Villagers friday

March 10, 2010

Death of a Bureaucrat (1966)

Filed under: Uncategorized — villagersfriday @ 3:53 pm

This shocking primordial plan by one of Cuba’s prominent steam-makers is a black comedy about institutionalised bureaucracy at its most pedantic. After a wear factory worker is killed in an mishap at make use of, he’s buried with his mixture card as a mark of constant solidarity; trouble is, when his spouse applies throughout a allowance, she’s told she must present the prankster before she can lay one’s hands on any money - and there’s a law forbidding exhumation within the foremost two years of funeral. It’s a surprising piece to have been made in the Cuba of the mid-’60s, but the laughs come as much from a Buñuelian wisdom of absurdity as they do from any totally criticism of Castro’s regime.

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March 9, 2010

13 Ghosts (1960)

Filed under: Uncategorized — villagersfriday @ 2:23 am
“A dull and crudely made haunted
house tale.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Exploitation producer and director William Castle (”The Tingler”/”Mr.
Sardonicus”/”Homicidal”) helms this black-and-white shot juvenile, hokey
and pointless fright tale. Robb White, who wrote five scripts for Castle,
turns in a pedestrian screenplay. Castle, the master showman, promotes
the film by issuing to the audience cheaply made cardboard “ghost viewers,”
3D glasses (even though the film was never shown in 3D), with one lens
that sees specters (red) and another that doesn’t (blue). The gimmick was
called “illusion-O.” If that wasn’t enough of a gimmick, Castle offered
the enticement that a lucky ticket holder could win a key that opens a
so-called haunted house and would inherit that house.

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Cyrus Zorba (Donald Woods) is a penniless family man, with a justifiably
fearful wife Hilda (Rosemary DeCamp), a pretty teen daughter Medea (Jo
Morrow), and Buck (Charles Herbert), a precocious 10-year-old whose hobby
is reading ghost books. The pleasant family is about to be evicted, and
its furniture is repossessed. The reason being is that Cy is paid a low-salary
as a paleontologist and a guide at the LA County Museum. In the nick of
time, the Zorba family inherits a furnished creepy Gothic mansion from
Cyrus’s estranged eccentric occultist uncle, Dr. Plato Zorba, a world traveller
who dies in Los Angeles without his family even knowing he was in town.
The uncle’s estate lawyer Ben Rush (Martin Milner) puts the fright on the
family by telling them their uncle Plato, whom he never saw, collected
ghosts and accumulated 12 with a 13th expected (1. The clutching hands.
2. The floating head. 3. Flaming skeleton. 4. Screaming woman. 5. Emilio,
the Italian chef, with cleaver in his hand. 6. His unfaithful wife. 7.
Her lover. 8. Executioner and decapitated head. 9. Hanging woman. 10. Lion.
11. Lion tamer without head. 12. Dr. Zorba. 13. ?). The will also leaves
the family Plato’s invention of “ghost viewers,” enabling them to view
the apparitions. Ben warns that ghosts come with the house, and if it’s
not lived in the will stipulates that the house goes to the state. The
family finds that Plato’s stern witch-like housekeeper, Elaine Zacharides
(Margaret Hamilton), formerly Plato’s assistant until a fallout when she
disagreed with his decision to withdraw all his money from the bank and
hide it somewhere in the house. She remains at her post without pay. Castle
delivers a Ouija board and a seance sequence and uncorks low-tech ghost
sightings that seemed more silly than frightening, such as a skeleton engulfed
by flames that transforms into a whirling specter. There’s soon the discovery
of Plato’s buried fortune by the curious Buck, and the tricky shyster lawyer
getting the kid to keep it a secret from his family. 

I guess what ruined this campy ghost tale for me besides the so-so
acting, the incomprehensible plot line and the uninspired storytelling,
was that I missed not having those cheaters at home to see the ghosts–all
I saw was a dull and crudely made haunted house tale. Though the film was
crap, it was one of Castle’s biggest hits. Which goes to show you, never
underestimate crap or overestimate the public’s taste.

March 6, 2010

“A cheesy gothic horror tale…

Filed under: Uncategorized — villagersfriday @ 7:43 am
“A cheesy
gothic horror tale.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Mr. Sardonicus is a cheesy gothic horror tale directed by William
Castle (”Strait-Jacket”/”House on Haunted Hill”), someone best known for
his innovative ad promotions and gimmicky devices he peppers his films
with during his heyday of the 1950s and 1960s. Part of the film is reserved
for William Castle’s opening and closing monologue. In the epilogue he
rails against the London fog in 1880 because his matches are too damp,
while in the prologue he has the audience in a “Punishment Poll” vote thumbs
down or up on whether Mr. Sardonicus got off too easy in the film–the
audiences were given glow-in-the-dark “thumb cards” with which they flashed
at the screen at the climax. 

The horror spectacle is flatly achieved and fails at both its comic
and scare efforts. Building to one frightening scene, the remainder of
the film after the mystery is revealed remains clunky and tedious. It’s
a pointless and twisted tale about a villainous baron’s greed and lack
of humanity due to a curse cast on him.

The film opens as brilliant London neurosurgeon Sir Robert Cargrave
(Ronald Lewis) is summoned by his former lover Maude (Audrey Dalton) to
her remote Moldavia castle in Gorslava where she resides with her brooding
husband Baron Sardonicus (Guy Rolfe). She was tricked into marrying him
and now feels in danger, and needs the help of Sir Robert. The baron suffers
from a scarred deformation of his face from his youth and covers it with
a mask whenever he is seen in public. The baron’s face has frozen into
a hideous grin after digging up his father’s grave for a winning lottery
ticket. Assisted by his faithful but sadistic one-eyed servant Krull (Oskar
Homolka), Sardonicus forces Cargrave to treat him with an untested procedure
by threatening to harm his wife if he doesn’t. The results look as if they
may be successful as the baron’s face is restored to normal, but it soon
becomes apparent that all is not well as the baron can’t get rid of the
curse. It all builds to an unsatisfying payoff.

March 5, 2010

Haunted Mansion (1998)

Filed under: Uncategorized — villagersfriday @ 4:13 am

If you add up the box office receipts of all his films, Harrison Ford is by some distance the biggest star of all time. Eddie Murphy currently sits fifth in this table, which might explain his recent focus on big studio family films.

With no apparent interest in writing or directing after the disastrous

Harlem Nights

, perhaps his motivation is simply to entertain more people than anyone in history. Then again, it could be the $20 million he gets for each film…

It seems charitable to come up with some excuse for his participation in The Haunted Mansion, for there's nothing in the script to recommend it. Murphy plays Jim Evers, a cheesy estate agent who neglects his family to focus on work. Jim promises to take his family away for the weekend, but on the way he makes them stop at one last call, a baroque mansion which has just come on the market. Naturally, complications arise, and before long he and his family are trapped in a nightmare involving ghosts, secret passages, and an ancient mystery.

The Haunted Mansion is based on a Disney ride, but this is a creaky merry-go-round compared with the thrilling rollercoaster that was


Pirates Of The Caribbean



. Murphy's character is prissy and vain, a man who avoids getting out of his car in case his shoes get dirty. Marsha Thomason, Shazza in TV's

Playing The Field

, is stunning but bland as his wife, and the comic turns (Terence Stamp, Wallace Shawn and Jennifer Tilly) are left embarrassingly adrift by a humour-free script.

This is, of course, a kids' film, but kids are just as sensitive to weak storytelling and non-jokes as adults, and possessed statues singing barbershop quartets is a non-joke.

What's perhaps most troubling is Disney's apparent policy of discreetly including racial tension as a plot element in its films.

The Lion King

's hyenas were clearly identified as being black, in a move that seemed purely designed to reinforce the antagonism between the two sets of characters.

Here at least the subtext is slightly less inflammatory; the reason the family are trapped in the mansion is because Murphy's (black) wife is the spitting image of the woman who had a love affair with the owner centuries ago, but could never marry him because "they were from two different worlds" - Disney-speak for 'she was black' apparently.

The Haunted Mansion is just a kids' film, but it's a rubbish one. Treat the family and rent

Robin Hood

instead.

March 2, 2010

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March 1, 2010

I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With (2007)

Filed under: Uncategorized — villagersfriday @ 11:53 am

At the beginning of Rajnesh Domalpalli’s beguiling “Vanaja,” an Indian music and dance trio performs an ancient story of an innocent girl who is forced to disrobe in front of an evil man. She calls on the gods for help and is supplied with so many layers to her sari that, eventually, the man passes out waiting for her to finish.

Among the audience members watching the performance is 15-year-old Vanaja (Mamatha Bhukya), the daughter of a widowed, alcoholic fisherman from a lower caste in southern India. The young girl dreams of becoming a kuchipudi dancer herself and gets her father to ask the area’s wealthy landlady, Rama Devi (Urmila Dammannagari), if Vanaja can work for her in the woman’s sprawling mansion. Rama Devi, in her day a famous kuchipudi dancer, is impressed by Vanaja’s cleverness, as well as her rudimentary dance skills, and hires her.

From there, the story twists and glides through unpredictable but completely believable occurrences. Vanaja shows great talent as a dancer, but her burgeoning career is interrupted when the landlady’s hunky son, Shekhar (Karan Singh), shows up. Up to that point, Vanaja has bubbled with curiosity about the world. She’s played “you show me yours” with the horny young postman; she’s romped through the village with her best friend. But she cannot dance in front of the landlady’s son, a would-be politician. Although she’s flirted with Shekhar rather shamelessly, and even peeked in at him while he is showering, she makes the mistake of humiliating him in front of his mother. Seeking to shame her, he rapes Vanaja and she becomes pregnant.

Although Vanaja lives at Rama Devi’s house, she still returns to her father’s hovel to tend to his needs and, especially, to lecture him against drinking. After her son is born, and Rama Devi finds out the boy is her grandson, Vanaja’s father sells him to her for 500,000 rupees.

What keeps all this from being an Indian remake of “Stella Dallas” are the extraordinarily winning performance of Bhukya in the title role, and Domalpalli’s sublime direction. Bhukya delivers an entrancing and natural performance, deftly balancing both the wide-eyed childishness of a young girl with the dawning awareness of life’s darker possibilities. She’s also an accomplished dancer, which she proves at several points in the film.

Can this wonder-filled film truly be not only Domalpalli’s first feature, but originally part of a thesis submission at Columbia University? Both in the film’s writing and direction, Domalpalli displays maturity, wisdom and a loving sense of visual and character detail.

On the surface, “Vanaja” almost seems like a folk tale in its simplicity, yet while it frequently invokes the spirit of the kind of allegory found in many folk tales, the film never actually becomes allegorical. Instead, Domalpalli lets character drive the story line, and we follow willingly along.

- David Wiegand


‘I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With’

SNOOZING VIEWER Comedy. Starring Jeff Garlin, Sarah Silverman, Bonnie Hunt and Amy Sedaris. Written and directed by Garlin. (Not rated. 80 minutes. At the Lumiere in San Francisco and the Shattuck in Berkeley.)

Something tells me Jeff Garlin doesn’t particularly care whether his vanity project, “I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With,” is a good film or not. Having a good time making a movie with his friends in his old neighborhood is apparently satisfying enough.

And while the good times had by all do come across, this scattershot, virtually plotless comedy is mostly a misfire, albeit a genial, gentle one. Fans of Garlin, of HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” might lap it up; all others are advised to stay away.

Garlin, the film’s writer and director, stars as James, a 39-year-old overweight, struggling actor who doesn’t have a girlfriend and lives with his mother.

“That shirt makes you look fat,” his mother nags.

“That’s because I am fat,” James replies. “If anything, I make this shirt look fat.”

His agent dumps him just when his dream part is up for grabs: the lead in the remake of “Marty,” the 1955 best picture winner that earned Ernest Borgnine an Oscar. He meets a hot girl (Sarah Silverman) working behind the ice cream parlor counter and is amazed when she shows interest in him - yet, she has a few screws loose, it seems. Also vying for his attention, maybe, is a cute elementary school teacher (Bonnie Hunt, wonderful), who is rumored to be a “chubby chaser.”

If this sounds like a breezy 80 minutes of entertainment, yes, it should have been. But Garlin’s directing has little pacing, and many of the borderline gags could have been salvaged with some sharper editing. And there’s a shocking amount of jokes and situations that just don’t work.

Still, it has its moments, and Garlin is truly a likable fellow. Hope to see him again in a movie sometime, perhaps with a stronger script and director.

– Advisory: This film contains mild language and sexual innuendo.

- G. Allen Johnson


‘The Taste of Tea’

POLITE APPLAUSE Comedy-drama. Starring Tadanobu Asano, Anna Tsuchiya and Maya Banno. Written and directed by Katsuhito Ishii. (Not rated. 143 minutes. At the 4 Star.)

Writer-director Katsuhito Ishii would hardly seem the logical choice to mine the territory of Yasujiro Ozu, the revered director of family dramas in the golden age of Japanese cinema, the 1950s and ’60s. But the onetime Tarantino wannabe has suddenly developed into a real filmmaker, as the gentle, pleasing 2003 movie “The Taste of Tea” demonstrates.

But hold on, the maker of the awful and awfully noisy action flick “Sharkskin Man and Peach Hip Girl” and the animated sequence in Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill Vol. 1″ hasn’t entirely gone straight. The rural family of six in “The Taste of Tea” have bizarre eccentricities, strange goals in life and even hallucinations. It’s Ozu on ecstasy.

The heart and soul of the episodic film is 8-year-old Sachiko (Maya Banno), who constantly sees a giant version of herself everywhere she goes. Her older brother (Takahiro Sato) has a crush on a new schoolmate, a half-American, half-Japanese (Anna Tsuchiya, memorably one of the “Kamikaze Girls”). Mom (Satomi Tezuka) seeks to rediscover her skills as an animator, dad (Tomokazu Miura) is a hypnotist who practices on the family, and the handsome uncle (heartthrob Tadanobu Asano) tells fascinatingly strange stories while trying to get over a love affair.

Apparently, Rinko Kikuchi, nominated for an Oscar for her work in “Babel,” has a small role here, but it was so small I missed it.

Quirky with a capital Q, “The Taste of Tea” is far too long at 143 minutes, but the endearing characters will stick with you far longer than that.

- G. Allen Johnson

February 28, 2010

STEVE MARTIN, Martin Short and…

Filed under: Uncategorized — villagersfriday @ 1:18 am

STEVE MARTIN, Martin Squat and Chevy Follow go south of the verge for “Three Amigos,” the cinematic equal of Montezuma’s revenge. It’s a calamity of a comedy, the professional perfect to concession-stand nachos con cheez.

Martin, as executive producer and cowriter, shoulders a hefty share of the blame for this limping, laughless lampoon. With cowriters Lorne Michaels and Randy Newman, he swipes lamely at B-westerns, singing cowboys and TV heroes like “The Cisco Kid.”

These amigos are just wild and crazy caballeros in rhinestone sombreros and satin chaps, circa 1916. They’re silent movie stars mistaken for authentic troubleshooters by a poor señorita (Patrice Martinez) whose village, Santa Poco, has become the stomping ground of the bandit El Guapo. The Amigos, between jobs, mistake her desperate cablegram for a movie offer and make for Poco pronto. When in Mexico, they mistake El Guapo (Alfonso Arau) and his band for costars and the shoot-’em-up for a movie shoot.

All the stars stick to their usual shtick, except Chase — who virtually sleeps through the piece. Looking like a Mr. Potatohead piñata, Chase is Pauncho to Martin’s Crisco (still the slippery guy), with Short not quite nutso enough as a second-string sidekick.

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The jokes are as old as Roy Rogers — “You can kiss me on the veranda,” she says. “The lips would be fine,” he says. And the plot gits along like a pokey dogie under the laborious direction of the beleaguered John Landis. He’s too loose with the reins here, allowing Martin to upstage his costars and Short to overcompensate. But I must say, he only draws attention to himself. And in a movie like this, you ought to hope nobody’ll notice you were in it.

February 26, 2010

Steam: The Turkish Bath (1997)

Filed under: Uncategorized — villagersfriday @ 3:18 pm

POLITE APPLAUSE
STEAM: Drama. Starring Alessandro Gassman, Francesca d’Aloja and Mehmet
Gunsur. Directed by Ferzan Ozpetek. Written by Stefano Tummolini and
Ozpetek. (Not rated. 96 minutes. In Turkish, Italian and French with English
subtitles. At the Castro Theatre through December 17.)



Istanbul is the setting for “Steam,” an erotic drama about a young Italian
designer who inherits a Turkish steam bath when his eccentric aunt dies.
Separated from job, Rome and a wife he’s grown tired of, Francesco becomes
intoxicated by the ancient exotic city — and finds his life opening in ways
he never imagined.

“Steam,” which opens today at the Castro for a two-week run, is
something of a surprise. Judging by its title and a publicity shot of two
young men lounging in a steam bath — one of them leering in the other’s
direction — it looks like some homoerotic cheapie that the Castro booked
for instant gay appeal.

But director Ferzan Ozpetek, who makes his directing debut here after 15
years as an assistant director, has genuine talent and more on his mind than
weighted glances and well-posed beefcake. Reared in two cultures, Turkish
and Italian, Ozpetek has an eye for physical detail, a feeling for cinematic
rhythms and a gift for suggesting psychological mysteries through visual
analogues.

His protagonist, Francesco, is a man adrift. Successful in business but
angry and frustrated, he’s ripe for the psychic reflection of extended
travel. Instead of returning home to Italy, he stays on in Istanbul, falls
in love with its aura of voluptuous pleasures and decides to remodel
the hamam (steam bath) and not sell it to a wealthy developer.

Gradually, by reading letters, sleeping in his aunt’s bed, talking to
her friends and studying her personal effects, Francesco “meets” her for
the first time and recognizes similar
ities: their sense of aloneness, their estrangement from family, their
feeling that Istanbul is a “generous” mother to wandering children.

Francesco is played by Alessandro Gassman (“A Month by the Lake”), the
son of veteran Italian film star Vittorio Gassman. It’s not an easy part to
play, since Francesco speaks little and mostly reacts to the siren of
Istanbul, but Gassman draws a convincing portrait of latent, unhinged
desire.

As Marta, the cold and regal wife who follows him to Istanbul, Francesca
d’Aloja has a larger handicap. “Steam” stacks the deck against her,
associating her with soulless materialism and the masks of corporate
society. Only later, when Istanbul starts to work its spell on her, too, and
the film’s focus shifts to her, does Marta emerge as more than an
unfortunate but picturesque impediment.

“Steam” is contrived and obvious in the way it draws connections
between Istanbul and the sensual awakening of a series of people. But
Ozpetek has such a smooth way of using atmosphere to tell a story — and
shadow to underscore the sense of enigma — that his film’s pleasures
outweigh its defects.

February 25, 2010

Before Night Falls (2000)

Filed under: Uncategorized — villagersfriday @ 12:03 pm

Have you ever gone to see a flick, fully with child it to be a good one, and while watching it you realize the film is&#8212for lack of a well-advised b wealthier word&#8212transcendent? This happens to me very hardly ever. I commonly be acquainted with what to expect in a film, and I’ve also seen my share of hype. So when I instance maxim the phoney trailer for Before Night Falls, with its accompanying heel over of awards, I was nosy yet skeptical. The film looked gorgeous, and I love Johnny Depp, so I eventually went to see it. By the time I left, I considered Before Night Falls to be the third best film of 2000 (just behind Requiem For A Dream and Dancer In The Dark).

Leap up ahead a few months, and Before Night Falls arrives in the correspondence. I enjoyment the time to watch it again as I unsuitable it in my DVD player. I select “Play Movie,” but then I pause: Would it be worth it? Could my inferior merchandise viewing possibly live up to my first skill of seeing the film? Would I have the same temperamental reactions? Or would I recognize a clanger in a shot and have a famed scene forever ruined?

The answer? Yes. Yes it can. It can and does live up to every memory I had from my first duration.

In the forefront Night Falls is the literal piece of Reinaldo Arenas, a gay Cuban writer. Castro’s government persecutes Arenas for his “subversive” books and his open homosexuality. The film is based on Arenas’ posthumously published memoirs. Julian Schnabel directs the film, keeping it accurate to the memoirs while at the uniform time adding his own personal touch. The motion picture sometimes appears gimmicky (such as when Arenas describes the four “types” of gay men), but mostly the gimmicks supplement humor and don’t remove the viewer from the recital. Schnabel, coming from a painter’s background, also looks at each formulate and cycle as a cinematic painting. And indeed, the film is humming and vibrant, with some shockingly powerful and beautiful images. For example, for those who have seen the trailer but not the film, the train where Arenas is on some rocks by the beach, and it begins to rain as he screams. Shots of such knockout are not uncommon in the blur, but they are juxtaposed with images of tense cruelty and pain, which dream the audience appreciate them more.

Javier Bardem portrays Reinaldo Arenas in a career-making performance. The Academy® knew what they were doing when they nominated Bardem looking for best bib actor (although indubitably didn’t know what they were doing by in actuality giving it to Russell Crowe). Bardem portrays all the aspects of Arenas’ survival unflinchingly: the tribade, the creative Grub Streeter, and the (literally) tortured artist. To institutionalize it bluntly, Bardem made me roll on the floor, moan, and see what it really means to compromise your ideals and beliefs. If the rest of the film were trash, Bardem’s performance would be reason enough to see this film.

However, it is not perfect; Schnabel takes less heed with the supporting characters. After Arenas’ adolescence, where it’s veritably easy to understand who is who, Schnabel introduces tons characters without counsel or explanation. One of Arenas’ closest companions in appears through a very confusing sequence. We not in any degree truly know who he is, but he plays a paramount role in the film and cannot be ignored. Other characters enter the plot, and the choice of who gets formally introduced and who is not has no rhyme or object, as far as I can tell. The most confusing standpoint is that Johnny Depp plays two separate characters: the sooner is a drag queen in quod; the subordinate is as a Lieutenant who interrogates Arenas. We’re not sure if this second individual is the chief lone out of drag, or if Depp is playing someone else entirely. In the termination, it is Depp playing someone else entirely, but I don’t recall why Schnabel would cast the that having been said actor in both roles.

Arenas was a renowned lyrist, and his words create scenes that are as literate as they are beautiful. The film makes left of centre eat of his metrical composition, as wonderfully as the music of Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed, with Carter Burwell composing most of the music. He chose lush, sweeping music than fades in and out, be fond of the tides of the ocean; played on synthesizers, the score doesn’t politic like an orchestra playing; ironically, the synthesizers sound more organic than a magnanimous orchestra would and go a eat one’s heart out custom towards making the integument excellent, as it were. Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed’s contributions cannot be discerned from Burwell’s, and one has to spectacle if Schnabel really needed the additional music they accommodate, or if he starkly wanted their names associated with the film.

Regardless of the faults, I’m glad I saw Before Night Falls again. And if you don’t have the courage of one’s convictions pretend me when I say it’s supreme, I foretell watch it again.

February 23, 2010

That Hamilton Woman (1941)

Filed under: Uncategorized — villagersfriday @ 9:03 pm
“Winston Churchill’s favorite
film; he reportedly saw it 83 times.”

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Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Winston Churchill’s favorite film; he reportedly saw it 83 times.
It’s a patriotic film released during WWII, whose theme is that you can’t
make peace with a madman who is trying to rule the world—you must destroy
him (the reference to Hitler was obvious and wasn’t lost to the public
who made the film a box office hit). The historical romantic drama is energetically
directed by Alexander Korda (”Rembrandt”/”The Private Life of Henry VIII”/”Fire
Over England”), a close friend of Churchill’s, and written by Walter Reisch
and R.C. Sherriff. It features spouses Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh,
who prior to their marriage both had a well-publicized affair while married
to others. In this Hollywood made but very British film they depict an
affair between Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton, an illicit relationship between
the marrieds that caused a national scandal.

The film opens in Calais, where a destitute English woman is caught
stealing a bottle of wine and put in jail. There she tells another English
prisoner that she’s Lady Hamilton and then tells her life story. 

Sir William Hamilton (Alan Mowbray), an elderly rich widower who
is the British ambassador to the Court of Naples, receives in 1786 the
beautiful 18-year-old Emma Hart (Vivien Leigh) who arrives in Naples with
her chaperone, the crude and earthy mother of her low birth, Mrs. Cadogan-Lyon
(Sara Allgood). Sir William’s nephew Charles Greville passed Emma onto
him without her knowledge and never intended to marry her as she thought.
Impressed with her beauty, the old codger tutors her to be a lady and marries
her. A few years pass and the dashing Captain Horatio Nelson (Laurence
Olivier) visits Sir William in Naples to say England is at war with France
and needs troops from Naples. When her hubby is too slow to respond, Emma
helps Nelson see the Queen of Naples immediately and she talks the king
into giving Nelson 10,000 troops. Five years later Nelson returns and when
the neutral Naples is too frightened of Napoleon Bonaparte to help Nelson,
Emma helps him get his supplies. She’s also shocked to see Nelson has been
blinded in one eye and has lost an arm. Nelson now goes to fight Napoleon’s
fleet in Egypt’s Nile and wins a smashing victory. Upon returning to Naples,
the now promoted to admiral, Nelson, starts his affair with Emma and after
rescuing the Hamiltons and the royals from the revolutionary mob. Nelson
then follows his original orders to go to Malta. His disobeying orders
to save Lady Hamilton, receives the ire of the British Admiralty. They
order him to return to England alone. Back in London the dour Lady Frances
Nelson (Gladys Cooper) meets her hero husband, and when she soon finds
out that hubby knocked up Lady Hamilton glumly announces she’ll never give
him a divorce. Emma in 1801 has the child, a girl, and refuses to reconcile
with Sir William, choosing to live happily instead with Lord Nelson in
a country cottage. In 1805 Nelson is called upon to defend England’s fleet
from being attacked by Napoleon and his ally of Spain, at the cape of Trafalgar.
Nelson gives England its greatest naval victory at the Battle of Trafalgar,
but dies in the battle. Though he provided amply for Emma, the British
courts refused to allow her to collect and she would become a debtor and
her life would end tragically as a pauper.

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