Comedy – Page 8 – The Magnificent 60s

How Sweet It Is (1968) ***

You’d have thought by now leading men would be running shy of Debbie Reynolds, aware just how easily she would steal the picture out from under the top-billed star (witness Goodbye Charlie, 1964). But she had producers clamouring for the fizz she brought. Her comic skills, and willingness to entertain slapstick, were matched only by Doris Day. Especially helpful when she’s saddled with a convoluted plot that’s one-third generation gap comedy, one-third If It’s Tuesday It Must Be Belgium and one-third the kind of creative thinking that determines that somehow or other the female star must end up in a brothel. Throw in some flower power, split-screen, stills montage and slow-mo and you’ve covered all the bases.

In this hit-and-miss line-up, by far the most amusing element is that it’s the adults – photographer Grif (James Garner) and wife Jenny (Debbie Reynolds) – who are sex-obsessed, sneaking away at every opportunity for a bit of hanky-panky, trying to avoid the disapproving eyes of their virginal teenage son Davey (Donald Losby).

An odd example of creative license here. Poster designers had decided that red was the color no matter what. In the last section of the movie Debbie Reynolds parades in a blue – not red – bikini and the book on which it is based is called “The Girl in the Turqoise Bikini.” I’m not sure the color of the bikini is that much of a plot point unless it’s to hook readers of the original novel, but it’s mighty strange for the poster people just to change the color.

The narrative determines that Davey joins girlfriend Bootsie (Hilarie Thomson) and her lithe gal pals on a tour of Europe accompanied by Grif who has been commissioned to photograph the trip. Much to Grif’s horror, Jenny decides she’s going to follow them and hires out a swanky pad where the grown-up lovebirds can make a nest at some undetermined point.

The picture quickly loses interest in Grif and the girls, beyond an attractive tour guide making a pass at Grif and of course their bus getting stuck in the mud. Not only is the Jenny segment more intriguing – turns out she’s been conned by Gilbert Tilly (Terry-Thomas) into handing over a thousand bucks for a chalet he’s not entitled to hire out – because she gets romanced in high French style (champagne and flowers in case you’re bursting to know) by legal lothario Philippe (Maurice Ronet) and every now and then finds herself wearing little more than a bikini and sometimes nothing at all.

Takes a heck of a long time for the two stories to dovetail so that Grif can flounce off in a huff, punch the living daylights out of the Frenchman, and give the screenwriter the excuse to plonk Jenny down in a brothel (that part, I have to admit, is neatly done). There’s also some unusual class comedy at the chateau, Philippe initially being mistaken for a butler, then having to bunk down with his servant because (guess what) this mansion has only one main bedroom.

For no apparent reason there’s an odd section at the start. Instead of flying to Europe, they take the ship and for no apparent reason they’re stuck on C-deck with a lip-pursing purser (Paul Lynde) who insists males and females must sleep apart and share cabins with strangers. Slot into the miss department the opening with the old trope of the husband coming home to find his wife in bed with another man, except it’s Davey and the parental lovers are enjoying some afternoon delight, though quite how you can stretch that to Davey taking a carving knife up the stairs beats me.

James Garner is no more convincing a photographer than he was in The Pink Jungle (1968) and he hardly gives Debbie Reynolds a run for her money, as if he doesn’t know how to bring this character to life. Except for excelling at the risqué, and she a willing accomplice, he’s coming over like the straight man to her comedienne. Debbie Reynolds is superb, reactions honed to the bone, throwing herself into the part, undergoing whatever humiliation will snare a laugh.

Garner briefly resurrected his career with Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) before he hit the slide (see the previous Behind the Scenes article) and to my astonishment this signalled pretty much the end of Reynolds’ screen career, nothing for the next decades except What’s the Matter with Helen (1971) and a bit part (as herself) in The Bodyguard (1992). You can hardly blame her for screenwriters not coming up with the right material to take advantage of her supreme comedic gifts. Alexandra Hay (The Model Shop, 1969) is wasted, you might just as well have dabbed her role “the sexy blonde.”

Director Jerry Paris (Never a Dull Moment, 1968) throws everything he can at the screen without much success. Future director Garry Marshall (Pretty Woman, 1990) and producer Jerry Belson (Fun with Dick and Jane, 1977) in his movie debut formulated the screenplay from the bestseller by Muriel Resnik.

Far from the last comedy hurrah you would have wished for the actress, but all you’re going to get.

A Touch of Larceny (1960) ****

Magically fits into the “lost” film category that I’ve been banging on about recently, films, for a variety of reasons, denied cinematic release. Or at least that’s according to Rotten Tomatoes which declares “there are no featured reviews…because the movie has not (been) released yet” despite the fact that it was a big hit in cinemas over six decades ago.

Happening upon this nugget of information in a casual trawl of RT I thought I’d see if this “lost” movie was as good as The Appointment (1969) perhaps or Fade In (1969) or whether it should never be seen.

Imagine my surprise to find a highly entertaining picture best described as a one-man caper that takes aim at the Establishment and the Media, wrapped in a very witty rom-com, and helped along by the kind of Whitehall characters making a meal out of doing nothing as lampooned in BBC TV series Yes, Minister.

The central conceit sounds so lame from the outset that you think this confection is going to collapse the minute it is put into practice, but, in fact, a good few twists inflate the idea until it floats along quite merrily towards a happy conclusion. And if you only remember James Mason from dour turns in The Deadly Affair (1967) or as the smarmy villain in North by Northwest (1959), you’re in for a treat.

For this is the actor at his most winning, so charming he almost edges into the adorable class, and this while playing a rake, the seducer’s seducer, but with the quickest of quick wits to get him out of any scrape. We begin and end with a demonstration of such speedy thinking.

Surprised by the return of his latest conquest’s husband, Commander Max “Rammer” (the nickname nothing to do with sexual prowess) Easton simply dons his naval uniform, whisks up the woman’s dog, his presence explained as delivering a poor creature lost in the street. As easy as pie.

His life is one of ease. When he says he works at the Admiralty, “working” might be a stretch, although “lolling about” would hardly be in the job description, the sole purpose of his desk somewhere to lay his feet, and has an airy dismissal at hand for any Whitehall buffoon inclined to pepper their language with Civil Service gobbledegook.

Bumping into an old war chum Sir Charles Holland (George Sanders), now an ambassador, they were submarine commanders in World War Two, allows him brief acquaintance with American widow Virgina (Vera Miles). Naturally, he snaffles one of her gloves so as to have an excuse to return it. Realizing his game, she bats him back with effortless repartee, saving for the last the fact that she is engaged to be married to Sir Charles.

Given he is so practised at this game, he manages to inveigle his way into her life – Sir Charles away on urgent business – determines that her fiance’s main attraction is his dosh, and comes up with a barmy scheme to put himself in the wealthy category. His notion is to pretend to be a spy, drop a top secret document down behind a filing cabinet, vanish to a remote Scottish island, wait for his colleagues to raise the alarm, someone discover the document is missing, and the newspapers to brand him a traitor, at which point he will pop back up and sue the media for libel, and become rich enough to suit Virginia.

Yep, it seems a crazy notion, especially as Virginia, though clearly enjoying his company, has kept him at a decided arm’s length. Unfortunately, once the hue-and-cry is raised, Virginia makes the mistake of telling her husband it’s all a big con. But that puts Sir Charles in a bind, because to fess up might put his fiancé, and by extension himself, in a difficult position.

So they do nothing. Meanwhile, on his deserted tiny island off the coast of Scotland, Easton is living it up, dining off his ample supplies, occasionally catching a fish or a lobster, certainly enough booze to keep up his spirits, tuning into the radio to keep up with the news, waving half-heartedly at any passing ship, rehearsing his lines for when he is rescued. He’s even brought along a canister of petrol so he will have no trouble lighting damp driftwood and seaweed to make the bonfire he will require to attract attention.

So far, so barmy. But now the first twist. He chucks into the sea all evidence of his high living. He slips on a rock, falls into the water and the precious fuel sinks to the bottom. Now, he is a genuine castaway, soaked, starving, freezing. Second twist, the passengers on the boat that turns up to rescue him greet him by name.

So now we’re in for a devilish third act, the cops tipped the nod without getting the full story, Virginia the obvious culprit, Easton, back to the wall, requiring some fiendish ingenuity to get himself out of the mess. After a bundle of twists coming quick and fast, the romantic entanglement is disentangled, Easton still set to be rich by selling his tale (“the real true story” i.e. fictional hogwash) to the media who no doubt toss in a sweetener in gratitude for not being sued.

Not only is it delivered in effortless style by director Guy Hamilton (The Battle of Britain, 1969), and Mason at the top of his game, matched by Vera Miles (Psycho, 1960), but it is very short, clocking in at just over 90 minutes. Roger MacDougall (The Man in the White Suit, 1951), Ivan Foxwell (Tiara Tahiti, 1962) and the director concocted the screenplay from the novel by Paul Somers.

Great fun, the repartee and the final third an absolute treat while poking gentle fun at the Establishment.

Rather than belonging to the “lost” category, it sits comfortably in the “they don’t make ‘em like that anymore” section.

Goodbye Charlie (1964) ***

Gender switch comedies were a rarity in Hollywood at this point though of course Billy Wilder had scored big with Some Like it Hot (1959) and I’m guessing the possibility of Tony Curtis repeating his drag act was an audience lure for this one. Alas, that wasn’t to be. This goes the other way. Or several other ways. A woman playing a man who is a woman. That would be catnip these days were it a transgender thing, but it ain’t.

Confused? So sex predator Charlie (a male) drowns while escaping enraged husband Sir Leopold (Walter Matthau) only to reappear, re-born or reincarnated (as the producers decide after googling it, sorry, after they look it up in a book) as a naked woman walking along the highway, rescued by the wealthy Bruce (Pat Boone) and delivered to the nearest house, Charlie’s own pad, now occupied by old buddy George (Tony Curtis).

There’s some light comedy as George tries to safely manhandle the unknown woman, clad only in Bruce’s coat (necessitating his later return of course) and gradually the surroundings seem over-familiar to the woman and then, shazam, George works out from what she knows about him that actually she must have returned as a man, also called Charlie (Debbie Reynolds).

A cosmic joke, in other words. The man who preyed upon women returning as a woman. See how he likes it to be on the receiving end of misogyny. But, mostly, he/she lolls around with legs spread like a man, gulps down whisky and is a dab hand at cards. But that’s not where the humor lies, apparently, because the movie moves on quickly from the woman acting the man and into the man-woman discovering all the female tricks of the trade, visiting a beauty parlor and the hairdresser. Charlie discovers it’s not the same fun slapping a woman’s backside – what a revelation – if you’re a woman.

But, basically, the female Charlie decides to become a female version of the male Charlie, the predator, ripping off friends, chasing the big money, trying to seduce Bruce. So, mostly, it’s one odd plot device after another.

But the sizzle is Debbie Reynolds, not so much the man-woman stuff, but turning into a mean Bette Davis character before your eyes, all hard-edge and shifty moves. There’s sexual tension as well, George initially resisting the woman he knows is or was a man, before finding the attraction too much, and the same going for Bruce. There’s a fair whack of sexual confusion, as the newborn Charlie still finds herself ogling women.

In those far more innocent times, it doesn’t know what it wants to say and lacks the narrative to say it. Audiences had terrific fun with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in Some Like it Hot, but that narrative ploy was bang on, and Lemmon enjoying dressing up as a woman and Curtis having to keep his male instincts at bay while ogling Marilyn Monroe was pure catnip.

Here, Curtis is mostly the foil for Debbie Reynolds and by the time it looks as though they might get it together she is way past behaving like a man and is most definitely a desirable woman so it’s kind of difficult to make this work romantically or humorously.

Perhaps the oddest element is that the signs were already there that it wouldn’t work that well. It started as a Broadway play written by George Axelrod (The Seven Year Itch, which was a Broadway smash) but it barely lasted a dozen weeks on stage. By that time, though, Twentieth Century Fox had splashed out $150,000 for the rights. Still, bigger sums have been buried in the annual accounts.

And I guess when Vincente Minelli (Two Weeks in Another Town, 1962) came on board with a pretty decent cast it seemed at least doable. Like many a lightweight comedy from the decade – Dear Brigitte (1965) for example – it’s keep afloat by a terrific performance by the principal star, in this case Debbie Reynolds (Divorce American Style, 1967). You might spot Ellen Burstyn (The Exorcist, 1973) in an early role.

Take away Debbie Reynolds and it would limp along.

Anyone But You (2023) **** – Seen at the Cinema

Hey, I’m going back to Anyone but You because I went back to see it again. Blame Oppenheimer, or its lack thereof – the reissue had been scheduled for showing on Monday but was pulled presumably because it was already on streamer and not enough customers showed up over the weekend – so I took a chance on this substitute. If you recall, I’ve already reviewed it and gave it three stars. But on re-view, I’m upping that to four stars. As is often the case on first viewing, you get snagged down by the narrative, but for second viewing, once you know which way it’s headed you can sit back and enjoy the other ingredients.

I’m not alone in thinking this has been under-rated – in the U.S., box office has gone up by over 11 per cent rather than down in the third weekend of release – and, in fact, the take has increased every weekend – indicating strong word-of-mouth.

The rom-com has kind of faded away from the glory days of Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan / Richard Gere-Julia Roberts / Hugh Grant-A.N. Other and if you find it at all these days it’s likely to be wrapped in an adventure or thriller. In truth it’s been on a sticky wicket for over five decades when studios preferred straight-out romance or straight-out comedy rather than a hybrid, but more importantly because, for it to work, you need stars of equal importance who can generate that extremely rare onscreen chemistry.

And not either male or female stars so big that nobody cares who plays the leading man or leading female opposite them. While movie pairings ain’t so unusual – think Tracy-Hepburn, Rock Hudson-Doris Day, Burton-Taylor, Bogart-Bacall, Clark Gable-Lana Turner – it’s worth remembering that it’s only the first two of these teamings that fitted the rom-com mold, the rest being more high octane dramas or thrillers.

Most comedies that have hit the contemporary button have been raunchy boozed-up affairs whose characters have been waylaid by self-destructive tendences, insecurity and body shaming. This one is a throwback to Hollywood gloss. Nobody’s out of work, even temporarily, nobody’s poor, nobody’s moaning about their bodies, nobody’s out of their mind on drink or drugs. The male members may have a predilection for displaying torso, ass and, er, members, and the gals are equally fit, prancing about as likely as not in bikinis or even just the bottom half.

It’s woke enough, it’s a gay wedding they’re attending, they all do yoga and are fit enough to undertake a hike into the wilderness, you can take a break (a la Friends) from a relationship and hook up with someone else, and the worst that can be said is that the older guys like an occasional joint while someone takes peppermint tea with sugar and the male lead, despite being buffed-up-to-hell, is scared of flying and swimming. But it’s a very nifty script, with a bucket of little character-defining cameo moments, the brides-to-be compete to place plates in the correct position on a table, one boyfriend too keen on booze, helicopter parents.

And you could say it is as contemporary as they come, pivoting on effectively tittle-tattle, what otherwise might be an indiscreet comment on social media that turns the world upside down is here just overheard. And it’s a pretty intelligent picture that puts the ability to have a decent fight in a marriage above peace and harmony, reality in other words over romantic fiction gibberish.

The basis of any rom-com is of course meet-cute followed by any number of reasons to keep the couple apart. Most of those ideas have been used up already, so the chances of digging up anything original is rare. What they come up with here is pretty fair, and plays on the necessity of a warring couple required to cosy up in order not to cause chaos at the wedding.

But a rom-com ain’t going to work unless the audience takes to the central couple. And my first question after seeing Glen Powell (Top Gun; Maverick, 2022) and Sydney Sweeney (The Voyeurs, 2021) is when are they going to team up again? They’re far from cloying or schmaltzy, but believable human beings. Individually, they are stars in the making. Together, they are dynamite..

I’m not sure you’d go for the other Sydney (the one in Australia) as your ideal wedding venue unless Australia was helping you foot the movie production bill, and although interesting use is made of the harbor I’d not be keen on a river so shallow that boats can’t turn around in it (a plot point) but if you’re going to stage a Titanic homage (not the sinking I hasten to add but the King of the World malarkey) probably this is as good a place as any.

Anyway, the story focuses on the disgruntled participants of a one-night stand forced to pair up at a wedding where they encounter an abundance of exes and various interfering family members. While skipping the raw rudeness of its immediate predecessors, there are still a couple of slapstick moments centering on the discarding of items of clothing, but mostly the narrative follows the dictat of the will-they-won’t-they scenario, cleverly finding ways to keep them apart just when they look set.

Apart from Powell and Sweeney, worth looking out for Hadley Robinson (The Boys in the Boat, 2023), Alexandra Shipp (Barbie, 2023), MTA Charlee Fraser in her movie debut, and old-timers Dermot Mulroney (My Best Friend’s Wedding, 1997), Rachel Griffiths (Muriel’s Wedding, 1994) and Bryan Brown (Cocktail, 1988). Directed by Will Gluck (Friends with Benefits, 2011) from a script by himself and Ilona Wolpert (High School Musical: The Musical, 2021-2023) but pretty much drawn from Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing.

Has charm in abundance, and the script has plenty of bite especially when the couple are trading bitter remarks.

An updated version of the old-fashioned enjoyable rom-com.

Dear Brigitte (1965) ***

In the same year as his momentous turn in Shenandoah, James Stewart at his exasperating best has the time of his life in this throwback comedy that takes its time getting all its ducks in a row while taking a tilt at nuclear energy, computers and the eternal battle between the arts and science with a fair chunk of whimsy thrown in.

Surprisingly contemporary nod to this whole business of actors speaking directly to the camera, with the ramblings by the Captain (Ed Wynn) in this capacity constantly being interrupted by passersby in the vein of “you talking to me?” or “stop talking to yourself.” Professor Leaf (James Stewart), a distinguished poet constantly at odds with Dean Sawyer (Howard Freeman) at the local college where he teaches – on the few times when he’s not handing in his resignation – and which has a nuclear power station next door, tries to espouse the arts at every opportunity, including a family four-piece outfit playing classical music, only to discover son Erasmus (Bill Mummy) doesn’t have an artistic bone in his body.

Surprisingy, in the UK down-graded to supporting feature in this kid-centric double bill. The marketing men pulled another fast one in the poster, leading audiences to believe that was BB in the bikini when it was only the usually-nude model of an artist neighbour attempting to be decent.

What Erasmus has, for some reason only now coming to the fore although he must be about ten or so, is that he’s a mathematical prodigy, able to work out complicated sums faster than a computer and pointing out errors in the calculations of the local bank. Leaf’s wife Vina (Glynis johns) doesn’t have a great deal to do except rein in the professor but she has a wonderful scene where she brings the local bank manager to book.

Anyway, eventually, Erasmus gets hooked into helping the boyfriend Kenneth (pop singer Fabian) of Leaf’s daughter Pandora (Cindy Carol) guess the winners of horse races as a way of assisting the couple in raising enough money to get married. By this time, Leaf has finally resigned and worked out he won’t pick up easy cash from the Government – another terrific scene – and is hoodwinked by con artist Peregrine Upjohn (John Williams) into setting up a charity to help disadvantaged students by employing his son’s skills.

Anyone familiar with horse racing will be aware how preposterous the conceit that anyone, no matter how scientifically skilled at working out the odds, can consistently pick winners. But this all flies by since it’s that kind of movie, one that not only defies belief, but basically sucks you into believing the whole thing, the way the untalented youngsters always managed in Hollywood times gone by to muster a great stage show or turned any kind of loser into a winner.

Still, all this goes on before we get close to the nub of the title. Erasmus has fallen in love with Brigitte Bardot and because he’s basically the family’s sole breadwinner eventually dad takes son to France to meet the real-life superstar who is far more charming than you would expect, the sexpot on hold for the occasion.

So, mostly, as I said, it’s an old-fashioned confection, the kind you could still get away with in the mid-1960s before the changing times demanded that comedies take on a harder edge. And with James Stewart in top form and husky-voiced English star Glynis Johns (who had her own television series in the U.S.) jumping in now and then to prevent him from making things worse it works a treat. Stewart exaggerates all those mannerism you might have thought mildly irritating before – he’s all limbs and sentences cut off in their prime and telling people to leave their own houses. But if he had toned any of that down, the air would have quickly escaped the balloon, for really he’s the only thing keeping it afloat.

But that’s stardom for you. A vehicle comes along that in total isn’t really worthy of the involvement of a marquee attraction like Stewart, who could be lending his talents to more solid fare like Shenandoah and The Flight of the Phoenix (also released the same year). While he’s crucial to both those other pictures, giving one of his best performances in the former, perhaps surprisingly, U.S. audiences, voting with their dollars, felt his performance here trumped that of the Aldrich picture.

Ir’s usually believable roles that attract the greatest critical plaudits for stars, but actually their most notable contribution is in making fly movies that should never work on paper but somehow with their magical injection not necessarily makes the screen sizzle but turns doughy material into something lighter and more easily digestible.

Henry Koster (Mr Hobbs Takes a Vacation, 1962) directs with occasional flair from a screenplay by Hal Kanter (Move Over, Darling , 1963) and Nunnally Johnson (The Dirty Dozen, 1967) based on the bestseller by John Haase.

As under-rated as The Trouble with Angels (1966) as lightweight comedies of the decade generally were, this is worth a look for Stewart alone.

https://amzn.to/3RiMcjX

The Trouble with Angels (1966) ****

Shocking Fact No 1: director Ida Lupino was the only female director working in Hollywood at this time. And she hadn’t worked in features for over a decade. Her previous picture, The Bigamist (1953), was her fifth. And while she had continued to find work in television, the movie business shunned her. What was perhaps more shocking, as I pointed out in my book When Women Ruled Hollywood, was that in the period 1910-1919 more women worked as directors in Hollywood than at any time since and that it was a woman, Alice Guy, rather than Melies, who actually made the first narrative movie. Worst of all, despite being a major box office hit, this was Lupino’s last picture.

Shocking Fact No 2: this didn’t turn Hayley Mills into a major adult star. Oh yes, she made the transition – and how – in The Family Way later that year, a British romantic drama that saw her shed her clothes. Big hit in Britain, not so well-received in the USA. Her career then took an odd turn, into thrillers like Twisted Nerve (1968) and Endless Night (1972).

*Not exactly demure. Marching band outfit takes the grey out of the convent uniform.*

I say an odd turn because if there was any better demonstration that the actress had properly developed her comedy chops I’d yet to see it. Sure, Disney had used her in comedy, but that was mostly routine stuff. Here, she revealed an emotional maturity lacking in her previous work and, to some extent, in her future movies.

And, in part, because Lupino keeps her away from big dramatic moments, relying entirely on her facial expression to reveal character development. I am surprised that, at this point, with Doris Day’s box office allure dimming, that nobody saw Mills as her natural successor. She had the same puckish demeanor and she deftly handled comedy. Give her a few years and she would have been a natural for such polished items as Barefoot in the Park. You get the feeling there was more natural ability that was left untapped.

Anyway, on with the show.

This is just a delight. It shouldn’t work at all, certainly not for a modern audience accustomed to sharply-honed laugh lines. But it’s so cleverly constructed, in covering a three-year period, it could easily have been a string of loosely-connected episodes rather than a picture with an underlying narrative that mostly takes place beneath the surface.

Orphan Mary (Hayley Mills) has been dumped by rich playboy uncle (Kent George) in a convent boarding school that looks more like a medieval fortress than anything else. She teams up with the equally unhappy Rachel (June Harding), whose parents are at least indulgent, and together they torment the life out of the nuns and other kids, pouring detergent into tea-pots, setting off fire alarms, charging their schoolmates for an illicit guided tour of the convent, developing their smoking habits, breaking everything in sight. One scheme goes so badly awry the nuns have to take shears to a face mask.

Throughout all of this, she comes up against a tough Mother Superior (Rosalind Russell) who comes across like Miss Jean Brodie, minus her dangerously progressive side, but ever ready with a quip, able to tackle any emergency, though Mary drives her to distraction. While set in her ways, the nun does sail close to the wind, kitting out the girls in red cheerleader outfits in order to give them an unfair advantage in a marching band competition.

Any other director would have made the marching band competition the climax of the movie. I was fully expecting it to take up the final third, as pupils with little musical ability work hard and discover they can improve enough to win the competition and in so doing find out some platitudes about themselves. Instead, every episode is kept short and sweet, often the pay-off delivered in unexpected manner, for example, that we discover the girls have won when Mother Superior takes the opportunity to gloat over her rival headmaster (Jim Hutton). Or a section where teenage girls sent to buy their first bra go wild trying on all sorts of outrageous outfits that in other hands could easily have been expanded is ended sharply by Mother Superior holding up the plainest item and ordering two dozen of them.

It fairly skates along. But every now and then it dramatically slows down. And for what? Pretty much nothing at all. Just Mother Superior taking a quiet moment to herself amid all the hurly burly of running a school and dealing with mischief. But gradually, in those quiet moments, she is joined, at a distance, by a staring Mary, wondering about the nun’s inner calm.

Ida Lupino’s color palette is extraordinary. Sure, it’s nuns, so we can expect a lot of black and white. But Lupino avoids the temptation to compensate with huge swathes of color. Instead, for most of the film, the girls are decked out in grey. So when splashes of yellow or pink or red appear they are distinctive. Only as the girls grow older does more color emerge.

The wry Rosalind Russell (Gypsy, 1962) is on top form. Instead of attempting to dominate, she nips in and steals scenes with her dry delivery. She shifts from indominable to maternal and eventually engages the psychological attention of Mary in a superb scene about her own life.

In that sense Hayley Mills has her work cut out to hold her own against such an accomplished professional, which she achieves through her own delivery, but much more through facial expression. This was June Harding’s only movie. But look out for Camilla Sparv (Assignment K, 1968) in her movie debut and a cameo from Gypsy Rose Lee.

Terrific direction for Ida Lupino – watch for example how the camera closes in on characters – from screenplay by Blanche Hanalis (Where Angels Go Trouble Follows! 1968) from the bestseller by Jane Trahey.

As old-fashioned as they come and a joy to watch.

Catch it on YouTube – the first link is rent or buy, the second one is free but punctuated by adverts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37FnvNp2EYc

The Assassination Bureau (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.

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Carry On Nurse (1960) ***

There was no greater divide between audiences and critics in Britain than the long-running comedy “Carry On” series (outside of an occasional satirical bulls-eye like Carry On Up the Khyber, 1968). And a similar gulf existed between the type of audiences the movies attracted in Britain and those in America. In Britain they were vastly popular general releases while in America their usual habitat was the arthouse as if they were seen as the natural successors to the Ealing comedies. And there was a third chasm – between the endearing risqué early comedies and the more lascivious later versions.

Carry On Nurse fell into the endearing camp. The humor was gentle rather than forced, the emphasis on misunderstanding and innuendo and smooth seducers like Leslie Phillips rather than exposed female flesh and the grasping likes of the ever-chortling Sid James. Perhaps you could define this earlier film as pre-nasal Kenneth Williams, his peculiar type of delivery not yet at full throttle. Here there is innocence rather than lust and the males quake in fear not just of the indomitable Hattie Jacques in brusque matron mode but of the other efficient nurses led by Shirley Eaton who have the measure of their rather hapless patients, although student nurse Joan Sims – making her series debut – is an accident-prone soul.

The action is mostly confined to a male ward. There are plenty of gags – alarms rung by mistake, boiling catheters burned to a turn, medication making a patient go wild, patients intoxicated by laughing gas and the famous replacement of a rectal thermometer by a daffodil. Wilfred Hyde-White as a constant complainer and obsessive radio listener Charles Hawtrey provide further ongoing amusement.

But the thrust of the story is romance. Journalist Terence Longdon fancies Shirley Eaton but his initial advances are spurned as she is in love with a doctor. In a role far removed from his later brazen characters, Williams plays a shy intellectual who finally comes round to the charms of Jill Ireland (later wife of Charles Bronson). Although Leslie Phillips is his usual suave self, he makes no designs on the female staff since he has a girlfriend elsewhere and his ailment – a bunion on the bum – makes him an unlikely candidate for a hospital liaison.

Hattie Jacques is in imperious form, Shirley Eaton shows what she is capable of, Kenneth Williams playing against type is a revelation.

British critics hated the “Carry On” films until late in the decade when Carry On Up the Khyber (1968) hit a satirical note. Critics felt the movies pandered to the lowest common denominator and were a poor substitute for the Ealing comedies which had given Britain an unexpected appreciation among American comedy fans.

It was a well-known fact the comedies did not always travel. Apart from Jacques Tati, the more vulgar French comedies featuring the likes of Fernandel were seen as arthouse fare. Unless they featured a sex angle or the promise of nudity, coarse Italians comedies struggled to find an international audience. The “Carry On” films were bawdy by inclination without being visually offensive

Carry On Sergeant (1958), the first in the series, had been a massive success in Britain. Distributor Anglo-Amalgamated was so convinced it would find a similar response in the U.S. that it was opened in New York at a first run arthouse. Although comedies were hardly standard arthouse fare, this was generally the route for low-budget British films. The picture lasted only three weeks and taking that as proof of its dismal prospects other exhibitors ignored it.

The follow-up Carry On Nurse (1959) took an entirely different route when launched in America in 1960. This time New York would be virtually the last leg of its exhibition tour. Instead it opened on March 10 at the 750-seat Crest in Los Angeles. Away from the New York spotlight, the little movie attracted not just good notices but decent audiences.

Instead of being whipped off screens after a few weeks, it developed legs. In Chicago it ran for 16 weeks in first run before transferring to a further 50 theaters. Within a few months of opening it had been released in 48 cities. In Minneapolis it was booked as a “filler” at the World arthouse, expected to run a week and no more. Instead, it remained for six weeks and when it shifted out to the nabes out-grossed Billy Wilder’s big-budget comedy The Apartment (1960) with a stellar cast of Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine.

In its fourth month at the 600-seat Fox Esquire in Denver where it opened in May, it set a new long-run record for a non-roadshow picture. It had been taking in a steady $4,000 a week since opening.

SOURCES: “How To Nurse a Foreign Pic That’s Neither Art nor Nudie: Skip N.Y.,” Variety, Aug 24, 1960, 3; “British Carry On Nurse A Sleeper in Mpls With Long Lopp Run, Nabe Biz,” Variety, Aug 24, 1960, 18;

Note: by and large this blog follows American release dates so although Carry On Nurse was shown in Britain in 1959 it did not reach America until 1960.

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The Fast Lady (1962) ***

Even the biggest stars have to start somewhere. Julie Christie in embryo, however endearing, is a long way from the finished article in Doctor Zhivago (1965). And, to be honest, this is more of a reminder of the scale of the journey undertaken for here she’s really no more than an adornment. Though, possibly, as rich man’s daughter Claire, she’s acting her socks off given her main role is to fall in love with gormless civil servant Murdoch (Stanley Baxter) after imagining him dressed in a kilt spouting Burns.

And at this point in cinematic development, cars were viewed more as sources of comedy than thrills, anyone suggesting that vehicles could be pushed to their limits in the breakneck manner of Bullitt (1968) and The French Connection (1970) would have their heads examined.

*This poster and the one below bear all the hallmarks of a quick reissue*
*to take advantage of Christie’s post-Zhivago fame.*

Cashing in on audience love of the antique auto as demonstrated in Genevieve (1953), and with a surprisingly contemporary nod to the ongoing battle between cyclists and drivers, this mainlines mostly on a long-lost innocent charm even as car salesman Freddie (Leslie “Ding Dong” Phillips) injects as much innuendo (though not on the Carry On level) as possible.

After coming off worst in a collision with aforesaid rich fellow Charles (James Robertson Justice), cyclist Murdoch decides to buy an old Bentley Red Label 3-liter (the titular “Fast Lady”) sports car as a means of wooing speed-mad Claire. As you might expect, the path to true love is littered with obstacles, not least the overbearing father’s objections and the small matter of Murdoch not being able to drive. Cue jokes about driving lessons and tests and a mistaken arrest for drunk driving. There’s endless opportunity for protagonists to end up in the mud or the water.

*Legally, in the credits, her name had to be smaller than the top-billed stars. But there was nothing to prevent distributors from making her face the focus of attention.*

Feels miscast somehow, the top-billed Leslie Phillips (Maroc 7, 1967) has misplaced his normal charm, coming across as little more than an upper-class spiv. And you can’t help feeling Norman Wisdom would have been better suited as Murdoch rather than snarky Scottish comedian Stanley Baxter (Father Came Too, 1964) while James Robertson Justice (Mayerling, 1968) never leaves his comfort zone.

On the plus side are too many treats to mention. Apart from Christie and a glimpse of Stanley Baxter before he dominated the British light entertainment television scene, in bits parts are such comedy legends as Dick Emery, Frankie Howerd and Clive Dunn (and singer Kenneth McKellar on television) plus a smattering of racing idols like Graham Hill and John Surtees and a cameo from BBC motoring correspondent Raymond Baxter.

Ken Annakin (Battle of the Bulge, 1965) isn’t much stretched though keeping the script by Jack Davies (Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, 1965) and Henry Blyth (A Stitch in Time, 1963), based on the book by Keble Howard, on the straight-and-narrow may well have been his most difficult task.

May be heresy but for some viewers Julie Christie will take second place to the array of vehicles.

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Sons of the Desert (1933) *** – Seen at the Cinema

One of the joys of the current spate of one-day anniversary revivals is that it turns up a 90-year-old gem like this. I haven’t seen Laurel and Hardy on the big screen since I was a child, and that wasn’t even in the cinema, but at our local school in Cumbernauld, Scotland, where the local padre Fr Jaconelli (part of the famed ice-cream clan) ran an impromptu cinema show on Saturday mornings with a shaky 16mm projector.

Actually, I could catch the comedic duo once a week at a pub down the road where the local chapter of the “Sons of the Desert” fan club hosts a showing. “Sons of the Desert,” in case you didn’t know, is an international fan club with hundreds of affiliated clubs (or “tents” as they are known) and this film is the reason.

But the question, as ever, with comedians, is does their schtick stand the test of time. They are perhaps fortunate in that they don’t rely on witty one-liners. On the other hand, the set-ups are so straightforward they are almost prehistoric. And comedy double acts have more or less disappeared.

The movie follows the traditional Laurel and Hardy template, some barmy scheme dreamed up by Ollie, tripping over ever prop in sight, a variety of items to destroy, the pair bedraggled. In this case, Ollie’s wife Lottie (Mae Busch) opposed the idea of them attending the annual convention of the aforesaid desert gang in Chicago so he convinces her that he’s so ill the only way he’ll recover is by taking a trip to Honolulu. Naturally, the liner sinks and they are caught out in the lie.

Meanwhile, all mayhem breaks loose, drenched on the roof, battered at the convention, the target of practical jokes by conventioneer Charley (Charley Chase) who turns out to be Lottie’s long-lost brother. The plot’s pretty much irrelevant where this pair are concerned, just the starting point for a series of gags, whether it’s Stan eating wax fruit, landing Ollie in whatever water is handy, and both doing the wrong thing when the correct would have been simpler.

Sure, Ollie twiddles with his tie and harrumphs and marches his fingers across the table, Stan scratches his hair and looks about to burst into tears, but the combination remains irresistible. Few comic duos have come as close and then for not as long.

The program also included the short Dirty Work from the same year which sees them as chimneysweeps attending the household of a mad scientist who has discovering the secrets of rejuvenation. I’m not such a big fan that I could tell you where Sons of the Desert ranks in their pantheon, except that it was the inspiration for the fan club (which prefers, incidentally, to be known as a collection of “film buffs”) but it was fantastic just to see them on the big screen and imagine the laughter they have generated down the generations.

There was a big revival in the 1960s, when silent comedy was being rediscovered, and there was a cartoon series, and they made so many films you can probably see one anywhere anytime. These kind of gagsters never went out of fashion, Jim Carrey channeled much of their mirth, but few have matched their sense of timing.

I saw this as part of my self-appointed cinema triple bill on Monday. I’ve reviewed the films in reverse order of seeing them. It’s one of the beauties of my method of going to the cinema that I can compile a program from completely different genres – comedy, crime, horror – and go in with little expectation (I doubted even Laurel and Hardy would stand the test of time on the big screen) and come out thinking I had one of the best cinema outings in a long time.

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