Italian peplums 1: spoofs and thrills

TWO NIGHTS WITH CLEOPATRA - Sort of an Italian CARRY ON CLEO? This Alberto Sordi comedy seems to be a spoof of the sword-and-sandal genre churned out in Italy during the ‘50s and early ‘60s. This one is only of note now because it features the 19 year old Sophia Loren in the dual role of Cleopatra and a slave girl who looks like her. Cleo needs to escape for a night or two and the slave girl Niscia has to impersonate her. Cleo though is in the habit of sleeping with her guards who are then killed the next morning – and Sordi is the latest guard. Alberto though is one of those annoying comedians (like Benny Hill or Frankie Howard or Norman Wisdom or Jerry Lewis – I dare say every country has their own) whom one either likes or dislikes. I am afraid it is the latter for me, but Sophia looks like she is going places here and has that swim in the pool … direction is credited to one Mario Mattoli. Very average but then Italian comedy does not always translate well abroad. It is of course a Ponti-De Laurentiis production.
NERO’S LOST WEEKEND or MY SON NERO – This 1956 one features Sordi again as Nero on holiday at his seaside villa. The cast though is the thing here: Vittorio De Sica as Seneca (one of his take the money and run jobs to finance his gambling no doubt), the pre-Vadim Brigitte Bardot lovely as ever as Poppea – AND Gloria Swanson as Nero’s fearsome mother Agrippina. She makes a fantastic entrance parting the curtains of her carriage as she is all in red with a red veil – quite a contrast to Norma Desmond. She enters into the spirit of all, so it is amusing nonsense. My copy is in Italian though – but with that cast one hardly needs English!. Steno is credited as director but Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci are also involved and it has the usual Titanus production values. Peter Ustinov’s Nero though was a lot funnier in QUO VADIS!



MESSALINA IMPERIAL VENUS – a 1960 routine Italian sword-and-sandal saga I had been meaning to see as it features a fascinating starlet Belinda Lee, who was one of the British Rank Organisation girls and who featured in British moves in the ‘50s before moving to Europe and the popular peplum movies of the era, before being killed in a car accident in 1961 while still in her 20s. Maybe she would have had a better career … Here she is the evil Messalina, wife of Claudius (a minor character here) as she plots to take control using lovers and having people assassinated. There are also some Christians of course, but Messalina the ex-vestal virgin gets her comeuppance eventually. It is a good German issue actually with German and English subtitles and interesting enough, though without a strong male lead. Directed by one Vittorio Cottafavi.

JOSEPH AND HIS BRETHERN – Another interesting biblical, released in 1962 but must have been filmed about 1960 (as star Belinda Lee died in 1961), directed by veteran Irvin Rapper (who lived to be 101!). It has decent production values, and a score by Mario Nascimbene, as it expands on the biblical story of Joseph sold into Egypt and his coat of many colours. Geoffrey Horne from BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (and BONJOUR TRISTESSE and THE TEMPEST, both ’58) is Joseph, biblical veteran Finlay Currie his father and one of the brothers is Terence Hill as Benjamin. Robert Morley has a whale of a time hamming it up as the merchant Potiphar and Belinda Lee, looking sensational in a black wig, is Potiphar’s deceitful wife who puts the make on Joseph. It is all quite watchable as Rapper (a long way from NOW VOYAGER) makes it seem effortless.

and: not a sword-and-sandal but certainly an oddity I finally caught up with:



THE TROJAN WOMEN – Funny how one resists certain movies. Despite my admiration for those leading actresses I just never wanted to see this Michael Cacoyannis 1971 version of the Euripedes Greek tragedy, and despite having the dvd for over a year, I was in no hurry to see it. But as it is a week of exploring female roles I gave it a go, and it certainly lived up (or down) to my expectations. Perhaps Greek tragedies are now unfilmable (though Cacoyannis’ ELECTRA was an exception). Here he is showcasing Katharine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave, Genevieve Bujold and Irene Papas who all get their moments but they are Acting, Acting, Acting. It just gets tiresome and is in fact rarther risible as they are dressed in rags, scrabbling around in the dust in a barren desert landscape (rather like out-takes from THE LIFE OF BRIAN) – but these are Trojan noblewomen and Troy has just been captured, it would not be reduced to rubble just yet, so one queries the look of the film. Redgrave produces a weird animal-like shriek as she is told her son has to die, and it is fascinating to see the leonine Hepburn, as the queen Hecuba, at this stage of her career after her late ‘60s successes and before her frailties set in. Papas scores best though as the caged Helen, proud and defiant in her nakedness. Brian Blessed and Patrick Magee are the only males of note. It is certainly an interesting oddity, but hardly one to re-see.

Next lot: Steve Reeves THE GIANT OF MARATHON, THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII, Jeffrey Hunter GOLD FOR THE CAESARS, Anthony Quinn ATTILA, Kirk Douglas ULYSSES, Jeanne Crain NEFERTIRI PRINCESS OF THE NILE etc

Some French films....

4 French flicks I recently enjoyed:



DEATHWATCH or LE MORT EN DIRECT - Bertrand Tavernier's 1979 futuristic film (released in 1980) set in a (then) run-down Glasgow and other Scottish locations, as a sort of sci-fi where watching people die on television is the new craze. Its "reality tv" about 20 years before it happened ... and is a weird mix of 70s Hollywood (represented by Harvey Keitel and Harry Dean Stanton) mixed in with icons of European cinema - Romy Schneider and Max Von Sydow. Schneider is fascinating as ever and delivers a powerhouse performance as the woman told she is going to die, who is followed by Keitel with a camera implanted in his eyes to record her every move for the tv company marketing the Death Watch show - sort of an early Big Brother. She goes on the run to avoid her death being a public spectacle, but is she really ill or being deceived? At over two hours it is probably a bit too long and there are longeurs but then Von Sydow enters making the last 15 minutes enthralling. Romy died two years later in '82 and is very natural and feisty here and even de-glamourised is still so beautiful. A fascinating experiment that doesn't quite come off...



LE PEAU DOUCE (THE SOFT SKIN) - Francois Truffaut's 1964 study of an adulterous affair and its repercussions is still a charming movie from that era of lustrous black and white photography. In the hands of another director, this could be a corny melodramatic story (rather like DAY FOR NIGHT's "MEET PAMELA"); in the hands of Truffault, this little gem becomes a credible, melancholic drama - but to modern audiences now the "hero" surely comes across as a smug, self-satisfield individual, cheating on his wife and constantly eyeing up other women. No wonder his wife Franca is dissatisfied. On a routine trip away he makes a play for the air stewardess who is at the same hotel, and this quickly leads to an affair. But would Nicole the attractive hostess - Francoise Dorleac at her vibrant attractive best - really notice this average, if well-known, middle-aged man? He takes her away on another trip but everything goes wrong as his time is monopolised by the provincial people he is lecturing to, and he gets landed with a bore who wants to travel back to Paris with him. Things comes to a head with his marriage and he images he will be setting up home with the hostess, but then his wife finds the photos of their weekend away and takes matters into her own hands. He does not seem too put out about Nicole leaving him, as he sits at his usual place in the restaurant as he arranges to resume his marriage... Its another nice movie of Paris in the early '60s (like CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 or LE FEU FOLLET). Jean Desailly is effective as our hero and Dorleac creates a very modern girl. One nice moment is when they put out the breakfast tray and the cat comes in on cue - which Truffaut had fun recreating in DAY FOR NIGHT.



ANOTHER MAN ANOTHER CHANCE - Not really French, this long unseen rarity turned up courtesy of TCM here in the UK as one of their United Artists titles they are currently screening. I saw it back in '77 so pleasant to catch it again now. It is of course a western reworking by Claude Lelouch of his 1966 mega-hit UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME - as this is another man and another woman in a different time and place. Its a handsome pleasant hazy re-creation of the old west (well apart from the rape and murder of vet James Caan's wife, Jennifer Warren...). It begins in revolutionary Paris as photographer Francis Huster and wife Genevieve Bujold decide to move to the new world and travel by ship to America, then they are on a covered wagon and attacked by redskins and finally decide to settle and open their photography business. Caan also arrives in town, having sold his ranch, and deposits his baby with the underwritten part of the school-teacher - a too-little seen Susan Tyrell. Then cue the influences of Lelouch's original: some years later they visit their children at the school, she misses her stagecoach drive home, the teacher asks him to give her a drive, they slowly open up to each other, he asks to meet her husband and then we get the flashback about how he was killed .... instead of motor cars and racing tracks there are stagecoaches and horse races - and the ending is perfect as he rides on horseback to join her and the children [having brought his wife's killers to justice] as the camera pulls back to leave them as figures in a landscape with a neat voiceover as it fades to a sepia photograph in a photo-album. If you loved the '66 original, you will get a lot of pleasure out of this too, particularly with Caan and Bujold at their most pleasing, both are very likeable here. Lelouch though seems to be out of fashion now, unlike Demy, Malle, Truffaut or Chabrol...



HEAVEN FELL THAT NIGHT [Les Bijoutiers Du Clair De Lune] - Back to the '50s for Vadim's second film with Bardot after their AND GOD CREATED WOMAN sensation in 1956. This is a sunburned film noir, beautifully photographed in colour and CinemaScope utilising some extraordinary landscapes in Spain. BB is the young convent girl returning home to stay with aunt Alida Valli and her lecherous husband who is soon killed by local stud Stephen Boyd, who has been seeing Valli. A powerful scene takes place during the Count's funeral where we see Valli stopping in the village streets and removing her veil which covers her face to stare in silence, at Boyd, as she conceals her passions beneath a steely exterior. BB is sensational as ever but does not come to dominate the film until she and Boyd are on the run though those incredible landscapes. Her scenes with the animals (a donkey and a piglet) are charming - highlighting her future interests. There is also though the brutality of bull-fighting, and a very erotic scene as the lovers finally get together. This one does for Spain what AND GOD CREATED WOMAN did for St Tropez. Bardot and Boyd are perfect here and both look their best, which did not apply 10 years later in that trash western (also made in Spain) SHALAKO in '68 when they were both past their peaks.... Valli too is terrific in a role with shades of her Wanton Countess in Visconti's SENSO. Like the British THE SPANISH GARDENER it captures Spain before all the tourists arrived... though this must have been much more sensational at the time with BB in various states of undress; one can see how she affected the 50s, like James Dean did, being a true archtype, as Mylene Demongeot and others copied her hair and fashions. Just what the '50s needed! The dvd also contains a bumper selection of trailers for all those other BB titles, some long unseen.