The “Behind the Scenes” articles have become increasingly popular in the Blog. As regular readers will know I am fascinated about the problems incurred in making certain movies. Perhaps one of the more interesting aspects of this category is that every now and there is out of nowhere massive interest in the making of a particular movie and it shoots up the all-time tree. Most of the material has come from my own digging, and sources are always quoted at the end of each article, but occasionally I have turned to books written on the subject of the making of a specific film.
As with the All-Time Top Movies section, the top 20 comprises the choices of my readers. Alistair MacLean still exerts an influence, which is reassuring because my next book is about the films made from his books.
While Waterloo remains firmly out in front there are some interesting new entries such as The Cincinnati Kid, The Appointment, Mackenna’s Gold, The Train, The Sons of Katie Elder and The Trouble with Angels while Man’s Favorite Sport has made a steady climb upwards.
(1)Waterloo(1970). No doubting the effect of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon in racketing up interest in this famous flop.
(2) Ice Station Zebra(1968). A complete cast overhaul and ground-breaking special effects are at the core of this filming of an Alistair MacLean tale.
(3)In Harm’s Way(1965). Otto Preminger black-and-white epic about Pearl Harbor and after.
(7) The Guns of Navarone (1961). Alistair MacLean again, setting up the template for the men-on-a-mission war picture with an all-star cast and enough production jeopardy to qualify for a movie of its own.
(6)The Satan Bug(1965). The problems facing director John Sturges in adapting the Alistair MacLean pandemic classic for the big screen.
(9) Man’s Favorite Sport (1964). Howard Hawks back in the gender wars with Rock Hudson and Paul Prentiss squaring off.
(4)Battle of the Bulge (1965). There were going to be two versions, so the race was on to get this one to the public first.
(5) Cast a Giant Shadow (1965). Producer Melville Shavelson wrote a book about his experiences and this and other material relating the arduous task of bringing the Kirk Douglas-starrer to the screen are told here.
(10) The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968). Cult classic starring Marianne Faithful and Alain Delon had a rocky road to release, especially in the U.S. where the censor was not happy.
(8) Sink the Bismarck! (1962). Documentary-style British WW2 classic with Kenneth More with the stiffest of stiff-upper-lips.
(11). Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). Richard Fleischer dispenses with the all-star cast in favor of even-handed verisimilitude.
(New Entry) The Cincinnati Kid (1965). Once Sam Peckinpah was fired from the poker epic, Norman Jewison took over. Steve McQueen, Ann-Margret and Edward G. Robinson are top-billed.
(New Entry) The Trouble with Angels (1966). Hayley Mills causes trouble at a convent school where Rosalind Russell tries to rein her in.
(13). The Bridge at Remagen (1969). John Guillerman WW2 classic with George Segal and Robert Vaughn
(17). The Collector (1963). William Wyler’s creepy adaptation of John Fowles’ creepy bestseller with Terence Stamp and Samatha Eggar.
(New Entry) The Train (1964). Another director fired, this time Arthur Penn, with John Frankenheimer taking over in this cat-and-mouse WW2 struggle between Burt Lancaster and Paul Schofield.
(New Entry) The Appointment (1969). Sidney Lumet has his hands tied in Italian drama with Omar Sharif and Anouk Aimee.
(20) The Way West (1967). Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum face off in pioneer western.
(New entry) Mackenna’s Gold (1969). Producer Carl Foreman has his work cut out bringing home western Cinerama epic starring Gregory Peck and Omar Sharif.
(New entry) The Sons of Katie Elder (1965). Long-gestating Henry Hathaway western with John Wayne and Dean Martin as brawling brothers.
Traditionally, this is an opportunity for me to blow the trumpet on behalf of my loyal and growing band of readers. But this time out I’m also taking the opportunity to blow my own trumpet or in the patois of my home city “bum ma load.” I began this blog in June 2020 and my monthly viewing figures scarcely topped a few hundred in the first year. Now I’m hitting 10,000 views a month. Being a self-effacing kind of guy, I thought the world should know.
Now, back to the main task in hand. It’s been a major aspect of the Blog to see which films are most favored by my readers. As regular readers will know, I run this feature every six months.
It’s worth pointing out that for such a testosterone-driven decade the Top Ten is dominated by female stars with Ann-Marget and Angie Dickinson in the ascendancy. Raquel Welch, Hayley Mills and Jean Seberg also make a splash. As well as top male figures like Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and Dean Martin readers have been highly appreciative of underdogs like Alain Delon, Richard Johnson and Alex Cord.
Surprisingly high number of new entries include Young Cassidy, Fathom, The Appointment, Diamond Head, The Family Way and The Venetian Affair.
The figures in brackets represent the previous year’s position.
(1) The Swinger (1966). Queen of the Blog Ann-Margret in bouncy sex comedy that manages a sprinkling of innocence.
(2) Stagecoach (1966). Double whammy from Ann-Margret in this more than acceptable remake of the John Ford western with the male lead taken by Alex Cord, another star in need of reassessment.
(4) Fraulein Doktor (1969). German spy Suzy Kendall out-foxes Kenneth More in this World War One adventure with surprisingly grisly battle scenes and a superb score from Ennio Morricone.
(3) Jessica(1962). Angie Dickinson as a young widow incurring the wrath of wives in a small Italian town.
(7) Once Upon a Time in the West (1969). For many, including myself, the greatest western ever made. Sergio Leone fashions a masterpiece from a stunning cast of Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson and that fabulous Morricone score.
(6) Fireball XL5. (1962) The height of a television cult. Famous British series from Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, now colorized. “My heart will be a fireball…”
(5) The Sins of Rachel Cade. (1961) Angie Dickinson (again) as African missionary falling foul of the natives and commissioner Peter Finch. Roger Moore in an early role.
(10) Vendetta for the Saint. (1968) More television cultism. Movie made by combining two episodes of the series featuring the immortal Simon Templar. Roger Moore tackles the Mafia.
(12) TheSisters (1969). Complicated French love triangle featuring Nathalie Delon and Susan Strasberg.
(11) Baby Love (1969). Controversy was the initial selling point but now it’s morphed into a morality tale as orphaned Linda Hayden tries to fit into an upper-class London household.
(13) Pharoah (1966). Sensational Polish epic set in Ancient Egypt centering on the battle between the country’s ruler and the religious hierarchy.
(9) Moment to Moment (1966). Hitchcockian-style thriller set in the south of France with Jean Seberg caught out in illicit love affair. Co-starring Honor Blackman.
(21) Go Naked in the World (1961). Steamy drama with Gina Lollobrigida discovering that her profession (the oldest) and true love (with rich Anthony Franciosa) don’t mix. Great turn from Ernest Borgnine as a doting father.
(8) The Secret Ways (1961). The first of the Alistair MacLean adaptations to hit the big screen features Richard Widmark trapped in Hungary during the Cold War. Senta Berger has a small role.
(36) In Harm’s Way (1965). Otto Preminger’s Pearl Harbor epic sets John Wayne and Kirk Douglas at each other’s throats.
(20) The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl (1968). Genuine French cult film with Daniele Gaubert as a sexy cat burglar.
(14)Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humpe and Find True Happiness? (1969) Self-indulgence reaches new heights as singer Anthony Newley invokes his inner Fellini that somehow involves bedding lots of women. Then-current wife Joan Collins co-stars.
(New Entry) Young Cassidy (1965). Rod Taylor and Julie Christie in Jack Cardiff’s Irish drama. He took over from an ill John Ford.
(22) Pressure Point (1962). No escape for racist patient Bobby Darin when psychiatrist Sidney Poitier is around.
(New Entry) The Appointment (1969). Complete change of pace for Omar Sharif in unusual Italian drama directed by Sidney Lumet. Anouk Aimee is the tantalizing female lead.
(New Entry) Fathom (1967) Raquel Welch swaps her skydiving kit for the more comfortable environs of a bikini in thriller. Anthony Franciosa co-stars.
(22) Pendulum (1969). Cop George Peppard accused of murdering unfaithful wife Jean Seberg.
(New Entry) The Family Way (1966). Hayley Mills grows up – and how – in marital drama with new British star Hywel Bennett.
(New Entry) Diamond Head (1962). Ruthless hypocritical land baron Charlton Heston causes chaos in Hawaii. With Yvette Mimieux and George Chakiris.
(26) A Dandy in Aspic (1968). Cold War thriller with Laurence Harvey as a double agent who wants out. Mia Farrow co-stars.
(New Entry) The Venetian Affair (1966). Robert Vaughn turns in a terrific performance as an ex-alcoholic spy dealing with former lover Elke Sommer in slippery Venice-set thriller.
(21) The Best House in London (1969). That’s a euphemism for a brothel, let’s get that straight. David Hemmings tries to do right by the sex workers.
(25) Lady in Cement (1969). Frank Sinatra reprises private eye Tony Rome with mobster’s moll Raquel Welch as his client.
(31) The Girl on a Motorcycle / Naked under Leather (1968). Heavily-censored in the U.S., erotic drama with singer Marianne Faithfull as the titular fantasizing heroine. Alain Delon co-stars.
(New Entry) Genghis Khan (1965). Omar Sharif as the all-conquering Mongol chieftain. Stephen Boyd, James Mason, Eli Wallach, Telly Savalas and Francoise Dorleac lend support.
(New Entry) The Chalk Garden (1964). Hayley Mills again, being brought to heel by governess Deborah Kerr with a hidden secret.
(New Entry) Plane (2023). Gerard Butler channels his inner Bruce Willis as he attempts to avoid dying hard on an island inhabited by rebels.
(23) Oceans 11. Frank Sinatra heads the Rat Pack line-up, inspiring an industry of remakes and with everyone starting with Tarantino ripping off one scene.
(New Entry) Five Card Stud (1968). Surprising mix of feminism and noir in revenge western. Dean Martin, Robert Mitchum and Inger Stevens topline.
(34) The Misfits (1960). Last hurrah for Clark Gable, fabulous turns from Montgomery Clift and Marilyn Monroe in John Huston tale of losers.
(28) Once a Thief (1965). Change of pace for Ann-Margret as working mother whose ex-jailbird husband Alain Delon is forced into another job.
(27) Deadlier than the Male (1967). Espionage with a sting in the tale as venomous female villains including Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina target Bulldog Drummond
(35) Rage (1966). Glenn Ford and Stella Stevens combat pandemic in Mexican town.
(New Entry) Blonde (2022). Ana de Armas in stylized biopic of Marilyn Monroe
(33) She Died with Her Boots On / Whirlpool (1969). Sleazy British film from cult Spanish director Jose Ramon Larraz sees kinky photographer Karl Lanchbury seduce real-life MTA Vivien Neves.
Apparently to everyone’s surprise the extended version of Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (2001) broke into the box office top ten the weekend before last with The Two Towers (2002) not far behind. Already cinemas are gearing up for a swathe of 1999 reissues (25th anni don’t you know) including The Matrix and American Pie and IMAX is already setting aside screens for the 10th anniversary re-release of Interstellar (2014) later in the year.
With the demise of the DVD and the domination of the streamers, you would have thought there was no room anywhere for old movies returning to the big screen. But, historically, reissues always returned to save the day, most commonly when the industry was low on product. That was generally the most obvious reason and splurges of revivals occurred in the early 1920s, late 1930, post WW2 and the mid-1950s.
But there were other reasons. I could give you chapter and verse about the reissue since I wrote a book about it, but to save you ploughing through those 250,000 words, I’ll stick to the salient points. Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin kicked off the revival business. In the silent era there were few prints of any new picture, often less than 100, so theaters which couldn’t afford the price of the new offerings of the King and Queen of Hollywood just brought back their old ones.
For a time, in the 1920s and 1940s, studios just retitled pictures and brought back oldies as newbies until the law caught up with them. And in another dodgy piece of business, just before Hollywood sold a bunch of titles to television, they were inclined to throw them out for one last roll of the box office dice, infuriating exhibitors and moviegoers alike.
But the big boom in reissues was nothing to do with shortage and more the realization that, as we are more fully aware these days, punters will go back again and again to see a favorite. The James Bond bandwagon kicked off this particular spree but by the 1970s many films – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Billy Jack (1971) and Jeremiah Johnson (1972) – made more on revival than they did first time around. Studios began to build into a film’s release a reissue – they even invented a phrase for it “the wind-up saturation.”
And when those particular wells began to run dry as ancillary – video, cable – took over, the art film rode to the rescue. Neglected masterpieces like Abel Gance’s Napoleon (1927) or Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) were revamped while disgruntled auteurs of the caliber of David Lean found new audiences for different versions of Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Ridley Scott took this notion to the extreme with endless iterations of Blade Runner (1982). Then Imax and 3D came into play and scooped up gazillions for further airings of Pixar or Disney classics or Titanic (1997).
However, the reissue heyday looked dead and buried once movie lovers cottoned on that old movies were constantly were only being brought back for a one-day showing because they had gone through the 4K loop, but with DVDs able to add buckets of extras, commentaries and histories, that became the de facto location for revivals.
But then Covid struck and cinemas, bereft of product, looked once again to oldies. While nobody was partying like it was 1999, it was both astonishing and satisfying to studios that older movies could take up some of the product slack. While most of the movies taking a second bite were made this century and some coming back not long after initial release, there have been a good few surprises in the mix, not least that the anniversary marketing tag was not always in play.
Take the 2020 revivals for example. Topping the list was Mamma Mia (2008) with a whopping $84.6 million gross worldwide – plus $7.2 million for the 2018 sequel – followed by Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001) scooping up a wizard $31.5 million. Gravity (2013) with Sandra Bullock adrift in space notched up $24.8 million. You’d be taking something of a marketing gamble to reckon American election year could boost an old political movie but that was the case for The Post (2017), sterling cast of Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks aside unless Streep was surfing a Mamma Mia wave, which blocked out $13.9 million. Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) continued to clock up the bucks, with $7.1 million.
The traditional upswell for U.S. animated classics was long gone but Moana (2016) cleared another $21.7 million while The Lion King (1994) chomped through another $5.6 million in the wake of the remake.
Avatar (2009) was the big noise of 2021, lifting $57.9 million a year ahead of the long-awaited sequel. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone kept going, an extra $15.5 million and, guess what, there was a welcome audience for Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring with $8.9 million.
And the original Avatar wasn’t done. In fact the following year – 2022 – it did even better, an awesome $76 million in the kitty. Given that James Bond was the original source of so much reissue wealth it was fitting that 10th anniversary status was bestowed on Skyfall (2012), with the studio rewarded by a healthy $33 million. In true Martin Scorsese style, that is by not fitting with convention, The Wolf of Wall St (2013) celebrated its ninth anniversary and plundered $15 million.
James Cameron and Christopher Nolan in 2023 went head to head for the title of reissue king. Titanic – again – won with $70 million. Interstellar – another ninth anniversary celebrant – took home $44 million. The original Toy Story (1995) resurfaced with $27.5 million and in a 30th anniversary gesture The Nightmare Before Xmas (1993) romped off with $10.4 million.
And what of this year? Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace (1999) leads the pack with $19.4 million. As I mentioned 1999 is getting fair old fist-pump, some marketeers with little in the way of cinematic memory going so far as to claim it was cinema’s best-ever year. That kind of all-encompassing revival branding was rolled out for Columbia’s 100th Anniversary celebrations which saw a bundle of old pictures brought out under that aegis for a total $6 million gross. The second part of Dune brought further viewings for Dune (2021) and $3.9 million. Shrek 2 (2004) was 20th anni fare – a further $2.4 million.
Yet another revival of Alien (1979) – 45th anni if you’re interested – snapping up $2.3 million – ahead of the latest in the series was no surprise but a return for Hereditary (2018) was, this Toni Collette number reflecting its growing cult status with an extra $2.4 million.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy this year has already snagged a collective $7.8 million, Fellowship in front with $3.4 million, Two Towers on $2.4 million and Return of the King with $2.2 million.
So it looks like, at least for the time being, and as long as anniversaries provide marketing heft, the reissue will keep going,
Next up, as part of the Columbia reissue juggernaut, Lawrence of Arabia (1962). As it happens, there’s a Behind the Scenes on that one on the blog.
SOURCES: Brian Hannan, Coming Back to a Theater Near You, A History of Hollywood Reissues 1914-2014 (McFarland, 2016); Box Office Mojo.
Hilariously bad. Worth a look if you are short of contenders for the Razzies. However, I do reserve the right to accept that I am wrong and that as a male of the species it’s really my own fault if I can’t get to grips with a female version (director, writers, cast) of the shark sub-genre. If you’ll recall I was recently singing the praises of Under Paris, a highly inventive and improbable ecological take on the shark picture but solidly done in which the predators showed no mercy and the director hadn’t a sentimental bone in his body. I’ve also been keen on the various iterations of The Meg. So if anyone’s going to cut a shark movie a bit of slack it would be me. But I’m right out of slack.
For those of you who thought S Club 7 ditty “Reach” would if anything act as a shark repellent I’ve got some bad news for you, although I should add the rider that maybe the problem is that Ruth (Ellouise Shakespeare-Hart) is dancing as well as singing and in shallow water. But at least though the singer was first up on the shark menu if you watch closely you’ll see the correct way to do the actions for the tune. There is a right way, you know, and this picture is full of people who know the right way to do all sorts of insignificant stuff, like the etiquette of peeing in the ocean (quite different from a swimming pool), and what’s the difference between a yacht and a boat (a class thing, apparently) and the clincher – the correct use of the ellipsis.
So five gals are somewhere in the Pacific (I guess, could be Blackpool with fake palm trees for all I know) for a wedding and they have the bright idea to temporarily maroon former lovers Kayla (Natalie Mitson) and Meg (no irony intended, I’m sure) on a tiny desert island until they make up. They had split up after being beaten up by a gang of homophobic females. Well, Meg (Hiftu Quaseem) was beaten up, and now suffers from panic attacks. Kayla was unharmed but is guilty about that.
They only hired a small boat and once they have to race for help after the shark has taken little more than an amuse bouche out of Ruth’s leg, uber-bossy bride Lizzie (Lauren Lyle) takes charge, speeds the boat and runs it over a reef which is when they discover they only have one lifebelt and (gosh) there’s no mobile phone connection. Guess who can’t swim? Lizzie, so she gets the lifebelt. Turns out they would only have needed four anyway at this juncture because Ruth soon succumbs and in the only piece of sense that anybody exhibits they dump the body in the water, hoping that will be sufficient to satisfy the shark.
And with testosterone out of the equation and only one knife between them this isn’t the time for the hapless quartet to trade survival tales or work out clever ways to avoid being eaten. Or even cover their faces against the terrible sun with the shirts they all wear over their swimsuits. Mostly what they do is point the finger of blame and once they’ve done all that they execute a perfect reversal and each starts blaming herself for causing the situation. Kayla then decides to swim for help all the way back to their holiday beach because (I’m assuming) she’s got an unerring sense of direction or an inbuilt compass and isn’t just going to swim around in circles or miss a turn and hit Australia.
A shark fin pops up from time to time to remind us we’re not in a soap opera. Given we’re several generations away from Jaws (1975), it’s hardly surprising the characters have little in the way of shark know-how. The question isn’t really how did the women find themselves in this situation but how did anyone think it would work.
There’s not much experience on show. Movie novice Hiftu Quaseem carries the greatest emotional package in a movie that’s thin on backstory and character. Natalie Mitsom had two previous bit parts, Nicole Rieko Setsuko, one, Ellouise Shakespeare-Hart one significant movie role. Lauren Lyle, the most experienced, has the worst part of bridezilla. Directorial debut for former art director Hayley Easton Street has proved, even before release, enough of a calling card that she’s got another two movies lined up. Dialog sample – “we’re all in the same boat” / “she’s like a dog with a bone” – by movie debutante Cat Clarke gives an idea of what the actresses had to put up with.
Once I check out their CVs I feel a bit mean about being so tough on such an inexperienced bunch but I’m sure they’ll weather worse than me and, should success beckon, can write it off to experience.
On the plus side it’s only about 80 minutes long, the kind of credit that include the names of welders and audit clerks padding it out a few minutes longer.
There’s something in the water all right – a turkey.
Unpacking Kevin Costner’s hefty portmanteau is a significant task since at times it veers into the unwieldy. But only once during the three-hour running time did I glance at my watch and that was over an hour in when I started to wonder when Costner in his capacity as star would appear. Anyone looking for anything heroic or iconic or in the vein of Dances with Wolves (1990) or even Wyatt Earp (1994) had better look elsewhere. This has more in common with the grimy westerns of the 1970s when heroes were hard to come by and the West was a cesspool of brutality.
There’s a heck of an arthouse sensibility to this ensemble piece, characters and situations appear with little preamble and often little consequential explanation, and we switch geographically and psychologically at the drop of a hat. Theoretically, I should be waiting until Chapter 2 pops into view in a few weeks’ time before attempting summation because it’s clear that some sections are unresolved here, assuming the ending is more of a trailer for part two than a speeded-up finale.
At $100 million – and same again for Chapter 2 – this would have all the makings of an over-the-top vanity project, especially after Yellowstone was thrown out with the bathwater. In some senses it’s closer to a series of vignettes puncturing the myth of the West. The wagon train section, for example, focuses on an over-entitled English woman who breaks several golden rules and encounters a couple of peeping toms while the wagon master (Luke Wilson) finds out just how powerless he is in trying to enforce discipline.
Virtually all the women are schemers. Ellen (Jena Malone) attempts to murder her husband and flee with their child, takes up with another fella who’s trying to run some kind of gold strike scam but unfortunately runs into the sons of the man she tried to kill. Her child, meanwhile, is being cared for by sex worker Marigold (Abbey Lee) who gets her hooks into prospector Hayes (Costner) but only as long as she can dump him for another man and dump the child on another family. By comparison Frances (Sienna Miller) is saintly, having survived an Indian massacre, but she makes no bones about making a play for married cavalry lieutenant Trent (Sam Worthington).
And the older ones are just as savage. Mama Sykes sets her sons out for revenge and an elderly lady in the fort batters two soldiers for trying to steal a child-sized bed. The latter is another vignette, the old woman, mourning the loss of one child, being maneuvered by a clever sergeant (Michael Rooker) into semi-adopting another, and that lass, in the most touching (or sentimental if you like) vignette, sending soldiers into battle wearing flowers she has cut from a quilt.
There’s not much point being a child here if you can’t fire a weapon. Native American kids are only too ready to aim arrows at white men and one young massacre survivor buys a pair of Colts to effect his revenge.
The main thrust of the tale is the land rush of the 1860s, when settlers dashed from east to west in the hope of a better life and in the expectation that the Army would take care of any Native Americans who got in the way. Lt Trent does his best to dissuade settlers from picking land that’s too far away from a fort to defend. The Apache chief tries his best to dissuade his son Pionsenay (Owen Crow Shoe) from attacking the settlers, pointing out (somewhat improbably) that his tribe can find enough sustenance in the mountains.
From my own reading on the subject, namely The Earth Is Weeping by Peter Cozzens, this was true to life, the younger braves more likely to wage war, the older chiefs prescribing restraint and fearing consequence, and the rivalry between different tribes is cleverly dealt with, even though it’s hard to understand at the time the point of a lone Native American being hunted down and killed by a band of other Native Americans.
The titular “Horizon” is the name of a large swathe of land being sold back east to settlers as presumably a land of milk and honey, said settlers harnessing similar entrepreneurial spirit as the Pilgrims who crossed the Atlantic in search of same. Every now and then a character pops up to provided a potted history, Col Houghton (Danny Huston) one such, predicting the bloody end to the encroachment of land.
The biggest set piece is the massacre that interrupts another set piece, the kind beloved of John Ford and Michael Cimino, the local dance, that itself punctuated by other vignettes, the teenager too old to dance with his mother, another teenager playing with a loaded gun, until both teenagers are taught savage reality and this section ends with Frances hammering a shotgun through the earth to provide a source of air for her and her daughter trapped underground.
There’s a quirkiness here that would sit well with Robert Altman or the Coen Brothers or Yorgos Lanthimos. And the scene between Hayes and the younger Sykes gunslinger is pure Tarantino.
But there’s way too much hair. Authentic though it may be, the thickness of the beards makes it virtually impossible at times to identify the actor underneath. But despite the running time it’s also been brutally edited, hard to work out how Hayes goes from being hunted by the Sykes Gang to working on the railroad.
So this is a warning as much as a straightforward review. Don’t go in expecting the usual. This isn’t an exploration of the West in the manner of How the West Was Won (1962) with big stars and a ton of set pieces and Cinerama to pump up the action and roadshow to make the whole enterprise seem somehow more worthy.
The women steal the acting honors, especially Sienna Miller (The Lost City of Z, 2016) and Jena Malone (The Neon Demon, 2016). Directed with some style by Costner from a screenplay by himself and Jon Baird in his debut.
Plenty to see here that’s worthy of praise if you set aside expectations.
Curious about what happened to Haya Harareet, Charlton Heston’s leading lady in Ben Hur (1959), filmed in 70mm glorious color, I happened across this neat twisty British thriller filmed in standard ratio and black-and-white. Turned out to be put together by the Basil Dearden/Michael Relph combo and starring Stewart Granger, one-time star of MGM extravaganzas like King Solomon’s Mines (1951) and clearly now atoning for failing to hit the box office mark often enough for Hollywood’s liking.
Driven by a brilliant plot, whose resolution I defy you to guess, and climaxing with three stunning twists, the first story-driven but the others landing a no less effective emotional and human punch. I should warn you right away that Harareet is not in the picture as much as you would expect given that she took second billing. That’s no surprise, really, since on her first entrance, as wife Nicole, she walks out on husband John Brent (Stewart Granger) citing his illicit romantic liaisons.
Though driving a swanky car and living in a big house, Brent, a top-level shipping executive, is one harassed individual. What’s more he is being blackmailed by alcoholic dentist Ralph Beldon (Norman Bird). When the shipping company’s safe is robbed of £130,000 (equivalent to £3 million today), suspicion falls on Brent, one of only two employees with both keys and the combination. Enter about-to-retire chain-smoking Detective Superintendent Hanbury (Bernard Lee, shortly to achieve global fame as “M” in the Bond series).
Constantly wreathed in a cloud of smoke, Hanbury’s investigation leads to various suspects – the other keyholder Charles Standish (Hugh Burden) whose job is at risk, interior designer Clive Lang (John Lee) who is over familiar with Nicole, and friend Alan Richford (Conrad Philips) who is secretly in love with Nicole. All have good reason to be responsible for the theft, not least Nicole because of Brent’s habit of talking in his sleep and in trying to memorize ever-changing safe combinations constantly running them through his head, conscious or unconscious.
To add to the complications, Brent has a mysterious past. In addition, a masked gunman pops up from time to time. So, although Brent remains the prime suspect, Hanbury, with an investigator’s vigilance and attention to detail that Hercule Poirot would be proud of, uncovers clues that point elsewhere. Pretty soon, Brent is on the run, first to France, where he is arrested, and then, after escaping custody, through the murky streets of Soho trying to locate a girl to whom he might have given the combination while asleep. He, too, discovers some unpleasant truths far closer to home.
Basil Dearden (Victim, 1961) does a brilliant job of setting up the mystery, a dab hand, too, at serving up multiple red herrings, as well as a spot of sleight of hand, not least when the music intrudes too loudly in old-fashioned manner as if to point the finger, and the audience’s attention, in a misleading direction. Sure, it’s a low-budget affair by Hollywood standards and indeed by Dearden/Relph standards (big-budget roadshow Khartoum, for example), and the black-and-white photography is for financial rather than artistic reasons, but it is superbly done and keeps you guessing to the end.
Stewart Granger (The Last Safari, 1967) is at his suave best. Harareet, all fur coat and steely resolve, gives a good performance. Bernard Lee is an excellent British copper, hoping to end his career on a high note, patiently probing suspects, and there is a good turn from Norman Bird as the dodgy dentist and a fleeting appearance by Willoughby Goddard as an equally dodgy hotel manager. Written by David Pursall and Jack Seddon who went on to churn out MGM’s Miss Marple thrillers.
Two trends came together to create the ideal climate for the movie. The first was a fashion for filming comic books. By the mid-60s, Italy was at the forefront of this development thanks to the fumetti craze.
Mandrake, created in 1934 and first filmed in 1939, was being prepped by Duccio Tessari (My Son, the Hero, 1962). Though that stalled on the starting grid Dino De Laurentiis had bought the rights to Jean-Claude Forest’s Barbarella. He was also prepping Diabolik – at that point to be directed by Brit Seth Holt (Station Six Sahara, 1963) and fronted by Catherine Deneuve (Belle de Jour, 1967). Monica Vitti was being lined up to play Modesty Blaise (1966). For Barbarella De Laurentiis initially favored Franco Indovina (The Oldest Profession, 1967) in the director’s chair and Brigitte Bardot as the star.
The other element driving forth the venture was the involvement of Hollywood major Paramount in European production. Paramount had turned to Europe to “replenish its dwindled film vaults.” Formerly almost exclusively committed to U.S. production, by 1967 the studio was in the middle of a $60 million European spending spree, the cash spread over 30 movies made in the U.K. or mainland Europe where Italy took the lion’s share. Paramount struck a deal with De Laurentiis for Barbarella and Danger:Diabolik (1968) – eventually helmed by Mario Bava with John Philip Law and Marisa Mell – plus Arabella (1967) and Anzio (1968).
Paramount’s involvement should have excluded Vadim. He was persona non grata with the studio, having reneged on a previous three-picture deal, which he was paying off in $20,000 instalments. The budget of $3 million should have put the picture out his league. The Game Is Over had cost only $900,000 and none of his previous work suggested he might have the necessary skill to handle the special effects. And he was well known for declaring his opposition to studio interference.
But in terms of delivering sexy fare Vadim was in a class of his own. And God Created Women (1956) was the top-earning foreign picture in the U.S. He had made stars of Brigitte Bardot and Annette Stroyberg (Dangerous Liaisons, 1959) and he was in the process of turning the earnest Jane Fonda (In the Cool of the Day, 1963) into a sex symbol after plastering her nude body over billboards promoting La Ronde/Circle of Love (1964) and stills from La Curee/The Game Is Over in Playboy.
Still, she was far from first choice. Following Bardot’s refusal, De Laurentiis approached Sophia Loren, but she was pregnant, and he did a screen test of Ira von Furstenberg (Matchless, 1967). Fonda was not as nailed-down a star as you might expect. Her affair with Vadim kept her out of the country, making the kind of picture that was generally perceived as salacious arthouse material and not likely to raise her marquee value in the U.S. Cat Ballou (1965), which should have propelled her to the very top, instead performed that trick for Lee Marvin after he won an Oscar for the dual role. After meaty roles in The Chase (1966) and Hurry Sundown (1967) and top-billed in comedy hit Barefoot in the Park (1967), she should have been able to write her own ticket. But she did demonstrate independence in choosing to align with Vadim for Barbarella and though it didn’t win her any acting accolades it smoothed the path towards They Shoot Horses, Don’t They (1969) and Klute (1971), for which she won the Oscar.
Vadim was smarting from damage done to his reputation by censors and the authorities. “I have become a black sheep for censors and I’m paying the penalty in everything I make. Anything I direct is automatically suspect. I believe I’m the only director who must get censor clearance before I can begin filming.” He wasn’t – technically, this applied to every director working Hollywood since all scripts had to be cleared in advance of filming by the Production Board. But in Italy even when films like The Circle of Love (1964) and The Game Is Over (1966) cleared censorship obstacles, the films were seized by the police and threats laid of obscenity charges.
However, he believed this time round he would be immune from threat since the film would contain “no reference whatsoever to moral concepts as we know them. We’re dealing with life in the year 40,000. It would be difficult in the realm of science fantasy for any censor to discover objectionable scenes.” Clearly, he assumed mere nudity would not raise eyebrows.
Vadim admitted, “When I made Barbarella, I found the most difficult thing was the detail.”
Attracted by the “wild humor and impossible exaggeration” of the original material, he “wanted to make something beautiful out of eroticism” and intended to film it as if “a reporter doing newsreel…as though I had just arrived on a strange planet.” And had a camera on his shoulder. He viewed the character as a “lovely average girl” though not so average in that she possessed “a lovely body.”
Fonda was determined to keep her character “innocent,” rejecting the idea of playing her as a vamp, “her sexuality was not measured by the rules of our society,” and neither “promiscuous” or “sexually liberated.” Vadim interpreted her role somewhat differently, viewing it through the prism of a “shameless exploitation of her sexuality.”
With multiple writers on the project, the question of who wrote what has been open to argument. Impressed by their work on Danger: Diabolik – which employed a total of eight screenwriters – De Laurentiis parachuted in British pair Tudor Gates and Brian Degas. Original writer Terry Southern (Candy, 1968) claimed responsibility for the opening striptease and the doll robots. Uncredited screenwriter Charles B. Griffiths (The Wild Angels, 1966) came up with the notion of the millennia of peace, Barbarella’s clumsiness and the suicide room. Even co-star David Hemmings got in on the act, claiming he inspired the nonsense Fonda spouted during their sex scene.
Southern suggested Anita Pallenberg for the role of the Black Queen after encountering her while working with The Rolling Stones – her voice was dubbed by plummy English actress Joan Greenwood. Jane Fonda brought John Philip Law into the equation after working with him on Hurry Sundown (1967).
The director employed some sleight-of-hand. Just like the later Ridley Scott on Alien, he didn’t inform his actors in advance what was about to happen in some critical scene, such as those involving the Excessive Pleasure Machine. Vadim wanted a natural response from Fonda and Milo O’Shea so omitted to tell them “what a big explosion there would be. When the machine blew up, flames and smoke were everywhere, and sparks were running up and down the wires.” Fonda was “frightened to death” and O’Shea was convinced he “was being electrocuted.
And Vadim summoned his inner Hitchcock for the scene when Fonda was attacked by the hummingbirds (actually, substitute wrens and lovebirds). Not getting the effect he wanted, Vadim used a powerful fan to blow the flock onto the actress whose outfit was peppered with birdseed. There was an unexpected two-week hiatus between filming the bird attack and the striptease. Fonda contracted a fever, forcing the movie to shut down halfway through its 12-week schedule. On her return, Vadim filmed the striptease to be shown over the credits which was intended to “camouflage censorable flesh.” The set for the strip was upside down, Fonda performing on a pane of glass facing a camera in the ceiling.
The sensational aspects of the movie had attracted exceptional media interest. Over 200 journalists visited the set including representatives from Vogue,Playboy, Time, Life, McCall’s, Seventeen, Paris Match and UPI and AP. Paramount kept the pot boiling with some advertisements that were exceptionally full-on for the times: “It’s the year 40,000 A.D. A scantily-clad space adventuress battles 2,000 hummingbirds who rip off her clothes, two dozen shark-toothed dolls who rip off her clothes, 100 purple rabbits who don’t rip off her clothes and an army of leather giants who attempt to whip her to death. In between she makes love a lot.”
By the time the movie appeared, Paramount had invested in another development. It was the first studio to set up a marketing department, not just a catch-all under which promotional and advertising efforts were undertaken, but a unit that took a systematic, research-based, approach to release strategy. As a result Barbarella was one of the first movies to achieve a global simultaneous release, the bulk of movies taking a step-by-step approach, U.S. first and then major countries overseas, following a pattern that could take up to 18 months to complete.
According to research undertaken by the marketing department it was “judged as a picture which would have a sensational first few weeks everywhere it played because of the impact of the subject matter, star (Jane Fonda) and promotional pizzazz. But research indicated word-of-mouth might be poor. The decision was made to open the picture everywhere at once – and that meant worldwide since there was fear that any ‘bad word’ on such a highly-touted pic could spread from country to country. Here, too, the prognosis proved letter-perfect. As any exhibitor will confirm, Barbarella was the film this fall which started out great then dropped off. In view of this Paramount is thought to have maximized its gross via the global saturation playoff pursued.”
In the U.S. Paramount ordered a record number of trailers and space age fashion shows, like one at Alexanders Department Store in New York, were the order of the day. In Britain, there was a phenomenal ad spend (the second-highest ever), Mary Quant boots, tie-ins with shoe stores, and both a hardback and paperback book.
But Barbarella proved to be a slow-burn at the box office. Initially, it was deemed to have ranked a lowly 46th in the annual U.S. rentals chart with just $2.5 million in the kitty, falling far short of Paramount’s box office smashes that year – The Odd Couple (ranked fifth) with $18.5 million in rentals and Rosemary’s Baby (ranked seventh) on $12.3 million. But, in fact, it more than doubled its rentals the following year and ended up with a highly-respectable $5.5 million at the U.S. box office. (And I hereby apologize to anyone whom I challenged on these figures).
The global release paid off. It ranked eighth in France, seventh in Switzerland, third in Britain, 14th in Hong Kong and a big hit in Italy. However, the content denied it a sale to U.S. television. The movie was reissued in 1977 in the wake of Star Wars, and took a “handsome” $175,000 gross from 65 houses in New York. It was revived again after Flash Gordon (1980) and the following year when Paramount entered the laserdisk business among the first 30 oldies released it was the only one from the 1960s.
A sequel’s been on the cards since the film opened. Possibly rather tongue-in-cheek and with an element of the risqué sauce of the times, Paramount’s Robert Evans planned to trigger a second episode called Barbarella Goes Down, the title apparently relating to underwater adventures. Terry Southern was asked to write a sequel in 1990 while in the aftermath of Sin City (2005) director Robert Rodriguez came close to an $80 million version and Nicolas Winding Refn toyed with a television series. As of now, Sydney Sweeney (Anyone But You, 2023) appears most likely to hit the sequel button.
SOURCES: Patrick McGilligan, Backstory 3: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 60s, (University of California Press, 1997); Lisa Parks, “Bringing Barbarella Down to Earth”. In Radner, Hilary; Luckett, Moya (eds.). Swinging Single: Representing Sexuality in the 1960s, (University of Minnesota Press, 1999); Gail Gerber,and Gail Lisanti, Gail (2014). Trippin’ with Terry Southern: What I Think I Remember. McFarland, 2014); Roberto Curti, Diabolika: Supercriminals, Superheroes and the Comic Book Universe in Italian Cinema (Midnight Marquee Press, 2016); .Brian Hannan, Coming Back to a Theater Near You, A History of Hollywood Reissues 1914-2014 (McFarland 2016) p252; “Comic Strip Character Film Trend,” Variety, June 9, 1965, p23; “Vadim’s Autonomous Views,” Variety, August 24, 1966, p2; Gerald Jonas, “Here’s What Happened to Baby Jane,” New York Times, January 22, 1967; “Paramount Getting 6 Pix from Italy in Bid to Build Prod,” Variety, February 1, 1967, p16; “Par O’Seas Hatch By Dozen,” Variety, April 26, 1967, p5; “Italo Film Boom,” Variety, June 7, 1967, p20; “Barbarella Laid Low By Jane Fonda Virus,” Variety, August 16, 1967, p2; “I’ve Been A Black Sheep To Censor,” Variety, July 19, 1967, p22; Marika Aba, “What Kind of Supergirl Will Jane Fonda Be as Barbarella?” Los Angeles Times, September 10, 1967; Roger Ebert, “Interview with Jane Fonda,” October 15, 1967; “Paramount Stressing Sex and Visual Fantasy,” Variety, October 18, 1967, p26; “Space Age Fashion Show,” Box Office, September 2, 1968, pA2; “Record Teaser Trailer,” Box Office, September 9, 1968, p13; “Eyebrows Up – Here’s Barbarella,” Kine Weekly, October 19, 1968, p23; “Big Box Office Winners of 1968,” Kine Weekly, December 14, 1968, p6; “What Makes a Director?”, Variety, January 8, 1969, p26; “Big Rental Films of 1968,” Variety, January 8, 1969, p15; “Swiss B.O. Race,” Variety, January 15, 1969, p41; “Shaws Dominate HK,” Variety, January 15, 1969, p41 “Par Puts the Science into Sell,” Variety, February 5, 1969, p33; “Int’l Filmgoing Tastes Tres Complex,” Variety, February 5, 1969, p35; “CBS Bid for Baby Doll,” Variety, October 29, 1970, p78; “All-Time Film Rentals,” Variety, January 7, 1970, p27; “New York Showcases,” Variety, November 2, 1977, p8; “Paramount’s Home Video to Market Viddisks,” Variety, April 29, 1981, p54.
While sci-fi was being viewed through a serious glass darkly what with Fantastic Voyage (1966), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Planet of the Apes (1968) along came Roger Vadim’s little number to set up an alternative universe of camp fun. Had this been a box office smash in the nature of The Odd Couple ($18.5 million in U.S. rentals) rather than under a third of that there might have been less of the po-faced doomladen sci fi in the following decade.
But if you wonder where Star Wars got its vibe, setting aside the overt sexiness portrayed here, this is as good a place to start. Naïve adventurers, check. Ice planet, check. All sorts of weird creatures in strange otherworldly locales, check. A doomsday weapon, check.
It’s kind of newsworthy to be rewatching this given that star du jour Sydney Sweeney (Anyone But You, 2023) is going to be donning the Barbarella costume for a remake next year. And who knows to what Oscar-winning fare that might lead, if she were to follow the Jane Fonda template, given it was La Fonda’s follow-up that brought her serious attention from the Academy.
But it would be remiss of me if I didn’t bring up the testy matter of director Roger Vadim’s uncanny obsession with getting his myriad girlfriends to shed their clothes for the movies, Fonda being the latest example, and in no uncertain terms, the striptease performed during the opening credits certainly rivaling Kubrick and Spielberg for the most jaw-dropping opening to a sci-fi movie.
Whether it was Fonda or someone else and whether it was Vadim or someone else you couldn’t get away from the fact that Barbarella as a sci-fi icon was most definitely on the sexy side as determined by her creator Jean-Claude Forest, sharing like British comic strip heroine Jane a predilection for losing her clothes.
Barbarella shares something of the same innocent abroad personality, the kind who gets into one unexpected scrape after another, after being despatched from peace-loving Earth to save the world by finding Durand Durand (the pop band making homage to the movie dropped the final letter of this character’s name) and his doomsday machine.
So mostly, it’s one imaginative character or scene after another, delivered in disconnected episodic manner, and it sometimes has the feel of a jukebox movie, of the greatest hits of the comic strip writer strung together, with an occasional comment on the problems created by sex and a climactic gender-spinning twist. You’d have to remember what Pop Art was to chuck it into that short-lived category but if you think it belongs on the same planet as the more earthbound Modesty Blaise (1966) and Danger: Diabolik (1968), think again.
The best sections are truly terrific. The sharp-teethed menacing robot dolls are exceptionally scary as they nip chunks out of our heroine’s flesh and leave her blood-soaked. There’s a homage to The Birds (1963) where our plucky heroine is trapped in a cage with a flock of sparrows. You’ve also got the The Catchman, performing the same function but considerably scarier than the same year’s Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. But no wonder the kids need caught because they are full of evil intent.
You’ve got a blind angel (John Phillip Law) who can’t fly, a problem mysteriously solved by sex with the ever-gracious Barbarella who, previously, has discovered, courtesy of The Catchman, the immense pleasure of the art of making love the old-fashioned way rather than just popping a pill. The angel also has no memory, permitting an ironic twist ending. You’ve got an incompetent rebel (David Hemmings). Sex is pretty much top of everyone’s agenda, even the villain (Milo O’Shea) who uses it to kill people via his own invention, which proves not much cop, since rather than murdering Barbarella with excessive pleasure, she makes it blow up.
Along the way there’s any number of interesting inventions: a manta-ray acts as the skis for a futuristic sailing ship, hollow robotic soldiers, a labyrinth.
Some of the special effects wouldn’t pass muster these days, but that’s a minor flaw compared to the rest of what’s on show. It’s not exhilarating in the real sense, but if you’re unfamiliar with the source material, it retains an endless fascination, more like a sexed-up version of the Ray Harryhausen world than anything that would have interested Kubrick. And, heck, just fun. What’s not to like.
Jane Fonda (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They, 1969) holds it all together, innocent rather than naïve, even her sexuality is innocent not exploitative, and possibly for a film deemed sexy makes greater comment on the dangers of lust than many a more self-important movie.
Great supporting cast with David Hemmings (Blow-Up, 1966), John Philip Law (Danger: Diabolik), Anita Pallenberg (Performance, 1970), Milo O’Shea (Ulysses, 1967) and Marcel Marceau.
Roger Vadim’s best film. Written by a huge squad of writers, nine in total, headed up by Vadim and Terry Southern (Candy, 1968).
Will probably be yanked out of circulation at the approach of the remake so now’s your chance to catch up on a fun sci fi.
Poor casting blows a hole in this picture’s great premise and only an excellent turn by Anthony Quinn as an indignant kidnappee prevents it achieving “so-bad-it’s good” infamy. In fact for the first third of the movie you could pretty much guarantee it’s going to be a stinker so dire are the performances of the quartet of hippy kidnappers. Only when the camera cuts Quinn a bit more slack and the script skids into a clever reversal does the movie takes flight although still hovering dangerously close to the waterline.
Faye Dunaway (Sandy), all blonde hair and pouting lips, looks for the most part as though she has entered an Ann-Margret Look-A-Like Competition. Michael Parks (Sureshot) resembles a fluffy-haired James Dean. George Maharis is condemned to over-acting in the role as ringleader Taurus while Robert Walker Jr. as Herby does little more than mooch around. None shows the slightest spark and behave virtually all the time as if they are in on the joke.
For no special reason, beyond boredom, they kidnap hotel tycoon Roc (Quinn) hoping to make an easy score with the ransom. Unfortunately for Roc, none of those he is counting on to cough up the ransom – wife Monica (Martha Hyers), current business partner Fred (Milton Berle), former business partner Sam (Oscar Homolka) and offscreen mother – will play ball. In fact, Monica and Sam, enjoying an affair, would be delighted if failure to produce a ransom ended in his death.
Eventually, while the movie is almost in the death throes itself, Roc fights back, using blackmail to extort far more than the kidnappers require from his business associates and taking revenge on his wife by setting her up as his murderer. It turns out Roc is a former gangster and well-schooled in the nefarious. So then we are into the intricacies of making the scam work which turns a movie heading in too many directions for its own good into a well-honed crime picture.
Quinn is the lynchpin, and just as well since the others help not a jot. As a kidnappee only too willing to play the victim in case he endangers wife and son, he achieves a complete turnaround into a mobster with brains to outwit all his enemies. But in between he has to make a transition from a man in control to one realizing he has been duped by all he trusted.
Director Elliott Silverstein, who got away with a lot of diversionary tactics in Cat Ballou (1965) – musical interludes featuring Stubby Kaye and Nat King Cole – essays a different kind of interlude here, fast cars speeding across the screen at crazy angles, that does not work at all. Probably having worked out pretty quickly that he can’t trust any of the young actors, he mostly shoots them in a group.
Some scenes are completely out of place – a multiple car crash straight out of It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, for example. But occasionally he hits the mark in way that will resonate with today’s audience. Sureshot, confronted by a policeman, refuses to lower his hands in case he is shot for resisting arrest. Although drug use is implied rather than shown, Sureshot is so stoned he can’t remember if has actually made love to Sandy. And like any modern Tinderite, neither knows the other’s name after spending a night together.
The strange thing about the youngsters was that they were not first-timers. Dunaway had made her debut in Hurry Sundown (1967). George Maharis had the lead in The Satan Bug (1965) and A Covenant with Death, Michael Parks the male lead in The Idol (1966) and played Adam in The Bible (1966) and although it marked the debut of Robert Walker Jr. (Young Billy Young, 1969) he had several years in television. But, like his character, Anthony Quinn (Lost Command, 1966) takes charge and shows all these wannabes how it’s done.
Frank Pierson (Cool Hand Luke, 1967), James D Buchanan (Midas Run, 1969) and Ronald Austin (Midas Run) devised this hotchpotch. Not their fault the kids spoiled it.
Anthony Quinn proves what a star can do with indifferent material.
Timely reminder that Hollywood could make decent coin from lightweight romantic froth. Imagine how many movies this year would be delighted to be walking away with $84.1 million (around $111 million in today’s money) from the worldwide ticket wickets, especially given the low budget. So you have to wonder: what was the magic formula that audiences responded to that they’re not responding to now. Because, to be honest, this is the most unlikely of unlikely concoctions.
After a previous fairy tale Once (2007) – whose real-life happy ending included being adapted for theater and turned into a Broadway hit – writer-director John Carney (following two low budget flops) tries again but drives a tank through credibility. At this point rumpled Mark Ruffalo, whose undeniable charm has saved many a picture, had apparently lost the last of his nine marquee lives so that he now fell into the category of American actor fawned over by British filmmakers because he deigns – even though relegated to second billing – to get involved. For the top-billed Keira Knightley (Atonement, 2007) it would prove to be her last hit.
Musician Adam (Dave Kohl), on the cusp of stardom, has been flown over to New York by his record company. His girlfriend Gretta (Keira Knightley), along for the ride, is an unsuccessful songwriter. After Adam has an affair, she dumps him, wandering the streets with a bag and a bike until, lo and behold, she bumps into (as one does in a city of 19 million people) old pal Steve (James Corden) busking on a street corner.
At an open mic gig, she is pestered to do a number. The minute she starts singing the entire audience starts chatting amongst themselves. But wait, just-fired depressed alcoholic record producer Dan (Mark Ruffalo) in the audience recognizes her “talent,” immediately envisaging the string and percussion arrangement that could magically transform the number. Except, she doesn’t want fame, she wants purity. Initially, rejecting his (artistic) overtures, she agrees to his world-beating notion of recording an album in the streets, Steve having miraculously accumulated sufficient recording equipment. Cue umpteen shots of cute New York (Brooklyn Bridge, Greenwich Village) and no hummable songs.
There’s kind of a will-she-won’t-she romantic subplot with Dan but he’s still smitten with estranged and acidic wife Miriam (Catherine Keener). Another subplot involves his daughter Violet (Hailee Steinfeld). Sparks never fly and you start wishing for the next best thing – a speedy resolution. No such luck. Dan makes said album, complete with (would you believe) 24-page glossy booklet. Gretta rejects a record deal out of supposed purity, but in fact greed, wanting more than a 10% cut of the pie.
The disc sells 10,000 copies in a day on the internet. Rewind. It sells that amount because (purity be damned) one of Dan’s buddies is Mos Def and he is a God of Twitter and enough of his millions of followers obey his every command. There is but one subtle scene, when Knightley intuits her boyfriend’s betrayal and without a word slaps him in the face.
A few more slaps would have done this film good. Knightley gushes like one of the Famous Five, the film itself like a 1940s movie where rejected theatrical nobodies put on a show in a barn. The central theme of artistic purity and refusing to give in to an over-commercialized business scarcely rings true, but somehow it provides the movie with the kind of innocence that the more romantically-inclined among the audience would vote for in a world of wishful thinking.
And, actually, precisely because it refuses to give the audience what in one way it’s demanding – a proper romantic movie – and goes down the other route of artist fighting for integrity, it comes off with something of the rare feel of a movie being true to itself.
Of course, since then, Ruffalo’s career has occasionally soared, both artistically (three more Oscar nominations, most recently for Poor Things) and commercially (long-running role as The Hulk). Conversely, Knightley’s career has plummeted. Outside of The Imitation Game (2014) in which she had a supporting role and a bit part in the final Pirates of the Caribbean adventure, each successive movie in which she has been top-billed has made less than the last. From a $14 million haul for Colette (2018) we’re now down to $1.9 million worldwide for Misbehaviour (2020) and $400,000 for Silent Night (2021). After her breakthrough in True Grit (2010), Hailee Steinfeld’s career had also been wayward, big budget flops including Bumblebee (2018) and The Marvels (2023).
If the movie’s box office sounds like a Hollywood fairy tale and you maybe recall it as not doing much business Stateside, that’s because, in one of those anomalies that occasionally shine on a movie, it proved an absolute sensation in South Korea. Just under half of its entire worldwide revenue came from South Korea. Go figure.
Even without that, a $43 million haul for an improbable lightweight semi-romance mainlining on artistic purity would have had the backers rubbing their hands with glee.
The Magnificent 60s 