adaptation of bestseller – Page 43

The Woman in the Window (2021) *

I stopped watching this mid-drivel so don’t count on me for a balanced assessment. But it does point up the dangers of the current Netflix obsession. In the cinema, no matter how bad a picture, I would always stay to the end. Particularly with Netflix’s movie joblot I found myself switching off in frustration that it was ever given the green light. I bet, though, Twentieth Century Fox were delighted to have been able to offload it onto Netflix, which provides no acceptable measure of audience response, rather than watching it sink like a stone at the movie box office.

It’s also a cautionary tale about the problems of snapping up a bestseller supposedly in the Gone Girl (2014) and The Girl on a Train (2016) vein, both featuring as here an unreliable narrator, without working out how such fiction might translate to the screen. Buying bestsellers is usually an astute piece of business from the Hollywood perspective. Both the novels mentioned sold in excess of 20 million copies. Even if only 10 per cent of the book buyers went to see the movie, you are talking about $20 million already at the box office. If it’s 20 per cent, then that’s a flat $40 million, and so on.

Bestsellers tended to get snapped up quickly, often in pre-publication, and although they might come with riders attached relating to copy sales, generally you are looking at a movie sales tag of around $1 million. That’s a tiny fraction of the cost of any movie budget with the double bonus that readers will more than offset the purchase price and that the bestseller angle provides an easy marketing hook.

I go to the movies once a week and watch at least two films and sometimes as many as four. And I pay to go. I buy my ticket rather than, as a movie critic, gaining free access. So I’m a sucker for almost anything and if you’ve been reading my Blog you’ll see that I have a pretty high tolerance level and enjoy a wide variety of pictures. So it takes a lot for me to get a downer on a particular movie.

So what’s gone wrong here? The book pivoted on the notion that the protagonist Anne Fox (Amy Adams), imprisoned by agoraphobia in her apartment, views the world through the prism of old Hollywood movies. So old pictures inform much of the writing, they are referenced all the time, almost in the sense of “what would Humphrey Bogart do.” That’s just not an option for a movie, so we are only given a few glimpses of films like Spellbound and they do not play any part in explaining her mental state.

So then it’s basically a re-run of Rear Window (1954) with instead of voyeuristic proclivities being deemed acceptable because it’s James Stewart doing the peeking we have what is effectively a creepy “cat lady” (minus the cats of course) who moons around her apartment drinking. She employs a psychiatrist but he’s redundant in movie terms because we already know she’s loopy and we don’t need to be told that, and that no matter what she did it’s not going to make us look upon her with any more kindness. Why? Because she has a singularly unattractive personality.

Amy Adams (Arrival, 2016) can normally be relied upon to deliver a good performance, but she is hopeless, generating not an ounce of sympathy for her predicament, not helped by going spare at kids doing nothing more dangerous than enjoying Halloween. But she’s not alone in producing audience antipathy. Of the couple across the street whom she spies upon, Jane Russell (Julianne Moore) has obnoxiousness down to a tee while husband Alistair (Gary Oldman) is over-the-top. And if an audience can’t find anyone to like it’s not going to like the film.

For a film boasting two Oscar-winners – Gary Oldman for Darkest Hour (2017) and Julianne Moore (Still Alice, 2014) – plus six nominations for Adams and one for Jennifer Jason Leigh and stars Anthony Mackie and Wyatt Russell from current television mini-series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021), this is a hatful of talent waiting for a rabbit to jump out and perform a miracle cure on a thriller with no thrills. A packet of exposition gets in the way of audience involvement and director Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice, 2005) fails to make any headway in the Hitchockian department.

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of his movie car crash is that its timing could not be more apposite. A film about not being able to go out during a pandemic that confined global populations to their homes should have struck some kind of chord. Of course, it’s been sitting on the Twentieth Century Fox (now rebranded as “20^th Century Movies”) shelf since 2019 and it might have been better for all concerned had it stayed there.

Catch this on Netflix.

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 off 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 attracts women in a way that suggest this is also a perk 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. 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 in question. 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. David Tomlinson (Mary Poppins, 1964) and Gabriella Licudi (You Must Be Joking!, 1965), have small parts. Aso watch out for future British television stars Derek Nimmo (Oh, Brother, 1968-1970) and John Le Mesurier (Dad’s Army, 1968-1977) as well as Jennifer Jayne (Hysteria,1965) and Betty McDowall (First Men in the Moon, 1964).

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 that pair had gone on to hit box office heights.

Catch-Up: Previously reviewed in the Blog are Jack Cardiff’s The Long Ships, Rod Taylor in The Glass Bottom Boat (1966) and Hotel (1967) and Trevor Howard in Operation Crossbow (1965) and Von Ryan’s Express (1965).

Hotel (1967) ***

The cardinal rule of the grand hotel picture was that it featured major stars. That is not so much the case here although the portmanteau of stories is up to scratch. Traditional hotel manager Peter McDermott (Rod Taylor) and boss Warren Trent (Melvyn Douglas) battle ruthless financiers, aristocrats Geoffrey (Michael Rennie) and Caroline (Merle Oberon) are involved in a fatal car accident, hypocritical God-fearing businessman Curtis O’Keefe (Kevin McCarthy) has a mistress Jeanne Rochefot (Catherine Spaak) on the side. Added into the mix are hotel thief Keycase Milne (Karl Malden) and hotel detective Dupere (Richard Conte). Not forgetting a dodgy elevator (you know where that’s headed!).

None of the stars mentioned comes up to the marquee standard set by the original in the subgenre – Grand Hotel (1932) boasted Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and Wallace Beery – while an offshoot of the same idea The VIPs (1963) had Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton Orson Welles and the later Airport (1970) would rustle up top attractions Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin and Jean Seberg.

Top British film critic Alexander Walker espoused the movie.

It’s a fair bet that Warner Brothers felt audiences would be satisfied that the storylines were augmented by the behind-the-scenes insider information promised by the Arthur Hailey bestseller on which the film was based, such as how B-girls stole hotel keys, the tricks employed by a hotel thief and the various corrupt opportunities open to hotel staff. But it’s a major miscalculation to assume an audience cares that much who owns a particular hotel. And in the year in which In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner dealt with racism head-on, it was odd to see desegregation parlayed as a device to lower the asking price for the business or introduced out of economic necessity rather than high-minded principle.

Such gripes aside, this is movie comfort food, a picture that moves at a leisurely pace among its interwoven tales. Kevin McCarthy’s ruthless arrogant businessman steals the show, closely followed by Merle Oberon’s scheming duchess. To use a soccer analogy Rod Taylor is more like an old-fashioned center half rather than a midfield maestro, holding the picture together rather than setting it alight and his romance with McCarthy’s mistress (half his age) is an unlikely diversion, although the soft-spoken French actress, confronted by conscience, is particularly good. Melvyn Douglas as the aging owner mixes curmudgeon with affection and it’s hard not to feel sorry for Conte, outwitted by an older woman, and especially for Malden as the thief finding out how much the credit card has cut into the larceny business.

This was the last big-budget production for director Richard Quine whose career had been on the slide since box office highs The World of Suzie Wong (1960) and Sex and the Single Girl (1964). But he may have been somewhat restrained by having screenwriter Wendell Mayes (Von Ryan’s Express, 1965) as his producer. While well-crafted affair and glossy it lacks the inherent tension of an Airport.

COMPETITION: Win a Signed Copy of “The Making of The Guns of Navarone”

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the opening of The Guns of Navarone I am offering a copy of my book “The Making of The Guns of Navarone.” This is a revised and enlarged edition – the first time with illustrations (over 30 of them) – of the original version which was published in 2013.

The Royal World Premiere of the film took place at the Odeon Leicester Square, London, on April 27, 1961. But it was not released in the U.S. until June, opening at the Criterion and Murray Hill cinemas in New York. At all three cinemas it broke the box office record.

All you have to do to enter is guess from all the films reviewed in the Blog in April which five proved the most popular (judged from the number of views).

Put the five you have chosen in ascending order.

Email your answers to me at bhkhannan@aol.com

The person who gets the most right in the proper order will be declared the winner.

The book will be posted free of charge anywhere in the world and, being the author, I can arrange for it to be signed. The closing date is Monday, May 17.

Feel free to let your friends know.

Good luck.

Book Into Film – The Venetian Affair

Sometimes I wonder if studio executives ever read a book before they purchase the rights or whether they just rely on the assumption that a bestseller must have a storyline worth adapting for the movies. I always had the impression that in many instances producers were simply buying up what they saw as a ready-made audience, that if a novel sold a few million copies enough of those satisfied readers would turn up to see the adaptation which would more than pay for what the book cost to buy (not counting the automatic marketing bounty that came from bookstore displays). These days we are used to films rigidly following the storylines of bestselling novels, even expanding the movie version into two parts to accommodate it.

But that was far from the case in the 1960s. As shown previously in this Blog, some films – Fathom (1967) a classic example – bore little resemblance to the source material while others such as The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) were more faithful renderings and others (example: The Quiller Memorandum, 1966) built on what the author had originally created. I often wondered at the reaction of a screenwriter handed an adaptation of a bestseller. Is he/she instructed to junk the whole thing and start again, retaining only the title, or asked to see what they can make of it, making other stuff up as they go along?

Sales of Helen MacInnes books increased as the 1960s wore on with The Double Image in 1966 and The Salzburg Connection in 1968 both making the annual Top Ten list, the latter the last of her books to be filmed.

In this case, producer E. Jack Neuman hired himself as the writer so I’m guessing he already knew that, beyond a simplified version of the storyline and some of the characters, he was going to dump virtually every aspect of the Helen MacInnes novel.

There were two explanations for this. The first was Neuman’s record as a creative force and it occurred to me he saw his version of the MacInnes leading man as a potential movie series character. This was his movie screenwriting debut but he had been churning out episodes of television series – including Wagon Train, The Untouchables and The Twilight Zone – for over a decade. More importantly, he was showrunner of three series – two dramas Sam Benedict (1962-1963) and Mr Novak (1963-1965) and a western A Man Called Shenandoah (1965-1966) which between them clocked up over 100 episodes – so he knew how to keep a good character going.

The second issue was the difficulty in adapting the work of MacInnes. The Scottish writer had been turning out bestselling espionage novels long before Ian Fleming, Alistair MacLean and John le Carre picked up a pen, but only two had ever been turned into pictures. And the reason was simple. The plots were anything but simple. Not so much twist after twist but complication after complication. The Venetian Affair is dense and in particular, consists, in many scenes, of exposition with characters explaining to other characters what the hell is going on.

In fact, the plot for The Venetian Affair is so obtuse – although strangely enough, quite contemporary – that it would never have worked on film. The C.I.A. are trying to get hold of a fake letter that will implicate the U.S. and Britain in a plot to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle (fake news in today’s parlance). So that was never going to work in a movie. Preventing an assassination, yes, but, of course, what a preposterous idea to think anyone could kill de Gaulle without having a time machine that could flash forward to Day of the Jackal. In any case, the C.I.A. only find out about the letter’s existence because someone picks up the wrong overcoat – so that’s not going to play either.

However, what the book does have is a good title. Venice is an excellent locale for a spy movie. The only problem is only half the novel is set there. The first half takes place in Paris. What else the book has from a screenwriter’s perspective is that the ex-wife, Sandra Fane (Elke Sommer), of the central character Bill Fenner (Robert Vaughn) is a Communist defector who is considering defecting back and to achieve that requires the presence of her former husband.

So that formed the emotional heart of the film, potential reunion or further betrayal, that Fane is just going to dupe him a second time. And that’s about as much as Neuman takes from the book. The rest of the plot – the bombing, Fane disguised as a nun, virtually all the action, the bad guy, the brainwashing, the mouse sequence – is the invention of Neuman.

In the book Fenner is not an alcoholic but it’s more dramatic in the film if he is. Some of the characters from the book such as hard ass CIA boss Rosenfeld (Edward Asner) appear on screen much as described. Others have characters enhanced – Vaugiround (Boris Karloff) here a global kingpin is a mere moral philosopher in the book. The character of Claire Connor (Felicia Farr) is hardest done by. In the book, she is a central figure, the widow of an agent, teamed up with Fenner in a pretend romance that turns real. But in the film, she has become the mistress of a diplomat.

I had already enjoyed the movie but my appreciation of the creative endeavor that went into its making increased by reading the original material screenwriter Neuman had to work with.

The Venetian Affair (1966) ****

Robert Vaughn gives a terrific performance as a numbed alcoholic ex-C.I.A. journalist drafted into Venice to investigate a plot involving ex-wife and Communist defector Elke Sommer. He’s the spy who lost it rather than a flashy contemporary of James Bond. This occasionally very stylish number kicks off with an excellent credit sequence that concludes with a suicide bomber blowing up a nuclear disarmament conference. Unshaven and with a Columbo cast-off overcoat, Vaughn discovers Sommer was key to the atrocity, the bomber an otherwise distinguished diplomat with no known proclivities in the area of mass murder.

Although sold as an action picture, nobody is ripping through the canals as in a Bond film, and it is altogether a more somber, reflective, intelligent movie. Vaughn’s feelings for his ex-wife are shown when, in her apartment, he tenderly touches her clothes and smells her perfume. Far from being party to the plot, it appears Sommer has had a change of heart and wants to defect back, leaving Vaughn in a perilous dilemma. Does he believe her or is she just using him? It is beginning to sound like a modern-day film noir, except he is already being used by the C.I.A., his presence in Venice a device to draw Sommer out, C.I.A chief Rosenfeld (Edward Asner) every bit as ruthless as the villains.

His investigations lead him to Dr Pierre Vaugiraud (Boris Karloff) and power broker Robert Wahl (Karl Boehm) who possesses a mind-altering drug that can make a man terrified of a mouse, send him into a trance and on his way to deliver savage retribution. There is death aplenty, fisticuffs and chases and Sommer, in hiding disguised as a nun, is worth waiting for.

Based on the bestseller by Scottish novelist Helen MacInnes, who outsold Alistair Maclean in her day, the project was at one point to be directed by Guy Hamilton. Coincidentally, David McCallum, Vaughn’s co-star in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. television series, was in Venice at the same time shooting Three Bites of the Apple.

Vaughn is superb in a downbeat role – shaking off his Napoleon Solo television persona- never sure if he is being duped, on the rack from falling back in love, and emerging from an alcoholic haze with a few decent ruses up his sleeve. It’s often forgotten that this is an Oscar-nominated (for The Young Philadelphians, 1959) star and that the subtlety of his performance in The Magnificent Seven (1960) is generally overlooked.

Television stalwart Jerry Thorpe making his debut contributes some interesting moments. Interpreters listening in to the conference hear the magnified ticking of the bomb moments before explosion. A sequence on a train is well done and the activity surrounding the mouse is first class. There’s a solid cast, Asner menacing even as a good guy, Karl Boehm a charismatic villain, Karloff memorable in his last performance in a non-horror picture, and interesting appearances by Felicia Farr as a C.I.A agent masquerading as the murderous diplomat’s unsuspecting mistress and Luciana Paluzzi as the girlfriend of an agent. Lalo Schifrin produces an outstanding score.

It was a flop first time round because audiences, partly duped by the title (all Uncle episodes incorporated the word “Affair” although the book, in fairness, was written long before the television series was envisioned) expected to pay to see Napoleon Solo, or something quite like him, on the big screen, with all the pizzazz and gimmickry of the small-screen show. Unfairly under-rated, this is a really satisfying thriller set against a murky Cold War background with Vaughn, trapped between love and redemption, the only character with a streak of morality.

Stiletto (1969) ***

Tough talking Patrick O’Neal (Castle Keep, 1969) whose “hello” is usually accompanied with a fist enlivens this adaptation of a slim bestseller by Harold Robbins as cop George Baker on the trail of Mafia hitman Count Cesari Cardinali (Alex Cord ). Unusually, Cord was the go-to star for producers of Mafia pictures, his previous movie being The Brotherhood (1968). Equally unusual, Cardinali 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 – and not in normal fashion, weighted down by a block of cement. Unfortunately, his dilemma is hardly one to solicit sympathy from an audience much less Mafia boss Emilio Matteo (Joseph Wiseman) and Cord isn’t enough of an actor in any case to tug at the heartstrings.

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 Italian-made A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die (1967). But 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 and sure enough he soon discovers that Wiseman doesn’t consider him a candidate for a pension while O’Neal bullies witnesses into providing the legal ammunition to bring the gangster down.

One such person is illegal Polish immigrant Illeana (Britt Ekland), Cardinale’s girlfriend when he is not chasing Ahn Dessie (Barbara McNair). This is another thankless role for Ekland (Machine Gun McCain, 1969), there to add glamour, but, surprisingly, she manages to bring pathos to the part. McNair, who is always worth watching and had made an auspicious debut the year before in If He Hollers, Let Him Go, hardly gets any screen time. But it’s O’Neal (Alvarez Kelly, 1966) as the ruthless cop who holds it all together.

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 at a penthouse and the climax on a deserted island which has more than a hint of a spaghetti western. Wiseman (Dr No, 1962) rustles up another interesting performance and Roy Scheider (Jaws,1975) also appears.

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. This was the seventh adaptation of the books of bestseller writer Harold Robbins after Never Love a Stranger (1958), A Stone for Danny Fisher (filmed as King Creole in 1958), The Carpetbaggers (1964) – which also resulted in Nevada Smith (1966) – and Where Love Has Gone (1966).

This isn’t easy to get hold of but you are more likely to find it will find it on Ebay (new) than Amazon.

The Prize (1963) ****

Thoroughly involving potboiler with alcoholic novelist Paul Newman turning unlikely detective to uncover murky double-dealings at the annual Nobel Prize ceremony. Based on the Irving Wallace bestseller set in Stockholm, director Mark Robson (Von Ryan’s Express,1965) strings together a number of different stories that coalesce in a gripping climax. Screenwriter Ernest Lehman (North by Northwest,1959) brings alive what could have been a very soggy adaptation of a beefy bestseller with witty and literate dialog and a plot that hovers just the right side of hokum.

Elke Sommer, delegated to look after Newman, starts out as stuffed shirt not sexpot, allowing Newman’s attention to drift towards Emily Stratman (Diane Baker) – daughter of another winner Dr. Max Stratman (Edward G. Robinson) – while he is also dragged into romantic entanglement with neglected wife Dr Denise Marceau (Micheline Presle). Mostly, Newman just wants his next drink and his almost continual inebriation sparks some good comedy and he is gifted good lines to extricate himself from embarrassment. Simmering in the background are warring winners – the Marceau husband-and-wife team and Dr John Garrett (Kevin McCarthy) convinced that Dr Carlo Farelli (Gerard Oury), with whom he is sharing a prize, has stolen his research.

There are sufficient character clashes and plots to be getting along with if you were just intent on taking a Valley of the Dolls approach to the material, that is, cutting between various dramatic story arcs, but, without invalidating the other subsidiary tales, the movie takes quite a different turn, providing the potboiler with considerable edge.

Turns out that Newman is so impoverished that he has been writing detective novels under a pseudonym and suspecting that Dr Stratman is an imposter he starts investigating. So in some respects it’s a private eye procedural played out against the glamorous backdrop of the awards. But the clues are inventive enough and there is a femme fatale and once Sommer comes along for the ride and with Newman a target the picture picks up an invigorating pace. Echoing the humorous auction scene in North by Northwest is a sequence set in a nudist colony where Newman seeks refuge to avoid villains while another terrific scene plays out in the docks.

Newman looks as if he is having a ball. In most of his pictures he was saddled with seriousness as if every part was chosen with an eye on the Oscars. Here, he lets rip with a lighter persona, and even if he mugs to the camera once too often, the result is a screen departure that lifts the picture. Inebriation has clearly never been so enjoyable. Sommer is a delight, showing great dramatic promise. Edward G. Robinson (Seven Thieves,1960), more renowned for his gangster roles, convinces as a scientist. Diane Baker (The 300 Spartans, 1962), Kevin McCarthy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers,1956) and Leo G. Carroll (North by Northwest) provide sterling support.

Robson directs with dexterity, mostly with an eye on pace, but it is Lehman’s script with occasional nods to Hitchcock that steals the show.

Catch-Up: Previously reviewed in the Blog – Paul Newman in Torn Curtain and Cool Hand Luke; Diane Baker in Marnie and The 300 Spartans; Elke Sommer in The Corrupt Ones and Mark Robson picture The Lost Command.