War – Page 5 – The Magnificent 60s

Army of Shadows/ Les Armees des Ombres (1969) ****

The antidote to the gung-ho World War Two picture. Scarcely any action and certainly none of the French Resistance swagger of The Train (1964) or the popular uprising of Is Paris Burning? (1965). Instead, sombre realism as Resistance leader Gerbier (Lino Ventura) dodges capture in a country pitted with collaborators. Nor is the underground portrayed in heroic fashion, their methods of revenge every bit as pitiless as the occupying forces.

Told in documentary style and based on the real-life exploits of characters taking the battle to the enemy, it’s backroom stuff, Gerbier organising his Resistance cell, meeting with other leaders. But his life is fraught with tension, as he attempts to dodge capture, with little success, it has to be said.

The film opens with Gerbier in captivity, an internment camp, where he is betrayed by an informer. While being transported to Paris, he escapes. His first action, revenge. With three colleagues, in an ordinary Marseille house where use of a gun will give them away, they strangle to death an informer. It’s not pretty.

Some join up for the risk like Jardie (Jean-Pierre Cassel), others maintain a more orderly, outwardly uninvolved, almost philosophic, lifestyle, like his older brother Luc (Paul Meurisse) who turns out to be the “Big Boss” of the Resistance, prominent enough to be transported by submarine to London to meet French leader-in-exile De Gaulle.

Little of what they organise works out. Betrayal a constant, not just from collaborators, but from a fellow member who could be compromised by having a vulnerable child or parent. When one of the Marseille stranglers, Felix (Paul Crauchet) is captured, and likely to crack under torture, Mathilde (Simone Signoret), Gerbier’s assistant, comes up with a daring plan involving Jardie giving himself up so he will be imprisoned with Felix and, at the pessimistic end of expectations, can provide him with a cyanide pill, while the most optimistic outcome is three members disguised as Germans infiltrating the jail and sneaking him away.

The plan fails and Gerbier is subsequently arrested, imprisoned, his execution only denied by a daring rescue attempt – the only kind of typical war picture action. But then Mathilde becomes a liability and is executed.

It’s a cold-blooded kind of film and depicts with far greater realism the endeavors – failure outweighing success of an underground operation during the Occupation. They don’t have the training for the job and their effectiveness is always open to question. Although British and American films might be filled with characters volunteering for dangerous missions, those are activities in isolation, not a commitment to a lifestyle that most likely would end in torture and death, endanger family and friends and leave you living in a sewer of suspicion. This presents an unvarnished truth. Not only are you expecting at any moment the Germans will pounce, there is a constant dread that the Resistance will be undone by their own actions, a plan too ambitious, someone cracking up, firing squad the most likely result. There’s nary a sniff of glory.

The big budget roadshow – The Longest Day (1962), Battle of the Bulge (1965), The Battle of Britain (1969) et al – while covering in some aspects the dangers of war were for the most part fist-pumping patriotic achievements, not this sneaking around, undercover stuff where missions were low-key, and the protagonists rarely in charge of their own destinies.

As far as French critics were concerned, the release timing was off, the film arriving in the wake of the 1968 riots and with De Gaulle in political trouble due to the Algerian situation. So it flopped with critics and audiences alike, and although it found a receptive audience in the U.K. in the late 1970s, it was denied release in the U.S. until 2006, by which point politics could not cloud opinion, and it earned rave reviews.

Lino Ventura (The Sicilian Clan, 1969) on top form is run close by Simone Signoret (The Deadly Affair, 1967). Jean-Pierre Cassell (Is Paris Burning?) comes closest to comic book heroics but even that is eventually reined in.

Everyone is helped by a screenplay by Joseph Kessel (The Night of the Generals, 1967), himself a member of the Resistance, that is light on melodrama and overwrought dialog and concentrates on getting done the job in hand, no matter how unsavory. Equally notable is the lack of grandstanding, of glorious finish, of the Hollywood convention of redemption.

Director Jean-Pierre Melville (Le Samourai, 1967) , also a Resistance fighter and with a hand in the screenplay, brings to bear film noir sensibilities and the cold-bloodedness that informed a previous oeuvre tending towards gangster pictures.

A very bold undertaking of the most dour kind that deserves appreciation.

The Train (1964) ***

Director John Frankenheimer (The Gypsy Moths, 1969) tackles the movie’s off-putting central issue straight on. At various points, characters argue whether it’s worth risking lives to save a bunch of paintings, even if they are by masters like Cezanne, Matisse and Manet and even if they do constitute the “pride of France.”

Had this been an ordinary heist, some master criminal conspiring to steal a trainload of paintings, the loot would not have been so contentious, as there was little chance of lives being lost. And in any case, thieves, in the act of stealing, do have to accept that they might fall prey to the cops or, as commonly, fellow members of the gang.

There was another point. Art, then and now, was commonly perceived as a high-class aspect of life, especially once it diverted away from easily understood portraits and still lifes into the specific styles of a Monet or Picasso. Working-class people had little interest in it and felt excluded from it.

So, from the French perspective, coming towards the end of World War Two, post-D-Day and Paris close to being liberated, upper-class German Col von Waldheim (Paul Schofield) decides to hijack the contents of a museum and take hundreds of masterpieces to Germany, ostensibly to fund the fightback against the invaders, but more likely just a final act of a conqueror who has enjoyed, rather than destroyed, the captured French capital.

At first, station master Labiche (Burt Lancaster), while complicit in minor sabotage, has no interest in becoming personally involved, especially with liberation so close and the threat of death lifting by the hour. Others take a much more patriotic stand over the paintings and endeavor in small ways to prevent the trainload’s departure and slow down its progress to Germany.

A whole battalion of German soldiers, including Von Waldheim, who has commandeered a train in the first place, and railway workers, are aboard. But not all are in agreement with their commander’s aims, his deputy Major Herren (Wolfgang Preiss) outspoken in his opposition to this waste of manpower and diversion of energy.

Von Waldheim blames Labiche for the minor sabotage and forces him to take personal control of the train. And it turns out Labiche is much more than a bureaucrat, and knows everything there is to know about driving a train and how the tracks operate. And eventually it becomes a game of cat-and-mouse between Labiche and Von Waldheim.

But before that occurs and the movie really takes off, there’s tons of stuff that come into the sub-genre of a sub-genre category, to the delight of a railway-spotter but the irritation of the general audience as we are treated to endless scenes of the train running through the country or stopping and starting and points being switched. All very fascinating in its own way, but tending to the tedious.

I’m a bit pernickety when it comes to the heist picture and I’m just wondering how the Resistance, in what appears to be very short notice (in real time the movie only lasts a few days) to arrange for railway stations and towns along the route to manage to make massive signs, some I would guess 30-40ft long, to convince Von Waldheim he is taking the route he expects rather than being diverted along a different track. And then to get word to the Allied forces not to bomb a train that had a whitewashed roof. Try explaining the contents to an Army that is trying to get on with winning the war and couldn’t be less concerned about what might be interpreted as misplaced pride.

You would imagine that if those actions could be so easily carried out that there might have been a proper Resistance troupe ready to assist in blowing up the engine, but safeguarding the coaches, along the way. As the toll of ordinary Resistance members mounts, it’s left to Labiche, decidedly not an art lover, to save the day.

And that’s when the film does take off. He’s the most enterprising of individuals, managing, despite being wounded, to single-handedly derail the train twice, even with soldiers hounding him over the hills and patrolling the track.

Burt Lancaster (The Gypsy Moths, 1969) is superb as the doubter who becomes committed to the cause. It’s easy to forget just what a range Lancaster has. There’s not every actor you would believe when he’s twisting wires in the complicated business of setting an explosion or hammering loose sections of track. To slip effortlessly from the nuance and privilege of Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard (1963) to the hard muscular graft of this is quite an achievement.

Paul Schofield (A Man for All Seasons, 1966) was far more virile than his later screen persona suggested. He was a classic example of why Hollywood raided Britain, especially for villains. Outside of the stage, he was virtually unknown, only two previous films in the 1950s, so he was a fresh face. He didn’t quite master the art of cinema, a bit prone to shouting and facial expressions verging on the combustible. But he proves an excellent and inventive adversary.

It’s another for the futility of war department and it’s ironic that it’s the mutinous Maj Herren rather than the French who decides lives are not worth losing over a bunch of paintings.

The action, when it finally emerges from the trainspotting, is excellent. But a bit of judicious pruning in the earlier stages would have worked wonders.

H.M.S. Defiant / Damn the Defiant! / The Mutineers (1962) ****

Had the audacity to take on Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) at the ticket wickets, beating that much-delayed production into cinemas in both Britain (where it was hugely successful, the ninth biggest film of the year) and the U.S. (less so). While in some respects young officer Lt Scott-Pagett (Dirk Bogarde) fits the Fletcher Christian template as the arrogant upstart, he is actually more of a Captain Bligh, mercilessly flogging his crew.

While Scott-Pagett is loathed by all, he is not the real cause of a mutiny. That had been a long time coming, thanks to inflation, poor conditions and a change in equipment that kept sailors at sea far longer than before.

Set in 1797 at the beginnings of the Napoleonic War, Captain Crawford (Alec Guinness) is tasked with escorting ships from Italy to England. He abhors unnecessary punishment and will even reduce the number of strokes to minimize human damage for a miscreant. But in taking his young son along on his first trip to sea, he becomes a hostage to fortune as Scott-Pagett finds any excuse to beat the lad.

Crawford has to tread carefully for his junior officer has powerful friends in London and been responsible for ensuring his previous commanders fell foul of the Admiralty. Even so, Scott-Pagett continually over-steps the mark, challenging his superior’s decisions, even disobeying orders, until he is finally brought to heel, humiliated and confined to quarters. That makes him even more determined to get his own way and bring down the captain. When Crawford is wounded in a battle with an enemy ship, Scott-Pagett takes over, only to unleash the wrath of the crew.

Never shying away from exposing the harsh life aboard – the actually mutiny sparked by a sailor forced to eat food riddled with worms – it also in mellower moments offers a fascinating glimpse of life at sea, the racing up the rigging, the dancing to a hornpipe. The sea battles, especially in the absence of CGI, are exceptionally well done, Captain Crawford’s men enduring terrific fusillades as they draw close enough to inflict damage.

Oddly enough, the situation only escalates into mutiny after a lesser rebellion, the equivalent these days of a strike, with a call for the entire Navy to down tools, fails to materialize. Rebel ideas clash with patriotism when the mutiny prevents delivery of vital information about a French invasion of England.

But the film also depicts the uneven power struggle. Sailors are completely impotent, on board a ship there’s no appeal to a higher power, while a captain hesitates before over-ruling an officer for fear it sends out the wrong signals about hierarchy and obedience to the general recruits.

The crux of the film is the duel between captain and lieutenant. Crawford can be undermined as long as his son is under the command of Scott-Pagett. Fellow officers would think twice about upsetting a man of such high breeding who has the ear of the powerful ashore.

The role was a very bold choice for British matinee idol Dirk Bogarde (The High Bright Sun, 1964). Having rid himself of his Rank contract, he had determined to act against type, a role as a sadistic officer, face twisted in constant sneer, was so far from the dashing heroes of previous films that there was a fair chance it would alienate his legion of fans as much as its predecessor Victim (1961) in which he played a blackmailed homosexual.

It was a bit of a swap for Alec Guinness who in Tunes of Glory (1960) had played the arrogant bully determined to bring down a superior officer. Both are excellent and the scenes between them are superb, one of the few times when two British actors of the highest caliber were affordable in a non-roadshow picture. But there’s also a rich supporting cast. Anthony Quayle (East of Sudan), more normally associated with officer roles, tones down the bombast to play an ordinary seamen, split between fomenting agitation and keeping his own supporters in check.

A bunch of rising stars making the most of the opportunity include Nigel Stock (The High Bright Sun), Ray Brooks (The Knack, 1965), Tom Bell (Lock Up Your Daughters!, 1969) and Johnny Briggs (The Devil-Ship Pirates, 1964) – all of whom would make bigger career strides in British television through, respective, Owen M.D. (1971-1973), Big Deal (1984-1986), Out (1978) and Coronation Street (1974-2006).

Lewis Gilbert (The 7^th Dawn, 1964) directed from a screenplay by Edmund North (Patton, 1970) and Nigel Kneale (Quatermass and the Pit, 1967) based on Mutiny by Frank Tilsley and completed by his son Vincent Tilsley. With a wealth of material, Gilbert proves adept at moving through the gears while not losing sight of the main drama.

Well worth a watch.

Father Goose (1964) ***

The African Queen with kids or 100 ways to see Cary Grant deflated. The penultimate movie in the screen giant’s career is a tame affair especially after the thrilling Charade (1963) and it may have prompted him to shy away from attempting to carry on a romance with a woman decades younger as occurs in his final offering Walk, Don’t Run (1966). When Trevor Howard (Von Ryan’s Express, 1965) effortlessly steals the picture with a performance that turns his screen persona on its head, you can be sure it’s not quite top notch.

In World War Two, Walter (Cary Grant), a hobo on water with a knack of stealing official supplies, is commandeered by British officer Houghton to operate a radio outpost on a Pacific island giving early warning on Japanese aircraft sorties. While there, he encounters Catherine (Leslie Caron), a French schoolmistress and consul’s daughter, in charge of a pack of female schoolkids.

Effectively, both relationships follow a pattern of verbal duels, initially with Walter losing them all as he is kept on a leash by Houghton and then is beaten by teacher and children. The kids steal his hut, his bedding, clothes (shredded and sewn to fit young girls), food, booze and sanity.

The straight-laced Catherine is happiest when straightening a picture. Walter only regains some of his standing when it transpires he has practical skills like catching fish, repairing a boat and encouraging to talk a girl who has been traumatized by war into temporary dumbness. Naturally enough, any time Leslie warms to him he does something off-putting. But gradually, of course, they get to know each other better, romance is in the air, and secrets are revealed, his hidden past laughable.

It’s a series of set pieces, designed to make the most of Cary Grant’s deftness with physical comedy, he can pull faces with best of them and long ago mastered the double take and the pratfall. So there’s little here you’ve not seen before. And the trope of man and woman trapped on a desert island – most recently probably best exemplified given its inherent twist in Heaven Knows, Mr Allison (1957) – has long been over-used and this addition to the sub-genre suffers from lack of originality.

The little blighters are less an innovation than a complication (or perhaps a multiplication) but they do have the advantage of reducing him to impotence, since he can hardly deal with their transgressions the way he might Catherine. And of them is smart enough to realize that he runs on booze and rations this out.

All in all it’s gentle stuff, nothing too demanding, redemption neither an issue nor an option. Cary Grant is an unusual species of top star in that, as with Rock Hudson and a few others, he didn’t mind being the butt of all the jokes, and in some respects sent up his screen persona.

Keeping Cary Grant in check might well be a sub-genre of its own, so Leslie Caron (Guns of Darkness, 1962) is inevitably limited in the role, primarily a foil/feed for the Grant, the part not not quite of the caliber of the roles played by actresses in his thrillers such as like Grace Kelly (To Catch a Thief, 1965), Eva Marie Saint (North by Northwest, 1959) and Audrey Hepburn in Charade.

As I mentioned, Trevor Howard is the surprise turn, and steals the show. Ralph Nelson (Soldier Blue, 1970) directs from s script by Peter Stone (Charade), Frank Tarloff (The Double Man, 1967) and S.H Barnett, a television writer in his only movie. I’ve clearly under-rated the script because it collected the Oscar.

Perfectly harmless and enjoyable, if a tad obvious.

Judith (1966) ***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Worth it for Sophia Loren’s stunning performance.

Play Dirty (1969) ***

Heroism is a handicap in this grimly realistic, brutally cynical, ode to the futility of war. David Lean would have struggled to turn this stone-ridden desert into anything as romantic as his Lawrence of Arabia (1962) though he might have recognized the self-serving glory-hunting superior officers.

There’s a murkiness at the outset that is never quite clarified. You could easily assume that the long-range bunch of saboteurs led by Captain Leach (Nigel Davenport), with the peculiar habit of losing new officers, was involved in something more nefarious rather than doing its utmost to disrupt Rommel’s supply lines in North Africa during World War Two.

Brigadier Blore (Harry Andrews) appoints raw officer Captain Douglas (Michael Caine) to take charge of the next mission – a 400-mile trek to blow up a fuel dump. Col Masters (Nigel Green), in overall charge of the commandos, bribes Leach to ensure Douglas comes back alive. Blore is using this small unit as a decoy before deploying a bigger outfit to complete the mission with the singular aim of snaffling the glory for himself.

Leach proves insolently disobedient, forcing Douglas at one point to draw his weapon on his crew. But when it comes down to a question of heroism vs survival, Leach takes control at knifepoint, preventing Douglas going to the aid of the larger outfit when ambushed by Germans.

It’s mostly a long trek, somewhat bogged down by mechanics of desert travel. You’ll be familiar with the process of rescuing jeeps buried in sand dunes and of personnel sheltering from sandstorms, so nothing much original there. What is innovative is the terrain. Stones aren’t conveniently grouped together, edges softened by time, as on a beach. They’re jagged- edged and less than a foot or so apart so as to more easily shred tires. So there’s a fair bit of waiting while tires are replaced.

Some decent tension is achieved through sequences dealing with mines – threat removed in different fashion from Tobruk (1967) or, for that matter, The English Patient (1996) – and in crawling under barbed wire. But that’s undercut by the sheer brutality of the supposed British heroes slaughtering an Arab encampment and viewing a captured German nurse as an opportunity for rape.

A couple of twists towards the end raise the excitement levels but it’s less an action picture than a study of the ordinary soldier at war. Captain Douglas, the only character worth rooting for, soon loses audience sympathy by foolish action and behavior as criminal as his charges.

A few inconsistencies detract. For a start, there’s no particular reason to assign Douglas to this patrol. Primarily a backroom boy, he’s put in charge because he was previously an oil executive. But it hardly takes specialist knowledge to lob bags of explosives at oil drums. And the ending seems particularly dumb. I can’t believe Douglas and especially the canny Leach, both dressed in German uniforms, would consider walking towards the arriving British forces waving a white flag rather than stripping off their uniforms and shouting in English to make themselves known to the trigger-happy British soldiers.

And a good chunk of tension is excised by the bribery. Why not leave the audience thinking that at any moment the bloody-minded Leach would dispatch an interfering officer rather than offering him a huge bounty (£75,000 at today’s prices) to prevent it?

It suffers from the same affliction as The Victors (1964) in that it sets out to make a point and sacrifices story and character to do so. That individuals will be pawns in pursuit of the greater good or glory is scarcely a novel notion.

Having said that, I thought Michael Caine (Gambit, 1966) was excellent in transitioning from law-abiding officer to someone happier to skirt any code of conduct. There’s no cheery Cockney here, more the kind of ruthlessness that would emerge more fully grown in Get Carter (1971). Nigel Davenport (Life at the Top, 1965) adds to his portfolio of sneaky, untrustworthy characters. Equally, Harry Andrews (The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1968) has been here before, the kind of upper-class leader who behaves like a chess grandmaster.

In his first picture in half-a-decade Andre de Toth (The Mongols, 1961) produces a better result than you might expect from the material – screenplay courtesy of Melvyn Bragg (Isadora, 1968) and in her only known work Lotte Colin, mother-in-law of producer Harry Saltzman – and creates some exceptionally tense scenes and the occasional stunning image.

Anti-war campaigners line up here.

The Extraordinary Seaman (1969) **

It wouldn’t be the first time that a director, disgruntled by his fee or some snit with the producer, was wrong in his summation. But John Frankenheimer’s pronouncement that it was “an absolute disaster from beginning to end” is only slightly off the mark. It only really comes apart mid-section when you discover what makes the British Lt. Commander Finchhaven (David Niven) anything out of the ordinary.

Up till then it resembles a decent enough riff on The African Queen (1951), the bearded Finchhaven perennially drunk though not wild-eyed and disorderly like Humphrey Bogart, and take your pick from Lt Krim (Alan Alda) or Jennifer (Faye Dunaway) as the character trying to keep him on the straight and narrow. Instead of being sharp-tongued, Jennifer is a sharp-shooter.

And if anyone’s in the habit of communing with God, it appears to be the British captain. And it’s a bit more upscale, Finchhaven in charge of a ship – the oddly named HMS Curmudgeon, which should give you a hint all is not fine and dandy – rather than a small steamboat.

But he’s stranded on a Philippine island towards the end of World War Two when rescued by four U.S. Marines who themselves have been uncommonly detached from their vessel during a lifeboat exercise in the fog.

But there is more than enough talent assembled to keep any seagoing yarn shipshape. You wouldn’t discount an immediate return to form, despite flopping with The Fixer (1969), by director John Frankenheimer, a huge name after The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Seven Days in May (1964) and Grand Prix (1966) though you might have worried a tad since comedy did not appear to be his forte.

David Niven, whose war movie credentials were still held in high regard after The Guns of Navarone (1961), had resurrected a fading career with unexpected hits The Impossible Years (1968) and Prudence and the Pill (1968) while Faye Dunaway was riding extremely high in Hollywood following the double whammy of Bonnie and Clyde (19670 and The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) and a pre-Mash Alan Alda was a rising star.

Cut off from contact with either British or American forces, and unaware of Hiroshima turning the tide in the Far East, Finchaven and Co (Krim has three buddies) set off in pursuit of the enemy. If anybody is the odd one out at this point in proceedings, you would put your money on Krim who is liable to fall overboard with every turn of the wheel.

But before they get anywhere near the kind of action that typified The African Queen or the later The Sea Wolves (1980 – also starring Niven), there’s the big reveal. Krim is puzzled that the captain never seems to eat and continues to drink constantly despite no sign of any obvious supplies, doesn;t require sleep or to launder his uniform. Krim would never get his detective’s badge, his suspicions are only really raised when he discovers an old photograph of the captain, dated 1914, and when Finchhaven’s empty whisky bottle miraculously refills.

Finchhaven is a ghost. Yep. Have you ever? Nope. The dumbest notion ever to set sail or be funded by a major studio. His back story is worth the price of admission alone if you have your heart set on the so-bad-it’s-good fraternity. He died, wait for it, at the start of World War One, when he fell overboard drunk on this very ship and is condemned, so it would appear, to a hellish life of captaining the ship.

Well, after that, you just couldn’t care less.

You might have already begun to get itchy feet by the constant barrage of newsreel or stock footage interjections, presumably offered as social and/or comic commentary, or perhaps to augment the length which stands at a very neat 80 minutes, somewhat short of the standard feature. Or the fact that after demonstrating her shooting skills, Dunaway gets nothing more to do.

On the plus side, which is still stretching it a bit, David Niven makes a believable ghost, not existing in an imaginary world of his own making, behaving in every way as a normal ship’s master. And Alan Alda gives glimpses of his somewhat unique screen persona. This might have worked on paper – the source is a novel by Phillip Rock – but Frankenheimer makes a pig’s ear of translating it to the screen.

I’m still toying with giving this a one-star review.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Operation Crossbow (1965) ****

A clever mixture of detail and derring-do, World War Two picture Operation Crossbow (1965) – based on the true story of Allied infiltration of a German rocket factory – was a surprising hit at the British box office. The picture took a risk in keeping star George Peppard hidden from view for the first 28 minutes (top-billed Sophia Loren took nearly another 20 minutes to show up). Prior to their appearances the opening sequences were loaded up with a roll-call of British stars familiar with the genre in the vein of John Mills (Ice Cold in Alex, 1958), Trevor Howard (Cockleshell Heroes, 1955) and Richard Todd (The Dam Busters, 1955). Anthony Quayle, who puts in a later appearance, was also a war movie veteran after turns in Battle of the River Plate (1956), Ice Cold in Alex and The Guns of Navarone (1961).

Most war films relating to destroying a vital enemy base involved bombing (The Dam Busters, 633 Squadron, 1964), sinking (Sink the Bismarck!, 1962) or blowing things up (The Guns of Navarone, 1961). Operation Crossbow falls into the last-named category. The story breaks down into four sections: the discovery towards the end of the war by the British that the Germans are forging ahead with building V1 and V2 rockets; the recruitment and training of spies to parachute into Occupied France; a tense sequence abroad where complications arise; and, finally, attempts to obliterate the rocket plant.

Director Michael Anderson (The Dam Busters) switches through the genres from docu-drama to spy film to action adventure, further authenticity added by bold use (for a mainstream picture) of subtitles, all characters speaking in their native tongues. Various real-life characters are portrayed, among them photo reconnaissance expert Constance Babington Smith (Sylvia Sims), German aviatrix Hannah Reitsch (Barbara Rutting) and Duncan Sandys (Richard Johnson) who was on the British War Cabinet Committee.

Trevor Howard, at his irascible best, is the scientist pouring scorn on the idea of rockets – until they start raining down on London. Volunteers – Peppard, Tom Courtenay (Billy Liar, 1963) and Jeremy Kemp (who appeared with Peppard the same year in The Blue Max) – trained to spike the new weapon are recruited primarily on their language skills. Character is sketchy, Peppard designated a womaniser because he arrives in a taxi with two women.

But the operation has been assembled in such haste that not enough attention has been paid to the identities assumed by the agents. Courtenay’s character turns out to be wanted for murder. Peppard is accosted by his character’s divorced wife (Loren). So the mission faces immediate exposure. Although Loren’s role in terms of screen time amounts to little more than a cameo, she delivers a powerful emotional performance to a picture that could as easily have got by on tension alone. The harsh realities of war are shown in abundance. Twists come thick and fast in the second half, not least that Peppard’s face has become known, before the movie reaches a thrilling denouement.

Fail-Safe (1964) *****

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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