THE LICKERISH QUARTET

 This infamous soft-core porn movie is notorious, not for its sex scenes which are tame by any standards, but for its pretensions to be 'about something'. "The Lickerish Quartet" finds director Radley Metzger stepping into the shoes of Antonioni only to find they don't fit at all. This is porn for the art-house crowd, (the so-called 'dirty mac' brigade would get bored very quickly), but then the art-house crowd would see through this immediately, (it's way too glossy to pass for camp).

Shot in Eastman Colour it's certainly easy on the eye and whatever Silvana Venturelli lacks in acting talent she undoubtedly makes up for in looks. The only 'name' in the cast is Frank Wolff who, despite some energetic humping, doesn't look particularly happy. (he committed suicide only three years later). Perhaps best seen as a curio it's just weird enough to be of passing interest.

SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL

 "Shake Hands with the Devil" isn't much of a movie and its plot, set during the Irish War of Independence, takes some swallowing and yet in its crude way it's highly entertaining. James Cagney, sporting an atrocious Irish accent, is the IRA (here simply referred to as The Organization), commander who takes his role perhaps more seriously than might be necessary, Don Murray is the young Irish-American who is drawn into 'the cause', Dana Wynter, the English girl who is taken hostage and Glynis Johns, again sporting another atrocious Irish accent, the colleen in love with Murray.

The excellent cast also includes Michael Redgrave as 'The General' (I'll take the role but I'm not putting on an Irish accent) and Dame Sybil Thorndike as Lady Fitzhugh, (Countess Markievicz in all but name), while the Irish players include Richard Harris, Donal Donnelly, Cyril Cusack and Ray McNally. Politically it's all over the shop; is it pro-IRA? pro-British? Or are we just meant to enjoy it as another Cagney gangster movie in an Irish setting? Regardless, it's a cracking yarn well directed by Michael Anderson and clearly aimed at the American market. Just don't take it too seriously.

HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS

 It isn't very often that you are tempted to call a film unique but "Hundreds of Beavers" is definitely one of a kind, a wordless, if not silent, black and white slapstick comedy that could have come from the very dawn of cinema but is, in fact, visually highly sophisticated. It is the product of the imagination of Mike Cheslik, (director and co-writer), and the delightfully named Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, (star and fellow co-writer), and it looks like a Guy Maddin film though it's much funnier than anything Maddin ever did.

I won't even attempt to describe the plot or lack of one except to say it all takes place in some icy wilderness, has one leading actor, (Tews), a few supporting actors and a lot of people dressed as bears, beavers, wolves, rabbits etc. and that the opening credits only appear after the movie has been on for about 30 minutes or so and that we aren't given the title until well past the hour mark. It won't be to everyone's taste but if you're a fan of Pythonesque comedy you'll find a lot to like here. A true cult classic,

KINGS OF THE ROAD

 Wim Wenders' "Kings of the Road" comes as close to naturalism, or to what I prefer to call 'actuality', as cinema gets. While the narrative relies heavily on the tropes of narrative cinema the presentation is anything but conventional. Wenders allows his film to evolve in a way that seems wholly to belong to the characters on the screen and not to the actors, the writer or the director, (Wenders, in both cases).

There is a plot of sorts. Bruno, (Rudiger Vogler), travels to towns along the East German border repairing cinema equipment. Robert, (Hanns Zischler), is the man who drives his car into a river while Bruno is having a rest break and who then settles into the passenger seat of Bruno's truck. They travel together, never quite becoming friends. It's almost as if Wender's allows them control over their own stories with both actors simply becoming the characters they are playing.

It's a long film, (three hours). with little resembling narrative action. It's like a documentary with a few divertissements along the way reminding us that however naturalistic it might seem it's only a 'film' after all, (a pick-up in a cinema that is neither sexual or romantic, 'borrowing' a motorcycle for a jaunt into the past). It is also a love letter to cinema and to American cinema in particular, a road movie about movies that should please the most ardent of cinephiles and which is certainly the equal of "Wings of Desire" and "Paris, Texas" in the Wenders' canon.

THE WRONG MAN

 Perhaps because it isn't a conventional suspense picture or perhaps because it's just so downbeat Hitchcock's "The Wrong Man" isn't much revived and yet it's one of his greatest films. It's the story of 'Manny' Balestrero, a totally innocent New Yorker identified by several people as an armed robber. If it were fiction we would call it Kafkaesque but this is fact. Balestrero's reactions as to what's  happening to him are as blank and unresponsive as Joseph K's and Henry Fonda is simply magnificent in the role, (it may be his finest performance), and as befits the seriousness of the subject matter Hitchcock films it almost as if it were a documentary, Brilliantly shot in black and white by Robert Burks and with a surprisingly muted Bernard Herrmann score this is an astonishing and deeply moving work. Absolutely essential.

LADY ON A TRAIN

 

As murder-comedies go "Lady on a Train" is certainly one of the best, if also one of the least known. It's a Deanna Durbin vehicle, (yes, she sings and charmingly), and a screwball comedy of the first rank, (the supporting cast includes Edward Everett Horton, Elizabeth Patterson and, although he gets star billing, Ralph Bellamy in a relatively small role, at least for him).

Deanna is the lady on the train who, like Miss Marple, sees a murder from the train window and sets out, like the scatterbrain amateur detective she is, to solve the case aided and abetted by crime novelist David Bruce (excellent). Throw in the likes of Dan Duryea, George Coulouris and Allen Jenkins as suitably shady characters and it's anybody's guess who the killer might be. More than just a guilty pleasure this Charles David directed movie is a little gem that is well worth seeking out.

VICTIM

 During his lifetime Dirk Bogarde never admitted to being gay and before his death he destroyed many of his private papers. Nevertheless, his sexuality has long been an open secret and Bogarde's desire to keep his private life private had to be respected. It was, therefore, an astonishingly brave decision to take on the role of Melville Farr, the closeted gay barrister who is willing to 'come out' in order to break a blackmailing ring in Basil Dearden's pioneering thriller "Victim".

Bogarde says he chose the part because he wanted to break free of the matinée idol roles he had played up to that time but by doing so he risked alienating his fan-base. Of course, by playing Farr and subsequent similar roles in films like "The Servant" and "Death in Venice" it could be argued that he was vicariously acting out on screen what he was feeling in real life.

That "Victim" was made at all is as astonishing as Bogarde's decision to take the lead. This was 1961 and homosexuality was still illegal in Britain. "Victim" broke new ground by making it the central theme and by making the gay characters sympathetic, the victims of the title, and by making the law, (at least in the form of John Barrie's investigating copper), sympathetic to their plight. This was a crusading work and is today largely credited with bringing about the change in the law that decriminalized homosexual acts between consenting adults in Great Britain.

Viewed today it is, of course, both melodramatic and didactic. At times it seems the characters aren't saying lines but making speeches. As a thriller it's reasonably exciting, (it's got sufficient red-herrings to keep us guessing), and Dearden admitted that without the thriller element the film might never have been made. (He did something similar with racism in the film "Sapphire").

"Victim" also featured a number of other gay actors in the cast, notably Dennis Price, superb as an ageing actor, and the actor/director Hilton Edwards. Whatever his motives for taking on the role, Bogarde is superb and he has at least one great scene when he finally admits his true nature to his wife, beautifully played by Sylvia Syms. There is certainly no doubt the film has dated and yet it remains one of the greatest of all gay movies.

JANET PLANET

 Another Marmite movie in that you will either love it or hate it but if, in the initial scenes, you're a detractor don't rush to judgement because "Janet Planet" is finally hypnotic and in a good way. It's another movie in which 'nothing happens'; there's no plot just an observation of life passing slowly for a young girl, her mother and the people who 'intrude' in their lives one summer in rural Massachusetts. Since it's set in the past, 1991, you might see it as autobiographical and it marks the directorial debut of writer Annie Baker.

Janet is Julianne Nicholson, a forty or fifty something acupuncturist who lives near the woods and who is unhappy. A superb Zoe Ziegler is Lacy, her friendless young daughter, mature beyond her years and the very centre of her own universe. People played by Will Patton, Elias Koteas and a terrific Sophie Okonedo drift in and out of their lives leaving no mark.

It's a slow, you might even say, pretentiously 'arty' picture which makes no concessions to its audience or their expectations. Dialogue is sparse and literate and it's gorgeously photographed by Maria von Hausswolff. I began by being a little bored by the lack of anything resembling 'action' but gradually I became enchanted by the imagery, the music and the performances. Yes, like Marmite it's an acquired taste but if you stick with it you will be amply rewarded.

THE SHAMELESS OLD LADY

 One of the least known films of the French New Wave perhaps because the subject matter is so old-fashioned like something you might have seen in the French cinema of the thirties or forties, (even the setting, Marseille, is the same as in Pagnol's famous trilogy). Berthe, (Sylvie, a lovely performance), has been widowed in her eighties and, for the first time in her life, begins to live much to the consternation of her family.

Not a great deal happens; its dramas are fairly small-scale but it's definitely a charmer and there's not a jot of sentimentality on view. Sylvie underplays beautifully and she's backed by an excellent cast while director Rene Allio films it with a documentary-like attention to detail. OK, it was never going to light up the cinema in the way that the films of Godard or Truffaut did but there is so much here to like and to discover.

MOFFIE

 One of the best films to show the horrors of military training although the setting, (White South Africa during apartheid), is perhaps an extreme example. The raw recruits being turned from 'scabs' into 'men' in "Moffie", (the title is a South African slur for a gay man), are essentially being turned into homophobes and racists if they weren't already. The film's central character is neither homophobic nor racist but a young closeted gay man and he must hide it from those around him.

Directed with documentary-like realism by Oliver Hermanus and very well played by its mostly young cast this is a more subtle and understated LGBTQ+ film than many and a pretty horrifying reminder of what life was like in South Africa at the time and of just how toxic and destructive racism and homophobia can be and of how easily evil can flourish if we treat our fellow human beings this way. Although it ends on a positive note of sorts the horrors depicted here make those in Lumet's "The Hill" seem like a teddy-bear's picnic.

MURDER, MY SWEET.

 Dick Powell may not have had Bogart's insouciance but he was just as good with the one-liners, maybe better, of which there are many in John Paxton's superb adaptation of Raymond Chandler's "Farewell, My Lovely" which, if it's not the best film Edward Dmytryk ever directed, is almost certainly the most enjoyable. It is, of course, classic Film Noir with just enough of a convoluted plot to please the most ardent of mystery fans as Powell's Philip Marlowe is hired by Mike Mazurki's 'Moose' Malloy to find his old girlfriend Velma. Meanwhile, he's also asked to act as bodyguard to Douglas Walton's gigolo in a deal involving stolen jewels, a deal that brings him into the orbit of Claire Trevor, (they were her jewels), and some suitably shady characters. When 'Moose' turns up in the same orbit it isn't hard to put two and two together.

Bogart's  Marlowe was undoubtedly a tough guy, (Bogie's snarl counted for a lot); Powell
is clearly softer and more cynical along the lines of Elliot Gould's later personification and there were times when I was sure Dick was going to burst into song. Mazurki is the surprise here giving what is probably his most finely modulated and memorable performance while Trevor positively sizzles with duplicity. Beautifully shot by Harry J. Wild and with Dmytryk for once displaying the lightest of touches, what's not to love.