Young Cassidy - a John Ford film directed by Jack Cardiff

YOUNG CASSIDY Or: SEAN O'CASEY IN LOVE ? One of 1965's under-rated gems is this biopic of Irish writer Sean O'Casey, a perfect example of American film-making in England in the '60s. It was a project dear to John Ford, but he only spent a few weeks on the film due to illness, so esteemed photographer Jack Cardiff took over, having directed the successful D.H. Lawrence adaptation SONS AND LOVERS himself in 1960.



Ford may only have directed a couple of scenes - the pub fight and meeting Daisy Battles (the radiant young Julie Christie) and the death of Sean's mother, the noble Flora Robson. The cast here is the thing: Rod Taylor is an agreeable presence, ideal in THE BIRDS etc, and certainly makes for a brawling playright! Maggie Smith is Nora, the bookshop girl he loves, but she cannot deal with his growing success and the world he wants to live in. Julie (just before DARLING and DR ZHIVAGO that year) is the happy prostitute he meets a few times, Dame Flora is perfect as the ailing mother, Sian Phillips his poverty-stricken sister - and then theres Edith Evans as Lady Gregory who runs the Abbey Theatre, and Michael Redgrave as W.B.Yeats - heavyweights indeed. Add in Pauline Delaney as the randy landlady, Donal Donnelly, Joe Lynch, Jack McGowran and other assorted Irish characters.


Ford and Cardiff on set, above right.

The Easter Rebellion of 1916 plays out in the background as O'Casey steals books from Maggie's shop and gets his first play written and staged, but he cannot cash his first cheque to pay for his mother's funeral! Finally, he leaves for England and the successes waiting for him. The Dublin backgrounds are nicely staged along with the poverty of the time and its all a breezy romp touching certainly on events in the early O'Casey's life. O'Casey's plays are still being revived, I am off to a National Theatre revivial of JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK in the new year.

Showpeople (15): Bogarde and pals

I have done some 'Showpeople' posts on Dirk Bogarde previously, with the likes of pals Kay Kendall and Rex Harrison, meeting Rock Hudson - did the closeted British and American heart-throbs compare notes? - and with co-stars like Jean Simmons, Anouk Aimee (whom he knew since she was a teenager), Monica Vitti, Julie Christie, Lilli Palmer - did he and Lilli discuss the Rex and Kay story?, Lilli being the previous Mrs Harrison. (Left, another shot from that DARLING premiere with Christie and Vitti. Glamour!)

Below with Kay and Kenneth More in DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE, and with Muriel Pavlow, another Rank Organisation stalwart and co-star, and with Capucine. Dirk and Kay were also guests at Kenneth More's "This Is Your Life" tv show in 1959.









I suggest that Lauren Bacall and Dirk really are the people who knew everybody - and SHE visited HIM the day before he died in 1999, and I love the photo of her with Kay, Vivien Leigh and Coward back in 1959, and with Kay at the theatre that year! [Showpeople label]. He worked of course with all the English talent of the time including those newcomers Courtenay, Fox, Miles ("dainty Miles" as he referred to her at one of his NFT discussions), Christie, Stamp, York - Michael and Susannah, etc. Then of course he knew all the European ladies: the young Bardot in DOCTOR AT SEA, Thulin, Seyrig, Aimee, Vitti, Mangano, and became great friends with Charlotte Rampling and Jane Birkin, he was also pals with Simone Signoret and Yvonne Mitchell though did not work with them, and of course his later co-stars like Lee Remick and Glenda Jackson. [It is a shame that Romy Schneider did not get to play the Austrian princess in Losey's ACCIDENT in '67, as originally planned - she would have brought so much more to the role and made her a real tease, rather than Sassard's blankness]. Then of course there are the Garland, Capucine and Ava Gardner stories, as per his books ... here is a further selection then:

Awards time in 1965 with Lee Marvin, Julie C and Patricia Neal - later of course he and Glenda Jackson did THE PATRICIA NEAL STORY for television; and that silent scene with Delphine Seyrig in ACCIDENT and with Anouk in JUSTINE, and Bjorn from DEATH IN VENICE!

Showpeople (13): Friends, rivals - and the glamorous life

Anouk Aimee looks in on pal Dirk Bogarde with Jean Simmons on the set of SO LONG AT THE FAIR, 1950. Dirk at the 1965 premiere of DARLING with co-star Julie Christie and Monica Vitti (they were filming MODESTY BLAISE at the time).
Below: Joe Losey and Visconti at the Cannes festival in 1971, both promoting their wares: when Visconti heard that Losey got the Palme D'Or for THE GO-BETWEEN he set off for the airport, but was called back when the Jury invented a special 25th anniversary prize for him, for DEATH IN VENICE!
Coming attractions: lots more French flicks - Francois Ozon, 3 Claude Sautet avec Romy Schneider, Andre Techine avec Catherine Deneuve, and back to Chabrol and Melville with those Belmondos and Delons, that Techine boxset (including WILD REEDS), Chabrol's LE CEREMONIE, Assayas' SUMMER HOURS, Deneuve in A CHRISTMAS TALE and others.

Showpeople (12): Girls' night out (2)

An intriguing shot of Julie Christie, Ursula Andress and Catherine Deneuve meeting up probably at some film festival or premiere sometime in the mid-60s .... all in their white gloves! Catherine may be wearing couture (Chanel? St Laurent?) but that outfit and handbag looks positively mumsy next to Julie! When incidentally did women stop wearing white gloves? ... possibly to the late 60s presumably. The photo is from that fabulous site STIRRED, STRAIGHT UP, WITH A TWIST. www.stirredstraightup.blogspot.com

Michael Sarrazin RIP

Another R.I.P! Michael Sarrazin (1940-2011) was one of those interesting new actors who came along in the mid-60s and, again like most good-looking actors, had a good 10 years with some interesting hits and misses. As a leading man of the era he was ideal opposite the likes of Jacqeline Bisset and foil to Jane Fonda and Susannah York in THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY, 1969 - one of those movies we loved at the time and which I have been meaning to re-watch.

Sarrazin often played young drifters (as in HORSES) and is another one in the effective teasing thriller EYE OF THE CAT, 1967 (reviewed here previously). Other movies included Streisand's co-star in one of her minor movies, the amusing FOR PETE'S SAKE (1974), and THE REINCARNATION OF PETER PROUD, and the monster in the television FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY ('75). Other movies included SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION, THE FLIM FLAM MAN, and that Italian oddity in '68 with Julie Christie - IN SEARCH OF GREGORY, another one to re-watch sometime. Canadian Sarrazin was always interesting and had a nice laid-back presence. Among the roles he turned down was Joe Buck in MIDNIGHT COWBOY.

Losey

They do it with mirrors! Some classic images from Joseph Losey films - like Visconti, most of my favourites worked with him ... Jeanne Moreau and Stanley Baker in EVE (1961); that classic image from THE SERVANT, 1963; Bogarde and Sarah Miles; Alain Delon and Romy Schneider in THE ASSASSINATION OF TROKSTY in 1972; Julie Christie in THE GO-BETWEEN, 1971; Bogarde, Baker, Vivien Merchant, Michael York, Jacqueline Sassard, and Delphine Seyrig with Bogarde in ACCIDENT, 1967; and Losey with Vitti, Bogarde and some of the MODESTY BLAISE cast, 1966.

Also, Elizabeth Taylor and Noel Coward in BOOM, 1967, and Mia Farrow with those two aunts Peggy Ashcroft and Pamela Brown in SECRET CEREMONY, 1968. I have written previously [Losey label] on how I saw Losey with Burton and Taylor in London in 1970 when they were protesting about SECRET CEREMONY which was not a success being edited and sold to television! Losey had a great late hit with his baroque verson of DON GIOVANNI, one of the best opera films.Other Loseys of note [and which I have written about previously] include, after his early Hollywood era, that 1954 thriller THE SLEEPING TIGER (his first with Bogarde), and TIME WITHOUT PITY, BLIND DATE, THE CRIMINAL, THESE ARE THE DAMNED, KING AND COUNTRY, FIGURES IN A LANDSCAPE, and then his French era with Delon and Moreau in MISTER KLEIN and Montand in LE ROUTES DE SUD (only ever shown on tv once here in the UK) and his final, the intriguing STEAMING with Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles and Diana Dors, her last movie also, and his 1973 re-worked version of A DOLL'S HOUSE headed by Jane Fonda and Seyrig. His THE GYPSY AND THE GENTLEMAN for the Rank Organisation in '58 is a rip-roaring melodrama in vivid colours, like an updated Gainsborough picture with good roles for Mercouri and Flora Robson.

Julie

The above 2008 book caught my eye in a discount bookstore, so I bought it for a fiver [£5] purely for the cover picture of Julie, who has fascinated me ever since BILLY LIAR. Terrific picture - dreadful book, the epitome of a cut-and-paste job, by not one but two writers I had never heard of! Its 240 pages and by page 200 they are still on DON'T LOOK NOW - then the rest of her career and life from 1973 is rushed through in the remaining 40 pages telling us (or me, at any rate) nothing I did not know before. Everything about DARLING and its making is lifted verbatim from Dirk Bogarde's book SNAKES AND LADDERS! It is such a bland book that there is no mention of John Schlesinger being gay and Tony Forwood, Dirk Bogarde's partner, is referred to as his manager. How do books like this get commissioned in the first place? - I trust nobody paid full price for it! Julie though remains as enigmatic as ever and survives their intrusion.

Here is another picture of Julie which I like from the cover of the London National Film Theatre programme when they did a retrospective on her films back in 1989:

A Dirk Bogarde double bill...

A movie I have loved for 44 years - and one I saw yesterday ...

Losey's MODESTY BLAISE is one of my key movies of 1966 and remains a very misunderstood movie. It has a cult following and passionate devotees - others cannot stand it or think it is rubbish! That's how cult movies get made folks! Back in 1966 Losey and Bogarde were the new flavour of the month after their critical (if not commercial at the time) successes with THE SERVANT and then KING AND COUNTRY, and the Bond movies were big box office and ripe for spoofing - hence the film of Peter O'Donnell's cult comic strip: the adventures of secret agent Modesty Blaise and her sidekick Willie Garvin as they try to outwit master criminal Gabriel. The movie as designed by Richard McDonald is an op art delight with that mediterranian hideway and Gabriel as super-camp silver-wigged mother-fixated arch-criminal with his dour Scottish accountant (Clive Revill) constantly poring over his ledgers and Mrs Fothergill (Rosella Falk) his sadistic assassin who we see dispatching those who have offended Gabriel.



There are so many choice moments in this riot of mid-'60s glamour and mod fashions: Gabriel unable to decide which lobster for dinner: "decisions, decisions" or enjoying agonising over listening to the conversation of the two pilots whose plane is he about to explode ... The plot is a farrago about a cargo of diamonds Gabriel is going to steal from a ship for which he needs the talents of Willie (Terence Stamp) and the trap they set for him - assisted by dependable regulars Harry Andrews and Michael Craig. After some detours via Amsterdam and some stylish violence the real fun begins as Gabriel traps Modesty in his op art cell and her multi-coloured changes of costume. [Vitti and Stamp are as iconically 60s here as Stamp and Julie Christie the following year in FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD].

The casting of Monica Vitti as Modesty is a masterstroke - the art house goddess of the Antonioni films was an unknown quantity to the mass audience and she had that aura about her. Her comedy skills find a lot of humour in the role though her English sounds as if she learnt it phonetically! Its still a cult favourite after all these years. John Dankworth's score is also spot on and a terrific '60s thriller pastiche. Dirk has great fun as Garbriel - even staked out in the desert at the end crying for "champagne, champagne"! It fits nicely into the Losey canon, as he and Bogarde went on to Pinter's script for ACCIDENT next.

It was made in 1965 for early 1966 release; 20 year old me was among the crowd watching the stars arriving at the premiere in '66 - Vitti didn't show, but Dirk was there with Mrs Fothergill (Rosella Falk) in his arm!.

Rosella Falk and Scilla Gabel with Stamp, Vitti and Bogarde.
Terry and Monica in the recording studio [Photo: Eve Arnold].


THE HIGH BRIGHT SUN

Apart from the 'important' movies he was making throughout the '60s Bogarde still turned out routine programmers for the Rank Organisation - we didn't bother much with them at the time (THE PASSWORD IS COURAGE, HOT ENOUGH FOR JUNE, another Doctor film) but its fun catching up with them now, so it was interesting to finally see the 1964 adventure set in '50s war-torn Cyprus THE HIGH BRIGHT SUN yesteday - another of those Ralph Thomas-Betty Box productions that kept Dirk busy during the '50s. This is a routine efficient thriller with Bogarde as the military commander (a part he could play on autopilot but he brings some nice nuances to it) and Susan Strasberg is the American-Cypriot girl who gets into danger by seeing who the guest is of the family friends she is staying with. George Chakiris is the local rebel leader who decides she has to be silenced so she goes on the run and finally she and Bogarde are holed up in an apartment in town as the rebels attack. It plays out nicely with good roles for Denholm Elliott and the likes of Gregoire Aslan. Colin Campbell from THE LEATHER BOYS has a supporting role which you just know won't make it to the final reel ... its the sort of well-made entertainment people went to see at their local cinema on a weekly basis back then. Dirk went on to DARLING next.

Bogarde with Vitti (they must have been shooting MODESTY at the time) and Julie Christie at the DARLING premiere, Sept. 1965