movie review – Page 39 – The Magnificent 60s

The Substance (2024) **** – Seen at the Cinema

Like Tar (2022) suffers from stylistic overkill and outstays its welcome by a good 30 minutes, but otherwise a perfect antidote to Barbie (2023). While not entirely original, owing much to the likes of The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Stepford Wives and the doppelganger and split personality nrrative nonetheless a refreshing take on the ageing beauty syndrome. Shower fetish might be a homage to Brian DePalma and except that the movie is directed by Frenchwoman Coralie Fergeat (Revenge, 2017) we might be lambasting its rampant nudity for misogynistic reasons.

On the plus side, everything else about it feels new. The whole story plays out like a demonic fable, the participants only caught out because, in their greed, they refuse to play by the rules. But like all the best horror films this occupies its own world. Whoever offers this free drug and the chance to relive your life through the best possible you is a monosyllabic voice at the end of a telephone. Not only is there gruesome rebirth but a stitching-up process. The black market drug at the center of the tale can only be accessed in a deadbeat part of Los Angeles by crawling under a door, but then, suddenly we’re in a pristine room and the various constituent parts of the substance are laid out on the Ikea model with easy-to-follow instructions.

After surviving a horrific automobile accident, onetime movie star Elizabeth (Demi Moore), reduced to breakfast television exercise guru, is passed a mysterious note by an incredibly good-looking young man that takes her down this particular rabbit hole. Like Eve’s forbidden fruit or Cinderella’s toxic midnight, there’s a catch to reliving her beautiful youth. She must switch back “without exception” to her original persona every seven days.

Of course, that’s too much to ask, and as the double named Sue (Margaret Qualley) steals minutes then hours and days the effect is seen on Elizabeth, a monstrous aged finger appearing in her otherwise acceptable hands first sign that these rules cannot be broken. Warning that there are two sides to this singular personality goes ignored. Instead of acting in concert each prt of the split personality conspires againt each other until entitlement spills over into abhorrent violence.

Apart from the initial rebirth squence, and the toothless section, the best scenes are more toned down, in one Elizabeth is faced with an alternative future, the other when she re-does her make-up four times for a date, unable to decide on which face she wishes to present.

Demi Moore (Disclosure, 1994) is being touted as a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination, but that’s mostly on account of her willingness to appear without makeup and for long sections without clothing. I’m not convinced that there’s enough heartfelt acting beyond the bitterness that was often her trademark. Margaret Qualley (Poor Things, 2023) isn’t given much personality to deal with except for exuding shining beauty and horror when it starts to go wrong.

All the males are muppets, it has to be said, wheeler-dealer Harvey (Dennis Quaid) the worst kind of obnoxious male. But this doesn’t feel much like a feminist rant but a more considered examination of refusal to accept oncoming age. Everyone has the kind of vacuous personality that’s endemic in presenting the best face (and body) to the viewing (television, big screen) public.

The movie plays at such a high pitch that most of the time you can ignore the deficiencies, but the 140-minute running time is at odds with hooking a contemporary horror audience and the gore at odds with hooking the substantial arthouse crowd required to generate the returns needed to pay back acquisition rights. None of the characters has any depth, little backstory, virtually nothing in the way of the usual confrontation with others in their lives, but then Elizabeth already lives a life of isolation, clearly lamenting her longlost fame and the attention it brings.

This won at Cannes for the script and not the direction and that feels about right. Great idea in ultimately the wrong hands, too much of the repetition that was so annoying in Tar and the determination to make every single shot different, a movie beaten into style every inch of its running time.

Coralie Fergeat has a triumph of some kind on her hands, but one that might struggle, due to excessive length, to find an audience. Not sure, either, why tis is being sold as comedy-horror, a peculiar sub-genre in the first place to make work, but I don’t remember laughing once.

However, like Saltburn (2023) this has a good chance of attracting the young crowd via word-of-mouth, the kind who are just waiting to find their own cult material.

Both facinating and repellant.

Grand Prix (1966) *****

If ever there was a case to be made for six-track stereophonic sound or, for that matter, split screen Grand Prix would form the first line of defense. That it was made in Cinerama 70mm was merely a bonus. Most roadshow movies start with an overture, a ten-minute or so musical introduction that would thematically at least give the audience some indication of the picture they were about to watch. Thrumming and roaring engines formed the montage opening to Grand Prix, a noise that almost shook a cinema to its foundations.

Cinerama had been built on its ability to create almost primeval effects. There was always a downward rush, a runaway train, a roller coaster, something to set an audience on the edge of its seat in pure exhilaration. But the visual had nothing on the aural and what set Grand Prix apart was danger, that constant thrum of engines rising to impossible crescendos. Split screen allowed the director to tell several stories at once as competitors chased each other round perilous circuits at a time when death was a racing driver’s constant companion and in fact of the thirty-two professional participants including Graham Hill, Jim Clark, Juan Fangio and Jack Brabham five were dead within two years of the movie’s completion. Nobody needed to remind an audience how hazardous the sport was, they could read about the continuous carnage in the newspapers, but what was less easy to convey, although such events were well attended, was the pure thrill of being at a race meeting. Grand Prix set out to rectify that problem.

At nearly three hours long it had room to tell several stories and in that respect it was more of an ensemble picture than something like Lawrence of Arabia (1962) which took even more time to tell just one story. Many of these stories came to an abrupt end as the character died in an accident.

Steve McQueen and Paul Newman, both racing aficionados, were front runners for the leading role but it went instead to James Garner, also a racer who did all his own driving (though not necessarily at the speeds indicated). And to properly represent the competition it required an international flavor so other drivers were played by Yves Montand (The Wages of Fear, 1953) in a part first offered to Jean-Paul Belmondo and Antonio Sabato (in his second film) with Adolfo Celi (Thunderball, 1965) as the Ferrari boss and Toshiro Mifune (Seven Samurai, 1954) as a Japanese team owner. Swedish star Harriet Andersson (Through a Glass Darkly, 1961) was cast as the female lead but dropped in favour of Eva Marie Saint (Exodus, 1960) in a role turned down by Monica Vitti (Modesty Blaise, 1966).

Garner and Saint had previously worked together in thriller 36 Hours (1964) and it said a lot for his marquee credentials that he was still best known for The Great Escape (1963). Although he had reached top billing status, films like The Art of Love (1965) and Mister Buddwing (1966) did not deliver commercially. Saint’s career had been as peripatetic after Exodus (1960) as before, star of All Fall Down (1962) but third-billed in The Sandpiper (1965) and second-billed in The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966), the latter two both big hits.

Frankenheimer had directed Saint in All Fall Down and enjoyed a distinguished career with The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Seven Days in May (1964) although the high regard in which he was generally held was somewhat tarnished by The Train (1965) and thriller Seconds (1966), the latter a spectacular flop. Grand Prix was not only the biggest film of his career, though The Train had given him a grounding in action, but also his first in color. The movie was filmed on existing legendary circuits with Formula 3 racing cars adapted to look like Formula 1 and a thousand other incidental details including an appearance by a Shelby Mustang (with Carroll Shelby as technical adviser) that made it an accurate depiction of the sport. Eighteen cameras were used to film the races.

The narrative arc follows the Grand Prix season and while the actual competition dominates the movie it is against the background of the emotional turmoil the sport wreaks on the drivers and the wives and girlfriends who have to live with the knowledge that their partners might not come home at the end of the day. Garner is considered too reckless for the top spot in a racing team and in a bid for redemption signs for a new company. Former world champion Montand is coming to the end of his career. English actor Brian Bedford makes his mainstream movie debut as a driver recovering after a horrific crash caused by Garner. The emotional subplots comprise Garner having an affair with Bedford’s wife (Jessica Walter); Montand embarking on an affair with Saint who plays a magazine writer, with French actress Francoise Hardy (better known as a chanteuse) involved with Sabato. In addition, there are some telling sequences in which the drivers unload about their fears.

Frankenheimer does a terrific job in marshalling all the effects and the minute details, and the fact that there is no big star in the mix makes the battles between the characters more realistic.

The Notorious Landlady (1962) **

Botched job. Not an all-out stinker. Something that should easily have worked – and didn’t. Thanks to the principals involved. Biggest finger of blame points at Jack Lemmon (How To Murder Your Wife, 1965), who jitters and jabbers, arms waving, eyeballs swivelling, classic example of over-mugging the pudding.

But Kim Novak (Strangers When We Meet, 1960) is as bad for the opposite reason. She’s completely insipid. Sure, she’s meant to be playing someone frightened out of her wits but she could as easily be worrying about how to lay the table for all the energy we get.

Director Richard Quine (Strangers When We Meet) hardly gets off scot-free for allowing this to happen as well as quite bizarre shifts in tone from a fog-wreathed London straight out of Sherlock Holmes, to a denouement with Novak naked in the bath – Lemmon averts his eyes but the camera and hence the audience doesn’t – and a climax straight out of the Keystone Cops. I know Quine had a fling with Novak but it looks like he’s trying to share her physical charms with all and sundry, scarcely a scene goes by where’s she’s not in her underwear, night-time apparel, soaking wet one way or another or wearing revealing outfits. The “Notorious Cleavage” might have been a better title.

As I say, this should have worked. The story is straightforward enough, a mystery, red herrings aplenty, mysterious lurking figures, enough twists to give it edge.

Diplomat William Gridley (Jack Lemmon), newly arrived from the States, comes to view an apartment to rent in Mayfair only to find landlady Mrs Hardwicke (Kim Novak) most unwelcoming. Unfortunately for her, it’s love at first sight for him, so she can do no wrong. Which is unfortunate for him, for she is suspected of murdering her husband. That doesn’t sit well with Gridley’s boss Ambruster (Fred Astaire) who feels staff should be completely above board and not risk the good name of the U.S. by consorting with film noir style damsels.

Ambruster is already in cahoots with Inspector Oliphant (Lionel Jeffries) and it’s not long before Gridley is enrolled to act in an undercover capacity, sneaking into her bedroom, finding a gun in a drawer and overhearing suspicious phone calls all the while continuing to romance her. Meanwhile, he’s woken up in the middle of the night with her playing an organ. He’s such a clumsy clot he manages to set fire to a garage, which attracts front page headlines and puts his career in jeopardy.

Anyway, various red herrings later and Ambruster somewhat mollified after falling for Hardwicke’s charms himself, we discover that her husband isn’t missing after all, but when he turns up, she shoots him dead and so ends up in court charged with his murder. His death, while convenient, is treated as accidental.

But the fun’s only just beginning. What could have been a shade close to film noir or the kind of romantic thriller Hitchcock turned out in his sleep, now takes a quite bizarre turn. It transpires that her husband, a thief, has hidden stolen jewels in a candelabra which, because she’s short of cash, she has sold to a pawnshop. This emerges in the aforementioned bathtub contretemps. But Hardwicke is being blackmailed by the witness whose evidence cleared her. Said witness has made off with the jewels and now plans to kill off the real witness. So they all end up at a retirement village in, where else, Penzance. Gridley has to save the real witness from being run off the edge of a cliff in a wheelchair while Hardwicke and the fake witness would have had a real old catfight if either of them could have managed to land a punch, instead of hitting the ground or falling backwards into bushes, so the entire climax suddenly takes a distinct comedic turn.

There’s not even a decent performance from Fred Astaire (The Midas Run, 1969) or Lionel Jeffries (First Men in the Moon, 1964) to lift proceedings. In fact, the best performance comes from villain Miles Hardwicke (Maxwell Reed) who rejoices in lines like, “ I like you better when you’re frightened.”

Written by Larry Gelbart (The Wrong Box, 1966) and Blake Edwards (The Great Race, 1965), which would make you think comedy, and that this was a spoof in the wrong directorial hands, except that Edwards was responsible for Experiment in Terror / Grip of Fear (1962) so knew how to extract thrills.

Coulda been, shoulda been – wasn’t.

Lee (2024) *** – Seen at the Cinema

Would have worked better as a documentary. Bit puzzled too by the deceit of the structural device, flashing back from her war years to being interviewed by an apparent journalist in old age at her country cottage. Seems an interesting conceit that he turns out to be her son Antony (Josh O’Connor) and she’s able to turn the tables and ask what she was like as a mother (not good, apparently, Antony grew up feeling he was an imposition). But also a standard biopic trope as he uses her famed photos to stimulate memories. But then, presumably in the interests of honesty (or who knows what) the credits blow these sequences to pieces by pointing out that her son didn’t have a scoobie about her war activities until after the death a forage in the attic turned up boxes of her photos. What the heck, artistic license and all that.

My other quibble, since I’m in that sort of mood, is that the ageing process seems to have passed our star Kate Winslet by. Sure, she’s dabbed on a bit of oldie make-up for her later years but the crow’s nest of lines around her eyes are noticeably prominent for a woman just turned thirty in the immediate pre-war year.

Still, on with the show, in which her pre-war fame as a surrealist is also ignored, as is her liaison with Man Ray, or that before she took up with another surrealist Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgard) she had been married to – and not divorced from – an Egyptian businessmen. The thrust of the movie is her war years as Vogue correspondent. There’s a bit of falling back on characters skitting around in the background (Cecil Beaton, for example) and keeping us up-to-scratch on timescale, invasion imminent etc.

Misogyny is fairly rampant, the British squeamish about sending women unnecessarily to the front line, the Yanks less so. Though Lee Miller is treated, for dramatic purposes, as the only female war correspondent, breaking through the usual class ceiling, in fact the Yanks had squads of them including Martha Gellhorn and Mary Welsh, third and fourth wives of Ernest Hemingway, respectively, Kathleen Harriman, Dixie Tighe and Helen Kirkpatrick, and Tania Long, none of whom would be unknown to Miller since she posed for a photo with the gang in 1943.

There was nothing subtle about Lee Miller, she said it like it was, a hard-drinking what used to be known as a free spirit, an euphemism for embracing a love-‘em-and-leave-‘em mentality. But there’s some subtlety here, a scene of her peeling potatoes revealing more about male expectation than any verbal punch-up with any officious male, being covered with supposedly invisible paint by Roland more effective in catching sexual attraction than the rest of her let-it-all-hang-out persona.

The only problem is that the concentration camp scenario has been dealt with by any number of far superior films and her staggering back with shock at the sight of the piled-up corpses not compensation enough. I don’t know enough about war photographers to compare what she captures through the lens with the dozens of others doing the same job. By the time her photos of the Holocaust were printed in American Vogue, Richard Dimbleby and Edward Murrow had delivered radio devastating reports and anonymous military photographers supplied tons of evidence against the Nazis.

I’m not sure it actually helps her case that she took a bath, naked, in Hitler’s bath.

Kate Winslet (Ammonite, 2020) almost single-handedly keeps the movie on course, but it lacks impact as a war picture, and the idea that nobody other than Lee was taking note of the suffering of the British during the Blitz seems a bit of a stretch. Pick of the support is most definitely Andrea Riseborough as the doughty British Vogue editor, every bit as tough if not as outspoken as Miller. Josh O’Connor (Challengers, 2024) spends all his time looking soulful for no reason I can divine. Marion Cottillard (La Vie en Rose, 2007) is wasted.

Ellen Kuras directed from a script by Liz Hannah (All the Bright Places, 2020), Marion Hume (movie debut) and John Collee (Monkey Man, 2024).

Movie not as hard-nosed as Winslet.

The Critic (2024) ** – Seen at the Cinema

Can we get over all this “national treasure” (a favorite of Britain) baloney, please? If we’re going to drag our esteemed acting knights of the realm out of their armchairs (you notice I didn’t say retirement because actors almost never officially retire, Kathy Bates and Gene Hackman to the contrary) could we please give them something more than an opportunity to overact and turn themselves into ripe old hams at the age of (in this case) eighty-five. Sir Ian McKellen (Gandalf and Magneto to you and me) deserves better.

Because there’s nothing at all in this beyond Falstaffian monster Jimmy (Ian McKellen), the eponymous theater critic, relishing his power and taking revenge when’s on the verge of losing it. Frankly, if this was called The Tie-Pin Killer, the serial murderer in the book on which this is based, and Jimmy, as in that book, was relegated to a bit part, albeit a juicy one, it might have been a lot more interesting.

While it touches upon 1930s London Fascists and the plight of the homosexual (a criminal offence to participate) these are kind of tossed into the scenario as if to placate an audience who might complain this is very thin gruel indeed. Presumably, we are somehow meant sympathize with this cruel, odious, character because from time to time he finds himself confronted by blackshirts, who take a dislike to his black companion Tom (Alfred Enoch), who acts as his secretary and presumably not anything else because Jimmy prefers “rough trade.”

In revenge for being fired, he sets up actress Nina (Gemma Atterton) to seduce his employer David Brooke (Mark Strong). Blackmail’s the tool of reinstatement. Apart from general actor insecurity, it’s not entirely clear why Nina should be so determined to keep in Jimmy’s good books. There’s some unbelievable stuff about becoming attracted to acting through reading his articles, which seems quite bizarre since his nasty reviews would put people off going, as he proudly explains is one his aims.

So Nina prostitutes herself for a good review. Yep, must happen all the time. And despite her supposed success – these are, after all, West End plays she is starring in – she lives in a bedsit where hot water is rationed. But she is, romantically, in a bind. She’s just dumped her married lover Stephen (Ben Barnes) whose wife Cora (Romola Garai) just happens to be the daughter of Brooke.

And although Brooke’s wife is “bonkers” (though that’s very much on the periphery) he’s that old-fashioned upper class English gent who only feels shame at adultery when he’s caught out and then of course does the right thing which is to blow his brains out. Which leaves Nina racked with guilt which drives her, as it would, back into the arms of Stephen only for him (another adulterer with principles) to reject her on the grounds that she slept with his father-in-law. When Nina begins to talk about confessing to her role in conspiracy, what’s an upstanding chap to do but drown her in the bathtub?

*In the original book Jimmy was a minor character.*

Crikey, and we complain about the plotting in the multiverse. This is just bonkersverse. Presumably, Oscar-nominated screenwriter Patrick Marber (Notes on a Scandal, 2007) happened upon Anthony J. Quinn thriller Curtain Call in which Jimmy exists on the periphery of the actual narrative though as a larger-than-life character and decided to forget the whole tie-pin killer thing and rearrange the tale so it revolved around McKellen in the hope nobody would notice, in the midst of McKellen roistering and boistering to his heart’s content, the lack of any sensible tale.

You could certainly have more easily hooked it on Nina, who falls into the Patrick Hamilton category of easily-led character on the edge with impulse inclined to cut her adrift.

If you want ham, McKellen’s your man, none of the subtlety which has impelled other performances. Gemma Atterton (The King’s Man, 2021) has a few moments tormented by conscience but the part is woefully underwritten. This is the reined-in Mark Strong (Tar, 2022) rather the one with the veins standing out on his neck. Lesley Manville (Mrs Harris Goes to Paris, 2022), potentially another future national treasure, has a brief role as does Romola Garai (Atonement, 2007).

Maybe wanting to burnish his artistic credentials, director Anand Tucker (Leap Year, 2010) is predisposed to the extreme close-up and for viewing a scene in extreme long shot through a corridor, window or door.

Jimmy would give have slated this.

House of Cards (1968) ***

American boxer Reno Davis (George Peppard) stumbles on an international conspiracy when hired by rich widow Anne de Villemont (Inger Stevens) in Paris to look after her eight-year-old son Paul (Barnaby Shaw). All roads eventually lead to Rome and a showdown with arch-conspirator Leschenahut (Orson Welles) in this thriller which throws in a couple of measures of Gaslight (1944) and, more obviously, North by Northwest (1959), to the extent of Anne being an icy blonde of the Eva Marie Saint persuasion and the couple, on the run, sharing a compartment on a train.

The boy’s previous tutor has been murdered. After months in a sanatorium, Anne, paranoid about her son being kidnapped, is in virtual house arrest in the family mansion, watched over by arrogant psychiatrist Dr Morillon (Keith Michell) who has diagnosed her as unstable, neurotic and a danger to the boy.

After an assassin on a bridge on the Seine takes potshots at Reno and Paul, Reno is framed for murder but escaping from the police returns to the mansion to find it empty, the furniture covered in dust sheets. I half-expected Reno to be told that the job was all in his imagination and that Anne did not exist, but instead finds out that mother and son have been taken to a castle in Dijon, in reality a fortress with a platoon of armed guards. Only Paul has been already been transported to Italy. So it’s attempted rescue, imprisonment, escape, fistfights, chase, clever moves and countermoves, twists and double twists as Reno and the still icy Anne head for Rome.

In among the mayhem are a few humorous moments, a play on the Trevi fountain scene from La Dolce Vita, a monk mistaken for a killer, a bored girl only too happy to be taken hostage, an over-familiar American who gives away valuable secrets because he mistakenly believes Reno is a co-conspirator, Dr Morillon making the error of treating Reno as a servant. And characters involved in assisting escape extract a high price, one seeking financial reward, another that her husband be killed in the process. There is also a flirtatious but spiky maid Jeanne-Marie (Perette Pradier) and a couple of excellent reversals.

Reno is somewhat innovative in the weaponry department, the hook of a fishing rod, for example, while the son is rather handy with a pistol. But given the opposition are armed with machine guns, knives and swords that seems only fair.

George Peppard seems to have found his niche in this one, dropping the innate arrogance of The Blue Max (1965) and Operation Crossbow (1965), no chip on the shoulder, a good bit more attractive as a screen presence, a nice line with the ladies, more than able to take care of himself, a sprinkling of wit, completely at ease. Inger Stevens comes off well though her psychological problems and concerns for her son get in the way of any burgeoning romance with Peppard. But she has quite a range of emotions to get through, from wondering if she is mad, to dealing with the controlling family, and letting go of her son enough to allow the boy to bond with Reno, and despite her vast wealth down-to-earth enough to see a toothbrush as an essential when on the run.

Orson Welles (Is Paris Burning?, 1966), as ever, looms large over everything, with dialog so good you always have the impression he improvised on the spot. Keith Michell, a couple of years away from international fame in BBC mini-series The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970), does a very good turn as the psychiatrist.

John Guillermin, who directed Peppard in The Blue Max, has a lot to do to keep the various balls in the air, especially keeping track of a multiplicity of characters. The screenwriting team of Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving Ravetch (Hud, 1963) pulled this one together from the novel by Stanley Ellin. Francis Lai’s memorable score is worth a mention, with distinctive themes for various parts of the story.

Eva Renzi (Funeral in Berlin, 1966) was originally down for the part of Anne and Italian actress Rosemary Dexter (Romeo and Juliet, 1964) has a small part.

Doesn’t quite come off .

Number One / Pro (1969) ****

Quite possibly Charlton Heston’s best performance – as an ageing pro footballer refusing to bow down to the inevitable. Ron Catland (Heston) has much in common with Ned Merrill (Burt Lancaster) in The Swimmer (1968) as characters who believe they have been let down by the American Dream. And like that picture, plot is in short supply, it’s mostly a character study with sideswipes at the realities and inanities of American football.

An injury puts star quarterback Catland’s career in doubt. The media write him off, a younger quarterback Kelly (Richard Elkins) is waiting in line, while former colleague Ritchie Fowler (Bruce Dern) offers him a job in his car leasing business, or he could opt for a second career in computers, but Catland wants the only life he has ever known to go on forever.

There’s nothing inherently likeable about Catland. In fact, he’s downright mean most of the time, in part because of the falsity of his profession, management buttering you up when it’s contract time, then on your back once you have re-signed. He’s got a hero’s arrogance, has ignored from the outset the coach’s instructions, at odds with independent fashion-designer wife Julie (Jessica Walter), no children to shore up their marriage. Hardly surprising he drifts into another affair, “an occupational hazard” his wife calls it, this time with the fey Ann (Diana Muldaur) who owns a tennis shop.

You are probably familiar with the kind of football picture which climaxes with a last-minute touchdown or the more realistic movies like North Dallas Forty (1979) or the superlative Any Given Sunday (1999) where nonetheless the focus is on winning and characters are ramped up for dramatic effect. Or you might imagine Hollywood had been routinely churning out football movies like Knute Rockne All-American (1940) and Jim Thorpe All American (1951) for decades. But strangely enough the movie industry had not focused on this particular sport for well over a decade until the NFL documentary They Call It Pro Football (1967) and comedy Paper Lion (1968).

Number One sets out to set the record straight on the reality of being a football hero. And it’s by far the most realistic of the species. For every good-looking gal wanting to pass him a note on a napkin in a restaurant there are plenty fans turning on him for refusing to sign an autograph. For every sports reporter writing a puff piece, there are others tearing him to pieces in print.

The documentary-style approach by director Tom Gries (100 Rifles, 1969) serves the film well. This is a different kind of football team to the later fictional depictions. It’s a lonely life for a start. The players are rivals, not comrades. There’s little camaraderie. The dressing room is like a morgue. No practical jokes and tomfoolery. No over-the-top team talk by the coach and thank goodness no padre who pretends to walk every aching mile in their shoes. Any exhortation is almost a plea. Injury is mostly ignored. Legs are constantly strapped up. And when your career is over you might be reduced to bumming a loan from a current star. The politics are brutal.

New Orleans Saints cooperated with the production so the game scenes come across well though not obviously with the razzamatazz of Any Given Sunday and Heston has the physique for a sportsman. Primarily a television writer, David Moessinger (The Caper of the Golden Bulls, 1967) only crafted two films in the 1960s and this, the second and last, was an unusual effort, as the character twists and turns trying on the one hand to escape the cage of his career and on the other determined to squeeze the last drop out of his golden imprisonment.

Catlan still sees himself (at the age of 40, no less) as the best quarterback in the business and simmers with anger that his body is letting him down and that he has nothing in place to fill the gap that abandoning the game will create. Underneath the volatility is a hole of pain. There’s no sense either that he has enjoyed his time at the top, just that it has always one way or another been a struggle.

Although the movie was marketed with Heston as an aggressive individual, in fact it calls for a far wider range of emotions from Heston, and for this part he delivers in spades. Jessica Walter (Grand Prix, 1966) gives as good as she gets, Bruce Dern (Hang ‘Em High, 1968) as the fast-talking salesman and Diana Muldaur (The Swimmer, 1968) are excellent. But this is Heston’s film. It’s more of a reflective piece, none of the dramatic highs and lows of other football pictures.

Crooks and Coronets / Sophie’s Place (1969) **

The concept of “national treasure” – perhaps in itself a purely British conceit – wasn’t invented back in the day but if it had Dame Edith Evans would fall into the same coveted category as Maggie Smith and Judi Dench do today. She was certainly among the most honored of British thespians in the 1960s – Oscar nominations for Tom Jones (1963), The Chalk Garden (1964) and The Whisperers (1967) – so what she’s doing in this unfunny mess is anybody’s guess. She was 80 at the time and while easily the best thing in it, the switch between battiness and cleverness is hardly new.

Everyone is oh so British, including the gangsters led by Frank (Harry H. Corbett), and it should be the old trope of Yanks not coming to grips with English life and customs, which sometimes can strike a note, but instead the set-up is so dire and the acting so uninspiring. Warren Oates (The Thief Who Came to Dinner, 1973) is at his worst – when I tell you his best scene is his discomfort at having to hold a plate and cup-and-saucer at the same time, you’ll guess why. Telly Savalas attempts to be charming but it just comes off as an overheated version of his usual thug.

Story is lame. Herbie (Telly Savalas), just out of the slammer, finds he is in hock to mob boss Nick (Cesar Romero), so with buddy Marty (Warren Oates) sets off for England to fleece Lady Sophie Fitzmore (Edith Evans) only to discover that her stately pile is also in hock (you want to discover about British death duties, this is the one for you). British mob boss Frank doesn’t like the idea of the Yanks infringing on his territory, so is keeping a close watch and in the end decides to raid Sophie’s joint himself, by which time the Yank villains have become so enamored of Sophie that they’re on her side and set up the kind of defense that would have been axed from cockanamie comedies like The Great Race (1964) for not being funny enough. Sure, Edith Evans in goggles and racing in on a biplane looks good on paper but not when the thugs scatter like the Keystone Cops.

Edith Evans was exceedingly wary of the movies. She only made 14 – and just six pre-1960 and two of those in the silent era – in all those decades when she was otherwise devoting her time to the theater and best remembered by movie audiences for The Importance of Being Earnest (1952). According to Sir Laurence Olivier she only gave the movies another bash when her memory started failing her and the notion of only having to remember a few lines at a time exerted its attraction.

While she’s good fun here, she’s saddled with mutton for co-stars. Telly Savalas (The Assasination Bureau, 1969) theoretically wins his first leading role, but in fact that went to Edith Evans and better actors than him had faded away in Dame Edith’s slipstream. Quite what Warren Oates thought he could do with the part is anybody’s guess because he does nothing.

Written and directed by Jim O’Connelly (The Valley of Gwangi, 1969).

Dear Heart (1964) ****

Big difference between the manufactured maudlin of a weepie and middle-aged characters so ill-at-ease and discomfited that they are painful to watch, circumstances not redeemed by comedy. Audiences and critics didn’t take too kindly to this because the two stars were way out of their comfort zones. Glenn Ford (Rage, 1966) dropped his take-charge quiet-tough-guy persona, and didn’t even play that for laughs, and Geraldine Page (The Sweet Bird of Youth, 1962) rid herself of the tragic face that sacrificed itself on the altar of Oscar (at this point she was three-eights into her Oscar nominations haul).

The whole unremittingly sad enterprise would have been made for today’s generations, more acceptable of the sour ending and the clunkiness of romance that fails to gell.

Harry (Glenn Ford), a greetings card salesman who falls back on his own profession in his chat-up lines, thinks he has achieved his goal of settling down with widow Phyllis (Angela Lansbury) and becoming father to her young son, enjoying domesticity, extended family round for dinner, playing baseball and larking about with the boy. Evie (Geraldine Page) is too much and not enough, too big in her personality, not enough of whatever it takes to make her a long-term proposition for the opposite sex. They meet at a convention, hers, she’s a postmaster, he’s just staying at the same hotel.

She’s at least the more self-aware, wants more than the one-night stand of convention life, reluctant to take her place among the singletons, can’t work out why if she’s the life and soul of the party that at party’s end she’s still sitting on the shelf. But she also wants recognition – of some kind – makes fictitious calls to hotel reception so that a bellboy will troop round the lobby calling out her name. She brings her own lightbulbs, to replace the low-wattage ones in a bedroom, forever trying to adjust the world o her own vision, teasing bedroom curtains out in a different fashion, mild invention that keeps her sane regardless of how insane some actions are, charging ahead to open every door in the expectation that she shouldn’t count on male gallantry (this is the 1960s after all).

Harry’s the guy who does open doors for women, but cursed with loneliness, caught in embarrassing gaffes, chatting up the dumb kiosk blonde who’s a good bit more savvy. Most of the comedy hurts. He’s late to meet his boss because he stopped off for a martini at the apartment of an occasional lover and when he trips out too many excuses is told, tartly, that while one excuse is acceptable, three or four (train late, weather, can’t get a taxi, taxi stuck in traffic etc) is the sign of a liar. He does the whole unnecessary explanation routine when booking a hotel room for a tryst with the blonde whom he pretends is his wife not noticing the receptionist’s cynical eyebrows, and brought down to earth when said blonde breezes in and calls out a greeting to the receptionist.

Evie works out how to get a table in a packed restaurant, passing onto Harry the clever trick of saying you are waiting for a date and then apologising when they don’t turn up. When he tries this out, the waitress upends him with, “Why not join this lady (Evie), she can’t imagine either what happened to her date.”

There’s nothing cute about either of them so no chance of a meet-cute. She’s continually awkward, independent, and he doesn’t know how to spell out his troubles or work out why he’s walking into an unsuitable marriage. The only room this movie has for comedy is the sudden appearance in Harry’s life of a bearded teenager who usurps his bedroom (girlfriend constantly in the bath). This lad is Phyllis’s grown-up son Patrick (Michael Anderson Jr.) yet Harry’s been led to believe, or thinks he has, that the boy would be much younger, judging by the treasured photo given him by his fiancée. On the one side is a slab of situation comedy, on the other an out-of-his-depth Harry not knowing if he’s been duped and realizing how little he knows of genuine fatherhood. He’s awkwardness grown ten feet tall.

It’s not as if Harry and Evie actually conduct a romance, there’s some kind of attraction that neither can fully recognize, every time it sparks up as likely to wilt, and he’s prone to letting her down, sudden arrangement with son taking precedence over pre-arranged dinner with her, except, she’s mollified because he left her a note at the desk, and she doesn’t get those unless she manufactures them herself and then in her ungainly way lets everyone know someone has tried to contact her, as if that’s a sign of importance, or explanation for her feeling of being so let-down.

Phyllis turns out not to be the smalltown housewife of whom Harry dreams. She’s had enough of being a housewife. She wants what she sees as the high life, living out of hotels, “From now on I just want to pick up the telephone” and order food, cocktails, laundry, newspapers, whatever. Just what different paths they are on is detailed in a killer of a line. When he complains – it would be an accusatory tone if he could muster up the courage – about why she gave him this particular photo of the boy, as a kid not a man, comes the rejoinder, “Because that’s the best picture of me that’s ever been taken.”

You’d be lucky to find romance in this sullen snarky version of New York, filled with uncivil, unhelpful staff, bursting with indifference, nary a touch of sympathy for any customer, whether they are seeking a room in a city jam-packed with conventions or just a cup of coffee.

If you believe in the tagged-on happy ending, you’ll believe in anything. This pair are so discordant, so jarring, that they are probably the most realistic couple to ever grace the screen. Ignored as their performances are, they are probably the best of their careers, in part because neither is central to the bigger story that a high-end drama or western or thriller might entail., in part because they go out on an acting limb, light years away from their established screen persona. They are just so darned realistic your heart bleeds because you just know they are doomed into making relationship mistakes, most likely with each other, and will remain among the jittery unfulfilled, wondering how everyone else manages it.

Director Delbert Mann’s been here before – Oscar-winner for Marty (1955), drawing an Oscar-winning performance from David Niven in Separate Tables (1958) and James Garner’s best performance in Buddwing (1966) – and makes acceptable viewing out of what in the hands of a Harold Pinter would be an impossible watch. But even so, it comes close. Tad Mosel (Up the Down Staircase, 1967) wrote the screenplay.

Had this been an an arthouse picture, it would be drenched in awards.

Fabulous performances, heartfelt situation.

One on Top of the Other / Perversion Story (1969) ****

No idea how they thought they’d market this one. Neither of these titles would recommend it to first run, more likely sending it down the exploitation route. Which would be a pity because, although there is enough nudity and sex to satisfy those patrons, it is, almost to the very end, clever noir, femme fatales to the fore, and the kind of male patsy who would later decorate the likes of Body Heat (1981). And if it played out as all instinct – except that of a happy ending – told you, it would have been an absolute cracker. As it is, it’s more Hitchcock than giallo, director Lucio Fulci’s, known at that time for comedies, first dabble in crime, and with excellent cinematography and plot twists.

As it is, said sucker has a hell of a time, turned inside, beset by paranoia and trickery until he’s all set for the electric chair and it boasts a classy cast. It’s set in San Francisco, though I found those hilly streets a distraction as any minute I expected to see Bullitt racing over the top or Sean Connery demolishing a streetcar before heading to The Rock.

Asthmatic sickly wife Susan of top surgeon George (Jean Sorel) dies from accidental overdose in the first few minutes. The good doctor isn’t so upset, he’s having an affair with fashion photographer Jane (Elsa Martinelli) and is astonished to discover he’s about to inherit a couple of million from her insurance. That’ll come in handy because his business is going down the tubes.

But an anonymous tip sends him into a topless bar where the star performer and sometime sex worker Monica (Marisa Mell) bears a startling resemblance to his wife, blonde where she was brunette, brown eyes rather than green, but otherwise almost a dead ringer. But he’s seen his wife’s stone-cold corpse so he gets the doppelganger heebie-jeebies. Still, it’s not long before he’s testing out his theory and in the most intimate fashion.

But there’s an insurance agent on his tail, taking note of the philandering, and his concerns force the cops to re-open the case and discover Susan was poisoned and with George the obvious beneficiary that makes him the obvious suspect. Meanwhile, Jane’s trying to find out what’s Monica’s game, to the extent of giving her a fashion gig that goes a few steps beyond the Blow-Up playbook.

Top cop (John Ireland) isn’t slow to put two and two together and reckon Monica and George are in it together and bumped off Susan. He finds evidence of Monica perfecting Susan’s signature. But while Monica skedaddles, George is on the hook and eliminating all that annoying courtroom guilty/not guilty objection sustained palaver, the movie cuts to the chase and the surgeon is lined up for an appointment with the chair, knowing full well he’s innocent.

In a terrific twist I didn’t see coming turns out his brother Henry (Alberto de Mendoza), partner in the business, has been having an affair for years with Susan who – yep – is Monica after all, and takes delight in telling George what a sucker he’s been. Henry will inherit the dosh and take up where he left off with Monica/Susan. George hasn’t exactly elicited audience sympathy, although he’s occasionally staring moodily in the camera as his brain can’t compute what’s going on, and he’s a two-timing swine – no, make that three-timing – no, two-timing if Monica actually is his wife. Anyway, he doesn’t cover himself in glory whereas Monica is a class act, not just sexy as all-get-out but playing him beautifully, so you kind of want her to get away with it especially as you didn’t see the brother angle coming, and you just marvel at how cleverly George has been duped.

George is saved and the picture unaccountably suffers at the last minute when out of the blue a jealous client Benjamin (Riccardo Cucciolla) turns on the getting-away-with-it pair and blasts them to high heaven.

George is an unusual character, dominated by both women. When we first encounter Jane she’s on the point of dumping him, after a bout of sex first of course, and he’s the one who chases after her. But Susan clearly enjoys stringing George along, taking control in their lovemaking in a manner she clearly didn’t when being Susan, as if her new-found has freed her from her inhibitions.

My guess is this was heavily cut for U.S. and U.K. release and also that the moviegoers coming along expecting sexploitation might have been somewhat surprised to find themselves watching a Hitchcockian homage, but with the bad girl as the heroine.

A few plot flaws don’t hole this beneath the waterline. Great acting all round, Marisa Mell (Danger: Diabolik, 1968) the pick, but Elsa Martinelli (Hatari!, 1962) every bit as calculating and seductive. You feel sorry for Jean Sorel (Belle de Jour, 1967) caught between the two.

Lucio Fulci (A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, 1971) makes the most of the locations and ensures the women, rather than the man, take center stage.

Take away the exploitation elements and you’ve still got a great thriller that turns on its head all expectations.