The Grass is Greener (1961)

Our love for each other is founded on mutual distrust. In order to maintain their crumbling and damp stately home, Earl Vincent Rhyall aka Victor (Cary Grant) and his wife Lady Hilary (Deborah Kerr) reluctantly open it to coach parties of tourists, one of whom, American oil millionaire Charles Delacro (Robert Mitchum), falls for the lady of the manor. Feeling rather neglected, she begins to return his advances and spends four days with him at the Savoy in London. In order to win her back, the Earl has to call on the services of his old flame, Hattie Durant (Jean Simmons) and his very laconic, very English butler Trevor Sellers (Moray Watson) who’s really looking for material for a novel. When Hilary and Charles return to the manor, Victor decides there’s only one way to settle things and it’s straight out of the eighteenth century... That’s the way the world wags. It’s the third time Grant was paired with Kerr following Dream Wife and An Affair to Remember; ditto for Mitchum and Simmons after Angel Face and She Couldn’t Say No; and Mitchum had been memorably cast opposite Kerr in Heaven Knows Mr Allison and more recently in The Sundowners, also released in December 1960. Director Stanley Donen knew what he was doing with this immaculately polished stage adaptation by Hugh Williams and Margaret Vyner of their West End success. Yes, it’s theatrical but it’s beautifully mounted, the setting is fabulous and the Dior costumes wonderful (particularly Simmons’) and the cast really get their teeth into the smart dialogue. There are good in- jokes – including about Rock Hudson (originally intended for Mitchum’s role), a mutual friend of both men called ‘Josh Peters’ (a nod to Donen’s two young sons) and Paramount Studios. A class act, in every sense of the term, this was shot by Christopher Challis at Osterley Park, just outside London and the interiors were by Felix Harbord. There’s no honour where there’s sex

 

Beautiful But Dangerous (1954)

Aka She Couldn’t Say No. I do a lot of thinking when I’m driving and sometimes I just don’t notice small towns. Wealthy Corby Lane (Jean Simmons) returns to the American hamlet of Progress, Arkansas, whose residents had paid for a critical medical operation for her when she was a child. Now her father has died and she has returned from being educated in England, she decides to express her gratitude by giving them money anonymously but her goodwill bumps up against the homespun locals. The headstrong heiress clashes with the local doctor, Robert Sellers (Robert Mitchum), a confident type who foresees the resulting chaos and tries to woo her himself … I only got two ways of feeling. I either feel bad or I feel awful bad. A good cast wrestles with a dull script and the liveliest scenes are when Simmons goes fishing with little Jimmy Hunt who wises her up to the local scene. The score by Roy Webb fills in the gaps that the screenplay by D.D. Beauchamp & Williams Bowers and Richard Flournoy doesn’t reach. Lloyd Bacon’s final film. Is there anyone you’d care to marry?

 

Angel Face (1952)

I only ask questions and I love to dance. When wealthy Beverly Hills denizen Mrs. Catherine Tremayne (Barbara O’Neill) is mysteriously poisoned with gas, ambulance driver Frank Jessup (Robert Mitchum) meets her refined but sensuous stepdaughter Diane (Jean Simmons), who quickly pursues and infatuates him, taking him away from his hospital receptionist girlfriend Mary (Mona Freeman) who expects to marry him. Diane’s father Charles Tremayne (Herbert Marshall) is a formerly successful novelist who hasn’t written a word in a year and indulges his daughter. Diane persuades Frank to work as her family’s chauffeur and asks her stepmother to give him money to fund the former racing driver’s plan for a garage of his own. Despite fearing that Diane’s hatred of her mother could lead her to kill her, Frank goes along with her plan to run away but then both her stepmother and father have an accident and he finds himself embroiled in a court case … One acquires bad habits so early. Producer/director Otto Preminger spins a deeply subversive noir melodrama out of Frank Nugent and Oscar Millard’s screenplay (from a story by Chester Erskine) with uncredited contributions from Ben Hecht, almost removing the drama so that when the violence occurs – twice – it comes as more of a surprise than it would in a conventionally mounted suspenser. Mitchum is great as the sap who says he won’t be caught as the innocent bystander, while Simmons unleashes her inner demon to great effect. In their smaller roles, Marshall plays a typical Englishman albeit one whose charm has run out for his wealthy wife due to his spendthrift ways; while Mona Freeman is fine as the girlfriend who knows only too well she can’t outcompete Simmons. Leon Ames and Jim Backus have fun in the courtroom face-off. There’s a a lyrically misleading score from Dimitri Tiomkin and it’s beautifully shot by Harry Stradling. Quietly brilliant. All I want is you. I can’t let you go – I won’t

Great Expectations (1946)

Pip – a young gentleman of great expectations! Orphaned Philip ‘Pip’ Pirrip (Anthony Wager) lives with his older sister and her blacksmith husband Joe (Bernard Miles). He encounters runaway convict Magwitch (Finlay Currie) on the marshes and assists him with food and helps him cut himself free. However Magwitch is recaptured when he has a fight with a fellow escapee. An eccentric elderly spinster Miss Havisham (Martita Hunt) wants company for herself and her teenage ward Estella (Jean Simmons) a cruel but beautiful teenager who mocks Pip but with whom he falls in love from afar. Pip is apprenticed to a blacksmith when he turns 14 and Estella goes to France to become a lady. Years later Pip (John Mills) is visited by Miss Havisham’s lawyer Jaggers (Francis L. Sullivan) and he is to be the beneficiary of a mysterious benefactor to become a gentleman of great expectations in London where he befriends Herbert Pocket (Alec Guinness) who tells him that Miss Havisham’s life is dedicated to revenge against men because she was jilted at the altar and Estella was brought up likewise. They are reunited when Pip is 21 and he visits Miss Havisham after getting his living stipend of £500 a year and he finds that Estella (Valerie Hobson) is engaged to a man she doesn’t love. Pip is visited by Magwitch who reveals he was his benefactor and that Miss Havisham was using him. He confronts her and she realises the great harm she has done and as Pip is leaving a terrible accident occurs. Magwitch should not be on the territory and is commiting a felony and Pip undertakes to help him escape England … I want to be a gentleman on her account. Director David Lean recalled a perfectly condensed theatre adaptation of the Dickens novel and wrote the screenplay with producer Anthony Havelock-Allan, Cecil McGivern, Ronald Neame and Kay Walsh. From its magnificent opening sequence on the marshes (shot by Robert Krasker) and the atmosphere conjured by the decaying mansion housing Miss Havisham, this is a film of such dazzling detail and character, brilliant playing and staging and flawless pacing, as to merit the description perfect. Lean came of age as a director and the cinematography by Guy Green and the soaring score by Walter Goehr pick out, express and complement the heart of the drama. It never dodges the little social critiques (Mills’ reaction to the public hangings) or the touches of humour (Pip popping Pocket in the jaw; his silly fashionable get up) nor the ideas of snobbery, stupidity, guilt or social injustice that characterise the text of the novel. The final scene, when Pip returns and throws light upon Estella is heartbreaking and delightful. A simply bewitching masterpiece. What larks!

Say Hello to Yesterday (1971)

A time capsule of London at the beginning of the Seventies, love in the afternoon and the likely dream of bored housewives everywhere who saw Romeo and Juliet – having a ridiculous meet-cute with hyper-verbal Leonard Whiting and playing kiss-chase across the city for 10 hours. He spurns lovely young Susan Penhaligon (uncredited) and hits on forty year old Jean Simmons taking the train to London and haunts her into hanging out with him. When she arrives at her mother’s Regency flat he turns up with flowers and Mother says, If you have an affair with that boy you’ll regret it, if you don’t have an affair with him, you’ll regret it. She and Papa had their own fun separated by WW2. What’s a frustrated middle class woman to do?  An everyday tale of a day in the life, sort of, and an underrated look at life in those in-between years when unnamed people could have a one-day stand and not live to regret it. Written and directed by Canadian Alvin Rakoff whose preferred soundtrack of Joni Mitchell and Donovan was replaced by work from Riz Ortolani, best known for Mondo Cane. If the city looks great, that’s thanks in large part to being photographed by Geoffrey Unsworth. It’s also nice to see Catweazle (Geoffrey Bayldon) as an estate agent. Whiting’s general disappearance from screen acting for several years is mystifying albeit it seems he was typecast as the beautiful young man. He was last credited as ‘Julia’s Father’ in a 2015 thriller called Social Suicide alongside his former co-star Olivia Hussey as ‘Julia’s Mother’ in what appears to be a reworking of Romeo and Juliet. Sigh.