Mike's Movie Projector

Art

2012-02-24T03:53:00.009Z

Hockney's "The Arrival of Spring"
The power of art to heal and change us is well shown by the popularity of the big London exhibitions - the recent one on Leonardo da Vinci, with people getting up in the middle of the night to join the early morning queues for tickets to see 15 of his major pictures together for the first time; and now the current sell-out David Hockney exhibition focusing on his recent paintings back in the north of England, a joyful celebration of nature in all his finery during the changing seasons, full of happiness and joy. Compare with his 1967 A BIGGER SPLASH, so splendid in its simplicity, when he was the painter of the L.A. scene.

Plus now there is a new auction coming up causing quite a stir, with the sale of the only copy of Edvard Munch's THE SCREAM still in private hands. Some reports say it will fetch at least $50 million! It is of course one of the most recognisable art images anywhere - you can even buy a blow-up balloon of the woman screaming - and despite being painted in the 1890s it is the very essence of modernity - one could almost see it as a scream at all the horrors of the last century ...

Marie Colvin, Remi Ochlik, R.I.P.

2012-02-24T03:37:00.010Z

Here at the Projector we try to keep out of political stories as others' opinions will differ, but sometimes one cannot ignore what is going on in the world and one simply has to salute astounding courage and bravery. So it is with reporting the deaths of war correspondent Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik, who were covering the bombardment of Homs in Syria, where the regime there were determined to remove the foreign press.

I had been aware of Marie Colvin's by-line for years as one of the principal journalists of "The Sunday Times" as she reported from war zones all over the world, losing an eye in the process. Colvin worked for "The Sunday Times" for 20 years and twice won the British press award for Foreign Correspondent of the Year. Today's press reports the appalling danger they were in by still sending out news reports from Homs, as those determined to silence them could lock on to satellite signals and home in accordingly.... One can only salute the bravery of them and all the others following the recent changes in Egypt and Libya. R.I.P. indeed.

I'm gonna wait till the midnight hour ...

2012-02-23T13:45:00.015Z

I have had a few very late nights in Paris myself, back in the '80s (when one of my oldest friends was married and living there for a decade), so its nice to go back there with Woody in his latest outing MIDNIGHT IN PARIS and yes, its his best in some long time. As previously posted here, his "Spanish one" VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA seemed a return to form, and of the "London ones" YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER had a great cast and some good comic moments, but MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is just simply perfect, and again a neat 86 minutes ... also, with Woody, no extras on the dvd - presumably he only shoots what he needs for his script so there are no deleted scenes, outtakes, commentaries.

Owen Wilson is Gil, a scriptwriter in Paris with his girlfriend and her family (who are on a business trip) as he slowly realises how little he has in common with them. She is not interested in walking in the rain and much prefers to go shopping, the parents are rightwing reactionaries obsessed about money and the price of things. Then that midnight taxi turns up as Gil gets away for a late night walk ... and suddenly he is back in the 1920s to the Paris of the Jazz Age. We share his bemusement as he encounters the Fitzgeralds (thats Scott and Zelda), Cole Porter at the piano, the young Hemingway, and soon the salon of Gertrude Stein - a no-nonsense Kathy Bates; Adrian Brody is perfect too as Dali, and Gil also encounters surrealists Man Ray and Luis Bunuel (to whom he gives the idea for EXTERMINATING ANGEL!). Then too there is Adriana (Marion Cottilard) the muse to Picasso and other painters ... On his return visits Gertrude Stein agrees to look at his new manuscrpt and he begans to fall for Adriana but she is dissatisfied with the 1920s she is living in, so by another time warp they go back to the 1890s Belle Epoque and encounter who else but Toulouse Lautrec at the Moulin Rouge sketching all those can-can dancers! Meanwhile, back in the present, there is another girl in Paris Gil gets to know, whom we just know will be perfect for him .... good to see Woody back in Paris practically 50 (well 47) years after WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT where he was chasing Romy Schenider and those other girls ... and of course the French scenes in EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU.

Woody Allen's latest then is beautifully written and a charming story that belongs in the top ten of his all-time greats - up there with "the early funny ones" and ANNIE HALL, MANHATTAN, INTERIORS, STARLIGHT MEMORIES, HANNAH & HER SISTERS, CRIMES & MISDEMEANORS. From the opening montage of lush picturesque Parisian scenes by day and night and in the rain, the film is a love letter to the city of light. Owen Wilson is for once perfectly cast as the young Woody type, Michael Sheen is ideal too as the ex-lover of Inez, Gil's girlfriend, whom it turns out she is still sleeping with (trust Hemingway to notice that...) and there is the nice scene at the art gallery where Gil puts the pedant in his place; Carla Bruni turns up in the nothing role of the tourist guide, and it all ties up nicely together. The best laugh out loud moment is provided by the detective hired by Inez's father to see where Gil goes at night - boy does he he get into a time warp!

Downton Dolls

2012-02-22T09:49:00.006Z

I just have to share this: paper dolls of some of the DOWNTON ABBEY cast: cut out and dress your favourites from The Dowager Countess (with a range of expressions!), Matthew and Lady Mary, or the evil Thomas and O'Brien below stairs. What no snooty Lady Edith, well-meaning Mrs Crawley, The Earl or Lady Cora or those running the house: Carson, Bates, Mrs Hughes and cook Mrs Patmore ?

More dolls and DOWNTON at Costume Drama label ...

Its all Too Much ... / People We like: Dorothy Malone

2012-02-21T12:27:00.015Z

1958's TOO MUCH TOO SOON is a delirious piece of trashy cinema, nice to relish now, purporting to tell the true story of Diana Barrymore - of the Barrymore dynasty. Its main interest of course is the casting of Erroll Flynn as Diana's father the great John Barrymore who dissipated his talent in drink and god knows what else - as Erroll was in fact doing at this stage of his life - he would of course die the following year 1959, ravaged by the excesses of his wayward life, looking a lot older than his 50 years - a long way from the glory years of the mid-30s when he was perfect for CAPTAIN BLOOD, ROBIN HOOD, ESSEX and all the rest.

Flynn is very touching here as the sozzled father trying to re-connect with his adoring daughter - but he exits the film half way through, leaving an hour more of Diana's descent to the gutter and her ultimate redemption (a year before her demise too, as the end credits tell us ...). The very under-rated Malone is marvellous here, ageing from a teenager to a mature woman - and the guys are ok too: Martin Milner as the reliable old beau, Efrem Zembalist Jr as the first husband and Ray Danton as the sleazy tennis pro who knows when he sees a dame to latch on to and exploit and abuse.

Booze, drugs and an endless string of bad lovers put her career on the rocks from which she never really recovered. Ms. Barrymore's story is sad and morose and this movie does its best to sensationalize it. Her fast rise is chronicled here as well as her even faster fall from grace. So its a downbeat movie really, not as trashy as those later Lana Turner epics, but theres a lot to interest here. Good to see it finally available. Directed by one Art Napoleon.

Now for Dorothy's WRITTEN ON THE WIND, a Sirk classic and her Oscar-winning best supporting actress role in 1956. Dot Malone is indeed one of those great gals we like (and she is still here too ...), review of her and Liberace in SINCERELY YOURS at Dorothy Malone label - a change for her from being out west a lot in all those oaters, she also pops in FATE IS THE HUNTER (1964) as another ritzy society dame, before she went into the tv series of PEYTON PLACE. I am catching her seduction of Tab Hunter in Warners' BATTLE CRY (1954) on again this weekend ... Dot too is terrific in all those westerns like WARLOCK ('59), THE LAST SUNSET ('61), FIVE GUNS WEST ('55), and in Sirk's TARNISHED ANGELS with Rock again in 1957 and back to Hawks' THE BIG SLEEP in '46 where she has that memorable scene in the bookshop with Bogie.

Scotty's services

2012-02-21T12:16:00.023Z

Its certainly a fascinating read! - the book they are all up in arms about ... Scotty Bowers' story of the sexual services he provided for the in-crowd of Hollywood during the 1940s and later, from his gas station in downtown L.A. - the biggest stars turned up ...

I feel I am the only one in on the joke - this is surely Gore Vidal's last throw of the dice, a gigantic spoof, on the lines of his novels MYRA BRECKINRIDGE and MYRON - that pansexual world he advocates where everyone can have sex with everyone else regardless of gender or age, and may be his final revenge on people he doesn't like ...

I can well believe Scotty really exists (he is now 88) and was pimping out not only himself but also other guys and gals at the gas station in L.A. back in the '40s - Gore certainly knew him and has taken his story and added all the star stuff - "spilling the beans" on Hepburn, Tracy and the rest. Scotty seems to get his dates mixed up quite a bit - just after the war in about 1946 he describes a lunch meeting with Hepburn and Cukor and hair stylist Sydney Guilaroff (another happy client of Scottys of course) and they are arguing over Kate's hair style in ADAMS RIB, which is a 1949 film !

Also rich famous and goodlooking stars like Cary Grant and Randolph Scott would surely have to be very careful if they needed hunky marines to spice up their relationship between all those marriages of theirs. And then there is the peculiar story of Spencer Tracy and Scotty - and Walter Pidgeon (who knew? my mother's favorite actor!) outed as an early client of Scottys! Of course closeted stars back then couldn't be seen hanging out in bars, cruising the seafront or attending George Cukor's or Rock Hudson's exotic parties - not after Tab Hunter was caught at a "pyjama party". Also a lot of these actors had lines to learn for the next day, and could not be out late at night - so a discreet service set up by a hunky ex-marine who kept his mouth shut would have been ideal.

I don't know how the lesbian scene works but would one of hollywood's top stars like Kate Hepburn want (or trust someone to get) young girls sent to her ? Supposing they talked afterwards ... why have none of them come forward, some must still be alive. And I think Vivien Leigh was quite adept at picking up truck drivers on her own, without Scotty's help ...

The book seems very disjointed - it begins with him being an innocent arriving in hollywood in 1946 after the war - Gore's golden age, as he often wrote about - and starting work at the gas station - as if he was an innocent and knew nothing about the goings on of the early 40s ... but as he tells his story in the following chapters he is the new kid in town in the early 40s on a weekend pass from the marines, and the first guy who picks him up turns out to be Orry-Kelly ! the famous dress designer (and a close pal of Cary's - who is not mentioned then). Then George Cukor turns up and invites him to his pool party the next sunday ! Then he is having threesomes with Cary and Randy - whom I thought lived together in the mid-30s - but this was the early 40s when they were at the height of their carrers and married to women, so they were hardly living together then, so maybe Scotty is getting his wires crossed - and he says he also bartended at a party/orgy of theirs in 1950!

Oh, and he meets Katharine Hepburn at the first Cukor pool party he attends, where she comes across as a very mannish lesbian ... so was Kate a regular at George's famous pool parties then? and it turns out George hates Garland ! It seems too that these guys like Cukor and Cole Porter are only interested in oral sex -maybe back then famous gays always paid for every sexual encounter and never wanted a relationship or to live with someone, but just to suck off an endless parade of johns - what a way to live!

And it seems every man Scotty ever met wanted to have sex with him, even when he was a kid, even all the married ones! Its a great read but I don't believe a word of it! - plus no notes or index. Trash, then - utter trash, but try putting it down ... Scotty comes across as a saint, he never charged for his services, and didn't even want a cut on the sale of (then hard to get) pornographic pictures he posed for! Of course gay liberation and the gay lifestyle did not exist back in that post-war 1940s golden era, so young guys (and gals presumably) could sleep with or provide tricks for either sex without thinking about it too much or having to label themselves ... and there wasn't that 24 hour news media, mobile camera phones, or internet or inquisitive press to spoil things - as long as the fan magazines were kept happy! Then of course in the '50s he helps out Roddy, Rock, Monty, Tony Perkins et al, but certainly didn't like Jimmy Dean! - his view on Rock's sham marriage is certainly interesting too - she, Phyllis, was of course a lesbian. An interesting companion too that William K Mann's tome on KATE a few years ago ... which also mentions Scotty. Plus if you read it you won't ever see Charles Laughton in the same light again!
(Coming soon: all those photos of Cary and Randolph ...)

Titanic, 1953

2012-02-21T11:48:00.005Z

Fanscination with The Titanic rolls ever onward - in its centenary year. We will soon have a new 4-part series written by Lord Julian Fellows (DOWNTON ABBEY), and of course whatever one thinks of James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster, the second half after the iceberg hits is stunningly well done as one really feels the ocean invading and sinking the ship ... so it was interesting to catch Jean Negulesco's 1953 version. Winner of three Academy Awards, the 1953 TITANIC holds up well, even on a much smaller budget - as does the 1958 A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, with Kenneth More, perhaps the best all-round version of events without silly stories at the forefront.

Fascination with the fate of the huge and opulent liner is as strong as ever, especially since improved technology has led to more breathtaking visits to the ship's resting spot on the floor of the Atlantic where state-of-the-art robots with cameras explore the crumbling interiors of the still eerily majestic but rapidly decaying wreck.

20th Century's contribution to the story hold the interest with Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck heading the cast as an ill-matched couple; she is in fact leaving him and returning to America with their children as he joins the ship at the last minute to reason with her. Webb and Stanwyck bring their expertise to this soap opera story and it remains very affecting. Add in young Robert Wagner, more like a 50s teenager than a 1912 one, and Thelma Ritter as the famous Unsinkable Molly Brown, and Brian Aherne as the captain and the stage is set for some dramatics. Negulesco keeps it going nicely and it has that early 50s 20th Century Fox look in spades.

The tempestuous exchanges between Webb and Stanwyck are strongly and believably acted, and then we have the sinking of the vessel - not as graphically done as in the later versions, but suitably stiff upper lip to the end. Interesting to compare these versions this anniversary year, we shall be hearing more about them.

Movies I Love: River Of No Return

2012-02-18T19:03:00.033Z

RIVER OF NO RETURN is a western I can watch anytime - though it is hardly a Western at all, more of a Canadian ... filmed in Canada in 1954, that magic year for me - by Otto Preminger it moves along at a cracking pace, Monroe and Mitchum are great together - just like Mitch and Deborah Kerr in that 1957 John Huston classic HEAVEN KNOWS MR ALLISON - another great Fox Scope movie (and another Movie I Love - see Mitchum label). (Apparantly Mitchum had been in the army with MM's first husband, and had seen photos of the young starlet then ...) - actually MR ALLISON is about a marine and a nun in the wilderness (or a remote tropical island), so it shares similarities with this - there they catch that unfortunate turtle, here it is a moose; plus are holed up in a cave with marauders on the loose ..
1954 was that year I began going to the movies when about 8 - JOHNNY GUITAR, DRUM BEAT, SITTING BULL, THE COMMAND - RIVER OF NO RETURN was another western that year, while Raoul Walsh was also making SASKATCHEWAN with Alan Ladd and Shelley Winters in Canada that year. (Shelley and Marilyn had of course been room-mates at one stage...). Here Marilyn is Kay, a saloon singer who is entangled with no-good Rory Calhoun who has cheated his way to a gold mine and needs to get to Carson City to file the claim. Mitchum is the farmer who comes to the tent city after a stint in prison, looking for his son - Tommy Rettig, who is friends with Kay. Later back on the farm father and son rescue Calhoun and Kay who are going downriver on a raft - but Calhoun has his own plan and takes the farmer's horse and gun, leaving them at the mercy of marauding indians, so there is nothing for it but for father, son and Kay who has stayed behind to head down the river themselves on the raft. The Canadian wilderness (Alberta and Banff area) looks great here, and I love the music for whenever the redskins appear ... it is a great soundtrack too.

Exciting fare then, and the back projections with the raft and the stunt doubles are well done. I like the sequence where Mitch takes the frozen wet Kay to a cave, wraps her in blankets and massages her back to warmth as their warring characters begin to respond to each other as the scene melts into the shot of the warm flames. MM and Mitch spar well together and she copes well with the rough stuff. I love how Marilyn looks in 1954, here and in THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS, after that break-out year 1953 for her. Her Kay is pure peaches and cream, and she sings marvellously too. She had developed so much as an actress and performer since those early small parts in 1950 just a few years earlier ...

People tend to forget what a great vocal artist she was. When I was a teenager one of the first record albums I had was "Marilyn" the soundtrack to the 1963 compilation film Fox were quick to put out about her, and it included those songs from the film on it - the theme "River of No Return", "One Single Dollar", "Down in the Meadow" and the terrific "I'm Gonna File My Claim" which she sings in the saloon to the understandably dazed audience. This film has all those Fox Monroe touches: her costumes by Travilla, choreography by Jack Cole, and the songs with lyrics by Ken Darby and music by Lionel Newman. Preminger keeps it going well - he also did CARMEN JONES the same year in that busy decade for him before his Jean Seberg films (we also like BONJOUR TRISTESSE (see Deborah Kerr label) and he finished the decade with ANATOMY OF A MURDER, before his early 60s big hitters). So, its a fun western, an enjoyable movie I can happily re-watch any time its on - I love the bit where the redskin gets onto the raft to rip her blouse off (before being despatched) so she has to face the rapids in her camisole. It may be symbolic but why at the end does she throw her red shoes away - she is going back to the burnt out cabin in the wilderness with no proper clothes or shoes!
In the Monroe filmography RIVER though is regarded as a studio programmer she had to do in 1954, but it actually stands with the best of her Fox films and Kay is one of her best roles.

1954 - what a year for leading ladies: Marilyn's 2, Elizabeth Taylor's 4 including THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS, Ava's THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA, Audrey as SABRINA, Grace in 5 films including REAR WINDOW, THE COUNTRY GIRL and GREEN FIRE, not to mention those other busy ladies like Shelley Winters, June Allyson, Lauren Bacall, Doris Day, Deborah Kerr, Jean Simmons, Anne Baxter etc.... and Kay Kendall in England; and in Europe: Alida Valli in SENSO, Loren in WOMAN OF THE RIVER, Silvana Mangano in MAMBO; more at 1954 label. (By 1957 the new crop like Lee Remick, Shirley McLaine, Joanne Woodward, Eva Marie Saint and the grown-up Natalie Wood had arrived, along with those second tier names like Vera Miles, Martha Hyer, Dorothy Malone and the B-girls Rhonda Fleming, Virginia Mayo, Arlene Dahl, Yvonne De Carlo, Debra Paget ... while Ingrid Bergman was back, and the '40s gals like Lana, Rita, Susan were pretty busy too, as indeed were the '30s lot!

Bad Boys: HUD and ALL FALL DOWN

2012-02-17T13:34:00.022Z

Finally I have seen HUD all the way through, as previously I had only seen bits of it here and there. It certainly lives up to his reputation with that great Panavision black and white photography and that modern (1963) western setting, as directed by Martin Ritt who gets the best from his cast of 4, from a novel by Larry McMurtry (who also wrote THE LAST PICTURE SHOW and who scripted Ang Lee's film of that other modern western also set in 1963 BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN.) Here we have proud old Melvyn Douglas (that debonair leading man of Garbo's in films like NINOTCHKA and TWO FACED WOMAN) as the old rancher sharing his farm with son Hud (Paul Newman), grandson Lon (Brandon de Wilde) and housekeeper Alma (Patrica Neal). Lon of course hero worships Hud who is shown to be a heel, getting involved with married woman and generally not caring for anybody but himself. He and the weary and wary Alma have a flirtation which spills over almost into violence one drunken night. Problems at the ranch escalate too with the herd of sick cattle which have to be destroyed in a grim sequence, which proves too much for the proud older man. Alma leaves on a greyhound bus and Lon also sees the light leaving the unrependant Hud feeling distinctly sorry for himself. Its a searing climax. Neal's Alma is a brilliant creation well deserving of her best actress award that year.

[This May 1963 issue of "Films & Filming" was the one which had my personal ad in when I was 17, which led to all my pen-friends then... as per other posts here].

Here is a good synopsis from IMDB: "Hud Bannon is a ruthless young man who tarnishes everything and everyone he touches. Hud represents the perfect embodiment of alienated youth, out for kicks with no regard for the consequences. There is bitter conflict between the callous Hud and his stern and highly principled father, Homer. Hud's nephew Lon admires Hud's cheating ways, though he soon becomes too aware of Hud's reckless amorality to bear him anymore".
A confession though: while I admire Newman's charity works and his spaghetti sauces, as an actor he just never interested me much - whether he is HUD or THE HUSTLER or COOL HAND LUKE or Brick in CAT... or Ben Quick in THE LONG HOT SUMMER or Chance in SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH he always seems the same basic bad-ass character to me, so as Hud he is more of the same really.

ALL FALL DOWN, as scripted by William Inge and filmed by John Frankenheimer, from the novel by James Leo Herlihy (who also wrote BLUE DENIM and MIDNIGHT COWBOY) which I loved then in 1962 aged 16 - the same age as Clint, who records events obsessively in his notebooks, observes his parents Ralph and Annabel (Karl Malden and Angela Lansbury, both perfect casting) and he falls for the visiting "old maid from Toledeo" Echo O'Brien (Eva Marie Saint - also perfect as ever) - the fly in the ointment though is older brother Berry-Berry (Warren Beatty at his most) a never-do-well who returns home with predictable results ... its one of those rites of passage movies where Client finally realises his idolised older brother is no good and is in fact a dangerous, pitiable jerk who leeches onto women and cannot function in a relationship.

Set in Cleveland Ohio it has some lyrical black and white photography and some nice scenes set in Florida as Clint travels looking for his straying brother ... this is one I like a lot and have done for decades.

People We Like: Brandon de Wilde

2012-02-17T13:13:00.023Z

The next 'People We Like'* is an actor who would - amazingly - be 70 this year - but the fates had other ideas, as he died aged 30 in an automobile accident in 1972. Brandon de Wilde though, like James Dean and those others who perished in traffic accidents (like Francoise Dorleac, Belinda Lee, Jayne Mansfield) will be forever young ... it would have been interesting though to see how his career would have gone in the '60s and '70s - would he have been a conventional leading man or something more oddball in the Dennis Hopper mould ?

Born in 1942 he was acting on Broadway aged 9 in the theatre production of Carson McCullers' THE MEMBER OF THE WEDDING, as the sombre little boy John Henry, which he also played in Zinnemann's 1953 film with co-star Julie Harris (below). That year he was also the little boy in SHANE, George Stevens' classic western. Other roles in the 50s included films like FAREWELL MY LADY (Lady is a dog), THE MISSOURI TRAVELLER and a James Stewart western I like, NIGHT PASSAGE, in 1957 (below). As a teenager he starred in BLUE DENIM (or BLUE JEANS) with Carol Lynley in 1960, a drama about unmarried teenagers having a baby. I did not see this at the time, but have recently got a copy of it, so a fuller report on that in due course. In 1962 he is Clint, the hero of James Leo Herlihy's novel ALL FALL DOWN, a favourite I have written about here several times (1962 label), subject of my next post...

HUD in 1963 was more of the same, with young Lon (De Wilde) losing his hero worship of uncle Paul Newman. Then came roles in Preminger's IN HARM'S WAY in 1965 and other routine movies like THOSE CALLAWAYS and lots of television work. He was touring in the play BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE at the time of his fatal accident, in Denver, Colorado when on the way in a camper van to visit his second wife who was in hospital; he left a son named Jesse.

(* other 'People We Like' here include: David Hemmings, Stewart Granger, Jeffrey Hunter, Stephen Boyd, Stanley Baker, Michael Craig, Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Capucine, Joan Greenwood, Kay Kendall, Dirk Bogarde, Lilli Palmer, Ingrid Thulin, Alida Valli, Silvana Mangano, Romy Schneider, Anouk Aimee etc).
See labels - Coming up: Peter Finch, Alan Bates, David Warner.

Dory Previn, R.I.P.

2012-02-16T03:59:00.006Z

What memories the very name Dory Previn brings back - those early '70s albums and songs like "Mythical Kings and Iguanas", "The Lady with the Braid", and the song about Mary C Brown the girl who jumped off the Hollywood sign, and Janis Joplin buying a headstone for Bessie Smith - but forgetting to pay for her own! In the era of Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon, Carole King, James Taylor, Paul Simon et al Dory established herself as the singer/songwriter of gloom and depression, an acquired taste certainly but very effective. My late friend Stan liked her so much.

The breakup of that marriage with Andre Previn and the song about Mia Farrow were also fascinating ..... RIP indeed Dory, 86 is a very good age. Don't expect any Whitney-type coverage though.
She had met Previn on the set of the trashy MGM film THE SUBTERRANEANS (Trash label) in 1960, as he was one of the jazzmen included in the film, for which she had writte the theme lyric. ("Andre Previn and the Previnettes" as Morcambe & Wise once memorably introduced him in one of their tv sketches...)

Movie-wise her lyrics include Natalie Wood singing "Youre Gonna Hear From Me" in INSIDE DAISY CLOVER and Dionne Warwick's theme song and Susan Hayward/Helen Lawson's "I'll Plant My Own Tree" in VALLEY OF THE DOLLS !

David Kelly, R.I.P.

2012-02-16T03:58:00.004Z

David Kelly, best known for his role in seventies British sitcom FAWLTY TOWERS, passed away on Monday after a short illness at the age of 82. In his long career which spanned over 50 years, the Irish stage, film and TV actor has appeared in many memorable roles including Grandpa Joe in CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, Rashers Tierney in STRUMPET CITY and his career defining role of the feckless incompetent builder Mr O'Reilly in FAWLTY TOWERS. "It was nine minutes on the screen of Fawlty Towers and I was signing autographs all over the world," he had said, The actor is also known for his naked bike ride in the 1998 comedy WAKING NED. "He was a hilarious man. He had an outlook on life that was slightly skewed and made you laugh all the time," his friend Niall Toibin as saying. Kelly's last role came in the 2007 British film STARDUST, where he played a wall guard. The actor received a lifetime achievement award at the 2005 Irish Film and Television Awards.

Grammys !

2012-02-15T06:08:00.007Z

We don't really go a bundle on the Grammys here in the UK , its only been shown here for the last year or two - but like last year's with Cee Lo and Gwynneth, and the Aretha tribute, it certainly throws up some moments [see comments at Music label]. Adele of course has been huge here for a year or more, I have the latest CD, we like the songs - but she had not really impinged on me much - then I saw her at the Grammys where she blew us away!

How worrying for Gaga (who looked terrible here), Rihanna (half naked as usual), Kathy Perry and Nicki Minaj with that ridiculous over the top rip-off of THE EXORCIST to see their thunder stolen by a chubby English girl who just stood there and sang and looked gorgeous and she sells zillions of records! I am sure Beyonce and Madonna would have felt the same if they were in the room - they wisely stayed at home! And what planet is Diana Ross on? She comes on (still with that awful hair) and asks if everyone is having fun, totally ignoring the Whitney thing ... Adele though is something else and only 23 !

BAFTA honours ...

2012-02-13T10:41:00.008Z

What a pleasure to see 82 year old Max Von Sydow introducing Martin Scorsese, the recipient of this year's BAFTA Fellowship (why no mention of Marty's NEW YORK NEW YORK though? This musical is probably one of my favourite Scorsese's but its perceived "failure" seems to make it the one that got away); also John Hurt [see recent post on him below] honoured for his "outstanding contribution" to cinema.

Whitney Houston, R.I.P.

2012-02-13T10:39:00.004Z

Sometimes words are not needed ....

Sanctuary, sanctuary ...

2012-02-12T12:54:00.019Z

Fascinating to catch up now with THE STORY OF TEMPLE DRAKE, the first movie version of William Faulkner's novel SANCTUARY, it makes for a terrific 70 minute Pre-Code movie, directed by Stephen Roberts in 1933, with Miriam Hopkins in full throttle as that spoilt, selfish tease Temple, wno thinks she can flirt and control her men, until she is held captive by bootleggers and raped by Jack Le Rue, and Temple finds she likes it ... eventually back home she has to testify about what really happened and who killed Trigger (La Rue) which will show her up in her true light. Miriam of course went on to VANITY FAIR in 35, the first colour main movie, and appearing a few times with her rival Bette Davis and she was very effective in later roles, mainly for Wyler, in films like THE HEIRESS, CARRIE and THE CHILDREN'S HOUR. Many indeed are the stories of her feuds with Davis and others... I particularly relish 1943's OLD ACQUAINTANCE, a delirious treat anytime.

Fascinating too to compare with the 1960 version SANCTUARY, long unseen here, directed by Tony Richardson as his first venture in Hollywood, with Lee Remick perfect as Temple and Yves Montand doing an impersonation of La Rue. Here is what I said about it last year:

"Also long unseen here, is Tony Richardson’s 1961 film of SANCTUARY which I had wanted to catch up with for Lee Remick’s performance as Temple Drake. Bradford Dillman plays her husband and Yves Montand (fresh from Marilyn Monroe and LET’S MAKE LOVE) as the bootlegger Candyman who rapes her. Blues singer Odetta is also in the cast. Remick is as fascinating as ever as the tease who takes to sex and booze, and that remote to us now 20s era of flappers and the Charleston is well conveyed. The story is bizarre though with the death of the baby – again, perhaps a reading of the book would be useful. An odd choice though for director Tony Richardson. Montand has a great 'look' with the hat and the cigarette, but back then the English language continued to defeat him. Remick though is the reason to see this, with lots of lingering close-ups of her."

Soon: the real Jeanne Eagels in THE LETTER in 1929, also compared to Bette's in 1940 and Lee Remick's in 1982, and Kim Novak as Jeanne in the 1957 meller JEANNE EAGELS

'40s kitsch with Jade and Judy, not to mention Carmen !

2012-02-10T06:16:00.020Z

Sometimes its hard to get one's head around the fact that in the last desperate years of World War II while dreadful things were happening in Europe and the Far East, Hollywood was still turning out those dream factory products like MRS MINIVER, RANDOM HARVEST, MEET ME IN ST LOUIS and this piece of oriental make-believe, made in 1944. (The MINIVER film though was designed to showcase the plucky Brits and gets Americans involved, like Anna Neagle's I LIVE IN GROSVENOR SQUARE). It must have seemed a good idea at the time to get Katharine Hepburn to play Chinese - after all, Edward G. Robinson and Loretta Young did in THE HATCHET MAN in '32; along here with that cast including Walter Huston, Agnes Moorehead, Akim Tamiroff and Turhan Bey. Kate is Jade, a pre-feminist Chinese woman who struggles with her family for survival when the Japanese invade. Presumably audiences of the time did not mind that other races were played by well-known actors. The film made while atrocities against the Chinese were being carried out reflects the American thinking at the time, as depicted through the keen expert eyes novelist Pearl S. Buck, author of THE GOOD EARTH. It also reflects what was available to Hollywood film-makers at that desperate moment. Given the time and the circumstances, the movie does quite an adequate job. Hepburn's name on theater marquees also ensured that many more people would see the film than otherwise (like Bette Davis in WATCH ON THE RHINE). Hollywood was of course also courting the South American audience, as their films were not available in wartorn Europe, with all those Carmen Miranda films set DOWN ARGENTINE WAY...

The plot here is: Ling Tang and his family live on his prosperous farm in rural Southern China and have not yet felt the impact of the Japanese invasion in the North. Tang's two oldest sons, Lao Ta Tan and Lao Er Tan are married and hard working while youngest son Lao San Tan remains a free spirit. Er's wife Jade is also willfully unconventional and desires to exercises her literacy skills by reading books, a most unfeminine practice in 1930's China. Tang's only daughter is married to Wu Lien, a city merchant who profits from selling Japanese goods. When the dreaded invasion reaches their village, the family is scattered as the sons join the resistance while Wu Lien survives by collaborating with the enemy.
Hepburn, thankfully, is less mannered and less on display than usual - her idea of being Chinese amuses now - and as a wartime drama it holds the attention. An interesting curiosity now then.

The later 40s shows the dream factory in full force with those favourites like A LETTER TO 3 WIVES, ROADHOUSE, THE HEIRESS etc and now A DATE WITH JUDY in 1948. Another 40s dreamworld where the middle-classes have roomy comfy homes and domestic help - yes its a coloured maid here, as Jane Powell as the perky teen Judy sings at the local high school, is friends with Carol - Elizabeth Taylor, the local rich girl, and worries about her parents' marriage as it seems father (Wallace Beery) is having an affair with a woman at his office. She though is Carmen Miranda who is teaching him how to rhumba to Xaviar Cugat's music at his wedding anniversary! Carmen is a bit subdued here but adds some sparkle, Jane Powell trills some songs like "Its a Most Unusual Day"; young Robert Stack is the new guy in town working in the drugstore whom both girls have their eyes on. 16 year old Elizabeth Taylor is marvellous here, patenting her future roles as the nice rich girl with some steel when it comes to getting her man. A Joe Pasternak production directed by Richard Thorpe, it is a pleasing discovery now. Perfect late 40s entertainment, particularly when Wallace Beery shows off his rhumba skills and the girls get their beaus, and of course with Leon Ames as another paterfamilias who learns the importance of his family. And of course teens then were just younger versions of their parents until the '50s when teenagers were suddenly invented and got their own culture as rock'n'roll arrived!

Send in the gowns ....

2012-02-07T04:58:00.029Z

Katharine Hepburn, “Christopher Strong”, 1933 (via mothgirlwings)

There have been of course no end of iconic gowns in the movies, here are just a tiny selection - that crazy art deco insect outfit worn by the young Katharine Hepburn in CHRISTOPHER STRONG, 1933; one of Travis Banton's designs for Dietrich in SHANGHAI EXPRESS, 1932; one of Adrian's opulent costumes for the Norma Shearer MARIE ANTOINETTE in 1938; the famous Travilla gold gown for Marilyn, circa GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES; one of Edith Head's Grace Kelly outfits, REAR WINDOW 1954; Helen Rose's iconic white dress for Elizabeth Taylor in CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, 1957; Sophia's wet dress in BOY ON A DOLPHIN, 1957 and one of her later ritzy head-dresses; Irene Sharaff's amazing designs for Elizabeth Taylor as CLEOPATRA, 1963 - Sharaff also did Sreisand on stage and screen in FUNNY GIRL and HELLO DOLLY, where she has some great hats; Kay Kendall in Balmain in THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE, 1958 working that feather boa; Cecil Beaton's terrific gown for GIGI, 1958, and Cecil's Regency outfits for Barbra in Brighton in ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER, '69; Keira Knightley in that green gown in ATONEMENT - hardly a gown but we have to add Debra Paget's "costume" in that sizzling number dancing with the snake in Fritz Lang's 1959 double THE TIGER OF ESCHNAPUR and THE INDIAN TOMB, I really must look at that Masters of Cinema new edition...

Showpeople: film festival folk

2012-02-04T10:30:00.009Z

Antonioni and Fellini in 1982; below: Fellini, Jeanne Moreau and Antonioni at the Cannes festival in 1960 when L'AVVENTURA and LA DOLCE VITA caused a furore; Visconti and Losey at the 1971 Venice festival when both were competing - Losey got the main prize for THE GO-BETWEEN so they created a special prize for Luchino for DEATH IN VENICE.

Below: two shots of Sophia Loren, Alain Delon and Romy Schneider at the 1962 Cannes Festival (all that talent and glamour in the back of the car, Ponti is in front with the driver); plus Vitti, Delon and Schneider in 1960.

Vanity Fair Hollywood Issue 2012

2012-02-04T04:47:00.012Z

Great to get this year's Hollywood issue of VANITY FAIR - once a magazine junkie, always a magazine junkie! This one is essential for European film fanatics: new interviews with those two 77 year olds - Sophia Loren in splendid seclusion at her home in Geneva as caught by Annie Leibovitz, and Brigitte Bardot at St Tropez - no new photos from there though. Good to get these 2 icons looking back on it all now ... and that biographer (or cuttings compiler) Charlotte Chandler writes about Antonioni and Fellini with some interesting photos too - she really did know everyone, being photographed here with her head on Antonioni's chest over lunch. This year's cover is by Mario Testino on the new girls in town (Rooney, Mia, Jessica etc). Esther Williams at 90 answers their monthly questionnaire; and the essential movie of the last 30 years? - not PULP FICTION nor E.T. nor TOY STORY - but DINER
!
Below: last year's cover headed by Ryan Reynolds, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway and James Franco - and bottom the 2001 roundup including Loren, Deneuve, Vanessa, Meryl, Cate and Kate, Gwynneth, Penelope, Nicole ... so much glamour and talent in one room, if there were all there at the same time !

Ben Gazzara, R.I.P.

2012-02-04T04:24:00.009Z

Ben Gazzara [1930-2012], that intense actor whose long career included playing Brick in the original CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF on Broadway, and had roles in influential films by John Cassavetes and worked with top Hollywood directors, has died aged 81.

He studied at the Actors Studio in Manhattan, which earned him regular work across half a century, not only onstage — but in dozens of movies and all sorts of television shows. His movies include THE STRANGE ONE, holding his own against James Stewart and George C Scott in Preminger's ANATOMY OF A MURDER in 1959 where he and Lee Remick are a very sexy couple. Perhaps his most important work was with John Cassavetes and Peter Falk (who died last year) in HUSBANDS in 1970 (though they barely knew each other then) and THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE, and with Gena Rowlands in OPENING NIGHT in '77. He is good too as the uncomprehending father in that early Aids drama AN EARLY FROST (with Gena Rowlands again), 1985. He also got involved with Audrey Hepburn in the two films they appeared in, the dreadful all-star BLOODLINE and THEY ALL LAUGHED. Other films included A RAGE TO LIVE, SAINT JACK, and the Coen Brothers THE BIG LEBOWSKI, and several made in Italy, where he also kept a home. An individual talent indeed, and another survivor gone from that great era of new actors of the late 50s/early 60s and the experimental '70s. He also directed episodes of COLUMBO and RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, and published an autobiography in 2004. I last saw him (looking sadly aged) in I LOVE NEW YORK.

John Hurt, A BAFTA tribute

2012-02-01T14:06:00.011Z

How good to hear that John Hurt is being awarded a BAFTA Fellowship award next month (Alfred Hitchcock was awarded the first and one has been awarded each year for deserving great careers either in acting, directing or other fields of show business). Hurt at 72 is busier than ever - he and Ray Winstone must be England's busiest actors. I spent an evening with them at the BFI National Film Theatre maybe 2 years ago for the unveiling of their 44 INCH CHEST which they were promoting and were doing a Q&A session - both have made several films since, I now have Hurt's TINKER TAILOR SOLIDER SPY to watch. I used to see him around town a few times too when I worked in London's Regent street for 20 years.

I remember his debut in THE WILD AND THE WILLING in 1962, and soon he was etching those memorable parts on our collective consciousness: Caligula in I CLAUDIUS, Quentin Crisp in THE NAKED CIVIL SERVANT (pity the follow-up AN ENGLISHMAN IN NEW YORK was not quite in the same league), his unbelievably moving John Merrick in THE ELEPHANT MAN, among varied other assorted roles, cropping up here and there in all kinds of films, 10 RILLINGTON PLACE was an amazing performance too, plus his amazing exit in ALIEN, with Julie Christie in 1968's IN SEARCH OF GREGORY (right), in A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS and a lead for John Huston in the forgotten SINFUL DAVY, and now he is in the last HARRY POTTER films. He has also been doing Samuel Beckett's KRAPP'S LAST TAPE on stage. His Peanut was a tough east end lag in 44 INCH CHEST with a vile tongue (Melvil Poupaud who impressed me a lot in Ozon's TIME TO LEAVE was the waiter tied up by Ray's gang!). He is also terrific in LOVE AND DEATH ON LONG ISLAND, which I shall be turning to shortly (with other recent 'gay interest' titles). Let's hope we see a lot more of John Hurt, who just gets better and better; what a life he has had too, living all over the place, including a stint in Ireland - a travelling player indeed.

Richard Lester, a BFI Tribute

2012-01-31T19:17:00.010Z

Richard Lester is awarded a BFI (British Film Institute) Fellowship at a ceremony next month with an interview and special screening of maybe his best film ROBIN AND MARIAN - (see still at Nicol Williamson post below), not only has it Connery and Audrey Hepburn but also the likes of Robert Shaw, Nicol Williamson, Richard Harris etc. One of my essential 1976 films (along with TAXI DRIVER, OBSESSION, NETWORK, L'INNOCENTE etc).

Lester is that Canadian who moved to England, became an essential director of English movies, up there with Tony Richardson, John Schlesinger, Joe Losey, Ken Russell, Clive Donner and Michael Winner then. His HARD DAY'S NIGHT with the Beatles was very influential, as was HELP! - it was marvellous walking into the cinema half-way through (continuous performances in those days, you could stay as long as you liked, I saw it twice through) the sequence on Salisbury Plain as George Harrison did his solo number "I Need You" - it was a big thing then, at 19, to see The Beatles on screen in colour, rather than on a tiny black and white television. His Beatles films were hugely influential as the first pop promo videos really with those musical numbers cut and edited to the music.

Lester also hit it with THE KNACK [which won the Cannes Grand Prix] and offbeat films like THE BED-SITTING ROOM, HOW I WON THE WAR, he certainly worked with the best and his movies were full of delicious quirky funny moments. PETULIA with Julie Christie in San Francisco is one I really must re-view and his 70s all star spectaculars were, well, spectacular and funny: THE THREE and FOUR MUSKETEERS, ROYAL FLASH (review at Malcolm McDowell label), and I am shortly going to catch up with JUGGERNAUT a better than average bomb-on-ship thriller, with Hemmings & co.. ROBIN AND MARIAN was perfect too.

He also presented a marvellous 6-part BBC television series back in the '90s HOLLYWOOD UK, (thankfully I kept some episodes on vhs cassettes) revisiting the locations and interviewing surviving members of iconic British 60s films like BILLY LIAR, BLOW-UP, THE L-SHAPED ROOM, SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING, THE SERVANT etc with waspish comments from Bogarde, Terence Stamp (insisting that BLOWUP was all about him and Antonioni had been following him around and offerred him the role first), with Monica Vitti speaking in Italian and it was fascinating going back to BILLY LIAR's house as it is now, and the BLOW-UP park and studio.

Good to see more praise for this boldly original director with a great sense of humour!

Ken's Rainbow

2012-01-29T03:49:00.026Z

That was a nice wave of affection for Ken Russell who died recently, at the good age of 84. BBC here in England ran WOMEN IN LOVE the other weekend, terrific to see it again after some decades - it remains his "prestige" film, they also showed the lesser known THE RAINBOW from 1989, also by D.H. Lawrence, with the same lead character Ursula Brangwen when younger.

WOMEN IN LOVE is so exhuberent - there is just so much in it, so much plot, so much happening, so many vivid characters, Ken here in his prime has great material to work with and a great cast and comes across like an English Fellini, creating great moods and images, it is so very 1969. I had forgot how marvellous Alan Bates was in his prime, and it must also be Oliver Reed's finest moment, Eleanor Bron is also terrific. Russell was a visionary who marched to the beat of his own drum and WIL remains a film that is both visually striking and rich in narrative. Perhaps the more apt comparison is to Orson Welles, a fellow auteur who started his career in the good graces of the critics and then began making more challenging films that were interested in stretching the medium.

Ken too while "hot" did some challenging films: THE MUSIC LOVERS (I have a new dvd of that to watch, so a report later) and I understand a new complete print of THE DEVILS will be unveiled (but not sure if I want to see that again....) and he kept working to diminishing returns after the success of TOMMY. I loathed VALENTINO and he seems to have lost his mass audience around then, but kept making movies even ending up making them in his garage. THE SAVAGE MESSIAH should be a re-discovery, and perhaps the amusingly awful LISZTOMANIA , and his forays into American movies ... (I recently also got BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN (1967) to complete my Francoise Dorleac movies.)

The BBC also showed a new documentary on him, great to see clips from his "Monitor" days, those black and white films on composers like Delius and Elgar. THE RAINBOW though is a curious trifle - almost D.H. Lawrence lite, or a parody of those themes. IMDB says: Ken Russell's loose adaptation of the last part of D.H. Lawrence's "The Rainbow" sees impulsive young Ursula coming of age in pastoral England around the time of the Boer War. At school, she is introduced to lovemaking by a bisexual physical education instructress. While experiencing disillusionment in her first career attempt (teaching), she has an affair with a young Army officer, who wants to marry her. Unable to accept a future of domesticity, she breaks with him, and eventually leaves home in search of her destiny.

Ken obviously inspired a lot of affection so appearing here must have been a labour of love for Ken's regulars like Glenda Jackson and Christopher Gable as Ursula's loving parents with their bohemian (for the time) marriage. David Hemmings is simply marvellous as Uncle Harry - before he got too florid - and he brings a lot of humour and grace to the role. The unusual looking Sammi Davis is Ursula, and Amanda Donohue (later the star of Ken's bonkers LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM) is the school teacher who teaches Sammi the joys of sapphic love as the girls strip and run around naked in the rain ... Amanda soon though latches on to Hemmings and marries him and has a baby, while soldier Paul McGann shows Sammi the joys of hetero sex, as he too strips and runs around naked. Add in school teaching with lecherous teachers and the scene is set for the usual Ken histrionics. So, an enjoyable romp, another of those British films of the era exploring sex in those restrictive times, like that other 1970 D.H. saga THE VIRGIN AND THE GYPSY by Christopher Miles, who also gave us the later DH bio THE PRIEST OF LOVE with more stripping off by Ian McKellen and Co in 1981 - reviews at costume drama label.

I also recorded THE BOYFRIEND - also not seen that for decades, should be fun again, as Ken's regulars like Max Adrian, Glenda, Gable, Georgina Hale, Antonia Ellis, Vladek Sheybal, Graham Armitage and the very gauche Twiggy [now starring in Marks & Spencer clothes advertisments] amuse and entertain us back in 1971.

Nicol Williamson, R.I.P.

2012-01-27T12:55:00.016Z

RIP indeed to one of the great acting talents of the British theatre and cinema. Nicol Williamson burst on the scene in the '60s - like the young David Warner he was a mesmerising Hamlet, he and Warner (whom I have been meaning to write about too, along with Alan Bates and Peter Finch) are together in the '68 drama THE BOFORS GUN, long unseen.
By all accounts a difficult man, as the respectful obituaries put it: "his prickly temperament helped derail what might have been one of the great theatrical careers" as he was "touched by genius" and "the greatest actor since Brando". Heady praise to live up to ...

He died aged 73 in December but his family have only released the information now. His 1968 HAMLET was filmed by Tony Richardson, with Marianne Faithfull as his Ophelia, and Richardson also directed him in his film of Nabokov's LAUGHTER IN THE DARK, where Williamson replaced another ailing hellraiser Richard Burton. This film is too little seen now, but I remember a tv showing if it ... His initial stage success was in John Osborne's INADMISSABLE EVIDENCE where his ranting solicitor (a rather more raging BUTLEY as played by Alan Bates) was a tour de force, he also played the role in the film. Other films included THE SEVEN PER CENT SOLUTION as Sherlock Holmes (above with Vanessa Redgrave), and as Little John with Connery and Audrey Hepburn in Richard Lester's smashing ROBIN AND MARIAN in 1976 - which also co-starred Robert Shaw - another of those actors like Stanley Baker, Laurence Harvey and Stephen Boyd who died too young. Williamson too had alcoholic problems, like Robert Stephens who also never became quite the star people thought he would and made too many dud movies, as did the hellraiser in chief Richard Burton. Peter O'Toole seems to have survived all that ... It seems now that a lot of the hellraisers of the 60s like Oliver Reed, Richard Harris, David Hemmings, Anthony Hopkins became, if they survived, old hams in dud movies. Nicol Williamson didn't quite go that route having got bored with acting eventually and turning to music. What a fascinating man. He is fun too in my favourite snake-on-the-loose-with-people-trapped-in-a-house-under-seige movie VENOM with his ex-lover Sarah Miles (review at Sarah Miles label), and then of course there was his Merlin in John Boorman's EXCALIBUR!

The actor, who was known as a straighforward, private man, leaves his son, Luke. "He was the most honest, funny and intelligent man I have ever had the pleasure of knowing," writes Luke on Williamson's official website. "He was my father and words cannot adequately express how proud I am of him."

Marcello & Romy ! !

2012-01-27T12:45:00.010Z

Another new Italian discovery: I hadn't realised that Romy Schneider and Marcello Mastroianni had teamed up for FANTASMA D'AMORE in 1981, one of her last films, the year before her death in '82. This is another one we were denied in London, though surely there would have been an audience for it then when the art circuit was still going and international stars like these were still popular ... I have now though seen some scenes from this Dino Risi drama on YouTube and have ordered an Italian only dvd,so a full report in due course ...

Riso Amaro (Bitter Rice) 1949

2012-01-26T18:34:00.014Z

Finally, the great Italian drama from 1949 - RISO AMARO, or BITTER RICE (a decade before L'AVVENTURA - see below) which introduced Silvana Mangano to international audiences, an engrossing drama of life in the rice fields where thieves Doris Dowling and Vittorio Gassman flee to evade capture, but peasant girl Silvana (Silvana Mangano) is on to them and ingratiates herself with Doris ... then enter army captain Raf Vallone, so the stage is set for drama and tragedy. This is a great Dino de Laurentiis production and was such a hit that Mangano, Vallone and Gassman were teamed again in 1951 for ANNA (Mangano label), that torrid melodrama by Alberto Lattuada which I liked so much recently - this one too had the young Sophia Loren in the mix, in the background. A few years later in 1954 Loren had come to prominence in her own working in the rice fields drama WOMAN OF THE RIVER, which impressed me so much when I was about 12 - as mentioned before (Sophia Loren label) and it was in colour too!

Silvana though wasn't as ambitious as Sophia and was content to be cast in her husband De Laurentiis's films: ULYSSES, MAMBO (another favourite discovery of mine - Mangano label), and those two rarities I liked when young: Rene Clements' THE SEA WALL (THIS ANGRY AGE) and Lattuauda's THE TEMPEST, both 1958, and Martin Ritt's glum FIVE BRANDED WOMEN, 1960. Mangano continued thoughtout the 60s and 70s (while Loren, Vitti, Cardindale came to prominence) in comedies like IL DISCO VOLANTE and then in those Pasolini films like TEOREMA, OEDIPE RE (both '68) and for Visconti in DEATH IN VENICE, LUDWIG, CONVERSATION PIECE etc, as per my previous posts on her. It was odd seeing her popping up in the De Laurentiis production of David Lynch's DUNE in 1984, before her untimely death in 1989.

BITTER RICE though is terrific stuff and Silvana sizzles in those shorts showing her magnificent thighs and legs - she, Vallone and Gassman in their youthful prime are what movie stars are all about!

L'Avventura again, and again

2012-01-23T10:36:00.012Z

Here is an early post of mine from 2 years ago, on Antononi's L'AVVENTURA:

The late English film critic and writer Alexander Walker [whom I used to see around town regularly] was very perceptive in his movie reviews and his biographies on the likes of Vivien Leigh, Elizabeth Taylor, Rex Harrison, Garbo and the silent era. His Thursday reviews were essential reading.

Here are his comments from a recommendation on a screening of L'AVVENTURA:

"Not all great movies, as Pauline Kael tartly observed, are received "in an atmosphere of incense burning". Michelangelo Antonioni's L'AVVENTURA was greeted at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival with a storm of cat-calling and booing. Yet within the year it had become the most fashionable film in European arthouses, and one that set the tone of other bleakly visionary film-makers. It begins with an almost glossy magazine depiction of the affluent Rome middle-class on a yachting holiday in the Lipari islands. Tensions are perceptible, but enigmatically conveyed. Then, as they prepare to leave an island, one woman (Lea Massari) is found to be missing. A search is mounted. With marvellous sleight-of-hand, Antonioni misdirects our attention: gradually we realise that instead of being looked for by her friends, she is being forgotten as two of them fall in love. The film changes key subtly, yet again to suggest how the emotions of a social class have become deadened and selfish. Monica Vitti made her name with this puzzle picture. The last sequence in a Taormina luxury hotel became notorious for her apparantly endless walk through the midnight corridors to discover her treacherous lover (Gabriele Ferzetti). It tried the patience of the black-tie crowd beyond endurance; yet The Walk soon became the trademark of other heroines, in other movies, who exemplified the sick soul of sixties Europe."

L'AVVENTURA was though the most problematic of the Antonioni films for me, I much preferred L'ECLISSE but now I have seen L'AVVENTURA a few more times and suddenly I think its wonderful in all its stark beauty. Our arty film channel Film4 ran it again last week, and despite having the Criterion dvd, I recorded it and found myself returning to it several times. It is pure cinema and I can now lose myself in it repeatedly. The first section on the island is brilliant - the photographs here show what a difficult shoot it must have been on the island in that magic year 1959. Monica Vitti is mesmerising and its a very multi-faceted performance: her anguish on the island searching for Anna, then trying to evade Sandro and finally giving in to her feelings and being deliriously in love and then that climax at the hotel in Taormina in that cold dawn ... a gold plated classic then and as I said in other posts on it, it and PSYCHO usher in that new modern world of 1960, both in their way about a woman who disappears and the people looking for her.

Thoughts ...

2012-01-22T13:40:00.035Z

David Hockney's "Arrival of Spring" from the new Royal Academy exhibition.

The award season is now underway - here in the UK the Golden Globes do not mean much to us, and were hilariously awful on that E! Entertainment channel last week, broken up every few minutes as they were with commercials for the Kardashian show, even breaking into Christopher Plummer's speech. I just had enough and zoomed through the rest of it. Elton's face was priceless when Madonna graciously (or did she?) accept her gong for best song ... for one of the movies (THE IRON LADY and THE ARTIST being the others) that Harvey Weinstein is behind this year.

Well the reviews are now in here for W.E. and make amusing reading - (I quite like Madonna's music though - that mid period "Ray of Light" and "Music" with those interesting videos and re-mixes) - but looking at clips from Clint's J. EDGAR my only question is: WHY? Why on earth bother making a dull movie about this dull man and his era, no movie could tell the real story, and they spend so much time under rubber trying to look old (hopefully not as hilariously as Bette Midler and James Caan in FOR THE BOYS!). It is of course my loss but Eastwood's films just do not interest me, I give his movies a miss, amazing he is still making them in his 80s. He bags Judi Dench here as Hoover's mother - a rather thankless role like her Dame Sybil in MY WEEKEND WITH MARILYN. It all seems reminescent of Scorsese's THE AVIATOR where Leonardo had a go at capturing Howard Hughes. Will it really be Sinatra next ? - but surely Frank and his life and work is too well known to impersonate - and again how could it be the real story? But in an era of impersonations winning awards - it seems Meryl as Mrs T has a lock on the best actress this year, despite Michelle Williams as Marilyn - and then there is THE HELP. So the Oscar nominations should be interesting, and the BAFTA nominations are also in, with all the usual suspects. [I don't think it will be Meryl after all now, the film isn't good enough and her Mrs T is like a "Spitting Image" cartoon; liberals will hate it for glorifying Thatcher, while her devotees will hate it for presenting her as an old lady with dementia...]
More than the Oscar-bait movie J EDGAR though it is Ralph Fiennes' CORIOLANUS that seems the real film, a very cinematic version of one of Shakesepare's lesser known plays, interestingly set in a modern Balkans background with Fiennes, Gerard Butler and by all accounts a stunning performance by Vanessa Redgrave (Vanessa label) as his mother - but it seems to have been ignored by the nominators .. what gives? In the meantime new dvds of THE SKIN I LIVE IN, THE GUARD and THE TREE OF LIFE have arrived, with DRIVE and TINKER TAILOR... arriving this week - more on those soon then.

Watching Jeremy Irons being interviewed this morning and discussing MARGIN CALL it is now one I am very keen to see when it opens here - another terrific cast including Irons, Spacey and Zachery Quinto (also one of the producers) on the current financial meltdown;

While the new David Hockey exhibition has got glowing reviews, though as Philip Hensher says it ignores that great body of work of the last 40 years to focus on his English paintings since he moved back here 7 years ago - but it is time to celebrate these new paintings and iPad works. Another popular art show for London then. There are over 150 pictures - "the Yorkshire artist combines formidable draughtsmanship with an invigorating colour palette to capture and transmit a pleasure in sylvan landscapes rarely seen since the impressionist era", as "The Sunday Times" puts it. Like the sell-out Leonardo exhibition day tickets are released each morning. Hockney now is firmly a national treasure after his decades in California, France and other countries as he explored his various forays into painting and photography. California was where the sun was warmer and the boys sexier. "England doesn't have many vivid blue swimming pools for white-rumped Adonises to jump into ... and the colour schemes Hockney favours, England simply isn't Hockney-coloured", but now Hockney "painting Bridlington in the rain" makes those essentially British landscapes his own; as a display of energy by an artist who is almost 75 this is some statement". And also this:
"The energy, radiance and manifest love with which Hockney depicts the landscape of his native Yorkshire are magical, and his huge oil paintings and smaller watercolours beautifully capture both joy in nature and the changing seasons, and a poignant sense of life's transience. I emerged from the Royal Academy convinced I had seen the work of a modern master enjoying a spectacular blaze of autumnal creativity, and spent the rest of the day feeling both ridiculously happy and unaccountably blessed. That is the consolation of great art".

Music-wise Lana Del Ray is currently wowing us, I love that track "Video Games"; the late Amy Winehouse's "A Song For You" is a stunning version of that Leon Russell song I loved and which Donny Hathaway made his own - until now. I like Maroon 5 and their jumpy infectious music, like Franz Ferdinand or The Killers, and "Moves Like Jagger" has been the song of the season, great video too!

Etta James, R.I.P.

2012-01-21T03:21:00.007Z

Etta James (1938 - 2012) one of the great blues voices, and one of the most individual talents - up there with Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone - has died after battling long illnesses. What a talent. One of the early singles I bought was her "Losers Weepers" and her great "I'd Rather Go Blind" which has been covered by so many (like Chicken Shack). Then of course there was "Tell Mama", "I Just Want to Make Love To You" (which had a new life when part of a television commercial) and of course "At Last".

Etta's story is a key strand in the story of American music in the 20th century. She was singing in a group aged 14, then marketed as an R&B and doo wop singer, after being discovered by Johnny Otis the "godfather of rhythm & blues", who coincidentally died a few days before her. After signing with Chess Records in 1960, James broke through as a traditional pop-styled singer, covering jazz and pop music standards. James's voice deepened over the years, as she battled various demons, moving her musical style into the genres of soul and jazz. She went on to win 6 Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. Legendary producer Jerry Wexler once called her "the greatest of all modern blues singers". Her music defied category, her legend can only grow, so when next having a drink let's toast Etta James.

L'oro di Roma, 1961

2012-01-19T10:59:00.025Z

GOLD OF ROME: One more trip back to Italy in the early '60s for this impressive film by Carlo Lizzani - another one I did not know as it may never have been released in the UK, but again, it is on YouTube complete at 93 minutes.

It used a fictional story to recount the facts behind the final deportation of the Jews of Rome: Nazi Colonel Herbert Kappler summoned the highest representatives of the Jewish community ordering them to collect 50 kgs of gold within 36 hours. The punishment in case of failure or disobedience was the detention of 200 people. Gold was collected and brought but on nothing could save 1259 Jews from deportation: it was the beginning of the end for the Jewish community of the Ghetto of Rome.

The film stars French actor Gerard Blain as the militant Jew determind to fight back and who joins the partisans, and Jean Sorel (again, see below) as the Catholic who falls for Jewish Anna Maria Ferrero who witnesses the start of the round-up. The Roman locations are nicely used and we see a lot of the Jewish community as they try to reason with the Germans and understand what is happening to them as they are rounded up. One of many films then on the German occupation of Rome, like THE RED AND THE BLACK 1983 (Christopher Plummer plays Kappler here, to Gregory Peck's priest in the Vatican, with John Gielgud excellent as Pius XIIP) [review at War link] and MASSACRE IN ROME with Mastroianni and Burton.

The film was shown in New York a few years ago on Remberance Day, with director Lizzani present. Having recently enjoyed De Sica's L'ORO DI NAPOLI (Mangano, Loren, De Sica, Italian labels) and other early 60s Italian movies like GHOSTS OF ROME, THE LONG NIGHT OF '43, and the '51 ANNA - as reviews below - this is an interesting addition. Now for BITTER RICE (RISO AMARO) before moving on to some modern titles ...

Another great Italian war film of this era is the 1962 well-regarded FOUR DAYS OF NAPLES by Nanni Loy, with Jean Sorel again as a sailor who gets shot by the invading forces; one to track down then!

"An airline ticket to romantic places ..."

2012-01-17T10:10:00.038Z

Freezing January and one's thoughts return to holidays in warmer climes and those interesting places still to visit: Taormina in Sicily with that Roman theatre, one of the most celebrated ruins in Italy (above), then there are Rome, Sorrento and Amalfi, postponed from last year due to knee injury. Taormina has been on my wish-list ever since I saw that Clarice Cliff "Taormina" china pattern (right). My late friend and partner Rory was the Clarice Cliff expert and had some ...
Will it now be possible too in the coming years to visit Leptis Magna that fascinating Roman ruin in Libya? (below)

Definitely planning a return to Lindos in Rhodes, and the fascinating Rhodes Old Town - my sister-in-law will love it. Lindos's acropolis with that view over the Mediterranean and perfect beach will be ideal for a stay there and it should be fascinating at night. (below)

I would like to return to Sweden too - Gothenburg was fascinating, and I must experience Stockholm and that Scandanavian culture...

Stockholm and Gothenburg

Also of course a return to the west of Ireland - Counties Kerry, Cork and Clare - that south-west tip, so accessible now with airports as opposed to those long journeys on trains and ferries. The two great beaches and seeing the wild Atlantic from the cliffs at Ballybunion does it for me (below) .... and its so near where I grew up and still visit. Its just across the Atlantic from Cape Cod or Maine.

Further afield, South America always beckons - I must eventually experience those magic names like Rio De Janeiro, Ipanema, Bahia, Lima, Machu Picchu, Bueonos Aires, Valpariso, Montevideo, Punta Del Este in Uruguay etc [no wonder I love Belmondo's THAT MAN FROM RIO]. Not to mention Egypt, India, USA (California and the west, New York and New England in the fall) and those magical Canadian names like Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Banff (all Joni Mitchell country) - a train across the Rockies perhaps ...

Charlize & Dior

2012-01-17T09:56:00.005Z

Glamour returns big-time with that latest advertisement for Dior with Charlize Theron. Filmed exclusively at the Château de Versailles, she radiates throughout the commercial. Jean-Jacques Annaud directed the visually stunning clip. Through the wonders of technology, Charlize gets to mingle with legendary blond sirens from old Hollywood. She kisses Grace Kelly on the cheek, coyly smiles at Marlene Dietrich and hands over a bottle of the fragrance to Marilyn Monroe. It’s the first time Monroe’s likeness has been used in a fragrance ad since 1987.

Charlize certainly seems among the most interesting of the current leading ladies - she does not play safe in rom-coms or in bland girlfriend roles. Interesting new movies of hers coming up include Ridley Scott's PROMETHEUS with man of the moment Michael Fassbender, and YOUNG ADULT. MONSTER was her first venture as producer and her company are also invoved in YOUNG ADULT. Perhaps only Kate Winslet, Michelle Williams, Naomi Watts and Carey Mulligan are as in control of their careers and making as interesting choices ...

Hypnotised ...

2012-01-15T18:02:00.016Z

IPNOSI (HYPNOSIS) 1962 (or DUMMY OF DEATH). An ingenious little thriller (directed by Eugenio Martin) which is a nice discovery and also showcases that young Jean Sorel ...(lots more on him at Jean Sorel label)

As usual my pal Melvelvit summarises it nicely over at IMDB: "Hypnotist's assistant Eric Stein (Jean Sorel) is in love with his boss Han's (Massimo Serrato) fiancée Marta (Eleanora Rossi Drago) and secretly sends her roses every opening night. Chris (Götz George), the guy delivering the flowers, is also an amateur boxer down on his luck and takes advantage of an empty dressing room to steal the trio's bankroll but he's caught by Hans who gets knocked out during a brief struggle. Eric finds the unconscious Hans and bashes his head in with a cane before calling for help as the act's ventriloquist dummy, Grog, seems to look on. The police track Chris to his sister Carmen and chase him out onto a ledge where he saves a detective from falling before fleeing into the night. Now hiding out with his boxing buddies, Chris asks Carmen to help him find the real killer while Marta has a breakdown and the only witness to the crime, Grog, disappears...

The next murder comes as a surprise and what follows is reminiscent of PSYCHO with one sibling searching for another who's already dead in a surprisingly suspenseful black & white crime thriller with some supernatural touches. The film's also a forerunner of the Italian horror sub-genre later known as Giallo, some of which even starred that handsome devil Jean Sorel, a little league Alain Delon".
There is also a VERTIGO touch as the tough police guy (Heinz Drach) on the case follows Chris out on to a high window ledge and is left dangling by his fingers as the fugitive goes to rescue him - who will fall? In this case neither as the cop is saved, then knocked out by the fugitive who flees into the night, giving the cop another reason to find him before the real killer does - thats just the first of many thrills and spills here, Sorel shines as another villain, as in his CHAIR DE POULE the next year - Sorel/French labels.

Ghosts of Rome / Phantoms of Rome, 1961

2012-01-14T19:17:00.015Z

That's 500 posts done! So, to start the next 500, back to that early '60s Italy for another discovery - FANTASMI A ROMA: PHANTOMS (or GHOSTS) OF ROME, a very amusing comedy which I had never heard of - but there it is on YouTube, all 93 minutes, but I had to have it for myself so have ordered a copy - I can practice my Italian on it as there are no subitles, but that does not stop one's pleasure in watching this great cast at their peaks: Marcello Mastroianni - after LA DOLCE VITA, Vittorio Gassman, the great Edouardo de Filippio, Sandra Milo - and fitting in nicely, Belinda Lee again in one of her last roles.

I think its quite an achievement for Belinda to have become part of the booming Italian movie scene of the late 50s and early 60s - I can't think of any other English actress who did, particularly a glamorous one! not only in the popular peplums (sword and sandal movies) of the time but also comedies likes this and dramas like THE LONG NIGHT OF '43 [reviewed below here...] with the leading Italian actors of the day; and of course she was also in that French LE DRAGUEURS in 1959 (reviewed at Belinda and French labels).

A whimsical fantasy with bite, the story follows Don Annibale (De Filippo), the elderly Prince happily sharing his crumbling palazzo with the ghosts he knows are there of his ancestors. They include Reginaldo (Mastroianni), a two-bit Casanova from the eighteenth century; Flora (Sandra Milo), a doomed romantic from a few generations later who drowned herself after an unfortunate love affair; and Father Bartolomeo (Tino Buazzelli), a greedy monk who died after eating poisoned meatballs intended for rats. The child of 10 ghost is the older brother of De Filippo now in his 70s, who died when De Filippo was 6!

De Filippo soon joins them after an unfortunate accident. His nephew, Federico (Mastroianni again in one of his 3 roles ) turns up with his stroppy girlfriend, Eileen (Belinda Lee), and they intend to sell the palazzo to a developer who wants to build a department store on the site. The ghosts are rather upset with this turn of events, and decide to do their best to stop the developers’ plans. Then they co-opt the ghost of a renaissance artist (Vittorio Gassman) to paint a fresco in the attic, hoping that when it’s discovered the building will be declared a place of historical interest and therefore subject to a conservation order. It is an amusing satire on the booming new Italy of the '60s and the ghosts with their grey pallor and period costumes interact amusingly with the modern cast. Lee is amusing as the brassy girlfriend of the modern Mastroianni while ghostly Marcello, a rather camp Casanova, watches her bathe. . A lot of the comedy comes from the ghosts' attempts to come to grips with the modern life which is increasingly encroaching on their world.

It is nicely photographed by Giuseppe Rotunno (THE LEOPARD, AMARCORD etc. etc.) and has lovely art direction. Director Antonio Pietrangeli’s direction is spot on, and the ghosts are beguiling creatures, for which credit is due to Mastroianni, Gassman, and Milo. This must never have played in London or I would have known about it, but it is a nice discovery now, as I track down more Italian rarities with those players I like. All that's missing here is Vittorio De Sica!

Denise Darcel R.I.P.

2012-01-14T18:44:00.010Z

Denise Darcel (1924-2012) who has died aged 87 was a voluptuous actress and singer who appeared in several films in the early 50s. She was one of several Continental imports whom Hollywood vainly hoped would equal the impact of the Garbos and Bergmans - others included Viveca Lindfors, Corinne Calvet, Micheline Presle, and those American-Italian sisters Pier Angeli and Marisa Pavan - perhaps only the likes of Lilli Palmer and Alida Valli and the later Romy Schneider and Claudia Cardinale really built their reputations as international stars following that raft of Italians like Mangano, Lollobridgida, Loren and Vitti; while Anita Ekberg cornered the sexbomb market!

Denise didn't make too many movies but was a well-known cabaret personality and singer in the 50s, perhaps her best movie was Aldrich's VERA CRUZ with Cooper (above) and Lancaster in '54. Her last film was a 20th Century Fox potboiler SEVEN WOMEN FROM HELL, circa 1961 where she was one of the 7 women (others were Patricia Owens and Yvonne Craig) escaping in the jungle from Japanese captors during WWII - Cesar Romero and John Kerr also popped up in this enjoyable farrago. Denise's torn blouse was prominently on display. It was an interesting career with spells as singer, cabaret artist and some enjoyable films.

Eve Arnold, from A (Anouk, Antonioni) to V (Vitti)

2012-01-11T03:41:00.014Z

More on the late Magnum photographer Eve Arnold - she certainly moved in the best circles, here she is with some of my favourites, showing her great eye for composition:

One of Arnold's great mid-50s Monroe shots.
Joan Crawford in 1959 in front of that marvellous 40s portrait of her.
Dirk Bogarde and Ingrid Bergman in 1964 - Ingrid was his houseguest when she did her stage run in A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY, one of the first plays I saw, in 1965.
Sophia Loren with Chaplin on the set of THE COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG, 1966
(I really need to re-see that, I have totally forgotten it!).
Anouk Aimee on the set of JUSTINE, 1969.
Monica Vitti on the set of MODESTY BLAISE, 1966.
Joe Losey in Paris, with Eve's reflections in the mirror as she takes the picture.
Michelangelo Antonioni on the set of BLOW-UP, 1966, what a great shot.
- all from her terrific book "Film Journal"

Interestingly, Yul Brynner's photographs are now on exhibition and there should be a book, these fascinating candid photos of his colleagues at work and play have not been seen before. I particularly like that nice shot of Ingrid Bergman on the set of GOODBYE AGAIN. Yul always had a camera around his neck.

Ab Fab: all the J's

2012-01-11T03:35:00.008Z

Did you notice? Their names all begin with J:

Jane Horrocks: Bubbles
Julia Swahala: Saffy
Jennifer Saunders: Edina
June Whitfield: Mother
Joanna Lumley: Patsy

2011 discoveries including more Rene Clement

2012-01-10T14:51:00.025Z

New movie-going was a bit rare on the ground for me in 2011, as from the summer on I was preparing for and getting over knee replacement surgery, so those movies I saw and reviewed in the first half of 2011 seem remote now: THE KING'S SPEECH, ANOTHER YEAR, UNCLE BOONMEE, MEEK'S CUTOFF, POTICHE, HANNA, etc (2000s label) - in fact my last cinema outing was to the National Film Theatre to see a favourite, Rene Clements' KNAVE OF HEARTS (Gerard Philipe label) on the big screen with a friend back in August. Now however dvds of those movies I wanted to see like THE SKIN I LIVE IN, TREE OF LIFE, DRIVE, WEEKEND, TINKER TAILOR... etc are just starting to come available this month, so reviews on those in due course.

It has been a year of re-discoveries then, like the previous 2 years when I loved the '58 THE SEA WALL, I WAS HAPPY HERE, THAT MAN FROM RIO, Visconti's SANDRA (VAGHE STELLE D'ORSA), THE CHAPMAN REPORT, etc, as per reviews, so the main big discoveries for me this year were the Silvana Mangano ANNA (reviewed below, Mangano label) and the Belinda Lee THE LONG NIGHT OF '43 (ditto, review below), plus those first two Antonioni films on brillaint new divds: CHRONICLE OF A LOVE AFFAIR and THE LADY WITHOUT CAMELIAS (Antonioni label), De Sica's GOLD OF NAPLES (Italian/De Sica/Loren/Mangano labels), Duvivier's CHAIR DE POULE (Jean Sorel/French labels) and now Rene Clements' LES MAUDITS from 1947, along with his 1956 GERVAISE (Clement, French labels).

Silvana Mangano as ANNA; THE LONG NIGHT OF '43

LES MAUDITS (THE DAMNED), 1947: Rene Clement directs an exciting U-boat drama that focuses on a group of Nazis and Nazi sympathizers fleeing in a submarine to South America as World War II draws to a close. There is one reluctant passenger, a doctor (Henri Vidal) kidnapped to tend to Florence Marly who bangs her head and falls into a temporary coma early on. She is the wife of an Italian who tolerates her openly sleeping with a German general, also on board. The ringleader of the group is a vicious, not-so-secret homosexual (Jodest) with a young companion Willy (Michel Auclair), who has his own agenda. Top billed is Marcel Dalio (just Dalio here), but he only appears briefly and has a great death scene. It's an exciting drama, nicely shot capturing the claustrophobia of the submarine - rather an old tin can one here - as the seas rage and the inmates turn on themselves. Henri Vidal was a very attractive guy too - like my other discovery Gerard Philipe he also died young (a heart attack at 40!) in 1959. He is good with Sophia Loren in the Anthony Quinn ATTILA (1954) and with Bardot in the '57 LE PARISIENNE (a treat on YouTube).

LES MAUDITS though is another terrific Rene Clement discovery, along with the engrossing GERVAISE, and THE SEA WALL (THIS ANGRY AGE), PLEIN SOLEIL, LES FELINS, IS PARIS BURNING? etc, as per my previous posts at Rene Clement/French/Alain Delon labels. I already wrote about that favourite KNAVE OF HEARTS (MR RIPOIS) where Clement, five years before the New Wave, was shooting with Gerard Philipe and Joan Greenwood on the streets of London with mobile and hidden cameras. An essential French director then, before the New Wave, but not as old as those '30s masters... Henri Vidal, right.

Next discoveries will be Mangano's RISO AMARO (BITTER RICE) and a batch of Gerard Philipe films: THE CHARTERHOUSE OF PARMA, THE SCARLET AND THE BLACK, POT BOUILLE, LES FEMMES DE NUIT, FANFAN LE TULIPE, LA RONDE, LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES ... and 2 more Antonioni rarities; plus a handful of Catherine Deneuve films!

Another Italian discovery: La Lunga Notte del '43

2012-01-08T04:14:00.022Z

"I was surpised at how much I enjoyed THE LONG NIGHT OF '43 - it was not at all what I was expecting from a "war movie" (which is what I thought it was) let alone a Belinda Lee movie", so says my friend Melvelvit (from IMDB). It is certainly a big re-discovery for me, as I saw it back in 1967 when I was 21 as an older friend then took me to see it at London's National Film Theatre so many thanks to Guy Tremlett for introducing me to the NFT, - I more or less lived there in the '70s; this film though never showed up anywhere since.

Florestano Vancini made his debut with this 1960 drama, a potent mix of illicit romance and politics, set in Ferrara [Antonioni's home town] as the Fascists tighten their grip to maintain control. Belinda Lee is the wife of a crippled pharmacy owner who spends his time looking out the front window in the apartment above the pharmacy where she works at the till - so he sees too much. At the cinema she meets old flame Gabriele Ferzetti, who is hiding with his family, and they embark on a romance. The personal and the political come to a climax one long night in that December 1943. A wartime atrocity occurs [several prominent locals are rounded up and shot including Ferzetti's father], pushing the two lovers in very different directions. A coda, set in present-day 1960, plays out bitterly but beautifully, jettisoning romance in favor of a grim reminder that the murderers are still among us. It's a remarkable finish to a very compelling film. The leads are excellent; Pier Paolo Pasolini is one of the credited screenwriters, its from a story by Giorgio Bassani, author of THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS.

The film brought director Vancini a "Best First Work" award at the Venice Film Festival in 1960, and according to my other IMDB pal Jorge, he is now resident in Brazil. Jorge by the way is looking forward to seeing a copy of this.

Gabriele Ferzetti, the same year as L'AVVENTURA, plays another selfish, hollow man here [and he is still working, playing the patriarch in my 2010 favourite I AM LOVE, 2000s label], while Belinda Lee in one of her last roles (before that fatal car crash in 1961) shows what a loss she was - she is a compelling actress here jettisoning most of her glamour - quite a contrast to her Rank Organisation or sword-and-sandal peplum roles. Deglamorised and playing an ordindary Italian woman she is like a young Magnani or Loren, and shows how her career could have gone if fate had been different. It is a very engrossing film with the central massacre sequence being brilliantly staged. One of my re-discoveries of the year then.

It has been interesting too catching up with 2 of Belinda's peplums: the 1957 APHRODITE GODDESS OF LOVE, and her last film CONSTANTINE AND THE CROSS with Cornel Wilde, released in 1962.

American Bridesmaids -v- English Inbetweeners

2012-01-07T04:17:00.010Z

Here at the Projector we like to be positive about things – movies, music, art, books, People We Like, etc – and leave negativity outside. Sometimes though something comes along which one just cannot get enthusiastic about … such is BRIDESMAIDS. It is a chore just recounting the plot … do I have to?

Annie's life is a mess. But when she finds out her lifetime best friend is engaged, she simply must serve as Lillian's maid of honor. Though lovelorn and broke, Annie bluffs her way through the expensive and bizarre rituals. With one chance to get it perfect, she'll show Lillian and her bridesmaids just how far you'll go for someone you love, as the blurb says.

I thought this would be hilarious and bought it as one of many gifts for Christmas – but we sat there in mainly bemused silence as it unfolded, over two hours, with quite a lot of tedium. Even the gross-out scenes did not amuse.

The problem I have with it is that we do not get SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE here in the UK, so most of these SNL people are unknown to me. I had never seen Kristen Wiig before, nor Melissa McCarthy who plays Megan. The humour seems disjointed, like scenes or skits just linked together with no dramatic progress. The scene on the plane for instance starts out funny and then goes on and on and on … likewise, that extended scene when the two rivals (Wiig and DAMAGES’ Rose Byrne, ideal here as the annoyingly perfect Helen) keep grabbing the microphone as they compete to show how much they mean to the bride Maya Rudolph.

It was good though to see Jill Clayburgh one more time, and I did not recognise Jon Hamm as the dickhead casual boyfriend, and there was Matt Lucas in a few scenes.

Kristin Wiig though plays a sad loser, working in a job she hates after her bakery folded, she ends up having to return home to her mother as her room-mates don’t want her, so she is naturally jealous and resentful as plans for the wedding and Helen’s largesse get out of hand, and her relationship with that nice cop goes in fits and starts and is too protracted.

To sum it up - I just found it mainly unfunny, poorly written and masquerading as a comedy. There are a lot of American comedies that I find less than amusing nowadays and which seem to be focused on teenage boys and their bodily functions; this female version isn’t any better, but is so forgettable I will soon have totally forgotten it.

Kristen Wiig is merely the latest in a long series of "actors" like Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, David Spade, Rob Schneider, etc. Big screen comedies basically have been taken over by the alumni from SNL and the talent emanating from the stable of Judd Apatow. They may be good at comedy sketches but need to learn how to develop a storyline arc to cover 90 minutes, let alone 2 hours!

Overall, the movie seems to paint a negative picture of women. I was surprised that this was written by a woman (directed by Paul Feig) - it basically portrays women as sad, unable to function without a man, catty and superficial and determined to out-do each other. So no, I won't be rushing to watch the dvd extras: the deleted/extended scenes, the gag reel, the bloopers etc. But its not just me - the IMDB reviews for instance are so polarised, people either love it or hate it.

THE INBETWEENERS MOVIE on the other hand is madly funny and I liked it a lot, despite it being "focused on teenage boys and their bodily functions"! Go figure.

One of the hits of the summer THE INBETWEENERS movie follows the 4 lads from the hit tv series as they finish school and go on holiday to Malia in Crete - one of those Greek holiday spots like Falaraki in Rhodes. Predictable yes, but fast and really funny. This was my first encounter with the boys, as I had not seen the 3 series of the tv show [but have now got the boxset to rectify that - each half hour show should be fast and funny]. Anyone who watches the show knows the set up of the boys: Will, bespectacled, well-mannered but altogether massively irritating - but the one we identify with; his best friend Simon, who goes on and on about his ex-girlfriend who clearly doesn’t feel anything for him - she also turns up on holiday here; dim and slow-witted Neil, and Jay, chronically lying about women he’s shagged, things he’s done, and er, women he’s shagged. The four boys’ ridiculously embarrassing travails through life made for three hugely entertaining series on channel 4, so now comes the obligatory big screen outing.

Critics have hailed THE INBETWEENERS MOVIE as prurient, juvenile, and relentlessly crude. It is. Some of the jokes do fall flat, but the ones that are good are great, and coupled with a cheesy-cool soundtrack, some genuine drama and an arsenal of one-liners that will have you hiding behind your hands with embarrassment. It pretty much does what it says it would on the tin, with an added bonus of the unexpected but genuine satisfaction the viewer gets from seeing the 4 boys become men – sort of, as they sort out their entanglements with 4 very different girls as it all culminates on a boat cruise. Satisflyingly enjoyable then. Sorry, Bridesmaids.

Eve Arnold: first R.I.P. of 2012

2012-01-06T04:38:00.014Z

Eve Arnold [1912-2012], one of the first woman photojournalists to join the prestigious Magnum Photography Agency in the 1950s and had traveled the world for her work, but was best known for her candid shots of Hollywood celebrities, has died at the remarkable aged of 99; she would have been 100 in April.

Starting in 1951, when career women were a rarity, Arnold navigated distant countries and cultures for unusual photographs ranging from horse trainers in Mongolia to factory workers in China. Her photo essays appeared in feature news magazines like LIFE and in the many books she compiled, in that great age of photo-journalism. She also photographed the leading politicians of that era, including Mrs Thatcher.

She was one of the photographers assigned to the shooting of THE MISFITS in Nevada in 1960 and became friends with Marilyn Monroe who she had photographed several times before in the 50s. This later led to several books on Monroe and the shooting of that complex film. Old-timers like Crawford and Dietrich also recognised a great photograher when they saw one, and Arnold was also on the sets of various favourite 60s films of mine like JUSTINE and MODESTY BLAISE. Her book "Film Journal" covers these in detail along with interesting stories and some terrific photos like Bogarde with Ingrid Bergman, Vanessa Redgrave and her daughters, Loren with Chaplin, Vitti and Stamp recording MODESTY BLAISE (above) and of course a selection of those Monroe shots. Marilyn certainly glows in Arnold's lenses.

Like that other great photographer Bob Willoughby its a great career to celebrate and any of her collections of photographs are cherishable. I love this 1956 shot of Silvana Mangano's great profile.

Absolutely delicious ....

2012-01-03T04:02:00.042Z

The new AB FAB and that Christmas GLEE ....

Above is Jeanne Durand the famous glacial French movie star who has deigned to appear in the new tv series of ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS, the BBC's long-running series of comedies by Jennifer Saunders with her and Joanna Lumley as Edina Monsoon and Patsy Stone - the fashion, PR and media stars. [That episode "The End" with Patsy in New York and that flashforward to them just as disgraceful 25 years later is my particular standout favourite, it always creases me up...].

In order to impress her daughter Saffy, Edina decides to take on Jeanne as her new client and books her a concert at the Albert Hall - then it turns out that Durand can't sing! This is of course blissfully funny, and the campest thing you will see on tv this new year! It is fleshed out with all the usual AB FAB trimmings, Jane Horrocks as Bubbles, June Whitfield as mother, and guest stars Lulu and Emma Bunton - and yes, its "champagne for Lulu" once again! There are 3 new episodes of AB FAB and they are well up the quality of the previous.

Jeanne is of course wickedly played by Lindsay Duncan, that esteemed British actress who turns up everywhere: DR WHO, MERLIN, ROME, SPOOKS (she was stunning in that), and of course LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES with Alan Rickman, her breakthrough theatre role in '87. She plays 2 roles in the 1999 MANSFIELD PARK, which I saw over the holidays, as per review below, and was Isherwood's icy mother in CHRISTOPHER AND HIS KIND (gay interest label). Here (below) she channels the Jeanne Moreau of BAY OF ANGELS, latterday Deneuve or maybe Dunaway doing Dietrich. Its slyly wickedly funny. I will be seeing her on stage in a month or so in a new production here in London of Coward's HAY FEVER where she will be playing Edith Evans's old role as Judith Bliss, with Jeremy Northam.

Incidentally, Duncan also played a stunning Margaret Thatcher in a BBC play: MARGARET in 2009 - so Meryl is not the first IRON LADY ! Duncan's was a deadly serious look at Thatcher's divisive reign and policies and the bids to topple her and shows how disliked she was. Stirring stuff!

On a different tack, the Christmas episode of this season's GLEE was a madly camp delight too as Klaine (Kurt and Blaine - how about "Blurt"...) had their "Let It Snow" number done as a perfect recreation of an early 60s black and white tv show such as those Judy Garland shows circa '63 (below). They are joined too by Mercedes and Rachel and swop gifts. It is a delightful parody or recreation of that time. Internet comment though on the boys has been fascinating. I watch GLEE without liking it too much, as rock anthems like the Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want" are steamrolled and homogenised into teen musak, but hey, it sells - and there is always characters like Sue Sylvester to keep things humming, as well as guest stars like Gwynneth Paltrow! So it is at least always watchable - but I agree, their singing "Do They Know Its Christmas?" while feeding the homeless at the shelter was a tad too condescending and smugly self-satisfied.

Comments include:
"The happiest and highest-profile gay couple on television has a new video, and in fitting holiday form it's for the song "Let It Snow." Kurt (Chris Colfer) and Blaine (Darren Criss) from Glee, a.k.a. "Klaine" as the kids on Twitter and fan sites call them, are featured in a magical video that resembles a grand old MGM musical number. The two young men are slick, sophisticated and super cute in their performance.

I applaud Glee for highlighting a gay couple as happy, healthy, and absolutely adorable. I found that this episode most definitely showed that they were together.
Adding close friends Rachel (Lea Michele) and Mercedes (Amber Riley) for "My Favorite Things" is smart, because it feels comfortable, and the grouping is totally believable.

And "Do They Know it's Christmas?" comes off as extremely condescending when sang to homeless people's faces. Why are the less fortunate enjoying this? They live in America! Of course they know it's Christmas!

The same goes for this video. It's just Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire to me and if seen by someone unaware of Klaine they would have no idea this scenario is that these two young men are 'living together' in this fabulous 50's house and having a fabulous singing/dancing Christmas get-together (I don't want to say party because it never came off as a party...)
it could just as easily be Rock Hudson and Tony Randall singing about their lonesome holiday not two seconds before Doris Day and her perrenially toasted housekeeper walk in from the cold. Charming but dated. Where is the real gay romance?

Creating prancing, limp-wristed, lisping Gays for entertainment is just as horrifying as having black-faced entertainers."

So, lots of varied opinion there then! - and Rachel gets to sing a bit of Joni Mitchells "River" too ... well it is a classic Christmas lyric: "Its coming on Christmas, they're cutting down trees, singing songs of joy and peace ...."

Back to: 1963

2012-01-02T11:39:00.060Z

I love 1963. It was a transition year for me from my teenage years in Ireland to arriving in London in April 1964 when I was 18 and began catching up with all those movies (like LA DOLCE VITA which I could not see in Ireland). In 1963 though I was still, at 17, a “small town boy” – like Billy Liar I suppose. 1962 is one of my key movie years (its 50 years ago!) – I could do a top 20 favourite movies from that year which are still influential and favourites now, and 1964 was not too bad either! Here though is a dozen from 1963, almost 50 years ago too! – a key year in that transition from old Hollywood to new, and that developing British and European cinema. [Right: Tippi's Mattel Barbie BIRDS doll, complete with the green suit and pecking birds!]

1963's key movies now include Hitch and Tippi and the ever-fascinating THE BIRDS, Visconti’s sumptuous THE LEOPARD, Losey’s breakthrough with THE SERVANT – Bogarde’s best role to then too; the film of BILLY LIAR (it was a also a book I loved, and a play) introducing us to Tom Courtenay and Julie Christie – the swinging 60s arrived with her walking around those Northern streets! And I love its affectionate portrait of suburban life.

Glossy enduring entertainment too with Audrey dressed by Givenchy in CHARADE and Capucine by Balmain in THE PINK PANTHER delirious fashion treats as well as fabulous movies, art cinema favourites LE FEU FOLLET and BAY OF ANGELS showing Malle and Demy at their best; THE VICTORS that grim anti-war tract with its raft of rising European actresses (Schneider, Moreau, Mercouri etc), and Neame’s I COULD GO ON SINGING – Judy almost playing herself, with Bogarde again – I had the soundtrack album, as I did for CLEOPATRA and that stunning entry into Rome. (I actually did not see that until its general release in 1964 and it certainly was worth the wait).
Back to THE BIRDS and that lovely interplay between Mitch Brenner and Melanie Daniels, as the tension slowly builds; and she looking so soigne in the birdshop, dialling the telephone with her pencil. Hitch makes sure here that she has all the right accessories: the suit, the hair, the gloves, the handbag, the lovebirds... and then there is Annie Hayworth (Pleshette) at Bodega Bay, and that very complicated mother Lydia (Tandy), and then that first gull attacks ....

Other 1963 classics that live on: THE GREAT ESCAPE, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, Julie Harris and Claire Bloom excelled in THE HAUNTING, LORD OF THE FLIES, HUD, TOM JONES (film of the year), Rattigan ran up a little treat for the Burtons and Co in THE V.I.P.s, another Bronston spectacular 55 DAYS AT PEKING, and that amusing Doris comedy THE THRILL OF IT ALL!. Another one I did not catch until London in ’64 was Bergman’s controversial THE SILENCE… and BYE BYE BIRDIE, a recent discovery as per recent post on that!

A vintage year then for a movie-mad teenager with those "Films & Filming" magazines (where I would work for a year in the '70s) and as related before - see label, I had my own personal ad ["boy 17 seeks penfriends male or female under 21...!"] in its May 63 issue [this was before Facebook] and had replies from all over the world, and I am still in touch with one of them, who is now in San Francisco !
Then there were my first records: that first Beatles album, Francoise Hardy, Peggy Lee, soundtracks of WEST SIDE STORY, SOUTH PACIFIC and the Broadway cast MY FAIR LADY. I was playing records on my portable record player in my room in November 1963 when my mother rushed up stairs to tell me about events in Dallas...
Actors of the year: Dirk Bogarde, Maurice Ronet. Actress: Jeanne Moreau /
Directors: Joseph Losey, Luchino Visconti, Louis Malle, Jacques Demy.
See labels for more on all of these mentioned and those key films ..

Lucy Schmeeler: "She's a grand girl"!

2011-12-31T05:34:00.026Z

Let's end the year by picking up some sailors, going on the town and celebrating a great comic talent. Happy New Year !

Lucy Schmeeler (Alice Pearce) is the super-plain room-mate of Brunhilde Esterhazy (Betty Garrett) in the 1949 MGM musical ON THE TOWN, a perennial favourite I can enjoy anytime. I do not know Leonard Bernstein's original but it seems some of the songs were junked for the movie (but doesn't that always happen, as in FUNNY GIRL or CABARET?).

We enjoy following our 3 sailors on shore leave in late 40s New York, and the real locations help. Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munchin zoom around the city and the underground train system, Gabe (Gene) sees and falls for "Miss Turnstiles" (a monthly pin-up) whom he imagines is a celebrity, while she (Vera-Ellen at her loveliest) turns out to be from the same small town as his! Jules gets entangled with ritzy Ann Miller who has a thing about "Prehistoric men" and Jules' face fits just right, as they cause havoc at the museum and the dinosaur (or Dinah Shore!) collapses! Frank teams up with taxi driver Brunhilde - Betty Garrett who woos him back to "my place" - where Lucy Schmeeler ["she's a grand girl" says Betty with vitriolic sweetness...] is staying in with a cold. Betty finally gets to her leave so she can get close to Frank. They are supposed to be looking for the elusive Miss Turnstiles, but Gabe finds her at the rehearsal halls and they do that lovely dance to "Main Street" ....

Later they all team up at the top of the Empire State Building and head off "On The Town", this sequence is bliss as they visit one crowded nightclub after another where the revue girls always sing "thats all there is folks, and goodnight to you, we hope your enjoyed our .... revue" as the last girl always shoves her rear end in their faces... Miss Turnstiles has to flee though to her late night job as a coochie dancer at Coney Island, after Gabe gets stuck with Lucy Schmeeler who joins them for a riot of a number and some other sailors from the ship mistake her for Gabe's girl, so they will have a lot to tell the other guys back on the boat ... Gabe takes Lucy home and has to let her down gently as he is in love with Vera --- poor Lucy is back to her laundry lists and won't wash for a week after Gabe kisses her! Her plain character is being patronised of course but its part of the fun here.

Things work out ok at Coney Island and the 3 girls see off the 3 gobs back on their boat, as another flock of sailors disembark to explore "New York New York its a wonderful town"!. That's it in a nutshell, but it is so infectious and a sheer delight from start to finish [screenplay by Comden & Green] - a key musical then with Kelly and Stanley Donen co-directing, paving the way for all those 50s musicals ... including SINGING IN THE RAIN and IT'S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER (see post at musicals label) where their partnership broke up!

Alice Pearce's Lucy is a scream - Alice was a terrific comedienne, she was also Olga the "Jungle Red" manicurist spreading all the gossip in THE OPPOSITE SEX in 1956, [Dolores Gray label], that delicious musical remake of THE WOMEN, which I like so much. She was highly regarded also on tv, appearing in the BEWITCHED series, but she died aged only 48 in 1966. She also played Lucy Schmeeler in the original Broadway production of ON THE TOWN.
That iconic shot of Donen (below) with Kelly & Sinatra ...

Christmas treats ...

2011-12-29T10:24:00.047Z

Starting with a box of macaroons from Paris - the box is a work of art in itself, I feel tempted to hang it on the wall, it has a lovely black cat on it - also a spice & marmalade cake, also from Pierre Herme, Paris. Then dipping in and out of all those old movies on television, catching up with some not seen since I was a kid, and a few old favourites.

NIGHT PASSAGE is a pleasant memory of a '50s Sunday afternoon matinee, this 1957 James Stewart western should have been another of his tough westerns with Anthony Mann, but Mann walked due to script problems, so it was directed by James Neilson. A look at frontier life along the railroad, with train robberies; I remember liking this scene with Stewart and young Brandon DeWilde on the train, also on board was Elaine Stewart (another of this year's departees, aged 80) married to big boss Jay C Flippen! Audie Murphy and Dan Duryea were among the baddies, and Ellen Corby another tough frontier woman.

TARZAN'S GREATEST ADVENTURE from 1959 - not seen this since then but its as effective and violent (effectively directed by John Gullermin) as I remembered - Gordon Scott the perfect Tarzan for '50s kids, Anthony Quayle a terrific villain with young Sean Connery and Niall McGuinness in his gang, along with bad girl Scilla Gabel - Sophia Loren's stand-in on BOY ON A DOLPHIN, and here starting out her own career as a sizzling eurobabe. Scilla was always good value in Steve Reeves epics and movies as diverse as SODOM AND GOMORRAH and my fave MODESTY BLAISE.

THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER - one of those lavish (it says here...) 1977 remakes, helmed by the usually reliable Richard Fleischer (THE VIKINGS, BARBABBAS) this is an idiotic remake of the Erroll Flynn original. Lurid colours and guest stars aplenty: Charlton Heston, the older Rex Harrison, Raquel Welch is mainly silent - the interest for me is the re-teaming of Oliver Reed (rather portly here) and David Hemmings as his evil brother - their hell-raising was taking its toll on them here, since they were young in 1964's THE SYSTEM, a key movie for me then [review at David Hemmings label], showing the 60s just starting to swing. Mark Lester as both the prince and the pauper shows that most perfect child actors (OLIVER) grow up to be very uninteresting indeed, he is lanky here with frizzy hair and there is no difference at all between his two roles ... an amusing time-waster then, not in the same league as the producers' delightful star-stuffed MUSKETEERS films by Richard Lester. Right: THE SYSTEM gang in '64 including Olly and David Hemmings - 2 years later he was the star of Antonioni's BLOW-UP and the icon of the age!

THE SEARCHERS. A classic one never tires of of course, like THE QUIET MAN and VERTIGO, also afternoon or late night delights. More on Ford's classic western at Jeffrey Hunter label - he has that bath scene here with Vera Miles (Mrs TARZAN in real life as she was then married to Gordon Scott!; her pregnancy cost her that leading role in VERTIGO). I shall get around to appreciating Vera in due course. What is jarring about THE SEARCHERS now is the treatment of the squaw Hunter accidentally marries; but to counterbalance that we have those essentially 50s yet timeless scenes with those characters Martin Pawley, Laurie Jurgenson and Natalie Wood's Debbie.

MANSFIELD PARK, the 1999 film of a Jane Austen novel seems to have divided opinions, as a lot of Austen purists hate it. I read the book some time ago, it is not my favourite Austen - that is PERSUASION by a mile, one I can re-read and like all 3 adaptations (costume drama label). The priggish Fanny Price is indeed Austen's least loveable heroine as she relishes her moral superiority over the other young people putting on the play, which she does not approve of. It is a good cast here though, with Harold Pinter (left) as Sir Thomas Bertram whose business interests in Antigua turn out to be slavery, James Purefoy and Johnny Lee Miller as his sons; the marvellous Sheila Gish (right) as Mrs Norris who tries to keep Fanny as the poor relation, and Lindsay Duncan as both Fanny's downtrodden mother and opium-addicted wife of Sir Thomas. Frances O'Connor is a spirited Fanny, but hardly fair to Austen's original.

Finally, a re-view of 1958's A TALE OF TWO CITIES as well, not seen since I was a kid. French actor Paul Guers who did actually look like Bogarde, plays Charles Darnay whom Dirk replaces on the guillotine - Guers has been in some other items I saw recently like Demy's BAY OF ANGELS and THE GIRL WITH GOLDEN EYES (both at French label). This is solid Rank Organisation fare by Ralph Thomas with all those familiar featured players: Rosalie Crutchley, Freda Jackson, Athene Seyler, Christopher Lee, Donald Pleasance etc, all looking splendidly in period.

THIS HAPPY BREED. Another perennial favourite, as I have written about before (Kay Walsh label). Kay excels as Queenie the dissatisfied daughter of Robert Newton and Celia Johnson; and there is that endless bickering between Amy Vaness's mother-in-law and Alison Legatt's spinster sister, all part of the Higgins family in Clapham between the wars. The period detail is just perfect and the emotions are fully engaged, particuarly that scene when the parents in the garden are told of the deaths of their son and his wife, as the camera stays in the sitting room where afternoon tea is about to be served ...

And one discovery: THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION THE WITCH & THE WARDROBE from 2005: "When the Pevensie family are evacuated out to the country, they are unaware of the adventure they will encounter. During a game of hide and seek, the youngest daughter, Lucy discovers a wardrobe which transports her to the land of Narnia. Covered in snow, Narnia is full of weird and wonderful creatures, but is watched over by the evil White Witch. When all four Pevensie children end up through the wardrobe, they discover that it was meant to be, as two daughters of Eve and two sons of Adam must join with the mighty lion, Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson) to defeat the evil White Witch". Tilda Swinton is perfect as the Ice Queen/White Witch and James McAvoy (whom I had not though much of) is an adorable faun and the children are just perfect. For a CGI movie I liked it a lot, and Andrew Adamson's direction is also perfect! I shall have to watch the others now ...

The new DOWNTON ABBEY special is indeed a treat, and ticks all the right boxes, and the new GREAT EXPECTATIONS is an odd re-telling, rather different from Lean's version, with Ray Winstone a perfect Magwitch, and Gillian Anderson as a wraith-like younger Miss Havisham. Unusual though to see a plain-jane Estella (who is meant to be a glacial beauty out of the rather ordindary Pip's league), but here Pip with his sculptured cheekbones and pouting lips, is much prettier than her! Pip is Douglas Booth who was one of Isherwood's boys in CHRISTOPHER AND HIS KIND (gay interest label). Now for that BEN HUR re-boot, with Winstone again (as Jack Hawkins). It cannot be a patch on Wyler's classic but may have some cheap laughs!
BEN HUR (2010) actually turned out to be quite interesting, shot in Morocco it looks more like THE LIFE OF BRIAN than a Hollywood blockbuster, and wisely does not try to be - the chariot race for instance is much smaller scale (no circus maximus here) and the ships at war are courtesy of CGI effects and there are interesting script variations from the Wyler film. Winstone is a mumbling Arrius, Hugh Bonneville good as a nasty Pilate, Alex Kingston right as Mrs Hur (the leprosy is also played down), but in all a radical re-working of the original material. Joseph Morgan is a totally underwhelming uncharismatic Ben, but Stephen Campbell Moore (from THE HISTORY BOYS) a rather good Messala.
We will though be still watching the Lean and Wyler originals when these lightweight remakes are soon forgotten - I tuned in to Lean's EXPECTATIONS again yesterday and was bowled over again by how perfect it all was, with that great double act of Martita Hunt and Jean Simmons as the perfect Havisham and Estella, and that marvellous black and white photography, so right for Dickens.

Seasons Greetings !

2011-12-24T04:56:00.029Z

I never tire of David Lean's classic 1946 GREAT EXPECTATIONS and that great double act of the great Martita Hunt and Jean Simmons as Miss Havisham and Estella. I never saw that 1974 version which was meant to be a musical and then wasn't but Margaret Leighton [right] must also have been a terrific Havisham [and favourites Sarah Miles a spiteful Estella, Michael York an earnest Pip and James Mason suitably grim as Magwich - Ray Winstone in this new version]. The jilted Miss Havisham has also been played by Charlotte Rampling in 1999 (left below) and now by Gillian Anderson [left] in a new BBC production this christmas, as a much younger almost alluring recluse - Jean Simmons in her later years even played her for some long forgotten tv version! Happy holidays!

Coming up: more Italian and French rarities, more gay interest titles, more cult classics, more trash, more 'people we like' [Peter Finch, Alan Bates, David Warner, Vera Miles, George Sanders, Brandon De Wilde], more on Deneuve, Romy Schneider, Anouk Aimee, Gerard Philipe and some new movies too - starting with those popular choices BRIDESMAIDS and THE INBETWEENTERS MOVIE! How I spoil you.

Home for Christmas

2011-12-24T04:52:00.005Z

How good to see George Michael released from hospital and well enough, if rather breathless, to face the cameras after his extended hospital stay in Vienna, after his pneumonia illness. Welcome back George, now please take time to get well properly before starting another gruelling tour, and less partying this time - and lets have another album as good as OLDER ! Season's greetings!

Its that time: Christmas in Connecticut or France ?

2011-12-23T18:48:00.024Z

Some seasonal viewing: a '40s Hollywood christmas tale, or a recent French look at another dysfunctional family during the holiday season ?

CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT: Released the last year of WWII in 1945 (I was born that December), the film is full of subtle patriotic gestures and holiday nostalgia but never sinks to sentimentality. Stanwyck is sexy and sassy as always and is a lot of fun here. She is a cooking columnist who's built up this whole image of living on a small Connecticut farm with husband and baby cooking all these marvelous delicacies. Trouble is she's unmarried, childless, writes her column from her apartment in New York and doesn't know how to boil water. But her writing is a hit with the public. Trouble comes when she's hijacked into cooking a home Christmas dinner for a war hero sailor played by Dennis Morgan who gets to sing a couple of songs as well. Her publisher Sidney Greenstreet likes the idea so well that he invites himself to the dinner. So with borrowed farm, baby, and Reginald Gardiner who'd like to make it real with Stanwyck she tries to brazen it through. S.Z. Sakall adds a great deal of Hungarian malaprop & double-entendre humor in support as Babs' true source of culinary talent & Una O'Connor is hilarious as Gardiner's obnoxious Irish housekeeper. A nice treat then.

A CHRISTMAS TALE: Fancy another French family dysfunction drama? Rather like Assayas's SUMMER HOURS (reviewed at French label), only this one is two and half hours long in the company of some unsumpathetic people as the Vuillard family gathers: parents Junon and Abel, a daughter Elizabeth and her son Paul, Henri and a girlfriend, Ivan, his wife Sylvia and their young sons, and cousin Simon. Six years before, Elizabeth paid Henri's debts and demanded he never see her again or visit their parents' home. Paul, at 16, has mental problems and faces a clinical exam. Junon learns she needs a bone marrow transplant if she's to live beyond a few months: thus the détente bringing all together. Two family members have compatible marrow, but the spats, fights, cruel words, drunken toasts, and somewhat civilized bad behavior threaten all; plus Junon may simply refuse treatment.

It turns out to be an overly long and incredibly talky dysfunctional family drama, by Arnaud Desplechin, led by a chilly Catherine Deneuve as the dying matriarch (such a contrast to her sunny role in the delicious POTICHE (yes, also reviewed recently at French label). She's dying of a rare kind of cancer, and the spectre of that eventuality plus the proximity of brothers and sisters who haven't seen each other for a while and have scores to settle puts everyone in a reflective mood. It rather strikes home if you too have brothers and sisters who do not see or have much contact with each other .... Melvil Poupaud (so effective in Ozon's TIME TO LEAVE - yes, its at the french label) scores as the youngest son.

We also of course have the perennial IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE with Jimmy Stewart running through Bedford Falls in the snow as he gets his life back, and THE MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET (the Maureen O'Hara-Natalie Wood one) and '54's WHITE CHRISTMAS though how many times can one watch that? and of course theres always those recent christmas perennials like ELF and BAD SANTA and GREMLINS. I was pleased to catch up with favourites Lee Remick and Angela Lansbury in the glutinously sentimental tv film A CHRISTMAS STORY: THE GIFT OF LOVE from 1982, and dear Loretta in CHRISTMAS EVE one of her final roles in '85, as the rich old lady with not long to live re-uniting her family, assisted by ailing Trevor Howard. If that does not get you crying for christmas nothing will ! Perfect viewing anytime though, and particularly at this time of year, is the 1952 film of the play THE HOLLY AND THE IVY, a perfectly British treat with Ralph Richardson, Margaret Leighton and Celia Johnson all sublime (and yes see Richardson, Leighton or Johnson labels for review); and let's not forget the lovely if rarely seen HOLIDAY AFFAIR from 1949 with Janet Leigh having to choose between Robert Mitchum or Wendall Corey! It should be a holiday staple too.

Another French rarity: La Fille Aux Yeux D'Or (1961)

2011-12-22T03:52:00.006Z

A beautiful girl without a name...! WHO was the mysterious rival who kept her captive in a world of luxury?

THE GIRL WITH GOLDEN EYES - This routine film by novice director Jean-Gabriel Albicocco handles the subject of a relationship between women, set in the haute couture world of Paris circa 1960 - so it is naturally tres chic, though the story implies that if a man falls in love with a lesbian she can change her sexual orientation. Loosely based on a novel by Honore de Balzac, a skirt-chasing fashion photographer and "modeliser" who seduces models like the young Francoise Dorleac (while his friends listen as it is tape recorded) meets a mysterious young woman who captures his interest immediately. She is not wholly forthcoming, but after a period of time, he realizes that he is in love with her — she is not just another conquest. It takes awhile before he also realizes that she is the partner of his female associate who is possessive, at the very least.

Paul Guers is the attractive hero (he was in the Bogarde A TALE OF TWO CITIES as well as Demy's BAY OF ANGELS, Demy label), Francoise Prevost is the chic lesbian (she was also in the English PAYROLL with Michael Craig in '61, and the female part of the triangle in Griffi's IL MARE, in 1962 - review at Italian label). The Girl herself is the marvellous Marie Laforet, who dazzled me as Marge in Clements' PLEIN SOLEIL the previous year (see label on that...). Marie sings as well as acts and is still working now.

The drama here escalates as the three characters grapple, and a knife comes into play .... Chabrol did more of the same 6 years later with his popular LES BICHES, the first of his successful series with Stephane Audran. THE GIRL WITH GOLDEN EYES is photographed by the director's father, Quinto Albicocco, and must have been quite daring for its time. My friend Jorge advises that the film's director, Jean-Gabriel Albicocco, abandoned the director's chair in the early 70s to live in Brazil, he fell in love with the country, and opened several art cinemas in Rio and in São Paulo. This is certainly an oddity to see now.

3 more legendary R.I.P.s ...

2011-12-20T01:36:00.012Z

I could hardly ignore Vaclav Havel (1936-211): Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last president of Czechoslovakia (1989–92) and the first President of the Czech Republic (1993–2003).

Also Cesaria Evora (1941-2011: the "barefoot diva" from Cape Verde;

Author and journalist Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) whose books, essays, and journalistic career spanned more than four decades. He was a columnist and literary critic for Vanity Fair among so many others, and of course a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits; whose trenchant opinions will be sadly missed as per the glowing tributes. Another defiant smoker too .....

Moreau: Eve & Nathalie Granger

2011-12-19T18:38:00.031Z

"Welsh writer Tyvian Jones (Stanley Baker) seems to have it all, 60s style: an international best seller, an apartment in Rome, holidays in Venice, a lovely fiancé Virna Lisi, but he is bitter anyway, He meets his existential match in ennui in the mod seductress Eve, played by Jeanne Moreau, who was never more cynical or iconic. Decked out in pointy pumps and heavy eyeliner, listening to Billie Holliday on scratchy LPs as she counts lire and smokes endless packs of cigarettes in strangers’ bedrooms, she is the epitome of frayed glamour. An emotional tyrant, Eve’s cruelly casual maneuvering forces Baker to confront his past – and his weaknesses – as a man and as an artist.

When the Hakim brothers (the notorious producers of PLEIN SOLEIL and BELLE DE JOUR) handed Losey a fat contract and a pulp potboiler by James Hadley Chase, Losey was sure it was his break. After years of tighly budgeted British programmers he hoped EVA would be his ticket to the glossy world of international cinema. But while Losey’s final cut was hailed by critics as equal to his masterpiece THE SERVANT, it was barely released and remains largely unseen after 30 years.Losey disowned the producers’ version, 15 minutes shorter than his own,

Losey’s original version (titled EVE) is now included on dvd, along with the Hakim’s cut. The only surviving print of the original longer version is a Swedish/Finnish release print with Swedish/Finnish subtitles and English dialogue."

Thus went the cover notes on the combinded dvd of EVE and EVA, Joseph Losey's 1962 film set mainly in a wintry Venice. Catching up with it is a fascinating experience now. Losey had done those thrillers like THE SLEEPING TIGER, TIME WITHOUT PITY and the excellent BLIND DATE in 1959 (which I like a lot, as per Losey label), and also THE CRIMINAL and that Hammer oddity THE DAMNED. EVE / EVA is his third with Stanley Baker (who would also co-star with the other Losey regular Dirk Bogarde in ACCIDENT in 1967) and Moreau was at the height of her European stardom. It seems though like a very disjointed odd film - perhaps Losey imagined he too could do an arthouse "sick soul of Europe" movie in the style of Resnais or Antonioni - then the height of intellectual cinema. EVE now though looks and plays like a parody of an early 60s arthouse flick.

Large parts of it seem unintentionally funny, Baker glowering and occasionally hitting Moreau when she provokes him too far - there is no logical ending or conclusion to their story, as it looks like she is going to keep on humiliating him as he keeps coming back for more. One extended sequence fascinates - as Baker and we the audience watch her arrive in her hotel room, she puts on the Billie Holliday record, messes up her hair, lights a cigarette, plays with a cat and finally goes to bed ... then Baker's hands encircle her throat - we wonder briefly if this is real or a fantasy or is he going to finally kill her ... but no, on and on they go. He turns out to be a hollow man - is it really his brother's book he is passing off as his own? How many admirers does she have at all those endless casino nights? There is too a wintry funeral in Venice, anticipating Roeg's DON'T LOOK NOW a decade later. Moreau is a fully realised character in films like LA NOTTE and BAY OF ANGELS, (reviews at Antonioni and Demy labels), and in those Malle and Truffaut films, but here she is merely a cypher whom we do not get to know or understand at all. It points the way to Losey's next film though: THE SERVANT where all his themes of class and decadence would come together perfectly - lots of mirror shots here too. Later after he and Bogarde and Baker had gone as far as they could in British cinema, he teamed up with the Burtons for another pair of oddball films and thence to Europe to Delon and Romy Schneider, Montand (and Moreau again in MR KLEIN). Losey - a martinet and a sadist, according to critic Alexander Walker who knew him well - made so many interesting films which remain fascinating viewing - EVE or EVA certainly is. As I relate in other posts on him, I saw him and the Burtons on stage in 1970 when they were furious that SECRET CEREMONY which had been a box-office disaster had been recut and sold to television!

NATHALIE GRANGER - Marguerite Duras's 1975 puzzle film; to some it is a tedious boring mess, others find it a rivetting minimalist drama. I only know after watching it one remains in its unique mood for ages afterwards. It creates an atmosphere of unbearable tension, depression, grief, apprehension, as we watch two women living with some unexplained trauma, in a waiting that never ends (though the film is quite short). Something to do with the mother's anguish over a violent, abnormal daughter who is Nathalie Granger (whom we hardly see). The radio announces that the police are looking for a pair of depraved teenage boy killers on the loose in the local woods. Did they kill someone in the family? Or are they perhaps family members? Do the two women know something about these boys that the police don't? The shots suggest the house and garden is being watched ... A numbed mood separates them from the world outside in front of the house, and the equally claustrophobic garden at the back where they dully burn leaves. Great actresses are denied the opportunity to act, as they sit around staring dully into space or move from room to room in a trance. By bizarre contrast, the young Gerard Depardieu drops in as an awkward vacuum cleaner salesman who tries to sell them a hoover, as they blankly stare at him - it is like something out of Pinter or Beckett commenting on the futility of life.

Moreau - usually the protagonist in her films, seems to do nothing here, she just sits and observes and she is just titled the Other Woman - is she a friend, neighbour, lover of Lucia Bose who seems to be the owner of the house? Good to see Bose again here after catching the re-issues of those first two Antonioni features this year (CHRONICLE OF A LOVE AFFAIR, THE LADY WITHOUT CAMELIAS). A fascinating experiment then in what looks like real time from the ever-fascinating Marguerite Duras (author of THE SEA WALL - both versions of which are reviewed here, Silvana Mangano and Isabelle Huppert labels).

Below, right: Duras with Moreau (who took to directing herself with the fascinating LUMIERE in 1975).

Soon: Moreau with Gerard Philipe in Vadim's 1959 LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES, and those other Philipe films like THE CHARTERHOUSE OF PARMA, THE SCARLET AND THE BLACK, POT BOUILLE, LES FEMMES DE NUIT, LA RONDE, FANFAN LA TULIPE etc; my favourite KNAVE OF HEARTS and LOVERS OF MONPARNASSE are reviewed at French and Gerard Philipe labels.

Anna / Mangano / Loren / Gold of Naples

2011-12-14T03:31:00.036Z

A Silvana Mangano double feature, with Sophia Loren too !

1949's BITTER RICE was the successful Italian film which introduced Silvana Mangano to international audiences. I have not seen it yet (but will be shortly) - producers Dino De Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti who combined to produce all those Italian films of the 50s, repeated its success, along with co-stars Raf Vallone and Vittorio Gassman, with Silvana as ANNA in 1951, a torrid melodrama reuniting its 3 young stars (who would all have great international careers). As per my other posts on Silvana she was never an ambitious actress (like Loren or Lollo) but as Mrs De Laurentiis she headlined her husband's films. Also on the fast track then was the next Italian sensation, Sophia Loren, who had Carlo Ponti to guide her career. It is amusing seeing Sophia here in the more or less silent bit part as one of the nightclub girls (with Gassman, below left); 3 years later by 1954 Sophia (barely 20) was headlining those terrific movies I love like WOMAN OF THE RIVER and TOO BAD SHE'S BAD (where is SCANDAL IN SORRENTO ?) after working her way up in films like the amusing Sordi vehicle TWO NIGHTS WITH CLEOPATRA, by which time Gina Lollobrigida was also another major Italian star, heading for international movies.

Back to ANNA - this may well be my discovery of the year. Silvana is luminous as the indispensible hospital nursing nun (but she has not taken her final vows yet....) beloved by her patients and the surgeon she assists at operations, but what is her secret?
One night we find out as wounded Raf Vallone is brought in, Sister Anna rushes to the opera to get the head surgeon who is needed to operate and we see in flasback, that she was a nightclub singer and was going to marry country boy Raf, but her jealous lover Vittorio cannot let her go .... after tragedy she finds peace as a nun. Silvana gets to sing here, two delightful numbers which were released on disk and it seems they are still available (I shall have to investigate...). This is an engrossing drama that still works now - it is in fact an ideal "woman's picture" much better than any today. The three young stars in their youthful prime command the screen, Silvana framed by that nun's habit looks sensational - that face and profile, with that long nose and expressive eyes. The drama continues as Raf comes out of surgery, Sister Anna tries to evade his attention but can the lovers get back together or will her life at the hospital, as an emergency train crash victims arrive, prove too strong? Terrific stuff then. Alberto Lattuada directs - he also helmed Silvana's THE TEMPEST which I liked a lot back in 1958, the year Silvana did Clement's THE SEA WALL (THIS ANGRY AGE) with Tony Perkins (see labels for more on these), 1960 saw Martin Ritt's downbeat FIVE BRANDED WOMEN - all Laurentiis productions as was ULYSSES in '53 with Silvana as Penelope and Circe, 1954's MAMBO where Silvana also sings and dances up a storm in another torrid melodrama by Ponti-De Laurentiis but releases by Paramount, with Gassman and wife Shelley Winters; in this one though its Silvana whom Shelley has a yen for! ANNA though is a great discovery with great Lux film production values. I loved it.

After some 60s films like BARABBAS and the amusing IL DISCO VOLANTE (see post below) Silvana mainly worked for directors like Pasolini (OEDIPE RE, TEOREMA) and Visconti (DEATH IN VENICE, LUDWIG, CONVERSATION PIECE) in the 70s, she had more or less retired from cinema as Vitti and Cardinale took centre stage; a heavy smoker she died in 1989, aged 59; one of her final appearances being in De Laurentiis's DUNE.

Finally one can see GOLD OF NAPLES (L'ORO DE NAPOLI) De Sica's 1954 portmanteau collection - which he followed in the 60s with his segment in BOCCACCIO 70 and the Loren-Mastroianni hit YESTERDAY TODAY & TOMORROW. GOLD OF NAPLES though showcases Naples in all its vibrancy and is where director De Sica spent his first years, this is a collection of Napolitean episodes : a clown (Toto) exploited by a gangster, he is even paid to say prayers at the grave of the gangster's wife, its richly comic when the worm turns; an unfaithful pizza seller (Sophia) losing her emerald ring - and the young Loren is sensational walking through those Neapolitan streets; the funeral of a child; the gambler Count Prospero (Vittorio himself) defeated by a kid; the unexpected and unusual wedding of Teresa (Silvana), a prostitute, a touching tale, Mangano has a long climactic close-up. With Eduardo De Fillipo and scripted by De Sica regular, Cesare Zavattini. Bliss to finally catch up with now. Like Rossellini's VOYAGE TO ITALY it captures that early 50s Italian scene perfectly. and now for BITTER RICE .... see Italian label for more on all these; Vittorio's return to Naples in the first segment of YESTERDAY TODAY & TOMORROW being particularly choice, (and whose locations seem the same as the Toto episode here in GOLD OF NAPLES), also his Loren segment of BOCCACCIO 7O, and those other Italian portmanteau 60s films like LE BAMBOLE and LE FATE, with Vitti and Lollobrigida..

5 BRANDED WOMEN: Mangano, Moreau, Vera Miles, Barbara Bel Geddes, Carla Gravina; TEMPEST - Agnes Moorehead ideal as Mangano's mother.

Gilbert Adair, R.I.P.

2011-12-13T03:49:00.014Z

Gilbert Adair (1944-2011), who died last week at the age of 66, was a novelist and well-regarded film critic. His movie reviews each week for the London "Independent" were pithy, often withering assessment of that week's most eye-catching release; incrementally, his reviews amounted to a defence of his beloved cinema, but may have been too elitist (or too highbrow for the mainstream) for some.

As he pronounced upon, damned and just occasionally approved of the week's offerings, he did so in a voice that deprecated its owner's undeniable cinephile authority. His fiction ranged from Agatha Christie pastiches to literary thrillers. Three of Adair's books themselves became films: LOVE AND DEATH ON LONG ISLAND (which I have been meaning to write about in connection with other "gay interest" titles), a comic recasting of "Death in Venice", where his stuffy professor wanders into the wrong cinema at the multiplex and becomes infatuated by the teen star on the screen; his somewhat autobiographical account of his days in 1968 Paris, "The Holy Innocents" (filmed as THE DREAMERS by Bertolucci); and "A Closed Book". There was also an impressive body of non-fiction, among which his quite personal history of the cinema, "Flickers", and "Movies", the anthology of film writing that he edited, are still rightly remembered. Adair was one of those very readable (even if one did not agree with him) critics like Pauline Kael or Alexander Walker.

A 50s snapshot ....

2011-12-12T02:33:00.044Z

If one had to select roughly 10 movies from each decade, I am sure these 20 would feature in quite a lot of 50s lists ... (30s, 40s, 60s, 70s to follow in due course). The 50s of course was that great era for dramas as well as musicals, epics, westerns and most genres really and the heyday of the post-war stars, both American and European ... how can one leave out Peck, Clift, Day, Kerr, Simmons, Hepburn, Hudson, Newman, Douglas, Lancaster .... or Lollobrigida, Mangano, Magnani; or Mastroianni and Bogarde (who would claim the 60s).

And for that essential '50s glamour, its back to the old favourites: LES GIRLS, THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE, DESIGNING WOMAN, THE OPPOSITE SEX, Romy's SISSI, Gina as Esmerelda, Silvana and Tony Perkins in THE SEA WALL.

Linda Darnell x 3

2011-12-09T11:17:00.033Z

I did a piece here last year on Linda Darnell (see label) - that '40s beauty who was neglected for a long time, but - like Gene Tierney - is now recognised as one of the quintessential actresses and beauties of the era. Here are 3 of her major movies:

NO WAY OUT, one of Joseph L Mankiewicz's two 20th Century Fox films in 1950 (the other was some little trifle called ALL ABOUT EVE) is still a stunning drama; no wonder it is never revived or seen on television these days, it is a tough racist drama which does not pull its punches with all that racist language spewed out by Richard Widmark as the petty, mean hood who thinks black hospital doctor Sidney Poitier (one of his first roles) was responsible for his brother's death and he means vengance. Stephen McNally is the dependable head of the hospital and Linda is the down-on-her-luck girlfriend of Widmark's nasty hood - that roominghouse room they reside in looks all too real. Tensions escalate as the local racists gather for a fight, a scene illuminated with a flare gun; and it still shocks to see Poitier with the spit on his face from a bigot - Widmark gets more deranged and self-pitying as he launches his final attack on Poitier and then realises just what a hateful unloved mess he is .... Linda is admirable as she comes to her senses and realises where her loyalties lie. It is a good downbeat role for her after those 40s glamour roles in the likes of FOREVER AMBER and Preminger's FALLEN ANGEL. Prior to this the only NO WAY OUT I knew was the 80s Kevin Costner flick.

How can I convey how much I love A LETTER TO THREE WIVES - it is surely one of the most perfect 40s American movies showing that 40s dreamworld of plush suburbia where the women all have roomy comfortable homes, drive big estate cars and have domestic help (Themla Ritter!) when entertaining. It is just as good if not better than ALL ABOUT EVE (which really has the same format being about 3 women: Margo, Karen and Eve all with about equal screen time; it is though a more wittily acidic curdled cocktail of a movie). Each wife here represents a different type of the upwardly mobile post-WWII woman. Jeanne Crain is a pretty, stay-at-home type of modest background, grateful and anxious to fit in with the country club set. Ann Sothern is the married career girl both proud and worried that she makes more than her schoolteacher husband (young Kirk Douglas), as she writes for the radio soaps. Linda is the unrepentant social climber from the wrong side of town who plays the cards she’s dealt with masterfully, but can’t get over the golddigger persona she feels saddled with, as she lands the rich Paul Douglas who feels he has bought her.

Mankiewicz delights in pricking and celebrating the pride and pretensions of each woman, succeeding especially with Sothern and Darnell as they worry (when away on a day trip) over which of their husbands has run off with the town socialite Addie Ross who has thoughtfully had a note delivered to them advising that she is leaving town with one of their men! It remains visually expressive though of course the story would not work now in the modern world where people are never out of contact without their telephone! The first story with Jeanne Crain is the slightest, then there is the dinner party from hell with Florence Bates as the radio executive with much verbal wit with that amusing wordplay on Sadie the maid (Thelma) being saturated and penetrated by the radio ads - Gracias!; and then the story of how Linda's Lora Mae from the shack by the railroad (wait till the trains pass by..) snares her department store boss Porter Hollingsway (Douglas), she too can be a girl in a silver frame on a piano. The poor sap does not stand a chance as Lora Mae ladders her nylons to emphasise her legs and retorts "what I got don't need beads" when implored by her mother Connie Gilchrist to put on a necklace.

It climaxes nicely on New Year's Eve when Porter calls to capitulate and Lora Mae bitterly realises she has won, they do not find out they love each other until that nice moment at the end with her "you big gorilla"! This enduring classic (there was a rubbish television remake but who remembers that...or even saw it) and HOUSE OF STRANGERS made 1949 a terrific year for Mankiewicz (right), winning Oscars for writing and directing here, as he did again in 1950 with ALL ABOUT EVE, and also directing NO WAY OUT - just like a decade later Billy Wilder scored with SOME LIKE IT HOT followed by THE APARTMENT where he won his awards - as he lost out to BEN HUR the previous year). Mank of course is one of Hollywood's great writer-director-producers and he also romanced quite a few leading ladies: Darnell, Lana, Judy and so many others... as well as producing Joan Crawford movies and stuff like WOMAN OF THE YEAR where he made that remark that Tracy would cut Hepburn down to size ... I still have his FIVE FINGERS and PEOPLE WILL TALK to watch, and I always like seeing CLEOPATRA, SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, THE HONEYPOT, THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA (which Linda was set to play, but then Ava was the bigger star).

I had been looking forward to Preston Sturges' UNFAITHFULLY YOURS from 1948 - I like Prestons's other films a lot: SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS, THE LADY EVE, THE PALM BEACH STORY are all classics, I even like those Eddie Bracken and Betty Hutton comedies of his - so UNFAITHFULLY YOURS looked like it would be a treat. However I did not like it all, I found the humour laboured as famous conductor Rex Harrison suspects his lovely wife Daphne (Linda Darnell) of infidelity. While leading his orchestra in three different pieces, he elaborately daydreams various forms of revenge, each one accompanied by a classical music piece. First, in a complex and ingenious fantasy to Rossini's music, he murders Daphne and plots to frame and convict Anthony Windborn (Kurt Kreuger), his own suspected young private secretary, for the crime.
While performing the second number, by Wagner, he fantasizes about writing Daphne a large cheque, forgiving the young couple, and allowing his wife to run off with her young lover. And while conducting the third piece - a Tchaikovsky overture, he sees himself challenging Daphne and Tony to a fatal game of Russian roulette. While the plans work perfectly in his mind, he stumbles and bumbles his way through the preparations in real life in a very laboured scene. Finally, realizing how deliriously silly he's been, he embraces and kisses his loving wife, who's never been unfaithful, and has no idea that he has been plotting against her. Was this really funny in 1948? Did audiences lap it up? The scene where he fantasises about killing his wife with his razor just off camera is simply not amusing. Nice though to see that 40s high life, the furs and jewels for the women, the plush bathroom with the leather strap for sharpening an open razor ... but it is all very dated and just does not work now, even though Dudley Moore did a remake, which thankfully passed us by. Rex is as sharp as ever here but for me he did not come into his own until the '50s; Harrison though was the ideal actor for Mankiewicz, headlining 4 of his movies, including that waspish Caesar in CLEOPATRA.

Linda's great era was the 1940s of course - she still had some successes in the '50s, I like SATURDAY ISLAND or ISLAND OF DESIRE where she is on a desert island with young marine Tab Hunter (looking like a go-go dancer in his sawn off shorts), and as per review at Linda Darnell label, I love her 1954 melodrama THIS IS MY LOVE, also directed by Stuart Heisler [thanks to IMDb pals Melvelvit and Timshelboy for that one].
Linda would have been perfect as the diner owner in the Steinbeck THE WAYWARD BUS in 1957 but Fox gave it to their new import English Joan Collins! Linda alas died in a fire in 1965, aged only 41.
Linda and Mank's 40s films have that recognisable plush late '40s 20th Century Fox look, as does Negulesco's neat little '48 noir thriller ROADHOUSE where Widmark plays another deranged role opposite the very hard-boiled chanteuse Ida Lupino - more on that later, it cries out for a re-view.

"Hollywood Beauty" is a biography on Linda by Ronald L. Davis; the blurb reads: "In 1939, at the age of 15, Linda Darnell left her Texas home and ordinary world to live the Hollywood dream promised by fan magazines and studio publicity offices. She appeared in dozens of films and won international acclaim for BLOOD AND SAND, FOREVER AMBER, A LETTER TO 3 WIVES, and the original version of UNFAITHFULLY YOURS. Driven by her mother to become rich and famous but unable to cope with the real nature of Hollywood, Darnell soon was caught in a downward spiral of drinking, failed marriages, and exploitive relationships. By her early twenties she was an alcoholic, hardened by a life in which beautiful women were chattel. By the time of her death in a house fire aged 41, she was struggling for recognition in the industry that had once called her its "golden girl". Its one of Hollywood's sadder tales.

Another Kay Kendall rarity ...

2011-12-07T17:32:00.011Z

MANTRAP (MAN IN HIDING) - a nifty oh-so British thriller from 1953 captures post-war London nicely (as POOL OF LONDON did, see review at London label) with its upper-class Mayfair locations and nightclubs and the bombed-out sites around St Paul's Cathedral. It is an early Hammer film directed by Hammer maestro Terence Fisher (who went on to do the Draculas and Frankensteins and Mummys), but what is particularly fascinating about it for me is that 1953 cast - Paul Henreid is the lead, Keiron Moore the guy on the run - the main heroine is a rather uninteresting Lois Maxwell - who went on to be Miss Moneypenny in the Bonds, and, my favourite, Kay Kendall as Henreid's amour, just before she went on to acclaim in GENEVIEVE. Below her in the cast list is Anthony Forwood as the gin-tippling photographer, one of his few acting credits before giving it up to manage Dirk Bogarde's career and of course being his partner [Kay of course being a great chum of Bogarde's too], he having been previously married to Glynis Johns. Their son Gareth must have been named after his character in KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE, which was on show last week, as was the Richard Todd Disney ROBIN HOOD AND HIS MERRIE MEN where he was Will Scarlett. Young Bill Travers is here too.
Its an amusingly dated little thriller, before English crime movies got into the swing of the 50s, and another of Kay's early roles which have been fun to track down now, like FAST AND LOOSE, DANCE HALL, MAN IN THE SHADOWS, ABDULLAH THE GREAT, CURTAIN UP, IT STARTED IN PARADISE since her debut as a teenager in LONDON UP in '46. She soon got into her stride after this one before heading off to Hollywood and that marriage to Rex Harrison. The English 50s were her decade.

L'Innocente - Visconti's final film, 1976

2011-12-01T04:50:00.024Z

L'INNOCENTE, 1976 - Luchino Visconti's final film (he shot most of it from a wheelchair) is both an intense drama and also one of the most ravishing costume dramas ever committed to celluloid. [It sits next to BARRY LYNDON in my cabinet shelf of 70s movies as the 2 most perfect costume dramas of that decade].
Giancarlo Giannini is Tullio, a wealthy and arrogant aristocrat openly having an affair with another woman (Jennifer O'Neill's Teresa Raffo), thus driving his wife (Laura Antonelli's Giuliana) to start her own affair with a writer Filipo D'Arborio (Marc Porel) that leads to a pregnancy and baby. Giannini is magnificent in a role that instills in the viewer zero sympathy and outright hostility. The film heads into what can only be described as one of the most memorably tragic conclusions since Shakespeare, and is also one of the most beautifully filmed and costumed movies ever (Antonelli with that veil across her face...), with sumptuous costumes, rooms and sets. Surprising nudity too - male as well as female as Guiliana is undressed a few times, and Tulio glares at the naked D'Arborio in the shower. One can see how this lush, opulent film stately directed by Visconti with slow zooms and tracking shots must have influenced Scorsese's AGE OF INNOCENCE, played out as it is in stately drawing rooms for piano recitals, fencing classes, summer villas and mansions at dawn, in that "fin de siecle" era.

Jennifer O'Neill (dubbed in Italian - did Luchino need an American name in the cast?) is devastatingly beautiful and seductive as the self-assured, selfish, spoiled, ambitious, self-seeking lover, as much as Laura Antonelli is the opposite side of the coin but in a lower key, as the humble and insecure, betrayed, embittered, resentful wife, but also devastatingly gorgeous. (Below: Visconti on set).

The drama increases as Guiliana becomes pregant as her husband desires her all over again and wants her back, D'Arborio having died of a tropical disease, but he does not want the baby, the innocent of the title (we never see the wife and lover together, that affair is played out offstage). She pretends not to care for the baby to keep it safe but Tullio is too jealous of it, leading to ultimate tragedy. Then after a final confrontation with the glacial Teresa .... there is that great last shot of her leaving in that chilly dawn. The novel is by the great Gabriele D'Annnunzio, and script co-authored by Visconti regular Suso Cecchi D'Amico (who died last year aged 96), photography by Pasqualino De Santis. The costumes are ravishing and the cast including Rina Morelli, Didier Haudepin, Massimo Girotti, ideally cast even to the smallest part. It's a lasting pleasure and Visconti's farewell to the class and way of life he knew. Giannini was also ideal in those Lina Wertmuller films like SEVEN BEAUTIES.

Young Cassidy - a John Ford film directed by Jack Cardiff

2011-11-30T20:07:00.014Z

YOUNG CASSIDY Or: SEAN O'CASEY IN LOVE ? One of 1965's under-rated gems is this biopic of Irish writer Sean O'Casey, a perfect example of American film-making in England in the '60s. It was a project dear to John Ford, but he only spent a few weeks on the film due to illness, so esteemed photographer Jack Cardiff took over, having directed the successful D.H. Lawrence adaptation SONS AND LOVERS himself in 1960.

Ford may only have directed a couple of scenes - the pub fight and meeting Daisy Battles (the radiant young Julie Christie) and the death of Sean's mother, the noble Flora Robson. The cast here is the thing: Rod Taylor is an agreeable presence, ideal in THE BIRDS etc, and certainly makes for a brawling playright! Maggie Smith is Nora, the bookshop girl he loves, but she cannot deal with his growing success and the world he wants to live in. Julie (just before DARLING and DR ZHIVAGO that year) is the happy prostitute he meets a few times, Dame Flora is perfect as the ailing mother, Sian Phillips his poverty-stricken sister - and then theres Edith Evans as Lady Gregory who runs the Abbey Theatre, and Michael Redgrave as W.B.Yeats - heavyweights indeed. Add in Pauline Delaney as the randy landlady, Donal Donnelly, Joe Lynch, Jack McGowran and other assorted Irish characters.

Ford and Cardiff on set, above right.

The Easter Rebellion of 1916 plays out in the background as O'Casey steals books from Maggie's shop and gets his first play written and staged, but he cannot cash his first cheque to pay for his mother's funeral! Finally, he leaves for England and the successes waiting for him. The Dublin backgrounds are nicely staged along with the poverty of the time and its all a breezy romp touching certainly on events in the early O'Casey's life. O'Casey's plays are still being revived, I am off to a National Theatre revivial of JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK in the new year.

Life upon the wicked stage . . .

2011-11-29T03:19:00.006Z

SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE was one of those polarising movies back in 1998/1999 - did you prefer it or SAVING PRIVATE RYAN ? (just like in 1994 were you a PULP FICTION or FORREST GUMP kind of person? - It was definitely PULP for me, I have never wanted to see GUMP!). While I enjoyed SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE at the time, it was a great evening at the cinema, I have hardly thought about it since, and now that we have Shakespeare debunked in ANONYMOUS, a television showing of SIL made me relish it all over again.

A friend of mine, Leon, over at IMDB puts it perfectly in his review:

Given the little information available on Shakespeare the Man a movie, either full of gravitas or, as here, a tongue-in-cheek entry, was a brilliant idea waiting to happen and the only mystery is what took so long. The two writers have contrived to cater for just about everyone from the Shakespeare scholar to those with a reasonably nodding acquaintance - i.e. someone who can name say ten of the plays off the top of their head and are aware of Marlowe as the author of The Jew Of Malta, Tamburlaine and Dr. Faustus but wouldn't necessarily associate 'Kit' with CM - to those who wouldn't know Shakespeare from Pete Doherty but have a thing about Gwynneth Paltrow, Joe Fiennes or both and provided humor for all from the 'in' jokes such as the bloodthirsty young boy who identifies himself as John Webster, to the conceit of Shakespeare seeing a shrink to say nothing of the Victor Victoria spin on girls playing boys playing girls and the wry twist on Romeo and Juliet. This movie has just about everything, spectacle, social history, satire, romance, glamor and top quality thesping all round. Definitely one to own on DVD and replay annually.

The cast certainly dazzles: Joseph Fiennes is ideal as is Gwynneth - will they ever be as iconic again? - and they are surrounded by Colin Firth amusing as the obnoxious beau, Judi Dench makes an unforgettable Elizabeth I in her few minutes, then there is Simon Callow, Anthony Sher, Tom Wilkinson, Geoffrey Rush, Imelda Staunton perfect as usual, Rupert Everett, Ben Affleck, Jim Carter, Martin Clunes and the rest. [Fiennes was also in Tudorbethan mode the same year as the Earl of Leicester to Cate Blanchett's Virgin Queen in ELIZABETH]. Tom Stoppard's script amuses too as writer and actor Shakespeare strugges with his new play "Romeo and Ethel the pirate's daughter" and then he spies the lady Viola who loves the theatre but women cannot appear on stage, and there is that arranged marriage ... It ends on a satisfying note though with Will getting his inspiration, Viola going to the New World and the Queen demanding "a comedy next time for Twelfth Night".

At the time it was considered by some with disdain as the perfect Miramax/Harvey Weinstein production designed and marketed to win all those awards, but here is one instance when they were deserved. Costumes, scenery, lighting, and sound - all the technical and design elements are incredibly well researched and well executed as love, life and the theatre are conjured up in the Elizabethan era. I never wanted to see director John Madden's follow-up CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN which by all accounts was a filleted version of a book I loved, rendering it just a Greek travelogue with some very questionable casting ...

My friend Daryl adds that SAVING PRIVATE RYAN seemed too self-important at the time when it was really an updated version of those World War II war movies like THE STORY OF G.I JOE, whereas audiences actually enjoyed the verbal wit, romance, comedy and great period detail of SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE.