Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 24/10/2013)

There will come a time when documentaries about Marilyn Monroe will mean as much to the mainstream audience as those about Mary Pickford, Louise Brooks and Clara Bow already do. For the moment, however, the most famous female face of the 20th century retains her high profile and devoted fans and the mildly curious alike will find much to savour in Liz Garbus's Love, Marilyn. Plenty has already been said about the bold gambit of hiring lots of famous actresses to deliver Monroe's own words. But the decision to shoot these earnest stars against green screens represents one of the project's few missteps and the plaudits should instead be given to editor Azin Samari, who cogently links clips from Monroe's most famous features with newsreel and television footage, still photographs, and printed and handwritten documents, while also incorporating talking-head contributions from those who actually knew the star and those who cannot resist being paid to analyse her.

Marilyn Monroe died in mysterious circumstances on 5 August 1962. Wisely, Garbus avoids speculating on the cause of her demise and concentrates on how the 36 year-old who started out as Norma Jeane Mortenson came to fascinate everyone from adolescents to presidents. But this isn't a cradle to grave biography. The `facts' are too well known to justify such an approach and Garbus draws on the correspondence, journals and marginalia contained in the 2010 tome Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters by Marilyn Monroe, which was edited by Stanley Buchthal and Bernard Comment from two boxes of material discovered in the archives of Actors Studio guru Lee Strasberg. Tending to reinforce what we already know about Monroe, the extracts reveal her lively and often intense writing style and they are delivered with laudable sensitivity by Elizabeth Banks, Ellen Burstyn, Glenn Close, Viola Davis, Jennifer Ehle, Lindsay Lohan, Janet McTeer, Marisa Tomei, Lili Taylor, Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood.

Davis, Ehle and Tomei stand out from the crowd, while Lohan and Thurman try too hard to channel their inner Marilyn. Alongside them, Oliver Platt and Paul Giamatti prove adept as directors Billy Wilder and George Cukor, while F. Murray Abraham is suitably grave as one of Monroe's many psychiatrists. Similarly, Ben Foster (Norman Mailer), Jeremy Piven (Elia Kazan), Hope Davis (Gloria Steinem), Adrien Brody (Truman Capote) and David Strathairn (Arthur Miller) read trenchantly from admired appreciations of a woman whose intelligence and determination largely eluded authors who chose to dwell on her allure and insecurity. Biographer Donald Spoto and critics Molly Haskell, Thomas Schatz and Sararh Churchwell often fall into similar traps and their opinions are never as astute or thought-provoking as the confidences of those who knew Monroe, including Lois Banner, Patricia Bosworth, Jay Kanter, Richard Meryman, George Barris and Amy Greene, who is the widow of Monroe's production partner and regular photographer, Milton Greene. 

One of the most arresting moments comes when Ellen Burstyn reads from the passages Monroe highlighted in Mabel Todd's 1937 tome, The Thinking Body, which reveal more about her use of her pin-up physique on screen than any film clip. Similarly, the way in which she reacted against trendy therapist Ralph Greenson's theories of countertransference by reading the letters of Sigmund Freud captures the independence of thought of an autodidact whose passion for self-improvement and understanding partially explains her decision to discard marriages to policeman James Dougherty and baseball legend Joe DiMaggio and seek cultural acceptance on the arm of playwright Arthur Miller.

Her rejection of 20th Century-Fox chief Darryl F. Zanuck and her devotion to Method acting coach Lee Strasberg are bound into the same need to be taken seriously and it's a shame that there aren't more clips from some of Monroe's lesser-known pictures to chart her evolution as an actress. But nostalgics will be able to wallow in the scenes from Howard Hawks's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), Joshua Logan's Bus Stop (1956), Laurence Olivier's The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) and Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (1959), while those seeking greater insight will be able to read the expressions on Monroe's face as she was caught by news cameras and those recording the Person to Person slot she did with Edward R. Murrow and the Greenes on 8 April 1955. 

There are numerous gaps in the coverage of Monroe's personal and professional lives, but these can partly be excused by the fact that the content seems to have been dictated so largely by the Fragments cache. What this film essentially constitutes, therefore, is a love letter to Monroe that also doubles as a showcase for her musings on the need to love and be loved. She remains the troubled and vulnerable waif who hid for so long behind the sex goddess persona that she could not escape from its shadow. But this also presents Marilyn as a woman of intelligence, curiosity, ambition and drive, who might have become a very different person if she and those she trusted had just let her.

Just as Marilyn was a product of the California in which she was born and raised, so record producer Rick Hall reflected his upbringing in the Alabama backwoods, as the songs he heard the cotton pickers singing as they toiled in the fields inspired the music that he would record at his fabled FAME Studios in the 1960s and 70s. However, as the debuting Greg `Freddy' Camalier points out in Muscle Shoals, this region around the Tennessee River was synonymous with musical greatness.

According to Tom Hendrix, the Yuchi Indians believed that a woman sang in the waters of the river to ward off evil spirits and, thus, there is something in Bono's contention that the songs recorded in this burgh of 8000 souls `came out of the mud'. The U2 frontman becomes something of an irksome presence as he waxes lyrical about the energy of a place that spawned WC Handy (the father of the Blues), Helen Keller and Sam Phillips, who would sign the likes of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash to his Sun Records label in Memphis. But, while he packs the early stages of this enjoyable documentary with Terrence Malick-like magic hour shots of the Colbert County countryside, Camalier never quite nails why Muscle Shoals generated so much exceptional music.

He is more successful in identifying what drove Hall to rise from an isolated shack with no amenities to mixing with musical royalty. Forced to live with his father after his mother drifted into prostitution following the scalding death of his toddler brother, Hall saw both his father and his first wife killed in vehicular accidents (he under the tractor his son had bought him to celebrate his success and she in the car that Hall himself was driving). However, he was also determined to prove wrong those who had crowed that he wouldn't amount to much and to exact a measure of revenge on Billy Sherrill and Tom Stafford, who had fired him from his first studios in the nearby town of Florence for taking music-making too seriously.

But, from the moment he recorded Jimmy Hughes's `Steal Away', Hall knew he had found his calling and he scored his first solo hit with `You Better Move On', which was written and recorded by local hotel busboy Arthur Alexander and became a major UK hit for The Rolling Stones in 1964. However, the first house band Hall assembled - comprising Norbert Putnam, Peanut Montgomery, David Briggs and Jerry Carrigan - didn't stay with him for long, as they were whisked away to open for The Beatles at their first American concert in Washington, DC. Undaunted, Hall put together another crew and David Hood (bass), Jimmy Johnson (guitar), Roger Hawkins (drums) and Barry Beckett (keyboards) became known as The Swampers, whose `greasy' sound convinced those not in the know that these four young white boys were seasoned black veterans.

They were often joined in the studio by songwriting session players Spooner Oldham, Donnie Fritts and Dan Penn and they attracted the attention of Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records after hospital orderly Percy Sledge topped the charts with `When a Man Loves a Woman' in 1966. Suddenly, Hall was playing in a different league and he forged an unlikely bond with the notoriously temperamental Wilson Pickett, who brought the best out of The Swampers on tracks like `Land of 1000 Dances' and `Mustang Sally'. Recorded at a time that Governor George Wallace was still advocating segregation, these hits should have become theme tunes for the campaign for equality. But not even Aretha Franklin knew that she would be working with white folks when Wexler signed her from Columbia and redirected her flagging career with `I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)'.

This session ended with Franklin's husband, Ted White, getting into a fight with one of the brass section and Wexler and Hall fell out when the latter went to the singer's hotel to have it out with the controlling spouse. Yet, while he lost his contract with the label, The Swampers were invited to New York to finish such legendary cuts as `Respect', `(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman', `Chain of Fools' and `Do Right Woman, Do Right Man'. Undaunted, Hall contacted Leonard Chess in Chicago, who entrusted him with Etta James's next album and he talked her into recording `Tell Mama', which became a huge hit. She admits being a difficult customer, but was soon seduced by the Swamper mix of blues, hillbilly and rock, in which the heavy bass and drum grounding allowed for a little more surface finesse.

Shortly afterwards, Duane Allman arrived in Muscle Shoals after quitting his band, The Hour Glass. As brother Gregg recalls here, he had recently damaged an elbow in a horseback fall and had been inspired to play slide guitar with a bottle of Coricidin pills after hearing the debut album by guitarist Taj Mahal. Welcomed with open arms by Hall and The Swampers, the long-haired Allman was viewed with deep suspicion by the locals and it was a reluctance to face the lunch counter crowd that led Allman and Wilson Pickett to concoct a version of `Hey Jude' that was to prove crucial to the evolution of Southern Rock. However, for once in his life, Hall's ear failed him and he let The Allman Brothers Band slip through his fingers.

Camalier doesn't quite explain the extent to which this misjudgement persuaded Hood, Hawkins, Johnson and Beckett to decamp and join Wexler just as Hall secured a big deal with Capitol Records. Instead, he lets Percy Sledge reminisce about the time Jimi Hendrix played in his backing band and his conclusion that time changes everything is left to justify the decision to open the Muscle Shoals Studios at 3614 Jackson Highway. Cher was among the first clients. But, as Hall guided Clarence Carter to the top of the charts with `Patches' (which he wrote in memory of his recently deceased father), the new facility got off to a slow start and the Swampers were growing concerned that they had made a dreadful mistake when The Rolling Stones checked in.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards recall their brief stint at the studio with evident relish. Indeed, Richards reckons that the recording of Fred McDowell's `You Gotta Move' and their own compositions `Wild Horses' and `Brown Sugar' was perhaps the funkiest highlight of the band's 50-year career. But, while his erstwhile colleagues were spinning rock gold, Hall was melding session stalwarts like Clayton Ivey, Jesse Boyce and Harvey Thompson into The FAME Gang, who played on albums by a bewildering variety of artists over the next decade. Indeed, such was the growing reputation of the two studios that they got to host acts of the calibre of Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Candi Staton, Bobbie Gentry, Lou Rawls, Joe Tex, Joe Simon, Bobby Womack, Tom Jones, The Osmonds, Carlos Santana, JJ Cale, Boz Scaggs, Bob Seger, Linda Ronstadt, Joan Baez, Leon Russell, The Staples Singers, Otis Redding, Kris Kristofferson and Mark Knopfler.

The list is as astonishing as it is impressive. But what is most notable is the diversity of the artists and the fact that the two house bands always seemed to catch the vibe of whoever they were backing, whether it was Jamaican Jimmy Cliff on `Sitting in Limbo' (which did so much to popularise reggae) or Steve Winwood and Traffic, whose `headless horseman' style was slicked into shape by The Swampers on tracks like `(Sometimes I Feel So) Uninspired'. As Donna Jean Godchaux (who sang backing vocals for Percy Sledge before joining The Grateful Dead) avers, they were just a bunch of freakishly talented musicians who just all happened to be in the right place at the same time.

This is, in effect, the key to the Muscle Shoals story and Camalier rather misses in allowing Bono to ramble on with pretentious earnestness and cinematographer Anthony Arendt to shoot so many evocative images of riverbanks and main streets. But this is less a forensic study than a fond shuffle down memory lane, with the anecdotes mattering as much as the archival footage ably edited by Richard Lowe and even, perhaps, the music itself. Thus, the picture winds up with what is essentially a digression about Lynyrd Skynard's passing association with The Swampers that earned them a mention in the lyrics of `Sweet Home Alabama'. But, as Jimmy Johnson divulges, the combo played a key part in helping the Van Zant siblings find their sound and it was his refusal to cut the nine-minute `Freebird' down to under four minutes for radio play that led the label to snatch them away from his studio.

Although his rift with Wexler has never healed, Hall bears no grudges against Hood, Johnson, Hawkins and Beckett (whose 2009 death goes curiously unmentioned) and Camalier opts to end his overview with the old gang reuniting to accompany Alicia Keys on `Pressing On' rather than chart the fortunes of the complementary rivals over the last 30 years. Such decisions may be frustrating, but they don't detract from the excellence of what Camalier has chosen to include. Some may cavil at his leisurely approach, but many more will be scrambling to acquire some of the countless gems contained in an affectionate actuality that leaves one longing to see Dave Grohl's paean to Muscle Shoals, Sound City.

A musician cut from similar cloth who took a markedly different direction is captured in his twilight days by Irish director Paul Duane in Very Extremely Dangerous. Coming close at times to taking his life into his own hands, Duane gets so up close and personal to Jerry McGill that he becomes as much a target for his waspish tongue and unpredictable temperament as childhood sweetheart Joyce Rosic and bosom buddy Paul Clements. However, he survived to tell this compelling tale of a personal friend of Elvis Presley who ended up a drunken junkie after spending three decades on the run or in the slammer for crimes ranging from armed robbery to attempted murder.

Duane first became aware of McGill when he read Robert Gordon's 1994 book, It Came From Memphis, and he was so taken by the catchiness of his first single on Sun Records, `Lovestruck',. that he decided to delve further and uncovered William Eggleston's 1973 film Stranded in Canton, which chronicled a substance-fuelled session that involved somebody brandishing a gun. Although he recorded the comeback track `Hoochie Coochie Man', McGill soon succumbed to his baser instincts and, by the time Duane finally got to meet the 70 year-old in the spring of 2010, he was struggling to acclimatise to life back in Huntsville, Alabama after being released from a three-year stretch. Moreover, his reunion with the sweetheart he has abandoned 47 years earlier cruelly happened to coincide with a diagnosis of lung cancer. Nevertheless, McGill remains bullish and boasts openly about his 90-odd arrests and the fact that he had lived much of his life under such aliases as Curtis Buck. But, most importantly, the realisation that he might not have much time left persuades McGill to clean up his act and he informs Duane that he intends recording and gigging again so he can leave behind a worthwhile legacy.

Colleagues McGill has not seen for 35 years, including Luther and Cody Dickinson, Jim and Jill Lancaster and Jimmy Crosthwait, turn up for the first day of the sessions and producer Roland Janes declares himself delighted with the track they lay down. However, he concedes he has no means of releasing it and laments that McGill could have been a huge star if he had kept away from bad company and made some wiser decisions.

Right on cue, the demons resurface just 12 days before McGill is due to go in for life-saving surgery and he is forced to bunk with Clements in his motel room after Rosic throws him out of her home. Two days later, he announces that he needs to buy a shotgun (even though this breaches the terms of his parole) and he revels in telling Duane how old pals Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings had spoken up for him after he was finally arrested after 13 years on the lam having been the getaway driver on an armed heist. Yet it's hard to reconcile this outlaw with the old codger buying a walking stick, a flag and a pair of boots at a yard sale. But he is soon up to his old tricks again and Clements ejects him from his room after he catches him sharpening a knife in the middle of the night.

With only three days to his operation, McGill might have been expected to calm down in preparation. Instead, he takes a taxi all the way to Florida to record with the Lancasters and their son Clayton and Duane is sent to bail him out after a tyre blows en route and he calls producer Robert Gordon with a plea to pay his fare. Duane arrives to find McGill on fine form and living it up in the borrowed home of a neighbour. However, he is disturbed by the fact that McGill seems obsessed with weapons and laughs off getting arrested for fishing in the middle of the night without a permit. Indeed, he is having a ball and borrows his absent host's clothes and spend so much time chatting about the old days that his voice is shot by the time he comes to record the overdubs.

Jim Lancaster is happy enough with what might be McGill's swan song, however, and is even more relieved to get him out of Niceville. In fact, he chauffeurs him the 400 miles back to Rosic and talks him into making another appointment with the surgeon rather than going out in a blaze of glory. But McGill's good intentions don't last long and he is quickly at loggerheads with Rosic and Clements over some letters of apology that he claims to have mailed them. As he has nowhere else to go, therefore, McGill announces that he is going on the road and Duane films him shooting up in the back of a car and having to put on a jacket for a hospital appointment, to prevent the doctor from noticing the puncture mark on his arm. Such incorrigibility recurs three weeks later when he brandishes the bottle of red nail varnish he has just lifted from Walmart and the increasingly wayward McGill decides that he needs to check in with his manager, chiropractor Doc Brewer.

Brewer first knew McGill when he was using the name Billy Firmin and he offers him a bed on his farm while he psychs himself up to play his first live show in decades. Leaving Doc to butcher a pig in the garden, McGill leaves for Memphis with Rosic and spends the journey popping pills because he knows he has so many enemies in the town who would love to see him fail. As he irons a shirt in a motel, McGill confides to Duane that he is going to propose to Rosic and turn his life around. But the Irishman has distinct misgivings when McGill takes to the stage at the Hi-Tone Cafe and has to ask the audience for a guitar pick, as he has forgotten to bring one. He is out of tune during the first number, but, after washboardist Jimmy Crosthwait recites a poem, he seems to conquer his nerves and goes down well with a crowd that doesn't know him from Adam, but is suitably supportive to sing along with a song that few, if any, of its members would ever have heard before.

Charmed by his vulnerability and old-fashioned showmanship, Duane is thrilled by the reception and notes how playful McGill is with the motel chambermaids the following morning. But he loses his cool while doing his share of the driving on the way home and a row erupts with Rosic that sees McGill blame the evils of the world on womankind. Things improve momentarily, but when Doc calls to say he has booked another gig, the pair start bickering again and McGill is deposited at the side of the road after he tries to grab the wheel on the freeway. Jumping out of the car to avoid getting caught in the crossfire, Duane urges McGill to stop hitting Rosic and, when McGill smashes one of Rosic's brake lights, he whispers into the microphone that  he has had enough.

Somewhat inevitably, however, this is not the end of the story. Two days before his rearranged hospital appointment, McGill calls Gordon to say he has severed all ties with Doc and Clements. But, the following day, Rosic phones Gordon to inform him that McGill has been captured by bounty hunters and that she needs him to help or he will miss his surgery. The producer evidently rode to the rescue, as Duane met up with McGill a year later to find him mellow and reflective, as he sings abut the mysteries of life and love changing people. However, this would prove to be the last time they would be together, as McGill died on 20 May 2013.

Despite the poignancy of the occasional tune, McGill was much more of a rascal than a balladeer and Duane captures the last embers of his burning fury with the alacrity of someone who knows that the footage is going to more than justify the risks of riding along with a trigger-happy madman. In truth, he doesn't get very far in trying to fathom McGill's motivations, although he is hardly helped by the mischievous mythologising of a subject who frequently shoots off his mouth without engaging his brain. But this is as much a record of a desperado's last hurrah as it is an analytical assessment and, as a consequence, it more than fulfils its brief.

Focusing on a slicker breed of criminals, Havana Marking makes a dramatic departure from the cosy soap operatics of Afghan Star (2009) to chronicle the life and crimes of a notorious gang of Balkan jewel thieves in Smash & Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers. Using voiceovers and animated inserts directed by Tom Comley to protect the anonymity of the inside contributors, Marking has produced a visually stylish thriller that has been slickly edited by Joby Gee to a driving score by Simon Russell. But, while the central story is fascinating, Marking dwells overlong on an explanation of the changing situation in the former Yugoslavia that allowed the Pinks to prosper and also rather plods through the sequences in which the various cops on the trail of the impossibly elusive organisation explain their methodology. Thus, while this occasionally sparkles, it's not quite the diamond doc it might first appear.

Opening with a montage of CCTV footage showing raids on jewellery shops across the world, Marking introduces us to Mike, who is voiced by musician Tomislav Benzon and appears on screen as an animated avatar sitting in a relaxed manner beside the sea. He and Novak (Bob Kennedy) explain how the Pink Panthers are crooks rather than terrorists and started off breaking into houses and cars in Yugoslavia before realising that jewellery was easier to steal and shift and brought in much bigger profits. Mike denies they are latterday Robin Hoods, as even though they are regarded as heroes in some quarters they don't give what they steal from the rich to the poor.

In Geneva, Chief Inspector Yan Glassey of the Swiss Central Brigade reveals that the Pinks have been linked to 500 robberies since around 2000 and have made off with an estimated $300 million in loot. A stuffed pink panther hangs from a noose in his office, as he concedes the gang is the best in the world and, over CCTV footage of four men raiding a shop in around 20 seconds, he states that they prepare as meticulously as the villains in Michael Mann's Heat (1993), but never resort to using guns. His Parisian counterpart, Hervé Conan, also has begrudging respect for the Pinks, as he commends their speed of execution, while journalist Milena Miletic follows an amusing clip from an American tele-travelogue by explaining how they exploited conditions in the fragmenting Yugoslavia to hone their skills and apply them to heists in Bahrain, Japan and Dubai, as well as Europe.

A vox pop suggests many compatriots admire the Pinks for bucking the system, while Mike explains that it is a complex operation whose eschewal of a fixed hierarchy means that no one knows anything more than they need to and, thus, can never disrupt its smooth running if they are arrested or defect. He extols the virtues of the female agents, as they have to be beautiful, intelligent and confident to case jobs without attracting undue attention and Lela (Jasmin Topalusic) is well aware of her importance to the inner circle or Family.

A Muslim of Montenegran-Albanian stock, 48 year-old Mike started out as an apprentice to a safecracker from Kosovo and learnt about the different types of `kitten' during his four years in Italy. By the time he was recruited for the Pinks, he was a master of his craft and he recalls with pride a particularly brilliant job in Spain carried out during a religious festival. Lela was the scout for this blag and she recalls realising that there was no easy access from within the jeweller's itself and that she recommended they went in through the wall of an adjoining souvenir shop. She befriended the owner and took a job with him so she could ascertain the best angle of attack.

But Marking wishes to spin this story out and cuts to footage of Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito over which Mike and Miletic extol his ability to keep some 20 feuding nationalities together in a single state that also had the temerity to defy the Kremlin at regular interval. Mike further rose-tints this flashback by recalling how he used to sell drinks to tourists who often went topless on the unspoilt beaches. But the Dimitrovgrad where Lela was raised was far less salubrious and she was glad to follow her aunt to Hamburg to work in a restaurant. Here she met a boyfriend named Milan who used to give her flashy presents and she became even more attracted to him when she discovered he was a thief. She soon began reccying jobs for him and remembers how she used to take an outsize ring to the target shop so she could look around without drawing attention to herself. However, she disliked the long periods of separation after each heist and the need to change her appearance, as it undermined her sense of self and made her feel like a doll.

At this point, Marking digresses again to show the effect on Yugoslavia of Tito's death in 1980 and Miletic remembers how separatist groups began springing up in the different republics. She also recalls demonstrating against new Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, while Mike says so much hatred was seething below that surface that it was almost inevitable that war would follow when Bosnia and Herzogovina voted for independence and 130,000 lost their lives in the conflict that followed in the early 1990s. However, Lucky (one of the few Pinks to use his own voice in the film) laments the UN imposition of sanctions, as they drove people to lawlessness in order to survive and it was from this chaos that the Pink Panthers emerged.

According to Mike and Lucky, the Pinks started out in a small way and did a lot of black marketeering and smuggling in the mid-1990s. Miletic says the governments of the newly independent states were powerless to crack down on the crime wave, as the ringleaders had contacts within the guerilla groups that had helped bring many of the leaders to power and former security official Bozidar Spasic admits that regimes helped the worst offenders secure fake documents so they could commit their crimes abroad and then spend the ill-gotten proceeds at home. Around the turn of the Millennium, however, the thefts became more organised and CCTV footage shows a couple of thieves holding up a shop with pace and precision.

Once again, Marking cuts away from a train of thought and returns to Spain, as Mike and Lela are getting ready to strike. He recalls how they waited until the fiesta was in full swing, so that the street outside would be busy and noisy, and broke down the party wall with pickaxes. Unfortunately, the safe proved difficult to crack and Mike decided to use a car jack to hoist it into the van and hide it in the woods until he could fathom a way of opening it. Lela, meanwhile, was starting to worry, as she had not heard from anybody and was forbidden to make contact in case it compromised someone's safety. But they were soon on the move when Mike blew the lock and he remembers with some amusement finding a dildo among the more valuable contents. 

Lucky worked as a courier and he explains that the key to a dangerous job is to remain calm at all times and show no fear. Glassey qualifies this by revealing that they always had impeccable paperwork, as they often had contacts within the political establishment and Conan affirms that the gang also had a network of trusted fences across the Balkans, who could move the merchandise quickly and with minimum risk. In return for their services, the Pinks took a 20-30% cut and made sure that everyone else involved was well paid to ensure their loyalty.

But there were casualties and Lela recalls how Milan started enjoying the high life too much and she decided to dump him and get out of the game while she was ahead. Moreover, Interpol was becoming aware of the Pink Panthers, while the Americans wanted a clamp down on gem smuggling to enable it to cut off the supply of blood diamond money that was sustaining the civil war in Sierra Leone. A Special Operations veteran, Green (Daniel Vivian) was invited to join the Pinks because he had contacts in high places and he began forging authenticity certificates to allow the gang to sell its wares in Antwerp without attracting US suspicion.

However, in moving outside their traditional territory, the Pinks began to attract official attention and Monaco asked Interpol to intervene when the gang first hit the principality in 2007. Their teams began to spot connections between raids and even identified rivalries within the organisation. But it was the ram raid on the Graff store in the Wafi mall in Dubai in 2007 that gave the authorities their first major victory.

As journalist Awad Mustafa recalls, as the CCTV clip seem in the opening sequence plays again, the gang had planned a getaway route along a stretch of road without traffic lights so they could ditch the battering cars and vanish in new ones in just 10 minutes. However, as police chief Major General Khamis Mattar Al Mazeina reveals, his forensic team were exceedingly fortunate in the fact that one of the abandoned cars didn't burn properly when it was torched and not only did Dr Farida Al Shamali find sufficient DNA traces to put them on the trail of the thieves, but Major Saeed Abdullah Al Saadi also put their hire car under surveillance and caught Milan Ljepoja and Dusko Poznan when they came to remove the stash from the inside of the front doors 

They are now serving lengthy sentences in Liechtenstein, but Bojana Mitc, who cased the mall, slipped through the net and is now safe in Serbia. Conan says police co-operation is improving and some 50 people have been arrested for Pinks-related crimes since 2007. Moreover, Mike says so many of the former Yugoslav states are willing to trade Pinks members to help their applications for the European Union that there are fewer boltholes than before. He admits to being tired of feeling paranoid and wants to settle down. But, as he knows nothing else, his only way of making quick money is to do another job and the longer he goes on the more he risks being caught.

Glassey reckons the younger generation are not as meticulous as their elders, but they are more aggressive and he fears that there may be more deaths in future heists. Miletic says that the Pink Panthers may have scaled down operations in recent years, but she is confident they will be back. Lela agrees, as she has returned to Dimitrovgrad and is dismayed how tough life is for young people with no jobs and few prospects. She has now married and has a child. But she knows Milan will always be the love of her life and she misses the excitement of the game, even though she spends much of her time praying for forgiveness.

For all its audiovisual slickness and the compelling nature of the anecdotes, this is never as riveting as it might have been. The animation is intelligently used to enhance Mike and Lela's personalities, but Marking hardly blows the lid on the Pink Panthers. Indeed, she really only seems to have detailed inside information on the raids in Spain and Dubai and pads out much of the running time with an extended chronicle of Yugoslavia's descent into madness that could easily been condensed and remained just as informative and effective.

The admissions by the various coppers that they are often trusting to luck where the Pinks are concerned are far more revealing and it might have been interesting to spend more time on the gang's status with ordinary people, as it is anything but a band of merrie men and women stealing from the rich to give to the poor under the guidance of a latterday Robin Hood. Ultimately, therefore, this may be technically accomplished and irresistibly propulsive, but it is also more than a little scattershot and superficial.

Some genuine heroism comes under scrutiny in a film that has been from gleaned the BFI archive. Reissued to mark the 60th anniversary of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's heroics in June 1953, Captain John Noel's The Epic of Everest (1924) chronicles the doomed third expedition up the world's highest mountain, which infamously claimed the lives of George Mallory and Merton College alumnus, Andrew Irvine. However, this newly restored print is also notable for containing some of the first footage ever taken of everyday life in Tibet and for the technical innovations that were used in its making.

Opening with a caption proclaiming that it is the birthright of humanity to conquer its surroundings, this reverential record notes in hushed awe that Mount Everest remains unconquered and that its allure will continue to attract men of mettle until its summit is reached. Having surveyed the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas and the plains that lead to a land of eternal snow, Captain Noel presents a blue-tinted shot of dawn breaking over the peaks of Nepal and Tibet. An iris singles out Everest, which rises as a 10,000ft precipice of rock from the ice-pinnacled Rongbuk Glacier and culminates a further 29,000 feet above sea level. The Tibetans call the mountain `Chomolungma' - the Goddess Mother of the World - and a caption boasts that this film will visit places previously unseen on camera and, as two tiny silhouettes edge forward in the cloudy distance, Noel reinforces the majesty of the landscape with a pinkish view of the glacier and its steeply sloping edifices of ice.

Lots of preparation is required for such an audacious expedition and an army of 500 men and animals sets out over the 15,000ft Jelep pass that takes travellers from India to Tibet. As cowbells ring on the soundtrack, the caravan is shown winding along narrow pathways in the snow. Eventually, it reaches Phari-Dzong, the highest town in the world beneath Chomolungma's 10,000ft cliffs of rock and ice, and Noel films the simple dwellings and uses captions to explain how the people live with their cattle and dogs, never wash and have their corpses hacked to pieces on a stone slab after they die.

A few curious souls smile for the camera and a caption informs us that the better class of Tibetan women wear coral ornamented fillets to bind their madonna-parted hair with braids falling over her shoulders. We are shown a silver and turquoise amulet box containing charms and a potion to ward off misfortune whose ingredients include powdered lizards, dried blood and the toenail clippings of a venerable lama. A Tibetan elder carries his badge of rank in a pendant earring of turquoise and gold, while another woman shows off a turquoise-studded aureole laced into her hair. She is very bashful for someone of her advanced years and there is something endearing about the way she covers her face and turns coquettishly away from the camera. Some mothers give their babies a sun-baking bath of butter to prepare their skin for the bitter winter winds and one is left to fear for a jolly beggar, who owns nothing but a drum and the rags upon his back.

Dressed in suits and pith helmets, Mallory and Irvine inspect the yaks that will carry the expedition 200 miles over the Tibetan plains. Dr Howard Somervell sketches one of the locals and his neighbours gather round to watch. Meanwhile, experienced Alpine climber John de Vere Hazard devotes himself to map-making duties, while Noel Odell checks the saddle of his tiny mountain pony. Their only companions now are the nomadic Dok-Pa shepherds and Noel films the womenfolk churning butter and spinning wool in tents that are closely guarded by black Tibetan mastiffs.

A caption reveals that the breathtaking beauty of the scenery helped pass the time during the long and arduous trek and the party is grateful for the hospitality it receives at each stopping point. Nonetheless, in true old colonial fashion, a quizzical eye is raised at some of the musical instruments and the damping rods used in a communal dance. The climbers are more respectful about the hamlet of Kampa-Dzong, which has stood on rock 15,000ft above sea level since before Tibetan written history began, and the Shekar-Dzong monastery, which is carved into the sheer rock face on several levels and is so spectacular that it is known as `The Shining Crystal'.

The route march takes several weeks and Noel records that a donkey born in camp had to be carried over a fast-flowing river after walking 22 miles on its first day and 16 the next. The party becomes aware that they are getting closer to Everest when they pass through sacred valleys pocked with the cliff cells that were once occupied by hermitic lamas. The lama of Rongbuk warns that the gods will deny them success, as he performs a ceremony in their honour, but they take no heed as they press on to a camp at 16,500ft for the yaks, who can go no higher.

In addition to Mallory, Irvine, Odell, Somervell and Hazard, Edward Norton, Bentley Beetham and Geoffrey Bruce are chosen for the big push and they pose awkwardly together outside a tent. Aiding them are 60 Sherpas, who will carry their packs and build glacier camps along the route. Transportation officer EO Shebbeare sorts out 1001 boxes and organises the stores to be sent up to the glacier depots. The first comes at 17,500ft, but there will be 15 miles of glacier to be negotiated before the party even reaches the foot of Everest's northern precipices, where temperatures plummet by 50° once the tropical sun sets.

Just before the expedition sets forth, a caption laments that just two weeks after this moment of optimism and pride, Irvine and Mallory would be dead. But spirits are high at the outset, with one female Sherpa showing at Frozen Lake Camp how she can carry packs as heavy as the best man. But the mood changes again, as a striking sequence shows the light changing on the snow as the clouds scud overhead and a caption suggests that the mountain was frowning down upon them as though it had been `angered that we should violate these pure sanctuaries of ice and snow that never before had suffered the foot of man'. Yet, as Captain Noel films wisps of cloud floating past the summit, Everest looks more beautiful than forbidding.

Shortly afterwards, however, bad weather sets in and two men succumb to frostbite. But they cannot turn back and trudge on with the rest, as the snaking line of fatigued bodies heads towards a blue-tinted Fairyland of Ice, where, according to Tibetan legend, imps, gnomes, goblins and hairy men hold high revels in the frozen night. Noel's framing of the mountainscape is often inspired, as he uses snow and ice to frame the daunting rocks in the distance. Moreover, as he frequently takes top shots of the party walking towards the camera, he clearly puts himself at considerable risk to attain such memorable images.

The seven-strong party strike out for Snowfield Camp below Everest's precipice, at 21,000ft above the sea. The men and tents look minuscule against the windswept North-East Ridge, which has been chosen as the optimum route to the summit. But, reliant on their climbing skills and some sturdy rope, they cut 2000 ice steps, place 400ft of hand ropes and even fix a rope ladder to scale the `Ice Chimney' that will allow their porters to make the next leg of the journey. A masked oval shows three men tackling a ledge and two more going up a steeper incline. A long shot shows six figures climbing in pairs through the snow. But, while the images are dramatic, it's impossible to know who is who and why the numbers on the climb keep fluctuating.

At Ice Cliff Camp, three members of the party sit on the rocks and gaze out from a height of 23,000ft at the humbling terrain. But it is decided that Noel's camera is too heavy to go any further and he can only watch from a distance as groups return from building new camps at 25 and 27,000ft. He is forced down to Snowfield amidst deteriorating weather conditions and it is from here that Noel uses a pioneering telescopic lens to film from one and a half miles away as Norton, Somervell and Mallory risk their lives to rescue the four men stranded on the topmost ledge of an almost vertical incline some 2000ft above.

On reaching Snowfield, the survivors told of hearing the phantom guard dogs of Chomolungma. But Noel is determined to remain with the spearhead party to capture the great moment for posterity and he heads to Eagle's Nest Point, where he has a clear view of Everest from ice cliff to the summit. A caption explains how the clear air made it possible to photograph silhouettes against the snow some three miles away and Noel makes use of a telescope mask to focus the gaze on the correct part of the screen. He demonstrates how the North-East Ridge looks to the naked eye and then shows how the lens can pick out Norton and Somervell at a height of 25,000ft from a distance of one and three-quarter miles away.

At 28,000ft, the climbers began to find the air too thin and they return to base camp with Norton snowblind and Somervell in a state of near physical collapse. They are laid in tents to recover, while Mallory and Irvine volunteer to take a tilt at the top using breathing apparatus. The camera catches a glimpse of them at 26,000ft from the Eagle's Nest and a caption claims that this is the longest distance that a motion picture camera has ever taken and image, as the pair were two miles away and 4000ft above the filming point. Odell claimed to have seen Mallory and Irvine a mere 600ft from the summit - closer to God than man had ever been before - but they suddenly vanished and the whistling wind effect on the soundtrack falls silent as a cut shows Everest (at some remove) in a telescope mask.

As the Sherpas sent out a search party, a caption speculates that the pair fell down a 10,000ft precipice, while another suggests they might have attained their goal and had simply been too tired to descend and had frozen to death in the open air. Shots of the mountain covered by cloud reinforce the notion of their fate being shrouded in mystery, as, after two days without word, Odell ventures up to 27,000ft to lay out six blankets in the form of a cross on the snow. A signal reading `Abandon hope and come down' was then sent and the tragic end to a glorious expedition hits home hard. Another caption states that they must leave the mountain and its secret, as nothing more can be done. As the letters dissolve, the implication is that we try to defy Mother Nature, but it she is too powerful and we are simply too small to challenge her might.

The party is seen returning across the snow and there is something chastening about the sight of such small specks of humanity against such a colossal backdrop. A caption ponders whether one could wish for a better grave than pure white snow and, as a pall of cloud draws across the land, another claims there can be no more fitting memorial than a simple cairn of stones. As photos appear of Irvine and Mallory, a caption reads: `With what uncanny and awful power did this mountain fight, and how cruel and heartless a human sacrifice did she claim!'

While the expedition saw Everest as merely a rock, the Tibetans continue to regard it as a goddess and, as rousing Simon Fisher Turner music plays on the soundtrack, another caption queries whether something ethereal had opposed human strength and Western science, just as the Rongbuk lama had predicted: `The Gods of the Lamas shall deny you White Men the object of your search.' As a last caption asks whether there is a guardian spirit beyond our comprehension that watches over the living mountain, a browny red tint is used to invest a long shot of sunset over Everest with additional mystery and the scene fades to black as clouds darken the view and the word `Chomolungma' lingers over the ill-starred enterprise.

Vital both as a record of an heroic bid to do what no man had done before and as a work of ethnography, this restoration has been undertaken in collaboration with Sandra Noel, whose father first became obsessed with Everest when he visited the region in disguise while on leave from his Indian regiment in 1913. Six years later, he proposed that the mountain should be climbed during a lecture at the Royal Geographical Society and this August body combined with the Alpine Club of Great Britain to form the Mount Everest Committee in 1920.

The first reconnaissance trip took place the following year, with Noel shooting the earliest footage of both Everest and Tibet while accompanying the 1922 expedition. But the Maharaja of Sikkim and the 13th Dalai Lama took exception to the depiction of Tibetan life in The Epic of Everest, with the former being particularly offended by the locals being shown eating insects and the latter considering the monastic scenes an affront to Buddhism.

Captain Noel's courage during the 1924 trek can never be doubted and his artistry is often as apparent as his ingenuity. But this never feels quite as engaging as either South (1919), Frank Hurley's account of Ernest Shackleton 1914-16 bid to cross Antarctica, or The Great White Silence (1924), Herbert G. Ponting's record of Robert Falcon Scott's doomed 1910-13 Terra Nova expedition. This may be because so little effort is made to introduce the members of the summit party as individuals. Consequently, 90 years on, they merely remain names rather than stand out as identifiable heroes and it takes background reading to appreciate the enormity of their loss. Nevertheless, this stands as a worthy tribute to those who risked all for the glory of their country and their comrades. 

The archival footage proves equally fascinating in Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige's The Lebanese Rocket Society, which recalls the amazing efforts of Armenian scientists at the Haigazian University in Beirut to keep Lebanon on the heels of the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s space race. The brains behind the initiative was Manoug Manougian, who found a willing collaborator in army ballistics expert Youssef Wehbé. However, while Manougian bore an endearing similarity to a character in a Jules Verne or HG Wells science-fiction novel, Wehbé recognised from the outset that the only way to convince his superiors to back a rocket programme was to downplay the prestige it might bring the country and emphasise its potential to improve the firepower of the armed forces.

When they first saw a photograph depicting a missile test, Hadjithomas and Joreige were sceptical that Lebanon had once been a force in rocketry. However, on discovering that Manougian was now based at the University of South Florida, they paid him a visit and were afforded access to his unique collection of documents, photographs and home movies. He explains how the Rocket Society began and recalls how an early launch from one member's family farm nearly went horribly wrong. He also relates amusing anecdotes about the near disasters that occurred during experiments to find a suitable propellant fuel and clearly remembers such colleagues as Simon Aprahamian, Garabed Basmadjian, Hampartsum Karaguezian, Hrair Kelechian, Michael Ladah, John Tilkian, Hrair Aintablian, Hriar Sahagian, Jirair Zenian and Jean Jack Guvlekjian with great pride and affection.

College president John Markarian and photographers Harry Koundakjian and Assaad Jradi recall the first launch at Kchag in the Ain Saade region in April 1961 and the second at Sannine a month later. Beating Israel to the punch by three months, these feats prompted President Fuad Chehab to meet the HCRS crew in August and led the army to volunteer Wehbé and Joseph Steir as liaison officers. They remember being stunned by the Cedar II rocket reaching 2500 metres in September 1961 and how the launches of the larger Cedar III and Cedar IV craft in 1962 and 1963 made such an impact that the achievement was marked by a special set of stamps.

Yet, even though four more rockets were tested to 1966, the programme was halted. Academics Paul Haidostian and Zafer Azar join Hadjithomas and Joreige in speculating whether French pressure, the decline of Pan-Arabism following the Six Day War or the growing tensions within Lebanon itself proved the decisive blow. But it remains unclear why the Rocket Society was stood down and the co-directors rather pad out the final segment by turning their attention to the production of a replica of Cedar IV and its journey from the cliffs of Dbayeh to a courtyard in Haigazian College. An animated reverie by Ghassan Halawani illustrating how Lebanon might have looked in 2025 had the space programme flourished also feels somewhat superfluous. Nevertheless, with Manougian and Wehbé making splendidly contrasting interview subjects, this is still an intriguing account of a forgotten moment in Middle Eastern history.