STAN & OLLIE

"Stan & Ollie" may be the saddest film you will see all year; it is also one of the funniest. It's the story of the concert tour Laurel and Hardy took to the UK and Ireland in 1953 and in these roles Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly are pitch-perfect and in Oscar-worthy form, (the failure of either actor to be nominated is another badge of shame for the Academy). The reason for the tour, presumably, was to raise money for a Robin Hood film which they hoped would mark their comeback to the big screen. The money never materialized and the film was never made though judging by the material on view here it might have been a classic.

They were, of course, like an old married couple; bickering, fighting but clearly very much in love and the film is often heartbreaking as it shows how out of favor they were, playing to near-empty houses at the start of the tour until coaxed by Bernard Delfont, (a smarmy Rufus Jones), into making 'personal appearances' to boost their publicity, yet even when they started to play in sold-out venues, things didn't always run smoothly between them. Stan blamed Ollie for abandoning him at the height of his career, although it was Stan who got the sack for bad behavior while Ollie counter-attacked saying they were never friends to begin with but just working partners. Of course, that wasn't true; they were life-long friends who seemed to be as funny off-screen as on while both Shirley Henderson and Nina Arianda are also superb as the wives who were something of a double act in their own right. This is a small film, certainly not ostentatious in any way but in this case, small is very definitely beautiful.

THE TOMB OF LIGEIA

You may be surprised, as I was, to find that the script of Roger Corman's "The Tomb of Ligeia" was written by none other than Robert Towne but then again perhaps not since this is an unusually  intelligent 'horror' picture, filmed not on the Californian coast like the earlier Poe pictures, but in England like its immediate predecessor "The Masque of the Red Death". It also marked the end of the Corman/Poe cycle and like its predecessor is one of the best examples of the genre. Price may still be hamming it and the supporting cast are mostly wooden, (although Elizabeth Shepherd is surprisingly good as both heroine and villainess) but it looks terrific, (Corman was never really given the credit he deserved for his use of colour), and as a study of obsessive love (or hate) reaching out even beyond the grave it is worthy of any number of great directors. Maybe not quite the masterpiece some people think it is but it's certainly superior to any number of 'prestige' pictures of the time.

POISON

Todd Haynes first full-length film was a triptych of stories inspired not only by the novels of Jean Genet but also by the schlock-horror B-Movies of the fifties and sixties. Sex, primarily homosexuality, is the main theme and is presented both poetically and with a good deal of self-deprecating humor, (one tale, modeled on "The Fly", is obviously about AIDS), and prefigures much of Haynes later work; "Far from Heaven" isn't far from the surface in the presentation of the story about a boy who kills his father and literally flies away. It's certainly not commercial and was clearly aimed at a specific art-house audience but it marked a breakthrough both in Independent American Cinema and in LGBT cinema. It also marked Haynes out as a major talent and someone to watch.

THE SALT OF LIFE

Gianni Di Gregorio's"Mid-August Lunch" was one of my cinema-going delights of the past few years. It was a 'little' film in which very little happened. A middle-aged man, played by the director and living with his ancient mother, is tasked with looking after a few other old ladies for the night. Next day he makes them all lunch and that, as they say, is that but there was a joie de vivre to the film rare in movies today.

In "The Salt of Life" the director again plays a middle-aged man, also called Gianni, and again with mother problems, (the magnificent 97 year old actress, Valeria De Franciscis Bendoni, who played his mother in "Mid-August Lunch", is again his mother here), who decides to have a final fling with a younger woman. Of course, things don't go according to plan.

As a writer and director, (and indeed as an actor), Di Gregorio has a wonderful Tatiesque sense of the vagaries of life. There is a lot of comedy in the small everyday things he encounters, and virtually no dramas at all. He is the gentlest of movie-makers and one of the most affectionate. Life may frustrate Gianni but he never lets it disturb him. He makes movies designed to make you smile and I grinned like the Cheshire Cat all the way through "The Salt of Life".

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THESE THREE

In 1936 when William Wyler made this film of Lillian Hellman's play "The Children's Hour" the subject of lesbianism was strictly taboo on the screen, or at least in a film aimed at a commercial audience so the love that dared not speak its name was dropped in favour of a heterosexual triangle yet it worked and worked beautifully. Hellman herself did the adaptation of her play and the title was changed to "These Three"
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Apart from what appeared to be a somewhat minor adjustment to the plot, (even in the play lesbianism was never really the focal point of the piece but the lie that suggested it), the story remained very much intact; the lives of two women teachers at a private school they run together are destroyed by the malicious lies of an evil and vindictive child. The teachers were very well played by Merle Oberon and Miriam Hopkins and that very fine and hugely underrated actor Joel McCrea was the man in the middle while Bonita Granville was terrific as the little monster.

In 1961 Wyler remade the film under its original title and with the rumour of lesbianism reinstated but despite very good performances from Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine and Fay Bainter, (magnificent as the grandmother; an equally good Alma Kruger was the grandmother here), the remake never quite lived up to this version which is a highly intelligent and very grown-up example of the artistry of the studio system at its very best.

A MOST VIOLENT YEAR

With only his third film J.C. Chandor has taken on the mantle of Sidney Lumet and has done him proud. "A Most Violent Year" is an incredibly tense, gripping drama, (I hesitate to call it a thriller per se), set in New York in 1981, reputedly the most violent year in the city's history and around the time Lumet was making films like "Prince of the City" and "The Verdict". Like these, "A Most Violent Year" depends, not on action, extreme violence or sex but on a good story, a brilliant script, intelligent direction and a host of superb performances.

Oscar Isaac, (getting better with every film), is Abel Morales, owner of his own oil company and in the throes of a deal that will greatly expand his empire, who finds he is also the subject of a number of hi-jackings of this trucks, possibly organized by his competitors. Abel is a good, decent man who doesn't want to dirty his hands even though both he and his company are being investigated by District Attorney David Oyelowo. His wife, on the other hand, isn't so squeamish, whether it's in fiddling the books or shooting an injured deer. She's played, terrifically, by Jessica Chastain in an Oscar-worthy performance, (she didn't even manage a nomination), and her presence on screen suggests this film may go down some very dark streets indeed.

Of course, if Chandor keeps making films like this he isn't going to wow the Academy, (though he did wow the National Board of Review who chose it as the years best picture), or bring in the big bucks not because "A Most Violent Year" is below par, (it isn't; it's easily one of the best pictures of last year), but because he makes the kind of intelligent pictures about subjects other directors tend to shy away from, (the financial fall-out in "Margin Call"; a one-man show and set in the middle of the Ocean in "All is Lost"). He's also proved himself a great director of actors and a writer of uncommon intelligence. The fact that this film failed to pick up a single Oscar nomination speaks volumes about the Academy's tunnel-vision. Seek it out, it's superb.

CRISIS

Ingmar Bergman's first film is like a Bette Davis/Miriam Hopkins melodrama as written by Henrik Ibsen. Nelly is an 18 year old girl, abandoned by her mother in a small Swedish town and reared by kindly, dull Mutti. Then mother comes back to claim her and lure her to the big city. Throw in a sweet, slightly older man and a sexier, younger rapscallion both vying for Nelly's affections and you have a classic tale of mother love and thwarted passions that once might have been made by Edmund Goulding. But this is Bergman and already the psychological depths he would come to display in his later masterpieces is plain to see. The film unravels in a series of short scenes that seem to end almost before they begin. We are drip-fed information about each character; even a murder plot is thrown away as something incidental and in typical Bergman fashion, it's happy' ending is tinged with unhappiness.

ONE WAY PASSAGE

One of the great romantic comedies of the thirties yet hardly anyone has seen it or even heard of it. It's a 'One Way Passage' for William Powell and Kay Francis since he's being taken to the gallows and she's only got a short time to live; yes, it's a comedy with the comic relief being provided by the great Aline MacMahon and Frank McHugh. MacMahon is excellent as usual but Powell and Francis are sublime as the doomed lovers.

It mostly takes place at sea on a journey from Hong Kong to San Francisco and Robert Lord won an Oscar for his original story. Tay Garnett directed beautifully, managing the transition from light comedy to something altogether more serious without the slightest trace of mawkishness. I haven't seen the George Brent/Merle Oberon remake "Til We Meet Again" but something tells me it couldn't hold a candle to this.

PARTY GIRL

Robert Taylor was far too old for the part of a hot-shot lawyer in Nicholas Ray's "Party
Girl", (and much too wooden an actor to make the character convincing), but leading lady Cyd Charisse was surprisingly good and certainly never looked more beautiful than she does here. The real star of the picture, of course, is Lee J Cobb whose cigar-chomping gangster just happens to be called Rico. The film is much revered by the French and fits neatly into the auteur theory. It's certainly as hard-boiled and as unsentimental as we have come to expect from Ray and while George Wells' script could be stronger, it's an unusually intelligent genre picture and Ray's superb use of colour and widescreen remains very much in evidence.

THE LITTLE FOXES

Not the most cinematic of Wyler's films "The Little Foxes"betrays it's theatrical origins at every turn, despite Gregg Toland's superb cinematography, but since the material is so rich and so richly melodramatic that hardly matters. Lillian Hellman adapted her own play, with a little help from Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell, and it's certainly a classic of the American stage. Here it's cast to something close to perfection. Bette Davis, too young for the part, nevertheless makes Regina Giddens entirely her own while Dan Duryea, Charles Dingle, Carl Benton Reid and most especially the great Patricia Collinge, (her Miss Birdie is surely one of the screen's great supporting performances), were never better. The young lovers, Teresa Wright and Richard Carlson, are a miscalculation but the scene in which Davis watches husband Herbert Marshall breathe his last is unforgettable.

EYES WITHOUT A FACE

Working on the premise that what we don't see but imagine is infinitely more frightening than what we do, Georges Franju gave us "Les Yeux Sans Visage", (aka "Eyes Without a Face"), his masterpiece of the horror genre, in 1958. It's about a mad, bad and very dangerous to know surgeon, (Pierre Brasseur) who, with the help of his assistant Alida Valli, kills young women and attempts to graft their faces onto his daughter who has been disfigured in an accident. Franju never shows us the daughter's disfigurement or the aftermath of the (mostly botched) surgery, leaving it up to the viewer to think the worst. The result is genuinely chilling and a lot more unsettling than the slasher movies of today. This has been described as the most 'poetical' of horror movies and there's certainly a grotesque beauty in Eugene Shuftan's gorgeous black-and-white cinematography. Not many people who have seen this film will easily forget the image of Edith Scob as the daughter almost floating through the vast house, her disfigured face hidden in a mask or Valli driving through the night on her murderous missions to the strain of Maurice Jarre's superb score. Almodovar paid his own tribute to it with "The Skin I Live In".