Roger's
reviews have appeared in McClatchy-Tribune News
Service, Orlando Sentinel, Spin Magazine, The World,
Orlando Magazine Autoweek Magazine among others.
He is the founder and editor of Movie
Nation.
It
was “The Lavender Hill Mob” and “The
Titfield Thunderbolt” that Monty Python’s
John Cleese was remembering when he decided that well-past-70
Charles Critchon might be just the jolly sort to direct
his screenplay for “A Fish Called Wanda.”
Those
classic Ealing Comedies might date from another age,
and the old rule about “old guys can’t do
comedy” remains a hard prejudice to overcome.
But Cleese, Jamie Lee, Palin, Kline & Co. turned
out to be in the surest possible hands with 1988’s
“Wanda,” one of the greatest screen comedies
ever.
Yet
the editor-turned-director was already making his mark
in British cinema before comedies beckoned. World War
II launched his directing career (“For Those in
Peril”). And stumbling across “Against the
Wind” on a streaming channel reveals this 1948
gem to be the “perfectionist” Critchon at
his action-oriented best.
It’s
a heist picture bent to fit the still-new commando thriller
narrative, and as such it’s a jaunty, genre defining
work.
A
“team” is assembled, trained to fight, parachute
and hit the enemy with gadgets from a military movie
prototype for James Bond’s Q-Division. The mission
goes wrong from the first — accidents, betrayals,
characters’ Achille heels’ exposed.
But
with that “Keep calm and carry on” doggedness,
these men and a woman don’t give up. And if the
viewer isn’t won over by the twists, narrow escapes
and sacrifices of the early acts and Critchton’s
brilliant shooting and cutting, the filmmaker tosses
young actors John Slater and Gordon Jackson onto a moving
train, imperiling one and all in some seriously jaw-dropping
“They did their OWN STUNTS” action for the
climax.
An
Urtext thriller becomes downright dazzling, and Crichton
takes a giant step to making his name in British cinema
in the process.
A
priest (Robert Beatty) with a gift for languages and
experience on The Continent is recruited by Ackman (James
Robertson Justice of course, later of “Guns of
Navarone”) to an asymettrical warfare unit specializing
in “sabotage” behind enemy lines.
Future
Oscar winner and “Diabolique” icon Simone
Signoret, still in her ’20s and making her first
English language film, is Michèle, bridling at
desk duty, longing to return to Nazi Occupied Europe
for revenge against a turncoat lover. Bomb-gadget guru
Duncan (Jackson) will have to hide his feelings for
Michèle – — “Once you start
mixing duty and affection, you start digging graves!”
— and his Scots-accent and iffy French from the
authorities if he’s ever sent on a mission. Show
dancer turned radio operator Julie (Gisèle Préville)
will have to get over her crush on Father Philip (Beatty).
Hulking man without a country Cronk (Jack Warner) could
come in handy. Emile (John Slater) will undergo plastic
surgery so convincing his own wife won’t recognize
him on this assignment.
And
Picquart (Paul Dupuis of “Passport to Pimlico”)
will have to have a fascist image makeover before making
his way back to Brussels. Because that’s where
they’re bound. Their former instructor, master
saboteur Andrew (Peter Illing) may have masterminded
the work records office fire that threw a wrench into
Nazi foreign labor impressment. But he was caught, and
By Jove, they’re going in to get him.
Everything
that can go wrong does when you’re dealing with
parachute jumps, espionage, explosives, agents of mixed
allegiances and locals you may not wholly trust. But
the mission endures, with “suicide pills”
a final out for those captured.
The
deaths here are dramatic, sometimes to the point of
shocking, and each has meaning and consequences. Signoret
is the standout in the cast, but Dupuis, Slater and
Jackson have some great moments.
Jackson,
later immortalized as the fusty, traditionalist butler
in “Upstairs Downstairs,” an early hit for
PBS in the US and the template for “Downtown Abbey,”
is most impressive as the sexist Scot who swoons for
the jaded, loveless Michèle, only to have to
depend on her professionalism to save his life.
But
watching him cling to rolling rail-stock in the film’s
climactic rail chase (much of the movie was filmed on
location in Belgium) we don’t see “performing”
“as if my life depended on it.” The actor,
and Slater as Emil, are white-knuckling onto couplings
and other parts of rolling freight cars because one
false move and they’re dead or at the very least
badly injured.
Ealing
Studios would make its true mark on film history via
the comedies to come — “Whisky Galore,”
“The Ladykillers,” “Kind Hearts and
Coronets” — a couple of them directed by
Crichton.
But
with the sentimental, sad and sometimes thrilling “Against
the Wind,” one and all proved that it wasn’t
just twee, quaint and distinctly British charm and wit
that made Ealing a revered institution. Definitive genre
pictures about “Their Finest Hour” did Ealing
and Crichton & Co. credit, too.
