1960s film – The Magnificent 60s

Jungle Street / Jungle Street Girls (1961) ***

More social document than thriller. Two elements make it stand out. Critics pointed to the likes of kitchen sink drama Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) as exemplifying the British working class. Equally, when looking for a picture that identified the British criminal, critics and academics were more likely to point to Robbery (1967) and Get Carter (1971) where the villains demonstrated considerable intelligence, leadership and acumen.

Let’s get the social aspects out the way first. Petty thief Terry Collins (David McCallum) still lives with his parents. He argues with his father, is mollycoddled by his mother. There’s a fry-up for breakfast. The kitchen doubles as the dining area. Excitement is limited to winning the Pools (a football-based version of the current Lottery) and going to the cinema. His father (Thomas Collins) has worked all his life shifting sacks of potatoes (presumably in a market). But he’s not disillusioned with life. He’s brought up his family and can still spend time down in the pub.

Terry is a delusional gangster. But only a part-time one, making his living working in a garage, having chucked in his factory job. He thinks he can make a big score and run off to Europe to live the high life. He’s in love with stripper Sue (Jill Ireland) who doesn’t respond to his romancing. She’s taken to stripping because her lover Johnny (Kenneth Cope) is serving a one-year stretch for a jewel robbery.

People always seem to be laughing at Terry and he reacts violently. But he’s not the rough-tough dominant male he aspires to be. Three times he gets whacked about the face, twice by criminal colleagues, once by Sue.

Inadvertently, he’s killed an old man while robbing him. So the police are on his tail. Johnny’s been released from prison, reclaiming Sue, and wants to know what happened to his share of the loot from the jewel heist in which Terry was his partner. To compensate, Terry offers to set up a robbery of the safe at the strip club whose routines he has studied.

Once the safe has been opened, he clatters Johnny over the head, and scarpers with the cash, makes for Sue, and is astonished when she refuses to accompany him. Eventually, the police catch up and another deluded petty criminal bites the dust.

Initially, of course, the audience sides with our young lad, understands his need to escape the boredom of ordinary life that awaits. But, gradually, he provides little to root for.

Given the regular sequences of girls stripping, the running time is even leaner than usual. The heist has some considerable moments of tension especially when the watchman, bound hand and foot, inches along the floor to the alarm button, and then when Terry appears trapped before jumping out a window.

There’s nothing glamorous about the strip club either, Sue having to constantly ward off the unwelcome advances of owner Jacko (John Chandos) and every other customer who thinks a stripper is morally lax. Even though she’s kept herself for Johnny, he doesn’t believe her. Some girls know how to play the system, a new stripper not giving in to Jacko until he’s spelled out the financial benefits.

The seediness of the lower depths is depicted well and it’s not hard to see how young men and young women are easily snookered into this kind of existence when the alternative is so mind-numbingly boring.

David McCallum (Sol Madrid/The Heroin Gang, 1968) and real-life wife Jill Ireland (Cold Sweat, 1970) are both convincing, exuding surprising emotional depth. Kenneth Cope (Randall and Hopkirk Deceased/My Partner the Ghost, TV series 1969-1970) is on hand to show the young ingenue what it means to be a proper tough guy.

Charles Saunders (Danger on My Side, 1962) directs from a script by Alexander Dore (The Wind of Change, 1961) and Guido Coen (Baby Love, 1969).

More interesting as a character study than as a thriller.

Blue (1968) *****

Easily the most underrated western of all time. Few people saw it on release and precious few since. If remembered at all, it’s for reasons of movie trivia. Robert Redford got into a legal fight with Paramount when he pulled out of the starring role. And it was what was being shot in the background of the Burt Reynolds movie Fade In (1968).

Decades before cultural appropriation was a major no-no, Americans didn’t take too kindly to Brits taking on top-billed roles in westerns. Audiences sniggered at Dirk Bogarde as a Mexican bandit in The Singer Not the Song (1960), John Mills proved an obstacle to audience acceptance of Chuka (1967) and Shalako (1969) starring Sean Connery, the world’s biggest box office draw at the time, would become a huge flop Stateside.

Yet there are some extraordinary moments here. Some, frankly, I’m astonished never rated a mention at the time nor since. The director’s use of natural sound is ground-breaking. For a start, there’s very little music, none of the triumphal brass that generally accompanies hordes of cowboys racing across plains. Often, here, all we get is hoofbeats. In terms of the aural Hitchcock would have applauded one scene, where a man is hunted through tall grass. All we hear is the crackling sound of the pursuers as they stalk him through the dried-out terrain.

Most times when in other films we see a bunch of cowboys charging along, it’s filmed from the front or the side. Reason being, shoot it from the back and you’ve got to deal with all the dust churned up by the hooves. Not so, here, bring on the dust. Let’s have something new.

There’s even a nod to The Searchers (1956), the famous doorway scenes, but here the main character is neither coming nor coming but cannot make up his mind whether to do either and so slouches against the doorframe.

The opening sequence is The Wild Bunch (1969) in reverse. It’s the good guys in the town, and the bandits who create the ambush and, minus Peckinpah’s obsession with bloodletting, treat their captives ever bit as brutally. Even here, there are two notable scenes. In the first, our hero Blue (Terence Stamp) has been sitting napping under his hat when a troop of Mexican soldiers arrive. Once they hunker down inside the saloon he throws a huge red scarf in the hair, signal to the watching bandits. Then, after the soldiers have been routed, and their leader is still trying to make a stand, Blue races up behind and whips away first his upraised gun, then his hat, then the man himself.

And these are not ordinary bandits. You might think they are given our post-action introduction to them shows them whoring, gambling and fighting. But actually they are revolutionaries and leader Ortega (Ricardo Montalban) has a strategic brain and realizes that they have to take the fight across the river to the Americans – on their most important day of the year, July 4^th, Independence Day – and get them so riled up they do something about the inequities in Mexico.

And he has his work cut out to rein in his rebellious son and the concerns raised by his number two that the life, hiding out in the hills and sleeping in caves, is losing its appeal to his followers. So, intelligent bandits.

The Americans might not be particularly bothered by their neighbors, but still they’ve got a stuffed mannikin hanging from a noose with the word “Greasers” written upon its chest. The bandits break up the party, rob the Yanks, but for some reason leave the enemy with all their weapons, allowing the farmers to form an immediate posse and set off in pursuit.

Blue is shot but makes his way to a farmhouse where, luckily for him, he is tended by farmer’s daughter Joanne (Joanna Pettet) whom he previously saved from rape. It’s a bit of a tip-off that the fugitive goes by the name Azul (the Spanish word for “blue”) to the Mexicans given, I’m assuming, all Mexicans are brown-eyed. So he must be an outlander. And so he is, brought up by the Mexican bandits.

At first he appears to be of the Clint Eastwood persuasion, monosyllabic to the point of dumbness, but, eventually, in a quite brilliant scene, forced to utter a word before Joanna cuts his throat with a razor, an idea that found its way, as I recall, into Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning (1988).

And if ever action carries more meaning than words, it’s in the scene where Joanne discovers Blue has apparently fled only to spy him ploughing the fields. As you might expect, whether an American male or female is brought up by Native Americans (Hombre, 1967) or as here Mexicans, they find it hard to be accepted. The issue is forced upon his new countrymen when the bandits return, and Blue has to choose a side.

Blue was an orphan thanks to racism against his American parents when they settled in Mexico. And he suffers, unfairly you would say given he was born in the U.S., from racism again when he crosses the border.

The sex scene is brilliantly handled, relying both on sight and sound. It’s Joanna who has to instigate it, instinctively knowing that he won’t make any move in case it is wrongly interpreted. The father, noting her bedroom is empty, begins to walk along the corridor to Blue’s room. Hearing his footsteps, Joanna turns out the light. Seeing the light go out, the father retreats – on tiptoe.

There’s also the best demonstration of pistol shooting this side of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid the following year. And without taking anything away from the Robert Redford scene, it’s remarkably similar.

And Blue proves himself to be a brilliant tactician. He sets up a stunning ambush and the bandits are slaughtered from both sides of the river when they attempt to cross. His leadership, unusually, sets up emotional issues. When Joanne reacts against this new tough side of him, it’s her father that calms her. But that isn’t the peach. Blue confesses that he enjoys killing, it “pleasures” him.

I’m afraid to say the ending of Butch Cassidy also has remarkable similarities to this. There it’s the freeze frame that encapsulates the death of the heroes. Here, the camera draws back and back into the sky as Joanne holds her dead lover in the river.

Terence Stamp (The Collector, 1965) doesn’t quite have enough going on behind the eyes to become a top-class actor so sensibly director Silvio Narrazino (Georgy Girl, 1966) avoids going in too close on the baby blues and allows the actor freedom of movement to reveal his feelings, the slouching in the doorway one example, another being Blue’s slow realization that much of what he sees in the farmer’s house is familiar. Stamp acquits himself well in the action scenes.

But Joanna Pettet (The Best House in London, 1969) is the revelation. We’re quite used to spunky or feisty females in westerns. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen one who takes control with subtlety. Her father Doc Morton (Karl Malden) can’t get a word out of Blue no matter the threats uttered and violence threatened. But when Joanna takes up a cut-throat razor for the first time in her life and begins to trim his stubble, deliberately making a hash of it, that’s as novel a meet-cute as you’re going to find as well as one of the best definitions of female character that you’ll see in a western.

Written by Meade Roberts (The Stripper, 1963) and Ronald M. Cohen (The Good Guys and the Bad Guys, 1969).

One of the most stylish and innovative westerns you’ll ever see and you need to watch it with your ears attuned to sound.

A true find.

Della (1964) ***

At this point in her career Joan Crawford was more of a holy terror than a femme fatale. So audiences came at her movies expecting the worst even when she was still dolled up to the nines, hair coiffed within an inch of its life, outfits immaculate or someone would pay the price. Oddly enough, unlike most actresses of her generation, she had embraced age. Her hair was a solid grey, not an ounce of original color. So, given her propensity to tweaking her screen persona, expectation might be that on initial appearance she could still be more femme than fatale, only to later trap an unsuspecting victim.

The convoluted opening to this one is explained by it being a pilot for a television series that was never aired so the producers just pitched it out onto the cinema screen. It’s surprising it wasn’t picked up by a television network because the theme was one – family conflict in big business – that later made television studios absolute fortunes (Dallas etc) and retains a hold on the small screen today, witness Succession.

*This autobiography left out the bits the media pounced upon in her daughter’s memoir Mommie Dearest published in 1978 and filmed in 1981 starring Faye Dunaway.*

Once the narrative settles down it’s a twist on Wild River (1960), the titular Della (Joan Crawford) appearing immoveable in the face on necessary community progress, and a hint of Mildred Pierce (1945) with an over-protective mother guarding daughter Jenny (Diane Baker) from potential suitor Barney Stafford (Paul Burke), an attorney. Jenny must be the only person in the annals of Hollywood who, shunning daylight, does not have a vampiric tendency.

Rich recluse Della owns most of the local town, but developers want to shake things up. In the past she had a fling with Barney’s father Hugh (Charles Bickford). At first she resists all moves by Barney who’s working for the developers but changes her tune when she notices how much Barney brings her daughter out of her shell. Eventually, we realize Jenny’s daylight intolerance is due to a rare skin condition.

The twin elements, the clash of big businesses and the nascent romance, would be enough fuel for this particular fire but given the movie did not originate as a feature film but as the first episode in a television series – to be called Royal Bay after the name of the town – it was duty bound to rope in a lot of other characters, ignite various personality clashes, and feed the audience on other issues that would resolved further down the line.

*Joan Crawford starred in “Rain” in 1932.*

So, quickly, we learn that, tough as she is, Della is exceptionally vulnerable when it comes to her daughter and tough as Barney would like to be his business snse goes haywire after touching base with Jenny. Della’s skirmishes with Barney are old-school, but the holy terror part is kept to a minimum, while if the femme fatale appears at all it’s only to hook Barney to care for her daughter.

Naturally, not much goes to plan. Della can’t control her daughter once romance enters her head, nor can she put the squeeze on Barney. But, for his part, the attorney thinks he’s smarter than he is and miscalculates just how right the mother is in protecting the daughter from herself. Once Jenny rebels, there’s tragic consequence.

Top Hollywood female stars hadn’t imposed themselves on television yet. Barbara Stanwyck’s sojourn as the matriarch in The Big Valley was still a year off and although Lucille Ball turned into a television entrepreneur of considerable note (producing a bunch of major series apart from I Love Lucy) she did not have the movie marquee stature of Crawford. How much Crawford would have featured in further episodes is unclear but a running battle between herself and Barney, who she was likely to blame for her daughter’s death, would be standard material for such soaps.

Joan Crawford (Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, 1962) is in her element, serving up a ruthless operator with a softer side. Paul Burke (Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting, 1969) lacks the screen persona to take her on while veteran Charles Bickford (A Big Hand for the Little Lady, 1966) doesn’t get to tangle with her often enough. Hitchcock protege Diane Baker (Mirage, 1965) continues to show promise.

Directed by Robert Gist (An American Dream / See You in Hell, Darling, 1966) does better with Crawford than the rest of the cast. Written by Richard Alan Simmons (Juggernaut, 1974).

It’s lean on the running time but Crawford is worth it.

Battle of the Bulge (1965) ***** – Seen at the Cinema in Cinerama and 70mm

Cinerama was the IMAX of the day and far superior in my view in many aspects not least the width of the screen. IMAX goes for height but I’m not convinced that compensates for lack of the widest screen you could imagine. So the chance of seeing this in the original Cinerama print, 70mm and six-track stereo, at the annual Bradford Widescreen Festival yesterday was too good to miss. And so it proved. A thundering experience. Much as I enjoyed it on DVD, this was elevated way beyond expectation.

Superb even-handed depiction of war, far better than I remembered. Most war films of this era and even beyond showed the action primarily from the view of the Americans/British – even the acclaimed The Deer Hunter (1978) and Apocalypse Now (1979) show nothing of the skills of the Vietnam forces that would prove victorious. And while The Longest Day (1962) shows reaction to the invasion, the Germans are revealed as caught on the hop. Given the basis for this picture is the unexpected German offensive in the Ardennes, France, in December-January 1944-1945, you might expect the Germans to be accorded some attention. But hardly, given as much of the picture as this, so that in the early stages the Germans are portrayed as powerful, clever and patriotic while the Americans are slovenly and complacent, their greatest efforts expended on preparing for Xmas.

With tanks the main military focus, Cinerama is deployed brilliantly, the ultra-wide screen especially useful as the unstoppable vehicles rampage through forests and land and allowing true audience involvement when opposing armies meet head-to-head. Of course, it being Cinerama, there are a couple of scenes that play to the strength of this particular screen, a car careening round bends and a train racing along twisting tracks, the kind of scenes that previously would have had the audiences out of their seats with excitement, but here mainly used to raise the tension in the battle.

It’s to the film’s benefit that the all-star cast doesn’t feature a single actor who is truly a star in the John Wayne/Gregory Peck/Steve McQueen mould so that prevents the audience rubbernecking to spot-a-star that afflicted The Longest Day. The biggest name, technically, is Henry Fonda, and although he received top billing in many pictures, you would have to go back to The Wrong Man (1956) to find an actual box office hit. The only previous top billing for Robert Shaw (From Russia with Love, 1963) had been in The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1964), a flop few had seen. And the top-billing days of Robert Ryan (Horizons West, 1952) and Dana Andrews (Laura, 1944). In fact, the actor with the biggest string of hits was Disney protégé James MacArthur (Swiss Family Robinson, 1960). Anybody who had seen The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Great Escape (1963) would recognise Charles Bronson in a supporting role. So fair is the movie that it’s the blond-haired Shaw who steals the show with a dynamic performance.

So it helped the almost documentary-style of the film that it was filled with familiar faces rather than dominant stars and the director was not bound to give a star more screen time or provide them with one brilliant scene after another, or establish a redundant love story in order to provide them with more emotional heft. In fact, the only romance goes to a sly black marketeer who views his relationship more as a business asset.

Initially, the role of Lt. Col. Kiley (Henry Fonda), a former cop, seems only to be to rile his superiors General Grey (Robert Ryan) and Colonel Pritchard (Dana Andrews), his pessimistic view contrasting with the accepted notion that the Germans are well and truly defeated and the war would be over soon. On airplane reconnaissance he takes a photograph of an officer later identified as Panzer tank genius Colonel Hessler (Robert Shaw). While Grey and Pritchard over-ride his conclusions, the movie concentrates on the German build-up, their discipline, efficiency, leadership and determination juxtaposed to the American inefficiency and sloppiness.

Where the Americans just want to get home, Hessler – more charismatic than any of the dull Yanks – is in his element, wanting the war to never end, convinced at least that a tank-driven assault would drive a wedge between the Allied forces, and reaching the target Antwerp in Belgium in the north would extend the war by another year by which time Germany’s V2 rockets would give them greater firepower. The Germans also have a clever idea, the type that the British were always coming up with and would make a film of its own, of parachuting American-born Germans behind enemy lines, dressed in American uniforms to carry out vital sabotage and hold crucial bridges across the River Meuse.

In one of the best scenes in the film, his tank commanders spurt spontaneously into a patriotic song with much stamping of boots. And while Hessler’s immediate superior (Werner Peters) , ensconced in a superior bunker, can enjoy a comfortable lifestyle, no more illustrated by the fact that he has courtesans to hand, one of whom, offered to Hessler, is furiously dismissed. And the clock is ticking, the Germans have limited supplies of fuel and must reach the enemy’s supply dumps before they run out of gas.

The maverick Kiley manages to be everywhere – the River Meuse bridge, in the air in the fog determinedly hunting for the panzers he believes are hidden, is the one who realises how critical the fuel situation is for the enemy, and at the fuel depot for the movie climax. Otherwise, the picture uses its cast of supporting characters to cover other incidents, the massacre of prisoners of war at Malmedy, the chaos as the Germans over-run American-held towns.

Best of all is the human element. It would be easy on a picture of this scope to lose emotional connection, as you would say was the prime flaw of The Longest Day. Not only is Kiley the outsider trying to beat the system, but we have the cowardly Lt Weaver (James MacArthur) who would rather give up without a fight than lose his life, the weaselly Sgt. Guffy (Telly Savalas) representing the worst instincts of the grunts, the confused General Grey can’t make up his mind how to respond to the sudden attack, and Hessler’s driver Conrad (Hans Christian Blech) who is fed up with paying the price of war.

The action scenes are outstanding. If you’ve never been up against a tank in full flight, you will soon get the idea how fearsome these metal battering rams are, as the rear up, crash over trees, race across open fields, and either with machine gun or shells wreak havoc. As with the best war films, you are given very precise insights into the battles, the tactics involved, the ultimate cost. Wolenski (Charles Bronson) is in the thick of the fighting.

While Robert Shaw is easily the biggest screen personality, Henry Fonda is solid, and holds the various strands of the picture together, while Charles Bronson enjoys a further scene-stealing role. But the pick of the acting, mostly thanks to bits of improvisation, is Telly Savalas (The Slender Thread, 1965) as the thieving Guffy. In one memorable scene he kicks out in resentment at his collection of hens and in another shakes his body at the tanks. No one else, beyond Shaw, comes close to his infusing his character with elements of individual personality.

Pier Angeli (Sodom and Gomorrah, 1962) as Guffy’s mistress and Barbara Werle (Krakatoa, East of Java, 1968) as the courtesan are inexplicably billed above Charles Bronson, Telly Savalas and James MacArthur perhaps in a ploy to deceive audiences into thinking there was more female involvement.

Full marks to British director Ken Annakin (The Biggest Bundle of Them All, 1968) for visual acumen and for simplifying a complicated story and peppering it with human detail. His battles scenes are among the best ever filmed. Credit for whittling down the story into a manageable chunk goes to Philip Yordan (The Fall of the Roman Empire, 1964), Milton Sperling (The Bramble Bush, 1960) and John Melson (Four Nights of the Full Moon, 1963).

A genuine classic, with greater depth than I ever remembered.

Murder in Eden (1961) ***

Had there been the budget to spare for more stylish cinematography and a director more inclined to tip the wink to the audience, this would have been recognized as a late addition to film noir. As it is, thanks to keeping the viewer largely in the dark, there’s an almighty twist at the end that aficionados of the unexpected climax would relish.

Although aficionados of another kind might have been happy to sit through a less-well-worked thriller for the sake of watching a “bubble car” in all its glory. In some eyes, the three-wheeler Italian-made Isetta should take center stage. Or you might consider an early appearance by Irish actor Ray McAnally (My Left Foot, 1990) an extra bonus.

An investigation revolving round art forgery might seem initially less than an interesting starting point. But when the expert who pointed out the forgery is bumped off and Inspector Sharkey (Ray McAnally) is called in, the investigation seems to take second place to his budding romance with French journalist Genevieve (Catherine Feller) especially after a meet-cute where she, literally, falls into his arms.

Suspicion falls upon gallery owner Arnold Woolf (Mark Singleton), art dealer Bill Robson (Jack Aranson) and paintings restorer Michael Lucas (Norman Rodway). A fellow called Frenchman Jack (Noel Sheridan) might also have made it onto the suspect short list except he is murdered.

Sharkey isn’t much of an ace detective and the investigation plods along except to throw out the occasional red herring. Director Max Varnel (A Question of Suspense, 1961) spends most of the picture keeping his powder dry. Much of what we learn seems incidental.

So what if Arnold’s glamorous wife Vicky (Yvonne Buckingham) is having a fling with Lucas? So what if Genevieve seems a shade too industrious for a journalist working for a newspaper whose trademark is soft features about the rich, famous and glamorous? So what if this looks like a plan to stitch up and bankrupt Arnold? And what are we to make of what might these days be called a “panic room,” a secret part of a house hidden behind a two-way mirror?

When the denouement comes it looks like Varnel has sold us short, kept us out of the loop about what’s been going on behind the scenes when Genevieve is revealed not just as a femme fatale but a dupe herself. The last five minutes is a story all by itself, of betrayal, lust and revenge.

It’s one of these films where at the end you look back and think it was much better than you imagined and the director has been too slick for you.

Especially as there’s been a certain innocence about the proceedings. Although the background, as we eventually discover, is decidedly murky, this appears to take place in a world where upright cops don’t just jump into bed with seductive Frenchwomen but have to go about wooing her the old-fashioned way.

Ray McAnally, who in his later screen persona, was a much tougher character, comes over as a juvenile lead, a rising star in an era that was full of them. The gravitas that was later a significant part of his onscreen presence is nowhere in evidence and in stringing him along Catherine Feller (Waltz of the Toreadors, 1962) is not permitted to be as seductive as she is later revealed to be while the role of Yvonne Buckingham (The Christine Keeler Story, 1963) appears to have been edited down so as to not give the game away.

The bubble car looks like it’s been included as product placement. You enter it from the front, literally peeling back the entire front of the car, engine in the rear a la Volkswagen, and it can whiz into the tightest of parking spaces, never mind race along main road.

Written by John Haggarty (The Killer Likes Candy, 1968) and, in his sole screenplay, E.L. Burdon. Won’t take up much more than an hour of your time.

Another welcome contribution from the Renown B-picture crime portfolio which has found a home on Talking Pictures TV.

The Stripper (1963) ***

Can’t shake off its stage origins though Joanne Woodward is riveting as the eternally optimistic but ultimately luckless showgirl of this tawdry tale. For a while it looks like it’s going be another examination of small town morals but those who want to break free of social constriction come from such different parts of the world that the two tales – teenage rite-of-passage and older woman trying to recapture her innocent youth – don’t mesh while the background for both is routine and stale.

Magician’s assistant Lila (Joanne Woodward) returns to her home town and meets up with old neighbour Helen Baird (Claire Trevor) and her pump jockey son Kenny (Richard Beymer). He reminds Lila of Helen’s dead husband on whom Lila had a teenage crush. Abandoned by lover/manager Ricky (Robert Webber), she finds a safe berth with Helen. Kenny, annoyed at principled girlfriend Miriam (Carol Lynley), soon, as you might expect, falls for Lila. For a time she enjoys the security of small town life.

But, as you would expect, Ricky returns. He beats her up and drags her off to become a stripper. Kenny gets to witness her more degrading employment. Lila manages to quit Ricky and sets off with another suitcase full of delusions.

Despite Lila’s effervescence lacks the emotional punch to make this more than a re-tread of a standard Hollywood trope. Lila’s an eternal wannabe, not deterred by crushed dreams, but failing to understand the limitation of her talent, her most treasured possession a few strips of film from a screen test, and undone by her taste in men. She calls Ricky “daddy” and he punishes her with his belt.

The most effective sequence is the one with leering men reaching forward with lighted cigarettes to burst the balloons that cover her modesty while she strips. That tells a different story to the one we’ve sat through, the degrading endgame, the price paid for falling in with the wrong man or for believing you can live on illusion.

There would have been no shortage of better role models when she grew up, but dreams of stardom derailed that. In some respects, Ricky is rebelling against the same upbringing, requiring excitement (and sex) rather than the life he has been brought up to respect. He’s over-mothered for sure, but lacks ambition and probably needs marriage to give him some direction.

But there’s too many cliché characters, beginning with mother and girlfriend and rough lover. There’s nothing new about Ricky and no depth and while Lila is happily shallow that doesn’t help the story.

As I said, Joanne Woodward (Big Hand for the Little Lady, 1966) more than holds the film together but that’s not really enough. Richard Beymer (West Side Story, 1961) doesn’t rise above juvenile lead. Clare Trevor (The Cape Town Affair, 1967) has little to do but Carol Lynley (Bunny Lake Is Missing, 1965) acts against type.

Solid directorial debut I guess you would call it from Franklin J. Schaffner (Planet of the Apes, 1968). Screenplay by Meade Roberts (Danger Route, 1967) from a play by William Inge (Bus Riley’s Back in Town, 1965).

Worth it for Woodward but not much else.

Whistle Down the Wind (1961) ****

Sheer coincidence that within the space of a week I’m watching three films that deal with the power of a child’s imagination. While The Magic Faraway Tree disappeared into the realms of fantasy and Eye Witness / Sudden Witness a lonely child’s fervid alternative realities, Whistle Down the Wind examines the ability of children to become involved in something that makes complete sense to them while keeping adults out of the picture.

And not just for the religious allegory is Whistle Down the Wind streets ahead. While the children in the other films are believable enough, this is much more down-to-earth. A farm here isn’t a refuge from the city and a place to indulge dreams, it’s muddy and cold and wet. Everyone trudges around in wellies. Adults drown kittens, are overly pious and view children as mostly a nuisance. The children wouldn’t dare be cheeky to those in authority.

And their belief in something that defies belief is both touching and understandable given the circumstances. They are convinced they have found a reborn Jesus (Alan Bates) in their barn. Perhaps it’s only a child, with all that innocence, who could actually be persuaded that, as stated in the Bible, Jesus will come again.

The characters are very well-drawn. Kathy Bostock (Hayley Mills), eldest of three siblings, motherless, is the leader, saving the drowning kittens, stealing to feed the man, and guiding her flock in taking care of him. Youngest child Charlie (Alan Barnes) is instinctively more cynical. Mr Bostock (Bernard Lee) has his hands full dealing with his kids and his snippy sister Dorothy (Elsie Wagstaff) resents having to act as housekeeper.

The religious allegory elements include of course finding Jesus in a barn (doubling for the stables at Bethlehem), bringing him gifts as if the kids were the Magi, feeding him bread and wine (a bottle of port stolen from a cupboard), treating him with adoration and denying him thrice (Judas Iscariot). Even when the first crack appears in the façade after Jesus has allowed a kitten left in his care to die, Kathy battles to keep the dream alive, pestering the local vicar to explain how Jesus could allow this and finding an answer that does the trick.

The enterprise collapses when a child is spotted secreting an extra piece of birthday cake for the man. By this time he has managed to secure a gun and we know he’s wanted for murder.

Even so, Kathy refuses to let go of her belief, promising to a younger child, saddened by the man’s capture, that Jesus will come again.

The allegorical aspects would have worked better at a time when fantasy was not all the rage. But the current diminution of Christian belief means that the ideas spelled out in the New Testament might well sound fantastical to a contemporary audience. Certainly, the idea of stumbling, by circumstance, onto a magical character forms part of the fantasy trope.

Understanding childhood from the remove of adulthood takes some doing. We are apt to forget how our younger minds worked. Children desperately want to believe in something else that lifts them from the gloom of the day-to-day. But, equally, they want to keep their childhood dreams secure from adult interference. No youngster really wants to entertain the cool dad who is “down with the kids.”

And the secret is something to savour. The local bully is disconcerted when a playground full of kids taunt him with “we know something that you don’t.” That fear of exclusion is highly potent.

Unlike The Magic Faraway Tree there is no complicit adult who will back up the fantasy. Here, the kids instinctively know adults will seek to destroy it, especially after the Sunday School teacher clearly can’t come to terms with the idea of Christ coming again any time soon and the vicar uses any interaction with children as an opportunity to blame them for something.

I was surprised this worked as well as it did. The viewer knows full well it’s only an accident of circumstance that there is a man in the barn and that the conjecture that he is Jesus Christ relies on his use of that word as a swear word (as it would be at the time). So we’re not being asked to believe in fairies or elves, as we are by now attuned to do after Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter etc. We are watching the reaction of the children to wondrous mystery.

By this point Hayley Mills was being turned into the standard vanilla child star by Walt Disney – Pollyanna had just confirmed that status – and I’m sure Disney was appalled that he had not secured her to an exclusive contract. Instead, every year she made a movie that, perhaps while capitalizing on the fame Disney was paying for, offered a more challenging role.

She’s not coiffed and clothed as in the Disney ventures, more an ordinary scruffy child, and she gives a superb performance. In some respects, given the acting intelligence exhibited, no one should have doubted she would make the crossover into the adult star of The Family Way (1966). The questioning Alan Barnes (The Victors, 1963) is a treat. Bernard Lee (The Secret Partner, 1961) is the pick of the adults. Alan Bates (The Running Man, 1963) has less to do than you might imagine.

Bryan Forbes (King Rat, 1965) made an auspicious directorial debut, not just wrangling the kids expertly but using the visual to complement the narrative, the bleak landscape a million miles away from the more commonly seen blooming English countryside. Written by the team of Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall (The Winston Affair, 1964) from the book by the star’s mother Mary Hayley Bell (Sky West and Crooked / Gypsy Girl, 1966).

Despite the unlikely premise, draws you in.

All Fall Down (1962) ***

Both an easy sell and a tough sell for today’s audience. Easy because, this early in the decade, we’ve got a succession of independent sexually liberated women for whom handsome hunks like Berry-Berry (Warren Beatty) are collectibles. Tough because our ostensible hero is a serial abuser, beating up women.

The tale is somewhat complicated by the narrative which, rather than putting Berry-Berry and Echo (Eva Marie Saint) together early on, gets more involved in the travails of Berry-Berry‘s innocent young brother Clinton (Brandon De Wilde), leading us to believe this is going to be more of a coming-of-age saga than a more mature romance, especially when the young lad is besotted by the 31-year-old Echo who appears to foolishly encourage him though he’s not much past the age of consent.

Or that it’s one of those stories when the adoring sibling realizes that big brother is not worthy of any adoration and far from looking as if he rules the world with his drinking and womanizing that he’s a pitifully small part of it.

Given the era, only a fraction of the sleazy world explored in the bestselling source novel by James Leo Herlihy (Midnight Cowboy, 1969) can find its way onto the screen. Still, in the first few scenes were are introduced to hookers, strippers and corrupt cops (who steal the cash Clinton planned to spend setting his brother up in the shrimp business).

Berry-Berry hasn’t a protective gene in his body, abandoning Clinton when a rich married woman beckons. It’s not just the unhappily married who alight on Berry-Berry but otherwise respectable schoolteachers. For a contemporary audience this might have been a more instructive avenue to go down, how such women, not all with money to burn, have the confidence to pick up men from a position of authority. Sure, Berry-Berry’s not one, ultimately, to remain at anyone’s beck-and-call but it’s interesting to see just who’s first to do the beckoning.

This is also the kind of picture that comes over more like a stage play and all the hidden secrets that entails – Echo’s previous boyfriend committed suicide. Clinton’s parents, however, let it all hang out, the father an alcoholic, the mother controlling.

By the time Berry-Berry and Echo manage to get it together, you can tell which way this is heading and even if Echo hadn’t died in a car accident, it’s doubtful given Berry-Berry’s personality whether he could have handled commitment.

Warren Beatty (Kaleidoscope, 1966) comes over like a latter-day James Dean, all quiff and male arrogance and winning smile, but there’s not an ounce of depth to his characterization albeit that he wants to have it all and can’t deal with entanglement and treats women as punchbags when he wants out of a relationship.

Eva Marie Saint (36 Hours, 1964) is better value, expectation already beaten out of her after having put up with the depressed boyfriend all this time and willing to embark on an affair with Berry-Berry because she hopes that eventually he will come to love her. Her ideal lover, it has to be said, looks like being the sweet-natured Clinton. But Saint leans into her feyness too often.

Much better value are Karl Malden (Billion Dollar Brain, 1967) and Angela Lansbury (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) as the bickering parents. Malden has never looked as unkempt and he retains a marvelous innocence, inviting three bums to the house in the spirit of Xmas.

Too much rests on the shoulders of Brandon De Wilde (In Harm’s Way, 1965) and, in truth, the narrative could have excised him and still arrived at its destination and it seems somewhat preposterous to have him so involved in the final scenes.

The structure emulates F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby where much of what we see is through the prism of a secondary character who in the novel acts as narrator. They junked that aspect for any of the screen versions and they’d have been better off doing the same here.

John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate) directs from a William Inge (Splendor in the Grass, 1961) script.

A contemporary audience might find more interesting the parts that the film only covers in passing. “They ought to have highways stacked with guys like you,” is the come-on of one rather forward lady.

Death Rides A Horse (1967/1969) ****

Although Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) is my all-time favorite western and although the first X-certificate movie I sneaked into as a teenager was The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966/1968), I never had much interest in spaghetti westerns. For a start, by the time I started my serious cinemagoing – bear in mind I grew up in towns without picture houses – the spaghetti western sub-genre was long gone.

So I was surprised to find how stylish and intriguing this little number was. People had odd ideas about style: they think it’s about capturing a vista at sunset or the way a director moves the camera or some effect gained from the cinematography. But there are other, as important, aspects. And two, perhaps the smallest of the effective ingredients, are on show here.

The first comes with the opening shot. Some cowboys are braving torrential rain. Now movie rain doesn’t behave the same way as real rain. It’s directed and its force depends on something else beyond nature. It’s too consistent in the way that real rain isn’t. So to convince us that these dudes are enduring a storm, director Giulio Petroni has set up on the very edge of the screen a lamp that moves, twisting one way and the other as the wind shifts direction, flaring up and flickering down depending on the position it holds. That little thing was what it took to convince me this was a storm.

The second thing was the editing. Again, critics intend to focus on some unusual aspect. Fast-cutting, for example, as in The Wild Bunch (1969) or cutting between a match and a sunrise (Lawrence of Arabia, 1962)) or from one pillow to another in separate households (Zee & Co, X Y & Zee, 1972). But actually the biggest benefit of good editing is to keep the story moving and not waste time

So here we cut from our blue-eyed anti-hero Bill (John Philip Law) being told to meet a bad guy in his office. Next thing, Bill is entering a darkened room. Automatically, you think this is a trap, that he’s going into villainous saloon owner Cavanaugh’s (Anthony Dawson) office. Instead, he confronts the other anti-hero, criminal Ryan (Lee Van Cleef), just released from prison after 15 years. And without any dialog to otherwise explain the situation, we understand immediately from previous interaction that Bill has been hired by the bad guy to kill Ryan.

There’s countless examples of this kind of editing where action sets the tone rather than dialog, although in the latter regard some of the lines are filled with edge.

Bill and Ryan really should be working as a team. They both want revenge on the same gang of outlaws, Bill because, as a child, he witnessed the gang murder his family and rape his mother and sister, and Ryan because he was fitted up for the robbery the gang committed. But both want the sole satisfaction of carrying out the revenge.

Ryan is something of a mentor to the greenhorn, a skilled gunslinger without the smarts necessary to hold his own. Ryan constantly shows Bill how much he still has to learn about looking after himself and the teaching comes with sharp consequence, Bill left horseless on two occasions and having to tramp miles into the nearest town.

So they get in each other’s way. Bill kills Cavanaugh without realizing that the only reason the businessman is still alive is that Ryan wants reparation from him of $15,000 – $1,000 for each of the years he spent in prison. And now he saddles Bill with that debt.

Ryan knows exactly who he’s hunting down but Bill has to do it the hard way, following a series of clues, personal elements of the masked guys who slaughtered his family, someone who wears distinctive spurs, another with a tattoo on his chest and so on.

This proves a particularly good twist on the older guy-younger guy narrative device so often used in Hollywood. The rivalry rarely cools, Bill taking simple revenge on Ryan at any opportunity.

Eventually, they do agree to work together after Bill works out that Ryan was one of the gang, except that the older man arrived too late to take part in the massacre but just in time to save Bill from being consumed by a raging fire.

The last twist is saved for the climax.

United Artists waited until Sergio Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy had opened the box office doors in America before pushing this out in 1969 (hence the odd dating). Lee Van Cleeef essays a more considered version of his Man in Black persona from For a few Dollars More (1965/1967). John Philip Law (Barbarella, 1969) would never work out, unlike George Peppard, say, that the intensity of his gaze and the blueness of his eyes distracted from his acting.

Put me in mind to check out some of the other spaghetti westerns directed by Guilio Petroni such as A Sky Full of Stars for a Roof (1968). Written by Luciano Vincenzoni (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly).

Well worth a look.

The List of Adrian Messenger (1963) ***

The gimmick of stars in disguise isn’t enough to spark this routine whodunit and the extended sequences of fox-hunting might deter the contemporary viewer but oddly enough something else of considerable interest is going on and enough to keep you hooked.

Given it’s an actor’s screen persona that tempts you to their movies, how are you going to respond when that’s gone AWOL? Actually, you get a more intriguing performance. Covered in slabs of make-up Kirk Douglas makes out like a latter-day Alec Guinness or Peter Sellers, essaying a number of quite different characters. So the jutting chin, the fierce eyes and the aggressive tone are all gone and in its place he shows he can act. His vicar is especially appealing.

But the same holds true of George C. Scott even though he’s not in disguise. Director John Huston, much as he did with his trio of star names in The Misfits (1961), gets Scott to tone down his screen idiosyncrasies. So the growl is tempered, the flaring eyebrows in cold storage for much of the time, and his jutting chin and aggression set to one side as he depicts a different character to his usual.

The Academy usually hands out Oscars to people who over-act or have some affliction to overcome, and they seem to wilfully ignore it when actors show how well they can act outside their comfort zone.

The story is the usual combination of clever deduction, red herrings and set pieces. Former spy Anthony Gethryn (George C. Scott) is hired by the titular character (John Merivale) to find out if a bunch of people on his list are still alive. Messenger himself is soon bumped off in a plane explosion but not before he leaves a garbled clue with sole survivor of the sabotage Raoul Le Borg (Jacques Roux). Gethryn soon discovers everyone on the list is dead. This may have something to do with the Second World War or it may be that the killer wants to cover up something now before potential scandal can ruin a promising future.

Meanwhile, the killer keeps bumping people off. And just to keep Gethryn from getting distracted by possible romance by Lady Bruttenholm (Dana Wynter) Le Borg pounces on her.

By this point the director was pursuing his dreams of becoming landed gentry with a stately home in Ireland and very keen on all the trimmings including fox-hunting which probably accounts for the length of time accorded the sport.

Kirk Douglas, who’s company produced the picture, thought – either to fire up public interest or to help along a fairly straightforward tale – he would ask a few of his movie star buddies to bury themselves in make-up and play bit parts. Whether audiences spent all their time when they should have been concentrating on Gethryn’s detection on carrying out their own sleuthing trying to detect which of the supporting characters might actually be Tony Curtis, Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum or Burt Lancaster is anybody’s guess. It does have to be pointed out that some of the make-up is unconvincing, some faces looking as though they’ve come out of a box.

Despite all this, I enjoyed seeing George C. Scott (Patton, 1970) and Kirk Douglas (Cast a Giant Shadow, 1966) playing decidedly against type and showing how easy it is to act if you’re not always having to adopt a screen persona.

John Huston looks as if he’s having a ball. Written by Anthony Veiller (Night of the Iguana, 1964) and Alec Coppel (Vertigo, 1958) from the book by Philip MacDonald.

A watchable curiosity.