sex – Page 11 – The Magnificent 60s

John and Mary (1969) ****

Woefully underrated. Remove the weight of expectation and you’re left with a bittersweet romance. This just wasn’t what critics anticipated from stars Dustin Hoffman, coming off the back of Midnight Cowboy (1969), and Mia Farrow, previous film the coruscating Rosemary’s Baby (1968), and certainly it seemed there was resentment at the audacity of British director Peter Yates attempting to switch from his action roots, best shown in Bullitt (1968). Worse, that Yates was trying to introduce a New Wave vibe.

In the end-up it’s sweet, but getting there is a prickly affair and it’s precisely this unique approach that creates its appeal. Where the standard set-up comprises meet-cute, break-up, back together, for the most part this looks as if actual romance, as opposed to sex, will never get off the ground, the pair smothered by doubt expressed in internal monologue.

Whereas, in The Fixer (1969), for example, hearing a character speak of their feelings outside of dialogue almost torpedoes the picture, here it works a treat, because it’s dealt with as if it was dialogue of the unspoken variety. Past experience that forces both characters to make suppositions about the other’s intent creates a very amusing and essentially true barrier to progress.

Back in the day, at the dawn of the singles generation, the idea of two young people hooking up for one-night stands filled the moral majority with shock, not just that widespread use of the Pill in avoiding pregnancy invoked promiscuity, but that random encounters immediately ended up in the bedroom rather than the becoming the start of a wooing (and discovery) process. These days, of course, Tinder and other such social media inventions, create umpteen opportunities for attraction to translate into instant sex.

But it doesn’t reduce the type of anxieties that are so well addressed here.

You can start with the basic morning-after notion of “how do I get rid of her?” all the way through to assuming such easy attitudes to sex on either side would destroy an ongoing relationship, and along the way dipping into such minefields as how to get to know another person, does he/she even like me or would they fall into bed with the first person to ask them, are they even as attractive in the cold light of day than when perceptions are muddied by alcohol and excitement, and, of course, the ultimate, was performance up to scratch.

The Carlton was one of the smaller London West End cinemas and often used for prestigious openings to create the hold-overs that would build audience awareness and, such as here with box office increasing week-on-week, encourage cinema bookings.

This takes the unusual route of being peppered with flashback while the pair engage in spikier dialogue than you would find in the standard Hepburn-Tracy Hudson-Day romcom. And often what they say is the opposite of what they feel. Setting off in several directions at once – back a year or so, taking in the activity of the previous night and ploughing through the current day – could be off-putting but I found it worked a treat.

Anal retentive domesticated furniture designer John (Dustin Hoffman) hooks up in a singles bar with untidy politically-motivated sometime-actress Mary (Mia Farrow). His first reaction on waking up is to explore the apartment (rather large for New York), wonder when his wife will return, and think of all the deceptions he could pull. His first reaction borders on pure fear: she’s already planning to move in.

That neither has a genuine idea of the other person’s feeling provides the movie’s dynamic and the entire movie consists of them adjusting their expectations against a very contemporary backdrop of protests, politics, cinema verite and sex. Though primarily non-sexist and quite gender-equal, she isn’t looking to become a kept woman, for example, it does touch upon the notion that an easily-available woman is not far short of a whore, whereas, naturally, a promiscuous male is entitled to a free pass.

Her last relationship was with a married man (Michael Tolan), but she dropped him once he started talking about divorcing his wife. For John, girlfriend Ruth (Sunny Griffin) dramatically upped the stakes, arriving at his apartment with luggage, items of furniture and a rampant dog, enforcing on John responsibilities he did not want. Unusually, for the era, he is not politically involved and can cook, both of which attributes/skills we discover are the result of a mother so committed to politics that she neglected her children, never stocked her fridge and left her children to fend for themselves.

Each could press the nuclear button at any time. They’re attractive singles so more sex is just round the corner, going their separate ways the easier option, building a relationship far more difficult.

Dustin Hoffman shakes off a lot of the tics that were already showing and would inhibit later performances in a character far removed in sexual confidence from The Graduate (1967), but in some ways still touchingly naïve, and delivers a very believable performance. That it doesn’t fall into the usual Tracy-Hepburn battle of the sexes with witty put-downs owes much to the highly-nuanced performance of Mia Farrow who isn’t, as you might expect, in the least fragile and expresses her independence and challenges his views in a non-aggressive fashion.

Completely ignored by the Oscars, technically it won plaudits from Bafta, bracketed with Midnight Cowboy for Dustin Hoffman picking up the Best Actor Award, and with Rosemary’s Baby and Secret Ceremony for Mia Farrow in being nominated for Best Actress – such arcane rules later changed.

In small parts look out for Cleavon Little (Blazing Saddles, 1974), Tyne Daly (Cagney and Lacey TV series 1981-1988), Don Siegel’s son Kristoffer Tabori (Journey through Rosebud, 1972) and Olympia Dukakis (Moonstruck, 1987). John Mortimer (Bunny Lake Is Missing, 1965) wrote the screenplay from the Mervyn Jones bestseller.

Cinematically and narratively refreshing, manages to be entertaining and thoughtful at the same time.

Modesty Blaise (1966) ***

You might well enjoy this if a) you are in a very good mood, b) you love psychedelia, Pop Art and the Swinging Sixties, c) you fancy a spy film spoof or more likely d) you are a big fan of one or all concerned. Otherwise, you might be well advised to steer clear because it either takes the mickey out of a number of genres, not just espionage, or plays merry hell with narrative and character and is only loosely based on the source material by Peter O’Donnell.

Bear in mind it originated in a comic strip – later turned into a series of novels – that had more in common with the likes of Danger: Diabolik than the more straightlaced adventures emanating from DC Comics or Marvel. In particular, Modesty had a neat habit of distracting the villains by appearing topless in moments of crisis – a trick adopted in movies like 100 Rifles (1969) and El Condor (1970).

Fans of the comic strip/book may have been left indignant by the audacity of the filmmakers to introduce romance between Modesty and her sidekick Willie Gavin since in the book their relationship was strictly platonic. There was no place, in either comic strip or book, for the musical numbers that pepper the movie. And – check out The Swinger (1966) – for the notion of a character acting out a fictionalized version of herself.

You should be aware that Modesty is a very rich version of the gentleman sleuth, an idea that belonged to the old school, of a person, such as The Saint, bored with wealth, who takes on dangerous assignments in the eternal battle between good and evil.

Anyways, on with the story.

Modesty Blaise (Monica Vitti) is hired by the British government in the shape of MI5 chief Sir Gerald Tarrant (Harry Andrews), in return for immunity for her previous crimes, to deliver a secret shipment of diamonds, part-payment for oil imports, to Sheik Abu Tahir (Clive Revill). Modesty happens to be the sheik’s adopted daughter. Meanwhile, criminal mastermind Gabriel (Dirk Bogarde), believed to be dead, has his eyes on the consignment.

Meanwhile (again), Modesty upsets current lover Hagen (Michael Craig), Tarrant’s aide, by hooking up with old flame Willie Garvin (Terence Stamp). Meanwhile (again again), Garvin hooks up with another of his old flames, magician’s assistant Nicole (Tina Marquand), who has information on Gabriel.

Various assassins employing a variety of methods are sent to kill Modesty so a good chunk of the picture is her avoiding her demise. Gabriel is a pretty touchy employer, so upset by failure that he assigns his Amazonian bodyguard Mrs Fothergill (Rosella Falk) to eliminate all such assassins. Gabriel, however, is something of a contradiction, very sensitive to violence. And just in case you are not keeping up with the plot, conveniently, the bulk of the conversations between Tarrant and his superior (Alexander Knox) will fill you in.

Through a whole bunch of clever maneuvers on Gabriel’s part, Modesty and Willie are forced to steal the diamonds themselves. And, meanwhile, Hagen is on their tail, infuriated at being jilted.

In between the umpteen shifts in plot, which basically lurches like a ship in a storm, the screen is ablaze with color. Nobody complained much when Raquel Welch found it necessary to change her bikini ever few seconds, or that a musical required continuous costume changes, and Modesty here seems to have fallen into the same pattern, the changes in outfit often so swift you imagine she has a disorder.

And be warned, this is a poster film for Pop Art, so if it’s not clothes that are being swapped, it’s décor. You might put Terence Stamp’s blond barnet in the discordant category. You can’t really complain about the plot because espionage storylines are usually something of a conjuring trick with the impossible little more than a standard mission. There’s much to enjoy if you’re of a mind and subscribe to one of the four ideas outlined in the opening paragraph and like the idea of the otherwise critical darling Joseph Losey (Accident, 1967) giving way to stylistic overkill.

Monica Vitti (Girl with a Pistol, 1968) inhabits the role with the necessary verve though Terence Stamp (The Collector, 1963) looks as if he has walked into a spoof and Dirk Bogarde (H.M.S. Defiant / Damn the Defiant!) appears still in experimental mode, having dumped the British matinee idol, unsure of what his screen persona should be. Evan Jones (Funeral in Berlin, 1966) is generally to be blamed/praised for the screenplay.

A movie for which the word confection was invented.

The Oscar (1966) ****

Don’t you just love a really good bad movie? Where redemptive character is outlawed. When over-acting is the key. In which everyone gets the chance to spout off about someone else, generally to their face, and then is permitted, in the cause of balance, a quiet moment of bitter self-reflection. And even the most minor character gets a zinger of a line. Welcome to Hollywood.

Tale of an actor’s rise and not exactly fall because we leave Frank Fane (Stephen Boyd) at a pinnacle of his career, though, don’t you know, he’s empty inside and deserted by all his faithful companions. Lucky Frank has some kind of charisma or that he just fastens onto losers who see in him what they need because from the outset he is one mean hombre, living off stripper girlfriend Laurel (Jill St John), so dumb she switched to him from his so dependable best pal Hymie (Tony Bennett – yes, that Tony Bennett, the singer).

He hooks up with Kay (Elke Sommer), a designer who happens as a sideline to make costumes for off-Broadway productions. When King of Lowlife Punks Frank shows a pusillanimous stage actor what you do in a knife fight he strikes a chord with theater producer Sophie (Eleanor Parker), who happens to have a sideline as a talent scout for the movies.

She fixes him up with an agent Kappy (Milton Berle – yes that Milton Berle, the loudmouth comedian) and together they sell him to studio boss Regan (Joseph Cotten). The only good deed Frank does in the entire movie is to stand witness – not for marriage, but for divorce – for an ordinary couple, private detective Barney (Ernest Borgnine) and Trina (Edie Adams), he meets at a bullfight, huge fans, and thank goodness that action comes back to bite him.

The picture goes haywire in the third act. Fane’s career is crumbling in the face of audience indifference, exhibitor displeasure and, don’t you know it, a chance for revenge for Regan, who was stiffed in a previous contract. But instead of taking the traditional tumble into the forgotten category, his career is revived by an Oscar nomination.

*From top to bottom – a fully-clothed Stephen Boyd, then in various states of undress, Elke Sommer, Jill St John and Eleanor Parker. That’s how to sell a picture apparently*.

But that’s not enough for the ruthless Fane. Earlier in his life a corrupt sheriff had stuck him with charges of pimping. Using Barney, who seems to have the ear of the media, he plants a story about himself, hoping that Hollywood being the cesspool it is, everyone will assume one of his rivals did the dirty. “I can’t rig the votes,” rationalizes our poor hero,” but I can rig the emotions of the voters.”

What a scam. I was chortling all the way through this section and almost laughing out loud when it transpires Frank had misjudged how deep the cesspool is, because Barney then blackmails him. This gives everyone he has treated heinously over the years the chance to stick it to him. Nobody will lend him the dough to get this grinning monkey off his back. Salvation comes in the oldest of Hollywood maneuvers. Trina, who has always wanted to get into pictures, and is the kind of person who embodies A Grievance Too Far, supplies the information that will sink her ex-husband, in exchange for Frank using his influence to get her a small role.

There’s a brilliant climax. I should have said spoilers abound but I can’t resist telling you the ending it’s such a cracker. So there is Frank at the Oscars with Bob Hope (yes, that Bob Hope) as master of ceremonies and the audience studded with real stars like Frank Sinatra (yes, that…). Like an evil chorus – you can almost hear them hissing under their breath and they all fix him with baleful looks – are all those he treated badly.

The winner is announced. “Frank…” Assuming victory, Fane gets to his feet. “Sinatra.” The only way he can rescue his embarrassment is to make it look as he is giving the winner a standing ovation. But when the rest of the audience follows suit, he slumps to his chair, and in the only true cinematic moment in all the sturm and drang the camera pulls back from him sitting bitter, twisted and defeated in his seat.

Stephen Boyd (Shalako, 1969) is terrific because even when he was top-billed he tended to over-act and when he became a co-star or supporting player he was an inveterate scene-stealer, of the sharp intake of breath / vicious tongued variety. Here he shows both his charming and venomous side. If he was playing a gangster he couldn’t be more menacing – or charismatic. It’s a peach of a role – he can dish it out, dump women at will, and still embrace victimhood as “170lb of meat.”

Luckily, most of the rest of the cast take the subtle route. Although all disporting in various negligible outfits at one time or another, Jill St John (The Liquidator, 1965), Elke Sommer (The Prize, 1963) and Eleanor Parker (Eye of the Cat, 1969) and giving Frank his comeuppance wherever possible – St John slings him out – the performances are generally nuanced, Parker in particular evoking sympathy.

Tony Bennett is miscast, especially as he has to do double duty as an unwelcome voice-over, filling in bits of the narrative that, thankfully, has been skipped. But Milton Berle is pretty good as a quiet-spoken agent.

In the over-the-top stakes, Boyd has his work cut out to hold his own in scenes with Ernest Borgnine (The Wild Bunch, 1969) who revels in his scam, and Edie Adams (The Honey Pot, 1967) who is anything but a dumb blonde and delivers the most stinging of zingers.

Doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t know about Hollywood except in one delicious scene where, early in his career, Frank has to squire around a female star who relishes putting him in his place.

It’s not badly made just pell-mell and over-the-top. Russell Rouse (The Caper of the Golden Bulls, 1967) directs from a screenplay by himself and Harlan Ellison (yes that Harlan Ellison, the sci fi author) from the bestseller by Robert Sale.

An absolute hoot.

The Group (1966) ***

The ensemble picture provided a showcase for new talent. But consider the gender imbalance at work. Only Candice Bergen proved a breakout star of any longevity compared to a flop like The Magnificent Seven (1960) from which six relative newcomers – Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Eli Wallach (only his fourth movie) and Horst Buchholz – became top-billed material.

Part of the problem was Hollywood itself, not enough good roles for actresses who weren’t destined for spy movies or to become a decorative supporting player, and who could not headline a western, war picture or (with the exception of Bonnie and Clyde) a hardnosed crime movie. But part of the problem was the structure of The Group. Yes, there’s a 150-minute running time, but there are eight main characters to contend with.

And the story doesn’t have a central focus like The Magnificent Seven where characters are built in asides to the main action but has to meander in eight different directions. Luckily, it still remains a powerful confection, tackling, as if setting out to shock audiences, contentious issues like mental illness, leftwing politics, birth control and lesbianism. What could easily have descended into a chick flick or a glorified soap opera instead pushes in the direction of feminism.

A bunch of wealthy privileged university female graduate friends sets out in the 1930s to change the world only discover, to their amazement, that the male-dominated dominion chews them up and spits them out.

Only Lakey (Candice Bergen), who prefers the company of women, appears to find fulfilment but that’s mostly from running off to the more liberated Paris at the earliest opportunity to study art history though the Second World War puts an end to that.

Kay (Joanna Pettet) seems to have made the best marriage, with a wannabe alcoholic writer (Larry Hagman), but she ends up in a mental asylum. Dottie (Joan Hackett) also views life in the art world, marrying a painter, as the best option only to later prefer a more mundane husband. Priss (Elizabeth Hartmann), the strongest-minded of the octet, lands a man of a stronger, controlling, character.

Polly (Shirley Knight) is the most sexually adventurous. Ostensibly, Helena (Kathleen Widdoes), a renowned traveller, and Libby (Jessica Walter), a successful novelist, appear to achieve the greatest independence and success but come up short in that most important of endeavors, romance. The men, you should be warned, are all one-dimensional scumbags.

The movie focuses mainly on Kay, Polly and Libby. Lakey shows up at the beginning and the end.

At its best, it’s an insight into the world of women, on a grander scale than any of the tear-jerkers of previous decades. But it suffers from too many characters and too little time. It might have been better as a mini-series, though that, obviously, was not an option at the time. The Sidney Buchman (Cleopatra, 1963) screenplay fails to match the intensity of the critically-acclaimed source novel by Mary McCarthy, a huge bestseller.

It’s a surprising choice for Sidney Lumet (The Pawnbroker, 1964), more mainstream than his general output, but while he clearly presents the characters in sympathetic fashion, his hallmark tension is missing.

Mostly, it works as a time-capsule of a time-capsule, a movie about the 1960s optimism of 1930s optimism, and the obstacles faced by both.

Only Candice Bergen (Soldier Blue, 1970) approached the level of success achieved by The Magnificent Seven motley crew, achieving top-billed status in a number of films and her screen persona, possibly as a result of this movie, was often independence. Leading lady in Will Penny (1968) and Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) was the height of success for Joan Hackett.

Already twice Oscar-nominated as a Supporting Actress, Shirley Knight was the best-known of The Group, but was only thereafter top-billed once, in the low-budget Dutchman (1966) although she won critical plaudits for The Rain People (1969).

An Oscar nominee for her debut A Patch of Blue (1965), Elizabeth Hartmann was top-billed in You’re A Big Boy Now (1967) and then fell into the supporting player bracket. Never top-billed, Joanna Pettet was a strong co-star for the rest of the decade but that was marked by flops like Blue (1968) and The Best House in London (1968) and she drifted into television.

Best known for Number One (1969) and Play Misty for Me (1971) Jessica Walter failed to achieve top-billing. Though, as a result of this review, it has been pointed out to me (thanks Mr Film-Authority) that I glossed over her brilliant performance in television show Arrested Development (2003-2019); in fact, if your search for her on imdb that TV series is the one that pops up first.

Most of the actresses did have long careers, sustained by leading roles in television or bit parts in movies but when you consider the success visited upon the group known as The Magnificent Seven you can’t help thinking this was a whole generation of talent going to waste because they could not be accommodated by the Hollywood machine and did not fit the industry prototype.

For another example of gender disparity you could compare the consequent comparative success of the stars of Valley of the Dolls and The Dirty Dozen, both out the following year.

Inside Daisy Clover (1965) ***

Exploitation Hollywood. Cautionary tale of young singer in the 1930s seduced by the movies only to discover she is regarded as a plaything and a profit center rather than a human being. Not highly regarded at the time despite being directed by Oscar-nominated Robert Mulligan (To Kill A Mockingbird, 1962), gained greater traction since #Me Too!

At the time the central performance by Natalie Wood (Cash McCall, 1960) seemed too much one-note, but on reflection, despite the endless popping and swivelling of her eyes (you can always see the whites, often to her detriment in acting terms), it appears a much truer reflection of a teenager caught in the headlights of the fame- and money-making machine. Christopher Plummer (Lock Up Your Daughters, 1969) delivers a devilishly restrained performance and there’s the bonus of an over-the-top turn by Robert Redford (The Chase, 1966), named Most Promising Newcomer in some parts.

The odds are stacked against Daisy Clover (Natalie Wood) from the start, living in a shack on a beachfront with an insane mother (Ruth Gordon), earning a living forging signatures on movie star portraits, but with a secret yen to become a singer. After sending a demo disk, cut in a fairground booth, to Swan Studios she finds doors opening. Raymond Swan (Christopher Plummer) turns her into a star. Having committed her mother to an institution, and for public consumption announced her dead, greedy Aunt Gloria (Betty Harford), now her legal guardian, signs her niece’s life away.

It’s almost docu-style in the telling, very few close-ups, most long shots, even in groupings the camera seems awfully far away, and the Hollywood we are shown is mostly the giant empty barns of shooting stages and the never-seen elements, like post-synching in a booth. Daisy never seems to be enjoying herself, except when, although underage, is seduced by movie idol Wade Lewis (Robert Redford) who abandons her the morning after their wedding and can’t resist a “charming boy.”

Mostly, she is the puppet, dressed in glamorous outfits, her life re-invented for the fan magazines, freedom curtailed, living in a suite in the grand mansion of Swan and wife Melora (Katharine Baird), who, it transpires, is an alcoholic and at one point cut her wrists. Most of the time Daisy just seems frozen, locked into a character she doesn’t recognize, kept at one remove from her mother, turned into a money-making machine.

She’s too young to be a Marilyn Monroe and too old to be a Shirley Temple. The most likely template in Deanna Durbin (Mad About Music, 1938), who after being rejected by MGM, struck gold with Paramount as a 15-year-old, but, ironically, in terms of this picture, proved as hard as nails, not only negotiating contracts that turned her into the highest-earning star in Hollywood but quitting the business before it ate her up.

*Except she doesn’t put anyone down. She’s nobody’s idea of a winner despite this clever piece of publicity.*

Daisy shifts from being able to fend off unwelcome attention from an erstwhile boyfriend while poor to being seduced, while rich and theoretically more powerful, by anyone who shows her the slightest kindness, including her boss after she’s dumped by Wade. Swan bears a close resemblance to Cash McCall, making no bones about his money-making intentions and viewing every employee in terms of profit, but using charm to mask his ruthlessness. When the façade breaks, it’s one of the best scenes.

The odds are also stacked against anyone looking good. This is a parade of the venal, everyone destroyer or destroyed. The fact that actors with no other talent earned vast fortunes from a business that was willing to underwrite their flops (Natalie Wood, herself, a classic example) and must have enjoyed some aspect of their wealth, if not in just being rescued from abject poverty, doesn’t enter the equation.

Although there is no doubt there is a Hollywood publicity machine, a lot less attention is paid to the power of the Actors PR which has managed to convince the public that no matter how much the stars earn ($20 million a picture for some) they are still poor wee souls at the mercy of terrible studios willing to gamble enormous sums ($295 million on the latest Harrison Ford, more for Fast X) on their box office potential.

But let’s not digress.

While the picture-making style is unusual, it’s worth appreciating the deliberate effort Robert Mulligan has put in to de-glamorize the star system. Brit Gavin Lambert (Sons and Lovers, 1960) wrote the screenplay from his own, more brutal, bestseller.

This cold-hearted expose is just what Hollywood deserves. That Daisy is a minor when taken advantage by Wade is mentioned just in passing, and from the actor’s perspective (it could damage his career). That vulnerable women are kept in that position was no more heinous then than it is now.

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.

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 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.

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.

Young Cassidy (1965) ***

I’m assuming MGM adjudged that a film about a playwright, no matter how famous, and even if directed by John Ford (Cheyenne Autumn, 1964), would not be enough to attract an audience. And that a better physical match for said writer would have been a weedy actor of a Tom Courtenay disposition. So, I came to this with no idea it was about world-famous Irish playwright Sean O’Casey since his name is never mentioned and the main character is called John Cassidy (Rod Taylor).

Which was just as well because I was wondering what kind of lad Cassidy was when despite his obvious brawn he was an inept labourer, requiring instruction on how to properly use a spade. That this working-class fellow has any inclination towards authorship is not obvious until halfway through the picture, by which time he has demonstrated qualities more appropriate for brawling, revolution and sex.

*Technically, this was a John Ford film as he was the producer.*
*The French chose not to point out he was not the director*.

It probably says a lot about me that I was unaware of the significance of the title of O’Casey’s most famous play – The Plough and the Stars (1926 and, incidentally, filmed a decade later by Ford). By the time I was cogniscent of the country – early on, I assure you, as my grandfather was an Irish immigrant – the Irish flag was the tricolor made up of green, white and orange. I hadn’t known that the flag created by rebels two years before the Easter Uprising of 1916 was a representation of the plough and the stars, hence public outrage when O’Casey blithely adopted it as the title for his breakthrough play.

But you only need a vague idea of history to appreciate the movie. A couple of stunning scenes provide the background of dissent and poverty. The brutality of soldiers and police in quelling a riot is matched by striking transport workers tossing a scab into the river, his drowning ensured by the wagon that follows him in. Cassidy’s true position in the hierarchy is best shown when he is given a cheque rather than cash from a publisher. Lacking a bank account, not only does he fail to cash the cheque but is treated dismissively by clerks at the bank. His joy at rising above his station in receiving such a payment is immediately destroyed by feeling out of place and unwelcome in a bank.

Because, otherwise, Cassidy is quite the confident young fellow, winning over almost any young woman who falls within his compass, varying from upmarket prostitute Daisy (Julie Christie) to meek bookshop assistant Nora (Maggie Smith) and casual acquaintances.

Writing isn’t presented in the romantic manner of David Lean in Doctor Zhivago out the same year (with Julie Christie in a much bigger role), no stunning imagery and no close-up of soulful eyes, just Cassidy sitting at a table working through the night. But there is no indication as to why he chose plays as his metier, especially when the main theatre in Dublin, the Abbey, was the fiefdom of the middle- and upper-classes.

Ironically, Cassidy is tested more when his situation improves than as a downtrodden worker joining the revolutionary cause. As a worker his fists, brawn, brain and looks see him through. But once he steps up into the intellectual class, he is adrift, his new occupation driving a wedge through relationships.

Not aware that this was a biopic of a playwright, I had little need to question the narrative, and just took each incident as it came. I never had the impression of a condensed biopic, crammed full of cameos. More of an interesting story set against the background of rising Irish nationalism.

There’s a certain amount of “Oirishness” to contend with – the accents vary – the poverty is never as bleak as you might expect, and once the story heads out of Dublin you might think it’s going to go all the way to The Quiet Man country. But then you have to bear in mind that working-class poverty, as long there was employment available, was not quite of the slum kind, and that once you get out of Dublin you do indeed hit beautiful countryside.

Rod Taylor is good as the brawler-turned-playwright. In the duel of the rising stars, Maggie Smith (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 1969) wins by a nose from Julie Christie, but then, though further down the credits, she has the bigger role. Michael Redgrave (Assignment K, 1968) as poet W.B. Yeats (responsible for the phrase “a terrible beauty is born”) makes the most of choice lines, Edith Evans (The Chalk Garden, 1964) is a quirky, mischievous Lady Gregory, co-founder of the Abbey. It’s top-heavy with talent including Sian Philips (Becket, 1964), Flora Robson (55 Days at Peking, 1963), Jack MacGowran (Age of Consent, 1969) and T.P. McKenna (Perfect Friday, 1970).

Turns out John Ford was too ill to direct more than few minutes and that role fell to Jack Cardiff (Dark of the Sun, 1968) and I would have to say he does an agreeable job. John Whiting (The Captain’s Table, 1959) drew from O’Casey’s autobiography to write an intelligent script.