Posts Tagged With 'James Mason'

Man in Grey, The

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This overly convoluted but nonetheless heavily similar melodrama to The Wicked Lady, precedes said film by two years and is lauded as the first melodrama from Gainsborough studios. As in The Wicked Lady, Margaret Lockwood stars as a greedy, eyes fixed firmly on the goal of grabbing the country manor, she-devil. Her aptitude for cunning is quite frankly wasted on the menial role of Governess, which James Mason intuits as he refuses her the role, deeming her unsuitable. Instead, he allows her to stay as lady’s companion to his wife, Phyllis Calvert. As in The Wicked Lady’s similar wifely role covered by Patricia Roc, Calvert represents rosy-cheeked duty, lack of drama and well-meaning naivete. Bless her.

Probably advisable not to dwell too much on the parallels between the two films as there are too many to mention. Instead, appreciate that the magic ingredient in The Man in Grey is Stewart Granger, providing light relief as a slightly more complex and human character than the dutifully devillish Mason and who is genuinely very funny (and slightly incongruously so) in his loveable goof stage performance as Othello. Actually, we don’t really know what to make of him. We know he’s both mercurial and untrustworthy but we have a hunch he’s OK and not necessarily devious, unlike Lockwood and Mason. Of course, as is the custom in 1943, any self-respecting, ambitiously transgressive brunette will get her comeuppance in the end and in this case, it’s Mason’s turn to get nasty with Lockwood, with worrying relish.

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Wicked Lady, The

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As parodied in the Blackadder the Third episode Amy and Amiability, where Miranda Richardson is the highwaywoman, this 1940s film starring the gorgeous Margaret Lockwood, plays with the themes of good and evil to grotesque proportions. But it’s such a ripping good yarn, and will appeal to every good girl’s darker side. James Mason is delectable as Lockwood’s mentor, the ravishingly patronising Captain Jerry ‘Until our next merry meeting – in hell!’ Jackson, humouring his little missy all the way to the gallows.

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20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

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“Gooooot a whale of a tale to tell you lads, a whale of a tale or two-oo…” Kirk ‘snails’ Douglas steals the show – just – against heavy opposition from James Mason, Paul Lukas and Herbert Lom in this Disney version of Verne’s classic from the days when the words ‘Disney version’ meant something quite good and weren’t a prelude to nausea. So much to see here; the attack on the ships, the dinner, the penal colony, the giant squid, Ocalina Fagiolina…the list goes on.

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Odd Man Out

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Wounded IRA gang leader James Mason ducks in and out of the streets of Belfast one night, meeting drunken painter Robert Newton, barman William Hartnell and assorted others as a touch of the magic realism sets in. Also with Wilfrid Brambell and Dora ‘Taste of Honey’ Bryan.

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Man Between, The

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If you’ll forgive us a shallow observation about a cinematic giant, what was it with Carol Reed and the word “Man”? As well as The Third Man and Our Man in Havana, you had The Running Man, ace IRA magic-realist drama Odd Man Out with James ‘Mandingo’ Mason, and then this Berlin-set period piece, with Mason again as a troubled Wall-hopping businessman, who gives it all up for Claire ‘Illustrated Man’ Bloom. Some Third Man-ish photography, a very Odd Man Out-like ending, and Geoffrey ‘Freewheelers’ Toone are in there as well.

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Journey to the Centre of the Earth

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This isn’t the Cushing/McClure Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptation At The Earth’s Core (the one with those pterodactyl things that made a backwards noise when they blinked), nor is it the Italian version with Kenneth More, whatever the hell that one was like. And it’s clearly not Rick Wakeman’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth on Ice. An altogether better proposition, this is the original ’50s version with James Mason and, er, Pat Boone, with impressive Technicolor stalactite caves, and less impressive iguanas with stuck-on rubber fins.

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Georgy Girl

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Top quality swinging social comment, as a floppy Lynn Redgrave stumbles about in awe of loose and louche flatmate Charlotte Rampling, lusts after a brilliantly deranged Alan Bates, and eventually succumbs to shabby-but-rich James Mason. And of course, there’s *that* Seekers’ theme song, with Oscar winning lyrics from the one and only Jim ‘Dr Nookie’ Dale, as our Lynn ambles around NW1 looking in shop windows.

JIM DALE CORNER: Time to reflect on what a fine clutch of film theme songs the trolley-surfing one-time possible Dr Who has amassed. Of course, he was a consummate singing star before he ever set foot on a film lot, hosting Six-Five Special and recording a slew of waxings like Be My Girl and the classic Rock Island Line parody Piccadilly Line. Once he got into film (appropriately enough via a Norman Hudis-scripted film spin-off of Six-Five Special, wherein two girls travel to London on the titular train, which conveniently happens to be packed full of pop and skiffle greats, plus Jim, Bernie Winters and the John Barry Seven in the guard’s van) there was no stopping him effortlessly marrying the two disciplines. There was his theme song to Doris Day vamp-in Tread Softly, Stranger; The Ballad of Shalako for the eponymous Sean Connery western; wrote and sang the titular theme to Twinky, the slightly off-colour tale of middle aged pornographer Charles Bronson copping off with a sixteen-year-old Susan George (with Michael ‘Triangle’ Craig and Honor Blackman as George’s parents, and, better still, Paul ‘Bilkooo!’ Ford as Charlie’s dad, and best of all, Jimmy Tarbuck playing a certain ‘Norman Vaughan’, while Norman Vaughan plays a certain ‘Jimmy Tarbuck’); and lent his pipes to various other films he starred in, belting out Milligan’s It’s Gonna Be a Good War for the film of Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall, and getting all 18th century for also-romped bawdy second-stringer Joseph Andrews.

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Boys From Brazil, The

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“More plausible now than it was in the late seventies,” reckons the Radio Times, barometer of international technological advancement. Gregory Peck, Sir Larry, James Mason, Denholm Elliott, Prunella Scales, Michael ‘Brideshead’ Gough, Linda ‘Shillingbury Tales’ Hayden and, yes, Steve Guttenberg feature. Now, here’s a thing. In Martin Scorcese’s Casino, when the FBI burst in on Artie Spiletto and blow the whole caper, the banquet scene from this movie is playing rather noticeably in the foreground on a telly. What do we suppose that is supposed to symbolise, then?

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