Armed robbers lack the finesse of a jewel thief or burglar when it comes to pulling off a major heist. Rather than resorting to the weaponry of the title, they are more inclined, as John Cassavetes does here, to plant bombs, both as a diversionary tactic and within the target building, in this case a Las Vegas casino.
Although boasting Hollywood leads in Cassavetes and Peter Falk and rising Swedish leading lady Britt Ekland (The Double Man, 1967) and wife of star Peter Sellers, this was an Italian-made gangster thriller with the usual abundance of location work. Without the romantic complications of A Fine Pair (1968) it concentrates on the machinations of the central characters.
And it is a pretty lean machine. The robbery takes place against the background of warring Mafia chieftains, West coast boss Charlie Adamo (Peter Falk) trying to muscle in on a Vegas casino without being aware it is controlled by the New York hierarchy. Hank McCain (John Cassavetes) does not realize the robbery has been set up by his naïve son Jack (Pierluigi Apra) on behalf of Adamo. Irene Tucker (Britt Ekland) is on board as a kind of mostly mute magician’s assistant, helping out Hank.
Little dialogue comes Cassavetes’ way, either, which plays to his strength, that glowering intense unpredictable weasel-face, whose reactions are less likely to be emotional than violent. Falk gets the dialog and little help it does him, his goose is cooked when he has the temerity to shout at the New York kingpin.
Yet this slimmed-down documentary-style hard-nosed picture in the vein of Point Blank (1967) manages several touching moments, even more effective for completely lacking sentimentality. When Hank’s son is knifed in the back, the gangster finishes him off with a burst from the titular machine gun rather than see him suffer. His old flame Rosemary (Gene Rowlands), making too brief an appearance, has a wall covered in newspaper headlines of herself with Hank celebrating her life as his moll and she accepts without enmity the new woman in his life and she proves the toughest moll of all when confronted with Mafia gunslingers..
The planning of the heist is well done, no explanatory dialog, just action on screen; there’s a car chase; and the gangster dragnet is unexpectedly powerful. Gabriele Ferzetti (the railroad baron in Once Upon a Time in the West, 1968) is excellent as the calm authoritative New York boss, Falk a bit too excitable, and Florinda Balkan (The Last Valley, 1971), in her third screen role, has a small part as a traitorous moll. Ekland is surprisingly good with not much to play with, a couple of lines here and there but still emoting with her face.
Cassavetes, who always claimed he was only acting to fill in the time between directing (Faces, 1968), and as a means of financing them, was at a career peak, Oscar-nominated for The Dirty Dozen (1967) and male lead in Rosemary’s Baby (1968). He had just appeared in another Italian gangster movie Bandits in Rome (1968). Cassavetes and Falk would go on to have a fruitful partnership over another five films. Falk and Ekland had played opposite each other in Too Many Thieves (1967). Falk also had an Oscar nod behind him for Murder Inc. (1961) but his career was about to go in a different direction after the TV movie Presciption: Murder (1968) that introduced Columbo.
Trivia trackers might also note a score by Ennio Morricone. Though not one of his best, a few years later he would deliver one of his most memorable themes for Sacco and Vanzetti (1971) for the same director Giuliano Montaldo.
Proof that time can be kind to even the unholiest of unholy messes. Previously only appreciated/mocked for its camp values, the thin story this has to tell suddenly carries contemporary weight. Not so much the transgender elements but now revealed as the first picture to bring the MeToo agenda to light.
While it’s still terrible, with a tendency towards the really really obvious and, when that doesn’t work, bombard the audience with a That’s Entertainment smorgasbord of sexual innuendo. In fairness, even in those more feminist-awakening times, you probably still had to batter the viewer over the head to get them to accept any of the points being made.
Candy-striped oufit pure invention of the poster designer.
The first, while theoretically in a theoretical twist tranposed to the female, was the sexual predator, closely followed by the notion that every woman wanted “it”, regardless of them expressing otherwise. Even the dumbest cinemagoer could not have failed to see that putting an exclusively male casting couch at the disposal of Hollywood agent Leticia (Mae West) was actually a clever way of showing just how the movie business at its worst worked, though in reverse, the females queuing up (apparently) for the kind of sexual transaction that could give them a shot at stardom.
That it’s Myra (Raquel Welch) herself who spends most of the movie degrading men (anal rape anyone?), and women indiscriminately (I’m surprised the posters didn’t scream “Raquel Goes Lesbian”), it’s again just a play on what went on in the virtually exclusive male enclave of Hollywood. Just as pointedly it points the finger at the way Hollywood has destroyed the American Dream, snaring thousands of hopefuls who spend fortunes, whittle away their lives and prostitute themselves (and still do) in the vain hope that taking acting lessons for an eternity will somehow provide them with a talent they weren’t born with.
The narrative – what narrative? – concerns Myron (Rex Reed) having a sex-change operation to become the aforesaid Myra and then claiming an inheritance, on exceptionally spurious grounds, from her kinky uncle Buck (John Huston). And trying to part hunk wannabe Rusty (Roger Herren) from his wannabe girlfriend (Farrah Fawcett, the Major came later). You might argue that the continuous loitering presence of Myron is a distraction but occasionally it’s welcome as the movie runs out of punchbags.
And in case you didn’t get the message in what passes for dialog, Myra takes to just delivering straightforward lectures on the male-dominant Hollywood that posited the notion that women were there for the taking if you were just male enough to take them and that any women who showed the slightest ounce of onscreen intelligence and the ability to swat away predatory males was just a predatory male in disguise.
Nobody comes out of this with any dignity and though it destroyed the career of director Michael Sarne (Joanna, 1969) and Roger Herren, John Huston (The Cardinal, 1963) was inclined to self-indulgence on-screen if not restrained by a strong director, while Farrah Fawcett and, in a bit part, Tom Selleck survived to become television legends. The less said about wooden Rex Reed the better.
Quite where this left Raquel Welch is anyone’s guess. While she held the narrative together in convincing fashion, as an actress she wasn’t provided with enough material beyond the sensational to convince as a dramatic actress of anything more than middling caliber. Yet, it was an incredibly brave career decision. The contemporary likes of Joanne Woodward, Jane Fonda, Maggie Smith et al would have balked at the thinness of the material, and would have run a mile from expressing themselves in such sexual terms, despite probably recognizing what the movie was attempting to achieve.
It needed someone larger than life to play the part and, possibly with higher expectations than seemed plausible, the bold Raquel stepped up to plate. Perhaps the element that appeared most to her was that she took revenge on Rusty because (shock, horror) he didn’t fancy her at a time when she was presented as the most fanciable woman on the planet.
So discretion left at the door, blunderbuss in full operational mode, but even now it’s that approach that is wakening the industry up to the sexual misbehavior of many of its to male personnel. What was once top of the so-bad-it’s-good tree is now revealed as not too bad after all, if you swap the phantasmagoria for the stinking reality underneath.
Remembering this picture as a summer holiday matinee of stiff-upper-lip entangled in all sorts of Khartoumery, I came at this film with low expectations. Given producer Charles H. Schneer’s (First Men in the Moon, 1964) involvement, there were no Ray Harryhausen magical special effects. I was only aware of star Anthony Quayle as a bluff supporting actor in epics like Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) and Sylvia Syms as a willowy supporting actress (The World of Suzie Wong, 1960).
So I was in for a pleasant surprise. Take away the back projection, stock footage and the unlikely zoo of wild animals and there is a fairly decent action film set in the Sudan on the fringes of the Mahdi uprising (that story filmed as Khartoum the following year).
Baker (Anthony Quayle), former army sergeant awaiting court martial, escapes from a battle near Khartoum, saving governess Miss Woodville (Sylvia Syms), her charge Asua (Jenny Agutter making her debut), officer Muchison (Basil Fowlds) and a wounded soldier. The motley crew flees down the Nile in a boat. You know you are in for something quite different when the soldier dies and Baker wants to toss him overboard. Overruled by prim Miss Woodville and by-the-book Murchison, this good deed is rewarded by losing their beached boat while burying the dead.
A picture like this only survives on twists. Burning the remainder of their boat to attract the attention of the British relief force only brings in their wake a mob of Arabs, who we are informed, in a spicy exchange, don’t know the ten commandments, especially “thou shalt not kill.”
The movie turns into a battle of the sexes, with Woodville’s innocence and good breeding quickly eroded in the face of danger, her natural antipathy towards a scallywag like Baker softening. Lacking due deference, said scallywag is given some choice lines which spark up proceedings. It being Africa, the animals have nothing better to do than torment them, so cue snakes, crocodiles, charging rhinos, hippos, elephants without even a decent monkey to lighten proceedings. Baker sets his ruthless tendences to one side to take a tender, paternal interest in young Asua. Ongoing action prevents the usual male-female meet-cute African Queen-style banter and it’s all the better for it.
Capture by African tribesman takes the story on an interesting detour. Baker, attempting to make friends, shouts out despairingly, “Don’t any of you even speak English?” only for chieftain Kimrasi (Johnny Sekka) to stride out of the bushes with the reply, “I speak, English, Arabic and Swahili.” Baker explains, “We come in peace.” The chief retorts, “With gun in hand?”
Game on! The plot goes offbeat for w while when we become involved in Kimrasi’s life. A former slave, his village presents an unusually realistic alternative world not least for Asua, ill by this time, saved by an African witch doctor. There are further surprises, clever ruses to foil the enemy, revelations about Woodville and a surprising but very British ending.
Quayle is convincing, reveling in the opportunity to create a fully-formed character rather than confined to a small chunk of a picture. Syms, too, with more on offer than normal, Agutter (Walkabout, 1971) not a precocious Disney cut-out, and Fowlds revealing what did for all those years before turning up on television as puppet Basil Brush’s sidekick. As a British B-picture making do on a small budget, it overcomes this particular deficiency with some sparkling dialog and attitudes that go against both the time in which it was set and the era in which it was made. Directed by Nathan Juran (First Men in the Moon) from a screenplay by Jud Kinberg (Siege of the Saxons, 1963).
Another tricky one because, of course, I’m supposed to mock this colossal box office flop. Not least because, as later events proved, you couldn’t lift the Titanic off the seabed in one piece since it had actually broken in two. And there’s the dumb maguffin to end all dumb maguffins that kicks it all off in the first place, but you did need some excuse for the exercise. And, in fairness, in theory at least, it’s more cinematic to show the ship going down, and having lovelorn lovers to lament, than to see it coming up with no passengers to root for.
That said, the actual hunt for the lost vessel and the raising is stupendous stuff, even on the small screen, and with a director with greater visual flair than Jerry Jameson (Airport ’77, 1977) it could have been even better. But there can’t be a more iconic climactic shot than the Titanic steaming into New York, missing its scheduled arrival by a mere six decades.
Question is, does the technical stuff, the underwater photography, the raising, the impeccable model-work, make up for the lack of smarts elsewhere? Heck, who cares? No one is interested in whatever storyline the makers come up – and, let’s face it, not even DiCaprio and Winslet, good though they are, were the driving force for the James Cameron version – all they are interested is the recreation of the mythical ship, probably the only one everyone in the world can name. So get the nautical elements right and you’re pretty much there.
Critics, and crucially audiences, back in the day didn’t think so. But I disagree. I couldn’t begin to tell you much about the hare-brained narrative – some item so crucial to the present-day (1980, that is) ongoing Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R – and I couldn’t care less. Nor would you find many takers for a love triangle involved explorer Dirk Pitt (Richard Jordan), journalist Dana (Anne Archer) and all-purpose politico Gene (David Selby). And although an occasional acting heavyweight like Jason Robards (as an Admiral) and Alec Guinness (as a Titanic survivor) hoves into view, it’s the character actors like J.D. Cannon and M. Emmet Walsh who have more to do.
But that’s not much either, because anyone involved in the underwater stuff is required only to show two emotions, shock and awe, and to be honest they do a good job because really all we need are witnesses to the amazing. The picture tickles along for a bit while the principals argue about the right way to go about their task and where, specifically, to concentrate the search, and then about the actual mechnics of the raising, that aspect suddenly given the kind of self-imposed deadlines that seemed de facto for disaster pictures (they are always running out of time) because some guys are now trapped in the ship.
But just as James Cameron awed audiences with his reimagining of the interior of the mighty ship, it’s no less imposing here in its impoverished state, stripped of its glory, nothing but the naked façade of the still-amazing below decks. And when it finally does surface carries magical visual splendor.
In truth, I found I was tuning out of the human goings-on, waiting with bated breath for the next sighting – or the first – of the ship. And we’re spared the endless wittering-on about how the ship sank and who was responsible and you could argue the narrative trigger in Titanic (1997) of the old lady’s brooch is every bit as dumb as the rare mineral secretly stashed on board here.
Jerry Jameson’s cinematic career was sunk by the poor box office and he didn’t receive another movie credit for over a decade. But he does a decent enough job here in the absence of a genuine all-star cast and those sequences depicting the hunt and the triumph work very well indeed. None of the acting is awful, but the stars have been hired for obvious reasons – being inexpensive might have been the starting point – and neither Jason Robards (Hour of the Gun, 1967) nor Alec Guinness (The Quiller Memorandum, 1966) attempts anything you’ve not seen before. While Richard Jordan (Logan’s Run, 1976) is too freshfaced for his character, Anne Archer (Fatal Attraction, 1987) suggests vivacity on legs.
Screenplay credited to Adam Kennedy (The Domino Principle, 1977) and Eric Hughes (Against All Odds, 1984) in reality went through a hatful of different hands. Based on the Clive Cussler bestseller.
Don’t believe the critics – and possibly not even me – on this one but I found it a surprisingly good watch.
A curiosity. Something of vanity project for star James Cagney (One, Two, Three, 1961) – in his penultimate leading role – who doubled up as producer. But more of a documentary than a war picture. Witness, no scenes of actual World War II combat for a start. And going down the same annoying route as The St Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967) where the voice-over pretty much tells you what everyone had for breakfast and in that vein goes on to tell you whether or not they survived the conflict and maybe became a relatively famous politician thereafter.
Basically recounts the turnaround in U.S. fortunes at the Battle of Guadalcanal in the South Pacific in 1942-1943. The Americans had invaded the island but were coming under increasing pressure from the Japanese. In case you don’t know your Second World War history, this was the first major American land offensive following Pearl Harbor. Though the Americans had thwarted the Japanese at The Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway, these were nautical triumphs. Guadalcanal was the first objective in the American island-hopping strategy.
Here, I’m getting all information-overload myself, because all you really need to know is that the Americans parachuted in (actually, he landed by flying boat) Admiral “Bull” Halsey (James Cagney) at a critical moment to revitalize their operation and prevent the expected Japanese attack. The Japanese were so convinced that victory was imminent that they had drawn up operational details of the surrender ceremony they planned to impose on the vanquished Americans.
The Yanks managed to intercept and decode Japanese radio transmissions and in the only real dramatic moment, after capturing the surrender document, Halsey pins it to a tree so his troops can read it and stiffen their resolve.
But mostly this is a bunch of guys in a bunch of rooms talking about what they were going to do and how difficult, what with lack of support and casualties and low morale, their challenge was going to be. There’s no shortage of detail but every time a scene starts to become dramatically interesting up pops our resident voiceover (director and co-star Robert Montgomery if you want to know) to provide us with some unnecessary detail about some character in the room.
On the debit side, this is pretty irritating. On the plus side, it’s fascinating, a potted history of various personnel without having to resort to the usual sub-plots, often inane in themselves, often of the romantic persuasion, that crop up in an otherwise intriguing war picture so as to provide the audience with people to root for. If you were American, you would recognise some of the characters depicted, some true-life heroes (ace pilots, courageous soldiers) who made their name on the field of battle or contributed to the victory off it.
Of course, if you’re from anywhere else you won’t have a clue who anybody is – and not that much interested either, preferring the old-fashioned approach of sub-plot and romance – but stick with it because, once you realize this is a determinedly novel approach for the genre, it does become pretty interesting especially as Cagney, despite his character being nicknamed “Bull,” dispenses with his usual acting tricks, the strangulated voice and the aggressive demeanor, in favor of a more rounded personality.
Nobody tends to hold up a critical mirror to battles that end in victory, unlike Pearl Harbor, so it’s never going to degenerate into verbal fisticuffs, and much of the pressure the audience might detect comes from the other side, the cocky Japanese, who are presented in a very even-handed manner, despite, or perhaps because, their leader Admiral Yamamoto (James T. Goto), who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, was highly respected by the Americans. This is where maybe Violent City (1970) got the idea of ignoring subtitles, but at least here we can rely on Mr Voiceover to keep us posted on what the Japanese were actual up to.
Cagney holds it all together and you might spot Dennis Weaver (Duel, 1971) and Richard Jaeckal (The Dirty Dozen, 1967) among the supporting cast. Sixth and final directorial outing for star Robert Montgomery (though he limits his onscreen involvement here to just the narration) who had experimented with voiceover in Lady in the Lake (1945). Whether you fall in with his take on this one, he pretty much delivers what he intended, a semi-documentary account of leaders in battle. Screenplay by Beirne Lay Jr (The Young and the Brave, 1963) and Frank D. Gilroy (The Subject Was Roses, 1968).
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) set in the West – men driven mad by gold fever. Straightforward plot, however, complicated by an avalanche of characters. And for a two-hour running time it seemed perverse to waste the first six minutes on scenery, narration – explaining the Apache legend of a fabulous hidden seam of gold – and theme song.
The real film begins with a shoot-out between Marshall Mackenna (Gregory Peck and an Indian. “You will wish you never saw this map,” says the Indian before he dies, but Mackenna burns the map. That doesn’t go down well with villain Colorado (Omar Sharif), whose gang has taken Inga (Camilla Sparv) hostage. Convinced the lawman has memorized the map, Colorado adds Mackenna to his hostage quotient.
At Colorado’s hideout Hesh-Ke (Julie Newmar) has a hostile reaction to Mackenna. Like Colorado, they have history. Mackenna and Inga bond when he fends off an Indian intent on raping her. As if this isn’t a pretty straightforward set-up, old foes reunited, potential romance brewing, a treasure hunt, further complications arise in the shape of a posse led by Ben Baker (Eli Wallach), not hunting renegades but also chasing gold. As if that wasn’t already a complication too far now we have a Cavalry troop, who confuse the posse with outlaws thus mostly eliminating a complication before it gets too complicated – the pursuing Apaches finish them off.
And in a nearby pool, we get a deadly twist on the naked attraction, as Hesh-Ke, first trying to lure Mackenna then trying to drown the woman she views as her romantic rival. When the Cavalry reappear, they have turned rogue, led by Sgt Tibbs (Telly Savalas). So now we’ve got the narrative ironed out it’s three separate groups – outlaws, Cavalry and Apaches – searching for gold with various individual old scores to be settled. And, just in time, they’ve arrived at Shaking Rock, the tall pillar visualized in the poster, and a sunrise worth waiting for. It is a glorious scene.
After a close-up of the rising sun and the pillar, and the screen changing color, the shadow of the pillar creeps across the canyon floor and points to a crack in the canyon wall. The crack is a tunnel entrance and on the other side the sun is shining on a seam of bright gold. And that leaves only the various denouements to be played out. And some surprises – straightlaced Inga succumbing to gold fever, the supposedly barbarous Apaches revealed as good guys – treating pillar (and gold) with reverence – and (would you believe it) an earthquake.
The earthquake might just have been too big a temptation given this was filmed in Cinerama. But it’s the least effective use of the process. A fairly standard western trope, crossing a dodgy bridge, is heightened in Cinerama but it’s still a cliché. Much better is the river crossing, the camera’s dizzying effect echoing the rollercoaster ride in This Is Cinerama and the rapids and runaway train of How the West Was Won (1962), audiences pitched headlong into camera point-of-view, racing water, oncoming rapids, thundering waterfall. The final section is triggered by the Cinerama camera racing for two minutes down the twisting track leading to the gold. So, in Cinerama terms, the audience got its money’s worth.
And there should have been enough conflict to keep the narrative on track – Mackenna vs. Colorado, Hesh-Ke vs. Inga, Inga vs Colorado, Calvary vs. outlaws vs. Apaches, plus various fist, gun, knife and belt fights. The individual conflicts, Inga’s genuine fear over her fate, the romantic triangle and especially ruthless Colorado revealed (ditto Butch Cassidy) as a dreamer, imagining life in faraway lands (swap Butch’s Bolivia and Australia for Colorado’s Paris) were more than enough to be going on with without being drowned out by a simplistic message about greed. This is nothing more – or nothing worse – than a decent western wrapped up in the bloated shadow of a roadshow.
Gregory Peck (Arabesque, 1966) and Omar Sharif (Mayerling, 1969) are both pretty good in roles that play against type, both female roles are well-written and well played by Camilla Sparv (Downhill Racer, 1969) and Julie Newmar (The Maltese Bippy, 1969) but the film is overloaded with way too many cameos. As he had proven in The Guns of Navarone (1961) J. Lee Thompson was excellent at handling large casts especially in scenes featuring a host of characters and his visual and aural skills are superb but not so good at putting writer-producer Carl Foreman in his place.
Take away the Cinerama effects and the roadshow elements, and trim another 20 minutes off the picture, and you would have had a tight character-driven picture.
A triumvirate of art thieves are blackmailed into stealing a famous Goya painting from the Prada museum in Madrid. Jimmy Bourne (Rex Harrison) is the actual thief, Eve Lewis (Rita Hayworth) smuggles the artworks out of the country and Jean-Marie (Joseph Wiseman, soon to be more famous as Dr No, 1962) creates the forgeries that replace the stolen masterpieces. Hayworth is the least reliable of the trio, her drinking (she had a problem in real life) jeopardizes their slick operation. Not only has the painting they have stolen slipped through their hands but the thief, Dr Victor Munoz (Gregoire Aslan), is not above a bit of murder on the side
Bourne is always one-step-ahead but never overbearing, and the thefts are carried out with military precision. Even when let down by colleagues, who are inclined to scarper when threatened, he takes it all in his stride, the calm center of any potential storm. His marriage proposal is just as cool, coming by way of dictation, “the new Mrs Bourne.”
Bourne is the archetypal gentleman thief (“there is a touch of larceny in all successful men”) and Eve does her earnest best to keep up (“I want so much to be a first-class crook for you, I’m trying to be dishonest, honestly I am.”). But there is never the remotest chance of them being confused with real gangsters. “I thought that stealing was the only honest way Jimmy could live with himself,” says Eve. In truth, their characters set the template for better-known later heist pictures like How to Steal a Million (1966), Gambit (1966) and A Fine Pair (1968) which couple one determined thief with one less so.
Of course, heist pictures rely for much of their success on the actual heist. And Bourne’s plan for the Prada is brilliantly simple and carried out, as mentioned, with military precision. The get-out clause, which, of course, is how such films reach their conclusion, is more realistic and human than the other movies I have mentioned.
What’s more, there are number of excellent sight gags and great throwaway lines, while Jean-Marie and Dr Munoz are well-written, the villain’s motivation is particularly good. Other incidentals lend weight – their apartment is opposite a prison, the security guards at the Prada are caring rather than the idiots of How to Steal a Million, and a sub-plot involving a bullfighter (Virgilio Teixeira, Return of the Seven, 1966) also sheds light on Bourne. There is a jaunty whistling theme tune by Mario Nascimbene (One Million Years B.C., 1966) which maintains levity throughout.
The movie does tilt from the gentleman thievery of the initial section into something much darker, but, so too, do the two principals and, unusually, rather than in the usual contrived fashion, Bourne and Eve undergo personal transition by the end.
Rex Harrison (Midnight Lace, 1960) and Hayworth are a delightful pairing. Hayworth has abandoned the sultry in favor of the winsome, Harrison shifted from sarcasm to dry wit. And there is genuine chemistry between them though his character’s matter-of-fact attitude tends to undercut the kind of passionate romance that moviegoers came to expect from top-class players thus paired. It would have been tempting for Hayworth to act as the ditzy blonde (brunette, actually) but instead she plays it straight, which is more effecting.
I found the whole exercise highly enjoyable. It’s very under-rated. My only quibbles are that it is shot in black-and-white, which seems bizarre when Spain is such a colorful location. The title, too, is an oddity. This was the only picture produced by Hayworth in partnership with husband James Hill. They split up before the picture was released which might explain its poor initial box office.
Hill was an experienced producer, part of Hill-Hecht-Lancaster (The Unforgiven, 1960), but this proved his final film. Hayworth, too, had previously worn the producer’s hat for The Loves of Carmen (1948), Affair in Trinidad (1952) and Salome (1953). Hayworth was still a marquee attraction at this point, taking top billing here, and second billing to John Wayne in Circus World/The Magnificent Showman (1963). But this is quite a different performance to her all-out-passionate persona or the slinky deviousness of Gilda (1946).
Director George Marshall (Advance to the Rear, 1964) knew how to stay out of the way and let his stars deliver the fireworks. John Gay (Soldier Blue, 1970) wrote the screenplay from the novel by Richard Condon (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962).
I grant you, not many movies pivot on a broken matchstick. Nor, for that matter, play around with the screen persona of the imperturbable Roger Moore (Vendetta for the Saint, 1968) or call upon him to do more than raise an occasional eyebrow. No doubt I’m committing heresy in comparing this to The Wicker Man (1973) but there’s a certain similarity in the innocent being dragged into deep waters and, as in that picture, instead of our hero triumphing against sinister forces, ending up a victim.
While the main narrative thrust is a doppelganger, the initial plot concerns murky business dealings, boardroom betrayal, and corporate espionage set against the backdrop of high living, upscale car, trophy wife, a spot of fun in a casino. The final film of Basil Dearden (The Assassination Bureau, 1969), who died prematurely aged 60, deals with the shattering of the life of strait-laced Pelham (Roger Moore).
He is fastening his car seat-belt a full decade before that was mandatory in Britain, punctuality his mantra, keeps to the speed limit, an immaculate dresser, and while hard work has taken its toll on his marriage he’s not the kind to have a mistress stashed away. But he crashes his car when, against all odds, he seems possessed by the desire to race along at 100mph, overtaking like crazy. For a moment, in surgery, his body registers two heartbeats.
Then people start reminding him of out-of-character activities, thrashing everyone at the club at snooker (and for money stakes), hitting the casino, receiving a nod-and-wink for under-the-table business dealings, while fashion photographer Julie (Olga Georges-Picot) makes sexual demands.
And outside his house his wife Eve (Hildegard Neil) spies a very swanky sports car and begins to suspect her husband is having an affair. Naturally, the upstanding Pelham tries to track down this imposter who has the habit of marking his territory with a broken matchstick. Some occurrences are downright weird. On meeting colleague Alexander (Anton Rogers) for a drink, he discovers he’s already had a drink. There’s the question of a piece of jewellery for Julie that he doesn’t recall buying. An astonished barber wonders why his client would need his hair cut two days in a row. And is someone stealing his shirts and ties?
This is the kind of picture where the normal resolution would be some kind of gas lighting, or tip into film noir with wife and/or the femme fatale involved in conspiracy, or at least some reasonable explanation for the dodgy goings-on.
Britain was going through a doppelganger mini-epidemic, Doppleganger/ Journey to the Far Side of the Sun appearing the year before, but that was a more straightforward sci-fi, being set in the future. And, of course, sci-fi was going through a new cycle what with 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Barbarella (1968) and Planet of the Apes (1968).
But it would be a tough call to place this in the same straightforward sci-fi category. The better fit, as I suggested, is The Wicker Man, the background one of a character upset by a different version of normality rather than inhabiting another world or discovering things have changed in the future. And there’s a psychological twist too, the sense of man losing grip on reality, battling a madness he cannot escape, and while it could have done with dwelling on that aspect a while longer, nonetheless Dearden still achieves his result.
Roger Moore is excellent in twin roles, Hildegard Neil makes an interesting debut and Olga-Georges Picot (Farewell, Friend / Adieu L’Ami, 1968) brings surprising depth to her limited role.
The twisty stuff was written by Michael Relph (The Assassination Bureau) and Dearden based on the bestseller The Strange Case of Mr Pelham by Anthony Armstrong.
Of all the lazy, incompetent streamers this has to take the biscuit. Not content with branding as new films made over half a century ago, now we have films being screened which clearly nobody has bothered to watch even once. Otherwise, how to explain a picture where the language lapses into Italian at critical moments without the benefit of sub-titles.
Which is a big shame because, confusing through the movie is, it takes an unique approach to the femme fatale angle and serves up a noted screen tough guy as one whose heart is genuinely broken – suck that up, pale imitators going by the name of Stallone, Schwarzenner, Willis et al.
Post-Bullitt (1968) but pre-The French Connection (1971) we open with a dazzling car chase where the pursued race up stairs rather than down as is the current trope and batter their way through closely-packed streets in the Virgin Islands. That’s before wannabe retired assassin Jeff (Charles Bronson) is gunned down, although he’s still capable of diving under a burning car to escape immediate detection.
Jeff is on the lam with lover Vanessa (Jill Ireland). Dumped in jail with time to repent (no, strike that), mull over his circumstances, in the meantime dodging a tarantula (a real one!) crawling over his body, and coming to the conclusion that the moll has set him up and has returned to her previous lover, ace racing driver Coogan (no idea who plays him, imdb doesn’t know either). Despite having abandoned his profession, Jeff, not getting the hang of the broken-hearted moping malarkey, decides he’ll come out of retirement for the usual one last job, this time laying waste to Coogan.
But someone spots him and he’s blackmailed by Mafia chief Weber (Telly Savalas) into continuing his murderous ways. But here’s a sting in the tail – a wonderful twist to end all twists: Weber is Vanessa’s husband. She’s not a femme fatale at all just a sexual butterfly who dances from one lover to the next with Weber’s tacit approval.
But, in fact, in another twist, she is, after all, the femme fatale to end all femme fatales, setting up Jeff to bump off Weber so that she and attorney lover (what, another one) Steve (Umberto Orsini), Jeff’s best buddy, can take over her husband’s organization now that it has gone legit. And in the final twist to end all twists this ends with Jeff’s broken heart turning him suicidal (beat that Schwarzenneger, Stallone, Willis et al).
This is a very down’n’dirty Italian thriller, dashing from deadbeat locale to Southern Belle balls, from rusting riverboats to swampland, from factories to fashion shoots, the confusion factor infused further by the sudden incursions into Italian, often in mid-scene, as if this was some kind of artistic coup, determined to leave the viewer baffled.
Despite going the whole nine yards in the broken-heareted department, Jeff isn’t quite the full-blown romantic, an attempted rape of Vanessa in New Orleans only interrupted by (wait for it) three thugs beating another character to death. Naturally, Jeff isn’t the kind of good bad guy who intervenes, and these characters, even more naturally, have nothing to do with the plot (except as Jeff points out it’s a violent city after all). But what the hell, it’s that kind of film.
I’ve cutting Amazon Prime a big break here with my rating, because despite the language problems, it’s a cut above your normal thriller, and Charles Bronson (Red Sun, 1971) before being typecast by Death Wish (1974) gives a very good account of himself, certainly a lot more to do than just grimace, and, heck, you even feel sorry for him twisted inside out by emotion. Telly Savalas (A Town Called Hell, 1971) is a bit more polished and emotionally aware than his usual villain.
You might be tempted to call Jill Ireland (Rider on the Rain, 1970) the stand-out. She still can’t act for toffee, but she is well suited to playing this kind of jinxed minx, whose beauty snags dupes well below her league. And (spoiler alert) she does let it all hang out, indulging in copious nudity.
Directed with some flair by Sergio Sollima (The Big Gundown, 1967) and extra marks for coaxing unusual performances from the three principals. Six screenwriters (can’t you tell) put this together including Lina Wertmuller (The Belle Starr Story, 1968). Great score by Ennio Morricone.
Given I couldn’t understand half of what was going on thanks to streamer disinterest in sub-titles, I was still very impressed. Worth a watch.
NOTE: Amazon Prime has this under the title Family but once the credits roll it switches to original title Violent City.
Tricky little number that pivots on a tricky plot point and is almost sunk by the kind of moralizing voice-over that was attached to Riot on Sunset Strip (1967) but actually bears serious reassessment. Quite a brilliant two-minute opening sequence with a tracking camera. I’m a big fan of directorial technical skill so bear with me.
We open with a man dangling from a balcony whose cries for help go unheard at the party inside. We shift inside and with no dialogue the camera begins tracking to the right. A man moves down to kiss a girl and from behind the one being kissed a hand relieves him of his wine glass and the camera slides inches further over to a dark-haired girl in the act of removing a bowler hat from a man and placing it on her head and as she leans back into the sofa that allows a blonde to come to the fore whose cigarette is removed from her mouth to light the cigarillo of an unshaven character who grabs a bottle of wine and in glugging it down moves over to the window and observing the dangling man and pours the rest of the bottle on his head.
“Help him up,” calls out another woman. This request is ignored, but the unshaven character shouts for someone else to help. The man is rescued. With a cynical stare, the unshaven man asks of the woman who has intervened, “Anything else?” She retorts, “Drop dead.” He climbs onto the balcony, falls over, and when the partygoers rush over in horror we cut to the street below where he is swinging from a lamppost.
Easy enough to get away on the poster with what otherwise contractual credit billing forbids. Guy Hamilton could take his name off the credits but that wasn’t so easily enforced abroad.
Over the following credits comes the moralizing. “This film is the story of young people who become, for want of a better word, beatniks. It’s not an attack on beatniks…but shows the loneliness and unhappiness and eventually the tragedy that comes from a life lived without love for anyone or anything.” In other words – an attack on beatniks.
Actually, it’s far more about depression, though that’s scarcely acknowledged, not so much people trying to find themselves as not knowing where to look and in consequence spending a lifetime running away. You might only figure that out in retrospect but it gives the picture some punch. And they’re not overtly rebelling against society or authority as in The Damned (1962) or Riot on Sunset Strip (1967) beyond daubing a drunken face with a CND symbol.
These are less beatniks than, from their classy outfits, society debs slumming it. Yes, they don’t seem to do much else but party, although a number have artistic pretensions, sculpting and painting, for example, but mostly they seem able to lounge around without a care in the world, not like the motley secretaries living in bedsitters in The Pleasure Girls (1964).
The party characters quickly evolve into Moise (Oliver Reed), the unshaven character, who lusts in vain after sultry soul-eyed American Melina (Louise Sorel), the girl who gave him a ticking off, even though he has an adoring singer girlfriend, the blonde Libby (Ann Lynn), who he can, as he demonstrates rather misogynistically, summon with with a snap of his fingers. Bowler-hat is mysterious painter wannabe Nina (Katherine Woodville). The rescuer is sculptor and drummer Geronimo (Mike Platt).
Similarly, Guy Hamiltoncouldn’t prevent the marketing team sticking a sly reference to him – director of “Goldfinger” – elsewhere on the marketing material.
Melina has a wimp of a fiance, Phil (Jonathan Burn), and the story kicks into gear with the arrival of her American fiance Carson (Clifford David), a high-flying businessman, though owing rapid promotion to the fact she is the boss’s daughter. Since marriage is immiment, he is perturbed at being unable to contact his fiance.
But when he does try to find her, he is given the run-around. Nina tells him Melina is recovering from a terrible operation, someone else sends an easily-duped Yank to Buck House (Buckingham Palace), he finds her suitases packed in her room, that element backed up by the notion that she has given away clothes and jewellery (Nina wears her bracelet) and she has either skipped off to Paris or might be lying on a building site half-naked after being dumped there, dead drunk, as a prank by the gang.
So far, so black comedy. And you could believe all of it because Melina is “afraid of everything,” dreads having a daughter who might grow up to be “pawed by a thick hand” and otherwise seems to drift like a melancholy ghost. Phil, having failed his medical exams, commits suicide and like An American Dream/See You in Hell, Darling (1966) Carson is cast in the role of the person who could have saved him from diving from a roof.
Eventually, we do learn more about the other characters. Nina, who in the absence of Melina, takes up with Carson, is a provincial girl, who had an ill-advised marriage to please her parents. Libby is desperately in love with the womanizing Moise, who does a nice line in imitation and cutting remarks. When Melina’s father (Eddie Albert) turns up, the pace quickens.
And in a quite brilliant directorial coup, we realize that, ever since Carson’s arrival, the movie has been operating in flashback. There’s a better reason Melina is missing. She’s dead. She wasn’t drunk, she had toppled from a high staircase at a party and snapped her neck. But since everyone else is totally smashed, they assume she’s just out of it. Only Moise knows the truth, since she’d been trying to get away from him too fast. And since he makes no effort to prevent the prank going ahead, there would be some serious trouble should the police get involved.
Of course, the corpse turns up. Carson, reckoning he’s dodged a bullet, isn’t too torn up and he has a nice girl from the country, Nina, to hold his hand. Moise shows some remorse, but not enough.
Yes, a kind of morality tale but hardly enough to warrant the moralizing cautionary voice-over. Instead, it’s more prescient, Melina the forerunner of the kind of heroine who would find life just too tough and either end up in an institution or go on to ruin her own and everyone else’s life. As a study of depression it’s hard to beat. The spoiled brat who has everything only to realize it’s not enough. Guilt, too, if you count in Phil’s horror at kissing his dead girlfriend.
The credit sequence, which has been ripped off countless times, shows the motley post-party crew slinking across an iconic London bridge at dawn. And there are some wonderful scenes with a viciously playful Oliver Reed. In one he gives a Pythonesque take on the misunderstood waif – “my bathwater was never the right temperature, the servants always burned the toast.”
Oliver Reed (The Assassination Bureau, 1969) should have taken all the acting plaudits but in fact the women, with more emotion to openly play with, steal it. Katherine Woodville (The Wild and the Willing, 1962) takes it by a nose from Louise Sorel, in her movie debut, and Ann Lynn (Baby Love, 1969).
Just superbly directed by Guy Hamilton (A Touch of Larceny, 1960), who mixes atmosphere, emotion and mystery, in just the right quantities, a difficult trick at the best of times. And who has the cojones to pull a fast one. It could as easily have been, upfront, a murder mystery. Instead, it’s much more. Screenplay is by Marc Behm (Charade, 1963).
It was made in 1963, when it would have been far more pertinent, but, thanks to the British censor, held back for two years. The censor was exercised by the scene where Phil kisses Melina, thinking she is dead drunk, only to realize some time later that she is actually dead, and the real reason he threw himself off the roof. In those days, nobody had come up with a solution to the knotty problem of a director who wanted their name removed from the credits. Several years later, Hollywood adopted an all-purpose pseudonym to cover that eventuality. But here, if you watch the credits, you’ll see that there is, to all intents and purposes, no director.
The Magnificent 60s 