movie review – Page 28 – The Magnificent 60s

Borsalino (1970) ****

You wonder how much the unexpected success of this French gangster picture encouraged Paramount to invest in The Godfather (1972). The studio had gone down the Mafia route with The Brotherhood (1968) but to a significantly muted response. But where that film was heavy on family and drama, Borsalino went wild with charismatic performances and, as important, machine-gun-driven violence. And you couldn’t ignore the success the previous year of the French The Sicilian Clan (1969).

While Borsalino doesn’t go into the weighty issues and family sensibility that elevated The Godfather in the eyes of critics, its starting point owed more to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) with two likeable hoods, even, initially at least, sparring over the same girl. The family element here concentrates on fraternity, brothers in crime, rather than the father-son dynamic that drove The Godfather. And it’s just so much goddam fun.

Francois (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Roch (Alain Delon) are petty crooks in Marseilles in the early 1930s working their way up to the top, initially just with scams like presenting a longshoreman who can’t speak a word of German as a German regional boxing champion, hijacking the favorite in a horse race, setting up a slot-machine business, disrupting the city’s fish market, until graduating to more serious crime and challenging Marello (Arnoldo Foa) and Poli (Andre Bollet), kingpins of the area’s organized crime. They set fire to an abattoir, establish their own fiefdoms, running legitimate businesses like casinos. But the higher they climb the closer they come to a devastating irony which cannot be ignored. Once they’ve eliminated everyone else, their only competition is with each other, and both realize that, inevitably, one will begin to want to become the undisputed top gangster.

Roch is the more thoughtful of the pair, the one looking ahead, sensing opportunity, the strategist, Francois more likely to indulge his playboy instincts, but both enjoy the high life, mixing with celebrities, politicians and archbishops. There’s plenty collateral damage. Try to steal a bigwig’s girlfriend away and you are virtually condemning her to death.

Unexpectedly, for the genre, it’s huge fun, in part helped along by the genial earworm of a score by Claude Bolling, as evocative of the period as Scott Joplin’s rags were to The Sting (1973). We don’t have to suffer any sanctimonious prig on the sidelines offering commentary or the gangsters making out that they’re better than they are because they don’t indulge in certain types of crime. But the biggest contributory factor is the teaming of Alain Delon (Once a Thief, 1965) and Jean-Paul Belmondo (Is Paris Burning?, 1966), the two biggest French male stars of the decade, the former enjoying substantially more success overseas than the latter.

Remember that Robert Redford was a not star when he made Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid so the pairing of two huge marquee names was not a regular feature anywhere in the world. It was Alain Delon, in his capacity as producer, who snared his rival, ceding top billing to achieve it.

This was the second of nine movies that Delon made with director Jacques Deray and could not have been more different from their previous outing La Piscine/The Swimming Pool (1969), a claustrophobic psychological thriller. Deray had history with Belmondo, too, Crime on a Summer Morning (1965). The characters were a great fit for their screen personas. And the photography, with some sepia tint, is distinctive.

Written by Jean-Claude Carriere (Viva Maria!, 1965), Claude Sautet (Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud, 1995), Jean Cau (Jeff, 1969) and the director, based on the book Bandits a Marseille by Eugene Saccomano.

Buddy movie breakout. Highly enjoyable.

Blackeyes (1989) *****

Absolutely mesmeric. Would be catnip for contemporary audiences with its shifting time frames, juggling perspectives, narrative sleight-of-hand, and heavily feminist-oriented outlook with its slating of misogyny. Ripe for a remake and with the adventurous directors around these days they should be vying for the opportunity. But I should warn you, steer clear of the version that showed on Amazon Prime which cut the four-part television series in half.

British screenwriter Dennis Potter was something of a national institution before this appeared, the BBC ponying up vast sums (in television terms) for his experimental programs that included the likes of Pennies from Heaven (1978) – remade as a movie three years later with Steve Martin – and The Singing Detective (1986) (remade seventeen years later with Robert Downey Jr) and his blend of pastiche and males struggling with raw emotion had made him not just a household name but accorded him worldwide acclaim.

However, just as Peeping Tom (1960) put the kibosh on the career of Michael Powell, Blackeyes proved a major critical reversal and after the mauling it received and outraged headlines in the national media Potter somewhat lost his mojo and automatic critical favor although Lipstick On Your Collar (1993) helped a certain Ewan McGregor to make his mark.

In part, Blackeyes is way ahead of its time in the use of the stylistic devices mentioned above which when incorporated into the works of, for example, David Lynch or Christopher Nolan, were hailed as groundbreaking.

So this is a three-hour-plus show setting precedents that not only break all the rules of narrative but blows them sky-high and has so many layers you can hardly keep up and that narrative spinning continues to the very end. You could almost entitle it “Whose Story Is It, Anyway?”

Elderly author Maurice (Michael Gough) has fashioned the experiences of his model niece Jessica (Carol Royle) into a bestselling literary novel. Leading character Blackeyes (Gina Bellman) is taken advantage of so often by men that she commits suicide, wading out dressed in sexy night attire into a lake. Although Maurice makes a fine specimen suited-and-booted and talking to admiring audiences at book fairs, in reality he’s a sodden old drunk living in a threadbare apartment with a teddy bear. But he’s intellectually adroit as shown with his verbal duels with a smug journalist who spouts artistic jargon.

Jessica is so annoyed that she has not been acknowledged as the source of her uncle’s novel – he claims it is a work of imagination – that she begins to write her own fictional version of her life story, calling into question some of the events in her uncle’s account. So that’s two perspectives already. Stand by for a third, that turns the entire story on its head.

It appears Blackeyes (Gina Bellman) has not committed suicide. Detective Blake (John Shrapnel) is convinced she has been murdered, especially after he finds a list of names stuck in her vagina (yes, despite Blake gamely searching for every euphemism under the sun, the actual word, to add to the shock and horror of an audience and especially critics reeling from the sex and nudity, was used on the BBC) and later finds her diary which provides another version of events.

He’s an old-school detective, and while not beating anyone up, not above handing out a good thump in the ribs to anyone giving him lip. So while following Maurice and his niece, we are also finding out more about Blackeyes via the cop’s investigations and how she was taken advantage of in the advertising profession and world of photographic modeling. She is even the one who gets the blame when someone tries to rape her.

Her life could be viewed in two ways, as a sexually independent woman or as a victim of MeToo.

To counteract what is presented as a sordid existence there comes into her life a gentler soul, advertising copywriter Jeff (Nigel Planer) and he’s writing and rewriting versions of a more old-fashioned romance where they enjoy a meet-cute (of sorts) and get talking and move onto romantic walks along the seaside. But Jeff’s too diffident a fellow to appeal to Blackeyes and he doesn’t even get to first base. But it also turns out that he’s been watching Jessica through binoculars (they live across the street from each other) and there’s a marvelous moment when he realizes that Blackeyes occupies the same apartment as Jessica and that he could at that very moment be watching himself.

All the way through there’s been a male voice-over, measured, commenting on the action, advising on twists in the story, adding a different perspective to characters, offering many polished bon mots, and it takes you quite a while to realize that this is an entirely new voice, and doesn’t belong to either Maurice or Jeff. In the ordinary run of things, this character would turn out to be the Hercule Poirot of the piece, putting the jigsaw together, explaining all.

In fact, he’s another element of the jigsaw. He’s not just the narrator. Everyone we’ve seen are characters in his fiction. But they don’t always obey the rules and at the very end Blackeyes escapes.

So just a stunning piece of television. Although Michael Gough (Batman Returns, 1992) received the bulk of what little plaudits there were, the series is carried by New Zealand actress Gina Bellman (Leverage, 2008-2012, and Leverage: Redemption, 2021-2023) who is simply superb. She rises above what could easily have been a cliché – and in some respects was written as a cliché version of the “dumb blonde” at male beck and call. Her comic timing for a start turns many scenes on their heads. But what’s often been overlooked is her transitional skill. She moves from male fantasy figure to believable human being and from there to rebel. And that takes some doing.

Gina Bellman hates talking about this series, my guess on account of the nudity and the backlash that created for a young actress, but she should be proud of her achievement. This is more than solid stuff.

Writer Dennis Potter also directed and his camera is always prowling around the edges.

The word auteur was over-used but this genuinely fits that category.

A masterpiece.

Any Given Sunday (1999) *****

It’s always with trepidation that I go back to a banker, one of my favorite films, hoping that it will remain timeless, and still good enough for a place on my all-time personal Top Ten. I’d planned a double bill of Kingdom of Heaven (2005) and this but the former proved so disappointing that it took me a while to pluck up the courage to watch Oliver Stone’s kaleidoscopic American football epic.

My fears proved misplaced and this is bearing in mind that I know nothing about the sport and have little understanding of what always appear arcane rules that make little sense to someone brought up on the more disciplined (at least in my eyes, rules-wise) football/soccer (or the hybrid “soccerball” as my grandkids refer to it). I’ve always been a fan of sports movies, which means American sports movies, because with the exception of Chariots of Fire (1981) the British don’t seem to have the knack. So I’m used to following movies where I don’t necessarily understand what’s going on the field of play.

This is driven by three compelling narratives – all power duels of one kind or another, between owner Christina Pagniacci (Cameron Diaz) and various politicians, between her and coach Tony D’Amato (Al Pacino), and between Tony and arrogant rising star quarterback Willie Beaman (Jamie Foxx). And while all these battles are a mixture of discreet management and full-blown blood-and-thunder shouting matches, the movie is liberally sprinkled with tiny cameo moments that add depth.

There’s a blink-and-you-miss moment when team physician Dr Mandrake (James Woods) is seen in conversation on the sidelines with a blonde cheerleader. The next time you see her is when she chooses not to follow Mandrake when he is fired, as curt a signal as you’ll ever find that position rather than personality equates to worth. She appears for one more nanosecond and this time in conversation with his replacement Dr Powers (Matthew Modine).

The saddest moment is when cute sex worker Mandy (Elizabeth Berkley) tries to let Tony down gently that theirs is purely a financial, not romantic, transaction. But that’s run close when Willie’s girlfriend Vanessa (Lela Rochon) is given the brush-off by the established WAGs. And the toughest scene, amidst all these high-powered testosterone-driven adrenalin male and female junkies, is when injured star quarterback Cap Rooney (Dennis Quaid) is given the mother of all slaps by wife Cindy (Lauren Holly). All such moments are merely incidental to the three main narratives, as is the battle for music supremacy in the dressing room, when the head-bangers among the team turn the volume up to eleven.

Revenge is a theme. And that can run from setting loose your baby alligator in the team shower room, taking a buzz saw to a rival’s ultra-expensive automobile or his team-mates punishing Willie for his overweening arrogance by not protecting him on the field and allowing him to be battered by the opposition. Though there’s little as sweet as Tony handing Christina her come-uppance by stealing away Willie for his new team. But that’s run close by the grim smile of satisfaction on the face of the Football Commissioner (Charlton Heston) when he, too, brings her up short. And by Tony stiffing cocky pundit Jack Rose (John C. McGinley). Indulgence, by comparison, is sniffing coke off a naked woman’s breast. There’s even moments of comedy, Willie being duped into taking flowers to the coach when invited for dinner, and the holding-up-the-hand scene.

And all of this is before we get to the meat of the movie, the games that mean absolutely everything – more than sex, family and drugs – to the participants. Sometimes Tony, a 30-year-old veteran, conjures up the words to inspire his team, sometimes he doesn’t, occasionally he turns away from them in disgust, occasionally it’s left to the padre (in the days when “take a knee” meant something else) to inject some common sense into the overloaded equation.

If all these characters are larger-than-life that’s no surprise because there’s little room in the hard world of top-level sport for the shy and withdrawn. So shouting matches are titanic. Lives play out only in the fast lane. Winners get the prom queen, losers get…nothing. And unlike sports originating from Britain – like football/soccer/soccerball or cricket – there are no draws. If you’re not a winner, then you’re a loser.

The essential tale of staying on top, maintaining a winning role, reversing a losing one, getting to the playoffs, the holy grail of winning the Super Bowl (known here as the Pantheon) and the coveted ring that accompanies victory, is always going to be packed with drama. But director Oliver Stone (Platoon, 1986) adds other layers, the daughter whose father wanted a son, the coach who’s driven away everyone who ever loved him and now pays through the nose for nights of affection, the quarterback so infused with self-belief and victim mentality that he learns the hard way he needs help.

You can’t deny Stone his quirks, the lightning bolts or seemingly endless snatches of pop tunes and shadowy figures who appear out of nowhere, and cuts to cheerleaders or crowds, and the paraphernalia that surrounds the game. But not a moment is wasted.

The acting is top-notch. Al Pacino (The Godfather, 1972) gives one of his best performances, Cameron Diaz (The Mask, 1994) upends her cute screen persona, James Woods (White House Down, 2013) plays another version of his screen schemer, Jamie Foxx (Back in Action, 2025) gives notice of his talent. Written by John Logan (Gladiator, 2000), the director and Daniel Pyne (The Manchurian Candidate, 2004).

Best-ever sports movie (though maybe tied with Field of Dreams, 1989).

Without doubt retains its place on my All-Time Top Ten.

The Innocents (1961) ***

One description of this film’s prequel The Nightcomers (1972) was that, even with the overt sex and violence, it was an arthouse picture masquerading as a horror movie. And obviously absent the sex and violence that’s how I feel about this one. I’m of the old-fashioned school when it comes to horror – once in a while I expect to jump. The biggest problem here is that fear is telegraphed in the face of governess Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr). Instead of the audience being allowed to register terror, all the tension is sapped away by one look of her terrified face.

Atmospheric? Yes! Scary? No.

Certainly, the set-up is likely to spark the darkest imaginations. Orphans Miles (Martin Stephens) and Flora (Pamela Franklin) are abandoned by their uncle (Michael Redgrave) who wants to spent his time enjoying himself in faraway London without having to bother about the care of the minors. The governesses he installs are given carte blanche to deal with any situation that arises – as long as they don’t concern him with it. And he’s so disinterested in the children’s welfare that he hires a completely inexperienced governess in Miss Giddens despite the fact that the previous occupant of the post, Miss Jessel, had died in mysterious circumstances and a little digging would have revealed that she lived a hellish life under the thumb of valet Quint.

The kids appear somewhat telepathetic or telekinetic – Flora knows Miles is coming home before Miss Giddens does, Miles knows when the governess is standing outside his door. They’re maybe a too bit self-indulgent – Flora enjoys watching a spider munch on a butterfly and isn’t above finding out if her pet tortoise can swim, while Miles has Miss Giddens in a neck stranglehold.

But it’s unlikely the children are summoning ghosts – Quint appears to Miss Giddens at the top of a tower and again peering in through a window, Miss Jessel turns up, too, and I lost count of the number of disembodied voices. The ghosts it turns out have taken possession of the children in order to continue their relationship.

And while this is all very clever it does not chill you to the bone. The children are not as cute as they need to be to make this work. You get the impression, given half the chance, they would happily turn into little savages and experiment with all manner of cruelty. And that would occur whether there was the likes of Quint around to lead them astray because the adults in their lives are so selfish and set the wrong kinds of standards. But with the focus perennially on the trembling Miss Giddens, there’s little chance of getting inside the heads of the children.

Since jump scares are not in director Jack Clayton’s cinematic vocabulary, the best scenes are not visual, but verbal, housekeeper Mrs Grose (Meg Jenkins) filling the governess in on the unequal relationship between Quint and Miss Jessel, Flora imagining rooms getting bigger in the darkness (effectively more dark), Miles seeing a hand at the bottom of the lake.

There’s certainly an elegiac tone and the camera clearly sets out to destabilise the audience but that’s just so obvious it seems more an arthouse ploy than a horror schematic.

This was start of Deborah Kerr (Prudence and the Pill,1968) playing psychologically distorted characters. Over the previous decade she had revelled in a screen persona that saw her playing the female lead (sometimes the top-billed star) opposite the biggest male marquee names of the era – Burt Lancaster (twice), Cary Grant (twice), Yul Brynner (twice), Gregory Peck, William Holden, Robert Mitchum (three times), David Niven (twice), Gary Cooper. Now she turned fragile and that screen persona, introduced here, would see her through the next decade.

So she’s both very good and very bad here. Her character facially registers her inner thoughts but those too often get in the way of the audience. I found the kids more limited in their roles, not through acting inexperience, but through narrative restriction.

Jack Clayton (Dark of the Sun, 1968) directs from a screenplay by Truman Capote (In Cold Blood, 1967) and William Archibald (I Confess, 1953) from the celebrated Henry James story.

A bit too artificial for my taste. Probably heresy to admit it but I preferred the prequel.

One-Eyed Jacks (1961) ****

Sets the tone for the later Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah and Clint Eastwood westerns in which the bad guys are the good guys and we find ourselves rooting for bounty hunters, gunslingers and bank robbers. Except this is more of a drama than a western. Shooting is kept to a minimum and instead it’s a character-driven drama about outlaws. Ostensibly, it’s a simple revenge tale and also totes around that later cliché of the honor code and principles that The Wild Bunch (1969) in particular put so much faith in.

But, in reality, it’s an in-depth look at two fascinating characters, both very human, both sly, self-indulgent, constantly attempting to reinvent themselves, cheat their way to a better life or to get what they want. There’s no sense of redemption, just obsession.

Rio (Marlon Brando) and Ben (Karl Malden) are bank robbers, the former a notorious gunslinger to boot and also partial to stealing pieces of jewellery to assist his practiced seduction routine whereby he claims a ring or necklace was a family heirloom, and he’s a good reader of the reluctant female because that tends to open the bedroom doors. Pursued after pulling off a job in Mexico, down to one exhausted horse and trapped by a posse, Ben is sent to get fresh horses but instead of coming back heads off with the loot. The captured Rio does a five-year prison stretch before escaping and seeking revenge.

Ben, meanwhile, has gone straight. He’s picked up a peach of a job as a lawman, a marshal no less, in Monterey on the California coast, where he’s made no secret of his past so he’s not prey to blackmail. He thinks Rio believes his story that he did all he could to return to aid his friend. We know different.

Rio has alighted on this town by pure accident, hooking up with a band of thieves led by Bob (Ben Johnson) who are set on robbing the bank here. Their plans are put in disarray when Ben takes revenge on Rio seducing his stepdaughter Louisa (Pina Pellicer) by subjecting him to a savage whipping and breaking his gun hand. It takes ages for the hand to heal and for Rio to even manage to whip out the gun let alone fire it with any speed or accuracy. He fesses up to Louisa that he’s not a secret Government agent, his usual cover story, but a bank robber and that the heirloom he gave her did not belong to his mother.

Bob gets fed up waiting, tries to pull off the bank job with one other accomplice, but the robbery goes wrong and a girl is killed. Ben pins the blame on Rio, arrests him and prepares to hang him. Louisa, who has initially rejected Rio after his confession and aware of his revenge plan, helps him escape.

The final shoot-out isn’t built up with the intensity of High Noon (1962) or Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) but with a resigned inevitability. Rio could have skipped out with Louisa and made a new life in Oregon. That would, in some senses, be revenge enough, stealing away the stepdaughter, one of the two main planks of Ben’s newfound respectability.

Don’t come here looking for honesty or upstanding individuals. Respectability is feigned – even Ben’s wife Maria (Katy Jurado) had a child out of wedlock. Everyone lies, even Maria – to protect Louisa from the stepdad’s wrath at losing her virginity.

In other words, a totally human cast of characters, shuffling the truth like it was a deck of cards. You wouldn’t trust any of them an inch. It doesn’t take much for cruelty to creep through the cracks, the cruel whipping, deputy Dedrick (Slim Pickens) handing out a beating to Rio in retaliation for being rejected by Louisa, Bob taking great delight in shooting dead an unarmed accomplice.

Ben isn’t alone about lying about the impossibility of coming to Rio’s aid, Bob does it too. Wife and stepdaughter lie to Ben. Ben lies to Rio. Rio lies to Louisa. Where this fits into one of Dante’s circles of Hell is anyone’s guess.

Cinematically, there’s only really one standout scene, when Ben calls out of hiding all the men who are going to surround Rio. But there are bold visuals. I thought I was watching a dud DVD because the image was so washed out for the opening sequences then I realized it was just the glare of the white desert sand and deliberate. And the backdrop of crashing waves suggests a different sensibility.

You can see the impact of Brando’s direction – he was making his directing debut – more with the leeway he allows actors to carry out little bits of business that only another actor would appreciate. A shoeless Ben dances over the hot sands, when he picks up the coins he has dropped he remains on the ground longer sifting through the sand in case he has missed one, Rio reacts to Dederick sweeping ash in his direction.

This is Marlon Brando (The Nightcomers, 1971) still in his pomp.

Written by Calder Willingham (The Graduate, 1967) and Guy Trosper (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 1965) from the book by Charles Neider.

An exemplary work from a novice director.

Mr Majestyk (1974) ****

I interrupt the current program to bring you the hugely under-rated Mr Majestyk, now showing on Amazon Prime.

You read any critical assessment of the 1970s and if they talk about male actors at all it’ll be the “new wave” of Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman, Oscar nominees/winners all. There’ll be nary a mention of the actors who kept the box office straight on a consistent basis for most of the decade. Clint Eastwood would come into the equation, but it wouldn’t be for Dirty Harry (1971) or Every Which Way but Loose (1978) but only when he flexed his directorial muscles. Charles Bronson never harbored any ideas of picking up a megaphone so he wouldn’t even have that saving grace.

Yet Eastwood and Bronson saved Hollywood before the big blockbuster like Jaws (1975) or Star Wars (1977) took off and for one specific reason. They attracted a global audience. When foreign receipts started to matter more than ever, these two delivered. And while the critically-adored actors dithered over choices and could scarcely be guaranteed to put out a picture a year, Eastwood and Bronson were dependable, occasionally ramping up output to three a year (1971 and 1973 for Eastwood, 1972, 1974 and 1976 for Bronson). They were old-school reliable performers. .

Mr Majestyk has been somewhat overshadowed because it appeared just before what some ill-informed observers deemed to be Bronson’s breakout picture, Death Wish (1974), and because it was helmed by the under-rated Richard Fleischer (The Boston Strangler, 1968) who never seemed to generate critical traction.

In fact, it’s a cracker – a pair of stunning car chases, full-on blow-away street battle, and the actor is one of his best roles. If anyone could play a farmer convincingly it’s Bronson, who looks as if he knows exactly what it’s like to put in a mucky day’s work (he was a miner). Vince Majestyk (Charles Bronson), in the watermelon line, falls foul of small-time organized crime in the shape of one of the most hapless hoods you’ll come across, Bobby Kopas (Paul Koslo). When Majestyk doesn’t take too kindly to Kopas trying to muscle in on the employment market, the farmer ends up in jail.

During a routine transportation, gangsters try to hijack Mob hitman Frank Renda (Al Lettieri) but despite going in all guns blazing the racketeers haven’t counted on Majestyk, who steals the bus, sees of the pursuing cops and robbers and hides out in a shack in the hills. He trades the mobster for the cancellation of charges against him by Det Lt McAllen (Frank Maxwell). But he’s duped by Renda’s backgammon-playing fashionable moll Wiley (Lee Purcell). On the loose, Renda is determined to get his revenge. The cops are happy to use Majestyk as bait.

Mexican Nancy (Linda Christal), a crop picker and union organizer, also enters the frame, and despite Majestyk, having recognized imminent danger, trying to stifle burgeoning romance, she keeps coming back. She’s a straightforward gal. “You want to go to bed with me, why don’t you just ask?”

But bait becomes bait-and-switch and soon it’s the gangsters who are on a wild goose chase, car passengers driven off the road during a wild chase over dusty mountainous country, others picked off by rifle until it comes down to a showdown at an isolated house.

While Majestyk has the muscle to give Renda an occasional slapping, he’s also got the sucker punch, duping the hoodlum time and again.

One of the elements that distinguishes this is that, apart from Renda, all the characters, good or bad, male or female, are soft spoken. Even Lt McAllen isn’t always chewing someone out.

Although the car chases have been compared to Bullitt (1968) and The French Connection (1971) they have much more in common with Fear Is the Key (1972) where we are miles away from slick city roads. Plenty opportunity for vehicles to sail through the air. Nancy proves something of find behind the wheel, and Vince pretty game in the back of the truck being bounced six ways to Sunday by her driving.

Outside the action, several excellent scenes – the gangsters shooting up the watermelon crop, headlights ominous in the dark, a crop-picker being smashed by a car, Kopas being put in his place by Renda. Not only is the romance in a low register, but Bronson is in a low key, resigned to what he cannot change, but taking charge with blistering speed when he can.

This was a deliberate change of pace in terms of characterization from Bronson following the more action-oriented Chato’s Land (1972), The Mechanic (1972) and The Stone Killer (1973). There’s none of the usual brooding menace. He’s a farmer, not a killer.

Despite a long stretch in The High Chaparral (1967-1971), this was the first movie in six years for Argentinian Linda Cristal who’s effective rather than a scene-stealer which the cool Lee Purcell (Kid Blue, 1973) definitely is in non-showy fashion. By contrast Al Lettieri (The Godfather, 1972) eats the scenery, which is his job, as he turns from cat into mouse.

More than ably directed by Richard Fleischer from an original screenplay by Elmore Leonard (The Big Bounce, 1969).

A must see.

Kingdom of Heaven (2005) ***

I’m conscious of entering contentious waters especially as a new 4K DVD edition of the 195-minute Director’s Cut – expanded from the original 144-minute version – is being released by Twentieth Century Fox to coincide with today’s theatrical 20^th anniversary theatrical release. Normally, that would have filled me with joy because I was a huge fan of the original Director’s Cut, which, it is true, added considerable depth to the film as initially screened.

But in watching the Director’s Cut as the first part of a proposed All-Time Top Ten double bill with Any Given Sunday (1999) I discovered to my horror it was not the film I remembered and had for many years championed. The flaws were all too obvious, it was extremely wordy, rammed full of characters and a narrative that ran all over the place trying to keep up with itself.

We should begin with the major flaw and that’s the casting of Orlando Bloom, fresh from his breakthrough role in Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), as Balian the blacksmith. The role was written for Russell Crowe but schedule clash prevented his involvement. Director Ridley Scott went ahead anyway and Bloom doesn’t remotely convince as a leader.

Though most of the picture is based on historical fact, the initial MacGuffin doesn’t make sense. For the purposes of the narrative we need to get blacksmith Balian to the Crusades. Balian’s wife (Nathalie Cox), seen briefly (and happily) in flashback, has committed suicide because of a miscarriage which seems a mighty odd reason, and we are never made privy to whatever other mental problems afflicted her. In those days, if you committed suicide you could not be buried in sacred ground and furthermore your head was chopped off. Now, admittedly, the local priest (Michael Sheen), Balian’s half-brother, is a creepy character, but it hardly seems to justify Balian thrusting a sword through his heart and setting him on fire.

But, don’t you know it, if you run off to the Crusades you win a get-out-of-jail-free card rather than being hung for your crime. So Balian joins up with his dad Godfrey (Liam Neeson) who has returned briefly from the Crusades and initially been rejected by his son. They’re attacked by soldiers seeking to arrest Balian but, wouldn’t you know it, after a few lessons from his old man, Balian turns out to be an ace swordsman.

Eventually, after a few adventures and shipwreck and fortuitous encounter with Muslim Imad a-Din – remember the name because he later plays a critical role – he reaches Jerusalem and is confronted with a wordfest, a heavy distillation of philosophy, a narrative that flits around fragile peace between Christian and Muslim, and woman of intrigue Sibylla (Eva Green) whose husband Guy happens to be the leader of the anti-Muslim forces.

It might have helped if Godfrey hadn’t inconveniently died, of wounds while protecting his son, because Liam Neeson strikes you immediately as a leader and not the kind of actor like Bloom who is only a leader because the script says so. Anyways, before we can get down to any of the stirring and visually commanding action for which Ridley Scott is rightly acclaimed, Balian, who remember is a blacksmith, turns before our eyes into a wizard of an engineer and before you know it a parched piece of land is fully irrigated. It’s a lovely sequence, to be sure, and accompanied by my favorite piece of music (score by Harry Gregson-Smith) in the film, but not particularly believable.

Nor is the romance, Sibylla now deciding on adultery with her husband’s enemy. And, again, to be sure, much of the extra footage does fill out her character, but that still leaves a jumble of other characters fighting for political power – the dying masked King of Jerusalem, Baldwin IV (Edward Norton), a leper; City Marshal Tiberias (Jeremy Irons); the aforementioned Guy and his sidekick Raynald (Brendan Gleeson); assorted Knight Templars who are ferociously anti-Muslim; and parked outside the city gates Muslin chief Saladin (Ghassan Massoud).

The story, if you can still keep sight of it amongst all this intrigue, is that Guy and Raynald and the Knights Templar want to spark a Holy War, ending years of peace, restoring Jerusalem to sole ownership of the Christians, rather than being equally shared (though, noticeably, no Muslims on any of the ruling factions).

Anyway, eventually, after we’re done with philosophizing and Balian making hay with Sibylla, we get to the action and at last the movie takes flight, and though you no longer particularly believe in Balian as a leader of men he does show some tactical awareness. There’s a superb pitched battle against superior forces and a magnificent siege. Written by William Monahan (The Departed, 2006).

But watching the Director’s Cut again I came away wishing for the shorter version, though very little could compensate for the casting of Orlando Bloom.

I might change my mind if I get to see it in the cinema again but for the moment it’s lost its coveted place in my All-Time Top Ten.

The Untouchables (1987) *****

The greatest crime picture ever made, outside of The Godfather Parts I and II (1972/1974). A sledgehammer of a narrative that moves like an express train, only slowing down for a number of bravura sequences. Riddled with fabulous lines, built on great performances, and seeded early on with subsidiary characters who will later play significant roles. In any analysis it reads like a greatest hits.

The bloodied finger of Al Capone (Robert DeNiro) holding court to fawning journalists; the little girl’s plaintive cry of “Mister” before she’s blown to kingdom come; the love note included in the lunch of Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner); “poor butterfly” as the first raid goes wrong; the introduction of Malone (Sean Connery) “here endeth the lesson”; the trading of racist insults with recruit George Stone (Andy Garcia); Capone bludgeoning an associate to death with a baseball bat; in the safety of a church, Malone explaining “the Chicago way”; the first big cinematic sequence – the shootout at the border with meek accountant Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith) making his bones and sneaking a drink of beer; Malone “killing” the dead man; “touchables” smeared in blood in the lift; Malone’s fistfight with crooked boss Dorsett (Richard Bradford); Malone’s murder by hitman Frank Nitti (Billy Drago); the second, and greater, bravura sequence – the shootout on the steps of the railway station; Ness pushing Nitti off the rooftop; the disbelieving Capone sentenced.

And those are just the broad strokes. Peppered throughout is the issue of Capone’s tax evasion, the crime that brings him down, with virtually all Wallace’s contribution being reading from documents relating to this. Nitti appears in the second scene, leaving the bomb that will blow the little girl to kingdom come, and again at Ness’s house.

And this is so old-fashioned that not only are we rooting for the good guys but none of those involved has marital or alcohol problems. Cops like Malone may be disillusioned but they don’t take their disenchantment out on the bottle. Anyone who talks about marriage agrees it is a good thing.

Character introduction doesn’t go down the iconic route of The Magnificent Seven (1960) or The Dirty Dozen (1967). Chicago’s Finest sneer at Ness behind his back. Another director would have been tempted into a bolder entrance for Malone. But he’s a loser, still a beat cop in middle age, and on the late shift at that. He doesn’t just know his job, detects Ness is packing a gun, but he’s capable of a sardonic quip or two. Who’d claim to be working for the humiliated Treasure Dept is they weren’t? And he’s not so stand-up as he appears, playing with a key chain like worry beads, keeps a sawn-off shotgun in his record player.

And that’s before we go into the dialog. Screenwriter David Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross, 1992), revered as America’s greatest living playwright, turns on the style. “You can get further with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word”; “They pull a knife, you pull a gun”; “do you know what a blood oath is?”; “team!”; “brings a knife to a gun fight”; “all right, enough of this running shit;” “can’t you talk with a gun in your mouth?” “his name wasn’t in the ledger,” “did he sound anything like that?”

And that’s before we get to the score by Ennio Morricone, his best in terms of the consistency of theme (rather than just one standout tune) since Once Upon a Time in the West (1969). Or the rocking title sequence.

Turned Kevin Costner (Horizon, An American Saga – Chapter 1, 2024) into a star, a position, with dips here and there, he’s maintained for half a century. Andy Garcia (Black Rain, 1989), too, though for a shorter duration. Not everyone was impressed by Robert DeNiro’s (The Alto Knights, 2025) florid interpretation, but I wasn’t one of them. Brought Sean Connery (The Russia House, 1990) long overdue recognition for his acting, though it’s worth remembering that the Oscar voters who gave him a standing ovation could have handed him the gong a good time before for any number of excellent portrayals.

Director Brian DePalam (Carrie, 1977) was an Oscar shut-out. And when I look at the films that took precedence in the Best Film nominations, there’s only one, Moonstruck, that I’d seek out.

This is a thunderous achievement, and I can’t wait for 2027 when Paramount surely will bring it back to the big screen for a 40^th anniversary celebration.

Unmissable.

Satan Never Sleeps (1962) **

Of all the misguided sentimental anti-Communist drivel, this is a very poor swansong for triple Oscar-winning director Leo McCarey (Going My Way, 1944). A tone that’s awkward enough all the way through goes straight through the wringer when we are asked to accept without question the actions of a rapist. Such genocidal rape as the conqueror visits on the conquered would sit less comfortably with a contemporary audience.

Most of the problem is the set-up. Apart from those pesky Communists invading a Christian Mission, in other circumstances this would have settled into a verbal sparring match between about-to-retire old priest Fr Bovard (Clifton Webb minus trademark moustache), full of tetchy quips, and his younger replacement Fr O’Banion (William Holden) trying to shake off the unwelcome advances of even younger native Siu Lan (France Nuyen). There would be a servant or maybe a more high-flown doctor whom O’Banion could push Siu Lan onto.

There’s laffs aplenty if you’re easily satisfied with the likes of a servant (Burt Kwouk in an early role) who believes thieving is compatible with Christianity, O’Banion’s woeful attempts at cooking and his inability to shoo away the ardent Siu Lan, and the priests risking breaking a golden rule of their religion to enjoy a glass of wine before the clock strikes midnight.

The arrival of the Communists is not initially too tiresome, Bovard doing his best headmaster impression keeps them in line, Communist leader Chung Ren (Robert Lee), an ex-Christian, sweet on Siu Lan. Things get tricky when Chung Ren’s attempts to forcefully claim the woman are deterred by O’Banion who is tested several times on the old Christian principle of turning the other cheek before resorting to unchristian violence.

Chung Ren then rapes Siu Lan anyway. But when she stabs him in the back and the rapist is forced to ask O’Banion to go to another mission to fetch the necessary penicillin to prevent infection spreading, the older priest is inclined to ignore the request and let him die. O’Banion thinks he has struck a deal to free the old priest in exchange for fetching the medicine, but Chung Ren reneges on the agreement and the priests are tortured and stand trial.

Meanwhile, Chung Ren has a change of heart, or so it seems, after Siu Lan gives birth to his son. But, actually, this might be more to do with the fact that he has been demoted for not being a good Communist, inclined to enjoy the finer things in life rather than share them out with his comrades. And it’s only when he’s told he’s going to be sent away to some kind of Chinese Gulag that his principles make an appearance and he helps the two priests and Siu Lan and her baby to escape.

I could see maybe Siu Lan being forced into marriage by Chung Ren in the Communist state while he was in a position of importance; she would have no choice in the matter. But for her to show the same acceptance in a democracy outside China smacks of the worst kind of wishful thinking. Sure, the Christian God is all-forgiving and, technically, all Chung Ren would have to do was confess the sin of rape and equally technically he would receive absolution and therefore in the Church’s eyes be free to marry.

But O’Banion overheard the rape. He’s a witness. That’s no use in the Communist society, but in a democracy you would have thought he would have been seeking prosecution. As he was a witness and this was not something protected by the sanctuary of the confession, he would not just be perfectly within his rights but would have to seek out rule of law.

I have never heard of a rapist and the woman he raped living happily ever after and I doubt if it would ever have been considered conceivable even in the early 1960s.

That aside, William Holden (The Devil’s Brigade, 1968) and Clifford Webb, in his last picture, are good value as the squabbling priests, less so when they venture into dubious morality. France Nuyen (A Girl Named Tamiko, 1962) doesn’t get a fair shake, required to be the cliché happy grinning native and then provided with no opportunity to state her case against her rapist before she’s pushed, for the sake of a fairy tale ending, into marriage.

Written by the director and Claude Binyon (North to Alaska, 1960) from the bestseller by Pearl S. Buck.

A Dream of Kings (1969) *****

Sometimes great movies just disappear. Even if they pick up some critical traction on initial release, as here, they flop at the box office. And they are not revived because the production company goes bust or the rights are complicated. Or, more likely, they don’t fit into audience expectation. All three stars here completely play against type, outliers in career portfolios. We have become so accustomed to the attraction of stars according to their screen personas that unless they are known to completely change their screen characters with every outing anything that’s different to the norm becomes unacceptable.

Director Daniel Mann (Ada, 1961) was best known for producing Oscar-winning or Oscar-nominated performances from female stars. He was immensely skilled at making audiences sympathize with the most flawed women. Here, he does the same for Anthony Quinn, in a performance that should have had Oscar voters lining up but was dismissed for all the wrong reasons. Theoretically, one of the film’s problems is the dialog. We are so used to a script full of cut-and-thrust or witty putdowns that we fail to recognize a screenplay, that in much the same way as a stage play – but without that form’s inherent artificiality – lets characters live and breathe, explore depths that are just not possible except in fleeting moments in the normal construction of a movie.

Most scenes here begin one way and then move in all sorts of directions, sometimes ending up back where they started, but most often going somewhere unexpected, not in the sense of a sudden twist, but in digging deeper into relationships and understanding that marriages are built on shifting sands, and not all of them perilous. There’s a lot of dialog and when you get a lot of long speeches it can make the actors look as though they’re hamming it up when in fact what they’re doing is opening up the character.

We shouldn’t like Matsoukas (Anthony Quinn) at all. He’s a gambler, a womanizer, drinks, comes home at sunrise, has nothing you’d call a real job.

And yet.

In his company you enter a world of possibility. By sheer force of personality he lifts gloom, even when it’s his actions that have caused it. He can convince the most downtrodden weaklings that they have something of worth.

When nobody has anything good to say about old drunk Cicero (Sam Levene), Matsoukas tells him he has a poker dealer’s graceful hands and provides solace just by befriending him. He convinces a 72-year-old man that the loss of his libido is not down to the old guy’s age but because in four years of marriage he has lost interest in his 31-year-old wife because she’s the one who has aged, physically less appealing, and then he teaches the desperate soul the gentle art of seduction, how to win a woman’s heart by putting her on a pedestal, treating her like a goddess, kissing her softly on eyes and ears rather than pawing her in frantic passion.

Just what Matsoukas’s job is – on the door it says “counsellor” which would suggest something legal – but in fact he’s a male version of an old wife and provides solutions to odd problems, a mother worried that her teenage son masturbates, for example.

He is the sort of guy who can wring triumph from disaster. He has just lost a bundle of dough at poker but the way he tells it you’d think he’d won. Instead, he appreciates the drama of it all, the way it makes a great tale even if he’s the loser. Naturally, wife Caliope (Irene Papas) doesn’t see it his way. She’s on her knees with trying to feed her three children from the scraps that fall from his gambling. Though when he wins big, they live like kings.

Although he still has a lusty sex life with Calope, and can mostly coax her round, he has fallen for widowed baker Anna (Inger Stevens), attracted to her in part to alleviate her grief, pull her out of the darkness.

And he cannot face up to the potential loss of his young son who has three months to live and has it fixed in his own mind that the boy will be cured if Matsoukas can expose him to the sunshine and the ancient gods of his Greek homeland, though he lacks the $700 required for the air fare.

Each sequence is long, carefully calibrated, giving time for the exploration of a wealth of emotions. Outside of the three main narratives are two other stand-out scenes. In his sermon a priest rails against the evils of life insurance that makes people welcome death yet argues, ironically, that death is a great joy and should not be feared. And there’s a party where Matsoukas on the dance floor is a magnet for every woman in the room.

This is an Anthony Quinn (The Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968) devoid of all trademark abrasiveness, the loud voice gone, trying to gouge every ounce of joy from a forbidding world. He has a very tender relationship with his dying son, inventing a game with fake telephones to deal with the boy’s fears, and is very playful with his two daughters. He is constantly wooing his wife, in part to ease the pain he causes her, but mostly because he wants them to get the most out of life.

This is a different Irene Papas (The Brotherhood, 1968) too, not the fiery woman or dutiful wife of her screen persona. Whatever anger she feels is subsumed by sorrow and she is always willing to let her husband fire up her heart as in the old days. Actresses don’t get such complex roles these days.

And all the pent-up fragility of Inger Stevens (Five Card Stud, 1968) is suddenly let loose as she twists her entire screen persona of tough woman in a man’s world – usually a western – on its head. Her scenes with Quinn are breathtaking. Unfortunately, this was her final film – she committed suicide shortly after. But she could not have found a better swansong, one that extended her range.

As he always does, Daniel Mann doesn’t take his main character’s side, but while extracting sympathy for character predicament and perspective, still lets the audience make up his mind. This could easily have gone all maudlin, the child miraculously recovering, the flight to Greece to find a rare cure, all Matsoukas’s delusion revealed as nothing more than true faith, but it’s more hard-edged than that. At the end Matsoukas has his exterior carapace ripped apart, beaten up, ostracized for committing the worst crime of a gambler – cheating – in dire straits.

And yet.

Written by Ian McLellan Hunter (Roman Holiday, 1953) from the bestseller by Harry Mark Petrakis.

I just adored this.