movie review – Page 43 – The Magnificent 60s

Castle Keep (1969) ****

A bit more directorial bombast and this could have matched Apocalypse Now (1979) in the surrealist war stakes. Never mind the odd incidents surrounding a small unit of G.I.s taking over a magnificent Belgian castle towards the end of World War II prior to what turned out to be the Battle of the Bulge, this has on occasion such a dreamlike quality you wonder if it is all a figment of the imagination of one of the characters, wannabe writer Private Benjamin (Al Freeman Jr.). Throw in a stunning image, for the beleaguered soldiers at the start, of a horsewoman charging by in a yellow cloak, so out of place that it carries as much visual impact as the unicorn in Blade Runner (1982), and we are in definite cult territory.

One of the unusual elements is that, in this unexpected respite from battle, the soldiers are defined by character traits rather than dialogue or bravery as would be the norm. This ranges from baker Sergeant Rossi (Peter Falk) taking over the boulangerie and bedding the baker’s wife (Olga Bisera), mechanic Corporal Clearboy (Scott Wilson) diving into a lake to rescue a Volkswagen and the troops receiving a lecture on art history from Captain Beckman (Patrick O’Neal).

Commander Major Falconer (Burt Lancaster) is not only brilliant in the art of war, but calmly mentors Beckman through a firefight with an enemy airplane, teaches local sex workers how to make Molotov cocktails and, evoking ancient aristocratic tradition, enjoys conjugal relations with the conquered countess (Astrid Heeren), whose impotent husband (Jean-Pierre Aumont) encourages the relationship since the castle needs an heir.

There is wistful revelation, Beckman clearly hankering after his turn with the countess, a minister who wishes he had the courage to join the boys in the brothel, the young soldiers there being treated as children rather than customers. And there are juvenile pranks – moustaches are painted on statues, wine bottles used for ten-pin bowling practice.

But the surreal moments keep mounting up. The Volkwagen, though riddled with bullets, refuses to sink in the lake, a hidden German reveals himself by playing the same tune on a flute as one of the soldiers. The countess often appears as an ethereal vision.

Through it all is rank realism. Falconer knows a German previously shared the countess’s bed. The count will do anything to safeguard his castle and maintain the family line, even to the extent of incest, since his wife is actually his niece. But above all, while his troops believe the war is at an end and enjoy the pleasures at hand, Major Falconer prepares for rearguard action by the Germans, filling the moat with gasoline, planning to pull up the drawbridge and control the high ground.

The battle, when it comes, is vivid and brutal, the initial skirmish a hand-to-hand battle in the village before the Germans begin their siege of the castle.

Burt Lancaster (The Swimmer, 1968) is superb, far removed from his normal aggressive or athletic persona, slipping with pragmatic ease from the countess’s bed to battle stations. War films in the 1960s were full of great individual conflicts often won on a twist of ingenious strategy but seldom have we encountered a soldier like Falconer who knows every detail of war, from where and how the enemy will approach, to the details of the range of weaponry, and knows that shooting dead four soldiers from a German scouting mission still leaves one man unaccounted for.

Patrick O’Neal (Alvarez Kelly, 1966) also leaves behind his usual steely-eyed screen persona, here essaying a somewhat timid and thoughtful character. Peter Falk’s (Machine Gun McCain, 1969) baker is a beauty, a man who abandons war, if only temporarily, for a second “home,” baking bread, adopting a wife and child. In a rare major Hollywood outing French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont (Five Miles to Midnight, 1962) carries off a difficult role as a count willing to accept the humiliation of being cuckolded if it improves his chances of an heir. In one of only four screen appearances German actress Astrid Heeren (The Thomas Crown Affair, 1968) makes the transition from a woman going to bed with whoever offers the greatest chance of saving the beloved castle to one gently falling in love.

There is an excellent supporting cast. Bruce Dern (Support Your Local Sheriff, 1969) makes the most of a standout role as a conscientious objector. You will also find Scott Wilson (In Cold Blood, 1967), Al Freeman Jr. (The Detective, 1968), future director Tony Bill (Ice Station Zebra, 1968) and Michael Conrad (Sol Madrid / The Heroin Gang, 1968).

Two top-name writers converted William Eastlake’s novel into a screenplay – Oscar-winning Daniel Taradash (Hawaii, 1966) and newcomer David Rayfiel who would work with Lancaster again on Valdez Is Coming (1971) and with Pollack on Three Days of the Condor (1973) and Havana (1990)

Sydney Pollack (This Property Is Condemned, 1966), who had teamed up with Lancaster on western The Scalphunters, 1968), does a terrific job of marshalling the material, casting an hypnotic spell in pulling this tantalising picture together, giving characters space and producing some wonderful images, but more especially for having the courage to leave it all hanging between fantasy and reality.

Expressions like “we have been here before,” “once upon a time,” “the supernatural” and “a thousand years old” take solid root as the narrative develops and will likely keep spinning in your mind as you try to work out what it’s all about.

The Black Hole (1979) ***

Think of this as having been made before Star Wars (1977), Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien (1979), heck even Star Trek (1979), changed the sci fi world forever and imagine it’s a huge advance SFX-wise on the 1950s vanguard of sci fi pictures and you’ll probably come away very happy. A lot to admire in the matte work and some groundbreaking effects and actually the story – mad scientist lost in space – has a bit more grit than was normal for the genre.

But it’s laden down with talk and the action when it comes resembles nothing more than a first draft stab at the light sabers of Star Wars and clunky robotic figures that come across like prehistoric Stormtroopers. A bit more light-hearted comedy than in the other three mentioned, various quips at the expense of the robots.

Scientists aboard space ship USS Palomino, a research vessel looking for life in space, is astonished to discover, hovering on the edge of a black hole, a missing spaceship USS Cygnus and are even more astonished to find out it’s not uninhabited, still on board is heavily-bearded Dr Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell) and an army of robots that he has miraculously fashioned during his time lost in space.

This is a bit of an emotional blow to Dr Kate McCrae (Yvette Mimieux) whose father had been part of the crew of the Cygnus. Dr Reinhardt seems kosher enough except for his idea of, in the true spirit of space adventure, blasting off through the black hole. Although Reinhardt has been exceptionally clever in monitoring the invasion from the visitors and nullifying any threat with a blast from invisible laser, once they are on board that monitoring capability appears to vanish, allowing the visitors to search the ship where they find out that Reinhardt’s story doesn’t seem to add up.

Apart from Dr McCrae, the other personnel from the Palomino comprises Capt Dan Holland (Robert Forster), Dr Durant (Anthony Perkins) – the most inclined to follow Reinhardt into the greatest danger in the universe – quip merchant Lt Pizer (Joseph Bottoms) and dogsbody Harry (Ernest Borgnine). Plus there’s a cute robot Vincent (Roddy McDowall) constructed along even more rudimentary lines than R2-D2.

Vincent turns out to be a whiz at a basic version of a computer game, something between Space Invaders and Kong. But his main task is to wind up the crew with a head teacher’s supply of wisdom, spouted at the most inopportune moment. Except for the chest-bursting appearance of Alien, this might have garnered more kudos for the creepy mystery element – Reinhardt has lobotomized his crew members, turning them into these jerky robots, after they mutinied in revolt against his plan to dive into the black hole. Dr McCrae nearly joins the lobotomy brigade. And once she’s rescued it’s a firefight all the way. A stray meteor is on hand to add further jeopardy. And in the end the good guys are forced to plunge into the apparent abyss of the black hole, only to be guided by some angelic light and come out the other end unscathed, no worse for enduring the kind of phantasmagoric light show Stanley Kubrick put on in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

By this point Maximilian Schell (Judgement at Nuremberg, 1961) was an accomplished bad guy, covering up inherent malignancy with charm and scientific gobbledegook. Joseph Bottoms (The Dove, 1974) is the pick of the incoming crew but that’s because he’s been dealt a stack of flippant lines. Anthony Perkins at least gets to waver from the straight-laced. But everyone else is a cipher, even Yvette Mimieux (Light in the Piazza, 1962) who might have been due more heavy-duty emotion.

This was the 1970s version of the all-star cast, all the actors at one point enjoying a spot in the Hollywood sun, but now all supporting players. Schell was variably billed in pictures like St Ives (1976), Cross of Iron (1977) and Julia (1977). Robert Forster (Medium Cool, 1969) hadn’t been in a movie in six years. Anthony Perkins was waiting for a Psycho reboot to reboot his career – only another four years to go. Yvette Mimieux had only made four previous movies during the 1970s including Jackson County Jail (1976). The most dependable of these dependables was Ernest Borgnine (The Adventurers, 1970), for whom this was the 24^th movie of the decade, including such fare as Willard (1971), The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and Hustle (1975).

It didn’t prove a breakout picture for director Gary Nelson (Freaky Friday, 1976), Screenplay credits went to Jeb Rosebrook (Junior Bonner, 1972) and female television veteran Gerry Day.

Sci fi the Disney way.

Pendulum (1969) ****

It’s better to come at this as a drama rather than the thriller it was marketed as. That the name of George Schaefer, the last to make a movie of the directors who shot to fame in television in the 1950s, should be indication that this is character- and issue- rather than action-driven. It’s more about people being sucked into the system, about the vulnerable members of society, who, whether cop or criminal, have no recourse to some kind of higher power to sort their lives out. As such, it’s a satisfying drama.

A-list male stars playing emotionally vulnerable characters was a growing trend in the late 60s. Think of Rock Hudson in Seconds (1966), Burt Lancaster in The Swimmer (1968), Frank Sinatra in The Detective (1968), Kirk Douglas in The Arrangement (1969) – all reviewed on the Blog, incidentally. Here top Washington detective Frank Matthews (George Peppard) goes through the personal and professional ringer, suspecting wife Adele (Jean Seberg) of an affair then becoming a suspect himself in a murder case. Underlying these plot-driven aspects is an exploration of the political issue of civil liberties, in particular the constitutional rights of criminals, setting this up as one of the earliest law’n’order movies, a trope that would take center stage in films like Dirty Harry (1971).

At a peak of professional success, having been awarded a medal and promoted to a consultant to a subcommittee on Law and Order headed by Senator Augustus Cole (Paul McGrath), Matthews’ ethics come under scrutiny when alleged murder/rapist Paul Sanderson (Robert F. Lyons), whom Matthews had arrested, is freed on a technicality thanks to the efforts of civil liberties attorney Woodrow Wilson King (Richard Kiley).

Matthews appears distracted much of the time trying to keep track of his wife’s whereabouts. After delivering a speech in Baltimore, he walks the streets in a fug of depression. Meanwhile, King is disturbed by the fact that a man he clearly believes guilty refuses to seek psychiatric help. The question in the audience mind is where he will strike next. There’s an excellent scene in King’s office where his secretary Liz (Marj Dusay), delighted at the lawyer’s success in overturning Sanderson’s case, instinctively pulls away from the freed man.

When Adele and lover are murdered in Matthews’ bed, he finds himself on the opposite side of the law, undergoing the treatment he has meted out to so many criminals, quickly aware that circumstantial evidence could find him guilty. Front-page news himself now, suspended from his job by a quick-to-judge senator, emotionally isolated and a laughing stock, he retreats further inside himself. Naturally, he evades subsequent arrest, setting out to track down the killer himself, that leads him into the murkier depths of society from which emotionally-abused villains easily spring.

Other issues are explored in passing, the independent woman for a start, whether it is wanting to have her own career and not play the stay-at-home wife or considering it fair game – as with Karen (Lee Remick) in The Detective or Gwen (Faye Dunaway) in The Arrangement – to upturn accepted morality and take a lover.

But the focus remains squarely on Matthews struggling to cope with life running away from him, falling deeper into despair and into the maw of the criminal justice system which has the knack of bending its own rules. He has never been the saintly cop and there are moments where violence seems the best option, although not the vicious kind later espoused by Inspector Callahan. It’s ironic that the only solid detection the cop does in the first part of the film is tracking down his wife’s whereabouts.

George Peppard (Tobruk, 1967), generally a much-maligned actor, excels in a part where he can neither charm his way to an audience’s heart, nor confide in someone else about his marital problems, nor resort to action to define his character. That his pain is all internalised shows the acting skills he brings to bear. Oddly enough Jean Seberg (Moment to Moment, 1966), a specialist in emotional pain, takes a different path, coming across as a devious minx, keeping Matthews on the hook while enjoying relations with an ex-lover, whose career, as it happens, has panned out a lot better than her husband.

I only knew Richard Kiley, an American theatrical giant and primarily in the 1960s a television performer, through that mention in Jurassic Park (1993), but he is solid as the attorney who has qualms about releasing a prisoner he knows is guilty. Robert F. Lyons, making his movie debut, brings jittery danger to the unbalanced criminal. Look out also for Charles McGraw (The Narrow Margin, 1952) as the cop determined to take Matthews down and Frank Marth (Madigan, 1968) as the subordinate who gives the suspect too much leeway – to his cost. Madeline Sherwood (Hurry Sundown, 1967) is excellent as the disturbed, needy mother.

George Schaefer, at this point a four-time Emmy award-winner, specialized in thought-provoking drama such as Inherit the Wind (TV, 1965) and Elizabeth the Queen (TV, 1968). This fits easily into that pattern. The title is a giveaway, too, referring to the pendulum swinging, “perhaps too far,” from all-powerful police to the rights of the accused taking prominence.

This was the only screenplay from Stanley Niss, who died shortly after the film’s release. He was also the producer. And better known as the writer-producer of television series like Jericho (1966-1967) and Hawaiian Eye (1959-1961).

Say hello to a different Peppard.

Pussycat Alley / The World Ten Times Over (1963) ***

Sold as sexploitation fare, this is more of a chamber piece as flatmates Billa (Sylvia Syms) and Ginnie (June Ritchie) face up to crises in their lives. For two-thirds of the picture we steer clear of their place of occupation, a Soho nighclub, and only go there for a scene of unsurpassed male humiliation. Unusually, since the expectation would be that the two girls, supplementing their official income with some part-time sex working (implicit rather than explicit), would be treated as victims of wealthy males, in reality they serve up several plates of juicy revenge, but in accordance with their characters rather than as noir femme fatales.

In a very drab London, shorn of tourist hallmarks and red buses and royal insignia, Ginnie sets the tone, furious at lover Bob (Edward Judd), pampered son of a wealthy industrialist, for bringing mention of “love” into what she views as either (or both) an expression of pure pleasure or financial transaction. Bob is the old cliche, the client fallen in love with the girl. Attracted as she is by the pampering and the fact that she can twist him round her little finger, she values her independence too much to commit to such a weak man. In addition, she is so used to getting her way and so wilful that she delights in running rings around him, humiliating him in front of his entire office.

A contemporary picture like Anora (2024) would find space to excuse or explain her choice of employment, but here, beyond the fact that she left school aged 15 and has no qualifications, we are given nothing to work on, except that her predilection for doing exactly what she wants to do most of the time means she she might find steady employment a drain on her spritely personality.

Billa’s problem is she’s pregnant with no idea who the father might be and becomes infuriated by her widowed teacher father (William Hartnell) who can’t let go of his childlike notions of his beloved daughter. Thankfully, no notions of abuse, but just a dad not coming to terms with a grown-up daughter, shocked that she can knock back the whisky, and whose idea of a treat is taking her to one of the most difficult of the Shakespeare plays. Eventually, suspicions aroused, he tracks her down to the nightclub where she takes great delight in behaving disgracefully, refusing to leave at his presence, parental authority cut stone dead, the staff treating the father like any other punter, even setting him up with a girl (though on the house and he doesn’t take them up on the offer).

Meanwhile, the over-entitled Bob, failing to get his father to offer Ginnie a job except as an escort for the company’s clients, decides to leave his wife, books plane tickets for an exotic holiday only to be spurned. Ginnie recognizes more easily than him what a disaster marriage would be. She enjoys the fancy restaurants and fast cars but draws the line at commitment. She’s at her best when prancing around, indulging her whims, and yet there is a price to pay for her lifestyle as we discover in more sober fashion at the end.

Billa is sober pretty much all the way through, thoughtful, withdrawn, unable to connect with her father, her biggest emotional support being Ginnie. Despite her failure to go along with her father’s vision of her as an innocent child, her apartment is bedecked with childish paraphernalia, teddy bears, dolls etc.

Not quite a harder-nosed version of Of Human Bondage, and not far off as far as the males are concerned, but more of a character study of the two women.

Although she has the less showy part, Sylvia Syms is the peach here, and if you consider her portfolio from The World of Suzie Wong (1960) through to East of Sudan (1964) this shows the actress at the peak of her ability. June Ritchie (A Kind of Loving, 1962) is excellent as the flighty piece and Edward Judd (The Day the Earth Caught Fire, 1961) steps away from his normal more heroic screen persona. This was William Hartnell’s last movie before embarking on his time travels for Doctor Who and it’s a moving portrait of an old man whose illusions are shattered.

Directed by Wolf Rilla (Village of the Damned, 1960) from his own screenplay.

Low-life never looked so glam and so shoddy at the same time.

The Russia House (1990) ****

The amateur spy – the innocent caught up in espionage malarkey – had scarcely graced the screen for a couple of decades, Hot Enough for June/Agent 8¾ (1964) or Masquerade (1965) possibly the highpoints of that subgenre. That it turns up at all is probably due to spymaster John le Carre’s Cold War comfort zone evaporating following glasnost and perestroika in Russia in the late 1980s. Of course, the West didn’t entirely trust the Soviets to reform, and had no intention of pensioning off its battalions of secret agents.

The plotline is largely irrelevant here, acting more as a MacGuffin than anything else, because audiences will have long forgotten what was sacred to the West three decades ago. And the picture is devoid of the usual car chase and there’s not even the kind of foot-race that became de rigeur to prove our ageing superstars could still physically hack it – Clint Eastwood in In the Line of Fire (1993) or Liam Neeson in Taken (2008).

So what we’re left with is probably what le Carre was hoping for in the first place – a character study. It may have passed your notice that among the highest ranks of the superstars only Sean Connery could match Tom Hanks in actually changing his appearance – different hairstyle, different beard (yep, you didn’t think that could define character, did you) – to depict character. Of course, nobody was expecting Stallone or Schwarzenegger to alter their look; Harrison Ford got a buzzcut once; but Paul Newman, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, even going further back to James Stewart, Gary Cooper, their hairstyle remained untouched, and until Connery made it part of his persona Hollywood believed that moustaches were box office disaster.

Barley (Sean Connery) is an upmarket publisher whose business is on the slide, so much so that he doesn’t attend an annual book fair in Moscow. So when Russian single mother Katya (Michelle Pfeiffer) turns up looking for him, she ends up handing a manuscript to Penguin’s representative who, naturally, turns it over to MI6.

Takes a while what with interrogation and flashback to work out why Barley has been selected. Unwittingly, on a previous sojourn to Russia, he had made the acquaintance, over a drunken dinner, with Dante (Klaus Maria Brandauer) who turns out to be Katya’s long-ago first love and, more importantly, a nuclear scientist with secrets to sell or give away. Barley is hooked into returning to Russia to gain the confidence of both Katya and Dante and provide access to secrets the British Secret Service and their Yank counterparts desire.

That it doesn’t go the way the high-ups want is because Barley is a “decent human being” and when he realizes he has compromised Katya, and endangered the lives of her two young children, he turns traitor and trades their safety for secrets.

Given the plot and counter-plot thesis, and the various axes that need to be ground over nuclear weapons accumulation and inherent corruption, this cinematic enterprise could have proved way too unwieldy for a contemporary audience. Instead, the very fact that much of the background is now meaningless clears the way for the movie to stand on its own two feet, as yet another wonderful character study in the largely unheralded Sean Connery (The Hill, 1965) portfolio. And with Michelle Pfeiffer turning in a Golden Globe-winning performance, the movie hinges more on the characters than the espionage.

There’s a fabulous scene where the initial narrative is just turned on its head. You’re already thinking MI6 must be hard put to be even thinking of employing Barley, given he’s a bit of a boozer, the kind of guy who knocks one whisky straight down before sipping the next. Katya, attempting to establish his bona fides and suspicious that he’s actually a spy, asks him, “Are you alone?” Meaning, has he come alone, is he acting independently?

Barley takes a different meaning from the question. “Never been more alone,” he replies, barely concealing the despair in his eyes. “I let people down,” he confesses at another point.

His life is headed in all the wrong directions. He’s fluffed too many lines and no guarantee he’s even capable of looking for redemption. And Katya’s way too wary. He’s like an enthusiastic schoolboy when he falls in love with her. When he dives in for a kiss, she tilts her head so he can only kiss her cheek in the Russian fashion.

His romancing comes unstuck when instead of responding to his ardor she recounts her experiences with Dante. It’s her scene and yet Connery steals it with his slow-burn despair. Her wariness shows in her face. The purported new freedoms her country promotes mean little more than citizens can more freely complain.

While you might not go along with his self-deprecating description of himself as a “large unmade bed” – his physical grace always going to make this unlikely – nonetheless he is a shambles of a man. Even Connery can’t make fashionable the duffel coat, his perennial outfit of choice, an item of clothing that to generations epitomized the unfashionable, a garment worn by those who couldn’t care less about their appearance.

Connoisseurs of Connery’s hair and beard will notice a certain rumpled element compared to the stylish beard he wore in Rising Sun (1993) or the confident full version of The Hunt for Red October (1990).

Outside of the Connery-Pfieffer axis, although the narrative stumbles in accommodating their manoeuvring, the movie boasts a phalanx of interesting supporting actors, some fallen from the marquee heights like Roy Scheider (Jaws, 1975) and James Fox (Thoroughly Modern Millie, 1967), others who would make their mark in television like John Mahoney (Frasier, 1993-2004), Martin Clunes (Men Behaving Badly, 1992-2014), David Threlfall (Shameless, 2004-2013) and Michael Kitchen (Foyle’s War, 2002-2015) and topped up with a wild-eyed indulgent performance from director Ken Russell (Billion Dollar Brain, 1967).

Rather devoid of screenwriter Tom Stoppard’s (Shakespeare in Love, 1998) trademark humor except in a couple of aural jokes about odd sounds emanating from hidden microphones. The first movie to be filmed in Russia after glasnost so a bit more authentic location work than usual. To his credit director Fred Schepisi (The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, 1978) allows Connery and Pfeiffer full rein rather than getting bogged down in the inescapable politics and office backstabbing.

Watch it for Connery and Pfeiffer.

Be warned: I feel a Connery binge coming on.

Uptight (1968) ****

While a misplaced attempt to relocate John Ford’s Oscar-winning The Informer (1935) to Cleveland, Ohio, after the funeral of Martin Luther King, director Jules Dassin more than makes up for it with his exploration of black militancy and racial conflict. The basic story of unemployed alcoholic Tank (Julian Mayfield) trying to regain the favor of local activist committee led by B.G. (Raymond St Jacques) is less interesting than the revolutionary backdrop.

Dassin was suited to uncovering the seamy side of life having helmed film noirs Brute Force (1947) and The Naked City (1948) and while mostly concentrating on dramas he remained best-known for heist pictures Rififi (1955) and Topkapi (1964) so it was almost a given that this movie would feature a robbery. Tank was supposed to be part of a team, led by Johnny Wells (Max Julien), hijacking guns, but he’s too drunk to help, and during the robbery after a guard is killed the finger points at Johnny.

Assailed for his lack of maintenance by Laurie (Ruby Dee), mother of his kids, who subsists on welfare and prostitution, Tank considers informing on Johnny and picking up the $1,000 reward. So the story becomes a question of whether he will succumb to temptation.

But that’s really just a MacGuffin for an insight into the problems facing the poverty-stricken black population and the armed response many feel is the only way to resolve such issues. Several outstanding sequences depict the raw emotions of people trapped in this lifestyle. The opening scene, showing the funeral of Martin Luther King, became a clarion call for violence. Laurie is humiliated by the welfare officer. Police attempting to arrest Johnny are met with a fusillade of bottles.

The case for armed insurrection is made abundantly clear. The black population is continually oppressed, not just by police violence, but being told they lack the skills for a rewarding job. “When you’re born black, you’re born dead.” B.G. rejects the offer of assistance of white civil rights activists.

Not all the locals are underdogs. Clarence (Roscoe Lee Brown), with an apartment lined with bookshelves and wearing fine clothes, does very well out of his arrangements with the police and the black welfare officer clearly gets a kick out of his power to possibly disbar Laurie from receiving welfare.

While it might have proved more incendiary at the time, it’s impossible to miss the injustice portrayed. It was almost a wake-up call for the ruling authorities that there existed a growing underground force determined to achieve equality through violence if necessary. The idea of an organized group, rather than a shambolic mob, is the other clear message.

Any actor would balk at the prospect of matching the Oscar-winning performance of Victor McLaglen in the Ford original and surely no director would entrust the task to an inexperienced actor like Julian Mayfield whose only previous screen credit was a decade before in Virgin Island (1958). Mayfield finds it impossible to conjure up the pathos required and mostly appears as a bumbling fool.

This is despite the movie going out of its way to make Tank appear more sympathetic. He could easily claim he was blackmailed into informing by wealthy stool pigeon Clarence who holds compromising photographs. But, equally, the brotherhood, should it become aware of Clarence’s activities, would surely come down on him hard. Johnny absolves Tank of responsibility for not participating in the robbery, recognizes that while the man’s bulk was useful in the past, he lacks the mind-set for robbery. And he must stay away from Laurie otherwise she will lose her welfare.

But the rest of the cast is outstanding. Raymond St Jacques (If He Hollers, Let Him Go, 1968) stands supreme as an imposing Malcolm X figure. Roscoe Lee Brown (Topaz, 1969) is persuasive as confident gay informer. Activist Ruby Dee (The Incident, 1967) is good, too. And there is strong support from Frank Silvera (Guns of The Magnificent Seven, 1969), Max Julien, best known later for The Mack (1973), and in her movie debut Janet MacLachlan giving a hint of the acting skills that would win her an Oscar nomination for Maurie (1973)

Perhaps the most important element of the picture was the screenplay, a collaboration between Julian Mayfield, Ruby Dee and Jules Dassin, the involvement of the first two ensuring that the main targets were well and truly hit. With Dassin at the helm, the movie never loses its way, tension kept high by the hunt for Johnny, the personal dilemma of Tank and the various confrontations with B.G.

This is a movie that still stands up, not just because of its fearless delineating of the times, but from the suspicion that not enough has changed in the abject poverty to which so many are condemned.

Delivers a social sting.

Crooks Anonymous (1962) ***

Charm was in short supply in the 1960s. sure, for a period you still had Cary Grant but David Niven was as often to be found in an action picture (The Guns of Navarone, 1961) or a drama, and others of the ilk, like Tony Curtis, veered more towards outright comedy. Britain had something of what would today be called a “national treasure,” admittedly a term more likely to be accorded females of the standing of Maggie Smith or Judi Dench; maybe a space might be found for the idiosyncratic Ralph Richardson. Dare I put Leslie Phillips into contention for such an honor?

Once into his mellifluous stride and with his trademark appreciation of female beauty, “Ding dong!” a more welcome remark than the more common “Cor!” or “Strewth” or sheer inuendo, Leslie Phillips, not so well known perhaps in the USA and foreign parts, would fit that definition. He had charm in spades.

Unfortunately, you could split his career into those roles where “ding dong” entered the equation and those it did not. This is one of those, and I have to confess I’m both disappointed and delighted. Dissatisfied because the charm appeared part of his screen persona, but pleased whenever I found out he wasn’t tied down to it and could essay other characters just as well.

Here, here’s shifty criminal Dandy, whose only redeeming feature is that somehow he has acquired a beautiful girlfriend, stripper Babette (Julie Christie), who, despite her profession

appears to have steered cleared of seediness and insists he goes straight before she consents to marriage. And that would be fine, except what can Dandy do when faced with such obvious temptation and jewels left idly on a counter in a jewellery?

When she catches him out, he is sent to the criminal version of Alcoholics Anonymous where he is at the mercy of a particularly sadistic “guardian angel” Widdowes (Stanley Baxter – in a variety of disguises). He is locked in a cell full of safes. Food, cigarettes etc are hidden inside the safes, so to eat and satisfy his smoking habit, he must open them. The logic, presumably, is that he will grow sick and tired of opening so many safes for so little reward.

Maybe it’s the hidden punishments – a touch of electrocution and various other booby traps – that do the trick. Or, it could be the glee of Widdowes. When Dandy finds cigarettes, they come without any means of lighting them. He pleads with Widdowes to point him in the direction of a safe containing means of ignition.Replies the “angel”, “I’m glad you asked that because I’m not going to tell you.”

There’s a whole raft of comedy skits revolving around temptation, mostly involving Widdowes in one guise or another. And when the movie stays with Widdowes and a bunch of other reformed criminals, it fairly zips along. But once Dandy is released and plot rears its ugly head it falls back on more cliché elements.

Dandy manages to go straight, employed as a Santa Clause in a department store, while Babette decides to give up her job so both can start afresh. Unfortunately, temptation raises its ugly head to the tune of a quarter of a million pounds and all those goody-two-shoes reformed criminals line up to take a crack at it. The twist, which you’ll already have guessed, is that they have to break into the vault again to return the money they have stolen.

Scottish comedian Stanley Baxter was going through a phase of attempting to become a movie star and was given a fair old crack at it – The Fast Lady (1962) and Father Came Too (1964) followed, the former with both Philips and Christie, the latter with just him.

But what was obvious from Crooks Anonymous was that Baxter was better in disguise – and the more the merrier – than served up straight. He steals the show here where in the other movies his character is more of an irritant.

A well-meaning Leslie Phillips somehow snuffs out the charm and there’s not enough going on between him and Babette when he’s full-on straightlaced. Heretical though it might be, there’s not enough going on with Julie Christie either to suggest she might be Oscar bait. Here’s she’s just another ingenue.

Wilfrid Hyde-White (P.J. / New Face in Hell, 1967), another who generally traded on his charm (in a supporting category of course), is also in the disguise business, so he steals a few scenes, too. James Robertson Justice (Father Came Too) would have stolen the picture from under the noses of Baxter and Phillips had he been given more scenes.

Directed by Ken Annakin (Battle of the Bulge, 1965) from a screenplay by Jack Davies and Henry Blyth (Father Came Too).

I might have preferred Phillips in “ding dong” persona, but this works out okay, especially in the scenes set in the criminal reform school.

Ding dong-ish.

Sinful Davey (1969) **

Major disappointment from a director of the caliber of John Huston. Granted, the quality of his output during the decade had been variable but this marked a new low and the suspicion lingers that he only took on the gig to spend time in Ireland – the movie was filmed there – where he had set up a home in the grand manner of a country squire. Equally odd is James Webb as screenwriter. Having chronicled the American West via How the West Was Won (1962) and Cheyenne Autumn (1964), Webb had turned his attention to British history, beginning with Alfred the Great (1968).

But where that had at least historical reality to guide the narrative, here Webb relies on the dubious autobiography of the titular subject, resulting in an episodic, picaresque, sub-Tom Jones (1963) and even sub-Where’s Jack? (1969) tale set in the Scottish Highlands. And much as John Hurt later achieved considerable recognition for his acting, the role, as played, could have been handled just as easily by any number of rising male stars, since, beyond being able to affect two accents – broad Scots and upper-class English – little is required.

In fact, the director clearly couldn’t distinguish between the Irish and the Scottish accent as among the joblot of accents, none more than serviceable, there is many an Irish lilt. As if to make the point that he couldn’t care less, you will also discern on the soundtrack a refrain from “Danny Boy.”

Beyond that it made a good scene, quite why Davey Haggart (John Hurt) decided to announce his desertion from the British Army in such ostentatious manner is difficult to understand. He’s a drummer, marching along, banging said drum, when he takes it into his head to jump off the nearest bridge into the nearest river, complete with drum, only to find himself headed for a mill. In possibly the best line in the script, seeing the mill wheel blocking his escape, he mutters, “Who put that there?”

From here on it’s a tale of pursuit – two actually. Lawman Richardson (Nigel Davenport) leads the merry chase but he’s also got childhood sweetheart Annie (Pamela Franklin) on his tail to ease him out of scrapes in the hope that he’ll reform. Beginning as a pickpocket, he switches to highway robbery and piracy, rarely with particular success. Loaded down with booty on the carriage he has stolen, for example, he loses control of the horses and is left at the side of the road, as poor as when he started.

He’s certainly inventive but contemporary audiences will recoil from the notion of using the head a height-challenged man aloft another’s shoulders to test the rotting rafters inside a jail, leading not to escape but to a home-made pleasure parlor, since it provides entry to the female jail above where our hero establishes himself as a pimp.

But that’s as inventive as this picture gets and in the manner of Cat Ballou and Where’s Jack? you know that whenever a hero heads towards the gallows you can be sure the hanging will be thwarted. The period setting – the 1820s – offers little assistance, as the picture could be set any time before the invention of steam, and could as easily have taken place in a galaxy far far away long long ago called Brigadoon for all the period authenticity shown.

This didn’t lead to instant stardom for John Hurt and possibly just as well as he’d have been wasted in a series of ingenue roles. Pamela Franklin (And Soon the Darkness, 1970) doesn’t have much to do beyond trying to master a Scottish accent. Nigel Davenport (Play Dirty, 1968) was in his element playing yet another frosty authoritarian figure.

John Huston (Night of the Iguana, 1964) did prove one thing – that he lacked the knack for comedy.

Suspect / The Risk (1960) ****

Marvellous long-forgotten character-driven espionage drama exploring the twin themes of guilt and duty. It would appear to be stolen by two supporting actors, Ian Bannen and Thorley Walters, but in fact both play roles that have significant bearing not only on the narrative but on our understanding of the most important characters. Not only do we have the main plot, but we also have two well-worked sub-plots, one concerning disability and the other of more sinister relevance – a 1984 Big Brother theme.

Basic tale concerns a laboratory that has discovered a bacteria that can cure plague. Hopes of a celebratory drink all-round and academic kudos on publishing his paper for top boffin Professor Sewell (Peter Cushing) are dashed when the Government in the shape of the pompous Sir George Gatling (Raymond Huntly) steps in, steals the discovery and makes the staff sign the Official Secrets Act.

*Romance No 1 – Virginia Maskell and Tony Britton in the lab*.

While the revered professor takes it on the chin, colleague Bob Marriott (Tony Britton) is outraged so vocally in public that he attracts the attention of the shady Brown (Donald Pleasance) who suggests to the dupe that there is a way of getting the information out to the wider scientific community, especially to plague-ridden countries.

However, don’t let Sir George’s pomposity fool you. He doesn’t trust this bunch an inch and puts the Secret Service on their tail to assess “the risk” and we dip into the dark kind of web (not that kind of dark web) and the mundane business of deception and betrayal shortly to be explored by the likes of John Le Carre (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, published in 1963) and Len Deighton (The Ipcress File, published a year earlier).

Rather than this outfit being headed by a version of the prim George Smiley, Mr Prince (Thorley Waters) has a lot more in common with the unkempt Jackson Lamb of the Slow Horses series. His incompetence is an act to make visitors to his shambles of an office under-estimate him. But he’s got that Columbo knack of asking the most important question just when an interviewee thinks the interview is over.

Also in the background, coming more increasingly into the foreground, is an unusual love triangle between colleagues Bob and Lucy Byrne (Virginia Maskell), who kiss and hold hands in the cinema, and Lucy’s flatmate, the disabled war vet Alan Andrews (Ian Bannen). The fact that Lucy and Alan live together at a time when such a relationship was frowned upon and would be career death in certain circles and that they were once engaged to be married gives it an edge. That Alan has lost an arm and a hand so needs to be cared for – fed (as in food spooned into his mouth), washed (you can guess that aspect), cigarette lit and removed between puffs, dressed – suggests significant intimacy for an adult.

Obviously, she’s the kind of lass who couldn’t abandon him to the welfare system, and he’s the kind of man who broke off their engagement so she wouldn’t feel tied to him for the rest of her life. But he also hates what he’s become, his desperate reliance on her, what he’s lost, and that’s turned him into not just a bitter individual but a particularly cunning one, who has developed the trick of torpedoing any nascent romance. “You can’t compete,” he gloats to Bob, “because you can’t make her feel good.”

*Romance No 2 – Ian Bannen and Virginia Maskell.*

But when that doesn’t work, he befriends Bob and surreptitiously eggs him on to betray his country and in so doing, hopefully, kill off the romance.

Mr Prince is a delight. Accorded the best lines, he makes great use of them. When his subordinate Slater (Sam Kydd) abrasively brings Dr Shole (Kenneth Griffith) in for questioning, he reprimands him with the rather coy, “Oh, you haven’t been rough again.” To Dr Shole (Kenneth Griffith), the most susceptible of the professor’s acolytes, he warns, “Tell him (Sewell) not to be a fool or you’ll smack him on the backside.” Though Dr Shole has a superb retort, “We’re not exactly on those terms.”

Professor Sewell appears mostly on the back foot. While quietly seething at being denied his professional day in the sun, he accepts duty. Even so, he’s smart enough to outwit Prince when the traitor is caught.

The background of the wheels-within-wheels of Government, the silent overseeing of ordinary lives, the authorized level of spying, comes as something of a shock, since despite George Orwell’s best efforts Big Brother was seen as a clever fiction that could not occur in this most democratic and upright of countries where “fair play” was the rule. Visually, this is well done, we see eavesdroppers in mirrors in pubs and, as I said, Prince seems the least effective of operatives but with the kind of personality that you could easily have built a series around.

Disability from war was a constant of post-war British pictures, most often demonstrated by a character with a limp, as with general dogsbody Arthur (Spike Milligan) here. The Oscar-winning The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) was the most effective at dealing with the physical after-effects of the Second World War. But there, the worst-affected soldier, had prosthetic hands. Here, Alan does not, so the scenes of him being tended to by Lucy are emotionally more powerful.

She tends to his emotions, too, and will embrace him and kiss him on the mouth though he’s not dumb enough to read true romantic commitment into those demonstrations of affection. Clearly, there is emotional residue from their engagement, from which you guess she will ultimately be unable to entangle herself, unless he can find a more brutal way of helping her out of the dilemma.

The lab aspect is surprisingly well done. We don’t get any real information on the scientific breakthrough. Mostly, what we view is the grunt work, the laborious checking of thousands of samples for another experiment. At one point Bob thrusts his arm into a contraption packed with buzzing flies as if he was a competitor in I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.

Ian Bannen (The Flight of the Phoenix, 1965) is the standout but character actor Thorley Waters (Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace, 1962) runs him close. Tony Britton (better known later for television comedy) has the least interesting role, but Virginia Maskell (Interlude, 1968) has too much to do without dialog to demonstrate her dilemma. Peter Cushing (The Skull, 1965) is solid as always and Spike Milligan provides light relief.

Joint direction by the Boulting Brothers (The Family Way, 1967), Roy and John. Screenplay by Nigel Balchin (Circle of Deception, 1960) based on his own novel.

Exceptionally solid stuff. I was very much taken by the unusual approach, the themes and the acting.

Worth a look.

A Home of Your Own (1964) ***

The phrase “classic silent British comedy” isn’t one that naturally trips off the tongue. Add in “of the 1960s” and you can guarantee furrowed brows. Thanks to the boom in recycling Hollywood silent classics in the early 1960s there was a subsequent mini-boom in what were called “wordless” pictures, as if using the term “silent” was blasphemous. The oddity is that so many emerged from Britain, primarily in shortened format – not more than one hour long – as the second feature in a double bill.

Blame for this development lay in the hands of producer and later writer and later still director Bob Kellett, Britain’s unsung comedy king.

A Home of Your Own is beautifully structured, following the mishaps in building a block of new apartments. A credit sequence covers the stultifying bureaucracy involved, so that what was a pristine site at the beginning of the endeavor turns into a waterlogged dump before the first brick is laid. Sight gags and slapstick abound with mostly everyone getting in each other’s way, or not, the traditional approach of the work-shy British builder being to provide an audience for someone else to dig up a road or a trench.

No paddle goes unsplashed, mud only exists to drench people, and in pursuit of comedy gold most of building materials end up misused. The gatekeeper’s main job is to make tea and there is naturally a union official whose chief task is to obstruct.

Pick of the gags is Ronnie Barker’s laying of cement, delivered with exquisite comedy timing, followed by Bernard Cribbin’s stonemason delicately chiseling out a plaque only to discover at the end in a laugh-out-loud moment that he has misspelled one word, and the carpenter who appropriates the closest implement with which to stir his tea. Some of the jokes grow legs – the morning tea break, a ham-fisted carpenter, the pipe-smoking architect arriving in a sports car, and a patch of ground on the road outside constantly being dug up by different contractors representing water board, gas, electricity.

Once the building is complete, the job taking long enough for the aspiring apartment-owner, a mere fiancé at the outset, to lift his wife over the threshold accompanied by three kids. Any sense of personal accomplishment – the British thirst for owning property quenched – is undercut by problems the young couple now face thanks to the workmanship we have witnessed.

All this is accompanied by a very inventive Ron Goodwin (633 Squadron, 1964) score which provides brilliant musical cues. As a bonus, the film features a roll-call of television comedy superstars including Ronnie Barker (The Two Ronnies, 1971-1987), Richard Briers (The Good Life, 1975-1978) and Bill Fraser (Bootsie and Snudge, 1960-1974). Peter Butterworth and Bernard Cribbins were Carry On alumni. Janet Brown achieved later fame as an impressionist while Tony Tanner hit Broadway as the star of Half a Sixpence before expanding his career to choreographer-director, Tony nominated for Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

A Home of Your Own went out as the support to the Boulting Brothers’ comedy Rotten to the Core (1964) which gave a debut to Charlotte Rampling. Despite being effectively a B-film, primarily made to take advantage of the Eady Levy (a cashback guarantee for producers), A Home of Your Own was surprisingly successful. “Will delight arthouse patrons” commented Box Office magazine in America (“Review,” October 4, 1965, p160) as British comedy films in those days tended to end up in the arthouses. In part, this was because it was the official British entry to the Berlin Film Festival. It was distributed there by Cinema V in a double bill with Rotten to the Core and launched in what was misleadingly called a “world premiere engagement” at the prestigious Cinema 1 in New York.

Jay Lewis (Live Now, Pay Later, 1962) directed and co-wrote, along with Johnny Whyte. Kellett continued in this enterprising vein with the 55-minute San Ferry Ann (1965) – which he wrote – about a group of British holidaymakers going abroad and the 49-minute Futtock’s End (1970) – which he directed – featuring a bunch of guests descending on an ancient country house owned by Ronnie Barker.

Television stars showcased in these two featurettes included Wilfred Bramble (Steptoe and Son, 1962-1974), Rodney Bewes (The Likely Lads, 1964-1966), Warren Mitchell (Till Death Do Us Part, 1965-1975) and Richard O’Sullivan (Man About the House, 1973-1976). Ron Moody composed the Oscar-winning Oliver! (1968) while Joan Sims and Barbara Windsor made their names in the Carry On series and theatrical knight Sir Michael Hordern appeared in Khartoum (1965) and Where Eagles Dare, 1968.

Though disdained by critics, Kellett went on to become by far the most influential British comedy director of the 1970s. His output included the Frankie Howerd trilogy Up Pompeii (1971), Up the Chastity Belt (1972) and Up the Front (1972), as well as The Alf Garnett Saga (1972). He was well ahead of his time with the transgender comedy Girl Stroke Boy (1972) and female impersonator Danny La Rue in Our Miss Fred (1972).

Fun.