Dave Clark Five "Catch Us If You Can" 1965

This was famed director John Boorman's first directorial effort. He also directed "Deliverance" (1972) and "Hope and Glory" (1987) and other major films. If this opening of lads dashing about in a open park and hopping about on a playground reminds anyone of the Beatles and director Richard Lester's "A Hard Day's Night" (1964) from the year before that's probably just what the producers wanted.

The film itself however is more a traditonal romance comedy/drama and should be seen by those who enjoy this era.


From Wikipedia: "Although they perform the off-screen soundtrack music, The Dave Clark Five (unlike The Beatles in their films) do not portray themselves, but appear to be a team of freelance stuntmen/extras led by the saturnine Steve (Dave Clark). Clark had worked as a stuntman on a number of films, which appears to have provided him with a level of cinematic experience and camera-sense rare for a pop-artist of the time.

"Far from being a conventional pop vehicle, the film concerns itself with the frailty of personal relationships, the flimsiness of dreams, and the difficulty of maintaining spontaneity, authenticity and integrity in a stage-managed "society of the spectacle." Boorman's debut offering drew favourable notices from Pauline Kael and Dilys Powell, not least because of the enormous cultural energy of the time (mid-1960s) in which the film was made."

It was released in the USA as "Havin' a Wild Weekend".

"The Americanization of Emily" (1964) James Garner, Julie Andrews, written by Paddy Chayefsky

This 1964 film could be described as an anti-war film in some ways, but I think the best description would be as James Garner, one of my favorite actors and the star of the film, later said in his memoirs, "It allows that sometimes war is necessary, like when you have to defend yourself from an invader. But don't make war so wonderful that kids want to make "the ultimate sacrifice" when they grow up. If we want to end war, we have to stop building shrines (to war)..."

"...Emily", directed by Arthur Hiller, is a movie I remember seeing for the first time shortly after the Fall of Saigon in 1975 and the end of the Vietnam War. It struck a nerve with me, a nerve that exposed me to the fact that most other war films I had ever seen engaged in nobility and sentiments that those men and women who actually experinced war didn't experience--at least until years later.

The end of the Vietnam War in other words a perfect time to see a film that seemed to have been made for an audience a decade ahead of its release date. It showed that every war, even the Second World War, "the Good War" had its share of madness and pointedly senseless sacrifices.

To me the near monologue James Garner delivers here is one of the great anti-war statements of the 1960's, as great as you will find in the novels "Catch-22" and "Slaughterhouse-5" by Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., respectively

This film was made at the start of the Vietnam War but is set twenty years earlier in England. Garner's character is Charlie Madison,a junior officer who is the adjutant to a admiral who is obsessed not with a successful Operation Overlord (the D-Day Invasions) but with the notion that a sailor or marine should be the first to die on a Normandy landing beach, to create a "Tomb of the Unknown Sailor" to match that of the "Unknown Soldier" back at Arlington National Cemetery.


Madison, a former enlisted man and "dog robber" (one who steals supplies of rationed goods from other companies and works the black market to keep his superiors happy) is to be that man. But in this scene his character doesn't know that yet. All he knows is that the young lady he is interested in, Emily, has invited him home to tea to meet her mother in the family garden. He has been warned the mother has lost her husband and a son and has gone a bit mad. But Madison decides to give her his personal war experiences (and pragmatic philosophy) to Emily's "mum" as truthfully and as honestly as he does everyone else in the film, without sentiment and without sparing any sector of society.

I think it's one of the best scenes you'll see from any American movie from the 1960's.

The writer, Chayefsky, had been a US Army infantryman who was wounded by a mine explosion during a combat march. James Garner had also been an Army foot soldier, a decorated Korean War vet who had been wounded by friendly fire and nearly perished in an all-out assault by Chinese troops on a position his company held.

Arthur Hiller had also seen combat action in World War II.The man who played the dangerously depressed and unbalanced Admiral Jessup in the film (Melvyn Douglas) had previously served in the two world wars.

Julie Andrews (who played Emily, the WREN officer) spent many nights singing to keep up morale among her fellow "prisoners" of the Luftwaffe in a London bomb shelter as a young girl during The Blitz.



In short, this was made by people who knew war first-hand, which makes what is said here all the more powerful.

But, judging by the rakish poster art (below) , one could be forgiven as a casual movie-goer in 1964 for thinking this film had little to do with serious matters and was just another run of the mill service comedy.

"The Americanization of Emily" did not do well at the box office that year, although it was a critical success, won Mr. Chayefsky an Academy Award, and earned a respected following since then.

Saturday Night Comedy: Three By Peter Cook

"Being British in this part of the century meant living in the country that had Peter Cook in it. There are wits and there are clowns in comedy, I suppose. Peter was a wit, it goes without saying, but he was funny in an almost supernatural way that has never been matched by anyone I've met or even heard about. It wasn't to do with facial expression or epigrammatic wit, or cattiness or rant or anger or technique: he had funniness in the same way that beautiful people have beauty or dancers have line and grace. He had an ability to make people gasp and gasp and gasp for breath like landed fish."

• Stephen Fry

Here are a couple comedic scenes  featuring one of the great comedians of the pre-Monty Python era.  Peter Cook (1937--1995)  starred with Dudley Moore in the 1967 film "Bedazzled". Here he plays Lucifer who comes to earth to try and take the soul of a hapless and love sick short-order cook played by Dudley Moore.  To me this is one of the best comedies of that era.  

  

Cook was a member of the celebrated "Beyond the Fringe" group that included Dudley Moore, his more famous but not more talented comedic counterpart. This  theatrical program was a major hit in the early 60's on stage in London and New York. He also was a founding member of the satirical magazine "Private Eye".   Here is a skit from his "Fringe" period called "The Miner" recreated for a 1970's performance film.

Natalie Wood: Gone But Never Forgotten

Born in San Francisco, California, to Russian emigre parents in 1938, Natalie Wood went on to become one of the few child actors who went on to film stardom as an adult. Her death at 43 left in void in a lot of film watchers hearts--mine included--not because she was simply too freaking beautiful to be beliveved, which she was, but because she seemed to be on the verge of a major third act in her career--from child actor to beautiful ingenue to strong-willed mature woman playing other memorable roles either in films or television. 

 

She made some bad movies to pay the bills with--if you've never seen her as a Russian scientist in a disaster flick called "Meteor" (1980)  with Sean Connery and a cast of other name actors getting in a couple days work for a lot of cash--count yourself among the blessed.   But there was also signs she was going to be as good as Vanessa Redgrave or Anne Bancroft if you saw her in television films like "The Cracker Factory" (about mental illness) or in the otherwise so-so remake of the wartime drama "From Here to Eternity" (1979) where she literally stole every scene she was in playing a part made famous by Deborah Kerr in the original. 

. One just took it for granted that she would be around for a while longer.

Most people my age have their favorite Natalie Wood film (or two).  And while as an adult she did everything from serious dramas like "Splendour in the Grass" (1961) with Warren Beatty to madcap slapstick in the overlong but enjoyable "The Great Race" with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, she continued  to shine.  Even in movies that were forgettable, she  wasn't.

Anyway, here's an extended scene from my favorite of her films, "Love With the Proper Stranger" (1963). It's the story of two younger New Yorkers who are nearing the end of their youth and see a future of working-class ennui ahead of them...she's kind of a wallflower  in this movie (I know.  Natalie Wood as a wallflower???  It's still a Hollywood movie I'm afraid.)   The guy in her life is a musician who's scared of settling because he's still sowing wild oats but the clock is running out and he should settle down, maybe.  Except the people he knows from his neighborhood who have look so much older and beaten-down then they should be. It's from 1963, but it could have been made forty years later and still be as relevant.   

What is a clever twist in this a romance is that they only really start this bumpy relationship off AFTER she comes to him and announces she's pregnant after a one-night stand and he can't even remember sleeping with her.  (As someone pointed out on You Tube, how do you not remember sleeping with a girl who looks like Natalie Wood??  I'm guessing LSD.) 

   You might recognize her co-star.

For me the coolest thing about Natalie Wood is that she was given an award in 1966 as "The Worst Actress of the Year" by the student journalism staff at Harvard University--The Harvard Lampoon--and she actually went in person to the Cambridge, Massachusetts to accept the "award".   Sandra Bullock did it too a couple years ago but Natalie was the first.

If you want to see more pictures and background for  Natalie Wood, here is a good website.  http://flickchick1953.blogspot.com/2011/11/remembering-natalie-wood-you-dont-know.html

Otley (1968) Tom Courtenay/ Romy Schneider-- Music by Stanley Myers/Don Partridge

"Otley" is a "sleeper" film a lot of people might have never seen. As far as I can tell it is not available in either DVD or even VHS in the United States.

It's a shame. The film deserves a wider audience in my opinion.

Here's a bit of synopsis: Gerald Otley, a petty thief and garbage rummager, wakes up one morning, after a drunken night on the town, and finds that he is wanted by the police for murder. And that is only the beginning. While being pursued for a crime he did not commit, he is kidnapped by a group of criminals who suspect him of being involved with double agents. Otley manages to escape, but cannot avoid getting into one near-fatal crisis after another, as police and foreign agents chase after him. It is a wild week of misadventures which Otley will never forget! Written by alfiehitchie, IMDB site.

Both the talented Tom Courtenay (from "Billy Liar", "Doctor Zhivago" and the more recent BBC-TV production of Charles Dickens "Little Dorrit") and the beautiful French actress Romy Schneider (as a spy who more "femme" than "fatale") make a good mismatched couple in this man-on-run-tale.



It's a Swinging London version of Alfred Hitchcock's "The 39 Steps", complete with a documentary-style opening that is very much in keeping with the British New Wave style.



I got a chance to see it again after a long interval a couple months ago courtesy of the best movie channel on the cable universe, Turner Classic Movies. It's uneven in patches, granted, but just as charming as I remember. In addition to the tongue-in-cheek style it also features some scenes, such as an attempted murder-by-briefcase-bomb in a London Underground tube station that shows Director Dick Clement was at the top of his game.

Even if these kind of nostalgic spy capers of the 60's and 70's aren't your cup of tea, or Starbucks double latte, the opening tune of the film is quite a catchy little piece by Dan Partridge. Anyway, here's all the film I could find on the Internet.

The Un(der)known Elvis--- "(It's a) Long Lonely Highway"

I thought this week I would feature a few Elvis songs wither on video or Mp3 that I enjoy that didn't get a lot of airplay or were put into those mediocre movies he began to make around 1962 when producers figured out that you didn't need a good script or a first-rate director to make money on an Elvis feature--you just needed Elvis.

This song was featured in a very "needy" little film called 'Tickle Me" from 1965. It's a lightweight screwball comedy of the kind that we as kids used to watch on the CBS Friday Night movies. (It didn't take long for these films to get from the drive-ins of North America to network television. )

We in the junior set all knew the Elvis films weren't all that good. But we also knew that Elvis had charisma and he seemed confident around beautiful women and always got the girl and beat the bad guys at their own game.

Despite his physical and emotional swagger on the screen, it seems a shame that his manager, the rapacious Col. Tom Parker, steered the real Elvis into so many bad films when it's clear that he had some good acting chops and deserved the same material that was often accorded a Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra.

Instead he got "Tickle Me", "Spinout", "Live a Little, Love a Little" and "Girls, Girls, Girls". All these movies made a brick of money and all of them were made on the cheap. Thank goodness we have them at least for the fans, but thankfully Elvis got off this "drive-in-late show filler" stuff and became a concert singer again in his last few years. Even then he discovered to late he had been shafted out of royalties by the Colonel (who managed by some shady financial legerdemain to get him to accept a lump sum payment) along the way. It's safe to say Parker died a richer man than Elvis.

But the legend will live on, and as one fan said, "he was my kind of good person and he gave lots to his fans, even in movies like this that were increasingly beneath him". 'Nuf said I say. Play it.

Moments of Movie Magic: "Ecstasy of Gold" from Sergio Leone's "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" (1966)

This tribute to the great Italian composer Ennio Morricone, artist of such magnificent film scores as this one and "Cinema Paradiso", "Once Upon a Time in the West" and so many others features one of my favorite scenes in all films and one that many others share as well.

It's the haunting and powerful moments near the end of Sergio Leone's "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", the third film in Leone's western series that later included "Once Upon a Time in the West" with Charles Bronson, Claudia Cardinale and Henry Fonda as a blue-eyed sociopath villain!


Few who enjoy action films devoid of excess special effects can fail to appreciate this amazing climax to one of the greatest epics in the Western cinema canon.

"The bad" gunslinger Tuco (played with a great relish by the still-active Eli Wallach) starts off on his mission to locate a grave containing several thousand gold dollars in a massive American Civil War graveyard. It is the end of a long and bloody quest to fulfill a greedy desire to spare nothing and no one in a quest for ill-gotten gain--the parallels of Manifest Destiny and the rush for land and its mineral and agricultural wealth are all too symbolized to perfection.

And that ALL paths, to paraphrase the great English poet Thomas Grey, whether "paths of glory" or a brutal one simply for the headstone and gilded remains of a forgotten soldier named "Arch Stanton", "lead but to the grave".

The certainty of death in this aftermath of the orgy that is warfare points to another kind of greed---the greed of old men for power over the men they send to death, men who will never share the fruits of peace.

Death literally surrounds the three men (also played by star Clint Eastwood and former Holywood heavy Lee Van Cleef) whose conquest is more material and individualistic and ultimately as empty as the grave where the money was originally supposed to be.

With plenty of mordant humor and a uncanny knack of evoking the American West as both a myth and a flesh-and-blood place in time, this film (and its score) is truly a masterpiece no one who loves film can discount.

The background on Maestro Morricone and his old school chum, Sergio Leone, is the focus for the beginning of this mini BBC documentary. The second half shows how the evocative "Ecstasy of Gold" theme looked in the theaters and in concert halls later on when the composer toured and conducted orchestras and singers in Munich, Venice and London.

The Man Who Saved Britain: A Personal Journey into the Disturbing World of James Bond

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Entertainment
Author:	Simon Winder (2006)

Simon Winder writes a very entertaining book for those grew up on the cinematic fantasies of the James Bond films. The fact is that he never proves in this book that James Bond or Ian Fleming or Sean Connery of the producers of the original films (Albert Broccoli, Harry Saltzman) save Britain or, really. that pop culture "saves" at all.

What makes this book worth reading is Winder's sardonic and very witty takes on all matters of the Bond books (from Fleming's passion for food, especially smoked salmon and all sorts of drinks, to his obsession with kinky sex and violence combos). Also, the movies (in which I'm afraid he rather undervalues the latter films, although some of them like "License to Kill" (1989) , "Goldeneye"(1993), and "The Spy Who Loved Me" (1977) are really quite good for their genre and anyone who went to those movies expecting a cinematic experience on par with "Raging Bull" or "The Sorrow and the Pity " should have stayed home and read a good book.

Here's a bit of Widner prose style. He's rather good I think.


"As the 1960s progressed, Bond’s ability to maim and kill foreigners became a great consolation to millions of embittered and confused people whose traditional world picture had changed with alarming speed. Bond in fact became in the 1960s pretty much the only British national capable of damaging anybody at all.’ "

"We can argue almost indefinately about which Bond film is the worst---but in the end it is an argument that sullies us all. The very fact of having to recall, say, Roger Moore dressed as a clown in "Octopussy" or Blofeld in a wheelchair being tipped down an industrial chimney in "For Your Eyes Only " makes everyone feel uncomfortable."


Until the more childish fantasies of the "Star Wars" series knocked it off its perch in 1977, the James Bond films were cutting-edge, cool films for young people old enough to get off the Walt Disney feature treadmill and see more adult fare. My first Bond film was "Gold-finger" (1964) and I was hooked on its formulas, even with the cuts made for its US television premiere. Of course the James Bond style was already familiar to me thanks to programs like "The Man From UNCLE", "The Avengers" and spy spoofs of secret agent gadgetry and competence like Don Adams mostly-hapless Maxwell Smart in the "Get Smart" series. The real deal, the Bond movies, were off limits to me thanks to parents who thought violent Westerns without sex were better for me than the "kiss kiss bang bang" stuff that played and was revived over and over again at the local drive-in theaters about Santa Clara County.

A few months later "Live and Let Die" (1973) hit the local screens and could see any film I could get myself into. I found the film risque, funny, inventive and enjoyable, even though older viewers around me in the dark no doubt lamented the loss of Sean Connery, the lucky fellow who got to play Bond when it was fresh and the best of the Fleming material was just waiting to be adapted.

"Live and Let Die", features the more pedestrian actor from television, "The Saint" (the amiable but less dangerous Roger Moore) subbing for Connery, the latter taking his personal mix of suave danger and pub-brawler grit off to more challenging roles.

Still Moore's film efforts, with a couple of wrong turns like "The Man With the Golden Gun", had the same successful mix of adventure, Men's Magazine style casual sex, outlandish action, fantasy violence with foreign baddies with bizarre names, more than a dash of sadism, some exotic travel locales , beautiful women, and the inevitable showdown with a diabolical mastermind in his trend-setting Ken Adam-designed high-tech lair just as the earlier ones.


It seemed it that era (roughly 1964--1975) that all spy films either aspired to be Bond films or went out of their way to go in a more unBondian direction. In that way, the series had very much the same impact that Ernest Hemingway's writings had in Americ, with aspiring fiction writers either copying or loathing his spare, telegram-inspired style.



The main focus of this book is on the novels of Ian Fleming whose first James Bond book, "Casino Royale", came out in in 1953 a few months after a tragic "killer smog" in a London winter has caused hundreds of deaths and seems as good a landmark as any to summarize a long era of post-war drabness under Clement Attlee, Anthony Eden, and Harold MacMillan. By the time "Doctor No" came out in 1962, Britain had a new post-war generation looking for their own adventures at the pictures. Just as John Kennedy--a fan of Fleming's work--represented a new era in America, a new Britain was emerging in the high culture plays of Harold Pinter, the pop culture triumphs of rock and roll groups, and the outlaw cultures of protest and youthful idealism.

Perhaps these movements "saved" Britain in some way on the home front. I'll leave that to some otherreviewer. Most Americans went to the Bond films or read the books I'll wager because it was cool to do so and seemed like a escape. And, yes, an English guy in a dinner jacket seems more likely to carry off a dangerous near -suicidal assignment with aplomb than, say, an overeager American stud with a small vocabulary and a big blowtorch.


Indeed, Winder goes back and forth, especially in the early part of the book between major British economic, political and military events and compares them with the fantastic world of Bond and his international der-ring-do and high-living and hedonistic lifestyle. The Bond adventures, he maintains, became a sort of palliative not only for young male readers looking for some spicy bedtime reading, but also for a older and generally conservative reading public which wondered where Britain stood in the post-war world.



Other books I've run across focus on the origins of Ian Fleming's characters and how they evolved into the hottest film series of the 1960's and early 70's, treating Bond as divorced from the larger society he represented. Winder reclaims Fleming, a former intelligence officer at the Admiralty, scion of privileged and ex-pat "swell" living mostly in Jamaica in his last years as a flesh-and-blood man, without lionizing him but giving him a certain left-handed tribute.

The book provides insight into how the Bond character came to be seen as a reaction to the momentous changes Britain, for good and bad, Britain underwent after World War II and how it dealt with a slow but steady economic decline starting in the 50's with a few ramped-up years here and there, followed by the doldrums of the mid-70's when the UK settled to being a major European rather than an international power thanks to the debacles of the Suez Crisis, decolonization and the rise of the USA in manufacturing,to DeGaulle's rejection of his old ally from the European Common Market and to Japan as rivals for the spoils and underpaid labors of the earth.

Somehow, though, as least in Flemingland if not England, all was well in hand by the climax of the latest adventure, a series which keeps going.

Be that as it may, this is a fun book if you're a Bond fan.

"Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) Faye Dunaway, Warren Beatty

"Bonnie Clyde" was not supposed to be a hit movie and it nearly wound up as a  feature to be re-discovered as a "cult film" years after its release.  It took several years to bring it to the screen, at a time when American movies were evolving away from the  standard Hollywood back-lot, classic-narrative style and toward the more informal and abrupt techniques pioneered by the French New Wave.

 

 

 Both Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard  were offered the direction of the film by co-producer Warren Beatty. But Truffaut wanted nothing to do with a  film actor telling him what to do behind the camera and Godard apparently thought the movie should be made as a low-budget effort as close to New York City as possible, rather than the states of Texas and Oklahoma where the actual crime spree of the Barrow Gang took place.  

 

The American director of "The Miracle Worker", Arthur Penn, was chosen. He had worked with Beatty on an earlier homage to the New Wave, "Mickey One", which had died a quick death at the box office and left audiences confused. 

The studio that made it "Warner Brothers" thought the idea of a bank robbery film set in the 1930's making any money in 1960's America was very unlikely.  Jack L. Warner, who had been boss of production for over three decades, saw it as an old-fashioned story of bank robbers and cops in the style of the Cagney and Bogart urban dramas that had gone out of favor after World War II.  He gave Beatty a large percentage of the potential profits on the picture, thinking it would likely play quickly in cities, die a sub-par death and then get put into drive-ins.  

 

 

It turned out that the realistic violence and honest depictions of sexuality did go over well with a lot of  audiences, although many critics like Bosley Crowder of the New York Times thought it a "film for morons". Younger critics like Roger Ebert found it to be outstanding. The studio, however,  initially refused to give it a wide release.  Beatty managed to talk the new owners of Warner Brothers into ignoring the mixed reviews and letting a wider audience see it.        

On the second release the film took off, eventually making $40 million dollars. The stark violence and bloodiness of the movie matched what people were seeing on their television screens as the Vietnam War was being reported on the evening news in  America night after night.

Gangsters like Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger were legendary anti-heroes in their own times--the Great Depression, when banks foreclosed on houses and farms. In the same way, disaffected and mostly younger 1960's film-goers saw the couple and their gang of bank-robbers as figuratively setting out to tweak the failed establishment.  In other words, the movie clicked in ways that couldn't be anticipated by executives in suits looking for the next "Sound of Music".

 

The ultra-violent ambush ending of the film is probably one of the most memorable  in film.  I saw as a kid in 1972 in theater just before the film went to television. I remember being stunned by how realistic and appalling the shoot-ups were.  If this was what shotguns and revolvers actually did to people's bodies, it was news to me. 

 

I had only seen movies before where people who were shot simply fell over dead, clutching their chests in a bloodless swoon before landing nicely on the floor.  The first time I saw a character in "Bonnie and Clyde" get shot square in the face, and actual red blood came out of his forehead, it was a realisation that this was more a mere entertainment but a film with a purpose: to show gun violence without the old conventions, the old lies. 

  

The real Bonnie and Clyde were a rather mangy looking pair,  not of the Beatty/ Faye Dunaway types by a long shot.

 

  . Ironically its the supporting cast, Clyde's brother Buck (Gene Hackman) and his wife Blanche (Estelle Parsons), who seem better suited to the lead roles from a physical  perspective.  

 

 

 

 

But the depictions of the   hero and heroine as outlaws in hard times (with the  American Dream reborn  from a smoking barrel of a Colt .45  and a fast 1933 DeSoto)  and that brutal death scene overcome  any Romanticism in my view. This is a must-see, and see again  movie.   

The Beatles - 'You got to hide your love away' music video

A bit of cinematic music video from the 1965 Richard Lester film "Help!"

Eleanor Bron is the underimpressed lady in pink on the sofa and the talented Leo McKern is seen once or twice outside in the street in his non-Oscar winning role as "Man In the Manhole".

Charade (1963) Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, Story by Peter Stone, Music by Henry Mancini

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Romantic Comedy

This film is as good as it gets in terms of combining a Hitchcock style suspense story with the comic/romantic elements one might expect from a film about two attractive and mature adults who happen to fall in love. You'd think Sir Alfred Hitchcock himself would've directed this one, but its a knock-off from another director (Stanley Donen), obviously inspired by Cary Grant's earlier Hitchcock roles in films like "To Catch a Thief" (1955) with Grace Kelly or the two-hour thrill ride of mistaken identity and Cold War espionage that made "North By Northwest" (1959) a touchstone for many filmmakers like Donen.
(below, the opening scene from the film. Grant and Hepburn meet and you can already see the chemistry will be superb.)


"Charade" is a jewel box of a film with a few brass knuckles in with the Cartier diamonds.

Audrey Hepburn is Regina (Reggie) Lambert, who works as a United Nations translator. She decides to divorce her remote and rather uncaring American husband, Charles Lambert, after a brief marriage. (She decides while on a vacation from him at a Switzerland ski resort.)

What Regina doesn't know is that divorce is just so unnecessary "Chuck" has already been murdered---thrown from a fast-moving passenger train in France during the pre-title sequence to be exact, already freshly dead and in his pajamas. It's so undignified I feel, but its all over very fast so it doesn't hurt the chic Parisian backdrop of the rest of the film.




Back in Paris to bury her husband, Regina finds herself being pursued by at least three men who want to terrify her into revealing where the hundreds of thousands of dollars Charles stole from them years ago while in the super secret OSS branch of the American Army.

Trouble is, Charles never bothered to tell Regina about such trifling sums and where and how they were hidden. Another trouble is.... the bad guys don't believe her. She goes to the American Embassy in Paris for help. They aren't much help either, but a nice fellow in one of the offices there (Walter Matthau) tells her to play along and they will see if they can help later. Frightened, she turns to a seemingly nice man she just met named Peter Joshua (Grant) for help.

But is Peter Joshua his real name? Turns out he has at least three others aliases, suitable for all occasions. . All the more reason not to trust him too much either.


But the trouble is this guy, though better-looking than the thugs who want the money, is apparently in league with said thugs. Or is it other four men? Do I hear five? Well somebody is busy secretly bumping them all off one by one so don't bother to keep count.

Suffice to say this is a film to see again. And if you haven't seen it yet, what a treat!

Is Time Travel Right For You? (Part One)

Time Travel was a big dream of mine since I was a kid.  I suppose I went through the period where I wanted to be an astronaut and all that.  But somehow the idea of going places people had already been to and seeing history take place before my own eyes, even if it was totally impossible, has had a hold on my imagination.  When the New Year rolls around my thoughts turn to the very serious and perhaps very rather comic possibilities of such a "trip" to see what really happen in the near and far past.

"The Time Tunnel" was probably the first exposure I had to the realm of this sub-genre.  The special effects today look rather cheesy and no one would mistake The Titanic on this first episode of the 1966-67 series for the ones Ronald Neame and  James Cameron employed  in their films "A Night to Remember" (1958) or "Titanic" (1997).  But the idea of how people would react to events of the past and if they could change these events with their foreknowledge seemed intriguing.

 

 

Of course this has been the stuff of popular science fiction for decades.  H.G. Wells wrote his short story "The Time Machine" in 1900.  H.G. reportedly sold that story for a pittance to a publisher who made a small fortune off of it.  In  1960 MGM made a feature-length film of the story with Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux.  Although in the Wells story the Time Traveller has no given name in this one he is named George and the girl he meets in the far-distant post-apocalyptic future is named Weena.  (Hell of a name to give  a girl, but things are rather downhill for the human race by the time George gets to the future. The Morlochs are pretty much using them for food, and even a nice blond lady doesn't even know how to wear her hair without asking some strange guy for tips. Anyway, even though I'd rather travel to the past, I have to rate this film as a favorite. )

Of the novels on time travel that I have read the most interesting in my opinion was Jack Finney's 1970 book, "Time and Again".  Finney (1911-1995) was an acknowledged master of the time travel story and published several novels and short stories o the subject, along with thrillers like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and some comic novels. 

  There are no time machines in this story, but, like the "Time Tunnel" series, the book concerns a super-secret group called "The Project" that recruits men and women to try and travel back into time using a sort of total immersion method, coupled with being in the same place that existed in the time needed to travel back to.

In the case of the book, the time traveller is Simon Morley, a commercial illustrator living in New York City. He is recruited by a mysterious fellow from US Army intelligence named Rube Prien into The Project because of his observed qualifications.  It turns out that Morley can travel back into time and is sent from 1970 to 1882 (via the Dakota apartment building, the same one John Lennon and Yoko Ono lived in ) to try and decipher a clue about a half-burned letter that may point to some kind of global disaster in the future.  The main scientist on the project D.D. Danziger is adamant that the past must not be altered; there is no telling what might occur. Rube Prien is more "liberal" in the promethean idea that the world can be a better place by tweaking the past.

Morley's interest in the past mirrors my own, which makes him a favorite character for me. He's the kind of guy who looks into an old photograph or a

bit  of film and wonders what life was like for those people, people now long gone who are now only an image but were once as real as I am sitting here typing away to you and you are reading this:

"... the sense of wonder, staring at the strange clothes and vanished backgrounds, at knowing that what you're seeing was once real. That light really did reflect into a lens from these lost faces and objects. That these people were really there once, smiling into a camera. You could have walked into the scene then, touched those people, and spoken to them. You could actually have gone into that strange outmoded old building and seen what now you never can - what was just inside the door. (Time and Again, page 19)

 

In Victorian New York, Si Morley falls in love with Julia, a beautiful woman who also is the object of the man he is pursuing to find out the mystery of the letter.  After many twists and turns, Morley does alter something important in time--the meeting between two people who will eventually become parents to a member of The Project--and he stays in New York to settle in to a more sedate and tranquil life .  (Julia does a little time travel of her own and is less than impressed with dangers of the modern metropolis.)   "Time and Again" is  a fine novel, one that spawned a very good sequel, "From Time to Time", (1995)  and one I would recommend to anyone who likes a good suspense novel, and won't mind a little stretch of the imagination. 

Part Two coming soon.

 

 

"The Alamo" (1960) Music by Dimitri Tiomkin (John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Laurence Harvey)

Rating:	★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Westerns

"Republic. I like the sound of the word. Means that people can live free, talk free, go or come, buy or sell, be drunk or sober, however they choose. Some words give you a feeling. Republic is one of those words that makes me tight in the throat."--John Wayne as "Davy Crockett" in "The Alamo".



You know what makes me tight in the throat? Movies like "The Alamo" that should be outstanding works, but instead wind up barely above average by the time all the cuts are made and its ready for the general release. Also heavy-handed messaging in a movie make me tight in the throat. Real tight.

(to the right, Richard Widmark and John Wayne share some rare downtime on the arduous shoot that was the making of "The Alamo".)
A long time ago I first saw John Wayne' epic retelling of the 12-day siege of The Alamo. Although it was not fought by an American Army, it has come down to this country as part of our folklore. Certainly part of Texas folklore.

General San Houston was the leader of the Texican rebels. They were mostly Americans who had started coming to Texas in the 1820's when it was a northern part of Mexico, having been invited to settle there as long as they became Roman Catholics and swore to be good citizens.

Mexico needed as many settlers in this area as they could, due in large part to the ferocity of the Comanche Indians, who had frequented the area for centuries and weren't interested in being part of any European-style government.

Over the years the first Anglo settlers to Texas got along reasonably well with this arrangement. Then the Mexican leaders became concerned there were too many Anglos settling in. Many cultural and political issues with the government in Mexico City came to be more of a problem ( the Americans brought slaves into the area, for instance, an institution that the Mexican government had ended in the 1820s after they liberated themselves from Spain.)

In late February and March of 1836, about 200 American settlers and their Mexican-America allies (the Te-janos) fought and were wiped out in a last stand by an army of three-four thousand soldiers led by the President-turned-dictator General Santa Anna.




John Wayne, a film star who became an out-sized American icon, was obsessed for many years with making this movie. After many false starts, he got his chance in the Fall of 1959. An exact replica of the Alamo and part of the old city of San Antonio was rebuilt near a small town in south Texas.

It was the first film Wayne directed and it became one of the most expensive films anyone had ever made. Wayne had worked with some great directors like Howard Hawks on "Red River" and John Ford on "The Searchers" and many other films. It's a very long and rather preachy movie, with a one-sided view of the conflict. In her memior about her father, his daughter Alissa (who played a small part in the film) said:
"I think making The Alamo became my father's own form of combat. More than an obsession, it was the most intensely personal project in his career."


The film has many pluses never the less--the performances of Richard Boone (as San Houston) and Laurence Harvey (as the Alabama-born Southern aristocrat leader of the rebels, William Travis) and Widmark as Jim Bowie are all quite capable.

Although I don't recommend this movie to anyone who doesn't like Westerns, I think the music score by Dimitri Tiomkin is fabulous. The action scenes in the film are enhanced by excellent photography and Tiomkin's score.

One of the main problems lies with Wayne the director not being able to get a good performance out of Wayne the actor. The dialogue is also long-winded and preachy, a reflection of the backdrop of a Cold War between Russian and the West that really misses the nuances that a real live historical event of its own time should be given.

I've seen this film a few more times since then. Oddly enough, altough I find Wayne's politics in general abhorrant and his delivery of lines a tad off, he had a great screen presence and feel he might have have this a great film given better material. I feel this movie could have been great. I always kept hoping it will get better somehow. There is something about standing and fighting against overwhelming odds that does seem the stuff of heroes, even ones whose princioles didn;t match their actions when it came to freedom for all men and women of any color.

If only Wayne had started his career as a director with a more modest film for a starter, and let Hawks or Ford helm this movie and rewrite or get others to trim his didactic messages. They might have contained the production from the cost overruns that eventually forced him to sell his share of the movie to United Artists and walk away from any profits the film might later earn.

Ernest Gold, composer--"It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World" (USA, 1963)

This comic movie--with a title appropriate for this sad anniversary for Americans and others of many nations-- was one of the first I remember seeing at a drive-in theater--and have enjoyed on television from time to time since. It was an overhyped extravaganza of a film, more popular with the general public than with most critics.

It affords not only a worthy and multitudinous cast of mainly American comedians in their prime, but also reaffirms that humanity's lust for money can make mild-mannered grown-ups into badly-behaved children.

The plot, from screenwriter William Rose ("The LadyKillers") is simple. A older hoodlum just one step ahead of the cops a serious accident with his car flying off the road on a desert highway. Before he literally "kicks the bucket", he tells eight good samaritans in four separate parties gathered around him that there is a cache of 350,000 bucks hidden "under a big W" in a near-by coastal California town---all they have to do is get there and dig it up!

The "samaritans" soon fall out and a two-and-a-half hour melee ensues for control of the treasure, all the while Police Captain Culpepper tracks the would-be criminals while his personal and professional world crashes and burns all around him. Will his own deep-seeded avarice get the better of him?

Stanley Kramer produced and directed, and Ernest Gold did the excellent score.
Cast:

Spencer Tracy ... Capt. C. G. Culpepper

Milton Berle ... J. Russell Finch

Sid Caesar ... Melville Crump

Buddy Hackett ... Benjy Benjamin
Ethel Merman ... Mrs. Marcus

Mickey Rooney ... Ding Bell
Dick Shawn ... Sylvester Marcus

Phil Silvers ... Otto Meyer
Terry-Thomas ... J. Algernon Hawthorne

Jonathan Winters ... Lennie Pike

Edie Adams ... Monica Crump

Dorothy Provine ... Emeline Marcus-Finch

Guilty Pleasures at the Movies: Michael Caine in "The Italian Job" (1969)

One of the most clever and enjoyable movies from the familiar genre of the suave- robber-who-can't-go-straight school of movie action, this film links up Michael Caine, Noel Coward (in his last film role), Raf Vallone, Benny Hill and Maggie Blye.  

The caper involves creating a giant traffic jam in the middle of Turin and making off with a large amount of gold that actually should be ripped off fair and square by the Italian Mafia.  A passel of Mini Coopers then just make a quick mountain swing into Switzerland to celebrate the joys of a job well done!    

Although things do not quite as well as that plan intended. 

"The Italian Job" features some great toss-away lines by Caine and a amusing performance by Coward as "Mr. Bridger" a powerful if jailed crime boss (who enjoys looking at formal portraits of Her Majesty in his private cell.)   It also has a lot of beautiful women, great Renaissance architecture, and  some great car racing stunts  and an ending in the Alps that will literally leave you hanging!     

A Most Uncommon Movie: Petulia (1968) Julie Christie ,George C. Scott, directed by Richard Lester

"Petulia" (1968) is a film set in a particular time and place--the San Francisco of the late 60's Hippie Cultural Revolt-- but yet its still  one of those movies that doesn't seem to age, certainly not like  42 year old movie should.

It was always a "dark horse" of a film, one I saw a couple times many years apart.  Now, finally, it was put on DVD last year,and hopefully is available.    It is an unconventional film in a variety of ways.   

What starts out looking dangerously like a Goldie Hawn vehicle from the 70's--- a "too-cute" film about a kooky young married jet-setter Petulia (Julie Christie) who falls in love with an older surgeon named Archie  (George C. Scott).  Why she falls in love with him is revealed a bit later.

The story  changes its tone quickly.  Petulia is a kooky woman, but she is also a fully realized human being who is desperate to escape the clutches of a hasty and mediocre marriage to a spoiled all-American upper-class man/boy David (Richard Chamberlain), who has  a violent streak that rightfully should put him in prison.  But his father (Joseph Cotton) can smooth over anything, except the world he once knew, a world crumbling before his eyes.  

Scott's character knows not where he's going, expect that he doesn't want to be married anymore to his former wife (Shirley Knight) and he doesn't want ot get burned again in a relationship. He's a man in flux, not even sure a liaison with a beautiful and bright woman can heal what is eating away at his soul.

Petulia has no such limitations on herself, but she also has a past that won't just fall away and let her be free again.  

   

   This friction between the two characters, both running from an unsatisfying past, leaves them with much more in common than Archie realizes, at the very end, what he has to grab unto...if she is still there for him as she was at the first.    

 All the actors are superb and even George Scott, an actor known for conveying rage perhaps all too readily is both subdued and still powerful in this change of pace for him.    The music by the great John Barry is a mile away from his work on the James Bond films, and hits the mark all the way through. 

Moving back and forth expertly in story-line between, past present and future this film grows  into a much stronger  feature about the nature of attraction, love, the woes of divorce, domestic  brutality, and the perils of accepting ones life versus fully living life 100 percent by letting go of the past. Nicholas Roeg's cinema photography captures all levels of the backdrop of the city, from the electric energy of the club scene of the time--Janis Joplin and The Grateful Dead can be seen playing throughout parts the film--to the ennui-inducing   shallowness of matters like the penguin act at Aquatic Park or a society charity show at the Fairmount Hotel. 

Even if you don't care much for the 60's and flower children and all, be assured this is a movie you are likely not to forget. I couldn't and I'm glad its now available in a clear print to a wider audience. 

In this scene, Archie puts up with his ex-wife's new fiancee and runs into Petulia. (Where else in San Francisco but at a Cable Car Crossing?)

See the following brief  scene between Petulia and Archie at Aquatic Park at the first comment below.    

A Hard Day's Night of the Living Dead

Two classic films of the 1960's joined together to make one really fake movie trailer.

Bobby Darin - Simple Song of Freedom

Booby Darin would have turned seventy-four years of age today, exactly one-half of the span he had on Earth. As a hit-maker of the 50's and 60's, he at first glance belongs to the style of lounge singing finger-snapping white guys like Dean Martin, Andy Williams, Frank Sinatra, et al, who made up the last front of show-biz entertainers who reached out to a largely formal, conservative and adult audience. His work in films seems very "square" indeed.

It would not be long before the youth quake and the turmoil of war and civil rights rocked the popular culture of America and Europe and profound changes came to pass.

Darin was one performer who was profoundly influenced by this political turmoil of his times. After the assassination of John Kennedy, he stopped being an entertainer for a three years to assess his life and where the nation was headed. Unlike most of his peers, who stuck to their personas as genial romantics, he spoke out to reach a new generation with his musical compositions and messages. Although his newer music didn't reach as many as his more "safe" hits like "Beyond the Sea" and a cleaned up version of "Mack the Knife", this song speaks to the tenor of the times in the same vein as the group Buffalo Springfield, Donovan or Johnny Cash.

SIMPLE SONG OF FREEDOM


Come and sing a simple song of freedom
Sing it like you've never sung before
Let it fill the air
Tell the people everywhere
We, the people here, don't want a war

Hey there, Mister Black Man can you hear me?
I don't want your diamonds or your game
I do want to be someone known to you as me
and I will bet my life you want the same

Come and sing a simple song of freedom
Sing it like you've never sung before
Let it fill the air
Tell the people everywhere
We, the people here, don't want a war

Seven hundred million are enlisted
Most of what you read, most of what you read, is made of lies
But speaking one to one, ain't it everybody's sun
To wake to in the morning when we rise?

Come and sing a simple song of freedom
Sing it like you've never sung, never sung, before
Let it fill the air
Tell the people everywhere
We, the people here, don't want a war

No doubt some folks enjoy doin' battle
Like presidents, prime ministers and kings
So let's all build them shelves so they can fight among themselves
and leave us be those who want to sing

Come and sing a simple song of freedom
Sing it like you've never, ever, sung before
Let it fill the air
Tell the people everywhere
We, the people here, don't want a war

Come and sing a simple song of freedom
Sing it like you've never, ever, sung before
Speaking one to one
Ain't it everybody's sun
To wake to in the morning when we rise
Speaking one to one
Ain't it everybody's sun
To wake to in the morning when we rise



This summation of Mr. Darin's career comes from the Rock and Roll Piano Man website on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/opurkert


"Bobby Darin cramped everything into the mere 37 years he lived. He was a multi-talented man who played the drums, piano, harmonica, guitar and what not. He was a successful actor, energetic entertainer, and a superb singer. Of course he is known mostly for his interpretations of "Mack The Knife", "Beyond The Sea", his early hits "Splish-Splash" and "Dream Lover". But among the many songs he wrote, arranged and produced, he also wrote and recorded great folk songs. He did a great version of Tim Hardin's "If I Was A Carpenter", his last real hit. After the assasinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, who's campaign he promoted, he wrote more politically motivated songs. They wouldn't become hits, but they are still great songs.
"Simple Song of Freedom" is just that and unfortunately has lost none of it's topicality. Seems like politicians haven't learned much since the 1960s. This is taken from a 1970's TV Special "A Night With Bobby Darin" and can be found on the DVD of the same name (Umbrella Entertainment), which also has a nice 43 min. biography."

Guilty Pleasures at the Movie House, Part One: "Dark of the Sun" (1968)

The first one up is one of the most unusual haunting action film scores from the 1960's, a film I saw a teenager and still find that it holds up nicely. It's not without a good deal of brutality and if it were remade today could stand an unserved need to tell more of the story  from an African point of view. 

 It's still an entertaining and a well-done action film. And with the exception of ex-NFL football star Jim Brown, all the actors are top-notch veterans.  Even Brown--in his third film---does a credible job.  

 The opening track from "Dark of the Sun" by  Jacques Louisser(a pianist and composer known for his jazz interpetations of J.S. Bach's greatest pieces)suits this above-average film quite well. Set against the long and brutal conflict in the Congo, the film was directed by long-time master cinematographer Jack Cardiff (who also directed the 1961 film adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's "Sons and Lovers"). The film acknowledges the role that foreign powers had made in dominating and expiloting the resources of the Democratic Congo, a blighted nightmare of a nation carved out as a personal fiefdom by King Leopold of the Belgians in the 1880's and later used as a helpless pawn in the Cold War where atrocities abounded starting when it became independent in  1960. (The Congo was also the setting for Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella 'Heart of Darkness".)  

Hope the nutshell of the plot, courtesy of "Wikipedia" site:

The Congo,1964: Good guy soldier of fortune Bruce Curry (Taylor) is hired by President Ubi (Calvin Lockhart) to rescue the white residents of a remote jungle town about to be attacked by rebels, but his real (and ultra-secret) mission is to relieve 50 million dollars in diamonds stashed in a high-tech vault there. Curry enlists a team including his Congolese (educated in America) pal Ruffo (Brown), evil ex-Nazi Captain Henlein (Peter Carsten) and alcoholic Doctor Wreid (Kenneth More, in a should-have-won an Oscar turn). Heading by troop train into the heart of darkness, Curry rescues a beautiful civilian (Mimieux), fights an inconclusive chainsaw duel with Heinlein, and eventually evacuates the white residents of the town just as the rebels attack (the rebels manage to uncouple the coach with the diamonds , but the rest of the train gets away).

The ending is one I didn't see coming when I first saw it, and flies in the face of the conventional action-film finale where the good guy(s)  and the beautiful leading lady(ies) ride off into the sunset.   It's a movie that  was called "The Mercenaries" in Britain and "Katanga" in other parts.     

 

Director Cardiff said of the film at a later vantage :   "Although it was a very violent story, the actual violence happening in the Congo at that time was much more than I could show in my film; in my research I encountered evidence so revolting I was nauseated. The critics complained of the violent content, but today it would hardly raise an eyebrow."

 

Here's some movie-style violence as Curry tries to teach some chivalrous manners to the Nazi dead-ender Heinlein, the punk he's stuck on the mission with.  As with all romantic triangles, sooner or later a chainsaw is bound to enter into the picture ;-)

 

   

"Waterloo Sunset"--The Kinks (1967)

This song made it to Number #2 on the British Pop Charts. I heard it recently in a romantic-comedy film made in London called, oddly, "French Film" (2009) . The cover song over the end titles of that film was done by The Rushes, a newer group. This got me wanting to find the original song. For some reason I'd never heard it.

"The Kinks" were well-known in America at this time because of "You Really Got Me" and other hits. However, they were restricted from playing in America for four years due to immigration issues possibly involving some violence between two band members. This song, therefore, never got the airplay it deserved in the USA.

This video (by EastEndMods) features footage and pictures of modern Waterloo Station and scenes of the beautiful Julie Christie and the still-active Terence Stamp from the moody gothic film "Far From the Madding Crowd" from the year before this song was released. Ray Davies of The Kinks considered this version a landmark for the group.

Ray Davies (From Uncut magazine January 2009): "It came to me first as a statement about the death of Merseybeat. But I realized that Waterloo was a very significant place in my life. I was in St. Thomas' Hospital when I was really ill as a child, and I looked out on the river. I went to Waterloo every day to go to college as well. The song was also about being taken to the Festival of Britain with my mum and dad. I remember them taking me by the hand, looking at the big Skylon tower, and saying it symbolized the future. That, and then walking by the Thames with my first wife (Rasa, who left Ray, taking his two daughters, in 1973) and all the other dreams that we had. Her in her brown suede coat that she wore, that was stolen. And also about my sisters, and about the world I wanted them to have. The two characters in the song, Terry and Julie, are to do with the aspirations of my sisters' generation, who grew up during the Second world War and missed out on the '60s.
Sometimes when you're writing and you're really on good form, you get into the frame of mind where you think, I can relate to any of these things. It's something I learned at art school-let all the ideas flow out. But if you listen to the words without the music, it's a different thing entirely. The lyrics could be better. But they dovetail with the music perfectly."