"The League of Gentlemen" (1960) on Hulu Plus

     Four years before "Seance on a Wet Afternoon", Richard Attenborough and Bryan Forbes teamed for the entertaining heist picture, 1960's "The League of Gentlemen". This was a year before Forbes made the leap to directing, when he was making his living as a writer and actor. He scripts and co-stars, while British film industry stalwart Basil Dearden directs.

     It's the story of Lieutenant-Colonel Norman Hyde (Jack Hawkins) and the group of men he assembles to carry out a heist. There's an economy of storytelling to the beginning of this picture. In a series of brief scenes each character is established: Major Peter Race (Nigel Patrick) is hosting gambling parties, Major Rupert Rutland-Smith (Terence Alexander) is a cuckolded shell of a husband, Captain "Padre" Mycroft (Roger Livesey) is hiding out posing as a priest and carrying around a case of dirty books, Captain Martin Porthill (Bryan Forbes) is a playboy shacking up with an older woman, Captain Stevens (Kieron Moore) is running a gym and being blackmailed, Captain Frank Weaver (Norman Bird) is a milk drinking sad-sack living with his obnoxious wife and father-in-law, and Lieutenant Edward Lexy (Richard Attenborough) runs a shop fixing radios and gambling machines.With deft strokes of writing and directing we see these characters in three dimensions, with no wasted time or effort.

     "I had a bloody good war", says Rutland-Smith to his wife early on in the picture. When the men first assemble together with Hyde, he goes around the room giving the background of each man and we learn that these "gentlemen" are a group of scoundrels and traitors, perverts and murderers. As it turns out, they did not have a bloody good war. Hyde later explains why he chose who he did, Race is a transport officer, "Weaver genius with explosives, Lexy, a radio king, Mycroft, absolutely first class quartermaster, and the other three, good trained soldiers. Ruthless..." He has formed his own criminal battalion of disgraced vets. It's the type of picture John Sturges (who Attenborough would act for in "The Great Escape") did so well, the story of a group of men coming together to do a job.

     Forbes' script, specifically the first half, is endlessly charming and funny. There are no throw away lines, it's all in service of plot and character. As the story moves forward, though, the screenplay is forced to move into the mechanisms necessary of a heist picture and things get a bit less interesting.

     Dearden directs with a straightforward style and light touch, his main focus is to always keep the audience entertained. The sequence in which the men steal gun's from an army base is a perfect example. Half the men pose as higher-ups doing a spot inspection of the base's food, while the other's steal the arm's. We cut back and forth between the comic scenes of the inspection and the tense scene's of the gun heist. This is a film that wants the audience to smile while they are on the edge of their seat's.The climatic bank heist scene is wonderfully atmospheric and intense. It's a smoke bomb and gas mask laden affair that hearkens back to Siodmak's "Criss Cross" and Lang's "You Only Live Once".

     The movie's portrayal of women is fairly abysmal. Every woman is either a slut or a shrew. This is a "man's movie" where there is no concern for the fairer sex. This is crystallized in a moment when Race asks Hyde about his wife, to which he replies, "I regret to say the bitch is still going strong."

     For a picture that starts off with such strong characterizations, it never really does much with the character's once they are established. The friendship of Race and Hyde is the only real relationship it builds and there's never any real conflict among the men. There's not one single performance that stands out beyond the other's, as the entire ensemble acquit themselves quite nicely. Hawkins, Patrick and Livesey are the most memorable, also it's fun seeing Attenborough play a wolfish, pinstripe attired cad.

     We never feel the stakes are high in this movie, it's too charming for that, it's main concern is with being an entertainment, and in that it succeeds. That being said, we root for the men to pull of the job, so it accomplishes the main requirement of a heist picture. It's just that I wanted to care about these characters more, I wanted there to be more gravity. "The League of Gentlemen" is a delightful piece of cinema, but it can't be considered one of the great crime pictures.  

   

Oh yeah, and check out this Oliver Reed cameo!!

"Seance on a Wet Afternoon" (1964) on Hulu Plus

     I remember when I first encountered this film. It was during one of my shifts at the video store (Video To Go RIP). Wandering the aisles, my eye was caught by what I thought was one of the strangest titles I'd ever seen:

     This experience of stumbling upon a title purely through chance- of wandering through an environment with a finite amount of choices and discovering a dusty gem- is one I miss. I understand that alot of it is nostalgia, and the irony of bemoaning the loss of the video store experience on a blog dedicated to streaming services is not lost on me. It's just that I miss the thrill of discovery, of having my interest piqued by a title, a bit of cover art, or a write-up on the back of the box. We live in a world now where our devices tell us what they think we want, where the computers at Netflix make weird recommendations based on whatever algorithms they are programmed with. Video stores, to me, were all about not knowing what I wanted. Of travelling the world of cinema without a detailed map, until an avenue caught my eye and then finding where it lead. Such was how I discovered this film.

     "Seance on a Wet Afteroon" begins quite literally. The mood of the piece is immediately established in the hushed candle lit seance scene that opens the picture. After that, the participants and the audience are thrust out into the afternoon, rain falling on the camera as we stare up into the grey English sky.

     This is the story of Myra (Kim Stanley) and Billy (Richard Attenborough) Savage and their plan to kidnap a child (Judith Donner), so that Myra may later aid in finding her, thereby proving her psychic abilities. Myra treats Billy horribly, manipulating and insulting him at every opportunity. Attenborough as Billy is soft-spoken, beaten down with a soul-weary stare, quietly carrying out his wife's criminal wishes.

     There's a mournful black and white heaviness to this picture; a fluid, uneasy stylishness to the cinematography. Initially, the aesthetic alone evokes dark feelings within the viewer, and as the story unfolds we discover they are tied to the narrative as well, a story of loss and sorrow. Under Bryan Forbes' direction, style and substance are one.

     Likewise, sound and screen are synthesized beautifully. John Barry delivers a score that stands out even among his godlike body of work. During the kidnapping scene, as the child cries out from the backseat, we don't hear her voice. Instead, we hear the flute's of Barry's music. It's music as dialogue as pure emotion. Forbes' attention to sonic detail enriches the entire picture. When Billy kidnaps the girl, a jet flies overhead, underscoring the moment. Later, he and Myra hide in their house as the cops are at their door, looking for the girl they have hidden. The sound of the young girl's voice penetrates the silence, making the tension unbearable. It's an example of a film-maker using all the cinematic tools in order to create suspense.

     Kim Stanley's performance is powerful and complex, and because she didn't perform on the silver screen again for 20 years, legendary. Myra is a charlatan who believes her own con, who uses kidnapping as a means to prove the truth of her lies, oblivious to the paradox. This discordant mix of the esoteric and the common perfectly echoes the title, which conjures images of the mystical and strange, but instead refers literally to a seance that is happening on an afternoon when it is raining.

     As the picture progresses, we eventually come to view Myra not as a domineering manipulator, but as a sick, mentally troubled woman. In a pivotal scene about 90 minutes in, Billy finally asserts himself, becoming a voice of reality and reason, and we realize the dynamics between this couple are not at all what we had supposed them to be. Whether out of love, loyalty or both, Billy has chosen to be the subservient husband until this moment when Myra's requests go too far. Attenborough, understated and heartbreaking, is the perfect counterpoint for Stanley's portrayal of a woman's gradual mental breakdown. It's a case of two great artists relying on each other and enhancing one another's performance. Together they give us a portrait of two sad human beings, haunted by a shared tragedy in their past.

     Part thriller, part psychodrama, but ultimately a study in grief, "Seance on a Wet Afternoon" is an overcast ode to loss and plans made for a future that never arrived.