Parky at the Pictures (DVD 24/4/2014)

The beauty and the beast story had twice been filmed as Esmeralda (1905 and 1922) before Wallace Worsley released his lavish silent 1923  version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which featured a tour de force performance from the `Man of a Thousand Faces, Lon Chaney. However, Laughton very much made the part of Quasimodo his own and it remained one of his personal favourites (if only because, for once, he didn't have to diet or wear a corset). Wearing make-up created by George and R. Gordon Bau, he exuded a humanity and humility that belied his grotesque appearance and, moreover, brought a surprising agility to the role - which was all the more impressive as he was saddled with a wire-framed, foam-filled hump, which was deeply uncomfortable to wear at the height of the Californian summer.

The shoot was tinged with melancholy, however, as war broke out between Britain and Germany on the day that William Dieterle filmed the sequence in which Quasimodo rings the tower bells. Laughton's disappointed rage is readily evident (as he recognised the poignancy of the moment, as the bells in his homeland would be silenced for the duration of the conflict) and he continued the peal long after the take was over. Indeed, Dieterle (who was a German emigré) intended the film to highlight the evils of authoritarianism and the Expressionist elements in Van Nest Polglase's sets and  Joseph H. August's cinematography were consciously designed to evoke the dark psychology of German cinema in the immediate pre-Nazi era.

Costing around $2 million, this was one of the most expensive pictures that RKO ever made. But it was money well spent, as the judicious blend of medieval morality, Gothic melodrama and political allegory (which is occasionally leavened with sly humour) has lost little of its affecting power.

Laughton is on equally fine form, as David Lean returns to the Victorian milieu of Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948) for Hobson's Choice (1953), an adaptation of Harold Brighouse's 1915 stage play that had previously been filmed by Percy Nash and Thomas Bentley in 1920 and 1931 respectively. Marking Lean's first attempt at comedy since Noël Coward had guided him through Blithe Spirit (1945), this wry domestic power struggle benefited greatly from the presence of Laughton in the title role he had first played in a Scarborough theatre early in his career. But there isn't a sub-par performance in an amusing sitcom, which not only won the British Academy Award for the best home-produced picture, but also the Golden Bear at the 4th Berlin Film Festival.

Manchester bootmaker Charles Laughton is a tyrant, who treats daughters Brenda De Banzie, Daphne Anderson and Prunella Scales no better than his chief cobbler, John Mills. Spending much of his time in the Moonrakers Inn, Laughton expects to be waited on hand and foot and incurs De Banzie's ire when he announces that she is to take sole care of him after he marries off Anderson and Scales to lawyer Richard Wattis and corn merchant Raymond Huntley's son Derek Blomfield.

Proposing to the milksoppy Mills, De Banzie accepts an offer from satisfied customer Helen Haye to set him up in a rival business and Laughton soon finds himself losing income and being threatened with a lawsuit after he falls into Huntley's cellar while staggering home drunk and is charged with trespass. He tries to respond with customary bullying bluster, but discovers that Mills has learned to stand on his own two feet and he winds up being grateful to be taken on as his son-in-law's sleeping partner.

Once seen, never forgotten, the sequence in which a sozzled Laughton puzzles over the reflection of the moon in a puddle is the standout moment of this deceptively steely study of social convention. Slyly shot by Jack Hildyard on Wilfrid Shingleton's evocative sets and played with impeccable comic timing by Laughton to the accompaniment of Malcolm Sergeant's score, this classic moment is more than matched by Mills's efforts to summon up the courage to perform his conjugal duties after completing the writing exercise that his new bridge has insisted he completes on his wedding night.

The difference between postwar British and American cinema is starkly demonstrated by comparing this period charmer and Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole (1951), which centres on unprincipled big-city reporter Charles Tatum (Kirk Douglas), who is hired by a New Mexico paper and not only cajoles the national media into covering the story of a man trapped in a cave, but also lures the townsfolk into competing for their moment in the spotlight. Screenwriters Lesser Samuels and Walter Newman were Oscar nominated for this hard-nosed, fact-based melodrama, which dared to suggest that American life more closely resembled the cold, cynical core of a Frank Capra picture than the cornball, feel-good finale.

Robert Riskin, who had scripted such Capra classics as Mr Deed Goes to Town (1936) and Meet John Doe (1941), had already hinted that the American Dream was going sour in Magic Town, a 1947 satire, in which a homely burgh is corrupted when James Stewart proclaims it the embodiment of US universality. But, Wilder took such coy irony to its logical extremes in this savage follow-up to Sunset Blvd. (1950) and audiences who had only just seen Kirk Douglas betray the badge in William Wyler's Detective Story (1951) knew exactly what to expect when his New York hack walked into the office of an Albuquerque newspaper which proudly hung the hand-embroidered motto `Tell the Truth' on its wall.

The very fact that Ace in the Hole (which Paramount re-issued as The Big Carnival, hoping to recoup some of its box-office losses) is one of the innumerable movies to have been lampooned by The Simpsons proves that this neglected classic has only grown in relevance since it first exposed the pernicious underside of celebrity culture. But in the early 1950s, audiences were appalled to see both decent, small-town folk cashing in on the misfortune of Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict) and the undisguised relish with which Tatum approaches his work, which begins with him delaying the rescue for publicity purposes and ends with him exploiting the plight of the victim's already stressed wife, Lorraine (Jan Sterling).

Douglas is chillingly superb, as he manipulates the amorality of his neighbours, whose ghoulish fascination with his `human interest' story will be familiar to anyone addicted to tabloid tittle-tattle.

Made 12 years later, Lindsay Anderson's This Sporting Life (1963) confirmed that British cinema had finally got a cutting edge, as it charts the fortunes of Yorkshire coal miner Frank Machin (Richard Harris), who finds fame as an uncompromisingly combative rugby league player at a club controlled by rivals Weaver (Alan Badel) and Slomer (Arthur Lowe). However, his boorish behaviour is nowhere near as effective off the field and he becomes increasingly frustrated by widow Margaret Hammond (Rachel Roberts) resistance to his clumsy advances.

Anderson was the first of the Free Cinema pioneers to taste success, winning an Oscar for the documentary short, Thursday's Child, in 1955. However, he was also the last to move into features and the `grim oop north' phase of British film-making was coming to a close when he released this adaptation of David Storey's acclaimed novel. Slower, longer and less forgiving than its predecessors, it failed to find an audience with a public then reveling in the first throes of Beatlemania and looking to invest its hopes in witty, well-groomed working-class heroes rather than self-obsessed angry young men.

The critics were more positive, however, with some even claiming this as the best picture that Britain had ever produced. But it now enjoys something of a mixed reputation, with those who applaud its actorly intensity, psychological power and auteurish integrity being countered by others who lament its impersonality, uncertain sense of place and self-conscious striving for significance.

If the nouvelle vague-inspired flashback opening now seems the most outdated aspect of the film, then Anderson's limp grasp of his sporting context is the least credible and not even Richard Harris's passion for rugby could disguise the over-deliberation of the action sequences, in which he exhibits the thuggish tendencies of the `great ape' that he finally realises himself to be after Margaret's brain haemorrhage.

Indeed, the entire sporting scenario seems strained, as Anderson never fully resolves the issues involving either Johnson (William Hartnell) the gay scout or the disdainfully exploitative Weaver and, thus, the club setting always feels like a contrivance designed to prove that macho men would be incapable of understanding or expressing their emotions whether they were in a dead-end job or feted as a titan.

The leads prove equally problematic as, while Harris won the Best Actor prize at Cannes and both he and Rachel Roberts landed Oscar nominations, it's always obvious that they're giving a performance. Moreover, because they were so well matched, it's hard to believe in the inarticulateness and immaturity that ultimately dooms their relationship. Yet such shortcomings only reinforce this flawed film's elemental fascination.

Robert Altman made his directorial debut with the 1951 documentary, Modern Football. He spent much of the next decade working his passage in television, but he had established himself as one of the most innovative film-makers in the New Hollywood by the time he embarked upon Nashville (1975). Altman decided that he wanted to make a musical after hearing Keith Carradine sing `It Don't Worry Me' and `I'm Easy' at a party. Rejecting a property entitled The Great Southern Amusement Company, he set Joan Tewkesbury to write an original scenario. But as this was to be a typically extemporised collaboration, Altman also insisted that the cast composed their own songs and many relied on the assistance of Richard Baskin, whose contribution to the 50-60 titles that were developed for the project is all the more remarkable considering his influences were Bartok, Gershwin and Satie rather than American folk or country-and-western.

Shooting over 45 days on a $2 million budget, Altman amassed over 16 hours of footage and initially considered releasing two features, Nashville Red and Nashville Blue. But hopes of producing a 10-hour miniseries for ABC were dashed when the film grossed only $7 million - despite reviews that compared Altman to everyone from Chekhov, Joyce, Dos Passos and Mailer to Fellini, Godard, Bertolucci and Astaire.

Howard Koch, who co-wrote Casablanca, considered this study of `the famous somebodys crossing paths with the lowly nobodys in a city of dreams and illusions' to be `the Citizen Kane of this generation of moviemakers', while Wim Wenders (who was married to Ronee Blakely) called it `a movie about noise'.

Molly Haskell proclaimed it to be `a Chaucerian musical pilgrimage whose Canterbury is Nashville' and a quasi-religious sense of America after the Fall pervades the picture, which was released exactly midway between President Richard Nixon's resignation and the start of the Bicentennial celebrations. Moreover, it opened in the same month that A Chorus Line - another story of showbiz aspirants in a microcosmic setting - premiered on Broadway and launched its own assault on the conventions of the stage musical.

Nashville is a denunciation of the fundamentalist mentality. It equates the conservatism and folksily faux humility of the country scene with the hypocrisy of the political establishment and indicts Nixon, Hollywood and Nashville for each devaluing a cherished American institution. But it's also about the assassination of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, the suppression and exploitation of women, debasement in the pursuit of ambition, and the public's acquiescence in the decline of political integrity and artistic ingenuity. But, most significantly, Nashville is about the death of the musical.

Altman felt that Nashville in the 1970s had the same feel as Hollywood in the 40s. Consequently, such MGM and Fox musicals as Meet Me in St Louis, The Harvey Girls, Down Argentine Way and Moon Over Miami exerted a considerable influence on his approach. But he also subverts the genre's love of symbolic celebration by contrasting Centennial Summer's postwar sense of euphoria with the nation's despondency at the tail end of the Vietnam conflict.

This sense of chaos and inertia is superbly conveyed in the airport and freeway sequences, which not only establish the cacophony that will eventually drown out the music, but also suggest that the songs are as superficial as their singers. Thus, Nashville treats music in much the same way that Rashomon exploited diegetic truth and posits that the traditional musical has no place in modern America, because the generic gambits that made it work are now extraneous to everyday life.

Indeed, everything about Nashville is designed to undermine musical convention. The customary duality is destroyed by presenting the characters in isolation or triangles and the resultant lack of romantic contentment dashes any backstager notions of success.

But Altman reserves his special ire for the folk musical (see Chapter 00). With everyone in town for their own ends, the usual sense of harmonious community is corrupted. Consequently, the myth that anyone could be a performer is shattered, because music no longer emanates spontaneously from the soul of the people, but is manufactured and packaged in order to make money, sustain celebrity or secure political power or sexual favour.

Stripped of its potential to touch hearts and change lives - let alone expose the psyche of the singer - music becomes an irrelevance within its own genre. Whereas ambient sound was once suspended for the duration of a number, it now interrupts or obscures the music during the majority of the live spots, because performance now belongs in the artificial studio environment of the real world and not in a screen fantasy. 

In the late 1980s, Altman considered making a sequel, Nashville 12. But, with the musical virtually extinct, there was nothing left to lampoon.

Produced the same year, The Rocky Horror Picture Show would have long been forgotten were it not for Tim Deegan and Denise Borden. Faced with a critical and commercial catastrophe in the States, 20th Century-Fox was planning to consign Richard O'Brien's B-movie homage to video when marketing executive Deegan persuaded theatre owner Borden to screen the film as a midnite matinee at the Waverly Theatre in Greenwich Village. But what turned a curio into a cult were the audience members who began attending the screenings in character costume and shouting out ad-libbed responses to the dialogue. Rocky, thus, became a refuge for outsiders and exhibitionists, who identified with the movie's motto `Don't Dream It, Be It', and it's been a countercultural phenomenon ever since.

[I'm happy with your second para - I don't think it needs any analysis at this stage and don't think the names are a problem. I know you don't want it to be too factual, but sometimes a few names, dates and places are necessary]

There's still little love lost between the various figures in the picture's genesis, as each is keen to secure their own slice of the kudos for Rocky's success. Yet, to most fans, its appeal lies in O'Brien's songs and storyline, which fondly lampoons the kind of sci-fi and horror cheapies that had been churned out by such Hollywood companies as Universal and American International Pictures and the British trio of Hammer, Amicus and Tigon (??). However, the performances have become equally iconic, especially Tim Curry's bravura turn as Frank N Furter, a transvestite from the planet Transexual in the galaxy of Transylvania. Indeed, beside his strutting scene-stealing in numbers like `Sweet Transvestite', it's easy to overlook the sly underplaying of Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon, as the straight-laced Brad Majors and his fiancée, Janet Weiss. Their respective renditions of `Dammit, Janet' and `Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me' rank among the musical highlights, alongside the superb opener, `Science Fiction Double Feature', which is sung by a pair of disembodied red lips that namecheck several movies and stars more renowned for their kitsch value than their quality.

But the undoubted showstopper is `The Time Warp', which engulfs Brad and Janet as they enter Frank's old dark house after their car breaks down outside Denton during a storm. Indeed, such is the comic gusto displayed here by Richard O'Brien (reprising his stage role as the hunchbacked henchman), Patricia Quinn (as Frank's incestuous sister, Magenta) and Charles Gray (as the narrator) that the score struggles to recapture its ingenuity and exuberance. Indeed, the plot similarly begins to meander, as the emphasis shifts away from Brad and Janet on to Eddie the reckless biker (?? - more on who he is) and Rocky (Peter Hinwood), Furter's Frankensteinian vision of idealised manhood, and those not being bouyed along by participating audiences at ritualistic fancy dress screenings will increasingly find time hanging heavy.

Having rejected a substantial budget and the prospect of Mick Jagger playing Frank, Sharman remained largely loyal to the original cast and shot the film for $1 million over eight weeks at the old Hammer studios at Bray and the nearby Gothic pile, Oakley Court. However, Fox nearly cancelled the project at the eleventh hour and few were surprised when it opened to disastrous Stateside reviews, as conservative critics expressed their disgust at a musical that not only parodied the all-American genre, but which also demonstrated such an unflinchingly positive attitude to what they considered to be sexual deviancy. But the British press was less squeamish about Rocky's blend of audiovisual pastiche and good honest smut and it was soon hailed as a progenitor of punk. However, late-night screenings at arthouses, grindhouses and campuses across America eventually rescued it from obscurity - although the Waverly Theatre sequence in Fame (1980) did no harm, either.

The mania attending the famous `sing-along' screenings (that have becoming increasingly bourgeois in recent years) has since seen Rocky gross over $135 million. But even its cast members (many of whom prefer the vitality and viscerality of the stage original) are somewhat at a loss to explain its enduring allure. A key factor, however, is the subtext, which revolves around notions of stardom and MGM's attitude to its troubled creation, Judy Garland. Indeed, Sharman had even planned to shoot the action up to Frank's entrance in Wizard of Oz monochrome. But, as the ploy proved too expensive, he had to content himself with the Kansas tactic of placing the alien retinue among the small-town residents. However, the conceit can now be viewed among the extras on the 25th Anniversary DVD.

Camp of a more sophisticated kind is served up in Jon Sanders's Back to the Garden. Far too few films are made about folks in their late middle age and this follows Low Tide (2008) and Late September (2012) in exploring concerns about love, loss and legacy in an unhurried, improvisatory manner in a pleasingly appointed setting. Reinforced by the title, the Edenic feel is particularly strong in this slowly simmering saga, which benefits enormously from the unobtrusive cinematography of David Scott and the delightful flute-inflected score by Douglas Finch. But, as in his earlier outings, Sanders too often seems content to let his actors extemporise at their leisure, with the result that they sometimes seem to be straying from the point and straining for significance.

A year has passed since Emma Garden's theatre director husband, Stephen Lowe, passed away. She has found it difficult to get used to being alone, as her life was so entwined with his. Moreover, she has struggled to reclaim her identity and she confides to neighbour Petra Markham that she is rather dreading a reunion of old friends to pay their last respects before she buries her spouse's ashes in the flower bed.

Her trepidation is shared by longtime marrieds Anna Mottram and Bob Goody, who are not looking forward to having to do a small turn in tribute to their mentor in a small outdoor show before the committal. They stop for coffee and a sandwich in the quiet of the Kent countryside and Mottram can sense that her husband is unhappy, but she had learned not to press him for information, as she doesn't always want to hear what he has to say.

Nearby, Charlotte Palmer boards a small boat moored at the end of a jetty for a rendezvous with her lover, Richard Garaghty. They lament post-coitally that this will be the last time they will be able to use the craft, as Garden has decided to sell it and they wonder where they will be able to canoodle in the future, as they are still something of a clandestine couple, even though neither has other attachments and they clearly enjoy each other physically and intellectually. As they chat, they hear footsteps on the deck and fall nervously silent. However, the interloper disappears as quickly as they arrived and they laugh about nearly being caught in flagrante.

Having arrived at Garden's idyllic home among the fields, Mottram gives Goody a quick haircut and teases him about the fact that he always manages to find himself a special female friend during every production with which he's involved. He tries to plead innocence and insists he is simply protecting vulnerable waifs from the wolves in the cast, but Mottram knows that his flings mean nothing and that he will always come back to her. As Goody goes to collect the final guest Tanya Myers from her train, Mottram asks Garden how she is faring and reassures her that it takes time to become accustomed to grief.

Stopping off at the pub on the way back from the station, Goody tells Myers that he has landed her a part as his assistant on a new TV series. She is flattered that he considered her for the role, but insists that it is better if she turns it down, as she knows he has fallen in love with her and she does not reciprocate his feelings. He tries to persuade her that they will have fun together and that the shoot might bring them closer, but Myers is adamant that she doesn't want to hurt him or Mottram, as they have been such good friends for so long and Goody reluctantly accepts her decision.

Once everyone is assembled, Garden, Mottram, Markham and Myers sit together at a wooden table in the garden and discuss how hard it must be to lose the person you love. They consider whether having faith makes bereavement easier, as there is the possibility of a celestial reunion. But the majority are certain that death is the corporeal end, even though the spirit of the deceased lives on in both family members and friends and in the work they leave behind. While this conversation continues, Goody confides in Myers that he has allowed his feelings to get the better of him and she urges him not to jeopardise his marriage to such a lovely woman as Mottram for the sake of a crush.

While Garden and Myers rehearse a song at the piano and Goody helps Markham dig a hole for the interment, Mottram tries to put Garaghty at his ease about being the outsider of the party. She explains that she used to act, but concentrated on supporting Goody and raising their children when the parts dried up. But she admits that it isn't always easy on the periphery and she hopes that Garaghty finds happiness with Palmer if this is what they both want. Indeed, this conversation seems to clarify Mottram's thinking and she goes to see Myers, who is reading on her bed. She tells her that she has always known that Goody has strayed while treading the boards, but warns her that he is not the most reliable of men and Myers snappishly reassures her that she has done nothing to encourage his affections and the pair hug before Mottram wanders down to the garden to tell Goody that, if staying with her makes him so unhappy, she won't stand in his way.

As dusk deepens, the friends perch on a bench in the garden for their show. Garaghty and Palmer open proceedings with a plate-spinning act before Myers sings by Turner Layton and Henry Creamer's jazz standard `After You're Gone'. Palmer then plays the flute and Garaghty the tambourine, as Mottram and Garden perform an ancient Greek dance and Goody closes with a self-composed poem about the time that Lowe had told him how to improve his technique by being in the moment. He jokes about what a hard taskmaster Lowe could be and pauses before telling everyone how grateful he is to Mottram for sticking with him for so long. Lowe's ghost hovers between the bench and the bushes, as the friends embrace before going in to change for the ceremony. Garden keeps things simple, as she pours the ashes into the hole, which Goody fills in before sidling up to Mottram, putting his arm around her and leading her inside.

The action opens with a couple of enigmatic scenes that may well be dreams. The first sees Garden make a cup of tea on the boat and welcome an off-screen presence who may simply be a figment of her tormented imagination, while the second sees Goody stride through the morning mist to the riverbank to watch a rowing boat drift past containing a figure that is more likely to be Mottram than Myers. But this is all Sanders gives us by way of backstory and it takes a while for viewers to get up to speed with who everybody is and how they connect with each other. Even then, some of the ties remain frustratingly loose and this refusal to let the audience fully into the story world leaves them lingering on margins with an uncomfortable sense they are eavesdropping on conversations that would be better off taking place in private.

Shooting on a shoestring in a limited time span, Sanders makes heavy demands on his cast and, sadly, several of the exchanges are plain dull, while others are utterly excruciating. Indeed, many are overtaken by what can only be described as waffle, as the static camera fixes unflinchingly on performers who largely learnt their craft in alternative theatre in the 1970s. Yet, Sanders does indulge in one of his trademark sideways pans during the garden table conflab and (as one might expect from such a seasoned sound recordist) he also makes fine audiovisual use of the road and railway line in the middle distance. Moreover, he captures the mood of wistfulness and regret permeating the encounters, which he flecks with a wit and tenderness that makes the characters and their situations all the more believable. Thus, while this occasionally feels like a casual record of an acting workshop, it has the courage of its conviction and by sticking to its own rhythms and cadences, it succeeds in being honest, thoughtful and touching.

Scot Eric Lomax remained silent for four decades about his treatment in a Japanese prisoner of war camp after he was captured in Singapore in February 1942. However, since the publication of his memoir, The Railway Man, in 1995, the text has inspired three films. Hard on the heels of the book, Mike Finlason chronicled the reunion between the prisoner and his gaoler, Takashi Nagase, in the documentary, Enemy, My Friend, while similar ground was covered in the BBC's Everyman episode `Prisoners in Time', which was directed by Stephen Walker and starred John Hurt as Lomax, Rowena Cooper as his wife Patti and Randall Duk Kim as Nagase. Now, a year after Lomax's death at the age of 93, Frank Cottrell Boyce and Andy Paterson have returned to his autobiography for The Railway Man, which has been directed with such sanitised sensitivity by Australian Jonathan Teplitzky that it feels more like one of those `now it can be told' dramas that appeared in the immediate postwar era than a genuinely authentic or reflective assessment of both the atrocity and its aftermath.

A tentative romance begins in Scotland in 1983 after Eric Lomax (Colin Firth) meets Patti Wallace (Nicole Kidman) on a train. He jokes about David Lean's railway romance Brief Encounter (1945) as they chat at Edinburgh's Waverly Station. But it is only after she has married the retired lecturer and keen railway enthusiast and moved into his home in Berwick-upon-Tweed that Patti comes to realise the full extent of the trauma he still suffers after his experiences in a POW camp during the Second World War. Disturbed by her husband's nightmares, she tries to get him to discuss the time he spent building the Death Railway while detained in the infamous Kanchanaburi camp in Thailand.

A flashback shows Lomax (here played by Jeremy Irvine) being savagely beaten by Takashi Nagase (Tanroh Ishida) after he was caught in possession of a radio built from pilfered parts in August 1943. But Lomax prefers to share his thoughts only with those in a self-help group for camp survivors and Patti seeks out his friend Finlay (Stellan Skarsgård) to get a better understanding of what the prisoners endured. He suggests that she coaxes Lomax into meeting with Nagase when it is discovered that the onetime interpreter is working as a guide at the museum now housed in the camp. However, Lomax refuses to confront his past and it is only after Finlay hangs himself that he feels compelled to return to the scene of his incarceration.

On arriving in western Thailand, Lomax goes to the Kempeitai War Museum and finds Nagase (Hiroyuki Sanada) alone. He thinks back to the brutal beating he suffered at the hands of the Kempeitai military police, who were convinced that he was using the radio to communicate with the Chinese. Lomax approaches Nagase and demands to know why he resorted to such inhumane methods. He pulls a knife and the terrified Japanese protests that he has sought to atone for his crimes and now wishes only to apologise and be granted forgiveness. However, he seems to sense that he is about to die and, as he composes himself, Lomax recalls the living hell of being waterboarded.

Forty years earlier, Nagase despised the British for dishonouring their flag by surrendering. Now, however, he pleads with Lomax that he is ready to repent and his words and the sudden realisation that he is threatening a defenceless man with a blade brings Lomax to his senses. He lets Nagase go and throws the weapon into the river. A year later, he brings Patti to a memorial service at the Hellfire Pass and, when Nagase makes a formal apology, Lomax hands him a letter offering him complete forgiveness. As a postscript reveals, the pair remained good friends until Nagase passed away in 2011.

Lomax was not alone in struggling to come to terms with his war record. Nagase had been crippled by guilt and had spent his life trying to make reparation. In addition to publishing his own book, Crosses and Tigers, he also contributed towards the building of a Buddhist temple on the site of the infamous bridge over the River Kwai. Thus, Cottrell Boyce and Paterson are right to make this a story about compassion and forgiveness rather than crime and punishment. However, at no stage does Teplitzky come close to duplicating the harrowing scenes of physical and mental cruelty depicted in John Krish's recently rediscovered POW camp drama, Captured (1959). Nor does the triumvirate find a way of weaving together the romance with Patti, the recollections and the reunion with Nagase into a smoothly flowing whole.

Colin Firth's reference to David Lean is also ironic as many veterans of the Burma railroad condemned his Oscar-winning epic, The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for shying away from the grim reality of life on the tracks and in the camps. Indeed, The Railway Man feels trapped somewhere between Kwai and Nagisha Oshima's Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (1983), which was based on Laurens van der Post's tomes, The Seed and the Sower (1963) and The Night of the New Moon (1970). The plot is too placid, while the reconstructions are too tasteful, as if Teplitzky was trying to protect the sensibilities of his audience rather than subjecting them to the abhorrence of what men like Lomax experienced.

Despite the script making far too few psychological demands, Firth and Sanada manage decent performances, while Irvine conveys something of the torment. Moreover, he also captures Firth's mannerisms with a subtly that is missing from David Hirschfelder's otherwise rousing score and Garry Phillips's locaton-acute cinematography. Sadly, Nicole Kidman is wasted in an underwritten supporting role, which might have been used to say more about the impact that post-combat trauma had on loved ones who often had little idea of the savagery that was meted out to Allied prisoners because of the code of silence they upheld. But the screenwriters devote more time to their scrappy structure than they do to emotional insight and, thus, this fails to deliver on its good intentions.