The Wages of Fear / Sorcerer

I realised the other day I had never seen Henri-George Clouzot's 1953 classic THE WAGES OF FEAR, that highly regarded thriller about the four desperate men driving two trucks of dangerous explosives over rough terrain in a South American jungle. who would survive?. I almost did not like it at the start as the first hour is spent setting the scene, but once they get going, and Yves Montand takes command - boy, does the tension build...

In 1977 William Friedkin, a hot director after THE FRENCH CONNECTION and THE EXORCIST (and of course THE BOYS IN THE BAND) did a remake, with stunning colour photography of the jungles and Roy Scheider (hot after JAWS) in the lead, and its super fantastic now, with that great score by Tangerine Dream (me neither), but it, now renamed SORCERER, it was a huge box office disaster, as we were all loving those space operas by George Lucas and Spielberg or living the New York life with Woody Allen (ANNIE HALL) and John Travolta (SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER), so SORCERER quickly got lost and disappeared from view, until a new issue recently. Its a keeper and one to see again, even if - like the Clouzot film there is a confusing opening section setting up the characters in various locations like Paris, Jerusalem, New York etc. Highly recommended - if only  for the scenes of the trucks crossing those bridges ... It must have been a tough shoot.
A gangster, a crooked banker, a hitman and an arab terrorist are stranded and on the run in a small village in South America. Their only chance of escape is to drive two trucks filled with unstable nitroglycerin up a long and rocky mountain road in order to plug an escalating oil refinery blaze. With their deadly cargo likely to explode at the slightest bump, the four men must put aside their differences and work together to survive. 
Trapped in squalor, unable to return to the lives they abandoned, they're driven by circumstance to accept a normally unthinkable job. They have to drive old, unstable dynamite from its storage site hundreds of miles over mountain terrain and washed-out roads to the location of an oil well fire so the blaze can be snuffed out. The pay is exorbitant -- but it's commiserate to the danger. The risks are colossal ... and they ultimately have no choice.
SORCERER is tense, suspenseful film-making at its finest. Friedkin creates a palpable sense of place, and Scheider is immensely powerful as a man whose every move suggests that he knows he's doomed. Taut with suspense, completely convincing and breathtakingly human, SORCERER is an unfairly maligned film that delivers in every way.
See both versions and decide which you prefer ...

'Gross Indecency' at the BFI ...

July 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of a landmark in LGBT rights - the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales (not Scotland?). Though the Sexual Offences Act 1967 hardly put a stop to persecution, it was a step forward in a climate of fear and ignorance, where any on-screen depiction of gay life assumed enormous currency. British cinema boasts a long history of carefully coded queers, but taboo-busting gathered steam in the late 1950s. This BFI (British Film Institute) season spans two decades, bracketed by the 1957 Wolfenden Report and the onset of AIDS in the early 80s. 

So says the introduction to the two-month BFI season, but as a young gay at the time - 18 in 1964 and new in London - there didn't seem to be any restrictions on our lives. There were a few bars and clubs one could go to, but the gay boom of the 1980s and 90s was a long way away. I remember those pioneering BBC "Man Alive" documentaries, and VICTIM (getting an extended run at the BFI) was an early success.

The season highlights several rare items I have reviewed over the past few years (gay interest/British labels) like SERIOUS CHARGE, THE LEATHER BOYS, THE WORLD TEN TIMES OVER, TWO GENTLEMEN SHARING, and they have dug up those two rather exploitative items THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE and the terrible STAIRCASE, as well as GIRL STROKE BOY and the transgender drama I WANT WHAT I WANT, as well as NIGHTHAWKS, and an extended run for PRICK UP YOUR EARS. There is also a rare 1960 TV production on the trial of Oscar Wilde with Micheal MacLiammoir's celebrated portrayal of Oscar (below) - but not the two Oscar Wilde films of that era. Or indeed the 1970 DORIAN GRAY or GOODBYE GEMINI with their looks at early London drag pubs like the Vauxhall Tavern - or those 60s British films DARLING and THE PLEASURE GIRLS with their uncomplicated happy homosexual friends of the heroines. Murray Head does a Q&A after a screening of SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY - one still remembers the audience gasp at kiss, when seeing the film a second time, at a suburban cinema ...

Television is also currently getting in on the act, with a raft of programmes on Channel 4 and maybe on BBC, as well as on MTV where sassy drag queens with attitude, led by Rupaul,  are playing appropriate pop videos, from the likes of Madonna, Kylie & Co. Rupert Everett did a nice programme last night 50 SHADES OF GAY, so it was back to Heaven, The Colherne and other gay London locations of the last 50 years; Stephen Fry, Simon Callow and others explored BRITAIN'S GREAT GAY BUILDINGS (more Heaven, The Vauxhall Tavern, Old Bailey, etc), and POP PRIDE & PREJUDICE covered the gay pop scene, with lots of Bowie, Boy George, George Michael, Jimmy Sommerville, Marc Almond, etc. 

BBC's Radio3 are even doing a 90 minute programme on the making of VICTIM, with actors playing Dirk and his partner, director Dearden, co-star Sylvia Syms etc. Presumably based on Dirk's version of its making, as in his "Snakes and Ladders" book. I don't think I need listen to that. Sylvia is still here of course, but presmably too old to play her younger self ...

Coming up is a new dramatisation of that inflential 1954 court case involving Peter Wildeblood and Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, with Mark Gatiss, AGAINST THE LAW, which BBC2 will screen this autumn - I also reviewed the previous 2007 one in 2013. A VERY BRITISH SCANDAL:

http://osullivan60.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/wildblood.html

London Pride is this Saturday 8th, so the city will be thronged as will Brighton for Pride in August, with the Pet Shop Boys doing a full concert.  

The French list .....

Continuing our Lists theme, 25 essential French flicks we love, from the Fifties to the Seventies, again two maximum from each director ... (AND, Those French Tough Guys). 

• LA RONDE (1950) / MADAME DE … (1953) - Ophuls. Classic French cinema avec Danielle Darrieux & Co. 
• M RIPOIS (KNAVE OF HEARTS) 1954 / PLEIN SOLEIL (1959) – Rene Clement: Gerard Philipe and Alain Delon both at peak perfection in Clement's perfect films. Maurice Ronet is also terrific in SOLEIL as a very unpleasant Dickie Greenleaf ,,,,
• AND GOD CREATED WOMAN / HEAVEN FELL THAT NIGHT – as was Bardot in 1956 and 1958 in these Vadim scorchers! She WAS the female James Dean.
• LIFT TO THE SCAFFOLD (1958) / LE FEU FOLLET (1963) – Malle - Malle's electrifying films still dazzle now, as does Maurice Ronet and Moreau ...
• LOLA (1961) / BAY OF ANGELS (1963) – Demy - 2 gleaming monochrome classics, as good as Demy's musicals, Anouk and Moreau at their best (Of course we love Demy's 2 pastel musicals and his 2 enchanting fairy tales as well, Demy label).
• AMELIE, OU TE TEMPS D’AIMER – Michel Drach, 1961 - not seen since at the Academy in Oxford Street London in 1964 when I was 18. Jean Sorel and a Victorian romance at moody Mont St Michel (my favourite place in France). 
• UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME - Lelouch. We just love Anouk and Trintignant and that lush score and visuals. Perfectly 1966
• LA FEMME INFIDELE / INNOCENTS WITH DIRTY HANDS (1975) – Chabrol's valentines to Stephane and Romy ... (just two from my 14 disk Chabrol set)
• UNDER THE SAND / TIME TO LEAVE – Ozon. A brace of Ozon classics. TIME TO LEAVE is harrowing, Rampling is perfect UNDER THE SAND (as was Deneuve in POTICHE).
• 400 BLOWS / HISTORY OF ADELE H. – Truffaut. Isabelle Adjani mesmerises as Adele H in 1975. and the first Antoine Doinel from 1959 is New Wave personified. 
  
• LES DRAGUEURS  - Mocky. More perfect 1959 French new wave as we take in Paris by night with Anouk and Belinda Lee.
• CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 – Agnes Varda, 1962. 
• LES VALSEUSES - Blier's shocker from 1974 still packs a punch as tearaways young Depardieu and Dewaere go on the rampage, in those flaired jeans. 
• THE BEST WAY TO WALK – Miller. Claude Miller's delicious 1976 drama
• THE WILD REEDS (LES ROSEAUX SAUVAGES)  – Techine. Andre Techine's gay classic from 1994, Gael Morel shines. 
• INDOCHINE – Wargnier - A Deneuve epic from 1992, almost a French GWTW.
  
• CESAR & ROSALIE – Sautet. Romy and Montand are perfect leads. One of Schneider's 6 with Claude Sautet, each is perfect. 
• PLAYTIME -Tati. TRAFIC is fabulous too as Monsieur Hulot goes travelling, 

12 FRENCH TOUGH GUYS:

• RIFIFI – Hossein in Dassin's 1955 masterclass
• MELODIE EN SOUS SOL – Verneuil's 1963 caper with Gabin & hot shot young Delon as they rob a Cannes casino, the playoff is perfect, 
• LE SAMOURAI – Melville's masterpiece from 1967
• LE HOMME D’ RIO – De Broca. Belmondo dazzles in Rio in 1964 with Dorleac. 
• BORSALINO – Deray. Delon and Belmondo ramp up the glamour in 1970
• THE WICKED GO TO HELL - Hossein's slick 1955 thriller with his wife Marina Vlady, and Henri Vidal.
• TOI LE VENIN -  Slick Hossein thriller from 1958, "Night is not for sleep" indeed! 
  
• UNE MANCHE ET LA BELLE (KISS FOR A KILLER) - Super Verneuil 1957 thriller with Vidal and Mylene Demongeot and Isa Miranda. 
• CHAIR DE POULE – Duvivier's jet black thriller from 1963 with Sorel and Hossein (right)
• LE CIRCLE ROUGE / ARMY OF SHADOWS – Melville's downbeat wartime epic with Signoret, Ventura & Co. 

More on all these at labels, particularly PLEIN SOLEIL, MR RIPLEY etc. 

20 Italian classics .....

Its my delayed Lists week - we start with some Italian favourites, then French, British, Costume films, American dramas and 20 Trash favourites ..... let's do one a day. (I am limiting myself to 2 maximum from each director).

• BICYCLE THIEVES / GARDEN OF THE FINZI CONTINI (1970) – De Sica
• TOO BAD SHE’S BAD – Blasetti, 1954 (the first pairing of Sophia and Marcello, with Vittorio having fun too)
• I VITELLONI (1953) / AMARCORD 1974) – Fellini - two Fellini classics (it may be heresy but I never liked LA DOLCE VITA or EIGHT AND A HALF that much ...)
• JOURNEY TO ITALY – Rossellini. A key Italian movie from 1953 that paved the way for the likes of Antonioni and the others .... Bergman and Sanders were hardly ever better.
  
• PANE, AMORE, E …. (SCANDAL IN SORRENTO) – Risi, 1955 Delicious Italian frolic with Sophia and Vittorio having fun in Sorrento. 
• LA NOTTE BRAVA (1959) / FROM A ROMAN BALCONY  (1960) –Bolognini - Doomed glamorous youth (Terzieff, Brialy, Sorel, Milian) in Bolognini's key works .... (perhaps MUBI will put them on for Martin .... just sayin'.)

LA NOTTE BRAVA

• L’AVVENTURA / L’ECLISSE – Antonioni & Vitti  (its all at the labels...)
• IL MARE (THE SEA) – Patrone Griffi (never seen this since 1964, when I was 18, and it was at the old Academy in Oxford Street, London). Rare indeed ....
• THE LEOPARD / SANDRA – Visconti (Luchino's opulence and that great black and white melodrama from 1965, with Cardinale and Sorel at their sumptuous beautiful peaks). 
  
• THE CONFORMIST (1970) – Bertolucci (it still amazes now). 
• OEDIPE RE / TEOREMA – Pasolini. His late 60s classics with Silvana Mangano mesmerising as ever. 
• THE LONG NIGHT OF ’43 – Vancini (this 1960 rare classic has Ferzetti and Belinda Lee in a terrific dramatic role - she is the equal of Loren or Mangano here). 
• SEVEN BEAUTIES – Wertmuller - this 1975 stunner still packs a powerful punch, particularly those scenes with Giancarlo Giannini and Shirley Stoler in the concentration camp ...)
• PADRE PADRONE - Taviani  Brothers. 1970s arthouse favourite - I liked it so much I returned with friends so they could share it too. More on these at labels.

Scorsese's documentary MY VOYAGE TO ITALY, as per my post in 2011, is essential and covers these key films and directors in detail with lots of clips, the movies he grew up watching.

Compared to What ?

The first track on Roberta Flack's first album back in the early 70s. We liked Roberta a lot then, she was up there with Aretha Franklin and I saw them both twice, at the old Odeon Hammersmith in those years, Roberta's album has several other stunners well worth a listen now: "Angelitos Negros", "Trying Times", "Ballad of the Sad Young Men", "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" etc. 

Effi Briest, 1974

I had been meaning to catch Fassbinder's 1974 drama EFFI BRIEST - but pal Martin has been raving about it, part of the Fassbinder season on MUBI - Martin is a devotee of this site, so I just had to get the bluray of this stunning and engrossing drama.     .

We like Rainer Werner Fassbinder's early Seventies films here, they were must-sees in arty London circles then, along with the New German Cinema of Wim Wenders and Herzog. I liked Fassinder best: THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT, FEAR EATS THE SOUL and the very downer but essential gay classic FOX AND HIS FRIENDS (see Fassbinder label), and the later more bizarrely explicit QUERELLE, his last film, and the mess the out of control director made of DESPAIR with Dirk Bogarde, in 1978. 

In the nineteenth century, seventeen year old Effi Briest is married to the older Baron von Instetten and moves into a house in a small isolated Baltic town. She soon bears a daughter,  Effi is lonely when her husband is away on business, so she spends time riding and walking along the shore with Major Crampas. Instetten is promoted to Ministerial Councillor and the family moves to Berlin, where Effi enjoys the social life. Six years later, the Baron is given letters from Crampas to Effi that convince him that they had an affair. He feels obliged to challenge Crampas to a duel and banish Effi from the house.

Like HEDDA GABLER or A DOLL'S HOUSE or ANNA KARENINA or MADME BOVARY this is a searing indictment of women's lives and powerlessness once married to possessive husbands in the restrictive 19th Century. The lesser-known novel by Fontane was a favourite of Fassbinder's and he does it justice with stunning black and white photography and those white fade-outs. Hanna Schygulla is of course tremendous as Effi, and the cast also features Karlheinz Boehm, who also crops up in FOX AND HIS FRIENDS, 

I like EFFIE BRIEST a lot, it should be a better known Fassbinder, and is essential "Women's Cinema" for everyone. It is a film of marvellously controlled images, and vivid imagination, with all those mirror shots. Its a great costume movie too, and I like its leisured, stately pace, almost like a 1950s Ingmar Bergman film. Perhaps that's what Fassbinder intended ... it has a melancholy ending, with a perfect long last shot. 

We will now have to check out his other films. several with Schygulla: THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN, LOLA, LILI MARLEEN, VERONIKA VOSS ...  Schygulla of course was also in PETRA VON KANT, and I remember her in a very vivid 1989 Mexican film by gay Jaime Humberto Hermosillo: MISS FORBES.  She has clocked up 98 credits and is still working now - one of those essential European actresses like Liv Ullmann, Thulin or Moreau, Deneuve, Huppert .... 

Mahogany, 1975

I thought I would enjoy this one a lot more, but really, its just rather dull, dull, dull - not quite a '70s Trash Classic then, just forgettable really. It starts with a rather outre Seventies fashion show, but then the plot takes over.

Tracy (Diana Ross) an aspiring designer from the slums of Chicago puts herself through fashion school in the hopes of becoming one of the world's top designers. Her ambition leads her to Rome spurring a choice between the man she loves or her newfound success.

It's a guilty pleasure that you know is bad, but you just can't help enjoying it. Casting Diana Ross as a fashion model was truly inspiring since it gives her an opportunity to look sensational throughout. This she does with little effort. Billy Dee Williams is fine as her idealistic boyfriend intent on changing the world rather than his clothes, but the most fun is provided by Anthony Perkins whose performance could be subtitled "Norman Bates's Greatest Hits." As the neurotic and gay photographer, he chews the scenery like never before, and gives a sensational performance.

Well, yes, that about covers it, but it could have been delirious fun and it isn't. Nina Foch and Marisa Mell are also on hand, but are wasted, as is Jean-Pierre Aumont. Miss Ross glides effortlessly through it all on a rather one-note performance, though its a stretch to imagine her as a novice designer slumming it in Chicago .... but things look up once we hit Rome and all that decadence. It just could have been a lot more fun and taken off into a zany satire on fashion, but as ploddingly directed by Tamla honcho Berry Gordy (who fired Tony Richardson) it isn't. File it next to to those other Seventies glossy items like LIPSTICK, or THE EYES OF LAURA MARS or the brilliant AMERICAN GIGOLO in 1980, but that had the vision of Paul Schrader .... MAHOGANY now comes across like those vanity projects of Streisand or Beyonce.

Ross, who had a hit with LADY SINGS THE BLUES in 1972 (but was nothing like Billie Holiday in a glossy travesty of her life) had another hit here - I refused to see her THE WIZ though ...

Still of the day ...

Two of our favourite blondes: Faye and Michael - Dunaway and York that is, in Richard Lester's all-star extravaganza THE FOUR MUSKETEERS, the more sombre follow-up to his jolly THREE MUSKETEERS, both filmed in 1973. Faye is a deliciously wicked Milady with the York boy as the hapless D'Artagnan .... Charlton Heston scores too as the devious Richelieu, as does Olly Reed as Athos and Christopher Lee in a different role for him. Lots of enjoyment here .... it all looks great too,

A new LUDWIG

I was intrigued to see a new 4-disk Bluray of Luchino Visconti's 1973 opus LUDWIG is about to be released. I already have the 2 disk dvd, but this seemed too good to pass up, so it is on its way to me. We have covered LUDWIG and Visconti, Helmut, Romy, Silvana, Trevor Howard in detail here before, as per the labels - so more on it in due course. It should be a nice companion piece to the new Criterion bluray of Antonioni's BLOW-UP also out next week, and on its way to me from Barnes & Noble in New York. A brace of European classics then, all spruced up for the new era ...

Helmut acquits himself well here, and Romy is sheer perfection as the older, more cynical SISSI, while Trevor Howard and Mangano are ideal as the Wagners. Then there are all those attractive footmen as Ludwig battles his proclivities ... As with all Visconti films costume dramas don't get more opulent, and our perennial favourite Romy is simply stunning as the older Sissi. 
It was great seeing it initially on the large screen at a London Film Festival back then, watching at home it may be too long to see all at once, but ideal in chunks as the opulence washes over one ... its certainly up there with the other Visconti classics like SENSO, THE LEOPARD, L'INNOCENTE ...
Its a terrific package, with a 60 page booklet, a 1999 hour-long documentary on Visconti, when a lot of those who worked with him were still living and interviewed here, a documentary on Mangano and the full version of the film, in two parts, at almost 4 hours (238 minutes) or a 5 part TV version. There's also a new interview with Helmut Berger ..... Essential, then, As one review says: 
Among the scenes you’re most likely to remember – from all the versions – will be Ludwig’s wooing of the young actor Kainz in that glorious underground grotto with the swans and that charming little love boat, and Elizabeth’s visit to Ludwig’s most famous castle in the room with all those mirrors. Visually the film is a near-constant treat, with sets and costumes as gloriously garish and/or stunning as you’ll have seen. And then there’s that hunting lodge scene with all the young men perched atop and around the limbs of the giant tree that grows in the middle of the lodge.

Visconti with Romy & Helmut

Some '70s gals ...

Some of our favourite 1970s actresses who provided lots of amusing goofy moments - so no Jane, Faye, Julie, Diane or Jill, instead its Madeline, Terri, Barbara, Karen and Sandy !

The late great Madeline Kahn: Eunice in WHATS UP DOC?, Trixie Delight in PAPER MOON, Lili Von Shtupp in BLAZING SADDLES, Kitty O'Kelly in Bogdanovich's bomb AT LONG LAST LOVE, the monster's bride in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN.

Terri Garr: TOOTSIE, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS ...,  her great line in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN: "He vould have an enormous schwanzstucker" ... (There's also of course Cloris Leachman's immortal Frau Blucher ...).

Barbara Harris, so deliously amusing in PLAZA SUITE, touching in NASHVILLE, perfect in Hitch's last FAMILY PLOT.

Karen Black, if only for her air hostess flying the plane in AIRPORT '75, her country queen in NASHVILLE, also in FAMILY PLOT, and another Altman: 1982's COME BACK TO THE FIVE AND DIME, JIMMY DEAN, JIMMY DEAN, which also featured:

Sandy Dennis (1937-1992) who of course started in the Sixties with WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE, A TOUCH OF LOVE, THE FOX etc and delighted us in the Seventies with THE OUT OF TOWNERS and her ditzy turn in NASTY HABITS. 

Plus we have to mention Melinda Dillon, so wonderful in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS... and Eileen Brennan, particularly in THE CHEAP DETECTIVE,

Soon, maybe, the '70s guys: Caan, Dern, Devane, Burt Reynolds, Segal, Gould, Sutherland, and the big hitters Nicholson, Redford, Newman, Hackman, De Niro, Pacino and more  ... or maybe not,

The original boys in the band

Fascinating going back to the original BOYS IN THE BAND now, after seeing the recent theatre revival in London the other week (review below, & at Theatre, gay interest labels). William Friedkin's 1970 film features the original cast of nine who played it in New York and London in the late sixties. Its been interesting and sad too finding out what happened to them.

The play and film had long been unseen, and seen as a cliche of early gay stereotypes, but its a fascinating drama by Mart Crowley (still here now) showing how self-loathing some gays were then, before Stonewall and the 1970s gay liberation shook things up. Then of course in the 1980 the Aids spectre arrived ....

There's neurotic Michael who hosts the birthday party for Harold, "a 42 year old pock-marked Jew", his birthday present of the midnight cowboy hustler, then there's uncomplicated nice guy Donald, the screaming queen Emory, coloured guy Bernard, the couple Hank and Larry with their own problems of fidelity, and straight guy Alan who drops in .....

Five of the cast died of Aids-related illnesses: Kenneth Nelson (Michael) aged 63 in 1993, who had a theatre career in London; Frederick Combs (Donald) aged 56 in 1992; Leonard Frey (Harold) aged 49 in 1988 - he was also the tailor in FIDDLER ON THE ROOF; Robert La Tourneaux (cowboy) aged 45 in 1986, and Keith Prentice (Larry) aged 52 in 1992. Cliff Gorman (Emory) had a long career, starting in JUSTINE and LENNY on stage (but lost the film to bigger name Dustin Hoffman) died aged 65 in 2002 of leukaemia. Reuben Green (Bernard) seems to have vanished, while Laurence Luckinbill (Hank) and Peter Green (Alan) are both still here and are interviewed on the 2008 German dvd I got of the film, where director Friedkin enthusases about the cast and the film, as does writer Mart Crowley. 

Its fascinating to see it again as originally staged and made cinematic by Friedkin, as the cast use all those props and the food and lots of drink. Its as savage as Albee's WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (also having a London revival at the moment), and it remains a great play, capturing a decisive moment in gay evolution. 

Glenda in Yanks ???

Idly watching John Schlesinger's 1979 wartime romance YANKS again on television, I was suddenly caught by this one shot from that emotional climax at the railway station as the GIs pull out and all the womenfolk are crowding the station to say goodbye. The female stars of the film are Vanessa Redgrave and Lisa Eichorn and Rachel Roberts, but surely this is Glenda Jackson, among the crowded extras, she had starred in Schlesinger's SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY in 1971. Does anyone else think its our Glenda ?

For the weekend ....

George sings Joni / Jimmy revisits "Smalltown Boy" in 2014 / Joan's "Back To The Night" in 1975. I have just bought a vinyl album of that, one of her essentials with those great early songs, but somehow it is not on cd, unless for very silly money ...

Querelle & Fassbinder

One of the most bizarre movies is Rainer Werner Fassbinder's QUERELLE, a 1982 item from the novel by Genet - but in Fassbinder's vision it becomes a lurid if not sensational potboiler of repressed (and not so- ) homoerotic passions with all those matelots in those eye-catching outfits hanging out in waterfront dives in Brest in France, as our hero Querelle (Brad Davis) has the hots for his superior officer, a moody Franco Nero, right.. 
Add in Jeanne Moreau of all people, wearing those enormous ear-rings, intoning Oscar Wilde's "Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves" and Querelle submitting to her brutal husband, who likes getting off with those sailor boys.   It was all too much at the time, how would it fare now? It was actually released after Fassbinder's death in 1982. 

The Fassbinder we really like is his 1974 FOX AND HIS FRIENDS, reviewed here a while back, see Fassbinder label - where the director himself plays the loutish lottery winner taken to the cleaners by his smart new boyfriend (Peter Chatel, right) and his grasping family who need Fox's money to prop up ther ailing business. It ends on a very downbeat note as Fox's body is robbed by kids in a metro station.  

Other Fassbinders (once as prolific as Almodovar or Ozon) we liked then include FEAR EATS THE SOUL, his stylish hothouse lesbian drama THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT, EFFI BRIEST, THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRUAN, and the fascinating mess he made of Nabokov's DESPAIR with Dirk Bogarde, the director's last before his untimely drug-related death in 1982, aged 37. Still, he clocked up 44 credits ...  . 

A FOX memory - between 1976 and 1979 I was working at Dillons University Bookshop (now Waterstones) in London's University quarter, not in the bookshop but in an office upstairs, working with a German woman, Monica, who became a friend (we both loved Dietrich and Romy Schneider); one day she was expecting a guest for lunch and asked me to talk to him until she came back from a meeting. In walked this guy whom I recognised as Peter Chatel, the actor from FOX AND HIS FRIENDS, he sat on the edge of my desk and we talked about that until Monica returned, Chatel died aged 42 in 1986, another Aids casualty, 
Below: Andy Warhol visits the set, with Fassbinder and Brad Davis.

Bette is Madame Sin

Here's a delicious doozy for a dull winter afternoon. Bette Davis as MADAME SIN, a 1972 release, originally meant as a pilot for a tv series, but released in cinemas here in Europe. Another unintentional comic Trash Classic! 

Bette Davis is Madame Sin, a sinister-looking, totally evil, half-Chinese woman who indulges in endless machinations. Ensconced in a Scottish castle that is packed with an array of spy gadgetry, she runs afoul with counter spy, American CIA agent Anthony Lawrence (Robert Wagner), who is out to counter her plots for control of a Polaris submarine.

The budget ran to a helicopter and renting a castle in Scotland - Robert Wagner, a friend of Bette's, co-stars and co-produces, some British stalwarts are lined up: Denholm Elliot, Gordon Jackson, Dudley Sutton, Roy Kinnear ... what, no Harry Andrews? but it all looks rather cheap and second rate capturing that seedy London of the early 70s. 

Bette though has a whale of a time chomping out her lines in that Eurasian get up - is she channelling Ona Munson as Madam Gin Sling in THE SHANGHAI GESTURE or maybe Gale Sondergaard in her own THE LETTER, or even Death (in that black cape) in THE SEVENTH SEAL? She needed to do something to liven it up, Wagner looks good here in his early 40s, and there is an unexpected ending. Director David Greene did some interesting 60s films but is on auto-pilot here. Perhaps for Bette addicts only?

This was the year she appeared before us at the London BFI  (right) and brought the house down - as I have reported before - Bette, NFT labels, so it must have been after she filmed this.