Reviews

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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 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.

I liked some of the props and furnishings relating to Blofeld's (Savalas) steel, rotating and circular head-quarters at the Piz Gloria in the spectacular jagged snow-crowned Swiss Alps. They reflected late-'60s European-Swiss sophistication in interior design: the art and set design are quite superb. The late-'60s were pioneering years when things were imbued with psychedelism. Australian actor and former male-model, Lazenby gives a very good job-in-hand performance.

An amusing spoof of the film-noir genre from that greyest of hippie years - 1972. I enjoyed Michael Caine's laconic cockney humour and syntax. He plays Mickey King a professional pulp-fiction writer involved in an actual murder. In appearance he sports medium-length wavy auburn-hair and sideburns, a white flared corduroy suit and spectacles with mauve lenses and thick black frames. The Maltese settings and views of Valletta - some anthropological - are evocative. English actor, Dennis Price plays a rude tourist who doesn't suffer fools gladly while Mickey Rooney is an obnoxious diminutive freckled brash exiled US actor with underworld connections called Preston Gilbert and who is the mooted topic of a biography to be written by King. The film features a Bogart look-a-like and Godfather heavy, Italian-American actor, Al Lettieri plus gruff pugnacious cigar-chomping Lionel Stander.

Very simply - a very good adventure series produced in 1987. Australian actor, Keith Michell (he was in his late fifties during the production) is solid as the brilliant Yorkshire adventurer - with gruff Yorkshire accent and syntax although he maybe lacks that 17th/18th-Century subtle and humane sense of the 'rococo' and 'Johnsonian'- this was the age of classical figures such as Bach, Handel, Humboldt and Defoe despite the horrors of the slave trade. Maybe the penetration of the Antarctic Circle by The Resolution in 1772-1773 could have have had more emphasis - surely one of the most ambitious and remarkable enterprises in modern history - along with the scenes in Brazil with The Endeavour which might have given the director a chance to show the abundance of the tropics in Latin America and views of the port of Rio. The scenes in Dutch Batavia during an outbreak of malaria are very evocative - the Dutch characters show purpose and look elegant 18th-Century costume. The music by Madrid-based composer, Jose Nieto who uses electronic keyboards is romantic and lush. Maybe excerpts from Bach and Handel could have been deployed? Spanish actor Fernando Rey (''The Light at the Edge of the World (1971) and ''Antony & Cleopatra'' (1972)) is quite good as the Head of the British Admiralty, Lord Hawke although I think his goatee-beard is anomalous.

I saw this when I was a teenager in the '80s when it was aired by the Beeb. It is an amusing and droll take on the '70s Aussie macho style. Mustachioed fairhaired Jim Thompson is highly professional as the coach. The abundant sun and light of Australia are astonishing. It is a stablemate to 'Goodbye Pork-pie' (1981) the hilarious and adventurous New Zealand road-movie.

An effortless superbly timed performance by Burt Reynolds ('Sam Whiskey' (1969), ('Deliverance' (1972)) as a genial, wise-cracking mustachioed jewel-thief at large in London and Amsterdam. It was NME's Ian Penman who wrote in an eighties article that Reynold's flair acting was akin to that of a 'Rolls-Royce'.

An interesting sports film from the early-'70s, relating to the striving for Olympic glory in the context of the Marathon and which is colourfully filmed in diverse settings focussing on a quartet of runners. Welshman, Stanley Baker is professionally superb as the martinet coach of Michael Crawford's runner while Irish-American actor, Ryan O'Neal's confident sandyhaired US athlete is amusing. Baker instills stiff discipline and ultra-high standards. Michael Winner would go on to direct Brando in the gothic 'The Nightcomers' and the violent western,'Chato's Land' which starred Charles Bronson in 1972.

London's Time Out Film Guide describes this western from '70-71 as a 'self-conscious western'. Indeed, it is engaging if not compelling and lacks the surreal feel and flair of the Spaghetti genre. Two broke ageing gunslingers, Will Tenneray (Kirk Douglas) and Abe Cross (Johnny Cash) decide to engage in a shoot-out in a winner-takes-all scenario although there is no hatred between the two of them. Some of the traditional plain-spoken phrases and syntax are very interesting - they reveals the sense of 'the Dollar is King' in an American/western context and the barren beige-coloured scrublands of Santa Fe are evocative. The opening score is sung by Cash while Douglas's young blond son, Eric plays his son 'Bud'. There is a squeamish scene showing the killing and slaughter of a black bull during and after a bull-fight. The shoot-out was filmed in a Madrid bull-ring although other scenes were shot in Sante Fe in New Mexico. Douglas would show more flair in his two subsequent films, 'The Light at the Edge of the World' (1971), an adventure film also filmed in Spain and the Euro heist movie, 'The Master Touch' (1972). Producer, Harold Jack Bloom went on to produce the detective series, 'Heck Ramsey'.

Very simply - a credible adaptation. Filmed at MGM Studios in Borhamwood , Pinewood and Madrid in July 1969 and released in 1970 - the early-'70s were pioneering years. Imperious US star, Charlton Heston - he of the hawk-like profile and lofty height is committed as Marc Antony while Sir John Gielgud is very good as Caesar: his English is superb, although Jason Robards is a very flat Brutus. The script and screenplay deploy the beautiful phrases from Shakespeare to good effect. The studio settings and props are well-varnished while the Spanish setting featuring Brutus's death scene and eulogy after the Battle of Phillipi features a spectacular sky at twilight - a mauve/mother-of-pearl colour which looks slightly surreal. Heston would return as Marc Antony in Antony & Cleopatra (1972) which was filmed in Almeria and Madrid between June and August 1971. Fraser Heston said that his father admired the 'mystique' of Spain.

A splendid documentary produced by the Beeb in 1982 and a stable-mate to the scientifically fascinating 'The Search for the Nile' (1971) and 'The Voyage of Charles Darwin' (1978). Like the aforementioned two documentary series it is academic and is directed with adventurism and enterprise - a rare commodity in these dumbed down times. Some of the tropical settings in Indo-China and Indonesia are compelling and the costumes, dialogue and props are splendid reflecting typically stolid B. B. C. Commonsense production values amidst the verdant abundance of the tropics. Patrick Allen does a good job as the Governor of Singapore, Sir James Brooke but seems a bit abrasive. Sporting sandy-coloured mutton-chops and imbibing white wine alongside Tim Preece's Wallace as the latter goes into detail on the topic of the mutation and reproduction of insect species - deep stuff.

An amusing film relating to mill-town working-class mores and cosy domestic habits in the pioneering late-'60s/early-'70s adapted from Bill Naughton's stage play. Some of the perfectly formed visual props are very interesting with a sense of the vaguely surreal in the mundane:- a canister of 'Vim' bleach, jars of 'Heinz mayonnaise, 'HP brown sauce' and the dense sugary pink and lemon-yellow layers of a sliced 'Angel cake' in the Crompton family's kitchen and dining room; dark mahogany cabinets and bright lime-green patterned curtains in the living room; vinyl records and colour posters; shift scenes in a mill; cigarette street advertisements (Marlboro or Embassy Regal?); views of redbrick industrial Bolton and the bleak rugged Pennines; they all record time so well. A quartet of Yorkshire-born actors are featured including Huddersfield's Marlborough and Cambridge-educated James Mason and Keith Buckley; Leeds-born Diana Coupland ('Bless this House') and Bingley-born Rodney Bewes, while teenager Len Jones is from Leigh. Although its soap qualities are in contrast to Mason's flair role as Captain Nemo in '20000 leagues under the Sea' (1954) he gives a very good interpretative exposition as the moustachioed, flat-cap sporting, mill-town pater familias, Rafe Crompton. He had great affection for the rubric of Huddersfield and the mill-towns of the Pennines in real life and there are references to Handel's 'Messiah' which is the staple of Huddersfield Choral Society in the film. In fact, 1970 was an exciting year in Huddersfield as the 'Terriers' won promotion to the top flight featuring classy Shelf-born soccer star Frank Worthington and Trevor Cherry.

'Harry in Your Pocket' (1973) has the same serviceable sense and inner logic as the rational US tv private eye series 'The Rockford Files', which incidentally is my favourite television series of all time. Tall silver-haired toothy US actor, James Coburn had incredible rhythm and 'cool'. David Thomson described him as '...that least neurotic of American leading men..' Some of the gaudy and garish early-'70s fashions, tastes and settings are amusing - flared lapels, huge shirt collars etc. In America 'the dollar is king' and this movie has US sense of the tangible to the maximum. Walter Pidgeon was born in the remote 1890s.