Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 29, 2019 15:43:49 GMT -8
At Mr. Kung’s prompting, I did finish 1966’s Khartoum with Charlton Heston. The cinematography is terrific. The story, however, is a little lacking. It repeats too much the interplay between General Gordon (Heston) and William Gladstone Ralph Richardson). The politics of it when back and forth while all action ground to a halt. Heston is a little stiff in the role even for Heston. Although it’s gratifying to see the British (and other Muslims) kill the radical Muslims, that alone can’t carry the movie. It’s a lavish movie but one short on story. It’s a Lawrence-of-Arabia wannbe and clicks on at least four of its six cylinders but still runs a little rough. It would have greatly helped this movie if they would have cut about 30 minutes out of the latter half and used that runtime to set up the story as Gordon as savior of the Sudanese people. There are a lot of potentially interesting themes here, such as the people having to choose between The Great White Hope and Lawrence Olivier in face-paint (well-played by him, I’d say). But the depth isn’t there. Maybe the best part of the movie was the battle scene when they went out into the surrounding area to gather cattle and supplies to prepare for a siege in Khartoum. And the movie also gains some interest as Heston must use his military engineering skills to try to build a defense. But this element is breezed right through and (egads!) only to return to the politicians and Ralph Richardson. A better script was needed. But I did find the scenes between Heston and Olivier to be quite good. There was enough good stuff peppered about to keep you going. But the story just lacked punch. But it did lead me to what I thought was an even better movie. I searched the “you may also like” section of Amazon Prime connected to Khartoum and found… North West FrontierThis is an unusual paring of Kenneth More as Captain Scott (a man married to the military) and Lauren Bacall as the American widow, Catherine Wyatt. Muslims (they should have been exterminated from India long ago) are on the rampage again. Their immediate aim is to kill a young Hindu prince so that the Hindus are leaderless. The young prince (the only stiff of an actor in this one…poor choice in casting) is in the charge of Catherine Wyatt. She and the prince, with the help of Captain Scott, have just barely made it into some kind of railroad fort. But the odds are against them and they must take a chance of trying to get the prince safely to Delhi. But the Muslims are at the gate and have broken through the outer perimeter. All trains have already left. Or have they? The engineer, Gupta, (played wonderfully by I.S. Johar) is sure that one of the old, broken-down out-of-service trains can accomplish the task. And so they set off on their journey, a mix of battles/dangers and onboard psychological drama amongst the passengers. The mix is nice and makes for a well-paced movie. The mix of characters on the train include an arms dealer, a journalist, the governor’s wife (very traditional-minded), and the liberal-minded Wilfrid “Bridie” Hyde White. If you don’t mind small spoilers, it’s a pleasure to see a move where the Muslims are the bad guys (which makes sense given their murderous history in India) and the journalist also being a bad guy. Herbert Lom is excellent in what is a thankless role. Interesting as well is some of the frank, and non-cliched, talk about British colonialism. One can say that both sides are presented. And, of course, it is the British (and their railroads) who pull all of their chestnuts out of the fire while here and there are peppered more theoretical discussions. This is a good picture from start to finish. I’m surprised I’d never heard of it. Bacall gets to play the “independent” woman (as Capt. Scott calls her) and which Bacall says something like “Oh, do you mean pig-headed?” There is some nice dialogue between the two. This is just a nice, thoughtful movie full of action but not full of the usual nonsense. “An ignored masterpieces” is how one reviewer puts it and I tend to agree. |
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Post by kungfuzu on Nov 29, 2019 16:12:25 GMT -8
It has been years since I saw "Khartoum," but I recall it to be very much as you describe it. Some parts were very good and the costumes were very well done. But it was a bit stiff and drawn out. Still the scene on the stairs where it ends for Heston was striking. I also liked the way Olivier turned away in horror when he looked up to see Chinese Gordon's head on a stick.
I have seen part of "North West Frontier," but not the whole movie. As far as I can recall, I liked what I saw. I have always liked Kenneth Moore and Herbert Lom.
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Post by timothylane on Nov 29, 2019 16:45:26 GMT -8
I've never seen North West Frontier, but I'm not surprised that it treats the colonialists sympathetically. That was often the case back then, and even as late as Zulu several years later.
George MacDonald Fraser discussed Khartoum in his The Hollywood History of the World. He points out that Gordon never actually met the Mahdi, but they did correspond, so the connection wasn't invented. Most likely their exchanges were based on what they actually said in that correspondence.
Gordon's situation at Khartoum was actually very similar to Travis's at the Alamo. (I attended William Barret Travis Elementary School for a year in Galveston, incidentally.) Each was supposed to evacuate a place considered indefensible in the long run, and each decided otherwise. Relief forces were sent to both (though Sir Garnet made more progress in the Sudan than Fannin did in Texas). And in the end they were killed as their fortresses fell.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 30, 2019 9:23:51 GMT -8
Nineteen seventy-nine’s Riddle of the Sands isn’t set in the desert, but it does have sand…beach sand, in this case. I found it via “You might also like…” in regards to North West Frontier so there is a grain of consistency. Michael York and Jenny Agutter team up three years after Logan’s Run. Known only as “Davies,” the hunkish Simon MacCorkindale is sailing his small boat off the coast of Germany pursuing various interests, including updating the outdated British charts. He’s not a spy. He’s just doing this on his own. He catches the attention of some local Germans. Set in the early years of the 20th century, this would appear to be a period just prior to World War I. Davies quickly determines by the behavior of the Germans (including an illegal search of his boat while he is away) that they are up to something. Davies writes to an old college buddy of his, Carruthers (Michael York), who works in the British state department. The letter from Davies is just intriguing enough to pry Carruthers from his leather chair, cigars, and brandy. When he gets to Germany he expects to find himself ensconced on a luxury yacht that has many servants. But Davies’ craft is but a small one. Carruthers’ portmanteau will not even fit down the hatch. This fish-out-of-water shtick is rather good while it lasts, but Carruthers turns out not to be a snowflake and rather quickly adapts. Carruthers is game, if only because he knows Davies to not be the hysterical sort. If he says something is up, something must be up. Meanwhile, Davies had become superficially involved with Herr Dollman’s daughter, Clara (Jenny Agutter). They advance the plot of a forbidden sort of love (after all, he is English and Herr Dollman is German and likely one of the bad guys) But this romance fades out after the first quarter of the film only to return to any significance near the end. Although I didn't want a chick flick, per se, it would have been nice if they had pursued this aspect a little more. But what fades in in place of the romance is no less than a Scooby-Doo movie for adults. That’s not to say that the plot and characters are goofy or amateurish. Generally they are not. But this movie has the same vibe. You can just hear Herr Dollman at the end saying “I would have gotten away with it except for you meddling kids.” Gotten away with what? Well, I won’t give that away. This movie is by no means five stars but they do pretty good with three of them. This is certainly watchable. At times it does become a bit unintentionally comically Scooby-Doo. Davies would have made a very bad meddling kid. His attempts at spying on the bad guys in this film are often ham-fisted. Michael York isn’t much better. At one point they row to a small island where the bad guys are up to something — up to either no good or simply searching for an old Napoleonic wreck supposedly filled with gold. But in case Carruthers gets lost in the fog, he is to blow a whistle. Davies answers him by blowing a rather loud horn. They go back and forth a couple times and I’m thinking “Very stealthy.” This is actually based on a book published in 1903. Nothing about this film makes me want to read the book but I’m glad I saw the film. With just a few re-writes this could have been truly excellent. But I saw early on that I needed to lower my expectations a bit and just go with the Scooby-Doo flow. |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 30, 2019 9:39:40 GMT -8
Yes, that turned out to be very bad karma for him. Very little expense seemed to be spared in filming Khartoum. The look is first-rate, for sure. In the trivia section it mentions:
I think articulating that a bit more would have been good. After all, sticking their noses in other people's business is what made the British empire. But why was The Sudan unimportant to them? Why was it important at one time? Yes, because of the Suez Canal, surely. But all this could have been better articulated.
Apparently Heston was not pleased with the way Basil Dearden directed the movie. He had wanted Sir Carol Reed to direct it. Carol Reed is known for "The Agony and the Ecstasy," "Mutiny on the Bounty," "The Third Man," Oliver!," and "Night Train to Munich," among others.
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Post by kungfuzu on Nov 30, 2019 9:55:22 GMT -8
An English friend gave me this book to read about a decade back. The film sounds as if the sides are switched. As I recall, the English were nosing around the sands off northwest Germany and the Germans didn't much like it.
On a historical note, the author was an Anglo-Irishman who was later hanged for having something to do with some Irish uprising. Given the subject of the book, I thought there was more than a little irony there.
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Post by timothylane on Nov 30, 2019 10:01:30 GMT -8
There were a number of British war novels during the period before World War I. Many, and some related works, were later collected into an anthology called Voices Prophesying War. I read all of them, though one (The War of the Worlds) I had read in grade school. Riddle of the Sands was one of them. In addition, Mark Steyn did it as one of his books of the month.
Of course, in this one you don't actually end up with a war, unlike (say) The Battle of Dorking. The author also later became an Irish nationalist and accepted assistance (rifles and ammunition mainly) from Germany during the Great War.
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Post by artraveler on Nov 30, 2019 10:11:52 GMT -8
This movie was criticized for neglecting to mention the many very good reasons why Prime Minister William Gladstone was reluctant to send an army into the Sudan. England, in spite of being a world power, had a very small professional army and most of it in the late 19th century was deployed to India. The center of English power for over three hundred years was the ability of the Navy to influence events around the world. If Gladstone could have sailed a fleet up the Nile I think he would have, but alas the Nile is just not navigable that far up for the fleet. The army he did send was untrained volunteers and after 1879 the need for training was evident. Just wearing a red coat was not enough. English adventureism in Africa is pockmarked by bad choices. In South Africa the Zulu and Boer Wars were not popular in the homeland. The Zulu war (1879) demonstrated that an English army of mostly untrained and badly led soldiers could be overcome by natives with nothing but spears. And the Boer wars in the 1890s would prove the vulnerability of the English line to mobile commandos. Let us not forget that an obscure Indian lawyer was thrown off a train in South Africa prompting a rebellion in the sub continent that led to the loss of empire. |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 30, 2019 10:14:59 GMT -8
In the movie, Davies was doing little more than a little innocent sightseeing, updating his charts, and getting in some duck hunting when he could. The "nosing-around" began in earnest, especially after Carruthers was rather brutally assaulted.
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Post by timothylane on Nov 30, 2019 10:15:33 GMT -8
No, Brad's description of the movie sounds like what I recall from reading it a couple of years ago and from the descriptions in Steyn's articles on it. (I'm not a member of his club, but he would briefly describe each segment and include an excerpt of it.)
Incidentally, Steyn's articles included maps applicable to each day's segment, and I got the impression that they were actually in the edition of the book that he read. I hadn't realized how difficult that area is, which presumably explains why there aren't that many ports in the area. (Of course, "the area" extends from the Dutch to the Danish borders and includes coastal areas of both the North and Baltic Seas.)
Personally, I'm skeptical that the plan of attack would work. The sort of shallow-draft boats that would be needed for the plan would probably be slow and vulnerable. The German fleet could protect some, but most likely not enough of them. Of course, that's why exposing the plan would doom it -- what chance it had depended entirely on surprise.
The German plans for Operation Sealion relied heavily on barges and ferries, but at least it would attack in the Strait of Dover area rather than from the East Frisian Islands. Admiral Raeder also pointed out that so many barges taken from the internal water communications via the German rivers and canals would play hob with the economy, something Erskine Childers didn't consider.
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Post by timothylane on Nov 30, 2019 10:20:51 GMT -8
The Zulus did have a small number of rifles, though little knowledge of how to use them. Still, enough shots will find occasional targets, and I've read that a high percentage of the casualties at Rorke's Drift (the subject of Zulu, which is far more accurate than a viewer would realize, even if Private Hook's descendants sued the producer for smearing his behavior before the battle -- and I think they won) came from that. Isandhlwana and Hlobane would have been different matters, of course.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 30, 2019 11:05:27 GMT -8
It does come across in the movie that this northern shore of Germany that faces the North Sea is a difficult shoreline. There are plenty of shifting sandbars and that sort of thing. The island in question is one of the Frisian Islands: Memmert. The two men under cover of fog rowed out to the island from their sailboat which was anchored near the mainland. It was a trip of several miles. But York is masterly with the compass. It would have worked 100% just great if they wished to overwhelm a small island or city. But they would have needed to ferry over an enormous amount of supplies including heavy guns, tanks, etc. for any more ambitious effort. That’s one thing I gained from reading about the Civil War. Just to move a regiment took dozens, if not hundreds, of wagons of supplies. Sending soldiers as shock troops would have worked fine. But without further support (and far more than could be carried in those small barges), it seems to me the British could have just left them on the beaches to starve. The plan was based on the fact that the British fleet was not in the North Sea in any force, if at all. But given that Portsmouth isn’t exactly a continent away, the British Navy would have been there within hours. But for a book published in 1903, it seems a plausible Jules Verne-ish look into the future. Or maybe this was more H.G. Wells-ish. |
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