Lists: Those Trash Classics ....

We have been here before - call them what you will: Bad Movies We Love, Guilty Pleasures, Trash or Utter Trash ... those delirious melodramas and just plain bad movies that are so enjoyable - most of the great ladies did some: Lana and Susan and Joan and Bette specialised in them later in their careers, while other great ladies like Olivia and sister Joan dipped their toes in the muddy waters too. 

I have covered them in more detail in my earlier reviews - click on Trash-A label to read on ...http://osullivan60.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/trash-favourites.html

Right now, I list them:

• PORTRAIT IN BLACK - Lana's crowning epic, from 1960 (whereas IMITATION OF LIFE is a cult classic)
• LOVE HAS MANY FACES - Lana does Acapulco, with Ruth Roman and those beach boy bums in speedos in 1966
• WHERE LOVE HAS GONE - Susan and Bette go head to head in this 1964 stinker 
• I THANK A FOOL - Susan and Finch should have been a great team but not in this weird meller shot in Ireland ...
• ADA - Susan in fighting form
  
• BACK STREET - the best of the Susan's ?, 1961
• STOLEN HOURS - love Susan's British remake of Bette' DARK VICTORY, in 1963
• SERENADE - Fontaine is stupendous in this Mario Lansz sudser, 1956
• ISLAND IN THE SUN - Joan 'romances' Harry Belafonte ... 1957
• LADY IN A CAGE - sister Olivia is trapped
• THE SINGING NUN - Debbie's worst in 1966, a travesty of the real Nun's Story
• A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME - Shelley chomps the scenery. 1964.
• SYLVIA - a Carroll Baker epic, its delirious, its delovely 
• SINCERELY YOURS - Liberace's sickly starrer, with Dot Malone and Joanne Dru competing for him ... a 1956 howler.
• MAMBO - a 1954 discovery, torrid saga with Silvana Mangano and Shelley Winters, in Italy.
• FOUR GIRLS IN TOWN - the perfect 1957 Universal-International meller, as is:
  
• THE FEMALE ANIMAL - thats Hedy Lamarr in 1957 with Jan Sterling, splendid as ever.
• GO NAKED IN THE WORLD - Gina ! 1960.
• THE CHAPMAN REPORT - Shelley, Glynis, Claire, young Jane Fonda ... we love Cukor's starry drama, The Higher Trash.
• THE REVOLT OF MAMIE STOVER - Jane Russell ! with Agnes Moorehead as the madam, 1956.
• A GIRL NAMED TAMIKO - one of Laurence Harvey's worst 
• WALK ON THE WILD SIDE - ditto, but with Stanwyck, Capucine, Fonda, Baxter ...
• THE LOVE MACHINE - a scream with gay David Hemmings and Dyan Cannon both wanting John Philip Law
• THE CROWDED SKY - best of the airline disasters?, 1960
• DORIAN GRAY - Helmut ! in 1970s London 
• GOODBYE GEMINI - one of the terrible British flicks of the era, 1970 - as was:
• MY LOVER, MY SON - why Romy. why did you make this terrible film?
• 10.30 PM SUMMER - fake arty 1966 Eurofare, but it does have Melina, Romy and Peter Finch
  
• POPE JOAN - Liv may have been great in those Bergman films but made some stinkers in English, none worse than this in 1972.
• Glenda made some stinkers too, none worse than THE INCREDIBLE SARAH in 1976, where she flounces around as Bernhardt in a Readers Digest travesty. Its a scream. 
• BLUEBEARD - Edward Dmytryk helmed some Trash Classic favourites like THE CARPETBAGGERS, WALK ON THE WILD SIDE, WHERE LOVE HAS GONE, but came a cropper here, aided by Burton's worst performance, in 1972
• THE SQUEEZE - rather good Brit gangster flick, from 1977, with down on their luck Boyd, Hemmings, Carol White ...  BRANNIGAN (John Wayne) and HENNESSEY (Rod Steiger and wasted Lee Remick) were amusing mid-70s British thrillers too ...

We don't bother with the insultingly bad, like THE OSCAR or HARLOW ..... then there are the Troy Donahue and Ann-Margret clunkers, and you know how we love those Bette and Joans: TORCH SONG, HARRIET CRAIG, FEMALE ON THE BEACH, QUEEN BEE, AUTUMN LEAVES, THE STORY OF ESTHER COSTELLO, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING, BERSERK! or two Bettes in DEAD RINGER.

Ingmar - a round dozen

My friend Mike in San Francisco (my oldest pal, we were penfriends when we were 17 - what people did before the internet and Facebook) and I have been ruminating on Ingmar Bergman films. Hard to believe now but when I was first in London, aged 18 in 1964, we went to a screening of Bergman's THE SILENCE, an arthouse hit then (which we followed by going to see the routine THE CHALK GARDEN). 

It seems inpossible now that teenagers would go and see a sombre black and white Swedish film with sub-titles, but back then arthouse movies were part of the general movie scene, with several crossover hits and every reasonable size city had one or two for the trendy folk to go to. (There was a more exotic or erotic arthouse cinemas for those looking for something more explicit than what the local Odeon or ABC served up..."the dirty mac brigade").  Of course there were less distractions then, just 2 television channels here in the UK, in black and white; no internet or cellphones. Mike was saying his students would not even watch an old Greta Garbo movie now. 
Of course THE SEVENTH SEAL was stunning on a first view, we had seen nothing like it, as it later became an arthouse cliche, and his lovely film of Mozart's THE MAGIC FLUTE is still a perfect opera film. 

Anyway to Bergman, a list of my favourites:

• THE SEVENTH SEAL
• SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT
• WILD STRAWBERRIES
• THE MAGICIAN
• THE SILENCE
• PERSONA
• CRIES AND WHISPERS
• AUTUMN SONATA
• THE MAGIC FLUTE
• FANNY & ALEXANDER

Theres also the early SUMMER WITH MONIKA, and THE VIRGIN SPRING, THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY, WINTER LIGHT and those unsparing Liv Ullmann dramas FACE TO FACE and SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE. I have not seen the 1964 comedy NOW ABOUT THESE WOMEN, or the later THE SERPENT’S EGG.

Bergman (1918-2007) directed a total of 67 films, and died on the same day as Michelangelo Antonioni – which was quite a surprise for us in 2007, but the movies go on and continue to resonate with us. 
We were also fascinated by his troupe of actresses: Thulin, Lindblom, Ullmann, Bibi and Harriet Andersson, Eva Dahlbeck ... and Ingrid having a late career swansong with that SONATA. 
I went twice to his 1970 London theatre production of HEDDA GABLER - a very intense staging with actors in black on a red stage (rather like CRIES & WHISPERS) - with Maggie Smith (right) giving one of her best stage performances. 
I have written more on some of these at Bergman label, but must return to them and review some more over the winter months. (Above, the two Bergmans on AUTUMN SONATA). 

Say Hello To Yesterday, 1970

Say hello also to tedium and annoyance as this twee 1970 'romance' unfolds ..... I intially thought I would not mention it, but I have covered some other 1970 Trash Classics here, like GOODBYE GEMINI and DORIAN GRAY (see 1970 label), and its a fitting companion piece in that cinematic junkyard - its a fascinating era really as the British Cinema deteriorated into tat after those great decades of the 1940s and 1960s, and the 1950s were not too bad either!

Lets look at the blurb for this effort:

One of the most under-rated British films that was produced between the end of the swinging sixties and the beginning of the hippie seventies. Leonard Whiting plays a young dreamer who is trapped in a working class existance: living in a council house with a father who has no  horizon higher than working in the local factory. Jean Simmons is the mature woman living in a leafy Surrey house with her stockbroker husband and two children, but is desperately unhappy with her life.

When the two unlikely lovers meet on a train to London, Whiting begins his charm offensive of the older woman across London's 1970s landscape. this is one of the most insightful films to deal with the thrill and inevitable puncturing of the balloon that signifies the love affair between these two unikely protatonists. Directed and co-written by Alvin Rakoff, music by Riz Ortolani. 

It is always nice to see Jean Simmons and she tries her best here in this underwritten role. Whiting is beyond annoying as his "charm offensive" in 1970 looks like sexual harrassment and he would be arrested these days as he keeps bothering her on the train full of stuffy commuters. And the horror - his family live in a council house! where his salt-of-the-earth dear old Mum (Constance Chapman) slips him a fiver as he heads off to Cobham station where Jean is boarding the first class compartment.  Our leads have no names here, they are listed as just Woman and Boy. He finally wears her down and yes they end up in bed but not for long. She flees back to her Surrey estate and he is left with those balloons which can signify whatever one wants .... Evelyn Laye appears as her wise mother. If Jean is the older woman here, then her mother must be ancient! 

There was a vogue for older woman/younger man romances, like the play and film of FORTY CARATS which was rather amusing, as per my review (Liv Ullmann label), but that was a well-written Broadway play. This suffers by comparison. Whiting may have been right for Zeffirelli's ROMEO & JULIET, but seems quite ordinary, if annoying, here. He wears a nice velvet suit of the period, not the same one he wore when I saw him at the BFI later that year. The dvd has a useful interview with Simmons, from sometime in the 80s. 
Thanks to Colin for this Twitter photo of Leonard in San Francisco recently for a showing and Q&A on ROMEO & JULIET in January. 

Summer fun: 40 Carats

40 CARATS did not appeal to 27 year old me 40 years ago back in 1973, and its hardly shown its face here since, but thanks to Colin for sending me this, which is a delightful treat at this remove. 

A forty year old woman vacationing in Greece meets a twenty-two year old, also on vacation. They spend the night together and she leaves him while he was sleeping. She then returns to New York and she is stunned to learn that her daughter's boyfriend is him. He then pursues her, and she is uncertain of what to do. 

It was a successful play of course with the kind of role those ladies in their 40s would have relished - one could picture Jean Simmons doing it, Julie Harris did, and maybe Lauren Bacall? Everyone, including Sophia Loren, was suggested for the film, but it went to Liv Ullmann and seeing her again here playing comedy one realises how marvellous she is, as she can - and did - play everything. We admired her in those Bergman movies like PERSONA, AUTUMN SONATA, CRIES & WHISPERS, FACE TO FACE. Jan Troell's THE EMIGRANTS etc, but her other films (POPE JOAN - Trash label, the dreaded LOST HORIZON remake, etc) did not know what to do with her. 

Here though she is pleasingly real and makes her cardboard character one to care about. She does not overact, as in the scene where she meets again the young man she left sleeping in Greece - and the scenes with her family sparkle. Binnie Barnes at 70 (her last movie role, she died aged 95 in 1998 and was the producer's wife) is simply wonderful as her mother - and she certainly tears up the dance floor!, Deborah Raffin is the daughter, and Gene Kelly - not as annoying as I imagined he would be, and with someone else's hair on his head, is admirable too as her ex-husband - I last saw him as Natalie Wood's older guy in the 1958 MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR last week .... and I see him all the time with those LES GIRLS - he signed a biography on him for me in 1975. 

The young guy Peter is Edward Albert, a pleasing performer here (his father Eddie is back in cinemas now too in the re-issued ROMAN HOLIDAY as the photographer sidekick of Gregory Peck). Albert had scored also the previous year 1972 in that other filmed Broadway play BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE and no I did not want to see that then either, being sniffy about such popular entertainments. 40 CARATS works itself out nicely with some nicely amusing moments, and that gruesome visit to Peter's duplicitious parents - did I mention Nancy Walker in full Themla Ritter mode as Liv's secretary at the office?  

It all reminded me of that other filmed Broadway comedy hit CACTUS FLOWER in 1969 (which made us love Ingrid Bergman all over again) - produced as well as 40 CARATS, BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE and others by Mike Frankovich (he also produced trash classics like THE LOVE MACHINE and DOCTORS' WIVES). So, its an ideal summer movie and to my surprise, I liked it a lot - good score by Michel Legrand, scripted by Jay Presson Allen and Leonard Gershe, and directed by Milton Katselas. Edward Albert died in 2006 aged 55, we recently also saw him as the son of THE GREEK TYCOON - Trash label.

Pope Joan

POPE JOAN was little seen in 1972 and has never appeared here since, I was always curious about it but that has now been taken care of by a German issued dvd. Well, there's trash of all kinds: the higher trash, the lower trash, delirious trash, classy trash and boring trash. JOAN falls into the latter camp, tedium reigns supreme here as glum (very) Liv Ullmann plays the supposed female pope. This is based on the medieval legend of Pope Joan, who was made Pope for a brief period around 855 A.D. Although it is questionable that Pope Joan really did exist, this movie presents her existence as fact, but is a very unimaginative telling of the legend.  The film though is typical of the sort of international co-productions made 40 years ago in the late '60s/early 70s.

It was shot I believe in Romania and looks it, what scuppers the latter part of the film, when we are supposed to be in Rome it is so obviously some central European backwater and looks nothing like the Eternal City (or even Constantinople). The Dark Ages is a fascinating period of history, when Christianity was probably at its zenith and the general population were terrified of hell and damnation and plagues, the age of those great cathedrals, as fascinating as the medieval world or the renaissance. Some great movies have captured this: Ingmar Bergman's THE SEVENTH SEAL, rousing adventures like THE VIKINGS and EL CID, or the wit of THE LION IN WINTER or Zeffirelli's sumptuous BROTHER SUN SISTER MOON (with Alec Guinness as a very wily pope), or BECKET or any version of THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (I like the '50s Quinn-Lollobrigida one). POPE JOAN by comparison looks cheaply made but here the cast is the thing. Ullmann - so great in her European films - didn't really translate in her English efforts or the films were just not that good - I have her 40 CARATS to see soon too, and of course everybody laughed at LOST HORIZON (Bette Midler: "I never miss a Liv Ullmann musical"), her other one with Peter Finch THE ABDICATION also emptied cinemas and has also vanished from view, whereas we all always have room for PERSONA or AUTUMN SONATA or her other major titles.

The brutality of the age is captured vividly when the convent orphan Joan has taken refuge in is sacked, and the mother superior (Olivia De Havilland) is crucified upside down and nice Lesley-Anne Down slain brutally ... Joan and monk Maximilian Schell make their escape and wander around that grubby Europe before Joan's gift for reading the bible gets them noticed by the church. In no time she is made a cardinal and assistant to the kindly old pope Trevor Howard who names him/her (oh, she hacked off her hair and has been posing as a male) as his successor, so soon she is indeed Pope. Then Franco Nero re-enters, having caught her eye earlier at the convent ... how soon before he suspects her secret?  We don't really see them get together much but it seems Joan is heavily pregnant which she can hide under her pope's vestments, but it was rather foolish of her to go out among the peasants just as she goes into labour, and the superstitious people tear her to shreds ...

Everyone seems to accept Liv as a male and she certainly looks glum enough. The interesting cast is made up of several thespians of the time - there is even a young Nigel Havers and the last performance of David Farrar (Mr Dean in BLACK NARCISSUS) but I did not spot them among dependables like Andre Morrell, Richard Pearson, Jeremy Kemp, George Innes, Peter Arne, Patrick Magee. Produced by Kurt Unger and directed by old hand Michael Anderson, well used to handling large casts in movies I like like AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL, OPERATION CROSSBOW, and Gary Cooper's final two, among others. The dvd has interesting later interviews with Ullmann, Schell, Anderson and writer John Briley. There is also a 2009 version of POPE JOAN but for me one was enough. 

Autumn Sonata

I find Ingmar Bergman a very polarising director - while I yield to no-one in my admiration for a dozen or so of his films, a lot of his other ones I simply had no interest in seeing at all! So for all those favourites like THE SEVENTH SEAL, WILD STRAWBERRIES, SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT, THE SILENCE, PERSONA, CRIES AND WHISPERS, AUTUMN SONATA or FANNY AND ALEXANDER there are others like THE SERPENT'S EGG or those Liv Ullmann psychodramas like FACE TO FACE or SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE that I just did not want to see, (highly regarded though they were), not even his one with Elliott Gould THE TOUCH! His opera film of THE MAGIC FLUTE is sheer delight though, one I liked a lot, and it was also good to see THE MAGICIAN from '58 recently (as per review on that), and I keep meaning to catch up with those other early '60s ones THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY and WINTER LIGHT (which with THE SILENCE - which I first saw aged 18 when new in London in 1964 - form a trilogy). Then of course there are his earlier ones from the early '50s of which I have only seen SUMMER WITH MONIKA. Ingmar certainly had a prodigious output. One stage production of his which I saw in 1970 (in fact I went to it twice) was his HEDDA GABLER with Maggie Smith at her most intense, set as it was in red rooms with black dressed characters - very austere.

I also remember going to see AUTUMN SONATA twice during its initial run in 1978, as I found it endlessly fascinating. This of course sees Ingrid Bergman back in Sweden and it provides her with a last great cinema role - I felt at the time that she and Liv Ullmann should have jointly won the best actress Oscar as they are both mesmerising and give towering performances. Bergman at this stage was already battling cancer. Her last performance was as Golda Meir for television in 1980, where she had no vanity at all as the Israeli leader.

Here she is Charlotte a well-known musician endlessly on tour who deigns to spend a few days with the daughter she has not seen in 7 years. Both women are initially uneasy in each other's company as Charlotte settles in and is horrified to discover that her other, severely disabled daughter whom she had consigned to an institution and forgotten about is also at the house as Eva (Ullmann) has taken her in and is caring for her.

Charlotte is a very talented, but completely self-absorbed woman. Eva has in her wretched state turned herself into a frump and does not seem to realise how much her pastor husband loves her. We now come to the stunning sequence where Charlotte asks her daughter to play for her and we watch mesmerised as every emotion, from pain to acceptance and maternal love, flickers over the mother's face as the daughter plays badly - then the artist in Charlotte takes over and she has to demonstrate how the Chopin piece should be played while we focus of Eva in closeup seething with rage and hated at her once adored mother, highlighting her own painful shame of inadequacy and mediocrity . A long night of the soul follows as mother and daugher accuse and lash out at each other - while the other unloved disabled daughter (Lena Nyman) also cries out in her pain and distress. It's Liv's cruelty toward her mother in that unforgettable late night diatribe that grips as the film unfolds to a kind of resolution. (It must have been harrowing for Ingrid Bergman, having the comparisions as it does with her first failed marriage and her leaving her daughter Pia, during her Rossellini period, though mother and daughter were later reconciled).

It all adds up to a beautiful and devastating film that I admire, and in the Bergman canon seems closest to CRIES AND WHISPERS in it's textures, the warm reds and the close-ups of the faces of wounded souls, as photographed by Bergman regular Sven Nykvyst (who went on to Woody Allen's rather similar INTERIORS next). The film is bleak (obviously) but not depressing and the resolution is slightly hopeful as Eva walks in the local cemetry loving observed by her husband, and Charlotte - her composure and public facade restored - continues on her tour, chatting to her agent (Gunnar Bjornstrand) on the train about those ordindary people going about their evening tasks, preparing meals etc in the houses they pass, as she goes to her next concert engagement, but perhaps she and Eva can get closer now and know more about each other, or will they never see each other again? It could be a hopeful optimistic conclusion, and a key '70s film.

Ingrid Bergman appeared several times on the London stage (A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY in '65 was an enormous hit, and I also saw CAPTAIN BRASSBOUND'S CONVERSION) and she was always very pleasant to meet and chat to, and I also saw her at a screening of CASABLANCA at the National Film Theatre where she was very informative on the film's production and answered everyone's questions. Despite the dramatics her sense of humour is also there in AUTUMN SONATA. Ullmann remains the best known of the Bergman actresses (Thulin, Harriet and Bibi Andersson etc) but her English speaking films are woefully dismal (POPE JOAN, THE ABDICATION, the widely derided remake of LOST HORIZON etc).