Entertainment
was limited to the radio (for music) and films.
Television had not reached Ceylon then and the ‘Internet’ was not even a
figment of anyone’s imagination. Cinema formed our major
source of entertainment during our medical student days. I would like to recall
some of the most memorable English films released at the time.
1.
General
a. The Grass is Greener – A
beautifully filmed story, of a lost romance and its aftermath.
b. Holiday in Paris – This was billed as a
parody of the antics of an heir to the British Crown.
c. The Ten Commandments –
Cecille B de Mille’s story of Moses and the exodus of the Israelites from
bondage in Egypt of the Pharoahs. It took a lot of money to produce and was
filmed in 70mm to be projected on a very big screen with audio of 32 channels
if I recall correctly.
d. Ben Hur – was in the same
mould as the Ten Commandments but not as successful.
2.
Comedy
a. Laurel and Hardy – The
‘fat and lean men’ of American comedy, had a series of slap-stick jokes.
b. Norman Wisdom – Much more
serious comedy than the Americans. We would not miss a single Norman Wisdom
show in town.
c. Paris Holiday – Starring Bob
Hope and Fernandel –. This was one of the best color films of that period. Bob
Hope was the top American comedian and Fernandel was his French counterpart.
This story revolved around tracing a manuscript of a play that had been lost in
France. It was superb with a lot of laughs.
d. School for Scoundrels - an
English comedy on ‘one-upmanship’ containing typical subtle British humour.
e.
The ‘Carry
On’ series which included such classics as Carry on Doctor and Carry on Nurse were big draws in the cinemas.
3.
Horror
a. Alfred Hitchcock – A
series of films directed by Hitchcock drew a dedicated crowd. It was said that
Hitchcock himself appeared in a scene in each of the films he produced. It was
a challenge to us to spot him in each new release by him.
b. The Curse of the Demon. A
story of a demon let loose in an English countryside, with many thrills.
4.
Musicals
a. South Pacific – A lovely
musical about the American forces in the Pacific, during the Second World War
starring Rossano Brazzi and Mitzi Gaynor.
b. The Sound of Music - A
lovely musical starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. We used to sing
quite a few of these songs at our parties. During my stay in the UK in 1982, I
was told by a nurse working in Aylesbury, that confessing to being an admirer of
this musical in conversation, immediately consigned one to the lower classes of
English society. The reverse was the case with ‘My fair Lady’. Such little acts
draw social lines in the UK.
c.
My Fair Lady
– A musical based on George.Bernard.Shaw’s play ‘Pygmallion’. Again it had a
lot of songs which we sang in parties.
d. The King and I - The story of an English teacher’s experience
in the Thai Royal household. (One of our innocent friends at Bloemfontein
loudly read the advertisement for the picture as, ‘The King and One’ and
brought the house down!).
A pronouncement of the King of Siam (Yul Brynner), in the film,
" A girl is like a blossom, with honey for just one man,
And the man must be like the honeybee and gather all he can,
To fly from blossom to blossom, the honeybee must be free,
But the blossom must not ever fly, from bee to bee to bee".
Such were the sentiments expressed from Hollywood in the late 1950s.
5.
War films
a. The Longest Day – Darrell
Zanuck’s story of the landing in Normandy during Second World War.
b. A Bridge Too Far – The
story of the failed attempt to seize a strategic bridge in Europe, during the
Second World War.
c.
Colditz – The
story of a German Prisoner of War camp in Germany.
d. Tora, Tora, Tora – The
story of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
e.
The Bridge Over
the River Kwai. – David Lean’s film, about the construction of a bridge by
British prisoners of war.
6.
Westerns
a. High
b. The Magnificent Seven with
Yul Brynner .
7.
Movies with titillating sex scenes
a. The Light Across the Street
which starred Brigitte Bardot - The story of the young wife of a French bowser
driver. The husband meets with an accident and suffers head injury and is
advised off sex. It gave the director Roger Vadim a lot of latitude to build a
story around Brigitte Bardot’s role.
b. And God Created Woman – Also
directed by Roger Vadim and starred Brigitte Bardot had a few suggestive scenes
but was not much of a film.
Most of these
films were in black and white. There were no zoom lenses those days on cameras
and you can see the effect on the films, when we see the replays now. Violence
and explicit sex scenes were very few. The current Hollywood films have too
much violence. I watch French films which are really superb on TV5, on my satellite
TV now. Sex is always an underlying theme in the French films, but it is
handled with refinement and finesse unlike in present day Hollywood films. I
also watch Korean Tele-Dramas, which have no violence and are really wonderful,
on Ari-rang Satellite TV. They have an unending array of themes, which are an
eye opener to other film producers.
