The Last King of Scotland (2006)

Directed by Kevin MacDonald
Starring Forest Whittaker (Idi Amin) and James McAvoy (as Nicholas Garrigan)

After watching this film I left the cinema with a sense of disappointment, and as I walked to the pub I wondered why.

It wasn't just because it was too long, although I thought that the opening scenes could have been telescoped and wondered what exactly was the point of Gillian Anderson’s role.

It wasn’t the final violence, disgusting as it was. In fact I thought it was long overdue, considering the subject matter.

The editing style was a bit flashy for my taste at times and I would like to have seen some of the minor roles fleshed out more. The British diplomat perhaps, the other Ugandan doctor certainly.

I realised my problem was with the lead characters.

Forest Whitaker has been praised and honoured for his performance, justly so, for he is magnificent. But it upsets the balance of the film, which is not ‘The Life of Idi Amin’, (along the lines of All the King’s Men) but ‘The early life of Dr Nicholas Garrigan’ (along the lines of Moby Dick).

And I simply didn’t care for or about Nicholas Garrigan. As written, the character is feckless, superficial, mouthy and naïve (read ‘stupid’) and there is nothing James McAvoy can do to make him sympathetic.

I found it difficult to believe that Nicholas would have informed on the Minister of Health, having watched the violent mood swings and incipient paranoia of Amin. He is a doctor after all, and apparently quite a good one. And his affair with the dictator’s wife beggar’s belief, unless I’ve grown too old to remember the power of youthful hormones.

Whatever his motives, his behaviour overall leads to the torture and death of at least three innocent, even good, people. And yet there is no sense of Nicholas’ story being a tragic one, merely that a silly boy is lucky to get away free from the consequences of his actions.

But the film is worth seeing for Forest Whitaker, amiable buffoon and paranoid monster, moving from charm to bonhomie to suspicion to rage and back again with bewildering and terrifying ease.

I think the producers made the wrong film.

The Long Goodbye (1973)

Directed by Robert Altman. Starring Elliott Gould, Nina van Pallandt and Sterling Hayden.

Chandler purists don't like this film. And you can't blame them because Gould's Marlowe is a chain-smoking slob, forever muttering to himself, and who finally blows what little of the original's integrity he manages to display throughout the movie.

Let's ask a few questions:

Is this movie a typical example of Altman's cinematic flair?

Sure is. It's as flashy as hell. There's the usual overlapping, aimless dialogue; a scene involving reflections in a window; also great ensemble acting. Credit where it's due.

What about the acting?

Pretty good. Hayden's good, though his character is an irritating bore. Mark Rydell is not bad as a gangster boss, although probably he was just playing himself. He is a director after all. Nina is pretty pretty, for a skinny bird. Elliott is just brilliant. Never better. In every scene. He carries the film, such as it is.

Comedy?

It has moments: the thing with the cat; the thing with the trainee hood; the thing with the guard who likes to do impersonations (I liked his Walter Brennan, but Cary Grant was poor). Elliott was hilarious throughout.

Drama, intrigue, suspense?

Not a lot.

Does it reflect the era when it was made?

Definitely. The half-naked tarts in the neighbouring apartment, doing yoga and making candles, the 'aren't we so cool' condescension to the bourgeoisie, the occasional existential violence.

Character development?

Don't be silly.

Judgement?

I enjoyed it but mostly for Gould's performance and because it was a diverting new take on an old character. But it didn't work for me, and I just want to go back and watch Bogie in The Big Sleep or Dick Powell in Farewell, My Lovely (Mitchum , come to that).

But suit yourself. Makes no difference to me.

Shane (1953)

Directed by George Stevens. Starring Alan Ladd, Van Heflin, Jean Arthur, Brandon de Wilde.


SPOILER ALERT


Story

Shane rides into the Starret homestead, heading north. The purpose of this journey, if such there be, is not revealed. Joe Starrett is suspicious of what is obviously a gunman, especially when Ryker, the local big rancher simultaneously arrives with yet another demand that Starrett and the other homesteaders get out. It becomes clear that Ryker is conducting a campaign of harassment against the squatters in order to maintain the open range for his cattle.

When it becomes clear that Shane is not involved, he and Starrett become friends and this is symbolised by their joint effort to uproot a tree-stump, the scene portentously shot, edited and scored for maximum emotional impact. It's clear also that Starrett's wife, Marion, is drawn to the handsome, soft-spoken but dangerous stranger; and that their son, Joey, from whose point of view much of the drama is seen, already hero-worships him.

Shane interrupts his journey, takes off his gun and sets to work for Starrett. When Ryker loses patience and hires the black-clad, snake -like killer, Wilson, to root out the settlers at whatever cost, the crisis comes to a head. One of the farmers is murdered, 'legally', and Ryker hatches a plot to kill Starrett, a natural community leader, at a 'peace conference'. Shane intervenes and in a fight shot to parallel the earlier stump-pulling prevents the other man from attending the meeting.

He challenges Wilson in professional style and kills him, as well as Ryker. Joey, as ever observing, watches Shane re-holster with a memorable flourish, a flashy hint of pride in a job well done, then shouts out a warning that Ryker's brother has the drop on him. Shane is wounded but still kills the other man.

Then, following a little moral lecture to Joey, he rides away, heedless of the boy's pleas: 'Shane, come back . . .I love you . . .Mother loves you!'

Style

With Shane George Stevens wanted, it seems, to take a routine story and present it with fresh depth, with a combination of realism and cinematic beauty. In telling it through the eyes of a child he can merge reality into legend.

The film is set in a valley, not just beautiful but obviously fertile, the kind of place for which men would kill and die, but the small town in it and the the settlers' homes are makeshift at best, squalid at worst.

Stevens emphasises the terrifying loudness of Shane's initial display of gunfire and the brutality of Stonewall's death in a muddy street, but he also achieves the effect of Wilson's effortless and graceful mounting of his horse by running backwards film of him dismounting. The deer's antlers' framing of Shane when he first rides in is well-known, but Stevens uses the same trick when Stonewall storms out through the saloon door, smashing a hole through which we see Ryker, his brother and Wilson, silent and malevolent.

Such things draw attention to themselves and are, to my mind, a flaw to which Stevens was prone.

Themes

For all that the film ends withe defeat and the death of 'bad guys', we nonetheless leave it with a feeling of melancholy. The victory of the settlers is tempered by the departure of their glamorous champion, the fracture of a family and the passing of an heroic way of life.

The friendship of Starrett and Shane is close. Forget homosexuality, but watch their shared pleasure in uprooting the stump together and taking on a bunch of cowboys in the saloon. Starrett is a man shackled to the treadmill of his farm, with just a woman and boy for company. His other acquaintances are a group of timorous neighbours, who have no strength but what he gives them. Only Shane shares his resolution, but complements his stolidity with style and deadly skill.

But it is a doomed friendship. One is a settler, one a wanderer. And there is Marion. Their last meeting is a vicious fight for the right to face Ryker and Wilson. Shane's motive is to save Starrett's life, for the sake of Marion; Joe's to prove himself a man in her eyes. Shane, fighting unfairly for once, uses his gun to knock out his opponent before taking his gun, with obvious phallic symbolism.

Marion's contentment with life is shattered. From now on, she will know that there is a man she prefers to her husband, and whom she has now lost forever. Moreover she has blurted out her frustration with the grinding toil of her daily life. If that has improved, now that Ryker is dead, that improved has been achieved by the use of guns, something she has opposed. She knows too that Joey's fascination with guns has been reinforced by the role model of Shane.

Joey has lost his surrogate father and senses the estrangement between his parents.

Ryker is no typical villain. He is even given the opportunity to put his case, the case of all conservatives who see a world they love passing. His methods are violent, but not murderous at first. In turning to Wilson, he is betraying what moral code he has. Compare him with Ben Johnson's Calloway, a bullying cowboy eventually repelled by the murder of Stonewall.

Ryker is proud of opening up the territory, defeating Indians and rustlers and imposing his own law for want of any other. Now he sees all he has done is clear the way for others with alien values. Not only is official law approaching, with a marshal a hundred miles away, but it is brought to his doorstep by 'squatters' bearing bits of legal paper.

Shane is like Ryker, a man whose days are past, although 'not quite yet' as he says, contemplating one last job to be performed in the old-fashioned way.

We know nothing of Shane's past, but we note his lightning reaction to the cocking of a gun. He remarks with disapproval on the number of fences near Starrett's land. He says he is heading North. Where? Perhaps he is another Wilson, on his way to work for another Ryker. If he helps Starrett, it is for personal reasons, but not because of self-interest.

If John Wayne had played the part - and it has affinities with Ethan Edwards and Hondo - instead of Alan Ladd, I doubt that we would have perceived the inner sadness of the man, as he contemplates the the woman he can never have, the son who will never be born to him, the friend he must hurt, the open land he must watch carved up and the life he must lose.

Some say he is dead at the end of the film. I cannot say, but he is a dead man riding.

Conclusion

So are there any winners? As the old guy says at the end of The Magnificent Seven, 'Only the farmers have won.' Who are these farmers who have replaced the pioneering Ryker and the heroic Shane?

They are a pusillanimous crowd, only able to survive if they find a strong leader and someone not afraid to fight their fights for them. These are the men who despise Shane for initially refusing to fight, then worrying about the consequences for them when he does, who call his profession 'murder'. One is a comic Swede, one a boastful old soldier, another lazy drunk, their women plain and dowdy. Only the Starretts have class. And even they will help turn the wide open spaces into little parcels of suburbia, happily growing their 'taters' and rearing their hogs.

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

Directed by and starring Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood carries his stardom easily and confidently. Throughout this film he wears a scruffy beard, bisected by a long scar from a sabre slash, and spits streams of tobacco juice at anything that moves. But none of this can prevent his genuine charisma shining through.

He's not afraid of competition either, happy in the past to cede the screen to a scenery-chewing Eli Wallach, an orang-utan or, here, a loquacious old Indian offering periodic morsels of off-the-wall wisdom.

An exchange, one of the best jokes, shared between Josey and Lone Watie, played by Chief Dan George, encapsulates the film's theme. Josey bemoans the fact that, ' When I get to likin' someone, they ain't around long.'

'I notice,' replies Lone, 'when you get to dislikin' someone they ain't around long neither.'

Josey Wales is a variation on The Man with No Name Character and we get more than our fair share of superhuman gunplay. In fact, for students of Western gunfights, this film provides some of the best. Look out for 'The Missouri Roll', 'the Missouri Boatride' and the strangely thoughtful scene where a young bounty-hunter is forced to back down by Josey. Rather than breathe a sigh of relief, Josey waits, knowing that pride will bring the man back. He does indeed return, to certain death.

Unlike Clint's heroes for Leone, we are given some motivation for Josey's character. Forced to watch the murder by pro-Union guerrillas of his wife and son, he arms himself with a burning hatred and a deadly skill with firearms, and sets off on a quest for vengeance.

And we see his gradual and reluctant re-integration into society. A motley band of outsiders coalesce around Josey, drawn to his strength and diverting him from his vengeance. The little community, populated by familiar Western types is both a re-creation of his own lost innocence and a restoration of a society fractured by war.

Perhaps the film is too optimistic - Josey's love for the sister of a 'Redleg', conceivably one of those who murdered his family, the pact with the Comanche chief - but interestingly this all happens outside of established society, where government is seen as a malevolent force. And amongst the spirit of reconciliation, Josey's revenge must proceed.

An episodic film, a succession of quirky characters, miniature dramas, and punctuated by well-staged gunfights. Clint's best Western, in my opinion, a fine film in the twilight of the genre's life.

Waterloo (1970)

Directed by Sergei Bondarchuk and starring Rod Steiger as Napoleon and Christopher Plummer as Wellington.

So often a war film does not give any idea of the scale of a battle. I remember watching Cromwell's recreation of the Battle of Naseby, and seeing what appeared to be a minor skirmish between a few cavalrymen, with the outcome hingeing on one simple ruse.

The logistics of creating a major battle between armies are so great, even with the assistance of CGI, that very often the film chooses to focus on the contribution of one unit. This technique also has the benefit of emphasising character and concentrates the drama. On reflection, Saving Private Ryan, for all its power and pyrotechnics, adopts this approach.

The Longest Day's huge scale is in fact a patchwork of individual human stories from all ranks of the military and civilian participants.

Movies which have made a serious effort to stage a realistic battle include Paths of Glory, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Alamo, Patton and Midway. But the best of the lot is Waterloo.

Forget character. Steiger is hammy, Plummer so understated as to be a caricature of the stiff-upper-lipped, haughty English aristocrat. There's a nod to the other ranks involved and one simple soldier is allowed to voice the one anti-war remark. Otherwise the dialogue is made up of carefully selected 'famous quotations' or vague, simplistic indications of what the hell is going on. 'He who wins the farmhouse,wins the battle.' Don't ask why.

But as a spectacle it is unsurpassed. Amid great columns of smoke, we see from a helicopter huge British squares attacked by hundreds of French cavalry, massive batteries of cannon, the sieges of Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte. Bondarchuk re-stages the famous charge of the Royal Scots Greys -'the finest cavalry in Europe, and the worst-led' - in the style of the paintings produced later, and likes it so much he lets us see it it slow motion. Napoleon staggers blindly though black smoke as the battle slips away from him.

Although the scale is huge, you won't come away from this film with much insight into how the Waterloo was won and lost. The absence of Grouchy, the arrival of Blucher, the impetuosity of Ney, the illness of Bonaparte all seem to be significant, but do not expect to know the strategies of the commanders, to understand the on-field tactics, or see individual initiative, heroics and blunders.

Nonetheless, Waterloo is magnificent. But, as they say, 'C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre' - nor a great film.

Christmas Films

As a rule I avoid Christmas films, that is films with a Christmas theme. You look forward to a week of wall-to-wall movies on TV and you get all this treacly, sentimental, optimistic, life-affirming, lets-all-love-each-other mush. Family films! But let me not be Scrooge-like. Here's a few that can seduce even me into a tearful desire to embrace humanity, plus one or two antidotes to philanthropy.

Mind you, I'm a sucker for the usual Christmas perennials, like The Great Escape and The Wizard of Oz, and I have my own personal treats, like my Laurel and Hardy compilation or their Way Out West. Or an old Bogart or Cagney. Doesn't The Roaring Twenties end at Chrstmastime? Back to the theme:

Three Godfathers is a greatly under-rated film. It has all the hallmarks of a John ford film - John Wayne, eccentric supports, comedy, amazing location photography, beautifully composed. What some would call sentimentality I call real emotion. In any case, it's Christmas! And why shouldn't there be a allegorically religious Western? This tale of redemption carries its message lightly and is rooted in deep humanity. The more I see it, the more it rises in my estimation.

Gremlins. Bedford Falls is invaded by malevolent cuddly dolls. Great fun, shot through with a dark, nasty streak, and full of little jokes for film buffs. Worth seeing, if only for the cinema full of entranced gremlins watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarf's. I like the one who puts a crisp packet over each ear. As the man said, 'We all dream of being a child again, even the worst of us. Maybe the worst of us most of all.'

A Christmas Carol, the one with Alastair Sim, the only one. Alastair was an actor with a face that could be jovial or unpleasant, with a delivery that could be very - I'm looking for a word here that means humorous with an edge - sardonic, that's it. He's the perfect Scrooge.

Holiday Inn. What more could you want? Bing and Fred. Irving Berlin songs. Bugger the plot.

Meet Me in St Louis. I don't like Judy Garland much. She wasn't pretty and I hated her self-indulgent, self-pitying, prima donna final years, but in her youth she had a certain charm when she sang. Somewhere Over the Rainbow always moves me, as does Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas in this film. Not only that, but it's a perfectly realised piece of turn-of-the-century Americana . . .(yawn).

There are a lot of Christmas films I need to see. I'm told Miracle on 34th Street (1947) is pretty good. The Bishop's Wife, with Cary Grant, is another.

If you need a corrective, how about Die Hard? I don't care what anyone says, I love it. Old Bruce undercuts all the impossible heroics with his little quips and Alan Rickman is the kind of villain that villains should be. British, for a start. All he lacks is a moustache to twirl.

But the greatest anti-Christmas film of all is It's a Wonderful Life. Oh yes it is. It is one of the best films ever made. Direction, acting, photography, editing are all impeccable. This is a dark story, a scream of despair, that ends in suicide. For George Bailey really does kill himself. All that stuff with the angel is a dream, that flashes through his brain as he drowns. There is no angel, only a good man who is ground down not only by the stupidity and the corruption and the small-mindedness of others but also by the crushing of his own dreams. Only the miracle of an angel can remedy this situation, and, as we know, there is no such thing.

I see there was an IMDb poll on this subject.

Peter Boyle

Peter Boyle has died.

I suppose most people remember his turn as the monster in Young Frankenstein, especially his song-and-dance routine with Puttin' on the Ritz. OK, that was good fun, but for real class acting you have to go back to The Friends of Eddie Coyle, where he played a shady character called Dillon.

Friends, directed by Peter Yates, is based on the novel by former Boston DA, George V Higgins, and incidentally provides Bob Mitchum with one of his finest roles. It's a fine, but forgotten film. I'm not sure it's even available on DVD.

Higgin's novels are unusual in that they are composed almost entirely of dialogue, rather like those of Ivy Compton-Burnett. It's no mean trick to advance the plot of a thriller purely with conversations but Higgins pulls it off in highly readable fashion. The film is also heavy on dialogue and remains thoughtful and downbeat throughout. Nonetheless it is absorbing and for my money one of the best gangster films ever made.

The 'friends' of the title is highly ironic, for no-one is to be trusted, least of all the cops, who conduct a favour-for-favour relationship with the various hoods involved.

Boyle's Dillon is a bartender, with fingers in many criminal pies. One of his 'friends' is Mitchum's small-timer, Eddie, trying to avoid prison and tempted to shop one of his other 'friends' in exchange for leniency. Dillon also is receiving his $50 a week from the cops. He is greasy, slippery, humourless and menacing, with his great bulk and slow, padding walk. He is also totally without scruple, and by the end of the film we find he is probably the most evil of all the dodgy characters involved.

It's a memorable performance, but Boyle's potential as a heavy - he was never going to be a romantic lead -was never realised. A lot of TV work came to him as the years passed and he seems to have retired into the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond.

The Prestige

Yesterday I got our new TV working. More or less. For some reason my DVDs are all in black and white, but no doubt all will be well. It's a 28 inch wide-screen and, as luck would have it, got it's first real test later when TCM showed Lawrence of Arabia. Now that is a test, and it passed with flying colours. Lawrence is a truly wonderful film. The more often I see it the more I admire the dialogue, the wealth of great actors, the music, the photography and Lean's great vision and, most of all, his control of all the elements.

I once read a criticism of the film, namely that for all its scope and scale, there is little at its centre, that we know Lawrence no better at the end of the film than we do at the beginning.

Isn't that the point?

But my raptures over my new TV were soon put into perspective, because I went to the pictures later. I do this rarely and I always realise afresh that no TV, however big and expensive can compare with the wondrous experience of sitting in the dark trying to take in that huge screen, which can with equal ease show you a raging storm at sea or a single drop of water on a woman's cheek.

If only I could pause the film sometimes and go make a cup of tea.

I went to see The Prestige. Good cast, up-and-coming director, intriguing story, technically brilliant. But half an hour too long, and basically a daft story which could not bear the weight of its treatment. Hollywood would have made it with more dash and pace 50 years ago. Maybe Hitchcock. Cagney and Bogart doing the Bale and whatisname roles.

The Wild Geese

The Wild Geese is rubbish.

A simple adventure story starts with a montage of scenes of suffering Africa, complete with song by Joan Armatrading, before we cut to Richard Burton playing a drunk, perhaps the only role he was capable of by this stage. He, of course, is an expert and commands the undying loyalty of all who have ever worked with him.

Richard Harris is an expert too, a 'planner'. He also has an embarrassingly obnoxious son, whom he loves dearly - so we know what will happen to him, don't we? He's also a 'liberal', who is persuaded to join the mission only because it is to save the only good African leader on the continent. His liberalism does not prevent him, however, planning the death of over 200 men by cyanide gas. There's even a token black mercenary who is reassured by Harris' presence that he is not being asked to do anything unworthy.

Hardy Kruger is there as the Afrikaaner who has to move rapidly from dislike of 'kaffirs' to such respect for this deposed President that he is willing to die for him. His changing form of address from 'kaffir' to 'man' to 'bloke' is as nauseating as Harris' son's whooping of 'Yahoo' when told he's going on a skiing holiday. Of course, he doesn't go. Cue for tears. Oh, Kruger is an expert in something. Explosives? I forget. He's handy with a crossbow, though.

The rest of the commandos must be the most middle-aged bunch ever recruited. Jack Watson is there, the devoted Sergeant-Major, giving us the routine tough training programme, Ronald Fraser and Percy Herbert left over from World War II, another hammy performance from Kenneth Griffith. And there are various superannuated British actors playing duplicitous, shadowy characters form business and government. The mercenaries, you see, are just naive pawns in some murky political game.

I forgot Roger Moore. He's there too, forcing men to eat heroin and charming women. 'He's such a dear' is another stomach-churning moment.

The operation goes well to start with - these men are experts after all - but then goes wrong, because they are betrayed. Opportunity for initiative and courage and self-sacrifice.

Director Andrew V MacLaglen once showed promise in a sub-Fordian way. Screenwriter Reginald Rose wrote Twelve Angry Men and Man of the West, and I can only ask, 'What happened?' I suppose he needed the money.

It's a dishonest, exploitative, derivative film, which wastes a good cast and leaves a very nasty taste in the mouth.

So why do I watch it so often? Why do I love every minute of the bloody thing?

Five new videos

I called in a local 'buy and sell' shop today to see what was going cheap. The owner is selling off videos at £1, sometimes 50p, and I hoped to pick up some classics for next to nothing. His DVDs are still too expensive. This is what I bought:

• Hamlet - Kenneth Branagh version. The whole text! Spot the celebrity.
• Gladiator - surprisingly, I didn't own a copy. It's obviously over-rated. Just a combined remake of Spartacus and The Fall of the Roman Empire.
• Great Balls of Fire - story of Jerry Lee Lewis. Dennis Quaid fantastic, even plays the piano well enough for some close-ups. Great songs, or should I say one great song repeated with variations? Lewis was an arrogant, self-absorbed prat really. What kind of a haircut was that? Racist bastard as well, I'm told. I've lent this to a friend who's a fan. Slips into 'musical' mode occasionally, when the music stops being studio sessions or concerts, and provides the background for a song and dance act.
• The Commitments - better, grittier, prefer the music. But still just another Full Monty, or Brassed Off or Billy Elliott. Fouled-mouthed, fucking underclass trying to better themselves. Calendar Girls was in the same vein, but 'nicer'. I went to see CG a couple of years ago, because it seemed like a safe bet as birthday present for a lady friend. Gangs of New York might have been a bit dodgy. The cinema was full of female couples, middle-aged daughters with their mothers, all feeling terribly daring.
• Legends of the Fall - Hopkins, Pitt, Zwick directing (who did Glory). Must be worth a look.

Re-making the Dam Busters

It takes a brave man to re-make a much-loved classic of the cinema. No matter what their faults and limitations might be, we rarely accept that the new version is anything other than a poor imitation. And even though they may be aimed at a completely new audience, which has never heard of the original, they never seem to work.

Recently we've had The Ladykillers, War of the Worlds and Alfie. No doubt they are all well-made, no doubt they all made money, but will they ever, unlike the originals, be anything more than a footnote in film history?

Is The Maltese Falcon not an exception, some might ask? Not so. It was indeed preceded by two forgettable attempts to film Hammett's novel, but it did not enter cinema's canon until John Huston took on the project and a happy combination of star, support actors, script, camerawork and direction, and what can only be described as zeitgeist, came together at the precise moment to produce a kind of perfection, which it is impossible to recreate.

But Peter Jackson is to produce a new version of The Dam Busters (and call it The Dambusters). Obviously the man does not learn. His recent new take on King Kong had all the advantages of modern cinema, especially CGI, but still failed to deliver the impact of the 1933 original, for all its naivety and clunky special effects.

But to remake The Dam Busters is more than brave. It's foolhardy. Jackson may be a New Zealander, but we'll still be on the watch for American attempts to steal our British glory. A thousand armchair military historians will comb the film for inaccuracies, and it will be compared scene for scene with the earlier film and at best given grudging praise by amateur and professional critics alike.

In Lincolnshire, of course, we feel we own Bomber Command, and to interfere with the myth of the raid is akin to querying some 'fact' about the Alamo with a Texan. I grew up being told to look out for the shot of Lincoln cathedral in the film, and my own children always had RAF Scampton pointed out as we passed it in the car

The 1954 film was very much of its time, and thoroughly British. Understated, proud (in a polite way) and aimed at an audience that had lived through the dark days of a decade before. It was methodical, almost documentary in style and shot in monochrome. I always think of World War II as a war fought in black and white. Spielberg thinks the same way and Saving Private Ryan's colour is so muted it hardly seems to exist. I hear that Clint Eastwood's Flags of our Fathers is similar. This technique was not used in, say, Memphis Belle and I think this is one reason why the film did not work for me, for all it's accuracy and historical detail.

Back to 1954. The film avoid histrionics and sentimentality, but it still stirs deep, powerful emotions in its audience. Michael Redgrave's body language, stiff and awkward, hints at Wallis' fear of failure, his boyish enthusiasm in success and his final rush of guilt. Richard Todd's brisk professionalism hides Gibson's loneliness in command, a post forbidding any real friendship but that of a dog. So often it is a mere detail or simple image that triggers the tears: the brief, silent thought on Gibson's face when a plane is shot down before he orders the next crew to go in; the dead dog's leash lying useless in his in-tray; Wallis rolling up his trouser legs before wading into the sea to retrieve fragments of his shattered bomb.

It's very irritating that so much of the debate about Mr Jackson's project has been over 'Nigger's' name. Personally, I wouldn't change it, because I'm sick of the current climate in Britain, so desperate to be sensitive, so keen to avoid offense. But then again, I wouldn't care too much if it were to be changed. Even the most true-to-life films are full of alterations to history. Characters are amalgamated, events eliminated or simplified. If you want the facts, you find them in documentaries or non-fiction books. Sometimes it takes fiction to show the truth.

I would not alter one scene of the original film, which is a masterpiece - I use that word in its strict sense - a thoroughly professional work about a thoroughly professional operation. But there's no denying its historical inaccuracies. I am not talking about dogs' names, or who had the idea of setting lights under the fuselage to estimate height, or whether the bombs were spherical or cylindrical. Nor even about the rather unpleasant nature of Gibson's character. The real question is over the success or otherwise of the raid itself.

Although the film ends on a poignant, melancholy note, it gives the impression that the raid was successful. Unfortunately it wasn't - maybe it wasn't. The results were well below what had been expected. Only two of the three target dams were breached. Water production was restored within six weeks. Other sources of power were found and the dams were repaired within eleven weeks. One thousand civilian Germans were killed, along with many Ukrainian POWs and slave workers. Not to mention our own terrible losses - eight planes lost out of nineteen, 53 men dead, 3 captured, out of 113.

Only in hindsight can consolation be found. It was obviously great propaganda and, no doubt, boosted morale - I always find that concept patronising. The enemy diverted precious manpower to guarding the dams, etc. (But they still had enough left to take over Italy when Mussolini fell).

As I said before, facts are facts and truth is truth. The truth here is, as always, in man, in humankind, the answer to the sphinx's riddle. The film is about victory, moral, Pyrrhic, but victory. That potent mix of brains, leadership, discipline, self-sacrifice and raw, stupid courage.

It ain't like it used to be, but it'll do.