The Big Country

1958 - Dir.: William Wyler - 2 hours 40 minutes - USA

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 28th February, 2015

This is a co-production between the star, Gregory Peck, and the director, William Wyler. The two, who had become friends while working on “Roman Holiday”, didn’t start out with the intention of making a western. The original idea was to make a comedy about a museum robbery in Madrid. Writers were hired and casting begun - but the story didn’t work out and the film never got off the ground.
A little later a friend drew Peck’s attention to a story by Donald Hamilton, “Ambush at Blanco Canyon.” which had been serial­ized in the Saturday Evening Post and later expanded into a novel entitled The Big Country. Peck showed the story to Wyler, noting that it had at least six good parts and was “an anti-macho western”. The director liked the project, and the two friends divided up their responsibilities and formed two separate production companies - Wyler’s was called World Wide Productions, and Peck’s was Anthony Productions. Wyler would be in charge of artistic matters, while Peck, in addition to having casting and script ap­proval, would choose the livestock, horses, and riders. Peck, who also had a development deal with United Artists, arranged for that studio to finance and distribute the film. That agreement was probably the most harmonious moment in the entire process. Wyler, a perfectionist, hired and fired writer after writer as the script developed and eventually admitted that he couldn’t remember who had written which part of the script - the Writers’ Guild of America were called in to arbitrate when the writing credits were being drawn up.
Things went downhill from there. Wyler called for re-take after re-take. Peck, also a perfectionist, was known for his careful preparation… which usually resulted in the scene being shot in one or two takes. After one row things got so bad that Peck had to be coaxed back to the set to complete the picture. They didn’t speak for years. The other actors fared no better - Jean Simmons was so traumatized by the experience that she refused to talk about it until an interview in the late eighties when she revealed, "We'd have our lines learned, then receive a rewrite, stay up all night learning the new version, then receive yet another rewrite the following morning. It made the acting damned near impossible." Despite the friction behind the camera the result is a fine piece  of work - perhaps the only “pacifist” western of its day….
NOT MANY PEOPLE KNOW THAT…
●    US President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave the movie four consecutive showings at the White House and called it "simply the best film ever made. My number one favorite film."
●    Gregory Peck cast all of his  sons (Jonathan Peck, Carey Paul Peck and Stephen Peck) in the film. 

Seducing Doctor Lewis

La Grande Séduction

2003 - Dir: Jean-François Pouliot - 1 hour 44 minutes - Canada
Shown in FeckenOdeon 2 on 13th February, 2015

We ended our small cinema’s 2014 showings in November with “Calvary” which was billed as a “black comedy”. Many of us struggled to find the comedy. We’re glad to say that tonight’s film is an out and out comedy. It’s supposed to be funny and nobody gets their brains blown out. Brendon Gleeson, the owner of the splattered brains, is not in this film - but he is in the less successful 2013 re-make. We gather that nothing was changed apart from the plot, the location, the title and the language spoken… 

The decline of traditional industries and changes in ways of working have caused problems for ordinary folk the world over. The Canadian fishing industry, though in good health overall, has changed. It’s no longer viable for small communities, with poor communications with the large centres of population, to compete with conglomerates with factory sized boats and industrial scale processing plants. This is the background to the plight of Ste-Marie-la-Mauderne on the north coast of Quebec - where things have got so bad that every single inhabitant is claiming welfare. Small wonder that they grasp at the opportunity of a new source of employment with such vigour and ingenuity…
This is an old fashioned little film. The plot is barely believable as some of the more pedantic critics have hastened to point out. It’s a bit of whimsy - comparable to Passport to Pimlico or perhaps Waking Ned - both equally unbelievable but both equally charming.
The Film was made in Harrington Harbour on the coast of Northern Quebec. Although life in the area is undoubtedly hard, the citizens are adamant that their fishing industry is healthy, their town is prosperous and a plastics factory is not on their list of “must haves”. They were not impressed when the film company made their tidy little town look run down and dirty.
None of the “stars” are well known outside their home territory of the province of Quebec but they’re all regulars on Quebec’s many TV channels. Raymond Bouchard and Lucie Laurier each have film careers spanning 30 years. The endearing and cheeky acting ensemble works hard, and Ken Scott's script (his first) finds ways of wringing irreverence from the apparent good nature of the situation, flipping cynicism and urban snobbery on their heads by conjuring a romantic view of hamlet life.

Saving Mr Banks

2013 - Dir.: John Lee Hancock - (USA)
Shown at the FeckenOdeon on 31st January, 2015
Some critics have pointed out that this film was bound to be over sympathetic to Walt Disney because it was made by the Walt Disney Studio. There may be a grain or more of truth in this but there’s no doubting that this is a beautifully constructed and well acted account of the making of one of Disney’s finest achievements. There’s also no doubting that P.L.Travers was a tricky customer to deal with. On her own insistence, all dealings with the studio were recorded on audio tape and it’s evident that Emma Thompson hasn’t overplayed her character’s eccentricities - by all accounts the real Mrs T was a good deal nastier.
The accusation that the studio was merely making an extended plug  for its 50th anniversary re-release of the original film probably scuppered its chances of Oscars and other awards. Certainly the central performances are worthy of recognition. Emma Thompson has never given a better observed performance and Tom Hanks, fresh from his exploits in “Captain Philips”, really gets under the skin of Disney’s character. Mr Hanks had his own argument with present day Disney puritanical producers when he tried in the interests of accuracy to persuade them to show Walt smoking. Disney was a heavy smoker with a persistent cough. He died of lung cancer two years after the release of Mary Poppins. A compromise was reached where ashtrays are shown but not the actual smoking.
Tom Hanks is a distant cousin of Walt Disney which may account for the physical resemblance

Mary Poppins

1964 - Dir.: Robert Stevenson (USA)
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 31st January, 2015
As those of you who attend tonight’s film (Saving Mr Banks) will find out, Walt Disney promised his daughters that he would make a film out of their favourite series of stories - “Mary Poppins” by P.L.Travers. Because of the obstinacy of the author it was a promise that took 20 year to fulfil…. but that’s this evening’s story…
This is easily the best of Disney's experiments in combining animation and live action, and one of the studio's best-loved films. It was the last feature overseen by Walt Disney before his death in 1966. It was nominated for 13 Oscars and scooped five, including best actress for Julie Andrews in her screen debut. It was certainly the spoonful of sugar that sweetened the bitter pill Miss Andrews had swallowed when Warner Brothers cast Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Dolittle in the film of “My Fair Lady”. Julie had created the role on the West End and Broadway stage and was understandably miffed when Audrey (who couldn’t even sing) took the big prize. Revenge was sweet - Mary P beat Eliza D not only in the awards stakes - but also at the box office.
Mention does have to made of Dick Van Dyke’s “cockney” accent. Quite how Disney’s vocal coaches could have got it so wrong remains a mystery. Now 88 and still going strong Mr Van Dyke recently said he was completely unaware during the shoot that anything was wrong with his attempted cockney brogue. “I was working with an entire English cast and nobody said a word! People in the UK ask what part of England I was meant to be from and I say it was a little shire in the north where most of the people were from Ohio.” Ohio-ese apart, the film is packed with unforgettable sequences, adorable cartoon characters and timeless songs, it's quite simply supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines

or HOW I FLEW FROM LONDON TO PARIS IN 25 HOURS AND 11 MINUTES
1964 - Dir.: Ken Annakin (UK/USA)

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 27th December, 2014
Unless you had parents who took you to big city centre cinemas back in the 1960s you’re unlikely to have seen this film presented in the way its makers intended. For some reason 20th Century Fox decided to throw buckets of money at what to all intents and purposes is an extended Ealing Comedy. If the Rank Organisation had owned the rights it would probably have been made in black and white and had the story (and costly cast) pruned to the bone. As it was, Fox shot it in the horrifyingly expensive 70mm Todd AO format in Technicolor, hired every British comedy actor capable of drawing breath and commissioned vast sets, accurate replica aircraft and a sweeping orchestral score. The result is a very British comedy with international spectacle. The version we’re showing tonight is a restoration of the original roadshow version - complete with intermission, overtures, etc. This is the first showing in Todd AO in the UK for many years. We apologise if you can’t quite see the bottom of the picture - our screen has to expand to its very widest and deepest to accommodate the extra large picture
This is a good humoured romp that takes great joy in over the top characterisations. These days we may find the racial stereotyping uncomfortable but it’s a least even handed - everybody of every colour, race and background is equally lampooned. As Robert Morley’s newspaper tycoon says “The trouble with these international affairs is that they attract foreigners”.
Although director Ken Annakin is best known for large scale American financed movies (The Longest Day, Monte Carlo or Bust, Genghis Kahn) he was born in Yorkshire, worked as salesman and journalist before breaking into films with a short for J Arthur Rank. He directed a string of very British low budget features (Here Come The Huggetts, You know What Sailors Are, Three Men in a Boat) before heading to the wider screens of California. It could be said that this film brings together the two strands of his career. He died at the age of 94 in Beverly Hills in 2009.
THE FLYING MACHINES
The 1910-era aircraft used in the film were replicas built using the authentic materials of the originals, but with slightly more powerful engines (supplied by VW and Rolls-Royce). About 20 planes were built at a cost of about £5,000 each. Two of the replicas (the 1910 Bristol Boxkite and the 1911 Roe IV Triplane) built for the film still fly across the English countryside as both are preserved in the "Shuttleworth Collection" based at Old Warden, Bedfordshire. There are two real vintage aircraft to be seen in this film: a 1910 Deperdussin Monoplane and a 1912 Blackburn 'Type D' Monoplane.