Monthly Archives: November 2018

The Slender Thread
Directed by Sidney Pollock
Written by Stirling Silliphant from an article by Shana Alexander
1965/USA
Stephen Alexander Productions
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Mark Dyson: [to Inga] Do you think that not getting caught in a lie is the same as telling the truth?[/box]

Could have been better but enjoyable for the performances.

Alan Newell (Sidney Poitier) is a college student who volunteers at a Crisis Hotline.  He is hoping for a quiet night but almost immediately picks up a call from Inga Dyson (Anne Bancroft) who has just taken a handful of barbiturates.  She just wants to talk while waiting for the drugs to take effect and refuses to give her name or address.  Her breaking point came when her husband Mark discovered that the son they had been raising is not his own.  Alan struggles to keep her awake and on the phone while the authorities attempt to trace the call.  With Telly Savalas as Alan’s supervisor.

Poitier and Bancroft act their hearts out and there are several touching moments.  The problem is the excessive amount of time focused on police procedural elements like tracking the call and on the flashbacks.

The Slender Thread was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Costume Design, Black-and-White and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White.

The Sons of Katie Elder
Directed by Henry Hathaway
Written by William H. Wright, Allan Weiss, and Harry Essex; original story by Talbot Jennings
1965/USA
Wallis – Hazan
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Tom Elder: Mr. Hastings, you know everybody around here: Can you tell us who is the dirty stinkin’ lowdown rat that shot our pa?[/box]

Many of the Western tropes were getting mighty tired by 1965 as were some of the stars.

John Wayne, Dean Martin, Earl Holliman and Michael Anderson Jr. pay the sons of Katie Elder.  They reunite in their old town to find out who killed their father and swindled their mother.  Lots of action and witty repartee ensue.  With James Gregory and George Kennedy as bad guys.

This is exactly what I would expect from this director and cast circa 1965.  If not looking for surprises, it’s a couple of hours of well-made nostalgia.

My Winnipeg
Directed by Guy Maddin
Written by Guy Maddin and George Toles
2007/Canada
Buffalo Gal Pictures/Documentary Channel/Everyday Pictures
First viewing/FilmStruck

[box] I’ve never bought that cliché that you should never take people out of the narrative, take people out of that dramatic illusion. I’m more of a person who loves his grandmother. I’m thinking when a grandmother sits at the foot of your bed and tells you a bedtime story, you get absorbed into the story, you notice her style of telling a story. Some parts you should tell badly, other parts charmingly. You’re totally sucked into the story. You’ve been scared, moved, engaged, and then every now and then you notice your grandmother has a dental whistle or a nose hair or that she’s getting pretty wrinkly and that she’s sitting on your foot, and then you go back into the story. I’m one of those filmmakers that likes to show the grandmother. – Guy Maddin[/box]

I wasn’t quite expecting this witty surreal homage to Manitoba’s capital.  Wild!

Director Guy Madden’s conflicted love affair with his home town, turns out not to be so much documentary as fictionalized autobiography with the people in Madden’s life played by actors.  Notably, Ann Savage (Detour) plays the nagging mother!  Manitoba itself is another major character.  The cinematography is dreamy, with black-and-white accentuating the cold, drab atmosphere Madden both extols and laments.

I enjoyed this a lot, having travelled to Canada many times on a prior job.  It’s not something I would necessarily recommend though.  You have to have some sort of affinity for Madden’s hipster sensibility to really appreciate it I would think.

Rapture
Directed by John Guillerman
Written by Stanley Mann from a novel by Phyllis Hastings
1965/USA/France
Panoramic Productions
First viewing/YouTube

[box] That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, lest you should think he never could recapture the first fine careless rapture! Robert Browning [/box]

Weird incesty plot is only partially redeemed by the phenomenal cinematography, gorgeous score and excellent cast.

Agnes (Patricia Gozzi) is a wild woman-child who lives on a farm near the coast of Brittany with her father Frederick (Melvyn Douglas), a retired judge, and housekeeper Karin (Gunnell Lindblom).  Agnes lives in a world of fantasy and behaves like an out-of-control ten-year-old.  Both Agnes and Frederick have been deeply scarred by the death of her mother years before.  The resemblance of Agnes to her mother bothers Frederick at some existential level.

Agnes decides she must make a scarecrow and coerces Frederick to reluctantly contribute an old black suit (his funeral suit?) to the project.

Shortly after the scarecrow is erected, a convict named Joseph (Dean Stockwell) escapes when a prison transport crashes.  He critically injures a guard in the process and is being hunted for attempted murder.  Joseph hides out in Frederick’s barn.  He puts on the clothes from the scarecrow.  Shortly thereafter he meets with Agnes who believes he is her scarecrow come to life.

The whole family conceal Joseph from the police.  He repays  by succumbing to the advances of both Karin and Agnes.

I feel so torn about this one.  Everything about it just great.  Melvyn Douglas in particular was fantastic.  I couldn’t really get past the relationship between Joseph and Agnes, though.  She is clearly presented as having the mentality of a child, and a mentally ill child at that.  This made love affair just icky as far as I was concerned.  Thus it’s nothing I would rewatch and doesn’t get a recommendation from me.  Probably in the minority here.  Available for free on YouTube.

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold
Directed by Martin Ritt
Written by Paul Dehn and Guy Trosper from the novel by John Le Carre
1965/UK
Salem Films Limited
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Control:  You know, I’d say, uh… since the war, our methods – our techniques, that is – and those of the Communists, have become very much the same. Yes. I mean, occasionally… we have to do wicked things. Very wicked things, indeed. But, uh, you can’t be less wicked than your enemies simply because your government’s policy is benevolent, can you?[/box]

Possibly the saddest spy movie ever made.  Also one of the best.

Alec Leamas (Richard Burton) has been head of British Intelligence in Berlin for several years. An agent he was trying to protect is slain crossing the border into West Berlin.  Alec figures it is time for him to return to London.  This he does but Control has further use for him in East Berlin.

Alec creates an elaborate back story as a former spy who has been abandoned by his employers and is ripe for defection.  He drinks heavily in his part.  What no one counts on is Nan Perry (Claire Bloom).  She is an idealistic Communist and rapidly falls in love with Alec.  Both will be pawns in a convoluted game.  With Oskar Werner as an East German.

Martin Ritt brilliantly captures the bleak cynicism and empty world view of men who have come to believe that the end justifies the means.  I like this one a lot but it’s nothing to watch when you need to cheer up!

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Actor and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White.  I can’t understand why Oswald Morris’s cinematography did not also get a nod.

Major Dundee
Directed by Sam Peckinpah
Written by Harry Julian Fink, Oscar Saul and Sam Peckinpah
1965/USA
Jerry Bresler Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Maj. Amos Dundee: I have only three commands. When I signal you to come, you come. When I signal you to charge, you charge. And when I signal you to run – you follow me and run like *hell*![/box]

Sam Peckinpah’s first major directing credit didn’t grab me.

The film is set in the last months of the Civil War near the Texas-Mexico border.  Maj. Amos Dundee (Charleton Heston) is tired of Apache raids on his men across the border.  So he boldly decides to illegally pursue the raiders back into Mexico with a ragtag bunch of Union regulars, Union deserters, Confederate prisoners, and freed black slaves.  Adding to the excitement, the commander of the Confederate contingent, Captain Benjamin Tyreen (Richard Harris), has sworn to kill Dundee after the Apache are defeated.  There’s also a love triangle tossed in the form of Teresa Santiago (Senta Berger).  With James Coburn almost unrecognizable as a bearded Indian Scout and Jim Hutton as an eager lieutenant.

This is quite OK and the action is effectively shot.  But it’s nothing that caused me to think OK here’s the first film of a major talent.  The jury is still out.  Also I’m not a Charleton Heston fan.  He’s exactly the same here as in every other movie and if you like him he won’t be a drawback.

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With the Criterion Collection announcing its own independent streaming service for Spring 2019, I’m switching gears back into 1965 films.