Brian Hannan

Behind the Scenes: “The Comedians” (1967)

Richard Burton was at his box office peak. From Cleopatra (1963) through The VIPs (1963), Becket (1964), The Night of the Iguana (1964), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), The Sandpiper (1965), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) and The Taming of the Shrew (1967) he had enjoyed massive box office success and notched up three Oscar nominations. He was being pursued for Camelot (1967) – the part he played on Broadway – and himself pursued the rights to Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer. But out of admiration for novelist Graham Greene he accepted, sight unseen, the leading role in The Comedians.

Director Peter Glenville, better known at the time as a stage director, owed his career to the two male principals. Alec Guinness had backed him for his debut The Prisoner (1955) and starred in his latest film, the farce Hotel Paradiso (1966). Burton had been one of his two incendiary stars of Becket (1964), a box office smash, as a consequence of which the director signed a four-picture deal with MGM. All three of his previous films had begun life as plays directed by Glenville.

Before the picture could get off the ground it faced a potential legal minefield from producer George Glass. He owned the rights to a short story The Prisoner, written by screenwriter Ernest Lehman (North by Northwest, 1959) and published in the January 1952 edition of Cosmopolitan magazine. It had since been turned into a television play directed by john Frankenheimer for the Playhouse 90 series in February 1957. Glass argued the new picture would infringe his copyright.

Although without doubt Taylor was the bigger box office star, the better remunerated and the more acclaimed, at least by Oscar standards (two wins to his five nominations), in their personal life the roles were reversed. “There seems little doubt,” wrote Burton biographer Melvyn Bragg, “that although he was drawn into what he saw as the mystery and fun of Elizabeth he was the dominating partner. She soothed him. She sought him in bars.” Burton himself said, “We never had any question of who was boss. She always realised I was to run the show.”

Whether that was the reason she took what was no more than a supporting role in The Comedians at half her usual salary (for the first time Burton on $750,000 versus her $500,000 was the financial top dog) is unclear, but she certainly, as was attested on The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, did not like to leave him footloose and fancy free on a film set where he could indulge his liking for liquor and pretty women. On her previous film, Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) “she resented playing second fiddle” to Marlon Brando, and might have preferred making a picture where she regained a sense of her own importance, but instead she accepted a role that was not up to her usual high standard.

Director Peter Glenville (Becket) had not particularly wanted Taylor for the role, possibly feeling she might over-balance the project. It would be the couple’s seventh movie together, a pairing that was being discussed in the same hushed tones as the legendary Tracy-Hepburn. Alec Guinness was somewhat apprehensive about the film. Calls he had made to the couple’s suite at the Dorchester Hotel in London had gone unanswered and gifts returned. Burton was mortified. It turned out his staff had been too protective of their employer.

Shooting began in January 1967 before the novel was published. Although producers often purchased books while still in galley stage, they generally preferred the book to have acquired a substantial readership before embarking on a costly movie investment. However, Graham Greene could fairly lay claim to being the greatest living English writer and his involvement appeared to add gravitas to the project, although it would be fair to say that none of the translations of his works into movies had enjoyed anything like the success of The Third Man (1949). He had not written for the screen since Our Man in Havana (1960), also starring Guinness.

Unusually for a novelist, he had acquired a reputation for setting his stories in trouble spots. Often, he would take on a journalistic assignment from the likes of the British Sunday Times to investigate conditions in countries undergoing brutal change. His literary reputation often gave him access to the inner sanctum from which an ordinary reporter would have been barred. The author had adored Haiti before the Duvalier takeover and hated that Papa Doc ruled by terror, backed by the dreaded Tonton Macoutes. The Comedians was a determinedly political novel, the author hoping his expose of an “unique evil” might put pressure on the dictator.

Greene described Haiti as a “a tormented little country” and had feared for his life on his last visit. The author told an Italian journalist that he had clearly got under Duvalier’s skin. “A writer is not so powerless as he usually feels,” he once wrote, “and a pen, as well as a silver bullet, can draw blood.” Martha (the Elizabeth Taylor character) was based on a woman the author had known in Martinique who ran a hotel and had a son.

Initially, Glenville had envisaged making the film in Haiti, where the book was set, but, given the author had taken careful aim at country it was a concern that the dictator might take revenge on stars who had the audacity to film in his own backyard. Dahomey, in West Africa, about the size of Cuba, was its replacement.

When accidents plagued the shoot, and since voodoo was a story element, rumors spread that Duvalier had ordered witch doctors to curse the production. “Apparently voodoo spells cannot travel over water,” recollected Guinness, “and have to be operated at hand…(but) on the first day of filming one of the unit stumbled on the beach, possibly from a heart attack, and drowned in a foot of water before anybody could assist him. Several people complained of difficulty in breathing, suffering from acute headaches and deep depression; one or two had to be sent home….there was something a little sinister in the atmosphere.” Guinness, in conversation with the French Consul, was informed the country was still inhabited by cannibals, a threat he took seriously enough to warn actor Paul Ford’s wife not to sit around alone on her porch, but which was later discounted by the local archbishop as the kind of joke a foreigner would too easily fall for

Guinness also saved the director from drowning. Not realizing how treacherous the sea, with an infamous undertow, could be, Glenville had gone for a swim. Reading on the beach nearby, Guinness heard him calling for help and had to drag him to safety. Guinness suffered from a mysterious rash for four days.

Of course, Burton and Taylor were treated like royalty, They were met by President Soglo and given use of the presidential compound. And it was also a humbling experience. Washing was strung along lines in the presidential courtyard, the Queen’s closet was filled with “a perfectly ordinary rack of shoes.” Burton had mixed feelings, commenting in his diary, about the President: “his clothes were ill-made…he obviously likes women and was forever taking E (Taylor) by the arm…We both found the experience oddly moving. Here was this huge, mosaiced palace, only completed three years ago, and outside the immense Salle de Reception, capable of receiving 3,000 people at one time, there was washing on the line.”

But this treatment did not extend everywhere, and for the better. Most people in Dahomey had never heard of the couple so they were able to dine out without harassment. “Glenville noticed that the lack of outside stress helped them relax in front of the camera.”

But the heat was intolerable, temperatures some days reaching 110 degrees, hitting 138 degrees under movie lights. This resulted in no one dallying over takes. The situation was exacerbated by Burton’s drinking. “I hardly find him the same person,” commented Guinness, recalling the times the pair had occasionally spent together in the late 1940s when he was by far the bigger star. “Drink has taken a bit of a toll.” Breakfast for Burton on the first day of shooting was a Bloody Mary. On one occasion Burton was so inebriated he failed to turn up for a presidential dinner in their honor in front of two hundred guests. He was an ugly drunk and his wife bore the brunt of it. Being top dog financially and in terms of screen credit did not appear to bring him the solace he required.

The Burtons’ extensive entourage recruited an additional member with a specific skill. Photographer Gianni Bozzachi was “considered the number one re-toucher in Italy,” his job solely to ensure that any photographs of Taylor sent to the press were “as beautiful as humanly possible.” He became the couple’s official photographer, often taking candid pictures unobtrusively.

Bozzachi believed Taylor more beautiful in person – her left and right profiles were equally symmetrical, a rare physical gift – than on camera and was attempting to capture that inner beauty. He said, “without make-up she glows. There’s a sensuality always present.” But he also exuded a sensuality that disturbed Burton. That a tall curly-haired handsome young man was showering attention on his wife made Burton jealous.

Burton and Alec Guinness respected each other’s talent. In one four-minute scene where Guinness took center stage and Burton was simply listening, Guinness commented, “That was the greatest support I’ve had from an actor in my life.”

Burton was not particularly enamored of Dahomey. Although he retained a “certain amount of nostalgia” for the country, he also referred to the “dangerous sea,” the arrogance of the Americans, the “mad palace, the President and his dowdy provincial wife.” But then Burton in his diaries was particularly waspish. Guinness was even more forthright. “I was glad to leave Dahomey. I couldn’t help feeling it was sinister…ideas of voodoo are never absent from one’s mind.” The final stages of filming were completed in Nice.

In the wake of the violence in The Dirty Dozen (1967) and, more especially, Bonnie and Clyde (1967), which stirred up huge controversy, not least against the Production Code which had passed both films, MPAA president Jack Valenti took against the violence in the film and persuaded Glenville to “mute” one particularly bloody scene.

This proved a difficult film to market outside of the star names and the adaptation of a literary bestseller. However, Duvalier inadvertently helped, launching a furious tirade in the press against the picture, threatening legal action against what he termed “inflammatory libel” and exciting the U.S. media so much it triggered a four-part television series. There was a major article in Look magazine which had sent a reporter and photographers to the set in Dahomey. And the marketing team pulled off something of a coup in persuading the Museum of Modern Art in New York for the first time to devote a complete exhibition to a movie.

Despite the top-heavy English cast, the movie premiered in New York at the Coronet where it ran concurrently at the DeMille. Although it opened in the same week as Cool Hand Luke, it trailed the Paul Newman prison drama at the box office, taking $64,000 from two cinemas compared to $92,000, also from a pair. But that was still deemed a good result and initial U.S. first run bookings were brisk – the box office termed “socko” and “boffo.”

Post-production MGM had considered turning it into a roadshow for the U.S. market but decided against it. However, for the later British launch, in January 1968, it was blown up into 70mm and presented as roadshow in London’s West End at the Casino Cinerama and in various countries around the world. The American version, running at 156 minutes, was edited by nine minutes though the programme was effectively lengthened to accommodate the necessary roadshow intermission.

Though named by three critics as one of the top ten films of the year, the movie received no Oscar nominations. It proved to be Glenville’s last film although he lived for another 30 years.

SOURCES: Chris Williams (editor), The Richard Burton Diaries (Yale University Press, 2012) p130-131, 152-157; Melvyn Bragg, Rich, The Life of Richard Burton (Hodder and Stoughton, 1988) p223, 231-232, 236-237; Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger, Furious Love, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, The Marriage of the Century (JR Books paperback, 2011) p196-204; William J. Mann, How to Be a Movie Star, Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood (Faber and Faber, 2009) p378-379; Alec Guinness, Blessings in Disguise (Hamish Hamilton, 1985) p209-210; Leopold Duran, Graham Greene, Friend and Brother (Harper Collins, 1994) p153, 238, 258; “Burton-Guinness Teamed,” Kine Weekly, September 8, 1966, p4; “Burton-Guinness Teamed,” Box Office, September 16, 1966, p4; “George Glass Protests Metro’s Comedians Treads on his Teleplay,” Variety, October 26, 1966, p5; “Elizabeth Taylor to Co-Star in Comedians for MGM,” Box Office, October 10, 1966, p7; “Comedians Looms as Metro Roadshow,” Variety, April 12, 1967, p26; “Plan Comedians Premiere,” Box Office, September 11, 1967, pE3; “Urge Films Shun Shock’n’Violence for Own Sake,” Variety, October 25, 1967, p1; “Museum to Devote Entire Exhibit to Comedians,” Box Office, October 30, 1967, pE7; “Haiti Protests Showing of Comedians,” Box Office, November 6, 1967, pE4; “Comedians on Roadshow at London Coliseum,” Variety, January 3, 1967, p5; “Year-End Best Picks,” Variety, January 10, 1968, p8.

The Comedians (1967) ***

Over-long, over-hyped and over-cast. Pretty much an early example of virtue-signalling, exposing corruption in a dictatorship (Haiti), but offering more through the singular self-deception of the main characters. An element of sleight-of-hand is also practiced on an audience enticed by four big stars “above the title” comprising three Oscar winners and one multiple nominee. Luckily, the ironic in-joke of naming characters with traditional English names – Smith, Jones and Brown – would probably pass most people by.

Brown (Richard Burton), a hotelier, is present throughout but Major Jones (Alec Guinness) appears only briefly at the beginning then disappears until late on to spike the plot. Martha (Elizabeth Taylor), the adulterous love interest, pops up sporadically as does her husband Ambassador Pineda (Peter Ustinov). There’s not much of a story, Brown, cynical about the dictatorship, is friendly with a rebel leader, Jones is an ineffectual arms dealer, and missionary couple the Smiths (Paul Ford and Lillian Gish) offer comic relief until barbarity rears its head.

Great play is made of naivete but the film suffers from the Hollywood curse of only being able to examine foreign politics through the prism of a (white) American or Englishman. At the time it might have been shocking to see brutality so convincingly dispensed, and there is, also, in Mondo Cane fashion, too much time spent on strange ritual, but at the same time, of course, the U.S. was inflicting its own barbarities on the Vietnamese.

On the other hand, Brown is exactly the kind of foreigner who believes things must improve because, damn it all, he’s British and bad things can’t happen to a Brit in a strange land. He is convinced he will be able to sell a hotel located in a war-torn country, persists in believing Martha will abandon husband and son, and convinces himself he is the very man the rebels have been looking for.

Jones mistakenly believes everyone is taken in by his hail-fellow-well-met routine and his tales of heroism in World War Two jungles, thinks he is in with a chance with Martha and that his gun-running activities will avoid detection. The ambassador thinks his wife will not leave him as long as he turns a blind eye to her affairs. And Martha, probably wondering why she married such a buffoon, can’t work out to dump him. Everyone who has much to lose appears to be continually on a precipice and it’s hard to see what they could gain from their actions.

They are all misfits, “comedians,” stuck in the rut of their own destiny, unable to change.

Nobody is more gullible than those who dupe themselves and the film comes into its own when it sets personal delusion against political naivete. In narrative terms Jones is the most obviously unmasked but the others are no less shown to be foolhardy in their expectations.

This had all the hallmarks of a prestige picture, initially planned as a roadshow, around $2 million spent on the above-the-line cast, another chunk on buying the rights to the Graham Greene bestseller and assigning the author the screenplay, location shooting in Dahomey.

Don’t expect oratorical fury from Richard Burton (The Bramble Bush, 1960) nor outbursts of angst from Elizabeth Taylor (Secret Ceremony, 1969). There’s something almost comically homely in their deception and in the outwardly confident Brown perceiving Jones as a love rival. Alec Guinness (The Quiller Memorandum, 1966) is the big treat, an upmarket con man, his boisterous voice and mannerisms far removed from his more usual introspective performances. Peter Ustinov (Topkapi, 1964), a bit too fidgety for my liking, nonetheless attracts sympathy as the man who is batting above his weight in snaring a trophy wife he knows he cannot hold onto.

Burton was the odd one out in the Oscar rankings. Despite five nominations by this stage, he had never taken home the statuette. Elizabeth Taylor, by contrast, had won twice, for Butterfield 8 (1960) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), Guinness once for Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Ustinov also twice Spartacus (1961) and Topkapi.

However, in some senses if you remove the star turns, you are left with a rawer picture, and director Peter Glenville (Becket, 1964) captures much of the personal intensity of the novel. Taylor, in particular, misses the mark. Although playing a German, she never once bothers attempting an accent. Had Burton been the sole star, the movie would have worked much better since his low-key playing would not have been so much at odds with other actors.

There’s a host of striking turns from supporting stars, ranging from silent film star Lillian Gish (The Unforgiven, 1960) to Roscoe Lee Brown (Topaz, 1969), James Earl Jones (The Great White Hope, 1970), Raymond St Jacques (Uptight, 1968) and Cicely Tyson (Sounder, 1972).

Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) *** – Seen at the Cinema

Avatar: The Next Generation and the Rescue Marathon. Not sure about that, Jim, lacks punch. How about Avatar Meets Moby Dick? Hmm. You got a MacGuffin? Yep, the Earth is dying and the bad guys need to wipe out everyone on Pandora before they ship out the emigrants. And more Impossibilium? You’ll like this, this time we’re extracting anti-ageing serum from whales, worth $80 million a pop. And there’s also Avatar Meets The Titanic, seemed a shame to waste a ship going down.

So we don’t see as much of Sam Worthington this time round, is that right? Well, we’ve got to introduce his four kids, all approaching the rebellious stage, plus Spider, who’s maybe the son of the Quaritch (Stephen Lang) who was cloned before he died, plus the kids of the water king and of course all the kids squabble and make up and squabble again – you get the picture.

So how many rescues, exactly? To be honest I’ve lost count, but basically when A gets captured he needs rescued by B who then also gets captured and needs rescued by C who also gets captured and then…Yes, we get the picture.

Sigourney Weaver? Kate Winslet? Blink and you’ll miss them. But great for the marquee, right?

So, you see, with all these complications, you’re darned lucky I can manage to cram everything into a three-hour-plus running time.

Yep, it’s a bit of a mess, but the good news is while I might have been irritated by the narrative repetition I didn’t walk out. It certainly looks amazing. And you can’t top James Cameron for extended battle scenes. And there’s an emotional twist, starts out Jake protecting his family and ends up with his kids and wife saving him. Plus if you want woke, there’s a ton of Gaia-style philosophy.

My Greatest Hits: Shameless Xmas Plug Part Deux

My greatest hits, if you like. I can hardly believe that I’ve turned out so many books or that a publisher has been willing to take them. I have two publishers. McFarland in America prefers works on a Hollywood theme while the British publisher, Baroliant, is happy to print tomes which target a smaller potential audience. I should point out that McFarland publications are more expensive though they are in a bigger format.

All of my books are available on Amazon/Kindle. The ones below are all available in print editions.

If you have problems getting hold of any title let me know.

You might also be interested to know that I have contributed lengthy articles to
*Cinema Retro* magazine on films as diverse as *The Dirty Dozen* and
*La Dolce Vita* and every issue have a column devoted to box office.

Accident (1966) ****

Intellect can present as powerful a sexual magnetism as wealth. And for young women, unlikely to come into the orbit of powerful movie magnates or wealthy businessmen, they are most likely to experience abuse of power in academia, especially in top-notch universities like Oxford and Cambridge or Harvard and the Sorbonne.

Young students, unsure of their place in the world, depend on praise for their self-esteem. To be on the receiving end of flattery from a renowned scholar, a young person (males included) might be willing to overlook other unwanted attention. For young women and men accustomed to being assessed on looks alone this might be a drug too powerful to ignore.

The British system ensured that potential prey was delivered to potential predators. As well as attending lectures, each student was allocated a tutor and could spend a considerable amount of time with them in private in congenial surroundings behind closed doors. And since essays marked by tutors played a considerable element in an overall mark, there was plenty of opportunity for transactional sex.

And it was easy for women to think they wielded the sexual power. I once employed a woman who boasted that she had seduced her university tutor, little imagining that that took any opposition on his part, and that, in reality, she was just another easy conquest.

So you might be surprised to learn that when this movie about inappropriate behavior in a university of the caliber of Oxford appeared, nobody gave a hoot about the grooming and exploitation of young Austrian Anna (Jacqueline Sassard) by two professors, Stephen (Dirk Bogarde) and Charley (Stanley Baker).

The story is told in flashback in leisurely fashion. Hearing a car crash outside his substantial house in the country, Stephen finds inside the vehicle an injured Anna and her dead boyfriend William (Michael York). Then we backtrack to Anna’s arrival in Oxford, and how the love quadrangle is created. The presence of William suggests Anna has predatory instincts, but there is no sign of sex in their relationship, rather that he is forever frustrated at being kept on a leash and clearly suspecting he is losing out to others.

Stephen, a professor of philosophy, no higher calling in academe, endless discussion on the meaning of life manna to every student, has a purported happy home life, wife Rosalind (Vivien Merchant) pregnant with their third child. He’s no stranger to infidelity, reviving an affair with the estranged daughter Francesca (Delphine Seyrig) of a college bigwig (Alexander Knox).

But he can’t quite make his move on Anna, despite idyllic walks in the fields and their hands almost touching on a fence. The uber-confident Charley, novelist and television pundit in addition to academic celebrity, has no such qualms and seduces her under the nose of his friend and sometime competitor.

When opportunity does arise for Stephen it does so in the most horrific fashion and, that he takes advantage of the situation, exposes the levels of immorality to which the powerful will stoop without batting an eyelid.

The web Stephen is trying to weave around his potential victim is disrupted by William and Charley and if any anguish shows on Stephen’s face it’s not guilt at the grief he may cause or about his own errant behavior but at the prospect of losing a prize.

Director Joseph Losey (Secret Ceremony, 1968) sets the tale in an idyllic world of dreaming spires, glasses of sherry, tea on the lawn, glorious weather, punting on the river, old Etonian games, the potential meeting of minds and the flowering of young intellect. The action, like illicit desire, is surreptitious, a slow-burn so laggardly you could imagine the spark of narrative had almost gone out.

Stephen is almost defeated by his own uncontrolled desire, taking advantage of his wife entering hospital for childbirth, the children packed off elsewhere, to have sex with Francesca, not imagining that Charley will take advantage of an empty house.

And the young woman as sexual pawn is given further credence by the fact that at no point do we see the events from her perspective.

Anguish had always been a Dirk Bogarde (Justine, 1969) hallmark and usually it served to invite the moviegoer to share his torment. So it’s kind of a mean trick to play on the audience to discover that this actor generally given to playing worthy characters is in fact a sleekit devious dangerous man. Of course, the persona reversal works very well, as we do sympathise with him, especially when relegated to second fiddle in the celebrity stakes to Charley and humiliated in his own attempts to gain television exposure.

Stanley Baker (Sands of the Kalahari, 1965) was the revelation. Gone was the tough guy of previous movies. In its place a charming confident winning personality with a mischievous streak, a far more attractive persona when up against the more introspective Bogarde.

Jacqueline Sassard (Les Biches, 1968) is, unfortunately, left with little to do but be the plaything. There’s an ambivalence about her which might have been acceptable then, but not now, as if somehow she is, with her own sexual powers, pulling three men on a string. In his debut Michael York (Justine, 1969) shows his potential as a future leading man.

You might wonder if Vivien Merchant (Alfred the Great, 1969) was cast, in an underwritten part I might add, because husband Harold Pinter (The Quiller Memorandum, 1966) wrote the script and Nicholas Mosley, who had never acted before, put in an appearance because he wrote the original novel.

Losey, a critical fave, found it hard to attract a popular audience until The Go-Between (1971) and you can see why this picture flopped at the time despite the presence of Bogarde and Baker. And although it is slow to the point of infinite discretion, it’s not just a beautifully rendered examination of middle class mores, and a hermetically sealed society, but, way ahead of its time, and possibly not even aware of the issues raised, in exploring abuse of power, a “Me Too” expose of the academic world.

The acting and direction are first class and it will only appear self-indulgent if you don’t appreciate slow-burning pictures.

New York Showcase: 1969 Box Office Race

In the days before computerised box office figures and the internet permitting easy access, fans of the sport had to make do with the weekly tallies in the “New York Showcase” section run every week in Variety. The “Showcase” was an early version of the wide release but instead of the 3,000-4,000 cinemas involved today in an opening week launch, movies would hit the Big Apple in 23-60 theaters. No matter the low theater count, it was still considered the most accurate prediction of how a movie would fare nationwide.

Some films opened straight into the showcase format, others ran day-and-date with a glossy opening on Broadway or a prestigious arthouse, and for a few this was the first step in general release after a roadshow run.

The same rules applied as today. A movie was retained for a further week only if the picture hit the target. Long runs were rare, two weeks the standard. As we shall see, some were movies making their 1969 debut while others were going wide after opening the previous year, the delay accounted for by holdover success in first run or Oscar recognition.

Just over 200 theaters took part in the showcase splurge, divided into five main strands generally through circuit or distributor affiliation plus one that brought together suburban arthouses. Not all the streams were in full-time operation, some weeks saw four new releases others six. Movies could count on losing theaters after the first week.

And, as with now, while overall receipts were the main factor, the per-theater gross could also offer up some indication of future performance.

The best single week’s take in 1969 was achieved by Dustin Hoffman comedy The Graduate which took $760,000 from 43 houses (per-theater average: $17, 674) followed very closely by Ali McGraw debut Goodbye, Columbus with $757,000 from 44 ($17, 204 per theatre). Steve McQueen thrill-ride Bullitt nabbed $684,000 from 45 ($15,200). In fact all three pictures placed twice in the single-week top ten.

Others flying high, at least for one week, were: Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice ($540,000 from 48), True Grit ($531,000 from 49), Joanne Woodward in Rachel, Rachel ($522,000 from 42), psychedelic outing The Trip ($520,000 from 49), sexploitationer Fanny Hill ($506,000 from 42), The Boston Strangler ($481,000 from 38) and I Am Curious Yellow ($480,000 from 40).

By contrast, at the other end of the heap, Marlon Brando in Night of the Following Day could only manage $125,000 from 31, The Assassination Bureau scraped up $82,000 from 22, Elliott Gould in Ingmar Bergman’s The Touch hit $48,000 from 26 while Michael Caine performed abysmally, Play Dirty knocking up just $91,000 from 24, The Magus $80,000 from 20, The Battle of Britain tumbling stratospherically from $366,000 from 32 one week to $101,000 from 27 the next.

But the showcase system also breathed life into arthouse hits attempting to break out into a wider marketplace. John Cassavettes’ Faces rocked up $469,000 in three weeks, Luis Bunuel’s Belle de Jour $329,000 over the same period, Brian De Palma’s Greetings $263,000 in a fortnight while one week of Robert Downer Snr.’s Putney Swope registered $205,000.

Reissues were also prime fodder to stoke up a distribution system creaking at the seams due to lack of new product. Gone with the Wind (1939) was the plum, $658,000 in three weeks. Disney’s Swiss Family Robinson (1960) chopped down $418,000 in two and Clint Eastwood pair A Fistful of Dollars/For a Few Dollars More – both released Stateside in 1967 – $279,000 in a fortnight. More usually, reissues lasted just a week, filling a gap in the annual program.

Even so, they could pull in some decent numbers: Peter Pan (1953) grossing $300,000, Sidney Poitier double bill Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)/To Sir, With Love (1967) $272,000, perennial favorite The Sound of Music $230,000, Rosemary’s Baby (1968)/The Odd Couple (1968) $215,000, James Bond dualer Goldfinger (1964)/Dr No (1962) $162,000, another Eastwood pair The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (1967)/Hang ‘Em High (1968) $155,000 and a lengthy coupling of Planet of the Apes (1968)/ Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (1965) $115,000.

The overall winner in the annual New York Showcase stakes was The Graduate which over a five-week run grossed $2.24 million. Bullitt was the runner-up with $1.99 million over six weeks, though the last sally was in a double bill with Bonnie and Clyde. Goodbye, Columbus came third with $1.95 million over four weeks. Romeo and Juliet lasted a record eight weeks to pocket $1.69 million. Fifth was Swedish sensation I Am Curious Yellow on $1.28 million after five weeks.

After playing first run for the best part of six months Rachel, Rachel hit the showcases following an Oscar nomination for Joanne Woodward, bringing in $1.08 million over three weeks. Another anomaly was I Love You, Alice B. Toklas, such a flop the previous year it was ranked 78^th in the annual box office race, but now emerging as a showcase front-runner with $1.03 million over five weeks.

Eighth spot went to The Boston Strangler ($932,000 in three weeks) followed by Charly – Oscar win for Cliff Robertson – on $910,000 for six weeks. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was tenth with $900,000 in two weeks – the western had launched at the tail end of the year and did so well it ran for another five weeks in 1970 to capture an extra $1.5 million.

Filling out the top twenty were, in order, Easy Rider, Ice Station Zebra, The Night They Raided Minsky’s, The Wild Bunch, Popi, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, True Grit, Oliver!, Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice and Fanny Hill.

In general terms, New Yorkers response to showcase releases was mirrored throughout the country. The majority of the high-flying films mentioned ending up in the annual box office top 20. But there were some anomalies. Rachel, Rachel had finished the previous year in 37^th place in the annual chart, hardly suggesting it was prime candidate for an exceptional showcase run. The Night They Raided Minsky’s came only 32^nd in the 1969 chart. Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice did not earn enough around the country to qualify for inclusion on the annual chart. And, frankly, I’m mystified as to why I Love You, Alice B. Toklas did so well.

By contrast Paul Newman racing picture Winning performed so indifferently in the New York showcase that for the final two weeks of its three-week run it was bolstered by John Wayne oil adventure The Hellfighters, yet it ran out 16^th for the year. Three in the Attic (18^th in 1969) and Support Your Local Sheriff (20^th) failed to match expectations in New York.

The Lie (2018) ***

I rarely feel inclined to dig around the two streamers – Netflix and Amazon – available to me what with a vast backlog of 1960s DVD/VHS still to plough through and interest in contemporary cinema sated though a weekly visit to the multiplex. It’s rare that I can sit through more than five minutes of the movies funded or picked up by streamers, so poor is their quality control. So this came as a surprise.

The acting’s not the best and just when you are beginning to run out of patience suddenly the real twist kicks in and it makes terrible, terrible sense and a situation that has spiralled out of control ends up in a bottomless pit. I say the real twist because I had guessed the first twist, an obvious consequence of the set-up of these kind of films. But the real twist is much darker and eminently more savage.

So, the basic story is rock musician Jay (Peter Sarsgard), estranged from wife Rebecca (Mireille Enos), takes teenage daughter Kayla (Joey King) to dance camp and on the way picks up her best pal Trini (Dani Kind) and somewhere in the middle of an ice-bound wilderness said friend needs the toilet. Kayla and pal go off but only Kayla returns, admitting she has pushed friend off a bridge into icy river.

Jay’s now got to decide how to protect his murderous daughter, hide any evidence of Trini being in the car etc. He confides in Rebecca, and protecting their daughter brings the couple closer together. Meanwhile, Kayla is acting as if what’s all the fuss about. This is dysfunctional on the rocks.

Luckily, it turns out Trini has a record of running away and her dad Sam (Cas Anwar) has a terrible temper and may be abusing her so it’s relatively easy to get the police to consider him the main suspect, especially as he’s very lax in reporting the child missing. Plus, Rebecca seems to know her way about the police and Sam makes the mistake of causing a scene in the street.

But, of course, nothing goes according to plan, the situation gets worse, as the innocent parents try to fabricate something that will make the police go away. There’s a lot of other subtle stuff that complicates the situation. But essentially it’s two parallel stories diverging along psychological lines.

With those malevolent eyes, Peter Sarsgard (The Batman, 2022) has some difficulty passing for innocent, and of course his character is not exactly saintly, so that muddies the waters, as I guess is the intention, while the casting of Mirielle Enos (best-known as the detective in the U.S. television adaptation of Nordic hit The Killing, 2011-2014) also suggests the director is hoping to mislead the audience.

Joey King (Bullet Train, 2022) is so sulky and petulant from the outset that you wouldn’t be remotely surprised that her teenage hormones could escalate into murder and then for her sit back and enjoy watching her parents try to deal with the consequences.

And you might nitpick and wonder exactly what kind of town this is when there’s not a single neighbour to appear at the sound of an argument or a fight or a car accident, and no cameras on the streets. But generally, this is a tight mostly three-hander with tension quietly building, wrong decisions taken by people who think they are cleverer than they are, a finely balanced pyramid of parental attitudes to children and vice-versa and throwing out the one question every parent hopes to avoid: how will your react if your beloved child commits a heinous crime? What lengths will you go to protect them?

So in the context of the shattering ending, everything makes far worse sense.

A very neat thriller and almost a made-for-streamer feel about it, in the old made-for-television sense.

Writer-director Veena Sud (The Salton Sea, 2016) keeps a keen grip on a tale that is a remake of German picture Wir Monster (2015).

On Amazon Prime.

Blatant Xmas Plug – “1960s Movies: Behind the Scenes” /”1960s Movies Redux” / “Paisley at the Pictures, Part III: 1952”

I have given in to entreaty. Demand might be too strong a word. Or you could say, using a phrase that I hope is consigned to the past, I have responded to “constructive criticism.”

I have been contacted by a goodly number of my readers wondering, to save them trawling through what is now close on 750 reviews, whether there was another, simpler, way for them to pore through the collection. If there was, in other words, a way of putting the collection together in a manner that could be accessed in one fell swoop.

Fortunately, I came up with a solution. I could publish them in book form, both in Kindle and for those, like myself, who prefer to hold a physical object, as printed material. Unfortunately, it would not be possible to put the entire set of reviews in one book. I’m not saying it would bust the Internet, but a book over 500,000 words long would be a very sizeable undertaking in either format. I should know, I got into trouble with my American publisher McFarland for delivering a book that totalled 250,000 words (Coming Back to a Theater Near You, in case you’re interested.)

So I’m publishing the works in stages and as two separate publications, although the titles, I have to admit, and the covers as well for that matter, are similar.

1960s Movies: Behind the Scenes Volume One does what it says on the tin. It’s a collection of the first 30-odd articles examining what went wrong or right in making particular movies during the decade. It ranges from Battle of the Bulge (1965), Dr No (1962), The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968) and now, officially, the greatest western ever made Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) to Operation Kid Brother (1967), Secret Ceremony (1969) and The Ipcress File (1965) plus the Alistair MacLean quartet of The Secret Ways (1961), The Guns of Navarone (1961), The Satan Bug (1965) and Ice Station Zebra (1968).

In addition, there is a sampling of two other popular features of the Blog , “Book into Film” and “Pressbooks,” – a couple of interviews and various articles on developments that affected the industry during the decade. There are illustrations throughout.

1960s Movies Redux Volume One is a companion piece featuring over 100 movies, including many of the pictures covered in the Behind the Scenes book, roughly presented in the order they originally appeared in the Blog. Ideal if you’ve still got a lot of catching up to do and don’t want to battle through the Blog to the beginning.

The content of this book varies from The Swimmer (1968), The Bedford Incident (1964), Point Blank (1967) and The Venetian Affair (1966) to The Blue Max (1966), Ocean’s 11 (1960), The Fox (1967), The Lost Continent (1968), Pharaoh (1966) and Moment to Moment (1966). But “varies” is an understatement as it swings at random through every genre.

There is no particular logic to my selection of movies to review, just what happens to be handy or something I’ve taken a notion to see. Again, there are illustrations throughout.

Skip back a decade and you’ll come to my third book Paisley at the Pictures, Part III: 1952. As the title suggest, this is in fact a sequel. In fact, it’s a sequel to a sequel as the previous book in the series Paisley at the Pictures, 1951 embodied the word “sequel” in the title.

Paisley, in Scotland, in case you didn’t know, is a large town, only a few thousand bodies short of qualifying as a city, and at the time eight cinemas served a population of 93,000. Seating capacity for the octet was just over 13,000 so on a Saturday night -. given that moviegoing was hugely popular especially before the advent of television – there was no guarantee you would get a ticket to the movie of your choice.

Six of the picture houses showed first run and two second run. Few movies ran for six days, most theaters operating on a split-week basis, one program running Mon-Wed and another Thu-Sat. (Films only ran on a Sunday if it was a charity fund-raiser.) Most programs were double bills. But over 1200 films were screened. And since Paisley was way down the movie distribution food chain it was mostly showing pictures that were months or possibly years old. There was, in any case, no such thing as the global wide release seventy years ago and only in very rare instances anything approaching day-and-date.

Historically, the year was significant for it marked the introduction of the X-certificate and the Eady Levy, a form of tax rebate to encourage film production. Sci-fi boomed. B-pictures could still be guaranteed an audience, as could serials. And cinemas began to welcome, on occasion, foreign fare.

The top films of the year in Paisley were: An American in Paris (1951), Singin’ in the Rain (1952), Show Boat (1951), Ivanhoe (1951), The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), The African Queen (1951), The Quiet Man (1952), The World in His Arms (1952), Laughter in Paradise (1951) and Jungle Jim in the Forbidden Land (1952).

Except for the latter these chimed with the top movies shown that year or in 1951 in the rest of Britain and, for that matter, excepting the British-made movie, the United States.

But that was not the case for the most popular stars.

The Top Ten stars in Paisley were: Randolph Scott, Virginia Mayo, Roy Rogers, Rod Cameron, Humphrey Bogart, Doris Day, Gregory Peck, John Wayne, Errol Flynn, and in joint tenth position Glenn Ford and Susan Hayward. These rankings might come as a shock to anyone who takes the annual top tens published in the trade press as gospel. But I suspect there were as many local variations on the national scale elsewhere as here. The annual charts tended to flatten out local differences and favor stars who were more popular in bigger cities.

An appendix lists all the films shown in Paisley cinemas that year, by month and by venue. There are over 120 illustrations, some very rare, many drawn from my collection of Pressbooks.

Now, down to the sticky matter of cost. You’ll be delighted to hear that both the 1960s books cost, as they say, less than a cup of coffee. On Kindle both are priced at $2.99 (£2.34 at current exchange rates for British readers and the equivalent for other countries). Printed copies cost £10 (around $12). And if you want your printed copy signed, that can probably be arranged. Both are available on Amazon, Kindle and enlightened bookshops.

Due to the huge number of illustrations – over 120 – the Paisley book is not available on Kindle, only in book form and costs £10 (about $12). But I’m working on a Kindle edition that reduces the number of illustrations,

If you are not interested in buying the books themselves I would be grateful if you could, nonetheless, circulate the information.

But, of course, I probably don’t have to point out that they will make ideal Xmas presents.

London in the Raw (1964) ***

The headmaster of top English public school Harrow and the owners of upmarket emporium Grieves probably didn’t realize what they were letting themselves in for when they agreed to participate in this British version of Mondo Cane (1962), the movie that turned documentary into box office gold by the simple device of concentrating on the sleaze.

In truth it’s a bit of bait-and-switch, although anyone seeking titillation in those more repressed times when nudity was forbidden by the censor would be rewarded by the sight of three women topless, an anomaly explained by such nudity appearing in a non-sexual situation and my guess that the movie’s producers pointed to the stage loophole which permitted it as long as the women did not move. (That reasoning was explained, should you be interested, in Mrs Henderson Presents, 2005.)

The nudity occurs in the context of life classes, one organized by a bunch of beatniks as a means of funding their lifestyle, which includes eating baked beans cold and snacking on cat food, rebels that they are; when business is poor, they resort to taking snaps of the girls for Soho magazines. The other is the post-dinner entertainment in an upmarket restaurant where the customers sketch drawings of the undressed immobile models.

There’s an expose of clip joints, where elderly men are duped out of money by unfulfilled promise, paying extortionate amounts for non-alcoholic beverages, and a behind-the-scenes look at a strip club (nudity concealed behind nipple pasties) and a sex worker, the narrator making the point that while it’s not illegal for that woman to ply her trade indoors, a beggar playing a penny whistle in the street could be arrested. The strip club has the dingiest of entrances.

But in the main it’s a rather snippy examination of contemporary mores as staid London, at this stage not quite Swinging London, undergoes dramatic change. A health club enters the frame and there’s a gory piece on male hair transplants, a bloodier experience than audiences might expect, and a trawl round various unusual, but harmless, place of entertainment: an Irish pub with a horde of singers, an amateur Jewish theater, disco dancing at the renowned Whiskey-A-Go-Go, German students congregating for a slice of home at the Rheingold Club, the casino at Churchills, and cabaret.

“Bold! Brazen! Bizarre!” boasts the trailer and while that might be typical hype, audiences in those tamer times may well have been shocked especially when the camera focuses on two elements rarely discussed at that point in polite society: homelessness and drug addiction. Even so, it does find, as with the rest of the movie, unusual aspects of both. For example, the homeless lace their methylated spirits with milk. A director with an eye for dynamic composition could not have hit upon a better idea than contrasting the white contents of one bottle with the blue contents of another, the mixture being consumed in tea cups.

And I, for one, did not know that drug addicts were treated far more sympathetically in Britain than in the United States. That may well have been because the numbers were low, only 600 registered addicts compared to 47,000 across the Atlantic, though the degradation was no less pitiful, female abusers taking to the streets to pay for their addiction.

As a slice-of-life it’s less exploitational than the posters – or title – suggest and so falls into the historic category of The London Nobody Knows (1967), although less compelling, and it’s perhaps more interesting for the personalities involved, several of whom became significant figures, one way or the other, in the movie business.

Making the biggest later impact was Michael Klinger who went on to produce Roman Polanski’s Cul-de-Sac (1966), drama Baby Love (1969), gangster classic Get Carter (1971), Gold (1974) and Shout at the Devil (1976). Co-producer Tony Tenser went on to found Tigon, the horror outfit that challenged Hammer. Stanley Long turbocharged the British sexploitation industry with numbers such as Groupie (1970), The Wife Swappers (1970) and Eskimo Nell (1975).

But it didn’t open many doors for director Arnold L. Miller who managed only a handful of features such as Frustrated Wives/Sex Farm (1974) which was banned by the British censor. Uncredited co-director Norman Cohen later made The London Nobody Knows.

Interesting for the most part and buy it if you want to play your part in upholding the British Film Institute which has rescued this from the vaults in the hope of making a quick buck.

Joy in the Morning (1965) ****

Not a great movie by any means but I am drawing attention to it for other reasons. While entering familiar small town soap opera territory with malice behind every curtain and the repression rampant a century ago, it’s a fabulous exploration of character.

The narrative drive is slim, young couple coming undone by circumstance. But that is more than compensated by the preoccupation with their actual characters, marital bust-ups for no reason, insecurities to the fore, a daring sexual overtness that for the time it was made does not stoop to the lowest common denominator, and without doubt the best performance in the career of Yvette Mimieux (Dark of the Sun, 1968) here taking center stage rather than as was more usual a mere appendage to the leading man.

*Not sure what the rival picture was. any ideas?*

The story is told primarily through the eyes of Anna (Yvette Mimieux), a poor uneducated homely girl who falls for dashing virile law student Carl (Richard Chamberlain), both of Irish descent, who, against parental wishes, run off to get married.

But marriage instantly brings financial calamity. As a married man, Carl is ineligible for college loans, and his wife is forbidden, following aspirational middle-class custom of the day, to work except for a bit of babysitting. Viewing Anna, coming from poorer stock, as a gold-digger, Carl’s father Patrick (Arthur Kennedy) not only withdraws financial support but demands repayment of loans.

So the pair struggle through. And that would be par for soap opera.

What brings this to the fore is the director’s fascination with character, allowing personality, with all its inexplicable whimsicalities, full rein rather than making that subservient to a more dramatic story.

If you think couples these days have difficulty communicating, imagine the situation a century ago where a man made all the decisions and expected obedience from his partner. And a wife so fearful of announcing a pregnancy for fear it would force her husband to abandon his studies. Beyond obvious worry, there is little problem-sharing or joint resolution of difficulties.

For all his charm, Carl is pretty gauche. His ardent inexperienced love-making borders on rough. He is so out of touch with his wife’s passion that he takes a job as a nightwatchman. He plays a mean trick on her in a communal shower. And although he refuses to cower to his father, in general he kowtows to authority.

Anna is more feisty, challenging his father, ignoring patriarchal rules, almost pathologically opposed to using the word “Sir,” but full of compassion, befriending the gay florist, object of public ridicule, encouraging him in his writing, standing up, too, for the widow, forced by circumstance to become the mistress of a rich businessman (Oscar Homolka), taking money for the privilege.

Yet for all her outgoing confidence, she is insecure, so desperate to learn that she sneaks into the halls of the college to overhear lectures, a dictionary her constant companion. Sexually, she is conflicted, memories of stepfather abuse arising too often, and yet intensely physical, adoring the touch of a loving male.

Despite her homely beauty, she follows a more obviously attractive woman, copying the way she walks, swings her hips, flicks her hair. She wants a tight sweater when the fashion is to wear them loose. Unable to afford a hair salon, she has her blonde hair cut short enough in a barber shop so that it will bounce when she walks. Due to her deficiencies and in constant emotional turmoil, she is liable to snap at perceived insult.

The story could easily have gone down a more fairy-tale route, of Anna finding herself, espousing independence, becoming a writer, instead of – anathema to a contemporary audience – finding expression by supporting her husband. But that would not be true to the times. That she has hardly any home to look after, little in the way of furniture to polish, no cosy gang of housewives for coffee mornings, so her efforts at expanding her education would simply qualify as a sensible way to spend her day.

And while director Alex Segal (Harlow, 1965) does not trust her with the kind of soulful close-up accorded the likes of Elizabeth Taylor or Audrey Hepburn, where one look into the eyes reveals everything, and restricts emotion to dialog, he does provide countless small moments that allow proper character development. Nor does he trust himself much, only two compositions of any singularity; snow falling on a house that turns out to be a storekeeper tipping icing sugar over a model of a home for a shop window Xmas scene; and a shadow suddenly appearing when the couple are about to make love.

And there is a role reversal of sorts. It’s television heartthrob Richard Chamberlain (Twilight of Honor, 1963) who regularly disports semi-naked rather than Mimieux. Chamberlain took the opportunity to boost his burgeoning singing career, crooning the movie theme song. Although the undoubted star, it was Mimieux, though lumbered with an Irish accent, who took the acting plaudits.

Sally Benson (a career stretching from Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, 1943, to Viva Las Vegas, 1964) and Alfred Hayes (The Double Man, 1967) wrote the screenplay from the Betty Smith (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn) bestseller. Features one of the lesser-known scores of Bernard Herrman (Marnie, 1964) but you will instantly recognize swelling strings that wouldn’t be out of place in an obsessional Hitchcock piece.

An enjoyable picture, batting above average, almost Tarantino-esque in concentrating on character at the expense of story. Sure, there’s no equivalent to foreign hamburgers, but there is some quirky dialog and it’s worth it just to see what Mimieux can do when given the opportunity.

Seems easier to get hold of the Richard Chamberlain album than the movie, but it must be on streaming somewhere, it was on YouTube at one point so may return there.