sex – Page 11 – The Magnificent 60s

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.

The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969) ***

Sounds like a treasure hunt picture, contemporary buccaneers or thieves in search of missing gold. But there’s nothing in the way of maps waiting to be discovered, no clues, no character unhinged by its pursuit. In fact, the valuable commodity here is wine, over a million bottles of it. Everyone in the hilltop town of Santa Vittoria is in on the secret. Because they hid it from prying Germans who have taken over the place after the death of Italian dictator Mussolini. And that element of the story, once we finally embark on it, doesn’t begin until halfway through.

Meanwhile, we are treated to the browbeaten drunk Bombolini (Anthony Quinn), too dumb to realize that being elected mayor – the previous incumbent kicked out for being a Fascist – is a poisoned chalice. However, taking a few tips from Machiavelli he works out that his survival depends on bringing together a council of more sensible heads. His new position cuts no ice with disgruntled wife Rosa (Anna Magnani) whose weapons of choice, vicious tongue apart, include copper pans and an elongated rolling pin.

But if you were desperate to know how to bury treasure, here’s your chance. A good quarter of an hour is spent on that element. I’m not entirely sure what fascinated director Stanley Kramer (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, 1967) about this. Because, clever though the scheme is of vanishing into thin air more than a million bottles, it takes little more than lining up the populace in rows close enough together so they can pass a bottle onto their neighbor, until the total amount – minus 300,000 bottles left behind to fool the Germans – is hidden in tunnels in the caves below the village.

Assuming of course the Germans fail to prod the stones concealing the tunnels and discover the cement is too fresh to be ancient. But Bombolini is in luck because German leader Captain von Prum is a “good German,” inclined to take things easy, coming down hard of any of his soldiers who pester female villagers, allowing the mayor to negotiate to retain some of the supply being handed over to the invaders, half his mind on the local Countess Caterina (Virna Lisi) with whom he fancies his chances, but in gentlemanly fashion of course, aiming to seduce her over dinner rather than resorting to force.

That matter is complicates because the widowed countess already has a lover, a wounded soldier Tufa (Sergio Franchi) whom she nursed. It’s only when the captain realizes that he has been duped by the apparent buffoon of a mayor and by the countess that things start ugly and soon you can hear cries of the torture echoing out over the piazza.

The odd mixture of comedy and reality fails to gel. Anna Magnani (The Fugitive Kind, 1960) doesn’t look as if she’s acting in showing her distaste of Anthony Quinn (Lost Command, 1966) possibly because he is over-acting, cowing and whimpering and using his hands to express every single word he speaks. But it looks authentic enough. Either Kramer has rounded up every aged extra left over from Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) or he has recruited scores of ordinary peasants to play the villagers.

Kramer’s usual earnestness has disappeared, and although his first movie was a comedy, and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, his previous picture, played on the comedic elements of the situation, his feeling for comedy is rusty at best, non-existent at worst. It’s hard to feel any particular sympathy, as would be the point, in the villagers outwitting the Germans and in the fact that they have changed from ostensible World War Two conquerors to the conquered once their erstwhile allies turned on them.

You might consider this a feminist twist on The Taming of the Shrew, Rosa not only being a shrew who would never be tamed, not even by Germans, but actually the family breadwinner. While, until his election, her husband is a nonentity. And it might be viewed as a choice role for Anthony Quinn, a dramatic shift away from the heroic roles with which he was more often associated. Anna Magnani mostly looks as if wondering why she agreed to participate.

The best acting comes from Virna Lisi (How to Murder Your Wife, 1965), a widow realistic about the lack of true love in what sounds like an arranged marriage, and faced with having to keep the amorous captain sweet, and possibly doing whatever that takes in order to protect the townspeople. Hardy Kruger (The Red Tent, 1969) has also abandoned his normal arrogance, is uncomfortable with being a despot, wanting to maintain friendly relations with the villagers, and seeking solace in gentlemanly fashion from the countess. He has the best scenes, the look of superiority as he outwits, he thinks, Bombolini, and the look on horror on his face as he discovers the countess’s lover.

Based on the bestseller by Robert Crichton with a screenplay by William Rose (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner) and Ben Maddow (The Way West, 1967) it’s the kind of movie that raises a lot of questions without bothering to answer any of them.

Hurry Sundown (1967) *****

Otto Preminger’s drama was the first of a trio of heavyweight films in 1967 – the others being In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner – that took African American issues seriously. In post-war Georgia land-grabbing by ambitious Henry Warren (Michael Caine) pits him against World War Two vet Rod (John Philip Law) and African American farmer Reeve (Robert Hooks) who team up. Throw in a quintet of feisty women – Henry’s wife Julie Ann (Jane Fonda), Rod’s wife Lou (Faye Dunaway), schoolteacher Vivian (Diahann Carroll) – Reeve’s love interest – Henry’s lover Sukie (Donnie Banton) and Rod’s mother (Beah Richards) – and emotional confrontation comes thick and fast.

Preminger had spent most of the decade making films about big subjects – Exodus (1960), the politics behind the formation of Israel; Advise and Consent (1962), just politics; The Cardinal (1963), politics within the Roman Catholic Church; and In Harm’s Way (1965), Army politics and bluster around Pearl Harbor

Preminger is both economic and elegant. From opening dialogue to climactic court scene, the picture races along, and continuous use of tracking shots ensures the movie never gets bogged down. While there is no lynching, racist abuse, whether direct or indirect (through patronizing attitude) is never far from the surface. Corrupt Judge Purcell (Burgess Meredith) is by far the most vicious, his unrestrained language making you wince. But even those with more measured approaches have to play the game, Reeve gives a lift to Rod but has to let him off before they reach town in case anyone spots this, Rod forbidden, for example, to buy dynamite.

But the racists do not get it all their own way. Julie Ann stands up to the judge and her position in the community is so strong that others boycott the judge’s daughter’s wedding leading to the judge receiving a tongue-lashing from his wife. Weak Sheriff Coombs (George Kennedy) coming to arrest Rod is bamboozled by his female relatives while Vivian charms her way past the judge.

The women are uniformly strong. Julia Ann goes from seductive wife to distraught mother, but in between capable of defrauding Rod’s mother, her childhood nanny, out of her inheritance. Lou resents her husband’s return after in his absence taking on a full-time job while running the farm and now resisting the idea of selling up to Henry. Rod’s mother, beholden to white men all her life, now turns against them. The judge’s daughter (Donnie Banton) makes no bones about the fact that she is marrying her “dull” fiancé for his money. This is no spoiler because you will have guessed some similar outcome but at the end it is Vivian who takes the initiative in her relationship with Rod and marches into his house with her baggage, declaring she has come to stay.

And although the ruthless Henry is the bad guy, he, too, is afforded insight, soothing himself by playing a musical instrument, a man with talent who had “distracted” himself by pursuit of money. And there is another touching moment when he takes in a runaway child. Acting-wise, Michael Caine (Gambit, 1966) is a revelation. Gone is the trademark drawl and the laid- back physical characteristics. Here he talks snappily – and no quibbles with his Southern accent either – and strides quickly. That we can believe he is brutal, gentle, remorseful and ruthless is testament to his performance.

Similarly, this is a massive step forward in Jane Fonda’s (Cat Ballou, 1965) career, away from Hollywood comedies and sexed-up French dramas, and her internal conflict springs from being forced to choose between husband and son, between her innate sexiness that oozes out in every intimate scene and maternal longing to comfort her disturbed child. Her usual shrill delivery is tempered somewhat by the deeper emotions she is forced to bear. While her attempt to defraud Rod’s mother comes from a desire to keep her husband, her eyes tell you she knows that is no excuse.

What’s perhaps most surprising of all is the tenderness. There are wonderful, gentle love scenes between Caine and Fonda and Law and Dunaway.

Children, too, also unusually, play a central role. Henry’s callousness is no better demonstrated than in his earlier treatment of his son. Reeve’s eldest son also resents his father’s return and, viewing Henry as a more suitable adult, betrays his father. The Judge is obliged to drop one of the worst aspects of his racism in order to appease his daughter.

The acting throughout is uniformly good. Dunaway’s debut won her a six-picture contract with Preminger. Singer Diahann Carroll’s role as a confident young woman led to a television series. Robert Hooks would also enjoy small-screen fame. The surprisingly effective John Philip Law would partner Fonda in sci-fi Barbarella (1968) and link up with Preminger again in the ill-fated Skidoo (1969). Horton Foote (To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962) and Thomas C. Ryan (The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, 1968) wrote the screenplay based on the bestseller by K.B. Gilden.

Unfairly overlooked by Oscar votes, who preferred the other Poitier films, Hurry Sundown, despite the rawness of the language and the innate brutality meted out to African-Americans, has been vastly under-rated. It is worth another look because at its core is not just racism but big business which scarcely cares about the color of those it exploits. It is as much about the power shift in relationships and ambition.

The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl / La Louve Solitaire (1968) ****

A sheer delight, a twisty thriller with a standout sexy burglar. It might put you immediately in mind of To Catch a Thief (1955) but this takes the Hitchcock embryo and molds it in something effortlessly stylish and not just to keep the audience on the hop. A second viewing has raised it in my estimation.

Unless you were a fan of the more permissive pictures at the end of the 1960s or kept a close eye on the gossip columns – or for that matter Playboy magazine – you were unlikely to have come across slinky blonde Daniele Gaubert. A former teen model and supporting actress in a number of French and Italian films at the start of the 1960s, she had a brief brush with Hollywood as Yul Brynner’s girlfriend in United Artists’ Flight from Ashiya (1964) but then married Rhadames Trujillo, son of the Dominican Republic dictator.

The year after The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl she starred in Radley Metzger’s provocative Camille 2000 which set pulses racing especially at the censor’s office. Then marriage beckoned again, this time to French Olympic triple gold medallist skier Jean-Claude Killy with whom she made her last picture The Snow Job (1972) also known, depending on where you lived, as The Ski Raiders and The Great Ski Caper.

She only made eighteen movies but The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl is by far the standout. A taut thriller with plenty of twists and stylish action scenes, the French-Italian co-production was the only film of documentary film maker Edouard Logerau and that background helps shape the movie with many of the most thrilling sequences lacking musical accompaniment.

Female empowerment is not normally associated with crime, given that organized crime is generally organized by men. But burglary is a different matter, lending itself to non-gender-specific individual enterprise. Though there are safes to break, there’s no glass ceiling in this brand of thievery.

Gaubert plays a cat burglar ironically known as “the lone wolf” (as in the original title) who is forced to trade her freedom by stealing a cache of drugs for the police in order to apprehend a criminal mastermind (Sacha Pitoeff). (Maybe this notion inspired Luc Besson’s Nikita.) Her sidekick is Michael Duchaussoy, seconded from his usual job as an embassy press attache, on the grounds that he can lip-read (which proves more than a gimmick as the plot unfolds).

Given that this was all shot “in camera” – Christopher Nolan’s favourite phrase – without the benefit of CGI or, so it would appear, much in the way of bluescreen, the burglary scenes are pretty impressive. For a kick-off, Gaubert is a sexy as you can get in a skin-tight cat-suit. Furthermore, her character calls on skills from her previous occupation as a trapeze artist. While the director doesn’t match Hitchcock’s in the tension-racking stakes, the sheer verve of the burglary takes the breath away.

The first burglary – before she is caught – takes place at a fancy chateau where a party is in full swing (owners in residence less likely to take extra precautions to hide their valuables), Gaubert nips over a wall, slips up a tree, uses a line thrower (a type of harpoon) to connect tree to building, and then proceeds to walk along the tightrope. Mission accomplished, she zooms off in a sports car, only stopping to remove false tyre treads and strip out of her costume before hiding her ill-gotten gains in a secret compartment at the back of the fridge.

The police burglary is in an office block. She and the lip-reader are holed up in an apartment opposite watching via a telescope. Although they pass the time in gentle flirtation, especially as she favours revealing outfits, she is not quite as imprisoned as it might seem and is already hatching her own plans to outwit her captors. This burglary is even more dangerous, in the pouring rain for a start, across Parisian rooftops, and involving a trapeze and ropes.

Thereafter, plot twists come thick and fast after this. She escapes to Switzerland, pursued by lip-reader (to whom she has clearly formed an attachment), cops and furious drug runners. Eventually re-captured she agree to another official burglary as a way of finally trapping Mr Big.

The tone is lightened by repartee and some interesting characterization. The lone wolf turns out to have very strong principles that prevent her just running off. Mr Big is a stamp aficionado. A lava lamp is turned into a weapon. Instead of counting to five before killing someone, a bad guy does the countdown according to the number of people diving into a swimming pool. Gaubert fools her captors into thinking they have a flat tyre by dangling her handbag over the edge of the door until it bumps into the tyre and makes the thwock-thwock of a burst tyre. “Survivors give me goose flesh,” quips a thug.

The closest comparison is not Hitchcock but Danger: Diabolik (1968) featuring John Philip Law which has a definite comic book riff. And you might also point to Joseph Losey’s Modesty Blaise (1966) or even, for a self-contained independent woman, to Raquel Welch’s Fathom (1967. But this lone wolf is ice-cold. Blonde is not enough. She is one step ahead of the law and the criminals. There are hints of a tragic past – a trapeze artists requires a partner, for example.

The last shot has Genault triumphant on a Paris rooftop. There is a nod to Hitchcock (think Rear Window) in the use of a telescopic framing device for many scenes, giving them a voyeuristic aspect. Sure, a bigger budget and a better supporting cast – and perhaps a more obvious romance – might have lifted the picture but Genault’s presence ensures that the film does not lack style. Gaubert dominates so much you could imagine she harldy needed direction but it is the cleverness of Edourd Logerau (Paris Secret, 1965) that makes it appear seamless.

Definitely deserves a more appreciative audience.

The Happy Ending (1969) ****

Vastly under-rated, critically dismissed at the time, this early reflection on feminism has now come into its own. Yet it starts out as a completely different picture. At first it appears as ruthless a depiction of the self-destructive alcoholic as the later Leaving Las Vegas (1995). In passing, skewering the conventions of marriage in an era or strata of society where divorce was not a convenient option. And a time when women, chained to the home but craving attention, might risk the humiliation of being turned away by a secretary on visiting their husband at the office.

When love had turned into transactional sex. Where women hid out in beauty parlors, sanctuaries which men would dare not invade, to drink and play cards in peace. Or, indulging in the working aspect of such places, underwent breast augmentation or brutal hair removal or other procedures with a view to holding on to their men, seen as daily riding a wave of temptation in the Mad Men world of cocktails and expense account living. For this class of men the word “inappropriate” has never been invented as they paw at any female within reach.

*From snow-kissed romance and champagne to….*

A largely redundant and lengthy (eight minutes, for goodness sake) montage (including credits and a post-credits – what! – theme song) serves to emphasize the part Hollywood played in reinforcing the celluloid image of initial romance being the mere prelude to happy ever after. The reality was a much whiter shade of pale.

Facing up to their sixteenth wedding anniversary – their marriage, topically, spanning the birth of Prince Charles and his anointing as Prince of Wales, seen via cinema newsreel and television news – alcoholic middle-aged housewife Mary (Jean Simmons) re-evaluates her stultifying life. Lawyer husband Fred (John Forsythe) jokingly refers to himself as “the F.B.I.” but the surveillance he undertakes to ensure his wife has not fallen off the wagon would have earned him a gold star in that particular organization. He has housemaid Agnes (Nanette Fabray) snoop on his wife, goes through all her drawers and clothes until he finds the mercifully unopened bottle of vodka hidden in a boot, checks up on her movements at the hairdresser and even knows which bar she is likely to frequent.

Although managing to refrain from drinking anything alcoholic, Mary’s behavior take her perilously close. She drinks tomato juice from a champagne glass, buys a fellow alcoholic a whisky in a bar just to savor him drinking it. And for all her husband’s attempts to keep her away from the stuff gets pretty loaded himself at times and the catering table at a previous anniversary party fairly groaning with booze has proved a temptation too far. She’s been an extreme player – her stomach pumped out in flashback.

*…anything that comes in a glass or a bottle. She even has booze secreted in a bottle of perfume.*

Husband’s control extends to finance. She is denied credit card, cheque book and ready cash. Even her mother (Teresa Wright) refuses to lend her money. Unable to go through with putting another good face on their marriage via the anniversary party she pawns a necklace and jaunts off to the Bahamas. On the plane she meets old buddy Flo (Shirley Jones) who is enjoying a clandestine affair with a married man. Mary dips her toe in those illicit waters but her flight has sobered her up enough to face up to her dilemma and not cover all the wounds with alcohol.

I’m not planning to spoil the story by telling you the ending but the ending is the whole point. While the movie’s title is initially perceived as an ironic tilt at the state of marriage – the traditional movie “happy ending” – in reality the ending Mary chooses for herself is the feminist one of self-determination, independent of a man, her self-worth not tied up in his appreciation of her, and she takes the extremely bold decision to quit the marriage, not for another man as might have been de rigeur and in some ways more acceptable within society, but to find herself.

This was a terrible flop, the worst in director Richard Brooks’ career which at the time had reached the commercial and critical peaks of The Professionals (1966) and In Cold Blood (1967), for which he was Oscar-nominated. Audiences failed to respond despite Jean Simmons (Rough Night in Jericho, 1967) receiving her second Oscar nomination.

And you can see why it sank. If people didn’t walk out during the interminable montage sequence, then for the most part it was interminably depressing. The only thing worse than watching an alcoholic getting drunk is watching an alcoholic desperate to get drunk, holding back from indulging as if standing on the edge of a precipice, almost willing themselves to fall over for the sheer relief of oblivion.

And yet it is extremely watchable as the couple play out their marital game, Fred, the ostensible loving husband, protecting his wife from herself, Mary blaming her drinking for their marital problems rather than the other way round.

Jean Simmons is a compelling watch. This is really a tremendous performance and a shame she lost out to the more showy acting of Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. As good as that was, it was pretty much all surface, Smith playing a character who was pure invention, for the most part sashaying through life by force of her incredible personality, not a woman grasping at straws from the outset, damned by all in sight who were only too aware of her affliction, unable to come to terms with herself, denied all that was casually tossed to often worthless men.

John Forsythe (Topaz, 1969), who grits his teeth so much they appear likely to puncture his cheeks, is as good as I’ve ever seen him in a whale of a part that calls upon him to play two roles effectively, the dutiful husband restrained by having to watch over his errant wife, and a man who, out of her sight, can still enjoy himself, and, it is hinted, has been illicit himself with colleague’s wife Helen (Tina Louise).

Structurally, it’s very cleverly done, and Richard Brooks continues with the façade of the happy marriage and the wife’s drinking being the root cause of their dual unhappiness before letting rip late on with the incipient feminism.

A tremendous movie and well worth seeing.

Shalako (1968) ***

It’s a gripping and unusual opening. The jangling noise of metal beating upon metal. A trapped mountain lion surrounded by a posse of unkempt men. The beast driven into a killing zone. The camera ends up on a classy blonde in a top hat, Irina (Brigitte Bardot), drawing a bead on the animal. But as she shoots so does rugged cowboy Bosky (Stephen Boyd) and you can be sure his aim is more deadly. It wouldn’t do to have an upper-class European lady to be mauled to death by a vicious creature just because her ego got the better of her.

Except that’s not the opening. Instead, that’s sacrificed for a dumb theme tune and a few minutes over the credits watching titular hero Shalako (Sean Connery) doing what exactly? Nothing exciting that for sure. We see him riding I guess to prove he can sit as tall in the saddle as the stars of the genre like Alan Ladd, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, James Stewart, as if nobody expected James Bond to be able to complete such a transition. There’s a bit of waking up, more riding, drinking from a dirty stream, and more riding while composer Jim Dale struggles to find lyrics that rhyme with Shalako.

There’s a bit more exposition before Shalako does anything meaningful. We are introduced to a fistful of Europeans on a hunting party complete with butler (Eric Sykes) and guzzling champagne and escorted by a bunch of mean-looking cowboys looking on in envy though I doubt any would acquire a taste for champagne.

Then the real action starts. A bit’s been missed out explaining just why Irina took off on her own with just one man as escort to continue hunting and nobody thought fit to warn her this was Apache country. We know she’s in trouble because her escort is just about dead and Apaches are gathering. Enter Shalako to save the day. The first piece of dialogue between the most handsome man in the world and the screen’s most beautiful woman, a movie made just so Connery, at his Bond peak, and Bardot, in her most expensive picture, could strike sparks off each other, is hardly something to treasure. It’s almost priceless for its mundanity. “You all right?” grunts Shalako. “Yes,” replies the breathless heroine.

But trust the British to bring that epitome of British moviemaking, the class war, to that most democratic of movie species, the western. It’s ironic that in the country where freedom is a given – slavery long since abolished in the period this movie was set – members of the hunting party are fettered. Irina is little more than bait. You might as well have staked her out, hoping to snare German aristocrat von Hallstatt (Peter van Eyck). Marriage would cure the financial woes of her debt-ridden sister Lady Daggett (Honor Blackman) and husband Sir Charles (Jack Jawkins). Von Hallstatt doesn’t believe in making romantic overtures, it would be, like so many aristocratic marriages, a contract of convenience; he acquires beauty, she gets wealth.

To complicate matters Lady Daggett has a roving eye which has settled on Bosky, and to complicate matters even further, nobody should be firing rifles, even if only for sport, in Apache territory. It’s not long before the Apaches take umbrage and launch an attack. And it takes even less time for Bosky and his buddies to take off, leaving their charges poorly defended in a makeshift fort.

It takes way too long to sort out all these plot machinations and get to the meat of the story which is finding a way of putting Connery and Bardot together and when they are not the movie trundles along without much in the way of screen sparks. It could have done with an entirely different scenario. Something akin to Soldier Blue (1970) would have worked a treat, with roles reversed of course back to the traditional of experienced male tending the inexperienced female as they battle through enemy territory.

You needed to get this pair together – and quick – for the movie to find any steam at all. As it is, it’s somewhat laborious. While the action sequences are well done and Shalako scores in the western lore department, you wouldn’t have thought a mountaineering subplot could have produced so few thrills, its only purpose, plot-wise, to ensure that von Hallstatt acquires some credibility (he’s the mountaineer) and that the group can reach a plateau whose main attraction, as lovers of westerns will already be aware, is a pool where in the great Hollywood tradition a woman can disport herself half-naked. Shalako, in sneaking up on her, comes across like a bit of a peeping tom.

Sean Connery (The Hill, 1965) is convincing enough as a cowboy. He certainly doesn’t look out of place on a horse but it takes far too long for the expected romance to begin. Brigitte Bardot (Viva Maria!, 1965) is better than you might expect as a sharpshooter, but not quite in the fiery class of a Claudia Cardinale (The Professionals, 1966) or even Maureen O’Hara (The Rare Breed, 1965) and she’s not really given the dialog necessary to fully establish the independence of her character.

Director Edward Dmytryk (Mirage, 1965) does his best with an overly-complicated script and some cumbersome set-pieces and it would have worked far better if a few characters and reams of sub-plot had been chucked aside to bring the stars together quicker. While Connery does the riding and shooting well enough he lacks the grizzled lived-in face of his famed western predecessors and I get a sense of him trying too hard. And, as I said, it wouldn’t have taken much to pep up Bardot.

Having complained about the subsidiary characters, they are all well-drawn. Stephen Boyd (The Big Gamble, 1961) makes on helluva mean cowboy, Honor Blackman (Moment to Moment, 1966) is excellent as a predatory female. Aristocratic pair Peter van Eyck (Station Six Sahara, 1963) and Jack Hawkins (Masquerade, 1965) are the kind of actors who can denote fallen status with facial expression rather than requiring lumps of dialog. But Eric Sykes (The Plank, 1967) is really a British in-joke.

James Griffith and screenwriting partner Hal Hopper had previously worked on Russ Meyer epics like Lorna (1965). The original story came from a novel by Louis L’Amour (Catlow, 1971).

Out-with his guise as James Bond, Connery – excepting Robin and Marian (1976) and Cuba (1979) – was not one of the screen’s great lovers so this would have been the perfect chance to hone those particular credentials. But like the entire picture this was a missed opportunity. When the best scene is the brutal suffocation of Honor Blackman and not the two stars canoodling, you can see the target was missed by miles.