The Third Man (1949)

"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Yes, it had to be that quote. Predictable but necessary.

This film is, essentially, superb. It tends to suffer somewhat from the overly high expectations one tends to have for films as critically acclaimed as this, but I won't discriminate against it for that. The film didn't choose to be so hyped. In truth, this film may not be quite amongst the best ever made but it is, nonetheless, utterly superb.

I won't recount the intriguing plot with its twists and turns and the gradual reveal of the story of Harry Lime, played with splendid charisma by the great Orson Welles. But the script paints as dark a picture of human nature as one would expect from the typewriter of Graham Greene. Vienna is made to look awesome by Carol Reed in its monochrome splendour, and the cast is superb. This is a Vienna still under occupation by the four powers, where even minor aristocrats resort to the black market to survive. This once-great imperial city has fallen very far indeed, with its grandiose Habsburg architecture seeming to mock it. 

Above all this film has atmosphere, pervaded as it is by a sense of doom and pessimism. And above it all floats that zither tune. This is a film that everyone should see.

Superman (1978)

"I have sent them you, my only son."

This is, perhaps, the first of the current era of superhero films. The 1966 Batman film was a TV tie-in, while all the others were either movie serials or of that world. This film sets a precedent, and at first it looks like being a good one; Superman is, after all, bloody good.

It isn't a good precedent, though, for the simple reason that the film is an origin story. It happens to work here, yes, but it doesn't in general. Origin stories just mean that you spend most of the film without the title character being able to do any of their usual cool stuff. It works here because Superman's origin story is epic and cool, but generally speaking origin stories are to be avoided.

Still, it works here, and the film is superb. Oh, there are flaws- Gene Hackman is miscast, playing Lex Luthor for broad humour rather than the more camp performance the character needed. Luthor six written like a villain from the Batman TV series; he should have been played as such. Also, there's a glaring continuity error. Jor-El tells Kal-El in the Fortress of Solitude that he's been dead for thousands of years. Yet Kal-El took twelve years to reach Earth and he crashed into Kansas, we're told, in 1948. (So Superman is thirty years old.)  Oops. Also, I'm not sure there's any real logic to the way Luthor infers the existence of Kryptonite. Still, it's necessary to the X plot. Oh, and why is Superman so stupid as to tell Lois one of his weaknesses, namely that he can't see through lead, knowing full well that she's going to write a full page article about it?

All that said, though, the film is epic, huge, looks awesome and Christopher Reeve is perfect casting. It's a triumph, and here are some particular nice touches. The film commemorates thirty years of Superman, so the tribute to Action Comics #1 at the start is an extremely nice touch. Also a nice touch is that all the Elders of Krypton have  different symbol on their chests, and Jor-El's just happens to look like an "S" in the Roman alphabet. Also, well, Marlon Brando. Sadly, though, I must confess to my fellow Doctor Who fans that I failed to spot William Russell in these scenes.

Also s nice touch is the young Clark Kent running faster, literally, than a speeding train. These little touches keep us entertained as the film whisks is through Superman's origins and, this being pre- Crisis on Infinite Earths and the film being moderately faithful to the comics, his takes a good long while. 

Interestingly, though, Jor-El says the line "I have sent them you, my only son". This is a blindingly obvious Christ allegory and I'm not sure that's appropriate; Superman was created in 1938, the year of Kristallnacht, by a couple of Jewish nebbishes. The character is, in spirit, Jewish. He's also essentially a liberal wish fulfilment figure: Superman in his early years would go after wife beaters or put Hitler and Stalin on trial. Here, though, he's a resolutely conservative and all-American figure, his liberal, Jewish origins forgotten.

Nothing dates the film so much as the scenes at the Daily Planet, with typewriters everywhere and not a single PC. Metropolis is very obviously New York here: there are trains to Buffalo and Syracuse.

Sadly, the climax to the film is a bit of a letdown; if Superman can just turn back time so that Lois doesn't die then all future dramatic tension is gone. But this is a film that rises above its flaws by dint of simply being awesome. 

There. After loads of Marvel stuff I've finally blogged something by DC!

Battle of Britain (1969)

"So don't threaten or dictate to us until you're marching up Whitehall. And even then we won't listen."

Well, that was strangely underwhelming. I'm British. I hate the Nazis. The real, historical Battle of Britain puts fire in my belly. So why is it that this film leaves my belly distinctly cold?

What's especially surprising about this is that the film has an extraordinary cast- Lawrence Olivier is particularly superb as the drily realistic Hugh Dowding. Yet none of the characters have enough screen time, or are sufficiently fleshed out, to make a difference. Michael Caine, in particular, is wasted on a role that doesn't give him anything to do and then suddenly killed off. The only exception to all this is Curd Jurgens' charismatic general, and he's a bloody Nazi. Still, at least Ralph Richardson gets a magnificent speech in his cameo.

It must be said, too, that this film is a little deceptive in implying that Britain would have been finished if it had lost the Battle of Britain. It wouldn't. Just Google "Operation Sealion" for why. Large parts of the country are out of German bombers' air range, for a start, and there's the entire Home Fleet waiting at Scapa Flow, in an age where accurate bombing of ships was simply not a thing.

There are a couple of nice moments- I like the bit where German POWs are made to clear up their own mess- but sadly this is a film that fails to raise my patriotic heckles. A slow, meandering missed opportunity.