KING OF JAZZ (Dir: John Murray Anderson, 1930).

KING OF JAZZ (Dir: John Murray Anderson, 1930).

Conceived as a star vehicle for bandleader Paul Whiteman, and featuring Bing Crosby in his first screen appearance, King of Jazz is a spectacular musical revue, innovative in both its use of sound and early two-colour Technicolor; a process in which blues and yellows do not photograph but the reds and greens look lovely. Such was the care taken with the colour photography that every frame of the movie looks beautiful.

As a revue there is no plot in King of Jazz, rather a series of musical numbers punctuated with short comedy skits. While the comedic segments may not have aged too well, the musical sequences are as wonderful as they are weird. Highlights include the rubber legged dancing of Al Norman in ‘Happy Feet’ and some incredible loose limbed contouring from Marion Stattler in ‘Ragamuffin Romeo’. Best of all is a magnificent performance of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, rendered ‘rhapsody in teal’ by the two-colour process. Here the entire orchestra is seated in the largest grand piano you have ever seen!

Although an expensive failure for Universal Studios on release, the film has since been reappraised. Thankfully so, as there is little else like it in Hollywood history.

Is King of Jazz a masterpiece? Not quite. But nearly 90 years after release it still makes for fascinating, not to mention highly entertaining, viewing. Anyone with an interest in 20s/30s band music and especially aficionados of early Hollywood will find much to enjoy.

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THE SHIRALEE (Dir: Leslie Norman, 1957).

One of the final productions from Ealing Films, released through MGM, The Shiralee was one of a handful of movies the company shot in Australia.

Aussie swagman Jim Macauley (Peter Finch) returns home to find his wife Marge (Elizabeth Sellars) in the arms of another man. After giving her lover a beating he takes their young daughter Buster (Dana Wilson) and hits the road. Travelling from job to job with the youngster in tow she thus becomes his ‘shiralee’, an Aboriginal term for burden. Fighting his way from one town to the next and abandoning Buster for a tryst with a shop assistant, Macauley makes for a somewhat unlikable central character and is a little difficult to sympathise with. In spite of which, Peter Finch does well in the lead.

Some comedy relief arrives in the form of Tessie O’Shea and Sidney James which, while a welcome break from the otherwise bleak narrative, represents such a shift in tone it feels like it belongs in a different movie. Presumably the Leslie Norman and Neil Paterson screenplay or, perhaps, the D’Arcy Niland novel from which it is sourced are to blame. As such, The Shiralee, while an easy film to admire, is a difficult film to wholeheartedly enjoy.

As director the underrated Norman is as efficient as ever and cinematographer Paul Beeson’s location footage from the streets of Sydney to the Outback is beautiful. A couple of Tommy Steele numbers on the soundtrack was a pleasant surprise.

While not among the very best work of Leslie Norman or Peter Finch, The Shiralee still has much to recommend it, from its beautifully shot locales to its stellar cast. A commendable effort to expand the range of the already dying Ealing Studios but not an entirely successful one.

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RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET (Dir: Rich Moore & Phil Johnston, 2018).

A sequel to a Walt Disney Animation Studios feature is a rare beast. While the 1990s and early 2000s were plagued with cheaply made straight-to-video sequels (a few of which did gain cinema release) produced by the television arm DisneyToon Studios, no feature since the 2008 release The Little Mermaid 3: Ariel’s Beginning (Peggy Holmes) has bared this indignity.

Other animation studios such as Pixar, DreamWorks and Blue Sky have regularly released sequels to their biggest hits with varying quality, but I was glad that Disney had abandoned exploiting their product in this way, especially as their last decade has seen a run of exceptional original movies, arguably their best since the Walt-era features. So it was with some trepidation that I viewed Ralph Breaks the Internet, the sequel to the excellent 2012 original Wreck It Ralph and I am happy to report that I was not too disappointed.

Ralph Breaks the Internet sees video game buddies Ralph and Vanellope Von Schweetz leave their respective games in Litwak’s Family Fun Center and Arcade and travel to the internet, initially eBay, in order to retrieve a spare part to repair Vanellope’s Sugar Rush game. On the way they visit the noirish Dark Net and unwittingly unleash a devastating virus but not before a sojourn in hyper-real racing game Slaughter Race and an encounter with the Disney Princesses in a neat cameo via the Oh My Disney website.

Yeah, the plot is slightly convoluted! This is where Ralph 2 suffers most in comparison to the original movie; the simple story of bad guy who wants to be good is simply more appealing, not to mention more streamlined, than what is on offer here. It also has a mildly unsatisfying conclusion and a slightly muddled message, a little at odds with that of the first film.

Still, Ralph Breaks the Internet is a lot of fun and is visually spectacular. While this movie doesn’t quite live up to the original it is certainly well worth 2 hours of anybody’s time and I guess bodes well for the next Disney Animation sequel, due for release in November 2019; a little movie named Frozen 2...

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BARNACLE BILL aka ALL AT SEA (Dir: Charles Frend, 1957).

The last true Ealing comedy; 1958’s Davy, often regarded as the last, is a comedy/drama quite different in tone. Barnacle Bill, retitled All at Sea for US audiences, adheres to the ‘little guy against the system’ aesthetics of the classic Ealing comedy, although less subversively and with a little less bite than earlier films.

The marvellous Alec Guinness is on good form as Captain William Horacio Ambrose, the last in a succession of seafarers. Afflicted with seasickness, Capt Ambrose purchases a dilapidated seaside pier which he runs as a stationary luxury liner to the chagrin of the town council who wish to bulldoze the site to make way for a marina. A scene in which Guinness portrays his ancestors recalls Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949) where he plays all 8 members of the D’Ascoyne family.

To be honest, Barnacle Bill is not as good as earlier Ealing comedies, despite its screenplay by TEB Clarke, scenarist of previous winners Passport to Pimlico (Henry Cornelius, 1949) and The Lavender Hill Mob (Charles Crichton, 1951). Perhaps director Charles Frend, an Ealing stalwart notable for Scott of the Antarctic (1948) and The Cruel Sea (1953) was better suited to drama than comedy. That said, it is not at all bad and as an example of a brand of comedy that cinema no longer produces it should be considered a minor treasure.

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Happy birthday Audrey Hepburn!

RIP Doris Day.