Category Archives: espionage

In Like Flint [1967)

It all started with Errol Flynn.  Flynn, accused of statutory rape by two under-age girls in November 1942 was defended by (among others)  the American Boys’ Club for the Defense of Errol Flynn.  That’s right:  ABCDEF.  One member of the organization was William F. Buckley, Jr.  Ah Buckley…not the heroic Bill Buckley who died in Beirut (after helping to expose Project MKUltra).  Nay, we speak of the harpsichord man.  The Knight of Malta (like Ronald Reagan). 

In 1943 (that is, the next year) the Buckley in question would go from ABCDEF (Z.O.W.I.E. anyone?) to being a student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.  After a short stay, he entered (?) WWII out of U.S. Army Officer Candidate School and soon enough (at war’s end) was at Yale and in the loving arms of Skull and Bones (being a member in good standing). 

Buckley was recruited by the CIA in 1951.  The story goes that he served just two years, but strikingly one of those two was back in Mexico City as a “political action specialist” in the Special Activities Division under E. Howard Hunt.

Now there’s a name…  Hunt, along with G. Gordon Liddy (what is it with these guys and first initials?), engineered the first Watergate burglary on behalf of President Richard Nixon and his administration.  That is to say:  in 1972 the President of the United States of America’s “people” broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee.  In on this whole thing was another fellow keen on the aforementioned self-referent nomenclature:  L. Patrick Gray (the acting head of the FBI at the time).

This immense tangent serves to set the stage for what is not really that great a movie:  In Like Flint.  Yes, the phrase is thought to have originated in reference to good old Errol Flynn (the demigod [not to be confused with demagogue] of our friends the ABCDEF).

All of this is to say that the “plot” of In Like Flint is beyond fanciful (and utterly jaw-dropping in its dated sexism).  Yet, every day the machinations of strange organizations with nefarious plans swirl around us in orbits mostly unnoticed.

I must say that I preferred the direction of Daniel Mann’s Our Man Flint to the staging here of Gordon Douglas.  Don’t get me wrong:  there are some priceless moments herein.  At one point James Coburn utters the phrase “an actor as President…” (as if the whole thing seemed too preposterous to be real).  Of course the U.S. would go on to actually have an actor as President when Reagan assumed the position for the majority of the 1980s.

The tape recorders in hair dryers idea bears a spooky resemblance to what the other Bill Buckley observed at McGill University in Montreal (under the horrific guidance of Dr. Ewen Cameron):  that is to say MKUltra. 

More light-hearted is Coburn’s hilarious “dolphin talk” near the top of the film.  Fans of The Illuminatus Trilogy will doubtless find this particularly poignant. 

Spy Chief Framed As Libertine…  This brings to mind the strange case of Gen. David Petraeus.  In the film, intelligence (?) chief Lloyd Cramden is stoned and dethroned in just such a manner by a junta of which Gen. Carter is head.  Once again Flint shows his boundless talents (including a stint as hypnotist and another as a ballet dancer).  Rahm Emanuel would surely be proud.  Leave it to the polymath Flint to deduce female cosmonauts from a cardiograph (80 BPM) on Earth. 

Coburn as a Cuban is definitely a knee-slapper.  And there is plenty of eye candy (as in the appropriately-named Operation Smooch).  All in all this is great downtime for spy and enthusiast alike.

-PD 

Leave a comment

Our Man Flint [1966)

Derek Flint, the superspy with four girlfriends who picks up a fifth during the course of this film, has the most interesting bed in film history.  In many ways, he’s infinitely more interesting than James Bond.  Of course it’s all a joke, right?  Well, sort of.  It’s not actually that much more far-fetched than the Bond series.  In fact, we simply have a superspy whose life makes explicit everything inferred by the exciting Mr. Bond.  To be sure, there is not much inferred in the Bond series (save sexual inferences).

Director Daniel Mann had helmed BUtterfield 8 in 1960 which starred Elizabeth Taylor.  His filmography otherwise is not really a stunning list to read, but his direction here is fine indeed.  He gets a lot of help from his lead star James Coburn.  In 1960 Coburn was one of The Magnificent Seven.  Coburn was a very capable actor (as evinced in the little-known Blake Edwards film The Carey Treatment).

But yes, this is a spy spoof in the strictest sense.  Instead of S.P.E.C.T.R.E., we get Z.O.W.I.E. (or, actually, for the bad guys, Galaxy).  Funny that an organization wielding power through controlling worldwide weather should make its first assassination attempt on our hero by using a harp (or is it a HAARP?).

The whole bouillabaisse section is infinitely hilarious.  Like a monk through extreme concentration, Flint also places himself in suspended animation twice during the film.  The second time he does so to play dead (quite successfully) which allows for his escape once his watch tickles him back to consciousness.  Flint knows every trick in the book…from Shaolin to spetsnaz.

Gila Golan is excellent as (you guessed it) Gila.

The presidential ringtone (3 x 5) is a catchy, kitsch motif throughout the whole production.  The music in general (by Jerry Goldsmith) is excellent.

If you like James Bond films, you probably have a sense of humor.  If you can stomach the scattershot Casino Royale (1967), this will seem like the greatest film ever made.  It really is a joyful little classic.

 

-PD

 

2 Comments

Modesty Blaise [1966)

Seldom have I seen a more enjoyable film than this jewel staring Monica Vitti.  Entered in the ’66 Cannes film festival, this spoof surely garnered little attention in a world dominated by the French New Wave.  And today it is not easy to write about a film which has been essentially written off.

Modesty (Vitti) is simply wonderful in this sunny film.  Her sidekick is Willie Garvin (Terence Stamp).  Based upon a British comic strip of the same name, Vitti was excellently cast–herself being 5’7″ and Modesty Blaise supposed to be 5’6″.  Though she was about 35 years old when this film was made, she doesn’t seem unduly cast as a late-twenties super-heroine.

Indeed, the comic strip itself predated this first film adaptation by only about three years.  The strip ran 10,183 installments (1963-2001).

Vitti had two years previous appeared in the Antonioni masterpiece The Red Desert.  Indeed, she was integral to his trilogy L’Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961) and L’Eclisse (1962).  By 1979 she was finally getting around to making her second English-language film An Almost Perfect Pair.  Modesty Blaise is half of her oeuvre in inglese.  Vitti would work with Antonioni one last time in 1981 on The Mystery of Oberwald.  In 1989 Vitti herself would direct the film Secret Scandal, but it would be her last (as of the present time) film appearance.

Our director, Joseph Losey, had helmed Eva in (1962) and in high school had been friends with Nicholas Ray.  Losey suffered extensively because of his investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee.  Being unable to work in the U.S., he eventually made a career for himself in Europe (including The Go-Between [1971] which won the Palme d’Or).

Terence Stamp would follow Modesty Blaise up with the Pasolini film Teorema (1968).  By 1978 he was General Zod in Superman.  He reprised this role in 1980.  Stamp’s career initially got rolling in 1962 when he received an Oscar nomination for his role in Peter Ustinov’s Billy Budd.  Ustinov directed seven other films before dying in the canton of Vaud (Switzerland) in 2004.

Stamp would continue his screen presence in 1994’s The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and in The Limey (1999).  More recently he has appeared in Valkyrie (2008) and The Adjustment Bureau (2011).

And finally, what would our film be without the deliciously evil Dirk Bogarde?  Bogarde had previously acted for Losey in The Servant (1963) and would go on to follow Modesty Blaise with a turn in another Losey film titled Accident (1967).  In 1969 and 1971 he would appear in the Visconti films The Damned and Death In Venice (respectively).  It should be remembered that Losey called upon Bogarde as early as 1954 (The Sleeping Tiger).  For fans of “auteur theory,” let it be noted that Bogarde acted in a film co-written by Andrew Sarris:  Justine (1969).  In the 80s and 90s Bogarde turned to novel writing.

And so:  there you have it.  Modesty Blaise–a strange meeting point for a British comic strip, a gorgeous Italian actress, a blacklisted American director and a couple of British chaps (one eventually earning a Sir to precede his name).  I heartily recommend this film as it is joyful viewing and entertainment all the way through.  The facts are scant.  This is your dossier.

 

-PD

 

Leave a comment

Casino Royale [1967)

Strange that the first James Bond novel didn’t come to the big screen until several 007 films had already been made–and that it came in the form of a slapstick comedy.  This is certainly no Eon production.  In fact, it takes the piss (as the British would say) from the opening credits.  Indeed, this is a very loose adaptation of Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel, but it is a thoroughly entertaining film.

Any film with Peter Sellers is worth checking out, and this flick does not disappoint (with Sellers as the nervous baccarat master Evelyn Tremble).  Ursula Andress, herself the first Bond girl (Dr. No), plays Vesper Lynd:  the woman so rich that she buys the statue of Lord Nelson in Trafalgar Square and has it moved to her own residence.  This is just one of the many ridiculous details which make this a polarizing tapestry.

Joanna Pettet is quite good as the love child of Sir James Bond (David Niven) and Mata Hari.  Mata Bond (as she is known) takes up the spy trade of her progenitors in the film and, notwithstanding claims to the contrary, is quite a good dancer indeed.

But it is not just the details which make this film thoroughly puzzling.  The film credits list John Huston as director, but that is only part of the story.  Nicolas Roeg was a cinematographer on the film.  In fact, even auteur/actors such as Orson Welles and Woody Allen participate in their thespian capacities.  Surely, there was plenty of talent involved in the making of this mess-of-a-film.  But what a pleasant mess it is.

The film begins in a pissoir (reminiscent of Henry Miller’s oeuvre) and never looks back regarding the “tradition of quality” it leaves behind.  The plot (liberties taken with Fleming’s plot) is absolutely Joycean and akin to The Big Sleep.  If one is not painfully attuned, the entire first quarter of the movie makes no sense whatsoever.  Sir James Bond’s house is blown up by MI6, but somehow the head of the service (M) is killed in the explosion which he himself ordered.

Indeed, the entire episode in Scotland (near the top of the film) is confusing at best.  M’s widow has been replaced by a SMERSH (Russian conjunction meaning roughly “death to spies”) agent named Mimi…who, of course, falls for Sir James Bond (himself reluctantly returning from retirement after his house is blown up by his former employers) and thus fails to do her duty for mother Russia.  This apocryphal film in the Bond saga fails to take the same liberty as Eon Productions in that the name SMERSH (Soviet counterintelligence) is retained in the stead of SPECTRE (an Eon creation which neatly changed the “enemy” focus from being the U.S.S.R. to simply organized crime…on a grand scale).

David Niven’s portrayal of 007 bears no likeness to Connery…especially in that “Sir” James Bond is a man of utmost morals.  This couldn’t be further from the womanizing Connery-Bond we see in From Russia With Love and other Eon production classics.

Mention should be made of Barbara Bouchet’s portrayal as Miss Moneypenny.  Her overtime work (beyond the call of duty) to find a spy capable of controlling his libido is really rather hilarious and she plays this part quite well.  In a nod to Spartacus, Sir James (now the new head of MI6) orders all British agents to henceforth go by the name James Bond.  Terrence Cooper is chosen by Moneypenny (or, perhaps, vice versa) as the most capable candidate as regards warding off the temptation of “feminine charms.”

Orson Welles plays Soviet agent (a gambler trying to save his neck) Le Chiffre.  Having such an auteur on set couldn’t have but helped the knowing “direction” of this movie.  Mata Bond’s foray to East Berlin in fact is a foray back into the Expressionist cinema of Robert Wiene (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari).  The set designing in this particular section is quite remarkable and, if we are to go by the credits alone, we might credit John Huston with this deft reference.

The spoof hits higher and higher levels of satire as when Evelyn Tremble (himself also now known as James Bond…quite laughable) encounters Miss Goodthighs (a singular name, what?).  But the real pinnacle in this absurd film is Welles’ (Le Chiffre’s) torturing of Sellers (Tremble).  I have seen nothing quite like it in cinema except for the psychedelic boat ride in the original Willy Wonka movie with Gene Wilder.  Certainly, the year was 1967…but still:  this could have been an outtake from Roger Corman’s The Trip!

It becomes so that one senses the ghost of Buster Keaton in this ever more Dadaist confection.  A flying saucer lands in London.  Sir Bond’s nephew Jimmy Bond (Woody Allen) is revealed to simultaneously be Dr. Noah (a hilariously Hebrew reference to the original Bond villain Dr. No).  Jimmy Bond’s plan for world domination (he has defected from MI6 over to SMERSH) bears a striking resemblance to the film The Tiger Makes Out.  Strange times…

The coup de grâce is when not only the American cavalry arrive at the casino (straight out of a John Ford film for all we know), but when amidst the equestrian chaos Jean-Paul Belmondo finally appears to say merde a few times (after each time he punches someone).  By this time all sense of taste has been trampled underfoot, but it was so fun getting there.  Indeed, Mata Bond at one point takes a taxi from London to Berlin!

So what, if any, relic is left of John Huston’s direction in this anti-masterpiece (besides the hairpiece which succeeds M…a role likewise acted by Huston at the film’s start)?  And should this vestige be given Christian burial?  In Fleming’s original novel, MI6 has no “Christian name” on file for Le Chiffre.  He is a total mystery:  Mediterranean with perhaps a dash of Prussian or Polish.  But that’s it.  He is a cipher–a number.

Vladek Sheybal (who had played Kronsteen in From Russia With Love) appears in a minor role during the East Berlin portion of the film.  In fact, we last see him (having sauntered into West Berlin) firing shots at the fleeing Mata Bond (right under the nose of an American soldier).  What is the meaning of this, one might ask?

With turns like that of John Wells (as Q’s assistant), this might very well be considered the true predecessor of the Airplane movies.  In fact, there were FIVE different directors employed in the making of this film (not including Richard Talmadge, who co-directed the final chaotic episode).  It is believed that not only Allen and Sellers contributed to the script, but also Ben Hecht, Joseph Heller, Terry Southern and even Billy Wilder.  Again (in my best British tone):  just what is the meaning of this?

It appears that John Huston only directed the beginning of the film.  Ken Hughes, in fact, pulled off the Calagari-referencing East Berlin scene.  Three other directors shot various scenes among them to bring the total to five.  Ben Hecht was initially the principal screenwriter, but his “straight” adaption eventually became so bastardized as to bear no resemblance to its original self (nor the Fleming novel).  Hecht, of course, died in 1964…well before Casino Royale made it to the big screen.

Rewrites were handled (it appears) principally by Billy Wilder.  The Spartacus idea, though, (all the James Bonds running amok) would be preserved from Hecht’s adaption.  It is interesting to note that Peter Sellers (in his well-reported competitive dealings with actor Orson Welles…as well as Woody Allen) had Terry Southern write his dialogue.  Sellers and Welles were famously at odds (no pun intended) during the shooting of this film–Welles being unimpressed with Sellers, and Sellers feeling insulted and perhaps insecure by the presence of Welles.

Whatever can be conjectured, one thing is certain:  this was the most expensive Bond film made at the time it came out.  It indeed runs like an extremely indulgent film-school joke.  Fortunately, it’s a good joke.  Welles’ magic tricks as Le Chiffre (at the baccarat table, no less) were real life annoyances to Peter Sellers (all of which–the tricks and the irritation–made it into the film).  The film really is a bloody mess (in plain Cockney).  It is interesting to see this burgeoning side of Welles (the magic) which would play such a large role in his last major film F for Fake (1973).  Indeed, there is only one film in the entire cinematic canon which outshines F for Fake and that is Histoire(s) du cinéma by Godard.

Part of the nonsensical nature of this film can be explained by the fact that Sellers was either fired or quit before filming was completed.  This posed an enormous problem for director (1 of 5) Val Guest who was tasked with patching all of this incredibly expensive footage together into a quasi-cohesive whole.  Indeed, one is rightly confused by the James Bond Training School being in the bottom level of Harrods because the scene which was to set this up was never shot.  Many other such aberrations make the narrative at times completely inexplicable and unnavigable.

“Ooch,” as Belmondo translates from his phrase book:  merde.  I can very well see why many would consider this film just that:  complete shit.  But it is not.  It’s not because David Prowse (the physical Darth Vader in Star Wars) appears in his first film role (as Frankenstein giving Niven directions by dumbly walking into a steel double-door).  Perhaps it is because the film has at least a hint of legitimacy from John Huston, Orson Welles, etc.?  All of these intellectualizations aside, it is simply an entertaining template for Austin Powers which dates all the way back to the time Mike Myers would have to recreate three decades later.

Eon would have to wait until 2006 to get its shot at Fleming’s novel Casino Royale.  And there just really is no beating a film in which “The Look of Love” (as sung by Dusty Springfield) plays such a highlighted part.  So we wish Daniel Craig and Adele well on these recent ventures, but Casino Royale of 1967 will always be in our senseless hearts.

 

-PD

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a comment