Anyone breaking into the private eye market in the late 1960s had to content not only with the ghost of Humphrey Bogart but a heavyweight slugger name of Harper (1966) whom Paul Newman had fashioned into the most likely contender for the Bogart crown. Ironically, it was growing interest in Bogart that spurred on an imitator. His movies, screened two hundred times a year on television, created an initial cult following, his persona maximized to the full by the reissue on the tenth anniversary of his death of 45 of his pictures plus the half-dozen biographies that appeared in a three-month stretch.
As it happened a couple of Raymond Chandler novels, The Little Sister and The Long Goodbye never before filmed and theoretically at least avoiding comparison with the past, were up for grabs. The Little Sister was the chosen vehicle. But, anyone chancing their arm in the role of Philip Marlowe was likely to be met with jibes of “he’s no Humphrey Bogart.”
That’s not the only problem here. The story is awfully convoluted, it’s been updated to a modern Los Angeles complete with hippies and gym work-outs and screenwriter Stirling Silliphant has chucked away the bulk of the original dialog. So, little remains of what made the character compulsive viewing in the first place.
Marlowe (James Garner) is investigating the disappearance of the brother of Orfamay Quest (Sharon Farrell), a young woman from Kansas, when he stumbles upon a couple of ice-pick murders and a pack of incriminating photos that depict television sit-com star Mavis Weld (Gayle Hunnicutt) – no slouch herself at knocking people out – in a compromising situation with top-line gangster Sonny Steelgrave (H.M. Wynant) whose speciality had been killing people with an ice-pick. So it’s a murder/blackmail double whammy.
The plot thickens when Winslow Wong (Bruce Lee) tries to pay him off and when that fails wrecks his office by demonstrating the kung fu skills that would later make that actor a star. Detective Lt French (Carroll O’Connor) is the typical dumb cop that Marlowe runs rings round. Also entering the fray is exotic dancer Dolores (Rita Moreno), a friend of Mavis, and to liven things up for the gumshoe a girlfriend Julie (Corinne Camacho) who has some nifty one-liners when Ofamay attempts to seduce her boyfriend. And there’s any number of Steelgrave’s thugs who make any number of attempts to scare Marlow off.
Eventually, after being drugged by Dr Vincent Lagardie, Marlowe finds the missing brother, Orrin, who, while dying, attempts to kill the detective with an ice-pick. Assuming that clears up both cases, Marlowe then discovers that Orrin, Mavis and Orfamay are siblings.
Hunnicutt is given the pin-up treatment in ABC Film Review.
But the tale still has some way to go, uncovering a hornet’s nest of spite and revenge among the warring siblings. There’s way too cute an ending though whether that was Silliphant’s invention or the tack taken by Chandler I have little interest in finding out, exhausted as I am by a seemingly endless series of twists and turns.
I’m not exactly sure what’s missing from this except a femme fatale – Mavis makes no moves on Marlowe, though her sister, who hardly qualifies as a femme fatale, does. It’s unfair in a sense to complain that it’s not following the Chandler template when so much effort has gone in to trying to initiate something new. If it had been called anything else, or the name Marlowe substituted by Smith, then we wouldn’t be thinking so much of the source material or the imitable Bogart.
Confusingly, there is a Bogart involved, director Paul Bogart (The Three Sisters, 1966 – from the Checkov play and no relation to The Little Sister) and although he keeps the plot ticking along – who wouldn’t with so much plot to tick – that’s pretty much all he does, in the cold light of Los Angeles hardly able to emulate the film noir setting.
So, effectively, it’s up to James Garner (Mister Buddwing, 1966) to pull the whole movie together, or put another way, keep it from falling apart. Audiences, much taken with the actor’s reinvention of his screen persona in his previous picture, comedy western Support Your Local Sherrif (1969), didn’t bring sufficient box office support. Garner is okay but sorry to say he’s no Bogart.
Rita Moreno (Night of the Following Day, 1969) is the pick of the supporting cast. Gayle Hunnicutt (Eye of the Cat, 1969), given the type of billing that elevated Lauren Bacall to super-stardom, doesn’t do enough to achieve the same. Interestingly, both Garner and Hunnicutt went down the shamus route in television in the future, the former in The Rockford Files (1974-1980), the latter in an episode of Philip Marlowe, Private Eye (1983).
If you’re a fan of Garner a reasonable watch. If you’re a fan of Chandler or Bogart you’d be inclined to give it a miss.
Superb performance by Sophia Loren (Arabesque, 1966) lifts taut Parisian-set thriller into outstanding class. Forced, of narrative necessity, to keep a lid on her emotions, Loren’s eyes betray her feelings. Director Anatole Litvak’s (Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun, 1970) camera is relentless, trapping her with almost claustrophobic compulsion, allowing little release, preventing her escaping the eye of truth.
Husband Robert (Anthony Perkins) and wife Lisa (Sophia Loren) embark on major insurance fraud. He’s the instigator, she reluctantly goes along with the plan as she imagines that, with their unlikely marriage already teetering, it will buy her freedom. Robert, sole survivor of a plane crash, rather than announcing he is alive, uses his death to scam the insurance company out of $120,000 (equivalent to $1.2 million today).
Given he is deceased, she has to carry out the formalities of making the claim, dealing with the various authorities, including police and the American consulate. Meanwhile, hiding out, every knock on the door or ring of the telephone creates panic. At various points Robert has to hide in every room in the apartment – remembering to remove any sign of his existence – and on the stairwell and when that proves too dangerous on the roof.
Little things that could give him away. The extra plate or glass could trigger suspicion from the cleaner. Lisa, a non-smoker, has to purchase cigarettes for Robert, the remains of an ashtray a possible reveal. She returns to work much faster than you would expect of a grieving widow.
She attracts an initially unwelcome suitor, David (Gig Young), a doctor, a friend of a friend. Workmates turn up at inopportune moments. A boy in an apartment opposite spots the recluse, at one point, shining a mirror into Robert’s eyes, dazzling him as he hides, precariously, on the roof. A cat, too, threatens to reveal the voluntarily imprisoned man.
You might wonder how why she married the financially dissolute Robert in the first place, more baby than man, a “charming octopus” whose needs would strangle the life out of a wife. He was her meal ticket from post-war Naples. She was so desperate to escape poverty that she would, as Robert acidly (and truthfully) puts it, that she would have gone off with any fellow with “a couple of bucks in his pocket.”
In Britain it was released on the lower part of a double bill to “Taras Bulba.”
He suspects she has a lover. And from random clues in the apartment, David also suspects she has a lover. But mostly it’s nail-biting waiting. And when her nerves are so shredded she is inclined to confess all to the police, and be rid of her husband, she realises she would be jailed as his accomplice. And though going along with the notion that the money will buy both their (separate) freedom, the devious Robert has no intention of letting her go, intending to blackmail her into remaining with him.
As the stakes rise we enter a frankly magnificent endgame, with one twist after another, Lisa barely coherent from overwhelming pressure even as freedom beckons.
It’s splendidly done, chock full of surprises, from the opening credits to the last intense close-up of Lisa. The credit sequence, a long tracking shot following a pair of legs from a bus to a nigh club, jaunty jazz in the background, Lisa exuberantly dancing the Twist, ends in an explosive slap. Where are obstructive insurance agents, the kind that automatically challenge every claim, hoping to whittle down the amount, when you need them? This one couldn’t be more helpful, even easing the path, when she had counted on the opposite in order to scupper the outrageous plan, to getting a death certificate out of the American consulate. It turns out you can easily dupe the police by simply denying that a coat found near the location of the crash does not belong to Robert.
The focus is kept almost evenly on the culprits. Awful husband that he is, Robert’s little-boy-lost persona still extracts audience sympathy – she is a deceiver after all, conning him into marriage, lover on the side – especially as you know that, even though this never occurs to Lisa, that capturing Robert will result in her imprisonment. But Robert already lives on the emotional edge and there’s one terrifying scene where he is clearly tempted to throw the small boy off the roof.
Even when Lisa believes she has found sanctuary in David, his suspicions threaten that. I won’t spoil the endgame for you because it is exceptional, very well worked in terms of action and emotion.
This didn’t get much attention when it appeared despite Loren’s stunning performance, perhaps because insurance fraud suggests little of the inherent tension of a heist. Anthony Perkins, desperately trying to avoid the typecasting triggered by Psycho (1960), successfully develops a more attractive screen persona that would climax in Pretty Poison (1968). Given the set-up, you imagine that the eternally charming Gig Young (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They, 1969) will turn out to be an undercover insurance agent. Even when that is obviously not the case, he is too inquisitive for Lisa’s good.
In contrast to the claustrophobic tension, the movie plays out against the backdrop of fun-filled parties, dancing, nightclubs, cocktails, the high life.
At this point Anatole Litvak was rarely mentioned in dispatches, critics considering his best films (The Snake Pit, 1948, for example) way behind him and that he was more likely to helm lumbering well-meaning vehicles like The Journey (1959). But, opening credits and a couple of scenes making using of perilous shadow apart, he is primarily an actor’s director. And when he gives a star of the skill of Sophia Loren such leeway, the script not permitting her self-justification, he is truly rewarded.
Superb performance by Sophia Loren (Arabesque, 1966) lifts taut Parisian-set thriller into outstanding class. Forced, of narrative necessity, to keep a lid on her emotions, Loren’s eyes betray her feelings. Director Anatole Litvak’s (Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun, 1970) camera is relentless, trapping her with almost claustrophobic compulsion, allowing little release, preventing her escaping the eye of truth.
Husband Robert (Anthony Perkins) and wife Lisa (Sophia Loren) embark on major insurance fraud. He’s the instigator, she reluctantly goes along with the plan as she imagines that, with their unlikely marriage already teetering, it will buy her freedom. Robert, sole survivor of a plane crash, rather than announcing he is alive, uses his death to scam the insurance company out of $120,000 (equivalent to $1.2 million today).
Given he is deceased, she has to carry out the formalities of making the claim, dealing with the various authorities, including police and the American consulate. Meanwhile, hiding out, every knock on the door or ring of the telephone creates panic. At various points Robert has to hide in every room in the apartment – remembering to remove any sign of his existence – and on the stairwell and when that proves too dangerous on the roof.
Little things that could give him away. The extra plate or glass could trigger suspicion from the cleaner. Lisa, a non-smoker, has to purchase cigarettes for Robert, the remains of an ashtray a possible reveal. She returns to work much faster than you would expect of a grieving widow.
She attracts an initially unwelcome suitor, David (Gig Young), a doctor, a friend of a friend. Workmates turn up at inopportune moments. A boy in an apartment opposite spots the recluse, at one point, shining a mirror into Robert’s eyes, dazzling him as he hides, precariously, on the roof. A cat, too, threatens to reveal the voluntarily imprisoned man.
You might wonder how why she married the financially dissolute Robert in the first place, more baby than man, a “charming octopus” whose needs would strangle the life out of a wife. He was her meal ticket from post-war Naples. She was so desperate to escape poverty that she would, as Robert acidly (and truthfully) puts it, that she would have gone off with any fellow with “a couple of bucks in his pocket.”
He suspects she has a lover. And from random clues in the apartment, David also suspects she has a lover. But mostly it’s nail-biting waiting. And when her nerves are so shredded she is inclined to confess all to the police, and be rid of her husband, she realises she would be jailed as his accomplice. And though going along with the notion that the money will buy both their (separate) freedom, the devious Robert has no intention of letting her go, intending to blackmail her into remaining with him.
As the stakes rise we enter a frankly magnificent endgame, with one twist after another, Lisa barely coherent from overwhelming pressure even as freedom beckons.
It’s splendidly done, chock full of surprises, from the opening credits to the last intense close-up of Lisa. The credit sequence, a long tracking shot following a pair of legs from a bus to a nigh club, jaunty jazz in the background, Lisa exuberantly dancing the Twist, ends in an explosive slap. Where are obstructive insurance agents, the kind that automatically challenge every claim, hoping to whittle down the amount, when you need them? This one couldn’t be more helpful, even easing the path, when she had counted on the opposite in order to scupper the outrageous plan, to getting a death certificate out of the American consulate. It turns out you can easily dupe the police by simply denying that a coat found near the location of the crash does not belong to Robert.
The focus is kept almost evenly on the culprits. Awful husband that he is, Robert’s little-boy-lost persona still extracts audience sympathy – she is a deceiver after all, conning him into marriage, lover on the side – especially as you know that, even though this never occurs to Lisa, that capturing Robert will result in her imprisonment. But Robert already lives on the emotional edge and there’s one terrifying scene where he is clearly tempted to throw the small boy off the roof.
Even when Lisa believes she has found sanctuary in David, his suspicions threaten that. I won’t spoil the endgame for you because it is exceptional, very well worked in terms of action and emotion.
This didn’t get much attention when it appeared despite Loren’s stunning performance, perhaps because insurance fraud suggests little of the inherent tension of a heist. Anthony Perkins, desperately trying to avoid the typecasting triggered by Psycho (1960), successfully develops a more attractive screen persona that would climax in Pretty Poison (1968). Given the set-up, you imagine that the eternally charming Gig Young (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They, 1969) will turn out to be an undercover insurance agent. Even when that is obviously not the case, he is too inquisitive for Lisa’s good.
In contrast to the claustrophobic tension, the movie plays out against the backdrop of fun-filled parties, dancing, nightclubs, cocktails, the high life.
At this point Anatole Litvak was rarely mentioned in dispatches, critics considering his best films (The Snake Pit, 1948, for example) way behind him and that he was more likely to helm lumbering well-meaning vehicles like The Journey (1959). But, opening credits and a couple of scenes making using of perilous shadow apart, he is primarily an actor’s director. And when he gives a star of the skill of Sophia Loren such leeway, the script not permitting her self-justification, he is truly rewarded.
The screenplay, for once not drawn an another source like a novel or Broadway play, is an original drawn out of the combined minds of Peter Viertel (The Old Man and the Sea, 1958), Hugh Wheeler (Kaleidoscope, 1967) and Andre Versini (Mission to Venice, 1964).
Loren is the true star. In a peach of a performance, her eyes constantly reveal inner turmoil.
Passable British crime B-picture, mainlining on sleaze, plot as flimsy as the costumes of the dancers, rescued by, flipping her screen persona on its head, a heartfelt performance by Jayne Mansfield. Career tumbling spectacularly after her Frank Tashlin heyday (The Girl Can’t Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter, both 1957) she was loaned out to any outfit that would have her. Director Terence Young’s (Dr No, 1962) career was also at a low ebb after Safari and Zarak (both 1956) while Carl Boehm (Peeping Tom, 1960) and future Carry On stalwart Barbara Windsor, minus trademark Cockney accent, were on the way up.
Ostensibly an expose of the Soho strip club business, invests too much time in cabaret, though Midnight Franklin’s (Jayne Mansfield) number is surprisingly well done. Parallel plots see journalist Robert (Carl Boehm) investigating the industry while rival night club owners Johnny Solo (Leo Genn) and Diamonds Dielli (Sheldon Lawrence) duke it out over the spoils.
As you might expect, such clubs are populated by seedy customers, some harmless like a Leipzig salesman falling for disinterested showgirl Lilliane (Danik Patisson), others on the creepier side like Mr Arpels (Martin Boddey) who tempts unwary girls with talk of setting them up in the movie business. Naturally, so many girls together, jealousies simmer and tensions flare, resulting, as you might expect, in a catfight. But that’s nothing compared to the beating handed out to Johnny by Diamonds’ thugs. Matters aren’t helped by Johnny’s manager Novak (Christopher Lee) being in the pay of the opposition.
Apart from wearing outfits that would give the censor of the time a heart attack, Midnight is really a sensible girl, hating violence, warning boyfriend Johnny to get out of the business before he ends up dead. She’s got few illusions left, hardly expecting Johnny to pop the question, but like Richard Widmark in yesterday’s Two Rode Together (1961) gradually becoming repelled by his actions.
For the most part she accepts that Johnny effectively pimps out his acts to wealthy customers like Arpels but recoils when he attempts to do so with Ponytail (Barbara Windsor) whom most people believe to be under-age. However, when Ponytail’s attempted rape turns into murder and the police turn up at the nightclub, Midnight, initially obeying the laws of omerta, turns on Johnny after she discovers his gun. But in a wonderful closing scene, she picks up the discarded flower he wore in his lapel and kisses it.
There’s some surprisingly potent dialogue and sharp one-liners – “that’s a very nice dress you nearly got on” / “I had a friend once but it didn’t take”/ “there’s not enough milk of human kindness around here to fill a baby’s bottle” / after a date with Arpels “some girls came back with promises…one came back with a baby.” A good bit more of such zingers and the movie would barrel along regardless of limp plot.
Energy is lost by focusing too long on the cabaret acts and on the growing romance between Robert and Lilliane. As glamorous fading nightclub star, Midnight provides the necessary oomph in more ways that one, but the movie would have benefitted by concentrating more on her ruefulness and self-awareness. Though besotted by Johnny, she knows he’s no lifetime ticket, tries to keep from herself as long as possible acknowledgement of his more sinister side, not so much knowing her place but aware which barriers not to cross. There’s a terrific scene in the middle of the night when she guesses he might be in trouble but hesitates over telephoning him in case this would be deemed over-familiar intrusion. Even she doesn’t know why she still hangs around a joint like this except “fish gotta swim, bird gotta fly.”
Bombastic on stage, she’s subtle off. You will come away believing Jayne Mansfield can actually act. But there’s nothing much to get excited about from the other performers, mostly in the stolid category, though it’s interesting to see what Barbara Windsor can do without reverting to a Cockney accent. Oscar-nominated Leo Genn (55 Days at Peking, 1963) proves that even crooks can possess a stiff upper lip. At this point with only a couple of horror pictures to his name Christopher Lee (The Devil Rides Out, 1968) could still be found in dramatic fare, but this is no break-put role.
Herbert Kretzmer, credited with the screenplay along with Harry Lee (All That Heaven Allows, 1955), would go onto worldwide fame and enormous wealth for Anglicizing French hit musical Les Miserables. While posters boast of Eastman color, which would have added to enjoyment of the dance routines, you can pretty much only find this in black-and-white and with ten minutes lopped off.
Wanna feel sorry for Jayne Mansfield, this is for you.
A sheer delight, a twisty thriller with a standout sexy burglar. It might put you immediately in mind of To Catch a Thief (1955) but this takes the Hitchcock embryo and molds it in something effortlessly stylish and not just to keep the audience on the hop. A second viewing has raised it in my estimation.
Unless you were a fan of the more permissive pictures at the end of the 1960s or kept a close eye on the gossip columns – or for that matter Playboy magazine – you were unlikely to have come across slinky blonde Daniele Gaubert. A former teen model and supporting actress in a number of French and Italian films at the start of the 1960s, she had a brief brush with Hollywood as Yul Brynner’s girlfriend in United Artists’ Flight from Ashiya (1964) but then married Rhadames Trujillo, son of the Dominican Republic dictator.
The year after The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl she starred in Radley Metzger’s provocative Camille 2000 which set pulses racing especially at the censor’s office. Then marriage beckoned again, this time to French Olympic triple gold medallist skier Jean-Claude Killy with whom she made her last picture The Snow Job (1972) also known, depending on where you lived, as The Ski Raiders and The Great Ski Caper.
She only made eighteen movies but The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl is by far the standout. A taut thriller with plenty of twists and stylish action scenes, the French-Italian co-production was the only film of documentary film maker Edouard Logerau and that background helps shape the movie with many of the most thrilling sequences lacking musical accompaniment.
Female empowerment is not normally associated with crime, given that organized crime is generally organized by men. But burglary is a different matter, lending itself to non-gender-specific individual enterprise. Though there are safes to break, there’s no glass ceiling in this brand of thievery.
Gaubert plays a cat burglar ironically known as “the lone wolf” (as in the original title) who is forced to trade her freedom by stealing a cache of drugs for the police in order to apprehend a criminal mastermind (Sacha Pitoeff). (Maybe this notion inspired Luc Besson’s Nikita.) Her sidekick is Michael Duchaussoy, seconded from his usual job as an embassy press attache, on the grounds that he can lip-read (which proves more than a gimmick as the plot unfolds).
Given that this was all shot “in camera” – Christopher Nolan’s favourite phrase – without the benefit of CGI or, so it would appear, much in the way of bluescreen, the burglary scenes are pretty impressive. For a kick-off, Gaubert is a sexy as you can get in a skin-tight cat-suit. Furthermore, her character calls on skills from her previous occupation as a trapeze artist. While the director doesn’t match Hitchcock’s in the tension-racking stakes, the sheer verve of the burglary takes the breath away.
The first burglary – before she is caught – takes place at a fancy chateau where a party is in full swing (owners in residence less likely to take extra precautions to hide their valuables), Gaubert nips over a wall, slips up a tree, uses a line thrower (a type of harpoon) to connect tree to building, and then proceeds to walk along the tightrope. Mission accomplished, she zooms off in a sports car, only stopping to remove false tyre treads and strip out of her costume before hiding her ill-gotten gains in a secret compartment at the back of the fridge.
The police burglary is in an office block. She and the lip-reader are holed up in an apartment opposite watching via a telescope. Although they pass the time in gentle flirtation, especially as she favours revealing outfits, she is not quite as imprisoned as it might seem and is already hatching her own plans to outwit her captors. This burglary is even more dangerous, in the pouring rain for a start, across Parisian rooftops, and involving a trapeze and ropes.
Thereafter, plot twists come thick and fast after this. She escapes to Switzerland, pursued by lip-reader (to whom she has clearly formed an attachment), cops and furious drug runners. Eventually re-captured she agree to another official burglary as a way of finally trapping Mr Big.
The tone is lightened by repartee and some interesting characterization. The lone wolf turns out to have very strong principles that prevent her just running off. Mr Big is a stamp aficionado. A lava lamp is turned into a weapon. Instead of counting to five before killing someone, a bad guy does the countdown according to the number of people diving into a swimming pool. Gaubert fools her captors into thinking they have a flat tyre by dangling her handbag over the edge of the door until it bumps into the tyre and makes the thwock-thwock of a burst tyre. “Survivors give me goose flesh,” quips a thug.
The closest comparison is not Hitchcock but Danger: Diabolik (1968) featuring John Philip Law which has a definite comic book riff. And you might also point to Joseph Losey’s Modesty Blaise (1966) or even, for a self-contained independent woman, to Raquel Welch’s Fathom (1967. But this lone wolf is ice-cold. Blonde is not enough. She is one step ahead of the law and the criminals. There are hints of a tragic past – a trapeze artists requires a partner, for example.
The last shot has Genault triumphant on a Paris rooftop. There is a nod to Hitchcock (think Rear Window) in the use of a telescopic framing device for many scenes, giving them a voyeuristic aspect. Sure, a bigger budget and a better supporting cast – and perhaps a more obvious romance – might have lifted the picture but Genault’s presence ensures that the film does not lack style. Gaubert dominates so much you could imagine she harldy needed direction but it is the cleverness of Edourd Logerau (Paris Secret, 1965) that makes it appear seamless.
The most celebrated of the conspiracy thrillers and rightly so. But I’m not going to start with the Korean brainwashing, extraordinary cinematic sequence that that is, but with the scene on the train, the pickup scene as it might be known in those days, meet-cute now. There is little cute about this picture which stretches the bounds of normality. And I guess I was already so unsettled, and perhaps settling into film noir mode when an easily available woman was always to be distrusted, and thought that the sudden appearance of Eugenie (Janet Leigh) was a plant.
But that wasn’t in itself what lodged that scene in the caboose so firmly in my mind. But the superlative acting of Frank Sinatra as the investigative Major Marco. Sure, we’ve seen good, sometimes great acting before from Sinatra, generally under-rated due to the myth that nobody could seriously give a good performance after just one take, as if stage actors do not do this every night of the week. But this is above and beyond.
Ads aimed at the cinema manager.
What makes this so outstanding is the depth. Whatever he is saying, that’s not what he’s thinking. He is so dislocated his mind is elsewhere.
Now you give an actor punchy dialog and that’s the way he’s going to treat it, like a punchball, zing zing zing, but that’s not the case here. You can see from his expression that while he is responding well enough to this apparently sympathetic dame that his mind is not completely gone, but that he is barely holding himself together. Another actor would have shown greater signs of mental collapse, signs of a tear perhaps or using an artefact for support, a glass to crush in his hands. But not here. It’s all in the face.
He’s helped of course that the dialog is all about identity. Who is Eugenie? Not as in, who is she really, which would be a good question to ask at this point in the proceedings, but how does someone cope with a name like Eugenie and so the dialog rambles around the various shortenings of her name, while at the same time, recognising he desperately needs a port in a storm, she ensures she knows her address.
The way this movie is going that could be code, too, or a trigger, or that when he turns up at her apartment he’s going to encounter some obstacle, but it doesn’t turn out that way either, even though this is a movie where no one is what he or she seems. Insanely ambitious politician’s wife Eleanor (Angela Lansbury) double crosses her country, the Koreans double cross her by turning her son (rather than any old grunt) into an assassin, and in the end the son, the rather effete Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey), turns on the mother in the most murderous way imaginable. Much as she loves her son, she is willing to sacrifice him for the chance of becoming the President’s wife and when she does will exert her revenge on the Koreans.
The “exchange” is an old industry term, literally like a library, meaning where you would take the movie you had just screened and swap it for your next movie. You would pick up all your advertising material and campaign manual at the same time. Certainly saved on the postage. And the exchange manager, meanwhile, would try to sweet talk you into taking another movie you had never heard of.
I’ve gone on before about the beauty of the single-take movie (Grenfell, 2023) but here I’m in raptures at the single scene, how a movie pivots on superb acting. I could have used the brainwashing as an example, but that’s not about acting, but about directing, about perception, about how the audience as much as the participants is being led around by the nose by director John Frankenheimer, who would return to questions of identity and voluntary brainwashing in Seconds (1966).
But back to the brainwashing. This hits the mother lode. A troop of captured U.S. soldiers face an audience with a ringmaster demonstrating just how much they are under his command and can be hypnotised into carrying out any order, even cold-blooded murder. But each of the soldiers sees a different audience. That’s the cinematic coup. I would have loved to have been part of the original audience back in the day, brought up on war movies or thrillers that followed a straightforward narrative arc. Even critics singing the praises of the French New Wave would have never seen anything like this.
Anyway, it soon occurs to Major Marco that his ongoing nightmares are part of a deeper problem especially as his memory of Shaw does not tally with what he finds himself saying about his troop leader.
We follow two parallel stories, Marco trying to get to the truth before he fries his brain, and the audience being let in on much of the truth by tracking Shaw, who, to spite his hated mother, has taken a job with, effectively, the opposition and has fallen in love again with Jocelyn (Leslie Parrish), the daughter of one of her husband’s most implacable foes.
You couldn’t get a more twisty movie, set against the backdrop of the Communist witch hunt, when a politician could garner headlines just by pretending to name Communists in high office. The political element is just as cynical as the same year’s Advise and Consent and savage as the ineffectual Senator Iselin (James Gregory) is, he’s not much worse than the clowns in the Preminger picture. So it all rings true.
There’s scarcely a moment wasted as the movie screams towards a terrifying climax. The built-in control trigger I didn’t see coming, and Shaw’s transformation from strict man-in-charge to bumbling romantic fool is a joy.
Frank Sinatra (The Detective, 1968) gives the performance of his life, Laurence Harvey (Life at the Top, 1965) proof of the power of love, Angela Lansbury (In the Cool of the Day, 1963), the mother from Hell, are all outstanding. The support cast includes Janet Leigh (Psycho, 1960), Henry Silva (The Secret Invasion, 1964) and John McGiver (Breakfast at Tiffanys, 1961).
Frankenheimer directs with elan from the script by George Axelrod (Breakfast at Tiffanys) based on the Richard Condon (The Happy Thieves, 1961) bestseller.
After Murderers Row (1967), Ann-Margret flipped Hollywood the finger. At one point in the early 1960s contracts had been oozing from every pore, multiple deals with multiple studios, even one to star opposite Frank Sinatra. And despite showing considerable acting talent as a mother rather than moll in Once A Thief (1965), the career she had envisaged had not materialized.
In part, her reign as a glamor queen had been usurped by Raquel Welch, who had out-bikinied her in One Million YearsB.C. (1966) and Fathom (1967), or by the slimmer versions of beauty emanating from Britain in the shape of Julie Christie or from French exile in the shape of Jane Fonda.. But mostly, you would say, her box office hadn’t matched her salary and she was learning fast that promise can only take you so far. So, she took a leaf out of La Welch’s book, and headed for Italy, for a three-year four-picture sojourn.
She was probably the biggest Hollywood star to head there during the whole decade, not the never-was-es and has-beens who usually made the Transatlantic crossing. But if she had thought she would get the pick of the roles, juicy parts directed by top arthouse names, she was sadly mistaken. It was clear Hollywood-on-the-Tiber viewed it the other way round, and saw her as adding some box office pizzazz to, by Hollywood standards, less well-made productions. This was her final effort.
I never thought I’d be saying this but in Criminal Affair Ann-Margret gets in the way of a neat heist thriller that occasionally slips into the broad Italian comedy unbeloved by everyone outside Italy. But this one does have a clever premise and like many of the best robbery movies the set-up is intriguing.
Criminologist professor Simpson (Rossanno Brazzi), classes filled with more adoring female students than Indiana Jones, has more than an academical interest in his subject, having planned and executed one jewel theft, and in traditional gangster fashion pulled a fast one on his confederates. As luck would have it, his bosses grant him an all-expenses paid sabbatical to Buenos Aires where he plans to pull off the crime of the century.
FYI, that ain’t Ann-Margret on the bed and, despite the opportunity to get her soaking wet as was always a prerequisite regarding women when water was introduced, she doesn’t appear in the sewer scene either.
Accompanying him is mooning secretary Leticia (Ann-Margret) who prefers sporting herself in sexy ensembles or nothing at all to attract his attention rather than undertaking the more mundane tasks her job title might suggest. All to no avail, so it would seem, although she does, without her knowledge, play a vital role in his plan, as do some parakeets.
Academic profile opening doors, Simpson is able to scour police files to find his team, with one particular set of skills, that they can sing and properly for the grand plan is to stage a robbery at the opening night of La Traviata in the city, attended by the high and mighty who have paid colossal sums for the privilege.
He enrols other accomplices such as Georgette (Helene Chanel) whose task is divert the owner of the box overlooking the stage for which Simpson has another use. Her presence and that of the diva (Barbara Nichols) enrages Leticia, who resorts to swimming naked in the pool, flirting with the muscular butler and when that fails bombarding Simpson with dinner plates.
The use of the sewer is something of a heist trope, although there’s an original method of covering up the drilling and explosion, but mostly through misdirection we don’t quite work out how Simpson is going to fleece the opera house. Improbable a ruse as it is, nonetheless, as befits his high opinion of himself, the concept is a work of genius. Complications arise when the jewel robbers pursue him to Argentina. The film pretty much dispenses with the other heist trope, of spending much time on the character development of his new thieving team, beyond some obvious comedy.
The fact that Leticia has little to do deprives the picture of any reason for her presence, except as a dupe, physical attributes a distraction when necessary, and her lack of awareness that she is playing a key role leads to the movie’s sting in the tail.
But, in terms of the way the heist plays out, any actress could have played the part. It didn’t need to be Ann-Margret. And there’s not even any excuse, in a movie where singing is central, for her to sing. It’s possibly the most redundant role she ever took on. A bit more screenplay could have fixed that, had her character been developed along the lines of that of La Welch in her Italian-made heist picture The Biggest Bundle of Them All which appeared the same year.
And it might have better just to concentrate more on Rosanno Brazzi (The Battle of the Villa Florita, 1965) because he has mother issues, carries his absent-minded personality disguise well, and allocate more time to the intricacies of the plot and his pursuers. Viewed just as a heist picture without the unnecessary diversions of the female lead and the comedy it pretty much makes the grade. On the other hand Ann-Margret’s existence might simply have been that since he was also director he couldn’t carry the acting side of the picture on his own.
No doubt, though, I will have to check out, for your benefit, Ann-Margret’s other Italian trio.
Tracking down forgotten B-pictures it’s easy to convince yourself you’re going to uncover an under-rated gem. Sadly, despite mixing film noir with espionage and a treasure hunt, this fails dismally at getting over the line.
And that’s a shame because the credits roll over a background of long shadows, recalling instantly to mind not a film noir trope but the later famed poster of The Wild Bunch (1969). And there’s an excellent repetitive theme by Martin Slavin (Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (1962), an interesting striptease involving a bear, and a superb chase sequence where the pursuer is in a wheelchair. Otherwise, it’s got such a convoluted storyline you wished someone could get on top of it sooner rather than dragging the audience from Trieste to Dubrovnik to Somaliland.
Femme fatale No 1 Anita West literally in a hole with John Bentley.
In his final movie British star John Bentley, who brought to life both Paul Temple and The Toff, plays Steve, a drifter of unspecified means, who saves cabaret singer/stripper Tina (Anita West) from assassination. Hired by her as bodyguard/detective, he learns her father was a German spy who has left her a list of names and a map to hidden treasure and strangely enough she has been receiving regular anonymous donations of cash. It soon becomes obvious to Steve that blackmail is the source of this unexpected bounty. And that he is caught in the middle. Some people want to pay him off, others to kill him off.
It doesn’t help that he is seduced by both Tina and Nadia (Faten Hamamah), daughter of Litov (Vladimir Leib), one of those being blackmailed but now confined to a wheelchair.
Along with Mario (Ferdy Mayne) and Michel (John Gabriel) they are all soon convinced that the solution to all their problems will be joining Steve on a trip to Somaliland to find the hidden treasure, cash the father was reportedly carrying to pay his team of spies.
Femme fatale No 2 Faten Hammamah looking disgruntled.You could say the same about Bentley.
Usually, with any kind of picture involving hunting for treasure, the audience is invited to be baffled by various clues, but here none are offered and the audience simply remains baffled. Once in Africa, of course, the action hots up, courtesy of stock footage of stampeding elephants and a variety of dangerous animals and by the double-crossing that appears essential to such schemes. Eventually, they end up in a cave, where the only bit of treasure detecting actually takes place. Assume more double cross and you’re just about there.
Director George P. Breaksaton (The White Huntress, 1954) must take full responsibility for this mess since he was also the writer and producer. Apart from the various sequences previously mentioned, he has little idea of narrative drive or even narrative. None of the characters connect with each other and certainly not with the audience.
John Bentley does his best but that’s mostly down to frowning and grunting and trying to get a share of everyone’s spoils. He’s intended as some kind of James Bond lounge lizard given the movie begins simply because he follows an attractive woman in a nightclub. But he really has very thin material to work with. Neither of the femme fatales, Anita West (Shadow of Fear,1963) and Egyptian star Faten Hamamah, has enough in the smouldering department and if they did weren’t inclined to waste it on the likes of Steve.
Hardly a fitting end to Bentley’s career. More of a curiosity than an entertaining watch.
The Godfather Part II of action movies. It’s taken me three visits to fully appreciate the visual, aural and thematic splendor. Usually when someone pays homage to the likes of John Ford, David Lean, Francis Coppola, Akira Kurosawa, Luchino Visconti, Ridley Scott, Michael Mann, James Bond (yup) and the myriad directors who filmed a car chase, the result is rarely top-notch. That’s not the case here.
Let’s begin with sound. The bone-jarring punch that opens this picture is easily the best aural opening of any picture and would make the case for Imax straight off the bat. That’s followed by thematic motifs, the sun (I can’t tell if it’s rising or falling) and the stairs that will figure so prominently, the sun especially a gorgeous palette, whether streaming through the Eiffel Tower or in fabulous sunrise mode to indicate the beginning of the climactic duel, a throwback to the classic western, and as operatic in its composition as anything Sergio Leone could throw at us.
Not to mention that this is essentially a story of bounty hunters, and that puts it squarely in the window of the spaghetti western. And could you get any closer to Leone than naming one of the pair of assassins in pursuit Mr Nobody? As the price on John Wick’s head reaches dizzying proportions – $40 million – it’s open season. Setting aside the punching and kicking and whacking and ramming with cars, nobody has filmed shoot-outs like these since the glory days of Michael Mann.
And that’s before we come to Hollywood’s best-ever dog, a cojones-chewing throat-mauling nutcase that can turn cute at any given moment. And if you are looking for thematic completion there you have it, this entire series began because an idiot killed John Wick’s dog. This is a dog as if it had somehow been born out of John Wick.
Perhaps the best element of the spoken and unspoken brotherhood that infuses the picture is the underlying cynicism that accompanies it. You save someone and they owe you. Mr Nobody (Shamier Anderson) comes to Wick’s rescue twice, once cynically because the price on his head is not yet high enough and then out of acknowledgement for his enemy’s action regarding the dog.
And it takes a moment, given Wick is never permitted explanation, to realise that Wick’s final action will provide a satisfactory outcome to all concerned.
Only a director of note would think to capture the sound of sand tricking through an hourglass and the silence when it stops, or the tap of a tiny spoon against the tip of a tiny coffee cup. The Marquis (Bill Skarsgard), tasked by the invisible High Table with bringing down Wick, enjoys such extraordinary wealth you wonder what more does a man need – except of course to satisfy his ambitions within the closed circle of the High Table. Probably no supporting member of any cast has ever been provided with such elegant narrative.
Underneath blazing chandeliers in a room the size of a small town, he chooses one cake from an immeasurably large selection – the rest of which presumably go to waste – and only, delicately with a fork, eats half. As if never sated, he must lick the last of his coffee from his spoon. The female riders in his stables are practising with sabers, you imagine for more than acrobatic purpose. His final act reveals the man in all his arrogance and cowardice.
You wonder where the heck did Chad Stahelski come from to make a movie of such majesty. Yes, I know he’s a former stunt man but that’s like asking Yakima Canutt to conjure up something as iconic as The Searchers. The preceding Wick trilogy, as good as they are, did not set you up for this.
There’s not a single wasted character. The previous betrayer Winston (Ian McShane) returns and is not just blamed for the whole debacle but finds his prospects tied in even more closer to his one-time buddy. The Harbinger (Clancy Brown), who begins as messenger and transitions to intermediary and finally judge, has such a mythical presence you wish Marvel could pay heed and hire someone with his gravitas.
Stahelski has such command of his material that he can set up twists for which his narrative skills provide solution. Instead of the traditional sons of gangster pictures, and bear in mind it was an errant son who started this whole business off, it’s daughters, one innocent of her father’s occupation, the other complicit. Some codes are replete with honor, others more practical.
Once the deadline is set for a duel to resolve the situation, blind assassin Caine (Donnie Yen) needs Wick to make it, but, having assisted him, evens the odds by slicing through his hand. At the end of a tortuous ordeal fending off the multitudes in Paris, Wick has a 200-step climb to his final destination. Further multitudes lie in wait. He gets to the top before he rolls back down and has to start all over again, the clock ticking.
And there can’t have been a better final image than in Wick loosening his belt.
Brilliant script by Shay Hatten (Army of the Dead, 2021) and Michael Finch (Predators, 2010), with some lines that will enter the screenwriting Hall of Fame, and Wick and his supporting cast are stupendous, but in the end this film belongs to the director and a movie that calls out to be seen in the cinema and to be called a masterpiece.
The only redemptive factor in this too-clever-for-its-own-good post-ironic mess is a gorgeous performance by Hugh Grant. The one-time romantic male lead has shorn the floppy locks, put to bed the trademark stumbling over words and taken to the dark side. From pantomime villain in Paddington 2 (2017), through small-screen A Very English Scandal (2018) and The Undoing (2020) to Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves (2023), Grant has reinvented himself as a baddie par excellence.
If there is any justice in the world or, put another way, some Hollywood or streaming mogul wanting to cash in on an instantly attractive character, they should be thinking of a film or television series revolving around his wonderful Cockney billionaire criminal, the epitome of the diamond geezer. The moment he appears, about a quarter of the way in, the film lights up. When he departs, it falls flat again.
Not surprisingly, given it is the embodiment of the over-egged pudding. The movie’s idea of character depth is to make all-round thug Nathan (Jason Statham) a wine connoisseur. Statham’s done pretty well to turn from a supporting actor to lean B-movie (Crank, 2006) shoot-‘em-ups to second banana in big budget pictures like the Fast and Furious franchise and The Meg (you didn’t think Jason was the actual star, did you, when there was a monster the size of a city block on the loose). In growl and unshaven cheeks, he may look like Bruce Willis, but Bruce Willis he ain’t. And he ain’t Charles Bronson either, despite rolling the dice twice on The Mechanic( 2011 and 2016).
Whitehall mandarin Knighton (Eddie Marsan) calls on smooth operative Nathan (Cary Elwes), who spends a lot of time eating, to put together a bunch of government-sponsored crooks – Orson (Jason Statham), Sarah (Aubrey Plaza) and JJ (Bugzy Malone) – to find a stolen artefact and prevent it being sold on to international gangsters or terrorists. Only problem is, nobody knows what was stolen. But somebody must know its value because another gang, led by turncoat Mike (Peter Ferdinando), is chasing the same item.
There’s a ton of computer jiggery-pokery that mostly gets in the way but suffice to say top-ranked crook Greg (Hugh Grant) is seen as being at the centre of whatever is going on, whatever that is, your guess is as good as mine. Lo and behold – what larks! – there’s a dead easy way to get inside Greg’s fortress (a giant ocean-going yacht): he is a huge fan of action star Danny (Josh Hartnett) who is recruited to play himself (a conceit too post-ironic for simple irony).
For a man as rich as Greg and as generous – he raises money for war orphans – Greg keeps poor company and consequently leads Nathan’s team to their prey, cueing burglaries, chases, fisticuffs. But most of the excitement is undercut by the aforementioned jiggery-pokery. It’s hard to concentrate on the action if every two seconds Nathan or Sarah is listening to a voice in his ear or we are being told by a third party that such some cute implausible jiggery-pokery is simplifying their tasks.
There are some electrifying sequences: the opening robbery taking place to the sound of Nathan’s footsteps echoing along a long marble hallway; a burglary where the occupants, rendered unconscious by jiggery-pokery, are so out of it Nathan can remove rings from fingers and watches from wrists.
But all the time this ultra-clever stuff is going on you just wished director Guy Ritchie (Wrath of Man, 2021) would have the sense of turn the camera back on to the one real characters in the ensemble, Greg, who doesn’t need anyone whispering in his ear or rely on jiggery-pokery to get through a scene.
Two brilliantly-scripted scenes demonstrated the talent gap between Grant and Statham. Nathan has his eye on Sarah and the scene between them where he imagines an immediate sexual connection is toe-curlingly superb. Nathan has a scene where, confusingly, he answers “yes” to each of Nathan’s questions and it comes off like a guide in how not to play comedy.
I’m not usually one to thank streaming giants for putting cinema-ready material on the small screen, but here I’m pretty grateful for saving me the expense. I’d seen a trailer for this months ago and thought it sounded pretty good. But if I’d seen it at the cinema I’d have been far more disappointed given the time and effort involved. As it was, I could stop the show and go back to watch the Hugh Grant scenes.
The concept could have been an ideal picture if it had come down to a more bare-bones story of two jumped-up thugs trying to gain the upper hand. I feel sorry for Statham. If Hugh Grant hadn’t delivered such a terrific performance, he wouldn’t have the movie stolen from under his feet. Two one-time big stars, Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride, 1987) and Josh Hartnett (Black Hawk Down, 2001) play against type while Aubrey Plaza (Emily the Criminal, 2022), mostly loaded down with exposition, sparkles.
Made just before director Basil Dearden embarked on Khartoum (1965), this is probably best-known these days for being screenwriter – and ace self-publicist – William Goldman’s first credit. It’s based on Castle Minerva by Victor Canning whose previous filmed books included The Golden Salamander (1950) with Trevor Howard, The Venetian Bird (1952) with Richard Todd, and The House of the Seven Hawks (1959) with Robert Taylor.
I’d like to say this is a self-aware thriller with spy and comedic elements but it veers awful close to either a cult film or a mess. Basic story has Frazer (Cliff Robertson) hired by former wartime commander and now British intelligence agent Col Drexel (Jack Hawkins) to look after an Arab princeling who has been kidnapped by the British (so much for Brits always being on the side of the angels) to help seal an oil concession in the Gulf.
Theoretically, the kidnapping is for the teenager’s own good, to prevent him being assassinated before he ascends to the throne…see it’s getting awfully complicated already. Anyway, it turns out he actually has been kidnapped by Drexel who has turned rogue in order to fund his retirement. The boy is held in some kind of fortress/castle in Spain and then another more sinister one.
Frazer meantime falls for the seductive charms of Sophie (Marisa Mell) who he thinks is a smuggler intent on stealing his boat but a) is part of the kidnap gang and b) in love with him enough to help him escape when he in turn is captured.
Did I mention the film also included a circus, a clown act, a gunfight on a dam, characters left dangling on a rope bridge, a lady in red, a balancing act along a perilous ledge, entrapment in a wine tanker (huh?) and an animal cage (double huh?), a vulture, men in bowler hats…
It is enlivened by visual gags – ultra-large footprints (from somebody wearing flippers). The dialogue sparkles as when the prince, with an overactive entitlement gland, says, “I am practically divine,” to which Hawkins deadpans “Your Highness, you are irresistible.” Add to that various cliché-twisting scenes – the double-dealing Sophie now overcome by love, says to Drexel: “Ask me anything you want and I will tell you the truth,” but every question he asks solicits the response, “I don’t know.” Then, imprisoned in a cage, after protracted cobbling together of lengths of bamboo to steal keys they turn out to be the wrong keys.
Throw in: British propriety – Frazer’s substantial fee for risking his life is reduced to a miserable sum once tax has been deducted; and a superb Arab charge on horseback with tracking cameras, either a rehearsal for Khartoum or the scene that got Dearden the gig.
Actually, the more I write about it the more fun it sounds and I wish it were, but it does not quite gel. Cliff Robertson (The Devil’s Brigade, 1968) and Marisa Mell (Danger: Diabolik, 1968) don’t convince – Robertson talks through gritted teeth without suggesting he has much inner grit – although Jack Hawkins (The Third Secret, 1964) and other British stalwarts like Charles Gray (The Devil Rides Out, 1968) and Bill Fraser (The Best House in London, 1969) and Frenchman Michel Piccoli (Danger: Diabolik) deliver the goods. It should have been a straightforward three-star job or – if qualifying as a cult – in the five-star class. It is definitely not an outright stinker. Perhaps best filed under “curiosity.”
The Magnificent 60s 