British film, just a bit off the beaten path

The Titfield Thunderbolt (UK, 1953):

Here's the fictional situation.  National Rail is closing down a branch line.  Local forces vie.  Some of the Ealing comedies can tiptoe inoffensively, but like the best/most forceful of them (cf. The Man in the White Suit particularly), this film blithely tweaks both the left and the right.  The union man retires defeated because it turns out that the owners are only exploiting themselves, and quite willingly at that.  The rapacious bus line competition is painted in properly sinister capitalist hue—before going on to be affectionate and affirmative about eternal things like the English countryside, craftsmanship, cooperation, and the endless wonder and beauty of plain people.  The character of the Vicar is especially delightful, and his similarly train-smitten Bishop nicely broadens the reach and portent of their mutual and pretty obsession.  Hugh Griffith is, as usual, a Michel-Simon-like comic juggernaut.  

An unrelated image

The film's various complications and machinations (the battle with the steam roller, the communal water stop, the very effective train wreck, the stolen engine boldly driven right down the street, the cautious Naunton Wayne character's pleasing repentance) all lead beautifully to a wonderful and gently suspenseful climax: the very happy test run for the fussy inspector who of course turns out to know right from wrong, and very cheerfully allows the folly to run on into eternity.

Much more anarchic than this film...

The Brave Don't Cry (UK, 1952):

A very admirable and moving docudrama, British style.  We should make that admirable and moving docudrama, Scottish-style, at least in part.  Much of the cast is made up of members of Glasgow's Citizen's Theatre.  Its history and origins, along with its extremely significant location in the city's Gorbals district, deserves a whole 'nother post.  Later, maybe.  The particularity of the UK docudrama is that unlike much estimable similar stuff produced in the States at the time (like Kazan's Boomerang, or Panic in the Streets), we get much more than just movie stars running through actual locations, or authentic faces arranged as decoration.  This is is an actual kind of neo-realism, and not neo-ornamentation around the edges of the frame. 

Rossellini

The story is based on the actual Knockshinnoch mining disaster of 1950 (Ayrshire, Scotland).  


Here's the hill that caved in:

Before the accident occurs the filmmakers take some little time to set the scene, or establish the context.  In the film's opening sections they lovingly sketch detail and character, slowing and enlarging things so that when dramatic events come they are presented as part of a larger pattern of work and want, of fellowship and dignity.  The result is the opposite of the tabloid sensibility that so often informs dramatizations like this.  The headline isn't just an excuse for sensation, nor, on the sentimentalist's side, to portray picturesque poverty and poignant extremity.  This attitude too often leads to sensationalism anyway, as arousing elements are extracted from the larger context without bothering to illuminate or respect the lives that go on before and after and beyond whatever disaster brought the filmmakers in the first place.  (Billy Wilder's nearly contemporaneous Ace in the Hole, among its many other vitriolic agendas, completely dismantles this media strip miner's method.  It does not offer any constructive ideas about what might replace the regrettable norm.)


Cinematic stoicism:

The Brave Don't Cry rejects sensation and condescension both.  It has heroism, but with a human dimension, and though there is eventually some romanticism too (a certain enhancement of character and incident), it's definitely of that good Drifters variety (Grierson, 1929).  It is rooted in real relations and fervent feeling, and so it does not distort into unrecognizability.  (In fact John Grierson served as this film's Executive Producer.)  As for the mechanics of the thing, it's actually quite terrifying how the hill caves in, sans fanfare and all cut with fateful dispassion.  After that the film faithfully, calmly, with documentary faithfulness and precision, sets out to solve the problem.  


A few lost, and many more rescued:

There is a wonderfully indirect device here, as one of the missing men is presented from his family's perspective.  This missing Father, whom we never do see, is set up as the faithful, honourable working ideal.  This was the character that populated the classic British documentary, which was, again, largely spearheaded by John Grierson.  That worker was presented as both exception/al and rule, the unlauded backbone of Britain and more, the salt of the whole earth.  Grierson's films sometimes affirmed the dignity of work and the nobility of the worker, even as actual industrial infrastructures were crumbling beneath him.  So, here, in a period of Glasgow and Western Scotland's actual industrial agonies.  The non-presence of the film's father very gently suggests that, Seawards-like (Hilary Harris, 1961), we'll not see his like again.  

Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time (UK, 2001)

This gives new meaning to the creative treatment of actuality.  Grierson’s idea was profound and correct, and has made the world a better place.  It is also at least somewhat problematical, and has led to some justified criticisms and complaints.  Aren’t honesty or clarity more important?  Isn’t it presumptuous and even deceptive to try to put your own stamp on social reality?  Probably, but that’s civilization for you. 

Except that Goldsworthy, as an environmental artist, or an artist who's medium is the elements of the earth, really reinvigorates Grierson's phrase, raising all sorts of profound, previously unsuspected possibilities.  In addition to being really cool and beautiful, Goldsworthy’s work brings all sorts of latent, even unsuspected questions up to the surface.  Did I say cool and beautiful?  Yes, with quite a bit of folly thrown in.  But if these installations are somewhat absurd, then it’s the absurdity of human aspiration, of resisting an ignoring the gravity and entropy that is going to eventually prevail.  Film director Riedelsheimer is sensitive and attuned to the work, alternating between the portrayal of process and a just right framing of the results. 

Goldsworthy writes applications and gets grants—get a load of his artist's compound!—but this is much more than specialists’ fodder.  How far below our blessings are we all living, when it comes to nature, the natural, and the world that we’ve inherited?

Peter and the Wolf (UK, 2006)

This is an amazing demonstration of perspective, especially when set against the way more familiar Disney version.  This is to say that when viewed from a different angle, a situation can change utterly.  Disney and Sterling Holloway emerge as ideologically overdetermined in the comparison, as having effaced or ignored all sorts of things.  Seeing the two films, important questions arise.  Who says that the wolf, in his habitat, following the directives of instinct, is the bad guy?  Why must it always come down to conquest?  


Two contrary views on lupine matters, post Universal horror/Disney:

Mowat

Mason

Sentimental beasts and apple-cheeked boys will win you your point, but that doesn’t mean you’ve won it fairly.  (The Disney is not only ideological, but also archetypal as well; there’s room for liking and critiquing both.)  Given the pretty convincing contemporary Russian milieu here (executed by a bunch of Poles and Brits), who’s to say that this sleeping, grudgingly affectionate, probably alcoholic Grandfather is all that much better than the Darwinian clarity and nobility of the wild?  In support of this idea, note the feral beauty of the child.

The pre-wolf interlude that goes on outside grandpa’s compound is really light and funny.  That’s a neat trick, since the (hilarious) cat is trying to kill his evolutionary subordinates the whole time.  The advent of the wolf is electrifying.  Creature design!  In this version there's no second chance for Sonja/the duck.  Predators prey.  

The comic invention and technical execution of what follows is quite awesome.  Look at those fore/mid/backgrounds!  The battle between wolf and child is really distended, with the result that the child really earns his laurels, while the wolf maintains our admiration.  As for the conclusion, it’s like Nora Helmer slamming that door, or Huck Finn embracing damnation.  Not only the writing on the wall, but the wall come tumbling down.