widescreen – The Magnificent 60s

Dangerous Charter (1962) *** – Widescreen Experiment

Strong contender for cult status especially when post-production murder and sexploitation are thrown into the pot. A vanity picture but one with serious underlying purpose. Sole venture from director Robert Gottschalk, who doubled up as writer and producer. So, all-out auteur. This popped out by pure coincidence while I was in the middle of my annual widescreen/ 70mm/ Cinerama binge and thus pricked my interest.

And if you know your widescreen, the name of Robert Gottschalk will not be far from your lips. Because he invented Panavision. It’s still in use but in the roadshow era it was one of the contributing factors to directors heading for the biggest widescreen they could get. MGM properly introduced it with the 65mm Raintree County (1957) and then more strikingly, in terms of box office, with Ultra Panavision 70 for Ben-Hur (1959).

Ultra Panavision was used for sections of How the West Was Won (1962) and completely on Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) and Battle of the Bulge (1965) and it was revived by Quentin Tarantino for The Hateful Eight (2015). Super Panavision 70 was more regularly employed as was 35mm Panavision

Dangerous Charter had two aims. Firstly, to showcase the advantages of Panavision, hence the lax pace, the striking images of a yacht moving in a variety of directions across the water, often with sunset behind, the kind of awesome shot that might be favored by the likes of David Lean. Secondly, Gottschalk wanted to get into the production business, aiming initially at six movies a year, including a 70mm effort called Owyhee to be filmed in Hawaii in the summer of 1959.

Ben-Hur did the job of showcasing the process for him, so the production unit fell by the wayside and Dangerous Charter, made over a few weeks in 1958, sat on the shelf for four years after an initial attempt at distribution by Filmserve Distribution Corp fell apart, and as a result now conveniently falls into my purlieu.

So really, it’s a late 1950s movie masquerading as an early 1960s one, after it was picked up as a cheap support vehicle by the nascent Crown International.

It’s a shame Gottschalk didn’t quite have the same technical mastery of other elements of movie making as he did over camera and lenses. But in its favor, the movie is short, has a terrific villain, springs more twists than you might expect and certainly showcases his widescreen invention.

Three down-on-their-luck fishermen come across a deserted drifting yacht, the Medusa, with one corpse on board. The cops give it to them in lieu of a salvage fee, intending to use, in a cute sense of irony, the fishermen as “bait” to try and hook whoever was responsible for its abandonment.

The trio are only too happy to accept the gift. Aspiring skipper Marty McMahon (Chris Warfield) is in love with daughter June (Sally Fraser) of the captain, Kick (Chick Chandler), and there’s a chirpy deckhand Joe (Wright King). Pretty soon a money-no-object charter appears in the shape of Dick Kane (Richard Foote) and for $10,000 they agree to take him to La Paz on a 10-day return trip and pick up a passenger Monet (Peter Forster). June boards as cook.

Ongoing friction between Marty and June – he refuses to marry her until he can properly earn a living – spills over into some modest canoodling between the girl and the guitar-playing Dick, a stolen kiss as far as it gets before she warns him off.

Monet turns out to be quite a character. Plummy-voiced, white-suited, charming, friendly, think a slick Robert Wagner (Banning, 1967), accommodating and even entertaining. In short order, however, the Medusa is hijacked. And not for the valuable boat but for its even more valuable cargo of drugs.

The thugs threaten to hold June, by now decked out in a fetching pink swimsuit, hostage and there’s not much the boatmen can do to counter the threat. Their radio has been disabled by Dick who turns out to be a junkie. Marty tries a clever trick, flying the boat’s flag upside down, the nautical sign of distress, but that attempt to garner local attention is nipped in the bud. Monet has planted a bomb on board so there’s a ticking-clock countdown and a zinger of a climax when Dick, furious at being tortured via cold turkey by Monet, takes his revenge in a superb suicide by ramming their speedboat into the bigger boat, killing both.

Mostly, it’s juiced up by long shots of the boat on the water, which, while selling the process, rips the heart out of any tension. But towards the end it picks up the pace. The upside-down flag idea is scuppered when other fishermen assume they’ve just made a mistake and point this out within the hearing of Monet.

Marty has to scream at the other terrified screaming crewmen to shut up because the only way he can locate the bomb is by its give-away ticking. And when the bomb explodes harmlessly over the side and Monet decides to turn round and bump off the witnesses the old-fashioned way it’s Dick who twists the wheel towards doom.

There’s no great acting, but Peter Forster does a convncing job of an unusually civilized gangster and June Fraser attracts the eye. Chris Warfield, with little claim to fame as a television and support actor in pictures, later turned to direction under the pseudonym Billy Thornberg in the sexploitation vein, Teenage Seductress (1975) and Sheer Panties (1979) among his lurid portfolio. This proved a movie swansong for June Fraser, otherwise a bit player. You might remember Robert Forster from Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) but not much else.

Robert Gottschalk went back to turning Panavision into a hugely successful company before being murdered by his lover at aged 64.

Circus World / The Magnificent Showman (1963) **** – Seen at the Cinema

Bookended by disaster – a ship turning turtle, fire raging in the big tent – and kept aloft by giddy circus turns this long-ignored movie in the John Wayne canon is ripe for reassessment. In more down-to-earth mold, with no villains to rein in, no gun-toting required, this calls upon something more basic from the actor, the dramatic skill required to make the audience fix on a strong character within a spectacular screen event.

Presented in stunning Super Technirama, the swansong of maverick producer Samuel Bronston (El Cid, 1961), and mistakenly viewed as little more than a travelog or a compendium of circus acts, this dwells instead on transition and loss as Matt Masters (John Wayne) struggles to allow adopted daughter Toni (Claudia Cardinale) to grow up and to come to terms with the part he played in the romantic calamity – father a high-wire suicide, acrobatic mother Lili (Rita Hayworth) fleeing to Europe – that left her parentless.

It’s no coincidence that sending his three-ring circus cum Wild West Show on a lucrative tour of Europe in the early part of the 20^th century provides an opportunity to hunt for Lili, the love of his life. But the circus ship capsizes in Barcelona, leaving Masters penniless, forced to work for a rival European promoter until he can scrape together enough dough to start again. Masters uses the opportunity of traveling through European capitals to scout new acts, including clown Aldo (Richard Conte), a lion-tamer turned tiger-tamer Emile (Hans Dante), and ballerina Katharyna (Giovana) who performs on the high wire while Toni wants to chance her arm against Matt’s objections as an acrobat and flex her romantic muscles in romantic dalliance with Matt’s new partner Steve (John Smith).

The subplots add dramatic heft, the lion-tamer is frightened of tigers, Aldo has vengeance in mind, so in between the scintillating circus acts the storyline is compressed around the drink- and guilt-sodden Lili and conflict on several fronts with Toni while old retainer Cap (Lloyd Nolan) is on hand to pep up or challenge Matt.

You wouldn’t be allowed to make this kind of film these days so it’s worth glorying in the glory days of the circus – dancing horses, lions, tigers, elephants, acrobats and genuinely hilarious clown sequences. It being a three-ring circus there’s always something going on, plus the Wild West element which comprises a stagecoach being attacked.

John Wayne is as befuddled as ever in romance, restricting his trademark double take to astonishment at Tony’s transition to womanhood. There’s an occasional reversal but mostly it’s a battle against the odds, potential triumph leavened by gritty loss.

A modern producer would have switched the disasters – it didn’t really matter how Matt got into a fix. But the capsizing, appearing so early the effect is stunning, is brilliantly handled, not just the rescue of people and animals but Matt in lion-taming mode and ending with a clever coda. In every photograph Lili’s face has been scratched out but in among the saturated notes of Matt’s vital cash box is a picture of her.

Some critics have suggested John Wayne (In Harm’s Way, 1965), recovering from his own financial debacle caused by over-investment in The Alamo (1960), took the role for financial expediency. But I can see the attraction, as I’m sure the actor did. This is a far more rounded character than anything since The Searchers (1956) and he can’t even find redemption from a six-shooter. He’s more protective than aggressive, paternal instinct triggering character reaction, and it’s more of a James Stewart type of role, coming back from adversity, and nothing straightforward about a man whose love affair caused marital disaster.

Critics have also taken pot-shots at Claudia Cardinale (The Pink Panther, 1963) as if she was not already an accomplished actress (a favorite of Visconti, for example) in a compelling role and competing on even terms with a star of John Wayne’s charisma without being able to fall back on the old saw of the romantic interest. Although playing a character nearly a decade younger, Cardinale brings an earthy feistiness to a character with a bucket of decisions to make, turning on its head her relationship with Matt and going through the dramatic hoops with Lili.

Rita Hayworth (The Happy Thieves, 1961) has shucked off the glamor, a worn-down relic of her former self, turning to drink and religion in equal measure in vain hope of finding peace. Veteran Lloyd Nolan (The Double Man, 1967) and Richard Conte (Assault on a Queen, 1966) hold their own, but John Smith (Waco, 1966) does not. Look out for former British star Kay Walsh (A Study in Terror, 1965).

Henry Hathaway (5 Card Stud, 1968) does a terrific job marshalling all the elements, containing the core family drama within the wider action-oriented structure. While there’s never a dull moment, in among all the spectacular scenes are some exhibiting a particularly sensitive directorial touch such as when Matt discovers Lili’s hotel room and reflects on his own misdemeanors.

There were almost as many writers as circus performers – James Edward Grant (The Commancheros, 1961), Ben Hecht (Spellbound, 1945), Julian Zimet (A Place for Lovers, 1968), Bernard Gordon (55 Days at Peking, 1963), Nicholas Ray (The Savage Innocents, 1960) and Philip Yordan (El Cid).

Come at it from the fun perspective and you won’t go wrong. John Wayne completists will adore it.

I was lucky enough to see this is full glorious widescreen at the cinema where it was the Closing Film at this year’s Widescreen Weekend in Bradford. What a way to end a show!

Widescreen Weekend 2022

We are so conditioned to watching old movies on tiny screens it comes as something of a primal shock to see them in all their original glory. Most festivals lean towards the arthouse end of the cinema business so it’s all the more delightful to find an event that without apology concentrates on the mainstream. Widescreen Weekend takes place at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, England, and mostly in its Pictureville Cinema, the only venue in the country equipped to show Cinerama pictures in the original three-strip version which requires three projectors.

*Wagons race to escape attack in “How the West Was Won.”*

And while most other film festivals attract general movie lovers, this one appears to appeal in large part to those who have had something to do with the movie-making business or its technical side. Speakers might include, for example, Cinerama restoration specialist Dave Strohmaier or Kevin Brownlow, editor turned director, and among the audience you might find people like Keith Stevens from Australia, a former operations executive with Village Roadshow there, but who started out as a projectionist and regaled me with tales of projecting The Sound of Music (1965) in its original roadshow run.

There’s a limited number of movies that were made, mostly in the 1960s, either in Cinerama or 70mm, so the event has expanded to take in the earlier Cinemascope and the other versions of widescreen technology on which Hollywood depended as the marketing hook to bring back audiences from the all-encompassing maw of television in the 1950s. Later films whose directors understood the cinematic impact of 70mm are also added to the mix.

You are transported back to a time when screens were just enormous – this one is 51ft wide – and were curtained, and those curtains would not open (to the sides) until in typical roadshow fashion, a lengthy musical Overture, highlighting aspects of the movie’s music, had run its course. There is something quite sumptuous about sitting in a movie theatre staring at huge red curtains and waiting for the house lights to dim and the music to begin.

*Christopher Frayling and Kevin Brownlow getting ready to introduce “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”*

Roughly half-way through the movie itself, the curtains would close for an intermission, and before the picture restarted there would be more music, what was termed the Entr’Acte. Some DVDS of roadshows contain both Overture and Entr’Acte but there is a lightyear of difference between hearing them in your lounge and being exposed to them in a picture house built to bring out their best sound.

This is a homage not just to old movies but the old way of seeing a movie.

In previous years the programs have included Ice Station Zebra (1968), West Side Story (1961), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the David Lean trilogy of Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965) and Ryan’s Daughter (1970),a pair from William Wyler that could not have been more diverse – Ben-Hur (1959) and Funny Girl (1968) – This Is Cinerama (1952), Carol Reed’s The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), John Frankenheimer’s split-screen Formula One epic Grand Prix (1966) and of course the mother of all roadshows The Sound of Music (1965). Throw in a healthy helping of 1950s Cinemascope features and more contemporary pictures which embraced 70mm and you have the makings of an always satisfying weekend.

*A thoughtful John Wayne next to Claudia Cardinale in “Circus World.”*

So one of the highlights is to see old favorites. This year we were treated to the three-strip version of How the West Was Won (1962), your feet tapping immediately at the sound of the driving Alfred Newman score, and a restored The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962), the first two movies made in the Cinerama process that had dramatic purpose and were not mere travelogs.

But there was also an opportunity to watch old movies that have never been screened in their original version since their initial release, such as Circus World / The Magnificent Showman (1964) shown in Super Technirama 70. Also on the program was Carol Reed’s Oscar-winning Oliver! (1968), Bob Fosse debut Sweet Charity (1969), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) and Douglas Trumbull’s Brainstorm (1983), Natalie Wood’s last picture and one that experiments with screen size. Extending the program into non-70mm widescreen there was a screening of Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966) and A Star Is Born (1954). Every screening was introduced by an expert and there were occasional surprise guests like Kevin Brownlow, the editor of The Charge of the Light Brigade.

The event takes place in October every year and I’m already looking forward to the next. Kathryn Penny, who has organized the event these past few years, is moving onto a post in academia, and she will be sorely missed.