To the Devil . . . a Daughter (1976)

It was probably inevitable that the folks at Hammer Films would produce a movie in the vein of Rosemary’s Baby (1968), because nothing screams Hammer like the lurid intersection of sex and supernatural thrills. Unfortunately, To the Devil . . . A Daughter lacks the comic-book fun of the best Hammer flicks—it’s a ploddingly serious psychodrama hampered by indifferent leading performances. And because certain scenes push the boundaries of good taste in terms of displaying nubile flesh, the whole endeavor feels needlessly sleazy. Therefore, even though director Peter Sykes mounts a generally handsome production, with sleek camerawork by the great David Watkin and several atmospheric locations, the cons outweigh the pros. Richard Widmark stars as John Verney, a supernatural expert recruited by worried dad Henry Beddows (Denholm Elliot) to look after Henry’s teenaged daughter, Catherine (Nastassja Kinski), who has spent years cloistered with a mysterious religious organization in Europe. Long story short, it turns out the head of the organization, Father Michael Rayner (Christopher Lee), is a Satanist grooming Catherine for some sort of unholy union with a demon. Verney attempts to save Catherine. The saucy plot could have worked, but Widmark seems so bored that he sucks the life out of every scene he’s in, while Lee—as always, more interesting as a physical presence than as an actor—merely glowers like he’s making one of his interchangeable Dracula movies. In the absence of dynamic leading performances, all eyes turn to Kinski’s exotic beauty. Had she been cast as an innocent whose sexual power was merely implied, Kinski could have justified the movie’s existence with her innately beguiling qualities. Instead, the filmmakers went too far and displayed the actress fully nude, despite the fact that she was a minor at the time of filming. Toying with the erotic implications of a provocative story is one thing, but brazenly showcasing a child as a sex object is putrid.

To the Devil . . . a Daughter: LAME

Hanover Street (1979)

          While not a career zenith for any of its major participants, except perhaps leading lady Lesley-Anne Down, Hanover Street is a respectable World War II romance filled with old-fashioned themes of heroism and sacrifice. The movie’s reliance on narrative coincidence is a problem, and one wishes writer-director Peter Hyams had moved past archetypes to investigate his characters more deeply, but Hanover Street delivers much of what it promises—the stars are attractive, their onscreen love affair is complicated by unusual circumstances, and the movie spins inexorably toward an action-packed climax. So, even though it’s all a bit rudimentary in conception, the full package—accentuated by David Watkin’s shadowy cinematography and John Barry’s plaintive musical score—goes down smoothly.

          Harrison Ford, giving the most satisfying performance of his wilderness years between Star Wars (1977) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980), stars as David Halloran, a U.S. pilot stationed near London circa 1943. After a quick meet-cute with British nurse Margaret Sellinger (Down), David persuades his new acquaintance to join him for a long afternoon of tea and conversation. Although they fall in love almost instantly, Margaret reveals she’s married—but then the trauma of being caught in an air raid pushes them together. They begin an affair. This affects both of their lives badly, because David loses his combat edge while worrying about when he’s going to see Margaret again, and Margaret introduces a chill into her marriage to Paul Sellinger (Christopher Plummer). Paul was a teacher during peacetime, but he’s now an officer with British Intelligence—and when he feels Margaret drifting away, he recklessly volunteers for a mission behind enemy lines, hoping to win back her respect.

          The coincidence with which Hyams merges the fates of these characters stretches believability, but Hyams commits wholeheartedly to the ensuing melodrama, and the second half of the movie—when the story shifts from romance to thrills—is brisk and tense. As far as the actors go, Ford sulks a bit too much, though he’s sufficiently dashing during action scenes to compensate for his moodiness; and if Down fails to provide much substance behind her mesmerizing beauty, that’s acceptable as well, since she’s primarily meant to be an object of desire. Plummer is, predictably, the picture’s saving grace, lending elegance, humor, and vulnerability to his characterization. FYI, Hanover Street is far more palatable than the similarly themed Yanks, which was released later the same year—although the latter picture, directed by John Schlesinger, is more sophisticated, it’s a lifeless museum piece compared to Hyams’ fast-moving crowd-pleaser.

Hanover Street: GROOVY

Catch-22 (1970)

         Director Mike Nichols once described the “green awning effect” of becoming an A-list filmmaker. By notching two big hits in the late ’60s, Nichols convinced Hollywood he knew how to connect with audiences. Testing his newfound power, perpetually mischievous Nichols pitched a movie about a green awning outside a building—the movie would simply train a camera on the awning so viewers could watch different people pass underneath. According to Nichols, some executives expressed interest in this awful idea simply because they wanted to be in the Mike Nichols business.

          This helps explain why Paramount Pictures let Nichols spend a then-extravagant $17 million on an adaptation of Joseph Heller’s 1961 novel Catch-22. A satirical and surrealistic World War II story exploring topics including bureaucracy, capitalism, and trauma, the book features a disjointed timeline and a sprawling cast—unlikely fare for a big-budget studio picture. Nonetheless, Nichols and screenwriter Buck Henry (whose previous collaboration was 1967’s The Graduate) endeavored to focus the narrative by centering attempts by Captain Yossarian (Alan Arkin) to get relieved from his duty as a bomber pilot, his justification being that combat has driven him mad. (The title refers to a Kafkaesque military guideline stipulating that anyone capable of recognizing his own insanity must be sane and therefore suitable for combat.) Surrounding this main plot are myriad deviations, some into subplots, some back and forth through time, and some into the eerie world of dreams. 

          Viewed through the most forgiving lens, Catch-22 captures the chaos and horror of Yossarian’s experience by confronting him with an endless variety of bizarre characters and confounding situations—to watch Arkin drift from hysteria to stupefaction and various emotional states in between is to feel not just his anguish but also his desperate need for human connection. Viewed through a harsher lens—the perspective adopted by most critics during the film’s original release—Catch-22 epitomizes directorial overreach, with clarity falling victim to scale. Strong arguments can be made for both takes because for every brilliant moment that Nichols renders, seemingly a dozen others elicit bewilderment. There’s a lot of seesawing between “How did he think of that?” and “What the hell was he thinking?”

          Aesthetically, Catch-22 is perfection thanks to cinematographer David Watkin’s exquisite high-contrast lighting and Nichols’s startlingly complex shots, such as lengthy unbroken takes featuring actors’ movements choreographed with explosions and flying planes. (The appearance of Orson Welles in a small role feels like a wink to Welles’s penchant for similarly baroque sequences.) The other impeccable element of Catch-22 is a cast overflowing with talent: Bob Balaban, Martin Balsam, Richard Benjamin, Norman Fell, Art Garfunkel, Jack Gilford, Charles Grodin, Bob Newhart, Paula Prentiss, Martin Sheen, Jon Voight, and—pulling double duty—screenwriter Henry. Particularly great are Balsam as a heartless commander and Voight as an officer whose entrepreneurial schemes achieve ghastly proportions.

          Yet the key element of Catch-22 is also the most divisive, and that’s the script. Occasionally the film’s extreme comedy and extreme tragedy mesh in memorably weird scenes, notably the sequence featuring an unforgettably gory onscreen death, but more often the satire is excruciatingly bleak, as when Nichols punctuates a rape/murder scene with an absurdist punchline. Nichols deserves praise for trying to nail such a difficult tonal balance, but whether he succeeded is another matter. The script also suffers for extravagance given that whole characters and subplots could have been removed.

          Because Nichols was one of the first directors to peak during the New Hollywood era, the grandiosity of Catch-22 and the failure of the film to recoup its cost during initial release now seems like a harbinger for subsequent examples of auteur excess—Bogdanovich’s At Long Last Love (1975); Scorsese’s New York, New York (1977); Spielberg’s 1941 (1979); and, of course, Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980). Like all of those films, Catch-22 cannot be reduced to a snarky footnote. It’s a window into the creativity of an essential filmmaker, and its best moments are mesmerizing even if, for most viewers, the sum is less than the parts. It’s also weird as hell, which represents a certain kind of perverse integrity. So, whether Catch-22 strikes you as a work of unconventional genius or a case study in what happens when a director buys his own hype, it is unlikely to leave you unaffected. 

Catch-22: FREAKY

The Boy Friend (1971)

          British director Ken Russell earned his bad-boy bona fides with his breakout movie, Women in Love (1969), a posh literary adaptation infamous for its scene of nude male wrestling. And though he seemed intent on continuing down the road of sexualized content with The Music Lovers (1970) and his first 1971 release, The Devils, he instead took the exact opposite tack with his second 1971 release. Adapted from the 1954 stage musical that made Julie Andrews a star, The Boy Friend is so chaste it could have been made in the 1930s—and, indeed, the strongest scenes feature Russell’s tributes to the work of Depression-era musical-movie auteurs like Busby Berkley. Loaded with flapper-styled costumes, opulent sets, and outrageous compositions that turn actors into elements of candy-colored tableaux, these sequences are visually resplendent. Unfortunately, the film containing these highlights is frothy and meandering, so The Boy Friend becomes quite dull as it sprawls across 137 repetitive minutes. Those who savor coordinated chorines and tricky tapping will find much to devour, but those craving a potent narrative will be left starving for substance.

          Finding a clever-ish way to give playwright Sandy Wilson’s storyline added dimension, Russell (who also penned the script and produced the picture) turns Wilson’s The Boy Friend into a play-within-a-movie. Thus, Polly Browne (Twiggy) is not just the lovestruck girl in the play, longing for sparks with a handsome delivery boy (Christopher Gable); she’s also an actress playing the lead role in a stage musical titled The Boy Friend. This device allows Russell to balance Wilson’s trite onstage patter with more realistic vignettes taking place offstage. Equally helpful is Russell’s addition of a theatrical star (played by an uncredited Glenda Jackson) whose injury forces Polly to take the stage in her place; this gives the Polly character a poignant underdog quality. Russell’s third big gimmick is the unexpected appearance of a Hollywood producer (Vladek Sheybal) on the very night Polly steps into the spotlight, filling all the stage performers with excitement about the possibility of big-screen stardom.

          Yet even though Russell’s efforts to toughen up the narrative are admirable, The Boy Friend is still just a compendium of 20 forgettable songs. Furthermore, leading lady Twiggy, a former model, is endearing but not particularly compelling (although she somehow managed to win two Golden Globes for this movie), so she’s regularly upstaged by livelier performers. In particular, long-limbed ’70s Broadway star Tommy Tune is impressive whenever he puts his gangly frame to the task of blazing tap-dance performances. The Boy Friend looks gorgeous, not only because of the impressive production design but also because of delicate photography by David Watkin, and it’s interesting to see Russell’s over-the-top style presented without his customary vibe of juvenile perversity. At more than two and a half hours, however, The Boy Friend is a slog for anyone but diehard movie-musical fans. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

The Boy Friend: FUNKY

Cuba (1979)

          It’s hard to decide if Cuba is a great idea executed poorly, or simply a case of terrific execution masking the absence of any central idea whatsoever. In either case, the Richard Lester-directed romantic/political thriller is frustrating, because despite incredible production values and a strong cast, the film is rudderless. When Cuba begins, it seems as if the main story will involve British mercenary Robert Dapes (Sean Connery) getting drawn into the drama of 1959 Cuba, just before rebel forces led by Fidel Castro staged a successful coup. Dapes was hired by the endangered Batista government to train soldiers for their battles against the rebels, and Dapes quickly realizes he’s on the wrong side of history. His situation gets even more complicated when he encounters Alexandra (Brooke Adams), a young woman with whom he once had an intense love affair, and who is now the wife of a playboy Cuban aristocrat (Chris Sarandon).

          The lovers-in-wartime premise is vaguely reminiscent of Casablanca, but unlike that classic film, Cuba can’t decide whether it’s an examination of geopolitics or simply a torrid love triangle. As a result, the movie bounces from one tonal extreme to another, creating a disjointed narrative and neutralizing any real emotional involvement on the part of the audience. Exacerbating the problem is the fact that the acting and filmmaking are so consistently good. Lester employs clever grace notes, such as tossed-off dialogue by peripheral characters and fussy background action, in order to generate a palpable sense of place and texture. He also works in his trademark sight gags, usually at the expense of pudgy character actor Jack Weston, who plays a crass American developer trying to score a big deal before Cuba implodes.

          Supporting player Hector Elizondo is terrific in a more serious role, as Dapes’ military handler; Elizondo’s knowing glances and sly asides communicate volumes of worldly cynicism. Denholm Elliot, Lonette McKee, and Chris Sarandon are equally effective in less nuanced roles. As for the leads, Adams looks spectacular throughout the picture, even if her character is written in such a confusing way that Adams is precluded from portraying consistent behavior. Connery pours on the manly-man charm, and he’s actually quite effective in his scenes with Adams, displaying more sensitivity than he usually integrates into his performances, but the story weirdly sidelines his character until the climax.

          Still, even with these catastrophic flaws, Cuba has indisputable virtues. The location photography by David Watkin is vivid, and the script by frequent Lester collaborator Charles Wood is witty. One typically tart dialogue exchange occurs between Weston and a prostitute. Weston: “Don’t you Cubans know that time is money?” Prostitute: “I do.”

Cuba: FUNKY