"May Be My Treasure or the Price I Have to Pay"

Now that I've read the magnificent original novel, the 1965 adaptation of She is even more frustrating. But it wouldn't be frustrating if there weren't things I like about it and top of the list is Peter Cushing and Bernard Cribbins.

All three of the male leads are well cast, actually, and could've been excellent playing closer to the original characters. Cushing as Holly isn't as brawny or as ugly as the character in the book is said to be but I think a little weight lifting and some makeup could've fixed that. There's not a thing wrong with Cribbins as Job the valet. John Richardson is bland and handsome but so was his character, Leo Vincey, in the book.

Strange echoes of their original relationship are retained in the film. In the book, Holly was a professor and foster father of Leo, who was bequeathed to him by a colleague along with mysterious artefacts. Job was Holly's servant. In the movie, the story has been moved to 1918, at the end of World War I (the book was published in 1887). Holly, Leo, and Job are soldiers, deciding how to return to civilian life. Job announces his intention to be a valet, Holly wants to go back to being a professor. The three in no way seem like soldiers, despite Peter Cushing's amusing attempt to be rowdy with a few topless dancers.

This also deviates from Holly in the book who's terribly awkward around women and whose lifelong unrequited romantic needs are an important part of the book's subtext. Cushing could've played that beautifully, alas, but he and Cribbins are wonderful as a sort of Frodo and Sam in the desert.

JOB: "I'm glad I'm not an educated man, sir, if that's what makes you go off on a damn fool search for lost cities."

HOLLY: "Isn't that exactly what you're doing, Job?"

JOB: "Well, yes, sir, but I'm too ignorant to know any better."

The changes were obviously made in the interest of condensing the story. They weren't good decisions, not just for putting the characters in roles they don't act like they're in anyway. It also loses a lot of the novel's mysterious build-up. Worse is the fact that Leo meets Ayesha, the She of the title, almost immediately, in a house in Palestine where she gives him a ring and a map to her hidden kingdom of Kuma. In addition to losing the mystery, it also doesn't make much sense for her to ask him to come find her when she's standing right in front of him.

Ursula Andress is appropriately beautiful though she wants an air of authority. One of the extraordinary things about the novel is how Ayesha came off as truly brilliant, capable of considering strategy and adept at judging character. Andress just seems like a petulant teenager.

Christopher Lee and Andre Morell are fine in supporting roles. Rosenda Monteros as Ustane, Ayesha's unexpected rival for Leo's affections, is perfectly fine, though Ayesha's treatment of her is another thing that lacks the nuance of the novel.

As flawed as it is, I can still see myself watching this movie again. I'm amazed it's so hard to find and it appears never to have had a blu-ray release, despite having been one of Hammer's greater box office successes.

Twitter Sonnet #1720

Evaluations sever glitter ties.
Misfortune chopped the business man to meat.
Reduction cost the bull a dream of lies.
The people's prank deflowered Mary's seat.
Some thirsty desert troops have wrecked the bar.
For phantom queen, the golden cub embarks.
Her sweaty dream was near but miles far.
His train assays a list of vain remarks.
Emerged again, the floating damsel paints.
We walk to wharves without the grace of paws.
And look, the lonesome lady quickly faints.
In beauty's sky were eyes and feudal laws.
With brazen praise, the goddess lines the cliff.
The beach below belongs beyond an "if".

The Treacherous Uniform

Sometimes people get so caught up in their jobs they forget what their jobs are for. The word for it is "careerism" and it's rampant in the 1963 British farce The Wrong Arm of the Law in which London's criminal underworld and Scotland Yard team up to catch a gang of police impersonators. Starring Peter Sellers, Lionel Jeffries, and Bernard Cribbins, this film is both razor sharp and completely ridiculous. It also has some surprisingly effective car chase scenes.

"Do you have to put in for a gallon of petrol every time you chase someone, do you?" asks the exasperated criminal called Pearly Gates (Sellers) when his reluctant comrade, Inspector Parker (Jeffries), objects to a point in their cooperative plan to catch the imposters that would require paper work and currency exchange. But the crooks aren't much better. They gather together earlier in the film like it's a union meeting deciding how to handle negotiations with an employer.

Both sides are so comfortable with the status quo that a gang of Australians can foul things up just by putting on police uniforms and driving a stolen police car. They make their profits by catching crooks and taking the loot just like the real cops, and the crooks let them do it because the relationship between cop and crook is so cosy and rote. When a gang of burglars mistake three real cops for the fakes, they start easily beating up the cops. When they realise the mistake, they stop and apologise even though they were winning. Because that sort of thing just isn't done, I suppose.

Despite his high handed talk about rules and principles, Parker is quick to follow any suggestion Gates puts forward if it might get him a promotion. It's pretty broad but I think we've all met a few people who are at least a little like this.

The cast is great right down the line and the tone of the film never breaks from the deadpan, however ridiculous things get. Bernard Cribbins is good playing an Irish gangster named O'Toole with a nervous tick and Nanette Newman as Gates' lover Valerie is sharp and sexy. The Wrong Arm of the Law is available on Amazon Prime.

Twitter Sonnet #1302

In future floods the pods and phones command.
A washing crew in vicious squads array.
To ancient trees the limbs we must remand.
Forgotten shoes mislead the walking foot.
Confusion's cords connect a thousand phones.
A heft meal replaced a bowl of soot.
Nutritious tubes replaced the empty bones.
Remembered clips return the rented tapes.
Decisions pave the Martian streets in wheels.
The circled square was stomped like buggy grapes.
A hundred guts consumed a heavy meal.
A stolen car is took again in haste.
A copper's van was held in amber paste.

Perennial Subversions

In 1977, Helen Mirren starred in a BBC production of one of the most notorious plays in the history of the English stage, The Country Wife. First performed in 1675, this intensely lively play upends social morality at a breakneck pace, coming at a time when the general reaction against the Puritan ban on stage plays that ended fifteen years earlier was at full steam. At the same time, as the surprisingly informative Wikipedia entry for the play notes, the presumably royalist aristocracy is not spared in the play's off hand revelation of a vigorously amoral sexual network below the surface of society. The 1977 production directed by Donald McWhinnie has great sets and costumes and features appropriately energetic performances.

Helen Mirren has such an aura of intellect I wondered if she could play the initially naive and guileless title character, Margery, Mrs. Pinchwife. I needn't have worried. Maybe successfully playing dim is the mark of a truly intelligent performer. With slightly slow, almost slurred delivery, Mirren completely sells Margery's incredible innocence.

PINCHWIFE

I tell you then, that one of the lewdest fellows in town, who saw you there, told me he was in love with you.

MRS. PINCHWIFE

Indeed! who, who, pray who was’t?

PINCHWIFE

[Aside] I’ve gone too far, and slipped before I was aware; how overjoyed she is!

MRS. PINCHWIFE

Was it any Hampshire gallant, any of our neighbours? I promise you, I am beholden to him.

PINCHWIFE

I promise you, you lie; for he would but ruin you, as he has done hundreds. He has no other love for women but that; such as he look upon women, like basilisks, but to destroy ’em.

MRS. PINCHWIFE

Ay, but if he loves me, why should he ruin me? Answer me to that. Methinks he should not, I would do him no harm.

Of course, as his sister, Alithea (Ciaran Madden), remarks in aside from nearby, Mr. Pinchwife is pretty guileless himself, his dialogue often amusingly directing innocent Margery right into the arms of the sins he desires her to avoid.

Mr. Pinchwife is played by Bernard Cribbins, best known to-day for playing the sweet old man Wilfred Mott on Doctor Who. His take on the aptly named Pinchwife is more bombastic, ridiculous in his frequently backfiring attempts to keep her from London society, but also surprisingly frightening, as in one startling moment where he threatens to carve the word "whore" into Margery's face with a penknife. Cribbins holds the knife to within an inch of Mirren's eye--she admirably maintains a placid and innocent composure.

He's trying to make sure Margery stays away from the also aptly named Mr. Horner (Anthony Andrews), a gentleman notorious for making horns for married men, i.e. making them into cuckolds. Horner has a whole separate plot, one that particularly offended audiences, in which he pretends to be a eunuch to allow women the opportunity to meet with him without arousing their husbands' suspicions, an opportunity three women take with eagerness.

Of course, Pinchwife is himself ultimately responsible for Margery meeting Horner as Pinchwife brings her to the New Exchange dressed as a schoolboy, complete with candy apple. Horner's not fooled by the cross dressing for a moment, a subtle and effective joke at the expense of the familiar device from 16th and 17th century plays. Mirren takes to the role with infectious relish and as Margery very quickly starts to practise the machinations of a city woman her performance effectively shows the evolution in the young wife's understanding. The supporting performers are also very good and this production is well worth watching.