Comedy – Page 2 – The Magnificent 60s

The Spy with a Cold Nose (1966) ***

Surprisingly good fun for a flop. A horde of brilliant visual gags, some of considerably subtlety, keep the ball rolling on what must be the most deliriously barmy concept ever – though, you never know, it’s so ingenious someone in the espionage game might well have tried it out.

The problem for audiences back then was that nobody was going to pay good money to see supporting actor Lionel Jeffries (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, 1968) hog the screen. It’s not as if he is merely scene-stealing. For most of the picture, it’s like the billing has been reversed. Third-billed Jeffries seems to be actually the star, the character around whom the tale revolves, with the top-billed Laurence Harvey (A Dandy in Aspic, 1968) and Daliah Lavi (Some Girls Do, 1969) relegated to the background and their expected sexual combustion a long time coming.

It’s also a particularly British concoction, belonging to the bureaucratic form-filling world of The Ipcress File (1965) rather than the free-wheeling James Bond series. Middle-aged spy Stanley Farquhar (Lionel Jeffries), with little to show for his decades in the Secret Service and no sign of, as he laments, a naked girl in his bedroom, come up with the clever idea of sticking a tiny microphone up the nose of the British bulldog being presented as a gift by the British prime minister to the Russian supremo (Colin Blakely).

Takes a while for Stanley’s snooty bosses to go along with the idea because, don’t you know, it’s just not cricket. The Russian premier is so taken with the dog it accompanies him everywhere and the Brits are soon smashing Russian spy rings. Eventually, the Russians sent their top spy Princess Natasha Romanova (Daliah Lavi), who has half the Russian hierarchy in her seductive pocket, to find out who’s behind this state of affairs.

She alights first on Stanley and naturally seduction turns into male embarrassment as he’s caught with his trousers down for the whole world to see. Eventually, and more than an hour into the picture, she sets her sights on dog whisperer and dog groomer par excellence Francis Trevelyan (Laurence Harvey) who, of course, is nothing to do with the Secret Service but has been blackmailed into fitting the mic into the canine spy.

The tale is so slight and nutty that you’d be heading for the exist doors within 15 minutes except that the movie is propelled along, very nicely thank you, with a string of visual gags. Stanley, being the type of high-ranking official whose briefcase is handcuffed to his wrist, is so distracted by the torments of his kids, that when we first meet him he affixes said briefcase to said hand before he’s put his arm through his jacket, thus being forced to conceal it under a bulky overcoat all the way to the office.

That means driving one-handed and making his colleagues think he has lost an arm. He’s also arrived at work minus his car roof which he’s managed to burn off after mistakenly using the cigarette lighter which has been turned into a flamethrower by the boffins. When he’s handed his instructions at work, he can’t read them. Don’t we have any ordinary pens around here, snaps his boss, realizing at the same time as the audience does, that he’s used a pen with invisible ink. There’s a lovely gag involving the Queen’s corgis. Another of the gadgets, an umbrella that flowers into a parachute, is brought into play at the wrong time.

And his awful children are straight out of the Just William playbook, stealing his breakfast from under his nose and dropping worms into his open mouth when he dozes off in the garden. Aftet the much-publicized episode of his encounter with the Princess, Stanley is landed with a suspicious wife (June Whitfield) accompanying him on his missions.

As you might expect, there’s some slapstick, but except in the case of Wrigley (Eric Sykes), Stanley’s associate, who overdoes it, it’s generally underdone to great effect, the Princess requiring one of her lovers to push out of the door another of her lovers who refuses to accept his time is up. However, the titular dog, thankfully, makes no attempt to steal scenes and remains a very minor figure in the proceedings.

But the idea of the likes of Stanley either getting the better of the Princess or even understanding the notion of being seduced means that, no matter how hilarious the scene, audiences feel hoodwinked at the lack of top-billed male-female action. When Trevelyan eventually gets to make a major contribution it’s too little too late.

But if you go along with it, and are not frustrated by the lack of screen time afforded Harvey and Lavi, it’s a got a good deal to recommend it. Lionel Jeffries’s acting was acknowledged by the Golden Globes, as was the film itself.

Laurence Harvey shows a keen eye for the comic and Daliah Lavi, as ever, steals every scene she’s in. Denholm Elliott (Maroc 7, 1967) and Colin Blakely (The Vengeance of She, 1968) are the pick of the supporting actors.

Directed by Daniel Petrie (Stolen Hours, 1963) from a screenplay by Galton & Simpson (The Wrong Arm of the Law, 1963).

Great fun and worth a look.

Arrivederci Baby / Drop Dead Darling (1966) ***

The Wrong Arm of the Law (1963) ***

Effortless stuff from Peter Sellers – funny accents and all – that put into sharp perspective his later strained performances in vehicles like What’s New Pussycat (1965) coupled with one of those delicious tales replete with countless twists that sets bad guy against bad guy. An on-from Sellers dominates any picture and here he’s at the top of his game and all you can do is sit back and wallow in the pleasure of watching him.

Theoretically, he’s playing two roles – poncy French fashion house owner Jules and London crime mastermind Pearly Gates. But the Frenchman is a role he’s adopted. In that capacity he garners information from a gullible clientele only too happy to boast about where they’ve stashed their jewels or where someone else is putting on an ostentatious display of wealth. This is relayed back to the gang who go and steal it.

The first twist is that the gang itself is being duped. Another mob, Australians, posing as cops (known as the I.P.O. mob – Impersonating Police Officers) arrest the thieves and make off with the loot. Gates is furious and is convinced it must be an inside job, he’s got a grass on his team. He is correct. But, twist number two, he’s the blabbermouth, unwittingly passing on details of his next criminal coup to girlfriend Valerie (Nanette Newman), adept at playing on his arrogance to winkle out the information.

As the gangsters are operating under a city-wide syndicate with gangs allocated territories and not treading on each other’s shoes, Gates’s first suspicions fall on rival gang leader “Nervous” O’Toole (Bernard Cribbins). But when that proves a bust, the syndicate teams up with the real cops led by Inspector “Nosey” Parker (Lionel Jeffries) with the approval of his boss (John le Mesurier) and establish a 24-hour no-robbing arrangement while trying to flush out the IPO outfit.

Together, they set in motion a major crime, assuming the information will be passed on to the IPO team, and the cops can catch them in the act. Twist number three, Gates doesn’t see why he should go to all that trouble without adequate reward and plans to make off with the stolen money.

The terrific cast doesn’t let Sellers have it all his own way. Lionel Jeffries (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, 1968), Bernard Cribbins (She, 1965) and John Le Mesurier (Dad’s Army television series, 1968-1977) can scene-steal with the best of them. Nanette Newman (The Wrong Box, 1966) is a revelation and the supporting cast is bumped up with the likes of Graham Stark (The Magic Christian, 1969) and Bill Kerr (Doctor in Clover, 1966) and if you’re quick you’ll spot a pre-fame Michael Caine (Zulu, 1964).

Not all the jokes are good but they come so thick and fast that you don’t care. And in the midst of this we have a rather enlightened and vulnerable Gates. He is a considerate employer, looking after his team in bad times, paying them well and generally acting as a paternal figure, while away from the gang he can unwind with Valerie and let his true feelings and the pressures he’s under be known.

Director Cliff Owen (The Vengeance of She, 1968) hardly stops to take breath. Screenplay by the due of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson (The Spy with a Cold Nose, 1966) working in conjunction with John Antrobus (The Big Job, 1965).

Avoid the snigger territory of the Carry On pictures, this is probably the last British comedy that could get away with such innocence and was rewarded with huge box office numbers in Britain.

Sheer enjoyment.

The Magic Christian (1969) ***

Substitute contemporary artwork/installation/performance art for practical joke and this will come up trumps. Taken in the artistic sense, where artists are pillorying society, there are gems – a stage Hamlet performing a striptease, feeding scraps of money to the ducks, ship passengers experiencing an apparent voyage when the vessel hasn’t left land, cutting up a famous work of art. Although I have to point out this will inevitably be remembered by some for a bikini-ed Raquel Welch cracking the whip over a galley of topless oarswomen.

Effectively a series of comedy skits loosely tied together under the theme of money, mostly in the form of bribery. Billionaire Sir Guy Grand (Peter Sellers) sets out to teach adopted son Youngman (Ringo Starr) just what money can buy. Could you pay one of the teams sufficient dough in the annual Boat Race for them to ram the other? Would a parking warden (Spike Milligan) eat the parking ticket he has just issued? In the spirit of fair play is it okay to down a pheasant with an anti-aircraft gun?

When the going slows down, surrealism enters the equation: ship’s captain kidnapped by a gorilla, vampire waitperson, black head on white body, urine-soaked banknotes given away to a crowd, the occasional nun or Nazi, newspapers where apologies are written in Polish.

Plot-wise, there’s not much to it and the satire is merely repetitive as Sir Guy embarks on educating Youngman on the perverse uses of money. It has the feeling not of following a storyline but of “what can we get up to next” and attempting to layer shock upon shock in the manner, it has to be said, of some contemporary directors.

But there’s neither sufficient bite to the satire nor punch to the shock so it remains an elaborate series of disconnected sequences. Luckily, nobody’s having to pretend to put in an acting shift which is just as well because Ringo Starr proves he can’t act.

And it’s not much helped by a host of cameos – Laurence Harvey (A Dandy in Aspic, 1968), Richard Attenborough (Guns at Batasi, 1964), Christopher Lee (Dracula, Prince of Darkness, 1965), Raquel Welch (Bandolero!, 1968), director Roman Polanski (Rosemary’s Baby, 1968), Wilfred Hyde-White (P.J. / New Face in Hell, 1967), comic Spike Milligan and various members of the future Monty Python team including John Cleese (A Fish Called Wanda, 1988) and Graham Chapman. Harvey and Welch make the biggest splash.

Excepting Dr Strangelove, Hollywood had failed to capture the essence of offbeat novelist Terry Southern (Candy, 1968) and despite input from Chapman, Cleese and Sellers, this never really gets off the ground.

Peter Sellers (The Pink Panther, 1963) was in something of a career rut where very little struck home at the box office and he would continue a dismal losing streak until resuscitating The Pink Panther franchise in 1975.

Director Joseph McGrath’s (The Bliss of Mrs Blossom, 1967) record was spotty. Best known for music videos for The Beatles, he was only well served when his cast was filled with strong actors.

No more than an occasionally humorous trifle with an equally occasional target hitting the bullseye.

What’s New Pussycat? (1965) ***

Being this was the age of the Lothario, what with James Bond and Matt Helm and Co surrounded by adoring women, you were hardly going to find many males in the audience feeling that sex addiction was a bad thing. Nor was commitment phobia likely to be high in the agenda of the females in the audience.

Really, there’s no real reason to go to any trouble to come up with justification for bedroom farce that borders just occasionally on screwball comedy. Let men be caught with their trousers down and women in various stages of deshabille and let’s hope there are enough jokes in between to keep the pot boiling.

The main problem here is that while Peter O’Toole shows a fine and unexpected gift for comedy, the two actors for whom comedy is supposed to be their metier mostly fall flat, Peter Sellers resorting to over-acting and Woody Allen in his movie debut trying to steal every scene and the best lines (he wrote the script) to boot.

There are a couple of cracking set-ups. In one a language teacher who gets her class of foreigners to repeat what she says finds that they are parroting every word of a crazy fight she is having with her lover. And a strip club, even one as high-falutin as The Crazy Horse in Paris, has rarely provided so many laffs. And in an echo of Cyrano de Bergerac, a man wakes up an entire apartment block trying to woo the lover of his friend.

Michael James (Peter O’Toole) seeks advice from psychiatrist Dr Fassbender (Peter Sellers in a dreadful wig) as to how to temper his sexual instincts. He is under siege from lover Carole (Romy Scheider) who is desperate to marry him. The repressed married doctor is mad keen on Renee (Capucine) but the minute she sets eyes on Michael she can’t get enough of him.

To make Michael jealous Carole flirts with Viktor (Woody Allen), her nervous wreck of a chum.

Soon Michael is juggling four lovers, Liz (Paula Prentiss) and Rita (Ursula Andress) as well as Carole and Renee. Eventually, for no great reason except it must have seemed a good idea at the time and it’s the ideal location for a bedroom farce, they all end up in a small hotel, where Michael has his work cut out, dashing from room to room, to assuage all his lovers, while Fassbender and Viktor try to snap up his leftovers.

This all takes place against a background of La Dolce Vita involving a revolving cast of fashionistas and disco dancers. Michael drives an antique car straight out of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) and he carries off style with great elan. Wherever he is, Michael is the center of attention, in a disco resorting to striptease, and you can hardly blame him for being unable to resist so many gorgeous women throwing themselves at him.

While Peter O’Toole (The Lion in Winter, 1968) seamlessly holds it together, Peter Sellers (The Pink Panther, 1963) and Woody Allen (Annie Hall, 1977) threaten to pull the flimsy structure apart, the latter in particular determined to turn it into a Woody Allen picture. But Peter O’Toole is sheer delight and, as misogynistic as it sounds, carries off with aplomb the central conceit of a poor fellow who just can’t get enough of women. His comedy instinct is first-rate, far better employed here than in How to Steal A Million (1966) and his drunken scene is a joy.

Peter Sellers appears to be spoofing himself while Woody Allen, years away from solidifying his screen persona, is, as usual, just himself.

It’s left to the female cast to add depth and virtually all come out of the experience with bonus points, Romy Scheider (Otley, 1969) and Paula Prentiss (Man’s Favorite Sport, 1964) in particular while Ursula Andress (She, 1966) and Capucine (Fraulein Doktor, 1968) raise the glamor stakes to a new high.

Director Clive Donner (Alfred the Great, 1958) does his best to keep the picture on an even keel while allowing it to lurch sideways whenever the comedy requires. Written by Woody Allen.

Good fun in parts.

The Sting (1973) *****

There was a time when movies had charm. An easy grace. A fluidity. The ability to hold an audience in the palm of their hands with the simplest of narratives. Sadly, that time is long gone. I doubt if any Hollywood director – so raddled now by self-indulgence and self-importance – would even know how to make this kind of souffle.

I haven’t watched this movie in decades. And I fully expected to dismiss it as having aged badly. Instead, I just adored it. In part that is due to what is surely the greatest male screen partnership ever. It wasn’t uncommon then and now for two top stars to be paired together, but usually the narrative had them in conflict. That’s not the case here. There’s a reason why Paul Newman and Robert Redford were credited in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) with inventing the buddy movie. Their screen personas just dovetail and they appear so comfortable with each other.

Sure, the story is a cracker, and the direction is impeccable, what with using long-gone techniques like the wipe, and the chapter headings, and, of course, the adaptation of the Scott Joplin music and audience exposure to the techniques of pulling the “big con” and the secret nose-stroking by which fraudsters identified each other. But while this premise would surely have worked with another duo, it would not have worked half as well.

This was Robert Redford’s annus mirabilis. It’s impossible these days to comprehend his impact, for the simple reason that stars rarely release two movies in the one year. Following Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Redford had been there or thereabouts without quite taking the final step required to become a box office sensation, indulging himself in worthy pictures like The Candidate (1972) and Jeremiah Johnson (1972), but the latter was decidedly under-performing until Warner Bros sent it long after initial release down the “four-wall” route that would prove pivotal to The Exorcist (1973), whereby a studio hired theaters to show a movie, paying a flat fee that covered an exhibitor’s costs and some profit rather than splitting the proceeds on a percentage basis.

But the double whammy of The Way We Were (1973) and The Sting sent Redford’s marquee value into the stratosphere. And he’s not the big romantic lead that he was in the Streisand picture, if anything he comes up short in the romantic department, dumb enough to seduce a female assassin. He’s always one way or another needing to be rescued from a self-induced calamity rather than the confident gunslinger of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with an adoring woman hanging on his every word.

There are a couple of other memorable pieces of acting that I’d like to draw to your attention. The first is Reford’s thumbs, which always seem to stick out, the reason for which is never explained and possibly they’ve been beaten by previous malfeasance into that position. The second isn’t Robert Shaw’s pronounced limp, but his menacing catchphrase “You follow?” which must be the toughest two words outside of swearing ever spoken by a gangster.

Seeking revenge on underworld kingpin Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw), on-the-run con man Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford) teams up with the more experienced Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman). The plan is to rook Lonnegan of half a million dollars. They’re going to do it with a racing scam, where they know the results of a race before anyone else.

But first Gondorff needs to find finance and needle Lonnegan enough to bait the hook. He achieves both by stealing Lonnegan’s wallet before using that cash for his wagers and cheating better than Lonnegan at poker.

Then Hooker has to pretend that he’s fallen out with Gondorff and willing to work with Lonnegan to screw two million bucks out of Gondorff. Meanwhile, to spice up the plot, maverick cop Snyder (Charles Durning) is on the trail of Hooker and the FBI are on the trail of Gondorff.

The payoff is so brilliant that audiences at the time reputedly cheered and I have to say I felt like doing so myself.

Robert Redford was nominated for an Oscar but I think the acting honors were even with Newman. The movie won the Best Film Oscar and Best Director for George Roy Hill (Hawaii, 1966) and usually when you come to re-evaluate Oscars you tend to mark down many of the choices because they don’t really hold up. This was up against The Exorcist, American Graffiti, Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers and the comedy A Touch of Class, so it wasn’t as though there was another better contender.

I like to think it won for bravura. Elan. In every department. Fresh and innovative, oozing charm and with the greatest double act in American cinema.

Director George Roy Hill (Hawaii, 1966) was on a roll and the screenplay by David S. Ward (Steelyard Blues, 1973) hit a home run.

There’s hardly been a more enjoyable Oscar-winner.

The Tiger and the Pussycat (1967) ***

Ann-Margret was taking a leap into the unknown when she decided, temporarily, to turn her back on Hollywood and revive her fading fortunes – and buttress her bank account – by heading to Italy. By the time she made that decision, Clint Eastwood would not have been deemed to set a sparkling template since his spaghetti westerns were not released in the USA until after she had departed for Italy. She may well have had her head turned by such critically acclaimed fare as the Oscar-nominated Marriage Italian Style (1964) or perhaps the prospect, like Burt Lancaster in The Leopard (1963), of being taken up by critically-acclaimed director.

At one point she had easily been the fastest-rising star in Hollywood, with contracts for movies from rival studios, at one time balancing the demands of around a dozen movies. Had she been born in the previous decade she would have headlined any number of pieces of fluff that attracted box office. Even so, after making a number of pictures that scarcely challenged her – from Bye, Bye Birdie (1963) to The Swinger (1966) by way of a couple efforts that stretched her screen person (Once a Thief and The Cincinnati Kid, both 1965) – she had discovered that she was still perceived as little more than a Bond Girl, or the Matt Helm equivalent in Murderers’ Row (1966).

Quite what she expected to find in Italy is anybody’s guess. Probably not a standard Italian comedy. Nor to be playing second banana to Italian star Vittorio Gassman (A Virgin for the Prince, 1965) – three-time winner of a David (the Italian equivalent of the Oscars) – who knew how to frame his performance for an Italian audience. But while a huge star in his homeland he had not crossed-over like Marcello Mastroianni to win international favor.

Top executive Francesco (Vittorio Gassman), alarmed at becoming a grandfather at the age of 45, and believing life has now passed him by, begins a relationship with Carolina (Ann-Margret), an art student less than half his age. She makes a good bit of the running, being attracted to older men.

So a fair chunk of the picture is Francesco unable to make up his mind, or then suffering guilt from an illicit affair, worrying that his wife will find out and at the same time considering running away with the decidedly energetic girl.

The scenario will be more familiar to Italian audiences than American. Affairs were often seen as opportunities for comedy rather than, as in Hollywood, drama and angst. Francesco has the example of his friend Tazio (Fiorenzi Fionrentina), brought to financial ruin by an affair, and all the friends of his wife Esperia (Dorothy Parker) are divorcees after their husbands have run off with younger women.

Despite his excuses for being away from home mounting up, Esperia is not suspicious. You would have thought his colleagues would have more of an inkling given the number of times he dodges work commitments.

If you are a fan of Italian comedy, this will be right up your street, a number of sequences where Gassman falls back on physical comedy or stretches his features every which way but loose and gives the impression of not being able to follow his dreams at the same time as being suffocated by them.

If you’re here for Ann-Margret, you’ll be baffled. Sure, she has the occasional opportunity to shake her trademark booty, and she has lost none of her screen presence, but the role, effectively of second banana to the male lead, could have been played by a dozen other actresses, and Ann-Margret doesn’t bring anything particularly innovative or exciting to the role.

She went into Italian exile for three years and the movies she made all bombed at the American box office so in effect, as far as Hollywood and American audiences were concerned, she had inexplicably disappeared and there wasn’t exactly a long queue seeking her signature when she returned.

Directed by Dino Risi (Treasure of San Gennaro, 1966) from a script by himself, Enni De Concini (A Place for Lovers, 1968), Adriano Baracco (Treasure of San Gennaro) and Nino Manfredi (Treasure of San Gennaro).

A decent enough comedy. Gassman runs off with the picture but Ann-Margret completists will find little to enjoy.

Cactus Flower (1969) ****

Television hadn’t produced the goods in terms of furnishing Hollywood with an abundance of new talent. We were still only talking about Steve McQueen (Bullitt, 1968) and James Garner (Buddwing/Mister Buddwing, 1966) in the 1960s as having made a successful transition from small-screen to big-screen stardom with occasional brief flurries from the likes of Clint Walker (The Dirty Dozen, 1967). Though Hollywood kept trying – Universal had tossed thirty-two of its contracted players into Airport (1970) in the hope one would catch audience attention.

But it turned out Hollywood had been looking in the wrong direction. Expecting to unearth actors who could carry dramas or thrillers or westerns, Hollywood had, in general, not considered comedy as a source of new talent. Dick Van Dyke (Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang, 1968) was considered an anomaly because he could morph into a song-and-dance man and his comedy was based on the physical.

So the industry was astonished when Goldie Hawn emerged from what was essentially a comedy skit show, The Rowan and Martin Laugh-In, to become a genuine screen box office comedienne and over the next decades there would be an excellent harvest from television comedy including Robin Williams, Chevy Chase and a whole troupe of others.

But it’s a shame that Goldie Hawn got all the glory – she won an Oscar – because this was the picture that established Walter Matthau as a genuine star as opposed to part of a double act with Jack Lemmon (The Fortune Cookie, 1966, and The Odd Couple, 1968). John Wayne once made the point that most acting is actually reacting to what someone else has said and in that regard there’s a masterclass from Ingrid Bergman (The Visit, 1964), playing determinedly against type.

Deceit drives the narrative. Just like Dean Martin in Airport (1970), upscale dentist Dr Julian Winston (Walter Matthau) has cottoned onto the fact that he can keep marital interest from mistress Toni (Goldie Hawn) at bay by the fact that he’s married. Except he isn’t and has to rustle up a fake wife to keep Toni on the hook. So he turns to spinster nurse Stephanie (Ingrid Bergman), a Swede cut from the repressed Bergmanesque cloth rather than the free loving spirit of popular (male) imagination, who has been carrying a torch for him for years, so, despite the notion that it’s not real, she goes full-tilt-boogie into the pretense. She’s even got a couple of nephews in tow who can masquerade, unknowingly, as Winston’s own kids.

Meanwhile, Winston rethinks his position, realizes he doesn’t want to lose Toni and reckons the only way he can get himself out of the sticky situation of his own creation is to pretend that his imaginary wife is also having an affair, so he has to set Stephanie up on dates with some of his customers so Toni can get a peek at them.

Assuming from its stage origins – France before being adapted for Broadway – this had more farce in the original production, that aspect has been trimmed back to concentrate on the various degrees of deceit. Instead of trying to force laffs from opening and closing doors and men being caught with their trousers down, this follows the simpler plotline of maintaining the deceits while inserting a potential twist when Toni develops an interest in her neighbor, author Igor (Rick Lenz).

The three principals are excellent, all bringing something fresh to the table, Walter Matthau as a lothario rather than a crafty conniver a distinct change of pace, Goldie Hawn a refreshing new face who was soon able to carry pictures on her own, and, especially, to my mind Ingrid Bergman. She has two absolutely marvelous reactions to information received – in the first her elbow literally falls from a table, in the second she is overwhelmed at the thought of receiving a gift, and she has the best scene of all, cutting loose on the dance floor.

As you might expect, the romantic entanglements are resolved.

Director Gene Saks (A Thousand Clowns, 1965) sticks to the knitting, extracting weighted performances from the cast without resorting to insipid extras. I.A.L. Diamond (The Fortune Cookie) adapted the Broadway play by Abe Burrows (Can-Can, 1960) who in turn had borrowed the French play by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy.

Most 1960s comedies have lost their verve but this still plays exquisitely.

What’s Good for The Goose / Girl Trouble (1969) ***

One of those comedies that works best in a time capsule and far more interesting for the coincidences and anomalies of those involved. What are the chances, you might ask, of sisters playing roughly the same role in two entirely different movies, one a comedy the other a drama, in the same year. We’ve got Sally Geeson here, in her debut, playing a free loving hitchhiker picking up an older married man and we’ve got her slightly more experienced sister Judy Geeson (Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush) as a free loving hitchhiker picking up older married man Rod Steiger in Peter Hall’s Three into Two Won’t Go (1969).

This proved the final starring role for Norman Wisdom (A Stitch in Time, 1963), at one time a huge British box office star, who had been infected by that disease that seems to always hit comedians, of wanting to play it straight. While there is some comedy, it’s sorely lacking in the kind of physical comedy, the pratfalls and such, with which Wisdom made his name.

And there’s another name to conjure with – Menahem Golan. More famous, eventually, for foisting on the general public a string of stinkers under the Cannon umbrella and taking over the British cinema chain ABC before going spectacularly bust. What’s his role in all this? He’s the creative force, would you believe, wearing his writer-director shingle, in his first movie outside Israel. And if that’s not enough, the producer is Tony Tenser, also trying to change direction, switching from the horror portfolio which with his outfit Tigon had made its name and into a different genre.

And if you want another name slipped in, what about Karl Lanchbury, playing a nice guy in contrast to the creepy characters he tended to essay in the likes of Whirlpool / She Died with Her Boots On (1969).

Time capsule firmly in place we’re in a Swinging Britain world where young girls listen to loud rock music (though don’t take drugs) and go where the mood takes them, free travel easily available through the simple device of hitchhiking.

Timothy Bartlett (Norman Wisdom) is a bored under-manager drowning in a sea of bureaucracy and turned off by wife Margaret (Sally Bazely) who goes to bed wearing a face mask and with her hair in curlers. On the way to a business conference he picks up two hitchhikers, Nikki (Sally Geeson) and Meg (Sarah Atkinson), becoming smitten with the former, making hay at a night club where his “dad dancing” is the hit of the evening. He slips into the counterculture, wearing hippie clothes, generally unwinding, doing his thing, and sharing his bed with Nikki.

You can tell he’s going to get a nasty shock and just to put that section off we dip into a completely different, almost “Carry On” scenario, where his efforts to sneak Nikki in his bedroom are almost foiled by an officious receptionist. Eventually, she invites all her hippie pals to make hay in his hotel room while she makes out with Pete (Karl Lanchbury),a man her own age, and Timothy is told in no uncertain terms the essence of free love is that she doesn’t hang around with a man for long, in this case their affair only lasted two days.

It’s the twist in the tail that generally makes this work. Rather than moan his head off or believe he is now catnip to young ladies, Timothy, unshackled from convention, uses his newfound freedom to woo his wife.

So, mostly a gentle comedy, and good to see Norman Wisdom not constantly having to over-act and twist his face every which way but loose, even though this effectively ended his career. The teenagers enjoy their freedom without consequence (nobody’s pregnant or addicted to drugs) and there’s a fairly good stab at digging into the effortless joys of the period. Sally Geeson (Cry of the Banshee, 1970) didn’t prove as big a find as her sister and her career fizzled out within a few years.

As an antidote to the Carry On epidemic, this works very well.

A gentle comedy.

You can catch this on YouTube courtesy of Flick Attack.

What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (1966) **

How on earth did James Coburn get mixed up in this mess? I’m assuming that having suddenly been elevated from supporting actor to top billing as a result of Our Man Flint (1966) he took the first job that came along that reflected his ideas about salary. Director Blake Edwards was, to some extent, at something of a loose end. United Artists had passed on The Great Race (1965) and another project with the director had fallen by the wayside. Apparently, this movie was the result of a question asked by his son. During World War Two, Edwards had served in the U.S. Coastguard which meant he did not see active service though did suffer a back injury. Writer William Peter Blatty (A Shot in the Dark, 1964) was too young for World War Two and though he joined the US Air Force he didn’t see active service either, being employed in the psychological warfare division.

So this exercise wasn’t going to be based on personal experience. The mid-1960s wouldn’t exactly lend itself to poking fun at war, although Vietnam was fair game.

You might have thought Coburn, on reading the script, would have realized he’s not much in the movie for the first 20 minutes or so and then is at the mercy of a bundle of subplots.

During the invasion of Sicily in 1943, stickler for discipline Captain Cash (Dick Shawn) is handed command of a disorganized unit headed by Lt Christian (James Coburn) and instructed to take a strategic village from the Germans. Turns out the enemy is long gone and the resident Italian soldiers, commanded by Capt Oppo (Sergio Fantoni), are only too happy to surrender as long as they can continue to enjoy la dolce vita which in this case involves an annual wine festival. Most of the early part of the picture revolves around getting Cash to loosen up, and after imbibing copious amounts of liquor and being seduced by the mayor’s daughter Gina (Giovanni Ralli) he relents.

There are only two obstacles to the merry party. Oppo objects to his girlfriend Gina being used as a makeweight to make Cash see things the Italian way and Cash’s boss General Bolt (Carroll O’Connor) asks to see proof of their success. So, since not a shot has been fired and they can’t boast of a camp full of Italian POWs, they decide to invent the proof and start filming phoney footage. Bolt reckons they need support and sends up reinforcements. Which is just as well because the Germans, either realizing what they’ve been missing or being nudged back into action, decide to reappear. And given the slovenly chaotic opposition it’s not hard for them to re-take control of the town which results in Cash hiding out in drag.

Theoretically, it’s a reasonable idea. There’s been no shortage of swindlers or con-men or black marketeers in war movies – think James Garner in The Great Escape (1963) and The Americanization of Emily (1964) – and various armies have been filled with shysters ranging from Sgt Bilko to the shifty recruits in British films up to all sorts of wheezes or doing their best to stay out of the line of fire.

But once the point has been made that it’s better to make love not war and drink as much wine as possible and become friends with the enemy, the point is made over and over again. There isn’t a single joke that isn’t belaboured and not many laffs to begin with. Going over-the-top is fine for slapstick like The Great Race but it doesn’t work here.

James Coburn has too little to do and Dick Shawn (A Very Special Favor, 1965) too much. Giovanni Ralli (Deadfall, 1968) and Sergio Fantoni (Hornet’s Nest, 1970 ) are wasted. Carroll O’Connor (Warning Shot, 1966) is the pick of a supporting cast that includes Aldo Ray (The Power, 1968) and Harry Morgan (The Mountain Road, 1960) but that’s only because he has a clever reversal of a role as a general who wants to be treated as an individual.

I should point out this has something of a cult following but I won’t be joining the fan club.

Must have seemed a good idea at the time.