High Pressure (1932)

High Pressure, released in 1932, is one of the movies William Powell made during his time at Warner Brothers.

The Warner Archive released a four-movie DVD set of some of the lesser-known less remembered movies William Powell made during his time at Warner Brothers.

One of these movies is High Pressure, released in 1932. Powell is Gar Evans, a company promoter. He is not a con man. Well, not exactly. He will not do anything that is actually illegal. If he’s going to promote a company that makes bicycle clips there has to be an actual factory that manufactures actual bicycle clips. Gar’s genius lies in persuading investors and the public that such a company makes the finest bicycle clips ever devised and that the company will soon be bigger than Standard Oil.

In this case it’s a company that makes artificial rubber from sewage. “Colonel” Ginsburg (George Sidney) assures him that the process actually works and produces actual artificial rubber. He has seen the formula devised by the genius scientist. Thus reassured Gar sets out to create the necessary hype. He will sell people on the idea that the Golden Gate Artificial Rubber Company is a goldmine and that they would be crazy not to put money into it.

It’s all about creating the right impression. If you rent a luxurious suite of offices, expensively furnished, in a fancy office building people assume the company really is going to become a vast business empire. Everything gives the impression of prosperity even though the impression has been created by borrowed money. And he has an uncanny ability to persuade people to offer him insanely attractive deals, such as halving the rent on the suite of offices.

Gar is careful not to tell any actual lies. He simply presents the truth in an imaginative and artistic way.

Soon the company is booming. The stock price is skyrocketing. Nothing can stop the Golden Gate Artificial Rubber Company. And the great thing is, it’s all on the level. The artificial rubber processing system really exists. At least Gar assumes that it exists. The Colonel assured him that the inventor had assured him that it works. It must be on the level. It has to be. Gar would just feel a bit happier if they could actually find the inventor. Nobody else has been able to make any sense of his formula.

If the invention doesn’t exist they’ll all end up behind bars.

Gar has woman problems as well. He’s been stringing Francine (Evelyn Brent) along for years but his promises of marriage never seem to come to anything. Francine is getting fed up. She’s also suspicious that Gar might have his eyes on his new secretary, a pretty blonde.

It has to be said that Evelyn Brent is just a little bit dull.

There are some terrific character actors in the supporting cast. Guy Kibbee, who pays the hapless clueless president of the company, is always a delight. And there’s Charles Middleton - Fu Manchu himself!

High Pressure loses focus at times. It’s William Powell who carries the movie and he does so effortlessly. He’s all manic energy and bravado and fast talking slick ultra-confidence. He’s in superb form. Gar is a bit of a scoundrel but he’s so much fun and has so much charm. We don’t care if he’s not entirely honest. He’s so brazen that we want him to succeed.

High Pressure is sparkling entertainment and a treat for William Powell fans. Highly recommended.

The DVD transfer is extremely good.

Shampoo (1975)

Shampoo is a 1975 sex comedy which was something of a personal project for Warren Beatty. He came up with the idea, he co-wrote the script with Robert Towne and he produced. It was a huge box-office hit. It’s intriguingly untypical of 1970s Hollywood movies, with definite hints of a European sensibility.

Right from the start the pacing is frenetic and the plotting is chaotic. But that’s intentional. It reflects the complete chaos of the life of the protagonist, George (Warren Beatty).

George is a very fashionable Beverly Hills hairdresser. Despite being a hairdresser he is very interested in women. Maybe too interested for his own good.

His ambition is to have his own beauty salon. He’s an excellent hairdresser and would have no difficulty attracting clients. Every rich fashionable woman in L.A. wants her hair done by George. The problem is that George is thirty-five going on sixteen. There’s no way he is responsible enough to have his own business. But self-awareness is not George’s strong suit.

His biggest problem is juggling all his women. He is currently sleeping with quite a few women. In fact lots of women.

He has a cute girlfriend Jill (Goldie Hawn). He’s also sleeping with a rich client, Felicia (Lee Grant). Felicia thinks she can persuade her rich tycoon husband Lester (Jack Warden) to advance George the money to open his own beauty shop. Fortunately Lester doesn’t know that George is sleeping with his wife.

Lester has a glamorous mistress, Jackie (Julie Christie. Fortunately Lester doesn’t know that Jackie is George’s ex-girlfriend. It’s even more fortunate that Lester doesn’t know that George is still sleeping with Jackie. It’s also probably lucky that Lester doesn’t know that George is sleeping with his daughter Lorna (Carrie Fisher). Felicia knows, and it seems to excite her.

George is so self-absorbed that he has no idea that he is self-absorbed. He knows his life is over-complicated but it’s never occurred to him that this may be his own fault. He is good-looking but he is so charmless and selfish that you wonder why women are attracted to him. Perhaps it’s the bad boy thing. Or the irresponsible naughty boy thing. Or they think they can change him.

This is the world of the rich and vacuous in L.A., decadent shallow people living shallow meaningless lives with enough money to shelter them from reality.

The movie begins on November 4, 1968, the day before the election that swept Nixon into office. There is presumably some political satire intended but what’s interesting is that it’s the achingly liberal wealthy middle-class elites who are being satirised. This is a Hollywood movie savaging the middle class rather than the working class or rural Americans who were usually Hollywood’s favoured targets.

But this is not really a political movie. It’s a social and sexual satire, and a social and sexual melodrama. It’s an intelligent sophisticated sex comedy. And as social and sexual satire it has real bite.

What Shampoo really takes aim at is deception. It’s not the sexual promiscuity of the various characters that does the damage, it’s the lies they tell.

Jack Warden pretty much steals the picture but Warren Beatty is very impressive. George is not an admirable person but Beatty brings him to life. We may still not like George but we start to see what makes him tick. Julie Christie and Goldie Hawn are excellent.

At the time Shampoo got an X rating. There’s some mild nudity and some mildly graphic simulated sex but mostly it got the X rating because it’s a very grown-up movie. It deals with grown-up subject matter in a grown-up way.

Even though it’s a product of mainstream Hollywood this movie has more of an affinity with sophisticated European sex comedies such as Pasquale Festa Campanile’s The Libertine (1968) than with the general run of mainstream Hollywood movies. Shampoo was a very unusual Hollywood movie at the time and it’s still unusual. It takes sexual relationships seriously and it dissects them mercilessly. But with sensitivity. These are people with chaotic personal lives. They play emotional and sexual games and they forget that people, both men and women, can get hurt.

Shampoo is also very funny.

The Criterion Blu-Ray looks good and includes a very good interview with Warren Beatty.

Casino Royale (1967)

The 1967 Casino Royale is an object lesson in how to create a cinematic disaster.

The movie came about because Eon Productions owned the rights to all the Bond novels, apart from the first. For complicated reasons producer Charles K. Feldman owned the rights to Fleming’s first novel, Casino Royale. He knew he wanted to make it into a movie. He had no idea how to do so. He never did figure it out.

It ended up with ten writers and five directors. Five directors at the same time, each directing part of the movie.

Feldman initially thought of doing a straight Bond movie. Then he decided to make it a spoof.

David Niven had been under consideration for the role of Bond in the late 50s. Feldman persuaded him to take the role in Casino Royale. Then he decided it would be cool to have Peter Sellers play the role. So they both play Bond. So we get a crazy scheme to have lots of Bonds. Not because it was a cool or clever idea but because the movie had already become a chaotic mess with nobody have the slightest idea what they were doing and none of the people involved in the movie making any attempt to co-ordinate their wildly differing ideas.

Then Feldman started adding lots of Bond girls. There are no less than three lady super-spies, played by Deborah Kerr, Ursula Andress and Joanna Pettet. Plus we have Miss Moneypenny’s daughter (Barbara Bouchet) playing at being a lady super-spy as well.

We have two diabolical criminal masterminds, played by Orson Welles and Woody Allen, Yes, Woody Allen. Neither of these diabolical criminal masterminds has any actual master plan. That’s because the movie has no actual plot. It has no plot at all.

There were some very good spy spoof movies made during the 60s and what they all have in common is that they have actual spy movie plots. The humour comes from taking a spy movie plot and then playing it for laughs. But you need a plot. If you have an actual spy plot you can extract lots of humour from it. Without that all you have is a bunch of comedy sketches thrown together for no reason at all, which is what Casino Royale is. Which is why Casino Royale is so much less funny than the other 60s spy spoofs.

If you have a plot and you have characters you can extract more humour from the interactions between the characters, especially between the hero and the sexy lady spy and between the hero and the super-villain. Casino Royale is so overloaded with stars and characters that none of the characters is developed sufficiently to bring out their comedic potentials. The interactions are not funny because the characters are not characters, they’re just random actors speaking lines to each other for no discernible reason.

If you’re aiming for comedy it helps to have some decent gags. There’s not a single truly funny moment in this film.

This film relies on being zany, crazy, outrageous and madcap. But it manages to be zany, crazy, outrageous and madcap without actually being funny.

Then there’s the Peter Sellers factor. I have to put it on record that I have never thought Peter Sellers was funny but here he’s particularly feeble. Every single scene in which he appears would have worked better had it been played by David Niven.

There really are just too many unnecessary characters. One diabolical criminal mastermind is enough. Orson Welles could have been a very fine and very amusing tongue-in-cheek Bond Villain but he needed to be given more scope for evil plotting. Woody Allen is one villain too many and he seems to belong to a totally different movie and being a villain is not the kind of role that plays to his comic strengths. There’s probably one too many lady super-spies and they all belong in different movies.

This movie has some huge flaws but it does have a few major strengths. The cinematography, the production design and the costumes are stunning and delightfully extravagant and fun. I love the spy school that looks like it’s straight out of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.

I love this film’s extreme artificiality. At times, visually at least, it does achieve a wonderful wild surreal comic-book feel. It looks totally amazing.

A major asset is Ursula Andress. She speaks with her own voice here. She was dubbed in her earlier movies. She has a strong accent but it makes her an even sexier lady spy. She’s enormous fun when she’s being seductive and she projects stupendous amounts of glamour. Her costumes are bizarre but magnificent.

Look out for Alexandra Bastedo and Jacqueline Bisset in bit parts (Bisset plays Miss Goodthighs).

For all its many and egregious flaws Casino Royale is worth a look if you enjoy spectacular but morbidly fascinating cinematic trainwrecks.

I’ve reviewed lots of 60s spy spoofs including Deadlier Than the Male (1967), The President’s Analyst (1967), the Matt Helm movies - Murderers’ Row (1966), Matt Helm in The Silencers (1966), The Ambushers (1967) and The Wrecking Crew (1969), the Derek Flint movies Our Man Flint (1966) and In Like Flint (1967) and the absolutely delightful Hot Enough for June (Agent 8¾, 1964). These are all examples of totally successful spy spoofs.

Casino Royale came out a year after Modesty Blaise (1966), which suffers from some of the same problems, having been made by a director, Joseph Losey, who did not have a clue what he was doing. Modesty Blaise, like Casino Royale, was aiming for a psychedelic vibe but misses the mark.

Congress Dances (1931)

Congress Dances was released in 1931. German, French and English-language versions were shot. There were some cast differences between the three versions. The recent Kino Classics Blu-Ray offers the German-language version with English subtitles.

The Congress of Vienna which opened in 1814 was a diplomatic conference to establish a new framework of relations between the Great Powers after the defeat of Napoleon. You might not think that it would be the perfect background for a lighthearted goofy comedy romance with songs and a strong fairy tale vibe, but you’d be wrong. This is one of those “this idea is so crazy that it just might work” concepts, and it actually does work.

The prime mover of the Congress was the Austrian Foreign Minister Prince Metternich (played here by Conrad Veidt). His main problem is to keep Tsar Alexander of Russia fully occupied and out of the way. That way Metternech can ensure the result he wants from the Congress. There’s nothing sinister about this. It’s just diplomacy.

What Metternich doesn’t know, what nobody knows, is that the Tsar has a stand-in. An officer named Uralsky, who closely resembles the Tsar, takes the Tsar’s place in dangerous situations where assassination might be a danger. The Tsar also makes use of Uralsky to avoid very unpleasant public duties, such as the performance of the Russian Ballet that Metternech has organised. If there’s one thing Tsar Alexander can’t stand it’s Russian ballet!

Now a pretty young glove-seller enters the picture. Christel (Lilian Harvey) has come up with an ingenious publicity stunt for her glove shop. Vienna is now filled with VIPs. When she sees a foreign head of state she throws him a bouquet of flowers, with an advertisement for her glove shop attached. When she tries the stunt on the Tsar she lands herself in big big trouble. In fact she’s about to have her bottom caned. Luckily the Tsar gets wind of this and rescues her in time from this painful indignity.

The Tsar is charmed by Christel. He thinks she’s the cutest thing he’s ever seen. They spend a delightful afternoon together. She is swept off her feet by the handsome romantic Tsar. She must have had quite an effect on him, since he provides her with a luxurious villa and a carriage. He has clearly decided to make her his mistress. Christel thinks this that this is a most exciting prospect.

It’s interesting that Christel is not the least bit shocked or disconcerted by the prospect of becoming the Tsar’s mistress. And she is not amazed that such an important man would take an interest in her. She has plenty of confidence.

If you’re trying to see some kind of commentary here on class it’s important to understand that Christel is not working class. She’s not a penniless waif wandering the streets barefoot depending on charity. She’s a successful prosperous independent businesswoman. It’s implied that she owns her shop. She employs several girls. She does not represent the downtrodden masses. She is solidly middle class.

The affair with the Tsar seems likely to prosper but there is somebody about to throw a spanner in the works - Napoleon. He’s not staying quietly in exile the way he’s supposed to.

The fact that the Tsar has a stand-in naturally leads to lots of romantic complications and lots of humorous complications. There’s more than a touch of farce to this movie.

London-born actress Lilian Harvey was an ideal choice as Christel, being fluent in English, German and French which allowed her to play Christel in all three versions. She’s a delight. Christel is pretty, she’s adorable, she’s lively, she’s sexy in a playful way and she’s a total screwball.

Willy Fritsch makes a charming handsome Tsar. Conrad Veidt played Metternich in the English and German-language versions. He’s excellent. Metternich is not a villain. He’s not even mildly villainous. Veidt plays him as a likeable rogue.

Congress Dances was a UFA production which means this is a big-budget big-studio picture. This is a lavish production. The production design is very impressive.

Congress Dances is zany, offbeat, wildly romantic and charming. It’s also very very German. If you’ve ever seen any of Ernst Lubitsch’s crazy early silent films such as The Wildcat (1921) and The Doll, or early Lubitsch musicals like The Love Parade (1929), or the insanely romantic Sissi (1955), you’ll know what I mean. Whimsical romance with a fairy tale flavour was something for which German filmmakers had a real affinity. Congress Dances is a lot of fun. Highly recommended.

The source material was in bad shape but Kino Classics have come up with a pretty decent Blu-Ray transfer.

The Trouble with Harry (1955) - Hitchcock Friday #13

The Trouble with Harry, released in 1955, was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and scripted by John Michael Hayes.

It can be seen as one of Hitchcock’s experiments. This is not an experiment in technique nor an experiment with narrative. This is an experiment in tone. This is full-blown black comedy, but of a kind that was totally new in mainstream American cinema.

The comedy-mystery (as distinct from out-and-out spoofs of the mystery genre) was an established genre but in such movies the murder is always seen as a terrible crime the perpetrator of which had to be brought to justice. There could be amusing hijinks along the way but murder itself could not be treated as a joke. But in The Trouble with Harry the murder actually is treated as an hilarious joke. Poor Harry is dead but nobody cares except for the fact that the existence of his corpse is rather inconvenient.

As in Shadow of a Doubt Hitchcock makes great use of small-town America as a setting but his purposes here are very different.

This is a gorgeous movie. This is a picture postcard world. A world so beautiful and idyllic that a corpse seems rather out of place.

You might think I’m weird but this movie seems to me to have a similar feel to the opening sequences of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. This is small town America at its most perfect, but it’s a bit too perfect. It’s so perfect it’s slightly disturbing. And while the people in this tiny burg are all very very nice people they regard poor Harry’s murder with total indifference. That’s the weird element that makes this movie so startling. And that makes it such an outrageous black comedy. The audience is not expected to feel the slightest concern about the fact that a man has been killed.

Which of course explains why this movie was initially a box-office flop (although it was re-released and eventually ended up in the black). Mainstream American audiences had never been exposed to such an oddly off-kilter movie. And they had never seen small town America subjected to such gleeful (albeit good-natured) mockery. It also explains why the movie was a hit in France. French audiences would not have been shocked in the least.

The other thing counting against this movie was its complete lack of star power. John Forsythe is well cast and he’s very good but he was never a big star and his name on the marquee was not going to sell tickets. Shirley MacLaine would become a star but at this stage she was a complete unknown and this was her first movie. Edmund Gwenn was the kind of character actor people would recognise without remembering his name. Big name stars might have made the movie easier to promote but as a star vehicle it would have been a different movie. It’s an ensemble piece and as such it works.

John Forsythe really is good. Shirley MacLaine was a nobody. She was just an understudy in a play when she was spotted. But she had the kooky quality Hitchcock wanted and he recognised her star quality immediately. She’s delightful here.

The plot is simple. A dead body turns up. His wallet identifies him as Harry. Captain Wiles (Edmund Gwenn), out hunting rabbits, assumes he shot poor Harry accidentally. And maybe he did. As the movie progresses other possibilities emerge. The one thing that is clear is that nobody cares that Harry is dead but his corpse is very inconvenient. The mystery doesn’t really matter. There’s no suspense. This is a comedy. A zany twisted deliciously black comedy. Black comedy was something Hitchcock did very very well. It was the kind of humour he loved.

The location shooting in Vermont is gorgeous, except that a lot of the time it’s not Vermont, it’s a Hollywood sound stage. The trees had already dropped their leaves, but Hitch wanted those lovely autumn leaves. So the crew collected the leaves, they were taken back to Hollywood and pinned onto fake trees on a sound stage. And it works. This is the magic of movies!

The Trouble with Harry is quirky and offbeat but delightful and charming. And it really is funny. It wasn’t what audiences and critics were expecting from Hitchcock but it’s great fun. Highly recommended.

The Blu-Ray looks exquisite and there’s a reasonably informative featurette.

Blondes at Work (1938)

Blondes at Work (1938) was the fourth of the Torchy Blane B-movies. Between 1937 and 1939 Warner Brothers made nine Torchy Blane movies, seven of them starring Glenda Farrell. It was one of the most successful B-movie series of its era.

In Blondes at Work ace girl reporter Torchy Blane sees two guys leaving an office building. There’s nothing suspicious about that except that one of the guys looks ill but Torchy is a reporter and she notices little things like that.

The sick guy was department store tycoon Marvin Spencer and now he has disappeared. The fear is that he’s been murdered. The police have to find him - he’s an important man. And that makes this a big story, so Torchy is interested.

Torchy has been getting regularly scoops for her paper, The Star, and that has upset the other papers who have sweetheart deals with the cops. Torchy is making them look silly and she’s making the cops look silly. Torchy gets her inside dope from her boyfriend, Lieutenant Steve McBride (Barton MacLane). McBride’s chief wants these leaks to stop. McBride agrees not to give Torchy any more information but Torchy soon finds a way around that. She figures out a way to get the info from his driver, the poetic but dim-witted Detective Gahagan (Tom Kennedy).

Marvin Spencer has of course been murdered, and Torchy gets the scoop. At every step of the investigations Torchy scoops her rivals.

The plot is nothing special. That doesn’t matter at all because this movie has lots of other things going for it. Its biggest asset is Glenda Farrell. She’s funny, she’s charming, she’s feisty, she talks like a machine-gun and she’s adorable. She plays Torchy in seven of the nine movies. The two movies without her were flops. The seven movies with her were hits.

Torchy is a reporter which means she has no morals whatsoever. She’d sell her own mother for a scoop. But she’s so adorable that we love her anyway, and apart from her lack of professional ethics she’s a nice girl.

The movie’s second asset is the pairing of Glenda Farrell with Barton MacLane as her cop boyfriend. They have perfect chemistry. They have romantic chemistry - they seem like a real couple. And they have superb acting chemistry. In every scene together they strike acting sparks off each other.

The film’s third asset is its pacing. There may not be much to the plot but director Frank McDonald makes sure that there always seems to be something happening. This film has so much energy and vitality.

It also benefits from the right blending of the mystery, romance and comedic ingredients. The romance and the comedy never slow down the action. Tom Kennedy as Gahagan is a comic relief character but he’s amusing without being irritating and he and Glenda Farrell really work well together in comic scenes. And the makers of the film, very sensibly, realised that there was no need to add any other comic characters. Everyone else plays it dead straight, which makes it even more fun to watch Torchy running rings around them.

Stylistically it’s standard Warner Brothers fare which means it has that slightly tough look which works perfectly here.

Blondes at Work is bright and breezy and a lot of fun and Glenda Farrell is a delight. Highly recommended.

The transfers in the Warner Archive DVD Torchy Blane set (which includes all nine movies) are extremely good.

I’ve also reviewed the first three movies in the series - Smart Blonde (1937), Fly-Away Baby (1937) and The Adventurous Blonde (1937).

Road To Paradise (1930)

Road To Paradise is a 1930 First National pre-code movie.

Loretta Young plays dual roles. She plays Mary Brennan, an orphan girl who has been raised by two good-natured crooks, Nick and Jerry (known as Jerry the Gent). Mary is a nice girl but she’s not entirely honest herself. It doesn’t take much effort to persuade her to join the crooks in a daring criminal enterprise.

Mary also has an unusual paranormal ability which will later become very important.

Young also plays wealthy socialite Margaret Waring. She’s very wealthy indeed.

Mary and her two crooked pals notice Margaret in a speakeasy. They are amazed by the resemblance. The two women look identical.

This gives the two crooks an idea. Having Mary impersonate Margaret could make it much easier to burgle Margaret’s house. One of the things they noticed about Margaret in the speakeasy was that she was wearing some very expensive jewels.

The burglary takes on a slightly farcical quality with a cheerful Irish cop spotting the two crooks on the roof and pursuing them with a notable lack of success. Various cops spend most of the movie in pursuit of these burglars

The burglary also leads to unintended consequences.

Everything hinges on the question of identity. There’s just no way to tell the two women apart.

One of the things that happened after the Production Code took effect in 1934 is that genre boundaries became more rigid. In the pre-code it was not uncommon to come across melodramas with some of the lighthearted character of comedies, and movies that were more or less comedies but with strong melodrama overtones. The tone of pre-code movies was often fluid.

In the pre-code era there weren’t too many rules. If for example you wanted to take a movie such as this one and add an element of the paranormal then you simply went ahead and did so. Road To Paradise is a typical pre-code oddity which simply ignores genre boundaries.

Loretta Young was aways a delight in her pre-code movies. This movie is no exception. She’s utterly adorable as the criminally inclined Mary. She handles the dual role quite successfully. The focus is more on Mary than on Margaret. Mary is very likeable - she’s a crook but she’d prefer not to be.

The best line in the movie is when one of the crooks who raised her comments, "I could never understand this desire for respectability. It always seemed kind of morbid to me.”

The other players are all perfectly adequate but this film completely belongs to Loretta Young.

This movie was directed by William Beaudine, later to become known as One-Shot Beaudine for his practice of never shooting retakes. In his later career, spent mostly making B-movies, that was understandable. His success was based on being able to bring low-budget movies in on time and on budget every single time. That doesn’t make him a bad director and in Road To Paradise he displays considerable skill.

What makes it recognisably a pre-code film is its indifference to the law. Being a criminal is OK as long as you’re basically a nice person. And if you’re a young sweet pretty female then it’s definitely OK.

Road To Paradise is cheerful and good-natured. Loretta Young is more than enough reason to give it a spin. Recommended.

This movie is included on a two-movie Warner Archive DVD paired with another Loretta Young pre-code film, Week-End Marriage.

Take a Girl Like You (1970)

Take a Girl Like You, based on Kingsley Amis’s famous novel of the same name, was directed by Jonathan Miller. It came out in 1970.

Jenny Bunn (Hayley Mills) is a young school teacher from the north of England where she has had an upbringing of a very traditional nature. She moves into the home of local politician Dick Thompson (John Bird) and his wife Martha (Sheila Hancock). They have two female lodgers, the other being Anna (Geraldine Sherman).

It’s not long before Jenny meets Patrick Standish (Oliver Reed), a lecturer in the local technical college. Patrick is a notorious ladies’ man. Anna was one of his previous conquests. He intends to make Jenny his next conquest.

There should be no problem. Jenny obviously likes him. The chemistry is there between them. There is however an impediment. Jenny is a virgin. She’s not just a virgin. For Jenny it’s not so much a choice as a vocation. No amount of persuasion will change her mind. She can’t really explain why she’s so determined.

It’s all rather exasperating to Patrick. On the other hand, despite his womanising, he’s a basically decent guy. He certainly has no desire to force himself on an unwilling woman. He’ll use plenty of plausible persuasion but he’s not a man to take things any further.

Patrick and Jenny make the acquaintance of Julian Ormerod (Noel Harrison), a very rich very idle upper-class chap who lives in a palatial home and devotes himself to pleasure. Being very rich and very upper-class he is of course a socialist (there is some gentle satire in both Amis’s novel and the film).

Patrick is also introduced to Julian’s current mistress, Wendy (Aimi MacDonald), a ditzy blonde minor TV personality with no sexual inhibitions at all. Wendy thinks Patrick is rather a dish.

Jenny won’t sleep with Patrick but she certainly doesn’t intend to let another woman have him. Jenny is kind of sort of in love with Patrick although she’s reluctant to admit it to herself.

Patrick lays siege to Jenny’s fiercely defended virginity. They have no idea that they might actually fall in love but of course they do, and they both end up having to rethink their attitudes towards both sex and love.

You do have to remember that Kingsley Amis’s novel was written in 1960. The Sexual Revolution had not yet gathered any momentum at all. By 1970 it was in full swing. So by 1970 Jenny’s obsession with virginity would have seemed perhaps less plausible than would have been the case a decade earlier.

At this stage the career of Hayley Mills was thriving and she seemed to be making a very successful transition to grown-up roles. Sadly, as the 70s progressed her career lost momentum. She was always equally adept at serious and comic roles and she’s excellent in this movie, managing to avoid making Jenny seem too prissy or too much of a calculating tease. Whether or not we agree with Jenny’s obsessive defence of her virtue we can’t help liking her.

This is a slightly unusual role for Oliver Reed but he did have a greater range as an actor than he’s usually given credit for, and he could project a great deal of charm. Like Hayley Mills he has a slightly tricky role here. Patrick is a bit of a lad but despite his inveterate womanising he has a certain basic decency. Reed is likeable and amusing here.

Noel Harrison was a very underrated actor and gives a typically charming performance as Julian, a thoroughly pleasant man with no morals whatsoever.

Sheila Hancock is also somewhat underrated and she’s very good as well. Aimi MacDonald is amusing as the vapid Wendy. The whole cast is good. Look out for Penelope Keith in a very small very early role.

All of the characters have some depth. Their motivations and emotions are often beset with contradictions and they don’t always understand their own feelings.

This was the only feature film directed by Jonathan Miller, an extraordinary figure in the late 20th century British cultural scene - he directed plays and operas, he was a writer and TV presenter and a humourist.

Take a Girl Like You is not a conventional romantic comedy but it is a comedy about romance. It’s not a sex comedy but it is a comedy about sex. While the British at that time certainly had a taste for broad comedy Take a Girl Like You is very different - it’s witty and sophisticated.

This was a time when British film-makers were starting to explore a topic that had always terrified them - sex. There was a keen desire to make movies that took an honest grown-up approach to the subject. The absurdly strict British film censorship was finally starting to loosen up just a little. Towards the close of the 60s there were countless British films tackling this subject, some of them doing so with surprising success. There were also quite a few British coming-of-age movies made around this time. In fact Hayley Mills had starred in one of the best of these, Sky West and Crooked, in 1966. The better British movies of this era dealing with sex include Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (1968), Baby Love (1969), I Start Counting (1969), Cool It, Carol! (1970), Age of Consent (1969), All the Right Noises (1970)

Take a Girl Like You is an offbeat mix but it has an infectious and enjoyable quirkiness. There is real chemistry between Hayley Mills and Oliver Reed which helps a great deal. Highly recommended.

The Powerhouse Indicator Blu-Ray presentation is excellent. There are a few extras including an interview with Hayley Mills (interestingly enough she has fond memories of working with Oliver Reed).

Carry On Loving (1970)

Carry On Loving, released in 1970, was the 20th movie in the Carry On series. There are those who feel that it’s a bit more risqué than previous Carry Ons. Perhaps it is, just a little. There are also those who feel that the series was starting to become a bit stale by this time, an opinion with which I strongly disagree.


This entry in the cycle features most of the much-loved series regulars.

This time the subject is marriage. Mr and Mrs Sidney Bliss (Sid James and Hattie Jacques) run the Wedded Bliss Marriage Bureau, a computerised dating service which is rather less high-tech than it appears to be. Mrs Bliss suspects that her husband is sampling the female merchandise, keeping the most desirable ladies for himself. In particular she thinks he’s having it off with Esme Crowfoot (Joan Sims).

She hires a thoroughly inept private eye (played by Charles Hawtrey) to find out just what Sid is up to.

Mr Snooper (Kenneth Williams) has his own problems. He’s a marriage guidance counsellor but he’s not married and he’s been told he’ll lose his job if he doesn’t acquire a wife pronto. He turns to the Wedded Bliss agency for help.

There are all the misunderstandings you’d expect in a Carry On movie. Shy young virgin Bertrum Muffet (Richard O’Callaghan) is set up to meet Esme Crowfoot but he ends up meeting a photographic pin-up model instead. He has no idea she is a model and is shocked when she immediately wants to take her clothes off.

This is the second date the agency has arranged for him. The first one ended disastrously, landing him in the midst of an incredibly gloomy and crazy family.

The great thing about the Carry Ons is that even when you know exactly where a scene is heading it’s still funny. In fact the anticipation makes it funnier. And this is a very funny Carry On movie.


Everyone is in fine form. Sid James is sneaky and lecherous, Hattie Jacques is a bit of a dragon, Kenneth Williams is the world’s worst marriage guidance counsellor. Bernard Bresslaw has great fun as Esme’s terrifying wrestler ex-boyfriend Gripper Burke. Joan Sims, Terry Scott and Charles Hawtrey are as reliable as ever. Newcomer Richard O’Callaghan plays a role that in previous movies would certainly have gone to Jim Dale but he does a fine job as a good-natured innocent.

This movie takes the same irreverent attitude towards marriage that the Carry Ons took towards everything else. Irreverent, but not hostile. The Carry Ons had no political barrow to push, which is why they’re so refreshing to watch today. The aim is to provide laughs, and Talbot Rothwell’s script provides plenty of those.

By this time the Carry On franchise was humming along like a well-oiled machine. Everybody, from director Gerald Thomas down to the humblest crew member or bit-part actor, knew what to do and how to do it. These were very modestly budgeted moves but very professionally made.

There’s a vast amount of sexual innuendo, all of it good-natured. Men are made fun of, and so are women. Authority figures are regarded with a certain scepticism.

Critics never had much love for the Carry On movies which committed the cardinal sin of being immensely popular with ordinary audiences. The opinions of the critics were irrelevant. Carry On Loving did very nicely at the box office.

Carry On Loving is naughty (in an innocent wort of way) and it’s funny. Highly recommended.

This movie is part of the Carry On Collection DVD boxed set. It gets a good 16:9 enhanced transfer with quite a few extras. Jacki Piper joins Richard O’Callaghan for an amusing audio commentary. They both have very happy memories of working on this movie.

I’ve reviewed lots of the Carry On movies including my personal favourite Carry On Cleo (1964), Don't Lose Your Head (1966), Carry On Henry (1971) and the unfairly maligned Carry On Emmannuelle (1978).

The Oyster Princess (1919)

The Oyster Princess (Die Austernprinze) is a very early German Ernst Lubitsch film, described as a grotesque comedy which sums it up quite well.

If you’re only familiar with Lubitsch’s Hollywood movies his German silent movies will come as a major shock. They’re wild and crazy. Lubitsch invented his own genres as he went along. These movies obey none of the rules of conventional film-making that became established with the coming of the sound, but they don’t even obey any of the rules of silent film-making. Lubitsch just didn’t care about rules at this stage of his career. He was wildly experimental. I’d be tempted to describe the young Lubitsch as an avant-garde film-maker but that gives the impression of someone taking himself very seriously and Lubitsch wasn’t taking himself seriously at all. He was making fun movies. They were crazy, but they were fun.

The Oyster Princess is the story of Ossi (Ossi Oswalda), the daughter of American millionaire tycoon Quaker (Victor Janson). Quaker made his fortune from oysters. He’s the oyster king.

Ossi is throwing an epic tantrum. She has just heard that the daughter of America’s shoe-polish king has married a count. She now expects to marry a man at least equal to a count, preferably outranking a count. To calm her down her father promises to buy her a prince.

Quaker engages the services of renowned matchmaker Seligsohn (Max Kronert). Quaker places a firm order for a prince.

Fortunately in Europe in 1919 princes could be picked up quite inexpensively. There were plenty of noblemen who had lost their estates and fortunes in wars and revolutions. All of them would jump at the chance to marry a millionaire’s daughter.

Such a nobleman is Prince Nucki (Harry Liedtke). He is a real prince but he shares a squalid tenement apartment with his buddy Josef (Julius Falkenstein). Josef is in theory the prince’s aide-de-camp, and his only servant. Prince Nucki doesn’t have two pfennigs to rub together. What he has are debts. The marriage sounds like a fine idea.

Josef is dispatched to the Quaker mansion to meet Ossi and to make arrangements for the wedding.

Josef is certainly impressed by Quaker’s wealth. His mansion isn’t the size of a small palace, it’s the size of a large palace. Ossi doesn’t have a personal maid. She has two dozen personal maids.

The wedding doesn’t turn out quite as expected. Ossi gets married, but to whom?

This is not a bedroom farce and it’s not really a bawdy comedy. It pokes fun at millionaires and princes but it’s not really a satire. It’s certainly not a realist film but it’s not a fantasy. Everything is highly exaggerated but it doesn’t feel like surrealism.

There is romance, but this film doesn’t neatly fit the romance genre either.

It’s a bit of all those things blended into an intoxicating cocktail.

There has never been an actress quite like Ossi Oswalda. She made a series of films for Lubitsch and her performances are always bizarre and over-the-top but she’s quite different in each film. She had a knack of being bizarre and loveable at the same time. A strange actress but a fascinating one.

The Oyster Princess doesn’t have the overt and deliberate extreme artificiality or the extreme stylisation of other early Lubitsch movies, but you can sense that he’s starting to move in that direction.

Mostly it’s just crazy good-natured fun. The characters might be grotesques but they’re likeable in spite of this. Even Quaker, as crass as he is, isn’t such a bad old guy.

And I haven’t even mentioned the fox-trot epidemic yet.

This movie is included in the Lubitsch in Berlin DVD boxed set from Eureka (which has now been released on Blu-Ray as well) and it’s also available on Blu-Ray from Kino Classics. My copy is from the DVD set and the transfer is quite OK and English subtitles are provided for the title cards.

It’s best to approach The Oyster Princess with no expectations at all in mind. Just sit back and enjoy the ride. Highly recommended.