Sarah Miles

  • The Big Sleep (1978)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2022) Forty-five years later, the decision to remake a classic 1940s Los Angeles-based film noir as a 1970s London-based thriller smacks more of a stunt than a modernization of the story. There is, to be fair, a rather amazing cast in the 1978 version of The Big Sleep. With Robert Mitchum playing the private investigator to an elderly James Stewart, the film then goes on to have Joan Collins in a small role… even if Sarah Miles gets most of the appreciative stares playing a mop-topped redhead. While updated elements include colour cinematography and free mentions of elements too racy to have been acknowledged by classic Hollywood, the deliberately labyrinthine plotting has been kept almost intact. It makes for interesting viewing, but that may have more to do with the incongruity of the adaptation than its success. It’s a fun ride, but it would be an exaggeration to call it a good movie. Mitchum is easily twenty or thirty years too old for the role, and the film tortures itself to justify the American-accented Mitchum and Stewart in the middle of an otherwise very British film. Director Michael Winner’s pacing is slack, and Mitchum relies a bit too much on his tough taciturn persona rather than inhabiting the character. The period feel is more flashy than transparent (exactly the opposite of what the filmmakers intended for audiences at the time) and the direction is much flatter than expected, with the actors not always fully engaged in their roles. Oh, I still liked this The Big Sleep remake—but I liked it as a perversion of a much-admired original rather than its own thing.

  • Hope and Glory (1987)

    Hope and Glory (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2019) There have been many movies about WW2, many movies about the bombing of England and many movies about civilian populations suffering from war. But don’t think there are that many movies like Hope and Glory. Writer-director John Boorman’s biggest conceptual leap here (in semi-autobiographical mode) is to see the home-front devastation from the eyes of a kid—a nine-year-old boy for whom war is just part of life, with bombed-out buildings offering plenty of opportunities for adventure. What jolly good fun it is to play in the rubble, watch dogfights in the sky, encounter parachuting Nazis and have Hitler bomb your school! Yes, the irony is palpable throughout the film, and its message even more potent because it avoids the expected mawkishness of such films. In fact, Hope and Glory is best experienced thoroughly spoiled: Knowing that nothing really bad happens to the protagonist and his family is a key to appreciating this off-the-wall take on the Blitz. It works as a kid’s comedy, it works as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, it works as an affectionate family portrait. While Sebastian Rice-Edwards gets a lot of screen time as the young boy, Sarah Miles (as the mother) and Ian Bannen (as the grandfather) are quite strong in their roles. There are more essential war movies than Hope and Glory, but there aren’t as many that try to do something true and different with that kind of material. It’s well worth a look.