1964 - THE BLACK TULIP, entertaining update of a traditional swashbucker

French star Alain Delon does the Errol Flynn swashbuckler thing in this entertaining throwback to one of Flynn's 1930's or 1940's sword fighting films.  Delon's in a dual role as Guillaume de Saint Preux, The Black Tulip sort of a Robin Hood type of role.  Delon also plays his look alike brother brother Julien de Saint Preux who has to step into the role of The Black Tulip after Guillaume is injured.

This film is set just before the French Revolution and it's a handsome production filmed in 70mm by Henri Decaë who had an extensive list of credits working for directors Francois Truffaut, Louis Malle, Claude Charbol, Jean Pierre Melville, Roger Vadim, Robert Wise and Wim Wenders, a very impressive resume.

 

The film also stars Italian actor Virna Lisi an attractive woman who as it turns out could act.  Also showing up in this film is perennial ham actor Akim Tamiroff who as usual just plays the same character from film to film.  Tamiroff was a favorite actor of Orson Welles and showed up in a couple of his films.

 

The director Christin-Jaque keeps the film moving with some very entertaining action scenes and the whole film has a very fast moving light touch to it.  It takes a lot of skill to pull off this kind of a fun film.

The film was written by Henri Jeanson and Christian-Jaque, the running time is 110 minutes.

1964 - BEDTIME STORY, a farce with Marlon Brando!

 Marlon Brando the preeminent method actor of his generation, the star of On The Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire, Julius Caesar and The Godfather gives a performance as a complete grinning goofball in this comedy.  He mugs, does some broad slap stick and at one point acts like the village idiot.  This is his only outright comedy as far as I can tell and he's incredible to watch.

 

Bedtime Story is what you could call a typical Universal Studio comedy. With a little adjustment in the plot and characters it could star Doris Day and Rock Hudson.  The film has reasonably amusing situations.  It was written by a couple of tried and true pros Stanley Shapiro and Paul Henning.  The director Ralph Levy was also an expert in comedy having worked on TV shows such as I Love Lucy, Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies so Brando was surrounded by people who knew their way around this genre.

 

You can see Brando is really enjoying himself in this film.  He was the first to admit that playing broad comedy this was not exactly his acting forte.  However performing with David Niven, not an actor who was known for method acting really brought out the ham out in him.  Niven who was a very witty guy in real life kept Brando laughing throughout the entire production.

 

Well the plot such that it is involves two con men  (Brando and Niven) attempting to chisel an heiress played by Shirley Jones out of her money.  Bedtime Story has been remade a couple of times as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and The Hustle.  It was also adapted as a Broadway musical.  I would hardly say this is the greatest comedy ever made but Brando and Niven are very entertaining playing off each other and certainly worth a look.

The running time is 99 minutes. 

1964 - VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, 11 Days to Zero

Kicking around in my DVD collection is the first season of Irwin Allen's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.  Let's take a quick look at the pilot episode for this series.

The first season of this series was shown in black and white on television but the producer Irwin Allen was prescient enough to film it in color since the remaining seasons were broadcast in color.  Irwin Allen was what I guess you would call a character.  He was drawn to science fiction and fantasy themes but as an actual producer he was kind of a cheapskate.  Allen was known for reusing footage from other episodes of his TV series and any movie he could lay his hands on. The later seasons of his TV shows tended to get more ridiculous plot wise as the look of the series got cheaper.

For the pilot episode 11 Days to Zero, Allen actually cast interesting actors.  Richard Basehart was Admiral Nelson the inventor of the submarine Seaview.  David Hedison played Captain Lee Crane.  It should be a tribute to these two actors that they kept a straight face during the run of the series when faced with a series of ridiculous monsters.  Giant sea plankton, a giant manta ray, a giant jellyfish and who could forget the unforgettable heat monster that threatened the Seaview during the series run.

The pilot episode of 11 Days to Zero was written and directed by Irwin Allen himself.  A close examination of the episode shows that it was a rehash of Allen's 1961 movie version of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.  Allen cleverly loaded the story up with lots of stock footage from that film and stuck in a decent guest star, in this case Eddie Albert who was able to stir up a little character conflict.  The pilot is enjoyable mostly because it's fun to see how many scenes he lifted from the movie and stuck in this episode.

Probably the coolest thing about this series was always the submarine Seaview itself.  It has a pair of wings in the back of it and the famous windows in the front.  Inside the Seaview itself it's like living in a Hilton.  Everything is spacious and very bright.  I have no idea if this design is even practical but for a 10 - 12 year old kid it's probably the ultimate in cool.

 

Obviously Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was no Star Trek but as a simple and at times very silly adventure series it entertained.

The running time for 11 Days to Zero is 52 minutes.

1964 - THE WORLD OF HENRY ORIENT, a good film about adolescent girls

A charming film about a couple of adolescent girls caught up in a crush on a concert pianist played by a rather restrained Peter Sellers for a change.  This is a rare film that focuses on the kids rather than the adults who seem to have made a mess out of their own lives.  The director George Roy Hill did an excellent job handling the girls played by Merrie Spaeth (who grew up to become a Republican party hack) and Tippy Walker (who ended up involved in a year long affair with the 44 year George Roy Hill during her senior year in high school).  

The rest of the cast is pretty darn good.  Paula Prentiss a comedian who I guess had a decent career, is a married woman contemplating an affair with Sellers. Phyllis Thaxter plays Spaeth's divorced mother.  Tom Bosley and Angela Lansbury are the parents of Tippy Walker who have a very troubled marriage.  Lansbury was at this point in her career where she played a lot of bitchy and at times nasty women.  She's essentially the villain in this film.

It would be interesting to know how Peter Sellers ended up in this film.  For a big "ham" like him it's basically a supporting role. But even in a smaller part he's still a master of accents, he's definitely got the NYC sound down.

 

The film appears to have been mostly filmed in New York City.  It does seem to have a feeling for what it's like to be an adolescent girl growing up with some very flawed parents.  The film was written by Nora Johnson the daughter of veteran screenwriter Nunnally Johnson who contributed to the screenplay.  Dare I say Nora Johnson's female perspective probably contributed to the tone of this enjoyable film.

The film runs 106 minutes.

1964 - THE YELLOW ROLLS ROYCE, one of those all star film stories

Considering the talent involved and there is a lot of big name talent involved in this multi character drama,  it should have been a lot better.  As it is it's just a passable old fashioned British time killer of a film.  The film consists of three short stories all tied together with the gimmick being that in each story at one time or another a character owns The Yellow Rolls Royce which is featured in the film.

The first story stars Rex Harrison and Jeanne Moreau as an English Lord who slowly comes to realize that his wife has been cheating on him.  Harrison is good as always and manages to make this very conventional story interesting.

Then it's off to Italy where the Rolls Royce ends up being owned by an American gangster played by George C. Scott in a hammy performance. Scott is engaged to a chorus girl played by a very shrill Shirley MacLaine.  While touring, Italy MacLaine falls in love with French guy Alain Delon who when he goes swimming wears a very ridiculous swimming cap.  Probably the only performance of note in this segment is Art Carney as Scott's right hand man.

 

Finally the last segment with the car stars Ingrid Bergman as a rich American tourist who happens to arrive in Yugoslavia just as World War II breaks out.  Bergman ends up getting involved with the Yugoslavian partisans in particular Omar Sharif.  Bergman and Sharif certainly make a good looking couple.  Their love story is probably the best segment in the film.

 

The film was made by the same team who had done another multi character film called The V.I.P.s.  That film surprisingly made money so this film was a matter of getting lighting to strike twice.

The producer was Anatole de Grunwald who had an impressive career in the British cinema. The director Anthony Asquith was a reliable craftsman and the writer Terence Rattigan was an important playwright and screenwriter.  However it's safe to say no one involved was trying very hard on this production.  The film has that lazy shot in the studio look to it and it's kind of a clueless show considering 1964 was the year of films like A Hard Day's Night, Dr. Strangelove and From Russia with Love.

The running time is 122 minutes.

1964 - THE LONG SHIPS, very entertaining Viking adventure

No one was ever going to confuse The Long Ships with Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev, but this is a very entertaining adventure film.  The film stars Richard Widmark as the Norseman Rolfe.  Along with his brother Orm, they kidnap a Viking Princess and steal a Viking boat in search of a giant Golden Bell.  While in search of the Bell they run up against a Moorish King played by Sidney Poitier of all people.  Poitier's queen is the Italian actress Rosanna Schiaffino and the screenplay is written in such a way that Poitier has taken a vow of chastity.  In fact he doesn't even touch the gorgeous Schiaffino at all throughout the entire film.

This film has it all,  shipwrecks, battle scenes a treasure hunt and excellent location photography.  The film was shot on some scenic Yugoslavian locations for the most part.  One doesn't think of the actor Richard Widmark as having a light touch as a swashbuckler in this adventure epic, but he's not bad.  Poitier is all dead seriousness as the Muslim King Aly Mansuh and Rosanna Schiaffino basically stands around and looks beautiful.   Dancer/actor Russ Tamblyn is Widmark's brother and in his fight scenes he hops around like he's back in Seven Brides For Seven Brothers. 

 

Apparently no one wanted to make this film, the thought of being on location in Yugoslavia was less than appealing to the cast, particularly the American actors.  The director Jack Cardiff supposedly spent much of his time trying to get out of his contract to make the picture.  It's amazing this picture turned out as well as it did.

The Long Ships is the type of lightweight adventure epic the film industry doesn't seem to be able to provide these days.  The film was written by Beverley Cross and Berkely Mather.  Beverly Cross had written Ray Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts which was clearly an influence on this film's plot.  The running time is 126 minutes.

1964 - FATHER GOOSE, is all about Cary Grant

Cary Grant is one picture away from wrapping up his career with Father Goose.  Grant was probably in his middle to late 60's when he made this film and Father Goose is a good example of how his comedy timing and sensibilities can enhance a rather routine comedy.

Grant plays a coast watcher stuck on a Pacific island during World War II his job is to report the movements of the Japanese fleet.  Grant plays an antisocial beach bum.  He's not dressed impeccably and it looks like he hasn't shaved in a couple of days, but he's still Cary Grant.  With the usual plot twists, Grant ends up saving the lives of a French school teacher and her students played by Leslie Caron.  You can probably figure out the rest of the story from this point.

 

Cary Grant was so good at these kind of light comedy performances that he can easily overwhelm a bunch of scene stealing kids.  The writers don't work very hard to whip up a relationship between Caron and Grant.  I would venture to say that Grant's best partner in this film is Trevor Howard as the navy commander he reports to.

 

The film is credited to three writers one of them being Peter Stone who was a clever writer but in this case inspiration in the story department seems a little lacking.  The film is certainly a pleasant enough entertainment.  Ralph Nelson directed and he was usually good working with actors when he had a decent script

Written by Peter Stone and Frank Tarloff, the running time is 118 minutes.

1964 - THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY, an excellent romantic comedy about war

Given a good script, journeyman director Arthur Hiller could really shine.  With The Americanization of Emily, Hiller had the benefit of the writer Paddy Chayefsky.  In truth Chayefsky was probably more of the driving force behind this movie than the director.  You have to give credit to the producer Martin Ransohoff.  It was pretty gutsy to make an anti-war film during the Vietnam War but Ransohoff  never ducked tough and interesting projects.

During World War II,  James Garner is the navel procurement officer for an Admiral played by Melvyn Douglas.  He's good at finding the best food and women.  Garner is also an unrepentant coward.  He falls in love with a non singing Julie Andrews who plays a morally upstanding British driver for the military but not to upstanding she apparently doesn't have any trouble sleeping around.  

 

Anyway to get on with the story the Admiral decides that the first person to die on Omaha Beach during the D-Day Invasion should be an American sailor.  After a series of plot twists the cowardly Garner ends up on Omaha Beach.

 

The selling points in this film are the great Paddy Chavefsky speeches on war, romance and heroics.  They are almost a warmup for his films The Hospital and Network.

The film is well cast, James Garner was always a good comedian and it's probably Julie Andrews best not singing film if not her best film.  An excellent film.

The running time is 115 minutes.

1964 - THE TRAIN, excellent action film from Burt Lancaster and John Frankenheimer

Usually considered one of the last black and white photographed action films, The Train is an exciting story with all of the action sequences staged with real trains and hardware. Amazingly, Burt Lancaster at 51 years old is still doing his own stunts.

Frankenheimer took over the direction of the film from Arthur Penn who Lancaster always something of a "director killer" had fired.  Frankenheimer and Lancaster had worked together before, so Frankenheimer knew what he was getting into.  Apparently the film was made with a lot of input from Lancaster who didn't have a problem throwing his power around on this production.

 

The Train was originally going to be a story about uneducated Frenchmen attempting to stop the Nazis from stealing the national art treasures of France.  Why would men who probably had never stepped in a museum even care about art?   Well we will never see that version of this film.  Frankenheimer and Lancaster reconfigured the script and turned it into an action epic and the action is pretty amazing.  Real trains crash into each other, a train yard is bombed, just incredible stuff.

 

 Lancaster and Frankenheimer put together an amazing cast of French actors, people who had been associated with filmmakers like Francois Truffaut and Jean Renoir, Michel Simon, Suzanne Flon Albert Rémy and Jeanne Moreau.  This is an impressive action film.

The credited screenplay is by Franklin Coen, Frank Davis and Walter Bernstein.  The runs 133 minutes.

1964 - THE MOON SPINNERS, Disney does Hitchcock

Perennial 1960's Disney star Haley Mills headlines a good cast in this attempt at an Alfred Hitchcock type of thriller for young viewers.  Mills was now 18 years old and had grown out of the young girl parts she had stared in for Disney the past couple of years. The Moon-Spinners is a decent transitional role for her for the most part.

Mills plays Nikky Farris who along with her Aunt played by Joan Greenwood,  gets involved in a search for stolen jewels on the island of Crete.  The chief bad guy is Eli Wallach. Silent screen star Pola Negri plays a rich woman mixed up in this stolen jewel caper.  Negri was a legendary silent screen star which probably didn't mean much to the Disney kid audience.  

 

The film appears to have had extensive location shooting on the island of Crete and it certainly doesn't lack for local color.  Mills is a capable heroine and the story supplies her with a handsome leading man.

 

Probably the film's biggest issue is a rather meandering script.  The film takes almost two hours to tell it's story and could have used a little pruning in the script department.  Still an enjoyable entertainment for the most part.

Written by Michael Dyne, the running time is 118 minutes.

1964 - SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, excellent political thriller

 The director John Frankenheimer at the top of his game.  This political thriller about an attempted coup by the United States military against a weak President is skillfully made. A lack of the usual tiresome action scenes is compensated by ramping up the suspense with excellent acting, camera work, and direction.

 

The film has a superb cast, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Frederic March, Martin Balsam, Edmund O'Brien, George Macready and Ava Gardner in the rather thankless role of the love interest.  I would be neglectful if I didn't mention a couple of favorite supporting actors, Whit Bissel,  Hugh Marlowe and Richard Anderson.

  

Rod Serling wrote the at times somewhat preachy screenplay,  the running time is 118 minutes. Kirk Douglas's company produced it.

1964 - ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS, Good Science Fiction

A good reliable science fiction film anyway you cut.  The director Bryon Haskin was a talented craftsman who knew his way around this genre.  The film is also smart enough and self aware enough to acknowledge that it is based on Daniel Defoe's novel.

 A great deal of the film was shot in Death Valley by master color cinematographer Winton Hoch.  Hoch was a named usually associated with John Ford and frequently Irwin Allen.  The sky was so blue it allowed the special effects technicians to add optical work with a great deal of  clarity,  unusual for a modestly budgeted 1960's science fiction film.

The acting, story and design have been carefully thought thru.  The story moves along as the astronaut  Christopher Draper encounters challenges surviving in the Martian environment.  This is Hollywood movie making at it's best, with the filmmakers bringing a lot of skill to a premise which could have been very ridiculous.

The film wasn't a success when it was released, but has grown it stature with time.

 Ib Melchior and John Higgins wrote the screenplay, 110 minutes. 

1964 - DOGORA or Dogora the Space Monster

A typical Japanese monster movie from the old monster movie director himself Ishiro Honda.

Dogora as the monster is called for some reason eats diamonds and coal.  Into this mix is a subplot about a gang of diamond thieves who needlessly complicate the standard monster movie plot.\

This is a quick enjoyable monster movie that Ishiro Honda could knock out in his sleep and he probably did.

The dubbing as usual in these movies is half the fun.

83 minutes, written by Toho's go to monster screenwriter Shinichi Sekizawa.

1964 - ONIBABA, or Demon Hag

This is an exceptional drama with elements of horror from Japanese director Kaneto Shindo.  Two women living in a marsh during the medieval Japanese war period make their living by killing samurai soldiers and robbing them of their weapons and armour.  Into their lives comes a former soldier to upset their existence.

As atmospheric as you could ask for in an eastern Gothic film like this.  The marsh setting with the tall reeds is claustrophobic the photography is suitably creepy especially at night and there is a highly charged erotic atmosphere to the whole film.

This is a unique horror film.  Well worth a look.

103 minutes.

1964 - MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE, a classic Italian film from Vittorio De Sica

A classic Italian comedy/drama from a director considerably less flamboyant than Fellini but no less important, Vittorio De Sica.  Marriage Italian Style stars larger than life personalities Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni.  The story features Loren as the mistress of Mastroianni over a 20 year period.  A spouse in every way but legally Loren finally resorts to some drastic measures in their relationship.

This is Loren in her prime sex goddess period and frankly when the film started I was expecting the worst and for a while I got it.  But  De Sica was one of the few directors who could actually get a real performance out of her.  She even credibly ages without the benefit of using her looks or her bosom.  Mastroianni plays the usual excitable Italian who is somewhat of an ass. 

Mastroianni, Loren and Vittorio De Sica

The film is supposedly a comedy, but frankly there is more drama than comedy in it.  De Sica focuses on the exploitation of Italian women in a culture that is absolutely oozing with male chauvinism.

Vittorio De Sica was a  meticulous craftsman.  The film is extremely well directed with excellent color photography.

102 minutes

1964 - MARNIE, Hitchcock loses the light.

 Marnie is a Hitchcock film that has it's defenders but I wonder if these defenders have actually watched this film recently.  It's not very good but very fascinating.  Exactly what Hitchcock ever saw in this story completely escapes me.  Hitchcock had been critical of Spellbound a film that he felt had a lot of psychological mumble jumble.  However Marnie has as much pseudo psychological garbage in it as Spellbound.

If there is any insight to be gained in Marnie, it's mostly watching Hitchcock load the film up with loving closeups of the actor Tippi Hedren.  She is carefully photographed in about every conceivable way and clothed and gowned to the "nines".  It's been well documented that Hitchcock had an almost pathetic infatuation with Hedren needless to say this situation did not end well.  The problem with Tippi Hedren was that she couldn't act her way out of a paper bag.  At least Spellbound for all its issues had Ingrid Bergman an actual performer.  About the only one who survives this mess is Sean Connery who at least turns in a real performance.

The other major problem with Marnie was the terrible script that Hitchcock put together with the writer Jay Presson Allen.  Hitchcock always claimed he was a visual director but almost every actor in this film yaks away in scene after scene.  Marnie would probably have worked better as a stage play than a film.

Marnie marks the end of Hitchcock's association with Bernard Herrmann.  Hermann wrote a very melodramatic score for the film.  Apparently Herrmann felt that Tippi Hedren was completely miscast in the film and tried to boost the film with a lot of over the top music.  Hitchcock was  not pleased with the score.

Hitchcock's previous film The Birds had it's issues but at least it was an interesting film.  Marnie marks the beginning of Hitchcock's very depressing decline at Universal Studios.

130 minutes.

1964 - THE GORGON, weak Hammer horror film

The ancient Greek creature the Gorgon is lose in eastern Europe turning people to stone.  It's up to a couple of British actors playing some kind of European professors to track it down. 

The Gorgon is a mighty disappointing Hammer film in spite of the involvement of "the big three" from Hammer,  Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and the director Terence Fisher.  The production looks cheap even by Hammer's standards with the whole thing filmed on about 4 sets.  The woman with the snake head hair is what it is for a 1960's special effect. 

What should have been a horror film is really more of a murder mystery story with Christopher Lee attempting to figure out exactly who the Gorgon is.  Even this part of the story is so poorly done that it's pretty obvious almost immediately

James Bernard who could usually be counted on to ramp things up with an over the top score tried for a little more subtlety this time for a film that probably needed things to be ramped up a whole lot.

83 minutes

1964 - THE COMEDY OF TERRORS, horror comedy from American International Pictures

The Comedy of Terrors is the writer Richard Matheson's idea of mixing horror and comedy together in one film.  The veteran director Jacques Tourneur did an excellent job directing this film.  The four iconic actors Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff are fun to watch.  The problem is that this film is more amusing than funny.

Vincent Price is a down on his luck undertaker who has Peter Lorre as an assistant coffin maker who's coffins fall apart.  Price is really pretty good at spinning Matheson's dialog to make it seem funnier than it is.  Price is married to a big breasted blonde who happens to be the daughter of Boris Karloff.  Price has no sexual interest in her a joke that kind of misfires for the film. 

Anyway, Price gets the idea to speed up the deaths of some of the citizens of the town to make some money but meets his match in Basil Rathbone.  Rathbone suffers from some sort of condition that makes it look like he is dead when he actually isn't. 

Richard Matheson was a good writer but even he had some misfires in his career.  It's depressing to see a great director like Jacques Tourneur getting assignments like this towards the end of his career.   

Comedy of Terrors is a pretty good looking production for a cheap AIP picture that was shot in about 10 days.

84 minutes.

1964 - FIRST MEN IN THE MOON, a Ray Harryhausen film with plot and characters for a change.

Ray Harryhausen's producer Charles H. Schneer purchased H. G. Welles novel of a trip to the moon and I will assume was probably responsible for hiring the excellent screenwriter Nigel Kneale to adapt the book.  Kneale added a very clever modern prologue and epilogue to the the film and even fleshed out the characters which included the completely unnecessary love interest.  The end result was a very good science fiction film with a lot of British humor and charm.

The cast was an unusually good one with Edward Judd and a very eccentric Lionel Jefferies as the lead characters along with American actor Martha Hyer who is not too bad in the typical heroine role.  Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves without letting the special effects get in the way

There actually aren't a lot of the famous Harryhausen animated special effects in this film.  There was no way he could have animated the dozens and dozens of Selenites that live inside the moon.  Still, the models and miniatures are extremely well done and the set design primarily done by Harryhausen is quite impressive.  The music by Laurie Johnson is effective and captures the proper Victorian mood of this film.

First Men IN the Moon is kind of a forgotten film classic in the science fiction/fantasy genre.

103 minutes.

1964 - I AM CUBA, Soviet propaganda film impressively made

A propaganda masterpiece.  The director Mikhail Kalatozov and his brilliant cinematographer Sergey Urusevsky created a film with such stunning photography and staging that the film has a vivid atmosphere and feeling for Cuba which is even more amazing considering it was shot in black and white.

I Am Cuba celebrates the fall of Batista and the rise of Castro or more specifically for the Soviet Union, the embracing of a communist state close to one of the biggest democracy's in the world. The people are exploited, the revolutionaries are noble and those rotten capitalists suck.

I Am Cuba for all it's commie propaganda (which apparently wasn't enough for the Soviet government) is really about what a gifted director can do working in the disreputable genre of the propaganda film.  Kalatozov is in some ways like Riefenstahl an artist who can bring all of his or her talent and technical expertise to create a special film. 

Probably comparing Kalatozov to Riefenstahl is a little unfair, his film is hardly in the same league as Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will.  This film is not some Nazi superman epic.

141 minutes