Pandemic means panic and these are by far the best scenes in the adaptation of John Wyndham’s famed sci-fi novel. Virtually everyone in the world is struck blind by the fierce brightness emitted from a bombardment of meteorites.
When passengers on a plane realize their pilot is blind, the panic is breathtaking. Ditto a train crashing into a station. While those with sight intact such as a busload of convicts can terrorize the blind, forcing them to submit to sexual overtures. On top of that are terrific scenes of deserted cities – very familiar to us all during the current pandemic – and of those unable to see trying to walk hands outstretched or attach themselves to anyone still blessed with sight.
One of the standouts is patient Bill (Howard Keel), saved from seeing the dazzling light display because his eyes were bandaged, walking through a deserted and trashed hospital. And perhaps Jurassic Park found useful the scene where the plants test an electrified fence.
And on top of that, of course, are the unstoppable monstrous man-eating plants whose growth has been triggered by the comets. Steven Spielberg over a decade later showed how to maintain tension by showing a terrifying predator in small doses and indicating its presence through musical cues and especially, when your monster ain’t quite up to scratch, keeping it hidden for as long as possible.
Interestingly, this film uses sound cues, specific noises attributable to the creatures, though the plants are shown too soon and too often but, in terms of special effects, not at all bad for their time and the low budget. And the sheer normality of the locations works very well – a caretaker having his sandwich, hard-boiled egg and flask of coffee the first victim. Some deft humor undercuts the terror. “Once you’ve tasted this coffee of mine,” remarks a character, ”you’ll know nothing worse can happen.”
Leading the fight against the monsters are sailor Bill (Howard Keel), ironically recovering from an eye operation, hotel proprietor Christine (Nicole Maurey) and in an isolated location alcoholic scientist Tom (Kieron Moore) and his wife Karen (Janette Scott). Bill and Christine are initially intent on mere escape, but in the end have to fight.
A lean 93 minutes (the same as Gravity, 2013), tension is the key. That in itself is astonishing, given cinematographer Freddie Francis was called in at the last minute to puff out what would have been a too-short-to-release feature (under one hour at that point) directed by Steve Sekely (Kenner, 1968). Philip Yordan (El Cid, 1961) and Bernard Gordon (55 Days at Peking, 1963) knocked up the screenplay.
But once again a film like this shows how much more powerful is imagination. We can imagine being blind and walking in a vacuum with the vulnerability and helplessness that fear entails. As the recent pandemic has shown, the unknown is terrifying and fear of the unknown even worse.
Your leading man is an alcoholic drug-addled star with substantially impaired sight. Your leading lady, in her first major role, decides she knows more about acting than the very experienced director. But in the world of victimhood, who gets the blame? Not of course Montgomery Clift (The Defector, 1964) or Susannah York (Sands of the Kalahari, 1965), but director John Huston (The Night of the Iguana, 1964).
Huston had been trying to put together a movie about the flawed god of psychiatry, Sigmund Freud, for 13 years. In 1949, with a screenplay by Charles Kaufman and backed by Twentieth Century Fox, it was going to be called Dr Freud. That version was still on the stocks a couple of years later. It wasn’t the first attempt to put the Viennese genius’s life on film, in 1940 Warner Brothers announced Edward G. Robinson in The Life of Freud with a script by Gary Endore.
Huston began serious work on the movie in 1956, but it was only greenlit two years later, after he signed a five-picture $20 million deal with new production unit Seven Arts, set up by Ray Stark and Eliot Hyman, future kingpins at Columbia and Warner Bros, respectively. It was to follow The Man Who Would Be King (not finally made until 1975), for which Huston was scouting locations in Afghanistan. At that point Freud was scheduled for 1959. Then it was Unforgiven (1960) and The Misfits (1961) that came first.
Mostly, the delay was caused by the screenplay. Huston had handed the task to celebrated French philosopher and playwright, who with what amounts to contempt for Hollywood, had written a 300-page script. His next attempt was 780-pages. Read that and weep, Christoper Nolan and Martin Scorsese, this was a 10-hour movie. When questioned, Sartre retorted “so make a 10-hour film.” Huston contemplated turning the script into two unrelated movies, perhaps in the vein of Young Tom Edison and Edison, the Man (both 1940).
Sartre spent two weeks at Huston’s home in Ireland, with Reinhardt on hand as well, trying to condense the material. But he spoke so rapidly that Huston confessed “I could barely follow even his basic thought processes….sometimes I’d leave the room in desperation, on the verge of exhaustion from trying to follow what he was saying.” Huston could not fault Sartre’s diligence. The playwright rose at 5am and would have 20-25 pages ready for discussion five hours later.
Sartre was paid $40,000 for his screenplay. Kaufman was brought back on board but his work didn’t gel with Huston’s vision. Wolfgang Reinhardt, whose name also appeared as producer, was more involved on the script. His relationship with Huston went back to Juarez (1939) on which they were co-writers and Dr Ehrlich’s MagicBullet (1940), for which Huston was credited with one-third of the script and Reinhardt was producer. But Reinhardt hadn’t received a screenplay credit since Juarez and his last Hollywood picture as a producer was Caught (1953). More recently, he had found work in Germany on The Trapp Family (1956). According to Huston, he was “misunderstood, distrusted and ill-used in Hollywood.”
Eliot Hyman questioned Reinhardt’s contribution. In addition to snagging $30,000-$35,000 and a 7.5 per cent profit share for his producer duties, Reinhardt was being paid $300 a week plus expenses for screenwriting, fees Hyman considered “out of line.”
Huston was determined that “Freud’s descent into the unconscious should be as terrifying as Dante’s descent into Hell.” Sartre was viewed as having not just objectivity but as someone who knew Freud’s work intimately. But clearly major work was required to trim the Sartre script. It took six months to reduce the material into a workable script. Naturally, Sartre objected to the reworking and wanted his name removed.
Eventually, with the project at an impasse, Huston turned to leading British psychiatrist Dr David Stafford-Clark to provide clarification. Clift, who as a patient had considerable experience of psychiatrists, insisted on joining their discussions, but “his presence served only to delay and confuse.” When asked to leave, he stood outside the door and cried, then “drank himself unconscious.”
That should have been warning enough. Having worked with an equally addled Montgomery Clift on The Misfits (1961), Huston might have thought twice about going back into the lion’s den. But, while not covered in box office glory, The Misfits was superlative, with all three principles turning in excellent performances. And in any case, Clift was the go-to actor for the tortured character.
Eva Marie Saint (The Stalking Moon, 1969) was first choice for the role of troubled teenager Cecily and after she turned it down Huston approached Marilyn Monroe whose psychiatrist advised against it. So, it went to 22-year-old English actress Susannah York, who had attracted Hollywood’s attention after two British films – Tunes of Glory (1960) and Loss of Innocence / The Greengage Summer. Unusually, this was not a romantic part, treatment of this patient critical to Freud’s analytical breakthrough. Karl Malden (Pollyanna, 1960) was offered the second male lead, but due to his unavailability it provided a comeback for Larry Parks (The Jolson Story, 1946) who hadn’t worked in Hollywood since 1954.
Huston recalled, “He had deteriorated to a shocking degree… I should have dropped Monty…but I didn’t. I thought that when we got on the set and he had lines he would be all right.”
Clift continually tried to rewrite the movie. He had got hold of previous copies of the script and produced his own indecipherable version and spoke the lines in an infantile manner. “Finally, I realized this was primarily a stall for time,” said Huston. “Monty was having difficulty memorizing the lines. I was surprized at this because he had done so well during The Misfits.” But those lines were simple compared to the long, complicated speeches of Freud.
“I’m sure Monty had almost no conception of what he said in the picture – yet he had the ability to make you believe what he did.” Eventually, his lines were written on boards, on the labels of bottles, door frames and other places on the set. Added Huston, “There was a mist between him and the rest of the world that you simply couldn’t penetrate.”
Huston also encountered problems with York. “Susannah was the personification of the uninformed arrogance of youth. Shortly, under Monty’s influence, she became convinced she was entitled to scientific opinions regarding a subject of which she was woefully ignorant.”
She and Monty would collaborate to rewrite their scenes. York refused to do a scene as originally written until a call to her agent changed her tune.
It took all Huston’s experience to hold onto his temper but a confrontation with Clift in his dressing-room resulted in a door slammed so hard it shattered a mirror. That was later conflated into Huston smashing furniture and tearing the couch apart. Huston was also blamed for Clift receiving rope burns during the climbing sequence. In fact, the shots were arranged so that after just holding on to the rope for the short period required, the actor could let go and land a few feet down on a pile of mattresses. Instead, he slid down the rope, holding on with his hands.
“My reputation for cruelty appears to stem directly from this one scene,” complained Huston, convinced the rope burns were Clift “for his own reasons beating himself up.”
Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe developed a technique of three-plane camerawork to help audiences distinguish between reality, dreams and memory. Scenes where characters recalled memories were shot through a small clear-glass plate mounted on the lens matte box. Dreams acquired an extreme black-and-white effect with chalky faces and other details standing out as luminous in tunnels of darkness. This was achieved through a combination of dramatic contrast in photography, stock and lab work.
The production spent five weeks at the Bavaria Studios in Munich before shifting to Vienna, which included 10 days of night shooting.
Universal underwrote the movie, and with To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) also on its roster, intended to celebrate its golden anniversary in fine style with “record rentals” from a raft of movies appealing to the public and the critics.
Freud’s daughter Anna and son Ernest didn’t take kindly to Hollywood’s interpretation of their father’s life and disassociated themselves from the movie and the Viennese hierarchy objected to the film’s louche elements.
Filming began in August 21, 1961, including three weeks on location in Vienna, and was due to wrap on December 5. That it took another two months to complete, (final shooting date was February 10, 1962) inflating the budget, was laid at the foot of Clift. Never mind the drink and drugs he was consuming in mighty proportions, he had cataract problems and could hardly see.
Universal sued Clift for $686,000 for not acknowledging his cataract problems prior to filming, an issue that prevented him memorizing his lines. Clift counter-sued for the remaining $150,000 owed from his $200,000 fee, claiming the problems had developed during filming. “I refuse to accede to the defendant’s demand that this condition…was responsible for delays to the picture.” Firemen’s Fund Insurance, whose policy covered the actor for a year from April 1, 1961, with the proviso the movie finished by December 5, 961, denied liability.
Universal was concerned that the title would mean little to the general public and pre-release toyed with changing the title to Freud: The Dark Passion but agreed, in the end, not to “tamper” with it. However, exhibitors disagreed. And once Minneapolis second-run and neighborhood cinema owners refused to book it under the existing title, it was changed to The Secret Passion, which at least got it through the door with bookers even if the public remained wary. On posters, The Secret Passion part of the title grew bigger and bigger until the Freud element almost disappeared. The film was cut after initial release but the DVD shows the full version.
Despite critical approval and a 12-week run in New York and some decent runs in smaller houses in the country’s bigger cities, it was a flop, not managing the $1 million in rentals required to earn a spot on Variety’s annual box office chart.
SOURCES: John Huston, An Open Book (Columbus books, 1988) p294-305; “Memo from Eliot Hyman,” July 15, 1959, United Artists Archive, University of Wisconsin, Box 7, Folder 7; “Endore for Freud,” Hollywood Reporter, February 24, 1940, p2; “Robinson As Freud,” Box Office, March 2, 1940, p2”; “Dr Freud Bio On Fox Docket,” Box Office, September 17, 1949, p19; “20th Lead with Five in Biopic Sweepstakes,” Variety, January 24, 1951, p5; “Freud Biopic 1st Hyman 7-Arter,” Variety, July 30, 1958, p3; “John Huston’s Next Spot – Afghanistan,” Variety, October 15, 1958, p19; “Huston Seeks Saint,” Hollywood Reporter, November 10, 1958, p2; “Universal Unchained,” Variety, August 19, 1959, p5; “Huston in on Freud Biography,” Variety, October 28, 1959, p11; “Sartre Script on Freud: 780 Pages,” Variety, June 29, p3; “Freud Rolls August 21,” Variety, July 26, 1961, p5; “Freud Moves Location,” Hollywood Reporter, October 12, 1961, p6; “Freud on Night Shift,” Hollywood Reporter, October 24, 1961, p3; “Freud Film Not To Liking of Kin,” Variety, November 1, 1961, p2; “Three-Plane Photography Developed for Freud,” Hollywood Reporter, December 19, 1961, p11; “Huston’s Freud Ends Photo Phase,” February 14, 1962, p4; “Universal Sues for $600,000,” Hollywood Reporter, April 30, 1962, p3 “Montgomery Clift’s Eye Trouble,” Variety, June 5, 1963, p5; “U’s Insurance Claim on Monty Clift,” Variety, June 27, 1962, p7; “It’s Plain Freud, U Won’t Tamper,” Variety, October 3, 1962, p3; “Never Heard of Freud,” Variety, October 9, 1963, p5; ’“Top Rental Films of 1963,” Variety, January 8, 1964, p37.
Walt Disney discarded much of Eleanor H. Porter’s original best seller not to mention a great deal of the tear-jerking section that played to superstar Mary Pickford’s strengths in the silent 1920 adaptation. Pickford was in her late 20s at the time and a movie mogul to boot (having launched United Artists) so had a depth of emotion Hayley Mills (aged 13 during filming) could not hope to match.
The screenplay, by David Swift (Love Is A Ball, 1963) is an object lesson in how to retain the essential element of a story – a positive-thinking orphan alleviates the gloom in an embittered town – while providing enough worthwhile for adult audiences. Disney assembled an awesome cast with three Oscar-winners – Jane Wyman (Best Actress, Johnny Belinda, 1948), Karl Malden (Best Supporting Actor, A Streetcar Named Desire, 1952) and Donald Crisp (Best Supporting Actor, How Green Was My Valley, 1942) – plus four-time nominee Agnes Moorehead and Adolph Menjou.
Despite no Oscar recognition Nancy Olsen had been leading lady to the likes of Bing Crosby (Mr Music, 1950), John Wayne (Big Jim McLain, 1952) and William Holden (Force of Arms, 1951). In effect, parents would be very familiar with the stellar supporting cast.
Orphan Pollyanna (Hayley Mills) – British accent explained by parents being missionaries – , majoring on optimism, tries to enliven a town torn apart by dissent and petty feuds and in thrall to her intimidating aunt and fading spinster Polly Harrington (Jane Wyman). While she tries to see the good in everyone, the rest of the population is forever pointing out the bad. The main source of contention is a derelict orphanage. The townspeople want it demolished and a new one erected. Polly Harrington wishes it preserved in its dilapidated state as a monument to her father who had built it. It’s the kind of attitude someone would take who was just plain determined to get their own way. Pollyanna tries to sway opinion against her aunt, resulting in no end of trouble.
Various sub-plots include stifled romance, Harrington has driven away boyfriend Dr Chilton (Richard Egan), fire-and-brimstone preacher Rev Ford (Karl Malden),another orphan Jimmy (Kevin Corcoran), the reclusive Mr Prendergast (Adolphe Menjou) coaxed back into communal life, and the mayor (Donald Crisp) trying to repair the rifts.
Unusually for a kid’s picture, Wyman, Malden and Crisp each are given a reflective moment to prove they are doing more than taking an easy salary cheque, bearing some of the weight of the narrative, Malden especially allocated more screen time than would be normal in a movie aimed at kids.
I have never read the book nor (to my shame) seen the Pickford version, so I came to the movie with low expectations, anticipating a lazy, maudlin effort. So I was quite surprised to discover how much I enjoyed it and was shocked by the final piece of action which turned the movie on its head. Sure, it relies on a feelgood drive but there is some decent stuff here – Pollyanna’s determination to find goodness in every event and every person takes her into some strange avenues, the rainbow playing on the walls, the “good parts” of the Bible – that these days makes for an entertaining matinee.
At least in Hollywood terms (Mills made her debut the year before in the British Tiger Bay, 1959) Pollyanna falls into the a-star-is-born category. The actress acquits herself well, with her expressive face, while hearing the emotion she packs into the word “gorgeous” is word admission alone. Being older than the usual child star, she was one of the few who made the transition into adult roles. Karl Malden is the pick of the supporting cast but he is given a good run for his money by Jane Wyman. Disney’s trick of peppering a children’s film with actors well-known to the adult audiences was one he would use again.
Swift, in dual capacity as director (and making his movie debut) played down the saccharine nature, making the main character less just automatically bouncing with happiness and more striving to make the best of difficult situations.
One of the joys of writing this blog has been the opportunity to reassess stars that I’ve had a tendency to under-rate. You’ll maybe forgive me for putting Doris Day in that category especially as I’ve had ample reasons now to take a different, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1960) just one of the many instances where the actress has confounded my expectations.
Until I started on the Blog I’d never gone out of my way to watch a Doris Day picture with the exception of musical Calamity Jane (1953) when it became a camp classic as well as Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and films where she happened to be co-starring with Cary Grant.
So I came to The Glass Bottom Boat with low expectations, especially as this was towards the end of her two-decades career and her co-star was Rod Taylor, a different level of star to Grant and Rock Hudson. By now, she had dropped the musical and dramatic string to her bow and concentrated on churning out romantic comedies and also been supplanted by Julie Andrews as Hollywood’s favorite cute star.
But it was in part on the evidence here that I changed my tune regarding Day. This is entertaining enough. And she sings – the theme song, one other and a riff on one of her most famous tunes “Que Sera Sera.” Unless there’s a symbolism I’ve missed, the title is misleading since the boat only appears in the opening section to perform the obligatory meet-cute with Taylor as a fishermen hooking Day’s mermaid costume.
The plot is on the preposterous side. The occasionally hapless Jennifer (Doris Day) is suspected as a spy after infiltrating Bruce Templeton’s (Rod Taylor) aerospace research operation. It’s partly a James Bond spoof – when her dog is called Vladimir you can see where the movie is headed – with all sorts of crazy gadgets. But mostly the plot serves to illustrate Day’s substantial gifts as a comedienne. For an actress at the top of her game, she is never worried about looking foolish.
And that’s part of her appeal. She may look sophisticated even when, as here, playing an ordinary public relations girl, but turns clumsy and uncoordinated at the first scent of comedic opportunity. There’s some decent slapstick and pratfalls and some pretty good visual gags especially the one involving a soda water siphon. A chase scene is particularly inventive and there’s a runaway boat that pays dividends. But there are a couple of effective dramatic moments too, emotional beats, when the romance untangles.
She’s in safe hands, director Frank Tashlin responsible for Son of Paleface (1952) and The Girl Can’t Help It (1956). I also felt Rod Taylor (Dark of the Sun, 1968) was both under-rated and under-used, never given much to do onscreen except stick out a chiseled jaw and turn on the charm. Although he had been Day’s sparring partner in her previous picture Do Not Disturb (1965) he’s not in the Cary Grant-Rock Hudson league.
It’s also worth remembering that the actress had her own production company, Arwin, which put together over a dozen of her pictures, including this one, so she would be playing to her strengths rather than those of her co-star. On the bonus side, watch out for a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo by Robert Vaughn (The Man from Uncle), and a featured role by Dom DeLuise as a bumbling spy.
Everett Freeman (The Maltese Bippy, 1969) wrote the screeplay.
Sequels being all the rage – James Bond, Matt Helm, Derek Flint, The Pink Panther, The Magnificent Seven – in the 1960s it was no surprise that the success of Dr Who and the Daleks (20th top film at the British box office in 1965) suggested that a second go-round might be as profitable. As was standard, a recurring formula was the key.
In this case, Dr Who (Peter Cushing) and grand-daughter Susan (Roberta Tovey) repeated their previous roles though another grand-daughter Barbara (Jennie Linden) was replaced by a niece Louise (Jill Curzon) and hapless passenger Ian (comedian Roy Castle) was ousted in favour of hapless London cop Tom (comedian Bernard Cribbins). But returning director Gordon Flemyng (The Split, 1968) upped the ante. Instead of waiting ages for the dreaded mechanical monsters with their electronic catchphrase (“Exterminate”) to appear, they turn up virtually in the first reel.
As if to emphasise the versatility of the Tardis, this time instead of space travel it’s time travel, Dr Who turning up in a blitzed London virtually two centuries ahead only to discover his nemesis rules the planet. It being set in a familiar locale, nobody is loaded down with information dumps, a tedious feature of the first picture, and it doesn’t take as long to get going, and our heroes, in various configurations, and while befriending the rebels – leader Wyler (Andrew Keir) and David (Ray Brooks) – endure a cycle of trap and escape while the good doctor tries to work out what brought the daleks to his home planet.
I’m giving this the benefit of the doubt and suggesting that the first appearance of the daleks is a homage to Dr No (1962) although one of the creatures emerging from the River Thames is hardly a patch in the sexy-entrance stakes as a bikini-clad Ursula Andress. Amidst all the mayhem, there are a couple of standout sequences, the best of which is a comedy skit involving Tom, disguised as a leather-clad member of the brainwashed automatons. This reminded me of Bob Hoskins in the first Super Mario Bros (1993 vintage) being trapped in an elevator with the Goombas. Tom is just too human to fit into this gang, constantly out of step with their actions.
Naturally, the Dr Who team are split up, allowing the action to move into two converging directions. The daleks plan to turn the planet into a giant spacecraft it can tow around, that storyline somehow involving a mining operation outside London while there’s some clever sci fi tomfoolery using the Earth’s magnetic poles to destroy the enemy.
Oops, I’ve given away the climax. Not that anybody cares that much, the main fun being the escaping formula – the daleks even use this as a plot twist, commending the intelligence of any human who can manage to escape – and watching the doctor outwit the enemy. Actually, the main fun is the dastardly daleks. Every time they appear you can imagine yourself back in a cinema crammed with thousands of kids yelling “Exteminate! Exterminate!”
The plot keeps rolling along, no time to draw breath. And we’re not having to bother with any of the boring MCU claptrap intent on giving the super-villains a backstory or expiating their evil brains. The daleks represent alien domination, and they’re not here to give lectures on inhumanity or peace. In their determination to kill, they could almost be contemporary, given the number of serial killers and/or madmen clogging up cinema screens.
If not conspicuously inventive, Gordon Flemyng’s management of a large cast and a variety of action brought him to Hollywood attention. Given the storied career of Peter Cushing (TheSkull, 1965) storied career, his performances as the doctor are generally overlooked, which is a pity, because he is certainly among the best to essay this character. Carry On regular Bernard Cribbins livens up proceedings without needing to resort to slapstick in the Roy Castle mode. This must have seemed a bit of a come down for Ray Brooks after unexpected hit The Knack (1965) but he always seemed more at home on the small screen (although Flemyng hired him again for The Last Grenade, 1970).
The series ended here after the movie flopped on home territory. The original had bombed in the States, so the producers were heavily dependent on British box office. I guess just getting U.S. audiences aware there was such a thing in Britain as a “police box” would have been harder to grasp than the fact that it housed a time machine, and that the interplanetary craft was just there without a whole story about how it had come into being.
Made on a miserly budget by anybody’s standards, the sfx was never going to come up to scratch. But who cares.
By this point in the 1960s, Gregory Peck’s career was pretty much at a standstill. Prestige had not saved Behold a Pale Horse (1964) from commercial disaster, thriller Mirage (1965) went the same way, other projects – The Martian Chronicles, Ice Station Zebra – failed to get off the ground or like The Bells of Hell Go Ting-a-Ling-a-Ling were abandoned once filming began. So, he was the main beneficiary of Cary Grant’s decision to retire.
Stanley Donen had Grant, with whom he had made the highly successful thriller Charade (1963), in mind for the role of the hieroglyphics professor caught in in a web of intrigue in Arabesque. In some ways Peck was an adequate replacement but lacked the older actor’s gift for comedy and failed to master the art of the double-take. Arabesque was almost a counterpoint to Charade. In the earlier movie Audrey Hepburn is continually suspicious of Cary Grant. The new movie sees a gender reversal, Peck constantly puzzled as to where Sophia Loren’s loyalties lie.
The story itself is quite simple. A code has been put inside a hieroglyphic and a variety of people are trying to get hold of it either to decipher the secret within or to stop someone else finding out what it contains. When the scientist who has the code is killed, the man who ordered the killing, the sinister Beshraavi (Alan Badel), approaches Prof Pollock (Gregory Peck) to unravel the code, but is turned down. The professor is then kidnapped by Arab prime minster Hassan Jena (Carl Duering), whom he admires, to ask him to take up the job. Beshraavi’s provocatively-dressed wife Yazmin (Sophia Loren), flirting outrageously with Pollock, is also after the code.
There follows more twists and double-crosses than you could shake a stick at, leaving the amenable Pollock mightily confused. “What is it about you,” he asks Yazmin at one point, “that makes you so hard to believe?” It looks like director Donen is playing a variation of the famous Raymond Chandler maxim, that when a plot begins to flag, “have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.” Sometimes, there is actually a gun or similar weapon, but mostly it’s just another twist. If Pollock doesn’t know what the hell is going on, then the audience is in the same boat.
But it is stylish, set in appealing parts of Britain (antique university, Ascot), Yazmin decked out in glamorous Dior outfits and even Pollock gets to wear a morning suit. Drop in a couple of action sequences, Hitchcock-style chases in a zoo and pursuit by a combine harvester, Pollock nearly run over by horses in a race, and the pair of them having strayed into a builder’s yard facing demolition by the British equivalent of a wrecking ball. But the standout scene is when Yazmin hides the professor in her shower (curtain drawn) while being interrogated by her suspicious husband and then steps in naked and then they play footsie with dropped soap. And she proceeds to expound, “If I was standing stark naked in front of Mr Pollock, he’d probably yawn.”
Beshraavi’s jealousy over his wife’s flirtation with Pollock adds another element of tension. Beshraavi is a very sinuous, sensuous bad guy, who can turn a harmless massage into a matter of life and death. He also has a pet falcon with a habit of ripping people’s cheeks. But even in the face of obvious threats, Pollock holds his own. In one scene as Beshraaavi attempts to retrieve what he believes is the code from Pollock’s dinner plate, where it has fallen from the hiding place in the professor’s clothing, Pollock taps the man’s invading fingers with the sharp tines of his fork.
And there is some accomplished dialogue. When Pollock offers the falcon a date and is brusquely told the bird of prey only eats meat, he responds, “I thought he looked at it rather wistfully.” Beshraavi retorts, sharply, “It must have been your fingers.”
Donen had not made a film in the three years since Charade, so there was some critical feeling that he was a bit rusty and used experimentation – big close-ups, odd camera angles – to cover this up. He was living in London by this point and had been for nearly a decade. But there was very little that fazed him in any genre, and he had switched from musicals like Singing in’ the Rain (1952) to romantic drama (Indiscreet, 1958) and comedy (The Grass Is Greener, 1960). And though there is no question the film would have been better with Cary Grant, Peck proves a reasonable substitute.
The movie’s main drawback is the lack of romance since falling in love with someone you believe is either a traitor or a compulsive liar is a hard trick to pull off. But if you like the idea of pitting your wits against the screenwriters – Peter Stone (Charade), Julian Mitchell (Another Country, 1984) and Stanley Price (Gold, 1974), the latter pair in their movie debuts – then this is one for you.
Take twelve condemned men, drop them in the desert hundreds of miles from safety with only enough water to last two weeks, and nothing to eat but dates, and make them work together to effect salvation from their predicament. Not exactly the premise for The Dirty Dozen (1967) but not far off. The Flight of the Phoenix appears a dummy run for director Robert Aldrich’s more ambitious war picture, not least because in terms of structure it is only eight minutes shorter. There are no women in the picture (except those appearing in a mirage) and the men, of all different types, must come together or die in the savage heat.
You might argue that the audience for this kind of picture no longer exists. In the 1960s there was a big market for the Nevil Shute/Hammond Innes/Elleston Trevor type of novel which contained a lot of practical detail at a time when heavy industry – mining, shipbuilding, oil, car manufacture – was a massive employer and the ordinary man had an easy understanding of – and was often fascinated by – the principles of engineering. Bear in mind that this was the era of space rockets and there was excitement about man’s planned flight to the moon.
During a sandstorm a small twin-engined plane carrying passengers from an oil field crash lands in the Sahara. James Stewart as the pilot was a casting trick. In a previous aerial adventure No Highway (1951), Stewart was the ordinary joe challenging authority. Here he is the authority figure, pilot Frank Towns, challenged and part of the film’s guile is the way he has to concede that authority to the one person on board everyone hates, arrogant German aircraft designer Dorfmann (Hardy Kruger).
The global job lot of passengers includes: two soldiers, martinet Capt Harris (Peter Finch) and his mutinous Sgt Watson (Ronald Fraser); alcoholic navigator Moran (Richard Attenborough); oil worker Cobb (Ernest Borgnine) on the brink of insanity; sarcastic Scots troublemaker Crow (Ian Bannen); French Dr Renaud (Christian Marquand0; company accountant Standish (Dan Duryea); Italian Gabriele (Gabriele Tinti); Bellamy (George Kennedy) and Carlos (Alex Montoya); plus a monkey of no fixed abode. The monkey, incidentally, is cleverly utilised. He’s not a sentimental or cute device, there to soften a hard guy or for comic relief, but Aldrich often cuts to his squeals or his face when there is imminent danger.
Two passengers are already dead, one is seriously injured. They have been blown so far off-course they will be impossible to locate. There is only enough water for ten or eleven days. It is a given in such circumstances that tempers will explode and hidden secrets surface. Were they guaranteed rescue those two pegs would be enough to hang a movie on. Since there is no such guarantee, this becomes a picture about survival. The obvious maneuver comes into play on the fifth day. Capt Harris determines to walk to safety, over 100 miles in deadly heat. But it’s not a trek picture either, the engineers present know the risks. Mountains will cause false compass readings and those going will walk around in circles.
Trevor Dudley-Smith wrote under nine other pseudonyms including Elleston Trevor and Adam Hall for the “Quiller” spy series.
What? I can get that magnetism in the mountains can affect a compass but where does the walking round in circles enter the equation? Because, explains Moran patiently, a person does not automatically walk in a straight line if there is no actual road. If right-handed then you’ll walk in a left-hand direction because the right leg is more developed than the other and takes a longer stride and there’s nothing you can do about it. This doesn’t matter if you are walking along an actual path but in the desert with no road markings it’s lethal. And this is the beginning of a bag of what would otherwise be deemed trivia except that such facts are a matter of life and death. This is a movie about reality in a way that no other realistic or authentic picture has or will be. Physics is the dominant force, not imagination.
Finch’s sergeant fakes an injury to avoid going. The mad Cobb, originally prevented from leaving, sneaks away in the night. Towns, in courageous mode, goes after him. While he is away, Dorfmann carries out a character assassination. And continues on his return – “the only thing outstanding about you is your stupidity.” By now though, Moran has warmed to Dorfmann’s insane idea of building a single-engined plane out of the wreck of the twin-engined one. And that becomes the crux of the story. Can they build this weird contraption? Will they manage it before they die of thirst? Will rising tensions prevent completion? Are they fit enough after days in the boiling heat to manage the herculean tasks involved?
Aldrich keeps psychological tension at fever pitch, helped along by the pessimistic Towns and the wildly pessimistic Crow, needling everyone in sight, who delivers lines like “how I stopped smoking in three days.” Towns and Moran have to come to terms with the parts they played in the plane crashing, Sgt Watson with his cowardice. Issues arise over leadership and water theft.
I won’t spoil it for you by mentioning the incident that threatens to demolish the entire project. But the finale is truly thrilling, edge-of-the-seat stuff and the skeletal monstrosity being constructed looks hardly capable of carrying the monkey let alone a full complement of passengers. Aldrich is a master of the group shot with unerring composition and often movement within the frame or just a simple bit of business by an actor, for example George Kennedy at one point tapping his hand against his leg, ensuring that the film does not solely focus on a couple of characters. Sometimes all Aldrich needs to make his points are reaction shots.
Terrific performances all round with Ian Bannen Oscar-nominated. Aldrich called on Lukas Heller for the screenplay, based on Elleston Trevor’s novel, having worked with him on Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962) and Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte (1964). Aldrich’s son William and son-in-law Peter Bravos had bit parts, killed off during the crash.
Flight of the Phoenix virtually invented the self-help rescue genre that relied on ingenious mechanical ideas – rather than more simplistic notions – such as later absorbed in movies like Apollo 13 (1995) and The Martian (2015). Aldrich’s mastery of group dynamics would stand in him in good stead for The Dirty Dozen.
The 2004 remake isn’t a patch on the original.
A terrific movie and well worth seeing.
Turning the novel by Elleston Trevor into a movie is illustrative of the process by which the screenwriter eliminates, changes and adds. The Flight of the Phoenix (published in 1964) was a lean 80,000 words, a far cry from the blockbuster airport reads like Exodus by Leon Uris and James Michener’s Hawaii. But its length made it an ideal subject for a film, the shorter novel tending to stick close to the main story. The author’s speciality was authentic detail, an early career as a racing driver and flight engineer inspiring in him a love for all things mechanical.
He knew what made things work and gaps in his knowledge were filled by assiduous research. He was an assiduous man, with 36 books since 1943 under ten pseudonyms, one being Adam Hall whose bestselling spy tale The Berlin Memorandum would be filmed as The Quiller Memorandum. He had tackled aviation before, most prominently in Squadron Airborne (1955).
The film follows the book’s structure with only a couple of deviations. The main one was changing the nationality of the aircraft designer from British to German. Originally named Stringer he was a testy young individual prone to taking offence and going off in big sulks. There was a German in the Trevor version, Kepel, a young man who is injured in the crash. But there was no handy doctor on board and fewer different nationalities.
To build up James Stewart as the heroic pilot and as a consequence to add meat to his clash with German designer Hardy Kruger, in the film he bravely goes out into the desert to find one of the passengers, but that does not occur in the book. Other changes were minor – in the book the passengers are occasionally able to supplement their drinking rations by scraping night frost off the plane and at a later point in the book they drain the blood from a dead camel in order to dilute their drinking water.
While there is an encounter with Arab nomads in both book and film, the book’s approach to this incident is much more straightforward, ignoring some of the detail supplied in the book.
Of course, a novel allows for the inclusion of far greater detail. And while that provides the skeleton for story development, Trevor gives greater insight into the characters than can be achieved on screen. The author allows each character an internal monologue, through which device we discover their motivations, history and fears.
This approach combines the present with the past, presenting a more rounded cast of characters. While the inherent tension of the situation drives the story along, the author switches between characters to keep the reader fully engaged. The cowardly sergeant (played by Ronald Fraser in the film) is the biggest beneficiary, portrayed as a more sympathetic person than in the film.
The book is a stand-alone enjoyment, Trevor’s writing skills, his grasp of character, creation of tension and his engineering knowledge (bear in mind he invented the idea of building another plane out of the wrecked one) make the novel every bit as enthralling as the film.
Standout performance by James Mason (Age of Consent, 1969) holds together this curiosity. Based on a novel by Georges Simenon from 1951, it is updated to the Swinging Sixties and transposed from France to the English provincial town of Winchester (possibly chosen thanks to the hit single the previous year). While featuring an investigation, but minus Maigret, it’s essentially a character study.
Given John Sawyer (James Mason) is a depressed, divorced, retired lawyer, it could easily have sunk under the weight of cliché. Realistic portrayals of depression, except amongst those confined to institutions, were rare in this era. The bulk of the audience would probably view him just as a grumpy old man.
Sawyer is not only estranged from everyone, distancing himself from daughter Angela (Geraldine Chaplin), but sliding into oblivion and even when offered potential redemption can scarcely lift his head above a parapet of boredom, almost catatonic in his attitude, overwhelmed by the loss of wife and, presumably, the esteem that came with his career. A member of the upper middle-class, he shows surprising sensitivity to the underprivileged, outsiders, especially migrants, usually dismissed with a racist epithet, and sex workers whom he treats as victims rather than a corrupting influence.
When the corpse of young American ship’s steward Barney (Bobby Darin) is found in his disused attic, suspicion falls on his daughter’s unemployed Greek boyfriend Jo (Paul Bertoya). Turns out Barney is a nasty piece of work, blackmailing Angels and her friends for trespassing on his ship.
As well as being put up initially in an empty warehouse by Desmond (Ian Ogilvy) whose father, a department store magnate who owns the building, a former cinema, and later in Sawyer’s attic, Barney extracts cash and sexually humiliates his victims. Attempted rape of Angela comes with his conviction that she’ll “thank me for it.”
Eventually, Sawyer is convinced to take on the case and is up against his daughter’s pompous employer and his wife’s lover Hawkins (Bryan Stanion). Maigret would have solved this in a trice but the joy of this is Sawyer’s indifference to the police procedural. He spends most of the time during the trial attempting to make a necklace out of paper clips, asks virtually no questions of witnesses, and makes no pretence of interest in the proceedings.
Among his unusual techniques are summoning up references to Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Unusually, the pay-off doesn’t come in a courtroom but at the twenty-first birthday celebration of the entitled Desmond when to attract attention Sawyer whips off a tablecloth, sending glasses and crockery crashing, and introduces a woman in red.
Estrangement from his daughter could easily be his fault, too wrapped up in a high-flying career to pay the child much heed, but that indifference might as easily be ascribed to the possibility, as his wife taunts him, that the girl is not his.
There’s much to admire in the observations of ordinariness, loneliness, a class system filled with puffed-up mediocrities revelling in the slightest sliver of power, female advancement often requiring dispensing sexual favors to predatory employers or some form of begging.
There’s a brief appearance by Eric Burdon and the Animals, a modelling assignment using the cathedral as backdrop, and drugs. Difficult to imagine though that the pistol holstered by a carnival booth operator could be the real thing.
James Mason’s employment of a limp (result of a war wound) probably went against any genuine assessment of the subtlety of his performance. Geraldine Chaplin (The Hawaiians, 1970) builds up her character with action rather than dialog, showing tenderness where you might expect anger. Bobby Darin (Pressure Point, 1962) essays another creepy thug.
Paul Bertoya (Che!, 1969) is underused. Ian Ogilvy (The Sorcerers, 1967) is so smug you want to thump him. Look out for Pippa Steel (The Vampire Lovers, 1970), Moira Lister (The Double Man, 1967) and Yootha Joyce (Our Mother’s House, 1967).
In his sole directorial assignment Frenchman Pierre Louve, who wrote the screenplay, has better luck dissecting English mores than finding the essence of Simenon, whose non-Maigret novels generally concentrated on a man under pressure. While Mason delivers a fine performance, and his depression is obvious, there’s no sense of him teetering on the edge, more a general decline. In fact it’s the opposite, returning to the legal fray provides him with redemption.
The story of Breathless is usually told from the triumphant perspective of director Jean-Luc Godard, expressed in messianic terms as the young Frenchman who saved the turgid movie industry and inspired a new generation of filmmakers. For star Jean Seberg it provided partial redemption and a sharp plunge into a harsh reality.
Where she had been at the mercy of Otto Preminger in her previous two films, Saint Joan (1957) and Bonjour Tristesse (1958), and for all that she loathed aspects of that experience, she was still in the Hollywood system, where a whole phalanx of people attended to your needs. Preminger had had enough of the woman he believed he could turn into a star. Both movies had flopped, her acting talent questioned.
It’s generally understood that Preminger dumped her and sold her contract to Columbia. But the antipathy went both ways. Her husband, lawyer Francois Moreuil, approached Preminger to negotiate a release from her contract. She might have wished just to be set free for nothing but given Preminger’s investment, not just salary when she wasn’t working but all the build-up that went into turning an unknown talent into a star, that was never on the cards. So, he passed her on to Columbia, to whom he was contracted, and which would take her on as a favor.
But Columbia had little idea what to do with her either. As far as that studio was concerned she was far from the finished article, a long way away from stardom. The best she could hope for was a supporting role in a prestigious production, rebuilding her career under a more sympathetic director. That appeared the most likely outcome when her name was linked to a supporting part in Carol Reed’s Our Man in Havana (1959) starring Oscar-winning Alec Guinness and Maureen O’Hara. But she wasn’t even auditioned.
When Columbia finally found something for her to do it was in the low-budget British-made The Mouse That Roared (1959), leading lady to Peter Sellers, his first as star. After that though, as far as Columbia was concerned, it would be a tumble down the credits in the American Let No Man Write My Epitaph (1960) starring Burl Ives. The British film set had none of the highwire tension of a Preminger film. She was taken acting lessons which restored some of her confidence after the mauling she had taken from Preminger.
As luck would have it, while awaiting a summons from Columbia, she was ensconced in Paris in a romantic idyll with Moreuil, who had vague notions of turning to film direction and had therefore made the acquaintance of the Cahiers du Cinema gang of critics who harbored the same dream. That brought him into contact with Godard, who was, much to her surprise since her performances had generally been lambasted, a big fan.
She was impressed by his short Charlotte et son Jules starring former boxer Jean-Paul Belmondo. Her role in his debut feature, said Godard, was based on the character she had essayed in Bonjour Tristesse. “I could have taken the last shot of Preminger’s film and dissolved to a title ‘Three Years Later’,” he explained. Still, even though there was nothing on the horizon from Columbia, she hesitated.
Godard was an unknown quantity, there was no script, and making a movie outside the Hollywood comfort zone would be a trial, a miniscule budget – $90,000 – scarcely a fortieth of that of a Preminger picture – would ensure no retinue of assistants. She would be largely on her own. Tippi Hedren had felt the same cold shock when she maneuvred herself out of her Hitchcock contract and discovered that rather than being waited on hand-and-foot by the industry’s best costume designers she had to wear her own clothes for her first job, in television.
Financially, Godard was in bad shape. Without a name – Belmondo scarcely counted – the film would be abandoned. In the absence of anything else, she signed up. But first she needed Columbia’s approval. The studio was offered $12,000 for her services and half the worldwide rights but when they stalled her husband pulled a fast one, announcing that since he was rich (untrue) Seberg need never work again and threatening that she would simply retire. Columbia took the money and ignored the rights, which cost them several million dollars.
Seberg was paid $15,000 – around $5,000 a week (the shoot lasted 23 days) – a hefty sum for an ingenue if you took that as a potentially weekly rate ($250,000 a year), but even if that was all she earned it was still six times more than the average U.S. employee was paid in a year. That was still an improvement on the $250 ($13,000 per annum) paid by Preminger in 1957.
But there was a dramatic switch in power politics. With Preminger, she kowtowed, doing what she was told, failing to stand up to the director. On Breathless, she had no trouble expressing her views and wielding her power. She walked off the set on the first day of shooting after a disagreement with Godard. That was resolved by the director chasing after her. A couple of days later she was ready to quit.
And she argued vehemently against his interpretation of her character’s actions in the final scene. Godard wanted Patricia (Seberg) to steal the wallet of Michel (Belmondo) as he lay dying. She refused to do it on the grounds that it was not in character, but later explained that it was more personal, she did not want to play a thief on screen. She had reservations about taking off her clothes for the sex scene, resolved by the couple being hidden under the bedsheets and Seberg remaining full clothed. And if she fancied a day off – a considerable indulgence on a film on so tight a deadline – she took one. Godard saved face by allowing everyone a day off.
Cameraman Raoul Coutard observed, “She didn‘t let herself be pushed around but she did cooperate.” And without the normal armada of backroom staff attending to make-up and ensuring she looked her best in every scene, Coutard fell back on the fact that she was imply photogenic and did not require the full Hollywood treatment to look her best.
Perhaps the guerrilla style of movie making appealed. Instead of rehearsals with a script set in stone and lines learned weeks in advance, Godard made up the film as he went along, turning up in the morning with a students’ notebook filled with ideas and dialogue. At times there was no written script, Godard speaking lines and the actors repeating them.
Although at one stage after a spat he threatened to deny her a close-up, in reality budget restrictions – a close-up would require filming a scene several times over – put paid to most of those. The scene in the car where the camera focuses on her an example of taking clever advantage of circumstance as the sequence, in its daring, appealed to the avant-garde.
But Godard did take the trouble to ensure that Patricia was true to her origins. As an American, her character should not speak fluent French, but make mistakes here and there, especially with gender. “It became much more colloquial and much more foreign in a way,” she said.
And much as she hated the way Preminger had imposed his ideas so strictly upon her, when left to her own devices, thanks to Godard’s improvisational style, she was at a loss. “She was very disabled because there wasn’t a script,” explained Francois. When she asked Godard for directions he would tell her to do what she wanted. Eventually, assuming the film was a mistake and would flop, she decided to “sit back and have fun.”
Although under time pressure, that was a less frightening experience than having a hundred pairs of eyes fixed on her as she spoke lines according to the Preminger dictat. But she had to come to terms with just how far down the production ladder she had fallen, a café toilet doubling as a make-up room, her wardrobe purchased from a discount store.
Godard’s inventiveness knew little bounds. For the final tracking shot, the director was pushed along in a rented wheelchair. The shot of the Champs-Elysess came from employing a postal cart. Filming began on August 29, 1959 and most of the film was shot consecutively.
Innovations included extensive use of the jump cut, hand-held camera and low lighting. Although deemed an arthouse movie by the rest of the world, Breathless opened at a commercial chain of cinemas in Paris where it was an instant hit, selling a quarter of a million tickets in its first four weeks.
While Godard and Belmondo basked in a critical and commercial triumph, for Seberg it was only part-redemption. Except at the end of the decade she was never the leading lady in big Hollywood productions, but she became an acknowledged star of French cinema, a couple of years later the third-highest paid actress in France, earning $1,750 a week ($91,000 a year).
SOURCE: Garry McGee, Jean Seberg: Breathless, Her True Story (2018), pp60-68.
I’m conscious of puncturing a sacred arthouse cow. While applauding the cinematic bravura of Jean-Luc Godard’s debut feature that launched the French New Wave, what are we to make of a leading man who is a sexist pig? Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) refers to women repeatedly as “dogs”, complains about their driving skills, accuses them of cowardice, steals from them, forbids them to see other men, chases after them in the street to lift their dresses, constantly gropes his sometime girlfriend Patricia (Jean Seberg), and boasts of other sexual conquests.
While attempting to ape hero Humphrey Bogart, he hasn’t a shred of that star’s romantic inclination, all his energy directed towards getting sex from the nearest available female with nary a notion of love. He’s not just hard-boiled, he’s hard work, as close to the despicable males of Guide for a Married Man (1967) as you could get.
I’m no proponent of woke, but I guess audiences these days who happily accept him as thief and murderer will draw the line at his attitude to women. I found myself squirming at times at being asked to swallow this amoral character in what was otherwise a homage to the Hollywood B-picture. And it says a lot about the directorial skills that he ends up with any audience sympathy at all. And part of that certainly comes from his proximity to the more existential-minded arty Patricia. Not for the first time are we asked to re-examine our instinctive reaction to a charming thug because a sympathetic woman in either loving him or appearing to offer him understanding provides a conduit between audience and character, asking us to see him from her less judgemental perspective, no matter how misguided that might be.
You can see the connection between the Cecile of Bonjour Tristesse (1958) and Patricia here but it’s hardly as clear-cut as Godard suggests. Patricia has qualms not just a nice comfort blanket of guilt. She’s not, as Michel wishes, some kind of sidekick or accomplice. He fails to unlock her criminal tendency as Clyde would later in the decade with Bonnie in Arthur Penn’s gangster picture. But, just as Cecile rids herself of a rival in Bonjour Tristesse, Patricia finds it relatively straightforward to turn in to the police a man for whom she has no feelings and who would prove, without the parachute of love, an irritation in her life.
Certainly, Michel is the quintessential bad guy but with entitlement issues. He wants it all, or nothing. If Santa came knocking, top of his wish list would be death. He’s a dab hand at stealing cars, can whack anybody over the head, and not above rifling through a girlfriend’s purse. But, essentially, he’s the delinquent who never grew up and Patricia is one of the many saps he’ll try to con throughout his life.
But, in fact, if you were making this today, the angle would be different. It would be the vengeful woman, as epitomized by Jenna Coleman in television mini-series Wilderness, relishing the prospect of being tagged a “bunny boiler” or predatory wolf. Much as Patricia is happy to spend some time with Michel while working out her feelings towards him, given that he is the father of her unborn child, she is far from the soft touch he imagines, betrayal in her genes.
I’m guessing budget issues contributed to much of the cinematic bravura. It’s much cheaper to eliminate close-ups, and to film outdoors where light is less of an issue than indoors, and where nobody’s bothering to seek civic approval to shoot. So, there’s certainly a freshness, a boldness, the kick in the pants that stuffy Hollywood with its insistence on certain procedures required.
The camera is restless, not just in the tracking shots (especially the famous final one), but in bobbing around, as if questioning just what was the Hollywood obsession with nailing everything down, keeping it fixed, as if the camera was merely a tool rather than a means of directorial expression. And Godard does bring to exceptional life characters who would otherwise be passersby, dreamers who are more likely to fail than succeed, who try to provide themselves with codes as if that will assuage inner doubt.
Except for her self-preservation instincts and urge for independence, there’s every chance that Patricia would end up the dissatisfied housewife, especially with baby in tow. Michel is a dumb criminal, not the heist genius of so many other movies. Cocking a snook at authority might be the only true freedom he ever attains.
I’m not sure this was part of Godard’s thinking, but it’s plain to me that Michel’s biggest problem is crossing over into the real world. The minute he comes up against a woman who lives an ordinary life, albeit with elevated expectation, he comes a cropper because she doesn’t subscribe to his limited world-view. It’s not exactly a clash of cultures, because, in reality, she’s every bit as vicious as him. If she loved him, it might be a different story. But as with Jenna Coleman in Wilderness, fail to safeguard that love and it’s curtains.
Without doubt a singular earthquake of cinematic proportions, freeing up a generation to filmmakers to challenge the hierarchy, but requiring reassessment in view of its dubious attitude to women.
The Magnificent 60s 