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You can't talk Latin much. It's not like French
Having finished arguing with pharmacies, and generally feeling like hell, I decided to watch Waterfront (1950), which I'd discovered on International Talk Like a Pirate Day and then not seen because the internet promptly went down for the rest of the day.
It's a quick little twist of a movie, with a melodrama plot and lots of location shooting. Robert Newton's name is first after the title, but he's not the protagonist; that's probably Avis Scott as Nora McCabe, daughter of a merchant sailor who abandoned his family in 1919 and fourteen years later blows back into their lives without remorse or warning, dragging in his wake a messy snarl of drunkenness and trouble with the law. Grown up to fend for herself, Nora's a sharp-tongued, self-reliant young woman who runs more of the household than her wistful mother, her younger sister hoping to marry her way out of the tenements, or their bright youngest brother learning Latin on a scholarship. She knew her father was snowing her all those years ago when he kissed her through the school gates and promised to return; now that he's back, she stares at him like something out of a horror movie, this aging man with his peppery grey hair and the same warm, unreliable grin. Newton's very good in the part, a less sympathetic take on some of the wayward types he's played (cf. The Desert Rats' Tom Bartlett). Confronted by his daughter, Peter McCabe is full of airy reassurances and confiding winks, but his temper scratches nastily to the surface when he doesn't get the loving reunion he wanted and in a fit of spite he goes very nearly from his wife's bedroom to a neighbor's bed. His long-separated spouse can speak kindly of him—"He never really had a chance, poor Peter. Taken away from school and sent to sea before he was George Alexander's age"—but the film doesn't make it an excuse for the monumental callousness with which he really seems to think he can just resume his former presence in their lives. For this reason I suppose Waterfront might be classifiable as a women's picture: the men are the catalysts, but the women are not the scenery. There's a poignant late moment between Peter and the son he never knew about, as he very gently and diffidently offers the boy a tobacco tin that came from his own father, plainly feeling it a very common return for two lines' declamation from the Aeneid. The film still closes on Nora and her new husband, the next generation that matters. Richard Burton is so young I didn't recognize him until his second or third scene, slender, smile-lined and lanky, with lofting dark hair; he can demonstrate to Nora that not all sailors go out with the tide and never come back, but after two years on the dole he can't convince himself he's still a fit match for her. It frustrates her that he insists on waiting to marry until she's no longer supporting them both, but when calamity strikes and he wants to offer his name as a statement of solidarity, she sets him straight as to her priorities: "It's knowing I've got you, Ben." And the very last shot isn't of any human thing at all, but the shipyards of Liverpool, the ships on the Mersey coming in, going out; it amazes me how many stories understand that the sea is under everything, it's what always and doesn't change. I think the film fails the kitchen sink test on the voices alone (almost no one makes any attempt at a regional accent, Lancashire native Kathleen Harrison mystifyingly included), but the cinematography is beautifully documentary of Liverpool's docks and bridges and knows how to turn as expressive as film noir at the right moments. Whatever this genre is, I think its defining entry is still It Always Rains on Sunday (1947), but I'm not sorry I saw this one. Seriously, worth it for the docklands.
I would be a lot more enthusiastic about the new BFI Player premiering on my birthday if I thought it would work in my country. I spent considerable time this afternoon determining that half the things I want to watch starring Robert Donat can't be found on the internet, let alone DVD. Even TCM doesn't seem to have heard of The Cure for Love (1949).
It's a quick little twist of a movie, with a melodrama plot and lots of location shooting. Robert Newton's name is first after the title, but he's not the protagonist; that's probably Avis Scott as Nora McCabe, daughter of a merchant sailor who abandoned his family in 1919 and fourteen years later blows back into their lives without remorse or warning, dragging in his wake a messy snarl of drunkenness and trouble with the law. Grown up to fend for herself, Nora's a sharp-tongued, self-reliant young woman who runs more of the household than her wistful mother, her younger sister hoping to marry her way out of the tenements, or their bright youngest brother learning Latin on a scholarship. She knew her father was snowing her all those years ago when he kissed her through the school gates and promised to return; now that he's back, she stares at him like something out of a horror movie, this aging man with his peppery grey hair and the same warm, unreliable grin. Newton's very good in the part, a less sympathetic take on some of the wayward types he's played (cf. The Desert Rats' Tom Bartlett). Confronted by his daughter, Peter McCabe is full of airy reassurances and confiding winks, but his temper scratches nastily to the surface when he doesn't get the loving reunion he wanted and in a fit of spite he goes very nearly from his wife's bedroom to a neighbor's bed. His long-separated spouse can speak kindly of him—"He never really had a chance, poor Peter. Taken away from school and sent to sea before he was George Alexander's age"—but the film doesn't make it an excuse for the monumental callousness with which he really seems to think he can just resume his former presence in their lives. For this reason I suppose Waterfront might be classifiable as a women's picture: the men are the catalysts, but the women are not the scenery. There's a poignant late moment between Peter and the son he never knew about, as he very gently and diffidently offers the boy a tobacco tin that came from his own father, plainly feeling it a very common return for two lines' declamation from the Aeneid. The film still closes on Nora and her new husband, the next generation that matters. Richard Burton is so young I didn't recognize him until his second or third scene, slender, smile-lined and lanky, with lofting dark hair; he can demonstrate to Nora that not all sailors go out with the tide and never come back, but after two years on the dole he can't convince himself he's still a fit match for her. It frustrates her that he insists on waiting to marry until she's no longer supporting them both, but when calamity strikes and he wants to offer his name as a statement of solidarity, she sets him straight as to her priorities: "It's knowing I've got you, Ben." And the very last shot isn't of any human thing at all, but the shipyards of Liverpool, the ships on the Mersey coming in, going out; it amazes me how many stories understand that the sea is under everything, it's what always and doesn't change. I think the film fails the kitchen sink test on the voices alone (almost no one makes any attempt at a regional accent, Lancashire native Kathleen Harrison mystifyingly included), but the cinematography is beautifully documentary of Liverpool's docks and bridges and knows how to turn as expressive as film noir at the right moments. Whatever this genre is, I think its defining entry is still It Always Rains on Sunday (1947), but I'm not sorry I saw this one. Seriously, worth it for the docklands.
I would be a lot more enthusiastic about the new BFI Player premiering on my birthday if I thought it would work in my country. I spent considerable time this afternoon determining that half the things I want to watch starring Robert Donat can't be found on the internet, let alone DVD. Even TCM doesn't seem to have heard of The Cure for Love (1949).
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I like writing them. What frustrates me about YouTube is people who put up their three favorite two-minute clips from a movie rather than the movie itself—I mean, good for you, thinking Robert Newton looks hot in his PJs, but I'd like to see the rest of Night Boat to Dublin (1946), too.
Hope you're feeling better.
Thank you. Better than yesterday (better than
And damn it all--why can't the BFI share its treasures?
Well, they are! Just not outside of the UK! This is more frustrating than DVD region codes.
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Good heavens. The Brattle will be screening The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T!
Nine
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TEN. HAPPY. FINGERS.