Kiss me. Please don’t kiss me. Californian architect Larry Coe (Kirk Douglas) yearns to create adventurous designs, but his pragmatic wife, Eve (Barbara Rush), is determined to make her husband focus on more marketable, straightforward work instead of the unconventional work he craves. Maggie Gault (Kim Novak), a neighbor of the Coe family who is trapped in a loveless marriage and who Larry hits on at their kids’ school bus stop, believes in Larry’s creative impulses, and the pair eventually strike up a love affair while he builds the house of his dreams on his ideal coastal site for wealthy writer Roger Altar (Ernie Kovacs). However, they’re interrupted by the nosy, lecherous Felix (Walter Matthau), who has eyes for Eve and turns to blackmail…Alright, Larry, I wanted him. That’s what you really wanted to hear, isn’t it. I wanted him. One of the most brutally beautiful scrutinies of love in the burbs and middle class meltdown ever committed to the silver screen, this has Novak at her beguiling best, reunited with lover Richard Quine, who directed her in Bell, Book and Candle alongside co-star Kovacs. Novelist Evan Hunter adapted his book and it’s treated lushly, the carefully designed house on the perfect cliff-edge site operating as a metaphor for the dangerous relationship that sates the love-lorn pair lonely in their respective marriages and looking for a satisfying sexual encounter that matches their romantic expectations. The supporting performances are fantastic – Matthau as the vicious neighbour, Rush as the wisely restrained wife, Virginia Bruce as Novak’s suspicious mother – but it’s the compelling sexual attraction between Douglas and Novak that’ll have you coming up for air as you reach for a gin martini. The score by George Duning is a thing of majesty and it’s one of the most gorgeous portraits of Los Angeles you will ever see with locations masterfully shot by Charles Lang at Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Santa Monica and Malibu. Any place you’ve got a housewife, you’ve got a potential mistress
Everything’s legal in Havana. Jim Wormold (Alec Guinness) is an English ex-pat living in pre-revolutionary Havana with his vain teenage daughter Milly (Jo Morrow). He owns a vacuum cleaner shop but isn’t very successful and Milly is annoyed he’s unable to fulfill his promise of a horse and country club membership, so he accepts an offer from Hawthorne (Noel Coward) of the British Secret Service to recruit a network of spies in Cuba. Wormold hasn’t got a clue where to start but when his friend Dr. Hasselbacher (Burl Ives) suggests that the best secrets are known to no one, he decides to manufacture a list of agents from people he only knows by sight and provides fictional tales for the benefit of his paymasters in London. He is soon seen as the best agent in the Western hemisphere and is particularly happy with his new friend, the beautiful spy Beatrice Severn (Maureen O’Hara) but it all unravels when the local police decode his cables and everything he has invented bizarrely begins to come true when they start rounding up his network and he learns that he is the target of a group out to kill him… This film is, rather like North by Northwest, a taste of things to come: an irreverent picture of the Cold War, the assumptions of the West and of course a picture of Cuba on the verge of a revolutionary breakdown (it was shot immediately after the Batista regime was overthrown). Graham Greene was reluctant to let anyone film his novels following the near-desecration of The Quiet American but this novel (the last he would term an entertainment and based on his WW2 experiences in Portugal) survives pretty unscathed with its comic tone evident throughout the cast (albeit Greene hated Maureen O’Hara). Who doesn’t love Ernie Kovacs? Or Guinness, for that matter, who perfectly inhabits this hapless effortful beast Wormold. I particularly liked his take on a game of checkers. Beautifully photographed by the great Oswald Morris – but in black and white – in Havana?! Why?! Directed, not by Hitchcock, who had tried to acquire the rights from Greene, but by Carol Reed. It was their third collaboration following The Fallen Idol and The Third Man. One never tortures except by a kind of mutual agreement.
Doris plays Jane Osgood, a widowed mother of two trading lobster. When a shipment of 300 of the poor creatures dies in transit she asks her lawyer George (Jack Lemmon) to sue the railroad company and she’s awarded money. The company files against her and George wants her to take the train in lieu then the newspapers get hold of the story and she threatens to appear on TV. George is jealous of Larry (Steve Forrest) who’s a journalist she’s smitten with and the railroad bypasses the town, endangering all the businesses … Cute undemanding comedy with great stars and fun script by Norman Katkov and Max Wilk, this saw director/producer Richard Quine reunited again with regular star Lemmon and the great Ernie Kovacs, who had also appeared in Bell, Book and Candle: he’s cast here as “the meanest man in the world”! Re-released in 1961 as Twinkle and Shine.
Ahh, women! I never met one yet that was half as reliable as a horse! Such a fun-filled, rumbustious comedy western must have had a great concept – but it didn’t, other than being a Wayne vehicle in Alaska, the newest state and vaguely based on a play called Birthday Gift. There was no script. The first director didn’t like the choice of Capucine as Angel, the prostitute, declaring her unsexy – he didn’t know she was shacking up with Charles Feldman, the producer. So Henry Hathaway came on board. And they started shooting this adventure about prospectors George (John Wayne) and Sam (Stewart Granger) who strike it rich but need to steer clear of conman Frankie (Ernie Kovacs) and keep Sam’s kid brother Billy (Fabian) on the straight and narrow. When Sam’s fiancee in Seattle proves to have married someone else, George brings back Angel and her relationships with each of the men reveals something of each of their characters in the midst of their efforts to keep the gold haul for themselves. For a script written mostly on the hoof by old-timers John Lee Mahin, Martin Rackin, Claude Binyon, Wendell Mayes and Ben Hecht, with contributions by Feldman, it works like a dream, with a tongue in cheek touch that more prepared productions should envy. The song was a huge hit and made the film even more popular. Proper entertainment. I’m on your side, lady! It’s my only politics: anti-wife! Any woman who devotes herself to making one man miserable instead of a lot of men happy don’t get my vote
Oh, Pye, Pye, Pyewacket. What’s the matter with me? Why do I feel this way? It’s such a rut. The same old thing day after day. Same old people. I know I’m feeling sorry for myself but it’s true. Why don’t you give me something for Christmas, Pye? Gillian Holroyd (Kim Novak) is the owner of a rare ethnological art store in Greenwich Village, New York City. She’s secretly a witch. Bored with her routine life, she takes an interest in her new neighbour, publisher Shepherd Henderson (James Stewart). On Christmas Eve, Shep arrives home to discover Gillian’s aunt, Queenie (Elsa Lanchester) inside his apartment. Offended at being ushered out, Queenie who’s also a witch hexes Shep’s telephone. He visits Gillian to use her phone and they discuss the best-selling book Magic in Mexico and his desire to meet the author, Sidney Redlitch (Ernie Kovacs). As Shep leaves, Queenie invites them both to the Zodiac Club. Having perused his letters, Queenie reports that Shep is engaged, but encourages Gillian to use her magic to pursue him anyway. That night, Shep brings his fiancée Merle Kittridge (Janice Rule) to the Zodiac Club, meeting Gillian, Queenie and Gillian’s brother Nicky (Jack Lemmon) a warlock who plays the bongos. Recognising Merle as an old college enemy, Gillian torments her with the club band until Merle flees, followed by Shep. Returning to Gillian’s apartment, the Holroyds exchange Christmas gifts; Nicky gives Gillian an enchanted liquid, with which they attempt to summon Redlitch. Queenie and Nicky depart when Shep arrives, and he reveals that he and Merle are eloping later that day. Gillian uses her familiar, a Siamese cat called Pyewacket to cast a love spell on Shep, who becomes immediately enamoured of her. After spending all night out on the town with Gillian, the infatuated Shep breaks up with Merle. Ring the bell, close the book, quench the candle. That’s how they used to excorcise them. Redlitch arrives at Shep’s office, having been magically compelled to meet him and explains that he is researching witches in New York City for his next book. The oblivious Shep introduces him to the Holroyds and Nicky later reveals his powers to Redlitch … Hasn’t this cat got anything better to do? Couldn’t you give him something to read? How fabulous is Kim Novak? She had an intimate relationship with Richard Quine which led to probably her best performance, in the later Strangers When We Meet, but in their collaboration here she’s the gorgeous Gillian, who bewitches staid publisher Stewart when he moves into the apartment above her shop in snowy Greenwich Village. It’s nice having you over me. I mean it’s reassuring having a man around… in case he’s needed. She puts a love spell on him because he’s engaged to Rule, who made her life hell in college. When he jilts Rule he utters a line that wouldn’t be in the culture for, oh, another five decades: It’s a very heavy word. Let’s just say that we’re… uncoupling. Then Gillian starts to like the idea of being human. With the brilliant Kovacs as the crazed overpraised writer on Shep’s books, Lemmon as Gillian’s kooky brother and Lanchester and Hermione Gingold in a witch-off, this is a highly enjoyable adaptation by Daniel Taradash of John Van Druten’s 1953 stage classic, expanding the action from the original single set to include scenes in Central Park, Fifth Avenue and the Flatiron Building among others. Beautiful in every way, Gillian’s shop is why our lounge looks like we’ve been doing our own Magic in Mexico research but it was actually based upon the Carlebach Gallery, which supplied the art. Scored by George Duning and shot by James Wong Howe, this is a perfect romantic entertainment with one of the best cats ever. Love you, Pye! And so did Novak, who was presented with her co-star by his trainer Frank Inn when he noticed the special bond they had. This was at one time mooted for Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. Imagine that! And to think the play was a coded iteration of gay life in Greenwich Village. Released on Christmas Day 1958, this is a treat at any time of year but it’s pretty special right now. I’d like to do something different. I’d like to meet someone different
mondomovies 