The Old Dark House (1932)

"Even Welsh doesn't sound like that!"

I've been somewhat remiss in leaving it until now, when I'm forty-two years old, to see this excellent film (who cares about some dodgy attempts at British accents?) which is not at all the different-film-studio-but-pretty-much-Universal-horror type film I expected, in spite of he present of James Whale and Boris Karloff and a fair few chills. This is no horror film.

No; beyond the superficial genre tropes is a substantial script from J.B. Priestley himself, the famed Yorkshire intellectual of the early twentieth century, with fascinating characters and very real-sounding dialogue which now, eighty-seven years after the film was released, brings the past to life in a way few old films can. These people may be from a different age but they feel very real from the argument in the first scene onwards.

The cast is wonderful. Yes, Karloff is wasted as the mute butler in a role similar to last year's Frankenstein, but Ernest Thesiger delights as the extremely camp Horace and Charles Laughton shines as the rich but tragic, and very northern, Sir William. The cast is a collection of grotesques and sympathetic individuals, but it's the characters and cast, rather than the almost non-existent plot, that makes this film sing with atmosphere, pathos, danger and tension, in spite of the Charlotte Bronte madman in the attic. And at the centre of it all is the visionary and magnificent James Whale.

Titanic (1997)

"I intend to write a strongly worded letter to the White Star."

This is, well, the biggest, most epic film I've yet blogged. It's long, expensive and big in every sense of the world. Is it any good? Well, yes. It has deep flaws in its pacing but it is a technical triumph of cinema, and the interminable first half eventually gives way to a second half (in real time from the moment the iceberg is hit until the final sinking in a significant chunk of the film that does not feel to long) which can stand among the finest disaster movies ever made.

That first half, though... yes, it looks amazing in its recreation of Belle Époque opulence, but it is bloated and unwieldy. Yes, the modern day sequences are nice and, yes, Gloria Stuart is a legend of cinema, but given the sheer amount of footage these sequences are disposable. And the long setting up of the relationship between Rose and Jack takes up a normal length film by itself- and, if that were the whole film, this would be fine.

Yes, it's nice to see the the amusing Hollywood romantic comedy trope whereby a woman starts out by being intensely annoyed by the man she will ultimately fall in love with. Yes, Rose and Jack are star cross'd lovers, divided by the gulf of social class. Yes, it's funny to see Cal's unthinking snobbery ("That's amazing. You could almost pass for a gentleman."). But the effect of all this is somewhat undermined for the audience by the fact that the characters are all on the Titanic and, bloodthirsty as we are, we're all impatiently waiting for that iceberg.

And the constant use of that bloody Celine Dion tune doesn't improve matters either.

There are some nice touches; we get to see such Titanic perennials as the unsinkable Molly Brown and J. Bruce Ismay. The Captain is played by Bernard "Yosser Hughes" Hill. There's a very nice sweeping camera movement from the Bridge to the hot, stifling environment with the machinery below. The class gulf between first and third class, and between old money and new, is made very clear. Jack seems to be a fan of Picasso's Cubist period. Rose gets naked and there ensues what can only be described as a sketching montage.

It's still a relief, though, when we're saved by the iceberg. It's an instant change of tone, and urgency; levels of panic will slowly rise and rise throughout the second half of the film. Jack finds himself handcuffed to a pillar as the ship starts sinking, and this leads to a magnificent sequence whereby Rose rescues him; this is truly superb, perhaps the highlight of the film.

Order soon collapses into chaos, with the brave, the selfish, the rich and the lucky finding themselves on lifeboats more often than not. The film becomes more and more gripping as desperation takes hold, with scene after scene providing top entertainment. Perhaps my favourites are the band- truly noble- the Captain going down with his ship and the gentlemen in first class who remain behind to die "But we would like a brandy."

The final moments of the ship are superb,  and we get to see the tragic deaths of people bobbing in the water while people watch in lifeboats which are nowhere near full, and (spoiler alert!) Jack's death is such a powerful moment. 

Titanic is a mixed bag of a movie: overlong, and a mix of bad melodrama and great disaster movie. But the latter, and it's awesome technical accomplishments which won it all those Oscars, makes it a film that has to be seen.

The Invisible Man (1933)

“He meddled in things men should leave alone…”

What a brilliant film that was. I mean, I should have expected it to be good after seeing James Whale’s Frankenstein, but this just knocks the earlier film into a cocked hat. Great camerawork, incredible special effects, a magnetic and charismatic star who mesmerises with his voice alone, many amusing comic characters and an assured and pacey plot… what’s not to like? This whole film is a gleeful and glorious spectacle, breezily confident in how good it is but innocently eager to share the fun with the rest of us. It’s not the greatest film ever made, but it’s one of the easiest to love.

Claude Rains is such fun. He gets to be rude, to laugh hysterically, to be gentle with Flora, to twirl his moustache, to deliver hilarious lines such as “We’ll begin with a reign of terror; a few murders here and there!”, yet to hold the character together with sheer charisma and joie de vivre. His performance is as much a spectacle as the joyful and amazing scene where he first reveals his invisibility to the dumbfounded villagers. Even today the effects are genuinely amazing. And the character of Griffin suits his invisibility perfectly; without being seen, he’s able to get naked (symbolic in itself!) and gleefully break all of society’s rules, and get away with it. We’d all do the same, up to a point, if we could.

The film has such fun with his invisibility; hew plays so many practical jokes that it’s necessary for the murders to keep piling up more and more to stop us liking him. In the end he has to destroy a whole train in order to deserve his punishment. But that’s not the only side to the fun- I love the scene where he admits that rain, fog, smog, food visibly digesting, and even dirt between his fingernails(!) could be his undoing. Rather cleverly this prefigures the ending; snow, of course, is rather suspiciously not mentioned.

None of the other characters matter much, really, although the comedy police constable and the comedy pub landlady and landlord are fun. Cranley and Kemp are stock characters (although the slow unravelling of how Griffin manages to kill Kemp, as he says he will, is huge fun, and the car crash is great, too!), and Flora is the wettest female lead ever. In fact, aside from being wet, she has no other character traits whatsoever. Hardly a rewarding part to play, I’d imagine. As for Cranley, he seems to exist purely as a contrast with Griffin; a “responsible” scientist, concerning himself with the practical affair of food preservation, as opposed to “mad” scientist Griffin, with his self-centred and wild meddling into Things Which Should Not Be Disturbed. But no character here can compete with Rains.

The ending- with its mob and its burning building- is so similar to Whale’s earlier Frankenstein that it seems to be almost a deliberate tribute. But the ending is satisfying; it seems to follow on from lots of characters throughout the film, serious and silly, speculating on the various ways in which Griffin might come unstuck.  And it’s fitting that Rains, whose performance has been an utter triumph, finally gets his face on screen for the closing moments.