{"id":8838,"date":"2017-02-23T14:49:42","date_gmt":"2017-02-23T14:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=8838"},"modified":"2017-06-20T13:28:37","modified_gmt":"2017-06-20T13:28:37","slug":"sixty-years-a-film-critic-how-it-all-started","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=8838","title":{"rendered":"Sixty years a film critic … how it all started"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

LONDON \u2013 My life as film critic began 60 years ago with a log of movies I saw along with my verdict on each one. I was 11.<\/p>\n

The first movie image I recall seeing was of a man with curly white hair in a battered top hat who reaches deep into a pocket of his baggy overcoat and when he draws out his hand, his fingers and thumb are lighted candles.<\/p>\n

Harpo Marx in \u201cA Night in Casablanca\u201d. Harpo tries to comfort a girl named Maggie on a park bench. He pretends that his eyes are made of glass and he mimes removing them, cleans them and puts them back. He plays \u201cHappy Birthday\u201d on his harp and does the magic with the candles.<\/p>\n

The first movie I saw on my own was the musical \u201cWhite Christmas\u201d, with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen, when I was 9. The Odeon cinema in Ashford, Kent, was packed and I entered right in the middle of the picture. One of the usherettes led me down the aisle with a torch to find a seat and I had\u00a0that amazing sensation of going from daylight into the darkened corridor of a cinema to emerge in a crowded auditorium\u00a0with a giant, glittering screen.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve loved it ever since. My professional career commenced 55 years ago when I was 16 as a trainee reporter on the Gravesend Reporter in north Kent and over a long career on newspapers and magazines in the U.K., Canada and the United States, I have always found a way to write about the cinema.<\/p>\n

The first feature in my movie log, which I kept from January 1957 to January 1959, was a musical titled \u201cSerenade\u201d starring Mario Lanza. It was based on a novel by James M. Cain although even with Anthony Mann as director it didn\u2019t retain\u00a0much from the noir writer. The opera was fine, though, and I gave it three stars.<\/p>\n

I learn now that director Michael Curtiz (\u201cCasablanca\u201d) optioned the novel originally and he used a similar approach when he adapted \u201cA Stone for Danny Fisher\u201d by Harold Robbins into an Elvis Presley vehicle titled \u201cKing Creole\u201d, which earned a full five stars in my movie log.<\/p>\n

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I was a big Elvis fan and so \u201cLoving You\u201d and \u201cJailhouse Rock\u201d also received five stars although an exploitation quickie titled \u201cDon\u2019t Knock the Rock\u201d, featuring Bill Haley and Little Richard, got\u00a0only three.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m pleased to see that the five-star accolade went to \u201cThe Fastest Gun Alive\u201d with Glenn Ford, \u201cMister Roberts\u201d with Henry Fonda and Jack Lemmon, \u201cFear Strikes Out\u201d with Anthony Perkins, \u201cEnemy Below\u201d with Robert Mitchum, \u201cTeacher\u2019s Pet\u201d with Doris Day and Clark Gable.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Vikings\u201d with Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis also had five stars along with \u201cIndiscreet\u201d with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, \u201cThe Young Lions\u201d with Marlon Brando, Mongomery Clift and Dean Martin, \u201cThe Defiant Ones\u201d with Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis, and Hitchcock\u2019s \u201cVertigo\u201d with James Stewart and Kim Novak.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m amused to see that I gave Lewis Allen\u2019s wartime romance \u201cAnother Time, Another Place\u201d three stars and mentioned Lana Turner, Glynis Johns and Barry Sullivan but not future 007 Sean Connery.<\/p>\n

When I turned 12, I began to add a comment or two to some entries. Martin Ritt\u2019s black-and-white drama of marital strife \u201cNo Down Payment\u201d earned five stars and the comment: \u201cBrilliant acting, amusing and highly dramatic\u201d. Set in a California sub-division, its ensemble cast included Joanne Woodward, Tony Randall, Sheree North, Jeffrey Hunter and Canadian-born British actress Patricia Owens, with whom I was in love at the time, which probably accounts for the rating.<\/p>\n

Even with Patricia Owens, however, the original \u201cThe Fly\u201d rated just three. \u201cThe Fiend Who Walked the West\u201d starring Hugh O\u2019Brian and future producer Robert Evans was \u201camusing at times\u201d with three stars. Raoul Walsh\u2019s film of the Norman Mailer World War II novel \u201cThe Naked and the Dead\u201d, which I had read, was deemed \u201cslightly too long\u201d with four stars. I\u2019m pleased that along with Aldo Ray and Cliff Robertson in the cast I noted William Campbell, Richard Jaeckel and James Best.<\/p>\n

War pictures \u201cIce Cold in Alex\u201d and \u201cDunkirk\u201d, both with John Mills, were \u201ctypically British\u201d with four stars apiece. Anthony Mann\u2019s swampy sex tale \u201cGod\u2019s Little Acre\u201d with Robert Ryan and Tina Louise, was \u201cweird\u201d with three stars.<\/p>\n

Arthur Penn\u2019s Western \u201cThe Left Handed Gun\u201d with Paul Newman as Billy the Kid based on Gore Vidal\u2019s play, had \u201cgood acting\u201d at four stars. My favourite childhood star Roy Rogers had played William Bonney in \u201cBilly the Kid Returns\u201d (1938) and another favourite of my youth, Audie Murphy, played him in \u201cThe Kid From Texas\u201d (1950).<\/p>\n

That led to two lifelong literary interests, first tales of the Old West, which resulted in discovering the wonderful novels of Larry McMurtry, and then, after Audie Murphy starred in \u201cThe Quiet American\u201d (1958), discovering Graham Greene, whose novels I re-read every 10 years.<\/p>\n

My parents said that when I was little and\u00a0they asked me what I wanted to do in life, I said, \u201cI want to be a reporter and go to Hollywood and meet Roy Rogers.\u201d And that\u2019s what I did.<\/p>\n

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By Ray Bennett LONDON \u2013 My life as film critic began 60 years ago with a log of movies I saw along with my verdict on each one. I was 11. The first movie image I recall seeing was of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1263,14],"tags":[4490,4491,4489,4488],"class_list":["post-8838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-memory-lane","category-reviews","tag-jailhouse-rock","tag-vertigo","tag-white-christmas","tag-harpo-marx"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8838"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9099,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8838\/revisions\/9099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}