Return to Tiffanys ....

It is always a mistake to tune in to a screening of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S. as - no matter how many times one has seen it, one will sit there waiting for favourite moments. I have written about it quite a bit here, as per Audrey label - about the cat, her apartment, the fashion and glamour moments, Blake Edwards, Peppard, that "stylish girl" Patricia Neal waving her chequebook, and of course its a great New York movie and a 60s perennial. Now though, I just want to comment on the start and the finish ....

We love that opening scene behind the credits as the taxi pulls up at Tiffanys at dawn, and our huckleberry friend sips her coffee and eats her danish, looking at Tiffany's window, and then wanders back to her brownhouse apartment. It says everything about living in a big city at the dawn of the 1960s ... 

That ending too - pure scmaltz as it is, gets one every time. She throws the cat out of the taxi, then relents and searches for it, in the train. They look at each other - did any couple look better in the rain? - and then she hears cat. Cue the heavenly choir singing "Moon River" as the camera rises and pulls back, as they become just another couple in the rain, with the wet cat squeezed between them. Perfect. Of course it is not Capote's ending at all, where he sees the cat in somebody else's window, after Holly did go to South America .... but this ending is what we want here. Time and time again. 

Return to Tiffanys with Pal Joey

Apartments we love - hey, thats an idea for a post: BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S

Lazy afternoon on sofa, nursing a cold, with a divine double bill on television - well, it saves digging out the dvds. I can watch BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S any time and PAL JOEY was fairly new to me, not having seen it in years. Here's what I did on TIFFANY'S a year or two back ....

I can never resist another look at BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S whenever it screens, and so it was again yesterday. One can look at it for so many reasons: Audrey, the wit, romance, Capote, Blake Edwards' sure direction, its a great New York Movie etc. This time I focused on the cat -
who gets quite a bit to do in it. I wonder what this cat who lived 50 years ago made of it? He (or she) is put out in the rain, thrown around, and sits and observes. It is a great feline performance.
Who can resist that climax when Cat miows and Holly picks him up and Cat is crushed between them as they kiss in the rain and the heavenly choir soars - did two people ever look better in the rain? - they must have used glycerine or suchlike. .... 
TIFFANY'S remains one of the imperishable hits of 1961 along with THE MISFITS, TWO WOMEN, ONE EYED JACKS, COME SEPTEMBER ... That ending though: in Capote's novella Holly does go off to South America, and the gay (we understand) narrator keeps looking for the cat, and finds him one afternoon, sitting happily in the window of someone else's apartment. That is perfect too but the movie went for the softer option. Its still an iconic early '60s classic ... then there is Patricia Neal's "stylish girl" waving her chequebook and coming on like a vampiric dragon lady ... Audrey oddly reminds me a lot of Kay Kendall in her early zany scenes, waking up, getting ready to go out etc. Kendall had died 2 years previously in 1959, and she and her sister were showgirls in revues in early '50s London, as was Audrey, and I understand they all knew each other.

1957's PAL JOEY is also a sanitised version of the John O'Hara original - it was a terrific stage musical in London in the 80s with Sian Phillips dynamic in the Hayworth role and those Rodgers & Hart songs. This is 1957 though but at least Sinatra looks at his peak here as the heel with that hat and the coat slung over his shoulder. Rita Hayworth is delicious as Mrs Simpson the ex-showgirl/rich bitch who bankrolls Joey's nightclub but on her terms, while Kim Novak, nearing her zenith (as she would do next year 1958 with VERTIGO and BELL BOOK AND CANDLE) gives her showgirl a sad quality that is just right,

 and then there is that adorable pooch. San Francisco is the back-drop, Barbara Nicols is a brassy showgirl and the numbers include Kim miming "My Funny Valentine", Rita also mimes the zingy "Zip" and "Bewitched /Bothered and Bewildered" while showering - dig that ritzy shower ! Then Frank sings "The Lady Is A Tramp" and we are watching another iconic moment. Musicals veteran Charles Walters keeps it moving nicely. 1957 was a great year for musicals: THE PAJAMA GAME, LES GIRLS, SILK STOCKINGS and this .... we like them a lot.  Lots of ritzy clothes too - Kim looks edible in that lavender dress, and those gloves ! ..... while Rita sizzles in some Jean Louis creations.

Beatniks !

Bad movies we love, or at least want to laugh at: THE SUBTERRANEANS - no wonder its never shown these days, but  I sourced a copy a while back, and wrote about it then - Trash label - but we had another look at it the other day, and its so hilariously awful I just have to mention it again.

I had never heard of director Ranald McDougall until now - he also directed Joan's QUEEN BEE as well as this lulu: has anyone actually seen 1960's THE SUBTERRANEANS ? - its never been shown here in the UK for as long as I can remember: Its an MGM production from Arthur Freed - his last - which tackles Jack Kerouac's beat novel with George Peppard, Leslie Caron and Roddy McDowell (left) as beatniks! "Love among the new bohemians" indeed! The female lead was black in the novel, but somehow ended up French in the movie - The mind reels.

 ....it must have had a good jazz score though! (with Previn, Mulligan etc).  Beatniks of course must have been a dangerous new exotic cult at the time, so the movies had to get in on the act and present them on screen ...

Poor Leslie Caron; she was GABY, and LILLI and GIGI and had just been filming George Bernard Shaw with Asquith and Bogarde (THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA, as reviewed recently, Bogarde label), now she was saddled with this, before being FANNY. Peppard at least had that gig at TIFFANYS lined up with Audrey ....

Tormenta entre dos Pasiones

No, not some lurid Euro-trash shocker, but the Spanish title for TORN BETWEEN TWO LOVERS, a 1979 telemovie starring our perennial favourite Lee Remick. Here she is a typical happily married housewife who meets cute with George Peppard (a divorced architect, of course) when they are both stranded at a snowed-in airport - he rescues her Klimpt poster "The Kiss" and carries her off to a VIP area he has access to, where they quaff champagne and really get on. Then she gets her flight back to Chicago next morning and resumes her marriage to solid, dependable Italian guy Joe Bologna. Then she discovers George's gloves in her overcoat pocket - they had gone for a walk in the snow (it all takes place in a snowy world) and he had lent them to her .... She calls him about returning them, and pretty soon they are having a full blown affair. Lee's Diane is simply in love with two men, as well as her art gallery job, and various family events, large meals etc, with that extended Italian family.  

Finally her guilt gets too much and she has to confesss. Joe of course is angry ... George applies no pressure but wants her to be with him. Lee prevaricates but finally makes her decision. This is superb tosh, brilliantly done. Delbert Mann directs (he did MARTY, and favouites like SEPARATE TABLES, THE DARK AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS, LOVER COME BACK etc) and its a good role for Remick who is centre stage, the two men are more oblique characters. We saw Lee and Peppard growing up in the movies, from their early roles in the late 50s through the 60s and 70s. Here they are older and more mature. Its from a hit song, apparantly, but is a nice old-fashioned 'tv movie of the week' treat now, but is only available in a Spanish dvd edition. Lee was always a working actress, combining film, tv and stage until her untimely death at 55 in 1991.

BABY THE RAIN MUST FALL. Remick (I met her in 1970 when she was living in London, and saw her on the stage as Cherie in BUS STOP in London in 1976, with Keir Dullea as that annoying cowboy (Remick, NFT labels), has a rather similar role in 1965's BABY THE RAIN MUST FALL, one of those Pakula-Robert Mulligan films, shot in nice black and white, with an Elmer Bernstein score, set in that fabled American backwoods/deep south, based on Horton Foote's "The Travelling Lady".  It was though thrown away here in the UK as was released as the lower part of a double feature, and edited. Good its on dvd now. Lee, as in WILD RIVER and others, plays with her usual yearning the role of the young wife married to bad boy Steve McQueen.  As the blurb says:
"Steve McQueen and Lee Remick ignite sparks in this impassioned drama about a rootless drifter and the woman who loves him. Georgette (Remick) arrives with her small daughter in Columbus, Texas, to join her husband (McQueen) who has just been paroled from the state penitentiary. He had been serving time for stabbing a man in a drunken brawl. His hopes pinned to a career as a songwriter, he returns to singing and playing guitar in bawdy roadhouses. Slim (Don Murray) a quiet-spoken deputy sheriff, grows attached to Georgette and the child and does what he can to keep the volatile McQueen in line. But when his tantrums become increasingly more violent, Slim is forced to stop him, bringing the film to a shattering climax".
From that nice opening of Lee and daughter travelling in the greyhound bus, this is an engaging pleasing film, good to see it again after this time. Incidentally, one of Lee's early roles was that sad little saloon girl giving her savings to Don Murray in his 1959 western starrer THESE THOUSAND HILLS - here he is supporting as Lee takes centre stage. 

Soon: Lee in SUMMER AND SMOKE for the BBC in 1972.

Yes, war is hell ....

THE VICTORS. Good to see this 1963 anti-war film getting a rare airing on our TCM in the UK. It does not look 50 years old - written, produced and directed by Carl Foreman it is a very mixed bag now, but has a sensational cast acting out various episodes showing how war corrupts everyone, victors as well as losers and victims, as it follows the fortunes of a squad who arrive in Southern Italy and move up to occupied Berlin at the climax, intermixed with newsreels of war coverage at the time. Maybe Foreman (who produced THE GUNS OF NAVARONE) meant it to be a riposte to the gung-ho 1962 Zanuck all-star THE LONGEST DAY, but they must both have been in production about the same time ...

 
There are lots of strong sequences, some a bit over the top such as the execution of a deserter in the winter snow to the accompaniment of a Sinatra christmas song, and the shooting of the dog one soldier had befriended, as the squadron moves on and the dog runs after them ... there was also a now-deteted sequence showing a boy who sleeps with soldiers for money or food. The two main leads are Georges Peppard and Hamilton, one forgets what interesting young actors they were before excess and the perma-tanned life took over. There are also Vince Edwards, Eli Wallach, Maurice Ronet, Michael Callan, Peter Fonda, Robert Mitchum's son and, for a minute or two, a young Albert Finney for that grim climax in Germany. Wallach has a good episode with Jeanne Moreau ... (below).
 
The film was sold on its joblot of prestige European actresses at that interesting time when there was that growing interest in international cinema (The only female in THE LONGEST DAY was Zanuck's mistress Irina Demick) - so here we have Romy Schneider (below) as the young musician corrupted into being a prostitute, shell-shocked French widow Jeanne Moreau, war profiteer Melina Mercouri, lonely Italian wife Rosanno Schiaffino and Elke Sommer and Senta Berger as two sisters enjoying wartime benefits in wartorn Berlin. Something for everyone then! 

A brace of '60s war movies

SINK THE BISMARCK! A very satisfying English war movie from 1960 showing how the Admiralty chased and sank the German battleship “Bismarck” in the battle of the North Atlantic. Directed by Lewis Gilbert it features just about every British character actor from those war films. Kenneth More stars as the strict captain of operations, ably assisted by Dana Wynter (who died this year) who looks terrific in those navy outfits. Also on board are Michael Hordern, Laurence Naismith, Geoffrey Keen, Maurice Denham, Michael Goodliffe and John Stride as More’s son who is missing in action. On the Bismarck “good German” Carl Mohner is over-ruled by the increasingly unhinged captain Karl Stepanek. Clever use is made of stock footage and models in the studio tank but we are mainly at Admiralty headquarters and the growing relationship between More and Wynter is nicely under-stated. Based on true events it all seems very real and keeps the interest.



OPERATION CROSSBOW. Another war movie, perhaps the last of the genre (until those big hitters like WHERE EAGLES DARE and THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN), ably put together by producer Carlo Ponti and helmed by Michael Anderson, well used to handling large international casts. This is an expensive MGM production from 1965 and was a popular movie at the time - I remember being 19 and new to London and travelling on the underground to the big ABC cinema at Bishops Bridge Road near Paddington to see it on a Bank Holiday Monday - and it still gets screened a lot.
The first half shows how the Germans (led by Paul Henreid and German air ace Hanna Reisch) built their flying bombs and V2 rockets to rain destruction on London, as again, all the English war movie actors sit and deliberate: Trevor Howard, John Mills, Richard Johnson, Richard Todd, Sylvia Syms, John Fraser, Richard Wattis etc. as agents are recruited to parachute into occupied Holland and pose as engineers for what would seem to be suicide missions to penetrate the underground bomb-making factories where the Germans are mass-producing bombs. We then get the central segment where the producer’s wife Sophia Loren walks in demonstrating 60s star quality (with no concession to 40s hair or clothes styles) as the estranged wife of one of the engineers, who is now being impersonated by George Peppard. Hotelier and agent Lilli Palmer is very determined the mission should not be put in jeopardy as Loren is kept prisoner at the hotel, as other agent Tom Courtenay is arrested for murder. Anthony Quayle is the double agent who knows Courtenay is an agent impersonating a dead man as he tries in vain to crack Courtenay and gain the truth. The very determined Lilli makes sure Loren does not spoil the mission as the story moves to the underground bomb factory and boys-own heroics take over, as Peppard and Jeremy Kemp sabotage the factory as the bombers approach to blitz it. Stirring stuff then, ably put together (the Germans all speak German) and a war movie perennial. An enjoyable (!) brace of '60s war movies then! My mother was in London during the blitz and we used to enjoy hearing all those stories of life during wartime.....

That Cat

I can never resist another look at BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S whenever it screens, and so it was again yesterday. One can look at it for so many reasons: Audrey, the wit, romance, Capote, Blake Edwards' sure direction, its a great New York Movie etc. This time I focused on the cat - who gets quite a bit to do in it. I wonder what this cat who lived 50 years ago made of it? He (or she) is put out in the rain, thrown around, and sits and observes. It is a great feline performance. Who can resist that climax when Cat miouws and Holly picks him up and Cat is crushed between them as they kiss in the rain and the heavenly choir soars .... TIFFANY'S remains one of the imperishable hits of 1961 along with THE MISFITS, TWO WOMEN, ONE EYED JACKS, COME SEPTEMBER ... Cats of course are notoriously difficult, if not impossible, to train - there is that nice moment in Truffaut's DAY FOR NIGHT when they try to get the cat to come in on cue to investigate the breakfast tray - based on a scene from his earlier LE PEAU DEUCE.



What other great cats are there in the movies? Kim's Pyewacket in BELL BOOK AND CANDLE (review at cat label) who leaves when she is no longer a witch, that cat prowling the credits of WALK ON THE WILD SIDE, Walt's THE THREE LIVES OF THOMASINA a delightful cat movie, and of course the bunch of lethal cats in EYE OF THE CAT (reviewed here last year, cat label).

50 years on: "our huckleberry friend" is back .....

Of course,she has never been away - BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S must be the one 50 year old film [apart from PSYCHO and SOME LIKE IT HOT] that everyone knows and still watch regularly - well, all those into romcoms anyway. It is surely the prototype romantic movie for those who grew up after the classic golden age of the 30s and 40s. It is endlessly stylish too, Audrey and that black dress and accessories must be as iconic now as anything by Monroe or Jimmy Dean. [Blake Edwards was certainly a high in the early 60s, I also love DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES (50 years old next year) and the first PINK PANTHER.] Capote saw his friend Marilyn Monroe in the role of Holly Golightly, I see Kay Kendall (if she had lived), but Audrey it is and she is perfect too, and I love Patricia Neal as the "very stylish girl" waving her chequebook at writer/gigolo Paul Varjak (Peppard) - there is of course a whole gay subtext here, but it works on every level, and then there is Mancini's score and that song... it is everything we feel about that optimistic early '60s and being young in a big city.

Capote's original novella was given away free in a newspaper here (in the UK) a while ago and it was interesting re-reading it. It has the perfect bittersweet ending of Holly going off to South America and they do not find the cat. The narrator keeps searching though and finds the cat one afternoon - now belonging to someone else, curled up in a window in a nice house. But of course in the movie we want that soaring choir singing "Moon River" as Cat is found and squeezed between Audrey and Peppard (did any couple ever look as good in the rain?). It is also of course one of the great New York movies - but words are superfluous... the images say it all, it's a movie of great moments and dialogue to savour. Roll it again .... it is also now back in selected cinemas in a new reissue by the BFI [British Film Institute].

Early '60s movie posters

Some choice examples from that hollywood 1960/61 era when MGM was turning out glossy trash (+ a few choice late '50s ones):

I had never heard of director Ranald McDougall until now - he also directed Joan's QUEEN BEE as well as some of the above lulus: has anyone actually seen 1960's THE SUBTERRANEANS ? - its never been shown here in the UK for as long as I can remember: MGM (Arthur Freed actually!) tackes Jack Kerouac with George Peppard, Leslie Caron and Roddy McDowell (above) as beatniks ! "Love amoung the new bohemians" indeed! The female lead was black in the novel, but somehow ended up French in the movie - The mind reels ....it must have had a good jazz score though! (with Previn, Mulligan etc).
The Gina opus is fun with La Lollo giving it her all (its like a trashier BUTTERFIELD 8 where the high class call girl also has to pay for her sins), and RJ and Natalie go to town in ALL THE FINE YOUNG CANNIBALS where George Hamilton and Susan Kohner also shine - all 4 tear each other apart emotionally but Pearl Bailey steals whatever is going in this overheated melodrama (and sings a bit too), Natalie's 1958 sudser MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR (with Gene Kelly in heel mode) is enjoyably awful now too. Then there is missionary Angie paying for her sins out in Africa in THE SINS OF RACHEL CADE - falling for pretty young Roger Moore (and having a baby) while Peter Finch glowers in the background .... other Warner potboilers included Burton (with Angie again) in THE BRAMBLE BUSH, and an Edna Ferber snow saga ICE PALACE. Burton would soon though get his call to Rome and those big paychecks....
for sensational sudsers 1959's A SUMMER PLACE and THE BEST OF EVERYTHING were unbeatable.