Around Midnight… All Night Long (1962)

I was so distracted by the stream of famous jazz players in this film that it took me a good portion of the action to realise that it’s a jazzed version of Othello. Patrick McGoohan plays drummer Johnny Cousin who has his eyes set on stealing his friend’s wife and using her to front his own band. He sets out by playing everyone against each other by whispering in their ear, spreading rumours and lies, undermining friendships and loves, aiming to break everyone so that he may succeed.

McGoohan goes further than Iago in terms of having a commercial end game but he’s so good in this role, pushing his friends as far as he can, letting them fall into traps of their own making and always seeming to be on their side. On top of this the actor also plays his own drums and, even if the sound of those beats was from drum coach/ “ghost drummer” Allan Ganley, he looks like he can keep a rhythm and he seemingly spent long hours practicing in a garage to copy the movement.

Just as the various characters take their cue from McGoohan’s lies so does the film’s tension revolve around the actor’s intensity and his ability to convey malice and nervous duplicity with ease. It’s Iago with a beat, self-hatred and a lonely soul as a motivator.

Charlie Mingus

All seems cool enough at the start when rich benefactor Rod Hamilton (Richard Attenborough) travels down from Belgravia in his Bentley to open up his warehouse club down in Stoney Street, Southwark. As he walks in, he greets one Charles Mingus, pipe in his mouth, warming up over a double bass and it’s the kind of moment that makes this film essential viewing for every jazz lover: Mingus in the flesh!

More players arrive including Tubby Haynes, Allan Ganley, Ray Dempsey, and others with a pretty young blonde name of Carol White – uncredited here but soon to take the world by storm as the Battersea Bardot. There are so many “faces” in the crowd… including Cleo Laine if you look hard enough. It’s as if someone just put in a call to Ronnie Scott’s to send down anyone who was playing that week.

The boys in the band greet Carol White

Sure enough the great Dave Brubeck turns up and it’s a delight to watch him work ads it is with Johnny Dankworth – see that’s why Cleo’s there! Some have complained that there’s not enough jazz versus story but there’s more than enough to establish a real vibe in the stary and anymore and we’d be looking at a musical rather than a drama and Basil Dearden's direction is too cool for that.

The balance works well enough and allows the intensity of the story to build as Johnny tries everything he can to break up the anniversary party given in honour of piano player Aurelius Rex (Paul Harris) and his wife, singer Delia Lane (Marti Stevens). Harris has great presence as the powerful Aurelius – London’s King of Jazz (hence “Rex) who, whilst he loves his Desdemona/Delia true, still asked her to stop performing when they got married.

Marti Stevens and Paul Harris

Johnny aims to coax her back and away from her man – he has his own designs all mixed up in fear and jealousy… so much does Paddy convey! Johnny also aims to undermine Aurelius’s manager and sideman Cass (young Keith Michell) and skilfully encourages him to fall off the waggon and smoke some weed against his boss’s instructions. He has lifted Delia’s cigarette case and gives it to Cass with more weed, pushing his buttons so that he might rebel.

It’s striking to see Aurelius and Delia’s mix-race relationship in 1962 and with not a comment from anyone. Cass’ girlfriend Benny (María Velasco) is also black, and the only problem there is Cass’ commitment phobia.

Patrick McGoohan, shaken and a stirrer...

Johnny plays on all of these things and strings everything together for a climactic scene of betrayal and violence. His own wife Emily (Betsy Blair) has stood by him even though he married her out of obligation and reveals his own conflicted soul driving him to ruin as much of everyone else’s happiness as he can.

Does it end like Othello or is their salvation in those Southbank streets…? I’d recommend you watch it and find out for yourself.

Dusty verdict: A powerful mix of drama and jazz which stands or falls on fine the performances of the key players. The jazz takes an inevitable back seat but gives the full feeling of the cutting edge of contemporary cool. The jazz is real and so too are the emotions… jealousy, anxiety and pure insecurity driving people to risk everything even though they’d be safer staying at home. And that is jazz.

All Night Long is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Network and you can order it direct from their site right here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Bucolic Bardot… Dulcima (1971), Carol White

This is a deceptively simple film which features one of Carol White’s finest performances alongside the great John Mills. The interplay between the two is exceptional and showed that the “Battersea Bardot” could not only hold her own with the very best, acting and reacting with the natural emoting seen in her Loach films, but also that she could place herself in different contexts. This is not the kitchen sink of the city but the barn door of Gloucestershire countryside and she fits right in, hair a natural brown, pitch perfect accent and freckles revealed in her un-made-up face.

 Based on a novella from HE Bates – author of The Darling Buds of May, The Triple Echo and Love for Lydia – the story is a typical rural affair, transposed from his usual stamping ground of Northamptonshire to Gloucestershire, with filming taking place around Minchinhampton and Tetbury.  

Fresh from his best supporting Oscar for Ryan’s Daughter (1970), the 62-year old Mills looks fit as a fiddle as Farmer Parker, devoid of rustic charm and a penny-pinching drunk given to cheating his competition of fair prices at the market and stashing his cash under carpets, in biscuit tins and under his hat. He’s a selfish old get who starts the film after a long lunchtime session by driving his Land Rover all too close to Dulcima Gaskain (Carol) as she pushes her baby brother in a pram. He ends up crashing into his chicken coop and Dulcima rushes to help, as he falls out onto the mood in a stupor.

Sir John

Dulcima “Dulce” Gaskain is the eldest of countless siblings and is a drudge for her parents, driven especially hard by her father (Bernard Lee), who expects her to look after him at the expense of her own happiness. After a hard day’s mopping, shopping and cooking, she lies in bed reading of a better life, looking dreamily at the latest fashions and alighting with a smile on an advert showing a handsome young man advertising the knitwear brand Albert.

Seeing Parker’s chaotic existence, she sees an opportunity to make some money by helping to clean his house and generally making herself useful. At first, he doesn’t quite see it, especially when sitting room is transformed as Dulce clears his clutter and washes his threadbare curtains but a hot meal soon persuades him that perhaps he can take advantage of this young woman.

Both of them have ulterior motives and when Dulce accompanies Parker to the cattle market, we see how the wily old sod deliberately takes out a competing farmer by saying he’ll buy his cows so that he can get a better price for his own cattle. He doesn’t follow through with his offer and perhaps this gives Dulce the signal that he deserves a little of his own medicine.

Dulce distracts

Dulce then deploys a different approach by driving Parker to distraction with a few buttons lowered on her top and some earthy leaning and bending as she cleans the floors. If he was happy with her food and cleaning, he’s delighted to see more of her and all the while Dulce keeps a tally of how much he owes her. Getting actually paid the old man requires a greater level of commitment though and Dulce finally gets what she wants by giving him what he’s obviously not had for some time… poor fellow is so distracted he even gives her more than she asked for although she later tells him he overpaid her; it’s a canny game between the two.

All the while Dulce has been warding Parker off with talk of her jealous boyfriend, Albert – inspired by the advert – but she gets a start when one day the man from the advert turns – as the Forest Warden from the neighbouring estate (Stuart Wilson). From this point on she keeps on bumping into the younger man and Parker, who keeps on seeing him from a distance, becomes increasingly uncertain. 

Love is blind though and Dulce moves in to be rewarded with a higher salary and a TV set. The point has been reached were the balance in the couple’s strange relationship has been tipped in Dulce’s favour and when she gets dolled up and flirts with “Albert” on the bus, she arranges a date with him. It’s quite the transformation for White as the “dolly bird” of the sixties emerges in full bloom and it’s clear Parker is out of his depth and age group.

Carol White and Stuart Wilson

Now this amiable tale changes tone as there’s nowhere for Albert’s love to go as Dulce becomes increasingly attached to Albert and yet the resolution is not going to be a clear one: will Dulce take responsibility for where she has led the old man, will he realise that his pursuit of her is hopeless?

Dusty Verdict: Frank Nesbitt directs with a lightness of touch that frees the two main players to interact in funny and convincing ways. White’s Dulcima does not come across as cynically as she might and there’s a genuine win-win for both Dulce and Parker until life intervenes.

Mills is as good as you expect with some delightful expressiveness and he’s truly convincing as the dirty old farmer from the days when baths were less frequent and the four-wheel drives were often battered and purely functional. White responds so well and is perfectly at home in the country showing the comic touch to make light of Dulce’s duplicity as well as the dramatic flair we all know she has.

Dulcima is available on Blu-ray now so there’s no excuseto miss this one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No one was saved? Made (1972)

Anyone in any doubt about the stunning consistency and sheer ability of Carol White need look no further than this overlooked yet viscerally affecting film. Until this 2k restoration and release on DVD from Network, Made had been little seen since its original theatrical release and subsequent mixed reviews with the Time Out review from Geoff Andrew noting “moments of acute perception” but also accusing it of “a typically British glamorisation of seedy lives…”; it’s hard not to agree with the former and to completely disagree with the latter. There’s a Loachian reality to the film, a freshness to the, partly improvised playing and these lives are recognisably un-glamorised and far from seedy.

The person holding this all together is Carol White and performance is very much in the style of her films made with Ken Loach, Cathy Come Home and Poor Cow. In his superb essay in the 28 page booklet accompanying the DVD, film historian Neil Sinyard quotes White in saying she found the part exhausting because she identified so much with her character Valerie, “Nothing goes right… it’s just not fair.” Sinyard’s booklet is one of the best you’ll find and adds so much context to the film and I apologise for any snippets I’ve lifted*! He is right to describe White as luminous as Valerie and, as she is in virtually every scene, she carries the whole enterprise on her shoulders with a vital grace and balance that brings the best out of even the untrained but charismatic Roy Harper.

Carol White

In White’s eyes Valerie’s trials are all too believable, there’s an intelligence and vulnerability as well as a working-class resilience that leaves you hope even with a scenario every bit as brutal as a Zola novel. Most things, as Carol said, “go wrong” for our Val, but she faces up to it all and, unlike Howard Barker’s play, No One Was Saved (1970), you can believe, as with Giulietta Masina’s character in Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria (1957), that she may yet prevail. Part of the reason for this is that Valerie is not the source of her bad luck, that is very much the men in her life and others too; at the end of the day, she’s too strong to be undermined by their attempts to control and to use her. Down but not out in London and Brighton…

Barker’s play was partially a reaction to The Beatle’s Eleanor Rigby in which he saw a rare concern with despair and defeat from a group he wasn’t always convinced by, especially Lennon. In this case the song was McCartney’s and all the more remarkable for that given his supposed fondness for the sweet stuff... Barker’s screenplay for Made was, written in collaboration with the producer, Joseph Janni, and director John Mackenzie, no relation to Father Mackenzie obviously, who had directed the excellent Unman, Wittering and Zigo (1971) and would go on to give us The Long Good Friday (1980).

Title sequence showing priest, mother and musician: the forces shaping Valerie's life

The film has cracking opening credits, shot in shadowy black and white with White’s character and Ray (Richard Vanstone) looking up to the night sky as they play on a roundabout in a children’s playground. Other characters are featured in this inspired entre and it sets the mood of dislocation and loneliness from the get-go as well as kicking off the narrative as soon after Valerie gives Ray the knock back when he expects more of her in the back of his van; he calls her frigid and all the usual seventies expressions of frustrations at women who don’t go “all the way” (back to The Beatles and John’s original lyric of “she’s a pr*ck teaser…” for Day Tripper).

Valerie is a single mother working as a switchboard operator in London with her best mate, June (Doremy Vernon) who is altogether more relaxed in her attitude to relationships, she even agrees to go out with Ray later in the film. In the office one of the managers, Mahdav (Sam Dastor) has a crush on Valerie but she doesn’t see him as serious or authentic enough. Mahdav puts Valerie on a pedestal and will even write poetry for her…

Roy Harper's minstrel in America

Valerie is a doting mother to her baby son whilst her own mother, played by the excellent Margery Mason, has MS and wants more attention from her girl than is healthy. Mackenzie doesn’t necessarily judge but observes and there’s tragedy in this relationship as the mother cries wolf and the daughter just wants some joy.

Valerie is a member of a youth club run by Father Dyson, John Castle, who is always so good in conveying artifice and the disconnects between sincerity and anterior motivations, he likes Valerie and yet he also likes her too. The group travel down to Brighton for a day out and whilst he stands up for their misbehaviour, asking for understanding, he is quite judgemental himself and when it comes to Valerie, he thinks he knows best, couching his guidance in terms that seem to support her need for freedom and yet which leave us in no doubt as to his desire to possess.

Getting noticed at work with Doremy Vernon

Part of the group is a girl called Ann played by the excellent Sara Clee, it’s only a bit part but she is always a good addition to any film!

In Brighton Valerie wanders on her own and comes across a young Bob Harris interviewing folk-pop wonderkid Mike Preston (Roy Harper). Whispering Bob does rather well with his twiddling pen and questioning as does Mr Harper – hats off to both! I wonder how much of this section was scripted or whether they were both given free reign to elaborate on familiar themes. Roy Harper is one of our great lyricists and over a fifty-year career has written some classics, especially When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease and Twelve Hours of Sunset, yet he is not known for his acting. Mike Preston is Roy’s only role and he does a decent enough job as Mike/Roy, responding well to the performers around him. 

Bob interviews Roy

Mike and Valerie begin a relationship and there are some good exchanges as the anti-establishment creed of the folk singer chimes with the young mother’s desire to be accepted as an equal yet Valerie doesn’t agree with Mike’s ideas of free love and she still carries the idea of a long-lasting monogamous commitment. Harper’s instinctive playing also goes well against his ostensible rival, Father Dyson, contrasting with John Castle’s more layered and controlled style.

As events unfold, Mother deteriorates and horrible tragedy intervenes, the worth of Valerie’s suitors is to be fully revealed and, it seems, her only chance is to “make” herself for herself and not to be made in their image. 

John Castle and Carol White

Dusty Verdict: Made is a flawed and fascinating film that deserves to be more widely seen. The Network DVD is out of print now – which is especially a shame for Sinyard’s notes – but you can stream it on Amazon Prime and copies are available on eBay: don’t hesitate!

It’s a really strong performance from Carol White who develops on her previous roles with very strong improvisations that, for me, place her high in the British actors of this era; she was called the Battersea Bardot, but she’s far more of a metropolitan Jeanne Moreau. She conveys natural emotion through the believable veneer of everyday emotion and always draws the eye and sympathy, a true star.

*Neil Sinyard is Emeritus Professor of Film Studies at the University of Hull and has published over twenty books on film, he also has a wonderful blog, Sinyard on Film.

 

 

 

 

 

Sara Clee, second row, on the right!