Posts by editor
The Billion Dollar Brain(1967) – Palmer meets the Bond Universe.
Director: Ken Russell Cast: Michael Caine. Karl Malden. Francoise Dorleac. Ed Bagley. Oscar Homolka. Harry Saltzman knew he was on to a good thing. Worldwide spy film mania was going through the roof. Even the Europeans had got on the “Bond wagon”, starting an entirely new sub-genre known as “Euro Spy” films. Their most infamous…
Read MoreFuneral in Berlin (1966) – Divided Berlin and Palmer, the anti-Bond
Director: Guy Hamilton. Cast: Michael Caine. Oscar Homolka. Eva Renzi. Paul Hubschmid. Gunter Meisner. By 1966, Len Deighton had published his fourth spy thriller, The Billion Dollar Brain, with the same nameless hero. However, his second book, Horse Under Water, involving sunken U Boats, exotic locations and heroin trafficking, somehow wasn’t developed for the…
Read MoreThe Ipcress File (1965) – the first coolest Anti Bond
Director: Sidney .J.Furie Cast: Michael Caine. Guy Doleman. Nigel Green. Sue Lloyd. In 1962 the first James Bond film Dr No was released. In 1962 Len Deighton wrote his first book, The Ipcress File. Perhaps it was a coincidence. By 1965 when Thunderball was released, the Bond mania had spread worldwide. Everyone thought…
Read MoreZulu 1964 – Empire triumphs
Director: Cy Endfield. Cast: Stanley Baker, Nigel Green, Michael Caine (introducing) In the early to mid-1960s, massive worldwide shifts happened. All the “colonies” were becoming independent. Old timers could see their nations crumble in front of their eyes. No wonder, in this atmosphere, the English-speaking world took to a gentleman named James Bond,…
Read MoreZulu Dawn (1979). Empire’s Disaster
Director: Douglas Hickox. Cast: Burt Lancaster, Peter O’Toole, Simon Ward, Bob Hoskins Films on the British Empire usually have a familiar trope – the “Empire brought civilisation “and “progress”. Rarely are the subjects of the Empire treated with respect. Mostly the “local natives” are treated onscreen with ridicule and scorn. Wicked local villains usually…
Read MoreThe Odessa File (1974) – Lost in adaptation
Director: Ronald Neame . Script: George Markstein (also an excellent spy fiction writer) Cast: Jon Voight, Maximilian Schell, Mary Tamm Israel has always considered itself to be facing existential threats from everywhere. Historically the state of Israel seemed at its most fragile from its declaration of independence in 1948 till the 1967 Seven-Day War.…
Read MoreTo End All Wars (2001) – From despair and anger to Forgiveness.
World War 2 usually has a one-sided, one-dimensional portrayal of the Allies. Very rarely are the enemies humanised – even if they are evil. Rarely do the onscreen sufferings translate into a personal, almost spiritual salvation for the person undergoing severe torture and terrible health, yet emerging victorious in spirit at the end of the…
Read MoreThe Enemy Below (1957) – A fascinating battle between men (or machines?).
In 1957, World War 2 was only twelve years old. The general depiction of Germans and Japanese in 1950s films was of brutal, nasty savages hell-bent on doing all sorts of bad things to “clean” “decent” Americans and or British, the epitome of “Western civilisation”. This 1957 film changed that. It was one…
Read MoreThe Outpost (2020) – Edge of seat
After twenty years, trillions of dollars, and thousands of deaths on all sides, the U.S. finally replaced the Taliban with the Taliban. This was an actual WhatsApp message circulating in August 2021 when the Taliban finally took over Afghanistan for the second time in 20 years. The comparison with Vietnam in 1975 (below top)…
Read MoreThe Day of the Jackal – 1974 – RIVETING (even now)
Fact: The OAS – The Organisation Armee Secrete (the Secret Armed Organisation), was composed of ex-French Army soldiers who opposed French President Charles de Gaulle’s policy of granting independence to Algeria as they considered it and its French population as French. The organization aimed to kill de Gaulle and bring Algeria back under French rule.…
Read MoreNarvik – Hitler’s First Defeat (2022) – Disappointing
I got at least three messages asking me to take a look at the latest Netflix release and so watched the film. First: the plus. This is a Norwegian production with Norwegian actors, thus devoid of the typical Hollywood “showbiz” angle. However, there are some war movie cliches. Second Plus: while the…
Read MoreLand and Freedom (1995) – Powerful yet poignant
Films on World war 2 (WW2) are a dime a dozen ranging from the great to the abysmal. But films on WW2’s curtain raiser, The Spanish Civil War (SCW(, are very few or not well known. Ken Loach’s 1995 film remedies that by offering a powerful and insightful view of The Spanish Civil War, as…
Read MoreCarmen – No Man’s Woman
An Opera. Stage shows. Musicals. Multiple film versions, including a Flamenco-based film. Even a Bollywood Film. A story that continues to fascinate. About a free-spirited woman who can’t or won’t be subdued by any man. “No one tells Carmen’s eyes where to go but Carmen”. That line summarises her character. If she is fiery,…
Read MoreOperation Anthropoid – multiple versions of a grim story
Czechoslovakia was the first country to be occupied by the Germans before WW2 started. The Germans partly occupied it in 1938 and fully annexed all provinces into the “German Reich” in March 1939, six months before the official starting date of September 3, 1939. The Czechs thus had the longest history of Resistance against the…
Read MoreOn The Beach (1958) – Humanity loses.
The 1950s saw The Cold War take off spectacularly. The two sides kept staring at each other and made worldwide alliances based on ideology. For all its talk of “Democracy”, the US supported unpopular dictatorships with terrible Human Rights records (Guatemala, Paraguay, Argentina, Zaire, etc.). The Socialist Bloc wasn’t far off, often crushing democratic dissent…
Read MoreA Bridge Too Far (1977) – A Truth Too many
I first read the story “A Bridge Too Far” when I was a teenager, in Reader’s Digest. In my college days, I bought the Cornelius Ryan book on which the film was based. The story seemed highly heroic then, full of pluck, raw courage, and determination. I looked forward to the film’s release in India…
Read MoreRough Cut (1980) – A hidden Gem
Caper / Heist movies as a genre belong to two broad categories. Either the bad guys don’t get away with it – the police catch up with them. Or the bad guys get away with it – but with consequences. They also have two broad styles – dark and bloody. Or lightweight, crispy, and crackling…
Read MoreThree films on Hitler’s last Days – EVIL’S GRAND END
“Berlin where Hitler had fought his last battles against marriage and the Red Army and, defeated by both Venus and Mars, blew out his troubled brains”. This is one of the most significant lines by my favorite writer Len Deighton which appears in the Bernard Samson series of spy thrillers. This post will show why.…
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