Reviews

Composer Michel Legrand wrote over 200 film scores and this is one of his very best...such a pity it was wasted on a rather tawdry story. Never seemingly issued on CD either and the movie itself has never, as far as I'm aware, been shown on TV in the UK. Marie-France Pisier was an actress (sic) whom I had not previously encountered and I would like to see more of her...work. The melodramatic nature of this movie reminds me of Portrait In Black (1956?) starring Anthony Quinn and Lana Turner, both giving over the top performances, which I saw as a kid...the fact that I still remember it shows what an impression it made on me. Never shown on UK TV either.

I'm afraid I can't share everyone's enthusiasm for this movie. I had been searching for it for ages as I'm a huge Cyd Charisse fan but honestly, a prima ballerina at the Sands Hotel?? Also she may hold hands with Dan Dailey a lot but they have absolutely no chemistry together. For no apparent reason she suddenly drops her antagonism towards him and falls in love. The music in particular is very unmemorable... Nicolas Brodsky wrote the immortal Be My Love and Because You're Mine for Mario Lanza but this kind of movie just isn't his forte. Meet Me In Las Vegas (NOT Viva Las Vegas! As it says at the top) just drags on and on and you think, what a waste of talent and money. The cameo appearances, however, are fun.

It takes a long time to get going and the principal actors are unconvincing... if Jacques Demy had managed to persuade Johnny Hallyday to play Orphee that would have been really interesting. Also Demy had to cast a Japanese actress (who couldn't speak French) as Eurydice in order to secure the finance for the movie. Jean Marais and Marie-France Pisier are excellent and the film perks up when they are on screen. I always enjoy Michel Legrand's music and the lighting effects in the movie are excellent. But it is not one of this director's better efforts.

An entertaining colonial yarn, largely shot on location in Kenya and South Africa, featuring quite convincing sequences of animal attacks. It's mainly to be treasured for its intimate colour photography of the breathtakingly beautiful Belinda Lee, who is featured in some steamy clinches with the ever dependable Michael Craig. The Rank Organisation, which had hitherto treated her as eye candy for the likes of Benny Hill, at last gave her the opportunity to show her considerable acting ability. It was such a tragedy that she subsequently left the UK in pursuit of an Italian prince and met an untimely end in a road accident only three years later.

It's now available as a "legitimate" DVD and comes up sparkling. The plot's not up to much but the photography and art direction are excellent and there are a few laughs. It doesn't compare with The Dave Clark Five in the earlier Catch Us If You Can, which has better songs and, despite a much lower budget, a real sense of purpose.

I've just watched it again after 50 years, and in a proper cinema (Regent Street, London). There remain for me two major problems. The first is the treatment of the musical score compared with the Broadway show. Hardly any of the numbers here are allowed to speak for themselves; they are over-arranged and swamped by continual changes of tempo and inflexion. Many of the lyrics have been altered for the worse: why, to give just one example, in Put On A Happy Face change "Grey skies are gonna clear up" to "Why look so awfully gloomy?". My second concern - and this is going to upset a lot of people - is Ann-Margret. She is as miscast here as she had been the previous year in the 20th Century Fox remake of State Fair. She switches from ingenue to vamp and back to ingenue in a story that unfolds over less than two weeks. Only Marilyn Monroe could have got away with that. Of course Ann-Margret was a hot property at the time but I feel this movie did her no favours. As for the rest of the cast, Dick van Dyke looks very uncomfortable and Janet Leigh (who doesn't sing and dances only adequately) is sidelined by the Mother. Ed Sullivan comes out of it rather well.

This is just about my favourite movie of all time and I strongly recommend buying the new BFI DVD, which apart from digitally remastering the film itself contains some really interesting "extras", including interviews with Terence Stamp (whom director John Schlesinger really didn't want), screenwriter Frederic Raphael and director of photography Nicolas Roeg, plus footage taken during the filming and brief reports from some of the locations used. This in't the place to compare this version with the 1998 and 2015 remakes but one thing that has always puzzled me is why it was given a 'U' certificate? Even today I would rate it '12' as the subject matter is really rather adult and there are two graphic scenes (the cockfight and the opening of the coffin) which are completely unsuitable for children.

It's a long slow haul. The dialogue appears to be improvised, which I imagine is supposed to make it sound realistic but instead adds to the overall tedium. I don't think the husband is a b*****d, he's just out of his depth. You'd think she would start by at least turning the radio on at home or watching a bit of TV in order to give herself a bit of company; She doesn't interact with any of the parents or teachers at the school, she just wallows in her own self pity and doesn't think to medical help. The Paris sequence is laughably unrealistic and the denouement leaves us guessing - not that I cared much by that stage. (Incidentally where is the garden square she wanders around at the beginning and end of the film? It doesn't appear to have any connection with the estate where they live.) Gemma Arterton suffers nobly but she's one of the executive producers, so she has to take a share of the blame for this unconvincing farrago.

Rupert Everett fulfils a long-held ambition here to make a film about the last days of Oscar Wilde, and in the title role he is simply terrific - he is never off the screen. To write it and direct it as well, however, is to take on too much; indeed the need for an objective view is often apparent when it comes to narrative and structure. The film starts slowly (with a dreadful cardboard cut-out of London by night that could have taken from Olivier's wartime Henry V) and it's some time before the flashbacks (and flashbacks within flashbacks) begin. Supporting performances, especially from Colin Morgan as Bosie and Emily Watson (under-used) as Constance, are excellent and the photography,(particularly in the Italian sequences) beautiful, though I found the half-shadows of the faces in the candlelight rather tiresome. I must add that, for someone who is penniless and constantly on the run, Wilde does possess a large wardrobe. There is more humour than one might expect (I won't spoil your enjoyment by quoting any of the jokes but I found the sequence where the priest (Tom Wilkinson) comes to give Wilde the extreme unction especially hilarious). Great attention is paid to the soundtrack, but why the use of Tchaikovsky's Pathetique Symphony at the end? All in all a fine effort, but I did leave the cinema strangely unmoved.

I watched this on ITV3 this morning. I have seen many episodes of Rising Damp but think this is the best of them all. The studio audience are crying with laughter and frequently on the point of disrupting the proceedings; they even cheer during the closing credits, something very rare in those days. As to the show itself, firstly the plot is extremely clever with many twists and turns; for example Miss Jones thinks that she will be playing the love scenes with Philip and instead gets lumbered with Rigsby, and then the author. The pace is relentless and goes to show how slow many other sitcoms of this age were by comparison (I include Dad's Army). I marvel that Eric Chappell, who I believe is still alive aged 84, took the show's premise from a single West End play (in which three of the four main actors took part) and wrote the entire series on his own. Almost every episode still comes up fresh, compare this with shows like The Army Game, Please Sir!, On The Buses and George & Mildred, which soon ran out of ideas. Leonard Rossiter gives one of his best performances ever, moving effortlessly from pathos to broad farce - where his split second face and body movements are wonderfully fine tuned. I find the show's exploration of racial and sexual cultures still pertinent and certainly very ahead of its time. Peter Bowles perfectly captures the campness of his "luvvie" character. Don Warrington and poor Richard Beckinsale spark off each other in the usual manner. This is classic sitcom and puts paid to the idea that the BBC had the monoploy of the genre.

What is this doing on the big screen? It's a television play, poorly adapted from a prize-winning novel. It gets round the book's first person narrative by having the protagonist tell his ex-wife the story, which is a clumsy and unlikely device. The public school scenes are unconvincing (I am the same age as him). There are some annoying jumps: how does he find out Veronica's name? Why does he end up staying at his ex-wife's flat after she has said he can't? Some of the details are inaccurate: there were no seat belts in the '60s and if you know the London Underground system the journeys don't make sense. Parts of the plot are incomprehensible: who is the man who comes into the camera shop? Since we never see the shop again are we to assume that all of the following scenes take place at weekends? Why can't his wife get to the hospital more quickly? But the real frustration for me was that the denouement left me puzzled and unsatisfied, so I felt I'd wasted my time sitting through the movie.