movie review – Page 56 – The Magnificent 60s

A Touch of Larceny (1960) ****

Magically fits into the “lost” film category that I’ve been banging on about recently, films, for a variety of reasons, denied cinematic release. Or at least that’s according to Rotten Tomatoes which declares “there are no featured reviews…because the movie has not (been) released yet” despite the fact that it was a big hit in cinemas over six decades ago.

Happening upon this nugget of information in a casual trawl of RT I thought I’d see if this “lost” movie was as good as The Appointment (1969) perhaps or Fade In (1969) or whether it should never be seen.

Imagine my surprise to find a highly entertaining picture best described as a one-man caper that takes aim at the Establishment and the Media, wrapped in a very witty rom-com, and helped along by the kind of Whitehall characters making a meal out of doing nothing as lampooned in BBC TV series Yes, Minister.

The central conceit sounds so lame from the outset that you think this confection is going to collapse the minute it is put into practice, but, in fact, a good few twists inflate the idea until it floats along quite merrily towards a happy conclusion. And if you only remember James Mason from dour turns in The Deadly Affair (1967) or as the smarmy villain in North by Northwest (1959), you’re in for a treat.

For this is the actor at his most winning, so charming he almost edges into the adorable class, and this while playing a rake, the seducer’s seducer, but with the quickest of quick wits to get him out of any scrape. We begin and end with a demonstration of such speedy thinking.

Surprised by the return of his latest conquest’s husband, Commander Max “Rammer” (the nickname nothing to do with sexual prowess) Easton simply dons his naval uniform, whisks up the woman’s dog, his presence explained as delivering a poor creature lost in the street. As easy as pie.

His life is one of ease. When he says he works at the Admiralty, “working” might be a stretch, although “lolling about” would hardly be in the job description, the sole purpose of his desk somewhere to lay his feet, and has an airy dismissal at hand for any Whitehall buffoon inclined to pepper their language with Civil Service gobbledegook.

Bumping into an old war chum Sir Charles Holland (George Sanders), now an ambassador, they were submarine commanders in World War Two, allows him brief acquaintance with American widow Virgina (Vera Miles). Naturally, he snaffles one of her gloves so as to have an excuse to return it. Realizing his game, she bats him back with effortless repartee, saving for the last the fact that she is engaged to be married to Sir Charles.

Given he is so practised at this game, he manages to inveigle his way into her life – Sir Charles away on urgent business – determines that her fiance’s main attraction is his dosh, and comes up with a barmy scheme to put himself in the wealthy category. His notion is to pretend to be a spy, drop a top secret document down behind a filing cabinet, vanish to a remote Scottish island, wait for his colleagues to raise the alarm, someone discover the document is missing, and the newspapers to brand him a traitor, at which point he will pop back up and sue the media for libel, and become rich enough to suit Virginia.

Yep, it seems a crazy notion, especially as Virginia, though clearly enjoying his company, has kept him at a decided arm’s length. Unfortunately, once the hue-and-cry is raised, Virginia makes the mistake of telling her husband it’s all a big con. But that puts Sir Charles in a bind, because to fess up might put his fiancé, and by extension himself, in a difficult position.

So they do nothing. Meanwhile, on his deserted tiny island off the coast of Scotland, Easton is living it up, dining off his ample supplies, occasionally catching a fish or a lobster, certainly enough booze to keep up his spirits, tuning into the radio to keep up with the news, waving half-heartedly at any passing ship, rehearsing his lines for when he is rescued. He’s even brought along a canister of petrol so he will have no trouble lighting damp driftwood and seaweed to make the bonfire he will require to attract attention.

So far, so barmy. But now the first twist. He chucks into the sea all evidence of his high living. He slips on a rock, falls into the water and the precious fuel sinks to the bottom. Now, he is a genuine castaway, soaked, starving, freezing. Second twist, the passengers on the boat that turns up to rescue him greet him by name.

So now we’re in for a devilish third act, the cops tipped the nod without getting the full story, Virginia the obvious culprit, Easton, back to the wall, requiring some fiendish ingenuity to get himself out of the mess. After a bundle of twists coming quick and fast, the romantic entanglement is disentangled, Easton still set to be rich by selling his tale (“the real true story” i.e. fictional hogwash) to the media who no doubt toss in a sweetener in gratitude for not being sued.

Not only is it delivered in effortless style by director Guy Hamilton (The Battle of Britain, 1969), and Mason at the top of his game, matched by Vera Miles (Psycho, 1960), but it is very short, clocking in at just over 90 minutes. Roger MacDougall (The Man in the White Suit, 1951), Ivan Foxwell (Tiara Tahiti, 1962) and the director concocted the screenplay from the novel by Paul Somers.

Great fun, the repartee and the final third an absolute treat while poking gentle fun at the Establishment.

Rather than belonging to the “lost” category, it sits comfortably in the “they don’t make ‘em like that anymore” section.

Marnie (1964) *****

Arguably Alfred Hitchcock’s most difficult film and with some attitudes that will not sit well with today’s audiences nonetheless this is an assured work and the completion of an unofficial trilogy that tries to explain the unexplainable. The director had not been making what might be termed traditional Hitchcock pictures for well over half a decade if you take North by Northwest (1959) as the anomaly in a sequence that began with the obsessive Vertigo (1958). You could argue that Hitchcock had turned a bit “north by northwest” himself, the “hero” of Psycho (1960) a mother-obsessed serial killer, the “bad guys” in The Birds (1963) the titular rapacious creatures who besiege the leading characters and set the world on an apocalyptical course.

Attempts are made in both Psycho and The Birds to explain the actions of the predators, but such explanations are external, remote, and with Marnie Hitchcock takes the bold step of attempting to explain what makes such a devious, compulsive, frigid liar tick. Hitchcock called the movie a “sex mystery” but it was unclear whether he was just once again trying to tantalize his audience or whether he believed it was film about the mystery of sex, what causes attraction between two people while others steadfastly refuse to consider the concept. To embellish his thesis he chose one of the world’s most beautiful actresses (Tippi Hedren) and the actor (Sean Connery) who could easily lay claim to being the world’s sexiest man (as he was later anointed in various polls).

It seemed almost an indecent proposal to deny the bed-hopper-par-excellence – as viewed from the James Bond perspective. And it certainly took all the charm Connery could muster to prevent audiences baulking at the almost perverse scientific aspects of his character, an amateur zoologist who welcomed a known criminal into his world for the chance to examine her at close quarters. The audience is constantly kept at one remove. In the first section we watch enthralled as Hedren carries out her bold thefts, as if she is capable of wrapping the entire male population around her little finger by the simple device of adjusting her skirt.

But in the middle section, it is Connery who is in control and the trapped Hedren who is twisting and turning searching for an escape route. In the final section, when it is clear that is the lover, not the scientist, in Connery that tries to find a way round the problem, the tension is at its height because we have no idea whether she will run true to form and manage to steal and lie her way out or whether Connery’s patience will snap and he will throw her to the wolves who are certainly by this point circling.

The central device on which Hitchcock hooked an audience was the moviegoer demand for a happy ending. He duped cinemagoers in Psycho, slaughtering the heroine halfway through. In The Birds Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren underwent a harrowing physical assault and while clearly romantically involved by the end Hedren was a wreck. Here, the assaults are mental. There is none of the romantic banter that defines the greatest of his traditional works. Hedren and Connery are together because he has forced the issue and loving though his blackmail is it is still an unequal relationship and one from which she will seek to escape at every opportunity. Hedren’s compulsive character is a mystery that appears insoluble as she resists every attempt to break down the wall she has erected to protect herself from her past.

The story is straightforward with few of the twists of other pictures. We meet Hedren as she escapes with nearly $10,000 stolen from her employers. We learn quickly that she is a master of disguise, has several social security cards up her sleeve, can turn from brunette to blonde, and is so practiced in her deception that she can convince an employer to take her on without references. As the employer is spelling out his predicament to the police, an amused Sean Connery, a customer of her employer, appears. Hedren runs off to a bolt-hole, an upmarket hotel, close to the stables where she keeps a horse, Forio.

Shifting back to Hedren we find her visiting her mother in a tawdry street near the docks. The artifice of confidence is shredded away. She is jealous of the attention her mother gives a little girl whom she looks after. She wants love that her mother is unable to give. When she lays her head on her mother’s lap waiting for the soothing stroke of a hand all she receives is rebuke for leaning too heavily on her mother’s sore leg. The mother in North by Northwest was played for comedy, in Psycho an occasion for murder, and here a means of control. Here, too, we witness the color red sparking an inexplicable and frightening experience.

When Hedren applies for a new job it is at Connery’s firm, where he is the coming man. He watches amused as she is interviewed, intervenes to ensure she is hired. They have in common that they are widowed. Hedren is already planning her next big score, discovering that the combination to the safe is kept in a drawer to which her employer’s secretary has the key.

But he is ready for her and it seems almost perverse that he does not let her know he is aware of her true identity. Instead, under the guise of asking her to work overtime, he gives her an academic paper to type. The subject is predators, “the criminals of the animal world” in which females feature. His gentle pressure is almost sadistic and she is saved by a sudden storm which triggers another bad subconscious reaction.

Her theft of money from the office is a classic Hitchcock scene. It begins in complete silence. The screen is divided in two, the office and the corridor. Seeing a cleaner appear, Hedren removes her shoes to make her getaway. Almost as she reaches the safety of the stairs, a shoe falls out of her pocket and clatters on the floor. The cleaner does not look up. She is very hard of hearing.

But Connery is again prepared and when she disappears tracks her to her bolt-hole, confronts her, questioning her again and again until he thinks he is close to the truth. He can’t turn her in because he has fallen in love. The choice is stark – him or the police. Soon they are married. But the honeymoon, despite his patience, is a disaster, she cannot “bear to be handled” and they return home further apart than ever.

Meanwhile, figures from her past begin to appear. Lil (Diane Baker) who lusts after Connery brings peril to their door. Connery persists with trying to get Hedren to open up.

Eventually, there is a break in her compulsive syndrome, brought on by love, and we head back to her mother’s to get to the root of the problem. Even when the problem is solved her mother remains distant, still won’t stroke her hair. If there is a happy ending it is like that of The Birds, an immediate problem solved but who knows when or if the crows will return, and there is a similar resolution here, Hedren learns the source of her nightmares but it would be a very blind person who did not see terrible ramifications for the future.

There are certainly a few jarring moments, Hitchcock’s insistence on back projection for a start, but then you didn’t really think in North by Northwest that the director was allowed to film in front of the United Nations. Rather than a technical flaw, the back projection seems to fit another purpose, a device to make the audience stop and examine what is going on for much of it occurs when Hedren is in her fantasy world. And you would have to take exception to Coonery’s actions in the bedroom on honeymoon, no matter how gentle his caresses at other times. And certainly, the psychological assumptions ring hollow given our current knowledge of such conditions, but despite that make for tense viewing.

But the meat of the movie is self-deception. Hedren is convinced she can get away with a series of thefts. Connery is convinced her can cure her. His constant interrogation is what passes for lovers’ banter. In aligning himself as her moral guardian and perhaps her savior, “dying to play doctor,” Connery has entered a nightmare of his own making. Only an arrogant man would believe all women would fall at his feet and Hitchcock clearly makes a connection with Connery’s ongoing incarnation as James Bond where that is exactly the case. Connery is every bit as flawed, as obsessive, as Scottie in Vertigo, determined to shape a woman into perfect form, and that, yes, expecting to eradicate the imperfect past.

Connery emanated such ease, such amazing grace, on the screen that it backfired. Critics often didn’t believe he was putting much into his acting when in reality he was acting his socks off. This is a tremendously difficult part, walking the tightrope between looking a deluded fool and retaining audience empathy and coming across badly when he pushed a vulnerable woman too hard. This is a very rounded character, a gentle adoring lover in the main, but not one to be crossed. His interrogations are intense and yet still you can see that it will kill him if he is double-crossed. The casual amusement with which he greeted her appearance at his office is replaced by fear at her sudden departure.

Hedren, too, whose acting ability was often called into question, carries on where she left off from in The Birds. By the end of that picture her nerves had been shredded. Here, her emotions, which she cannot as easily control as the rest of her life, too often fly off into a high pitch. Half the time she is the cool collected customer of The Birds, the rest of the time she is demented. Except in The Birds she was self-confident around men. Any self-assurance she has now is skin deep. There was always a fragility about Hedren, hidden behind the glossy exterior and fashionable outfits, and here it is exposed. The touching scenes with her mother, the mouth tightened in jealousy over the little girl, are perfectly played. A little girl lost in wolf’s clothing. And trapped, she is almost snarling at her captor, the submissive dialog concealing the mind hard at work looking for an exit.

The interrogative scenes between Connery and Hedren are extremely difficult to pull off. It would have been easier if Connery was not in love with her, and to some extent pulled his punches. It would be easier for her if he was an out-and-out predator who could be paid in kind to shut up and go away. Instead, they both have to walk a verbal tightrope and only actors of some excellence can pull off that trick without losing the audience.

55 Days at Peking (1963) ***

Imperialism is hard to stomach these days but at the start of the twentieth century it was rampant and not restricted to the main culprit, the British. China was Imperialism Central, round about a dozen nations including the USA and Russia claiming control of sections of the country or its produce. So they had all set up diplomatic shop in Peking. And the film begins with an early morning roll call of national anthems before this domination by outside interests is shattered by rebellion.

Just as hard to stomach, of course, was the movie mainstream notion in those days that all rebellions must perforce be put down regardless of how put-upon the peasant classes were. Audiences had to rally round people in other circumstances they would naturally hate. So one of the problems of 55 Days at Peking is to cast the rebels (known as Boxers) and the complicit Chinese government in a bad light while ensuring that those under siege are not seen as cast-iron saints. There’s no getting round the fact that the rebels are shown as prone to butchery and slaughter while the Chinese rulers are considered ineffective and traitorous.

So it’s left to the likes of Major Mark Lewis (Charlton Heston) heading up the U.S. Marines stationed in the city to bring some balance to proceedings. “Don’t get the idea you’re better than these people because they can’t speak English,” he expounds. British Consul Sir David Robertson (David Niven) tries to keep this particular league of nations onside while negotiating with one hand tied behind his back – “we must play this game by Chinese rules” – with the Chinese Dowager Empress Tzu-Hsi (Flora Robson) while knowingly endangering his wife Lady Sarah (Elizabeth Sellars) and two children. Unscrupulous Russian baroness Natalie Ivanoff (Ava Gardner) exhibits little loyalty to her home country.

The picture is one-part action, one-part politics and one-part domesticity, if you include in the last section the major’s romance with the baroness, the consul’s guilt when his son is wounded in an attack and Lewis’s conflict over a young native girl fathered by one of his own men who is then killed. Two of the best scenes are these men coping with parental obligation, Sir Arthur managing a wounded son, Lewis finding it impossible to offer succor to the child.

The action is extremely well-handled. The siege goes on longer than expected when the expected troops fail to arrive, tension rising as casualties mount and supplies fall low. As with the best battle pictures, clever maneuvers save the day. Two sections are outstanding. The first has Lewis marshalling artillery to prevent the Chinese gaining the high ground. The second is a daring raid – Sir Arthur’s idea, actually – through the city’s sewers to the enemy’s ammunition dump. Personal heroism is limited – Lewis volunteers to go 70 miles through enemy territory to get help but has to turn back when his men are wounded or killed.

There’s a fair bit of stiff upper lip but while Lewis, in familiar chest-baring mode, has the baroness to distract him, Sir Arthur is both clever, constantly having to outwit the opposition and hold the other diplomats together, and humane, drawn into desperation at the prospect of his comatose son dying without ever having visited England. The baroness moves from seducer to sly traitorous devil to angel of mercy, wapping glamorous outfits for a nurse’s uniform, at the same time as changing her outlook from selfish to unselfish.

Charlton Heston (Diamond Head, 1962), David Niven (Eye of the Devil, 1966) and Ava Gardner (The Angel Wore Red, 1960) acquit themselves well as does Flora Robson (Eye of the Devil) in a thankless role. In supporting roles are John Ireland (The Swiss Conspiracy, 1976), Harry Andrews (The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1968) and Leo Genn (Ten Little Indians, 1965).

This was the third of maverick producer Samuel Bronston’s big-budget epics after King of Kings (1961) and El Cid (1961) with a script as usual from Philip Yordan – sharing the credit with Robert Hamer (Kind Hearts and Coronets, 1949) and Bernard Gordon (Custer of the West, 1967) – and directed by Nicholas Ray (King of Kings) who also had assistance from Guy Green (Diamond Head).and Andrew Marton (Africa: Texas Style, 1967)

All in all it is a decent film and does not get bogged down in politics and the characters do come alive but at the back of your mind you can’t help thinking this is the wrong mindset, in retrospect, for the basis of a picture.

Age of Consent (1969) ***

Reputations were made and broken on this tale of a jaded artist returning to his homeland to rediscover his mojo. Director Michael Powell had, in tandem with partner Emeric Pressburger, created some of the most acclaimed films of the 1940s – A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948) – but the partnership had ended the next decade. Powell’s solo effort Peeping Tom (1960) was greeted with a revulsion from which his career never recovered. Age of Consent was his penultimate picture but the extensive nudity and the age gap between the principals left critics shaking their heads.

For Helen Mirren, on the other hand, it was a triumphant start to a career that has now spanned over half a century, one Oscar and three nominations. She was a burgeoning theatrical talent at the Royal Shakespeare Company when she made her movie debut as Mason’s muse. It should also be pointed out that when it came to scene-stealing she had a rival in the pooch Godfrey.

You would rightly be concerned that there was some grooming going on. Although 24 at the time of the film’s release, Cora (Helen Mirren), an under-age nymph, spends a great deal of time innocently cavorting naked in the sea off the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. But there are a couple of provisos. In the first place, Cora was not swimming for pleasure, she was diving for seafood to augment her impoverished lifestyle. In the second place, she was so poor she would hardly have afforded a bikini and was the kind of free spirit anyway who might have shucked one off.

Thirdly, and more importantly, artist Bradley Morahan (James Mason) wasn’t interested. He wasn’t the kind of painter who needed to perve on young girls. An early scene showed him in bed with a girlfriend and it was clear that he was an object of lust elsewhere. Morahan, fit and tanned, obsessed like any other artist about his talent, and was in this remote stretch not to hunt for young naked girls but to find inspiration. As well as eventually painting Cora, he also transforms the shack he rents into something of beauty.

Morahan is vital to Cora’s self-development. The money he pays her for modelling goes towards her escape fund. Her mother being a useless thieving alcoholic, she has little in the way of role model. And the world of seafood supply is competitive. She is lost in paradise and the scene of her buying a tacky handbag demonstrates the extent of her initial ambition. Although her physical attributes attract male attention, it is only on forming a relationship with the painter that Cora begins to believe in herself. There’s not much more to the central story than the artist rediscovering his creative spark and helping Cora’s personal development along the way.

Morahan is a believable character. He is not an impoverished artist. Far from being self-deluded, he is a questing individual, turning his back on easy money and the temptations of big city life in order to reinvent himself. He isn’t going to starve and he has no problems with women. And he is perfectly capable of looking after himself. A more rounded artist would be hard to find. Precisely because there is no sexual relationship with Cora, the movie, as a film about character development, is ideally balanced.

The movie is gorgeously filmed, with many aerial shots of the reef and underwater photography by Ron and Valerie Taylor.

What does let the show down is a proliferation of cliched characters who over-act. Nat Kelly (Jack McGowran), sponging friend, ruthless seducer and thief, leads that list closely followed by Cora’s grandmother (Neva Carr-Glynn) who looks like a reject from a Dickens novel. There’s also a dumb and dumber cop and a neighbor so bent on sex that she falls for Kelly. It’s not the first time that comedy has got in the way of art, but it’s a shame it had to interrupt so often what is otherwise a touching film.

At its heart is a portrait of the artist as an older man and his sensitive relationship with a young girl. In later years, Powell married film editor Thelma Schoonmaker and after his death she oversaw the restoration of Age of Consent, with eight minutes added and the Stanley Myers score replaced by the original by Peter Sculthorpe.

Unusually sensitive screenplay from Peter Yeldham who, as my readers will know, is more usually associated with Harry Alan Towers productions like Bang! Bang! You’re Dead / Our Man in Marrakesh (1966), based on the novel by Norman Lindsay.

Intriguing, occasionally moving, superb debut from Mirren plus it works.

The Magic Sword (1962) ***

Where’s Ray Harryhausen when you need him? Not much wrong in this fun low-budget adventure that a few doses of Dynamation wouldn’t fix. While it means the monsters don’t cut it – man in mask with a dodgy perm playing an ogre, two-headed dragon whose flames appear superimposed – the rest of it is as up to scratch as you might expect from a genre that relies on exploiting old myths.

And we do get a look at Gary Lockwood (The Model Shop, 1969) in embryo and Basil Rathbone (The Comedy of Terrors, 1963) having a whale of a time as a villain who somehow (point plot not explained) has lost his magic ring. That means he’s going to strike a deal with loathsome knight Sir Branton (Liam Sullivan) – who happened across it (plot point unexplained) – to kidnap Princess Helene (Anne Helm). He’s somewhat hindered in explaining his plans because his voice is often drowned out by the thunder he can summon just by lifting his arms.

But it’s magic vs. magic as the pair come up against sorceress Sybil’s (Estelle Winwood) adopted son Sir George (Gary Lockwood) who’s stolen a set of enchanted artefacts including the titular sword, armor, a shield and the fastest horse in the world and heads off to rescue fair maiden from the castle of Lodac (Basil Rathbone) where the aforementioned dragon is on a steady diet of consuming a human being (or two, if twins or sisters are to hand) once a week.

Sybil, who seems to exist in some kind of darkroom, constantly lit by red, is a hoot, when not turning herself into a cat, unable to recall spells, not surprising since her memory has to span 300 years. Her coterie includes a chimp who does nothing (what’s the point of that, you might wonder, though perhaps magic is involved in just getting it to sit still) and a two-headed man, both faces speaking the same words at the same time.

There’s a tilt at a magnificent seven scenario as Sir George brings to life six sidekicks, a multi-cultural melange if ever, or a stab at attracting audiences from six different countries if you like. You need to be mob-handed at this game because the bunch, assisted or sabotaged by the accompanying Sir Branton, need to overcome The Seven Curses of Ladoc (the film’s alternative title in various parts), including the ogre and a malodorous swamp, and sure enough those dangers soon cut the motley band down to size.

Meanwhile, the imprisoned princess has watched the dragon eat, and is tormented by dwarves (though the caged elves turn out to be friendlier). There’s going to be two showdowns, not one, since Lodac has no intention of allowing Sir Branton the glory of rescuing said princess and therefore winning her hand in marriage. He is hell-bent on revenge, since the king’s father had burned his sister at the stake as a witch.

The meet-cute if you like is princess and potential rescuer facing each other across a dungeon while tethered by rope to stakes. Sybil does try to help but damned if she can remember the final words of her spell.

Gary Lockwood, in his first leading role, takes the whole thing seriously, and only made two more films before something in this role and It Happened at the World’s Fair (1963) and Firecreek (1967) tipped off Stanley Kubrick that here was a star in the making for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). So it does show that no part, however preposterous, is worth turning down.

Basil Rathbone would steal the show – as he should being top-billed – were it not for the fun-loving Estelle Winwood (Games, 1967) as the dotty aunt kind of sorceress. What Hollywood dictat I wonder determined that leading actresses often made their entrance swimming naked in a pool. Anne Helm (The Interns, 1962) doesn’t have much to do except look scared. You might spot Danielle De Metz (The Scorpio Letters, 1967).

With Sybil to dupe, all the curses to overcome and deal with the duplicitous Sir Branton, the pace never lets up. And it’s short (just 80 minutes) so no time for dawdling.

Director Bert I. Gordon (The Amazing Colossal Man, 1957) has been here before with the special effects that appear dodgy to the contemporary eye but were ground-breaking at the time when SFX did not command multi-million-dollar budgets. Screenplay by Gordon and Oscar-nominated Bernard C. Schoenfeld (13 West Street, 1962).

While Harryhausen tales were always redeemed by the special effects, this is perfectly acceptable late-night entertainment when the critical guard is down.

Model Shop (1969) ***

Surprising number of similarities to The Appointment (1969), including the aura of seediness, but lacking that film’s inherent tension or style. Lola (Anouk Aimee) is another model pursued by a another man who catches a glimpse of her in the street as in the Lumet affair. But it turns out a “model shop” is a tacky dive where men pay to take photographs of semi-naked women rather than anything to do with haute couture.

Lola is as depressed as Carla in The Appointment and for the same reason, abandoned by her boyfriend, who has gone off to gamble in Las Vegas. But new lover George (Gary Lockwood) is the antithesis of the successful Omar Sharif. You are inclined to give him a free pass because he’s got the draft hanging over him.

If he was disaffected, that could explain it. But he’s just bone idle, sponging off everyone in sight, musician friends and more ambitious girlfriend Gloria (Alexandra Hay), an actual model, though more in the commercial line than high fashion, but bringing in enough to pay his bills.

You might feel sorry for him that “the man” is trying to repossess his car until you see it’s an MG coupe that an unemployed guy could not afford and that when he does get enough cash to pay the outstanding payment he comes up with another excuse rather than parting with the money. He studied architecture but hasn’t the gumption to make his way in the adult world whereas Gloria accepts she might have to sit in a bathtub naked for a potential client if she wants to get on.

He won’t marry Gloria or give her a child so she’s full of empty threats to leave him but doesn’t carry that out until she discovers photos of Lola that he’s left lying around. There’s not much going on. It’s certainly a downmarket world. George and Gloria lived in a rundown suburb of Los Angeles with a pumpjack drilling for oil outside their front door.

A good chunk of time is spent on the road, not “out along the highway looking for adventure” as in Easy Rider (1969) and not in the great outdoors, but mindless drifting, or tailing Lola, around L.A.. There’s some kind of deadline on their romance – she’s headed home to France, his call-up is immediately imminent so unless there’s some expose of the seedier side of the city going on there’s not much else, just two people who lost their way finding brief solace in each other.

Anyone attracted by Anouk Aimee’s top billing is going to be disappointed, not in her performance, which reveals a markedly vulnerable gal beneath the glam (though she does dress haute couture). But Gary Lockwood (They Came to Rob Las Vegas, 1968) is front and central; she doesn’t turn up until about a third of the way through and only has a handful of scenes thereafter. So it’s that kind of slice-of-life movie, what the British used to term a “kitchen sink” picture, and takes place over a short time-span.

Gary Lockwood is excellent but he’s not asked to do very much, and you kind of get the impression he’s just being his charming self. Aimee seems to have cornered the market in playing “degrading” women, accused of being a sex worker in The Appointment and loaned out to high-class friends of her husband in Justine (1969). In some senses, bringing out the character behind the tawdry image appears her forte. Alexandra Hay (Skidoo, 1968) is equally good, the grit behind the glam, not just a pretty face.

But just nothing happens. The background – the draft, potential Vietnam peace talks, the occasional joint – is scarcely a visceral snapshot of America at the time. European director looks at America and doesn’t much like what he sees, but less obviously a commentary on society along the lines of Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point the following year or even the home-grown Medium Cool (1969).

And lacking the style of Demy’s previous outing, the exuberant musical The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) and you keep on expecting – hoping – the characters are going to burst into song. Oddly enough, it suffers from an unexpected culture clash. Relocate the same characters and the same story to Paris, speaking French with subtitles, and it would have worked better no matter how slight the story because it would automatically be infected by Gallic charm and even the poorer streets there would be interesting.

Carole Eastman (Five Easy Pieces, 1970) a.k.a. Adrien Joyce contributed to Demy’s screenplay. Members of rock band Spirit appear in the film and provide several tracks but there was no soundtrack album to take advantage of their involvement.

You might be interested to know that Harrison Ford was at one time up to play the lead. Hay was a starlet under contract to Columbia who financed the film. Equally oddly, it was not sufficiently arthouse to appeal to the cognoscenti and it was little surprise that the studio eventually chose to promote the seedier aspects in the marketing.

The Appointment (1969) ****

You can see why MGM dumped this. Just as easily as you can see its attraction for star Omar Sharif, his boldest-ever role, completely against type, burying the romantic hero in one fell swoop. It wasn’t just the arthouse pretensions – the absurdly long, by Hollywood standards, long shots held for an insanely long time and the greatest aerial shot, almost to the moon and back, ever devised – that made the studio cut and run faced with the impossibility of selling Omar Sharif as a creepy, repressed guy who drives his wife to suicide.

Luxuriant moustache trimmed to look like a ramrod British colonel, often bespectacled, unmarried middle-aged lawyer Federico (Omar Sharif) takes a fancy to the withdrawn Carla (Anouk Aimee), fiancée of legal buddy Renzo (Fausto Tozzi). She works as a model in a high-class fashion house.

So Federico is shocked to discover that Renzo has dumped her after discovering evidence, somewhat circumstantial it has to be said, that she moonlights as an equally high-class sex worker who takes occasional assignments from antiques dealer Emma (Lotte Lenya). Now that Carla is unencumbered in the marital stakes, Federico undertakes to discover whether the accusation is indeed correct. If not, then he reckons, she might well fall for him, if only on the rebound, after all he is very successful and, despite the geeky haircut and moustache, a handsome dude.

It’s left to your imagination whether Federico actually has sex with the young woman – who “could pass for 17” and arrives clutching schoolbooks – for whom he pays 100,000 lire (around $1,000) but my guess is he does, getting her to pretend he’s her Latin schoolmaster. So that’s the Omar Sharif romantic persona killed off right there and from then on it’s hard to muster any sympathy for the character, every bit as obsessive, say, as James Stewart in Vertigo (1958).

This has a Hitchcockian aura, an atmosphere of stealth and secrecy and chill. He ends up marrying her, turns into a control freak, refuses to let her go out to work, complains about her make-up, asks where she’s been. He gets it into his head that she’s back to her old tricks and rekindles the investigation. She becomes more withdrawn and eventually commits suicide. The ideal ending, the arthouse ending, would have left Federico forever puzzled, not knowing whether he had married a hooker or not, whether, for all his caution, he had been duped. But that’s not the way with what you would otherwise describe as a psychological thriller – calling it a big-budget arthouse picture from a major studio by a relatively unacclaimed (outside of The Pawnbroker, 1964) mainstream director would not be an option – so we get a twist at the end.

This isn’t your usual Italy either, it’s not set in a sun-drenched land with impeccable beaches and ladies wandering around with cleavage abounding. This is the Italy of traffic jams and rain and wind and huge brown waves battering the shore and buttoned-up women.

And audiences have rarely been presented with such a depressing insecure female character. You get the impression she wears fabulous clothes to hide, not glorify, her body. She might come across as playing with Federico, pretending to be asleep when he comes to bed during a romantic weekend on a remote island, the woman way out of his league who wants to keep him at a distance while she makes up her mind. But that interpretation would only be from Federico’s perspective. Otherwise, an attendant viewer would note that she doesn’t seem at all comfortable with life, and that abandoned by one lover without finding out why she can’t risk losing her heart to another.

Had this been made by Visconti or Antonioni (Blow-Up, 1966, went down a similar suspicious route) it might have been acceptable as a distribution vehicle for MGM (after all, they did pump millions into Zabriskie Point, 1970). The odd thing was, the arthouse mob didn’t like it either, showing disdain in the most publicly humiliating manner possible, audiences at Cannes booing it off the screen.

But once you accept the odd premise and equally fall in with the seedy character depicted by Omar Sharif, you begin to feel its power. The daring camerawork is exceptional, some of the scenes in extreme long shot contain as their essence elements of intimacy, and the world’s greatest aerial shot pulls away from the picture’s most romantic scene, as if giving indication of what is not well, rather than enveloping the characters with the usual background of nature at its most rapturous. And it’s pretty much silent, a John Barry theme dips in and out, but scarcely swells when it does, on a rare occasion, appear, so this plays out without much in the way of musical nods to the audience.

Outside of Lawrence of Arabia (1962), this is easily Omar Sharif’s greatest performance. His gamble in parlaying his box office marquee and universal romantic appeal (he appeared in Mayerling, the ultimate romantic tale, the same year) to take on this unappealing role showed a commitment to expanding his screen persona that went unrewarded. Anouk Aimee, anointed one of the screen’s biggest female romantic leads after the unexpected success of A Man and a Woman (1966), is also playing against type.

Sidney Lumet went through a distinctly lean period between The Pawnbroker and his 1970s output – The Anderson Tapes (1971), Serpico (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975) – and while The Pawnbroker presented an equally disaffected character he was crying out for your sympathy. You could almost view The Appointment as an exercise in style and the director trying to see, in terms of narrative and character, what he could get away with, and to become the director stars would trust when they wanted to shake up their screen persona – witness Sean Connery as a criminal and Al Pacino as a gay bank-robber.

Critics have avoided this like the plague – three reviews on imdb, only one on Rotten Tomatoes – so if that’s not a sign of being under-rated I don’t know what is.

It’s different for sure but that doesn’t make it any less worth seeing. And it would certainly fit in with the expectations of a contemporary audience.

Goodbye Charlie (1964) ***

Gender switch comedies were a rarity in Hollywood at this point though of course Billy Wilder had scored big with Some Like it Hot (1959) and I’m guessing the possibility of Tony Curtis repeating his drag act was an audience lure for this one. Alas, that wasn’t to be. This goes the other way. Or several other ways. A woman playing a man who is a woman. That would be catnip these days were it a transgender thing, but it ain’t.

Confused? So sex predator Charlie (a male) drowns while escaping enraged husband Sir Leopold (Walter Matthau) only to reappear, re-born or reincarnated (as the producers decide after googling it, sorry, after they look it up in a book) as a naked woman walking along the highway, rescued by the wealthy Bruce (Pat Boone) and delivered to the nearest house, Charlie’s own pad, now occupied by old buddy George (Tony Curtis).

There’s some light comedy as George tries to safely manhandle the unknown woman, clad only in Bruce’s coat (necessitating his later return of course) and gradually the surroundings seem over-familiar to the woman and then, shazam, George works out from what she knows about him that actually she must have returned as a man, also called Charlie (Debbie Reynolds).

A cosmic joke, in other words. The man who preyed upon women returning as a woman. See how he likes it to be on the receiving end of misogyny. But, mostly, he/she lolls around with legs spread like a man, gulps down whisky and is a dab hand at cards. But that’s not where the humor lies, apparently, because the movie moves on quickly from the woman acting the man and into the man-woman discovering all the female tricks of the trade, visiting a beauty parlor and the hairdresser. Charlie discovers it’s not the same fun slapping a woman’s backside – what a revelation – if you’re a woman.

But, basically, the female Charlie decides to become a female version of the male Charlie, the predator, ripping off friends, chasing the big money, trying to seduce Bruce. So, mostly, it’s one odd plot device after another.

But the sizzle is Debbie Reynolds, not so much the man-woman stuff, but turning into a mean Bette Davis character before your eyes, all hard-edge and shifty moves. There’s sexual tension as well, George initially resisting the woman he knows is or was a man, before finding the attraction too much, and the same going for Bruce. There’s a fair whack of sexual confusion, as the newborn Charlie still finds herself ogling women.

In those far more innocent times, it doesn’t know what it wants to say and lacks the narrative to say it. Audiences had terrific fun with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in Some Like it Hot, but that narrative ploy was bang on, and Lemmon enjoying dressing up as a woman and Curtis having to keep his male instincts at bay while ogling Marilyn Monroe was pure catnip.

Here, Curtis is mostly the foil for Debbie Reynolds and by the time it looks as though they might get it together she is way past behaving like a man and is most definitely a desirable woman so it’s kind of difficult to make this work romantically or humorously.

Perhaps the oddest element is that the signs were already there that it wouldn’t work that well. It started as a Broadway play written by George Axelrod (The Seven Year Itch, which was a Broadway smash) but it barely lasted a dozen weeks on stage. By that time, though, Twentieth Century Fox had splashed out $150,000 for the rights. Still, bigger sums have been buried in the annual accounts.

And I guess when Vincente Minelli (Two Weeks in Another Town, 1962) came on board with a pretty decent cast it seemed at least doable. Like many a lightweight comedy from the decade – Dear Brigitte (1965) for example – it’s keep afloat by a terrific performance by the principal star, in this case Debbie Reynolds (Divorce American Style, 1967). You might spot Ellen Burstyn (The Exorcist, 1973) in an early role.

Take away Debbie Reynolds and it would limp along.

The Pink Jungle (1968) ***

Near miss rather than the spectacular crash dive the poor box office returns suggested. Though it’s scarcely surfaced in five decades. Espionage adventure-cum-treasure hunt is slightly undone by knowing winks to the camera and it won’t take an eagle eye to spot that most of the action doesn’t take place in the jungle at all, although the title is explained in a clever twist at the end.

Shame the script goes AWOL and you might be left lamenting what might have been had it been a hit and the boost it could have given the careers of George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke, 1967), playing ebulliently against type, and Eva Renzi (A Taste of Excitement, 1967) who proved to have lot more screen charisma than her ensuing roles suggested. Not to mention James Garner (Duel at Diablo, 1966), marquee value taking a hit after a string of flops.

However, if you can accept James Garner as a fashion photographer, and a gag that sees all three male principals decked in out varying shades of lipstick, and shut out the noise of Garner’s character offering commentary on what is about to happen, it’s a pleasant, non-demanding ride, with a believable central romance.

And I learned diamond arithmetic: five carats equals one gram, 28 grams is one ounce so you’re talking a phenomenal amount for a diamond weighing a few ounces never mind a 20lb haul which is where the endless MacGuffins lead. And if Ann-Margret can elect to shoot a fashion spread against the backdrop of motocross (C.C. and Company, 1970), choosing the South American jungle as the ideal spot for a lipstick advert is scarcely a stretch.

The long-winded tale begins with photographer Ben (James Garner) having his consignment of lipstick confiscated by police chief Ortega (Michael Ansara) who suspects they conceal hidden microfilm from the C.I.A. for rebel insurgents. When model Alison (Eva Renzi) arrives by helicopter that’s promptly stolen by South African illegal diamond dealer Ryderbeit (George Kennedy). The stranded couple repair to the nearest town, followed by the cops and by a pair of thugs, where Ryderbeit connects them to Englishman Capt Stopes (George Rose) who boasts a map leading to the lost diamond haul.

There’s no great reason for Ben to get involved, and the script offers nothing compelling, but let’s go for the ride, so suitably prepared (cigars and whisky essentials apparently) they set off with mules into the desert (yep, no jungle) where the model demonstrates her rodeo skills. There, they encounter Australian McClune (Nigel Green), the supposed deceased partner of Stopes, but he dupes them, leaving them stranded without water or mules, in the desert and heads off to find the loot himself. Of course, that does mean he has to come back the same way so the inevitable shootout, compounded by villains and cops, ensues.

Though determinedly sluggish in parts and the introduction of McClune adding little to the scenario, for the most part, although treading a thin line between cliches, it’s enjoyable enough. Ben is surprisingly handy with his fists, Alison has unusual depths and Ryderbeit is an engaging conman.

For a time there’s a bit of a tussle over Alison, as she’s clearly at times more attracted to the “masterful” adventurer Ryderbeit, a cool dude especially when he demonstrates his dance moves, than the cynical Ben. McClune takes a more predatory interest in Alison. But the growing romance between Ben and Alison is gentle stuff and almost required acting of the highest caliber given that the two actors hated each other according to the scuttlebutt.

Guilty of over-plotting and trying hard not to take the scenario seriously enough, even when it’s clear it won’t work unless that does occur, and that as a previous Garner episode proved, as in A Man Could Get Killed (1966), you can easily skirt around dense narrative and espionage malarkey without getting too bogged down. Over-populated, though, with characters and accents vary.

I’m used to Garner’s schtick by now, but Eva Renzi and George Kennedy were revelations, as was Nigel Green (Fraulein Doktor, 1969) also having a ball as a duplicitous character far removed from his usual ramrod-straight persona.

Oscar-winning director Delbert Mann (Mister Buddwing / Buddwing, 1966) does his best but he could have moved it on a bit for the pace seriously slackens at times. Charles Williams (Joy House, 1964) contributed the screenplay based on the novel by namesake Alan Williams.

Far more enjoyable than I expected and worth it for Renzi and Kennedy.

PREVIOUSLY REVIEWED IN THE BLOG: James Garner in Cash McCall (1960), The Wheeler Dealers (1963), Move Over, Darling (1963), The Americanization of Emily (1964), 36 Hours (1965), The Art of Love (1965), A Man Could Get Killed (1966), Duel at Diablo (1966), Buddwing/Mister Buddwing (1966), Grand Prix (1967), Hour of the Gun (1967), Marlowe (1969); Eva Renzi in Taste of Excitement (1969); George Kennedy in Lonely Are the Brave (1962); Charade (1963), In Harm’s Way (1965), Mirage (1965), Shenandoah (1965), The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), The Flight of the Phoenix (1965), Hurry Sundown (1967), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Bandolero! (1968), Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969); Delbert Mann directed A Gathering of Eagles (1963), Buddwing/Mister Buddwing (1966), Fitzwilly/Fitzwilly Strikes Back (1967).

C.C. and Company (1970) *

Just terrible. Not even the presence of Ann-Margret (The Swinger, 1966) can save this. Scarcely a single redeeming feature and nothing that might lend itself to shift it into the So Bad It’s Good category. In fact, you would probably put it in a lower class, the So Bad It’s Worse Than You Can Possibly Imagine strata. Little seen for over half a century, and small wonder.

And, boy, did Ann-Margret need a hit after a three-year self-imposed exile in Italy, where she earned big bucks for pictures that hardly got a sniff on the U.S. release circuit, putting an almighty dent in her marquee value. In theory, she should have returned home with a bang, as female lead in a Stanley Kramer production, R.P.M. (1970), the most prestigious picture she had ever been associated with, and easily the best director. But that, riding the counter-culture wave, was a big flop.

This was her second attempt at counter-culture. Motorbike sagas were bankable after the success of Easy Rider (1969) and even as B-pictures had attracted decent audiences for the likes of The Wild Angels (1967) and Run, Angel, Run (1969).

But this was saddled with a terrible star in Joe Namath, and a terrible script by Roger Smith (The First Time, 1969), Ann-Margret’s husband-manager, that puts the wild boys of the highways in a motocross competition, swapping their high-powered bikes for the much smaller Kawasaki engines used in that sport.

If you were American, Joe Namath was a god. If you were foreign, he was a nobody. One of the country’s greatest American football (not soccer!) players, he had made his movie debut in another flop, Norwood (1969). My guess is Ann-Margret was there to help out her husband, also the producer, and beef up the marquee.

But C.C. Ryder (Joe Namath) looks more like an overgrown schoolboy, hulking though he is, than a Hell’s Angel. For the lack of believability he invests in the role you would have done as well with pop star Fabian (Ten Little Indians, 1965).

Anyway, on with the barmy story. So, fashion director Ann (Ann-Margret) has the bright idea, as fashion directors did in those days, of setting up a shoot against the backdrop of a motocross event, kind of like Zabriskie Point (1970) but with bikes. On the way, her car breaks down. The two passing bikers who come to her rescue have something else in mind and she is only saved from rape by the intervention of Ryder.

He belongs to a biking troupe headed by Moon (William Smith), the misogynist’s misogynist, who slaps his women around and sends them out to prostitute themselves on the highways because unlike the enterprising chaps from Easy Rider he’s not got the brains to set up a drugs operation. Then he gets the inspired notion of picking up easy money by sending his guys to compete in the motocross competition because, surely, them being serious motorbike freaks they can beat the hell out of any professional motocross rider who does this for a living.

No doubt audiences will be rooting for the amateurs the way they do for the young kids in other movies that need to put on their own show to save an orphanage or the like.

Naturally, Ryder falls for Ann. Equally naturally, Moon doesn’t like that one bit. And so kidnaps Ann, ensuring Ryder comes to the rescue. Cue a showdown. No doubt we’ll see an almighty battle with chains and wrenches and surely there will be a flashing blade or two as this pair roll around in the dust.

Nope! Let’s just find a handy football stadium and race round the athletic dirt track. That’s bound to be more exciting. You would get more excitement watching goldfish in a bowl.

Theoretically, the combination of Namath and Ann-Margret should have reached the incendiary levels of football star Jim Brown’s sexual tussle with Raquel Welch in 100 Rifles (1969). Nope. Namath has all the screen charisma of a beetle and there’s nothing Ann-Margret can do to help that. You couldn’t have wasted her first nude scene on someone less deserving.

As you might expect, Ann-Margret does get to dance, but for some reason the camera is more focused on Namath who is lacking in the shake-your-booty department.

There is one decent scene and one interesting shot. Unfortunately, the only good scene is the opener, giving a false sense that this might be an interesting picture. It involves Namath “grazing” his way round a supermarket, making up a sandwich from easily available ingredients, even stealing a tissue from a box to wipe his lips. What a rascal, no wonder everyone would be terrified of such a biker. And in the climactic race one of the bikers hits a fence that collapses concertina style.

But that’s it, a 94-minute vanity project that killed off Namath’s movie career and nearly put the kibosh on Ann-Margret’s. You can’t really blame television director Seymour Robbie (Marco, 1973) for failing to improve the material or the stars.

Sometimes being a completist (in this case following Ann-Marget’s career) has its down side.

PREVIOUSLY REVIEWED IN THE BLOG: Ann-Margret in State Fair (1962), Viva Las Vegas (1964), Kitten with a Whip (1964), The Pleasure Seekers (1964), Bus Riley’s Back in Town (1965), Once a Thief (1965), The Cincinnati Kid (1965), Made in Paris (1966), The Swinger (1966), Stagecoach (1966), Appointment in Beirut/Rebus (1968), Criminal Affair/Criminal Symphony (1968).