1960s film – Page 61 – The Magnificent 60s

Behind the Scenes: “The Adventurers” (1969)

Lewis Gilbert was on a career high. After a string of flops – Loss of Innocence/The Greengage Summer (1961) and The 7^th Dawn (1964) – he had bounced back with the critically-acclaimed and Oscar-nominated box office hit Alfie (1965), cementing his commercial standing with You Only Live Twice (1967).

Next up was Oliver!, the adaptation of the Lionel Bart musical. Gilbert had bought the rights to the songs after its debut in 1960 – from British singer Max Bygraves of all people who owned a music publishing company – but was prevented from filming it until it had completed its Broadway and London runs, as was standard with hit musicals. In the wake of Alfie he was prepping the musical, turning down the likes of Richard Burton and being forced to consider Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke for the leading roles. But he had also signed a very beneficial contract with Paramount chief Charles Bluhdorn.

Gilbert took it as read that he had Bluhdorn’s agreement to make Oliver! first. By now, he had co-written the script with Vernon Harris, was in the process of finalizing costumes, choreography, musical arrangements and sets, and was all set to make the movie “he had been born to direct.”

Bluhdorn had other ideas. He had taken over Harold Robbins’ big, brash bestseller The Adventurers from Joseph E. Levine who had bought the rights for $1 million in 1963. A script by John Michael Hayes (Nevada Smith, 1966) had been scrapped, but Bluhdorn had made little headway and with the studio under the cosh after investing too much in flops, was desperate for a safe pair of hands. Gilbert soon realised that in Hollywood a person’s word was not their bond. Bluhdorn knew all about contracts and had signed an unhelpful one himself, which set him a tight deadline to deliver a picture.

Gilbert threw away the unwieldy screenplay written by Robbins and settled down with playwright Michael Hastings (The Nightcomers, 1971) to condense the equally unwieldy novel down to a two-hour running time. But once again Bluhdorn had other ideas. After Gilbert had begun pruning, Bluhdorn demanded a three-hour roadshow. Then he sprung another surprise. “Stars are out of date,” he announced, “We don’t need them.”

That was a blow to Gilbert who had envisioned Alain Delon (Once a Thief, 1965) for the leading role of a cold-hearted but suave playboy. The actor’s personal reputation for squiring many of the most beautiful women in France meant he was viewed by an audience as a man with abundant charm. And his films roles had proved he could easily pass for cold-hearted. So it was with reservations that Gilbert turned instead to unknown Bekim Fehmiu from Bosnia Herzegovina who had attracted critical plaudits for I Even Met Happy Gypsies (1967), winner of the Palme D’Or at Cannes.

Initially, production was going to be split between Paris and Colombia until the 1968 riots put the French capital out of commission. French actors like Louis Jourdan (Can-Can, 1960) already cast were dumped. Rome proved a good substitute, but the four main studios were already occupied, forcing the production to take whatever space remained available in all of them. Venice and New York City were also briefly used.

To speed up production, and switch the locales from France to Italy, Gilbert employed other writers, Clive Exton (10 Rillington Place, 1971) and Jack Russell (Friends, 1971), as well as Hastings, each working independently of the other, the whole being coordinated by Vernon Harris.

The cast mixed experience with newcomers. As well as Fehmiu, Gilbert recruited relative beginners Candice Bergen (The Magus, 1968) in her fifth film, Swede Thommy Bergrenn (Elvira Madigan, 1967) making his Hollywood debut, Leigh Taylor-Young, only known at this point for her debut I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (1968) and Italian Delia Boccardo, leading lady in Inspector Clouseau (1968).

Heading up the veterans were double Oscar-winner Olivia De Havilland, Oscar-winner Ernest Borgnine, a supporting player in items like Ice Station Zebra (1968), and Italian Rossano Brazzi (Krakatoa, East of Java, 1968) who had fallen a long way down the credits since the heights of South Pacific (1958). As makeweights – essential for an “international all-star cast” – were Spaniard Fernando Rey (Villa Rides, 1968), French singer Charles Aznavour and British character actor Alan Badel (Arabesque, 1966).

At the end of the Rome shoot, Gilbert declared himself “surprisingly optimistic.” Colombia killed that off. The only way to reach many remote locales was on horseback. Actors whose contracts dictated travel by luxury transport found their vehicles could not negotiate steep narrow pathways. Six thousand extras recruited from dozens of small villages had to get up at 3am to walk, in the absence of transport and roads, to a main location in a small town where catering for such numbers was in itself a major logistical exercise.

Accommodation for the stars was difficult to find. One location only had one hotel and that with only four rooms. Gilbert tore ligaments in his foot, making walking impossible. He directed all future outdoor scenes atop a horse like a “great old-time director in the days of silent films.”

The South American scenes, pivoting on blood-thirsty violence and revenge, were at odds with the ones filmed in Rome that showcased high society and seductive sex. The two halves were an uneasy mix at best. And the actor who was meant to bind them was not working out. As the movie wore on, Gilbert realized Fehmiu was miscast. While Fehmiu could match Delon’s exploits with women, Brigitte Bardot reputedly among his conquests, he lacked the Frenchman’s easy manner on screen and never convinced as a romantic playboy.

“One thing you know in films,” said Gilbert, “is that you always end up with what you begin with. If you begin with a piece of s*** that’s what you’ll end with, doesn’t matter how you change things or what you try. The story couldn’t be told in under three-and-a-quarter hours…it had been deliberately structured for a certain type of audience” which didn’t really exist back then.

Paramount virtually committed publicity suicide by holding the press show on a Boeing 747. Even a Jumbo Jet could not present the movie on anything except a tiny screen which made nonsense of the movie’s 70mm credentials. While projected on one screen, it was only shown in 16mm, people at the back could hardly see it and the sound was terrible. Gilbert considered it “the worst experience of my life.” Worse, few people had ever flown a 747 before so to quell nerves, the journalists were tanked up, which didn’t help their mood when they came to write scathing reviews.

After the press screening, it was heavily cut. And with roadshow on the way out, it received few 70mm bookings in the U.S. though that format was more welcomed in Europe. (In my local city of Glasgow, in Scotland, it ran for 10 weeks in roadshow presentation at the ABC Coliseum, a decent stint).

Oddly enough, it was relatively well-received by audiences. It pretty much made its money back which was a big achievement given the budget and certainly did not fall into the category of being a loser.

SOURCES: Lewis Gilbert, All My Flashbacks,(Reynolds and Hearn, 2010) p279-288, p295-304; “Interview with Lewis Gilbert,” British Entertainment History Project, August 13, 1996, Reel 13; Brian Hannan, Glasgow at the Pictures, 1960-1969, (Baroliant, due later this year).

The Adventurers (1970) ***

Class A Trash. Adaptation of Harold Robbins (Nevada Smith, 1966) bestseller goes straight to the top of the heap in the So-Bad- It’s-Good category. Only Alan Badel (Arabesque, 1966) as a double-dealing revolutionary comes out of this with any honors.

The likes of Candice Bergen (Soldier Blue, 1970), Rossano Brazzi (Rome Adventure/Lovers Must Learn, 1962), double Oscar-winner Olivia de Havilland (Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte, 1964), Leigh Taylor-Young (The Big Bounce, 1969) and Ernest Borgnine (The Wild Bunch, 1969) must have wondered how they were talked into this.

And director Lewis Gilbert (Loss of Innocence/The Greengage Summer, 1961) must have wondered how he talked himself into recruiting unknown Yugoslavian Bekim Fehmiu (The Deserter/The Devil’s Backbone, 1970), nobody’s idea of a suave lothario, for the lead.

One of the taglines was “Nothing has been left out” and that’s to the movie’s detriment because it’s overloaded with sex, violence, more sex, more violence, in among a narrative that races from South American revolution (in the fictional country of Corteguay) through the European jet set, fashion, polo, fast cars, orgies, and back again with revenge always high on the agenda. At close on three hours, it piles melodrama on top of melodrama with characters who infuriatingly fail to come to life.

Sensitivity is hardly going to be in order for Dax (Bekin Fehmiu) who, as a child after watching his family slaughtered and mother raped, makes his bones as a one-man firing squad, machine-gunning down the murderers. From there it’s a hop-skip-and-jump to life as the son of ambassador Jaime (Fernando Rey) in Rome where he belongs to an indulgent aristocracy who play polo, race cars along hairpin bends, swap girlfriends and, given the opportunity, make love at midnight beside the swimming pool.

His fortunes take a turn for the worse when his father backs the wrong horse, the rebel El Condor (Jorge Martinez de Hoyos) in Corteguay, and is killed by the dictator Rojo (Alan Badel). In between an affair with childhood sweetheart Amparo (Leigh Taylor Young), life as a gigolo and cynical marriage to millionairess Sue Ann (Candice Bergen), Dax takes up the rebel cause, initially foolish enough to fall for Rojo’s promises which results in the death of El Condor, and then to join the rebels.

But mostly it’s blood, sex, betrayal and revenge. Anyone Dax befriends is liable to face a death sentence. He only has to look at a woman and they are stripping off. It’s a heady mess. It might have worked if the audience could rustle up some sympathy for Dax, especially as he was entitled to feel vulnerable after his childhood experiences. But he just comes across as arrogant and the film-makers as even more arrogant in assuming that because women fall at his feet that must mean he had bucketloads of charm rather than that was what it said in the script. He’s fine as the thug but not convincing as a lover.

Excepting Badel, the best performances in a male-centric sexist movie come from women, those left in Dax’s wake, particularly Candice Bergen as the lovelorn wife and Olivia De Havilland as the wealthy older woman who funds his lifestyle, aware that at any moment he will leave her for a younger, richer, model. Lewis Gilbert is at his best when he lets female emotion take over, not necessarily wordy intense scenes, because Bergen and De Havilland can accomplish a great deal in a look.

The rest of it looks like someone has thrown millions at a B-picture and positioned every character so that they have nowhere else to go but the cliché.

By this point, Hollywood had played canny with Harold Robbins, toning down the writer’s worst excesses and employing name directors to turn dire material into solid entertainment. Edward Dmytryk (Mirage, 1965) had worked wonders with The Carpetbaggers (1964), whose inherent salaciousness was held in check by the censor and made believable by characters played by George Peppard (Pendulum, 1969), Alan Ladd (Shane, 1953) and Caroll Baker (Station Six Sahara, 1963). Bette Davis and Susan Hayward contrived to turn Where Love Has Gone (1964) into a decent drama. Even Stiletto (1969), in low-budget fashion, managed to toe the line between action and drama.

But here it feels as if all Harold Robbins hell has been let loose. Rather than reining in the writer, it’s as if exploitation was the only perspective. Blame Lewis Gilbert, director, and along with Michael Hastings (The Nightcomers, 1971) in his movie debut, also the screenwriter for the end result.

On the other hand, if you can leave your critical faculties at the door, you might well enjoy how utterly bad a glossy picture can be.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Reward (1965) ***

Max von Sydow’s Hollywood career might have gone in a different direction had this brooding modern western remake of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) taken off. Instead of a screen persona as a heavily-accented somewhat awkward foreigner, he would have been viewed as a lean adventurer in the laconic Steve McQueen mold.

There’s no actual gold here, American airline pilot Scott Swenson (Max von Sydow) and his impromptu gang chasing into the Mexican desert human prey worth $50,000. Frank Bryant (Efrem Zimbalist Jr) is wanted for kidnapping and killing his own child. His virtually monosyllabic girlfriend Sylvia (Yvette Mimieux) is viewed as a bonus, clearly rape in the mind of some of his pursuers.

In normal circumstances, Swenson would spend his time dusting crops but he is being held for inadvertently destroying a water tower that will cost $20,000 to repair. But when he spots old buddy Bryant drive into town, he turns bounty hunter, cutting local English-speaking sheriff Capt Carbajal (Gilbert Roland), an exile in this remote town, in on the deal to repay the debt. The rest of the posse, led by his guitar-playing deputy Sgt Lopez (Emilio Fernandez) are initially misled as regards reward. So,when they do find out, greed will out.

When the escapees run out of road, they take to horses, but are located pretty quickly by the posse, also on horseback. Finding them was easy compared to getting them back. In fact, the posse seems to return via a different route that takes them through an abandoned town complete with church bell that Lopez makes ring through the simple device of battering it with his head.

It’s that kind of movie, filled with odd scenes that reflect character. In one episode, at the start of the chase and in a truck, a flat tyre is caused by one dumb occupant chucking his beer bottle in front, rather than to the side, of the vehicle. Flute-playing Joaquin (Henry Silva) tames a wild horse which, when he’s not around, has a bit of a rebellious streak, apt to lead the other mounts astray.

But it’s realistic, too. There’s not enough food to go round and even that seems limited to tortilla. There’s no reason to tie up the prisoners because there’s no escape in the desert hell. But although Swenson has betrayed an old friend in order to get himself out of a hole, there’s none of the guilty dialog you might expect and Sylvia turns out to be more cynical, not intent on building romance out of a brief fling in Acapulco, and only too aware of what captivity might mean. As is pointed out, the reward will be paid out for a decapitated head as much as a complete living person.

Rather than being devastated at killing his son, Bryant wants sympathy. It was an accident. Blame the police for starting a shoot-out that ended with the child dying in the crossfire. Blame his wife for taking the child away in the first place.

Nobody comes out of this well, except Sylvia whose good deed might result in rape, but whose motives you would also question, given she is harboring a child killer, an action not excused as would be the norm by being rapturously in love with him. She is resigned to her fate rather than flirting with the gang as a way of avoiding it.

So it’s tension all the way, Lopez working on the principle that the fewer claimants of the reward the better. But it’s not just lack of water that’s the most dangerous element in this perilous landscape, but lack of horses. Water isn’t in dramatically short supply anyway not when you can count on the occasional thunderstorm, which, unfortunately, makes Sylvia a more attractive reward when she is soaked to the skin.

The body count, as you might expect, mounts as Lopez takes control, his boss, coming down with a fever, growing weaker by the day.

But it’s not as noir as you might imagine. Mostly, it’s just characters trudging through the desert, enlivened by some flute- and guitar-playing, heading into a doom of their own making. There’s very little in the way of heated dialog and there’s a very bold decision to dispense with subtitles – only the sheriff and Swenson are bilingual, helping them devise a conspiracy to keep the reward to themselves – but it’s easy enough to work out what’s going on with the Spanish-speaking Mexicans and it does explain why Sylvia says so little.

If you managed to get hold of The Picasso Summer (1969) – reviewed earlier in the Blog – this is for you since it has the same director Serge Bourguignon whose style is elliptical to say the least. But cutting down on expository consequence is spot-on. We don’t need characters bewailing their fate to know the potential outcome. Circumstance makes menace implicit rather than explicit.

The actors are good enough not to be laden down with overwrought dialog. This is certainly presents a refreshing aspect of Max von Sydow (The Quiller Memorandum, 1966). Yvette Mimieux (The Picasso Summer) is mostly a bewildered fragile beauty. Emilio Fernandez (The Wild Bunch, 1969) would be at his scene-stealing best except he has to contend with Henry Silva (Secret Invasion, 1964) in one of his few heroic parts. Veteran Gilbert Roland (Cheyenne Autumn, 1964), who made his name as The Cisco Kid, is the surprise turn, authority sapped as illness takes hold.

If you want a peek at a curiosity, it might as well be this one.

Goodbye, Columbus (1969) ****

Despite being made at the opposite end of the decade to Loss of Innocence/The Greengage Summer (1961) this has a number of similarities, in the main the star-making turn, this time from Ali McGraw in her debut and, though playing a slightly older and much wealthier character, she is also a woman in transition, from puppy love to true love, not entirely in control of her emotions and not willing either to accept responsibility for her actions.

Richard Benjamin, in his first starring role, plays the sometimes gauche, much poorer, more responsible, object of her affections. He’s only connected by religious upbringing to The Graduate’s Dustin Hoffman, far more relaxed with women and comfortable in his own persona. The camera loved McGraw the way it did Susannah York, but in these more permissive times, and given the age difference, there was much more the screen could show of the star’s physical attributes.

I was surprised by the quality of McGraw’s performance, expecting much less from a debutante and ex-model (and studio boss Robert Evans’ fiancée) but she is a delight.

Supremely confident Brenda (Ali McGraw) enjoys a life of privilege and engages in witty repartee with the more down-to-earth Neil (Richard Benjamin) who doesn’t know what to do with his life except not get stuck with a money-making job. He would much rather help a young kid who likes art books.

It’s not a rich girl-poor man scenario but more a lifestyle contrast and both families are exceptionally well portrayed. Brenda’s father Ben (Jack Klugman) has sucked the life out of exasperation while her uptight mother (Nan Martin) has to cope with an oddball son (Michael Meyers) and a spoiled brat of a younger sister (Lorie Shelle). It’s somewhat reassuring that money doesn’t prevent family politics getting out of hand.

But in the main it’s a lyrical love story well told. The zoom shot had just been invented so there’s a bit over-use of that but otherwise it zips along. A major plot point provides a reminder of how quickly men took advantage of female emancipation, the invention of the Pill dumping responsibility for birth control into the woman’s lap, leaving the male free to indulge without the risk of consequence.

In other words, it was still a man’s world. Of course, without the Pill, it would be a different kind of story, romance tinged with fear as both characters worried about unwanted pregnancy and stereotypical humour as the man purchased – or fumbled with – a rubber. Acting-wise Ali McGraw is pretty game until the final scene when her inexperience lets her down. I’m not sure I went for the pay-off which paints McGraw in unsympathetic terms and lets Benjamin off rather lightly.

The romantic stakes were considerably lower than in McGraw’s sophomore outing, Love Story (1970) and for both characters it was not the defining moment of their lives, more a rite-of-passage.

Director Larry Peerce (The Incident, 1967) takes time to build a believable background and uses humor to defuse what could have become an overwrought melodrama. Arnold Schulman (The Night They Raided Minsky’s / The Night They Invented Striptease, 1968) was Oscar-nominated for his screenplay based on the Philip Roth bestseller.

No one ever knows why the camera takes to an individual and given this was long after Hollywood had stopped trying to invent stars it was a wonder that Ali McGraw was turned into an marquee attraction. But there was such a lightness to her screen persona it was a surprise she didn’t become a contender for screwball comedy.

Richard Benajmin (Catch 22, 1970), also making his movie debut, does his best but can’t prevent his co-star stealing the show. It must have been galling for the young actor who must surely have believed he was the one being groomed for stardom after the success of television show He and She (1967-1968). He suffered the indignity of his face being reduced to a postage stamp – almost an afterthought – on a poster on which McGraw dominated. He might have taken top billing but in contractual terms that only permitted his name to come first and could not dictate how he was presented.

All in all I was surprised how much I enjoyed it.

Doctor Faustus (1967) **

Vanity dies hard. It’s not the first time a top-ranked actor was convinced he could show Hollywood how it should be done. A raft of stars in the 1950s and 1960s – from John Wayne and Burt Lancaster to Gregory Peck and Frank Sinatra – had lost their shirts setting up production companies. The notion of the creative hyphenate only made sense as a tax dodge, being able to spread earnings from a big hit over decades rather than paying all your dues in one year. But you could do that anyway, by means of the initial contract, as William Holden had done with Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).

Otherwise, the vanity project was littered with box office and critical disasters. And it’s odd that it took so long for one of the best-known notions in literature – the idea of selling your soul to the Devil in return for earthly reward – to be realized on film. Especially as it had a line – “was this the face that launched a thousand ships?” – to rival “To be or not to be” as the most famous sentence in literature. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, a contemporary of Shakespeare, was published in 1604.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968) was a more diabolical and commercial spin on the same theme but it’s not as if the movies had ignored the idea – The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), Bedazzled (1967) and later Ghost Rider (2007) and Hellblazer (2013) could lay claim to be inspired by the legend, never mind musician Robert Johnson who famously sold his soul to the devil (beware of crossroads).

Presumably, multiple Oscar nominee and theatrical giant Richard Burton believed nobody had done the original play justice. Films made from historical plays were quite the thing in the late 1960s – Romeo and Juliet (1968) might have in retrospect seemed a sure thing, but The Taming of the Shrew (1967), even with Burton and Taylor in tow, was a considerable risk.

Doctor Faustus, Burton’s follow-up to that bawdy Shakespearian romp, was certainly a low-budget affair, with little more than $1 million available, derived from various sources including the pockets of the star and producer Joseph E. Levine (The Carpetbaggers, 1964) , with Columbia on board as distributor to give it the Hollywood seal of approval.

But, critically, Burton also shouldered directorial duties along with academic Nevill Coghill who had no experience either in that arena. It looks good in an old-fashioned costumed-to-the-hilt fashion but all the actor does is speak the lines. Burdened at times with a wig or thick-framed black glasses he comes across more like smutty British comedian Benny Hill than a classical actor, that comparison not helped by the occasional emergence of naked women with conveniently very long hair to hide most of their nudity.

Beyond an occasional scene filmed through the eye of a skull, there’s no discernible style and since Burton is surrounded by amateur actors no detectable drama, except, theoretically, the battle for his soul. There are some woeful images, Faustus, victorious in battle, prancing around with swords sticking out of his body, and even an appearance of Elizabeth Taylor as Helen of Troy, at one point like a silver version of the gold-painted Shirley Eaton in Goldfinger (1964), offers mere diversion rather than dramatic focus.

So, unlike Ice Palace (1960), we’ve got the sonorous growling whisky-sodden voice but not even a whisper of true drama. A touch of melodrama here would certainly not have gone amiss. Just Faustus sauntering around speaking lines in the iambic pentameter of the period to make the tale even harder to understand.

Even sold under the Burton-Taylor brand, it made little headway with audiences, even those turning up at their local arthouse, which was its default destination. Proof, judging from the poster, that you can always find a laudatory critic when you need one.

Theoretically, it should have gained a lease of life in the So Bad It’s Good cult category but for that to occur you needed an audience to watch it the whole way through and that’s a pretty big ask.

The Family Way (1966) ****

Nudity was not an option for previous child stars attempting to make the leap into adult roles. Shirley Temple in the 1930s and Margaret O’Brien in the 1940s were kids when they played kids and when they outgrew their cuteness audiences proved indifferent.

Being older when playing younger characters increased the chances of career survival. Silent movie superstar Mary Pickford was 22 when she first tackled child heroine Tess of the Storm Country (1914) and 30 for the remake and she made an absolute fortune from these kinds of roles. Judy Garland was 17 when The Wizard of Oz (1939) appeared and managed another 15 years at the top before drugs and drink took their toll, still worthy of supporting roles after A Star Is Born (1954) and even star billing in her last film I Could Go On Singing (1963). But she was fired from Valley of the Dolls (1967), ironically enough given the film’s subject matter, due to alcohol and drug dependency.

Hayley Mills was 14 when her first Disney picture Pollyanna (1960) was released and for the next five years at that studio never played anyone approaching her true age. She was protected from studio abuse because this was Disney and because her father was actor John Mills, who often appeared in her movies. When the Disney contract ended, Sky, West and Crooked (1966), her father’s directorial debut, attempted to refashion her screen persona with a more challenging role.

But The Family Way forced audiences to set aside all preconceptions. Not only did she show her naked derriere, but this was a film essentially about sex. No sex is actually shown because newly-weds Jenny (Hayley Mills) and Arthur (Hywel Bennett) have problems consummating their marriage. You can thank the Carry On films for the snigger-snigger British mindset to sex. The promiscuous and often predatory characters of Darling (1965) and Alfie (1965) occupied a different world, almost a foreign country as far as the inhabitants of this solid working-class town were concerned.

They would have looked askance at such permissiveness. Here, at this particular point in history, both sexes were still expected to be virgins when they married. Sex in Darling and Alfie, for example, carries little emotional overtones. The Family Way is novel in treating sex as fundamental to happiness within marriage.

The subject of impotence would not be first on your list when you set out to make a warm-hearted drama. But here screenwriter Bill Naughton (Alfie) in adapting his play All in Good Time uses the theme to explore family values. But where recrimination – and subsequent confrontation – might be the first port of call for another writer, Naughton foregoes that obvious route to concentrate on the way impotence eats at a man’s self-worth. Two secrets drive the plot but the second is preserved right to the end, resulting in possibly the most moving finale you will ever watch.

In documenting working-class life it is superior to the earlier Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960). It is life without inbuilt bitterness. Families are still crammed into small houses, a visit to the housing department – to get a new council house or just be put on the waiting list – an invitation to humiliation, but there is full employment and enjoyment to be found in simple pleasures.

Family dynamics are expertly explored. Arthur, with a shelf load of books and penchant for classical music, is diametrically opposed to his down-to-earth but exceptionally obtuse father Ezra (John Mills), and there is a wonderful scene early on where Arthur seeing how badly his father takes defeat allows him to win an arm-wrestling competition.

Ezra is the standout, devoted to the memory of a long-departed childhood pal and struggling with his position as patriarch especially in the face of perennial sniping by wife Lucy (Marjorie Rhodes). Ezra is so expressive of longing and emotion, and it is he who has the heart-breaking final scene.

The older characters are fully rounded, bluff exteriors concealing fragile emotion. Hard-faced Lucy appears almost fey when she recalls a moment of love. Jenny’s burly father (John Comer) cannot cope with her departure from his household, especially as that leaves him at the mercy of his shrewish wife (stand-up comedienne Avril Angers).

Hywel Bennett begins a successful movie career with a difficult part, an introspective role calling for him to contain his emotions – not venting his spleen like the endlessly complaining Arthur Seaton of Saturday Night – until they erupt in a spectacular fist fight that does not go at all the way you would expect.

Barry Foster (Frenzy, 1972) has the showy part as the rough-edged workmate and Murray Head (later part of the love triangle in Sunday, Bloody Sunday, 1971) also makes his debut in an equally showy role as Bennett’s brother who makes advances to his frustrated sister-in-law.

Even without the nudity, Hayley Mills, the denoted star, makes the transition to movie adulthood with ease. In part, all she had to do was drop the unnatural excitement that appeared essential to her Disney portfolio. Her delivery, her reading of a line, had always been good and she had clearly worked out she was going to be an actress not a sex symbol so there was no exaggerated use of her physicality.

Even the nudity worked in her favor, startled to be disturbed emerging from a bath, genuinely shy, not the mock-shy or reveling in her naked state that was de rigeur in Hollywood. She was also helped by being a light foil to the brooding, gloomy Bennett, her natural bright personality, while affected by their problem, still capable of enjoying harmless pleasures.

This was a distinct change of pace for the fraternal producer-directing team John and Roy Boulting, stalwarts of British production since the 1940s with a host of well-regarded dramas and comedies, often with Peter Sellers, to their name. Generally, they took turns about in the director’s chair – the former putting his name to thriller Brighton Rock (1948) and comedies Lucky Jim (1957) and I’m Alright, Jack (1959), the latter claiming credit for drama Fame Is the Spur (1947), thriller Run for the Sun (1956) and comedy A French Mistress (1960). Occasionally, they shared the directing chore as with thriller Seven Days to Noon (1950), comedy Heavens Above (1963) and in this contemporary drama.

Their approach to The Family Way went against the grain of the gritty working-class dramas in the vein of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and This Sporting Life (1962). Nobody here has a job they hate or comes home covered in grime. In fact, since the central thrust (pardon the pun) of the movie is about pleasure (sexual, that is), it is set against a background of enjoyment. Both principals have jobs in entertainment, Arthur an assistant projectionist in a cinema, Jenny working in a record store and also seen at a disco and a motocross event. Alcohol plays a role, of course, but not to the extent of over-indulgence, not drinking yourself to oblivion like Arthur Seaton, and its main purpose is to present the father as an amiable host.

What impact the burgeoning affair between Hayley Mills and Roy Boulting (33 years her senior) had on the production is anyone’s guess but possibly it helped steady the star’s nerves when it came to the nude scene. From today’s perspective the nudity appears gratuitous. And certainly back then it was shocking, ensuring an X-certificate (although the subject matter probably already guaranteed that).

Actually, it was social comment. While living in a decent-enough house, the family lacked one particular amenity – an indoor toilet. Washing took place at a communal sink or in the privacy of a bedroom with a bowl of water. A bath was a mobile unit, a zinc item dragged out of the scullery into the living room, filled with endless pots or kettles of hot water.

But for a young woman to take a bath demanded privacy. So when Jenny is interrupted in her ablutions, males and females in the audience had opposite reactions. It would not be unreasonable to suggest that males simply enjoyed the sight of the naked posterior. Women, on the other hand, would wince.

Aversion to nudity may have played a part but more likely women would feel deeply the humiliation at the lack of privacy in such a household, that someone could come upon you at your most vulnerable at any time. Sure, nothing went hidden in such houses, the sounds of any activity would carry through walls, but such a deep personal activity as exposure while taking a bath said far more about the brutal congestion of family life than jokes about hearing someone urinating into a container in the next room.

Paul McCartney contributed a very hummable melody as part of his debut movie score.

American audiences did not respond so well to Hayley Mills’ emergence as an adult actor and the movie failed to click at the box office there. But by that point it was already in profit, a runaway British hit (among the top twelve films of the year) and set the female star up for an adult career, pointed Hywel Bennett in the right direction and gave John Mills one of his most memorable turns.

Very entertaining with terrific acting.

Ice Palace (1960) ***

Adaptations of sprawling novels require a firm hand at screenplay stage. Exodus (1960), for example, excised the first couple of hundred pages depicting the first two millennia relating the history of the Jews in the Leon Uris bestseller. Hawaii (1966) sliced the James Michener epic in two, the sequel The Hawaiians (1970) taking up the slack. Otherwise, like here, you end up with a multi-generational sprawl.

The producers clearly felt that the endzone – two grandfathers warring over a grand-daughter that was also somehow a metaphor for the battle for Alaskan statehood – was too good to miss. Except author Edna Ferber (Giant, 1956) had already dealt with that problem, in her book beginning at the end, where feminist icon Christine Storm is given a voice and the story unfolds in flashback. Instead, it’s Christine who has to wait ages to make an appearance and scarcely in the manner outlined by the novelist.

Initially, ex-World War One soldier Zeb (Richard Burton) and Alaskan fisherman Thor (Robert Ryan) become friends after the latter saves the former from drowning, Zeb having lost his job in a cannery for fancying boss’s daughter Dorothy (Martha Hyer). The pair then decide to go into business together, Thor catching the salmon, Zeb canning them. But illicit love tears the incipient partnership apart, Thor’s fiancée Bridie (Carolyn Jones) falling for Zeb.

Finding banks are against funding a nobody, Zeb hits the mother lode in capitalizing his business by marrying the wealthy Dorothy, while a distraught Thor hits the snowy wastes and returns with an Eskimo son. Bridie hangs around long enough to sew the seeds of suspicion and take a hand in bringing up the baby, though holding back on the marriage that might seal the deal.

So then we are quickly onto the second generation. Thor’s son Einer (Barry Kelley) and Zeb’s daughter Grace (Shirley Knight) elope to the snowy wastes where, guess what, she gets pregnant, but, guess what, he is killed by a bear and she dies giving birth to Christine (Diane McBain).

So that takes us to the final act, Dorothy now also conveniently dead, grandfathers sharing custody, and the metaphor for the birth of Alaska in full swing. Zeb, now a greying ruthless industrialist who finds it easier to feed his multiple canneries by catching fish in traps as they exit the Alaskan rivers, opposes statehood, fearing legislation will curb his entrepreneurial tendencies and that, more to the point, he will be hardest hit by the taxation required to fund the government apparatus. Thor, meanwhile, has turned greying politician, fighting Zeb every inch of the way, Christine now mere collateral damage.

*An Australian daybill hence the date “1961” rather than “1960”*
*the date it appeared in the U.S.*

It’s certainly a full-throated melodrama, and might have worked better if it had skipped a generation and got to the warring grandparents sooner, or worked the love triangle up to a higher pitch, but that might have felt like the bloodbath required to kill off Dorothy, Einer and Grace would have looked even more calculated. And it could have done with more actual high drama, fishermen battling mighty waves on the high seas, for example, as in The Perfect Storm (2000), and to be honest watching caught salmon shooting along cannery travelators is no substitute.

The other problem is that neither Richard Burton (Becket, 1964) nor Robert Ryan (The Wild Bunch, 1969) has settled into their screen persona. In the former’s case it’s the voice. Except in fleeting instances, we are deprived of his whisky-sodden sonorous tones. In the latter it’s the stillness, all the work done with the eyes or a grimace instead of an overworked marionette, body jumping, arms pumping. In both cases, and with the entire cast for that matter, there’s over-reliance on flashing eyes, a mainstay of overwrought melodrama.

If you’re searching out subtlety you’d have to watch the women, the look on Dorothy’s face on first meeting Bridie and recognizing a rival, the various expressions on Bridie’s face – for virtually the whole picture – as she observes the unobtainable Zeb grow even more distant, and Grace as she realizes she is being duped into a marriage of political convenience. And with so much story to pack in, the best scene in the picture just whizzes by, when, in the absence of the town doctor, Bridie is called upon to be midwife to Zeb’s child, knowing that it should, if only she had the courage at the time, be hers.

The Alaskan statehood element was, I imagine, lost on non-American audiences, the statehood metaphor probably lost on everyone except discerning critics, and as far as I can work out from the box office nobody anywhere gave two hoots for the picture. Bear in mind Richard Burton was far from a major star, having burned his boats after star-making roles in The Robe (1953) and Alexander the Great (1956) failed to provide the necessary glue to bind actor and moviegoer. In fact, Burton was so little in demand he was scarcely making a movie a year – and only The Robe entered positively in the box office balance sheet – until Cleopatra (1963) revived his career.

So with a cut-price Burton and an over-extended Robert Ryan there’s little the women can do to rescue the picture, though Carolyn Jones (How the West Was Won, 1962), Martha Hyer (The Sons of Katie Elder, 1965), the debuting Diane McBain (Claudelle Inglish, 1961) and Shirley Knight (The Group, 1966) put in more heartfelt performances.

Vincent Sherman (A Fever in the Blood, 1961) directed from a screenplay by Harry Kleiner (Bullitt, 1968). One look at the gem George Stevens created from Giant and all you can see here is missed opportunity.

They Came To Rob Las Vegas (1968) ***

Actually, they didn’t. The thieves planned to pull off a heist of $7 million from a security truck as it travelled through the Nevada desert en route to Mexico. Las Vegas pops into the story every now and then, criminal mastermind Tony (Gary Lockwood) employed there as a croupier in order to romance the girlfriend Ann (Elke Sommer) of millionaire Steve (Lee J. Cobb) who owns the security business being targeted.

The picture’s overlong and a shade complicated but the robbery is terrific, if a bit unbelievable, while the ending is existential and almost Boorman-esque. It’s futuristic, too, with computers programming routes for security vehicles to make them harder to follow, pretty sophisticated visual communications for the era. The trucks are more like armored cars, tough as tanks, steel so thick it’s impervious to an oxy-acetylene cutter, and with machine guns mounted on the roof.

You’ll scarcely have heard of the director, Spaniard Antonio Isasi (That Man in Istanbul, 1965) whose career only spanned eight movies. And while you might be familiar with Gary Lockwood (2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968), Elke Sommer (The Prize, 1963), Lee J. Cobb (Coogan’s Bluff, 1968), and Jack Palance (Once a Thief, 1965) who plays Douglas, an F.B.I. agent investigating Steve’s Mafia connections, you’ll struggle to keep tabs on the myriad other characters who flit in and out of what ends up as a four-way narrative.

So we start out with Tony’s brother (see, I told you it was complicated) who has bust out of jail and wants to go back to old-style heists that involve shoot-outs in the street, nostalgia getting the better of him as he winds up dead. Then we’ve got Steve who wants to quit the underworld. That seems to be a trope of the time, The Brotherhood (1968) and Stiletto (1969) going down a similar route. When the truck is hijacked, Steve comes under suspicion from his Mafia buddies, who reckon he’s looking for an easy way to fund his retirement.

Meanwhile, as well as the $7 million in legitimate cash, the truck is also carrying millions in Mafia loot to be laundered across the border in Mexico, a notion that’s already attracted the attention of Douglas and his team.

Meanwhile, meanwhile, Tony is carrying out some low-grade casino theft, as croupier dealing Ann some very helpful cards and topping up his salary to the tune of $400-$500 a day. Ann, who could as easily be water ski-ing or living the high life in Acapulco with the married Steve, still takes time out of the mistress gig to undertake her ordinary job at the security company’s head office where she is in charge of the seemingly mindless task of feeding route cards into the computer.

While this takes quite a while to get all the wheels in motion and the various sub-plots and characters to fall into line, when finally we get to the robbery, it’s a cracker. Though you might find yourself asking who was funding the heist, with its five-man crew, helicopter, flame-thrower, machine guns, plus what can only be described as a giant vault buried in the desert.

At first, the heist appears patently old-fashioned. Gangsters dressed as guards replace the real guards but once in the back of the truck they have neither access to the loot nor the driver’s cabin. No matter, they know where the truck is headed, out into the desert, where they have made the road impassable with heaps of sand and just in case that didn’t work shoot out a tyre. The flame thrower finishes the job.

Thomas Crown would be impressed by their planning for they have another tyre buried in the sand to swap for the useless one and they also have metal tracks that can be laid over the sand to ease passage. They need the tracks because the truck goes off-road over the top of a dune and is lowered into the vault while the rotary blades of the whirligig serve to cover the top with a layer of sand, returning the desert to its normal pristine condition.

But we’re far from finished. We still have betrayal, underground paranoia, Steve being stalked by Douglas, the Mafia getting uppity with Steve, Steve becoming suspicious of Ann, a hapless motorist caught in the crossfire, squads of cops and goons descending on the hijack spot, and Tony still having to work out how to open the unbreakable truck.

At times, the plot comes together with devastatingly simplicity, but at other times the various strands merely serve to blow the whole thing apart. None of the principals is on their A-game, most appearing overly stiff and clichéd, while you’re still trying to work who all these other characters are.

The heist itself is splendidly done and the twist ending worthy of comment. Most of the time it’s pretty watchable but what should be a relatively seamless narrative is undone by over-plotting.

While the time was ripe for an ingenious heist, the crime thriller had taken one of those periodic leaps into new territory, what with Point Blank (1967) and The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), so it was virtually impossible to accommodate a movie with so many narrative jumps, where motive was unclear, characters diffuse and the tone widely variable.

On the other hand, as I said, the heist had me enthralled and the twist ending had me intrigued.

Up the Down Staircase (1966) ****

Impressive impressionistic tale of naïve young teacher and her travails in a rough inner city New York high school, a world away from the preppie hi-jinks of The Group the previous year and a good bit more realistic and less sentimental than To Sir, With Love the same year. If you thought teachers had a tough time these days, it was no better half a century ago.

We get no insight into the home life of idealistic singleton Sylvia (Sandy Dennis) beyond that once a week she gets a phone call from her annoying mother. Outside the school, she is warned to walk slowly in order to show she is not frightened to walk down these mean streets.

The school appears chaotic, hordes of almost-adult kids rampaging along corridors, hellbent on causing anarchy. And it takes some objective observation to realize that the endless rules, sometimes delivered by intercom and very often improvised on the spot, imposed by the tough headmaster McHabe (Roy Poole) have created a semblance of order.

But if the kids are led astray by inherent attitude, the adults are undone by bureaucracy and petty infighting. A list of rules on the wall forbids the school nurse from actually treating any patients. There’s a marvellous librarian whose reaction to an attempted suicide is to demand the return of an overdue book. Teachers squabble about who has precedence to use a particular drawer. Budding novelist and lothario Barrington (Patrick Bedford) spends his mornings in a local café, an adoring secretary covering for his absence.

The end-zone in all movies about schools (excepting If…a couple of years later) focuses on a struggling teacher who doubts her abilities but finds worth in her calling. Although that cliché pops up towards the end, mostly it’s an examination of the terrible home lives, seen in snippets, of the pupils and their parents, possibly who had the same experience, of viewing schools as obstacles to life and nothing more than the existing hierarchy’s way of keeping them in their place, education peeceived as akin to a police force exacting penalty.

With her fragile beauty, posh voice, and ideas of converting teenagers to the joys of Chaucer, Dickens and myriad poets, you would expect Sylvia to be gobbled up by the system. And at times, her quivering lip goes into overdrive, but that masks an inner determination not to fall for any sob stories – no matter that the audience will lap them up – and to extricate herself from dangerous situations with the macho Joe (Jeff Howard) who is convinced she won’t hand in him for carrying a switchblade and that she must be in love with him.

Pupils fall into three categories: those who fall in love with their teachers, those who want to kill them and those who are dying of boredom, living day-to-day in catatonic indifference.

Sylvia’s understated refusal to be intimidated carries the day and, while she encourages, realizes that she can’t resolve the endemic social issues – children battered at home or who have to work at night or who are brought up by a series of neighbors – by inflating a pupil’s mark just to help out. There’s none of the grandstanding of Dead Poets Society (1989) or Mr Holland’s Opus (1995) either, no individual or group who, in dramatic fashion, demonstrates allegiance, sides with the teacher or proves a test case for the teacher’s brilliance.

If Sylvia makes any impact, it’s shown in a small way by awkward pupil Alice (Ellen O’Mara) who believes all literature is about love and is humiliated by Barrington. Sylvia hasn’t the personality to collect a coterie of adoring pupils as in Dead Poet’s Society, nor like Robin Williams there have the confidence to chuck away set texts and do it his own way. But it would be a close run thing as to who would be the better teacher. Williams should win by a neck given his exuberance, but Sylvia, the mouse, is actually the better teacher.

It’s pretty bold of director Robert Mulligan (Inside Daisy Clover, 1965) to actually force the audience to watch Sylvia dissect the opening paragraphs of A Tale of Two Cities in order not just to prove what an insightful teacher she is but to demonstrate her command of her once-rowdy class. The show of hands of pupils desperate to ask questions is testimony to her quiet methods.

Superb performance from Sandy Dennis (The Fox, 1969), showy one from Patrick Bedford, touching one from Ellen O’Mara and with Jeff Howard attempting to channel his inner James Dean, but, for the last three, unusually in a film stuffed with newcomers, their roles did nothing for their careers. You might spot Bud Cort (Harold and Maude, 1971), Eileen Heckart (No Way To Treat a Lady, 1968), and Jean Stapleton (Emmy award winner for All in the Family, 1971-1979) but mostly it’s cameos in an ensemble picture.

Expertly mounted by Robert Mulligan with a screenplay by Tad Mosel (Dear Heart, 1964) from the Bel Kaufman runaway bestseller.

As much as it has you rooting for the little guy, it doesn’t gloss over the calamities schools are left to deal with.