Revisiting old favourites ...

I have written about these here several times, so no need to rehash them again, but its been a lot of fun revisiting QUENTIN DURWARD, JUSTINE and SANDRA ..... see labels for previous comments.

QUENTIN DURWARD from 1955 is maybe my favourite costume drama from the 50s (along with Fritz Lang's MOONFLEET, also 1955 - I enjoyed seeing them as a kid at Sunday afternoon matinees). DURWARD captures the Walter Scott world perfectly, with perfect roles for Kay Kendall and Robert Taylor and Robert Morley as the very devious King of France. 

JUSTINE is a genuine Trash Classic, started in Tunisia and then moved to Hollywood, it in 1969, it has that plush 20th Century Fox look, a great score by Jerry Goldsmith and Anouk Aimee looking stunning in those Irene Sharaff creations, plus Michael York and Dirk Bogarde as well as Anna Karina. George Cukor took over the direction, lensed by veteran Leon Shamroy, so it romps along, capturing some of Durrell's exotic Aleandria. I just like it a lot.

SANDRA in 1965 is maybe a lesser Visconti, but is still a powerful operatic melodrama with Claudia Cardinale and Jean Sorel at their peaks of stunning beauty as the incestuous brother and sister. Again, one to savour. 

Jenny or Jenny ?

Jenny Bowman or Jenny Stewart, that is. Both are legendary Broadway divas, very used to getting their own way.  Joan Crawford is Jenny Stewart and TORCH SONG is Joan's first in colour, in 1953, and is a camp riot of garish colour, particularly with Joan in "tropical makeup" for the bizarre "Two Faced Woman" number. One feels sorry for the chorus boys Jenny terrorises and Michael Wilding as the blind pianist who is the only man who can stand up to her. Very odd too is her pack of teenage fans crowding the stage door to meet her .... I have reviewed this Camp Classic several times, as per Crawford label, so these are just a taster: love her party where she is the only woman. Joan truck gold again the following year with the equally bizarre western JOHNNY GUITAR, the first movie I saw, aged 8; again see label.

I COULD GO ON SINGING is more serious fare, with Judy Garland's final role, a decade after her A STAR IS BORN, where she plays Jenny Bowman, a version of herself, superbly aided by Dirk Bogarde. The numbers are great and Judy is caught here at a good moment for her in the early sixties. The shoot though was a nightmare, as per Dirk's memoirs. Lots more at Judy label,

'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.  

A treat: Lee and Dirk in The Vision, 1987

A thousand thanks to Colin for finding this - one of my Holy Grails - a 1987 BBC film with two of my top favourites, which was only ever shown once by the BBC and since unavailable. It is now on dvd, so thanks again Colin - just what I needed after a few days in hospital. 

Dirk Bogarde and Lee Remick head an outstanding cast (including Eileen Atkins and Helena Bonham Carter) in this powerful drama from the creative team behind SHADOWLANDS. Originally screened (in January 1988) as part of BBC2’s acclaimed Screen Two strand, THE VISION is a disturbing reflection on an era of televangelists, burgeoning satellite channels and ruthless media manipulation – quite timely then for 30 years ago.

Bogarde plays James Marriner, a faded, unhappily married for TV presenter, reduced to margarine commercials and opening supermarkets, who is persuaded to front The People Channel – a right-wing, evangelical satellite network poised to launch in Europe. Determined to recruit “Gentle Jim” as a reassuringly familiar anchorman, the network’s steely, seductive boss Grace Gardner (Remick) proves hard to refuse.

As the network’s first live transmission looms, Marriner – whose personal life is now under surveillance – has become deeply uneasy about its aims. Garner, however, makes it clear than any attempt to alert viewers to her organisation’s true agenda, will bring about a devastating retribution. 
Written by William Nicholson and directed by Norman Stone. 

Eileen Atkins (in another of her then Mrs Glum roles) is Bogarde's unhappy wife, and Bonham Carter their daughter, Dirk and Lee play perfectly together, at this late stage in their careers - almost their final work. I met them both (separately) at the BFI in 1970 (I was 24) and got to talk to them both, as per other posts on them (see labels). Its a great role for Remick, which she plays with relish and looks great here in her early fifties, a few years before her death in 1991. (We also saw Atkins on stage then as Elizabeth I in Bolt's VIVAT REGINA with Sarah Miles as Mary Queen of Scots).

I suppose it now too much to expect to get Lee's other BBC productions, SUMMER AND SMOKE in 1972 and Henry James' THE AMBASSADORS, with Paul Scofield, in 1977, finally on dvd too? - in the meantime, great to see THE VISION again, and it is so timely, even if the 80s technology looks so dated now.  Then there are Bogarde's other TV productions, like THE PATRICIA NEAL STORY with Glenda Jackson ...

Vote for Britain

A crucial week here in the UK, with our election on Thursday and terror attacks escalating - lets return to the glory years of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s and all those British movies we love, part of our current Lists season, and no, I may not be able to stick to 20 each - but then, my blog - my rules. Reviews of lots of these at British label.

1940s:

• Lets start with 7 David Lean, all essential: IN WHICH WE SERVE / THIS HAPPY BREED / BLITHE SPIRIT / BRIEF ENCOUNTER / GREAT EXPECTATIONS / OLIVER TWIST / THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS
  
• 4 Michael Powell, even more essential: A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH / I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING / BLACK NARCISSUS / THE RED SHOES
• 2 Carol Reed: THE FALLEN IDOL / ODD MAN OUT
• 2 Basil Dearden: SARABAND FOR DEAD LOVERS / THE BLUE LAMP
• Asquith; THE WAY TO THE STARS
• Annakin - HOLIDAY CAMP - the post war boom starts with those new holiday camps, 1947.
• Hamer – IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY - the grim side of postwar London / KIND HEARTS & CORONETS
• Crichton – WHISKEY GALORE.

Let's throw in some Gainsborough melodramas which brightened up the war years: THE WICKED LADY, MADONNA OF THE SEVEN MOONS, CARAVAN, BLANCHE FURY, and some Anna Neagle epics: I LIVE IN PARK LANE, MAYTIME IN MAYFAIR. 

1950s:

Often seen as a bland decade for English movies, but lots of pleasure for those of us growing up then:

• Dearden – POOL OF LONDON / THE GENTLE GUNMAN  / VIOLENT PLAYGROUND
• Crichton – DANCE HALL (by Godfrey Winn - the leisure time of factory girls, as much a social document as SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING would be at the end of the decade)
• Hurst – DANGEROUS EXILE (ditto Belinda Lee in this 1957 costumer about the son of Marie Antoinette..)
• Box – CAMPBELL’S KINGDOM (Dirk and very tough guy Stanley Baker in the Canadian Rockies (actually the Dolomites in Italy), we loved it in 1957.
• Fregonese - SEVEN THUNDERS (Boyd leads a terrific cast in 1957 wartime thriller set in occupied Marseilles - one I enjoyed as a kid)
• J Lee Thompson - NO TREES IN THE STREET / TIGER BAY / NORTH WEST FRONTIER (all 1959)
• NO TIME FOR TEARS - 3 Anna Neagle classics:
• MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER 
• THE LADY IS A SQUARE
• THOSE DANGEROUS YEARS
• WONDERFUL THINGS
• SIMON AND LAURA 
• AN ALLIGATOR NAMED DAISY
• NOR THE MOON BY NIGHT
• OUT OF THE CLOUDS
• JET STORM - Stanley Baker pilots the plane, Richard Attenborough has the bomb, all star cast in 1959. Love it 
• HELL DRIVERS
• ALIVE AND KICKING
• THE WEAK AND THE WICKED. Glynis Johns is sent to prison and shares a cell with Diana Dors, in this delicious 1954 meller, from J Lee Thompson.
• TURN THE KEY SOFTLY. More ex-jailbirds with Yvonne Mitchell and young Joan Collins in 1953
• PASSPORT TO SHAME 
  
• EXPRESSO BONGO
• SERIOUS CHARGE
• ROOM AT THE TOP.

1960s:

The new boys and girls and directors hit town:

• VICTIM
• A TASTE OF HONEY
  
• A KIND OF LOVING (above right)
• THE L-SHAPED ROOM (Leslie Caron joins the seedy Notting Hill bedsit set, 1962)
• WEST 11 (Di Dors also in Notting Hill bedsit land with gay Alfred Lynch, in early Winner 1963)
• TWO LEFT FEET (Young Hemmings and Michael Crawford shine)
• SOME PEOPLE, 1962 charmer about Bristol teenagers, with Hemmings again.
• THE BOYS - fascinating 1962 time capsule
• THE LEATHER BOYS - another early gay British saga, 1964, below)
  
• BILLY LIAR
• THE SERVANT
• DARLING (above right) - Julie and gay pal eye up the waiter .... both get him.
• THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES
• I WAS HAPPY HERE
• THE KNACK
• THE SYSTEM - perfectly 1964 as England began to swing ...
• THE WORLD TEN TIMES OVER - 1963 Soho saga
  
• A HARD DAY'S NIGHT
• HELP!
• THE PLEASURE GIRLS - 1965 Kensington girls, gays too!
• SATURDAY NIGHT OUT
• NOTHING BUT THE BEST
• REPULSION
• ACCIDENT.

SWINGING 60s:

• TOM JONES
• WHATS NEW PUSSYCAT?
• MODESTY BLAISE
• BLOW-UP
• SMASHING TIME
• HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH
• DEEP END
• PERFORMANCE.

All covered in detail at British/London labels. 

Dirk's books

We have not done a Dirk Bogarde post for a while - he is one of our Patron Saints here after all, as per all the other posts on him. After my recent house move I was unpacking all those books of his ... who knew when I met him back in November 1970, when he was promoting DEATH IN VENICE and doing a lecture/Q&A at the BFI in London, when he was just starting on that decade in France, that he would go on to write 9 best-selling books of autobiography and 6 novels. There are several other books on him too ...

A POSTILLION STRUCK BY LIGHTENING in 1977 was his first book, a delightful and popular best-seller on his idyllic childhood on the Sussex downs. This was followed by SNAKES AND LADDERS in '78, still a terrific re-read on his early career and being the "Idol of The Odeons" and goes up to that move to France. AN ORDINARY MAN and BACKCLOTH continue the saga of life in Provence and his 1970s films, while the fascinating A SHORT WALK FROM HARRODS in 1993 covers the end of the French life, with illness and death and that return to Chelsea in London, and then his own stroke and recovery. GREAT MEADOW is another childhood memoir, and CLEARED FOR TAKE-OFF in 1995 is more tales of his career and some of the people he knew (like Ingrid Bergman and Capucine and the young Bardot). They are all here in these books, as Dirk certainly knew everyone including all those fascinating ladies like Kay Kendall, Garland, Ava, and all the new talent of the Fifties and Sixties he worked with.  

A PARTICULAR FRIENDSHIP is a charming memoir too of his pen-friend ship with an American woman who owned one of his houses - she did not know who Bogarde was but saw some pictures of the house in a magazine at the hairdressers and just had to write to him about it, leading to a long friendship until her death. FOR THE TIME BEING in 1998 (a year before he died) is a very interesting collection of his book reviews and columns for "The Times" from when he was back in London and doing regular reviews. 

I saw him again in 1992 at the National Theatre, reading from and discussing one of his memoirs then. 

His first novel A GENTLE OCCUPATION in 1980, remains his best for me, its very re-readable too and a fascinating story with great characters in that Far Eastern wartime setting; VOICES IN THE GARDEN amuses, the others are WEST OF SUNSET, JERICHO, PERIOD OF ADJUSTMENT and his final one CLOSING RANKS in 1997 which I have not read, but a copy is on its way to me. 

Books on Dirk are the 1974 THE FILMS OF DIRK BOGARDE by Margaret Hinxman and Susan D'Arcy; comprehensive up to THE NIGHT PORTER; Shreridan Morley's career and life overview in DIRK BOGARDE RANK OUTSIDER, and Robert Tanitch's DIRK BOGARDE: THE COMPLETE CAREER ILLUSTRATED, in 1988 all with great detail and photographs. He was certainly the most prolific and most-written about of the British stars of his era, as shown by the huge (600+ pages) authorised biography by John Coldstream (who commissioned Dirk to write for "The Times") followed by EVER, DIRK, a collection of his letters (500+ pages), edited by Coldstream. 

Two other delicious items I must mention are that 1958 Fan's Star Library little book on him - I collected them all and first had that when I was 12 ( still have the Sophia Loren one too), and one I acquired much later as a car boot sale: Dirk's Life Story in Pictures which is a priceless delight with all those illustrations. It explains Dirk's bachelorhood to the fans (this was 1958) with the relevation that he was really in love with Jean Simmons (his co-star in SO LONG AT THE FAIR in 1950) all along but she broke his heart by choosing Stewart Granger, leaving Dirk alone at his country estate ...... it also has a delicious take on Rock Hudson and his sham marriage - as covered before here, see Dirk comic strip label, for more. 

Interesting chapters on Dirk too in the biographies of actors like James Fox, Michael Craig, John Fraser and Michael York, on working and socialising with Dirk and of course Tony Forwood. 

4 British classics ....

As mentioned we moved house back in May, downsizing to an apartment 10 floors up, with great views. So we have been re-sorting and getting settled ok. A box of dvds though seems to have gone astray, maybe thrown out by mistake ..... I have had to re-buy several I had to have, but at least they are very cheap now. 

There were 4 essential British classics I had to have back:

THE BLUE LAMP - the 1949 thriller with a young Dirk Bogarde in his break-out role as the spiv with a gun in grim postwar London - its still terrific now, with great location filming. This is the one where PC Dixon of Dock Green (Jack Warner) gets shot by Dirk, but was later resurrected for that long-running TV series, which I remember seeing when new in London in the '60s.

POOL OF LONDON - a museum piece from 1951 showing the busy docks of London around London Bridge and surrounding bombsites after the war - its all different now of course with the new City Hall by London Bridge, ships can't moor there any more. A sterling British cast of the time headed by Bonar Colleano and Earl Cameron  as sailors on leave getting involved with crime and robbery, and there's that early inter-racial romance ....

SAPPHIRE - a fascinating re-view now from 1959, with the murder of that girl whose body is found on Hampstead Heath, as we follow detectives Nigel Patrick and Michael Craig as they discover that the girl, Sapphire, was passing for white - we follow the investigation through the London night clubs and to that ordindary suburban family. Yvonne Mitchell is marvellous as ever here. Those gals passing for white just can't resist those bongo drums, as detective Michael Craig realises in that seedy Notting Hill clip-joint ....

VICTIM - London in 1961 with those homosexuals being blackmailed, as we see all sections of society from titled toffs to grubby bedsits, taking in the famous Salisbury (gay then) pub, and the bookshops around Charing Cross Road, as barrister Melville Farr (Bogarde again) determines to find the blackmailers who have caused the death of the young man (Peter McEnery) he had been seeing, to the consteration of his wife Sylvia Syms, who does not understand ....

It was only after ordering them I realised all four are of course directed by Basil Dearden (killed in a car crash in 1971 aged 60) - one of the great directors of British films, but not as lauded as the Schlesingers, Loseys or Richardsons were. 

Other British classics of that post-war era, which I like a lot, and are reviewed here, at British/London  labels include IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY, HOLIDAY CAMP (both 1947), and  DANCE HALL from 1950. The early '50s also provided those enjoyable entertainments like TURN THE KEY SOFTLY, THE WEAK AND THE WICKED, THE GOOD DIE YOUNG, IT STARTED IN PARADISE (with Kay Kendall in a small role before hits like SIMON AND LAURA). Then there's those enjoyable Rank romps like AN ALLIGATOR NAMED DAISY, THE SPANISH GARDENER, CAMPBELL'S KINGDOM, DANGEROUS EXILE, PASSPORT TO SHAME and more, keeping the likes of Dirk Bogarde, Glynis Johns, Joan Collns, Yvonne Mitchell, Stanley Baker Michael Craig, Laurence Harvey, Diana Dors, Belinda Lee busy ...
So British cinema in the 1950s was very productive too, the Forties may have been the golden era of David Lean, Michael Powell, Carol Reed, Anthony Asquith, and the Sixties to early Seventies saw the new crowd of Tony Richardson, John Schlesinger, Joseph Losey, Richard Lester, Clive Donner etc. before the Trash merchants took over. 
The Fifties also saw that British War Era as they re-fought World War II keeping Dirk in uniform, along with Richard Todd, Kenneth More, John Mills, Jack Hawkins, Peter Finch, Stanley Baker, Michael Redgrave etc: THE SEA SHALL NOT HAVE THEM, THE CRUEL SEA, SEA OF SAND, DUNKIRK, THE DAM BUSTERS, REACH FOR THE SKY, THE MALTA STORY, APPOINTMENT IN LONDON, THEY WHO DARE, ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT, BATTLE OF THE RIVER PLATE, YANGSTE INCIDENT etc. 

Bad Movies We Love: Justine

The little-seen JUSTINE from 1969 is one of those 'literary' 20th Century Fox movies - from the Laurence Durrell book, set in Alexandria during the 1930s - that somehow ended up a Trash masterpiece, practically ignored or laughed at back in 1969 when Fox eventually released it. George Cukor somehow created a movie of great moments - well I like it anyway - theres Anouk Aimee in one of her key post-UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME movies, looking sensational as always, and her little girl voice is part of her allure here. Dirk Bogarde is in his element as Pursewarden, young Michael York and Anna Karina too. It is all very lush and colourful using some of the location footage - Cukor keeps everything swirling, like he did with India in BHOWANI JUNCTION. Bogarde and Anouk were old friends from way back (she also appeared - wildly miscast - in the TV film of his novel VOICES IN THE GARDEN), and York had been in ACCIDENT with Dirk in '67. Here's what I wrote about it previously:

JUSTINE gets a couple of rare screenings as part of the Dirk Bogarde retrospective (only his post-1960 career) at the London National Film Theatre - I shall have to amble along and savour it on the widescreen again. It has been unseen for decades but it was a treat to get a copy recently, an enjoyable 20th Century Fox version of the Durrell books set in Alexandria and rather a botched movie. It was began in Tunisia in '68 with director Philip Strick (who did ULYSSES), but the project was then recalled to the Fox lot in California, with George Cukor taking over. Cukor and Aimee had one of THE famous feuds, as they did not get on AT ALL. The fascinating international cast though has Dirk Bogarde giving another terrific performance as Pursewarden, young Michael York as Darnley the narrator who falls in love with the mysterious Justine, also Anna Karina, John Vernon, Robert Forster, Philippe Noiret and Cliff Gorman as one of those dancing girls.

I see that

I just like the look of the film, those mysterious locations and Aimee being very enigmatic, looking alluring with that little girl voice, she seems incommunicative though, as though she does not want to be there – it was silly though to use the nude body double seen in long shot for the beach scene with the horses. Leon Shamroy makes it all look terrific and there is a nice score by Jerry Goldsmith. It really has the look and texture almost of a Von Sternberg picture, and remains one of the great good bad movies. I used to have a photo of Anouk as Justine on my wall back in 1969...by the late '60s everything Moroccan and Tunisian were suddenly part of the new hippie chic, as movies like DUFFY, MAROC 7 and PERFORMANCE showed.

It just looks terrific with those Tunisian locations, Vernon and Forster are the warring brothers Nessim and Narouz, and there are masked balls, belly dancers and lots of intrigue among the expats in Alexandria where everyone seems to be hiding guilty secrets. Bogarde is ideal as Pursewarden - by this time Anouk had become a very big star indeed, having been in movies since the late 40s, those Fellinis and UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME had added to her allure, but by the time JUSTINE she just wanted to be away with her new love Albert Finney, so it seems she had no real interest in the film and didn't film again until 1976 by which time her marriage to Finney was over.

York is the young narrator describing in the voiceover how Justine seemed to move in a golden glow..."blood-sister to a thousand tyrant queens". Everyone is in thrall to the fascinating Justine, the seemingly amoral wife of a wealthy Egyptian, biding her time in 1930s Alexandria with a slew of lovers, who spends her time looking for a lost child in the brothels of Alexandria, Anna Karina is the less fortunate prostitute who innocently lets slip Justine's real political interests to Pursewarden, after her romance with York has finished.


It is a condensed version of Lawrence Durrell's brilliant literary classic "Alexandria Quartet", about the sophisticated game of international intrigue and espionage in Alexandria between the first and second world wars with subtle character portraits from a range of British and European actors at the top of their game; it is just a perfect film of its time and place, late 60s, Europe and Hollywood combining. I can't wait to see it again .....

Bette and Dirk / Dirk and Bette

People We Like, continued. Dirk Bogarde (the man who knew everyone) didn't get to meet Bette Davis until late in both their careers and lives, but I remember seeing them in some tribute show in the 1980s.  

Here they are with Dickie (Lord Attenborough) too - I met him and his wife the time we were all queueing for Dirk's first personal appearance/Q&A at the London BFI in 1970, and Bette was a wow there in person in 1972  (above right), as we have reported before here, Bette, NFT labels.

Dirk in 1971

I came across a fascinating long interview with Dirk Bogarde by Gordon Gow in the May 1971 200th issue of one of my favourite magazines "Films and Filming", about the time Dirk was promoting Visconti's DEATH IN VENICE. (As I have recounted here before, I met him about 6 months before this interview, at the London BFI in November 1970 where he gave a very entertaining lecture and Q&A session, and he autographed the programme for me afterwards when I managed to have a quick conversation with him). 

Dirk always gave good interview and this one is choice. I must quote some extracts .... as he talks about Marilyn Monroe, and various films of his like THE SPANISH GARDENER, THE SERVANT, ACCIDENT and DEATH IN VENICE. He talks a lot about Visconti here, and was particularly fond of SENSO. 

"Marilyn had this intangible wistfulness … in BUS STOP she was magical. Do you remember the scene where she gets her tatty old train ripped off her by a man at a café table when she is doing her act? Do you remember her look of pain and rage and despair?

THE SPANISH GARDENER: “In those days they wouldn’t have anything to do with homosexuality. The whole premise of the original story was that a small boy, without any sexual knowledge, fell in love with the gardener because he had no love at all from his parents. He had no mother and a perfectly foul father. This sort of thing so often happens. The whole story tilted on the fact that the father became incurably jealous because he was sexually in love with the gardener. And of course that did not come through because then we were supposed to be making nice wholesome pictures. In the end nothing worked out, I wasn’t killed as the gardener was in the book. We made it all nice for the Odeon circuit. It was so absurd and shameful I did not go and see it, but the old aunties and uncles loved it." (In the book, a best-seller by A.J. Cronin, Jose the gardener is 19 - Bogarde was 35 at the time, and the character was not killed off as in the novel, as Rank created a false happy ending to send audiences home happy).   

He is not especially fond of his work in THE SERVANT. “It amuses me. It was enormous fun to do – it was no effort. It was entirely technical to act. Harold Pinter had written it so unfailingly that you couldn’t put a foot wrong in it. I was surrounded with only the very best people, and it was as easy as falling off a log. But THE SERVANT will be a classic film for all time. I know – whatever happens to me – I will be in the archives because of THE SERVANT. In its entirety of course, its an important film. Especially now we know all about LSD – surprise, surprise. Apparanty audiences didn’t now about LSD when the film was first shown, and none of the critics did either, and the whole ending is LSD – the boy is on a trip. I’ve seen it again in America recently and it stands up, and it is absolutely chilling in German – more than that, it’s a towering picture. But from my point of view it cost me very little emotionally, because I’m nothing to do with the man I played in THE SERVANT so it was easy to become a North country bastard called Barrett and his compulsion to dominate." Shame he was not asked about Gabriel, his high camp arch-villain in Losey's 1966 MODESTY BLAISE ... (one of my essential movies). Left: a MODESTY publicity shot.

He says though that ACCIDENT is the best film Losey and Bogarde did together. “I was very aware of the emotions of the man in ACCIDENT and I was almost in a trance for about four months after I’d finished it. …. I put all the clothes and shoes that I wore for the character into a trunk and locked them up. I wore them later in JUSTINE and left them all behind me in Hollywood, so they may come up for sale in 20^th Century Fox’s lot. I got rid of them, you see, because the man I had been in ACCIDENT was dead and I didn’t want his clothes  - locked them away as you would with the clothes of anybody who has died in a sudden car crash. JUSTINE was much later and Pursewarden was a different man." (I saw and reviewed ACCIDENT again recently, scroll down or over the page..).

"Aschenbach in DEATH IN VENICE is the ultimate loser. He’s a dying man, he goes to Venice for the last months of his life. After years of rigorous and strict belief that beauty is created by man, he suddenly finds at dinner one night that God, quite alone by Himself, all up there in Heaven, has created a piece of beauty sitting across the soup plate … a youth of such beauty that Aschenbach can’t believe it. … Before he dies he sees that God was right and man was wrong. That God is in fact the creator of beauty … I do believe there is a higher power, and I don’t know any other word for it but God. I think our future is formed: whether you go and play golf on the moon or get squashed by a truck on a French bypass. Its all shaped."

Bogarde now lives in his house in France, at Grasse, eschewing the crowded beaches below and settling for a hose-down in his back garden. He is waiting for Alain Resnais to give him the word to start work on a film about the Marquis de Sade, but money has been difficult to raise. “I’ve got a very pleasant place to live in now. Sufficient money to exist for the rest of my life if I’m very careful. I can manage … DEATH IN VENICE could well be the finish for me. I don’t want to go back to the things I did before – the DOCTORS and all that rubbish. If DEATH IN VENICE fails, I’ll stay with it as a failure. If it’s a success, and my performance in it has worked, then perhaps it’s the film I’ve always been wanting to make – and I might someday go and do another somewhere, but I’m not anxious." 

Of course that Resnais film did not happen - Dirk as the Marquis de Sade would have been interesting! - , but he and Resnais did the wonderful PROVIDENCE in 1977, and by then he had began his series of memoirs and novels as he became a best-selling writer. 
His later books like "A Short Walk From Harrods" recount his later French years and his and partner Tony Forwood's return to London due to ill-health - where he died in 1999 aged 78. Interesting too to read about the LSD in THE SERVANT, It did seem that Tony (James Fox) was drugged at the end, but I did not imagine it could have been LSD! (We certainly knew about LSD in 1968 when we were seeing The Doors and Jefferson Airplane in concert and the 2001 film on acid, but hardly early in the decade). 
It was interesting too seeing THE SERVANT again on the big screen a couple of year ago, as I have recounted previously, at the Curzon Soho, to tie in with its Blu-ray release, with co-stars Fox, Sarah Miles and Wendy Craig present, to discuss the film and their memories of working with Dirk and Losey, both of whom I had seen (separately) back in 1970 when I was a mere 24. Left: Bogarde at the BFI in 1970.
LOTS more Bogarde at the labels ....