Brian Hannan

The Killing of Sister George (1968) ***

Somewhere between camp classic, hilarious comedy and bitchiness-on-speed, loaded down with a May-December narrative, too much of the genuine soap opera element of the filming of a soap opera but lifted up by some very touching moments. This started life as a black comedy and its stage antecedents are only too obvious, many scenes running way too long for a movie, and in the unlikely hands of director Robert Aldrich – at this point best known for male actioner The Dirty Dozen (1967) rather than the equally bitchy Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962) – asks audiences to ingest a great deal more seriousness.

The sex scene was so shocking in its day that, in the reformed U.S. censorship system, earned one of the first mainstream X-certificates, thus torpedoing its box office potential as newspapers routinely refused to accept adverts for such. Yet while it is tender, and to some extent galvanized by the astonishment of older lesbian Mercy Croft (Coral Browne), a high-ranking television executive, at having such a young and adorable lover as Alice (Susannah York), it is sabotaged by Alice’s gurning.

Whereas Beryl Reid’s performance as aging soap opera actress June (aka Sister George) about to be cut adrift by the television production which has made her name is pretty much spot on as a drunken, insecure, needy, dominant, older lover. Susannah York (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They, 1969) just seems out of control as the bonkers dumb blonde. While same sex relationships between men had only just become legal in England, and the specter of blackmail, public scandal or imprisonment that had hung over many generations now removed, there had never been a correlative for women. Though a newspaper headline might well kill a career.

The best sequence in terms of the harmonious gay relationship comes in the gay club where women hold each other for a slow dance and it seems so normal and touching. Of course, relationships, straight or gay, don’t necessarily run smoothly, but the longstanding affair between June and Alice belongs to the Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) playbook. Alice may well be a gold-digger for all she does, but since the May-December aspect of male-female relationships was a standard Hollywood trope it seems fair enough to apply the same rationale to a single-sex partnership.

There’s some uncomfortable sadism when, as punishment for mild misdemeanor, Alice is forced to eat a cigar butt and told in no uncertain terms just how stupid she is. There had been a recent rash of on-set bitchiness, star tantrums and studio power struggles from pictures like The Carpetbaggers (1964), Harlow (1965), Inside Daisy Clover (1965), The Oscar (1966) and Aldrich’s own The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968), so none of production shenanigans bring anything new to the table.

However, when June lets rip, embarrassing management or forcing her fellow actors to laugh during a tragic scene, this is comedy gold. Her alcohol intake and arrogance aside, it seems a step too far for June to attempt to sexually assault two nuns in a taxi – this unseen sequence key to her downfall. You might be inclined to question how Alice came into the sexual orbit of June and Mercy in the first place, and wonder if the two older women are not guilty of what would be termed these days inappropriate behavior in taking advantage of clearly a vulnerable young woman.

Beryl Reid (The Assassination Bureau, 1969) walks a fine line between self-indulgence and character insight. I felt Susannah York’s over-acting got in the way. The tight-lipped Coral Brown (The Legend of Lylah Clare) was too close to the cliché for my liking.

Robert Aldrich just about gets away with it. Lukas Heller (The Dirty Dozen) adapted Frank Marcus’s play.

The Damned / Gotterdammerung / Twilight of the Gods (1969) **

Ponderous, gratuitous, offensive. Let’s start with the pedophile, spoiled grandson Martin (Helmut Berger) of industrialist patriarch Joachim (Albrecht Schonhals). We already guess he has this kind of predilection for young girls as that’s suggested during a game of hide-and-seek at the family mansion and by a scream in the night that is ignored. He keeps a mistress Olga (Florinda Balkan) and is drawn to the young girl in the apartment next door, bringing her the kind of expensive present that her impoverished mother believes she must have stolen. So we know what he’s all about. It’s discreetly enough stated without the inclusion of a scene which I doubt would pass the censor these days and should the young actress be still alive in these MeToo times might be considering legal action for being taken advantage of.

Although the storyline is similar to the director’s earlier The Leopard (1963) of the powerful – there a wealthy landowner, here an arms manufacturer – trying to hold onto their status in times of change (then the invasion of Sicily by forces wanting to unite Italy, now the rise to eminence of Hitler), there’s little of the cinematic flair of the latter. Long scenes are played out at dinner tables or in bedrooms. And most of that is machination, someone or other wanting to take over the family firm or be the power behind the throne.

You need some knowledge of German history to understand the significance of some events. Hitler, then the German Chancellor, burned down the Reichstag (the German Parliament) in 1933 in a ruthless bid for power. Hitler employed two factions, the predominantly working class brownshirts (the SA) and the mainly middle class blackshirts (the SS), the former a paramilitary organization committed to actions against Jews and backing his early bid for power. In 1934, in the Night of the Long Knives, the SS obliterated the SA.

The first section of the picture straddles these two events with a Succession-style drama. In reaction to the burning of the Reichstag, Joachim replaces Herbert (Umberto Orsini), his top executive and outspoken anti-Nazi, with boorish nephew Konstantin (Reinhard Koldehoff) who is a high-ranking member of the SA.

This doesn’t sit well with Friedrich (Dirk Bogarde), who expected preference. Urged on by lover Sophie (Ingrid Thulin), Joachim’s widowed daughter-in-law, and Aschenbach (Helmut Griem), Joachim’s nephew and an ambitious high-ranking SS official, Friedrich kills Joachim but pins the blame on Herbert who has to flee.

Konstantin is thwarted because although technically in charge it’s now Martin who owns the business and nudged by Sophie gives Friedrich the top management role. So Konstantin resorts to blackmail, having uncovered the pedophile. In steps Sophie who uses Aschenbach to thwart him again. Though there’s not much need because Konstantin is eliminated as one of the SA members executed in 1934 at some kind of gathering where the attendees all appear to have homosexual tendencies.

Aschenbach and Martin nurse grievances. Aschenbach feels Friedrich isn’t ostentatious enough in support of Hitler and Martin is furious that Sophie manipulated his difficulties with Konstantin to Friedrich’s benefit. So the SS man and the dissolute conspire. In the way of this kind of heightened melodrama it’s revealed that Friedrich killed Joachim. That doesn’t send Friedrich to trial, instead wins him a get-out-of-jail-free card by turning into a radical Nazi.

Martin, meanwhile, is also a member of the SS. He rapes Sophie, Friedrich loses his way and in one of those moments Francis Ford Coppola would appreciate Martin kills them on their marriage day.

There are a couple of oddities. It’s hard to believe a young girl – we’re talking a 7-8-year-old – would actually manage the mechanics of hanging herself. And when Friedrich is drawn into joining the slaughter of the SA members, there is over-emphasis on his perceived sensitivity when previously he had cold-bloodedly despatched Joachim.

So glorified soap opera with too much virtue signalling for its own good. Excepting Herbert and wife Elizabeth (Charlotte Rampling) and another grandson, who play minor roles, there’s not a single character to care for.

Despite the unusual backdrop, there’s nothing particularly unusual about the succession/inheritance scenario. The tough self-made millionaire or latest head of a wealthy family seeks to maintain power and guard against diminishing its status and lineage by ensuring the correct successor is groomed and that capital is not dissipated through unsuitable marriage or indulging weaker offspring. Thomas Mann, who fled the Nazis in the 1930s, covered this ground more successfully in his debut novel Buddenbrooks, although admittedly with less decadence.

Setting The Damned against the rise of the Nazis is an attempt to give it more artistic status than it merits because it’s really not much more than a standard study of ambition and ruthlessness.

Peeping Tom (1960) *****

You could hardly get a more prescient movie, almost in the 1984 class in depicting the future. Not dystopian, but the contemporary obsession with filming every inch of a child’s life. You do wonder what kind of reaction this will generate further down the line when Generation ZZZ realizes how little privacy it has been afforded.

Director Michael Powell – thrice Oscar-nominated and at the time after such hits as The Red Shoes (1948) regarded as on a par with the likes of David Lean (Oscar-winner of Bridge on the River Kwai, 1957) and Carol Reed (The Third Man, 1949) – lost his shirt and his reputation on this, and it took decades before Peeping Tom was accepted as nothing short of a masterpiece.

The narrative cleverly links up several strands. With a portable movie camera landlord Mark (Carl Boehm) obsessively records everything in the vicinity, including posing as a journalist to join a police murder investigation and rigging his apartments to check out the goings-on. He’s also, it transpires, a serial killer, the terror registered on corpses’ faces not aligning with the knife wounds that killed them. Into his world comes a young woman Helen (Anna Massey) who is attracted to this intriguing shy figure. Her mother (Maxine Audley) is less accepting.

In the background are the visual memories of Mark’s childhood, perhaps explaining his current compulsions, the films his psychiatrist father made of how his son reacted to fear, most of which episodes are triggered by the father. And the whole movie takes place in another world of make-believe, that of movie making, where directors are driven to distraction by incompetence and Mark can play on ambition by luring wannabe actress Vivian (Moira Shearer) into making an after-hours movie with him, which ends in her death. Even Helen, a children’s writer, has taken as her subject a magic camera.

Although Mark is interviewed by the police and, in a very modern trope, films himself being interviewed, he is not considered a major suspect. He screens his snuff movies for the blind mother. Murder is perceived as an almost erotic act, correlating with the very modern idea of violence as pornography. Clearly, it’s the progenitor of the slasher film. And Helen would be viewed as the first “final girl.”

But it’s also beautifully made, the color palette, use of light and shadow, the mise en scene, all speak to a master at work, and the delving into the mind of a killer is shown, unusually, in visual rather than verbal terms in the dry tones of a psychiatrist such as parlayed by Alfred Hitchcock at the end of Psycho the same year. Quite why only Hitchcock’s film was acclaimed, given they cover similar personality defects, you would have to go ask the critics.

And the big reveal – why the victims died in such fright – would surely be noted by today’s moviegoer as inspired genius. Carl films his victims dying and he has attached a mirror above the camera so the victims can see themselves die in horrific fashion.

Audience and critical revulsion was as possibly triggered by the scenes of the young Carl being tortured by his father, such aspects of society treated in far more discreet fashion, if at all, in those times. The voyeuristic aspects of the murders are only sexual on the surface, and really harbor back to the tormented childhood where a young boy grows up believing all acts of violence are not only permissible but must be recorded. Written by Leo Marks (Sebastian, 1968).

The raw power must be seen to be believed. Martin Scorsese has promoted many movies he believes under-rated but in this one he gets it right.

Identity Unknown (1960) ***

The disaster picture in embryo. Well, the disaster picture without the actual disaster, but setting up the disaster narrative formula of who lives and who dies.

But before we go on to that, spot the deliberate mistake – in the poster I mean. At least I’ve realized it comes from an entirely different movie whereas imdb and Rotten Tomatoes clearly do not. But I’m using it as I guess for the same reason they did – due to the lack of a genuine poster for this picture.

*Just to confuse you further, this is a lobby card from the wrong picture,*
*the one from 1945 not the one being reviewed.*

Regarding the survival lottery, your card is somewhat marked, this being the innocent start of the 1960s and not a few decades later where screenplays adopted a more cynical – and shock-bait – approach to narrative. The minute you know that the lives of four children depend on the survival of various adults involved in a plane crash in the Swiss Alps then you can guess pretty much who will come out of the disaster scot-free.

But as would later be de rigeur for the disaster movie, the narrative concerns itself with a limited number of characters. There are only ten people on board the plane. We know from the outset only three have survived. So the question is – who?

But instead of following the survivors as they battle the crash and the snowbound mountains and fierce storms and freezing cold and whatnot, instead we focus on the back stories of the passengers and crew through John (Richard Wyler) and Jenny (Pauline Yates), seasoned and novice reporter, respectively, as they go through their door-stepping paces.

So, essentially, it’s an expanded portmanteau, ten stories, ten families’ lives in the balance.

Our cross-section of society includes a few who might benefit from someone not surviving – lawyer Jamieson (John Gabriel) hoping the main witness against his villainous client won’t be able to testify, adulterous wife Mrs Sylvester hoping her husband’s death will leave her free to marry lover Ray (John Carson). To counter those conniving characters, we have the heart-tugging tales of two child refugees from Poland awaiting the arrival of their adoptee mother Mrs Phillips, parent Ken (Vincent Ball) whose child will die if an eminent surgeon doesn’t return, and pilot’s wife Pam (Nyree Dawn Porter) in a maternity ward with a newborn baby.

Movie agent Charlie (Martin Wyldeck) takes advantage of unexpected publicity for his ageing client, praying survival will boost her fading career. But he’s cynical enough to already be imagining headlines: “Farewell Performance” if she dies, “Return Farewell Performance” if she lives.

The journalists are not as hard-bitten as they imagine. Sure, Ken does report fraudster Philbert (Peter Elliott) to the police, but he stops short of revealing the fact that her daughter is on the plane to a blind mother whose family are keeping the news from her. In theory, Jenny, is the more conscience-stricken of the journalists, but that’s only if you excuse the tape recorder hidden in her handbag.

By the time our motley crew head out to Switzerland to meet the rescuers coming down the mountain and find out if their loved ones have made it, some home truths have been spelled out. Mrs Sylvester discovers her lover only seduced her to win a job from her husband. “Think I’ve been hanging around here for the pleasure your company?” snarls Ray. “If your husband’s dead you’re no use to me.” Not one to take a put-down lying down, she chats up a smooth gangster in Switzerland. “I’ll ring you some time,” he says when they part. “You don’t know my number,” she wails.

By the time the journos and those waiting are assembled in the bar at the Swiss airport, you might have expected Hercule Poirot to waltz through the door and start interrogating them – generally the only reason for such an assembly.

By this point, John and Jenny have cosied up, at least she’s cooked him a meal, though that proves not a precursor to seduction. But the movie skips past the joy of the child-related survivors and ends on a couple of telling visuals: the welcome home cake for the daughter who won’t return and the tape unspooling from the recorder as Jenny decides being a hard-nosed journalist isn’t for her. While in some senses Mrs Sylvester gets her come-uppance, husband dead, lover fled, this is no morality tale – the villain gets off with murder.

As usual, with these trim British B-pictures, don’t expect much in the acting department, but the story is well told, sufficient and interesting variety of characters, especially when the narrative goes outside the point-of-view of the reporters and focuses on facial expression of those involved.

Pauline Yates (Darling, 1965) has more spark than Richard Wyler (The Ugly Ones, 1966) while Nyree Dawn Porter (BBC’s The Forsyte Saga, 1967) and Vincent Ball (Echo of Diana, 1963) flesh out minor roles. Valentine Dyall (The City of the Dead/ Horror Hotel, 1960) plays a grumpy newspaper editor.

Directed with occasional nifty touches by Frank Marshall (A Guy Called Caesar, 1962) from a screenplay by Brian Clemens (The Corrupt Ones / The Peking Medallion, 1967).

Another plum on Talking Pictures TV.

Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humpe and Find True Happiness? (1969) **

I’ve been revisiting this oddity in the hope that maybe I was too quick to condemn what was, in some respects, one of the quirkiest pictures ever made. Alas, time has been no kinder.

One of the biggest-ever movie follies, an overblown vanity project with Fellini-esque overtones – written, directed, produced and starring British crooner Anthony Newley (Doctor Dolittle, 1967) – that turned into the first X-rated musical. Bob Fosse mined a similar, almost as seedy, sex-obsessed autobiographical vein in All That Jazz (1979) to critical acclaim whereas the Newley effort met critical coruscation.

Although primary known as a Broadway star (Stop the World, I Want to Get Off), he had a small but reasonable movie portfolio, star of The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963) and male lead to Sandy Dennis in Sweet November (1968), so in a sense he was ready for the leap into movie stardom, though perhaps not in such grandiose fashion. Had the movie shown the slightest touch of irony, that might have been its saving grace, but the main theme is that women queue up to bed a star who is fed up with bedding women yet appears to revel in his own moral decadence.

The story is so slim it defies belief or arrogance. Hieronymus Merkin (Newley) is preparing to make a film about his own life though he feels he has been controlled from the outset, his child view is that of a marionette with someone else pulling the strings. Once Goodtime Eddie Filth (Milton Berle) sets him on a stage career beauties flock to his side. Although married to Polly Poontang (Joan Collins) he longs to be reunited with earlier lover Mercy Humpe (Connie Kreski). Basically, he keeps asking the universal question besetting all men – if I can all the sex in the world, why am I not happy?

On the plus side it is certainly audacious, surreal, pretentious, unconventional and gives a good idea of what would happen if a director turned up on a beach in Malta with a cast of whoever happened to be available plus assorted nudes and rolled the camera to see what would happen and then argued with his crew or critics about what was taking place. One big minus is the songs. Newley was a talented lyricist (Goldfinger) and composer as well as performer. But the material here is poor and Newley, despite his Broadway experience, has no idea how to stage a musical.

Cameos abound. You can spot famed comedian George Jessel, singer Stubby Kaye, British entertainer Bruce Forsyth, Tom Stern (The Devil’s Brigade, 1968), and British character actors Patricia Hayes (The Terrornauts, 1967) , Victor Spinetti and Judy Cornwell. You may be surprised to learn that the script written in tandem with Herman Raucher (Sweet November, 1968) was named Best British Original Screenplay by the Writers Guild of Great Britain.

Theoretically, this is now regarded as a cult classic but I’ve yet to come across a review that treats it as anything other than a self-indulgent curiosity rather than a must-see.

Studio Universal was so embarrassed by the final outcome that it released it in the U.S. under its Regional Film unit “which handles product Universal doesn’t care to go out under its own banner.” The $1.25 million picture was not quite the box office disaster many anticipated. After poor runs in New York and Los Angeles and helped along by a 10-page spread in Playboy, it scored substantial business in cities as diverse as Detroit, Louisville and Minneapolis. In the US it grossed $1.3 million and coupled with overseas income went into profit.

Given Newley did not make another picture for six years, you might have imagined Hieronymos Merkin spelled the death-knell for his career. But that was not so. After the film opened, he signed a $1 million four-year deal at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, was lining up a Broadway musical about Napoleon and Josephine with Barbra Streisand and was in talks to star in a movie adaptation of his hit musical The Roar of the Crowd.

SOURCES: “Newley Making Vegas Bow Aug 7 at Caesar’s Palace,” Variety, June 11, 1969, p76; “Newley-Streisand for B’way Tuner on Nappy-Josie,” Variety, July 2, 1969, p1; “Merkin Dates Overcome Jink,” Variety, July 9, 1969, p3; “Jack Haley Jr. Setup To Produce, Direct,” Variety, December 24, 1969, p6; “Variety B.O. Charts’ 1969 Results,” Variety, April 29, 1970, 26.

Once More With Feeling (1960) **

At the very least I had thought, given the involvement of classy director Stanley Donen (Charade, 1963) that this might go down as a glorious failure rather than just a straightforward glossy dud thanks to the woeful miscasting of Yul Brynner (The Double Man, 1967) and a bizarre plot. Am sure it must have appeared a welcome change of pace from a string of heavyweight dramas for the actor.

Adapted from the Broadway success by playwright Harry Kurnitz (Goodbye Charlie, 1964) this never escapes its stage origins, too many dramatic entrances, faked dramatic faintings, unwelcome guests ushered out. That would all have been manageable had Yul Brynner shown the slightest instinct for comedy. Bluster doesn’t compensate. Playing a tyrannical orchestra conductor would hardly take any acting for a performer who radiated intensity.

Victor Fabian (Yul Brynner), as egomaniacal and temperamental as you’d expect from a top conductor, is caught in flagrante by harpist wife Dolly (Kay Kendall) with young musician Angela (Shirley Anne Field). After she storms out, he loses his mojo. Worse, his orchestra loses its most efficient fundraiser, since Dolly is the one who keeps donors sweet.

Dolly has wasted no time acquiring a new admirer, esteemed physicist Richard (Geoffrey Toone), and wants a divorce in order to marry him. But wait, there’s a catch. Not the obvious one that Victor turns over a new leaf and determines to win her back, abandoning arrogance in favor of humble ardent wooing.

No, she can’t leave him because, wait for it, they never married. Well that’s not so jaw-dropping as the consequence. He insists that she can’t get a divorce unless she marries him and during an agreed short period together presumably that will give him time to flex his romantic muscles and win her back.

I can only assume that in the sophisitcated circles in which they run, the idea that they have been living in sin might cause her considerable embarrassment. But I’m perplexed at the notion, even for the less permissive times, that this would provoke sufficient scandal – more scandal than getting divorced in the first place? Or that they would expect nobody to notice the sudden marriage and wonder how they have managed to so openly live together? This seems nothing more than a jumbled-up head-over-heels barmy plot strand.

Anyway, she agrees, and he does his best to win her back even to the extent of playing a piece of music, beloved of a sponsor, that he detests.

The plot belongs to the golden age of the screwball comedy but the picture doesn’t play it that way. There’s more to being frenetic in pursuit of laffs than just being frenetic and this never takes off.

While Brynner is strictly one-note and never manages to bring a suggestion of genuine romance into the proceedings, the director is equally at a loss to inject any oomph or style and it looks as if he’s done little more than film a stage show with all its cinematic limitations.

Kay Kendall (Les Girls, 1957) in her final role – she died of leukemia – is equally constricted by a character who huffs and flounces and never embraces the comedy side of screwball.

This was the first of two straight comedies pairing Donen and Brynner and I’m dreading its successor Surprise Package (1960). Kurnitz adapted his own play which had been a decent success on Broadway, so the movie failure can’t all be blamed on him.

Night after Night after Night (1969) ***

British giallo sets tough London cop Bill Rowan (Gilbert Wynne) hunting a Jack-the-Ripper type serial killer who has slaughtered his wife (Linda Marlowe). Chief suspect is leering cocky jack-the-lad Pete (Donald Sumpter) of the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am school of seduction. In an era when pornography and “perversion” were beginning to shake off the shackles – and strippers, prostitutes, voyeurs and transvestites condemned as evils to be stamped out – this skirts the boundaries between sexploitation and heavy moralizing.

Chief among those embarking on a moral crusade is hypocritical puritan Judge Lomax (Jack May) who spurns his attractive wife (Justine Lord) while indulging in cross-dressing. Needless to say, his clerk, ostensibly another upholder of the moral fabric, is a porn addict. As the body count grows, Pete manages to needle Rowan sufficiently for the cop to consider any nefarious means to put him behind bars.

Knives flash in the dark, the killer wears black leather, victims writhe on the ground as they are slashed to pieces, and coupled with the unusually high nudity quotient it is surprising that this picture passed the British censor. The movie never drags and there is enough incidental sleaze to keep the viewer interested. As a historical document, it details the point at which the country hovered between reined-in respectability and full-on sexual freedom.

Operating here under the pseudonym Lewis J. Force, Canadian director Lindsay Shonteff (The Million Eyes of Sumuru, 1967) conjures up a darker vision of a London so often presented in glorious tourist tones with nastiness seeping into every corner of society. Veteran Jack May (A Twist of Sand, 1968) captures well the double life of a decent man undone by what is perceived to be indecency and his later scenes are quite moving. Donald Sumpter (The Black Panther, 1977) is excellent as the taunting petty criminal while Gilbert Wynne makes a decent debut as a leading man. In small roles are Justine Lord (Deadlier than the Male, 1967) and Linda Marlowe (Big Zapper,1973 – directed by Shonteff). Written by Dail Ambler (Beat Girl/Wild for Kicks, 1960).

Jack the Ripper was such an ingrained element of British culture that any movie featuring a similar villain gave audiences the creeps. British television cops were beginning to move out of the shadow of Dixon of Dock Green and into the new age of The Sweeney and while giallo did not catch on among home-grown filmmakers there was considerably more focus on hardened criminals such as Get Carter (1971) and Villain (1971).

Goodbye Again / Aimez-vous Brahms (1961) ***

Something of a feminist icon with middle-aged single woman choosing her lovers. I should warn you that there’s a May-December trope, which was very common at this period, as older female stars, engaging on romance with younger males, catch up with the unchallenged notion that any ageing male star should be accorded a younger female partner regardless of the age difference.

Paula (Ingrid Bergman), a lady of independent means, is tiring of philandering lover Roger (Yves Montand). After five years, he still can’t keep his hands off any young girl – known as “Maisies” – who come within reach. Paula is pursued by a younger man Philip (Anthony Perkins) and eventually succumbs to his ardent wooing. They differ on whether their relationship has much of a future, she the more pragmatic of the two, as, I would guess, are the audience.

While he’s refreshing and energetic, the spoiled rich boy exhibits childish tendencies. There’s a clash between the independent woman and the older macho misogynist male who expects his lover to be at his beck and call, even when his disappearances are the result of assignations with other lovers.

A middle-aged woman was as much on the hook to an unfaithful lover as a married woman. While she doesn’t want to be married, she wants to enjoy the same sense of trust that marriage might bring. However, she’s not destroyed, as a married woman of the period might have been, by her partner’s infidelity. And precisely because they are not bound by legal obligation, she is perfectly within her rights to choose another lover.

Still, there is an intense melancholy that she cannot make Roger settle down with just the one woman – her – and that if their affair is to continue it must be on his unacceptable terms. Yet she is terrified of being alone and except for the appearance of Philip and her independence there is the sense that she might subdue tragic instinct and settle for the crumbs from Roger’s table.

Glorified soap opera, no doubt, but it survives on the playing of Ingrid Bergman (The Visit, 1964) who shares with Deborah Kerr the ability to show conflict and sadness in her eyes. She brings so much depth to her character you are apt to forget you are watching a soap opera. That she remains attracted to Roger beyond the realms of logic compounds her tragedy.

Anthony Perkins (Pretty Poison, 1968) is very charming, ridding himself in the main of the jumpiness that appeared to fit his screen persona. While Perkins and Bergman make an unlikely screen couple, they are a believable one.

Yves Montand (Let’s Make Love, 1961) doesn’t have to drift much outside his screen persona of male fantasy figure, the one who has all the dames at his feet.

This is one of those very well-made Hollywood movies, full of gloss, trimmed with an edginess that soon takes center stage. Made in the 1940s it would be a classic weepie. The ending will take you by surprise.

Directed by Oscar-nominated Anatole Litvak (The Night of the Generals, 1967) in determined old-fashioned style from a screenplay by Samuel A. Taylor (Topaz, 1969) based on the Francoise Sagan bestseller.

An old-fashioned treat.

Battle Beneath the Earth (1967) ***

Aliens, would be your first guess these days should you happen upon strange disturbances emanating from underneath the earth’s surface, citing the examples of War of the Worlds or an iteration of Transformers, whereby creatures from outer space had remained dormant buried in our habitat for millions of years, like inveterate moles, waiting to spring into action. But this is the 1960s and domination of the Universe is not on the cards. Instead, it’s mere global domination. And as James Bond and others in the espionage game have persuaded us if it’s not some supervillain we’re under threat from it’s the Russians or Chinese.

Even if you detected odd goings-on there was more chance of you being stuck in a mental institution, as is the fate of seismologist Arnold Kramer (Peter Arne), who makes the mistake of causing a “listening disturbance,” arrested lying down on the streets of Las Vegas with his ear pressed to the ground.

Navy Commander Jonathan Shaw (Kerwin Mathews) is on an equally sticky wicket, his latest undersea project resulting in the death of 27 men. However, his assistant Susan (Norma West) prevails upon Shaw to take a look at her brother Arnold. But he isn’t impressed. Until he hears about a mining disaster in Oregon, the deepest mine in the USA, and recalls that Kramer had mentioned discovering unusual activity underground in Oregon.

So off Shaw goes to investigate and finds a laser-drilled tunnel and a lair with missiles. There’s a vehicle with some kind of death ray and before your mind jumps to the notion that this is alien-induced we’re in the command post of Chinese General Chan Lu (Martin Benson) who, as well as planning whatever devilish destruction he aims to visit upon the Americans, has also been in the business of mining gold and growing plants packed with vitamins.

Turns out there’s more than one tunnel – they run from China underwater across the Pacific and underground through America – and although Chan Lu’s stock of nuclear warheads is depleted after being defused by the Yanks he’s still got enough left in the tank to turn America in a desert and kill 100 million people. And there’s not much time to waste – the Chinese plan to strike in 48 hours.

Meanwhile, to buff up the story, Shaw’s team adds volcanologist Tila Yung (Viviane Ventura), providing the opportunity for extra peril and a touch of incipient romance. The Yanks plan to locate the Chinese in a tunnel under the Pacific and detonate a 10-megaton atom bomb. But things don’t go according to plan. One of the team is hypnotized and Shaw and crew are ambushed and imprisoned.

Chan Lu is far from the lunatic villain and invites Shaw post-conflagration to team up to help to peacefully reconstruct the broken world. Being a pragmatic sort, the General is somewhat surprised to be turned down. Naturally, Shaw’s gang break out of the cell, Arnold the one with the clever idea, and sabotage the Chinese bombs, so it doesn’t end well for the villain, while our hero has the beginnings of a romance.

This was the final movie for director Montgomery Tully (The Terrornauts, 1967, Fog for a Killer, 1962, The Third Alibi, 1961) and he brings some of the pacing he demonstrated in the B-film crime thrillers to the material so it rattles along. The background is well handled and the two male leads are unusually damaged for a sci-fi romp. Audiences might have felt duped that Viviane Ventura (A High Wind in Jamaica, 1965) doesn’t appear until about halfway through. Kerwin Mathews (Maniac, 1963) leads with his chin but the movie’s not expecting much else. Written by L.Z. Hargreaves (Devil Doll, 1964) aka Charles Vetter, the film’s producer.

Decent hokum.

Goodbye, Mr Chips (1969) ****

Stunning revelatory performance by Peter O’Toole (The Night of the Generals, 1967) and unexpected screen chemistry with former British child star turned pop singer Petula Clark (Finian’s Rainbow, 1968) lift a relatively humdrum musical remake of the 1939 classic. Musicals entrusted with roadshow-sized budgets usually came with the proviso that they had already conquered London’s West End or Broadway – The Sound of Music (1965), Oliver! (1968) et al – and so came with an inbuilt audience. A movie musical original with little audience familiarity was always a risk.

There had been a trend away from the choreographic splendor, star exuberance and lightweight narratives that held the key to the golden era of Hollywood musicals. The movie musical had embraced both the introspective and weightier tales – Camelot (1967) the most obvious example. Male stars who couldn’t sing could simply “talk” their way through a tune following the example of Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady (1964).

The proper stretching of vocal chords is sensibly left to Petula Clark, but none of the songs by Leslie Bricusse (Doctor Dolittle, 1967) leave much of an imprint, and you might question why MGM was in such a hurry to commission a remake at all except for O’Toole’s Oscar-nominated turn. By now audiences were well aware of the actor’s screen tics and the intensity he could bring. But moviegoers might as well have been embracing a new star because everything you ever knew about O’Toole was left at the door.

In some respects the realism of his performance plays against the picture, which, effectively, save for the ending, has a lightweight narrative. There’s nothing remotely charming about his characterization of Arthur Chipping. He’s not the kind of eccentric fuddy-duddy that was a common feature of the British movie. Duty has got in the way of likeability. We are introduced to him denying a poor lad the opportunity to become a school tennis champion on the last day of term simply because the match had been scheduled to take place within teaching hours. Small surprise that he is actively disliked, although he takes that, in some respects, as a mark of his teaching prowess.

Unexpectedly, he is introduced to music hall singer Katherine (Petula Clark). What would be the standard meet-cute turns into a meet-awful as unintentionally he delivers a series of insults. Unexpectedly, they meet again, this time in the kind of surroundings that suit his mentality, a Greek amphitheater where he can demonstrate his academic skill, filling her on the acoustics and on the fact that sound travels upward so it’s easier for the person seated above to hear the person standing below than the other way round. Cinematically, this is superbly done, the best scene in the picture from a visual perspective.

Even though, initially, he has no recollection of their previous meeting, a spark is lit and catches fire so that when he returns to school it’s with a somewhat “unsuitable” bride. The best scene in the movie from an emotional perspective is driven by Katherine as she injects some verve into the stodgy school hymn so much so that she soon has the entire school singing with gusto and as though they have for the first time understood the lyrics.

It’s not long before her influence softens the harsh schoolmaster. But she is not a welcome addition in many eyes, her background not what would be expected of a schoolmaster’s wife, and a couple of sub-plots revolve around the impact of her unsuitability on her husband’s career. There’s not much more to go on beyond the sad ending and as I said the songs are treated in low-key fashion rather than full-on energy with dancing schoolboys in the background.

But you don’t really need the songs to enjoy this. Peter O’Toole’s sensational performance more than justifies the remake while the pairing with Petula Clark works surprisingly well.

Herbert Ross (Play It, Again, Sam, 1972) makes his directorial debut. Terrence Rattigan who had previously delved into the public school system to find lonely teachers with The Browning Version (1948) updates the original tale by James Hilton. This is not the performance Peter O’Toole fans would generally nudge you towards, because it’s such an oddity in his portfolio, but, truly, this deserves much wider appreciation