THE BIRDS
****
USA
Flocks of birds begin to terrorize a small town in California for no apparent reason.
A very explicit example of the master manipulator having a nasty lot of fun. There isn't much along the way of a story - more like a breathless succession of visceral attack sequences. There isn't any music in the film either - all of the shocks are honestly earned.
dir: Alfred Hitchcock
ph: Robert Burks
ed: George Tomasini
cast: Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette, Veronica Cartwright

LES CARABINIERS
****½
France/Italy
This dark wartime allegory was Godard’s second foray into politics - more allegorical but also far more pointed than his first, "Le Petit soldat", made in 1960 but released in '63. Namely it concerns two cretins conscripted to fight in ‘the King’s war and believing it to be a terrific opportunity to rape, pillage and get rich.
   The war is a fictional one, but the picture has a documentary immediacy about it. Godard stages most scenes with an emphasis on long shots, long takes, natural lighting and a contrasty monochrome so that they blend in almost seamlessly with the bits of genuine newsreel he mixes in.
   He doesn’t present a comforting, heroic side to war. The [anti-]heroes are ordinary-looking peasants, who say and do outrageously awful things - they express genuine delight in slaughtering innocents.
   Essentially the picture is a very black comedy, and in its own black way, it’s essentially hilarious. But the humour is grounded in that horrific realism of wartime reportage to the extent that it doesn’t necessarily make you laugh (aside from a slapstick interval when one of the soldiers discovers cinema for the first time) as much as it makes you uneasy.
   And back in 1963, it made people so uneasy that the picture’s general release was delayed till 1967, the very same year that Godard also completed another masterful and even more unsettling political allegory.
dir: Jean-Luc Godard
wr: Roberto Rossellini, Jean Gruault, Jean-Luc Godard
ph: Raoul Coutard
cast: Marino Mase, Albert Juross, Genevieve Gaela, Catherine Ribero

CHARADE
****
USA
A widowed Parisienne is in danger of losing her own life and must rely on the kindness of a mysterious stranger.
Unmistakably a Hitchcock imitation, but a charming one, smoothly alternating between romantic comedy and suspense.
dir: Stanley Donen
wr: Peter Stone
cast: Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, Walter Matthau, James Coburn, George Kennedy

CONTEMPT
***½
France/Italy
Jean-Luc Godard’s first big-budget picture, this was shot in Cinemascope and lush Technicolor, with a story based on an Alberto Moravia novel. Godard draws parallels between the problems of a troubled film shoot (a heavily symbolic adaptation of Homer’s “Odyssey”) with those of a troubled marriage.
   Jack Palance plays the volatile film producer, who hurls abuse at his director, Fritz Lang (wonderfully wise and witty, playing himself in a cameo which includes his famous quip about how Cinemascope is only good for “shooting snakes and funerals”), manipulates his scriptwriter, played by a withdrawn Michel Piccoli, and flirts with the latter’s wife, an indignant Brigitte Bardot. The movie-making digressions end up serving almost as bookends, since a midsection which deals exclusively with Piccoli and Bardot’s marital woes takes up the vast majority of the running time. A sombre, grandiose score by Georges Delerue erupts at regular intervals to prevent things from becoming dry.
   Godard was never better-behaved than here. There's nary a jump cut or a wink at the camera. The picture’s Hollywood financiers however, were still unsatisfied with the product initially delivered to them, and made sure that Bardot’s pert behind plays a prominent role in the final version released in theatres.
wr/dir: Jean-Luc Godard
ph: Raoul Coutard
m: Georges Delerue
cast: Michel Piccoli, Brigitte Bardot, Jack Palance, Fritz Lang, Giorgia Moll, Jean-Luc Godard

8½
*****
Italy
What separates Fellini's self-analysis from the plethora of rip-offs it spawned (all of which inevitably and very quickly slip into the land of wankery, never to emerge) is his generous, all-encompassing spirit. He lets you in on his private jokes and hang-ups. He doesn't look to assert his genius or delineate a status above yours. Organic, spontaneous and with an intoxicating sense of longing, his dreams speak at the level of your dreams. Few - if any - other filmmakers have mastered their craft to such a level that they've been able to capture something as vague, as mysterious and overwhelming as one's own dreamlife with such sensitivity, such intimacy and openness that, rather than a stranger's autobiography, you feel you are tuning into a raw, unfiltered materialisation of another person's rich and fabulous headspace.
dir: Federico Fellini
wr: Federico Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano, Brunello Rondi
ph: Gianni Di Venanzo
m: Nino Rota
cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimée, Claudia Cardinale, Sandra Milo, Rossella Falk, Barbara Steele

FEBRUARY
**
China
In 1920s China, a young, idealistic teacher arrives in a small village and gets involved with two of the local women.
Little really happens in the first hour of this melodrama with social commentary aspirations, but it maintains some interest through an implied promise of an impending point or emotional pay-off. Neither actually arrives, and despite taking a long time to establish its characters, it eventually forces them into actions and resolutions completely drastic and unnatural.
wr/dir: Tieli Xie
cast: Xuepeng Fan, Bo Gao, Yunzhu Shangguan, Saolin Sun, Pei Wang

LE FEU FOLLET
****
France
For when you need to gently lull somebody into a suicidal mode.
Louis Malle’s study of a depressed writer recently ‘cured’ of alcoholism goes without the romanticising and self-pity that tends to come with depressed writers in movies (especially when they’re based on real-life figures). It’s a strange film – it even stands out among its French New Wave peers.
   Malle’s hand is inconspicuous; the picture seems to unfold on its own organic terms. An early scene where the hero, played by Maurice Ronet with mournful eyes and a quiet dignity, does absolutely nothing for about 10 minutes in his hospital room is extraordinary for how it manages not to stifle the picture. Malle pulls you into his hero’s environment with his camera’s steady, subdued prowling for poignant little details and a careful, unobtrusive use of atmos sound effects (nothing fancy, mostly traffic noise). And gradually, via Ronet’s half-nonsensical solitary rambling, Malle also pulls you into his mind-set. You feel like you’re bonding with him.
   Ronet spends the rest of the picture visiting old friends, all of whom turn out to have found contentment but only after making some major compromises. Their personalities come off as pale shadows of what they once were, but Malle chooses not to look down on them. He finds it in him to approve of all of the very different choices his characters make, whether they are conservative or self-destructive.
   The clean, sterilised visual style is necessary in terms of Malle’s principle of restraint. The melancholic piano score aims to make you emotional - and it works - without jarring.
wr/dir: Louis Malle
ph: Ghislain Cloquet
m: Erik Satie
cast: Maurice Ronet, Lena Skerla, Yvonne Clech, Hubert Deschamps, Jean-Paul Moulinot, Mona Dol, Jeanne Moreau, Alexandra Stewart, Pierre Moncorbier, Rene Dupuy

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
****
UK
Evil Russian spies go after James Bond.
The second in the Bond series was every bit as satisfying as the first. Good-looking, first-class brainless entertainment with a collection of memorable set-pieces. 
dir: Terence Young
ph: Ted Moore
cast: Sean Connery, Robert Shaw, Daniela Bianchi, Pedro Armendariz, Lotte Lenya, Bernard Lee, Eunice Gayson, Lois Maxwell

THE GREAT ESCAPE
**½
USA
POWs plot an escape from a Nazi camp prison camp.
An overlong prison escape drama, based on a true story. It includes an international cast and a tragic ending, in case its earnest importance was to be undervalued.
dir: John Sturges
cast: Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, James Donald, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasance, James Coburn

THE HAUNTING
****½
USA
An exceptional little chiller about a professor who seeks to find "scientific evidence" of the supernatural in a house that is notoriously haunted. He brings along the heir to the house, an unstable spinster and a Greenwich Village lesbian with ESP. Robert Wise made this as a homage to Val Lewton, his mentor, and it's very likely the best thing he ever did, certainly the most enjoyable. He relies on canted frames and sound effects in a manner which has since becomes clichéd and yet he does this with such style and expertise that the picture is still more frightening than any of its imitators (including a forlorn 1999 remake). The high-contrast Widescreen photography and the ominous, elaborate design of the New England house (with a library which has its own little creaking spiral staircase) are of enormous help.
dir: Robert Wise
wr: Nelson Gidding
ph: Davis Boulton
m: Humphrey Searle
pd: Elliott Scott
cast: Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn, Lois Maxwell, Fay Compton, Valentine Dyall, Rosalie Crutchley

HUD
****
USA
An arrogant alcoholic womanizer complicates matters at an isolated Texas range.
A brooding, melancholy Western, with a haunting sense of setting. Even when the dramatic grip drops in stretches, the impeccable performances continue to compel.
dir: Martin Ritt
wr: Irving Ravetch, Harriett Frank Jr., Larry McMurtry
ph: James Wong Howe
cast: Paul Newman, Patricia Neal, Melvyn Douglas, Brandon de Wilde

IRMA LA DOUCE
***½
USA
A Parisian policeman falls for a prostitute and becomes both her pimp and her best customer.
An overlong straight adaptation of a small-scale stage musical, with a bright and hilarious first half giving way to a less interesting, unnecessarily stretched out second.
dir: Billy Wilder
cast: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Lou Jacobi, Herschel Bernardi, Joan Shawlee

IT'S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD
***½
USA
A detective sends many people in pursuit of hidden treasure.
A flawed and overlong, but consistently funny comedy on an epic scale and with bright star turns.
dir: Stanley Kramer
cast: Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Durante, Milton Berle, Ethel Merman, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers, Terry-Thomas, William Demarest, Peter Falk, Edward Everett Horton, Buster Keaton, Joe E. Brown, Carl Reiner, the Three Stooges, ZaSu Pitts, Sterling Holloway, Jack Benny, Jerry Lewis

THE LEOPARD
*****
Italy/France
A gorgeously mounted adaptation of one of the great novels of the century. The perfect mix of grace and physicality, Burt Lancaster plays the titular aristocrat as he ponders the relative insignificance of his life, his class and humanity, as feudalism is giving way to senates, politics and hand-kissing. A lot of the strongest patches in the script are lifted word for word from Lampedusa's book. But the celebrated ball sequence, which comprises the final third of the film, is pure cinema.
   Initially the picture was much-abused through dubbing, reprocessing and shortening for financial reasons that never paid off. It was finally restored to its original glory twenty years later.
dir: Luchino Visconti
wr: Suso Cecchi D'Amico
ph: Giuseppe Rotunno
m: Nino Rota
ad: Mario Garbuglia
cast: Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale, Paolo Stopa, Rina Morelli, Romolo Valli, Lucilla Morlacchi, Serge Reggiani, Leslie French

LE PETIT SOLDAT
****
France
Godard made this moody love story with political digression overtones straight after “Breathless”. But because of its depiction of international torture tactics relating to the then-ongoing war in Algeria, it wasn’t granted a premiere until after the war finished. The torture scenes are indeed detailed and rendered without much fuss so as to seem extra believable. But overall the picture seems too cool, too romantic and casually stylish to be deemed incendiary.
   Godard’s politics are so murky they seem almost beside the point. He treats the political situation like Hitchcock treats a MacGuffin. The two lovers – Michel Subor, playing a right-wing deserted soldier forced to assassinate someone important, and Anna Karina, playing an idealistic left-wing informer – get involved in the war mostly to meet each other and undergo a shared existentialist crisis. When they’re together on screen, you forget the war is happening. You’re just vaguely aware that they are facing some larger-than-life obstacles like impossibly glamourous screen lovers always seem to be. They spend half the time waxing philosophical, but they underplay their monologues nicely and look so good together that you genuinely hope for them to make it through. This isn’t often the case with lovers in a Godard picture, which is why the nonchalantly tragic ending carries far more emotional impact than you expect.
wr/dir: Jean-Luc Godard
ph: Raoul Coutard
m: Maurice Leroux
cast: Michel Subor, Anna Karina, Henri-Jacques Huet, Paul Beauvais, Ladzlo Szabo, Georges de Beauregard

THE PINK PANTHER
***
USA
The only "Pink Panther" movie not to be a sequel or a remake. Peter Sellers gained international fans only after he wreaked havoc as Inspector Clouseau, so his role here is smaller than most people remember it to be. It consists almost entirely of pratfalls. Whenever he isn't on screen, the picture makes an effort at class. There is an implicit attempt at faux sophistication in the casting of David Niven as a playboy jewel thief. He smirks a lot to compensate for his lack of good looks, and no lady can resist him. You tend to like him though, because he looks to be the only one who can see through the picture's projected glamour and accept it for what it is: mildly diverting, forgettable fun. The highlight is the credit sequence, which introduced to the world the now beloved cartoon character of the title.
dir: Blake Edwards
m: Henry Mancini
cast: David Niven, Peter Sellers, Robert Wagner, Capucine, Claudia Cardinale

ROGOPAG
***½
Italy/France
A mostly Italian-produced collection of four sketches by four separate directors (three of whom have since been accorded legendary status), which, like most of these things tend to be, is ultimately a mixed bag.
   The first of the four, titled “Chastity” and helmed by Roberto Rossellini, aims at a cosmopolitan flavour. It boasts a jazzy score and exotic location photography (awkwardly matched with studio footage) and tells of an Alitalia stewardess whose maternal nature attracts the unwanted attention of a balding middle-aged customer. There’s lots of Freudian and Jungian extrapolating going on and the two major male characters (the middle-aged creep and the flight attendant’s boyfriend back home) both turn out to be assholes with a silly complex. But you still feel the flight attendant is the one stuck with the fuzzy end of the lollipop. She isn’t granted a personality of her own and the rape that is attempted on her is played for laughs.
   In “Ricotta”, Pier Paolo Pasolini combines themes of Catholicism, movie-making and working-class oppression to form an ultimately rather ambiguous - you might suspect, even hollow - statement on each of these. But he has a way of sucking up to you and convincing you that you’re having a good time. For example, he has a cast of colourful extras doing all sorts of blasphemous things, as well as Orson Welles (pretty much playing himself) behaving in exactly the way you always imagined Orson Welles would behave in real life. He also sets his piece at the proper rhythm to make it evocative. He knows, for example, when to linger on a close-up and when to take the music off the soundtrack.
   The third sketch, “The New World”, is probably Godard’s least inspired work from this period. The concept of a nuclear bomb exploding several thousand kilometres above Paris should be an absorbing one. (It was topical in its day - which is interesting because you don’t necessarily associate topicality with the Nouvelle Vague.) But at heart Godard seems ambivalent towards the issues he raises, and even his mood-building feels half-assed. His actors come off as apathetic, which may be serving a purpose, but it wouldn’t be a productive one in any case.
   The final sketch is the most accessible of the four in that it mostly revolves around a middle-class family trudging through some of life’s more familiar conundrums, like when the baby won’t leave the store without a few insidiously marketed toys in his hands. It’s directed by Ugo Gregoretti (the only one of the four who was and still remains relatively unknown) in a style which would probably appear simplistic and heavy-handed if the issue at its core wasn’t as relevant today as it was over forty years ago. Gregoretti's jabs at consumerism aren't deep but they're thought-provoking, though his ending is overly pessimistic.
dir: Roberto Rossellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jean-Luc Godard, Ugo Gregoretti
cast: Orson Welles, Ugo Tognazzi, Lisa Gastoni, Rosanna Schiafinno, Bruce Balaban, Laura Betti, Alexandra Stewart

THE SERVANT
***½
UK
A shady manservant begins to dominate his employer.
A highly acclaimed study of master-servant relations and the British class system, intriguing and expertly photographed, but not as compelling or haunting as it wants to be.
dir: Joseph Losey
wr: Harold Pinter
ph: Douglas Slocombe
cast: Dirk Bogarde, James Fox, Sarah Miles, Wendy Craig, Catherine Lacey, Richard Vernon

SHOCK CORRIDOR
***½
USA
A sensationalistic variation on a well-worn plot: a newspaper reporter checks himself into a mental institution to uncover a murder. It's handled in the familiar Sam Fuller fashion, with striking stylistic flourishes surrounded by jumpy editing and unfounded, badly acted hysteria. At times the picture is aiming to be a hard-hitting exposé of the shady workings of insane asylums, but serious-minded sequences are always followed by something as outrageous as the murderous attack of the crazy nymphos. And there's bizarre Widescreen colour footage thrown in on occasion of scenes that look lifted from anthropological docos. All in all, there's quite a bit of fun to be had here, though it's a pity the narrative slips into a familiar, repetitive structure where you have to wait for the hero to gradually squeeze crucial info out of an unstable witness not once, not twice, but three times.
wr/dir: Samuel Fuller
ph: Stanley Cortez, Samuel Fuller
cast: Peter Breck, Constance Towers, Gene Evans, James Best, Hari Rhodes, Larry Tucker, William Zuckert, Philip Ahn

THE SILENCE
****½
Sweden
In the concluding chapter of Ingmar Bergman's trilogy on Godlessness, Ingrid Thulin does subtle, majestic things as the cancerous, repressed sister holidaying in an unnamed, presumably Eastern-European country with her younger, more amply-bosomed one. It's Bergman-by-numbers, but this never fails to get me very excited. It doesn't appear as striking or visionary today as it very well may have in the early 60s (it's even - pecuiliarly for Bergman - simplistic at times), though it retains a freshness, along with the formidable claim to cinema's first (and second) truly great sex scene.
wr/dir: Ingmar Bergman
ph: Sven Nykvist
cast: Ingrid Thulin, Gunnel Lindblom, Jörgen Lindström, Birger Malmsten, Håkan Jahnberg

THE SWORD IN THE STONE
***
USA
The tale of King Arthur, Disneyfied.
Generally enjoyable, though the animation is limp and sketchy.
dir: Wolfgang Reitherman
voices of: Ricky Sorenson, Sebastian Cabot, Karl Swenson, Martha Wentworth

TOM JONES
***½
UK
The adventures of a foundling in 18th century England.
A bawdy, breezy adaptation of the Henry Fielding novel, with clever casting and cinematic trickery.
dir: Tony Richardson
wr: John Osborne
ph: Walter Lassally
ed: Anthony Gibbs
cast: Albert Finney, Susannah York, Hugh Griffith, Edith Evans, Joan Greenwood, Diane Cilento