movie review – Page 38 – The Magnificent 60s

Where’s Jack (1969) ***

Prison escapees tend to conform to a certain type. Think Charles Bronson and Steve McQueen (The Great Escape, 1969), Paul Newman (Cool Hand Luke, 1967) and Clint Eastwood (Escape from Alcatraz, 1979). Admittedly, Tim Robbins (The Shawshank Redemption, 1994) doesn’t fit the bill, but he’s got brains instead of brawn. But he’s not twinkle-eyed or twinkle-toed or diminutive like British hoofer Tommy Steele (Half a Sixpence, 1967) who’s not helped here by being up against a distinctively tough screen character in the shape of Stanley Baker (Zulu, 1964).

Served up as an antidote to the tomfoolery and sexuality of Tom Jones (1963), more interested in the seamier side of Ye Olde England, it ignores the more interesting tale of criminal corruption and hypocrisy of Jonathan Wild (Stanley Baker), the Thief-Taker, in favor of young thief Jack Sheppard (Tommy Steele) who proves his nemesis.

Wild was the ultimate hypocrite, not just stewed in the corruption of the times but taking advantage of it, and not so much poacher-turned-gamekeeper but gamekeeper who had not entirely abandoned his previous profession. Wild, a notorious thief, managed to set himself up as London’s top lawman, keeping other thieves in line and handing over a certain number to the hangman. He had another sideline. He sold back stolen goods to burglarized owners. Most of this was condoned by the authorities who believed that it took a thief to catch a thief.

Wild enrages Sheppard, apprentice locksmith to trade, by reneging on a deal to free Sheppard’s criminal brother. Sheppard sets out to teach the antique godfather a lesson, breaking into his warehouse and stealing the contents.

Wild has him arrested on a variety of occasions, but each time Sheppard breaks out from prisons that had the reputation of the later Alcatraz, in one instance through a sewer, in another via a chimney, turning himself into a local hero in the process. Sheppard’s main trade is not so much burglary as highwayman and further annoying Wild by bringing such criminal solicitation to the streets of posh London, from which it had, by decree of Wild, been outlawed.

In so doing, Sheppard encounters Lady Darlington (Sue Lloyd), so taken with our scamp that had this been Tom Jones there would have been some rollicking in the hay (or the Mayfair equivalent). Instead, she bets her Scottish estate that he will escape from his latest incarceration.

Sheppard has the hots for barmaid Bess (Fiona Lewis) but this not being Tom Jones we don’t go much beyond cleavage. The sub-plot involving Lady Darlington, which I’m guessing forms part of the Jack Sheppard legend (since he was a real-life character), takes up valuable time which could have been spent either developing the romance or on the escapes, which don’t generate the necessary tension, or filling out the crook’s character.

Narrative-wise there’s more at stake for Wild, not just being led a merry dance by Sheppard and losing respect (the crime of crimes against a criminal mastermind) but also by potentially damaging his cosy relationship with the authorities, led by snippy Lord Chancellor (Alan Badel) who is on the other side of the Lady Darlington wager.

Fair amount of rubbish being tossed out of windows, unruly tavern occupants, poverty and homelessness abounding, and general but unspecified bawdiness, in fact a truer perspective of the times, doesn’t compensate for the lack of compelling narrative.

On paper, this should have amounted to a lot more. Mostly, it goes askew from miscasting. Tommy Steele is outshone without much difficulty by Stanley Baker and it’s asking a lot of an audience to accept that a cheeky chappie can outwit the exceptionally clever tough guy. It’s Baker who makes the most of his scenes, either lording it over his gangs, using cruelty to keep them in line, or fearing that he might be toppled from his lofty position and end up either back in the gutter or at the end of a noose.

There’s a bit of complicated jiggery-pokery relating to the effect your weight has on how long you can dangle on the end of a rope. Hangmen in those days did not follow scientific principles and provide some kind of weighting handicap as occurred later to prevent unnecessary suffering and make death as swift as possible.

Anyway, our Jack, being a skinny little runt (and this plot-point key to the climax ensuring the part required a skinny little runt rather than someone hewn from the normal tough guy runt) doesn’t die from the hanging, escaping the fury of Wild and (so legend has it) managing to escape to the colonies.

Put a Michael Caine (The Ipcress File, 1965) in the leading role or Richard Harris (Major Dundee, 1965) or even a Nicol Williamson (The Reckoning, 1970) and you would have quite a different movie, a more believable protagonist. Even Peter O’Toole (Night of the Generals, 1966), while devoid of muscle, would suggest the brains to outwit his opponent.

In the face of the mop-haired pop singers and raucous rock stars, Tommy Steele had reinvented himself from 1950s teen idol into Broadway musical star with Half a Sixpence and then viewed as a squeaky-clean alternative to the more louche movie star turned up in harmless offerings like Disney’s The Happiest Millionaire (1967) and Francis Ford Coppola’s non-grandiose Finian’s Rainbow (1968).

Oddly enough, it was to escape such typecasting that he took on what was perceived as a much tougher role only to discover he lacked the acting cojones to pull it off. Baker, Badel (Bitter Harvest, 1963) and Lloyd (Corruption, 1968) beat him hands down.

Director James Clavell was riding high after To Sir, with Love (1967) as was producer-star Stanley Baker after Robbery (1967) and screenwriters David and Rafe Newhouse following Point Blank (1967). This brought them down to earth.

More Artful Dodger than Get Carter.

Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963) ***

Must have seemed a good idea at the time. A switcheroo from The Apartment (1960), where Jack Lemmon is the sap caught in middle of illicit affairs, to setting him up as the ace seducer with a string of girls at his beck and call. Except this won’t wash for contemporary audiences given that, effectively, he’s a sexual predator (seducer if you want to be nice about it), peeping tom (no way to dress that up) and eavesdropper (could have taught a class in The Conversation, 1974). He lets out plush apartments to beautiful girls who either pay no rent or very low rents in return for favors granted.

He uses his own key to let himself into apartments and he’s got a telescope at the ready although that’s hardly required since all the ladies leave windows and doors open permitting him to gawk whenever he wishes.

Luckily, he’s not the mainstay of the tale. Nope, that’s breaking down another barrier, and very cleverly for the times. At this time, sex on the screen was usually the result of illegitimate affairs, involving at least one husband or wife, or it was a sex worker by any other name (Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield 8, 1960, expects presents in lieu of cash). The idea of living in sin, as it used to be called, i.e. cohabiting without a marriage licence, was not generally on the cards.

So the deal here, to get round the snippy censor, was that Robin (Carol Lynley) and Dave (Dean Jones) set up home together to test out their compatibility but without sex entering the equation, him sleeping in a separate bed. Their apartment is let out by Hogan (Jack Lemmon), the predatory landlord. He has just been dumped by Robin’s aunt Irene (Edie Adams), hence the vacancy, and believes it’s two beautiful women moving in, not a couple. So his plan to offer two damsels a romantic meal with candles and violins (these play automatically) and a roaring fire (also electronic) falls apart.

That doesn’t prevent him from using his own key to enter the apartment at inappropriate moments and continuing his ardent wooing while trying to get rid of Dave or cause the kind of ruckus that’s going to cause the boyfriend to quit, leaving the coast clear.

Luckily, which gives the movie some acceptable life of its own, the dodgy landlord aspect takes second place to the lust vs logic argument that’s intrinsic to the idea of marriage. The couple spend most of the time arguing, and the movie is quite specific, much more than you might expect, on the ways in which a lusty young fellow can keep his ardor in check.

It’s based on a stage play, of the farce kind, so it relies on misunderstandings and misalignments and finds various ways of getting various combinations of the trio (and occasionally a quartet when Irene returns) in the room at the same time. There’s the usual problems when exchanges get heated.

Lurking in the background are married housekeeper Dorkus (Imogene Coca) and handyman Murphy (Paul Lynde), at opposite ends of the approval scale, the man even creepier than his employer.

Previously, I hadn’t found Jack Lemmon’s schtick so wearing, but his acting style is so frenetic you wonder how it ever found expression except in madcap comedy. It’s not just that his jaw constantly drops, but his eyebrows go up at the same time, and he might even be chucking in that trademark cackle. He toned it down for Days of Wine and Roses (1962) and jacked it up for The Great Race (1965) and somehow anything in between doesn’t quite work unless he’s got Billy Wilder on his tail.

But there are several pluses here. Carolyn Lynley (Bunny Lake Is Missing, 1965) proves an adept comedienne and Dean Jones was clearly in rehearsal for his later Disney pictures like The Love Bug (1967). Imogene Coca had been a legendary television staple, with her own show in the 1950s. There are fleeting glimpses of Bill Bixby (The Incredible Hulk, 1977-1982) and Variety columnist Army Archerd and James Darren (The Guns of Navarone, 1961), who died recently, sings the title song, and has a more robust voice than I had assumed for a pop singer.

David Swift (The Interns, 1962) directed and co-wrote the script with Lawrence Roman (The Swinger, 1966) from the latter’s Broadway hit.

A film of two halves. You can only cringe at the attitudes on display but enjoy the pre-marital ding-dongs between the couple.

Stark Fear (1962) ***

Unless you were unfortunate enough to get mix up in an international conspiracy, or your wealth induced a husband towards your murder – or a la Gaslight towards your insanity – or had taken a shower in strange motel, a wife in American movies was unlikely to live in fear of a sadistic spouse. Wife-beating aka wife-battering had never been high on the Hollywood agenda as an appropriate subject matter, so this picture not only stands out for the period but also strikes a contemporary spark. While many marital dramas of the 1960s have quickly become outdated, this has not.

Opening with an audacious cut from a woman’s eyes seen in a car’s rear-view mirror to her face in a photograph being pelted, being smashed to pieces. Ellen (Beverly Garland) has committed the grievous sin not just of going out to work but of taking up the post of secretary to oil executive Cliff Kane (Kenneth Tobey), a previous rival of husband Gerry (Skip Homeier). But Gerry’s income had unexpectedly tumbled and the couple, married just three years, need her money. He pours a drink over the terrified woman’s head, demands a divorce and promptly disappears.

Her search for him takes her to Quehada, pop. 976, a rundown town she had never heard of and whose existence her husband made no mention despite the fact it was where he grew up. Her husband’s sleazy friend Harvey takes her to the grave of Gerry’s mother (also called Ellen) where he rapes and beats her while, unbeknownst to her, her husband watches.

Back at the office, she begins to fall for Cliff, but Gerry, even though he no longer wants her, sets out to destroy the budding romance.

Following the classic pattern of course Ellen blames herself for making Gerry unhappy and for getting raped. Her guilt fuels her husband’s sadistic streak. She is unsure whether the threat of divorce is just the most cruel taunt her husband can imagine or for real, which would be just as bad, given her low-self-esteem.

Once she realizes Gerry had an unhappy childhood and is mother-fixated, it makes it even harder for her to abandon him, regardless of the mental and physical torment he inflicts and despite the entreaties of social worker friend Ruth (Hannah Stone). Ruth, too, however, represents an alternative equally fearful future, the now-single woman who regrets separating too quickly from her husband and has no man in her life or none who come up to scratch.

This is not a picture where men come out well. Gerry is a fiend in a suit. On the way to Quehada she is groped by other men who clearly feel it is their right. Harvey has a history of just taking what he wants. Even the relatively gentle Cliff appears to have an underlying reason for taking an interest in her.

In a world and a time where marriage meant not just financial security, but a safe haven from all the other men who would like as not press themselves upon the opposite sex at any opportunity, and not necessarily with any delicacy, director Ned Hockman presents life as a succession of traps for women. And we know now that not much has changed, and that for women fear is a constant.

Hockman directs with some singularity. He uses black-and-white not quite in the film noir manner of shadows and shafts of light but sets the subject of any night scene in a pool of light with darkness all around, which makes for some striking images. A couple of unusual backdrops include Commanche tribal dancing and a chase in a jukebox museum help place this a couple of notches above the usual B-picture.

Beverly Garland was a 1950s B-picture sci-fi and horror scream queen in movies such as It Conquered the World (1956), Curucu, Beast of the Amazon (1956) and Not of This Earth (1957) so fear was something of a default. Here, she adds something else, desolation at the position she finds herself in, confusion that her marriage is in tatters, hunting for a solution that never emerges, and unable to summon up the anger that might free herself. Hannah Stone has an intriguing role, encouraging her friend to leave her husband, knowing that being single again is not all it is cracked up to be. Unusually for a minor character in this kind of picture, primarily there to shore up the star, she enjoys a spot of lifestyle reversal.

Heart-breaking.

Dangerous Charter (1962) *** – Widescreen Experiment

Strong contender for cult status especially when post-production murder and sexploitation are thrown into the pot. A vanity picture but one with serious underlying purpose. Sole venture from director Robert Gottschalk, who doubled up as writer and producer. So, all-out auteur. This popped out by pure coincidence while I was in the middle of my annual widescreen/ 70mm/ Cinerama binge and thus pricked my interest.

And if you know your widescreen, the name of Robert Gottschalk will not be far from your lips. Because he invented Panavision. It’s still in use but in the roadshow era it was one of the contributing factors to directors heading for the biggest widescreen they could get. MGM properly introduced it with the 65mm Raintree County (1957) and then more strikingly, in terms of box office, with Ultra Panavision 70 for Ben-Hur (1959).

Ultra Panavision was used for sections of How the West Was Won (1962) and completely on Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) and Battle of the Bulge (1965) and it was revived by Quentin Tarantino for The Hateful Eight (2015). Super Panavision 70 was more regularly employed as was 35mm Panavision

Dangerous Charter had two aims. Firstly, to showcase the advantages of Panavision, hence the lax pace, the striking images of a yacht moving in a variety of directions across the water, often with sunset behind, the kind of awesome shot that might be favored by the likes of David Lean. Secondly, Gottschalk wanted to get into the production business, aiming initially at six movies a year, including a 70mm effort called Owyhee to be filmed in Hawaii in the summer of 1959.

Ben-Hur did the job of showcasing the process for him, so the production unit fell by the wayside and Dangerous Charter, made over a few weeks in 1958, sat on the shelf for four years after an initial attempt at distribution by Filmserve Distribution Corp fell apart, and as a result now conveniently falls into my purlieu.

So really, it’s a late 1950s movie masquerading as an early 1960s one, after it was picked up as a cheap support vehicle by the nascent Crown International.

It’s a shame Gottschalk didn’t quite have the same technical mastery of other elements of movie making as he did over camera and lenses. But in its favor, the movie is short, has a terrific villain, springs more twists than you might expect and certainly showcases his widescreen invention.

Three down-on-their-luck fishermen come across a deserted drifting yacht, the Medusa, with one corpse on board. The cops give it to them in lieu of a salvage fee, intending to use, in a cute sense of irony, the fishermen as “bait” to try and hook whoever was responsible for its abandonment.

The trio are only too happy to accept the gift. Aspiring skipper Marty McMahon (Chris Warfield) is in love with daughter June (Sally Fraser) of the captain, Kick (Chick Chandler), and there’s a chirpy deckhand Joe (Wright King). Pretty soon a money-no-object charter appears in the shape of Dick Kane (Richard Foote) and for $10,000 they agree to take him to La Paz on a 10-day return trip and pick up a passenger Monet (Peter Forster). June boards as cook.

Ongoing friction between Marty and June – he refuses to marry her until he can properly earn a living – spills over into some modest canoodling between the girl and the guitar-playing Dick, a stolen kiss as far as it gets before she warns him off.

Monet turns out to be quite a character. Plummy-voiced, white-suited, charming, friendly, think a slick Robert Wagner (Banning, 1967), accommodating and even entertaining. In short order, however, the Medusa is hijacked. And not for the valuable boat but for its even more valuable cargo of drugs.

The thugs threaten to hold June, by now decked out in a fetching pink swimsuit, hostage and there’s not much the boatmen can do to counter the threat. Their radio has been disabled by Dick who turns out to be a junkie. Marty tries a clever trick, flying the boat’s flag upside down, the nautical sign of distress, but that attempt to garner local attention is nipped in the bud. Monet has planted a bomb on board so there’s a ticking-clock countdown and a zinger of a climax when Dick, furious at being tortured via cold turkey by Monet, takes his revenge in a superb suicide by ramming their speedboat into the bigger boat, killing both.

Mostly, it’s juiced up by long shots of the boat on the water, which, while selling the process, rips the heart out of any tension. But towards the end it picks up the pace. The upside-down flag idea is scuppered when other fishermen assume they’ve just made a mistake and point this out within the hearing of Monet.

Marty has to scream at the other terrified screaming crewmen to shut up because the only way he can locate the bomb is by its give-away ticking. And when the bomb explodes harmlessly over the side and Monet decides to turn round and bump off the witnesses the old-fashioned way it’s Dick who twists the wheel towards doom.

There’s no great acting, but Peter Forster does a convncing job of an unusually civilized gangster and June Fraser attracts the eye. Chris Warfield, with little claim to fame as a television and support actor in pictures, later turned to direction under the pseudonym Billy Thornberg in the sexploitation vein, Teenage Seductress (1975) and Sheer Panties (1979) among his lurid portfolio. This proved a movie swansong for June Fraser, otherwise a bit player. You might remember Robert Forster from Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) but not much else.

Robert Gottschalk went back to turning Panavision into a hugely successful company before being murdered by his lover at aged 64.

The Defector (1966) ***

How often does a government hoodwink a morally upright citizen into deceitful action for the cause of the greater good? In this case physicist Professor James Bower (Montgomery Clift) doesn’t need a great deal of urging because what’s at stake are Russian space race secrets and the man selling them is a Russian scientist he knows from translating his books. It’s apparent from the outset that in setting out to make contact in East Germany, he is walking into a trap. It’s moody, and drab in the vein of The Quiller Memorandum (1966), shot in soulless German streets, and of course it is the final performance, after a four-year screen absence, of a frail-looking Clift, an iconic Hollywood star for nearly two decades.

But genres can be confusing. Although tagged as a spy picture it’s not really a spy film. It’s a character study. In fact, two character studies. And when you get to the end and realise the sacrifice made in order not to compromise principle, it turns into quite a different movie, one with considerably more depth than you might have imagined.

Bower is a rather adept amateur spy, neatly dodging being followed, and capable of nipping between two moving trams to evade pursuit. His instructions lead him to asking for a particular prescription and being sent in apparent haphazard fashion to an intended meeting with Dr Salter, his contact. Instead he is led to Counselor Peter Heinzmann (Hardy Kruger).

His hotel room is not merely bugged but fitted with electronic instruments to prevent sleep and distort his mind. Meanwhile Heinzmann is engaged in a hawk-vs.-dove battle with Orlovsky (David Opotashu) to determine whose methods, the latter preferring torture and brainwashing, would prove the more successful in forcing Bower to betray the whereabouts of the would-be defector. And there is also a doctor’s receptionist Frieda (Macha Meril), with whom romance so obviously beckons your natural moviegoer instinct is to regard her as lure rather than friend.

It’s a chess game, Bower a pawn, with the net growing tighter, imprisoned in more ways than one, being groomed for defection himself. Although there is double cross, triple cross, murder and an excellent chase, and a final unexpected, very human, twist, it’s far from your typical spy thriller, in general subtle in tone except for the nightmarish hotel scenes. Heinzmann is also a pawn, fighting a system that sees degradation as its most potent weapon and even while a danger to Bower displays humanity.

Quite what the set was like is anybody’s guess given than not only was Clift dead by the time of the film’s release but that Belgian director Raoul Levy (Hail,Mafia, 1965) – better known as the producer of many Brigitte Bardot films and now helming only his second film – had committed suicide.

If ever there was proof of star power, this is it. Even when the film is meandering and the plot at times impenetrable, Clift exerts an almost hypnotic hold on the viewer. Despite his clear infirmity, the intensity of expression that enraptured audiences from films as disparate as Red River (1948), From Here to Eternity (1953) and The Misfits (1961) has not vanished. Since many scenes are just meetings that scarcely progress the story, it is quite a feat to keep audiences interested. Far from his greatest performance, he still displays screen presence.

He is helped along by Hardy Kruger (Flight of the Phoenix, 1965) in one of his more measured performances, both sharing the knowledge that in doing good for their country they are betraying themselves. David Opatashu (Guns of Darkness, 1962) is excellent as his quietly ruthless superior and there should be mention of Karl Lieffen as the constantly complaining Major. Even as a dowdy East German, Macha Meril (Une Femme Mariee, 1964) still captivates. Serge Gainsbourg contributed the music.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Directed by Jean Dreville (Queen Margot, 1954).

North by Northwest (1959) ***** – Seen at the Cinema in 70mm – Bradford Widescreen Weekend

Only thing better than seeing this on the big screen is seeing it on biggest screen possible, Some clever clog has blown it up to 70mm by scanning the “original 6-perf 35mm Vistavision camera negative in 13k with all restoration work completed in 6.5k. The 70mm film print was created by filming out a new 65mm negative.” I don’t know what it means either – except that extra 5mm is the soundtrack and perfs refers to height – but I’m delighted with the result.

Not only does the crop spraying scene bask in greater glory but the pivotal scrambling on Mount Rushmore where Hitchcock used the wide screen at its widest takes on a vivid clarity that’s just impossible watching a DVD when characters are literally hanging off the furthest edges of the screen.

But setting aside the widest widescreen-ness what seeing it on the big screen more than anything restores is the audience experience and that allows the sly humor to reach its full potential. I hadn’t realized just how funny this darned picture is, not just the eye-rolling mother treating her grown-up son as a michievous scamp, and the zingers of lines but the interplay between the various characters.

And putting to one side Hitchcock’s wizardry it is a tour de force for screenwriter Ernest Lehman. I must have counted at least 20 narrative beats, not just thriller or action twists and turns but changes in our appreciation of the characters, plus the devilishly clever sexual banter. And while hero Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is a hero by accident, heroine Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) is heroine by design, and thanks to her exceptionally callous boss, The Professor (Leo G. Carroll), likely to pay a heavy price for wanting to do something worthwhile in a life that from her looks seems as if aerated, gliding along with nary a care in the world, her beauty ensuring she would always garner easy attention.

There are some exceptionally clever moments that emanate from Lehman rather than Hitch. The elusive villain hiding behind a variety of identities is finally unmasked as Vandamm (James Mason) at an auction when the auctioneer calls out his name as he buys an artefact that contains stolen microfilm. And so a scene that appeared there for a different purpose – the emotional one of Van Dam realizing he has been cuckolded and Kendall realizing she is going to lose the only man she ever truly loved – turns out to play a vital role in the narrative, critical to the ending.

Given Hitch suffered from accusations of misogyny it’s astonishing how often he serves up exceptionally self-confident women who can string men along, in this case two men, Eve using Roger for mere sexual gratification while seducing Van Dam for the more serious business of snaring a traitor and giving her life meaning. And can there have been a more convincing femme fatale? That is, not the obvious kind as in film noir where a male dupe is easy pickings for a clever female and her seduction techniques over-obvious.

Here, the seduction is not only very gentle, and to some extent baffling, and achieving through language and screen dexterity a marvellous intimacy, but her femme fatale-ness only revealed when she secretly sends a note to Van Dam asking what does she do with her victim in the morning.

There are lot of elements more obviously coming to your attention on the big screen. The irony of a cab firm being called “Kind Taxis” especially in New York where their drivers err on the side of the irate. The train porter whose clothes we think Roger has stolen only for a quick cutaway to reveal him counting his bribe. The cleverness of that disguise. How many red-capped porters will you find in a train station?

A lot of the time Cary Grant (Walk, Don’t Walk, 1966) doesn’t have a great deal to do except react sometimes to very little at all. When he’s waiting to be collected at the crop field he makes his feelings known through shifting his gaze and jiggling with his trouser pockets.

There’s even a scene that might have given Sergio Leone the idea for his famous shootout in Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) where, on first meeting, Roger and Van Dam circle each other with the camera taking each’s POV.

This is just overloaded with delights – the drunken Roger telling the cops to call the cops, using his only phone call in jail to call mother, escaping from thugs in an elevator by the “women first” device, the amazing innocence when he encounters locked doors, clearly expecting them still to be left open to facilitate his escape.

Hitchcock – and to a greater degree in The Birds (1963) – ushered in the random action explosion (gas tankers always seem to be convenient) that would become de rigeur in the genre and used with less finesse here when the crop plane crashes into the tanker and car passengers stop to gawk allowing our hero the chance to steal one and escape.

It generally passes unnoticed how Hitch sets up his main character. At the start of films, especially these day when viewers are in on the gimmick, most audience eyes are on spotting the directing putting in his trademark appearance, rather than assessing Roger as a workaholic advertising executive, dragging his secretary out of the office when she should be on her way home so he can dictate a few more lines to her in a taxi, and inadvertently setting himself up as the kind of man who tells lies for living who for once must stick to the truth.

Grant’s acting ability was rarely fully recognized. Here the more urgent question seems to be how many suits he got through in filming (16) rather than the way he holds the picture together. And only Hitch would keep the audience waiting 30 minutes before introducing the female lead and make it hard for the maternally-dominated Thornhill to exude any sexual attraction after being under the thumb of mother for the first section.

This was the British premiere of the 70mm version so look out for it turning up at your local arthouse. Perhaps someone will go the whole hog and accord Hitch the contemporary honor of re-tuning his pictures in Imax.

I am assuming that I saw the 70mm version of the new 4k that’s just being released.

Not to be missed on big screen or small.

Subterfuge (1968) ***

Worth seeing alone for super-slinky leather-clad uber-sadistic Donetta (Suzanna Leigh) who delights in torturing the daylights out of any secret agent who crosses her path, in this case Michael Donovan (Gene Barry). She’s got a neat line in handbags, too, the poisonous kind. Two stories cross over in this London-set spy drama. American Donovan (Gene Barry) is under surveillance from both foreign powers and British intelligence. When his contact comes into unfortunate contact with a handbag, he finds himself on the sticky end of the attention of Shevik (Marius Goring) while at the same time employed by the British spy chief Goldsmith (Michael Rennie) to find the mole in their camp.

The three potential suspects are top-ranking intelligence officers: Col. Redmayne (Richard Todd), British spy Peter Langley (Tom Adams) and backroom underling Kitteridge (Colin Gordon). On top of this Langley’s wife Anne (Joan Collins) adds conscience to the proceedings, growing more and more concerned that the affairs of the secret state are taking too much precedence over her marriage.

The hunt-the-mole aspect is pretty well-staged. Kitteridge always looks shifty, keenly watching his boss twisting the dials on a huge office safe containing top secret secrets. Langley is introduced as a villain, turning up at Shevik’s with the drugs that are going to send Donovan to sleep for eight hours for transport abroad in a trunk. But he turns out to be just pretending and aids Donovan’s innovative escape. Charming but ruthless Redmayne is also under suspicion if only because he belongs to the upper-class strata (Burgess, Philby and Maclean etc) that already betrayed their country.

In investigating Langley, Donovan fixes on the wife, now, coincidentally, a potential romantic target since her husband is suing for divorce. She is particularly attracted to Donovan after he saves her son from a difficult situation on the water, although that appears manufactured for the very purpose of making her feel indebted. However, the couple are clearly attracted, although the top of a London bus would not generally be the chosen location, in such glamorous spy pictures, for said romance to develop.

As you will be aware, romance is a weak spot for any hard-bitten spy and Shevik’s gang take easy advantage, putting Anne, her son and Donovan in peril at the same time as the American follows all sorts of clues to pin down the traitor.

This is the final chapter in Gene Barry’s unofficial 1960s movie trilogy – following Maroc 7 (1967) and Istanbul Express (1968) – and London is a more dour and more apt climate for this more down-to-earth drama. Forget bikinis and gadgets, the best you can ask for is Joan Collins dolled up in trendy min-skirt and furs. Gene Barry, only too aware that London has nothing on Morocco or Istanbul in the weather department, dresses as if expecting thunderstorms, so he’s not quite the suave character of the previous two pictures, but that does not seem to dampen his ardor and the gentle romantic banter is well done.

Joan Collins, in a career trough after her Twentieth Century Fox contract ended with Esther and the King (1960), has the principled role, determining that the price paid by families for those in active secret service is too high. No slouch in the spy department himself, essaying Charles Vine in three movies including Where the Bullets Fly (1966), Tom Adams plays with audience expectations in this role.

It’s a marvelous cast, one of those iconic congregations of talent, with former British superstar Richard Todd (The Dam Busters, 1955) and Michael Rennie, television’s The Third Man (1959-1965), Marius Goring (The Girl on a Motorcycle, 1968) and Suzanna Leigh (The Lost Continent, 1968) trading her usual damsel-in-distress persona for a turn as terrific damsel-causing-distress.

Shorn of sunny location to augment his backgrounds, director Peter Graham Scott (Bitter Harvest, 1963) turns his camera on scenic London to take in Trafalgar Square, the zoo, Royal Festival Hall, the Underground, Regent’s Park with the usual flotilla of pigeons and ducks.

Get slinky.

The Vengeance of She (1968) ***

Sequels boomed in the 1960s mainly thanks to multiple spy spin-offs in the James Bond/Matt Helm/Derek Flint vein but for every From Russia with Love (1963) and In Like Flint (1967) there was a more tepid entry like Return of the Seven (1966). One of the prerequisites of the series business was that the original star reappeared. But Ursula Andress who played the title character in Hammer’s She (1966) declined to reprise the role.

John Richardson did return from the first picture but in a different role, as the immortal Killikrates within the lost city of Zuma. So Hammer brought in Andress lookalike statuesque Czech blonde Olinka Berova (The 25^th Hour, 1967), even emulating the Swiss star’s famous entrance in Dr No (1962), although instead of coming out of the sea Berova is going in and substituting the bikini with bra and panties, but the effect is much the same.

Story, set in the 1960s, has supposed Scandinavian Carol (Berova) mysteriously drawn south against her will and driven by voices in her head conjuring up the name Ayesha. We first encounter her walking down a mountain road in high heels only to be chased through the woods by a truck driver. It transpires she had unusual powers, or someone protecting her has, for the lorry brake slips and the truck crushes the driver. Next means of transport is a yacht owned by dodgy drunken businessman George (Colin Blakely) and before you know it she is in Algeria, assisted by Kassim (Andre Morell) who attempts to forestall those trying to control her mind, but to no avail.

Philip (Edward Judd), whose character is effectively “handsome guy from the yacht,” follows as she continues south and eventually the pair reach Kuma, where she is acclaimed as Ayesha aka She. Kallikrates’ immortality depends on her with some urgency crossing through the cold flames of the sacred fire. There’s a sub-plot involving high priest Men-hari (Derek Godfrey) promised immortality for returning Ayesha to Kuma and further intrigue that comes a little too late to help proceedings. You can probably guess the rest.

There’s no “vengeance” that I can see and certainly no whip-cracking as suggested in the poster. Berova, while attractive enough, lacks the screen magnetism of Andress and the mystery of who Carol is and where she’s headed is no substitute for either pace or tension and Berova isn’t a good enough actress to convey the fear she must be experiencing. The script could have done without weighting down the Kuma high priests with lengthy exposition explaining the whys and wherefores. Neither a patch on the original nor the expected star-making turn for Berova, this is strictly Saturday afternoon matinee fare and the slinky actress, despite her best sex-kitten efforts, cannot compensate.

Director Cliff Owen (A Man Could Get Killed, 1966) assembles a strong supporting cast, headed by Edward Judd (First Men in the Moon,1964) and Colin Blakely (a future Dr Watson in Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, 1970). You can also spot Andre Morell (Dark of the Sun, 1968), George Sewell (who later enjoyed a long-running role in British television series Special Branch, 1969-1974) and television regular Jill Melford.

Curious change of pace for writer Peter O’Donnell, best known at this point for creating another sultry heroine, Modesty Blaise (1966).

The Rain People (1969) ****

You could argue that grandiose ambition sucked the life out of Francis Ford Coppola. That if he had continued along the more intimate trajectory suggested here there might have been a more consistent output, perhaps on an even higher plane. Even if grounded in American life, this has a distinct European sensibility and while you won’t find a single memorable image you will definitely find characters of substantial depth drowning in agonizing circumstance.

That’s not to say you won’t find outstanding sequences. I defy you to find a more cruel and character-defining scene than the one where our heroine Natalie (Shirley Knight), running away from the chains of domesticity, takes dominance to a new extreme by demanding that muscular ex-college footballer Jimmy (James Caan) crawl round on the floor beneath her feet.

There’s no excuse for such behavior except that she wants some kind of revenge on her husband, whom she accuses of trapping her into said domesticity by the old-fashioned route of making her pregnant. This is before she discovers that Jimmy is simple-minded as the result of brain damage following an American football injury, and that it’s easier now for him to obey people rather than as before argue and stand his ground.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously said there were no second acts in American acts. What he failed to mention was that some people barely got to the end of the first act. Jimmy is an outcast, nobody willing to take responsibilty for him, everyone dodging such commitment. Because American scoiety has no place for losers, they fall through the cracks and stay there.

As a result of his injury Jimmy was given a thousand bucks and “told to leave.” So, he went. He’s got a destination in mind, salvation of some kind, I guess, heading towards a drive-in where he has been promised a job by the father, previously a huge fan, of his ex-girlfriend Ellen (Laura Crews).

Natalie is on a road trip to find herself, firstly at the very least just to escape, secondly requiring the seclusion to decide if she wants to keep the baby, but also to have fun, pick up other men for sex. That’s how she happens upon Jimmy. But there’s no sex, not with the shame she feels after humiliating him and realizing just how dumb he now is.

But the alpha horse-riding girlfriend doesn’t want him, she’s humiliated that anyone would associate her with this shambling hulk, and the promised job flies out the window. Natalie dumps him at a reptile zoo where the duplicitous owner appropriates his thousand bucks, leaving Natalie so delighted to be rid of him she races off and is pulled over for speeding by lovelorn cop Gordon (Robert Duvall). Circumstance forces a return to the zoo where Jimmy has caused chaos by freeing all the livestock.

But she’s taken enough by Gordon and desperate for the sense of freedom that illicit sex brings that she ends up in his trailer. Only his rebellious young daughter doesn’t take kindly to him bringing home his conquests and while he’s trying to bed Natalie, initially very complicit despite the awkward presence of the awkward child, causes a ruckus outside. Natalie would still be up for it except she takes umbrage that Gordon’s unable in his lovemaking to forget his dead wife, killed along with his son in a house fire.

The scene turns ugly and she’s rescued by Jimmy who proceeds to put his football playbook moves on Gordon, picking him up and throwing him to the ground and ramming him in the stomach, none of your standard fisticuffs here. But given Gordon’s a cop, there’s a gun on the loose and the daughter picks it up and shoots Jimmy stone dead.

That last scene comes out of nowhere and stops the audience as dead as it does Jimmy and in a bitter ironic twist wraps up a scenario where the lost never find what they’re looking for. You might find similar in, despite their power, later characters such as Michael in The Godfather (1972) and Col Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (1979).

Compare the Caan and Duvall of The Godfather and you’ll think they’ve swapped their personalities from here, Caan adopting the firmness and overt masculinity of Gordon and Duvall the soft-spoken tones of Jimmy.

I mispoke when I said there were no memorable images. There are, but their meaning comes later. We see Jimmy sweeping up leaves in playful fashion and only later discover that’s all he’s fit for. We see Natalie as trapped in a phone booth as in her marriage trying to talk her way out of returning to her husband, whose tone changes from angry to whining and desperate, and all we get of him is his voice. There are a few of those lingering shots of rainwater and drab early morning scenery that you would get in an arthouse picture but this quickly grows out of them and into the meat of the situation.

James Caan is particularly superb, completely altering is screen persona. Shirley Knight (The Group, 1966) delivers on previous promise and Robert Duvall demonstrates his range. Original screneplay also by Coppola.

Lost in the acclaim for Coppola’s more grandioise efforts but well worth digging out.