Sunday in New York + 4 more Jane Fonda flicks

A feast of Fonda, lately - Jane that is. I just got SUNDAY IN NEW YORK, and my pal Jerry passed 4 of hers onto me recently.   Then, KLUTE was on again over the weekend, so we had another look at that too - its a key '70s movie for me, as per my other reports on it here - Fonda label.

I saw SUNDAY IN NEW YORK at the time, on its general release here in the UK in 1964, when I was 18, and more or less forgot it. But seeing it again now, 50 years later, its a bright, shiny artifact of the early 60s and is one of the better comedies revolving around sex of that time - COME SEPTEMBER, SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL and of course the Rock and Doris comedies. It has extensive New York shooting, and an engaging quartet of players, plus An Apartment To Die For - one of those Apartments We Love, which I will have to return to soon.

Its a sparkling comedy from a Norman Krasna stage play (cue lots of doors opening and people arriving unexpectedly) and its amusing to see what was considered daring on screen 50 years ago. Peter Teskesbury keeps it moving nicely and New York circa 1963 looks great in Metrocolor, yup its another great New York movie, like BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S  — we get to see the city just before the decline that caused filmmakers of the late 1960s and 1970s (cue KLUTE!) to use the city as a symbol of urban crime rather than a terrific place for falling in love. There is also a nice jazz score by Peter Nero (who also makes a cameo appearance in a nightclub scene). 

Jane is the 23 year old virgin who refuses to put out for her fiance, and is visiting her airline pilot brother (Cliff Robertson) who swears to her that he does not sleep with girls and respects them, while a running joke has he and girlfriend Jo Morrow (super here) being continually frustrated while trying to get together. Enter amiable nice guy Rod Taylor whom Jane gets attached to - literally - on a bus. Further complications follow when they are both undressed back at Cliff's place when her fiance Robert Culp walks in and thinks Rod is her brother - then her real brother arrives!  Needless to say it is nicely worked out, and we just love that bachelor apartment with its brick walls, sunken kitchen, and the spiral stairs up to the bedroom area, which can be shuttered off at night. Urban bliss indeed.  Mel Torme sings the engaging theme tune and its classy work all round, capturing that early '60s Manhattan single lifestyle - almost an update on Rock and Doris in PILLOW TALK!  Its the perfect Valentine Day treat. 

Rod was fresh from THE BIRDS and THE VIPs, Jane had done THE CHAPMAN REPORT and WALK ON THE WILD SIDE, those two Trash Classics we love from 1962 and would go on to do more films of Broadway plays like BAREFOOT IN THE PARK and ANY WEDNESDAY, as well as her French films LES FELINS and the Vadim's like LA RONDE, and as well as the heavy stuff like THE CHASE and HURRY SUNDOWN, before her hits BARBARELLA, THEY SHOOT HORSE DONT THEY? and back to KLUTE and JULIA. We never really liked much of her work after that and she has of course re-invented herself several times since and is now a very glamorous late Seventies ...

Now, back to her first film: TALL STORY in 1960, where she is directed by father Henry's pal Joshua Logan, and co-starred with Tony Perkins - very tall and gangly here as the ace basketball player and Jane as the girl who is determined to bag him. Its a so-so comedy, rather boring in parts, with too much of the older professors. 

The most amusing scene has Jane following Tony into the mens' changing room and seeeing naked Van Williams emerging from the shower... It also features young Gary Lockwood and maybe Robert Redford in one shot.

I did not like PERIOD OF ADJUSTMENT that much either, Tennessee Williams' first comedy from 1962, which makes for a raucous comedy as we follow newly-weds Fonda and Jim Hutton en route to their honeymoon, as they visit another couple Tony Franciosa and Lois Nettleton  who are having problems of their own.  It all gets very tiresome before too long, or maybe I was just not in the mood for it. 

Ditto with Godard's TOUT VA BIEN, a 1972 political tract which sees Fonda (just after KLUTE) and Yves Montand as a couple in Paris, journalists dealing with a factory strike and the capitalist society we live in. It highlighted everything I dislike about Godard films and I just found what I saw of it unbearably tedious. I do want to re-visit Godard's CONTEMPT though, with Bardot in 1963 - which if I remember right is a fascinating treatise on making movies. 

Nice though to finally see THE GAME IS OVER (LA CUREE) again, after all this time. This Roger Vadim piece of exotic erotica dates from 1966 and is a delicious Trash Classic as Jane enbarks on a doomed love affair with her stepson, Peter McEnery. Husband is mercurial Michel Piccoli, and Jane suffers but wears marvellous costumes for each scene, particularly for her mad scene at the climax!. We like McEnery (the first HAMLET I saw on stage, in 1967). It it all delirious nonsense played out in opulent sets which are a scream. 

After all those Janes, we now want to go back to some more Romy Schneider and Catherine Deneuve ... 

'50s noirs: 5 Against The House / Underworld USA

Those American crime movies always conjures up images from those '40s classic noirs, but the '50s also saw a lot of snappy crime movies, often programmers or supporting features. Some studios like Columbia turned out some nifty ones like THE BROTHERS RICO, JOE MACBETH or THE BIG COMBO. I have now got a batch of Sam Fuller and Phil Karlson thrillers from the mid-50s, so let's dip a toe in some ...

5 AGAINST THE HOUSE is a neat 1955 meller, 84 minutes, with an interesting cast of 4 rather mature university students (they are Korean veterans going to college on the G.I. Bill, which explains their age), so we have the leader Guy Madison, the loopy one Brian Keith, excellent as usual as he goes quietly mad, the clever one Kerwin Mathews in one of his first roles, and the annoying one Alvy Moore and his constant wisecracks ... add in Kim Novak as 'the girl' - its one of Kim's first roles and she croons a few torch songs (presumably dubbed) and looks terrific as usual. 

Our gang are visiting Reno and the gambling casinos and after seeing a failed robbery and overhearing that the casino cannot be raided our clever one Kerwin comes up with an idea .... the others go along with it as a joke and plan to return the money, but Brian Keith is deadly serious .... the movie ambles along nicely and suddenly gets tense and exciting as the plan is put into action and casino guard William Conrad has to play along .... there is the usual tense showdown and it ends nicely as one would expect.

Karlson keeps it moving, Stirling Silliphant scripts but the good-looking cast is the thing here. Madison (1922-1996) had a good run in westerns (his 1954 THE COMMAND was one of the first I saw as a kid), he made a good one too with Jean Simmons HILDA CRANE (see Madison label); Kerwin was an easy on the eye looker who forged a good career in fantasy films: THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, GULLIVER'S TRAVELS, PIRATES OF BLOOD RIVER etc, he also played French secret agent OSS 117 - when he died aged 81 in 2007 it turned out he had a male partner for over 40 years .... Brian Keith of course excelled in lots of films from westerns to Disney's original THE PARENT TRAP. Kim went on to her great era in the 50s - there was interesting magazine interview with her the other week, at 79 - a true Hollywood survivor.

Kerwin Mathews

Karlson (1908-1985) was one of those guys like Don Siegel, who came into the studio system just before television. Early live TV produced directors like John Frankenheimer and Arthur Penn but there were already the guys like Siegel and Karlson, who got the chance to direct because they could do it quick and cheap and keep it snappy, like those William Wellmann pre-code movies in the 1930s. Other Karlsons I have to view soon are THE PHENIX CITY STORY, TIGHT SPOT and 99 RIVER STREET, he also directed Elvis in KID GALAHAD, a good Jeffrey Hunter war drama HELL TO ETERNITY and a few of those Dean Martin Matt Helm '60s capers. 5 AGAINST THE HOUSE may well have inspired the original OCEANS 11 caper ...

UNDERWORLD USA, 1961 "written, produced and directed by Samuel Fuller" is as gripping a thriller as I remembered from seeing it at the time, when I was an early teen. It is a very vivid revenge tale, starting with 14 year old Tolly Devlin witnessing his father being killed and he swears revenge on the 4 hoods responsible. He grows up to be tearaway career criminal Cliff Robertson, a great early role for him, who cleverly gets his ambition but pays the ultimate price in a sizzling operatic climax which Fuller orchestrates perfectly as the hoods are now a mob syndicate which he infiltrates.
Fuller was one of those mavericks who created great genre movies like PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET, a real joy to discover last year, plus a Stanwyck western 40 GUNS, and classics like SHOCK CORRIDOR and THE NAKED KISS and his last success THE BIG RED ONE. Robertson, who died last year, is just right here, with Dolores Dorn as the moll who can spill the beans on the syndicate, and Beatrice Kay - a tougher Thelma Ritter - as the broad who looked after the young Tolly. Ideally she and Dorn are on the cover of that great 60s' 'Movie' paperback "Broads" (below) which covers a huge selection of shady ladies ... good to see this again, now for some more Fuller's: THE CRIMSON KIMONO, VERBOTEN... 

Rust and mobster

UNDERWORLD USA remains a tough, violent, amusing in parts noir as Robertson delights in torturing his victims and then there is Richard Rust, one of cinema's great killers who puts on his sunglasses before carrying out his assignments, even cold-heartedly dispatching a victim's young daughter ... he is similarly icy in 1962's great trash classic WALK ON THE WILD SIDE ....

R.I.P: Cliff Robertson

Cliff Robertson (1923-2011). Another leading man from my youth departs, but at the good age of 88. I highly rate his Michael Courtland in De Palma's OBSESSION - a movie I loved in 1976 [and a "Movie I Love" on here, see label]. Robertson has been around since I more or less began going to the movies - those early roles in PICNIC, AUTUMN LEAVES with Joan Crawford, GIDGET with Sandra Dee - the height of teendom in 1959 when I was 13 - and his stint as JFK in PT109.

For a while there he seemed interchangeable with James Garner or Rod Taylor (all "amiable 60s leading men" as the reference books would say). Somehow I never wanted to see his Oscar-winning turn in CHARLEY but he was terrific in THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, and of course he stars opposite Lana in one of the great guilty pleasures: LOVE HAS MANY FACES! I saw one of his lesser 70s movies last week: OUT OF SEASON made in England where he is the guy between Vanessa Redgrave and Susan George! Looking at his credits it is a long career to which most of today's young actors can only aspire.



William Holden is generally considered too old for his role of the drifter in PICNIC but the pal he visits, Robertson, was also in his 30s then - also playing a character meant to be at least 10 years younger than he was. He was married to the lovely Dina Merrill.

Oh, those prudish '50s!

Movies I love: Obsession

1976 and the key movie of the year is Scorsese's TAXI DRIVER, but for me there was also Brian De Palma's breakout movie OBSESSION (and Lumet's NETWORK too of course) - what an exciting year with the New Hollywood cementing their reputations. What also links the two movies of course is that they both have those final scores by the great Bernard Herrmann - I had both on sountrack albums (video had not yet arrived!) so one had to have those pounding scores.... OBSESSION was such a dazzling movie seeing it for the first time in the cinema.

The story is deceptively simple as New Orleans businessman Cliff Robertson loses his wife and daughter in a kidnapping that goes wrong. The style, the editing, the music, all contribute to the air of delirium and then our grieving hero is left with his memories, the memorial in the business park, and his business partner John Lithgow... Then years later there is that fateful trip to Florence as he retraces his steps with his wife, and that church where the Italian girl is restoring frescoes. He approaches, he sees her and his frozen ..... as the images and the music reach a crescendo. She is of course the reincarnation of his dead wife - he has to get to know her and unbelievably they fall in love. We see her ill mother and after she dies he has to bring her, Sandra, back to New Orleans where she has promised to marry him. She begins to explore the house and another level is reached, as the kidnapping is replayed .... what is happening, how is it all going to end?

Hitchock of course is the obvious influence here, particularly VERTIGO, and one can see De Palma's relishing of the material and the twists and turns of the plot until the final satisfying conclusion. We watch in amazement as Sandra reveals her side of the story (just like Kim in VERTIGO) and the real villain of the piece emerges. There is also that flashing pair of scissors (just like DIAL M FOR MURDER). The photography by Vilmos Zsigmond complements the music perfectly, and both Roberton and Bujold are astounding, one simply falls in love with Genevive's Sandra Portinari.

In the pre-video '70s though VERTIGO was long unavailable, most Hitch fans only had a memory of it (as I had), and it actually ends on a downbeat note as Scottie loses his great love once again - but that does not happen here, in Paul Schrader's very adroit re-telling of the story.

In the cinema though the lights went up and the curtains closed over the final moments as the camera does that 360 degree sweep around our couple so one did not see the final frames. One has to see it to the very end to appreciate what is really happening as they begin to realise who they really are as puzzlement gives way to understanding and joy. It is totally affecting. For me it is De Palma's masterpiece (I hated DRESSED TO KILL but OBSESSION will always be a Movie I Love).

Bad Movies We Love (2): More Lana, Susan, Bette, Joan F - and music music music!

LOVE HAS MANY FACES – I simply had to revisit this deliriously exotic artefact from 1965 and currently my favourite Lana Turner epic. The best thing about it actually is the theme song sung by Nancy Wilson. Lana, looking glazed throughout, is dressed by Edith Head (though that’s no recommendation anymore after the other period films like A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME she dressed in atrocious early 60s styles) and plays a wealthy playgirl in Acapulco married to ex-beach boy gigolo Cliff Robertson. They drink a lot as the police find the body of another beach boy who it seems Lana knew. Hugh O’Brian in skimpy speedos lingers while waiting to get off with Lana, as he trains his room-mate, another bottle blonde beach boy, in how to be a gigolo. Enter Ruth Roman [right, with O'Brian], a dame who knows the score and is willing to pay for her pleasures, with her pal Virginia Grey. Stephanie Powers is the young innocent trying to find what happened to the dead beachboy, and she and Cliff are drawn together. They all go off to a bullfight [below] and ….. but no, I cannot describe how this delirious farrago ends. Its certainly one to cherish though, as directed by Alexander Singer who also did A COLD WIND IN AUGUST and PSYCHE 59 (both to be reviewed here). Ruth is terrific, I must see more of her ...WHERE LOVE HAS GONE - this 1964 sudser has re-surfaced! A famous clunker at the time and seemingly based on the Lana Turner scandal, here we have Susan Hayward as the famous sculptress whose wayward daughter Joey Heatherton kills her lover and is put on trial. Dominating the show is Bette Davis as Hayward's mother, an imperial dowager who (as the Newsweek review at the time said "sits in the ugliest chair in Hollywood and lowers her teacup and pronounces "Somewhere along the line the world has lost all its standards and all its taste"). Embassy and Paramount are obviously cashing in on the Lana scandal - scripted by John Michael Hayes and directed by Edward Dmytryk (the team who brought us the compulsive trash of THE CARPETBAGGERS) this is gloriously over the top stuff. Michael Connors is the colourless leading man, Jane Greer is in the background, Susan though isn't firing on all cylinders - perhaps the presence of Bette hindered her (Hayward has just re-made one of Davis's 30s hits DARK VICTORY, as STOLEN HOURS - another movie I love!) Bette went on to entertain us in DEAD RINGER and HUSH HUSH SWEET CHARLOTTE, of which more later.

Above: Hayward and Davis with director Edward Dmytryk.

SERENADE. Mario Lanza films were jolly affairs as I remember [like THE SEVEN HILLS OF ROME], but SERENADE in 1956, seen again recently on TCM UK, is a very enjoyable, dark, twisted tale, from a James M Cain novel, with that rich deep Warnercolor and as directed by Anthony Mann (having a break from westerns) has some great scope compositions. Mario here is the factory worker on his tractor who is discovered by Joan Fontaine as Kendall Hale (a man in the Cain original!). Kendall is a society dame/rich bitch who, aided by her campy sidekick Vincent Price, picks up and then destroys her proteges, her current one being hunky young boxer Vince Edwards. Mario is soon in Kendall's clutches and on his way to being an opera star, but he spectacularly falls apart once Kendall discards him - in a scene as intense as Judy Garland's in A STAR IS BORN - so he ends up in Mexico ... enter Sarita Montiel (who became Mrs Mann) who is very attractive here, and gets Mario back to singing. The stage is set for a showdown between the women when they return to New York and it all ends in pure melodrama. Joan has a lot of fun with the role [though she dismisses it with one line in her autobiography] and does that quizzical look and raised eyebrow to perfection as Mario serenades us with "Nessun Dorma" and she has several ritzy outfits including that white fur cape for the opera, and the red outfit to match her red thunderbird when out driving ..

SINCERELY YOURS, 1955 – This is one of those movies I know I saw as a child but could remember nothing much about, as it had never surfaced since, so it was beyond amusing to finally get to see it again. It of course is Liberace’s one starring role as the concert pianist with an apartment to die for overlooking Central Park and he finally gets to play Carnegie Hall, only to find – it is too kitsch for words – that he has suddenly gone deaf! He lives cosseted by his devoted manager William Demarest and his devoted secretary Joanne Dru who of course secretly loves him. Then there is the ritzy socialite Dorothy Malone he is engaged to … but now his world falls apart – but he has that pair of binoculars and he begins to spy on people in the park: the mother (Lurene Tuttle) who is not smart enough to meet her snobby daughter’s in-laws, or the little crippled boy longing to play ball with the other kids. Lee of course intervenes to make things turn out right for them [nobody seems to have realised that spying on a little boy could be considered pervy back then, or that it was questionable to invade people’s privacy], and then he finally has a little operation and can hear again. Lee’s fans must have lapped this up back then, it is kitsch beyond endurance but the cast give it their all, particularly Malone and Dru. Studio hack supreme Gordon Douglas keeps it all together and as an actor Liberace is a great piano-player as we are treated to miles of footage of him tinkling the ivories.

Next round-up to include WRITTEN ON THE WIND, A SUMMER PLACE and those Troy Donahue and Fabian classics...

People we like: Genevieve Bujold

Genevieve Bujold - there's a name to conjure with. Born in Canada in 1942, she has been one of the most individual actresses/stars since she began in the '60s with De Broca's KNAVE OF HEARTS opposite Alan Bates, and in Resnais' LE GUERRE EST FINIE with Yves Montand and Ingrid Thulin. Then of course that breakthrough role as Anne Boleyn in that dull pageant of a costume movie, ANNE OF THE THOUSAND DAYS, but she was excellent in it.
She was Heston's mistress in the entertaining EARTHQUAKE, but for me her best role is in DePalma's terrific Hitchcock pastiche OBSESSION, in 1976. To me its as important as TAXI DRIVER and it also has a late great Herrmann score. She is ideal as the girl Cliff Robertson meets in Florence who is the image of his dead wife, and whom he brings back to New Orleans, only to find....... Genevieve is terrific in the two roles and really makes it work, as does John Lithgow's fascinating villain. Genevieve is also super in Crichton's COMA as the plucky doctor uncovering just why so many people go into comas at her hospital - Michael Douglas is her rather dull boyfriend and Richard Widmark runs the hospital, while Elizabeth Ashley guards the sinister facility where the bodies are kept in suspended animation. There is that very tense sequence where she evades the prowler sent to keep her quiet... There were also a pirate caper with Robert Shaw, movies with Clint Eastwood and Jack Lemmon, and of course Cronenburg's masterly DEAD RINGERS with two Jeremy Irons. She is also marvellous in those Alan Rudolph films CHOOSE ME, TROUBLE IN MIND and THE MODERNS, and there is a routine thriller FINAL ASSIGNMENT with Michael York which I have got but not seen yet.

I also liked her in that charming take on westerns by Claude Lelouch, ANOTHER MAN ANOTHER WOMAN, with James Caan in '78 - a sort of variation on his UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME success of the '60s, and of course she is also terrific in the little-seen THE TROJAN WOMEN in '71 as Cassandra with that powerhouse cast including Katharine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave and Irene Papas.

She seems to be somebody who did not let the industry rule or ruin her, but works on her terms [she exited a STAR TREK series after one day! after realising it was not what she wanted] and walks away from all the hoopla and red carpet nonsense, like Julie Christie, Sarah Miles and a few others. Viva Genevieve - I love her looks and quirky manner, nice to see she is keeping busy and trust she finds suitable roles as she ages.