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In 1961, Hollywood was a casino. The advent of the roadshow and the lure of repeating the big-budget successes of Ben Hur (1959), Around The World In 80 Days (1958), Bridge On The River Kwai (1957) and The Ten Commandments (1956) had seen every studio sink colossal sums on the roll of the box office dice. United Artists had lavished $4m on three-hour epic Exodus about the formation of Israel with a star Paul Newman who had no blockbusters to his name. Columbia had sanctioned an even bigger budget, $5m, for war film The Guns Of Navarone.

Two studios were backing the directorial debuts of two major stars whose inexperience had seen both budgets soar. United Artists was part-funding John Wayne’s The Alamo while Paramount had too much riding on Marlon Brando’s western One-Eyed Jacks. MGM had a roadshow re-make of the 1931 Oscar-winner Cimarron with Glenn Ford and unknown Maria Schell in the leads. Even Disney had been tempted into the big-budget arena with Swiss Family Robinson, its most expensive live action movie.

None of these represented the biggest gamble of the year.

That honour, or should it be folly, went to the three small distributors bidding the unheard-of sum of $500,000 (the equivalent of $5m now) for the US rights for a three-hour Italian black-and-white Italian arthouse film, La Dolce Vita, directed by Federico Fellini.  Despite the success in America in the 1950s of films like the Japanese Seven Samurai and Fellini’s previous La Strada and the current vogue for Swedish director Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal) and the French New Wave, the marketplace for arthouse movies was tiny.

For marketing, arthouse exhibitors depended on movies winning prizes at film festivals or being directed by someone who had previously won such a prize. In the past decade only a handful had ever made $1m. Even the most successful of the recent spate of British films, classed as imports, such as Room at the Top, driven by massive publicity from its Oscar nominations and wins, had barely hit the $2m mark. The most successful foreign-language art movie had been Roger Vadim’s And God Created Woman, which had grossed $7.5m. But that had starred Brigitte Bardot in a state of some undress.

Fellini was certainly a solid arthouse marquee name, having been awarded the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in successive years for La Strada (1956) and Nights of Cabiria (1957). In this he had matched the director credited with Italy’s post-war movie renaissance, Vittorio De Sica, who had also won Honorary Oscars (predating the Foreign Film category) for Shoeshine (1946) and Bicycle Thieves (1948). But Fellini was also aligned with the wider European New Wave, in 1958 forming a loose partnership with French directors Jacques Tati (M Hulot’s Holiday) and Robert Bresson (Diary of a Country Priest). Tati had his own company and had already invested in Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac and there had been talk of Fellini directing Tati in Don Quixote.

Filming of La Dolce Vita began in February 1959 with a cast including Marcello Mastroianni, Swedish actress Anita Ekberg and Anouk Aimee. Based on the performance of his previous films, producers Cineriz were dubious about its commercial prospects, but went ahead because it was a prestige picture. When the movie opened in Rome on St Valentine’s Day 1960, it astonished and shocked in equal measure.

The Catholic Church was outraged, demanding cuts, controversy boiling over when this met with refusal. Fellini had no truck with censorship. He said it was ‘dangerous in any way, in any occasion, because an artist cannot create under the sign of the guilty.’ Initial reaction to the movie was mixed; there was even a smattering of boos at the premiere. But some were already calling it a masterpiece.

Its opening weekend in Rome set a new house record of $16,000 (the equivalent to over $160,000 today) and then it broke every other conceivable record. In May it won the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Record giant RCA issued the popular theme tune by Nina Rota in Italy and in France a novelisation,  La Douceur de Vivre, was published complete with screenplay and soon it would appear as an illustrated book in Italy with shooting script and behind-the-scenes photos. Fellini was already planning his next film, The Trip, to star Ekberg and Sophia Loren. After six months, still in its two launch cinemas, La Dolce Vita was taking $15,000 a week in Milan and $9,000 a week in Rome. By October it was outgrossing most new releases. By year’s end it had hoisted a sensational $1.125m in Italy. The season’s box office champion by a considerable margin, it left big-budget-Hollywood films in the dust.

Columbia Pictures, which had sizeable investments in European films, was quickest off the mark, purchasing in August the rights to distribute the film in the UK, where a November release was planned, and the British Commonwealth. Convinced the film was too controversial to receive a Production Code Seal (the censorship system of the time) in the US, nor wishing to drag the company name through any subsequent scandal, Columbia did not bid for the American rights. And so it became the tale of three companies, Omat Corporation, Embassy Pictures and Astor Pictures, who all had the same aim, to reinvent themselves through entering the arthouse business.

They were a disparate bunch. Omat had made its name reissuing old American movies which had been withheld from television. An abortive move into film production with Brotherhood of Evil had almost bankrupted it. But it  had come back to buy a batch of Mexican films for distribution including Beyond The Limit starring Jack Palance and films with lurid titles like Never Take Candy From A Stranger. Embassy was run by Joe Levine, an independent distributor from Boston with an impeccable pedigree until he decided to relaunch himself in 1957 as a wheeler-dealer on a national scale, buying the rights to the Italian-made Attila the Hun starring Anthony Quinn and Sophia Loren and sending it into the American market on the back of more promotional dollars than it had cost to purchase. The next year, on a much bigger scale, he did the same thing with Hercules starring Steve Reeves, opening the movie with 600 prints nationwide in July. It made him a fortune. He followed up with films like Hercules Unchained and Jack the Ripper.

But soon he sensed a change in the marketplace and wanted to build up the prestige of his company away from the exploitation marketplace. ‘A small revolution is taking place,’ he told Variety, ‘among the major and independent circuit operations. Many large houses (cinemas) are converting to specialty and art policies. Demand for those films is growing. That’s for me.’

He bought a French film called The Law, directed by Jules Dassin, and changed the title to the more snazzy, and suggestive, Where The Hot Wind Blows. But by late 1960 he had another reason to be in hot pursuit of La Dolce Vita. He had missed out on Jules Dassin’s new movie Never On Sunday, at that time just opened in New York to record business. Astor Pictures was Embassy on a smaller scale, distributing exploitation films like The Girl in Room 13, Festival Girl and Yellow Polka Dot Bikini. The 30-year-old company had been taken over from the estate of Richard Savile in 1959 by a group including George Foley, financier and vice-president of City Stores Franklin Bruder, and Everett Crosby, brother of Bing and his business representative. Like Embassy, it had bigger aspirations, planning to release 10 features, the most in its history, including three produced by Crosby, in 1961. And then it saw an opportunity to crash the arthouse system.

Each company put in a bid in the region of $500,000 – an astronomical sum for an arthouse flick – for the rights. And each believed its bid had been accepted. In October 1960, Omat claimed it had a deal with Italian producers Cineriz for that sum plus a percentage and promptly announced the film on their distribution list.  Joe Levine contested that, saying he had a ‘handshake deal’ that later turned into a ‘verbal agreement’, binding under Italian law, in front of two witnesses, for roughly the same amount. Astor also claimed victory. But in December Cineriz took out an advert in Variety declaring all claims were premature, as the US rights had not yet been granted. To everyone’s surprise, on January 7 1961, Astor was announced as the winner with a contract to prove it. They had outbid the others, paying a whopping $625,000 for the privilege. Al Schwartzberg of Omat complained: ‘All I know is we had a deal and nobody had told me different.’ 

Even more astonishing, Astor planned to spend a further $400,000 – more than the lifetime gross of  most arthouse movies in the US – on promotion. Just to break even (since the cinema took about 50% of the gross), it would need to make $2.5m. In order to do that, it would have to achieve what had not been done since And God Created Women, guarantee an arthouse film a nationwide release. For a three-hour film foreign film without Brigitte Bardot, it was madness.

Astor wanted to start recouping their investment as quickly as possible. There was just one problem. That would prove impossible in the current system of releasing arthouse movies.

There were only a handful of such specialist cinemas, just 15 in New York, the biggest city in America. A New York opening was paramount, the gateway to the rest of the American arthouse circuit. The problem was every cinema was already tied up months in advance. Once a US distributor had bought a foreign movie it could take upwards of a year to find a New York cinema to release it in. And there had been a squeeze of another kind. The British New Wave was sweeping into America via the arthouse circuit and swallowing up screens wholesale. Since they did not require either dubbing or subtitles, British films were more accessible to American audiences, and cheaper for distributors.

Out of the approx 700 weeks playing time available annually at the New York cinemas, British films had accounted for 252 weeks (up from 154 the year before) compared to 85 weeks for French films and 45 weeks for Italian films. In addition, the majors had started to use arthouses for the kind of mainstream releases that would appeal to that particular audience. Even with arthouse films, there were trends, and there was a fear that American audiences would start to reject subtitled films altogether.

Never having played this game before, Astor decided to break the rules. To get round the Production Code, they simply did not apply for approval. Technically, they were within their rights; only films made by US companies were required to comply with the Code. After Room at the Top, which had not been passed by the Code, had won two Oscars earlier in the year, the exhibitors organisation (TOA) attempted to plug this loophole, aiming to force cinema owners to play only films passed by the Code.

Even United Artists, which had decided to release Never on Sunday through its subsidiary Lopert to avoid being besmirched by scandal, had submitted the film to the Code, receiving the worst rating. Still, there was no dodging the National Legion of Decency, at the time an extremely powerful force. The Legion passed its verdict whether you liked it or not. By normal standards, given the content, La Dolce Vita should have been condemned. But the Legion had a special category, for films with artistic merit dealing with dubious issues, and it decreed that La Dolce Vita was actually a moral film. Normally, Legion disapproval could boost a movie’s box office, since sophisticated arthouse movie buffs considered the Legion irrelevant. But that only worked if your target market was just the chic crowd. For Astor to have any chance of getting its money back, La Dolce Vita had to break out of the strictly arthouse market.

So Astor made a deal with the Legion. The Legion placed the film in a ‘separate classification’ and pronounced it was ‘animated throughout by a moral spirit.’ The Legion said, ‘The shock value is intended to generate a salutary recognition of evil as evil, sin as sin.’ Nonetheless, there were conditions. The film was cut by five minutes. Astor had to guarantee its advertising would have no prurient appeal, and, more important, agreed not to dub the film  – the Legion felt dubbing would make the film more accessible to a younger, impressionable, audience. To show the film only in subtitles was a massive gamble, especially for the intended wider audience. Then Astor broke the rules again. Initially, in order to gain the impact it felt the movie required, it intended opening it on two arthouse screens in New York rather than one. But, of course, that was just doubling the problem. So with no cinema immediately available, it opened at the 946-seater Henry Miller Theatre in New York, which had never, in its history, shown a film, only presented plays. Astor had to guarantee the theatre $100,000 before the theatre was converted at a cost of $50,000.

Now Astor went for broke, and decided to release La Dolce Vita as a roadshow film. This move – arrogant, impudent or plain crazy, take your pick – was met with universal incredulity. The roadshow was the preserve of big-budget American-made major-studio widescreen colour films like Ben Hur not for foreign black-and-white interlopers. (Two foreign films had gone down this route before, The Golden Coach in 1954 and Tosca in 1958, but both had met with dismal failure). The only thing La Dolce Vita had in common with Ben Hur was the running time.  In truth, Astor hedged its bets, also opening the film in the normal way in a proper cinema, the Gray Theatre, in Boston.

In New York, there was a reserved seat policy for each of the ten performances, one show per night plus matinees on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. In Boston, there were four shows a day, starting at 11am with barely 10 minutes between each performance, and reserved seats at the weekend. There was one instant advantage to going roadshow – putting up the prices (called ‘hardticket’).  How the film went out to other cinemas thereafter – if it went anywhere at all – would depend on which release technique proved more successful.

Astor embarked on the kind of campaign associated with a roadshow. There were adverts in newspapers and customised PR, it was featured in Life magazine and on television, a paperback tie-in was published and RCA issued six different singles of the theme tune. The trailer was unusual, a scattergun sequence of still images.

From the UK came encouraging news. As well as opening in December 1960 in the country’s most prestigious art house cinema, the 500-seater Curzon in Mayfair to a record gross of $11,000, La Dolce Vita had also opened at exactly the same time in a mainstream West End cinema, the 740-seater Columbia, the first time such a thing had occurred (called ‘daydating’ in exhibitor terminology), grossing $16,000. To put that in perspective, the week’s top film was Tunes of Glory which took $22,000 at the 1,400-seater Odeon Leicester Square. In January, each cinema was outgrossing the West End takes of Burt Lancaster in Elmer Gantry and William Holden in The World of Suzie Wong, which had opened in the same week as La Dolce Vita. At the Columbia it ran for 11 weeks, but was in its 18^th week at the Curzon (still grossing a healthy $6,600) by the time it opened in the States.

On the other hand, by now, unexpectedly, La Dolce Vita had competitors for that sophisticated in-crowd. Major studio Columbia, which had baulked at Never on Sunday, had  Mein Kampf scheduled to open in New York the same month. Jules Dassin’s Never on Sunday, which cost just $125,000 to make, was already doing terrific box office. On the one hand, the fact that a foreign film, equally controversial due to its content, was making money, could be construed as good. On the other hand, since the films appealed to the same audience, there were doubts whether the restricted marketplace could accommodate both. In addition, Never on Sunday had a far more popular theme tune, a singles chart-topper, the music acting as a powerful promotional tool for people who had never heard of the movie. And although the subject matter of Never on Sunday was prostitution, it was treated in such a light-hearted, charming, way that people fell in love with the film. And it had been made in English, not dubbed, so its appeal was instantly more universal.

Yet Never on Sunday demonstrated the pitfalls facing small distributors like Lopert and Astor. Black Orpheus, distributed by Lopert, had won the best foreign film Oscar in 1960, but the week it won was taken off the Plaza, the cinema owned by Lopert, because another film was pre-booked. There was just no flexibility in the arthouse industry. Like others in the market Lopert trod a fine line between art and profit. And in same month as Black Orpheus won the Oscar, Lopert announced twelve new films, more bread-and-butter than arthouse, including two horror films, one from Japan and one from Italy, and a Brigitte Bardot movie which would change its title from The Woman and The Puppet to the more sensational A Woman Like Satan. If a subsidiary of major studio United Artists could not survive in the arthouse field, what chance was there for an upstart like Astor?

Part Two tomorrow.

SOURCES: Brian Hannan, La Dolce Vita and the American Box Office Bust-Out (Baroliant, 2018) ; “Brian Hannan Revisits La Dolce Vita,” Cinema Retro, No 33.

I was riveted. This is one of the most extraordinary films I have ever seen. Highly under-rated and largely dismissed for not conforming to audience expectation that horror pictures should involve full moons, castles, darkness, fog, costumes, nubile females exposing cleavage, graveyards, a male leading character, shocks to make a viewer gasp, and the current trend for full-on gore. So if that’s what you’re looking for, give this a miss. Even arthouse critics, spoiled by striking pictures by the Italian triumvirate of Fellini, Visconti and Antonioni, were equally scornful. For the most part this takes place in broad daylight and set in an impoverished town in the Italian mountains, so primitive farmers till the soil with horse and plough and water is collected in buckets from the river.

One of the most striking aspects of the picture is that it creates its own unique universe. The townspeople are both highly religious and deeply superstitious, every traditional Catholic ceremony matched by old-fashioned ritual. Even some of the formal traditions seem steeped in ancient belief, sinners marching up a steep hill being scourged or carrying a heavy rock, in a convent the tree of a suicide covered in barbed wire. Less conformist notions include a wedding night rite involving shoving a scythe under the bed to cut short Death’s legs with the bedspread covered in grapes to soak up evil and discord arranged in the form of a cross to act as bait for bad thoughts and poison them before they can cause the couple harm. When the people run through the town brandishing torches it is not, as would be genre tradition, to set fire to a castle but to vanquish evil from the air.

It is filmed in austere black-and-white. In the Hollywood Golden Era of black-and-white movies lighting and make-up transformed heroines, rich costumes enhanced background. Here, if the heroine is wearing make-up it’s not obvious and the only clothes worth mentioning are a priest’s robes or a plain wedding dress. Otherwise the most arresting feature is the stark brightness against which the black-dressed figure of the heroine Puri (Daliah Lavi) scuttles about.

And although there are no jump-out-of-your-seat shocks, there are moments that will linger on in your mind, not least the heroine enduring a vicious extended beating from her father, an exorcism that turns into rape and the sight, Exorcist-fans take note, of a spider-walk, the young woman’s torso thrust up high on elongated arms and legs. Virtually the entire success of the picture relies on atmosphere and in places it is exquisitely subtle, the audience only realizes she has been raped by the look on her face.

The picture opens with a dialog-free scene of stunning audacity, foreshadowing the idea from the start that image is everything. Puri pierces her chest with a needle, cuts off a chunk of her hair to mop up the blood, throws the hair into the oven and rams the crisp remains into a loaf of bread. Not to be consumed as you might imagine, but as a tool of transport. Shortly after, having failed to seduce Antonio (Frank Wolff), she tricks him into drinking wine infused with the ashes of her bloodied hair, bewitching him, so she believes, to abandon his betrothed. In an echo of a Catholic sacrament she shouts, “You have drunk my blood and now you will love me, whether you want to or not.”  

The next morning when collecting water at the river she has a conversation with a boy Salvatore only to discover he has just died, his death blamed on her because his last words were a request for water, which she is judged to have denied him. She is beaten by women. She is feared by everyone in the village, her family tainted with the same brush, wooden crosses nailed to their door. She is not a ghostly figure, flitting in and out of the townspeople’s lives, an apparition tending towards the invisible, but fully formed, highly visible in her black dress and anguished expression, doomed by often vengeful action and forceful word.

Much of the film involves Puri being beaten or chased or captured, at one point trussed up like a hog. Attempts to exorcise her, whether pagan or Catholic, focus on getting the demon to speak his name. The ritual performed by heathen priest Guiseppe involves blowing on a mirror before taking on sexual aspects which culminate in rape. The Catholic version in a church in front of her family is primarily, as it would be in The Exorcist, a duel between the priest and whatever possesses her.

Movie producers took one look at the beauty of Palestinian-born Daliah Lavi (Blazing Sand, 1960) and thought she would be put to better use in bigger-budgeted pictures made in color that took full advantage of her face and figure and that stuck her in a series of hardly momentous movies such as The Silencers (1966) and Some Girls Do (1969). They should be ashamed of themselves for ignoring her astonishing acting ability. And much as I have enjoyed such films, I doubt if I could watch them again without thinking what a waste of a glorious talent. This is without doubt a tour de force, as she alternatively resists possession and adores the being who has taken hold of her mind. She dominates the screen.

The rest of the mostly male cast are dimmed in comparison, as if overawed by the power of her personality. Future spaghetti western veteran Frank Wolff (Once Upon a Time in the West, 1968) comes off best. Director Brunello Rondi (Run, Psycho, Run, 1968) is better known as a screenwriter for Federico Felllini. He made few films, none matching this in scope or imagination, perhaps as a result of the picture not receiving the praise it deserved. Even now it does not have a single critical review on Rotten Tomatoes.

One other point: you may have noticed that in general the proclivities of male horror characters are never in need of psychological explanation. Nobody considers that the Wolfman must have suffered from childhood trauma or that a vampire drinks blood because he was a rejected suitor. Strangely enough, as would be the case in The Exorcist and other instances of female possession, psychiatry is usually the first port of call and here all reviews I have read implicitly see Puri’s actions as based on sexual inhibition and rejection by Antonio. 

We are so conditioned to watching old movies on tiny screens it comes as something of a primal shock to see them in all their original glory. Most festivals lean towards the arthouse end of the cinema business so it’s all the more delightful to find an event that without apology concentrates on the mainstream. Widescreen Weekend takes place at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, England, and mostly in its Pictureville Cinema, the only venue in the country equipped to show Cinerama pictures in the original three-strip version which requires three projectors.

And while most other film festivals attract general movie lovers, this one appears to appeal in large part to those who have had something to do with the movie-making business or its technical side. Speakers might include, for example, Cinerama restoration specialist Dave Strohmaier or Kevin Brownlow, editor turned director, and among the audience you might find people like Keith Stevens from Australia, a former operations executive with Village Roadshow there, but who started out as a projectionist and regaled me with tales of projecting The Sound of Music (1965) in its original roadshow run.

There’s a limited number of movies that were made, mostly in the 1960s, either in Cinerama or 70mm, so the event has expanded to take in the earlier Cinemascope and the other versions of widescreen technology on which Hollywood depended as the marketing hook to bring back audiences from the all-encompassing maw of television in the 1950s. Later films whose directors understood the cinematic impact of 70mm are also added to the mix.

You are transported back to a time when screens were just enormous – this one is 51ft wide – and were curtained, and those curtains would not open (to the sides) until in typical roadshow fashion, a lengthy musical Overture, highlighting aspects of the movie’s music, had run its course. There is something quite sumptuous about sitting in a movie theatre staring at huge red curtains and waiting for the house lights to dim and the music to begin.

Roughly half-way through the movie itself, the curtains would close for an intermission, and before the picture restarted there would be more music, what was termed the Entr’Acte. Some DVDS of roadshows contain both Overture and Entr’Acte but there is a lightyear of difference between hearing them in your lounge and being exposed to them in a picture house built to bring out their best sound.

This is a homage not just to old movies but the old way of seeing a movie.

In previous years the programs have included Ice Station Zebra (1968), West Side Story (1961), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Ryan’s Daughter (1970), Khartoum (1965), a pair from William Wyler that could not have been more diverse – Ben-Hur (1959) and Funny Girl (1968) – This Is Cinerama (1952), and Carol Reed’s  The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965). Throw in a healthy helping of 1950s Cinemascope and Vistavision features and more contemporary pictures which embraced 70mm and you have the makings of an always satisfying weekend.

So one of the highlights is to see old favorites. This year we are being treated to the three-strip version of How the West Was Won (1962), your feet tapping immediately at the sound of the driving Alfred Newman score, David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago (1965), which was blown up from 35mm to 70mm for roadshow, one of the original Cinerama travelogs Seven Wonders of the World (1956) and Stanley Donen musical Funny Face (1957) in Vistavision. For many the highlight will be a showing of the forgotten La Fayette (1962) in 70mm, at the time the most expensive French movie ever made.

There’s a Hitchcock strand including the 70mm version of Vertigo (1958), Cleopatra (1962) in 70mm, John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) and Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1961).

The event takes place in two cinemas so there’s up to six movies a day. This year’s edition begins today and ends on Monday. I’ll be there. If you’re going and are a subscriber to my blog feel free to say hello.

Simple small-town morality tale, brilliantly told, with a quiet nod to The Blue Angel and Citizen Kane. Shy dirt poor farmer’s daughter Claudelle Inglish (Diane McBain) after falling for the handsome Linn Varner (Chad Everett) expects to be married when he returns from his Army stint. But he rejects her. Initially, devastated, keeping all his letters and the dancing doll she had won with him at a fair, she decides that lying in bed all day and staring at the ceiling is not going to work. So she smartens up her frumpish look with lipstick and turns her simple wedding dress into a more attractive outfit.

She discovers that the boys are so desperate to come calling on this new-look creature that they will bring presents to every date, ranging from the biggest box of candy in the shop to a pair of red shoes. Encouraging her determined manhunt, dissatisfied mother Jessie (Constance Ford), who has endured twenty years of broken promises throughout marriage to hardworking Clyde (Arthur Kennedy),  beseeches her to go after a rich man. Luckily, there is one within the vicinity, the widowed S.T. Crawford (Claude Akins) who happens to be their landlord. Crawford tries to bribe Clyde with free rent and other benefits to put in a good word, but to no avail, the father believing that true love cannot be bought and, furthermore, will alleviate abject poverty.

Claudelle bluntly rejects Crawford as “too old and too fat” but takes his present anyway and, under pressure, agrees to go for a ride with him without allowing him to stop the car. Dennis Peasley (Will Hutchins), eldest son of a store owner, believes he is the front runner, deluging her with gifts, naively believing she is his sweetheart until he realizes he is in competition with a horde of other local boys, including his younger brother, and outsider Rip (Robert Colbert). Jessie, seeing the prospect of a rich husband slip away, embarks on an affair with Crawford. Soon, Claudelle has the entire male population in the palm of her hand, piling up presents galore. However, tragedy, in the way these things go, is just round the corner.

What struck me first was the subtlety. Nothing here to bother the censor, beyond the immorality on show, and despite Hitchcock breaking all sorts of sexual taboos with Psycho the year before. This isn’t an all-hot-and-bothered essay like the previously reviewed A Cold Wind in August or a picture that pivots on twists-and-turns like A Fever in the Blood, both out the same year. It took me a while to work out Claudelle was actually having sex with all these guys.

The initial shy girl blossoming under the first blush of love is done very well, a gentle romance ensuing, Claudelle still withdrawn in company, agreeing to an engagement even though Linn cannot afford a ring, waiting anxiously for his letters, adoring the dancing doll,  paying off a few cents at a time material for a wedding dress. It’s only after she receives a Dear John (Dear Jane?) letter that it becomes clear, though not crystal clear, that sex has been involved because that word is never spoken and that action never glimpsed. Only gradually do we realize that present-givers are being rewarded, and as her self-confidence grows she is soon able to pick her own presents.  One look is generally all it takes to have men falling all over themselves to give her what she wants, which is, essentially, a life where promises are not broken. But the closest she gets to showing how much she is changed from her original innocent incarnation is still by implication, telling a young buck she is “pretty all over.”

I was also very taken with the black-and-white cinematography by Ralph Woolsey. The compositions are all very clear, but in the shadows Claudelle’s eyes become glittering pinpoints. The costumes by Howard Shoup won an unexpected Oscar nomination, his third in three years. Veteran director Gordon Douglas (Them!, 1954) does an excellent job of keeping the story simple and fluent, resisting all temptations to pander to the lowest common denominator while extracting surprisingly good performances from the cast, many drawn from Warner Brothers’ new talent roster.

Diane McBain (Parrish, 1961) handles very well the transition from innocence to depravity (a woman playing the field in those days would be tagged fallen rather than independent) and holds onto her anguish in an understated manner. In some senses Arthur Kennedy (Elmer Gantry,1960) was a coup for such a low-budget production, but this could well have been a part he was born to play, since in his movie career he knew only too well the pain of promise, nominated five times for Best Supporting Actor (some kind of record, surely) without that nudging him further up the billing ladder. His performance is heartbreaking, working his socks off without ever keeping head above water, repairs getting in the way of promises made to wife and daughter, kept going through adoration for his wife.

Constance Ford (Home from the Hill, 1960) is heartbreaking in a different way, scorning her loving husband and dressing like her daughter in a bid to hook Crawford.  Television regular Claude Akins is the surprise turn. In a role that looked like a cliché from the off – i.e. older powerful man determined by whatever means to win the object of his desires – he plays it like he was auditioning for The Blue Angel, hanging on every word, being twisted round her little finger, demeaning himself as he is made to wait, sitting downcast outside the Inglish house like an rejected schoolboy. Of the younger cast, Will Hutchins was Sugarfoot (1957-1961), Chad Everett was making his movie debut, and Robert Overton had appeared in A Fever in the Blood (1961). Leonard Freeman (Hang ‘Em High, 1968) wrote the screenplay based on the Erskine Caldwell bestseller.

And where does Citizen Kane come into all this? The dancing doll Claudelle won at a fair when dating Linn is something of a motif, never discarded, as if a symbol of her innocence, and in close-up in the last shot of the film.

Taking a Biblical tale as a starting point veteran director Raoul Walsh (White Heat, 1949) stirs up heady brew of intrigue, rebellion, politics and romance. Returning home victorious, King Ahasuerus (Richard Egan) discovers his wife Queen Vashti (Danielle Rocca) has committed adultery and that his minister Klydrathes (Renato Baldini) has been squeezing the people blind with punitive taxes, hanging them for non-compliance.

Casting his wife aside, the king seeks a new bride. Since he has conquered all the known world except Greece, marriage to make a political alliance is not an option, so, given women are treated as mere chattels and the king is all-powerful, all the likely virgins are rounded up including Hebrew Esther (Joan Collins) on her wedding day.

Her husband-to-be Simon (Rik Battaglia) kicks off, attacks Klydrathes and becomes a wanted man. The queen’s lover and the king’s chief minister Prince Haman (Sergio Fantoni) attempts to fix the bridal selection, inserting his hardly-virginal choice Keresh (Rosalba Neri) into the proceedings while attempting to murder clear favorite Esther. When that fails, Haman plots to usurp the crown. With the Hebrews facing possible annihilation, Esther is put in the position of giving in to the kind in order to save her people. As her serenity soothes the savage beast, her initial hate turns to growing attraction.

Meanwhile, Simon is on a rescue mission and Prince Haman cooks up a devilish plot that will see the Hebrews blamed for passing on military secrets to the king’s enemies. Naturally, all hell eventually breaks loose.

More a drama than a typical big-budget DeMille offering, with battles taking place off-screen action is limited to a few chases and skirmishes. There is a fair amount of sin on show what with a tribe of concubines at the king’s disposal, a whipping, a striptease by Vashti in a last gasp attempt to win back the king, some very seductive dancing routines by female slaves who, at times, look as if they were coached by Busby Berkeley. Substantial amounts appear to have been spent on costumes and production design, so historical atmosphere is well captured. Once you realise there’s not going to be any kind of big battle or major action center piece common to the Biblical genre, it’s easy to sit back and enjoy the political machinations, the initial torment of Esther, introduced as a rebellious soul, and the king, more at home with soldiers, shaking off his despondency at marital betrayal as he responds to Esther’s coaxing.

Richard Egan (300 Spartans, 1964) is a thoughtful king, showing very little temper, possibly because he doesn’t need to with everyone, beyond the conspirators, cowering in his presence.   Regal and stately suits him fine rather than the more common explosions were accustomed to seeing from people in that line of work. The top-billed Joan Collins (Seven Thieves, 1960) has a difficult role. Normally, you would expect expressions of passion or depths of anguish, but the rebellion she displays at the start soon disappears when she enters the palace and is helpless to change the situation except by, initially against her will, accepting the king’s desires. In that sense, her portrayal is understandable but the understated performance gets in the way of a woman who is supposed to be devastated by the loss of her husband and then trapped by the needs of her people into making the marriage.

Sergio Fantoni (Von Ryan’s Express, 1965) excels as the spurned lover and Rik Battaglia (The Conqueror of the Orient, 1960) as the schemer. Rosalba Neri (Top Sensation, 1969) and Danielle Rocca (Behold a Pale Horse, 1964) both make striking appearances. Look out also for Gabriele Tinti (Seven Golden Men, 1965).

It was the end of the line for Irish actor Dennis O’Dea (The Fallen Idol), making his final film, and also, at least temporarily, for Joan Collins. She was coming to the end of her seven-year Twentieth Century fox contract but fell out with the studio after being rejected for Cleopatra, and on the evidence here you can see why. She been top-billed in The Sea Wife (1957) above Richard Burton and The Wayward Bus (1957) above Jayne Mansfield, but gradually fell down the pecking order. After leaving Fox, she only made five more films during the decade. Director Raoul Walsh made only another two. 

Setting aside the Biblical angle and need to inject as much sin as the censor at that time would permit this works very well as a historical drama filled with political intrigue, twisting on the morality/sin axis, and with a terrific battle scene. The set up is superb. Bera (Anouk Aimee), Queen of the titular twin cities, allows Hebrew leader Lot (Stewart Granger) to settle along the River Jordan in order to provide a buffer between her kingdom and the marauding Elamite tribe. Meanwhile, her treacherous brother Astaroth (Stanley Baker) intends using the Elamites to dethrone his sister.

The Sodom-Hebrew arrangement is ugly from the start. Sodom owes its wealth to salt. And it relies for its salt mining and processing on thousands of slaves, literally worked to death, corpses piled high on wagons and dumped in the desert. The Hebrews abhor slavery. But having wandered in the desert for so many years, Lot is in no position to argue and assumes that his people can live peacefully enough alongside the heathens, even accommodating Sodom to the point of returning fleeing slaves.

In fact, in agreeing to live in such close proximity to Sodom, Lot is already in the throes of seduction. In what appears a gesture to seal the deal, Bera presents Lot with her chief female slave Ildith (Pier Angeli), a cunning move designed to undermine Hebrew culture. Naturally, Lot grants Ildith her freedom but her presence creates disharmony, Melchior (Rik Battaglia) leading the dissenters. Astaroth seduces both of Lot’s daughters Shuah (Rosanna Podesta) and Maleb (Claudia Mori).

Eventually, of course, the Hebrews succumb to many of the pleasures of Sodom, especially after discovering their own salt deposits, which instantly make them wealthy, while Astaroth continues to stir up trouble. Lot the politician is more to the forefront than Lot the good and faithful servant, ignoring the slavery for the sake of peace. However, politics remain a sticky maneuver and, in the end, of course, it is God who intervenes, smiting the wicked.

There are surprising depths to the story. Ildrith initially rejects Lot’s overtures of marriage on the grounds that it will diminish his goodness. In trying to improve living conditions for the Hebrews, Lot does the opposite, jeopardizing their beliefs, his actions rendering virtually invisible the distinctions between the opposing cultures, especially when he is up close to the dancing female slaves and men being burned alive on a wheel. Queen Bera is a political genius, skilled at keeping her enemies closer, not just taking advantage of Lot’s weakness but ensuring that Astaroth never catches her cold.

Stewart Granger (The Secret Partner, 1961) is surprisingly good as the Hebrew leader. He might lack the physical presence of the likes of Charlton Heston but proves himself no mean adversary in the various action scenes, two fights with Astaroth for example, the battle itself and in quickly dealing with dissent in the ranks. It would never have occurred to me that a shepherd’s crook was much of a weapon, but in Granger’s hands it proves very effective. He knows he is being seduced, first by Ildith, and then by Sodom, but, as a human being rather than figure of spirituality, is powerless to stop it.  Stanley Baker (The Guns of Navarone, 1961) as the queen’s treacherous brother, on the other hand, just looks shifty and mean throughout.

Anouk Aimee (The Appointment, 1969) is excellent as the politically astute monarch, and save for God’s intervention, would have got the better of everyone.  Pier Angeli (Battle of the Bulge, 1965) is touching, initially angry at being cast out of Sodom, gradually warming to Lot, but only too aware that in succumbing to her charms he might spoil his own innate goodness, like a femme fatale only too wary of her own powers.  Rosanna Podesta (Seven Golden Men, 1965) is good in a supporting role as is Scilla Gabel (Colossus of the Arena, 1962) in a smaller part. Look out, too, for Gabrielle Tinti (Esther and the King, 1960), later best known for his marriage to Laura Gemser of the Black Emmanuelle series, and future spaghetti western anti-hero Anthony Steffen (Django the Bastard, 1969).

Robert Aldrich (The Last Sunset, 1961) creates an excellent addition to the genre, the pace of the drama, with various storylines, never slacking. As a historical picture this aims higher than mere pulp where sexiness and torture are the audience hooks. His battle sequence is outstanding, unusual in that the balance of power shifts throughout, in part through treachery, between the participants. Ken Adam (Dr No, 1962) headed up the production design and Wally Veevers (The Guns of Navarone, 1961) among the half dozen experts contributing to the special effects. Screenplay by Hugo Butler (The Legend of Lylah Clare, 1968) and Giorgio Prosperi (The Golden Arrow, 1962) from the novel by Richard Wormser. Sergio Leone helped out in the direction.

You could not have a more explosive start. In the wake of the seismic slap Sidney Poitier delivered to an arrogant white man in In the Heat of the Night (1967) heist mastermind McClain (Jim Brown) bursts out of the traps by: picking a down-and-dirty knuckle-duster of a fight with hardman Bert (Ernest Borgnine); ramming a limo driven by Harry (Jack Klugman); locking technical wizard Marty (Warren Oates) in an electronic cell; and bracing marksman Dave (Donald Sutherland). It turns out these are all auditions for a $500,000 robbery from the Los Angeles Coliseum during a football match. Nonetheless, the point is made. Despite explanation for the ferocity it scarcely masks the fact that here was a hero unwilling to take any crap from anybody.

The Split follows the classic three acts of such a major crime: recruitment, theft, fall-out. Gladys (Julie Harris) sets up the daring snatch, entrusting a down-on-his-luck McClain –   attempting reconciliation with divorced wife Ellie (Diahann Carroll) – with pulling together a gang with particular sets of skills. The clever heist goes smoothly, the cache smuggled out in a gurney into a stolen ambulance, itself hidden in a truck, and spirited away to Ellie’s apartment until the ruckus dies down.

But someone else has a different plan. The stolen money is stolen again. McClain, responsible for its safekeeping, is blamed for its loss, while he suspects all the others. Adding to the complications is a corrupt cop (Gene Hackman). So it’s cat-and-mouse here on in, McClain dodging bullets as he attempts to clear up the mess, find the loot and dodge the cops.  

The title refers to the way the way the money is intended to be shared out but it could as easily point to a film of two halves – recruitment/robbery and fall-out. The first section has several stand-out moments – a split-screen credit sequence, Marty’s desperate strip inside the cell to prevent the electronic door closing, an asthma attack mid-robbery, the beat-the-clock element of the heist, Dave’s targeting of tires to create the massive gridlock that facilitates escape. Thereafter, the tension grows tauter, as the thieves fall out with murderous intent.

One of the joys of the picture is watching a bunch of actors on the cusp. Jim Brown (The Dirty Dozen, 1967) was in the throes of achieving a stardom that would soon follow for Hackman (Bonnie and Clyde, 1967), Sutherland (also The Dirty Dozen) and Oates (Return of the Seven, 1966). Brown is tough and cynical in the Bogart mold, a loner with lashings of violence in his locker.

Of the supporting cast, Sutherland’s funny maniac, complete with mordant wit, is the pick and he has the movie’s best line (“The last man I killed for $5,000. For $85,000 I’d kill you seventeen times.”) Hackman reveals an intensity that would be better showcased in The French Connection (1971) and Borgnine, Oscar-winner for Marty (1955), reverts to his tough guy persona. Having said that, you only get glimpses of what they are capable of.

Making the biggest step-up is Scottish director Gordon Flemyng whose last two pictures were Dr Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks’ Invasion Earth A.D. 2150 (1966). He helms the picture with polish and confidence, allowing the young bucks their screen moments while wasting little time in getting to the action and pulling off a mean car chase.

Crime writer Richard Stark (pseudonym of Donald E. Westlake) was careful to sell the rights to his books one-by-one so that no single studio could acquire his iconic thief Parker. That accounted for him being renamed Walker in Point Blank (1967), Edgar in Pillaged (1967), Macklin in The Outfit (1973), Stone in Slayground (1983) and Porter in Payback (1999) before finally appearing in original name in Parker (2013).

Great stuff.

Falling into the unusual category of Saturday afternoon matinee with a message, American cowboy Jim Sinclair (Hugh O’Brian) and sidekick Jim Henry (Tom Nardini) hightail it across the Atlantic to help the wildlife conservation efforts of game rancher Wing Commander Hayes (John Mills) who faces sabotage at every turn by another rancher Karl Bekker (Nigel Green). It combines Hatari!-style action and interesting storylines with Disney-animal-cuteness (a domesticated zebra called Pyjama Tops).

To get the conservation element out of the way – Hayes is concerned that letting animals roam free will result in overgrazing, turning the countryside into a dustbowl and endangering a variety of species. That Hayes is already talking about animals becoming extinct is way ahead of the common perception of Africa at the time. His plan is to round up the wild animals and fence them in, this kind of ranching preventing foodstocks becoming depleted. Bekker’s objection is that wild animals could carry infections such as East Coast Fever that will endanger his herd.   

Romantic interest is supplied by the already-engaged nurse Fay Carter (Adrienne Corri) while orphan Sampson (Charles Malinda) tugs at the heart strings. There is a fair measure of authenticity, glorious aerial shots of elephants and buffalo and other species, tribal dances by the Masai while the Sinclair/Henry rodeo-style method of catching the wild animals, with lasso rather than giants nets as in Hatari!, ramps up the excitement quotient, not least when Sinclair goes one-on-one with an enraged rhino. As you might expect, there is also ample opportunity for Sinclair to encounter a deadly snake and crocodile and it wouldn’t be an African picture without a stampede. 

Although villainous, Bekker is not without logical argument, not just the fear of infection which would decimate wildlife as much as soil erosion, but his own fears that taming wild animals would upset the balance of nature, and, on a personal level, the lack of respect for territorial rights. Of course, when push comes to shove, he resorts to rifle and fist to settle arguments.

Atmospheric, well-made, engaging and at times exciting, there is enough going on here to keep the picture ticking along – a hunt for a lost and bewildered Sinclair, questions about home, and the spectacular wildlife rodeo show. Unlike Born Free (1966) and any other animal picture for that matter although wildlife takes narrative center stage we are not subjected to countless cute four-legged specimens.

Hugh O’Brian (Ambush Bay, 1966) could be a latter-day Tarzan (or more correctly Jungle Jim since he is never in loincloth) but Scottish actress Adrienne Corri (The Viking Queen, 1967) is not a jungle adventuress but a principled counter to his easy manner. With every chance to rely on the stiff-upper-lip of an English war hero, John Mills (A Black Veil for Lisa, 1968) does anything but and turns in another engaging performance and if you are looking for a decent chap to deliver a conservation message he is definitely your man without being obsessively annoying. Nigel Green (The Skull, 1965) adds to his portfolio of interesting characters as a smooth-talking rough-edged bad guy while Tom Nardini (Cat Ballou, 1965) impresses. Look out for a fleeting glimpse of Hayley Mills at the start.

Director Andrew Marton, who had been involved in helming The Longest Day (1962) and second unit director of Ben-Hur (1959) and Cleopatra (1963), was something of a wild animal specialist with Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion (1965) in the kitty as well as a dozen episodes in total of television series Flipper (1965) and Daktari (1966). But he is at home as much with the human aspects of the story as with the animal. Producer Ivan Tors was a sometime rival to Walt Disney in the family film market with Flipper (1963) and Zebra in the Kitchen (1965) as well as small-screen Flipper and Daktari.

Mistakenly described on imdb as a TV pilot, this was a genuine feature film that happened to produce a television spin-off series Cowboy in Africa. It was screened for the trade on May 5, 1967, reviewed in the feature film section of Variety on May 17, and its box office figures can be tracked through Variety – opening in San Francisco and Kansas City in June, for example, Baltimore in July, Detroit in August and Boston and Louisville in September. In some situations it was double-billed with El Dorado (1967).

If only all message pictures were this much fun.