Under-rated directors: Desmond Davis

Now in his 90s (born in 1926) Desmond Davis is surely one of Britain's most neglected film directors, who had a good run in the 1960s, and directed that original star-heavy (led by Olivier, Maggie Smith) CLASH OF THE TITANS in 1981 (I couldn't even watch the CGI-heavy remake). 

He began as camera operator on TOM JONES in 1963, and also on Huston's FREUD, plus those new wavers A TASTE OF HONEY and THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER. His 30 directing credits include those two particular favourites of mine, from Edna O'Brien stories: THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES in 1964 and I WAS HAPPY HERE in 1966, with those great County Clare locations Lahinch and Liscannor, as they were then, and Sarah's bedsit in London overlooking the new Post Office Tower.  

I have written about these a lot here  - see Ireland, O'Brien, Miles, Tushingham labels), and he also directed the 1984 television remake of O'Brien's THE COUNTRY GIRLS (the original of GIRL WITH GREEN EYES). Other 60s films include our other favourite SMASHING TIME, re-uniting Rita and Lynn in that slapstick Swinging London riot. There was also a rather good Agatha Christie: ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE. 

Other British-based directors of the time may have got all the kudos and awards (Tony Richardson, Schlesinger, Losey, Lester, Boorman) but Davis's work endures and is still endlessly watchable, particularly his Irish-based dramas,which should have a lot of resonance with anyone Irish. He also did a lovely little film THE UNCLE in 1967 which barely got seen, though I got a ticket to the premiere from "Films and Filming" magazine. 

Next: equally neglected Clive Donner & WHATS NEW PUSSYCAT, ALFRED THE GREAT etc.

An Irish cottage for the weekend ...

Its a weekend with THE QUIET MAN - John Ford's immortal piece of Irish whimsy from 1952. No matter how many times I have seen it (quite a lot since I was a kid) it always comes up fresh. All those great characters to enjoy spending time with - that perfect cottage interior and were Wayne and O'Hara ever more lovable?  (above: the restored cottage for today's tourists)

Brian sings Joni

One of our favourite singers Brian Kennedy sings Joni Mitchell songs on a recent CD (which I had to acquire on eBay from Australia) A LOVE LETTER TO JONI. 

Great to hear a (gay) man singing "Night Ride Home", "A Strange Boy", "Michael From Mountains", "Free Man in Paris", "You Turn Me On I'm A Radio", "Amelia", "River", "A Case Of You" etc.

Other Joni songs that would work well in this context would include "Be Cool", "Man to Man", "Night in the City", "Chelsea Morning", "Car On A Hill", "Talk To Me", "Barangrill" etc. 

Good to hear Brian is well again after cancer treatment, and it was enjoyable hearing him on Michael Ball's radio show last week. He has a new 2 CD compilation out too. His "On Song" CDs are good too on current and old Irish songs I know well, he has of course also toured extensively with Van Morrison. His Joni tribute disk is as good as Ian Shaw's Joni disk DRAWN TO ALL THINGS, or Herbie Hancock's THE JONI LETTERS, or George Michael's great version of "Edith and the Kingpin".  

Two other CDs I had to get recently (not being on Spotify, Martin!) are a brilliant new recording of Tchaikovsky's PATHETIQUE by Seymon Bychkov, and, on its way to me, Daniel Hope's FOR SEASONS, a new take on Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" and with songs for each month - Weill's "September Song" for instance. Can't wait to hear it. 

Just because its March 17 ...

Festive cheer 4

A final Christmas movie choice is 2007's HOW ABOUT YOU? - I don't know if it even opened back then, but its a pleasing end of year amusement. If you are going to film a soapy Maeve Binchy story then the way to do it is to make it look good and get some venerable old thespians on board, and so it is here. There's a nice Irish country house, posing as a retirement home, and the main regulars are Vanessa Redgrave, Imelda Staunton, Brenda Fricker and veteran Joss Ackland (I saw him on stage with Ingrid Bergman 45 years ago.

The plot is about 4 tiresome residents who have upset everyone else and are left alone for Christmas, with young Hayley Atwell (one of the Keeley Hawes-Gemma Atherton school of young actresses) who is minding the place for her sister who has to leave to care for their ill mother. 

She soon gets tired of the antics of the residents and tells them they will have to leave as the home will be closed down if they do not behave. So old showgirl Vanessa, bickering sisters Imelda and Breda, and old curmudgeon Joss have to buckle down and enjoy Christmas.

Its an amusing hour and a half, filmed in nice Irish locations by Anthony Byrne, of course snooty movie buffs would not give it the time of day, but for us others it passed an evening pleasantly enough.

The Ballroom of Romance

William Trevor, the great Irish writer has died at age of 88. We celebrate his great output of novels and short stories. Some of them, like FELICIA'S JOURNEY, FOOLS OF FORTUNE, THE OLD BOYS have been filmed. Here is a lovely version of his short story THE BALLROOM OF ROMANCE, made in 1982. It captures that lonely Irish life on farms perfectly and the frustrations of single women looking for the right, or any, man ... Trevor is worth investigating if you do not know his work. His other short stories are perfect too: "Angels At The Ritz", "The Day We Got Drunk on Cake", "Lovers Of Their Time". "The Hill Bachelors", "The News From Ireland" etc. 

Carol goes to Brooklyn

How nice to have another look at BROOKLYN last night - four months or so since I saw it in the cinema - and CAROL is lined up for a second view tonight. Now that Award Season is behind us for another year, one can appreciate them more fully. Both movies will endure and become more popular, now that they are not swamped by the big hitters anymore. Both have quite a bit in common: both from respected novels, and set in the early Fifties - and both featuring those department store girls: Eilis from Enniscorthy in Ireland, and Therese working in the toy department over Christmas, when Carol Aird walks in and they look at each other .... perfect moments and perfect endings too. And Emory Cohen is my discovery of last year, as Eilis's Italian-American boyfriend. Saoirse, Cate and Rooney are all spell-binding of course. 

For the weekend: a favourite scene ...

I absolutely love this scene from Kubrick's BARRY LYNDON - 1975 - and could watch it over and over (my Blu-ray gets played frequently), for the stunning photography and visuals recreating that 18th century, the throbbing music as the Countess of Lyndon and Barry connect at the gambling table, watched by her son's tutor Reverend Runt (the great Murray Melvin) - and then when they touch and kiss in the moonlight, like two helpless puppets pulled by invisible strings .... the following scenes are wonderful too with more great sets and photography. (see O'Neal label for my full review a while back).

BARRY LYNDON is an award-winning period film by Stanley Kubrick based on the novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844) by William Makepeace Thackeray. It recounts the exploits of an unscrupulous 18th century Irish adventurer (Barry Lyndon né Redmond Barry), particularly his rise and fall within English society. 

I felt I should have the music soundtrack, but the CD is not available now, except for very silly prices. But what is the music here - is it Schubert's Trio Op 100  for violin, cello and piano? 

Rock & Captain Lightfoot

Rock Hudson had some great hits in the 1950s: We all remember and like re-watching GIANT, those Sirk classics like ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS, and of course PILLOW TALK which set him and Doris up as a great box office team for the early '60s. A lot of his other movies - routine adventures and romances - are barely seen or remembered now: SOMETHING OF VALUE set in Africa with a young Sidney Poitier in 1957, NEVER SAY GOODBYE, TWILIGHT OF THE GODS with Cyd Charisse, THIS EARTH IS MINE with Jean Simmons etc. George Stevens' GIANT certainly put him in the major league, as before that he was just another Universal hunk ... He was certainly the actor of choice for Douglas Sirk, who apart from his melodramas, also did some westerns (TAZA, SON OF COCHISE, which featured Rock) and period films like SIGN OF THE PAGAN in 1954 and CAPTAIN LIGHTFOOT in 1955. 

CAPTAIN LIGHTFOOT is an enormously entertaining comic adventure filled with revolutionary skirmishes in 1815 Ireland. It was fun seeing it again, I barely rememered it but recall a photo of Rock in Ireland posing at an Irish road sign. It was the first Hollywood feature film to be entirely shot in the Emerald Isle (It seems THE QUIET MAN just shot exteriors there). Sirk's film glories in the rolling hills and elaborate period finery for the color ‘Scope frame - it was the first Universal-International film shot away from the studio, AND its a Ross Hunter production. Rock plays young rebel Michael Martin, a small-time hood taken under the wing of Captain Thunderbolt (Jeff Morrow), a legendary Robin Hood resistance fighter and bon vivant, whose daughter Barbara Rush causes romantic complications. Rock has some amusing scenes learning how to dance and wearing his new finery. The likes of Finlay Currie, Hilton Edwards, Denis O'Dea and Kathleen Ryan are also involved.  (The scenario was lifted for Michael Cimino’s THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT in 1974. CAPTAIN LIGHTFOOT’s screenwriter W.R. Burnett was not kind to the remake: “He stole it. Son-of-a-bitch. I’m glad HEAVEN'S GATE flopped.”). 

Soon: Another film we like shot in Ireland, in 1959: SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL.

Astor matinees and Plaza nights

The cinemas of our youth ! Yes, some of them are still there. Growing up in a small town in Ireland we had 2 cinemas - and they were certainly kept busy in the 1950s and early 60s - television did not become widely available in Ireland until early 60s. 

The Astor was a big barn of a place, near the town's council estate (it has since been carved into a three-screen multiplex and still going) with just a raised area for the expensive seats - whereas The Plaza, at the more select end of town, was a much cosier place with a perfect upstairs balcony with its own sweet kiosk. It was somehow 'posher' going to The Plaza. Of course us kids began in the cheap seats and as we got older graduated the middle area, and finally to the Balcony ! Both cinemas ran movies for 2 nights, changing programmes 3 times a week, a mix of new, old, double features or a 'full supporting programme' of cartoons, newsreels, shorts and trailers - so one certainly got one's value. They certainly served the town's 3,000 inhabitants then. 

They followed the UK release system, with the Astor showing MGM and Warner Bros, and Columbia, while the Plaza was the home of 20th Century Fox, Paramount and United Artists. Both houses shared Universal-International and British Rank Organisation movies while the Astor also fitted in other British releases from British Lion and Anglo-Amalgamated - like those CARRY ON's. We also got  a smattering of European releases - I first saw Alain Delon in FAIBLES FEMMES at the Plaza, and PLEIN SOLEIL at the Astor, plus Sophia Loren in WOMAN OF THE RIVER, those SISSI films with Romy Schneider, Romy and Lilli Palmer in FIREWORKS and MADCHEN IN UNIFORM, and I remember THE 400 BLOWS at the Astor. 

I should mention (again) my movie-going began in 1954, aged 8, when I was taken by my parents, and graduated to being allowed to go on my own in 1957 - there were no worries about child safety in that more innocent time! Before that my father would take me to all those westerns and John Wayne or Bing Crosby (he liked Bing) movies, or dramas like TRAPEZE, while my mother and aunts took me to musicals and comedies - My mother liked Judy Garland so it must have been her who took me to A STAR IS BORN and a revival of MEET ME IN ST LOUIS - and we went to I COULD GO ON SINGING in 1963. It was a treat to sit at The Astor watching THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME with Gina and Quinn - or Sunday matinees there seeing revivals of BRIGADOON, ITS ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER or costume movies/actioners like MOONFLEET, HELEN OF TROY, ALEXANDER THE GREAT or QUENTIN DURWARD. We were also stunned by EAST OF EDEN, (I could just remember James Dean's death and all the fuss and magazines about him) - loving Dean and Julie Harris (little knowing that one day I would see her on the stage, write to her and she would reply to me). And then the rise of Elvis - particularly liking LOVING YOU, a Plaza favourite - as we got into all that 50s music;. and later those 50s dramas like SEPARATE TABLES or our favourite Susan Hayward in I WANT TO LIVE!  We loved SOUTH PACIFIC and FUNNY FACE at the Plaza, while the Astor had those Warner dramas and musicals like CALAMITY JANE and all those MGM favourites ...

One could in fact go to the movies there almost every night to a different show - and lots did - or as I did go both nights to movies like Loren's IT STARTED IN NAPLES and THE MILLIONAIRESS. A roadhouse epic like BEN HUR or EL CID would run for a week - with intermission and programme, and we would return to them more than once. We loved THE VIKINGS and THE BIG COUNTRY at the Plaza, plus THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN and I vividly remember being stunned by seeing PSYCHO and SOME LIKE IT HOT there for the first time (Ireland did not follow the Certificate system - kids were able to see everything - but anything too risque was pruned to remove anything too salacious - that was Catholic Ireland for you! 

Plaza nights were marvellous watching all those 20th Century Fox items in Cinemascope - and I made some friends there too ... By the time I was 16 it was marvellous watching Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick in DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES at the Astor ..... little did I know that within a decade or so I would be meeting and talking to lot of my favourites like Lee and Dirk, or seeing Bette and others (NFT label) discussing their careers on stage - as it was nearly time to leave small town Ireland and move to the  Big City, which I did in April 1964, when 18, and just in time for the Swinging Sixties - but that will be a different story ...
Going back to the cinema there when on holiday in the late 60s was different - everyone now had televisions, the Plaza had closed (apart from special events and yes they did Bingo on Sunday nights) but the Astor solidered on and still does now. 

Eilis goes to Brooklyn

BROOKLYN would seem to have stolen a march on CAROL, that other literary adaptation about shopgirls in Fifties New York, by getting into cinemas first. We still have to wait two weeks more for Todd Haynes' long-awaited CAROL (it was only filmed last year). John Crowley's film, as scripted by Nick Hornby from Colm Toibin's marvellous and successful novel will leave you in a happy daze, with smiles and a few tears as one leaves the cinema. It is going to be very popular too. The early screening today was practically full. Perhaps Toibin's recent novel "Nora Webster" would also be a good movie?

BROOKLYN is an old fashioned period piece that offers fine acting, beautiful cinematography, charming writing grounded in reality, and thought provoking direction. As I said about the book here in 2010: It is set in the Ireland of the '50s when smart local girl Eilis works in a shop but gets an opportunity to move to Brooklyn and study and improve herself. Small town life of the time is nicely captured and Eilis finds life in Brooklyn much the same among the Irish community there, but before too long she finds her feet - and an Italian boyfriend, also seeking to improve his lot. Then a death calls her back to Ireland where she has to make some hard choices about what to do next.

The Fifties background looks quite right for once, and not trowelled on, the colour schemes are soothing and the production design perfect. As this is 1952 passing mention is made of THE QUIET MAN and SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, a nice touch.The casting is marvellous too, even to the smallest parts - the people we see in the streets or at the store where Eilis works, or the faces of the men at the homeless shelter, and the girls at the Brooklyn boarding house. Jim Broadbent and Julie Walters are as sterling as ever, Brid Brennan is marvellously nasty, and Fiona Glascott is touching as Eilish's sister Rose. 

At the centre though are two stunning performances that hold the attention and enthrall us. Saoirse Ronan, mesmerising as Eilis, she matures before our eyes, and Emory Cohen as Tony, the Italian plumber she falls for in New York. 
He is a marvellous presence and they have great chemistry together, and some very touching scenes. I simply loved every minute of it. Saoirse will be an Oscar contender along with Cate, Rooney, Kate Winslet and Maggie Smith .... going to be an interesting award season. BROOKLYN will be a Best Picture contender too - CAROL will have a lot to live up to. Now for THE LADY IN THE VAN and Winslet's THE DRESSMAKER looks a lot of fun too.

Ireland looks good here too, though Enniscorthy looks rather drab. Emigration from Ireland to America was common in the fifties. I remember a schoolfriend's family moving to San Diego which seemed impossibly exotic to us (his father was a bank manager) and a girl who worked for my mother also going to America - we saw her off from Shannon Airport and the photos she sent looked exactly like Coney Island here.

The little red chairs

Edna O'Brien, one of my favourite authors, now 84, has just written a new novel; THE LITTLE RED CHAIRS - her first in ten years - and as per the reviews, what a stunning piece of work it is. This audacious new work has been hailed as her masterpiece.

Beginning in a fictional small, isolated Irish town, a charismatic mystic and healer, Dr Vlad, arrives and mesmerises the people there with his spirituality and healing therapies. We find out quite soon, though, that he is a wanted war criminal who has committed the most appalling atrocities in the Balkans. To say that he is a thinly disguised Radovan Karadzic would be to exaggerate the extent of the disguise, but by making him a fictional character in a community that she understands intimately, O'Brien can explore his character and the consequences of his actions through fictional events and she paints a brilliant, disturbing portrait of an egocentric, self-deluding psychopath, and the woman ,Fidelma, who loves him.

The chairs of the title - 11,541 of them - were laid out in Sarajevo in 2012 to commemorate the casualities of the siege 20 years earlier. 

So spellbinding is the effect of O'Brien's narrative shifts in perspective that when an appalling act of violence occurs the reader is left reeling, wondering what could possibly follow. The answer, as Fidelma flees to London, sees O'Brien gifting her eloquence to the migrants and refugees along whom Fidelma now finds herself struggling to exist. Could anything be more topical for our troubled era?

With a third act taking place at The Hague in Holland, this is a novel that leaves an indelible impression, brilliantly written and fiercely humane. An astonishing work from a writer of 84 who first excited us with her THE COUNTRY GIRLS back in the 1960s. We have liked a lot of of her output since then as she explored facets of Irish and London life, in those novels, short stories, essays. 

Shopgirls in 1950s New York ...

Rooney Mara in CAROL by Todd Haynes from Patricia Highsmith - and Saoirse Ronan in BROOKLYN from the Colm Toibin novel, finally opening here this week .... can't wait to see them. 

6 lesser-known '60s dramas + a treat ...

Following on from the lesser-known '50s dramas (see below), lets turn to the '60s: 

SONS AND LOVERS. D.H. Lawrence seems back in vogue again, with that new underwhelming BBC version of LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER screened recently, and the BFI are screening a restored WOMEN IN LOVE at the forthcoming London Film Festival, but the only version I know of his monumental novel SONS AND LOVERS is this 1960 version directed by Jack Cardiff, with great CinemaScope black and white images of those Nottingham coal pit communities by Freddie Francis, and co-scripted by Gavin Lambert. 

Young American actor Dean Stockwell plays Paul Morel the sensitive lead trying to become a writer, but the film is dominated by two great performances from Wendy Hiller and his fiercely protective if domineering mother and Trevor Howard as her embittered husband, a coal miner. Their battles form the backbone of the film, as Paul tries to establish his independence and his relationships with with pious Miriam (Heather Sears) and the worldly older married woman Clara Dawes (Mary Ure). It may be rather forgotten now, but was a ‘prestige’ picture (one of 20^th Century Fox’s literary classics little seen now) and was nominated for seven Academy Awards including best film and best director.

ALL FALL DOWN. Another pair of embattled parents (Karl Malden and Angela Lansbury as Ralph and Annabel) feature in John Frankenheimer’s lyrical 1962 drama scripted by William Inge from a book I loved at the time; James’s Leo Herlihy’s novel about 16 year old Clint (Brandon De Wilde) who idolises his wastrel older brother Berry-Berry (Warren Beatty in one of his early eye-catching roles) . I was 16 myself and identified totally with Clint, as we see him initially in Key West in Florida tracking down his brother, who finally comes home for Christmas. This is an amusing sequence as Ralph brings home three tramps for the festive season, to spite Annabel's plans, but she soon manoeuvres them out of the house, aided by some dollar bills. 

The arrival of Echo O’Brien, the “old maid from Toledo” (Eva Marie Saint in another stunning performance) upsets the balance of the house, Clint becomes infatuated with her but she and Berry-Berry embark on a doomed romance and she gets pregnant, but he cannot handle the responsibility and reverts of his mean nature beating up women, as Clint finally sees how shallow and empty and hate-filled he is. I have written about this here before, as per the labels. It remains a pleasure from that good year for Frankenheimer – he also turned out THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ that year. De Wilde also had a good role in HUD the following year, but died in a traffic accident when 30 in 1972. Gay writer Herlihy went on to write "Midnight Cowboy" and did some acting too, he appears with Jean Seberg (see below) in the 1963 IN THE FRENCH STYLE, another favourite.

REACH FOR GLORY. Another book I loved back then when 16 in 1962 was “The Custard Boys” by John Rae, which was a highly-regarded novel about British teenagers in wartime. This is what I wrote back in 2011:

Hardly ever seen now, Philip Leacock's 1962 film REACH FOR GLORY is the film version of a highly praised 1960 novel "The Custard Boys" by John Rae, a headteacher at Westminster College. The blurb said: "During World War II, teenage boys in a small English town are consumed with jingoism and brutal war games, hoping dearly that the war won't end before they can fight in it. John, one of the younger members, is increasingly torn between these peer group values and his deepening homoerotic friendship with Mark, a gentle Jewish refugee whom his gang has ostracized as a sissy and a coward." It is rather suggestive of LORD OF THE FLIES, leading as it does to tragedy, and starts with the boys chasing and killing a cat. The main adults are the estimable Harry Andrews and Kay Walsh as hero John Curlew's parents, and Michael Anderson as Lewis Craig, the bullying leader of the gang, as the boys are encouraged in their war games, but love and affection are very suspect - life during wartime! 
The worst thing here is to be a coward, as John realises, coping with his blustering father (Andrews) and his deepening friendship with the Jewish boy Mark Stein. But there is a real bullet among the blanks in their training exercises …

Leacock was a very prolific director, very good with children, who in the '50s directed films like THE SPANISH GARDENER [review at Dirk Bogarde label], and later went on to a successful career in American television with the likes of THE WALTONS, DYNASTY and FALCON CREST. This though is a nice small little back and white film, and an early 'gay interest' title, which I managed to catch once as a supporting feature, but have now got a dvd copy. It's been well worth the wait.

THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES & I WAS HAPPY HERE:

Two perfect mid-60s British black and white romantic dramas set in Ireland - both from Edna O'Brien stories, and both directed by Desmond Davis are 1964's THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES and I WAS HAPPY HERE in 1966, starring Sarah Miles (a world away from her other overblown Irish romance for David Lean). I have written about these here before (Sarah, Rita, Edna O'Brien, Ireland labels). They do though make a perfect double bill. O'Brien's theme in both is the passage of love as her Irish country girls love and lose and set up new lives in London.

This was very relevant for me being Irish and new in London too then, as Miles' Cass goes back to her Irish village [Liscanor and Lahinch in Co Clare, where Cyril Cusack runs the hotel she used to work at, and which is closed for the winter, and Marie Kean presides over the local pub] while Rita and Lynn (wonderful as the feckless Baba) have their adventures in '60s Dublin as Tush is romanced by wordly older man Peter Finch (sterling, as ever); Marie Kean is his housekeeper, handy with a rifle. It ends with the girls on the night ferry from Dun Laoghaire to England - a trip I did myself many times - and shows us Rita's new life in London - she works at the WH Smith shop in Notting Hill Gate just across from the Classic Cinema (above) - an old haunt of mine! whereas Sarah also ends up wiser as her boorish husband comes to reclaim her, and her fisherman lover has found a new love .... both are perfect small films that pays re-viewing. I particularly liked Sarah's london bedsit with its great view of that '60s icon The Post Office Tower. Sarah went on to Antonioni's BLOW-UP (which according to her memoirs was not a happy experience for her) and then back to Ireland - Kerry this time - for the protracted shoot on RYAN'S DAUGHTER, released in 1970. Rita had the smash hit of Lester's THE KNACK among others, and she and Lynn teamed again to great comic effect in Desmond Davis's SMASHING TIME, great fun in 1968,as per reviews at labels. See Sarah and Rita labels for more on these treats. 

SANDRA or OF A THOUSAND DELIGHTS. Visconti's operatic melodrama from 1965, VAGHE STELLE D'ORSA (its from a poem) or OF A THOUSAND DELIGHTS or simply SANDRA - which I have written about here before [Visconti, Cardinale, Sorel, Craig labels]. 

It is a small film in the Visconti canon, overshadowed by those big operatic productions like ROCCO, THE LEOPARD, THE DAMNED, DEATH IN VENICE or LUDWIG. I first saw it when I was 19 in 1965 and then it became unobtainable for a long time. It was great to catch up with it again last year, and it was as powerful as I remembered. The stunning black and white photography by Armando Nannuzzi show Claudia Cardinale at her zenith, along with Jean Sorel as her brother and English actor Michael Craig as her husband.

Sandra and her husband return to the family home, one of those sprawling Italian mansions, in the Etruscan city of Volterra, where family secrets are slowly uncovered, as Sandra has to confront her brother who wants to resume their once-incestous relationship, her mentally ill mother and the crumbling estate and the secret about their father and the war ... Visconti builds it to a powerful climax,and the images still resonate. Good to see this back in circulation again, it is certainly one to seek out and keep.

And now, after all these moody black and white dramas, a burst of sunshine and colour and romance as we head off to the South of France, for a delicious mid-60s romantic drama/thriller, of the old school.

MOMENT TO MOMENT in 1966 is a glossy romantic thriller by old hand Mervyn Le Roy (his last film) set in the South of France and is a fabulous treat to see now at this remove. It was part of a double-bill on release initially.

The first half is lushly romantic as Jean Seberg drives around Nice in her snazzy red sports car, sporting a Yves St Laurent wardrobe that would still be the height of chic today - she is a bored wife whose (dull) husband Arthur Hill is away on business, and she gets romantically involved [as one does] with a naval officer on the loose - Sean Garrison, a bit wooden but does what is required of him, ie - he fills out his uniform nicely. Jean resists at first but ... add in Honor Blackman [just after her stint as Pussy Galore with James Bond] as the mantrap next door and the stage is set for some fireworks.

Then it turns into a Chabrol-like thriller with a missing body, police on the prowl, the return of the husband and the missing body (very much alive).  It is though all nicely worked out, a lot of it studio bound, but nice locations too. Jean is perfect here and its a perfect mid'60s treat. Great Henry Mancini score too .... it deserves to be much better known and would be a much better chick flick now than some of the current examples. There is a lovely moment at the well-known Colombe D'Or restaurant (still going strong at St-Paul-de-Vence - I read a recommendtion on it last week) with the doves flying into the sun .... perfectly romantic then with a few Hitchcockian twists and Seberg is in her lovely prime here. What's not to like? My pal Jerry loves it as well and thanks to him for sourcing a copy.