Heatwave movies: Maroc 7

I first reviewed this in 2010, but it deserves another look, as a great summer movie!

MAROC 7 is a riot of colour, girls, guns - a delicious crime caper from 1966 that plays like a UK version of those Dean Martin Matt Helm films such as THE SILENCERS. Here it is Gene Barry as the suave agent infiltrating a fashion shoot in Morocco - that endlessly fascinating mysterious exotic location (also well used in the caper DUFFY in '68, also reviewed here).

MAROC 7 was made about the same time as Antonioni's BLOW-UP and also features a photographer and lots of model girls - here though Leslie Philips (who also produces) is the snapper with crime on his mind, but its the girls who are the main interest. Cyd Charisse (for it is she) is the fashion editor using her magazine shoots to cover her criminal activities, top model girl is the stunning Elsa Martinelli (as nice here as for instance as her Dallas in Hawks' HATARI!) and that very intriguing Canadian actress Alexandra Stewart who had a career in European films (LE FEU FOLLET, DAY FOR NIGHT, ONLY WHEN I LARF with Hemmings, and Penn's MICKEY ONE with Beatty) and is still working now. She plays police inspector Denholm Elliot's assistant. Cyd and Leslie are ruthless in their ambitions, disposing of one of the girls who knows too much and the professor who won't reveal the whereabouts of a priceless medallion. The plot involves secret maps, robbing tombs and multiple double crosses, after a nice start with Evans breaking into Charisse’s house and stealing jewels while she returns and takes a shower. Then there is one of those ‘60s parties …… and then its off to Morocco with all those girls and those '60s outfits!

Above: girls on location.

It is all deliriously put together by director Gerry O'Hara, that '60s movie-maker of low budget independent glamour films (his THE PLEASURE GIRLS (1965 label) is an interesting minor film about girls in Swinging London) and he also helmed episodes of THE AVENGERS and, er, THE BITCH! This one kind of looks cheap but that suits it perfectly. It is great to see the mature Charisse, she is ideally cast here, her looks and voice are still sensational. I simply cannot wait to see it again .....it's a cult movie to match DANGER DIABOLIK!

Above: Elsa Martinelli, below: Alexandra Stewart and with David Hemmings in ONLY WHEN I LARF.

Francois, Charlotte et Melvil sur la plage

A brace of sombre films by Francois Ozon, featuring the beach and meditations on mortality....
UNDER THE SAND (SOUS LE SABLE) When her husband goes missing at the beach, a female professor begins to mentally disintegrate as her denial of his disappearance becomes delusional, as the brief synopsis puts it. This 2000 French film by Francois Ozon is notable for a stunning performance from Charlotte Rampling as Marie who has to adjust her life after her husband presumably drowns. She goes into denial and continues as though he is still there but gradually it all becomes too much. As she cannot accept his death she cannot access his funds and her friends, including a nicely mature Alexandra Stewart worry about her. What are her motives for getting involved with another man (Jacques Nolot) whom she is toying with? We see the husband (Bruno Cremer) as she imagines he is there with her – but tellingly at the beach we also see his expression before he goes into the sea.



His aged mother taunts Marie that her son has faked his death to get away from her as he was bored, or even committed suicide. Finally, a body is found – will Marie be able to accept that is her husband or does she continue in denial? Is it in fact her husband? There is that powerful scene at the morgue. The overweight husband does seem older and tired and weary in the early scenes as the couple head to their holiday home. It is splendidly directed by Ozon who focuses tightly on his star, but one does begin to get exasperated by Marie's behaviour by the end. It is a meditation on aging, loss, mourning, which would seem the domain of a more senior filmmaker [Ozon was 35 when directing this], but he has accomplished a thoughtful, serious, and compelling movie that we can all identify with, even if we do not share the extent of Marie's mourning process.

TIME TO LEAVE (LE TEMPS QUI RESTE) – Nice that Ozon’s new film POTICHE with Deneuve and Depardieu is an international hit. I had been putting off watching this, his 2005 more sombre drama as I imagined it might be too harrowing. Romain (Melvil Poupaud) a gay fashion photographer (who seems to have it all) is given a death sentence by his doctor – he has terminal cancer. He becomes reclusive as he begins to give up the world and people close to him, alienating himself from his lover, sister and parents. The only person he tells is his grand-mother (Jeanne Moreau, marvellous as ever) as she will be dead soon too. It is not harrowing at all but rather affecting at times, and also nicely compact at 75 minutes. Improbably, he is asked to impregnate a waitress he chats to whose sterile husband he quite fancies, which he at first refuses, but later all three get together.


Poupaud must have seriously lost weight by the final scene at the beach as the solitary man enjoys himself, with visions of his childhood past – one shocking moment has him throwing his ringing phone into a trashcan as he leaves the world behind him. The film’s pared down style is similar to his previous UNDER THE SAND and is a meditation on what it means to find out you only have a short time left to live. Melvil Poupaud carries the film beautifully and gives a performance that is both affecting and un-selfpitying, morphing from a fit, athletic young man to an emaciated invalid. It is indeed affecting as the sun goes down and people start to leave the beach... Francois Ozon continues to be one of the more interesting (and openly gay) directors around. I must return to that boxset of his earlier films: 8 FEMMES, 5 X 2 and SWIMMING POOL with Rampling again, and I also must watch that BFI dvd of his earlier shorts, REGARDE LA MER. It is good to see POTICHE is popular, one wonders what he will deliver next?
Soon: a new Andre Techine boxset, Assayas' SUMMER HOURS, several Catherine Deneuve and Belmondo titles and back to Chabrol and Melville, and summer repeats of Demy and Varda, and finally Truffaut's FINALLY SUNDAY, and Charlotte again HEADING SOUTH.

A Louis Malle double feature

Two of Louis Malle's early features, from that good box set [Vol 1] which also includes LES AMANTS and ZAZIE DANS LE METRO. Malle (who died in 1995 aged 63) began filming in the mid '50s with underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau, their first documentary being the well-received LE MONDE DU SILENCE in '56.

LIFT TO THE SCAFFOLD – (or ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS to give it it’s American title). Louis Malle’s 1958 thriller ASCENSEUR POUR L'ÉCHAFAUD is still a fascinating experience as the plot spirals off in different directions. We have Jeanne Moreau endlessly wandering around Paris by night and in the rain looking for her missing lover (Maurice Ronet) who was supposed to kill her wealthy industrialist husband and join her, but he get trapped in the lift/elevator when the power is turned off, after the murder which he fakes to look like suicide. Can he escape? Meanwhile, his car is stolen by a teenage delinquent and his girl, who speed off and get involved with a German couple. We wonder why we are spending so much time with them, but this too leads to murder as the stories converge …. The spare Miles Davis soundtrack is cool beyond belief and Paris in 1958 looks the place to be. For me Malle (like Demy) is the most interesting of the New Wave directors [he was just 25 when directing this] and it is still a fascinating movie with Moreau and Ronet in their early prime. Marvellous black and white photography too by Henri Decae.



LE FEU FOLLET (THE FIRE WITHIN). This made such a big impression on me when I saw it aged 18 in 1964 that I did not need to see it again until now. It is surely Malle's most outstanding work, adapted from the Drieu La Rochelle story, with an Erik Satie soundtrack (so appropriate) and those luminous images by Ghislain Cloquet and with an astounding performance by Maurice Ronet. This and Bogarde's role in THE SERVANT are surely the outstanding performances of 1963. Ronet captures every facet as Alain Leroy, a playboy drying out at a private clinic who really finds nothing to live for once he is "cured". His alcoholic playboy is also a terminally depressed and finds life hollow and meaningless. Even the visiting friend of his ex-wife, whom he sleeps with and who writes him a cheque, cannot rouse him. He likes the routine at the clinic as we observe him in his room - notice the picture of Marilyn Monroe (a supposed recent suicide) and other newspaper features on death clipped to the wall... and the date scrawled on the mirror - the next day's date.


He decides on a whim to return to his old haunts in Paris to see if any of his old friends can be of any help in giving him a reason to go on living. Paris again in the early 60s looks marvellous as we linger at the Cafe Flore and the Brasserie Lipp. But Alain seems a shadow of his former jolly self to the barman and hotel staff he used to know. His best friend has settled into domesticity with a wife and child and is writing a book, he meets Jeanne Moreau, and Alexandra Stewart and her high society friends, and he starts drinking again. There is also that group of homosexuals who notice Alain and comment on how he has changed as one comments that a friend of theirs had been in love with him. It sounds depressing but it isn't really, and is a mesmerising film about suicide as a rational way out for a hollow man who is all used up and cannot see any point in continuing.... it is inevitable when back at his room to see him pack up his belongings and his life.



Malle went on to lots more varied films from the jollity of VIVA MARIA and the dramatic LACOMBE LUCIEN to those American classics like ATLANTIC CITY - LIFT TO THE SCAFFOLD is a young man's film exploring what cinema can do, but LE FEU FOLLET remains a personal favourite that simply endures. A key '60s film too, comparable to THE SERVANT or BLOW-UP or BELLE DE JOUR.

My new favourite '60s fun movie!

MAROC 7 is a riot of colour, girls, guns - a delicious crime caper from 1966 that plays like a UK version of those Dean Martin Matt Helm films such as THE SILENCERS. Here it is Gene Barry as the suave agent infiltrating a fashion shoot in Morocco - that endlessly fascinating mysterious exotic location (also well used in the caper DUFFY in '68, also reviewed here).

MAROC 7 was made about the same time as Antonioni's BLOW-UP and also features a photographer and lots of model girls - here though Leslie Philips (who also produces) is the snapper with crime on his mind, but its the girls who are the main interest. Cyd Charisse (for it is she) is the fashion editor using her magazine shoots to cover her criminal activities, top model girl is the stunning Elsa Martinelli (as nice here as for instance as her Dallas in Hawks' HATARI!) and that very intriguing Canadian actress Alexandra Stewart who had a career in European films (LE FEU FOLLET, DAY FOR NIGHT, ONLY WHEN I LARF with Hemmings, and Penn's MICKEY ONE with Beatty) and is still working now. She plays police inspector Denholm Elliot's assistant. Cyd and Leslie are ruthless in their ambitions, disposing of one of the girls who knows too much and the professor who won't reveal the whereabouts of a priceless medallion. The plot involves secret maps, robbing tombs and multiple double crosses, after a nice start with Evans breaking into Charisse’s house and stealing jewels while she returns and takes a shower. Then there is one of those ‘60s parties …… and then its off to Morocco with all those girls and those '60s outfits!

Above: girls on location.

It is all deliriously put together by director Gerry O'Hara, that '60s movie-maker of low budget independent glamour films (his THE PLEASURE GIRLS is an interesting minor 1964 film about girls in Swinging London) and he also helmed episodes of THE AVENGERS and, er, THE BITCH! This one kind of looks cheap but that suits it perfectly. It is great to see the mature Charisse, she is ideally cast here, her looks and voice are still sensational. I simply cannot wait to see it again .....it's a cult movie to match DANGER DIABOLIK!

Above: Elsa Martinelli, below: Alexandra Stewart and with David Hemmings in ONLY WHEN I LARF.