movie review – Page 70 – The Magnificent 60s

Cash McCall (1960) ***

As time wore on and attitudes to corporate skull-duggery hardened – Wall Street (1987), Other People’s Money (1991), The Big Short (2015) – it was no longer necessary to soften a venal character with romance. And I guess the ruthless Cash McCall (James Garner) falling in love with Lory (Natalie Wood), daughter of takeover target Grant (Dean Jagger), provides the movie with a soft underbelly, intended presumably to show the inhuman businessman’s more human side, but instead diverting the picture away from delivering a massive punch against the asset-stripping proliferating too fast in American business.

Otherwise, it is a good assessment of the double-dealing and pitiless behavior of business sharks preying on weaker businesses. Then complaining when the tables are turned. Anti-Trust investigators would have a field day, but I’m not sure if the U.S. Securities & Exchanges Commission, set up in the wake of the 1929 Wall St Crash, was as powerless as today, usually turning up when the damage is done rather than stepping into prevent it.

Grant decides to sell up when his biggest customer Schofield Industries, run by retired Army General Danvers (Roland Winters), holds him to ransom. Cash McCall swoops in but, after finding a flaw in Schofield Industries, determines through clever maneuver to add that to his mountain of companies and make an immediate $1 million profit on Grant’s company which he purchased for $2 million.

The romance resistance that is standard for such pictures pivots on Lory having been rejected (on a stormy night) by Cash the previous summer. Ironically (though I doubt if the makers noticed the irony), Lory is viewed as a bonus in the deal, Cash’s wealth making him an ideal catch in the eyes of her parents, despite the abhorrence he inspires.

A contemporary audience might expect her to be the fly in the ointment, especially as she owns ten per cent of her father’s company, offering an opportunity to stand up to Cash on principle. But that’s not envisaged here. And you can’t expect her, in those sexist times, of complaining that her father is depriving her of her inheritance and the chance to run a big company.

It’s at its best in the financial chicanery. Danvers comes unstuck when Cash discovers that Grant holds an unexpected ace and can run his company into the ground. Every time anyone tries to get the drop on Cash it turns out he owns their company or nullifies their intent by knowing what they’re up to. He recruits or increases the salary of anyone who stands in his way. Money not only talks it minimises and even forgives or elevates heinous action.

The only person who bests him is a hotel assistant manager Maude (Nina Foch) who, misreading the signals, believes herself to be his love interest. In revenge, she scuppers his burgeoning romance with Lory.

In fairness, Cash is as upfront about his intentions as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street. He describes himself as a “thoroughly vulgar character – I enjoy making money” while confessing he doesn’t buy businesses to run them but to sell them or break them up into more viable smaller pieces.

But the James Garner (The Americanization of Emily, 1964) charm gets in the way. He wants to have his cake eat it. Move into serious roles without falling foul of the public. Romance is seen as the tool.

Garner evolved a sneaky screen persona, attempting to be rascal who got away with it thanks to his charm, best personified in The Great Escape (1963) and The Americanization of Emily, in both films his escapades endorsed by the authorities. But it would be hard to find any redeeming qualities in a ruthless business buccaneer who exalted in the chaos he caused, little regard for the wrecked lives left in his wake.

The film attempts to get by this via the romance – a beautiful woman couldn’t possibly end up with a scoundrel, could she – and by setting up virtually every other character excepting Grant as dodgy (and even Grant ends up congratulating him on his clever schemes).

As an insight into corporate malfeasance, it’s interesting enough, and bold for the times, and certainly gets points for not falling back on the old trope of the little guy fighting big business. This features grown-ups knowing exactly what they are letting themselves in for.

A couple of sections jar – the flashback and a labored explanation that “Cash” is not a nickname but a Christian name. On the other hand, it could as easily be perceived as a romance that just happened to take place against the unusual backdrop of the boardroom.

It’s worth noting that Garner himself was not above unscrupulous dealing. Having convinced Warner Brothers to fund his first three movies, he then proceeded to sue the studio over his contract, leaving them with the bill for his flops.

Nina Foch (Spartacus, 1960) and Dean Jagger (Firecreek, 1968) are the pick of the supporting actors. The most interesting aspect of Joseph Pevney (The Plunderers, 1960) was that he directed a quartet of films in this single year and then not another for the rest of the decade.

The final screenplay from celebrated writer Lenore Coffee, whose career spanned forty years, an astonishing feat for a female in Hollywood, and was at one time the highest-paid screenwriter in the industry. It was co-written by Marion Hargrove (40 Pounds of Trouble, 1962) from the bestseller by Cameron Hawley.

Would have been a better picture if it had stuck to the knitting and not wandered into romance, so good in parts rather than a major success.

H.M.S. Defiant / Damn the Defiant! / The Mutineers (1962) ****

Had the audacity to take on Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) at the ticket wickets, beating that much-delayed production into cinemas in both Britain (where it was hugely successful, the ninth biggest film of the year) and the U.S. (less so). While in some respects young officer Lt Scott-Pagett (Dirk Bogarde) fits the Fletcher Christian template as the arrogant upstart, he is actually more of a Captain Bligh, mercilessly flogging his crew.

While Scott-Pagett is loathed by all, he is not the real cause of a mutiny. That had been a long time coming, thanks to inflation, poor conditions and a change in equipment that kept sailors at sea far longer than before.

Set in 1797 at the beginnings of the Napoleonic War, Captain Crawford (Alec Guinness) is tasked with escorting ships from Italy to England. He abhors unnecessary punishment and will even reduce the number of strokes to minimize human damage for a miscreant. But in taking his young son along on his first trip to sea, he becomes a hostage to fortune as Scott-Pagett finds any excuse to beat the lad.

Crawford has to tread carefully for his junior officer has powerful friends in London and been responsible for ensuring his previous commanders fell foul of the Admiralty. Even so, Scott-Pagett continually over-steps the mark, challenging his superior’s decisions, even disobeying orders, until he is finally brought to heel, humiliated and confined to quarters. That makes him even more determined to get his own way and bring down the captain. When Crawford is wounded in a battle with an enemy ship, Scott-Pagett takes over, only to unleash the wrath of the crew.

Never shying away from exposing the harsh life aboard – the actually mutiny sparked by a sailor forced to eat food riddled with worms – it also in mellower moments offers a fascinating glimpse of life at sea, the racing up the rigging, the dancing to a hornpipe. The sea battles, especially in the absence of CGI, are exceptionally well done, Captain Crawford’s men enduring terrific fusillades as they draw close enough to inflict damage.

Oddly enough, the situation only escalates into mutiny after a lesser rebellion, the equivalent these days of a strike, with a call for the entire Navy to down tools, fails to materialize. Rebel ideas clash with patriotism when the mutiny prevents delivery of vital information about a French invasion of England.

But the film also depicts the uneven power struggle. Sailors are completely impotent, on board a ship there’s no appeal to a higher power, while a captain hesitates before over-ruling an officer for fear it sends out the wrong signals about hierarchy and obedience to the general recruits.

The crux of the film is the duel between captain and lieutenant. Crawford can be undermined as long as his son is under the command of Scott-Pagett. Fellow officers would think twice about upsetting a man of such high breeding who has the ear of the powerful ashore.

The role was a very bold choice for British matinee idol Dirk Bogarde (The High Bright Sun, 1964). Having rid himself of his Rank contract, he had determined to act against type, a role as a sadistic officer, face twisted in constant sneer, was so far from the dashing heroes of previous films that there was a fair chance it would alienate his legion of fans as much as its predecessor Victim (1961) in which he played a blackmailed homosexual.

It was a bit of a swap for Alec Guinness who in Tunes of Glory (1960) had played the arrogant bully determined to bring down a superior officer. Both are excellent and the scenes between them are superb, one of the few times when two British actors of the highest caliber were affordable in a non-roadshow picture. But there’s also a rich supporting cast. Anthony Quayle (East of Sudan), more normally associated with officer roles, tones down the bombast to play an ordinary seamen, split between fomenting agitation and keeping his own supporters in check.

A bunch of rising stars making the most of the opportunity include Nigel Stock (The High Bright Sun), Ray Brooks (The Knack, 1965), Tom Bell (Lock Up Your Daughters!, 1969) and Johnny Briggs (The Devil-Ship Pirates, 1964) – all of whom would make bigger career strides in British television through, respective, Owen M.D. (1971-1973), Big Deal (1984-1986), Out (1978) and Coronation Street (1974-2006).

Lewis Gilbert (The 7^th Dawn, 1964) directed from a screenplay by Edmund North (Patton, 1970) and Nigel Kneale (Quatermass and the Pit, 1967) based on Mutiny by Frank Tilsley and completed by his son Vincent Tilsley. With a wealth of material, Gilbert proves adept at moving through the gears while not losing sight of the main drama.

Well worth a watch.

Prudence and the Pill (1968) ****

Cleverly calibrated chuckle-worthy comedy of manners. Far more enjoyable than the basic material might suggest, especially as you will easily guess where it all ends. Anchored by redemptive performances, after disappointing turns in The Eye of the Devil / 13 (1966), by Deborah Kerr and David Niven, playing a middle-aged upper-class childless couple whose marriage survives on civility alone, and a sparkling showing by Judy Geeson (Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, 1967).

It’s surprising what a fresh look at cliché can achieve. On the face of it, American director Fielder Cook (How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life, 1968) is the last person to be tackling the upper classes, especially as there’s scarcely a hint of satire. It’s wonderfully pitched, no sexist jokes, no farce, no tourist or Swinging London, and avoids the temptation of aiming for the lowest common denominator (Carry On Up the Pill for example). But authority is constantly confounded, pomposity pricked, and, astonishingly for a movie about relationships in Britain – the home of the kitchen sink drama – in the late Sixties, everyone ends up happier ever after.

The titular drug in question, in case that term is no longer in common usage, is the contraceptive pill, here sold under the generic name of Thelon. The biggest shocks here might well be that mothers and fathers in middle-age still have sex. Although that is balanced by a contemporary vibe of having children late in life.

So the fun begins when Henry (Robert Cooote) and Grace (Joyce Redman) discover bubbly daughter Geraldine (Judy Geeson) in bed with Tony (David Dundas). Cue howls of anger from staid parents, who divide up the ticking-off, the mother tasked with warning daughter about the dangers of pregnancy – and with it the specter of single motherhood, a high society no-no – the father to whip the young rascal.

The mother is only mollified – though still affronted at such blatant expression of sexuality – when she discovers her daughter is on the Pill. But shocked to discover Geraldine has been pilfering her own supply. Father is taken aback to discover the lover is not only heir to a fortune but has already proposed.

Unlike most movies of the era, where sexuality remained a dirty word, and most illicit romances were conducted in secrecy and ended up in disaster, the vivacious Geraldine could be the poster girl for sex. She is delighted to have lost her virginity, and to expand her sex education, and stands up against her mother’s old-fashioned views.

However, the replacement of mother’s Pill with aspirin presents a dilemma. Robert and Grace are also enthusiastic lovers and the absence of contraception for so long points towards the possibility of a very embarrassing pregnancy.

Meanwhile, Henry’s brother, bored company chairman Gerald (David Niven), who lives in a mansion with servants and swans around in a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce, discovers, to his horror, that his wife Prudence (Deborah Kerr) has been taking the Pill, denying him his much-cherished desire to have children. So he swaps it for a vitamin pill. Unknown to him, his young maid Rose (Vickery Turner), warming to the amorous attentions of the chauffeur Ted (Hugh Armstrong), has taken a leaf out of Geraldine’s book and snaffled her mistress’s Pill.

You can see where this is headed. But there’s a complication. Assuming (as a man would) that their lack of children was due to his wife’s infertility, Gerald could have had children by his younger mistress Elizabeth (Irina Demick). But he refuses to seek a divorce (the scandal, don’t you know) and Elizabeth views him as a poor candidate for marriage (would he not just have another mistress) and fatherhood.

Prudence, it soon transpires, also has a lover, Dr Huart (Keith Michell). Equally resistant to divorce, for societal reasons and to prevent her husband marrying his mistress, Prudence soon warms to the thought of having a child, but abhors the prospect of having Gerald as its father.

In the best Hitchcock fashion, the audience is privy to information denied the characters who fluster around in their incompetence.

It should never work. The story is so obvious and, from a narrative perspective – given unplanned pregnancy does not lead to dark deeds, humiliation and abandonment – weak. That it is pretty much a triumph owes as much to the direction (witty use of musical cues, for example) as a script that feasts on reversals. The acting is first-class all round. David Niven and Deborah Kerr, in their final pairing, atone for the under- and over-acting, respectively, of Eye of the Devil. Judy Geeson is a standout as a marvellously gleeful liberated young woman. Edith Evans (The Chalk Garden, 1964) pops up for a delightful cameo.

Pure joy.

Father Goose (1964) ***

The African Queen with kids or 100 ways to see Cary Grant deflated. The penultimate movie in the screen giant’s career is a tame affair especially after the thrilling Charade (1963) and it may have prompted him to shy away from attempting to carry on a romance with a woman decades younger as occurs in his final offering Walk, Don’t Run (1966). When Trevor Howard (Von Ryan’s Express, 1965) effortlessly steals the picture with a performance that turns his screen persona on its head, you can be sure it’s not quite top notch.

In World War Two, Walter (Cary Grant), a hobo on water with a knack of stealing official supplies, is commandeered by British officer Houghton to operate a radio outpost on a Pacific island giving early warning on Japanese aircraft sorties. While there, he encounters Catherine (Leslie Caron), a French schoolmistress and consul’s daughter, in charge of a pack of female schoolkids.

Effectively, both relationships follow a pattern of verbal duels, initially with Walter losing them all as he is kept on a leash by Houghton and then is beaten by teacher and children. The kids steal his hut, his bedding, clothes (shredded and sewn to fit young girls), food, booze and sanity.

The straight-laced Catherine is happiest when straightening a picture. Walter only regains some of his standing when it transpires he has practical skills like catching fish, repairing a boat and encouraging to talk a girl who has been traumatized by war into temporary dumbness. Naturally enough, any time Leslie warms to him he does something off-putting. But gradually, of course, they get to know each other better, romance is in the air, and secrets are revealed, his hidden past laughable.

It’s a series of set pieces, designed to make the most of Cary Grant’s deftness with physical comedy, he can pull faces with best of them and long ago mastered the double take and the pratfall. So there’s little here you’ve not seen before. And the trope of man and woman trapped on a desert island – most recently probably best exemplified given its inherent twist in Heaven Knows, Mr Allison (1957) – has long been over-used and this addition to the sub-genre suffers from lack of originality.

The little blighters are less an innovation than a complication (or perhaps a multiplication) but they do have the advantage of reducing him to impotence, since he can hardly deal with their transgressions the way he might Catherine. And of them is smart enough to realize that he runs on booze and rations this out.

All in all it’s gentle stuff, nothing too demanding, redemption neither an issue nor an option. Cary Grant is an unusual species of top star in that, as with Rock Hudson and a few others, he didn’t mind being the butt of all the jokes, and in some respects sent up his screen persona.

Keeping Cary Grant in check might well be a sub-genre of its own, so Leslie Caron (Guns of Darkness, 1962) is inevitably limited in the role, primarily a foil/feed for the Grant, the part not not quite of the caliber of the roles played by actresses in his thrillers such as like Grace Kelly (To Catch a Thief, 1965), Eva Marie Saint (North by Northwest, 1959) and Audrey Hepburn in Charade.

As I mentioned, Trevor Howard is the surprise turn, and steals the show. Ralph Nelson (Soldier Blue, 1970) directs from s script by Peter Stone (Charade), Frank Tarloff (The Double Man, 1967) and S.H Barnett, a television writer in his only movie. I’ve clearly under-rated the script because it collected the Oscar.

Perfectly harmless and enjoyable, if a tad obvious.

Someone Behind the Door (1971) ****

Dvorak would be turning in his grave at the audacity of using his New World Symphony (Ridley Scott used it with more subtlety for the Hovis advert a couple of years later) as the score for a Charles Bronson picture. But you could argue this really isn’t a Charles Bronson movie. He’s not the tough guy. He doesn’t come out all guns blazing. He doesn’t slap people around.

This is probably the biggest reversal of screen persona in Bronson’s career (if you exclude The Sandpiper, 1965, where he plays an artist, and you could probably chalk it off anyway because he wasn’t a star at that point). This is so far from the Bronson you guess it must be a cruel hoax.

Here, Bronson is the dupe, the patsy, the stooge.

Come again?

He’s not even dignified with a name, just “The Stranger.” In fact, this could be a remake of Rider on the Rain (1970) with Bronson playing the bad guy not the mysterious cop.

The Stranger, found standing in the road and no idea how he got there, ends up the patient of neurosurgeon and psychoanalyst Laurence (Anthony Perkins). The Stranger is suffering from amnesia so being the good guy he is, and always interested in another scalp for his casebook, Laurence takes him home – in Folkestone on the English south coast, next to Dover – and helps him begin the process of unravelling his identity.

Laurence is a bit cross, it has to be said, because he’s discovered his wife Frances (Jill Ireland) is having an affair with a French journalist Paul Damien. Laurence brings in his brother-in-law to break her alibi of always staying with him.

From a suitcase found on the nearby beach, whose clothes fit The Stranger, it’s conceivable this might be the very same Paul. But he could as easily be an escaped madman. Or he could be the chap who’s raped and murdered a blonde on the beach.

The Stranger, mightily confused, begins to suspect, especially when he finds a photo of a naked Jill in his pocket, he might indeed be Paul. And to even things up, he has reason to be jealous. If he is Frances’s lover, it could very well be Paul Damien to blame.

Naturally, Laurence has arranged for there to be gun handy. And gradually he twists the facts and works inventively to convince The Stranger that he should be very hot and bothered should, as appears likely, at any moment Frances and Paul walk through the door, allowing Laurence to take revenge and get off scot-free.

Whether The Stranger is ill or not, he is clearly easily led and pretty much accepts the situation Laurence presents. Any time he queries anything, Laurence has a ready answer.

So what you have really is two parallel tales of cat-and-mouse. On the one hand you have Laurence snaring The Stranger in a spider’s web of possibility and drawing a tighter noose around his wife and her lover (whoever that may be). But you also have, in his debut, clever-dick Hungarian director Nicolas Gessner (The Little Girl Who Lived Down the Lane, 1976) playing with audience expectation. At any moment, in the first parallel tale, you expect The Stranger will come to his senses, memory recovered, and putting an end to the nasty plan. Equally, at any moment, you expect the real Charles Bronson to stand up, take control and blast everyone to hell.

But neither of these possibilities occurs. The Stranger looks lost for the most part, diminished, outwitted, twisted around like an impotent puppet. Rather than concealing the difference in height between the principals ( that a big star is never smaller than anyone else seems set in the Hollywood Bible of Audience Deception), Bronson always appears to be cowering in front of Perkins.

Not falling back on his screen persona, in fact staying as far away from it as is possible (beyond showing off his torso from time to time to placate his female fans), Bronson delivers a more than believable performance as the little boy lost. This may not be an Oscar-winning elements performance, but in the Bronson portfolio this may well be his finest.

Sure, there a couple of implausible moments, but that’s par for the course in this kind of thriller.

And the coup de grace is that when, finally, Bronson does break loose of his shackles, it’s to act in a way no fan would like to see, when he commits a heinous act.

Bronson was far from the big Hollywood star at this point. While French audiences had certainly taken to him, that wasn’t reciprocated much elsewhere and despite being tossed into films like You Can’t Win ‘Em All (1970) opposite Tony Curtis and an international cast in eastern-western Red Sun (1971) he was still some way short of the top of the Hollywood tree. It would take another year before stardom was validated by the double whammy of The Valachi Papers (1972) and The Mechanic (1972) and another couple of years before Death Wish crowned him a superstar.

So it was an incredibly bold move to make such a shift away from creating a tough-guy screen persona. More so, to pull off such diffidence and weakness.

Interestingly, this isn’t the Anthony Perkins of Psycho (1960) either. He’s not the tic-ridden jumpy quavery-voiced individual that had appeared to be his screen persona.

Very much worth a look. Unless of course you don’t want to disturb your image of Bronson.

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) *****

Employs Hitchcock’s trick of having you rooting for the bad guy. The caper picture remade. Steve McQueen (Nevada Smith, 1966) reinvented. Faye Dunaway (The Extraordinary Seaman, 1969) making the most stunning entrance this side of Ursula Andress in Dr No (1962). The technological dream of the split screen. Film noir filmed in bright sunshine with a femme fatale on the right side, only just, of the law.

Takes the insurance agent of Psycho (1960) and switches the gender. Nabs the Hitchcock crown (Notorious, 1942) for the longest screen kiss. Steals from Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal, 1957) the title of best chess scene.

Female sleuth at a time when I don’t think the idea of a female detective crossed anyone’s minds in Hollywood. And one so sexy, stylish and uber-confident that she attracts not one sexist remark. Not dumb enough either like Lila in Psycho to walk into a trap.

And, incredibly, given wealth has been a movie trope since day one, luxuriates in a lifestyle – gliders, dune buggies, polo – never seen before. Not just a mesmerising song (“The Windmills of Your Mind”) but an absolutely outstanding score from Michel Legrand (Play Dirty, 1968). Almost works as a visual greatest hits collection, one memorable scene after another, a cat-and-mouse scenario, twists aplenty and smart, smart dialog.

Ignores back story and dark hidden secrets. Dispenses with the usual robbery cliches of planning the heist and the robbers irritating the hell out of each other. Theft here is carried out with mathematical precision, the crew members never meeting, mastermind Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) hidden from view at initial interview behind a bank of blinding lights. But the investigation is clever, too, donkey work – tracking everyone who flew to Geneva (where the stolen cash is banked) – coupled with instinct, insurance agent Vicki (Faye Dunaway) choosing Crown as the most likely criminal from his photograph, and a piece of inspiration, offering a huge reward for anyone noticing their spouse had been in Boston on the day of the robbery and been behaving oddly.

Crown is a fabulous invention, savvy businessman, bursting with competitive instinct, unable to prevent himself crowing, his opening line – “you overpaid” – puncturing the triumph of businessmen who believed they bettered him in a deal. But he’s bored, riches and all the toys that brings including sexy girlfriend Gwen (Astrid Heeren) not enough, and he seeks to test himself against the law.

But he’s always testing himself, regardless of how high or how low the stakes. He’s the kind of guy who just bets for the thrill. The only reversal in the whole movie is a golf match where he employs the old sucker punch, double-or-quits routine, to be able to repeat an unexpectedly successful shot. When he loses spouts another brilliant line, “What else can we do on Sunday?”

But he’s up against as steely a competitor. Has any character ever delivered such an immortal line with such panache – “I’m immoral” – as Vicki who has no qualms about invading Crown’s house on a flimsy pretext or kidnapping the son of one of the gang. “You won that round,” she tells Crown after bringing gang member Erwin (Jack Weston) in for questioning and stationing him in the same room as Crown, hoping to elicit recognition.

You’d hardly be surprised to discover she’s more than capable of using her body as a weapon, but you’d be hard put to work out who is seducing who. For both, part of the attraction must be danger, being up close (and very personal) with your rival. It wouldn’t take much to imagine this is a reversal, that Vicki is being hunted, that in the throes of romance she will give away too much. Or that the arrogant Crown believes he can have his cake and eat it. He doesn’t need the money, he can give it back, avoid arrest and sail off into the sunset with a woman his match in style and intellect.

If there’s one flaw in the spellbinding narrative, it’s here. We all know insurance exists outside the law. Retrieving money for clients is the sole aim, justice not on the agenda. No bank chief executive wants to suffer the embarrassment of being hauled into a courtroom to explain just how fallible their security systems are. Hand back the money, bury the publicity and all’s well. I’m not entirely sure why Vicki had to seek the approval of detective Eddy (Paul Burke), leading the police side of the investigation, when she could as easily have bypassed him and picked up her ten per cent of the money as reward and sailed off into the sunset.

Unless, of course, it’s not a flaw. And that for Vicki, as resolute a competitor as Crown, she requires official recognition of victory and to prove her superiority over the criminal by allowing him to be set free, giving her if you like the upper hand in the relationship.

Director Norman Jewison was on a box office roll after turning conspiracy upside down with The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966), and exploring racism with In the Heat of the Night (1967). Where most critics prefer directors who reveal thematic consistency, Jewison seemed to be headed every which way – although in the cat-and-mouse stakes you could look at The Cincinnati Kid (1965) – with elan his ace in the hole.

And if you ever sat in a movie theater and thought you could do better than the drivel you were watching, then screenwriter Alan R. Trustman would be your patron saint. A lawyer by profession, he wrote The Thomas Crown Affair in a couple of weeks and, hardly surprising, given its audacity, it found its way to an agent. He went on to write Bullitt (1969), Lady Ice (1973) – almost a remake of Thomas Crown – and The Next Man (1974) for Sean Connery.

The best fun crime movie since Hitchcock paired Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief (1955) and never bettered since.

Dazzling.

The War Lord (1965) ***

Contemporary audiences will gib at a narrative that relies on legalised rape. Audiences at the time had the same response but since then it has picked up considerable critical acclaim on account of its down-and-dirty portrayal of a medieval era far removed from the knight in shining armour. But it still pivots on the distasteful notion of “droit de seigneur”, the right of any noble to take the virginity of any female underling on their wedding night – it was motivation for William Wallace’s rebellion in Braveheart (1995).

The idea that this was pervasive or even occurred at all has been proven to be historically inaccurate. Logic tells you that any ruler wanting to keep his subjects in check would scarcely resort to wholesale rape that could spark disloyalty among his subjects. Or that any no one would be unaware of the dangers of inbreeding should the nobleman’s seed result in pregnancy.

What of course the movie does get right is that women were treated as chattels – “she’s mine” / “you’re mine” a recurrent refrain – or were makeweights in deals uniting the vested interests of kings or dukes.

As reward for years of service to the Duke of Ghent, Chrysagon (Charlton Heston) is handed a fiefdom in Normandy, prone to attack by Frisian raiders from the neighbouring Netherlands. In interrupting such an assault, Chrysagon captures the enemy chief’s son without being aware of it, prompting a later battle.

While the area boasts vestiges of normality, a priest and a strong tower, the inhabitants are inclined to the pagan rather than Christianity with rites (reminiscent of Game of Thrones) involving stone and trees while anyone using herbs for medicinal purposes is likely to be accused of witchcraft. Chrysagon takes a fancy to Bronwen (Rosemary Forsyth) already bethrothed to Marc (James Farentino). Egged on by his brother Draco (Guy Stockwell), Chrysagon decides to take up the option of droit de seigneur, but refuses to return the bride after the allotted time period (before dawn), incurring the wrath of the villagers who recruit the Frisians to their cause.

So it’s siege time although it seems unlikely that the attackers would be capable of producing such dangerous siege weapons in such a short time or that they wouldn’t simply resort to starving out the beseiged. Chrysagon’s troops engage the attackers in time-honoured fashion from the top of the tower by arrow, boulders and boiling oil. Chysagon slides down a rope like Errol Flynn to prevent the raised drawbridge being lowered and uses a boat anchor to dislodge the siege tower. Battering rams and catapults soon enter the equation.

The only question-mark (unspoken) against Chrysagon’s employment of the “droit” privilege comes when the Duke demotes him and appoints Draco in his stead, prompting various endgame twists.

The battle is interesting enough, threat repeatedly countered, but there’s only so many times a director can cut to a soldier tumbling to his death. The ending is an anomaly, Chrysagon showing more respect to the son of his enemy than the wife of his villagers, and it seems odd that Draco is suddenly revealed as a bad guy, despite not being the one who triggered the conflict.

Chrysagon might have easily have fallen into the Martin Scorsese category of characters with “no redeeming features” – who are exempt apparently from the need for decency because of war – and it’s hard to summon up the necessary audience sympathy to make this picture work, especially given its starting point. Had Chrysagon merely fallen in love with Bronwen who reciprocated his feelings and that caused enmity among the villagers it would have been one thing but to start out from an historically inaccurate base is another.

One of the problems is that Bronwen doesn’t evolve. Her transition is from interesting to passive. She has actually gone through a marriage ritual (of the Druid kind, but still binding as far as the villagers are concerned) and is therefore embarking on an adulterous relationship once the cock crows. It seems ludicrous, without allowing the woman dialog to express her feelings and acknowledge the peril of her actions, that she would believably take this route.

So, if you like, accepting the droit de seigneur, in some ways it becomes a bolder picture, a major Hollywood star risking his reputation by playing a rapist, and in the way of all rapists justifying his action. And, like the characters in the recently-reviewed Play Dirty (1969) or Judith (1966), it becomes a question of individuals as pawns, the powerful taking advantage of position to abuse the weak. And it wouldn’t be the first time the innocent have suffered through a superior taking an indefensible approach.

Franklin Schaffner (Planet of the Apes, 1968) directed. Charlton Heston (Diamond Head) performs as if he’s the French equivalent of a Brit constantly biting on that stiff upper lip. Richard Boone (Rio Conchos, 1964) is wasted. Guy Stockwell (Tobruk, 1967) essays another weasel. It’s a picture of two halves for Rosemary Forsyth (Where It’s At, 1969) – while being wooed she’s good but then she’s pretty much dumped as far as the narrative goes.

Screenwriter John Collier, who later wrote the even creepier Some Call It Loving (1973) – an early Zalman King production – and Millard Kaufman (Raintree County, 1957) adapted the screenplay from an unusual source, a Broadway play by Leslie Stevens (Incubus, 1966) called The Lovers. The play had a different perspective, the bride ultimately committing suicide, while the War Lord and husband killed each other in a duel. Needless to say, there are no Frisians, so no siege, and no brother.

Before the arrival of Ridley Scott, this would been viewed as the best depiction of genuine medieval siege, so that part certainly still holds up. But the rest of it will only stand the test of time if you are willing to view it as an expression of the corruption of power.

Eye of the Devil / 13 (1966) ***

Shades of The Innocents (1961), The Wicker Man (1973) and The Omen (1976), but lacking the suspense of any, leading roles woefully miscast, supporting roles, conversely, brimming with inspired casting including the debut of Sharon Tate (Valley of the Dolls, 1967) and a mesmerising role for David Hemmings (Blow-Up, 1967) Any attempts at subtlety were dumped when the original more intriguing title of 13, which turns out to have more than one meaning, was dumped (except in some foreign markets) in favor of the giveaway designation of Eye of the Devil. Despite embracing a web of sinister legend, it lurches too quickly into full-on demonic horror.

French count Phillippe (David Niven) is called away unexpectedly from the Parisian high life to deal with a crisis in his vineyard. When his son Jacques (Robert Duncan) starts sleepwalking in his absence, his wife Catherine (Deborah Kerr) decamps with daughter Antoinette (Suky Appleby) to the family pile, a huge millennium-old castle. The count’s sister Estell (Flora Robson) fears her arrival. Villagers fear Phillippe, doffing caps when he passes.

Meanwhile, Catherine encounters or witnesses strange goings-on. Archer Christian (David Hemmings) shoots dead a dove which is later offered to unknown gods by his sister Odile (Sharon Tate) in a chamber filled with men in black robes. Later, Odile changes a toad into a dove and hypnotises Catherine into almost falling off a parapet. A quietly spoken priest (Donald Pleasance) offers no succor. The number thirteen could refer to the day of an annual local festival or a ceremony involving thirteen men, twelve of whom dance around the other. In a forest Catherine is trapped by men in black robes, then drugged and imprisoned.

Meanwhile, her husband remains grimly fatalistic, gripped by torpor, except when roused to whip Odile. Generation after generation, going back over a thousand years, the head of the household has come to a sticky end and without explanation it appears Phillipe expects a similar outcome. .

It doesn’t take you long to realise devilry is afoot. It’s a pagan castle, it transpires, a “fortress of heresy.” After three years of poor grape harvest, the earth demands a sacrifice. Where the victim in The Wicker Man is an innocent outsider lured to a remote island, the count accepts his destiny even as his wife struggles to prevent his death. Dramatically, the later film has the edge, the victim struggling against fate rather than a mere observer. That Catherine is powerless somehow doesn’t bring the dramatic fireworks you might expect.

What the posters conceal is that the film was made in black-and-white – the last MGM picture not to be in color – and this is a photo of Sharon Tate as she appeared in magisterial and beguiling form.

There’s a curiosity about the casting of Deborah Kerr (The Gypsy Moths, 1969). This most repressed of actors, as if a veil has been lifted, empowered to scream and batter against doors and race around, seems to drain the movie of energy. She just seems laughably bonkers rather than intense and empathetic. For someone whose performance is generally minimal, who exists in the margins, it seems almost perverse to force her to go so over-the-top.

Perhaps such unusual verbal and physical activity was deemed essential to counter the inactivity, the virtual sleepwalking, of the rest of the cast. While looking pained, David Niven (The Extraordinary Seaman (1969) can’t quite capture the intensity, the personal devastation, the role requires. David Hemmings as the silent archer and especially Sharon Tate as the trance-inducing magician, steal the show, investing their characters with little emotion, and yet, visually, as if mere costumed performers, present the most vivid incarnations.

From an audience perspective, it’s hard to root for Catherine since it’s obvious she is in no mortal danger. Like The Wicker Man, the audience is there in an observatory capacity, but unlike the Scottish policeman the victim attracts little sympathy. There’s not real

It’s a surprising backward step for director J. Lee Thompson after the superb Return of the Ashes (1965) which was chock-full of suspense and interesting characters. After an atmospheric opening, it turns uneven as he falls into the trap of following the wrong character. Screenwriters Dennis Murphy (The Sergeant, 1968) and Robin Estridge (Escape from Zahrain, 1962) adapted the latter’s acclaimed novel Day of the Arrow, written under the pseudonym Philip Loraine. So perhaps he can be blamed for shifting the investigative focus from Catherine’s ex-lover to Catherine herself.

I was surprised to see Deborah Kerr take on such a role and that is a story in itself which I’ll address tomorrow.

Judith (1966) ***

This is why you hire Sophia Loren. In the middle of a complicated story she provides the emotional anchor.. And she can do it without words. A few close-ups are all you need to guess at her inner turmoil in a world where, as with Play Dirty (1968), the individual is disposable. The good guys here, Israelis fighting for survival at the rebirth of their country, are every bit as ruthless as the commanding officers in the World War Two picture.

And it’s just as well because the tale is both straightforward and overly complex. Like Cast a Giant Shadow, out the same year, or the earlier Exodus (1961), it’s about the early migrants staving off Arab attempts to destroy the tenuous foothold Jewish immigrants on the land with the British, stuck in the role of maintaining law and order, cracking down on illegal landings of refugees and arms smuggling. But where the earlier movies take the war to the enemy, this is all about defence, holding on to hard-won positions.

Israeli leader Aaron (Peter Finch) discovers General Schiller (Hans Verner), a former German WW2 commander wanted for war crimes, currently in charge of the Arab tank regiment, is planning imminent assault. After locating Schiller’s wife Judith (Sophia Loren), he smuggles her into Israel with the intention of using her as bait to kidnap the general.

This would be no romantic reunion. The general had abandoned his wife, a Jew, and she spent the war in Dachau where she survived as a sex worker. She wants nothing more than revenge. But it takes a fair while for the cloak-and-dagger elements to warm up. First of all she has to seduce British Major Lawton (Sophia Loren) into revealing details of her husband’s whereabouts.

Turns out Lawton is the only principled official on show, out of general decency and a British sense of fair play (unlike the soldiers, for example, in Play Dirty) turning down the offer of her body in return for his aid. But it also transpires that Judith also lacks any notion of fair play and stabs her husband at the first opportunity, making it virtually impossible for his captors to discover the specifics of the planned attack. You wouldn’t need much of a sense of irony to share the Israeli anger when uner interrogation the captured general tosses back at them the Geneva Convention.

Judith’s involvement in the hunt for the general had the potential to be a very fine film noir on its own, especially had the wife been required to show willing to the husband in order to lure him out into the open.

Unfortunately, that’s not the tack the movie takes. Instead, we follow a series of forgettable characters either espionage agents, or at the kibbutz or effectively just there in passing, on the edge of the action, even when they might be in the heart of the real action either being unloaded into the surf or under attack from Arabs. There’s a sense of trying to cram too much historical incident into what would have worked best as a straightforward thriller. How far would Judith go to extract revenge? And, can Aaron stop her ruining his delicately-balanced plans?

Plenty of room for maneuver too on the sticky point of country vs individual. Where Aaron is happy to sacrifice or exploit Judith to satisfy his agenda, albeit to the greater glory of his country, so, too, is Judith unwilling to surrender her individuality for that more beneficial cause.

So what we get is a riveting mess. When Sophia Loren (Operation Crossbow, 1965) is onscreen you can’t take your eyes off her. When the action switches to the sub-plots, you keep on wondering where she’s got to and when will she next turn up. Judith is a fascinating character, batting away contempt about the way she survived the concentration camp, arriving in an old-fashioned cargo container with the corpse of a companion who failed to last the journey, and before long sashaying through the kibbutz delighted to attract male attention.

Yet, despite the hard inner core, and keeping one step ahead of both Aaron and Schiller, as if she had long ago stopped trusting men, she is emotionally vulnerable and proves easily manipulated when either pierces the carapace.

That director Daniel Mann feels duty bound to attempt to tell the bigger story of the Israeli struggle is somewhat surprising since he was best known as a woman’s director. Under his watch both Shirley Booth and Terry Moore were Oscar-nominated for Come Back, Little Sheba (1953), both Susan Hayward and Anna Magnani Oscars winners for I’ll Cry Tomorrow and The Rose Tattoo, respectively.

John Michael Hayes (Nevada Smith, 1966) cooperated with Lawrence Durrell (Justine, 1969) on the screenplay.

Worth it for Sophia Loren’s stunning performance.

The Gypsy Moths (1969) *****

Unsung masterpiece. In the same year, director Jphn Frankenheimer went from the career nadir of The Extraordinary Seaman to an absolute gem. Beautifully paced, exquisitely observed, with five heart-wrenching performances of naked repression. For star Burt Lancaster a companion piece to The Swimmer (1968), for leading lady Deborah Kerr better work than even The Arrangement (1969), for supporting actor Gene Hackman (Downhill Racer, 1969) a wake-up call to Hollywood. Sparked by thrilling aerial sequences. And like Easy Rider (1969) interprets transience as freedom.

And in the most stunning piece of directorial bravura since Alfred Hitchcock despatched Janet Leigh halfway through Psycho (1960), here John Frankenheimer, four-fifths of the way through, leaves the others to pick up the pieces after the star’s apparent suicide.

A trio of sky divers – Mike (Burt Lancaster), Joe (Gene Hackman) and Malcolm (Scott Wilson) – on a barnstorming tour of small town USA board with Malcolm’s estranged Aunt Elizabeth (Deborah Kerr) and Uncle John (William Windom) in the small Kansas town where he was born and orphaned at age ten. John clearly resents the intrusion, Elizabeth finds it impossible to even hug her nephew, but a single glance between Mike and Elizabeth says it all. She is the bored housewife, he the conqueror.

But for all the subsequent revelations that would be melodramatic meat-and-drink to the likes of Elia Kazan’s The Arrangement, the entire tone is low-key. While fuelled on regret, this is not a movie that feasts on it.

And quite astonishingly, there is a whole pile of information dumps that serve to add tension to the tale. The stars of the show are all involved in the nitty-gritty, penning dates and times on posters, sewing their kit, the bombastic Joe acting as marketing guru and cheerleader. In a talk to women’s group, while purportedly explaining how a parachute works, Mike gives his audience a whiff of danger. For the whole enterprise depends on coming close to death. The longer a sky diver takes to open his parachute, hurtling to the ground at 200 mph, the more the crowd soaks it up.

The sky divers are long past the days of thrill-seeking, this is just a job, they are itinerants with nobody meaningful in their lives. Sky diving is “not only a way to live but also a way to die as few things are.”

Except when the performer, Mike is so reserved he might almost have disappeared into a void except silence seems to fill out his personality. He embarks on an affair with Elizabeth with scarcely a word spoken.

The screenplay has an amazing structure, each character exposed in novel fashion. The extremely realistic Mike finds himself in the deep waters of imagination. The overly-confident Joe speaks of his fears to the topless dancer (Sheree North) he has picked up but only when she’s safely asleep. He beats his chest in Church as he recites the “I am not worthy” section of the old Catholic Mass. Even the dancer gets a couple of great lines, confiding in a friend that Mike would have been her first choice to bed but Joe proved a decent substitute.

And there’s just a wonderful, initially mystifying, set of scenes, that could easily have been cut, but left in display the director’s utter mastery. A cranky conductor is rehearsing a marching band for, we learn later, the Fourth of July parade, picking, as is the way of cranky conductors, on some innocent in the band. Come The Fourth of July the marching band turns into main street – and finds it empty. The entire town, in a demonstration of ghoul-ness, has decamped to watch Malcolm attempt the stunt that cost Mike his life.

Returning home, Malcolm finds no homecoming despite his childless aunt desperate for a surrogate son. If she was any more buttoned-up she would explode. “I just wasn’t very observant,” she observes, explaining how her sister stole away her lover. And when that couple died in a car accident, John, who married Elizabeth on the rebound, forbade his wife to adopt Malcolm because he didn’t want to be daily faced with the son of her true love.

So many scenes are wordless observation. We focus on the dead eyes of John, pretending to be asleep, when his adulterous wife returns. Elizabeth watches her husband in a mirror. Virtually every shot of Elizabeth reveals the torment of a woman desperately clinging on to sanity. Every shot of Malcom reveals rejection.

Characters are viewed in long-shot, through doors, or from the sky, and then in bold extreme close-up, but not in a kind of experimental fusion of style, but through careful directorial consideration. You feel that every shot is just the correct shot for the moment.

For once, Frankenheimer has no conspiracy theory to peddle, but oddly enough this bears similarity to the car crash of The Extraordinary Seaman in that it is riddled with ghosts, of choices not taken, of regrets taken root.

And there is something quite remarkable in the character construction. Both Mike and Malcolm are melancholic, sapped of energy. Into this gap bursts Joe, a vibrant personality, the one gets every party going and always ends up with a bottle in one hand and a girl in the other. It’s quite a stunning performance from an, at this point in his career, a scene-stealer of some style.

In previous films Gene Hackman was always doing something, the hallmark chuckle still in embryo, but his performance often got in the way. Here, the screenplay by William Hanley – based on the novel by James Drought – effectively places him center stage, taking up the slack from the other pair and Hackman responds by proving how he could carry a picture if he was in fact the star.

Scott Wilson (In Cold Blood, 1967) takes the opposite approach, drawing us in with his soulful eyes and a demeanor calling out for affection. He dominates the final section as he, too, contemplates suicide, a pretty tall order given at this point he is in the sky and his eyes are masked by goggles.

When Deborah Kerr asks Burt Lancaster, “Why are we so contemptible to you?” it’s the question she’s asking of herself and that self-loathing guides her repressed performance, occasional bouts of adultery her only release, but unable, as with her early lover, to charge headfirst into happiness.

Lancaster’s role is central but not over-dominant in the way of The Swimmer. While seemingly the picture’s anchor, Frankenheimer is duping the audience in the manner of Hitchcock. Lancaster is not the unshakeable monolith he appears, but a fragile heart.

Critics, possibly still confounded by The Extraordinary Seaman and feeling Frankenheimer had shot his bolt, were pretty dismissive of this at the time. It doesn’t score highly on any of the current critical aggregate charts.

But I find that simply astonishing. If ever there was a movie demanding reappraisal, it’s this.

Just stunning.

Go see.