movie review – Page 60 – The Magnificent 60s

Girl with a Pistol (1968) ****

Off-beat Oscar-nominated comedy-drama that is both a marvelous piece of whimsy and a slice of social realism set in the kind of Britain the tourist boards forget, all drizzle and grime. It zips from Edinburgh to Sheffield to Bath to London to Brighton to Jersey as if the characters had been dumped from an If It’s Tuesday It Must Be Belgium sketch. If your idea of Italy was Fellini’s glorious decadence or Hollywood romance amid historic ruins and fabulous beaches, then the upbringing of Assunta (Monica Vitti) is the repressive opposite.

All women in her small town wear black. Men are not allowed to dance with women and must make do with each other. A man like Vincenzo (Carlo Giuffre) desiring sex must kidnap a woman, in this case Assunta, to which she will consent as long as he marries her. When instead he runs off to Scotland, she is dishonored and must kill him, armed with the titular pistol.

Pursuit first takes her to Edinburgh and a job as a maid, has a hilarious encounter with a Scottish drunk, and various other cross-cultural misinterpretations – in a bar she cools herself down with an ice-cube then puts it back in the bucket. Then it’s off to Sheffield where she falls in with car mechanic Anthony Booth (television’s Till Death Do Us Part) because he is wearing Italian shoes.

She can’t imagine he can watch sport for two hours. “You’re a man, I’m a woman, nobody in the house and you look at the television.” Although tormented by images of being attacked back home by a screaming mob of black-robed women, she begins to shed her inhibitions, wearing trendier clothes, although an umbrella is essential in rain-drenched Britain and given the Italian preference for shooting exteriors.

In between sightings of Vincenzo there are episodes with a suicidal gay man (Corin Redgrave) and a doctor (Stanley Baker). She becomes a nurse, then a part-time model, sings Italian songs in an Italian restaurant, drives a white mini, wears a red curly wig and more extravagant fashions. It turns out she can’t shoot straight. Gradually, the mad chorus of home gives way to feminist self-assertion as she becomes less dependent on men and a world run by chauvinists. It’s a startling mixture of laugh-out-loud humor and social observation. And while the narrative that at times verges on the bizarre, Assunta’s actions all appear logical given her frame of mind.

Vitti was Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni’s muse (and companion) through L’Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961) and L’Eclisse (1962) to Red Desert (1964). She had a brief fling with the more commercial, though still somewhat arty, movie world in Joseph Losey’s Modesty Blaise (1966) and the nothing-artistic-about-it comedy On the Way to the Crusades (aka The Chastity Belt, 1968) with Tony Curtis. Director Mario Monicello had two Oscar nominations for writing but was best-known for Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958) and Casanova ’70 (1965). Girl with a Pistol was nominated in the Best Foreign Language film category at the Oscars.

Cold Sweat (1970) ***

One great scene doesn’t make a great movie, but I’ll tell you about it anyway and we can all wonder what went wrong with the rest of the picture. Through a swinging louvre door we catch glimpses of Joe (Charles Bronson) putting a headlock on a thug. The motion of the door slows down as the villain is slowly choked to death. As the door closes we cut to Joe’s terrified wife Fabienne (Liv Ullman) and watch her reaction as she hears the neck snap.

Pretty good, eh? If only the rest of the movie were in that class. Except for a rollicking good car chase, it’s hampered by an over-complicated plot, kidnappings in retaliation for kidnappings, a dippie hippie (Jill Ireland) and one of the worst accents you will ever hear – quite why director Terence Young (Mayerling, 1969) wasn’t able to tell James Mason that his American South impersonation didn’t cut it is anybody’s guess.

*Made before Bronson was a major global star, there’s a fair chance*
*the kung fu picture was a stronger attration.*

Joe charters out a yacht in the south of France, but prefers gambling and drinking to spending evenings with his wife. But then his past catches up with him. Cue complicated backstory – he was a soldier who got mixed up in a robbery but ran away from the theft when the going got tough and was the only one who escaped a jail term. Now his old buddies want revenge but will accept instead Joe doing another job for them.

Joe doesn’t agree so Captain Ross (James Mason) kidnaps his wife and child. So Joe kidnaps the captain’s girlfriend Moira (Jill Ireland), stashing her away in a remote cabin filled with creepy-crawlies where she has “nothing to eat but money.” So they do a trade, except Ross reneges, and then gets shot, potentially leaving wife and child at the mercy of his creepy sidekick.

There’s a fair bit of action, and when Joe is beating people up or driving like crazy over inhospitable terrain, it makes like a thriller but when he’s left to try and lift a flare gun up with his foot it’s on shakier territory. The two elements of the story split too quickly and while wife and daughter make the most of being scared out of their wits, terrified women aren’t what people come to see a Bronson picture for.

So it’s too much of a mixed bag. To compensate for the dire Mason (A Touch of Larceny, 1960), Liv Ullman offers a fresh perspective on the female lead in a Bronson picture, an actress who can actually act, her extremely expressive features meaning she doesn’t need to over-act. In her first mainstream picture, Ullman junks the Ingmar Bergman angst and comes across as a normal wife and mother thrown into a desperate situation. Her presence lightens up Bronson, though at this stage in his career, as evidenced by Someone Behind the Door (1970), Violent City / Family (1970) and Red Sun (1971), he presents quite a different screen persona to the grimacing/growling that was his post-Death Wish (1974) trademark.

Young seems caught between the action of his James Bond trilogy and the emotion-led drama of Mayerling and falls between two stools and hadn’t quite worked out how to get the best out of Bronson, a problem he rectified in Red Sun. Based, theoretically, on a novel by Richard Matheson (The Devil Rides Out, 1968), the screenplay has gone through too many hands, four at the last count, which probably accounts for the dodgy plot.

Not Bronson at his best, probably not a highlight of Ullman’s career either, and definitely a low point for Mason.

For Bronson completists only.

NOTE: There’s a vicious rumor going round, spread on Imdb, that this movie ended up on television only three days after cinematic release. Total nonsense of course. It was released in Britain in July 1973, gaining a two-week London West End run at the ABC-2 (“West End Soars, Variety, July 25, 1973, p19) and going out on a circuit release. It failed to find a U.S. distributor until 1974 in the wake of the success of Death Wish whne it was given a PG certificate by the Motion Picture Code and Rating Program and subsequently distributed by independents like Marcus Film and Emerson. It premiered in Denver – seen as a testing ground for difficult pictures, the city viewed “as a good barometer” of how movies will perform nationwide – in May 1974 (“Denver Used As Testing Ground For New Movies,” Box Office, May 20, 1974, pW4). Total rentals were estimated at around $250,000 (“Variety Chart Summary,” Variety, May 7, 1975, p134) and it placed 247^th in the chart. It made its U.S. television debut on ABC in February 1975. (“Only ABC Enters Second Season With Quantity of First-Run films,” Variety, January 29, 1975, p43) but didn’t score highly with viewers finishing in 119^th place for the year (“Theatrical Movie Rankings 1974-1975,” Variety, September 17, 1975, p40).

Machine Gun McCain (1969) ***

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.

Myra Breckenridge (1970) ***

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.

East of Sudan (1964) ***

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).

Action the old-fashioned way.

Raise the Titanic (1980) ****

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.

The Gallant Hours (1960) ***

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).

Not compelling, but interesting enough.

Mackenna’s Gold (1969) ***

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.

The Happy Thieves (1961) ****

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).

The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970) ****

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.