Crime/Thriller – Page 39 – The Magnificent 60s

Marnie (1964) *****

Arguably Alfred Hitchcock’s most difficult film and with some attitudes that will not sit well with today’s audiences nonetheless this is an assured work and the completion of an unofficial trilogy that tries to explain the unexplainable. The director had not been making what might be termed traditional Hitchcock pictures for well over half a decade if you take North by Northwest (1959) as the anomaly in a sequence that began with the obsessive Vertigo (1958). You could argue that Hitchcock had turned a bit “north by northwest” himself, the “hero” of Psycho (1960) a mother-obsessed serial killer, the “bad guys” in The Birds (1963) the titular rapacious creatures who besiege the leading characters and set the world on an apocalyptical course.

Attempts are made in both Psycho and The Birds to explain the actions of the predators, but such explanations are external, remote, and with Marnie Hitchcock takes the bold step of attempting to explain what makes such a devious, compulsive, frigid liar tick. Hitchcock called the movie a “sex mystery” but it was unclear whether he was just once again trying to tantalize his audience or whether he believed it was film about the mystery of sex, what causes attraction between two people and what sets others up to steadfastly reject the concept. To embellish his thesis he chose one of the world’s most beautiful actresses (Tippi Hedren) and the actor (Sean Connery) who could easily lay claim to being the world’s sexiest man (as he was later anointed in various polls).

It seemed almost an indecent proposal to deny the bed-hopper-par-excellence – as viewed from the James Bond perspective. And it certainly took all the charm Connery could muster to prevent audiences baulking at the almost perverse scientific aspects of his character, an amateur zoologist who welcomed a known criminal into his world for the chance to examine her at close quarters. The audience is constantly kept at one remove. In the first section we watch enthralled as Hedren carries out her bold thefts, as if she is capable of wrapping the entire male population around her little finger by the simple device of adjusting her skirt.

But in the middle section, it is Connery who is in control and the trapped Hedren who is twisting and turning searching for an escape route. In the final section, when it is clear that it is the lover, not the scientist, in Connery that tries to find a way round the problem, the tension is at its height because we have no idea whether she will run true to form and manage to steal and lie her way out or whether Connery’s patience will snap and he will throw her to the wolves who are certainly by this point circling.

The central device on which Hitchcock hooked an audience was the moviegoer demand for a happy ending. He duped cinemagoers in Psycho, slaughtering the heroine halfway through. In The Birds Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren underwent a harrowing physical assault and while clearly romantically involved by the end Hedren was a wreck. Here, the assaults are mental. There is none of the romantic banter that defines the greatest of his traditional works. Hedren and Connery are together because he has forced the issue and loving though his blackmail is it is still an unequal relationship and one from which she will seek to escape at every opportunity. Hedren’s compulsive character is a mystery that appears insoluble as she resists every attempt to break down the wall she has erected to protect herself from her past.

Cover of the Winston Graham source novel. In the book, Marnie is being pursued by two men but in the film this is turned to Connery being the one with two women in tow.

The story is straightforward with few of the twists of other pictures. We meet Hedren as she escapes with nearly $10,000 stolen from her employers. We learn quickly that she is a master of disguise, has several social security cards up her sleeve, can turn from brunette to blonde, and is so practiced in her deception that she can convince an employer to take her on without references. As that particular duped employer is spelling out his predicament to the police, an amused Sean Connery, a customer of her employer, appears. Hedren runs off to a bolthole, an upmarket hotel, close to the stables where she keeps a horse, Forio.

Shifting back to Hedren we find her visiting her mother in a tawdry street near the docks. The artifice of confidence is shredded away. She is jealous of the attention her mother gives a little girl whom she looks after. She wants love that her mother is unable to give. When she lays her head on her mother’s lap waiting for the soothing stroke of a hand all she receives is rebuke for leaning too heavily on her mother’s sore leg. The mother in North by Northwest was played for comedy, in Psycho an occasion for murder, and here a means of control. Here, too, we witness the color red sparking an inexplicable and frightening experience.

When Hedren applies for a new job it is at Connery’s firm, where he is the coming man. He watches amused as she is interviewed, intervenes to ensure she is hired. They have in common that they are widowed. Hedren is already planning her next big score, discovering that the combination to the safe is kept in a drawer to which her employer’s secretary has the key.

But he is ready for her and it seems almost perverse that he does not let her know he is aware of her true identity. Instead, under the guise of asking her to work overtime, he gives her an academic paper to type. The subject is predators, “the criminals of the animal world” in which females feature. His gentle pressure is almost sadistic and she is saved by a sudden storm which triggers another bad subconscious reaction.

Her theft of money from the office is a classic Hitchcock scene. It begins in complete silence. The screen is divided in two, the office and the corridor. Seeing a cleaner appear, Hedren removes her shoes to make her getaway. Almost as she reaches the safety of the stairs, a shoe falls out of her pocket and clatters on the floor. The cleaner does not look up. She is very hard of hearing.

But Connery is again prepared and when she disappears tracks her to her bolthole, confronts her, questioning her again and again until he thinks he is close to the truth. He can’t turn her in because he has fallen in love. Her choice is stark – him or the police. Soon they are married. But the honeymoon, despite his patience, is a disaster, she cannot “bear to be handled” and they return home further apart than ever.

Meanwhile, figures from her past begin to appear. Lil (Diane Baker) who lusts after Connery brings peril to their door. Connery persists with trying to get Hedren to open up.

Eventually, there is a break in her compulsive syndrome, brought on by love, and we head back to her mother’s to get to the root of the problem. Even when the problem is solved her mother remains distant, still won’t stroke her hair. If there is a happy ending it is like that of The Birds, an immediate problem solved but who knows when or if the crows will return, and there is a similar resolution here, Hedren learns the source of her nightmares but it would be a very blind person who did not see terrible ramifications for the future.

There are certainly a few jarring moments, Hitchcock’s insistence on back projection for a start, but then you didn’t really think in North by Northwest that the director was allowed to film in front of the United Nations, did you? Rather than a technical flaw, the back projection seems to fit another purpose, a device to make the audience stop and examine what is going on, for much of it occurs when Hedren is in her fantasy world. And you would have to take exception to Connery’s actions in the bedroom on honeymoon, no matter how gentle his caresses at other times. And certainly, the psychological assumptions ring hollow given our current knowledge of such conditions, but despite that make for tense viewing.

But the meat of the movie is self-deception. Hedren is convinced she can get away with a series of thefts. Connery is convinced her can cure her. His constant interrogation is what passes for lovers’ banter. In aligning himself as her moral guardian and perhaps her savior, “dying to play doctor,” Connery has entered a nightmare of his own making. Only an arrogant man would believe all women would fall at his feet and Hitchcock clearly makes a connection with Connery’s ongoing incarnation as James Bond where that is exactly the case. Connery is every bit as flawed, as obsessive, as Scottie in Vertigo, determined to shape a woman into perfect form, and, yes, expecting to eradicate the imperfect past.

Connery emanated such ease, such amazing grace, on the screen that it backfired. Critics often didn’t believe he was putting much into his acting when in reality he was acting his socks off. This is a tremendously difficult part, walking the tightrope between looking a deluded fool and retaining audience empathy and coming across badly when he pushes a vulnerable woman too hard. This is a very rounded character, a gentle adoring lover in the main, but not one to be crossed. His interrogations are intense and yet still you can see that it will kill him if he is double-crossed. The casual amusement with which he greeted her appearance at his office is replaced by fear at her sudden departure.

Hedren, too, whose acting ability was often called into question, carries on where she left off in The Birds. By the end of that picture her nerves had been shredded. Here, her emotions, which she cannot as easily control as the rest of her life, too often fly off into a high pitch. Half the time she is the cool collected customer of The Birds, the rest of the time she is demented. Except in The Birds she was self-confident around men. Any self-assurance she has now is skin deep. There was always a fragility about Hedren, hidden behind the glossy exterior and fashionable outfits, and here it is exposed. The touching scenes with her mother, the mouth tightened in jealousy over the little girl, are perfectly played. A little girl lost in wolf’s clothing. And trapped, she is almost snarling at her captor, the submissive dialogue concealing the mind hard at work looking for an exit.

The interrogative scenes between Connery and Hedren are extremely difficult to pull off. It would have been easier if Connery was not in love with her, and to some extent pulled his punches. It would be easier for her if he was an out-and-out predator who could be paid in kind to shut up and go away. Instead, they both have to walk a verbal tightrope and only actors of some excellence can pull off that trick without losing the audience.

Many of the films from the 1960s are to be found free of charge on TCM and Sony Movies and the British Talking Pictures as well as mainstream television channels. Films tend to be licensed to any of the above for a specific period of time so you might find access has disappeared. There is a particularly awful pan-and-scan version of this film on YouTube. But if this film is not available through these routes, then here is the link to the DVD and/or streaming service.

Seven Days in May (1964) ****

Donald Trump and the recent insurrection bring this picture bang up to date. Democracy is a dangerous weapon in the hands of the people. Can they be trusted to make the correct decision? That’s in part the thematic thrust of this high-octane political thriller that pits two of the greatest actors of their generation in a battle to decide the fate of the world. This was the era of the nuke picture – Dr Strangelove (1962), Fail Safe (1964), The Bedford Incident (1965) – all primed by the real-life Cuban Missile Crisis and the growing threat of the Cold War. But since that threat has never gone away – if anything it has worsened – the movie is as relevant today.

Promoting a male-oriented film about politics was always going to be a hard sell despite the distinguished cast. One route Paramount marketeers went down was a massive tie-in with publisher Bantam’s bestseller paperback . Over 1.5 million copies of the book had been rolled out and Bantam had arranged cross-over publicity in supermarkets, five-and-dime stores, booksellers and wholesalers stocking the book. “Look” magazine ran a six-page article by one of the book’s authors Fletcher Knebel.

Just as the President (Fredric March) is about to sign a nuclear treaty with the USSR, much to the fury of the majority of Americans judging by opinion polls, Colonel Jiggs Casey (Kirk Douglas) uncovers signs of a military coup headed by hawk General James Mattoon Scott (Burt Lancaster).

The movie divides into the classic three acts. In the first, Douglas investigates the existence of a secret army unit in El Paso comprising 3,600 men trained to overthrow the government and needs to persuade the President the country is in danger. The second act sees the President hunting for proof of the imminent coup and identifying the conspirators. The third act witnesses showdowns between March and Lancaster and Lancaster and Douglas.

About $65 million out of the U.S. national budget of $90 million was allocated to the military, according to director John Frankenheimer writing in the above magazine. Frankenheimer combined with Kirk Douglas’s company to purchase the book and hire writer Rod Serling. The original script was too long so, without losing a scene, the director went through it cutting phrases and sentences here and there till it was down to the required two-hour length. Paramount put up extra money to get Ava Gardner join the cast.

At the heart of the story is betrayal – Lancaster of his country’s constitution, Douglas of his friend when he takes on the “thankless job of informer.” Douglas proves rather too ruthless, willing to seduce and then betray Ava Gardner, Lancaster’s one-time mistress. Both Gardner and March prove to have higher principles than Douglas. For both Douglas and Lancaster who operate at a high threshold of intensity and could easily have turned in high-octane performances the tension is even better maintained by their apparently initial low-key confrontations. Douglas has a trick here of standing ramrod straight and then turning his head but not his body towards the camera.

As a pure thriller, it works a treat, investigation to prove there is a conspiracy followed by the the vital element to conspiracy theory – the deaths and disappearances of vital people – and finally the need to resolve the crisis without creating public outcry. The only flaw in the movie’s structure is that Douglas cannot carry out all the investigations and when presidential sidekicks Martin Balsam and Edmond O’Brien are dispatched, respectively, to Gibralter and El Paso the movie loses some of its intensity. But the third act is a stunner as March refuses to take the easy way out by blackmailing Lancaster over his previous relationship with Gardner.

Of course, there is a ton of political infighting and philosophizing in equal measure and speeches about democracy (“ask for a mandate at the ballot box, don’t steal it”), the American Constitution and the impact of nuclear weapons on humanity. But these verbal volleys are far from long-winded and pack a surefire punch. The coup has been set up with military precision and must be dismantled by political precision.

A hint of the future: one unusual aspect of the picture was the use of closed-circuit television which was seen as being used as method of general communication between politicians and the Pentagon.

The film is awash with Oscar talent – Burt Lancaster, Best Actor for Elmer Gantry (1960) and, at that point, twice nominated; thrice-nominated Kirk Douglas; Fredric March, twice Best Actor for Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) plus three other nominations besides; Ava Gardner nominated for Best Actress (Mogambo, 1953); and Edmond O’Brien named Best Supporting Actor for The Barefoot Contessa (1954).

None disappoint. March is especially impressive as a weak President tumbling in the polls who has to reach deep to fight a heavyweight adversary. Lancaster and Douglas both bristle with authority. Although Lancaster’s delusional self-belief appears to give him the edge in the acting stakes, Douglas’s ruthless manipulation of a vulnerable Ava Gardner provides him with the better material. Edmond O’Brien as an old soak whose alcoholism marks him out as an easy target is also memorable and Ava Gardner in recognizing her frailties delivers a sympathetic performance.

Fashion might have seemed to offer limited marketing opportunities for such a picture but that did not stop Paramount’s publicists. On the back of one of the subsidiary characters being seen combing her hair with an Ajax comb the manufacturer was inveigled into a nationwide campaign. Director John Frankenheimer was pictured wearing a custom-made Cardinal suit in an advert in “Gentlemen’s Quarterly” and designer Mollie Parnis created a suit for women which could be simply altered every day to provide enough outfits for seven days.

Rod Serling (The Twilight Zone) does a terrific job of distilling a door-stopper of a book by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II. But the greatest kudos must go to director John Frankenheimer – acquainted with political opportunism through The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and with Burt Lancaster through The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) – for keeping tension to the forefront and resisting the temptation to slide into political ideology.

Many of the films from the 1960s are to be found free of charge on TCM and Sony Movies and the British Talking Pictures as well as mainstream television channels. But if this film is not available through these routes, then here is the link to the DVD and/or streaming service.

A Lovely Way To Die/A Lovely Way To Go (1968) ****

Woefully neglected detective thriller with a sparkling script and sexy leading stars exuding screen charisma. Like the celebrated William Goldman-scripted opening to Paul Newman private eye picture Harper (1966), the credit sequence here is at least as innovative in that it appears to be little short of a trailer, a highlights reel showing the audience what lies in store.

Kirk Douglas is a womanizing cop too handy with his fists, half his arrests making an unexpected detour to hospital. Sylva Koscina is the bored young wife of an older millionaire whose idea of fun is to chuck an expensive scarf out of a speeding car forcing her husband to pull up and go back and fetch. When her husband is shot, suspicion falls on Koscina – inclined to dress in revealing outfits for the media – and her playboy boyfriend.

At the behest of attorney Eli Wallach with a rich Southern accent and a knack for speaking in parables, Douglas, having resigned from the force one step ahead of being fired, is sent in to provide security and find out whether her alibi stacks up. He soon finds out it doesn’t but by this time he has fallen under her spell. Witnesses disappear, intruders are dealt with, attempts are made on the detective’s life, and the twists come thick and fast. Koscina is the arch femme fatale who is a past master in the twisting department – twisting every male within a 50-mile radius round her little finger.

Harper was a throwback to The Maltese Falcon/The Big Sleep but A Lovely Way To Die knocks that shamus tradition on the head. For a start, Douglas is a high-living high-rolling character who doesn’t take prisoners. The second time we meet him he has dumped the girl he took to the races for someone he has met while picking up his winnings. Seducing gorgeous women and dumping them is second nature. This is Douglas as glorious charmer, a part of his screen persona lost after a glut of more serious pictures like Seven Days in May (1964) and Cast a Giant Shadow (1966). Yugoslavian actress Koscina, often little more than eye candy for most of the decade, had vaulted into the higher echelons after a turn as Paul Newman’s squeeze in The Secret War of Harry Frigg (1968).

Typical of the cheesecake type of photo used in movie fan magzines in the 1960s – this one of star Koscina appeared in the Yugoslavian magazine “Filmski Svet.”

An inherent part of the attraction of this picture is how deftly she keeps Douglas at bay. Scriptwriter A. J. Russell and director David Lowell Rich (Madame X, 1966) deliver the goods in maintaining the tension in their relationship. There is a wonderful scene where the expectant Douglas follows her up the stairs of her fabulous mansion and three times he ignores the import of her unmistakable “Goodnight,” his uber-confidence taking him to her door – which she shuts in his face.

Sure, in some ways it is slick, but it is also taut and realistic, Douglas does not win all his fights and he eats with the rest of the help at the mansion. And he does some terrific detection so it doesn’t fall short in that department. He is definitely helped by some choice lines – “police methods are sometimes difficult for an amateur to understand” he tells Koscina after brutally despatching an intruder. Koscina is in her element as the sexy, wealthy suspect, and especially in her banter with Douglas, in which her main aim to disarm his cockiness.

Eli Wallach is also superb, given just enough ham to hang himself, but matching Douglas in arrogance and outgunning the D.A. with his courtroom gymnastics. A couple of the subsidiary characters are well-drawn, a housekeeper who plays the markets for example.

For some reason this sank like a stone on its initial outing, audiences perhaps being more attuned to the Bogartian sleuth, but I found it highly enjoyable and this could be seen as a taster for anyone familiar with the antics of the star’s son Michael Douglas who found himself in similar territory in Basic Instinct (1992).

Escape from Zahrain (1962) ***

After being attacked by armored cars and strafed by airplanes, stranded in the desert, and overcome various tensions within the small group of escapees, there is still considerable life left in this picture at the end as Jack Warden, making his departure, comes up with a classic last line: “We must do this again sometime.”

In truth, the picture has far more going for it than a mere outline would suggest. In rescuing rebel leader Yul Brynner from a lorry bound for jail, the escapees led by Sal Mineo (Exodus, 1960) in a stolen ambulance also scoop up three convicts including American fraudster and loudmouth Jack Warden (That Kind of Woman, 1959) and all-purpose thug Anthony Caruso (a television regular) plus a nurse Madhlyn Rhue (A Majority of One, 1961) as a hostage. Like most desert films, the storyline is on who will survive and how.

Action is one constant. The threat of failure is another. Supplies are rationed and, of course, someone steals more than their fair share. The members regularly switch allegiance. At various points someone is about to give up Yul Brynner. Their gas tank is punctured so, thanks to Warden’s engineering skills, they just make it to a remote pumping station where James Mason pops up in a cameo as a maintenance man. Their numbers diminish and despite his recalcitrance Warden’s engineering skills save them again when they reach an oasis.

This was originally intended as a starring vehicle for Clark Gable with Edward Dmytryk in the director’s chair.

What makes the film different is that the characters all change. In a country where “half the wealth is stolen by Europeans and half by corruption,” Brynner is the altruistic leader whose ideals are shattered. Rhue, a Muslim, drinks alcohol and questions the number of deaths necessary for a revolution but declines to leave when the opportunity arises. Mineo who thinks “women should be as free as men” reacts badly when Rhue enjoys such freedom. Warden, who has embezzled $200,000, and has loyalty to no one stands by the shambolic crew.

I had always believed Brynner had enjoyed a rare case of beginner’s luck when he won the Oscar for his debut in The King and I (1956) and that once Hollywood became wise to his acting schtick he would never be nominated again – as proved the case. But after watching Brynner in The Magnificent Seven (1960) and its sequel and Invitation to a Gunfighter (1964) and Flight to Ashiya (1964) I have become convinced he is under-rated as an actor. He acts with his eyes and his delivery is far more varied than I had supposed. Here, clothed in Arab costume, there is no bald pate to distract.

British director Ronald Neame (Tunes of Glory, 1960) holds the enterprise together, keeping to a tidy pace but allowing tension and character to emerge.

Many of the films from the 1960s are to be found free of charge on TCM and Sony Movies and the British Talking Pictures as well as mainstream television channels. Films tend to be licensed to any of the above for a specific period of time so you might find access has disappeared. But if this film is not available through these routes, then here is the link to the DVD and/or streaming service.

The Corrupt Ones / The Peking Medallion (1967) ****

Non-stop action as spy Robert Stack (The Untouchables tv series) battles a variety of crooks in Macao on the Chinese border as they seek the legendary Peking medallion. Stack hails from the James Bond school of espionage, duty bound to kiss every girl he meets. He might wonder at their compliance until he realizes they are only after his knowledge of the missing medallion.

The violence is criminally brutal – punch-ups, gunfights, samurai swordfights, murder, torture by blowtorch and acid and being dragged behind a motorboat. The string of sexy women is matched by handsome men (Christian Marquand and Maurizio Arena in addition to Stack). The thriller pitches helter-skelter through nightclubs, casinos, caves, temples and palatial mansions, the pace only slowing down for, naturally, a scene in a stately rickshaw.

As well as Stack who briefly – and unknowingly – has the medallion in his possession, others in the hunt include Elke Sommer, wife of the man (Arena) who passed it to Stack before being killed. Sommer is on the wrong side of the femme fatale equation. Once Stack is wise to her seductive charms he quips, “Maybe you’re telling the truth but I can’t trust you.”

The original title of the picture was “Hell in Macao” and that was used in Germany for example. It was called “The Peking Medallion” in the UK, Italy and Mexico and “The Corrupt Ones” in the US, France and Spain.

Also in hot pursuit are gangster Brandon (Marquand) and a Chinese mob headed by Nancy Kwan (The World of Suzie Wong, 1960). That’s on top of a corrupt cop (“I have never feared death only poverty” is his mantra) who doesn’t care who wins the prize as long as he gets his share. Double cross is the order of the day, alliances forged then broken. The action never stops long enough for one of those tension-building scenes of which Alfred Hitchcock or imitators like Stanley Donen (Charade, 1963, and Arabesque, 1966) were so fond.

Stack faces danger with a quip, a kiss or gritted teeth, an old-fashioned tough guy without the James Bond self-awareness. He carries out his manly duties until his brain kicks in and he realizes this isn’t a spy picture after all but a genuine treasure hunt with clues that have to be deciphered. As this causes the movie to sidetrack down another route, it looks like the picture has lost the plot. But then all hell breaks loose and we are back on the safe ground of fistfights, double-crossing and shooting.

The script by Brian Clemens deftly mixes a variety of genres. What might have been a definite change of pace for British director James Hill given his previous effort was Born Free (1966) was anything but since he was responsible for the most recent Sherlock Holmes thriller A Study in Terror (1965).

Fans of improbable storylines, exotic settings, action, interesting bad guys and twists and turns will love this. How can you fail to love a movie with a fight featuring a samurai sword versus a camera tripod?

Guns of Darkness (1962) ***

You might think David Lean in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) had cornered the market in startling transitions involving light (from Peter O’Toole’s match to the rising sun) and gut-wrenching scenes involving quicksand but nearly six months prior Anthony Asquith (The Millionairess, 1960) in the less-heralded Guns of Darkness had adopted similar techniques. He cuts from a nightclub singer blowing out a candle to a man lighting a candle in a church and since his film is in black-and-white it cannot hope to match Lean’s fabulous color transition. However, the quicksand scene in the Asquith, I would argue, lacking color or not, is far superior to that of the desert epic.

Thanks to Pygmalion (1938) and The Winslow Boy (1948) Asquith was one of a handful of British directors – Lean, Powell/Pressburger and Carol Reed the others – with an international reputation. Stars David Niven and Leslie Caron had topsy-turvy careers. Niven’s box office cachet had almost disappeared in the mid-1950s before an unexpected Oscar for Separate Tables (1958) and a starring role in The Guns of Navarone (1961). Although Caron had An American in Paris (1951), Lili (1953) and Gigi (1958) on her dance-card she was not an automatic big-name star. It reflects their respective positions that Caron has star billing.

Niven and Caron are an unhappily married couple caught up in a revolution in a fictional South American country. His boyish charm has long worn thin, his employment record is spotty and he is inclined, when drunk, to insult bumptious boss (James Robertson Justice). On New Year’s Eve while an enclave of pampered Brits is counting down to the bells, rebels are preparing to storm the presidential palace and seize power. Niven seems the last person to give shelter to a fugitive from the revolution, especially when the runaway turns out to be the ex-president Rivero (David Opatoshu, Exodus, 1960). Caron, who has been planning to leave Niven the next day, finds herself involved in the escape.

The couple are both quickly disabused of notions of the saintliness of presidents and peasants, Rivera nearly strangling a child who discovers his hiding place, Caron stoned by villagers, pacifist Niven forced into a horrific act of violence.

If you ever wondered what screenwriters do to earn their money, this film is a good place to start. It was based on a book “Act of Mercy” by British thriller writer Francis Clifford, who also wrote “The Naked Runner,” also later filmed. The screenwriters changed the David Niven character from the happily married committed businessman of the book to the dissatisfied dilettante of the film. As a happy couple, there are none of the marital tensions in the film. The revolution in the book has already started but in the film it is moved to New Year’s Eve and about to begin. The quicksand scene is a screenwriter’s invention as is the incident with the boy and the massacre in the village.

The pace is brisk from the outset, Asquith cross-cutting between revolutionaries and the Brits and as the manhunt steps up a gear the three escapees face a succession of perilous incidents. Not least is a river that has turned to quicksand. This six-minute scene is a standout, the mud closing in on their heads, Niven having to crawl back to rescue Rivera. As you would expect with this kind of picture there is a fair bit of philosophizing, moralizing and sheer brutality. As the couple flounder towards reconciliation, the script spends some time trying to ascertain Niven’s motives. Had the film stuck to the source book’s title, Act of Mercy, that would not have been necessary.

A taut film with, once the revolution has begun, the British put in their place rather than acting as imperialist overlords. There are a couple of unexpected twists at the end and Asquith finished with a technical flourish of his own, the camera tracking back from people walking forward. Both Niven and Caron are excellent, James Robertson Justice at once cuddly and ruthless, and the picture comes out as a tidy character-driven thriller.

The Running Man (1963) ****

Twisty Carol Reed thriller pivoting on emotional entanglement that keeps you guessing right up to the end. In revenge for losing his business after an insurance company failed to cough up for his crashed plane, entrepreneur Laurence Harvey (Butterfield 8, 1960) fakes his own death and flees to Malaga in Spain.

But when girlfriend Lee Remick (Days of Wine and Roses, 1962) joins him she finds he has assumed the identity of an Australian millionaire whose passport he has purloined and completed the transformation by changing his black hair to blond. Harvey has a mind to repeat the experiment by killing off himself (under the new identity) and claiming the insurance. Remick, complicit in the original scam, not only balks at this idea but finds disconcerting his change of personality and clear attraction to the opposite sex.

Tensions mount when mild-mannered insurance investigator Alan Bates (A Kind of Loving, 1962) appears on the scene. Anyone watching the film now has to accept that in the days before social media every face was not instantly tracked and accept that Bates is unaware of what Harvey looks like.

The couple cannot run because they are awaiting a bank draft. Bates immediately sets the tone for suspicion when he pronounces that their vehicle “looks like a getaway car.” Forced to follow “The Godfather” dictum of keeping your enemies closer, the pair befriend Bates with the intention of finding out what he knows and what are his intentions. Harvey and Remick have to pretend they have only just met, and have separate bedrooms, leaving the door open for Bates to gently woo Remick, an action endorsed by Harvey. They are caught out in small lies. Harvey’s Australian accent falters. Bates keeps on making notations in a notebook. Harvey foils Bates’ attempts to photograph him.

The ensuing game of cat-and-mouse is complicated by Bates pursuit of Remick. Is this as genuine as it appears? Or is he trying to get her on her own to admit complicity? Both Harvey and Remick are, effectively, forced to adopt the new identities they have forged to dupe Bates with unforeseen results. There are red herrings aplenty, a race along mountainous roads, and some marvelous twists as the couple find the tale they have woven is turning too tight for comfort until murder appears the only solution.

As with his international breakthrough The Third Man (1949), Reed grounds the whole Hitchcockian enterprise in local culture – this being unspoiled Malaga prior to the tourist deluge – Spanish churches, a wedding, a fiesta, the running of the bulls, with an occasional ironic twist – “gypsy” musicians watching ballroom dancing on television. Reed resists taking the material down a darker route – Hitchcock would undoubtedly have twisted the scenario in another direction until Remick came under threat from Harvey – but instead allows it to play out as a menage-a-trois underwritten by menace.

The acting is sublime. Harvey wallows in his part, Remick quietly anxious scarcely coming to believe that she had played a part in the original crime, Bates with a pleasant inquisitive demeanor the ideal foil to Harvey. Unusually, they all undergo change, Harvey uncovers a more ruthless side to his character, Remick responds to the gentler nature of Bates, while Bates shrugs off his schoolmasterly aspects to become an attractive companion. It all leads towards a thrilling conclusion.

A couple of footnotes – special mention to Maurice Binder for the opening credits and this was the final score of British composer William Alwyn (The Fallen Idol, 1948).

Our Man in Marrakesh aka Bang! Bang! You’re Dead! (1966) ***

All hail Senta Berger! Another from the Harry Alan Towers (Five Golden Dragons, 1967) portfolio, this is a spy-thriller mash-up with a bagful of mysteries and a clutch of corpses. At last given a decent leading role, and although you wouldn’t guess it from either poster, Senta Berger steals the show from the top-billed Tony Randall (as miscast as Robert Cummings in Five Golden Dragons) and a smorgasbord of European talent including Herbert Lom (The Frightened City, 1961), Terry-Thomas, Klaus Kinski (Five Golden Dragons), John Le Mesurier and Wilfred Hyde-White (Carry On Nurse, 1959). In this company, the glamorous Margaret Lee (Five Golden Dragons), as Lom’s cynical lover (“you are never wrong, cherie, you told me so yourself,” she tells him) is an amuse-bouche.

*A more comedic approach to the movie when it was re-titled for U.S. release*. At least here it did not try to sell itself as a Bond-type picture.

Six travellers – including oilman Randall, travel agent Le Mesurier, salesman Hyde-White and tourist Berger, meeting her fiancé – board a bus from Casablanca airport to Marrakesh. One is carrying $2 million as a bribe to ease through a vote in the United Nations, but bad guy Lom doesn’t know which one it is. When Berger’s fiance’s corpse tumbles out of Randall’s cupboard, the pair become entangled. Berger is a marvellous femme fatale, trumping Randall at every turn.

With no shortage of complications, the tale zips along, directed on occasion with considerable verve by Don Sharp (The Devil-Ship Pirates, 1964). There are some inventive double-plays – with a body in the boot Berger and Randall are stopped by a cop who tells them their boot is open. An excellent rooftop chase is matched by a car chase. And there’s a terrific shootout. Kinski is at his sinister best and Terry-Thomas a standout in an unusual role as a Berber.

The film was shot on location including the city’s souks, the ruined El Badi Palace and La Mamounia hotel (featured in The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1956). But Berger seamlessly holds the whole box of tricks together, at once glamorous and sinuous, practical and tough and exuding sympathy, and it’s a joy to see her for a large part of the picture leading Randall by the nose. Quite why this did not lead to bigger Hollywood roles than The Ambushers (1967) remains a mystery.

The Assassination Bureau (1969) ***

A couple of decades before the “high concept” was invented came this high concept picture – a killer is hired to kill himself. Oliver Reed is the assassin in question and Diana Rigg the journalist doing the hiring. So Reed 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 Reed, Rigg 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 glamour 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).

The American advertisement for the film set out its stall in a different way to the British advertisement with Diana Rigg taking pride of place.

Moustached media magnate Telly Savalas has a decent chomp at an upper-class British accent. 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 Reed 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 Reed gone rogue. Reed and Rigg (in her best Julie Andrews impression) are in excellent form and strike sparks off each other. The second-last film from Dearden suggested he wanted to go out in style.

Many of the films made in the 1960s are now available free-to-view on a variety of television channels and on Youtube but if you’ve got no luck there, then here’s the DVD.

The Frightened City (1961) ***

Sean Connery in an early role as a gangster is not the only reason for watching this brisk British thriller about a London protection racket. Primarily told from the point-of-view of the bad guys, this explores how a ruthless Mr Big (Herbert Lom) builds up a criminal empire. Lom, a bent accountant, brings together the six major gangs involved in extorting money from pubs and stores into a democratically-run syndicate. Lom then moves on to demanding bigger sums from bigger enterprises such as construction businesses. However, when the gangsters fall out they go to war.

This film is way ahead of the game in presenting gangsters as displaying any intelligence. Generally, they were depicted as brutes who ruled by force. But criminality at the top level demanded as much organization as in a legitimate business. Personalities had to be harnessed to work together rather than shoot each other on sight. Such skills had to exist in order for gangsters to operate on any scale. This picture examines how this was done.

The cops led by John Gregson are almost a sub-plot and the story would have adequately run its course without their involvement. Gregson sails close to the wind hoping to “tilt the scale of justice in our direction for a change.” Connery doesn’t appear until about 20 minutes as a karate-expert cat-burglar turned enforcer. Connery’s involvement with the syndicate ends when his code of honor is breached and he turns on his employers. His code is not so sacrosanct that it prevents him cheating on his girlfriend. But he does display the virility to fill James Bond’s shoes.

There’s far more violence that would be expected in a British crime picture. Night clubs, shops and pubs are wrecked and there’s plenty of fisticuffs and when the gangsters go head-to-head they upgrade to grenades. There’s a bit more plot than the running time can deal with so director (and producer and co-writer) John Lemont occasionally resorts to cliché devices like newspaper headlines. Canadian Lemont – most famous for writing the first serial hon on ITV, Sixpenny Corner – was an auteur of the old-fashioned (and unheralded) kind, and previously writer-director of The Shakedown (1960). Triple-hyphenates, while rare in the movie business, were generally of a high calibre such as Billy Wilder and Joseph L. Mankiewicz, so Lemont was in good company, and clearly, in consequence, the movie that appeared reflected his own vision.

Top billing was a step up for Lom and he made the most of it, delivering a suave villain among the thugs. Gregson (The Captain’s Table, 1959) was a solid British star and ideal cop material (he was later British television’s Gideon). Yvonne Romaine, as Connery’s new squeeze, a nightclub singer exploited by Lom more for her looks than her voice, was known to audiences after Curse of the Werewolf (1961). In only her second film Scottish television actress Olive McFarland was Connery’s dumped girlfriend. Unusually, for a British picture at this time, the theme tune written by Norrie Paramour was covered by The Shadows and turned into a hit.

At this point in his career, Connery had already had two bites of the cherry without much success – romancing Lana Turner in Another Time, Another Place (1958) and Disney’s Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959). This was three films before his breakthrough with Dr No (1962) but the Pressbook showed signs that he was headed for the heights. Co-star Yvonne Romaine (and her distinctive body measurements) were accorded three separate stories in the Pressbook, compared to one each for Lom and Alfred Marks, at that point better known as a comedian, but none of Connery. But Connery (and Romaine) outshone their co-stars when it came to the advertising campaign.

Producers were contractually bound in relation to the size of credits that appeared on any advertising. But there were no such regulations regarding the visuals of an advert. Although top-billed, Lom is not shown on any of the adverts. Given greatest prominence was Yvonne Romaine. There were thirteen different ads and she appeared in them all. Although Connery was third-billed and she was two rungs below in the credit stakes, he was the junior partner when it came to the artwork. While, Connery appeared in eleven in only one did he overshadow Romaine and in another they were visually-speaking accorded roughly the same status. But otherwise, she hogged the adverts.

The Pressbook was small by American standards, consisting of six A3 pages, the bulk of which was given over to adverts. But what it lacked in pages it made up for in taglines – of which there were six main types. Of course, Connery would become an “Untouchable” in the later Brian dePalma film.

The picture was not seen much in the United States, sent out in first run as the lower half of a double bill in only a handful of big cities, so there’s a fair chance it’s completely unknown except to Connery completists. But it’s certainly worth a look. New 60th anniversary edition has come out in April 2021 – that’s the top DVD, the previous one is below.