Last night we saw an outstanding British heist movie called "A Prize of Arms"(1962). The plot takes off from the very first frame as a car crawls along a wilderness road in the dead of night, coming to a stop at a pasture. Three men get out and unload some gear. One sets off detonations that take out sections of a fence. Another has a flamethrower. He sets the field afire. The third man times these actions with a stopwatch. The three are practicing for a rip off of the payroll at a military base. Ten minutes into the movie their escapade begins, and it doesn't let up till the last fifteen seconds.
Stanley Baker stars as "Turpin", the leader of the gang. They've planned all their moves in advance and we follow them with no explanation. We're watching the job "in progress", as if we are in on it from the get-go. The men have every possible contingency figured out and adjusted for.
The other two guys are "Swavek" (Helmut Schmid) and "Fenner" (Tom Bell). The former is a Polish national with a heavy accent. Turpin has instructed him not to speak once they're on base, lest his voice betray his foreignness. The latter is a career criminal that Turpin has chosen for his nerve. "He's amoral but he doesn't rattle". The premise revolves around a large transfer of personnel at the base. A convoy of troops will be shipped to the Suez Canal. This means two things, according to Turpin. 1) There will be a huge sum of cash in the payroll safe, to pay salaries and facilitate the move, and 2) the transfer will create a lot of activity on the base. As long as they move forward with confidence, as if they belong there, the gang will move freely in the disarray.
They'll be leaving from their hideout, an old stone barn, at 6am on the day of the transfer. They'll drive up in a stolen Army truck, similar to the ones in the convoy. They have several different uniforms stashed in their duffel bags. When they arrive at the main gate they'll be wearing standard infantry duds, complete with berets. They have counterfeit papers to present to the guard. Once they're in, they'll park the truck and set out to the payroll office, where they're going to impersonate fire inspectors first. "Hello, sir", Turpin says to the duty officer. "We're here to change the extinguishers". Later they'll impersonate MPs.
I'm not going to tell you the reason for that, nor reveal all the details of their scheme. This movie is so tight, so inventive and sharp, that you've just got to see it unfold for yourself. The tension ratchets higher in many of the situations, as the gang is asked questions they hadn't thought of answers for. They're good at B.S.ing their way through the doubters, however. One officer, a medic, wonders why Turpin hasn't been vaccinated for the transfer to Suez. He's gotta come up with a reason on the spot. Does the medic suspect he's an infiltrator? Or just a slacking soldier? Director Cliff Owen plays it straight down the middle. "C'mon, Turpin"!, you find yourself thinking. "Answer the doctor's question"! This is one of those crime movies where you're rooting for the bad guys. They've invaded a military base, so security is super tight, and authority has hold over everything. Chain of command is the stone-carved rule. If someone higher up asks a question, you'd better have an answer right quick, before they ask again and then thrice, by which time they're very suspicious.
The gang has to create a diversion to ultimately access the payroll safe. Keep the early practice session in mind, in the pasture at the beginning of the movie. Once this most crucial action is accomplished, they need to leave the base, with the stolen cash hidden, along with the departing convoy. They'll blend in with the long line of trucks.
I'm gonna straight-up say that "A Prize of Arms" is one of the top three heist flicks I've ever seen, including "Rififi" and "Touchez Pas au Grisbi" (also know as just "Grisbi"). Am I justified in such high praise? Watch it for yourself and decide. Yeah, there are many other movies that could vie for that claim, but this is one of them. I thought it was freakin' tremendous in every respect, which is why it gets my highest rating : Two Gigantic Thumbs Up. This is one crime film you absolutely shouldn't miss. The print is darn good, if not razor sharp. If you're watching on an old laptop like my little Chromebook, you may want to listen through headphones as the volume is slightly lower than ideal. There's also a fair amount of Britspeak. But these are all minor concerns. I'm just trying to maximize your experience so you get the most out of this excellent film. It runs 105 minutes, which might seem like an eternity in our Short Film-loving climate, but it moves like the breeze so you never notice. Watch it as soon as you can. /////
The previous night's movie was an idiosyncratic noir entitled "One Girl's Confession"(1953), written and directed by a Czech filmmaker named Hugo Haas, who also co-stars. I'd never heard of Haas, who was apparently a big star in his home country in the 1930s before the Nazis forced him out. If this film is any indication, his movies are a personal vision. Cleo Moore stars as "Mary Adams", a waitress at a beachfront dive in Santa Monica. She hates her job; the male patrons grab her and her boss is a crusty old jerk. But it's all that she's got so she tolerates it and perseveres, until one day when she sees her boss accepting a payoff. We aren't sure what it's for (and it's never explained), but it's a tidy sum of dough. "He's nothing but a crook", Mary thinks and she's right. The crustacean is a stone cold criminal.
She watches him hide the money, then steals and hides it herself. Then she does the unthinkable for a thief. She turns herself in to the police. Sentenced to a woman's prison, she does some hard time, but is paroled early for good behavior. The authorities know she hid the money but they've never found it. Now we find out that her former boss once screwed her father out of his life savings. Ahhh....so there's a motive for her actions, now it all makes sense. Free from prison and back in town, Mary gets another job waitressing and bides her time, while planning to recover the money. Her new boss is quite a character, friendly and always laughing. His name is "Mr. Damitrof" (played by Hugo Haas himself). It's often hard for Mary to tell when he's joking. Is he a schemer, too, or does he genuinely have her best interests in mind?
Mr. Damitrof also has a terrible gambling problem. At one point, he loses his cafe in a game of cards. Mary is tempted to bail him out, to offer him her hidden money as a loan, so he can pay off his poker debt. But she hasn't even recovered it yet. She's afraid to, in case she's being watched. She does feel righteous about keeping it, however, given that it came from her former boss, the man who bankrupted her father. Along the way, she meets and falls in love with a sailor who dines at the cafe. He seems like a truly good guy, who wants to take Mary overseas.
There are several different themes at play, and you wonder, at times, of the focus. As I noted, it's an idiosyncratic film. Haas lets his characters act out, in long monologues expressing their feelings. He especially allows himself to ramble on and on as Mr. Damitrof (love that name). At first it's a question mark, but I found his style growing on me, and by the end of the movie I was loving it's sincerity. Apparently, according to IMDB, Haas was working in a format not unlike that of Eric Roemer and his "Moral Tales". He called his group of films, which included this one, his "Fate and Irony" series. "One Girl's Confession" is a little slow in places and could benefit from a 5 to 7 minute cut in it's 74 minute running time, but overall you'll enjoy it for it's warmth, especially when the fate and irony become clear. Let's give it Two Big Thumbs Up for originality, and look for more from Hugo Haas. He's recommended! ////
That's all I've got for the moment. I wrote for three hours this afternoon. The book is coming along like gangbusters. You might say, "a book, Ad, about your personal caregiving experience? What gives"? Wouldn't you think there'd be a hundred books like that? But as I mentioned, it's gonna be about a lot more than that, and..........it's idiosyncratic! (hey, wait a minute. didn't we just hear that word?) But it will indeed be unique, and that's because it's me who's writing it, haha, so it can't help but be that way. It'll be full of all kinds of different flavors besides caregiving. As I summed it up before, it's about Absorbing and Sharing Life, and the thing is - most importantly - that I was only motivated to write it because of the response I got to the remembrance I wrote for Pearl's service. Since I read it at church a little over two weeks ago, I've had numerous people remark that it moved them, to laughter, to tears and both. People have asked me for copies of the two page story, and some have passed those copies on to other people to read, people who didn't even know Pearl. I wanted to bring her to life, and I think I did, even though I was limited to a ten minute reading.
But after the response, I said "I've gotta write this as a book"! So now I'm doing it. I think it's gonna make a heck of a story, in honor of an amazing lady. And of course I'm in it, too.
I hope you had a nice day. Can the Dodgers come back from 0-2? We'll find out tomorrow night.
I send you Tons of Love as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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