Must-see for collectors of cinematic curios. A treatise on entitlement, bullfighting, Picasso, the impact of celebrity on everyday lives and the hermaphroditic qualities of snails? Or an innovative piece of moviemaking through its use of a jigsaw split-screen, an audacious reimagining of the painter’s work, documentary and animation. Or despite the involvement of top talent like Albert Finney (Tom Jones, 1963), Yvette Mimieux (Dark of the Sun, 1968), composer Michel Legrand (The Thomas Crown Affair, 1968) and writer Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451, 1966), rightly consigned to the vault and never given a cinema release.
George (Albert Finney), a disenchanted San Francisco architect who designs warehouses, and wife Alice (Yvette Mimieux) take a holiday in France to rekindle his love of Picasso and set out to find and – in in a severe case of early onset entitlement – talk to the legendary painter. So they fly to Paris, take the train to Cannes and cycle around. Romance, it has to be said, in that idyllic countryside is the last thing on his mind, although George does pluck a guitar and sing a love song on a riverbank and they do dally in the sea. And he is far from a stuffed shirt, in one scene stealing a boy’s balloon to prevent the kid hogging a telescope.
Not even Barbra Streisand singing the title track provided the movie with any momentum.
There are barely ten lines of meaningful dialog, though Alice’s frustration at her husband’s obsession is soon obvious. The best sequences are the reimagining of Picasso paintings as animation. Picasso broke down the world, so we are told, and represented it as his own so by this token it seems pretty fair to do the same to the artist’s work. In the best scene George turns toreador (not sure the budget ran to stuntmen) facing up to a real bull. But there is plenty Picasso to make up, including a candlelit walk along the “Dream Tunnel” displaying the artist’s War and Peace murals, a lecture on the painter’s ceramics and his self-identification with death in the bull ring.
And there is a twist at the end, as the couple on a beach do not loiter long enough to see a man resembling the famed artist make Picasso-like drawings on the sand. But mostly it’s a story about American entitlement, that a painter should not shut himself off from the world in order to prevent the world stopping him getting on with painting. When George, denied entrance or even acknowledgement of his bell-ringing, stands at the gate to the Picasso villa, it is almost as he is the one imprisoned by his need for celebrity. Half a century on, the need for ordinary lives to be validated by contact with celebrities has become an insane part of life. The fact that the impossible mission ends in defeat (“everything is still the same”) lends a tone of irony.
Work out in your own mind what resemblence the guy who appears briefly at the end bears to Picasso.
Finney’s box office status at this point in his career allowed him to retain his thick Lancashire accent – Sean Connery managed that trick for his entire career. As in Two for the Road (1967) he does a trademark Bogart impression and eats with his mouth open. And he is game enough to stand in a bull ring with a raging bull. Yvette Mimieux is scandalously underused, insights into her thoughts conveyed by lonely walks through night-time streets, although she is the only one to fully appreciate art when she comes across a blind painter (Peter Madden). The best part goes to Luis Miguel Dominguin playing himself, a bullfighter and renowned friend of Picasso. In the incongruity stakes little can match Graham Stark (The Plank, 1967) as a French postman.
As you might have guessed this had a somewhat complicated production. Three directors were involved: Robert Sallin, Serge Bourguignon and Wes Herchendsohn. It was the only directorial chore for Sallin, better known as the producer of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). It brought a temporary halt to the career of Oscar-nominated director Bourguignon (Sundays and Cybele, 1962) whose previous film was Two Weeks in September starring Brigitte Bardot. Herchendsohn was primarily an animation layout artist/supervisor credited with episodes of Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973-1974).
There is some stunning cinematography from Vilmos Zsigmond (Deliverance, 1972) and a superb score by Michel Legrand. This was the beginning and end of the movie career of Edwin Boyd who shared screenwriting credit with Bradbury. And it was the beginning and the end of the movie as a viable film for general release, Warner Brothers promptly shelved it.
In the hands of a French or Spanish arthouse moviemaker, with a tale of protagonists going nowhere, this might have gained more critical traction. It’s hardly going to fall into the highly-commended category, but in fact from the present-day perspective says a lot about celebrity obsession and entitlement. Despite the oddities – perhaps because of them – I was never bored.
There were five our great reasons to see this picture. Firstly, it was in Cinerama. Secondly, it was the first attempt in that special format to tell a dramatic story rather than offer just a travelog. Though How the West Was Won (1962) was promoted at the first dramatic use of Cinerama, that was actually untrue. This came first. Third, there was a terrific gimmick – Smell-O-Vision – which allowed audiences to inhale around 30 fragrances at the same time as the onscreen characters. Fourthly, it was produced by Mike Todd Jr., son of the Oscar-winning producer of Around the World in 80 Days (1956) and second husband of Elizabeth Taylor who was instrumental in bringing Cinerama to the big screen in the first place., Lastly, it was the first top-billed appearance of rising British star Denholm Elliott.
Unfortunately, none of these hit the target and it remains a novelty in the Cinerama canon. For a start, there wasn’t much of a story – it’s a chase tale of sorts with crime novelist Oliver (Denholm Elliott) uncovering a plan to kill American heiress Sally Kennedy. In setting out to thwart it he travels all over Spain in the company of philosophic wise-cracking taxi driver Smiley (Peter Lorre). Cue travelog of scenic Spain including fiestas, dances and the running of the bulls, which appears not to have been specially staged but filmed documentary-style as it occurred with the bulls inflicting considerable damage on the humans foolish enough to think it’s a lark.
The hook is the mystery woman who can only be detected by her Schiaparelli perfume while the giveaway for the villain, hired assassin Baron saradin (Paul Lukas), is his tobacco. Cue an onslaught of scents. But the smells don’t just pop up when characters are involved. When a barrel of wine smashes, that produces another smell.
Astonishingly, the movie manages to bring in some of the Cinerama trademarks – the runaway element seen from the audience POV, not just the traditional vehicle but also barrels of wine.
The smell gimmick worked well enough in cinemas set up for such technical aspects, but that amounted to very few screens, and outside of those the movie just seemed a random series of scenes with only panoramic views of Spain to lessen the boredom.
It did nothing for the career of Denholm Elliott and he did little for the movie. He lacked the edge or innocence required to make such a character come alive and mostly he looks as though he doesn’t know what to do. He didn’t make another movie for three years and on his return for Station Six Sahara (1963) he was no longer the star but quickly shifting into the character actor he would be for the rest of his screen career.
It was nearly the last hurrah for Peter Lorre. He suffered heart attack during filming so the real Peter Lorre is only seen in half the picture, for the other half it’s a stand-in.
The presence of Elizabeth Taylor (Butterfield 8, 1960) could conceivably have redeemed the picture but she puts in only a fleeting appearance, so speedy her distinctive features barely register. You see more of Diana Dors (Baby Love, 1969).
In the hands of Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho, 1960) or imitators like Stanley Donen (Charade, 1963) and with a more finely worked screenplay, reliant on neither visual nor olfactory gimmick, this might have worked. But it was in hands of Jack Cardiff (The Girl on a Motorcycle, 1968), famed cinematographer but only his third outing as a director, and he clearly didn’t know how to balance the various ingredients and so it limps home.
The minute the location of the source novel by Audrey Kelley and William Roos shifted from New York to Spain and the number of investigators halved, the trouble started. The hunt for a woman whose existence is in question was a standard mystery trope and might very well have worked here minus the smells and Cinerama.
Old causes never die but they do go out of fashion and interest from movie audiences in the issues surrounding the Spanish Civil War had fallen from the peak when they attracted artists of the caliber of Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso. But passions surrounding the conflict remained high even 20 years after its conclusion as indicated in this Fred Zinnemann (The Sundowners, 1960) drama.
Manuel Artiquez (Gregory Peck) plays a disillusioned guerilla living in exile in France, who has ceased raiding the Spanish border town under the thrall of corrupt Captain Vinolas (Anthony Quinn). Artiguez has two compelling reasons to return home – a young boy Paco asks him to revenge the death of his father at the hands of Vinolas and his mother is dying. But Artiquez is disinclined to do either. Heroism has lost its luster. He has grown more fearful and prefers to live out his life drinking wine and casting lustful glances at young women.
In France he enjoys a freedom he would be denied in Spain. He is not hidden. Ask anybody in the street where he lives and they will tell you. This is a crusty old soldier, unshaven, long past finding refuge in memories, but not destroyed either by regret. There is a fair bit of plot, some of it stretching incredulity. The action sequence at the end, conducted in complete silence, is very well done, but mostly this is a character piece.
This is not the upstanding Gregory Peck of his Oscar-winning To Kill a Mockingbird. He is a considerably less attractive character, burnt-out, shabby, grizzled, lazy, easily duped, unwilling to risk his life to see his mother. We have seen aspects of the Anthony Quinn character before but he brings a certain humanity to his villain, bombastic to hide his own failings, coarse but occasionally charming, suitably embarrassed when caught by his wife visiting his mistress and praying earnestly to God to deliver Artiquez into his hands. Omar Sharif has the most conflicted character, forced by conscience to help an enemy of the Church.
However, two elements in the picture don’t make much sense. Paco tears up a letter (critical to the plot) to Artiquez which I just cannot see a young boy doing, not in an era when children respected and feared their elders. And I am also wondering what was it about Spain that stopped directors filming it in color. This is the third Spain-set picture I have reviewed in this blog after The Happy Thieves and The Angel Wore Red. For the first two I can see perhaps budget restrictions being the cause, but given the stars involved – Rex Harrison and Rita Hayworth in the first and Ava Gardner and Dirk Bogarde in the second – hardly facing the production dilemmas of a genuine B-picture.
But Behold a Pale Horse was a big-budget effort from Columbia and while black-and-white camerawork may achieve an artistic darkness of tone it feels artificial. This was never going to be the colorful Spain of fiestas and tourist vistas but it would have perhaps been more inviting to audiences had it taken more advantage of ordinary scenery.
J.P. Miller (Days of Wine and Roses, 1962) adapted the film from the novel Killing a Mouse on Sunday by Emeric Pressburger who in tandem with Michael Powell had made films like Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948). The film caused calamity for Columbia in Spain, the depiction of Vinolas with a mistress and taking bribes so upset the authorities that all the studio’s movies were banned.
Given that this is filmed in black-and-white, it seems a curious title. So I’m assuming the color is a reference to a scarlet woman which, indeed, Ava Gardner (Mayerling, 1968) is, working in a “cabaret” in an unnamed town at the start of the Spanish Civil War. Strangely enough, the decision to shoot in black-and-white works in the actress’s favor. She was one of the last relics of the Hollywood Golden Age when brilliant cinematographers used innovative lighting to capture on screen not so much great beauty but tantalizing emotion.
The close-up was almost exclusively the preserve of actresses who could convey deep feeling with minute changes of expression or simply through their eyes. Here, a couple of joint close-ups prove the point: Gardner’s face illuminated, even in repose struggling to contain passion; that of lover Dirk Bogarde (Victim, 1961) merely the same as always.
This Italian-American production is a curiosity, part homily, part reverential, part brutal. Arturo (Dirk Bogarde) is a priest on the run from the invading Communist forces. He takes refuge in a cabaret (code for brothel) where he is sheltered by Soedad (Ava Gardner). He has just denounced his faith so when captured is not executed as an enemy of the state, thus allowing him to begin a relationship with her.
They share an unusual type of innocence, Soledad because, as what was known in those days as a woman of easy virtue, she has never known true love, Arturo, for obvious reasons, denied such an emotion. Their trembling acceptance of this wondrous state of affairs is the beauty of the film.
The love story which would surely in any case have a tragic outcome unfortunately too often plays second fiddle to a subsidiary tale of safeguarding a sacred relic – about whose importance, strangely enough, both sides are agreed – and of arguments between various other political elements over the conflict. Hawthorne ( Joseph Cotton), a cynical journalist – are there any other kind? – bears testimony to the opposing perspectives while no-nonsense General Clave (Vittorio de Sica) deplores the “dirty” war. Neither side comes out well in the conflict the Communists, like a mob storming Dracula’s castle, destroy the cathedral, the Republicans committed to killing all prisoners so as not to hold up their advance. Only the clergy retain their principles even when tortured.
No one can portray a fallen woman like Gardner, but even as a mature woman her steps towards true love are hesitant, almost believing it is tucked away beyond the rainbow way out of reach, while inner conflict had become central to the Bogarde screen persona.
Writer-director Nunnally Johnson (The Three Faces of Eve, 1957), in his final movie in the hyphenate capacity, had good reason for choosing to film in black-and white – it permitted use of newsreel footage of diving Stuka bombers and more importantly since much of the story takes place at night it creates a haunted background of dark alleys. Color would have destroyed such a vision. You could argue there is artistic purpose here, filming a country which has fallen into a state of spiritual darkness. But that would not be true of the star – black-and-white allows rare opportunity to show what the camera adores in Ava Gardner, her face, even in repose, absorbing the light, as if she were, indeed, redemption.
A film that doesn’t take sides with characters caught in the middle can’t quite make up its mind where it wants to go.
Garner rather than Bogarde is the reason to see it.
Due some unexpected reverence after being chosen by Quentin Tarantino for his inaugural eponymous festival that kicked off at the Dobie theater in Austin, Texas, in 1996. I thought I’d throw that in since my opinion alone may not have swayed you as to this film’s merits. Ken Annakin (Battle of the Bulge, 1965) wasn’t first choice as director. It was initially on the slate of Jack Cardiff (The Girl on a Motorcycle, 1969) and should have also made waves as the first big British-Indian co-production. After his World War Two tank epic, Annakin’s career unexpectedly stalled.
He backed out of a project to make a Las Vegas version of Grand Hotel (1931), another, the $1.5 million The Fifth Coin, written by Francis Coppola and to star George Segal, got snarled up on the starting grid. He balked at Texas Across the River (1966) – when the females leads were going to be Shirley MacLaine and Catherine Deneuve – due to concerns about the schedule. He actually shot half of The Perils of Pauline (1967) with Terry-Thomas, Pat Boone and Pamela Austin, wife of super-agent Guy McIllwhaine, before being fired, for reasons that were unclear. Still, he remained in demand and was immediately off to Italy to shoot Raquel Welch heist picture The Biggest Bundle of Them All – not released until two years later as explained in my Behind the Scenes blog on that movie.
However, before jetting off to Italy, he had been sounded out by British producer Sydney Box who had a commitment from Yul Brynner and Trevor Howard to star in the $3 million The Long Duel being financed fifty-fifty by British studio Rank and fourteen Indian investors taking advantage of a tax-shelter deal. Annakin was in line for his biggest-ever fee. For Rank it was a brave new world. The British studio after years of relative inactivity was back on the production front foot, initially in co-production deals with American majors and British investment outfits like the National Film Corporation. It planned to invest $12 million in eight pictures. Initially, its stake in The Long Duel was limited to 60 per cent at a time when the movie was budgeted at $2.3 million. This was “particularly surprising because it came at a time when Britain was caught in a severe economic freeze” although the surprise success of the Bond pictures suggested the country’s movie industry was, in contrast, riding the crest of a wave.
Things turned sour on the location scouting trip to India. A “bottomless pit” of laborers was on standby to build a rope bridge across as soon as the money came through. Timber had been ordered to build a fort on a plateau with stunning views of snow-capped mountains, but nothing would arrive until money changed hands. While Rank had committed three-fifths of the finance with the rest coming from the release of blocked rupees guaranteed by a Maharajah, without any immediate cash and with the stars on pay-or-play contracts, there was no option but for Rank to pick up the entire cost and seek out alternative locations. That meant it was the single biggest British production financed domestically without a foreign partner.
Matters worsened when producer Sydney Box suffered a heart attack, triggering his departure from the business, in which he had been a mainstay for 33 years, movies ranging from The Seventh Veil (1945) to Accident (1966). In addition, Annakin was negotiating to make a permanent move to France while his wife was at home in England dealing with an adopted new-born baby. Annakin – acting also as producer for the first time – gambled on shifting the movie to Spain.
After the success of Doctor Zhivago (1965), Spain was fast being viewed as an ideal terrain, Custer of the West (1967), Camelot (1967), Fathom (1967) and The Bobo (1966) jostling for space. Having made a couple of movies there, Annakin assured the backers, the terrain was “not dissimilar” to the locations he had viewed in India. “I believe we can make Spain into India, so long as the crowds are dressed as Indians, which will cost quite a lot more because it means providing all the costumes whereas in India they already exist,” he explained. He had three weeks before the actors were due.
Yul Brynner and Trevor Howard would have seemed best buddies by now, having appeared in three films together over the past two years – Morituri (1965), The Poppy Is Also a Flower (1966) and Triple Cross (1966). Brynner’s career had revived thanks to Return of the Seven (1966). He was considered poor box office in the U.S. but made up for it with his global marquee appeal. Howard had been on an unexpected box office roll following Father Goose (1964), Operation Crossbow (1965), Von Ryan’s Express (1965) and The Liquidator (1965).
Annakin turned to the Sierra Nevadas to double as the Himalyas, located the rope bridge in a ravine near Ronda, the villages transplanted to the dusty Andalusian plains, and found sufficient horse-riding extras among the gypsies of Dacoit country. The Alhambra was called in to action for part of the Indian palace. A steam train of sufficient vintage was found.
Brynner supplied his own motor home, one of the most luxurious on the market, but required considerable assistance to move it around, especially on narrow country roads linking locations. Over 300 horses were required, with complications when the animals had to be moved in the dark. The major scenes required extensive lighting and nobody had taken into account the fierce winds which nearly blew everything away. The dancing bear was supplied by Chipperfield Zoo near Windsor, England. In the scene where Brynner returns to find his tribe massacred, the bear is also a victim. But, when the bear was knocked out by an injection, it didn’t wake up again. Cast and crew were so shocked that filming was abandoned for the day.
Howard’s alcoholism was another issue, liable to leave the actor so disoriented during the shooting of dangerous scenes that his close-ups were often shot at a later date, though, eventually informed of this accommodation, the veteran sobered up. If you felt when watching the movie that the female stars were out of place, you wouldn’t be far wrong. In the original tale there was no significant female role. But acceding to the demands of studio and distributor required various love interests. Suzanna Leigh (Subterfuge, 1968) turned down the lead, providing Charlotte Rampling (Three, 1969) with a worthy role.
Convinced it was onto a winner, Rank took out adverts in the trades claiming “all signs point to it being…among the greats” and it took the bold step of launching it in roadshow at the Odeon Marble Arch simultaneous with continuous performance at the Odeon Leicester Square in London’s West End.
SOURCES: Ken Annakin, So You Wanna Be a Director (Tomahawk Press, 2001) p186-189, 197-206; “Sydney Box $10-Mil Prod Program,” Variety, January 26, 1966, p14; “Rank Now Measuring Up,” Variety, July 27, 1966, p25; Advert, Variety, August 24, 1966, p27; “$3-Mil Rank Duel May Be Costliest British Film Ever,” Variety, October 26, 1966, p5; Advert, Variety, November 9, 1966, p27; “Sydney Box Quits Film Posts,” Variety, August 7, 1967, p2.
You didn’t used to get away with this. Until recently, screen murderers had to be unveiled or at the very least, if getting away with their crime, come unstuck in the final few minutes as with Jagged Edge (1985) or tip the wink to the audience in the manner of Keyser Soze in The Usual Suspects (1995). About the only thing Netflix can genuinely take positive credit for is the invention of a subgenre of movies/series about unsolved crimes. And now it’s taken that a step further with programs where the killer(s) are apprehended but you never find out why they committed their appalling crimes.
The Asunta Case was very much the Spanish equivalent of the Madeleine McCann Case. The latter attracted global publicity, the former headlines that raged in Spain for years. However, Asunta, the 12-year adopted daughter of the recently separated Rosario and Alfonso, was soon found not far from the couple’s country estate, albeit with hands tied with red twine, and dead.
Although the couple fell under immediate suspicion, there was little sign of motive. Would the mother, a bundle of nerves and very thin, have been capable of drugging and suffocating the child and bundling her into a car and dumping her on a piece of waste ground? The father appeared a devoted parent and no cameras could find evidence of him anywhere near the estate or the area where the child was found.
So Netflix plays its usual narrative tricks. The couple appear guilty, then innocent, then guilty, then innocent. The investigating team hide evidence that doesn’t back up their case. A witness arrives late in the day. There’s a question of how bright the moon was that night. You can’t match two ends of this kind of twine to prove that the material that bound the child was the same as some found in a waste paper basket. Alfonso is accused of hiding his computer. Jail cells are bugged. There’s a hint that money might be involved. The media undermine the judiciary process by digging up juicy morsels that may or may not pertain to the case and may or may not influence a jury. In the absence of anything conclusive the evidence is almost entirely circunstantial.
What helps the Netflix tale most is the actress (Candela Pena) portrayng Rosario. I’ve no idea how accurate a portrayal this might be. But a more whiny, self-centred individual would be hard to find. Quite how she manages to conduct an affair just prior to the murder defies belief. As does Alfonso’s continued commitment to his unfaithful wife.
It could well be that Rosario’s witlessness, coming to pieces, is the result of loss, or, equally, the impact of guilt. She is a lawyer, so you would expect her not just to be above suspicion, but with a good idea of how the system works, enough to work her way around it. Alfonso (Tristan Ulloa) is a journalist so he, too, must be accustomed to the ways of the media and that refusing to talk will keep the media at bay long enough for his constant protestations of innocence to take effect.
As with most of these dramatized mini series, the information is structured in a way that keeps you on your toes. The situation for the investigative team is complicated in that the chief investigating officer, here deemed a “judge”, has to cope with a father with dementia while one of the cops is undergoing fertility treatment.
And the dramatists do the police work for them, presenting the circumstantial evidence as if it is fact. So what we are given are various options, how the couple could not have committed the crime, in which case the criminal, still at large, could strike again, and how they very much could. And this is after various red herrings dressed up very much as the menu du jour have been discarded, principal among which is the idea that the girl has been sexually abused, as she is seen early on wearing clothing and make-up inappropriate for her age, such photos found on the missing computer, and yet with a genuinely innocent explanation.
The investigation appears to focus more on Rosario – killer mother worse than killer father it would seem – although Alfonso’s implacability would drvie you to drink. The investigators don’t get off scot free either, complicit in permitting the judge to ignore evidence favorable to the defense. In the end the crime is solved, or at least a verdict reached, but the truth remains hidden, neither of the accused fessing up, no psychiatric reports to provide clarification, no suggestion that Alfonso did it to inflict terrible injury on the mother more than the child, which is often the case in child murders.
The dubbing’s annoying and you might enjoy this more watching it in the original Spanish with subtitles.
Whatever, it is totally absorbing, for the most part because of the mystery of the couple themselves, how they came to be in this position, and whether doubt remains.
A triumvirate of art thieves are blackmailed into stealing a famous Goya painting from the Prada museum in Madrid. Jimmy Bourne (Rex Harrison) is the actual thief, Eve Lewis (Rita Hayworth) smuggles the artworks out of the country and Jean-Marie (Joseph Wiseman, soon to be more famous as Dr No, 1962) creates the forgeries that replace the stolen masterpieces. Hayworth is the least reliable of the trio, her drinking (she had a problem in real life) jeopardizes their slick operation. Not only has the painting they have stolen slipped through their hands but the thief, Dr Victor Munoz (Gregoire Aslan), is not above a bit of murder on the side
Bourne is always one-step-ahead but never overbearing, and the thefts are carried out with military precision. Even when let down by colleagues, who are inclined to scarper when threatened, he takes it all in his stride, the calm center of any potential storm. His marriage proposal is just as cool, coming by way of dictation, “the new Mrs Bourne.”
Bourne is the archetypal gentleman thief (“there is a touch of larceny in all successful men”) and Eve does her earnest best to keep up (“I want so much to be a first-class crook for you, I’m trying to be dishonest, honestly I am.”). But there is never the remotest chance of them being confused with real gangsters. “I thought that stealing was the only honest way Jimmy could live with himself,” says Eve. In truth, their characters set the template for better-known later heist pictures like How to Steal a Million (1966), Gambit (1966) and A Fine Pair (1968) which couple one determined thief with one less so.
Of course, heist pictures rely for much of their success on the actual heist. And Bourne’s plan for the Prada is brilliantly simple and carried out, as mentioned, with military precision. The get-out clause, which, of course, is how such films reach their conclusion, is more realistic and human than the other movies I have mentioned.
What’s more, there are number of excellent sight gags and great throwaway lines, while Jean-Marie and Dr Munoz are well-written, the villain’s motivation is particularly good. Other incidentals lend weight – their apartment is opposite a prison, the security guards at the Prada are caring rather than the idiots of How to Steal a Million, and a sub-plot involving a bullfighter (Virgilio Teixeira, Return of the Seven, 1966) also sheds light on Bourne. There is a jaunty whistling theme tune by Mario Nascimbene (One Million Years B.C., 1966) which maintains levity throughout.
The movie does tilt from the gentleman thievery of the initial section into something much darker, but, so too, do the two principals and, unusually, rather than in the usual contrived fashion, Bourne and Eve undergo personal transition by the end.
Rex Harrison (Midnight Lace, 1960) and Hayworth are a delightful pairing. Hayworth has abandoned the sultry in favor of the winsome, Harrison shifted from sarcasm to dry wit. And there is genuine chemistry between them though his character’s matter-of-fact attitude tends to undercut the kind of passionate romance that moviegoers came to expect from top-class players thus paired. It would have been tempting for Hayworth to act as the ditzy blonde (brunette, actually) but instead she plays it straight, which is more effecting.
I found the whole exercise highly enjoyable. It’s very under-rated. My only quibbles are that it is shot in black-and-white, which seems bizarre when Spain is such a colorful location. The title, too, is an oddity. This was the only picture produced by Hayworth in partnership with husband James Hill. They split up before the picture was released which might explain its poor initial box office.
Hill was an experienced producer, part of Hill-Hecht-Lancaster (The Unforgiven, 1960), but this proved his final film. Hayworth, too, had previously worn the producer’s hat for The Loves of Carmen (1948), Affair in Trinidad (1952) and Salome (1953). Hayworth was still a marquee attraction at this point, taking top billing here, and second billing to John Wayne in Circus World/The Magnificent Showman (1963). But this is quite a different performance to her all-out-passionate persona or the slinky deviousness of Gilda (1946).
Director George Marshall (Advance to the Rear, 1964) knew how to stay out of the way and let his stars deliver the fireworks. John Gay (Soldier Blue, 1970) wrote the screenplay from the novel by Richard Condon (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962).
Twisty Carol Reed thriller pivoting on emotional entanglement that keeps you guessing right up to the end. In revenge for losing his business after an insurance company failed to cough up for his crashed plane, entrepreneur Rex (Laurence Harvey) fakes his own death and flees to Malaga in Spain.
But when girlfriend Stella (Lee Remick) joins him she discovers he has assumed the identity of an Australian millionaire whose passport he has purloined and completed the transformation by changing his black hair to blond. Rex has a mind to repeat the experiment by killing off himself (under the new identity) and claiming the insurance. Stella, complicit in the original scam, not only balks at this idea but finds disconcerting his change of personality and clear attraction to the opposite sex.
Tensions mount when mild-mannered insurance investigator Stephen (Alan Bates) appears on the scene. Anyone watching the film now has to accept that in the days before social media every face was not instantly tracked and accept that Stephen is unaware of what Rex looks like.
The couple cannot run because they are awaiting a bank draft. Stephen immediately sets the tone for suspicion when he pronounces that their vehicle “looks like a getaway car.” Forced to follow “The Godfather” dictum of keeping your enemies closer, the pair befriend Stephen with the intention of finding out what he knows and what are his intentions. Rex and Stella have to pretend they have only just met, separate bedrooms et al, leaving the door open for Stephen to gently woo Stella, an action endorsed by Harvey. They are caught out in small lies. Rex’s Australian accent falters. Stephen keeps on making notations in a notebook. Rex foils his pursuer’s attempts to photograph him.
The ensuing game of cat-and-mouse is complicated by Stephen’s romantic inclinations towards Stella. Is this as genuine as it appears? Or is he trying to get her on her own to admit complicity? Both Rex and Stella are, effectively, forced to adopt the new identities they have forged to dupe Stephen, with unforeseen results. There are red herrings aplenty, a race along mountainous roads, and some marvelous twists as the couple find the tale they have woven is turning too tight for comfort until murder appears the only solution.
As with his international breakthrough The Third Man (1949), Carol Reed grounds the whole Hitchcockian enterprise in local culture – this being unspoiled Malaga prior to the tourist deluge – Spanish churches, a wedding, fiesta, the running of the bulls, with an occasional ironic twist – “gypsy” musicians watching ballroom dancing on television. Reed resists taking the material down a darker route – Hitchcock would undoubtedly have twisted the scenario in another direction until Stella came under threat from Rex – but instead allows it to play out as a menage a trois underwritten by menace.
The acting is sublime. Laurence Harvey (A Dandy in Aspic, 1968) wallows in his part, Remick (Days of Wine and Roses, 1962) quietly anxious scarcely coming to belief that she had played a part in the original crime, Alan Bates (The Fixer, 1969), his deceptively pleasant inquisitive demeanor the ideal foil to Harvey. Unusually, they all undergo change, Harvey uncovers a more ruthless side to his character, Remick responds to the gentler nature of Bates, while Bates shrugs off his schoolmasterly aspects to become an attractive companion.
A couple of footnotes – special mention to Maurice Binder for the opening credits and this was the final score of British composer William Alwyn (The Fallen Idol, 1948). John Mortimer (Bunny Lake Is Missing, 1965) wrote the screenplay based on the Shelley Smith novel.
It was Hollywood’s worst nightmare. Two major studios – Columbia and Warner Brothers – were competing to make films about the Battle of the Bulge, one of the most famous episodes of the Second World War. Rival movies on similar or the same subject – classic examples You Only Live Twice (1967) vs Casino Royale (1967) or Deep Impact (1998) vs. Armageddon (1998) – risk cannibalising each other, each entry eating into the prospective audience of the opposition.
At first it seemed like the Columbia entry had the upper hand. Writer-producer Anthony Lazzarino had spent four years preparing The 16th of December: The Story of the Battle of the Bulge (the date referring to the start of the battle). Lazzarino’s project was endorsed by the U.S. Department of Defense which offered exclusive cooperation. Advisors were of the top rank – General Omar Bradley, General Hasso E. von Manteufel who had commanded the Panzers during the battle, British generals Sir Francis de Guingard and Robert Hasbrouck and Colonel John Eisenhower plus the cooperation of Eisenhower himself and Field Marshal Montgomery.
With a budget in the $6 million – $8.4 million range, and shooting was set to start in winter 1965, William Holden was lined up to play General Eisenhower and Kirk Douglas for General Hasso. Although initially intending to film in the Ardennes and Canada, ultimately the producers settled for the cheaper option of Camp Drum, one of the largest military installations in the U.S, a remote area in upper New York where the buildings could stand in for Bastogne, around which much of the real battle revolved, production there feasible because the Camp closed for winter. .
But that meant it would already be behind the eight-ball since Battle of the Bulge intended opening at Xmas 1965. Richard Fleischer (The Boston Strangler, 1968) was originally signed to direct. But he had become embroiled in a lawsuit with producer Samuel Bronston (El Cid, 1961, The Fall of the Roman Empire, 1964) whose production outfit had gone bust, killing off a deal for Fleischer to make The Night Runners of Bengal. The director was seeking g $910,000 in compensation.
Warner Brothers had enlisted Cinerama as co-producer, the studio’s first involvement in the stunning widescreen process and the first time war was considered a subject. The process had been utilised in other Hollywood pictures most notably MGM How the West Was Won (1962), but that has been as a supplier of the equipment, and taking a small share of the profits. But now Cinerama planned to enter the production business and had contracted with WB to shoot the film in the single-lens process instead of the more complicated three-camera approach which had led to vertical lies on screens.
Neither company was in great shape. Cinerama had posted a $17.9 million loss in 1964, WB $3.8 million. But whereas WB had My Fair Lady on the horizon, Cinerama was less reaons for optimism. Its income stream relied on sales of its equipment, either for filming or projection, and a levy from every cinema using the process. Expansion was seen as key to renewal. With only 67 cinemas equipped to show Cinerama in the U.S. and only 59 overseas, a major program was underway to reach 230 by 1967. Setting up a production division would ensure there were enough films to feed into Cinerama houses, and since such films were intended as roadshows, they would keep the cinemas product-secure for months on end.
Cinerama planned to spend $30 million on five films – John Sturges western The Hallelujah Trail (1965) budgeted at $5 million, Battle of the Bulge ($.75 million) while $6.5 million had been allocated to an adaptation of James Michener bestseller Caravans, $6 million for Beyond the Stars which became 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and $7 million for Grand Prix (1966). Added to the list was epic William the Conqueror, due to film in England in early 1966 with Robert Shaw taking top billing.
The WB-Cinerama project, which had taken a year to negotiate, was to be filmed in Spain under the aegis of producer Philip Yordan, one time associate of Bronston who had built a mini-Hollywood there. Yordan, Bronston’s chief scriptwriter, had written the screenplay along with his co-producer Milton Sperling. Instead of seeking official support or reproduce the battle in documentary detail, Yordan and Sperling aimed for a fictional account that took in the main incidents. The cast would include “ten important stars.”
Just what constituted an “all-star cast,” one of the key ingredients of the roadshow phenomenon of the 1960s, was open to question. While The Longest Day (1962) boasted stars of the pedigree of John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Richard Burton and Sean Connery, it was also liberally sprinkled with actors of no marquee value. David Lean in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) had loaded his film with the likes of Oscar winners Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn and Jose Ferrer to offset unknowns Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif as the leads. While The Great Race (1965) could boast Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood, It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) only had Spencer Tracy amid a host of television comedians.
But none of the stars of Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1964) had successfully opened a major picture. Of the Battle of the Bulge contingent only Henry Fonda could truly be called a current star, although his box office star had considerable dimmed since the days of The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and Fort Apache (1948). Former stars Robert Ryan and Dana Andrews were now supporting actors, Ty Hardin was best known for television, Charles Bronson (The Great Escape, 1963) had not achieved top billing and while James MacArthur had done so that was in youth-oriented movies. Initially, Italian prospect Pier Angeli (Sodom and Gomorrah, 1962) was announced as “the only principal female role” – playing a Frenchwoman – for a touching scene showing the effect of war on innocent women caught up in the conflict.
Just before filming was about to start, Fleischer pulled out, citing differences of opinion with the producers. Yordan turned to British director Ken Annakin, who had helmed the British sequences in The Longest Day and Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. There was soon a double whammy. Realizing he was losing ground, and hoping to sabotage its progress, Larrazino sued WB for $1 million, claiming that “another film, less accurate, would be confused with his picture.” Just as filming of the Battle of the Bulge got underway in January 1965, it was hit by a temporary restraining order. While failing to shut down the production, it imposed a marketing blockade. WB was prevented from publicising its picture, a potentially major blow given how dependent big budget roadshows were on advance bookings which could only be generated by advance publicity.
Annakin’s immediate response to the opportunity was delight. He commented that he had a “lot of toys to play with.” He found inspiration for his approach from an unusual source, the Daleks (“an apparently irrevocable onslaught of metal monsters”) from the BBC television series Dr Who. He decided he would use Cinerama as “a kind of 3D, shooting in such a way that the tanks would loom up as monsters against humans whom I would make small and puny.”
Although he had no influence in the casting, Annakin was already familiar with some of the actors, James MacArthur from Swiss Family Robinson (1960) and Werner Peters and Hans Christian Blech from The Longest Day. He did not receive such a warm welcome from Robert Shaw whom he had rejected for a role in The Informer.
He found Fonda “a remarkable professional…always on time, patient, eager to get to work, and always knew his lines.” He confessed to being a reluctant movie actor, preferring the stage, and had not been a big office draw since his work with John Ford in the 1930s and 1940s. Even critical successes like Twelve Angry Men (1957) had lost money, some of it the actor’s own, and prestige movies like The Best Man (1964) and Fail Safe (1964) failed to attract sufficient audiences. “In the theatre,” he said, “the actor achieves fulfilment from beginning to end. But on a picture you create a minute here and a minute there over a twelve-week period. When it’s finished there’s no recollection of what you did…Films are a director’s medium.” Battle of the Bulge was his 59th picture, after completing a supporting role in Otto Preminger’s In Harm’s Way (1965) and taking second billing to Glenn Ford in modern western The Rounders (1965).
There was a stand-off with Bronson on his first day after the actor kept the crew waiting while fiddling too long with his costume. Ty Hardin (television’s Bronco, 1958-1962) was accident-prone, tumbling into a frozen river in full kit, and whacking the director’s wife in the face with his helmet. Dana Andrews had a drink problem so that in some scenes Fonda and Ryan would be surreptitiously holding him up. But such veteran actors could improvise their way round scenes and “give me hints and lead me into changes.”
Andrews was enjoying career resurgence. His movie career was at a standstill, a ong way from a peak like Laura (1944). But his last significant top-billed parts were over a decade gone. “I was starting to get nothing for a while but offers came swarming in when I told my agent to go ahead and try from Walter Huston parts.” After only televisions roles in the four years since Madison Avenue (1961), Battle of the Bulge would mark his eighth role in 1965, including The Satan Bug and In Harm’s Way.
Winter in Spain was cold which meant it provided the ideal backdrop for the WB version. The chosen location, 4,500ft high in the mountains of Segovia provided identical conditions to the actual battle. Spain had provided 80 tanks including Tigers mounted with 90mm guns and Shermans. Half of the 20-week shoot would be spent in Segovia with interiors filmed at studios in Seville and the Roma facility in Madrid. The WB adviser was General Meinrad von Lauchert, a divisional tank commander during the battle. He hoped the picture would show the German solider “as he was, brave and good” rather than clichéd presentation and not give the “impression that the American Army had nothing to do but walk into Germany.”
He wanted the film to reflect the truth that the “Americans had to pay a high price for every yard.
Extras were drawn from the Spanish village of El Molar, with a population of just 2,400, which specialised in that supply. Locals could earn 200 pesetas a day. A pair of tavern owners had established this lucrative side-line, demand so high at this point that “they can play Russian World War One Deserters for Doctor Zhivago (1965) one day and shipped to World War Two the next for Battle of the Bulge.” Whenever Annakin found himself in trouble with the script he turned to the senior actors, Fonda, Ryan and Andrews who could improvise their way round scenes and “give me hints and lead me into changes.”
For the first scene, a week’s worth of white marble dust, representing snow, had been spread over the ground before 40 tanks emerged from a pine forest. But just as the cameras begun to turn, unexpectedly, against all weather forecasts, it began to snow. While initially a boon, when it continued to fall for five weeks the snow turned into a liability. Nobody was prepared for snow, not to the extent of snowploughs or even salt and it was a three-mile hike uphill to reach the tank location until army vehicles could be used to transport the crew. The tanks churned up so much mud that three or four cameras were required to catch the action.
“It was a director’s feast,” recalled Annakin, salivating about the prospect of a “vast panoramic” employing the entire array of tanks. To speed production, he had two units one hundred yards apart and jumped from one to the other, thus achieving 30-40 set-ups a day while the effects team exploded tubes and burned rubber tyres to create a fog of black battle smoke. A small town, already wrecked and shelled from the Spanish Civil War, added an air of realism when standing in for Bastogne.
Midway through shooting the producers realised the movie lacked a theme and from then on Annakin was faced with daily rewrites as new scenes were added to bring out the humanity implicit in war. Then Cinerama boss William Foreman arrived and demanded the insertion of the type of shot he believed his audiences were expecting, the equivalent of the runaway train and the ride through the rapids in How the West Was Won. He angled for a jeep racing downhill or a plane spinning and diving and happy to stump up any extra costs.
Such a request was more easily accommodated than his insistence that a role be found for his girlfriend Barbara Werle. a bit part actress Tickle Me (1965). While Yordan, wearing his producer’s hat, was willing to keep one of his main funders happy, the director and Robert Shaw were not. Shaw refused to do the scene until Foreman pleaded with both, explaining that in a vulnerable period of his personal life – when, in fact, he had been imprisoned – Werle had helped him out and he owed her a favour.
In Annakin’s opinion Werle was “willing but completely dumb…as though you had picked a girl straight from the cash desk of a supermarket.” Her one scene, as a courtesan offered to Robert Shaw by a grateful superior, was used to mark out the German commander as a man of honour when he rejection such temptation out of hand.
To overcome problems of matching earlier Panzer footage with the climactic battle to be shot on the rolling hills of Campo – in the earlier shots the ground was covered in snow, but now it was summer and the ground was scorched by the sun – Annakin relied on aerial shots, shooting downwards, “keeping as close as possible so as not to reveal what the terrain actually looked like” while on the ground two units shot close-ups of the action. The action was augmented by 30 model shots with miniature explosions.
When shooting was completed, there was a race to get the movie ready for its schedule launch, on December 16, 1965, the 21st anniversary of the start of the battle. There were ten weeks left to do post-production. Four editors had already been working on the material but Yordan asked Annakin, who had not been near a moviola for two decades, to personally edit the climactic battle scene. The director found the experience exhilarating: “matching my location footage with miniature shots; a four-foot helicopter (i.e. aerial) shot cut with a couple of feet of a U.S tank rounding rocks to face a Panzer; a shot of Telly Savalas at his gun site yelling ‘Fire’ intercut with a miniature tank blowing up.” But all his intricate work never made it into the final cut. Another editor fiddled around with the material and since no one had thought to make a dupe of Annakin’s original it was lost.
Although the challenge from Lazzarino had died away, the Pentagon was unhappy with the amount of time allocated to the German perspective. Yordan had the perfect riposte, pointing the finger at Annakin and saying “see what happens when you get a limey director.”
Werle had the last laugh. She was billed sixth in the credits (Angeli came fifth) but in the same typeface as Fonda, Shaw, Ryan and Andrews, and above the likes of Bronson, MacArthur and Hardin who not only all had substantially greater screen experience but had a bigger impact in the movie.
With the smallest part of all the listed stars, nonetheless she managed to turn the experience to her advantage, introduced to the press part of the marketing campaign and attending the world premiere at the Pacific Cinerama on December 16, 1965 in Los Angeles and the New York premiere the following day, brought forward four days, at the Warner Cinerama. In Los Angeles she arrived in true style at the head of a marching brigade of 100 service men.
SOURCES: Ken Annakin, So You Wanna Be A Director (Tomahawk, 2001) p167-181; “Du Pont, Bronston, Co-Defendants,” Variety, July 22, 1964, p4; “Schenck-Rhodes Roll Battle of Bulge at Camp Drum in U.S.” Variety, July 22, 1964, p42; “German Military Sensitivity,” Variety, September 23, 1964, p32; “Columbia Will Distribute Battle of Bulge Film,” Box Office, September 28, 1964, p18; “Plan Battle of Bulge As Cinerama Film,” Box Office, November 23, 1964, p4; “Tony Lazzarino To Produce The 16th of December,” Box Office, December 16, 1964, p4; “Rival Battles of Bulge; Bill Holden Up for Ike in Lazzarino Version,” Variety, December 16, 1964, p5; “Warner Reports Loss of £3,861,00,” Variety, December 23, 1964, p5; “L.A. Court Has Its Battle of Bulge Hearing, 27th,” Box Office, January 25, 1965, pW-2; “Dana Andrews Strategy: Regain Momentum,” Variety, March 10, 1965, p3; “Battle of Bulge Now Being Lensed in Spain,” Box Office, March 15, 1965, pNE2; “Winter in Spain Cold But Correct for Bulge Pic,” Variety, March 17, 1965, p10; “Cinerama Plans Five Films to Cost $30 Mil,” Box Office, April 19, 1965, p13; “For Actor Satisfying Legit Still Beats Pix, Reports Henry Fonda,” Variety, May 3, 1965, p2; “London Report,” Box Office, May 3, 1965, p8; “One Girl in WB Bulge,” Variety, May 5, 1965, p20; “Battle of Bulge Pic May Roll Next Winter,” Variety, May 5, 1965, p29; “El Molar, Spain’s Village of Extras,” Variety, May 12, 1965, p126; “Cinerama Report Loss,” Variety, May 13, 1965, p15; Advert, Box Office, July 12, 1965, p22; “WB To Film Cinerama Epic in England,” Box Office, October 11, 1965, p11; “Introduce Barbara Werle,” Box Office, October 18, 1965, pE3; “Battle of Bulge Opens N.Y. Now Dec 21,” Box Office, October 18, 1965, p10; “Actress To Attend Bows of Bulge in L.A., N.Y.,” Box Office, December 6, 1965, pW4.
Hungarian Andre de Toth’s somewhat cavalier career had become ultra-cavalier during the 1960s. Best known for westerns such as Ramrod (1947) with Joel McCrea, Springfield Rifle (1952) starring Gary Cooper and The Indian Fighter (1955) headlined by Kirk Douglas plus House of Wax (1953), he was not, you might have imagined, riding high in the critical stakes. Hollywood considered him a journeyman. Esteemed French magazine Cahiers du Cinema, which had championed Hitchcock in the face of mainstream indifference, believed otherwise and interviewed him for a 1967 issue.
He might have been the name of everyone’s lips for more hard-won commercial reasons had attempts in the late 1950s come to fruition of filming the Ian Fleming portfolio beginning with Dr No. Instead, he was deemed a spent force and during the ensuing decade limited to only four films: Man on a String (1960) and the Italian-funded Morgan The Pirate (1960), The Mongols (1961) and Gold for the Caesars (1963).
The Fleming enterprise had put him into the orbit of Harry Saltzman which led to a producing gig on Billion Dollar Brain (1966). Saltzman was also involved in The Deadly Patrol – the basis of Play Dirty – with French director Rene Clement (Rider on the Rain, 1970). According to de Toth, Saltzman wanted to elevate himself in movie circles. He “looked down on the Bond pictures” and wanted to make more serious movies.
And the pair clashed on style. “Genteel Rene wanted to make ‘a poetry of war.’ Harry wanted blazing guns and roaring tanks.” Saltzman feared Clement’s version “was going to be some kind of art movie.”
Play Dirty was originally set to be shot in Israel – even though insurance was impossible – as a favor to Arthur Krim, head honcho at United Artists which was providing the finance. In the end filming was switched to Spain, even though neither Saltzman nor Clement was familiar with the terrain of Almeria, and the reality fell far short of the Lawrence of Arabia landscape both envisaged.
De Toth, by now part of the Saltzman entourage, was again assigned production duties with a new script to be written by de Toth, John McGrath (Billion Dollar Brain) and Melvyn Bragg (Isadora, 1968) as long as the credits made room for Lotte Colin, Saltzman’s mother-in-law. Shuttling pages to Saltzman, de Toth had little conviction the revised screenplay was being passed on to the Frenchman.
Michael Caine, already contractually committed, was keen to make a movie “good, bad or indifferent” with Clement. Richard Harris, on a salary of £150,000, pulled out of the role of Capt Leach after script rewrites eliminated four of his major scenes. “I wasn’t going to play second fiddle to Caine,” raged Harris. (Nigel Davenport, originally in a supporting role, was upgraded to take his place). Caine didn’t like the script. But it was either go ahead or Saltzman lose out on all the money already spent. Sets were built with still no guarantee from Clement that he would actually turn up.
The inducement of receiving the final chunk of his salary, payable on completion of the picture, did the trick. At first Clement appeared fully committed, altering the script, and “observant and meticulous about details.” But soon mere tinkering escalated into demanding to “revamp the set, find new locations maybe in North Africa; in short, shoot another film.” When de Toth turned up on set, Clement vanished. Then the director went sick but refused to admit a doctor to his hotel room. A three-day enforced hiatus ended after De Toth was subjected to a barrage of abuse down the telephone by Saltzman and then instructed to get on the set and start shooting.
“It was a strange way to get the directorial assignment,” noted de Toth. “I would have been a hypocrite to deny I wasn’t happy. I had wanted to do a story like Play Dirty since I had wallowed in the blood of futility in Poland.” But that combat experience came in handy. “I had learned in Poland how to crawl under barbed wire with fishhooks dangling on it and if you were caught and the tin cans rattled you had no chance to start your last prayer.” De Toth’s acquaintance with the realities of war inform the film. Location manager Andrew Birkin, brother of actress Jane Birkin, described de Toth as “more of a sergeant-major and he made the picture that way which was probably the right way to do it.”
“Michael Caine was probably more disappointed than I and I understood him and his resentment of the film. He felt uncomfortable, insecure, in the film without Clement, which made his portrayal in Play Dirty so remarkable, considered by many one of his very best…My respect for his professionalism grew as we drilled.”
Unexpectedly in the desert, rain came to the aid of the already hard-pressed production. The downpour turned the sand into a flower garden. Shooting was postponed for two weeks allowing the cast and crew to bond and iron out the script.
Since the beginning of the decade Almeria, decidedly smaller than it usually appeared, was a an in-demand location, favored by King of Kings (1961), El Cid (1962), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Cleopatra (1963) and, following the success of A Fistful of Dollars (1964) hugely popular for westerns. The local authorities had regulations in place regarding usage, limiting employing of the sand dunes made famous by Lawrence of Arabia. “You got them for two weeks because another picture was coming in.” Even so, competing movies often got in each other’s way.
Michael Caine recalled that one scene requiring German tanks to advance over the desert sands were “confronted round one of the dunes by a horde of American Indians in full battle cry in pursuit of a nineteenth-century stagecoach” for the western Shalako (1968). The noise of the tanks made the horses rear up, throwing off their riders, and the war picture production was delayed while all evidence of the western, including, of course, mounds of horseshit, were cleared away.
Caine remembered the experience more for the opportunity to meet Brigitte Bardot, the female lead on Shalako. One afternoon his peace was disturbed by the arrival of Bardot who uttered the immortal words, “I have been looking for you everywhere.” Caine leapt to his feet, knocking over a table of drinks.” Caine’s assumption that the French sex goddess had her eyes on him was wide of the mark. Instead, it was Bardot’s assistant, Gloria who was keen to make Caine’s acquaintance, the actor falling far short of Bardot’s taste in men, extremely young and very dark.
Despite disgruntlement about not working with Clement and over the picture in general, there was a happy ending for Caine. For his 35th birthday present, Saltzman presented him with an envlope containing his contract torn up into small pieces.” From being beholden to Saltzman, albeit his salary on a seven-year contract signed in 1965 was incrementally increased on an annual basis – the fee for The Ipcress File was just £6,000), Caine was now a free man.
Lotte Colin hated the end result and tried convincing Saltzman to shelve it – unlikely given the millions involved and the commitment to a distributor and not least because Caine’s name attached guaranteed audience interest . But she did succeed in removing elements of the Michel Legrand score. And she did replace de Toth on the screenplay credits.
Play Dirty disappointed at the U.S, box office bringing in a miserly $650,000 in rentals (the amount returned to studios once cinemas have taken their cut of the gorss). It did better overseas with $2 million in rentals. but since it cost $3 million it incurred a loss.
“Play Dirty” managed to offset some of its losses by being a regular on the reissue scene – though it would probably have been hired for a fixed fee rather than a percentage. It later showed up as the support to “Beach of the War Gods” (1973).
This proved to be de Toth’s last directorial assignment. But it might not have been. The bosses of new production shingle National General were ardent pacifists and wooed de Toth. Offered the choice of producing or directing western El Condor (1970) he chose the latter.
Nowadays de Toth is best described as a director’s director, an “unsung hero,” by the likes of Martin Scorsese who confesses to being “fascinated” by the “underlying anger and determination” that often makes the director’s movies “very disturbing.”
“Take Play Dirty for instance,” he observes. “The characters have no redeeming social value; they don’t think, they just act. They have a job to do and they’re going to do it. The nihilism, the pragmatism – it’s at least unsettling. Disguise becomes a way to survive that brings doom at the end.”
SOURCES: Andre de Toth, Fragments: Portraits from the Inside (Faber and Faber, 1996) p390-391, 399, 416,433-447; Michael Caine, What’s It All About? (Century, 1992) p247, 256; Michael Caine, From Elephant to Hollywood, The Autobiography ( Hodder and Stoughton, 2010) p142-144; Robert Sellers, When Harry Met Cubby, The Story of the James Bond Producers (The History Press, 2019) p182-184; De Toth on de Toth (Faber and Faber, 1997) p151, 158; “United Artists Corporation and Subsidiaries, Motion Picture Negative Costs for Pictures Released in the Year Ended January 3, 1970” (University of Wisconsin).
The Magnificent 60s 