Drama – Page 2 – The Magnificent 60s

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.

Gray Lady Down (1978) ****

The best of the late 70s disaster pictures and possibly the best of the whole short-lived genre, mixing technology, hair-rising tension and restrained emotion on top of a belter of a concept, sailors trapped in a submarine on the seabed with oxygen running out. But what lifts this above the norm is that it doesn’t follow the normal disaster picture template. Men do not rise easily to this challenge. Courage drains away as fast as time. Tempers flare and more than one of these hardy men collapse under the pressure.

The best scene in the picture is a man dealing wordlessly with loss and being a male of a certain era unable to shed a tear. So it’s all on the face. Capt Blanchard (Charlton Heston) has to shut himself away to grieve. And there’s a somber tone throughout. Corpses, covered only in a blanket, are laid out alongside the injured in an improvised sick bay. More than one person cracks. Even in a major crisis, bureaucracy gets in the way.

Blachard isn’t exactly the strong-jawed hero. As the situation grows more serious, his equanimity fails and he gets very snappy with the crew. And he’s also dealing with a heavy dose of guilt. Luckily, his major failing isn’t exposed to the crew, but his second-in-command points the finger.

Although the sub has been sent to the bottom courtesy of a collision in thick fog with a merchant ship boasting faulty radar, the accident should never have occurred. The sub shouldn’t have been on the surface. The only reason for that was Blanchard’s pride. This is his final voyage and he wanted to sail into harbor with is vessel atop the waves.

Now the sub is laid up in a deep trench and subject to “gravity slides”, the technical term for rock falls, which not only shift its position every now and then, pushing it deeper into the trench, but seal up the top of the escape hatch.

So the U.S. Navy’s new-fangled DSRV (Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle) can’t do its job and an even more new-fangled experimental submersible, operated by Captain Gates (David Carradine) and his sidekick Mickey (Ned Beatty) is called in. But its operation is sabotaged when officious Capt Bennett (Stacy Keach), tasked with the rescue mission, insists on one of his own men going down instead of the more experienced Mickey.

The underwater scenes are thrilling, and there’s plenty of technical know-how on view and a bunch of impression jargon spouted, as the sub slips further away and the submersible moves into more perilous depths. In the days before CGI, this is superb stuff. And since the sub is now upside down you certainly see more than normal of your typical submarine.

Unlike earlier disaster numbers like Airport (1970), The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and Towering Inferno (1974), no time is wasted setting up the various characters, usually embroiled in emotional entanglement, and for sure there’s no nuns or pregnant women to get in the way of a tight narrative. Comic relief, if that’s what you’re looking for, is provided by the chirpy Mickey.

But when you get right down to it, this holds all the narrative aces. You know rescue is going to get complicated. The unexpected always gets in the way.

But the men under pressure a thousand feet blow the surface are really under pressure and it’s not long before the cracks begin to show and widen.

Unfortunately, this came at the tail end of the disaster cycle when public interest was waning, and perhaps precisely because there was a lack of male-female interaction and no nuns it proved less appealing.

Charlton Heston (Will Penny, 1968) is very impressive, especially when he strains to hold it together and the scene I mentioned is one of his most best pieces of acting. Ned Beatty (Deliverance, 1971) also has a top-notch stiff-upper-lip scene.

Topping the supporting cast are David Carradine (Heaven with a Gun, 1969) and Stacey Keach (Fat City, 1972). You can spot Christopher Reeve (Superman, 1978) in an early role. Rosemary Forsyth (The War Lord, 1965) has a small part, but onshore.

Ably directed by David Greene (Sebastian, 1968) from a screenplay by James Whittaker (Megaforce, 1982) and Howard Sackler (The Great White Hope, 1970) based on the book by David Lavallee

If you’re in the mood for a thrilling ride, hang on to your hat.

The Testament of Ann Lee (2025) *

Nobody told me this was a musical and a dire one at that, characters breaking into dirge-like tunes at any opportunity and throwing themselves about as if choreographed by Bob Fosse on speed. The kind of film where visual imagination is so limited that every now and then when a snake hoves into view, tongue tipping out, that we’re supposed to realize it’s an image from the Garden of Eden.

It’s such a mess that the director tries to rescue the narrative by imposing a dreadful voice-over commentary that tells us what the screen should have made abundantly clear. This device either robs sequences of any potency or avoids creating any scenes of note by relying on the voice-over to fill in the blanks.

And that’s a shame because there is a good story here to tell. A feminist one for a start, a woman by her own merit achieving a position of considerable importance in eighteenth century Britain and America. If you only knew the term “Shaker” in terms of furniture, then this is the one to disabuse of that notion. However, that term seemed to be one of contempt, an offshoot of the Quakers, who believed a woman would lead the Second Coming, which espoused a religion where they were shaking all over as an essential part of their worship of God, in part related to confessing their sins, but in part, I would guess, because singing and dancing with abandon offered pure physical – not to say sexual – release.

It was a particularly noisy religion. The stomping and yelping attracted so much attention that they were liable to be arrested for being too noisy. But there was a bright side to languishing in prison, at least for our heroine Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried), who, on the brink of starvation, saw visions that elevated her to a position of leadership – the new Messiah – among her clique.

One of the tenets of the religion – no doubt caused by her being in a state of endless pregnancy with no progeny to show for it, all four offspring dead at birth or soon after – was celibacy. Fornication was strictly forbidden. While nobody gave mind to how that might prevent a new generation carrying on the religion, no doubt it contributed to its popularity amongst women who had to give in to their husband’s sexual demands even though continuous pregnancy wore them out.

Never mind the pregnancies, Ann had a particularly good reason for wanting to stop having sex with her husband Abraham (Christopher Abbott). He was fond of pornography (yes, the printed stuff existed then and was even illustrated so it appears), and of giving her a good whipping as a prelude to sex and he was also bisexual.

They take their singing and dancing to America. The lack of sex leaves Abraham to abandon his wife, which is just as well because she’s too busy setting up Shaker communities to be involved in any intimacy with a perverted male.

The singing and dancing aspect doesn’t go down so well in the New World, it being too close to witchcraft for some, and accusations of witchcraft being the easiest way for the male hierarchy to keep women in their place. For every believer there are a ton of angry disbelievers who don’t want anyone shaking all over.

I saw this as part of my usual Monday triple bill that had got off to a very good start with the interesting, though far from superlative, Elvis Presley in Concert, followed by a more than tolerable Scream 7 with Neve Campbell (returning now that the producers had acceded to her salary demands) introducing her daughter to the delights of being chased by Ghostface. I was looking forward to having enjoyed a very decent day out at the cinema. Alas, the final picture torpedoed that notion.

I should have known better than to avoid films that were touted as more than worthwhile on the back of critical acclamation and an Oscar nomination for the lead. If Oscar nominations were handed out for people debasing themselves or not using make up such as Demi Moore (The Substance, 2025), then Clint Eastwood should have been more in line for similar recognition given the number of times he was whipped or beaten up.

Certainly Amanda Seyfried (The Housemaid, 2025) goes through the hoops here but, frankly, the movie is such a shambles and the voice-over kills off much of the narrative structure that she’s wasted.

Another “visionary” director in the form of Mona Fastvold (The World to Come, 2020) who with husband Brady Corbett (The Brutalist, 2024) wrote the screenplay and who, having been given too much rope by indulgent financiers, proceeds to hand herself.

It might have worked minus the singing and eternal dancing and with the voice-over stripped out and the picture trimmed by a good 20 minutes. Who knows, we might get a director’s cut where the director sees the error of her ways and delivers a more sensible version.

The person sitting next to me in the multiplex gave up after a mere 20 minutes. I wish I had followed suit.

Just awful.

The Lion in Winter (1968) ****

Template for The Godfather (1972) and Succession. King Henry II (Peter O’Toole) has to choose an heir from Richard (Anthony Hopkins), Geoffrey (John Castle) and John (Nigel Terry). Helping set the Machiavellian tone are Henry’s wife Eleanor (Katharine Hepburn), his mistress Alais (Jane Merrow) and French King Philip II (Timothy Dalton). Cue plotting, confrontation, double-crossing, rage and lust.

Some other complications: the queen is actually a prisoner, the result of organising a failed coup against her husband, the sons participating in this attempt to overthrow their father, and with Henry willing to sacrifice his mistress in order to achieve an alliance with Philip, relations are less than cordial all round. Eldest son Richard, strong and aggressive, would be the obvious choice, and should be the only choice I would guess by law, but Henry prefers the youngest son John, who is weak, while the middle son Geoffrey is the most savvy (see if you can guess how easily these characters fit The Godfather scenario, or Succession for that matter). Geoffrey reckons that even if passed over for the top job, he will rule from behind the scenes as John’s chancellor.

This is not your normal historical picture with battles, romance and, let’s be honest, costumes, taking central stage. And there’s little in the way of rousing speeches. Virtually all the dialog is plotting. And, like Succession, there are elements of vitriol and pure comedy. In five crisp opening scenes we know everything we need to know. The King brings his family together for Xmas, the Queen freed for the occasion, to decide the succession. Richard is shown in hand-to-hand combat, the wily John leading a cavalry attack, the whiny John pouting and complaining, Alais realizing just how much a pawn she is in the game as Henry explains she is to be married off to Richard.

And if you are not the chosen one, your only chance of gaining the throne is by the back door, by having a powerful ally in your pocket, one whose armies would threaten the King, which is where Philip comes into the equation as potential kingmaker. Let the intrigue begin, especially as those who ought to be little more than bystanders – the women – have ideas of their own. “I’m the only pawn,” says Alais, “that makes me dangerous.” Despite her current status, Eleanor still owns the French province of Aquitaine and taunts her husband by revealing that she slept with his father.

The plot twists and turns as new alliances are formed between the conspiring individuals. The overbearing Henry will certainly remind you of Logan Roy, “When I bellow, bellow back.” And there is a Hitchcockian element in that we, the audience, know far more than the participants and wait for them to fall into traps. Richard is revealed as homosexual, having had an affair with Philip.

The dialogue is superb, brittle, witty, and it could have been all bombast and rage except that emotion carries the day. Henry clearly could not have wished for a better Queen than Eleanor, more than capable of standing up to him, more capable than any of his sons, and he probably wishes she was by his side rather than confined, as by law, to prison. Eleanor still retains romantic notions towards him, even as she forces him to kiss his mistress in front of her – only the audience sees the truth revealed in her eyes, not Henry who is too busy kissing. The uber-male Richard complains to Philip that he never told him he loved him.

Maternal and paternal bonds ebb and flow and throughout it all is the dereliction caused by power. A father will lose the love of the children he rejects. Or, realizing they are more powerful together than as individuals, they could turn against him. The mother faces the same fate – she risks losing the love of the ones she does not back.

Unlike Alfred the Great, the monarchs have stately castles, so the backdrops are more commanding, but once an early battle is out of the way, it is down to the nitty-gritty of plot and counter-plot. A truly satisfying intelligent historical drama.

Peter O’Toole (Lawrence of Arabia, 1962) had played Henry II before in Becket (1964) and is in terrific form. Katharine Hepburn (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, 1967) won her second successive Oscar – and her third overall – in a tremendous performance that revealed the inner troubles of a powerful woman, Anthony Hopkins (When Eight Bells Toll, 1971) gave an insight into his talent with his first major role.

John Castle (Blow Up, 1966), Nigel Terry (Excalibur, 1981), Jane Merrow (Assignment K, 1968) and future James Bond Timothy Dalton, in his movie debut, provide sterling support, Dalton and Castle especially good as a sneaky, conniving pair.

*This was an odd choice for a roadshow – at just over two hours considerably*
*shorter than most of the genre. But the 600-seat Odeon Haymarket in London’s West End*
*was an ideal venue for building word-of-mouth and it ran for over a year.*

Modern audiences might bristle at the idea of woman as commodity, but women in those days were the makeweights in alliances of powerful men, though the fact that they bristle at the notion as well evens up proceedings, Eleanor in particular happy to jeopardize Henry’s ambitions in favor of her own, Alais warning Henry to beware of the woman scorned.

Director Anthony Harvey (Dutchman, 1966 ) was deservedly Oscar-nominated. James Goldman (Robin and Marian, 1976) won the Oscar for his screenplay based on his Broadway play which had not been in fact a runaway Broadway hit, only lasting 92 performances, less than three months. John Barry (Zulu, 1963) was the other Oscar-winner for his superb score.

The Secret Agent (2025) ****

Now that publicists have hijacked film festivals in an effort to sell the public an unending stream of over-praised self-indulgent rubbish, it’s refreshing to come across a foreign film that is innovative, interesting and not over-acted. This meshes a thriller-like quality with the kind of surreal diversions that used to indicate movies not following the Hollywood dictat.

And while the storyline concentrates on brutal regimes and people persecuted for no reason except the authorities can get away with it, the potentially somber tone is undercut by homages to La Dolce Vita (1960) and Cinema Paradiso (1988). With time jumps, the movie takes its sweet time coming to a conclusion and when it does so, there’s an unexpectedly emotional twist.

It’s set in Brazil in 1977, but I have to confess I know little about the politics of the period except, judging by what goes on here, corruption is rife and justice is compromised. We begin with our hero, college professor Marcelo (Wagner Mauro) being shaken down at a petrol station by a pair of cops, who eventually are happy with just a packet of cigarettes as their booty. The cops pointedly ignore the corpse rotting in the sunshine.

The widowed Marcelo, on the run and using a pseudonym, is driving to Recife to reunite with his son who is living with his grandfather. Marcelo hides out in a house full of refugees, who are equally in danger. Marcelo has fallen foul, it eventually transpires, of an industrialist who wants to steal his research. Said businessman has despatched two hitmen to deal with this “transgressor” and the hitmen in turn hire a cheaper hit man to carry out the deed.

The surreality emerges when a human leg found in the belly of a shark attracts greater headlines than normal because the country is in the grip of Jaws-fever. The leg takes on a life of its own when it’s stolen from the mortuary and used to terrorize gay men making out in a public park. Attitudes to death are equally morbid, the cops taking bets on how high the death toll will run at the annual carnival.

The grandfather is a projectionist in the local cinema so we are treated to mentions of Jaws (1975), The Omen (1976) and King Kong (1976). Marcelo makes contact with the resistance who are trying to help him get out of the country. But he’s also landed a job in an ID unit where, on the side, he can hunt for information about his mother.

The title is ironic. There’s nothing dangerous about Marcelo and he doesn’t have secrets that can topple a regime, nor is he spying for a foreign power. But he does have to behave like a secret agent just to survive, dodging about, hiding in plain sight, making contact via codes and signals.

You are led to believe also that his every word is being taped and that there are collaborators only too ready to hand him over. But in fact, the story jumps around to the present day and a student doing research on the period.

Marcelo isn’t much of a hero in the normal Hollywood manner. He might be something of a lothario in the James Bond manner but he’s just trying to survive and get on better terms with his young son. His father-in-law, with some justification it appears, accuses Marcelo of hypocrisy – he’s grieving for a wife to whom he was serially unfaithful.

And it’s very honest on the emotional scale. Marcelo discovers that his mother, who was little more than a slave, was impregnated by a landowner when she was 14. When the present-day student confronts Marcelo’s grown-up child with information about his “heroic” father, hounded by a brutal regime, the son doesn’t want to know – he was brought up by his grandfather and that’s more important than a man he rarely saw and to whom he has little emotional connection.

So on the one hand it’s the kind of political thriller that many critics have viewed as holding up a light on brutal regimes around the world, but it’s not that kind of political thriller. It’s at its best when exploring ordinary life, and the way that ordinary people are treated by bad actors.

Wagner Moura (Civil War, 2024) is deservedly up for an Oscar but the movie is people with highly believable characters. Writer-director Kleber Mendonca Filho (Pictures of Ghosts, 2023) makes no sweeping political points but by concentrating on the small scale he more than compensates.

Thoughtful and enjoyable.

A Man for All Seasons (1966) ****

Columbia offset the gamble of turning an award-winning play with a stage star with no movie marquee luster, a co-star who had just about the same pulling power for audiences, and a host of actors nobody had ever heard of by cutting the budget to the bone – the $ 2million spent would barely be enough for a mid-level Hollywood production – even though director Fred Zinnemann belonged in the upper reaches of the Oscar hierarchy with one win and six nominations to his name.

You could even argue that the best-known person in the cast was female lead Susannah York (Sands of the Kalahari, 1965, The 7^th Dawn, 1964) or the legendary Orson Welles or even screenwriter Robert Bolt, acclaimed for his work on Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965).

Movie audiences of the period would be hard put to even recognize male lead Paul Scofield, in only his second major screen role after The Train (1964), while Robert Shaw had little more popularity unless you were familiar with From Russia with Love (1963) in which he played a bad guy and Battle of the Bulge (1965). There was a fair chance that Scofield could hit the mark among the upscale stage audiences in London and New York, where he had won a Tony. The play, by Robert Bolt, had proved substantially more popular in terms of length of run and critical esteem in New York than London.

But Zinnemann hadn’t made a picture in six years, not since The Sundowners (1960), having become embroiled in two projects The Day Custer Died (never made) and Hawaii (made but without him) without anything to show for it.

This was a virtue-signaling picture long before the term became over-used. England’s Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas More (Paul Scofield) makes a principled stand against King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw). From today’s perspective, the principled stand is more complex. The idea that the ruler of a country would have to bend the knee to the leader of a religion would not sit well today. You might be unlikely to blame Henry VIII for wanting to break the rules, given he was in dire need of a male heir that his current wife could not supply, especially as without said heir the country would most likely fall into civil war.

You could make a case for Henry VIII being the heroic one, standing up to the Pope, who, for political reasons, as much as anything else, refused to annul the king’s existing marriage. When the Pope didn’t see it the king’s way, Henry VIII decided the only alternative was to break away from the Catholic Church and set himself up as the secular head of the church in England.

And although Thomas More has a fair following today for his philosophy – he wrote Utopia – Robert Bolt was guilty of leaving out aspects of his character which were more unsavory. He was a prime mover in the persecution of Protestants, condemned as “heretics,” but that’s been excised from the story told here in order to present Thomas More as a man of conscience.

Apart from the verbal duel between More and Henry VIII, there’s a rich backdrop of political machination bringing in such names as Thomas Cromwell (Leo McKern) – of Wolf Hall fame – Cardinal Wolsey (Orson Welles), the Duke of Norfolk (Nigel Davenport), William Roper (Corin Redgrave) and Richard Rich (John Hurt). There’s corruption, bribery and betrayal and at times it appears that More is the only one to place any significance on the law.

But More’s no innocent, he’s well used to playing the political game and arguing his case. He only becomes undone by his stand against a king who will brook no opposition.

Paul Scofield has a fine time of it with a well-developed character, gently spoken, appealing to sense and sensibility, and generally well loved by the populace. Although in retrospect I think other Oscar nominees Richard Burton for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Michael Caine for Alfie might have been more deserving of the Oscar gong.

Robert Shaw makes a fine opponent, tempering the monarch’s known bluster with a sense of humor. While Paul Scofield tended to steer clear of Hollywood except for films like Scorpio (1973), Robert Shaw went immediately into the male lead in Custer of the West (1967) and eventually became a genuine draw.

The uncredited Vanessa Redgrave (Blow-Up, 1966) was otherwise the star-picker’s pick. Future years would invest greater luster in the supporting cast. John Hurt (Sinful Davey, 1969) the first to be given a tilt at marquee splendor. Leo McKern (Assignment K, 1968) achieved small-screen deification through Rumpole of the Bailey (TV series, 1978-1992). Colin Blakely (The Vengeance of She, 1968) played Dr Watson in Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970).

Robert Bolt deserved his Oscar for the considerable work he put in to converting his stage version for the screen. The staging looks quite stagey to me, but Zinnemann did an excellent job of adding the necessary richness and ensuring the tale was rounded-out.

Not sure I’d place it in the Top Fifty Best-Ever British Films, but it’s still enjoyable even though you might take issue with the issues presented.