That Blow-Up bluray ...

Its better than I imagined, after only having the bog standard dvd for years. As in the recent 4-disk LUDWIG pack, there is another chunky 64 page booklet, 1960s interviews with Antonioni, two interviews with David Hemmings from 1968 and 1977, that long 2016 interview with Vanessa Redgrave, a Jane Birkin interview, a marvellous documentary featuring people involved with the making of the film, including model Jill Kennington, and more. It puts it all in proper context, and yes the park and the studio and London then in 1966 - which I knew as I was 20 there then - are all just perfect. Even the street I lived in, Draycott Place, SW3 in 1972-73, crops up, as its next to that restaurant. We return to the park and studio as they are now too. Lots more at labels ... one funny thing: the characters are never named, but Hemmings is Thomas, Vanessa is Jane, Sarah is Patricia, Castle is Bill, Bowles is Ron.
The booklet points out something I and most other viewers miss, no matter how often we have seen it. As Thomas is driving through London, after leaving the park, just as the girl puts the protest placard in his car, the car following has the Jane from the park and her accomplice (we see her in her check shirt) who are following him, which is how she is able to turn up at his studio just as he arrives back - I never got that before. They were also trying to get into his car while he is in the restaurant, but that sequence was cut short by producer Ponti. 

There were two video-cassettes of BLOW-UP, then the dvd - I always loved the soundtrack album, on vinyl and cd, and now finally the bluray - its Region 1 though, 

The Viking Queen, 1967

Here's a doozy from that groovy year 1967 - a Hammer Film with an imported American star - just like their 1966 THE WITCHES with Joan Fontaine in her last film. This one has Don Murray, a decade or so after his BUS STOP breakout role, he hardly stands out here in this farcical setting. First of all there are no Vikings here - it is set in Roman Britain - the vikings came much later. 

To honour her father's dying wish, Queen Salina shares the rule of Icena with Justinian, a fair and just Roman. This displeases the bloodthirsty Druids on one side and the more hard-line Romans on the other. As Salina and Justinian fall in love their enemies start to plot, and blood soon stains the green hills of Britain.

Carita - an international model apparently - has her sole movie role as the queen of the title, but the fun in this cheapo peplum is the British supporting cast, and those County Wicklow, Ireland locations. 

Adrienne Corri and Nicola Pagett are her contrasting sisters, annoyed that her father (Wilfrid Lawson) named her as his heir. Donald Houston overacts wildly as the druid leader, and my favourite DR WHO - Patrick Troughton - is on hand, as are Niall McGuinness (a long way from HELEN OF TROY), and Sean Caffrey (from another favourite, I WAS HAPPY HERE in 1966). 

It is standard fare - there was a rumour one of the extras in the few crowd scenes is wearing a watch - hilariously awful now, no where near the standard of Hammer classics like BRIDES OF DRACULA or SHE. Murray was selective about his film projects so why on earth did he choose this? Perhaps offers were less by the time this went into production; proof of my idea that most actors if lucky get ten good years .... This one will pass a rainy afternoon nicely. We didn't bother with rubbish like this in 1967 when hip groovy folk were going to BLOW UP and BONNIE & CLYDE etc 

Sixties rarity: The Day The Fish Came Out, 1967

There MAY be a more bizarre 1960s movie than THE DAY THE FISH CAME OUT, unleashed in 1967, but I can hardly think of one, apart from THE TOUCHABLES in 1968, or JOANNA or HEROSTRATUS or LEO THE LAST or MYRA BRECKINRIDGE or BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS in 1969 ...

FISH is Michael Cacoyannis's followup to his huge hit ZORBA THE GREEK in 1965 - 20th Century Fox were hardly expecting the madly camp, if not gay, mishmash he produced next .... We were dazed by it at the time (it was taken off after two weeks and never seen again, until dvd arrived), as Candice Bergen in some bizarre outfits and pretty young Ian Ogilvy danced with the beautiful gay people on a Greek island, contaminated by some nuclear waste material dropped into the sea from a plane piloted by Tom Courtenay and Colin Blakely - who spend most of the time in their underwear as the pilots tried to hide, and the locals try to increase their tourism trade and anxious government officials try to cover up the disaster and locate the radioactive material .... Mikis Theodorakis adds another Greek score, and it is all delirious fun. 

Here is what we said some years ago: 

Life on a remote Greek island is forever changed when two atomic bombs are accidentally dropped in the sea there when a NATO plane flies overhead. This so-called comedy chronicles these changes. When the pilots Tom Courtenay and Colin Blakely realise they have lost their cargo, they bail out and land on the island - dressed throughout in their underwear - and try to get help without being found. The government has beaten them to the punch and has already sent an agent disguised as a resort developer. All of them are busy looking for the missing weapons when the island is suddenly filled with hedonistic tourists, all looking very gay, who believe the developer is going to build the best resort in the area. The locals are also overjoyed, thinking their quiet little village is finally going to be a tourist resort. When the Agean fish being to mysteriously die (hence the title?) everyone realises that the jig is up and so they give into their wildest desires...

add in Candice Bergen and lots of pretty unisex people, the pilots in their skimpy briefs and it all adds up to one pretty bizarre movie !

Beatles for sale - in vinyl

Now that vinyl records are back again - and a lot pricier than they used to be, a new collection of The Beatles albums in vinyl caught my attention, now that I can play vinyl again. Its so satisfying dropping the needle on the long-playing album, the way listening to music used to be, rather than pressing 'play' on a cd or streaming music.

The Beatles on vinyl collection starts with that classic ABBEY ROAD, at a decent price of £9.99, and there is a new album every two weeks, retailing at £16.99 - cheaper than buying them at a record store. The next one is SGT PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND - I will have to get that one too, though I have the CD, as I do of most of the fab's albums, and I may also have to get HELP, A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, REVOLVER and all their main albums again on vinyl. These may have been originally released as a box set, but this new collection allows one to just get the albums one wants, There are really a dozen original Beatles albums (if one includes THE MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR,, originally a double EP), the rest of the 23 here are those compilations and anthologies. 

I will be back in 1967 with flatmate Stan and Linda, the girl upstairs, as SGT PEPPER unfolds again. All are in facsimiles of the original albums, with magazines and notes. We Beatles fanatics will be pleased (though of course back then in the late Sixties I also loved The Rolling Stones, Cream, The Yardbirds, The Moody Blues, The Pink Floyd, some Who, The Band, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, The Lovin Spoonful, and those early Joni, Neil Young, Tom Rush, Aretha Franklin albums....).

A new BLOW-UP

Finally, its on Blu-ray and dvd in a new Criterion edition released on 28 March. For far too long there has only been a standard dvd, with a terrible commentary track by a professor presumably discussing the film with a class of American teenagers who knew nothing about the Swinging Sixties or cast members like Vanessa Redgrave .... it is hilarious for all the wrong reasons.

I have written about Antonioni's BLOW-UP so many times already, so this is just a summary of the new edition. I was going to watch the dvd as part of my new year re-views, but we will be waiting till March now. Here is the Criterion blurb and contents:

In 1966, Michelangelo Antonioni transplanted his existentialist ennui to the streets of swinging London for this international sensation, the Italian filmmaker’s first English-language feature. A countercultural masterpiece about the act of seeing and the art of image making, Blow-Up takes the form of a psychological mystery, starring David Hemmings as a fashion photographer who unknowingly captures a death on film after following two lovers in a park. Antonioni’s meticulous aesthetic control and intoxicating color palette breathe life into every frame, and the jazzy sounds of Herbie Hancock, a beautifully evasive performance by Vanessa Redgrave, and a cameo by the Yardbirds make the film a transporting time capsule from a bygone era. Blow-Up is a seductive immersion into creative passion, and a brilliant film by one of cinema’s greatest artists.

New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray

New pieces about director Michelangelo Antonioni’s artistic approach, featuring photography curators Walter Moser and Philippe Garner and art historian David Alan Mellor

Blow Up of “Blow Up,” a 2016 documentary on the making of the film

Conversation from 2016 between Garner and actor Vanessa Redgrave

Archival interviews with Antonioni and actors David Hemmings and Jane Birkin

Trailers

PLUS: A book featuring an essay by film scholar David Forgacs, an updated 1966 account of the film’s shooting by Stig Björkman, the questionnaires the director distributed to photographers and painters while developing the film, and the 1959 Julio Cortázar short story on which the film is loosely based.

Of course the plot does not bear too much examining. How for instance, in that pre-internet world,  does the mystery woman Vanessa Redgrave turn up at the photographer's studio just as he arrives back, when she does not seem to know who he is in the park, let alone where he lives or works. They must have followed him from the park, via that detour to the Chelsea restaurant (which I used to know, as I lived near it in '72/'73). 
There was supposed to be more about someone rifling through his car there, but producer Ponti nixed the rest of that sequence. The whole murder in the park and leaving the body undiscovered there seems all a bit far-fetched, but one is swept up in the mystery of it all, and that perfect London 1966 ambience. 
I was 20 and part of it all then. It was of course the film to see and have an opinion on when it opened in London early in 1967 before going to the Cannes Festival. Terence Stamp too is on record about it, as he had been promised the part, and is still annoyed about it .... David Hemmings though delivers a major performance as the typical disillusioned Antonioni male - he had been fairly nondescript up till then,  but was soon the icon of the era. 
We just love the images and the spaces - that park, that studio, London changing as it was then, and that perfect Herbie Hancock soundtrack, which has stayed with me, on vinyl, CD, and ipod. Now for the Blu-ray ...

If you’ve never seen Blowup before, prepare yourself for one of the cinema’s most unique experiences. If you have seen it before, prepare as well for rediscovering—much like the film’s hero—something you only thought you knew.

New year re-views 5: Les Demoiselles de Rochefort

LA LA LAND got me in the mood for those Jacques Demy musicals once again - we love THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, but even more, his 1967 THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT, which is sheer endless delight, as per my previous items on it, here's a reprise:

This was bliss to see again recently, to see it in colour and widescreen is magical. It is another all singing musical with great colour and sets – the whole town of Rochefort seems to be dancing at one stage. The sisters Catherine Deneuve and Francoise Dorleac star, with hoofers an older Gene Kelly, George Chakiris in tight pants, and a blonde Jacques Perrin as a lovelorn sailor. It all works perfectly now and I urge anyone who has not seen it to seek it out on dvd, as it is not as well known as the more famous Cherbourg film, it is in fact a perfect 60s film, which I have written about here several times already. We also get Danielle Darrieux as the girls' mother, and Michel Piccoli as her admirer.
The BFI dvd includes Agnes Varda's documentary on the film's 25 year anniversary party held at Rochefort, which sadly Francoise Dorleac was a major absentee ...

Sunday treat

For Helen Lawson and Neely O'Hara fans everywhere ...

Helen Lawson at home

We LOVE this casual pose of Broadway legend Helen Lawson at home. The gay boys over at Datalounge.com were discussing her legendary career and all those stories. It seems the indestructible Helen is still going and planning a super reunion show with those other Broadway gals, some of whom she tangled with over the years: Margo Channing, Eve Harrington, Lora Meredith, Vicky Lester, and Helen's nemesis from their VALLEY OF THE DOLLS one Neely O'Hara - thats, of course if Neely is not back on the bottle, and Lora not away filming with Felluci in Italy (as she was in IMITATION OF LIFE), but at least Vicky - who was born in a trunk - knows that the show must go on ..... If only they could bring it to London. 

Speaking of which there is a new major production of Sondheim's FOLLIES opening at the National Theatre here in London late next year, should be as good as their A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC a decade or more ago - but which legend will sing "I'm Still Here" ... ? 

Helen of course wears that pant suit created for Vicki who was initially cast in VOTD.

Prick Up Your Ears, 1987

The story of the spectacular life and violent death of British playwright Joe Orton, through the eyes and pen of that other great British playwright Alan Bennett.

In his teens, Joe Orton (a smart working-class boy from Leicester) is befriended by the older, more reserved Kenneth Halliwell, and while the two begin a relationship, it's fairly obvious that it's not all about sex (they were also sent to prison for defacing library books, hilariously treated here). Orton loves the dangers of cruising; Halliwell, not as attractive as Joe, doesn't fare so well (he is bald and wears a wig). While both try to become writers, it is Orton who succeeds - his plays ENTERTAINING MR SLOANE and LOOT become huge hits in London of the sixties, and he's even commissioned to write a screenplay for the Beatles. But Orton's success destroys Halliwell's sanity, whose response ended both their lives.

This 1987 film is a fascinating re-view now, particularly with that great cast: Gary Oldman and Alfred Molina early in their careers as the outrageous playwright Joe Orton and his lover Kenneth Halliwell who ends up killing them both. Add in Vanessa Redgrave ideal as the agent Peggy Ramsay (a small woman actually), Julie Walters as Joe's dotty mother back in Leicester, Frances Barber as his sister, Lindsay Duncan as the wife of writer John Lahr (Wallace Shawn) who wrote that great biography of Orton, as we follow him piecing together Joe's life. Its a fascinating saga particularly for anyone who lived through that 1960s era, as I did. 
I did not see MR SLOANE then but remember walking past the theatre where it was playing when I was first new in London in 1964, when I was 18 - but I saw the 1967 production of LOOT at the Criterion, with young Simon Ward and Kenneth Cranham. In 1976 I saw a great revival of SLOANE at the Royal Court, with Beryl Reid reprising her role in the 1970 film (much better than the film of LOOT - see Orton label) with Malcolm McDowell as Sloane in leather trousers! The actual murder of Orton in August 1967 and Ken's suicide was front page news, I was spending the weekend in Hastings on the coast with friends and it was in all the papers ...

Written by Alan Bennett from Lahr's book and directed by Stephen Frears, PRICK is a treat all round and captures both the 80s and 60s perfectly, and their one-room flat in London's Islington. It should be a better-known cult film, it does not shy away from the seedier aspects of cruising (what gays did before all those bars and clubs opened in the '80s - pity Orton did not live to see all that...) its frank language captures it all too. Its also very moving and sad as well as being wildly funny - Oldman (great legs) is perfect as Joe (looks like him too in that leather cap and tee shirt) and Molina is also marvellous as ever. Great to see him recently in that other gay romance LOVE IS STRANGE (and those re-runs of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK), while Gary is magnetic in films like AIR FORCE ONE, BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA, TINKER TAILOR SOLIDER SPY etc (and directed NIL BY MOUTH). 
Lahr's book is a great read too (as are Orton's published diaries), capturing it all, like Joe's final visit to Brighton where he was looking at flats as be was thinking of moving there, once he had left Halliwell (before he returns to London that fateful weekend ... when Ken explodes in murderous rage when Joe suggests they could split up, leaving Ken feeling abandoned by Joe's success), and it also details their friendship with Kenneth Williams and their trips to Morocco etc. Orton's own diaries are very amusingly explicit too on his many sex-capades ...
Great quotes in the film also: like that end comment, before The Beatles's "A Day In The Life" reaches that crescendo ...

Leonie Orton:  [Mingling Joe's and Ken's ashes]
I think I'm putting in more of Joe than I am of Ken.

Peggy Ramsay:  It's a gesture dear, not a recipe.

Kenneth Halliwell:  Cheap clothes suit you. It's because you're from the gutter.

[Halliwell puts his hand on Orton's leg. Orton brushes it off]

Joe:  No. Have a wank.

Kenneth:  Have a wank? Have a wank? I can't just have a wank. I need three days' notice to have a wank. You can just stand there and do it. Me, it's like organizing D-Day. Forces have to be assembled, magazines bought, the past dredged for some suitably unsavoury episode, the dog-eared thought of which can still produce a faint flicker of desire! Have a wank, it'd be easier to raise the Titanic.

[Joe and Ken are cruising a strange man]

Joe:   He's built like a brick shithouse!

Kenneth:  He's probably a policeman.

Joe:  I know, isn't it wonderful?

Peggy:  Ken was the first wife. He did all the work and the waiting and then...

John Lahr:  Well, first wives don't usually beat their husbands' heads in.

Peggy:  No. Though why I can't think.

John:  So what does that make you? The second wife?

Peggy:  Better than that, dear. The widow.

The Honeypot, 1967

THE HONEYPOT, filmed in Venice in 1966 and released in 1967, is a choice treat now, an acid comedy by Mankiewicz with  great role for Rex Harrison and three super ladies: Susan Hayward, Capucine and Edie Adams with two rising players on the sidelines: Maggie Smith (already a scene stealer as she proved in THE VIPs and THE PUMPKIN EATER) and Cliff Robertson. Its lensed by ace cameraman Gianni Di Venanzo and looks great. Talky yes, but when Mank is scripting and Rex and Maggie saying the lines bliss is assured. 

Inspired by a performance of his favorite play, Ben Johnson's "Volpone," Cecil Fox (Rex Harrison) devises an intricate plan to trick three of his former mistresses into believing he is dying at his opulent home in Venice. Fox hires William McFly (Cliff Robertson), a man of many trades including being a sometime actor to act as his secretary. Though the women have vast fortunes of their own, Fox depends on their greediness to bring them running. There is Merle McGill (Edie Adams), a Hollywood sex symbol; Princess Dominique (Capucine), who once took a cruise on Fox's yacht; and Lone Star Crockett (Susan Hayward), a Texas hypochondriac who travels with her nurse Sarah (Maggie Smith). 

As Fox and McFly act out their charade, Lone Star states to the other women that she is the only one entitled to the inheritance since she is Fox's common-law wife. Later that night as Sarah and William go out for drinks where Sarah tells of her daily routine of walking Lone Star at 3:00 AM to give her more sleeping pills to get through the night, William then excuses himself to make a phone call and Sarah, tired from her travels slips off to sleep for about an hour. When Lone Star is found dead later that morning from an overdose, Sarah immediately suspects William. Her suspicions are confirmed when she finds the roll of quarters missing from Lone Star’s bag in William’s room. 

She confronts William with her findings and he promptly locks her in her room demanding she keep her mouth shut about the whole situation. Fearing that William will now kill Fox, she uses the dumbwaiter that connects her room to his to pull herself up and warn him. Fox both praises her intellect and her stupidity, leaving Sarah slightly confused but relieved that she has forewarned Fox.

But Fox has one more trick up his sleeve, and Lone Star gets the last word in ..... to say any more would spoil the surprise. 

Harrison, in his fourth outing with Mankiewicz, relishes the witty dialogue, the three woman are all up to their usual level, though we do not see too much of Hayward as Lone Star. Her husband back in Georgia USA died during the shoot, and old pal Mank may have released her early so she could return home ... Capucine displays her usual haughly elegance and glamour as the impoverished princess, and Edie is as amusing as she was in LOVER COME BACK or LOVE WITH THE PROPER STRANGER. 
Maggie of course compels all the attention whenever she is on, particularly her scenes with Rex.   Its all probably a bit too talky and high-faluting for some, but certainly a treat if one is in the mood and ready to spend time with these fascinating people .... 
Susan went on to give us her Helen Lawson later that year in VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, but thats another post. Maggie of course later played nurse/companion to Bette Davis in DEATH ON THE NILE in 1978 where both were very droll. Mank had one more hit in store: SLEUTH in 1972. We love him of course for LETTER TO 3 WIVES, ALL ABOUT EVE, THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA, CLEOPATRA, THE GHOST & MRS MUIR etc, as per reviews, at label. Its a good late role for Rex too, after his Caesar for Mank in CLEOPATRA, THE YELLOW ROLLS ROYCE and MY FAIR LADY - unless one counts DR DOLITTLE or, heaven forbid, STAIRCASE! 

'60s British cinema: Dirk, Losey, Accident, again

Nice to see ACCIDENT on television again - thanks, Talking Pictures. Been a few years since I last saw it, though the dvd is filed away - we liked Losey's 1967 drama, scripted by Harold Pinter, a lot back then, it was almost the kind of movie we took for granted then, but it seems like an arthouse classic now. This is what I wrote on it here in 2013 :

Joseph Losey's ACCIDENT remains a key '60s movie for me - I well remember seeing it for the first time with my best pal Stan when it was on general release as a double feature - the supporting movie was JUST LIKE A WOMAN another forgotten '60s comedy, good cast though headed by Wendy Craig. ACCIDENT though was the culmination of those Bogarde-Losey films: THE SLEEPING TIGER in 1954 and that quartet which more or less defined the '60s: THE SERVANT, the too little see KING AND COUNTRY, the mod op-art delight MODESTY BLAISE (maybe my favourite cult movie with the divine triumvirate of Vitti, Bogarde & Stamp on that mad, mod op art island, with those witty asides as Dirk goes over the top as the supercamp villain Gabriel in the blonde wig... but I digress as usual). The Losey-Stanley Baker films are fascinating too, I particularly like the 1959 thriller BLIND DATE (Losey, Baker labels) and EVE and THE CRIMINAL ...

ACCIDENT, scripted by Harold Pinter, begins and ends with the sounds of a car crash, and we go back and forth to discover what really happened. There is that long marvellous central sequence depicting a languid lazy summer afternoon at the comfortably upper-middle class Oxford residence of professor Stephen (Bogarde) and his pregnant wife Rosalind, perfectly played by Vivien Merchant. Guests include William, one of the professor's pupils - a golden boy, aristocrat Michael York, and his girlfriend Anna an Austrian princess, Jacqueline Sassard.
An interloper is another rival professor Charley, Stanley Baker at his most aggressive. They shell the peas, go for walks, lie on the lawn, hands slowly touch, as we begin to see the tensions and undercurrents here... Stephen is having a kind of mid-life crisis and is attracted to Anna, the glacial girlfriend who is manipulating these men. She is sleeping with Charley but knows how Stephen feels about her. Rivalies between the men come to the surface over dinner as William falls drunk into his plate - Charley is also a tv presenter, he is good on tv - and taunts Stephen who also wants to be on tv, and in fact has an appointment with a producer, played by Pinter himself. We also see Charley's distraught wife Ann Firbank, watering flowers in the rain, while the pregnant Rosalind watches all - Stephen also has a date with an old girlfriend, silently played by Delphine Seyrig - we hear their disjointed conversation played over that restaurant scene. Her father is Losey regular, Alexander Knox. Upper class rituals are explored - rugby, punting on the river ....

 We know right away that William has been killed in the car crash, as Stephen takes the unconscious Anna out of the car and into his house. Who actually was driving ?
Do they sleep together too ? Does he take advantage of her dazed state? One thing that mars ACCIDENT for me is that Sassard is too blank a presence at the centre - she also had a big role in '68 as a similar object of desire in Chabrol's LES BICHES, though it was her last year in movies. (I also saw her when younger in FAIBLES FEMMES, a French comedy with the young Alain Delon, in 1959). Projector favourite Austrian Romy Schneider, who was originally cast, would have been ideal here, with that teasing, feline quality of hers and would have made so much more of the role. We never get to see or understand what Sassard is feeling or thinking. Baker and Bogarde of course are both pitch perfect, squaring up to each other again a decade after their Canadian adventure CAMPBELL'S KINGDOM, a perfect Rank Organisation movie in 1957. ACCIDENT would be their final film with Losey, who was next making films with the Burtons and going off to Europe (Losey label), as indeed would Dirk. ACCIDENT's reputation has grown over the years, though like Antonioni's BLOW-UP it is a polarising film, some people actively hate it, but like BLOW-UP and THE SERVANT it is for me a major '60s film, and one of Pinter's best scripts. Cinematography by Gerry Fisher, and music by Johnny Dankworth. 

1967: Vanessa in Vogue - by Bert

Sixties glamour with a vengance: A favourite book is Vogue in the Sixties, capturing the glamour of that decade with some stunning images. Here is Vanessa Redgrave in one of their January 1967 issues certainly ramping up the glamour stakes - thanks to Colin for finding it on Twitter. 
These were Vanessa's break-out years after the successes of MORGAN and BLOW-UP and she would go on to CAMELOT and ISADORA and so much more. Interestingly, the photographer here is the great Bert Stern, who did those final Monroe images in his "The Last Sitting". 

Also in 1967, here is Vanessa in another ritzy outfit at Cannes Film Festival with Monica Vitti and Antonioni. In her memoir Redgrave related how her first husband Tony Richardson wanted her to be like Monica Vitti .... Vanessa only went on to star for Antonioni and here they all are sur le plage!  Lots more on Vanessa at label. 

Deneuve & Dorleac

More French 1960s glamour ... with sisters Catherine Deneuve and Francoise Dorleac in Jacques Demy's LES DEMOISELLES DEROCHEFORT, a great from 1967 - its marvellous on the big screen as Demy gets all of Rochefort dancing with our sisters - add in Gene Kelly, blonde sailor Jacques Perrin, dancing boys George Chakiris and Grover Dale, as well as eternally chic Danielle Darriex as the girls' mother and bliss is assured. More on this at Demy label .... 

Francoise perished in a car accident in 1967 .... she was certainly an essential Sixties beauty and French star. We like her in THAT MAN FROM RIO, LE PEAU DEUCE, even GENGHIS KHAN and that Michael Caine film. See my fuller appreciation on her at Dorleac label.