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Reviews
The Life and Times of David Lloyd George (1981)
Enjoyable BBC period drama from '81
This period drama features stolid BBC production values and what seems to be an accurate account of the life and career of David Lloyd George, a topic which was part of my A-level History course. Welsh actor Philip Madoc is excellent - he really gets the exposition, Welsh eloquence and sense of ''self'' and mission right. I admired the war-time scenes in the trenches of Flanders and public speeches. The Churchill character complements the young sandyhaired English actor Simon Ward's patrician Tory style in the classic 1972 cinematic biopic ''Young Winston'' directed by Sir Richard Attenborough. A terse evocative theme tune by Italian maestro Ennio Morricone was a hit in the UK pop charts.
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1972)
Cultural artefact from '71-72
Joanne Woodward's performance as a maudlin, melodramatic and drunk widow and mother of two young daughters is certainly telling. The film depicts dysfunctionality, a sense of closure rather than opportunity in life and emotional abuse with many comedic touches and records the 'feel' of '71-72 that greyest of hippie years so well. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward's young daughter, Nell Potts plays the blonde thoughtful 'Matilda' who shows a keen interest in biology and astrophysics: hence the film's title. Wallach (daughter of Eli Wallach - he was in Leone's ''The Good the Bad & The Ugly'' (1966)) plays the swarthy, lively but epileptic 'Jessica'. Woodward
won the Best Actress Award at the '73 Cannes Film Festival. 1972 was an interesting year for Paul Newman: the excellent modern-day western ''Pocket Money'' and revisionist western ''The Life & Times of Judge Roy Bean'' were shown in cinemas that year.
Scalawag (1973)
Amusing and engaging adventure film from '72-73
An amusing and engaging adventure film from 1973 also known as ''Bar Silver''. This was Kirk Douglas's second adventure film from the early-'70s and is a stablemate to the Jules Verne adaptation ''The Light at the Edge of the World'' (1971). It combines Robert Louis Stevenson's novel ''Treasure Island'' with the western. Produced by Douglas's own Bryna company and Italian backers the film features impressive stunt-work and action shots, evocative sea and landscapes: it was filmed in the Balkans between June and September 1972, a talking parrot, the Douglas family's pet black labrador ''Shaft'', hidden treasure, English youngsters Lesley-Anne Down and Mark Lester ("Oliver" (1968)) plus the chubby diminutive Italian-American actor Danny De Vito (''Flyspeck'') while Douglas sports a striped dark blue-and-white t-shirt and leather jerkin and salt-and-pepper beard and hair. He later remarked that the most effective thing in the film was his pirate character's wooden-leg! The early-'70s were pioneering years.
Van der Valk (1972)
Excellent '70s private-eye series
I am a keen admirer of the creativity, old world charm and classical things relating to those countries between Germany and France: Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Belgium. ''Van der Valk'' caught the zeitgeist in the jaded '70s with its depictions of Amsterdam's urban settings. The bars, pubs and clubs and transport network ca. 1972 are recorded well. Fair-haired, prudent, rational and witty actor: Barry Foster - a man of the East Midlands is very good. Good to see talented English actors such as Ian Hendry, John Stride and David Wood involved. The stirring theme tune ''Eye Level'' played by The Simon Park Orchestra was a major hit on the international pop charts in 1973. Well done to the Talking Movies channel for airing this series again.
Candy (1968)
Amusing romp from '68
An amusing well-formed ''flower power'' romp from '68 that great dizzying hippie year. Great psychedelic rock score by Dave Grusin, The Byrds and Steppenwolf: ''Ascension to Virginity'' was admired by Captain Sensible of London punk band The Damned. Brando's lustful Hindu guru, 'Grindl' is a hoot. He sports a ruby or jasper-stone caste mark, robes and flowing black hair and resides in a truck replete with Eastern murals and shell-like adornments and furnishings. Equally handsome American actor, Paul Newman remarked; ''If you're as talented as Marlon you don't need to work.'' NME's Barney Hoskyns inferred that he was a ''fifties icon of street-cool' and a 'boy-god' along with Elvis Presley and James Dean. Ringo Starr spoke about meeting the American star in Rome during the filming when interviewed in Australia by Yorkshire journalist Michael Parkinson in 1980. Although Brando's career had dipped badly after ''Mutiny on the Bounty'' (1962) he conjured his most flairful and unself-consciously flamboyant performance in the epic adventure ''Burn!'' (1968-1971) as the fair-haired bearded dandy adventurer, Sir William Walker, just after his role in ''Candy''.
Flame (1975)
Don, Noddy, Dave and Jim
Glam rock band, Slade caught the zeitgeist in the early-'70s although by 1975 their flaming fire of success had declined in the UK. ''Slade in Flame''- aired in cinemas in 1975 shows Dave, Noddy, Jim and Don involved in the British film world with this gritty tale about the rock industry, using the last burning embers from their success. Slade had always shown initiative: in 1968 they had performed gigs in the Bahamas and ''Slade Alive'' recorded in London in October 1971 is a classic. 1975 was the year of Leeds vs Bayern Munich and West Ham vs Fulham, The Ramones debut album, ''Brut'' aftershave and the early stirrings of the punk movement. The film shows the seedy side of the music industry featuring pubs, clubs and bingo halls plus the corporate world of London in the pre-Thatcher era. Stout, bald, bespectacled London actor, Johnny Shannon is excellent as the thuggish agent, Mr Harding: he was in ''Performance'' (1968-1970) with James Fox and Mick Jagger. NME's Barney Hoskyns saw value in Slade in a 1983 article featuring nihilistic LA punk band The Angry Samoans, noting Slade's influence on the LA hard-core punk scene alongside The Stooges and Black Sabbath. There are some sharp telling scenes: Don Powell up to no good in a bingo hall and first-class train carriage; the ''I'm not a fish-finger'' phrase from Jim Lea and a vicious scene involving the Jack Daniels figure (Alan Lake). The album, though only features one exciting song ''Those Kinda Monkeys Can't Swing''. The well-known ballads, ''How Does It Feel'' and ''Far Far Away'' are too slow.
Catch Me a Spy (1971)
Entertaining slap-stick spy caper from '71
An amusing and adventurous espionage caper from the early-'70s. I like some of the imagery - the scenes filmed at Loch Leven, Perth & Kinross and Oban (?) are evocative and show the bleak beauty of Scotland. The adventure film ''Kidnapped'' was filmed nearby at roughly the same time at Stirling and Loch Fyne faeturing cockney actor Michael Caine. Those years '71-72 had a strangely ''Caledonian-ish'' feel. Auburn-haired, steely-eyed, lantern-jawed US actor, Kirk Douglas as ''Andrej'' a Rumanian spy is very good and is adept at comedy. He had recently been in the compelling adventure film ''The Light at the Edge of the World'' which was produced in Spain in the autumn of 1970. Some of the comedy scenes have a Python-esque sense of slapstick. Patrick Mower (''Emmerdale Farm'') is good. The writers, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais are famous for brilliant '70s tv comedies ''Porridge'' and ''Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads''. Gaunt, darkhaired Swiss-born White-Russian actor Sascha Pitoeff is very good too.
The File of the Golden Goose (1969)
The inscrutable Yul Brynner - ''Cool Yul''
It was the London-based New Musical Express in an article in the '80s which referred to shaven-headed, inscrutable, exotic Russian-American actor, Yul Brynner as -''Cool Yul''. Indeed, he was one of the coolest actors in Hollywood - he had incredible style and rhythm. This modern spy vehicle showcases his talents and rhythm and the film itself records the late-'60s which were pioneering years. Edward Woodward gives good support. The photography is very sharp and the scenes of modernist ''Swinging London'' are evocative. In the early-'70s Brynner stayed in Europe to act in ''Sabata'' (1970), ''The Light at the Edge of the World'' (1971) alongside Kirk Douglas, Fernando Rey and Samantha Egger and ''Romance of a Horse Thief'' also from 1971.
El Cid (1961)
Entertaining epic from 1961
One of those great epics from the '50s and '60s: ''Quo Vadis'', ''Ben-Hur'', ''Spartacus'' and ''Mutiny on the Bounty'' which involved a Hollywood-style generalised treatment of history along with a cast of thousands and spectacular set-pieces and battle scenes. Imperious US actor, Charlton Heston - he of the hawk-like profile and lofty height is impressive (despite an anomalous mullet hair-style) as ''El Cid'' the Spanish hero who saved Christian Spain from the Moors. Some contemporary historians say that in fact, ''El Cid'' fought for both sides, had perhaps part-Moorish origins and that Spanish society during the Dark Ages was a fusion of Muslim, Christian and Jewish components. Another ambiguity is that some viewers have railed against Heston - an American actor and follower of the Scots Presbyterian faith playing a Catholic hero. The barren Spanish landscape looks very bleak. Blonde, almond-eyed and Paris-born Genevieve Page is very good as the scheming, devious and haughty Princess Uracca (''uracca'' means ''jackdaw'' in Spanish). According to his son, Fraser, Heston was fascinated by the ''mystique'' of Spain. Indeed, he produced a Shakespeare adaptation of ''Antony and Cleopatra'' there in the early-'70s which was filmed in Almeria and Moro Studios in Madrid in the summer and early autumn of 1971.
Nobody's Fool (1994)
Engaging reflections on ageing and failure
An engaging film from the mid-'90s on the topic of ageing and failure but at the same time still having the capacity to enjoy the mundane pleasures of life. The good-looking blue-eyed US actor Paul Newman explored similar themes in the neo-noir ''Twilight'' (1998) as did Burt Reynolds in ''Dog Years'' (2017). Newman's character is a stubborn semi-retired handyman - Don ''Sully'' Sullivan who has domestic and financial problems and is involved in a run-in with the law. Although a tad twee the film evokes the ironies and regrets encountered by most people in life - 'the man in the street' and records small-town US mores in telling fashion. It would seem that provincial New York State has much in common with my own locale in the Industrial North of England- there are many similarities. Many of the lines are 'deep'. The modern western ''Pocket Money'' (1971-1972) also starring Newman is in my top ten films of all time and he showed great flair in ''The Mackintosh Man'' (1973) too, both of which I own on DVD.
Dave Allen (1993)
As funny as his brilliant shows between '71 and '86.
Late dark Dave Allen: vis-a-vis his tv shows in '93-94 was just as perceptive and funny as his shows for the Beeb between '71 and 1986 covering topics from the absurd dead-weight and fatuities of technology e.g. Automated computerised car voiceovers: prefiguring the onset of the internet, mobile phones etc to the usual gags relating to sexual and religious peccadilloes. It isn't the case of the earlier the better and refreshingly acerbic Irish raconteur, Mr Allen stood for intelligent tv comedy. The Dave Allen at Large series caught the zeitgeist - I fondly remember the series from the early-'70s when I was a nipper. His shows for the Beeb in 1990 showcased a maturer take on a fatuous world.
Queimada (1969)
A lemon-pudding of an adventure film from '68-69
I first saw "Burn!" in 1983 when it was aired by the Beeb and NME's Chris Bohn referred to it as '..a great movie..' Italian-Jewish director Gillo Pontecorvo wanted in his words to '..(produce) a romantic adventure with the film of ideas..' Produced in '68-69 - two dizzying hippy years and filmed in Cartagena in Colombia, Cinnicitta Studios in Rome, Saint Malo in Brittany and the mountains near Marrakech in Morroco, it is something of a discombobulated adventure film and political allegory. Pontecorvo was fascinated by Brando's 'somatic qualities' and indeed Brando's character Sir William Walker is the American star's most flairful exposition and shows Brando's sense of grand high Glamour coiffured by Italian stylists in the late-'60s. He sports harmonious burning long wavy ash-blond hair, a beard, aquiline profile, billowing peach-coloured scarves and a clipped and amused upper-class English accent. In fact he looks like Christ relating to his impossibly handsome features: only those other US actors, Paul Newman and tv star Ben Murphy come close to Brando's good looks. In terms of Walker's character he is an amalgam of philanthropist, Marxist aristocrat, Machiavellian schemer and adventurer: so multi-faceted! It features some fascinating flair set-pieces: Walker's brawl with a sailor in a London pub; his amusing speech on the topic of economics addressed to creole plantation owners in a Cartagena hotel clubroom with the analogy of 'the slave and the prostitute'; the bright vivid colours and rhythms of Colombia; fascinating colonial props and period furnishings; anthropological scenes showing slave dances, Mardi Gras carnival scenes etc. Some of the imagery when the tone becomes greyer towards the end of the film perhaps nod to the downbeat and grey hippy year: 1972 although that year saw Brando experience a renaissance in his fortunes with the release of "The Godfather" and "Last Tango in Paris". The Italian actor, Renato Salvatori who plays the liberal stooge, Teddy Sanchez would feature in the adventure film "The Light at the Edge of the World" (1971) starring Kirk Douglas, Fernando Rey and Yul Brynner.
The Upturned Glass (1947)
The saturnine James Mason
An intriguing crime thriller shot in black-and-white. Huddersfield-born, James Mason (''20000 Leagues Under the Sea'' (1954) and ''Bad Man's River'' (1971)) is highly professional as the tormented surgeon driven to murder. Dirk Bogarde referred to him as a '..dark God..' relating to his swarthy good looks, lofty height, measured manners, velvet voice and chiselled facial features. Mason often portrayed figures with malevolent and melancholy dispositions. The film - produced soon after WWII features many existential issues relating to crime and the criminal mind. Mason's first wife Pamela Kellino plays his victim.
The Brothers (1972)
Interesting soap from the '70s
An interesting and intelligent 'soap opera' from the '70s. The dialogue and acting are first-rate and constructive while the very ''70s' bourgeois props and costumes are evocative: I saw a framed print of Vermeer's ''Girl With A Pearl Earing'' in one domestic scene showing good taste. The young graceful English actor - the Chaucerian Malcolm Stoddard was in the brilliant scientifically fascinating documentary series, ''The Voyage of Charles Darwin'' (1978). Prim and proper actress, Jean Anderson was born in the remote year of 1907! The series was a big hit in Holland. The first episode was aired in 1972 - that greyest of hippy years although the early-'70s were pioneering years.
Per qualche dollaro in più (1965)
Sensational Morricone score
Ennio Morricone's score is enthralling:- an angelic, soaring ethereal female chorus accompanied by silver triangles and deep bassoon. His ''Ecstasy of Gold'' in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1968) is equally as inspiring. Another Italian maestro- Piero Piccioni also composed a thrilling 'hairs-stand-on-the-back-of-your-neck' opening score for the adventure film, The Light at the Edge of the World (1971) starring Kirk Douglas, Fernando Rey and Yul Brynner, showing just how talented those Italian composers in the '60s/70s were. London's Time Out Film Guide refers to Clint Eastwood's '..super-cool, taciturn gun-slinger' and '.... Morricone's terrific score'. When interviewed by the B. B. C. In 1989 relating to a tribute programme dedicated to Leone and Lee Van Cleef, English film expert, Christopher Grayling explained that Leone wanted to conjure a kind of 'flamboyant rhetoric' to transcend the traditional Hollywood oater. And that he had originally wanted that most rhythmic of US actors - lanky, silver-haired, toothy, James Coburn - as the character played by Eastwood.
You Can't Win 'Em All (1970)
Entertaining adventure film from '69-70
A sort of spaghetti western filmed in Turkey in 1969 relating to the Greco-Turkish War of 1922. Tony Curtis (''Spartacus'' (1960) and ''Insignificance'' (1983)) is a genial, wise-cracking adventurer accompanied by taciturn slit-eyed US-Lithuanian actor, Charles Bronson (''Vera Cruz'' (1954) and ''Chato's Land'' (1972)). Curtis's character sports a brown leather jacket, bright-green tie and thick sideburns. His one-liners and ad-libs are hilarious. Full of explosive set-pieces and action shots it records the 'Eastern Promise', colours and stunning landscapes of Cappadocia and Turkey. The end of the '60s/beginning of the '70s were exciting years.
The Main Chance (1969)
Of its time
Cherubic fair-haired and round-faced, John Stride is David Main, a solicitor based in London and the city of Leeds in Yorkshire in the early-'70s. Stride's character is professionally excellent, has perfect manners, tasteful dress sense and a touch of class. The props, furnishings and scenarios are very '70s. The series is also 'rational' and interesting, in fact, television and film in the early-'70s often stood for high quality entertainment when they got it right. The nostalgia-based tv channel, Talking Pictures should be applauded for airing this series. John Stride also acted in Shakespeare productions and I believe that a later tv series in the '70s which acted in is also worth seeking out.
Dog Years (2017)
Effortless performance by Burt Reynolds
Despite approaching the age of 80, Burt Reynolds ('Sam Whiskey' (1969) & 'Shamus' (1973) still showed effortless superb timing. It was the NME's Ian Penman in an '80s article for that London rock journal who referred to Reynold's acting flair as being akin to that of a 'Rolls-Royce'. This film depicts late dark aspects of ageing, failure and cause and effect: familiar themes in the neo-noir 'Twilight' (1998) with Paul Newman, James Garner and Gene Hackman. The scene in the grand hotel records the passage of time and has an enchanting sense of stillness and it is amusing to see the young goth chick alongside the '70s mustachioed macho movie star Burt. Incidentally, Penman was a keen admirer of James Garner & 'The Rockford Files' (1974-1980) another one of those charming 'rational' US actors like Reynolds.
The Left Handed Gun (1958)
A fairly good rendition of the Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid Legend
Photographed in luminous monochrome, this mid-'50s rendition of the Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid Legend although not as vivid as Brando's 'One-Eyed Jacks' (1961) or as elegaic and playful as Peckinpah's 'Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid' (1973) is very simply a fairly good one. Good looking blue-eyed actor, Paul Newman is committed to his role. In appearance he sports wavy hair, those luminous eyes and trimmed sideburns. The narrative suggests Oedipal undertones and has many subtle images: I admired the flour fight scene. Popular in France and Belgium rather than in the USA, raven-haired sultry beauty Lita Milan looks ravishing.
The Honkers (1972)
A 'Junior Bonner' stablemate
1971's 'The Honkers' is a stablemate to other rodeo-themed modern westerns from '71-72: 'Pocket Money', 'Junior Bonner' and 'JW. Coop'. Lanky, silver-haired toothy actor, James Coburn plays an ageing rodeo rider making a hardscrabble living in Arizona and at the same time having fun with women, bars, clubs and booze. Coburn had incredible rhythm- '..that least neurotic of Hollywood leading men', wrote David Thomson while Andy Garcia described him as the -'epitome of class'. The film records the early-'70s well - those were pioneering years and has a tragi-comic and playful feel as it shows American individualism.
La leggenda del santo bevitore (1988)
'Through a glass darkly' with Rutger in '87-88
Dutch actor, Rutger Hauer plays the role of a Catholic-Pole and tramp - Andreas Kartack, living in penury in a a timeless Paris. He is approached by a generous dapper gentleman (English actor Anthony Quayle) who gives him 200 francs as long as he donates part of it to a local chapel. An ex-coal miner, in appearance, Kartack sports 'over the ears' wavy fair hair, rheumy eyes, a thin moustache and those tell-tale signs of the coal-mining trade - a rough tough job to say the least- a flat-cap and coal-dust underneath his fingernails. There are shots of him in a Polish mine-shaft and pit-village in an earlier life. He finds work, the company of women and companionship with fellow Poles but is let down by his alcoholism if not sense of stupidity. Based on Lemberg-born Jewish writer Joseph Roth's novel, why the film is poignant is hard to describe - perhaps relating to Slavs/East Europeans exiled from their homelands. The film has a rich spiritual feel, in fact it has that sense of art and spirituality seen in Dostoyevsky's novel, 'The Idiot' featuring the saintly epileptic Prince Leo or Tarkovsky's moving, 'Nostalghia' (1983). Paris seems like an organically glamourous city . For me, this is Hauer's finest performance after his role as the fair-haired French free spirit, Claude Maillot-Van Horn in Roeg's 'Eureka' (1983).
Nostromo (1996)
Tasteful adventure series from mid-'90s
A good taste adventure series produced in Cartagena in Colombia in the mid-'90s and based on Anglo-Polish author, Joseph Conrad's novel. The vivid tropical colours of Colombia, Latin-American settings, flair set-pieces and Late 19th-Century costumes are sumptuous while Lancastrian actor Albert Finney (''Scrooge'' (1970), ''Under the Volcano'' (1982)) is quite superb as the drunken cynical Dr Monygham. Produced at a time when the Beeb could conjure higher classical things with a feel for adventure and flair apropos of the equally adventurous ''The Search for the Nile'' (1971) and ''The Voyage of Charles Darwin'' (1978) there is nothing bland or mediocre about it.
The Sting (1973)
Entertaining and amusing crime movie from '73
This crime caper caught the zeitgeist in the early-'70s - 1973 was a very bleak turning-point hippy year marked by Foreman-Frazier, memorable soccer upsets: England v Poland and Leeds v Sunderland/A. C. Milan not to mention Peckinpah's ''Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid''. American thespian superstars: blue-eyed Paul Newman and blond Robert Redford have fun and show tremendous chemistry and streetsmarts. The '30s Chicago settings and props are evocative. Gruff British actor, Robert Shaw (''Young Winston''(1972) and ''Jaws'' (1978)) is menacing as the ''mark''. London's Time Out Film Guide says that it is '..all a bit soulless..' but I think it is very entertaining.
There Was a Crooked Man... (1970)
Naughty comedy-western from 1970
I read a scholarly review from Films & Filming/Film Facts (?) which referred to this early-'70s comedy-western's 'pert amoralism'. Indeed despite the irresistible overall tone and performances the humour is very black. Sporting dyed red longish-hair, circular steel-rimmed granny glasses, long side-burns plus those famous flashing pearly white teeth and jutting cleft-chin, Kirk Douglas is Paris Pitman Junior, a devious outlaw who bides his time while serving a prison sentence in an Arizonan jail: he has stolen cash squirrelled away in a desert rattle-snake pit. The film outlines the relativity of good and evil, spite and universal one-upmanship.
The Amazing Mr. Blunden (1972)
An entertaining Dickensian ghost story from '72
The early-'70s were pioneering years and this UK children's film adapted by Lionel Jeffries in 1972 from Antonia Barber's novel, The Ghosts records the pneuma and 'feel' of the period so well. It refers to trauma, redemption,, time travel and the spirit world. Diana Dors as a money-grubbing, bonnet-wearing Regency-Era pub landlady with facial moles, Mrs Wickens is remarkably good as is David Lodge who plays her punch-drunk husband, while the shadowy scenes in Camden Town are evocative. 1972 was also the year, The Nightcomers an adult-themed ghost story was released which was directed by Michael Winner.