Despite a heady concept and some excellent acting, Martin Ritt’s Five Branded Women (1960) – reviewed yesterday – was a flop on initial release. So television studios were not exactly lining up to provide it with its small screen premiere. In fact, the length between big screen release and small screen showing had been so truncated by that point (The Magnificent Seven, for example, out the same year was seen on television within two years of release) that it could have been shown on television any time from 1962 to 1966, and probably would have been had initial performance suggested there was a big audience awaiting its small screen premiere.
The other possibility for a flop was that between cinema release and television screening, the stars had gone on to better things so a small screen showing could be promoted off the back of a current big screen success or, better still, series of successes. But that wasn’t the case with Five Branded Women. Star Silvana Mangano had meant little to US moviegoers since Bitter Rice (1949). Jeanne Moreau’s sizzle at the arthouse box office had diminished and the limited success of Viva Maria (1965) was put down to the presence of her compatriot Brigitte Bardot. Vera Miles hadn’t appeared in a movie since The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Barbara Bel Geddes was a long way from career revival in Dallas and all she had to show for the intervening years was a small part in By Love Possessed (1961) and a single episode in television. Italian Carla Gravina had no U.S. imprint at all. As a leading actor, Van Heflin was a busted flush.
So there was some consternation when Five Branded Women took ninth place in the television rankings for movies receiving their television premiere between 1966 and 1968. There was just no accounting for it. The same could be said for Your Cheatin’ Heart (1964) which was one place ahead of Five Branded Women. Star George Hamilton had not made it big, the film was an indifferent performer at the box office and its subject, Hank Williams, was long dead.
But television had a knack of providing unlikely redemption for movies that generally ended up on the wrong side of the box office. Cliff Robertson who headed the cast of PT 109 (1963) was still in the category of rising star with no breakout hits to suggest he was capable of rising to greater things. While 633 Squadron (1964) had done reasonable business, thriller Masquerade (1965) and war picture Up from the Beach (1965) had done so badly he was demoted to second billing in The Honey Pot (1967), incidentally another flop. He did achieve a breakthrough with Charly in 1968 but PT 109 was shown on television the year before. So how did that happen? You could maybe point to the continuing popularity of dead President John F. Kennedy, whose wartime heroism this movie recalled, but he had been dead when the movie first came out and that didn’t send it shooting to the top of the box office charts. On the television charts this came in one place behind Five Branded Women, although 633 Squadron could only manage a distant 92nd.
There were other surprises. Second Time Around (1961) placed 15th. But star Debbie Reynolds was still a genuine box office attraction after The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) and the unexpected success of The Singing Nun (1966).
Otherwise, the biggest hitters on television were Alfred Hitchcock, Elvis Presley and Doris Day. Hitchcock topped this particular chart with The Birds (1963), though presumably somewhat censored. His North by Northwest (1959) took 14th spot, Marnie (1964) placed 26th and Rear Window (1958) 39th.
Elvis Presley placed 11th with Roustabout (1964), 21st with Blue Hawaii (1961), 25th with Tickle Me (1965) and 41st with Fun in Acapulco (1963). Doris Day clocked in at 12th with That Touch of Mink (1962), 19th with Send Me No Flowers (1964), 23rd with The Thrill of It All (1963) and 35th with Move Over, Darling (1963).
Television had paid record sums to acquire the likes of Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and The Robe (1963), taking second and sixth positions, respectively, and undoubtedly helped by the ongoing success of director David Lean (Doctor Zhivago, 1965) and Richard Burton (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, 1966).
Others in the top then were Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), which had been successfully reissued in cinemas in a double bill with Butterfield 8 (1960), both headlining Elizabeth Taylor, to capitalize on her Oscar-winning turn in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. This came in third followed by The Great Escape (1964) and John Wayne as McLintock (1963) with Maureen O’Hara. Lilies of the Field (1963) was seventh.
The Made-for-TV films were beginning to make an impact. The Doomsday Flight (1966), released theatrically overseas, was 17th, one spot ahead of The Longest Hundred Miles (1967) with rising stars Doug McClure and Katharine Ross and seven ahead of Fame Is the Name of the Game (1967) with Tony Franciosa (Fathom, 1967) and Jill St John (Tony Rome, 1967).
Other notable small screen results were registered by Natalie Wood-Warren Beatty starrer Splendor in the Grass (1961) which took 12th spot, Shirley MacLaine and an all-star cast in What A Way To Go (1964) in 16th, Susan Hayward Oscar-winning weepie I Want To Live (1958) in 21st, and Henry Fonda and Maureen O’Hara in Spencer’s Mountain (1963) in 23rd.
SOURCE: “All Network Prime Time Features” (Seasons 1966-1967 and 1967-1968),” Variety, September 11, 1968, p47.
Should have qualified as that rare thing – an all-star female cast. Italian Silvana Mangano had led the arthouse revolution and kickstarted the importing of sexy Italians in international hit Bitter Rice (1949), Jeanne Moreau was a leading light in the French New Wave (and another sexy import to boot) as star of Les Liaisons Dangereuses/Dangerous Liaisons (1959), Vera Miles was hot after Psycho (1960), rising star Barbara Bel Geddes (Vertigo, 1958) another Hitchcock protegee. Never mind that the story was a serious one, the redemption of female collaborators in Yugoslavia in World War Two, there was still time for what had become very much a western genre cliché, the inability of any woman not to strip off at the sight of a waterfall – here all five go skinny dipping.
The narrative should have been clearcut as redemption tales generally are: miscreant finds salvation. But this one is pretty muddled up and the moral confusion gets in the way. While some of the women such as Ljubo (Jeanne Moreau) have sex with the occupying Germans to prevent a brother being sent to a work camp, others such as Jovanka (Silvana Mangano) simply fall in love or like widow Marja (Barbara Bel Geddes) are desperate for a child. All five have been conquests of German lothario Sgt Keller (Steve Forrest) who is castrated by the partisans. The women are humiliated by the partisans who shave their heads and the Germans cast them out of the town, Daniza (Vera Miles) part of the quintet though she denies having sex with Keller.
Like “Deadly Companions” the marketeers major on the promise of female nudity in a pool.
But it’s not just the Germans who are apt to have predatory notions about women. A pair of armed collaborators consider them fair game and attempt to rape Jovanka and Ljubo. Partisan Branko (Harry Guardino) – ostensibly in the category of good guy – attempts to rape Jovanka then seduces Daniza. The lovers are later executed by the partisans for breaking the rule not to have sex with each other. And this is where it gets mixed up. The pair were meant to be on guard when they started having sex. In consequence, three Germans sneaked into their camp and nearly caused disaster. Despite that, Jovanka, who believes she was unfairly treated in the first place in being denied love just because there was a war on, still insists that they shouldn’t be condemned for ordinary human desire.
The movie works best when it sticks to straightforward redemption or is character-driven. Given the chance Jovanka turns into an effective partisan, cutting down Germans with a machine gun, preventing rape of herself and Ljubo by shooting the attackers with a captured pistol. But she rejects an attempt at reconciliation by partisan leader Velko (Van Heflin), the one who had cut off her hair, blaming him for her unnecessary humiliation. He later tries to make amends, by trying to keep her out of brutal action.
Despite taking up arms, the women remain vulnerable to smooth-talking men. Ljubo takes prisoner Capt Reinhardt (Richard Basehart), who might fall into the “good German” category since he isn’t like Keller, was a professor of philosophy and generates sympathy because his wife died in an air raid. Taking his word of honor, Ljubo unties him. She thinks he will be exchanged for a partisan prisoner. But he knows the truth – there are no partisan prisoners available for exchange because the Germans kill them. So he tries to escape, and she machine guns him in the back.
By this point Ljubo is far from a soft touch, not likely to prattle on about women being free to love the enemy or their compatriots, and is the one who shoots Daniza as part of a firing squad when it is left to her or Jovanka to do so.
What saves it is the brutal realism of war, this predates the vengeful citizens who at war’s end would take revenge on local women who slept with any occupying Germans (Malena, 2000, showed this repercussion in Italy and it was the same throughout France). There’s certainly an innocence about female desire and Jovanka defending her right to have sex, though, surely, there would have been shame involved in having sex with even a Yugoslavian before marriage in what would still have been a devout country. So a complex defiant woman, refusing to bow down to male-enforced rules. But there’s a male corelative. Branko equally refuses to obey any rules, and his actions cause harm.
In terms of acting, Silvana Mangano and Jeanne Moreau are streets ahead of their American counterparts, and complement each other, Mangano loud and outspoken, Moreau quiet and brooding. Harry Guardino (Madigan, 1968), Richard Basehart (The Satan Bug, 1965) and Van Heflin (Once a Thief, 1965) are the pick of the males.
Martin Ritt (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 1965), who liked to back a cause, has chosen an odd one here, and after a slow start it picks up. Written by Ivo Perilli (Pontius Pilate, 1962) from the book by Ugo Pirro.
Easily leads the pack of the women-in-wartime subgenre and despite, or bcause of, the moral confusion still well worth a look.
The shooting of Le Feu Follet in 1963 had proved so depressing for director Louis Malle that halfway through the filming, alone on a Sunday afternoon in his Parisian apartment, he jotted down the two pages that turned into Viva Maria! He had worked with Brigitte Bardot before on A Very Private Affair/ La Vie Privee (1962) but even with her presence it was made in virtual isolation. So he was unprepared for the brouhaha that awaited. The media had created a rivalry between the two stars – Bardot and Jeanne Moreau – which was ironic given it was a film about friendship.
Since this was Brigitte Bardot’s first movie-related trip across the Atlantic, her arrival presaged a media firestorm. Over 250 journalists, most representing international outlets, turned up for the first day of shooting. That media pressure created “an almost unbearable atmosphere.” Days were lost due to publicity commitments, as print journalists, photographers and television crews – including one from France making a 52-minute documentary – descended on the production. Such was the potential for chaos, paparazzi were banned. Bardot was more accustomed to media intrusion than her director, batting back inane questions with practised repartee. The qustion: “What was the happiest day of your life?” brought the response, “It was a night.”
This was only Malle’s sixth film. Unlike other directors who came to the fore in the French New Wave he had not first been a critic, but had attended cinematography school in Paris and his breakthrough came on the Jacques Yves-Cousteau documentary The Silent World (1956). Hired as camera operator, he was promoted to co-director. Both Elevator to the Gallows (1958) and the controversial The Lovers (1960) had starred Moreau. On the back of the critical success of Le Feu Follet/The Fire Within (1963), which won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival, Malle struck a four-picture deal with United Artists.
He had been attracted to screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere after becoming aware of his work on Diary of a Chambermaid for Luis Bunuel. They worked together on the script of Viva Maria! while Malle was directing the opera Rosenkavalier in Spoleto, where he had shot A Very Private Affair. Like most French filmmakers of his generation the western was “a very cherished genre.” With Viva Maria! he intended a spin on the American notion of two men, “two buddies,” in action together, along the lines of Robert Aldrich’s Vera Cruz (1954) starring Burt Lancaster and Gary Cooper.
But in movies like Vera Cruz, Fort Apache (1948) with John Wayne and Henry Fonda or John Wayne and Montgomery Clift in Red River (1948), the two stars, even if eventually settling their differences, were at odds for most of the picture.
“We thought it could be fun to put Bardot and Moreau in the same situation as Cooper and Lancaster,” said Malle. Both director and screenwriter had enjoyed a rich childhood fantasy based on the book editions of magazines like Le Monde illustre, so, in terms of locale, they provided inspiration. The movie aimed “to combine an evocation of childhood fantasies with a pastiche of traditional adventure films…it was never intended to be realistic – more projection of the imagination. Ideally, I was hoping the spectator would see it with the wonderment of the child.”
The notion of “floating between genres” didn’t sit easily with French critics and he was accused of “trying to do too many different things.” As with any big budget picture, problems multiplied, not just the difficult logistics but with the Mexican government, which, as John Sturges had found on The Magnificent Seven (1960) could take a tough line with movie makers. A previous censor Senorita Carmen Baez had stipulated that movies could not mention the 1910 Mexican Revolution, so to comply with that regulation the action was moved to an earlier date, 1904, and in an “unnamed South American country”
A combination of the number of locations – as well as Churabasco studios in Mexico City, the unit travelled to Guautla, Morelia, Tepotzlan, Cuernavaca, Vera Cruz, Puebla, Guanajuota and Hacienda Cocoyoc – and budget meant that the production could not afford to linger at any one locale, scenes had to be finished off within the planned schedule because the entire unit had to be on the move the next day.
In terms of shooting, Malle explained, “I always had to adjust and compromise…the sky was…desperately blue – the very hard light was a problem for the girls.” Ideally, Malle would have preferred shooting in the early morning or late afternoon, but time pressures and the production caravanserai meant the main scene was shot “with the sun at its zenith.”
Malle was later conscious that the film envisioned in the screenplay didn’t make it onto the screen. The irony, for example, of George Hamilton being cast as a Jesus Christ figure was lost on an audience which took him more seriously than intended. “It was comedy,” observed Malle, “but it was easy not to perceive it as comedy.” Similarly, Moreau’s “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” speech didn’t come across as humorous. “The audience either didn’t get it or took it seriously. That’s the danger of pastiche. It’s a very risky genre.”
He worried that the film’s budget – originally set at $1.6 million – and top-name stars might get in the way of the style of movie he was trying to make. At one point he suggested to UA that they cut the budget, switch to English and hire younger stars like Julie Christie and Sarah Miles, neither of whom at that point had enjoyed career breakthrough roles. The presence of the big stars “transformed the film into something else.”
The shoot was plagued by illness. Bardot and Malle were incapacitated while when Moreau slipped on a stone stairway breaking a shin bone and requiring stitches to a cut under her chin it was the third time she required time off, including suffering an affliction on her first day of shooting. An extra was killed on 24 May 1965 during the filming of the cavalry charge. Whether Malle took time off to get married to Anne Marie Deschodt on April 3 is unclear because, by then, staff were already having to work overtime to make up for lost days. The budget mushroomed to $2.2 million. Four weeks behind schedule, the movie, which had begun shooting on 25 January 1965 finally wrapped in June.
For its opening bookings in New York, at the Astor and Plaza, beginning 20 December 1965, the film was subtitled – by playwright Sandy Wilson of The Boyfriend fame no less – but thereafter was dubbed, Malle unhappy with the outcome, especially with the actress for Bardot. In the run-up to the launch, there was media overkill. Bardot was mobbed by the media on arrival at JFK airport (and also on departure) and held another press conferences in New York.
Small wonder the press were so hyped. Bardot, considered the sex symbol of the decade, was putting in her first personal appearance in the U.S. While the movie opened to “smash” business at the Astor and Plaza first run, and knocked up a decent $127,000 from 25 houses on New York wide release – not far off A Patch of Blue on $160,000 from 27 but miles behind The Chase with $292,000 from 28 – that level of box office wasn’t repeated elsewhere.
In retrospect, it was obvious Bardot lacked the marquee status the studio anticipated. The bulk of her movies had played at arthouses or seedy joints, and they had all been sold on the kind of sexuality that kept them outside the mainstream. Noted Variety, “Brigitte Bardot has not made a box office dent in more than three years but her popularity with the press doesn’t seem to have flagged.” A not unknown phenomenon, of rampant media coverage not translating into receipts. A battle with the local censor in Dallas didn’t help. So all the hoopla was to no avail – it flopped in the U.S.
Elsewhere, the publicity teams took a more upscale approach. In Paris, the Au Printemps department store, the largest in the city, devoted a series of window and internal displays to the movie promoting different fashionable aspects. It finished third for 1966 at the Parisian box office, with 602,840 admissions not that far behind Thunderball’s 806,110 admissions but had twice the audience of the nearest U.S. competitor Mary Poppins and did three times the business of Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, the next American movie on the list.
In Britain, flamboyant hairdresser Raymond created 24 different hairstyles as a fashion tie-in while Le Rouge Baiser created a different lipstick for each of the two main characters. Overall, it proved “one of the most successful fashion tie-ups ever,” the results seen at the box office.
It opened in London’s West End at the newly-built Curzon Mayfair which specialized not so much in arthouse pictures but upmarket, classy, fare, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) followed it. It ran for eight weeks before embarking on a circuit release and returned to the West End the following year as support to another Moreau vehicle 10.30pm Summer. Bardot and Moreau were nominated for Baftas in the Best Foreign Actress section. It was ranked third out of foreign releases in Switzerland, sixth in Germany and made the top ten in Japan
Oddly enough, in socialist countries “it was very well received” and at Berlin University, according to Rainer Werner Fassbinder, “they were fascinated.” The two women represented different aspects of the struggle against repression, one promoting armed struggle, the other trying to achieve revolution without violence.
Overall it was a profitable venture. The poor $825,000 in U.S. rentals was compensated by an overseas tally of $4.1 million which meant, in the United Artist profit league for 1966, it finished seventh.
Malle only completed two pictures in his four-picture UA slate – Le Voleur / The Thief of Paris (1967) being the other. Another project set in the Amazon in 1850 came to nothing as did a separate deal to direct Choice Cuts for Twentieth Century Fox.
SOURCES: Malle on Malle, edited by Philip French (Faber and Faber, 1993) pp45, 49-54; “Bardot Due in Mexico,” Variety, December 9, 1964, p26; “Louis Malle’s Four for United Artists,” Variety, January 13, 1965, p3; “Bardot Swamped by Mex City Newsmen,” Variety, February 3, 1965, p17; “Filming Viva Maria in Mexico,” Box Office, February 15, 1965, p12; “Arnold Picker Chides Malle’s Pace,” Variety, April 7, 1965, p2; “No Newsmen at Can-Can,” Variety, April 28, 1965, p13; “Jeanne Moreau Injury,” Variety, May 19, 1965, p3; “Complete Viva Maria,” Variety, May 25, 1965, p15; “Extra Killed in Viva Maria Bit,” Variety, June 2, 1965, p5; “UA’s Viva Maria Booked for Astor, Plaza for Xmas,” Box Office, November 8, 1965, pE2; “Paris Window Display,” Box Office, November 22, 1965, pB1; “Malle Dickers UA on Three Films,” Variety, December 15, 1965, p5; “Picture Grosses,” Variety, December 22, 1965, p9; “International Sound Track,” Variety, December 22, 1965, p26; “TV Crafts Greeting to Bardot,” Variety, December 22; “Maria Viva $110,000,” Variety, December 29, 1965, p20; “Curzon Premiere for Viva Maria,” Kine Weekly, February 24, 1966, p3; “Viva Maria,” Kine Weekly, February 24, 1966, p21; “New York Showcase,” Variety, March 23, 1966, p10; “UA’s Location Plans Span Globe,” Kine Weekly, May 26, 1966, p36; “Thunderball As Topper,” Variety, June 1, 1966, p3; “1965-1966 Paris Film Season,” Variety, June 15, 1966, p25; “Story As Before,” Variety, July 13, 1966, p17; “Texas High Court Denies Viva Maria Re-Hearing,” Box Office, October 31, 1966, p7; “U.S. Majors,” Variety, January 18, 1967, p24.
Had it been a hit in the U.S., it could have changed the way women were portrayed on screen.
A box office smash could certainly have fired up a sequel (a key plank of the United Artists business model) and perhaps a reboot (Viva Marias! starring their daughters with or without the mamas). Could have led to the notion of Sophia Loren teaming up with Claudia Cardinale or Gina Lollobrigida and rescuing a captured male in a feminist twist on a western like The Professionals (1966). Imagine if it was Faye Dunaway and Jane Fonda carrying out the con caper in The Sting (1973).
Until Viva Maria!, two top female stars only appeared together in a movie as rivals for a male’s attention, or if one was the victim of nasty behavior from the other, or one was heading for an untimely death leaving the other to hog the screen in a tide of emotion.
Although it still remained virtually impossible to have a pair of female stars appearing together unless for weepie or noir purpose, the impact of Viva Maria was considerable. For a start, it invented the buddy movie four years ahead of that subgenre’s official inception in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).
The poster preceded Clint Eastwood in pointing weaponry hardware menacingly at the potential audience, Gatling rather than a .44 Magnum. Speaking of Gatling guns, might have given Sam Peckinpah ideas for employing that weapon in The Wild Bunch (1969).
Neither molls nor victims, these women fell at the first woman’s picture trope. They were not rivals in love. Maria II (Brigitte Bardot) is of a polyamorous disposition and expresses no interest in Flores (George Hamilton) the revolutionary lover of Maria I (Jeanne Moreau). Forget Julie Christie sowing wild oats in Darling (1965) or any other of the other liberated ladies of the decade, Maria II is streets head, acquiring – and discarding – men by the bunch.
Nor is Maria II particularly interested in becoming that other female fixture of the 60s – the rebel – given that she spent most of her childhood as an accessory to her insurgent father’s violent acts, rolling out detonating wire or pressing the plunger in locales as varied as Ireland and Gibralter before watching her father died in an act of sabotage that went wrong.
You would have thought that by this point in her career Brigitte Bardot (Shalako, 1969) could hardly get away with playing the innocent – setting aside her amoral intent – but audiences expecting titillation would have been surprised to see how quaintly she performs an accidental striptease which transforms their circus act, fortuitous really because Maria II has little sense of the rhythm required to be a stage performer.
Maria II resists becoming involved with Maria I’s messianic boyfriend but when he snuffs it she can hardly ignore his deathbed plea. The two Marias team up with the peasants to overthrow El Dictator (Jose Angel Espinosa ‘Ferrisquilla’) but not before they tangle with the Inquisition and the bad guys learn not to leave Gatling guns lying around. Would it be too much to argue that the female empowerment image of the decade is these two lasses spraying the enemy with bullets from the Gatling gun and, with more sense than Sam Peckinpah’s bunch, no intention of dying an heroic death.
It’s not a comedy in the normal sense, there’s no spoofing of revolution for a start, and it’s not so much filled with great one-liners as terrific sight gags. It’s more a drama with laffs. And, as you will be aware, revolution is good material for musicals – witness 1776 and Les Miserables, so don’t be surprised at the end to find our ladies treading the boards in Paris in a musical version of the revolution they have instigated.
Both Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau (Mademoiselle, 1966) throw acting caution to the winds, breaking out of the restraints of their screen personas, and almost as if freed from having to perform the dutiful female role of sacrifice, can turn their attention to embracing friendship and having a whale of a time doing so. George Hamilton (By Love Possessed, 1961) looks lost.
Most of what director Louis Malle (Atlantic City, 1980) attempts comes off though it might take you a little while to get to grips with the tone. Screenplay by Malle and Jean-Claude Carriere (Belle de Jour, 1967).
Arthouse noir? Cross between an Ingmar Bergman movie, except that the protagonist acts on her repression, and a Claude Chabrol with a character harboring festering desire. Certainly a bold choice for star Jeanne Moreau, excepting Brigitte Bardot France’s biggest female star, to play someone so malignant with scarcely a redeeming feature. Bold, too, in the setting, not the picturesque French village peppered with bright boulangeries and patisseries and with restaurant gatherings knocking back the wine. This is the reality of country life, ruled by religion and officialdom, little sign of ooh-la-la, and distinctly xenophobic – the minute anything goes wrong, blame the foreigner, in this case an itinerant Italian woodcutter.
It’s a distinctly arthouse notion to let the audience know straight off who the villain is while the villagers themselves are left in the dark about who caused two recent fires, their suspicions landing on Manou (Ettori Manni), the forester who arrives once a year so not quite an unknown entity, and too keen on seducing the local women.
We don’t know who the arsonist is, yet, either, but we might get a good idea from the opening sequence where some annual religious pageant, involving blessing fish caught in the river, is disrupted after a woman in high heels and black lace gloves opens a dyke, allowing a torrent of water to flood a farmyard, nearly drowning the animals, only the priest and a few boys left to continue the parade once the adults have raced back to the farm to save the livestock.
The woman is careful to wipe her high heels clear of grass as she places them in a wardrobe on a high shelf that contains other high-heeled shoes. We soon learn she is not just the schoolteacher but also volunteers her typing skills to the police, therefore keeping fully abreast of any investigation, and that she is held in such high esteem in the village that she goes by the name of Mademoiselle (Jeanne Moreau). While she defends Manou against accusations thrown around by the police, she victimises Manou’s son Bruno (Keith Skinner), ridiculing his clothing, making him stand in the corner or against a tree in the playground.
Turns out she’s the fire-raiser and in a small farming village there’s no shortage of houses with adjacent barns stacked full of straw that it only takes a match and a spill of flaming paper to set aflame. Foreigner Manou doesn’t act like an outsider, but dives in to help, at one point needing to leap to safety himself from a burning building. He doesn’t give his son much leeway either, ridiculing him and belting him across the face.
Only the camera catches Mademoiselle’s brooding intensity, the villagers intent on seeing only the upstanding part of her nature, judging her by the job that in an impoverished ill-educated area elevates her to a position of some standing in local society. Nobody dares come a-wooing. Maybe there’s a local squire somewhere around who might fit the bill. And certainly, she won’t lower herself like certain of the younger village females to make the first move.
As the fires grow more common, greater suspicion falls on Manou whom she secretly desires. Contrary to expectation, given the real power she wields in the classroom, and the secret power she wields over the community, her sexual hankerings run in the opposite direction. She wants to be debased, kissing the shoes of Manou when at last she makes her feelings known, howling like a dog, submitting to his domination which includes being spat upon and her clothes torn. You get the impression this might just be her playing out a fantasy except when she returns to the village with her clothes ripped and the women presume she has been raped she points the finger at Manou.
There’s no climax. We don’t see Manou being chased by a baying mob or being arrested as the film ends with her being driven away in a taxi, presumably to move onto the next village where she can continue her life of crime.
So, very much a character study. It’s hard to know when it’s set, but then raw village life hardly changes from one century to the next. Director Tony Richardson (The Loved One, 1965) makes no attempt to evoke sympathy for her. A few decades on when audiences took a liking to serial killers played by terrific actors (Silence of the Lambs, 1991, for example), moviegoers would have been more rapt by her exploits, almost willing her on, but this decade followed a different morality, filmgoers expecting villains of either gender to be punished.
Those sullen sulky features that Moreau previously used as part of her undeniable sexuality now seem turned-in, as defining of incipient evil as deformity was back in the early days of Hollywood.
Sensational performance by Jeanne Moreau (Viva Maria!, 1965) and also by Ettore Manni (The Battle of the Villa Florita, 1965) who proves far more sadistic than your run-of-the-mill seducer with attitudes to women that wouldn’t be out of place in the later giallo genre.
You might feel short-changed that there’s no resolution and that, in a sense, just like Bitter Harvest (1963), the director has skipped the third act and that there’s no real detection of her crimes, no cat-and-mouse between sleuth and villain. But it’s all the better for leaving out those elements. Written by Jean Genet (The Balcony, 1963).
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.
It could as easily have been Cecil B. DeMille (The Ten Commandments, 1956) in the director’s chair. And Yul Brynner (The Magnificent Seven, 1960) and Jeanne Moreau (Jules and Jim, 1962) as the stars.
The Barabbas tale had already been plundered before Swedish novelist Par Lagerkvist published his relatively short bestseller – only 144 pages – in 1950. An earlier novel of the same name by Emery Bekessy hit American bookstalls at the height of the mid-1940s religious cycle kicked off by Going My Way (1944) and The Bells of St Mary’s (1945). DeMille – whose portfolio included Biblical epics The Ten Commandments (1923), King of Kings (1927) and The Sign of the Cross (1932) – was in competition with British producer Alexander Korda to buy the rights.
While that production never entered production, just to confuse matters a British film, Now Barabbas, based on a successful West End play and with no Biblical element, was released in 1949.
Swedish director Alf Sjoberg (Miss Julie, 1951), twice winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes, turned the Lagerkvist book into a black-and-white film in 1953, the first Swedish picture to be dubbed into English.
A bigger-budgeted version, piggybacking on the success of Ben-Hur (1959), was the brainchild of Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis who had pacted with Hollywood studio Columbia on a four-picture slate worth $17 million, the bulk of which, $10 million, was to be spent on Barabbas “with a cast of thousands headed by some of the biggest names in motion pictures.”
“Hollywood on the Tiber” was producing movies at a record rate – topping 200 a year – and De Laurentiis, who had shot to fame with Bitter Rice (1949) starring future wife Silvana Mangano and Fellini’s La Strada (1954) was intent on gaining a foothold in America beyond the arthouse market. Producing King Vidor’s War and Peace (1956) for Paramount had not done the trick and the Columbia slate was a last-ditch attempt to break into the Hollywood game.
Hollywood had originally invested in Europe to take advantage of tax breaks or to access monies frozen by countries after the Second World War, but by the 1960s the continent had become more attractive as a cheaper production alternative. While Britain had been a substantial recipient of Hollywood largesse, Italy was fast catching up as the chosen locale for pictures as varied as Cleopatra (1963), The Pigeon That Took Rome (1962) and Jason and the Argonauts (1963).
Director Richard Fleischer’s career was at a curious impasse. The son of world-famous animator Max Flesicher, creator of the Popeye cartoons, Richard had won critical acclaim for low-budget thriller The Narrow Margin (1951), followed up with a pair of stupendous action hits, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (1954) and The Vikings (1958), both starring Kirk Douglas, and a daring examination of the world’s first “thrill killing” Compulsion (1959) with Orson Welles.
But he was at loggerheads with Twentieth Century Fox, to whom he was contractually tied, having turned down North to Alaska (1960) with John Wayne. As a result, he was relegated to lesser projects, Crack in the Mirror (1960), again with Orson, and The Big Gamble (1961), a picture with virtually no stars unless you count the questionable marquee value of Juliette Greco and Irishman Stephen Boyd trying to capitalize on his success in Ben-Hur (1959).
“Holdover” also meant it was not playing as a roadshow. In the roadshow exhibition situation, a cinema would be required to play a movie for an agreed number of weeks, generally a minimum of eight or thirteen. Non-roadshow films relied on box office performance for the length of their run, the engagement extended week-by-week.
He had been on Dino De Laurentiis’ radar before, approached to helm War and Peace, circumstances dictating otherwise, and a $10 million project, a 70mm roadshow, presented an ideal opportunity to resuscitate his moribund career. As Fleischer put it, “Even if I had loved Darryl (F. Zanuck, the legendary Fox producer of The Big Gamble), I would gladly have jilted him for this assignment.”
Despite the promise of the budget, the reality was off-putting. The De Laurentiis studio was housed in a “dreary industrial slum” and consisted of a two-storey wooden building housing the offices and “three decaying stages.” However, there was little downbeat about De Laurentiis, “an impeccably tailored bundle of raw energy,” according to Fleischer, “the impact of meeting him for the first time is something akin to sticking your finger into an electric light socket.”
The Italian producer possessed a quality that was appreciated in Hollywood, especially among old-school mavens. He was a showman. He could drum up publicity at the drop of a hat. His first publicity coup was hiring French star Jeanne Moreau, at the time considered one of the few foreign actresses who need not rely on buxom figure, as the female lead. Her arrival in Rome for pre-production prerequisites such as costume and make-up testing induced a flurry of front pages. A mob of about 30 reporters almost prevented any testing. “Even though the tests were purely mechanical, she became the character in the script the moment the camera turned,” observed Fleischer.
Unfortunately, De Laurentiis had no intention of hiring her, not when he had wife Silvana Mangano at home. The press reaction to Moreau might have suggested he was backing the wrong horse, despite Mangano’s own marquee appeal, but he appeared delighted to have achieved a publicity coup, no matter that he had manipulated and duped a great actress and the director.
De Laurentiis pursued Yul Brynner for the titular role, a suggestion with which the director was in accord. This was the real thing, attempted recruitment not just a publicity gag. Until Charlton Heston muscled in with Ben-Hur, Brynner was the go-to actor for historical epics, The Ten Commandments (1956) making him an instant star, a position solidified with an Oscar for The King and I (1956) and commanding a $750,000 payday, on a par with john Wayne and William Holden.
Brynner was initially disinclined to play the role but after a day in discussion with Fleischer they shook hands on a deal only to have it torpedoed by De Laurentiis.
Scriptwriters Christopher Fry, famed English playwright but novice screenwriter, Nigel Balchin (The Man Who Never Was, 1956) and Diego Fabbri (The Corsican Brothers, 1961) were recruited with De Laurentiis reporting that they were “currently at work after having studied the material at length.” Later added to the roster was Italian Nobel prize-winning poet Salvatore Quasimodo. Not trusting the producer to stick to the text, Lagerkvist assigned his son as overseer, a tactic that singularly failed to work.
Still lacking a male lead, De Laurentiis announced the movie would start shooting on January 7, 1961, with French pair Jeanne Moreau and Simone Signoret (Room at the Top, 1958) in the top female roles, neither of whom were ultimately involved.
Despite two Oscars as Best Supporting Actor, Anthony Quinn (Guns for San Sebastian, 1968) had failed to reach the top echelons of Hollywood stardom, stuck in the rut of male lead to top-billed female or starring in lower-budgeted pictures. To rectify the situation, he had embarked on a project intended to provide a prestigious showcase for his acting skills. He had signed up to play opposite Laurence Olivier in the Broadway production of Jean Anouilh’s acclaimed play Becket.
He had to be prised away from the Broadway run by De Laurentiis who forked out $37,500 in compensation and guaranteed the actor time off halfway through the shoot to fulfil a commitment to Lawrence of Arabia (1962). In fact, Becket, while attracting good notices, was a Broadway flop, the production only going into the black as a result of the De Laurentiis pay-off.
The all-star cast never materialized. But there was prestige aplenty, three members of the cast Oscar winners, another trio nominees. Vittorio Gassman (Ghosts of Rome, 1961) was at best a rising star, marquee value restricted to Italy. Jack Palance (Shane, 1953), was better known in Italy than the U.S., having spent the previous five years in Italy and now attempting a Hollywood comeback as a director. He was signed to play the notorious gladiator intent on killing Barabbas in combat. Ernest Borgnine (The Vikings) was still clinging on to vestiges of stardom after unexpectedly winning the Best Actor Oscar for Marty (1955). His wife Katy Jurado (High Noon, 1952) remained a starlet. Despite a bout of Oscar nominations in the supporting actor category Arthur Kennedy (Elmer Gantry) and never-nominated Harry Andrews (Solomon and Sheba, 1959) were no more than character actors.
It would have been impossible to make Barabbas on the tiny studio De Laurentiis owned so, encouraged by tax breaks, he invested in hundreds of acres of cheap land to build a new state-of-the art studio. But when Fleischer first saw it, it was nothing but a barren wasteland. Even so it was in these empty fields that production designer Mario Chiari would construct the ancient world.
Over several hours, simply by pointing his finger in vague directions, the pair came up with over 100 buildings, and the sets for Jerusalem and the Praetorium. The movie already had its arena – the 2,000-year-old structure in Verona – which would double for the Rome Colosseum. The complicated gladiatorial spectacle was the first sequence to be shot, with a world-record 9,115 costumed extras, arriving on a fleet on 75 buses from nearby towns. The only obstacle to rolling the cameras: Anthony Quinn’s specially designed gladiator sandals had been left behind in Rome. A temporary pair were mocked up so the first shot could be completed before lunch.
On the second day of shooting occurred a Hollywood fairy story. Looking for good characters to focus on in the crowd “one face truly stood out, that of an eighteen-year-old girl of stunning beauty.” The daughter of an officer at a U.S. military base in Vicenza, her name was Sharon Tate. Shortly afterwards, she moved in with Jack Palance, and not too long after that she was on the Hollywood glory trail prior to her premature death.
Another mishap threatened to spoil the scene where Quinn and Gassman, playing prisoners in the sulphur mine, were going to be chained together. The location was the top of Mount Etna in Sicily. On hand were 500 extras dressed as Roman slaves. It was a Sunday since that was the only day the roads would be clear enough to transport so many people and all the equipment up the two-hour drive from Catania up the twisty route.
The weather was terrible, the sky so black, the volcanic cinder ground a perfect match, with barely enough light to get an exposure. The only section of the scene unrehearsed was the riveting of the chains. And that required charcoal. But someone had forgotten the charcoal. A race down the mountain to bring back the charcoal took till the afternoon. But just as the charcoal arrived there was a break in the clouds and a spot of perfect light. It lasted just long enough for the shot to be taken.
The solar eclipse was no special effect. It was actually taking place on February 15, 1961, and Fleischer had cameras in place to record the phenomenon, the only genuinely ethereal scene in a movie that was more concerned with realism. The burning of Rome was also filmed “in camera,” the sets consumed in one take in one night.
While there were other occasional production errors, Fleischer found the Italian crew as professional as he required. And as accommodating. One day he was informed the crew had to go on strike for one hour. But after consultation with the director, the crew was happy to strike during the lunch break.
Even with a schedule rearranged to include Quinn’s time away filming Lawrence of Arabia (1962), shooting went smoothly with no overages or budget-blowing.
The production faced other threats. The 1953 version, already conveniently dubbed, was being reissued. There was a television production called Give Us, Barabbas, and a new play was launched off-Broadway by Belgian playwright Michel de Ghelderode, all of which could have stolen the limelight.
The movie followed an unusual distribution pattern. Launched in Italy at the tail end of 1961 to big box office it was another six months before it made a mark in London. In June 1962 it was the opening presentation for a new cinema, the Odeon Haymarket in London’s West End, a 600-seat underground emporium set up to take advantage of the demand for hard-ticket roadshow venues. The premises had not operated as a cinema since 1939 when it had been known for a short period as the Gaumont. It was only the second cinema built in London since the Second World War, the other being the Columbia in Shaftesbury Ave which had opened in 1959. In separate-performance advance-booking format, and tickets priced at $1.05-$2.80, Barabbas would remain at the Odeon for over six months.
It didn’t reach the United States – at the DeMille in New York – until October and even then was beaten to the North American punch by the 2,318-seat Odeon Carlton in Toronto, the largest cinema to enter the roadshow arena. And although available as a 70mm roadshow, in most locations it was more likely to be presented in 35mm minus the separate performances that were the hallmark of the prestigious hard-ticket presentation.
Columbia created some enterprising marketing concepts for the U.S. launch, including a touring exhibit by six well-known painters who had all used the film as the basis of artworks. A 41-foot high float including a 10-foot high revolving figure of Barabbas had been seen by 1.2 million people when paraded through Los Angeles. A special 190-page “making of” book was published in hardback. Six months after launch, the film was promoted as a “Special Lenten Presentation” in local cinemas with prices increased by 25 cents.
Although a huge success in native Italy and generally well-received at the international box office, Barabbas came up short in the U.S., rentals barely hitting $3 million, earning a lowly 35th place in the annual chart.
SOURCES: Richard Fleischer, Just Tell Me When To Cry, A Memoir (Carroll & Graf, 1993) p217-226; “Another Religious Picture May Be Barabbas Novel,” Variety, December 4, 1946, p4; “Now Barabbas Was A Robber,” Variety, June 1, 1949, p1; “First Swedish Picture Dubbed Into English,” Variety, June 23, 1954, p4; “Swedish Barabbas,” Variety, June 1, 1960, p4; “Lagerkvist, Nobel Winner, Assigns Son To Rome As Watchman on Barabbas,” Variety, December 14, 1960, p17; advert, Variety, January 4, 1961, p71; “Barabbas Budget over $10,000,000,” Variety, February 15, 1961, p3; “Dino De Laurentiis No 1 Indie Producer?,” Variety, February 15, 1961, p24; “Figure $17,500 for Off-Broadway Barabbas,” Variety, February 15, 1961, p71; advert, Variety, April 26, 1961, p71; “Becket Got 37½G On Quinn’s Exit,” Variety, May 3, 1961, p83; “Becket Folds As 40G Sleeper; Had Seemed Prestige-Only Flop,” Variety, May 31, 1961, p59; “Quinn Back To Work in Barabbas,” Variety, October 11, 1961, p17; “No Time To Fiddle in Rome,” Variety, November 15, 1961, p1; “To Write Barabbas Dialog,” Box Office, November 27, 1961, pW6; “Canada Coin,” Variety, March 21, 1962, p40; “Barabbas Exhibits Start Key City Tour,” Box Office, March 26, 1962, pE8; “Barabbas London Event: New York Date Oct 10,” Box Office, June 11, 1962, p14; “Barabbas Premiere Set For Oct 4 in Toronto,” Box Office, July 23, 1962, pE8; “Hard Cover Book to Ballyhoo Barabbas,” Box Office, July 30, 1962, p10; “Palance Back, Try Directing,” Variety, October 17, 1963, p3; “Big Barabbas Float,” Box Office, January 4, 1963, pA1; advert, Variety, January 23, 1963, p27; “Barabbas at Eight,” Box Office, February 18, 1963, pK2; “Lenten Angle for Barabbas Date,” Variety, March 13, 1963, p17; “Top Rental Features of 1963,” Variety, June 8, 1964, p37.
The Magnificent 60s 