JamesHitchcock

"Enchanted April" is a good example of how the boundaries between the British feature film and the British television movie were becoming blurred in the nineties. It was part of the BBC's "Screen Two" series of TV dramas, but it also received a cinematic release and was nominated unsuccessfully for three Academy Awards. It was also nominated for three Golden Globes, winning two. I cannot imagine any of the "Play for Today" series, "Screen Two's" predecessor, ever being nominated for such awards.

The film is based upon a novel by Elizabeth von Arnim, In the early 1920s four English ladies decide to spend the month of April staying in an Italian castle by the sea. They are Lotty Wilkins (unhappily married, middle-aged), Rose Arbuthnot (ditto), Mrs. Fisher (elderly, widowed) and Lady Caroline Dester (young, single). At least, I presume that Caroline is single. At one point she mentions a young man called Jack, who was killed in the war and who clearly meant a good deal to her, but as she still uses her father's surname Jack was presumably a boyfriend or fiancé rather than her husband.

So what happens to the quartet during their spring break. Well, the answer to that question is that for a long time nothing happens and then, suddenly, nothing happens.

If you have got the impression from the previous sentence that I disliked this film, you would be right. To describe its pace as "glacial" would be an understatement; at least glaciers do move, albeit very slowly. Apart from the beautiful, vivacious Caroline, the four women are all the sort of people that I would most definitely not want to spend a holiday with. Lotty is scatty, absent-minded and prone to making silly or inappropriate remarks. Rose is dull and sanctimonious. Mrs Fisher is the sort of old lady who is frequently referred to as "formidable", largely because that sounds more polite than "overbearing and insensitive". She is the only major character whose Christian name we never learn, presumably because none of the others dare ask her. At least Mrs Fisher has some interesting things to talk about; she comes from a literary family, and in her youth knew several major literary figures, including Carlyle, Tennyson and Browning. (Lotty's inquiry as to whether she also knew Keats is treated with the contempt it deserves).

The main reason why Lotty and Rose decide to go to Italy is to get away from their husbands, with whom both seem to have difficult relationships. Lotty's husband Mellersh is domineering and miserly; he forces her to keep an account of every penny she spends in a notebook. Rose's husband Frederick writes erotic novels under a pseudonym, which offends her religious faith. (These books are published and sold quite openly; this suggests that, given the puritanical moral climate of the twenties, the decade in which Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover" was banned, any eroticism in Frederick's books must have been very mild by twenty-first century standards).

As soon as they arrive in Italy, however, they start missing their husbands, and immediately invite them by telegram to come and join them. Once the men arrive, their marital quarrels seem to be forgotten; indeed, Frederick and Rose are so overjoyed to be reunited that they start behaving like a pair of love-struck hormonal teenagers, kissing and cuddling in full public view.

The eighties and nineties were probably the heyday of the British "heritage cinema" movement, which produced some excellent films, but in my view "Enchanted April" is not one of them. There are some talented actors on view, but even the most talented actors need something more substantial than this to get their teeth into. The film is not even particularly visually attractive, despite its highly picturesque setting. I find it difficult to believe that those who gave it all those nominations and awards saw the same film as I did. 4/10.

"Destry Rides Again" is an example of the spoof comedy Western, made long before Mel Brooks's "Blazing Saddles". Brooks acknowledged his debt to the earlier film by basing one of his characters on Marlene Dietrich's Frenchy. The title might suggest that this is a sequel to an earlier film, but this is not the case. It is a remake of an earlier film from 1932, and both are officially based on Max Brand's novel "Destry Rides Again", the 1939 film only very loosely so.

The plot is that old Western standard, also used by Brooks in "Blazing Saddles", about the new lawman who cleans up a lawless town. (1939 also saw another famous film based on this plot, the Errol Flynn vehicle "Dodge City"). The action takes place in the (fictitious) Western town of Bottleneck, dominated by an unscrupulous town boss named Kent. When Keough, the local sheriff, starts investigating the crooked poker games held in Kent's saloon, Kent has him murdered, although the official version is that Keough has had to leave town for personal reasons. Slade, the corrupt local mayor who is in league with Kent, appoints an elderly drunkard named Washington Dimsdale as the new sheriff. Dimsdale, however, has more backbone than Kent and Slade realise. He once served under a famous lawman named Tom Destry. Destry is now dead, but Dimsdale sends for his son, Tom Destry junior, to help him clean up Bottleneck.

That could be the plot of a serious Western. (OK, the rather comical name "Bottleneck" is something of a giveaway, but then some real Western towns, notably Tombstone, had equally implausible names). The joke is that Destry junior is far from the conventional Hollywood idea of the tough Western lawman. He is a polite, obviously well-educated young man, who strikes everyone as being a bit of a milksop. To make matters worse, he is also something of a pacifist who refuses to carry a gun. His reasoning is that carrying a gun did not do much for his father, who was killed when shot in the back by an enemy. And yet he proves to be a more effective law enforcer than anyone expects; despite his refusal to carry a gun, he turns out to be an expert marksman.

The film tells the story of how Destry cleans up Bottleneck, with the assistance of Dimsdale and his deputy, an eccentric Russian immigrant named Boris. Destry also receives help from an unexpected quarter, Kent's girlfriend, a saloon singer named Frenchy, who has fallen in love with him. Eventually, however, Destry has to rethink his pacifist principles and abandon his non-violent stance after Dimsdale is killed, making him realise just how ruthless Kent and his gang are. (In 1939, with war threatening in Europe and the possibility that America might be forced to get involved, Hollywood was not too keen to make films preaching pacifism).

Frenchy's name suggests that she is French, but she speaks with a German accent- unsurprisingly, given that she is the character played by Dietrich. This film represented something of a comeback for Dietrich whose last few films had not been successful. She was one of a number of stars around this time (most notoriously Katharine Hepburn) who had been labelled "box office poison". Here, however, she gives a splendid performance, making Frenchy the proverbial "tart with a heart", seductive but basically decent and surprisingly vulnerable beneath her tawdry exterior. I say "tart" because, during the Production Code era, "saloon girl" was essentially coded language for "prostitute", even if the Code prevented scriptwriters from being too explicit about the exact nature of such a woman's occupation.

James Stewart was later to make a number of serious Westerns, most famously the five he made with director Anthony Mann in the fifties. In the thirties, however, he was best known for comedy, although I would say that Destry is not an entirely comic character. In my view he has much in common with Jeff Smith, the hero of Stewart's previous film, "Mr Smith Goes to Washington". Smith and Destry are both characters of a type that Stewart excelled in playing, characters who initially seem pleasant but rather ineffectual, but who later turn out to have hidden reserves of character and a determination to do what is right. Smith's full name is Jefferson Smith; Destry's is Thomas Jefferson Destry junior. Is it a coincidence that Stewart's characters in two successive films are named after America's Third President? I think not, especially as the equivalent character in Brand's novel was called Harrison Destry.

Comedy is not generally the longest-lived film genre; some comedies from the thirties are today apt to raise not so much a laugh as the question "Why did people find that funny all those years ago?" Like "Mr Smith Goes to Washington", "Destry Rides Again" is one of the exceptions, perhaps because it is not entirely comic. Yes, we can laugh at the antics of Dimsdale and Boris, but there is a more serious strain running through the film. Several characters lose their lives, and there are serious underlying themes, such as "Is pacifism the best way to fight evil?" and "How do I do the right thing?" It is this mingling of the comic and potentially tragic which still makes "Destry Rides Again" compelling viewing more than eighty years on. 8/10.

Sir David Frederick Attenborough is, by common consent, a British national treasure. He is probably best-known for his series of wildlife documentaries made for the BBC, but his range of activities- naturalist, conservationist, broadcaster, administrator, activist, educator- is much wider than this. And perhaps the most remarkable thing about him is that he remains active in many of these fields at the age of 99.

Sir David has long been a campaigner for environmentalist causes, but this has not always made for an easy relationship with the Beeb, which prides itself on its political impartiality. For example, "On Thin Ice", the final episode of his "Frozen Planet" series from 2011, was criticised by some who took exception to his stance on global warming, and some American networks refused to show it.

This may explain why "Ocean", Sir David's latest production, was not made as a TV series but as a feature-length documentary, shown in cinemas as well as on television. His subject is the threat to the world's oceans caused by human activities. He does not neglect pollution and global warming, but this latter topic is less of a hot potato in 2025 than it was in 2011, largely because there now seems to be a political consensus that global warming is both real and a serious threat about which we need to take urgent action. In "Ocean", however, Sir David turns his attention to a subject which remains controversial even today, namely the damage being caused by the fishing industry.

This damage is not confined to the depletion of fish stocks caused by overfishing, although that is certainly one of the problems. The removal of the target species from an area can adversely affect the local ecosystem by disrupting natural food chains. There is also the issue of "bycatch"- the taking of species other than the target one- and, potentially the most serious, the devastation of fragile marine environments by modern fishing methods, especially "bottom trawling"- the dragging of heavy nets along the sea floor. As with all of Sir David's documentaries, the photography is stunning, although there is a lot more to "Ocean" than beautiful pictures of wild creatures in their natural habitats. We also get to see those habitats being destroyed by trawling and then a series of bleak shots showing the aftermath of that destruction.

Given this widespread devastation, it would be easy for Sir David to exclaim, along with Private Frazer from "Dad's Army", "we're doomed, man!" And yet he does not. And the solution is not simply for everyone to give up eating fish, a vital source of protein in a hungry world. Sir David shows how it is possible to reverse the damage we have caused, not just by limiting fishing catches but by declaring certain areas, to be off-limits to fishing altogether. This can do more than reverse the damage within the protected zones themselves. What is known as the "spillover effect" means that wildlife from the protected zones will start to recolonise other areas, even if they are not protected themselves. If we get the balance right, this can mean that fish stocks will start to increase in the non-protected zones, which combined with less environmentally destructive practices could lead to a sustainable fishing industry.

"Ocean" is a much-needed wake-up call, yet it also has a message of hope, making it inspiring enough for me to award it one of my rare examples of a perfect mark. 10/10.