From the Archives: Sleuth

From the pre-Talking Movies archives.

On his sprawling country estate, an aging writer (Caine) matches wits with the struggling actor (Law) who has stolen his wife’s heart.

If you don’t know who Harold Pinter is then avoid this film like the plague. If you do know who Harold Pinter is, Nobel Laureate and Attendant Lord of British Theatre from the 1950s onwards, then you will find this film quite rewarding but not entirely dramatically satisfying. There’s a Pinter pause in the very first piece of dialogue that will unnerve the hell out of cinemagoers that have just wandered in by chance to a Jude Law film and will alert theatregoers to the fact that this is really Harold Pinter’s latest play. This is the real deal; a comedy of menace as two men fight each other with veiled verbal threats in a confined space, trying to assert control over each other, and over the woman they both want to possess, who is absent for most of the film. Sleuth features one of the most riveting opening sequences of the year as Branagh ditches his customary extremely mobile camera for fixed set-ups and long-shots, it is a full 12 minutes before the first close-up, on Michael Caine for “I understand you’re f***ing my wife”.

Law is there to discuss a divorce for Caine’s wife but Caine has a different sort of proposition for Law and the mind-games between the two escalate quickly. The original Anthony Shaffer play was filmed by legendary All About Eve director Joseph L Mankiewiecz in 1972 as his swansong. One of the best films of the 1970s it was twisted, funny and Laurence Olivier and Caine faced off against each other in a clash of RADA and cockney accents that mirrored the class divide between their characters. That tension has been replaced by a homoerotic undertone highly reminiscent of Pinter’s play No Man’s Land that doesn’t really work. Olivier’s dangerous eccentric lived in a house cluttered with useless bric-a-brac, Michael Caine’s modernist open-plan house is made to appear equally sinister thru Branagh’s clever use of lighting.

Sleuth is so strongly dependent on its plot-twists that it’s almost impossible to write about it without ruining it. Instead let us mock Jude Law. One of the twists in Sleuth depends entirely on acting ability. That twist is of regretful necessity thrown away here because while Law may be under the impression that he can do more than stand in front of the lights and look pretty, Pinter is not. His version from that point onwards departs radically from the original’s plot points becoming a depiction of malevolent psychological cruelty rather than a joyously frantic game of cat and also-cat, but Law’s acting cannot sustain such intensity, so after 86 minutes we simply end with a whimper. Sleuth must therefore be ranked as one of the most interesting failures of 2007. But I’d rather have this intelligent attempt, even with Jude Law, than the polished mediocrities that clog up the multiplexes, any day.

2/5

Graham Greene Festival 2019

The Graham Greene International Festival is about to happen at Greene’s birthplace of Berkhamsted once again, and this year’s event, running from Thursday 19th to Sunday 22nd of September, is the 21st such garrulous gathering.

“It’s wonderful, isn’t it, how you always get what you pray for,” reflects Milly, beloved daughter of Wormold, the hapless intelligence agent in Graham Greene’s comic satirical masterpiece Our Man in Havana (1958). The theme for the 2019 Festival is described by Festival Director Martyn Sampson as Reflections on Greene: to give voice to the shades of reflectiveness and the reflections — and reflections on reflections — that present insights into the life and work of Greene. The programme of events could be compared to a veritable hall of mirrors, plentiful in perspectives and diverse in points of view, in which Festival-goers can pursue all manner of different leads and ideas.

Tickets will be on sale at the door for all events other than the meals, and online via the website: grahamgreenebt.org/tickets.

Season tickets, which offer a discount, are available for those who plan to attend all the talks and films. Friends of the GGBT can obtain a small discount on tickets by putting ‘Friends’ in the code box when purchasing.

 

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THURSDAY 19TH SEPTEMBER

Railway Station (or Court House) and the Town Hall

Afternoon session (£5)

Berkhamsted Railway Station (or Court House)

2.15       Berkhamsted, The Greene Guide: a guided walk of approximately one hour, led by Brian Shepherd, with readings from A Sort of Life, The Human Factor and The Captain and the Enemy, by Judy Mead and Richard Shepherd. Meet outside the rear entrance to Berkhamsted Railway Station (the Platform 4 exit) for introduction. In the event of wet weather, there will be an illustrated talk with readings in The Court House.

 

Evening session

The Town Hall

(Supper and film £30; supper only £20; film only £10.)

5.15       Film Supper: 5.15 meet for drinks at pay bar, 6.00 waitress – served two-course supper with coffee; vegan/vegetarian option.      

(Please book by Monday 9 September at the latest.)

7.15       (For 7.30 start.) Film: 21 Days (London Film Productions, 1940, 72 minutes), directed by Basil Dean, screenplay by Basil Dean and Graham Greene, and starring Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier. Introduced by Mike Hill.

 

 

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FRIDAY 20TH SEPTEMBER

The Town Hall, The Civic Centre

Morning session (£16)

 The Town Hall

9.45       Greene & Sherry: The Fox & The Hound: a talk by Lucinda Cummings-Kilmer, who was research assistant to Norman Sherry, the first biographer of Greene

10.45      Break for tea and coffee

11.15      “It was our Bible”: US Vietnam War era Reporters (1965−1975) and the impact of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American: a talk by Professor Kevin Ruane of Canterbury Christ Church University.

Break for lunch

12.45      A repeat of Berkhamsted: The Greene Guide (£5). In the event of wet weather, there will be an illustrated talk with readings in The Town Hall.

 

Afternoon session (£16)

The Town Hall

2.30       Brighton Rock: Wrestling a Wonderful Story from out of a Book and onto the Stage: Bryony Lavery and Esther Richardson are interviewed by Mark Lawson.

3.30       Break for tea and coffee

4.00       The Priest in the Novels of Graham Greene: The Saint and the Sinner: A talk by Revd. Canon Emeritus Professor David Jasper of the University of Glasgow. The David Pearce Memorial Talk.

 

Evening session (£10)

 The Civic Centre

7.30       Film night: Our Man in Havana (Kingsmead Productions, 1959, 111 minutes), directed by Carol Reed, screenplay by Graham Greene, and starring Alec Guinness, Ernie Kovacs, Burl Ives and Maureen O’Hara. Introduced by Quentin Falk.

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SATURDAY 21ST SEPTEMBER

Deans’ Hall and Old Hall, Berkhamsted School (Castle Street)

Morning session (£17)

Deans’ Hall

9.45      Vicious Cities: Shadows of The Third Man in Our Man in Havana: a talk by Dr Chris Hull of the University of Chester and Dr James Clifford Kent of Royal Holloway, University of London.

10.45    Break for tea and coffee

11.15    What or who was The Third Man . . . and the vital question remains. . . .: Miles Hyman and Jean-Luc Fromental are interviewed by Dr Brigitte Timmermann.

Break for lunch

 

 

Mid-afternoon session (£17)

Deans’ Hall

2.00      The launch of the Graham Greene Film Review Competition: A presentation by Dr Creina Mansfield, Emma Clarke, Quentin Falk and Dr Jo Barnardo-Wilson.

2.30      Our Woman in Havana: Reporting Castro’s Cuba: a talk by Sarah Rainsford.

3.30     Break for tea and coffee

4.00      Politics and the Novel: a talk by Sir Vince Cable, former Leader of the Liberal Democrats 2017-19 and former Secretary of State for Business.

 

Late-afternoon session, including Birthday Toast (£15)

5.00      The Birthday Toast: by Jonathan Bourget.

5.30      Where is the line between true crime and crime fiction?: a talk by Geoffrey Wansell.

 

Evening session (£36)

Old Hall

8.00      Festival Dinner: three courses with wine and coffee; vegan/vegetarian option, with grace to be said by Revd. Canon Emeritus Professor David Jasper. (Limited to 60 tickets. Please book by Monday 9 September at the latest.)

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SUNDAY 22 SEPTEMBER

VIth Form Centre and Old Hall, Berkhamsted School (Castle Street)

Morning session (£16)

VIth Form Centre, Castle Street

9.00      A Tour of the School & Archives: including a look at the Exhibition Room, the green baize door, Old Hall and the School Chapel. Meet outside Old Hall.

10.00     Scandinavians are terribly Scandinavian: Graham Greene’s friendship with Norwegian writer Nordahl Grieg: a talk by Johanne Elster Hanson. This talk will follow an introduction by Ian Thomson.

11.00    Break for tea and coffee

11.30    Graham Greene’s Hungarian Connection: a talk by Dr Tamás Molnár and Dr Ramón Porta.

 

Old Hall Lunch (£25)

1.00      Farewell Lunch: cold buffet, wine and coffee; vegan/vegetarian   option. (Limited to 60 tickets. Please book by Monday 9 September at the latest.)

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The venues will feature exhibitions during the course of the Festival. The Graham Greene Trust Festival bookstall and Richard Frost’s second-hand bookstall will be open on the Friday and Saturday. Both will feature a large selection of books by, and relating to, Graham Greene. A free Festival brochure will be available during the Festival. It will include a full Festival programme, details of speakers and more. A Season ticket to all events, including both films but excluding meals, is available for £106. There is free admission to all Festival events (excluding meals) for under 21s. If you have any queries or problems with tickets, please email ticketing@grahamgreenebt.com or phone +44 7988 560496.

Friends of The Graham Greene Trust

You are cordially invited to become a Friend of the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust at: grahamgreenebt.org/membership

Benefits include receipt of a quarterly magazine entitled A Sort of Newsletter and a Festival discount of £2 per event (for up to five events).

What becomes a Christie most?

Can the melancholic approach taken in Murder on the Orient Express work for a proposed Death on the Nile sequel?

I was quite surprised by the melancholic tone of Branagh’s first Poirot outing, but that, more than anything else, even his energetic performance as an exacting, physical Poirot, was what made the film work. And with a 350 million return on a 55 million budget it is inevitable that the sequel set up in its final scene will happen – Death on the Nile. Discussing this prospect with occasional co-writer Friedrich Bagel (which I still strongly suspect of being an assumed name) he opined that it would be better to go for a Christie mystery that has not been filmed, like The Mysterious Affair at Styles or The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Sadly, I opined right back, two things stand in the way of that – people would riot in their cinemas at the finale of Ackroyd, and marketers would riot in their boardrooms at the prospect of actually having to do their job rather than utilise the name recognition of already beloved properties. Alors, Nile…

One hopes that someone in Burbank isn’t thus scrolling through Peter Ustinov’s IMDb profile. Ticking off Evil Under the Sun and Appointment with Death as the final entries in the Branagh Poirot quadrilogy, sneakily noting Thirteen at Dinner, Dead Man’s Folly, and Murder in Three Acts as potential TV specials to cross the street with to HBO if the Branagh Poirots hit a wall at the box office, or God help us looking about for young Branaghs for a potential prequel Mysterious Affair at Styles. We know that Michael Green will again be adapting Christie’s novel for Branagh to star and direct. Reviewing Murder on the Orient Express back in November I noted that Green redeemed himself from the double whammy disasters of Alien: Covenant and Blade Runner 2049 with his melancholic interpretation, which saw Branagh and composer Patrick Doyle render the murder almost as a mourning ritual. But that card can only be played once, leaving an obvious possibility that will annoy the purists.

That card is the trump that left the London Times spitting blood this Easter weekend when the BBC changed the identity of the killer in Ordeal by Innocence. It’s impossible to change the killer in Murder on the Orient Express, and one would think the same applies to Death on the Nile, but a severe rewrite (in the order of the tortures visited upon Stoker for Laurence Olivier’s Dracula) could yield anything. It is disconcerting when screenwriters assume they know better than the Queen of Crime who done it, but then there is a general tendency to sniff at Christie’s writing as being mere three-card-trick-plotting, overlooking some wonderful sly comedy as well as much darker effects of suspense, paranoia, and cynicism in The Hollow and And Then There Were None. No, if Green were to change the identity of the killer in Death on the Nile it wouldn’t be totally inadmissible, but it would be a hefty task of rewriting to keep Christie’s logic intact.

It is a matter of opinion that the melancholic card can only be played once. Green’s invented character arc for Poirot, where he admits shades of grey into a Manichean worldview is similar to the moral agony endured by Suchet’s Poirot on the same case. But Suchet’s crisis was explicitly Catholic while Branagh’s was, predictably for Hollywood, a crisis in the secular Markwellian ethics of consistency; allied to the writing of Poirot’s OCD as the scrupulosity of consistency in all things. (Although I vigorously object to the tendency to dub any and all devotion to precision as OCD, rather than, say, a devotion to precision.) I hold that the senseless murder of a kidnapped child naturally occasions a melancholic atmosphere in a way that a twisted love triangle climaxing in slaughter does not, but as Green threw out large chunks of plotting and minutiae to focus on a mood, it would not be outrageous to think he could do much the same thing for Nile.

Bagel took me to task for harping on Branagh as a physical Poirot, declaiming that Poirot was a policeman so he should be able to chase people, and that Christie herself admitted she’d blundered with his age, being retired in 1920 he would be 105 when solving crimes in 1960s Chelsea; a mistake akin to PG Wodehouse initially locating Blandings Castle damnably far from London for later plotting purposes. I retorted that Branagh’s physicality distinguishes his interpretation. Peter Ustinov naturally brought a raconteurish quality, and his bumbling was a play on how Christie made Poirot exaggerate his foreignness to trick villains into complacency. Suchet, lacking that flaneuring spirit, emphasised Poirot’s prim and proper sedentary use of the little grey cells; more true to the retired from active duty to pure consultation of Christie’s first forays with the detective. Branagh takes some of the fire from Suchet’s Poirot, indignant at evildoers expecting to get away scot-free, and makes his Belgian less retiree, more Fury at large.

To end where we began Herr Bagel wrung his hands that there is no decent actor who can play Hastings, the Watson to Poirot’s Sherlock, without being ‘annoying’. Hugh Fraser was perfect in the part for ITV, and, by indirect associations; he had previously played a villain in Edge of Darkness, he was tall where Suchet was small; I led myself to the only candidate (sic) for the part – Toby Jones. Who, by good fortune, was recently in Witness for the Prosecution for the BBC, and previously played opposite the great David Suchet on ITV’s Murder on the Orient Express. Branagh is Poirot, Jones is Hastings, the sun is high, the Nile water deceptively calm…

Graham Greene Festival 2016

The Graham Greene Festival returns after a sojourn last year for another hectic long weekend of events in Berkhamsted organised by festival director Mike Hill.

Hill says of this year’s event “In The Third Man, Graham Greene lampooned earnest literary gatherings by sending a writer of cheap novelettes to answer questions on James Joyce and the stream of consciousness. He might forgive us for organising a literary festival in his honour, an event now in its eighteenth year. People from all over the world will again descend on Berkhamsted to celebrate his life and works – many of them seasoned Greene Festival-goers, some first-time visitors. All are welcome, and all assured of a varied and interesting programme. There may be some earnestness, but there will certainly be friendliness and laughter. I hope you will come along.”

The festival is organised by the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust as Berkhamsted was where Graham’s father was headmaster of the venerable public school which Graham reluctantly attended; a deeply unhappy experience immortalised in the 1971 autobiography A Sort of Life. Greene mellowed towards his hometown though, returning to it imaginatively in late novels The Human Factor and The Captain and the Enemy. The four-day festival is only a half-hour train ride from London Euston, and is well worth the attention of all Greene fans in the Home Counties and beyond. As well as film screenings, gala dinners, and talks by both Greene scholars and film-makers involved in adaptations of his works, the festival has become a venue for launching new works of academic Greene scholarship.

This year’s highlights include the coup of a talk by Labour Big Beast, political biographer, and proud Yorkshireman Roy Hattersley on the recusancy of Shakespeare and the 20^th Century revival of an English Catholic literary tradition. There is also an interview with Greene’s daughter and nephew, and a rare chance to see a 1961 version of The Power and the Glory starring Laurence Olivier and George C Scott, as well as two episodes from the 1970s Thames TV series Shades of Greene. The 2014 Festival innovation of a Greene book club is retained and expanded to include eight different titles (including my personal favourite The Ministry of Fear). Festival venues will feature exhibitions including ‘Greene in Theatreland’, and alongside the Festival bookstall’s recherché joys will be Richard Frost’s bookstall, with a large selection of books by and relating to Greene.

 

 

Thursday 22 September

Court House, The Gatsby, The Rex Cinema

Afternoon session (Cost: £5)

Court House, beside St Peter’s Church

2.15 ‘Graham Greene’s Common’: a guided walk (under three miles; includes WW1 trenches) led by Brian Shepherd, with readings from A Sort of Life and The Human Factor by Judy Mead and Richard Shepherd.

Assemble outside the Court House for introduction. Cars/lifts and stout walking shoes required for the start of the walk at Inns of Court War Memorial, New Road car park. If wet, illustrated talk with readings in the Court House.

 

Evening session

The Gatsby

5.30 Social gathering and buffet supper at The Gatsby. -7.15 Two courses and a glass of wine; vegan/vegetarian option. (Limited to 73 tickets. Book by Thursday 15 September at the latest.) Cost: £16

 

Film Night at The Rex Cinema

7.30 The Power and the Glory (CBS Television, 1961 – 90 -9.30 minutes) Director: Marc Daniels. With Laurence

Olivier, George C. Scott, Julie Harris, Cyril Cusack, Roddy McDowall.

Introduced by Professor Neil Sinyard. Cost: £9

 

Tickets are available for purchase online at www.grahamgreenebt.org, or by telephone: 07988 560496

 

Friday 23 September

The Town Hall, The Civic Centre

Morning session (Cost: £15)

The Town Hall

9.45 Journey With Maps: the beginning of Greene’s Quixotic holidays: a talk by Professor Carlos Villar Flor on Greene and Father Leopoldo Duran.

10.45 Break for tea and coffee

11.15 Travels with Auntie: the BBC’s James Naughtie interviews Nick Warburton about his writing career and his radio adaptations this year of The Honorary Consul and The Power and the Glory.

 

Break for lunch

 

Afternoon session (Cost: £15)

The Town Hall

2.30 The Catholic Muse: a talk by Lord (Roy) Hattersley.

Why, until the end of the nineteenth century were there so few distinguished Catholic writers and why were so many of the Catholic poets and novelists of the twentieth century converts? Roy Hattersley – carefully distinguishing between Catholic writers and writers who were Catholics – offers answers to those questions and tries to resolve the age old conundrum, was William Shakespeare, in the language of his age, a Papist?

3.30 Break for tea and coffee

4.15 Graham Greene Book Club: eight discussion groups, each focusing on a different Greene novel: The Man Within, England Made Me, The Power and the Glory, The Ministry of Fear, The End of the Affair, Our Man in Havana, The Human Factor, The Captain and the Enemy.

 

Evening session (Cost: £10)

The Civic Centre

7.45 Film night: two episodes from Shades of Greene -9.45 (Thames TV, 1975-6): Two Gentle People (50 mins), with Harry Andrews and Elaine Stritch, and Dream of a Strange Land (40 mins), with Ian Hendry. Introduced by: Dr David Rolinson of

Stirling University.

 

Saturday 24 September

Deans’ Hall and Old Hall, Berkhamsted School

(Castle Street)

Morning session (Cost: £16)

Deans’ Hall

9.30 Current Greene Research: presented by a University of North Georgia panel of students and faculty.

10.30 Break for tea and coffee

11.00 Graham Greene remembered: Vincent McDonnell, author of The Broken Commandment, interviewed by Mike Hill.

12.00 Launch of Graham Greene Studies by Professor -12.15 Joyce Stavick.

 

Break for lunch

 

Mid-afternoon session (Cost: £16)

Deans’ Hall

2.15 Greene and Jews: a talk by Professor Cedric Watts on the paradoxical treatment of Jews in a number of Greene’s nonfictional and fictional works, including The Name of Action, Stamboul Train and Brighton Rock.

3.15 Break for tea and coffee

3.45 Regarding Graham: Caroline Bourget, Greene’s daughter, and Nick Dennys, Greene’s nephew, interviewed by Dr Jon Wise.

 

Late afternoon session (Cost: £12)

Deans’ Hall

5.00 The Birthday Toast: by David Pearce.

5.15 ‘I’ve always wanted to be in a publisher’s office’ (Graham Greene, 1933): a talk by Professor Judith Adamson on Greene the publisher.

 

Evening session (Cost: £35)

Old Hall

7.45 Festival Dinner: three courses with wine and coffee; vegan/vegetarian alternative. (Limited to 60 tickets. Book by Thursday 15 September at the latest.)

 

Sunday 25 September

Careers Library and Old Hall, Berkhamsted School

(Castle Street)

Morning session (Cost: £15)

Careers Library (next to Old Hall)

10.00 ‘Something to catch hold of in the general flux’: Greene’s presentation of religious ideas and longings in his first three novels – The Man Within, The Name of Action and Rumour at Nightfall: a talk by Dr Alice Reeve-Tucker.

11.00 Break for tea and coffee

11.30 Taking liberties: two controversial film adaptations of, and by, Graham Greene: a talk by Professor Neil Sinyard.

 

Lunch (Cost: £24)

Old Hall

1.00 Farewell Lunch: cold buffet, wine and coffee; vegan/vegetarian option. (Limited to 60 tickets. Book by Thursday 15 September at the latest.)

 

 

Tickets

Tickets are available for purchase at http://www.grahamgreenebt.org, or by phone: 07988 560496. A Season Ticket to all events, excluding the film at The Rex and meals, is available for ￡95. There is free admission to Festival events (excluding the film at The Rex and meals) for under 21s and holders of the Dacorum Card.

Enquiries: grahamgreeneboxoffice@gmail.com

 

Friends

Become a Friend of the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust at http://www.grahamgreenebt.org and receive a quarterly newsletter, a Festival discount of ￡1 per event (for up to five events), or a Season Ticket to all events, excluding the film at Thee Rex and meals, for ￡95.

 

Graham Greene Birthplace Trust

On the website (www.grahamgreenebt.org) there are further details of the talks, interviews and speakers, online ticketing service, and information on any changes that may arise. Tickets will be on sale at the door for all events other than the meals and the Rex film, but it would be preferable to book in advance online from the website. Season tickets are available for those who plan to attend all the talks.

Top 5 Michael Caine Movies

I wouldn’t like to give the impression that I was mean-spiritedly making fun either of Michael Caine or of cockney accents in last week’s sketch, so as a gesture of atonement here’s a Top 5 of my favourite Michael Caine movies. I’ve picked only ones in which he’s the lead.

(5) Get Carter
“You’re a big man, but you’re out of shape”, “She was only thirteen”… A movie plundered both by Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan to sharpen their Caine impressions in The Trip, and arguably by Martin Campbell and Daniel Craig to make the last image of Casino Royale iconic. This gritty thriller, which is still director Mike Hodges’ calling card, sees Caine’s implacable London hard-man Jack Carter head north to avenge his brother’s death with a shotgun. Shot in stylish long-takes with a distancing aesthetic this is an imposing British crime movie that loomed over all that followed.

(4) Educating Rita
“There is more insight in the telephone directory…and probably more wit”. Caine’s jaded English professor helps Julie Walter’s discontented housewife better herself thru an adult education course in a sparkling adaptation of Willy Russell’s play, itself almost a spin on Pygmalion. But this Henry Higgins is on a serious downward spiral; drowning in drink and self-pity in equal measures, cheated on by his wife and despising his own volumes of poetry. Caine’s showy role encompasses glorious high verbal comedy and drunken slapstick, as well as the quiet drama of alcoholic misery. This finally won him a BAFTA.

(3) The Quiet American
“Oh, shit” .Caine’s dead-pan delivery of that line is emblematic of his quiet, measured and ultimately devastating performance in Philip Noyce’s 2002 film. This subtle work is arguably the finest adaptation of Graham Greene’s work since the 1940s. Caine plays the archetypal Greene character. His foreign correspondent boasts of simply observing the chaos of 1950s Vietnam and offering no point of view, no political allegiance. An unwelcome romantic rival (Brendan Fraser’s titular do-gooder) and pressure from London to break a story sparks a belated moral engagement with the ethics of American interference, and opposition to it…

(2) Sleuth
“Be sure and tell them it was all just a bloody game!” Joseph L Mankiewicz’s riveting adaptation of Anthony Shaffer’s play sees a rich aged writer invite his young wife’s lover, a cockney hairdresser, to his rural mansion for some vindictive head-games. Caine’s regional accent and film acting technique go head to head with Olivier’s RADA accent and stage acting style in a contest Caine was easily winning till a desperate Olivier produced a moustache… If you want to empirically measure Caine’s acting ability note how Sleuth’s entire structure disintegrates in the remake because Jude Law can’t act.

(1) The Italian Job
“You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!” A truly flawless film; from Quincy Jones’ impossibly catchy original soundtrack and the glorious turn by Noel Coward as the imprisoned crime-lord masterminding proceedings, to the implausible gang apparently composed solely of gay aristocrats and cockney wide-boys and the deranged Carry On antics of Benny Hill, and on to the wonderfully staged Austin Mini car-chase and the definitive cinematic cliff-hanger, it’s impossible not to sit back with a smile pasted on your face throughout as Caine motors the whole film along with a performance of winning charm.

Michael Caine cock(ney)s up shakespeare

INT.HOLLYWOOD DIOGENES CLUB-DAY
MICHAEL CAINE is sharing a brandy in the sedate library of this fabled haven of civility in an oftentimes torrid city with his agent, the celebrated MONTGOMERY MONCRIEFF MICAWBER-MYCROFT. Micawber-Mycroft though is wary. He knows only too well the fixed eye of the man with a grievance…

CAINE: You’ve been there ’aven’t you?
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: What, the rebuilt Globe? Yes, of course I’ve been there. I saw Macbeth there a few years ago, they had posters everywhere proclaiming ‘This is a bloody production of an extremely brutal play’; I had to stop myself from cackling with delight. That should draw in the crowds in Sarf London I thought to myself.
CAINE: And you’ve been around the exhibition part of it as well, yeah?
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Yes, of course I have.
CAINE: So you know the booths where you can listen to all the old geezers speaking Shakespeare?
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Um, yes I tried out the sound booths where you can listen to choice speeches, scenes and sonnets being performed by RADA’s finest graduates.
CAINE: And?
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: And what?
CAINE: Wha’ did you notice?
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Well, I was rather surprised that the earliest recordings, of Edwardian era actors doing Henry V’s big speeches, made Larry Olivier sound like he was being restrained by contrast when he popped up later. In fact he sounded positively subdued, and, whisper it, naturalistic, when we both know he was an enormous ham.
CAINE: No, Mycroft, you’re missing my point. Wha’ did you notice, did you ’ear a lot of regional accents in them booths?
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Eh, no.
CAINE: Yeah, Eh, No. And why is tha’, eh? Do all the people in England sound like Laurence bloody Olivier when they open their mouth? Not bloody likely. So why can’t someone who sounds like me be featured in the recordings in them booths?
(Mycroft quickly puzzles out in his head what this meeting is really all about…)
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Do you want me to try and get your voice into those booths?!
CAINE: Yeah!
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: But, you’ve never really done Shakespeare…
CAINE: How bloody ’ard it can be? I’m not going to record a whole bloody play, I’ll just replace the one track they’ve go’ with Olivier doing Othello. Daft bastard shouldn’t be there doing that anyway, it’s an insult. Putting on blackface at age 58, in 1965 for Christ’s sake, what was he thinking? Until Chiwetel Eijofor remembers to record his bloody vocals for that fantastic exit scene he did with Ewan McGregor a few years ago I’ll ’ave a go.
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: Oh! That speech? The final soliloquy?
CAINE: Yeah, tha’ one.
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: I’m not sure that’s a very good idea, Michael.
CAINE: Why? Wha’? Do you think I can’t measure up to Larry?
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: No, we both know you can, it’s just I have grave fears that that particular speech might sort of, well, send you looping off in another direction, almost against your will, as it were.
CAINE: Nonsense, it’s easy. (not really listening to Micawber-Mycroft anymore….)
MICAWBER-MYCROFT: (shuddering) And then I might have to deal with an angry Nolan again. And I don’t like dealing with Nolan when he’s angry, especially not now when he’s already simmering at mildly furious with me for telling Delaney I fed him a pivotal line of dialogue for Batman Begins.
CAINE: I’ll go in, knock it ou’, and be back in time to film a cameo in a remake of Jaws IV.

INT.ABBEY ROAD STUDIOS, LONDON-DAY
MICHAEL CAINE and BORIS, a sound engineer, stand on either side of the glass in a recording studio. Boris gives Caine the thumbs up thru the glass, and Caine picks up a battered old Penguin Popular Classic copy of Othello from the studio floor, bent open at the right page with a huge amount of annotation of the speech in question. He then proceeds to deliver a performance and a half; he invests the text with sub-text, pathos, nobility, nuance, and even that thing where his voice breaks when he gets very emotional – very emotional, indeed…

CAINE: Soft you; a word or two before you go:
I have done the Sta’e some service, and they know’t:
No more of tha’. I pray you in your le’’ers,
When you shall these unlucky deeds rela’e,
Speak of me, as Oi am. Nuffin’ extenua’e,
Nor se’ down augh’ in malice.
Then you must speak,
Of one that lov’d no’ wisely, but too well:
Of one, no’ easily jealous, but being wrough’,
Perplex’d in the extreme: Of one, ’ose ’and,
Like the base Judean threw a pearl away
(Twitches; self-restraining, then forlornly) The size, of a tangerine…
BORIS: CUT!
(Boris shakes his head, walks to the door, and opens it. Looks pityingly at Michael Caine and quietly says–)
BORIS: Get out.
CAINE: Yeah, alrigh’.

Interview with Kenneth Branagh

I traveled to Belfast in late 2007 to interview Kenneth Branagh for InDublin about his mainstream directorial comeback Sleuth which was about to hit cinemas. Here then is the full transcript of Kenneth Branagh on Sleuth, Pinter, Caine and more…

Is it fair to say that the words ‘Screenplay by Harold Pinter’ were the main attraction of Sleuth?
It is absolutely fair to say that. I mean, it really arrested me. The call came through and they said ‘a new version of’ which is a better way of saying ‘remake’ cos I thought ‘oh dear no’, I know that original film very well and I’d seen the play not long before but then they said ‘Jude Law is producing it, Michael Caine is in it but the screenplay is by Harold Pinter’ and I’d always, always wanted to work with him. I couldn’t believe really that I hadn’t been in a Pinter play. I did my audition speeches for drama schools, the modern ones anyway, from Pinter plays, and, I don’t know, I’ve seen so many of the plays that somehow I felt I ought to have been. And also you know he’s such a modern classic, done so regularly, and I having spent some you know a lot of time, ahem, working with dead authors, I was very excited about the idea perhaps as I’d been led to believe he would be involved, that he had been very heavily involved with the development process and worked with Jude Law as producer on a number of drafts of the screenplay, that he would be in the room; and I knew that he was a very good actor and a very good director himself, it just seemed – that’s how it was incredibly attractive.
Your shooting style on Sleuth seems different. Your films have been characterised by a very mobile camera, following the actors around, creating a lot of energy on screen, whereas this film has a lot of fixed camera set-ups. Was that a response to Pinter’s style? Creating an apparent surface calm to focus people on the subtext which crackles?
Yeah, it was trying to find the style. It was much influenced by films that I like a lot, French cinema actually, recently seen films that I’ve liked a lot like Cache (Hidden), Thirteen, Lemming, those kinds of movies where the camera doesn’t move much, where the action unfolds in long takes, where the frame is very carefully constructed, so one of the things that I enjoyed doing was, for instance, when the two men come into the house for the first time and in this sort of little dance of conversational niceties that precedes the sort of meat of it, you get 10 minutes of this sort of dance and then Michael Caine sits down into what is the first close-up to say ‘I understand you’re fucking my wife’. That in the second shot, where we bring them into the house, that we’re looking at the level of a drinks table, we’re looking thru two glasses –   one is already poured with a whiskey: Caine’s character hasn’t asked Jude whether he wants one yet, he hasn’t asked him what it is, and he hasn’t chosen, and yet the idea of providing the provocation with the way the frame is set, suggesting to the audience from very early on that everything could mean something; the colour of the whiskey, the placement of the glass, the fact that he’s walking towards us the glass of a green bottle, that we don’t see their heads then, that their body language might be just as key – the way they hold the glass, all of that. I enjoyed trying to find a spare, and yet loaded, style cos that’s what I felt about his dialogue.

I think, because they give the award so late in a career, that this is the first time a Nobel Laureate has worked on a film since Bernard Shaw’s screenplay for Pygmalion. Was he an intimidating presence? Did he stand behind your shoulder muttering ‘I wrote three dots, he’s only giving me two’?
No, he wasn’t. I mean there was a bit of kerfufflage before we started that, where – I think maybe it was to do with Harold’s 75  th birthday, maybe that was it, a number of extremely important celebrations of his work, one of which involved a documentary for Channel 4 in which I think he rather bridled against the kind of popular myth of the orchestration of the pauses in his work, his ultra-precision and deliberation and insistence upon absolute adherence to his pre-planned structure, but I found him to be a very JOLLY collaborator, I found him I found him to be somebody who as he said explicitly on our first meeting ‘I like being part of a team’ and that seemed to be a typical remark of a writer, but also in his case, a man of the theatre – someone who started out as an actor and also a very fine director. So he’s very much in tune with the creative process. He, and Michael Caine, their ages seemed to drop once in the rehearsal room. They had that enthusiasm, I’ve seen it in other people, Robert Altman’s another example of somebody who   –  I worked with him when he was in his late 70s, when I saw him by the camera he seemed to be – 25, and so it was with these two. So Harold did not carry the aura of his…beatification.

So he was happy to let you be the one in charge of interpreting his ambiguities?
He left a lot of space. We did ask questions and he was happy to answer them, where he felt it was pertinent to do so. Sometimes. But, to give you an example of where, as it were the Pinter question mark, that I think is a very positive part of this entertainment, was there. I remember in rehearsals saying to him, ‘So, uh, Harold can I ask, it may seem banal, when Maggie rings up at the end of the movie, [during the very intense scene between the two men], she calls twice, I mean what is she saying?’ and he said ‘Well, who says it’s Maggie?’ ‘What? But I mean he’s talking to her!’ ‘We hear him talking. He appears to be talking to someone. It may appear to be Maggie. But he could easily have contrived for the call to have occurred. There may be no-one there. I don’t know is the answer. There It Is…’ I understood actually that once he said that actually, once we worried less about offering Jude some literal off-screen responses or scripted piece for Maggie it began to be quite interesting – about the way, particularly about the way in which in that third act, we were unsure as to whether Michael’s character was providing a provocative but phony suggestion that he was gay and wished to share his life with Milo, and whether Milo was responding in kind, appearing to indulge it, be surprised by it, and then sort of meet it halfway but in fact was involved in an even more super-subtle attempt to humiliate the other so for me, when he did choose to speak to add further ambiguity it was always interesting.

Michael Caine has said that he played his character as suffering from morbid jealousy. Could you talk a bit about that?
Yeah. We had to have, what you might call a sort of playing centre, some basic position that on the surface of it might simply be a jealous or revengeful husband. But when I discovered this condition, and numerous and specific examples of what in this very grotesque, intensified version of jealously were clearly true, .i.e. the specific notion that this condition would encourage someone to pursue the ultimate revenge, of trying to have an affair with the lover of the adulterous partner, a tremendously sort of twisted and destructive act, and sort of very calculating and unbalanced and unsettling, at least sort of rather surprising and unusual. It seemed to release Michael, it seemed to just – there was plenty to read about, medical experts to support, ‘oh no, this is’ – if you want to put it crudely it’s jealousy really at the max. It seemed to allow all sorts of things to happen, .i.e. for him to be ABSOLUTELY cool, calm and collected – because its manifestations often involved the ability to wear masks, you know sort of social and public masks that were incredibly convincing. So it allowed him to be even more naturalistic, even more throwaway, even more kind and gentle where he was supposed to be, even funnier where he was supposed to be, knowing that he could reach with an intensity that he gives full value to at the end of that first act where he says ‘I’ve always wanted to have a conversation with a hairdresser. A hairdresser that’s fucking my wife. My wife is mine – She Belongs To Me’, and he seems to then reveal that morbidly jealous side which practically shows him as a kind of caveman, and so that, it seemed to open us access to both superficial ways of playing things and also a sort of central feeling of an atavistic rather primitive individual.

It also moves it away from Olivier’s dangerous eccentric, that this film is not a playful gun game of plot twists it’s a full on Comedy of Menace. I mean I almost cheered when you started with a Pinter pause at the start when they first meet, because it indicates this is the real deal, this is full on Pinter – two men battling for control.
I remember the first time we previewed it and we got a laugh on that first moment of just, and it was a nervous laugh, at the end of it – is there a mistake? Did something just happen? It almost felt live. ‘I’m Milo Tindle’ long pause ‘Oh yes’. But much longer than that.

Michael Caine is having something of a late career resurgence with Children of Men, The Prestige, Batman Begins and this. Is he enjoying acting more than ever now?
He talks about a period about 10 years ago where he really said he was going to give up. He was going to give up and he wasn’t enjoying it anymore, he didn’t feel the parts were interesting enough. He was at, as it were he didn’t get the girl anymore so that part of him that as the leading man movie-star hadn’t quite morphed into the really fascinating career parts quite yet. Even though to some extent he’s always had a character career as well as his unusual but brilliant leading man career. So, he said for about two to three years, as he puts it, he ‘fucked about in the restaurant trade’. And then, I think it was Bob Rafelson with a picture with Nicholson was singular event- Days of Wine and Roses? Can’t quite remember, must be more than 10 years ago. Anyway he said that was something of a –   he enjoyed it so much he got back in the swing of it and I think he now only does exactly that which he fancies and he really did fancy this. And he had to work very hard for this, long takes, lots of dialogue to remember, great big leading man role and I think he seemed to be enjoying it hugely. And this was particularly one where his particular brand of experience means for particular moments –   and one that I would cite at the end of the first act where he fires the gun and looks at where Jude Law’s character is and we hold a close-up for, I know it to be literally 24 seconds, in profile – just him watching where he’s fired the gun which I think is a wonderful movie moment, its rather like the one you were alluding to at the beginning, it takes a long time – there’s no music – and it’s just Michael Caine reacting and I think it’s a riveting moment and very much sort of an example in a very, very subtle way of how a lifetime of experience can be channelled into something that is a piece of fine brushwork, that is wonderfully apt for that point in the picture.

To talk about your own acting career, the critics were ridiculously hostile to Love’s Labour’s Lost, which I adored I thought it was a wonderful 30s musical interpretation of the piece. But it was slated and having killed off the directing career they pointed to the performances in Conspiracy and Shackleton and Rabbit-Proof Fence and said ‘See what we made him go do instead? Good for us critics!’ Do you think that they’re wrong, that it is possible to build up a good body of work as a director AND as an actor in other people’s films?
Yes, I think so. I think it’s impossible to make prescriptive rules to cover what is quite sort of an unusual career-path, not many people get a chance to do it or perhaps even choose to pursue it when the opportunities come up. To be honest I don’t fully understand  – I would have said that my experience of the moments in one’s career where one’s REALLY been dumped on across the board tend to be the ones that do turn around. So Frankenstein, it was as vitriolic but perhaps greater in volume because it was a bigger picture, the reaction to that – and yet since it started appearing on television or DVD or video I’ve never seen a bad review for it, I’ve only seen very, very positive things, certainly is the case with the Hamlet DVD that’s just come out. Love’s Labour’s Lost, I’m hoping that will find its place at some point, I think it hasn’t quite had that sort of reassessment but I supposed I don’t understand it – people say to me occasionally ‘It’s about time you understood, don’t be too clever for your own good’ or something and I really don’t understand what that means – do they want me to be stupider, than your own good? Or, what I believe now, I absolutely of course understand with some work, everyone of course is entitled to their opinion and it may be very particular and it may not be very positive about a film, but I think it’s manifestly untrue to suggest in the cleverness argument that one is, the suggestion that one infers is that that kind of work – with its so called ‘cleverness’ – is an attempt to condescend or patronise or to advertise what somehow I am suggesting subtly is a superior intelligence, I would say that is manifestly untrue and in fact is the opposite in the sense that it is ABSOLUTELY assuming intelligence, pre-eminent intelligence, not an intelligence which requires some sort of academic track record, but simply intelligence, imagination, invention, curiosity, receptivity. Do I assume all of those things? Yes. Beyond that people like the film – they may or may not. But somehow the judgement that that kind of condescension might be at work, I simply disagree with it.
When can we expect to see The Magic Flute and As You Like It?
Magic Flute will be here in January, and will travel around, and As You Like It will be here also and doing the kind of – the truth is with both those pictures – not actually in both cases all the time but they’re tending to do, As You Like It in particular, two or three nights at an art-house cinema. Magic Flute will certainly open here in January, Belfast and Dublin, and play in various places for at least a week and I hope beyond that. The release for Magic Flute actually is pleasingly and surprisingly wide, I’ve been delighted to find out. [] Yeah, and I do recommend that they see it in a cinema because the sound mix is really great, usually these pictures being the specialist tings they are they end up being in rather good cinemas that really maximise the amount of trouble we took to try and, particularly in the case of Magic Flute, get a sort of real experience not just only of the music but the soundtrack and effects within the movie and that in itself is an unusual thing with an opera, you’ll not hear it very often in that way. Some friends I showed it to last week were commenting on what an unusual and pleasing things that was. So I hope it has a good long life in the cinema.

Just as a sort of parting shot question, do you have any plans to re-release Henry V in 2015 for the 600th Anniversary of Agincourt?
Well what an interesting idea. I had been hoping to try and twist somebody’s eyes about, twist somebody’s arm rather, about 2009 for just the 20th anniversary of when it was released here but you’ve now put another idea in my head so thank you for that. You’re welcome, thanks. [] Thanks ever so much, appreciate it