Film and TV recommendations 16th/17th September
Tuesday 16th September
There's a return to themed programming for the BBC tonight, something that was a regular feature on BBC Two during the 90s. BBC Four has an evening of railway-related programmes from 9pm. The slightly random selection includes two comedies: Oh, Doctor Beeching! - another series, Like You Rang M'Lord?, which seemed to exist only to provide regular work for most of the cast of Hi-de-Hi! – and the classic episode of Dad's Army (9.30pm) in which Captain Mainwaring is smitten with a female recruit to the platoon in an homage to Brief Encounter (both have scenes at railway stations). The thread ends with the drama-documentary Murder on the Victorian Railway (10.40pm, which I haven't seen) but the centrepiece is Andrew Davies' adaptation of The Signalman (10pm). Originally A Ghost Story for Christmas first shown in 1976, it takes Charles Dickens' intriguing but hardly scary short story and turns it into a deeply unsettling study of a lonely man – brilliantly played by Denholm Elliott – very literally haunted by guilt and visions of death.
Over on Talking Pictures TV at 10.45pm, The Cellar Club strand, introduced by Caroline Munro, features John Carpenter's 1988 science fiction thriller, They Live. Carpenter's most overtly political film, it exposes the self-centred consumerism and materialism of Reagan's America (with obvious parallels to today). The first quarter shows a recognisable but strangely unfamiliar and deeply divided world, with the have-nots abandoned by the haves, as brutally illustrated during the scene in which police raid and destroy a make-shift homeless town (based on a real event in Los Angeles at the time the film was made). The reasons for this divide in society and apparent lack of compassion on the part of many people, who are obsessed with money and possessions, are revealed in some imaginatively striking scenes that are both funny and shocking. Unfortunately, the film does degenerate into quite a bit of running and shooting towards the end but it has Carpenter's trademark technique and style, plus a great synth score, and is simultaneously entertaining and thought-provoking.
Wednesday 17th September
An early start, or just remember to set the recorder, to see Orson Welles' The Stranger (1946) at 9am on Talking Pictures TV. Usually regarded as one of the lesser films Welles made in the wake of Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, it still shows off his skill as a filmmaker, taking a fairly straightforward thriller and turning it into something much darker and psychologically challenging (as he did with the later Touch of Evil). Welles stars as well, playing a seemingly charming, respectable college professor with a settled life in a small town. That begins to crumble with the arrival of an investigator from the War Crimes Commission hunting for a notorious Nazi fugitive. Edward G Robinson is superb as the dogged pursuer and his battle of wits with Welles climaxes with a memorable scene in a clock tower. Not classic Welles but a well-made and acted film noir with some serious undertones.
Another character who is not all he seems features in The Firm (1989), being shown on BBC Four at 10.20pm. Gary Oldman plays Bex, a family man and estate agent with an ostensibly ordinary life who is also the leader of a gang of vicious football hooligans. Originally shown as part of BBC Two's Screen Two TV strand, it was the last film directed by Alan Clarke, who highlights organised crime and the divisions in Thatcher's Britain during the 80s as a cause of the violence rather than just sporting tribalism. There is also an introduction at 10pm by Phil Davis, who plays Bex's rival, Yeti. Grim but well-directed with committed performances by Oldman, Davis and Lesley Manville.
