The Great Gatsby (1962)

D. Randal MacDougall
Colour


I don’t care what anyone says, Elvis Presley as Jay Gatsby works!


This is a movie which gets a lot of stick, even from Elvis fans. Yes that’s right, even those ultra-defensive individuals who’ll fervently make the case that EVERY SINGLE FUCKING THING the man did was brilliant to every semiquaver, will slag off this film. Complaints I’ve read include that the period detail looks unconvincing, that the supporting case is painfully uncharismatic and that the songs are crap. That last one is particularly odd, as the songs really aren’t that bad, if you slog your way through Elvis soundtrack album after Elvis soundtrack album (I don’t recommend this as a leisure activity by the way) you will find dozens of worse examples. Other complaints are that the script doesn’t really capture the book, that it’s poorly paced and that – really – ‘The Great Gatsby’ shouldn’t come with a quasi-happy ending.


And I’ll be honest, a lot of that is true. The period trappings are a little staid with any detail coming from stock footage and fake backdrops. Obviously the more contemporary setting of ‘Wuthering Heights’ was better, but the 1920s – if we’re honest – is not so far away from Elvis’s milieu as to be ridiculous. Michael Landon as Nick Carroway and Linda Evans as Daisy Buchanan are both bland as hell, clearly miscast and losing all their television charisma on the big screen. As for the songs, yes there are some turgid examples, but then there are a couple of catchy ones – the Leiber & Stoller ‘Money, Money, Money’ (clearly no relation to the Abba track) is a particular foot stamper. And really, we’re going to criticise an Elvis adaptation of a classic novel because it doesn’t show sufficient fidelity? It’s an Elvis adaptation of a classic novel - Different Rules Apply!


It seems to me though that all these criticisms miss the point of the enterprise, as this entire film – more than ‘Loving You’, more than any of the concert movies – is a film all about Elvis. This is a movie, this a character, that Elvis Presley just owns! Think about it: the tale of a self-made man who comes from nothing to live the life of opulence; the story of a man who dared to dream big and had all those dreams come true; a man who achieved so much from so little and so must have felt a stranger in his own skin. This could be the Elvis Presley story. Elvis is Jay Gatsby in a way that he is never any other part. In a way that completely negates later interpretations by Robert Redford or Leonardo DiCaprio. On screen this is him at his best, pure and undistilled. This is a magnetic performance of sheer dynamism, a brilliant showing which truly captures the highs and lows of not only the story, but Elvis’s whole career.


Apparently Elvis was disappointed not to get an Oscar nomination, I can truly see why.


Those naysayers are wrong as even though there are plenty of flaws, those flaws all melt away in the face of Elvis’s performance. Yes, in isolation it’s hard to imagine Linda Evans inspiring anybody’s eternal passion, but Elvis manages to convince that this is the case; just as he makes it believable that he’d take Michael Landon as a friend (and not just someone to pelt with wet toilet roll whenever he saw him); or that Jay Gatsby could and should come out somewhere on top. Okay, the ending is contentious and I would find it ridiculously dubious in any other adaptation, but here the near happy ending is one all Elvis fans should root for. As this isn’t F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’, this is Elvis Presley’s. And who wouldn’t want to see a happier ending to ‘The Great Presley’?

The Black Flamingo (1948)

D. Raoul Walsh
Glorious Technicolor


It’s been a long time since we had a proper pirate film. These days the closest we get is ‘The Pirates of the Caribbean’, which is much more post-modern and ironic (as well as being happy to arse about and throw goggle-eyes at the supernatural). But those films don’t feel like proper pirate films to me, they’re almost spoofs of a pirate films which just coast along on the affection we apparently all feel for Johnny Depp’s performance. (And seriously, if we don’t love it and think it’s merely okay – and if we’re honest increasingly served with lashings of self-indulgence which makes it go WAY over the top - then those films can be more than somewhat tedious). Before that we had ‘Cutthroat Island’, which I saw in the cinema and greatly enjoyed, and am always a little baffled that it was such a flop and has so much bad press. But really if we want a proper pirate film – one with ruffled shirts and cutlasses and impossibly handsome leading men with earrings pretending to sail the seven seas in a large tank in the studio – we have to go back even further to the 1940s/1950s and the true age of the pirate film.


This is one of my favourites. Here we have Clark Gable roaring it up as the titular Black Flamingo – who according to his star-struck first mate is “a rogue, a fighter, a lover.” (It goes without saying that the first mate has a bit of a crush on Clark, indeed the moony way he utters the word “lover” suggests this affection may have been reciprocated.) Out at sea one day (or in a tank in the studio) Clark and his crew catch sight of a listing frigate. They’re pirates of the old school so of course they raid, and on board they find nobody but wealthy London trader Sidney Greenstreet and his delectable daughter, Virginia Mayo. Obviously there’s a mystery as to why the ship is otherwise empty, but first – and to save his own life – Greenstreet tells them of some treasure he has stowed away. Filled with greed, the pirates sail out to find it, taking Greenstreet and Mayo with them as hostages. And that’s the film. It’s a breezy and exciting adventure yarn which is filled with the thrill of sailing the mighty oceans, wielding cutlasses, and wearing big frilly shirts (in particular Clark’s luridly red frilly shirt). It’s about Clark Gable’s dashing moustache, it’s about his romancing the absolute peach of a beauty that is Virginia Mayo and it’s about Clark’s less than trustworthy relationship with Sidney Greenstreet. The two of them facing off in a battle of wills, a battle of styles, a battle of rogues who look so distinctive in profile.


And that’s what makes this film so brilliant, it keeps everything simple. Rather than lots of complex plot points and supernatural nonsense, ‘The Black Flamingo’ presents its strengths and proceeds to expertly play to them. Raoul Walsh clearly believes that the dashing enthusiasm of Clark Gable will contrast fantastically with the conniving stillness of Greenstreet, and so it’s worthwhile giving them lots of scenes together. Similarly he thinks that Virginia Mayo looks absolutely ravishing in Technicolor (seriously Virginia Mayo does look absolutely, jaw droppingly, sex on legs, magnificent in Technicolor; her peaches and cream complexion is absolutely delicious – seriously it’s possible that no woman was ever photographed as well in Technicolor as Virginia Mayo) and it will be a male audience fantasy to see her seduced by Clark Gable. (And women, let’s be honest, the sight of an expert seduction by Clark Gable must offer a vicarious thrill). Okay the mystery of the empty ship isn’t as resolved as well as it should be, but everyone has had so much fun on the way that only the most finicky will really care. As what this film is trying to be is The Perfect Pirate Movie, with catchy sea-shanties, a cheerfully roguish crew, betrayal and distrust, romance and adventure laced through every frame. All of that is true and Walsh magnificently steers this mighty ship to give us a truly wonderful hour and a half.

The Final Man on the Run (1959)

D. Frank Howard
B&W


I truly love creaky old British Science Fiction. It’s not just that being a ‘Doctor Who’ fan means that dodgy monsters in grainy black and white comes somewhat with the territory, it’s that alien invasion always feels a lot more poky and provincial in England. In America there are wide open spaces, the world that is being invaded seems so wonderful and worth taking. It’s not like that in Britain. Maybe if – like ‘The Children of The Damned’ – these aliens are choosing to invade the Home Counties you can perhaps see where they’re coming from, but grim and grimy London? Seriously, alien invaders, what’s wrong with your planet that you’d want to come somewhere that still uses powdered egg?


The oddly titled ‘The Final Man on the Run’ is cheap and British and essentially a rip off of ‘The Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ – only with the twist that instead of a quiet and prosperous America town being stolen, it is the seedy environs and backstreets of Soho. This makes it a very interesting set-up, as the aliens are replacing people who are already scary anyway. These aren’t schoolteachers and policemen who are being replicated, but spivs, small time crooks and all round scum. The only one who realises what’s happening is a down on his luck boxer, with a dodgy record himself, but no one will listen to him as nobody really cares for these people anyway – and so the contagion spreads.


This film, despite its cheapness and the rip off of the premise, should be better remembered – not least as one of the early starring roles for Sean Connery.  (There’s also a pre Doctor Who William Hartnell as a tobacconist who is one of the first to be taken. It’s a great moment when Connery peers into his face and sees not a single ounce of emotion). And Connery does well as the boxer in totally over his head. There’s a path to his performance, a joy in seeing the character question more and more before frustration truly overwhelms him. Although unlike Kevin McCarthy in the American version, Connery can never make himself look totally helpless. Even in the bleak conclusion, one gets the impression that this Glaswegian Terry Malloy, will still find a way to save the world.


It’s a tense ride which understands just how scary shadows are, although it feels too rushed at 72 minutes. Much like ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’, which can be interpreted as either anti-communist or anti-witch-hunts, I suppose there are two possible readings here also. Either the film is saying that the salt of the Earth (no matter how coarse a grain) are the most crucial people of all and once we lose them we lose everything; or else this is a bunch of middle class film makers sneering from their pipes and slippers and thinking that the working classes are so common and brutish they are all pretty much aliens anyway, aren’t they?


So perhaps pour yourself a sherry and let the alien takeover begin!

Blue Moon Over Soho (1977)

D. Jack Gold
Colour


I always want to like this film more. The three times now that I’ve seen it, I’ve always wished I could find a way to take this film more to my heart. After all, what’s not to like? We have David Hemmings (already distinctly portly after his sixties prime) running a pornography empire in Soho, and after he tries to help a young girl, finding himself being investigated by uptight cop, Albert Finney. Elsewhere we have Patrick MacNee (John Steed of all people) as a strip-show obsessed English gentleman, and Helen Mirren as a tabloid journalist who has more than a little interest in the seedier side of life. I look at that mixture, and say what’s not to love? Surely this should be one of my favourite films. Why then isn’t it?


The flaw can be described in two words “Robin Askwith”.


Not that Mr Askwith actually appears in this film – he’d be well and truly out of place in this esteemed cast – but ‘Blue Moon Over Soho’, for its all lofty and hard-hitting pretensions, bends a little too far towards the Robin Askwith school of British cinema. Askwith, for those of you lucky enough not to know (I almost feel like I’m robbing you of some of your innocence here) was the star of a series of sex comedies in the 1970s, all with the prefix “Confessions”. So we had ‘Confessions of a Driving Instructor’, ‘Confessions of a Window Cleaner’, ‘Confessions of a Neurosurgeon with a Focus on Peripheral Nerves’ (okay, one of those titles I may have made up). The films are a low grade spicy stew of Jack the Lads, bum & tits, a nice bit of crumpet and phwooaaarrr!!! If you’ve never seen a ‘Confessions’ film, but have seen a latter day ‘Carry On’ film then you’ll know pretty much what I’m talking about.


So the problem with ‘Blue Moon Over Soho’ is that it says it wants to hit hard but what it really wants to do is titillate. This tale of one man’s crumbling porn empire and the righteous cop out to get him, becomes an excuse for bouncing boobs and bums, of suspender clad thighs and attractive birds who just want it and want it now. There is no pubic hair, there is nothing that could be classed as penetration, but there is a school boy smuttiness that never lets up. The tone is established in the opening shot of a busty schoolgirl – who, if we’re honest here, must be at least thirty – slowly removing her gymslip. Of course this being Britain in the 1970s, there is a lot more cellulite and round bottoms than one would get if this film was made in California, but it’s still aiming to arouse rather than anger.


Of course the performances are great. If I had to watch an actor’s face as he gazes impassive at the exploitation of a young girl, then David Hemmings would be in my top ten. And he does some of his best work as a man who has his dormant conscience well and truly pricked. Finney is great as the driven and slightly mad copper, Macnee is deeply, but touchingly, weird as the dapper old pervert and Mirren does as much as she can in an underwritten role (and is, of course, given a topless scene). But one gets the impression that the film around them isn’t the one they signed up for, and the film that made it to the screen cries out for the reassuring presence of Robin Askwith.


‘Confessions of a Righteously Genteel Porn Baron’.

The Caribou Caper (1978)

D. Clive Donner
Colour


Peter Sellers, that gifted and subtle character actor of the 1950s, had truly morphed into a monster of a performer by the latter half of the 1970s. One who was quite happy to crash through all his scenes with as broad a characterisation as possible and carrying a side of ham on a platter the whole way. This was the period where he had just returned to prominence thanks to 'The Pink Panther' movies, never the most understated (or by this point reliably funny) of films and Sellers now seemed to regard any movie he was in as an extension of Inspector Clouseau. Everything he did had to be as loud and brash and hi-hi-hi-larious as possible, except when Sellers is on the screen generally only the first two apply.


And that’s a shame as this is a film that really cries out for a subtler Peter Sellers, perhaps not the everyman performer of the 1950s, but the 1960s model who could glide through the original 'Pink Panther' without deliberately pushing over every apple cart he could find.


Peter Sellers and Michael Caine are brothers, I know it’s difficult to believe when you look at them, but then elsewhere in cinema history Sean Connery played Dustin Hoffman’s dad and a woman named Katy Elder managed to birth two sons with a 36 year age difference. Sometimes you just have to go with these things. They’re not just any brothers mind you, but high-end criminal brothers who have carried out a series of daring jewel thefts across Europe. Now they want one more job, Caine so he can have security on the yacht he plans to sail around the world, and Sellers because it will help him fulfil his life-long dream of buying Napoleon’s underpants. And to do this they target wealthy American movie star, Caribou Curvaluv, (played with her usual levels of bored adequacy by Raquel Welch), but what happens when they each fall in love with her?


First things first, this is a film way out of time. In the sixties Sellers had the original ‘Pink Panther’, Caine had ‘Gambit’ and Welch had ‘Fathom’ – but nobody was making this kind of high-class caper romp in 1978. It’s perversely, ridiculously out of time and no amount of jokes about OPEC, President Carter and the British letting a woman lead a political party is going to solve that. What’s more these are three actors who could easily have made this film ten years earlier, and now seem a bit – well – gone to seed. Sellers, as was starting to be apparent in ‘The Ideas Man’, can’t help but look like a creepy uncle as he ogles young women in bikinis; Caine has that red-faced, sweaty, over-done potato look that he would later wheel out for the likes of ‘Blame it on Rio’, while Welch does shape up well, but one wouldn’t want to leave her in front of a radiator for too long. Let’s be fair, the set-up, the script, the leads would all have appeared better and more fitting in 1968.


It’s an odd film then and that’s before we get to the Peter Sellers factor.


You can really see the importance of collaboration in a film when it isn’t happening properly. Here is a case in point. Sellers and Caine don’t actually have that many scenes together. In the few they do, there is an easy camaraderie between there, a mutual respect. One wouldn’t really believe they were brothers, but they certainly come across as two people who have known each other a long time. When they’re apart though it’s perfectly clear they’re in completely different films. Caine is a likeable cockney, a classy villain, who is looking for one final job to assuage his mid-life crisis; Sellers is a barnpot who speaks constantly in a loud, manic voice and dreams of owning Napoleon’s underpants. It seems that on getting the script for a ‘classy crime comedy’, Caine paid attention to the word ‘classy’, while Sellers blew up the word ‘comedy’ into eighteen foot high letters.


Sellers tramples over everything in his path in his desire to get a laugh. Clearly not listening to Welch’s lines so he can comically leer at her and mug to straight to camera – in addition we have raising of eyebrows, desperate hand gestures and jumping over other actor’s lines, even when they’re seemingly crucial to the plot. It’s clearly the performance of a man out of control. And Caine’s subtler take on his part just makes it look worse.


As such this is a strange out of place, utterly disjointed, film – but one which, I suppose makes you feel like you’re getting two movies for the price of one.

The Ideas Man (1970)

D. Robert Parrish
Colour


So, how will ‘Mad Men’ end? How will Don Draper cope with the final days of the 1960s? Will a swarm of hippies take over Sterling Cooper, lured there by Roger and the promise of LSD? Will Peggy and Joan stage a management buy-out, and guide their new firm in a truly feminist direction with copies of ‘The Female Eunuch’ and ‘Spare Rib’ scattered about the place? Or will the final shot be a close-up of Sally Draper taking a puff of a specially rolled cigarette, the younger generation hailing in the 1970s through a haze of marijuana smoke?


Maybe we can hunt for clues in this neglected 1970 comedy about advertising, one of the many, many, many, many Peter Sellers films which now sit ignored and gathering dust in our collective memory. Much like his friend and sometime co-star, Michael Caine (we’ll cover some of their work together later this week), Sellers seemed to delight in just making total and utter tripe. We all remember ‘The Pink Panther’ films (although we can probably agree there that quality was rarely the watch word), we of course know ‘Doctor Strangelove’ and we have a soft spot for ‘Being There’. But amongst those high points there is masses of crap, a troupe of elephants worth of crap, literally your mind would explode if you tried to visualise just how much crap there is.


What are we waiting for?


Peter Sellers is Simon Harper, a new arrival at a Madison Avenue ad agency. He comes with a big reputation, apparently having done fantastic work in Britain and looking to make it in Manhattan. Unfortunately the ad agency has chosen the wrong Simon Harper, this one has flunked out of every ad agency he ever worked at and is a joke back home. However his guileless self-confidence carries him through and he acts as if he’s earned his position. And of course when he comes up with his simple, childish ideas the yanks love them. They see it as a new wave in advertising, clients are eating out of his hand and before long he’s the wunderkind of New York. (Although ostensibly a satire on advertising, isn’t this scenario really just a swipe at Americans? After all this character was a flop in sophisticated Britain, but in New York his work is apparently infantile enough to be cutting edge). Of course this is the same type of thing Sellers would later do with Chancy Gardner, though probably the reason this  film is less well known is that ‘Being There’ doesn’t try to marry it to the occasional Inspector Clouseau pratfall or a disconcertingly rampant libido.


If you’ve seen ‘Mad Men’, then you’ll see all the trappings in their original form.  There are the very bright late 60s wall dressings and furniture, there are the girls in miniskirts, there is even a buxom redhead (although nowhere near as swoonsome as Christina Hendricks). And what’s more, once his ‘talent’ starts to show Sellers finds himself fawned over and flirted with by nubile young sweetie after nubile young sweetie. Peter Sellers as Don Draper, before Don Draper even existed. A far-seeing spoof that comments on advertising, work place politics of the time and two nations separated by a common language – whilst also peering forward to one of our finest modern day dramas.


And yet none of it works.


Peter Sellers, the fat boy of 1950s British cinema lost weight and decided he wanted to be a sex symbol. This change from just wanting to make people laugh to wanting to be James Bond had a terrible effect on his career. It’s a basic truism that it’s hard to be funny whilst also portraying yourself as a successful ladies man. The comedy of failure is just too seductive; the comedy of failure in actual seduction doubly so. As a result this film stops being a comedy, and just becomes a fantasy for a randy middle-aged man who wants to cop off with young flesh (while occasionally slipping out of an office swivel chair). There’s actually a pattern of this in Sellers’ career - his randy forty something shagging Goldie Hawn comedy ‘There’s a Girl in My Soup’ has not aged well, nor his attempts to seduce his own wife in ‘The Bobo’. It must have been nice to get the girls, the kissing scenes no doubt boosted his ego – but, seriously, why is this supposed to be funny? Even in 1970 the hand of our middle aged star creeping up the thigh of his just turned twenty secretary, would surely have counted more as ‘ewwww’ creepy rather than ‘roll around on the floor, clutch our sides, piss ourselves with laughter’ merriment.


At the end a cameoing Roger Moore arrives as the real and unbelievable glamorous Simon Harper, the one who succeeded in London. It involves another comic pratfall from our star, but Moore exposes Sellers as a fraud. But here’s the thing, Sellers work was so good he has won the respect of his colleagues and peers, they decide to stay with the idiot savant manqué anyway. Why not? They’re all making money and living the life, so what’s not to like? And maybe that’s how ‘Mad Men’ should end. It turns out the real Don Draper didn’t die in Korea and instead walks back through the doors of Sterling Cooper to claim his place. But the power of consumerism wins out and our Don gets to keep his name and his life and they all live happily ever after.


And I will love the show more than I already do, if in this big revelation, the returning Don Draper is played by – please, please, please – Sir Roger Moore!

Murder at Greystone Grange (1934)

D. John Harris
B&W


What’s that you say? There’s a new film opening down The Ritzy? A murder mystery at an English country house? Ooh, intriguing. Very Agatha Christie. Oh, this isn’t her? Never mind, it’s a scenario which always offers a lot of promise. Who’s in it? Okay Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Madeleine Carroll, Ralph Richardson, Edith Evans, Peter Lorre and Peggy Ashcroft. Hmm, Madeleine Carroll I know as she’s your proper film star, but as for the rest I’ve heard the names – I’m not much of a theatre goer, I’m afraid – and that good things are expected. Promising young actors then. And Edith Evans who isn’t actually that young. Okay, I’m sold. Let’s go!


If ever there was a film where the over-talented cast tries valiantly to get above underwhelming material, it’s ‘Murder at Greystone Grange’. Gielgud is a wealthy industrialist who invites various associates – including: his supposedly demure sister Ashcroft; socialite Carroll; penniless duchess Evans; mysterious European investor Lorre; and man about town/mystery novelist Olivier – to a dinner party at his fantastic old manor house, Greystone Grange. But at the stroke of midnight the lights go out and the next anyone sees is Gielgud’s lifeless body sprawled on the floor.


The script is credited to a Deidre Evans, with direction by John Harris. These are two individuals whose work I confess I don’t know, but whose names just scream out pedestrian and mediocre. Can we really expect great things from a collaboration between Harris and Evans? Clearly not. It’s often difficult to physically and unmistakably see a lack of something, but inspiration here is painfully and utterly missing. So, what makes this creaking, aged curio interesting is watching that talented cast try their absolute hardest to breathe life into material so limp it almost feels in need of a mercy killing itself.


Olivier has moments to shine as the callow young lead, Gielgud is dominant as the aged industrialist, Richardson is shifty as the butler and one only needs to point the camera at Lorre to make him a sinister European. There are good things in the performances. But there is also a director with absolutely zero sense of control. In comparison to Gielgud and Ashcroft’s underplaying, both Lorre and Olivier wildly overact. Olivier mostly gives into his tendency to attack any scenery he sees as if he is peckish Neolithic man and it’s a tasty slab of woolly mammoth; while Lorre is all eye popping and dramatic gestures galore. His pronunciation of “telephonist” is definitely worth seeking out however, making it sound like one of the most exotic substances known to man.


What truly lingers from the film though is Carroll, who brings the charm and understanding of a proper film star. It’s a genuine movie performance and another reason why she should be better remembered today.