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

Actors: Hoffman x 2, Finney, De Niro

A double bill featuring that fascinating actor Philip Seymour Hoffman - I have not liked all of his films, but sometimes he blew one away, ever since his early roles in BOOGIE NIGHTS, MAGNOLIA and THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY.  Here teamed with Albert Finney and Robert De Niro as equally magnetic co-stars, he delivers the goods ...

BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD. Sidney Lumet’s last film in 2007 (see below & Lumet label for other reviews) is also – yes, fascinating – to catch now, since its star Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death recently. This is a family drama that veers into Greek tragedy territory. Lumet at 83 lays on a powerhouse cast as we watch brothers Andy (Hoffman) – desperately needing money to finance his drug habit and cover money he has embezzled, and weak younger brother Hank (Ethan Hawke), who needs money for his family and who gets lured into big brother’s plan to rob a jewelry shore – not just any old jewel shop, but the one belonging to their parents, Albert Finney and Rosemary Harris. 

This is meant to be a victimless crime with the insurance paying out. But younger brother gets someone else involved in the robbery and the mother, who was not meant to be at the shop, fights back, resulting in two deaths: hers, and the robber. Both brothers go into meltdown, and the father – Finney at his most intense, in a good late role for him, decides to investigate further. This leads to a stunning climax between Hoffman and Finney ... Marisa Tomei has a good role too. Now for another I had been putting off: Hoffman with De Niro in FEARLESS, which I did not want to see at all at the time.

 

FLAWLESS from 1999 is a real oddity, sometimes one wants to turn it off or speed it up, as we watch homophobic ex-cop Robert De Niro, who suffers a stroke during a run in with some drug dealers, and tries to recover. His doctor tells him the best way to improve his speech is to start singing lessons. He plucks up courage to ask his neigbour to teach him to sing - this is Hoffman as the flamboyant transvestite and drag queen, who has problems of his own, as he finally admits he is lonely and ugly and unloved. This film is about how the relationship grows between these two very different people and how they both work together to overcome their very different problems, while some vicious hoods are also looking for that money. 
It is good to see De Niro back to his best after some very average movies, a lot of which one didn't want to or need to see (he is almost an older Travis Bickle here, down on his luck in a very seedy sleazy gritty New York) and Phillip Seymour Hoffman is just outstanding and mesmerising again, he was certainly an actor who took risks - and will be as sorely missed as Heath Ledger. Its a Joel Schumacher film, a lot of it though looks too dark, one can barely see what is going on. 

Soon: Finney in Huston's 1984 UNDER THE VOLCANO, and with Tom Courtenay in THE DRESSER, plus Tom in Noel Coward's ME AND THE GIRLS.

Filmed theatre: Long Day's Journey Into Night

Author Eugene O'Neill gives an autobiographical account of his explosive homelife, fused by a drug-addicted mother, a father who wallows in drink after realizing he is no longer a famous actor and an older brother who is emotionally unstable and a misfit. The family is reflected by the youngest son, who is a sensitive and aspiring writer. 

LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT is the big one, a long, searing drama by Eugene O'Neill, which can be tough to watch for almost three hours. It was hardly seen at all for a long time, as the 1962 film had a very limited release then, despite its cast of 4 getting best actor awards at the Cannes Film Festival. 

It is Sidney Lumet again, and Katharine Hepburn again - see below for A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE and A DELICATE BALANCE. 
The great Kate is mesmerising here in maybe her finest performance as Mary Tyrone the mother who descends into morphine addiction over the course of that long day. Ralph Richardson too is a perfect choice here - Fredric March had played it on the stage - and the two sons are Jason Robards as the wayward older son, and Dean Stockwell as the sensitive younger one. It is perhaps as searing a drama as WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? or A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE in the American theatre pantheon, and of course O'Neill's THE ICEMAN COMETH (the 1958 film of O'Neill's DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS with Loren in her first American made film, Perkins and a totally over the top Burl Ives, does not work at all, looking now like overheated trash). As a film LONG DAY'S JOURNEY is one of Lumet's best - his ALL ABOUT EVE perhaps, though not as witty as the Mankiewicz classic, but as iconic in its own right.

Richardson excels as the father unable to help his family - a penny-pinching famous old actor, whose wife Mary is being lost to drug addiction, as he was too cheap to pay for proper medical treatment. This is Hepburn's most intense, frightening role and she gives herself completely to it - when we see her in LION IN WINTER or SUMMERTIME we can see her acting and enjoy her all the more, but this harrowing role is different as she captures every facet of it. It was her only screen work between 1959's SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER and 1967's GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER when we young movie buffs fell in love with her, despite that hokey film, after her long absence, as this 1962 film was not available then. Stockwell and Robards are note-perfect too. Here O'Neill shows us his dysfunctional family, like Tennessee Williams does in his great works. 

Lumet sometimes misfires as with his film of THE SEA GULL in 1968 - as per recent review, Lumet label - but here he is in sure command of the material and it shows.

Filmed Theatre: A View From The Bridge

Arthur Miller’s A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE must have been a powerhouse play back in the ‘50s, with Van Heflin in the lead as that Brooklyn longshoreman Eddie Carbone. Did Miller see him as a tragic hero who was a common man, a blue collar longshoreman in a gritty working class world? That’s how he is presented in Sidney Lumet’s film released in 1962. It is almost an European film, interiors were filmed in Paris, with Raf Vallone, Jean Sorel, Raymond Pellegrin, and Americans Maureen Stapleton and Carol Lawrence (the original Maria in WEST SIDE STORY). However the overheated dramatics seem a tad risible now as the films veers into Greek tragedy territory. Was Lumet trying for another ON THE WATERFRONT?

Eddie Carbone, a Brooklyn longshoreman is married to Beatrice and unconsciously in love with Catherine, her niece they have raised from childhood. Into his house come two brothers, illegal immigrants, Marco and Rodolpho. Catherine falls in love with Rodolpho; and Eddie, tormented but unable to admit even to himself his quasi-incestuous love, reports the illegal immigrants to the authorities.

Miller’s play focuses on the old world Italian immigrants making their home in America and bringing over their relations, some of whom want to integrate, as does Rodolpho, who can gain citizenship when married to an American girl. Vallone’s Eddie builds up an unreasoning hatred of the younger man, because of his attraction for his niece. Lawrence either is naive or just puts it out of her mind, but Stapleton sees what is happening all too clearly and tries to reason with her husband. Things come to a climax when Eddie kisses Rodolpho, implying he is homosexual – but surely if he were that should please Eddie as then Rodolpho would not be interested in Catherine …..

Pauline Kael in her pertinent review (in I LOST IT AT THE MOVIES) skewers the film’s odd thinking perfectly. 
As she puts it: “What does Eddie Carbone want?” – he no longer desires his homely wife (Stapleton at her most irritating) whom he is only supposed to have sex with for evermore. Kael also had words on that kiss - the first time men kissed (it seems) on screen, and neither were meant to enjoy it! Meanwhile the young couple fall for each other. Eddie loses his good name and is a lone man at the end, armed with his meathook as he and Pellegrin, armed with his, confront each other. It is powerful stuff typical of its era, but rather over the top. Vallone however in his prime is never less than compulsive, Stapleton excels as ever, and Sorel was that popular young actor of the time who had a long career – more on him at Sorel label. 

I saw Arthur Miller at a book signing for his novella "Plain Girl" in his later years, when he signed copies but nobody could talk to or speak to the great man. But just to see him and get a signed copy was enough. 

PS: I mentioned above that A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE was not performed much now - I was wrong, a new production is opening at London's Old Vic from April to June, with the intriguing casting of Mark Strong - the discerning director's hard man or villain of choice - as Eddie Carbone. Strong, from THE LONG FIRM to THE EAGLE, THE GUARD, ROCKNROLLA and ROBIN HOOD and more, should be ideal here. 

'60s rarities continue: The Sea Gull

Finally, the 1968 film of Chekhov's THE SEA GULL is available (a no-frills Warner Archive all region release). This has been one of my holy grails - as it never appeared anywhere here in the last 40 years or so. Hard to fathom why, as its a Sidney Lumet film with a stunning cast of the time. James Mason, Simone Signoret, Harry Andrews and David Warner (briefly) had all appeared in his 1967 London thriller THE DEADLY AFFAIR, and here they are again for this film of the Chekhov play.

Love yearned for and love cast aisde. The powerful, all-star film version of Chehov's classic. A brilliant cast brings playwright Anton Chekov's masterpiece of the capricious power of passion to the screen. The story is set during two gatherings, two years apart, on the same Russian country estate and among six lovers, most of whom are not loved in return. Those who are hard-shelled and wordly shrug off romantic disappointment. Those who are not, cannot ... and tragedy ensues. With direction by Sidney Lumet (NETWORK, DOG DAY AFTERNOON, THE VERDICT) and the talents of James Mason, Vanessa Redgrave, Simone Signoret, David Warner, Denholm Elliot and more lights of film and stage, THE SEA GULL resonates with profound emotion.

That's the dvd blurb. I am not familar with this play, but know Chekhov's THE THREE SISTERS (Theatre label) very well, from various productions (Janet Suzman and Joan Plowright were ideal Mashas, but the best one and still vivid in my memory is a 1968 production at London's Royal Court with Glenda Jackson ideal, and the young Marianne Faithfull a radiant Irina). Also, having last seen Vanessa Redgrave as the dying wife of Terence Stamp in last year's SONG FOR MARION (review below) another of those tedious movies for the older generation, it is marvellous to go back and see her in her '60s prime here.

First of it, it looks lovely (as staged by Tony Walton, and photographed in Sweden by Gerry Fisher), set in that countryside by the lake, with the woods and the trees and that country house estate where they gather to watch the play, which the bored mother, actress Arkadina, soon interrupts. Konstantin the son (David Warner) is distraught, he loves Nina who was playing on stage, but she gets to meet Trigorin (James Mason) the companion of Arkadina (we earlier see him sleeping naked in bed, while she sits at her dressing table). Arkadina is visiting the estate of her brother Sorin (Harry Andrews), and also to hand is Alfred Lynch (WEST 11- London label) as the schoolteacher who is in love with Masha (Kathleen Widdoes, from Lumet's THE GROUP) - the one who wears black as she is in mourning for her life - daughter of the estate bailiff Ronald Radd. Eileen Herlie is the bailiff's wife, and also to hand is Denholm Elliot, a doctor, sporting an odd wig. We spend the first act watching them gather and interact as Konstantin stages the play. Vanessa's Nina is spellbinding and luminescent here, and Warner suitably intense. The last absorbing if melancholy act takes place two years later ...

Lumet had already done the highly-regarded 1962 film of O'Neill's LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT, among other successes, but somehow comes a cropper here, as it all gets tedious, there are long speeches shot with few close-ups, with some odd casting choices, the chief one being that Simone Signoret with her Franch accent seems all wrong here, playing with her English brother and son. Pauline Kael's long review came to hand in her book "Going Steady" so let's quote a bit: she calls it a badly-filmed play as characters playing educated middle class and professional people - mixed with bohemians - mingle just before the turn of the 20th century. They are beset by financial problems (the schoolteacher does not earn enough), unrequited love, unrealised aspirations, they indulge in unhappiness and nostalgia and despair. Signoret's accent gives her lines the wrong shadings and emphases. Because her style isn't in tune with the others and because her lines sound heavy, Arkadina loses her charm and becomes the villainess of the piece - a selfish, stingy, son-devouring Freudian mother. And every time this monster speaks she stomps on the remnants of the fragile play. But its interesting to see actors wrestling with real roles, even when the actors are wrong for them. Simone Signoret is bad here, but she is still Simone Signoret. And THE SEA GULL is a terrible movie, but it is still a movie of THE SEA GULL". (Signoret though was terrific in SHIP OF FOOLS, GAMES, THE DEADLY AFFAIR, ARMY OF SHADOWS in those years).

Well that certainly gives one food for thought when watching Lumet's film, at least it is in circulation again. (Kael is also very pertinent on another Lumet filmed play, Arthur Miller's A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE from 1961, which I may get around to soon too). Maybe time soon for Chekhov's other drama of loss and regret UNCLE VANYA ...

Next: Another rarity, Maximilian Schell's 1970 film of Turgenev's FIRST LOVE (more Russian costume drama angst), plus Warner & Redgrave again in MORGAN A SUITABLE CASE FOR TREATMENT in 1966, and Warner as MICHAEL KOHLHAAS in 1968, Sophia Loren as MADAME SANS-GENE with Robert Hossein in '61, and our 1962 favourite THE CHAPMAN REPORT, also finally on dvd - all more '60s rarities; plus Terry and Julie again (AWAY FROM HER and THE LIMEY) and back to Peplums with HELEN OF TROY.

Simone Signoret: Ship of Fools / The Deadly Affair

Based on the novel by Katharine Anne Porter, 1965's SHIP OF FOOLS is set on board a liner sailing from Mexico to Bremerhaven in Germany in 1933 - a significant date. Among the many passengers (who represent society at large then) are divorcee Mary Treadwell (Vivien Leigh in her final role) and La Condesa (Simone Signoret) a drug-addicted Spanish noblewoman being deported as a political prisoner. Leigh and Signoret are both marvellous here - Signoret in particular having a doomed romance with ship's doctor Oscar Werner (who has a heart condition...) - these two are tremendous together. Leigh (who died in 1967) has some stunning moments too, an older Blanche Du Bois or Mrs Stone, surveying her ageing appearance in the mirror, suddenly bursting into a frantic charleston as she walks along the corridor, she is desperate for love and affection and certainly knows how to work a feather boa, she also attacks Lee Marvin who stumbles into her cabin thinking it is that of one of the women selling their favours in Jose Greco's flamenco troupe. 

Marvin is an ageing alcoholic athlete here - also on board are artists George Segal and Elizabeth Ashley (looking like a very 60s modern miss) who have a love-hate relationship, Michael Dunn as a dwarf who addresses us the audience, Jose Ferrer as an obnoxious German spouting his anti-Jewish verbiage without thinking and is a budding Nazi in the making, well-meaning captain Charles Korvin, and a cross section of Germans including Lilia Skala and her dog, Heinz Reuhmann who cannot believe bad of his fellow Germans, teenager Gila Golan and her parents, and the lower decks are full of refugees and extras. We follow their interweaving stories as this particular ship of fools head towards Germany and their destiny ... which foreshadows the holocaust to come, showing a microscosm of a world on the verge of war and worse, as we glimpse a swastika on arrival in Germany ...

Social Significance and Big Issues were always Stanley Kramer's forte and his big ponderous pictures were popular then, whether dealing with racial intolerance (THE DEFIANT ONES), the end of the world (ON THE BEACH), the war trials (JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBURG), teaching (INHERIT THE WIND) etc. SHIP OF FOOLS, scripted by Abby Mann, is more of the same (the naive German Jew returning to Germany says: "there are one million Jews in Germany alone. What are they going to do -- kill all of us?") but it is quite entertaining as well, particuarly when the leads are on view - much more satisfying than the 1976 all-star plodder VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED which was too stuffed with names to involve one ("look, there's Julie Harris with Wendy Hiller..." etc), Oscar Werner was in that too, married to Faye Dunaway in her jackboots).

SHIP OF FOOLS was one of  the year's big ones - but the look of the film is all over the place, only the two leads make any attempt at a period look, the others - particularly Segal and Ashley - look as it they walked in off the street in 1965; it is though interesting to see again as I had not seen it since 1965 when I was 19, at one of my favourite cinemas, the Notting Hill Coronet, which thankfully is still there, though it comprises smaller cinemas now. (Segal of course was heading into his busy years then, with THE QUILLER MEMORANDUM, KING RAT (review below) and so many others). 

Signoret and Leigh must surely have had some interesting conversation about Marilyn Monroe, who of course worked with both their husbands Olivier and Montand, Signoret also starred with Olivier in TERM OF TRIAL....

THE DEADLY AFFAIR: Sidney Lumet's 1966 downbeat thriller has another fascinating role for a rather deglamorised Signoret, and has the perfect casting of James Mason, Harry Andrews, Maximilian Schell, Harriet Andersson and Lynn Redgrave, with lots of familiar faces: Roy Kinnear, Robert Flemyng and others.

Based on a John Le Carre novel THE DEADLY AFFAIR is a cold war thriller centred in the world of espionage. When Foreign Office official Samuel Fennan and his wife (Signoret) are anonymously accused of Communist affiliations, their world is turned upside down. Fennan is subsequently found dead from an apparant suicide, although Secret Service agent Charles Dobbs (Mason), suspects otherwise. When Dobbs' suspicions hit a dead end with his superior officer, the veteran agent decides to resign his government post and join forces with retired CID inspector Mendel (Andrews). As the two men continue their pursuit of the truth, their investigation unearths a spy ring and much more than they ever expected along the way.

This is a satisfying convoluted thriller, rather like that other Le Carre, THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD (Mason is George Smiley in all but name), with offbeat London locations - the cast excel, good to see Ingmar Bergman actress Harriet Andersson here, Signoret is suitably enigmatic, and there is a murder in a London theatre (the Aldwych actually where David Warner is playing EDWARD II on stage..., and Lynn is a dippy stagehand). It combines elements of film noir, magnificent cast, understatement, gritty realism, even a touch of humor now and then among the glum events. Signoret in just 4 scenes (2 of them silent) excels, the intrusive score by Quincy Jones seems out of place though.

Mason, Signoret and Warner joined forces again for Lumet's impossible to see now THE SEAGULL in '68. We do though have another Signoret to watch: THE WIDOW COUDERC from 1971 with Alain Delon, plus Ophuls' 1950 LA RONDE to re-visit. She is also terrific and glamorous in 1967's GAMES, that quirky thriller by Curtis Harrington, see review at Signoret label.

More Kramer soon - his 1969 'comedy' THE SECRET OF SANTA VITTORIO one of several Qunns to see (THE LOST COMMAND, THE GREEK TYCOON), also Lumet's last film BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD; more Lee Marvins too: THE KILLERS, POINT BLANK, HELL IN THE PACIFIC, PRIME CUT.

The Group

Mary McCarthy's novel THE GROUP was one of those best-sellers of the '60s, like John Updike's RABBIT RUN, which the intelligentsia just had to have on their bookshelves. In 1966 Sidney Lumet turned it into a movie, which I have finally caught up with and quite fascinating it is too. It is almost a costume drama really with all those '30s fashions, as we follow the girls from the Class of 1933 at Vassar through the highs and lows of the 1930s leaving them two and half hours later as war is declared and they are burying one of The Group.

It's 1933, and eight young women are friends and members of the upper-class group at a private girl's school, about to graduate and start their own lives. The film documents the years between their graduation and the beginning of the War in Europe, and shows, in a serialized style, their romances and marriages, their searches for careers or meaning in their lives, their highs and their lows.

 

Lumet (RIP label) assembled quite a collection of rising young actresses, its the best female line-up since THE WOMEN in 1939 or its 1956 remake THE OPPOSITE SEX (which was also a dizzying '50s fashion show with a great crowd of '50s gals, as per  my other posts on it here, but not the dire 2009 version - which ironically cast Candice Bergen as Meg Ryan's mother!) Then of course there was THE CHAPMAN REPORT (1962 label) and the enjoyable trash that is VALLEY OF THE DOLLS and items like STEEL MAGNOLIAS.

The girls soon discover that outside the protective bubble of college and "The Group", which their wealth, position and privilege have guaranteed them, real life presents considerable greater challenges. Touching on everything from politics, birth control, lesbianism, marriage, mental illness, marital abuse, adultery, childbirth, alcoholism and date-rape all tied up in two and half hours, as well as how one's ideals can take quite a beating when confronted by the disappointments and compromises of the real world.

The film focuses mainly on Kay (Joanna Pettet) and Polly (Shirley Knight) and we see lots of catty Libby (Jessica Walter, as mesmerising as she was in PLAY MISTY FOR ME), there's Elizabeth Hartman again as Priss (see YOU'RE A BIG BOY NOW, below).  Sapphic Lakey (Candice Bergen) is absent for most of the film but returns in some style from Europe with her Countess in tow, and has a nice pointed final scene with Kay's husband (Larry Hagman - even more obnoxious here than in DALLAS).  Kay and husband have a perfectly '30s apartment (below) but their marriage soon unravels .... Polly has problems with men and her father who may be mentally ill ... Priss has childbirth and baby problems, as Libby becomes a prime bitch. The actresses are fascinating here, early in their careers. Some fared better than others, and others like Hartman and Joan Hackett sadly died far too young. The men though here are an unappetising bunch: Hagman, Richard Mulligan, Hal Holbrook .... surely the girls deserved better. Good to see the ever-dependable Shirley Knight and Joanna Pettet too, one of those '60s girls who seemed to have disappeared. Candice is as slinky as ever here ....

Watching THE GROUP is like enjoying a satisfying novel with well-developed characters and sub-plots and situations and that perfect period detail, one of Lumet's better films then, and a superior soap opera too which puts recent 'chick flicks' to shame. Pauline Kael did a lengthy piece on the making of the film for "The New Yorker" which is included in her collection "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang".

Sidney Lumet RIP

Sidney Lumet [1924-2011] was indeed one of the most prolific directors ever since he began making movies in 1957 with 12 ANGRY MEN. Like John Frankenheimer and others he began in the golden age of live television.

He worked in lots of genres throughout the 60s - THE FUGITIVE KIND, THE PAWNBROKER, THE HILL, FAIL-SAFE, THE GROUP, THE DEADLY AFFAIR, THE SEAGULL, BYE BYE BRAVERMAN, then there was the failure of the cod-Antonioni THE APPOINTMENT which would have emptied cinemas if it ever played in them - but Lumet certainly hit some peaks in the '70s with MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS and those great New York movies like DOG DAY AFTERNOON and SERPICO, and of course NETWORK, followed by THE VERDICT and PRINCE OF THE CITY. Another theatrical one was his film of the hit play EQUUS in '77. THE WIZ though seems to have been a misfire - I had no interest in seeing it or a lot of his later films.

Always terrific with actors and staging - the murder in THE DEADLY AFFAIR for instance - it is a terrific legacy of solid middle-brow, thought-provoking enterainment with some great performances [Signoret, Finch, Dunaway, Holden, Brando, Magnani, Steiger, Mason, Pacino etc], (I trust that does not sound too patronising).



Here are a few I cherish: STAGE STRUCK from '58 with a nice role for Joan Greenwood; the film of Arthur Miller's A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE with Raf Vallone and Jean Sorel, the 1959 drama THAT KIND OF WOMAN, not seen until a year or two ago - where kept woman Loren has to choose between soldier Tab Hunter or wealthy George Sanders - only flaw for me was it said it was 1944 but what we see on screen in pure 1959; and the ensemble in LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT in 1962 where the 4 cast members won the Venice Film Festival acting prize, providing perfect late roles for Katharine Hepburn and Ralph Richardson.