Parky at the Pictures (DVD 2/5/2013)

Commissioned as a training film by the Army Kinema Corporation for the War Office, Captured opens with a caption branding its action restricted before Anthony Farrar-Hockley (who spent two years as a POW in Korea after fighting with the Glorious Glosters) explains the purpose of what is to follow. He concedes he had to survive on his wits, but is confident that this scenario will help anyone unfortunate enough to share his fate to know what to expect and how to combat the cruelties of torture and psychological warfare.

Opening with a shot of a prisoner being led away for trying to nail a sign reading `Dreamland' to the gate of a North Korean detention camp, the story starts with a small group of POWs receiving re-education from a guard, who insists they are not prisoners, but students learning about the benefits that Communism can bring to the world. One man pipes up about the inhumanity of being deprived Red Cross parcels, while another claims their captors wilfully disregard the Geneva Convention. The guard is stung by the accusation and sends them back to their barracks on failing to find out who had dared to speak up.

As the POWs bicker in their hut about quislings and the slowness of the UN forces to liberate them, the scene shifts to HQ, where Intelligence officer Morrison (Bernard Fox) is briefing Daniels (Alan Dobie) about an upcoming patrol and reminding him how to behave in the event of being taken prisoner. Morrison warns Daniels that the Koreans have the backing of the Chinese and the Russians and evidence of their cunning is shown back in the camp, as the men are made to line up in the freezing darkness to be interrogated individually by an urbane Korean, who prefers to cajole rather than coerce. He is fully aware of the tension between Ross and Thornton (neither actor can be identified), and slyly drives a wedge between them, by sympathising with the latter that it must be tough being the outsider of the group and hinting that he might be able to get him transferred and even access mail from his parents if he is willing to co-operate. Thornton resists temptation and Cole (also unknown) confesses to calling out to spare his friends further inconvenience and is badly beaten for his insubordination.

The following morning, Ross is the first to tuck into food supplied by the guards and even lights up a cigarette left by the commandant as a goodwill gesture for being so helpful over the Cole incident. Inevitably, this leads to the men speculating about who betrayed Cole and Ross has no doubt it was Thornton and his guilt seems established when he is summoned to the Korean's office. Perched on the bed, the officer offers Thornton an apple and confuses him by claiming his involvement with the International Union of Students and the peace movement makes him a fellow traveller, as each institution is dominated by the Communists. He wonders how Thornton's buddies would feel if they knew of his affiliations and, while he has him off guard, the Korean asks him questions about Daniels, who is a close friend from home. Relishing the chance to reminisce, Thornton lets slip details about Daniels's unit, family and hobbies and the divulgence of his name is superbly avoided with an abrupt cross-cut that shows Daniels giving his name, rank and number as he is captured in the field.

A wounded trooper is cynically duped into giving information in return for medical assistance, only to be left to die as the POWs are marched off to the camp. Daniels chats with an Irish veteran (Wilfrid Brambell) as they arrive and he jokes grimly that the Koreans and the Chinese can't be any worse than the Nazis and the Chinese. Inside the office, however, Thornton is being conned into identifying Daniels and receives a letter from home as a reward. Bluffly refusing to answer any questions, Daniels marches into the dormitory and referees a squabble between Thornton and Ross (who is appalled the newcomer likes his nemesis) and ticks them all off for reading The Daily Worker, which he brands a Party mouthpiece, and castigates them for taking the word of a Communist soldier over one of their own. They go to ask Cole whether he gave himself up, but he is dead in the corner and a silence descends.

Later in the day, the POWs are instructed in one of their frequent re-education sessions that the UN is the aggressor in this war and that its crimes against a peace-loving people will never be forgotten. Daniels argues back that the Koreans are the ones committing atrocities and he is led away and tossed into an underground bunker, where he is forced to sit cross-legged with his arms folded under the constant scrutiny of a guard at the door. The wind whistles outside as night falls and Daniels calls the guard an `illegitimate son of Madam Butterfly' when he snatches away the food he has brought him. He keeps hurling insults to show his fighting spirit to an abrasive Chinese officer, who wakes him in the night and orders him to confess his crimes against the Communist Party. Daniels draws in the dust to occupy his mind and keeps playing mind games with the guard to score minor victories.

However, he is jolted awake with a rifle butt and denied permission to go to the toilet before being frog-marched in the driving rain to the Korean's office. He tries to reason with Daniels and convince him that any intelligent man would realise that he is on the wrong side. Much to Daniels's relief, he sends him back to the cell to sleep. But, no sooner has he rested his head on a wooden block, than Daniels is being prodded by the Chinese officer, who insists he has imagined the Korean altogether. Suddenly beginning to doubt himself, Daniels tries in voiceover to get a grip of himself. However, he is exhausted and disorientated and keeps hearing his mother's voice in his head, as the Chinese shines a torch in his eyes and accuses him of being a spy.

The same charge is levelled by the Chinese next morning when Daniels is taken to a tree in the middle of the blasted wilderness and he lets slip that he is an intelligence officer. Hurriedly trying to cover his blunder, he agrees to produce a written statement if he can sleep and eat. But, much to the annoyance of his interrogator, he merely amends the lyrics of `Teddy Bears' Picnic' and is taken into a room full of packing crates and bundled inside one. Through the grille, he spots the Irishman, who encourages him to steel his resolve. However, he is soon taken to a small room with a single bulb and tied to a chair. The Korean tells him he will be tried for his crimes and suggests co-operation now could greatly improve his chances of leniency. An older Russian asks Daniels where his patrol was heading when it was captured and kicks over his chair when he remains obdurate. He also tosses a towel over his face and ladles water on to it until Daniels begins to suffocate. As the Russian's questions drone in the background, Daniels's inner voice urges him to concentrate and he hears Morrison's voice saying that each blow the enemy delivers proves how wrong they are.

After enduring this water torture, Daniels is released back into the hut. He is aghast to see that Ross has talked the others into signing a letter to the British newspapers urging the government to attend peace talks because the Koreans are anything but the rabid warmongers they are branded by the media. Even though he knows Thornton had betrayed him, he exhorts them to stick together and insists that such defeatist talk is every bit as damaging to the cause and morale as squealing. Suddenly, guards burst in to take Daniels away. But, when the teacher enters to start the next phase of brainwashing, one of the POWs squares up to him and tells him to `get stuffed'.

This concluding defiance typifies the acuity of this entire enterprise. Having based his script on discussions with Farrar-Hockley and fellow POW Tony Preston, Krish set out to produce a war thriller rather than a piece of educational propaganda and, thus, this owes much to the docudramatic tradition of British wartime cinema. Yet, while it recalls titles like Harry Watt's Target for Tonight (1941), on which Krish served as assistant director, it also feels like an American B movie and fleetingly recalls Stanley Kubrick's Fear and Desire (1953). Moreover, the use of swearing gives it a pronounced sense of barrack-room authenticity.

However, the military message comes through powerfully and it is fascinating to witness the Communist manipulation techniques that would later be so crucial to John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate (1962). But, while one should be grateful for an extras package that includes the prison service recruitment film H.M.P. (1976) and the public safety shorts Sewing Machine (1973), Searching (1974) and The Finishing Line (1977), it might have been more useful to have included the US Armed Forces Information Film, The Code (1959), which was narrated by Dragnet star, Jack Webb.

Equally compelling are Krish's digs at the peace movement, the ISU and The Daily Worker, whose acquiescent coverage of a Korean POW camp had caused something of a stir during the war. The performances are also strong, with Dobie making an admirably ordinary hero and it is wonderful to see a pre-Steptoe Wilfrid Brambell alongside such young actors as Ray Brooks and Mark Eden. Michael Reed's monochrome photography and Peter Gilpin's sound design are also accomplished. But there is no question that the ongoing events in Guantanámo and the recent stand-off with Kim Jong-un has given the picture an unexpectedly chilling contemporary relevance.

Nineteen fifty-nine saw another classic tale of British troops in Asia open at the Royal Court Theatre in London. A year after the success of The Long and the Short and the Tall, Willis Hall teamed with lifelong friend Keith Waterhouse to adapt his bestselling novel Billy Liar for the stage. In 1963, the same pair produced the screenplay for John Schlesinger's film adaptation, which faultlessly blends social realism and satirical fantasy. The only comedy among the kitchen sink sagas that transformed domestic cinema, it clearly owed debts to James Thurber's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. But Waterhouse rooted his daydreamer in a world so real that both the reveries he uses to escape from his mundane existence and his refusal to leave for pastures new make perfect sense.

Yorkshireman Billy Fisher (Tom Courtenay) drives parents Geoffrey (Wilfred Pickles) and Alice (Mona Washbourne) to distraction with his failure to focus on his future. Even his devoted grandmother, Florence (Ethel Griffies), wonders what will become of him. While working for undertakers Duxbury (Finlay Currie) and Shadrack (Leonard Rossiter), Billy seeks refuge in the neverland of Ambrosia, where he is supreme dictator. But such is his flightiness that he is no more committed to girlfriends Barbara (Helen Fraser) and Rita (Gwendolyn Watts) than he is to a long-held ambition to go south and write gags for comedian Danny Boon (Leslie Randall).

Fretting over the fact that he has forgotten to post 300 calendars and stole the postage money, Billy tries to tender his resignation. But Shadrack refuses to accept it and warns him that he will have to make amends for the calendar debacle. He is also in trouble with Barbara and Rita, as he has proposed to each of them and keeps trying to take their shared ring for repairs so that neither will discover his duplicity. During a chance encounter with old flame Liz (Julie Christie), he is delighted to see that his predicaments amuse her and he equates her free-spirited wanderlust with his own woolgathering. However, reality catches up with him when Rita learns that her ring isn't at the jeweller's and storms into the Fishers' parlour to spark a family row that culminates in Billy shouting at his distressed grandma.

Dismayed to learn that Boon doesn't want his material, Billy sneaks past Barbara and Rita to join Liz inside the Roxy nightclub. She urges him to come to London and he starts to think that changing his life could actually be possible when the band starts playing a song he has written with pal Arthur Crabtree (Rodney Bewes). But he is mortified when the announcer declares that he has been hired to write for Danny Boon and makes himself scarce after nearly bumping into his bickering fiancées. Liz tells him that she still has feelings for him and he describes Ambrosia to her and she appears to understand everything about him. However, they are interrupted by local bad lad Stamp (George Innes), who mocks `Billy Liar' as he heads home after promising to meet Liz at the station for the midnight sleeper to the capital.

No sooner is he indoors than Billy is lectured by his father, who breaks the news that Florence is in hospital. Billy rushes to sit with Alice and stays with her until his grandmother dies. He dashes to the station and boards the train with Liz. However, he says he needs some milk and scurries away, only to return to see Liz waving sadly through the window and his suitcase on the platform. As he makes his way through the deserted streets, Billy pictures himself at the head of the marching Ambrosian army and quickens his step as he strides out for home.

Billy Fisher is anything but an angry young man. He's too divorced from everyday reality to be more than mildly irritated by having to earn his living or look after his grandmother. Moreover, he isn't that opposed to conformity and succumbs to accepting his lot with a meekness that makes his psychological rebellion so deeply tragicomic. Yet for all his mischievous geniality, Billy also has a dark side. He's deceitful and intolerant of others and these unattractive traits manifest themselves in his attempt to destroy the calendars he failed to deliver and his recurrent fancy of gunning down those who cross him.

Indeed, it's very much to Courtenay's credit that he retains our sympathy, even after he abandons Christie (who was a late replacement for the indisposed Topsy Jane) at the railway station. But Schlesinger and cinematographer Denys Coop pack the CinemaScope frame with such drab provincialism and grizzly respectability that it's possible to forgive anything to this hapless prisoner of an imagination that's both boundless and treacherous.

In Billy's defence, the Big Smoke doesn't look all that appealing in Joseph Losey's The Servant, which also celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and reminds modern audiences that there was more to the British New Wave than dark satanic mill towns. Adapted from a short story by Robin Maugham, this was the first of three collaborations between Losey (an American in exile after being blacklisted during Hollywood's Communist witch-hunt) and Hackney playwright Harold Pinter. As in Accident (1967; see below) and The Go-Between (1971), the principal theme was class. But this dark upstairs, downstairs saga also offered an intriguing window on to the changing attitudes that would tip Britain into the Swinging Sixties and it is always worth comparing the mood in this study of domestic dysfunction and the one in Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg's Performance (which was made in 1968, but only released in 1970), which also stars James Fox, but this time as a gangster whose home is infiltrated by a pop star (Mick Jagger) and his drug-addled entourage.

Leaving his previous employment at Thomas Crapper Sanitary Engineers, Dirk Bogarde applies for the post of manservant to James Fox, an affluent young man who has just returned from Africa and has bought a faded Georgian house in Chelsea. Impressed by Bogarde's deferential manner and unperturbed by his northern accent, Fox hires him and explains that he and blueblood girlfriend Wendy Craig are soon to go to Brazil, where he has a city planning job lined up. Fox and Bogarde get along famously while making plans to renovate the property, but Craig senses there is a hidden side to Bogarde and becomes convinced that he is up to no good following an argument over nursing Fox through a cold.

After a while, Bogarde informs Fox that there is too much work around the house and suggests bringing sister Sarah Miles down from Bolton. Craig, who has just accepted Fox's marriage proposal, urges him to dismiss Bogarde before he gets his feet under the table and she is even more dismayed when she detects that Fox is attracted to the vivacious newcomer. Keen to nip any infatuation in the bud, Craig spirits Fox away to the country seat of her ennobled parents, Richard Vernon and Catherine Lacey, whom he immediately recognises as ignorant snobs. While Fox is away, however, Bogarde has the run of the house and gets up to some very unfraternal antics with his `sister'.

Over the next few days, Bogarde flaunts Miles in front of Fox, who is too bashful to act upon his growing lust, and they mock him while sharing a bath. However, when Miles returns early from visiting her supposedly sick mother, she takes advantage of Bogarde's absence to seduce Fox. Naturally, Bogarde is aware of developments and feels sufficiently confident to challenge Craig's authority. But his triumph is short-lived, as he is fired when Fox and Craig discover him in bed with Miles on returning from a stay with her parents. Yet Craig also realises that Fox has slept with Miles and she stalks off in disgust, as he embarks upon a drinking binge that will leave him at Bogarde's mercy after they meet in a pub some weeks later and Fox pleads with him to come home.

Even though Bogarde claims Miles has left him for another man, the power dynamic has shifted and he starts treating Fox like a tolerated equal. He also spends his money on expensive liqueurs and coaxes Fox into playing eccentric games designed, like the brief return of Miles, to humiliate him. But Craig has not entirely given up on Fox and, when she walks in on an orgy, she orders the prostitutes to leave and slaps Bogarde across the face. Suddenly overcome by the realisation that her ordered world has come crashing down, Craig staggers into the street and starts sobbing, while Fox lies unconscious on the floor and Bogarde and Miles look upon their handiwork with little satisfaction.

Released in the same year that Beatlemania rewrote the rules of celebrity, propriety and mobility, this could almost be read as a coincidental allegory on the shattering of illusions. Intriguingly, it also anticipated the Profumo Affair, in which a senior member of the cabinet was caught in flagrante with a couple of good-time girls. In throwing open the doors of supposedly polite society, Pinter and Losey presented an arty variation of a News of the World or Titbits exposé, while Bogarde dealt a further fatal blow to his Rank idol image by following his daring portrayal of a homosexual in Basil Dearden's Victim (1961) by essaying a depraved scoundrel, who had no morals and no respect for his betters.

Fox, Craig and Miles also excel. But an added dimension is brought to all of the performances by Losey's calculating use of the giant convex mirror that hangs on the living-room wall and distorts both the visual perspective, but also the perceived distances between the masters and their servants. Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe and production designer Richard Macdonald are not alone in meriting praise, however, as John Dankworth's score and Reginald Mills's editing are also first rate. If there is a criticism, it has to be levelled at Pinter's last act, as the dialogue becomes laboured and the denouement strives too hard to invoke the spirit of the French and Italian new waves. Nevertheless, this is a landmark in British cinema history and Losey and Pinter struggled to match its intensity and significance in Accident. 

Oxford philosophy tutor Dirk Bogarde is disturbed one night by the sound of a car crash outside his home. Rushing to see what has happened, he sees student Michael York dead in the front seat and his fiancée, Jacqueline Sassard, suffering from shock. Bogarde takes her inside and fails to mention that she had been in the vehicle when policemen Terence Rigby and Brian Phelan come to investigate. As he watches Sassard sleep upstairs, Bogarde thinks back over the events that led to this calamity.

Bogarde and wife Vivien Merchant are expecting their third child. However, he is still drawn to Sassard after he notices her in a tutorial and bitterly regrets accepting an invitation from the aristocratic York to go punting because he loses his balance and falls in the river. But he remains bewitched and invites the couple to Sunday lunch as an excuse to see Sassard again. Among the other guests is novelist-cum-media don Stanley Baker, who teases Bogarde about having an affair with a student and becomes incredibly competitive at tennis. Yet, even though he is feeling good about himself after joshing Baker about a forthcoming meeting with a TV producer and senses that Sassard is taken with him, Bogarde shies away when she flirts with him.

At a loose end when his BBC meeting is cancelled, Bogarde calls old flame Delphne Seyrig, who is the daughter of the University provost, Alexander Knox. They go to dinner and wind up in bed together. But his mood swiftly changes on returning to find Baker and Sassard in the middle of an assignation. Merchant is furious that the married Baker has brought his fancy piece into their home and cheated on her friend, Ann Firbank. But Bogarde has to keep quiet about what he knows when he is invited to spend the weekend with York and the pressure he is under is symbolised by a boisterous variation on the Eton Wall Game. Back in Oxford, during a much gentler cricket match, Sassard asks Bogarde to break the news to Baker that she is getting engaged to York and he agrees.

But the lovers crash while popping round to see Bogarde that night and he snaps out of his reverie and clumsily tries to force himself on Sassard. She resists him and he is still feeling guilty when a call comes from the hospital that his new-born baby is having difficulty breathing. He drops Sassard at her college and goes to visit Merchant. On his return, Baker is waiting for him, as he has only just heard about York. He has no idea that Sassard was involved (Bogarde suspects she was actually behind the wheel) and insists that they check on how she is bearing up. They find her packing and she bids them a distracted farewell. Later that day, as Bogarde plays with his children in the garden, he hears the sound of an accident in the near distance.

Adapted from a novel by Nicholas Mosley, this is a deeply pessimistic study of academic arrogance and emotional turpitude. Rarely has mid-life crisis been dissected so forensically, with Baker's cynical bid to exploit his fame to seduce his students almost seeming excusable besides Bogarde's treachery towards his pregnant spouse. Yet, notwithstanding his abnegation of professional responsibility, Bogarde also sleeps with his ex-girlfriend and breaks the law in the hope that Sassard will reward him for protecting her with sexual favours. The envy each man feels towards the handsome, wealthy and athletic York (whose vitality is thrown into sad relief by the recent revelation that he is suffering from the rare blood disease, amyloidosis) inspires Baker and Bogarde's determination to best him at tennis or in the skrimash. But they allow their urges to cloud their judgement and their battle of egos produces casualties but no victors.

Applying different methods to attain the same goal, Bogarde and Baker are outstanding, while the support playing is uniformly solid. Pinter's weak spot this time is his delineation of the female characters, with the assumption being lazily and more than a little chauvinistically made that Merchant and Firbank are less interesting than Sassard because they are less youthfully attractive. But Losey and cinematographer Gerry Fisher make fine use of Oxford's familiar landmarks, as well as such lesser-seen outposts as Rhodes  House. Carmen Dillon's production design and Alan Bell's sound editing also stand out. But this is also one of Losey's finest directorial displays, as he plays with time, memory, space and feelings in a manner that recalls such continental auteurs as Alain Resnais and Michelangelo Antonioni. The jurors at Cannes were evidently impressed, as the film was awarded the Grand Prix behind Antonioni's London-set Blowup. But, while Losey would win the Palme d'or himself for The Go-Between, Accident is much the better picture.

Pinter was sandwiched between John Osborne and Joe Orton in the `angry young man' timeline and it is striking how quickly the theatregoers who had been shocked by Jimmy Porter in 1956 were now appreciative of such bawdy romps as Entertaining Mr Sloane, which had opened at the New Arts Theatre in London in May 1964 and finally reached the small screen in 1968, after Orton had been in negotiations with Brian Epstein to script for Up Against It for The Beatles. Sadly, neither man survived the Summer of Love, with Orton being bludgeoned with a hammer by his lover, Kenneth Halliwell, on 9 August.1967 and Epstein succumbing to an accidental Bromoureide overdose 18 days later. Despite the stage and television acclaim for Sloane, it received a cooler reception from film critics in 1970 and its mix of bleak farce, innuendo and sitcomedic parody has not worn particularly well.

Beryl Reid lives in a Gothic pile next to a cemetery with her father, Alan Webb. As she gazes out of the window, she spots Peter McEnery sunbathing on a tombstone and offers him board and lodgings after he informs her he is an orphan and she suggests that he could replace the illegitimate son she had to give away years before after a fling with brother Harry Andrews's best friend. However, Webb gets it into his head that McEnery is a killer and attacks him with a garden fork. Reid offers to clean the wound on his leg, but insists he removes his trousers, while promising him that she never has impure thoughts. 

Andrews has not spoken to his father for 20 years since he caught him dallying feloniously in the bedroom. However, he comes to call in his pink Cadillac when he hears his sister has adopted another waif. He scarcely believes that she rescued McEnery from the public library. But Andrews changes his mind the moment he claps eyes on him and they quickly form a bond over such mutual interests as body-building, the navy and uniforms. He warns him to be wary of Reid and offers him a job as his chauffeur and agrees to pay his rent if he wears a smart leather livery.

Reid is determined to get her man, however, and, having pointed out the resemblance to her former beau, she vamps McEnery in a negligee on the sofa and coyly jokes that she will feel so ashamed in the morning. But, while the siblings compete for his affection, McEnery soon starts to take advantage and uses the Cadillac for amorous adventures. Realising what is going on after spying through peepholes throughout the house, Webb confides in Andrews that he thinks McEnery killed his boss. He also tells him that Reid is pregnant, but McEnery denies everything when Andrews confronts him. But, in order to earn his second chance, McEnery has to swear off women and move into Andrews's flat.

When McEnery cautions Webb against stirring things, the old man threatens to go to the police and McEnery kicks him to death. Once again, Andrews agrees to forgive McEnery if he moves in with him. But Reid declares herself pregnant and says she will call the police unless McEnery stays with her and, at the height of a bellowing row, McEnery knocks Reid's false teeth out of her mouth and breaks them. Fortunately, everybody calms down and they decide to share McEnery six months at a time and conduct unofficial wedding ceremonies to seal the deal and the dubious interloper's fate.

Director Douglas Hickox and screenwriter Clive Exton may have tinkered with the setting and expanded Webb's part, but the essence of Orton's scurrilous scenario remains. In many ways, the plot resembles The Servant. But Reid and Andrews are much more worldly wise and libidinously grotesque than Wendy Craig and James Fox. Consequently, McEnery is subjugated where Bogarde succeeds in subverting and the traditional English home once more becomes a castle.

Cinematographer Wolfgang Suschitzky picks out the lapses in taste and incongruous contrasts in Michael Seymour's production design, while Georgie Fame tries to give his score a touch of 60s dash. But Hickox's direction is rather static and lacks the wit he displayed in Les Bicyclettes de Belsize (1969) and the knack for pantomime he would show in Theatre of Blood (1973). He also fails to rein in actors who play each gag to the back of the four and nine-pennies. The sublime Beryl Reid carries on where she left off in Robert Aldrich's The Killing of Sister George (1968), but the usually dependable Andrews seems highly uncomfortable in his lechery, while McEnery is too winkingly in on the gags. As for Orton, Silvio Narrizano adapted Loot later in 1970. But What the Butler Saw and that fabled Fab Four opus have yet to make it to the screen and Orton remains best served by Stephen Frears's 1987 adaptation of John Lahr's biography, Prick Up Your Ears.