Drama – The Magnificent 60s

All Fall Down (1962) ***

Both an easy sell and a tough sell for today’s audience. Easy because, this early in the decade, we’ve got a succession of independent sexually liberated women for whom handsome hunks like Berry-Berry (Warren Beatty) are collectibles. Tough because our ostensible hero is a serial abuser, beating up women.

The tale is somewhat complicated by the narrative which, rather than putting Berry-Berry and Echo (Eva Marie Saint) together early on, gets more involved in the travails of Berry-Berry‘s innocent young brother Clinton (Brandon De Wilde), leading us to believe this is going to be more of a coming-of-age saga than a more mature romance, especially when the young lad is besotted by the 31-year-old Echo who appears to foolishly encourage him though he’s not much past the age of consent.

Or that it’s one of those stories when the adoring sibling realizes that big brother is not worthy of any adoration and far from looking as if he rules the world with his drinking and womanizing that he’s a pitifully small part of it.

Given the era, only a fraction of the sleazy world explored in the bestselling source novel by James Leo Herlihy (Midnight Cowboy, 1969) can find its way onto the screen. Still, in the first few scenes were are introduced to hookers, strippers and corrupt cops (who steal the cash Clinton planned to spend setting his brother up in the shrimp business).

Berry-Berry hasn’t a protective gene in his body, abandoning Clinton when a rich married woman beckons. It’s not just the unhappily married who alight on Berry-Berry but otherwise respectable schoolteachers. For a contemporary audience this might have been a more instructive avenue to go down, how such women, not all with money to burn, have the confidence to pick up men from a position of authority. Sure, Berry-Berry’s not one, ultimately, to remain at anyone’s beck-and-call but it’s interesting to see just who’s first to do the beckoning.

This is also the kind of picture that comes over more like a stage play and all the hidden secrets that entails – Echo’s previous boyfriend committed suicide. Clinton’s parents, however, let it all hang out, the father an alcoholic, the mother controlling.

By the time Berry-Berry and Echo manage to get it together, you can tell which way this is heading and even if Echo hadn’t died in a car accident, it’s doubtful given Berry-Berry’s personality whether he could have handled commitment.

Warren Beatty (Kaleidoscope, 1966) comes over like a latter-day James Dean, all quiff and male arrogance and winning smile, but there’s not an ounce of depth to his characterization albeit that he wants to have it all and can’t deal with entanglement and treats women as punchbags when he wants out of a relationship.

Eva Marie Saint (36 Hours, 1964) is better value, expectation already beaten out of her after having put up with the depressed boyfriend all this time and willing to embark on an affair with Berry-Berry because she hopes that eventually he will come to love her. Her ideal lover, it has to be said, looks like being the sweet-natured Clinton. But Saint leans into her feyness too often.

Much better value are Karl Malden (Billion Dollar Brain, 1967) and Angela Lansbury (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) as the bickering parents. Malden has never looked as unkempt and he retains a marvelous innocence, inviting three bums to the house in the spirit of Xmas.

Too much rests on the shoulders of Brandon De Wilde (In Harm’s Way, 1965) and, in truth, the narrative could have excised him and still arrived at its destination and it seems somewhat preposterous to have him so involved in the final scenes.

The structure emulates F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby where much of what we see is through the prism of a secondary character who in the novel acts as narrator. They junked that aspect for any of the screen versions and they’d have been better off doing the same here.

John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate) directs from a William Inge (Splendor in the Grass, 1961) script.

A contemporary audience might find more interesting the parts that the film only covers in passing. “They ought to have highways stacked with guys like you,” is the come-on of one rather forward lady.

Zee & Co / X Y & Zee (1972) ****

I’ve seen Elizabeth Tayor glide along the floor, I’ve seen her stomp and stamp, I’ve seen her bellow and hiss, but, except at the outset of her career, I’ve never seen her indulge in anything vaguely athletic. So it’s a bold opening here to witness the actress playing table tennis with some venom, virtually dancing from one foot to the other, bouncing in triumph when she wins. Who the heck is this reincarnation?

The movie’s acquired a different dimension since original release, a pathos that emphasizes the actress’s vulnerability. In the 1960s she was considered the most beautiful woman in the world yet she married a man who had a wandering eye. She would accompany him to film sets so she could keep an eye on him and keep other women at a distance. Can you imagine the impact on her psychological make-up to know that she was not enough for handsome charismatic husband Richard Burton?

That’s much the same situation the childless Zee (Elizabeth Taylor) finds herself in, married to handsome wealthy architect Robert (Michael Caine) who acquires other women art the drop of a hat. He’s got three on the go here. When she arouses him, he still enjoys passionate sex with his wife, he has a thing going with his secretary and he home in on widowed mother-of-to Stella (Susannah York). He encourages the idea of an open marriage. Though it’s unclear how much she actually indulges, she’s capable of stimulating his jealousy through her imaginative tales of seduction.

While he’s sleek and slim, she’s showing the signs of wear, plastered in make-up and desperate to fit into dresses at least a size too small.

While this doesn’t enter the no-holds-barred marital hell of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, it’s mostly ugly. He’s a chauvinist pig, a bully, given to tantrums. While, verbally, she can give as good as him, she’s mostly kept dangling on a string, spending “his money” her only satisfaction, and although they live the good life of fancy house, parties and expensive restaurants, the only reason they are not divorced is it would be an inconvenience.

Clearly, his usual targets are “ladies of leisure” but Stella runs her own design business. Robert has the instincts of all predators, targeting the needy. However, Stella is different, appearing to offer the serenity missing from his life. Where he started looking for just another fling, he finds himself falling in love. It’s not entirely clear whether he intends to split form his wife or is merely setting up Stella in an apartment, but he buys and flat and they decorate it, though there’s no sign of her to boys living there.

Zee is accustomed to sabotaging his wanderings. She knows how to hit him where it hurts. She manages to trace him when he’s off enjoying a dirty weekend and fires him up by telling she’s crashed his beloved Rolls-Royce – whether she has or not is unclear, but it does the trick of spoiling his weekend.

And she’s got her own antenna, seeking out the weakness in the mistress whom she befriends well enough so that Stella confesses her dark secret. These days, that would take on a completely different complexion, and would be dealt with in a more sympathetic dramatic fashion. Stella was expelled for falling in love with a nun at her school, so clearly the victim of grooming. Zee exploits this, seducing the younger woman, ensuring Robert knows the secret, destroying his plans for a more idyllic future.

So on the one hand director Brian G. Hutton, moving away from his action comfort zone of Where Eagles Dare (1968) and Kelly’s Heroes (1970), has fashioned on of those crisp double-edged marital dramas where each partner strives for dominance but on the other has created a highly sympathetic portrait of men and women trying to offset their own frailties.

If you’ve only seen Michael Caine employ that steely-eyed mean street for a succession of tough good guys and villains as exemplified by The Italian Job (1969) and Get Carter (1971) you’re in for a treat. This is Caine’s fury in full force, though that is undercut by charm and vulnerability. But it’s Elizabeth Taylor (Butterfield 8, 1960) who has the more rounded character, seductive, mothering, calculating, equally vulnerable. Susannah York (The Killing of Sister George, 1969) has an equally challenging role, maintaining a calm and carefree exterior while seething underneath with desires she dare not admit.

In other hands, this could easily be handled in an exploitational manner, a love triangle, plenty sex with hints of domination, and lesbianism. But Hutton resists the temptation and it takes some time before we less in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf territory than something like The Housemaid where the downtrodden individual turns out to hold the ace.

Written by Edna O’Brien (Three into Two Won’t Go, 1969) from her own novel, the screenplay is stagey at times, but the force of the screen personalities involved makes that irrelevant.

I caught it on Talking Pictures TV and it’ll be repeated there soon.

Thoughtful, stylish, scabrous and intriguing.

The Drama (2026) * – Seen at the Cinema

Today’s stars – and that’s an ever-decreasing category – seem to want to get into the kind of edgy material that used to be the province of the arthouse. They might even cut their fees to get a beloved project off the ground. I couldn’t remotely begin to understand what was going through the minds of Zendaya (Challengers, 2024) and Robert Pattinson (Die My Love, 2025) to make them think this had any value whatsoever. It skirts the only important subject in the whole picture, trying to fashion a rom-com-gone-bad in order to come up with, after an inordinate amount of time, a happy ending.

The premise, probably understandable in these suspicious times is: what secret is your partner hiding? Could they be bigamists? Have they changed gender? Have they been in prison? Nope, it’s much worse than that.

Emma (Zendaya) confesses that as a 15-year-old she was so fascinated by guns that she intended to slaughter her schoolmates. She didn’t go through with it because on the appointed day someone else had stolen her potential thunder. So what you might expect is that we backtrack and dig into the reasons why. But apart from a superficial stab at what turns an ordinary girl into a serial murderer and the notion that thousands of people would fall into the same category if they could ever get up the courage to do so.

Instead, this information is set against a rom-com backdrop and is used as narrative ammunition to derail her upcoming wedding to soft-hearted museum curator Charlie (Robert Pattinson). Po-faced pals Rachel (Alana Haim) and Mike (Mamadou Athie) get into an almighty snit over this, never mind that they have been guilty of heinous acts themselves. Bear in mind that Emma never actually injured anyone. But this pair who (Mike) used their previous girlfriend as a human shield against a ferocious dog and (Rachel) locked a mentally handicapped child in a cupboard in a remote house in the wood and ran away and didn’t fess up when a search party was formed.

Nobody thinks to send Rachel for counselling to ensure that whatever issues drove her to murder have been resolved. Instead, all concerned get agitated, and start examining Emma’s past and current life to see if she is going to go off on one. She’s certainly tougher than her wuss of a boyfriend, no problem sacking the DJ on the eve of the wedding or removing Rachel from a project.

Just to make sure Emma gets some audience sympathy she’s deaf in one ear and Charlie, on the edge of a mental breakdown, makes an unwise move on Misha (Hailey Gates), a member of his staff, which permits her boyfriend to give Charlie, literally, a bloody nose at the actual wedding.

You would hardly believe after all this nonsense and out of the detritus of the calamitous wedding that writer-director Kristoffer Borgli (Dream Scenario, 2023) manages to fashion a happy ending. This is witless stuff. And Hollywood at its hypocritical worst. I couldn’t begin to count how many people Pattinson has killed in his various movies and Zendaya in Dune has begun to express her violent tendencies. What’s that except glorifying violence and yet they still turn up in movies pontificating against violence.

There’s not a single likeable character. Charlie does his floppy-haired best and, supposedly, has such charm that he can get away with reading the same literary book as Emma – that’s the lame meet-cute – only to admit he hasn’t read a single word. Liar, liar, pants on fire appears to be a line that’s never entered Emma’s vocabulary, no doubt because, at 28, she’s never been in love (that in itself would be worth a piece of psychological digging).

This is one of the laziest attempts to provide contemporary stars with the “edge” they appear to so desperately seek as they try to emulate the Hollywood legends who genuinely did tackle important issues.

A mess.

Reminders of Him (2026) **** – Seen at the Cinema

Author Colleen Hoover pulls a fast one on admirers of It Ends with Us (2024) and Regretting You (2025). Audiences had come to expect sophisticated romances that played to feminist mores. While there’s certainly romance involved, it’s more about ex-con Kenna (Maika Monroe) trying to re-connect with the daughter Diem (Zoe Kosovic) she lost after being imprisoned. The situation is complicated because she was jailed for killing her fiancé Scotty (Rudy Pankow) in a car accident while under the influence. You can picture the scene: “Hi, Diem, meet your mother…she killed your father.”

I liked this film instantly because within five scenes it had set out its dramatic stall. Kenna gets out of a taxi taking her to Laramie, Wyoming, to rip out of the ground a makeshift cross marking where Scotty died. She can’t get a job because she ticks the “previous conviction” box in a job application. She is sent to a discount store to try there but a flashback reveals the meet-cute with Scotty who was driving an orange-painted truck. Another man, Ledger (Tyriq Withers) owner of a local bar, takes Diem for school. In the bar she flirts with Ledger until noting his truck she realizes this is her dead fiance’s best friend, whom she’d never met, because during her short courtship with Scotty, Ledger was off trying to make his career in football.

Kenna’s realistic enough but driven by a sliver of romanticism that ends in a relationship with Diem. There’s nothing but obstacles in the way, Ledger for one, who has occasion to physically remove her from temptation, which curdles their growing relationship. The still-grieving grandparents Grace (Lauren Graham) and Patrick (Bradley Whitford) fear Kenna might kidnap the girl and that eventually drives a wedge between them and Ledger, to whom they had grown incredibly close.

Everything about this is slow-burn. And there’s not an ounce of tear-jerking either. Kenna does not cry herself to sleep, doesn’t stand hidden under a tree or peek through a hedge or hover at a school gate trying to catch a glimpse of Diem. She doesn’t complain life’s unfair. Lacking a bed in her miserly accommodation, she sleeps on the couch, and is reduced to bagging groceries for a living.

There’s none of the usual misery memoir beats, nor does it take some miraculous piece of derring-do (saving Diem from drowning or a fire or from being knocked down in the street or – screenwriters have come up with worse – preventing her being kidnapped by someone else) to achieve a breakthrough. Nor is she baited in the street nor run out of town by people furious that she killed the well-liked Scotty.

Slow and contemplative would hardly be the best tone for a contemporary romance, and that takes a long time to get going thanks to the various complications. Resolution is provided with something of a get-out-of-jail-free car. As well as the DUI, Kenna was convicted for leaving the scene of the accident while (unknownst to her) her fiancé was still alive. The accident had occurred in a remote area and she had walked such a distance to get help and was herself in poor shape after the crash that she fell asleep in a barn only to discover Scotty had survived the accident only to die later.

In the old days you’d have called this a woman’s picture, but that category seems to have been taken over the excessively emotional Hamnet or Wuthering Heights, so it’s fairer to just class it as a more than decent picture for adults.

Both Maika Monroe (Longlegs, 2024) and Tariq Withers (Him, 2025) underplay to the benefit of the movie and there are interesting roles for Lauren Graham (Bad Santa, 2003), Bradley Whitford (The Handmaid’s Tale, 2018-2025) and Monika Myers in her debut. Directed with commendable restraint by Vanessa Caswill (Love at First Sight, 2023) from a screenplay by Hoover and producer Lauren Levine.

Like Regretting You, it’s not going to be a blockbuster, but quietly rewarding just the same.

Chubasco (1968) ***

Rather desultory effort. Whatever bite it had back in the day – if it struck a chord at all – has been lost in the passage of time and proves a more suitable vehicle for the limited talents of the enigmatic Christopher Jones than David Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter (1970) for which he proved an uncomfortable fit.

I have some background in commercial fishing – not active, I hasten to add, but as a journalist, my second job being for a UK weekly Fishing News and in that capacity been out enough at sea with fisherman to understand the complexities and dangers of the job. Nothing on screen reflected that reality until The Perfect Storm (2000). And this is a very lite version of that, in part because the catching method employed here is less implicitly dangerous than in the Wolfgang Petersen epic.

This fits into the Rebel Without a Cause mold, but with a stroppy entitled lad to the fore, struggling to elicit any sympathy from the audience and only the fact that his potential father-in-law is determined to beat him down makes him at all appealing.

The titular Chubasco (Christopher Jones), a 20-year-old lay-about who’s tangled too many times with the law, is given one last chance to go straight by being enrolled on a tuna-catching fishing vessel skippered by Laurindo (Simon Oakland). Sebastian Morino (Richard Egan), a rival fishing boat captain and father of Chubasco’s girlfriend Bunny (Susan Strasberg), is dead set on curtailing the romance.

Naturally, Chubasco’s sullenness doesn’t endear himself to the crew, but he settles into his role on board ship, suffering beginner’s wear and tear, and gaining some credence after helping save a young man who’s fallen overboard. He’s determined to defy Sebastian and after his first, successful, voyage, plans to marry Bunny, who’s skipped out of the house. However, at the wedding, Laurindo keels over and dies, forcing Chubasco to take a job with his father-in-law, who is now set on ruining the marriage. Chubasco, equally, is determined to make his way and after an accident Sebastian and Chubasco are reconciled.

It takes a long time to get to the end and seems to weave in and out of any distraction possible to churn up what should be a straightforward tale. The fishing detail is interesting but not in the same league as The Perfect Storm, so even the danger – and there is danger – is just not as gripping. And in the absence of genuine tension on board, it’s left to the extraneous to fill in the gaps.

But given Sebastian is for the most part miles away from Chubasco, making it impossible for their paths to cross, further tension is completely absent. And, once Chubasco proves his worth on board, any tension between him and his shipmates dissipates. Too long is spent setting up the story, with Chubasco being arrested and reprieved, arrested and reprieved. Little is made of the fact that he is ultimately following in his father’s footsteps – he wears his old man’s fishing boots and carries his marlin knife – or that he is an orphan, struggling along with only his grandmother for support.

Christopher Jones was reckoned to be the successor to James Dean, but really all he had in common with the 1950s superstar was the quiff and the surly demeanor. That didn’t seem to put producers off, his good looks making up for his lack of genuine screen persona and after his movie debut here he was given top-billing in Wild in the Streets (1968), Three in the Attic (1968), Brief Season (1969) and The Looking Glass War (1970) before falling into David Lean’s area of influence. But that would be his last role for over a quarter of a century.

Perhaps with a stronger guiding hand, he might have developed the promise studios thought he had.

Luckily, here, he’s surrounded by strong screen presences in Richard Egan (300 Spartans, 1962) and Susan Strasberg (Sisters / My Sister, My Love, 1969) but they don’t appear often enough.

Written and directed by Allen H. Miner in his sole movie outing.

A let down.

Inadmissible Evidence (1968) ***

The Angry Young Man approaching 40 is not only a lot angrier but misogynistic, rude, contemptuous, constantly berating society, and, despite his physical energy, completely lacking in the charm that made playwright John Osborne’s groundbreaking Look Back in Anger (1959) with Richard Burton such a conspicuous success.

Lawyer Bill Maitland (Nicol Williamson) exhibits neither self-awareness nor remorse as the aspects of his personality that have fueled his downfall are brought home to roost. He is abandoned by wife, two lovers and colleagues and finds that all the people he has ostracized over the years are unlikely to come to his aid in time of trouble.

Mostly, it’s just a catalog of disaster as his personal and professional life fall apart. While never a high-flyer in the legal field he had done enough to run a reasonably successful business, delegating those tasks for which he was unfit to employees, but treating everyone with disrespect, except temporarily when he is in seduction mode.

There’s an early scene advising a client on her impending divorce where it seems as though the scenario could shift in his favor, in the sense that the audience could be more on his side, empathizing with his situation rather than hating him. Mrs Gamsey (Isabel Dean) doesn’t want to divorce her philandering husband but realizes she can’t make him happy and has no idea what might bring him contentment, a situation that clearly reflects Bill’s own, and though for a moment it looks like he might be on the verge of self-realization the moment passes and he’s back on a rant against the world.

When secretary and lover Shirley (Eileen Atkins) tells him she’s pregnant, his first instinct isn’t congratulations or commiseration, but to try and establish, by working out when they last had sex, whether he could be the father. No sooner has she quit than he’s trying it on with the newest staff member, the comely Joy (Gillian Hills). Despite sleeping with him she doesn’t stay enamored of him for long. No matter, he already has another mistress, Liz (Jill Bennett) but that relationship is on the brink.

His marriage to Anna (Eleanor Fazan) is falling apart and she at least has the strength of mind to give him a good slap when at a party he insults their friends. That sends him scurrying out of the marital house. Daughter Jane (Ingrid Brett) can’t put up with his behavior either.

He is too late in realizing just how essential his clerk Hudson (Peter Sallis) is and by the time he offers the man a partnership, Hudson is already halfway out the door having received a better offer. He’s a poor operator, leaving a client (and former lover) in the lurch while another client is reduced to tears.

Throughout this, Bill keeps up a steady stream of abuse on virtually anyone his imagination alights. But it’s that imagination that also preys on his mind as he slips into nightmare scenarios of being brought to court for trial for his personal misdemeanors, of being disqualified from the profession, of being cremated. It’s not going to end well but just how it ends is left to the audience’s imagination.

It’s only the energy of Nicol Williamson (The Reckoning, 1970) that makes this fly at all. This falls into the sub-genre of successful men, lacking in self-worth, heading for a nervous breakdown as exemplified by The Arrangement (1969). Williamson was being hailed as the successor to the mantle of Richard Burton, but his choice of films soon scuppered that notion. He was a bigger draw on stage.

Here, director Anthony Page (Absolution, 1978) does him a disservice by, in terms of framing, refusing to give him physical stature. The camera always seems to be looking down on him, squashing his features, rather than elevating him as occurred in other films. Page does the audience a disservice by choosing to film in black-and-white. Whether for budgetary or artistic purposes is unclear. Adapted by Osborne from his play.

For about 30 minutes this is terrific stuff because Williamson can command the screen like few others. But then it’s just too wearing.

The Carpetbaggers (1964) ****

Likely because the gigantic bestseller by Harold Robbins (Stiletto, 1969) on which this was based made it impervious to critics, the critics determined to slaughter it. Which was a great shame because if they had been at all open-minded, not to mention fair, they would have recognized, outside of a terrific tale with a spellbinding performance by George Peppard (The Blue Max, 1966), a master class in screenwriting from double Oscar nominee John Michael Hayes (Butterfield 8, 1960).

There’s hardly a slack line in the entire ensemble and given he was adapting a monster of a book he cuts to the chase with infinite guile. Scenes demonstrate instant characterization and are littered with quotable lines and the story, even at two-and-half-hours, is told at breakneck speed.

No sooner are we introduced in the opening two scenes to the reckless, arrogant and bedhopping Jonas Cord (George Peppard) than his father has dropped dead and Cord has not only inherited the company but immediately turned from louche spoiled brat into hard-nosed businessman, not just tough but determinedly mean especially in the area of revenge. In a superb scene with his father’s widow Rina (Carroll Baker), we learn that she dumped Jonas for his richer father, and although Jonas appears to be leading her on, that’s only until he can humiliate her by exposing her innate greed.

Despite her wayward sexuality, Rina is a savvy businesswoman, enough to make sure she is set up for life, although the other men she gravitates towards are not as weak as Jonas’s father, nor as nasty as Jonas, and Nevada Smith (Alan Ladd) has the wisdom to led her down gently when he enters her seductive web. The Nevada Smith backstory, which takes up a hefty chunk of the novel, is dealt with in one clever scene, which could act as a trailer for the later film starring Steve McQueen.

And early on there’s a superb scene, akin to the madwoman in the attic, where Jonas opens a locked door containing a derelict bedroom strewn with children’s toys that belonged to his brother. The reason for the locking away is never explained but it’s the only time Jonas gives in to his vulnerable side.

Both Rina and Nevada segue into successful film careers and eventually have an affair. Cord becomes a movie mogul.

Though it certainly enters soap territory in the second half it’s so true to the characters that it plays out in hugely enjoyable fashion. Jonas remains ruthless – and unhappy – while Rina powers her way through men and booze, the latter leading to her death. Nevada doesn’t turn into a superstar, Jonas abandons wife Monica (Elizabeth Ashley) and child, begins an affair with former porn star Jennie (Martha Hyer) and destroys her.

You will be surprised to learn this has a happy ending. I can’t confess to have read the book so no idea whether or not this was tacked on to keep the studio happy. Whatever, it’s a terrific ride, full of punchy lines and sharply-wrought scenes and enough of the pell-mell structure of the book to keep an audience riveted.

This proved the career breakthrough for George Peppard – Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) had done considerably less for his career than it had for Audrey Hepburn – and he offered Hollywood mavens a new kind of hero, not just a tough guy in the Steve McQueen mold, but a mean tough guy that would open the door for the likes of Lee Marvin.

As you will know I’ve got a soft spot for Peppard, who’s generally been under-rated as an actor. This performance, despite the depths he showed, was equally dismissed, but it’s the turn of this career.

Carroll Baker (Harlow, 1965), too, has a part with real meat and makes the most of it, not just a slinky sex god, but devious and smart, and vulnerable. Alan Ladd (Shane, 1953) in his final picture is well out of his comfort zone and might have looked forward to an extended career playing a different kind of character except for his untimely demise.

The females are uniformly good, especially as they all have underlying reasons for their attraction to the wealthy Jonas, Monica desperate to save her father’s business, Jessica desperate to hide her past.

Edward Dmytryk (Mirage, 1965) doesn’t put a foot wrong, allowing insecurities in tough characters to creep through, but the star of the show for me is John Michael Hayes who turns what could have been a routine blockbuster with a built-in audience into a cracking entertainment.

One to catch.

Shark! / Man-Eater (1969) ***

The one where Burt Reynolds suddenly alights on his screen persona. At the outset he’s just another B-picture dude hoping to get by on macho posturing. Then, as though his brain has sparked into silver screen intelligence, the cocky grin appears. And we’re off.

If any director was skewered by his insistence on retaining his artistic vision, it’s Samuel Fuller (The Naked Kiss, 1964). He wasn’t one for good guys and bad guys. Everybody’s up to something, if good deeds occur it’s by accident. Such realism would make him catnip for today’s disillusioned generation.

And it’s got cult written all over it because Fuller wanted to take his name off the picture after it was re-edited by the producer, possibly to include more shark footage at the expense of the human flotsam and jetsam trying to make a buck in the shark-infested waters off the Sudan in Africa. (Spoiler alert: it was filmed in Mexico). The shark footage for the era, it has to be said, is pretty damn good and although the sequences of people being gobbled up by a marauding shark must have been staged with a fake shark they look entirely convincing on the small screen.

And this was before the shark exploded on the screen via documentary Blue Water, White Death (1971) and of course Jaws (1975). Even so, the producers managed to make the sharks here sound even more fearsome by duping Life magazine into running some fake news about Burt Reynolds’ stunt double being killed by a shark.

In any other world two partners hunting for sunken treasure who were in sore need of a diver would simply have made an honest approach to their target, offering a share of the loot. Who’d not jump at the opportunity? Except Professor Mallare (Barry Sullivan) and Anna (Sylvia Pinal) only have a license to dive for strange sea specimens, not lost gold, and Caine (Burt Reynolds) is a gunrunner wanted by the police. The local cop Inspector Barok (Enrique Lucero) does his best to keep tabs on things except, short of donning scuba gear, he’s got no way of seeing what they’re getting up to underwater, though, clearly, as the story plays out, he has his suspicions.

Anna reckons she needs to offer Caine a sweetener to come on board, so she hops into bed with him. The only person who has a redemptive bone in his body is the alcoholic doctor (Arthur Kennedy) who spoils his own salvation by demanding dough for saving someone’s life.

So while, what with being unable to resist the delectable Sylvia, Caine signs on for a share of the gold, he is from the outset planning how, in the event of striking it lucky, to get rid of his partners, which is just as well because they’re equally intent on getting rid of him. The climax is a pretty good one, and given I’d just watched Gene Hackman in Night Moves (1975) being left stranded and dying in a boat going round in circles in the ocean, that notion is matched here where Sylvia makes her escape on a boat she doesn’t know is sinking.

Burt Reynolds (Sam Whiskey, 1969), once the cocky grin puts in an appearance, isn’t the only plus point here. Five-time Oscar nominee Arthur Kennedy (Anzio, 1968) is slumming it but no doubt having a ball as an incorrigible drunk. This might also be perceived as a bit of a comedown for Sylvia Pinal (Guns for San Sebastian, 1968) after being a regular in Luis Bunuel arthouse offering like Viridiana (1961), The Exterminating Angel (1962) and Simon of the Desert (1965) but her part is too underwritten to do her talents justice. Barry Sullivan (Harlow, 1965) fills in the blanks.

But maybe the star attraction is the shark in the days when such a creature made rare appearances on screen even if it’s not a great white as with Blue Water, White Death or Jaws. The Steven Spielberg blockbuster did Shark! a good turn, and in its wake the Fuller picture was reissued as Man-Eater in both 1975 and 1976 and again in 1978 after Burt Reynolds, cocky grin to the fore, had achieved superstardom thanks to Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and Hooper (1978). Screenplay by the director and television writer John T. Dugan in his movie debut based on the Victor Canning (Masquerade, 1965) bestseller.

It’s a shame Samuel Fuller objected to the end result for as far as I can see, after a slow start, it’s quite a decent picture and as I said the characters will appeal to a contemporary audience.

Give it a chance.

Town Without Pity (1961) ****

Long-forgotten courtroom picture that deserves urgent reassessment in the wake of Jeffrey Epstein and especially the casual destruction of Virginia Giuffre. We’re so accustomed to attorneys being shown in a good light – defense lawyers rescuing the innocent, prosecutors putting away the evasive guilty – that we forgot just how brutal a trial is for the unprepared. Even a “fair trial” permits a lawyer to brutalize a witness. Until recently, rape trials came apart once the prosecution could prove the victim was “asking for it.”

Four American soldiers rape a young girl in Occupied Germany at the start of the 1960s. Major Steve Garrett (Kirk Diouglas), defending the quartet, goes on the attack, attempting to demolish the reputation of banker’s daughter Karin (Christine Kaufman). Unusually, the stakes are the highest they could be. Under a quirk of German law, the soldiers could face the death penalty. Under another quirk, for that to have any chance of occurring, Karin has to take the witness stand. If Garrett can place her and her family under sufficient pre-trial duress she might excuse herself from court.

Turns out Garrett finds many willing accomplices among the townspeople. It’s not so much a town without pity as a town called malice. Some dislike her father, others feel she has already brought the town into disrepute, and there’s the usual generation clash. A voyeuristic neighbor reports that she stands boldly naked at her window. Another has seen Karin and her boyfriend Frank (Gerhart Lippert) spend a weekend together. Her shamed father Karl (Hans Nielsen) discovers a lot he didn’t want to know about his adored daughter, though, even so, he backs her, willing to suck up the humiliation and finger-pointing.

Everyone knows the men are guilty although one of them, Corporal Larkin (Robert Blake), might be technically innocent because he proves to be impotent. Even so, he was present and did nothing to prevent the assault. The men’s defense is that they came upon her naked and, having quarrelled with Frank, she flaunted herself, desiring the sexual attention of men. Since it would be embarrassing to admit that she stood around naked beside the river, she lies and says she was wearing a bikini at the time.

Kirk Douglas was such a dab hand at playing the action hero – Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Vikings (1958), Spartacus (1960) – and the misunderstood, as in Lust for Life (1956), that audiences tended to forget his cynical turn in Ace in the Hole (1951) and that he could transition into mean at the drop of a hat. Here, he has the excuse of only doing his job.

But it’s vicious stuff and once Garrett has Karin in the courtroom there’s only going to be one winner at the expense of destroying the loser. She is torn apart as he sets her up as a woman who enjoys showing men her naked body and proves false her contention that the men ripped the bikini from her.

She can’t take the gruelling attack and faints, her father removing her from the witness box, rendering the death penalty inapplicable. There’s a sad coda, which would not have been unexpected.

German director Gottfried Reinhardt, who had worked with Douglas before on The Story of Three Loves (1953), takes an unusual approach, to some extent shielding the audience from Garrett with a voice-over narration from local reporter Inge (Barbara Rutting), with whom Garret initially flirts. But there‘s little grandstanding, any references to the law are not in recognition of its contribution to justice, but in pointing out that it’s not a good idea to get caught in the legal maw because you will be destroyed one way or another.

There’s one shot at the end where Garrett realizes that he’s been instrumental in driving Karin to suicide, but mostly he views himself as a victor, a legal warrior who will do anything to win. He excuses his behavior because he’s not trying to get his clients off the charge of rape but merely determined to avoid them hanging. But you know he’s still belongs to the tribe of men who can brutalize the innocent on the witness box and never feel remorse.

Kirk Douglas is superb, as is Austrian-born Christine Kaufman (Taras Bulba, 1962) in her debut. And although the rest of the cast has little to do, the collection of wannabes includes Robert Blake (Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, 1969) and Richard Jaeckal (The Dirty Dozen, 1967). Scripted by George Hurdalek (Tread Softly, 1965) and Sylvia Reinhardt (Situation Hopeless But Not Serious, 1965) from the book by Manfred Gregor.

Watching it now, the case of Virginia Giuffre hangs over this. She was reviled on all fronts before reaching an out-of-court settlement but never recovered from the ordeal and took her own life.

Worth reassessment.

The Sting (1973) *****

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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