Jerzy Skolimowski's fascinating movies

Above: Gina Lollobrigida and (presumably) John Moulder-Brown in KING QUEEN KNAVE (from a novel by Nabokov), 1972.
Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, now in his '70s and still-making movies also writes, paints, presides over Film Festivals and is certainly highly-regarded and attracts quality casts - but somehow his films are practically impossible to see! There was, finally, a recent dvd issue of his 1970 oddity DEEP END, but KING QUEEN KNAVE in '72 seems impossible to see now and I think it barely surfaced in London, despite its stars David Niven, Gina Lollobrigida (looking sensational) and John Moulder-Brown again, who was the lead in DEEP END, set in that East London swimming pool where tease Jane Asher works, he is the new attendant who becomes fascinated by her, and Diana Dors in her blowsy era is also on hand looking for satisfaction!



Jerzy began in the Polish cinema of the early '60s, scripting Polanski's highly-regarded debut KNIFE IN THE WATER - one of his early films as director is the 1967 THE DEPARTURE with Jean-Pierre Leaud which was popular at the time. THE ADVENTURES OF GERARD though in 1970 was tossed away as a dubbed supporting-feature, which I did see at the time, with Peter McEnery as the hussar of Conan Doyle's stories, with Claudia Cardinale, Eli Wallach and Jack Hawkins. THE SHOUT in 1976 was regarded as an oddity and little-seen too, despite the presence of Alan Bates, Susannah York and John Hurt - as I said, top quality casts! MOONLIGHTING with Jeremy Irons about Polish workers stranded in then early-80s London was premiered on the BBC here, and the 1984 SUCCESS IS THE BEST REVENGE with Michael York and Anouk Aimee (reunited from JUSTINE!) was only ever shown once here on the BBC2 channel!



Skolimowski now though has a new film, which has been getting some attention, so hopefully we may get to see it in London before too long - ESSENTIAL KILLING, about a Taliban member who lives in Afghanistan is taken captive by the Americans after killing three American soldiers. He is transferred to Europe for interrogation but manages to escape from his captors and becomes an escaped convict on a continent he does not know. Topical stuff! with Vincent Gallo and Emanuelle Seigner.

John Moulder-Brown is one of those fascinating actors one knows nothing about - even his IMDB page is blank - but he keeps working, now in his 50s. When he was young and pretty, apart from the two Skolimowski titles above, Visconti cast him as Prince Otto in the monumental LUDWIG, 1972, and Maximilian Schell cast him as the lead in his 1970 version of Turgenev's FIRST LOVE which was a nice period piece I caught at a film festival screening, with Dominique Sanda and writer John Osbourne!

DEEP END is now being re-released in selected cinemas (here in the UK) from May 6 and a new dual-format dvd is out in July from the BFI. Interesting comments on it in this weekend's papers by Jane Asher and John Moulder-Brown (now 57). It will be good to see a good print of it again - Now for those other titles like KING QUEEN KNAVE and GERARD!

Shades of exploitation ...

NIGHT OF THE QUARTER MOON - Of course, when you put schlockmeisters Albert Zugsmith and Hugo Haas together as producer and director, you aren't going to end up with something approaching A-list quality but this 1959 shocker provides some amazing viewing now. It is another of those race relations dramas of that year – IMITATION OF LIFE was the successful one, one of Sirk’s best melodramas that’s still marvellous now, and Basil Dearden’s SAPPHIRE was a neat British twist on the same, but this one somehow got backed by MGM! John Drew Barrymore is the spoiled high society playboy Chuck meets and falls for Ginny (Julie London) on a vacation down south. She, it turns out, has a quarter Portuguese-Angolian blood which makes her a ‘quadroon’ as the newspapers gleefully headline when they are back in San Francisco. Nat King Cole and Anna Kashfi are Julie’s relatives who run a night club (Nat gets to sing) and Agnes Moorehead scores as Corneila, the overbearing mother who tries to break up the marriage.Turned out of their hotel, harassed by neighbours, and treated harshly by police, the couple are separated by Cornelia who uses drugs and brainwashing to bring about an annulment on the grounds Ginny concealed her heritage from Chuck. During a sensational courtroom trial with everyone against her, Ginny is forced to strip before the judge to see if she's tan all over...

Julie London was not very animated in those westerns she did – MAN OF THE WEST with Gary Cooper and SADDLE THE WIND with Robert Taylor – but she is a revelation here and plays with passion as she struggles to get her husband back. It has a cheap and tawdry feel rather like a superior B film, but quite interesting to see now even if it is a sordid exercise in exploitation.

GIRL OF THE NIGHT - This film, directed by Joseph Cates, tells the story of a girl (Anne Francis) who becomes a high priced call girl. She is exploited by her pimp (John Kerr) and madam (Kay Medford) until she finds a tough yet caring therapist (Lloyd Nolan) and straightens herself out. Probably considered very daring in 1960, this film offers a prostitute as the main character and it really does not judge her and that lovely actress Anne Francis is quite convincing as the vulnerable Bobbie caught up in a sleazy, ugly, sadistic world . Lloyd Nolan is effective as the shrink, while Kerr in a change from those bland leads whines as the worthless pimp. Kay Medford looks like a painted gargoyle in that nightclub scene. Bobbie is finally able to walk away from her sordid past. The movie draws upon Film Noir for much of its atmosphere shot in real locations, Francis and Kerr were also teamed in 1960 as air hostess and co-pilot in that good “doomed flight” drama THE CROWDED SKY. A more sanitised look at prostitution was provided by Paramount’s A HOUSE IN NOT A HOME in 1964 where Shelley Winters was a very jolly madam, as reviewed on here a while ago (Shelley Winters label).

THE UNHOLY WIFE – Here’s a thing: in 1956 England’s J Lee Thompson directed the gritty drama YIELD TO THE NIGHT with blonde bombshell Diana Dors in her best role as the woman facing the death penalty for shooting her lover, while John Farrow was directing BACK FROM ETERNITY with Rod Steiger and blonde bombshell Anita Ekberg. Fast forward to 1957 and now its Farrow directing Steiger and Dors as another blonde bombshell who ends up facing the death penalty… Diana went to America in the mid-50s and made a few movies there before returning to become an esteemed character actress and all-round tv personality in the UK – here she almost literally glows in the dark in those skintight costumes with that mane of blonde hair in lurid Technicolor. She seems curiously impassive at times as the femme fatale but is never less than sympathetic as the blonde picked up by wine maker Steiger. Diana and pal Marie Windsor make a great pair of dames on the make –
soon though she is bored back in the wine country as Steiger leaves her alone a lot (he has a 'Korean war wound' too….). Why did he marry her? Well she has a young son, and he needs an hair for his vinery…. Diana takes up with lunk Tom Tryon while being observed by interfering mother-in-law Beulah Bondi who is very annoying here. There is a murder, Diana is in the dock, will she get off? Did she do it? Its intriguing and nicely exploits Diana at the height of her looks, before gravity and weight took their toll, and its perfect 1957 from RKO.

THE DETECTIVE – the late ‘60s saw exploitation taken to new levels with the new freedoms on offer as cinema could finally get to grips with more adult themes. This hard-boiled detective drama by old hand Gordon Douglas finds Frank Sinatra at the detective seeking promotion and finds it in convicting the wrong man for the murder of a prominent gay figure. Frank impassively watches the unstable suspect fry in the electric chair...
‘One Take Frank’ strides through it without much emotion – the real performance is by Lee Remick as his wife, creating a real person from the under-written part of the discarded wife who it seems is a nymphomaniac in her desires. The very cool Jacqueline Bisset (replacing Mia Farrow) is the boyish wife of a man who commits suicide who asks the detective to investigate the cause of the suicide.
It turns out the two cases are linked and there is wholesale corruption at the police department. Good roles here for Ralph Meeker, Jack Klugman, Al Freeman Jr (who strips suspects naked like those Nazis did!) and homophobic Robert Duvall. Frank’s investigations takes him into the gay underworld – those trucks down by the harbour! – and that gay bar (perhaps the first since ADVISE AND CONSENT?) and that pick-up that turns ugly. Gays are routinely described as “fags” and are presented as sad lonely individuals who lead loveless lives, outcasts from society – the killer would rather be considered a murderer than a homosexual! This is all rather tame now but was considered racy and gritty at the time.

3 IN THE ATTIC - A modern Don Juan pays the price when he two-times three different women. Christopher Jones is Paxton Quigley the campus Casanova who sleeps with Caucasian co-ed Tobey (Yvette Mimieux), the black beauty Eulice (Judy Pace) and the Jewish hippie Jane (Maggie Thrett). The three women discover Paxton’s extra-curricular activities and they seek revenge by locking him in an attic where they try and kill him with sex! Soon Paxton goes on a hunger strike as maybe his sexual desires may lead to his downfall, or even death. What a way to, eh! Chad and Jeremy provide the music which includes the title track with lines like “Is it possible for a woman to be Jewish and psychedelic at the same time?”

It’s a companion piece to American-International’s WILD IN THE STREETS, also 1968, and reviewed here recently. Chris Jones is quite animated here and it caused some attention at the time in being one of the first mainstream movies to feature male nudity (see also Zeffirelli’s ROMEO AND JULIET and Clive Donner’s HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH). Its quite amusing actually – with that nice late ‘60s preppy look [as in THE STERILE CUCKOO (or POOKIE as it was called in the UK) or LAST SUMMER]. AIP were of course exploiting the youth explosion and the new freedom of the counterculture era, but here its nicely played out, as directed by Richard Wilson.

DE SADE - One can hardly say the same for their DE SADE in 1969, American-International’s foray into costume drama, an odd mix of arthouse and expoitation – well the costumes don’t stay on very long as that orgy sequence seems endless as De Sade (Keir Dullea) romps with those strumpets in various states of undress. One trusts Lilli Palmer collected a large paycheck for her icy Madame de Montreuil making that marriage contract with De Sade to marry her daughter.
Keir thinks he is getting luscious Senta Berger but finds he has to marry her sister, English actress Anna Massey! John Huston though has a whale of a time as the decadent Abbe de Sade. Directed by reliable Cy Endfield and scripted by Richard Matheson but its just dull dull dull with the hilarious mix of psychedelia and costume drama, very 1969! As for Keir at least he had just finished 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY which will play forever while this has sank without a trace.

More British '50s rare pleasures...

Some more eclectic British films of the ‘50s before we zoom off to the ‘60s (and lots more ‘People We Like’)!

AN ALLIGATOR NAMED DAISY, a delicious 1955 Rank comedy starring Donald Sinden and Jeannie Carson, and Stephen Boyd [the essence of '50s beefcake here] teamed with Diana Dors – both of them going places. Sinden has to look after the alligator and chaos ensues. [This was a childhood favourite of mine and I bought the Donald Sinden box set purely for this still enjoyable comedy..]. James Robertson Justice, Richard Wattis, and - wonderfully - Margaret Rutherford (in one scene as a pet shop owner who can talk to the alligator) are all blissfully funny. Another by J Lee Thompson!

HOW TO MURDER A RICH UNCLE - a long-forgotten 1957 comedy, rather like a new Ealing production, featuring a ramshackle rich family now down on its luck, trying to bump off the rich uncle of the title, but killing each other insead. Its quirky and funny, directed by and starring Nigel Patrick, with Wendy Hiller and dear Katie Johnson of THE LADYKILLERS. Charles Coburn is the wealthy uncle whose relatives are dropping like flies around him...

WOMAN IN A DRESSING GOWN – one of several here featuring Yvonne Mitchell, this 1957 melodrama by Ted Willis and directed by the astonishingly versatile J Lee Thompson was a hit at the time. Mitchell is the slovenly wife, forever in that dressing gown, whose middle management husband Anthony Quayle is being lured away by bright young thing Sylvia Syms. It captures the mood of the late ‘50s with those modern new offices and the rising middle class. Carole Lesley, a starlet of the time, also features. Yvonne as usual makes it very compelling.

SAPPHIRE. Hardly ever seen now, this is a vivid childhood memory. Basil Dearden’s 1959 thriller is very colourful as it depicts late ‘50s Britain and the racial tensions of the time, with the arrival of those immigrants from Jamaica and Trinidad who were encouraged to move to England and better themselves, but were usually working on buses and trains. Sapphire is the girl found murdered on Hampstead Heath as detectives Nigel Patrick (dependable as ever) and Michael Craig look for clues. Yvonne Mitchell scores as the sister of Sapphire’s boyfriend, as it is revealed that the murdered girl was a half-caste who was passing as white. As in Dearden’s following VICTIM, attitudes are revealed among the suspects and its intriguingly worked out. A vivid scene set in a nightclub shows Craig’s reaction while watching a blond girl absorbed in the music as the owner tells the police that the girls passing for white always give themselves away when they hear that funky beat…. FLAME IN THE STREETS in 1961 is another set in this era as John Mills’ daughter (Sylvia Syms again) wants to marry an ordinary black man (not a Sidney Poitier superhero, as in Kramer's 1967 film) thus testing his liberal attitudes, while his wife, splendid Brenda de Banzie, is violently opposed to the union. This is also by Ted Willis.

THE TRIALS OF OSCAR WILDE is a fascinating and intelligent working of the Wilde story and for a movie made in 1960 about as frank as it could be. Peter Finch was a magnificent Wilde capturing the facets of the writer knowingly facing his destiny, and winning a BAFTA award. Yvonne Mitchell was the perfect Constance, and John Fraser as petulant a Bosie as Jude Law in the 90s Stephen Fry film. There was another version of the Wilde story made at the same time in 1960 by Gregory Ratoff with Robert Morley (playing Wilde as Robert Morley), but the Finch version directed by Ken Hughes won hands down, with handsome period detail and in scope and colour. James Mason and Nigel Patrick shone as opposing barristers and Lionel Jeffries was a malevolent if not insane Marquis of Queensbury. The film still holds up perfectly today. The Stephen Fry version may have been franker in 1997 but this one is just as good if not better and more nuanced.
Marketing Oscar in 1960: Click image to enlarge

The other version had the tagline: "Theirs was a relationship that the world could not, would not tolerate"!

CONSPIRACY OF HEARTS in 1960 from the Rank Organisation remains a superior tearjerker, where Lilli Palmer is the very elegant Mother Superior of a convent in Italy where the nuns save Jewish children from the Germans. Add in young Sylvia Syms, Yvonne Mitchell as the crotchety nun, David Kossoff as a rabbi and Albert Lieven and Peter Arne as dastardly Germans, plus Roland Lewis as a partisan. Experty put together by Ralph Thomas. Lilli is perfect as head nun squaring up to those Nazis.

NORTH WEST FRONTIER is a terrific adventure movie in scope and colour by J Lee Thompson in 1959 and it remains a television staple to this day as its screened at least once a year here in the UK. Thompson also made TIGER BAY that year as well as other ‘50s sterling titles like NO TREES IN THE STREET, YIELD TO THE NIGHT, THE WEAK AND WICKED, ICE COLD IN ALEX before going on to the likes of THE GUNS OF NAVARONE and CAPE FEAR. Here we are in India during the Victorian Raj era, Kenneth More has to guide a train through bandit country while protecting the young Prince whom a lot of people, including someone on the train, want to see dead. Lauren Bacall is the governess, Herbert Lom a shady character and Wilfrid Hyde White one of these decent English chaps. Its great fun to watch anytime.

UPSTAIRS AND DOWNSTAIRS – a very typical Rank Organisation comedy from 1960, with fascinating décor to see now, at the dawn of the new ’60s era. Michael Craig and Anne Heywood are the young marrieds who simply must have a domestic help to do their chores and look after their house. Their trials and tribulations make up the plot as they cope with bank robbers, a drunk Joan Hickson, Welsh girl Blodwyn (a hilarious young Joan Sims) who has never left Wales – Craig has a hilarious scene on a train with her – and Claudia Cardinale as a continental sexpot with men calling to the house at all times [5 years later Craig would be supporting Cardinale in Visconti’s SANDRA, of which more later]. French Mylene Demongeot plays the Swedish girl and its all jolly good fun and so typical of the era, also by Ralph Thomas.

The English '40s and into the '50s

Following on from commenting on Hollywood's '40s, English films of the '40s have always been high on my list of favourites. First, Powell and Pressburger with that wonderful quartet [I am afraid I have not seen A CANTERBURY TALE or OH ROSALINDA, which I must rectify...] of A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING, BLACK NARCISSUS and THE RED SHOES. I could write deliriously on each of these, but they are so well known there is no need [my aim here is to discuss the lesser known or lost films]. Suffice to say that I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING and BLACK NARCISSUS are numbers three and four in my top 30 list! Our London listings magazine "Time Out" used to say about NARCISSUS that one could show it out of focus and backwards and it would still be marvellous. Its one of the first movies I taped to video-cassette back in the '80s, now its great having the dvd and those extras on Jack Cardiff etc. Sister Clodagh [Deborah was only 26 at the time] and Sister Ruth and all the others are riveting as ever whenever I see it - Kathleen Byron, David Farrar, Flora Robson as ever, Jean Simmons and Sabu as the exotics. Then those great sets and colours particuarly towards the end - that jump cut and then the rain falling on those giant leaves as the nuns depart and the convent is swallowed up by the clouds as Sister Clodagh has one last request for Mr Dean... and it was all filmed in England and lensed by the incomparable Jack Cardiff! The mystical Hebrides are equally well served in I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING where Wendy Hiller, Roger Livesey and Pamela Brown (right) have never been more perfect, with Nancy Price as Mrs Crozier and that great Ardnacroish dance sequence and that castle! A film to treasure. Powell's PEEPING TOM is also as essential as PSYCHO and L'AVVENTURA in that key year 1960.

On to David Lean: I now love IN WHICH WE SERVE as much as THIS HAPPY BREED, and then there is BRIEF ENCOUNTER and BLITHE SPIRIT, all perfect of their kind, plus the two Dickens films GREAT EXPECTATIONS and OLIVER TWIST. The Ann Todd films were recent discoveries, I particularly like THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS with the great triangle of Todd, Howard and Claude Rains and that lovely '40s ambience. (More on it in my post on Valentine Day films). Kay Walsh, Celia Johnson, Ann Todd, John Mills, Trevor Howard et al are all ideal Lean actors.

Carol Reed is equally important with THE FALLEN IDOL, ODD MAN OUT and THE THIRD MAN. Add in those delirious Gainsborough melodramas like MADONNA OF THE SEVEN MOONS, CARAVAN and the MAN IN GREY [thank goodness for that Stewart Granger box set of 12 of these!], Flora Robson in POISON PEN, the sumptuous SARABAND FOR DEAD LOVERS (where Granger, Greenwood, Flora Robson and Francoise Rosay are all sublime) and then those Ealing comedies like the timeless KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS and WHISKEY GALORE, and those other 40s dramas like IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY, 2,000 WOMEN, GREEN FOR DANGER, THE OCTOBER MAN, THE WAY TO THE STARS (also reviewed further along here), the Anna Neagle-Michael Wilding films and popular late '40s films capturing the moment like HOLIDAY CAMP and DANCE HALL in 1950, important social documents now, as is Basil Dearden's POOL OF LONDON from 1951 when the London docks were in full swing, with those evocative names like Bonar Colleano, Earl Cameron, Renee Asherson and Moira Lister.

Apart from Anna Neagle, Wendy Hiller, Celia Johnson and Joan Greenwood other English '40s leading ladies include Margaret Lockwood, Phyllis Calvert, Patricia Roc, Greta Gynt and Kay Walsh, plus Kerr and Simmons before they went Hollywood. James Mason, Michael Wilding, Stewart Granger, Dennis Price, Jack Hawkins and Trevor Howard were ideal leading men [with Dirk Bogarde, Richard Todd, Kenneth More, Peter Finch etc waiting in the wings], and directors like Ronald Neame, Lewis Gilbert, J Lee Thompson, Basil Dearden, Ralph Thomas were all starting out and would dominate English films in the '50s.

Ken Annakin's HOLIDAY CAMP in 1947 is post-war England in aspic, going on holiday to the new holiday camps. Flora Robson has a great role here as the lonely spinster yearning for her love lost in the war, only to discover he is the holiday camp announcer but is now blind .... Esma Cannon (later in the CARRY ONs) as her twittery friend fares less well, as she falls prey to Dennis Price's murdering conman. The Huggett family (from the radio) are enjoying themselves, led by father Jack Warner and mum Kathleen Harrison. Its an enjoyable time capsule now, as is:

DANCE HALL - Charles Crichton's 1950 portrait of 4 working class girls who work in the local factory and let off steam at the Saturday night dance. A very varied cast here: the girls are young Petula Clark, Natasha Perry, Jane Hylton and the rising Diana Dors. Its a fairly grim look at working class life, but lots of fun too. Donald Houston and Bonar Colleano are among the men they attract, Kay Kendall pops in for a minute, as do Eunice Gayson and Dandy Nichols, Sydney Tafler is the dance hall manager and dear old Gladys Henson is Petula's mum who gives her an awfully old-fashioned dress to wear at the dance contest! Dors is great fun as the good-natured blonde with an eye for a hunky fella! 10 years later SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING would be a new male-dominated update on working class life, as the '60s dawned.

THE GOLDEN SALAMANDER was a treat to see last year, a 1950 thriller by Ronald Neame set in Tunisia where Trevor Howard is sent to unearth a gang smuggling antiquities out of the country. With his battered hat and pipe Howard is quite the dependable leading man here and is teamed with the teenage Anouk Aimee, as fascinating as ever here in one of her first films. Jacques Sernas is her brother, Herbert Lom leads the heavies as local bigwig Walter Rilla leads the gang. Its a pity its not in colour to capitalise on the locations but its exciting and tense as it seems the whole town is against our couple at the climax.

THE CLOUDED YELLOW. Another 1950 thriller starring Trevor Howard, this time with the young Jean Simmons in another tense tale, this time directed by Ralph Thomas. Howard here is a secret service agent suffering from burn-out, who takes a quiet job in the country cataloguing a butterfly collection (hence the title) at the home of Barry Jones and his wife Sonia Dresdel. Its an original little thriller, I like Howard's jaunty sports car, and the climax is a tense one at Liverpool docks as the villain chases Jean Simmons over the rooftops. Kenneth More is the detective in pursuit, and its one of Simmons' better films of the period, like her charming one with Dirk Bogarde of about the same time, SO LONG AT THE FAIR.

WOMEN OF TWILIGHT - a 1952 meller by Gordon Parry only of note now as its one of Laurence Harvey's early movies, before his breakthrough year 1954. He has 2 scenes here in this humdrum thriller set in a boarding house for unmarried women, ruled by a malevolent Freda Jackson (was she ever anything else?). Dora Bryan is fun as usual, and Lois Maxwell is also on board.

CAST A DARK SHADOW. I thought I was au fait with Dirk Bogarde's movies but only really began seeing them in 1957, when 11, so missed a few early ones like this and Losey's THE SLEEPING TIGER in '54. This '55 meller by Lewis Gilbert is a delicious treat now with Dirk in spivvy mode (looking at his Physique Pictorial magazines..) but somehow middle-aged women go for him in a big way. He begins married to older Mona Washbourne but you can tell he has plans for her...but retains her devoted servant Kathleen Harrison. Margaret Lockwood then enters as a delightfully vulgar woman with money who unaccountably has to marry Dirk but he soon realises she is no fool. Then splendid Kay Walsh comes on the scene and drama soon ensues. It twists and turns nicely, with Robert Flemying a good support. Poor Mona also became infatuated with unstable (and how) Albert Finney in 1963's NIGHT MUST FALL. Dirk's later films for the Rank Organisation were much more colourful like CAMPBELL'S KINGDOM, THE WIND CANNOT READ or the excellent version of A TALE OF TWO CITIES.

Right: Jean Simmons and teenage Anouk Aimee cooling down at one of Dirk Bogarde's Sunday afternoon parties, circa 1950.

Coming soon: those English actresses of the 50s [Muriel Pavlow, Virginia McKenna, Yvonne Mitchell, Barbara Murray, Dinah Sheridan, Shirley Eaton, Belinda Lee, Diana Dors, Sylvia Syms, Brenda De Banzie etc], to be followed by those Swinging '60s girls.