The way we were... The L-Shaped Room (1962)

It’s still a surprise to find former ballerina and star of American in Paris and many more Hollywood films trudging around a grey and white London looking for a room to rent but it happened and Leslie Caron was deservedly awarded a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for best actress only missing out to Patricia Neal in Hud at the Oscars (along with Shirley MacLaine, Rachel Roberts and Natalie Wood!). She is indeed outstanding and is perfectly cast as the woman in trouble but who is able to get ahead of her situation.

In an interview accompanying the 2017 remaster, the remarkable Caron – then 86, now 94 – explains that in a meeting with screenwriter and director Bryan Forbes, she explained that she felt her character would have more agency and be less timid than as originally written. As she spoke, Forbes seemed to be doodling away at his desk but when he finished he presented her with an instant re-write of the part incorporating her views. So it was that her French sensibilities were able to alter the course of the film with results that remain impressive.

There’s some critical opinion that won’t quite accept Forbes as a full member of the Kitchen Sink Club but in ways his film reflects the broader sensibilities of say an Antonioni or Truffaut in terms of the communication between men and women. Tom Bell’s Toby is full of masculine energy as well as writerly disappointment and struggles to connect with Jane at first. Even when they eventually do, he’s at a loss in terms of how to respond: where she leads he finds it difficult to follow because of male pride and values that he might have expected himself to be free of.

Brock, Leslie and Tom

At the end he presents Jane with his manuscript for a story called The L-Shaped Room and it’s perhaps the only way he can explain the changes she has made in him. Caron is the perfect carrier for this sentiment; it’s not even swinging and here she is making her own choices, deciding on her choices, rebuffing support from the father of her child, Terry (Mark Eden, later the villain Alan Bradley in Coronation Street, killed by a tram in Blackpool!) on the grounds that she doesn’t love him. Tough choices and from a time when marriage was preferable to illegal abortion for some.

The film is indeed gentler than contemporary efforts set further North but I’ve a feeling that Forbes’ later successes have influenced the view of this film which deals with a number of taboo areas in a calm way that’s more accepting and less moralising than you might expect. Another famous Corrie legend, Patricia “Pat” Phoenix plays Sonia a sex worker with whom June has a very matter of fact albeit guarded, discussion about the nature of her work. The women understand even if the men struggle.

Vintage Classic promo for the Blu-ray

This is also one of those films that makes Reel Streets essential reading and it’s fascinating to see their “then and now” pictures of the locations especially when Jane trudges down St. Luke’s Mews, W11 as viewed from Basing Street, then Clydesdale Road, W11 and looking across to Colville Square. These streets look very fine now but in 1962, Notting Hill was less in demand…today's white-washed Georgian townhouses were yesterday's slums along with the mews with doors hanging at odd angles and a general air of poverty.

Those golden old days before eh?

Talking of which there are others in the house where June finds her accommodation in the famous L-Shaped Room - basically two rooms split into one sharing a tiny window in the top storey of a Georgian ruin, infested with bed bugs, damp and much else besides. No bed bugs were harmed in the making of this film although it’s difficult to say especially when Johnny (Brock Peters) the man in the I-shaped room next to the L, shows up with a means of squishing them. Brock Peters has a lovely intensity as the jazz-playing Johnny who, from Toby’s throw-away comment, we are to read as a gay man – his jealousy of his friend’s relationship perhaps being a reflection of his loneliness and need for inclusion?

Cicely Courtneidge, Leslie Caron, Bernard Lee, Avis Bunnage and Brock Peters

Similarly with Cicely Courtneidge’s superb turn as the ageing actress Mavis who famously performs Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty as featured later in the introduction to The Smith’s The Queen is Dead. She is so well-wrought and full of nuanced dark corners. There’s a scene in which she reveals herself to June by showing her a picture of the love of her life and the latter’s reaction says all we need to know. Jane is non-judgemental and, again, that’s something – clichés aside – you might expect from a broad-minded Parisian? Not that Sylvia Sims or June Richie couldn’t have done just as well?

Then there’s no-nonsense land-lady Doris (Avis Bunnage) who drives a hard bargain and yet doesn’t want to appear mean in front of one of her gentleman friends. Even the cameo players have depth such as Gerald Sim as the doctor in hospital who helps Jane to give birth with non-judgemental sympathy. Even in the big Smoke there are friends to be found and if that makes Forbes a tad more romantic than his peers then so be it. This is the story of one woman’s ability to make her choice and it is uplifting and more complex than many a more sanitised or superficially grimy take.

Dusty Verdict: Watch this film for the streets of London, for the craft of the actors and the rightly lauded work of the leading lady, it’s a snapshot of the Golden Age of post-war Britain. For those who dream of resetting this country at some point in the past… maybe a timely reminder of life when it was harder for everyone, not just the outsiders in the boarding house.

I watched the Vintage Classics Blu-ray which features the 2017 restoration and interviews with Leslie Caron and the writer of the original book, Lynne Reid Banks. There’s also a featurette on The L Shaped Room and the British New Wave. This was the start of the Sixties when this country began to look up and beyond the austerity post War and Empire, when Victorian laws were revised and thrown away. Clearly, we are still in the middle of this process…

 

PS: You can find Reel Streets here - it is very well researched and highly addictive!

 

 

 

The Rotters' Club... What a Carve Up! (1961)

I’ve just finished reading Jonathan Coe’s novel of the same name, published in 1994, and which uses this film both as a major plot point in the way which influences his main character, writer Michael Owen, and also the broad storyline in which a wealthy but faithless family is brought together for the reading of their patriarch’s will only for some haunted home-truths to be savagely delivered in the most gruesome fashion. Coe’s aim is to satirize the landed elite and the conservative classes who gave birth to the Thatcherite glory years in which everything was sold off and greed was not only good but glorious. It is, as so much of his work, fiendishly clever and also very funny as he captures the mood of the times in thorough and entertaining ways.

There’s no deeper motives behind the original film except perhaps of a lampooning both of the usual class cliches of the time – it’s almost Carry on in style – but also the genre of horror films and ghost stories. It’s influenced in this respect by The Ghoul (1933) but also by The Cat and the Canary filmed as a silent by Paul Leni in 1927 and then remade with Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard in 1939 – a film which had the same impact on me as the film, and I certainly didn’t spend long hours freeze-framing the saucy bits as Owen does for the scene between Kenneth Connor and Shirley Eaton to leer over the latter undressing.

Discretion is the better part of valour Kenneth my lad!

Owen is taken by his parents to see the film as a child and this moment leaves a lasting impression on his sexuality, a fondness not just for Shirley but also a very Ken Connor-like dithering over opportunities missed. Connor was very much an everyman in his comedy films and here plays a rather nervy proof-reader of horror books which set his teeth on edge but bring in a paltry salary all the same. His mate Sid, on the other hand, is an outgoing and go-getting bookie with a heart of gold. There’s a thesis to be written on the cinematic charm of Mr James but he’s a fine actor who manages to convey genuine emotions and likeability whether in serious drama – The Small Back Room (1948) here or Carry on… I saw him twice on stage in Blackpool playing a variation of Bless This House – Sid as long-suffering husband and father – he was exceptionally good and my Dad, also a pipe smoker – loved him!

Kenneth Connor I know less about, but he came up through the Central School of Speech and Drama and following his wartime service RADA, so he was very well trained and technically able. He joined the Old Vic company for whom notable performances were as Chaplain de Stogumber in Saint Joan and Dobchinsky in The Government Inspector, which starred Alec Guinness. He may have opted to specialise in comedy due to his diminutive stature but he always kept working on the stage even during the Carry on successes. I always rooted for him as a kid and still do now as does Coe’s Michael Owen as he wonders what stopped him from staying with the lovely Shirley in the middle of the night after the killings begin in the isolated darkness of Blackshaw Towers…

“It’s a 5/6 for each of the horror ones and 3/6 for the sexy ones… “

“Why’s it two Bob cheaper?” 

“Well, they reckon I get that much pleasure out of reading them…”

Beyond our Ken?

After some entertaining opening titles revealing the faces of the key players intercut by Donald Pleasence’s creepy lawyer Everett Sloane, making his way to Ken’s flat, we find the latter nervously proof-reading The Fiend of the Second Flat as he sits in his own second floor flat. The camera pulls away and we see Syd fall through the kitchen skylight having been unable to get his friend’s attention via the doorbell… Then two are then surprised by Mr Sloane who invites Ernest up to hear the will of his late-departed Uncle Gabriel who becomes dearer the more Ernest imagines the riches in store.

Quickly adopting the airs and graces of presumptive new wealth and position, Ernest remains conflicted with fear and asks Syd to accompany him up to Yorkshire. After a disturbing exchange between Ernest and a ghostly station manager they hitch a lift from a hearse driver whose driver echoes a line from the classic Brit-horror, “there’s room for one in t’ back…”. They end up having to make their way cross country to the old house as even the driver of the dead won’t risk the final stretch…

Mr Pleasence unsettles all before him...

One at the imposing hall, we meet the first of Ernest’s strange relatives: Dennis Price as the wearied dipsomaniac “one-time gentleman” Guy (Dennis Price), well-oiled and over-sharing with the suggestion that all of the family are more than a little mentally ill. Then there’s Michael Gough having a (James) whale of a time as Fisk the greying old retainer with secrets to hide who guide the men to their rooms, Ernest in the East Wing.

We cut to Guy arguing with his sister Janet (Valerie Taylor) and their father Edward (George Woodbridge) and then Ernest meets Cousin Malcolm (Michael Gwynn) playing the organ who decides that he must be “quite mad” as the rest of them. Then Emily Broughton (Esma Cannon) enters exhibiting further aspects of the family disease talking about knitting scarfs for the soldiers at the front… in the Great War…

Shirley Eaton

Queue Shirley as Nurse Linda Dixon a breath of reassuring beauty and normalcy amongst the weirdness of the situation and the family. Every sits around the table as Mr Sloane reads out the news that his client is bequeathing “nothing” … Guy laughs and Janet talks of challenging a will re-written the day before he died. 

Why did he bring us all this way just to tell us he’s left us Sweet Fanny Adams…

That’s simple, he was like the rest of us, quite mad… 

After the generator breaks Ernest, Syd and Fisk go to investigate and on their way back discover Edward dead in the garden. The news is relayed to the rest of the group with the realisation that the murderer could only have been one of those in the house. No way out and with Fisk predicting more murder to follow it’s going to be a very long night…

His nerves getting the better of him, Ernest wanders into Linda’s room for the scene featured in Jonathan Coe’s book, Ernest determined to be the gentlemen but really intimidated by Linda’s presence. He allows his chivalry gets the better of him and he escapes into the hall where he battles an empty suit of armer to a draw.

Ernest: I suppose you must be scared what with all the things going on here tonight?

Linda: Oh, not really.

Ernest [nervously): Oh, well I am!

Sid, Michael and Kenneth

There won’t be much sleep tonight though as Ernest isn’t the only restless spirit, persuading the more grounded Syd to share his bed and annoying the latter as first a cat and then noises off disturb their sleep. Soon there will be blood and organ music and deception as the Broughton’s start to meet their ends one by one, straight on till morning…

As with the earlier films, the two Cats and Canaries especially, the film, directed by Pat Jackson from a script by Ray Cooney and Tony Hilton, manages to mix jump shocks with comic moments in ways that work in ways Scooby Doo and the Mystery Gang would appreciate. There’s actual horror and no one is safe, it’s hard to tell who’s good and who is bad and things are never quite as they seem.

Ultimately, whilst it resembles a Carry on film, it’s more cohesive and genre faithful than Carry on Screaming and feels more like a play on screen with more sophistication and cinematic intent than you’d find with the rest of the crew. The last remaining mystery is why this film is only available on old DVD, surely a restoration and Blu-ray release are deserved with more background on the storied cast and the genre of films that make you laugh and make you cry!

The book is freely available from all good bookshops and at Amazon... highly recommended to all fans of the genres involved, politics and Shirley!

Object Z (1965), BFI Blu-ray and DVD (Dual Format Edition), out now!

 

“Object Z is unique among children’s programmes. It does not feature children, teenagers, puppets, pop groups, animals. It was in fact originally written for adults…”

Kenneth Eastaugh, Daily Mirror 11th  November 1965

 

This is an excellent release from the BFI of a series I wasn't even aware of and was clearly an attempt to match the BBC's Dr Who or even Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass, using a global threat posed by invading aliens as a means of showing the divided world of the time. Like all good sci-fi, it holds a mirror up to the science-present as much as possible perhaps too boldly as the above quote reveals with some contemporary reviewers concerned at the frightening concept and the message it sent about humanity’s petty doom spiral… It’s rather sadly as relevant today as 60 years ago.

As a small child of the sixties I was convinced that the War was still being fought, not in Europe but somewhere in Africa so ever present where the scenes of conflict on programmes like All Our Yesterdays that replayed the last big event over and over. The reality is, of course, that some war was always taking place and so it has continued until our present state in which more war is far from “unforeseeable”. Writer Christopher McMaster wanted to make a global point about the threat to our long-term viability and that he was able to do so via a “children’s show” says much for the prevailing sensibilities of a country in which most people lived through the Second World War, Korea and the Cuban missile crisis when the Cold War almost thawed.

Unseen since its first transmission on ITV in 1965, and now newly remastered, Object Z is available on home media for the first time and it feels like the discovery of a time capsule... from a time when we trusted scientists and experts more than we do now. I remember this optimism as it fuelled not only TV science fiction, Dr Who but also the Gerry Anderson series, cinema with 2001 and others. At the same time there were an increasing number of dystopian creations, The Prisoner, 2001 again (beware of AI), then Charlton Heston’s one-man industry of post-apocalyptic disappointment: Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, The Omega Man and so on. The culture was wary about the speed of change but, heck we still went to the Moon didn’t we? The darker edge of Quatermass was revived on television with the growing environmental-futurist concerns of Doomwatch (very on the nose), The Changes, The Tomorrow People and back to Dr Who.

Object Z is an outlier in this respect with a group of astronomers discovering a huge object heading in the Earth’s direction from deep space with impact almost certain and the best-case scenarios still offering little hope for civilised society. The media plays a major role in communicating the truth, reflecting the Fleet Street heroes of The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) – surely a major influence - with television producer Peter Barry (Trevor Bannister) and his assistant Diana Winters (Celia Bannerman) holding the narrative focus in the race to find answers.

Meanwhile, society begins to fray as panic spreads and extremist political opportunists attempt to take advantage of chaos led by the Oswald Mosely type figure of Keeler (played menacingly by Arthur White, so close to the real deal). The scientists and politicians must work together and internationally too in an attempt to save the World and the tension ramps up after an initial missile fails to even dent the object or alter its course in any way.

Celia Bannerman on left, Trevor Bannister on right

Some of the World might just survive in hastily assembled bunkers but there’s no doubt that the impact is coming… is this an allegory or a forecast? The last episode has two shocks with the latter making you wish that season two existed… food for thought and a fascinating document.

“The recording was done as-live with no cuts, vision mixing took place in real time with filmed inserts played in live; and included a 125-second pause for the scheduled ad break. Only a genuine emergency would have stopped the recording and line fluffs certainly did not count…”

Jon Dear in the booklet essay.

It’s fascinating to see how the budgeting and production constraints impact the finished project with Jon Dear’s booklet essay being especially informative inn this respect along with the excellent commentaries. The episodes were filmed in order with three days’ rehearsals between Wednesday and Friday before recording on a Monday and broadcast on Tuesday, fairly common practice at the time and something which now adds a freshness and immediacy with outweighs the cardboard sets and cheap special effects.

Back to the cast and Trevor Bannister is the one holding everything together with a believability and force of conviction that regular viewers of Are You Being Served? might be surprised by. He’s so good and represents both viewer and his industry in terms of his reaction to the unfolding reality and the horrors of what to come. He keeps on doing his job and trying to find out the truth for his viewers… it’s a journalistic sensibility that may sadly be of its time… Hopefully not.

The super science special features are revelatory especially the illustrated booklet featuring new essays by Jon Dear, Dick Fiddy, Dr Elinor Groom and William Fowler, and credits. This is available with the first pressing only so please get in quick!

Also worth noting:

•             Newly remastered in 2K and presented in High Definition and Standard Definition

•             Audio commentary on Episode 1 by Jon Dear

•             Audio commentary on Episode 2 by Dick Fiddy

•             Audio commentary on Episode 3 by William Fowler and Vic Pratt

•             Audio commentary on Episode 4 by Dr Elinor Groom

•             Audio commentary on Episode 5 by Kevin Lyons

•             Audio commentary on Episode 6 by Celia Bannerman and Toby Hadoke

•             In Search of Sierra Nine (1963/2025, 7 mins): edited highlights from the sole remaining episode of the Rediffusion science fiction drama Sierra Nine accompany this investigation of a mostly missing television series

•             Object Z Episode 1 shooting script

•             Image gallery: rarities and curiosities relating to Object Z and its missing sequel series, Object Z Returns

 

You can find Object Z in the BFI shop and also from all good online retailers, do not hesitate, you never know when something unexpected may appear in the stars...

Trevor Bannister looking confident in a publicity shot

Kind of Blue? Fade In (1968)

"Both pictures are either going to be great or be disaster areas. There will be no middle ground with either one."

Judd Bernard, Producer for Blue and Fade In

As previously mentioned, Fade In was filmed at the same time as Silvio Narizzano’s film Blue (1968) and it features the fictionalised story of two people involved in the making of that film. It’s a meta concept with Blue’s stars Joanna Pettet and Terence Stamp shown arriving and on their way to the Utah desert set with the latter even getting a speaking role as a garage attendant asks of the film will feature John Wayne. It’s an intriguing concept and whilst the ideal way to experience ethe two would have been to have them on the same bill, it took a number of years for Fade In to make it to the screen and this was as a TV movie in late 1973, after its star Burt Reynolds had made Deliverance and become one of the biggest names in Hollywood.

So, what happened and why was this charming if low energy film consigned to the darkness for so long? A clue can be found in the fact director Jud Taylor asked for his name to be taken off the picture as did the scriptwriter Mart Crowley… "I did write one film, Fade-In, with Barbara Loden and Burt Reynolds in starring roles. However, it was butchered by other writers. It was never released. I paid Paramount $1700 to take my name off the project."

The credited writer was Jerrold L Ludwig, one of Mr Crowley’s butchers, whilst director was “Allen Smithee” a made-up name devised to get around the requirement of the Directors Guild of America that each film was to have a named director. The studio didn’t like Taylor’s cut and he certainly didn’t like theirs and perhaps even they weren’t that keen…

 

Burt Reynolds and Barbara Loden make film...

The film starts in an intriguing enough way as massive trucks trundle through the desert as seen only in fictional form and a century earlier in Blue. Then its almost a shock to see Terry Stamp driving his e-type Jaguar – oh Tel, you were living the dream mate! – towards the location, reminding the viewer perhaps of David Hemmings in his open top Roller in Blow Up (1966). Stamp was so location-specific this makes his appearance in Blue even stranger.

Pretty soon though we’re seeing Burt Reynold’s as Rob, a local rancher looking to get some work as a driver on set, waiting as Joanna Pettet’s plane arrives – cue some appreciative comments form his pal Bud (the ever-reliable James Hampton) before Rob sets eyes on Jean (Barbara Loden), the film’s assistant editor, who he is to chauffer. The two hit it off and Rob proves to be a gentleman walking her home and protecting her from a couple of his drunken pals… he’s already BURT, handsome, pensive and a powerful presence.

Rob and Jean get to know each other and we also get some fascinating glimpses of Blue being made from the camera’s sweeping around the filming of the deadly meeting of Blue’s compadres and the Mexican soldiers to Jean demonstrating the art of editing and the Kuleshov effect, cutting the action to generate an emotional narrative for the audience. In his turn Rob show the city girl his world from acting the cowboy and skinny dipping – there’s a lot of Burt on show!

 

Their romantic journey continues even as Jean’s place-holder boyfriend Bill arrives from Los Angeles… she’s more interested in her new lover although she finds him struggling to accept this. It’s a tale of people from two completely different worlds, one perhaps more real than the other and you wonder what will happen when the play-acting ends and both have to return to reality?

Dusty Verdict:  Fade In has a terrible reputation but it’s likeable enough in its lightweight way. It certainly benefited from being seen directly after Blue and the two together make for an interesting time capsule of Hollywood ideology from this period. If Stamp was out of place in Blue Reynolds is perfectly cast in this world and there are more than enough hints of his star power and persona to come.

A rainy-day film for romantics… after being hard to find for decades both films are now on blu-ray along with a documentary on Silvio Narizzano, whose idea it all was! Details of the Australian version are here!