Five-Star Review – Page 2 – The Magnificent 60s

A Dream of Kings (1969) *****

Sometimes great movies just disappear. Even if they pick up some critical traction on initial release, as here, they flop at the box office. And they are not revived because the production company goes bust or the rights are complicated. Or, more likely, they don’t fit into audience expectation. All three stars here completely play against type, outliers in career portfolios. We have become so accustomed to the attraction of stars according to their screen personas that unless they are known to completely change their screen characters with every outing anything that’s different to the norm becomes unacceptable.

Director Daniel Mann (Ada, 1961) was best known for producing Oscar-winning or Oscar-nominated performances from female stars. He was immensely skilled at making audiences sympathize with the most flawed women. Here, he does the same for Anthony Quinn, in a performance that should have had Oscar voters lining up but was dismissed for all the wrong reasons. Theoretically, one of the film’s problems is the dialog. We are so used to a script full of cut-and-thrust or witty putdowns that we fail to recognize a screenplay, that in much the same way as a stage play – but without that form’s inherent artificiality – lets characters live and breathe, explore depths that are just not possible except in fleeting moments in the normal construction of a movie.

Most scenes here begin one way and then move in all sorts of directions, sometimes ending up back where they started, but most often going somewhere unexpected, not in the sense of a sudden twist, but in digging deeper into relationships and understanding that marriages are built on shifting sands, and not all of them perilous. There’s a lot of dialog and when you get a lot of long speeches it can make the actors look as though they’re hamming it up when in fact what they’re doing is opening up the character.

We shouldn’t like Matsoukas (Anthony Quinn) at all. He’s a gambler, a womanizer, drinks, comes home at sunrise, has nothing you’d call a real job.

And yet.

In his company you enter a world of possibility. By sheer force of personality he lifts gloom, even when it’s his actions that have caused it. He can convince the most downtrodden weaklings that they have something of worth.

When nobody has anything good to say about old drunk Cicero (Sam Levene), Matsoukas tells him he has a poker dealer’s graceful hands and provides solace just by befriending him. He convinces a 72-year-old man that the loss of his libido is not down to the old guy’s age but because in four years of marriage he has lost interest in his 31-year-old wife because she’s the one who has aged, physically less appealing, and then he teaches the desperate soul the gentle art of seduction, how to win a woman’s heart by putting her on a pedestal, treating her like a goddess, kissing her softly on eyes and ears rather than pawing her in frantic passion.

Just what Matsoukas’s job is – on the door it says “counsellor” which would suggest something legal – but in fact he’s a male version of an old wife and provides solutions to odd problems, a mother worried that her teenage son masturbates, for example.

He is the sort of guy who can wring triumph from disaster. He has just lost a bundle of dough at poker but the way he tells it you’d think he’d won. Instead, he appreciates the drama of it all, the way it makes a great tale even if he’s the loser. Naturally, wife Caliope (Irene Papas) doesn’t see it his way. She’s on her knees with trying to feed her three children from the scraps that fall from his gambling. Though when he wins big, they live like kings.

Although he still has a lusty sex life with Calope, and can mostly coax her round, he has fallen for widowed baker Anna (Inger Stevens), attracted to her in part to alleviate her grief, pull her out of the darkness.

And he cannot face up to the potential loss of his young son who has three months to live and has it fixed in his own mind that the boy will be cured if Matsoukas can expose him to the sunshine and the ancient gods of his Greek homeland, though he lacks the $700 required for the air fare.

Each sequence is long, carefully calibrated, giving time for the exploration of a wealth of emotions. Outside of the three main narratives are two other stand-out scenes. In his sermon a priest rails against the evils of life insurance that makes people welcome death yet argues, ironically, that death is a great joy and should not be feared. And there’s a party where Matsoukas on the dance floor is a magnet for every woman in the room.

This is an Anthony Quinn (The Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968) devoid of all trademark abrasiveness, the loud voice gone, trying to gouge every ounce of joy from a forbidding world. He has a very tender relationship with his dying son, inventing a game with fake telephones to deal with the boy’s fears, and is very playful with his two daughters. He is constantly wooing his wife, in part to ease the pain he causes her, but mostly because he wants them to get the most out of life.

This is a different Irene Papas (The Brotherhood, 1968) too, not the fiery woman or dutiful wife of her screen persona. Whatever anger she feels is subsumed by sorrow and she is always willing to let her husband fire up her heart as in the old days. Actresses don’t get such complex roles these days.

And all the pent-up fragility of Inger Stevens (Five Card Stud, 1968) is suddenly let loose as she twists her entire screen persona of tough woman in a man’s world – usually a western – on its head. Her scenes with Quinn are breathtaking. Unfortunately, this was her final film – she committed suicide shortly after. But she could not have found a better swansong, one that extended her range.

As he always does, Daniel Mann doesn’t take his main character’s side, but while extracting sympathy for character predicament and perspective, still lets the audience make up his mind. This could easily have gone all maudlin, the child miraculously recovering, the flight to Greece to find a rare cure, all Matsoukas’s delusion revealed as nothing more than true faith, but it’s more hard-edged than that. At the end Matsoukas has his exterior carapace ripped apart, beaten up, ostracized for committing the worst crime of a gambler – cheating – in dire straits.

And yet.

Written by Ian McLellan Hunter (Roman Holiday, 1953) from the bestseller by Harry Mark Petrakis.

I just adored this.

Sinners (2025) ***** – Seen (Twice) at the Cinema

A great movie is more than the sum of its parts. There’s something indefinable, something as they used to say “in the ether”, or “hits the zeitgeist” or, more aptly “hits the spot” because the area in question can never be defined, yet somehow we know it’s there. A writer from several generations past came up with “only connect.” And that’s a pretty food summation. Audiences are not really interested in movies that connect with critics – we’ve been served up too much dross too often to trust critics, Anora (2024) a recent case in point. When movies scarcely drop any percentage of revenue at the box office in the second weekend it’s not because of a ramped-up advertising budget, but because movies have hit the spot, connected with audiences, acquired that elusive word-of-mouth quality. For sure, this is going to be an Oscar contender, which probably means all the fun will be knocked, as its supporters get all preachy on us about its importance as a social document.

But a great movie comes from nowhere and sets up its own tent, creates its world, its own logic. There were gangster pictures before The Godfather (1972), westerns before The Searchers (1956) or Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) and sci fi before Avatar (2009) but what such pictures owe to their genres is derivative in a minor key. And so it here, Sinners takes the vampire movie and tosses it every which way but loose.

You got the blues, the most appealing vampires you’ll ever come across (and not in the svelte style of another game-changer, The Hunger, 1983), the need for community, the duping of the poor through religion, music than can summon up Heaven and Hell, raw sexuality, belonging, mothers, orphans, genius, cotton, a world where African Americans who fought for their country discovered their country didn’t want to fight for them, where the white man is going to take your money and then, for sport, kill you, and the plaintive despair of never feeling the warmth of the sun again as long as you live – which is forever. And connections – there’s myriad connections that will hit home.

In fact, you might not be aware you’re watching a vampire movie for roughly the first half. You might imagine this is more akin to The Godfather Part II (1974) with gangsters trying to go straight. First World War veterans identical twins Smoke and Stack – I have to confess right till the credits I didn’t realize these were both played by Michael B. Jordan (Creed, 2015) – descend on a small southern town intending to make an honest buck from a dance hall, convinced they have acquired the necessary business acumen. The motley bunch enrolled in this endeavor include neophyte bluesman Sammie (Miles Caton), veteran alcoholic bluesman (Delroy Lindo), singer Pearline (Jayme Lawson), storekeepers Grace (Li Jun Li) and Bo (Yao), bouncer Cornbread (Omar Miller), Smoke’s estranged wife Annie (Wunmi Musaki), who has knowledge of the occult, and Stack’s ex-girlfriend Mary (Hailee Steinfeld). Coming a-calling is Irish immigrant Remmick (Jack O’Connell) recruiting new members for his vampire flock.

The movie doesn’t take flight so much in the unwinding of intertwined lives, or with the rocking action, as with two dance sequences that transcend anything you’ve seen before in the cinema, the first conjuring up music of the past, present and future, the second a routine by the vampires. Trying to save himself from vampires, Sammie begins reciting the Lord’s Prayer only to hear the sacred words echoed by the undead. A guitar is buried in Remmick’s head. And there’s a fascinating coda, if you wait through the credits.

Michael B. Jordan is the obvious pick, striding across both characterizations with immense aplomb (the Oscars will be calling) but Miles Caton in his debut, Delroy Lindo (Point Break, 2025), Hailee Stainfield (The Marvels, 2023), and especially the seductive blood-lusting Jack O’Connell (Ferrari, 2023).

Writer-director Ryan Coogler came of age with Creed and the Black Panther duo but this takes him into the stratosphere, a genuine original talent, not just with something to say but the visual smarts to match. He could have harked on a lot more. Too many worthy pictures have turned virtue-signaling into an art form, but one boring beyond belief. Coogler is much more subtle, he slips in his points.

But all the subtlety in the world wouldn’t count for a hill of beans if he couldn’t tell a story in way that connected big-time with the audience who wanted to tell their friends to go-see.

Zulu (1964) *****

The technical excellence is substantially under-rated. Not just the aural qualities – the approaching enemy sounding like a train – and the reverse camera and uplifted faces registering awe that later became synonymous with Steven Spielberg, but the greatest use of the tracking camera in the history of the cinema. So what could otherwise be a rather static movie given it revolves around a siege is provided with almost continuous fluidity.

It’s perhaps worth pointing out, in relation to accusations of jingoism, that the British had relatively few battles to celebrate – Agincourt in the Middle Ages, Waterloo in 1815, El Alamein in 1942. But the Crimean War, in which Britain was on the winning side, was remembered for the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade. Dunkirk in 1940 was a defeat and in cinematic terms D-Day was seen as heavily favoring of the Americans. Although there had been a corps of British World War Two pictures, these generally focused on individual missions (The Dam Busters, 1955) or characters (Reach for the Sky, 1956). And in fact the defense of Rorke’s Drift was preceded by a resounding defeat at the hands of the Zulus at Isandlwana.

Tactically, too, the Zulus are smarter. Their leader is only too happy to sacrifice dozens of his troops in order to gauge the British firepower, their snipers probe for weaknesses in the British defences, their troops feint to attract fire and waste bullets. The Zulus are too clever to attack where the British want.

This is not even your normal British army. Rorke’s Drift is a supply station and hospital. Its upper class commander Lt Bromhead (Michael Chard) idles his time away going big game hunting. The more down-to-earth Lt Chard (Stanley Baker) is there in his capacity as an engineer, erecting a pontoon bridge over the river. Neither has been in battle.

It’s surprisingly realistic in its depiction of the common soldier as having other interests beyond fighting. Private Owen (Ivor Emmanuel) is more concerned about the company choir, Byrne (Kerry Jordan) more focused on his cooking than bearing arms, and farmer Private Thomas (Neil McCarthy) spends his time cuddling a calf. Hook (James Booth) is a troublemaker and slacker and surgeon Reynolds (Patrick Magee) inclined to mouth off to his superior officers. The Rev Witt (Jack Hawkins) turns out to be a drunken hypocrite. His pious daughter (Ulla Jacobsen) is shocked when the men try to steal a kiss

Beyond a fleeting glimpse of victorious forces at Isandlwana, the Zulus are introduced in a sequence of harmony, a tribal ritual preceding a marriage ceremony, lusty singing and dancing scarcely setting up what is to come. It’s more like the by-now traditional section where the main characters in a movie set in an exotic land are introduced to aspects of local culture. Various characters attest to their military exploits.

But after that, tension cleverly builds. Witt raises the alarm, a bunch of cavalry irregulars refuse to stay and fight, the sound of the pounding “train” of the approaching army (an idea imitated for the oncoming unseen German tanks in Battle of the Bulge, 1965) and then the awesome shot of the thousands of Zulus adorning a hilltop make it unlikely the garrison can survive, especially given the inexperience of Chard and Bromhead, the latter of the civil “old boy” old school, and their inherent rivalry. Nor are the commanders typical. Chard may be gruff but he’s not arrogant and the soft-spoken Bromhead is the antithesis of every British officer you’ve ever seen on screen.

As the camera continues its insistent prowl, many sequences stand out – the battle of the battle hymns (“Men of Harlech” from the Brits); the bandage unravelling from the leg of wounded Swiss; the blackened wisps of canvas on the burning wagons at Isandlwana; the trembling voice of Color Sgt Bourne (Nigel Green) in the post-battle roll call; “he’s a dead paperhanger now”; the frantic bayonets digging holes in the walls of the hospital to escape; the final “salute” by the defeated Zulus; the torrential firepower the defenders inflict when three units fire in turn.

There’s a scene you’ll remember from The Godfather (1972) when Michael Corleone and the baker’s son stand guard outside the hospital and the baker’s hand shakes when he tries to light a cigarette whereas Michael notes that his own is perfectly steady. That has its precedent here. Chard’s hand shakes loading bullets into his pistol but later, battle-hardened, it does not.

There’s no glory in war as the surgeon constantly reminds the leaders and Bromhead, expecting to exult in triumph, instead feels “sick and ashamed.”

Terrific performances all round, mighty score by John Barry, written by director Cy Endfield (Sands of the Kalahari, 1965) and Scottish historian John Prebble (Culloden, 1964). The high point of Endfield’s career. Despite his character’s prominence Michael Caine was low down the billing, and despite the movie’s success stardom did not immediately beckon and he had to wait until The Ipcress File (1965) and Alfie (1966) for that.

I hadn’t see this in a long while and expected to come at it in more picky fashion. Instead, I thought it was just terrific.

Peeping Tom (1960) *****

You could hardly get a more prescient movie, almost in the 1984 class in depicting the future. Not dystopian, but the contemporary obsession with filming every inch of a child’s life. You do wonder what kind of reaction this will generate further down the line when Generation ZZZ realizes how little privacy it has been afforded.

Director Michael Powell – thrice Oscar-nominated and at the time after such hits as The Red Shoes (1948) regarded as on a par with the likes of David Lean (Oscar-winner of Bridge on the River Kwai, 1957) and Carol Reed (The Third Man, 1949) – lost his shirt and his reputation on this, and it took decades before Peeping Tom was accepted as nothing short of a masterpiece.

The narrative cleverly links up several strands. With a portable movie camera landlord Mark (Carl Boehm) obsessively records everything in the vicinity, including posing as a journalist to join a police murder investigation and rigging his apartments to check out the goings-on. He’s also, it transpires, a serial killer, the terror registered on corpses’ faces not aligning with the knife wounds that killed them. Into his world comes a young woman Helen (Anna Massey) who is attracted to this intriguing shy figure. Her mother (Maxine Audley) is less accepting.

In the background are the visual memories of Mark’s childhood, perhaps explaining his current compulsions, the films his psychiatrist father made of how his son reacted to fear, most of which episodes are triggered by the father. And the whole movie takes place in another world of make-believe, that of movie making, where directors are driven to distraction by incompetence and Mark can play on ambition by luring wannabe actress Vivian (Moira Shearer) into making an after-hours movie with him, which ends in her death. Even Helen, a children’s writer, has taken as her subject a magic camera.

Although Mark is interviewed by the police and, in a very modern trope, films himself being interviewed, he is not considered a major suspect. He screens his snuff movies for the blind mother. Murder is perceived as an almost erotic act, correlating with the very modern idea of violence as pornography. Clearly, it’s the progenitor of the slasher film. And Helen would be viewed as the first “final girl.”

But it’s also beautifully made, the color palette, use of light and shadow, the mise en scene, all speak to a master at work, and the delving into the mind of a killer is shown, unusually, in visual rather than verbal terms in the dry tones of a psychiatrist such as parlayed by Alfred Hitchcock at the end of Psycho the same year. Quite why only Hitchcock’s film was acclaimed, given they cover similar personality defects, you would have to go ask the critics.

And the big reveal – why the victims died in such fright – would surely be noted by today’s moviegoer as inspired genius. Carl films his victims dying and he has attached a mirror above the camera so the victims can see themselves die in horrific fashion.

Audience and critical revulsion was as possibly triggered by the scenes of the young Carl being tortured by his father, such aspects of society treated in far more discreet fashion, if at all, in those times. The voyeuristic aspects of the murders are only sexual on the surface, and really harbor back to the tormented childhood where a young boy grows up believing all acts of violence are not only permissible but must be recorded. Written by Leo Marks (Sebastian, 1968).

The raw power must be seen to be believed. Martin Scorsese has promoted many movies he believes under-rated but in this one he gets it right.

The Leopard (1963) *****

Masterpiece. No other word for the way director Luchino Visconti commands his material with fluid camera and three terrific performances (four, if you count the wily priest). An epic in the old-fashioned sense, combining intelligence, action and romance, though all three underlaid by national or domestic politics. And if you’re going to show crumbling authority you can’t get a better conduit than Burt Lancaster (check out The Swimmer, 1969, for another version of this), physical prowess still to the fore but something missing in the eyes. And all this on sumptuous widescreen.

Only a director of Visconti’s caliber can set the entire tone of the film through what doesn’t happen. We open with a religious service, not a full-scale Mass but recitations of the Rosary, for which the family is gathered in the massive villa of Prince Don Fabrizio Salina (Burt Lancaster). There is an almighty disturbance outside. But nobody dare leave or even react, children silently chided for being distracted, because all eyes are on the Prince and he has not batted an eyelid, worship more important than domestic matters.

Turns out there’s a dead soldier in the garden, indication of trouble brewing. Italy has been beset with trouble brewing from time immemorial so the Prince isn’t particularly perturbed, even if the worst comes to the worst an accommodation is always reached between the wannabes and the wealthy ruling elite.

There’s a fair bit of political sparring throughout but this is handled with such intelligence it’s involving rather than off-putting. Rebel Garibaldi is on the march, it’s the 1860s and revolution is on the way. But it’s not like the French Revolution with aristocrats executed in their thousands and when Garibaldi’s General (Guiliano Gemma) comes calling he addresses the Prince as “Excellency.”

The Prince is a bit of a hypocrite, not as devout as he’d like everyone to believe. He’s got a mistress stashed away for one thing and for another he blames his wife for the need to satisfy his urges elsewhere, complaining that she’s “the sinner” and that despite him fathering seven children with her he’s never seen her navel. Furthermore, the person he makes this argument to is the priest Fr Pirrone (Romolo Valli), who, knowing which side his bread is buttered on, doesn’t offer much of a challenge.

If you’re not going down the more perilous route of taking up arms, advancement in this society is still best achieved through marriage and the Prince’s ambitious nephew Don Tanacredi (Alain Delon), more politically astute, does this through marriage to Angelica (Claudia Cardinale), daughter of Don Calogeo Sedara (Paolo Stoppa).

Brutality and elegance sit side by side. You’re not going to forget the mob of women hunting down and hanging a Government police spy nor, equally, the astonishing ball that virtually concludes proceedings, showing that, whatever changes in society take place, those with money and privilege will still hold their own. But that’s only if they do a little bit of bending the knee to the new powers-that-be, something that Tancredi, by now a rebel hero wounded in battle, is more than happy to do, since that procures him even further advancement, but a step too far for the Prince, who at the end retreats into his study, as if this will provide sanctuary from the impending future.

Don’t expect battle on the scale of Lawrence of Arabia (1962), this action is a more scrappy affair, undisciplined red-shirted hordes sweeping through a town and eventually overwhelming cavalry and ranks of infantry.

But if you’re aiming to hold an audience for three hours, a decent script, romantic entanglement and camerawork isn’t enough. You need the actors to step up. Luckily, they do, in spades. Burt Lancaster is easily the pick, towering head and shoulders, and not just in physicality, above the rest, a man who sees his absolute authority draining away in front of his eyes. Alain Delon (Once a Thief, 1965) comes pretty close, though, not afraid to challenge his uncle’s beliefs nor point out his hypocrisy, and adept at picking his way through the new emerging society, his potential ascension to newfound power demonstrated by wearing a war wound bandage wrapped piratically around one eye, as though keeping a foot in both camps. Though American audiences never quite warmed to Delon, he was catnip for the arthouse brigade, courtesy of being anointed by Visconti and Antonioni in, respectively, Rocco and His Brothers (1960) and L’Eclisse (1962).

Far more than U.S. cinemagoers could imagine, Claudia Cardinale (The Professionals, 1966) also easily straddled commercial and arthouse – Rocco and His Brothers, Fellini’s 8½ (1963) – and on her luminous performance here you can see why. You might also spot future Italian stars Terence Hill (My Name Is Nobody, 1970) and Giuliano Gemma (Day of Anger, 1967). Adapted from the bestseller by Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa by the director and his Rocco and his Brothers team of future director Pasquale Festa Campanile (The Libertine, 1968), Suso Cecchi D’Amico, Enrico Medioli and Massimo Franciosa.

I can’t quite get my head round the audacity of Netflix in attempting a mini-series remake. I’m assuming they’ve had the sense to buy up the rights to the Visconti to prevent anyone comparing the two.

One of the decade’s greatest cinematic achievements.

In the Line of Fire (1993) *****

Outside of the top-billed trio of Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock and Meg Ryan, Rene Russo stole the limelight as the decade’s leading lady, bolstering the credentials of such supposedly superior marquee names as Dustin Hoffman (Outbreak, 1995), Mel Gibson ( Lethal Weapon 3, Ransom and Lethal Weapon 4, 1992, 1996 and 1998), John Travolta (Get Shorty, 1995), Kevin Costner (Tin Cup, 1996) and Pierce Brosnan (The Thomas Crown Affair, 1999) – an almost unprecedented, for a female star of the period, roster of hits.

Not only that, but she had also come to the game late, 35 at the time of her debut in Major League (1989) and therefore well into the most dangerous age for a female star in Hollywood, her 40s, by the time she came to work with some of the industry’s biggest names. By comparison Julia Roberts was 23 at the time Pretty Woman (1990) was released, Meg Ryan 28 when she captured hearts in When Harry Met Sally (1989) and Sandra Bullock 32 when she snazzed Sylvester Stallone in Demolition Man (1993).

It’s worth remembering that Eastwood, the previous decade washed away with insipid box office, was entering a late career halcyon period, his critical and commercial esteem boosted by the Oscar-winning Unforgiven (1992). Previous male superstars close to retirement age weren’t called upon to put in a sprint or two. Sure, John Wayne and James Stewart could land a good punch, but that was generally in a confined space and nobody was calling on their athletic skills. But, here, Eastwood set the tone for later pictures like Taken – and he was a decade older than Liam Neeson in that one.

Russo, an MTA, oozed class and maturity, never looked as if she was out of her depth or if she would come off second best to any of the macho males she was generally surrounded with. This isn’t her greatest role – her duel with Brosnan takes that accolade – but comes pretty close.

As Lilly Raine, she nurses ageing Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan (Clint Eastwood) over the line. Frank isn’t just perennially out of puff, but catches bad colds and makes such a basic error that he’s chucked out of the presidential protection elite, though kept on by boss Sam (John Mahoney) in a bid to track down assassin Mitch Leary (John Malkovich).

This is nuts-and-bolts action, a lot of time spent in basic detection, following up insignificant leads, but it’s also a classic hunter vs. hunted duel, with for the most part the assassin getting the upper hand, running rings round the entire Secret Service with his disguises and ability to remain more than one step ahead. Instead of a car chase, there’s a rooftop chase.

Horrigan is the kind of imperturbable cop who doesn’t mind partner Al (Dylan McDermott) being suffocated half to death if it gives him an edge on a villain. He’s got a chequered past, maligned by the Warren Commission in the Kennedy assassination report, feeling his age, but when life gets too tough tinkers away at the piano.

He has spicy exchanges with Lilly, taking sexism to what was an acceptable limit back in the day (now of course he’d be in the same dinosaur category as James Bond), and in due course, in quite oblique narrative fashion, wooing Lilly. The sex scene is treated as comedy, the first items to hit the carpet in the undressing malarkey are not panties and bra, but handcuffs and pistols. Hot romance is put on the back burner, which is just as well because Horrigan has his hands full not just with Leary but with a variety of superiors what with his inability to bite his tongue.

Meanwhile, we follow Leary as he coldly disposes of two men and two women in separate instances who have inadvertently caught him out. And he’s not going to make it easy for Horrigan. This isn’t the one-plan-man of previous assassin pictures, he doesn’t just have a back-up, instead employing all sorts of strategies to mislead and misdirect. And he’s not your usual nutter either. Clearly, he’s a worthy opponent, matching the enterprise, initiative and imagination of the anonymous killer of Day of the Jackal (1973). And in those days, what with developments in technology, an assassin can assemble his own gun rather than handing the task, as in Day of the Jackal, to a denoted weapons expert.

The stunning key sequence, astonishing in character terms, is when Horrigan passes up the option of shooting the assassin stone dead in favor of saving his own life – resulting in the irony (as Leary points out) of good guy being saved by bad guy. And in avoiding such action Horrigan condemns his partner to death. There’s as good a scene where I could swear Horrigan’s chin wobbles as he wonders if he could have prevented Kennedy’s death.

Sure, this is a variation on the serial killer trope of someone tormenting a potential victim, but the connections Leary attempts to build with Horrigan aren’t as far short as the cop would like to believe.

Director Wolfgang Peterson (Outbreak) is due considerable praise especially for his pacing, fitting in a complex narrative in a shade over two hours, building tension in myriad ways, but not being afraid to take a laid-back approach with the camera, long, lingering shots establishing mood and occasionally character. The sequence where Horrigan waits, somewhat wistfully, for Lilly to look back from a considerable distance after they have enjoyed an ice-cream together on a national monument is in many ways one of the finest nods to incipient romance ever put on celluloid.

Terrific acting all round. Written by Jeff Maguire (Victory, 1981).

Superb stuff. Top notch.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) *****

A mighty cast headed by John Wayne (True Grit, 1969), James Stewart (Shenandoah, 1965), Lee Marvin (The Dirty Dozen, 1967) and Vera Miles (Pyscho, 1960) with support from Edmond O’Brien (Seven Days in May, 1964) Woody Strode (The Professionals, 1966), Strother Martin (Cool Hand Luke, 1967) and Lee Van Cleef (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, 1967) do justice to John Ford’s tightly-structured hymn to liberty and equality and reflection on the end of the Wild West. So tight is the picture that despite a love triangle there are no love scenes and no verbal protestations of love.

The thematic depth is astonishing: civilization’s erosion of lawlessness, big business vs. ordinary people and a democracy where “people are the boss.” Throw in a villain with a penchant for whipping and a lack of the standard brawls that often marred the director’s work and you have a western that snaps at the heels of Stagecoach (1939), Fort Apache (1948) and The Searchers (1956).

The story is told in flashback after Senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) and wife Hallie (Vera Miles) turn up unexpectedly in the town of Shinbone for the funeral of a nobody, Tom Donovan (John Wayne), so poor the undertaker has filched his boots and gun belt to pay for the barest of bare coffins. Intrigued by his arrival, newspapermen descend, and Stoddard explains why he has returned.

Now we are in flashback as, arriving on stagecoach, novice lawyer Ransom is attacked, beaten and whipped by outlaw Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin). He is found by horse-trader Donovan (John Wayne) and taken to a local boarding- house-cum-restaurant where Hallie (Vera Miles) tends his wounds. With a young man’s full quotient of principle, Stoddard is astonished to discover that local marshal Link Appleyard (Andy Devine) has ducked out of responsibility for apprehending Valance on the dubious grounds that it is outside his jurisdiction and that Valance has so mean a reputation he has the town scared witless. When Valance turns up, he humiliates Stoddard and only Donovan stands up to him, rescuing an ungrateful Ransom, who detests violence and any threat of it.

Stoddard soon turns principle into action, setting up his shingle in the local newspaper office run by Dutton Peabody (Edmond O’Brien) and on learning that Hallie is illiterate establishing a school for all ages. In the background is politics, but the push for statehood is inhibited by big ranchers who employ Valance to intimidate. Despite his aversion to violence and insistence that due legal process will eliminate the law of the gun, Stoddard practices shooting. When Donovan gives him a lesson and, to point out his unsuitability to confront such a mean character as Valance, covers him in paint, Stoddard floors him with a punch.

That principle I mentioned has something in common with Rio Bravo (1959) – Howard Hawks’ riposte to High Noon (1952) – in that Stoddard, determined to fight his own battles, refuses to ask for help when targeted by Valance. The inevitable showdown is extraordinary, not least because it takes place at night and Ford, a la Rashomon (1951), tells it twice from different points of view.

Precisely because it retains focus throughout with no extraneous scenes, as was occasionally John Ford’s wont, the direction is superb. As in The Searchers, to suggest emotional state-of-mind, the director uses imagery relating to doors. This time the humor is not so broad and limited primarily to one incident. Both main male characters suffer reversals, in the case of Stoddard it is physical but in the instance of Donovan it is emotional. Either way, action is character. In the romantic stakes, they are equals, dancing around their true feelings.

Upfront there is one storyline, the upholding of law and order whether against an individual such as Valance or against the attempts of big business to thwart democracy. But underneath is a subtly told romance. Donovan and Stoddard are allies but in terms of Hallie they are rivals. Neither has an ounce of sense when it comes to women. Neither actually protests their love for Hallie. Although Donovan brings her cactus roses and is, unknown to her, building an extension to his house to accommodate what he hopes is his future bride, his idea of romance is to mutter, in patronizing manner, the old saw of “you look pretty when you’re angry.” He would have been wiser to have taken note of her spunk, because she can more than direct if need be.

Stoddard isn’t much better. Despite her growing feelings towards him being obvious to the audience, he assumes she prefers Donovan. Action drives the love element, the need to save or destroy.

All three principals are superb. This may seem like a typical Wayne performance, a dominant figure, comfortable with a gun and his abilities, but awkward in matters of the heart. But he shows as great depth as in The Searchers and the despair etched on his face at the possibility of losing Hallie eats into his soul. Stewart combines the man-of-the-people he essayed for Frank Capra with some of the toughness he showed in the Anthony Mann series of westerns. Vera Miles tempers genuine anger with tenderness and practicality. Unlike many Ford heroines she is not a trophy wife, but a worker, mostly seen running a kitchen. Lee Marvin cuts a sadistic figure, with an arrogance that sets him above the law, his tongue as sharp as his whip.

As well as Woody Strode, Strother Martin, Edmond O’Brien and Lee Van Cleef, you will spot various members of the John Ford stock company including Andy Devine (Two Rode Together, 1961) as the cowardly gluttonous marshal, John Carradine (Stagecoach), John Qualen (The Searchers) as the restaurant owner and Jeanette Nolan (Two Rode Together) as his wife.

Written by James Warner Bellah (X-15, 1961), Willis Goldbeck (Sergeant Rutledge, 1960) and Dorothy M. Johnson (A Man Called Horse, 1970).

SPOILER ALERT

Despite its five-star status, I am dubious about the famous “print the legend” conclusion and for two reasons. You could subtitle this picture The Good, the Bad and the Politician. In the first place, what Stoddart tells the newspapermen in the flashbacks is in fact a confession. He did not kill Liberty Valance. Donovan did. By this point in his life Stoddart has served two terms as a Senator, three terms as a governor and been the American Ambassador to Britain. And yet his career is based on bare-faced fraud. He took the glory for an action he did not commit. That is a huge scoop in anybody’s book. And I just can’t imagine a newspaperman turning a blind eye to it.

The second element is that Stoddart does not show the slightest sign of remorse. He built his entire career on this violent action, the antithesis of his supposed stance on the process of law. He takes all the plaudits and fails to acknowledge Donovan, except when it’s too late, and Donovan has died a pauper, his rootless life perhaps engendered as a result of losing Hallie. Hallie’s character, too, is besmirched. She chose Stoddart precisely because he was a man of principle who risked his life to tackle – and kill – Donovan. Those two elements are indistinguishable. Had she known Stoddart had failed and was only saved by the action of Donovan it is questionable whether she would have chosen the lawyer.

There are a couple of other quibbles, not so much about the picture itself, but about other quibblers, commonly known as critics. Alfred Hitchcock famously came under fire for the use of back projection, not just in Marnie (1964) but other later films. That spotlight never appeared to be turned on the at-the-time more famous John Ford. The train sequence at the end of the film uses back projection and the ambush at the beginning is so obviously a set.

Don’t let these put you off, however, this is one very fine western indeed.

The Sicilian Clan / Le Clan des Siciliens (1969) *****

Absolutely cracking, brilliantly structured, gangster thriller featuring two fabulous heists and three legendary French stars in Jean Gabin, Alain Delon and Lino Ventura. Roger Sartet (Delon) is a trigger-happy robber whose terrific prison escape is organized for a hefty fee by French-based Mafia chieftain Vittorio Manalese (Gabin). Le Goff (Ventura) is the rugged cop hunting down the escapee which brings him into the orbit of Manalese, about whose existence he is completely unaware, the gangster having kept an extremely low profile, never engaging in violence, hiding behind the legitimate front of a pinball machine business. Veteran French director Henri Verneuil (Guns for San Sebastian, 1968) dukes between the twin storylines with ease.

Sartet brings Manalese the opportunity to pull off the most audacious jewel robbery in history, even though the older man despises Sartet’s penchant for violence and sex. We often see Manalese at family gatherings, head of the dinner table, the family watching television together, frowning on one son’s liking for alcohol, playing with his grandson. He is not just a calm and clever businessman, but very quick-thinking, his sharp mind in a couple of instances preventing disaster. Sartet, on the other hand, will happily endanger his life and freedom by consorting with prostitutes and breaking an unspoken code of honor in an affair with Manalese’s son’s wife (Irina Demick).

The result combines dogged detective work by Le Goff and the inspired planning and execution of the jewel robbery until the two worlds collide. The investigation alone would have made this an outstanding picture. Le Goff, always seen with an unlit cigarette in his mouth although he is trying to give up smoking, concentrating initially on Sartet, sets up surveillance on the thief’s innocent sister and begins an involved – and engrossing – process of tracking down every potential lead and when at last he has Sartet in his sights it brings him up close to Manalese.

Le Goff’s professionalism is matched by that of Manalese and the picture develops into an absorbing battle of wits and the latter’s family values and moral compass puts him at odds with loner Sartet. There is some brilliant invention, the sacrificial watch, for example, and the unexpected appearance of a faithful British wife, although you do guess just how long Le Goff will go before lighting his ever-tempting cigarette.

The ultra-cool Alain Delon (Once a Thief, 1965) excels in this kind of amoral part, but Jean Gabin (Any Number Can Win, 1963) and Lino Ventura (Army of Shadows, 1969) as old-style gangster and cop, respectively, steal the show. Irina Demick (Prudence and the Pill, 1968) thrives as the bored wife of a dull gangster who is attracted by the violent Delon, at one point deliberately putting herself in the line of his potential fire for the thrill. Actually, it’s the jewel heist that steals the show. Unlike other heist pictures where you have fair idea in advance of the details of the theft, here the audience is kept completely in the dark. Just as important in any heist is that the thieves get away with their plunder and the plan in this instance is breath-taking.

As proved by The Burglars (1971) director Henri Verneuil has the nose for a heist, but this tops that for sheer audacity and elan. Verneuil, Delon and Gabin had worked together on Any Number Can Play. Written by Verneuil and Jose Giovanni (Rififi in Tokyo, 1963) from the novel by Auguste Le Breton (Rififi, 1965).

Preceding The Godfather (1972) in its exploration of family and Mafia code of conduct, it offers plenty in the humanity department while dazzling with ingenuity in the criminality stakes.

Unmissable.

The Boys in the Boat (2023) ***** – Seen at the Cinema

Remarkable. I never thought George Clooney (Good Night and Good Luck, 2005) had it in him. His previous offerings had all been worthy but dry. Here, he conjures up a gripping drama of underdogs pitted against the rich and powerful of the USA and then the might of Nazi Germany at the 1936 Olympics.

Rowing is generally considered an elite sport, contestants plucked from elite universities – in Britain it was always associated with the annual Oxford vs Cambridge Boat Race though from 1984 the country has won at least one gold at the Olympics and Sir Steve Redgrave, who lacked an alma mater, won five on the trot.

Except for athletics and golf, most popular sports are team games – football/soccer, American football, baseball – but the media and Hollywood tends to treat them as opportunities for individual excellence, the striker scoring the winning goal, the quarterback the winning touchdown, the baseball player the winning home run. The team aspects of these sports are rarely touched upon, even though you need a specific quantity of personnel working in tandem in order to compete.

What makes rowing so unusual is that, as one of the characters comments, you don’t have eight men in an eight-man crew you have one – in other words the guys have to be so in synch that they act as one. I probably learned more about the technicalities of sport from this one picture than any other sports-related movie I’ve ever seen and yet that information is passed out in dramatic form.

In terms of the feel-good factor, this comes closest to Chariots of Fire (1981), but in some regard exceeds that because it’s not about individuals coming good or coming from behind to win a medal, but about group dynamics. And it’s quite astonishing that with the narrative covering three key races, none much different from the other, just boats on water, that director Clooney manages to rack up so much tension.

And like Oppenheimer (2023) it’s a throwback, to those old days of men with hats. Unusual, too, that, like Moneyball (2011) or Any Given Sunday (1999) as much concerned with management as playing.

So, in the middle of the Great Depression, the young men who queue up to battle for a place on the eight-man rowing squad at the University of Washington (in Seattle not the national capital) are kids desperate to feed themselves, not those born with a silver spoon in their mouths, because making the team comes with a scholarship, a bed and meals. But qualifying is a massive attack on the human physique, not to mention psyche, as the combatants need to learn to breathe different and wear out muscles in a way no human being should.

There’s not room to showcase all the athletes so the narrative weight drops on Joe Rantz (Callum Turner), the hobo, abandoned by parents when young, living in a car wreck, skimping on food. He’s got a crush on well-to-do Joyce (Hadley Robinson) who has to do most of the running to get their romance over the line. Next in line is Don (Jack Mulhern), with a Charles Bronson haircut and taciturnity, no social skills but a handy piano player, his respiratory illness threatening to torpedo the team’s chances. In any other picture the cox Chuck (Thomas Elms) would hog the limelight because he’s the one who disobeys the coach’s commands and beats verbal hell out of the team.

Al Ulbrickson (Joel Egerton) is the coach fighting for his career, taking on the shady politics and rules-rigging and a system that wants to only reward the rich. Sidekick boatbuilder George (Peter Guinness) is the kind of backroom character who is mostly silent unless he has a pithy word of wisdom. Al manages two teams, the veterans if you like, who’ve been training together for three years and the juniors, comprising the Depression kids, but it’s the driven newcomers who impress the most and against all odds are selected to represent the university.

I had always assumed there was nothing to do in Poughkeepsie except “pick your feet.” Turns out its river is the locale for the annual rowing championships and so popular it’s not just a huge gala event but there’s even some kind of railway cars packed with passengers that runs along the side of the water so the elect can keep up with the rowers.

Most reviews of this picture have been on the niggardly side but I found it not only deftly done, but very moving, a couple of heart-tugging tear-snagging moments as it pounds its way to feel-good conclusion. The women, who are relegated to bit parts, are exceptionally good, Hadley Robinson (who I had just seen in a completely different role in Anyone But You, 2023) dances across the screen while Courtney Henngeler, as the coach’s wife, has a couple of the best lines in the entire picture. But probably the absolute zinger has to go to a blink-and-you-miss-it moment featuring Jesse Owens (Jyuddah James) when asked if he was going to “show” the Germans what he could do, replies that, no, he was going to show his countrymen back home, indicating the racial prejudice he had to overcome to win selection.

Terrific turn from Joel Edgerton (Red Sparrow, 2018) who has been hovering around for donkeys without delivering a career-defining performance. Breakthrough, too, for Callum Turner (Divine, 2020) and Jack Mulhern (Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, 2023) though I have a sneaky feeling you’ll go away thinking British character actor Peter Guinness has stolen the picture. Top notch script by Mark L. Smith (The Revenant, 2015) from the bestseller by Daniel James Brown.

All the elements that appear essential to a contemporary sports picture, namely sex, drugs and violence, are missing and what a difference that makes, allowing the picture to streamline forward without getting bogged down. And critics, believing something critical is missing, are missing the point. At the opposite end of the pizzazz scale from Oppenheimer but with as interesting and adult-oriented tale to tell. And for once allows audiences the chance to let their hearts rule their head. And at just over two hours, doesn’t overstay its welcome. This ain’t made by a streamer so catch it in the cinema where it belongs.

Instant classic.

Villain (1971) *****

Get Carter, out the same year, tends to get the critical nod over Villain, but I beg to differ. Not only do we have the most realistic robbery yet depicted on screen, but Richard Burton (Becket, 1964), delivering one of his greatest performances, is nearly matched by Ian McShane, flexing acting muscles that would come to fruition in Deadwood (2004-2006) and John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023), and Nigel Davenport’s cop, as cool under pressure as Frank Bullitt.

Where Michael Caine in Get Carter is primarily the avenging angel, Burton’s Vic Dakin is every bit as complex as Michael Corleone. Way ahead of its time in portraying Dakin as a gay gangster in sympathetic fashion, he also has a moral code akin to that of Don Corleone. While the Mafia chieftain drew the line at selling drugs, Dakin despises MP Draycott (Donald Sinden) for his corruption and views with contempt sometime boyfriend Wolfe (Ian McShane) for small-time drugs and girl peddling.

He reveres (as did Don Corleone) family values, bringing his aging mother tea in bed, kissing her affectionately on the forehead, treating her to a day out at the Brighton. But he also rejoices in violence as much as any of Scorsese’s gallery of thugs.

Complexity is the order of the day. Every dominant character, whether operating on the legal or illegal side of the street, receives a come-uppance verging on humiliation. Dakin himself is arrested in full view of his mother. The bisexual Wolfe, who otherwise dances unscathed through the mire, is beaten up by Dakin and humiliated when his male lover shows his female lover, the upmarket Venetia (Fiona Lewis), the door. Top gangster Frank (T.P. McKenna), who attempts to lord it over Dakin, ends up whimpering in agony in the back seat of a car.

Maverick cop Mathews (Nigel Davenport) is brought to heel by internal politics and frustrated at home when his wife is indifferent to the late night shenanigans of his son. Even cocky thug Duncan (Tony Selby), with a quip to terrify victims, is reduced to a quivering wreck under the relentless stare of Dakin.

Unlike The Godfather, mothers excepted, wives and girlfriends are complicit. Little chance of a shred of feminism here. Women are chattels, Venetia is traded out as a “favor” to Draycott, terrified gangster’s moll Patti (Elizabeth Knight) also used in that capacity by Wolfe. Draycott professes little interest in whether the women, procured in this fashion, enjoy sex with him.

So, to the story. Tempted by a tasty payroll robbery, Dakin steps out of his usual line of work, a protection racket, and joins up with two other leading hoods, Frank (T.P. McKenna) and his brother-in-law, the belching Edgar (Joss Ackland). But the robbery goes wrong. The tail is spotted by the payroll car and the victims almost evade capture. But stopping the payroll car renders the getaway vehicle virtually useless, a flat tyre soon flies off and they drive for miles on a wheel rim.

The payroll is well-guarded and several of the villains emerge badly scathed. Worse, the cases containing the cash have anti-theft devices, equipped with legs that spring out and red clouds of smoke. And there are ample witnesses. Edgar is quickly apprehended, and the movie enters a vicious endgame.

Contemporary audiences were put off by the obvious references to the Kray Twins and the Profumo Affair and American audiences had long shown an aversion to Cockneys (though that is not so apparent here) and critics gave it a mauling, the general feeling being that after Performance (1970) and Get Carter, the British public was entitled to the more genial criminal as exemplified by The Italian Job (1969), incidentally another U.S. flop.

There are many superb moments: Dakin’s affectionate stroke of Wolfe’s shoulder, Dakin and his sidekick’s nonchalant stroll over a footbridge as they make their escape, Dakin pushing Draycott into a urinal, Wolfe abandoning Venetia at a country house party so that Draycott can avail himself of the “favor,” Dakin’s love for his mother. Throwaways point to deeper issues, a country stricken by strikes and political corruption.

Dakin, unaware he has made a target for his own back by the unnecessary brutal treatment of an associate, comes up against a cool implacable cop, as confident as Dakin without the arrogance or recourse to brutality, easy with the quip.

A modern audience might appreciate the violence more than the acting, given that a la Scorsese we are supposed to revel in criminal behavior, but it’s the performances that lift the film. Burton had entered a career trough, sacked from Laughter in the Dark (1969), involved in a quartet of financial and critical turkeys – Boom! (1968), Candy (1968), Staircase (1969) and Raid on Rommel (1971) – with only another Oscar nomination for Anne of the Thousand Days (1970) to alleviate the gathering gloom that would see him strike out in his next nine pictures before another nomination for Equus (1977) restored some stability.

So this is a superb character, suited and booted he might be, doting on his mother, but underneath stung by insecurity and unable to rein in his sadistic streak. A marvellous addition to the canon of great gangster portrayals.

Ian McShane, too, provides a performance of great depth, in his element when skirting around the small-time world, out of his depth with the big time, the charm that can hook a vulnerable upper-class lass like Venetia as likely to attract a malevolent mobster, the former under his thumb, the latter controlling. To see him go from cheeky chappie with a winning grin to penitent lover forced to dismiss Venetia is quite an achievement.

Nigel Davenport (Sands of the Kalahari, 1965) is on top form and the supporting cast could hardly have been better – T.P. McKenna (Young Cassidy, 1965), plummy-voiced Donald Sinden (Father, Dear Father TV series, 1969-1972) playing against type, Joss Ackland (Rasputin: The Mad Monk, 1966). Throw in a bit of over-acting from Colin Welland (Kes, 1969) plus Fiona Lewis (Where’s Jack?, 1969) at her most accomplished.

Michael Tuchner (Fear Is the Key, 1972) directs with some style from a screenplay by Dick Clement and Ian La Fresnais (Hannibal Brooks, 1969) working from the novel by al Lettieri.

Ripe for reassessment.

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