adaptation of bestseller – Page 21

The Liquidator (1965) ****

Brilliant premise, brilliant execution, brilliant acting. The best send-ups are driven by their own internal logic and this is no exception: spy boss, known simply as The Chief (Wilfred Hyde White), determines in most un-British fashion to get rid of a mole in the operation by eliminating all potential suspects. Bristling Colonel Mostyn (Trevor Howard) recruits Boysie Oakes (Rod Taylor) for the job, believing Oakes showed particular gallantry during World War Two, unaware this was pure accident. Oakes is given all the perks of a super spy – fast cars, fashionable apartment – and once realizing that being a killer is outside his comfort zone delegates the dirty work to another hit man Griffen (Eric Sykes).

The sweet life begins to unravel when Oakes takes a weekend abroad with Mostyn’s secretary Iris MacIntosh (Jill St John) and is kidnapped. Forced to battle for survival, another Oakes emerges, a proper killer. Cue the final section which involves trapping the mole.

Where films featuring Matt Helm and Derek Flint imitated the grand-scale espionage they aimed to spoof, the laughs here come from small-scale observation and attacks on bureaucracy. According to regulations, Oakes’ liaison with MacIntosh is illicit. There is endless paperwork. His kidnappers are over-enthusiastic bumbling fools. Apart from an aversion to needless killing, Oakes has terrible fear of flying. Nobody can remember code names or passwords. Oakes’ automobile numberplate is BO 1 (the letters in those days being a standard acronym for “body odor”). It is all logical lunacy. And even when the story gets serious, it follows logic, a ruse, a dupe, a climax pitting resolve against human weakness.

Best of all, the parts appear custom-made for the players. Rod Taylor (The Birds, 1963), in his first venture into comedy, displays a knack for the genre without resorting to the slapstick and double takes requisite in the Doris Day pictures to follow. And he is a definite screen charmer.

By this point in his career the screen persona of Trevor Howard (Von Ryan’s Express, 1965) had been shorn of subtlety. He was generally one choleric snort away from a heart attack. Here, while the narrative pricks his pomposity, he remains otherwise ramrod certain. The audience is in on the joke, but nonetheless his genuine ability as a spy master is not questionable.

On the other hand Jill St John (Who’s Minding the Store, 1963) is allowed considerable leeway in the subtlety department, as a demure English rose rather than the sexier roles into which she was later typecast. In some respects British television comedian Eric Sykes is miscast. It is a particular English joke to present him as a killer since on television (in shows unlikely to be shown in America) he was hapless. And it is worth mentioning Akim Tamiroff whose villainous stock-in-trade is allowed greater depth.

Director Jack Cardiff had tried his hand at comedy before with My Geisha (1962) starring Shirley Maclaine but was better known for Oscar-nominated drama Sons and Lovers (1960) and action picture The Long Ships (1964). John Gardner, who wrote seven books in the Boysie Oakes series, later penned James Bond novels.

It is well worth considering whether The Liquidator would have punctured the success of both Our Man Flint (1966) and The Silencers (1966) and sent spy spoofery in a different direction. It had premiered in the U.K. prior to both but litigation held up its American launch until long after this pair had gone on to hit box office heights.

Behind the Scenes: “By Love Possessed” (1961)

Call it friendly persuasion. After The Magnificent Seven (1960), producer Walter Mirisch wanted to keep director John Sturges on-side. Other potential projects were falling by the wayside and Sturges needed, for financial reasons, to keep working while Mirisch wanted to ensure that when they finally licked the script for The Great Escape, still three years off as it happened, they would have a grateful director all set.

Especially, they did not want him to fall into the hands of rival producer Hal Wallis who was making a second attempt to set up The Sons of Katie Elder. Sturges had been the original director in 1955 with Alan Ladd in the leading role but a dodgy script. Although the script was in better shape, Wallis couldn’t get Paramount to bite (and wouldn’t until 1965). Another Sturges prospect was a remake of Vivacious Lady (1938) teaming Steve McQueen and Lee Remick in the Ginger Rogers-James Stewart roles, but that also fell through.

“I didn’t want John to go elsewhere and get tied up in another film,” admitted Mirisch. Partly as a means of finding a vehicle for Lana Turner, Mirisch had struck a deal with Seven Arts to make By Love Possessed by James Gould Cozzens, a 1957 bestseller for which producer Ray Stark had forked out $100,000 as a means of finessing his television-dependent company into the movies.

Essentially, Mirisch picked up the picture on the rebound. Seven Arts had fallen out with United Artists which had financed the acquisition of three expensive properties: Broadway hits West Side Story and Two for the Seesaw and the novel By Love Possessed, all of which fell into the Mirisch lap. Mirisch enthused about the two stage productions, interesting Robert Wise in the musical and Billy Wilder, at least initially, in the romantic drama. Prior to The Magnificent Seven, Mirisch had tied Sturges down to a long-term deal and now handed him the script for By Love Possessed. “He read it and said he would like to do it.”

Lana Turner had revived her career with an Oscar-nominated turn in Peyton Place (1957), a huge hit, and had hit gold with remake Imitiation of Life (1959). She seemed the ideal candidate for another adaptation of a seamy besteller. At this point the Mirisch company was still trying to make it way in Hollywood. Its prime method of getting its foot in the door was to pay stars over the odds and allow them greater say in their movies, sometimes backing pet projects. The price of working with big marquee names was often a lot of grief.

Like any other major producer, Walter Mirisch saw himself as a star-maker. Hiring talent on a long-term contract for a low fee was one way of ensuring he could ride on their inexpensive coat-tails in the future. Efrem Zimbalist Jr was the star of hit television series 77 Sunset Strip and the producer “hoped that casting him with Lana in our picture would make him a motion picture star.” He viewed the likes of Jason Robards and George Hamilton as merely supporting actors and not potential stars in their own right, although both would go on to have more stellar careers than Zimbalist.

Ketti Frings, Oscar-nominated for Come Back, Little Sheba (1952), had been paid $100,000 plus a percentage to write the screenplay of what was perceived as a difficult novel to adapt, given it was riddled with flashbacks and introspection. “If we told the book on the screen, we would be making an 18-hour picture,” said Sturges, derisively, as if blockbuster novels (From Here to Eternity etc) were not filetted all the time. Oscar-winner Charles Schnee (Red River, 1948) was drafted in for a rewrite – he had worked on Jeopardy (1953), though uncredited, a Sturges thriller starring Barbara Stanwyck.

Now the screenwriter was dogged with script changes demanded by Lana Turner. According to Mirisch, the actress “never let up” wanting script alterations. But Schnee’s work didn’t meet the director’s expectations and was doctored to such an extent the screenwriter removed his own name from the credits and substituted the pseudonym John Dennis. Mirisch initially brought in Isobel Lennart, who was adapting Two for the Seesaw, for a polish but eventually her version departed significantly from the Schnee original.

Novels could get away with a lot more blatant sexuality than books, though Peyton Place (1957) had made a very good stab at scorching the screen. But the finished script didn’t manage to match the novel’s carnality except in the character of Veronica (Yvonne Craig), the one-night stand who triggers the family downfall. Whatever the problems the script couldn’t nail, Sturges was clearly not the director to get round them with hot onscreen love scenes. Much as he admired strong women, couples getting it on were not his speciality.

The movie was filmed on the Columbia lot with a week on location.

“You get talked into it…or you need the money,” said Sturges. “I knew I had no business making that picture. Sure it was well-acted and staged …but I couldn’t care less about these people. I didn’t like ‘em, didn’t understand ‘em. And if you don’t understand people in a given situation, and you don’t like what’s happening, you shouldn’t try to make a movie out of it.”

Mirisch was as philosophical. “John Sturges was more at home with male-oriented, action pictures than soap opera. I was well aware of that, but I was guilty of ignoring my own misgivings and of wanting to keep him involved in one of our projects while we were doing the script preparation for The Great Escape.” The failure of the movie was, for Mirisch, “a psychological and emotional blow,” one that wasn’t softened by success at the box office.

SOURCES: Glenn Lovell, Escape Artist, The Life and Films of John Sturges (The University of Wisconsin Press, 2008) p218-220; Walter Mirisch, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History (The University of Wisconsin Press, 2008) p99, 114-116, 119-120;

By Love Possessed (1961) ***

You couldn’t get further away from The Magnificent Seven (1960) than this buttoned-up –Peyton Place melodrama but director John Sturges, struggling to put together a more favored project, ended up here. It’s not that he didn’t have experience in this genre, having helmed Spencer Tracy legal drama The People Against O’Hara (1952) and June Allyson in The Girl in White (1952) but it was only when you turned to this field that you realized how much more freedom there was in a western.

There’s no shortage of pithy dialog courtesy of Charles Schnee (Butterfield 8, 1960). The marriage of Arthur Winner (Efrez Zimbalist Jr) and wife Clarissa (Barbara Bel Geddes) is more “merger” than romance. Opposing lawyers are “friendly enemies.” Arthur’s son Warren (George Hamilton) balks at a “smug career.”

There a couple of marvellous scenes and the characters are well-drawn, too well-drawn perhaps, audience constantly being reminded of personality defects, and it reeks of the formulaic, wealthy lives coming apart in Mansionworld. The biggest problem is there’s way too many characters that suffocate the life out of the picture. The heat the director clearly expected to generate is missing, hardly surprising in a world where duty dominates.

We’re pretty much nearly halfway through the picture before adultery crops up, bitter alcoholic wife Marjorie (Lana Turner) falling for Arthur, the business partner of her husband Julius (Jason Robards). Just around the same time Warren avails himself of a one-night stand with local “tramp” Veronica (Yvonne Craig) because he wouldn’t dare lay a hand on fiancee Helen (Susan Kohner), the town’s richest gal.

Simmering in the background is what today we might recognize as early onset dementia, which in those days was just treated as the frailties of old age, when Arthur discovers his boss Noah (Thomas Mitchell) has been stealing from a client. So, as you can imagine, the whole set-up is all set to explode as characters rebel against self-imposed restraint.

First to crack in the bigger sense is Helen who commits suicide when a spurned Veronica accuses Warren of rape. Then you can take your pick of various other outcomes. And that’s a shame because there’s interesting material here, mostly left unexplored because we’re wrapped up in a game of consequences.

Ace Harvard law student Warren falls out with his father over the case, just discussed but never played out, of a young mother who has killed her baby. The woman, with a mental age of eight, believed her newborn was dead and so buried it. Warren argues his father should offer a plea of insanity, which Arthur rejects as a legal dodge. The question of how the pregnancy occurred is never discussed, but you can guess it could as easily be incest or at the very least someone taking advantage of an incapacitated youngster.

There’s a great scene – the Majorie A and Marjorie B sequence – where Julius explains how on the one hand his wife runs a great house and is a terrific social adjunct and on the other hand is wild, impulsive, demanding and it’s the second one he fell in love with and, although currently rejected, refuses to give a divorce. And it’s Julius again who has the best character defining scene, when he acknowledges that pity is “a dirty word.”

Some surprisingly raw language is used when it comes to the question of rape. “The law assumes a common tramp like Veronica can still be raped” and the question of consent carries a contemporary sting.

Perhaps the biggest issue is the unspoken. It’s not love the main characters are after, it’s sex. Julius is lame after an auto accident and that appears to hinder his activities in the marital bed. Warren is too scared of Helen’s reaction to engage in the normal fumblings of youth.

The top-billed Lana Turner (who headlined the original Peyton Place, 1957) is kept at bay for too long as the other factors are brought into play and to be honest she is way out of the league of the likes of Efrem Zimbalist Jr (A Fever in the Blood, 1961). He would scarcely come up to scratch for a woman like her unless she was desperate. And perhaps she is. Turner steals every scene she’s in. The only character who shows screen spark is the vengeful Veronica who refers to herself in the third person – “nobody treats Veronica like a tramp but Veronica.”

George Hamilton (A Time for Killing, 1967) has some moments, but not enough. The same goes for Yvonne Craig (Batgirl in the Batman TV series 1966-1968). Jason Robards (A Big Hand for the Little Lady / Big Deal in Dodge City, 1966) takes an early stab at the simmering tense persona he would make his screen template. Charles Schnee was so annoyed with what happened to his original script, adapted from the James Gould Cozzens bestseller, that he insisted on using the pseudonym John Dennis.

A well turned-out potboiler.

Topaz (1969) ****

Authentic, atypical, engrossing, this grittier Hitchcock mixes the realism of Psycho (1960) and Marnie (1964) with the nihilism of The Birds (1963), a major departure for a canon that previously mostly spun on innocents or the falsely accused encountering peril. The hunt for a Russian spy ring by way of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 forms the story core but the director is more interested in personal consequence, so much so that even the villain suffers heart-rending loss. Betrayal is the other key theme – defection and infidelity go hand in hand.

The tradecraft of espionage is detailed – dead letter drops, film hidden in typewriting spools, an accidental collision that is actually a sweet handover. In a transcontinental tale that shifts from Copenhagen to New York to Cuba to Paris, there is still room for classic sequences of suspense – the theft of secret documents in a hotel the pick – and Hitchcock at times simply keeps the audience at bay by employing dumbshow at key moments.

In some respects the director was at the mercy of his material. In the documentary-style Leon Uris bestseller (almost a procedural spy novel), the main character is neither the trigger for the plot nor often its chief participant and is foreign to boot. So you could see the sense of employing using a cast of unknowns, otherwise an audience would soon grow restless at long absences from the screen of a Hollywood star of the caliber of Cary Grant or Paul Newman, for example.

It is a florist (Roscoe Lee Browne) who carries out the hotel theft, a small resistance cell the spying on Russian missiles in Cuba and a French journalist who beards one of the main suspects, not the ostensible main character, French agent Andre Devereux (Frederick Stafford), not his U.S. counterpart C.I.A. operative Michael Nordstrum (John Forsythe) nor Cuban villain Rico Parra (John Vernon).

Unusual, too, is the uber-realism. The main characters are fully aware of the dangers they face and of its impact on domestic life and accept such consequence as collateral damage. It is ironic that the Russian defector is far more interested in safeguarding his family than Devereux. Devereux’s wife (Dany Robin), Cuban lover Juanita (Karin Dor) and son-in-law (Michel Subor) all suffer as a result of his commitment to his country.

And that Juanita, leader of the Cuban resistance cell, is more of a patriot than the Russian, refusing to defect when offered the opportunity. Hitchcock even acknowledges genuine politics: the reason a Frenchman is involved is because following the Bay of Pigs debacle in 1961 American diplomats were not welcome in Cuba.

I have steered clear of this film for over half a century. I saw it on initial release long before the name Hitchcock meant anything to me. But once it did I soon realized this film did not easily fit into the classic Hitchcock and had always been represented as shoddy goods. So I came to it with some trepidation and was surprised to find it so engrossing.

Frederick Stafford (O.S.S. 117: Mission for a Killer, 1965) was excellent with an insouciance reminiscent of Cary Grant and a raised eyebrow to match that star’s wryness. John Vernon, who I mostly knew as an over-the-top villain in pictures such as Fear Is the Key (1972), was surprisingly touching as the Cuban bad-guy who realizes his lover is a traitor. And there is a host of top French talent in Michel Piccoli (La Belle Noiseuse, 1991), Philippe Noiret (Justine, 1969), Dany Robin (The Best House in London, 1969) and Karin Dor (You Only Live Twice, 1967).

As you are possibly aware, three endings were shot for this picture and I can’t tell you which without spoiling the plot. In any case, this is worth seeing more than just to complete trawl through the entire Hitchcock oeuvre, a very mature and interesting work. Based on the Leon Uris bestseller, screenplay by Samuel A. Taylor (Vertigo, 1958).

Underrated.

The Last Safari (1967) ***

Producer Hal Wallis was known as a star maker. He had launched the careers of Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Lizabeth Scott, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis and Shirley MacLaine and was instrumental in shaping Elvis Presley’s screen persona. Continually on the lookout for new talent and with a roster of pictures to cast, he had swooped in the mid-60s on Suzanna Leigh (Boeing Boeing, 1965), Broadway rising star Tanya Everett and on the basis of a television pilot Lithuanian-born Kaz Garas.

So if The Last Safari appears both overcooked and undercooked, put that down to Wallis saddling director Henry Hathaway with the untried Garas as his star, billed ahead, much to his fury, of veteran Stewart Granger (The Secret Invasion, 1964). The film’s way too long as the producer keeps finding ways to insert the youngster into the older man’s tale of hunting an elephant that killed his buddy. In fact, it’s another youngster, Gabriella Licudi (The Unearthly Stranger, 1965) who, with a fraction of Garas’s dialog, steals the show.

The safari picture was by now fast out of fashion, the days of glorifying hunting, even just to supply zoos as in Hatari! (1962), losing its appeal especially with the softer conservationist approach of Born Free (1966) and Africa, Texas Style (1967). So while issues regarding poaching, native self-determination, tribal tradition and colonial interference are given more coverage than you might expect, it still boils down to great white hunter Gilchrist (Stewart Granger) setting out to kill an elephant. That millionaire playboy Casey (Kaz Garas) keeps getting in his way is down to an odd screenplay and the top-billing error that seems determined to find more space for the younger irritant than for the older guy coming to terms with himself.

By the time Casey lands in Kenya in a zebra-striped private plane with native guide Grant (Gabriella Licudi), Granger has already torn up his hunter’s license. Much of the initial narrative is simply Casey pursuing him and being turned down, until the American simply decides to tag along, despite inexperience of the bush.

It’s unclear whether Grant is a guide-with-benefits but she milks him at every turn and filches anything she can, including a lucky charm belonging to Gilchrist. But where Casey drones on, the camera is kind to her, showing her character in tiny snippets, concealing the lucky charm at Gilchrist’s approach, for example, or not being at all perturbed at being excluded from dinner on the grounds that’s she’s a servant and astonished that Casey gets himself so wound up at what he sees as an injustice. She’s perfectly happy dancing the Watusi on her own away from the boring grown-ups. And she puts him in his place, “You want a trophy…I’m not for sale.”

Quite why Gilchrist is obsessed with this particular elephant is never satisfactorily explained. There’s guilt of course since he was the protector but any observer would see that the buddy had stupidly put himself in harm’s way for the sake of getting a better photo of a charging elephant. You get the impression that Gilchrist is just finding a long slow way to die, now he has little else to live for, and his profession is being swamped by idiots, and the work involves dealing with entitled nincompoops like Casey.

Every now and then the movie takes a different, occasionally cute, turn, like watching the baby hippos clamber all over their parents in the water, repetition of this item explained by Gilchrist’s preference for that animal rather than that someone dug up some interesting library shots. But, more likely, it’s dangerous intrusion on tradition. Both Grant and Casey take it upon themselves to participate in a tribal dance, which leads to fisticuffs after a native, following her response to his moves, takes a fancy to the woman. Another time Gilchrist has to rescue some white people trapped in a village because they had violated tradition or were upholding tradition (the reason was unclear). Another chap is trampled to death because his watch alarm went off at the wrong time.

Once the movie settles down to what Hathaway is expert at, old men heading off on quests, long vistas, unwanted traveling companion, it picks up though audiences were probably let down by the ending, not the expected savage slaughter. By the time Casey admits he has learned humility you’ve long lost interest in him.

Howard Hawks would have swung in with a gender switch to make this work, turning Grant into an annoying female, introducing a romantic tussle, hoping the age gap wouldn’t act as too much of a deterrent. Frustratingly, this is excellent in patches, primarily when Gilchrist gets to demonstrate tradecraft and understanding of tribal tradition.

Stewart Granger, in festering in his guilt far removed from the traditional hero, is surprisingly good. Kaz Garas’s career told its own story, this being his only top-billed movie. He’s been thrown in at the deep end and sunk not swam. I was surprised to see Gabriella Licudi not popping up elsewhere because she makes a good stab at the self-sufficient sassy heroine. Hathaway looks overburdened with Wallis’s star-making. John Gay (Soldier Blue, 1970) adapted the Gerald Hanley novel.

Despite the flaws, still interesting.

The Angel Wore Red (1960) ***

Given that this is filmed in black-and-white, it seems a curious title. So I’m assuming the color is a reference to a scarlet woman which, indeed, Ava Gardner (Mayerling, 1968) is, working in a “cabaret” in an unnamed town at the start of the Spanish Civil War. Strangely enough, the decision to shoot in black-and-white works in the actress’s favor. She was one of the last relics of the Hollywood Golden Age when brilliant cinematographers used innovative lighting to capture on screen not so much great beauty but tantalizing emotion.

The close-up was almost exclusively the preserve of actresses who could convey deep feeling with minute changes of expression or simply through their eyes. Here, a couple of joint close-ups prove the point: Gardner’s face illuminated, even in repose struggling to contain passion; that of lover Dirk Bogarde (Victim, 1961) merely the same as always.

This Italian-American production is a curiosity, part homily, part reverential, part brutal. Arturo (Dirk Bogarde) is a priest on the run from the invading Communist forces. He takes refuge in a cabaret (code for brothel) where he is sheltered by Soedad (Ava Gardner). He has just denounced his faith so when captured is not executed as an enemy of the state, thus allowing him to begin a relationship with her.

They share an unusual type of innocence, Soledad because, as what was known in those days as a woman of easy virtue, she has never known true love, Arturo, for obvious reasons, denied such an emotion. Their trembling acceptance of this wondrous state of affairs is the beauty of the film.

The love story which would surely in any case have a tragic outcome unfortunately too often plays second fiddle to a subsidiary tale of safeguarding a sacred relic – about whose importance, strangely enough, both sides are agreed – and of arguments between various other political elements over the conflict. Hawthorne ( Joseph Cotton), a cynical journalist – are there any other kind? – bears testimony to the opposing perspectives while no-nonsense General Clave (Vittorio de Sica) deplores the “dirty” war. Neither side comes out well in the conflict the Communists, like a mob storming Dracula’s castle, destroy the cathedral, the Republicans committed to killing all prisoners so as not to hold up their advance. Only the clergy retain their principles even when tortured.

No one can portray a fallen woman like Gardner, but even as a mature woman her steps towards true love are hesitant, almost believing it is tucked away beyond the rainbow way out of reach, while inner conflict had become central to the Bogarde screen persona.

Writer-director Nunnally Johnson (The Three Faces of Eve, 1957), in his final movie in the hyphenate capacity, had good reason for choosing to film in black-and white – it permitted use of newsreel footage of diving Stuka bombers and more importantly since much of the story takes place at night it creates a haunted background of dark alleys. Color would have destroyed such a vision. You could argue there is artistic purpose here, filming a country which has fallen into a state of spiritual darkness. But that would not be true of the star – black-and-white allows rare opportunity to show what the camera adores in Ava Gardner, her face, even in repose, absorbing the light, as if she were, indeed, redemption.

A film that doesn’t take sides with characters caught in the middle can’t quite make up its mind where it wants to go.

Garner rather than Bogarde is the reason to see it.

Stiletto (1969) ***

The bursting of the B-movie bubble dealt a death blow to the careers of the two stars here. In the past, rising talent who failed to make the marquee grade could find almost a lifetime of contentment in low-budget westerns, neo-noir thrillers and down’n’dirty exploitationers with the hope of an occasional supporting role in a bigger picture to ease their path. By the end of the decade, just about the only option were Roger Corman biker flicks or spaghetti westerns. Especially if they had gone down the tough guy route, B-pictures might have provided an exemplary move for both Alex Cord and Patrick O’Neal. As it was, this was their last shot at the big time. And it was lean pickings.

Retirement can be a tough call any time for a high-flying businessman. But when you’re at the top of your profession in the Mafia, loosening such ties can prove problematic. Count Cesare (Alex Cord) is a part-time assassin, spending the rest of his time as a fun-loving playboy with a string of women, fast cars and racehorses. Only problem is, he wants to retire from the Family – and not in normal fashion, weighted down by a block of cement. Unfortunately, his dilemma doesn’t solicit sympathy from boss Matteo (Joseph Wiseman).

Adding to his problems is tough cop Baker (Patrick O’Neal) on his tail who fastens onto illegal immigrant Illeana (Britt Ekland), Cesare’s girlfriend when he’s not pursuing Ann (Barbara McNair). A strictly by-the-numbers thriller it’s enlivened by two underrated tough screen hombres. Alex Cord (The Brotherhood, 1968) isn’t given enough of a character here to tug at audience heartstrings although elsewhere he had proved better-than-expected value. If anything, he’s an existential kind of hero.

Cord made a brief splash as an action hero in the monosyllabic Clint Eastwood/Charles Bronson mold after debuting in the John Wayne role of the Ringo Kid in the remake of Stagecoach (1966) and didn’t have more than half a dozen stabs at making his name on the big screen before disappearing into the television hinterlands. So he’s something of an acquired taste, maybe the small output enough to qualify him for cult status. Here, he’s a decent fit for the violence but saddled with a role that makes little sense.

Patrick O’Neal (El Condor, 1970) followed a similar career trajectory, swapping television with the occasional movie and even managing a screen persona as a snarky type of villain/supporting character. A few more tough-guy roles and he might well have built a stronger footing in the business.

This is another thankless role for Britt Ekland (Machine Gun McCain, 1969), there to add glamor, but, surprisingly, she manages to bring pathos to the part. Barbara McNair (If He Hollers Let Him Go, 1968), always worth watching and who had made an auspicious debut the year before, hardly gets any screen time.

Director Bernard L. Kowalski (Krakatoa, East of Java, 1968) proves better at the action than the characterization, though, luckily nobody needs to be anything other than tough. Three scenes, in particular, are well handled – the opening murder in a casino, a shoot-out a penthouse and the climax on a deserted island which has more than a hint of a spaghetti western. Joseph Wiseman (Dr No, 1962) rustles up another interesting performance and collectors of trivia might note Roy Scheider (Jaws, 1975) putting in an appearance.

This old-style tough-guy thriller would have been better off had the Cord vs. O’Neal set-up taken center stage, with the assassin on murderous overkill hunted down by the zealous cop. As it is, it’s a missed opportunity for Cord to develop an Eastwood/Bronson persona and enter the action star hall of fame.

Based on a thin Harold Robbins bestseller, the screenplay by W.R. Burnett (The Great Escape, 1963) and A.J. Russell (A Lovely Way to Die, 1968) doesn’t take any prisoners.

Doesn’t quite deliver what it says on the tin, but interesting to see Cord and O’Neal battle it out.

The Sicilian Clan / Le Clan des Siciliens (1969) *****

Absolutely cracking, brilliantly structured, gangster thriller featuring two fabulous heists and three legendary French stars in Jean Gabin, Alain Delon and Lino Ventura. Roger Sartet (Delon) is a trigger-happy robber whose terrific prison escape is organized for a hefty fee by French-based Mafia chieftain Vittorio Manalese (Gabin). Le Goff (Ventura) is the rugged cop hunting down the escapee which brings him into the orbit of Manalese, about whose existence he is completely unaware, the gangster having kept an extremely low profile, never engaging in violence, hiding behind the legitimate front of a pinball machine business. Veteran French director Henri Verneuil (Guns for San Sebastian, 1968) dukes between the twin storylines with ease.

Sartet brings Manalese the opportunity to pull off the most audacious jewel robbery in history, even though the older man despises Sartet’s penchant for violence and sex. We often see Manalese at family gatherings, head of the dinner table, the family watching television together, frowning on one son’s liking for alcohol, playing with his grandson. He is not just a calm and clever businessman, but very quick-thinking, his sharp mind in a couple of instances preventing disaster. Sartet, on the other hand, will happily endanger his life and freedom by consorting with prostitutes and breaking an unspoken code of honor in an affair with Manalese’s son’s wife (Irina Demick).

The result combines dogged detective work by Le Goff and the inspired planning and execution of the jewel robbery until the two worlds collide. The investigation alone would have made this an outstanding picture. Le Goff, always seen with an unlit cigarette in his mouth although he is trying to give up smoking, concentrating initially on Sartet, sets up surveillance on the thief’s innocent sister and begins an involved – and engrossing – process of tracking down every potential lead and when at last he has Sartet in his sights it brings him up close to Manalese.

Le Goff’s professionalism is matched by that of Manalese and the picture develops into an absorbing battle of wits and the latter’s family values and moral compass puts him at odds with loner Sartet. There is some brilliant invention, the sacrificial watch, for example, and the unexpected appearance of a faithful British wife, although you do guess just how long Le Goff will go before lighting his ever-tempting cigarette.

The ultra-cool Alain Delon (Once a Thief, 1965) excels in this kind of amoral part, but Jean Gabin (Any Number Can Win, 1963) and Lino Ventura (Army of Shadows, 1969) as old-style gangster and cop, respectively, steal the show. Irina Demick (Prudence and the Pill, 1968) thrives as the bored wife of a dull gangster who is attracted by the violent Delon, at one point deliberately putting herself in the line of his potential fire for the thrill. Actually, it’s the jewel heist that steals the show. Unlike other heist pictures where you have fair idea in advance of the details of the theft, here the audience is kept completely in the dark. Just as important in any heist is that the thieves get away with their plunder and the plan in this instance is breath-taking.

As proved by The Burglars (1971) director Henri Verneuil has the nose for a heist, but this tops that for sheer audacity and elan. Verneuil, Delon and Gabin had worked together on Any Number Can Play. Written by Verneuil and Jose Giovanni (Rififi in Tokyo, 1963) from the novel by Auguste Le Breton (Rififi, 1965).

Preceding The Godfather (1972) in its exploration of family and Mafia code of conduct, it offers plenty in the humanity department while dazzling with ingenuity in the criminality stakes.

Unmissable.

Our Mother’s House (1967) ***

Lord of the Flies set in a sprawling London Victorian mansion. At its best when kids give rein to vivid imagination, not so strong when melodrama intrudes.

After the death of her invalid mother and dreading being sent to an orphanage, eldest child Elsa (Margaret Brooks), who has been with the help of a maid running the house anyway, determines that she and the rest of the brood will pretend their mother is still alive. They bury the body in the garden, manage financially after Jimimee (Mark Lester) discovers an aptitude for forging their mother’s signature on the monthly cheques she receives from a trust fund, and hold séances in the shed to commune with the deceased one.

To maintain the pretence, they get rid of the nosey and querulous maid Mrs Quayle (Yootha Joyce) and come up with all sorts of reasons to explain their mother’s absence to school teachers and neighbors. Child fears run rampant as they visualize the terrible lives they would lead in an orphanage. But the generally tolerant community lifestyle is disturbed by the dictatorial rule of Elsa, determining that Gerty (Sarah Nicholls), for example, must have her long hair sheared off for innocently breaking a house rule and, in keeping with their mother’s fundamentalist beliefs, refuses to call a doctor when the girl falls ill. But the séance takes on a creepier aspect, Elsa the one in communion with her mother and therefore using the supposed other-worldy presence to enforce her will.

So far, so Lord of the Flies, and excellent in its depiction of a world ruled by children according to their fears and beliefs and without adult intercession. But it loses its grip when melodrama takes hold.

Their mother’s dissolute husband Charlie (Dirk Bogarde) returns, romancing Mrs Quayle, and, initially, spoiling the children, who are delighted to see him. He soon reverts to form, spending all their money, getting Charlie to forge his mother’s signature on the house deeds, planning to pocket the proceeds and dispatch the kids to an orphanage. Worse, he breaks the spell their seemingly devout mother had over their children, informing them that their mother’s conversion to religion only came after a life of debauchery and that, in fact, every single one of them is illegitimate and not his offspring. That’s too much for Diana (Pamela Franklin) who kills him with a poker.

Too many twists for sure and by diverting a fascinating dissertation of childhood into adult melodrama robs the film of much of its power.

Director Jack Clayton had been here before with The Innocents (1961) but, there, less was spelled out. Dirk Bogarde (Justine, 1969) is surprisingly good as the charming rough layabout with an eye to the main chance but it’s the children who captivate especially Pamela Franklin (And Soon the Darkness, 1970) and Mark Lester (Oliver!, 1968). The children’s innocence in any case would have been despoiled as they challenged Elsa’s rule and it would have been more satisfying to go down that route.

It was based on the bestseller by Julian Gloag and for anyone wondering what happened to Haya Harareet (Ben-Hur, 1959, and The Secret Partner, 1961) she married Clayton and is credited with the screenplay of this along with Jeremy Brooks.

Slow-burn that trips the wrong way.

Rocket to the Moon / Those Fantastic Flying Fools (1967) ***

The Jules Verne express grinds to a halt in part because the promise of outer space adventure fails to materialize and in part because the treatment is comedic in the manner of The Great Race (1965). A series of sketches with a shifting array of characters rarely works. Occasionally it hits the mark in a laugh out loud fashion but too often the jokes are labored although as a tribute to a maze of inventive invention it’s a treat.

Unusually for such an all-star cast venture, we are, long before the titular action and a race (of sorts) commences, treated to the greatest hits from the book of all-time failures. So we have electricity setting on fire the first country house, belonging to the Duke of Barset (Dennis Price), to be so illuminated; a new-fangled suspension bridge, courtesy of Sir Charles Dillworthy (Lionel Jeffries), that collapses when Queen Victoria cuts the ribbon; and a new type of explosive invented by German von Bulow (Gert Frobe) that proves a tad overpowering. Meanwhile, making possible the idea of sending a man to the moon is the arrival in Britain of the diminutive General Tom Thumb (Jimmy Clitheroe) accompanied by the bombastic and greedy Phineas T. Barnum (Burl Ives).

Combining the various scientific advances of propulsion and engineering have the flaw of not being able to bring a manned rocket back home. And sinister forces are at work, spies and fraudsters.

As with all these all-star comedies you spend half the time wondering how your favorite star is going to be worked into the equation and, having been squeezed into the narrative, justify their ongoing involvement. Daliah Lavi (Old Shatterhand, 1964), not particulary known for her comic gifts, is a case in point. On her wedding day she (as Madelaine) jilts French groom Henri (Edward de Souza) in favor of balloonist Gaylord (Troy Donohue) who has, literally, appeared on the horizon. Henri trying to down said balloon triggers an awful joke about a shotgun wedding.

To gain revenge, Henri funds the project on the basis of Gaylord being the moon pilot, and, in anticipation of the craft’s failure, that he will regain his bride. Madelaine, having been sidelined by all the developments, suddenly rushes back to center stage when she uncovers the devious plot and is shipped off to a home for wayward girls, run by the very wayward Angelica (Hermione Gingold). But that requires she escape and find her way back to her beloved, that aspect complicated because she loves both men (it transpires).

As the script is in the invidious position of having to place the participants into similar frying pans in order to effect similar rescues it’s as much a game of ping-pong as a movie. But there are some nice gags, a rocket attached to a helmet, the ruination of a teleprinter and the criminally-inclined Washington-Smythe (Terry-Thomas) who rooks billiard players with a magnet. And there’s a very contemporary financial element in that large wagers are placed on failure rather than success, the equivalent of betting on stocks going down rather than up (short selling in the modern idiom)

The rocket is launched, with rather a different crew than originally anticipated following further skullduggery, and although it’s something of a cosmic joke that it only gets as far as Russia it’s rather a disappointing ending for fans of Verne who anticipated a more rigorous approach. Verne’s novel From the Earth to the Moon was surprisingly accurate in imagining how a projectile would achieve its aims. The novel had even more of a contemporary feel since it left the crew floating in space, a daringly artistically inconclusive climax, leaving the way open – again the contemporary flair – for sequel Around the Moon that explained their fate.

Oddly enough, Daliah Lavi, as the bride who can’t make up her mind, has one of the better parts, more fleshed out than most of the other flimsy characterizations. The likes of Troy Donohue, caught between heroism and doing nothing much at all, often looks flummoxed. Terry-Thomas (How To Murder Your Wife, 1965) in wily mode is the pick of the rest.

Director Don Sharp (The Brides of Fu Manchu, 1966) proves that comedy is not his metier. Screenplay by Dave Freeman (British TV sitcom writer making his movie debut) after Harry Alan Towers (Five Golden Dragons, 1967) altered the author’s original premise. While it could be skewered for taking such liberties with the august author, it is far better than you might expect, but not as good as it could, or should, be.