30 is a dangerous age,
Cynthia
Jock’s Box is the London boîte where a jazz pianist
goes to seed. He must act. The Golden Legend of
Erin he writes, a musical. And marries the girl
next door. Wedding and opening night are on the critical birthday.
His American chum turns the play into poncey arseaching rubbish,
it’s a smash hit. The wife finds out she’s a meridian, but
doesn’t mind.
In a perfectly sophomoric review, Renata Adler of the New
York Times called it “sophomoric”.
The Goon Show
A Nazi plot to bomb every bum in England caps this radio
performance in a television studio, whereof the added expenditure is conveyed
by a belle on a divan reading the Financial Times peradventure.
The
Bliss of Mrs. Blossom
It passes the stages of Renoir’s Boudu sauvé des Eaux to
see the blighter running the business (after saving it from one-size-fits-all
globalization).
A Cox and Box in all
but name, which gives you Pinter’s Night
School at a pinch. The illustrative cinematic
inserts are from De Sica’s contribution to Le streghe, to be sure.
The composition as a whole suggests Lumet’s Lovin’ Molly as a political analysis from Truffaut’s Jules et Jim, he brings it round to McGrath in Deux Anglaises et le
continent.
Screenplay Alec Coppel (and Denis
Norden) from a veteran producer of The
Untouchables, décor Assheton Gorton,
cinematography Geoffrey Unsworth, score Riz Ortolani.
Monthly Film
Bulletin,
“only Freddie Jones as an outrageously effeminate detective induces
anything like amusement.” Pauline Kael (The New Yorker),
“stagebound whimsy... frivolous... uncertain...
wayward and kinky... when the kinkiness doesn't work the picture is just
harmlessly stupid.” Howard Thompson of the New York Times dismissed Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik as “infantile junk” but on the
same double bill saw McGrath, “only the British... serenely amoral...
brisk writing... extremely nimble direction... lovely color, roguish,
restrained and absurdly likable.” Variety, “idea is fleshed out most
satisfactorily so as to take undue attention away from the premise.” Andrew Sarris (Village
Voice), Top Ten of the Year with Buñuel, Bellochio,
Godard, Chabrol, Truffaut, Siegel, Finney, Cassavetes and Forman. Richard Corliss (National Review), Top Ten of the Year
with Schlesinger, Rohmer, Welles, Pollack, Hitchcock, De Broca,
Peckinpah, Hunt and Frost. Tom Milne (Time Out), “any sparks in the
script or direction are ruthlessly extinguished by atrocious direction.” TV Guide,
“fun.” Catholic News Service Media Review
Office, “falls flat because of an over-inflated script.”
Halliwell’s Film Guide,
“silly.”
Money will buy the very best people. An
artificial environment can be created the only existence of which is fiduciary. People will do anything for money.
A comfortable or provocative theory at the time, and now plain
fact.
The Great McGonagall
That he was a poet is plain, because he suffered. That he was
execrable is even plainer, for he died first.
“Parts of it are lovely and hilarious,” said Richard
Eder, New York Times film critic and decorator of curate’s eggs. “Revue-type sketches”,
coldly observes Time Out Film Guide.
I’m
Not Feeling Myself Tonight
The sweeper-upper at the Hildebrand Institute of Sexual Stimulation
and Research, a ringer for Mary Poppins’ Bert, always a looker-on (“let’s
face it, Jon, you’re just a born wanker”).
His research tool made of odds and ends, named Agnes (the coffee
cup that attunes her is by way of Ralph Nelson’s Fate Is the Hunter, let us say). His love
for an office staffer pursued by a bigwig. Cf. Bernard C. Schoenfeld’s
“From Agnes—With Love”, dir. Richard
Donner for The Twilight Zone.
A colleague and “trendy dresser” has a question for
Mum, “would you say I was bent, a raving poofter?”
“Certainly, dear,” she replies, “you’re
bent and a raving poofter.” A
joke and James Booth from The Bliss of
Mrs. Blossom, “there we are, Bri’ish
technical knowhow, yer just
can’t beat it.”
“Yeaeaeah, look out, Europe!” Case of the love potion or love ray (cf. Robert Presnell,
Jr.’s “The Chaser” from John
Collier, dir. Douglas Heyes for The
Twilight Zone). The sneezing wardrobe of Laurel and
Hardy (The Flying Deuces, dir. Edward
Sutherland). Cagney and the grapefruit (The
Public Enemy, dir. William A. Wellman). “I’ve
discovered a new, improved Agnes. Double the range,
double the power.” The climax at the
International Sex Research Congress recalls Casino
Royale (dirs. McGrath et al.) and Wild Gals of the Naked West (dir. Russ
Meyer), among other things that certainly include The Andromeda Strain (dir. Robert Wise).
Clyde Jeavons (Monthly Film Bulletin), “the usual compendium of Anglo-Saxon
hang-ups played for laughs—and losing.”
The Strange Case of the
End of Civilization as We Know It
As any fool can see, it’s Moriarty’s descendant
versus Holmes’, but the execution has a mainspring. The U.S. Secretary of
State, Dr. Henry Gropinger (Ron Moody), loses his diary to a thief aboard his
government jet, he doesn’t know when he lands at “T.E. Lawrence (of
Arabia) Airport” that he isn’t in Israel, army guards shoot him
dead after he greets them with a “Shalom!”
The President (Joss Ackland) is a solemnly stupid horse’s
ass, “the police of five continents” are stumped, A.
Sherlock-Holmes (John Cleese), “A Private Investigator”, is
specially called in by Stratford Johns, who is and was the Commissioner of
Police. With Arthur Lowe as blitheringly idiotic Dr. W. Watson, M.D., and
Connie Booth as Mrs. Hudson, among others.
Rising Damp
The classic comedy of blinkers and blinders, the dreariest pub
in Christendom and the rottenest flats, the African prince and the art student,
the randy spinster and the girl who won’t, her father and the RAF ace,
all a cod and a load of bollocks.
The pussy-hating landlord sees through it all at last and,
illuminated, reconciled to his pet, the moggy trips him up headlong down the
stairs.
Barclays Bank adverts
The long road to ruin three times over, with Monty Casino (Peter
Sellers). He’ll make a sort of New Age busker of a symphony bassist, a
ringmaster of a squandering squire, a camper of a careless Cambridge man.
Night
Train to Murder
“Mr. President, where’s Wayne Morris?” Kind Hearts and Coronets (dir. Robert
Hamer) refracted by The Cat and the
Canary (dir. Elliott Nugent or Radley Metzger) and The List of Adrian Messenger (dir. John Huston), with a Phantom of
the Music Hall (Her Majesty’s Theatre, Carlisle) and a case of railway
homicide, cf. Carol Reed’s Night Train to Munich. The bill in
Carlisle is a masterpiece, Fools Rush In the revue is called.
Britmovie (Drewe Shimon), “whilst not that good, isn’t
that bad either: there are a lot worse things you could watch”.