Cherchez la femme, as they say in French. Here, because everyone is doubling up (or doubling down, I never get that right, and it is of course a sequel), the narrative has our heroes (and these being four musketeers if you include D’Artagnan and not three) chasing all over France in pursuit of two women.
If you recall from episode one (and it doesn’t matter if you don’t because this starts with a neat re-cap), D’Artagnan’s (Francois Civil) girlfriend Constance (Lyna Khoudri) has been abducted after overhearing details of a plot to kill King Louis XIII (Louis Garrel), so he’s trying to find her. Meanwhile, everyone’s after Milady (Eva Green), the double-crosser’s double-crosser. In fact, to complicate matters, the movie begins with her being rescued by D’Artagnan.
As it turns out, that’s one of the easiest complications because unless you’ve got a PhD in French history, you won’t have a clue what’s going on, what with imminent English invasion, traitors inside the palace, eternal bad guy Cardinal Richelieu (Eric Ruf) and the French laying siege to their own port of La Rochelle. I’m guessing, because it’s not exactly plain, that the background is Catholic vs Protestant enmity.
I’d forgotten of course that our heroes are called musketeers for a reason and it’s not because they are swashbucklers, though they are pretty nifty with the sword, but the name indicates a certain dexterity with muskets. So, there’s rather a lot more guns being fired and buckles being swashed.
The 1932 version.
And you could be forgiven for thinking this is some kind of riposte to Downton Abbey because everywhere our heroes go there is sure to be some fabulous chateau or castle and all kinds of pomp and circumstance. It’s a tad overladen with characters and not all stand out enough. D’Artagnan doesn’t quite command the screen and of other trio it’s lusty Porthos (Pio Marmai) who steals the show, always ready with a chat-up line or falling down unconscious from alcoholic intake.
Milady is by the far the most interesting character, tying all the males in knots, escaping every type of peril, dodging the hangman’s noose and an inferno and setting up Part III with a clever climax. Although the period wasn’t rife with feminism, she is the poster girl, not just adept with any weapon (including teeth), but detailing what it’s like to be eternally molested by men.
Constance, on the other hand, is as dumb as they come. The scene that allows D’Artagnan to wallow in pathos, you can’t help howling with laughter because the stupid girl has brought on herself a pitiless fate.
Sets quite a pace, but sometimes it’s hard to keep up with the politics and who is romancing who, and why someone who has been helpful in the past now has to be bumped off.
I hope this has earned its big budget back in France because I doubt if it will do well anywhere else.
Feels like director Martin Bourboulon (Eiffel, 2021) has bitten off more than anybody can chew.
Godzilla Minus One
Not just a remake but, as it turns out, a prequel. It’s nipped in early, ahead of the next vehicle in the recycle business Kong vs Godzilla due out next year.
In this Japanese version, made by Toho Studios which was responsible for the 1954 original, the timeline is 1945-1947. It kicks off at the end of World War Two with cowardly Japanese kamikaze pilot Skikishima (Ryonusuke Kamiki) unable to pull the trigger as the monster emerges from the depths. Fast forward to U.S. nuclear tests on the Bikini Atholl, and the creature now mutates with devastating impact on the mainland.
By this point, Skikishima has acquired an orphaned baby and takes on a job on a minesweeper (his trigger finger now put to good use) destroying the thousands of mines left behind after the war so he’s in the front line when the monster re-emerges with an atomic heat-ray in its arsenal, never find those stomping feet and destructive tail.
There’s some clever scientific ruses to destroy Godzilla involving Freon tanks (whatever they are) and some jiggery-pokery to lower the water’s buoyancy (what now?) but basically as you might expect it’s mostly our favorite monster decimating cities and taking on every warship and airplane that the country can throw at it.
It’s pretty good fun but you might find it hard to sympathize with a kamikaze pilot.
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).
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.
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.
A post-WW2 operation to save a handful of Japanese adrift at sea in a storm is endangered when three members of the U.S. Air Force Air Rescue Service confront conflicts from their past. Despite tense rescue action, this is basically a three-hander about guilt and how men deal – or fail to deal – with emotions. Extended flashbacks illuminate the tangled relationships between Sgt Takashima (Yul Brynner), Lt Col Stevenson (Richard Widmark) and Second Lieut Gregg (George Chakiris). Unusually, for the period, tough guys actually emote.
So really it’s like one of those portmanteau films that are occasionally popular – like Trio (1950) made up of Somerset Maugham short stories or similar to something like the Oscar-winning Crash (2004) where characters interconnect after an accident. While each of the episodes stands up in its own right, the thrust of the narrative revolves around actions taken in the past having a direct bearing on the present situation.
Gregg is haunted by causing an avalanche after flying his helicopter too close to a mountain and, as a result, by having to leave behind many of the victims, due to restricted capacity on board, and now he is terrified of flying solo. As a consequence Stevenson has no faith in abilities as a pilot.
Stevenson also has an abiding hatred of Japanese – colleague Takashima of Japanese ancestry also bears his wrath – because his ill wife Caroline (Shirley Knight) and child died in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp because medical supplies were reserved only for the Japanese. Faced with rescuing Japanese, he is enraged.
For his part, Takashima, a paratrooper during the war, inadvertently caused the death of his Algerian girlfriend Leila (Daniele Gaubert). It’s not so much an examination of tough guys under pressure as about their inability to deal with the consequences of action. There’s certainly a sense that the only way men like these have of dealing with trauma is to throw themselves into dangerous action.
Yul Brynner (The Double Man, 1967) gives a more thoughtful performance than you might expect while Richard Widmark (The Secret Ways, 1961), himself dabbling in production elsewhere, was good value. Goerge Chakiris (The Young Girls of Rochefort, 1967) was a weaker link. The presence of Suzy Parker (Circle of Deception, 1960) and especially Daniele Gaubert (The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl, 1968) strengthen the film.
Unusually, at a time when product was in short supply and for a film boasting a strong cast, the picture was shelved for two years after completion. Presumably explained by the demise of Harold Hecht’s production company after he split with Burt Lancaster. Michael Anderson (The Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968) directed from a screenplay by Waldo Salt (Midnight Cowboy, 1969) based on the novel by Elliot Arnold (Kings of the Sun, 1963).
The title’s a bit of a misnomer, suggesting someone is trying to escape from Ashiya when, in fact, that is just the name of the air base where the rescue team are located.
Critics complained it was neither one thing nor the other, but in fact I found it a perfectly satisfactory combination of action and drama, especially as it dealt with rarely-recognized male emotions.
Although a truly innocent movie about young love, wrapped up in a sunken treasure scenario, the marketeers then and now could not resist trying to inject elements of sexuality, the poster for the original movie highlighting what would be Hayley Mills’ second screen kiss (following a smacker from Peter McEnery in The Moon-Spinners the year before), the poster for the DVD sticking the star in a bikini that she does not wear in the film.
The film was based on the 1921 novel Satan: A Romance of the Bahamas (filmed as Satan’s Sister in 1925 with Betty Balfour) by Henry de Vere Stacpoole, who had previously dallied with young love in The Blue Lagoon. Despite the title, there was a complete absence of the demonic. In the book, she is sailing with her brother. That character was eliminated in favour of a father.
The 1960s teen movie that could as easily morph into angst (Splendor in the Grass, 1961), blackmail (Kitten with a Whip, 1964) or madness (Lilith, 1964) was generally more at home with innocence. The beach party movies and series like Gidget rarely involved more than a stolen kiss, the characters all clearly virgins, and certainly did not go down the brazen sexuality route that would mark the second half of the decade.
Hayley Mills is on charming form as tomboy Spring Tyler (hence the title) sailing the Caribbean as mate to her conman father Tommy (played by her real-life father John Mills). Their idyllic life is heading for the rocks since the father didn’t “figure on the little girl growing up.” With one eye on providing a suitor for his daughter, the skipper takes on board a Harvard Law School graduate William (James MacArthur) ostensibly to give him experience of fishing.
True love takes its time since the girl has no intention of growing up and prefers a life of independence. Initially, they are sparring partners – she mocks the fact that he wears pyjamas. But once the story kicks off, they find they have more in common.
The sunken treasure element, while slim, is enlivened by some over-the-top acting by Jose (Lionel Jeffries) and Judd (Harry Andrews). The three leads are actually quite good, John Mills (Tunes of Glory, 1960) totally convincing as a effectively a spiv on the high seas with Hayley Mills (The Family Way, 1966) as the independent woman (“I’m me so don’t expect anything else”) and the confident sailor becoming entangled in unexpected emotions.
Surprisingly, James MacArthur, also a graduate from the Disney acting school, though a decade older than Hayley Mills, shows unexpected subtlety, and this would be a springboard to more demanding roles in cold war thriller The Bedford Incident (1965) and WW2 epic Battle of the Bulge (1965). Cocky and rich, he is quickly brought down earth when she proves a faster swimmer and plays tricks on him. But he soon proves his worth.
Director Richard Thorpe’s career was winding down after four decades in the business and this was a far cry from MGM spectaculars Ivanhoe (1952) and Knights of the Round Table (1953) and even Jailhouse Rock (1957) but he keeps a tight rein on the narrative, makes good use of the scenery (Spain doubling for the Caribbean) and walks the delicate line of allowing the adolescents to explore their feelings with tipping over into anything more overt.
He was a better director than the material deserved, but then so was writer James Lee Barrett who the same year would receive screen credit for The Greatest Story Ever Told and western Shenandoah. However, their involvement made it an accomplished little picture and gave audiences a taste of what Hayley Mills could do in a film that did not tether her to child star mode.
The New York Times second-string reviewer Howard Thompson, in tagging the star “this delectable miss, now all of 18” opined (review, June 17, 1965) that the “two young people are the most winning advertisement for young love in a long time.”
The last swashbuckler to cut a genuine dash was The Crimson Pirate (1952) with an athletic Burt Lancaster romancing Virginia Mayo in a big-budget Hollywood spectacular. The chance of Hollywood ponying up for further offerings of this caliber was remote once television began to cut the swashbuckler genre down to small-screen size. Britain’s ITV network churned out series based on Sir Lancelot, William Tell and The Count of Monte Cristo and 30-minute episodes (143 in all) of The Adventures of Robin Hood. So when Hammer decided to rework the series as Sword of Sherwood Forest their first port-of-call was series star Richard Greene.
And to encourage television viewers to follow the adventures of their hero on the big screen, Hammer sensibly dumped the small screen’s black-and-white photography in favour of widescreen color and then lit up the canvas at the outset with aerial tracking shots of the glorious bucolic greenery of the English countryside. Further temptation for staid television viewers came in the form of Maid Marian (Sarah Branch) bathing naked in a lake. Robin Hood is soon hooked.
Two main plots run side-by-side. The first is obvious. The Sheriff of Nottingham (Peter Cushing) is quietly defrauding people through legal means. The second takes a while to come to fruition. Robin Hood is hired by for his archery skills by the Earl of Newark (Richard Pasco) – he shoots a pumpkin through a spinning wheel, a moving bell and a bullseye through a slit – before it becomes apparent he is being recruited as an assassin. Oliver Reed and Derren Nesbitt put in uncredited appearances and the usual suspects are played by Niall MacGinnis (as Friar Tuck) and Nigel Green (as Little John).
There is sufficient swordfighting to satisfy. Director Terence Fisher (The Gorgon, 1964), more at home with the Hammer horror portfolio, demonstrates a facility with action. Richard Greene (The Blood of Fu Manchu, 1968) makes a breezy hero and Peter Cushing (The Gorgon) resists the tmeptation to camp it up. Screenplay honors went to Alan Hackney (You Must Be Joking! 1965).
Six years on from Sword of Sherwood Forest, the challenge of reviving a moribund genre proved too much for A Challenge for Robin Hood but this second Hammer swashbuckler is a valiant and enjoyable attempt. More in the way of an origin story, this explains how a nobleman turned into an outlaw and how the merry band was formed. For in this tale Robin Hood (Barry Ingham) is a Norman nobleman framed for murder, Will Scarlet (Douglas Mitchell) and Little John (Leon Greene) are castle servants – also Normans – while Maid Marian (Gay Hamilton) is in disguise. Some liberties are taken with the traditional version – there is no fight with Little John, instead, as noted above, they are already acquainted.
There are a couple of excellent set pieces and although the swordfights are not in the athletic league of Errol Flynn they are more inventive than the previous Hammer outing and there is enough derring-do to keep the plot ticking along. Robin’s cousin Roger de Courtenay (Peter Blythe) is the prime villain this time round, the sheriff (John Arnatt), although involved up to the hilt at the end, content to offer acerbic comment from the sidelines.
When Robin and Friar Tuck escape the castle by jumping into the moat, Will Scarlet is caught and later used as bait. Meanwhile Robin’s archery prowess and leadership skills have impressed the Saxon outlaws hiding in the forest and he takes over as their head. But there are clever ruses, jousting, Robin disguised as a masked monk, torture, and a pie fight.
Director C. M. Pennington-Richards had some swashbuckling form having helmed several episodes of The Buccaneers and Ivanhoe television series but his big screen experience was limited to routine films like Ladies Who Do (1963) with Peggy Mount. This was a departure for scriptwriter Peter Bryan, more used to churning out horror films like The Brides of Dracula (1960) and The Plague of the Zombies (1966), and he has invested the picture with more wittier lines and humorous situations than you might expect.
It’s certainly an escapist holiday treat and unless compared to the likes of the Pirates of the Caribbean or the classic Errol Flynn adventure it stands up very well on its own.
Doomed for half a century to be seen as Saturday television matinee material and then purportedly put into the shade by the Zack Snyder’s stylish 300 (2006), The 300 Spartans is in sore need of re-evaluation. Lacking the big budget of an El Cid (1961) or Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and released during an era when historical drama – Barabbas (1961), The Mongols (1961), Sword of the Conqueror (1961), The Trojan Horse (1961), and The Tartars (1961) – was at a peak, this is a stripped-down version of the famous Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. and none the worse for it.
Clever camerawork suggests thousands of warriors involved and there is little sign of scrimping the wardrobe department, and there is more than enough action. But this is a surprising literate picture, with great lines for cynical politicians as much as for warriors and peasants. Themistocles (Ralph Richardson) comments: “Some day, I may enter religion myself. It’s better than politics. With the gods behind you, you can be more irresponsible.”
Told that the invading Persian army has “arrows that will blot out the sun,” Spartan King Leonides (Richard Egan) retorts, “then we will fight in the shade.” And there’s sexist banter typical of the period between a peasant couple: wife – “goats have more brains than men”; husband – “who can understand the ways of the gods, they create lovely girls and then turn them into wives.”
Quite how Leonides ends up fighting the massive army on its own is down to a mixture of politics and religion. Oracles foretell doom. The various Greek states refuse to join together, although Athens lends Sparta its fleet (“Athens’ wooden wall”). Even Sparta officially refuses to participate on the grounds that battle would interrupt a major religious festival. Leonides’ “army” of 300 men is comprised of his bodyguard.
A romantic subplot involving a young couple results in catastrophe. Just how ruthless is the opposition is shown when Persian king Xerxes (David Farrar) slaughters all his soldiers’ wives to make the men more determined to get to Greece where doubtless they will enslave the female population. When his archers fire, he doesn’t care if the arrows hit his own men.
What marks out the best historical action pictures is the intelligence behind the battle. Strategy is key. The first weapon, of course, surprise, so the Spartans sneak into the Persian camp from the sea and burn their tents. During battle, to counteract the Persian cavalry, the front row of the Spartan army lies down and allows the horses to jump over them, then rising up, trap the cavalry and drive them into the sea. (A ruse later employed by Richard Widmark in The Long Ships, 1964).
Other wily measures are used deal with the Persian crack infantry regiment, The Immortals. Even at the end, the Spartans continue to confound the enemy with clever ruses.
Richard Egan (Pollyanna, 1960) is effective as Leonides, Ralph Richardson (Woman of Straw, 1964) excellent as the crafty but honorable Themistocles while Alfred Hitchcock protégé Diane Baker (Mirage, 1965) – “glaringly miscast” according to Variety – has the female lead though Anne Wakefield (The Singing Nun, 1966) as a Persian queen the more interesting role. Former British matinee idol star David Farrar (Beat Girl / Wild for Kicks, 1960) Meet Sexton Blake, 1945), in his final movie, proves a handful as the intemperate Xerxes.
Five-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Rudolf Mate delivers the directorial goods, his handling the dramatic scenes as confidently as the action and masking the holes in his budget by making clever use of trees as the invaders march, suggesting an army far bigger than he could afford to put on the screen. Color-coding the Spartans – they were in red – made the action clearer to follow. George St George (Invasion 1700, 1962), doubling up as producer, wrote the script with his usual collaborators Ugo Liberatore (A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die, 1967) and Remigio del Grosso (Wanted, 1967).
Originally titled The Lion of Sparta, the film could not have been made without the wholesale cooperation of the Greek army which supplied over 2,000 soldiers. Those playing Spartans had to be over six foot tall. Since the Greeks had no cavalry and few knew how to ride, around 200 were given a crash course. It was a bonanza for the soldiers – their normal wage of $2 was supplemented by $5.50.
Thermopylae no longer looked like the area immortalised by the battle, so the action was shot at Loutraki, near Corinth and 80 miles from Athens.
Thoughtful drama with striking action deserves reassessment.
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.
