France – Page 3 – The Magnificent 60s

Paris Blues (1961) ****

Sometimes the stars just do align. Issue-driven drama played out against scenic Paris and host of jazz greats in support. The Walter Newman script gets quickly to the nub of a drama that focuses squarely on racism and creativity.

Jazz trombonist Ram (Paul Newman) lives for his music and fancies himself a composer as well as a player and expects women to fall in with his creative lifestyle until he comes across single mother tourist Lillian (Joanne Woodward) who ups the romantic ante by hopping into bed right away. Ram’s buddy, saxophonist Eddie (Sidney Poitier), falls for Lillian’s pal Connie (Diahann Carroll) but not only is she less promiscuous but a civil rights activist who rails against him for abandoning the cause and hiving off to Paris.

There’s a good twist on the will-she-won’t-she trope as this time around it’s the men (no surprises there) who have trouble committing. While the guys are both smitten, and at various times ready to throw up their Parisian lives and head for home, it doesn’t work out that way, so mostly what we get is argument, making up, repeat. But that’s not to suggest this falls into any kind of trap.

While Lillian uses seduction to try and winkle Ram out of his refuge, Connie, on the other hand, depends on guilt. Although Eddie’s able to verbalize the benefits for a black musician playing in Paris, he hardly needs to point it out, it’s plain to see that the innate racism he suffers at home is entirely absent in his adopted city.

If you’re a jazz enthusiast you’ll probably be more aware of the central musical conflict, the older-fashioned New Orleans style versus the modern be-pop. There’s no shortage of jazz. Duke Ellington was Oscar-nominated for the score, Louis Armstrong turns up, mobbed at the train station by fans, and every time the movie’s not cutting away to a Parisian backdrop it’s indulging in some great jazz tunes in the traditional smoky night club.

What’s really attractive here is the assured acting. Paul Newman was in the middle of a hot spurt, both at the box office and from the critics, successive Oscar noms on the way for The Hustler (1961) and Hud (1962) and endorsing his marquee credentials with From the Terrace (1960) and Exodus (1960). This is a lively performance, one in which he doesn’t have to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders or the deadweight of expectation. He’s not a snarling rebel, he doesn’t need to be, not with nightly improvisation, recognition from his peers, and a toehold on the next stage of creativity, composition. If he’s tussling with anybody it’s himself and his spats with Lillian are little more than arguments with himself about the road to take and the sacrifices that might be essential along the way.

Sidney Poitier (The Long Ships, 1964) snags a great career break, like Newman deprived of heavy duty, able to display his great charisma and charm with such a light touch. Joanne Woodward (Big Hand for a Little Lady, 1966) as ever brings a wide range to her role, sassy at times, pragmatic, not inclined to the lovelorn. Diahann Carroll has the hardest part, since she’s the evangelist for modern America, one where equality is going to be a given, so her scenes with Poitier end up mostly being argument rather than pure romance.

This would have been a lot edgier had it gone down the originally planned route of Ram falling for Connie, and that’s hinted at when they first meet, but I guess Hollywood wasn’t ready for that.

This was the second (of five) of director Martin Ritt’s collaborations with Paul Newman – they had formed a production company – and shows the pair’s preference for movies bearing social comment. Ritt (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 1965) marries all the various elements to produce an entertaining picture on a serious subject.

Walter Bernstein (The Money Trap, 1965), Jack Sher (Move Over, Darling, 1963) and Irene Kemp (The Lion, 1962) collaborated on the screenplay from the novel by Harold Flender.

Thought-provoking.

Lafayette (1966) ***- Seen at the Cinema in 70mm – Bradford Widescreen Weekend

We are so accustomed to Hollywood rewriting every other country’s history it comes as a something of a surprise when they get a taste of their own medicine. And in such elaborate style. At the time this was by some distance France’s most expensive movie, a roadshow production made in Super Technirama 70, the widescreen technology favored by productions as diverse as Walt Disney’s animated The Sleeping Beauty (1959), Biblical epic Solomon and Sheba (1960), British drama The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960), Samuel Bronston’s El Cid (1961) and Zulu (1964).

I wouldn’t have known from this picture how important a figure Lafayette was in French history. On a couple of forays to Paris I had placed no significance on shopping at the retail metropolis known as Galeries Lafayette. However, it turns out he was a major player in the French Revolution and helped to write the Declaration of the Rights of Man. But I wouldn’t have learned anything about his later career as this picture concentrates on his early life.

This long-lost restored picture was the official highlight of this year’s Bradford Widescreen Festival, mostly I assume because until the restoration it hadn’t been seen anywhere for half a century and because Bradford of all places is a sucker for restoration and its audience often includes more than a smattering of ex-industry professionals who can comment on its technical proficiency.

Although released in France in 1962 it didn’t cross the Atlantic or the English Channel until a few years later, but only for short selective engagements, during a period when there were was no shortage of roadshow material what with Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World still hogging Cinerama screens and My Fair Lady (1964) and The Sound of Music (1965) embarking on extensive runs.

This turned up in London in 1965 at the Casino Cinerama where How the West Was Won had played for over two years and it was also shown in Liverpool and enjoyed a couple of weeks in my home town of Glasgow at the Coliseum.

While the American alliance with France during the final stages of the War of Independence was critical to turning the tide against the British I suspect the exploits of the titular character (Michel Le Royen), an aristocratic stripling of 19 years of age, have become somewhat embellished in Hollywood Errol Flynn style.

The movie also ignores the irony that the principles of freedom and independence from regal rule spouted by many of the main characters came back to bite them several years later when the French Revolution sought to separate the brains of the aristocrats from their bodies. The French Emperor helped fund the American Revolution, assuming notions of independence were fine for foreign countries rising up against the British, a particular thorn in the French side at that point.

There’s also a considerable tinge of entitlement and for all its democratic principles the nascent new nation bowing down to the aristocratic breeding of the Frenchman and giving this inexperienced soldier the title of Major-General and putting him in charge of their least-disciplined troops, the irregular starving militia.

Never mind his age, he can hardly speak English and his aristocracy is hardly going to endear himself to his raw troops. And you can hardly ignore the ironic entitlement that when all other wounded men are left to look after themselves, our hero is carted off to George Washington’s (Howard St John) palatial servant-heavy mansion.

Still, according to this story and presumably the legend the young commander did indeed snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, in one engagement when his men were racing away in ignominious retreat he seized the torn American flag and inspired his men to return to battle and victory.

For a near three-hour picture it’s short on military action, though presumably that’s in the interests of historical accuracy so that means wading through countless scenes of politics both in France and America. In his home country he’s treated as something of a traitor for embarking on his own private war against the British. In America Congress is always on the back of George Washington, refusing him the funds and help he needs, insisting such would be in ample supply should he win a battle, the future President retorting back that victory would be guaranteed should he be given funds.

The absence of military set pieces is in part in recognition of the strategy endorsed by Washington, of avoiding a pitched battle with a superior enemy in favor of a guerilla war of attrition. There are more scenes of thousands of extras marching than of them engaging in any meaningful activity, though I’m assuming that could have been a budgetary restriction.

Whether’s it’s true or not there’s some clever stuff on the French political scene, the Emperor Louis XVI (Albert Remy) prone to taking advice from his wife Marie Antoinette (Liselotte Pulver) whose ear is being bent by La Fayette’s wife (Pascale Audret) but the self-serving attitudes on both sides will be recognizable to everyone.

There’s a stab at an all-star cast, Jack Hawkins (Lawrence of Arabia, 1962) as the British commander Cornwallis though the director – or perhaps the star himself given his idiosyncratic ways – has rendered Orson Welles as American ambassador Benjamin Franklin virtually unrecognizable, even his noted diction smothered.

The torch of freedom never had a more handsome advocate than in the hands of Michel Le Royer but it’s virtually a one-note performance though admittedly nobody expected much more from Errol Flynn.

Directed by Jean Dreville (Queen Margot, 1954).

The Substance (2024) **** – Seen at the Cinema

Like Tar (2022) suffers from stylistic overkill and outstays its welcome by a good 30 minutes, but otherwise a perfect antidote to Barbie (2023). While not entirely original, owing much to the likes of The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Stepford Wives and the doppelganger and split personality nrrative nonetheless a refreshing take on the ageing beauty syndrome. Shower fetish might be a homage to Brian DePalma and except that the movie is directed by Frenchwoman Coralie Fergeat (Revenge, 2017) we might be lambasting its rampant nudity for misogynistic reasons.

On the plus side, everything else about it feels new. The whole story plays out like a demonic fable, the participants only caught out because, in their greed, they refuse to play by the rules. But like all the best horror films this occupies its own world. Whoever offers this free drug and the chance to relive your life through the best possible you is a monosyllabic voice at the end of a telephone. Not only is there gruesome rebirth but a stitching-up process. The black market drug at the center of the tale can only be accessed in a deadbeat part of Los Angeles by crawling under a door, but then, suddenly we’re in a pristine room and the various constituent parts of the substance are laid out on the Ikea model with easy-to-follow instructions.

After surviving a horrific automobile accident, onetime movie star Elizabeth (Demi Moore), reduced to breakfast television exercise guru, is passed a mysterious note by an incredibly good-looking young man that takes her down this particular rabbit hole. Like Eve’s forbidden fruit or Cinderella’s toxic midnight, there’s a catch to reliving her beautiful youth. She must switch back “without exception” to her original persona every seven days.

Of course, that’s too much to ask, and as the double named Sue (Margaret Qualley) steals minutes then hours and days the effect is seen on Elizabeth, a monstrous aged finger appearing in her otherwise acceptable hands first sign that these rules cannot be broken. Warning that there are two sides to this singular personality goes ignored. Instead of acting in concert each prt of the split personality conspires againt each other until entitlement spills over into abhorrent violence.

Apart from the initial rebirth squence, and the toothless section, the best scenes are more toned down, in one Elizabeth is faced with an alternative future, the other when she re-does her make-up four times for a date, unable to decide on which face she wishes to present.

Demi Moore (Disclosure, 1994) is being touted as a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination, but that’s mostly on account of her willingness to appear without makeup and for long sections without clothing. I’m not convinced that there’s enough heartfelt acting beyond the bitterness that was often her trademark. Margaret Qualley (Poor Things, 2023) isn’t given much personality to deal with except for exuding shining beauty and horror when it starts to go wrong.

All the males are muppets, it has to be said, wheeler-dealer Harvey (Dennis Quaid) the worst kind of obnoxious male. But this doesn’t feel much like a feminist rant but a more considered examination of refusal to accept oncoming age. Everyone has the kind of vacuous personality that’s endemic in presenting the best face (and body) to the viewing (television, big screen) public.

The movie plays at such a high pitch that most of the time you can ignore the deficiencies, but the 140-minute running time is at odds with hooking a contemporary horror audience and the gore at odds with hooking the substantial arthouse crowd required to generate the returns needed to pay back acquisition rights. None of the characters has any depth, little backstory, virtually nothing in the way of the usual confrontation with others in their lives, but then Elizabeth already lives a life of isolation, clearly lamenting her longlost fame and the attention it brings.

This won at Cannes for the script and not the direction and that feels about right. Great idea in ultimately the wrong hands, too much of the repetition that was so annoying in Tar and the determination to make every single shot different, a movie beaten into style every inch of its running time.

Coralie Fergeat has a triumph of some kind on her hands, but one that might struggle, due to excessive length, to find an audience. Not sure, either, why tis is being sold as comedy-horror, a peculiar sub-genre in the first place to make work, but I don’t remember laughing once.

However, like Saltburn (2023) this has a good chance of attracting the young crowd via word-of-mouth, the kind who are just waiting to find their own cult material.

Both facinating and repellant.

The Count of Monte Cristo (2024) **** – Seen at the Cinema – Twice

Napoleon, shipwreck, false imprisonment, baby buried alive, corruption, audacious jailbreak, the Knights Templar, hidden treasure: enough for a pulsating soap opera for sure but lifted way out of that genre by the driving revenge narrative, and the personal price paid for such unmitigated ruthlessness. I confess I’m not familiar with the Alexandre Dumas classic and I’m not sure I’ve even seen any earlier screen versions, but I did come to this expecting swashbuckling in the manner of the recent The Three Musketeers. Whether it’s the 2023 double bill, or the versions from 2011, 1993 or 1973, those movies were swordplay heavy. So I was somewhat surprised to find this was lean on the old swash and buckle.

In fact, it’s better described as The Godfather of period adventure, three hours long, where the aspiring sea captain, much in the way of the gangster Michael, transforms from idealistic to classy ruthless killer, with the idea in his head than his rampage is justified because, as with the Coppola classic, he is fighting corruption in high places. And it’s a three-act picture, coming perilously close to tragedy, for sure, and thoroughly engrossing.

*There were over 30 previous versions – this one starring Richard Chamberlain.*

Seaman Edmond Danton (Pierre Niney) saves a young woman, Angele (Adele Simphal) from drowning only to discover she is a spy for Napoleon, just entering exile. Back home, this discovery prevents him from marrying his lover Mercedes (Anais Demouster) and with the connivance of ship’s captain Danglars (Patrick Mille), love rival Count de Morcef (Bastien Bouillon) and prosecutor Gerard de Villefort (Lauren Lafitte) he is arrested on his wedding day and sent to the notorious Chateau d’If prison where everyone is in solitary. During his long confinement he befriends Abbe Faria (Pierfrancesco Favino), who turns out to have secreted a horde of treasure.

Using the clever ruse of pretending to be a corpse, Danton escapes, finds the gold, and returns to Paris as the Count of Monte Cristo to take his revenge on the three men. To that end he recruits a younger generation – Andrea (Julian De Saint Jean), bastard son of Villefort, and Turkish lass Haydee (Anamaria Vsrtolomei) whose father was betrayed by Morcef. The vengeance is all very clever stuff, ruses involving false news, stock market manipulation, and infiltration of emotion. Danton is dab hand with disguises, too, best of all his spluttering Englishman. Audience manipulation, too, reaches a high bar. Naturally, we are behind Danton in his quest for vengeance, we want to see the bullies brought to heel, and so we are sucked in to believing that, like The Godfather, any means is acceptable. And it’s only as we come to the end that Danton is brought up short by the realization of how badly he has infected the innocent with his malice.

I’ve not read the book so I’ve no idea how faithful it is to the Dumas. I’m more inclined to suspect previous versions slashed away at the story to concentrate on the incarceration and the swashbuckling. Given critical obsession with length – an odd preoccupation given that most people will happily binge on three or four episodes of a television series at one sitting – it seems that here it’s justified, each section given due space to develop, Danton shifting from elation to despair and then, supposing erroneously that revenge will return him to a rapturous state, takes most of the third act to work out that it won’t and also that, even when opportunity arises, he cannot replicate the original true love, allowing for a realistic ending.

All the acting is top-notch because the characters are so well-drawn in the first place. And the actors age. in the opening section, they all display the brio of youth. Two decades on, that has dissipated and they are more covert creatures, the prosecutor in particular has a suspicious eye. And they all face emotional reprisal, the narrative so well worked that every character has a high point. Some of the set pieces are just terrific – the telling of a ghost story at dinner, the trial.

Directors Alexandre de la Pateliere and Mathieu Delaporte are well established in this milieu, having written the screenplay for both parts of the recent The Three Musketeers. But if that was a dress rehearsal, they have certainly learned a lesson in how to ground a movie, depending more on genuine drama and character development than flashing blade and conspiracy. Some interesting camerawork, too, long tracking shots reversing back or moving in close.

I enjoyed it so much I went out and bought the book – all 1200 pages of it.

Update: it’s on the shortlist to be considered as the French entry for the Best Foreign Picture category at the Oscars.

Thoroughly absorbing.

Mademoiselle (1966) ****

Arthouse noir? Cross between an Ingmar Bergman movie, except that the protagonist acts on her repression, and a Claude Chabrol with a character harboring festering desire. Certainly a bold choice for star Jeanne Moreau, excepting Brigitte Bardot France’s biggest female star, to play someone so malignant with scarcely a redeeming feature. Bold, too, in the setting, not the picturesque French village peppered with bright boulangeries and patisseries and with restaurant gatherings knocking back the wine. This is the reality of country life, ruled by religion and officialdom, little sign of ooh-la-la, and distinctly xenophobic – the minute anything goes wrong, blame the foreigner, in this case an itinerant Italian woodcutter.

It’s a distinctly arthouse notion to let the audience know straight off who the villain is while the villagers themselves are left in the dark about who caused two recent fires, their suspicions landing on Manou (Ettori Manni), the forester who arrives once a year so not quite an unknown entity, and too keen on seducing the local women.

We don’t know who the arsonist is, yet, either, but we might get a good idea from the opening sequence where some annual religious pageant, involving blessing fish caught in the river, is disrupted after a woman in high heels and black lace gloves opens a dyke, allowing a torrent of water to flood a farmyard, nearly drowning the animals, only the priest and a few boys left to continue the parade once the adults have raced back to the farm to save the livestock.

The woman is careful to wipe her high heels clear of grass as she places them in a wardrobe on a high shelf that contains other high-heeled shoes. We soon learn she is not just the schoolteacher but also volunteers her typing skills to the police, therefore keeping fully abreast of any investigation, and that she is held in such high esteem in the village that she goes by the name of Mademoiselle (Jeanne Moreau). While she defends Manou against accusations thrown around by the police, she victimises Manou’s son Bruno (Keith Skinner), ridiculing his clothing, making him stand in the corner or against a tree in the playground.

Turns out she’s the fire-raiser and in a small farming village there’s no shortage of houses with adjacent barns stacked full of straw that it only takes a match and a spill of flaming paper to set aflame. Foreigner Manou doesn’t act like an outsider, but dives in to help, at one point needing to leap to safety himself from a burning building. He doesn’t give his son much leeway either, ridiculing him and belting him across the face.

Only the camera catches Mademoiselle’s brooding intensity, the villagers intent on seeing only the upstanding part of her nature, judging her by the job that in an impoverished ill-educated area elevates her to a position of some standing in local society. Nobody dares come a-wooing. Maybe there’s a local squire somewhere around who might fit the bill. And certainly, she won’t lower herself like certain of the younger village females to make the first move.

As the fires grow more common, greater suspicion falls on Manou whom she secretly desires. Contrary to expectation, given the real power she wields in the classroom, and the secret power she wields over the community, her sexual hankerings run in the opposite direction. She wants to be debased, kissing the shoes of Manou when at last she makes her feelings known, howling like a dog, submitting to his domination which includes being spat upon and her clothes torn. You get the impression this might just be her playing out a fantasy except when she returns to the village with her clothes ripped and the women presume she has been raped she points the finger at Manou.

There’s no climax. We don’t see Manou being chased by a baying mob or being arrested as the film ends with her being driven away in a taxi, presumably to move onto the next village where she can continue her life of crime.

So, very much a character study. It’s hard to know when it’s set, but then raw village life hardly changes from one century to the next. Director Tony Richardson (The Loved One, 1965) makes no attempt to evoke sympathy for her. A few decades on when audiences took a liking to serial killers played by terrific actors (Silence of the Lambs, 1991, for example), moviegoers would have been more rapt by her exploits, almost willing her on, but this decade followed a different morality, filmgoers expecting villains of either gender to be punished.

Those sullen sulky features that Moreau previously used as part of her undeniable sexuality now seem turned-in, as defining of incipient evil as deformity was back in the early days of Hollywood.

Sensational performance by Jeanne Moreau (Viva Maria!, 1965) and also by Ettore Manni (The Battle of the Villa Florita, 1965) who proves far more sadistic than your run-of-the-mill seducer with attitudes to women that wouldn’t be out of place in the later giallo genre.

You might feel short-changed that there’s no resolution and that, in a sense, just like Bitter Harvest (1963), the director has skipped the third act and that there’s no real detection of her crimes, no cat-and-mouse between sleuth and villain. But it’s all the better for leaving out those elements. Written by Jean Genet (The Balcony, 1963).

Brooding and pitiless.

Bedtime Story (1964) ***

Con men at opposite ends of the grifter divide face off in a duel over territoriality in the French Riviera. Freddy Benson (Marlon Brando) is a low-level scam artist who is happy to scrounge a meal or talk his way into an innocent damsel’s bed. Lawrence Jameson (David Niven) is his polar opposite, posing as an impoverished aristocrat to relieve gullible women of their wealth, seduction an added extra.

Initially, Jameson gets the better of their encounters until Benson realizes just what a killing the Englishman is making. Initially, too, Benson is happy to pair up with Jameson, although that involves demeaning himself as a supposed mad brother kept in a dungeon, until the Englishman dupes him out of his share. Eventually, they agree a winner-take-all battle – whoever can swindle heiress Janet Walker (Shirley Jones) out of $25,000 shall inherit the shyster kingdom.

Benson takes the sympathy route to the woman’s heart, turning up in a wheelchair, while James adopts a psychological approach, persuading Ms Walker that Benson’s illness is psychosomatic for which he has the cure for the small consideration of $25,000. And then it’s one devious twist after another as the pair attempt to out-maneuver, out-think and generally embarrass the other. Both have a despicable attitude towards women, whom they view as dupes, but it is woman who proves their undoing.

Most comedies rely on familiar tropes and you can usually see the twists coming, but this is in a different imaginative league and once the pair are in their stride I defy you to work out what they will come up with next. It is full of clever quips and small dashes of slapstick and because neither actor chases the laughs but plays their roles straight it is a very effective and entertaining morsel.

Director Ralph Levy in his movie debut knows more than where to just point a camera since he had decades of experience extracting laughs in television with top comedians like Jack Benny and Bob Newhart. Brando (The Chase, 1966) free of the shackles of the angst he normally incorporates into his dramatic performances, looks as if he is having a ball and while teetering occasionally on the edge of mugging never quite overplays his hand.

David Niven (Prudence and the Pill, 1968) was born with a stiff upper lip in his mouth and while this kind of aristocratic character is a doddle for an actor of his stature the portrayal here is much more like the sharpest tool in the box. While oozing charm, Niven exhibits deadly spite.

Screenwriters Stanley Shapiro and Paul Henning had previously collaborated on Lover Come Back (1961) and Shapiro particularly made his bones on the Doris Day-Cary Grant-Rock Hudson axis so it is interesting to see him shift away from the romantic comedy cocoon into something that is a good deal sharper.

Enjoyable and original with excellent performances from the two principles and great support from Shirley Jones (The Music Man, 1962) as the mark and Egyptian Aram Stephan (55 Days at Peking, 1963) as an only too congenial French policeman.

Good fun, stars in top form.

Behold a Pale Horse (1964) ***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

La Belle Noiseuse (1991) ****

I’m taking the Jacques Rivette test. Aka the bum-on-seat test. How easily can you sit through a four-hour intimate epic is often seen as the true test of your credentials as a critic. I have to confess I’ve failed this test once. Twice, to be truthful. I walked out – twice – of Celine and Julie Go Boating Go Boating (1974). But as I’m partial to tales of creative endeavor, a sucker for any story about an artist, this seemed more promising.

This director does something so clever you wonder why the idea wasn’t applied before. Maybe it was, but nobody fessed up. The star of this show in many ways is neither Michel Piccoli (Topaz, 1968) as artist Frenhofer nor Emmanuelle Beart (Mission: Impossible, 1996) as model Marianne but the real-life painter Bernard Dufour. We never see Dufour’s face, only his hands. For it’s he who sketches and paints, not the actor. So we don’t have any of that nonsense where an actor purportedly spent a year preparing for the role, learning to play an instrument or whatever and then showing all too obviously that he/she is doing something by rote rather than inhabiting the skin of a true artist.

But that does also mean we don’t have to skate over a lifetime’s worth of painting or music or whatever to get to the painting or piece of music for which the character became famous and we don’t need to dwell on background or career development or any other issue that might have hindered /affected/ charged their progress.

This is, beyond a couple of introductory scenes, the story of how an artist paints and his relationship with the model and how that changes both of them. Rivette, having given himself all the time in the world, takes all the time in the world, so we go from initial sketches, ink on crackling paper, to an outline of an idea, to the false steps, wrong steps and true steps.

The awkwardness between artist and model is cleverly captured. Marianne feels she has been traded. Her boyfriend Nicolas (David Bursztein), a rising artist, hopes to win favor with the established artist by pushing her into the project without first asking her approval. Quite what makes her accept the (unpaid) job is unclear but then there are no academic studies on amateur models to provide clarification beyond a sense of excitement at being asked.

She takes in her stride the perfunctory reality that she will be naked virtually the whole time. That aspect of the film might have been viewed as somewhat prurient, but, in fact, it sheds light on just what a model does, what is asked of her, and why, and the idea is killed off right away that an artist always has a clear idea of his composition before he embarks on a painting.

Here, Frenhofer spends as much time trying to get to the heart and soul of his subject, to understand the shape and lines of her body, as he does on the actual picture. He wants to combine her characteristics with whatever he has in his head. There’s another element to the story. He tried to paint a similar picture a decade before, with his wife Liz (Jane Birkin) as the model. For reasons unstated, he abandoned the painting.

Although there’s a twist at the end, there’s not much more to the story than a painting being created from start to finish, including all the finicky bits like deciding on the pose and the size and shape of the canvas and the colors etc.

Yes, it’s incredibly long and not long in the way of Christopher Nolan or Martin Scorsese or Ridley Scott where length is the result of trying to cram in too much, characters, details, storylines, complications or visualisations a director could not resist. But it’s endlessly fascinating and for many the best movie ever made about the creative process, all the more so because although documentary in style it’s not documentary in execution.

Both actors are superb, not least for the concentration this must have taken, since development would have taken place in minute detail.

I think I passed the Rivette test. Celine and Julie….hmmm, still not so sure.

Well worth four hours of your time.

Topaz (1969) ****

Authentic, atypical, engrossing, this grittier Hitchcock mixes the realism of Psycho (1960) and Marnie (1964) with the nihilism of The Birds (1963), a major departure for a canon that previously mostly spun on innocents or the falsely accused encountering peril. The hunt for a Russian spy ring by way of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 forms the story core but the director is more interested in personal consequence, so much so that even the villain suffers heart-rending loss. Betrayal is the other key theme – defection and infidelity go hand in hand.

The tradecraft of espionage is detailed – dead letter drops, film hidden in typewriting spools, an accidental collision that is actually a sweet handover. In a transcontinental tale that shifts from Copenhagen to New York to Cuba to Paris, there is still room for classic sequences of suspense – the theft of secret documents in a hotel the pick – and Hitchcock at times simply keeps the audience at bay by employing dumbshow at key moments.

In some respects the director was at the mercy of his material. In the documentary-style Leon Uris bestseller (almost a procedural spy novel), the main character is neither the trigger for the plot nor often its chief participant and is foreign to boot. So you could see the sense of employing using a cast of unknowns, otherwise an audience would soon grow restless at long absences from the screen of a Hollywood star of the caliber of Cary Grant or Paul Newman, for example.

It is a florist (Roscoe Lee Browne) who carries out the hotel theft, a small resistance cell the spying on Russian missiles in Cuba and a French journalist who beards one of the main suspects, not the ostensible main character, French agent Andre Devereux (Frederick Stafford), not his U.S. counterpart C.I.A. operative Michael Nordstrum (John Forsythe) nor Cuban villain Rico Parra (John Vernon).

Unusual, too, is the uber-realism. The main characters are fully aware of the dangers they face and of its impact on domestic life and accept such consequence as collateral damage. It is ironic that the Russian defector is far more interested in safeguarding his family than Devereux. Devereux’s wife (Dany Robin), Cuban lover Juanita (Karin Dor) and son-in-law (Michel Subor) all suffer as a result of his commitment to his country.

And that Juanita, leader of the Cuban resistance cell, is more of a patriot than the Russian, refusing to defect when offered the opportunity. Hitchcock even acknowledges genuine politics: the reason a Frenchman is involved is because following the Bay of Pigs debacle in 1961 American diplomats were not welcome in Cuba.

I have steered clear of this film for over half a century. I saw it on initial release long before the name Hitchcock meant anything to me. But once it did I soon realized this film did not easily fit into the classic Hitchcock and had always been represented as shoddy goods. So I came to it with some trepidation and was surprised to find it so engrossing.

Frederick Stafford (O.S.S. 117: Mission for a Killer, 1965) was excellent with an insouciance reminiscent of Cary Grant and a raised eyebrow to match that star’s wryness. John Vernon, who I mostly knew as an over-the-top villain in pictures such as Fear Is the Key (1972), was surprisingly touching as the Cuban bad-guy who realizes his lover is a traitor. And there is a host of top French talent in Michel Piccoli (La Belle Noiseuse, 1991), Philippe Noiret (Justine, 1969), Dany Robin (The Best House in London, 1969) and Karin Dor (You Only Live Twice, 1967).

As you are possibly aware, three endings were shot for this picture and I can’t tell you which without spoiling the plot. In any case, this is worth seeing more than just to complete trawl through the entire Hitchcock oeuvre, a very mature and interesting work. Based on the Leon Uris bestseller, screenplay by Samuel A. Taylor (Vertigo, 1958).

Underrated.

Two Weeks in September (1967) ***

Soubriquets were not common currency in Hollywood. Names might be shortened to a Christian name or a surname, as in Marilyn or Garbo, and occasionally a reporter might suggest an unlikely familiarity by referring to a star as “Coop” and for sure Bogie must have been desperate for people to call him anything other than Humphrey, hardly a name that spun off the tongue for a supposedly hardbitten hero eschewing his middle-class origins. But the world swung on its axis when simple use of the star’s initials were enough to guarantee universal acceptance.

BB was born on a wave of controversy. After And God Created Woman (1956) broke box office records all over the world, a star was born. But one who seemed to live as much on the pages of newspapers as on the screen. She could forever be guaranteed to provide a revealing photograph to spice up the more puritan newspapers.

But BB’s global fame didn’t translate into worldwide box office in part because her movies were mostly X-certificate in the U.K. and, being made generally by foreign companies, slipping past the Production Code in the U.S. and therefore into arthouses or shady emporiums in both countries rather than mainstream houses.

This isn’t the best introduction to her canon, but in many senses it’s pretty typical. The camera adores BB and shuns anyone else in her presence. There’s not much story here – bored wife dashes off to a model assignment in London and has an affair and can’t decide whether he’s ready for divorce.

To fill in the time we get plenty Carnaby St fashion shoots, certainly put into the shade by the likes of Blow-Up (1966), but of the kind that used to be so common, beautiful women in outlandish clothes against backdrops like zoo animals or suits of armor and all the while flirting with photographers and being chatted up in night clubs by all and sundry. As you might expec, red buses and mini cars are common, though the chances of a cop on horseback at night seems to stretch it a bit.

Cecile (Brigitte Bardot) seems too lively for staid husband Philippe (Jean Rochefort) and burdens him with ensuring her happiness. But he seems, I guess unusually for the time for such a wealthy character, to be happy for her to continue in her profession. She’s never been unfaithful unlike model buddy Patricia (Georgina Ward). But all this cavorting brings out the lech in photographer Dickinson (Mike Sarne) and while she flirts with him she fancies for no apparent reason the doe-eyed Vincent (Laurent Terzieff) although his doe-eyed dog is livelier.

Anyway, off they go to Scotland for a romantic idyll since every filmmaker in the world has been duped by Scottish Tourist Board fantasies of sunshine, tartan, heather and miles of unspoiled beaches (unaware they are empty because the natives have more sense than to go diving into icy water in freezing temperatures). Mostly, what they get is damp streets and grey skies, though if you have BB romping in the water then nobody’s really going to notice the awful weather. And, naturally, the highways and byways are filled with tartan-clad gents so Brigadoon rides again.

*Not quite sure how “To Their Heart’s Content” – clumsy in translation as it is –*
*is turned into the dull “Two Weeks in September.”* *Though she hardly seems happy in the poster.*

In any case, by the time September comes round, the sun has already packed up for the winter in Scotland, so there’s your get-out-of-jail-card in the title. Not much happens in Scotland either, mostly soulful camera work, soulful BB and dull-as-ditchwater Vincent. There’s a contrived ending.

What impresses most is how little BB you need to make a picture work, even one as patchy as this. It is almost the same template as an Elvis picture minus the songs. Just like BB, Elvis scarcely required a working script, just any excuse to get him on screen. Some stars possess screen charisman that it’s impossible to shift. Shame it was left to Serge Bourguignon (The Picasso Summer, 1969) to get more out of the faint storyline because he was never that bothered with narrative and inclined just to get by on close-ups and scenery. With BB she was as much scenery as audiences ever seemed to require.

Hardly falls into the recommended bracket but nonetheless an interesting example of how Bardot could get away with the mildest of trifles.