'60s / '70s British cinema: Olly and David

Lets now look at those two interesting British actors Oliver Reed and David Hemmings through the decades. Both were young jobbing actors at the dawn of the Sixties, and were established by the middle of the Swinging Decade .... thanks to directors like Antonioni, Michael Winner and Ken Russell. They worked together several times and their ends were rather similar too. They are both in THE SYSTEM (left) in 1964, THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER in 1977 and GLADIATOR in 2000. Both took to the hell-raising life as their careers waxed and waned and both died in their early sixties (Reed at 61, Hemmings at 62), no doubt from all that excess - at least David left an enjoyable and fascinating memoir.

It was an exciting time for young actors as the likes of Peter O'Toole, Albert Finney, Alan Bates, Tom Courtenay came to prominence in the early Sixties, with Michael York, Terence Stamp and more following .... Oliver with his striking looks had lots of small parts, including that hilarious moment when his camp ballet dancer invades Jack Hawkins' LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN in 1960, he was more typically cast as werewolves or bullies (as in THE ANGRY SILENCE) and had a good role in Losey's THE DAMNED in 1961. Michael Winner's THE SYSTEM in 1964 was a terrific role for him, and it a terrific British 1960s film ushering in that Swinging Era. David Hemmings is also in THE SYSTEM in a rather nondescript role - who would think two years later he would be starring for Italian maestro Michelangelo Antonioni who made him the face of the decade in BLOW-UP ? Hemmings also came up in small parts in films like NO TREES IN THE STREET, SINK THE BISMARCK!, SOME PEOPLE, PLAY IT COOL, WEST 11, TWO LEFT FEET etc - see Hemmings label. I had a good conversation with his then girlfriend Jane Merrow (star of THE SYSTEM) in the summer of 1966 when she was doing a West End play, about the time he must have been filming BLOW-UP - 50 years ago. 

The Antonioni classic did not hit London until 1967 when it became the talk of the town and it was the film (and still is) one had to see and have an opinion about. Being 21 at the time it was like seeing oneself up there in the screen, as Antonioni transformed David into that decadent dissatisfied cherub. He was soon seen in more '60s classics like CAMELOT, BARBARELLA, THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE and kept busy into the 1970s, was married to Gayle Hunnicutt, also directing (RUNNING SCARED, JUST A GIGOLO with Bowie and Dietrich) as well as lots of American TV series like MAGNUM PI and THE A-TEAM as he had re-located to America and became a top action director for TV. 

Oliver did more Michael Winner films (THE JOKERS, HANNIBAL BROOKS - did anyone see that?, and that magnum opus I'LL NEVER FORGET WHAT'ISNAME) and then Ken Russell stepped in, not only with WOMEN IN LOVE and the notorious THE DEVILS (see Ken Russell/Reed labels) but he also impressed in Ken's 1967 BBC film on Dante Gabriel Rossetti DANTE'S INFERNO. His popular movies continued with THE HUNTING PARTY, THE TRAP, his Bill Sykes in OLIVER!, TOMMY, ROYAL FLASH; THE TRIPLE ECHO and THE CLASS OF MISS MACMICHAEL, both again with Glenda Jackson, and American movies like BURNT OFFERINGS and THE SHUTTERED ROOM, and of course his brooding Athos in the Richard Lester MUSKETEERS films. 

THE DEVILS

They are both in the 1977 PRINCE AND THE PAUPER reboot, fun but not much more, and both turned up again in Ridley Scott's GLADIATOR, both rather aged now with no vanity at all, though just in their early sixties. Oliver had become a feature on the chatshow circuit where his increasing drunken antics make sad viewing now - there was a compilation on last week: THE OLIVER REED INTERVIEWS, it simply was too depressing to watch it all. Perhaps he was being encouraged to drink too much and go over the top to make car-crash television?
 He died of a heart attack in Malta during the GLADIATOR shoot in 1999 and was buried in Cork, in Ireland, where he had been living with his second wife. Hemmings kept going until 2003 - he had an effective role in Scorsese's THE GANGS OF NEW YORK, and the Brit film LAST ORDERS with peers Courtenay, Caine, Hoskins, Mirren, Winstone - and he also died of a heart attack on location in Romania. His memoir, published in 2004, is a fascinating read for anyone interested in British Cinema and his early life as a boy opera singer for Benjamin Brittan - he sang Miles in the first opera production of THE TURN OF THE SCREW. Hemmings talks about BLOW-UP (as does a still miffed Terence Stamp who had been promised the part) in that 1993 BBC series HOLLYWOOD UK, as do Vanessa and Monica Vitti too ... you also get Polanski, Roger Corman, Truffaut (with Julie Christie) and those other foreign directors wanting to be a part of Swinging London. 

We continue to like Hemmings and Reed and like seeing them on screen. Like Richards Harris and Burton they paid the price for all that excessive drinking, but kept going and working to the end -  of course like most working actors they did their share of rubbish and routine programmers (JUGGERNAUT, THE SQUEEZE, SITTING TARGET, AND THEN THERE WERE NONE), but we need not linger on those - more on them at labels. VENOM in '81 was a choice one for Olly - with the deadly snake going up his trouserleg ...

The Devils, 1971: "Hell holds no surprises for them"!

Viewing Ken Russell's THE DEVILS now (Sky Movies are showing it, uncut as far as I can see, several times) after a gap of 40 or so years, is a potent, sobering experience. I initially saw it on the big screen on its initial run in that year 1971 of big movies one had to see, like A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, DEATH IN VENICE, THE STRAW DOGS, SOLDIER BLUE etc. all pushing the boundaries on what could be shown on screen. Ken's THE DEVILS topped them all, even more so than his previous ones, THE MUSIC LOVERS and WOMEN IN LOVE.

After seeing Oliver Reed sleepwalking though so many later movies it is amazing to see him here .... ditto Vanessa Redgrave's Sister Jeanne, a deformed hunchback nun (both her actress daughters worked for Ken too), and the usual team of Russell regulars are all present and correct .... Graham Armitage is a treat as the very effete King, particularly when he produces that box with the relic which sends them all into a frenzy, and then he shows them it was an empty box! and I love his "bye bye blackbird""! Michael Gothard too tops all his other crazy roles as the demented torturer in chief, doing the bidding of devious Dudley Sutton, a pawn of Cardinal Richelieu who wants the city of Loudon demolished, but Father Grandier stands in his way ...

Cardinal Richelieu and his power-hungry entourage seek to take control of seventeenth-century France, but need to destroy Father Grandier - the priest who runs the fortified town that prevents them from exerting total control. So they seek to destroy him by setting him up as a warlock in control of a devil-possessed nunnery, the mother superior of which is sexually obsessed by him. A mad witch-hunter is brought in to gather evidence against the priest, ready for the big trial.

What follows is both a savage satire and critique of religious mania (like Arthur Miller's THE CRUCIBLE) and a crazed, over the top excerise in Grand Guignol, all based on historical fact. Only Russell could have gone this far, showing religious hysteria and human depravity as Grandier is shaved, tortured and cooked before our eyes, and the hysterical nuns strip and run amok, while the inquisitors and their torture instruments seek out evidence of devils ...... it is of course based on Aldous Huxley's novel and John Whiting play "The Devils of Loudon". Ken's vision was realised by Derek Jarman's expressionistic sets and Shirey Russell's costumes, and that cast, including Murray Melvin, Max Adrian, Georgina Hale, Brian Murphy, Christopher Logue - there is perhaps too much of Gemma Jones as the young innocent love of Grandier's. The depictions of plague and torture from that opening image of maggots crawling out of a rotten corpse held high on a wheel, are images not easily forgotten. 

After its initial run THE DEVILS was probably considered too shocking by Warners (who also had problems with Roeg and Cammell's PERFORMANCE) - this was two years before THE EXORCIST - and was unseen for a long time. Now it is back on television and uncut on dvd, it may be time to re-appraise it a one of Ken's best. I caught up with his LISZTOMANIA and VALENTINO last year, - see Russell label for reviews - which I did not like much though liking the grand vision behind them, though I like THE MUSIC LOVERS and his later THE RAINBOW. We still have to see his SAVAGE MESSIAH and MAHLER. TOMMY of course was a big hit in 1975 - we had to go to a late night show to see it. 

Reed was also amazing in Russell's BBC film on Rossetti in 1967: DANTE'S INFERNO, and Vanessa is a revelation here, stepping into Glenda Jackson's shoes .... Ken did THE BOYFRIEND next. THE DEVILS remains a shocking, searing experience but if you can bear the more gruesome moments, then you will find it fascinating viewing, and no matter how hard you try you won't be able to ignore its intensity. 1970s audiences eventually got tired of  Ken's excesses and he fell from favour, dying aged 84 in 2011, but his key works continue to fascinate.  

A classic year: 1975

IMDB 's Classic Film Board has a thread on the best films of 1975. I submitted my 1975 top twenty - I didn't realise it was such a classic year! and of course in that pre-video, pre-internet world we had to see all those films at the cinema (and London still had plentiful arthouse and revival circuit chains) and read the movie magazines to keep up with them ...  I have written about several of these here, as per labels.

THE PASSENGER - Antonioni 

BARRY LYNDON - Kubrick 

LOVE AND DEATH - Woody Allen 

NASHVILLE - Altman

HISTORY OF ADELE H. - Truffaut 

FOX AND HIS FRIENDS - Fassbinder 

SEVEN BEAUTIES - Wertmuller 

DOG DAY AFTERNOON - Lumet 

THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR - Pollack 

THE STEPFORD WIVES - Forbes 

THE MAGIC FLUTE - Bergman 

INDIA SONG - Duras 

JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUI DE COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES - Akerman 

THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW - Sharman 

TOMMY - Russell 

ROYAL FLASH - Lester 

SHAMPOO - Ashby 

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK - Weir 

MONTY PYTHON & THE HOLY GRAIL - Gilliam. 

Dreadful but compulsive (for Lee Remick, Barbra Streisand fans!): HENNESSEY / FUNNY LADY. 

In the IMDB poll on 1975, JAWS topped the list, but THE PASSENGER (PROFESSIONE: REPORTER) made a respectable 7th on the top 20, with BARRY LYNDON in second place, and NASHVILLE third followed by ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, and also respectable placings for ADELE H and SEVEN BEAUTIES. 

A fascinating year in the mid-70s then, CHINATOWN was the year before, and the following year 1976 had TAXI DRIVER, OBSESSION and Visconti's L'INNOCENTE to fascinate us, while 1977 and beyond took us into CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, ANNIE HALL, NEW YORK NEW YORK and the rest ... not a bad decade at all, the 70s are up there with the 50s and 60s - great to have lived through them as cinema changed and developed so much.

1975 was of course also a great year for music - on those vinyl gatefold albums, like this Joni Mitchell favourite: "The Hissing of Summer Lawns".

Other classic years here, as per labels: 1954, 1957, 1959, 1960, 1962, 1963, 1966, 1970

The Projector sees them, so you don't have to: Lisztomania & Valentino

LISZTOMANIA, 1975. Ken Russell must have been riding high after the success of TOMMY in 1975 (friends and I had to see it at a late night show), so maybe the producers of his next project on Liszt had similar hopes, which I imagine were quickly dashed when they saw the end result. 
I don’t remember LISZTOMANIA lingering around for very long, so never seen it until now. This now seems like a bad acid trip, the height of ‘70s pretentiousness – the central idea is great, to show the great composer as the rock star of his day, but the execution is a nightmare as we seem trapped in an endless rock concert, drably staged as Ken’s excesses run away with him – cue a giant plastic phallus being dragged to a guillotine as Liszt screams and those castrating women (think Glenda in THE MUSIC LOVERS) gleefully writhe and open their legs ….. Roger Daltry and his pals Paul Nicholas (Wagner as a vampire at one stage), Ringo Starr (the Pope, with movie star photos adorning his vestments) and Rik Wakeman painted silver must have thought they were hallucinating it all. Then theres the endless rows of young girls screaming for their hero …. 

Daltry was great in The Who (as I saw up close in 1968) but the movie camera does not love him in the same way – that wonky nose is too prominent and his performance, if one could call it such, is strictly one note, but perhaps he was just a pawn in his director’s increasingly deranged fantasies. With Sarah Kestleman, Fiona Lewis, Veronica Quilligan, and John Justin as the Count who has to duel with a naked Liszt swinging from chandeliers!  Oliver Reed also walks through. Those other Liszt films are masterpieces compared to this farrago. Does Trash get more lurid - or boring ? Ok, its absolute crap. 
Ken's stock must have been high then though, as opposed to his later years, as he could get rock stars and top names (like Nureyev) to appear in his increasingly bonkers movies, even in the '80s with Kathleen Turner, Tony Perkins etc. 

VALENTINO, 1977. More Ken excesses – this one though has a great central promise: Rudolph Nureyev at his peak as Rudolph Valentino, the great silent star who died in 1926. Nureyev bravely gives himself up to his director, who strips him naked at one stage, and he has a mesmerising charm of his own, being a great star impersonating another, though he looks nothing like the real Valentino, who died aged 31. I saw this at the time and remember Pauline Kael’s review where she hated it, particularly its depiction of the great Nazimova (Leslie Caron - below, with Michelle Phillips and Rudy as Valentino as Nijinski). Here Valentino is at the mercy of predatory women like his wife Natasha Rambova  (Michelle Phillips); Felicity Kendal is June Mathis, the scriptwriter who discovered Valentino and fashioned his image as The Sheik, and there are crude depictions of Fatty Arbuckle and those venal, greedy studio heads like Jesse Lasky. Ken himself plays Rex Ingram. Its all like a vicious cartoon of the 1920s as atmosphere is trowelled on with all those interiors and cars and costumes, starting with that over the top funeral parlour scene, it all must have cost United Artists a fortune – 
this and Scorsese’s overblown NEW YORK NEW YORK (which I love dearly) must have proved very expensive for them. 
Nureyev at least looks great as the ballroom dancer with his animal-like grace and sense of humour, he dances quite a lot actually. Huge liberties are taken though like that whole ‘pink powderpuff’ and that fight in the ring, which are pure Russell fantasies. Russell’s wife Shirley again provides the over the top costumes. The magazines, below, had a field day ...

After the success of WOMEN IN LOVE and THE MUSIC LOVERS and the oddball charm of THE BOYFRIEND, audiences soon got tired of Ken’s excesses, TOMMY though was a pop hit and his later films had varying success. I quite liked his later, less expensive, THE RAINBOW and his BBC version of LADY CHATTERLEY, he was ideal for D.H. Lawrence.  I didn’t see SAVAGE MESSIAH or MAHLER which may be much better and of course there are always his great early BBC films on Elgar, Delius, Rossetti and Isadora Duncan, showing Ken’s early genius in full flight.  
Tomorrow: we tackle NIJINSKI from 1980 ! 

Ken's Rainbow

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

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



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

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

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


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