Drama – Page 5 – The Magnificent 60s

Duet for Cannibals (1969) ****

Terrific twist-a-minute thriller. Forget its arthouse origins. The gap of half a century since its initial appearance has worked in its favor and you can now view it as exceptionally gripping entertainment. The Swedish setting doesn’t mean it’s drenched in angst and repression, and instead pivots on that other Swedish contribution to cinema of that decade of sex and nudity. Though power games these days tend to belong to the horror vernacular where innocents stray into the wrong location – Barbarian (2022), Heretic (2024) – outwith such business-set items as Working Girl (1988) and The Devil Wears Prada (2006), this belongs to an earlier version of the cycle which relies on sexual undertones.

This will most likely be touted as worth a look because it was one of the very few – less than a dozen – movies directed by women in the 1960s. While Swedish actress Mai Zetterling was the jointly the most prolific with four films beginning with Loving Couples (1964) and Frenchwoman Agnes Varda, also with four, the most acclaimed following Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962), American Susan Sontag’s debut – she also wrote the piece – was the most highly awaited. Through her writings she was something of an outspoken icon and an intellectual powerhouse.

*You can tell it’s arthouse because the poster is only altered minimally.*
*Instead of holding four figures in her hand the woman now holds on.*

Made in Sweden with a Swedish cast and while originally seen as Bergmanesque or perhaps Pinteresque, a contemporary audience is more likely to ignore the other influences and settle for the innocents walking willingly into a trap. Tomas (Gosta Ekman) goes to work for enigmatic political exile Dr Bauer (Lars Ekborg). His duties mostly involve curating the revolutionary’s life’s work, transcribing diaries and such, but occasionally he is called upon to do what appear to be simple acts of espionage, nothing dangerous just delivering a mysterious parcel.

Dr Bauer is pumped up with his own importance and expects employees at his beck and call – Tomas has to sleep there, in a made-up bed in the library – and enjoys the power surge of bawling people out when minor mishaps occur. But he also enjoys – if that’s the word – a peculiar marriage to younger Italian wife Francesca (Adrianna Asti) who while doe-eyed is far from docile. On her first encounter with Tomas, Francesca breaks a window and it’s not long until she exerts a sexual lure.

Tomas dreams of making love to her and would watch her making love to her husband in a car in the garage except Francesca obscures the windscreen with shaving foam. That scene in itself is one of the most intriguing. She has thrown an almighty sulk, locked herself in the car, ignoring her husband until she starts the engine and nearly mows him down at which point the tempo dramatically changes triggering for a bout of heavy sex.

*Nothing so common as a noveliization for Sontag. She gets the full screenplay treatment.*
*This appeared in 1970.*

Theoretically, Dr Bauer is dying from a mysterious illness. You get the sense he’s auditioning Tomas as someone to look after his wife when he’s gone, but all of that could just be part of the game.

There’s a marvelous scene where Tomas is encouraged to continue eating at the dinner table to the soundtrack of Dr Bauer throwing up in the toilet. When the doctor returns, he heaps food on his plate and continues eating.

Dr Bauer isn’t just paranoid – the cook’s poisoning him, his phone’s tapped, Tomas is a spy, his wife’s planning to kill him – but he’s also a narcissist, studying his face in the mirror, improving his appearance with wigs and a painted-on aesthetic beard. He encourages potential intimacy by having Tomas read poetry to his wife.

She’s the dominant one in her fantasy, rescuing Tomas from an enchanted castle, standing above him on a stool, bandaging his face so that as a mummy he can terrorize her in sexual fashion. She puts her husband’s perennial sunglasses on his eyes. Sometimes her husband’s head is bandaged.

Braun plans to kill his wife because “there’s no point keeping her alive.” Equally, she, apparently is intent on returning the compliment though she wants Tomas to do the dirty deed. Or it could be a murder-suicide pact.

She locks her husband in her bedroom closet so she can make love to Tomas while he listens but he also has key to the door and could let himself out at any time. When Tomas’s girlfriend Ingrid (Agneta Ekmanner) enters the equation Tomas is forced to watch her making love to Dr Bauer. And it’s not long before Tomas is chucked out and Ingrid sucked in. In one of the most erotic scenes you’ll ever witness husband and wife feverishly feed Ingrid with their hands and before you know it she’s sharing their bed.

Even within the confines and the mathematical possibilities of the power play, you still never know which way this is going to turn. You might quibble at the voice-over which attempts to play much of the goings-on through Tomas’s POV and the flirtations with left wing politics, but those are easy to ignore as you are carried along on the twists and turns. It keeps twisting till the very end when the stings in the tail come fast.

These days it would be played at a higher tempo, the melodramatic elements ramped up, but actually the lack of emotional heft works to its advantage. Terrific debut from Susan Sontag. The slinky Adriana Asti (Love Circle, 1969) steals the show.

Rare find.

Catch it on Netflix (great print) or YouTube.

Should you be interested YouTube has an interview with both Sontag and Varda.

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) ****

The one with the wife-swapping. Like Easy Rider released earlier the same year, a hymn to freedom, only this time of the sexual kind. Responsible thirtysomethings, well-to-do, married with children, jealous of the younger generation’s counter culture, seek guilt-free irresponsibility. They feel they’ve missed out, despite knocking back cocktails in their heyday, probably remained virgins until marriage. Like the recently-reviewed The Battle of the Villa Fiorita (1965), the problems incurred in marriage appear eternal, and decades later this holds up superbly, not just for taking a measure of its times, but for a screenplay setting up a bold series of reversals, character reaction you would never expect, that will have you in stitches even as it dissects universal truths.

Documentary film-maker Bob (Robert Culp) and housewife Carol (Natalie Wood) “find” themselves at a weekend retreat espousing naked yoga, primal screams, group therapy and emotional intimacy. Carol admits she finds her husband controlling. They return in evangelistic mode, desperate to pass on their new-found knowledge to their stuffier friends, Ted (Elliott Gould) and Alice (Dyan Cannon).

*The advertising campaign focused on the tease of wife-swapping.*

The film unfolds in a series of long sequences, each sparked by external incident. Bob confesses to his wife that while away on business he had an affair. To his astonishment she forgives him. Expecting this to be a prelude to some new way of tormenting an unfaithful husband, Bob remains skeptical until Carol convinces him that her world-view has changed following the retreat.

But Ted and Alice find it harder to accept. In a brilliant scene that exposes basic gender differences, he sees the problem as his revelation, she as the act of infidelity itself. High after meeting the other couple, Ted wants sex, but Alice, shocked by what she has heard, cannot contemplate it. He exerts so much pressure that she, deeply insecure, is almost on the verge of giving in. The dialogue not just marvelously encapsulates their marriage but sets out opposing views that, I am sorry to say, would probably be as prevalent today.

But the best scene, a superb reversal, occurs when Bob, spurning another night of illicit passion, returns home from a trip early to find his wife in bed with the tennis coach. Gender equality et al. The sequence turns completely on its head when, according to the couple’s new philosophy, Bob should not only accept and forgive, but help the tennis coach out of his predicament, calming his fears of facing an angry husband, in effect consoling his bedroom rival.

What appears to have been just a Ted fantasy, hooking up with a woman he met on an airplane, turns out to be true, creating a crisis in that marriage and when Alice is pacified, acknowledging a new truth, it is she who calls for an orgy. Now this is a revolution for Alice is by far the most repressed, although attractive almost matronly, and still using a childish word to describe her private parts. Her confessions to a psychiatrist reveal a tormented individual.

It’s a stunning debut from Paul Mazursky (An Unmarried Woman, 1978) who also had a hand in the screenplay with Larry Tucker (I Love You, Alice B. Toklas, 1968). He takes a story of endorsed immorality and stamps it as a morality tale. A movie that depended so much on dialogue concludes with a fabulous series of shots where the look on the faces of the characters tells you all you need to know.

Elliott Gould (The Night They Raided Minsky’s, 1968) and Dyan Cannon (The Murder Game, 1965) are the pick of the actors, both stepping up to the plate after less than stand-out performances previously. Both were Oscar-nominated but more importantly here created screen personas that would define their futures. Natalie Wood (This Property Is Condemned, 1966), in her first picture in three years, revitalized her career after a string of flops. Robert Culp, in a step-up from the I Spy television series (1965-1968), initially takes center stage but cedes ground to the superior acting of the others.

Where a whole bundle of films by new directors flopped that year and the next by targeting the younger generation, this was a success by painting a wry picture of a slightly older generation, not yet tipping into middle age, but terrified they might be missing out on something.

On Swift Horses (2025) *** – Seen at the Cinema

Authentic story stymied by unlikely plot. Set in a post-Korean War American when the United States is still a land of opportunity even for blue collar workers but sexuality and other forms of self-expression are stifled and the homosexual world is only accessible through secret codes. Married Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones) hankers after something of the wilder life apparently enjoyed by the brother Julius (Jacob Elordi) of her staid husband Lee (Will Poulter). Truth be told she hankers after an illicit relationship with Julius.

Muriel harbors two other secrets. Firstly, she wants to gamble, a notion that would never gain approval from her husband, who accounts for every penny in his bid to own his own home and thus move up in society. Secondly, she has lesbian tendencies and gradually, encouraged by the self-confidence generated through successful betting at the racetrack, she assumes a different persona, surprisingly capable of making the first move.

Lee is aware of his brother’s proclivities, though these, too, are measured in guarded tones. Julius lives “in another world”, not just the low-down hustling and gambling and earning a living as a gigolo and card cheat. His homosexuality is repressed but his barriers are broken down by Mexican hustler Henry (Diego Calva). But while Julius is willing to settle for a life of energetic sex with Henry, his lover has greater ambition and plans to move up in society via the scam route.

Muriel’s affection for Julius is not hampered by the fact that he constantly steals from her, pocketing the cash she sends him for a bus fare home, burglarizing their house while they sleep. And while she is happy to indulge in a casual affair with gay neighbor Sandra (Sasha Calle) she’s not whole-heartedly committed to that lifestyle. And it’s hard to see just how committed she is to Lee – the horde of cash she wins at the racecourse she keeps hidden from her husband even though it would miraculously ease their upwardly mobility.

While Muriel negotiates the hidden world with some care – gay people of both sexes meet at a certain hotel or come together under the guise of a book club – Julius is less wary and is beaten up and robbed a couple of times.

This isn’t quite the lush America of 1950s Hollywood with women bedecked in colorful dresses and enjoying cocktails, but there’s still satisfaction to be had in hauling yourself up and owning a tract of land and your own house. And it’s still down’n’dirty. Casinos spy on customers through two-mirror mirrors set in the ceiling and beat the life out of anyone caught cheating.

What wins your heart is the yearning. Muriel is caught in a half-world, even when she finds a willing lesbian partner she still aches for a heterosexual whirl with Julius. And Julius who believes he has found a safe sexual haven with Henry discovers that the latter’s naked ambition will destroy their tryst.

What doesn’t work are the fairy tale aspects. Julius isn’t a particularly good card cheat, a hidden ace or a partner at another table providing him with illicit advantage at the poker table. You’d expect he’d be rumbled quite easily. But the plot says no.

Similarly, Muriel enjoys an unbelievable good run on the horses, able to turn tips overheard from customers in the diner where she works into winning bets. Pretty quickly, and without a stumble, she has amassed a stash of $20,000. As if.

The ending doesn’t work either, Julius galloping on a horse (yep!) from San Diego to Las Vegas – a distance of some 350 miles (that’s some horse!) – after he realizes that, in fact, his heart belongs to Muriel, whose marriage has at last broken up, and she’s decided to follow her heart and become a gambler.

It leaves you wondering what kind of relationship they would have, a lavender marriage, where both are free to indulge in other aspects of their sexuality, no doubt living high on the hog from her racetrack winnings and his cheating at cards.

It looks to me like the director has bottled out of the third act, the one where supposedly they are the person of each other’s dreams and manage to make a life together as happy gamblers, until one or other decides that a person of their own sex is more fulfilling ultimately than a person of the opposite sex.

You didn’t need the barmy plot for this to work. And in fact it’s the barmy plot that gets in the way of it working. Both Julius and Muriel are entirely believable in looking for a love that dare not speak its name but can yet be easily located if you can follow the codes or if your gaydar is sufficiently developed.

Oddly enough, the most heart-breaking scene is the one before the barmy galloping. On the message board inside a gay meeting place are notes revealing the heartbreak caused not just by the dashing of love’s hopes but the destruction of marriages by men unable to conceal their secret desires.

The acting is uniformly good, though Jacob Elordi (Saltburn, 2023) thanks to his vulnerability, wins by a nose from Daisy Edgar-Jones (Twisters, 2024). But Will Poulter (Warfare, 2025) and Diego Calva (Babylon, 2022) also score points. Movie directing debut from Daniel Minahan from a script by Bryce Kass (Lizzie, 2018) based on the novel by Shannon Pufahl.

While you have to admire the actors for taking a gamble on this project – Elordi and Edgar-Jones are down as executive producers so they might also have taken pay cuts. But it has been an unmitigated financial bomb. Even the leanest movies these days appear to cost upwards of $10 million and this has barely touched the $1 million mark in global box offices. I attended the only daily screening at my local multiplex and there was only one other person in the audience. It probably deserves better and might have an afterlife on a streamer.

Enjoy the performances and ignore the plot.

The Wild and the Willing (1962) ***

The problem with showcasing new talent is that it’s a pretty difficult sell given that all audiences have to go on is a studio’s faith in these newcomers. You can’t actually justify which of these will succeed until long after their initial forays.

In fact, this was a pretty good indicator one way or another of the talent the Brits had at their disposal, although some only became major players via television and others like Ian McShane, making his debut, as durable as he was as occasional leading and staunch support and television work (Lovejoy, 1986-1994), really only achieved substantial fame around four decades later via Deadwood (2004-2006) and the John Wick series.

For others, this proved an ideal calling card, Samantha Eggar, another debutante, was the biggest immediate beneficiary, female lead in big-budgeters The Collector (1965) and Walk, Don’t Run (1966). But virtually everyone in the cast had a whiff of stardom at one time or another. John Hurt’s stint as Sinful Davey (1969) didn’t do him much good but his career revived through the likes of television movie The Naked Civil Servant (1975), Midnight Express (1978) and Alien (1979).

This is stuffed with names you might remember one way or another. Jeremy Brett became a television Sherlock Holmes, Johnny Briggs enjoyed one of the longest-running roles in British soap Coronation St. Paul Rogers made headway in Stolen Hours (1963) and was a solid supporting actor. Johnny Sekka made a splash in Woman of Straw (1964) and The Southern Star (1969). Some careers were short-lived, the slightly more established Virginia Maskell’s last picture was Interlude (1968).

The story itself – I’m sure you couldn’t wait till I come to that – is slight, but with sufficient complication for a narrative to flourish. Activity takes place on a university campus. Harry (Ian McShane) and Josie (Samantha Eggar) are an item, at least until his eye wanders to Virginia (Virginia Maskell), the unhappy wife of Professor Chown (Paul Rogers).

Harry’s nerdy pal Phil (John Hurt) has been knocked back by Virginia’s classy pal Sarah (Katherine Woodville) and in trying to become as popular as Harry embarks in a daft adventure that ends in disaster.

As far removed from the kitchen sink drama popular at the time, this is a well-observed piece about the young and ambitious without ever descending into the intensity that other pictures wallowed in. You can forget about the suggestiveness of the title, by today’s standards this is very tame and skirts issues of sexuality that were becoming more predominant.

Ralph Thomas (Deadlier than the Male, 1967) directs from a script by Mordecai Richler and Nicholas Phipps adapting a play The Tinker by Laurence Doble and Robert Sloman, effortlessly seguing away from the stage origins and deftly putting every aspect of the narrative jigsaw in its place.

So, part of the fun here is seeing how well actors established a screen persona, or how they moved on. Ian McShane certainly had the cocky walk, but was still too much of the ingénue, even while playing a bad boy. Samantha Eggar was more instantly recognizable for the charisma she threw off. You would see John Hurt’s nerd again and again.

Interesting for more than archival purposes.

Tamahine (1963) ****

Columbia sold this as if Nancy Kwan was a Bond girl with massive images of the star in a bikini (see above) – the advert in the trade magazine comprised a drop-down A2 pull-out i.e. three times the size of a normal page. But anyone expecting a salacious time would have been in for surprise. For although Kwan swam underwater during the credits (not Helen Mirren style as in The Age of Consent, 1969) and did reveal a naked posterior, you could not have imagined a more innocent, joyous, movie.

Tahitian teenager Tamahine (Nancy Kwan) wreaks havoc on the British stiff upper lip when after the death of her father she is sent to the all-male English public school run by his cousin Poole (Dennis Price), a widower. But it’s not a sex comedy with all the misunderstandings and double entendres that genre normally entails. Instead, it’s a clash of cultures, free love and expression versus prudery and repression. Poole has trouble enough on the female front, his daughter Diana (Justine Lord) inclined to enjoy a gin-soaked afternoon and in the middle of an affair with art master Clove (Derek Nimmo).

*The advertising department, however, could not resist the temptation*
*to stick a double entendre in the poster.*

Without mischievous intent, Tamahine causes chaos, assuming an artist’s model would be naked she scandalizes the petrified Clove and egged on by a gaggle of schoolboys whose hormones are off the scale she jams a chamber pot on the school weather vane. The plot, if there is one, is mostly Tamahine fending off suitors, Clove and Poole’s son Richard (John Fraser), and attempting to persuade Poole to take a paternal interest in her well-being.

But mostly it’s about how a sweet-hearted woman struggles to survive in a world where attitudes to sex remain Victorian and in which the avowed aim of education is to build character through manly pursuits such as beating the living daylights out of each other rather than teaching them to express emotion. And certainly the movie takes a more benevolent view of public schools than the later, brutal, If…(1968).

While endorsing free love, Tamahine draws the line at crossing the line in the matter of Richard, whom she deems a relation, no matter how distant. Challenging all conventions, she takes part in sports day.

But the comedy is so gentle and Tamahine so charming that this is best described as a delight. I found myself chuckling throughout and I felt I had just watched a genuine feel-good movie. On paper it certainly doesn’t sound so potentially good, especially when you consider the clichéd portrayals you might expect from the supporting cast, but in reality it exerts an extraordinary appeal.

Hardly off-screen, Kwan (The World of Suzie Wong, 1960), in only her fourth film, easily carries the movie as if she scarcely felt the weight of stardom on her shoulders and is a revelation as the imparter of tender wisdom. What aids the film enormously is that Dennis Price and Derek Nimmo play more interesting parts than their movie personas suggest. Price (Tunes of Glory, 1960), in a far cry from his Ealing comedy heyday, dispenses with his wry delivery and cynical demeanor. Unusual for a character actor, his character actually has a story arc and turns what could have been a stereotypical role into a moving performance. Before his strangulated vowels got the better off him, Derek Nimmo (The Liquidator, 1965), too, delivers probably his best performance.

Justine Lord (Night after Night after Night, 1969) is good as the rebellious daughter but James Fox offers none of the intensity he brought to the screen a year later in The Servant (1964) and neither does John Fraser (El Cid, 1961) light up the screen. In small parts you can spot Michael Gough (Batman, 1985) and Coral Browne (The Killing of Sister George, 1968).

Full marks to director Philip Leacock (The War Lover, 1962), himself a former public school boy, for not taking the easy way out with loutish comedy but instead crafting a film full of sensitivity and sensibility. Denis Cannan (Why Bother to Knock, 1961) based his screenplay on the Thelma Nicklaus novel.

You might be surprised at the four-star rating and I do confess it is a shade optimistic but it is worth more than three stars. It’s worth taking a moment to examine the whole issue of ratings. You might be asking how can Tamahine be given four stars, the same as The Battle of the Villa Florita and a tad below the very few I deem five-star pictures. The answer is I compare like with like. If the best films in your opinion must concern social comment or excel technically, then there will be little place in your world for a sheer confection like Tamahine. But if you watch a wide variety of films and recognize those that contain a high enjoyment factor then you will want to draw attention to such. Hence, the rating.

It’s true that sometimes we do want movies to tackle difficult issues or take us into other worlds, but other times there is nothing to beat an old-fashioned good-hearted picture like this.

The Comic (1969) ***

It’s a Hollywood trope that successful screen comedians invariably want to test their mettle in more dramatic circumstances. Studios tend to cave in to such self-indulgence, usually with the proviso that the star makes another couple of laff fests with them, but audiences tend to give such enterprises the thumbs down. Dick Van Dyke (Divorce American Style, 1967), on a commercial roll for most of the decade, took the, theoretically at least, easier option of limiting the drama on this one.

Silent films were also on a commercial roll, the oldies having made a comeback via compilation reissues and through slapstick homages such as It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) and The Great Race (1965) so setting the picture in that era in Hollywood’s history seemed a sure thing.

And it starts off bang on the money. A eulogy delivered at a funeral is interrupted by a pie in the face and (as seen above) that device can be utilized at any point.

I’d be telling you to give this complete misfire a miss if it wasn’t for an exceptional final third. The first two-thirds is made up of far too many silent film sequences starring Billy Bright (Dick Van Bright) who goes from vaudeville clown to major star complete with, at the height of his fame, being accorded the honor of a having a clockwork toy made of him.

When it’s not diverted into yet another silent movie sequence, which only serves to show that a modern comedian lacks whatever smarts the silent movie comedians had, the drama takes roughly the same approach, with scenes that could have come from a silent movie if not quite to the utmost.

Thanks to a multitude of affairs Billy burns his way through marriage to Mary (Michele Lee) and thanks to an overfondness for the bottle nearly kills off his career before the arrival of the talkies does that for him.

Eventually, and suddenly, we switch to an entirely different picture, a proper drama, very bold indeed for the time for its portrayal of old age and loneliness – a representation that would chime very much with today’s audiences. You don’t quite warm to this old fella because he wasn’t particularly sympathetic to begin with, but still, in its rawness, this section exerts a very emotional pull.

And, indeed, for Dick Van Dyke it was an incredible piece of acting. He morphs from young, tall, and fit with a head full of hair to an old bloke, bent over, shuffling and with the kind of comb-over that would put Bobby Charlton to shame. He’s been abandoned by everyone except sidekick Martin (Mickey Rooney) whose career has also gone south. They tell lies to each other to keep up their spirits.

The highlight of Billy’s life is getting a set of false teeth and setting the alarm for 4.30am so he can get up and watch reruns of his old movies on television. He lives on boiled eggs and milk.

And he’s still dumb enough to be rooked by a gold-digger. He’s placed an ad in Variety, drawing attention to the fact that he’s still alive, which wins him a spot on a TV chat show which turns into a gig for a commercial which leads a much younger woman to think he must be loaded. He ends up marrying her while in an oxygen tent, but she vanishes when she discovers his newfound fame has led to nothing.

In theory, this is about the side effects of fame, the temptations which few can avoid, and the sudden collapse in income and public awareness when the well runs dry. But, in reality, setting aside the Hollywood overtones, the last third could have been about any lonely old man.

A film of three thirds for the star, in the first two there’s nothing much to hold onto, in the last one he excels. Nobody else has much to do. Directed by Carl Reiner (The Jerk, 1979) and written by him and Aaron Ruben. Reiner had been the writer of The Dick Van Dyke Show so presumably that played a part in him getting the gig.

Died an absolute death at the box office. Not released outside America for decades and then only on DVD.

If it hadn’t been for the final third this would have been rated a one-star effort, it’s such an ill-conceived concept, and disastrous in its execution, but that final third makes it very worthwhile indeed if you can stick with it.

The Slender Thread (1965) ****

Hollywood paranoia in the 1970s ensured that any type of electronic surveillance was treated with suspicion. Cops, too, were almost certain to be corrupt. Although he would subscribe to such paranoia and implicit corruption in Three Days of the Condor (1973), in his movie debut director Sydney Pollack turns these concepts on their head.

Crisis center volunteer Alan (Sidney Poitier) faces a battle against time to save potential suicide Inga (Anne Bancroft), using his own powers of empathy and persuasion, but helped more than a little by dedicated policemen and the system of tracking calls. On the one hand the ticking clock ensures tension remains high, on the other Alan own’s battle with his nascent abilities brings a high level of anxiety to the proceedings especially as we learn of the particular circumstances driving Inge.

Alan is studying to be a doctor and he carries within him the arrogance of his profession, namely the power to cure. But that is within the realms of the physical. When it comes to dealing with the mental side of a patient he discovers he is ill-equipped. The intimacy he strikes up with Inga ensures he cannot seek relieve by handing over the problem to anyone else, the fear being that the minute he introduces another voice the spell will be broken. His medical training means only that he knows far better than a layman the effect of the pills the woman has taken and can accurately surmise how long she has to live. In the process he experiences a wide range of emotions from caring and sympathetic to angry and frustrated.

By sheer accident Inga’s otherwise loving husband, Mark (Steven Hill), skipper of a fishing vessel, has discovered that their son is not his. On being rejected, she has nothing to live for.

The simple plotline is incredibly effective. The two main characters never meet but we discover something of Inga’s life through flashbacks as her life gradually unravels and elements of insanity creep in. Alan, meanwhile, is shut in a room, relying on feedback from colleagues such as psychiatrist Dr Coburn (Telly Savalas) and others monitoring the police investigation attempting to discover where she is.

The fact that there actually was a suicide crisis center operating in Seattle (where the film is set) will have come as news to the bulk of the audience for whom suicide was a taboo subject and virtually never discussed in public or in the media. The fact that the telephone network could be used so effectively to trace calls would not have been such a surprise since it was an ingredient of previous cop movies, but it had never been so realistically portrayed as here, results never instant but the consequence of dogged work.

Initially, the movie treats Seattle as an interesting location with aerial shots over the credits and other scenes on the shore or seafront, but gradually the picture withdraws into itself, the city masked in darkness and the principals locked in their respective rooms.

Sidney Poitier is superb, having to contain his emotions as he tries to deal with a confused woman, at various times thinking he is over the worst only to discover that he is making little headway and if the movie had gone on for another fifteen minutes might have reflected how impotent he had actually been. Anne Bancroft (The Pumpkin Eater, 1964) matches him in excellence, in a role that charts her disintegration.

The fact that their character never met and that their conversations were conducted entirely by telephone says a lot about their skills as actors in conveying emotion without being in the same room as the person with whom they are trying to communicate. Telly Savalas (The Dirty Dozen, 1967) delivers a quieter performance than you might expect were you accustomed to his screen tics and flourishes. Ed Asner (The Venetian Affair, 1966) and Steven Hill, in his last film for 15 years, are effective.

The bold decision to film in black-and-white pays off, ensuring there is no color to divert the eye, and that dialog, rather than costumes or scenery, dominates. Pollack allows two consummate actors to do their stuff while toning down all other performances, so that background does not detract from foreground.

Winning the Oscar for Lilies of the Field (1963) had not turned Sidney Poitier into a leading man and in fact he took second billing, each time to Richard Widmark, in his next two pictures. Anne Bancroft was in similar situation after being named Best Actress for The Miracle Worker (1962) and although she took top billing in The Pumpkin Eater (1964) it was her first film after her triumph and, besides, had been made in Britain. And for both 1967 would be when they were both elevated to proper box office stardom. Written by Stirling Silliphant (In the Heat of the Night, 1967) based on a newspaper article by Shana Alexander.

Given the greater awareness of suicide today, this will strike a contemporary chord.

As the High Noon of the psychological thriller this more than delivers. Gripping stuff. And it’s worth considering the courage required to undertake such subject matter for your first movie.

Staircase (1969) ***

A huge flop at the time given both Richard Burton and Rex Harrison trousered $1 million. Now, primarily of historical interest, hailing from a time when homosexuals could be jailed. A man dressing up in woman’s clothing, as here, could be summoned in front of the magistrates. It’s the kind of movie that would work better if, as with the American idiom, the dialog of two people of any sex engaged in a long-term relationship was spattered with brilliant one-liners rather than a series of sarcastic putdowns.

Even so, there’s more here than originally met the eye. The fact that the hairdressers Charlie (Rex Harrison) and Harry (Richard Burton) have remained, like a married couple, together for twenty years says a lot about their enduring, if fractious, relationship. While Charlie has a daughter he never sees – and never wants to – Harry pines after a child. And there is some gentle complaint about why, in the eyes of the law, Harry would neither be permitted to adopt a child not to love a man, but those aspects are never in your face except that Charlie is awaiting his summons for the crime outlined above.

There’s not as much mincing and preening as you’d expect. Charlie is the better looking and has retained his good looks with the help of considerable pampering but Harry has lost his hair thanks to alopecia and rather than wearing a wig opts for a bandage.

It’s one of those movies where nothing happens based on a play (by Charles Dyer) where nothing happens, what little tension there is reliant on waiting (for the summons and the threat of an appearance by Charlie’s daughter). But while the stage can get away with two actors at the top of their game (Paul Scofield and Patrick Magee in London’s West End, Eli Wallach and Milo O’Shea on Broadway), that’s a far harder trick to pull off on screen.

So it’s to the credit of both actors than they make it work and we empathize with their immediate and ongoing circumstances. While Charlie sees his role as being the scathing dismissive one, leaving Harry to be supportive and apparently still in love, nonetheless his true feelings come out when he thinks his partner has had a heart attack.

In male-female terms, this would come across as just another middle-aged couple stuck in a humdrum marriage, and indeed there’s nothing elevated about the relationship between Charlie and Harry who live a very working class life in London’s East End, the former’s ambitions to become an actor long since dashed.

There’s not much director Stanley Donen (Surprise Package, 1960) can do to open up the play beyond sticking a few of the scenes outdoors and there’s one sequence that would raise eyebrows these days when Charlie ogles half-naked male teenagers playing in the sun. The worst reason for adapting a play for Hollywood is that, unless farce raises its head or there’s a string of one-liners or hilarious circumstance, the verbosity plays against the possibility of there being outstanding cinematic sequences. Luckily, it ends with one, when Harry takes a frightened Charlie by the arm.

I’m not sure I’d actually recommend it because there’s not much going on and the performances are not in the Oscar league, but it is much better than I thought. Rex Harrison (The Honey Pot, 1967) has the showier role, Richard Burton (Anne of the Thousand Days, 1969) reining himself in.

Commercially, nobody came out of this well. Rex Harrison didn’t make another film for eight years, Burton finding it more difficult to extract a million bucks from producers, and Stanley Donen continuing his run of poor box office. And harder for any British audience to take this seriously once comic pair Morecambe and Wise started sharing a bed in their sketches.

Sanctuary (1960) ***

This overheated melodrama stands as a classic example of Hollywood’s offensive attitudes to women. Nobel prize-winning author William Faulkner could hardly blame the movies for sensationalizing his misogynistic source material since if anything the movie took a softer line. Told primarily in flashback as headstrong southern belle Temple Drake (Lee Remick) attempts to mitigate the death sentence passed on her maid Nancy (Odetta). Given that such appeals are directed at Drake’s Governor father (Howard St John), and that the maid has been condemned for murdering Drake’s infant child, that’s a whole lot of story to swallow.

Worse is to follow. Drake takes up with Prohibition bootlegger Candy Man (Yves Montand) after being raped by him and thereafter appears happy to live with him in a New Orleans brothel – the “sanctuary,” no irony intended, of the title – despite him slapping her around. The film steers clear of turning her into the prostitute of the original book, but pretty much sets up the notion that high class women will fall for a low-class tough guy whose virility is demonstrated by his brutality. In other words a “real man” rather than the dilettantes she has previously rejected.

After the Candy Man dies, Drake returns home and marries wealthy suitor Gowan Stevens (Bradford Dillman) who blames himself, rightly, for Drake falling into the clutches of the gangster in the first place. But a past threatening to engulf her precipitates the infanticide.

Faulkner was a Hollywood insider, adapting Sanctuary for The Story of Temple Drake (1933) and earning high praise for his work on Bogart vehicles To Have and Have Not (1944) and The Big Sleep (1946). The success of The Tarnished Angels (1957) starring Rock Hudson, The Long, Hot Summer (1958) with Paul Newman and The Sound and the Fury (1959) headlined by Yul Brynner had sent his cachet rocketing. But all three were directed by Americans – Douglas Sirk and Martin Ritt – who had a distinctive visual style and an ear for what made melodrama work.

Sanctuary had been handed to British director Tony Richardson (Look Back in Anger, 1959) and he didn’t quite understand how to make the best of the difficult project. So while Lee Remick manages to suggest both strength and fragility, and makes her character’s wanton despair believable, Yves Montand is miscast and Bradford Dillman fails to convince even though portraying a weak character. Too many of the smaller roles appear as cliches. And it’s hard to believe the maid’s motivation in turning murderer.

What was acceptable steamy melodrama in the 1930s fails to click three decades on. Faulkner’s thesis that high-falutin’ women want a man to master them and furthermore will fall in love with their rapist seems to lack any understanding of the female mind and will not appeal to the modern sensibility than it did on release. Lee Remick is what holds the picture together, in part because she plays so well the role of a woman embracing degradation, and refusing – no matter how insane the idea appears – to let go of the man she believes is the love of her life. It’s not Fifty Shades of Grey, but it’s not that far off that kind of fantasy figure, and given the success of that book, it’s entirely possible there is a market for what Faulkner has to peddle.

A Child Is Waiting (1963) ****

While once the main interest in this piece would have come from fans of Judy Garland, lapping up her penultimate movie appearance, the prevalence of mental illness these days especially among the young, in part due to Covid and the scourge of social media, should switch audience attention – especially among contemporary viewers – back to the subject matter.

Garland’s stock had risen somewhat after her performance in Judgement at Nuremberg (1961), her first movie in seven years, but, given the travails of her private life, would most likely have been sympathetic to anything that cast a light on mental illness. The bulk of movies covering this ground tended towards the lurid, as exemplified by Shock Corridor (1963) and Shock Treatment, (1964) rather than the more tragic Lilith (1962). Whatever the approach, they focused on adult conditions. Here it’s the treatment of children.

Appreciation of the social conscience of star Burt Lancaster has largely gone unnoticed but this was the era when his movies touched upon crooked evangelism (Elmer Gantry, 1960), teenage gangs (The Young Savages, 1961), the Holocaust (Judgement at Nuremberg, 1961) and the effects of long-term imprisonment (The Birdman of Alcatraz, 1962). He was even an animal rights protester in The List of Adrian Messenger (1963).

Parental attitude to offspring with mental conditions is encapsulated in the opening sequence. Outside a hospital a young boy is tempted out of an automobile. Once out, the driver (the father) races off so fast the car door is still swinging open. Mentally or emotionally disturbed children were dumped, ostracized or abandoned by society, sometimes shut up in institutions along with adults, with treatment belonging to the Dark Ages.

Drawing on the ground-breaking approach of Vineland Training School in New Jersey and the Pacific Hospital in Pomona, California (pupils from the latter played the students in the film), the movie attempts to cast a light on the forgotten and to show that, with proper care and education, they need not be such victims of their circumstances.

The movie focuses on Dr Clark (Burt Lancaster), head of the Crawthorne State Training School, whose pioneering work combines tender encouragement with firm application, and the new music teacher Jean (Judy Garland) who challenges his approach. Instigating this crisis is 12-year-old Reuben, the child we see offloaded at the start, for whom Jean develops an unhealthy bond. She thinks Dr Clark is too strict and that his methods don’t work with someone as vulnerable as Reuben. Clark’s aim is to make the children so self-sufficient they are not condemned to a life in an adult institution.

Jean’s intervention creates a crisis in the child’s life but also brings home the unwelcome truth of the difficulties parents have of dealing with their children.

And while the tale is essentially confected to make the necessary points and Dr Clark and Jean epitomize opposite attitudes to handling the treatment of children, the story is really a documentary in disguise, bringing to light advances in care, and with the children not played by actors, brings a greater reality to the work.

Burt Lancaster, as ever, is good value and Judy Garland steps up to the plate. Gena Rowlands (Machine Gun McCain, 1969) and John Marley (Istanbul Express, 1968) also feature.

While this fits neatly into Lancaster’s portfolio, it stands out for the wrong reasons in the pantheon of critically-acclaimed actor-turned-director John Cassavetes (Faces, 1968). In fact, what he produced went against what producer Stanley Kramer (better known as a director – Judgment at Nuremberg, for example) wanted and the version we see is the one Kramer recut. Written by Abby Mann (Judgment at Nuremberg) from his original teleplay.

You might expect this to be awash with sentimentality but that’s far from the case.