movie review – Page 4 – The Magnificent 60s

The Party (1968) ***

Had director Blake Edwards (The Pink Panther, 1963) stuck to his guns and followed his instinct and gone down the silent film route, this would have emerged in better shape. Blame star Peter Sellers (The Pink Panther) for deciding “brownface” had worked so well in The Millionairess (1960) that it was ripe for a repeat and that dialog was essential to the audience empathizing with his character.

On reflection, the fish-out-of-water concept would have been more acceptable with a character originating from anywhere but India which would have still permitted the star to adopt one of the zany voices that were his trademark.

The script was originally 58 pages long which would have delivered a finished product running just short of an hour. The extra time would have been made up by the actor’s improvisation.

His character probably didn’t need to be actor either to find himself at bigwig’s party in Los Angeles. When Sellers is at his inventive best this just purrs along. Some of the ideas are priceless – trying to retrieve a shoe from a pond, meddling with a electronics system, getting his tie stuck in an unlikely spot, spraying all with water. But when he opens his voice, it drags.

Part of the problem is that Hrundi V. Bakshi (Peter Sellers) lacks lines with any zap. He just mumbles along, repeating the same humorless drivel. And while other characters make fools of themselves through dialog, that’s rarely with incisive wit either, the audience just laughing at their inflated opinions of themselves.

Bakshi is an incompetent Indian actor who manages to blow up the expensive set on costume epic Son of Gunga Din movie set at the height of the British Raj. He should have been blacklisted, but instead elementary error sees him invited to the party of studio boss General Clutterbuck (J. Edward McKinley) where he encounters a drunken starlet, an alcoholic waiter determined to steal the slapstick high ground, pompous western star “Wyoming Bill” (Denny Miller) and French singer Michele Monet (Claudine Longet) trying to avoid the advances of movie producer Divot (Gavin MacLeod).

Although this was reputedly shot in sequence, the running order doesn’t really matter. Set Peter Sellers in his pomp down in any situation and chaos will ensure. Wigs will come off, shoes will rocket around a room, anything on a plate, bowl or tray will fall off, anyone in the vicinity will be drenched or battered. Tempers will rise until they are nicely cooking and set to explode.

Quite where a Russian ballet troupe and a painted elephant fit into this is anyone’s guess except that both were intended as cues for further hilarity. When guests aren’t tumbling into the pool they’re soaked in soap suds. Naturally, Bakshi’s ineptitude triggers gentle romance with Michele.

This would certainly have built up a good head of steam if seen in a cinema with an audience. But the cinema audience would have encountered the same problem as anyone watching it at home. For every sequence that hits a comedic bulls-eye, others just fall flat. When the movie relies on the star’s charm rather than his ineptitude it falls apart.

It’s almost a highlights reel and my guess is that if it was cut back to the original one-hour length we might well have a classic on our hands. As it is, padded out, it doesn’t come close.

While at one time it acquired cult status my guess is that the contemporary audience won’t find enough to compensate for the offensive Brownface.

Certainly there are moments of genius, the shoe sequence and the electronics section are huge fun. But too much just doesn’t work.

You might end up fast forwarding every time Sellers opens his mouth. He is a master at finding fun in the inanimate, less impressive when dealing with people. Didn’t do anything for Claudine Longet, no more movies after this. And that was not surprising. Everyone was just a stooge to Sellers.

I apologize for falling back on that old analogy of the curate’s egg – good in parts – but that pretty much defines it.

Lawman (1971) *****

Virtually every film by British director Michael Winner was either despised or under-rated. Sure, he appeared at the wrong time, when critics were in the thrall of such stylists as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Arthur Penn and Steven Spielberg, guys who couldn’t tell a story without adding something distinctive and individual. It didn’t help that Winner came across as cocky and arrogant and chewed on cigars as if he was Orson Welles. His copybook was eternally blotted after Death Wish (1974) and possibly before then for consorting with the likes of Charles Bronson who did not fit the critical palette in terms of a western hero.

So I’ve come out swinging big-style for this extraordinary number for its moral complexity and revisionism. It doesn’t exactly turn the genre on its head but it’s the most honest and realistic western you’ll come across and with rasping dialogue where every word counts. Sheriff Cotton Ryan (Robert Ryan) is a coward, bought and sold by local rancher Vincent Bronson (Lee J. Cobb). Old flame Laura (Sheree North) is willing to jump into bed with the titular lawman Jared Maddox (Burt Lancaster) to save her partner Hurd Price (J.D. Cannon) and just as likely to bed Maddox anyway out of pure lust. But then she’s just as likely to feel sorry for one Maddox’s captives, Vernon (Robert Duvall), and sneak him out a gun and endanger her old lover.

Price and Laura had such a miserable spread and are such poor farmers, hooked by a dream that needs more than dreaming to turn it into a reality, that any crops they raise only feed the weevils. On the other hand Bronson, unlike the ranchers in other westerns, doesn’t want to posse up and hunt down the lawman. His skill set errs on the side of negotiation, bribery and blackmail. The young gunslinger Crowe (Richard Jordan) doesn’t end up, as usual for the genre, as easy meat.

Whenever John Wayne set off to right a wrong he generally had the audience on his side. The injustice committed against him, or that was walking into, was clear.

There’s nothing clear about who murdered an old man in Maddox’s home town of Bannock. It was an accident, or the kind of accident you get when a bunch of drunken outlaws shoot up a town. No idea who fired the fatal bullet. It could anyone out of seven visitors. We don’t even find out anything about the victim. He’s little more than a MacGuffin.

And Maddox isn’t vengeance on a horse. He’s not out to kill anyone. He doesn’t know who to blame for the murder, his job is just to round up the suspects. However, the wanted don’t take too kindly to being on his wanted list and a couple of them, namely Vernon and Bronson’s son Jason (John Beck) are itching to put a bullet through the lawman’s head, by fair means or foul, via the traditional shootout in main street or as conveniently the bullet in the back or the trail ambush.

Maddox is implacable. “A lawman is a killer of men. That’s what the job calls for.” Even though he agrees his task is a murky one, and little chance of divining the actual killer, and even the possibility that for lack of such clarity the judge hearing the case will simply let everyone off, he’s still obsessed with doing what needs done, rounding up the suspects, killing them if need be if they oppose the rule of law.

The townspeople aren’t much help, up in arms at the prospect of a widow-maker in their midst, and not keen on the law being enforced when their own lawman takes such a different view. Cotton Tyan, at one point, was a good and feared lawman. But those days are long past. “Everyone remembers Fort Bliss,” he mutters ruefully before reeling off the list of his failures.

As I mentioned the dialog is superb. No room for banter or repartee here. Every word comes with a hammer behind it.

“I ain’t afraid of him,” remonstrates wannabe gunslinger Crowe. “You would be,” retorts Ryan, “if you had brains enough to spit.”

To prevent Hurd from leaving Laura pleads, “But Maddox promised nothing would happen to you.” Hurd snaps, “But what did you promise him?”

Saloon owner Lucas (Joseph Wiseman), with whom Maddox has history, challenges his approach. “You’re wrong here.” “Not from where I stand,” says Maddox. “You can’t see from where you stand.”

Although Winner is too fond of a recent technological innovation, the zoom shot, the rest of the filming, like the tale itself, is somber. There are some nice touches. We are introduced to Maddox as he towers above the camera. And it’s only when the camera changes angle that we realize the load on his packhorse is actually a corpse.

I’ve never seen a western where anyone, despite riding through endless barren plains, is covered in dust. But here, Maddox’s eyes have a patina of dust. Ryan uses a horseshoe as a paperweight. His town is largely crime free because it lacks a railhead. Like a Henry Hathaway western, we get a good idea of the makeup of the town from signs on buildings.

The action scenes are terrific. Killing a man’s horse in the wilderness is as good as killing the man. The only time Ryan chips in is to help arrest someone committing crime in his own town, and in that section he and Maddox work as a team communication through nods and gestures.

The ending, had it gone to plan, would have turned the genre on its head, Maddox deciding he’s done enough killing and planning to leave without making any further arrests. But that’s not good enough for Jason, who has something to prove and dies because of it.

Bronson, who’s done his best to avoid outright conflict, also dies, by his own hand, unable to deal with the death of his only remaining son.

Michael Winner (The Nightcomers, 1972) knows he’s dealing with a western icon in Burt Lancaster (The Professionals, 1966) and allows the actor to add another iconic character to his portfolio and trigger the more thoughtful screen persona he would evince in the next two in his “western trilogy” Valdez Is Coming (1971) and Ulzana’s Raid (1972), each successively nudging closer and closer to outright revisionism.

Inveterate tough guy Robert Ryan (The Wild Bunch, 1969) plays mostly against type as the worn-outlawman seeking an easy life. Sheree North (The Gypsy Moths, 1969) makes the most of an unglamorous, conflicted, role. Based on this performance, you wouldn’t figure Robert Duvall on turning into a quiet gangster’s lawyer the following year in The Godfather.

Making his big screen debut is Richard Jordan (Valdez Is Coming, 1971) and on his sophomore appearance is John Beck (The Other Side of Midnight, 1977).

What a debut by screenwriter Gerald Wilson (Chato’s Land, 1972).

Coming to this in reverse order after watching Lancaster in Valdez is Coming and Ulzana’s Raid (1972) and after reappraising Winner following The Nightcomers, I had no idea what to expect. Least of all that I would be so impressed I’d watch it twice straight through.

Superb.

The Martian (2015) *****

You might recall how annoyed I was several weeks ago by being asked to tolerate Chris Pratt stuck in a chair in Mercy (2026) talking to the camera for what seemed like a solid hour. It struck me then how few actors could manage a whole film one-handed – Tom Hanks in Cast Away (2000) the most obvious example. But, in the wake of Project Hail Mary (2026) I realized there was another contender, Matt Damon as the stranded astronaut in Ridley Scott’s The Martian.

And sure, he eventually gets some help in maintaining audience interest once he communicates with Earth and the spaceship. But here’s the kicker. Mostly what he’s doing is exposition. That’s the one thing a star avoids like the plague. It’s usually left to the supporting actors to set the scene, explain the ins-and-outs of a situation.

But here it’s all down to Damon. He spends his time talking to camera, identifying a problem, usually so scientific you’d need academic books beside you, and then solving it. So, yes, like Cast Away, he’s a bloke on a version of a desert island who’s got to find his way to safety through how own devices.

But even so. What kind of screen persona do you need not just to keep us interested but enthralled? When he sees the first shoots of potato appear, it carries a massive emotional kick. The role of the people on Earth is wonderment and cynicism – no way he can do that sort of thing. Which rachets up the tension and then our hero does the impossible.

There’s always a moment in these space movies where someone comes up with something that’s never been done before – slingshots using gravity, Apollo 13 (1995) littered with improvisation. These scientists are I guess exceptionally brainy to qualify as lunar astronauts but even so.

As I said, I was coming to this again after Project Hail Mary so I was attuned to the science, or the expectation of science and the need to keep the audience informed. But Mark Watney (Matt Damon) comes up with unbelievably-inspired elements of improvisation, some of course pure science but others pure common sense, like pointing the camera at letters to spell out words.

It’s a heck of a ride, especially as with being under Ridley Scott’s command, there’s not a darn alien in sight, no stomach-bursting squeamishness to maintain audience attention, no rampaging monster scuttling along a spaceship. This is Mars as arid as you have been led to believe. Yes, an occasional mountain range or dustbowl to evoke the West of John Ford, and storms coming out of nowhere, but generally speaking as placid and dull a domain as you could wish for.

So in visual terms not much to help out the star. Every movement he makes is fraught with danger. He can choose to freeze through a long night or switch on the heating and thus lose vital battery power.

Every now and then, to speed things up, Ridley Scott literally does just that, characters whizzing around like they’ve just emerged from a silent movie. But mostly it’s slow painstaking going.

Of course we need a big finale and Scott obliges. And every now and then he flicks an emotional switch back on Earth and Nasa boss Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels) has to explain how the astronaut they held a memorial for is actually still alive, and the spaceship team have to come to terms with the fact that they abandoned not a corpse but a guy very much alive. There’s no room for humor, but occasionally some is squeezed in – Sanders having to apologize to the President for Watney’s profanity being globally broadcast.

Ridley Scott (Gladiator II, 2024) reins in the bombast and picks his way through a tricky scenario keeping the audience very much onside. Matt Damon (Oppenheimer, 2023) , who has surely inherited the Tom Hanks “everyman” mantle, demonstrates the power of a screen persona, in making an audience hang on his every word, even though most of what he says is scientific mumbo-jumbo. Jessica Chastain (Mothers’ Instinct, 2024) is the pick of the supporting cast.

Written by Drew Goddard who is as sure-footed here as on Project Hail Mary, again adapting a bestseller by Andy Weir.

Well worth another look.

Jungle Street / Jungle Street Girls (1961) ***

More social document than thriller. Two elements make it stand out. Critics pointed to the likes of kitchen sink drama Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) as exemplifying the British working class. Equally, when looking for a picture that identified the British criminal, critics and academics were more likely to point to Robbery (1967) and Get Carter (1971) where the villains demonstrated considerable intelligence, leadership and acumen.

Let’s get the social aspects out the way first. Petty thief Terry Collins (David McCallum) still lives with his parents. He argues with his father, is mollycoddled by his mother. There’s a fry-up for breakfast. The kitchen doubles as the dining area. Excitement is limited to winning the Pools (a football-based version of the current Lottery) and going to the cinema. His father (Thomas Collins) has worked all his life shifting sacks of potatoes (presumably in a market). But he’s not disillusioned with life. He’s brought up his family and can still spend time down in the pub.

Terry is a delusional gangster. But only a part-time one, making his living working in a garage, having chucked in his factory job. He thinks he can make a big score and run off to Europe to live the high life. He’s in love with stripper Sue (Jill Ireland) who doesn’t respond to his romancing. She’s taken to stripping because her lover Johnny (Kenneth Cope) is serving a one-year stretch for a jewel robbery.

People always seem to be laughing at Terry and he reacts violently. But he’s not the rough-tough dominant male he aspires to be. Three times he gets whacked about the face, twice by criminal colleagues, once by Sue.

Inadvertently, he’s killed an old man while robbing him. So the police are on his tail. Johnny’s been released from prison, reclaiming Sue, and wants to know what happened to his share of the loot from the jewel heist in which Terry was his partner. To compensate, Terry offers to set up a robbery of the safe at the strip club whose routines he has studied.

Once the safe has been opened, he clatters Johnny over the head, and scarpers with the cash, makes for Sue, and is astonished when she refuses to accompany him. Eventually, the police catch up and another deluded petty criminal bites the dust.

Initially, of course, the audience sides with our young lad, understands his need to escape the boredom of ordinary life that awaits. But, gradually, he provides little to root for.

Given the regular sequences of girls stripping, the running time is even leaner than usual. The heist has some considerable moments of tension especially when the watchman, bound hand and foot, inches along the floor to the alarm button, and then when Terry appears trapped before jumping out a window.

There’s nothing glamorous about the strip club either, Sue having to constantly ward off the unwelcome advances of owner Jacko (John Chandos) and every other customer who thinks a stripper is morally lax. Even though she’s kept herself for Johnny, he doesn’t believe her. Some girls know how to play the system, a new stripper not giving in to Jacko until he’s spelled out the financial benefits.

The seediness of the lower depths is depicted well and it’s not hard to see how young men and young women are easily snookered into this kind of existence when the alternative is so mind-numbingly boring.

David McCallum (Sol Madrid/The Heroin Gang, 1968) and real-life wife Jill Ireland (Cold Sweat, 1970) are both convincing, exuding surprising emotional depth. Kenneth Cope (Randall and Hopkirk Deceased/My Partner the Ghost, TV series 1969-1970) is on hand to show the young ingenue what it means to be a proper tough guy.

Charles Saunders (Danger on My Side, 1962) directs from a script by Alexander Dore (The Wind of Change, 1961) and Guido Coen (Baby Love, 1969).

More interesting as a character study than as a thriller.

A Man Called Sledge (1970) ***

It’s a risky business for an established star to change their screen persona. The only reason they’ve achieved stardom is because there’s something appealing and even comforting about the persona they’ve adopted. Audiences queue up to see a screen favorite because they know what they’re getting. That still leaves room for chameleons like Dustin Hoffman, whose appeal is the exact opposite, moviegoers don’t know what they’re going to get from one movie to the next.

James Garner (Buddwing, 1966) had a curious screen persona. Sure, he was laid-back and his delivery involved a drawl but his persona, drawn from the scallywag Maverick (1957-1962), also included an element of the sneaky. He wasn’t always as straightforward or heroic (The Americanization of Emily, 1964) as you might expect, but that made him comfortably different.

But it’s one thing to make minor changes to your screen persona, it’s another to dump it completely. Even his combed-back hairstyle is gone as well as the rest of his screen persona as he leans into the sneaky part. He’s an outlaw. And not charming like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and not hawking around a code of honor like The Wild Bunch (1969) and not a bad guy doing good for whatever reason. His only one redemptive feature is that he’s fallen in love.

On the other hand, if you’re going to play a villain, you better be a smart one, capable of shooting your way out of tricky situations, clever enough to outfox the authorities and able to come up with a plan to steal $300,000 in gold dust from the biggest and most secure safe ever build in the strongest stronghold you could find.

In short order, we are introduced to Luther Sledge (James Garner) robbing a stage, meeting up with girlfriend Ria (Laura Antonelli) and being ambushed in a saloon by gamblers who don’t like losing. Making good his escape, he comes across the Old Man (John Marley) who suggests the unthinkable, stealing the gold. The obvious method would be taking the gold when it’s being transported from the gold mine to the safe.

But it travels with a heck of a guard, more or less a small army, drilled to perfection, armed to the teeth. So, Sledge resorts to the inside job routine. Only problem is the stronghold is actually a prison with 500 prisoners and the safe is inside the maximum security section. Even so, the Old Man, whose done time there, reckons he has listened often enough to the tumblers on the safe being turned that they won’t need to resort to dynamite and the like.

Sledge gets his buddy Erwin Ward (Dennis Weaver) to act as sheriff taking him in as a prisoner, then once inside he plans to free all the prisoners to create a diversion and tie down the guards.

As you might expect this is achieved with a little hitch here and there to ratchet up the tension. But then when we expect an army of guards in hot pursuit and a massive shootout or Sledge to come up with some other clever way of escaping, it turns into The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and the tension just drains away, hampered by a cute unbelievable ending where Sledge chooses love over gold.

Somehow the third act robs it of what it had going for it, a tough guy devoid of sentimentality, in the vein of the Lee Marvin of Point Blank (1967). You might as well have inserted an old lady or a kid and be done with it as the reason for Sledge to change his ways and, unfortunately, it just kills off interest in the character. Redemption isn’t what we came for. You can get that any day of the week at the movies. But, ruthlessness, that’s a different story and you’d be surprised how well that can play.

Maybe there’s some unseen Hollywood code. If you’re a proper star, you can only be a tough guy if you don’t kill people (i.e. Butch Cassidy though not The Sundance Kid) or if your toughness is in pursuit of bad guys (True Grit, 1969).

There are some other interesting elements. There’s a second ambush, a street shoot-out, a la The Wild Bunch. There’s a banjo-playing deputy sheriff and a keen-eyed Sheriff (Wayde Preston) who can suss out a wrong ‘un. Dead men earn their keep, either on horseback providing cover or lying on the ground where their pistols come in handy. A small town is emptied by people attending a funeral, masked faces and all.

And there’s a good bit of sense – a Derringer has such a short range that a prison guard with the necessary keys for escape has to be passed cell by cell down a row until he can come within shooting distance for the gun to achieve its threat.

James Garner is indeed excellent in his new disguise, drawl gone, hair flopping all over the place, not a quip in sight. There’s not much room for anyone else though Claude Akins (Return of the Seven, 1966) deserves a nod. Italian Laura Antonelli (The Innocent, 1976) as the hooker in love sparkles though I’m guessing she was dubbed. John Marley (The Godfather, 1972) is a scene-stealing role does his best to steal the movie from Garner.

Actor Victor Morrow directed this, his sophomore effort. He had a hand in the screenplay, too. He parlayed the fame he’s achieved from long-running television series Combat (1962-1967) in attempting to shift him from being cast as the bad guy on the big screen but, unfortunately, he’s best remembered not for this but for his tragic ending, when he died on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983).

Which is a shame because this is a decent enough effort.

Engaging enough when in heist mode, less so when it disappears down the Sierra Madre rabbit hole.

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) ***

You can usually rely upon Ray Harryhausen to rescue any picture. But he’s got his work cut out in this leaden enterprise weighed down by nepo kids. One nepo kid would be bad enough but some bright spark had the terrible idea of pairing the son (Patrick) of John Wayne with the daughter (Taryn) of Tyrone Power, only to discover that neither could act. That’s not usually necessarily a massive drawback in an adventure picture, but they have zilch to compensate in the way of screen personas.

To make up, rather than periodic interventions by Harryhausen, this time we’ve got two of his creations with us virtually every step of the way – a baboon and a minotaur. The baboon playing chess is the highlight in terms of technical advances of Dynamation. To keep us on our toes when the narrative gets lost in exposition, every now and then we cut to the minotaur single-handedly rowing a ship or taking time out from such routine activity to spear some unwelcome visitor.

Given Harryhausen’s output switches from the mythical (Jason and the Argonauts, 1963) to the prehistoric (One Million Years B.C., 1966), he’s decided to mix it up this time round, with examples from both sub-genres. There’s a battle between a troglodyte (cave-man with what looks like a rhinoceros horn sticking out of his head) and a Smilodon (a sabre-toothed tiger)- and the baboon is so large it counts as prehistoric. Fulfilling the mythical end of the bargain a trio of ghouls with bulbous insect-like eyes arise from a fire, reminiscent of the skeleton army of Jason and the Argonauts. Halfway in between there’s a giant seagull, giant wasp, a miniature human and a very nasty cat.

Sinbad (Patrick Wayne) travels to the Arctic with sorcerer Melanthius (Patrick Troughton) who knows how to break the spell cast by the evil Zenobia (Margaret Whiting) that turned Prince Kassim (Damien Thomas), heir to the throne, into a baboon. Accompanying are the necessary ingredients for a love triangle – Kassim’s sister Farah (Jane Seymour) and Melanthius’s daughter Dione (Taryn Power).

Reversing the spell involves a sojourn to the icebound waste land of Arismaspi where the doors of temples look as if they have been constructed out of leftovers from King Kong (1976). Luckily, Zenobia isn’t as powerful as she thinks and after her outing as a seagull the witch can’t shake off the magic and is left with a bird’s foot. Every now and then her eyes glow like a cat.

There must have been some optimism at Columbia that Patrick Wayne could step into the shoes of John Philip Law (The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, 1973) and that Bond girl Jane Seymour (Live and Let Die, 1973) could be the equal of scream queen Caroline Munro. And while Wayne had some form in the fantasy line via Beyond Atlantis (1973) and been acting since 1950 with routine appearances in his father’s westerns, in terms of quality roles he would be hard put to come close to Law whose portfolio included Otto Preminger’s Hurry Sundown (1967), and cult items Death Rides a Horse (1967), Barbarella (1968) and Danger: Diabolik (1968) and top-billed in admittedly more trashy ventures like The Love Machine (1971).

As you know being a Bond girl can be a curse as much as a blessing – Seymour had been offered little since. And although she would later make her mark, all that was on show here was promise, and not much of that. Taryn Power hadn’t capitalized on her starring role in the Spanish-made romance Maria (1972).

Nobody would accuse Errol Flynn of being a great actor but he more than compensated for any deficiencies with his screen charisma. Since neither nepo had much to offer in that department it was left to older hands like Patrick Troughton (Dr Who, 1966-1985) and Margaret Whiting (The Password Is Courage, 1962) to provide the gravitas. Even so, there’s not they can bring as the movie lumbers – and sometimes slumbers – towards its endpoint.

It’s as much as director Sam Wanamaker (The File of the Golden Goose, 1969) can do to keep the ship above water. Screenplay by Beverley Cross (Jason and the Argonauts).

On the other hand this movie is very much like the westerns I watched as a kid where I couldn’t wait for the grown-ups to stop quarrelling with each other or kissing and cuddling so that we could get on with the meat of the movie which was a gunfight or a battle between the Cavalry and Native Americans. Here, everything in between the Harryhausen elements just gets in the way.

Harryhausen rules – just.

The Christophers (2026) ***

Britain has an unusually large quota of national treasures in the acting department. Manage to put the ageing Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, or Ian McKellen (Meryl Streep would be the only American contender and look at how she’s been re-born at the box office in The Devil Wears Prada 2)) in front of a camera and you’re pretty much guaranteed funding, media interest and at least an arthouse-style release. But given the dearth of interesting pictures – even though we are apparently in the midst of a mini-boom – such movies are just as likely to run up at your local multiplex and might even be given an advance screening – a “secret screening” was where I came upon this.

I’m a big fan of films about artists of all kinds, writers, musicians but especially the artists who paint – La Belle Noiseuse a big favorite as is Red (2018) – so I didn’t expect a picture where there’s no virtually no painting.

The beauty of this is its main drawback. Ian McKellen gets to talk – and talk and talk instead paint, and paint and paint. There’s hardly an actor alive who can hold the screen so well just by talking. And I suspect the Oscars will come calling. So it makes sense I would guess to just let him do that. It would be a two-hander except most of what Lori Butler (Michaela Coel) does is listen, her main task at the beginning to pick him up on lapses of modern etiquette, even though he’s gay he’s still not allowed to lounge around with his pyjama top open, reminded of the power dynamics of employment etc etc. But fair’s fair, when she does get to talk, she’s also allocated a lengthy monologue – and the only one that’s actually about the process of painting. The plot matters a lot less.

So, like Tar (2022), this has a lot to say about art and only latterly about how art infuses the emotions.

This would have been better if it had followed a simpler narrative instead of saddling the plot with Julian’s inane greedy children Barnaby (James Corden) and Sallie (Jessica Gunning) who have roped in penniless forger Lori to complete a set of famously unfinished portraits – “The Christophers”. But the sub-plot sets off too much improbability not to mention terrible acting.

It would have been better from the outset to set up what eventually takes place anyway, that somehow the presence of Lori inspires Julian to take up his brush again.

Most of Lori’s character, beyond being a poster person for woke sensibilities, is backstory. She was inspired to become an artist after seeing one of Julian’s most renowned works, “Boy Under a Cloud,” completed when he was only six. But then her confidence was destroyed when in some bizarre version of a television art talent contest her work is derided by Julian. Quite why she took to forgery is unclear and even less obvious is why she failed at that given she’s working shifts in a food truck.

There are some interesting nods to social media. Julian keeps the wolf from the door by despatching birthday greetings electronically and by delving into the internet finds out more about Lori than she wishes to reveal, including that she has excoriated his work. There’s not enough of the cut-and-thrust – think the play Art or even Sleuth (1972) – necessary to make this fly, although there are enough twists of a minor nature to keep it afloat.

But given that the wokeness has been a key element of the sorry it’s a shame it suddenly resorts to sentimentality including Lori giving Julian the kind of almighty hug that could have resulted in court proceedings had it been the other way. And even though the end has the kind of twist a film like this needs to survive, I wasn’t at all convinced that suddenly Lori had transformed herself into a multi-media artist given her work so far had been more straightforward.

Fans of Ian McKellen (The Critic, 2023) will revel in the latest in his series of louche characters, by virtue of age permitted to speak his mind without (as with the Meryl Streep character in The Devil Wears Prada 2) fear of censure. The frailties of old age are also to the fore. But given the lashings of dialog/monologue it’s worth noting that some of the best moments are devoid of wordplay, facial expression carrying hidden emotion.

For all that we learn about Lori, her part is remarkably underwritten. Michaela Coel (Mother Mary, 2026) is a rising star so best to cut her some slack. But Jessica Gunning (Baby Reindeer, 2024) and James Corden (California Schemin’, 2025) are truly awful, their characters little more than cut-outs.

Director Steven Soderbergh (Black Bag, 2025) is still in his I’m-cleverer-than-you phase and seems to want to deny his intelligent audience the intelligence to pick holes in the absurd plot. The over-wordy script is written by Ed Solomon (Bill and Ted Face the Music, 2020).

Despite my gripes I did enjoy this, primarily for Ian McKellen rather than anything else who proves why, like Meryl Streep across the pond, he is to be accorded the elevated status of national treasure.

Blue (1968) *****

Easily the most underrated western of all time. Few people saw it on release and precious few since. If remembered at all, it’s for reasons of movie trivia. Robert Redford got into a legal fight with Paramount when he pulled out of the starring role. And it was what was being shot in the background of the Burt Reynolds movie Fade In (1968).

Decades before cultural appropriation was a major no-no, Americans didn’t take too kindly to Brits taking on top-billed roles in westerns. Audiences sniggered at Dirk Bogarde as a Mexican bandit in The Singer Not the Song (1960), John Mills proved an obstacle to audience acceptance of Chuka (1967) and Shalako (1969) starring Sean Connery, the world’s biggest box office draw at the time, would become a huge flop Stateside.

Yet there are some extraordinary moments here. Some, frankly, I’m astonished never rated a mention at the time nor since. The director’s use of natural sound is ground-breaking. For a start, there’s very little music, none of the triumphal brass that generally accompanies hordes of cowboys racing across plains. Often, here, all we get is hoofbeats. In terms of the aural Hitchcock would have applauded one scene, where a man is hunted through tall grass. All we hear is the crackling sound of the pursuers as they stalk him through the dried-out terrain.

Most times when in other films we see a bunch of cowboys charging along, it’s filmed from the front or the side. Reason being, shoot it from the back and you’ve got to deal with all the dust churned up by the hooves. Not so, here, bring on the dust. Let’s have something new.

There’s even a nod to The Searchers (1956), the famous doorway scenes, but here the main character is neither coming nor coming but cannot make up his mind whether to do either and so slouches against the doorframe.

The opening sequence is The Wild Bunch (1969) in reverse. It’s the good guys in the town, and the bandits who create the ambush and, minus Peckinpah’s obsession with bloodletting, treat their captives ever bit as brutally. Even here, there are two notable scenes. In the first, our hero Blue (Terence Stamp) has been sitting napping under his hat when a troop of Mexican soldiers arrive. Once they hunker down inside the saloon he throws a huge red scarf in the hair, signal to the watching bandits. Then, after the soldiers have been routed, and their leader is still trying to make a stand, Blue races up behind and whips away first his upraised gun, then his hat, then the man himself.

And these are not ordinary bandits. You might think they are given our post-action introduction to them shows them whoring, gambling and fighting. But actually they are revolutionaries and leader Ortega (Ricardo Montalban) has a strategic brain and realizes that they have to take the fight across the river to the Americans – on their most important day of the year, July 4^th, Independence Day – and get them so riled up they do something about the inequities in Mexico.

And he has his work cut out to rein in his rebellious son and the concerns raised by his number two that the life, hiding out in the hills and sleeping in caves, is losing its appeal to his followers. So, intelligent bandits.

The Americans might not be particularly bothered by their neighbors, but still they’ve got a stuffed mannikin hanging from a noose with the word “Greasers” written upon its chest. The bandits break up the party, rob the Yanks, but for some reason leave the enemy with all their weapons, allowing the farmers to form an immediate posse and set off in pursuit.

Blue is shot but makes his way to a farmhouse where, luckily for him, he is tended by farmer’s daughter Joanne (Joanna Pettet) whom he previously saved from rape. It’s a bit of a tip-off that the fugitive goes by the name Azul (the Spanish word for “blue”) to the Mexicans given, I’m assuming, all Mexicans are brown-eyed. So he must be an outlander. And so he is, brought up by the Mexican bandits.

At first he appears to be of the Clint Eastwood persuasion, monosyllabic to the point of dumbness, but, eventually, in a quite brilliant scene, forced to utter a word before Joanna cuts his throat with a razor, an idea that found its way, as I recall, into Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning (1988).

And if ever action carries more meaning than words, it’s in the scene where Joanne discovers Blue has apparently fled only to spy him ploughing the fields. As you might expect, whether an American male or female is brought up by Native Americans (Hombre, 1967) or as here Mexicans, they find it hard to be accepted. The issue is forced upon his new countrymen when the bandits return, and Blue has to choose a side.

Blue was an orphan thanks to racism against his American parents when they settled in Mexico. And he suffers, unfairly you would say given he was born in the U.S., from racism again when he crosses the border.

The sex scene is brilliantly handled, relying both on sight and sound. It’s Joanna who has to instigate it, instinctively knowing that he won’t make any move in case it is wrongly interpreted. The father, noting her bedroom is empty, begins to walk along the corridor to Blue’s room. Hearing his footsteps, Joanna turns out the light. Seeing the light go out, the father retreats – on tiptoe.

There’s also the best demonstration of pistol shooting this side of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid the following year. And without taking anything away from the Robert Redford scene, it’s remarkably similar.

And Blue proves himself to be a brilliant tactician. He sets up a stunning ambush and the bandits are slaughtered from both sides of the river when they attempt to cross. His leadership, unusually, sets up emotional issues. When Joanne reacts against this new tough side of him, it’s her father that calms her. But that isn’t the peach. Blue confesses that he enjoys killing, it “pleasures” him.

I’m afraid to say the ending of Butch Cassidy also has remarkable similarities to this. There it’s the freeze frame that encapsulates the death of the heroes. Here, the camera draws back and back into the sky as Joanne holds her dead lover in the river.

Terence Stamp (The Collector, 1965) doesn’t quite have enough going on behind the eyes to become a top-class actor so sensibly director Silvio Narrazino (Georgy Girl, 1966) avoids going in too close on the baby blues and allows the actor freedom of movement to reveal his feelings, the slouching in the doorway one example, another being Blue’s slow realization that much of what he sees in the farmer’s house is familiar. Stamp acquits himself well in the action scenes.

But Joanna Pettet (The Best House in London, 1969) is the revelation. We’re quite used to spunky or feisty females in westerns. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen one who takes control with subtlety. Her father Doc Morton (Karl Malden) can’t get a word out of Blue no matter the threats uttered and violence threatened. But when Joanna takes up a cut-throat razor for the first time in her life and begins to trim his stubble, deliberately making a hash of it, that’s as novel a meet-cute as you’re going to find as well as one of the best definitions of female character that you’ll see in a western.

Written by Meade Roberts (The Stripper, 1963) and Ronald M. Cohen (The Good Guys and the Bad Guys, 1969).

One of the most stylish and innovative westerns you’ll ever see and you need to watch it with your ears attuned to sound.

A true find.

Della (1964) ***

At this point in her career Joan Crawford was more of a holy terror than a femme fatale. So audiences came at her movies expecting the worst even when she was still dolled up to the nines, hair coiffed within an inch of its life, outfits immaculate or someone would pay the price. Oddly enough, unlike most actresses of her generation, she had embraced age. Her hair was a solid grey, not an ounce of original color. So, given her propensity to tweaking her screen persona, expectation might be that on initial appearance she could still be more femme than fatale, only to later trap an unsuspecting victim.

The convoluted opening to this one is explained by it being a pilot for a television series that was never aired so the producers just pitched it out onto the cinema screen. It’s surprising it wasn’t picked up by a television network because the theme was one – family conflict in big business – that later made television studios absolute fortunes (Dallas etc) and retains a hold on the small screen today, witness Succession.

*This autobiography left out the bits the media pounced upon in her daughter’s memoir Mommie Dearest published in 1978 and filmed in 1981 starring Faye Dunaway.*

Once the narrative settles down it’s a twist on Wild River (1960), the titular Della (Joan Crawford) appearing immoveable in the face on necessary community progress, and a hint of Mildred Pierce (1945) with an over-protective mother guarding daughter Jenny (Diane Baker) from potential suitor Barney Stafford (Paul Burke), an attorney. Jenny must be the only person in the annals of Hollywood who, shunning daylight, does not have a vampiric tendency.

Rich recluse Della owns most of the local town, but developers want to shake things up. In the past she had a fling with Barney’s father Hugh (Charles Bickford). At first she resists all moves by Barney who’s working for the developers but changes her tune when she notices how much Barney brings her daughter out of her shell. Eventually, we realize Jenny’s daylight intolerance is due to a rare skin condition.

The twin elements, the clash of big businesses and the nascent romance, would be enough fuel for this particular fire but given the movie did not originate as a feature film but as the first episode in a television series – to be called Royal Bay after the name of the town – it was duty bound to rope in a lot of other characters, ignite various personality clashes, and feed the audience on other issues that would resolved further down the line.

*Joan Crawford starred in “Rain” in 1932.*

So, quickly, we learn that, tough as she is, Della is exceptionally vulnerable when it comes to her daughter and tough as Barney would like to be his business snse goes haywire after touching base with Jenny. Della’s skirmishes with Barney are old-school, but the holy terror part is kept to a minimum, while if the femme fatale appears at all it’s only to hook Barney to care for her daughter.

Naturally, not much goes to plan. Della can’t control her daughter once romance enters her head, nor can she put the squeeze on Barney. But, for his part, the attorney thinks he’s smarter than he is and miscalculates just how right the mother is in protecting the daughter from herself. Once Jenny rebels, there’s tragic consequence.

Top Hollywood female stars hadn’t imposed themselves on television yet. Barbara Stanwyck’s sojourn as the matriarch in The Big Valley was still a year off and although Lucille Ball turned into a television entrepreneur of considerable note (producing a bunch of major series apart from I Love Lucy) she did not have the movie marquee stature of Crawford. How much Crawford would have featured in further episodes is unclear but a running battle between herself and Barney, who she was likely to blame for her daughter’s death, would be standard material for such soaps.

Joan Crawford (Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, 1962) is in her element, serving up a ruthless operator with a softer side. Paul Burke (Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting, 1969) lacks the screen persona to take her on while veteran Charles Bickford (A Big Hand for the Little Lady, 1966) doesn’t get to tangle with her often enough. Hitchcock protege Diane Baker (Mirage, 1965) continues to show promise.

Directed by Robert Gist (An American Dream / See You in Hell, Darling, 1966) does better with Crawford than the rest of the cast. Written by Richard Alan Simmons (Juggernaut, 1974).

It’s lean on the running time but Crawford is worth it.

Battle of the Bulge (1965) ***** – Seen at the Cinema in Cinerama and 70mm

Cinerama was the IMAX of the day and far superior in my view in many aspects not least the width of the screen. IMAX goes for height but I’m not convinced that compensates for lack of the widest screen you could imagine. So the chance of seeing this in the original Cinerama print, 70mm and six-track stereo, at the annual Bradford Widescreen Festival yesterday was too good to miss. And so it proved. A thundering experience. Much as I enjoyed it on DVD, this was elevated way beyond expectation.

Superb even-handed depiction of war, far better than I remembered. Most war films of this era and even beyond showed the action primarily from the view of the Americans/British – even the acclaimed The Deer Hunter (1978) and Apocalypse Now (1979) show nothing of the skills of the Vietnam forces that would prove victorious. And while The Longest Day (1962) shows reaction to the invasion, the Germans are revealed as caught on the hop. Given the basis for this picture is the unexpected German offensive in the Ardennes, France, in December-January 1944-1945, you might expect the Germans to be accorded some attention. But hardly, given as much of the picture as this, so that in the early stages the Germans are portrayed as powerful, clever and patriotic while the Americans are slovenly and complacent, their greatest efforts expended on preparing for Xmas.

With tanks the main military focus, Cinerama is deployed brilliantly, the ultra-wide screen especially useful as the unstoppable vehicles rampage through forests and land and allowing true audience involvement when opposing armies meet head-to-head. Of course, it being Cinerama, there are a couple of scenes that play to the strength of this particular screen, a car careening round bends and a train racing along twisting tracks, the kind of scenes that previously would have had the audiences out of their seats with excitement, but here mainly used to raise the tension in the battle.

It’s to the film’s benefit that the all-star cast doesn’t feature a single actor who is truly a star in the John Wayne/Gregory Peck/Steve McQueen mould so that prevents the audience rubbernecking to spot-a-star that afflicted The Longest Day. The biggest name, technically, is Henry Fonda, and although he received top billing in many pictures, you would have to go back to The Wrong Man (1956) to find an actual box office hit. The only previous top billing for Robert Shaw (From Russia with Love, 1963) had been in The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1964), a flop few had seen. And the top-billing days of Robert Ryan (Horizons West, 1952) and Dana Andrews (Laura, 1944). In fact, the actor with the biggest string of hits was Disney protégé James MacArthur (Swiss Family Robinson, 1960). Anybody who had seen The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Great Escape (1963) would recognise Charles Bronson in a supporting role. So fair is the movie that it’s the blond-haired Shaw who steals the show with a dynamic performance.

So it helped the almost documentary-style of the film that it was filled with familiar faces rather than dominant stars and the director was not bound to give a star more screen time or provide them with one brilliant scene after another, or establish a redundant love story in order to provide them with more emotional heft. In fact, the only romance goes to a sly black marketeer who views his relationship more as a business asset.

Initially, the role of Lt. Col. Kiley (Henry Fonda), a former cop, seems only to be to rile his superiors General Grey (Robert Ryan) and Colonel Pritchard (Dana Andrews), his pessimistic view contrasting with the accepted notion that the Germans are well and truly defeated and the war would be over soon. On airplane reconnaissance he takes a photograph of an officer later identified as Panzer tank genius Colonel Hessler (Robert Shaw). While Grey and Pritchard over-ride his conclusions, the movie concentrates on the German build-up, their discipline, efficiency, leadership and determination juxtaposed to the American inefficiency and sloppiness.

Where the Americans just want to get home, Hessler – more charismatic than any of the dull Yanks – is in his element, wanting the war to never end, convinced at least that a tank-driven assault would drive a wedge between the Allied forces, and reaching the target Antwerp in Belgium in the north would extend the war by another year by which time Germany’s V2 rockets would give them greater firepower. The Germans also have a clever idea, the type that the British were always coming up with and would make a film of its own, of parachuting American-born Germans behind enemy lines, dressed in American uniforms to carry out vital sabotage and hold crucial bridges across the River Meuse.

In one of the best scenes in the film, his tank commanders spurt spontaneously into a patriotic song with much stamping of boots. And while Hessler’s immediate superior (Werner Peters) , ensconced in a superior bunker, can enjoy a comfortable lifestyle, no more illustrated by the fact that he has courtesans to hand, one of whom, offered to Hessler, is furiously dismissed. And the clock is ticking, the Germans have limited supplies of fuel and must reach the enemy’s supply dumps before they run out of gas.

The maverick Kiley manages to be everywhere – the River Meuse bridge, in the air in the fog determinedly hunting for the panzers he believes are hidden, is the one who realises how critical the fuel situation is for the enemy, and at the fuel depot for the movie climax. Otherwise, the picture uses its cast of supporting characters to cover other incidents, the massacre of prisoners of war at Malmedy, the chaos as the Germans over-run American-held towns.

Best of all is the human element. It would be easy on a picture of this scope to lose emotional connection, as you would say was the prime flaw of The Longest Day. Not only is Kiley the outsider trying to beat the system, but we have the cowardly Lt Weaver (James MacArthur) who would rather give up without a fight than lose his life, the weaselly Sgt. Guffy (Telly Savalas) representing the worst instincts of the grunts, the confused General Grey can’t make up his mind how to respond to the sudden attack, and Hessler’s driver Conrad (Hans Christian Blech) who is fed up with paying the price of war.

The action scenes are outstanding. If you’ve never been up against a tank in full flight, you will soon get the idea how fearsome these metal battering rams are, as the rear up, crash over trees, race across open fields, and either with machine gun or shells wreak havoc. As with the best war films, you are given very precise insights into the battles, the tactics involved, the ultimate cost. Wolenski (Charles Bronson) is in the thick of the fighting.

While Robert Shaw is easily the biggest screen personality, Henry Fonda is solid, and holds the various strands of the picture together, while Charles Bronson enjoys a further scene-stealing role. But the pick of the acting, mostly thanks to bits of improvisation, is Telly Savalas (The Slender Thread, 1965) as the thieving Guffy. In one memorable scene he kicks out in resentment at his collection of hens and in another shakes his body at the tanks. No one else, beyond Shaw, comes close to his infusing his character with elements of individual personality.

Pier Angeli (Sodom and Gomorrah, 1962) as Guffy’s mistress and Barbara Werle (Krakatoa, East of Java, 1968) as the courtesan are inexplicably billed above Charles Bronson, Telly Savalas and James MacArthur perhaps in a ploy to deceive audiences into thinking there was more female involvement.

Full marks to British director Ken Annakin (The Biggest Bundle of Them All, 1968) for visual acumen and for simplifying a complicated story and peppering it with human detail. His battles scenes are among the best ever filmed. Credit for whittling down the story into a manageable chunk goes to Philip Yordan (The Fall of the Roman Empire, 1964), Milton Sperling (The Bramble Bush, 1960) and John Melson (Four Nights of the Full Moon, 1963).

A genuine classic, with greater depth than I ever remembered.