1960s film – Page 45 – The Magnificent 60s

Behind the Scenes: “The Chairman / The Most Dangerous Man in the World” (1969)

Had things run according to the original plan, we could have seen Frank Sinatra return to a Communist country for the first time since The Manchurian Candidate (1962). But if you had wanted to write a script about the guy who wrote The Chairman, you couldn’t have invented a more interesting character than Samuel Richard Solomonick. He was one of those guy who held every job under the sun before reinventing himself as an anticommunist going by the name of Jay Richard Kennedy and subsequently entering the fields of real estate, radio and brokerage, then landing a gig managing Harry Belafonte and writing the screenplay for I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955).

By the time he ended up as an executive at Sinatra Enterprises he had a couple of ideas to sell. Forming Jade Productions in 1966 with director Richard Quine (How To Murder Your Wife, 1965), the pair hooked Sinatra’s interest in two projects, Follow the Runner (which would have co-starred Sammy Davis Jr) and The Chairman plus William Holden eyeing the lead in The Wordlings about the population explosion.

*That’s Gregory Peck trapped on the wrong side of the Russian border with Chinese soldiers closing in.*

Sinatra was known for falling out with directors, shunting Mark Robson off The Detective (1968), so whether Quine would have lasted the pace is anybody’s guess. After success with Tony Rome (1967), Twentieth Century Fox briefly toyed with the prospect of pairing Sinatra and new wife Mia Farrow in The Chairman. Originally scheduled to begin shooting on January 1967, that later shifted to early 1968. The notion that the movie also had parts for Spencer Tracy and Yul Brynner was one of those puff pieces that some journalists swallowed.

Despite some enticing projects – he was first name down to direct Catch 22, after Columbia had spent $150,000 buying the novel, and to helm the screen translation of Broadway hit The Owl and the Pussycat – Richard Quine’s career teetered after the flop of Hotel (1967). Making no headway with Sinatra he made instead another flop, Oh Dad Poor Dad (1967) and was effectively put on furlough for three years after failing to finance a movie to star Alex Guinness and Lee Radziwill.

Quine exited The Chairman in May 1967 when former PR bigwig Arthur P. Jacobs took over the production and with Sinatra in absentia turned to British director J. Lee Thompson who had helmed the producer’s debut picture What a Way to Go (1964). And that proved a lucky break for Thompson who had yet to match the success of The Guns of Navarone (1961).

After successive flops – Return from the Ashes (1965) and Eye of the Devil (1966) – Thompson had plenty projects on the boil including a musical remake of Alexander Korda’s The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) with a score by Richard Rodgers and Peter Ustinov playing the lead. Also on his slate was High Citadel based on the Desmond Bagley bestseller; The Harp That Once for Columbia; an adaptation of James Clavell bestseller Tai Pan; a sequel to The Guns of Navarone called After Navarone that would reunite the director with star Gregory Peck and writer-producer Carl Foreman; and Planet of the Apes (1968) to which he and Jacobs held the rights.

While none of these projects – except Planet of the Apes and minus Thompson – came to fruition, the Navarone connection would lead to Mackenna’s Gold for Foreman. In the meantime he had helmed a modest drama, Before Winter Comes (1968) starring Broadway star Topol. When Arthur P. Jacobs greenlit The Chairman, he hired Thompson who looked no further than Peck, connection re-established via the Navarone sequel. They were a four-time pairing – Cape Fear (1962) and Mackenna’s Gold and The Guns of Navarone. Peck was a controversial choice from the Twentieth Century Fox perpsective given he had broken a contract with the studio in 1960 to star in Let’s Make Love. But Jacobs smoothed ruffled studio feathers and paid his star $500,000 plus a percentage. With Jacobs on hands-on duty with Planet of the Apes (1968) – Mort Abrahams oversaw the production of The Chairman and immediately engaged in a budget dispute with the director. Jacobs had initially stipulated $4 million, Thompson believed he required another million. They didn’t quite split the difference, Fox had the film come in at $4.9 million.

Thompson recognized the problems of the script, pointing out that “the hardest thing for Americans about the film’s concept is accepting that China has some competent scientists.” Rather ingenuously, he averred that the movie would have “no political overtones,” while Abrahams retorted that it might have “some political overtones.” It would been obvious to anyone that a picture featuring Mao was bound to have political repercussions, his Little Red Book a massive bestseller on the campus, an album cut of recitations from the book and Edward Albee in 1968 premiering a play called Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung.

Denied access to China, the production team spent four months “reading everything we could get our hands on.” At one point they considered dropping the scene featuring Chairman Mao and lengthening the sequence relating to Peck’s arrival in Hong Kong. In any case, different versions of the Hong Kong environs were shot, some with nude shots of girls in a house of pleasure.

The British Colonial Office in Hong Kong blocked filming there after fears of riots due to the production daring to portray Mao Tse-Tung on screen. Taiwan substituted for China although the locals there were also incensed, so much so they burned an effigy of Peck. Wales, funnily enough, was another location as was London University. Filming began on August 28 and finished on December 3.

Although it might appear that Ben Maddow (The Way West, 1967) wrote his script based on Jay Richard Kennedy’s novel, in fact the novel appeared after the screenplay with Kennedy writing the novelizaton, and it’s more likely that what Maddow adapted was the original Kennedy screenplay. Interestingly enough, around this time Maddow had first crack at the Edward Naughton western novel that became McCabe and Mrs Miller (1971).

It wasn’t the first time Variety got a prediction wrong: “powerful box office attaction” fell far short of the actual results. This proved an annus miserabilis for Gregory Peck. In fact, he had four films, not three, released in 1969. By release date The Stalking Moon technically belonged to the previous year, but it only played a handful of cinemas in 1968, its general release taking place in 1969.

Despite pocketing a total of over $2 million, Peck’s marquee value was in clear decline. Of the Peck quartet, Marooned did best, placing 33^rd on the annual box office chart, with $4.1 million. Mackenna’s Gold (31^st) took $3.1 million in rentals (the amount returned from the gross once a cinema has taken its cut), The Stalking Moon (38^th) on $2.6 million, and The Chairman (41^st) with $2.5 million.

SOURCES: Gary Fishgall, Gregory Peck (Scribners, 2002) p267; James Caplan, Sinatra: The Chairman, (Doubleday, 2015), p724; “7 from 7 Arts,” Variety, March 3, 1965, p4; “Richard Quine,” Variety, July 7, 1965, p20; “Return of Advances,” Variety, October 6, 1965, p7; “Form Jade Prods,” Variety, December 15, 1965, p4; “J Lee Thompson Nearly Finished on 13,” Variety, February 2, 1966, p28; “Catch As Catch 22 Can,” Variety, February 23, 1966, p4; “Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Musical Henry VIII,” Variety, Mar 16, 1966, p1; “Inside Stuff – Pictures,” Variety, March 30, 1966, p22; “Lee Thompson Busily Blueprints His Musical Version of Henry VIII,” Variety, April 27, 1966, p17; “Jay Kennedy Script,” Variety, July 6, 1966, p5; “After Navarone,” Variety, April 19, 1967, p14; “Scripting Red Chinese,” Variety, May 21, 1967, p4; “”Personality Chemistry,” Variety, May 24, 1967, p4; New York Soundtrack,” Variety, Sep 20, 1967, p27; “Pat Hall Noel to Col,” Variety, December 27, 1967, p5; “N.Y. Indie Label Grooves Chairman Mao’s Thoughts,” Variety, April 10, 1968, p56; “Man About Town,” Variety, July 17, 1968, p68; “Jas Clavell to Roll Siege,” Variety, August 21, 1968, p7; “Thompson Wraps Up,” Variety, August 28, 1968, p29; “New York Soundtrack,” Variety, October 23, 1968, p18; “British Bar Fox’s Chairman,” Variety, December 4, 1968, p17; Big Rental Films of 1969,” Variety, January 7, 1970, p15; “Big Rental Films of 1970,” Variety, January 6, 1971, p11.

The Chairman / The Most Dangerous Man in the World (1969) ****

The sci-fi elements in this tidy paranoia thriller set in Communist China are not the only issues overlooked at the time and worthy of reconsideration now. Anyone who blasted it for supposedly political jingoism conspicuously failed to read a subtext that chimed with young left-wingers for whom Chairman Mao was not, as now, perceived as a tyrant du jour but as a political god. There’s a distinct whiff of Philip K. Dick in the implanting in a spy’s head of not just a tracking/listening device but one laced with explosive that can be remotely triggered for suicidal or murderous gain. Needless to say, the spy, ignorant of this fact, was a de facto sacrificial lamb. And a key plot thread about genetically modified crops as a means of solving world hunger came about four decades too early.

Widowed Nobel prize winning scientist Dr Hathaway (Gregory Peck) is despatched into China via Hong Kong to contact a missing scientist with a revolutionary formula for an enzyme. A series of crisp flashbacks set up the scenario of the tracking device and a reverse echo of Marooned (1969) where Army chiefs back at base, led by one-eyed Shelby (Arthur Hill,) can listen in but are helpless to intervene – except in sinister manner. Shelby considers Hathaway “the wrong brilliant man” for the task and that they have sent in “a civilian to do a soldier’s job.”

*Not able to trust the Brits to know who the title referred to, they came up with a lame alternative.* *The taglines reveal way too much of the plot.*

The hidden transmitter allows Hathaway to keep his superiors posted but the listening device also picks up a creaking bed as Hathaway almost falls into a honey trap in Hong Kong. Amazingly, he doesn’t have to sneak into China but is welcomed with open arms and hustled along to a meeting, and a game of ping-pong (the real thing and the verbal equivalent) with Chairman Mao (Conrad Yama). While spouting some propaganda, Mao is surprisingly open about sharing the secret of the enzyme rather than blackmailing a starving world. Meanwhile, it’s the Americans who are more interested in the double cross, Shelby itching to blow up Hathaway’s head in the assumption the explosion would dispose of the Chinese leader.

Emissions from the transmitter are tangling up the airwaves, making the Chinese secret police highly suspicious of Hathaway as he heads for the secret scientific compound housing Professor Soong Li (Keye Luke), creator of the enzyme, and his daughter Chu (Francesca Tu).

Turns out Hathaway has been summoned by the professor to help find a missing link in molecular chains. Hathaway has to burgle his way to steal the formula, but fails to find it, but when the professor commits suicide and is denounced by his daughter and the Chinese secret police close in, Hathaway has to scarper and head for the Russian border, that country, oddly enough for a spy movie, being on the same side as the Yanks. Meanwhile, Shelby’s trigger finger it itching to blow his man sky high for fear he might give away details of his mission.

*The French, too, had trouble with the original title*.

Turns on its head many of the spy film’s truisms: firstly that Hathaway effectively fails in his mission; secondly that patriotism doesn’t blind him to his country’s greed or folly; thirdly that’s he not in constant seduction mode.

Political argument that one point seemed to excessively delay the narrative thrust, now, at half a century’s move, seems more considered and providing an interesting balance between opposing views.

Gregory Peck (Marooned, 1969) is at his quizzical best, deeply-rooted scepticism helping to anchor his character. But if you were attracted by seeing Anne Heywood (The Fox, 1967) second-billed you’re in for a disappointment as she just tops and tails the picture. Arthur Hill (Moment to Moment, 1966) is good value as always.

But it’s testament to J. Lee Thompson (Mackenna’s Gold, 1969, also starring Peck) that his direction brings together diverse political/sci fi/spy/thriller elements in a winning formula, ignoring the obvious. Some interesting detail: someone handing out coffee on a tray to the inmates of the command station; Hathaway’s guilt at his role in the death of his wife barely touched upon, but it explains a lot; Mao’s famous Little Red Book provides a twist.

Occasional flaw: surely the Chinese would have bugged Hathaway’s room and catching him, however soft voiced, filling in his superiors. The idea that the Chinese could be technologically more advanced than the U.S. would have had John Sturges in a fit of fury, but Thompson takes it in his stride. Screenplay by Ben Maddow (The Way West, 1967) and Jay Richard Kennedy (I’ll Cry Tomorrow, 1955).

Reassessment overdue.

A Fever in the Blood (1961) ****

Blistering B-film from writer Roy Huggins (TV’s The Fugitive) that marries political chicanery to legal jiggery-pokery in a movie that races from one twist to another. In his role as producer Huggins calls upon actors he made stars from the television series he created – Efrem Zimbalist Jr. (77 Sunset Strip), Jack Kelly (Maverick) – and gives Angie Dickinson (Oceans 11) the female lead.

Huggins’ brilliant premise is to ignore the dilemma of the man, Walter Thornwall (Rhoses Reason), nephew of a former Governor, wrongly accused of the murder of his wife, and instead to concentrate on accuser District Attorney Dan Callahan (Jack Kelly) and Judge Lee Hoffman (Efrem Zimbalist Jr), both of whom, running for the vacant Governor post, stand to make massive political capital from the publicity surrounding a sensational trial.

Former buddies Callahan and Hoffman are now bitter rivals after the former had reneged on a promise to support the latter’s bid for the political post. Also throwing his hat into the ring is Senator Alex Simon (Don Ameche) whose wife Cathy (Angie Dickinson) once had romantic yearnings for Hoffman. The only one of the trio who has anything approaching a conscience is Hoffman and that is immediately tested when the Senator offers him a bribe to stand down from the race, which the Judge, after an appeal from Cathy, does not report to the authorities. There is another ploy open to Hoffman. Should he find reason to declare a mistrial that would sabotage Callahan’s bid since he would not be riding high in the media after convicting a celebrity killer.

The picture jumps from intense politics, the wheeling-dealing and wrapping up votes, to a trial in a packed courtroom very much in the Perry Mason vein with surprise witnesses, shocks, objections sustained or overruled, clever arguments, dueling attorneys, and last-minute evidence.

A witness has Thornwall running away from the scene of the crime and when his wife is painted as a nymphomaniac that provides ample motive. Further evidence pushes the defendant into a worse corner. But all the while over the trial hangs the stink of political machination.

There are another half-dozen brilliant twists, not least of which is Judge Hoffman letting conscience go hang and embarking on a couple of dodgy endeavors himself including what amounts to sheer blackmail. The District Attorney, one of the sharpest tools in the box, reacts to every setback with a cunning that would have been criminal had it not been legal. Also hanging there is potential adultery between Cathy and the widowed Hoffman.

The writer in Huggins is a past master at shifting the cards in the deck and this has so many twists and turns it feels like a whole series of The Fugitive crammed into one episode. There is as much self-awareness of the underbelly of politics as in Advise and Consent (1962), as much deceit and corruption, as much principle disguised as honor.

But the plot here is so tight, the characters dealing with twists and turns that the movie has no requirement for the depth of characterization that would have been brought to the picture by a Henry Fonda or Charles Laughton. Huggins proves you can have just as much fun without the big boys. None of the stars with the exception of Angie Dickinson made a dent on the Hollywood A-list but they are all perfectly acceptable, and once Huggins tightens the screws plot-wise the last thing on your mind is wishing for a better cast.

A cracker.

Billy Budd (1962) ***

Unfairly muscled out by lavish roadshow Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) but covering similar territory minus sailors going off-piste on a South Pacific island. Peter Ustinov outranked fellow triple hyphenates Billy Wilder (writer, producer, director) and John Wayne (actor, producer, director) in that he could add acting to his other skills (writer, producer, director) and in some respects he was actually better remembered as a noted raconteur on late night television shows. I was surprised to discover he was actually well versed in the directing malarkey by the time he came to helm Billy Budd, four previous excursions dating from the late 1940s and most recently Romanoff and Juliet (1961). He was better known at this point as an Oscar-winner for Spartacus (1960). He would win another for Topkapi (1964) and go on to direct another three pictures.

Billy Budd is a claustrophic affair that you’ll need a bit of a history lesson to understand. The British Navy had two methods of recruiting sailors. The first was the more honest, awaiting a supply of volunteers. The second, the most dodgy legal proces ever invented, involved grabbing any likely candidate and forcing – “pressing”- them into service. Normally, this caper took place on land and gangs of recruitment officers did the business, hence the term “press gang.”

However, I was unaware that in times of war – this is set during the Napoleonic War – the British Navy could board any passing merchant vessel and commandeer any of its crew. In this case, Captain (actually Post Captain if you’re being technical about it) Vere (Peter Ustinov) hijacks only one sailor, Billy Budd (Terence Stamp).

Quite why it’s only this singleton is never explained. There are a couple of other irregularities that run against making this a tight ship in terms of narrative construction. The first is, that in the first of two critical incidents, our otherwise charming and chatty Budd is suddenly struck dumb with a stammer, the first time such an affliction has put in an appearance. The second is that, in consequence, Budd strikes an officer, the bullying Master-at-Arms Claggart (Robert Ryan) who hits his head while falling and dies.

Now even I know, and I’m hardly a naval scholar, that striking an officer is punishable by death. The fact that Claggart has a Capt Bligh disposition, inclined to find any opportunity to bring out the lash, makes no difference to the outcome. So while it seems that court martial provides dramatic scope, here the outcome is never in doubt. This isn’t Queeg on The Caine Mutiny, which is a more complicated affair, where the captain’s sanity is questioned.

So where the narrative should have built up in intensity, it largely flounders and depends (successfully as it happens) on audience appreciation of Budd as an innocent abroad.

That said, like Mutiny on the Bounty, it reveals the remarkable lack of recourse to any higher authority on ship should the highest authority either carry out or endorse cruelty. The minute he’s on the ship Budd is exposed to the sadistic will of Claggart who has condemned a sailor to a pitiless flogging for reasons that cannot be explained. Budd soon learns that Claggart has accomplices who will sabotage a crew member’s gear so that he will be put on a report, accumulation of sufficient black marks resulting in automatic flogging without interference from the captain.

While Vere is hardly in the Capt Bligh category and most of the time comes across as relatively amiable, our introduction to him is firing a shot across the bows of a merchant ship that doesn’t want to stop in case its crew is press ganged. He is quite ready to invoke the rules to get what he wants and is enough of a disciplinarian that the crew kowtow to him. He might feel a touch of remorse that Budd is the sacrificial lamb to the Royal Navy’s rule of law, but he’s hardly going to go against procedure.

So mostly what we’ve got is the acting. Terence Stamp (The Collector, 1965), in his debut, was Oscar-nominated and you can see why and in some senses this is the career-defining role before acting affectations and mannerisms took over. Robert Ryan (The Wild Bunch, 1969) is very effective as the sinister Claggart. And there are a host of other British names to look out for – David McCallum (Sol Madrid/The Heroin Gang 1968), Ray McAnally (Fear Is the Key, 1972), Paul Rogers (Three into Two Won’t Go, 1969) and Niall McGinnis (The Viking Queen, 1967) among the foremost.

Ably directed by Ustinov who wrote the screenplay with Dewitt Bodeen (Cat People, 1942) based on the original Herman Melville novel and a stage adaptation by Louis O. Coxe and Robert H. Chapman.

Worth seeing for Stamp’s performance.

Behold a Pale Horse (1964) ***

Old causes never die but they do go out of fashion and interest from movie audiences in the issues surrounding the Spanish Civil War had fallen from the peak when they attracted artists of the caliber of Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso. But passions surrounding the conflict remained high even 20 years after its conclusion as indicated in this Fred Zinnemann (The Sundowners, 1960) drama.

Manuel Artiquez (Gregory Peck) plays a disillusioned guerilla living in exile in France, who has ceased raiding the Spanish border town under the thrall of corrupt Captain Vinolas (Anthony Quinn). Artiguez has two compelling reasons to return home – a young boy Paco asks him to revenge the death of his father at the hands of Vinolas and his mother is dying. But Artiquez is disinclined to do either. Heroism has lost its luster. He has grown more fearful and prefers to live out his life drinking wine and casting lustful glances at young women.

In France he enjoys a freedom he would be denied in Spain. He is not hidden. Ask anybody in the street where he lives and they will tell you. This is a crusty old soldier, unshaven, long past finding refuge in memories, but not destroyed either by regret. There is a fair bit of plot, some of it stretching incredulity. The action sequence at the end, conducted in complete silence, is very well done, but mostly this is a character piece.

This is not the upstanding Gregory Peck of his Oscar-winning To Kill a Mockingbird. He is a considerably less attractive character, burnt-out, shabby, grizzled, lazy, easily duped, unwilling to risk his life to see his mother. We have seen aspects of the Anthony Quinn character before but he brings a certain humanity to his villain, bombastic to hide his own failings, coarse but occasionally charming, suitably embarrassed when caught by his wife visiting his mistress and praying earnestly to God to deliver Artiquez into his hands. Omar Sharif has the most conflicted character, forced by conscience to help an enemy of the Church.

However, two elements in the picture don’t make much sense. Paco tears up a letter (critical to the plot) to Artiquez which I just cannot see a young boy doing, not in an era when children respected and feared their elders. And I am also wondering what was it about Spain that stopped directors filming it in color. This is the third Spain-set picture I have reviewed in this blog after The Happy Thieves and The Angel Wore Red. For the first two I can see perhaps budget restrictions being the cause, but given the stars involved – Rex Harrison and Rita Hayworth in the first and Ava Gardner and Dirk Bogarde in the second – hardly facing the production dilemmas of a genuine B-picture.

But Behold a Pale Horse was a big-budget effort from Columbia and while black-and-white camerawork may achieve an artistic darkness of tone it feels artificial. This was never going to be the colorful Spain of fiestas and tourist vistas but it would have perhaps been more inviting to audiences had it taken more advantage of ordinary scenery.

J.P. Miller (Days of Wine and Roses, 1962) adapted the film from the novel Killing a Mouse on Sunday by Emeric Pressburger who in tandem with Michael Powell had made films like Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948). The film caused calamity for Columbia in Spain, the depiction of Vinolas with a mistress and taking bribes so upset the authorities that all the studio’s movies were banned.

The L-Shaped Room (1962) ***

Has contemporary bite, given half the picture is about abortion, banned in Britain at that time and the Pill yet to come on-stream. Being a single mother was an equally unwelcome tag unless you were a widow, in which case you were shrouded with respectability.

Pregnant French lass Jane (Leslie Caron) has decided to hang on in Britain rather than face the shameful ordeal of returning home. She knows who the father is, Terry (Mark Eden), to whom she lost her virginity in a week-long affair in Cornwall, but she’s not planning to hustle him into a shotgun wedding and you get the idea that, at 27, her virginity was weighing heavily on her.

Ending up in a bedsit in London – the titular room a landlord’s clever way of turning one decent-sized room into two smaller ones, each with a share of the window – she is clearly au fait with a British legal loophole that permits termination should pregnancy damage her mental health. And there were enough Harley St doctors to mentor her through such a loophole, for a fee of course.

It’s the briskness of Dr Weaver (Emlyn Williams) that puts her off. She has another go, later on, this time with black market pills from one of her neighbors, but they don’t work. Meanwhile, she has fallen in love with aspiring writer Toby (Tom Bell) and divines, correctly, that he won’t want to bring up another man’s child. In the end, she has the baby and scarpers back to France to face the music.

On the face of it an ideal candidate for the “kitchen sink” mini-genre that was pervasive at the time, but actually much more rewarding than many of the genre with dealt with male anger. This is much more about acceptance, without being craven or abject about it.

And there’s much to enjoy in director Bryan Forbes’ understated style. Half the time you could imagine you were in noir from the use he makes of the commonplace manner in which lights in staircases generally went off after a minute or so (not so much an energy-saving device as a money-saving one for the landlord) and he makes clever play of these sudden changes. There are also, unusual for the time, disembodied voices – the camera on Jane as she mounts the stairs, the voice her out-of-sight landlady Doris (Avis Bunnage). And every now and then the camera glides from her room into that of her neighbor, jazz trumpeter Johnny (Brock Peters) who can hear everything through the paper-thin walls, her morning retching and her night-time love-making with Toby.

How Johnny does find out about her baby is beautifully done, the best sequence in the movie. She works in a café where Johnny eats each night and she’s set a little table for him with a flower in a bottle. But he doesn’t turn up. She suspects, for no real reason except the worst, that he’s in the basement making out with one of the sex workers, but it’s Johnny (who had always been a good friend) who tells her that, from a sense of his disgust, he has let her boyfriend know the truth.

Like Darling (1965), this is a fascinating portrait of a woman making the wrong decisions. But Jane lacks Diana’s power. She’s not helpless exactly, and certainly has a good line in getting rid of unwanted attention. Her motives are not entirely clear. She wasn’t in love with Terry and for a long time she fends off Toby. She deludes herself into believing that Toby’s love for her will overcome his distaste that she is carrying another man’s child. That’s when she takes the pills.

You could kind of get the impression, however, that the real reason for Jane’s predicament is so that the actress can follow in the footsteps of Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn et al to wallow in grief. But it’s more subtle than that. She hasn’t been thrown aside by a callous male. She had made a decision to lose her virginity without considering the consequences and now that there is consequence changes her mind in impulsive fashion on how to deal with it.

Surrounding this central tale are some snapshots of life in a tawdry rooming-house. Two of the occupants are gay, Johnny and faded actress Mavis (Cicely Courtneidge), the landlady has a succession of gentlemen friends, while in the basement Sonia (Patricia Phoenix) works as a prostitute.

Leslie Caron (Guns of Darkness, 1962) was nominated for an Oscar and won a Bafta and a Golden Globe. The film was nominated for a Bafta and a Golden Globe. Tom Bell (Lock Up Your Daughters!, 1969) is good as the struggling writer. And Brock Peters (The Pawnbroker, 1964) has a peach of a part.

Director Bryan Forbes (Deadfall, 1968) wrote the script from the Lynne Reid Banks bestseller.

Darling (1965) ****

Amorality tale. Compulsive opening but contradictory ending. Nobody comes out of this well as male and female alike use each other with little compunction shown. British film making that at one point appeared to be disappearing down the kitchen sink explodes into life with an exploration of just how far the Swinging Sixties can swing. Julie Christie picked up the Oscar for her portrayal of the impulsive, wilful, yet vulnerable model sleeping her way to the top, an unpopular theme in today’s climate.

The credits open with a striking image. A poster for global hunger relief being pasted over by one advertising model Diana (Julie Christie), the face of the decade. There are various other potshots at the hypocritical rich, fawned over for deigning to distribute some of their wealth to the poor, but it doesn’t quite complete the circle, because it’s exactly this kind of virtue-signalling philanthropic society to which Diana, with no sense of judgement, aspires.

It would be more convenient to view Diana as exploited, but, in fact, once she loses her puppy innocence, she is as good at the exploitation game as anyone else. First port of call is dull BBC arts journalist Robert (Dirk Bogarde) who provides her with an opening into the fashionable London set. Both, I should mention, are married, but ditch partners (and children in Robert’s case) and set up home together, she in demand as a hostess at charity events.

Trading sexual favors with advertising executive Miles (Laurence Harvey), she wins a role in a B-picture and his backing to make her the face of a campaign advertising chocolates, that commercial filmed in a palazzo in Italy owned by uber-wealthy but older Cesare (Jose Luis de Vilallonga), a prince, from whom she eventually accepts a marriage proposal, only to find she’s just as bored in Italy as elsewhere. There’s a speedy return to London and Robert’s bed, but he dumps her. Theoretically, she’s so powerless and vulnerable, poor lamb, that she submits to his plan to send her back to Italy, rather than, by now considerably more powerful, starting all over again with someone else.

Possibly the morality of the time or in keeping with some movie dictat required an unhappy ending (of sorts). But this seems to contradict her personality. Bear in mind she had already shown how readily she traded men, and you could already see her running off with a wealthy playboy in Italy and dumping the prince.

At the remove of over half a century, the wild goings-on would be viewed as tame by contemporary standards, and the flashiness of the style, which attracted criticism, would be ignored in favor of the stunning performance by Julie Christie and her empowered female. Sure, she’s emotionally immature, shallow and all the rest of it, and as likely to become a member of the hypocritically rich, but she’s managed to finesse a life as a model into a high-flying princess with the world at her feet and sure as heck she would soon learn how to manipulate that world as easily as Swinging London.

The only dated aspect is the sexuality, much of which was sneaked in under the censor’s nose (though I would imagine would be considerably cut for U.S. audiences) but that acts as a time capsule for a period when homosexuality was still in Britain punishable by law. Nonetheless, there are fleeting references to cross dressing, an orgy, a threesome and oral sex. (Although a cynic might observe how effective courting controversy was for publicity purposes). In some senses, the obsession of director John Schlesinger with thumbing his nose at the censor gets in the way of the central section which is meant to show how far, in terms of decadence, Diana has fallen when in reality she seems to enjoy exploring the wilder and more sensual parts of her personality.

There’s a clever role-reversal. Usually, it’s the man who plays away from home but expects to still be accepted back by a resigned partner. Here it’s Diana. If the men in her life are to be blamed at all it’s for being dumb, not recognizing her ambition and demanding nature. A lover who continues to tap away at his typewriter while Diana exhibits signs of restlessness is as dumb as they come. Miles and Cesare are more her type, the sexually voracious former switching partners at the drop of a hat, while the older man probably already has a mistress stashed away and expects his trophy wife to pick up a discreet lover in the way of aristocracy the world over.

So, at the remove of several decades, a different Diana emerges, one very much in control of her own destiny, picking up men as it suits her purpose, yes still some emotional growing-up to do, but you could easily see her turning into one of the dowager duchesses who run these fundraising balls with young bucks like Miles lionising her and leaving a few other husbands and/or lovers in her wake, possibly still unhappy, but the rich rather than the poor version.

Not sure if she’d qualify as a feminist icon, but she certainly navigated the world of the male gaze and used it to her advantage.

Turned director John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy, 1969) into a brand name. Nominated for five Oscars including Best Picture and winning for three, Julie Christie as Best Actress, Frederic Raphael (Two for the Road, 1967) for the script and Julie Harris for costume design. Bogarde, as well as Christie, reigned supreme at the Baftas. Commercially, one of the most successful British films ever, on a budget of around $1 million earning over $4 million in U.S. rentals alone.

Ending doesn’t ring true, but the rest does.

Winning (1969) ****

Boasting more marquee firepower than Grand Prix (1966) but less throttle on the track, faces the same problem as all racing pictures, namely, what to do with the cast when the camera’s not watching cars hurtle round and round. The John Frankenheimer Cinerama epic brought audiences much closer to the actuality of the circuit, though it fell down at the box office because U.S. moviegoers were less interested in Formula One than their home-grown variety, and filled up the off-track narrative with a clever concoction of politics, romance and revenge.

Le Mans ‘66/Ford vs Ferrari (2019) is the acknowledged ace of racing pictures, with terrific speed action, detailed engineering background, and the true-life tale of the manufacturing kingpin of America trying to wrest a crown from the European monarch, and with romance kept strictly off screen; I’ve no idea if Carroll Shelby had a wife or kids, that’s how disinterested this picture was in moving away from the central situation.

So what you inevitably have here is, to use the football idiom, a picture of two halves. And from today’s perspective, oddly enough it’s the off-screen maneuvers that take center stage. For the time, the racing sequences would have been interesting, not in the Grand Prix league, but then that didn’t make as much money as MGM would have liked, so it made sense to try and back up the spinning around with a more interesting story.

And this one’s a zinger, and the only reason the picture doesn’t work as well as it should is because the racing keeps on getting in the way of two hard-nosed individuals. There’s nothing particularly unusual about race ace Capua. He’s not of the win-at-all-costs league of Charlton Heston in Number One (1969), there’s no dodgy dealings for example, but he’s got the standard winner’s mindset, everything, including wife, takes second place to achieving his goal which in this instance is winning the Indy 500 (a 500-mile race round the same circular track about 200 times, not the twisting-and-turning racetracks of Grand Prix).

Even when he does win he lacks the champagne’n’sex personality of rival Erding (Robert Wagner) who’s usually got a girl on both arms and both knees and knows how to party. You’re more likely to find Capua wandering alone and drunk through the streets late at night with an empty hotel bed awaiting.

That’s where he meets single mum Elora (Joanne Woodward) shutting up shop (the hours they work!) in a car rental outlet (Avis, if you must know, since presumably they paid for the plug), the type of gal who looks a lot more straight-up than she turns out. She’s happy to dump her son on her mother and hightail off with new lover and he’s so smitten it’s not long before they’re married and she has to come to terms with the fact that he’s a lot more monosyllabic as a husband than a skirt-chasing Romeo.

What should have upset the applecart is her son, Charley (Richard Thomas), but Capua’s taken a shine to the teenager and spends a whole weekend – mum packed off elsewhere – getting to know him. Movies of this era didn’t waste any time on father-son bonding, kids mostly getting in the way of either romance or family life, and played for comedic effect (The Impossible Years, 1968, etc) or already having flown the nest and getting stoned. So this is pretty unusual territory and it’s well done.

But the real twist is Elora. Setting aside that she’s the kind of woman that dumps her son when a handsome hunk hoves into view, she looks like your typical mom, happy to sit on the sidelines and wait for hubby to come home and console him should he be on a losing streak. But Elora’s not that kind of woman at all. She needs attention. And if she doesn’t get it from a husband too wrapped up in his work she’s going to look elsewhere.

There’s an absolutely stunning scene that has little place in a sports picture when said handsome hunk, sporting god, top dog, finds her in bed with Erding. This has got to be Paul Newman’s best ever acting. And cleverly directed. The movie’s been toddling along with a nifty romantic score and that music’s playing as Capua heads home. But it shuts off suddenly when he opens the motel door. Tears brim in Capua’s eyes. The wife reacts from shame. No words are spoken. It’s all in looks.

Consequently, Charley takes against the erring mom and in a fast-forward to contemporary complicated maternal relationships she wants him to be her “friend.”

Of course, with her out of the way, Capua can get down to the serious business of winning, but that still leaves an emptiness inside. You’ll probably remember the famous freeze-frame ending of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), perhaps it’s no coincidence that Newman and producing partner John Foreman were in charge of that as well, because here they resort to the same technique. While, theoretically, this leaves audiences on an edge, it doesn’t at all, it just, as in the western, stops short of spelling things out. Elora’s much more self-aware than Capua, she’s making no moves to welcome a second chance, and you’re pretty darned sure this marriage ain’t going to get over her betrayal.

All the noise and razzamatazz of seeing the Indy 500 on the screen obscured the fine acting. Coming at it now with the racing sequences not appearing half as exciting as they must have been back in the day, and the twisty character of Elora to the fore, plus the exploration of the father-teenage son relationship, this has got a lot more to offer.

My guess is it gets marked down because the racing isn’t up to modern day expectations but ignore that and watch the acting. Joanne Woodward (A Big Hand for the Little Lady, 1966) steals the show, and, except in that one scene, beats Paul Newman (The Prize, 1963) hands down but that’s taking little away from the actor. In his debut Richard Thomas (Last Summer, 1970) shows definite promise, Robert Wagner (The Biggest Bundle of Them All, 1968) better than I’ve seen him. James Goldstone (When Time Ran Out, 1980) directed from a script by Howard Rodman (Coogan’s Bluff, 1968).

That bedroom scene takes some beating.

Time for a reappraisal.

Blood Demon / Blood of the Virgins / The Torture Chamber of Dr Sadism (1967) **

Heavy on atmosphere but not much else, a gender-switch take on the Countess Bathory horror tale (made by Hammer as Countess Dracula, 1971), which sees Count Regula (Christopher Lee) as, oddly enough, being one virgin’s blood short of achieving immortality, thirteen being the vital number, when he is arrested. Condemned to die in traditional fashion, first of all face impaled on a golden iron maiden then body torn apart by a quartet of horses, but not before casting a curse on the prosecutor.

Thirty years later or thereabouts Roger von Marienberg (Lex Barker), son of the prosecutor, turns up seeking the family castle only to find no one will show him the way. And that when he does get going it’s through intermittent fog, past burnt-out buildings and a forest strung with corpses and, it has to be said, a countryside that occasionally takes on an artistic hue, such as one sequence where the coach rides through the countryside with the sky above solid red and the land below solid green.

Along the way he encounters Baroness Lilian (Karin Dor) – the daughter of the evil count’s intended victim number thirteen – and her maid Babette (Christiane Rucker) who go through a routine of being captured and rescued, captured and rescued. When finally, halfway through, we reach the castle, we find the count in a glass coffin awaiting rebirth.

And then it’s like a reality tv show as the visitors undergo a series of torturous obstacles, Babatte hung over a bed of knives while time runs out, Lilian encountering rats and spiders and potentially dropping into a nest of (rather disinterested) snakes, Roger taking a leaf out of the Edgar Allan Poe playbook and facing either the pit or the pendulum.

The count – his awakening shown in shadow the best sequence in the movie – looks like a survivor from A Quiet Place, face desperately white, and frantic to fulfill his quest, with Lilian designated the unlucky thirteenth. Of course, although it took an iron mask and four stout horses to bring him to heel three decades before, he’s not so familiar with the rules governing the undead and a crucific is all it takes to unhinge him.

Very much horror by the numbers without much pizzazz. Lex Barker (Old Shatterhand, 1964) looks as if he’s more worried about his quiff being out of place than anything else. Christopher Lee (The Devil Rides Out, 1968) isn’t in it often enough and, minus the fangs, hasn’t the wherewithal to drum up a scare. Karin Dor (Topaz, 1969), beautiful though she is, doesn’t quite make it as a Scream Queen.

Atmosphere is the best element here, from the opening march from dungeon to execution through long echoing corridors to the Hieronymous Bosch-inspired backdrop of the castle, and the bodies that appear to have dived headling into trees rather than merely dangling from them.

Lex Varker is the key that this is German-made, directed without requisite suspense or fright, by Harald Reinl (Winnetou, 1963).

But like the fog everything is too strung-out

Advise and Consent (1962) ****

Excoriating engrossing political drama in which the unscrupulous take the moral high ground and the principled are destroyed. In other words, the reality of power – gaining it and keeping it and all the skullduggery that involves. And it has resonance in today’s cancel culture for it is minor indiscretions from the past that bring down the most upstanding of the species.

Theoretically, director Otto Preminger (Hurry Sundown, 1967) broke one major taboo in touching on the subject of same-sex relationships. But in reality he took an even bolder step from the Hollywood perspective of giving center stage in the main to older players. Many had first come to the fore in the 1930s or earlier – Walter Pidgeon (Turn Back the Hours, 1928), Lew Ayres (All Quiet on the Western Front, 1930), Charles Laughton (Oscar winner for The Private Life of Henry VIII, 1933) Franchot Tone (Oscar nominated for Mutiny on the Bounty, 1935), Henry Fonda (You Only Live Once, 1937).

This was the kind of all-star cast you used to get in 1960s big-budget pictures filling out supporting roles. But in this ensemble drama, they all, at various times, hold the floor. And this approach lent the movie greater authenticity. Even if few viewers today recognize any, that, too, works in the movie’s favor, giving it an almost documentary feel.

Movies about politics are never heavy on plot, so if you’re looking for a thriller in way of All the President’s Men (1973) go elsewhere. It has more in common with The Trial of the Chicago Seven (2020) with multiple viewpoints and opposing perspectives. What the best movies about politics have in abundance is repartee. Virtually every exchange is a verbal duel, the cut and thrust, the slashing attack, the parry, sometimes the knockout blow delivered through humor.

Given politicians spend most of their lives making speeches, even the shortest of sentences, even the bon mots, have a polished ring. And that, frankly, is the joy of this picture, brilliantly written by Wendell Mayes (Anatomy of a Murder, 1959) from the Allen Drury bestseller. In some respects the plot is almost a MacGuffin, a way into this labyrinthine world, where characters duck and dive like a more elevated breed of gangster

A lesser director would have given in to the temptation of filming these duels in close-up. Instead, Preminger’s direction is almost stately, keeping characters at bay.

A seriously ill President (Franchot Tone), distrusting his feeble Vice-President Harley Hudson (Lew Ayres), decides to fill the vacancy for Secretary of State with highly-principled Senator Robert Leffingwell (Henry Fonda). This not being the beginning of the President’s term, he can’t just do what he wants, his nomination must go before a committee and then face a vote in the Senate.

The Senate Majority Leader Bob Munson (Walter Pidgeon) isn’t too happy with the idea, seeing Leffingwell as a dove, likely to appease the growing Soviet threat. Others on the committee, namely Senator Brigham Anderson (Don Murray) feel the same and the committee hearing has the tone of an interrogation. The fine upstanding Leffingwell parries well until Senator Seabright Cooley (Charles Laughton) introduces a witness Herbert Gelman (Burgess Meredith) who says Leffingwell belonged to a Communist cell, an accusation Leffingwell denies.

Twist number one: Leffingwell has lied on oath. He confesses this to a friend Hardiman Fletcher (Paul McGrath) who then stitches up the witness. The committee apologies to Leffingwell, which means he is a sure thing for the post, but Cooley smells a rat and starts his own investigation. Leffingwell tries to get out of the job but the President won’t allow this. The Majority Leader and Anderson are let in on the secret, the former willing to accommodate the President but the latter outraged and planning to thwart the nomination when it reaches the voting stage at the Senate. Anderson comes under pressure, phone calls to his wife about something that went on in Hawaii.

And so the stage is set. The pressure builds on Anderson. The President becomes more unwell, making the appointment of Leffingwell more crucial. Aware of Anderson’s intentions, the Majority Leader starts whipping up votes, with Cooley doing the same for the opposition. Machinations take over. And for a movie that was initially light on plot, and it ends with three stunning twists, and proving once and for all there is nothing quite so standard as the self-serving politician.

This was the first movie for several years for Henry Fonda (Broadway and television his refuge) and for society hostess Gene Tierney (Laura, 1945) who suffered from mental health problems and the last screen appearance of Charles Laughton. The acting is uniformly excellent and the direction confident and accomplished.

A slow-burner for sure, but a fascinating insight into the less savory aspects of politics and the human collateral damage.