Drama – Page 26 – The Magnificent 60s

John and Mary (1969) ****

Woefully underrated. Remove the weight of expectation and you’re left with a bittersweet romance. This just wasn’t what critics anticipated from stars Dustin Hoffman, coming off the back of Midnight Cowboy (1969), and Mia Farrow, previous film the coruscating Rosemary’s Baby (1968), and certainly it seemed there was resentment at the audacity of British director Peter Yates attempting to switch from his action roots, best shown in Bullitt (1968). Worse, that Yates was trying to introduce a New Wave vibe.

In the end-up it’s sweet, but getting there is a prickly affair and it’s precisely this unique approach that creates its appeal. Where the standard set-up comprises meet-cute, break-up, back together, for the most part this looks as if actual romance, as opposed to sex, will never get off the ground, the pair smothered by doubt expressed in internal monologue.

Whereas, in The Fixer (1969), for example, hearing a character speak of their feelings outside of dialogue almost torpedoes the picture, here it works a treat, because it’s dealt with as if it was dialogue of the unspoken variety. Past experience that forces both characters to make suppositions about the other’s intent creates a very amusing and essentially true barrier to progress.

Back in the day, at the dawn of the singles generation, the idea of two young people hooking up for one-night stands filled the moral majority with shock, not just that widespread use of the Pill in avoiding pregnancy invoked promiscuity, but that random encounters immediately ended up in the bedroom rather than the becoming the start of a wooing (and discovery) process. These days, of course, Tinder and other such social media inventions, create umpteen opportunities for attraction to translate into instant sex.

But it doesn’t reduce the type of anxieties that are so well addressed here.

You can start with the basic morning-after notion of “how do I get rid of her?” all the way through to assuming such easy attitudes to sex on either side would destroy an ongoing relationship, and along the way dipping into such minefields as how to get to know another person, does he/she even like me or would they fall into bed with the first person to ask them, are they even as attractive in the cold light of day than when perceptions are muddied by alcohol and excitement, and, of course, the ultimate, was performance up to scratch.

The Carlton was one of the smaller London West End cinemas and often used for prestigious openings to create the hold-overs that would build audience awareness and, such as here with box office increasing week-on-week, encourage cinema bookings.

This takes the unusual route of being peppered with flashback while the pair engage in spikier dialogue than you would find in the standard Hepburn-Tracy Hudson-Day romcom. And often what they say is the opposite of what they feel. Setting off in several directions at once – back a year or so, taking in the activity of the previous night and ploughing through the current day – could be off-putting but I found it worked a treat.

Anal retentive domesticated furniture designer John (Dustin Hoffman) hooks up in a singles bar with untidy politically-motivated sometime-actress Mary (Mia Farrow). His first reaction on waking up is to explore the apartment (rather large for New York), wonder when his wife will return, and think of all the deceptions he could pull. His first reaction borders on pure fear: she’s already planning to move in.

That neither has a genuine idea of the other person’s feeling provides the movie’s dynamic and the entire movie consists of them adjusting their expectations against a very contemporary backdrop of protests, politics, cinema verite and sex. Though primarily non-sexist and quite gender-equal, she isn’t looking to become a kept woman, for example, it does touch upon the notion that an easily-available woman is not far short of a whore, whereas, naturally, a promiscuous male is entitled to a free pass.

Her last relationship was with a married man (Michael Tolan), but she dropped him once he started talking about divorcing his wife. For John, girlfriend Ruth (Sunny Griffin) dramatically upped the stakes, arriving at his apartment with luggage, items of furniture and a rampant dog, enforcing on John responsibilities he did not want. Unusually, for the era, he is not politically involved and can cook, both of which attributes/skills we discover are the result of a mother so committed to politics that she neglected her children, never stocked her fridge and left her children to fend for themselves.

Each could press the nuclear button at any time. They’re attractive singles so more sex is just round the corner, going their separate ways the easier option, building a relationship far more difficult.

Dustin Hoffman shakes off a lot of the tics that were already showing and would inhibit later performances in a character far removed in sexual confidence from The Graduate (1967), but in some ways still touchingly naïve, and delivers a very believable performance. That it doesn’t fall into the usual Tracy-Hepburn battle of the sexes with witty put-downs owes much to the highly-nuanced performance of Mia Farrow who isn’t, as you might expect, in the least fragile and expresses her independence and challenges his views in a non-aggressive fashion.

Completely ignored by the Oscars, technically it won plaudits from Bafta, bracketed with Midnight Cowboy for Dustin Hoffman picking up the Best Actor Award, and with Rosemary’s Baby and Secret Ceremony for Mia Farrow in being nominated for Best Actress – such arcane rules later changed.

In small parts look out for Cleavon Little (Blazing Saddles, 1974), Tyne Daly (Cagney and Lacey TV series 1981-1988), Don Siegel’s son Kristoffer Tabori (Journey through Rosebud, 1972) and Olympia Dukakis (Moonstruck, 1987). John Mortimer (Bunny Lake Is Missing, 1965) wrote the screenplay from the Mervyn Jones bestseller.

Cinematically and narratively refreshing, manages to be entertaining and thoughtful at the same time.

The Oscar (1966) ****

Don’t you just love a really good bad movie? Where redemptive character is outlawed. When over-acting is the key. In which everyone gets the chance to spout off about someone else, generally to their face, and then is permitted, in the cause of balance, a quiet moment of bitter self-reflection. And even the most minor character gets a zinger of a line. Welcome to Hollywood.

Tale of an actor’s rise and not exactly fall because we leave Frank Fane (Stephen Boyd) at a pinnacle of his career, though, don’t you know, he’s empty inside and deserted by all his faithful companions. Lucky Frank has some kind of charisma or that he just fastens onto losers who see in him what they need because from the outset he is one mean hombre, living off stripper girlfriend Laurel (Jill St John), so dumb she switched to him from his so dependable best pal Hymie (Tony Bennett – yes, that Tony Bennett, the singer).

He hooks up with Kay (Elke Sommer), a designer who happens as a sideline to make costumes for off-Broadway productions. When King of Lowlife Punks Frank shows a pusillanimous stage actor what you do in a knife fight he strikes a chord with theater producer Sophie (Eleanor Parker), who happens to have a sideline as a talent scout for the movies.

She fixes him up with an agent Kappy (Milton Berle – yes that Milton Berle, the loudmouth comedian) and together they sell him to studio boss Regan (Joseph Cotten). The only good deed Frank does in the entire movie is to stand witness – not for marriage, but for divorce – for an ordinary couple, private detective Barney (Ernest Borgnine) and Trina (Edie Adams), he meets at a bullfight, huge fans, and thank goodness that action comes back to bite him.

The picture goes haywire in the third act. Fane’s career is crumbling in the face of audience indifference, exhibitor displeasure and, don’t you know it, a chance for revenge for Regan, who was stiffed in a previous contract. But instead of taking the traditional tumble into the forgotten category, his career is revived by an Oscar nomination.

*From top to bottom – a fully-clothed Stephen Boyd, then in various states of undress, Elke Sommer, Jill St John and Eleanor Parker. That’s how to sell a picture apparently*.

But that’s not enough for the ruthless Fane. Earlier in his life a corrupt sheriff had stuck him with charges of pimping. Using Barney, who seems to have the ear of the media, he plants a story about himself, hoping that Hollywood being the cesspool it is, everyone will assume one of his rivals did the dirty. “I can’t rig the votes,” rationalizes our poor hero,” but I can rig the emotions of the voters.”

What a scam. I was chortling all the way through this section and almost laughing out loud when it transpires Frank had misjudged how deep the cesspool is, because Barney then blackmails him. This gives everyone he has treated heinously over the years the chance to stick it to him. Nobody will lend him the dough to get this grinning monkey off his back. Salvation comes in the oldest of Hollywood maneuvers. Trina, who has always wanted to get into pictures, and is the kind of person who embodies A Grievance Too Far, supplies the information that will sink her ex-husband, in exchange for Frank using his influence to get her a small role.

There’s a brilliant climax. I should have said spoilers abound but I can’t resist telling you the ending it’s such a cracker. So there is Frank at the Oscars with Bob Hope (yes, that Bob Hope) as master of ceremonies and the audience studded with real stars like Frank Sinatra (yes, that…). Like an evil chorus – you can almost hear them hissing under their breath and they all fix him with baleful looks – are all those he treated badly.

The winner is announced. “Frank…” Assuming victory, Fane gets to his feet. “Sinatra.” The only way he can rescue his embarrassment is to make it look as he is giving the winner a standing ovation. But when the rest of the audience follows suit, he slumps to his chair, and in the only true cinematic moment in all the sturm and drang the camera pulls back from him sitting bitter, twisted and defeated in his seat.

Stephen Boyd (Shalako, 1969) is terrific because even when he was top-billed he tended to over-act and when he became a co-star or supporting player he was an inveterate scene-stealer, of the sharp intake of breath / vicious tongued variety. Here he shows both his charming and venomous side. If he was playing a gangster he couldn’t be more menacing – or charismatic. It’s a peach of a role – he can dish it out, dump women at will, and still embrace victimhood as “170lb of meat.”

Luckily, most of the rest of the cast take the subtle route. Although all disporting in various negligible outfits at one time or another, Jill St John (The Liquidator, 1965), Elke Sommer (The Prize, 1963) and Eleanor Parker (Eye of the Cat, 1969) and giving Frank his comeuppance wherever possible – St John slings him out – the performances are generally nuanced, Parker in particular evoking sympathy.

Tony Bennett is miscast, especially as he has to do double duty as an unwelcome voice-over, filling in bits of the narrative that, thankfully, has been skipped. But Milton Berle is pretty good as a quiet-spoken agent.

In the over-the-top stakes, Boyd has his work cut out to hold his own in scenes with Ernest Borgnine (The Wild Bunch, 1969) who revels in his scam, and Edie Adams (The Honey Pot, 1967) who is anything but a dumb blonde and delivers the most stinging of zingers.

Doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t know about Hollywood except in one delicious scene where, early in his career, Frank has to squire around a female star who relishes putting him in his place.

It’s not badly made just pell-mell and over-the-top. Russell Rouse (The Caper of the Golden Bulls, 1967) directs from a screenplay by himself and Harlan Ellison (yes that Harlan Ellison, the sci fi author) from the bestseller by Robert Sale.

An absolute hoot.

Inside Daisy Clover (1965) ***

Exploitation Hollywood. Cautionary tale of young singer in the 1930s seduced by the movies only to discover she is regarded as a plaything and a profit center rather than a human being. Not highly regarded at the time despite being directed by Oscar-nominated Robert Mulligan (To Kill A Mockingbird, 1962), gained greater traction since #Me Too!

At the time the central performance by Natalie Wood (Cash McCall, 1960) seemed too much one-note, but on reflection, despite the endless popping and swivelling of her eyes (you can always see the whites, often to her detriment in acting terms), it appears a much truer reflection of a teenager caught in the headlights of the fame- and money-making machine. Christopher Plummer (Lock Up Your Daughters, 1969) delivers a devilishly restrained performance and there’s the bonus of an over-the-top turn by Robert Redford (The Chase, 1966), named Most Promising Newcomer in some parts.

The odds are stacked against Daisy Clover (Natalie Wood) from the start, living in a shack on a beachfront with an insane mother (Ruth Gordon), earning a living forging signatures on movie star portraits, but with a secret yen to become a singer. After sending a demo disk, cut in a fairground booth, to Swan Studios she finds doors opening. Raymond Swan (Christopher Plummer) turns her into a star. Having committed her mother to an institution, and for public consumption announced her dead, greedy Aunt Gloria (Betty Harford), now her legal guardian, signs her niece’s life away.

It’s almost docu-style in the telling, very few close-ups, most long shots, even in groupings the camera seems awfully far away, and the Hollywood we are shown is mostly the giant empty barns of shooting stages and the never-seen elements, like post-synching in a booth. Daisy never seems to be enjoying herself, except when, although underage, is seduced by movie idol Wade Lewis (Robert Redford) who abandons her the morning after their wedding and can’t resist a “charming boy.”

Mostly, she is the puppet, dressed in glamorous outfits, her life re-invented for the fan magazines, freedom curtailed, living in a suite in the grand mansion of Swan and wife Melora (Katharine Baird), who, it transpires, is an alcoholic and at one point cut her wrists. Most of the time Daisy just seems frozen, locked into a character she doesn’t recognize, kept at one remove from her mother, turned into a money-making machine.

She’s too young to be a Marilyn Monroe and too old to be a Shirley Temple. The most likely template in Deanna Durbin (Mad About Music, 1938), who after being rejected by MGM, struck gold with Paramount as a 15-year-old, but, ironically, in terms of this picture, proved as hard as nails, not only negotiating contracts that turned her into the highest-earning star in Hollywood but quitting the business before it ate her up.

*Except she doesn’t put anyone down. She’s nobody’s idea of a winner despite this clever piece of publicity.*

Daisy shifts from being able to fend off unwelcome attention from an erstwhile boyfriend while poor to being seduced, while rich and theoretically more powerful, by anyone who shows her the slightest kindness, including her boss after she’s dumped by Wade. Swan bears a close resemblance to Cash McCall, making no bones about his money-making intentions and viewing every employee in terms of profit, but using charm to mask his ruthlessness. When the façade breaks, it’s one of the best scenes.

The odds are also stacked against anyone looking good. This is a parade of the venal, everyone destroyer or destroyed. The fact that actors with no other talent earned vast fortunes from a business that was willing to underwrite their flops (Natalie Wood, herself, a classic example) and must have enjoyed some aspect of their wealth, if not in just being rescued from abject poverty, doesn’t enter the equation.

Although there is no doubt there is a Hollywood publicity machine, a lot less attention is paid to the power of the Actors PR which has managed to convince the public that no matter how much the stars earn ($20 million a picture for some) they are still poor wee souls at the mercy of terrible studios willing to gamble enormous sums ($295 million on the latest Harrison Ford, more for Fast X) on their box office potential.

But let’s not digress.

While the picture-making style is unusual, it’s worth appreciating the deliberate effort Robert Mulligan has put in to de-glamorize the star system. Brit Gavin Lambert (Sons and Lovers, 1960) wrote the screenplay from his own, more brutal, bestseller.

This cold-hearted expose is just what Hollywood deserves. That Daisy is a minor when taken advantage by Wade is mentioned just in passing, and from the actor’s perspective (it could damage his career). That vulnerable women are kept in that position was no more heinous then than it is now.

Cash McCall (1960) ***

As time wore on and attitudes to corporate skull-duggery hardened – Wall Street (1987), Other People’s Money (1991), The Big Short (2015) – it was no longer necessary to soften a venal character with romance. And I guess the ruthless Cash McCall (James Garner) falling in love with Lory (Natalie Wood), daughter of takeover target Grant (Dean Jagger), provides the movie with a soft underbelly, intended presumably to show the inhuman businessman’s more human side, but instead diverting the picture away from delivering a massive punch against the asset-stripping proliferating too fast in American business.

Otherwise, it is a good assessment of the double-dealing and pitiless behavior of business sharks preying on weaker businesses. Then complaining when the tables are turned. Anti-Trust investigators would have a field day, but I’m not sure if the U.S. Securities & Exchanges Commission, set up in the wake of the 1929 Wall St Crash, was as powerless as today, usually turning up when the damage is done rather than stepping into prevent it.

Grant decides to sell up when his biggest customer Schofield Industries, run by retired Army General Danvers (Roland Winters), holds him to ransom. Cash McCall swoops in but, after finding a flaw in Schofield Industries, determines through clever maneuver to add that to his mountain of companies and make an immediate $1 million profit on Grant’s company which he purchased for $2 million.

The romance resistance that is standard for such pictures pivots on Lory having been rejected (on a stormy night) by Cash the previous summer. Ironically (though I doubt if the makers noticed the irony), Lory is viewed as a bonus in the deal, Cash’s wealth making him an ideal catch in the eyes of her parents, despite the abhorrence he inspires.

A contemporary audience might expect her to be the fly in the ointment, especially as she owns ten per cent of her father’s company, offering an opportunity to stand up to Cash on principle. But that’s not envisaged here. And you can’t expect her, in those sexist times, of complaining that her father is depriving her of her inheritance and the chance to run a big company.

It’s at its best in the financial chicanery. Danvers comes unstuck when Cash discovers that Grant holds an unexpected ace and can run his company into the ground. Every time anyone tries to get the drop on Cash it turns out he owns their company or nullifies their intent by knowing what they’re up to. He recruits or increases the salary of anyone who stands in his way. Money not only talks it minimises and even forgives or elevates heinous action.

The only person who bests him is a hotel assistant manager Maude (Nina Foch) who, misreading the signals, believes herself to be his love interest. In revenge, she scuppers his burgeoning romance with Lory.

In fairness, Cash is as upfront about his intentions as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street. He describes himself as a “thoroughly vulgar character – I enjoy making money” while confessing he doesn’t buy businesses to run them but to sell them or break them up into more viable smaller pieces.

But the James Garner (The Americanization of Emily, 1964) charm gets in the way. He wants to have his cake eat it. Move into serious roles without falling foul of the public. Romance is seen as the tool.

Garner evolved a sneaky screen persona, attempting to be rascal who got away with it thanks to his charm, best personified in The Great Escape (1963) and The Americanization of Emily, in both films his escapades endorsed by the authorities. But it would be hard to find any redeeming qualities in a ruthless business buccaneer who exalted in the chaos he caused, little regard for the wrecked lives left in his wake.

The film attempts to get by this via the romance – a beautiful woman couldn’t possibly end up with a scoundrel, could she – and by setting up virtually every other character excepting Grant as dodgy (and even Grant ends up congratulating him on his clever schemes).

As an insight into corporate malfeasance, it’s interesting enough, and bold for the times, and certainly gets points for not falling back on the old trope of the little guy fighting big business. This features grown-ups knowing exactly what they are letting themselves in for.

A couple of sections jar – the flashback and a labored explanation that “Cash” is not a nickname but a Christian name. On the other hand, it could as easily be perceived as a romance that just happened to take place against the unusual backdrop of the boardroom.

It’s worth noting that Garner himself was not above unscrupulous dealing. Having convinced Warner Brothers to fund his first three movies, he then proceeded to sue the studio over his contract, leaving them with the bill for his flops.

Nina Foch (Spartacus, 1960) and Dean Jagger (Firecreek, 1968) are the pick of the supporting actors. The most interesting aspect of Joseph Pevney (The Plunderers, 1960) was that he directed a quartet of films in this single year and then not another for the rest of the decade.

The final screenplay from celebrated writer Lenore Coffee, whose career spanned forty years, an astonishing feat for a female in Hollywood, and was at one time the highest-paid screenwriter in the industry. It was co-written by Marion Hargrove (40 Pounds of Trouble, 1962) from the bestseller by Cameron Hawley.

Would have been a better picture if it had stuck to the knitting and not wandered into romance, so good in parts rather than a major success.

Eye of the Devil / 13 (1966) ***

Shades of The Innocents (1961), The Wicker Man (1973) and The Omen (1976), but lacking the suspense of any, leading roles woefully miscast, supporting roles, conversely, brimming with inspired casting including the debut of Sharon Tate (Valley of the Dolls, 1967) and a mesmerising role for David Hemmings (Blow-Up, 1967) Any attempts at subtlety were dumped when the original more intriguing title of 13, which turns out to have more than one meaning, was dumped (except in some foreign markets) in favor of the giveaway designation of Eye of the Devil. Despite embracing a web of sinister legend, it lurches too quickly into full-on demonic horror.

French count Phillippe (David Niven) is called away unexpectedly from the Parisian high life to deal with a crisis in his vineyard. When his son Jacques (Robert Duncan) starts sleepwalking in his absence, his wife Catherine (Deborah Kerr) decamps with daughter Antoinette (Suky Appleby) to the family pile, a huge millennium-old castle. The count’s sister Estell (Flora Robson) fears her arrival. Villagers fear Phillippe, doffing caps when he passes.

Meanwhile, Catherine encounters or witnesses strange goings-on. Archer Christian (David Hemmings) shoots dead a dove which is later offered to unknown gods by his sister Odile (Sharon Tate) in a chamber filled with men in black robes. Later, Odile changes a toad into a dove and hypnotises Catherine into almost falling off a parapet. A quietly spoken priest (Donald Pleasance) offers no succor. The number thirteen could refer to the day of an annual local festival or a ceremony involving thirteen men, twelve of whom dance around the other. In a forest Catherine is trapped by men in black robes, then drugged and imprisoned.

Meanwhile, her husband remains grimly fatalistic, gripped by torpor, except when roused to whip Odile. Generation after generation, going back over a thousand years, the head of the household has come to a sticky end and without explanation it appears Phillipe expects a similar outcome. .

It doesn’t take you long to realise devilry is afoot. It’s a pagan castle, it transpires, a “fortress of heresy.” After three years of poor grape harvest, the earth demands a sacrifice. Where the victim in The Wicker Man is an innocent outsider lured to a remote island, the count accepts his destiny even as his wife struggles to prevent his death. Dramatically, the later film has the edge, the victim struggling against fate rather than a mere observer. That Catherine is powerless somehow doesn’t bring the dramatic fireworks you might expect.

What the posters conceal is that the film was made in black-and-white – the last MGM picture not to be in color – and this is a photo of Sharon Tate as she appeared in magisterial and beguiling form.

There’s a curiosity about the casting of Deborah Kerr (The Gypsy Moths, 1969). This most repressed of actors, as if a veil has been lifted, empowered to scream and batter against doors and race around, seems to drain the movie of energy. She just seems laughably bonkers rather than intense and empathetic. For someone whose performance is generally minimal, who exists in the margins, it seems almost perverse to force her to go so over-the-top.

Perhaps such unusual verbal and physical activity was deemed essential to counter the inactivity, the virtual sleepwalking, of the rest of the cast. While looking pained, David Niven (The Extraordinary Seaman (1969) can’t quite capture the intensity, the personal devastation, the role requires. David Hemmings as the silent archer and especially Sharon Tate as the trance-inducing magician, steal the show, investing their characters with little emotion, and yet, visually, as if mere costumed performers, present the most vivid incarnations.

From an audience perspective, it’s hard to root for Catherine since it’s obvious she is in no mortal danger. Like The Wicker Man, the audience is there in an observatory capacity, but unlike the Scottish policeman the victim attracts little sympathy. There’s not real

It’s a surprising backward step for director J. Lee Thompson after the superb Return of the Ashes (1965) which was chock-full of suspense and interesting characters. After an atmospheric opening, it turns uneven as he falls into the trap of following the wrong character. Screenwriters Dennis Murphy (The Sergeant, 1968) and Robin Estridge (Escape from Zahrain, 1962) adapted the latter’s acclaimed novel Day of the Arrow, written under the pseudonym Philip Loraine. So perhaps he can be blamed for shifting the investigative focus from Catherine’s ex-lover to Catherine herself.

I was surprised to see Deborah Kerr take on such a role and that is a story in itself which I’ll address tomorrow.

Judith (1966) ***

This is why you hire Sophia Loren. In the middle of a complicated story she provides the emotional anchor.. And she can do it without words. A few close-ups are all you need to guess at her inner turmoil in a world where, as with Play Dirty (1968), the individual is disposable. The good guys here, Israelis fighting for survival at the rebirth of their country, are every bit as ruthless as the commanding officers in the World War Two picture.

And it’s just as well because the tale is both straightforward and overly complex. Like Cast a Giant Shadow, out the same year, or the earlier Exodus (1961), it’s about the early migrants staving off Arab attempts to destroy the tenuous foothold Jewish immigrants on the land with the British, stuck in the role of maintaining law and order, cracking down on illegal landings of refugees and arms smuggling. But where the earlier movies take the war to the enemy, this is all about defence, holding on to hard-won positions.

Israeli leader Aaron (Peter Finch) discovers General Schiller (Hans Verner), a former German WW2 commander wanted for war crimes, currently in charge of the Arab tank regiment, is planning imminent assault. After locating Schiller’s wife Judith (Sophia Loren), he smuggles her into Israel with the intention of using her as bait to kidnap the general.

This would be no romantic reunion. The general had abandoned his wife, a Jew, and she spent the war in Dachau where she survived as a sex worker. She wants nothing more than revenge. But it takes a fair while for the cloak-and-dagger elements to warm up. First of all she has to seduce British Major Lawton (Sophia Loren) into revealing details of her husband’s whereabouts.

Turns out Lawton is the only principled official on show, out of general decency and a British sense of fair play (unlike the soldiers, for example, in Play Dirty) turning down the offer of her body in return for his aid. But it also transpires that Judith also lacks any notion of fair play and stabs her husband at the first opportunity, making it virtually impossible for his captors to discover the specifics of the planned attack. You wouldn’t need much of a sense of irony to share the Israeli anger when uner interrogation the captured general tosses back at them the Geneva Convention.

Judith’s involvement in the hunt for the general had the potential to be a very fine film noir on its own, especially had the wife been required to show willing to the husband in order to lure him out into the open.

Unfortunately, that’s not the tack the movie takes. Instead, we follow a series of forgettable characters either espionage agents, or at the kibbutz or effectively just there in passing, on the edge of the action, even when they might be in the heart of the real action either being unloaded into the surf or under attack from Arabs. There’s a sense of trying to cram too much historical incident into what would have worked best as a straightforward thriller. How far would Judith go to extract revenge? And, can Aaron stop her ruining his delicately-balanced plans?

Plenty of room for maneuver too on the sticky point of country vs individual. Where Aaron is happy to sacrifice or exploit Judith to satisfy his agenda, albeit to the greater glory of his country, so, too, is Judith unwilling to surrender her individuality for that more beneficial cause.

So what we get is a riveting mess. When Sophia Loren (Operation Crossbow, 1965) is onscreen you can’t take your eyes off her. When the action switches to the sub-plots, you keep on wondering where she’s got to and when will she next turn up. Judith is a fascinating character, batting away contempt about the way she survived the concentration camp, arriving in an old-fashioned cargo container with the corpse of a companion who failed to last the journey, and before long sashaying through the kibbutz delighted to attract male attention.

Yet, despite the hard inner core, and keeping one step ahead of both Aaron and Schiller, as if she had long ago stopped trusting men, she is emotionally vulnerable and proves easily manipulated when either pierces the carapace.

That director Daniel Mann feels duty bound to attempt to tell the bigger story of the Israeli struggle is somewhat surprising since he was best known as a woman’s director. Under his watch both Shirley Booth and Terry Moore were Oscar-nominated for Come Back, Little Sheba (1953), both Susan Hayward and Anna Magnani Oscars winners for I’ll Cry Tomorrow and The Rose Tattoo, respectively.

John Michael Hayes (Nevada Smith, 1966) cooperated with Lawrence Durrell (Justine, 1969) on the screenplay.

Worth it for Sophia Loren’s stunning performance.

Young Cassidy (1965) ***

I’m assuming MGM adjudged that a film about a playwright, no matter how famous, and even if directed by John Ford (Cheyenne Autumn, 1964), would not be enough to attract an audience. And that a better physical match for said writer would have been a weedy actor of a Tom Courtenay disposition. So, I came to this with no idea it was about world-famous Irish playwright Sean O’Casey since his name is never mentioned and the main character is called John Cassidy (Rod Taylor).

Which was just as well because I was wondering what kind of lad Cassidy was when despite his obvious brawn he was an inept labourer, requiring instruction on how to properly use a spade. That this working-class fellow has any inclination towards authorship is not obvious until halfway through the picture, by which time he has demonstrated qualities more appropriate for brawling, revolution and sex.

*Technically, this was a John Ford film as he was the producer.*
*The French chose not to point out he was not the director*.

It probably says a lot about me that I was unaware of the significance of the title of O’Casey’s most famous play – The Plough and the Stars (1926 and, incidentally, filmed a decade later by Ford). By the time I was cogniscent of the country – early on, I assure you, as my grandfather was an Irish immigrant – the Irish flag was the tricolor made up of green, white and orange. I hadn’t known that the flag created by rebels two years before the Easter Uprising of 1916 was a representation of the plough and the stars, hence public outrage when O’Casey blithely adopted it as the title for his breakthrough play.

But you only need a vague idea of history to appreciate the movie. A couple of stunning scenes provide the background of dissent and poverty. The brutality of soldiers and police in quelling a riot is matched by striking transport workers tossing a scab into the river, his drowning ensured by the wagon that follows him in. Cassidy’s true position in the hierarchy is best shown when he is given a cheque rather than cash from a publisher. Lacking a bank account, not only does he fail to cash the cheque but is treated dismissively by clerks at the bank. His joy at rising above his station in receiving such a payment is immediately destroyed by feeling out of place and unwelcome in a bank.

Because, otherwise, Cassidy is quite the confident young fellow, winning over almost any young woman who falls within his compass, varying from upmarket prostitute Daisy (Julie Christie) to meek bookshop assistant Nora (Maggie Smith) and casual acquaintances.

Writing isn’t presented in the romantic manner of David Lean in Doctor Zhivago out the same year (with Julie Christie in a much bigger role), no stunning imagery and no close-up of soulful eyes, just Cassidy sitting at a table working through the night. But there is no indication as to why he chose plays as his metier, especially when the main theatre in Dublin, the Abbey, was the fiefdom of the middle- and upper-classes.

Ironically, Cassidy is tested more when his situation improves than as a downtrodden worker joining the revolutionary cause. As a worker his fists, brawn, brain and looks see him through. But once he steps up into the intellectual class, he is adrift, his new occupation driving a wedge through relationships.

Not aware that this was a biopic of a playwright, I had little need to question the narrative, and just took each incident as it came. I never had the impression of a condensed biopic, crammed full of cameos. More of an interesting story set against the background of rising Irish nationalism.

There’s a certain amount of “Oirishness” to contend with – the accents vary – the poverty is never as bleak as you might expect, and once the story heads out of Dublin you might think it’s going to go all the way to The Quiet Man country. But then you have to bear in mind that working-class poverty, as long there was employment available, was not quite of the slum kind, and that once you get out of Dublin you do indeed hit beautiful countryside.

Rod Taylor is good as the brawler-turned-playwright. In the duel of the rising stars, Maggie Smith (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 1969) wins by a nose from Julie Christie, but then, though further down the credits, she has the bigger role. Michael Redgrave (Assignment K, 1968) as poet W.B. Yeats (responsible for the phrase “a terrible beauty is born”) makes the most of choice lines, Edith Evans (The Chalk Garden, 1964) is a quirky, mischievous Lady Gregory, co-founder of the Abbey. It’s top-heavy with talent including Sian Philips (Becket, 1964), Flora Robson (55 Days at Peking, 1963), Jack MacGowran (Age of Consent, 1969) and T.P. McKenna (Perfect Friday, 1970).

Turns out John Ford was too ill to direct more than few minutes and that role fell to Jack Cardiff (Dark of the Sun, 1968) and I would have to say he does an agreeable job. John Whiting (The Captain’s Table, 1959) drew from O’Casey’s autobiography to write an intelligent script.

The High Bright Sun / Maguire, Go Home (1964) ****

Surprisingly good thriller about loyalties in war time. Elevated above the norm by a series of stunning scenes often turning on the psychological. And taking a helluva bold risk as far as the billing is concerned. In dramatic and structural terms top-billed British star Dirk Bogarde (Justine, 1969) and rising American star George Chakiris (Diamond Head, 1962) take second place to the third-billed Susan Strasberg (The Sisters, 1969), although Bogarde’s stiff upper lip is tested in just about the most despicable fashion.

Also derives an interesting agency from differing audience perspectives. The British audience will view Major Maguire (Dirk Bogarde) as a hero trying to keep the peace in terrorist-racked Mediterranean island Cyprus. But virtually everyone else will side with Haghios (George Chakiris) and his bunch of freedom fighters in what was effectively a war of independence. Stuck in the middle, and expecting to be given a free pass, is Juno (Susan Strasberg), a young geologist staying with family friends named Andros but who, as an American, would be viewed as a neutral.

However, she has witnessed the arrival at the Andros home of terrorists, not just Haghios but General Skyros (Gregoire Aslan), leader of the Resistance. Not wanting to get her friends in trouble, and assuming they are not involved in terrorism, she resists the attempts of Maguire to get her to name names. But it’s only the cooler head of the general and the youngest member of the Andros clan, son Emile (Colin Campbell), that prevents her being shot dead on the spot.

Bluff and double bluff are the order of the day. She’s a prisoner – and a shocked one at that having witnessed British soldiers murdered by terrorists – but if she is seen to be prevented from leaving the house it will give the game away. So Maguire comes up with an acceptable ploy to get her out so that, in a calmer situation, he can gently interrogate her.

Unfortunately taking her out to dinner backfires, as they are spotted by Haghios who, assuming they are romantically involved, realises she can’t be trusted and signs her death warrant.

But she’s far from the plucky female and no good at playing the game of being hunted. In a brilliant sequence she takes all the wrong actions and it’s only happenstance and sacrifice that prevent her capture. And this is followed by an even edgier scene when she hitches a ride late at night with a lascivious local. But that’s nothing to her treatment by Maguire who, furious at her refusal to talk, parades her in the streets “like a sitting duck.”

There’s a whole strata of soldiers in open rebellion of a different kind. Maguire mocks his commanding officer, the inept Col Park (Nigel Stock), and he in turn is mocked by his junior, Lt Baker (Denholm Elliott) who taunts him about the affair he had with Maguire’s wife. And there are any number of stings in the tail. Believing she has finally escaped, Juno is confronted by Haghios and no Maguire in sight to come to her aid.

But the central tale is given over to Juno, the innocent caught up in bloody warfare, forced to witness barbarity at first hand, and unless she hankers after personal sacrifice inevitably induced to take sides.

Susan Strasberg is simply superb. At no time is she the feminine hero springing into reluctant action in some espionage or wartime drama. Instead, she is the innocent bystander who at any moment will turn into collateral damage. And she’s too confused even to summon up outrage at betrayal by both sides.

Dirk Bogarde looks as if he is playing your standard British officer of high breeding who can trade barbs and bullets with the enemy but mostly tries to extract information by gentler means. But he turns out to be just as savage in his ideals as the opposition. And his armour is pierced not only by having an adulterous wife but having to take abuse from her lover.

It was a typical Hollywood ploy to stick an innocent American in a war zone in order to expose a situation or attract audience sympathy either for the underdog or the oppressors – think Jack Lemmon in Chile in Missing (1982) or Sally Field in Iran in Not Without My Daughter (1991) – but I doubt if director Ralph Thomas was as naïve or politically-inclined to attempt that here and instead he treads a finer line of personal decision as he would later do in The High Commissioner/Nobody Runs Forever (1968). Sticking to the storyline and relying on actors who never resort to emotional extremes pretty much does the trick.

George Chakiris is wasted and I can only assume this was a sign of his career going downhill.

Not just far better than I expected, but bordering on the excellent.

Fail-Safe (1964) *****

Given unexpected heft by current concerns over AI. Human error, it appears, is more simple to correct than computer malfunction. Once a course of action commences, machines have no way of checking it. And paranoia is the first casualty of truth. Bear in mind this was shockingly contemporary at the time it was made, the world in constant fear of nuclear war, the Cold War, that seemingly endless stalemate doing little to pacify terror.

Those whose job it ease the best outcome in the event of nuclear war were always inclined to rationalize staggering death tolls. So we begin with a late night discussion in which political analyst Dr Groeteschele (Walter Matthau) makes the argument that in the event of war, the country with the fewest casualties is the winner and in a nod to the ironic suggests the most likely survivors would be the worst type of convict, imprisoned underground, and office workers protected from the blast by being surrounded by filing cabinets crammed full of paper.

Just before the real drama begins there’s a neat scene where a women, turned on by a powerful man, makes a move on the doctor only to be slapped into place, sternly told by the prim analyst that he’s not of “her kind.” That’s not the only human element in the tale. the highest levels of secrecy may force top-level Army and Government executives to sacrifice families.

For no accountable reason, jets with nuclear warheads shift into an attacking position on the Russian border, the target if not stopped Moscow. The planes are unstoppable once they commence attack, unable to turn away from a strict sequence of pre-determined action. Not even the personal intervention by the President (Henry Fonda) of the United States can affect the outcome, the pilots already trained to ignore such an action on the grounds that the enemy could be imitating the President’s voice.

When the planes fail to turn back, the only option is for the Americans to blow their own planes out of the sky, an action that appears not just inconceivable to the Army personnel but treasonable. High-rankings officers ruthless trained for battle and to observe the protocol of obeying orders find this unconscionable.

Three dramas take place at once. On the ground the Army chiefs try to explore every option to avoid the unthinkable while battling with their own consciences at what appears to be the only way out. The President on the hotline to the Russian premier has to circumvent natural suspicion that this is a cunning ploy by the Yanks and then come to some agreement with the Russians on the assumption that Moscow may yet come under attack. We, the audience, are playing out the third element in our minds, a series of terrifying what if scenarios with indescribable consequence.

I’m not going to reveal the shock ending because it came as a hell of a shock to me, given I’d not seen the picture in decades.

It’s brilliantly-made with almost futuristic sets and noir lighting and the President effectively physically imprisoned, and not just by his conscience, stuck in a featureless cell presumably in the pits of the White House arguing the toss with the Russian chief, his only companion the translator (Larry Hagman) whose face seems to get greyer and greyer as he transmits worse and worse news.

Dr Groeteschele makes matters worse, at least to a pacifist left-wing viewer (though an opposite view would be taken by the hawks), by urging the President to take advantage of computer error and “first strike” and blow Russia to pieces, assuming that indulging in the attack option will result in fewer casualties in America, and thus, following his earlier projections, not just win the war but rid the word of the fear of nuclear war.

While the style is documentary, it’s a riveting watch. The tension is unbearable. Some like Col Cascio (Fritz Weaver) succumb to the pressure while the commanding General Black (Dan O’Herlihy) retains a stolid soldierly presence.

Sidney Lumet (The Pawnbroker, 1964) doesn’t put a foot wrong. Taking the line – rather than in The Bedford Incident (1965) of the wrong man with his finger on the button – of the right man trying to make the best of a botched job, he delivers a just superb picture. Walter Bernstein (The Magnificent Seven, 1960) does a terrific job in delivering a taut screenplay from a more meandering novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler.

There probably couldn’t be a more prescient movie for today.

The Hawaiians / Master of the Islands (1970) ****

Contemporary audiences will find much to admire. Perhaps unintentionally, certainly unusual for the era in which it was made, this is driven by a strong feminist streak and the problems of fusing different new cultures – Chinese and Japanese – on an island already dominated by white immigrants. In some respects a companion piece to Diamond Head (1962), which also starred Charlton Heston, but in reality a sequel to epic roadshow Hawaii (1966).

Nyuk Tsin (Tina Chen) has been kidnapped from her village in China with the intention of selling her into a brothel in Honolulu. But when her gender is discovered on board the ship, captained by Whip Hoxworth (Charlton Heston), transporting Chinese laborers to Hawaii, a fight breaks out, her owner is killed and she is taken over by Mun Ki (Mako). He fully intends, on making land, to sell her and keep the money but at the docks Whip’s wife Purity (Geraldine Chaplin) intervenes and the couple are offered jobs as husband-and-wife.

*“Hawaii” (1966) was not such a big box office hit abroad as it was in the United States*
*hence the decision not to rely on the U.S. title “The Hawaiians” for the sequel.*
*In fact, unlike the U.S. poster the novel is not so upfront.*

Mun Ki’s entrepreneurial spirit is obvious from the minute she reaches Whip’s plantation, as she starts planting seeds in a tiny area in front of the hovel that is their dwelling. That turns into a vegetable garden and eventually she has a side business feeding laborers. Her gardening skills encourage Whip to entrust to her to grow the seed pineapple plants he has stolen from French Guiana, a continent away in South America.

When that proves successful, and Whip manages to find an artesian well through the lava bed, he embarks on a career as a pineapple farmer, and as a reward, deeds her land.

Meanwhile, Nyuk Tsin discovers she is wife only in terms of procreation. Mun Ki already has a wife back home, so Nyuk Sin can only officially become an aunt to the five children she bears him, each named after a continent (Asia, Africa etc) and who do, it must be said, come in handy for her farming business. She is wealthy enough that attempts are made, as much from envy and fury at her success as anything else, to steal her property.

While officially disbarred from the position of wife, her feelings for her husband are so strong that when he contracts leprosy she accompanies him to the island of Molokai and looks after him until rescued by Whip. Now with a prosperous farm, and remaining unmarried, she is rich enough, and clever enough, to send one son to America to train as a lawyer. Through her own endeavors and willpower she becomes not the slavish wife, dependent on her husband and his whims, but a strong independent wealthy woman, and leader of her expanding clan.

Theoretically, this is a subplot in the film, but in reality director Tom Gries (Number One, 1969) affords it as much time as the supposedly main narrative which, in contrast to Diamond Head, sees Whip as the black sheep of the family, disinherited and left only with land that is useless until the cultivation of pineapples makes it viable. His wife, while ostensibly weak, is also of a feminist disposition, abandoning her husband after the birth of her only son Noel (John Philip Law) to return to her Hawaiian roots.

When the Japanese arrive on the island Whip takes as a mistress the educated self-sufficient Fumiko (Miko Mayama). The circle of interbreeding and cultural infusion is complete when Noel marries Mei Lei (Virginia Lee), Nyuk Tsin’s only daughter.

It’s a lot more melodramatic than that, to be sure, Whip at odds with his family, Purity sending him bananas by denying him sex after Noel’s birth, and then withdrawing from his life. Various characters flit in and out, like the alcoholic well-digger Overpeck (Don Knight), and the tale embraces, like Diamond Head, the period when the United States annexed Hawaii.

Allotting so much screen time to Nyuk Tsin can’t have been accidental, maybe it was just visionary, but taking her as the focal point pivots more on her single-minded nature than the haphazard character of Whip, who achieves success through luck, theft and brutality. It’s remarkable that Nyuk Tsin has understood its importance of land ownership, the bedrock of any country’s institutional hierarchy, and strives so hard to achieve that footing and becomes in essence the family breadwinner. If the foreign title had been changed to Mistress of the Islands it would not have gone far wrong.

Fans of the second-billed John Philip Law (Hurry Sundown, 1967) will perhaps be disappointed that he appears so late in the proceedings, essentially to ensure the narrative can embrace the generations, but also to show how attitudes can change for the good from one generation to another.

I’m aware I’m asking you to watch the movie from a different perspective from that advertised but it’s far more rewarding.

Charlton Heston is good, especially when transitioning from commander of all he surveys while on board ship to a mere family footnote on dry land. He can rant with the best of them, for sure, but underneath the fury you can detect the pain, cast aside by family and wife. The scenes where he fails to reignite sexual relations with Purity reveal how great an actor he is. We more often associate Heston with the lower half of his face, the jutting jaw, the flashing teeth, the dominance of his words, rather than the upper half where his eyes are so revealing of inner torment. There’s a sea-change in the standard Heston performance that runs through Planet of the Apes, Number One and here of a powerful man drained by circumstance.

But Tina Chen (Three Days of the Condor, 1975) is the standout, moving from humiliation to pride, often called upon to mutely absorb pain, but fiercely protecting husband and brood, and clever enough to calmly negotiate her way past husband and Whip to potential success.

Tom Gries, in his third picture with Heston, manages to create an epic feel to a picture whose limited running time sabotages that aim. His sweeping tracking shots provide the bravura but that is underpinned in the more intimate moments by sensitivity to character emotion shown in a look rather than expressed in dialog.

Screenwriter James R. Webb (How the West Was Won, 1962) had the job of chiselling another cinematic chunk from James Michener’s door-stopper of a novel and turning this sub-plot into a gem.

Well worth a look.