When Thora met Marlon… The Nightcomers (1971), Stephanie Beacham and Verna Harvey Part I

Creative combinations you never expected, Michael Winner and Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando with Thora Hird… This was indeed the last film Brando made before the career reviving and legend cementing Godfather and, whilst it was not a commercial success, we can now view it as the actor in his peak, knocking off a film for the still striving Winner and presenting as the kind of enigmatic free-spirit who could lead the children to behave in the way they did in Henry James' 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw, which had already been adapted into the 1961 film The Innocents. The idea of a prequel to that story and film is an odd one and so is this film with a sickly feeling of dread permeating throughout and embodied so well by the children; young Christopher Ellis as Miles and the 19-year-old Verna Harvey as Flora.

Harvey had to be older as she had to take on more of the perversity descending on the children’s normality although I’d check to see if Master Ellis was un-touched by some of the tying up, he was asked to do… there’s a case study there.

Marlon conducts his performance in a mumbled Irish accent that seems to be making its way slowly from South Dublin to Cork via Galway, dragged by a donkey and lubricated with Jameson’s.  Marlon O’Brando is nonetheless convincing and carries so much indistinct yet heavy presence that we can well believe in his corrupting influence not just on the children but also their teacher/governess Miss Jessel as played by Stephanie Beacham, who Winner claimed was slightly nervous about her more adult scenes although not so much that you’d notice with her 1973 Italian film Mafia Junction, about which more anon.

Thora Hird

If this film is a masterclass for anyone then it’s surely Lancashire great Thora Hird, who is more than a match for Brando and anyone else who is sent against her. Flora and Miles’ parents have both died on their travels and left their children in the hands of a guardian (Harry Andrews) who has rather more important things to do and therefore entrusts them to the care of housekeeper Mrs. Grose. He decides not to let the mostly redundant former valet, Peter Quint (Brando), who he tells to attend to the vast garden and assist Mrs Grose as required in the house.

Quint is a queer one with a troubled upbringing of his own with a nare-do-well father who abandoned him and an outlook on life that respects little of the boundaries of formality and lets his earthy animal heart seek what is so wilt. Mrs Grose trusts him not but he’s more interested in Miss Jessel’s physical charms and the children who listen so intently to his stories. Is he “evil” though or just a man who finds it hard to love without sado-masochistic stimuli and who is anti-authoritarian but still fascinated in the word whether it be childish cruelties like blowing frogs up with cigarette or larking around in the grounds with his two young pals.

Verna Harvey, Marlon Brando and Christopher Ellis

The children are an important part of their own subsequent story and whilst they take everything Quint tells them to heart, they are also more than willing to take his ideas to logical conclusions even as they lack the maturity to properly assess his moral ambiguities. Flora and Miles are also masters of the house even if they are not yet of majority and everyone around them here is their subordinate especially with their new father figure absent… It’s open to interpretation but I think Winner should have put in a second prequel to explain the children’s openness to turn so wild but perhaps all we need to see is here… parents who were absent, a guardian who got away as quickly as he could and an exceptionalism unbridled.

Quint leads them astray but mostly it’s harmless until they start spying on his sexual liaisons with their teacher. Following his soapy sexual success in Paris, Brando has no problem putting Stephanie Beacham in some sadistic sexual positions which are more uncomfortable to watch than erotic. How much of this is scripted is anyone’s guess but he definitely assumes the dominant role and grabs hold of whatever he feels in their first session. The next time Quint ties up his lover and proceeds from there. Consenting adults and all that but young Miles has been spying on this and starts to get ideas.

He tries to play out these love rituals with his sister, the two of them having no real idea of the missing elements and the feelings involved. They are interrupted by Mrs Grose who bans Quint from the house and threatens to write to the master.

Stephanie Beacham

The children’s capacity for cruelty is demonstrated when they invite the housekeeper out to the tree house they have built with Quint and then pull the ladder away so she’s trapped there for long hours. They only bring her back when Miss Jessel gets hurt and needs medical aid, persuading Mrs Grose to finally get rid of Quint.

But in trying to help Quint and Jessel find true love, as they have heard him describe it, the children may be doing more harm than good… are they the ones who really need help in the end?

Dusty Verdict: The film stands on its own unsettling two feet in the end despite Michael Hastings’ attempt to reverse engineer an “origin” story based the beginning of the Turn of the Screw, plotted backwards. Does that story need an origin and one this vague? The story of the children seems to have already begun before the twisted imagination of Quint connects how they react to that surely says all you need to know about how they had already been brutalised by their parents and their class circumstance… the true horror lies in how ordinary that may have been.

Angles were calculated to hide Brando's girth and Stephanie was the distraction...

Brando’s accent is a distraction but he does deliver a fascinating and feral performance. Winner’s account of the filming vary but it does seem that Marlon was quite pleased with the end result. Sadly, the public didn’t agree and he was soon on top of his game with the Godfather and everything that came afterwards. Sometimes it’s enough to see a man of his capabilities in a simpler role to appreciate his gift more fully. I’m pretty sure Thora would have been impressed and even more certain that the feeling would have been reciprocated.

On the last day of filming Brando commented to Winner that Verna Hervey “she’s got a very nice ass, I wish I’d noticed it earlier.” We presume that she escaped his attention even as Stephanie Beacham probably did but Brando, despite staying in a rented cottage with his girlfriend of the time, still had frequent visitors… a man of great appetite and not just for food. Brando stayed pals with Winner after filming and perhaps the two shared the same “philosophy” as well as exuberance/dominating instinct... complex men and sometimes it’s uncomfortable to watch their work.

 

A film of two halves… The Chase (1966)

What starts out as Peyton Place ends up as Straw Dogs… The Chase feels like so many southern neo-soaps with a cast of dozens each with multiple relationships and a small-town backstory as long as the pauses between Brando’s dialogue…

Directed with aplomb by Arthur Penn, it’s undeniably fascinating to see his marshaling of so many sixties big hitters with Marlon Brando and Angie Dickinson the most established stars paired with the up-and-coming Jane Fonda and Robert Redford and many others, but the story opens out in a subdued way over the first hour or so.

Robert Redford

Things kick off with a jail break which sees Charlie "Bubber" Reeves (Redford) landed in deep water when his fellow convict-on-the-run, kills a man and drives off in the car they were supposed to share. Bubber is not a killer but now, as he cradles the dead man in his hands, knows that life has just become a lot more complex…

Back home, the news spreads of Bubber’s escape – it’s initially quite difficult to imagine Redford as a man who instils fear in his townsfolk, his background is never clearly explained but with a domineering mother of poor judgement and some bad breaks he doesn’t appear to have been dealt an even hand.

Jane Fonda

One by one we encounter the good people of his home town only their not good at all, by and large, mostly selfish and guilty about something or other and in some cases Bubber… as if they’ve been complicit in his bad luck.

James Fox

There’s Jason "Jake" Rogers (James Fox, with a pretty good accent for a limey of his period), gifted son of the local dominant business man, Val Rogers (E. G. Marshall) who pretty much runs the town.

Janice Rule's cruel smile entices Richard Bradford

At his bank works the meek Edwin Stewart (Robert Duvall) who has somehow ended up married to the local fireball Emily Stewart (Janice Rule) who, bored stiff of her husband, seeks action elsewhere. Outspoken and over-sexed she is carrying on with Damon Fuller (Richard Bradford) whose wife, Mary (Martha Hyer) is drinking to forget the fact.

Emily appraises long-suffering Edwin

It soon transpires that pretty much the while town is drinking and, as with Emily, they struggle to control their urge to irresponsibility…

There’s Mr Briggs (Henry Hull) nosey and misanthropic who along with his wife (Jocelyn Brando) drifts through events adding spiteful spin as they go. Bubba’s mother (Miriam Hopkins), dominates her husband (Malcolm Atterbury), with her narrow-minded paranoia and has she left it far too late to help her son…

A Fox and a Fonda

Bubba’s wife Anna (Jane Fonda) has been seeing his best friend Jake, for most of the three years he has been in jail and lives above her wicked step-father’s bar when she’s not staying in motels with Jake… himself another victim of a love-less marriage.

Angie and Marlon

At the heart of all this is the Brando’s Sheriff Calder, married to Ruby (Angie Dickinson) and with some strong but un-specified sponsorship from Val Rogers. They are the film’s moral core and the closest to heroic: with so much naked self-interest and absolute corruption around them the viewer is going to rely on them to hold steady.

And, indeed, The Chase turns fully on these two, as Bubba’s approach to his home town is concerned and the various rats get nervous in their traps.

The Birthday Party

Val’s birthday party is a swinging affair with the locals getting ever drunker and wilder; they head into town to continue their bacchanal lead by Fuller and two chums.

Mary looks on as Emily and Damon cavort

Bubba make sit to a junkyard belonging to his friend Lem (Clifton James) who he instructs to go get Anna, but Lem is spotted by Fuller and the boys and almost lynched for being in a white girl’s apartment before Calder’s intervention.

He locks Lem in a cell for his own protection but once it is learned that he may know where Bubba is, the local drunks try to force their way in. Then Val arrives, desperate to keep Bubba from Jake after being told of his son’s long-standing affair: he orders the good ol’ drunks to “restrain” the Sheriff and there follows one of the most shocking scenes of assault you’ll see from this period.

Method beating...

The men beat Calder to a pulp and all in a strangely calm way that makes the violence seem even more extreme. It signals a step change in tone and makes you feel as frustrated and helpless as any in the confused audience of early 1966… Brando called it “method acting” and he performs the scene remarkably. It’s really quite unsettling.

Party?

Calder having already enlisted Anna and Jake to go and persuade Bubba to give himself up, they are now pursued by Val who has extracted his location by torturing Lem. The drunks from all over town converge to follow… an all-ages, inebriated posse/party.

Bubba and Anna reunited but for how long?

The films climax is – literally – explosive, as there is one mighty conflagration at the junkyard with tragedy affecting all… and there’s more to come as the final scenes escalate the pointless destruction a final shocking notch.

Boom!

The Chase proved far more harrowing than I expected and is a far more impressive film than I expected, even given the cast. You don't really know where it's going to go and it dares itself to greater heights of violence with every passing sequence in the last half.

Fonda and Redford are excellent, powerful screen presences on the verge of top billing. James Fox does well and it’s surprising that he didn’t move on to more Hollywood work whilst Angie Dickinson is a sublime force of nature even holding her own alongside Mr Brando.

Sublime

As for the esteemed method man, Marlon is incisiveness personified for much of the film only being occasionally let down by his famous diction. He’s near his best here especially in the fraught second half as if he needed a really extreme situation to act against.

The music is by John Barry and shows what a versatile composer he was above and beyond the lounge-core reputation. He supports the action with subtle under-statement and helps maintain a mood that could all too easily run away with itself.

Dusty verdict: The pot-boiler boils over and the stellar cast push themselves to one of the most relentlessly dark cinematic climaxes of the period.  The DVD is available from Amazons and a Blu-ray will surely follow for this good-looking film with a dark heart…

A mixed bag… Candy (1968)

There was a time in the late 60s when studios just couldn’t keep up with the rapid emergence of young talent and the demand for “artistic freedom”… blame The Beatles and the growth of accelerated career paths built on the “new”.

The bread-heads never knew if they were granting funding to people with sustainable talent - so many started well only to fall at the second or third hurdle. It has ever been thus… but probably not so much as in the psychedelic years from which every gaudy miss-step stares in stoned disbelief at the phase-shifted after image of its own folly… man.

Ewa Aulin

Candy has been described by some as the worst movie ever made (Cinema Retro actually made this the cover story a few years back: back issue still available!) but is it really that bad… with Burton, Brando, Matthau and Coburn?!

Well… not quite. Candy is a bit of a mixed bag and no amount of acting talent can completely rescue this over-wrought, over-thought, irritating and sometimes actually funny and good-looking sprawl… it’s a triple album which should have been an EP.

Elsa Martinelli, Ewa Aulin and "Uncle" John Astin

Candy is based on Terry Southern’s novel of the same name written in the late fifties as an updated version of Voltaire’s Candide. Southern’s book is well regarded and he has an impressive CV but he wasn’t involved in the film and subsequently disowned it. Buck Henry – writer of The Graduate – concocted the script and he couldn’t maintain its author’s coherence, snap or wit.

The film was directed by French actor Christian Marquand who had plenty of ideas but no consistent style although the cinematography is pretty good and there's no shortage of budget in evidence. His good buddy Marlon Brando played a major part in getting the film made and naturally enough appears along with the above-mentioned host of A-list Hollywood.

Maybe Marquand gave his actors too much freedom?

Walter Matthau and Marlon Brando

The ads for the film – distasteful like their subject matter – said that the only thing Candy is faithful to is the book. This is not entirely true either of the character or the story.

Candy begins the film as some kind of extra-terrestrial spirit which descends through space onto earth… transforming into the beautiful form of Ewa Aulin. The Swedish actress was just 19 at the time and is very good looking but, in so many ways, this works against her and the film. She’s not acting in her first language and appears to lack emotional engagement through all of the indignities she faces… which makes things so much worse.

Police harassment

Turning that PR line on its head, Aulin’s Candy can’t be “faithful” to anyone as she seems to be incapable of making any decisions of her own… thoughtlessly compliant to every forced advance, she’s innocent and trusting. She has “faith” in everything and everyone – there is no lack of it in her soul.

No guru, no method...

The redeeming feature is that, ultimately and literally, Candy rises above it all leaving Brando’s phoney mystic exhausted in her endlessly inquiring wake as she strides almost dismissively through all of the film’s flawed characters to a destiny beyond…

This final section is well done with the various parties lounging around on a sunlit hillside covered in brightly-coloured flags… Candy ignores them all and makes her own way away from their pointless depravity. Or maybe I was just relived that the film was over?

Richard Burton as Macphisto!

After the cosmic beginning, we see Candy as a college student being taught by her father Jack Christian (John Astin… a talented comedy actor formerly of The Adams Family). There’s an inappropriate moment even between father and daughter which foreshadows much of what is to come.

Richard Burton rolls up as the continuously wind-blown pisshead poet, Macphisto who wows his impressionable audience before taking Candy home. He abuses her in his car – chauffeur-driven by Zero (Sugar Ray Robinson) - and is too drunk to proceed further which allows Mexican gardener Emmanuel (an excruciating turn from Ringo Starr) to grab handfuls of Candy.

"Aw noo, thees is no good!"

 Dad returns to find the mess and resolves to send Candy away to private school in New York. He is joined by his twin brother (Astin again) and his sassy wife Livia (Elsa Martinelli). Chased by Emmanuel’s three sisters on motorcycles (a funny bit!), they just about manage to board a military plane carrying  General R.A. Smight (Walter Matthau) and a squad of troopers who patrol the skies in constant battle-readiness.

Matthau gives perhaps the best/least-worst performance and can carry the OTT satire better than the drama specialists. But the general has been starved of companionship and proceeds to maul Candy in the cockpit (see what they did there…?).

Landing in NYC, Candy’s dad has to undergo brain surgery at the hands of superstar surgeon, Dr. A.B. Krankheit  (James Coburn) in front of a paying audience… this being an operating theatre and all (see what they did…?).

Coburn does his best and is aided by a vicious turn from Anita Pallenberg  as his psychotic left-hand, Nurse Bullock  and a creepy cameo from John Huston as Dr. Arnold Dunlap. Things go a bit dull for a while with an “after-show” party and the bad Doctor’s inevitable examination of his patient’s daughter.

James Coburn, Anita Pallenberg, Ewa Aulin, Elsa Martinelli and chums

But Candy escapes the medical fraternity’s attention and runs into downtown where she is abused by the mafia and then a random man with a camera who insists on filming her in the gents toilets… he’s beaten by the Police as she runs off to encounter a Hunchback thief played with creepy intensity by Charles Aznavour… Here the mix of European and American sensibilities does jar and maybe that's one of the core issues: we weren't all in on the same joke... man.

Marlon Brando is Grindl!

As our winding plot finally starts to eat itself, Candy finds guru  Grindl in the back of a lorry… it’s Marlon Brando! Grindl improvises that Candy’s route to a higher state will be through sustained sexual congress… but Candy outlasts his energies and heads out over the desert where she meets a mysterious mud-caked pilgrim who turns out to be her “father”.

There’s too much and whilst the ending is enigmatically pleasing – Candy having overcome all the low-life around her – the humiliations of the previous two hours just feel gratuitous.

From an age when simply to ask questions was enough, Candy has little in the way of actual answers. It’s too cynical and abusive to be viewed as merely a “period-piece” retro-treat although it’s drenched in the spirit of the times.

Matthau apart, the big names are mostly flapping about, Burton takes the piss out of himself well enough as does Brando but their characters have no depth and rapidly run out of steam. As pop culture Candy is pretty shallow and its ultimate point, that we should respect ourselves a little more and always seek the answers beyond societal norm is as applicable to the film as the wider world. What would Candy do if she had to sit through this film?

Dusty verdict: Just about entertaining and worth preserving so long as you don’t feel too guilty about ogling Ewa Aulin when the narrative gets tough… The poor woman never got beyond her looks in her short career - a fact that nails Candy’s vapid pretensions firmly to the floor.