Amazing the tension that can emanate from one turn of a card. Or, more correctly, waiting for one. Only problem is we’re two-thirds through the movie before high-stakes poker begins – the pot nudging £250,00 (close on a cool £5 million now). Mostly, the earlier tension derives from not knowing what the hell is going on in this enjoyable thriller made at the height of the Swinging Sixties as playboy gambler Barney (Warren Beatty), a walking Carnaby St model driving an Aston Martin DB5, tilts the odds dramatically in his favor.
Barney is a gambler but the problem with gambling is the odds. They can be against you too much. So Barney decides to turn himself into a burglar, the kind that can clamber over rooftops, abseil between buildings, and break into – a printing business called Kaleidoscope. This just happens to print the playing cards supplied to all the major European casinos. So Barney does a little doctoring of the master printing plates. Bingo, the odds are a bit more even now that he knows what cards are coming out of the shoe – he plays chemin de fer (as it is known in posh casinos; pontoon or 21 to you and me).
While cleaning up he bumps again into fashion designer Angel – their original meet-cute taking place in a traffic jam – who he dated once in London. Unbeknownst to him, she is on a scouting mission, looking to snare the kind of high-rolling gambler who can take on and completely fleece drugs kingpin Harry (Eric Porter) being pursued by her father Manny (Clive Revill), a cop who, rather than waste so much time collecting the required evidence to put the villain behind bars, decides it would easier done by making him broke. Unable to pay his debts, some other villain would put him out of business in the traditional cemented-boot fashion.
It takes a while for the movie to line up all its ducks in a row, mainly by holding back the vital information the audience requires. But the audience is privy to details of the way Manny works that Barney is not. Even for ruthless villains, Manny has a peculiar calling card, one that would make any gambler think twice about entering his lair. Of course, it doesn’t take long for Manny to rumble Barney’s game so the stakes are much higher than the charmer imagines.
Throw in as much fashion as London was capable of generating at this time, the burgeoning romance, some exotic European locations, a castle with a moat, and the usual tourist guide stuff of red buses, Big Ben, Piccadilly Circus, pubs and Tower Bridge and you have all the ingredients of an easy on the eye thriller.
A bit over-reliant on star power. That is, if you don’t need Beatty to do much more than be Beatty, all teeth and charm. At this point Beatty’s career looked as if it was fast approaching its end. The box office success of Splendor in the Grass (1961) had been followed by a string of flops, romantic dramas and comedies that should have had audiences queuing up plus an occasional wild card like Arthur Penn’s Mickey One (1965), the biggest flop of all. He does make an engaging crook, and he never loses his screen charisma here, but there ain’t quite the right number of twists that moviegoers weaned on the likes of Topkapi (1964) had come to expect.
Hollywood had been doing its best to position Susannah York as a top box office attraction and she had snagged leading female roles in The 7th Dawn (1964) opposite William Holden and Stanley Baker in Sands of the Kalahari (1965) but she was recovering from the colossal flop of Scruggs (1965) by ‘poet of the cinema’ David Hart. Kaleidoscope offered the kind of role York could do with her eyes closed. So while the screen pair were not exactly sleep-walking it was not the kind of story that was going to create sparks.
Character actor Clive Revill (Fathom, 1967) and Eric Portman (The Pumpkin Eater, 1964) take more leeway with their roles, the latter almost chewing he scenery, the former content with just chewing his lips. Look out for Jane Birkin (Blow-Up, 1966) and British television stalwarts Yootha Joyce, George Sewell and John Junkin.
The title would have been more enigmatic, original meaning of images twisted out of shape, had it not also applied, straightforwardly, to the card-making company. Giving Harry the surname of Dominion seems overkill.
Director Jack Smight (No Way to Treat a Lady, 1969) came to this after twisty private eye picture Harper/The Moving Target (1966), a big hit starring Paul Newman, but this is too lightweight a feature to command such interest, but he does keep the story rolling along and it’s an effortless watch and it has a certain offbeat quality. The screenplay was fashioned by Robert Harrington and Jane-Howard Hammerstein, making their movie debut, who also co-wrote Wait until Dark (1967). It was also the debut for Winkast Productions, the Jerry Gershwin-Elliott Kastner production team who went on to make Where Eagles Dare (1968).
As dramatic a box office flop as this movie scarcely deserves a book as superb.
In quite extraordinary detail, author Simon Lewis discusses every aspect of the making of the film, from initial set-up to release, by way of analysis of dozens of separate scenes through to rarely discussed elements like the editing and mixing, and even the myth of the missing longer version and the importance of wooden boxes (as illustrated by the front cover). It might have helped the movie’s commercial chances, and not put too much of a dent in the ultimately massive budget of $26.1 million, if producer Dino De Laurentiis has snagged original dream team of Richard Burton (Napoleon) and Peter O’Toole (Wellington), both of whom carried much greater box office marquee than Rod Steiger and Christopher Plummer.
Burton was never really a possibility but by 1968 O’Toole was “practically set” although turning it down because he thought it would flop. John Huston, who had just completed The Bible (1966) for De Laurentiis, was original choice for director and got so far as being involved in the screenplay being written by H.A.L Craig (Anzio, 1968). When he dropped out, Gilles Pontecorvo (The Battle of Algiers, 1966) was briefly in the frame. However, a six-hour version of War and Peace (1965) put Sergei Bondarchuk in pole position.
Requiring thousands of properly trained and preferably “celluloid-seasoned” troops to carry out disciplined manoeuvres rather than extras, De Laurentiis was in negotiation with Turkey, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria before plumping for Russia, whose production arm Mosfilm pumped in $8 million (later rising in line with budget increases). Paramount and Columbia contributed a combined $7 million with worldwide rights selling for a total of $25 million. Once filming began, Paramount chiefs Charles Bludhorn and Robert Evans, watching elements of shooting, were so taken with what they saw they wished they had invested more. Evans was reportedly “enthralled by hours of film material.” Craig’s screenplay was augmented by the director and Vittorio Bonicelli as well as uncredited contributions by Jean Anouilh (Becket, 1964), Samuel Marx and Edward O. Marsh, not to mention additions by the two main actors. Steiger pocketed $385,000, Plummer $300,000, Craig $121,000 but Anouilh only $21,000. Gordon Highlanders pipers and drummers picked up £7 a day.
Lewis is at his best when forensically examining particular scenes, for example, the Duchess of Richmond Ball which used 4,000 candles inserted into candelabras, the slightest draught causing these to melt and drip wax on performers, a carpet used to get camera shots from a very low level.
Steiger played Napoleon almost as a dead man walking, having got hold of a copy of the French Emperor’s autopsy which revealed advanced cirrhosis and gonorrhoea. Steiger and Bondarchuk met the night before to iron out ideas for the following day but Steiger was not above forcing the director’s hand by in one instance the actor removing his trousers to ensure he could only be shot in close-up. Orson Welles matched Steiger in trickery. Only hired for two days, Welles extended his employment by insisting on doing his own make-up which of course was never up to scratch and required amendment. And in terms of movie trickery, Steiger was required to sit on a wooden box on his horse to ensure he could be kept in focus. Jack Hawkins dispensed with the horse altogether – he was either atop a box or on top of stilts, as he was unsteady on an animal.
In the absence of CGI of the kind Ridley Scott could employ for his battle scenes, the real soldiers were occasionally augmented by mannequins. Five thousand were made, two real soldiers at either end of a row held eight mannequins in place by the use of a single wooden plank which “allowed all regiments to march forward.” Among the many wonderful candid pictures in this lavishly illustrated tome – 200 photographs, many never seen before – is one of three girls staring at the mannequins as well as photos of Steiger and Hawkins on their boxes.
The Waterloo battlefield had one of the biggest sets ever built. A total of 17,000 soldiers, mostly from Siberia and including 2,000 cavalry, lived in a tented city a mile away. Steiger noted: “It would have taken assistant directors three days to put untrained men, mere extras, into position. When they broke for lunch it would be another three days to arrange them again. These guys are superb.” Real soldiers working with their actual commanders was the difference between waste and superb. Having a general in charge of the troops often created issues. Bondarchuk would select the horses he wanted based on the effect he wished to achieve with the light, demands often obstructed by the commander if it meant the chosen horses had not been properly fed. “I will order soldiers – but how do I order animals?” was the dry comment from the army chief. .
Although the battlefield was primarily authentic – mud for one scene created by pumping two days’ worth of water into the soil before cavalry churned up the area – there were occasions when filming conformed to the Hollywood norm. “The use of fiery explosions had been cinematic shorthand for battle scenes long before Waterloo” when in reality these would be minimal. “Most ammunition that was fired comprised large iron balls and so low was its speed it was possible to watch their progress.”
The famous charge of the Scots Greys was described thus in the script: “they came straight into camera – like centaurs in their magnificence.” The sight of 350 Arabian mounts travelling at breakneck speed was captured by use of a specially constructed railway powered by a diesel locomotive. Five cameras were sited in different positions on the train. The famous slow-motion effect – possibly the most exhilarating moment in the picture – was achieved by over-cranking the camera at 100 frames per second which slowed down what you saw by a factor of four.
Perhaps the best reveal regarding movie trickery was the moon above Wellington as he rode past the carnage. It comprised “special silver paper for front projection – 3M – like shark skin. You put one light on it and it reflects ten times brighter.” The moon was shown as one quarter less than full since the effect of a full moon would be harder to carry off. “Blue ink made some spots as moon craters.” The fake moon was suspended with one wire on top and two left and right to prevent it from moving, then one light was projected onto it.
Back cover of the book.
Lewis rebuts the myth of the missing longer version. He reckons this probably came about because over 300,000 feet of film – 55 hours – was shot and the first rough cut was five hours long. The final cut was 133 minutes – not much longer than if you had worked out the length by counting the pages of the screenplay – and release cuts varied because, for example, the British censors cut out 28 seconds of horse falls and the ending includes 50 seconds of music over the credits. It was never shown with the intermission which was de rigeur at the time for longer roadshows and would have, artificially, inflated the running time. There was some confusion over the final print because a novelisation by Frederick E. Smith included some scenes that didn’t make it into the final print, and Smith’s book, written of necessity before the film appeared, would have used as its main reference tool the screenplay. But Lewis spends a whole chapter explaining why a longer cut never existed.
The world premiere was held on 26 October 1970 in London where the movie released as a roadshow (i.e. separate performances) was a huge success. It ran for a few weeks short of an entire year in the London West End, breaking box office records at the Odeon Leicester Square and the Metropole where it opened on December 3rd, 1970, before shifting to the Columbia on June 17, 1971, and then a final week at the Odeon Kensington from September 30 1971. But audience appeal in the United States was at the other end of the spectrum. It went from a strong opening week of $25,436 at the Criterion in New York to just $1,775 in its fourth week, and nationwide racked up only $1.4 million in rentals (the studio share of the box office). It was derided in France in part because the film was about the defeat of a legend and the French could not come to terms with the idea that it was directed by a Russian.
Where most “making of” books concentrate on the stars and the director, Lewis goes into fantastic detail about all aspects of the production, the chapter on editing and mixing an education in itself. There’s a chapter on how historically accurate the film actually was. The author was helped by the discovery of a diary kept during production by actor Richard Heffer who played the small part Mercer. But Lewis also managed to make contact with Dino De Laurentiis’s daughters, Raffaella and Veronica, and around two dozen people connected with the film in some way, and clearly examined every scrap of information available on the picture. The Notes are another mine of information.
Even if the film is not at the top of your must-watch list, this book should go to the top of your must-read list.
Waterloo, The Making of An Epic, The Spectacular Behind-the-Scenes Story of a Movie Colossus by Simon Lewis is published by Bear Manor Media, 534 pages, illustrated (B&W), Hardback, Paperback & Ebook, ISBN 978-1-62933-832-3 .
I was probably as surprised as anyone to discover that far from being a flop, Secret Ceremony was in fact a hit, taking $3 million in rentals in the U.S., ranking among the Top 20 foreign movies at the French box office, and hitting the target in Italy, Germany and Australia. Yet, outside of France, it was universally derided by the critics.
Joseph Losey (The Servant, 1964) held the unusual position of being a cult director working in Britain. He was the “object of a vociferous cult….his following grown in scope and size with each new film” and, conversely, as his popularity among the arthouse fraternity increased, he attracted more critical ire. Courting popularity by entering the spy genre with Modesty Blaise (1966) and linking up with the Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton box office colossus for Boom! (1967) seemed to go against the critical grain. Losey ascribed the critical coruscation Boom! received as less to do with the merits of the film itself than “people using the opportunity to launch personal attacks on the Burtons.”
Boom! had been packaged John Heyman, who coupled acting as agent for Burton and Taylor with being the producer, not necessarily a good combination. Universal was convinced it had “Virginia Woolf in color,” a reference to the previous enormous hit, although the box office told a different story. Jay Kanter, Universal’s London production chief who greenlit the project, commented: “When the Burtons were involved a lot of my judgement was colored by the magnitude of the star she (Taylor) was considered to be.”
So it was something of a surprise to find Losey and Taylor teaming up again for Secret Ceremony. Of course, it may have been the money, Taylor at this point still holding out for a million-dollar purse. Heyman said, “We were regarded as whizz-kids just for making two consecutive films with Elizabeth Taylor and bringing them in under budget.”
Losey’s world reflects a “highly selective form of naturalism.” Except for Accident (1966), from Sleeping Tiger (1954) through to Secret Ceremony, Losey worked with the same design consultant/production designer Richard MacDonald whom the director treated as a sounding board, to “test (ideas) and reject them in the telling.” This is a director for whom “patterned exoticism is extraordinarily precise.” A more important collaborator had been playwright Harold Pinter who had fashioned The Servant (1963) and Accident, bringing to both films his distinctive ear for dialogue. He was hardly required for Boom! whose screenwriter was the even more famous playwright Tennessee Williams (A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951) and for Secret Ceremony Losey went elsewhere for his screenwriter.
Losey was among the string of American talent who taken refuge in Britain in the wake of the anti-Communist hysteria of the late 1940s/early 1950s – others included producer Carl Foreman (The Guns of Navarone, 1961), and directors Cy Enfield (Sands of the Kalahari, 1966) and Edward Dmytryk (Mirage, 1965). By the time of Secret Ceremony, Losey had been working in Britain for nearly a quarter of a century and established himself as a director of distinctive vision, a critical fave in his adopted homeland, wildly appreciated by the French, with an occasional box office home run.
But although regarded as a British film-maker, Losey made Secret Ceremony – and Boom! for that matter – exclusively with Hollywood money, the budget 100 per cent supplied by Universal, that studio having decided that anything coming out of Britain would appeal to younger audiences. There was an untapped pool of talent available in British television who could be hired for substantially less than their U.S. counterparts. In three years Universal’s London production unit, headed by Jay Kanter, spent $30 million on a dozen projects. The biggest budget was allocated to Boom! with $3.9 million followed by $3.5 million to The Countess from Hong Kong (1967) starring Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren. The Night of the Following Day (1968) cost $1.5 million as did Fahrenheit 451 (1967) and Three into Two Won’t Go (1968). Secret Ceremony came in at $2.45 million.
Robert Mitchum and Joseph Losey went way back to a time in Hollywood when both were working their way up the RKO ladder. As well as Losey, Mitchum had been friends with many who would fall foul of the blacklist including screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, Dmytryk and Howard Koch (Casablanca, 1942). When Mitchum’s dalliance with drugs brought him a jail sentence, Losey visited him and brought him chilli from a famed restaurant.
Mitchum was recommended for the role in Secret Ceremony by Roddy McDowell, a friend of Taylor, who had been working with the actor on Henry Hathaway western Five Card Stud (1968). Mitchum received the job offer while on holiday in Mexico. For two weeks’ work he would earn $150,000. The role itself was scarcely onerous, drawing on aspects of the loathsome character he had created for Night of the Hunter (1955), but it did require an English accent of some kind and to his amusement Mitchum found himself on the telephone, like a salesman listing available product, going through the variety of accents he bring to the part.
Whether it was almost having to sell himself to the director or some previous incident, Mitchum and Losey did not resume their friendship. In fact, their relationship was the polar opposite. “He was very unpleasant,” recalled the director, “it was extremely hard for me to work with him.” Losey never found the source of Mitchum’s contempt. “In some curious way I must have made some mistake with him; I don’t know what it was.” Even attempts to recall Mitchum’s collaboration with Charles Laughton on Night of the Hunter failed to break the ice. Losey believed that Mitchum played tough to mask “an intense sense of failure.”
Mitchum wasn’t above sneaking away from the set. On one occasion taking himself off to visit old friend Robert Parrish, he knocked back some tequila and complained about the movie. On the Holland section of the shoot, Mitchum got into a food fight with a hotel diner. In the end, Losey was so disturbed by Mitchum that he was grateful when he departed as per contract despite the fact that some scenes had not been shot, including, according to the actor, the bathtub sequence, which would have accentuated the incest theme rather than the hint of lesbianism. Mitchum’s epitaph to the movie was that he talked Mia Farrow out of True Grit (1969) claiming Hathaway was a terror to work with.
The bath scene turned out to be the cause of some marital anguish. The set was cleared for its shooting of the scene after Taylor froze on emerging from her dressing room to see so many people gathered. But this was hardly Taylor at her beautiful best as she had been gaining weight. Even so Losey filmed her at times as though she was the grand Hollywood star with hair framing her face and the camera glimpsing her cleavage, but at other times her weight was a source of determining her character, when she eats with her mouth full and belches.
Halfway through filming Taylor was afflicted by severe physical pain and she was rushed to hospital for a hysterectomy, an operation that lasted over three and a half hours. Complications followed the surgery and she was given drugs that caused her to hallucinate. Writing in his diaries, Richard Burton noted: “This is the first time I’ve seen a loved one in screaming agony for two days, hallucinated by drugs, sometimes knowing who I was and sometimes not, a virago one minute, an angel the next.” She went from commanding him to leave the room to crying out for him to return. Sometimes she believed she was on board their yacht, other times that a film was playing on the switched-off television set.
The loss of her uterus may have affected her performance since in the film she plays a mother who has lost a child and in reality was a woman who had lost the ability to have another child.
The film exacerbated the tensions in the Burton-Taylor marriage. It was usually Taylor who was the one who had to keep a watchful eye on her partner in case he strayed. In this case, ironically, it was Burton who exhibited the jealous streak. The way Losey had whispered in the actress’s ear to build up her confidence during the bath scene while getting rid of extraneous crew found its way back to Burton who misinterpreted the action as intimacy. “My wife and Joe Losey are having a professional love affair,” he claimed. He spent a lot more time than usual on the set of his wife’s film. He even offered to take on the Mitchum role.
Losey had long been fascinated by a strange-looking house in West Kensington, London, and managed to hire it for the shoot. Debenham House in Addison Road, between Holland Park Avenue and High St Kensington, is one of a handful of truly Gothic London buildings. The church used was in Little Venice, St Mary Magdalene in Rowington Close, also in London, and the antique shop was located at the corner of St Stephen’s Mews and Westbourne Green. When the production shifted to Holland it was to the coastal town of Noordwjik with use made of the Grand Hotel there.
By the time the film opened, Taylor found herself in the middle of a storm over foul language (“gutter talk” in Variety parlance) for which she was seen as the “chief exponent.” It was an ironic position for Taylor to find herself in given her expletive-ridden performance in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) had not only been critically acclaimed and a huge box office hit but seen as helping to break down the censorship barriers. However, it appeared that the “urination expression” and a word that was prefixed by “bull” were beyond the pale and Variety proclaimed that it was “evidently assumed that if a star of her (Taylor’s) magnitude can be gotten to speak the words, everyone else – actors, actresses, distributors, exhibitors and the public – will be accustomed to strong lingo in pix.” It was hardly coincidence that on the same day that this article was the leading story on the trade paper’s front page that inside six out of seven New York critics gave Secret Ceremony a drubbing, the exception being Renata Adler of the New York Times who called it Losey’s “best film in years.”
Even producer Heyman had his doubts about the material. “It should have been the story of two people who need and trust each other,” he said, “until one leans on the other a little bit more than she should. Unfortunately, the kind of sympathy which Losey shows for people in real life was absent from the relationship which is what I think made it unacceptable.” He summed up, “A cold picture.” (This has the taint of someone trying to work out why the film was a critical failure because otherwise I think Heyman got it exactly right for the movie I saw I did not view as cold nor unacceptable.)
And neither, strangely enough, did the public. Although making a poor showing in Britain, it was not a box office disaster. That was averted by astute marketing, the potency of the stars and a public who, not for the first time, ignored the critics. The movie broke records when it opened at the New York arthouse pair, the Sutton and the New Embassy, and further afield in cities like Dallas. Arthouse success would have been anticipated but nobody would have expected that when it went wide in New York the second week improved upon the first. As well as a decent showing in the States, it hit the ground running around the world, and “ought to be credited” as one of Universal’s “most successful pictures from either domestic or foreign source.” In the French box office rankings, it placed above The Detective (1968) and Hang ‘Em High (1968) and just below The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). Acclaimed by that country’s critics, the Academie du Cinema named it best foreign film with Taylor and Farrow taking the gongs for best foreign actresses.
When Universal sold the movie to television for $1.25 million, a fee which certainly provided the picture with a decent extra profit margin, fourteen minutes were cut out and replaced by a 500 lines of extra dialog and a filmed discussion of the psychological issues raised, prompting Losey to demand his name be removed, claiming it “exactly reversed the meaning an intention of my film.”
SOURCES: Lee Server, Robert Mitchum, Baby I Don’t Care, (Faber and Faber, 2001) p169, 232, 509-512; Sam Kashner & Nancy Schoenberger, Furious Love, (JR Books, 2011)p240, 242-243,2; Alexander Walker, Hollywood England, (Orion Books, 2005) p200, 345, 354-257; “Screen: Secret Ceremony,” New York Times, October 26, 1968; “Joseph Losey Following Has Grown,” Box Office, October 28, 1968, pE1; “No End to Gutter Talk,” Variety, October 30, 1968, p1; “N.Y. Critics This Week: Ouch,” Variety, October 30, 1968, p12; “Secret Ceremony Sets House Mark at Sutton, New Embassy,” Box Office, November 4, 1968, pE2; “Secret Ceremony Setting New Records in Dallas,” Box Office, January 13, 1969, pSW1; “This Week’s N.Y. Showcases,” Variety, February 5, 1969, p9; “Jay Kanter,” Variety, February 26, 1969, p78; “Kanter No Martyr,” Variety, March 19, 1969, p26; “Ceremony, Z Nab Kudos,” Variety, May 7, 1969, p107; “French Filmgoing,” Variety, January 28, 1970, P27; “Paris First Runs,” Variety, April 29, 1970, p76; “Losey Wants His Credit Blipped from Vidversion of U’s Secret Ceremony,” Variety, September 16, 1970, p70; “All-Time Film Rental Champs,” Variety, October 15, 1990, pM184.
Enjoyed this sequel to Deadlier Than the Male (1967) far more than I expected because it sits in its own little world at some point removed from the espionage shenanigans that dominated the decade. Hugh (nee Bulldog) Drummond is neither secret agent nor involved in espionage high jinks, instead employed in the more down-to-earth domain of insurance investigator, albeit where millions are at stake. Although his overall adversary is male, the smooth-talking Carl Petersen (James Villiers), adopting a series of disguises for most of this picture, the real threat comes from a pair of villainesses in the shape of Helga (Daliah Lavi) and Pandora (Beba Loncar – the latter, yes, having her own deadly Box. If anything, this pair are a shade more sadistic than Irma and Penelope from the previous outing.
The sequel doubles up – or doubles down – on the female villainy quotient, Petersen having created a race of lethal female robots who spend their time dispatching scientists working on the world’s first supersonic airliner. Global domination is only partly Petersen’s aim since he also stands to gain £8 million ($134 million today) if the plane doesn’t launch on schedule. Livening up proceedings are Flicky (Sydne Rome), a somewhat kooky Drummond fan who has her own agenda, Peregrine “Butch” Carruthers (Ronnie Stevens), a mild-mannered embassy official assigned bodyguard duties, and chef-cum-informant Miss Mary (Robert Morley).
Villiers has found a way of turning an ultrasound device intended originally to aid cheating in a boat race into something far more dangerous. But, of course, for Helga seduction is the main weapon in her armoury, and Drummond’s first sighting of her – a superb cinematic moment – is sitting on the branch of a tree wielding a shotgun. Equally inviting are the squadron of gun-toting mini-skirted lasses guarding Petersen’s rocky fortress.
The movie switches between Helga, Pandora and the robots raining down destruction and Drummond trying to prevent it. Dispensing with the boardroom activities that held up the action in Deadlier than the Male, this is a faster-moving adventure, with Drummond occasionally outwitted by Helga and calling on his own repertoire of tricks. Dialogue is often sharp with Drummond imparting swift repartee.
The action – on land, sea and air – is a vast improvement on the original. The pick is a motorboat duel, followed closely by Drummond in a glider coming up against a venomous aeroplane and saddled with a defective parachute. And there are the requisite fisticuffs. Various malfunctioning robots supply snippets of humour.
Richard Johnson (A Twist of Sand, 1968) truly found his metier in this character and it was a shame this proved to be the last of the series. Although Daliah Lavi never found a dramatic role to equal her turns in The Demon (1963) and The Whip and the Body (1963) and had graced many an indifferent spy picture as well as The Silencers (1966), she is given better opportunity here to show off her talent. Beba Loncar (Cover Girl, 1968) is her make-up obsessed bitchy buddy. Sydne Rome (What?, 1972) makes an alluring her debut. James Villiers (The Touchables, 1968) is the only weak link, lacking the inherent menace of predecessor Nigel Green.
There’s a great supporting cast. Apart from Robert Morley (Genghis Khan, 1965) look out for Maurice Denham (Danger Route, 1967), Adrienne Posta (To Sir, with Love, 1967) and in her first movie in over a decade Florence Desmond (Three Came Home, 1950). The robotic contingent includes Yutte Stensgaard (Lust for a Vampire, 1971), Virginia North (Deadlier Than the Male), Marga Roche (Man in a Suitcase, 1968), Shakira Caine (wife of Sir Michael), Joanna Lumley (television series Absolutely Fabulous), Maria Aitken also making her debut, twins Dora and Doris Graham and Olga Linden (The Love Factor, 1969). Peer closely and you might spot Coronation Street veteran Johnny Briggs.
The whole package is put together with some style by British veteran Ralph Thomas (Deadlier than the Male).
CATCH-UP: Chart through the Blog how Richard Johnson’s career went from supporting player to star via The Pumpkin Eater (1964), Operation Crossbow (1965), Khartoum (1965) Deadlier than the Male (1967), Danger Route (1967) and A Twist of Sand (1968). Conversely, see how Daliah Lavi went from European star of The Demon (1963) and The Whip and the Body (1963) to Hollywood supporting player in Lord Jim (1965).
Network has this on DVD currently at a bargain price in a double bill with Deadlier Than the Male.
Thanks to his language skills unemployed wannabe writer Nicholas (Dirk Bogarde) is recruited as a trainee executive on a too-good-to-be-true job visiting a Czech glass factory only to discover that while engaged on what appears a harmless piece of industrial espionage is in fact considerably more serious. Complications arise when he falls in love with his chauffeur Vlasta (Sylva Koscina) whose father, Simenova (Leo McKern), is head of the Czech secret police.
Eventually, it dawns on Nicholas that he is in the employ of the British secret service headed by Colonel Cunliffe (Robert Morley). Soon he is on the run. Adopting a variety of disguises including waiter, Bavarian villager and milkman he evades capture and makes a pact with Vlasta that neither of them will participate in espionage activities.
The slinky clothing and the image of Bogarde with a gun played up to the James Bond persona, which is of course completely lacking in the film. While Sylva Koscina is seductive at the correct moment she is not overtly so.
A chunk of the comedy arises from misunderstandings, Iron curtain paranoia, the destruction of indestructible glass, password complications, Nicholas’s contact turning out to be a washroom attendant, and from the essentially indolent Nicholas being forced into uncharacteristic action. Soon he is adopting the kind of ruses a secret agent would invent to outwit the opposition, including burning the hand of a man with his cigarette and stealing a milk cart.
The romance is believable enough and Vlasta has the cunning to shake off the secret agent shadowing her, although the ending is unbelievable and might have been stolen from a completely different soppy picture. Although Nicholas is clearly in harm’s way several times that is somewhat undercut by the espionage at a higher level being presented as a gentleman’s game.
There are unnecessary nods to 007 and the kind of gadgets essential to Bond films, although none come Nicholas’s way. But these attempts to modernise what is otherwise an old-fashioned romantic comedy largely fail. Taking a middle ground in comedy rarely works. You have to go for laughs rather than plod around hoping they will miraculously appear. And in fact the comedy is redundant in a plot – innocent caught up in nefarious world – that has sufficient story and interesting enough characters to work.
As well as James Bond, the movie tagline referenced “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” (1965). The American version of “Hot Enough for June” appeared with a new title a year after the British release and was able to take advantage of the film adaptation of the John Le Carre novel.
That the movie is in any way a success owes everything to the casting. Dirk Bogarde, though well into his 40s, still can carry off a character more than a decade younger. He can turn on the diffidence with the flicker of an eyelash. And yet can call on inner strength if required. He is the ideal foil for light comedy, having made his bones in Doctor in the House (1954), reprising the character for Doctor in Distress (1963), while dipping in and out of serious drama such as Victim (1961) and the acclaimed The Servant (1964), released just before this.
In some respects it seems as if two different pictures are passing each other in the night. The Bogarde section, excepting some comedy of misfortune, is played for real while in the background is a bit of a spoof on the espionage drama.
Sylva Koscina (The Secret War of Harry Frigg, 1968) is excellent as the beauty who betrays her country for love. Robert Morley (Topkapi, 1964) and Leo McKern (Assignment K, 1968), although in on the joke, are nonetheless convincing as the secret service bosses. Look out for a host of lesser names in bit parts including Roger Delgado (The Running Man, 1963), Noel Harrison (The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. 1966-1967), Richard Pasco (The Gorgon, 1964) and stars of long-running British television comedies John Le Mesurier, Derek Fowlds and Derek Nimmo.
This was the eighth partnership between director Ralph Thomas and Dirk Bogarde, four in the Doctor series but also three serious dramas in Campbell’s Kingdom (1957), A Tale of Two Cities (1958) and The Wind Cannot Read (1958). In themselves the comedies and the dramas were successful, but mixing the two, as here, less so. Lukas Heller (The Dirty Dozen, 1967) wrote the screenplay based on the Lionel Davidson bestseller.
American distributors were less keen on this picture and it was heavily cut for U.S. release and retitled Agent 8¾ presumably in an effort to cash in on the James Bond phenomenon. I’ve no idea what was lost – or perhaps what was gained – by the editing.
The end result of the original version is a pleasant enough diversion but not enough of the one and not enough of the other to really stick in the mind.
Every new Hayley Mills film was an exercise in transition. Would audiences allow the successful child star – the first for a generation – to grow up? Or would they turn against her as they had Shirley Temple? And would her paymasters Disney in the penultimate film in her contract assist her by offering more mature roles or insist she remained the cute kid? She had already ventured into more adult territory with the British-made The Chalk Garden (1964).
Set on the island of Crete, what starts out as typical Disney travelog – traditional Greek wedding and annual festival parade – soon morphs into darker sub-Hitchcockian territory. Nikki (Hayley Mills) on holiday with her aunt (Joan Greenwood), a collector of folk songs, becomes mixed up with skin diver Mark (Peter McEnery) who appears for reasons unknown to be on the trail of a local man Stratos (Eli Wallach). Young love looks set to blossom except for the villainy afoot. The picture holds on to its various mysteries for too long so exposition comes in a flood in the second act while the third act introduces a new set of characters including British consul (John Le Mesurier) and wealthy yacht owner Madame Habib (legendary silent star Pola Negri).
Along the way some excellent scenes feature: a nerve-tingling high-wire stunt on a revolving windmill, a punch-up on a speeding boat, the drunken wife (Sheila Hancock) of the consul, feral cats in an ancient monument, an old woman thinking she is going crazy when a bottle moves seemingly of its own volition, a hearse doubling as an ambulance, a cowardly leopard and a belter of a slap meted out by Nikki. Mark, physically inhibited by a gunshot wound, has to cede investigation into the nefarious activities to Nikki who in any case has already played the independence card.
Getting all the necessary information to the audience and ensuring various characters are properly introduced without the whole enterprise turning into a turgid mess is a tricky proposition but director James Neilson is equally at home with complicated plot and multi-character scenario from his experience on Dr Syn, Alias the Scarecrow (1963) and with Mills from Summer Magic (1963). And he lets mystery and action take precedence over budding romance, the kiss when it comes hardly going to make an audience swoon, and uses the traditional Greek elements to build up atmosphere.
All in all entertaining enough, especially if viewed as Saturday matinee material, but it’s clear that the leading roles would have worked better if played by older characters as was the case with the source novel by Mary Stewart. Hayley Mills (Pollyanna, 1960) makes a game stab at putting forward a more grown-up persona but relies far too much on the acting tricks that got her into the child-star business in the first place. Even so, once she exerts her independence, she becomes more believable although the idea of a teenager solving a crime creates more problems than it solves in attracting an adult audience.
In his first leading role Peter McEnery (Beat Girl, 1960) impresses. Villainy is a stock in trade for Eli Wallach (The Magnificent Seven, 1960) but here he dials down the brutality. Irene Papas (The Guns of Navarone, 1961) plays his sister and were it not for her husky voice Joan Greenwood (Tom Jones) would have been a dead ringer for a dotty aunt. It’s a treat to see a famed silent star Pola Negri (Shadows of Paris, 1924) putting in an appearance. Character actors John Le Mesurier (The Liquidator, 1965), Andre Morrell (The Vengeance of She, 1968) and Sheila Hancock (Night Must Fall, 1964) complete the British contingent. For British television writer Michael Dyne this proved his sole screenplay.
Catch Up: you can follow Hayley Mills’ unfolding career on the Blog through reviews of Pollyanna, The Truth about Spring (1965), Sky, West and Crooked / The Gypsy Girl (1966) and her adult breakthrough The Family Way (1966). Eli Wallach films reviewed are: The Magnificent Seven, Lord Jim (1965), Genghis Khan (1965) and A Lovely Way to Die (1968).
Decoding the emotional life of mathematics professor Sebastian (Dirk Bogarde) lies at the heart of a spy thriller mainlining on loyalty and trust. The presence of a flotilla of potential Bond girls has opened this picture up to charges of being a spoof, but I saw the mini-skirted incredibly-bright lasses as being a reversal of the standard secretarial pool. And a supposed representation of the “Swinging Sixties” would hold true if shot in the environs of Carnaby St rather than the bulk of locations being arid high-rise buildings.
In roundabout fashion, intrigued after literally bumping into him in Oxford, Rebecca (Susannah York) is recruited into an espionage decoding department staffed entirely by gorgeous (but brainy) women. Among the older employees is chain-smoking left-winger Elsa (Lili Palmer) whom security chief General Phillips (Nigel Davenport) suspects of passing on secrets. When romance ensues with Rebecca, Sebastian dumps dumb pop singer girlfriend Carol (Janet Munro) who is already having an affair and spying on Sebastian.
Sebastian and girlfriend.
Although there is no actual beat-the-clock codes to be unraveled, tensions remains surprisingly high as in the best Alan Turing/Bletchley manner, breakthroughs are slow. There’s an undercurrent of electronic surveillance, eavesdropping on recruits, bugs planted in the houses of even the apparently most trusted personnel, seeds of distrust easily sowed, codes shifting from numbers to sounds. The occasional nod to the contemporary, a disco, pop songs, Rebecca doing a fashion shoot in the middle of traffic, is background rather than center stage.
Sebastian, though worshipped by is female staff, is “more whimsical than predatory.” Nonetheless, introspective and often morose, unable to deal with emotions, it falls to Rebecca to take on the task of sorting him out which naturally leads to complications.
Most reviewers at the time complained it was a victory of style over substance, but somehow they managed to overlook the essential questions about trust the picture asked. That said, it does follow an odd structure, the third act dependent on directorial sleight-of-hand.
Rather unique meet-cute: Sebastian, all set to attend a function at Oxford University, gives Rebecca a word-game test.
Dirk Bogarde (Accident, 1966) is always highly watchable and Susannah York (The Killing of Sister George, 1968) Rebecca catches the eye with an impulsive, slightly kooky character who turns out to be down-to-earth. Nigel Davenport (The Third Secret, 1964) bring his usual cynical malevolence to the party but with the twist of not knowing whose side he is really on. John Gielgud (The Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968) is a delight. There’s a brief appearance by a pipe-smoking Donald Sutherland (The Dirty Dozen, 1967). Janet Munro (Bitter Harvest, 1963) decidedly rids herself of her Disney persona. Miss World Ann Sidney is one of “Sebastian Girls”
In his second picture after The Shuttered Room (1967) David Greene’s direction is mostly competent but the opening aerial tracking shots set the precedence for occasional bursts of style. Jerry Fielding supplied the score.
The maiden voyage of the time-travelling Tardis is triggered by some unexpected pratfall comedy. On board are the venerable doctor (Peter Cushing), his intrepid great-granddaughter Susan (Roberta Tovey) and a fearful pair, granddaughter Barbara (Jennie Linden) and accident-prone Ian (Roy Castle). They land on a petrified planet ruled by robotic Daleks with menacing electronic voices.
The malfunctioning Tardis forces them to investigate an abandoned city but they are quickly imprisoned, the steel robots determined to discover why the earthlings should be immune to the radiation that has consumed the planet after nuclear war. Meanwhile, the planet’s remaining inhabitants, the Thals, are planning an uprising.
Studio One was one of the smallest cinemas in London’s West End and often used as the launch pad for Disney pictures.Limited capacity ensured that a hit film would run for months and the crowds queueing outside would attract the attention of other passersby.
Budget restrictions ensure that menace is limited, even as the characters endure a heap of traditional obstacles such as swamp and rocky outcrop. Adults who did not grow up in the 1960s when the BBC television series took Britain by storm and apt to come at this without the benefit of nostalgia will certainly look askance at the sets and costumes. And it doesn’t possess the so-bad-it’s-good quality of some 1950s sci-fi pictures. But since it was primarily made for children, then perhaps it’s better to watch it with a younger person and gauge their response – of course, that may be equally harsh from someone brought up on the modern version of the series or already immersed in superheroes.
On the plus side, it does move along at a clip. Roberta Tovey (A High Wind in Jamaica, 1965) charms rather than annoys as the plucky grand-daughter even if her grandfather has mutated from the sterner figure of the television series into an eccentric inventor. Peter Cushing (She, 1965) is only required to ground the production which he does adequately. The innate comic timing of Roy Castle, in his leading man debut, brings a light touch to proceedings as the bumbling boyfriend and generates some decent laughs. Jennie Linden (Women in Love, 1969) has little to do except look scared.
With no built-in audience, the U.S. distributors marketed it in typical fashion – “half men half-machine” – and possibly roped in a bigger adult audience unaware of its origins in children’s television.
Oddly enough, it was American Milton Subotsky who, in opportunistic fashion, brought the project to the big screen, although the BBC had a track record of providing product that might make such a leap, The Quatermass Experiment in the 1950s the leading example. He wrote the screenplay and acted as producer and had previously worked with Cushing on Dr Terror’s House of Horrors (1965) and was about to embark on horror masterpiece The Skull the same year. He has approached the material with some reverence and the fact that the budget allowed for hordes of daleks rather than being seen one or two at a time as on the television probably made some child’s day.
Scottish director Gordon Flemyng (The Split, 1968) would make the leap to Hollywood on the back of this picture and its sequel the following year and you can see what made studios have faith in his ability – he deals with multiple characters, works quickly on a low budget and delivers an attractive picture that was a box office hit.
I suspect that audiences will divide into those who watch the film with nostalgia-colored spectacles, those who think it only as good as a bad episode of Star Trek and those who adore any low-budget sci-fi movie.
Hilarious credit sequence – I dare you not to laugh at the banana gag – sets the standard for this virtually silent slapstick vehicle featuring the cream of British television comedians. Hapless construction workers Eric Sykes (The Liquidator, 1965) and Tommy Cooper (The Cool Mikado, 1963) meet their match in the shape of a piece of wooden flooring. Running gags involve a car, a policeman with a bigger eye for a pretty girl than his duty, a car that is soon denuded of all its working parts, paint, rubbish and a pub.
But mostly this is driven by the antics of the bewildered pair, masters of the double-take and pained expression. Even when you think you can see the joke coming a mile off, some other piece of clever invention will take the idea in a completely different direction. Not reliant on clever dialogue, it’s one brilliantly imagined sequence after another. The plot, such as it is, is nothing but a succession of funny incidents.
British audiences were enjoying a small run of semi-silent comedies from A Home of Your Own (1965) through to Futtock’s End (1970), the hand of Bob Kellett behind this series of unlinked movies, but the difference between these and a gem like The Plank is that the latter was written and directed by a comedian (Eric Sykes) who understood timing and above all comic possibility. Clearly silent comedy classics provided much of the inspiration and Sykes has the sense not to spoof that genre but to create twists on originals.
The all-star comedy cast includes Jimmy Edwards (Bottoms Up, 1960), Carry On alumni Hattie Jacques and Jim Dale, Roy Castle (Dr Who and the Daleks, 1965), Sunday Night at the London Palladium television host Jimmy Tarbuck making his movie debut, Graham Stark (The Wrong Box, 1966) and the only straight actor among them Stratford Johns (BBC’s crime drama Z Cars, 1962-1965).
Too short at 45 minutes to qualify as a feature, it played for several years as a support to different movies and was often far more entertaining than the films it supported.
This big-screen version of small-screen hero is as pleasant a diversion as you can get. Nostalgia pretty much gives it a free pass and in any case the action, which punctuates the drama at regular intervals, was always going to be budget-restricted. Despite being in almost constant danger the insouciance of gentleman thief Simon Templar dictates that the pace is no more than languid.
As the title suggests, we’re in Mafia country, Templar (Roger Moore) drawn into a Cosa Nostra succession scenario as the result of a casual encounter with former bank clerk Houston (Fulton Mackay) later found dead. Houston has cast doubts on the real identity of Mafia Don Destiamo (Ian Hendry) one of several contenders to become the next Mafia overlord. Templar sneaks into Destiamo’s world by pursuing his niece Gina (Rosemary Dexter). Although outwardly respectable, Destiamo a bit too fond of using his cigar as a weapon of disfigurement, threatening his blonde English moll Lily (Aimi McDonald) in this fashion.
Part of Templar’s attraction is that although he has a nefarious side he is happy to walk those mean streets and has a strict moral code. And he moves in such elevated circles that he has a nodding acquaintance with dying Mafia chieftain Don Pasquale (Finlay Currie) who has yet to pick his successor.
The other part of his attraction is that he’s played with such suaveness by Roger Moore. For a good chunk of the time someone is trying to knife him, shoot him, blow him up, capture him, jab him with a truth serum, and generally trying to stop him. In fending off such attacks, or out-smarting the villains, there’s rarely a hair out of place. It’s not so much devil-may-care as devil-is-wasting-his-time with such an imperturbable fellow.
Although the action is pretty straightforward, Templar is not above a clever ruse – jamming a bus in a gateway preventing his pursuers continuing the chase – nor an old one such as tying sheets together to climb out of a window. While Malta stands in for Italy, the locations still look authentic enough, ancient stone buildings, the occasional horse pulling a cart. When the action/drama eases up, there’s always pleasant scenery.
Following MGM’s success in stitching together into a movie two episodes of The Man From U.N.C/L.E. television series (an idea of course the studio had pinched from Walt Disney’s cinematic re-presentation of Davy Crockett episodes) it was no surprise that ATV, then under the control of future movie mogul Sir Lew Grade (Raise the Titanic, 1980), decided to adopt the same idea. Although The Saint had been showing on British television since 1962, by the end of its run in 1969 it had stepped up to bigger budgets, 35mm and color. Given each episode lasted around 50 minutes, it was relatively simple to devise a two-part program shown over consecutive weeks on ITV in Britain and then release it throughout the rest of the world as a feature film. The first such project was The Fiction Makers (1968) followed by Vendetta for the Saint.
Roger Moore’s movie career had been in limbo since Romulus and the Sabines (1961) and there’s no doubt that his performance as Simon Templar and later in another glossier British television series The Persuaders (1971-1972) made him a candidate for James Bond. While his interpretation of Templar, especially the wry delivery, does bear some similarities to his incarnation as 007, that only holds true as long as you set aside the year’s supply of Brylcreem dumped on his hair, the shoulder-padded shoulders and the fact that he had not yet perfected his trademark move, the raising of the single eyebrow.
While no match for the quips prevalent in James Bond, Canadian screenwriter Harry W. Junkin – best known for his television work, his only other movies being a similar melding of television episodes of The Persuaders – and John Kruse (Hell Drivers, 1957) – had some neat one-liners. Despite the obvious limitations, director Jim O’Connelly (Berserk, 1967) does a decent enough job.
But Moore carries the show. Ian Hendry (The Hill, 1965) makes a passable villain but not a passable Italian. In general, not surprisingly since most characters were played by British actors, the accents are all over the place though Moore, courtesy of squiring Luisa Mattioli (later his wife) managed to deliver his Italian lines in an acceptable accent. Otherwise the only one who comes close is Rosemary Dexter (The Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968) and that’s because she was Italian. Worth checking out in the supporting cast are Finlay Currie (Ben Hur, 1959) and Fulton Mackay (BBC series Porridge, 1974-1977).
You can find a lot wrong with this without looking very hard but if you switch off your over-critical faculties you will be pleasantly surprised.
The Magnificent 60s 