Szukając Kelly

In a break from talking about the Royals, Channel 5 are to air a documentary about Hollywood royalty tonight, with Grace Kelly: The Hollywood Years.

Narrated by renowned Australian actor Jack Thompson, this documentary tells the story of a man who for most Australians is our first revolutionary, a persecuted hero who fought to tear his country from the shackles of Mother England and free his people from the corruption of British rule. From the moment the Kelly Gang burst out of the Glenrowan Inn in 1880 clad in suits of iron forged from old farm ploughs, he was set not only to take on the colony's rogue police force, but to become Australia's very own knight in shining armour. Today his values are touted as those of a nation, he is our beloved 'underdog', the true 'Aussie battler'.

In a break from talking about the Royals, Channel 5 are to air a documentary about Hollywood royalty tonight, with Grace Kelly: The Hollywood Years. Modern-day Hollywood may have its fair share of talented stars, but this archive-rich film transports us to the bona fide Golden Age, when movies such as Gone with the Wind, Casablanca and Rear Window brought international prestige to LA. It was the dawn of the cinema superstar, and by 1955 one name was on everyone’s lips: Grace Kelly.

Like M*A*S*H and Catch-22, both released the same year, this military comedy takes place in an earlier war but is really a thinly disguised treatise on the modern-day insanity and avariciousness then unfolding in Vietnam. Clint Eastwood stars as Kelly, a former lieutenant whose illusions about the glory of war, if he has any, are lost when he is busted in rank for following some poorly considered orders in World War II France. After capturing a friendly German officer, Kelly learns the whereabouts of millions of dollars in gold bars, earmarked to finance a military payroll. Taking advantage of a three-day liberty, Kelly assembles a motley trio of fellow soldiers to help him sneak behind enemy lines and retrieve the booty. They include Big Joe (Telly Savalas), a gruff sergeant; Crapgame (Don Rickles), a supply sergeant already enriching himself as a black marketer and con man; and the hippie-like tank commander Oddball (Donald Sutherland). Since crossing into enemy-held territory means heading in the opposite direction of the retreating Allies, Kelly and his men encounter armed resistance. Receiving word of their campaign, the vain General Colt (Carroll O'Connor) mistakes the quartet of freelancing scam artists for all-American heroes.

Contains very strong language and upsetting scenes. R Kelly is once again in the middle of another highly publicised media storm, following Ben Zand's acclaimed documentary R Kelly: Sex, Girls & Videotapes. In this follow-up film, Ben flies to the USA to get to the heart of the latest allegations: he meets the woman who claims R Kelly infected her with an STD and spends an extraordinary 48 hours with the Savages, who haven’t seen their daughter Joycelyn since December 2016.