James Mason

  • The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2022) Frankly, it took guts for Hollywood to even think about making The Desert Fox—a film halfway sympathetic to a Nazi hero barely six years after the end of WW2, at a time when paying audiences wanted nothing else but be reassured that their wartime experiences shooting Nazis in the face were fully justified. But as WW2 historians will note, if you were going to make a film about a non-despicable Nazi, Edwin Rommel was the right choice. An acknowledged superior military strategist, Rommel was also a Nazi supporter of convenience rather than ideologically driven (he wasn’t technically a Nazi Party member, but, you know…) and—best of all—he was an active participant to the failed 1944 plot to kill Hitler, something for which he was forced by the Nazi regime to commit suicide. The other good move of the film biography was to get James Mason in the lead role—an actor known both for refinement and his ability to play ambiguous villains. The result is surprisingly good, and just-as-surprisingly mature for the time. It’s certainly not faultless—film historians and military historians agree that, in being too favourable to the historical figure, The Desert Fox gave rise to a pernicious “Rommel Myth” that exaggerated the man’s qualities and downplayed his troublesome facets. Still, as a movie, The Desert Fox is, at the very least, an effective piece of propaganda. It’s not that much of a war film—much of the battle footage is recycled from earlier films or news footage, while much of the occasionally scattered plotting is made of parlour conversation. There is a much, much better film to be made about Rommel and his complexities, but for a 1951 production, The Desert Fox remains surprisingly effective.

  • The Mackintosh Man (1973)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2022) The topline names involved in the Cold War spy thriller The Mackintosh Man are fit to pique any cinephile’s interest: Directed by John Huston, co-written by Walter Hill, starring Paul Newman, with a supporting role for James Mason? Sounds pretty good to me! But that’s not quite counting what happens when everyone involved seems determined to deliver a lower-common denominator product. Both Newman and Mason turn in the kind of performance they could have slept-walked through. Mason as a refined slimy villain? Just another day of the week. But even Newman seems to be going through the motions of other thriller roles he had in the previous decade—namely The Prize and Torn Curtain. Much of the plot itself feels like bog-standard material as well, playing upon familiar tropes in the United Kingdom. Huston’s direction occasionally elevates the material—I’m specifically thinking of the car chase through the countryside—but otherwise feels remarkably mechanical, as it fiddles with genre elements with no real enthusiasm for the task. The fuzziness of the script doesn’t help, and neither does a very early-1970s muddy cinematography. The dour atmosphere hasn’t aged well and further contributes to the idea that everyone involved in The Mackintosh Man was going for a paycheque without paying attention if what they were making was any interesting to watch.

  • Lord Jim (1965)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2022) A lot of effort and care were expended to make Lord Jim… with decidedly mixed results. Starting from a solid framework of the Joseph Conrad novel, the film goes all-out for maximalist execution: shot on location in Cambodia, it pays for colour cinematography and an expansive re-creation of a classic adventure tale about a plucky lad atoning for a moment of weakness. The result, unfortunately, would test anyone’s patience even if it had been much less than its two-hour-and-a-half running time: Peter O’Toole is incredibly boring here as the titular protagonist, and the film simply dies around him. Not even James Mason and Eli Wallach can save it in flashy supporting roles: Lord Jim simply drags on with a charisma void in its middle, wasting everything else. You can still look at it with some interest as a failed attempt to present an epic adventure, but that’s not much of a comfort when the result fails at even delivering the basics of a thrilling yarn.

  • Island in the Sun (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2022) There are many reasons why Island in the Sun is interesting, but far fewer to call it good. Oh, it’s certainly respectable: As a prestige picture adapting a well-known novel to the screen, it comes with a mixture of pedigree, dramatic ambition and production means. For contemporary audiences, the most noteworthy thing about the film is how progressive it feels compared to other 1950s dramas—it talks about race relations and interracial relationships in a fictitious Caribbean setting, and isn’t afraid to go for high melodrama to make its points. The multi-stranded plot makes good use of its ensemble cast, and a generous amount of on-location shooting lets the colour cinematography of the film escape from studio sets. For celebrity watchers, the film has an embarrassingly rich cast: everyone from James Mason (playing his usual blend of malice and panache) to Harry Belafonte (terrific!) to Joan Fontaine to Joan Collins to Dorothy Dandridge and the always-entertaining John Williams in a minor but showy role. Beyond racial issues, Island in the Sun also acknowledges matters of class and wealth, with a few set-pieces of populist unrest. Reading about the film’s controversial reception is unsurprising, but it reflects its complexity compared to many of the blander 1950s social-issue dramas. All of this clearly combines to make Island in the Sun a minor recommendation in looking at 1950s cinema, and a film that’s still watchable for many good reasons. On the other hand, it doesn’t quite cross the frontier separating interest to enjoyment—it often feels ponderous and limited, with morals that don’t feel coherent, as it makes a point of its anti-racism but goes soft on marital rape. Watching Dandridge deal with a complex but stunted dramatic role is a sheer waste of talent—especially considering how few movies she made as a leading actress. The warnings attached to Island in the Sun may be lighted than others of the time, but they’re still there—and perhaps it’s best to be forewarned that it’s not going to be enjoyable as much as it’s going to be interesting.

  • Bigger Than Life (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2022) Digging into Hollywood’s back catalogue can be weird at times—you can find socially conscious films well before it became acceptable or fashionable to discuss those topics, except that this high-minded intention is often undermined by a sensationalist, less-than credible execution. So it is that Bigger Than Life delves, in 1956, into the topic of painkiller addiction, but then goes on to make its main character an unbalanced murdering psychopath due to a rare interaction between cortisone and his body chemistry. Director Nicholas Ray was doing good work for the time here—even if a modern view on the film will more readily see the melodramatic plotting, overdone drama and naïve treatment of its topic. On the other hand, well, we have Walter Matthau beating up James Mason (even throwing him through stair rails!) to prevent Mason’s character from murdering his wife and child, so that’s something. (Of note for Matthau fans: In Bigger Than Life, his third feature film, he beats up James Mason; in King Creole, his sixth, he gets beaten up by Elvis Presley. I’m sure you didn’t expect that.)  More seriously, though, Ray couldn’t have found a better lead actor than Mason—the English legend’s smooth voice and refined manners allow him to switch from hero to villain on a dime, and that’s what he ends up doing here as the drugs take over. The scene in which he puts down a parent at a PTA meeting is simply delicious, and plays into an overhanging suggestion that the nuclear family was a sham even in the 1950s. Mason is good enough, in fact, that he makes it much easier to ignore the script’s ham-fisted “drugs will make you a psychopath” thrust—if anyone’s going to go crazy, Mason makes it supremely entertaining. The result is… fair, although I suspect that I was interested in Bigger than Life for reasons that didn’t have much to do with Ray’s original intent. But, you know, that’s still a perfectly valid way to enjoy a film.

  • The Decks Ran Red (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2022) The James Mason vehicle thriller The Decks Ran Red may not be all that well known today, but it does have a few things going for it. I could say that the first is Mason’s good-guy performance as a cargo ship captain dealing with murderous mutineers, but I won’t lie: I only had eyes for Dorothy Dandridge in a supporting turn as the ship’s sole female presence. It’s an ungrateful role—she’s ethnically miscast as a Polynesian woman brought aboard the ship as a stewardess because she’s the wife of the new cook, and spends much of her time being threatened by the mutineers—but it’s not as if we’ve got a large number of substantial Dandridge roles available to us, so I’ll take it (especially given how the character has a full arc and a moment of triumph). The Decks Ran Red itself isn’t much more than a straight-ahead thriller, albeit with the claustrophobia of being stuck at sea with a bunch of criminals who see murder as a profitable enterprise. Mason is pleasantly heroic here: the film isn’t particularly interested in subtlety, so it’s not as if the captain is provoking the mutiny by his actions. By the time he comes aboard, the villains (led by a suitably gruff Damien Broderick) have already figured out their murder-sabotage-and-salvage scheme: but the rotten rascals hadn’t planned on everyone fighting back. It all culminates into an extended fight aboard the ship, and an unusual climax with a ship headed for a lifeboat. Shot in spare, more realistic style than many other thrillers of the time, The Decks Ran Red can’t be called a great film… but it’s a surprisingly decent one, and it can boast of three great screen presences in its cast.

  • The Seventh Veil (1945)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2022) Film history has no shortage of films that can be called problematic or troubling, but even those steeled against much of the worst may find themselves unpleasantly surprised at the conclusion of The Seventh Veil, in which the heroine goes running back to her abusive, possessive, controlling second cousin for romance. Not that it’s the only weird thing in this hypnotherapy film about a pianist who has lost the use of her (intact) hands—yet this was a box-office success in 1945 United Kingdom and won an Academy Award for best screenplay. What maybe saves it (well, aside from the fascination of an unavowable undercurrent of gender-aligned domination/submission) is a sense of melodrama, some choice lines (including the explanation for the titular seventh veil) and James Mason as the utter cad at the centre of the mixture. One of Mason’s most endearing trademarks is that he could be both very likable and completely repulsive in the same role (usually by playing impeccably mannered villains) and this duality is perfectly showcased here. The Seventh Veil can’t really be recommended as innocent entertainment viewing—but it is a mesmerizing film to watch, a piece of old-school filmmaking that really wouldn’t (or shouldn’t?) work today.

  • The Man in Grey (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) For a distinctive actor who hit Hollywood stardom in the 1950s and kept going until the late 1970s, it’s sometimes sobering to realize that James Mason’s career began much earlier in Great Britain, with his first film roles dating back to the mid-1930s. The Man in Grey isn’t quite that early in his career, but it shows Mason in a villainous role—one of the distinctive aspects of a career in which his characters could straddle the line between good and evil (or at least a very rough kind of good against a refined form of evil). It’s not, in most aspects, that good of a movie: It’s a period costume melodrama, with piques of salacious material in-between more standard fare. (Also: a lot of blackface. And slurs.) It’s sometimes fun, but its respectability only comes from how old it is. Still, Mason fans will be delighted to see him at work as a terrible cad in a film that revelled the bad actions of its characters.

  • The Blue Max (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2022) You may wonder why a mid-1960s film about World War I airplane pilots would go on the German side to find its protagonist, and the answer is obvious: he’s not meant to be a likable character. Adapted from a novel showing the transition to a harsher model of war, The Blue Max features George Peppard in the lead role, an egocentric pilot aiming for public recognition. His quest to achieve twenty kills even as he progressively alienates everyone around him becomes the dramatic arc of the film on which the (admittedly more impressive) flying sequences are arranged. You don’t have to watch The Blue Max for its serviceable plot—but if you’re even the least interested in World War I’s aerial front, this film becomes a must-see. The filmmakers were able to capture some captivating footage of mock combat, as well as other impressive stunts, such as a plane flying low between the trusses of a bridge. It’s quite amazing in colour cinematography, especially if you have a clear memory of previous black-and-white efforts such as Wings or Hell’s Angels. The Blue Max is a long sit at 156 minutes, but it goes by much faster once the action moves into the air. The back-projection special effects have not aged well, but the footage in-between them is still a wonder to watch. James Mason and Ursula Andress are interesting in supporting roles, while The Red Baron makes an appearance as a supporting character. In the wider continuity of war movies, The Blue Max certainly feels like a mid-1960s film—still very much an adventure spectacle, but slowly inching toward the war-is-hell post-1970s mentality in sync with its own themes. It’s still very much worth a look today for its aerial footage.

  • Forever, Darling (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) By all rights, Forever, Darling should be a much better film than it is. Put together by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez after the success of The Long, Long Trailer, the film was clearly meant to capitalize on the success of the pair during I Love Lucy, being shot during the summer hiatus of the show and showing the couple in the lead roles. Even the premise—what with a guardian angel trying to help our character go through marital troubles—is rich in possibilities. It’s even funnier when James Mason, playing the angel, is also revealed to be playing James Mason—the angel taking the appearance of each person’s, ahem, “favourite movie actor.”  (It’s just as funny to learn that while Mason was a sex-symbol at the time, the first pick for the role was Cary Grant… except that he was unaffordable.)  We’ve got Ball in fine form here, wide-eyed expressions of disbelief and surprise doing much of the comedic heavy lifting. But even with all of that put together, the script barely pokes at the comic implications of the premise, and its subservient-wife message has aged very poorly even for an innocuous 1950s comedy about a couple learning to get along. Even a spirited third act set in the wilds of a camping trip fails to gather much traction. Audiences at the time agreed—the film was a commercial bust, which stopped any further Ball/Arnez films from going forward. Too bad in many ways…

  • Evil Under the Sun (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) Agatha Christie’s Inspecteur Poirot is back for a third Richard Goodwin-produced adventure in Evil Under the Sun, a follow-up to Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile. This time, we leave transportation vehicles behind to focus on a weekend of relaxation and murder at a small Adriatic Sea resort. When a young actress is killed midway through the film, it’s up to the droll Poirot to interrogate suspects, gather clues and assemble everyone for the shocking solution. There’s been a dearth of good murder mysteries lately (as evidenced by Knives Out’s enthusiastic reception), and I suspect that it’s one of the reasons why Evil Under the Sun still plays so well now compared to when it came out. There’s a rather wonderful double-historical nostalgic effect in now watching a 1980s film set sometime in the 1950s (ish)—and it’s fun to spend some time with characters vacationing. That fun turns to intellectual challenge as the murder investigation starts and testimonies don’t add up. A rather interesting cast surrounds a near-flawless Peter Ustinov as Poirot (thankfully, his French is almost perfect), with Maggie Smith (as a resort owner) and James Mason (playing a character unusually fond of his lack of alibi) being the most recognizable supporting actors to twenty-first century viewers. Red herring abounds, and while the result isn’t as strong as the first two films in the series, it’s still quite entertaining to watch. I have a few quibbles about the rushed ending (not the least being that a bottle would be the physical proof claimed by the characters), but not enough to dislike the result. I’m waiting for murder mysteries to make a comeback, and I just have to point to Evil Under the Sun to make a point about how even mildly successful ones can still be a lot of fun to watch.

  • The Verdict (1982)

    The Verdict (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney Streaming, August 2021) The unsung hero of The Verdict is whoever who took the decision to cast Paul Newman in the lead role — what best way to portray a lawyer past his prime than to cast an aging movie idol? Newman still looks fantastic, of course (compare and contrast with how he looks in the roughly contemporary Absence of Malice), but the deliberate grey hairs, added fat and slower demeanour tell us everything we need to know, even before his character gets thrown out of a funeral in the opening scene. What follows, in keeping with the tone set early on, is an examination of justice with a jaundiced but not entirely cynical eye — as our burnt-out protagonist is handed an easy settlement but decides to push matters to a civil trial, and quickly gets enmeshed in dirty tactics and counter-tactics. If The Verdict remains compelling viewing today, it’s how it skirts the edges of an uplifting film with a gritty look at the less admirable aspects of civil law. Our protagonist isn’t above stealing mail; his opponent will spy on him; and in the film’s defining sequence, a slam-dunk testimony and piece of evidence that would, in another film, be the final blow are here (with some heavy dramatic license) judged inadmissible and struck from the record. But to get back to a crowd-friendly idealistic finale, it turns out that even inadmissible evidence can’t just be erased from memory. While the pacing of the film is a bit slow, especially at first, veteran director Sidney Lumet does keep good control over his material, gradually unfolding the layers of complexity in David Mamet’s narrative. (Unusually for Mamet, this first screenplay is adapted from existing material, and so his distinctive dialogue is not really present.)  Good supporting turns from Charlotte Rampling and the irreplaceable James Mason help round out the acting talent involved. The Verdict, then a box-office success and Oscar favourite from cerebral material and a strong narrative, is almost unusual today — but fret not, it’s still very enjoyable and the circa-1980 period has aged rather well… like its star.

  • Child’s Play (1972)

    Child’s Play (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2021) A decade and a half before Chucky’s introduction, there was a Child’s Play movie that had nothing to do with killer dolls, and everything to do with… hmmm, that’s actually a good question: What is Child’s Play about? It’s clearly about a boarding school for boys in which two senior teachers (James Mason as the hated one, Robert Preston as the loved one) have it out for each other. It’s also certainly about mysterious escalating events in which the hated teacher is tormented and maybe the loved one has something to do with it. But while it initially appears to maybe involve the supernatural, the ending apparently tells us that it’s not — but director Sydney Lumet maintains the ambiguity as if even he hadn’t made up his mind. Almost no one escapes from Child’s Play with their dignities intact: this is often derided as Lumet’s worst film (which isn’t that much of a dishonour considering the rest of his filmography), but he does manage to imbue something of an atmosphere by exploiting the dark gloominess of a boarding school and amplifying it with kids who clearly aren’t all right. Mason is clearly the least-disappointing one here, imbuing his character with his usual, polished blend of dignity and menace. Preston merely does OK with the role he’s given and the rest of the players are rather inconsequential. (Beau Bridges is just… there in comparison to the two veteran actors.)  In a historical context, Child’s Play feels like an attempt to ride the paranormal possession train launched by Rosemary’s Baby and The Omen, except without the genre familiarity to do anything with that intention. Which isn’t outlandish, considering that the film is adapted from a Broadway play and Broadway playwrights have seldom been acknowledged as being particularly comfortable with paranormal horror.

  • The Pumpkin Eater (1964)

    The Pumpkin Eater (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) Terrible people generally make for more interesting movies than good dull people, but it’s a fine line in dosing the awfulness of characters and keeping audience sympathy. It’s especially challenging in films that don’t have much else going for them — neorealist black comedies like The Pumpkin Eater featuring a woman with a high-but-unspecified number of kids from three marriages wedded (for the third time) to a man juggling multiple affairs. The pacing is slow, the structure bounces back and forth in time, the epiphanies are small and the characters are more irritating than anything else. Fortunately, there are occasional moments to draw us back in. Cinephiles will have fun seeing James Mason in glasses and a moustache playing an utterly despicable character. Or seeing a young Maggie Smith play the homewrecker (even if the home was self-destructing anyway). Or the fight that triggers the third act. And then there’s Anne Bancroft, who got some critical attention at the film’s release for playing a terrible person, a woman with substantial mental health issues who has kids as a form of self-therapy and otherwise wanders aimlessly through the film. Oh, I’m aware that The Pumpkin Eater can be read on a few levels as a story of a woman forced into a role she did not want — but that hardly excuses the dull, bloodless way the film deals with its material and the almost innate revulsion these characters cause. They are terrible people—maybe not entirely through fault of their own, but they are terrible people. The film will probably be more interesting to those who like to witness self-contained character drama, abstracting notions of “likable” characters. For everyone else, though, The Pumpkin Eater may be a mixed bag.

  • The Story of Three Loves (1953)

    The Story of Three Loves (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) As much as we can admire classic Hollywood’s greatest hits, talk fondly about its actors and follow the filmography of its directors, not every film of the era leaves a mark, even when it does feature great directors and a cast of known names. That’s the case with The Story of Three Loves given its severe structural issues: an anthology film composed of three segments, it suffers from the usual afflictions of such movies. The actors are only there for a third of the time, the tone shifts all over the place, the segments aren’t equally interesting, and there’s less time to attach ourselves to the characters, which is particularly bad in discussing character-based romance. Accordingly, perhaps, each segment has its own gimmick — from ballet dancing to body-switching to trapeze. Alas, the three segments also feel like short takes on topics that would be best approached in better full-length movies such as The Red Shoes, Big and Trapeze, respectively. Sure, there’s Kirk Douglas tearing up the screen, Leslie Caron speaking French and James Mason’s distinctive vocal cadence. But they’re not there for the entire film — in fact, they’re in three different segments. Vincente Minnelli directs one segment but not the others. Perhaps inevitably, The Story of Three Loves doesn’t leave much of an impression, nor much to chew upon. It is an eloquent example of what early-1950s MGM could bring to bear on a project, but it’s not, by itself, something particularly striking.