Start the revolution without me - 1970

Here's a forgotten, over-looked treat for a dull afternoon - I saw it in 1970 but it seems we all forgot about it. 

START THE REVOLUTION WITHOUT ME is a mostly hilarious farce sending up the French Revolution, as directed by Bud Yorkin, starring Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland (before their 70s peaks) as the mixed up twins - one rather dim (thats Gene) and the other terribly snooty. 

A great cast of farceurs are lined up: Hugh Griffith as Louis XVI, Jack McGowran, Murray Melvin, Victor Spinetti (as Count D'Escargot), Helen Fraser, Rosalind Knight, and best of all Billie Whitelaw as Marie Antoinette! AND Orson Welles narrates. Its  all a weird mix of Monty Python, A Tale of Two Cities etc. 

The adventures of Gerard - 1970

This was one of those throwaway movies we enjoyed at the time - like De Broca's THAT MAN FROM RIO, dubbed and released as a supporting feature in 1964 and became a cult favourite over time. GERARD is maybe quite not in the same league, but is an amusing diversion to see now, a swashbuckling period piece about Napoleonic times it is at times brilliant in its comedic delivery, from quirky Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, from stories by Conan Doyle, fleshed out by Peter McEnery as Gerard, Claudia Cardinale, Eli Wallach as a rather camp Napoleon, Jack Hawkins, Mark Burns and more. It is brash, colorful (all those red costumes), looks good in widescreen, Claudia dances up a storm (but I think only Visconti and Zurlini have really showcased her properly).

Other notable Hussars include David Hemmings as Captain Nolan in the 1968 CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE, and Malcolm McDowell in Lester's ROYAL FLASH in '75. GERARD in fact play like a Lester film, full of amusing moments and asides to the camera. We like of course Skolimowski's other films like DEEP END and KING QUEEN KNAVE, as per previous posts on them, (Jane Asher label). 
GERARD reminds me of another madcap comedy from that 1969-1970 era, which I will have seek out again: START THE REVOLUTION WITHOUT ME, Bud Yorkin's delirious costume comedy set in the French Revolution, with Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland as twins, Hugh Griffith as Louis XIV and Billie Whitelaw as Marie Antoinette! Another fond memory ...

McEnery is ideal here. He seems to have stopped working in 2008 (according to IMDB) Born in 1940, he had a small part in the 1960 TUNES OF GLORY and was then Boy Barrett setting the plot of VICTIM in motion in 1961. He did two Walt Disneys: giving Hayley Mills her first screen kiss in  the very entertaining THE MOONSPINNERS (where he also tussled with Eli Wallach's panto villain, in 1964) and that FIGHTING PRINCE OF DONEGAL in 1966, long unseen now. Jane Fonda gets him in Vadim's oddball LA CUREE (THE GAME IS OVER) in 1966, and he is with Glenda and Diane Cilento in NEGATIVES, one I did not see, in 1967. Then he was the very entertaining MR SLOANE in the 1970 film of Orton's hit play. 

A lot of television followed, and I saw him on the stage three times: he was the first HAMLET I saw in Leicester, in maybe 1969, followed by SHADOW OF A GUNMAN by O'Casey at the Old Vic in the early 70s, and a rather good LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC in 1989, with Dorothy Tutin, Susan Hampshire and Lila Kedrova. 

Like John Stride and those other British actors of his era, one would like to see more of him, 

10 other British 1960s flicks

We are familiar here at The Projector with the popular British films of the 1960s we grew up on - titles like A TASTE OF HONEY, VICTIM, TERM OF TRIAL, A KIND OF LOVING, THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER, THE SERVANT, BILLY LIAR, DARLING,  THE SYSTEM, THE KNACK, NOTHING BUT THE BEST, THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES, I WAS HAPPY HERE, MORGAN, SMASHING TIME …. and the very downbeat FOUR IN THE MORNING; that early-mid '60s heyday of Tony Richardson, John Schlesinger, Losey, Clive Donner, Desmond Davis, Richard Lester and early Michael Winner, plus Basil Dearden. Here though are 10 more, lesser-known, titles which took me a while to track down but proved well worth-while and which we recommend, if you ever come across them. All are reviewed fully at British label ...

• SATURDAY NIGHT OUT - engrossing little 1964 drama about guys and gals on a Saturday night out, it plays out very nicely, young Francesca Annis and LEATHER BOY Colin Campbell leads.
• THE PLEASURE GIRLS - an earlier TAKE THREE GIRLS as we join Francesca Annis Ian McShane and flatmates in their South Ken pad in 1965, along with that gay boy (Tony Tanner) downstairs (who is not ashamed or tragic).
  
• THE LEATHER BOYS - boy marries brassy Rita Tushingham and regrets it and the gay leather scene comes to the fore - in Sidney J Furie's engrossing 1964 drama, with Dudley Sutton. Furie also did the engrossing court trial of THE BOYS in '62. 
• A PLACE TO GO - a snappy Dearden from 1963 about moving those old communities into the new tower blocks, Mike Sarne (aargh!) and Rita Tush again and stalwart Bernard Lee.
• WEST 11 - an early Michael Winner, also '63, Alfred Lynch and Diana Dors among the Notting Hill bedsit people and drifters ...
• THE L-SHAPED ROOM  - Bryan Forbes' study of pregnant French girl (Leslie Caron) in 1962 Notting Hill bedsit land - sympathetic gay and lesbian characters too ....
• TWO LEFT FEET - Roy Baker's early ('63) coming of age saga with young Michael Crawford and David Hemmings to the fore. 
• THE WILD AND THE WILLING. The 1962 university set with youngsters Ian McShane, John Hurt, Samantha Eggar, plus lots of familiar faces.
• THE WORLD TEN TIMES OVER - the seedy world of Soho nightclub 'hostesses', a time capsule from 1963, with those early '60s iconic ladies Sylvia Syms and June Ritchie.
  
• BITTER HARVEST - Janet Munro is the naive Welsh girl who goes to the bad in the wild West End of 1963 and ends up another tragedy, with young John Stride. Its hilariously awful but enjoyable. 
• THE SMALL WORLD OF SAMMY LEE- Anthony Newley shines in Ken Hughes' 1963   drama, as the compere of a seedy strip club tries to stay one step ahead of the bookies to whom he owes money. 

That era of course had some amusing British comedies too:  (see Comedy label):

PLEASE TURN OVER, MAKE MINE MINK, TWICE ROUND THE DAFFODILS, LADIES WHO DO.

The British early '60s and '70s had those crime movies we also covered a while back: 

THE VERY EDGE, VILLAIN, ALL COPPERS ARE, THE SQUEEZE.

And there was a lot of Trash around in the early '70s Brit movies too, as per our previous reports - Trash label. 

DORIAN GRAY; GOODBYE GEMINI; MUMSY, NANNY, SONNY & GIRLY; UNMAN WITTERING & ZIGO; SAY HELLO TO YESTERDAY, BABY LOVE; PERCY; PERCY’S PROGRESS; LOOT, and those grotesquely unfunny CONFESSIONS OF and ADVENTURES OF  bottom-of-the-barrel items.

"Myra Breckinridge is all woman ... or something!"

Now let us turn to MYRA ... interesting to see that Russ Meyer's 1970 BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS is now issued on Bu-ray and dvd and reviewed in magazines like "Sight & Sound" .... it  was always regarded as the ultimate Trash Classic, often twinned with Fox's other 1970 bomb: the film they made of Gore Vidal's hilarious satire MYRA BRECKINRIDGE in all those late-night double features at cult cinemas.  Will MYRA follow suit onto Blu-ray now too ? Do we even want to see it again - there are clips on YouTube including a Mae West cut featuring only Mae's scenes.. (I have MYRA and BEYOND on a twin dvd pack actually, I am sure thats enough for me).

I absolutely loved Gore's book at the time, being in my early twenties, it was a savage satire on Hollywood and those movie buffs. England's one time pop singer (for five minutes) and part-time actor (A PLACE TO GO) Mike Sarne was the surprising choice chosen to direct, as he put veterans John Huston (Buck Loner) and Mae West (the insatiable agent Leticia Van Allen) through their paces, with Raquel Welch gamely playing sex-change Myra, with critic Rex Reed as her alter ego Myron. The critics hated it, the public generally ignored it, but those in the know rushed to see it as did my best friend Stan and myself - I can remember us standing in the queue waiting to get in, to be greeted by the bare bones of the novel and endless 20th Century Fox clips featuring Shirley Temple and the like .... it was really nothing like the book, but how could it? Huston and Mae seemed to be enjoying themselves (Mae arrives at her office, equipped with a bed, where a host of guys - including a young Tom Selleck - are waiting for her ... Mae says she has a full day so "one of those guys will have to go"). Farah Fawcett-Major got her big break here too as the innocent Mary-Anne. 

The climax with Myra donning a strap-on and sodomising that hunk Rusty Godowski (Roger Herren) was certainly eye-popping for the time ...

A sample of some of the dialogue: 

Myra: I am Myra Breckinridge, whom no man will ever possess. The new woman whose astonishing history started with a surgeon's scalpel, and will end... who-knows-where. Just as Eve was born from Adam's rib, so Myron died to give birth to Myra. Did Myron take his own life, you will ask? Yes, and no, is my answer. Beyond that, my lips are sealed. Let it suffice for me to say that Myron is... with me, and that I am the fulfillment of all his dreams. Who is Myra Breckinridge? What is she? Myra Breckinridge is a dish, and don't you ever forget it, you motherfuckers - as the children say nowadays.

Myra:  Gentlemen... I am Myron Breckinridge! Uncle Buck, your fag nephew became your niece two years ago in Copenhagen and is now free as a bird and happy in being the most extraordinary woman in the world!

Leticia: How tall are you when you're off your horse, cowboy?

Young Man at "Interview": Um, six feet, seven inches, ma'am.

Leticia: Well, never mind the six feet, and let's talk about the seven inches.

Myra: Where are my tits? Where are my tits?

MYRA was outrageous in 1970 even in that druggy, crazy counterculture era of MIDNIGHT COWBOY, WOMEN IN LOVE, FELLINI-SATYRICON, Antonioni's ZABRISKIE POINT, Visconti's THE DAMNED. Transgender is seemingly trendy now - could MYRA's time come again? I am in the mood for VALLEY OF THE DOLLS now ....

Joni and Tom ... and Aretha, Dusty and Janis too

I did not realise Joni Mitchell had appeared on our UK "The Tom Jones Show" back in January 1970, but while browsing the revamped Joni website (looking for an update on her health situation) I came across these. She also did some BBC recordings about the same time. I first saw her later that year at the Royal Festival Hall, in November, when she was the reigning hippie princess. Then (as per my other Joni posts) I got to meet her in 1972, and saw her again in 1974 when she was the new jazzy Joni.

Tom of course had them all on his shows - here he is with Janis Joplin, also 1970, her last year - and Dusty Springfield, and also with Aretha Franklin in 1970 Gosh, wouldn't it marvellous to see these again now - and here they are ! Sorry, no Tom and Joni clip.

Sir Tom of course is one of our elder statesmen of musc now, he has been great on the BBC series of "The Voice" adding some necessary gravitas and he is still rocking in his 70s. Way to go,

1970: Fire and rain

Many thanks to Colin for sending me this treat: the very readable FIRE AND RAIN, or to give it its full title: FIRE AND RAIN, THE BEATLES, SIMON & GARFUNKEL, JAMES TAYLOR, C S N Y AND THE LOST STORY OF 1970. Its a fascinating 2011 tome by David Browne chronicling that fascinating year in music (and movies and popular culture) 1970 as he focuses on the inter-twined fortunes of these musicians and their latest opuses. Other characters like Joni Mitchell flit in and out too ... 

These iconic acts of the '60s are at last wrapping up major new releases. The Beatles assemble one more time to put the final touches to LET IT BE. Crosy Stills Nash and Young finish their highly anticipated DEJA VU. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel finally complete their masterpiece BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER. (Paul referred to the title track as his "Yesterday"). Meanwhile on the sidelines, a shy upstart singer-songwriter named James Taylor is trying to write one more song to finalize an album called SWEET BABY JAMES. Over the course of the next twelve months, the lives of these remarkable musicians  - and the world around them - will change irrevocably. 

Acclaimed journalist David Browne sets the stories of those rock legends - and legends-to-be - against an increasingly chaotic backdrop of end-of-the-'60s events that sent the world spinning throughout that tumultuous year. The first book on the musical, political and cultural changes of 1970 FIRE AND RAIN tells the story of four landmark albums, the intertwining personal ties ties between the legendary artists who made them, and the ways in which their songs and journeys mirrored the end of one era and the start of another. Browne avoids sentimentality and nostalgia, aiming instead at a fresh look at the bands and their milieu. Some of the period details are almost astonishingly apt. says the blurb.  Below: Joni's album art for the CSNY album:

I was 24 then and in the thick of it all. 1970 was quite a year for me too - all that music, those movies still around like FELLINI SATYRICON and ZABRISKIE POINT. There were lots of Trash movies too, like Helmut's DORIAN GRAY. I was sharing a large flat with two friends in South London - here I am on the balcony leading down to the garden, plus some other shots from that year ..... My best friend Stan and I left the flat that summer to travel in Europe - my first trip to Paris, we walked all over the city and yes, slept under the bridges, then the train south and into Spain .... on return to London I rejoined my hippie friends (whom I saw The Doors & Jefferson Airplane with in 1968) in their rambling apartment until I left and found my own place for 1971. 

So it goes. 1970 was also the year I was at the British Film Institute cinema, the NFT, a lot, meeting and seeing and talking to Lee Remick and Dirk Bogarde among others, and standing next to Leonard Whiting in the gents urinal! plus seeing The Burtons and Joseph Losey on stage at the "Sunday Times" Cinema City Exhibition. I had also discovered Joni Mitchell by then, we liked her first two albums, and then saw her at her Royal Festival Hall concert later that year, from where I was sitting I could see the hippie princess waiting in the wings to go on - that was a fantastic evening too of course, little did I know I would be talking to her two years later when I met her purely by chance in the Kings Road (as per Joni label).

This book though captures it all - I loved the James Taylor album, and its follow-up MUD SLIDE SLIM, I was not really into CYNY but loved Young's voice and solo albums. We also had the Simon & Garfunkel and Beatles albums of course - this was the time When Albums Ruled The World! This of course was before the internet and social media, when the music spoke for itself. This is a fascinating rock book as Browne unearths a wealth of new material on performers one thought one knew more than enough about, for instance fascinating reading again on the mutual antagonism between Simon and Garfunkel. The Rolling Stones though do not get a look-in here. Left: Joni and James recording backup vocals on Carole King's TAPESTRY. 

Say Hello To Yesterday, 1970

Say hello also to tedium and annoyance as this twee 1970 'romance' unfolds ..... I intially thought I would not mention it, but I have covered some other 1970 Trash Classics here, like GOODBYE GEMINI and DORIAN GRAY (see 1970 label), and its a fitting companion piece in that cinematic junkyard - its a fascinating era really as the British Cinema deteriorated into tat after those great decades of the 1940s and 1960s, and the 1950s were not too bad either!

Lets look at the blurb for this effort:

One of the most under-rated British films that was produced between the end of the swinging sixties and the beginning of the hippie seventies. Leonard Whiting plays a young dreamer who is trapped in a working class existance: living in a council house with a father who has no  horizon higher than working in the local factory. Jean Simmons is the mature woman living in a leafy Surrey house with her stockbroker husband and two children, but is desperately unhappy with her life.

When the two unlikely lovers meet on a train to London, Whiting begins his charm offensive of the older woman across London's 1970s landscape. this is one of the most insightful films to deal with the thrill and inevitable puncturing of the balloon that signifies the love affair between these two unikely protatonists. Directed and co-written by Alvin Rakoff, music by Riz Ortolani. 

It is always nice to see Jean Simmons and she tries her best here in this underwritten role. Whiting is beyond annoying as his "charm offensive" in 1970 looks like sexual harrassment and he would be arrested these days as he keeps bothering her on the train full of stuffy commuters. And the horror - his family live in a council house! where his salt-of-the-earth dear old Mum (Constance Chapman) slips him a fiver as he heads off to Cobham station where Jean is boarding the first class compartment.  Our leads have no names here, they are listed as just Woman and Boy. He finally wears her down and yes they end up in bed but not for long. She flees back to her Surrey estate and he is left with those balloons which can signify whatever one wants .... Evelyn Laye appears as her wise mother. If Jean is the older woman here, then her mother must be ancient! 

There was a vogue for older woman/younger man romances, like the play and film of FORTY CARATS which was rather amusing, as per my review (Liv Ullmann label), but that was a well-written Broadway play. This suffers by comparison. Whiting may have been right for Zeffirelli's ROMEO & JULIET, but seems quite ordinary, if annoying, here. He wears a nice velvet suit of the period, not the same one he wore when I saw him at the BFI later that year. The dvd has a useful interview with Simmons, from sometime in the 80s. 
Thanks to Colin for this Twitter photo of Leonard in San Francisco recently for a showing and Q&A on ROMEO & JULIET in January. 

Pizza with Marcello, Monica, & Romy

A Marcello double-bill: Italian comedy with Monica and a ghost story with Romy ..

THE PIZZA TRIANGLE or JEALOUSY, ITALIAN STYLE or GRAMMA DELLA GELOSIA was a surprise hit in 1970 - Pauline Kael gave it a rave review too, but it had vanished without trace until recently. I should have been watching a new sub-titled disk but it has gone astray in the post (a replacement is on its way), so I am remembering it from back then. It shows Marcello Mastroianni and Monica Vitti as gifted farceurs as this trio of working class lovers clash, the third point of the triangle being Giancarlo Giannini. The prolific Ettore Scola, still writing and directing now, and who also directed Marcello and Sophia's hit A SPECIAL DAY in 1977, and Marcello as Casanova in THAT NIGHT IN VARENNES, fashions a hilarious tragedy as our bricklayer Marcello falls for flower-seller Monica, who then falls for pizza chef Giancarlo. Cue endless farce as they love, fight, bicker, and end up injured in hospital.

As IMDB puts it: An engrossing farce about a love triangle in modern Rome. Bricklayer Marcello Mastroianni meets flower-seller Monica Vitti at a political demonstration. He decides to ditch his fat, older wife for her. All goes well until a pizza, in the shape of a heart, arrives. It is sent to the girl by a young pizza-chef, played by Giancarlo Giannini. The pizza man becomes Vitti's lover, and poor Marcello goes mad with jealousy and attempts suicide, as do each of the other two at some point in this hysterical soap opera. The three lead performers, among the best that the Italian cinema has ever had to offer, are magnificent, as is the direction and comic timing by Ettore Scola creating a tragedy and comedy with political overtones and social satire.

Vitti and Marcello had not been this good in years (they were co-stars in Antonioni's LA NOTTE in 1961). Giancarlo Giannini of course went on to those towering performances in Wertmuller's SEVEN BEAUTIES, Oscar-nominated in 1975, and that chilly lead in Visconti's last, L'INNOCENTE in 1976 (both reviewed at Giancarlo  Giannini label), and again is still working now. 

FANTASMA D'AMORE (GHOST OF LOVE), 1981. 

A decade later, in 1981, we see an older Marcello with an older Romy Schneider - a year before her death (aged 43 in 1982). This for some reason, despite its two European stars, never played in London as I would have wanted to see it. It was only in Italian but I have now sourced a sub-titled print, 

I don't usually go for ghost stories, but this turned out to be a totally absorbing drama, with supernatural tones, which kept the interest, It is set in Pavia, a gloomy city as shown here, as Marcello's accountant catches the bus for a change, and an ill-looking, shabby woman boards the bus and does not have the fare, so he gives her a 100 lire coin. She thanks him and runs away and seems to know him. Then she rings him at home, where he and his wife lead separate lives. He did not recognise her, the woman on the bus, as she had changed so much due to illness, but she is Anna, his long lost love who has come back. He is astonished but agrees to meet her. 

She is now looking like her usual attractive self .... it turns out though she is married. Then he is told by a doctor friend that she died 3 years ago, which he cannot believe. They meet again and go out on the river in a boat, but she falls over and drowns .... there is also a mysterious murder where a man who abused Anna kills his aunt. It turns out Anna is unrepentant about that (before she falls into the river) .... then a body turns up, but it is not Anna but the man who abused her and who killed his aunt, who was also unpleasant to Anna. Is she a vengeful ghost bent on revenge? He has to find out and goes to see her husband, who also confirms that Anna died 3 years ago. Her aged servant also takes him to where she is buried ..... So what is the real truth.  The aged ill Anna turns up again on the bus - she keeps being drawn back to him as he keeps remembering her, and what does that odd priest know about it all. They have to part one more time ...... 

Ok, it is a ghost story, one can accept that. But what does one make of the final scene, where he returns to a large house (which may be a hospital or asylum) and the nurse in white uniform coming towards him is Romy/Anna too and she smiles as she leads him back in. It is all the ravings of a lunatic? or has he simply gone mad from it all? We have to make up our own mind .... Its an endlessly fascinating puzzle well directed by Risi, and made bearable by the stars, Marcello is fine as usual; Romy transcends the material and is a fascinating presence. They are a perfect team too, like Marcello with all the others: Sophia, Anouk, Gina, Anita, Monica, Silvana, Faye, Catherine, Brigitte, Belinda, Claudia etc. 

In due course, more Marcello rarities: with Silvana Mangano (DARK EYES, her last, in 1989) and maybe two dreadful ones, long unseen here: A FINE ROMANCE with Julie Andrews, and USED PEOPLE with Shirley McLaine, both from 1992. There is also something called MACARONI, another late '80s Marcello comedy also by Scola, with Jack Lemmon in crabby, annoying mode as an American in Naples (shades of AVANTI ?) ....I will have to resist that.
More Romy coming up too, and Catherine Deneuve.

Romy Horst Delon Belmondo! Fashion! Glamour !

MONPTI. Oh, to be young in Paris in 1957 – Horst Buchholz and Romy Schneider were in this romantic confection from Helmut Kautner. He is a poor Hungarian who lives in an attic and has some colourful neighbours, she appears to be a rich girl whom he meets in the park. There are some lovely romantic moments but (like Romy’s CHRISTINE the next year) there is no happy ending here. We also see a contrasting wealthy but shallow couple and wonder why we see so much of them, this is revealed at the climax, where that car accident robs our couple of happiness. It is a slight tale told to us by the older Monpti, and it all captures that 1950s Paris nicely, I imagine, as it was 1970 when I first got to the City of Light. Romy and Horst (1933-2003) though shine nicely here, he too was a European star before Hollywood beckoned.

I am indebted too to a friend (thanks Mel) who sent me a 1967 documentary on Romy which I did not know about: ROMY - PORTRAIT OF A FACE, by Hans-Jurgen Syberberg,  catching her at a good point, on a ski-ing holiday, where she talks to the camera and discusses her career and life to date, including her teen years as SISSI and working with the likes of Welles and Visconti.. Schneider was one of the most prolific international actresses of her era, with 62 titles in her 43 years (1938-1982), often averaging several a year, 
from her teenage years in Germany to being an icon of French cinema.
(I have about 40 of her titles, with maybe 10 yet to see, see Romy label for reviews).

BORSALINO, 1970. It’s a brilliant idea: take two popular French male stars, set them in a 1930s setting, spare no expense with period detail, kit them out in great suits and give them lots of stuff to do, as they initially fight – over a woman of course, faithless Catherine Rouvel (from CHAIR DE POULE), then they team up and play at gangsters in Marseilles, but their easy-going approach to crime soon changes as they end up in control of organised crime in the city. Add in Michel Bouquet and Corinne Marchand and plenty of local colour and its all a leisurely, blissful movie, which I somehow did not see at the time, despite my affection for the two leads – Belmondo and Delon. 

It was a huge hit at the time, as directed by Jacque Deray (LE PISCINE), and a fashion hit as well, covered by all the magazines, but has not been available here for a long time, but finally, a sub-titled version. It all looks terrific and is one to return to. The two leads are perfectly matched too as they guy their tough-guy images, that first fight of theirs is hilarious. It could well be this hit gave someone the idea to team another popular pair, Newman and Redford, in a similar 1930s setting ?