50 years on: "our huckleberry friend" is back .....

Of course,she has never been away - BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S must be the one 50 year old film [apart from PSYCHO and SOME LIKE IT HOT] that everyone knows and still watch regularly - well, all those into romcoms anyway. It is surely the prototype romantic movie for those who grew up after the classic golden age of the 30s and 40s. It is endlessly stylish too, Audrey and that black dress and accessories must be as iconic now as anything by Monroe or Jimmy Dean. [Blake Edwards was certainly a high in the early 60s, I also love DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES (50 years old next year) and the first PINK PANTHER.] Capote saw his friend Marilyn Monroe in the role of Holly Golightly, I see Kay Kendall (if she had lived), but Audrey it is and she is perfect too, and I love Patricia Neal as the "very stylish girl" waving her chequebook at writer/gigolo Paul Varjak (Peppard) - there is of course a whole gay subtext here, but it works on every level, and then there is Mancini's score and that song... it is everything we feel about that optimistic early '60s and being young in a big city.

Capote's original novella was given away free in a newspaper here (in the UK) a while ago and it was interesting re-reading it. It has the perfect bittersweet ending of Holly going off to South America and they do not find the cat. The narrator keeps searching though and finds the cat one afternoon - now belonging to someone else, curled up in a window in a nice house. But of course in the movie we want that soaring choir singing "Moon River" as Cat is found and squeezed between Audrey and Peppard (did any couple ever look as good in the rain?). It is also of course one of the great New York movies - but words are superfluous... the images say it all, it's a movie of great moments and dialogue to savour. Roll it again .... it is also now back in selected cinemas in a new reissue by the BFI [British Film Institute].

50 years on: El Cid still rules

I had not seen EL CID for a few years but there it was on afternoon television (thankfully with no ads) so, despite buying the recent handsome dvd edition, I sat down for another look and of course it was just as perfect as ever. It really is perhaps the most perfectly realised epic of them all, with that dense texture and realism and real crowd scenes that you just do not get these days from CGI so-called epics (ie TROY) - as Martin Scorsese highlights in his introduction to it on the new dvd.

The design and sets are also marvellous conjuring up the dark ages and Mann's love of Spain and those striking images and landscapes he conjures up, with that great score too. All the cast are just right: Vallone, Genevieve Page as the spiteful princess, the warring princes of Fraser and Raymond, and of course Heston and Loren at their most momumental, and of course Herbert Lom and Frank Thring. [When I met Heston in 1971 it felt like he towered over me, and seeing Loren up close too in '79 was astounding]. It would seem though that the Cid and Chimene had just one night together (resulting in her twin girls) as he goes off with his soldiers the next morning! Everything about this though is sheer perfection for me. The ending with "the purest knight of all" still gets to me, just as it did when we saw it as kids back in 1961! The last section with the seige of Valencia has to be cinema at its most stirring. Its certainly the equal of or better than BEN HUR (which does get bogged down in Victorian sentimentality, from the novel, after the chariot race).

Susannah York 1939-2011

I was going to write about Susannah as a "People We Like", but here is a piece I did on IMDB over a year ago:

Julie Christie gets all the respect and attention as THE English new star of the 60s but she was really the first in a line which included Susannah York, Sarah Miles, Rita Tushingham and Lynn Redgrave, Samantha Eggar, Susan Hampshire, Jane Asher. Nice to see that they are all still working. [Others like Julia Foster or Barbara Ferris or Jane Merrow did not last as long or may have retired early.] Actually Susannah began before the others...

I always liked Susannah as much as Julie and Susannah was certainly a lot more prolific in the decades since their early 60s debuts. Susannah is particularly effective in THE GREENGAGE SUMMER in 1961 [after her debut in TUNES OF GLORY], in this engaging Ronald Neame film with Kenneth More and Danielle Darrieux. TOM JONES in 1963 was as big a hit as you could imagine then, and she is absurdly young opposite William Holden and Capucine in THE SEVENTH DAWN in 1964. Her image was really the perfect English rose as opposed to the more angular Christie, and her looks were just as individual with those wide eyes and features and distinctive voice.

Huston's FREUD in 1962 where she appears opposite Montgomery Clift has been a long unseen film, but I finally obtained a copy recently so will be looking forward to finally seeing that.

A varied selection of hit and miss movies followed: a forgettable comedy with Warren Beatty KALEIDOSCOPE (I can't remember a thing about it), adventure with Stanley Baker in SANDS OF THE KALAHARI, comedy with Dirk Bogarde in SEBASTIAN, popping up in OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR and BATTLE OF BRITAIN (looking like a 60s dolly bird rather than the 40s period required), and of course Aldrich's sensation from 1968: THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE playing house with Beryl Reid and that scene with Coral Browne as Mercy Croft from the BBC. There was another period romp in LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS and of course the worthy MAN FOR ALL SEASONS.

She was marvellous in Pollack's THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY? in 1969 as the starlet cracking up during the dance marathon and was Oscar-nominated as best supporting actress [Goldie Hawn won for CACTUS FLOWER]. One of the missing ones I did not see at the time was the intriguing (now) DUFFY one of the hip movies of the time featuring James Coburn and James Fox.

[Edit: having now seen DUFFY it is indeed an amusing late 60s caper with those beautiful people, rich hippes in a rather stoned North Africa, and Susannah is certainly at her most beautiful here.]

The early 70s saw her as a tv JANE EYRE (surely too attractive), an odd drama with O'Toole: COUNTRY DANCE, and something called HAPPY BIRTHDAY WANDA JUNE with Rod Steiger. Did anyone see that?

Robert Altman's IMAGES was fascinating with Susannah reading the children's stories she had written, and it was all about her. Its certainly a cult film, with Susannah embracing the nudity of the time. A more torrid guilty pleasure is X, Y AND ZEE [or ZEE & CO] where a very pallid Susannah is overpowered by Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Caine - I'm afraid its one to laugh at now.

I saw her on the stage with Glenda Jackson doing Genet's THE MAIDS, probably in 1973, this was later filmed as part of the American Theatre series.

Other films like THE SHOUT and ELIZA FRASER followed and then came Superman's mother in SUPERMAN with Brando. But of course the typical scenario followed of roles drying up as an actress gets older, but Susannah had lots of television work like the series WE'LL MEET AGAIN and she continued in theatre in various projects including her show on Shakespeare's Women.

Susannah would appear to have worked with everyone and has always been very unpretentious about her stardom - I once found myself drinking next to her at the London "theatrical" pub The Salisbury as she chatted to a colleague.

Movie misfires .....

Not quite trash classics, this bunch of oddball movies are amusingly awful now ..... let's start with Richard Burton as BLUEBEARD. Did this seem a good idea in 1972?, a new version of the grim fairytale of the new bride finding all those corpses of previous brides in Bluebeard's castle - only here it is played for comedy with softcore porn touches, as a selection of Eurobabes gamely play the brides and reveal almost all ....

The Burtons threw a lavish party during the shoot in Budapest (it was made in Hungary) for Elizabeth's 40th birthday (the likes of Ringo Starr et all were there) which got lots of publicity but what was there to celebrate if this was the end result. I saw the Burtons 2 years earlier in 1970 on stage in London, with director Joseph Losey, bemoaning that their SECRET CEREMONY (a notorious flop then) had been re-edited and sold to television withouth their consent, and Richard had been ranting that he was being perceived as having sold out - but here 2 years later the Burton juggernaut rolls on. He plays BLUEBEARD on autopilot, being there but hardly acting, while the cast of Eurobabes disrobe and try to inject some life into their brief roles. Virna Lisi comes off best as a comic turn, she sings non-stop (until guillotined), Raquel Welch is the lascivious nun recalling her past loves (until entombed alive) and oddest of all, Nathalie Delon is the shy bride who hires prostitute Sybil Danning to teach her the arts of seduction, which of course turns into a full-on sapphic encounter (with the Baron secretly watching), later the naked ladies are entertwined in sleep under the conveniently placed giant antlers on the ceiling, so they too pay for their lusts. Bluebeard of course turns out to be impotent and cannot satisfy his brides who have to be killed when they demand love and sex...

The first bride is despatched in a very graphic animal shoot with lots of animals realistically being killed, and then there is the very masochistic bride Marilu Tolo who has to be whipped and humiliated .... the latest bride is Joey Heatherton, a very modern miss, who discovers the secret room where the corpses are hidden and realises she has to use her wits to escape the now mad Baron. (Heatherton seems an odd choice as leading lady, I only know her from the Susan Hayward/Bette Davis sudser WHERE LOVE HAS GONE, though she was popular on tv and as a singer).

The tone though, like the period, is all over the place. It seems to begin after World War I as the baron arrives in his bi-plane, then we are in what looks like the Roaring 20s or 30s. There does not seem to be any continuity and it is leadenly directed by Edward Dmytryk - where is the zip and pace he brought to real trash classics like his THE CARPETBAGGERS or WALK ON THE WILD SIDE? (and we are a long way from his hits like RAINTREE COUNTY or THE YOUNG LIONS). I don't think BLUEBEARD even played in London, so a real oddity then! Produced by the Salkinds who went on to Richard Lester and those MUSKETEERS films next.

GO NAKED IN THE WORLD is another 1960 morality tale, a terrific companion piece to BUTTERFIELD 8 which is also about a high-class call girl enjoying the lush life who finally falls in love. Liz got an oscar for her Gloria Wondrous, but there were no awards for Gina Lollobrigida here, but she is surprisingly sympathetic and makes a lot of the role, and of course she is a knock-out, as ever.

She is Julie, a popular call girl (who gets an admiring wink from a lower-down street walker as she arrives in furs at a nightclub with her latest guy) and as she says to the guy who has to leave that she "has not been alone for 10 minutes since she was 12"! New in town just out of the army is Tony Franciosa - they meet and for the first time Julie falls in love. He of course has no idea of her profession until he brings her to a family gathering where his bully father Ernest Borgnine, firing on all cylinders, as the local big shot builder knows her all too well, as do several other men at the gathering. The lovers fight, separate as the father tries to keep them apart but cannot leave each other alone, the father in time relents but it cannot be. It all climaxes at a cliff-top hotel in Acapulco when Julie realises her past will follow her - so like Gloria in BUTTERFIELD 8 exiting through the car windscreen, it is a long fall down from the luxury hotel to the sea below ..... father and son weep over the body and are reunited. This rich hokum is directed by one Ranald McDougall (who also directed Joan Crawford as QUEEN BEE and Lesie Caron as a beatnik in THE SUBTERRANEANS, also 1960. What a year it was. No wonder Dassin's NEVER ON SUNDAY was a surprise hit - a happy hooker who is still alive at the end!

A brace of Romy Schneider films, one lurid trash and one surprisingly effective...

MY LOVER MY SON from 1970 is one of those British Swinging London films which is never seen now and one can see why. It is a cheaply made lurid melodrama where Romy (she must have been mad to have signed up for this) is the mother of the rather mature Denis Waterman (from UP THE JUNCTION) and they seem too close, arousing the suspicions of her stolid businessman husband Donald Huston (the Welsh student from DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE). Cue lots of psychedelic flashes as mother and son swim and are alone in the big house a lot .... then there is a murder and a court case. The son has a girlfriend who is of course a mini-skirted dolly bird who lives in one of those houseboats on the river at Chelsea, so we have lots of driving around Sloane Square and down Kings Road to throbbing pop music. It is all wildly risible, and looks very late 60s - Waterman (now a craggy elderly detective in the cop show NEW TRICKS) wears the regulation white polo neck pullover, we all wore those then. Romy is of course lovely but wasted, she and Waterman were lovers at the time; she fared better in England in the fun spy caper OTLEY in '68 (as per my review of that, at Romy label).

BLOOMFIELD, this 1971 drama is directed by Richard Harris (his solo directing credit) who also stars, so the project must have been close to him, resembling as it does his THIS SPORTING LIFE in 1963. He is also a sporting hero here (its original title was THE HERO). It was made in Israel and here is the blurb: "Richard Harris (who also receives writing and directing credits) plays Eitan, yesterday's soccer hero waiting for tomorrow. He consults the unheroic prospects of having to find a new profession and having to face a loving woman who doesn't understand his problems. Meanwhile he is idolised by Nimrod (Kim Burfield) the best 10 year old soccer player in his village. Filmed in Israel amid a stark landscape." It certainly is stark, sometimes it looks like it is set on a different planet!

It is all a bit ponderous as the ageing sports star looks in vain for a contract from the sports club (who have their own agenda), and he also looks in vain for a bank loan and a job, as his options run out, a "friend" also wants him to throw the next game as a lot of money is involved. Harris and the little boy play it out, but the ending is oddly inconclusive - for me though Harris, like Burton and Caine, is oddly uninteresting as an actor and also ended up in some routine run of the mill fare. Romy though shines here as the sculptor girlfriend who is becoming quite famous in her own right and she is very attractive and sympathetic. The film though was not a hit and barely surfaced in London at the time.
Next: Burton again, Romy again and Delon (as the assassin) in Losey's 1972 misfire (again, it barely sufaced in London) THE ASSASSINATION OF TROTSKY.

Early '60s movie posters

Some choice examples from that hollywood 1960/61 era when MGM was turning out glossy trash (+ a few choice late '50s ones):

I had never heard of director Ranald McDougall until now - he also directed Joan's QUEEN BEE as well as some of the above lulus: has anyone actually seen 1960's THE SUBTERRANEANS ? - its never been shown here in the UK for as long as I can remember: MGM (Arthur Freed actually!) tackes Jack Kerouac with George Peppard, Leslie Caron and Roddy McDowell (above) as beatniks ! "Love amoung the new bohemians" indeed! The female lead was black in the novel, but somehow ended up French in the movie - The mind reels ....it must have had a good jazz score though! (with Previn, Mulligan etc).

The Gina opus is fun with La Lollo giving it her all (its like a trashier BUTTERFIELD 8 where the high class call girl also has to pay for her sins), and RJ and Natalie go to town in ALL THE FINE YOUNG CANNIBALS where George Hamilton and Susan Kohner also shine - all 4 tear each other apart emotionally but Pearl Bailey steals whatever is going in this overheated melodrama (and sings a bit too), Natalie's 1958 sudser MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR (with Gene Kelly in heel mode) is enjoyably awful now too. Then there is missionary Angie paying for her sins out in Africa in THE SINS OF RACHEL CADE - falling for pretty young Roger Moore (and having a baby) while Peter Finch glowers in the background .... other Warner potboilers included Burton (with Angie again) in THE BRAMBLE BUSH, and an Edna Ferber snow saga ICE PALACE. Burton would soon though get his call to Rome and those big paychecks....

for sensational sudsers 1959's A SUMMER PLACE and THE BEST OF EVERYTHING were unbeatable.

Bizarre Movie Posters: Staircase

"A marriage made in hell", "a sad gay story" ! STAIRCASE was a film made in hell - Paris actually, for the stars' tax reasons, though set in a seedy barber shop in rundown Brixton in South London. It was actually a well-regarded play with Paul Scofield and Patrick Magee at the Royal Shakespeare Company theatre The Aldwych in London, but the usually astute Donen came a cropper here, as the film was practically laughed off the screen back in '69. Rex and Burton camping it up just didn't work and was very dated even then - Whoops indeed! as they swished around their seedy home with their decrepit mothers. You would imagine with all their years in theatres and soundstages they would be able to do camp better than that - but of course back then gays were seens as freaks to laugh at and who usually killed themselves when they realised their true nature (THE CHILDRENS HOUR, THE SERGEANT (its unwatchable now - as Pauline Kael said why couldn't the movie be about something once John Philip Law rebuffs Rod Steiger's advances rather than Steiger rushing off to shoot himself in disgust), THE FOX, ADVISE AND CONSENT (with that first gay bar in mainstream movies, as Don Murray reels back in horror), THE DETECTIVE, THE BOYS IN THE BAND, THE GAY DECEIVERS etc).

I will be tackling Burton's worst (probably) BLUEBEARD next !

2010 - best and worst .....

We are a little behind here at the Movie Projector - I only saw UNCLE BOONMEE at the cinema yesterday, and the dvd of BEACHES OF AGNES has been sitting unwatched on a shelf for the last 9 or so months, but they are both my films of the year in that they are totally unlike anything else and left one dazed and exhilerated. Cinema then in a nutshell....

One knows one is leaving usual cinema terrain as the Thai UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES unspools: a water buffalo tethered to a tree at night breaks free and trots away and then stops for a while as we examine this strange animal as it takes in the night scene being at one with nature, then its owner enters, picks up its rope and takes it back. What is the beast thinking? Is it willing to go back? Then we join Boonmee's placid sister and his nephew as they travel to his bee farm to look after him in his final days as he is dying of a kidney disease. The pace seems very slow at first with shots held for longer than usual but then one falls into it. Nobody seems surprised when Boonmee's late wife Huay who has been dead for 19 years materialises at the dinner table and they talk to her. Boonmee, who is philosophical about his impending demise as he has lived before several times, asks her how he will find her in heaven: Huay replies: "Heaven is over-rated, there's nothing there. And anyway ghosts don't associate with places, they associate with people. We'll find each other."

Boomnee it seems has the ability to range over his past lives as he comes to the end of his current one, aided by the spirits of the forest who also include his son Boonsong who has changed into a weird creature with red eyes [from having mated with monkey spirits]. Then we come to the mesermising sequence with the Princess and the catfish, set against a stunning waterfall which one could sit and watch for hours - as the Princess disrobes and enters the water where the catfish is waiting for her... perhaps the water buffalo or the princess or the catfish are also past (or future) lives of Boonmee? - as apparantly his other lives can be male or female, human or animal.... (the connectedness of things?)



People who are not prepared for it will be left confounded but others will leave the cinema stunned at the experience of it all. It is therefore an experience rather than a conventional movie. Apichatpong Weerasethakul tells a story that doesn't ask or need to be understood. As he awaits his death, Boonmee, Huay, Jen, and Tong visit a cave with white sand floors where Boonmee reveals that this was the place he was first born. He then dies there. For me maybe the movie should have stopped here - there is a coda showing their life afterwards as they sit around a hotel room and the monk Tong takes a shower, but this really, after what went before, is rather like watching paint dry and seems superfluous. Apart from that its depiction of the enduring relationship between Boonmee and Huay, and the in images of a dying man comforted by family and friends, the film offers an experience of the permanence of love.

The permanence of love is also really what THE BEACHES OF AGNES is all about, as Fench director Agnes Varda now in her 80s makes the most unusual documentary ever about looking back over one's life and work. Her fascination with beaches comes to the fore as she and her friends (like Jane Birkin) arrange mirrors on the beaches as she recollects her parents and childhood and early career and her marriage to Jacques Demy and the films they made and the actors and friends they knew. At the end she is surrounded by her children and grand-children and she and they are the most delightful company. This is the most perfect way to get old and still remain fascinating and interested in everything. We experience the loss of Demy [who like Boonmee was nursed by loved ones], the courtyard where he and Agnes worked on their projects, clips from their movies, that New Wave era, their time at the centre of the counterculture in California in the late '60s (where they discovered Harrison Ford, but couldn't use him in Jacques' MODEL SHOP as he was not considered actor material by the studio!; Agnes was making LIONS LOVE with Viva and the HAIR creators).

As IMDB puts it: "Agnès Varda explores her memory - growing up in Belgium, living in Sète, Paris, and Noirmoutier, discovering photography, making a film, being part of the New Wave, raising children with Jacques Demy, losing him, and growing old. She explores her memory using photographs, film clips, home movies, contemporary interviews, and set pieces she designs to capture a feeling, a time, or a frame. Shining through each scene are her impish charm, inventiveness, and natural empathy. How do people grow old, how does loss stay with them, can they remain creative, and what do they remember?" (I have already written extensively here, as per French label, on Demy and Varda).

I saw Varda's LE BONHEUR when I was 19 in '65 and it was one of those films that made a very strong impression, so its been good to finally see it again now that there are Varda box-sets, and to finally discover her CLEO FROM 5 TO 7, with its delightful picture of Paris in the early 60s. That is one of my discoveries of the year, as below:

The 2000s label covers my other films of 2010 as per reviews of A SINGLE MAN, THE GHOST, I LOVE YOU PHILIP MORRIS, THE HURT LOCKER, INGLORIOUS BASTERDS etc. I shall be turning to I AM LOVE and TOY STORY 3 shortly, 44 INCH CHEST remains a terrific comedy ensemble piece of Winstone, Hurt, McShane, Wilkinson; IT'S COMPLICATED and LETTERS TO JULIET are the best of the romcoms; disappointment of the year has to be NINE and disaster of the year SEX AND THE CITY 2 (which is not worth mentioning). Polanski's GHOST is thriller of the year but surely the East Coast of America is not as bleak as depicted here (shot as it was in Europe) while McGregor (for his brilliance in the Carrey movie) and Colin Firth are actors of the year; actress = Tilda Swinton. Firth is no longer a lightweight actor and after also finally seeing McGregor in Greenaway's THE PILLOW BOOK one has to be amazed at his daring and taking of risks.

Of the late 2010 releases as we go into 2011 I shall be looking forward to catching THE KING'S SPEECH (with that great cast including Claire Bloom), Mike Leigh's return with ANOTHER YEAR, 127 HOURS, THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT etc.

Television (here in the UK at any rate) served up some treats: classy drama (or 'heritage tv') is back with Maggie Smith leading the ensemble in DOWNTON ABBEY, the revived UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS with a splendid Eileen Atkins taking charge, classy thrillers like SPOOKS and SHERLOCK and the splendid film of Nigel Slater's food memoir TOAST, while Tom Hollander scored with his comedy series REV and Rufus Sewell as the Italian detective ZEN.



My discoveries of the year are: Visconti's 1965 SANDRA (or OF A THOUSAND DELIGHTS), Clements 1957 THE SEA WALL (THIS ANGRY AGE) (I shall be seeing the recent version shortly), BLONDE IN BLACK LEATHER (a throwaway 1975 Italian comedy for the domestic market with Vitti and Cardinale having fun) - see Italian label, Ozon's UNDER THE SAND with Charlotte Rampling (to be reviewed), Varda's CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 and a brace of early Dirk Bogarde's: APPOINTMENT IN LONDON and CAST A DARK SHADOW where he is delightfully spivvy bumping off older wife Mona Washboure and having designs on wicked lady Margaret Lockwood and splendid Kay Walsh!

2011's revivals will include that early Fellini boxset and all those Chabrols to revisit (2 boxsets!), and Gerard Philipe (as Modigliani) in LES AMANTS DE MONTPARNASSE with Anouk Aimee and Lilli Palmer, as well as some other yet-unseen Romy Schneider films.

(Previous years' discoveries here at the Projector included Cukor's THE CHAPMAN REPORT, Jean Seberg in MOMENT TO MOMENT, Lana's LOVE HAS MANY FACES, Sarah Miles in I WAS HAPPY HERE, Lilli Palmer and Jean Sorel in ADORABLE JULIA, Demy's LES DEMOISELLES DE ROCHEFORT (on dvd and on the big screen), THE OPPOSITE SEX, ALL FALL DOWN, early Loren in TOO BAD SHE'S BAD and WOMAN OF THE RIVER, ABDULLA THE GREAT (Kay Kendall's missing 1955 film), Mangano in MAMBO and THE TEMPEST, Minnelli treats DESIGNING WOMAN and THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE, Linda Darnell in THIS IS MY LOVE (1954) and the 1954 KNAVE OF HEARTS as per reviews.
Right: I WAS HAPPY HERE, 1966 / below: ADORABLE JULIA: Jean Sorel and Lilli Palmer in Trafalgar Square, 1962