Anthony Quinn – The Magnificent 60s

Behind the Scenes: “The Guns of Navarone” (1961)

It’s time to celebrate the 65^th anniversary of The Guns of Navarone – world premiere on April 27, 1961, in London and New York opening on June 22, 1961. Although the picture set a new benchmark in high-octane entertainment, a fast-moving war thriller packed with twists and a genuine all-star cast, it was far – very far – from the sure thing it appears in retrospect.

For a start, U.S producer Carl Foreman, a victim of the McCarthy anti-communist witch-hunt of the early 1950s, was unable to assemble any of the talent he had set his heart on. He lost his preferred male cast of William Holden and Cary Grant and original scriptwriter Eric Ambler, the thriller writer famed for The Mask of Dimitrios and other novels.

He had a registered a major publicity coup by engineering the screen debut of opera diva Maria Callas, one of the most famous people in the world, but she also dropped out as did his other initial choice for leading lady. On top of that, once filming began he lost his director, Alexander Mackendrick, who had not only achieved a critical and commercial success with the British Ealing comedy The Ladykillers (1951) but also crossed the Atlantic to make the acclaimed The Sweet Smell of Success (1957) starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, to prove he could handle big Hollywood stars.

On top of that David Niven nearly lost his life during production and by the time the picture appeared Gregory Peck had suffered so many box office flops that he was a potential liability. And Foreman’s own marriage was in trouble.

It was a wonder it was made at all for Foreman was nobody’s idea of a sure thing. Although he had made his name as a screenwriter with three Oscar nominations for Champion (1949), The Men (1950) and High Noon (1952), his career was in ruins after being slung out of America for his supposed communist sympathies. He set up in London where he wrote screenplays under pseudonyms. But in 1956 won a four-picture production deal with Columbia at a time when that studio was investing heavily in making films in Britain to take advantage of the government’s Eady Levy (effectively, a tax rebate) and cheaper costs. But his first film, The Key (1958) with William Holden and Sophia Loren flopped in the U.S. Columbia persevered, seeing Foreman as the man to tackle its biggest-ever European production.

The Guns of Navarone almost fell at the first hurdle. Foreman’s first choice of location was Cyprus which was threatening to erupt into a civil war. At the last minute, he changed his mind and shifted production to Rhodes. Foreman, who also acted as screenwriter, made considerable changes to the book by British bestselling thriller writer Alistair Maclean, not least of which was introducing female characters to a story that had been resolutely all-male.

There was tension on set – four-time Oscar nominee Gregory Peck was annoyed at sharing the screen with two winners David Niven (Best Actor for Separate Tables, 1958) and Anthony Quinn (twice Best Supporting Actor for Viva Zapata, 1952, and Lust for Life, 1956). Replacement director J. Lee Thompson (Ice Cold in Alex, 1958) managed to sink a ship on loan from the Greek navy. The Actor’s Strike in Hollywood nearly forced the departure of the two younger stars.

The set for the titular guns was the largest ever built, costing £100,000, and even though that proved a design miracle, that, too, was not exempt from disaster, having to be rebuilt after a thunderstorm destroyed part of the set. The injury to David Niven was so severe he nearly died, putting the production in jeopardy. Even when the film approached completion there were other obstacles in the way, composer Dmitri Tiomkin (The Alamo, 1960), for example, demanding a record fee and Foreman locking horns with Columbia over his insistence on launching the picture as a roadshow, request which was ultimately denied, and one of the reasons for the film’ release delay,

I’ve written a book about The Making of The Guns of Navarone. Originally published in 2013, it has been revised with over 30 illustrations added for a new edition to tie in with the 65^th anniversary – available both in print and Kindle versions.

If you’re interested in this kind of book, you might like to know that I’ve also written The Making of The Magnificent Seven.

The Guns of Navarone (1961) *****

To celebrate this film now streaming on Netflix I thought i’d re-run a previous review.

Stone-cold action classic that blazed a trail for the big-budget men-on-a-mission war picture like The Dirty Dozen (1967) and Where Eagles Dare (1968). Brilliantly structured, written and directed, and featuring a sea battle, storm, shipwreck, mountaineering, chase, interrogation scenes, infiltration of an impregnable fortress, a pair of romances, two traitors, and an awe-inspiring climax make this a candidate for one of the greatest war pictures ever made.

The set-up is simple. Knock out the gigantic guns at Navarone or two thousand men will perish. It’s mission impossible and the clock is ticking. You don’t know who to trust and the enemy is ruthless.

In the early days of the all-star-cast, producer Carl Foreman rounded up an astonishing line-up, bulking out the bestseller by Scottish thriller maestro Alistair Maclean (The Secret Ways, 1961) with three top stars in five-time Oscar nominee Gregory Peck (The Big Country, 1958), double Oscar-winner Anthony Quinn (Heller in Pink Tights, 1960) and Oscar-winner David Niven (Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, 1960). Add in British household names Anthony Quayle (Ice Cold in Alex, 1958), Stanley Baker (The Concrete Jungle, 1960) and James Robertson Justice (Doctor in Love, 1960), a sprinkling of rising stars in James Darren (Let No Man Write My Epitaph, 1960), Gia Scala (I Aim at the Stars, 1960) and Richard Harris (The Night Fighters, 1960) and renowned Greek actress Irene Papas (Antigone, 1961).

Each man is a specialist. Capt. Mallory (Gregory Peck) the mountaineer whose climbing skills are essential to completing the fist part of the mission, explosives expert Corporal Miller (David Niven), mechanic ‘Butcher’ Brown (Stanley Baker), Greek patriot Stavrou (Anthony Quinn) and the ruthless killer Pappadimos (James Darren) who has the contact with the Greek resistance. The stakes are ramped up when we learn both Mallory and Stavrou have bounties on their heads, not to mention the fact they are sworn enemies, and that before the mission even gets under way, spies are discovered in the camp. The ostensible leader of the group Major Franklin (Anthony Quayle) is wounded early on, turning him into a liability and making Mallory the de facto leader.

The stakes are ramped up further – this time through relationships. Their Greek contact turns out to be a woman, Maria (Irene Papas), brother of Pappadimos. She brings with her a mute girl Anna (Gia Scala) for whom Mallory develops romantic feelings while Stavrou has eyes for Maria. Mallory is also torn about Franklin, his best friend.

And from there it pitches into one disaster after another. They are too easily hunted by the Germans. They are shelled with mortars and attacked by dive bombers as they race across open mountains and through caves to reach their destination. They have to shoot their way out of traps and finagle their way into the fortress. There are twists and turns all the way, the clock ticking in almost James-Bond-style as the deadline for the destruction of the troops approaches.

And although this is clearly a war picture it is also as obviously an anti-war one, no end to the killing in sight, people dying pointlessly.

Although the acting was ignored come Oscar time, each of the stars delivers and it is a communal tour de force. Director J. Lee Thompson (Ice Cold in Alex) ensures that in visual terms none of the stars dominates, each given equal screen time while the strong supporting cast each has their own narrative arc. With over two-and-half-hours’ running time, Thompson has both the bonus of time to allow each element to be fully played out and the problem of keeping the picture taut and he succeeds brilliantly in both aims. It is a masterpiece of suspense. And it looked fabulous, the guns themselves, by which the picture might succeed or fail, were awesome.

Thompson was Oscar-nominated as was producer Carl Foreman for both Best Picture and the screenplay, Dmitri Tiomkin for the score (one of the longest-ever), John Cox for sound, Alan Osbiston for editing. Bill Warrington who did the visual special effects and Chris Greenham who did the sound effects were the only winners on the night.

It was a commercial smash, top picture of the year in the U.S., the biggest picture of all time at the British box office and breaking records all over the world.

The Visit (1964) *****

Wow! How has this sailed under the radar? Not only does two-time (at this point) Oscar-winner Ingrid Bergman shred her screen persona as the loved one in a romantic interlude or as the victim, but she turns into one of the most chilling femme fatales you can imagine. Made today, this would be termed “High Concept”. But it’s better than that, it’s concept heaven, such a brilliant idea and superbly executed.

From the moment widowed billionaire Karla Zachanassian (Ingrid Bergman), dressed in white like a Hollywood star, steps off a train and cuts the waiting townspeople dead with a haughty look only to seconds later seduce them with a warm smile, you can guess this is going nowhere near where you’d expect.

The train wasn’t scheduled to stop. She merely pulled the emergency cord as if her wealth was excuse enough. And she was only on the train because she wanted to make an entrance. For, as it transpires, her chauffeur is in attendance.

The town is bankrupt and in the way of the small-minded the townspeople imagine that the only reason she could be returning to the place where she could grew up twenty years after she left would be to rescue Guellen from its financial misery. So the townspeople are ready with a parade and welcome banners and fine speeches. Former lover Serge (Anthony Quinn), though now married to Mathilda (Valentina Corsese), is happy to play his part and recall their romance, visit the barn where they made love for the first time, as if she has returned only to satisfy memory.

But that’s not the reason. She has a different recollection of events and while she’s willing to play the role of the returning benefactor, offering the town one million and another million to be shared equally among the townspeople, there’s a condition. She wants revenge for being humiliated. Serge – who had thrown Karla over in favour on the daughter of a richer man – denied her child was his and bribed false witnesses so she was sent packing, with prostitution her only option and the child dead within a year.

So now the townspeople can show themselves to be principled, refusing to encourage her barbaric sense of justice, or, more likely, start to nip away at the idea of justice when there’s a bounty of two million at stake. Karla sits on her balcony dressed to the nines twirling her parasol and sipping an iced drink watching like a hawk chaos unfold below or lounges in her room feeding red meat on a toasting fork to a caged cheetah.

There’s some interesting satire on both bureaucracy and democracy – should people be banned from voting on such a sensitive subject or should democracy insist otherwise. And while ostensibly the powers-that-be back Serge, he gets a shock when he realizes the ordinary people have starting buying new shoes and clothes on credit in anticipation of the bounty and the going rate for an assassin is just two thousand. Soon the town is overwhelmed with retailers selling fancy goods – cars, fridges, televisions, fashion items – on credit. There’s time, too, for other stories to play out in realistic fashion.

There’s a brilliant sequence where Serge is hunted through the streets by men with rifles on the erroneous (or deliberately erroneous) belief that he’s been mistaken for a wild animal and even his wife deserts him. The climax is absolutely stunning.

There would have been many parallels at the time – Communist witch hunt, the persecution of the Jews – but from today’s perceptive it’s more like a capitalist witch hunt or judgement on a “good” society.

Anthony Quinn (Guns for San Sebastian, 1968) bought the rights because he realized Serge was a terrific part but as producer he made the mistake (or touch of genius) in hiring Ingrid Bergman (Goodbye Again, 1961). Without doubt she stole the show. Amazing that she wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar given the chilling portrayal she delivered.

Directed by Bernhard Wicki (Morituri / Code Name Morituri, 1965). Adapted by Ben Barzman (The Heroes of Telemark, 1965) and Maurice Valency (The Madwoman of Chaillott, 1969) from the play by Friedrich Durrenmatt.

When you see how hard today’s “visionaries” strive to come up with meaningful tales of a serious nature or examinations of “the human condition,” you can see how much they fall short compared to this well thought-out drama.

I was blown away.

A High Wind in Jamaica (1965) ***

Forget swashbuckling shenanigans in the Captain Blood (1935) and Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) vein, this has more in keeping with Lord of the Flies (1963) as a bunch of third-rate pirates get more than they bargained for after kidnapping a bunch of English children.

The pirates are clever enough when required, using the ruse of pretending to be a ship in distress to defeat an enemy, capable of torturing a captured captain into revealing concealed treasure, or hiding from pursuit by disguising the masts with palm leaves, but generally short on intelligence. That the kidnapping is unintentional, no sensible pirate wanting the British Navy breathing down its neck, gives an indication of the mentality of Captain Chavez (Anthony Quinn) and his mate Zac (James Coburn). Nor are the children Disney-cute and far from being petrified they see it as a great adventure while the crew are superstitious about having the youngsters aboard.

The kids have great fun running rings round the pirates, stealing Chavez’s hat, climbing the rigging, and ringing the bell, while turning round the ship’s figurehead provokes another bout of superstition. When the kids are eventually imprisoned in a rowboat to prevent upsetting the crew they still manage to do so by playing a game that the crew take too seriously.

An attempt to abandon the children on the island of Tampico fails when the oldest boy John (Martin Amis) dies by accident. The children are unperturbed by his death, the only question raised is who can have his blanket. Much to his surprise Chavez discovers he has a strong paternal side, protective when he discovers that one of his captives is a young woman rather than a child, and going against the wishes of his crew when he tends to a knife wound on Emily (Deborah Baxter).

The children are far more grown-up and matter-of-fact than the childish crew, consumed by superstition, and Chavez, consumed by emotion. Although there is considerable comedy to be had from the children’s endeavors, it’s largely an adult film about children. In general, they don’t react the way they would in a Disney picture, nor in the manner which many adults would expect. The sexual tension of the book is considerably underplayed. But the fact that the adults are brought into harm’s way by sheer folly, and their reactions to life are essentially childish, creates a contrast with the more savage attitudes of the children. Emily essentially exposes Chavez’s guilty conscience.

While there is ambivalence aplenty, the depths the book explored go unexplored here, much to the benefit of the picture. The movie dances a tightrope as the children who would otherwise expect to trust an adult grow to learn how to distrust, a rather sharper lesson in growing up than they might have anticipated from their middle-class innocent lives.

Alexander Mackendrick (The Ladykillers, 1955) excels in ensuring the tightrope remains in place while taking advantage of the opportunity for comedy, the realization that this adventure is far from fun only becoming gradually apparent.

Anthony Quinn (Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968) reins in his tendency to ham things up, and his development from unbridled pirate to responsible adult is an interesting one. James Coburn (Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round, 1966) reins in the flashing teeth and reveals a more ruthless side than his captain anticipated. Deborah Baxter (The Wind and the Lion, 1975) is easily the pick of the kids although future novelist Martin Amis with his trademark sneer gives her a run for her money.

Lila Kedrova (Torn Curtain, 1966) appears as a brothel madam, Nigel Davenport (Sebastian, 1968) as the father and Gert Frobe (Goldfinger, 1964) as the captured captain. The cast also includes Dennis Price (Tamahine, 1963) and Vivienne Ventura (Battle Beneath the Earth, 1967).

Stanley Mann (Woman of Straw, 1964), Ronald Harwood (The Dresser, 1983) and Denis Cannan (Woman of Straw) wrote the screenplay based on the celebrated Richard Hughes novel.

A Dream of Kings (1969) *****

Sometimes great movies just disappear. Even if they pick up some critical traction on initial release, as here, they flop at the box office. And they are not revived because the production company goes bust or the rights are complicated. Or, more likely, they don’t fit into audience expectation. All three stars here completely play against type, outliers in career portfolios. We have become so accustomed to the attraction of stars according to their screen personas that unless they are known to completely change their screen characters with every outing anything that’s different to the norm becomes unacceptable.

Director Daniel Mann (Ada, 1961) was best known for producing Oscar-winning or Oscar-nominated performances from female stars. He was immensely skilled at making audiences sympathize with the most flawed women. Here, he does the same for Anthony Quinn, in a performance that should have had Oscar voters lining up but was dismissed for all the wrong reasons. Theoretically, one of the film’s problems is the dialog. We are so used to a script full of cut-and-thrust or witty putdowns that we fail to recognize a screenplay, that in much the same way as a stage play – but without that form’s inherent artificiality – lets characters live and breathe, explore depths that are just not possible except in fleeting moments in the normal construction of a movie.

Most scenes here begin one way and then move in all sorts of directions, sometimes ending up back where they started, but most often going somewhere unexpected, not in the sense of a sudden twist, but in digging deeper into relationships and understanding that marriages are built on shifting sands, and not all of them perilous. There’s a lot of dialog and when you get a lot of long speeches it can make the actors look as though they’re hamming it up when in fact what they’re doing is opening up the character.

We shouldn’t like Matsoukas (Anthony Quinn) at all. He’s a gambler, a womanizer, drinks, comes home at sunrise, has nothing you’d call a real job.

And yet.

In his company you enter a world of possibility. By sheer force of personality he lifts gloom, even when it’s his actions that have caused it. He can convince the most downtrodden weaklings that they have something of worth.

When nobody has anything good to say about old drunk Cicero (Sam Levene), Matsoukas tells him he has a poker dealer’s graceful hands and provides solace just by befriending him. He convinces a 72-year-old man that the loss of his libido is not down to the old guy’s age but because in four years of marriage he has lost interest in his 31-year-old wife because she’s the one who has aged, physically less appealing, and then he teaches the desperate soul the gentle art of seduction, how to win a woman’s heart by putting her on a pedestal, treating her like a goddess, kissing her softly on eyes and ears rather than pawing her in frantic passion.

Just what Matsoukas’s job is – on the door it says “counsellor” which would suggest something legal – but in fact he’s a male version of an old wife and provides solutions to odd problems, a mother worried that her teenage son masturbates, for example.

He is the sort of guy who can wring triumph from disaster. He has just lost a bundle of dough at poker but the way he tells it you’d think he’d won. Instead, he appreciates the drama of it all, the way it makes a great tale even if he’s the loser. Naturally, wife Caliope (Irene Papas) doesn’t see it his way. She’s on her knees with trying to feed her three children from the scraps that fall from his gambling. Though when he wins big, they live like kings.

Although he still has a lusty sex life with Calope, and can mostly coax her round, he has fallen for widowed baker Anna (Inger Stevens), attracted to her in part to alleviate her grief, pull her out of the darkness.

And he cannot face up to the potential loss of his young son who has three months to live and has it fixed in his own mind that the boy will be cured if Matsoukas can expose him to the sunshine and the ancient gods of his Greek homeland, though he lacks the $700 required for the air fare.

Each sequence is long, carefully calibrated, giving time for the exploration of a wealth of emotions. Outside of the three main narratives are two other stand-out scenes. In his sermon a priest rails against the evils of life insurance that makes people welcome death yet argues, ironically, that death is a great joy and should not be feared. And there’s a party where Matsoukas on the dance floor is a magnet for every woman in the room.

This is an Anthony Quinn (The Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968) devoid of all trademark abrasiveness, the loud voice gone, trying to gouge every ounce of joy from a forbidding world. He has a very tender relationship with his dying son, inventing a game with fake telephones to deal with the boy’s fears, and is very playful with his two daughters. He is constantly wooing his wife, in part to ease the pain he causes her, but mostly because he wants them to get the most out of life.

This is a different Irene Papas (The Brotherhood, 1968) too, not the fiery woman or dutiful wife of her screen persona. Whatever anger she feels is subsumed by sorrow and she is always willing to let her husband fire up her heart as in the old days. Actresses don’t get such complex roles these days.

And all the pent-up fragility of Inger Stevens (Five Card Stud, 1968) is suddenly let loose as she twists her entire screen persona of tough woman in a man’s world – usually a western – on its head. Her scenes with Quinn are breathtaking. Unfortunately, this was her final film – she committed suicide shortly after. But she could not have found a better swansong, one that extended her range.

As he always does, Daniel Mann doesn’t take his main character’s side, but while extracting sympathy for character predicament and perspective, still lets the audience make up his mind. This could easily have gone all maudlin, the child miraculously recovering, the flight to Greece to find a rare cure, all Matsoukas’s delusion revealed as nothing more than true faith, but it’s more hard-edged than that. At the end Matsoukas has his exterior carapace ripped apart, beaten up, ostracized for committing the worst crime of a gambler – cheating – in dire straits.

And yet.

Written by Ian McLellan Hunter (Roman Holiday, 1953) from the bestseller by Harry Mark Petrakis.

I just adored this.

The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) ****

Another nod to Conclave. Thought-provoking drama with a contemporary slant set against the grandeur of the Vatican amid geo-political turmoil. At a time of global crisis, dissident Russian archbishop Lakotov (Anthony Quinn) is unexpectedly freed from a labor camp by the Russian premier (Laurence Olivier). Arriving at the Vatican, he is promoted to Cardinal by the dying Pope (John Gielgud) before becoming an unexpected contender for Papal Office.

The spectacular wealth of the Catholic Church is contrasted with the spectacular poverty of China, on the brink of starvation due to trade sanctions by the United States, nuclear war a potential outcome. The political ideology of Marxism is compared to the equally strict Christian doctrine, of which Lakotov’s friend Father Telemond (Oskar Werner) has fallen foul. There is a sub-plot so mild it scarcely justifies the term concerning television reporter George Faber (David Janssen) torn between wife Ruth (Barbara Jefford) and young lover Chiara (Rosemary Dexter).

Lakotov is drawn into the Russian-Chinese-American conflict and the battle for the philosophical heart of the Christian faith while bringing personal succor to the lovelorn and performing the only modern miracle easily within his power, which could place the Church in jeopardy, while condemned to the solitariness of his position.

The political and philosophical problems addressed by the picture, which was set 20 years in the future, are just as relevant now. The film’s premise, of course, while intriguing, defies logic and although the climax has a touch of the Hollywood about it nonetheless it follows an argument which has split the church from time immemorial.

You would not have considered this an obvious candidate for the big-budget 70mm widescreen roadshow treatment, but MGM, after the Church not surprisingly refused access to the Vatican, spent millions of dollars on fabulous sets, including the Sistine Chapel. The roadshow version of the picture, complete with introductory musical overture and an entr’acte at the intermission, is leisurely and absorbing, held together by a stunning – and vastly under-rated – performance by Anthony Quinn (The Lost Command, 1966) who has abandoned his usual bombastic screen persona in pursuit of genuine humility and yet faces his moments when he questions his own faith.

Ruth has a pivotal role in bringing Lakotov down to earth but George has the thankless task, setting aside the quandaries of his love life, of talking the audience through the sacred ceremonies unfolding sumptuously on screen as the cardinals bury one Pope and elect another.

You wouldn’t think, either, that Hollywood could find room in such a big-budget picture for philosophical discussion but questions not only of the existence of God but whether he has abandoned Earth are given considerable scope, as are discussions about Marxism and practical solutions to eternal problems. None of these arguments are particularly new but are given a fair hearing. There is a hint of the Inquisition about the “trial” Telemond faces. Oskar Werner (Interlude, 1968) carries off a difficult role.

David Janssen (Warning Shot, 1967) is mere window dressing and Rosemary Dexter (House of Cards, 1968) mostly decorative but Barbara Jefford (Ulysses, 1967) is good as the wounded wife. Laurence Olivier (Khartoum, 1966) is the pick of the sterling supporting cast which included John Gielgud (Becket, 1964), Burt Kwouk (The Brides of Fu Manchu, 1966) Vittorio de Sica (It Happened in Naples, 1960), Leo McKern (Assignment K, 1968), Frank Finlay (A Study in Terror, 1965), Niall McGinnis (The Viking Queen, 1967) and Clive Revill (Fathom, 1967). In a small role was Isa Miranda, the “Italian Marlene Dietrich,” who had made her name in Max Ophuls’ Everybody’s Woman (1934) and enjoyed Hollywood success in films like Hotel Imperial (1939) opposite Ray Milland.

Michael Anderson (Operation Crossbow, 1965) directed with some panache from a script by veteran John Patrick (The World of Suzie Wong, 1960) and Scottish novelist James Kennaway (Tunes of Glory, 1960) based on the Morris West bestseller.

I found the whole enterprise totally engrossing, partly because I did not know what to expect, partly through Anderson’s faultless direction, partly it has to be said by the glorious backdrop of the Vatican and the intricacy of the various rites, but mostly from the revelatory Quinn performance. And even if the plot is hardly taut, not in the James Bond clock-ticking class, it still all holds together very well. From the fact that it was a big flop at the time both with the public and the critics, I had expected a stinker and was very pleasantly surprised.

All hail Anthony Quinn.

Behold a Pale Horse (1964) ***

Old causes never die but they do go out of fashion and interest from movie audiences in the issues surrounding the Spanish Civil War had fallen from the peak when they attracted artists of the caliber of Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso. But passions surrounding the conflict remained high even 20 years after its conclusion as indicated in this Fred Zinnemann (The Sundowners, 1960) drama.

Manuel Artiquez (Gregory Peck) plays a disillusioned guerilla living in exile in France, who has ceased raiding the Spanish border town under the thrall of corrupt Captain Vinolas (Anthony Quinn). Artiguez has two compelling reasons to return home – a young boy Paco asks him to revenge the death of his father at the hands of Vinolas and his mother is dying. But Artiquez is disinclined to do either. Heroism has lost its luster. He has grown more fearful and prefers to live out his life drinking wine and casting lustful glances at young women.

In France he enjoys a freedom he would be denied in Spain. He is not hidden. Ask anybody in the street where he lives and they will tell you. This is a crusty old soldier, unshaven, long past finding refuge in memories, but not destroyed either by regret. There is a fair bit of plot, some of it stretching incredulity. The action sequence at the end, conducted in complete silence, is very well done, but mostly this is a character piece.

This is not the upstanding Gregory Peck of his Oscar-winning To Kill a Mockingbird. He is a considerably less attractive character, burnt-out, shabby, grizzled, lazy, easily duped, unwilling to risk his life to see his mother. We have seen aspects of the Anthony Quinn character before but he brings a certain humanity to his villain, bombastic to hide his own failings, coarse but occasionally charming, suitably embarrassed when caught by his wife visiting his mistress and praying earnestly to God to deliver Artiquez into his hands. Omar Sharif has the most conflicted character, forced by conscience to help an enemy of the Church.

However, two elements in the picture don’t make much sense. Paco tears up a letter (critical to the plot) to Artiquez which I just cannot see a young boy doing, not in an era when children respected and feared their elders. And I am also wondering what was it about Spain that stopped directors filming it in color. This is the third Spain-set picture I have reviewed in this blog after The Happy Thieves and The Angel Wore Red. For the first two I can see perhaps budget restrictions being the cause, but given the stars involved – Rex Harrison and Rita Hayworth in the first and Ava Gardner and Dirk Bogarde in the second – hardly facing the production dilemmas of a genuine B-picture.

But Behold a Pale Horse was a big-budget effort from Columbia and while black-and-white camerawork may achieve an artistic darkness of tone it feels artificial. This was never going to be the colorful Spain of fiestas and tourist vistas but it would have perhaps been more inviting to audiences had it taken more advantage of ordinary scenery.

J.P. Miller (Days of Wine and Roses, 1962) adapted the film from the novel Killing a Mouse on Sunday by Emeric Pressburger who in tandem with Michael Powell had made films like Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948). The film caused calamity for Columbia in Spain, the depiction of Vinolas with a mistress and taking bribes so upset the authorities that all the studio’s movies were banned.

Lost Command (1966) ***

Derring-do and heroism were the 1960s war movie default with enemies clearly signposted in black-and-white. This one doesn’t fall into that category, in fact doesn’t fall into any category, being more concerned with the military and political machinations pervasive on both sides in war. Movies about revolutions generally succeed if they are filmed from the perspective of the insurrectionists. When they take the side of the oppressor, almost automatically they lose the sympathy vote, The Green Berets (1968) in this decade being a typical example, although the sheer directorial skill of Francis Coppola turned that notion on its head with Apocalypse Now (1979) when slaughter was accompanied by majesty.

In the 1950s-1960s the French had come off worse in two uprisings, Vietnam and Algiers. This movie covers the tail end of the former and the middle of the latter and it’s a curious hybrid, part Dirty Dozen, part John Wayne, part dirty tricks on either side, with a few ounces of romance thrown in.

Col Raspeguy (Anthony Quinn, in unlikely athletic mode – that’s him leaping in the poster) is the officer of a paratroop regiment who sees out the debacle of the final battle of the French war in Vietnam, loses his commission, and then, reprieved, is posted to Algeria, where the fight for independence is in full swing, with a ragbag of rejects plus some faithful comrades from his previous command. In any spare moment, the colonel can be seen keeping fit, doing handstands, swinging his arms, puffing out his chest, and a fair bit of running (presumably to avoid the contention that Quinn was too old for this part). Sidekick Capt Esclavier (Alain Delon) is a bit too moralistic for the dangerous business of war, plays his sidekick. The colonel is an ideal anti-hero for a hero, an officer who ignores, challenges or just plain overrides authority, adored by his men, hated by the enemy, ruthless when it matters.

The brutal realism, which sometimes makes you quail, is nonetheless the best thing about the picture, no holds barred here when it comes to portraying the ugly side of battle. The training in The Dirty Dozen is a doddle compared to here, soldiers who don’t move fast enough are actually shot, rather than just threatened with live ammunition, and there’s no second chance for the incompetent – at the passing out ceremony several are summarily dismissed. The only kind of Dirty Dozen-type humor is a soldier who fills his canteen with wine. Otherwise, this is a full-on war.

Battles are fought guerilla style, the enemy as smart as the Vietnamese, catching out the French in ambushes, using infiltrators sympathetic to the cause and terrorism. Unlike Apocalypse Now where the infantry appeared as dumb as they come, relying on strength in numbers and superior weaponry, Lost Command at least has an officer who understands strategy and most of what ensues involves clever thinking. The battles, played out in the mountains, usually see the French having to escape tricky situations rather than blasting through the enemy like cavalry, although having sneakily pinched a mayor’s helicopter gives Raspeguy’s team the opportunity to strafe the enemy on the rare occasions when they can actually be found, their camouflage professionally done.

Arab rebel chief Lt Mahidi (George Segal, unrecognizable under a slab of make-up apart from his flashing white teeth), matches the French in terms of tactics and brutality, shooting one of his own men for disobeying orders. His sister Aicha (Claudia Cardinale) is the femme fatale making a play for Esclavier, though he’d have to be a lot dumber than the audience to fall for her obvious ploys (guess what, he is dumber). With both sides determined to win at all costs, atrocities are merely viewed as collateral damage, so in that respect it’s an unflinching take on war.

The picture could have done with another 15 minutes or so to allow characters to breathe and develop some of the supporting cast. The movie did well in France but sank in the States where my guess is few of the audience would even know where Algeria was. Gilles Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers, out the same year, gave the revolutionaries the leading role.

For the most part Anthony Quinn (Guns for San Sebastian, 1968) is in bull-in-a-china-shop form but his character is more rounded in a romantic interlude with a countess (Michele Morgan), his ability to outsmart his superior officers, his camaraderie with his own soldiers and, perhaps more surprisingly, the ongoing exercise routines which reveal, rather than a keep-fit fanatic, an ageing soldier worried about running out of steam. Alain Delon (Texas Across the River, 1967) is entrusted with the morally ambivalent role. George Segal (The Quiller Memorandum, 1966) presumably didn’t realize how culturally inappropriate he would be.

Mark Robson (The Prize, 1963) lets worthy get in the way of action. Screenwriter Nelson Gidding (Nine Hours to Rama, 1963) had the same problem.

Set the politics aside and it becomes much more interesting.

Marco the Magnificent (1965) **

Small wonder this flopped even with the requisite all-star cast of Omar Sharif (Doctor Zhivago, 1965), Anthony Quinn (Zorba the Greek, 1964), Orson Welles (Austerlitz, 1960), Horst Buchholz (Nine Hours to Rama, 1963) and Elsa Martinelli (Hatari! 1962). Oddly enough, Quinn comes close to saving it. Although initially laughable, presented as a cross between Yul Brynner’s long-lost brother and Ming the Merciless, he tones down the trademark rasp and growl to deliver a powerful performance.

Of course, we also have to take the word of Marco Polos (Horst Buchholz) that he had all these adventures and that he did encounter The Old Man of the Mountains (Akim Tamiroff) and The Lady with the Whip (Elsa Martinelli). The former wore a mask of gold and if you ever saw his face that meant you were in for the chop. And he had a nice line in sonic torture. The latter chooses love above betrayal.

*The name of Marco Polo either meant so little to German audiences or the title change was due to the producers hoping to capitalize on the success of “Genghis Khan.”*

Love – or sex I guess – is a consistent theme. Marco is chosen for this adventure – whose main aim is to get a message to Mongol overlord Kublai Khan, now the ruler of China, that Italy, the dominant western power at the time, wants peace – in part because he is so handsome. He has no other pedigree that I can see. At the age of 20, he’s best described as an idler. But his father Nicolo (Massimo Girotto) is a renowned trader and has ventured along the Silk road to Samarkand.

But, would you believe it, following that old western genre trope where there’s always someone wanting to sabotage relations between Native Americans and soldiers, the idea of peace doesn’t sit well with everyone. Spies report on Marco’s every move and attempt to stop him completing his mission and when he reaches China discovers that another Mongol warlord Prince Nayam (Robert Hossein) prefers the traditional method of conquest, with the raping and pillaging that goes with it, rather than growing the economy through peaceful means.

Just as well Marco is so good-looking because whenever he is in a tight spot he is rescued by a beautiful woman, including the aforementioned Lady with the Whip, and, would you believe it, Princess Gogatine (Lynne Sue Moon), who has been chosen as a potential wife for Kublai Khan (Anthony Quinn). Multiple romance is the name of the game here – Arab chieftain Emir Alaou (Omar Sharif) has twenty-six wives, one of whom has the temerity to complain at his expanding harem.

Mostly, it’s a travelog – with a bucket of travel cliches thrown in such as Russian dancing – punctuated by occasional peril. But beyond looking handsome and putting his seductive powers to the test, there’s not much else for Marco to do.

The screenplay is so limited and haphazard you get the impression it must have been heavily truncated, that there was a three-hour roadshow covering the ground in a more sensible manner, but that appears not to have been the case. Producer Raoul Levy (who wrote and produced And God Created Woman, 1956, and wrote, produced and directed The Defector, 1966) ) spent so much assembling the cast he scrimped on a workable screenplay and was so intent on ramming it with oddly-named characters (Old Man of the Mountains and Lady with the Whip) that he took his eye off the narrative ball.

The final section with Kublai Khan trying to integrate through his own marriage the conquering Mongols and the conquered Chinese and dispensing with war in favor of peace makes more sense but by then you are so exhausted by the multiplicity of star names contributing nothing and the meandering plot that you have just about given up.

And it wasn’t as if Levy didn’t have time to get a screenplay in place. He’d been working on this since 1962 when an earlier version starring Alain Delon (Once a Thief, 1965) was abandoned when finance ran out. One of the most expensive French movies ever made, and extensively funded by Levy, it proved such a flop, it wiped him out financially and contributed to his suicide.

The inconsistency may have been caused by having three directors – Levy, Denys de la Patellier (Caroline Cherie, 1968) and Noel Howard (D’Ou Viens-Tu, Johnny, 1963).

All-star cast wasted, promise unfulfilled.

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Heller in Pink Tights (1960) ****

Taken on its own merits, George Cukor’s western is a highly enjoyable romp. Hardly your first choice for the genre, Cukor ignores the tenets laid down by John Ford and Howard Hawks and the film is all the better for it. Although there are stagecoach chases, gunfighters and Native Americans, don’t expect upstanding citizens rescuing good folk. Instead of stunning vistas Cukor chooses to spend his budget on lavish costumes and sets.

You can see he knows how to use a colour palette, and there is red or a tinge of it in every scene (to the extent of rather a lot of red-haired folk), and although this might not be your bag – and you may not even notice it – it is what makes a Cukor production so lush. The film might start with comedic overtones but by the end you realise it is serious after all.

Angela (Sophia Loren) is the coquettish leading lady and Tom (Anthony Quinn) the actor-manager of a theatrical company managing to stay one step ahead of its creditors, in the main thanks her propensity for spending money she doesn’t have. Of course, once gunfighter Clint (Steve Forrest) wins Loren in a poker game, things go askew.

Anthony Quinn (Guns for San Sebastian, 1968) had never convinced me as a romantic lead, but here there is genuine charisma between the two stars. Sophia Loren (Five Miles to Midnight, 1962) is at her most alluring, in dazzling outfits and occasionally in costumes as skin-tight as censors would allow in those days, but with a tendency to use beauty as a means to an end, with the conviction that a smile (or occasionally more) will see her out of any scrape. There is no doubt she is totally beguiling. But that is not enough for Quinn, as she is inclined to include him in her list of dupes.

While primarily a love story and a tale of theatrical woes set against the backdrop of a western, when it comes to dealing with the tropes of the genre Cukor blows it out of the water. We open with a stagecoach chase but our heroes are only racing away from debt until they reach the safety of a state line. We have a gunfighter, but instead of a shoot-out being built up, minutes ticking by as tension rises, Cukor’s gunman just shoots people in sudden matter-of-fact fashion.

Best of all, George Cukor (Justine, 1969) extracts tremendous comedy from the overbearing actors, each convinced of their own genius, and the petty jealousies and intrigue that are endemic in such a troupe. An everyday story of show-folk contains as much incipient drama as the more angst-ridden A Star Is Born (1954), his previous venture into this arena.

From the guy who gave us The Philadelphia Story (1940) with all its sophisticated comedy, it’s quite astonishing that Cukor extracts so much from a picture where the laughs, mostly from throwaway lines, are derived from less substantial material. Quinn (his third film in a row with Cukor) has never been better, no Oscar-bait this time round, just a genuine guy, pride always to the forefront, king of his domain inside his tiny theatrical kingdom, out of his depth in the big wide world, and unable to contain the “heller.”

I won’t spoil it for you but there are two wonderful character-driven twists that set the world to rights.

There is a tremendous supporting cast with former silent film star Ramon Novarro (Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, 1925) as a duplicitous businessman, former child star Margaret O’Brien, another star from a previous era in Edmund Lowe (Cukor’s Dinner at Eight, 1933), and Eileen Eckhart. Dudley Nichols (Stagecoach, 1939) and Walter Bernstein, who wrote a previous Loren romance That Kind of Women (1959) and had a hand in The Magnificent Seven (1960), do an excellent job of adapting the Louis L’Amour source novel Heller with a Gun, especially considering that contained an entirely different story.

Without a doubt it’s Cukor’s picture but Loren and Quinn combine to make it such a believable delight.