A new LUDWIG

I was intrigued to see a new 4-disk Bluray of Luchino Visconti's 1973 opus LUDWIG is about to be released. I already have the 2 disk dvd, but this seemed too good to pass up, so it is on its way to me. We have covered LUDWIG and Visconti, Helmut, Romy, Silvana, Trevor Howard in detail here before, as per the labels - so more on it in due course. It should be a nice companion piece to the new Criterion bluray of Antonioni's BLOW-UP also out next week, and on its way to me from Barnes & Noble in New York. A brace of European classics then, all spruced up for the new era ...

Helmut acquits himself well here, and Romy is sheer perfection as the older, more cynical SISSI, while Trevor Howard and Mangano are ideal as the Wagners. Then there are all those attractive footmen as Ludwig battles his proclivities ... As with all Visconti films costume dramas don't get more opulent, and our perennial favourite Romy is simply stunning as the older Sissi. 
It was great seeing it initially on the large screen at a London Film Festival back then, watching at home it may be too long to see all at once, but ideal in chunks as the opulence washes over one ... its certainly up there with the other Visconti classics like SENSO, THE LEOPARD, L'INNOCENTE ...
Its a terrific package, with a 60 page booklet, a 1999 hour-long documentary on Visconti, when a lot of those who worked with him were still living and interviewed here, a documentary on Mangano and the full version of the film, in two parts, at almost 4 hours (238 minutes) or a 5 part TV version. There's also a new interview with Helmut Berger ..... Essential, then, As one review says: 
Among the scenes you’re most likely to remember – from all the versions – will be Ludwig’s wooing of the young actor Kainz in that glorious underground grotto with the swans and that charming little love boat, and Elizabeth’s visit to Ludwig’s most famous castle in the room with all those mirrors. Visually the film is a near-constant treat, with sets and costumes as gloriously garish and/or stunning as you’ll have seen. And then there’s that hunting lodge scene with all the young men perched atop and around the limbs of the giant tree that grows in the middle of the lodge.

Visconti with Romy & Helmut

Sixties rarity: Nine Hours To Rama, 1963

Another of those long-unseen 20th Century Fox Cinemascope "prestige" films, benefiting from exotic locations and a tense story, even if we know the outcome, from a popular bestseller of the time. I caught it at the time before it vanished ...

NINE HOURS TO RAMA depicts the life of Nathuram Godse the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi. How Godse planned the assassination is shown in the film. How he became a Hindu activist who (unfairly) blamed Gandhi for the killings of thousands of Hindus by Muslims is revealed in a series of flashbacks.

Directed by Fox veteran Mark Robson (he had more success with the thriller THE PRIZE that year) with a polyglot cast browned up as Indians and set in India, it features German Horst Buchholz as the assassin, and Jose Ferrer as the weary police inspector on his trail, trying to catch him before it is too late. It is startling now to see the likes of Robert Morley, Harry Andrews, Diane Baker, Valerie Gearon, Francis Matthews etc as Indians, alongside Marne Maitland and other natives, J.S. Casshyap is an effective Mahatma as the film tries to make sense of those violent years. 
It is though colourful and tense, and Buchholz more or less looks authentic. It took several decades though for a more realistic picture of Gandhi to emerge, in Attenborough's 1982 film. 

1963 was the year of the Kennedy assassination, and like THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, NINE HOURS TO RAMA was taken out of circulation for a while,. 

1962, again ....

We love 1962 here at The Projector. It may be the last great classic Hollywood year, with so many absorbing films (I've listed over 40)  : dramas, musicals, and great British and European films too. I was 16 then and just getting into them all ... seeing them on big screen. That great era of black and white films, with that early Sixties vibe. A different world: no internet or cell phones, no dvds or home entertainment apart from vinyl records, only two television channels in black and white. No wonder cinema was so important to us ... and magazines like "Films and Filming" and "Photoplay" and those American fan mags, after those "Picture Show" and "Fans Star Library" years, we had not graduated to "Sight and Sound" yet!

1963, 1964 and 1965 had their share of great movies too, but not as many as 1962, after that new decade began in 1960 with PSYCHO and L'AVVENTURA, and 1961 had classics like BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S, THE MISFITS and Brando's brooding ONE EYED JACKS, while the New Hollywood was coming into shape in 1966 (Lumet's THE GROUP, MGM bankrolling Antonioni's BLOW-UP), and arrived with BONNIE & CLYDE and IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT in 1967,while 1968 brought forth 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY and solid entertainments like OLIVER! and THE LION IN WINTER, while 1969's best film was MIDNIGHT COWBOY.

But some of those 1962 titles are so long:

• WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?
• LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT
• DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES
• EXPERIMENT IN TERROR
• SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH
• THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALLANCE
• TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN
• LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA
• HEMINGWAY'S ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG MAN
• THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER
• TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
• THE MIRACLE WORKER
• ADVISE AND CONSENT
• THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
• ALL FALL DOWN
• BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ
• WALK ON THE WILD SIDE
• THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE
• LOLITA
• BILLY BUDD
• L'ECLISSE
• JULES ET JIM
• SUNDAYS AND CYBELE
• A KIND OF LOVING
• THE CHAPMAN REPORT
• LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
• SODOM AND GOMORRAH
• BOCCACCIO 70

  

  A KIND OF LOVING

• THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL
• FIVE MILES TO MIDNIGHT
• THE CONDEMNED OF ALTONA
• THE LONGEST DAY
• HOW THE WEST WAS WON
• CAPE FEAR
• DR NO
• THE MUSIC MAN
• GYPSY
• JUMBO
• HATARI!
• THE TRIAL
• PHAEDRA
• KNIFE IN THE WATER
• CLEO FROM 5 TO 7
• REACH FOR GLORY
• MR HOBBS TAKES A VACATION.

Lots on these at 1962 label ..... maybe only 1959 has as many noteworthy movies?

I now feel like digging out my 1962 "Films and Filming" magazines and re-live them all.

Last summer re-view: La Isla Del Sol

As summer ebbs away here and autumn sets in, our final summer re-view is, appropriately, ISLAND IN THE SUN (or as my Spanish dvd calls it LA ISLA DEL SOL), that sun-drenched trashfest/engrossing drama from 20th Century Fox in 1957, with fascinating casting and it all looks gorgeous, as per my earlier review.  To recap:

ISLAND IN THE SUN. “Scandal, political intrigue and inter-racial romance on a steamy Caribbean island” – well, that’s what the blurb says, and continues: “Its 1957 on the tropical island of Santa Mara (so no, its not Jamaica) where a charismatic new black leader threatens to unseat British rule.” The result though is an engrossing two hours as several plotlines converge around the leading players. Joan Fontaine has a chaste romance with Harry Belafonte (despite the posed still above they do not touch in the film) Which Cannot Be, so they have to give each other up, but it gives her a chance to wear some nice summer outfits and halter tops, with white gloves of course. 
Joan Collins also gets to wear some nifty outfits as she romances a stolid Stephen Boyd (an English lord !); James Mason gets into a murderous rage over his wife’s relationship with Michael Rennie; Dorothy Dandridge (CARMEN JONES) is lovely but rather wasted, and Diana Wynyard is good support, along with John Williams as the police chief tracking down the murderer. 

It was a best-selling novel by Alec Waugh  (a brother of Evelyn) and Darryl F Zanuck produces and gives it that 20th Century Fox plush Cinemascope look mixing in contract players like Boyd, Collins, Patricia Owens, with the more established stars, so another 20th Century Fox literary potboiler like their PEYTON PLACE, THE SUN ALSO RISES, THE WAYWARD BUS, SANCTUARY, THE SOUND AND THE FURY, HEMINGWAY'S ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG MAN. The island here could be a mix of Barbados and Grenada and is a set-designer’s dream. The title song is one of the first pop hits I remember ... A star-studded entertaining chunk of trash then from director Robert Rossen, for a damp afternoon, and so very 1957. 
PS on Fontaine & Belafonte - it caused a furore in America in the '60s when Petula Clark touched him when they were singing on one of her tv shows .... so imagine the fuss in 1957 ! Poor Joan received hate mail! On location, it was the other Joan - La Collins - who got to first base with Harry.

Summer re-views: for the RVT boys

The Royal Vauxhall Tavern, one of London's oldest gay pubs, is a Grade II listed entertainment venue, which has been catering to confirmed bachelors and their friends ever since it was a music hall in a previous incarnation. I had a lot of pleasant evenings there myself; it now has a free film club on the 1st of every month, and this evening's choice is - wait for it - WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? so I am sure the boys in the band will be singing out the lines along with Bette and Joan. Take it away guys: "Butcha are in that wheelchair, Blanche, you are ... " and that delicious end line: "You mean all these years we could have been friends". Here once again is the BABY JANE cover from my favourite magazine ... (I was 17 when I got that issue in 1963). 

Kim Novak x 2: Boys Night Out / Of Human Bondage

Time for a Kim Novak double feature. We like Kim here at The Projector, one of those essential '50s stars - like Janet Leigh. 1958 must have been her zenith year, not only Hitch's VERTIGO (below) but I also like her other one that year with Jimmy Stewart: Quine's BELL BOOK AND CANDLE (right) where she surely never looked better - reviewed at Kim label.. (It was his last as a leading man, as touching 50 he slid into character roles next year, with ANATOMY OF A MURDER and was soon playing those bumbling fathers in 20th Century Fox comedies and in some good westerns). 

I remember being fascinated as a kid by Kim in THE EDDIE DUCHIN STORY where she appeared impossibly glamorous (before dying tragically), she is adequate in PAL JOEY and JEANNE EAGLES. This item is from a 1965 feature on movie stars in my favourite magazine "Films And Filming" by Douglas McVay (author of "The Musical Film").:

A few years ago, Kim Novak mounted a challenge to Liz Taylor: sailing up the evening river on her floral barge as the Labour Day queen in PICNIC (and that dance with William Holden); conducting touching love affairs in MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT and STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET; and being ideally cast as the witch in BELL BOOK AND CANDLE (one particularly cherishes some literally enthralling close-ups of the luscious sorceress holding her equally seductive Siamese blue Pyewacket). More recently, however, with slightly tatty offerings like THE NORTORIOUS LANDLADY and OF HUMAN BONDAGE, Kim’s goddess-potential has tended to peter out.

That was written in 1965, and 50 years later Kim is still here (82 this year) and we are still talking about her and watching her - I have a few of hers to see including the 1962 comedy BOYS’ NIGHT OUT – not seen that since its release, ditto the 1964 supposedly dreadful version of  OF HUMAN BONDAGE where Kim as the slutty waitress Mildred (one of Bette Davis’s best early roles in the 1934 version) and Laurence Harvey famously hated each other. It’s a confusing film – Henry Hathaway walked off it early so direction was taken over by Ken Hughes, Bryan Forbes wrote the script and also appears and t was filmed in Dublin, so there are several Irish players, like Siobhan McKenna, as well as Robert Morley and …..

I must also dig out a 1983 tele-series MALIBU, one of those lush American soaps. Kim is the realtor, and cast includes Troy Donahue, George Hamilton, Chad Everett. Also of course in the early sixties there was her Polly the Pistol in Billy Wilder’s KISS ME STUPID, an acquired taste for some but she acquits herself well here. THE AMOROUS ADVENTURES OF MOLL FLANDERS may be simple fun and a rip off of TOM JONES, but the cast is the thing here: not only Kim but Vittorio De Sica, Angela Lansbury, Lilli Palmer and George Sanders as well as a huge raft of British players of the time:

I simply did not care for THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE at all, though it is a camp classic for some. Kim also pops up in the intriguing JUST A GIGOLO in 1977, but the film belongs to David Bowie and Marlene Dietrich in her few final minutes on screen … (review at Kim label), and she is hilarious in those bitchy scenes with Taylor in the 1980 THE MIRROR’S CRACKED …..

BOYS NIGHT OUT:  I saw this one from 1962,  but could barely remember it as it had never surfaced anywhere since. That early Sixties was a good time for romantic comedies pushing the sexual boundaries of the era. I also liked COME SEPTEMBER from 1961 (where Rock and Gina are a treat - with Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin for us teens - but don't bother with Rock and Gina in 1965's absolutely dreadful STRANGE BEDFELLOWS, totally unfunny and set in a Hollywood backstage version of London). 1963's SUNDAY IN NEW YORK is another terrific one, with the young trio of Jane Fonda, Rod Taylor and Cliff Robertson - as per my review (Fonda label). 

Fred, George, Doug and Howie are quickly reaching middle-age. Three of them are married, only Fred is still a bachelor. They want something different than their ordinary marriages, children and TV-dinners. In secret, they get themselves an apartment with a beautiful young woman, Kathy, for romantic rendezvous. But Kathy does not tell them that she is a sociology student researching the sexual life of the white middle-class male.

The delicious thing about BOY'S NIGHT OUT is that early sixties decor in that apartment. Its lush. The film itself is a pleasant timewaster now and didn't do much for Kim - or Garner - but the guest stars amuse: Jessie Royce Landis, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Patti Page, Fred Clark. Jim Backus etc. Directed by Michael Gordon of PILLOW TALK and other frothy items. 

OF HUMAN BONDAGE. Again, not seen here since its 1964 release, I saw it but it was a distant memory, I knew it was panned, and how, at the time. Seems Kim and Harvey (as one note as ever) loathed each other and it was a troubled production with original director Henry Hathaway walking, and Bryan Forbes more or less taking over (so Mrs Forbes, "the lovely Nanette Newman", is the nice girl at the end), though its credited to Ken Hughes. It could be a Trash Classic or a more interesting B-Movie for those in the mood. The Dublin locations and Irish supporting players are of interest now, but its obvious the young Bette Davis owns the role of Mildred (in the 1934 original (right)).  We will have another look at Kim's amusing THE ADVENTURES OF MOLL FLANDERS again soon ... 

People We Like: Gerard Philipe

KNAVE OF HEARTS, 1954

It was tragic that Gerard Philipe (1922-1959) died so young, of cancer, aged 36 in 1959 - just as those new guys Delon and Belmondo were taking off. (that other attractive French actor Henri Vidal also died that year, aged 40 - of a heart attack). Philipe was such an attractive presence and would surely have achieved so much more. He didn't even need to go to Hollywood ... his first big hit was FANFAN LA TULIPE in 1952 for Christian-Jacque, with luscious Gina Lollobrigida, its still a delicious adventure now.

KNAVE OF HEARTS (or MONSIEUR RIPOIS) Rene Clement’s 1954 film about a romantic Frenchman on the loose in London and his conquests, including young Joan Greenwood at her loveliest – their scenes in the rain are very lyrical. It is cleverly done with Clement shooting on the streets of London (with mostly hidden cameras) 5 years before the New Wave were doing the same in Paris. The fillm exists in French and English versions and it was great seeing it again at the BFI on the big screen a few years ago.

Philipe is mesermising with those soulful eyes magnified on the large screen –  He is one of the LA RONDE merry-go-round in Ophuls 1950 classic. I still have several others of his lined up to watch in that 'pending pile': THE CHARTERHOUSE OF PARMA, LE ROUGE ET LE NOIR, BELLES DE NUIT, POT BOULLE.

LES AMANTS DE MONTPARNASSE is a standard biopic from 1957 about painter Modigliani starving in a garret in Paris, Philipe is just right here with Anouk Aimee and Lilli Palmer as his contrasting lovers ...

In all he clocked up 35 credits, according to IMDB - so he crammed a lot into those 36 years!. Vadim's 1959 LES LAISIONS DANGEROUSES with Jeanne Moreau sees him in a last main leading role - I have already reviewed it here - Philipe, Moreau labels. His final film, FEVER MOUNTS AT EL PAO, a Mexican oddity by Luis Bunuel is now available on dvd and blu-ray. We will continue enjoying seeing Gerard Philipe on screen ...

The 1959 "Who's Who in Hollywood" says: "GERARD PHILIPE of Rouge et Noir and Lovers of Paris is to French audiences what Bill Holden, Tab Hunter and Cary Grant are to Americans (or Dirk Bogarde to the British). And "art house" devotees here are pretty gone on him too. A leading star of the French theatre Gerard was recently in this country with the Theatre National Populaire, as actor-director. The dark-haired, boyish-looking charmer started his career at 19 and has been happily married for several years". 

Dirk in 1971

I came across a fascinating long interview with Dirk Bogarde by Gordon Gow in the May 1971 200th issue of one of my favourite magazines "Films and Filming", about the time Dirk was promoting Visconti's DEATH IN VENICE. (As I have recounted here before, I met him about 6 months before this interview, at the London BFI in November 1970 where he gave a very entertaining lecture and Q&A session, and he autographed the programme for me afterwards when I managed to have a quick conversation with him). 

Dirk always gave good interview and this one is choice. I must quote some extracts .... as he talks about Marilyn Monroe, and various films of his like THE SPANISH GARDENER, THE SERVANT, ACCIDENT and DEATH IN VENICE. He talks a lot about Visconti here, and was particularly fond of SENSO. 

"Marilyn had this intangible wistfulness … in BUS STOP she was magical. Do you remember the scene where she gets her tatty old train ripped off her by a man at a café table when she is doing her act? Do you remember her look of pain and rage and despair?

THE SPANISH GARDENER: “In those days they wouldn’t have anything to do with homosexuality. The whole premise of the original story was that a small boy, without any sexual knowledge, fell in love with the gardener because he had no love at all from his parents. He had no mother and a perfectly foul father. This sort of thing so often happens. The whole story tilted on the fact that the father became incurably jealous because he was sexually in love with the gardener. And of course that did not come through because then we were supposed to be making nice wholesome pictures. In the end nothing worked out, I wasn’t killed as the gardener was in the book. We made it all nice for the Odeon circuit. It was so absurd and shameful I did not go and see it, but the old aunties and uncles loved it." (In the book, a best-seller by A.J. Cronin, Jose the gardener is 19 - Bogarde was 35 at the time, and the character was not killed off as in the novel, as Rank created a false happy ending to send audiences home happy).   

He is not especially fond of his work in THE SERVANT. “It amuses me. It was enormous fun to do – it was no effort. It was entirely technical to act. Harold Pinter had written it so unfailingly that you couldn’t put a foot wrong in it. I was surrounded with only the very best people, and it was as easy as falling off a log. But THE SERVANT will be a classic film for all time. I know – whatever happens to me – I will be in the archives because of THE SERVANT. In its entirety of course, its an important film. Especially now we know all about LSD – surprise, surprise. Apparanty audiences didn’t now about LSD when the film was first shown, and none of the critics did either, and the whole ending is LSD – the boy is on a trip. I’ve seen it again in America recently and it stands up, and it is absolutely chilling in German – more than that, it’s a towering picture. But from my point of view it cost me very little emotionally, because I’m nothing to do with the man I played in THE SERVANT so it was easy to become a North country bastard called Barrett and his compulsion to dominate." Shame he was not asked about Gabriel, his high camp arch-villain in Losey's 1966 MODESTY BLAISE ... (one of my essential movies). Left: a MODESTY publicity shot.

He says though that ACCIDENT is the best film Losey and Bogarde did together. “I was very aware of the emotions of the man in ACCIDENT and I was almost in a trance for about four months after I’d finished it. …. I put all the clothes and shoes that I wore for the character into a trunk and locked them up. I wore them later in JUSTINE and left them all behind me in Hollywood, so they may come up for sale in 20^th Century Fox’s lot. I got rid of them, you see, because the man I had been in ACCIDENT was dead and I didn’t want his clothes  - locked them away as you would with the clothes of anybody who has died in a sudden car crash. JUSTINE was much later and Pursewarden was a different man." (I saw and reviewed ACCIDENT again recently, scroll down or over the page..).

"Aschenbach in DEATH IN VENICE is the ultimate loser. He’s a dying man, he goes to Venice for the last months of his life. After years of rigorous and strict belief that beauty is created by man, he suddenly finds at dinner one night that God, quite alone by Himself, all up there in Heaven, has created a piece of beauty sitting across the soup plate … a youth of such beauty that Aschenbach can’t believe it. … Before he dies he sees that God was right and man was wrong. That God is in fact the creator of beauty … I do believe there is a higher power, and I don’t know any other word for it but God. I think our future is formed: whether you go and play golf on the moon or get squashed by a truck on a French bypass. Its all shaped."

Bogarde now lives in his house in France, at Grasse, eschewing the crowded beaches below and settling for a hose-down in his back garden. He is waiting for Alain Resnais to give him the word to start work on a film about the Marquis de Sade, but money has been difficult to raise. “I’ve got a very pleasant place to live in now. Sufficient money to exist for the rest of my life if I’m very careful. I can manage … DEATH IN VENICE could well be the finish for me. I don’t want to go back to the things I did before – the DOCTORS and all that rubbish. If DEATH IN VENICE fails, I’ll stay with it as a failure. If it’s a success, and my performance in it has worked, then perhaps it’s the film I’ve always been wanting to make – and I might someday go and do another somewhere, but I’m not anxious." 

Of course that Resnais film did not happen - Dirk as the Marquis de Sade would have been interesting! - , but he and Resnais did the wonderful PROVIDENCE in 1977, and by then he had began his series of memoirs and novels as he became a best-selling writer. 
His later books like "A Short Walk From Harrods" recount his later French years and his and partner Tony Forwood's return to London due to ill-health - where he died in 1999 aged 78. Interesting too to read about the LSD in THE SERVANT, It did seem that Tony (James Fox) was drugged at the end, but I did not imagine it could have been LSD! (We certainly knew about LSD in 1968 when we were seeing The Doors and Jefferson Airplane in concert and the 2001 film on acid, but hardly early in the decade). 
It was interesting too seeing THE SERVANT again on the big screen a couple of year ago, as I have recounted previously, at the Curzon Soho, to tie in with its Blu-ray release, with co-stars Fox, Sarah Miles and Wendy Craig present, to discuss the film and their memories of working with Dirk and Losey, both of whom I had seen (separately) back in 1970 when I was a mere 24. Left: Bogarde at the BFI in 1970.
LOTS more Bogarde at the labels ....  

1966 and all that ...

Its official, 1966 is now 50 years ago - those of us who were young then, and there will have fond memories .... as I shall return to.

After some good reviews I just had to order this new book by music journalist Jon Savage, taking us through the year month by month, mainly focusing on the music - all those fab singles out every week and those groundbreaking albums. I did not realise though it would be such a heavy tome of 650 pages ... too big to carry around for casual reading on the train!  Let's look at the blurb:

2016 will see the 50th anniversary of defining year in global pop cultural history, 1966. Jon Savage's exploration of the key highs, lows and revolutionary moments, will be at the centre of reflection on what made that year so uniquely resonant. extraordinary year in popular culture.

'The 'Sixties', as we have come to know them, hit their Modernist peak. A unique chemistry of ideas, substances, freedom of expression and dialogue across pop cultural continents created a landscape of immense and eventually shattering creativity. After 1966 nothing in the pop world would ever be the same. The 7 inch single outsold the long-player for the final time.

Jon Savage's 1966 is a monument to the year that shaped the pop future of the balance of the century. Exploring canonical artists like The Beatles, The Byrds, Velvet Underground, The Who and The Kinks, 1966 also goes much deeper into the social and cultural heart of the decade through unique archival primary sources.

From Haight Ashbury to pirate radio, via the prosecution of the Rollling Stones and the arrival of the first double-album by a major artist (Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde), 1966 represents both a watershed and a high water mark in post war culture,

This book has music at its heart – whether looking at Joe Meek, Motown, Stax, the Velvet Underground, the Byrds, the Kinks, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band or Tom Jones; music both reflected the times and changed them. From songs of protest – to those lampooning the protesters - from folk rock to soul and the emergence of rock, music pours forth from the pages and will make you reach for your own collections to play those songs, which still sound so fresh and relevant today

England was at the forefront of the new changes in the air, a trend picked up by TIME magazine with their Swinging London cover story ..... other British successes included all those trendy films, the new Hovercraft crossing the channel on a cushion of air, the Harrier Jump Jet, and of course England winning the World  Cup. But what did 1966 mean to me? How was I living then? 

Well I was just 20, and finally left my bedsitter/furnished room in North London where I had been since I arrived in London in April 1964, aged 18. My younger brother had arrived in London too and took over my room, as I moved on .... I had found a room in smart Bayswater, sharing a large apartment in Queens Gardens - where I played Bob Dylan and Francoise Hardy 4-track Extended Play disks, and Paul Simon's "I Am A Rock", and The Beatles RUBBER SOUL was still top of the charts - as would their REVOLVER later that year.  . I could walk up to Notting Hill Gate at night, for late night movies at the Classic Cinema, and began exploring the city and going to the theatre. There were some good shows that year: FUNNY GIRL with that new sensation Barbara Streisand - which I saw from the front row! and THE ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN up in the cheap seats at the Old Vic. THE KING'S MARE was an amusing comedy about Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves, which I enjoyed and some evening when I was out in theatreland I passed the stage door and there was actress Jane Merrow so we had a great conversation - as she sang a song in the play based on a Bob Dylan tune ... I had liked her in THE SYSTEM - it turned out she was David Hemmings' girlfriend at the time. I did not know then that he was off making BLOW-UP for Antonioni at the time - that would be the sensation of 1967 in the then swinging city. We prowled around the Prince of Wales theatre too hoping (in vain) to see Streisand - but got her co-star Kay Medford instead. There was also Ingrid Bergman's success in A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY, I got the cast autographs for that - and was taken backstage by a showbiz acquintance to meet the cast of the hilarious THE ANNIVERSARY and they all signed the programme: Michael Crawford, Sheila Hancock, Mona Washbourne, June Ritchie, Jack Hedley, James Cossins - most of them were in the 1968 film.

The movies just kept coming: I joined the crowd at the premiere of MODESTY BLAISE hoping Monica Vitti would be there, she was not but I saw Dirk Bogarde with Rosella Falk (Mrs Fothergill) on his arm, Monica, Dirk and Terry were my pin-ups of the year.. Other hits of the year were Bergman's PERSONA, Lelouch's UNE HOMME ET UNE FEMME (where Anouk Aimee was perfection, when not endlessly fiddling with her hair), and Sophia Loren and Gregory Peck wonderful together in ARABESQUE - a very 60s confection. WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? was a stunner Malle's VIVA MARIA has the 'house full' sign up when a friend and I turned up to see it at The Curzon in Mayfair. (still here, for now, as the developers move in). "Films and Filming" and "Sight & Sound" kept us up to date with all the new movies.  

I used to go to the big Classic cinema in Baker Street for revivals (not having a television then), and that new vegetarian store Cranks had opened next to it, I was in there one day and there was a small Japanese woman shopping next to me - I knew she was Yoko Ono, then (before John Lennon) a performance artist and avant garde film-maker (her film with all those naked bottoms!)  who featured in those new Sunday supplements. Another Sunday supplement regular was artist David Hockney - I went too to one of those new gay bars in Pembridge Road, Notting Hill - and recognised him there - looking at me, with the peroxide hair and the round glasses - perhaps he was over from California? I did not linger though and left after finishing my drink .... perhaps if I had stayed I might have been one of those boys in a blue pool ...

It was time though to move again - we moved a lot in those days, sharing apartments for maybe 6 monhs or so. Now it was on to West Kensington sharing a pad with 2 friends of a friend - it was just a temporary thing - Julie Christie it seemed lived in an apartment block there which we passed a lot, but never saw her., I saw that famous World Cup win there on a small black and white set (it was still the era of just two TV channels - imagine! - which closed down early and no colour) - no wonder young people were out making music and being creative and creating their own events. 

Finally, that autumn it was down to Clapham South, where I became a South London boy, sharing another flat with Stanley - who turned out to be my best friend, until he died in 1992 - we sharing flats on and off up to the early '70s and again later in the mid-80s before romance took me off to the South Coast for a decade or more .... We finally got television then, and that new trendy station BBC2 opened - LATE NIGHT LINE UP, MAN ALIVE documentaries - including one on those still illegal gays dancing in their clubs and wearing white polo neck sweaters; the popular soap THE NEWCOMERS, and crime series Z-CARS and even DIXON OF DOCK GREEN; DR WHO (Patrick Troughton) at Saturday teatime followed by THE SIMON DEE SHOW - all in shades of gray, and Sunday afternoon drama serials like a great THREE MUSKETEERS with Jeremy Brett, and KENILWORTH.on BBC2. It was also the year of that hard-ditting drama CATHY COME HOME and saw the start of Alf Garnett in TILL DEATH DO US PART. Later in the decade we loved those comedy shows like ME MAMMY (Anna Manahan and Milo O'Shea) and BEGGAR MY NEIGHBOUR where June Whitfield (still going now) had a knowing twinkle in her eye whenever mentioning a neighbour who "lived down by the maisonettes and was good to his mother". 

We began frequenting the West End coffee bars and early gay discos when the teens danced to Tamla Motown - The LE DEUCE in D'Arblay Street was a particular favourite.. So, 1966 ended on a high - but 1967 would be even better: as psychedelia hit London (we already liked that West Coast sound of The Mamas and Papas, and the New York combo The Lovin' Spoonful), BLOW-UP hit town in March and it was like seeing oneself up there on the screen, and then The Beatles released SERGEANT PEPPER .... Stan and I and Linda, the girl upstairs, went stark raving mad. We went to see The Stax Tour, just before Otis Redding took that fatal flight. 1968 brought Aretha Franklin to town and I joined the hippie set seeing The Doors and Jefferson Airplane at the Roundhouse at Camden, where everyone was on acid - ditto at 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY in Cinerama and so much more, like going to the Middle Earth club in Covent Garden and getting the hippie magazine "International Times" and that new weekly listings mag "Time Out" ...  Above right, me sporting the tousled Rolling Stone look on Clapham Common in '66.

Once more: The Leopard, 1963

We have blogged about Visconti's THE LEOPARD from 1963 a lot here, check label - I had another look at it, it is even more staggering on Blu-ray particularly that long ballroom sequence at the climax, which goes on for about 45 minutes. as Burt Lancaster's Prince of Salina and Claudia Cardinale's Angelica (was she ever more resplendant?) dance to that Verdi waltz as Alain Delon's Tancredi watches, as does the other guests. I was watching a documentary on Silicy the other day and the presenter, Alex Polizzi, visited the palazzo which contained that ballroom and adjoining chambers - its all exactly as it was then. I love Lampedusa's book too and have to return to it every few years, which again makes me want to see the Visconti epic once more ... it was of course a huge influence on Scorsese (check out THE AGE OF INNOCENCE), Coppola and others. 

Claudia of course was at her zenith too in Visconti's 1965 operatic melodrama: SANDRA (or OF A THOUSAND DELIGHTS). Thankfully thats available again now, I loved it when I was 19. She and Jean Sorel are another jaw-droppingly beautiful couple ...