On Location

Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney kick back on the set of 1967's Two For the Road.

Sex

Jacqueline Bisset, twice

Friday's Titter

Cool

Gene Kelly

The Newstand

August 13, 1979

My Week of Movie Watching

Emperor of the North – I was a bit saddened because I didn’t love this movie quite as much as I wanted to. Two of the great alpha-male actors (Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine), starring in a film made by a great alpha-male director (Robert Aldrich)? It can’t miss, can it? Alas, it can. Borgnine’s train conductor is so over-the-top loony and sadistic that you can’t take him seriously, and the film didn’t seem to know what to do with Keith Carradine as Marvins’ tag-along. On the plus side, the climatic battle between Borgnine and Marvin is terrifically bloody and exiting. The two men run through a cartoonish assortment of weapons - Knives, clubs, chains…an axe. All of this on top of a speeding train. A lukewarm recommendation.

Drunken Angel – Akira Kurosawa really became a legend with the release of Rashomon in 1950, but the man was already an established filmmaker at that point. This one, from 1948, stars his two greatest stars, Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura. Shimura is the angel of the title – A gruff alcoholic doctor who makes it his personal quest to save a tubercular gangster played by Mifune. As a general rule, I like Kurosawa’s “modern” films more, and this one is very good. Mifune stands out as a tough guy who makes a lot of noise about not wanting to be saved, but who always seems to turn up on the doctor’s doorstep. Recommended.

The Marquee

The Emperor of the North

Sex

Nastassja Kinski

The Newstand

July, 1970

Cool

Belmondo

On Location

"Yes, teacher!" Alfred Hitchcock and Suzanne Pleshette clown around on the set of The Birds.