Decline and Fall - 1968

A new BBC three-part version of Evelyn Waugh's satirical novel DECLINE AND FALL unveils tonight, here in the UK. One hopes it will be as amusing as the rather forgotten film they made of it in 1968. It was the 24 year old Waugh's first novel, first published in 1928, and I am saving it to read on a holiday next week.Comedian Jack Whitehall should be an ideal lead (The new series builds nicely, with Douglas Hodge, as ever, being the highlight here). Here is what I said about the film a few years ago:

DECLINE AND FALL, 1968.  Amusing film version of Evelyn Waugh’s satire which I enjoyed back then and is finally back in circulation (on a no-frills Fox Cinema Archives dvd). It is quite a lavish production from that era when Americans were financing the British film industry, this one is  directed by John Krish, the interest now is the great cast of English players, some of whom keep re-appearing as their characters’ fortunes wax and wane. I presume they titled it DECLINE AND FALL OF A BIRDWATCHER to make it sound a bit more racy … we only see our lead character Paul Pennyfeather watching birds (the feathered kind) once, before he is slung out of Oxford University as he is blamed for the pranks of others. 

Everything happens to hapless Paul, a passive victim of circumstance. He winds up teaching at Llanabba school in darkest, wettest Wales, a grim place run by Dr Fagan (Donald Wolfit, enjoying himself hugely) and his daughter Flossie (Patience Collier). Other teachers include Grimes (Leo McKern) a bigamist with a wonky leg, Prendergast (Robert Harris) with that ill-fitting wig, and Maybrick (Colin Blakely) the handyman turned thief. It rains of course on sports day but the heavens part to allow the sun to shine on Margot Beste-Chetwynd (Genevieve Page), socialite mother of one of the pupils, and soon Paul is in her thrall, as he is invited to her luxurious pad, Margot it seems has plans for him …. As she gets him to assist her with her Latin American Entertainments company, which is a front for white slavery, an amusing scene has her interviewing prospective dancers.  Paul of course takes the rap and is sent to a very grim prison, where McKern, Harris and Blakely turn up again. Margot marries the Home Secretary and gets a pardon for Paul, who is whisked away to a dubious nursing home, run by Dr Fagan . Poor Prendegast has been murdered by a lunatic and his body substituted for Paul at his funeral, leaving our hero free for further adventures. 

So, it is a comic, episodic ramble through English society, as our innocent hero finds duplicity and greed on all sides. Robin Phillips (who went into threatre direction) plays Paul, slinky vamps don’t come any slinkier than Genevieve Page, and Felix Aylmer as an aged judge, Kenneth Griffith, Patrick Magee, Donald Sinden, Paul Rogers, Roland Curram, Marne Maitland and Victor Maddern are among the host of supporting players. Like Tony Richardson’s Waugh film THE LOVED ONE it crams everybody in!  
Robin Phillips (1942-2015)  was also DAVID COPPERFIELD in that all-star 1969 version which I liked (with Olivier, Edith Evans etc), and in a very odd one TWO GENTLEMEN SHARING (right) which we finally caught up with a while back - review at British-1 label.

Forgotten '60s movies: Decline and Fall

DECLINE AND FALL, 1968.  Amusing film version of Evelyn Waugh’s satire which I enjoyed back then and is finally back in circulation (on a no-frills Fox Cinema Archives dvd). It is quite a lavish production from that era when Americans were financing the British film industry, from Ivan Foxwell and directed by John Krish, the interest now is the great cast of English players, some of whom keep re-appearing as their characters’ fortunes wax and wane. I presume they titled it DECLINE AND FALL OF A BIRDWATCHER to make it sound a bit more racy … we only see our lead character Paul Pennyfeather watching birds (the feathered kind) once, before he is slung out of Oxford University as he is blamed for the pranks of others. 

Everything happens to hapless Paul, a passive victim of circumstance. He winds up teaching at Llanabba school in darkest, wettest Wales, a grim place run by Dr Fagan (Donald Wolfit, enjoying himself hugely) and his daughter Flossie (Patience Collier). Other teachers include Grimes (Leo McKern) a bigamist with a wonky leg, Prendergast (Robert Harris) with that ill-fitting wig, and Maybrick (Colin Blakely) the handyman turned thief. It rains of course on sports day but the heavens part to allow the sun to shine on Margot Beste-Chetwynd (Genevieve Page), socialite mother of one of the pupils, and soon Paul is in her thrall, as he is invited to her luxurious pad, Margot it seems has plans for him …. As she gets him to assist her with her Latin American Entertainments company, which is a front for white slavery, an amusing scene has her interviewing prospective dancers.  Paul of course takes the rap and is sent to a very grim prison, where McKern, Harris and Blakely turn up again. Margot marries the Home Secretary and gets a pardon for Paul, who is whisked away to a dubious nursing home, run by Dr Fagan . Poor Prendegast has been murdered by a lunatic and his body substituted for Paul at his funeral, leaving our hero free for further adventures. 

So, it is a comic, episodic ramble through English society, as our innocent hero finds duplicity and greed on all sides. Robin Phillips (who went into threatre direction) plays Paul, slinky vamps don’t come any slinkier than Genevieve Page, and Felix Aylmer as an aged judge, Kenneth Griffith, Patrick Magee, Donald Sinden, Paul Rogers, Roland Curram, Marne Maitland and Victor Maddern are among the host of supporting players. Like Tony Richardson’s Waugh film THE LOVED ONE it crams everybody in! 
Robin Phillips was also DAVID COPPERFIELD in that all-star 1969 version which I liked (with Olivier, Edith Evans etc), and in a very odd one TWO GENTLEMEN SHARING (right) which seems to have vanished competely. He later became Artistic Director of Canada's Stratford Festival.

Simone Signoret: the day and the hour

Another day, another legendary French Actress: Simone Signoret in Rene Clement's THE DAY AND THE HOUR, 1963.

It's the spring of 1944 and Therese is in a hurry to get back to Paris. The trains aren't running from the village where she has gone to visit her father's grave and to fill two suitcases with food. Some British and American planes have been shot down and the Germans want to know where the pilots are hiding. An acquaintance has clearance to drive to Paris with a truckload of goats. After she is in the truck Therese discovers that two British pilots and an American pilot are back there with the goats. She must get the men on a train to Paris and to a safe house there, where there is no room for the American. Can she leave him at the Metro station trying to figure out the map? 

So sets the scene for Rene Clements' 1963 war film, a sometimes tense thriller (there is that long sequence on the crowded train, shot mainly in tight closeups) as Simone Signoret helps the American airman Stuart Whitman escape from the nazis and head over the border into Spain. It is though a curiously unsatisfying film, shot in black-and-white by Henri Decae; there is no real connection or romance between the leads and it all ends rather arbitrarily. Genevieve Page is there too, but only in a scene or two as Signoret's sister, and stalwart Michel Piccoli also lends a hand. One feels too for Simone having to cycle up those hills ...

After her best actress win for 1959's ROOM AT THE TOP Simone Signoret [1921-1985] was busy during the 60s, with roles like this and in TERM OF TRIAL, SHIP OF FOOLS, THE SLEEPING CAR MURDER, THE DEADLY AFFAIR, GAMES (Signoret label) in 1967, THE SEAGULL and also popping up in Clements' star-studded IS PARIS BURNING?, 1966, with her husband Yves Montand. She also played opposite Alec Guinness in a badly-received HAMLET at the Royal Court in London in in 1966.

Clements had his biggest hit with PLEIN SOLEIL in 1960 and his next after THE DAY AND HOUR was LES FELINS, with Delon again, as per review at Delon/Clements labels, and I have reviewed those others of his I like such as THE SEA WALL in 1958, KNAVE OF HEARTS, LES MAUDITS and GERVAISE (all at Clements label). With THE DAY AND THE HOUR though one keeps wondering how much longer it is going to be ....
Some more Signorets to watch: Ophuls LA RONDE, Melville's ARMY OF SHADOWS and THE WIDOW COUDERC with Alain Delon.

Youngblood Hawke

At last I have caught up with YOUNGBLOOD HAWKE, a 1964 delicious entry in the Trash stakes that eluded me at the time. Its long - 2 hours and 20 mintues - and in black and white like those other farragos of that time that I like (like SYLVIA, A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME - see Trash label) and finally available on Warner Archives label. Here is the tasteful blurb:

"Herman Wouk's bestseller about a Kentucky-born writer's spectacular rise and fall among the big city glitterati gets the big-screen treatment courtesy of Warner Bros master of melodrama Delmer Daves. Daves, fresh from a string of successes, recruited celebrated composer Max Steiner to score the film, adding gravitas to the glitz.
James Franciscus stars as the title character, a truck driver who arrives in New York City intent on making it as a writer. Aided by a friendly editor Jeanne Green (Suzanne Pleshette) Hawk's star is on the rise, both among the intelligentsia and the jet set. Hawk inevitaby succumbs to the lures of high society, breaking Jeanne's heart and eventually seeing his career destroyed by the jealous husband of one of his paramours."

Every cliche is lovingly polished as our truck driver hero moves to New York to take the city by storm at the hot new novelist. It must have been an important project for Daves as he also wrote the script. Wouk had written those other blockbusters like THE CAINE MUTINY and MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR - another ponderous Warners melodrama with Natalie Wood and Gene Kelly in 1958, and well worth reviewing too - so must have been a hot writer like A SUMMER PLACE's a Sloane Wilson or THE BEST OF EVERYTHING's Rona Jaffe, not to mention PEYTON PLACE's Grace Metalious. James Franciscus looks good but is rather dull - a taller duller Robert Redford - and all wrong for the hero, it needed a Steve McQueen or Paul Newman, though they had enough similar roles on their hands (like Sinatra is all wrong for me in SOME CAME RUNNING as it needed a Monty Clift or Newman rather than One-Take Frank walking through his scenes, but I digress, as usual.).

The interest here is the great cast: Suzanne Pleshette is warm and sympathetic and lovely as usual as the book editor our hero leaves for wealthy society matron Frieda, a great role for French actress Genevieve Page. She takes the trashy material and makes it something else entirely, in a better film it would have got her an Oscar nomination at least (she is as good as Simone Signoret in ROOM AT TOP). The languid Frieda soon has Youngblood installed in an actor friend's luxury apartment with a great view of the New York skyline ("did it have to be an attic?" she says on visiting his humble apartment) but she pays a hard price for her transgressions when her son falls ill ... also on hand are Mary Astor making the most of a few scenes as a famous actress, and Mildred Dunnock as Youngblood's mother. The drama is piled on with family squabbles over money, as Youngblood rises and falls when the critics fall on his latest tome, as our hero sells out but of course by the last reel comes to his senses with the real girl he loves waiting for him - after that spell in an oxygen tent (just like Carroll Baker's HARLOW, in that trashiest of trash epics, the 1965 Harlow film. It is an interesting curio now like Fox's HILDA CRANE with Jean Simmons in '56 or Warner's delirious CLAUDELLE INGLISH in '61 or even RETURN TO PEYTON PLACE ! (all at Trash label).

Delmer Daves (left, with Mary Astor) had a curious career as director: he helmed some marvellous westerns in the '50s, like DRUM BEAT (one of the first westerns I was taken to, by my father), the original 3.10 TO YUMA, COWBOY, THE HANGING TREE (that great late Cooper western in '59), and he wrote WHITE FEATHER; then he switched to those Warner melodramas of the late '50s and early '50s: A SUMMER PLACE, followed by those Troy Donahue romances for the teen set like PARRISH, SUSAN SLADE, ROME ADVENTURE which also had Suzanne Pleshette (who was briefly married to Donahue then, they also did a Roual Walsh western, his last, A DISTANT TRUMPET, and of course she made a big impression as Annie Hayward in Hitch's THE BIRDS, and I liked her in those other mellers like FATE IS THE HUNTER and A RAGE TO LIVE.

Daves though went with another blonde for YOUNGBLOOD HAWKE - but James Franciscus [1934-1991, he died age 57] is just not that charismatic. The movie is really stolen by the slinky Genevieve Page (left), whom I liked a lot in EL CID as the spiteful Princess Urraca (right) trying to get the better of Sophia Loren's Chimene, and she featured in Dirk Bogarde's SONG WITHOUT END in 1960, BELLE DE JOUR, the 1968 MAYERLING, Billy Wilder's THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES in 1970, and another seducer of a callow young man, but played for laughs, in the amusing 1968 film of Waugh's DECLINE AND FALL. She is still with us in her 80s and was working until recently.

We had quite a few seductive older ladies keeping younger men in the movies then: Joan Fontaine's ritzy society dame toying with and discarding her younger lovers in SERENADE in '56 (Trash/Fontaine labels), Vivien Leigh in THE ROMAN SPRING OF MRS STONE in 1960, Patricia Neal as Paul Varjak's keeper in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S, Page here with YOUNGBLOOD ...

More on those Troy Donahue epics soon.