A Man and a Woman (1966)

Aka Un homme et une femme. If I had to go through this again what would I do? Widowed script girl Anne Gauthier (Anouk Aimee) travels from her home in Paris to Deauville to visit her little girl Francoise (Souad Amidou) at boarding school in Deauville. She accepts a lift back with racing driver Jean-Louis Duroc who is a widower visiting his little boy Antoine (Antoine Sire). A friendship blossoms into romance but she can’t tell him her husband Pierre (Pierre Barouh) is dead and speaks of Pierre in the present tense, confusing their perceptions of each other. His wife Valerie (Valerie Lagrange) committed suicide when she saw him in a near-fatal accident and believed he died. But he survived. Now when he races in icy conditions on the Riviera in the Monte Carlo rally Anne watches the coverage on the radio (voiced by presenter Gerard Sire, father of Antoine) and sends him a telegram saying she loves him and he drives back north in his Mustang to see her  …  Why? Just your everyday story of a widowed script girl meeting cute with a widowed racing driver. From this slim premise evolved a glorious melodrama. Two of the most beautiful people to ever grace the earth in a romantic movie about movie-making and romance: this is how the Nouvelle Vague was repackaged and commercialised by writer/director Claude Lelouch and it was a cultural phenomenon in its day, a Palme d’Or winner at Cannes, an Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film and Original Screenplay as well as a huge box office success on both sides of the Atlantic. Shot quickly with just seven crew on a low budget, the flashy techniques were born of necessity. Different black and white film stocks were used until an American distributor contributed more money upfront enabling Lelouch to buy colour film. The old cameras used had to be covered in blankets to protect them from wintry damp – there was a lot of rain on those supposedly exotic resort locations: the antithesis of glamour. Yet did any actors ever wear sheepskin coats so well?! Trintignant was on board first and it was he who suggested Aimee as his co-star when Lelouch asked him who would be his ideal woman. They were old friends. When she closes her eyes during their scenes of radiant intimacy she paradoxically creates an even more empathetic heroine, this woman who can’t come to terms with her husband’s death.  This is always about how the mind works to permit people to fall in love in the aftermath of unspeakable tragedy. Danger underlines everything – these men who love Anne dally with it in their daily occupations. Hope is a little beyond her, the future unthinkable.  Isn’t death the ultimate subject of all art? The film’s conclusion was kept secret from Aimee:  that’s real surprise registering on her gravely luminous face. The score by Francis Lai is simply unforgettable. It was written before the production commenced and Lelouch used playback during the scenes to inspire the performers who where encouraged to improvise their dialogue. Lelouch said of working with Trintignant: I think Jean-Louis is the actor who taught me how to direct actors. We really brought each other a lot. He changed his method of acting while working with me, and I began to truly understand what directing actors was all about, working with him. I think the relationship between a director and actor is the same relationship as in a love story between two people. One cannot direct an actor if you do not love him or her. And he cannot be good if he or she does not love you in turn.  How astonishing has Trintignant been in the evolution of contemporary romantic dramas? Starting with And God Created Woman, A Man and A Woman, through Amour, he is the cornerstone of how we perceive the male psyche from the 1950s onwards. He will celebrate his 90th birthday December 2020. Co-written with Pierre Uytterhoeven. Not just a film, this is a landmark in cinema. If you ever find yourself in Deauville you can book into the suite named for the film at the Hotel Barriere Le Normandy. Some Sundays start well and end badly

The Shiralee (1957)

I’m not sore – I’m just indifferent. When freewheeling drover and occasional poacher Jim Macauley (Peter Finch) arrives home to Sydney from his regular ‘walkabout’ and finds his wife Marge (Elizabeth Sellars) in the arms of another man, he leaves with his young daughter Buster (Dana Wilson), whom he barely knows. He soon realises that he has to let go of his wandering ways in order to care for the little girl but when her mother wants her back and the child has an accident on his watch a legal battle must be fought … I’m no angel, but I played square with you. Peter Finch’s favourite of his own films, this is a wonderfully unsentimental portrait of a marriage gone wrong, a kid with an errant dad keen to make things right -well, if there isn’t a pretty girl handy.  It’s a picturesque exploration of the parts of Australia, beginning to be populated as the frontier of this vast new country continued to expand. The rugged landscape (north east New South Wales) is expertly framed by cinematographer Paul Beeson in one of a handful of films made by Ealing Films on location in Australia. There are entrancing performances from the leads with Finch superb as the man conflicted between the wish to redeem himself and enjoy the freedom of the open road. Niall MacGinnis has a good supporting role as an unreliable friend and Bud Tingwell turns up too;   while Sid James and Tessie O’Shea provide succour for the vagabond father and charmingly tomboyish daughter especially when his ex-girlfriend Lily’s (Rosemary Harris) father Parker (Russell Napier) wants him out of the area because of the wrong he did her years earlier – he left her pregnant. Neil Patterson co-wrote the adaptation of D’Arcy Niland’s novel with director Leslie Norman, father of much missed movie critic Barry. An absorbing modern western with a keen sense of character and place, sympathetically scored by the great John Addison. The song of the title (which incidentally means ‘burden’) became a hit for Tommy Steele.  I want her because she’s mine

 

The 39 Steps (1959)

If you’re looking for Richard Hannay this is the man you want. Freshly returned to London, British diplomat Richard Hannay (Kenneth More) goes to the aid of a nanny ‘Nannie’ (Faith Brook) in a park only to discover there is no baby in the pram and follows her to a music hall where he watches Mr Memory (James Hayter). She goes back to his flat and reveals that she is a spy working for British intelligence looking for the organisation The Thirty-Nine Steps who are after information on the British ballistic missiles project. When she is murdered in his flat he goes on the run, encountering a bevy of schoolgirls on a train with their teacher Miss Fisher (Taina Elg) who reports him to the police but he jumps off the vehicle on the Forth Bridge and hitches a ride on a truck driven by ex-con Percy Baker (Sidney James) who advises him to stay at The Gallows Inn run by occultist Nellie Lumsden (Brenda De Banzie) and her husband who help him escape during a cycling race.  He approaches Professor Logan (Barry Jones) only to find the man is in fact the leader of the spy ring and he must keep running … I’m not having a Sagittarius in the house tonight! Hitchcock was responsible for the first adaptation of John Buchan’s classic spy-chase thriller and this is a more or less straight remake, with the romance-chase narrative lines crisscrossing pleasingly as per the generic template established by The Master. More may be a slightly ridiculous hero but this is played for comic effect and its Hitchcockian homage continues in the casting of De Banzie who essays a knowing spiritualist in her crofting cottage. It has the advantage of location shooting, a winning plot, doubtful romantic interest, a deal of suspense and a collective tongue planted firmly in cheek. Directed by Ralph Thomas, written by Frank Harvey and produced by Betty Box. Keep out of the woods. Especially in August!

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972)

TB or not TB, that is congestion.  A set of wild skits loosely based upon scenarios suggested by questions raised in Dr David Reuben’s 1969 book (Are Transvestites Homosexuals? etc), this is Allen at his loosest, most surreal, tasteless and gag-driven. Between Allen’s role as Fool to the court of an English King (Anthony Quayle) and ending upskirt of the Queen (Lynn Redgrave) in a series of Shakespearean riffs; Gene Wilder’s medic (Dr Doug Ross, no less) getting caught in flagrante with a sheep (who’s wearing a garter belt); a parody of TV’s What’s My Line featuring perverts and Regis Philbin playing himself; Allen’s Fellini-esque director marrying a woman (Louise Lasser) who can only orgasm in public places à la Monica Vitti; a runaway giant breast al fresco in a sendup of Frankenstein, Ed Wood and The Blob; and the tour de force finale featuring Allen playing a sperm in scientist Tony Randall’s Fantastic Voyage through a man’s brain (What Happens During Ejaculation?) while Burt Reynolds mans the phones; this is uneven, hideously funny and somehow manages to be a perfectly dotty time capsule that sums up the issues affecting men and women fifty years ago. Or not. I found I could make a man impotent by hiding his hat!

Night of the Big Heat (1967)

Aka Island of the Burning Damned/Island of the Burning Doomed. We must avoid injecting fear into an already dangerous situation. Novelist Jeff Callum (Patrick Allen) and his wife Frankie (Sarah Lawson) run a pub called The Swan on the island of Fara, on the English coast.  Jeff hires former lover Angela Roberts (Jane Merrow) as his secretary and she arrives in the middle of an unseasonal and stifling heatwave – it’s winter, yet unusual things are occurring with cars stalling and TVs blowing up and sheep are dying inexplicably. Scientist Godfrey Hanson (Christopher Lee) arrives and rents a room at The Swan, setting up motion sensor cameras and taking soil samples and Jeff confronts him about what might really be happening and discovers that extra-terrestrials are in their midst so it’s time to get local doctor Vernon Stone (Peter Cushing to lend assistance as the temperatures rise and everyone seems to be losing their mind and what on earth is down in the gravel pit? … If the heat goes on like this it could very likely drive us insane!  Adapted by Ronald Liles from John Lymington’s novel, this had previously been adapted for broadcast by ITV in their Play of the Week slot in 1960 and Doctor Who husband and wife screenwriting team Pip and Jane Baker were hired to do this rewrite. This Hammer Films iteration has the key players in the studio and is all the better for it: that alien protoplasm ain’t got nothing on these guys, living in a pressure cooker of sex and fear. It’s nice to see Patrick Allen – that terrifying voice that so dominates my childhood memories is actually quite the thesp:  hark at him explain to his wife what the deal is with the smouldering minx Angela:  I wanted her! I wanted her body! It was completely physical, I promise you! while Lee is his usual earnest self as the de rigeur scientist, completely rational for a change, with Cushing, as ever, battling evil.  Merrow is marvellous as the vamp, going crazy, like everyone, in the sweltering heat. Satisfying sci fi very well handled by Terence Fisher. He’s a peculiar chap – but he’s got guts

 

Far From the Madding Crowd (1967)

Don’t anyone suppose that because I’m a woman, I don’t understand the difference between bad goings-on and good. I shall be up before you’re awake, I shall be afield before you’re up, and I shall have breakfasted before you’re afield. In short, I shall astonish you all. In the late nineteenth century in England’s West Country beautiful young Bathsheba Everdene (Julie Christie) inherits a picturesque farm from her uncle and decides to run it herself. Three very different suitors – Francis Troy (Terence Stamp), an intense soldier who has impregnated a maid; William Boldwood (Peter Finch), a prosperous middle-aged farmer; and Gabriel Oak (Alan Bates), a neighbouring sheep farmer of modest means – all contend for her hand in marriage and her different attitudes to each of them cause conflict and tragedy … At home by the fire, whenever I look up, there you will be. And whenever you look up, there I shall be. Adapted by Frederic Raphael from Thomas Hardy’s classic novel, this is one of the most gloriously beautiful films of its era, starring some of the most attractive British performers, all shot in almost decadently luminous imagery by the great Nicolas Roeg, a few years from making his directing debut. However none of that would matter if it weren’t for the management of the material which clarifies the novel’s question – how is it possible for a woman to maintain her independence and property while claiming a romantic relationship for herself? The painful issues of patriarchy and community combine when Bathsheba turns down Gabriel’s offer of marriage and she inadvertently triggers a chain of horribly dramatic events in this bucolic setting. It’s director John Schlesinger’s third film with Christie and she’s at the peak of her beauty and charisma playing this passionate girl. You can understand why everybody loves her. A woman like you does more damage than she can conceivably imagine

The Loves of Joanna Godden (1947)

I’d like to meet the men who won’t take orders from me.  In Edwardian Britain, a young woman has three suitors who seek her hand in marriage.  When Joanna Godden’s (Googie Withers) father dies, he bequeathed her a farm on the Romney Marsh in Kent. Joanna is determined to run the place herself. Her neighbour Arthur Alce (John McCallum) laughs at her ambitions, but loves her. Choosing a new shepherd, Collard (Chips Rafferty), she allows physical attraction to a man to overcome her judgment as a farmer and her scheme for cross-breeding sheep is unsuccessful after it’s met with mirth. Her wealth gone, she turns to Arthur Alce for help – but not love. That she accepts from Martin Trevor (Derek Bond), a visitor from the world beyond the Marsh. But on the eve of their marriage Martin dies in a drowning accident. When her sister Ellen (Jean Kent) returns from boarding school they clash about everything – and then Arthur asks for Ellen’s hand in marriage …  Things look very different when you’ve someone to share them with.  Isn’t Googie Withers just fabulous? That name. That face! So open and yet complex, a mask veiled with hidden depths, filled with pleasing astringency. She can say absolutely anything and you believe her – absolutely. Here she’s the feminist farmer, a character somewhat out of Thomas Hardy but actually from Sheila Kaye-Smith’s novel Joanna Godden adapted by H.E. Bates and Angus MacPhail, a woman whose story is told through her inheritance of a farm in Romney Marsh and via the rather nasty sisterly rivalry enjoyed opposite the brilliant Kent. The swirling, sonorous score conjuring up the location’s mysteries is by Ralph Vaughan-Williams and the slinky cinematography is by Ealing’s house expert, Douglas Slocombe. Perhaps what’s best about this after the atmospheric landscape which is so vividly enlivened is that Withers and McCallum married. This also features the marvellous Chips Rafferty a year after The Overlanders as – what else – a sheep farmer!  Directed by Charles Frend who had an uncredited assist by Robert Hamer when he fell ill. We hear a lot but we aren’t told much

Nobody Runs Forever (1968)

Aka The High Commissioner. He’s got to back to Australia and straighten a few things out. Australian outback police detective Scobie Malone (Rod Taylor) arrives in London to arrest the Australian High Commissioner Sir James Quentin (Christopher Plummer) for the murder of his first wife and return him to Sydney, but his task does not go as planned. The lawman finds himself acting as a bodyguard when assassins start to appear with alarming regularity in this world of international men of mystery.  Quentin’s foreign-born wife Sheila (Lili Palmer) is curious about why Malone is there, while Dutch secretary Lisa Pretorius (Camilla Sparv) is protective of the man she respects above all but it’s beautiful Madame Cholon (Daliah Lavi) who entices him into her bed … Use your own passport and get out. I don’t know you. Taylor produced and did some writing on this adaptation of Jon Cleary’s novel The High Commissioner which is attributed to Wilfred Greatorex. Presumably it’s an attempt to get in on the Bond craze and the settings in London are splendid – all that neon and nightlife and a shootout at Wimbledon and we don’t mean tennis (rather, we do), albeit director Ralph Thomas hardly brings Hitchcockian technique to a scenario reminiscent of The Man Who Knew Too Much. The fish out of water situation is nicely set up – we meet Scobie in the midst of a sheep farm only for him to be swiftly deposited in London to do the political will of the Prime Minister of New South Wales, Flannery (an uncredited Leo McKern) widely believed to be based on real-life politico Sir Robert Askin.  He soon figures this is a setup of sorts and develops a quick empathy with Quentin – triggered by an assassination attempt as soon as they set foot outside the embassy’s front door. His character occupies a position oddly close to a spoof, emphasising his difference from anyone in the diplomatic scene, from his Aussie deadpanning to the beatings he takes and the jibes at London bobbies; while the number of beautiful European ladies points us in their direction even if we don’t know precisely what anyone is spying about or why anyone would try to kill Quentin, who seems to be brokering discussions at a peace conference. Quite why the final scene is left for Quentin to get there first is anyone’s guess. It’s good to see Burt Kwouk in a supporting role and it all makes for some pretty pictures and there’s a good score by Georges Delerue. Produced by Betty Box.

Summer Holiday (1963)

Who forgot to buy the bread?!  Don (Cliff Richard) and his friends (Melvyn Hayes, Teddy Green and Jeremy Bulloch) are London Transport bus mechanics. During a miserably wet British summer lunch break, Don arrives, having persuaded their employers to lend him and his friends a double-decker bus which they convert into a holiday caravan, which they drive across continental Europe, intending to reach the Riviera. However, their eventual destination is Athens. On the way, they are joined by a trio of young women singers (Una Stubbs, Pamela Hart and Jacqueline Daryl) whose car has broken down and a runaway singer (Lauri Peters), who initially pretends to be a 14-year old boy called Bobby, pursued by her voracious stage mother (Madge Ryan) and agent (Lionel Murton). There are chases, dogs, singalongs, dance sequences with Cliff’s band The Shadows, a misunderstanding almost causing a marriage to a moustachioed shepherdess and problems at border crossings. Written by Peter Myers and Ronald Cass with musical orchestration by Stanley Black, this is chock-a-block with songs – Bachelor Boy was added to increase the running time. It’s genial, hokey stuff with England’s biggest rock ‘n’ roller Cliff making for a charming lead. His opposite number Lauri Peters was never a big name but she’d established the role of Liesel in the 1959 Broadway production of The Sound of Music where she sang Sixteen Going On Seventeen to teen Nazi Rolf played by Jon Voight who became her husband. She was overdubbed here by Grazina Frame who did the same job in Cliff’s previous film The Young Ones. The dance numbers were choreographed by Herbert Ross who made quite the director himself.  This was huge in the UK but in the US it played to empty houses – hardly surprising when you consider it was released there 54 years ago, November 24th 1963, two days after the assassination of JFK. Directed by debutant Peter Yates, this is why we all love red double-decker London buses!