A touch of class: The Nun's Story

THE NUN’S STORY. Zinnemann’s 1959 classic was on in the middle of the night, so I recorded it, despite having the dvd, and what a transfixing experience it is. I had not seen it for decades but remember what a big hit it was at the time. It is surely Audrey Hepburn’s crowning achievement. One hardly sees classic movie-making on this scale any more, as Zinnemann orchestrates it all – the early scenes in the convent as the young novice adjusts to the religious life, the faces of all those nuns, and then the Congo scenes, her recovery from tuberculosis, and back to wartime Europe, based on a best-selling true story. as scripted by Robert Anderson. While not as austere as a Bresson or a Dreyer or indeed Melville's LEON MORIN, PRIEST (reviewed here at Belmondo label) it does convey the rigours of the religious life and the demands it makes (and of course complements those nuns perfectly portrayed by Deborah Kerr in BLACK NARCISSUS and HEAVEN KNOWS MR ALLISON).

It is totally absorbing and the players are so perfect for their roles: Hepburn as the strong-willed and fiercely independent Sister Luke, whose very psyche is torn asunder by the battle between her own innate, personal pride and a sincere desire to live a life of obedience to the Church and its rules; Peter Finch as Dr Fortunati, Edith Evans as Mother Superior (doing marvels with very little screen time), Peggy Ashcroft, Dean Jagger as her father, Mildred Dunnock, Coleen Dewhurst, etc. A totally marvellous achievement and Franz Waxman's score complements the visuals perfectly.

1959 was not only a key year both in cinema and for me, aged 13, and loving all those big hitters of the year, as lots of key directors produced their late classics: BEN HUR, SOME LIKE IT HOT, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, ANATOMY OF A MURDER, SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, ON THE BEACH, RIO BRAVO, IMITATION OF LIFE, PILLOW TALK, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING, SOLOMON AND SHEBA etc, THE NUN'S STORY was up there with them as one of the key dramas of the year and it was of course an enormous hit, for such a solemn film, and it is certainly one of Hepburn's key roles, ably supported by Finch's skilful portrayal of the doctor. After the Congo episode we are back in wartime Europe as Sr Luke tries to settle back into the religious life, but her rebellious spirit will not let her.... The complexities of the religious life are nicely demonstrated when she is asked to fail an essential examination to help another nun go to the Congo. The interiors were actually shot at Cinecitta so just how much of it was shot in Africa I wonder? The seemingly now under-rated Fred Zinnemann showed his mastery again the next year with the wonderful THE SUNDOWNERS and that great re-teaming of Mitchum and Kerr, and of course his 1953 hit FROM HERE TO ETERNITY among others.

I find it incredible that London's National Film Theatre in their Audrey Hepburn season a year or so ago did not include THE NUN'S STORY or indeed the chance to see King Vidor's WAR AND PEACE, 1956, another key Audrey role, on the big screen, as they were focusing on Audrey as the fashion icon and not the actress!

Soon: an appreciation on Peter Finch.

Summertime blues ...

SUMMER THINGS, 2002. A quite amusing French comedy by Michel Blanc (MONSIEUR HIRE) who also wrote it. A disparate group go on vacation to Le Touquet: the wealthy Charlotte Rampling whose husband Jacques Dutronc decides to stay at home as his life is rather complicated – he has been having an affair with their friend, Julie a single mother, and is now seeing his personal assistant who seems to be a transsexual. Their friends Vero (Karin Giard) and her husband are broke and trying to keep up appearances – they are staying in a caravan site. Their teenage son Loic (Gaspard Ulliel – THE SEA WALL) hates this and manages to get a bed at the hotel as Vero is looking after Julie’s baby.
Julie falls for a hotel lothario, and Loic meets a rich girl who takes him sailing. There is also Michel Blanc who is insanely jealous over his beautiful wife Carole Bouquet as he imagines every man is having sex with her. Charlotte and Bouquet becomer friends and drink lots of champagne while poor Vero tries to keep up. Lots of comedy situations then, including Rampling and Dutronc’s sex-mad daughter who is in Chicago with an employee of his who has stolen some money for the trip and is promptly dumped by the daughter for a guy she meets on the plane – he is then mugged and robbed and left on his own in Chicago. By the end of it all Loic comforts Charlotte who is having a miserable time and gives her the courage to confront the holes in her marriage as she insists on separate bedrooms. It is all fitfully amusing in a Gallic way as Blanc works out his Robert Altman/Woody Allen inspired interweaving tales, it almost makes one feel like one has been on holiday too. Rampling is effective as usual in another of these late starring roles of hers (SWIMMING POOL, UNDER THE SAND, HEADING SOUTH etc).

SUMMER HOURS, 2008. A more sombre richly textured French drama by Olivier Assayas. Helene (Edith Scob – the mad doctor’s disfigured daughter in 1959’s EYES WITHOUT A FACE, reviewed here last year, French label) is the 75 year old matriarch facing her imminent demise as she sorts out the legacy she will leave for her 3 children. She was the mistress of a great artist so there are a lot of valuables which Museums are interested in. Two of the children though no longer live in France and rarely return – Juliette Binoche is the successful designer living and getting married in New York, Jeremie Renier and his family now live in China, only the eldest Charles Berling and his family live in Paris. He wants to keep the family home for all of them and their children to enjoy but the other two want to sell.


They get their way as we see the ramifications following Helene’s death. The house and grounds are loving explored, Isabelle Sadoyan is just right as the aged retainer. We see some pieces on display at the Musee d'Orsay as the house is stripped and teenagers have a farewell party there. There is a lot of sadness at the nature of how things change as families splinter and heritage takes over. A very satisfying movie then, like a good read with well-rounded characters.

10.30 PM SUMMER, 1966. A return visit to Dassin’s film of Marguerite Duras’s story which I had not seen since its release. A very oddball confection but with three people I like, heading by Melina Mercouri who is travelling around Spain with husband Peter Finch and friend Romy Schneider. A great cast then but it is all somehow very risible as Melina goes into over-drive. There is a murderer on the loose whom Melina tries to assist escape, as Finch and Romy also get involved. This provided a lot of hilarity at the time, I remember Pauline Kael being particularly choice on this version of exploring threesomes. For me though Finch and Schneider are always endlessly fascinating and I like Melina a lot too – I spent an afternoon with her once in 1968 when she was leading a protest march in London in Trafalgar Square about poverty in Africa – in Biafra then. I was an idealistic twenty-two year old and Melina looked terrific in a long red dress with lots of gold chains. The Dassin-Mercouri films get a lot of stick now but I like them! Melina can often resemble a croaky drag queen but she is certainlty intense here - that scene where she watches Finch & Schneider (a terrific pairing of favourite people of mine) together on the balcony as the rain beats down and the wanted murderer also hides on the roofs is brilliantly staged.



Now that summer is gone perhaps more summer movies?: SUMMERTIME, SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT, SUMMER AND SMOKE, SUMMER OF THE 17TH DOLL, LAST SUMMER, THE LONG HOT SUMMER ......

I will now be away for maybe two weeks - not alas on vacation as in SUMMER THINGS but have a hospital engagement (knee replacement surgery) followed by extensive physiotherapy, and I am not allowed my laptop! but I shall be returning with an appraisal of Visconti's LUDWIG, Antonioni's rare OBERWALD MYSTERY [below, with Monica Vitti] and his segment in I TRE VINTI, 5 Catherine Deneuve films (I shall keep her A CHRISTMAS TALE until that time), 4 versions of DORIAN GRAY, more silents like THIEF OF BAGHDAD and BEN HUR (1925), NATHALIE GRANGER and other Marguerite Duras films, KINSEY and other gay interest movies, and more People and Movies We Like and of course more Art, Trash and lots of Glamour!

Actors 2

A lovely still from Antonioni's L'ECLISSE, 1962, with Alain Delon. The link below, if you copy to your browser, features a terrific page of animated stills of this and other movies like TAXI DRIVER, BLADE RUNNER, 2001, LOLITA etc with brilliant animation of the stills. Enjoy!

http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2011/09/cinematographs_living_breathin.html

10 great male performances: (or my favourites at any rate)

Robert De Niro - TAXI DRIVER & RAGING BULL (and his sax player in NEW YORK NEW YORK!)
Dirk Bogarde - THE SERVANT / MODESTY BLAISE / DEATH IN VENICE
James Mason - A STAR IS BORN
Maurice Ronet - LE FEU FOLLET
Peter Finch - SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY / THE TRIALS OF OSCAR WILDE
Anton Walbrook - THE RED SHOES
Ralph Richardson - THE HEIRESS
Montgomery Clift - WILD RIVER
David Hemmings - BLOW-UP
Cary Grant - NOTORIOUS
Gary Cooper - FRIENDLY PERSUASION
James Dean - EAST OF EDEN
and sneaking in Jack Lemmon as Daphne in SOME LIKE IT HOT - Tony ain't bad either!

Sidney Lumet RIP

Sidney Lumet [1924-2011] was indeed one of the most prolific directors ever since he began making movies in 1957 with 12 ANGRY MEN. Like John Frankenheimer and others he began in the golden age of live television.

He worked in lots of genres throughout the 60s - THE FUGITIVE KIND, THE PAWNBROKER, THE HILL, FAIL-SAFE, THE GROUP, THE DEADLY AFFAIR, THE SEAGULL, BYE BYE BRAVERMAN, then there was the failure of the cod-Antonioni THE APPOINTMENT which would have emptied cinemas if it ever played in them - but Lumet certainly hit some peaks in the '70s with MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS and those great New York movies like DOG DAY AFTERNOON and SERPICO, and of course NETWORK, followed by THE VERDICT and PRINCE OF THE CITY. Another theatrical one was his film of the hit play EQUUS in '77. THE WIZ though seems to have been a misfire - I had no interest in seeing it or a lot of his later films.

Always terrific with actors and staging - the murder in THE DEADLY AFFAIR for instance - it is a terrific legacy of solid middle-brow, thought-provoking enterainment with some great performances [Signoret, Finch, Dunaway, Holden, Brando, Magnani, Steiger, Mason, Pacino etc], (I trust that does not sound too patronising).



Here are a few I cherish: STAGE STRUCK from '58 with a nice role for Joan Greenwood; the film of Arthur Miller's A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE with Raf Vallone and Jean Sorel, the 1959 drama THAT KIND OF WOMAN, not seen until a year or two ago - where kept woman Loren has to choose between soldier Tab Hunter or wealthy George Sanders - only flaw for me was it said it was 1944 but what we see on screen in pure 1959; and the ensemble in LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT in 1962 where the 4 cast members won the Venice Film Festival acting prize, providing perfect late roles for Katharine Hepburn and Ralph Richardson.

Perfectly '60s (3): Rita, Lynn and Sarah too

Two perfect mid-60s British black and white romantic dramas set in Ireland - both from Edna O'Brien stories, and both directed by Desmond Davis are 1964's THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES and I WAS HAPPY HERE in 1966, starring Sarah Miles (a world away from her other overblown Irish romance for David Lean). I have written about these here before (Sarah Miles label and 1960s label). They do though make a perfect double bill. O'Brien's theme in both is the passage of love as her Irish country girls love and lose and set up new lives in London.

This was very relevant for me being Irish and new in London too then, as Miles goes back to her Irish village [Liscanor and Lahinch in Co Clare] and Rita and Lynn (wonderful as the feckless Baba) have their adventures in '60s Dublin as Tush is romanced by wordly older man Peter Finch (sterling, as ever). It [THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES] ends with the girls on the night ferry from Dun Laoghaire to England - a trip I did myself many times - and shows us Rita's new life in London - she works at the WH Smith shop in Notting Hill Gate just across from the Classic Cinema (above) - an old haunt of mine! whereas Sarah also ends up wiser .... both are perfect small films that pays re-viewing. Sarah went on to Antonioni's BLOW-UP (which according to her memoirs was not a happy experience for her) and then back to Ireland - Kerry this time - for the protracted shoot on RYAN'S DAUGHTER, released in 1970. Rita had the smash hit of Lester's THE KNACK among others, and she and Lynn teamed again to great comic effect in Desmond Davis's SMASHING TIME, great fun in 1968,as per reviews at labels.

A Kay Kendall double bill

I had put off re-watching Stanley Donen's little-seen now ONCE MORE WITH FEELING from 1960 which was Kay Kendall's last film - it was actually made in the summer of 1959, she died 3 months later (on 6 September '59) of the leukaemia she had been suffering from, and the film was released in 1960. I remember reading at the time (when I was about 13) that her Givenchy wardrobe, all in black and white, was created for the 'look' of 1960. After his musicals (with and without Gene Kelly) Donen was a deft hand at romantic comedy, and showcasing star teams like Grant and Bergman (INDISCREET), Grant and Hepburn (CHARADE) and Peck and Loren (ARABESQUE), and Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (BEDAZZLED) - not though Harrison and Burton (STAIRCASE)!

Here we have Kay as Dolly Fabian, scatty wife of egomaniac symphony conductor Victor Fabian (Brynner) and their spats and tempestous rows are amusing, until she returns to find him entangled with student Shirley Anne Field. There is rather a lot of Gregory Ratoff and it all ends in a delightful concert where there is a lovely bow out for Kay. She also has a delightful merry harp playing scene. She looks well and happy here, just a few months before her death. She had scored bigtime with Cukor's LES GIRLS (top) in '57 and Minnelli's THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE in '58 (below, right) [which preserves the high comedy style of Kay and husband Rex Harrison] and had never looked better after her English Rank Organisation films like GENEVIENVE in '54 after working her way up in bit parts. SIMON AND LAURA in '55 was also a big hit and she then went into American films with one of my favourite costumers, QUENTIN DURWARD in '56 with Robert Taylor - all already discussed here (and I have written other posts on Kendall also).



SIMON AND LAURA - This is now the acme of mid-'50s English comedy, as directed by Muriel Box and features Kay and Peter Finch as the temperamental pair of theatre stars who are lured into starring in a daily BBC serial about their domestic life. They have to pretend to be happily married though they were on the point of splitting up but money problems intervene. It is a funny satire on '50s television and the BBC types are amusingly played by Ian Carmichael and Richard Wattis, while Muriel Pavlow has one of her better roles as the scriptwriter getting entangled with the egotistical Simon (Finch, clearly enjoying himself). It was a fond childhood memory so rather nice to see it on dvd now. Real life Tv luminaries like Gilbert Harding and Lady Isobel Barnett play themselves, and the domestics are drolly played by Thora Hird and Maurice Denham. Its a sterling cast and a sterling production. Kay also had an amusing cameo in her pal Dirk Bogarde's DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE in '54 and also in her first teaming with Harrison in that other perfect mid-50s English comedy THE CONSTANT HUSBAND.

London in the movies ...

... A PERSONAL CHOICE.

POOL OF LONDON - an Ealing Michael Balcon production from 1951. Let's start with a quartet from that reliable duo producer Michael Relph and director Basil Dearden. POOL OF LONDON's backdrop is the stark, bomb-site ridden City of London, centred round the old docks by Tower Bridge, fascinating to see how as all this area has been pulled down and re-developed. In fact the ship our heroes are on must be moored where City Hall is now. The film is full of faces of the time and those two leads Bonar Colleano and Earl Cameron are so redolent of the early 50s. Colleano was in several British films (including THE WAY TO THE STARS in '44, and died in a car crash in '58 (as did Dearden in '71); Cameron may be the first black actor regularly employed in British cinema and is still working now, he is in INCEPTION). Colleano was actually married to Susan Shaw, who is paired with Cameron here - rather odd seeing them together now, as there couldn't have been many coloured (as they are referred to here) men in London in the early '50s, as it was not until the late '50s that blacks were recruited from Trinidad and Jamaica to move to England, causing those race riots of the time, as explored in films like SAPPHIRE and FLAME IN THE STREETS. Plot-wise this is a neat thriller showing the strict customs control of the time as the sailors try to smuggle nylons and cigarettes for their lady friends. Colleano dabbles in smuggling but gets in over his head when asked to take some hot diamonds on board the ship and deliver them to Rotterdam. The robbery is nicely plotted featuring Max Adrian (whom I knew from his later Ken Russell films) as a run-down variety trapeze artist, who unfortunately kills the night-watchman at the office where the diamonds are. The usually posh Moira Lister is fun as the good time girl who persuades Bonar to keep the diamonds which he gives to Cameron to take on board the ship for him as it all unravels. An entertaining caper then, capturing the bombed-out City of London before all that redevelopment began, with trams and run-down variety theatres. Thank goodness it was all going to change...

1954 saw Gerard Philipe as that romantic Frenchman on the loose in London in KNAVE OF HEARTS (Monsieur Ripois), romancing the likes of lovely Joan Greenwood - Rene Clement shot exteriors on the streets of London with (mostly) hidden cameras, 5 years before the New Wave! It shows a nicely atmospheric London of the time, including that nice streetwalker who takes our suddenly homeless hero home!

SAPPHIRE. Hardly ever seen now, this is a vivid childhood memory. Basil Dearden’s 1959 thriller is very colourful as it depicts the casual racism of 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 her brother Earl Cameron makes obvious. 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. We see Hampstead Heath of the time and those various London locations like Notting Hill.



VICTIM - Dearden's 1961 follow-up is very well known now and gets re-discovered all the time, and again the thriller format is used to demonstrate attitudes to homosexuality while it was still illegal (until 1967) so blackmailers had a field day. Dirk Bogarde is the barrister who decides to unmask them, after the boy he was seeing (Peter McEnery) kills himself after being blackmailed. Sylvia Syms is the not very understanding wife, Dennis Price is amusing as one of those blackmailed, and we get to see the regulars of that famous gay bar The Salisbury in St Martin's Lane. London theatreland is also on view with shots of the Palace (showing 'Flower Drum Song') and the St Martins Lane theatre (where 'Oliver' is playing) and that bookshop must be in Cecil Court off Charing Cross Road. A quaint (now) but still richly rewarding British noir, as well as a historically significant one as apparantly it helped to change the law de-criminalising homosexuality in the U.K.

THE LEATHER BOYS in 1964 features the bikers seen around London and the North Circular Road, Rita Tushingham is a shrewish wife here, driving her husband into the arms of those leather bikers.

'50s London is on view in popular movies showing the upper classes as in INDISCREET or THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE. We have Gary Cooper in the Waterloo Station of 50 years ago in THE WRECK OF THE MARY DEARE, and Sophia Loren on the London Bridge skyline of 1960 in THE MILLIONAIRESS - its totally different now! More posh London featured in I COULD GO ON SINGING with its Harley Street surgeries and the London Palladium where Judy sings, and of course Bogarde again in Losey's THE SERVANT and that fabulous house in Royal Walk, off the Kings Road in Chelsea.

A PLACE TO GO - Kitchen sink movies must have come to a screaming halt with this Dearden movie from 1963 which was lost for decades and one can see why now that it is available again. It plays like a parody of kitchen sink dramas as we focus on Bethnal Green and working class families being moved to those enticing new high rise blocks. It is a rather patronising look at working class life with pub singalongs, dog tracks and the like. There is of course a dissatisfied young man - the 5-minute pop star Mike Sarne, surely the most uncharismatic leading man ever, his spikey waif girlfriend - who else but Rita Tushingham? and his salt of the earth working class parents - send for reliables Doris Hare and Bernard Lee. There is of course a raid on the local cigarette factory that goes wrong, and at the end those slum houses are being demolished at they move to the tower blocks.

And of course in 1964's GIRL WITH GREEN EYES, Irish Rita Tushingham (right) takes the ferry to London and works at the WH Smith shop just oppostite the Notting Hill Classic Cinema, one of my old haunts - and I took the ferry that same year, arriving on 11th April 1964! while in 1966, another Irish girl Sarah Miles mopes in her London bedsitter (with its topical view of the new Post Office Tower) in I WAS HAPPY HERE (also written by Edna O'Brien and directed by Desmond Davis) while pining for her lost love back in County Clare in Ireland, where she runs to follwed by her husband. It too shows a very mid-60s London, before the hip people took over.

London got more colorful and entertaining as the '60s progressed: NOTHING BUT THE BEST with Alan Bates on the make, Rita again in Lester's THE KNACK with Michael Crawford, Michael Winner's romps THE JOKERS and I'LL NEVER FORGET WHATSHISNAME (Oliver Reed, Carol White, Marianne Faithfull etc). THE '60s movie of course was BLOW-UP as Antonioni re-imagined the city and the parks [Maryon Park in Woolwich] and the studios [in Notting Hill Gate], just as Polanski gave us a different view of Kensington in REPULSION, and Polish director Skolimowski showed us another East End in DEEP END.

SMASHING TIME was a marvellous slapstick romp in 1967, another essential Swinging Lodon comedy, as Northern girls Rita Tushingham (it was certainly her decade) and Lynn Redgrave arrive at the old St Pancras Station, to find out where it's at. Soon they discover Anna Quayle's "Too Much" boutique, and that custard pie shop and of course the Post Office Tower.


OTLEY in 1968, one of those Swinging 60s spy spoofs has a hapless Tom Courtenay mistaken for a spy. Romy Schneider pops in and out as a mysterious lady – it was fun seeing it again recently and those 60s locations like Notting Hill and Portobello that I knew well at the time. There is also a good Antonioni joke at an intellectual party. Amusing support from the likes of Alan Badel, Leonard Rossiter and James Villiers. Above: a tense comedy shoot-out at Notting Hill Gate underground station.
Badel was also that very suave Arab villain in Donen's ARABESQUE a feast of mid-60s London locations as Greg Peck and Sophia Loren try to crack a code in time. Its a dazzling entertainment just as good as Donen's CHARADE.

Late '60s London features in Roeg & Cammell's PERFORMANCE in Notting Hill and Mike Sarne crops up again with JOANNA, [he also went on to direct Fox's MYRA BRECKINRDIGE, amusing for some...]. UP THE JUNCTION in '68 is fascinating now to see the open spaces around Victoria Station and Chelsea Bridge - which is all high-rise apartments now.

Then came SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY in 1971, Schlesinger’s enduring film about a particular slice of London society, the intelligentsia and how they spend their Sundays, as devised by writer Penelope Gilliatt, is perhaps THE London movie of the '70s. Finch excels himself as Dr Daniel Hirsch, the Jewish doctor in love with young artist Murray Head, as is Glenda Jackson in one of her most sympathetic roles as the career woman realising her romance is not going anywhere. Their backgrounds are carefully shown while we do not learn much about the young artist – in fact the puzzle is why would two such well rounded people bother with someone so shallow. Finch has a great scene at the all-night chemist in Piccadilly watching the addicts waiting for their fixes after meeting a previous pickup of his, Jon Finch, while Glenda grimaces as she drinks instant coffee made from the hot water tap and grinds cigarette ash into the carpet as she is left with the toucan. Finch who replaced Ian Bannen in the role should really have won every award going [as should have Bogarde the previous year for DEATH IN VENICE] if only for that speech to the camera at the end, but it was Gene Hackman’s year. IMDB has quite a lot on its making and that famous gay kiss in its material about the film. Like THE GO-BETWEEN it was one of the year's must-sees.

The modern London of now is of course well-caught in a wide variety of films like 28 DAYS LATER and DIRTY PRETTY THINGS. Perhaps Paris and Rome soon ?