France – Page 6 – The Magnificent 60s

The Train (1964) ***

Director John Frankenheimer (The Gypsy Moths, 1969) tackles the movie’s off-putting central issue straight on. At various points, characters argue whether it’s worth risking lives to save a bunch of paintings, even if they are by masters like Cezanne, Matisse and Manet and even if they do constitute the “pride of France.”

Had this been an ordinary heist, some master criminal conspiring to steal a trainload of paintings, the loot would not have been so contentious, as there was little chance of lives being lost. And in any case, thieves, in the act of stealing, do have to accept that they might fall prey to the cops or, as commonly, fellow members of the gang.

There was another point. Art, then and now, was commonly perceived as a high-class aspect of life, especially once it diverted away from easily understood portraits and still lifes into the specific styles of a Monet or Picasso. Working-class people had little interest in it and felt excluded from it.

So, from the French perspective, coming towards the end of World War Two, post-D-Day and Paris close to being liberated, upper-class German Col von Waldheim (Paul Schofield) decides to hijack the contents of a museum and take hundreds of masterpieces to Germany, ostensibly to fund the fightback against the invaders, but more likely just a final act of a conqueror who has enjoyed, rather than destroyed, the captured French capital.

At first, station master Labiche (Burt Lancaster), while complicit in minor sabotage, has no interest in becoming personally involved, especially with liberation so close and the threat of death lifting by the hour. Others take a much more patriotic stand over the paintings and endeavor in small ways to prevent the trainload’s departure and slow down its progress to Germany.

A whole battalion of German soldiers, including Von Waldheim, who has commandeered a train in the first place, and railway workers, are aboard. But not all are in agreement with their commander’s aims, his deputy Major Herren (Wolfgang Preiss) outspoken in his opposition to this waste of manpower and diversion of energy.

Von Waldheim blames Labiche for the minor sabotage and forces him to take personal control of the train. And it turns out Labiche is much more than a bureaucrat, and knows everything there is to know about driving a train and how the tracks operate. And eventually it becomes a game of cat-and-mouse between Labiche and Von Waldheim.

But before that occurs and the movie really takes off, there’s tons of stuff that come into the sub-genre of a sub-genre category, to the delight of a railway-spotter but the irritation of the general audience as we are treated to endless scenes of the train running through the country or stopping and starting and points being switched. All very fascinating in its own way, but tending to the tedious.

I’m a bit pernickety when it comes to the heist picture and I’m just wondering how the Resistance, in what appears to be very short notice (in real time the movie only lasts a few days) to arrange for railway stations and towns along the route to manage to make massive signs, some I would guess 30-40ft long, to convince Von Waldheim he is taking the route he expects rather than being diverted along a different track. And then to get word to the Allied forces not to bomb a train that had a whitewashed roof. Try explaining the contents to an Army that is trying to get on with winning the war and couldn’t be less concerned about what might be interpreted as misplaced pride.

You would imagine that if those actions could be so easily carried out that there might have been a proper Resistance troupe ready to assist in blowing up the engine, but safeguarding the coaches, along the way. As the toll of ordinary Resistance members mounts, it’s left to Labiche, decidedly not an art lover, to save the day.

And that’s when the film does take off. He’s the most enterprising of individuals, managing, despite being wounded, to single-handedly derail the train twice, even with soldiers hounding him over the hills and patrolling the track.

Burt Lancaster (The Gypsy Moths, 1969) is superb as the doubter who becomes committed to the cause. It’s easy to forget just what a range Lancaster has. There’s not every actor you would believe when he’s twisting wires in the complicated business of setting an explosion or hammering loose sections of track. To slip effortlessly from the nuance and privilege of Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard (1963) to the hard muscular graft of this is quite an achievement.

Paul Schofield (A Man for All Seasons, 1966) was far more virile than his later screen persona suggested. He was a classic example of why Hollywood raided Britain, especially for villains. Outside of the stage, he was virtually unknown, only two previous films in the 1950s, so he was a fresh face. He didn’t quite master the art of cinema, a bit prone to shouting and facial expressions verging on the combustible. But he proves an excellent and inventive adversary.

It’s another for the futility of war department and it’s ironic that it’s the mutinous Maj Herren rather than the French who decides lives are not worth losing over a bunch of paintings.

The action, when it finally emerges from the trainspotting, is excellent. But a bit of judicious pruning in the earlier stages would have worked wonders.

The War Lord (1965) ***

Contemporary audiences will gib at a narrative that relies on legalised rape. Audiences at the time had the same response but since then it has picked up considerable critical acclaim on account of its down-and-dirty portrayal of a medieval era far removed from the knight in shining armour. But it still pivots on the distasteful notion of “droit de seigneur”, the right of any noble to take the virginity of any female underling on their wedding night – it was motivation for William Wallace’s rebellion in Braveheart (1995).

The idea that this was pervasive or even occurred at all has been proven to be historically inaccurate. Logic tells you that any ruler wanting to keep his subjects in check would scarcely resort to wholesale rape that could spark disloyalty among his subjects. Or that any no one would be unaware of the dangers of inbreeding should the nobleman’s seed result in pregnancy.

What of course the movie does get right is that women were treated as chattels – “she’s mine” / “you’re mine” a recurrent refrain – or were makeweights in deals uniting the vested interests of kings or dukes.

As reward for years of service to the Duke of Ghent, Chrysagon (Charlton Heston) is handed a fiefdom in Normandy, prone to attack by Frisian raiders from the neighbouring Netherlands. In interrupting such an assault, Chrysagon captures the enemy chief’s son without being aware of it, prompting a later battle.

While the area boasts vestiges of normality, a priest and a strong tower, the inhabitants are inclined to the pagan rather than Christianity with rites (reminiscent of Game of Thrones) involving stone and trees while anyone using herbs for medicinal purposes is likely to be accused of witchcraft. Chrysagon takes a fancy to Bronwen (Rosemary Forsyth) already bethrothed to Marc (James Farentino). Egged on by his brother Draco (Guy Stockwell), Chrysagon decides to take up the option of droit de seigneur, but refuses to return the bride after the allotted time period (before dawn), incurring the wrath of the villagers who recruit the Frisians to their cause.

So it’s siege time although it seems unlikely that the attackers would be capable of producing such dangerous siege weapons in such a short time or that they wouldn’t simply resort to starving out the beseiged. Chrysagon’s troops engage the attackers in time-honoured fashion from the top of the tower by arrow, boulders and boiling oil. Chysagon slides down a rope like Errol Flynn to prevent the raised drawbridge being lowered and uses a boat anchor to dislodge the siege tower. Battering rams and catapults soon enter the equation.

The only question-mark (unspoken) against Chrysagon’s employment of the “droit” privilege comes when the Duke demotes him and appoints Draco in his stead, prompting various endgame twists.

The battle is interesting enough, threat repeatedly countered, but there’s only so many times a director can cut to a soldier tumbling to his death. The ending is an anomaly, Chrysagon showing more respect to the son of his enemy than the wife of his villagers, and it seems odd that Draco is suddenly revealed as a bad guy, despite not being the one who triggered the conflict.

Chrysagon might have easily have fallen into the Martin Scorsese category of characters with “no redeeming features” – who are exempt apparently from the need for decency because of war – and it’s hard to summon up the necessary audience sympathy to make this picture work, especially given its starting point. Had Chrysagon merely fallen in love with Bronwen who reciprocated his feelings and that caused enmity among the villagers it would have been one thing but to start out from an historically inaccurate base is another.

One of the problems is that Bronwen doesn’t evolve. Her transition is from interesting to passive. She has actually gone through a marriage ritual (of the Druid kind, but still binding as far as the villagers are concerned) and is therefore embarking on an adulterous relationship once the cock crows. It seems ludicrous, without allowing the woman dialog to express her feelings and acknowledge the peril of her actions, that she would believably take this route.

So, if you like, accepting the droit de seigneur, in some ways it becomes a bolder picture, a major Hollywood star risking his reputation by playing a rapist, and in the way of all rapists justifying his action. And, like the characters in the recently-reviewed Play Dirty (1969) or Judith (1966), it becomes a question of individuals as pawns, the powerful taking advantage of position to abuse the weak. And it wouldn’t be the first time the innocent have suffered through a superior taking an indefensible approach.

Franklin Schaffner (Planet of the Apes, 1968) directed. Charlton Heston (Diamond Head) performs as if he’s the French equivalent of a Brit constantly biting on that stiff upper lip. Richard Boone (Rio Conchos, 1964) is wasted. Guy Stockwell (Tobruk, 1967) essays another weasel. It’s a picture of two halves for Rosemary Forsyth (Where It’s At, 1969) – while being wooed she’s good but then she’s pretty much dumped as far as the narrative goes.

Screenwriter John Collier, who later wrote the even creepier Some Call It Loving (1973) – an early Zalman King production – and Millard Kaufman (Raintree County, 1957) adapted the screenplay from an unusual source, a Broadway play by Leslie Stevens (Incubus, 1966) called The Lovers. The play had a different perspective, the bride ultimately committing suicide, while the War Lord and husband killed each other in a duel. Needless to say, there are no Frisians, so no siege, and no brother.

Before the arrival of Ridley Scott, this would been viewed as the best depiction of genuine medieval siege, so that part certainly still holds up. But the rest of it will only stand the test of time if you are willing to view it as an expression of the corruption of power.

Behind the Scenes – “Eye of the Devil / 13” (1966)

It would have been a different movie entirely with Kim Novak (The Legend of Lylah Clare, 1968) in the lead and directed by Sidney J. Furie (The Ipcress File, 1965). He was one of three directors – the others being Arthur Hiller (The Americanization of Emily, 1964) and Michael Anderson (Operation Crossbow, 1965) – to pass on the picture (then known as 13) before it ended up in the lap of J. Lee Thompson (Return from the Ashes, 1965). Terry Southern (Dr Strangelove, 1964) also hnded the screenwriting torch over to Robin Estridge (the author under a pseudonym of source novel Day of the Arrow) and Dennis Murphy.

Possibly because of the potential involvement of Hiller, and that Martin Ransohoff, producer of The Americanization of Emily, was funding this film through his Filmways shingle, Julie Andrews was mooted for the lead. Instead, the part went to Kim Novak, who had just finished another British production The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1964). She had signed a three-picture deal with Ransohoff who was firming up productions with a number of Hollywood studios

According to co-star David Niven (The Extraordinary Seaman, 1969), Novak was insecure about acting the part. “I don’t think I’m betraying any confidences,” said Niven, betraying her confidence to a reporter, “if I said that Kim often told me ‘I think I’m not right for this part. I think I’m a sex-pot.’ ” Given she was playing a mother-of-two, it’s doubtful that she was intended to be overtly sexy, although that would certainly provide a different reading for the role.

Some of Novak’s concerns could be ascribed to any Hollywood-trained actress. “While highly professional,” observed Niven, “Kim worried about her looks, her scenes, her individual lines, everything.” Novak’s professionalism included arriving at the studio at 4.30am and often doing her own make-up accompanied by an “entourage of dialog coach, press agent and personal secretary, with whom she rehearsed her lines before going on set.” (I’m sure she practiced her lines with her dialog coach rather than secretary.)

As if British actresses prepared for a movie with ease and turned up on the set without a care in the world. However, that was Niven’s conclusion. As if little preparation was involved, “Deborah Kerr,” said Niven, “just walked before the camera and did them (her lines); stand-in Esmee Smythe would occasionally hear her lines – very occasionally because she always knew them – and once in a while would help out if the dresser was not on the spot.”

Four-fifths of the picture was completed when Novak pulled out. The standard reason given was because of a back injury. Initial filming had taken place in fall 1965 in France at the main location of Chateau de Hautefort in Dordogne before Novak fell from her horse. Production was suspended for two weeks. But the actress proved unfit to rejoin the unit.

*Title changed to “13.” It’s worth noting that the main images of the poster refer to Sharon Tate. It’s her eyes that are hypnotic*
*and she’s the one being whipped.*

Supporting star David Hemmings (The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1968) offered a different reason for her departure. This was the actor’s first big-budget international full-scale picture. His career was in reverse, from starring in Be My Guest (1964) he had tumbled to fourth billing in Two Left Feet (1965). As if forever destined to be the ingenue, here he was billed eighth.

Hemmings knew the director from No Trees in the Street (1959) and had worked with Donald Pleasance in Wind of Change (1961). He recalled “the comparatively unknown but totally ravishing Sharon Tate who was the same age and had done about as much as I did.”

Given his lack of knowledge of American television it was understandable he believed he was in the same bracket as Tate. In fact, she was such a hot prospect, coming off a role in the wildly successful series The Beverly Hillbillies she was given an “introducing” credit and had far the superior part.

“ I loved the setting and my part which demanded skills in riding and toxophily (archery),” said Hmmings. He found all the time wasted in playing darts in pubs assisted him in his archery training. “But I found it quite odd that a young lad of 24, dressed in black leather and riding a white horse, albeit with my toxophilic advantages, should have been thrown together with such a distinguished cast.”

The fact that he presented such a visual treat in his blonde curls and black leathers appeared not to occur to him. “The older actors were astonishingly kind to me. Niven’s charm was profound and genuine.”

One of the older stars who reached out to him proved to be Kim Novak. Although only eight years older she had been a star for more than a decade, leading lady to William Holden in Picnic (1955), Frank Sinatra in the Man with the Golden Arm (1955) and Pal Joey (1957), James Stewart in Vertigo (1958) and Bell, Book and Candle (1958) and Kirk Douglas in Strangers When We Meet (1960) while in most of her films in the 1960s she had received top billing ahead of the male star.

When Hemmings took to riding his white horse through the French countryside Novak became his companion. “We would stop somewhere to sit and chat. Easily and at great length almost about everything…and to begin with no hint of physicality…after a while I began to detect that strangely attractive wicked look in her eye that an experienced woman gives to an inexperienced man.”

One day, though staying in different hotels, she asked to meet him in a large park in the centre of Brive. “It wasn’t a suggestion, it was a command,” he recollected, “and being the young man it was a command I knew would lead inevitably to possibilities.” The assignment in the park led to a short affair conducted in her hotel room.

Shorty afterwards, at a press conference, “I can’t recall what Marty (Ransohoff) said to upset Kim or if it justified her reaction but I have an indelible vision of her stubbing out a cigarette in his one good eye which led to an ugly scene…and Kim being sacked.”

But it would be hard to convince the completion guarantee bonding companies and the insurance company that a back injury had been faked to cover the embarrassment of the producer. Original budget of £1 million was supplemented by another £600,000 from the insurers to complete the movie. Deborah Kerr had been holidaying at Klosters in Switzerland when she received the call and began work as a replacement at the Borehamwood studio in Britain over Xmas 1965.

Since Novak had not been in every scene, the opening scenes and the beguiling of the children by Sharon Tate, for example, it wasn’t a case of starting completely from scratch. And the director and cinematographer would have the advantage of already having made decisions regarding camera placement, while the other actors would be well-rehearsed. However, weather for the previous filming had been cold so there would have been a worry about matching exteriors since conditions in France in January-February 1966 were “like summer.”

It was Niven who had suggested Deborah Kerr as the replacement. This was the third of the five pictures they made together, preceded by Bonjour Tristesse (1958) and Separate Tables (1968), followed by Casino Royale (1967) and Prudence and the Pill (1968). Niven welcomed her presence. “Playing opposite Deborah is as delightful an experience as an actor can have,” he said. “I’ve always felt I won my Academy Award (Best Actor Oscar for Separate Tables) because she made me look so good. That sort of thing makes for a warm and relaxed screen relationship.” Niven was clearly ignoring the fact that, although happily married, the relationship of the couple on Eye of the Devil was tense and strained.

But the France reshoot took place at a different location, Brives Les Gaillards in Perigord, an overnight train journey from Britain. Perhaps in a bid to save money, Esmee Smythe was eliminated from the personnel intended to be shipped abroad. After a few words from Kerr – who otherwise would effectively be acting as her own stand-in for scenes involved horse-riding, driving and standing on the parapets – Ransohoff changed his mind. Despite the pressures to complete and ensure that Kerr’s work – a “daunting job of re-shooting” – would fit in with what had come before, shooting was deemed “pleasant.” Kerr again stood up to the producer when informed further work in Borehamwood would begin immediately on the morning of the overnight train journey home.

The original stars were paid twice, for Hemmings “the most lucrative job I’d ever done.” Nonetheless, there was clealry doubt about its box office potential and, unsually for a film with denoted stars, it sat on the shelf for over a year.

Despite MGM’s best marketing efforts the movie fizzled out in the United States where it opened in fall 1967. Prospects proved poor. It waited another seven months before a British premiere at the Ritz in London’s West End in March 1968, that showing possibly the result of the unexpected success for MGM with David Hemmings’ breakout movie Blow-Up (1966).

But the West End opening counted for nothing when it came to general release it the UK. On the ABC circuit it was only the supporting feature to The Heroin Gang (1968) starring David McCallum and Stella Stevens. It might have done better had it been delayed further and taken advantage of the successful comedy pairing of Kerr and Niven in Prudence and the Pill.

Like many a horror movie, the production was considered jinx. Filming on Prudence and the Pill was delayed when Kerr, who “had never had a day’s illness in her life,” was diagnosed with labyrinthitis, a condition which destroyed her sense of balance. While she recovered, others involved in Eye of the Devil were not so fortunate. Not only was Sharon Tate slaughtered by the Manson gang but a member of the location crew was crushed by a car and the chateau burned down a few years later.

SOURCES: Eric Braun, Deborah Kerr (WH Allan, 1977) p198-202; David Hemmings, Blow-Up and Other Exaggerations (Robson Books, 2004) p123-126.

Eye of the Devil / 13 (1966) ***

Shades of The Innocents (1961), The Wicker Man (1973) and The Omen (1976), but lacking the suspense of any, leading roles woefully miscast, supporting roles, conversely, brimming with inspired casting including the debut of Sharon Tate (Valley of the Dolls, 1967) and a mesmerising role for David Hemmings (Blow-Up, 1967) Any attempts at subtlety were dumped when the original more intriguing title of 13, which turns out to have more than one meaning, was dumped (except in some foreign markets) in favor of the giveaway designation of Eye of the Devil. Despite embracing a web of sinister legend, it lurches too quickly into full-on demonic horror.

French count Phillippe (David Niven) is called away unexpectedly from the Parisian high life to deal with a crisis in his vineyard. When his son Jacques (Robert Duncan) starts sleepwalking in his absence, his wife Catherine (Deborah Kerr) decamps with daughter Antoinette (Suky Appleby) to the family pile, a huge millennium-old castle. The count’s sister Estell (Flora Robson) fears her arrival. Villagers fear Phillippe, doffing caps when he passes.

Meanwhile, Catherine encounters or witnesses strange goings-on. Archer Christian (David Hemmings) shoots dead a dove which is later offered to unknown gods by his sister Odile (Sharon Tate) in a chamber filled with men in black robes. Later, Odile changes a toad into a dove and hypnotises Catherine into almost falling off a parapet. A quietly spoken priest (Donald Pleasance) offers no succor. The number thirteen could refer to the day of an annual local festival or a ceremony involving thirteen men, twelve of whom dance around the other. In a forest Catherine is trapped by men in black robes, then drugged and imprisoned.

Meanwhile, her husband remains grimly fatalistic, gripped by torpor, except when roused to whip Odile. Generation after generation, going back over a thousand years, the head of the household has come to a sticky end and without explanation it appears Phillipe expects a similar outcome. .

It doesn’t take you long to realise devilry is afoot. It’s a pagan castle, it transpires, a “fortress of heresy.” After three years of poor grape harvest, the earth demands a sacrifice. Where the victim in The Wicker Man is an innocent outsider lured to a remote island, the count accepts his destiny even as his wife struggles to prevent his death. Dramatically, the later film has the edge, the victim struggling against fate rather than a mere observer. That Catherine is powerless somehow doesn’t bring the dramatic fireworks you might expect.

What the posters conceal is that the film was made in black-and-white – the last MGM picture not to be in color – and this is a photo of Sharon Tate as she appeared in magisterial and beguiling form.

There’s a curiosity about the casting of Deborah Kerr (The Gypsy Moths, 1969). This most repressed of actors, as if a veil has been lifted, empowered to scream and batter against doors and race around, seems to drain the movie of energy. She just seems laughably bonkers rather than intense and empathetic. For someone whose performance is generally minimal, who exists in the margins, it seems almost perverse to force her to go so over-the-top.

Perhaps such unusual verbal and physical activity was deemed essential to counter the inactivity, the virtual sleepwalking, of the rest of the cast. While looking pained, David Niven (The Extraordinary Seaman (1969) can’t quite capture the intensity, the personal devastation, the role requires. David Hemmings as the silent archer and especially Sharon Tate as the trance-inducing magician, steal the show, investing their characters with little emotion, and yet, visually, as if mere costumed performers, present the most vivid incarnations.

From an audience perspective, it’s hard to root for Catherine since it’s obvious she is in no mortal danger. Like The Wicker Man, the audience is there in an observatory capacity, but unlike the Scottish policeman the victim attracts little sympathy. There’s not real

It’s a surprising backward step for director J. Lee Thompson after the superb Return of the Ashes (1965) which was chock-full of suspense and interesting characters. After an atmospheric opening, it turns uneven as he falls into the trap of following the wrong character. Screenwriters Dennis Murphy (The Sergeant, 1968) and Robin Estridge (Escape from Zahrain, 1962) adapted the latter’s acclaimed novel Day of the Arrow, written under the pseudonym Philip Loraine. So perhaps he can be blamed for shifting the investigative focus from Catherine’s ex-lover to Catherine herself.

I was surprised to see Deborah Kerr take on such a role and that is a story in itself which I’ll address tomorrow.

Rider on the Rain (1970) ****

This is not the Charles Bronson you think you know, the mean, truculent, monosyllabic persona who turned into a box office powerhouse later in the decade. It took the French to recognize the leading man qualities Hollywood determinedly ignored. God forbid, he is actually pretty charming, although his methods for squeezing information out of a suspect are, well, suspect. And he turns up pretty late in the picture, just when you think the focus is going to be on the suspect, Mellie (Marlene Jobert) and it’s going to be one of those pictures where an innocent woman is suspected of a crime and the man has to clear her name.

Except Mellie isn’t innocent. She’s killed a rapist who broke into her house and then dumped his body over the cliff. And she isn’t, officially at least, a suspect, local cop Inspector Toussaint (Jean Gaven) more interested in getting a loan from her husband, pilot Tony (Gabriele Tinti), to pay off gambling debts. Needless to say, any time the cop does knock on her door, she jumps out of her skin.

And she would have got away with the murder, except for the arrival of Dobbs (Charles Bronson). He turns up at a wedding, ensures she gets to see a newspaper headline of the murder, insinuates his way into her life, not too difficult once her husband heads off on another flight. She runs a bowling alley with her mother Juliette (Annie Cordy) who scarcely has a maternal bone in her body.

Rather than helping the cops solve the case, Dobbs is more interested in the red bag the rapist was carrying. But when she hands over the bag, it doesn’t contain the $60,000 Dobbs wants. We never see what Dobbs gets up to when he’s not with Mellie. But we hear it. His investigations may be carried out off screen but he’s tailing her – knows she bought a ton of newspapers – and tells her what he’s found out by speaking to cops and neighbors. Even though she’s replaced the cartridges in the shotgun she used to kill the rapist, he knows the gun has been fired. When she claims she was aiming at rats in the cellar, he points to the marks on the wall, too high for even the most acrobatic rat.

Mellie is trapped in a claustrophobic world, assailed by her own guilt and a jealous husband with too much unexplained loose cash (drug smuggling is the implication), turns against her best friend, boutique owner Nicole (Jill) who had an affair with her husband, and against her mother whom as a child she caught in bed with another man, causing her father to dump the mother.

*They started to get tricky with double bills in the 1970s, trying to suggest*
*the films were equally attractive, ignoring the fact that if they had been*
*such hits they wouldn’t have been paired in the first place.*

Most of the tension is self-inflicted but Dobbs has thing about nuts and soon is whizzing shells across rooms, some trick where they break on impact with a window, but the noise is like a shot, too close to the blast of the shotgun.

Every twist ratchets up the tension. And by concentrating on the suspect the police are ignoring and making Dobbs, by default, the chief investigator, and nobody to turn to, Mellie is turned inside out by his mere presence, never mind, when exasperated, he employs his own interrogation method, akin to waterboarding, except the liquid is alcohol, forced down her throat until her lungs are full to bursting.

The last act is a bit murky, as the locale shifts to Paris, involving a brothel owner and a set of gangsters who are even more intent on humiliating Mellie. With echoes of Charade (1963) and Moment to Moment (1966), it’s superbly directed by Rene Clement (Is Paris Burning? 1965), who doles out clues and twists like he’s playing a hand at cards.

In spite of the concentration on tension, he takes the time to build up his characters. A series of emotional flashbacks show the fault-lines in Mellie’s character, no matter that she initially appears confident with fashionable short hairstyle and white outfits bound to attract attention. Dobbs’ obsession with suddenly chucking nut shells around maintains the tension and his cavalier tone, especially his jocular use of a nickname, suggests an interesting personality behind the tough guy pose.

Like his script for The Sleeping Car Murder (1965), screenwriter Sebastian Japrisot is as concerned with ordinary life as with the thriller elements.

Charles Bronson (Farewell, Friend / Adieu L’Ami, 1968) delivers the best performance of his entire career, tough guy with a charming underbelly, kind of Cary Grant with muscle. Marlene Jobert (Catch Me a Spy, 1971) is excellent as the victim turned suspect, and even Jill Ireland, for whom a part was always found in husband Charlie’s movies, shows a different side to her screen persona.

A riveting watch.

The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl / La Louve Solitaire (1968) ****

A sheer delight, a twisty thriller with a standout sexy burglar. It might put you immediately in mind of To Catch a Thief (1955) but this takes the Hitchcock embryo and molds it in something effortlessly stylish and not just to keep the audience on the hop. A second viewing has raised it in my estimation.

Unless you were a fan of the more permissive pictures at the end of the 1960s or kept a close eye on the gossip columns – or for that matter Playboy magazine – you were unlikely to have come across slinky blonde Daniele Gaubert. A former teen model and supporting actress in a number of French and Italian films at the start of the 1960s, she had a brief brush with Hollywood as Yul Brynner’s girlfriend in United Artists’ Flight from Ashiya (1964) but then married Rhadames Trujillo, son of the Dominican Republic dictator.

The year after The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl she starred in Radley Metzger’s provocative Camille 2000 which set pulses racing especially at the censor’s office. Then marriage beckoned again, this time to French Olympic triple gold medallist skier Jean-Claude Killy with whom she made her last picture The Snow Job (1972) also known, depending on where you lived, as The Ski Raiders and The Great Ski Caper.

She only made eighteen movies but The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl is by far the standout. A taut thriller with plenty of twists and stylish action scenes, the French-Italian co-production was the only film of documentary film maker Edouard Logerau and that background helps shape the movie with many of the most thrilling sequences lacking musical accompaniment.

Female empowerment is not normally associated with crime, given that organized crime is generally organized by men. But burglary is a different matter, lending itself to non-gender-specific individual enterprise. Though there are safes to break, there’s no glass ceiling in this brand of thievery.

Gaubert plays a cat burglar ironically known as “the lone wolf” (as in the original title) who is forced to trade her freedom by stealing a cache of drugs for the police in order to apprehend a criminal mastermind (Sacha Pitoeff). (Maybe this notion inspired Luc Besson’s Nikita.) Her sidekick is Michael Duchaussoy, seconded from his usual job as an embassy press attache, on the grounds that he can lip-read (which proves more than a gimmick as the plot unfolds).

Given that this was all shot “in camera” – Christopher Nolan’s favourite phrase – without the benefit of CGI or, so it would appear, much in the way of bluescreen, the burglary scenes are pretty impressive. For a kick-off, Gaubert is a sexy as you can get in a skin-tight cat-suit. Furthermore, her character calls on skills from her previous occupation as a trapeze artist. While the director doesn’t match Hitchcock’s in the tension-racking stakes, the sheer verve of the burglary takes the breath away.

The first burglary – before she is caught – takes place at a fancy chateau where a party is in full swing (owners in residence less likely to take extra precautions to hide their valuables), Gaubert nips over a wall, slips up a tree, uses a line thrower (a type of harpoon) to connect tree to building, and then proceeds to walk along the tightrope. Mission accomplished, she zooms off in a sports car, only stopping to remove false tyre treads and strip out of her costume before hiding her ill-gotten gains in a secret compartment at the back of the fridge.

The police burglary is in an office block. She and the lip-reader are holed up in an apartment opposite watching via a telescope. Although they pass the time in gentle flirtation, especially as she favours revealing outfits, she is not quite as imprisoned as it might seem and is already hatching her own plans to outwit her captors. This burglary is even more dangerous, in the pouring rain for a start, across Parisian rooftops, and involving a trapeze and ropes.

Thereafter, plot twists come thick and fast after this. She escapes to Switzerland, pursued by lip-reader (to whom she has clearly formed an attachment), cops and furious drug runners. Eventually re-captured she agree to another official burglary as a way of finally trapping Mr Big.

The tone is lightened by repartee and some interesting characterization. The lone wolf turns out to have very strong principles that prevent her just running off. Mr Big is a stamp aficionado. A lava lamp is turned into a weapon. Instead of counting to five before killing someone, a bad guy does the countdown according to the number of people diving into a swimming pool. Gaubert fools her captors into thinking they have a flat tyre by dangling her handbag over the edge of the door until it bumps into the tyre and makes the thwock-thwock of a burst tyre. “Survivors give me goose flesh,” quips a thug.

The closest comparison is not Hitchcock but Danger: Diabolik (1968) featuring John Philip Law which has a definite comic book riff. And you might also point to Joseph Losey’s Modesty Blaise (1966) or even, for a self-contained independent woman, to Raquel Welch’s Fathom (1967. But this lone wolf is ice-cold. Blonde is not enough. She is one step ahead of the law and the criminals. There are hints of a tragic past – a trapeze artists requires a partner, for example.

The last shot has Genault triumphant on a Paris rooftop. There is a nod to Hitchcock (think Rear Window) in the use of a telescopic framing device for many scenes, giving them a voyeuristic aspect. Sure, a bigger budget and a better supporting cast – and perhaps a more obvious romance – might have lifted the picture but Genault’s presence ensures that the film does not lack style. Gaubert dominates so much you could imagine she harldy needed direction but it is the cleverness of Edourd Logerau (Paris Secret, 1965) that makes it appear seamless.

Definitely deserves a more appreciative audience.

Taste of Excitment (1969) **

Must-see for all the wrong reasons. An epic of confusion, appalling acting and dodgy accents make this thriller a prime contender for the “So-Bad-It’s-Good” Hall of Fame. Director Don Sharp (The Devil-Ship Pirates, 1964) jibed at star Eva Renzi (Funeral in Berlin, 1966) when he should have concentrated on a script that is over-plotted to within an inch of its life. A couple of kidnaps, casino visit, a sniper, and a vertiginous cliff-top maneuver are thrown in before a truth serum lights up the climax in spectacularly hilarious fashion.

Promising material goes badly awry. English tourist Jane Kerrell (Eva Renzi), floating around the South of France, is being targeted for unknown reasons. A white Mercedes has tried to drive her off the road, mysterious phone calls and visions make her believe she is going mad, that prognosis helped along by handy psychiatrist Dr Forla (George Pravda). And before you can say Surete, Scotland Yard and NATO she is the chief suspect in the murder of a man called Chalker on the ferry to France. Assistance comes in the form of handsome artist David Headley (David Buck) – preposterously famous “I’m David Headley” “The painter?” – who nearly does what’s she’s been complaining everyone else is trying to do, namely knock her down with his car. He specialises in painting nude women and for no reason at all, given he is identified immediately as a lothario, he resists her attempts to take her to bed.

Turns out Jane is something of a boffin, as any self-respecting computer expert would be known in those days, and a millionaire businessman Beiber (Paul Hubschmid), one of Headley’s rich clients, enlists the painter to offer her a job. Of course, he has something else in mind. His company is being accused to shipping unnamed goods to the unnamed opposition, hence the involvement of NATO chap Breese (Francis Matthews).

But nobody is to be trusted, especially as the French police have dismissed her fears as nonsensical. Scotland Yard’s Inspector Malling (Peter Vaughan) throws flames on the fire by not coming to her rescue but planning to arrest her since she is the last person to see Chalker alive. Then it turns out Chalker must have given her a code or secret message before he died. The police take apart her red Mini Cooper in clinical French Connection style but find nothing. That just shows how dumb they are. It never occurred to them, as it does instantly to Headley, to check the carburretor.

By now you’ll have guessed consistency is not this movie’s strong point. You never even know who the sniper Gaudi (Peter Bowles) is targeting his aim is so appalling. There’s even a sinister secretary Miss Barrow (Kay Walsh) with a pronounced Scottish accent in the Jean Brodie class. Headley comes up with an idea to disguise her – by changing her hairstyle (that’ll fool them!! – and astonishingly, in keeping with the bizarre tone, it does).

For someone who is meant to be paranoid Jane is surprisingly trusting, toddling off with clearly-identified villains when fed a line.

Most of the advertising, including this spread in “Films and Filming” magazine, made play of the sight of Eva Renzi’s naked derriere but ignored the unusual gender equality when it came to the nudity since in this scene David Buck gets out of bed and stands as equally starkers by the window.

You won’t be surprised when Jane ends up trussed and gagged, in her bikini naturally, in a fabulous house with an electrified fence. I can’t resist telling you about the truth serum. Before the evil psychiatrist has the chance to question her he is bopped on the head, Headley having sneaking in before (the dolts!) Gaudi thought to switch on the electric fence. (The electric fence is nullified by the police who just switch off all the electricity in the area.) But when she escapes, still full of the truth drug, when Gaudi calls out to find out where she is hiding, the serum forces her to give the correct answer. In the midst of the danger, Headley takes the opportunity to get an honest answer to the question of whether she loves him. And that’s not the best bit. The final line, given there hasn’t been a decent line all the way through, is a cracker. “Never believe a woman when she is telling you the truth” certainly gives you something to ponder.

So much is held back from the audience that there is never a chance, unlike Charade (1963), of genuine tension. Even the one gripping moment, taking a shortcut along a perilous cliff road, which is well done, is undercut by their pursuer beating them to their destination. The whole thing has an air of being improvised or being devised by someone who thought that twists counted more than characterisation, plot development or relationships.

The acting is so uniformly bad that Eva Renzi actually looks good. David Buck (Deadfall, 1968) is miscast in the slick Cary Grant role. While it is entertaining to see Peter Bowles (The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1968) drop his plummy English accent, his Italian accent fails to pass muster. Peter Vaughan (Alfred the Great, 1969), saddled with the bulk of the murky exposition, does his best. In a bit part, veteran Kay Walsh (A Study in Terror, 1965), holds the acting aces but she doesn’t have much competition.

Director Don Sharp also had a hand in the screenplay so it’s difficult to know who must take most blame, him or colleagues Brian Carton and Ben Healey. This was the alpha and omega of this pair’s movie career.

If you want to see how not to handle a potentially classy thriller tune in. Can’t make up my mind whether to give this two stars for being so bad or four stars for being so bad it’s good. You decide.

And you can do so for free on Flick Vault. Be warned that you have to get past some adverts first. And if you’re wondering what happened to the opening credits, there ain’t any.

Charade (1963) *****

Arguably the slickest thriller ever made. Two stars at the top of their game, three rising stars giving notice of their talent, more twists than you could shake a Hitchcock at, the chance to frighten the life out of the most fashionable actress of her generation, and standout scene after standout scene.

Three characters are presented upfront as bad guys, but whole enterprise is so laden with suspicion you are not all surprised when the finger points at Peter (Cary Grant) and Reggie (Audrey Hepburn), not least because Peter keeps changing his name, but also because audiences with lingering memories of film noir could easily imagine Reggie as a femme fatale especially when she comes on to a man whose got three decades on her.

Basic story: Reggie returns from a ski holiday where she met divorced Peter to find her husband dead and Parisian apartment empty. She is menaced by three men – Tex (James Coburn), Herman (George Kennedy) and Leopold (Ned Glass) – convinced she knows the whereabouts of $250,000 they lay claim to. Bartholomew (Walter Matthau) of the C.I.A. also stakes a claim. Tex has a nasty habit of throwing lighted matches at her, Herman threatening her with his steel hand. And there are doubts about Peter, initially perceived as a savior.

It is a film of such constant twists, you never know quite where you are, and forced to follow the lead of a befuddled and confused Reggie you question everything, so it’s an unsettling watch. Given the permutations, you could easily come up with a number of different endings.

And although this is virtually thrill-a-minute stuff it has the most endearing light romance, full of beautifully-scripted sparkling cross-purpose banter, and managing to work in marvellous scraps of Parisian atmosphere, some tourist-hinged (a market, boat ride on the Seine), others (a subway chase) less exhilarating. At times, Reggie turns spy and comes up with clever ruses to evade pursuit.

You can have this amount of conflict – baffling clues, perplexed French Inspector Grandpierre (Jacques Marin) kidnap, rooftop fight – without corpses soon mounting up. Alleviating the tension are a myriad of little jokes: a small boy with a water pistol, time out in a night club to play the rather frisky orange game, Peter showering with his clothes on. The romance might have helped except every time Reggie trusts Peter he gives her good reason to distrust him. And, of course, she could as easily have squirreled the money away herself.

The whole ensemble is delivered with such style and attention to detail (a bored man at a funeral clips his nails, cigarettes are expensive in France, voices echo when a boat passes under a bridge, phone booths are both refuges and traps) that it’s as if every single second was storyboarded to achieve the greatest effect.

It’s not just the entrance of the bad guys, door slamming in an empty church, that signals a director alert to every nuance, but the fact they all proceed, in different ways, to check Reggie’s husband is actually dead. A man has drowned in his bed. “I sprained my pride,” explains Peter after coming off worse in a fight. Apart from the core tale of suspicion, betrayals, theft and murder, everything else in the thriller genre is completely revitalized, in dialog and visuals this is nothing you have ever seen before.

The principals invest it with a rare freshness. Cary Grant (Walk, Don’t Walk, 1966) and Audrey Hepburn (Two for the Road, 1967) are such natural screen partners you wonder why (expense apart) the exercise was never repeated. And in typical John Wayne fashion, to minimise the May-December romance element, it’s Hepburn who makes all the running in that department, and you get the impression that she had been married to an older man anyway. Grant’s character is surprisingly adept at the old fisticuffs while Hepburn is more feisty than helpless, and devious, too, not above using the old screaming routine as a device to bring Grant running for romantic reasons.

James Coburn has his best role since The Magnificent Seven (1960), Walter Matthau (Lonely Are the Brave, 1962), at this point not considered comedian material, brings very human touches to his role, and George Kennedy (Mirage, 1965) presents a memorable villain.

And that’s not forgetting an absolutely outstanding score by Henry Mancini (Hatari!, 1962), jaunty one minute, romantic the next, and for the most thrilling sequences creating the type of effect David Shire achieved in All the President’s Men (1976) of steadily mounting tension rather than instruments shrieking terror. And the Saul Bass-style title credits were actually conceived by Maurice Binder of James Bond fame.

Outside of his musicals, this is the peak of Stanley Donen’s (Two for the Road) career. The gripping screenplay was the work of Peter Stone (Mirage), based on a story by Marc Boehm (Help!, 1965).

One of the few twist-heavy thrillers that rises effortlessly above the material.

Return from the Ashes (1965) ****

When your starting point is an arcane French inheritance law and the plot revolves around swindling a concentration camp survivor you are immediately on “icky” ground. Throw in a relationship between an adult male and the step-daughter of his deceased wife and the audience might already be backing off.

So it’s a tribute to the acting and that each character is not so much unlikeable as both vulnerable and predatory that this turns into a very involving drama. On the eve of World War Two in Paris Dr Michele Wolf (Ingrid Thulin) buys the love of penniless Polish chess player Stanislaus (Maximilian Schell) but at the cost of abandoning her step-daughter Fabi (Samantha Eggar). For him, love is contingent on wealth, but he marries Michele, a Jew, in a (failed) bid to save her from the clutches of the Nazis. Fabi, shorn of maternal love finds turns to a paternal variation, but is capable of coming up with an ingenious murder plot.

Just quite how hollow Michele has become is demonstrated in a brilliant opening scene set after the end of the war. In a railway carriage, a bored small boy endlessly kicks a door. Pretty much for 90 seconds we either see or hear that door being kicked. Foolishly, his hands wander from the window to the door handle. Next thing, he has fallen out. Cue screams, chaos, shocked passengers racing out of the carriage.

But when the conductor turns up to investigate the incident he finds Michele still sitting in her seat, oblivious to any death, even that of a child. When she returns to Paris, she takes a room in a hotel under a pseudonym, fearing that her ravaged looks make her unattractive, guilty at surviving (by volunteering to work in the camp brothel) when all her relatives were wiped out, unaware that she has unexpectedly inherited all their combined wealth.

So the story begins in a different way. When Stanislaus meets her accidentally under her false name, he immediately assumes she is just a dead ringer for his deceased wife and enrols her in a scheme to win the millions currently held in escrow under this inexplicable French law.

Since she continues to play the part of a different woman, she hears the truth about her relationship with Stanislaus, that although he committed the only unselfish “gallant act” in his life in marrying her nonetheless his prime reason was money. Already Fabi, in full femme fatale mode, is planning to rid the couple of Michele once the money has been legally acquired.

To his credit, Stanislaus initially balks at this notion, but when Michele reveals her true identity and scuppers his relationship with Fabi while at the same time trying to win back the affection of her step-daughter, matters take a deadly turn.

For the most part what we have is a menage a trois, equal parts driven by money and love, but in each instance propelled by innermost desire. Stanislaus is adept at pulling the wool over Michele’s eyes, she only too willingly blinding herself to his sexual deception. But Michele is equally willing, even when she knows his true feelings, to use her money to win him back while Fabi, aware that for her lover money will always trump romance, is determined to use her body to achieve the same effect.

What makes this so compelling is that, unusually, it avoids sentiment. It would have been easy to load each character up with such vulnerability that an audience would not condemn them. Instead, in addition to their individual weaknesses, we are shown their inherent predatory natures.

What makes it so enjoyable is the acting. So often Maximilian Schell is called upon to play stern characters, often typecast from his accent as a villainous German of one kind or another (Judgement at Nuremberg, 1961, The Deadly Affair, 1967), rather than allowing him to invent a more rounded character as he did in Topkapi (1964). This is a wonderfully involving performance, the wannabe chess grandmaster who uses his considerable charm to buttress his fears of poverty, and is only too aware of his failing, full of joie de vivre, bristling at being a kept man yet at the same time only too ready to financially exploit the situation.

Where in The Collector (1965) Samantha Eggar was constrained by circumstance and in Walk, Don’t Walk (1966) saddled with an initially cold character, here she is permitted greater freedom to develop a conflicted personality, loving and deadly at the same time, drawn to and hating her step-mother, attracted by the thought of the money that would secure Stanislaus but repulsed by the cost.

Ingmar Bergman protégé Ingrid Thulin (Wild Strawberries, 1957) is given the least leeway, another of the tormented characters in her intense portfolio. Herbert Lom (Villa Rides, 1968) puts in an appearance as a friend trying to warn her off Stanislaus.

Director J. Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone, 1961) takes the bold approach of allowing characters and situation to develop before moving into thriller mode. There are a couple of quite superb scenes, running the opening segment close is the much-vaunted scene of Fabi in the bath (“No one may enter the theater once Fabi enters her bath” was a famous tagline). It is brilliantly filmed in film noir tones, bright light slashed across eyes rather than through windows, and Johnny Dankworth provides an interesting score. Julius J. Epstein (Casablanca, 1942) wrote the screenplay based on the bestseller by Hubert Monteilhet.

Is Paris Burning (1965) ****

Politics don’t usually play a part in war films of the 1960s but’s it’s an essential ingredient to Rene Clement’s underrated documentary-style picture. Paris has no strategic importance and after the Normandy landings in 1944 the Allies intend to bypass the German-occupied French capital and head straight for Berlin.

Meanwhile, Hitler, in particular vengeful mood after an attempt on his life, orders the city destroyed. Resistance groups are splintered, outnumbered and lacking the weaponry to achieve an uprising. Followers of General De Gaulle, the French leader in exile, want to wait until the Allies send in the troops while the Communists plan to seize control before British and American soldiers can arrive.

When the Communists begin the fight by seizing public buildings, the Germans retaliate by planting explosives on the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and other famous buildings and all the bridges across the River Seine. 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 dispatch a messenger to persuade General Omar Bradley to change his mind and send troops to relieve the city. Director Clement, aware how little tension he can extract from the question of whether von Clowitz will press the destruct button (history tells us he did not) 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 his flock 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, corner-by-corner, bridge-by-bridge, enemy-emplacement-by-enemy-emplacement, tank-by-tank.

And Clement allows as much time for humanity. Francophile Sgt Warren (Anthony Perkins), 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. Bar owner Simone Signoret helps soldiers phone their loved ones.

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, only fleeting glimpses of Glenn Ford (Fate Is the Hunter, 1964), Kirk Douglas (A Lovely Way To Die, 1968), Robert Stack (The Corrupt Ones / The Peking Medallion, 1967), Orson Welles (House of Cards, 1968) and George Chakiris (West Side Story, 1961).

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). Director Rene Clement was best known for Purple Noon (1960), an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley starring Alain Delon

At $6 million, it was the most expensive French film ever made, a six-month shooting schedule, shot on the streets of the city including famous locations like Etoile, Madeleine and the Louvre. Big hit in France, it flopped in the United States, its box office so poor that Paramount refused to disclose it.