Brian Hannan

Behind the Scenes: The Circuit Breaker Busts the Release System

Every country followed a similar system. Unlike nowadays, new movies would first be released on the biggest cinemas in the biggest cities. Only after the hullabaloo of premieres and publicity in national newspapers did the films move into the bread-and-butter of the release pattern, appearing for a given week on the circuits. Britain had two main circuits, ABC and Odeon, both of whom, unlike their counterparts in the USA, were permitted not just to exhibit movies but to make and distribute them.

In the UK at the start of the 1960s, regardless of how well new movies had done in their opening salvos at the super-cinemas, they were allocated just one week on the circuit. In retrospect, it seemed a weird notion that a big-budget Hollywood movie would be given the same amount of time to sell tickets as a cheaper home-grown product. Even more basic, that demand was automatically limited. Unlike now, a cinema could not hold onto a hit film for as long as it wanted, because the print was already assigned another cinema in another locale. And there was no way of bringing back a hit for a second go-round until years later.

The release system began to change with the introduction of the roadshow, when 70mm movies showing twice a day at increased prices would run for at least a “season” (13 weeks) and could respond to demand by playing for much longer. Following their roadshow run, such films would be fed, at a later date, into the circuit system.

But in 1964, there was the beginnings of a shift on the ABC circuit. Towards the end of the year, instead of the traditional one-week circuit run, The Carpetbaggers, not a contender for roadshow despite its 150-minute running time, was shown for two weeks. But that proved an isolated incident. It was another two years before ABC repeated the experiment, courtesy of Alfie starring Michael Caine.

The following year the first two months saw four films go down the same route, Oscar-winning musical My Fair Lady which had been road-shown a couple of years before, Hayley Mills drama The Family Way, The Dirty Dozen, also a roadshow hit, and Bonnie and Clyde (a flop in the USA).

In addition, the circuit had learned to re-evaluate earlier hits. At that point a revival/reissue only made a second showing in the UK about 7-10 years after initial release. But in 1967, just three years after it proved to be a colossal box office success in the UK (it flopped in the USA despite an immense marketing campaign), Zulu was given another week on the circuit, this innovation adding a new dimension to the circuit release system.

In fact, The Dirty Dozen was afforded yet another week on the circuit in 1968 – in effect, counting the roadshow and the initial circuit release, the public was accorded three opportunities in a very short space of time, The following year One Million Years B.C. (1966) starring Raquel Welch and She (1966) starring Ursula Andress were double-billed in a reissue.

But whether the two-week window had proved a complete success was open to doubt because such clear-cut hits as Bullitt and The Italian Job were only granted one week to make an impact on the circuit box office. In 1969, the circuit had so misjudged the box office potential of Till Death Us Do Part, a movie version of the popular British television comedy series, that it was initially scheduled for a one-week run. But it was such a blockbusting success that ABC tore up its release calendar and slotted it in for a further week two weeks later.

Growth of the multiplex meant big films could be retained for much longer on the biggest houses, switching between two or three or four individual cinemas until demand was deemed fully drained. No longer did a circuit release mean that release dates for the suburban part of the release were set in stone, an approach guaranteed to force the main city center cinemas to remove from its screens a movie that still had pulling power and at higher prices.

But any kind of change to the circuit release system remained minimal. In 1970, only two movies, Where Eagles Dare, a monumental success when road-shown (a release option denied in the USA), and the home-grown Women in Love were provided with a two-week circuit platform though Bullitt doubled with Bonnie and Clyde made a speedy return as a reissue.

In 1971, a pair of British comedies Percy and Up Pompeii, both made by EMI which had taken over the ABC circuit, were given the two-week treatment. But like Till Death Us Do Part, revisionist western Little Big Man was allocated another week over a month after its initial showing. The Dirty Dozen returned yet again.

In 1972, the circuit introduced unveiled another release strategy called variously a “selective release” or a “pre-release.” This meant, in effect, that in major suburban cinemas, the biggest new pictures would be given two bites of the cherry. A Clockwork Orange and The Godfather were both deemed worthy of a one-week “selective” release with a second week factored in for the following year in what was deemed a “full release.” A version of roadshow was already in place for both these movies and in the main cinemas in big cities these were retained for a considerable amount of time.

In 1972 there were also re-runs for There’s a Girl in My Soup, Zulu and Paint Your Wagon (a bigger roadshow success in the UK than the USA). But the following year saw a whole wave of reissues beginning with The Ten Commandments (1956) followed by Dirty Harry/Klute (both 1971), The Wild Bunch (1969), Love Story (1970), Coogan’s Bluff (1968)/ Play Misty for Me (1971) while Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957) supported the new Friends of Eddie Coyle.

In 1974, The Sting and Airport 1975 went down the new “selective” plus normal release pattern, enjoying one week in each phase, while Blazing Saddles and The Exorcist received a two-week send-off from the start, Fear Is the Key (1972) was revived to support another television spin-off Holiday on the Buses.

Towering Inferno in 1975 ran for three weeks, the first qualifying as “selective” system but the others two weeks shortly after. But there was another development with Jaws which went out first as “selective”, then a week in “pre-release” and its third appearance on the circuit deemed a “full release” turned into an extended run. But the “selective”/”full release” of Death Wish, Mandingo, and Murder on the Orient Express comprised only two weeks. Lisztomania looked set to join the exclusive club but instead of going out on the full release some weeks later it was restricted to a single “selective” week, suggesting it had not fulfilled expectations first time round. The Godfather Part II also managed two weeks but not sequential, the second week deemed a “re-run” six weeks later. Where Eagles Dare and David Essex duo That’ll Be the Day (1973)/Stardust (1974) were reissued while Uptown Saturday Night (1974) was revived in support of Inside Out. Gone with the Wind (1939) enjoyed another reissue in 1976 as did Zulu and Freebie and the Bean (1974)

In 1977 “pre-release” replaced “selective” as the preferred jargon and was applied to King Kong, Airport 77 and Rollercoaster but in these instances amounted to a total of two weeks counting the later full release. By contrast, When the North Wind Blows and The Eagle Has Landed enjoyed a straight two-week release. Ben-Hur (1959) was reissued as were Jaws (1975), The Sting (1973), The Godfather (1972), Clint Eastwood double bill The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)/Magnum Force (1973) and television spin-off duo All Creatures Great and Small (1977)/It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet (1976).

In 1978, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) entered the reissue market along with revivals of Enter the Dragon (1973)/Death Race 2000 (1975). Charles Bronson western Breakheart Pass (1976) returned in support to Michael Caine thriller The Silver Bears, The Car (1977) to Full Circle, Paper Moon (1973) to House Calls and the ribald Adventures of a Taxi Driver (1976) to The Other Cinderella.

However, by this time, the big city center cinemas had begun holding on to major releases for such inordinate lengths of time that they were virtually played out by the time they reached the suburban circuit houses so there was little reason to insist on those cinemas retaining them for two or three weeks. None of the ABC chain’s top hits of the year – including the likes of Saturday Night Fever, Grease and Watership Down – played more than one week when they entered the circuit release.

By 1979 the “selective” and “pre-release” idea and the two-week booking was gone. But the following previous hits were re-cycled: Superman: The Movie (1978), The Goodbye Girl (1977), The Getaway (1972), The Towering Inferno (1974), the inspired pairings of Blazing Saddles (1974)/Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) and Convoy (1978)/Sweeney 2 (1978). More obvious was the dualing of Peter Cushing duo The Ghoul (1975) and Legend of the Werewolf (1975). Clint Eastwood was back on support duty, The Enforcer (1976) helping out new Boulevard Nights, The Eiger Sanction (1975) bolstering John Travolta romance Moment to Moment while The Land That Time Forgot (1974) boosted to The Brink’s Job.

But by the start of the new decade, there was little differentiation between a major cinema in a city center and the rest, a new movie, in order to take advantage of advertising, either running for months in the one locale, and sucking the commercial meat out of a movie, or going much wider from the off rather than settling down in any one place for an exclusive run. Though the saturation that’s common today was still a long way off, movies still inclined to be released in regional bursts to save on prints, the circuit business had come a long way in two decades.

Arabesque (1966) ***

By this point in the 1960s, Gregory Peck’s career was pretty much at a standstill. Prestige had not saved Behold a Pale Horse (1964) from commercial disaster, thriller Mirage (1965) went the same way, other projects – The Martian Chronicles, Ice Station Zebra – failed to get off the ground or like The Bells of Hell Go Ting-a-Ling-a-Ling were abandoned once filming began. So, he was the main beneficiary of Cary Grant’s decision to retire.

Stanley Donen had Grant, with whom he had made the highly successful thriller Charade (1963), in mind for the role of the hieroglyphics professor caught in in a web of intrigue in Arabesque. In some ways Peck was an adequate replacement but lacked the older actor’s gift for comedy and failed to master the art of the double-take. Arabesque was almost a counterpoint to Charade. In the earlier movie Audrey Hepburn is continually suspicious of Cary Grant. The new movie sees a gender reversal, Peck constantly puzzled as to where Sophia Loren’s loyalties lie.

The story itself is quite simple. A code has been put inside a hieroglyphic and a variety of people are trying to get hold of it either to decipher the secret within or to stop someone else finding out what it contains. When the scientist who has the code is killed, the man who ordered the killing, the sinister Beshraavi (Alan Badel), approaches Prof Pollock (Gregory Peck) to unravel the code, but is turned down. The professor is then kidnapped by Arab prime minster Hassan Jena (Carl Duering), whom he admires, to ask him to take up the job. Beshraavi’s provocatively-dressed wife Yazmin (Sophia Loren), flirting outrageously with Pollock, is also after the code.

There follows more twists and double-crosses than you could shake a stick at, leaving the amenable Pollock mightily confused. “What is it about you,” he asks Yazmin at one point, “that makes you so hard to believe?” It looks like director Donen is playing a variation of the famous Raymond Chandler maxim, that when a plot begins to flag, “have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.” Sometimes, there is actually a gun or similar weapon, but mostly it’s just another twist. If Pollock doesn’t know what the hell is going on, then the audience is in the same boat.

But it is stylish, set in appealing parts of Britain (antique university, Ascot), Yazmin decked out in glamorous Dior outfits and even Pollock gets to wear a morning suit. Drop in a couple of action sequences, Hitchcock-style chases in a zoo and pursuit by a combine harvester, Pollock nearly run over by horses in a race, and the pair of them having strayed into a builder’s yard facing demolition by the British equivalent of a wrecking ball. But the standout scene is when Yazmin hides the professor in her shower (curtain drawn) while being interrogated by her suspicious husband and then steps in naked and then they play footsie with dropped soap. And she proceeds to expound, “If I was standing stark naked in front of Mr Pollock, he’d probably yawn.”

Beshraavi’s jealousy over his wife’s flirtation with Pollock adds another element of tension. Beshraavi is a very sinuous, sensuous bad guy, who can turn a harmless massage into a matter of life and death. He also has a pet falcon with a habit of ripping people’s cheeks. But even in the face of obvious threats, Pollock holds his own. In one scene as Beshraaavi attempts to retrieve what he believes is the code from Pollock’s dinner plate, where it has fallen from the hiding place in the professor’s clothing, Pollock taps the man’s invading fingers with the sharp tines of his fork.

And there is some accomplished dialogue. When Pollock offers the falcon a date and is brusquely told the bird of prey only eats meat, he responds, “I thought he looked at it rather wistfully.” Beshraavi retorts, sharply, “It must have been your fingers.”

Donen had not made a film in the three years since Charade, so there was some critical feeling that he was a bit rusty and used experimentation – big close-ups, odd camera angles – to cover this up. He was living in London by this point and had been for nearly a decade. But there was very little that fazed him in any genre, and he had switched from musicals like Singing in’ the Rain (1952) to romantic drama (Indiscreet, 1958) and comedy (The Grass Is Greener, 1960). And though there is no question the film would have been better with Cary Grant, Peck proves a reasonable substitute.

The movie’s main drawback is the lack of romance since falling in love with someone you believe is either a traitor or a compulsive liar is a hard trick to pull off. But if you like the idea of pitting your wits against the screenwriters – Peter Stone (Charade), Julian Mitchell (Another Country, 1984) and Stanley Price (Gold, 1974), the latter pair in their movie debuts – then this is one for you.

The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) ****

Take twelve condemned men, drop them in the desert hundreds of miles from safety with only enough water to last two weeks, and nothing to eat but dates, and make them work together to effect salvation from their predicament. Not exactly the premise for The Dirty Dozen (1967) but not far off. The Flight of the Phoenix appears a dummy run for director Robert Aldrich’s more ambitious war picture, not least because in terms of structure it is only eight minutes shorter. There are no women in the picture (except those appearing in a mirage) and the men, of all different types, must come together or die in the savage heat.

You might argue that the audience for this kind of picture no longer exists. In the 1960s there was a big market for the Nevil Shute/Hammond Innes/Elleston Trevor type of novel which contained a lot of practical detail at a time when heavy industry – mining, shipbuilding, oil, car manufacture – was a massive employer and the ordinary man had an easy understanding of – and was often fascinated by – the principles of engineering. Bear in mind that this was the era of space rockets and there was excitement about man’s planned flight to the moon.

During a sandstorm a small twin-engined plane carrying passengers from an oil field crash lands in the Sahara. James Stewart as the pilot was a casting trick. In a previous aerial adventure No Highway (1951), Stewart was the ordinary joe challenging authority. Here he is the authority figure, pilot Frank Towns, challenged and part of the film’s guile is the way he has to concede that authority to the one person on board everyone hates, arrogant German aircraft designer Dorfmann (Hardy Kruger).

The global job lot of passengers includes: two soldiers, martinet Capt Harris (Peter Finch) and his mutinous Sgt Watson (Ronald Fraser); alcoholic navigator Moran (Richard Attenborough); oil worker Cobb (Ernest Borgnine) on the brink of insanity; sarcastic Scots troublemaker Crow (Ian Bannen); French Dr Renaud (Christian Marquand0; company accountant Standish (Dan Duryea); Italian Gabriele (Gabriele Tinti); Bellamy (George Kennedy) and Carlos (Alex Montoya); plus a monkey of no fixed abode. The monkey, incidentally, is cleverly utilised. He’s not a sentimental or cute device, there to soften a hard guy or for comic relief, but Aldrich often cuts to his squeals or his face when there is imminent danger.

Two passengers are already dead, one is seriously injured. They have been blown so far off-course they will be impossible to locate. There is only enough water for ten or eleven days. It is a given in such circumstances that tempers will explode and hidden secrets surface. Were they guaranteed rescue those two pegs would be enough to hang a movie on. Since there is no such guarantee, this becomes a picture about survival. The obvious maneuver comes into play on the fifth day. Capt Harris determines to walk to safety, over 100 miles in deadly heat. But it’s not a trek picture either, the engineers present know the risks. Mountains will cause false compass readings and those going will walk around in circles.

*Trevor Dudley-Smith wrote under nine other pseudonyms including Elleston Trevor and Adam Hall for the “Quiller” spy series.*

What? I can get that magnetism in the mountains can affect a compass but where does the walking round in circles enter the equation? Because, explains Moran patiently, a person does not automatically walk in a straight line if there is no actual road. If right-handed then you’ll walk in a left-hand direction because the right leg is more developed than the other and takes a longer stride and there’s nothing you can do about it. This doesn’t matter if you are walking along an actual path but in the desert with no road markings it’s lethal. And this is the beginning of a bag of what would otherwise be deemed trivia except that such facts are a matter of life and death. This is a movie about reality in a way that no other realistic or authentic picture has or will be. Physics is the dominant force, not imagination.

Finch’s sergeant fakes an injury to avoid going. The mad Cobb, originally prevented from leaving, sneaks away in the night. Towns, in courageous mode, goes after him. While he is away, Dorfmann carries out a character assassination. And continues on his return – “the only thing outstanding about you is your stupidity.” By now though, Moran has warmed to Dorfmann’s insane idea of building a single-engined plane out of the wreck of the twin-engined one. And that becomes the crux of the story. Can they build this weird contraption? Will they manage it before they die of thirst? Will rising tensions prevent completion? Are they fit enough after days in the boiling heat to manage the herculean tasks involved?

Aldrich keeps psychological tension at fever pitch, helped along by the pessimistic Towns and the wildly pessimistic Crow, needling everyone in sight, who delivers lines like “how I stopped smoking in three days.” Towns and Moran have to come to terms with the parts they played in the plane crashing, Sgt Watson with his cowardice. Issues arise over leadership and water theft.

I won’t spoil it for you by mentioning the incident that threatens to demolish the entire project. But the finale is truly thrilling, edge-of-the-seat stuff and the skeletal monstrosity being constructed looks hardly capable of carrying the monkey let alone a full complement of passengers. Aldrich is a master of the group shot with unerring composition and often movement within the frame or just a simple bit of business by an actor, for example George Kennedy at one point tapping his hand against his leg, ensuring that the film does not solely focus on a couple of characters. Sometimes all Aldrich needs to make his points are reaction shots.

Terrific performances all round with Ian Bannen Oscar-nominated. Aldrich called on Lukas Heller for the screenplay, based on Elleston Trevor’s novel, having worked with him on Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962) and Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte (1964). Aldrich’s son William and son-in-law Peter Bravos had bit parts, killed off during the crash.

Flight of the Phoenix virtually invented the self-help rescue genre that relied on ingenious mechanical ideas – rather than more simplistic notions – such as later absorbed in movies like Apollo 13 (1995) and The Martian (2015). Aldrich’s mastery of group dynamics would stand in him in good stead for The Dirty Dozen.

The 2004 remake isn’t a patch on the original.

A terrific movie and well worth seeing.

Turning the novel by Elleston Trevor into a movie is illustrative of the process by which the screenwriter eliminates, changes and adds. The Flight of the Phoenix (published in 1964) was a lean 80,000 words, a far cry from the blockbuster airport reads like Exodus by Leon Uris and James Michener’s Hawaii. But its length made it an ideal subject for a film, the shorter novel tending to stick close to the main story. The author’s speciality was authentic detail, an early career as a racing driver and flight engineer inspiring in him a love for all things mechanical.

He knew what made things work and gaps in his knowledge were filled by assiduous research. He was an assiduous man, with 36 books since 1943 under ten pseudonyms, one being Adam Hall whose bestselling spy tale The Berlin Memorandum would be filmed as The Quiller Memorandum. He had tackled aviation before, most prominently in Squadron Airborne (1955).

The film follows the book’s structure with only a couple of deviations. The main one was changing the nationality of the aircraft designer from British to German. Originally named Stringer he was a testy young individual prone to taking offence and going off in big sulks. There was a German in the Trevor version, Kepel, a young man who is injured in the crash. But there was no handy doctor on board and fewer different nationalities.

To build up James Stewart as the heroic pilot and as a consequence to add meat to his clash with German designer Hardy Kruger, in the film he bravely goes out into the desert to find one of the passengers, but that does not occur in the book. Other changes were minor – in the book the passengers are occasionally able to supplement their drinking rations by scraping night frost off the plane and at a later point in the book they drain the blood from a dead camel in order to dilute their drinking water.

While there is an encounter with Arab nomads in both book and film, the book’s approach to this incident is much more straightforward, ignoring some of the detail supplied in the book.

Of course, a novel allows for the inclusion of far greater detail. And while that provides the skeleton for story development, Trevor gives greater insight into the characters than can be achieved on screen. The author allows each character an internal monologue, through which device we discover their motivations, history and fears.

This approach combines the present with the past, presenting a more rounded cast of characters. While the inherent tension of the situation drives the story along, the author switches between characters to keep the reader fully engaged. The cowardly sergeant (played by Ronald Fraser in the film) is the biggest beneficiary, portrayed as a more sympathetic person than in the film.

The book is a stand-alone enjoyment, Trevor’s writing skills, his grasp of character, creation of tension and his engineering knowledge (bear in mind he invented the idea of building another plane out of the wrecked one) make the novel every bit as enthralling as the film.

Shameless Plug: “1960s Movies Redux Volume Two.”

When I started investigating the movies of the 1960s one of the shocks was coming to understand how little critical attention had been paid to many of these pictures. I had imagined, in my ignorance, that the highly-touted critics of the era, whose names attached to quotes you would often see adorning posters, had been allocated considerable space in newspapers or magazines for their reviews, and was astonished to discover that in most instances this was not the case.

A movie critic was allotted no more than a couple of hundred words once a week and that space might have to cover three or even four movies. Although movie production was slowing down, they were still making a lot more films than they do today. The bulk of the words would be devoted to whatever movie the critic had decided was the picture of the week. And what with many critics determined to educate their readership on what they considered the superior works coming in from abroad, some notable American movies often got the short end of the stick.

It wasn’t unusual for a picture to be dismissed in a grand total of thirty or forty words, or not mentioned at all. And once academics piled in and decided which movies future students of films should be concentrating on, then a mountain of movies were just ignored over the following decades. So, in part, my purpose has been an attempt at correction, to give every picture of the decade a lengthy review, and bring into sharper focus many movies that, in critical terms, had disappeared from view. In part, I aim to readdress the era, placing more emphasis on the films available to the general public rather than those whose remit was the arthouse. And, in part, it is also to provide a more representative idea of the era.

But, of course, in the main it’s fun, the opportunity to delve into a decade that through my many books I have grown to love. Oddly enough, I grew up in towns that lacked cinemas, and it was only when I attended university at the beginning of the 1970s that I had ready access to movies, so I had a lot of catching-up to do. I was first at the door for any reissue and combed the television listings and subsequently built up a huge library of VHS/DVD. And I was very glad of that investment, which often seemed an indulgence at the time, because trying to find older films on streamers is exceedingly difficult, and the only way of accessing certain titles is through DVD.

And part of the fun is being able to reassess certain performers. In this volume, in particular, I have come to appreciate much more the acting talent of George Peppard through such films as Pendulum, Rough Night in Jericho and P.J. / New Face in Hell. I’ve been watching with renewed interest Ann-Margret switch from lighter movies to more serious films like Once A Thief, Stagecoach and Bus Riley’s Back in Town. I saw a different side to Dean Martin, who had spent most of the decade in lighter fare, when he moved into westerns like Five Card Stud and turned his screen persona on its head with a vicious role in Rough Night in Jericho.

David Janssen, too, deserves reconsideration in my book after Warning Shot and Where It’s At. Angie Dickinson displays a wider range via Jessica, The Sins of Rachel Cade and I’ll Give My Life / The Unfinished Task, a movie of which I had previously been unaware.

I came across plenty films that appeared to have passed everyone by. Fade In, virtually disowned by star Burt Reynolds, being one, The Picasso Summer with Albert Finney and Yvette Mimieux, denied release at the time, and Vendetta for the Saint starring Roger Moore. I took a look at others rightfully disdained like The Maltese Bippy starring Rowan & Martin from the popular television series, Lock Up Your Daughters with Christopher Plummer as you’ve never seen him before – and wouldn’t want to again – and Orgy for the Dead.

And in trawling through the vaults, I came across many a movie that was sorely under-rated. Into that category I would place Terence Young’s Mayerling with Omar Sharif and Catherine Deneuve; Suzy Kendall as a German spy in Fraulein Doktor; James Corburn in the tricky Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round and for that matter the almost existential Hard Contract; and the aforementioned Five Card Stud and Rough Night in Jericho. I would urge you to take a second look at The Scalphunters, and The Shoes of the Fisherman and the tight thriller that turned Charles Bronson into a star, Farewell Friend / Adieu L’Ami, in which he went toe-to-toe with established French idol Alain Delon, and first made his mark as a genuine marquee attraction, albeit initially only in France.

Naturally, I’m hoping that reading these reviews might point you back to the movies I’ve mentioned. I have rated the movies out of five. The films are presented in alphabetical order.

One of the reasons for producing this book is that the first volume was so successful. And when I did a bit of research, I discovered that reading over 100 reviews on Kindle or in a book was a lot easier than reading than reading them online.

In this Volume I’ve also added illustrations.

There will be many more volumes to come as I’ve taken it upon myself to see as many movies of the 1960s as possible – I’ve already passed the 1,000-mark – so as to provide a better idea of the era’s output.

Available on Kindle (at $2.99/£2.48) and via Amazon in paperback and hardback.

MOVIES REVIEWED IN VOLUME TWO

The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965)

Baby Love (1969)

The Battle for the Villa Florita (1965)

Beat Girl / Wild for Kicks (1960)

Beau Geste (1966)

The Biggest Bundle of Them All (1968)

Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice (1969)

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)

The Brotherhood (1968)

Bus Riley’s Back in Town (1965)

Can-Can (1960)

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

Castle Keep (1969)

Catacombs / The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die (1965)

The Counterfeit Traitor (1962)

A Dandy in Aspic (1968)

Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966)

Deadlier than the Male (1967)

The Detective (1968)

The Devil’s Brigade (1968)

The Devil Rides Out (1968)

Dr Who and the Daleks (1965)

Experiment in Terror / The Grip of Fear (1962)

Fade In (1968)

Farewell Friend / Adieu L’Ami (1968)

Fate Is the Hunter (1964)

Five Card Stud (1968)

4 for Texas (1963)

Fraulein Doktor (1969)

Go Naked in the World (1961)

Hard Contract (1969)

Hercules and the Captive Women / Hercules Conquers Atlantis (1961)

A High Wind in Jamaica (1965)

A Home of Your Own (1965)

A House Is Not a Home (1965)

Ice Station Zebra (1968)

I’ll Give My Life / The Unfinished Task (1960)

It Started in Naples (1960)

Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

Jessica (1962)

King of the Roaring 20s (1961)

Kisses for My President (1964)

Lady in Cement (1968)

The Learning Tree (1969)

The Lion in Winter (1968)

Lock Up Your Daughters! (1969)

The Maltese Bippy (1969)

Mayerling (1968)

Medium Cool (1969)

The Mind Benders (1963)

Mirage (1965)

The Moon-Spinners (1964)

Murder Inc. (1960)

Night after Night after Night (1969)

Night of the Following Day (1968)

Once a Thief (1965)

Operation Kid Brother / O.K. Connery (1969)

Orgy for the Dead (1965)

Pendulum (1969)

Penelope (1966)

The Penthouse (1967)

Petulia (1968)

The Picasso Summer (1969)

P.J. / New Face in Hell (1968)

A Place for Lovers (1968)

The Pleasure Seekers (1964)

The Rare Breed (1965)

The Road to Corinth / Who’s Got the Black Box? (1967)

Rough Night in Jericho (1967)

Sanctuary (1961)

Sands of the Kalahari (1965)

The Satan Bug (1965)

Sebastian (1968)

The Scalphunters (1968)

The Scorpio Letters (1968)

Secret Ceremony (1968)

The Secret War of Harry Frigg (1968)

Seven Seas to Calais (1961)

The 7^th Dawn (1964)

Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (1962)

The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968)

The Sins of Rachel Cade (1961)

Sisters (1969)

The Sleeping Car Murder / Compartiment Tueurs (1965)

The Slender Thread (1965)

Sol Madrid / The Heroin Gang (1968)

Some Girls Do (1969)

The Spy with My Face (1965)

Stagecoach (1966)

Station Six Sahara (1963)

A Study in Terror (1965)

The St Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967)

Sumuru, Queen of Femina / The Girl from Rio / Mothers of America (1969)

Tamahine (1963)

Texas Across the River (1966)

Three (1969)

Topkapi (1964)

A Twist of Sand (1968)

Uptight (1968)

The Valley of Gwangi (1968)

Vendetta for the Saint (1969)

Viva Las Vegas! (1964)

Warning Shot (1968)

The Way West (1967)

When Comedy Was King (1960)

The Whip and the Body (1963)

Where It’s At (1969)

Wild Angels (1966)

Woman of Straw (1964)

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been trying to master the art of linking movies I’ve reviewed to DVDs on Amazon. I tried this before and failed and a week past tried again used “Site Stripe.” Despite following instructions to the letter, I had no better success so, in the absence of a working link, I would need you just to make your own way to Amazon.

Stranger in the House / Cop-Out (1967) ***

Standout performance by James Mason (Age of Consent, 1969) holds together this curiosity. Based on a novel by Georges Simenon from 1951, it is updated to the Swinging Sixties and transposed from France to the English provincial town of Winchester (possibly chosen thanks to the hit single the previous year). While featuring an investigation, but minus Maigret, it’s essentially a character study.

Given John Sawyer (James Mason) is a depressed, divorced, retired lawyer, it could easily have sunk under the weight of cliché. Realistic portrayals of depression, except amongst those confined to institutions, were rare in this era. The bulk of the audience would probably view him just as a grumpy old man.

Sawyer is not only estranged from everyone, distancing himself from daughter Angela (Geraldine Chaplin), but sliding into oblivion and even when offered potential redemption can scarcely lift his head above a parapet of boredom, almost catatonic in his attitude, overwhelmed by the loss of wife and, presumably, the esteem that came with his career. A member of the upper middle-class, he shows surprising sensitivity to the underprivileged, outsiders, especially migrants, usually dismissed with a racist epithet, and sex workers whom he treats as victims rather than a corrupting influence.

When the corpse of young American ship’s steward Barney (Bobby Darin) is found in his disused attic, suspicion falls on his daughter’s unemployed Greek boyfriend Jo (Paul Bertoya). Turns out Barney is a nasty piece of work, blackmailing Angels and her friends for trespassing on his ship.

As well as being put up initially in an empty warehouse by Desmond (Ian Ogilvy) whose father, a department store magnate who owns the building, a former cinema, and later in Sawyer’s attic, Barney extracts cash and sexually humiliates his victims. Attempted rape of Angela comes with his conviction that she’ll “thank me for it.”

Eventually, Sawyer is convinced to take on the case and is up against his daughter’s pompous employer and his wife’s lover Hawkins (Bryan Stanion). Maigret would have solved this in a trice but the joy of this is Sawyer’s indifference to the police procedural. He spends most of the time during the trial attempting to make a necklace out of paper clips, asks virtually no questions of witnesses, and makes no pretence of interest in the proceedings.

Among his unusual techniques are summoning up references to Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Unusually, the pay-off doesn’t come in a courtroom but at the twenty-first birthday celebration of the entitled Desmond when to attract attention Sawyer whips off a tablecloth, sending glasses and crockery crashing, and introduces a woman in red.

Estrangement from his daughter could easily be his fault, too wrapped up in a high-flying career to pay the child much heed, but that indifference might as easily be ascribed to the possibility, as his wife taunts him, that the girl is not his.

There’s much to admire in the observations of ordinariness, loneliness, a class system filled with puffed-up mediocrities revelling in the slightest sliver of power, female advancement often requiring dispensing sexual favors to predatory employers or some form of begging.

There’s a brief appearance by Eric Burdon and the Animals, a modelling assignment using the cathedral as backdrop, and drugs. Difficult to imagine though that the pistol holstered by a carnival booth operator could be the real thing.

James Mason’s employment of a limp (result of a war wound) probably went against any genuine assessment of the subtlety of his performance. Geraldine Chaplin (The Hawaiians, 1970) builds up her character with action rather than dialog, showing tenderness where you might expect anger. Bobby Darin (Pressure Point, 1962) essays another creepy thug.

Paul Bertoya (Che!, 1969) is underused. Ian Ogilvy (The Sorcerers, 1967) is so smug you want to thump him. Look out for Pippa Steel (The Vampire Lovers, 1970), Moira Lister (The Double Man, 1967) and Yootha Joyce (Our Mother’s House, 1967).

In his sole directorial assignment Frenchman Pierre Louve, who wrote the screenplay, has better luck dissecting English mores than finding the essence of Simenon, whose non-Maigret novels generally concentrated on a man under pressure. While Mason delivers a fine performance, and his depression is obvious, there’s no sense of him teetering on the edge, more a general decline. In fact it’s the opposite, returning to the legal fray provides him with redemption.

Behind the Scenes: “Breathless / A Bout de Souffle” (1960)

The story of Breathless is usually told from the triumphant perspective of director Jean-Luc Godard, expressed in messianic terms as the young Frenchman who saved the turgid movie industry and inspired a new generation of filmmakers. For star Jean Seberg it provided partial redemption and a sharp plunge into a harsh reality.

Where she had been at the mercy of Otto Preminger in her previous two films, Saint Joan (1957) and Bonjour Tristesse (1958), and for all that she loathed aspects of that experience, she was still in the Hollywood system, where a whole phalanx of people attended to your needs. Preminger had had enough of the woman he believed he could turn into a star. Both movies had flopped, her acting talent questioned.

It’s generally understood that Preminger dumped her and sold her contract to Columbia. But the antipathy went both ways. Her husband, lawyer Francois Moreuil, approached Preminger to negotiate a release from her contract. She might have wished just to be set free for nothing but given Preminger’s investment, not just salary when she wasn’t working but all the build-up that went into turning an unknown talent into a star, that was never on the cards. So, he passed her on to Columbia, to whom he was contracted, and which would take her on as a favor.

But Columbia had little idea what to do with her either. As far as that studio was concerned she was far from the finished article, a long way away from stardom. The best she could hope for was a supporting role in a prestigious production, rebuilding her career under a more sympathetic director. That appeared the most likely outcome when her name was linked to a supporting part in Carol Reed’s Our Man in Havana (1959) starring Oscar-winning Alec Guinness and Maureen O’Hara. But she wasn’t even auditioned.

When Columbia finally found something for her to do it was in the low-budget British-made The Mouse That Roared (1959), leading lady to Peter Sellers, his first as star. After that though, as far as Columbia was concerned, it would be a tumble down the credits in the American Let No Man Write My Epitaph (1960) starring Burl Ives. The British film set had none of the highwire tension of a Preminger film. She was taken acting lessons which restored some of her confidence after the mauling she had taken from Preminger.

As luck would have it, while awaiting a summons from Columbia, she was ensconced in Paris in a romantic idyll with Moreuil, who had vague notions of turning to film direction and had therefore made the acquaintance of the Cahiers du Cinema gang of critics who harbored the same dream. That brought him into contact with Godard, who was, much to her surprise since her performances had generally been lambasted, a big fan.

She was impressed by his short Charlotte et son Jules starring former boxer Jean-Paul Belmondo. Her role in his debut feature, said Godard, was based on the character she had essayed in Bonjour Tristesse. “I could have taken the last shot of Preminger’s film and dissolved to a title ‘Three Years Later’,” he explained. Still, even though there was nothing on the horizon from Columbia, she hesitated.

Godard was an unknown quantity, there was no script, and making a movie outside the Hollywood comfort zone would be a trial, a miniscule budget – $90,000 – scarcely a fortieth of that of a Preminger picture – would ensure no retinue of assistants. She would be largely on her own. Tippi Hedren had felt the same cold shock when she maneuvred herself out of her Hitchcock contract and discovered that rather than being waited on hand-and-foot by the industry’s best costume designers she had to wear her own clothes for her first job, in television.

Financially, Godard was in bad shape. Without a name – Belmondo scarcely counted – the film would be abandoned. In the absence of anything else, she signed up. But first she needed Columbia’s approval. The studio was offered $12,000 for her services and half the worldwide rights but when they stalled her husband pulled a fast one, announcing that since he was rich (untrue) Seberg need never work again and threatening that she would simply retire. Columbia took the money and ignored the rights, which cost them several million dollars.

Seberg was paid $15,000 – around $5,000 a week (the shoot lasted 23 days) – a hefty sum for an ingenue if you took that as a potentially weekly rate ($250,000 a year), but even if that was all she earned it was still six times more than the average U.S. employee was paid in a year. That was still an improvement on the $250 ($13,000 per annum) paid by Preminger in 1957.

But there was a dramatic switch in power politics. With Preminger, she kowtowed, doing what she was told, failing to stand up to the director. On Breathless, she had no trouble expressing her views and wielding her power. She walked off the set on the first day of shooting after a disagreement with Godard. That was resolved by the director chasing after her. A couple of days later she was ready to quit.

And she argued vehemently against his interpretation of her character’s actions in the final scene. Godard wanted Patricia (Seberg) to steal the wallet of Michel (Belmondo) as he lay dying. She refused to do it on the grounds that it was not in character, but later explained that it was more personal, she did not want to play a thief on screen. She had reservations about taking off her clothes for the sex scene, resolved by the couple being hidden under the bedsheets and Seberg remaining full clothed. And if she fancied a day off – a considerable indulgence on a film on so tight a deadline – she took one. Godard saved face by allowing everyone a day off.

Cameraman Raoul Coutard observed, “She didn‘t let herself be pushed around but she did cooperate.” And without the normal armada of backroom staff attending to make-up and ensuring she looked her best in every scene, Coutard fell back on the fact that she was imply photogenic and did not require the full Hollywood treatment to look her best.

Perhaps the guerrilla style of movie making appealed. Instead of rehearsals with a script set in stone and lines learned weeks in advance, Godard made up the film as he went along, turning up in the morning with a students’ notebook filled with ideas and dialogue. At times there was no written script, Godard speaking lines and the actors repeating them.

Although at one stage after a spat he threatened to deny her a close-up, in reality budget restrictions – a close-up would require filming a scene several times over – put paid to most of those. The scene in the car where the camera focuses on her an example of taking clever advantage of circumstance as the sequence, in its daring, appealed to the avant-garde.

But Godard did take the trouble to ensure that Patricia was true to her origins. As an American, her character should not speak fluent French, but make mistakes here and there, especially with gender. “It became much more colloquial and much more foreign in a way,” she said.

And much as she hated the way Preminger had imposed his ideas so strictly upon her, when left to her own devices, thanks to Godard’s improvisational style, she was at a loss. “She was very disabled because there wasn’t a script,” explained Francois. When she asked Godard for directions he would tell her to do what she wanted. Eventually, assuming the film was a mistake and would flop, she decided to “sit back and have fun.”

Although under time pressure, that was a less frightening experience than having a hundred pairs of eyes fixed on her as she spoke lines according to the Preminger dictat. But she had to come to terms with just how far down the production ladder she had fallen, a café toilet doubling as a make-up room, her wardrobe purchased from a discount store.

Godard’s inventiveness knew little bounds. For the final tracking shot, the director was pushed along in a rented wheelchair. The shot of the Champs-Elysess came from employing a postal cart. Filming began on August 29, 1959 and most of the film was shot consecutively.

Innovations included extensive use of the jump cut, hand-held camera and low lighting. Although deemed an arthouse movie by the rest of the world, Breathless opened at a commercial chain of cinemas in Paris where it was an instant hit, selling a quarter of a million tickets in its first four weeks.

While Godard and Belmondo basked in a critical and commercial triumph, for Seberg it was only part-redemption. Except at the end of the decade she was never the leading lady in big Hollywood productions, but she became an acknowledged star of French cinema, a couple of years later the third-highest paid actress in France, earning $1,750 a week ($91,000 a year).

SOURCE: Garry McGee, Jean Seberg: Breathless, Her True Story (2018), pp60-68.

Breathless / A Bout de Souffle (1960) ****

I’m conscious of puncturing a sacred arthouse cow. While applauding the cinematic bravura of Jean-Luc Godard’s debut feature that launched the French New Wave, what are we to make of a leading man who is a sexist pig? Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) refers to women repeatedly as “dogs”, complains about their driving skills, accuses them of cowardice, steals from them, forbids them to see other men, chases after them in the street to lift their dresses, constantly gropes his sometime girlfriend Patricia (Jean Seberg), and boasts of other sexual conquests.

While attempting to ape hero Humphrey Bogart, he hasn’t a shred of that star’s romantic inclination, all his energy directed towards getting sex from the nearest available female with nary a notion of love. He’s not just hard-boiled, he’s hard work, as close to the despicable males of Guide for a Married Man (1967) as you could get.

I’m no proponent of woke, but I guess audiences these days who happily accept him as thief and murderer will draw the line at his attitude to women. I found myself squirming at times at being asked to swallow this amoral character in what was otherwise a homage to the Hollywood B-picture. And it says a lot about the directorial skills that he ends up with any audience sympathy at all. And part of that certainly comes from his proximity to the more existential-minded arty Patricia. Not for the first time are we asked to re-examine our instinctive reaction to a charming thug because a sympathetic woman in either loving him or appearing to offer him understanding provides a conduit between audience and character, asking us to see him from her less judgemental perspective, no matter how misguided that might be.

You can see the connection between the Cecile of Bonjour Tristesse (1958) and Patricia here but it’s hardly as clear-cut as Godard suggests. Patricia has qualms not just a nice comfort blanket of guilt. She’s not, as Michel wishes, some kind of sidekick or accomplice. He fails to unlock her criminal tendency as Clyde would later in the decade with Bonnie in Arthur Penn’s gangster picture. But, just as Cecile rids herself of a rival in Bonjour Tristesse, Patricia finds it relatively straightforward to turn in to the police a man for whom she has no feelings and who would prove, without the parachute of love, an irritation in her life.

Certainly, Michel is the quintessential bad guy but with entitlement issues. He wants it all, or nothing. If Santa came knocking, top of his wish list would be death. He’s a dab hand at stealing cars, can whack anybody over the head, and not above rifling through a girlfriend’s purse. But, essentially, he’s the delinquent who never grew up and Patricia is one of the many saps he’ll try to con throughout his life.

But, in fact, if you were making this today, the angle would be different. It would be the vengeful woman, as epitomized by Jenna Coleman in television mini-series Wilderness, relishing the prospect of being tagged a “bunny boiler” or predatory wolf. Much as Patricia is happy to spend some time with Michel while working out her feelings towards him, given that he is the father of her unborn child, she is far from the soft touch he imagines, betrayal in her genes.

I’m guessing budget issues contributed to much of the cinematic bravura. It’s much cheaper to eliminate close-ups, and to film outdoors where light is less of an issue than indoors, and where nobody’s bothering to seek civic approval to shoot. So, there’s certainly a freshness, a boldness, the kick in the pants that stuffy Hollywood with its insistence on certain procedures required.

The camera is restless, not just in the tracking shots (especially the famous final one), but in bobbing around, as if questioning just what was the Hollywood obsession with nailing everything down, keeping it fixed, as if the camera was merely a tool rather than a means of directorial expression. And Godard does bring to exceptional life characters who would otherwise be passersby, dreamers who are more likely to fail than succeed, who try to provide themselves with codes as if that will assuage inner doubt.

Except for her self-preservation instincts and urge for independence, there’s every chance that Patricia would end up the dissatisfied housewife, especially with baby in tow. Michel is a dumb criminal, not the heist genius of so many other movies. Cocking a snook at authority might be the only true freedom he ever attains.

I’m not sure this was part of Godard’s thinking, but it’s plain to me that Michel’s biggest problem is crossing over into the real world. The minute he comes up against a woman who lives an ordinary life, albeit with elevated expectation, he comes a cropper because she doesn’t subscribe to his limited world-view. It’s not exactly a clash of cultures, because, in reality, she’s every bit as vicious as him. If she loved him, it might be a different story. But as with Jenna Coleman in Wilderness, fail to safeguard that love and it’s curtains.

Without doubt a singular earthquake of cinematic proportions, freeing up a generation to filmmakers to challenge the hierarchy, but requiring reassessment in view of its dubious attitude to women.

Behind the Scenes: “Bonjour Tristesse” (1958)

Otto Preminger was initially beaten to the punch, rights to Francoise Sagan’s 1954 bestseller already sold to Ray Ventura, forcing the director to ante up $150,000 a year later to retrieve them. The director started working on the script with S.N. Behrman (Quo Vadis, 1951) but, dissatisfied with the result, turned to Arthur Laurents (Rope, 1948), who was permitted to complete his screenplay without any interference.

Shooting began in July 1957 in Paris and locations included Maxim’s and jazz club La Hachette where Preminger filmed Juliette Greco singing the title song. The main locale, a villa in Le Lavandou in the South of France, was rented from French publisher Pierre Lazareff.

By casting Deborah Kerr (The Night of the Iguana, 1964) and David Niven, who had starred in The Moon Is Blue (1953) as principals, it was officially turned into a British production, providing access to Eady Levy monies, although it was shot with a French crew who proved largely hostile to the director’s personality and went on strike on the second day. Due to a scheduling misunderstanding, Niven and Preminger got off on the wrong foot.

But the chief victim of the director’s ire was Jean Seberg, star of his previous effort – and substantial flop – Saint Joan (1957). While not entirely happy with the neophyte’s performance in her debut, he decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. “I refused to believe that I was so wrong and the critics so right, that this girl was so completely devoid of talent,” he complained, offering her a second chance. “He showed a faith in me nobody expected him to show,” commented a grateful (at the time) Seberg.

But Preminger soon regretted his decision. “I don’t like the way you talk, walk or dress,” he told her. Unable to get a better performance from her after four or five takes he would just give up. At one point, she was drenched with buckets of water for a scene where she was emerging from the sea. However, that scene only took seven takes, something of a triumph for Seberg. And it’s worth noting that seven takes was nothing for Preminger if he really wanted to make an actor suffer.

If you think the movie takes a very melodramatic turn, the screenplay toned down much of the book’s melodrama and especially its more serious overtones. Preminger stuck to the script. He invented camera movement and blocking during the day’s rehearsals rather than arriving at the studio with fixed ideas. To allow the camera to move more freely, the floor of the set was treated with gelatin. He relied on only a few takes, expecting the actors to deliver what he wanted, so in some respects it was no surprise he reacted badly when Seberg failed to follow his instructions, although as a last resort he knew he could always cut to another actor.

Niven and Kerr both braced the director about his treatment of Seberg, telling him “to lay off this girl, because she’s had it, and if you continue, we don’t want to keep working. ”

The movie was completed at Shepperton Studios in England. The last shot of the film took an entire day to shoot, Cecile removing her makeup with cold cream in front of the mirror and tears form. Preminger wanted “the face to remain a child’s face.” Two days of flashback shoots had to be re-done as they had by mistake been processed in color rather than black-and-white

Preminger should have been a happy man. He was falling in love with costume coordinator Hope Bryce, a model who had worked with Givenchy, and in due course she became his third wife. Ditto, Seberg, who had fallen for lawyer and nobleman Count Francois Moreuil – a relationship that also ended in marriage – and as a result of the romance grew more relaxed on the set and “didn’t let Preminger’s demands bother her.”

Opinions differ regarding Seberg. Arthur Laurents deemed her “a shrewd cookie, I don’t care what they say about her.” Deborah Kerr averred: “I think any other woman would have collapsed in tears or walked out, but she took calmly all the berating and achieved a very interesting and true Sagan-type heroine.” Co-star Mylene Demongeot said, “For a while she had everything in her hands to have a successful career.” From Seberg’s perspective she viewed Preminger as a father figure, with the attendant hate that often comes with that.

Demongeot, however, fought fire with fire, calmly warning the director he would get a heart attack if he kept on yelling at her. Standing up to him and occasionally dissolving into fits of laughter at his instructions kept him at bay. She saw a different side of the director, although tagging him as “ a nasty man,” she also recalled him as “a very funny, intelligent man…and he could even be charming…outside of work.” Seberg and Demongeot had become friends after the American had stayed with the French actress and her husband in order to learn the lines of French required for her role.

After filming ended, Preminger’s current wife Mary Gardner sued for divorce and Twentieth Century Fox threatened to take him to court for repayment of $60,000 for a film bever made. Preminger sold Seberg’s contract to Columbia. “He used me like a Kleenex and threw me away,” said Seberg. But, interestingly, it was only after that relationship ended that she took acting lessons.

In truth Seberg’s Hollywood career never recovered although she enjoyed a brief mainstream revival a decade later through Paint Your Wagon (1969) and Airport (1970). Hollywood has its revenge on Preminger. After the failure of Skidoo (1968), Paramount chief Charles Bluhdorn exacted “a very slow death” on the director.

NOTE: There’s an update to this called Part Two which is published on Oct 19, 2023. When I did this original article I didn’t have my normal online access which permits me to check through trade magazines. Because I received a query about box office I decided, once the online issue had been cleared up, to check that issue and in the process I uncovered so much fascinating information I took a second stab at it.

SOURCES: Chris Fujiwara, The World and Its Double, The Life and Works of Otto Preminger (Faber and Faber, 2008) pp210-217; Eric Braun, Deborah Kerr ( W.H. Allen , 1977) pp164-165; Garry McGee, Jean Seberg, Breathless, Her True Story, (2017) pp42-48.

Bonjour Tristesse (1958)*** – Seen at the Cinema at the Bradford Widescreen Weekend

You might be forgiven for wondering why Otto Preminger, a past master at film noir, did not simply adapt the source novel by Francoise Sagan by tilting the material in that direction. After all, Preminger had helped create the genre with Laura (1944) and followed up with noir trilogy Whirlpool (1950), Where the Sidewalk Ends (1951) and Angel Face (1952).

The purported saving grace of the Sagan novel is the main character’s guilt at the disaster she triggers, although, from another perspective that could be viewed as author cunning, employing acceptance of culpability to render her more sympathetic. In other words, she gets away with it, and that’s a completely different twist.

Whereas, in another world, she would be doing jail time or at least undergoing psychiatric care, her action appears to make her even more independent, discarding men at whim, turning into the character whom Jean-Luc Godard would use as the inspiration for Breathless (1960).

The tale is told in flashback, allowing a peppering of grief into what otherwise would be a straightforward story of spoiled little rich girl Cecile (Jean Seberg) plotting to rid herself of interloper Anne (Deborah Kerr) who has disrupted the perfect life she shares with doting father Raymond (David Niven).

In some respects it applies a coming-of-age template to all the main characters, adults as well as young required to adjust to the consequences of love and alter their behavior. It’s not just the teenage Cecile who’s spoiled – nothing to do but laze in the sun, swim in the sea and attend parties and night clubs – but Raymond, a charming philanderer/perfect cad, new girlfriend on tap, the beauty of current one, Elsa (Mylene Demongeot), undercut by her propensity to blister under the sun and despite her overall shallowness a mathematical whiz in the casino, a skill which would probably allow her to dispense with her apparent dependence on an older rich lover.

Into this cosy set-up arrives, by an accident of timing, old flame Anne, a successful couturier, whose mental fragility is disguised by an outwardly strong character. Her presence is accepted until Elsa is sent packing and Raymond proposes marriage. Anne makes the fatal mistake of overdoing the maternal, seeking to rein in Cecile, instructing her to chuck her boyfriend Philippe (Geoffrey Horne) and spend her time studying. It says a lot about Anne’s character that she couldn’t have more seriously miscalculated not just Cecile’s character but that of Philippe, who, intending to become a lawyer, seems a sensible choice for a boyfriend.

So, Cecile hatches a plan to bring Elsa back into Raymond’s orbit knowing that fidelity is scarcely his strong suit. Oddly enough, this kind of plotting, especially given the South of France atmosphere, would play better as a standard rom-com ploy, daughter trying to push father in the direction of preferred lover.

Instead, it exposes the cracks in Anne’s psyche and drives her to suicide. But since no one is aware, and Elsa too dumb ostensibly to recognize the part she plays, of the machinations, Cecile gets off scot-free, and in reality using the guilt to make her appear more sympathetic. This probably worked better in the Sagan novel which, with a first-person narrative, allows the author to form the other characters in a manner that makes Cecile’s actions more understandable or at least acceptable, nudging the reader towards sympathy rather than repulsion.

Whatever way the story is pitched, it doesn’t really work. All the characters, save Elsa, are exposed as inherently fragile, unable to accept change and/or reality. The suicide seems a mundane narrative ploy. Raymond is never presented as the love of Anne’s life and her death seems an incredible over-reaction, intended to give the story a more dramatic climax.

However, the characters are all well-drawn and the vivacity of the French lifestyle brings the picture to life, but hardly suited to Preminger who, by this stage, had a tendency to look for a bigger issue to chew over.

Jean Seberg (Moment to Moment, 1966) never managed a successful Hollywood career but this film was a big hit with emerging French filmmakers, and she was a far bigger box office attraction in France. The iconic short haircut and Givenchy attire seemed to present her as a latter-day Audrey Hepburn, but it was her screen independence that appealed more. Deborah Kerr (Prudence and the Pill, 1968), portraying a complex character, would be the pick of the actors except David Niven (Prudence and the Pill) exerts effortless charm and in terms of screen splash you could scarcely fault the effervescent Mylene Demongeot (The Singer not the Song, 1961).

Preminger, as ever, toys with convention. It’s the present day that’s shot in black-and-white rather than the past. Just as he rid John Wayne of his trick of breaking sentences in two in In Harm’s Way (1965), here Deborah Kerr is revealed without make-up, her freckled face providing her with an innocence. He had some fun with the house servants, apt to glug champagne, literally, behind their employer’s back. Arthur Laurents (Rope, 1948) wrote the screenplay.

Not quite sure how it ended up at the Bradford Widescreen Weekend since although it is in Cinemascope it was not one of that process’s more outstanding champions. Nor why it was introduced as Deborah Kerr’s movie when as far as the public was concerned the star was Jean Seberg. Nor even why Kerr was deemed a “Queen of Scope” since you could apply that term to virtually every female star who appeared in the 1950s in Cinemascope (20^th Century Fox), VistaVision (Paramount) or Panavision (MGM).

If this were made now, there would be a scene at the end where Cecile tips the wink to the audience and enjoys rather than feels guilty about her clever ploy.

The Young Girls of Rocheforte / Les Damoiselles de Rochefort (1967) **** – Seen at the Cinema at Bradford Widescreen Weekend

In effervescence and color palette a close cousin to Barbie (2023) with the bonus of being able to call on one of Hollywood’s greatest hoofers, Gene Kelly, in a surprise cameo. He swoops and sways like he was Singin’ in the Sun. And he’s just the icing on the cake in this exuberant throwback to 1950s Cinemascope but with the sensibility of a 1940s musical in which dreams are delivered after a few minor setbacks.

Throw in a long-lost love, an affair that literally went south, an artist who has painted his ideal woman, a couple of literal-minded running French jokes – a woman called Madame Dame and a young sailor whose departure is immi-Nantes – and given the overall light-hearted treatment you would have to treat the presence of a sadistic murderer as being in the comedy vein.

Twins blonde Delphine (Catherine Deneuve) and brunette Solange (Francoise Dorleac) make a living running a music class. Delphine dreams of meeting the ideal man, having already rejected gallery owner Guillaume (Jacques Riberolles) and not too keen on itinerant carney (George Chakiris), while Solange wants a career as a composer, befriending music shop owner Simon (Michel Piccoli) who can put her in touch with old buddy and now renowned pianist Andy (Gene Kelly).

As you might expect the narrative is driven by misunderstandings and meetings choreographed by the minute to fail. This is the kind of film where an actor playing the role of a piano player is not expected to learn to play the piano, just stare into space as though channeling an internal muse or glancing at the sheet music.

There are songs by the dozen – possibly too many (27 singing or dancing sequences), more like a continuous ballet than a traditional musical – but none we’re still humming today, not like tunes from West Side Story (1961), The Sound of Music (1968) or Funny Girl (1968) – though “The Twins Song” probably comes closest. That’s not to put down Michel Legrand’s inventive score, but perhaps to suggest a cultural/language divide. Outside of Danielle Darrieux (Loss of Innocence / The Greengage Summer, 1961) , the singing voices were dubbed, even that of Gene Kelly who lacked the range for the material.

And probably you don’t need to worry about the quality of individual songs as you’ll be swept along by Jacques Demy’s infectious direction. Most of the dancing style reflects West Side Story but with a lighter edge. And it takes little or nothing for characters to burst into song or dance, sometimes that activity going on spontaneously in the background of another scene.

Set in the real seaside town of Rochefort in France and making use of genuine locations, the action kicks off on an unique type of bridge as the carnival comes to town. While not strictly a feminist endeavour, men are mostly put in their place, overtures rejected, marriage offers turned down and bad employers shown the door.

The appearance of Gene Kelly, who hadn’t worn his dancing shoes in more than a decade, gives this an enormous fillip as his classic style shows the others just how it’s done. But it’s the lightness of touch, as well as being able to plumb a well of emotion, that gives this film its grounding, Deneuve and Dorleac as well as Darrieux carrying the movie. George Chakiris (Diamond Head, 1962) looks more at home here than in any film other than West Side Story.

Jacques Demy and Michel Legrand had teamed up previously for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg / Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964). Catherine Deneuve (Mayerling, 1969) and Francoise Dorleac (Genghis Khan, 1965) were sisters. Tragically, Dorleac was killed in a road accident prior to the film opening.

But the whole enterprise is so effortless and appealing you can’t help being drawn in.