Ninja’d.
And Richard Attenborough. When his group of escapees are rounded up, he has an expression on his face that breaks my heart every time.
Attenborough plays a British officer… or am I being whooshed?
Yes, he was one of the escapees. And he realizes that they are not being returned to camp.
I’m not quite sure what you’re thinking I meant.
Oh sorry I thought you were referring to his accent, following on from the comment about Coburn.
Richard Attenborough started out as a gangster in Brighton Rock, but in the Great Escape fell back into the trope of the gentlemanly Briton contrasting the wild Americans.
We could do a whole thread about the post-war American beefcake genre, starting with Film Noir Robert Mitchum and lasting into the 80’s with Charles Bronson still shooting and beating up guys young enough to be his great-grandsons. Clint kept going beyond that, but arguably closed the book in 1992 with Unforgiven.
Oddly, while this was going on, although there were undeniably some British tough guys like Sean Connery and Stanley Baker, they largely remained sophisticated, diffident and ironic. Only after the Americans ceded the field in the 90s, British hard men with shaved heads took over the genre.
I wish folks would put the movie release date after the name. Since you mention Steve McQueen, you’re obviously talking about the 1960 release, not the 2016 remake that might be more familiar to some. Also, the origin of both was the Japanese film Seven Samurai, which was retitled for release in the US in 1954 as “The Magnificent Seven”, so there are really three different movies with the same name.
ETA: Also, the date gives one a sense of the general style of movie to expect.
I don’t recall how bad it is, but it would have to be plenty terrible to top Anthony Perkins in On the Beach (1959), to say nothing of Paul Newman playing a Brit who impersonates an Australian in The MacKintosh Man (1973).
LOL. No wonder you were confuzzled.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I always thought Brighton Rock must be some big rock in Brighton that’s a sightseeing spot. Had no idea until I saw the movie that it was candy. Such a sad, depressing movie…but good.
If you want to see James Coburn at his best, seek out the Derek Flint movies and enjoy.
Made a mere two years after one of his first starring roles in the that great sci-fi-horror classic “The Blob.”
Kinda fun spoofs, but incredibly dated.
He’s fun, too, but Coburn joins the movie at the end when they get to the big poker tournament.
Both the Great Escape and the Magnificent Seven were scored by Elmer Bernstein, noted here because I think the music is as important as anything else in a lot of movies. The Alamo was by Dimitri Tiomkin, a very distinctive, dynamic musical style. Tiomkin also liked to re-work old shtetl folk tunes into cowboy songs. Another favorite from the era is Jerome Moross, who scored The Big Country, and Wagon Train (back when tv shows had the title in their theme songs even when there weren’t sung lyrics: Bewitched, Bonanza, The FBI, etc.)
Revisionist Western in the late 60s & 70’s got away from that, for example The Long Riders with Ry Cooder supplying period-authentic music. When Hollywood made “bring back the golden age” Westerns like Silverado and Toombstone, the big, bombastic music came back too. But for the most part, contemporary Westerns like most of the rest of the movies today don’t include the music as a main character anymore.
I liked The President’s Analyst.
And Bullitt.
Love Bullitt. Keep an eye peeled for a young Robert Duvall in a bit role as a cab driver.
Just finished watching Beatles '64 and really enjoyed it. It’s was fun to soak up the vibe of the times. I was 9 years old when it all went down and was completely oblivious to Beatlemania. (My thing at the time was the space program)
@moes_lotion was replying to my seeing Charade for the time, starring Audrey Hepburn in a crime-based story. So taking that advice I just watched Wait Until Dark, again with Audrey Hepburn in another crime-based story. I had seen it years ago, and I still don’t really care for the film. It’s clever, for sure, but the vulnerable lady in distress is tiring, although at least she saves herself, instead of having a strong handsome man come to her rescue.
I liked the TCM commentary before and after the movie, where viewers in theaters when it was released were told that the ending of the movie (and the stage play as well) would be totally dark, so please refrain from lighting your cigarettes during that time. A different time indeed.
I just watched Dead of Night (1945), the British horror anthology film from Ealing Studio, best known for its segment where Michael Redgrave plays the mad ventriloquist (which has been copied one way or another on several shows).
The “horror” is so low-key that it’s not very shocking. The scariest thing I noticed is that evryone in this film appears to be chain-smoking. People offer each other cigarettes without a word, accept them, and light them up in rapid succession. Everybody always seems to have a lit cigarette in their hand, men and women. Except for the two guys in the golf segment who smoke pipes.
Well-done, but tame to modern eyes. Heck, I was raised on Twilight Zone and Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors.
Oh, I love that movie because its horror is mostly suggested, and there are no monsters or blood. And the ending is pretty cool. Most horror movies for me are more gross-outs than scary anyway. I find it a lot creepier if the situation is something I can imagine actually happening.