Uncategorized – Page 11 – The Magnificent 60s

Behind the Scenes: All-Time Top 30

Just like the All-Time Top 40, this is based on views on the Blog. I realized I didn’t do a catch-up last year and haven’t done one in two years so it kind of feels redundant to do a previous-year’s-position in brackets number.

All of these movies incurred problems – budget, changes of director or star, censorship issues, studio indifference – and for some it’s a surprise they ever made it onto the big screen.

Waterloo (1970). Sergei Bondarchuk’s roadshow epic with Rod Steiger and Christopher Plummer.
The Satan Bug (1965). John Sturges adaptation of Alistair MacLean pandemic thriller, striking a stronger note now than when originally release.
The Girl on a Motorcycle / Naked Under Leather (1968). Marianne Faithful in leathers, what more can you say, except the U.S. censors took umbrage and cut out most of what Europe went crazy for.
Ice Station Zebra (1968). John Sturges again. Alistair MacLean again. Big budget roadshow set mostly under the polar ice cap.
The Guns of Navarone (1961). All-star cast for J. Lee Thompson WW2 epic.
Cast a Giant Shadow (1966). Comedy director Melville Shavelson goes straight with Israeli action picture starring Kirk Douglas, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne and Senta Berger.
In Harm’s Way (1965). John Wayne and Kirk Douglas (again) in Otto Preminger’s examination of Army politics pre- and post-Pearl Harbor.
Spartacus (1961). Battle between the Kirk Douglas vehicle and a rival production from Yul Brynner.
Battle of the Bulge (1965). Cinerama to the fore in the battle of the tanks in WW2.
The Cincinnati Kid (1965). Sam Peckinpah fired, Norman Jewison takes over, Steve McQueen perfects his iconic loner in poker drama.
Secret Ceremony (1969). Elizabeth Taylor, Mia Farrow and a creepy Robert Mitchum in odd Joseph Losey drama.
The Ipcress File (1965). The spy picture that attempted to upend the Bond applecart. Michael Caine’s most iconic role.
Genghis Khan (1965). Though way down the credits, Omar Sharif in the title role.
Sink the Bismarck! (1962). British war film starring Kenneth More that does what it says on the tin.
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They (1969). Decades in the making, finally surfacing with a dream cast of Jane Fonda, Michael Sarrazin and Susannah York.
Doctor Zhivago (1965). Selling the David Lean epic.
The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968). Whoever imagined this would work as a roadshow? Anthony Quinn headlines.
The Biggest Bundle of Them All (1968). Raquel Welch effortlessly steals the show in Italian caper.
Night of the Living Dead (1968). Horror was never the same after George A. Romero went to work on zombies.
The Way West (1967). Underrated Andrew V. McLaglen western with top-notch cast in Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum and Richard Widmark.
Valley of the Dolls (1967). Would have been Judy Garland’s last hurrah except she was fired.
When Alistair MacLean Quit: Part Two. Not content with serving up concepts that were turned into some of the best films of the decade, the bestselling author had his own demons to battle.
The Wicker Man (1973). The trap is sprung on naïve Scottish cop in movie that was flop on release but is now considered one of the best horror films ever made.
The Secret Ways (1961). Richard Widmark hunted in Hungary in adaptation of Alistair MacLean thriller. The star finished off the picture when Phil Karlson quit/was fired.
Humphrey Bogart: 1960s Revival Champ. The reason Bogart became so iconic for a new generation: his reissued movies proved box office dynamite.
Once Upon a Time in the West (1969). The inside story of the Sergio Leone classic.
100 Rifles (1969). Raquel Welch, need I say more…well, yes, because Jim Brown brings a helluva lot to the action.
The Bridge at Remagen (1969). Producer David Wolper didn’t count on Russia invading Czechoslovakia when he scheduled his shoot.
The Man in the Middle / The Winston Affair (1964). Robert Mitchum defends an apparently guilty man.
When Box Office Went Worldwide. In the 1960s nobody reported foreign box office so you had to dig deep like I did to find the information all hidden away. Fascinating reading especially as it shows what films touted as successes were actually flops.

Behind the Scenes: “The Cardinal” (1963)

Otto Preminger was beaten to the punch on this one, the scandalous Henry Morton Robinson bestseller snapped up in 1955 by producer Louis de Rochemont (The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone, 1961) who had a tie-up with Columbia. Due to interference from the Catholic Church, de Rochemont dropped his option which Preminger picked up in 1961 while working on Advise and Consent (1962).

The last section of the novel, set in Austria during the Anschluss, reverberated with the director who was born in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire and although a Jew was well acquainted with Catholic society. One of his most significant changes to the book was introducing the Austrian cardinal who endorsed Hitler.

The first two screenwriters James Lee (Banning, 1967) and Daniel Taradash (Castle Keep, 1969) failed to whittle down the complex novel to cinematic proportions. So Preminger brought in Robert Dozier (The Big Bounce, 1969) and began working with him in summer 1962 making other alterations to heighten the drama. The incident involving the unborn child of the sister of Fr Fermoyle (Tom Tryon) acquires greater emotional power in the film, touching on the ambiguities inherent in any institution and provoking the priest’s guilt.

Gore Vidal (The Best Man, 1964) also worked on the script, swapping the novel’s Italian countess for the Viennese Annemarie (Romy Scheider) who, abandoned by the priest had married and was reunited with him prior to the Anschluss, and is sympathetic to Hitler until her husband’s faith endangers them both. Ring Lardner, who had satirized the Catholic church in a recent novel, was the final screenwriter added, his main task to rewrite scenes “to achieve what he (Preminger) wanted,” and, more importantly, to introduce the flashback structure. Ironically, both Vidal and Lardner were atheists.

*Tom Tryon and Romy Scheider meet again in Vienna.*

The director considered five actors for the leading role – Hugh O’Brian (Africa – Texas Style, 1967), Stuart Whitman (The Commancheros, 1961), Cliff Robertson (The Devil’s Brigade, 1968), Bradford Dillman (Circle of Deception, 1960) and Tom Tryon (In Harm’s Way, 1965), the latter three advancing to the screen-testing stage. The 34-year-old Tryon won the role and a five-picture contract he would later regret. Carol Lynley (Bunny Lake Is Missing, 1965) who plays the priest’s sister also pacted for five movies.

Romy Scheider’s (Triple Cross, 1966) part was enhanced by the work of cinematographer Leon Shamroy who “fell madly in love with her,” resulting in the actress virtually shimmering on screen, never before “looking as beautiful.” Held in warm regard by the director, she was exempt from his tirades.

It took considerable persuasion on the part of Preminger for John Huston to participate. Curd Jurgens, initially cast as the Austrian cardinal, pulled out and was replaced by character actor Josef Meinrad whose lack of English meant he had to learn his lines phonetically.

Tom Tryon described Preminger as “tyrant who ruled by terror.” He was fired on the first day and probably wished the director had not rescinded the decision, for thereafter the actor was tabbed “lazy…a fool…stupid and unprofessional.” Commented Tryon, “I was so frightened he was going to scream that…I (just) wanted the experience to end.”

One scene with John Huston took 78 takes because Tryon could not deliver what the director wanted. And at one point first assistant director Gerry O’Hara (later director of The Bitch, 1979) found the star in tears and refusing to return unless the director agreed not to shout at him. Eventually, during the Italian section of the shoot, Tryon collapsed from nervous exhaustion, and was prescribed two days rest, and after this incident Preminger let up on his demands of the actor.

Explained Preminger, “I probably chose him without deliberation because he is weak.” He felt than an ordinary person would not side with the Church against a family member in a predicament, and that only a person “with weakness in his character” would be believable in the role. The character “fails because when you become a priest you substitute your own judgement and your own feelings for the law of the Church…The big decisions are made for him.” (Quite why he never chose an actor who could portray such weakness is not known.)

Tryon admitted that he owed a brief let-up in the bullying to “Schneider’s benign presence.” He commented, “The only fun I ever had on The Cardinal was a (ballroom) scene I did with Romy.” Prior to turning the cameras, Prior called both over, appeared ready to issue instructions, but instead waved them away “you know what to do.”

Added Schneider, “Preminger taught me an important thing: work fast. It’s true that it greatly helps our acting. Each of his directions, whether of gesture or of intonation, is precise and correct. Even better, it’s the only one possible…Each phrase, each world, each syllable are minutely weighed.” That dexterity applied to his positioning of the camera. He made decisions immediately, never hesitating “over the placement of the camera and each time…it was the simplest, the most natural and, dramatically, the best.”

Ossie Davis (The Scalphunters, 1968), who professed to have enjoyed a marvellous relationship with the director, observed: “I met actors whom Otto liked, I met actors that had no relationship or feelings one way or the other and I met actors who were almost absolutely destroyed, almost literally in panic because of Otto Preminger (who) was always looking for a spark…whether you had the spark or not, he was going to find it and even put it in you.”

But Patrick O’Neal stood his ground. “I woiuld not take it from him.” And they became friends.

The unit shot for five weeks in New England before heading to Vienna, Preminger choosing to stay in the same suite in the Hotel Imperial as appropriated by Hitler when visiting the city. Permission to shoot in the National Library, “one of the most beautiful monuments in the city” was attacked by the current minister of education who wanted the Hitler era erased from memory. And he was barred from using other government buildings for spurious reasons.

After four and a half months in Austria, the unit shifted to Rome, locations including St Peter’s Square and inside St Peter’s Cathedral and the Santa Maria sopra Minerva church, with priests and monks hired as extras for the various ceremonies. The Georgia scenes were shot in Hollywood on the Universal back lot.

Although generally dismissed by the critics and given a hard time as you might expect from the Catholic Church, The Cardinal hit a chord with audiences, who turned it into Premigner’s second-biggest hit of the decade.

The Group (1966) ***

The ensemble picture provided a showcase for new talent. But consider the gender imbalance at work. Only Candice Bergen proved a breakout star of any longevity compared to a flop like The Magnificent Seven (1960) from which six relative newcomers – Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Eli Wallach (only his fourth movie) and Horst Buchholz – became top-billed material.

Part of the problem was Hollywood itself, not enough good roles for actresses who weren’t destined for spy movies or to become a decorative supporting player, and who could not headline a western, war picture or (with the exception of Bonnie and Clyde) a hardnosed crime movie. But part of the problem was the structure of The Group. Yes, there’s a 150-minute running time, but there are eight main characters to contend with.

And the story doesn’t have a central focus like The Magnificent Seven where characters are built in asides to the main action but has to meander in eight different directions. Luckily, it still remains a powerful confection, tackling, as if setting out to shock audiences, contentious issues like mental illness, leftwing politics, birth control and lesbianism. What could easily have descended into a chick flick or a glorified soap opera instead pushes in the direction of feminism.

A bunch of wealthy privileged university female graduate friends sets out in the 1930s to change the world only discover, to their amazement, that the male-dominated dominion chews them up and spits them out.

Only Lakey (Candice Bergen), who prefers the company of women, appears to find fulfilment but that’s mostly from running off to the more liberated Paris at the earliest opportunity to study art history though the Second World War puts an end to that.

Kay (Joanna Pettet) seems to have made the best marriage, with a wannabe alcoholic writer (Larry Hagman), but she ends up in a mental asylum. Dottie (Joan Hackett) also views life in the art world, marrying a painter, as the best option only to later prefer a more mundane husband. Priss (Elizabeth Hartmann), the strongest-minded of the octet, lands a man of a stronger, controlling, character.

Polly (Shirley Knight) is the most sexually adventurous. Ostensibly, Helena (Kathleen Widdoes), a renowned traveller, and Libby (Jessica Walter), a successful novelist, appear to achieve the greatest independence and success but come up short in that most important of endeavors, romance. The men, you should be warned, are all one-dimensional scumbags.

The movie focuses mainly on Kay, Polly and Libby. Lakey shows up at the beginning and the end.

At its best, it’s an insight into the world of women, on a grander scale than any of the tear-jerkers of previous decades. But it suffers from too many characters and too little time. It might have been better as a mini-series, though that, obviously, was not an option at the time. The Sidney Buchman (Cleopatra, 1963) screenplay fails to match the intensity of the critically-acclaimed source novel by Mary McCarthy, a huge bestseller.

It’s a surprising choice for Sidney Lumet (The Pawnbroker, 1964), more mainstream than his general output, but while he clearly presents the characters in sympathetic fashion, his hallmark tension is missing.

Mostly, it works as a time-capsule of a time-capsule, a movie about the 1960s optimism of 1930s optimism, and the obstacles faced by both.

Only Candice Bergen (Soldier Blue, 1970) approached the level of success achieved by The Magnificent Seven motley crew, achieving top-billed status in a number of films and her screen persona, possibly as a result of this movie, was often independence. Leading lady in Will Penny (1968) and Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) was the height of success for Joan Hackett.

Already twice Oscar-nominated as a Supporting Actress, Shirley Knight was the best-known of The Group, but was only thereafter top-billed once, in the low-budget Dutchman (1966) although she won critical plaudits for The Rain People (1969).

An Oscar nominee for her debut A Patch of Blue (1965), Elizabeth Hartmann was top-billed in You’re A Big Boy Now (1967) and then fell into the supporting player bracket. Never top-billed, Joanna Pettet was a strong co-star for the rest of the decade but that was marked by flops like Blue (1968) and The Best House in London (1968) and she drifted into television.

Best known for Number One (1969) and Play Misty for Me (1971) Jessica Walter failed to achieve top-billing. Though, as a result of this review, it has been pointed out to me (thanks Mr Film-Authority) that I glossed over her brilliant performance in television show Arrested Development (2003-2019); in fact, if your search for her on imdb that TV series is the one that pops up first.

Most of the actresses did have long careers, sustained by leading roles in television or bit parts in movies but when you consider the success visited upon the group known as The Magnificent Seven you can’t help thinking this was a whole generation of talent going to waste because they could not be accommodated by the Hollywood machine and did not fit the industry prototype.

For another example of gender disparity you could compare the consequent comparative success of the stars of Valley of the Dolls and The Dirty Dozen, both out the following year.

Wives and Lovers (1963) ***

Key name here is Jay Presson Allen. You may remember her for giving theatrical and then cinematic shape to Muriel Spark’s novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). The clarity she brought to both stage and movie productions resulting in critical kudos and box office. She would do the same with Cabaret (1972). And, undeniably, in Wives and Lovers she was also prophetic. Had it been filmed under the title of the play from which it was adapted, Allen’s The First Wife, we would not have been acknowledging the insight so much of The First Wives Club nearly three decades later.

By shape of course we mean structure and there’s not much you can do when the source is a Broadway hit other than expanding it out away from the inherent staginess. And here nobody makes the mistake of trying. This belongs to the tag end of the Rock Hudson-Doris Day comedy when innocents are not too badly punished for their errant ways and generally see the light at the end.

Here, struggling writer Bill (Van Johnson), financially supported by dental hygienist wife Bertie (Janet Leigh), hits the jackpot when his novel is published, becomes a Book-of-the-Month-Club (extra loot), is purchased by Hollywood (more loot) and is turned into a play (even more loot) by the author. As if he has swallowed a lorryload of steroids, the quiet spoken somewhat child-pecked Bill ups sticks to more fashionable Connecticut and charges headfirst into temptation. this appears in the form of cocktail parties, Hollywood stars, sexy agent Lucinda (Martha Hyer) and every excuse to spend endless nights on the town rather than cuddling up at home with Bertie and working out how to make the new-fangled stereo work.

There’s not much to this other than your standard three-act play: initial enjoyment of success, the aforementioned temptation, and coming to the kind of understanding that couples in the early 1960s were still permitted before divorce appeared the more convenient and adult option.

On hand to warn against that option is disillusioned divorced first wife neighbot Fran (Shelley Winters) whose “companion” (his position is left comfortably vague) Wylie (Ray Walston) spends most of his time belittling their interior décor. Also on hand to show how difficult it is to fit into the upmarket set is snippy housemaid (Lee Patrick). With neighbors and maid on hand to put her in her place, and husband rarely around to help her explore their newfound status, it’s hardly surprising that Bertie, assuming Bill’s late nights include some illicit romance, tries to find solace with predatory Hollywood star Gar (Jeremy Slate), neatly fitting into this jigsaw as the proposed leading man of the stage adaptation and as Fran’s ex-.

So, basically, it’s the usual comedy of errors, though for a time Bill does seem hellbent on making the most of a mid-life crisis. While it’s strewn with good and often funny lines, the timing of the actors often fails to accommodate them, so it’s kind of helter-skelter at some points. It’s pretty easy to move in high-falutin’ circles because everyone you meet goes by the moniker of “Sweetie.” On reaching a marital crisis, the couple resolve the situation in a clever, humorous manner.

Certainly, it’s the gentlest of comedies, but no worse for that and although former MGM matinee idol Van Johnson (Divorce American Style, 1967) takes a sledgehammer to his role, not least from trying to stop Jeremy Slate (The Devil’s Brigade, 1968) from stealing the picture, in fact it’s the more subtle performance of Janet Leigh (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) that keeps the movie ticking over, assisted by, in less combustible form than usual, Shelley Winters (A House Is Not a Home, 1965). The most worldly-wise character on show is daughter Julie (Claire Wilcox).

In one of those bizarre Hollywood anomalies, since Allen at this time was not a screenwriter figure of any importance, the more experienced Edward Anhalt (Becket, 1964) was handed the job, but with already such a cleverly contrived structure it’s hard to see what he brought to the party. Television director John Rich (The New Interns, 1964) doesn’t bring much more than the innate skill of knowing when to leave well alone.

Likeable enough, especially to see Janet Leigh in one of her rare starring roles in the decade. No intellectual exertion required.

The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl / La Louve Solitaire (1968) ****

A sheer delight, a twisty thriller with a standout sexy burglar. It might put you immediately in mind of To Catch a Thief (1955) but this takes the Hitchcock embryo and molds it in something effortlessly stylish and not just to keep the audience on the hop. A second viewing has raised it in my estimation.

Unless you were a fan of the more permissive pictures at the end of the 1960s or kept a close eye on the gossip columns – or for that matter Playboy magazine – you were unlikely to have come across slinky blonde Daniele Gaubert. A former teen model and supporting actress in a number of French and Italian films at the start of the 1960s, she had a brief brush with Hollywood as Yul Brynner’s girlfriend in United Artists’ Flight from Ashiya (1964) but then married Rhadames Trujillo, son of the Dominican Republic dictator.

The year after The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl she starred in Radley Metzger’s provocative Camille 2000 which set pulses racing especially at the censor’s office. Then marriage beckoned again, this time to French Olympic triple gold medallist skier Jean-Claude Killy with whom she made her last picture The Snow Job (1972) also known, depending on where you lived, as The Ski Raiders and The Great Ski Caper.

She only made eighteen movies but The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl is by far the standout. A taut thriller with plenty of twists and stylish action scenes, the French-Italian co-production was the only film of documentary film maker Edouard Logerau and that background helps shape the movie with many of the most thrilling sequences lacking musical accompaniment.

Female empowerment is not normally associated with crime, given that organized crime is generally organized by men. But burglary is a different matter, lending itself to non-gender-specific individual enterprise. Though there are safes to break, there’s no glass ceiling in this brand of thievery.

Gaubert plays a cat burglar ironically known as “the lone wolf” (as in the original title) who is forced to trade her freedom by stealing a cache of drugs for the police in order to apprehend a criminal mastermind (Sacha Pitoeff). (Maybe this notion inspired Luc Besson’s Nikita.) Her sidekick is Michael Duchaussoy, seconded from his usual job as an embassy press attache, on the grounds that he can lip-read (which proves more than a gimmick as the plot unfolds).

Given that this was all shot “in camera” – Christopher Nolan’s favourite phrase – without the benefit of CGI or, so it would appear, much in the way of bluescreen, the burglary scenes are pretty impressive. For a kick-off, Gaubert is a sexy as you can get in a skin-tight cat-suit. Furthermore, her character calls on skills from her previous occupation as a trapeze artist. While the director doesn’t match Hitchcock’s in the tension-racking stakes, the sheer verve of the burglary takes the breath away.

The first burglary – before she is caught – takes place at a fancy chateau where a party is in full swing (owners in residence less likely to take extra precautions to hide their valuables), Gaubert nips over a wall, slips up a tree, uses a line thrower (a type of harpoon) to connect tree to building, and then proceeds to walk along the tightrope. Mission accomplished, she zooms off in a sports car, only stopping to remove false tyre treads and strip out of her costume before hiding her ill-gotten gains in a secret compartment at the back of the fridge.

The police burglary is in an office block. She and the lip-reader are holed up in an apartment opposite watching via a telescope. Although they pass the time in gentle flirtation, especially as she favours revealing outfits, she is not quite as imprisoned as it might seem and is already hatching her own plans to outwit her captors. This burglary is even more dangerous, in the pouring rain for a start, across Parisian rooftops, and involving a trapeze and ropes.

Thereafter, plot twists come thick and fast after this. She escapes to Switzerland, pursued by lip-reader (to whom she has clearly formed an attachment), cops and furious drug runners. Eventually re-captured she agree to another official burglary as a way of finally trapping Mr Big.

The tone is lightened by repartee and some interesting characterization. The lone wolf turns out to have very strong principles that prevent her just running off. Mr Big is a stamp aficionado. A lava lamp is turned into a weapon. Instead of counting to five before killing someone, a bad guy does the countdown according to the number of people diving into a swimming pool. Gaubert fools her captors into thinking they have a flat tyre by dangling her handbag over the edge of the door until it bumps into the tyre and makes the thwock-thwock of a burst tyre. “Survivors give me goose flesh,” quips a thug.

The closest comparison is not Hitchcock but Danger: Diabolik (1968) featuring John Philip Law which has a definite comic book riff. And you might also point to Joseph Losey’s Modesty Blaise (1966) or even, for a self-contained independent woman, to Raquel Welch’s Fathom (1967. But this lone wolf is ice-cold. Blonde is not enough. She is one step ahead of the law and the criminals. There are hints of a tragic past – a trapeze artists requires a partner, for example.

The last shot has Genault triumphant on a Paris rooftop. There is a nod to Hitchcock (think Rear Window) in the use of a telescopic framing device for many scenes, giving them a voyeuristic aspect. Sure, a bigger budget and a better supporting cast – and perhaps a more obvious romance – might have lifted the picture but Genault’s presence ensures that the film does not lack style. Gaubert dominates so much you could imagine she harldy needed direction but it is the cleverness of Edourd Logerau (Paris Secret, 1965) that makes it appear seamless.

Definitely deserves a more appreciative audience.

Grenfell (2023) ****

The single take has been the Holy Grail of directors ever since Alfred Hitchcock just about managed to use it for the entirety of Rope (1948). A quarter of a century on critics were raving about the complete one-take circle Michelangelo Antonioni achieved in The Passenger (1975) and half a century later for Sam Mendes’s 1917 (2019). Every now and then an audacious director tries to earn kudos by employing the single take for long periods or editing a film in such a way as to get the same effect.

Oscar-winning British director Steve McQueen (12 Years A Slave, 2013) has jumped to the top of that particular technical tree by shooting all of Grenfell in one single mostly silent aerial take. I happen to be a big fan of the single take, much as I thoroughly enjoy reading long sentences in books. And for the same reason: the result is often hypnotic.

The movie opens in the sky a good distance from London to which the camera moves in stately progression. Below is traditional English countryside cut up by long avenues of trees. As we approach the city of London, all that divides the close-packed houses are other houses, although, it being England, there are still swathes of green.

This is what Grenfell looked like in 2009. Now it’s windowless and blackened.
Photocredit: Robin Sones, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59911338

We take a right as we fly over Wembley Station, the soccer fan’s Holy Grail, home of the F.A. Cup Final, international football matches and countless rock concerts including the legendary Live Aid (most recently replicated in Bohemian Rhapsody, 2018). Gradually, in the distance appears something untoward. We are not close enough to the ground to see when buildings have lost their sheen, but high enough so that they still seem solid. But up ahead, coming slowly into view, is a jarring spectacle.

A charred skyscraper. Grenfell Tower. The remains of a devastating fire that in June 2017 killed 72 inhabitants. Some of the lower floors are white, which makes the upper floors stand out in sharper contrast. What work is going on is hard to determine – there’s a crane and men working on scaffolding. Maybe they are just adding more white panels to cover up the ruin, some kind of PR exercise to rid the city of the monstrosity and the memory of what happens when money talks and warnings are ignored.

The building is a rarity for such a devastating fire. After blazes with such a high death toll, there’s not much left of a structure, usually an empty shell, or as with the 9/11 Twin Towers nothing at all. This was a different kind of fire. Faulty easily-combustible plastic “cladding” – “siding” to use the American term as in the ubiquitous “aluminum siding” that Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito sold in Tin Men (1987) – caused the catastrophe, allowing flames to race up the sides, emanating toxic smoke, too quickly for those inside to escape.

The camera takes a few turns around the building and you can glimpse the dead interior and imagine the lives once lived.

It’s not a long film. Only 24 minutes, and a chunk of that taken up with just getting there. Now it stands as a monument to injustice. Though the building lies within a prosperous London borough, only the poor lived here, and possibly might have only done so until they could be kicked out and the building demolished by a more normal means so that upmarket apartments could be sold to richer people.

As the camera rotates round the building, coming at it from slightly different angles, and without music to infuse it with deceptive grandeur, the result is less hypnotic than disorientating and your mind has to work hard to snatch at the images being shown, taking a while to realize that there’s going to be no coup de theatre, no grandstand finish, no sigh of relief – none of the “oh, that’s what it’s all about” that accompanies some opaque arthouse picture.

It ends as it begins with a blank screen, no credits.

It’s something of a cult film. There’s only one print and it’s only showing in one cinema, and not the kind you find in a multiplex, just a space within the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park in London. Admission is free and there are several showings at day. It was self-funded by McQueen, who had links to the Grenfell community, went to art school nearby and ran a stall at a market not far away. But it’s not intended for commercial purpose. There might not even be a DVD or end up on a streaming channel as I guess part of the experience is to see it with a group of people and all come out shell-shocked to the foyer and stare at the list of the names of the victims.

It’s running in London till May 10 so maybe if you’re over for the Coronation of King Charles you might just happen upon it. I was in London on Sunday past visiting my son and he had arranged the tickets. He’s pretty good at this sort of thing, one other time I saw him he had got tickets to see that eternally-long film about clocks (whose name I forget) at the Tate. I doubt if anyone’s going to fly thousands of miles just to see it, but my guess is it will eventually go on tour and be shown in one museum after another.

Unlike the Twin Towers, there’s no one group to blame, but like the worst of ordinary disasters it’s a combination of various corporations and community officials whose watchword is greed or disinterest rather than common humanity.

Fathom (1966) ***

If audiences rallied to the sight of Raquel Welch wearing nothing more than a fur bikini for the entirety of One Million Years B.C. (1966) and a skin-tight suit in Fantastic Voyage (1966) Twentieth Century Fox must have reasoned they would surely return in droves were the star to spend most of Fathom in a succession of brightly-colored bikinis.

Given such a premise who would care that a sky-diving expert was named after a nautical measurement? Or that Fathom (Raquel Welch) came nowhere near the height indicated by her name? Or that the character as described in the source material (a novel by Scottish screenwriter Larry Forester) had a distinctly harder edge; murder, sex and drugs among her proclivities.

With Our Man Flint (1966), the studio had successfully gatecrashed the burgeoning spy genre and spotted a gap in the market for a female of the species, hoping to turn Modesty Blaise (1966) starring Monica Vitti and Fathom into money-spinning series. The Fathom project was handed to Batman, The Movie (1966) co-conspirators, director Leslie H. Martinson and screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr. (Flash Gordon, 1980).

Female independence was hard-won in the 1960s and there were few jobs where a woman was automatically at the top of the tree. Burglary was one option for the independent entrepreneur (see The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl) and sport was another.

Welch plays an innocent bystander recruited for her top-notch sky-diving skills (her aptitude demonstrated in the opening sequences) to help Colonel Campbell (Ronald Fraser) of British intelligence recover the “Fire Dragon,” a trigger that could explode a nuclear bomb. Her sky-diving skills are required to land in the courtyard of playboy Peter Merriwether (Anthony Franciosa).

That turns out to be baloney, of course, a MacGuffin to point her in the direction of a valuable Chinese heirloom. And then it’s case of double-cross, triple-cross and whatever cross comes next.

There’s an intriguing mystery at the heart of this picture and a couple of top-class hair-raising moments. In one she is trapped in a bull ring and stunt double Donna Garrett had a few very definite close calls trying to avoid the maddened beast. In another she is stalked at sea by a circling motor boat while being peppered with harpoons. There is also an airplane duel and a ton of great aerial work. A couple of comic sequences are well wrung – Campbell pins his business card to one of the prongs of a pitchfork being brandished with menace by Fathom while Peter delivers a classic line: “The only game I ever lost was spin the bottle and that was on purpose.”

The biggest problem is that the film veers too far away from the source material which posited the heroine as a much tougher character, one who can despatch bad guys with aplomb. Instead, Fathom is presented almost as an innocent, bundled from one situation to another, never taking charge until the very end. Minus karate kicks or a decent left hook, she is left to evade her predators by less dramatic means. She has a decent line in repartee and by no means lets the show down. However, the idea, no matter how satisfactory to fans of the actress, that Fathom has to swap bikinis every few minutes or failing that don some other curve-clinging item, gets in the way of the story – and her character. Into the eccentric mix also come a millionaire (Clive Revill) and a bartender (Tom Adams).

There’s no doubt Welch had single-handedly revived the relatively harmless pin-up business (not for her overt nudity of the Playboy/Penthouse variety) and had a massive following in Europe where she often plied her trade (the Italian-made Shoot Loud, Louder…I Don’t Understand in 1966 and the British Bedazzled in 1967) but she was clearly desperate for more meaty roles. Those finally came her way with Bandolero (1966) and 100 Rifles (1969) and Fathom feels like a lost opportunity to provide her with that harder edge.

She’s not helped by the odd tone. As I mentioned she gets into plenty of scrapes and proves her mettle with her diving skills. In the hands of a better director and with a few tweaks here and there it could have been a whole lot better and perhaps launched a spy series instead of languishing at the foot of the studio’s box office charts for that year.

Anthony Franciosa (Rio Conchos, 1964), still a rising star after a decade in the business, who receives top billing, doesn’t appear for the first twenty minutes. And then he behaves like a walking advert for dentistry, as though his teeth can challenge Welch’s curves. But some of the supporting cast look like they’ve signed up for a completely different movie. Richard Briers (A Home of Your Own, 1965) – Ronald Fraser’s intelligence sidekick – looks like a goggle-eyed fan next to Ms Welch and Clive Revill (The Double Man, 1967) thinks it’s a joke to play a Russian as a joke. Ronald Fraser (Sebastian, 1968) provides decent support.

But it is certainly entertaining enough and you are unlikely to get bored.

“The Swinger” Dethrones “Jessica”

Ann-Margret’s The Swinger has staved off tough competition from the fast-rising Sergio Leone to take over the top spot in our All-Time Chart from Angie Dickinson in Jessica. It’s generally a mystery to me why some films attract more attention than others, but even I have been surprised at Ann-Margret’s popularity ahead of, for example, more popular female stars of the 1960s such as Raquel Welch. The last time I did an all-time chart it was back in September 2022 when The Swinger placed fifth. For reasons that escape me, I only filled you on the Top Ten places rather than the Top 30, so now I’m amending that.

1 (5) The Swinger (1966). She sings, she dances, she shakes her booty. Who care about the storyline?

2 (2) Once Upon a Time in the West (1969). Awesome music, stunning opening and operatic finale and now regarded as the best western ever made.

3 (1) Jessica (1962). Widow ruffles female feathers in small Italian town.

4(6) Fraulein Doktor (1969). Suzy Kendall as German World War One spy leading Kenneth More a merry dance.

5 (3) The Secret Ways (1961). Richard Widmark in polished Alistair MacLean spy thriller set in Hungary. Early appearance by Senta Berger.

6 (4) Oceans 11 (1960). The Rat Pack slides into action, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin organising a heist in Las Vegas.

7 (8) The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl (1968). Daniele Gaubert as a sexy cat burglar.

8 (7) Pharoah/Pharon (1966). Polish epic about love and religion in ancient Egypt.

9 (-) Can Heiroymous Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humpe and Find True Happiness? (1969). Anthony Newley’s Fellini-esque musical ode to hiumself.

10 (-) Vendetta for the Saint (1968). Roger Moore as Simon Templar.

11 (10) Moment to Moment (1966). French-set Hitchcockian thriller starring Jean Seberg and Honor Blackman.

12 (-) Sisters (1969).Intense French drama starring Nathalie Delon and Susan Strasberg.

13 (-) Subterfuge (1968). Gene Barry uncovers a mole in British Intelligence with the help of Joan Collins.

14 (-) Stagecoach (1966). Ann-Margret again in remake of the classic John Ford western.

15 (-) Lady in Cement (1969). Frank Sinatra in his second outing as private eye Tony Rome coming to grips with gangster’s moll Raquel Welch.

16 (-) A House Is Not a Home (1965). Shelley Winters gives both barrels, acting-wise, as the madam of a notorious brothel.

17 (-) Fade In (1968). The drama Burt Reynolds preferred you didn’t see. A romance set around the filming of Blue (1968).

18 (-) Supercar (1961-1962) in color. Episodes of the much-loved Gerry and Sylvia Anderson British television series with added color.

19 (9) Father Stu (2022). Impressive performance by Mark Wahlberg as a priest,

20 (-) Baby Love (1969). Orphaned Linda Hayden is taken advantage of by a wealthy London couple and their son.

21 (-) Blonde (2022). Ana de Armas in potent reimagining of Marilyn Monroe’s life.

22 (-) Pressure Point (1962). Prison psychiatrist Sidney Poitier tries to understand racist Bobby Darin.

23 (-) Beat Girl/Wild for Kicks (1960). Teenager Gillian Hills mixes with the wrong crowd in London-based drama best known for a supporting cast including Christopher Lee, Adam Faith and Shirley Anne Field.

24 (-) Sodom and Gomorrah. (1962). Robert Aldrich Biblical epic.

25 (-) The Girl on the Motorcycle (1968). Singer Marianne Faithful heats up the screen in leathers and often a lot less.

26 (-) A Place for Lovers (1968). Faye Dunaway and Marcello Mastroianni in doomed romance.

27 (-) Deadlier than the Male. Richard Drummond reinvents Bulldog Drummond as he battles sadistic pair Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina.

28 (-) The Venetian Affair. Robert Vaughn as disgraced CIA agent caught up in nuclear threat.

29 (-) 4 for Texas (1963). Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Charles Bronson, Ursula Andress and Anita Ekberg. A cast to die for in this Robert Aldrich western.

30 (-) For a Few Dollars More (1965/1967). Clint Eastwood in the second of the Sergio Leone western trilogy. The Man with No Name meets The Man in Black.

The Magus (1968) ***

Mind-games and unreliable narrators give this considerable contemporary appeal. Throw in Anthony Quinn back in Zorba the Greek (1964) territory and Michael Caine as a lothario in the Alfie (1965) mold plus Candice Bergen (Soldier Blue, 1970) in preppy mode and you have nothing short of ideal casting.

Nicholas (Michael Caine), escaping a failed romance with Anne (Anna Karina) by teaching English at the Lord Byron School on a Greek island, becomes entangled with millionaire Conchis (Anthony Quinn). The action primarily takes place on Conchis’s fabulous villa stuffed full of art treasures. Conchis initially presents himself as a psychic who can summon up the past, namely in the shape of Lily (Candice Bergen) who talks and dresses like the young girl Conchis previously loved.

But every time Nicholas rumbles a ruse he is presented with a different version of Conchis’s self. These include a psychiatrist, conjurerer-up of the mythic past and Second World War collaborator. All of these identities carry sufficient personal truth for Nicholas to doubt his doubts.

Is he the victim of some elaborate game, one which caused the mysterious death of his predecessor? Is he smart enough to expose the millionaire as a dangerous fantasist? Is Lily genuinely falling in love with him and will this be yet another romance which makes him feel trapped? Is he actually put on trial in front of the entire village or is that all a dream? Is Conchis intent on stripping him of his core identity? And if so, why?

It should have been a cracking film but somehow misses the target. In theory, this is because Michael Caine is miscast. Caine is usually in charge and here is anything but. But actually, flipping over an actor’s screen persona, especially this cocky one, works. You might keep on wishing the real Michael Caine would stand up, and the fact that he doesn’t gives the film its strength.

Anthony Quinn initially overdoes the flamboyance to the point of being hammy – what magician is not – but you can see the point of that when he turns into the sober mayor forced to deal with invading Germans during World War Two and faced with making life-or-death decisions. The general consensus is Candice Bergen is the weak link, but I’d challenge that too since she is playing a role, that of an easily-duped actress.

The main problem is the picture is loaded down with flashbacks. And all to do with the various reinventions of Conchis’s life. In keeping with the film’s style you are never sure how much of this is true. Caine’s character has little to do except ask questions. (A modern film would have him chasing after physical clues to uncover a riddle.) So it becomes very stagey, with Conchis like a frustrated teacher with an aberrant pupil.

*Of all the misleading ads! This lost a fortune for Fox*.

John Fowles adapted his 300,000-word cult novel, removing the bulk of the philosophizing, but not realizing that what works in a book, especially in the hands of a gifted narrator, is not so easily translated onto the screen. For the adaptation of his previous bestseller The Collector (1965), director William Wyler brought in screenwriters to make the book work as a film.

Either screenwriters balked at the problems of dealing with a masterpiece or Fowles insisted on writing the screen version or director Guy Green (Pretty Polly/A Matter of Innocence, 1967) believed him the best person to reconstitute his work. Quinn, rather than Caine, has the movie’s pivotal sequence, forced into an action on a par with Sophie’s Choice (1982) and it might have helped if that element had been brought in sooner.

As it is, the movie is no more than interesting when it should have been fascinating.

The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968) ***

Everyone loves a legend and here we are treated (twice) to the creation of one. Surprising echoes of Vertigo (1958) with none of that film’s virtuosity and proving that New Hollywood is much the same as Old Hollywood.

No wonder Kim Novak (The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders, 1965) came out of semi-retirement – three years off-screen following a brief marriage to Richard Johnson. It’s the role of a lifetime, an actor’s dream, the chance to delight Oscar voters. She plays two parts – the deceased Lylah Clare, a Jean Harlow type, and Elsa Brinkmann (name changed to Campbell), the ingenue hired to play her in a film about the star’s life.

Basically, history repeats itself. Director Lewis Zarken (Peter Finch) who turned Lylah into a star and married her, repeats the process with Elsa, seduction not leading to marriage, but the same jealousy plays out and the same tragic ending. Black-and-white flashbacks fill us in on Lylah, but most of the picture is Elsa’s transformation from mousy, bespectacled brunette full-blown blonde movie star.

Initially, Zarken is not smitten, but when Elsa manages an uncanny emulation of Lylah’s voice and it transpires she has the exact same measurements, he changes his tune and embarks on his own comeback. Elsa takes to stardom pretty fast, humiliating gossip queen Molly Luther (Coral Brown), and, for no apparent reason, takes to striding around the garden topless except for bra.

As Zarken grows more attached to Elsa it’s soon apparent he believes the woman he’s directing is Lylah re-born. There’s some mystery about Lylah’s death but no mystery about how this new relationship will work out, other than that Zarken will be tormented by jealousy as before.

As you might expect, Zarken duels with studio boss Barney Sheean (Ernest Borgnine), and there’s some interesting insight into negotiation techniques. The scenes showing how a movie is made are among the best, especially how a director finds alternatives when sequences don’t work. There’s temptation everywhere, drugs, alcohol and sexual experimentation if that’s your bag, a lesbian acting coach (Rossella Falk) coming on strong.

Of course, Elsa soon suspects it’s the character she’s playing – as in Vertigo – that everyone is falling in love with not the person she is.

But while Elsa can impersonate the great actress’s features and voice she lacks her acting talent, making her even more vulnerable to her own insecurity. “You’re an illusion, without me you don’t exist,” barks Zarken after Elsa makes the mistake of assuming he has real feelings for her instead of just bedding her as he would any powerless woman. And the idea that she would forsake a promising career for motherhood infuriates him, though, of course she could be making that up as a means of holding him to ransom.

For the most part, Novak, very under-rated as an actress and seen too often as just glamorous, is excellent, but she is hindered by too speedy a transition, from shy young woman to someone giving full throttle to her emotions, and, at one point, required to throw her head back in a maniacal laugh. Peter Finch (The Red Tent, 1969) is spot-on, exuding control, but very capable of the spiteful exhibition of power.

The real problem is that there’s little mystery as to how this will unfold. Most of what we see in Hollywood is what we expect, and although it’s not as camp as Valley of the Dolls (1968) at times comes perilously close. It’s often very stagey. Director Robert Aldrich (Flight of the Phoenix) had previously taken a pop at Hollywood in the The Big Knife (1955) and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962) but it’s such a difficult subject matter that virtually every avenue explored appears cliché.

Take it as camp and you’ll be satisfied, but don’t go looking for anything deeper.

No idea what’s going on with this “we’re sorry” business below.