Odd man out?

Thanks once again to Colin for finding this rarity: Alain, Marianne and a rather put-out Mick Jagger, for once not the centre of attention  - presumably to launch GIRL ON A MOTORCYCLE in 1968 - if only the film had been better .....

Marie Antoinette, 2006

MARIE ANTOINETTE Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film holds up well after a ten year gap in viewing. Is it marketed for a teen audience or does it depict Marie as an impressionable teen which today’s teens can relate to? The production is sumptuous as the teenage Marie leaves Austria to travel to France when still only 14 to marry Louis XVI and become queen at 19. We spend a lot of time with the teen Marie Antoinette (and Kirsten Dunst is perfect in the role) as she gets used to the lavish court and the rituals she has to abide by. It starts rather like Von Sternberg's 1934 THE SCARLETT EMPRESS with that other more knowing teenager heading off to become Catherine The Great ....

Later the birth of her children when in her 30s after she finally gets her husband to consummate the marriage is all glossed over rather quickly. The mob only appear once at the climax as she bows to the will of the people and we end with her and her family in a carriage, as the sun sets, on their way to their destiny.. The cast is quite good – nice to see Marianne Faithfull (if only briefly) as her mother Maria Theresa, and comedian Steve Coogan as the advisor, Rip Torn as the older king and Jason Schwartzmann as the diffident husband, plus Judy Davis, Rose Byrne and Tom Hardy. We also get to see a lot of the opulent and eccentric court at Versailles as Marie matures. Other characters like the Princess Lamballe and Count Fersen are rather glossed over.

The modern (well, 80s) music by the likes of Adam and the Ants, Bow Wow Wow and The Cure has caused a lot of comment (there are 854 reviews on IMDB alone! - as one puts it: "Gidget goes to Versailles and when she gets there, she gets bored, gossips, reads Rousseau, and has beach-blanket pot parties and wild balls in Amadeus outfits".) but for me it suits the images – even the shot of the trainers among the shoes – as these are the bored teens of their time, as they indulge in clothes, shoes, cakes and champagne.

We do not see enough of the mature queen or her trial where she defended herself, but this obviously was not part of Coppola’s plan – she also scripted from the well-regarded Antonia Fraser biography. Fraser expressed pleasure with the end result but then what historian would not like a lavish film to be made from their historical tome?

So really it is all about Marie Antoinette as a sweet, utterly conventional and finally boring teenage girl acting out the fantasy of becoming a queen without realising the implications that follow … certainly a fascinating contrast to the equally opulent MGM film of 1938 with Norma Shearer's majestic performance. There will always be a market for doomed queens, whether Marie Antoinette, Mary Queen of Scots or Elizabeth (Sissi) of Austria - Marie's story though is hard to beat - and it looks marvellous of course, as good as anything in BARRY LYNDON (which set the benchmark for period films).

End of year miscellaney .... a rag tag of photos

 Marianne Faithfull at the famous gay Salisbury pub in London in 1964 (thanks Colin) - I liked Marianne a lot then, and had all her early records. I knew the pub too later in the 80s .... / David Hockney yawning, in the 70s / a stunning shot of Garbo, 46 in 1951, by George Hoyningen-Heune / a great Dirk Bogarde pose by Cornel Lucas (RIPs, this year) / Lancaster, Romy Schneider & Alain Delon on set for Visconti's THE LEOPARD, 1963 / Loren & Marcello's first teaming in the delightful TOO BAD SHE'S BAD in 1954 ...

'60s double bill: In search of what's'isname ...

1967 - London in the Swinging '60s, the Kings Road, the fashionable people, the mini-skirted dolly birds and the clothes and music - and those long forgotten movies that never get revived now. Here's 2 more of them: Michael Winner's magnum opus of the time I'LL NEVER FORGET WHAT'S'ISNAME, and a Julie Christie oddity IN SEARCH OF GREGORY.

Advertising golden boy Andrew Quint is fed up with his fabulously successful life. In very dramatic fashion, he quits his job to return to writing for a small literary magazine. He wants to leave his former life behind, going as far as saying good-bye to his wife and mistresses. He finds, however, that it's not so easy to escape the past.

I had not seen Winner's film since its release, its a cornucopia of '60s people and places. We start with Oliver Reed, then in his prime, walking all the busy street with an axe over his shoulder. He arrives at his office and proceeds to demolish his desk. Well, its one way of resigning .... Olly's boss is the devious Jonathan Lute, top billed Orson Welles who looks like he is enjoying himself while no doubt collecting a hefty pay check. Lute is presented as evil incarnate who will do anything to keep Quint (Reed) in his power. Quint goes back to his roots, that little magazine he ran with Norman Rodway and his wife Ann Lynn, their secretary Carol White whom Quint gets involved with; of course there's also his discarded wife Wendy Craig, and assorted mistresses like hippy chick/dolly bird Marianne Faithfull always stripping off for a bath (below). Pot shots are taken at all the usual targets, the braying toffs at Cambridge, well-known faces pop in and out: Michael Hordern, Harry Andrews, Mark Burns, Mark Eden, Edward Fox, Frank Finlay, Roland Curram ... I suppose it was par for the course then for actors to get a day or two on the new Michael Winner.

Winner though, like the budding Ken Russell, had his finger on the pulse of contemporary culture then, this catches the mid-60s perfectly as his 1964 THE SYSTEM (Oliver again, with budding David Hemmings, Jane Merrow and another great cast) catches the tail end of that black-and-white era.

The melodramatics come thick and fast here, as scriped by Peter Draper: Rodway sells out the magazine to Orson, Quint make a commercial attacking the superficiality of it all and the ruthless world of advertising, this is unveiled to applause at the old National Film Theatre I knew so well, one of the leading characters comes to grief in a grisly car accident and we finish with Oliver at dawn on a bridge, as Wendy, his ex-wife, arrives and they walk off for breakfast, with Battersea Power Station belching out fumes in the distance .... they just don't make them like that anymore! POOR COW Carol White of course also lives in one of those Chelsea houseboats we are familiar with from other '60s trash opuses like MY LOVER MY SON and GOODBYE GEMINI. A neglected London classic then like UP THE JUNCTION ... ?  
Oliver Reed was a powerful screen presence then, as shown by his 4 for Winner and 4 for Ken Russell - I only caught his Dante Gabriel Rossetti in Ken's 1967 BBC film DANTE'S INFERNO once and it was a mesmerising experience, and of course his Bill Sykes in OLIVER will be unveiled once again over the seasonal holidays ...

IN SEARCH OF GREGORY:  The mid to late '60s saw lots of these pseudo highbrow arty cod-Antonioni dramas. For every genuine classic like THE CONFORMIST or THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI CONTINI we had to endure oddities like 1969's IN SEARCH OF GREGORY - Julie Christie hunting a mystery man - or De Sica's own A PLACE FOR LOVERS - Faye Dunaway dying of  a rare disease while still looking dazzling (as per recent review) or Vanessa Redgrave & Franco Nero in A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. (Trash label) or Anouk and Omar in Lumet's baffling THE APPOINTMENT - these must have emptied cinemas on release, but we never really got a chance to see them at the time, so they couldn't have hung around long. Visconti's SANDRA (VAGHE STELLE DELL'ORSA) in 1965 is one that actually works, its dazzlingly operatic style highlights Claudia Cardinale and Jean Sorel at their best as the incestuous siblings, as per my reviews on it (Italian, Claudia, Jean labels).

Here the brother and sister are Julie and a very young looking John Hurt. This would seem to reach for the Antonioni style with Julie as the Monica Vitti figure we first see walking around Rome. She is lured to her father's 5th wedding in Geneva by the promise of the mysterious guest Gregory who just may prove to be ideal for her. Her brother though wants to keep Gregory for himself - we never see the mystery man but Julie imagines him to be Michael Sarrazin, whom she glimpses in a poster in his leather jacket. Cue several scenes of Sarrazin, in and out of clothes, as the mystery man she keeps missing ...  the mystery here is why Julie, after her triumphs in DARLING, ZHIVAGO and FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD, chose to do this puzzler, maybe it was a final film she owed producer Joseph Janni. Her previous one, PETULIA for Richard Lester in '68 is a genuine '60s classic, before she headed to America, and Altman's MCCABE & MRS MILLER with Beatty, and of course back to Italy for DON'T LOOK NOW ...

What sinks IN SEARCH OF GREGORY is that Sarrazin (who died last year aged 70, see label), fine in other movies, is simply not appealing or interesting enough for us to see what attracts Christie to him ... the story is not realistically worked out, but hey - Julie looks different but marvellous here in 1969 and it catches that Euro-gloss nicely. Adolfo Celi as the father is for once easy to understand here, and Hurt looks like a decadent cherub.
We never see the real Gregory but Julie runs across Sarrazin at the airport and thinks he is Gregory and they end up in the same hotel room. Turns out he is not Gregory, but a complete stranger, while unknown to her the real Gregory is next to her at the airport while she is on the phone to her brother, who is also on the line to Gregory. Thats the kind of Antonioni puzzle director Peter Wood seems to be aiming for here, so its a tale of emptiness, boredom and longing about an idle rich girl (cue acres of footage of Julie wandering around looking glam but glum and disconsolate), as co-scripted by Antonioni regular Tonino Geurra (who also died this year). A genuine curio then...

These 2 (WHAT'S'ISNAME and GREGORY) have the Universal Pictures logo and are more examples of European films financed by Americans in the '60s, Others reviewed here (1960s label) include OTLEY, DUFFY, SEBASTIAN, THE DAY THE FISH CAME OUT, THE BOFORS GUN, SMASHING TIME (actually a Carlo Ponti production), LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS etc.  
Next Swinging '60s double bill: BEDAZZLED by PETULIA. 

My summer trash read ...

Hot on the heels of Scotty Bowers' trash memoirs, we now have this tome on the Redgraves - its the one they tried to stop publication of, an offending paragraph has been removed, but it is not really about the Redgraves at all ... what we have here is a full-blown biography of director Tony Richardson (Vanessa's husband in the 60s) - interesting in its own right, but not what it says on the tin - so why is it being sold as a book on the Redgrave dynasty? Obviously to attract more sales ... We hardly see Michael Redgrave after a brief first chapter on his family .... there is no mention of his great film successes like THE WAY TO THE STARS, THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST or indeed THE BROWNING VERSION. No mention of the hit play he had in 1965 A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY with Ingrid Bergman, one of the first plays I saw, or the 2 plays I saw Vanessa in: DESIGN FOR LIVING and MADHOUSE IN GOA - Michael's decline and death is barely mentioned, no reason given why his ashes were left at the crematorium for 8 years. For a volume supposedly about the Redgraves it has no list of their stage or film credits, essential in a book like this. Lynn hardly gets a look in until her decline ...  I have always been interested in the Redgraves for their work - not scandal about their private lives - as per my earlier 'People We Like' post here on Michael (Michael Redgrave label) and my appreciations of Vanessa and Lynn.

It is certainly fascinating though for anyone interested in British theatre and cinema since the '50s, with the emergence of the Royal Court and those early John Osborne plays like LOOK BACK IN ANGER and THE ENTERTAINER and Richardson's first successful films of them and A TASTE OF HONEY in '61 (Rita Tushingham label) and THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER, so very 1962. As covered in my recent post on "Hollywood UK" tv series, the huge success of TOM JONES in 1963 gave his company Woodfall Films unlimited funds for Richardson to indulge himself with films that nobody saw at the time or simply were not well-released, we never got a chance to see SANCTUARY with Lee Remick in 1961, THE LOVED ONE in '65 or those 2 in France with Jeanne Moreau, MADEMOISELLE from Genet and THE SAILOR FROM GIBRALTAR by Marguerite Duras - both rare movies for a long time. Vanessa is brilliant in the latter, in a supporting role at that time her cinema career took off with MORGAN, BLOW-UP, CAMELOT, ISADORA etc. Her politics at this time are well covered too ... now that she is a revered elderly actress this may be a part of her past she does not want dwelled on now. But where are the Redgraves and their illustrious careers ? the author just wants to focus on the family's oddities and scandals, up to the deaths of Natasha, Lynn and Corin in 2009 and 2010.

The first howler is on the dust-jacket which says it was 1928 when Olivier announced the birth of a new actress when Vanessa was born, which of course was 1937. It would be useful too if a biographer acquainted himself with the works of those he writes about. This is how he describes Vanessa's role in BLOW-UP: "Vanessa played one of two dolly birds cavorting in his photographer's studio. Although she was only on screen for 10 minutes, romping topless with Jane Birkin, it was enough for Hollywood to sit up and take notice. Her agent began getting calls". Thats all he has to say about BLOW-UP !

Well this show he knows nothing about Antonioni's classic and has not seen it, a cursory look at the synopsis of this still available and influential film would show her role is very different, and she had already appeared in MORGAN before it was released. So how on earth can anything else he says be taken seriously? and it was David Hemmings - not John Osborne - who named his son Nolan after the character he played in the LIGHT BRIGADE film; and Vanessa and Lynn were both competing for the Best Actress Oscar in 1966 - he gets that wrong too. He also misses the irony of Richardson telling Vanessa in the early 60s that he wanted her to look like Monica Vitti - then she is chosen to star in Antonioni's London film, which must have been a surprise for him.

Richardson & Redgrave

I am now just regarding it as a trashy read, akin to a summer disposable book to amuse oneself with on holiday. As for the remaining Redgraves, I do not think they need worry about it too much. It is good though on Woodfall films and how Richardson (and Osborne) got through all that money, spent too on his badly-received THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE in 1968, while still living the champagne lifestyle in the South of France, so it covers that mad time in the 60s when the Americans were financing (for a while) these bizarre loss-making English movies; but its certainly not a book about the Redgraves and their theatrical legacy. Richardson emerges as a complex man, who after his early successes was able to keep making oddball films that did not attract audiences: A DELICATE BALANCE, DEAD CERT, LAUGHTER IN THE DARK, his hippie HAMLET at the Roundhouse (I used to go to concerts there) with Nicol Williamson and Marianne Faithfull is entertainingly dealt with here, this gave him access to Mick Jagger which led to NED KELLY in Australia and all the headlines that attracted due to Faithfull's collapse - nobody much saw the film though, Jagger only did it to have something to do and felt he should be in movies and just walked away from it. Richardson though had his estate 'La Nid du Duc' in the South of France, where Hockney painted and there was a constant stream of house-guests. Richardson was lucky though to have his daughters nursing him in his final illness. After his death the story turns to Natasha and Liam Neeson, and Vanessa re-unites with Franco Nero.

This is the kind of book though where every salacious rumour has to be dragged in. Adler goes into more detail than I have ever heard before of what Mick and Marianne were doing when the police raided - again supposed to be totally untrue, and not relevant here, nor is the story of one of Joely's boyfriends, Jamie Theakston, visiting a brothel. As for the offending deleted passage (which was printed in the 'Daily Mail'), words fail me! Utter trash then ... with lots of silly mistakes which should have been noticed. However, Richardson and Osborne come across as people you really would not want to to know no matter how brilliant their early work was before complacency set in.

Nicol Williamson, R.I.P.

RIP indeed to one of the great acting talents of the British theatre and cinema. Nicol Williamson burst on the scene in the '60s - like the young David Warner he was a mesmerising Hamlet, he and Warner (whom I have been meaning to write about too, along with Alan Bates and Peter Finch) are together in the '68 drama THE BOFORS GUN, long unseen.

By all accounts a difficult man, as the respectful obituaries put it: "his prickly temperament helped derail what might have been one of the great theatrical careers" as he was "touched by genius" and "the greatest actor since Brando". Heady praise to live up to ...

He died aged 73 in December but his family have only released the information now. His 1968 HAMLET was filmed by Tony Richardson, with Marianne Faithfull as his Ophelia, and Richardson also directed him in his film of Nabokov's LAUGHTER IN THE DARK, where Williamson replaced another ailing hellraiser Richard Burton. This film is too little seen now, but I remember a tv showing if it ... His initial stage success was in John Osborne's INADMISSABLE EVIDENCE where his ranting solicitor (a rather more raging BUTLEY as played by Alan Bates) was a tour de force, he also played the role in the film. Other films included THE SEVEN PER CENT SOLUTION as Sherlock Holmes (above with Vanessa Redgrave), and as Little John with Connery and Audrey Hepburn in Richard Lester's smashing ROBIN AND MARIAN in 1976 - which also co-starred Robert Shaw - another of those actors like Stanley Baker, Laurence Harvey and Stephen Boyd who died too young. Williamson too had alcoholic problems, like Robert Stephens who also never became quite the star people thought he would and made too many dud movies, as did the hellraiser in chief Richard Burton. Peter O'Toole seems to have survived all that ... It seems now that a lot of the hellraisers of the 60s like Oliver Reed, Richard Harris, David Hemmings, Anthony Hopkins became, if they survived, old hams in dud movies. Nicol Williamson didn't quite go that route having got bored with acting eventually and turning to music. What a fascinating man. He is fun too in my favourite snake-on-the-loose-with-people-trapped-in-a-house-under-seige movie VENOM with his ex-lover Sarah Miles (review at Sarah Miles label), and then of course there was his Merlin in John Boorman's EXCALIBUR!

The actor, who was known as a straighforward, private man, leaves his son, Luke. "He was the most honest, funny and intelligent man I have ever had the pleasure of knowing," writes Luke on Williamson's official website. "He was my father and words cannot adequately express how proud I am of him."

Marie Antoinette (2006)

MARIE ANTOINETTE Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film is another I had put off seeing, but finally gave in today and I must report I enjoyed it a lot. Is it marketed for a teen audience or does it depict Marie as an impressionable teen which today’s teens can relate to? The production is sumptuous as the teenage Marie leaves Austria to travel to France when still only 14 to marry Louis XVI and become queen at 19. We spend a lot of time with the teen Marie Antoinette (and Kirsten Dunst is perfect in the role) as she gets used to the lavish court and the rituals she has to abide by.

Later the birth of her children when in her 30s after she finally gets her husband to consummate the marriage is all glossed over rather quickly. The mob only appear once at the climax as she bows to the will of the people and we end with her and her family in a carriage, as the sun sets, on their way to their destiny – just as at the start she is that young girl on her way to France in another carriage. The cast is quite good – nice to see Marianne Faithfull (if only briefly) as her mother Maria Theresa, and comedian Steve Coogan as the advisor, Rip Torn as the older king and Jason Schwartzmann as the diffident husband, plus Judy Davis and Tom Hardy. We also get to see a lot of the opulent and eccentric court at Versailles as Marie matures. Other characters like the Princess Lamballe and Count Fersen are rather glossed over.

The modern (well, 80s) music by the likes of Adam and the Ants, Bow Wow Wow and The Cure has caused a lot of comment (there are 854 reviews on IMDB alone!) but for me it suits the images – even the shot of the trainers among the shoes – as these are the bored teens of their time, as they indulge in clothes, shoes, cakes and champagne.



We do not see enough of the mature queen or her trial where she defended herself, but this obviously was not part of Coppola’s plan – she also scripted from the well-regarded Antonia Fraser biography [I have a copy in my to-read-sometime pile]. Fraser expressed pleasure with the end result but then what historian would not like a lavish film to be made from their historical tome?

So really it is all about Marie Antoinette as a sweet, utterly conventional and finally boring teenage girl acting out the fantasy of becoming a queen without realising the implications that follow … certainly a fascinating conrast to the equally opulent MGM film of 1938 with Norma Shearer's majestic performance. There will always be a market for doomed queens, whether Marie Antoinette, Mary Queen of Scots or Elizabeth (Sissi) of Austria - Marie's story though is hard to beat - and it looks marvellous of course, as good as anything in BARRY LYNDON (which set the benchmark for period films).

Great nights in the theatre (1)

Chekov's THREE SISTERS at the Royal Court Theatre in London, 1967. I was 21 and sitting in the front row. Glenda Jackson (before her movie roles) was Marsha, Avril Elgar Olga the oldest sister and a luminous young Marianne Faithfull was Irina the youngest sister. I can still picture her on the stage being so radiant - as I told Marianne some years ago when she was signing her autobiography! A stunning production directed by William Gaskill - and the programme had the complete text too! There were other THREE SISTERS including Joan Plowright at the National, but Glenda and Marianne are the ones I remember.