Vintage Movie Review - Jaws (1975)

After a late night, and one too many whisky's I just wanted something to watch that would pass the time until I fell alseep, and cruising Netflix I came across Jaws and thought, 'WHY NOT' - I'd not seen the film for a good few years, though at one time it was one of my favourite movies - such a pity the sequals were so poor-, and I thought I'd see how it played now. Would it be as good as I remembered? Would it still work?

I can vividly remember the first time I saw this movie - it was in my local cinema,The Workman's Hall, around 1976 when the hype for this movie was still at its peak. Back in those days big movies took months and months to get to my local cinema in my small Welsh town. You know, I was 11 years old when I went into the cinema to see this - back then age didn't matter and I saw a fair number of the Hammer X certificate movies on my the big screen back in the day; not to mention the Confessions movies. Back then they didn't take any notice of film classification and were happy for you to go in just as long as you paid your money - probably less than a pound for entry back then. 75P seems to stick in my mind.

I had my younger brother with me when I went into see this movie, so he would have been about 9 and I still remember, that when the Duh Duh music started with the first frame, my brother went green and ran out of the cinema - true story that. Before the shark even munched its first victim my brother had legged it. I wasn't going to miss the movie and so I stayed in my seat and ended up with a heck of a telling off from my parents for leaving my younger brother to go home on his own. Now that's an amusing, though totally true, story but think of the anticipation for that movie, the effect on young minds, because all it took was a Duh Duh to set my brother off at Olympic speed. Either it was a particularly scary Duh Duh or my brother was a pussy!

But I digress - watching the film now (a long time since I was 11 years old) does the film still work the same magic? Well, yes basically - it's still a damn good film and of course made Stephen Speilberg a superstar director for the geek generation. The performances are excellent - particularly Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss. And although the shark effects may be ropey by modern standards the suspense works far better because of this.  Sure, these days we could have  a CGI shark that looked absolutely amazing but that would be no substitute for the skilled storytelling in this movie.

Some of the core scenes I know like the back of my hand, but as soon as I found myself sucked into the movie they worked just as well as they did the first time. Robert Shaw's death still brought a tear to me eye, and I still felt like punching the air when they blew up that bad old shark.

Jaws still pack a bite.

Check out that ever so scary Duh Duh below.

Vintage Movie Review: The Desert Fox

1951
Directed by Henry Hathaway
Starring James Mason and Jessica Tandy


I very much enjoyed this movie - It depicts Rommel's as both a military genius and a hero, a man who fought for Hitler's Reich but would have nothing to do with the SS. So well regarded was Rommel, even amongst his enemies that Churchill even paid tribute to him in a speech before the House of Commons. Parts of this speech are played out at the end of the film.

These days there is controversy over Rommel and a German film currently in production is said to cast him as a war criminal, but Hathaway's movie depicts Rommel as a great leader, a genius tactician and a man who grew to despise Hitler and his Third Reich.

The movie begins with Rommel's defeat by the Allies in North Africa, and finds him disobeying an order from Hitler to throw his men to certain death - no retreat, fight to the last man. The staging of the battle scenes in El Alemain and later Normandy are incredibly lifelike but then they are real - the director used actual footage from the war within the movie which gives it something of a semi documentary feel. This not only adds to the realism but gives the production much gravitas - when this movie was made the war had of course only been over a mere six years.

In the movie, Rommel is disgusted by Hitler's command that his armies seek "victory or death". Gradually, he turns against the Führer. Rommel's opposition to Hitler has helped create his image as the second world war German field marshal it's okay to like. Though he fought for Hitler, he never joined the Nazi party, and there is some evidence that he despised the so called Final Solution.

Eventually Rommel lends his support to the removal  of Hitler, but hopes that by meeting with Hitler he can get him to see reason. At the tension-packed meeting, Luther Adler (a Jewish actor!) plays Hitler. He accuses Rommel of defeatism and not knowing the big picture. The new V weapons will win the war - his performance her depicts Hitler as a man completely out of touch with reality, almost a mental case. It seems that Hitler is building his tactics around the suggestions of his astronomer. War by horoscope. Rommel holds back, but James Mason's performance here is brilliantly nuanced and without a word of dialogue his inner feelings are clear to the viewer.  Soon afterwards  Rommel is wounded when his vehicle is struck by allied bombs and he  is in the hospital when the assassination on Hitler fails. Three months later, his involvement catches up with him while home convalescing.

Gen. Burgdorf, a typical yes man, turns up at Rommel's home with a warrant for his arrest for treason, and Rommel is given the option of taking his own life so that the official story will be that he died from wounds sustained in glorious battle.  At first Rommel is furious and wants to face a court of law but he realises that the only way to save his family is to take the poison provided to him. This is what really happened and the truth about Rommel's death would not be discovered until the Nuremberg trials following the war.


Original Trailer



An excellent film - a character study rather than a traditional war movie, and James Mason is superb in the role, in fact his performance here became one of his signature roles. The movie was part of a concerted effort to recast Rommel as a good German, to help repatriate West Germany's post-war reputation. The film's focus is on his gentlemanly mannerisms, strong familial bonds, increasing disgust with Hitler and finally his support, morally at least, for the plot to oust the Nazi leader.

The real Rommel

Vintage movie review: The Heroes of Telemark

1965
Directed by Anthony Mann
Starring Kirk Douglas, Richard Harris and Ulla Jacobson.

A large screen TV, a good sound system and a pristine cut on DVD - add a bottle of scotch and a cheese board and you've got all the ingredients for a truly cinematic experience in the home.

I watch a lot of old movies like this and so I thought it would be a good idea to add a VINTAGE MOVIE REVIEW section to the Archive, where titles would not be categorised by genre but rather included because they are what we would define as vintage. And you know, by and large, the old movies are usually the best - well, they are in the opinion of this grouchy old timer. You can stick your expensive CGI where the sun don't shine and muscle bound fools in latex merely bore me. Give me a slice of classic celluloid and I'm happy.

The Heroes of Telemark, filmed all the way back in 1965 (the year the Beatles released Help, cigarette advertising was banned on Television, Ian Fleming posthumously published The Man with the Golden Gun and I was born.) and takes its story from factual events.Namely the sabotaging by the Norwegian resistance of the German heavy water plants. These actions may have actually cost Germany the war, since prior to this audacious act of sabotage the Germans were closer than both the Americans and the British to producing a workable nuclear bomb. The story was also filmed in 1948 under the title   Kampen om tungtvannet, and that Franco/Norwegian version even featured four of the original commandos who took part in the actual sabotage playing themselves - that movie is available on You Tube and is embedded below. There is also a newspaper article HERE that tells of the death in 2012 of one of the last surviving saboteurs.




   Kampen om tungtvannet The movie as available on You Tube



Anthony Mann's movie is quite faithful to actual events, but the veteran director of many classic westerns, is at all times aware that he is producing an entertainment and he delivers a spectacular movie, excellently paced and full of excitement. Reviews at the time said the characters were wooden but I can't agree with that and whilst Kirk Douglas may come across as a cross between Indiana Jones and James Bond, Richard Harris' Nazi hating character is superbly nuanced.

The action scenes are excellent and the ski chase in the movie is as good as anything seen on the big screen, the suspense is also ramped up and the end scene in which Douglas tries to save a group of children from a ferry that is about to blow up is a master-class in edge-of-the-seat viewing.

If you enjoy movies like Where Eagles Dare and the Guns of Navarone, then you will certainly enjoy Heroes of Telemark. Highly recommended.