Parky at the Pictures (DVD 7/7/2011)

Loosely adapted from a novel by Joseph Hergesheimer and set in Bristol in the 1840s, Java Head is named after the house in which former sea captain Edmund Gwenn has finally put down roots. He envies younger son John Loder his life on the ocean wave, but is dismissive of heir Ralph Richardson, who runs his shipping line with a dour efficiency that keeps the profits rolling in. Gwenn has also fallen out with old friend Herbert Lomas and, as a consequence, Loder is forbidden from romancing his daughter, Elizabeth Allan.

As the story starts, Loder is about to head off on a trading voyage and Richardson is frustrated that Gwenn insists on using the old-fashioned vessels of his youth rather than purchasing a clipper or steam ship. But they are united in their surprise when Loder returns with Chinese bride Anna May Wong, who is immediately seized upon by Allan's uncle, George Curzon, who had spent much of his life in Shanghai before being sent home because of his drug addiction. Allan tries to be polite to Wong, who makes every effort to fit into her new surroundings. But tongues continue to wag and, when Wong injures Allan in a runaway buggy accident, Curzon urges her to elope with him so that Loder and Allan can start afresh.

The fascination with this picture lies behind the scenes rather than on the screen. Producer Basil Dean initially hired American J. Walter Ruben to direct, but his sudden return to Hollywood left an uncredited Thorold Dickinson to complete the shoot with assistant Carol Reed. Equally intriguingly, David Lean served as editor and not only brought a certain smoothness to the action, but also created the climactic dissolve that linked the tragic Wong with the lovers setting sail for a new life in the East.

The performances are solid enough, with the impeccably English-accented Wong bringing an intensity that is absent from Gwenn's jovial bluffness, Loder's stiff decency and Allan's simpering goodness. But Curzon also impresses as the leering old colonial, while Richardson is splendidly imperious after it's discovered that he has been secretly dealing in opium. However, those expecting a monochrome variation on The Onedin Line are likely to be disappointed by the melodramatic storyline and rather timid refusal to address the contentious social and political issues it raises.

Directed by J. Elder Wills, Tiger Bay is even less willing to tackle the racial themes that crop up in its exposé of backstreet life in a seedy South American port. However, the original intention was to set the action in the Limehouse district of London and it only became a cautionary tale for rookie colonials when the British Board of Film Censors demanded a change of location.

This time, Wong is a Chinese émigrée, who was forced to flee during the 1911 Xinhai Revolution with an English baby in tow. She is now twentysomething René Ray and Wong takes great care to ensure that she stays away from the lowlifes who frequent her club in the racy eponymous quarter. Wong is aided by cashier Margaret Yarde and waiter Ernest Jay, but they are no match for German thug Henry Victor and a cutthroat gang comprising Wally Patch, Brian Buchel and the peg-legged Ben Soutten.

Naive Brit Victor Garland stumbles into this den of iniquity after being tempted by the idle chatter of his colleagues and he falls for Ray after she tends to his wounded arm following a knife scuffle. However, Victor and his cohorts are soon back on the scene, driving away the Chinese staff and intimidating the patrons in a bid to coerce Wong into paying protection money. Yet, while she is made of stern stuff, she will do anything to protect Ray. Indeed, she is ready to accede to Victor's demands when Ray is abducted. But that's when seemingly harmless bird impersonator Lawrence Grossmith decides to intervene.

In many ways less sophisticated than DW Griffith's silent Limehouse saga, Broken Blossoms (1919), this lacks the sense of place that Julien Duvivier was to bring three years later to the Casbah of Pépé le Moko. A black couple in sharp threads and a drunk in a pith helmet no more suggest a Latin backwater than interiors that look suspiciously like a hastily redecorated East End bordello.

Moreover, the supporting turns are more notable for their enthusiasm than their efficacy. But David Lean's editing is again precise and Wong exudes stoic inscrutability without lapsing into caricature. That said, even she looks slightly bemused by the last reel twists that see her kill Victor with a flying blade and swallow poison after Grossmith informs her that she will probably face the death penalty for taking the law into her own hands. But such a sacrifice was clearly the closest the film could get both to conveying Oriental nobility and providing the audience with a three-hankie finale.

The setting is much more convincing in Alberto Cavalcanti's Went the Day Well? (1942). Adapted by John Dighton, Angus MacPhail and Diana Morgan from the Graham Greene short story, `The Lieutenant Died Last', this brought a shocking new realism to screen warnings about the threat posed by Fifth Columnists to the Home Front. Moreover, it demonstrated the value of authentic action and its greater suitability to cinema than the polished theatricality that had long been the hallmark of the UK film industry.

The story opens reassuringly, with verger Mervyn Johns explaining why there are so many German graves in the churchyard of the sleepy English village of Bramley End. However, things could easily have turned out very differently on that May Saturday in 1942 had it not been for the pluck and resourcefulness of the residents.

When Basil Sydney arrives at the head of a convoy of army trucks, he explains that he has been sent to review area defences and requires lodgings for 60 men. Vicar C.V. France and daughter Valerie Taylor offer the major the spare room and suggest that his troops occupy the village hall. But it soon becomes clear that Sydney is a German officer and that squire Leslie Banks, who is a corporal in the Home Guard, is a quisling under orders to facilitate an invasion.

The villagers remain blissfully unaware of the truth, however, and dismiss both postmistress Muriel George's misgivings at seeing one of the soldiers scold a scampish child and Taylor's concern that the newcomers use continental numerals when keeping score at cards. They even fail to react when rascally Harry Fowler finds some German chocolate in Sydney's luggage, as Banks convinces Taylor that it's probably just a test of their vigilance.

Realising he has to act while the Home Guard is away on manoeuvres, Sydney rounds up the locals in the church and France is shot for attempting to use the bells to send an SOS. Convinced nobody has heard the peal, Land Girls Elizabeth Allan and Thora Hird try to smuggle out a message on an egg. But it gets smashed when the delivery boy is knocked off his bike and the note that Marie Lohr passes to visiting cousin Hilda Bayley to fetch help after the returning Home Guard is gunned down winds up being jammed in a rattling window. Even George's effort to raise the alarm after slaughtering one of the Germans with an axe fails, as the telephonist at the exchange is busy gossiping and George is bayoneted before she can get through.

All looks lost. But Fowler and poacher Edward Rigby mount a rearguard that sparks resistance within the church. However, many will make the ultimate sacrifice before the counterattack succeeds.

At a time when most British pictures were designed to boost morale and stress the capacity of Allied forces to turn the tide of the conflict, Ealing Studios adopted a more realistic stance. Following Thorold Dickinson's The Next of Kin (1942), this brutally graphic drama sought to convey the ruthlessness of the enemy and the need to abandon traditional notions of fair play if it was to be vanquished. Little of Greene's tale remains, as the scenarists shifted the emphasis away from the poacher's selfless heroism and on to communal cohesion and the hideous difficulty of killing to survive.

The black comedic failure of the villagers to summon assistance is cleverly used to show the futility of any tactic other than meeting force with force and the sight of matriarchs and spinsters resorting to violence to protect their homes must have sent shockwaves through contemporary audiences. The casting of the usually noble Leslie Banks as a traitor would have had a similar effect. But such iconoclasm would remain a feature of Ealing's output, with even its justly famous whimsical comedies having an anti-establishment edge designed to discomfit the complacent middle-classes.

The Brazilian-born Cavalcanti also served as associate producer alongside MacPhail and Morgan on the same studio's The Halfway House (1944), a heart-rending tale of second chances that must have seemed incredibly poignant to audiences fully aware that such things were rare in a world of air raids and War Office telegrams. Yet, while this is every bit as propagandist as Went the Day Well?, Basil Dearden's sensitive direction ensures that a gentle aura of supernatural sentimentality permeates proceedings designed to encourage audiences to bear loss with courage and keep the home fires burning.

Fittingly for a saga centred on a hostelry in the mid-Welsh countryside, the action opens in Cardiff, as conductor Esmond Knight is cautioned by doctor John Boxer that he will only live for another three months if he refuses to relinquish his hectic schedule. Meanwhile, in London's Inner Temple, teenager Sally Ann Howes eavesdrops on a meeting between bickering parents Richard Bird and Valerie White and lawyer CV France and hatches a scheme to prevent their divorce.

In Parkmoor Prison, governor Roland Pertwee similarly urges ex-soldier Guy Middleton to make plans for his release and his quandary about whether to rejoin the regiment he was forced to leave in disgrace mirrors the one facing naval captain Tom Walls, who has not returned to sea since being humiliatingly towed back to port. Moreover, he is mourning the loss of his sailor son and despairing over French wife Françoise Rosay's conviction that she can make contact with him through spiritualism.

While the war has brought nothing but pain to some, others like Alfred Drayton have profited from its privations and he is busy setting up a deal for sugar in a West End café when he discovers that fellow racketeer Joss Ambler is a less than honourable crook. Suitably stung, he decides to take a break at the Halfway House just as Philippa Hiatt and her Irish fiancé Pat McGrath board a train at Bristol Temple Meads, with the uniformed Hiatt being less than amused that McGrath sees nothing wrong in accepting a diplomatic post in Berlin because the Irish Free State is neutral.

The pair arrive at the remote station at the same time as Bird and Howes, who has persuaded her father to take her to Wales after overhearing White's weekend destination. Soon, all of the characters have assembled at the cosy premises run by Mervyn Johns and his daughter Glynis, even though several have heard rumours that it was destroyed in a bombing raid the previous year. Dismissing the realisation that neither host has a shadow or reflection and the discovery that the newspapers and radio broadcasts are 12 months out of date, the guests settle in to consider their futures.

Howes co-opts Walls into staging a near-drowning incident to reconcile Bird and White, but the stunt misfires as dismally as Rosay's attempt to connect with her son. Moreover, Hiatt and McGrath seem to be drifting further apart until the Johns explain what befell them on the day Tobruk fell in June 1942 and how their misfortune offers the visitors a chance to change their destiny. So, when they hear planes overhead, the assembled know exactly what to do - even though they still don't really understand why.

The speeches in which Mervyn Johns convinces McGrath to put the good of humanity above national ideology and Drayton to be a patriot instead of a parasite may sound a touch corny to modern ears. But Gynis Johns's discussions of death and daughterly duty with Knight and Howes remain deeply touching and take the mawkish curse of Walls's apology to Rosay for disrupting her séance. The denouement is equally contrived, but Roy Kellino's final effects shot brings home the picture's message with an affecting simplicity.

Filmed more outdoors than was usual for Ealing wartime dramas, this adaptation of Denis Ogden's play, The Peaceful Inn, nevertheless benefits from the contrasts between Wilkie Cooper's sun-dappled vistas and Michael Relph's atmospheric sets. The performances are equally effective, with the calm acceptance of Glynis and Mervyn Johns being particularly cogent.

Although it was filmed three years later, David MacDonald's adaptation of LAG Strong's novel, The Brothers, feels considerably more old-fashioned. Despite also being photographed primarily on location, the novelettishness of the storyline and the theatricality of the playing make it difficult to accept that this study in sibling rivalry was produced a year after David O. Selznick and King Vidor tackled the same topic with infinitely more passion and panache in the scandalous Technicolor melodrama, Duel in the Sun.

Arriving on the Isle of Skye from the mainland, orphan Patricia Roc is collected by parish priest James Woodburn and driven by buggy to the croft that Finlay Currie shares with his sons Duncan Macrae and Maxwell Reed. As a charity case, Roc is grateful for the opportunity to work for her keep. But she takes an instant dislike to the dour Macrae and, having failed to elicit a response from Reed, she dallies with neighbour Andrew Crawford. However, the clans are mortal enemies and Currie warns Roc to remember where her loyalties lie.

Allegiances are sacred among this isolated community and, when John Laurie testifies that Patrick Boxill has been caught snitching to the authorities about the illegal liquor trade, he is sentenced to die by being set afloat in the bay with a fish tied to his head so that a diving bird can puncture his skull. It's a brutal method of execution and epitomises the harshness of island life, but Roc fails to learn the lesson and, by continuing to spurn Macrae and flirt with Reed and Crawford, she makes further tragedy inevitable.

Tensions rise after Crawford tries to force himself on Roc and he fights with Reed beneath a waterfall. But neither side is willing to let the matter lie and Crawford challenges Reed to a trial of strength by rowing that very nearly kills Currie and Crawford's own father. However, Currie succumbs soon afterwards, having encouraged Macrae to marry Crawford's cousin, Megs Jenkins. But his lustful feelings for Roc remain strong and, when he sees the depth of her love for Reed (after he loses a thumb in attempting to catch her some lobsters during a picnic with matchmaking veteran Will Fyffe), he vows to turn his brother against her.

Heavily reliant on the myth of the Seal Girl of Barra, the conclusion of this torrid tale suffers from a surfeit of incident and contrivance, despite the script contributions of the experienced husband-and-wife pairing of Sydney and Muriel Box. Moreover, Roc feels miscast as the wilful waif, while Macrae's sinister intensity and Reed's smouldering insecurity feel hammy beside Crawford's quietly cocky charm. But Stephen Dade's lowering monochrome photography captures the severe majesty of the locale, while George Provis's cramped sets reinforce the oppressive proximity of the protagonists. Furthermore, with its flashes of naked skin and discussion of smuggling, adultery and murder, this was surprisingly racy for its day.

In terms of content, Frederick Wilson's Floodtide (1949) is much tamer. But, rooted in the British docudramatic tradition and filmed extensively on Clydeside locations, this is a classic town-and-country saga that is spiritedly played by an exceptional Scottish ensemble. However, because of its association with the failed Independent Frame experiment, it has been rather unfairly forgotten. But story of a farmer's son who defies his family to pursue his shipbuilding dreams offers a compelling insight into a traditional heavy industry and the community it sustained as they attempted to re-acclimatise to postwar normalcy.

Much to the consternation of father James Woodburn, Gordon Jackson persuades uncle John Laurie to land him a job in a Glasgow shipyard. Armed with grandma Kitty Kirwan's savings, Jackson pals up with co-worker Jimmy Logan and comes to share his digs in Molly Weir's tenement flat. He also allows himself to be coaxed out on the tiles and the pair hook up with Janet Brown and Elizabeth Sellars. But Jackson is determined to design ships and overcomes the indifference of foreman Archie Duncan to impress both manager Jack Lambert and his yachting daughter, Rona Anderson.

Moved into rooms with landlady Grace Gavin, Jackson begins studying at the technical college and strives to convince sceptical supervisor Gordon McLeod that he has talent. He survives an uncomfortable moment when Logan, Brown and Sellars show up unexpectedly for a weekend booze-up and Jackson is reprimanded for upsetting Gavin and insulting McLeod. But Lambert becomes genuinely fond of him and invites him to stay at his lochside retreat, where Anderson advises him not to push their budding affair too fast.

Eventually, after three years of self-improvement and sacrifice, Jackson completes his education and his apprenticeship. Moreover, Lambert persuades chairman Ian McLean to let him design a new craft for South American businessman Peter Illing and, during tests at Alastair Hunter's wave pool, he not only succeeds in winning over McLeod, but also doubting directors Ian Wallace and Alexander Archdale. But, just as he seems set to fulfil his professional and personal dreams, Jackson argues with Anderson about attending Logan and Brown's engagement party and he drunkenly flirts with the uninvited Sellars. However, a crisis at the yard forces Anderson to go in search of him and overlook his indiscretion in order to prevent the vessel capsizing in the stormy swell.

Devised to cut costs by creating convincing back-projected environments that could reduce the amount of set construction, David Rawnsley's Independent Frame technique proved to be an expensive failure. It's certainly possible to detect the difference between characters acting in the open and standing in front of a screen. Yet Alfred Hitchcock tolerated indifferent back projection for much of his career and few would claim it detracted from the quality of his pictures.

Thus, it seems churlish to dismiss this for such a petty reason, especially as there is so much else to admire. George Stretton's images of the docklands convey their vastness and the insignificance of the workforce, while the balcony shot of the crowded dance floor at the Barrowland Ballroom superbly captures the atmosphere of a Glaswegian night out. The acting is also admirable, with Jackson and off-screen wife Anderson deftly suggesting the class tensions inherent in romancing the boss's daughter. Logan and Brown, who would later be better known for comic roles, also impress. But it's Sellars who catches the eye as the working-class girl keen to snag herself a socially mobile husband and yet who turns out not to be quite as scarlet as she's painted.

Despite being played out on rather imposing sets designed by Herbert Smith, Michael McCarthy's The Traitor (1957) is another film that has been overlooked because of its technical limitations. Yet this is an intriguing variation on the country house mystery that boasts a fine ensemble and an ingenious twist that would not disgrace a more prestigious production.

On receiving a phone call from agent Colin Croft, Colonel Donald Wolfit instructs butler Rupert Davies to send notes summoning their comrades in a wartime resistance group. Apparently, Croft has tracked down the Nazi soldier they have long been searching for to a displaced persons camp and he has important news about the betrayal of their much-loved leader. Doctor Christopher Lee, mayor Karel Stepanek, financier Frederick Schiller, pianist Anton Diffring, lothario Oscar Quitak and academic Carl Jaffe and his daughter Jane Griffiths duly arrive to discover which among them is a quisling. But Croft dies from a stab wound after managing only to inform the assembled that there has been a mistake and Wolfit has no sooner started his investigation when he is interrupted by American intelligence officer Robert Bray and his English sidekick, John Van Eyssen.

In true whodunit fashion, Wolfit tries to ascertain who was where when Croft was killed. However, he soon finds himself fending off Bray's prying questions and struggling to prevent his guests from giving away their apprehension. Having disposed of Croft's corpse in the woods, Wolfit has another one on his hands after a clumsy attempt is made on Bray's life and the tipsy Quitak allows his nerves to get the better of him.

Naturally, the identity of the culprit must remain a secret. But the cleverness of the denouement has to be mentioned, as Croft was not coming to expose a traitor but to acclaim a hero, as the partisan leader had forged a pact with the Gestapo and was about to betray the secrets of his entire organisation when he was slain. There are weak links within the cast and the dialogue occasionally sounds like it has been written for an amdram production. But Wolfit, Diffring, Lee and Davies deliver solid performances, while the constant movement of the finger of suspicion should keep most viewers guessing.

It's not entirely certain who the target audience is for Alexander Mackendrick's penultimate picture, A High Wind in Jamaica (1965). Adapted from a 1929 Richard Hughes novel, it starts off in the cosy Disneyfied realms of Swiss Family Robinson. However, it soon turns into a rather malevolent hybrid of Peter Pan, Lord of the Flies and The Turn of the Screw, as the children kidnapped by pirates prove to be far more pitiless in both their actions and their deceptions than their Spanish-speaking captors.

Concerned for the safety of their offspring following a Caribbean hurricane, 1870s parents Nigel Davenport and Isabel Dean decide to send Deborah Baxter, Martin Amis, Karen Flack, Henry Beltran and Roberta Tovey back to Blighty to complete their education. They are accompanied by Creoles Vivienne Ventura and Benito Carruthers on Captain Kenneth J. Warren's ship. However, they are waylaid by Anthony Quinn and his crew, who are too preoccupied with plundering to notice that the juveniles have stowed away below decks.

On being discovered, the children begin to make their presence felt and Quinn's henchman, James Coburn, suggests getting rid of them as quickly as possible. When Baxter is injured by a falling spike, the solicitous Quinn decides to billet them with Tampico bordello owner Lila Kedrova. But she warns him that the authorities are on his trail and he puts back out to sea, only for Amis to fall to his death shortly afterwards.

Quinn is so dismayed by the accident that he refuses to attack a Dutch craft skippered by Gert Fröbe and the crew mutinies. In the midst of the chaos, Fröbe attempts to rescue Baxter and she stabs him. However, when the pirates are apprehended by the British and put on trial, she accuses Quinn of the murder and he accepts his fate with a grace born partly out of his guilt at other unpunished crimes and partly out of his affection for a girl whose outward innocence belies her capacity for wickedness.

Handsomely photographed by Douglas Slocombe and scored with suitably nautical brio by Larry Adler, this is a curious mix of family-friendly adventure and dark psychological drama. Echoing many of the themes that Mackendrick had explored in another tale of a child being toughened by the need to survive, Sammy Going South (1963), this may not be as intellectually complex as Hughes's much-admired novel. But Baxter's amorality is still disconcerting in its calculated intensity and the manner in which Quinn is humanised and, ultimately, destroyed by his enchantment with her very much recalls Edward G. Robinson's fate on encountering Fergus McClelland in a scenario that was also scripted by Denis Cannan (who collaborates here with Stanley Mann and Ronald Harwood).

Caught somewhere between Robert Newton's Long John Silver and his own Zorba the Greek, Quinn never quite seems in command of his crew or the kids and this vulnerability makes his conquest by Baxter less surprising. But the 12 year-old debutant's performance is simply exceptional and ranks alongside Bonita Granville's in William Wyler's These Three (1936) in its demure depiction of heartless cruelty.

Richard Attenborough proved even more viciously pitiless in his portrayal of Pinkie Brown in the Boulting brothers' 1947 adaptation of Graham Greene's masterly novel, Brighton Rock. But Sam Riley misses the mood completely in Rowan Joffe's lacklustre remake, which is unconvincingly set against the Mods and Rockers ructions of 1964 and which fatally underplays the Catholic subtext that is so vital to both the plotline and the psychology of the juvenile gangster and his naive wife.

When mob mentor Kite (Geoff Bell) is killed, 17 year-old Pinkie challenges Spicer (Phil Davis) for control of their gang and vows revenge on Fred Hale (Sean Harris), who works for rival kingpin Colleoni (Andy Serkis). However, in capturing Hale as he attempts to chat up mousy waitress Rose Wilson (Andrea Riseborough), Spicer is photographed by a pier shutterbug and Rose is given the ticket to redeem the snap. Realising that it could incriminate him in Hale's murder, Pinkie decides to flirt with Rose in the hope of stealing the ticket. But after he has his collar felt by a sneering police inspector (Maurice Roëves), Pinkie decides to marry her to prevent her from testifying against him.

Although Spicer and fellow gang members Dallow (Nonso Anozie) and Cubitt (Craig Parkinson) have their doubts about this strategy, Pinkie steels himself to the distasteful task of being nice to Rose. However, when she asks him to make a recording of his voice in a self-operated booth, he takes the opportunity to say how much he detests her and smiles callously as she clutches the wedding day souvenir with girlish delight.

Yet, in romancing Rose, Pinkie arouses the suspicions of her tea shop boss, Ida Arnold (Helen Mirren). A former intimate of Hale, she confides in bookmaker Phil Corkery (John Hurt) that she intends bringing Pinkie to book. But she has trouble tracking the couple down and then fails to convince Rose of the danger she's in. Consequently, it takes a desperate nocturnal dash to the Sussex cliffs to deliver her from evil.

Besides John Mathieson's cinematography and James Merifield's production design, there's little to admire about this misfiring muddle. Martin Phipps's bombastic score is a constant intrusion, while Joffe's ungainly visual flourishes compound the impression that he would rather have been revisiting Quadrophenia than Brighton Rock. The 60s setting is authentic enough, but it undermines the credibility of the scenario, as Pinkie would much more likely have been a member of a Mod gang than a third-rate rabble whose protection racket seems much smaller time than the racecourse operation that Kite ran in the earlier versions.

In fairness, the decision to jettison the Kolley Kibber conceit pays off, as does the increased emphasis on Ida. But the story's religious aspects feel tacked on to justify the final shot - which flatly contradicts Joffe's assertion that he was reinterpreting the novel rather than remaking the film, as Greene detested the mawkish sentimentality of the crucifix close-up and made it clear that it had not featured in the screenplay he had written with Terence Rattigan, but was imposed upon him by director John Boulting.

The performances are also often unconvincing, although Davis, Parkinson and Anozie are much more marginalised as Spicer, Cubitt and Dallow than William Hartnell, Wylie Watson and Nigel Stock were in the original. Mirren's Ida also seems a less credible habitué of the criminal demi-monde than Hermione Baddeley's blowsier incarnation. But comparisons are, of course, odious, and it seems unhelpful to judge Riley and Riseborough against Richard Attenborough and Carol Marsh. Yet Riley lacks the spark of charisma that would make his remorseless (and sexually dysfunctional) sociopath attractive to such an unworldly waif, while Riseborough discards her faith too easily in passing from shrinking violet to complicit moll.

Greene has always been a tempting author for film-makers to rework. But the cinematic style of his prose has invariably proved deceptive and resisted easy adaptation. Several Hollywood attempts to transcribe both his novels and entertainments betrayed their sources, most notably John Ford's The Fugitive (1947), which made a dismal job of tackling The Power and the Glory, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz's The Quiet American (1957). Greene also harboured a healthy dislike of Fritz Lang's reading of Ministry of Fear (1944). But he always admired Attenborough's iconic display as Pinkie Brown and this alone should have suggested that Brighton Rock was not among the titles in most urgent need of a rethink. Nothing is exempt from the curse of the remake these days. But the blood runs cold at the thought of Jude Law and Tom Cruise in The Third Man.