I am a published author of books about film - over a dozen to my name, the latest being "When Women Ruled Hollywood." As the title of the blog suggests, this is a site devoted to movies of the 1960s but since I go to the movies twice a week - an old-fashioned double-bill of my own choosing - I might occasionally slip in a review of a contemporary picture.
After being attacked by armored cars and strafed by airplanes, stranded in the desert, and overcome various tensions within the small group of escapees, there is still considerable life left in this picture at the end as Jack Warden, making his departure, comes up with a classic last line: “We must do this again sometime.”
In truth, the picture has far more going for it than a mere outline would suggest. In rescuing rebel leader Sharif (Yul Brynner) from a lorry bound for jail, the escapees led by Ahmed (Sal Mineo (Exodus, 1960) in a stolen ambulance also scoop up three convicts including American fraudster and loudmouth Huston (Jack Warden) and all-purpose thug Tahar (Anthony Caruso) plus nurse Laila (Madhlyn Rhue) as a hostage. Like most stranded-in-the-desert films, the storyline is on who will survive and how.
Action is one constant. The threat of failure is another. Supplies are rationed and, of course, someone steals more than their fair share. The members regularly switch allegiance. At various points someone is about to give up Sharif. Their gas tank is punctured so, thanks to Huston’s engineering skills, they just make it to a remote pumping station where they encounter maintenance man (James Mason in an uncredited cameo). Their numbers diminish and despite his recalcitrance Huston’s engineering skills save them again when they reach an oasis.
What makes the film different is that the characters all change. In a country where “half the wealth is stolen by Europeans and half by corruption,” Sharif is the altruistic leader whose ideals are shattered. Laila, a Muslim, drinks alcohol and questions the number of deaths necessary for a revolution but declines to leave when the opportunity arises. Ahmed who thinks “women should be as free as men” reacts badly when Laila enjoys such freedom. Huston, who has embezzled $200,000, and has loyalty to no one stands by the shambolic crew.
I had always believed Brynner had enjoyed a rare case of beginner’s luck when he won the Oscar for his debut in The King and I (1956) and that once Hollywood became wise to his acting schtick he would never be nominated again – as proved the case. But after watching Brynner in The Magnificent Seven (1960) and its sequel and Invitation to a Gunfighter (1964) and Flight to Ashiya (1964) I have become convinced he is under-rated as an actor. He acts with his eyes and his delivery is far more varied than I had supposed. Here, clothed in Arab costume, there is no bald pate to distract.
Sal Mineo (Exodus, 1960) can’t compete in the acting stakes with the canny Jack Warden (Blindfold, 1966). Anthony Caruso (a television regular) is lost in the mix but Madhlyn Rhue (A Majority of One, 1961) certainly looked a good prospect.
British director Ronald Neame (Tunes of Glory, 1960) holds the enterprise together, keeping to a tidy pace but allowing tension and character to emerge. Screenplay was courtesy of Robin Estridge (Eye of the Devil, 1966) based on the Michael Barrat novel and with an injection somewhere along the line by Dudley Nichols (Heller in Pink Tights, 1960).
Can a dash of feminism rescue campy trash? Or even a genetics overload? Or is it enough to wonder what career hole Carol White (Never Let Go, 1960) found herself in to end up here? Or should we just sit back and watch the Pan’s People-style choreography and admire the astute re-use of all those bikinis left over from Hammer’s previous venture into this territory, the much more successful One Million Years B.C. (1966). Whatever, there’s no escaping the wooden acting and the one-note direction.
Dennis Wheatley (The Fabulous Valley, The Lost Continent, They Found Atlantis) and C.S. Lewis for that matter had the knack of transporting characters back in time or into other worlds. There’s usually some routine artefact, door or whatnot, that allows access to an amazing kingdom, or, in this case, queendom.
Here, big game hunter David (Michael Latimer), about to be sacrificed to some pagan African god, instead finds himself thrown back in time, chasing bewitching blonde Saria (Edina Romay), who, unfortunately is on the run, so when she is apprehended, so is he. Queen Kari (Martine Beswick) takes him as her lover. But he’s less keen, repulsed by her harsh rule. When one of her subjects rebels, the queen doesn’t delegate the task of bringing her into line but takes her on mano-a-mano. David, put to work with the other male prisoners, soon plots his escape.
Setting aside the expected mumbo-jumbo – the tribe worships a mythical white rhino (phallic symbol anyone?) for example – if you want to extract anything more from this, there are fresh fields to plunder. For example, brunettes, such as Kari, are in control, but only after rebelling against the blondes who had subjugated the black-haired women in similar fashion as Kari. As well as having a female ruler, the movie makes a relatively pertinent point that gender scarcely comes into it when a dictator imposes such harsh conditions on their subject, Kari, for example, making the blondes eat off the dirt.
I’m not convinced the irony is deliberate. David, scion no doubt of Victorian nobility who made their pile from scarcely paying their downtrodden peasants a living wage, and who goes around shooting leopards, is hardly in a position to ask the queen to cool it. When she even considers giving him some equality – a big role reversal right there – he wants her to treat everyone in a nicer fashion.
The movie had an unsual history. Made quickly after “One Million Years B.C.” it was released in the U.S. as “Prehistoric Women” in 1967 but flopped so it was heavily cut, re-titled “Slave Girls” and sent out in 1968 in the UK as the support to “The Devil Rides Out.” The new title is a bit of misnomer because her kingdom is as full of slave men. The girls refers to the blondes.It was released in the U.S. in February 1967 by Twentieth Century Fox and managed a tie-in in one city with Cara Nome perfume.Actually, U.S. grosses were not as bad as have been reported – a “good” $25,000 in first run in Detroit, second only to “Grand Prix” there for the week, and decent enough openings in Boston, Minneapolis and San Francisco.
And she has the insecurity of Napoleon, needs to be loved, and not in mercenary fashion, and willing to attempt some form of rudimentary seduction if that’s what it takes to tempt the suddenly high-principled David into her bed. There’s an element of upending the Gentlemen Prefer Blondes trope, as though brunettes have always hankered after putting those ditzy blondes in their place.
Hammer lost sight of the fact that One Million Years B.C. owed as much to Ray Harryhausen as the statuesque temptations of Raquel Welch in a fur bikini and in its haste to cash in on that film’s big box office rushed into production a movie minus the battling dinosaurs. Although, of course, they could merely be making historical amends, since everyone knows dinosaurs and man (never mind women in fur bikinis) did not co-exist. And possibly ignored the fact that the puny Michael Latimer was no substitute for the brawnier John Richardson of the previous picture.
If you’re not so interested in gender politics, you can always enjoy the dancing, which appears to take up a disproportionate amount of time (well, all those bikinis, need to be used). I was disappointed to discover the choreography was not the work of Flick Colby of the legendary BBC TV Top of the Pops dance troupe, but by one Denys Palmer, an actor it appears, whose main claim to fame was appearing in a classic Dr Who episode.
This was triple-hyphenate job, so blame Michael Carreras (The Lost Continent, 1968) for the screenplay and the direction and for taking on the production duties, or praise him for seeding a campy knock-off with issues that register more strongly today.
This was intended to be a big step-up for Michael Latimer but he was so charisma-free that he didn’t score another movie credit until low-budget British B-picture Man of Violence (1970). Martin Beswick (The Penthouse, 1967) never got another shot at a top-billed role. Carol White did better, next up was Poor Cow (1967) and from there it weas a small step to Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting (1969), but she doesn’t stand out here the way she did in Never Let Go (1960). If anyone stole the show it was Edina Ronay, and much good it did her, her next outing was in the lamentable Three (1969).
Under-rated British film noir classic. All the principals playing against type. Comedian Peter Sellers (The Millionairess, 1960) as the villain, British hero Richard Todd (The Dam Busters, 1955) comes seriously unstuck, pop star Adam Faith (Beat Girl / Wild for Kicks, 1960) tosses away his cuddly image. One of the earliest scores by John (James Bond) Barry. First grown-up role for Carol White (Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting, 1969). As much savage violence as the censor would allow at the time.
Down-on-his-luck salesman John (Richard Todd) has his car stolen. It’s uninsured. Without it he can’t get to his appointments on time. The police aren’t interested. So he has to investigate. That leads first to dodgy Teddy Boy Tommy (Adam Faith) who steals cars to order for supposedly legitimate businessman Lionel (Peter Sellers) and makes a play for Lionel’s young mistress Jackie (Carol White).
The interest lies not so much in the investigation as how those involved deal with pressure. John, hardly able to support wife Anne (Elizabeth Sellars) and two kids, has a history of failure, squandering money on get-rich-quick schemes, and apt to blow his top at clients who complain when he fails to keep appointments.
Doesn’t take long for him to lose his job. But instead of knuckling down and finding another, he stubbornly refuses to abandon his investigation, upsetting Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas (Noel Willman) who has much bigger fish to fry.
Lionel is a cocky gangster not afraid to lash out. In fact, he seems to enjoy battering people with his fists, feet and broken bottle. He treats Jackie with contempt, reminding her she’d be a sex worker if it wasn’t for him. He’s got a nice little empire and has kept his nose clean. He pays off corrupt cops.
But the last thing he expects is to be pursued by a loser like John who’s not cut from the John Wick template. Not does he possess the very particular set of skills that appear to be the prerequisite of anyone embarking on a mission of revenge.
If director John Guillermin (El Condor, 1970) hadn’t been obliged to tag on a happy ending, this would have been a downbeat tour-de-force, with the good guy losing everything in order to win back his self-respect.
It just sizzles with tension. Lionel belongs to the generation that spawned the likes of Harold in The Long Good Friday (1980) or the Kray Twins, a simmering, stewing piece of work, all gloss on the outside, a tinderbox on the inside.
There’s fabulous photography, eyes trapped in pools of light, overhead camera staking out victims, and seedy London picked out in detail. Newspaper vendor Alfie (Mervyn Johns), of pensionable age, the only witness to the crime, has his bedsit ransacked, the tiny terrapin he treasures crushed underfoot, when inadvertently he gives too much away.
Tearaway Tommy isn’t such a tough guy when Lionel comes battering on his door. Jackie is the only one who not so much stands up to Lionel as treats his idea of romance with disdain. Even when John fingers Lionel, Inspector Thomas bluntly tells him he’s too small fry and the cops aren’t interesting in chasing after his plebeian vehicle.
Lionel is the kind of gangster who is never going to realise he can’t always get away with it, that he might have to trim back his ambition until the coast is clearer. Instead, he batters on regardless, determined to terrify everyone into acquiescence.
As the movie progresses, the more you learn about John, the less you sympathise. His wife has stood by him through mostly thin, and will stick by him even if unemployed, but draws the line at antagonising a gangster who doesn’t know when to draw a line. John isn’t Gary Cooper in High Noon. He’s not a principled defender of the law. He’s almost as bad as the gangster, in that he doesn’t know when to stop, regardless of the danger this places his family.
Understandably, Peter Sellers attracted most of the critical plaudits, but this is the role of a lifetime for Richard Todd, who detonates his screen image, battered and bloodied almost beyond recognition, not hiding behind a stiff upper lip. Carol White, too, is superb as the mistress who just about recognises that this is not a good deal, and that she’s a chattel, not a loved one.
John Guillermin’s direction is superb. Coupled with the insistent, jazzy John Barry score, this is British film noir (admittedly, that’s not large pool to draw on) at its best.
Politics didn’t usually play a part in war films in the 1960s but’s it’s an essential ingredient to Rene Clement’s underrated documentary-style picture. Paris had no strategic importance and after the Normandy landings the Allies intended to bypass the French capital and head straight for Berlin.
Meanwhile, Hitler, in particular vengeful mood after the attempt on his life, ordered the city destroyed. Resistance groups were splintered, out-numbered and lacking the weaponry to achieve an uprising. Followers of General De Gaulle, the French leader in exile, wanted to wait until the Allies sent in the troops, the Communists planned to seize control before British and American soldiers could arrive.
When the Communists begin the fight, seizing public buildings, the Germans plant explosives on the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and other famous buildings and all the bridges across the River Seine. The German commandant Von Choltitz (Gert Frobe), no stranger to slaughter having overseen the destruction of Rotterdam, holds off obeying his orders because he believes Hitler is insane and the war already lost.
The Gaullists despatch a messenger to persuade General Omar Bradley (Glenn Ford) to change his mind and send troops to relieve the city. Sorry for the plot-spoiler but as everyone knows the Germans did not destroy the city and the liberation of Paris provided famous newsreel and photographic footage.
Director Clement (Rider on the Rain, 1970) was also aware he could not extract much tension from the question of whether von Choltitz will press the destruct button, so he takes another route and documents in meticulous detail the political in-fighting and the actual street battles that ensued, German tanks and artillery against Molotov cocktails and mostly old-fashioned weaponry. The wide Parisian boulevards provide a fabulous backdrop for the fighting.
Shooting much of the action from above allows Clement to capture the action in vivid cinematic strokes. Like The Longest Day (1962), the film does not follow one individual but is in essence a vast tapestry. Scenes of the utmost brutality – resistance fighters thrown out of a lorry to be machine-gunned, the public are strafed when they venture out to welcome the Americans – contrast with moments of such gentleness they could almost be parody: a shepherd taking a herd through the fighting, an old lady covered in falling plaster watching as soldiers drop home-made bombs on tanks.
This is not a film about heroism but the sheer raw energy required to carry out dangerous duty and many times a character we just saw winning one sally against the enemy is shot the next. The French have to fight street-by-street, enemy-emplacement-by-enemy-emplacement, tank-by-tank.
And Clement allows as much time for humanity. Francophile Sgt Warren (Anthony Perkins), as an American grunt, spends all his time in the middle of the battle trying to determine the location of the sights he longs to see – before he is abruptly killed. An unnamed café owner (Simone Signoret) helps soldiers phone their loved ones.
Like The Longest Day and In Harm’s Way (1965), the film was shot in black-and-white, but not, as with those movies for the simple reason of incorporating newsreel footage, but because De Gaulle, now the French president, objected to the sight of red swastika. Even so, it permitted the inclusion of newsreel footage, which on the small screen (where most people these days will watch it) appears seamless.
By Hollywood standards this was not an all-star cast, Glenn Ford (as Bradley), Kirk Douglas (General Patton) and Robert Stack (General Sibert) making fleeting glimpses.
But by French standards it was the all-star cast to beat all-star casts – Jean-Paul Belmondo (Breathless, 1960), Alain Delon (Lost Command, 1966), Yves Montand (Grand Prix, 1966), Charles Boyer (Gaslight, 1944), Leslie Caron (Gigi, 1958), Michel Piccoli (Masquerade, 1965), Simone Signoret (Room at the Top, 1959) and Jean-Louis Trintignant (A Man and a Woman, 1966). Orson Welles, in subdued form, appeared as the Swedish ambassador.
Gore Vidal (The Best Man, 1964) and Francis Coppola (The Godfather, 1962) devised the screenplay based on the bestseller by Larry Collins and Dominic Lapierre
At $6 million, it was the most expensive French film ever made. It had a six-month shooting schedule and was shot on the streets of the city including famous locations like Etoile, Madeleine and the Louvre. It was a big hit in France but flopped in the United States, its box office so poor that Paramount refused to disclose it.
The global release is a relatively recent phenomenon. Back in the 1960s nobody would dream of letting loose a film on 7,000 screens worldwide all at once. In those days release patterns were a moveable feast. You could guarantee that a big new movie would open on a scheduled date in first run in a major city like New York, London or Paris, but after that it was anybody’s guess how long it might take to arrive at your local neighbourhood cinema. Especially, if a movie was part of the roadshow equation, it could occupy one cinema for months, maybe even years, and as long as it was screening there could go no further afield.
But even I was astonished, once I dug around in the files, to see just how long it took a movie to shift from world premiere to turning up at the last booking stations on the route, those tiny cinemas that appeared to litter small-town America. Towns with populations under 2,000 could still support a cinema. And it fell to the exhibitor to ensure a movie did not outstay its welcome. In Britain, cinemas in the 1960s screened films six days a week (Sunday films were subject to different regulations and were often one-off showings of old horror pictures hired on a fixed rental basis). Films ran for six days or the week was split into two, one program running Mon-Wed, the other Thu-Sat, the latter being allocated the movies with the better box office prospects.
It seemed, from an objective perspective, a fairly straightforward system. But in Britain a cinema with a catchment area of just a couple of thousand people would have gone to the wall a good time previously. All cinemas, even independent ones, fitted into some kind of release pattern, and might get the fifth or sixth or seven run of a movie after its big city first appearance, but, excepting roadshow, once it had made that vital first appearance you could rest assured it would take no more than six months or so to travel down the pipeline.
That did not hold true for small-town America. In 1967, for example, a picture could 18 months or more to reach towns such as St Leonard (pop 1900) in New Brunswick; Pittsfield (pop 2300) in New Hampshire; New Town (pop 1200) and Washburn (pop 968) in North Dakota; Lansing (pop 1328) in Iowa; St Johnsbury (pop 6000) in Vermont; England (pop 2136) in Arkansas; Flomaton (pop 1480) in Alabama; Oshkosh (pop 1100) in Nebraska; Grace (pop 775) in Idaho and Miltonvale (pop 911) in Kansas.
Weeks here appeared to be divided into three: Sun-Mon (or Sun-Tues); Tues-Wed (or Tue-Thu); and Wed-Sat (or Thu-Sat or Fri-Sat); and possibly into four if the exhibitor reckoned he had a bunch of stiffs. Certainly, minimal population counted against a small town being favored with a release ahead of a larger town. In addition, this type of exhibitor might well hold back until the rental terms were lower.
Tobruk was the fastest movie out of the blocks as far as these towns were concerned, just four months passed from its launch in February 1967 until showing up in one of these aforementioned towns. Murderers Row was not far behind, six months after its December 1966 release. But these were rarities. It took nearly two years for The Great Race, a roadshow release in1965, to gain a booking while The Sound of Music, another 1965 roadshow, was only available on condition it was hired for two weeks rather than the usual maximum four days.
And it was nine or ten months from first run to last run for Raquel Welch vehicle Fantastic Voyage, Jack Lemmon-Walter Matthau comedy The Fortune Cookie and Rock Hudson sci-fi Seconds. It took a full year for World War One epic The Blue Max, Cary Grant comedy Walk, Don’t Run and the Oscar-laden Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf to show. There was an even longer wait for Marlon Brando drama The Chase (sixteen months) and Sophia Loren starrer Judith (eighteen months).
Assuming that any movie showing on a Saturday was considered the best risk, the following films were perceived by exhibitors to offer the best prospects: Disney family comedy That Darn Cat (booked for two days), western spoof Cat Ballou (three), British spy picture Deadlier than the Male (three), William Holden Civil War western Alvarez Kelly (three), a revival of Hammer horror The Brides of Dracula (two), Lee Marvin-Burt Lancaster western The Professionals (three), Glenn Ford in Rage (three), British epic Khartoum (two), The War Wagon (four days in once cinema, only two in another), El Dorado (four days, running Fri-Mon), The Blue Max (four), Tobruk (two) and crime thriller Warning Shot (three).
Programs beginning on a Sunday I would reckon to have the next best chance of collaring an audience. Among these bookings were: The Great Race (three days), The Fortune Cookie (three), Fantastic Voyage (three), Paul Newman private eye thriller Harper (two), The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (two), In Like Flint (two), Paul Newman western Hombre (two), Night of the Generals (three), Walk, Don’t Run (just one), The Quiller Memorandum (two), western remake Stagecoach (three) and Lost Command (two).
That sometimes left a two-day program in the middle of the week as a bonus in a good week or make-and-break in a bad one. Clearly, exhibitors took greater risks on pictures slotted in then. Sometimes the gamble paid off. Raquel Welch in Swingin’ Summer (two days), booked on the back of expectations for Fantastic Voyage, did surprisingly well. So did Wild Angels and a revival of Tom Jones.
Exhibitors were not slow in venting anger at a poor performer. Box Office magazine’s fortnightly feature “The Exhibitor Has His Say” – from which all this information is drawn – allowed the cinema owner to mouth off and warn fellow exhibitors. Terry Axley of the New Theatre in England was among the most vociferous. “Never been able to do much business on Ann-Margret,” was his view on Made in Paris. There was “no dice” for The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. Despite Sean Connery, A Fine Madness did only “average business.” Fantastic Voyage “flopped here entirely.”
The Quiller Memorandum provided an all-time low for S.T. Jackson of the Jackson Theater in Flomaton. Walk, Don’t Run was a “real disappointment” at the Arcadia Theater in St Leonard. A Man Could Get Killed was pulled “after the poorest Sunday ever” at the Roxy in Washburn. Arabesque held “no appeal” for the audiences at the Scenic Theater in Pittsfield, where Stagecoach “didn’t seem to have much draw.”
But exhibitors were equally good at pointing to pictures that had exceeded expectations: Laurel and Hardy’s Laugh In, Born Free, Henry Fonda western A Big Hand for a Little Lady, Tony Curtis comedy Not with My Wife You Don’t, Dean Martin comedy western Texas Across the River, espionage spoof Bang! Bang! You’re Dead and a revival of Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm from 1951.
What it showed was that one man’s turkey could prove another man’s golden goose. And while on the lowest rung of the distribution ladder that there was an inbuilt camaraderie that attempted to prevent fellow exhibitors from picking the wrong horse while hoping to pin their faith on an outsider romping home.
SOURCE: “The Exhibitor Has His Day,” Box Office, various issues, 1967.
A couple of decades before “high concept” was invented came this high concept picture – a killer is hired to kill himself. Ivan Dragomiloff (Oliver Reed) is the assassin in question and Sonya Winter (Diana Rigg) the journalist doing the hiring. So Ivan challenges the other members of his murderous outfit to kill him before he despatches them. The odds are about ten to one. Initially involved in shadowing Ivan, Sonya becomes drawn to his aid when it transpires there is a bigger conspiracy afoot.
Set just before World War One, the action cuts a swathe through Europe’s glamor cities – London, Paris, Vienna, Venice – while stopping off for a bit of slapstick, some decent sight gags and a nod now and then to James Bond (gadgets) and The Pink Panther (exploding sausages).
Odd a mixture as it is, mostly it works, thanks to the intuitive partnership of director Basil Dearden and producer (and sometime writer and designer) Michael Relph, previously responsible this decade for League of Gentlemen (1960), Victim (1961), Masquerade (1965) and Khartoum (1966).
Playing mustachioed media magnate Lord Bostwick, Telly Savalas (The Scalphunters, 1968) has a decent chomp at an upper-class British action. It’s easy to forget was one of the things that marked him out was his clear diction and he always had an air about him, so this was possibly less of a stretch.
Ramping up the fun is a multi-cultural melange in supporting roles: Frenchman Phillipe Noiret (Night of the Generals, 1967), everyone’s favourite German Curt Jurgens (Psyche ’59, 1964) playing another general, Italian Annabella Contrera (The Ambushers, 1967) and Greek George Coulouris (Arabesque, 1966) plus British stalwarts Beryl Reid (The Killing of Sister George, 1969) as a brothel madam, television’s Warren Mitchell (Till Death Do Us Part), Kenneth Griffith and Clive Revill (Fathom, 1967).
The action flits between sudden danger and elaborate set pieces. When Ivan announces his proposal to his board he promptly fells a colleague with a gavel just as that man throws a knife. Apart from folderols in a Parisian brothel, we are treated to a Viennese waltz and malarkey in Venice. There are disguises aplenty, donned by our hero and his enemies. Lighters are turned into flame throwers.
And there is a lovely sly sense of humour, an Italian countess, wanting rid of her husband, does so under the pretext of Ivan gone rogue. Oliver Reed (Hannibal Brooks, 1969) and Diana Rigg (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, 1970), adopting her best Julie Andrews impression, are in excellent form and strike sparks off each other. Their verbal duels are a joy to watch. Basil Dearden, in his second-last picture, invested the movie with considerable panache. It takes more skill to carry off this kind of movie, as much satire and spoof as anything else, than a straightforward action or crime picture.
Relph conjured up the screenplay based on an unfinished Jack London novel published posthumously in 1963 with the assistance of crime writer Robert L. Fish.
Shouldn’t work as well as it does. Surprisingly enjoyable.
Highly under-rated western, directed with some style by a Britisher, bolsters Jim Brown’s marquee credentials and twists and turns every inch of the way. The basic story couldn’t be more cliché: outlaw Luke (Jim Brown), after escaping from a chain-gang, hooks up with gunslinger Jaroo (Lee Van Clef) and his gang of Apaches to steal the gold bullion hidden inside a Mexican fortress.
It just doesn’t work out that way. Any time a cliché rears its ugly head, director John Guillermin (The Blue Max, 1966) treats it as narrative obstacle and finds a neat way round it. Luke’s attitude doesn’t help either. Looking at a woman the wrong way, not showing Apaches sufficient respect, failing to rein in his larcenous partner, all lead to trouble. But at the right time and the right place, the pair show – almost show off – their respective skills, permitting escape when necessary and finding a way into the citadel.
Lee Van Cleef takes top billing in the Italian poster which adopts a more thematic approach than the normal action-oriented marketing.
Did I mention there was a bullfight with fort commander Chavez (Patrick O’Neal), wielding a saber, dancing around the animal on horseback, or that at one point Luke becomes the bull substitute. Or that, in the picture’s most notorious scene, shades of Raquel Welch taking an impromptu shower in 100 Rifles (1969), the invaders are helped by Chavez’s disgruntled mistress Claudine (Marianna Hill) distracting the defending soldiers by disrobing.
And, though minus such distractions, this is probably where the white walkers in Game of Thrones learned to scale a mighty wall. Even so, it’d be a pretty big ask to infiltrate a fortress almost medieval in its construct with an outer and an inner wall, so Luke evens the odds by subjecting the inmates to involuntary thirst, having destroyed their water tower and poisoned all nearby wells.
Given the heist involves gold, it’s no surprise that the weaselly Jaroo is overcome by greed, taking any opportunity to help himself to more than his fair share, encouraged of course by the even wilier Chavez who has the measure of the potential thief. Luke might have been cautioned about entering into a partnership with such a character after witnessing a couple of Jaroo’s schemes backfire. In one of them, in just about the cleverest and most audacious cut you will ever see, we go from Jaroo in a store stuffing illicit goods under his coat to the pair emerging tarred and feathered from a pond.
And this ain’t The Dirty Dozen, nobody appears to understand a command structure, or even stick to orders, Apache chief Santana (Iron Eyes Cody), left to his own devices, liable to attack a wagon train despite that giving due warning of their presence in the vicinity. But then Luke doesn’t show due respect either, resulting in the pair being staked to the ground in the boiling sun, and finding it impossible to dislodge an Apache clinging to his back.
As you might expect, it’s a bloody affair, but without dwelling on gore, none of the visceral exploding body parts of The Wild Bunch (1969). And there is a surprisingly touching moment when, shades of Charles Bronson in The Magnificent Seven (1960), the hard-nosed Jaroo bonds with a young boy on the grounds that they are both illegitimate and parts with one of his two precious gold nuggets to give the child a start in life.
Harsh reality intrudes. Unspoken racism on the part of Chavez sets him against Luke. And that women are prizes of war provides an uneasy undercurrent. Claudine is Chavez’s lover because he offers safe haven, a security not afforded other Mexican woman, forcibly parted from husbands to provide soldiers with sexual playthings.
Jim Brown (100 Rifles) and Lee Van Cleef (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, 1967) are an inspired teaming, both playing against type, incurring more laughs than you might expect, and less inclined to play their previous stock characters, the former just a tough guy, the latter a ruthless professional. Patrick O’Neal (Stiletto, 1969) is a formidable opponent, perfectly capable of outwitting the more easily-duped Jaroo.
Despite, perhaps unfairly being remembered more for her nudity than her acting, Marianna Hill (Medium Cool, 1969) exhibits vulnerability as well as a tough core. Iron Eyes Cody (Nevada Smith, 1966) has a very refreshing take on an Apache war chief. And you might spot British starlet Imogen Hassall (The Long Duel, 1967) and veteran Elisha Cook Jr (Welcome to Hard Times, 1967).
But this movie really belongs to director John Guillermin who takes a fairly routine western and turns it on its head, extracting reversals at every opportunity, and clearly delighting in the several twists in the tail. Larry Cohen (Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting, 1969) and in his movie debut Steven Carabatsos (The Revengers, 1972) wrote the screenplay and the presence in the producer’s chair of Andre de Toth (Play Dirty, 1968) might account for some of the movie’s subversiveness.
There’s a historical footnote to El Condor. In a revision of the certificates issued by the censor, the British Broad of Film Classification in 1970 introduced the “AA” certificate, permitting people aged over 14 to view material that would previously have been restricted to the X-certificate. Admission to that category was raised to 18. So for a whole generation of teenage boys, hormones going wild, the first glimpse they had of a naked woman was in El Condor. (In the US it was an “R”.)
Not only well worth seeing but free to view on YouTube.
And when that source dries up you can find it on the Warner Archive.
I come at this with a disadvantage since I’m all Napoleoned-out what the various Abel Gance projects and that of Stanley Kubrick. So I suffer from over-familiary with the subject matter. Most of the audience won;t have viewed a Napoleon movie in their lifetime, but I’ve already sat through six-seven hours of this material.
In the end length defeats them all, the magnitude of the task of encapsulating an extraordinary career ends up as a mad dash through history. Setting any deliberate distortions aside, those scenes fictionalized for dramatic effect providing directors with a free pass, it’s just too much to find a central thread on which to encompass the man. Here, Ridley Scott makes a good stab at using romance as that glue, but it’s hampered by the great emperor (Joaquin Phoenix) being such an oaf in terms of seduction. Although he is as ruthless as any dictator whose risen from poverty to the absolute heights.
On the other hand, Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) is shown as a more complex character in more complex times, effectively taking up with this oaf for mercenary reasons, her clever plan only coming adrift because she cannot provide him with an heir. I doubt if that many among the audience are looking for an actual history lesson, which is just as well, because it feels, in part because of length restrictions, that this is inevitably going to come up short.
Little is made of the political situation in a world terrified of the revolution that changed France seeping into the countries of Europe. Theoretically, Britain was a democracy, but in reality it was ruled by an elite land-owning cabal, with poverty as rife as in France. Every other country in Europe had an unelected monarch. So Napoleon didn’t so much intend to conquer Europe from power lust but prevent his country being attacked by those who feared an end to the status quo.
Of course, if you had included more history you would have to accommodate an endless stream on one-line characters trying to explain the situation. Scott makes more use of subtitles to provide the audience with its historical bearings but still isn’t afraid to simply fall back on the Austerlitz trick of using protocol to announce a new one-line character.
In terms of actors, this has more the feel of a mini-series than a movie. Hardly anyone of box office significance and being weighed down with British character actors, virtually nobody is on screen long enough to make a mark. Certainly, none command the screen the way the veterans of the old-style all-star cast like Ralph Richardson (Khartoum 1966) or John Gielgud (Becket, 1964), and I’m sorry but Rupert Everett as the Duke of Wellington is sorely miscast.
Anyway, you could go through this entire picture pulling it to pieces, instead of concentrating of what does work. Napoleon’s insecurities contrast nicely with his rampant ambition and arrogance and every now and then someone delivers a historical bon mot. As annoying as it is, I doubt if many males of the period gave any thought to female pleasure during sex, so Napoleon’s amateur love-making can be ignored.
Except for the verbal sparring with Josephine, it’s the military duels that bring this up to scratch at least within the Ridley Scott canon. The taking of Toulon, the bloody putting down of the royalist revolt and Austerlitz are the outstanding scenes, though anybody who has dared to sit through Abel Gance’s Austerlitz might not come out thinking the frozen ice splintering is quite as novel as it might appear.
I’m guessing that the four-hour version planned for streaming might fill in some of the holes, but I’m worried that, like Austerlitz, it will be more of the boring stuff, a potted history filled out with more balls and costume-heavy scenes. If this is all the insight into the life of Napoleon that $200 million buys, then it will take another streamer with even deeper pockets to make a serious dent at tackling the full story of Napoleon.
I usually go back to see a Ridley Scott film at least once – I saw The Martian (2015), Gladiator (2000) and American Gangster (2007) four times each in the cinema – but I’m not sure this holds the same attraction. The director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven (2005) even with a miscast Orlando Bloom totally transformed that movie so I’m hoping the longer version here might achieve the same. But the latter had a marvellous score, which I had bought as a CD and was a virtual earworm for me, whereas the music here is an uneven as the picture.
I’d love to give this a better score, especially as it may be the director’s last cinematic outing, but it’s too disappointing.
At the height of his power after the tremendous critical and commercial success of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) you wouldn’t have wagered on Stanley Kubrick being outfoxed by Italian uber-producer Dino De Laurentiis. But the latter’s Waterloo (1970) was the prime reason why MGM shuttered Kubrick’s ambitious project. It’s not the reason it was never eventually made – money was.
At one point, it looked as if the movie would shift over to Columbia, which had funded the director’s previous hit, Dr Strangelove (1964), and thence to United Artists – production scheduled to start in September 1970 – before ending up in the lap of Warner Brothers, which would prove Kubrick’s home for the next few decades.
One of the reasons WB was so keen was that it had greenlit a movie by British director Bryan Forbes called Napoleon and Josephine. This was to follow The Madwoman of Chaillot (1970), a project he had taken over at the last minute after John Huston bailed. But it never went ahead because Forbes instead took over as head of production at British studio EMI. To have considered the project in the first place, despite facing competition from Waterloo, would have meant WB viewed the idea as a financailly sound.
The bigger problem, commercially, was that two events coalesced. By the end of the 1960s, the 70mm roadshow was on its last legs. It still continued in haphazard fashion into the early 1970s, but scarcely with the vigor and elan that had produced such different movies as Lawrence of Arabia (1962), It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), Doctor Zhivago (1965) and The Sound of Music (1965) that set fire to the global box office.
As important, studios hit a financial wall at the end of the 1960s as over-investment in all sorts of unlikely roadshow vehicles, often musicals, came back to bite Hollywood. And with Easy Rider (1969) cleaning up, the message to Hollywood was mean and lean.
So a project that could top out at $30 million – even with Jack Nicholson, Audrey Hepburn and David Hemmings involved – and inevitably run over budget, take well over a year to complete and appear when who knew how the movie landscape would have changed, and working with the only director from whom no studio executive in their right mind would dare seize control, this version of Napoleon was put on the back burner, resurrected every time Kubrick had a hit.
As well as the massive book, there were coveted extras, accessed via this card fixed to the inside front cover of the Taschen publication.
When MGM pulled out it was deemed “one too many…ultra-high budget commitments for the studio,” one of the hardest hit by financial turmoil. Columbia, it transpired, had only toyed with the idea. Warner Brothers built up the notion of coming to Kubrick’s rescue with Variety headlines such as “Costume Epic Due Anew? WB Hunch,” that appeared in Variety in 1972. It was the kind of movie that you almost expected an operation looking to grab Hollywood attention, say new ventures like Cannon or Orion, to pick up.
While Waterloo (1970) was seen as the main obstacle, coupled with the fact that one of the reasons Abel Gance’s Napoleon had stiffed way back in the silent era was American audience indifference to the French Emperor, it has to be said Hollywood would have noticed that Kubrick faced more competition than just De Laurentiis. Wider awareness of subject matter might have come from an unusual source, since Barbra Streisand was contemplating starring in a new Broadway musical about Napoleon and Josephine,
That there was continued interest in Napoleon was proved with the release of Fielder Cook’s Eagle in a Cage (1972), starring Kenneth Haigh (The Deadly Affair, 1965) and Billie Whitelaw (Leo the Last, 1970) and British acting royalty like John Gielgud (Khartoum, 1966) and Ralph Richardson (The 300 Spartans, 1962). This was limited to Napoleon’s exile, and was funded by a newcomer, Group W, its biggest-ever production gamble, albeit with a budget of only $1.25 million. The Brits proved pretty keen on the subject matter, a television mini-series Napoleon and Love (1974) up next starring Ian Holm (Chariots of Fire, 1981).
Interest never dwindled. There was a French musical in 1985 and a French mini-series at the turn of this century with an all-star cast including Christian Clavier (Asterix and Obelisk: Mission Cleopatra, 2002), Gerard Depardieu (Green Card, 1990) Anouk Aimee (A Man and a Woman, 1966) and Isabella Rossellini (Blue Velvet, 1986).
The larger obstacle had always been the budget which the new Ridley Scott picture has overcome thanks to the deep pockets of Apple.
Just how far the ever-obsessive Kubrick got with his project can be seen from the gigantic tome – Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made – running to 1100 pages, published by Taschen and now a collector’s item, copies changing hands for up to $2,000, containing not just the entire script, but all the details he had already filled in of costumes, locations, budget, and even his own thinking, as revealed in a series of interviews with collaborators. The book is crammed full of photographs and it’s a good a testament to a film that never was as you’re likely to find. I have a copy and can attest to that.
Surprisingly, there’s a happy ending. Apparently, Steven Spielberg is taking up the Kubrick mantle. HBO, not shy of spending gazillions as proven by Game of Thrones, has enlisted the director to make an eight-part mini-series based on the Kubrick screenplay. And although officially in retirement, Jack Nicholson is the first big name signed up.
Old legends never die.
SOURCES: Alison Castle, Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon (Taschen, 2009) ; “Kubrick To Make Napoleon for MGM Next Year, Box Office, July 22, 1968, pE7; “Kubrick’s Napoleon not for MGM May Go Via Columbia,” Variety, January 1, 1969, p5; “Forbes Has Full Reign on Napoleon and Josephine,” Box Office, January 6, 1969, pW3; “Kubrick’s Napoleon to UA,” Variety, January 15, 1969, p21; “Newley-Steisand for Broadway Tuner on Nappy-Josie,” Variety, July 2, 1969, p1; “Group W Biggest Theatrical Feature,” Variety, September 10, 1969, p7; “Gaffney as Kubrick Assisant on Napoleon,” Variety, October 19, 1969, p25; “Costume Epics Due Anew? WB Hunch,” Variety, January 12, 1972, p6; Advert, Napoleon musical,” Variety March 13, 1985, p120; Peter White, “Steven Spielberg Says Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon 7-Part,” Deadline, Feb 21, 2023.
If I’d seen this first, I might well have resisted the publicity tsunami that welcomed in 1981 the restoration reissue of Abel Gance’s silent epic Napoleon (1927). It’s the equivalent of John Ford following up The Searchers (1956) with something as clunky as Cannon for Cordoba (1970).
Oddly enough, the first few minutes are outstanding in telegraphing the French leader’s myriad insecurities. He forces a flunkey not only to break in his stiff new shoes – for fear the master of all he surveys be seen limping along – but also his new hat and then cheats when he undergoes the self-imposed ritual of being measured, pushing up on his toes to elevate his height by two inches from its genuine five foot two inches.
After that splurge of exquisite exposition, it goes not so much downhill as up and down ever narrative pathway possible. No wonder Ridley Scott felt that encompassing this particular life required at least four hours (the length of the planned streaming version) and that Steven Spielberg aims to devote seven hours to the subject when he revisits Stanley Kubrick’s script for HBO.
Mercifully, this part of the Napoleon legend is truncated to just three years, from the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, which purportedly brought peace to Europe, to the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805 when the French commander-in-chief demonstrated his military genius and shredded his opponents. But that battle is an almighty time coming.
In between, we have to put up with endless balls and endless characters shuttling through doors, although following the protocol of the time at least we have a clue who they are since they are announced by another flunkey in advance of their appearance. You would need Google open to check out who exactly they all are and what part they play.
Roughly, the story goes: Napoleon (Pierre Mondy) is attempting to achieve the “unification of Europe” (as would occur by more peaceful means over a century and a half later). The rest of Europe, naturally, isn’t in agreement so when foreign countries are not despatching assassins or reneging on treaties they’re lining up armies against him. Things are just as tough domestically. Even though, by overwhelming public vote, he has been named Consul for Life, he hankers after reviving the old title of Emperor, despite the last owner having his head chopped off.
Plus, there are problems on the romantic front, wife Josephine (Martine Carole) has taken a lover and is jealous of the imminent arrival of his former Italian lover. All in all, it’s a pretty busy affair with countless sub plots, including an attempt to dupe the English into thinking he plans to invade their country via Ireland, and American inventor Robert Fulton (Orson Welles) trying to sell him on the notion of an ironclad steamship and submarine. Even when he gets to war, it’s nothing but chatter and subterfuge, various underlings almost rebelling at his, according to them, lack of military skill and troops disobeying orders.
The battle also lacks that essential ingredient, of the audience being told exactly what’s going on and understanding just how clever a maneuver might be, and although there are thundering horses aplenty it comes nowhere near the scale and grandeur he achieved with Napoleon, nor, it has to be said, the later Waterloo (1970), except for the horses and men disappearing under the frozen lake.
It was the fate of Abel Gance to be ruthless edited, his monster Napoleon chopped by two-thirds for original U.S. release, this one losing one-third of its running time, though I suspect what was cut out was no great loss, assuming it was just more rigmarole and costume drama set around his court, although it might have helped in working out what part his sister Pauline (Claudia Cardinale) and Mlle de Vaudey (Leslie Caron) play in the proceedings. Though we could have done with less of the Austrian General Weirother (Jack Palance with an execrable accent). Pauline has the best line in the whole endeavour, refusing to sit on a couch because its color clashes with her outfit.
Nestling among the all-star cast you’ll find – or not, depending on which version you view – names like Vittorio De Sica (The Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968), Rossano Brazzi (The Battle of the Villa Fiorita, 1965) and Jean-Louis Trintignant (Les Biches, 1968).
Nobody does much to earn their crust and Pierre Mondy (The Night of the Generals, 1967) just looks irritated beyond belief that he got mixed up in this.
Far from director Abel Gance’s finest moment. Little more than an elongated information dump.
The Magnificent 60s 