film – The Magnificent 60s

Mickey One (1965) ***

Smorgasbord of paranoia, Kafka and the surreal, set in an American netherworld. Cue trampolines, a mime, what these days we’d call installations, a comic without a decent joke, a wrecker’s yard, organic food, catering kitchens. You could call Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde, 1967) a visionary director just for including some of these aspects. Or you could go for another contemporary word: “random.”

We are pretty used to people being on the run be they innocent of the crime of which they are accused or small-time hoods trying to evade punishment. The notion here is of small-time hood Mickey One (Warren Beatty) fleeing Detroit for Chicago but with no idea for what crime, though the list could include gambling debts and stealing a bigger gangster’s moll.

His situation is spelled out often enough in case you’ve not got the picture. “Hiding from you don’t know who for a crime you don’t know you committed,” remarks girlfriend Jenny (Alexandra Hay). In a particularly Kafkaesque moment, Mickey espouses: “The only thing I know is I’m guilty – of not being innocent.”

Smart with the words but not so smart with the actions. Even though he can just about get by as a kitchen wash-up, he gets sucked back into his former profession of stand-up comedian, hardly the most anonymous of jobs. So he is all angst-on-fire when success in some low dive, keeping clients entertained between strippers, attracts interest from a classier joint which naturally sees marketing the new prospect as part of the deal.

Some of this paranoia might just be in his head were it not for being stalked by car-crunching cranes in the wrecker’s yard, spotlights on stage (though you could point out that’s an occupational hazard) and a silent rag-and-bone man.

It says something for the acting of Warren Beatty (Kaleidoscope, 1966) that this is in any way believable. The fast-living lothario of the opening sequence, with gals and booze aplenty, segues into a bum without missing a beat. His paranoia is consistent and he makes some attempt to find out what the heck he has done to end up this way, though it has to be said there’s no actual evidence of pursuit, just the fear of it, and the notion that he owes somebody maybe twenty grand or that the lass tempted into stripping for him was stepping out of line.

*Pretty good plug from a top critic and an arthouse opening – what else could you ask for?*

His breadline living is realistic, too, hitching a ride on a train, bumming food from a mission, sleeping among bags of rubbish, a world where down-and-outs steal the clothes from the back of other vagrants and his job is scraping leftover food from plates in a cafeteria. And there’s always someone at the scam, his landlady dumping another tenant (Jenny) in his tiny apartment.

Maybe less realistic that club owners are lining up to hire him when there’s nary a laugh in his schtick. The biggest joke is in the casting, some kind of infernal joke on audiences to put the likes of the uber-handsome Beatty through mental and physical torture, albeit that he’s perceived as man of abundant talent and collects with ease women willing to put up with the depressive side of his nature.

The movie doesn’t quite fit the Kafka mold because being on stage represents freedom and nobody in Franz’s world ever had a sniff of that. And you wouldn’t call it a thriller either. And if it’s a homage to the French New Wave you’d have to watch a stack of French pictures from this decade to work out what it’s mimicking.

And it’s not like Penn’s work is always on this kind of edge, he’s not the David Lynch of his generation. Every top director is permitted at least one turkey, and this would have been Penn’s except critics in the 1990s started to give it the old reassessment treatment, Penn being a big enough name from his other works to have a stab at how this fits into his repertoire/oeuvre.

So, far from being an intolerable mess. Doesn’t quite ask the big questions Penn hopes it does. More of a curate’s egg of a picture, some interesting ideas, and an excellent performance from Beatty. Alexandra Hay (Only When I Larf, 1968) was part of the French connection, a Canadian model who had hit it big in Paris, with roles in French pictures and an affair with director Louis Malle. But actually she’s good, not the kind of submissive woman Mickey has perhaps been used to, but thoughtful and capable of challenging his illusions.

Screenwriter Alan Surgal was not prolific, this being his only movie.

In Cold Blood (1967) *****

Unfairly overlooked in favor of the Coppola/Scorsese grandiose perspective on gangsters, this changed the shape of the crime picture as much as the best-selling book altered the way readers regarded murderers. Neither whodunit, whydunit nor film noir, nonetheless it invites us into the world of the senseless crime, providing an extremely human portrayal of two men if not natural born killers then their pitiful lives always going to lead them in the wrong direction.

Although Perry Smith (Robert Blake) is a fantasist, dreaming of becoming a singing star in Las Vegas, determined to find the lost treasure of Cortez, and convinced a giant bird protected him from vicious nuns in an orphanage, his life did already verge on the fantastical. His mother, a Cherokee, was a star rodeo performer, his father a gold prospector in Alaska, but the mother, an alcoholic, choked to death on her own vomit and the father (Charles McGraw), a hobo in all but name, is astonished that the child he brought up, so he believes, to recognise right from wrong, would stoop to crime. As a child Perry and siblings watched his mother have sex with clients and his father viciously beat her with a belt. Perry is addicted to aspirin to minimize pain from a leg injury, and you can’t help but feel sorry for this otherwise fit young man massaging the massive disfiguring scar, the result of a motorbike accident.

Dick Hickock (Scott Wilson) is a very charming cocky personable con man, leaving a trail of bad checks behind him as he masquerades as a best man who has come out without enough cash to buy a wedding outfit for his buddy and, with his convincing patter, hoodwinking store clerks not just into accepting a check for the goods, later to be sold, but also cashing a personal check. His father, too, is stunned to hear his son had criminal tendencies.

Fatherhood is represented as a holy grail. Hickock enjoyed being a parent until he was caught with another girl and had to do “the decent thing” i.e. abandon existing wife and child. The parents of both boys have wonderful, emotion-filled, memories of loving and being loved by their children.

From another prisoner, Hickock has been told of the “perfect score,” a rich farmer called Clutter in Kansas with $10,000 in his safe. The plan, to which Smith has only momentary objection, is to leave no witnesses. Even muttered in grandiose manner, this phrase surely, in anybody’s mind, conjures up slaughter, Smith’s only saving grace that he prevents Hickock raping the daughter Nancy (Benda C. Currin). Their haul amounting to $43 and a radio, you could imagine the thieves wiping out the family in a fit of fury. But that’s not the case, it’s just cold-blooded thinking, an element of leaving no trace behind.

And that’s just what they do, committing an almost perfect crime, no fingerprints, just the mark of the sole of a shoe imprinted in blood. There’s a red herring – old man Clutter had just signed off on an insurance policy worth $80,000. But detective Alvin Dewey (John Forsythe) has to solve the crime the old-fashioned way, with inter-state cooperation and months (years in reality) of footslogging. Dewey could have been straight out of film noir with his nippy one-liners and epigrams.

*Other than Alfred Hitchcock, it was unusual for a reissue double bill to comprise*
*two films by the same director.*

Unlike the novel which concentrated as much on the aftermath among the shocked townspeople, the film focuses on the manhunt and Dewey’s deft way with newspapermen and colleagues. The four murders occur off-camera, but by that point we already know the outcome. There’s a virtue-signalling coda that shows the inhumane conditions in which murders were kept on Death Row, but that is countered by a marvellous speech by Dewey on the inequities of being a cop: hounded by media and public for letting someone get away with heinous crime, generally getting a tough time over police methods, lambasted after catching them for not doing it quickly enough, and then having to stand by while media and public launch an outcry to prevent the killers being executed.

All shade, the documentary style achieves the contradiction of appearing sparingly told yet with a wealth of character detail (location and time are ignored) and none of the grandeur and faux community spirit invested in gangsterdom by the likes of Coppola and Scorsese. Smith and Hickock would never pass the entry test for the Mafia given that at least required discipline and the ability to follow orders. Minus the killing spree, these characters might have survived a little longer in the underclass before ending up inside again.

All three principals are brilliant in the understated manner demanded. Robert Blake (Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, 1969) is the pick, tormented by future dreams and past nightmares, but Scott Wilson (In the Heat of the Night, 1967) has the stand-out scene, gulling store salesmen with his finely worked con, and there is a sense of the big brother in the way he looks after his friend. This might well be the best work by John Forsythe (Topaz, 1969).

And it certainly is one of the finest movies made by writer-director Richard Brooks (The Professionals, 1966) who handles a very difficult subject with at times such delicacy it is almost a complete departure in style.

King’s Pirate (1967) ****

Swell show. Virtually every movie Doug McClure (Beau Geste, 1966) made was under-rated, mostly due to his presence, but here he is at his impish cavalier best in a swashbuckler that rather than offering a re-tread goes in for clever reversals, running jokes and a healthy dose of the flashing blade. While McClure is no Errol Flynn (Against All Flags, 1952) he would be a safe match for Tyrone Power and Jill St John (Come Blow Your Horn, 1963) as his nemesis/lover could give the pirate picture’s most reliable spitfire, Maureen O’Hara (Against All Flags), a run for her money.

Well, actually, it is a bit of a re-tread, a spirited good-humored remake of Against All Flags, and follows the same story as Pirates of Tortuga (1961) of good guy infiltrating a pirate stronghold by pretending to be a buccaneer. But the locale has shifted a good three thousand miles to Madagascar, ideally placed to plunder cargo ships en route to India, and it would be hard to argue that Lt Brian Fleming’s (Doug McClure) motivation is pure, given he is expecting major financial reward for risking his life.

Still, to complete his disguise, he submits to a flogging. His task is to incapacitate the cannons that protect the island from Royal Navy invasion. But his team is somewhat unusual, a bunch of acrobats headed by Zucco (Kurt Kasznar) which ensures he can avoid the wall/cliff-climbing normally associated with such endeavors. Having just about convinced pirate king John Avery (Guy Stockwell), Fleming’s mission runs into trouble when Mogul’s daughter Princess Patna (Mary Ann Mobley) falls in love with him after he saves her from a burning ship, though admittedly one he had helped set on fire. He falls foul, too, of “Mistress” Jessica (Jill St John), the island’s de facto ruler and accomplished femme fatale, expert swordswoman, but a la Pirates of Tortuga with a yen to be a “lady.”

So, basically, he has to dodge the suspicious Avery, and put off the princess while trying to woo Jessica in order to find a secret map of the cannon locations.

The island’s preferred style of execution is staking men at the water’s edge and letting the rising tide do the rest. When Fleming, on initial arrival on the island, gulps at this demonstration of barbarity, you probably don’t guess this will happen to him. It’s just one a litany of reversals that make this a delight.

Talking of reversals and delights, how about the Indian princess speaking in a Scottish accent, courtesy of her governess, the fearsome Miss MacGregor (Diana Chesney)?

Not to mention Jessica’s habit of making her romantic inclinations known at gunpoint. Unusually lacking in the female ability of expressing her emotions, Jessica’s actions tend to be the opposite of her stated intention, resulting in, having given Fleming the brush-off, bidding against him in the slave market for Princess Patna to avoid the Indian lass getting her romantic claws into him. But not only is Jessica expert with the sword she is a crack shot and can shoot the end off a rapier.

Of course, when his sword can’t do the talking. Fleming has to weasel his way out of many a dicey situation with an inventiveness that would do Scheherazade proud.

All in all the best pirate film of the decade – though there wasn’t much competition. Competently made with McClure and St John striking cinematic sparks with former Miss America Mary Ann Mobley (Istanbul Express, 1968) happily cooperating in turning her character into a comedic gem.

While there’s certainly a touch of the Tony Curtis in McClure’s portrayal it is also his stab at carving out a position as a jaunty leading man. Jill St John, given a lot more to do than in most of her pictures, takes the opportunity to shine. Guy Stockwell (Beau Geste) delivers another villain.

Don Weiss (Billie, 1965) directed and does exceptionally well steering audiences away from unfulfillable expectation, given the low budget, by focusing on the qualities of the stars and a ripping tale knocked out by television comedy writer Paul Wayne, who rewrote or incorporated material from Aeneas MacKenzie and Joseph Hoffman responsible for the original.

Catch it on YouTube.

Tar (2022) *** – Seen at the Cinema

Editor wanted to stop self-indulgent director sabotaging his own work. Normally, this would be a producer’s job but there’s so many of them (I counted 14) in this co-production that I doubt any was at the wheel of the ship, trusting the director wouldn’t do something so guaranteed to alienate an audience as stick in four minutes (or more) of credits on a blank screen at the start. Credits that, virtue-signalling gone mad, list every Tom, Dick and Harry (and potentially their dog) who so much as pushed a pen for any of the production companies involved.

That won’t erode much of the mighty 158 minutes but it will make it appear several minutes shorter, assuming the audience bolts at the end. The cinema audience I saw it with wasn’t so courteous. Some were bolting long before the end. The sound of clacking chairs could be heard on a regular basis from halfway through the film.

You what!!! But this is an acclaimed picture, 92 Metascore on Imdb! Are we going to have start screening audiences now so that only people with the taste to sit to the end are allowed in?

To be honest, I shared their pain. Absolutely terrific Oscar-worthy performance by Cate Blanchett, pretty good work too from Nina Hoss as her long-suffering partner, but boy does it go on. And on. Was the director assuming the audience was too thick to get that the eponymous lead was a bit of a fitness freak without sticking that in endlessly? It’s not like it builds tension a la Vertigo with James Stewart’s apparently endless driving.

I enjoyed quite a lot of this even though at times it felt like one of those Classic Albums documentaries where those involved dissect their work, explaining how they married a riff here with a riff there, except given the composers are all dead the only creative force available is the conductor, otherwise those pesky musicians will just go off and do their own thing.

The problem is a lot of the dialog is “dead.” It doesn’t enhance our understanding of character, build character or (God forbid!) narrative or tension. One way or another it’s just intellectual discussion of classical music. Which is fascinating – but only for a time.

The story itself is told with subtlety in some places and with a sledgehammer in others. You couldn’t have telegraphed more an impending problem with an unseen musician than have Tar (Cate Blanchett) delete email correspondence. And the minute cellist Olga (Sophie Kauer) appears on the scene with her come-to-bed eyes, you know this is a femme fatale on the prowl, and expect speedy unfair promotion is on the cards at some point.

That power corrupts, whether in male or female hands, appears to the driving point of the rest of the story but you have to wait a good 90 minutes before that assumes any real significance, plus social media is presented here in its best guise as an instrument of truth.

It’s a rise and fall tale, although the climax doesn’t ring true, the director either dodging the true climactic scene, a confrontation with Tar over an enforced change in her professional status, or that didn’t take place and the first thing the conductor knows about what has occurred is when she’s about to take her place on stage. Neither decision makes much sense.

So, onto the good parts. Blanchett puts in a riveting performance, not just in her sense of her own superiority, but in managing so effortlessly to make a conversation just sound like a conversation rather than a string of points making dramatic emphasis. She leaves most of the parenting of their child to partner Sharon (Nina Hoss) only stepping in when someone needs to put a bullying girl in her place. That this relationship is long past its best is obvious from the off, and that Tar has a wandering eye is plain once Olga appears.

And although Tar seems to have a fine grasp of orchestral politics and can drive a hard bargain with those seeking financial gain, she is blind to consequence, needlessly making enemies of long-standing supporters, failure to provide promised promotion triggering betrayal.

What the film does get right (I guess, since I’m no expert) is the role of the big-name music director/conductor in the classical world, ferried across continents in private planes, knowing how to bend the rules in a business where, it transpires, the orchestra wields a great deal of power, and with a genuine genius for imbuing listeners with her enthusiasm for music.

Her interpretation of “Mahler’s Symphony No 5,” initially fascinating, soon lost its hold because I had no idea what she was up to (so I hold my hands up on that one) but you’d have to be intimately acquainted with the work to get so much out of it given the time spent exploring it. This isn’t about a composer of course and lacks Peter Shaffer’s instinct with Amadeus (“too many notes” and the scene where the ill Mozart describes his music to his arch-enemy) so quite a lot of the music stuff went over my head, leaving me with no interest in large sections of the film.

Cut down to two hours plus, okay, those four minutes of credits back in their proper position at the end, and you would have a very satisfactory movie that explored the classical musical world while detailing the downfall of a female tyrant.

Director Todd Field (Little Children, 2006) carries the can on this one.

But I would also point out to him that if you’re appealing to an adult audience and a largely arthouse one at that you’re trying to target generations that have seen all the best stuff, that respond to unusual films that take them to new places dramatically or stylistically and will not stand to be bored rigid.

People slapping down £14 to see it in their local Odeon aren’t going to be as inclined to tell people to go see it than critics watching it for free. And anybody who thinks a streaming audience isn’t going to be reaching for the switch-off button during the marathon opening credits is asking for further financial misery.

The Enforcer (2022) *** – Seen at the Cinema

After pulling double worthy duty with Empire of Light and Till as the starting points for my Monday multiplex triple bill it was something of a welcome relief to finish with an unpretentious pretty serviceable actioner that traded on Taken, The Equalizer and The Mechanic.

Ex-con Cuda (Antonio Banderas) has taken up his old job of debt collector/enforcer for bisexual mob boss Estelle (Kate Bosworth). Through happenstance he acquires streetfighter protégé Stray (Mojean Aria). Cuda’s daughter won’t speak to him so he’s partial to coming to the aid of homeless 15-year-old Billie (Zolee Griggs). To get her off the streets he puts her up in a motel. But, of course, no good deed goes un-punished and the motel manager arranges for her kidnap by Freddie (2 Chainz), a rising gangster who threatens Estelle’s dominance.

Meanwhile, Stray falls for dancer/hooker Lexus (Alexis Ren) who works for Estelle and may well be her main squeeze, though the consensuality of that relationship may be in question.

There’s none of the pavement-pounding hard-core detective work or even nascent skill undertaken by the likes of Taken’s Bryan Mills before Cuda tracks down Billie’s whereabouts and it doesn’t take long for the various strands to coalesce, resulting in a variety of fights and shootings. Given it’s a perky 90-minutes long, there’s very little time for subplots anyway or to find deeper meaning. That’s not to say there aren’t patches of clever dialog – Estelle compares the blood in her veins to that of the marauders in ocean depths whose blood has evolved to be extremely able to withstand parts of the sea where the sun never shines. (She says it a bit neater than that).

And there’s no time wasted on sentimentality either. Neither Cuda’s ex-wife or daughter want anything to do with him and thank goodness we’re spared a scene of him emerging from jail with nobody to greet him. The movie touches on the most venal aspects of modern crime, paedophilia, webcam pornography, kidnap, sexual violence, and of course Freddie bemoans the fact that Estelle is so old-fashioned she wants her tribute paid in cash not cryptocurrency.

It’s straight down to brass tacks, Cuda not seeing the betrayal coming. Thanks for bringing me fresh blood, Cuda, says Estelle, would you like one bullet or two with your retiral package. The only element that seems contrived at the time, that the battered and bloodied Stray can fix Cuda’s broken down car, actually turns into a decent plot point. And where Bryan Mills seems to be living on Lazarus-time, here it’s clear that the ageing Cuda is not going survive these endless beatings and shootings, so if there’s going to be a sequel it will be on the head of Stray.

I had half-expected Antonio Banderas (Uncharted, 2022) to sleepwalk through this kind of good guy-tough guy role but in fact his mostly soft-voiced portrayal is very effective, and his occasional stupidity lends considerable depth to the character. Kate Bosworth (Barbarian, 2022) has been undergoing a transition of late and is very convincing as a smooth, if distinctly evil, bisexual gangster.

I’ve never heard of Mojean Aria though if I’d kept my ear closer to the ground I might have ascertained he was a Heath Ledger Scholarship recipient. He had a small role in the misconceived Reminiscence (2021) and took the lead in the arthouse Kapo (2022). Judging on his performance here, I’d say he is one to look out for. He has definite screen presence, action smarts and can act a bit too.

And just to show my ignorance I was unaware that Alexis Ren is one of the biggest influencers in the world. This is her second movie and she doesn’t really have much of a part beyond compromised girlfriend. Zolee Griggs (Archenemy, 2020) is another newcomer. But you remember that old Raymond Chandler saying that when the plot sags have a man come through the door with a gun. Well, here, there’s a different twist – it’s a woman, in fact both these women turn up trumps when it comes to rescuing the guys.

This is the directing debut of Aussie commercials wiz Richard Hughes and, thankfully, there’s none of the flashiness than would have drowned a tight picture like this. He keeps to the script by W. Peter Iliff who’s been out of the game for some time but who you may remember for Point Break (both versions), Patriot Games (1992), Varsity Blues (movie and TV series) and Under Suspicion (2000).

Undemanding action fare, for sure, but still it delivers on what it promises. It doesn’t have a wide enough release or a big enough marketing budget to even qualify as a sleeper but I reckon it will keep most people satisfied. I had thought this might be DTV but that’s not so. Although it’s not been released in the States it’s had a wide cinema release in Europe. However, this looks like it’s already on DVD but been thrown into cinemas to coincide with the launch of Puss in Boots.

The Borgia Stick / F.B.I vs Gangsters (1967) ****

Happily married after five years Tom Harrison (Don Murray) turns to wife Eve (Inger Stevens) and asks: “Who are you?” No, we’re not tumbling down some existential rabbit hole. Reiterating his love for her, he continues, “Don’t you want to know who I am?”

They’re living an effective lie, nice house in the suburbs, Tom catching the train every morning with neighbor Hal (Barry Nelson), joshing with Hal’s youngest son about the giraffe that took the elephant’s seat one morning, Eve a contented housewife, cocktails and sex at the ready, charity work to occupy her idle day.

*Since nobody knew what money-laundering was in the 1960s and any mention of Borgia took audience minds in a historical direction it was best to play safe in the title department.*

They work for The Company aka The Mob. Nothing nasty though. He’s not in the drugs/enforcement/prostitution departments. He’s a money launderer. He goes round the country opening accounts in obscure banks and helping deposit Mafia cash as a means of buying other companies. “It’s not illegitimate, but it’s legal,” he’s informed.

This isn’t the Mafia that Coppola and Scorsese would later invest with grandeur, it’s closer to the faceless corporation of Point Blank (1967) but taking the business aspect to a higher level. There’s computerisation for a start, personnel files appear as a printout, and some hefty degree of organisation required to keep tabs of the $100 million-plus that enters legitimate business each year. And you would think they were spies, everyone uses code names, “Borgia Stick” being Tom’s, telephones have particular numbers, even conversation is some kind of code.

Trouble is, what was supposed to be an arrangement with benefits has turned into true love, and Tom wants to find a way out, live a different life, have kids. Eve backs off from that kind of commitment. But eventually the decision is taken out of their hands. A guy called Prentice (Ralph Waite) comes snooping around, claiming he knew Tom as Andy Mitchell from Toledo.

*“Murder Syndicate” in one country translated into “Gangster Syndicate” in another, no mention of the FBI.*

Cover potentially blown, Tom’s boss Anderson (Fritz Weaver) plans to give him a new life – his employers are not “unfeeling monsters” after all – pack him off to Rio with $83,000 to get him started. But only Tom. Eve is sent back to her old life, to prove she can be trusted, the life she was trying to keep from her husband. She is put to work in a clip joint.

Of course, it doesn’t work out that way and there are about a dozen twists before we reach an unexpected climax, especially given the opening scene which I won’t disclose.

Although The Godfather is seen as the high point of humanising the Mafia, in that picture Michael’s constant concealment from his wife of his true life means it avoids the real drama of the situation. Here, that drama is the crux. A clever big boss would try to avoid a marital mismatch. The wrong kind of love match can endanger the Family – just look at Meghan and Harry – and it’s a pretty clever device to splice two souls rescued from potential prison and a more sordid life, give them life’s trappings, assured that a woman who has sold herself to so many different men might be grateful just to be assigned a single one, and that a man who otherwise might have been a dull banker could receive, almost as an “extra,” a glamorous wife.

That they might have feelings for each other may well have been calculated into the equation. What would that matter? Surely, it would only benefit the relationship. Every manager knows that an employee with a happy home life is one less problem to worry about.

As long as company loyalty remained uppermost. Eve reminds Tom he’s no less guilty in helping the company get rid of tainted money than the guys on the ground who made it in the first place. Quite why Tom has a stab of conscience and hasn’t the smarts to work out that gangsters can be happily married is never made clear. However, once he sets rolling the particular ball of quitting the Mafia, it can only end in trouble.

Director David Lowell Rich (A Lovely Way To Die, 1968) does an exemplary job, spinning emotion and angst, humanising a couple we should really despise, and every now and then throwing in a corker of a twist. Unlike the experience of Lee Marvin in Point Blank, the employers are shown to be far from rigid, with an apparent touching regard for their employees.

Rich even manages to slip in a couple of scenes that provide greater insight. One of Tom’s co-workers talks like any successful salesman about the pressure of hitting his targets. And he fears the effect of computerisation, that it could make the Mafia vulnerable to Government investigation (rather than, as would later transpire, harnessing it to massive financial effect). And there’s a little nugget about how 200 businesses who controlled the entire U.S. economy in 1932 held the country to ransom for a year by refusing to accede to the wishes of President Roosevelt.

Inger Stevens (Firecreek, 1968) is the pick here, by turn confident, vulnerable, loving, hating, and with a terrific scene as she tries to control her emotions when tossed back into bargain basement of prostitution. Don Murray (The Viking Queen, 1967) spent his entire career trying to live up to the promise shown in Bus Stop (1956), for which he was Oscar-nominated, without quite getting the roles consistently enough that he deserved. But he is pretty convincing here.

This was television regular Barry Nelson’s first movie role in a decade. Fritz Weaver (The Maltese Bippy, 1969) is good as the boss whose game face is “understanding” and you might spot John Randolph (Seconds, 1966). George Benson wrote the songs for the nightclub sequence.

If you’ve never heard of this, it’ll be because David Lowell Rich is a very under-rated director and because it started life as a made-for-television movie in the heyday of that particular notion, but, as was often the norm with such projects, was released as a movie abroad under the alternative title.

Terrific little film, well worth a look. Way ahead of its time regarding money-laundering, sexual business arrangements (Homeland, 2011-2020), the pressures of working for the Mafia (The Sopranos, 1999-2007) and quitting that organization (Stiletto, 1969). You can catch it on YouTube but be warned this was filmed on video so the quality ain’t great.

Is Paris Burning? (1966) ****

Paris endured a four-year “lockdown” during the Second World War, under a brutal Nazi regime, and this is the story of the battle to lift it.

Politics didn’t usually play a part in war films in the 1960s but it’s an essential ingredient of Rene Clement’s underrated documentary-style picture. Paris had no strategic importance and after the Normandy landings the Allies intended to bypass the French capital and head straight for Berlin. Meanwhile, Hitler, in particular vengeful mood after the attempt on his life, ordered the city destroyed.

Resistance groups were splintered, outnumbered and lacking the weaponry to achieve an uprising. Followers of General De Gaulle, the French leader in exile, wanted to wait until the Allies sent in the troops, the Communists planned to seize control before British and American soldiers could arrive. When the Communists begin the fight, seizing public buildings, the Germans plant explosives on the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, other famous buildings and the bridges across the River Seine.

The German commandant Von Choltitz (Gert Frobe), no stranger to slaughter having overseen the destruction of Rotterdam, holds off obeying his orders because he believes Hitler is insane and the war already lost. The Gaullists despatch a messenger to persuade General Omar Bradley to change his mind and send troops to relieve the city. Sorry for the plot-spoiler but as everyone knows the Germans did not destroy the city and the liberation of Paris provided famous newsreel and photographic footage.

Line-drawings from the extended poster – the all-star cast included Orson Welles, Glenn Ford, George Chakiris, Yves Montand, Leslie Caron, Kirk Douglas, Robert Stack, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon. At $6 million, it was the most expensive French film ever made. It had a six-month shooting schedule and was shot on the streets of the city including famous locations like Etoile, Madeleine and the Louvre. It was a big hit in France but flopped in the United States, its box office so poor that Paramount refused to disclose it.

Director Clement was also aware he could not extract much tension from the question of whether von Clowitz will press the destruct button, so he takes another route and documents in meticulous detail the political in-fighting and the actual street battles that ensued, German tanks and artillery against Molotov cocktails and mostly old-fashioned weaponry. The wide Parisian boulevards provide a fabulous backdrop for the fighting. Shooting much of the action from above allows Clement to capture the action in vivid cinematic strokes.

Like The Longest Day (1962), the film does not follow one individual but is in essence a vast tapestry. Scenes of the utmost brutality – resistance fighters thrown out of a lorry to be machine-gunned, the public strafed when they venture out to welcome the Americans – contrast with moments of such gentleness they could almost be parody: a shepherd taking a herd through the fighting, an old lady covered in falling plaster watching as soldiers drop home-made bombs on tanks.

This is not a film about heroism but the sheer raw energy required to carry out dangerous duty and many times a character we just saw winning one sally against the enemy is shot the next. The French have to fight street-by-street, enemy-emplacement-by-enemy-emplacement, tank-by-tank. And Clement allows as much time for humanity. Francophile Anthony Perkins, as an American grunt, spends all his time in the middle of the battle trying to determine the location of the sights he longs to see – before he is abruptly killed. Bar owner Simone Signoret helps soldiers phone their loved ones. Gore Vidal and Francis Coppola fashioned the screenplay with a little help from French writers whom the Writers Guild excluded from the credits.

Like The Longest Day and In Harm’s Way (1965), the film was shot in black-and-white, but not, as with those movies for the simple reason of incorporating newsreel footage, but because De Gaulle, now the French president, objected to the sight of a red swastika. Even so, it permitted the inclusion of newsreel footage, which on the small screen (where most people these days will watch it) appears seamless. By Hollywood standards this was not an all-star cast, Glenn Ford (as Bradley), Kirk Douglas (General Patton) and Robert Stack (General Sibert) making fleeting glimpses. But by French standards it was the all-star cast to beat all-star casts – Jean-Paul Belmondo (Breathless, 1960), Alain Delon (Lost Command, 1966), Yves Montand (Grand Prix, 1966), Charles Boyer (Gaslight, 1944), Leslie Caron (Gigi, 1958), Michel Piccoli (Masquerade, 1965) , Simone Signoret (Room at the Top, 1959) and Jean-Louis Trintignant (A Man and a Woman, 1966). Orson Welles, in subdued form, appears as the Swedish ambassador. Director Rene Clement was best known for Purple Noon (1960), an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley starring Alain Delon.

The score by Maurice Jarre is one of his best. The overture at the start is dominated by a martial beat, but snuck in there is the glorious traditional theme that is given greater and greater emphasis the closer the Parisians come to victory.

Our Man in Marrakesh aka Bang! Bang! You’re Dead! (1966) ***

All hail Senta Berger! Another from the Harry Alan Towers (Five Golden Dragons, 1967) portfolio, this is a spy-thriller mash-up with a bagful of mysteries and a clutch of corpses. At last given a decent leading role, and although you wouldn’t guess it from either poster, Senta Berger steals the show from the top-billed Tony Randall (as miscast as Robert Cummings in Five Golden Dragons) and a smorgasbord of European talent including Herbert Lom (The Frightened City, 1961), Terry-Thomas, Klaus Kinski (Five Golden Dragons), John Le Mesurier and Wilfred Hyde-White (Carry On Nurse, 1959). In this company, the glamorous Margaret Lee (Five Golden Dragons), as Lom’s cynical lover (“you are never wrong, cherie, you told me so yourself,” she tells him) is an amuse-bouche.

*A more comedic approach to the movie when it was re-titled for U.S. release*. At least here it did not try to sell itself as a Bond-type picture.

Six travellers – including oilman Randall, travel agent Le Mesurier, salesman Hyde-White and tourist Berger, meeting her fiancé – board a bus from Casablanca airport to Marrakesh. One is carrying $2 million as a bribe to ease through a vote in the United Nations, but bad guy Lom doesn’t know which one it is. When Berger’s fiance’s corpse tumbles out of Randall’s cupboard, the pair become entangled. Berger is a marvellous femme fatale, trumping Randall at every turn.

With no shortage of complications, the tale zips along, directed on occasion with considerable verve by Don Sharp (The Devil-Ship Pirates, 1964). There are some inventive double-plays – with a body in the boot Berger and Randall are stopped by a cop who tells them their boot is open. An excellent rooftop chase is matched by a car chase. And there’s a terrific shootout. Kinski is at his sinister best and Terry-Thomas a standout in an unusual role as a Berber.

The film was shot on location including the city’s souks, the ruined El Badi Palace and La Mamounia hotel (featured in The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1956). But Berger seamlessly holds the whole box of tricks together, at once glamorous and sinuous, practical and tough and exuding sympathy, and it’s a joy to see her for a large part of the picture leading Randall by the nose. Quite why this did not lead to bigger Hollywood roles than The Ambushers (1967) remains a mystery.

The 300 Spartans (1962) ****

Doomed for half a century to be seen as Saturday television matinee material and then put into the shade by the Zack Snyder’s stylish 300 (2006), The 300 Spartans is in sore need of re-evaluation. Lacking the big budget of an El Cid (1961) or Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and released during an era when historical drama – Barabbas (1961), The Mongols (1961), Sword of the Conqueror (1961), The Trojan Horse (1961), and The Tartars (1961) – was at a peak, this is a stripped-down version of the famous Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. and none the worse for it.

Clever camerawork suggests thousands of warriors involved but there is little sign of scrimping in the wardrobe department and there is more than enough action. Also, this is a surprising literate picture, with great lines for cynical politicians as much as for warriors and peasants. Themistocles (Ralph Richardson) comments: “Some day, I may enter religion myself. It’s better than politics. With the gods behind you, you can be more irresponsible.” Told that the invading Persian army has “arrows that will blot out the sun,” Spartan King Leonides retorts, “then we will fight in the shade.” And there’s sexist banter typical of the period between a peasant couple: wife – “goats have more brains than men”; husband – “who can understand the ways of the gods, they create lovely girls and then turn them into wives.”

Originally titled” The Lion of Sparta”, the film could not have been made without the wholesale cooperation of the Greek army which supplied over 2,000 soldiers. Those playing Spartans had to be over six foot tall. Since the Greeks had no cavalry and few knew how to ride, around 200 were given a crash course. It was a bonanza for the soldiers – their normal wage of $2 was supplemented by $5.50. *Thermopylae no longer looked like the area immortalised by the battle, so the action was shot at Loutraki, near Corinth and 80 miles from Athens.*

Quite how Leonides ends up fighting the massive army on its own is down to a mixture of politics and religion. Oracles foretell doom. The various Greek states refuse to join together, although Athens lends Sparta its fleet (“Athens’ wooden wall”). Even Sparta officially refuses to participate on the grounds that battle would interrupt a major religious festival. Leonides’ “army” of 300 men is comprised of his bodyguard. A romantic subplot involving a young couple results in catastrophe. Just how ruthless is the opposition is shown when Persian king Xerxes slaughters all his soldiers’ wives to make the men more determined to get to Greece where doubtless they will enslave the female population. When his archers fire, he doesn’t care if the arrows hit his own men.

What marks out the best historical action pictures is the intelligence behind the battle. Strategy is key. The first weapon, of course, is surprise so the Spartans sneak into the Persian camp from the sea and burn their tents. During battle, to counteract the Persian cavalry, the front row of the Spartan army lies down and allows the horses to jump over them, then rising up, traps the cavalry and drives them into the sea. Other clever measures are used deal with the Persian crack infantry regiment, the Immortals. Even at the end, the Spartans continue to confound the enemy with clever ruses.

Richard Egan is effective as Leonides, Ralph Richardson excellent as the wily but honourable Themistocles while Hitchcock protégé Diane Baker (“glaringly miscast” according to Variety) has the female lead though Anne Wakefield as a Persian queen the more interesting role. Former British star David Farrar (Meet Sexton Blake, 1945) is the intemperate Xerxes.

Five-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Rudolf Mate delivers the directorial goods, his handling of the dramatic scenes as confident as the action and masking the holes in his budget by making clever use of trees as the invaders march, suggesting an army far bigger than he could afford to put on the screen. Color-coding the Spartans – they were in red – made the action clearer to follow. George St George, with few credits of notes (and few at all) doubling up as producer, wrote the script. This thoughtful drama with striking action deserves reassessment.

The Assassination Bureau (1969) ***

A couple of decades before the “high concept” was invented came this high concept picture – a killer is hired to kill himself. Oliver Reed is the assassin in question and Diana Rigg the journalist doing the hiring. So Reed challenges the other members of his murderous outfit to kill him before he despatches them. The odds are about ten to one. Initially involved in shadowing Reed, Rigg becomes drawn to his aid when it transpires there is a bigger conspiracy afoot.

Set just before World War One, the action cuts a swathe through Europe’s glamour cities – London, Paris, Vienna, Venice – while stopping off for a bit of slapstick, some decent sight gags and a nod now and then to James Bond (gadgets) and the Pink Panther (exploding sausages). Odd a mixture as it is, mostly it works, thanks to the intuitive partnership of director Basil Dearden and producer (and sometime writer and designer) Michael Relph, previously responsible this decade for League of Gentlemen (1960), Victim (1961), Masquerade (1965) and Khartoum (1966).

The American advertisement for the film set out its stall in a different way to the British advertisement with Diana Rigg taking pride of place.

Moustached media magnate Telly Savalas has a decent chomp at an upper-class British accent. It’s easy to forget was one of the things that marked him out was his clear diction and he always had an air about him, so this was possibly less of a stretch. Ramping up the fun is a multi-cultural melange in supporting roles: Frenchman Phillipe Noiret (Night of the Generals, 1967), everyone’s favourite German Curt Jurgens (Psyche ’59, 1964) playing another general, Italian Annabella Contrera (The Ambushers, 1967) and Greek George Coulouris (Arabesque, 1966) plus British stalwarts Beryl Reid (The Killing of Sister George, 1969) as a brothel madam, television’s Warren Mitchell (Till Death Do Us Part), Kenneth Griffith and Clive Revill (Fathom, 1967).

The action flits between sudden danger and elaborate set pieces. When Reed announces his proposal to his board he promptly fells a colleague with a gavel just as that man throws a knife. Apart from folderols in a Parisian brothel, we are treated to a Viennese waltz and malarkey in Venice. There are disguises aplenty, donned by our hero and his enemies. Lighters are turned into flame throwers. And there is a lovely sly sense of humour, an Italian countess, wanting rid of her husband, does so under the pretext of Reed gone rogue. Reed and Rigg (in her best Julie Andrews impression) are in excellent form and strike sparks off each other. The second-last film from Dearden suggested he wanted to go out in style.

Many of the films made in the 1960s are now available free-to-view on a variety of television channels and on Youtube but if you’ve got no luck there, then here’s the DVD.