Otto's Anatomy of a Murder

This is probably the greatest courtroom drama ever made and it features one of James Stewart's finest screen performance and Lee Remick is just perfect as Laura Mannion - not quite a tramp but enjoys her power to excite men - which goes too far one night when she is brutally raped. Controversial in its day for using words like "panties" and "sperm", Otto Preminger's film still enthralls with its close examination of a murder trial - one could see it as a companion piece to his 1962 ADVISE AND CONSENT - reviewed recently here (dramas, gay interest labels). As Michigan hick lawyer and jazz fan (cue Duke Ellington) Stewart is drawn into the case and comes up against flash big town prosecutor George C. Scott (in his breakthrough role). Their courtroom duels and stunts are mesmerising, revealing an America in 1959 leaving its traditional moral values behind as that new decade the '60s dawn, so it has that 1959 look in spades and is a key American film of that year, like NORTH BY NORTHWEST, SOME LIKE IT HOT etc. Its a long film which never dawdles but fizzes along.

The real courtroom judge presides over the case, Saul Bass's credits are exemplary as usual and as the young trailerpark couple Lee Remick and Ben Gazzara (he died last year, RIP label) have perfect chemistry too. Arthur O'Connell has a great role too as Stewart's sidekick redeeming himself while Eve Arden has not much to do but it is great to have her there as their secretary.

The case is interestingly worked out to the final denoument, with Kathryn Grant as a key witness (she soon gave it all up to be Mrs Bing Crosby). A key 50s film then and one of Otto's major works before his work fizzled out by the late 60s. After those two with Kim Novak in 1958 this was really the start of Stewart's character roles. Lee Remick has always been one of my favourites, as per my many posts here on her, I met her in 1970. She left us far too young.

 Ben Gazzara is the hothead army soldier (he slaps his wife around now and then)  who shoots the respected local inn-keeper who raped his wife, then pleads insanity or an "irrrestible impulse". Lee is great as the suggestive tease who leaves you questioning her motives throughout. She and Stewart have some nice scenes together as he coaches her to be less trampy and how to conduct herself in court. There is that great moment when she lets her hair down ... This was a sensational film at the time, I remember getting the paperback, great to see it holds up marvellously over 50 years later.

John Ford's London cop show

and a ferry to Hong Kong.

GIDEON OF SCOTLAND YARD (or GIDEON'S DAY) is an amusing view now - it must have seemed quaint even in 1958, I know I saw it as a kid. Directed (though you wouldn't know it) by John Ford as though he was having a vacation from THE QUIET MAN or THE SEARCHERS, it purports to show a typical day of Inspector Gideon who seemingly never gets to eat anything as he is always on the hop from one case to another. Here is a blurb: Scotland Yard Inspector George Gideon starts his day off on the wrong foot when he gets a traffic-violation ticket from a young police officer. From there, his 'typical day" consists in learning that one of his most-trusted detectives has accepted bribes; hunts an escaped maniac who has murdered a girl; tracks a young girl suspected of a payroll robbery and, then, helps break up a bank robbery. His long day ends when he arrives at home and finds that his daughter has a date with the policeman who gave him a ticket that morning.

John Wayne visits Ford on set

There is extensive shooting all over London and we see police procedures in that pre-computer and internet world with cops on the beat and without cellphones. Gideon drives a lovely old car as he drops off daughter Anna Massey at her music school. Mrs Gideon (Anna Lee) is kept firmly in her perfectly '50s kitchen (dig that check table cloth). Massey - who died last year, RIP label - was Ford's god-daughter (her father being Raymond Massey) - she played the young debutante in the original stage version of that other quaint view of '58 London, Minnelli's THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE (which I saw on a cinema screen recently, as per report below). A whole raft of English players pop up, some for just a moment: Miles Malleson, John le Mesurier, Marjorie Rhodes, Laurence Naismith as a sex killer - we just watch him climb the stairs to his victim (rather like how Hitch pulls away from the murder scene in FRENZY). 

Bank robbers were toffs then

Ford had made THE RISING OF THE MOON in Ireland in 1957 and ropes in some regulars from that here too: comedienne Maureen Potter, Cyril Cusack, Donal Donnelly. Jack Hawkins is his customary self radiating that natural authority not only for Ford here, but that PHAROAH for Howard Hawks and Roman admiral Quintus Arrius for Wyler in BEN-HUR. Top billed with Hawkins, Dianne Foster - a starlet of the time - has just 2 scenes. Gideon has a busy day coping with robberies, a murder or two, a corrupt colleague - but everything is wrapped up by the end of his long day. The Gideon books (21 in all) must have been popular, by John Creasey. It is an interesting view of police life before the gritty tv series like Z CARS took over in the '60s.

1958 seems very quaint here - as it does in the same year's studio confections THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE and Donen's INDISCREET, but things were changing as the '50s closed: next year 1959 saw ROOM AT THE TOP, I'M ALL RIGHT JACK, SAPPHIRE (and the American ANATOMY OF A MURDER - my next report, it airs again tomorrow); while 1960 brought that new era of movie-making with PSYCHO, L'AVVENTURA etc as well as England's PEEPING TOM, SONS AND LOVERS and 1961's VICTIM and FLAME IN THE STREETS, and those 'kitchen sink' items like A TASTE OF HONEY while by 1963 it was time for the new decade and BILLY LIAR, THE SERVANT and NOTHING BUT THE BEST ... as per other '60s posts here.

Lewis Gilbert's FERRY TO HONG KONG, a Rank Organisation actioner I remember from 1960 seems interminable now. We are on Orson Welles' ferry as habitual drunk Curt Jurgens is expelled from Hong Kong but is not allowed to enter Macao, so he goes back and forth on the ferry, to the annoyance of Orson, treating it all with disdain as the effete captain. Add in Slyvia Syms as a love interest (she was also in Hong Kong for THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG that year), Irish Noel Purcell as the chief engineer and Jeremy Spencer as first officer. Rank was trying to compete with international movies then, this though is not one of their better efforts and quickly becomes tedious despite a storm at sea and marauding pirates, while we wonder at Orson earning a crust here.
 Sylvia is still going strong now, happily playing old ladies (popping up in REV etc, as well as her turn in THE QUEEN) - but as I said a while ago whatever happened to Jeremy Spenser?
It will be a pleasure to remind myself of Orson's greatness by returning to his Falstaff in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, which we liked so much back in 1966. 

Afternoon tea (& shopping...)

A treat and respite from our current wet washout summer in London: taking afternoon tea at the Fortnum & Mason store in Piccadilly. I was meeting my friend Candie whom I had not seen for a while but she had an appointment in Victoria, so it seemed the ideal place to while away an hour or two (after a drink first of course) particularly as one also got a free glass of champagne by quoting a magazine offer! 

I had never done afternoon tea before but made an effort by wearing a tie and smartening up - and I have to say I loved it all. The room is spacious and bright and airy with the tables well spaced out. The finger sandwiches were perfect and one could have a second helping! I had never tried cucumber sandwiches before, they were wonderful as was the beef with horseradish and capers etc. I will have to make my own finger sandwiches now .... the scones with clotted cream and a selection of jams were also ideal and we could have had more. By then we barely had room for the delectible fancies - the attentive waiters replaced the tea and milk and offered to bag up what we could not eat, so we had a doggy bag (a nice box) to take away, with a gift of their Jubilee tea brand. One could also help oneself to cake from a selection on the trolley, but we just couldn't manage it.

Of course one had to stop off in the shop (which I used to visit regularly when I was working in Regent Street) for some of the jams and preserves and a pork pie to take home.  Highly recommended then and well worth the money. I feel quite jolly today now. We will be planning our next foray there when a friend is over from Northern Ireland in August ... and my sister-in-law from Kerry will love it too.
Plus some shopping:
Blue cologne bottles - I just love them, and those intoxicating scents by Tom Ford (his new 'Portofino') and Acqua di Parma Blu Mediterraneo (which has several versions: 'Amalfi', 'Capri', 'Calabria' etc)... thats me set up for summer! They are all doing Italian names now - Dolce & Gabbana have just brought out 'Stromboli' for men and their 'Portofino' for women, Voyage To Italy indeed !

Irish quartet

I have done threads on London and Paris (see labels) but how about Dublin in the 1960s? Look, there's Agnes Browne selling her fruit at her market stall, over there gay bus conductor Albert Byrne is entertaining his passengers -  while Edna O'Brien's country girls Kate and Baba (GIRL WITH GREEN EYES) are having a great time and looking for romance. A 1930s Ireland is also conjured up in the film THE FIELD - and of course the film of that great play DANCING AT LUGHNASA where Meryl Streep leads a great ensemble. Let's look at a few of these.  At least THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES (Ireland label) was made in the '60s and has that real Dublin vibe - there is something skewered in those colorful '90s recreations .... (also in the '60s films like YOUNG CASSIDY, ULYSSES, LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS, SINFUL DAVEY were filmed there, as well as 1959's SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL ... also in the '60s RYAN'S DAUGHTER in Kerry and my favourite I WAS HAPPY HERE in Clare.)

Anjelica Huston's AGNES BROWNE (1999) is an earlier incarnation of Brendan O'Carroll's series MRS BROWNE'S BOYS and his book "The Mammy". It is not really a realistic picture of a Dublin widow bringing up 7 children in the 1960s. The comic tone is set from the start as Mrs Browne and her friend arrive at the benefits office to claim her widow's pension. The harrassed assistant asks her when her husband died, to which Agnes replies "ten past four" - that day, she has not even got the death certificate yet! She therefore has to go to the local loan shark - a younger Ray Winstone with a dreadful accent - for ready cash. Then there is the funeral mix up with several coffins arriving at the same time and they are at the wrong graveside!

Agnes though copes well, she does not seem bothered by the loss of her husband, she and her best friend Marion (Marion O'Dwyer) cope with life's ups and downs, out drinking on a Friday night, and they have a day at the seaside but then Marion too is taken from her by cancer .... but there is that French baker who has eyes for Agnes and you just know it will all end ok for her, as her kids run riot at the swanky Gresham Hotel and one of them falls foul of the loan shark, but they club together to buy her that blue dress for her first date with the French guy - and then Tom Jones pops up as himself (this in 1999) and saves the day too as we end with Agnes and her brood watching him as his 1967 self  in concert [its Cliff Richard in the book!]. 

Angelica (marvellous is so many things from THE GRIFTERS to her father's THE DEAD - another great Irisih film) directs all this with a sure touch - she of course spent a lot of time in Ireland growing up partly at her father's pile in Galway - but she is perhaps a tad too glamorous for a harrassed mother of seven? Author Brendan O'Carroll (who plays Mrs Browne in his successful tv series) pops up too in various moments as the local drunk. So really I suppose it is great fun really but don't expect realism.

It's back to 1963 Dublin for Albert Finney's turn - as the blurb says:

"A touching and gentle tale of self-discovery and expression, A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE (1994) features a stellar cast of British acting talent.

Dublin 1963. Middle-aged bus conductor Alfred Byrne passes the day cheerily entertaining his passengers with passionate recitals of Oscar Wilde's poetry. However, Alfred is secretely living a desperately unhappy life - he's gay, deeply closeted and in love with his colleague, bus driver Robbie (Rufus Sewell) whom he adores from a distance.

When he meets an enchanting young passenger Adele (Tara Fitzgerald) Alfie is inspired to mount a production of Wilde's SALOME with Adele as the lead. With the rest of the cast filled out by his regulars, including a gruff butcher (Michael Gambon), he sets out to produce Wilde's controversial play - but not everyone is pleased with the choice. With production woes piling on, Alfie is forced to overcome his fears and be happy with who he is".

Albert (TOM JONES in 1963) goes at it full tilt - like David Hemmings he is an actor with surely no vanity at all - he is good at playing this man who is desperate to create beautiful things in a grey, humdrum world which just doesn't understand him. But there is something inherently comic in this drama as Michael Gambon and Brenda Fricker comically play those bigots who conspire against him - the scene when they try to break into his locked room is a scream. She as his sister does not like the spaghetti he cooks for her and she is worred where his hands have been - Albie's problem is that they have not been anywhere! In desperation, after he visits Adele's room and finds her in the throes of passion, he gets dressed up as Oscar Wilde with a green carnation to visit a gay bar where the guy he picks up leads him into an ambush, as the police are called. David Kelly (RIP label) is good too as his only friend; the great Anna Manahan (ME MAMMY and Mrs Ceadogan in THE IRISH R.M. and THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE) is one of the bus passengers. It all ends on a rather fairytale note as the bigots are defeated, his bus passengers stand by him, as does Rufus Sewell as the driver who likes him. It should be an engrossing drama but again, as in AGNES BROWNE, the comedy elements make it all rather risible. Directed by one Suri Krishnamma and written by Barry Devlin. Certainly an oddity then ... [famously hetero Finney (romanced Audrey, married Anouk Aimee, etc) does not disgrace himself here - unllike Burton and Harrison in the awful STAIRCASE, 1969].

Back presumably to the 1930s for THE FIELD - Jim Sheridan's 1990 film of John B. Keane's play. I have to declare an interest here, as John B Keane is from my home town in Kerry, and his family still run his famous pub. I was drinking there last year. I and my family knew him, as we did that other well known Irish writer Bryan McMahon. THE FIELD is a gripping drama but again for me something odd happens - it just seems to go way over the top so eventually the grim storyline becomes almost funny, like something out of Monty Python - as the misery piles on. By the climax when the cattle go over the cliff and the Lear-like Bull McCabe (Richard Harris) seems to have gone mad, one is almost laughing.

The cast again go at it full tilt: Brenda Fricker (again) as the almost silent wife, John Hurt as the village idiot type (think John Mills in RYAN'S DAUGHTER), Sean Bean, Frances Tomelty as the widow who wants to sell the field, which McCabe has nourished for years - and Tom Berenger as the visiting Yank who wants to buy it - leading to if not Greek Tragedy then Irish Tragedy all round ....again the blurb says: "Bull" McCabe's family has farmed a field for generations, sacrificing endlessly for the sake of the land. And when the widow who owns the field decides to sell the field in a public auction, McCabe knows that he must own it. But while no one in the village would dare bid against him, an American with deep pockets decides that he needs the field to build a highway. The Bull and his son decide to convince the American to give up bidding on the field, but things go horribly wrong".  This is a look at a more vicious reality of the rural Ireland behind the whimsy of THE QUIET MAN.

Here's an odd one, THE LAST SEPTEMBER, a 1999 film which I had never heard of, it can't have played in London and one can see why - directed by stage director Deborah Warner, hence a fatal lack of pace: talk of languid, langorous tedium set in a long summer in 1920 in County Cork on one of those Anglo-Irish estates which seems to have seen better days. Presided over by Michael Gambon and Maggie Smith with their niece Lois (Keeley Hawes) and visiting guests including Fiona Shaw and Jane Birkin - an odd choice here.  
During those long scenes when nothing seems to be happening one remembers how more animated Smith and Gambon were in GOSFORD PARK and that Smith and Birkin were both much more fun in EVIL UNDER THE SUN ... Pre-DR WHO David Tennant is the army officer in love with Lois who is drawn to and sheltering a rebel hiding in the old mill who has killed a black-and-tan made to kneel naked before him - and now Tennant too is exploring the old mill as another shot rings out ... Its all from an Elizabeth Bowen novel, rather like a William Trevor story, and the politics of the time will be difficult to comprehend for those unfamiliar with history - no laughs here though.

Rainy day thoughts ...

Some musing after reading the weekend papers ...

Nobody I presume sets out to make a bad movie, but some certainly turn out bad - how do the actors feel then having to promote them?  I caught sight of Simon Pegg a couple of times last week on early morning tv shows sitting on sofas (what has he done to his hair ? - he seems to be wearing something new ....) talking up this new piece of drek A FANTASTIC FEAR OF EVERYTHING which according to the reviews here is possibly the worst film of the year or as one says "is unarguably one of the worst British films I've ever seen" - what, worse than SEX LIVES OF THE POTATO MEN or LESBIAN VAMPIRE KILLERS which temporarily killed off James Corden's career here - once I saw that first review of it in "Time Out" followed by that "Sunday Times" page I knew it would take him a long time to recover, but of course he is now wowing them on Broadway. 

Pegg of course has form with bad movies - he may turn up in major franchises like that recent MISSION IMPOSSIBLE but there's also that awful BURKE & HARE and that take on Toby Young's HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS & ALIENATE PEOPLE, RUN FATBOY RUN etc - but I dare say he's not too worried, as he has several others in the pipeline since ... perhaps he should read the rave reviews from everyone for rapper Plan B (Ben Drew) and his film ILL MANORS - that should be suitable punishment.

Then there is Will Ferrell: "A word for CASA DE MI PADRE: rotten. This would have been stretched as a 5 minute sketch on Saturday Night Live. I have rarely laughed so little at a comedy", what on earth were Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna thinking?

Here's Grace ...

By now everyone must have seen those photos and clips of Grace Jones wowing them at the Royal Jubilee Concert as she hula-hooped her way through "Slave to the Rhythm". Everyone is commenting on how amazing she looks at 64 as she showed youngsters like Cheryl how it's done - Grace is bigger than ever now and headlines the annual Lovebox festival next Sunday here in London. (Music label). I saw her 10 years ago exactly at a festival in 2002 - where she was also the headline act and kept us all waiting as it got darker for 45 minutes so just as we were getting annoyed there she was and blew us away - it was an amazing act, one of the best I have seen. Those albums like NIGHTCLUBBING and LIVING MY LIFE are still essential and I love that COMPASS POINT double album sessions .... Grace can be known to be difficult but it was great seeing her chatting to The Queen. Grace's was actually the first 12" vinyl record I bought, back in the '80s - that double sider of "I Need A Man" and "La Vie En Rose" - and all those stunning videos ... Have a great Lovebox - it may be wet as our bad weather is set to continue.
Now the latest Hot Chip cd has arrived .....

What became of the movie brats ?

An interesting piece too on those other '70s directors we liked ...(apart from Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola, De Palma):

• Hal Ashby - , THE LANDORD, HAROLD AND MAUDE, SHAMPOO, COMING HOME, BEING THERE etc - died in 1988, aged 59. "His increasingly erratic drug-fuelled behaviour meant that by the end of the 80s he could only get work directing minor tv shows".
• Peter Bogdanovich - THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, PAPER MOON etc- but flops like DAISY MILLER and AT LONG LAST LOVE put paid to that interesting career that began with TARGETS. His books though like "Who the hell's in it?" are fascinating as he knew them all .... 
• William Friedkin - still working
• Dennis Hopper - died in 2010 aged 74.
• Rob Rafelson - last film in 2002
• Robert Altman - died in 2006, aged 81
• Paul Schrader - writer of TAXI DRIVER, director of AMERICAN GIGOLO, BLUE COLLAR, LIGHT SLEEPER etc - still working at 65, now in indie films - I liked THE WALKER ...
• Alan J Pakula - died in 1998 aged 70 in a freak automobile accident when a pole crashed through his windscreen while driving - I am seeing KLUTE again later this week ...

Stanwyck out west, redux

I love Barbara Stanwyck out west where she excelled at playing strong-willed, independent women, usually a cattle queen or town big wig who gave as good as she got - I grew up on those movies like CATTLE QUEEN OF MONTANA and THE MAVERICK QUEEN and 40 GUNS. See Stanwyck label for comments on these and 1957's very under-rated TROOPER HOOK which I loved as kid where she plays the white woman rescued from the redskins in a very interesting way, quiet and watchful. (The '50s was a good decade for Barbara what with CLASH BY NIGHT, EXECUTIVE SUITE, TITANIC, all these westerns before programmers like ESCAPE TO BURMA or WITNESS TO MURDER, and her other deceitful wife in BLOWING WILD).

A posed shot with scissors for THE FURIES

Now I have discovered two more of her '50s westerns I had not seen before: Anthony Mann's THE FURIES in 1950 and Rudolph Mate's THE VIOLENT MEN in 1955.  THE FURIES (like Wyler's THE BIG COUNTRY) is hardly a western at all but an engrossing drama of a divided family out west.  Walter Huston (his last role) is the powerful rancher who has brought up his daughter Vance to be as tough as himself and and has promised her the ranch The Furies will be hers after his death. But then he brings home his ageing fancy woman Judith Anderson (firing on all cylinders as usual) who wants to be his wife and begins to ease Vance out but goes too far by telling her there will always be a room there for her .... we had earlier seen Barbara playing with that large pair of scissors and it is an electrifying moment when she lets Judith have it in the face, which leads to bitter emnity between father and daugher.

Barbara lets rip with the scissors

Apart from Barbara and Judith we also have Blanche Yurka and Beulah Bondi - what a quartet - the men are Gilbert Roland, Barbara's Mexican pal who gets strung up - but his mother Blanche gets her revenge at the climax - and that oddity Wendall Corey, surely the dullest least attractive leading man ever? (see review of DESERT FURY, westerns label) This is a long western drama as Vance aims to buy out her father's ranch  and has some great black and white photography and as usual with Mann, there are some great compositions.

Barbara has a great line when visiting Corey, his girl tells her she is new here, Barbara retorts "honey, you wouldn't be new any place".

Ford, Keith, Robinson & Stanwyck

THE VIOLENT MEN is a more conventional western with great ourdoors vistas in Scope and colour as another rancher Glenn Ford faces up to crippled Edward G Robinson who wants to own the whole valley, as egged on by his unfaithful lustful wife Barbara (who is carrying on with his brother, the fitter Brian Keith). This gets pretty violent too, there is the sadistic murder of a ranch-hand by evil Richard Jaeckel, and also that great scene as Barbara (a mix of Medusa and Lady Macbeth) throws Edward G's crutches into the fire as their house burns leaving him to perish in the flames... She has a great moment at the climax when she thinks Robinson is dead but he rides back and like Bette at the climax of THE LETTER she too meets her nemesis ....a good afternoon's viewing then.

Joan Crawford was of course just as good out west in JOHNNY GUITAR (westerns label) the first movie I ever saw aged 8, as I often mention. Coming up: more on Joan's 50s classics, and Lana Turner's 50s sudsers, and also that other outdoor gal Susan Hayward who also went west a few times...how I spoil you.

The Artist ? OSS 117 ?

0SS 117 LOST IN RIO

I loved the idea of THE ARTIST, then I saw it .... Yes its amusing and has some charming moments, but I cannot understand how it is 2011's Best Picture or Dujardin Best Actor - Berenice Bejo was just as good - but that's the power of Harvey Weinstein ....

The plot of the film has a silent movie star meeting an extra at a premiere. Meeting again the next day on a set they are both smitten as they amusingly do take after take, but he's married. As her star rises, his begins to fall since he won't move from silents to sound films. However their lives remain intertwined.... I just was not blown away by all this, Valentin the silent star is hardly an 'Artist' if he stubbornly refuses to change from silent to sound films - he is not a great visionary but just churning out what looks adventure serials, so it is hardly a hommage to the silent films of the 1920s. We get elements from SINGING IN THE RAIN and A STAR IS BORN and even SUNSET BOULEVARD and a great CITIZEN KANE hommage ... it all looks beautiful though, and yes I adore Uggie, and Dujardin captures the swagger of that Douglas Fairbanks-type matinee idol perfectly.

The first half is a marvellous pastiche of Hollywood in the 20s and that black and white photography looks great. But there seems no real story arc as we move from 1927 and into 1932, when sound was really established so Valentin seems downright stupid (not to mention clueless and arrogant) by then not to see that sound is here to stay, and his character seems pigheadly stubborn as he does not even seem to realise how much Peppy loves him. So I found the second half as clichéd as the silent films it pays tribute to.

Bejo as Peppy Miller is entracing, and the song and dance sequences delightful, but apart from that .. and what on earth was Malcolm McDowell doing in just 2 shots as Peppy arrives for an audition? Presumably he was meant to have more to do?

On the strength of word of mouth about THE ARTIST I went ahead and ordered Michel Hazanavicius's two earlier films with Jean Dujardin, those OSS 177 spoofs: 2006's CAIRO, NEST OF SPIES and 2009's LOST IN RIO - hopefully that will be as good as that Belmondo favourite of mine THAT MAN FROM RIO, De Broca's 1964 charmer. Reviews to follow ....

I have now seen the OSS 117 films - how come they passed us by before? Were they hits in London at the time? The LOST IN RIO one is simply perfect - as amusing as THAT MAN FROM RIO as Dujardin arrives in 1967 Rio on the trail of some Nazis - his clueless, self-regarding agent is ideal, but no Bejo here alas.

Beachside frolics in RIO

He does however make a new friend at the beach after he is fed some LSD and gets into an orgy ...

Later they go to Brasilia and the locations are ideally used, with that climax at the giant statue of Christ the Redeemer overlooking Rio - Hitch would have loved it with the baddie danging from the statue ... and a nod to NORTH BY NORTHWEST too.

CAIRO, NEST OF SPIES

Lots of Dujardin's preening by the pool as the local beauties gasp, and he insults the Israelis, the Chinese, the Germans and his female sidekick whom he imagines is his secretary! Agent OSS 117 seems to have a secret gay side too, despite his homophobic comments, but then he insults everybody. This is delirious if low-brow fun and the Brazilian locations are marvellous too, I must share it with some friends shortly. There is surely also a nod to the original THE PINK PANTHER at the start set at Gstaad in Switzerland with that perfect 60s pastiche with lounge music and split screens.

The CAIRO NEST OF SPIES is also a perfect spoof, set in 1955 Cairo a decade after its 1945 prologue in black and white. Dujardin fits in to every period - just like 1920s Hollywood in THE ARTIST. In the CAIRO one he and Berenice Bejo are another perfect team, and it reminded me of that 1965 spy caper WHERE THE SPIES ARE where unsuspecting David Niven has to assist spies in Beirut and has to meet his secret agent contact at the airport - she turns out to be Francoise Dorleac (again, as in THAT MAN FROM RIO) (Francoise Dorleac label). We will now be looking forward to the next Dujardin epic here .... particularly after seeing those internet clips ...

Italian snapshots

To round off Italian week, some random snapshots - more at Italian label.

Ingrid Bergman, Rossellini's VOYAGE TO ITALY, 1953

Sophia, Marcello, the coliseum, TOO BAD SHE'S BAD, 1954

Vitti, Delon, Antonioni's L'ECLISSE, 1962

Antonioni x 4

Italian week: 4 - quartet of Antonioni rarities: I VINTI, I TRE VOLTI, THE OBERWALD MYSTERY, BEYOND THE CLOUDS

A man bends over a body in a suburban English park - no it is not BLOW-UP but Antonioni's first foray into filming in England: I VINTI (THE VANQUISHED) in 1952, maybe not released until 1953 and a forgotten film now. Fascinating stuff though, it is a film of 3 stories, set in France, Italy and England - each in their own language, so the new dvd has English subtitles for the French and Italian segments but the English one is in Italian, so one has to choose the original version in English for that!

These tales are about the "burnt-out generation" of juvenile delinquents who were causing concern at the time, with their lack of morals and contempt for society. Antonioni keeps it nicely moving as the bitter playlets play out. A group of bored teenagers in Paris plot to kill a show-off wealthy friend on a trip to the country, so they take a gun with them ... Jean-Pierre Mocky is the unlucky guy and Etchika Choreau (whom I remember from a Tab Hunter film) is the scheming girlfriend playing the boys against each other. The show-off gets killed but he only has paper money to impress the girls .... as the worried parents begin to realise what they are up to. (Mocky directed LES DRAGUEURS (THE YOUNG HAVE NO MORALS) a 1959 favourite, with Anouk Aimee and Belinda Lee, French label).

In Italy wealthy middle-class parents have no idea that their bored son is smuggling cigarettes, but his latest operation goes badly wrong and he callously shoots a policeman dead in order to escape.  He has to make a jump from a bridge which turns out to be a fatal mistake leading to internal injuries as he struggles to get home. He is Franco Interlenghi (who was in Fellini's I VITELLONI) and his girl is Anna Maria Ferrero (who gave up her career when she married Jean Sorel), and his father is veteran Eduardo Ciannelli.

Then in suburban London (filmed around Sutton and Carshalton) an out of work poet who does not want to work and has contempt for people finds a body on the golf links and sells the story to the papers  - but just how well did he know the dead woman? The newspaper hack (reliable Patrick Barr) soon realises that our poet (Peter Reynolds) killed the woman himself  after picking her up at the cinema - she is  venerable English actress Fay Compton.

This has some great shots of London in the 50s - Piccadilly Circus and the Underground station at night including those old ticket machines I remember from the pre-decimal era, and it is fascinating seeing Antonioni's view of '50s London with those interesting locations - just like BLOW-UP has in the '60s; Antonioni got to London before Rene Clement in 1954 with KNAVE OF HEARTS (Gerard Philipe label). I VINTI too surprisingly finishes with a tennis match .... it seems a world away now but the bright shiny world of the Swinging '60s and BLOW-UP was only 14 years later. Those familiar names Giovanni Fusco did the music and Suso Cecchi D'Amico had a hand in the script.

 I TRE VOLTI (THE THREE FACES OF A WOMAN) was Dino De Laurentiis's attempt, in 1965, to make a movie star of Princess Soraya (1932-2001), the ex-Empress of Iran (whom the Shah had to divorce as she could not provide an heir). She may have been fascinating in real life but on screen comes across as a less animated Sophia Loren/Silvana Mangano/Haya Harareet type. Presumably Antonioni and Bolognini signed on to direct episodes for the paychecks, as Soraya is filmed in various situtations with a new look and mood for each one: perhaps they are showing the glossy tedium of a beautiful woman being hounded by the press and attempting to be an actress as we see her being made up, wearing different wigs, acting out situations with Richard Harris (the Bolognini sequence - where Harris looks more animated than in IL DESERTO ROSSO) at the opera, on the beach, in luxury hotels, water skiing, a masked ball in Venice, the Parthenon at dawn, etc.- the high life looks quite empty here. Then Alberto Sordi pops up to little avail.  It must have cost a lot, but did anyone see it?  A lot of it looks like flicking through a '60s glossy fashion magazine, but maybe it set the tone for investigating a fashion photographer's lot in London?

THE OBERWALD MYSTERY, 1980 - great to finally get this on a disk, as I only had a vhs recorded from its one showing on BBC here back in the '80s. One of Antonioni's more obscure works this psychological period piece reunites him and Monica Vitti. Shot on video and based upon the play THE EAGLE HAS TWO HEADS by Jean Cocteau, the film casts Vitti as a queen who squares off against an anarchist poet who has come to her castle to kill her. Due to his remarkable resemblance to the long-dead king, the queen falls in love with the dissident; can they fall in love or end up killing each other? It is an experiement in colour shot on the then new video technology (so it has that grungy vhs look as well as those curious colour combinations) and was presumably meant to be an experimental minor interest work. Also, it is Antonioni's only period film set in some pre-WWI Hapsburg type kingdom - the castle looks the part. Monica looks (and sounds) as marvellous as ever, and there are some lingering close-ups even as they spout those reams of dialogue in those very static set-ups. Possibly only Antonioni or Vitti completists will find it compelling.

BEYOND THE CLOUDS - The British Film Institute Antonioni retrospective in 2005 said about this: "With help from Wim Wenders, Antonioni was able in 1995, despite his infirmity, to direct this series of episodes taken from his early literarly sketches. These are in the nature of fantasies, of achieved or failed seductions, and maybe should have stayed that way. But Antonioni's eye for detail and the play of light and shade is as masterful as ever." John Malkovich is the director whom we see beyond the clouds at the start on a plane, as he considers ideas for his next film. He wanders around Ferrara, and out of season Portofino, as well as Paris and Aix-en-Provence imagining and creating stories about people he sees.

These unfold in a dreamlike state: that "love affair that never existed", the girl who stabbed her father 12 times, couples divorcing and that girl who is going to enter a convent the next day - as a great European cast (Fanny Ardant, Sophie Marceau, Irene Jacob, Ines Sastre, Jean Reno etc) play them out - we even get a minute or two with Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau - stars of Antonioni's LA NOTTE in 1961 - commenting on art.

Moreau & Mastroianni re-united

The 50-minute documentary on the making of it has a lovely scene with Marcello and Antonioni in their old age, and also comments by Tonino Guerra (who died this year, RIP label). It is all dreamlike and unfolds at a trance like pace.  There are marvellous landscapes (Portofino and Antonioni's home town Ferrara look ideal), beautiful actresses taking their clothes off, as Antonioni at 83 with Wenders at his side creates a final complex film that leaves one in a tracelike state. Not though as spellbinding as L'AVVENTURA or L'ECLISSE or BLOW-UP or THE PASSENGER - For those not used to Antonioni it may come across like a parody of a European art film.