Heatwave movies: I want to see "Cycle Sluts" ....

"I suppose all the guys you pick up are air-conditioned"!

Yes, its a return visit to THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT, that 1970 treat that drove us (my pal Stanley and I) delirious at the time, with all those quotable lines. Barbra Streisand and George Segal certainly had their finger on the pulse then .... It was such a treat to see Barbra in her first modern role, as Doris Wilgus the prostitute whom Segal gets evicted from her apartment so she turns up on his doorstep - boy, is his day and night going to get a whole lot worse .... It was a hit play of course. Segal is nerdy Felix Sherman, as our mis-matched couple, fight, yell, and finally get close.

Can a bickering odd couple in Manhattan become friends and maybe more? Owlish Felix is an unpublished writer who vents his frustration by reporting to the super that the woman in a neighboring flat takes the occasional payment for sex. She's Doris, more wildcat than pussycat, and when Felix's peeping-tom-tattle-tale routine gets her bounced from her apartment, she knocks at his door at 3 AM, aggressive and ticked off. They yell, lose another apartment, and pick up where they left off in a friend's flat and beyond. Dancing by the light of the moon seems unlikely for this owl and pussycat. "You had a bad day? I lost my job, I didn't get paid, I got thrown out of my room, I got nowhere to go, it's raining and I'm stuck in a crummy room with a pervert!"

Along the way we take in Doris's porno movie CYCLE SLUTS ("I want to see Cycle Sluts", "overcoat"?, "no", "wanna hire one"?) or ("Take that cycle slut into the room", "not the room", "yes, the room", "take that, you cycle slut"); ("What's that thing?...and what's that other thing?") ("You can't put that there!" . ."Maybe you can!")

Its certainly one to love, virtually a two-hander, as our mis-matched couple grow to like each other, with that climax in Central Park., as Pauline Kael put it: "Were Hepburn & Tracy this good? Maybe, but not better"!.Directed by Herbert Ross (one of his better outings), with script by Buck Henry from Bill Manhoff's play.The humour is very 1970s as Doris accuses Felix of being a fag and teases him mercilessly; its funny too when they are stoned in the tub (below) as the owners return ...

Forgotten '60s movies: Lost Command

4 of our '60s favourites (Delon, Cardinale, Ronet, Segal)  in 1 forgotten war movie! Let's go ...

LOST COMMAND, 1966. “Anthony Quinn plays a hard-headed officer determined to become a hero at any cost in this dramatic war saga” but what will today’s generation make of this muddled war film dealing as it does with the French army in Indochina and Algeria in the ‘50s?. A Hollywood version of Pontecorvo's THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS? It starts with the battle of Dien Bien Phu in Indochina where the troops surrender to Burt Kwouk. 

George browns up ...

Mark Robson directs ably after touching on India’s problems (NINE HOURS TO RAMA), Sweden (THE PRIZE) and Nazi Germany (VON RYAN’S EXPRESS) not to mention his Hollywood sages like MY FOOLISH HEART, PEYTON PLACE or, his next, VALLEY OF THE DOLLS. Here in a large cast we have Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale re-teamed but Robson does not showcase them like Visconti did in THE LEOPARD. Likewise there’s Delon and Maurice Ronet, teamed again after Clement’s PLEIN SOLEIL as different types of captains, Delon the idealist and Ronet another career solider determined to do whatever is needed. Most bizarre of all is George Segal, right, (after SHIP OF FOOLS and KING RAT as per recent reviews here, Segal label) in brownface as an Algerian, initially one of Quinn’s platoon in Indochina, but soon he is radicalised and becomes an Algerian “terrorist” determined to drive the French out of Algeria – well there’s topical resonance in that. Michele Morgan is also on hand as a French countess to romance Quinn who gets another chance to prove himself when she gets him a new position in Algeria. The peasant born Quinn aspires to her class and good life. He persuades his army buddies Delon and Ronet to join him in shaping up a unit, but eventually is forced to confront his old colleague Mahidi, now the Arab terrorist leader (Segal). In a desperate struggle to achieve victory he launches a bloody battle against the terrorist rebel forces …. 

LOST COMMAND bitterly shows man’s inhumanity to man – with questions that still ask us who is the terrorist? And why are they in Algeria in the first place? A war scenario that still echoes today in different parts of the world. It’s a serviceable enough war drama with a terrific mid-60s cast in their prime, but like any film that uses real war situations it raises more questions that it answers … 
I still can’t get over Segal browned up as the Algerian who changes sides (with Claudia as his sister who uses Delon to avoid those military checkpoints).  Some exciting moments too with a well-staged roadside ambush (rather like in THE HURT LOCKER) and theres the Hitchcockian frisson as we wait for a planted bomb to go off, and helicopter chases after those rebels in the mountains. It ends with Delon quitting the army while the career guys like Quinn and Ronet ironically get bedecked with medals .... 

An odd film then, one of those big-cast expensive productions no longer seen now - Delon served in Indochina himself I understand, and Claudia hails from Tunis, next to Algeria, but here they are making "entertainment" out of a real war situation, the French military operations in Indochina and Algeria, mystifying to us now - filmed in Spain, and Segal browned up as the Algerian terrorist would surely never happen today ?  Not trashy enough to be a Trash Classic, but Trash all the same ...

Simone Signoret: Ship of Fools / The Deadly Affair

Based on the novel by Katharine Anne Porter, 1965's SHIP OF FOOLS is set on board a liner sailing from Mexico to Bremerhaven in Germany in 1933 - a significant date. Among the many passengers (who represent society at large then) are divorcee Mary Treadwell (Vivien Leigh in her final role) and La Condesa (Simone Signoret) a drug-addicted Spanish noblewoman being deported as a political prisoner. Leigh and Signoret are both marvellous here - Signoret in particular having a doomed romance with ship's doctor Oscar Werner (who has a heart condition...) - these two are tremendous together. Leigh (who died in 1967) has some stunning moments too, an older Blanche Du Bois or Mrs Stone, surveying her ageing appearance in the mirror, suddenly bursting into a frantic charleston as she walks along the corridor, she is desperate for love and affection and certainly knows how to work a feather boa, she also attacks Lee Marvin who stumbles into her cabin thinking it is that of one of the women selling their favours in Jose Greco's flamenco troupe. 

Marvin is an ageing alcoholic athlete here - also on board are artists George Segal and Elizabeth Ashley (looking like a very 60s modern miss) who have a love-hate relationship, Michael Dunn as a dwarf who addresses us the audience, Jose Ferrer as an obnoxious German spouting his anti-Jewish verbiage without thinking and is a budding Nazi in the making, well-meaning captain Charles Korvin, and a cross section of Germans including Lilia Skala and her dog, Heinz Reuhmann who cannot believe bad of his fellow Germans, teenager Gila Golan and her parents, and the lower decks are full of refugees and extras. We follow their interweaving stories as this particular ship of fools head towards Germany and their destiny ... which foreshadows the holocaust to come, showing a microscosm of a world on the verge of war and worse, as we glimpse a swastika on arrival in Germany ...

Social Significance and Big Issues were always Stanley Kramer's forte and his big ponderous pictures were popular then, whether dealing with racial intolerance (THE DEFIANT ONES), the end of the world (ON THE BEACH), the war trials (JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBURG), teaching (INHERIT THE WIND) etc. SHIP OF FOOLS, scripted by Abby Mann, is more of the same (the naive German Jew returning to Germany says: "there are one million Jews in Germany alone. What are they going to do -- kill all of us?") but it is quite entertaining as well, particuarly when the leads are on view - much more satisfying than the 1976 all-star plodder VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED which was too stuffed with names to involve one ("look, there's Julie Harris with Wendy Hiller..." etc), Oscar Werner was in that too, married to Faye Dunaway in her jackboots).

SHIP OF FOOLS was one of  the year's big ones - but the look of the film is all over the place, only the two leads make any attempt at a period look, the others - particularly Segal and Ashley - look as it they walked in off the street in 1965; it is though interesting to see again as I had not seen it since 1965 when I was 19, at one of my favourite cinemas, the Notting Hill Coronet, which thankfully is still there, though it comprises smaller cinemas now. (Segal of course was heading into his busy years then, with THE QUILLER MEMORANDUM, KING RAT (review below) and so many others). 

Signoret and Leigh must surely have had some interesting conversation about Marilyn Monroe, who of course worked with both their husbands Olivier and Montand, Signoret also starred with Olivier in TERM OF TRIAL....

THE DEADLY AFFAIR: Sidney Lumet's 1966 downbeat thriller has another fascinating role for a rather deglamorised Signoret, and has the perfect casting of James Mason, Harry Andrews, Maximilian Schell, Harriet Andersson and Lynn Redgrave, with lots of familiar faces: Roy Kinnear, Robert Flemyng and others.

Based on a John Le Carre novel THE DEADLY AFFAIR is a cold war thriller centred in the world of espionage. When Foreign Office official Samuel Fennan and his wife (Signoret) are anonymously accused of Communist affiliations, their world is turned upside down. Fennan is subsequently found dead from an apparant suicide, although Secret Service agent Charles Dobbs (Mason), suspects otherwise. When Dobbs' suspicions hit a dead end with his superior officer, the veteran agent decides to resign his government post and join forces with retired CID inspector Mendel (Andrews). As the two men continue their pursuit of the truth, their investigation unearths a spy ring and much more than they ever expected along the way.

This is a satisfying convoluted thriller, rather like that other Le Carre, THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD (Mason is George Smiley in all but name), with offbeat London locations - the cast excel, good to see Ingmar Bergman actress Harriet Andersson here, Signoret is suitably enigmatic, and there is a murder in a London theatre (the Aldwych actually where David Warner is playing EDWARD II on stage..., and Lynn is a dippy stagehand). It combines elements of film noir, magnificent cast, understatement, gritty realism, even a touch of humor now and then among the glum events. Signoret in just 4 scenes (2 of them silent) excels, the intrusive score by Quincy Jones seems out of place though.

Mason, Signoret and Warner joined forces again for Lumet's impossible to see now THE SEAGULL in '68. We do though have another Signoret to watch: THE WIDOW COUDERC from 1971 with Alain Delon, plus Ophuls' 1950 LA RONDE to re-visit. She is also terrific and glamorous in 1967's GAMES, that quirky thriller by Curtis Harrington, see review at Signoret label.

More Kramer soon - his 1969 'comedy' THE SECRET OF SANTA VITTORIO one of several Qunns to see (THE LOST COMMAND, THE GREEK TYCOON), also Lumet's last film BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD; more Lee Marvins too: THE KILLERS, POINT BLANK, HELL IN THE PACIFIC, PRIME CUT.

1965 - Marie Chantal & King Rat

A detour from 1966 to a treat from 1965 which I just had to see right away: Claude Chabrol's MARIE CHANTAL VS DR KHA - thanks Jerry!, plus Bryan Forbes' KING RAT, not seen since 1965 ...

Dr Kha (Akim Tamiroff hamming it up) the evil mastermind sends out his minions, including the slinky Olga (Stephane Audran) to obtain the jewelled panther with ruby eyes which actually contains a virus that could wipe out all of mankind!  The man carrying the ornament knows he is being followed and strikes up conversation on a train to a ski-ing resort with the madcap Marie Chantal (Marie Laforet) travelling with her cousin and a mysterious stranger (Francisco Rabal) and persuades her to take the panther and hide it for him ...... there is derring-do on the train, and also in Switzerland on the ski-slopes. He gets killed of course and Marie Chantal realises she is in danger, but she is a resourceful girl and runs rings around all the others. We then head off to Morocco, with more danger in the souks ... Olga does her best to get the panther and faces the wrath of Dr Kha - Marie Chantal though takes the rubies from the panther and turns them into ear-rings! - so the actual panther is now worthless as the precious virus is stored in the rubies ! Finally she confronts the evil mastermind .... who will emerge triumphant ?

This is delirious fun - a comedy thriller by Chabrol, up there with the best of them, like his ROUTE TO CORINTH, another bright comedy thriller set in Greece with Seberg and Ronet in 1967, and like De Broca's L'HOMME DE RIO which did for Brazil what Chabrol does for Morocco here, with the perfect duo of Belmondo and Dorleac (French label). It is also rather like what Losey was trying to achieve in MODESTY BLAISE with his heroine (Vitti) outwitting the bad guys, and it is all very Austin Powers ... and the Moroccan backgrounds are even better than in MAROC 7 or DUFFY (60s labels)...

 
The attraction for me are 2 stunning French actresses - I was transfixed by Marie Laforet since I first saw Rene Clements' PLEIN SOLEIL as a child (see label), she is the original Marge, and looks as perfect as Delon, she also sings, in a French folk style - I have some of her albums and downloads. 

She has one of those perfect angular faces - then there is Audran, as cool and delicious as ever, just as she and Chabrol began that marvellous series of films in the late '60s (like LA FEMME INFIDELE, review at Audran label). Serge Reggiani, Charles Denner and Roger Hanin are also involved in this delirious spy spoof, which is a joy to see now. Chabrol himself puts in an appearance too ... This is really a "pulpy" genre item like the Eurospy Bond spoof (like DANGER DIABOLIK) filtered through Chabrol's arty sensibilities (as Losey was doing at the same time with MODESTY). For an arty Eurospy movie with a strong female lead MARIE CHANTAL is just the ticket, and an interesting addition to the Chabrol boxsets ... I will be looking forward to visiting Marie Chantal again before too long ...

Now for something completely different: KING RAT, from the James Clavell novel, set in Changi prison in 1945. This is not a GREAT ESCAPE kind of prison where everyone looks well fed - the heat and humidity are well conveyed in the black and white photography - and as in the same year's other war movie Lumet's THE HILL a terrific cast of army types is assembled. Bryan Forbes directs and keeps us engrossed. It is one of the few war films to depict the conflict in the East, like A TOWN LIKE ALICE or THE LONG AND THE SHORT AND THE TALL ...

When Singapore surrendered to the Japanese in 1942 the Allied POWs, mostly British but including a few Americans, were incarcerated in Changi prison. This was a POW detention center like no other. Included among the prisoners is the American Cpl. King, a wheeler dealer who has managed to established a pretty good life for himself in the camp. While most of the prisoners are near starvation and have uniforms that are in tatters, King eats well and and has crisp clean clothes to wear every day. His nemesis is Lt. Robin Grey, the camp Provost who attempts to keep good order and discipline. He knows that King is breaking camp rules by bartering with the Japanese but can't quite get the evidence he needs to stop him. King soon forms a friendship with Lt. Peter Marlowe an upper class British officer who is fascinated with King's élan and no rules approach to life. As the story develops, it reveals the hypocrisy of the British class system and for King, the fact that his position in Changi's "society" is tenuous as best.

George Segal is ideal as King, as are James Fox as Marlowe (whom King practically seduces with a fried egg first time we see him), while Tom Courtenay seethes with rage at being unable to pin a charge on King. Add in John Mills, James Donald, Alan Webb, Denholm Elliott, Leonard Rossiter, John Standing etc ... King is a cynical huster/wheeler-dealer, while the British officers try to maintain civilised behaviour and standards in a pitiless world.

 
KING RAT now seems a very under-rated almost forgotten '60s film, odd as Segal, Fox and Courtenay were leading lights at the time, and Forbes had several successes (SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON, WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND, THE L-SHAPED ROOM and went on to THE WHISPERERS, THE WRONG BOX, THE STEPFORD WIVES etc, but somehow it was Losey, Schlesinger and Lester who were the critics' darlings - with THE KNACK winning best film at Cannes - I liked it but did not think it was that good!  KING RAT though is fascinating to see now, the outcome and final scene between King and Marlowe being quite affecting ... Courtenay of course also had his Losey moment with Bogarde in 1964's  KING AND COUNTRY, I must one of the few to have seen that rarity! Fox and Courtenay had of course already played in the 1962 LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER, Tony Richardson's downbeat drama from another Alan Sillitoe story, where resentful borstal boy Courtenay throws the race to spite his governor Michael Redgrave, Fox is the boy from the posh school who therefore wins ... According to Fox's biography KING RAT was made in Hollywood, and they were all on special diets to look suitably emaciated ....

Next 1965 item: the also little-seen now Kramer extravaganza SHIP OF FOOLS where Simone Signoret, Vivien Leigh (her last fiilm), Oscar Werner, Lee Marvin, and Segal again all deliver powerful performances ...

Movies I love: No Way To Treat A Lady

After looking at LOVING (review below) from 1970, here is a favourite George Segal film from 1968, the big attraction for me being a lovely performance by Lee Remick. NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY - Jack Smight's black comedy was a treat back then and is still so now, as serial killer Rod Steiger dons different disguises to con his way into the homes of lonely middle aged women ... it of course boils down to his mother complex! Rod runs a theatre so has access to lots of disguises as we see him in turn as an Irish priest, a Polish plumber, in drag as a woman scared to go leave a bar, and hilariously as a gay hairdresser!

George Segal is Mo Brummell, the harrassed Jewish detective on the case - plagued by his very Jewish mother Eileen Heckart who is great fun here. Lee Remick is the girl who may provide a clue and she is charming here making something special of the standard girl role. Just one quibble: wouldn't the mother fixated killer go after Segal's mother rather than his girlfriend? It's got that nice late '60s vibe .... below, right: Steiger in drag with another victim...

Loving, 1970

LOVING. Finally I get to see Irvin Kershner’s 1970 drama with terrific performances from George Segal and Eva Marie Saint. This is a very typical 1969/1970 American film, featuring another dissatisfied middle-aged man, unfaithful to his wife, and unsure of the quality of his work. He was usually either Segal, Jack Lemmon or Elliot Gould (Donald Sutherland delving into more quirky roles). Kirk Douglas did it in Kazan’s THE ARRANGEMENT, Jean Simmons showed us a female version in THE HAPPY ENDING.

Other “little films” of the era include THE STERILE CUCKOO and LAST SUMMER, while the big hitters were Antonioni blowing up America, Fellini going back to Ancient Rome, Visconti high-living with those decadent Nazis and mooning around Venice in search of beauty, while Ken Russell wrestled with D G Lawrence, Tchaikovsky and those demented nuns. LOVING though was, here in the UK, relegated to the lower half of a double bill and promptly forgotten. One can speculate why – Segal had some big hits (with Streisand in THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT, the engaging NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY with Lee Remick, and FUN WITH DICK AND JANE with Jane Fonda) but had done several smaller films – BYE BYE BRAVERMAN, WHERE’S POPPA? – that sank without trace.

LOVING is one of Segal’s better roles as his illustrator has a very trying day, we see him initially having a row with his mistress, harried about work, and at business meetings with sidekick Roy Scheider – one client Sterling Hayden does not see why illustrations for his trucks have to include scantily clad girls. Drink takes its toll too, as he gets sauced and makes a fool of himself at a private members club. Back home his wife Selma , Saint, is keeping everything together, including the two daughters and the cat whose tail he steps on. Worse is to come, as they view a larger house which they could afford if he gets the new project he is after, but it turns out it is being sold by a grim divorcing couple dividing up their possessions. Selma is keen to move but Brooks (Segal) sees it as a “30 year trap” so a row ensues with Selma saying she does not want to be regarded as a trap and he is free to leave if he wants – just how much does she know or suspect? There is also another woman, a neighbour’s wife, who makes it clear she is interested … so, a witty dissection of middle-class life? and a man in mid-life crisis willing to to strike up an affair with any attractive woman who makes eyes at him.

Things comes to a climax at a neighbour’s party at a full house as Brooks gets more and more drunk, and sneaks off with the neighbour’s wife (he even goes back to the house without his pants looking for more booze) but there is an early type of camera link to the rooms and soon the whole assembly is watching their drunk coupling. The film ends or just stops just as it is getting interesting (it’s a brief 89 minutes) with Selma hitting him in a rage. What happens now? Will they also be another divorcing couple selling up? Is he determined to lose everything? Brooks here is that new anti-hero of the era fed up with the hell his life is in suburbia – but 40 years later I bet a lot of people, women particularly, will see him as a prize jerk, tossing everything away and unable to resist other women. Sherry Lansing is another beauty in the background. The advertising world of these heavy drinkers is pitilessly exposed and Gordon Willis’s photography – lots of dark interiors – is exemplary (he went on to shoot KLUTE). Kershner directed several oddball little films: A FINE MADNESS, THE LUCK OF GINGER COFFEY, UP THE SANDBOX, EYES OF LAURA MARS, before joining the Star Wars and James Bond bandwagons. LOVING is a fascinating little oddity then, with Segal and Saint (a decade after her sleek, mesmerising Eve Kendall for Hitchcock) outstanding. I would think Kershner was influenced too by Antonioni’s LA NOTTE with it’s own long party sequence…. [I now remember Kershner's A FINE MADNESS had a similar scene: wild man writer Sean Connery is in the bath with mistress Jean Seberg, when they are discovered by wife Joanne Woodward - not seen it though since 1965!).