Italy – Page 4 – The Magnificent 60s

The Brotherhood (1968) ****

Minimal violence and no sex was the wrong recipe for this Mafia picture – as proven at the box office – but this is an absorbing, underrated drama nonetheless.

It bears a surprising number of parallels to The Godfather (1972). Pure coincidence, extraordinary though that may appear, because The Brotherhood premiered in December 1968 while the Mario Puzo novel was printed in March 1969 (and delivered to the printers long before), so no opportunity at all for plagiarism.

The two films could be opposite sides of the same coin. For a start, both begin with a wedding. Vince Ginetta (Alex Cord), brother of Mafia kingpin Frank (Kirk Douglas), is marrying Emma (Susan Strasberg), daughter of another Mafia chief Dominick (Luther Adler). Like Michael (Al Pacino) in The Godfather, Vince is just out of the army, well-educated and primed for a life outside the business. And like Michael is called upon to commit an act of supreme violence. There’s even a hint of Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) in the relationship between the brothers, Frank having brought up the much younger Vince after his father’s premature death.

And just as Don Corleone (Marlon Brando) refuses to join the other Mafia families in a new business venture (in that case, drugs) so Frank bows out of an incredibly high risk (but amazingly prescient) scheme to invest in electronic firms involved in military work for the government, a deal that not only promises huge profits but a potential hold over the powers-that-be.

Frank’s wife Ida (Irene Papas) is like Don Corleone’s wife, not wanting to know anything about the business, but both Emma and Frank’s daughter Carmela (Connie Scott) are thematic cousins to Kay Adams (Diane Keaton) as initial implicit trust is wiped away. When Frank dances with Carmela at the wedding, that is reflected in Don Corleone dancing with his daughter at her wedding. Like The Godfather our first sight of the other Mafia chieftains – including Jim Hagen (Murray Hamilton) and Don Peppino (Eduardo Cianelli) – is at the feast where they are viewed with suspicion by Frank’s clan. And the scene where Frank uses a banana to tease his nephew will remind you of Don Corleone spooking his grandson with an orange.

However, the twist, if you like, is that, unlike Michael, Vince is desperate to join the Family and is instrumental in developing legitimate enterprises, which is echoed by Michael Corleone’s strategic shift to Las Vegas. In some respects, Frank is more like Sonny (James Caan), happy to take personal command of murders which the other Mafia chiefs now scrupulously delegate to “mechanics” in Los Angeles. He is more old-school whereas the others have assumed the personas of respectable businessmen.

And then it becomes a question of loyalty. Which side the ambitious Vinnie will take is crucial to the story. Frank is under pressure on all sides, from the other Mafia leaders, a government investigation, Vinnie, and the need to exact revenge on the man who caused his father’s death.

There is authentic detail here as well – religious procession in Sicily, Frank playing boccia (the Italian version of the French boules) with his old pals, family dinner, canary stuffed in the mouth of a stool pigeon, but it is less spaghetti-drenched than The Godfather. Screenwriter Lewis John Carlino (The Fox, 1967), also listed as technical adviser, claimed to be drawing on his intimate knowledge of organized crime.

There are only three moments of violence – four if you count a shocking moment of someone spitting on a corpse at a wake – a pair of straightforward murders that bookend the film, plus a scene of Godfather-style brutality in which a man slowly strangles himself to death after being hogtied. Everyone is happily married, Ida very old-school to the extent of removing her husband’s clothes (and shoes) when he returns home drunk, Vince in a good relationship.

Kirk Douglas (Cast a Giant Shadow, 1966) is excellent in a difficult role that presents a fully rounded character, playful with his daughter, loyal to his wife, holding his own against the other mob bosses, enjoying the company of the old-timers who resemble his father, and the changing nature of his relationship with brother Vince. Alex Cord, whose work I initially dismissed (Stiletto, 1969), I have come to more fully appreciate, especially here, where he makes the transition from adoring brother to threat. It is a masterpiece of restraint.

The supporting cast is terrific, a rare Hollywood sojourn for Irene Papas (The Guns of Navarone, 1961), Luther Adler (Cast a Giant Shadow, 1966) as one of the hoodlums exasperated by Frank’s recalcitrance, Murray Hamilton (The Graduate, 1967) but, except at the start, Susan Strasberg (The Trip, 1967) is underused.

While director Martin Ritt (Hombre, 1967) is at times guilty of melodrama, his rendering of family life is much more nuanced than Coppola’s. There are very tender moments between Frank and his wife and Frank and his daughter, as well as moments where Ida plays a more maternal role.

For nearly half a century, The Brotherhood has lain in the shadow of The Godfather simply because they both deal with the Mafia. But this is an excellent movie in its own right.

The Equalizer 3 (2023) **** – Seen at the Cinema (three times)

Stylish, triumphant, conclusion to a vigilante series that stands comparison with John Wick as the best of the new century. Oddly enough, the pair share some motifs, not least a mountainous stairway to a medieval church. And there are nods to The Godfather, killings against the backdrop of a religious procession and fruit spilling onto a corpse, a dagger pinning a hand to a table. And you might find shades of Apocalypse Now in the brooding remorseful figure of Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) convalescing in a remote fishing village in southern Italy. And it’s fully contemporary with a nod to the power of the mobile phone in depicting live events.

For an actioner it’s chockful of mystery. To begin with, you think we’re at the end, the aftermath of some gun battle, but, in fact, it’s just the start. Quite why McCall has ended up in a Mafia fiefdom in Sicily is held back till the end as is explanation regarding helping young C.I.A. agent Emma (Dakota Fanning) track down Mafia drug dealers, both narrative hooks adding to the subtlety and nuance that filters through this reflective actioner. Sure, there’s brutality, when is there not with McCall around, but there’s also reality, marvellously evocative scenes of village life, the vigilante sipping his trademark tea in a café, buying fresh-caught fish, joining exuberant locals celebrating a famous win at soccer.

Assisted by local physician Enzo (Remo Arisio) and local cop Gio (Eugenio Mastandrea) in recovering from a life-threatening bullet-wound, it’s all McCall can do to hobble down the steps with the aid of a walking stick. No Rocky-style reinvention dynamics here, no weight-training or running regime, no taking to the target range. When McCall struggles up a flight of steps your heart is in your mouth.

Meanwhile, a story unfolds of a power grab, legitimate and illegitimate, by Mafia chief Vincent (Andrea Scarduzio). But when the gangster’s younger brother Marco (Andrea Dodero) pushes his weight around once too often in McCall’s presence the rumbling volcano starts to erupt. But in temperate fashion to begin with, McCall relying on being able to locate a particular nerve (a physical one) enough to send the young thug scarpering.

Worth noting that the movie avoids two obvious traps. Agent Emma isn’t fighting a gender war, she’s no feminist battling for approval from male counterparts; in fact, if anything, she’s accorded full praise for her work and makes sure that she never acknowledges McCall’s input to her superiors, which seems even more realistic.

You might expect by now that widower McCall would be ripe for romance but though waitress Aminah (Gaia Scodellaro) takes a shine to him that goes little further than a pleasant walk along the beach sampling local delicacies. So you might also expect that, sticking to the core, this would be just a lean rip-off sequel. Instead, it’s rich in composition and detail. Many scenes play out in what appears to be atmospheric black-and-white. While not in the operatic league of John Wick 4, it’s a joy to watch.

Plenty bang for your buck but an interesting storyline that meshes drugs, terrorism and the Mafia. Deceptively subtle performance from Denzel Washington (The Magnificent Seven, 2016). He could have coasted home with his brooding persona. Instead, he walks like a man half-dead, reacts as if bewildered to still be alive, and finds he is no longer an outsider. Dakota Fanning (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, 2019) plays down her role, there are no dramatic fireworks, she’s a confident individual, not giving an inch in her quiet duel with McCall, but no histrionics either.

Long-lasting director-actor teamings generally bring richer rewards as the partnership grows. This is the fifth film for Washington and Antoine Fuqua, beginning with Training Day (2001) and incorporating The Magnificent Seven and the two previous Equalizer outings. It has the feel of a famous partnership along the lines of John Wayne-John Ford, James Stewart-Anthony Mann and Gregory Peck-Henry King.

Nod to Richard Wenk, third time in the writer’s chair, for the screenplay and espcially to Marcelo Zarvos (Emancipation, 2022) for a score that combines haunting theme tune and screeching guitar for the action.

I was so taken with this I’ve already seen it three times. Might well head back a fourth time next week for more nuance – and more bang.

The Belle Starr Story (1968) ***

Only spaghetti western directed by a woman. Brings a distinctly feminist feel to that most sexist of the subgenres. You tend to forget that the sexy female Europeans imported to Hollywood as co-stars or to add spice further down the credits were actually top-billed stars in their natïve countries and demonstrated a greater range than the American industry allowed.

Not only do we have Elsa Martinelli (Maroc 7, 1967) as the leather-clad cigar-smoking titular gunslinger, whose watchword is female independence, but it was helmed by arthouse icon Lina Wertmuller (Swept Away, 1974). There’s a thematic consistency lacking in most Italian-made westerns, for example predating Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) in its water imagery. But any potential for lyricism is undercut by the risk attached to being a lone woman. And there’s a Tracy-Hepburn tone to the endless bickering and battle for superiority in her niggling romance with outlaw Blackie (George Eastman).

And, unusually in that decade, a woman who throws caution to the wind and will even bet her body when the money runs out at the poker table, as twisty a meet-cute as a screenwriter could devise. But thereafter it’s a struggle for dominance between the pair. She won’t take orders from a man. He won’t accept female equality even when she shoots the wooden fence he’s sitting on from under him, making him fall to the ground, and for good measure putting a bullet in his heels.

The first act builds up Belle Starr, cool at the poker table, even cooler in the bedroom, and demonstrating the gunplay that attracted her notoriety. The second act take an odd route, a lengthy flashback that digs deep into feminism, the orphaned Belle Starr running away after being sold into marriage by her uncle to an ugly old rich powerful man, traded, effectively, for political favor.

She returns to save a servant condemned to death for the crime of attacking the uncle when he tried to rape her. Sexual humiliation is a theme. Another outlaw Harvey (Robert Woods), who she regards as a platonic friend, steals her clothes as she swims in a lake, and then, having saved her from a posse, forcibly tries to take his reward.

The third act, like the duel between The Man With No Name and The Man in Black, is a case of double- and triple-cross. She refuses to join Blackie’s gang when he plans a million-dollar jewel heist, but hijacks the concept, recruiting her own gang to beat him to the robbery, and teach him a lesson.

But it backfires. Blackie is waiting. She has inadvertently hired his men. In the subsequence shoot-out he is captured. She rides to his rescue. But with their opposing ideas of a woman’s place in the world part on good terms.

The flashback was more subtly observed in Once Upon a Time in the West, and while she shared with Charles Bronson gunslinging skills he was not at any time viewed as a commodity or a piece of property or a candidate for rape. The flashback here fleshes out for the audience the powerlessness of women. But also the kind of camaraderie that is generally also usually only conferred on male characters.

We are pretty conversant with the notion that the gun rules the West. But less conscious of what happens when you are gun-less. Depriving someone of their fundamental weaponry makes them instantly impotent, as humiliating as denying someone water in a desert.

There are some nice directorial touches, blood dripping from a ceiling onto a dinner table, a saloon door opening to cast sudden light onto a corpse, waterfalls suggest sanctuary whereas open water attracts predatory males, and the finale, as they part, of Blackie, desperate to demonstrate his superiority, shooting off her hat from some distance.

Elsa Martinelli is a revelation as a star working to her own beat rather than playing second fiddle to some Hollywood marquee name. This wasn’t Lina Wertmuller’s first film and she had already made an impact with the Rita the Mosquito series, featuring another rebellious woman. Don’t be fooled by the co-directing credit, she replaced debut director Piero Cristofani after a few days.

It’s somewhat ironic that in a contemporary Hollywood attempt to create a female outlaw leader in Cat Ballou (1965), Jane Fonda was upstaged by Lee Marvin, and that in Bonnie and Clyde (1967), despite taking precedence in the title, Faye Dunaway was not the dominant one in the relationship.

By no means a great western but worth a look to see what Elsa Martinelli can achieve when not slotted in to the Hollywood co-star cliche and to get a preview of what Lina Wertmuller could offer.

Decent print on YouTube.

The Cardinal (1963) ****

Would appear resolutely old-fashioned except for Forrest Gump (1994) adopting same premise of the main character present at major events. Here it’s issues affecting the Catholic Church between last century’s two world wars and the protagonist is an American priest, Father Stephen Fermoyle (Tom Tryon) of Irish stock, who rises to the position of Cardinal.

So we move at a relatively stately pace through abortion, inter-denominational marriage, racism, a miracle, challenging church philosophy, and Hitler’s annexation of Austria on the eve of the Second World War, in which the church played an inglorious part. Along the way Fr Fermoyle is afflicted so badly by doubt that he takes a sabbatical only for his flesh to be sorely tempted.

Astonishingly, I saw this on YouTube (it’s still there) in a beautiful 70mm print preserved by the National Film and Television Archive. The roadshow print, to be exact, which begins with a marvellous five-minute overture. Oddly enough there’s something very settling about sitting in the darkness with the curtains drawn watching a blank (black) screen and listening to the majestic score by Jerome Moross (The Big Country, 1958).

And then it’s another few minutes of a stunning credit sequence, all sunlight and shadow, before the movie begins. The movie itself is over three hours long, so if you are put off by this kind of epic now’s the time to check out. But if you do, you will miss something genuinely to be savored.

For Otto Preminger (Hurry Sundown, 1967) certainly knows how to tell a story, even one as sweeping as this. For all its pomp, he manages to retain intimacy.

Immediately after his ordination just as America enters the First World War, Fr Fermoyle faces a crisis. His sister Mona (Carol Lynley) wants to marry a Jewish dentist (John Saxon) who refuses to convert to Catholicism. Fermoyle’s advice, in keeping with the church’s stringent rules: give him up.

A noted intellectual, Fermoyle is astonished to be sent by the worldly piano-playing cigar-chomping Archbishop Glennon (John Huston) to an impoverished parish to learn humility. There, he encounters the blind faith of parishioners and a pastor, Fr Halley (Burgess Meredith), so inclined to put others first that he will not seek help for a debilitating disease.

Meanwhile Mona, now a dancer and drinker, has become pregnant, and not by the dentist. But complications arise and she is forced to choose between herself and the unborn child. According to Church doctrine, as Fermoyle, advises, abortion being illegal, the mother must die to save the baby. Mona, not the sacrificial kind, does the opposite. Fermoyle, racked with guilt, wants to quit the church. Instead, he is promoted to Monsignor, and given a two-year timeout which he spends lecturing in Vienna.

There he falls in love with Annemarie (Romy Scheider). In the nick of time, he is recalled to the States and sent to the Deep South to help the black Fr Gillis (Ossie Davis) who is being harassed by the Ku Klux Klan. In standing by his colleague, Fermoyle undergoes a brutal whipping. Promoted to bishop, he is despatched to Austria “to instruct the princes of the church in the realities of the modern world.” Unfortunately, the clergy, siding with the Nazis, presides over the marriage of Germany and Austria.

Meanwhile, he is reacquainted with Annemarie, who has married a Jewish banker, and witnesses at first-hand Nazi treatment of the Jews, her husband so fearful of his future he jumps out a window. When a mob ransacks a church, Fermoyle isn’t so intent on facing up to them and instead, with Annemarie, manages to escape.

At its best and its worst by the narrative being forced through the prism of an individual. His reactions to issues are regulated by his employers, the Church, which exerts as much control over personal thought as the Communist Party, so, in effect, it becomes a tale of a person initially bristling against authority until, it turns out, the Church shares the same antipathy to the worst of the century’s scandals, the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis.

Father Fermoyle hardly seems suited to high office, given he is so often inclined to temptation, either in a sexual sense, or in taking the opposite view of the Church. And it’s almost as though the splendid backdrop as represented by the immense wealth of the Church has only been achieving by subjugation of the individual. That the worldly Glennon appears as the poster boy for the Church hierarchy is almost Preminger playing with the audience.

It might be sumptuously mounted, but once again Preminger takes no prisoners, showing up an institution that while purportedly set up for the benefit of mankind so often sabotages noble endeavor.

Tom Tryon (In Harm’s Way, 1965) is excellent in the leading role, personal conviction getting in the way of the easy path to the top. But the pick of the performers are the supporting stars, especially John Huston, more famous as a director (The Night of the Iguana, 1964) and here making his acting debut, and Romy Scheider (Triple Cross, 1966). Look out for Carol Lynley (Bunny Lake Is Missing, 1965), silent film star Dorothy Gish in her final movie appearance, Maggie McNamara (The Moon Is Blue, 1953) in her first picture in eight years, and John Saxon (The Appaloosa, 1966) before he was typecast as a heavy.

Otto Preminger (In Harm’s Way) directs in stately fashion from a screenplay by Robert Dozier (The Big Bounce, 1969) and Ring Lardner Jr. (The Cincinnati Kid, 1965).

Thoughtful and striking.

The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969) ***

Sounds like a treasure hunt picture, contemporary buccaneers or thieves in search of missing gold. But there’s nothing in the way of maps waiting to be discovered, no clues, no character unhinged by its pursuit. In fact, the valuable commodity here is wine, over a million bottles of it. Everyone in the hilltop town of Santa Vittoria is in on the secret. Because they hid it from prying Germans who have taken over the place after the death of Italian dictator Mussolini. And that element of the story, once we finally embark on it, doesn’t begin until halfway through.

Meanwhile, we are treated to the browbeaten drunk Bombolini (Anthony Quinn), too dumb to realize that being elected mayor – the previous incumbent kicked out for being a Fascist – is a poisoned chalice. However, taking a few tips from Machiavelli he works out that his survival depends on bringing together a council of more sensible heads. His new position cuts no ice with disgruntled wife Rosa (Anna Magnani) whose weapons of choice, vicious tongue apart, include copper pans and an elongated rolling pin.

But if you were desperate to know how to bury treasure, here’s your chance. A good quarter of an hour is spent on that element. I’m not entirely sure what fascinated director Stanley Kramer (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, 1967) about this. Because, clever though the scheme is of vanishing into thin air more than a million bottles, it takes little more than lining up the populace in rows close enough together so they can pass a bottle onto their neighbor, until the total amount – minus 300,000 bottles left behind to fool the Germans – is hidden in tunnels in the caves below the village.

Assuming of course the Germans fail to prod the stones concealing the tunnels and discover the cement is too fresh to be ancient. But Bombolini is in luck because German leader Captain von Prum is a “good German,” inclined to take things easy, coming down hard of any of his soldiers who pester female villagers, allowing the mayor to negotiate to retain some of the supply being handed over to the invaders, half his mind on the local Countess Caterina (Virna Lisi) with whom he fancies his chances, but in gentlemanly fashion of course, aiming to seduce her over dinner rather than resorting to force.

That matter is complicates because the widowed countess already has a lover, a wounded soldier Tufa (Sergio Franchi) whom she nursed. It’s only when the captain realizes that he has been duped by the apparent buffoon of a mayor and by the countess that things start ugly and soon you can hear cries of the torture echoing out over the piazza.

The odd mixture of comedy and reality fails to gel. Anna Magnani (The Fugitive Kind, 1960) doesn’t look as if she’s acting in showing her distaste of Anthony Quinn (Lost Command, 1966) possibly because he is over-acting, cowing and whimpering and using his hands to express every single word he speaks. But it looks authentic enough. Either Kramer has rounded up every aged extra left over from Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) or he has recruited scores of ordinary peasants to play the villagers.

Kramer’s usual earnestness has disappeared, and although his first movie was a comedy, and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, his previous picture, played on the comedic elements of the situation, his feeling for comedy is rusty at best, non-existent at worst. It’s hard to feel any particular sympathy, as would be the point, in the villagers outwitting the Germans and in the fact that they have changed from ostensible World War Two conquerors to the conquered once their erstwhile allies turned on them.

You might consider this a feminist twist on The Taming of the Shrew, Rosa not only being a shrew who would never be tamed, not even by Germans, but actually the family breadwinner. While, until his election, her husband is a nonentity. And it might be viewed as a choice role for Anthony Quinn, a dramatic shift away from the heroic roles with which he was more often associated. Anna Magnani mostly looks as if wondering why she agreed to participate.

The best acting comes from Virna Lisi (How to Murder Your Wife, 1965), a widow realistic about the lack of true love in what sounds like an arranged marriage, and faced with having to keep the amorous captain sweet, and possibly doing whatever that takes in order to protect the townspeople. Hardy Kruger (The Red Tent, 1969) has also abandoned his normal arrogance, is uncomfortable with being a despot, wanting to maintain friendly relations with the villagers, and seeking solace in gentlemanly fashion from the countess. He has the best scenes, the look of superiority as he outwits, he thinks, Bombolini, and the look on horror on his face as he discovers the countess’s lover.

Based on the bestseller by Robert Crichton with a screenplay by William Rose (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner) and Ben Maddow (The Way West, 1967) it’s the kind of movie that raises a lot of questions without bothering to answer any of them.

Criminal Affair/Seven Men and one Brain / 7 Uomini et un Cervello (1968) ***

After Murderers Row (1967), Ann-Margret flipped Hollywood the finger. At one point in the early 1960s contracts had been oozing from every pore, multiple deals with multiple studios, even one to star opposite Frank Sinatra. And despite showing considerable acting talent as a mother rather than moll in Once A Thief (1965), the career she had envisaged had not materialized.

In part, her reign as a glamor queen had been usurped by Raquel Welch, who had out-bikinied her in One Million Years B.C. (1966) and Fathom (1967), or by the slimmer versions of beauty emanating from Britain in the shape of Julie Christie or from French exile in the shape of Jane Fonda.. But mostly, you would say, her box office hadn’t matched her salary and she was learning fast that promise can only take you so far. So, she took a leaf out of La Welch’s book, and headed for Italy, for a three-year four-picture sojourn.

She was probably the biggest Hollywood star to head there during the whole decade, not the never-was-es and has-beens who usually made the Transatlantic crossing. But if she had thought she would get the pick of the roles, juicy parts directed by top arthouse names, she was sadly mistaken. It was clear Hollywood-on-the-Tiber viewed it the other way round, and saw her as adding some box office pizzazz to, by Hollywood standards, less well-made productions. This was her final effort.

I never thought I’d be saying this but in Criminal Affair Ann-Margret gets in the way of a neat heist thriller that occasionally slips into the broad Italian comedy unbeloved by everyone outside Italy. But this one does have a clever premise and like many of the best robbery movies the set-up is intriguing.

Criminologist professor Simpson (Rossanno Brazzi), classes filled with more adoring female students than Indiana Jones, has more than an academical interest in his subject, having planned and executed one jewel theft, and in traditional gangster fashion pulled a fast one on his confederates. As luck would have it, his bosses grant him an all-expenses paid sabbatical to Buenos Aires where he plans to pull off the crime of the century.

FYI, that ain’t Ann-Margret on the bed and, despite the opportunity to get her soaking wet as was always a prerequisite regarding women when water was introduced, she doesn’t appear in the sewer scene either.

Accompanying him is mooning secretary Leticia (Ann-Margret) who prefers sporting herself in sexy ensembles or nothing at all to attract his attention rather than undertaking the more mundane tasks her job title might suggest. All to no avail, so it would seem, although she does, without her knowledge, play a vital role in his plan, as do some parakeets.

Academic profile opening doors, Simpson is able to scour police files to find his team, with one particular set of skills, that they can sing and properly for the grand plan is to stage a robbery at the opening night of La Traviata in the city, attended by the high and mighty who have paid colossal sums for the privilege.

He enrols other accomplices such as Georgette (Helene Chanel) whose task is divert the owner of the box overlooking the stage for which Simpson has another use. Her presence and that of the diva (Barbara Nichols) enrages Leticia, who resorts to swimming naked in the pool, flirting with the muscular butler and when that fails bombarding Simpson with dinner plates.

The use of the sewer is something of a heist trope, although there’s an original method of covering up the drilling and explosion, but mostly through misdirection we don’t quite work out how Simpson is going to fleece the opera house. Improbable a ruse as it is, nonetheless, as befits his high opinion of himself, the concept is a work of genius. Complications arise when the jewel robbers pursue him to Argentina. The film pretty much dispenses with the other heist trope, of spending much time on the character development of his new thieving team, beyond some obvious comedy.

The fact that Leticia has little to do deprives the picture of any reason for her presence, except as a dupe, physical attributes a distraction when necessary, and her lack of awareness that she is playing a key role leads to the movie’s sting in the tail.

But, in terms of the way the heist plays out, any actress could have played the part. It didn’t need to be Ann-Margret. And there’s not even any excuse, in a movie where singing is central, for her to sing. It’s possibly the most redundant role she ever took on. A bit more screenplay could have fixed that, had her character been developed along the lines of that of La Welch in her Italian-made heist picture The Biggest Bundle of Them All which appeared the same year.

And it might have better just to concentrate more on Rosanno Brazzi (The Battle of the Villa Florita, 1965) because he has mother issues, carries his absent-minded personality disguise well, and allocate more time to the intricacies of the plot and his pursuers. Viewed just as a heist picture without the unnecessary diversions of the female lead and the comedy it pretty much makes the grade. On the other hand Ann-Margret’s existence might simply have been that since he was also director he couldn’t carry the acting side of the picture on his own.

No doubt, though, I will have to check out, for your benefit, Ann-Margret’s other Italian trio.

You can catch this on Youtube though the print is a bit washed-out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swf2yWL6E4Q

Giants of Thessaly (1960) ***

Spoiler alert – this film contains no giants unless you count the one-eyed Cyclops. It’s the Jason and the Argonauts story with a lot of political shenanigans thrown in.

Even lacking the Ray Harryhausen special effects of the film covering the same ground a few years later and without the kind of budget dropped into the lap of a Stanley Kubrick it’s not a bad stab at retelling the myth. And Carlo Rambaldi (later the creator of E.T.) does a decent job of the Cyclops at a time when special effects were primitive.

This belongs to the Italian-made “peplum” genre, out of which came Hercules (1958). What struck me most was the director’s use of the camera, very often tracking a character in scenes that would otherwise have been static. There are virtually no close-ups and hardly any medium close-ups. It’s quite strange to see.

On the one hand a moving camera is an expense and on the other hand lack of close-ups saves money, so it’s possible the money spent on one technique was the result of saving money from another.

Alternatively, much of the director’s work has gone into arranging characters in group scenes in such a way that dramatic impact is sustained while not moving the camera. There’s enough political chicanery going on to keep two different plots going. Back in Jason’s (Roland Carey) homeland, where he is a king, an usurper not only seeks his throne but wants his wife and tries to deceive the population into thinking Jason is dead.

Meanwhile, Jason faces mutiny on board the Argo and then the temptations of the Siren, battle with the Cyclops, and then a final bold act to reclaim the Golden Fleece. Possibly the best scene is kept for the end, when the Argo arrives home with its own brand of deception. The film is topped off with a clever trick. Sometimes what we would now view as a B-film, ideal Saturday matinee material, sticks in the mind because it has been the proving ground for a future director or star but writer-director Riccardo Freda had already turned out Spartacus the Gladiator (1953) and Theodora, Slave Empress (1954).

Star Roland Carey was unusual in this field because he was actually a trained actor rather than hired for his torso, but this did not exactly stoke his career – his appearance in Fall of the Roman Empire (1962) was uncredited. Female lead Ziva Rodann was unusual, too, in that she was Israeli rather than Italian, had appeared in Samuel Fuller’s Forty Guns (1957) and second- billed in exploitationer Macumba Love (1960) and would later play Nefertiti in the Batman television series. If you go in not expecting much, you might get a surprise, though, be warned, the acting is wooden and other special effects, such as the storm, not quite in the Rambaldi class

Revolt of the Slaves (1960) ****

Time has been very kind to this underrated handsomely-mounted hugely enjoyable historical romp about victimised Christians in ancient Rome. Virtually a last hurrah for 1950s redhead Rhonda Fleming (Gunfight at the OK Corral, 1957), known as The Queen of Technicolor and here gifted lines like “the whip will do him good.” Fernando Rey (The French Connection, 1971) is thrown into a pit of ravenous hounds. Singer and serial lothario Serge Gainsbourg, immortalised by late Sixties bedroom anthem “Je t’aime,” plays a sadistic villain.

Despite the occasional over-the-top religious references – a character called Sebastian (Ettore Mane) is pinioned to a tree by arrows because the overseer (“don’t aim for the heart”) wants to prolong his agony, a prisoner facing death is baptised in a convenient flood – the piety is largely kept under wraps because these Christians refuse to turn the traditional cheek and inflict considerable damage on their masters. A voice that sounds like the Voice of God is revealed as an ordinary mortal. And there are nods to modern politics, the powers behind the throne.

Cool Hand Luke couldn’t have come up with better plans for escape, filling a cell with water from the sewer till inmates, except the aforementioned late convert, float to the hatch in the ceiling. A sojourn along a river is enough to put the pack of chasing hounds off the scent. Pursuers are trapped in the catacombs by the simple device of bringing down the roof.

After wealthy patrician Claudius (Gino Cervi) saves the life of escaped slave Vibio (Lang Jeffries) his arrogant daughter Claudia (Rhonda Fleming), introduced driving a chariot along packed streets with little regard for public safety, finds every excuse to humiliate him.

The plot is triggered when Claudia’s cousin/niece (the English translation is unclear) Agnese (Wandisa Guida) is followed by spy Corvino (Serge Gainsbourg) to a Christian hideout. Claudia becomes implicated when Agnese seeks refuge and for a good while she’s on the run, eventually committing her first act of unselfishness after falling for Vibio. But, to save her family, Claudia denounces the Christianity she has begun to accept, only to become involved in the finale in the arena where Christians are killed one by one, not by the waiting lions, but by spear.

It’s mostly heady and bloody action, the driving narrative only pausing now and then to make a religious point. The Emperor, like any leader in Game of Thrones, is afflicted with illness which makes his face burst out in spots. There’s some excellent use of music. In one sequence the hunters with a soundtrack of barking dogs are contrasted with a peaceful scene of the Christians not realising their pursuers are so close until the barking infuses their scene.

*Fair bit of poetic license here. No tigers!*

Star of the show is undoubtedly Rhonda Fleming. A huge post-war marquee idol, she starred opposite the likes of Bing Crosby (A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of King Arthur, 1949), Glenn Ford (The Redhead and the Cowboy, 1951), Dana Andrews (While the City Sleeps, 1956) and Burt Lancaster (Gunfight at the OK Corral). But she was equally well-known as the top-billed star of adventures like The Golden Hawk (1952), Serpent of the Nile (1953) and Those Redheads from Seattle (1953). It was once said of her by a cinematographer that her beauty was so flawless she was stunning from any angle.

Quite why roles had dried up so much that she headed across the Atlantic to Italy for this is anybody’s guess. It certainly failed to revive her career, possibly because the religious aspects would have been more grating for audiences of the period whereas now they are less dominant.

Oddly enough, it was virtually a last hurrah also for veteran Italian director Nunzio Malasomma (The White Devil, 1947) who didn’t make another picture – his last – for seven years. But he handles the whole venture with aplomb, interspersing humor with action, moving along at a terrific pace, and making the most of a dream cast. In his debut Lang Jefferies (Don’t Knock the Twist, 1962) shows some acting talent among the flash of muscle. But it’s Rhonda Fleming’s picture.

Note: dubbing into English has changed some names. In the Italian version Claudia is named Fabiola – it’s a remake of the earlier Fabiola (1949) starring Michele Morgan – and her father Fabio, so stand by for confusion on imdb.

Certainly a cut above the sword-and-sandals epics flourishing at the time. I’d add that it’s an ideal matinee feature except I watched it late at night and it was just as entertaining. Highly recommended as an easy watch or just to see Rhonda Fleming at her best. The rating might err a little on the high side but every now and then we are allowed our guilty pleasures.

The Midas Run (1969) ***

You ever wonder what triggers criminality? Don’t deny an upper class English civil servant his knighthood, don’t fire an American university lecturer for an anti-war demonstration, don’t humiliate your beautiful wife by making her part of a business transaction. They might all feel robbery is the best revenge.

The highly respected Pedley (Fred Astaire) has talked his superiors in government into the notion that the best way to ship a consignment of gold is by passenger rather than commercial airplane. He recruits wannabe author Mike (Richard Crenna) who, in turn, comes to the rescue of glamorous Sylvia (Anne Heywood) when she is being sold off to sweeten a business deal.

The apparently eccentric casting was based on unfulfilled promise. Fred Astaire, who had not starred in a film for over decade, had made a comeback for Finian’s Rainbow (1968). But that had flopped, putting a dent in his marquee credentials and dramatic roles were hardly the forte of this twinkle-toed dancer. Richard Crenna’s bid for leading man status in Star! (1968) had spectacularly derailed at the box office.

Anne Heywood, the only one of the three principles to have a recent hit, in unexpected sleeper The Fox (1967), found no demand consequently for her services except from lover, future husband and biggest fan, producer Raymond Stross who had bankrolled the lesbian drama, and assigned her female lead here. You could extend your incredulity to the involvement of Swedish director Alf Kjellin,who hadn’t made a picture since Siska seven years before, and like most of his countrymen was seen as producing arthouse fare.

The biggest problem in a gold heist, as anyone watching the current television series The Gold will be aware, is shifting loot that weighs a ton. So Mike and Sylvia hire some Italian crooks to supply a couple of petrol tankers to hide and transport the bullion after the airplane has been forced down over Italian airspace by an Albanian fighter plane, Mike driving the World War Two tank that supplies the ground-based pressure.

As with any heist picture, robbery is only the beginning, double-cross the middle and triple-cross the end. Pedley, who has accompanied the shipment, is delegated by the British secret service to recover the gold, aided by suspicious assistant Wister (Roddy McDowall). The twist here is that he not only recovers most of the gold, apart from some secreted away by the now romantically-inclined twosome, but points the finger at his accomplices, including the fence General Ferranti (Adolfo Celi).

It then becomes a question of whether the younger crooks can evade his clutches, whether Wister can confirm his suspicions that the investigation has proceeded a tad too conveniently, and discover what the heck the bowler-hatted Englishman is up to. And, of course, whether Mike can trust Sylvia. It wouldn’t be the first – or last (see Perfect Friday, 1970) – grand theft in which the male has been the dupe.

Along the way there is some clever comedy, a play on the British assumption that everyone in the world naturally speaks English, the implicit trust that the upper-classes place in each other, and the stock view that any Italian, law enforcer or crook, can be distracted by a pretty face or comely derriere.

On the downside, the set-up takes too long coming to fruition, especially a mid-movie interlude that seems intend on channelling the worst romantic notions of the era, idyllic strolls in fields, that I half-expected a burst of slow-motion trotting, or some metaphor for the orgasm. There is some little understood banter about war games. And, for obvious reasons, La Heywood strips down to brassiere in the overheated tank (Mike manages to resist such un-English impulses) though she has previously indulged her innovative ideas about dress, turning a bedsheet into a fashionable toga at a moment’s notice.

There’s nothing particularly new here but Fred Astaire makes a deft impression as a typical upper-class Englishman, accent not found wanting, and successfully reinvents himself as a dramatic actor, that highpoint an Oscar nomination for The Towering Inferno (1974). Anne Heywood, once you realise she is playing all sides against each other, slips easily into the femme fatale role. Richard Crenna’s acting appears limited since his character, despite occasional initiative, is outwitted by all and sundry, and that was scarcely a good look in those days for the leading man to be out-thought by the leading woman.

Effortless, and harmless enough for a matinee.

Shoot Loud…Louder, I Don’t Understand (1966) ***

The Raquel Welch picture nobody’s seen. Which is a shame because she demonstrates considerable comedic flair. And there’s a freshness and naturalness – almost a youthful gaucheness – about her that’s lacking in other movies where she was developing her more iconic acting style.

Tania (Raquel Welch) literally bumps into sculptor Alberto (Marcello Mastroianni) when his latest acquisition, an iron gate (locked naturally), blocks a footpath. Intrigued, she enters his Aladdin’s cave of artefacts and is frightened by his mad uncle who communicates via fireworks. With a start like that, you’re either headed for gentle romance between sensible young woman and less sensible artist, the usual on-off on-off scenario, or, this being quirky Italy and the director the even quirkier Eduardo Di Filippo (better known as a playwright – Saturday, Sunday, Monday) it’s going to follow a different route.

*While Raquel Welch is for the most part costumed in alluring dresses she does not wear a bikini as in the poster at the top*.

And so it does. Alberto thinks he has witnessed the murder of neighbor Amitrano (Paolo Ricci) – blood-soaked glove one clue – but when he confesses it might have been a delusion, something to which he is prone, he is arrested because the dead man was a gangster. That sets a surreal tone – chairs raining from the sky, anyone?, a coffin full of potatoes, fortune tellers – and for some reason Alberto (who has received a bang on the head) begins to think Tania is also a figment of his imagination.

You can see where that idea came from, the delectable Tania in cleavage-resplendant form wearing dresses with clasps that appear unwilling to do their job. But on the other hand, he is handsome enough, with an artistic beard, and I doubt it would be the first time he had attracted a beautiful woman.

Tania is certainly a character, driving around in a sports car (with pink drapes) that appears to float rather than drive, containing another receptacle for a blood-soaked glove and with hot food in the glove compartment. In fact, she carries around a goodly supply of this local delicacy in case she might feel hungry in a police station or what have you.

Raquel Welch wasn’t girl of the year when this was made but by the time it was released in the USA in 1968 she had made a name for herself, in particular being named Star of the Year by one of the industry’s exhibiting organisations.

There’s certainly a bunch of dream-like sequences. After he finds a bloody knife and bloodied clothes Alberto gets punched on the head by a turbaned man, only to wake momentarily and fan his face with a fan, the kind of imagery Fellini could have dreamed up in his sleep. But this is set against a realistic backdrop, neighbors screaming at each other in the traditional Italian manner.

So, what we are left with is a perfectly acceptable comedy where Alberto is accused of a crime he didn’t commit but the film might be too Italian for most tastes. This was made before La Welch achieved screen notoriety through the donning of a fur bikini and critics tended to look on Mastroianni (A Place for Lovers, 1968) as a serious actor rather than someone mixed up in this kind of gentle tomfoolery. I thought he was excellent in the role. But that was par for the course here, everyone dismissed.

De Filippo (Ghosts – Italian Style, 1967) didn’t have the kind of critical following ascribed to the likes Fellini and Antonioni so if this fitted into his normal style nobody was aware of it. But I’ve a feeling that this quirkiness was one of his hallmarks.

If you accept it on face value without looking to insert some kind of meaning then it makes perfect sense. As I mentioned, although her voice is dubbed, Raquel Welch (Bandolero, 1968) comes across very well, especially as, despite the enticing attire, she is not required to be all sexed-up or carry the dramatic weight of the tale, unlike the westerns where she is generally an object of lust and continually attempting to assert independence.

Having said that, this is particularly hard to track down, so you might not think it’s worth the bother. But, of course, if you are a Welch completist, nothing will be too much trouble. However, you’ll need to scour the second-hand markets to find a DVD.