Ken's Rainbow

That was a nice wave of affection for Ken Russell who died recently, at the good age of 84. BBC here in England ran WOMEN IN LOVE the other weekend, terrific to see it again after some decades - it remains his "prestige" film, they also showed the lesser known THE RAINBOW from 1989, also by D.H. Lawrence, with the same lead character Ursula Brangwen when younger.

WOMEN IN LOVE is so exhuberent - there is just so much in it, so much plot, so much happening, so many vivid characters, Ken here in his prime has great material to work with and a great cast and comes across like an English Fellini, creating great moods and images, it is so very 1969. I had forgot how marvellous Alan Bates was in his prime, and it must also be Oliver Reed's finest moment, Eleanor Bron is also terrific. Russell was a visionary who marched to the beat of his own drum and WIL remains a film that is both visually striking and rich in narrative. Perhaps the more apt comparison is to Orson Welles, a fellow auteur who started his career in the good graces of the critics and then began making more challenging films that were interested in stretching the medium.



Ken too while "hot" did some challenging films: THE MUSIC LOVERS (I have a new dvd of that to watch, so a report later) and I understand a new complete print of THE DEVILS will be unveiled (but not sure if I want to see that again....) and he kept working to diminishing returns after the success of TOMMY. I loathed VALENTINO and he seems to have lost his mass audience around then, but kept making movies even ending up making them in his garage. THE SAVAGE MESSIAH should be a re-discovery, and perhaps the amusingly awful LISZTOMANIA , and his forays into American movies ... (I recently also got BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN (1967) to complete my Francoise Dorleac movies.)

The BBC also showed a new documentary on him, great to see clips from his "Monitor" days, those black and white films on composers like Delius and Elgar. THE RAINBOW though is a curious trifle - almost D.H. Lawrence lite, or a parody of those themes. IMDB says: Ken Russell's loose adaptation of the last part of D.H. Lawrence's "The Rainbow" sees impulsive young Ursula coming of age in pastoral England around the time of the Boer War. At school, she is introduced to lovemaking by a bisexual physical education instructress. While experiencing disillusionment in her first career attempt (teaching), she has an affair with a young Army officer, who wants to marry her. Unable to accept a future of domesticity, she breaks with him, and eventually leaves home in search of her destiny.

Ken obviously inspired a lot of affection so appearing here must have been a labour of love for Ken's regulars like Glenda Jackson and Christopher Gable as Ursula's loving parents with their bohemian (for the time) marriage. David Hemmings is simply marvellous as Uncle Harry - before he got too florid - and he brings a lot of humour and grace to the role. The unusual looking Sammi Davis is Ursula, and Amanda Donohue (later the star of Ken's bonkers LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM) is the school teacher who teaches Sammi the joys of sapphic love as the girls strip and run around naked in the rain ... Amanda soon though latches on to Hemmings and marries him and has a baby, while soldier Paul McGann shows Sammi the joys of hetero sex, as he too strips and runs around naked. Add in school teaching with lecherous teachers and the scene is set for the usual Ken histrionics. So, an enjoyable romp, another of those British films of the era exploring sex in those restrictive times, like that other 1970 D.H. saga THE VIRGIN AND THE GYPSY by Christopher Miles, who also gave us the later DH bio THE PRIEST OF LOVE with more stripping off by Ian McKellen and Co in 1981 - reviews at costume drama label.


I also recorded THE BOYFRIEND - also not seen that for decades, should be fun again, as Ken's regulars like Max Adrian, Glenda, Gable, Georgina Hale, Antonia Ellis, Vladek Sheybal, Graham Armitage and the very gauche Twiggy [now starring in Marks & Spencer clothes advertisments] amuse and entertain us back in 1971.

L'Innocente - Visconti's final film, 1976

L'INNOCENTE, 1976 - Luchino Visconti's final film (he shot most of it from a wheelchair) is both an intense drama and also one of the most ravishing costume dramas ever committed to celluloid. [It sits next to BARRY LYNDON in my cabinet shelf of 70s movies as the 2 most perfect costume dramas of that decade].
Giancarlo Giannini is Tullio, a wealthy and arrogant aristocrat openly having an affair with another woman (Jennifer O'Neill's Teresa Raffo), thus driving his wife (Laura Antonelli's Giuliana) to start her own affair with a writer Filipo D'Arborio (Marc Porel) that leads to a pregnancy and baby. Giannini is magnificent in a role that instills in the viewer zero sympathy and outright hostility. The film heads into what can only be described as one of the most memorably tragic conclusions since Shakespeare, and is also one of the most beautifully filmed and costumed movies ever (Antonelli with that veil across her face...), with sumptuous costumes, rooms and sets. Surprising nudity too - male as well as female as Guiliana is undressed a few times, and Tulio glares at the naked D'Arborio in the shower. One can see how this lush, opulent film stately directed by Visconti with slow zooms and tracking shots must have influenced Scorsese's AGE OF INNOCENCE, played out as it is in stately drawing rooms for piano recitals, fencing classes, summer villas and mansions at dawn, in that "fin de siecle" era.


Jennifer O'Neill (dubbed in Italian - did Luchino need an American name in the cast?) is devastatingly beautiful and seductive as the self-assured, selfish, spoiled, ambitious, self-seeking lover, as much as Laura Antonelli is the opposite side of the coin but in a lower key, as the humble and insecure, betrayed, embittered, resentful wife, but also devastatingly gorgeous. (Below: Visconti on set).



The drama increases as Guiliana becomes pregant as her husband desires her all over again and wants her back, D'Arborio having died of a tropical disease, but he does not want the baby, the innocent of the title (we never see the wife and lover together, that affair is played out offstage). She pretends not to care for the baby to keep it safe but Tullio is too jealous of it, leading to ultimate tragedy. Then after a final confrontation with the glacial Teresa .... there is that great last shot of her leaving in that chilly dawn. The novel is by the great Gabriele D'Annnunzio, and script co-authored by Visconti regular Suso Cecchi D'Amico (who died last year aged 96), photography by Pasqualino De Santis. The costumes are ravishing and the cast including Rina Morelli, Didier Haudepin, Massimo Girotti, ideally cast even to the smallest part. It's a lasting pleasure and Visconti's farewell to the class and way of life he knew. Giannini was also ideal in those Lina Wertmuller films like SEVEN BEAUTIES.

Hockney - another biography

The latest biography on David Hockney (Part 1: 1937-1975) paints a totally contrasting picture to being gay in the 60s and 70s than in those grim war years and in the 1950s as suffered by Alan Turing - here we have the full story on David as art student in his gold jacket and becoming the media darling of the 60s art crowd, and then of course his move to California where he becomes the painter of L.A. with all those boys in pools. What impresses about Hockney is that he never stopped working, everywhere he went he was painting. I particularly like his early 70s period in Paris. I still have a framed poster from his 1974 Paris exhibition. I also liked the Hockney look of that era: the glasses, the pastel colour clothes, he was just so individual - he was his own creation, as well as doing those opera designs and so many different types of drawings and sketches; the paper pools, his dogs, all those friends etc. Jack Hazan's 1974 film A BIGGER SPLASH captures it all perfectly.

Peter getting out of Nick's pool; Contre Jour in the French Style.


Part two should be fascinating too, as Hockney returns to England and settles in Bridlington, where his parents lived, and showcasing all his later developments with photocpiers, polaroids, photo montages and now digital art on his iPad and iPhone, and his new large paintings of the landscapes in the North of England, as he becomes the grand old man of British art, as detailed in all those books on his changing art. He is still a ferocious smoker too! We had a big exhibition of his prime works a couple of years ago, and a new one will be unveiled here in January running through to April 2012.

Back to: Close Encounters

I never thought I would want to see CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND again, ever - as I overdosed on it so much back in the '70s, but there it was just starting on afternoon television, so I looked in and was hooked again. It is simply one of the most perfect movies ever, pure cinema and its all done with lights and music, John Williams' sweeping score being an integral element here, as it all captures the wonder and awe of a child seeing movies for the first time.
Back in 1977 we went to STAR WARS but that was not me at all - then the buzz grew about CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, I went to see Stephen Spielberg discuss it at the London NFT (National Film Theatre) with my pal Stan, and we could not wait to see it. It was so astounding I had to go back to it again a few days later having the full screen in front of me at a matinee. That moment when Melinda Dillon turns around and sees the mother ship coming over the hill is still astounding even on television. Richard Dreyfuss's character of the Indiana everyman has not worn well though (like most of his roles) but those two terrific actresses Terri Garr and Melinda Dillon show why we loved them so much then - Terri of course was also so loveable in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, another key '70s treasure.

The splendid moments are still there and it remains a solid pleasure. What are particularly engaging now are the scenes between mother and son, Dillon and Cary Guffey and his delight at the visitors from the skies. The scene where he is spirited away is a powerhouse too as the house is no refuge from the visitors from the skies above rural Indiana. Like AMERICAN GIGOLO and ALL THAT JAZZ and those 70s Woody Allens and Bergman's AUTUMN SONATA and Malick's DAYS OF HEAVEN and LOOKING FOR MR GOODBAR it remains a key late '70s masterwork.

Loving, 1970

LOVING. Finally I get to see Irvin Kershner’s 1970 drama with terrific performances from George Segal and Eva Marie Saint. This is a very typical 1969/1970 American film, featuring another dissatisfied middle-aged man, unfaithful to his wife, and unsure of the quality of his work. He was usually either Segal, Jack Lemmon or Elliot Gould (Donald Sutherland delving into more quirky roles). Kirk Douglas did it in Kazan’s THE ARRANGEMENT, Jean Simmons showed us a female version in THE HAPPY ENDING.



Other “little films” of the era include THE STERILE CUCKOO and LAST SUMMER, while the big hitters were Antonioni blowing up America, Fellini going back to Ancient Rome, Visconti high-living with those decadent Nazis and mooning around Venice in search of beauty, while Ken Russell wrestled with D G Lawrence, Tchaikovsky and those demented nuns. LOVING though was, here in the UK, relegated to the lower half of a double bill and promptly forgotten. One can speculate why – Segal had some big hits (with Streisand in THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT, the engaging NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY with Lee Remick, and FUN WITH DICK AND JANE with Jane Fonda) but had done several smaller films – BYE BYE BRAVERMAN, WHERE’S POPPA? – that sank without trace.



LOVING is one of Segal’s better roles as his illustrator has a very trying day, we see him initially having a row with his mistress, harried about work, and at business meetings with sidekick Roy Scheider – one client Sterling Hayden does not see why illustrations for his trucks have to include scantily clad girls. Drink takes its toll too, as he gets sauced and makes a fool of himself at a private members club. Back home his wife Selma , Saint, is keeping everything together, including the two daughters and the cat whose tail he steps on. Worse is to come, as they view a larger house which they could afford if he gets the new project he is after, but it turns out it is being sold by a grim divorcing couple dividing up their possessions. Selma is keen to move but Brooks (Segal) sees it as a “30 year trap” so a row ensues with Selma saying she does not want to be regarded as a trap and he is free to leave if he wants – just how much does she know or suspect? There is also another woman, a neighbour’s wife, who makes it clear she is interested … so, a witty dissection of middle-class life? and a man in mid-life crisis willing to to strike up an affair with any attractive woman who makes eyes at him.



Things comes to a climax at a neighbour’s party at a full house as Brooks gets more and more drunk, and sneaks off with the neighbour’s wife (he even goes back to the house without his pants looking for more booze) but there is an early type of camera link to the rooms and soon the whole assembly is watching their drunk coupling. The film ends or just stops just as it is getting interesting (it’s a brief 89 minutes) with Selma hitting him in a rage. What happens now? Will they also be another divorcing couple selling up? Is he determined to lose everything? Brooks here is that new anti-hero of the era fed up with the hell his life is in suburbia – but 40 years later I bet a lot of people, women particularly, will see him as a prize jerk, tossing everything away and unable to resist other women. Sherry Lansing is another beauty in the background. The advertising world of these heavy drinkers is pitilessly exposed and Gordon Willis’s photography – lots of dark interiors – is exemplary (he went on to shoot KLUTE). Kershner directed several oddball little films: A FINE MADNESS, THE LUCK OF GINGER COFFEY, UP THE SANDBOX, EYES OF LAURA MARS, before joining the Star Wars and James Bond bandwagons. LOVING is a fascinating little oddity then, with Segal and Saint (a decade after her sleek, mesmerising Eve Kendall for Hitchcock) outstanding. I would think Kershner was influenced too by Antonioni’s LA NOTTE with it’s own long party sequence…. [I now remember Kershner's A FINE MADNESS had a similar scene: wild man writer Sean Connery is in the bath with mistress Jean Seberg, when they are discovered by wife Joanne Woodward - not seen it though since 1965!).

Movies I Love: Klute

Some movies (KLUTE, THE MISFITS, THE LION IN WINTER, CHARADE) I never need to see again, as I saw them so many times that every moment of them is imprinted on my brain. This 1971 Alan Pakula film made an enormous impression on me at the time, and I returned to it several times. Everything about it worked so perfectly: the creepy atmosphere, New York in the early '70s, Jane Fonda's best ever performance as Bree Daniels the call-girl who thinks she is in control of her 'Johns' - and Donald Sutherland in another of his best roles as the withdrawn detective John Klute being drawn into her web as he becomes fascinated by her. Those scenes of Jane as Bree totally in character out on the crowded streets, or visiting clients like Mr Goldfarb while Klute watches, or alone in her apartment, as Michael Small's score ramps up the feeling she is being watched and then there is Gordon Willis' stunning photography.



Alan Pakula, who used to produce those Robert Mulligan films like TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, LOVE WITH THE PROPER STRANGER, BABY THE RAIN MUST FALL, had a great eye for detail and certainly knew how to get the best out of his actresses: Liza Minnelli in THE STERILE CUCKOO (POOKIE), Maggie Smith in LOVE AND PAIN AND THE WHOLE DAMN THING, and Jane Fonda here. I liked Jane in BARABARELLA and those other frothy confections of hers and her Gloria was totally compelling in 1969's THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY for Sidney Pollack. Here as Bree she is the bit-part actress who turns tricks (checking her watch midway), visits her analyst as she discusses her reasons for wanting to be in control. Then slowly she and the visiting detective get to know each other, he sees her at her worst when she is drugged and out of it, and he puts her back together. There is that lovely moment when they are out shopping and she impulsively tugs his clothes as she realises they are a couple, only to find her apartment has been violated when they return ... then the creepy climax as she ascends in the lift to the empty factory where the killer is waiting, and he pours out his hate for her and the girls like her who leech off him, which is why he killed the other girls.



Klute is investigating the disappearance of a colleague in their small town who has vanished after a trip to New York. Charles Cioffi is the concerned friend who is paying for Klute to find out what happened. We see the underbelly of the big city then, as Bree takes Klute to visit her haunts, her old pimp Roy Scheider, and friends like Rita Gam, a chic lesbian, and Shirley Stoler. Then there is that desperate addicted prostitute Arlyn Page (Dorothy Tristan) whom the murderer also visits as she is supposed to have kept a diary .... Bree listening to the tape playback of Arlyn's murder as the killer has her cornered is part of the stunning climax - it is one of the best ever female performances. The aftermath is nice too with them leaving the city, but maybe she will be back ... I just loved everything about this, including the great widescreen vistas and the quiet intimate moments. It looks a little dated now with those early '70s fashions and hair-do's but that does not matter. Jane in that black sequin backdress dress is as glamorous as Dietrich in the '30s ...



Pakula did it again with THE PARALLAX VIEW in 1974, that other stunning conspiracy thriller capturing the paranoia of the times, as Warren Beatty sets out to discover what exactly is happening to all the witnesses of a politican assassination. It is another riveting experience and a key '70s film like KLUTE, CHINATOWN, THE STEPFORD WIVES and Pakula's huge success ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN. Pakula (1928-1998, he was killed in a freak accident while driving) also directed hits like SOPHIE'S CHOICE and PRESUMED INNOCENT, where Harrison Ford scores in this Scott Turow thriller.





Coming up: more People We Like: Peter Finch, Alan Bates, David Warner, Malcolm McDowell, and a brace of new European titles: 6 Catherine Deneuve films, 3 more Romy Schneiders, 2 more Anouk Aimees, 4 Gerard Philipe discoveries including Vadim's LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES with Jeanne Moreau! and Antonioni's rare OBERWALD MYSTERY with Monica Vitti, and his segment in I TRI VINTI.

Fassbinder & Fox and his friends, 1974

This powerful and harrowing melodrama from 1974 is one of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's most accessible movies, and is a must-see for all those interested in intelligent film making.

The tragic story of Fox is masterfully and poignantly handled by Fassbinder, while never slipping into sloppy sentimentality, but unfolds with grim inevitability. Fassbinder was inexhaustible. In his 15 year career he made 40 feature-length films, 3 shorts, directed 24 stage plays, wrote 33 screenplays collaborating on 13 more, developed 2 series for television and took on 36 acting roles in not only his, but the films of his contemporaries as well. He remains a key figure as the Enfant Terrible in the New German Cinema of the 70s, along with Wim Wenders and Herzog. It was his ability to work quickly on a shoestring budget that allowed him to take advantage of government grants that enabled him to continue working at breakneck pace, often taking on the roles of producer, editor, composer, production designer and cinematographer in order to ensure the quality of his work.
FEAR EATS THE SOUL and THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT were big hits one had to have an opinion on at the time, and then came FOX AND HIS FRIENDS....like Polanski playing the lead in DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES it is odd seeing Fassbinder himself playing the lead as the lumpy fairground worker who is convinced he is going to win the lottery [the woman who sells him the ticket is Brigetta Mira, the heroine of FEAR EATS THE SOUL - and other Fassbinder regulars pop up too]. Add in Carl Boehm (from the SISSI films and PEEPING TOM etc) as the wealthy gay Fox initially hooks up with, and Peter Chatel as the object of his affections and we get a rapacious gay milieu which Fassbinder presents before us.

Below: FEAR EATS THE SOUL / The lush THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT


Fassbinder’s fatalistic outlook was reflected in the extreme brutality and sorrow that permeate his films. That quality, combined with his gritty, naked in your face drama often left film critics and viewers speechless, while utilising melodrama like Douglas Sirk, a big influence on him. His first film LOVE IS COLDER THAN DEATH in 1969 was poorly received and died a slow painful death. THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT was an art-house success in 1972 and concerns the idea that power is the ultimate goal in all human relationships. MARTHA in 1974, explores cruelty of traditional marriage; FEAR EATS THE SOUL brilliantly re-works Sirk's ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS in a working class milieu as the cleaning woman's marriage to the Moroccan immigrant outrages her family and friends, until they get used to the idea and need her for work and baby-sitting duties, and FOX AND HIS FRIENDS the same year showcases the cruel side of homosexuality. This story centers around a good-natured young adult who wins half a million in a lottery, then naively hooks up with a lecherous man who, aided by his family, drains him of all his money and love, leaving him to die alone on the floor of a train station. These movies (plus a period drama EFFI BRIEST) were staples of London's indie revival houses (like the "Screen on the Green" where I used to hang out all the time), and the BFI also did a major retrospective.

He capped his career with a trilogy of films, the highly regarded THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN in 1978, LOLA in 1981 and VERONIKA VOSS in 1982 all centered around women (usually Hanna Schygulla) in post-fascist Germany; and DESPAIR with Dirk Bogarde, which according to Dirk, the by then drug-addled Fassbinder ruined in the editing just before its screening at the Cannes film festival.



Fassbinder lived hard and partied hard. One of his relationships with men included El Hedi ben Salem, the male lead in FEAR EATS THE SOUL and Fassbinder’s longtime lover, who hanged himself while in jail. Fassbinder did not live to see his last film QUERELLE in 1982, a lurid success about a good-looking sailor, a thief and hustler (featuring Franco Nero, Brad Davis and Jeanne Moreau), because he died from a lethal combination of sleeping pills and cocaine, a few days after his 37th birthday. His short remarkable career influenced some of today’s most imaginative directors like Pedro Almoldovar, Richard Linklater, John Waters, Todd Haynes and Gus Van Sant.

The ending though to FOX is a tragedy beyond description - Love is colder than Death indeed ... fascinating though the look of that early '70s: the clothes, the interiors, and the characters fascinate: Boehm as the wealthy gay who observes, the alcoholic sister wanting her money back, Chatel as the venal boyfriend with his own boyfriend poised to return once Fox has been cleaned out, the purchasing of the antiques and the trip to Morocco, and the money invested in the parents' failing company, and that ending at the railway station ... what a bleak universe. Interesting now to compare with the newly restored TAXI ZUM KLO, Frank Ripploh's vivid diary of his gay life in Berlin circa 1980. FOX though can be exasperating: does he not realise what is going on, is he complicit in his own destruction, if he is looking for love does he not realise he will not find it here? Is he so unloved?


A personal memory here: I worked for a London university bookshop in the late 70s, imagine my surprise one day when a guy came into my office and sat on my desk, waiting for my colleague, Monica a German friend, to return. It was Peter Chatel - who died in 1986. Fassbinder's main films though will endure and continue to fascinate.

Next: Mexico's joyous DONA HERLINDA AND HER SON by Jaime Hermosillo.