Saturday Night Out - more early '60s dramas

SATURDAY NIGHT OUT from 1964 turns out to be a delightful variant on that old standby - the (mis)adventures of sailors on shore leave. It turns out to be a great London film too (see London label) capturing that early '60s vibe nicely (I moved here in 1964 myself, when 18). We see the Soho of the time, the clip joints and more ritzy establishments where scams are also rife. Directed by Robert Hartford-Davis in gleaming black and white, it assembles a nice cast too - some unheard of since (John Bonney, Inigo Jackson), others like Francesca Annis at the start of their careers. Produced by the Compton group usually associated the expolitation and European erotica but they also produced Polanski's British films and the equally interesting THE PLEASURE GIRLS (1965 label).

Here we have 5 sailors and a passenger alighting in London on their Saturday night out. The most interesting story is businessman Bernard Lee meeting suave conman Derek Bond in a Mayfair bar and soon he is set up as Bond's ladyfriend lush exotic Erika Remberg arrives and pretends to mistake him for someone else. Events pan out nicely but Lee manages to put one over on his blackmailers. Harry (Inigo Jackson) is less lucky, being taken to the cleaners in a Soho dive presided over by boxer Freddie Mills as 2 "hostesses" Caroline Mortimer and Vera Day mechanically part Harry from his wallet. Harry's naive pal Jamey (Colin Campbell, from THE LEATHER BOYS) fares better with the shy Jane (Francesca Annis) and their adventures include taking drunk Patricia Hayes home and getting a room for the night. 

Will our young lovers get together before the end as he has to get back to his ship to collect his things before they make a go of it in Scotland? We also get old timers David Lodge with a brassy blonde (Margaret Nolan) in every port, and Irishman Nigel Green who wants to drink a lot. There is also Australian Lee (John Bonney) who meets the very annoying vegan anarchist hippie Heather Sears - less of her role would have been nice. It all adds up to a fascinating package, fitting in pop group The Searchers too, and is like an early '60s remake of the 1950 POOL OF LONDON, and fits in nicely with those other early '60s dramas reviewed here: A PLACE TO GO, WEST 11, THE LEATHER BOYS. THE SYSTEM, FOUR IN THE MORNING etc, as per labels. SATURDAY NIGHT OUT has been too long unseen but now has a nice dvd release with informative booklet, like THE MARK below.

80,000 SUSPECTS - another of Val Guest's topical thrillers (like THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE) this 1963 drama sees the city of Bath coping with an outbreak of smallpox, as we centre on a group of professional people coping with the outbreak and their own relationships. Doctor Richard Johnson and nurse Claire Bloom are celebrating New Year despite their failing marriage, after his affair with Yolande Donlan (Mrs Guest, so good in Guest's EXPRESSO BONGO in 1959), the unfaithful wife of a medical colleague Michael Goodliffe. Wanda Godsell is brought to the hospital with the symptoms of smallpox got from her son, a sailor on leave. 

The city medical team headed by Basil Dignam try to contain the disease by finding all the contacts. Bloom also falls ill, but she - the good wife - recovers, aided by priest Cyril Cusack. The faithless wife however has run away with an old flame and also falls victim and has to isolate herself from the others .... it is all a very British drama, lacking the punch of the recent CONTAGION, but Bloom shines here, and would be teamed with Johnson again in that year's superior THE HAUNTING. Dependables Kay Walsh, Norman Bird, Ursula Howells lend good support, with good Scope and black and white photography. Bath is seen as a working city here not the heritage site it is now.

THE MARK, 1961, has never popped up anywhere here in the last 40 years or more, good therefore to see it on dvd with an informative booklet. It is also a good example of American studios financing films made in Europe.

A man who served prison time for intent to molest a child tries to build a new life with the help of a sympathetic psychiatrist.

This was actually filmed in Ireland, though set in England, and is a very topical subject now, featuring a child molester released back into the community, but will he re-offend or is he “cured”? Can nice Maria Schell trust him with her young daughter? He is the surprise casting of Stuart Whitman, quietly effective here in contrast to his usual contract fare at 20th Century Fox, like THE COMMANCHEROS. Rod Steiger too goes to town on the role of his psychiatrist, a role he attacks with relish. The good supporting cast includes Brenda De Banzie, Donald Wolfit, Donald Houston, Paul Rogers. We see Whitman after his 3 years in prison settle in a new town with a new position and fall in love with Schell. Things are fine until a child is molested and beaten in the town and the police pick him up for questioning. He has an alibi but a reporter who covered his former trial recognizes him,… can he re-gain the trust he has earned? Whitman earned an Academy Award nomination for best actor, but ironically lost to Maximilian Schell, the brother of Maria, his co-star here. Directed by Guy Green it is a good example of those black and white Cinemascope 20th Century Fox films of the time. Green of course photographed Lean’s GREAT EXPECTATIONS and the photography here is exemplary too. A downbeat drama that repays viewing and is surprisingly topical now with lots of child abuse stories in the media. 

Soon: more '60s stuff like TWO LEFT FEET and 1970's rarity THE BREAKING OF BUMBO, plus a Stephen Boyd double-feature THE THIRD SECRET and THE INSPECTOR (aka LISA), and more French and Italian features.

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. 

VOTD

We have a pair of Trash Classics to look at this week - first a return visit to that Magnum Opus from 1967: VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, and then one I have not seen before, the rare 1972 POPE JOAN ....

Anne Welles, a bright, brash young New England college grad leaves her Peyton Place-ish small town and heads for Broadway, where she hopes to find an exciting job and sophisticated men. During her misadventures in Manhattan and, later, Hollywood, she shares experiences with two other young hopefuls: Jennifer North, a statuesque, Monroe-ish actress who wants to be accepted as a human being, but is regarded as a sex object by all the men she meets, and Neely O'Hara, a talented young actress who's accused of using devious means by a great older star (Helen Lawson) to reach the top .....

This reviewer (TJBNYC - host of one of my favourite sites: Stirred, Straight Up, With a Twist) at IMDB in 2001 puts it so well:

This is it, kiddies, the Grande Dame of camp classics. The sheer ineptitude of everyone involved is staggering. Mark Robson directs without a trace of nuance or subtlety; Patty Duke and Susan Hayward come off as boozy drag queens; Sharon Tate and Barbara Parkins look and act as if they had taken one downer too many; Dory and Andre Previn's musical numbers are as funny as those in "The Operetta"--the "I Love Lucy" episode which parodied musical theater; Billy Travilla concocts some of the most glamorously god-awful gowns ever seen; and Kenneth (of Hairstyles by Kenneth, of course) must be personally responsible for the hole in the ozone layer, so lacquered, teased and towering are his creations. But, you know what? IT ALL WORKS. The source material--Jacqueline Susann's groundbreaking, scandalous novel--begs for sledgehammer direction, overripe acting and eyepopping fashions. Certainly, subtlety was not a hallmark of Jackie's work. If anything, VOTD should have been even MORE over-the-top. Due to restrictions of the time, the film is sadly devoid of such juicy plotlines as Jennifer's lesbian affair, Tony's preference for - ahem - rear-entry intercourse, and Neely walking in on Ted Casablanca's tryst with another man. What we have, instead, is an endlessly entertaining piece of cinematic trash that is nowhere near as racy as it would like us to believe; and that's part of its twisted charm. Because it fails on so many levels--as true art, as explicitly sexual titillation, or as a faithful adaptation of a popular book--it's downright inspiring that it comes together so brilliantly. VOTD's ultimate triumph is that, despite its incredible waste of talent, time and money, 30 years later, we're still watching.

We certainly enjoyed VALLEY OF THE DOLLS in 1967 - I actually loved the soundtrack, that title song by Dionne Warwick, lyrics and music by the then Previns (Andre and Dory), which we hear while Barbara Parkins as Anne wallows in the surf after too many dolls (pills). Those New England in the snow scenes are lovely too, reminding us of those Fox PEYTON PLACE sagas and their movies about '3 girls sharing an apartment and looking for love'. The standout here of course is Patty Duke snarling and braying as Neely O'Hara, wearing the wrong costume for her next number as she is bombed or wondering where everyone is as her understudy (got up to look like the young Streisand) successfully takes her place. Then there is Ted Casablanca and those hilarious scenes at the studio as poor Jennifer (Sharon Tate) is only valued for her body ...... this is all deliriously put together by old hand Robson, no-where better than the famous cat-fight between Helen Lawson and Neely. This must have proved the template for all those fights between Joan Collins and Linda Evans on DYNASTY ....

Susan (replacing Judy Garland) of course is in her element here as the "barracuda" stage legend and she has 4 great scenes, the initial one when Parkins goes to the theatre to get her signature on some documents (above) when Helen hears Neely sing and gets her fired from the show; "give me a fountain pen, not one of those lousy ball-points" Helen/Susan growls, in that red suit, and her line "I know all about run of the play conrtracts"! Later she sings that hilarious number "I'm going to plant my own tree", then there is the tussle with Neely (right) before her wig goes down the can: "listen, they drummed you out of hollywood so you come crawling back to Broadway, well Broadway doesn't go for booze and dope...", she then leaves without the wig: "I'll go out the way I came in", and her final scene when she admits Neely's talent but knows she will destroy herself .... Susan of course is heads and shoulders above the rest of the cast, though Sharon Tate again shows what a singular beauty she was.

The men all seem hand-picked for their dullness: Paul Burke, Tony Scotti and Martin Milner all play mere cardboard foils for the volcanic, tragically self-destructive females, while the gays of course are dismissed as fags. You haven't experienced the true tacky splendor of the '60s till you've slipped this baby in your machine ...
The gay boys over at Datalounge.com (gay gossip site) actually have threads about Helen Lawson, a bulletproof Broadway legend, inventing various tv specials she did and things that went wrong with them as Helen boozes and cusses and causes havoc. Too, too funny .... Susan gives it her all here, really her last major movie, and Patty as Neely is dynamite too, and then there is Lee Grant stupendous as ever .... Trash has hardly been better, from the Jacqueline Susann best-seller (Jackie plays a tv reporter here), up there with Rona Jaffe's THE BEST OF EVERYTHING, another great Fox movie trash classic; or THE OPPOSITE SEX or WOMAN'S WORLD or those Lana Turner classics .... or Susan's BACK STREET, or those  more luridly trashy HARLOW films and THE OSCAR and of course THE LOVE MACHINE from 1970, the acme of Trash  from another Susann blockbuster, as per reviews at Trash label.

R.I.P., 2013

The new year starts with 4 more ...

Jon Finch (1941- 2012). I was sad to see his obituary in today's Daily Telegraph. I was actually just thinking yesterday of getting Polanski's MACBETH as had not seen it since the early 70s when Finch was THE new actor, with the Polanski,  Hitchcock's FRENZY and Robert Bolt's LADY CAROLINE LAMB and he had that great scene too with the other Finch - Peter - in Schlesinger's SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY, and of course items like THE VAMPIRE LOVERS! He was cast in the John Hurt role in ALIEN but his diabetes forced him to withdraw ... he seemed an actor without vanity or any love for the limelight. He died aged 71 in Hastings, England, on 28 December. His career seems to typify the vagueries of an actor's life .... going from being very in demand in the early '70s to being almost a supporting player in DEATH ON THE NILE in '78. He is quoted though as saying he never wanted to be a big star, so perhaps he lacked that vital ambition. A sobering thought as this awards season gets underway with the current crop gleefully waving their prizes and working those red carpets ... 

Robert Kee, 93. Broadcaster and writer and a prolific journalist. One of those fascinating lives: born in Calcutta in 1919 as part of the British Raj, he was educated at Stowe College and Magdalen, Oxford. He was a bomber pilot in the RAF during World War II, and then went into journalism and current affairs broadcasting. His series on Ireland was well received as was a follow-up 3-volume book "The Green Flag" on Ireland.

Patti Page (1927 - 2013) - maybe the best selling female vocalist of the'50s. Her "Tennessee Waltz" was a huge seller (and even turns up on the eclectic soundtrack of Antonioni's ZABRISKIE POINT), she also did some film roles, as in ELMER GANTRY, 1960. 

Mariangela Melato (1941-2013) - Italian actress whom I mentioned recently in the FLASH GORDON review where she is wildly funny as Kala. Best known role in Wertmuller's SWEPT AWAY ...

A woman called Golda

Ingrid Bergman's final screen outing - the 1982 TV miniseries A WOMAN CALLED GOLDA remains a fascinating view now. Bergman was already ill with the cancer that killed her that year and here with no vanity at all she plays Golda Meir, the Russian-born, Wisconsin-raised woman who rose to become Israel's prime minister in the late 1960s and early 1970s. With a frightful wig and a false nose she is Golda to the life. There is also, curiously enough, a lot of humour in her portrayal. It is actually funny in parts seeing Ingrid as Golda scolding her ministers and rival heads of state as the complex story unravels.
 

Judy Davis too is of course excellent as the younger Golda (just like she was as Judy Garland...). The supporting cast includes Anne Jackson. Golda was the first female Prime Minister of the state of Israel and we see she is also stubborn, intelligent, and very human. Fascinating to contrast with how Mrs Thatcher is presented in that recent film that won another Oscar for Meryl.  Bergman won an Emmy for her role her,  posthumously. 

In her engaging memoirs Ingrid tells us that in the last scene as she advances towards the camera after telling the associated company that its late and its time to go home, she knew it was her last appearance before the camera, like she knew at the Theatre Royal in London when it was her last night in the theatre, after her last play there (WATERS OF THE MOON) closed. GOLDA along with Ingmar Bergman's AUTUMN SONATA allowed Ingrid to go out on a high, but then there is very litttle dross in her filmography. For those in search of a good mini-series A WOMAN CALLED GOLDA, directed by Alan Gibson, ticks all the boxes.

Dirk & house-guests ...

Its Artic Monday here and the snow has turned to sleet. Nice to be back in, with HEAVEN KNOWS MR ALLISON on television once again, with Stanwyck & Sam Fuller's 40 GUNS coming up next, and SHIRLEY VALENTINE on later tonight, when one can say the lines along with the great cast while enjoying a vodka or two ....

We also dug out Dirk Bogarde's book "Cleared for Take-off" which has been an amusing/fascinating read once again, as Dirk discusses his various friends and house-guests. Kay Kendall of course became a more or less permanent house-guest of his in the '50s (as detailed in his "Snakes & Ladders" tome). This book finds him putting up Ingrid Bergman in 1964 when she was returning to the stage in Turgenev's A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY in Sussex.

The play of course was such a hit, everybody wanted to see Ingrid (and that great cast including Michael Redgrave, Emlyn Williams, Fay Compton and Jeremy Brett) that it transferred to London where it played for 8 months and where I saw it in 1965, one of my first theatre outings in London, and (being a bit of an autograph hound then) got all the cast signatures on the programme. In fact I got Ingrid's twice, from a later play she did with Kenneth Williams. I also saw her at the National Film Theatre several times, once at a screening of CASABLANCA where she was telling us about its making and how it was just another potboiler to them at the time. 

Ingrid was always a pleasure to meet and Dirk captures her perfectly here. He is in country squire lord-of-the-manor mode here (from that era of his big country houses), picking mint from the garden for cook, and putting a guest bedroom and bathroom plus his parlourmaid Hilda at Ingrid's disposal for her stay (plus a new telephone line), Hilda had to look after Ingrid's clothes and washing, and clean her rooms, so she got a salary increase for that. Eve Arnold (in her book "Film Journal") captures them nicely in this great shot (above). Dirk also tells us about the night JFK was killed when Fred, his valet, burst in to the room half dressed with the news. Dirk tells him to "tell the kitchen" (staff, presumably) while he turns on the tv. 
 

Dirk was also marvellous at his NFT lecture in 1970 (left) where I met him afterwards and got that signature (Bogarde label), and also at a 1992 reading from his books at the National Theatre. Actor John Fraser's book (he was Bosie to Peter Finch's Oscar in the 1960 film, and was in Dirk's THE WIND CANNOT READ in 1959) from 2004 has a great chapter on Bogarde and offers a completely different view on the Bogarde's home life, as well as a terrific chapter on a night out with Bette Davis at her most in 1965 - Davis was making THE NANNY at the time with Fraser's pal Jill Bennett, they ended up in a nightclub meeting The Beatles. Ringo Starr was impressed to meet Bette as his mother loved her films! The then openly gay Fraser was also in EL CID among others.

Soon: Ingrid's last role as Golda Meir in GOLDA.

Music on a Saturday afternoon ....

Ahmad Jamal's latest album - BLUE MOON: shows what piano, double bass, drums and percussion can achieve ... 9 new tracks: 3 original compositions: "I Remember Italy", "Autumn Rain", "Morning Mist"; that film noir theme "Laura", some Broadway and popular songs including a terrific 10 minute "Blue Moon" the Rogers-Hart perennial.... some tracks are over 13 minutes creating marvellous tempos showing Ahmad Jamal at the peak of his craft, at 82. 
Like that other great jazzman Mose Allison, also now in his 80s, Ahmad shows no signs of slowing down ... he remains one of those great world music originals, as were Mongo Santamaria, Mano De Bango, Toumani Diabate or the late Ali Farka Toure from Mali. Ahmad has been one of the foremost influential jazz pianists and composers over the last 5 decades (as I imagine Billy Strayhorn was in the '40s and '50s). 
(I got 8 of Ahmad's early albums at a bargain price in that new series 'Eight Classic Albums' on 4 cds, the other day .... amazing the list of other artists this series features from Peggy Lee and Julie London to Quincy Jones, Duke Ellington and Yusef Lateef .... and favourites Miles Davis and Jimmy Smith).  I must do a Miles Davis appreciation soon: those albums like "In A Silent Way" which I like so much, or "Bitches Brew" or the early classics like "Kind of Blue".

Flashback to 1985: the re-emergence of Davd Bowie after 10 years silence has created quite a tizz all round. I was reminded of his and Mick Jagger's "Dancing In The Street" from that summer of 1985, it was number one that weekend, when I discovered romance in Brighton and had to move there ....
Jagger of course has been back too with that recent very lucrative tour and the CROSSCUT HURRICANE documentary, but of course the older Jagger has never been away long - David however despite health rumours looks terrific and has us all looking forward to that new album which won't need any publicity budget at all. The Bowie albums I love are "Young Americans", "Lets Dance", "Station to Station" and the Berlin-era albums (which the new video for "Where are we now" hark back to), plus those fascinating video collections with "Blue Jean", "Hello Spaceboy" etc ... (Speaking of Jagger, Tony Richardson's 1970 film NED KELLY, turned up on our TCM late last night - 10 minutes of it was quite enough ...).

And a new artist: 18 year old Jake Bugg - terrific album and songs ... 

One singular sensation ...

Its coming back! Not revived in London since it opened in 1975 - it was the best night I had at the theatre until then when I saw it at Drury Lane on my 30th birthday that year - the ground-breaking musical is now coming back in a new production, to the London Palladium this time.

I never wanted to see the Attenborough film which it seems was all about the theatre director Zach (Fosse's ALL THAT JAZZ was the '80s musical for me) - so the show is a fond memory, of course we had to get the original cast album with those great songs: "What I Did For Love" being a particular standout. The show though is the thing and will continue so here's to the new production. I think we will be going back to it again .... Sadly though it seems almost everyone connected with the original production is no longer here - director Michael Bennett, lyricist Ed Kelban, writer James Kirkwood, and composer Marvin Hamlisch died last year ...  
Oscar and BAFTA nominations: interesting but no real surprises. I knew AMOUR would be in the mix ... I expect Day-Lewis, Riva and Hathaway to carry away all available gongs, pity Trintignant not nominated - but of course a French actor won last year (Jean Dujardin) and Marion Cotillard a few years ago too.

Black Narcissus, once more...

BLACK NARCISSUS was on once again and once again there I was watching it one more time, its a film that never palls and is so richly textured that one discovers new aspects to it. It is probably equal to BLOW-UP now among my best/favourite films ever ... as per my previous posts here.

It is on the one hand a very 1940s lurid melodrama set in that convent/harem high in the Himalayas, from the popular book by Rumer Godden. It is also maybe the best of the Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger classics (I also love I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, THE RED SHOES..) as key British films of the '40s. The look of this 1947 film is amazing, so many shots of the convent and the mountains and landscapes are beautiful as are those flashbacks to Ireland in that rich '40s Technicolor, as photographed by ace camerama Jack Cardiff (see also PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN, and that desert adventure LEGEND OF THE LOST, plus THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL etc, as per Cardiff label).

This time around I liked that early introduction to the convent as we follow the old Ayah (May Hallatt) around the deserted halls while the mother superior registers her disapproval of young Sister Clodagh being put in charge of the mountain convent. The other nuns are nicely depicted too: Sister Honey, Sister Briony and Sister Phillipa who plants flowers instead of vegetables ... Deborah Kerr at 26 (a decade before her lovely Sister Angela in HEAVEN KNOWS MR ALLISON) is ideal as Sr Clodagh and Kathleen Byron's Sister Ruth comes into her own in the closing scenes as she leaves the convent, puts on that red dress and lipstick and goes in search of Mr Dean, the land agent in the shorts, who has been having an unsettling feeling on both her and Sr Clodagh .... there is that scene in a red mist as Mr Dean rejects her .... the convent at sunset as the nuns search for her, and Sr Clodagh wearily goes to toll the bell .... this is delirious stuff that no matter how often one sees it keeps one enthralled. that stunning cut too and then the aftermath .... 

The nuns leave as the clouds swallow up the convent, and there is that deeply emotional final meeting of Sr Clodagh and Mr Dean when their affection and love is apparant as they have to say goodbye, and she asks him to do one final thing for her ... I love too that shot of the rain starting to fall on those giant leaves as the caravan moves on.  Back around 1980 when I got miy first vhs video recorder BLACK NARCISSUS was one of the first films I taped on those clunky cassettes, so we used to see that scene over and over ... I have not even mentioned Jean Simmons as Kanchi and Sabu as the young general with that perfume "Black Narcissus" from the Army & Navy Stores in London ... and to think it was all created in the studios. 
Soon: another late '40s Technicolor treat: Ealing's SARABAND FOR DEAD LOVERS.

Accident, 1967

Joseph Losey's ACCIDENT remains a key '60s movie for me - I well remember seeing it for the first time with my best pal Stan when it was on general release as a double feature - the supporting movie was JUST LIKE A WOMAN another forgotten '60s comedy, good cast though headed by Wendy Craig. ACCIDENT though was the culmination of those Bogarde-Losey films: THE SLEEPING TIGER in 1954 and that quartet which more or less defined the '60s: THE SERVANT, the too little see KING AND COUNTRY, the mod op-art delight MODESTY BLAISE (maybe my favourite cult movie with the divine triumvirate of Vitti, Bogarde & Stamp on that mad, mod op art island, with those witty asides as Dirk goes over the top as the supercamp villain Gabriel in the blonde wig... but I digress as usual). The Losey-Stanley Baker films are fascinating too, I particularly like the 1959 thriller BLIND DATE (Losey, Baker labels) and EVE and THE CRIMINAL ...

ACCIDENT, scripted by Harold Pinter, begins and ends with the sounds of a car crash, and we go back and forth to discover what really happened. There is that long marvellous central sequence depicting a languid lazy summer afternoon at the comfortably upper-middle class Oxford residence of professor Stephen (Bogarde) and his pregnant wife Rosalind, perfectly played by Vivien Merchant. Guests include William, one of the professor's pupils - a golden boy, aristocrat Michael York, and his girlfriend Anna an Austrian princess, Jacqueline Sassard.
An interloper is another rival professor Charley, Stanley Baker at his most aggressive. They shell the peas, go for walks, lie on the lawn, hands slowly touch, as we begin to see the tensions and undercurrents here... Stephen is having a kind of mid-life crisis and is attracted to Anna, the glacial girlfriend who is manipulating these men. She is sleeping with Charley but knows how Stephen feels about her. Rivalies between the men come to the surface over dinner as William falls drunk into his plate - Charley is also a tv presenter, he is good on tv - and taunts Stephen who also wants to be on tv, and in fact has an appointment with a producer, played by Pinter himself. We also see Charley's distraught wife Ann Firbank, watering flowers in the rain, while the pregnant Rosalind watches all - Stephen also has a date with an old girlfriend, silently played by Delphine Seyrig - we hear their disjointed conversation played over that restaurant scene. Her father is Losey regular, Alexander Knox. Upper class rituals are explored - rugby, punting on the river ....

 We know right away that William has been killed in the car crash, as Stephen takes the unconscious Anna out of the car and into his house. Who actually was driving ?
Do they sleep together too ? Does he take advantage of her dazed state? One thing that mars ACCIDENT for me is that Sassard is too blank a presence at the centre - she also had a big role in '68 as a similar object of desire in Chabrol's LES BICHES, though it was her last year in movies. (I also saw her when younger in FAIBLES FEMMES, a French comedy with the young Alain Delon, in 1959). Romy Schneider, who was originally cast, would have been ideal here, with that teasing, feline quality of hers and would have made so much more of the role. We never get to see or understand what Sassard is feeling or thinking. Baker and Bogarde of course are both pitch perfect, squaring up to each other again a decade after their Canadian adventure CAMPBELL'S KINGDOM, a perfect Rank Organisation movie in 1957. ACCIDENT would be their final film with Losey, who was next making films with the Burtons and going off to Europe (Losey label), as indeed would Dirk. ACCIDENT's reputation has grown over the years, though like Antonioni's BLOW-UP it is a polarising film, some people actively hate it, but like BLOW-UP and THE SERVANT it is for me a major '60s film, and one of Pinter's best scripts. Cinematography by Gerry Fisher, and music by Johnny Dankworth. 

 
A postscript: a nice birthday present recently (thanks Jerry) was a double CD of Johnny Dankworth scores for films and television (right), with vocal tracks by his wife Cleo Laine. It has that song "All Gone" so central to the fabric of THE SERVANT, music from MODESTY BLAISE, the ACCIDENT theme, DARLING including Dirk singing or rather intoning a song not used in the film!, fascinating stuff!

The Dead, 1987

John Huston's final film THE DEAD from 1987, details with loving attention to detail a Christmas dinner at the house of two spinster well-to-do sisters and their niece in turn-of-the-century Ireland, attended by friends and family. Among the visiting attendees are the sisters' nephew Gabriel Conroy and his wife Greta. The evening's reminiscences bring up melancholy memories for Greta concerning her first, long-lost love when she was a girl in rural Galway. Her recounting of this tragic love to Gabriel brings him to an epiphany: he learns how little he knows about his wife whom he loves dearly. 

"Think of all those who ever were, back to the start of time. And me, transient as they, flickering out as well into their grey world ... Snow is falling. Falling in that lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lies buried. Falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living, and the dead".

John Huston's last film is a labor of love at several levels: an adaptation of one of the greatest pieces of English-language literature by one of Huston's favorite authors, James Joyce; a love letter to Ireland where he lived and his children grew up; and the chance to work with his screenwriter son Tony and his actress daughter Anjelica. Peter Viertel in his engaging memoir describes a typical weekend at the Huston home St Clerans in Galway (its a luxury hotel now) where Huston, when not away directing, living the life of the Irish country squire with his dogs and shooting and hunting ....Huston was - like Italy's Vittorio De Sica - one of those larger than life directors who gambled and hunted and acted in movies as varied as CHINATOWN, THE CARDINAL and utter tosh like DE SADE (Trash label) where he seemed to be enjoying himself hugely, as usual .... Viertel's novel  "White Hunter Black Heart" (which was filmed by Clint Eastwood) was about Huston filming THE AFRICAN QUEEN...

I was obsessed about Huston's THE MISFITS for a long time, I love his HEAVEN KNOWS MR ALLISON (Huston label) and those subsequent films THE UNFORGIVEN, NIGHT OF THE IGUANA, FAT CITY and of course his '40s triumphs like THE MALTESE FALCON and his early '50s oddities like THE ASPHALT JUNGLE, MOULIN ROUGE and MOBY DICK. Huston was such a maverick that his later oddities like THE KREMLIN LETTER in '69 are also worth seeking out. It was great to see him in person for the launch of FAT CITY at the NFT in 1972. THE DEAD set as it is on the 6th of January, is an ideal film for this time of year ...

As my friend Martin Bradley sets the scene: THE DEAD takes place on the Feast of the Epiphany in the Dublin of 1904. It is confined, largely, to one setting, the home of the Morkan sisters, and not a great deal happens in conventional 'dramatic' terms. They entertain their guests; there is singing, dancing, recitations and much small talk but watching this film you can't imagine anywhere else you would rather be than in this company.

Finally, of course, it is 'about' much, much more. It is about love, loss and regret, those stable mainstays of great drama. In the film's closing scenes the tenor Bartell D'Arcy (Frank Patterson) sings a song, 'The Lass of Aughrim' which conjures up in the mind of Gretta (Anjelica Huston) wife of Gabriel (Donal McCann) the ghost of her first and probably greatest love, a boy who died in all certainty of a broken heart at the age of seventeen, and suddenly Gabriel realises he has never really known his wife and that he has not been the great love of her life after all. Emotionally, these scenes are incredibly powerful, firstly as Gretta recounts the circumstances of her lover's death and then as the voice in Gabriel's head sums up his own feelings. This is great cinema, the monologues superbly delivered by Huston and McCann.

But then all the performances are extraordinary. This is ensemble playing of the highest order. Added poignancy is to be had, of course, from the knowledge that Huston himself was close to death when he made this film which seems to me the culmination of his life's work. Death may well be its central theme but viewing this film is a life-enhancing experience. 

There is also the great Marie Kean as Freddie Malins' waspish mother, while Donal Donnelly plays her son Freddie, the amiable drunk (both right), and the two sisters are ideally played by Helena Carroll and Cathleen Delaney; the cast also includes Dan O'Herlihy, Sean McClory and Kate O'Toole. Its a wonderful film that will leave you seeking out James Joyce's "Dubliners" collection of stories.

I shall soon be reporting on Huston's 1963 FREUD, long unseen, with Montgomery Clift and Susannah York, when discussing Montgomery Clift soon.