Director Lewis Gilbert’s career was at an impasse. He had made his name primarily in a string of typically British stiff upper lip World War Two pictures including Reach for the Sky (1956) and Sink the Bismarck! (1960). It will come as a surprise to many British people to learn that virtually no British movie, not even the WW2 films that were big hits domestically, made any impact at the U.S. box office, Sink the Bismarck! a rare exception.
Ferry to Hong Kong (1959) starring Orson Welles had flopped and WW2 comedy Skywatch/ Light Up the Sky (1960) had died the death.
British director Victor Saville, who had made a name for himself in Hollywood with Greer Garson sequel The Miniver Story (1950) and Kim (1950) starring Errol Flynn, had turned producer, purchasing the rights to the bestseller by Rumer Godden (Black Narcissus, 1947).
Saville had entered into a partnership with veteran independent producer Edward Small (Solomon and Sheba, 1959) who had a deal with United Artists. The duo had three films on their slate, the others being movie version of The Mousetrap (delayed due to the length of a stage run that still prevents it being turned into a movie) and Legacy of a Spy (never made). Cary Grant was initially touted as the lead for Loss of Innocence.
When that deal foundered, it shifted from UA to Columbia after the intervention of British producer John Woolf (The African Queen, 1951), a relation of Saville, who had an ongoing relationship with Columbia. The script found its way to Kenneth More (Sink the Bismarck!) still a highly-rated draw at the British box office. He had to lose weight for the role. Later, Gilbert intimated he was not right for the part and would have preferred Dirk Bogarde.
More’s wife Mabel was friends with Gilbert’s wife Hylda and it was at the former’s suggestion that Lewis was roped in. Gilbert was initially wary of working with Saville who, although highly respected as a director, had a reputation of being difficult to work with. A director turned producer was all too likely to have ideas about the direction rather than sticking to the production side. As it turned out, Savile “didn’t interfere at all.”
Hayley Mills (The Family Way, 1966) was first choice for the female lead. Her Disney contract was not exclusive and at 15 she might have been ideal casting. But such a role would almost certainly impact on her future with Disney.
Mrs Gilbert was instrumental in the casting of Susannah York (aged 21) having called her husband down the stairs to see the young actress in a television production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. As it happened, Saville was on the same page, also having witnessed that performance, calling the director the following day to suggest York. Coincidentally, the Gilberts had been invited to dinner with Sylvia Syms, female lead in Ferry to Hong Kong, only to find York was a guest. Auditioned for the role of Jos, the oldest of the four sisters stranded at a chateau in France after their mother is taken ill, York won the part.
“The hard part to cast,” according to Gilbert, was Hester, Jos’s younger sister, wise beyond her 14 years “who can see trouble where Jos couldn’t.” Contrary to received wisdom, the bulk of children who attended stage schools were working class. “Their parents needed the income. Middle-class parents, preferring their children to be properly educated, discouraged them from going to stage schools.”
In consequence, the bulk of the girls turning up for auditions spoke Cockney whereas the part called for a “nicely-spoken girl.” Just as Gilbert was about to give up on the process, he received a phone call from an agent, promising a new discovery. “Her name was Jane Asher…a pretty 14-year-old with long red hair.”
Other casting gambles didn’t work out so well. Seeking a young man to play a French gardener, Gilbert hit on the notion of hiring a real Frenchman, having found a young lad with curly hair who appeared just right for the part. The only problem was – he couldn’t speak English. But it didn’t seem so insurmountable since he was cast three months before shooting began. But when the cameras rolled “he was unintelligible.”
Gilbert surmised that “someone so chaotic as that curly-haired Frenchman would never amount to anything.” He was wrong. The man was Claude Berri, later the highly successful screenwriter and producer of Jean de Florette (1986).
The movie’s original title – The Greengage Summer – caused a massive problem. Naturally, it was expected that greengages (plums) would feature prominently in the background. But there were no greengages thanks to a blight that had ruined the harvest all across France. As a consequence, British greengages were used, removed from their sacks by the thousands and sewn onto trees by the art department.
Susannah York created another problem when, in her naivety, she decided that the most authentic way to play drunk was to be drunk. Gilbert tried to dissuade her, explaining that the scene would go on all day not just last five minutes and in order to play a drunk you needed your wits about you. York ignored the advice and a day’s filming was ruined. Filming, split between England and France, began in August 1960.
Although it received “extraordinarily good notices” in both Britain and America it failed to light a spark with audiences in either country. Gilbert’s retrospective assessment, citing previous movies like Billy Wilder’s Love in the Afternoon (1957) with Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn and Sabrina (1954) with Bogart and Hepburn, was that “very few films where you get a young girl in love with an older man have ever been successful.”
SOURCES: Lewis Gilbert, All My Flashbacks (Reynolds and Hearn, 2010) p207-210; Kenneth More, More or Less, (Hodder and Stoughton, 1978); Roy Fowler, “Interview with Lewis Gilbert,” British Entertainment History Project; Philip K. Scheuer, “Saville to Resume Producing Career; Godden Novel First of Three,” Los Angeles Times, November 3, 1958, pC13; Richard Nason, “Small and Saville Planning Dear Spy,” New York Times, October 7, 1957, p47; Stephen Vagg, “Movie Star Cold Streaks, Hayley Mills”, Filmink, March 19, 2022.
The alternative title assumed nobody in America knew what a greengage was – it’s a type of plum – but the new title was actually pretty apposite. Until then director Lewis Gilbert had been known mostly for Second World War pictures like Reach for the Sky (1954) and Carve Her Name with Pride (1955) so this was a considerable change of pace, and filmed on location in France.
Joss (Susannah York) takes center stage as a girl on the brink of womanhood who experiences powerful emotions for the first time – love and its perpetual bedfellow jealousy – as well as rite-of-passage experiences like getting hammered on champagne. She is the oldest of four siblings stranded in a French chateau when their mother takes ill.
Left to her own devices, she promptly falls for the suave and much older Eliot (Kenneth More) who has interceded on their behalf when the hotel owner is against putting up with a bunch of motherless children. Matters are complicated because Eliot is having an affair with chateau owner Zizi (Danielle Darrieux) and by Joss attracting the attention of Paul (David Saire), a hotel worker closer to her own age. In short time, the situation is brimming over with suppressed emotion.
Hester (Jane Asher), suddenly aware of the romantic havoc being wreaked by her older sister, is going through her own transformation, jealous that the unrequited love of Paul is not directed towards her, her emotions flying off the handle when she triggers a violent altercation with a local lad.
Despite the distributor’s best efforts – the tagline promises “A Summer of Evil” – by modern standards this is a gentle tale, but not without a harsh undercurrent. York is superb as she undergoes a transformation from uncertain schoolgirl to a woman realizing the power her beauty can exert. She flares from child to adult and back again in seconds.
The main U.S. poster and this one seem determined to add seediness to the tale.
Susannah York (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They, 1969) had won her big break after a sparkling performance in a small role in Tunes of Glory (1960) and she floats effortlessly between chalet school pranks and more serious misdemeanors including drunkenness.
Sometime child actor Jane Asher (still better known as Paul McCartney’s girlfriend or for her cakes rather than stunning turns like Deep End, 1970) also achieves a career breakthrough and you could argue that she edges out York in a role that calls for more balance.
Kenneth More (Sink the Bismarck!, 1960) was at his charming best in the kind of affable role he had generally moved away from, but his character has a darker side. More importantly, as an older adult infatuated with a young girl, he manages to steer well clear of any inherent creepiness. There is no sense of him exploiting the situation, rather trying to guide the young woman in the art of love.
The dialogue is surprisingly good and Danielle Darrieux (better known as one of Darryl F. Zanuck’s girlfriends rather than for the likes of Romain Gary’s The Birds Go To Die in Peru, 1968) is convincing as an aging beauty willing to do anything to hold onto her man. There is an interesting under-developed subplot too dangerous to explore at this point in the decade of the hotel manager Madame Corbet (Claude Nollier) clearly being in love with Zizi.
The young Elizabeth Dear (The Battle of the Villa Florita, 1965), making her debut, also enhances her career and British character actor Maurice Denham (Danger Route, 1967) has a small role.
Lewis Gilbert’s subtle direction set his career on a new course that would ultimately deliver an Oscar nomination for Alfie (1966). The Howard Koch (The Fox, 1967) screenplay draws heavily on the source novel by Rumer Godden, an expert in the suppressed complexities of female life, best displayed in Black Narcissus (1947) and The Battle of the Villa Florita
The scenery is a bonus as are the snatches of provincial French life. All in all, an engaging piece of work, with Susannah York delivering a star-is-born kind of turn.
The boldest role ever undertaken by a major star of Frank Sinatra’s generation – and little thanks he got for it. Not only was he virtually unrecognisable under a slab of make-up that George Hamilton would have envied but the role was a complete reversal of his screen persona. Admittedly, he had flipped that persona for Tony Rome (1967) and as the cuckolded cop in The Detective (1968), but this was on a completely different level.
Sinatra was no Tom Hanks or Daniel Day-Lewis, known for inhabiting different types of characters, and, while he did have a vulnerability that he put to good use in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), he was best known on screen as the guy in charge.
That was far from the case here. Dumb and dumber might be more apposite. Dingus Magee (Frank Sinatra) is a scamp, an outlaw so useless he is worth only $10 in reward money, who steals the stash of old rival Hoke Birdsill (George Kennedy), triggering a revenge caper that is complicated by a host of unnecessary complications by director Burt Kennedy (Welcome to Hard Times, 1967) who has set his heart on some kind of satirical comedy western with a revisionist slant.
So we get a female mayor, Belle (Anne Jackson), who happens to own the local brothel, whose commercial prospects are endangered when the local Cavalry are called away to fight the Native Americans, an Indian chief Crazy Blanket desperate to trade his daughter for a rifle, and when that looks like not working out calling on any available squaw to seal the deal, predatory schoolteacher Prudence (Lois Nettleton) and a running gag involving a Brown Derby hat that results in a gunfighter (Jack Elam) being mistaken for Magee.
It’s a bit long on complications and short on satire and is rescued by the double act of Magee and Birdsill, who constantly get in each other’s way or try to pull a fast one. Birdsill, as it happens, is appointed sheriff, since that’s in the purview of the mayor, and, on the right side of the law for the first time in his life, makes an ill-fated attempt to do good.
Magee tries to help him along. In exchange for the sheriff turning a blind eye for a period of time to Magee’s nefarious activities, the reward for the outlaw will mushroom, permitting greater kudos for the sheriff on his capture.
The main problem is that Kennedy directs with a very heavy hand, very obvious musical cues for a start, and there’s not enough that’s intrinsically funny. Though there is a reversal of an obvious joke of Birdsall being sent to the brothel to locate the mayor, expecting to find a client not the owner.
But both Sinatra and George Kennedy (The Sons of Katie Elder, 1965) are a delight, the latter also playing against type rather than his usual dominating character. Their dumbness takes some beating. Sinatra just about gets the upper hand, but there’s not much in it.
The best thing about the picture is the sense of reality. The U.S. Cavalry spend more time in the brothel than out hunting Native Americans. Law and order can go to hell as long as everyone is having illicit fun. The respectable schoolmarm proves a skilled seductress. Peace is desirable because it is more profitable than war. And the bulk of the outlaws in the Wild West are far from achieving legendary status, just two-bit punks.
Not surprisingly, this was a massive flop and killed off Sinatra’s movie career for the rest of the decade – not that he was overly concerned, “My Way” having reignited his singing career and he was a Vegas regular. But it’s a shame the acting was so vilified, Roger Ebert blamed Sinatra rather than the director for its failure, in particular taking him to task for the one-take approach that Gena Rowlands previously exalted (but what does she know, she’s just an acclaimed actress and knows how a movie works better than a critic).
Well overdue for a reappraisal and if you go in duly warned you might even enjoy it, or at least the Sinatra-Kennedy double act.
Double Oscar nominee Mark Robson was a highly respected commercially successful director with hits like Peyton Place (1957) and From the Terrace (1960) behind him and The Prize (1963) and Von Ryan’s Express (1965) still to come. So what went wrong here, in this tale of the assassination of Ghandi, especially as he had successfully negotiated foreign climes in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958)?
You could start with the Indian equivalent of “blackface.” Apart from Ghandi himself all the major roles are played by white actors. Even cutting back on his trademark plumminess, the sight (and sound) of Robert Morley trying to talk the Indian leader out of exposing himself to possible assassination would just be hilarious if it wasn’t such a cringingly bad misstep.
Sure, Hollywood struggled to find anyone in Bollywood who had the box office marquee or critical kudos to provide the necessary confidence for Twentieth Century Fox (a problem that hasn’t really gone away – witness Gandhi and Passage to India). But rising star Horst Buchholz, in the leading role of assassin Godse, was nobody’s idea of the kind of actor with the credentials of a Ben Kingsley or Alec Guinness who might make a decent stab at playing an Indian.
And it’s a bizarre narrative mixture, dragnet film noir hunt led by Supt Das (Jose Ferrer) for a potential assassin (done so well in Day of the Jackal, for example), biopic of the assassin, and providing sufficient room for Ghandi to spread his principles of love and peace as well as plenty of scenes of tourist India.
And even with all these deficiencies it might still have worked except that, in the modern idiom of altering characters, times and places for dramatic effect, this pretty much ignores the known facts about the assassin’s life and in its place presents a barmy mishmash of thwarted ambition and romance.
Set in 1948 after India gained independence from the British and during ongoing violence that followed Partition, the dividing of the country on religious grounds into India and Pakistan, we find Ghandi being blamed for everything that has gone wrong, even though he was never the country’s prime minister and disavowed political office.
According to this version, against his father’s wishes and at a very inconvenient time (he is about to enter an arranged marriage), Godse attempts to fulfil a lifelong ambition to become a soldier but is rejected on the grounds that as a Brahmin he will find it difficult to take orders. He becomes involved with a right-wing organization one of whose stated aims is to take down Ghandi.
It’s actually not that hard to attempt to do so and the film conveniently misses out the fact that Godse had previously been fond guilty twice of trying to kill Ghandi, only being spared prison by his target’s clemency. Instead of that grimly ironic touch, we are fed a hotchpotch. It’s hardly surprising that the film skips the potential gender conflict inherent in Godse, since for superstitious reasons he was initially brought up as a girl, including having his nose pierced in the female fashion. And for “dramatic purposes” his father is a priest rather than the postal worker of real life.
He falls in love with a married woman (Valeri Gearon) and is violent to a prostitute Sheila (Diane Baker) who rips him off. Theoretically, Ghandi would not have fallen to this assassin’s bullet if Mrs Gearon had done the decent thing and run off with Godse.
Or if Gandhi had accepted the presence of an armed bodyguard, but the spiritual leader, pacifist to the end, was also a fatalist, and at approaching 80 certainly had cause, should he indulge in such pride, to believe he had made a difference.
Stunning opening section thrown away by shifting tone and despite excellent performances by the Oscar-nominated Alan Bates and Dirk Bogarde drifts into Kafkaesque virtue-signalling.
But let’s get the title out of the way first. I had assumed a “fixer” was a manipulator, an underworld type of character who could, for a price or future favor, sort out problems or find someone a job or act as an intermediary between politicians or businessmen. Not so. Yakov (Alan Bates) is nothing more than a handyman, who can fix broken windows or railings and turn his hand to anything such as wall-papering or basic accountancy.
In the credit sequence he demonstrates his skills by fashioning with wood, a couple of screws and some steel, a razor, with which to remove the hair and beard that would identify him as a Hassidic Jew. He is, as soon becomes apparent, afflicted by dogs. As he departs his remote cottage in a cart, a vicious dog so disturbs his horse that it bolts, resulting in the loss of a wheel. He continues his travels on horseback, arriving in a small town in time to witness a parade and Cossacks rampaging through the streets.
As it’s set in Czarist Russia, his journey is accompanied by melancholy violin with, for some reason, a disturbing undercurrent of military drum. As the credits end, we cut to the Russian flag and a marching band. He hides in terror as the horsemen drag people along by the ear, slash with sabers, hang others. It’s a pogrom, the type of attack commonly experienced by Jews living in ghettoes.
Up to now, it’s just outstanding. Then it tips into the picaresque. Yakov helps an old drunk Lebedev (Hugh Griffiths) who’s fallen down in the snow in the street. As reward he is offered work wall-papering a room. He has a prick of conscience when he realises that Lebedev is an anti-Semite. Lebedev’s daughter Zinaida (Elizabeth Hartman) seduces him. But, on spotting some blood on a cloth, he refuses to go through with the act.
Luckily, my reading of crime novelist Faye Kellerman has alerted me to the fact that it is an act of faith for Jews not to make love when a woman is menstruating. Luckly, Zinaida isn’t so up on her Bible (Leiticus 15: 19-23 in case you were interested) that she catches on to this revealing fact, for, as has been pointed out earlier, minus the distinctive curl, Yakov doesn’t have the physical characteristics associated in those times with a Jew. In fact, you would say Lebedev would more easily pass for one.
Anyway, Lebedev gives him another job, of counting the loads leaving his brickworks because he suspects he is being swindled. But the foreman, who has been rumbled, and suspects Yakov of being a Jew, calls in the Secret Police, it being a crime for Jews to leave the ghetto.
Now we tip into Kafka. The initial charge against Yakov is that he harbored another Jew during Passover. But then things spiral out of control. He is accused of passing himself off as a Gentile (non-jew), attempted rape of Zinaida and then of ritual murder, killing a small child.
Investigating magistrate Bibikov (Dirk Bogarde) is sympathetic and manages to avoid the rape charge much to the fury of prosecutor Grubeshov (Ian Holm) but once the other charges mount, he is nailed, everyone determined to prove an innocent man guilty.
This is based on a true case and clearly was a case of persecution and Yakov’s transition from worker happy to hide his ethnicity to gain work to a man who rediscovers his religion is a piece of great acting from Alan Bates. But the points are hammered home endlessly and where director John Frankenheimer (The Train, 1964) so deftly dispensed with dialogue in the superb opening sequence, now he more than makes up for it with leaden speeches, and a film that would worked better for being considerably shorter.
It feels like Hollywood is hard at work. After some moments of mild happiness Yakov’s cinematic chore is to invoke sympathy for an entire nation rather than taking on the Holocaust directly. Dalton Trumbo’s (Lonely Are the Brave, 1962) screenplay is filled with brooding lines. But providing Yakov with an interior monologue when he dithers over having sex doesn’t work at all, certainly not next to the more effective use of that technique in John and Mary (1969).
At the outset, Frankenheimer treats violence with discretion. We don’t see the dog being impaled on a saber, just its corpse thrown at Yakov. We witness a rope being wound round a man’s neck, as innocent of any crime as Yakov, but not the actual hanging. So what begins as highly-nuanced turned into a battering ram of a picture and characters forced into lines like “the law will protect you unless you are guilty” and “I am man who although not much is still more than nothing.”
Alan Bates (The Running Man, 1963) certainly deserves his Oscar nomination and Dirk Bogarde (Modesty Blaise, 1966) might feel aggrieved he missed out on a Supporting Actor nomination. But too many of the rest of the cast over-act. It’s an all-star cast only if you’re British. But check it out if you’re a fan of Hugh Griffith (The Counterfeit Traitor, 1962), Elizabeth Hartman (The Group, 1966), David Warner (Perfect Friday, 1970), Ian Holm (in his sophomore movie outing), Carol White (Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting, 1969) and Georgia Brown (Lock Up Your Daughters!, 1969).
Frankenheimer at his best when he lets the action play without the overload and there’s one almost Biblical scene, lit only by candlelight, that demonstrates his cinematic virtuosity. But otherwise it’s drowned in the verbal rather than the visual. Trumbo based his screenplay on the Pulitzer Prize winner and bestseller by Bernard Malamud.
Some effective moments, but too long drawn-out to make the impact expected.
Otto Preminger was beaten to the punch on this one, the scandalous Henry Morton Robinson bestseller snapped up in 1955 by producer Louis de Rochemont (The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone, 1961) who had a tie-up with Columbia. Due to interference from the Catholic Church, de Rochemont dropped his option which Preminger picked up in 1961 while working on Advise and Consent (1962).
The last section of the novel, set in Austria during the Anschluss, reverberated with the director who was born in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire and although a Jew was well acquainted with Catholic society. One of his most significant changes to the book was introducing the Austrian cardinal who endorsed Hitler.
The first two screenwriters James Lee (Banning, 1967) and Daniel Taradash (Castle Keep, 1969) failed to whittle down the complex novel to cinematic proportions. So Preminger brought in Robert Dozier (The Big Bounce, 1969) and began working with him in summer 1962 making other alterations to heighten the drama. The incident involving the unborn child of the sister of Fr Fermoyle (Tom Tryon) acquires greater emotional power in the film, touching on the ambiguities inherent in any institution and provoking the priest’s guilt.
Gore Vidal (The Best Man, 1964) also worked on the script, swapping the novel’s Italian countess for the Viennese Annemarie (Romy Scheider) who, abandoned by the priest had married and was reunited with him prior to the Anschluss, and is sympathetic to Hitler until her husband’s faith endangers them both. Ring Lardner, who had satirized the Catholic church in a recent novel, was the final screenwriter added, his main task to rewrite scenes “to achieve what he (Preminger) wanted,” and, more importantly, to introduce the flashback structure. Ironically, both Vidal and Lardner were atheists.
Tom Tryon and Romy Scheider meet again in Vienna.
The director considered five actors for the leading role – Hugh O’Brian (Africa – Texas Style, 1967), Stuart Whitman (The Commancheros, 1961), Cliff Robertson (The Devil’s Brigade, 1968), Bradford Dillman (Circle of Deception, 1960) and Tom Tryon (In Harm’s Way, 1965), the latter three advancing to the screen-testing stage. The 34-year-old Tryon won the role and a five-picture contract he would later regret. Carol Lynley (Bunny Lake Is Missing, 1965) who plays the priest’s sister also pacted for five movies.
Romy Scheider’s (Triple Cross, 1966) part was enhanced by the work of cinematographer Leon Shamroy who “fell madly in love with her,” resulting in the actress virtually shimmering on screen, never before “looking as beautiful.” Held in warm regard by the director, she was exempt from his tirades.
It took considerable persuasion on the part of Preminger for John Huston to participate. Curd Jurgens, initially cast as the Austrian cardinal, pulled out and was replaced by character actor Josef Meinrad whose lack of English meant he had to learn his lines phonetically.
Tom Tryon described Preminger as “tyrant who ruled by terror.” He was fired on the first day and probably wished the director had not rescinded the decision, for thereafter the actor was tabbed “lazy…a fool…stupid and unprofessional.” Commented Tryon, “I was so frightened he was going to scream that…I (just) wanted the experience to end.”
One scene with John Huston took 78 takes because Tryon could not deliver what the director wanted. And at one point first assistant director Gerry O’Hara (later director of The Bitch, 1979) found the star in tears and refusing to return unless the director agreed not to shout at him. Eventually, during the Italian section of the shoot, Tryon collapsed from nervous exhaustion, and was prescribed two days rest, and after this incident Preminger let up on his demands of the actor.
Explained Preminger, “I probably chose him without deliberation because he is weak.” He felt than an ordinary person would not side with the Church against a family member in a predicament, and that only a person “with weakness in his character” would be believable in the role. The character “fails because when you become a priest you substitute your own judgement and your own feelings for the law of the Church…The big decisions are made for him.” (Quite why he never chose an actor who could portray such weakness is not known.)
Tryon admitted that he owed a brief let-up in the bullying to “Schneider’s benign presence.” He commented, “The only fun I ever had on The Cardinal was a (ballroom) scene I did with Romy.” Prior to turning the cameras, Prior called both over, appeared ready to issue instructions, but instead waved them away “you know what to do.”
Added Schneider, “Preminger taught me an important thing: work fast. It’s true that it greatly helps our acting. Each of his directions, whether of gesture or of intonation, is precise and correct. Even better, it’s the only one possible…Each phrase, each world, each syllable are minutely weighed.” That dexterity applied to his positioning of the camera. He made decisions immediately, never hesitating “over the placement of the camera and each time…it was the simplest, the most natural and, dramatically, the best.”
Ossie Davis (The Scalphunters, 1968), who professed to have enjoyed a marvellous relationship with the director, observed: “I met actors whom Otto liked, I met actors that had no relationship or feelings one way or the other and I met actors who were almost absolutely destroyed, almost literally in panic because of Otto Preminger (who) was always looking for a spark…whether you had the spark or not, he was going to find it and even put it in you.”
But Patrick O’Neal stood his ground. “I woiuld not take it from him.” And they became friends.
The unit shot for five weeks in New England before heading to Vienna, Preminger choosing to stay in the same suite in the Hotel Imperial as appropriated by Hitler when visiting the city. Permission to shoot in the National Library, “one of the most beautiful monuments in the city” was attacked by the current minister of education who wanted the Hitler era erased from memory. And he was barred from using other government buildings for spurious reasons.
After four and a half months in Austria, the unit shifted to Rome, locations including St Peter’s Square and inside St Peter’s Cathedral and the Santa Maria sopra Minerva church, with priests and monks hired as extras for the various ceremonies. The Georgia scenes were shot in Hollywood on the Universal back lot.
Although generally dismissed by the critics and given a hard time as you might expect from the Catholic Church, The Cardinal hit a chord with audiences, who turned it into Premigner’s second-biggest hit of the decade.
Would appear resolutely old-fashioned except for Forrest Gump (1994) adopting same premise of the main character present at major events. Here it’s issues affecting the Catholic Church between last century’s two world wars and the protagonist is an American priest, Father Stephen Fermoyle (Tom Tryon) of Irish stock, who rises to the position of Cardinal.
So we move at a relatively stately pace through abortion, inter-denominational marriage, racism, a miracle, challenging church philosophy, and Hitler’s annexation of Austria on the eve of the Second World War, in which the church played an inglorious part. Along the way Fr Fermoyle is afflicted so badly by doubt that he takes a sabbatical only for his flesh to be sorely tempted.
Astonishingly, I saw this on YouTube (it’s still there) in a beautiful 70mm print preserved by the National Film and Television Archive. The roadshow print, to be exact, which begins with a marvellous five-minute overture. Oddly enough there’s something very settling about sitting in the darkness with the curtains drawn watching a blank (black) screen and listening to the majestic score by Jerome Moross (The Big Country, 1958).
And then it’s another few minutes of a stunning credit sequence, all sunlight and shadow, before the movie begins. The movie itself is over three hours long, so if you are put off by this kind of epic now’s the time to check out. But if you do, you will miss something genuinely to be savored.
For Otto Preminger (Hurry Sundown, 1967) certainly knows how to tell a story, even one as sweeping as this. For all its pomp, he manages to retain intimacy.
Immediately after his ordination just as America enters the First World War, Fr Fermoyle faces a crisis. His sister Mona (Carol Lynley) wants to marry a Jewish dentist (John Saxon) who refuses to convert to Catholicism. Fermoyle’s advice, in keeping with the church’s stringent rules: give him up.
A noted intellectual, Fermoyle is astonished to be sent by the worldly piano-playing cigar-chomping Archbishop Glennon (John Huston) to an impoverished parish to learn humility. There, he encounters the blind faith of parishioners and a pastor, Fr Halley (Burgess Meredith), so inclined to put others first that he will not seek help for a debilitating disease.
Meanwhile Mona, now a dancer and drinker, has become pregnant, and not by the dentist. But complications arise and she is forced to choose between herself and the unborn child. According to Church doctrine, as Fermoyle, advises, abortion being illegal, the mother must die to save the baby. Mona, not the sacrificial kind, does the opposite. Fermoyle, racked with guilt, wants to quit the church. Instead, he is promoted to Monsignor, and given a two-year timeout which he spends lecturing in Vienna.
There he falls in love with Annemarie (Romy Scheider). In the nick of time, he is recalled to the States and sent to the Deep South to help the black Fr Gillis (Ossie Davis) who is being harassed by the Ku Klux Klan. In standing by his colleague, Fermoyle undergoes a brutal whipping. Promoted to bishop, he is despatched to Austria “to instruct the princes of the church in the realities of the modern world.” Unfortunately, the clergy, siding with the Nazis, presides over the marriage of Germany and Austria.
Meanwhile, he is reacquainted with Annemarie, who has married a Jewish banker, and witnesses at first-hand Nazi treatment of the Jews, her husband so fearful of his future he jumps out a window. When a mob ransacks a church, Fermoyle isn’t so intent on facing up to them and instead, with Annemarie, manages to escape.
At its best and its worst by the narrative being forced through the prism of an individual. His reactions to issues are regulated by his employers, the Church, which exerts as much control over personal thought as the Communist Party, so, in effect, it becomes a tale of a person initially bristling against authority until, it turns out, the Church shares the same antipathy to the worst of the century’s scandals, the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis.
Father Fermoyle hardly seems suited to high office, given he is so often inclined to temptation, either in a sexual sense, or in taking the opposite view of the Church. And it’s almost as though the splendid backdrop as represented by the immense wealth of the Church has only been achieving by subjugation of the individual. That the worldly Glennon appears as the poster boy for the Church hierarchy is almost Preminger playing with the audience.
It might be sumptuously mounted, but once again Preminger takes no prisoners, showing up an institution that while purportedly set up for the benefit of mankind so often sabotages noble endeavor.
Tom Tryon (In Harm’s Way, 1965) is excellent in the leading role, personal conviction getting in the way of the easy path to the top. But the pick of the performers are the supporting stars, especially John Huston, more famous as a director (The Night of the Iguana, 1964) and here making his acting debut, and Romy Scheider (Triple Cross, 1966). Look out for Carol Lynley (Bunny Lake Is Missing, 1965), silent film star Dorothy Gish in her final movie appearance, Maggie McNamara (The Moon Is Blue, 1953) in her first picture in eight years, and John Saxon (The Appaloosa, 1966) before he was typecast as a heavy.
Otto Preminger (In Harm’s Way) directs in stately fashion from a screenplay by Robert Dozier (The Big Bounce, 1969) and Ring Lardner Jr. (The Cincinnati Kid, 1965).
Director John Frankenheimer (The Gypsy Moths, 1969) tackles the movie’s off-putting central issue straight on. At various points, characters argue whether it’s worth risking lives to save a bunch of paintings, even if they are by masters like Cezanne, Matisse and Manet and even if they do constitute the “pride of France.”
Had this been an ordinary heist, some master criminal conspiring to steal a trainload of paintings, the loot would not have been so contentious, as there was little chance of lives being lost. And in any case, thieves, in the act of stealing, do have to accept that they might fall prey to the cops or, as commonly, fellow members of the gang.
There was another point. Art, then and now, was commonly perceived as a high-class aspect of life, especially once it diverted away from easily understood portraits and still lifes into the specific styles of a Monet or Picasso. Working-class people had little interest in it and felt excluded from it.
So, from the French perspective, coming towards the end of World War Two, post-D-Day and Paris close to being liberated, upper-class German Col von Waldheim (Paul Schofield) decides to hijack the contents of a museum and take hundreds of masterpieces to Germany, ostensibly to fund the fightback against the invaders, but more likely just a final act of a conqueror who has enjoyed, rather than destroyed, the captured French capital.
At first, station master Labiche (Burt Lancaster), while complicit in minor sabotage, has no interest in becoming personally involved, especially with liberation so close and the threat of death lifting by the hour. Others take a much more patriotic stand over the paintings and endeavor in small ways to prevent the trainload’s departure and slow down its progress to Germany.
A whole battalion of German soldiers, including Von Waldheim, who has commandeered a train in the first place, and railway workers, are aboard. But not all are in agreement with their commander’s aims, his deputy Major Herren (Wolfgang Preiss) outspoken in his opposition to this waste of manpower and diversion of energy.
Von Waldheim blames Labiche for the minor sabotage and forces him to take personal control of the train. And it turns out Labiche is much more than a bureaucrat, and knows everything there is to know about driving a train and how the tracks operate. And eventually it becomes a game of cat-and-mouse between Labiche and Von Waldheim.
But before that occurs and the movie really takes off, there’s tons of stuff that come into the sub-genre of a sub-genre category, to the delight of a railway-spotter but the irritation of the general audience as we are treated to endless scenes of the train running through the country or stopping and starting and points being switched. All very fascinating in its own way, but tending to the tedious.
I’m a bit pernickety when it comes to the heist picture and I’m just wondering how the Resistance, in what appears to be very short notice (in real time the movie only lasts a few days) to arrange for railway stations and towns along the route to manage to make massive signs, some I would guess 30-40ft long, to convince Von Waldheim he is taking the route he expects rather than being diverted along a different track. And then to get word to the Allied forces not to bomb a train that had a whitewashed roof. Try explaining the contents to an Army that is trying to get on with winning the war and couldn’t be less concerned about what might be interpreted as misplaced pride.
You would imagine that if those actions could be so easily carried out that there might have been a proper Resistance troupe ready to assist in blowing up the engine, but safeguarding the coaches, along the way. As the toll of ordinary Resistance members mounts, it’s left to Labiche, decidedly not an art lover, to save the day.
And that’s when the film does take off. He’s the most enterprising of individuals, managing, despite being wounded, to single-handedly derail the train twice, even with soldiers hounding him over the hills and patrolling the track.
Burt Lancaster (The Gypsy Moths, 1969) is superb as the doubter who becomes committed to the cause. It’s easy to forget just what a range Lancaster has. There’s not every actor you would believe when he’s twisting wires in the complicated business of setting an explosion or hammering loose sections of track. To slip effortlessly from the nuance and privilege of Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard (1963) to the hard muscular graft of this is quite an achievement.
Paul Schofield (A Man for All Seasons, 1966) was far more virile than his later screen persona suggested. He was a classic example of why Hollywood raided Britain, especially for villains. Outside of the stage, he was virtually unknown, only two previous films in the 1950s, so he was a fresh face. He didn’t quite master the art of cinema, a bit prone to shouting and facial expressions verging on the combustible. But he proves an excellent and inventive adversary.
It’s another for the futility of war department and it’s ironic that it’s the mutinous Maj Herren rather than the French who decides lives are not worth losing over a bunch of paintings.
The action, when it finally emerges from the trainspotting, is excellent. But a bit of judicious pruning in the earlier stages would have worked wonders.
In the Alistair MacLean book there’s no speedboat chase through the canals of Amsterdam. There’s not one female assistant but two, Maggie (Barbara Parkins in the film) joined by a Parisian, Belinda, (played by Suzanna Leigh, except her part was cut) on her debut assignment. The espionage newcomer’s role in the book is to question the actions of boss Paul Sherman (the film’s Sven Bertil-Taube), provide more of an outsider’s perspective on his character, since, as his lover, Maggie is much more accepting of his behavior. I can see why Belinda never made it into the film, the movie’s emotional heart, little as it is, coming from Sherman’s relationship with Maggie.
Needless to say, Paul Sherman is British in the book, not American, as is Maggie. Amsterdam cop Inspector Van Gelder (Patrick Allen) doesn’t have a niece, Trudi (Penny Casdagli), addicted to heroin but an adopted daughter. In the book, he is far closer to her than in the film, to the extent of conducting an illicit affair.
It’s always fascinating to see what changes from book to film especially since, as in this case, author Alistair MacLean has a screenplay credit, and that, from Where Eagles Dare (1968) onwards, he tended to write his books with movies in mind.
Like many Alistair MacLean characters, Sherman has a physical disability, the two sides of his face not matching following plastic surgery after a plane crash. So that’s the first element from the narrative of the novel (it appears on the opening two pages) excised from the novel. Nor does the book begin with an anonymous assassin gunning down three addicts. Instead, it starts at the airport where Sherman witnesses a colleague murdered.
Maggie doesn’t meet him in Amsterdam (as in the film) but is his companion on the plane along with Belinda. The novel sees Sherman attempting to prevent the shooting of his colleague Duclos rather than being a mere observer to the airport slaying. And again, rather than keeping out of the way to safeguard his anonymity, he pursues the killer and in so doing knocks over Astrid Lemay (Ania Marson).
On leaving his hotel (via the roof as in the movie) Sherman dodges his follower by nipping into a restaurant not (as in the film) the room of a sex worker. His pursuer is old not young. Sherman follows him on the subway not by foot. But when the tables are turned and Sherman is the pursuer, the man does enter the Morgenstern premises (trimmed from the book’s more unwieldy Morgenstern & Mugganthaler and with only one owner rather than two partners). The man he finds in his room is not the assassin but the hotel floor-waiter, an addict. After a fight, Sherman dangles him over the balustrade before killing him.
The paperback movie tie-in – see below – was virtually identical to the original cover of the first edition of the hardback.
Sherman’s first meeting with Colonel de Graf (Alexander Knox) is in the latter’s office not the more scenic canal boat as in the film. Understandably, the movie attempts to cash in on Amsterdam’s tourist and more sordid elements. The movie makes much more of the canals and not just the aforementioned prostitute-in-the-window (the only capital in the world where sex workers are a tourist attraction). The nightclub is tamer in the book, little more than an old-fashioned bait-and-switch type of strip club, and certainly lacking the panache of the more modern variety with topless waitresses and cool sexy dance routines worthy of a Bob Fosse or at least Pan’s People. But Morgenstern isn’t one of the club’s customers in the book and neither does Astrid reject his advances. In fact, one of the sub-plots of the book is that Astrid makes herself scarce, flying out of Amsterdam.
Obviously, a book can invest more in characters. Trudi is introduced as having “the nicest voice for speaking bad English I’d come across in a long time” but rather than, as with the film, just speaking of her addiction, Sherman simply leans over and rolls up her sleeves.
With two female assistants rather than one, the job of tailing various characters can be split. So it’s Belinda who follows Astrid from the church. Although the notion of the puppet dangling on a chain is a major theme, it’s not the way Maggie dies as in the film. Instead she is pitchforked to death by a bunch of women in what appears, in true Hitchcock fashion, initially to be little more than a harmless pagan rite. And the impotent Sherman gets to watch rather than just discovering the corpse as in the movie.
That’s about the most horrific scene in the book but it’s closely matched by Sherman sticking two recalcitrant villains, the nightclub owner and a slimy associate, in a safe until they decide to spill the beans. These two guys are part of a sub-plot the movie just doesn’t have time to fit in.
The purpose of having a pair of girls in the book is to heighten the tension when Maggie dies, leaving Belinda, betrayed and captured, ready to endure hanging by hook.
Alistair MacLean is clearly a student of heinous ways to die, topping hanging and murder by pitchfork with torture by the high-pitched amplified sound of chiming clocks. Quite why a villain sophisticated enough to dream up such means of death would tie a captive up with electrical wire is anybody’s guess. You couldn’t expect a criminal to imagine that his opponent would have the brainpower to consider sticking the exposed wires in a plug, thus shorting the power supply and ending the torture. But film follows book in anointing this unlikely escape. Once free, there’s no thought in Sherman’s head, as in the film, of making use of a speedboat and pursuing the villain through the canals. He merely takes the more normal route back to the puppet premises.
As I mentioned, the film makes greater use of the canals. When Sherman is trying to find the boat, Marianne, in the film he takes to the water, in the book he remains on shore and locates it via binoculars. The scenes of Sherman getting aboard the barge and the clandestine collection of contraband from the sea are largely lifted entirely from the book, although there’s no helicopter involved as in the film.
The climax of the film, as in the book, involves Trudi revealed as not an addict and Van Gelder trapped on the hauling chain. Shame they left out the wonderful MacLean line, “Her mental age is not eight, it’s older than sin itself.”
There was always money involved. For an author whose string of bestsellers made him a fortune, Alistair MacLean found it particularly hard, in part due to poor investment and advice, to hold on to his millions. Victimhood was his default position for he tended to view himself as underpaid, not to mention ripped-off, by filmmakers, especially when the likes of The Guns of Navarone (1961) and Where Eagles Dare (1968) scored so highly at the box office.
That Puppet on a Chain arrived in cinemas the way it did was the result of the financial complications inherent in the novelist’s life. He had been too busy to write a screenplay for When Eight Bells Toll (1971) mostly because he was consumed with unravelling his finances and setting up a more lucrative template for his movie ventures.
He planned to form a partnership whose sole aim was the production and exploitation of his books as vehicles for films. To this end, MacLean alighted on budding director Geoffrey Reeve, then merely a highly sought-after helmer of commercials and promotional films for industry.
You might accuse Reeve of a bit of double-dealing himself since at the time he met MacLean he was working for the author’s nemesis Carl Foreman, producer of The Guns of Navarone. Foreman had adapted that book for the screen, considerably altering the source material in the process. Excluding MacLean from the party, Foreman had his eyes set on a sequel with the dull and very un-MacLean title of After Navarone.
But the instigator of the Reeve-MacLean partnership came from an unusual source, London wine merchant Lewis Jenkins, who in alliance with the other two formed the equally un-MacLean-named Trio Productions.
Jenkins was more than a wine seller. He was a high-flier who moved with a grace the grumpy Scotsman envied in the kind of classy circles that were, despite his fame, closed off to a mere novelist. He had come across details in a trade paper of MacLean’s deal for Ice Station Zebra (1968) and felt the author was being underpaid and, in a letter, he said so.
You couldn’t get MacLean’s attention more easily than plugging into his sense of victimhood. But it wasn’t movie talk that first made Jenkins indispensable. Horrified at the state of the author’s financial affairs, Jenkins put MacLean in touch with international tax lawyer Dr John Heyting who in turn handed him over to David Bishop, one of whose first tasks was to upbraid Foreman about his temerity on jumping the gun on Navarone and excluding the author.
While the triumvirate’s first notion was of approaching Columbia to fund a sequel, soon they were dealing with a much bigger fish. As unlikely as it sounds, David Lean (Doctor Zhivago, 1965) had expressed considerable interest in turning the threesome into a foursome. But the tantalizing possibility of a Lean-MacLean movie fell at the first hurdle as the director was tied up in developing Ryan’s Daughter (1970)..
It cost MacLean £100,000 to extricate himself from a financial muddle in which his advisers raked in more money than the man they supposedly represented. But it wasn’t just money that was wreaking havoc with his life. Though married, MacLean had a complicated love life and was a very heavy drinker, so it was testament to his discipline that he got any writing done at all.
The idea for Puppet on a Chain originated from a trip to Amsterdam with Reeve, who had mooted the notion of a thriller with a drugs background, during which by chance MacLean alighted on the image that sparked the title. What the author saw was harmless enough, a puppet dangling like a toy from a warehouse in the docks, its purpose probably nothing more than advertising the goods inside. It took an imagination like MacLean’s to turn it into something more sinister.
Once MacLean had written Puppet on a Chain, published in 1969 to commercial and critical acclaim, he handed the rights over to Reeve to negotiate a deal with a major studio. And it says something for the solidity of their partnership that it hit the screens one year later, quicker than When Eight Bells Toll, published in 1966, which took five years to be turned into a film.
Although critics tended to argue that little altered from one book to another, most failed to comprehend that Puppet on a Chain represented a subtle evolution. “It was a change of style from the earlier books. If I went on writing the same stuff, I’d be guying myself,” he said.
But the New York Times noticed and in a lengthy review elevated him to stand comparison with Graham Greene and Eric Ambler, the doyens of the literary thriller. “It’s a top-drawer effort,” commented critic Thomas Lask “If you have any red corpuscles in your blood, you will find your heart pumping triple time…The writing is as crisp as a sunny winter morning and MacLean has provided a travelog for a part of Amsterdam the ordinary tourist is not likely to go.”
But to his intense disappointment, the author discovered that his name alone, while it opened doors, did not unlock sources of funding. One of the two top British studios, ABC, its film arm trading as the Associated British Picture Corporation, which also owned the country’s largest cinema circuit (a state of affairs outlawed in the U.S, since 1948), was interested. ABPC wasn’t entirely avowed of MacLean’s potential, having purchased his debut novel H.M.S. Ulysses but left the project on the shelf.
MacLean was so keen to get the green light he sold the project, including the screenplay and Reeve’s fee, for $60,000, a substantial drop from the $100,000 (plus significant profit share) he received for screenplay alone for Where Eagles Dare. There was a caveat. If the rushes didn’t appeal, ABPC could replace Reeve.
Since advertising scarcely qualified as filmmaking at all, the number of directors who made the jump from making commercials (itself in its infancy) to making movies was virtually nil. This was long before the Scott Brothers, Ridley (Blade Runner, 1982) and Tony (Top Gun, 1986), and Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction, 1987) established commercials as a feeder route for Hollywood,
Having purchased the script for a bargain basement price, ABPC’s Robert Clark sought to offset the costs by involving an American partner. After softening up MGM’s Maurice Silverstein over lunch about the prospects of a joint production, Clark sent him a rough script of Puppet on a Chain. Silverstein was not impressed. The plot was too familiar. “Thanks ever so much for letting us have a look at the script,” wrote Silverstein. But that was as far as he went. No enthusiasm, no money.
But the MacLean name was sufficient to interest independents. Israeli Kurt Unger, former United Artists European production chief, whose father had been a distinguished producer, was in the market for a prestigious production, having cut his teeth on Judith (1966) starring Sophia Loren and Jack Hawkins. His sophomore effort was less successful, The Best House in London (1969) starring David Hemmings, a feminist comedy set in a brothel.
But he set up the picture, albeit with a good bit less funding than had been available for Where Eagles Dare and unlikely to even approach the $1.85 million it cost to make When Eight Bells Toll.
Lack of finance limited the talent available. There was no question of approaching a Richard Burton, much less a Clint Eastwood. And it’s more likely that Swede Sven Bertil-Taube was approved as a name with European appeal and following The Buttercup Chain (1970) could easily be sold as the next big thing in America, bearing in mind that espionage had paved the way in the previous decade for stars like Sean Connery and James Coburn.
Barbara Parkins (Valley of the Dolls, 1967) would also help guarantee media attention in the U.S. You might be surprised to learn rising British star Suzanna Leigh (The Lost Continent, 1968) was also on board. Her part was cut from the final film. Supposedly, she played a villain, but it’s more likely she was hired for the role of Belinda, one of the hero’s sidekicks in the book.
While hardly a big name, Brit Patrick Allen (The Devil Rides Out, 1968) brought dependable support and was well-known enough in the home market. Pole Vladek Sheybal (Women in Love, 1969) was always good copy, having twice escaped concentration camps in World War Two. Another Pole, Ania Larson, was making her movie debut and is still working – you might have caught her in The Witcher (2021) mini-series. A maiden movie outing for Greek actress Penny Casdagli was also her last.
One of the names in the aforementioned David Bishop’s contact book was Piet Cleverings, Amsterdam’s police chief, so permission for use of locales and, more importantly, the city’s extensive canals, was readily granted. Unusually, and presumably due to his backing of the partnership, MacLean intended to spend time in Amsterdam observing the filming. He brought over quite a party including his brother and wife and publisher Ian Chapman and wife plus Bishop.
But any sense of triumph at his role in putting the picture together was dashed by the news that his protégé Reeve had been replaced. “It was Geoff Reeve’s first film on this scale,” reported Unger, “and there some things not right. We brought in Don Sharp as a second unit director responsible for such scenes as the motor-boat chases.”
Unger had already taken steps to re-shape the script, calling on television writer Paul Wheeler and Sharp to add an extra dimension. In the producer’s view, MacLean “was a good writer but he was not a screenwriter. And what he wrote as a screenplay for Puppet on a Chain, I’m afraid, had to be rewritten.”
Understandably, MacLean was incandescent with rage at this “rubbishy travesty of what I wrote.” You could almost feel his spleen dripping onto the page as he wrote to Unger, complaining about Wheeler’s involvement. “If he can improve on practically everything I write and is clearly of the opinion that he is so much the better writer, why is it I’ve never heard of him?”
He went on: “I feel like a doctor who has been called in after a group of myopic first-year medical students with hacksaws have completely misdiagnosed and performed major surgery on a previously healthy patient.”
It was a poor introduction to the role of co-producer, although clearly MacLean didn’t think he had to protect his screenplay in the way that someone like Foreman would. If surrendering the rights for a low price furnished him with any power, he didn’t know how to use it.
Sharp was an unusual addition. Rather than being a go-to second unit director he was an experienced director in his own right, a favorite of Hammer and independent producer Harry Alan Towers, for whom he had helmed such films as, respectively, The Devil-Ship Pirates (1964) and Our Man in Marrakesh / Bang! Bang! You’re Dead (1966).
Unfortunately, his movie career had turned turtle, film work drying up after The Violent Enemy (1967) – television (episodes of The Avengers and Champion in 1968) paid the bills – and again after the lackluster Taste of Excitement (1969). In fact, aside from Puppet on a Chain, he remained in movie limbo for another four years.
Sharp argued that the script for the boat chase was “not good enough,” especially if it was to be the highlight of the film. “I chose the location,” recalled Sharp, “I talked to the police, got the boats and worked with a wonderful bloke there called Wim Wagenaar, who ran a restaurant.” As well as driving one of the boats, Wagenaar orchestrated jumping the boats in the canal.
“We sketched out a whole sequence, and some of the things, other boatmen said you can’t do this. I wanted his boat to run up on to the back of another boat and push it along. They said it won’t… I said, all right, let’s try it. And it did work. And we ran into bridges and came spinning round the corner.
“One time we had to wait for a little while because I had broken, I think it was, four boat hulls and smashed about eight Mercury engines. And they couldn’t get another one, they had to fly them in from Canada. It got a bit expensive.”
Part of what made the chase so thrilling was the unusual manner in which it was shot. Rather than shooting it in small sections and then editing it all together, Sharp took the advice of his camera operator Skeets Kelly. “(He) said to me, don’t cut it into pieces if you can do it all in one. . . . I had considered doing it in a couple of cuts, and Skeets talked me out of it. He said no, there’s so much more impact if you don’t because the audiences are very intelligent these days, so au fait with cinema, that they will know . . . But to go and do it in the one [shot], it’s absolutely for real.
Four weeks had been allocated for the boat chase and once it was complete Sharp received another call from Unger who was dissatisfied with the Reeve version. Sharp met with Unger and Lenny Lane, who had provided American funding. His opinion was: “bit of a mess.” Unger was a bit more forthright. “We’ve either got to spend more money and fix it or we’ve got to cut our losses and not release it.”
Sharp’s response was: “It’s a great shame because the boat chase is good and there are some good things in it. So I said, first of all, give me a couple of days in the cutting room with it, to look at it and make some notes, then I’ll tell you whether I think you can save it.”
After spending time in the cutting room, Sharp drew up a list of amendments. Unger talked to the financiers, sorted out the extra cash and commissioned Sharp to reshoot certain sequences, alter the plot and change the ending. Working with a Moviola of the original footage, Sharp could ensure new footage matched whatever was in the can.
He noted that Reeve “didn’t have a story sense then, as a director…and each set-up…looked like part of a television commercial and wasn’t there for the drama of it or just to let the audience know what was going on.”
For example, Sharp had to re-edit and re-film parts of the nightclub sequence. “Seventy-five per cent of it was fine…I did have to go and reshoot it because to shoot a couple of really good, important, dialog lines to do with the plot (were shown) in a shot between the legs of a dancer… done for a visual effect” rather than to tell a story.
MacLean went off in the huff to the extent that he failed to show up for a press conference in Amsterdam only to be later found to be so inebriated that addressing the world’s media would have proved an embarrassment.
MacLean, however, had the last laugh. The movie was a huge hit in Britain on initial release, “making a mint of money,” an automatic candidate in 1973 for a reissue double bill with When Eight Bells Toll.
You couldn’t get higher praise that a James Bond producer finding inspiration in your picture. Added Sharp, “The funny thing was that, when it came out, Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli, who knew Kurt Unger, said, how did you do that boat chase? Because they’d never thought of one, and from that they did Live and Let Die. And they spent on the boat chase in Live and Let Die more than we spent on the whole film, both units and the reshoot, on Puppet. They did it marvellously, there’s no doubt about it, but cut, cut, cut . . .”
SOURCES: Jack Webster, Alistair MacLean, A Life (Chapmans Publishers, paperback, 1992) p142-145, 152-157; Dean Brierley, “The Espionage Films of Alistair MacLean Part 2,” Cinema Retro, Issue 14, p36-38; Thomas Lask, “End Papers,” New York Times, November 4, 1969, p43; Barry Norman, “Alistair MacLean, Occupation: Storyteller,” Daily Mail, April 27, 1970; Eddy Darvas and Eddie Lawson, Don Sharp, The London History Project, November 1993; John Exshaw, “Don Sharp, Director, An Appreciation,” Cinema Retro, Issue 20.
The Magnificent 60s 