Deborah's Sister Clodagh and Sister Angela

Two of our enduring favourites were screened again recently, and despite having them on disk I had to tune in once again. We simply love Deborah Kerr's two nuns:  the superior Sister Clodagh in Michael Powell's masterwork BLACK NARCISSUS from 1947, when Deborah was all of 26 and in charge of those nuns in that convent in the high Himalyas - as per my other posts of it, so I won't repeat myself, see Narcissus label.

A decade later in HEAVEN KNOWS, MR ALLISON in 1957 she is that much simpler Irish nun Sister Angela alone on that pacific island (it was filmed in Tobago).... as this blurb states:  As World War II rages, tough marine Robert Mitchum is stranded on a desert island with nun Deborah Kerr. Cracking romantic chemistry in this ace John Huston adventure. Screenplay by John Lee Mahin the veteran who scripted that chemistry in 1932's RED DUST and and its 50s remake MOGAMBO as well as the fun western NORTH TO ALASKA (his last credit is a Jean Seberg movie I love MOMENT TO MOMENT in 1965. 

We have written about this before, here - see Kerr, Powell labels - it remains a deeply affecting movie, among Huston's best, I certainly prefer it to his similar AFRICAN QUEEN. MR ALLISON actually has a lot of affinities with Mitchum's RIVER OF NO RETURN in 1954 - people in the wilderness having to survive while surrounded by hostile enemies, and there's the similar scene where there Mitch has to warm up numb Marilyn Monroe, and here the wet sister Angela; they catch and cook a moose in RIVER, its that unfortunate basking turtle in MR ALLISON .... 

Deborh's nuns are as iconic as her governesses (THE KING AND I, THE INNOCENTS) and she worked with Huston several times, also in the silly 60s spoof CASINO ROYALE in 1967 and to great effect in NIGHT OF THE IGUANA in 1964. She and Mitchum had great chemistry together, as also in THE GRASS IS GREENER in 1960 and perfectly in Zinnemann's THE SUNDOWNERS which should have bagged her the 1960 Best Actress Oscar, in fact, as I mentioned before, I would have made it a tie with her and her friend Jean Simmons (not even nominated for ELMER GANTRY where her co-stars Burt and Shirley Jones got their awards) - Liz could still have (deservedly) won in 1966.  It would have been culmination of Deborah's and Jean's great decade, the two British roses who went to Hollywood and were very big stars indeed in the 1950s and early '60s. But it was not to be .... Deb's nuns though remain an evergreen treat. She also teamed with Mitchum again later in that 80s telefilm about an army reunion. of course had great chemistry with frequent co-stars Cary, Burt, Niven, Brynner,  More on her at Kerr label. 

Some choice Oscar moments

Remember when the Academy Awards shows were exciting back in the 1970s as we saw the great stars presenting or collecting prizes. Before multi-channel 24 hour TV, these were treats indeed. Here are a few:

Susan Hayward's last public appearance in 1974 on the arm of old co-star Charlton Heston who was propping her up. Hayward was already fatally ill, she would die the next year, but here she is bewigged, medicated and determined to complete her last public outing in style. Watch the surprise on Ellen Burstyn's face as Glenda Jackson - not even there - wins a second Best Actress award for a comedy which I had no interest in seeing ...

I knew James Stewart and Kim Novak had teamed again sometime in the '80s to present an award. Here it is in 1989 .

Ingrid Bergman is choice as usual as she wins Best Supporting Actress for her cameo role in MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, also 1974 - and she had wanted Valentina Cortesa to win, to the chagrin of her fellow co-nominess ...

Faye Dunaway arrives to collect her Best Actress Oscar in 1976. Some wag wrote that the goddess looked like she had been doing drugs and having sex in her limousine before arriving all tousled on stage ...

Deborah Kerr receiving her Honorary Oscar, introduced by Glenn Close, in 1994.

By Royal command ...

I have written about those Royal Film Performances here before, but here's a recap for those who missed them. The British Royal Film Performance was a big event each year during those key 1950s and 1960s years, when an usually important film was chosen for the Royals to see at the Odeon in Leicester Square in London, when a motley round-up of players were lined up to meet the Queen. Everyone it seems turned up ...

I was fascinated by this photo of Julie Christie, Catherine Deneuve and Ursula Andress at some mid-60s event, and sure enough it was at the 1966 Royal Film Perf. , the girls seem engrossed in their fashions and dig those long white gloves - in 1966. It seems the gloves were de rigeur. The film that year was BORN FREE and also present were Warren Beatty with consort Leslie Caron - maybe this was where Warren and Julie first met? - plus Dirk and Deborah, Rex Harrison and Rachel Roberts, and Raquel Welch and Woody Allen, James Fox and the stars of the film Virgina McKenna and Bill Travers. They also had to do rehearsals that afternoon ....  before the Royal party arrived. These events were covered by the newsreels of the time and the snippets make fascinating viewing now, a glimpse into a long gone movie world.

A decade earlier the 1956 one was the famous one when Marilyn was presented to Her Majesty - but also in the lineup was the young Brigitte Bardot and Anita Ekberg.... while the 1957 Royal film was LES GIRLS but its star Kay Kendall was detained in America, but here we have Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield (along with Michael Craig, Yvonne Mitchell, William Holden etc.) presumably before their famous encounter at Romanoffs in Hollywood in April that year.

The 1954 junket for the London premiere of A STAR IS BORN is fascinating too with Olivier as master of ceremonies, and Kay Kendall makes it to this one, as does Diana Dors and the Attenboroughs who like Kenny More and Jack Hawkins must have been regulars at these events, This is 14 minutes but worth watching - how movies where marketed and shown then ...

Another odd line-up is this 1970s one (FUNNY LADY?) where Barbra Streisand (with James Caan) broke with convention when being presented to the Queen asked why they had to wear the long gloves. Lee Remick and James Stewart (reunited from 1959's ANATOMY OF A MURDER are also in the lineup here). 

Black narcissus

BLACK NARCISSUS was on once again and once again there I was watching it one more time, its a film that never palls and is so richly textured that one discovers new aspects to it. It is probably my Number One movie now among my best/favourite films ever ... as per my previous posts here, see label. Every element is perfect here, I would not want to change a moment of it.

It is on the one hand a very 1940s lurid melodrama set in that convent/harem high in the Himalayas, from the popular book by Rumer Godden. It is also maybe the best of the Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger classics (I also love I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, THE RED SHOES..) as key British films of the '40s. The look of this 1947 film is amazing, so many shots of the convent and the mountains and landscapes are beautiful as are those flashbacks to Ireland in that rich '40s Technicolor, as photographed by ace camerama Jack Cardiff (see also PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN, and that desert adventure LEGEND OF THE LOST, plus THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL etc, as per Cardiff label).

This time around I liked that early introduction to the convent as we follow the old Ayah (May Hallatt) around the deserted halls while the mother superior registers her disapproval of young Sister Clodagh being put in charge of the mountain convent. The other nuns are nicely depicted too: Sister Honey, Sister Briony and Sister Phillipa who plants flowers instead of vegetables ... Deborah Kerr at 26 (a decade before her lovely Sister Angela in HEAVEN KNOWS MR ALLISON) is ideal as Sr Clodagh and Kathleen Byron's Sister Ruth comes into her own in the closing scenes as she leaves the convent, puts on that red dress and lipstick and goes in search of Mr Dean, the land agent in the shorts, who has been having an unsettling feeling on both her and Sr Clodagh .... there is that scene in a red mist as Mr Dean rejects her .... the convent at sunset as the nuns search for her, and Sr Clodagh wearily goes to toll the bell .... this is delirious stuff that no matter how often one sees it keeps one enthralled. that stunning cut too and then the aftermath .... 

That ending is perfect too as the nuns leave as the clouds swallow up the convent, and there is that deeply emotional final meeting of Sr Clodagh and Mr Dean when their affection and love is apparant as they have to say goodbye, and she asks him to do one final thing for her ... I love too that shot of the rain starting to fall on those giant leaves as the caravan moves on.  Back around 1980 when I got miy first vhs video recorder BLACK NARCISSUS was one of the first films I taped on those clunky cassettes, so we used to see that scene over and over ... I have not even mentioned Jean Simmons as Kanchi and Sabu as the young general with that perfume "Black Narcissus" from the Army & Navy Stores in London ... and to think it was all created in the studios with some stunning matte shots.

Tea and sympathy for a midnight cowboy

MIDNIGHT COWBOY was on television again and I had to go back to it, after not seeing it in decades, and I have been reading about the 1956 TEA AND SYMPATHY in those old "Films and Filming" magazines I got a batch of recently which led to digging out the dvd of that .... both are very 'gay interest' titles and maybe time to re-evaluate them ...

MIDNIGHT COWBOY, 1969 -The streets of New York are mean and dirty and paved with broken dreams in this Oscar-winning (the first X-rated film to win Best Picture Oscar) tale about the friendship between Jon Voight's rather dumb Texan gigolo/hustler and Dustin Hoffman's ratty grifter. The performances are so good you find yourself truly caring about this poor, luckless pair, and the film's late '60s period detail has its own charm too, as we take in that scuzzy New York of the time, and the Warhol crowd (Viva and others are here).

This was a hugely important movie at the time, and we all loved it. I liked the book too, by James Leo Herlihy (author of ALL FALL DOWN), and Schlesinger's film is a good adaptation, if a bit confusing in the flashbacks to what happened in Texas, setting dumb stud Joe Buck on his odyssey to New York where he finds all manner of lowlife as his dreams of becoming a stud to rich ladies is soon in tatters. 

There is that amusing scene with pickup Sylvia Miles in a scene-stealing few moments, as well as Brenda Vaccaro as the rich girl in a fur coat, and preacher John McGiver, and that poor kid in the cinema ..... The ending is suitably affecting as the greyhound bus arrives in Florida. Voight was probably never as good again (though he won the Oscar for COMING HOME in 1977) and of course Ratso is one of Hoffman's defining roles. Waldo Salt's screenplay and Schlesinger's direction are first rate as is the music score by John Barry and that song "Everybody's Talkin'" by Nilsson. It all defines the late Sixties.

TEA AND SYMPATHY probably defines the mid-Fifties too, a successful play by Robert Anderson, filmed by Vincente Minnelli in 1956, with the Kerrs - Deborah and John (no relation) recreating their stage roles, along with Leif Ericson as Kerr's husband and sports coach. 

Tom Lee is a sensitive boy of 17 whose lack of interest in the "manly" pursuits of sports, mountain climbing and girls labels him "sister-boy" at the college he is attending. Head master Bill Reynold's wife Laura sees Tom's suffering at the hands of his school mates (and her husband), and tries to help him find himself.

No wonder the play is not revived these days, it is excruciating to today's sensibilities, and the film never gets screened either - I don't recall it ever playing in Ireland either during my time there - it may have been banned!. I have been planning to return to Minnelli and his musicals and dramas, and have several lined up: THE BELLS ARE RINGING in 1960, KISMET, BRIGADOON and his comedy that I like a lot (purely for the Harrisons, Rex and Kay) 1958's THE RELUCTANT DEUBTANTE and his 1957 DESIGNING WOMAN - so there will be more on these soon - see Minnelli label for THE BANDWAGON  (maybe my favourite musical ever) and others like his 1962 drama TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN. Of course his other dramas include SOME CAME RUNNING, HOME FROM THE HILL, that remake of FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE and his delightful comedy THE COURTSHIP OF EDDIE'S FATHER, all during his great period of the 1950s and early 60s. We caught up with GOODBYE CHARLIE too a year or so ago, as per preview, again- Minnelli label.

Back to TEA AND SYMPATHY: Vaguely effeminate boy (sensitive features, wavy hair, bouncy walk) with 'unmanly' interests (poetry, classical and folk music) and 'unmanly' accomplishments (sewing, gardening, playing the guitar) is believed to be "not a regular sort of fellow" by his father, his bruiser of a housemaster, and his fellow college students, every single one of whom sport crewcuts, and enjoy mountaineering, swimming, ball games, horsing around, strength contests, boasting about non-existent sexual conquests and smashing their tennis shots.... It is very easy to laugh at this sort of thing,of course, and years on TEA AND SYPMATHY is a laughable antique, its characters being so blatantly contrived to suit the author's ends.

Of course the censorship problems of the time (Homosexuality was a taboo subject in '50s Hollywood) required the film to be bracketed by a new start and end showing that Laura regretted her "sacrifice" of giving herself to Tom to prove that he was normal and not homosexual (gay was hardly the word here). Tom is now married as he revisits his old school, and gets that letter from Laura from her ex-husband .... and we flash back to how it all began, of course a lot of the boys and the coach seem more gay than poor "sister boy" Tom who is happy sewing with the women and listening to music, rather than playing sports and being one of the gang. It is all deliciously quaint now, but Minnelli gives it his usual gloss and makes it look good with good scope compositions and his usual flair for decor. 

Deborah is as one would expect sensitive, stong and understanding as Laura. Edward Andrews is at his most venal as Tom's father (a narrow-minded crude character) who is disappointed in him and has a horror of him "being different" and wants the coach to make a man of him! Perhaps the play (and Minnelli's movie) can be seen as a ruthless portrayal of the "straights" - Tom's father is a really dumb man, and most of the boys and the other women are insensitive types. There's Jacqueline De Wit again (obnoxious Mona Plash in Sirk's critique of small town American society: ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS) horrified at the idea of a boy sewing. 
A problem for me is that John Kerr is just not very interesting as an actor, here he is 25 playing 17, and he is all wrong (he was also wrong in SOUTH PACIFIC) - he often comes across as sullen and obnoxious, no wonder the other guys don't want him around and tease him by calling him "sister boy", he also has an annoying monotone voice. I would rather have seen Joan Fontaine and Anthony Perkins (who replaced the Kerrs on stage) in the roles. Its certainly a fascinating oddity now proving that Tom cannot possibly be gay if he slept with Deborah Kerr, as her adultery (for which she must pay) cures him of worries about his masculinity. On, those Fifties ! 

I suppose the film has historical importance. It provides a good perspective for comparing gaylife now to the mid-1950s - when this movie was made. Of course a generation ago the subject could not be hinted at - here in the TEA AND SYMPATHY era gayness is a problem to be avoided, in the early 60s ADVISE AND CONSENT era only the bad guy was gay or queer and of course in VICTIM the good guy had been gay once, was sorry about it, and hoped he would never do it again .... ADVISE AND CONSENT review at gay interest label, or May 2012 Archive.
The film is representative of people's sentiments then as the success of the play showed - apart from Deborah Kerr and Joan Fontaine playing it in New York, Ingrid Bergman did it in Paris. 

Julia ? On the Beach ? The Arrangement ?

This week I am looking at and revaluating some "prestige" films that were  big in their day,  but do they still stand up now ? JULIA, ON THE BEACH, THE ARRANGEMENT.

JULIA was one of those hits from 1977 which we all went to at the time, and have been rather forgotten about since - THE TURNING POINT was another one - I will return to that later, when I have re-seen it. 

Looking at JULIA now it screams "prestige cinema" but it sees to have been has been debunked - just how much of it is true? Did Lillian Hellman make it all up? - its part of her memoir "Pentimento". It does all seem rather phoney now. Every scene is designed to be impressive, starting with the older Hellmann fishing in her boat at dawn, then that perfect period beach shack she shares with writer Dashiell Hammett (Jason Robards, to the manner born) as they fry fish on the beach - Cape Cod presumably. It is 1934 as we see from the calendar on the wall - the time of the Great Depression and Roosevelt's New Deal. Hellmann is also a writer (after her success with the play THE CHILDREN'S HOUR), but with writer's block as we see her grappling with that old typewriter. Jane Fonda is actually ideal here, in her 70s prime, like a young Katharine Hepburn. The fastidious Fred Zinnemann carefully fashions it all - I like his other great movies like FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, THE NUN'S STORY, THE SUNDOWNERS and he always gets superior perforances from his actors, and so it is here ....

Then the plot begins - we get flashbacks to her youth with her great friend Julia, with her wealthy grandmother Cathleen Nesbitt, and then their years at Oxford - all golden spires, and Vanessa Redgrave radiant as Julia striding around in her tweeds  while declaiming the brave new future to come ... but then of course the War intervenes .... and Julia devotes her life to fighting fascism, putting her life in danger ...

The central scene has Lillian meeting Julia in a restaurant, but they have to be very careful in case they are being watched. Julia is now on crutches .... and has a mission for Lillian to smuggle money (in her hat!)  As a thriller though its rather suspense-less. Max Schell appears as Julia's friend Johann, and the young Meryl Streep has that minute appearance. There is that train journey - will Lillian get the money throiugh safely?. But then the plot goes haywire, and suddenly Julia is dead. Lillian goes to see the body in a suburban funeral parlour (with Maurice Denham) and tries to find the baby Julia supposedly had.   

It is all still watchable, but I think we have to take it with a large pinch of salt. Redgrave and Robards both won Best Supporting Oscars here and it was nominated for a slew of other including best picture and director. It was Zinnemann's last big success (he did just one more), great score by Georges Delerue, and lensed by Douglas Slocombe. Fonda of course is a far prettier Hellman. 

ON THE BEACH

I really cannot find much to say about ON THE BEACH, that big one from 1959 by Stanley Kramer from the Nevil Shute novel. Shute's novels usually featured big ideas: aviation in NO HIGHWAY IN THE SKY, war in A TOWN LIKE ALICE and only the end of the world in ON THE BEACH. Kramer like Kazan, was big in the 50s and early 60s, with those self-important movies on big themes, like THE DEFIANT ONES, INHERIT THE WIND, JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBURG (with their great star turns) and this one set in Australia. Even Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner cannot make it sing as the ponderous affair also drags down Fred Astaire and Tony Perkins as the young naval husband. It is actually set in 1964 as atomic war wipes out humanity in the northern hemisphere; 

one American submarine finds temporary safe haven in Australia, where life-as-usual covers growing despair, as they wait for the radiation to reach them. The only interesting sequence is the submarine returning to San Francisco to investigate a tapping noise (which turns out to be a trapped blind cord), but where is everybody as there is no sign of dead bodies?. Did everyone just vaporise? The end coda couldn't be more in your face: that slogan "There is still time, brother"! That must have wowed them in 1959 as The Cold War escalated, it was one of the main films of that great year - but it simply does not stand the test of time and is a colossal bore now. One simply wants to fast-forward through most of it. 

THE ARRANGEMENT. Elia Kazan of course had his great decade in the 1950s, but like a lot of other once important directors may have felt left behind by the late sixties. THE ARRANGEMENT is from his own novel and it is all just too much as Kazan throws everything at us. Kirk Douglas is the business executive sick of the rat race his life as become as he deliberately crashes his car in that grim traffic scene. Deborah Kerr, getting rather matronly by then, is his worried steely wife doing all she can to help him rehabilitate himself, as he keeps flashing back to his exciting mistress Gwen - Faye Dunaway at the height of her glossy '60s glamour - who keeps taunting him about what he could have been. 

She does have that memorable line: "The screwing I'm getting is not worth the screwing I am getting". But it is all too much and too overwrought as Kirk fixates on his old Greek father Richard Boone and his nude frolics at the beach with Gwen ...

Eddie is a very rich man who has everything he wants; money, family, success, but a car crash causes him to reevaluate the life he leads. Searching for the happiness he lost, he remembers his one-time lover, Gwen, even as his wife conspires to take his fortune...

Like AMERICAN BEAUTY, Kazan's story looks anew at The American Dream and finds it wanting; looking at it now it is not as bad as some reviews said at the time, there's lots of interesting ideas here, but Kazan throws it all at us without being able to streamline it.  Right: Dunaway and Kazan.

Separate Tables, 1958

Terence Rattigan's 1954 play SEPARATE TABLES is a Fifties time capsule now, capturing as it does that genteel Bournemouth hotel with its residents at their separate tables ... the play is in two acts, with the main two leads playing different characters in each act, the other residents stay the same. In the original production it was Eric Porter and Margaret Leighton. But the Hecht-Hill-Lancaster production team when they made the popular 1958 film in Hollywood, combined them both into one continuous narrative, thus 4 stars were required for the main 4 characters, who are now Burt and Rita Hayworth, and David Niven and Deborah Kerr. This required a lot of dexterous pruning of the original script, which Rattigan himself did with John Gay and an uncredited John Michael Hayes. 

In the theatre when played as two acts, the acts are 18 months apart time-wise, but in the film we are in the continuous timeframe of the first act. This means a lot of the young couple (Rod Taylor and Audrey Dalton, below right) has been removed, and new material inserted, like scenes between Sybil and Mrs Shankland (Kerr and Hayworth) (who do not meet in the two separate act orginal).

The young couple stay as we see them in the first act - but in the second act of the play (18 months later) they are now married with a baby, which takes up all the mother's time - she sides with dragon-lady Mrs Railton-Bell to get the bogus Major, who has been exposed as a fake and a pesterer of women at the cinema, expelled from the hotel. Her husband does not agree and sides with the other residents. It makes for more interesting drama, but all that has to go for the film. 

There is a lot more of Miss Cooper, the hotel manageress, too in the play, but Wendy Hiller managed to scoop Best Supporting Actress for her role in the film. Niven of course won the Best Actor, but it seems a blustering fake performance, but then he is playing a blustering fake. Kerr is marvellous as the downtrodden Sybil, who finally stands up to her bully of a mother - Gladys Cooper being very malevolent here, as she was to Bette Davis in NOW VOYAGER. Hayworth and Lancaster add the Hollywood gloss and are perfectly adequate. The film is one of 1958's big enduring ones, up there with I WANT TO LIVE!, THE DEFIANT ONES, THE BIG COUNTRY, THE VIKINGS, SOUTH PACIFIC, AUNTIE MAME etc. 

I have seen a few other productions - John Schlesinger directed that 1983 television film, long unavailable, which goes back to the two act structure, with Julie Christie and Alan Bates (ther fourth teaming) playing both sets of leads, with Claire Bloom perfect as Miss Cooper, and Irene Worth, a monstrous suburban bully, as Mrs Railton Bell. Liz Smith shines too as the racing-mad spinster and Brian Deacon (from THE TRIPLE ECHO) as the young husband. - as per my fuller review, at Rattigan/Bates/Christie labels, which also goes into another version of Rattigan's work ...

I have now seen a BBC 'Play of the Month'  production of the play from 1970 with Porter and Geraldine McEwan in the lead roles. It is perfectly satisfying but a bit low-key. It is part of the BBC Terence Rattigan boxset (a nice companion to the Noel Coward boxset, again with interesting productions which I must return to), which also includes part of another version I saw on stage in the 70s, with John Mills and Jill Bennett. (As we mentioned previously, Rattigan's original text had the major pestering men in the cinema, but that would never have played back in the Fifties... and certainly not in the film, which suggests there is a future for the Major and Sybil).  

I also saw Rattigan himself at the BFI giving an entertaining talk also in the early 70s. The 1958 film though, directed by Delbert Mann, is the version most people know and like, even though it does not do full justice to the play and Rattigan's plea for tolerance for those who are 'different'. 

War weekend 1: From Here To Eternity

A recent weekend had a spate of war movies on tv, some of which I had not seen in decades, and proved fascinating again now.

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, 1953 – I had not seen this in years, it had almost become a cliché of the Hollywood war movie. Sitting down and watching it from the start, particularly after seeing PEARL HARBOUR again a few days earlier, proved to be totally enthralling, as Zinnemann aided by Daniel Taradash’s screenplay from James Jones’ vast novel, fashions a complex movie with a tight-script aided by that tremendous cast. 

There was a recent short-lived new musical based on the book in London recently which even put back some of the gay material they could not use in 1953, but that could not save it, even with Sir Tim Rice's score.

Little moments here fascinate – those first looks between Monty Clift and Donna Reed, that entertainer at the Congress Club, or those smouldering intense scenes between Lancaster and Deborah Kerr. The brutality of the army is shown as Prewitt (Clift - heart-stoppingly beautiful here in his prime) refuses to box and Maggio (Sinatra) falls foul of brutal Fatso Judson (Borgnine). Those girls toiling at the Congress Club include weary Joan Shawlee and Jean Willes. Mickey Shaughnessy and William Ober also excel. Pearl Harbour when it comes is quick and gripping and its soon that last scene on the ship as Kerr and Reed leave Hawaii. 

Donna Reed’s classy Lorene isn’t as brassy as Jane Russell in THE REVOLT OF MAMIE STOVER (also covering prostitution in those Hawaii years, Jane Russell label) while Kerr is simply a revelation here. 

Michael Bay’s PEARL HARBOUR from 2001 is so inferior in every way to Zinnemann’s classic that one need barely mention it. I just watched again for the main sequence, where the special effects come into their own, while the 3 pretty people grapple with some puerile romantic triangle and then get their revenge on Japan !   
Carl Foreman's all-star 1963 THE VICTORS (a riposte to THE GREAT ESCAPE or THE LONGEST DAY?) was meant to be shown this afternoon, but for some reason was pulled from the tv schedules. At least we have seen it several times and commented on it here - War label.

That 1966 Royal Film Performance ...

Maybe the best line-up ever?  I have posted photos from this event before here, those shots of Julie Christie, Catherine Denueve, Ursula Andress, and then with Leslie Caron and Warren Beatty. I had not realised there was newsreel footage of it, and that it also included Dirk Bogarde, Deborah Kerr, James Fox, Rex Harrison and Rachel Roberts, Christopher Lee, Raquel Welch and more, as well as the stars of the film (BORN FREE) Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers. AND they had a dress rehearsal earlier .... as per below. 

Here are some other shots: Deborah chats to the '60s girls, and Warren noticing Julie being presented to Her Majesty. This apparantly is where they met ... certainly a star-studded evening, the likes of which they don't have now, of course it was 48 years ago! 

 

Deneuve, Lee, Welch, Allen, Andress, Bogarde, Christie, McKenna, Travers

A '60s classic: Night of the Iguana

Almost 1,100 posts and I have not got around to NIGHT OF THE IGUANA ! - maybe the last great film from a Tennessee Williams play, and one of the great dramas of that classic era for them: the '50s and '60s. Also, a key John Huston film from 1964, with maybe the last great roles for Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr. The roles of Hannah Jelkes (Kerr) and Maxine (Ava) seem equally balanced, hard to decide which is the bigger role, we see more of Maxine initially but then Hannah seems to take over in that late great scene with the defrocked Reverend Shannon - for once, Burton is ideally cast here as he rants and rants. Throw in the LOLITA nymphet Sue Lyon and Grayson Hall as that schoolteacher, and of course the old poet Nonno and you have one of the great Williams plays. Its a film one can watch and enjoy on many levels, no matter how often one has seen it (and its certainly rewatchable!) - a great cast performing one of Williams' best plays with great dialogue to savour, by a great director giving full rein to the play and the players.

John Huston makes a terrific film of it all, and it certainly put Puerto Vallerta in Mexico on the map, black and white actually suits it, it might have looked too lurid in colour, and the play - I enjoyed reading it as a teenager - has been suitably modernised for the cinema, taking out those annoying Germans in the background was a good idea! It starts of course with Maxine idling with her 2 beach boys and that tied up iguana (it tastes like chicken apparantly) scrabbling to get free, as the defrocked priest turns up with his latest tour bus of old ladies, led by the fearsome Miss Fellowes (Hall) and her charge Charlotte (Lyon) who has eyes for the bus driver Skip Ward.

Then we get down on their luck sketch artist Hannah Jelkes and her ancient (94 I think) father, the poet, who also turn up. Maxine wants to get rid of them but Rev Shannon intercedes ... Charlotte causes more trouble for Shannon but the tour bus eventually leaves, after the priest saves Miss Fellowes from discovering her real interest in wilful pretty young Charlotte ....he and Hannah have that long soul-bearing conversation where she discloses her erotic encounters and how she and her father travel paying their way with their sketches and poems. Miss Jelkes is quite a hustler in her own way ...
Kerr is brilliant here and gets every nuance of her character, with her lines like "Nothing human disgusts me, Mr. Shannon, unless it's unkind or violent" and how she gained control over her demons by out-lasting them. Then there is "operating on the fantastic level and the realistic level" and of course the iguana "one of God's creatures at the end of his rope" get cut loose and escapes the cooking pot. Ava too is in her element, pushing around her cart of "complimentary rum-cocoas" ...

I liked this enormously when I was 18, back then while new in London it was a treat to travel into the West End and see a big new movie in a first run cinema on a Sunday night, and The Empire in Leicester Square was certainly the ticket, where I saw THE YELLOW ROLLS ROYCE and NIGHT OF THE IGUANA, and I also remember the first run of YESTERDAY TODAY & TOMORROW at the Plaza (now a supermarket where I later saw first runs of AMERICAN GIGOLO and BLOODLINE - well it starred Audrey Hepburn with Romy Schneider and that great cast!).

Bette in the original production

NIGHT OF THE IGUANA has proved to be endurable, and gets staged regularly, I have seen Sian Phillips as Hannah, where she was ideal too. That initial production must have been astonishing, in 1962 - Margaret Leighton a perfect Hannah and Bette Davis going over the top as Maxine, she was not happy in the role and left the production and ended up playing to her fans who came to see Bette camp it up. Ava (a much more sensual and earthy Maxine) and Deborah and Burton do some of their best work in the film, it must have been a fascinating set - Elizabeth Taylor was there as well, as well as Kerr's new husband writer Peter Viertel, an old friend of Huston's. They certainly did Tennessee proud. It was Huston's late great period too, from HEAVEN KNOWS MR ALLISON, THE UNFORGIVEN, THE MISFITS - there is a lot of fun in IGUANA by comparison, and then his late classics like FAT CITY (when I saw him being interviewed at London's BFI) and THE DEAD in '87. I have his UNDER THE VOLCANO with Finney lined upo to see soon too.
 

That Tennessee box set was an essential purchase some years ago in the great days of dvd, with that restored STREETCAR, CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF,  SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH, IGUANA and THE ROMAN SPRING OF MRS STONE. Add in SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, SUMMER AND SMOKE, BABY DOLL, THE ROSE TATTOO, THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED, THE GLASS MENAGERIE, THE FUGITIVE KIND, Losey's very odd BOOM! ... which may only leave his comedy PERIOD OF ADJUSTMENT I have not seen. I also saw his plays like SMALL CRAFT WARNINGS, and of course I love his short stories like "Two On A Party" and "The Malediction". The plays are great to read, and those collected short stories. Claire Bloom was a terrific Blanche too in that 1974 STREETCAR  production, but of course most ladies want to play Blanche - I bet Faye Dunway was a mesmerising one.

'60s comedies: the witty and the witless ...

Two long-unseen '60s comedies were interesting viewings now. GOODBYE CHARLIE from 1964 I did not remember at all, though I did see it at the time, but being 18 or so then, it seems to have made no impression on me. However, it turned out to be a pleasant surprise, as I will return to.

PRUDENCE AND THE PILL, on the other hand, from 1968, I remembered well, and pals and I saw it on its general release. I dare say a comedy about the (then new) contraceptive pill seemed a daring idea at the time, but couldn't it have been funnier?

Prudence is on the pill; so is her sister-in-law, but someone has been swapping aspirin for their pills. Is it the teen-age niece, the maid, the chauffeur, a lover, Prudence's husband, or all of the above?

Available for the first time for home viewing, Prudence and the Pill serves up a comic slice of sixties permissiveness from the days when the oral contraceptive was an exotic and legendary device that few people had any experience of using. Made in Britain by 20th Century Fox, and starring the debonair David Niven and the luminous Deborah Kerr, with vivacious support from 'It' girl Judy Geeson, this film takes us back to 1967's "summer of love", when established morality and codes of sexual behaviour where being turned upside down by new ideas and technology. So grab a gonk (a gonk was a 60s cuddly toy), straighten your mini-skirt and prepare yourself for a bumpy ride courtesy of the imprudent Prudence. 
(so went the hopeful dvd cover blurb, trying to make this feeble comedy into something important...)

This is so dated now, created by middle aged squares who imagined they were being hip and daring, but in fact creating a worthless, unfunny, snobby look at how Americans perceived the English back in that swinging decade. It is a film about posh people - David Niven and Deborah Kerr are frightfully posh and in fact just frightful. 

Their posh house is full of rooms in bilious colours (one longs for Minnelli and those decors and that sure comedy touch in THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE) and Kerr is unflatteringly photographed and costumed (she was getting rather matronly as the '60s progressed and her film career was winding down). She is Prudence and Niven is the husband, both are fed up with each other and having affairs - she with her doctor Keith Michell, and he has his professional mistress, played (amusingly) by professional mistress Irina Demick (Darryl F Zanuck's latest at the time, he put her in several Fox films of the era). The lower classes are represented by their maid Vickery Turner and the chauffeur, they are an item too. Then there is Niven's brother, silly ass Robert Coote, (being very silly ass here) and his wife, Joyce Redman (a rare movie role for her after that scene with Albert Finney in TOM JONES), and their mini-skirted daughter Judy Geeson, who is having it off with boyfriend David Dundas when mum and dad go to the cinema every week, however they return early this time and catch the two of them, in scenes which are painfully unfully and over the top. 

It turns out daughter (god, this is tedious to unfold) was swopping her mother's contraceptive pills with aspirins, and it soon turns out that everyone is swopping pills (which are conveniently sold in bottles and not individually bubble wrapped as now). Niven wants Prudence to get pregnant by her lover, so he swops her pills, the maid though swops Prudence's with the vitamin tablets her boyfriend gives her, and so on.

Dame Edith Evans then makes a few pointless appearances as a dotty aunt - thankfully she is not on the pills or forced to wear a mini-skirt. This farrago was directed by one Fielder Cook and must have appeared dated even before it was shown, back in the groovy decade, its a very square view of London too, where people meet for dinner at The Ritz. The mystery is did either Niven or Kerr, in what, their fifth teaming, really think this material was funny or worthy of them? Deborah did this kind of thing so much better in items like 1960's THE GRASS IS GREENER before the Sixties began to swing. Poor PRUDENCE isn't even campy enough to quality as a Trash Classic.

I did not think GOODBYE CHARLIE would be up to much, a forgotten 1964 comedy, but we are in the hands of experts here. Its from a George Axelrod comedy (which Lauren Bacall played on the stage - though that is no guartantee of quality - I saw, endured APPLAUSE, Bacall label), and directed by Vincente Minnelli - so it looks good. The music is by Andre Previn, and his then wife Dory co-wrote the title tune, its a zinger. I did not think Tony Curtis or Debbie Reynolds could surprise us, but they are nicely on form here - a decent role for Curtis and Debbie is a revelation, and not as grating as her UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN. 

Shot by a jealous husband, Charley falls out a porthole and is lost at sea only to find himself returned as an attractive blond woman. His best friend is staying at his house as he puts Charlie's affairs in order and after being convinced, finds himself an unwilling helper in Charlie's new plan to marry into money.

This is all quite amusing as womaniser Charlie is reincarnated as an attractive blonde, who soon gets a handle on his new situation and how to milk it to his advantage. Pat Boone is just right as the nice rich guy who falls for Charlie. Will Charlie for once do the right thing? Walter Mattheau is deliciously funny as the movie tycoon who shot Charlie, as nicely different here as he was in CHARADE. Joanna Barnes and Ellen Burstyn amuse as two of the wives Charlie dallied with, and now blackmails. It is all worked out quite nicely, as Charlie is reincarnated once again .... So, GOODBYE CHARLIE is a nice feelgood movie, with Tony and Debbie on top form - who knew? It fits nicely into Minnelli's '60s output too. It captures that early 60s grooviness and the showbiz shallowness before the swinging era got underway. The only jarring note is Tony's distaste at the idea of marrying his old pal Charlie, even if he is now a glamorous woman - which seemed unfunny compared to the brilliant "Why would a guy want to marry a guy?" similar scene in the classic SOME LIKE IT HOT.

Soon: another 1964 sex "comedy" - SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL, I saw it but I don't remember it, was it that forgettable? Curtis again, and Natalie surely looking her best, and Dame Bacall ....