As you watch Jean Renoir’s charming French Cancan, let your eyes wander and you might spot a trio at the sidelines – two men, and a woman with an impressive beehive hairdo, stacked up like a golden helmet. They look so natural there that it’s not immediately apparent they’ve actually wandered in from another film: Renoir had been so impressed by the movie in which they appeared that he wanted to pay tribute. That film was Casque d’Or; its director, Jacques Becker. It is he who is our subject today.

It’s not quite true that Becker is a forgotten figure but he’s usually relegated to footnote status in surveys of French national cinema. And yet, based on the three of his films available in this country, this seems unfair.

He began in ‘the movies’ as Renoir’s assistant (the hat-tip in French Cancan is the teacher saluting his pupil) and became a director during the war. Casque d’Or was his major breakthrough. Although not a big hit in France, it was a sensation in Britain and found favour with the cineastes at Cahiers du Cinéma. Set at the end of the Belle Époque, it’s a story of love amongst the criminal classes, a romantic study of an insalubrious world.

Better yet is Touchez pas au Grisbi; aging gangster Jean Gabin is challenged by thrusting youngster Lino Ventura. It would have been easy for Becker to fall into the romantic fatalism that characterised French film in the 1930s (especially those with Gabin) but he strikes a different, lightly melancholic tone: it’s a jazzy reverie on the gangster film, not a pessimistic elegy.

Becker’s final film is as different again. Although set, once again, amongst the criminal class, Le Trou is a realistic (based on a true story) prison-escape movie. Perfectly cast, with non-professionals rubbing shoulders with trained actors, it’s one of the most gripping thrillers there is, filled with sequences of unbearable tension that Henri-George Clouzot would be proud of.

It’s clear that these last two films, at least, made an indelible impression on Jean-Pierre Melville; watch a double bill of Touchez pas… and the later Bob Le Flambeur (something I thoroughly recommend) and you’ll notice similarities in casting, plot and – especially – tone. And while Melville had shown an interest in process before Le Trou, it was only after Becker’s film that his interest in procedural detail really began.

So why is Becker so little known? How can someone who made films this good have slipped into such relative obscurity? It’s hard to make judgements based on a few films but it could be that Becker was just too damn versatile. Although there’s an interest in fraternal loyalty and a certain epicureanism (even the cons of Le Trou are gourmands), these three films don’t show quite the consistency of vision of his mentor Renoir. And, unlike the films for which Jean-Pierre Melville is best remembered, Becker didn’t restrict himself to a single milieux, happily crossing from the exaggerated (Touchez pas…) to the ultra-realistic (Le Trou).

In other words, he’s hard to pigeonhole for critics wedded to the ‘auteur’ theory and its derivatives. But by any other standards, Becker was a major filmmaker: at least three of his films should be placed amongst the very best of French cinema. Praise comes no higher than that.

After the untimely death of Theo Angelopoulos in January this year, all the obituaries emphasised his status as the pre-eminent Greek filmmaker of his generation. Then again, since Angelopoulos was the only Greek filmmaker of his generation that most film buffs could name, this is perhaps less prestigious than it sounds. Indeed, between them, Angelopoulos and Michael Cacoyannis (who died last year), represent the sum total of what most of us know about Greek cinema.

While Greek culture is no longer as influential as once it was (things have been cooling on that score since BC turned into AD), it’s a shame that a country’s entire cinematic output can be condensed so easily.

The Greek film industry was traditionally diverse: it once did a thriving trade in exploitation films (check out the Anglo-Greek production The Devil’s Men.) And, thanks to a mention in Jonathan Franzen’s novel Freedom, there’s been a revival of interest in the filmmaker Nikos Koundouros (‘the Orson Welles of Greece’) and, specifically, his film O drakos (The Dragon), as an example of the artistic maturity of Greek cinema.

But if the world has, historically, overlooked Greek film, it couldn’t ignore Angelopoulos. From his debut, A Reconstruction, in 1970, it was clear his was a singular talent. Angelopoulos arrived fully formed, displaying his aesthetic preferences from the start, showing his country in ways that would horrify the Greek tourist board: unglamorous locations, enveloped by rain and fog and all filmed with long, long takes.

This might make him sound like a Hellenic Andrei Tarkovsky (and both men were, after all, reared in cultures shaped by the Orthodox church) but Angelopoulos explored very different concerns, overwhelmingly dominated by the traumas Greece suffered in the twentieth century.

Few directors have been so preoccupied with their homelands. This can make Angelopoulos’s work seem opaque. His early ‘trilogy of history’ – Days of ‘36, The Travelling Players and The Hunters sweep between the inter-war years, civil war and dictatorship with little compromise for those of us who basically don’t know what happened back then.

Still, this doesn’t have to be a problem. Angelopoulos’s control of the frame is so total that our attention is held throughout. And we can get the gist, even if we miss the nuance. Take, for example, The Hunters: a group of middle-aged men out hunting find the perfectly preserved body of a partisan, apparently from a war that ended twenty years ago. What follows is surreal, frequently bewildering but rarely less than stunning. We don’t need to know the precise details to understand that it’s a film about the political compromises and mistakes all too many Greeks would prefer to see swept under the carpet.

Angelopoulos’s tragic death (he was shooting his new film when he was knocked over by on off-duty policeman riding a motorcycle) means he won’t be able to comment on the problems that currently bedevil the country. It’s a bitter irony that he died at a time when the Greek film industry has its highest international profile for years; spurred on by the success of Dogtooth and Attenberg, there is excited talk of a new wave of Greek talent – and if they can survive the financial crisis, they’ll have no shortage of material.

Three box sets of films by Angelopoulos have recently been published by Artificial Eye

This column rarely covers contemporary film, preferring instead to concentrate on the old, the neglected and the forgotten. When I have the whole of film history to play with, why write about recent films, which have, in any case, usually been generously covered elsewhere?

But there’s more than that. Bluntly, I don’t find modern film very inspiring. In fact, I’ll go further – I sometimes wonder if cinema is still a living artform for me or if I’m only interested in its past. Indeed, sometimes I wonder if I even still like movies.

Oh, I know I’m not the only one to lament the state of Hollywood. But I find little sustenance in the ‘prestigious’ independent sector either. Indeed, many of the most acclaimed films of recent years strike me as severely deficient.

This isn’t the space to rehearse the arguments against those films, nor to challenge their (sincere) admirers. But too often, when I think about the state of movies today, I get pessimistic (because I can’t see much changing, can you?). Then I get despondent, worrying that the great days are over and that film has ridden into the last sunset.

The trouble with that line of thought is that I keep seeing excellent new films. They might not be the same ones that my brother-and-sister critics choose to eulogise but they exist and in sufficient numbers to keep tempting me into the picture palaces.

Take Post Mortem, newly released on DVD and very nearly essential. It’s a brilliantly uneasy Chilean film about life at the very beginning of Pincochet’s dictatorship. A marginal subject, you might think, but director Pablo Larraín (who made Tony Manero, itself one of the better films of the past decade) makes it compelling; its tone reminded me of something by Luis Buñuel.

You want another? There’s a film called The Silence. It’s being sold as another Euro-crime flick (Steig Larsson, The Killing, blah blah blah) but it deserves to stand on its own considerable merits. It’s a film about murder but also about loneliness, loss and isolation. It’s a tough film, extremely harrowing in parts, but consistently gripping. It’s the first film by director Baran bo Odar; if he can do something this good with his debut, how good is he going to be now he’s got this experience under his belt?

There are two reasons why I mention these films. The first is to spread the word about films I love. If you’re looking to make new discoveries, you could do worse. Just think how smug you’ll feel when Pablo Larraín lifts the Palme d’Or or Baran bo Odar makes a commercial breakthrough (and if I was a gambling man, I’d say both were worth a modest flutter); you’ll be able to tell your film buff friends, ‘of course, I liked them before they were famous.’

The second is more personal. It’s crucial to remind myself that good films – great films indeed – are still being made. And while it’s getting harder to find worthwhile films, it is always, without fail, worth the effort.

I have no doubt that I shall hate the overwhelming majority of new releases this year. I have equally no doubt that I will see films that remind me why I love the medium. I can’t wait to tell you about them.

So. Farewell then Ken Russell, senescent enfant terrible of the British film industry. He will be missed; although I was never much of a fan of his film work, he himself was terrific value, a cheerfully vulgar antidote to the insufferable self-congratulatory politeness of the British film establishment.

While he was hardly cut off in his prime, it’s hard not to rue the timing of his demise. In March, the BFI finally releases the long-awaited DVD of The Devils; it’s a shame the old goat won’t be around to savour the reaction.

There’s no-one in British film history like Ken Russell. British films are supposed to be restrained and tasteful. Even when they get down and dirty, it’s usually for respectable, political reasons (to lay bare the miseries of the lower orders and so forth). Ken Russell stuck two fingers up at all that.

For many years, his films were regarded as something of an aberration in British film, an indication of how standards in British film had plummeted in the early 1970s – a sort-of cultural equivalent of the malaise that gripped Britain during Heath’s Britain.

The official line had it that, after the ‘swinging sixties’, British film collapsed twice in the 1970s – first symbolically, when Ken Russell and his ilk were calling the shots and then (at least partly in consequence) literally; about half way through the decade, the American studios pulled out of the UK, leaving British film in the hands of exploitation merchants who steered it into the gutter – until the clean-cut likes of Chariots Of Fire, with their crinolines and well-pressed blazers, made cinemas safe for ‘nice’ people again.

And yet, start watching the films made in this country during the 1970s and a different story emerges. Dig into British film of this decade and you’ll uncover any number of good, very good and authentically great films made during this supposedly stagnant period.

Don’t Look Now, Gumshoe and O Lucky Man! suggested new horizons for British film. The Wicker Man, Death Line and Sir Henry at Rawlinson End skewer British self-image. In this context, Russell looks not like an anomaly but part of an authentic movement.

Part of the reason this decade has been so traduced is that it has been hard to see the films. With the rise of DVD, however, many neglected titles are finally getting their due. The BFI have released Radio On, Winstanley and Bill Douglas’s Trilogy; their essential Flipside imprint has revived forgotten titles like Little Malcolm, Requiem for a Village and the remarkable Deep End.

There is more. Later this year sees the publication of Offbeat, edited by Julian Upton (of this parish). It looks at overlooked British films from the 1960s onward but it is the surveys of the 1970s that are most interesting, shining a spotlight on genuinely great (if somewhat sleazy) films like The Squeeze, Sitting Target and The Black Panther.

The revival of The Devils, then, comes at a time when the films of this reviled decade are finally getting something like the acclaim they deserve. They might not have made an impact on original release but British film of the 1970s looks, in hindsight, like a time of great experimentation and excitement. Something of a golden age, then – albeit a slightly shabby one.

Here’s a funny thing. Orthodox wisdom has it that DVD is on its uppers. We are told that ‘physical media’ (which is to say shiny silver discs, be they DVD or Blu-ray) will be replaced by internet streaming. DVD will collapse, the futurologists assure us, just as surely as compact discs.

The trouble with this thesis is that no one seems to have told the DVD labels. Rather than winding down their lists or becoming ever more timid, the smaller British DVD manufacturers have given us a year that shows the format in rude health.

Take Masters of Cinema. This year alone, they’ve given us some essential Fritz Lang (the criminally underrated Indian Epic films), early Antonioni, amazing Japanese films (get Harakiri now) and welcome contemporary fare (Colossal Youth). They’re also in the process of expanding their coverage of Hollywood films, starting with a definitive release of Touch of Evil.

And it’s not just MoC: the venerable BFI have been spoiling us rotten. Do you start with their Ozu releases? The first part of their Complete Humphrey Jennings? Their on-going Flipside series (including the long-awaited Deep End)? Švankmajer’s Alice or a collection of films about British folk traditions? Possibly most exciting is The Soviet Influence from Turksib to Night Mail, a scholarly-but-unpretentious exploration of cinematic inspiration that uses the DVD medium brilliantly.

Second Run have a much lower profile amongst DVD labels but are arguably the most important; no label works harder to nurture the obscure and the overlooked. For example: although well regarded in its native Hungary, Szindbád was all-but unknown internationally until Second Run released it this year, causing minds to blow and preconceptions to be reordered.

I don’t think it’s too much to say the UK DVD market is the most exciting in the world. We might not have any single label with the reach and resources of the American Criterion Collection (still the world-beaters of DVD production) but we’ve got a cluster of companies that punch far above their weight.

It’s not just ‘art film’ labels that are flourishing: few releases brought me as much pleasure this year as Cobra Woman and the Charlie Chan sets (all from Odeon). Shameless go from strength to strength (I especially recommend Don’t Torture a Duckling) while Japanese specialists Third Window released Confessions. And I haven’t mention crackerjack releases from Artificial Eye, Second Sight, Exposure Cinema, Arrow….

Of course, you might think this emphasis on ‘labels’ is misleading: what matters is the film, not who puts it out, right? But I think the strong identity these smaller labels have developed is important. Unlike the big boys, their releases are carefully curated. Experience shows we can trust their judgement so we’re more likely try things they put out, even if we’re otherwise unfamiliar with them. I’d say that’s why the UK market is so interesting right now.

There’s one thing missing from this round up – the viewer. If these labels are happy to supply, it’s because they know there is demand, that there is a loyal audience who care about interesting films and want to see them presented well. I would submit that, as long as that holds true, we shouldn’t be in such a hurry to bid au revoir to DVD.

It’s said that pub landlords hated the Quatermass TV serial back in the 1950s. When the BBC first broadcast his adventures in those pre-iPlayer days, hostelries would empty as drinkers hurried home to catch the latest instalment, leaving no-one for barmen to pull pints for.

Professor Bernard Quatermass was the first great icon of British television. The creation of writer Nigel Kneale (himself the first great British TV dramatist), Quatermass has influenced the entire science fiction genre, from Doctor Who to John Carpenter and beyond. Perhaps more importantly, he keeps finding fans in each successive generation: the first three film adaptations have just been re-released, and since they’re on DVD you can enjoy them in your own time – no need to hurry your drinking.

In Kneale’s world, Quatermass was the head of the ‘British Rocket Group’ (oh, for the days when spacecraft boasted a Union Jack on their nose cones!). His position led him to encounter the dregs of the universe: Starting with BBC series The Quatermass Experiment in 1953 and continuing in Quatermass II (1955) and Quatermass and the Pit (1959), the professor battled with extraterrestrial invasion and, perhaps even worse, intransigent civil service bureaucracy.

Intrigued by the character’s TV success, a small film studio called Hammer Films chanced their arm with a film adaptation of the first story (which they audaciously renamed The Quatermass Xperiment to emphasise its shocking content and capitalise on the decision of the then British Board of Film Censors to award it an X certificate). It was a huge hit in 1955, establishing Hammer as the serious film-biz players they would remain for the next two decades.

Hammer eventually filmed all three serials (Quatermass 2 came in 1957, while his adventures In the Pit had to wait until 1967) and it’s these versions which are most familiar to modern viewers. All three are stories of alien invasion, in which the (largely unseen) enemy first possesses and then transforms their earthling victims so they lose their fundamental humanity.

This being the 1950s there are subtexts galore. We can view the aliens as a manifestation of the existential threat of communism, although this is a very reductive interpretation. Nigel Kneale was a more acute writer than that: the main tension in the film is not between mankind and the aliens but between this planet’s inhabitants – Quatermass is appalled how his inventions are co-opted by the military, who plan to use them to slaughter their enemies.

As with all successes, Quatermass inspired imitations. Hammer’s own (tremendously entertaining) X: The Unknown was even set to feature Quatermass until Kneale – unhappy at the Studio’s use of American tough-guy actor Brian Donlevy in the role in The Quatermass Xperiment – protested. It didn’t dissuade him from letting Hammer make The Abominable Snowman, adapted from another of his teleplays. Maybe the best of the Kneale / Hammer films, it concerns the hunt for the yeti and the terrible consequences for those who find it.

This boom was short lived. Soon after, Hammer discovered tacky Gothic Horror and changed course: apart from one-off efforts like Quatermass and the Pit and The Damned, Hammer steered clear of science fiction.

This is a shame, because they were amongst the best films the company made: mature, sophisticated and still thought-provoking.

It’s often said that Hollywood produces too many sequels. Certainly, the studios seem incapable of getting through a month without itching to return to past glories.
This year, for instance, brought forth the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film. The first (and by some way best) in that series was released in 2003: that’s four films in eight years. But consider this: in the eleven years between 1931 and 1942, Fox studios produced no fewer than twenty-three Charlie Chan films. In sequels, as in so much else, modern Hollywood is but a pale shadow of its forebears.

Chan was by no means unique. Successful series of the 1930s and 40s included Boston Blackie, Sherlock Holmes, The Dead End Kids, Tarzan, Mr Moto, The Whistler and The Thin Man. And that’s just for starters: those years are filled with film series built out of multiple entries, cheap programme fillers for the most part, produced with a frequency that’s bewildering to today’s eyes.

Most of these series are little known today, which is a shame. Watching the Charlie Chan films, recently re-released in two splendid box sets, I was reminded how entertaining they were. True, this is production line cinema. But it’s a production line staffed by skilled artisans.

Indeed, since these series were often the studio’s bread-and butter (it’s said Fox studios wouldn’t have survived the thirties without Charlie Chan), they were usually entrusted to reliable craftsmen. The two directors behind most of Fox’s Chan films, H. Bruce Humberstone and Harry Lachman, handle things adroitly; each would be far better known if they hadn’t worked on ‘production line’ films like this. (See also Roy William Neill, who made Universal’s Sherlock Holmes films much better than they have any right to be.)

As I watched these films, I couldn’t help wondering about how they were perceived on first release. Were they ‘event’ pictures, with audiences queuing around the block for each new instalment? Or were they taken for granted, drawing audiences through familiarity and force of habit?

Such questions make us realise just how much the cinema going experience has changed – these films date from a time when people went to the pictures without knowing what was playing. It’s easy to mythologise that era as a ‘golden age’ based on the number of great films that were produced but audiences then were essentially indiscriminate: the reason that producers made sequels was the same then as it is now. A tried and tested format gives a brand recognition, adding a slight edge at the box-office – something that was even more important in an age of routine cinema going.

I nearly wrote that the old-style movie series died with television, when viewers could enjoy recurrent characters on a weekly basis. Then I realised it wasn’t true: the movie series is still with us, albeit looking very different.

The most obvious example is James Bond but there are others. The Fast and the Furious keeps throwing out follow-ups; the Saw series has become a Halloween staple and I’ve lost track of how many Final Destination films there have been (I’d guess about 208. Am I right, sir?)

Perhaps future generations will watch them as I watch films from long ago. I hope they enjoy them as much as I enjoy the honourable Chan.

Goodness. There’s a right old brouhaha blowing up over newspaper journalism. But it’s beyond the remit of this column to raise comment on such matters: we just natter on about movies. However, since journalism is a subject much beloved of filmmakers, what better way to spend this column than by looking at the lengthy relationship between the press and the picture business?

No matter what the rest of us think about them, the movies just love journalists. Forget All The President’s Men, the golden age of cinematic reporters was the 1930s, when Hollywood made being a news hound look like the best job in the world – short hours, plenty of excitement and an indefinite tab at your favourite bar. What a life! Oh boy, wouldn’t it be something to live like that?

True, there are downsides: a spot of light typing every now and again and the occasional argument with a bull-headed editor, but that aside, movie reporters had it sweet. Take Clark Gable in It Happened One Night, the coolest character ever to have a byline: tall, dashing, cynical-yet- romantic, he makes being a hack seem the sexiest profession on earth.

It’s hardly surprising that Hollywood eulogised the gentlemen of the press since Hollywood was infested with former journalists. After movies switched to sound, the studios discovered that journalists had a better ear for the terse rat-a-tat rhythms of movie dialogue than the playwrights they initially hired. The first (and arguably the best) was Herman J. Mankiewicz.

Mankiewicz’s best-known work was his script for Citizen Kane. It’s famously a portrait of nostalgia, loss and the isolation of power. But it’s also a film for journalists, saluting honest newsmen and sticking two fingers up at execs like Kane who rain on their parade. Stick to the typewriter, it tells us: ignore the politics, the opera houses and compulsive antique collecting – it’s much less fun.

One of the writers brought to Hollywood was Ben Hecht who, with his sometime writing partner and fellow hack Charles MacArthur, helped create the definitive newspaper film: His Girl Friday, taken from their play The Front Page. Howard Hawks claimed to have transformed the play by adding a romance but, in truth, the love affair was always there: it’s a valentine to newspaper life.

Of course, not everyone holds the press in such high esteem. We in Britain have always held a more jaundiced opinion of the fourth estate, even before the present commotion. This view is reflected by (ex-reporter) Billy Wilder in Ace in the Hole. Kirk Douglas plays the sleaziest pressman in history, an utter heel who manipulates an accident to improve his career. Such things might seem tame in this age of ‘blagging’ but the film remains corrosively cynical and thus most apposite, given recent events.
But things change. All the films above date from a time when newspapers were the only game in town. They’ve been eroded since, first by TV (as demonstrated in While The City Sleeps) and now the internet (the movie version of State of Play).

Who knows how long newspapers can last in this digital age? Well, here’s a prediction: they’ve got until the movies can give us a blogger (shudder) as cool as Clark Gable. The wait, I suspect, will be a long one.

Visit MovieMail’s Stop Press! Newspapers and Reporters in Cinema DVD Sale

Cast your mind back to the early days of DVD; no doubt you’ll remember the seductive blandishments of the electronics manufacturers tempting us with their product. They promised this new format would revolutionise film viewing, offering much improved A/V quality and contextualising extras.

True enough, those things are still much appreciated (even if we never quite find the time to listen to all those commentaries or watch every featurette… sorry). But in retrospect, I think the most significant benefit of DVD has been something few predicted: the way it’s broadened our understanding of movies.

Let’s not pretend VHS was a wasteland. There were many fine films available on tape (some of which have yet to show up on disc). But VHS concentrated on the ‘classics’; the economics of DVD allows for many more releases. Coupled with the parallel revolution in retailing – MovieMail offers you many thousands more titles than even the most comprehensive high street shop – this has massively expanded the number of movies that film fans can watch.

This column is preoccupied – unkind souls might even say obsessed – with the deficiencies of orthodox film history. The cinematic canon is, after all, derived from what was available. Now we can easily access so many more films, that canon must be revised, excluding some once-compulsory films and including former obscurities.

But let’s not be complacent. The DVD revolution is far from complete, as a couple of new releases show us. Take Deep End, for example. This is probably the most important title yet released by the BFI’s Flipside imprint (a label dedicated to excavating neglected films).


Although much acclaimed on first release, Deep End has been hard to see since then (which gave bragging rights to those of us who managed to see it). That it’s finally available, restored and lavishly appended with extras, is fantastic news, even if it does mean I can’t swank about having seen it any more.

Deep End, of course, is a British film. The problem becomes even more acute when you consider films made in languages other than English. That’s why we should be grateful to Second Run, the DVD label most committed to expanding our perceptions of cinema.

By happy coincidence, they’re also putting out an essential and much anticipated release this month: Szindbád. Not to be confused with the sailor from the Arabian Nights, this Hungarian classic is eulogised by those who’ve seen it.

A rapturous meditation on life and love (and one of the most ravishing colour films ever made), it’s been hailed as one of the great ‘lost’ masterpieces of world cinema. And because of Second Run, it might now finally penetrate the consciousness of international cineastes in the same way that one of their earlier releases, Marketa Lazarová, did.

So, thanks BFI, thanks Second Run. And thanks DVD. The past ten years or so have been a golden age for those of us who love movies and, as Deep End and Szindbád show, the good times ain’t over yet.

However, these releases should remind us just how incomplete our knowledge of cinema is and how many films are still unavailable. As you enjoy Szindbád and Deep End, consider how such films could go AWOL for so long. How many more masterpieces are there, mouldering in the vaults?

Let us know about your unavailable favourites in the comments below.

BTW There’s a BFI Flipside sale on at the moment.

Cecil B DeMille liked to boast that he made the very first movie in Hollywood: The Squaw Man, in 1914. It was his efforts, he modestly claimed, that established the film colony in Los Angeles.

Like so many stories, it’s baloney – DeMille followed an established trail to California – but there’s a spiritual truth to the idea DeMille founded Hollywood: the brash, bombastic Tinsel Town is just the sort of place that the brash, bombastic DeMille might have imagined.

Always more popular with audiences than with critics, DeMille enjoys little posthumous reputation. Generally he’s only cited as an example of the worst excesses of the film industry (brash, bombastic etc). So why are we talking about him here?

Specifically, it’s because the past few months have seen a trickle of his films appear on DVD. As a fan, I want to promote them. But more generally, I think DeMille has been a little hard done by. True, his early work has its admirers. While he might not have invented Hollywood, he was a pioneer in every sense. He should be rated alongside D.W. Griffith as one of the directors who established the great tradition of American film; moreover, his films of this period are much more watchable than Griffith’s antiques and are still praised for their beauty and restraint.

But while his films were well-received, DeMille wanted more. He wanted huge audiences. So he developed a formula – approximately N x Y = $ (where n = giddy melodrama, y = garish sensation and $ = ker-ching!) – that made him perhaps the most consistently successful filmmaker ever.

How can we embrace such a shameless figure? Surely DeMille is one of the most utterly cynical of filmmakers, a puffing Victorian hypocrite who smuggled his predilection for sin and scandal into the most unimpeachably respectable material (the Bible!).

I gravitated for DeMille first as a guilty pleasure, amused by his cheerfully brazen cynicism. But I’m not sure that’s fair. You see, cynicism suggests that he was making films he didn’t believe in or that he had contempt either for his material or, worse, his audience.

DeMille’s work is so consistent and so unforced, one starts to suspect that it is an authentic projection of his personality: that these films are honest expressions and that he really believed in what he was doing. Viewed this way, the films become not cynical but perversely innocent, the statements of a born entertainer.

Moreover, many of his pictures stand up very well, especially those films he made about American history – Union Pacific, North West Mounted Police and The Plainsman are first rate potboilers, beautifully composed and tremendously invigorating. Unconquered has some questionable moments (a native American tribe led by Big Chief Boris Karloff for example) but zips along with great brio. Reap The Wild Wind might be best of all, not just for its involving love triangle but the climax, where John Wayne battles a giant squid.

These are grand operas, which might not find favour with modern tastes that favour work in minor keys; they might even be laughed at (now who’s being cynical, eh?). But if you want big, bold escapism, then our Cecil remains the benchmark. He was not a great artist. But there’s never been a better showman.

View MovieMail’s Cecil B. DeMille films