Producer Walter Mirisch could have afforded to rest on his laurels – he’d won the Oscar for In the Heat of the Night and been responsible for classics like The Magnificent Seven (1960) – and three sequels – and The Great Escape (1963). The 1970s had proved tougher, resulting initially in a string of pot boilers before hitting a home run with Mr Majestyk (1974) with Charles Bronson and knocking the ball out of the box office park with war picture Battle of Midway (1976), the former pulling in $20 million in rentals on a $2 million budget, the latter $50 million in rentals on a $7 million budget.
He had parted company with United Artists after nearly two decades in partnership and tied up a five-year deal with Universal. With Midway under his belt, he was the go-to producer for pictures on a naval theme. He had been sent a screenplay by James Whittaker about a submarine stranded at the bottom of the ocean. However, it turned out there was already a novel on the same subject, Event 1000 by David Lavallee, which result in various negotiations to determine the screenwriter credit, especially after playwright Howard Sackler (The Great White Hope, 1970) had completed a rewrite.
Charlton Heston, on a box office roll after Airport 1975 (1974), Earthquake (1974), Battle of Midway and Two Minute Warning (1976), was the obvious choice for the lead. But Mirisch had originally contemplated teaming Heston with Sidney Poitier (In the Heat of the Night). “He’s now backing away” from the idea, noted Heston in his diary in February 1976, “though I’m not sure why, save the cost of having us both in the film.” Heston was in strong demand, and turned down The Omen (1976) and The Pack (1977).
The film was slow coming together, “not much progress on the script…casting still slow” and there was the possibility of further delay to “mull” over the project. No director had been assigned by the end of February 1976. Following the Battle of Midway, the U.S. Navy was only too delighted to be involved. As well as following a disaster picture template, the movie was also tech heavy, featuring up-to-date ideas on rescue at sea.
The interior of the submarine, the main set, was constructed on a gimbal so that it could be tilted to achieve the effect of the sailors being thrown about as the sub sunk to the bottom and rolled over on a deep sea trench. Howard Anderson oversaw special effects work with models in a 44ft deep water tank which was filmed at CBS. Exteriors were shot at Universal with some work aboard a Navy escort vessel. Some material was also repurposed from Ice Station Zebra (1978).
To soak up the atmosphere of a real nuclear sub, Heston spent the day on USS Gurnard under the Pacific off San Diego. “I got a lot of useful little stuff,” commented Heston, “about the look and sound of submarine officers at work…the kind of thing nobody could tell you.” The sub contained a “vast array” of disparate and complex technology. “It was a very strange feeling to spend hours charging about under the ocean running mock torpedo attacks on surface vessels.” The experience also included drills for fire and flooding.
As shooting approached, Mirisch still had not done a deal for second lead Stacy Keach (Fat City, 1972). He was, however, “anxious” to recruit Ronny Cox (Deliverance, 1972). Ned Beatty, also form that film, came on board. David Carradine (Bound for Glory, 1976) and future Superman Christopher Reeve were added. Michael O’Keefe (The Great Santini, 1979) also made his movie debut.
Filming began on September 11, 1976. “I had very little to do,” noted Heston, “which was just as well, breaking in on a new film.” He played his only scene with Keach, “the tag of the picture and a key scene.” British director David Greene (Sebastian, 1968) was applauded for being as meticulous as William Wyler. More importantly, “he gives the actors a great deal and I find myself stimulated by almost all the suggestions he makes,” commented Heston. At one point, Greene decided to reshoot a major scene, bringing back offstage actors Heston thought he could do without. On the minus side, “he runs a rather loose ship.” Of his own contribution, the actor said, “I became preoccupied with giving an efficient performance rather than a creative one. The pressures I feel to be a consummate professional make me focus on getting it right.”
Filmed on a budget of just $5.25 million, it proved a huge hit, pulling in $19 million in rentals.
SOURCES: Walter Mirisch, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History (University of Wisconsin Press, 2008) p339-341; Charlton Heston, The Actor’s Life (Penguin, 1980) pp464-481.
The best of the late 70s disaster pictures and possibly the best of the whole short-lived genre, mixing technology, hair-rising tension and restrained emotion on top of a belter of a concept, sailors trapped in a submarine on the seabed with oxygen running out. But what lifts this above the norm is that it doesn’t follow the normal disaster picture template. Men do not rise easily to this challenge. Courage drains away as fast as time. Tempers flare and more than one of these hardy men collapse under the pressure.
The best scene in the picture is a man dealing wordlessly with loss and being a male of a certain era unable to shed a tear. So it’s all on the face. Capt Blanchard (Charlton Heston) has to shut himself away to grieve. And there’s a somber tone throughout. Corpses, covered only in a blanket, are laid out alongside the injured in an improvised sick bay. More than one person cracks. Even in a major crisis, bureaucracy gets in the way.
Blachard isn’t exactly the strong-jawed hero. As the situation grows more serious, his equanimity fails and he gets very snappy with the crew. And he’s also dealing with a heavy dose of guilt. Luckily, his major failing isn’t exposed to the crew, but his second-in-command points the finger.
Although the sub has been sent to the bottom courtesy of a collision in thick fog with a merchant ship boasting faulty radar, the accident should never have occurred. The sub shouldn’t have been on the surface. The only reason for that was Blanchard’s pride. This is his final voyage and he wanted to sail into harbor with is vessel atop the waves.
Now the sub is laid up in a deep trench and subject to “gravity slides”, the technical term for rock falls, which not only shift its position every now and then, pushing it deeper into the trench, but seal up the top of the escape hatch.
So the U.S. Navy’s new-fangled DSRV (Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle) can’t do its job and an even more new-fangled experimental submersible, operated by Captain Gates (David Carradine) and his sidekick Mickey (Ned Beatty) is called in. But its operation is sabotaged when officious Capt Bennett (Stacy Keach), tasked with the rescue mission, insists on one of his own men going down instead of the more experienced Mickey.
The underwater scenes are thrilling, and there’s plenty of technical know-how on view and a bunch of impression jargon spouted, as the sub slips further away and the submersible moves into more perilous depths. In the days before CGI, this is superb stuff. And since the sub is now upside down you certainly see more than normal of your typical submarine.
Unlike earlier disaster numbers like Airport (1970), The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and Towering Inferno (1974), no time is wasted setting up the various characters, usually embroiled in emotional entanglement, and for sure there’s no nuns or pregnant women to get in the way of a tight narrative. Comic relief, if that’s what you’re looking for, is provided by the chirpy Mickey.
But when you get right down to it, this holds all the narrative aces. You know rescue is going to get complicated. The unexpected always gets in the way.
But the men under pressure a thousand feet blow the surface are really under pressure and it’s not long before the cracks begin to show and widen.
Unfortunately, this came at the tail end of the disaster cycle when public interest was waning, and perhaps precisely because there was a lack of male-female interaction and no nuns it proved less appealing.
Charlton Heston (Will Penny, 1968) is very impressive, especially when he strains to hold it together and the scene I mentioned is one of his most best pieces of acting. Ned Beatty (Deliverance, 1971) also has a top-notch stiff-upper-lip scene.
Topping the supporting cast are David Carradine (Heaven with a Gun, 1969) and Stacey Keach (Fat City, 1972). You can spot Christopher Reeve (Superman, 1978) in an early role. Rosemary Forsyth (The War Lord, 1965) has a small part, but onshore.
Ably directed by David Greene (Sebastian, 1968) from a screenplay by James Whittaker (Megaforce, 1982) and Howard Sackler (The Great White Hope, 1970) based on the book by David Lavallee
If you’re in the mood for a thrilling ride, hang on to your hat.
Not cut out for the musicals, comedies, historical adventures (let’s not count The Greatest Story Ever Told, 1965), thrillers, dramas, and spy pictures that dominated that 1960s the western was John Wayne’s default. After his initial battle with lung cancer, he enjoyed an extended period of success in Henry Hathaway’s The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), Howard Hawks’ El Dorado (1967) and Burt Kennedy’s The War Wagon (1967) before diversifying in Vietnam war picture The Green Berets (1968), which he directed and was also a hit, and Andrew V. McLaglen oil drama Hellfighters which did, however, fall short of his high box office standards. So when any big western picture was mooted, it was either Wayne or James Stewart to whom producers first came calling. But when the actor particularly wanted a part, he usually got it.
Charles Portis was a journalist with one modern novel, Norwood published in 1966, to his name when he wrote True Grit, published in 1968, which, unusually for a western, spent 22 weeks in the New York Times bestseller list. The main attraction for a reader was the equally unusual first-person narrator, Mattie Ross, towards the end of her life telling the tale of how as a 14-year-old in Arkansas she sought bloody revenge for the death of her father. The narrative voice was highly individual with colorful phrases, punchy dialogue, and a taut storyline.
Producer Hal Wallis snapped it up for $300,000, beating out Wayne’s Batjac operation. Wallis had been making his own pictures for over two decades, having originally overseen films as varied as swashbuckler Captain Blood (1935) and Casablanca (1942). He also had a western pedigree, having set up John Sturges’ Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Sons of Katie Elder and Five Card Stud (1968) with Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum.
The movie went into speedy production, barely a year from the novel’s publication to the world premiere. From the start Wallis had Wayne in mind for Rooster Cogburn, with Robert Mitchum as back-up. Mia Farrow turned down the role of Mattie Ross when she found out the director was to be Henry Hathaway. Genevieve Bujold turned it down because she didn’t want to work with Wayne. Wayne favored Katharine Ross (The Hellfighters, 1968) or Michele Carey (El Dorado) or his daughter Aissa whom Hathaway ruled out. Sally Field from the television series The Flying Nun was also considered, but the part finally went to 21-year-old Kim Darby.
She had been in the movies since 1963 (an uncredited role in Bye, Bye, Birdie) and, excepting small roles in Bus Riley’s Back in Town (1965) starring Ann-Margret, fourth-billing in both the low-budget The Restless Ones (1965) and Arthur Penn television movie Flesh and Blood (1968), confined to guest roles in routine television series such as The Fugitive, Star Trek, Gunsmoke and Bonanza.
Elvis Presley was touted for the role of Le Boeuf but manager Col. Parker insisted his client receive top billing and the role went to another popular singer Glen Campbell, who had made his movie debut in The Cool Ones (1967). Robert Duvall, filling the boots of Lucky Ned Pepper, was also a refugee from television (The Outer Limits, The Fugitive, Combat) although he had delivered a memorable performance as Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and had risen to third-billing for Francis Ford Coppola’s The Rain People (1969).
Henry Hathaway, a former child actor, had directed 60 movies beginning in 1932. But he had learned about direction at the feet of Josef von Sternberg and Victor Fleming, both hard taskmasters, and only made the move into megging at the third attempt. First of all, he had spent nine months touring India with the idea of making a film in the style of silent documentaries Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life (1925) or Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness (1927). He managed to attract the interest of Irving G. Thalberg but the producer died before funding materialized. Next, Paramount planned to hire him when the studio planned an early 1930s investment in color but got cold feet and the idea was dropped. Finally, when Paramount decided it was going to make its own westerns, rather than buying them in, he was hired to direct Heritage of the Desert (1932) starring Randolph Scott but after six more in that genre – being paid $100 a week for the first two and then $65 a week for the next two after the Depression bit – he hit pay dirt with adventure The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) with Gary Cooper and comedy Go WestYoung Man (1936) with Mae West.
When Paramount finally embraced three-color Technicolor they chose Hathaway to direct adventure The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936) starring Sylvia Sidney and Fred MacMurray. “It cannot be merely accidental that he was selected,” commented historian Kingley Canham, arguing that Hathaway had “more than just an aptitude for freshening familiar material through technical resourcefulness.”
And like John Ford he was economical with the camera. “I only shoot what can be used so the producer has no choice…I always cut in the camera, the cutter just has to put the ends together,” he said. Determined to achieve verisimilitude, instead of using studio hand-made locusts for biopic Brigham Young (1940), he travelled to Nevada where had been a big invasion of the insects. Except for this film and The Shepherd of the Hills (1941), starring Wayne, he steered clear of westerns, preferring action and drama. However, he was instrumental in helping Wayne extend his acting style. For Shepherd of the Hills, Hathaway “added new subtleties to the already characteristic western hero persona – the roiling gait and economy of dialog were still very much in evidence but his acting was more mature, more sensitive, and more assured.”
He was called upon to demonstrate further technical mastery in the first of Twentieth Century Fox’s semi-documentary dramas The House on 92nd St (1945) followed by film noir Dark Corner (1946) and Kiss of Death (1947). He made his first western in a decade with Rawhide (1951) toplining Tyrone Power and Susan Hayward and only two other westerns in the 1950s – Garden of Evil (1954), teaming Cooper and Hayward, and Hell to Texas (1958) with Audie Murphy, the twist in this one being the hero rather than the villain subjected to a manhunt. Another technical innovation came with The Desert Fox (1951), where he “did the whole raid before the titles,” the first time any action had been shown prior to the rolling of the opening credits.
He was so impressed with the acting skills of Marilyn Monroe in Niagara (1953) that he purchased Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage intending to team her with Montgomery Clift, but nothing came of the concept. He worked with Wayne again in Legend of the Lost (1957) co-starring Sophia Loren.
But, like Wayne, he returned in triumph to the western in the 1960s, all bar two of his movies in this decade in this genre, the first four of the decade starring Wayne – North to Alaska (1960), How the West Was Won (1962), Circus World (1964) and The Sons of Katie Elder. He had finished up on Five Card Stud when Hal Wallis invited him to direct True Grit. He had only received one Oscar nomination, four decades previously, for The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, and no avant garde French film critic was reassessing his work, but he was known to bring movies in on time, and had his own distinct style if anyone could be bothered looking for it.
Certain themes did reappear, revenge for one, which was central to The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, Kiss of Death, historical adventure The Black Rose (1950), Prince Valiant (1954) with James Mason, The Sons of Katie Elder and Nevada Smith (1966) starring Steve McQueen. He also focused on disruption within the family, and situations where an older man aids an impetuous youngster, both instrumental to True Grit. “He is the only director I know,” observed Kingsley Canham, “to have specialized in films about backwoods and mountains.”
Screenwriter Marguerite Roberts was also old-school, born in 1905, with over 30 screen credits. She sold her first script while working as a secretary at Fox, had her first screen credit in 1933 for Sailor’s Luck. By 1939 she was earning $2,500 a week at MGM and turned out Honky Tonk (1941) with Clark Gable and Lana Turner, Sea of Grass (1946) with Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, Gunga Din remake Soldiers Three (1951) and big-budget historical adventure Ivanhoe (1951) with Robert Taylor and Elizabeth Taylor.
Like Abraham Polonsky she fell out of favor with Hollywood for her left-wing sympathies and was blacklisted for nearly a decade until Daniel Petrie’s The Main Attraction (1962) with Pat Boone and Nancy Kwan, Guy Green’s Diamond Head (1962) with Charlton Heston and Rampage (1963) with Robert Mitchum. She, too, had been working for Hal Wallis on Five Card Stud before receiving the commission to adapt the Portis book.
Roberts was familiar with the Old West, since her father had been a lawman in Colorado. Screenwriter Wendell Mayes, who wrote From Hell to Texas, commented that “Henry Hathaway is very easy for a writer to work with.” “When a screenplay is finished,” said Hathaway, “I go through it and work on it. I worked on True Grit with Marguerite Roberts because there was a great deal of repetition in the book and I eliminated a lot of things.” John Wayne felt Hathaway “never got the creative credit I think is due him…He was sort of a story doctor…a fine, instinctive, creator.”
Her first problem was how to translate the book’s distinctive first-person style onto the screen without the entire movie sounding too archaic and although many speeches were lifted verbatim from the book it was Roberts who established Mattie Ross as an authority figure from the outset by introducer the teenager as her father’s “bookkeeper” and inventing the argument about the type of horses he intended to buy.
The result is an unusual composite of tight storyline, exuberant characterization and wonderful dialog. The movie was filmed mainly in Colorado – Ouray, Owl Creek Pass, Ridgway, Canon City, Montrose, Bishop, and Gunnison – as well as Durango in Mexico and Inyo National Park in California where Hot Creek was used for the outlaw’s cabin and also Sherwin Summit.
The critics, who had slaughtered The Green Berets the previous year, and been largely indifferent to many of his previous westerns during the 1960s, virtually gave him a standing ovation. Variety called it a “top adventure drama…Wayne towers over everything in the film – the actors, script and even the magnificent Colorado mountains.”
Vincent Canby of the New York Times called it “a triumph…one of the major movies of the year.” The New York Daily News claimed it was “John Wayne’s finest moment.” The New York Post came closest to defining its appeal: “Few westerns will come along this or any other year that can be as fully enjoyed by as many people of varying ages and sex.” Vernon Scott of United Press was not alone in predicting “Wayne should win the Oscar.”
Joyce Haber of the Los Angeles Times said, “come Oscar time Wayne will be a leading contender.” Norma Lee Browning of the Chicago Tribune informed readers that “there’s already talk that he may, at long last, get an Oscar nomination.” Charles McHarry of the New York Daily News held the same view. Time opined “a flawless portrait of a flawed man.” International Motion Picture Exhibitor found it “the perfect vehicle for Henry Hathaway’s directorial style. He approached the simple western story in the most straightforward manner…garnished it with a delightful humor that springs right out of the vagaries of the homespun characters…and giving it a rhythm that carries the viewer along despite its lengthy running time.”
Allen Eyles in Focus on Film summed up the film’s appeal: “That True Grit could end up being the best western of the year is a tribute to old Hollywood – to a producer, director, star, cameraman and others who’ve been at the top of the film business for more than three decades. Their solid, unpretentious professionalism enables them to meet the challenge of filming a first-rate novel with pleasing assurance and directness…it is far superior to…the poorly-shaped but occasionally striking The Wild Bunch from Peckinpah…(it) is not innovatory in style but the details are communicated with a freshness that is appealing.”
Unusually, for a film of the period, the movie repeated a single image in all of its advertising, Wayne’s face dominating the composition, with below him Mattie Ross standing gun in hand and Glen Campbell behind him. That Campbell sang the title song over the credits led to the release of a record, and there was a New American Library book tie-in. Ancillary promotional items included a t-shirt embellished with the words “This Man Has True Grit,” and buttons announcing “I Have True Grit” and, alternatively, “Give Me a Man with True Grit.” Stetson created a special hat called “The Duke,” with a special one costing $1,500 to be presented to Johnny Carson on his show, with an advertising campaign that included Playboy and Esquire while Aramis created a special line of “Grit Soap.”
Time magazine had raised expectations for the picture by putting John Wayne on the front cover, on August 8, although this was in part retaliation to Life’s joint cover story on Wayne and Dustin Hoffman which ran in the Jul 11 issue, and Paramount took a gamble opening it in New York at the Radio City Music Hall, partly a ploy to boost European revenues, the first western to be so honored, although the theater covered itself by claiming the movie was an “outdoor adventure” rather than a western per se. The picture broke all sorts of records there and went on to conquer America, shattering Dallas records, for example, and then helped along by the Time cover story. For a few months it looked set to become the best performing western of all time, but was soon overtaken by the release of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Even so, it took $11.5 million in rentals to finish sixth in the annual chart. It was reissued after Wayne’s Oscar triumph the following year in an unlikely double bill with Oscar-nominated The Sterile Cuckoo and grossed $3.7 million in the twelve days. But Paramount, trying to offset calamitous losses, prematurely sold off the western to television so its reissue value was sharply curtailed.
SOURCE: Brian Hannan, The Gunslingers of ’69: Western Movies’ Greatest Year, (McFarland, 2019).
An old-style western with a modernized anti-hero in Rooster Cogburn (John Wayne), nearly as “rapaciously brutal” as the same year’s The Wild Bunch, a script with language that captured the period, a heroine Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) who falls into the robust Barbara Stanwyck/Maureen O’Hara mold, humor and action in equal measure, and an unfussy director (Henry Hathaway) who loved the panorama even more than John Ford.
Although still critically rated as not as good as The Wild Bunch, and still mostly disdained by academics, I would argue that it has been grossly under-rated and fully deserving of a re-evaluation. In the first place, despite direction very much in the old school, Hathaway exhibits many stylistic flourishes, not least the very long shot which has rarely been used to such effect. He also utilizes the shaky-camera point-of-view in a much more effective manner than Mackenna’s Gold (1969) to record Cogburn’s charge at the outlaws and there is even a zoom, to pick out the villain Tom Chaney.
Also, you know exactly where you are in a Hathaway picture, not just in the narrative sense, but in terms of how people lived and where the towns and farms were in relation to each other (the Ross farm is 70 miles from Fort Smith, the hamlet of McAllister 60 miles from the villains’ hideout). He liked to show many aspects of a town, so we see where the courthouse is in relation to the jail and the stable by the simple expedient of having the characters walk past them. And the movie is littered with sound effects of the most ordinary kind (blacksmith’s hammer, train whistle, footsteps). The film is as much about progress as Once Upon a Time in the West and The Wild Bunch, the name of the town, Fort Smith, where much of the initial action takes place, indicates it was once a frontier town.
Rooster Cogburn feels crowded out by a new generation of lawyers challenging swift justice, and Mattie Ross, hunting the killers of her father, is well schooled in argument, winning many a confrontation with apparently more experienced and wily men by being more adept at negotiation and like a chess player always one move ahead. The aftermath of the Civil War lingers in the background, demonstrated by Mattie’s weapon and Cogburn’s antipathy to Texas Ranger LaBeef (Glen Campbell). But the story strikes an even balance, no matter how assured Mattie Ross comes across in civilization she almost comes apart in the wilds and without the protection of Cogburn would have met the kind of fate at the hands of men undergone by female characters in The Stalking Moon (1969), Mackenna’s Gold and The Wild Bunch.
It should be said here that the movie is full of audience direction, we are always told where Mattie will go next or where Cogburn is intending to go, with accompanying plausible reason, especially when later Cogburn calls off the hunt for the outlaws. There is no exploration of mystery, the characters are always upfront, and where characters express regret is it minus the self-pitying of The Wild Bunch. Nobody is defined by something they should have done instead, so, in that respect, the narrative is as clear as the overall direction.
We hear Cogburn’s voice before we see him, as if the director is preparing us for a different John Wayne. This is the actor in a new timbre, the usual slow drawl replaced by a raucous bark. And it is a different Wayne, one eye covered in a black patch, giving him a piratical look. He hustles the prisoners out, kicking one straggler viciously in the butt. Wayne walks differently, too. Instead of the famous slow walk, Cogburn is a man in a hurry, pushing forward with purposeful stride, ignoring Mattie as she comes racing after him, slamming the basement door in her face.
LeBeef is another dreamer, “nobody yet” but aiming to “marry well”, in this case “a well-placed young lady in Waco” who would “look with favor” on him for bringing back Chaney who has also killed a senator. His charm fails to convince Mattie to join forces. She sees right through him: “I have no regard for you but I’m sure you have enough for yourself to go around.”
Then comes a four-minute Mattie tour de force as she confronts Col Stonehill (Strother Martin) and demands $300 in reparation for the loss of her father’s saddle and for selling him dodgy horses. She threatens him with the law in the shape of Daggett, her secret weapon, and she knows enough about legality to beat Stonehill at his own game. Even better, this is no meek woman. It is one thing to be able to score points off an old lawman like Cogburn, who would have been putty in the hands of any capable woman of the Stanwyck/O’Hara variety, but another to outwit a wily old horse-dealer like Stonehill (his title a hangover from the Civil War and one which ensures a measure of respect). Even better again, she knows she will win, so confident that she has already drawn up the papers to sign.
Now neither Cogburn nor LeBeef are witness to this demonstration of her capability, so they will, naturally, treat her as a young girl, “baby sister” in Cogburn’s dismissive term. But Hathaway is setting a trap for the audience. Having witnessed this display, we think she will be able to hold her own in the wilderness, mistaking her willfulness for sagacity, and so are on her side in her attempts to win over the two men, when, in fact, she will prove to be so out of her depth as to endanger herself and others.
The pursuit is dogged, and everyone at some point is found wanting. Cogburn smokes the villains out from their cabin and would kill the others without warning except LaBeef objects out of principle and Mattie wants Chaney alive.
At Mattie’s prompting, we hear Cogburn’s mostly unvarnished, but never maudlin, history, he lost his eye in the war, committed a robbery to fund the purchase of an eating place that had a billiard table, married a grass widow, until she left him for her first husband, taking their son, Horace, hiding his sorrow at the boy’s departure in a grumpy “he never liked me anyway” and berating him as “clumsy.” When she lies down to sleep, he gazes at her fondly for the first time, perhaps prompted by memory of his loss.
In the climactic shoot-out, in the most famous John Wayne image since his character’s introduction in Stagecoach (1969), first in long shot then from his point-of-view with a shaky camera, he grasps the reins in his teeth and fires two-handed. He kills two but Pepper shoots his horse from under him and Cogburn, in a sign of his age when otherwise traditionally cowboys leap free of a falling horse, is trapped on the ground under the weight of the animal, unable to reach his gun or to shift. The wounded Pepper advances. He towers over Cogburn until LaBeef, whose marksmanship had previously been in question, saves his life.
And that should pretty much have been the end of the picture, roll credits with Chaney being hung, but there is still nearly 15 minutes to go. Returning to collect Chaney, LaBeef is ambushed, cracked on the head by a rock. Mattie shoots Chaney but the recoil sends her into the snake pit. Cogburn arrives in time to kill the wanted man, also sending him into the pit. She has damaged her shoulder and cannot pull herself up on a rope so Cogburn has to descend. He shoots a rattlesnake but another bites her.
She still had enough presence of mind to demand he first collect her fallen gun and her father’s gold piece from Chaney’s corpse. As he hauls himself up, a dazed LaBeef, mounted on a horse, pulls on the tope to ease their ascent, but the effort is too much, and he keels over and dies.
Mattie strokes his head, the first sign of her changed feelings towards him. Alternatively, this could be guilt because it was her wrong-headedness that caused his death, but that seems unlikely, she is not one to covet regret. Cogburn slaps saliva on the wound (rather than, as we might expect from watching other westerns, sucking out the poison), puts her arm in a sling, and sticks her on Blackie, her horse, despite her protests about the little horse carrying such a weight. Cogburn is ruthless, riding the horse so hard it dies. Then he carries her and finally steals a buggy.
Where previously most of the journey had been rendered in long shot, now Hathaway reverts to medium shot and close up of the haggard Cogburn racing desperately to save the girl’s life. When we cut to Cogburn and Chen Lee instinctively we know she has been saved. The lawyer Daggett appears to pay Cogburn what he is owed plus $200 for saving her life, though, typically, she has prepared a receipt for him to sign.
Then she is home. It is winter. Snow lies on the ground. Cogburn explains there was no woman waiting for LaBeef, though the marshal has collected the reward. She shows him her father’s grave and wants Cogburn, the father she has adopted, to be buried in the same burial ground. She gives him her father’s gun and in a final triumphant moment the “fat old man” gloriously rides over a four-bar fence waving his hat in the air.
John Wayne received just reward with his Oscar, Glen Campbell (The Cool Ones, 1967) does better than we might expect from a singer. Kim Darby (Bus Riley’s Back in Town, 1965) was ignored by Oscar voters but she certainly holds her own. Terrific direction by Henry Hathaway (5 Card Stud, 1968) from a script by Marguerite Roberts (5 Card Stud) based on the bestseller by Charles Portis (Norwood, 1970).
Hugely enjoyable. Takes high concept to the Moon and back. Deliriously wild idea that, as with the best of movies that riff on the imagination, sticks to its own internal logic. The notion sounds so barmy it shouldn’t work – but it does. I enjoyed it even more than Vendetta for the Saint (1969), which it preceded, because it’s a lot more fun.
A criminal mastermind has taken the work of mysterious bestselling thriller author Amos Klein and not only adopted the characteristics of the author’s characters but follows the plot of the books and utilizes many of the clever ideas. For example, the author has invented a second ignition starter button for cars. And also invented a way to stop cars by fitting them with a technological device. People are so taken with being characters in these books that they want to know what happens to them next. I know, shouldn’t have worked, but it does, and it’s not even really set up as fitting into the sci-fi genre any more than James Bond with all its out-of-this-world machines and gadgets is.
Simon Templar (Roger Moore), aka The Saint, is hired to protect Amos Klein whose publisher believes the author is in danger. It doesn’t help that Klein lives in such anonymity that nobody knows the real name, not even the publisher. Turns out she’s a woman (Sylvia Syms), presumably adopting a male name because she writes such male-oriented books, filled with ingenious ideas.
She nearly shoots Templar because he arrives in the middle of her testing out scenarios for her new book – everything she writes has to work and she’s the one that tries them out. Anyway, Templar proves to be little defense against Warlock (Kenneth J. Warren), who has adopted the main villain of her book who runs a criminal organization called S.W.O.R.D. Warlock assumes Templar is Amos Klein and that she is his secretary.
The members of Sword, excepting Warlock, are an indifferent bunch apart from femme fatale Galaxy Rose (Justine Lord) who not only, following the premise of the books, intends to seduce Templar but believes that he, as the author, can alter her future, by making it a plot point in an as-yet-unwritten book that they fall in love that she will then marry him and live happily ever after.
Using Klein’s imaginative brain, Warlock wants the author’s help to plot a major heist from Hermetico, a giant secret vault which is to diamonds what Fort Knox is for gold. Hermetico is thief-proof, packed with amazing security devices including infra-red beams.
Although watched via CCTV cameras, Templar and Klein make a decent attempt at escape from Warlock’s mansion, tunneling upwards if you like, through the ceiling and the roof, clambering down a drainpipe and escaping in the car containing the second starter button, but also the one, it transpires, with the tech device that can stop it.
When they turn up at a remote cottage covered in mud and seeking help, the inhabitants think they are lunatics and delay them long enough till Warlock and his gang arrive to sedate them. Klein is kept prisoner, threatened with laser extinction, so Templar is coerced in assisting in the heist. In fact, Klein has come up with an ingenious method of ensuring they can find their way through the maze of infra-red beams.
This sequence is really well done, especially the method of getting all the gang through once Templar has negotiated it. Using an oxy-acetylene torch, they cut the top off an extractor vent and enter the vault, overcome the guards, and using another clever device one person manages to do something that usually requires two people.
Naturally, Templar is intent on spoiling the operation, which he does, but then has to get back to the mansion before the alarm is raised and Klein is incinerated. There’s a fisticuffs climax and a very fitting payoff for the villain.
I never thought this would work. It seemed such an improbable idea. But then Hollywood’s full of those. The fact that the S.W.O.R.D. gang are entirely believable as physical incarnations of Klein’s imagination is what makes it work. Plus Klein herself. Instead of being the standard moll or helpless heroine of so many spy pictures, she’s central to the story, and halfway between slinky and sensible.
Roger Moore (Vendetta for the Saint) – and his raised eyebrows – is, as usual, excellent in a role that very much suits his screen persona, and Sylvia Syms (Run Wild, Run Free, 1969) has a ball. Kenneth J. Warren (A High Wind in Jamaica, 1965) is given a more varied character than the normal villain while Justine Lord (Night after Night after Night, 1969) exerts a winsome appeal outside her overt sexiness.
Directed by Roy Ward Baker (Moon Zero Two, 1969) from a script by John Kruse (Vendetta for the Saint) and Harry W. Junkin (Vendetta for the Saint) adapting a novel by Leslie Charteris.
This was originally conceived as a two-parter for television that was then released as a movie instead of someone just editing together two random episodes as was usually the case with The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Impressively atmospheric. Cast in a cloud of fog and immersed in sound effects – bells, door swinging shut, echoing footsteps, screams, howls – and conspicuously devoid of the blood that was a Hammer hallmark. Effectively invents the Scream Queen but with a twist. With the likes of Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Vincent Price to accommodate, for the decade’s major purveyors of horror – Hammer, AIP and Tigon – women played a subsidiary role, mainly there to be helpless victims and scream. Here, as Hammer would later emulate, the female of the species took central stage and, therefore, screaming was at a minimum.
For that reason although Hammer sold Veronica Carlsen (Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, 1968) and Caroline Munro (Dracula A.D. 1972, 1972) as Scream Queens, they were not in the same league as Barbara Steele, who added mystery to glamor, and who took center stage rather than operating on the periphery, driving the narrative rather than required to be constantly rescued. Hammer took the Black Sunday template, more or less filched the story, and translated it into its Karnstein trilogy (The Vampire Lovers, 1970, Lust for a Vampire, 1971, and Twins of Evil, 1972) that allowed women to run rampant, and swapped relatively tame cleavage for nudity and sex.
As a showcase for the horror talents of British actress Barbara Steele (Castle of Blood, 1964) – in a dual role as both predator and victim – and Italian director Mario Bava (The Whip and the Body, 1963) we are entering horror masterpiece territory. Bava brings more imagination to the table than Hammer. The steel needles of the mask affixed to witches is a fabulous invention. Victims are not drained of blood but surrender through a gentle kiss. The contents of paintings change. Rising from the dead is an explosive business rather than the traditional slow entrance.
Dr Kruvajan (Andrei Cecchi) , traveling through Moldavia with assistant Dr Gorobec (John Richardson), inadvertently triggers the resuscitation of the corpse of Princess Asa (Barbara Steele), a witch executed two centuries previously, but, crucially, avoiding being burnt to death when a sudden thunderstorm extinguished the pyre. She is able to revive, telepathically, her lover Javutich, also condemned as a witch, and together they prey on the descendants of those who put them to death, namely Prince Vadja, his daughter Katia (Barbara Steele) and son Constantin. A crucifix saves the prince first time round but soon he is slaughtered.
Kruvajan, smitten by the beauty of Asa, submits to her power and becomes her willing accomplice assisting Javutich in his killing spree. Gorobec, meanwhile, has fallen for Katia, and together with Konstantin is on hand to initially prevent the worst. But Asa has her eyes on Katia, planning to drain her of her blood and take over her body.
There are plenty close calls and the usual quota of violence, though the cleavage quotient is almost nil. That the movie climaxes in a terrific twist and an awesome visual demonstrates that Bava was a cut above the usual directors working in the genre. By the time Gorobec traces the missing Katia to the haunt of Ava, the damage has been done, although the audience doesn’t realize it. The now revived and stunningly beautiful Ava points out Katia as the witch who requires killing. And it’s only when Gorobec notices the crucifix on Katia’s neck that he realizes the bodies have been switched. Beneath her robes, Asa is a skeleton. Horror specialists spent a decade trying to top that image and it took the big-budget The Exorcist (1973) to come close.
Barbara Steele is mesmeric, exuding an exotic mysterious appeal that no other Scream Queen could match. Screenplay by Ennio De Concini (A Place for Lovers, 1969) and Mario Serandrei, better known as an editor, based on the story by Gogol.
The AIP redubbed and recut version released in the U.S. in 1961 differs significantly from the original. It was banned in Britain until 1968.
Brilliant opening, brilliant finish, all hail the two new stars of the genre
Bloated films have become a modern curse with “visionary” filmmakers indulged because studio executives can’t rein them in. But in the best films length plays a significant role. It provides an opportunity for depth and complexity, and to tell a tale from more than one angle. Nobody balked at The Housemaid (2025), ostensibly a tad overlong for a thriller at 131 minutes, but the time was exceptionally well used and the movie cleaned up, $350 million worldwide and counting, the hit of the year so far in terms of budget vs gross.
Crime 101 isn’t going to get anywhere near those figures but deserves to because despite its length (140 minutes) it’s remarkably lean. It reminds me of the spare pictures Walter Hill (The Driver, 1978) used to make where narrative rather than emotion was the key. Here, there are three flawed characters who you are desperate to learn more about but writer-director Bart Layton (American Animals, 2018) keeps such audience desire at bay while seducing us with a complex tale. Action, too, is limited, so be warned.
Jewel thief Davis (Chris Hemsworth) is too clever to get tangled up in action, clearly aware that shoot-outs can get messy and lead to unnecessary entanglement. He tends to commit his robberies off-site, while diamonds are being couriered to customers. He has no commitments, buys sex, lives in apartments that would be almost avant-garde in their simplicity, no proof that anyone lived in them at all.
And he’s very human. For a criminal he’s mightily spooked when a job nearly goes awry and he receives a very slight gunshot wound, not the kind to need treatment. Maybe his guard is down because when he meets up with publicist Maya (Monica Barbaro) he strikes up an awkward relationship, refusing to reveal a single thing about his life, and not having the smarts to invent one.
You might term that complication number one because she’s too contemporary a woman to be hooked by a mysterious stranger and the more she wants to know about him, the more defensive he becomes. This isn’t a major plot point because you get the impression he’s been there before and walked away long before complication set in. But I’m just telling you because that’s the tone of the film, no big emotional blow-ups or confessions, just the heart kept very much under control. Stoicism, if you like, the guiding principal.
When Davis passes on committing another robbery so soon, his fence Money (Nick Nolte) hands the job to the unpredictable bike-riding Ormon (Barry Keoghan). So Davis has to look elsewhere for a score and alights upon disgruntled insurance broker Sharon (Halle Berry), a singleton for career purposes you guess, who relies on self-help tapes to get her going in the morning, passed over for promotion once too often. Despite initially knocking him back, her fury at her smug employers brings her to the table.
And this would shape up as a twist on The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) except that Davis already has someone on his tail, cuckolded cop Lou (Mark Ruffalo), in the process of splitting with his wife, but getting heat from his boss because he’s convinced a string of jewel heists are the work of one man, when the department has already collared people for some of them. Eventually, for not playing the game over a crooked cop, Lou is stood down, but that leaves him free to take on the thief in his own way.
In between keeping tabs on Ormon and realizing that he has a cop on his tail, and that his newfound girlfriend is about to dump him, Davis continues trying to fleece $11 million from billionaire Steven Monroe (Tate Donovan), half in the cash necessary to pay for the illegally imported jewels.
But by now, beaten senseless by Ormon, Sharon also discovers that, like Davis, her courage is not up to the task, and spills the beans to the cop who puts into place a clever plan that would probably work except Ormon is ready to break up the party.
Although rewarding in its own way, the ending jarred somewhat, the incorruptible cop giving in to temptation, and letting the other suspects get off scot free. But in an era of tough and bloody twists it was an unexpected way to finish.
The three principals are excellent – Chris Hemsworth (Thor: Love and Thunder, 2022) proving he has the stillness and acting chops that makes the big stars great, a rumpled Mark Ruffalo (Now You See Me, Now You Don’t, 2025) making the most of a terrific part and Halle Berry (The Union, 2024) putting in a shift as a flawed woman – but Barry Keoghan (Saltburn, 2023) overacts so just as well the director mitigated his presence by sticking him under a biker helmet for most of the picture.
A well-measured hugely enjoyable show from Layton. A thriller for thinking adults.
Could have been the greatest espionage movie of all time except for one thing – excess. Now director Ken Russell would soon make his reputation based on sexual excess – Women in Love (1969), The Devils (1971) etc – but here he takes self-indulgence in a different direction. The plot is labyrinthine to say the least, and Finland proves to be dullest of arctic locations, no submarine emerging from the ice to liven things up as in Ice Station Zebra (1968), just endless tundra.
Setting that aside, there are gems to be found. Author Len Deighton ploughed a different furrow to Ian Fleming (Goldfinger, 1964) and John le Carre (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 1965), none of the glitz of the former nor the earnestness of the latter. He was more likely to trip a narrative around human foibles. And so it is here.
For a start, our hero Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) is the MacGuffin and then is duped – three times. Firstly, he is the reason we end up in Finland in the first place, having responded to an anonymous message and the promise of easy money. Then, in the most foolish action ever to befall a spy, he falls in love with the mistress Anya (Francoise Dorleac) of old buddy Leo (Karl Malden). Finally, he is shafted by former employer Col Ross (Guy Doleman) and generally given the runaround by Russian Col Stok (Oscar Homolka), reprising his role from Funeral in Berlin (1966).
Unlike the previous Harry Palmer iterations, that began with the splendid The Ipcress File (1965), there’s a techie megalomaniac on the loose, General Midwinter (Ed Begley) – think Dr Strangelove on speed – who’s not so intent on world domination as flattening the Soviets, which more or less amounts to the same thing.
Midwinter provides the movie with considerable technological foresight, his billion-dollar computer prefiguring the way in which we have allowed technology to rule our lives, and, unlikely though it seems, perhaps provided the inspiration for the serried ranks of Stormtroopers from Star Wars (1977).
For the most part, lovelorn Palmer is led a merry dance and relies on a deus ex machina in the shape to Col Stok to put an end to Midwinter’s potential Russian uprising. A rebellion was always going to be a tad dicey because Leo has stolen all the money Midwinter provided for him to set up an army of Russian dissidents. Leo thought it made more sense for the cash to be put to better use, namely investing in high living and a glamorous mistress. There we go with the old human foible. But Palmer can match him there, not quite having the brains to realize that a beautiful woman who can play Leo so well could also play him.
There’s a marvelous pay-off where we discover that in the middle of the male-dominated espionage shenanigans, it’s Anya who turns out to be the clear winner. In a terrific scene she takes the case containing the secret McGuffin from Leo rushing to board her train then, with her hands on the valuable cargo, kicks him off the train. And once she has trapped a foolish British spy, who has let his emotions get the better of him, is apt to poison him.
There’s some distinct Britishness afoot. Complaints about salary and endless bureaucracy abound. And there’s a piece of pure Carry On when, in a sauna scene, the camera manages to put objects or bodies in the way of Anya’s nudity. One-upmanship doesn’t get any better than Col Ross smirking when he tricks Palmer into returning to work for him.
Smirking is in the ascendancy here. Palmer smirks at the folly of Leo in believing that the young beauty is after him for anything but his money and his access to potentially dangerous toxin. Anya doesn’t need to laugh behind the backs of the two men she has so easily duped when she can enjoy sweet revenge right to their faces.
Once you get to the end, you can more appreciate the content, although, like me, you probably wished the director could have got a move on, and thought he should have done a lot better in the climactic scene than toy trucks falling into Styrofoam blocks of ice.
The tale isn’t on a par with the previous two, Deighton being more at home with cunning adversaries rather than overblown megalomaniacs, but everyone, with the exception of Anya and Col Stok – i.e. the bad guys – are too easily taken in. Technically, Palmer wins the day, but that’s only to fulfil the requirement that the good guy must appear to win even if the good guy in this instance is smeared all over with impotence and folly.
The camera loves Michael Caine (Gambit, 1966) so there’s no problem there especially as by and large he’s wearing his cynical screen persona. Karl Malden (Nevada Smith, 1966) has a ball, especially as this must be the only time he gets the girl. Ed Begley (Sweet Bird of Youth, 1962) and Oscar Homolka over-act as they should, but Francois Dorleac (The Young Girls of Rochefort, 1967), in her final role, steals the picture from under all of them.
Directed by Ken Russell as if he kept his editor at bay and written by Scottish playwright John McGrath (The Bofors Gun, 1968) in his big screen debut.
So a very interesting twist on the spy picture but be warned before you go in that it takes quite a while to get there.
Eschews the X-cert terror of some of the end-of-the-world efforts of the period such as The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) and Day of the Triffids (1963) in favor of a more solid documentary-style approach and focusing on the tangled love lives of the main characters. There’s a distinctly British tone. People form long, orderly queues to receive an injection to combat a sudden epidemic of smallpox and police and any kind of hard-line enforcement plays a minor role. And the medical boffins in charge act more like detectives, tracking down potential infected individuals, engaging in door-to-door street-by-street hunts for those carrying the virus, maps are drawn, areas blocked off. There are deadlines and countdowns. Doctors are disinfected, clothes are incinerated and corpses cremated. So there’s enough tension to keep everyone on their toes.
But most of the emotional muscle is not by asking an audience to empathize or sympathize with those in danger or whose lives are suddenly cut short. But by concentrating on the impact of adultery on two couples. Dr Steven Monks (Richard Johnson), who identified the presence of smallpox in the large town of Bath with 80,000 people potentially at risk, is suspected by retired nurse wife Julie (Claire Bloom) of having an affair with glamorous Ruth (Yolande Donlan), wife to Monks’ stuffy colleague and friend Dr Clifford Preston (Michael Goodliffe).
The Monks are on the verge of going abroad on holiday when the smallpox disrupts their plans, although it’s Julie who appears the more principled and dutiful of the two, her husband being all set to head off and leave someone else to sort out the mess.
To make sure emotions are not sidelined by the scale of the epidemic, Dr Monks and wife are kept in the thick of it, the stakes rising dramatically when Ruth catches the disease. That triggers the most interesting – and original – sequence of the drama. When Steven thinks his wife is in danger of dying his feelings for her surge, but when she recovers, his ardor dampens down. He receives another kick in the teeth when he discovers that his lover Ruth has another fancy man.
So quite a lot of this is couples trying to work out their feelings, and it doesn’t follow the usual cliché, even though Julie is somewhat short-changed by the script in not being allowed to rage against her husband but passively accept his adultery. Dr Preston is more insightful, able to accept that his best friend has betrayed him, but sympathizing rather than condemning his wife because he knows that none of her adultery has brought her any happiness. It helps both of the Monks to have a wise padre (Cyril Cusack) available to listen to their troubles.
Though the epidemic is well drawn with plenty location work capturing the times, really the story is more about a pair of adventurous lovers, Steven and Ruth, landed with a pair of dullards in Ruth and Clifford, and making the necessary adjustments.
This was the first top-billed role of the career of British actress Claire Bloom (Three into Two Won’t Go, 1969) despite arriving on the scene in a blaze of leading lady glory. The Buccaneer (1958) opposite Yul Brynner and Look Back in Anger (1959) opposite Richard Burton should have been enough of a calling card, but she drifted to Germany and then television before another leading lady stint in The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962) before tumbling down the credits for The Chapman Report (1962).
And except that she had outranked Richard Johnson in The Haunting (1963), you might wonder why she achieved top-billing here when Richard Johnson (Deadlier than the Male, 1967) has the bigger role. In theory, Bloom has the better role, she’s a victim of disease and has to cope with an unfaithful husband, but its Johnson who faces the bigger predicament in coming to terms with a love for Bloom that is at its peak only when he risks losing her.
High-spirited Yolande Donlan (Jigsaw, 1962) steals the early scenes. Decent support in Cyril Cusack (Day of the Jackal, 1973), Mervyn Johns (Day of the Triffids), Ray Barrett (The Reptile, 1966) and former big marquee attraction Kay Walsh (Oliver Twist, 1948).
Val Guest (The Day the Earth Caught Fire) has to duck and weave with this one to ensure the human drama isn’t buried by the impending disaster – and vice-versa. Written by Guest based on the novel by Elleston Trevor (The Flight of the Phoenix, 1965).
You might think director George Seaton wearing his screenwriter’s hat had his work cut out adapting Arthur Hailey’s 500-page tome for a lean two-hour picture. But Hailey’s book was anything but lean and the fat was easily trimmed away. The author had little idea of dramatic tension and there’s a clear example here that what plays in a novel won’t at all work on screen.
Had Seaton slavishly followed the Hailey template the tension-filled climax of the bomb exploding on the plane and the pilot having to land the stricken plane on an icebound runway would have been interrupted by numb-boring back-and-forth between airport executives and people complaining about planes flying overhead disrupting their lives and the author holding forth on the future of air travel.
A huge chunk of the book is politics one way or another and with the exception of a brief tussle between airport boss Burt Lancaster and his bosses that focuses, unlike the book, on Lancaster’s attempts to keep the runway open, Seaton chucks out all that stuff about townspeople, literally, on the march. Audiences won’t be much interested either in much of what Hailey, in investigative fashion, turns up about cargo loading and the problems facing shoe-shiners and skims over the question of why airports permit insurance agents to so freely operate in an airport, making a healthy living (from which the airport takes a cut) from selling fear to travelers.
It’s interesting, as always, to see what, apart from the obvious as I’ve outlined, a screenwriter doesn’t believe essential. So in the movie Dean Martin’s beef with Burt Lancaster is over the airport’s supposed inefficiency in keeping the runways clear in the face of a snowstorm. But in the book that’s the least of Martin’s concerns, since he’s taken umbrage at this dialing up of the fear factor by selling insurance policies to people about to board a plane.
When you see all those guys and all that heavy-duty equipment trying to clear a path for the airplane grounded in the snow, you think what the heck’s the problem, it’s only a big mound of snow. In the book, the real problem is explained. The plane isn’t stuck in the snow – it’s stuck in the mud underneath the snow, so actually the ground staff have to dig it out of a pretty big hole.
Hailey also takes a detour with the George Kennedy troubleshooter. Instead of getting a police escort to the airport he takes time out to sort out a traffic tangle, demonstrating, for the reader, his unique set of skills, which, sensibly, Seaton reckons will be amply shown when he is doing his job on the runway.
Fourth time unlucky – the series runs out of runway.
There’s a subplot that Seaton eliminates. As well as having a troublesome brother-in-law in Dean Martin, Burt Lancaster has a troublesome brother, so burned out by his job as an air traffic controller that he’s on the verge of committing suicide. But again, Seaton reckons there’s enough going on without over-egging the pudding.
Seaton really comes into his own on the emotional front, having a better notion than Hailey of how to heighten emotion. So there’s no mention that the apparently childless Dean Martin had a previous child from a previous affair – the baby was adopted (a policy airlines encouraged to get stewardesses back to the front line as soon as possible) so the question remains – does he want to be a father? Seaton also brings forward his idea about an abortion. In the book, Burt Lancaster and Jean Seberg have not consummated their affair, but Seaton makes it implicit in the film that they have. Also Hailey reveals from the start that Lancaster’s wife is already playing away from home but Seaton holds that knowledge back so there’s an emotional twist in the film.
What Seaton adds is just as demonstrative of the screenwriter’s skill. Not in the book: the nun, the priest, the bolshie passenger and the know-it-all teenager. These are Seaton inventions. Seaton also builds up Lancaster’s wife as coming from a wealthy family rather than being a failed actress. And he brings to the fore the women who are the casualties of male weakness, Dean Martin’s wife discovering his girlfriend is pregnant, the bomber’s wife realizing what he has done, Lancaster’s wife confronting him.
Although Hailey spends acres of print going on about the problems low-flying planes cause he doesn’t actually show their impact. Seaton cuts right to the chase, opening with a scene of plates and stuff crashing to the floor in a house as a plane flies overhead. And in scenes of the snowplows sending snow wafting through the air the director in Seaton turns what Hailey described as a “conga line” into a ballet
One other element – in the book the Burt Lancaster character has a limp. Movie heroes don’t limp.
The Magnificent 60s 