The Ingenue

Mary Pickford - an ingenue of  silent films

What is an Ingenue?
An ingenue is an innocent; a guileless girl-woman who has charm, physical appeal and general niceness but is unsullied by too much worldly knowledge. Ingenues have been a mainstay character-type in film, literature and theatre for as long as these mediums have been around. They represent the eternal ideal of the virtue in women; Eve before the apple incident.

The Ingenue in Films

In the silent film era ingenues were particularly prevalent. Ham-fisted story-lines tended to revolve around sweet, artless young women who were often being threatened by the corrupting influence and/or physical violence of a villain - they were variations on the old cliched theme of the innocent girl tied to the railroad track by the ghastly evildoer and is rescued, with seconds to spare, by the gallant actions of the male lead.

Of course as audiences became more sophisticated, so did plots and subtler versions of the ingenue appeared. Ingenues became involved in complex plots involving a range of dramas and situations, from gangsters to spy thrillers. Screwball comedies of the 1930s featured feisty, wisecracking ingenues with bags of sex-appeal yet who seemed strangely immune to sexual innuendo.

The First Feature Film

Ned Kelly's helmet. Source

The Story of the Kelly Gang

The Kelly Gang cast on location at Heidelberg. Source.

Surprisingly, the first feature film did not emanate from Hollywood or the UK but from Australia. A feature film is generally described as 80 minutes or longer and at over an hour in length, The Story of the Kelly Gang, released  in Melbourne in 1906 was the first long-length film to be made.

Alas, only seventeen minutes of the film survives but what has remained has been digitally remastered by the National Film and Sound Archive. The story centres around the legendary colonial Irish rebel, Ned Kelly, a bushranger and his gang of renegades - Dan Kelly, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart. In Australia, Ned Kelly was (and still is) is regarded by many as a National hero, who, while hung by the neck in 1880 for murder and theft, had colourfully symbolised the struggle of the poor and disenfranchised against the cruel establishment. There are others who view him simply as a ruthless cop-killer but either way, he is one of our most famous or infamous, historical characters and a fitting subject for our first feature film. It was to be the first of several film adaptations of Kelly's life,  two of which starred Mick Jagger (1970) and Heath Ledger (2003) as Ned.

The Original Blob

It's indescribable It's indestructible! NOTHING can stop it! Beware of...

The Blob

It creeps...it crawls

The atomic-age 1950s was a great era for science-fiction films. Space exploration was a reality, the moon landing was just around the corner and there was a  general positivism about the achievements of science and technology in the 20th century thus far. However, the awe and wonder at mankind's own cleverness was tempered by a few kernels of fear. It was also the beginning of the cold war and political paranoia and developments in science sparked trepidation as well as awe - the widespread devastation wrought by the atom bomb was still fresh in the memory of the post-war 50s generation.

Science fiction allowed the 50s obsession with science, technology, space travel and political threats to be played out on screen - films such as IT Came from Outer Space (1951), The Thing from Another Planet (1951), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and The Day the Earth Stood Still meshed with that decade's mindset by touching on the fears and concerns of the 50s psyche.  It's often been suggested that some sci-fi stories were metaphors for something bigger or deeper.

Gidget the Movie

1959 Gidget on DVD

1959 was a big year for movies - among others, there was the blockbuster Ben Hur with Charlton Heston, the timeless comedy some Like it Hot, starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marlyn Monroe, the Hitchcock thriller North by Northwest; Doris Day and Rock Hudson were doing there romantic 50s shtick in Pillow Talk and for the newly emerged teenage market there was  Gidget...a film based on a 1957 novel by Frederick Kohner about a teenage girl's love of the California surf culture and one young surfer in particular.  

Gidget the movie is seen as a precursor to the beach party genre and credited as a significant influence in bringing surf culture into the mainstream consciousness. The name Gidget is a merge of 'girl' and 'midget'...a pet name given to the vertically challenged main character Francis Lawrence (played by Sandra Dee) by the surfer boys who haunt the beach. Francis is new to the surfer scene but what she lacks in experience she makes up for in enthusiasm, persuading her parents to buy her a second-hand surfboard for her 17th birthday. Fun on the beach, adolescent woes and standard romantic conflict follows...

Surfer Culture and American Values
Although Sandra Dee's Gidget is very middle-class and sweetness and light triumph over gritty realism,  there is yet a note of subversion, both in the beach culture itself and in the character of Kahuna (played by Cliff Robertson), a Korean air force veteran who drops out of society to pursue a life as a surfing beach bum and in the process becomes a role model for the young surfer dudes. Gidget's love interest, Moondoggie (Bobby Darren) in particular, is struck by the freedom of Kahiuna's lifestyle and threatens to abandon the university route his wealthy father has planned for him. Gidget however, challenges her friend Kuhuna's aimless and jobless lifestyle,wondering just how fulfilling a life it can really be. Meanwhile Gidget's conservative parents plan a blind date for her with the son of a respectable businessman..a situation she recoils from but accepts out of a sense of duty.

Moondoggie (Bobby Darren), Gidget (Sandra Dee) and Kahuna (Cliff Roberston)

In a typical pat Hollywood plot twist, the blind date turns out to be none other than  hot surfer boy Moondoggie and overturning his subversive philosophy, Kahuna destroys his groovy beach hut, ultimately rejecting the laid-back surfer lifestyle to become an airline pilot - ah, thus  it turns out all's right with status quo after all! Despite the fairly predictable outcomes, Gidget the movie is very watchable and has a great deal of charm and energy - the film was a surprise hit in 1959 and ushered in a new era of formulaic beach+music+youth =fun movies, few of which were as good as the original Gidget.

More vintage movies:

Rosemary's Baby
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
Double Indemnity
Kind Hearts and Coronets
10 Rillington Place

Kind Hearts and Coronets

Directed by Robert Hamer
Written by Robert Hamer and John Dighton
1949

Kind hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith more than Norman blood...~Tennyson, Lady Clara Vere deVere

Kind Hearts and Coronets is a black comedy in the best of the British Ealing Studios tradition and the perfect vehicle for the considerable talents of Dennis Price and Alec Guiness. Regarded as a cinema classic, Kind Hearts in listed in the British Film Institute's top 100 films.

The Plot
In Edwardian England, Louis Mazzini(Dennis Price) is a sharp, dandified young man with a powerful sense of entitlement.  The son of an Italian opera singer but brought up in modest circumstances by his widowed mother, the young Louis was indoctrinated with tales of his mother's rich and aristocratic family lineage - a family that shunned her when she married beneath her. It's a seed of resentment that grows within the breast of  Mazzini and is intensified when, on her deathbed, his mother's request to be buried in the family vault is rejected by the noble D'Ascoynes (all 8 of whom are played by Alec Guiness).

Alec Guiness in one of his many guises...this time as Lady Agatha D'Ascoyne, a prominent suffragette.

Outraged, Louis Mazzini charts the D'Ascoyne family births and deaths closely - rejoicing when a death occurs and lamenting at the birth of twins to the Duke, though the lament is followed by relief when a bout of diptheria knocks the twins and a few more D'Ascoynes off the family tree. Working in a men's haberdashery, by chance Louis finds himself serving a particularly insufferable D'Ascoyne one afternoon, an encounter that results in the loss of his job.  Outrage turns to resolve, when Louis decides to remove those D'Ascoynes that stand between him and the Dukedom of Chalfont, which he now considers his rightful inheritance and the only way to put right the terrible injustice served upon his mother by her aristocratic relatives.

Hilarity ensues as Mazzini plots (and succeeds) to knock off the clueless D'Ascoynes one by one - Ascoyne D'Ascoyne, (son of the current Duke), Henry D'Ascoyne, Reverend Lord Henry D'Ascoyne, Lady Agatha D'Ascoyne, General Lord Rufus D'Ascoyne and Ethelred D'Ascoyne, 8th Duke of Chalfont.  Fortuitously two die naturally, before Mazzini's plans have a chance to be realised - Admiral Lord Horatio D'Ascoyne and banker, Lord Ascoyne D'Ascoyne.

Complications occur when Mazzini's childhood sweetheart Sybella (Joan Greenwood) marries a rival for money and Louis, while still maintaining feelings for Sybella,  falls for the elegant widow of one of his victims - amiable photographer Henry D'Ascoyne. Although Sybella and Louis continue to meet in his rooms, jealousy rears its ugly head and when the former's banker husband suicides as the result of pecuniary tragedy, Sybella hides the suicide note, framing Mazzini for the death. Thus, in a wonderful piece of irony, Louis Mazzini finds himself enclosed in a prison cell for the one murder he did not commit. There, he proceeds to write his memoirs...

Fetching widow Edith D'Ascoyne( Valerie Hobson) and Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price)

Both Price and Guiness are superb in the film, amply bolstered by the supporting cast.  Price's clipped, upper class accent and polished manners make him a smoothly appropriate natural 'aristocrat" while Guiness has an actor's field day, posturing in the many D'Ascoyne guises. This is a flawless comedy,  expertly directed, which pokes fun at the absurd pretensions of the British aristocracy as well as the envy of the aspirational middle-class.

10 Rillington Place

True Crime

Director, Richard Fleischer
Screenplay, Clive Exton
1971


Adapted from the book by Ludovic Kennedy, 10 Rillington Place tells the chilling story of one of Britain's most notorious serial killers - John Reginald Halliday Christie. The quietly spoken Christie was an ex-WW1 service-man and while he presented a respectable, responsible veneer to the world,  beneath the superficial control lurked a bundle of serious personality problems; the most dangerous of which was sexual psychopathy.


After an apparently troubled childhood, Christie had indulged in some petty crime in early adulthood but gave it up after he was imprisoned for three months for viciously hitting a prostitute over the head with a cricket bat. He did however, continue to visit prostitutes and indeed, his first victim, Ruth Fuerst, was a munitions worker and part-time prostitute. During WW2 he applied --and because the relevant authorities had failed to check his record, was accepted-- as a Special Constabulary, resigning after the first Fuerst murder, no doubt conscious of the incompatibility of the two careers. He later worked as a clerk at a radio factory.



No.10: In a squalid area of post-war London, at the end of a row of bleak, uniform Victorian houses and adjacent to a factory wall, stood 10 Rillington Place. The grimy, peeling, ground floor apartment of the building had been home to Christie and his wife Ethel since 1938 and from 1940 to his arrest in 1953, Christie murdered at least six women, one of whom was Ethel, burying their bodies in the walls of his apartment, under the floorboards or in the garden. One of these murders, in 1949, was particularly controversial as many believe an innocent man was sent to the gallows for it and it's this tragic injustice that is the focus of the film.

Richard Attenboruogh as John reginald Christie

The rel John Reginald Christie

10 Rillington Place

Pat Heywood as Ethel Christie and John Hurt as Timothy Evans

The real Timothy Evans, looking eerily like John Hurt

Anatomy of a Film

Fleischer's 10 Rillington Place was designed with the knowledge that there would be few plot surprises for the viewer, since most Britains at least, were familiar with the events. Yet there is still plenty of suspense and the notoriety of the crimes only seems to make the film more riveting - no doubt because we know this is a representation of something that really happened.


Modern film scripts follow two types of story structure; the linear and the sequential. 10 Rillington Place follows a linear structure in that the story reveals a clear and logical path, with each scene and sequence dependent on the one before, and thus not so 'complete in themselves' as we might find in the sequential model. Rillington Place has an almost perfect shape, loosely built around a three act structure with only the resolution proving something of an anti-climax, perhaps because it is presented in the same matter of fact way that the rest of the story is handled and so there is no great sense of a thrilling denouement. Briefly, the structure is as follows:


Act One:
Set-up – Christie is established as a psychotic killer, luring women into his apartment with the false promise of 'medical treatments'.
Posing as an ex medical student, Christie befriends the newly arrived upstairs tenants, a young couple, Tim and Beryl, who are stressed and financially strapped with one baby in tow and another on the way. He offers them a solution in the form of one of his 'medical treatments', in this case a pregnancy termination. Tim is unsure but finally relents after assurances from Christie and Beryl that it's "the right thing to do".
Plot Point – Christie murders Beryl in a sexual asphyxiation frenzy and tells Tim it's the result of an earlier botched abortion attempt. He convinces Tim to hand over the baby and run away to escape prosecution.

The hapless Tim and Beryl

Act Two
Feeling guilty Tim eventually hands himself over to the police, still believing his wife's death was an accident and that his baby is safely ensconced somewhere in the countryside with a “loving couple”. The truth is revealed by police – his wife and baby were murdered. Tim is charged with murder and sent to trial, now fully aware of Christie's culpability. During the trial Christie behaves like a model of civic responsibility and Tim's pleas of innocence go unheeded.


Act Three:
Christie's wife attempts to leave him, but is murdered and he's now alone, free to indulge his heinous appetites. Completely devoured by his obsessions, he loses everything and is homeless, but not before committing several more murders. New tenants at Rillington Place uncover the bodies in a wall during renovations and the police search for Christie.

Pathetic and powerless, Christie is picked up on London Bridge by a local constable and arrested. Tim is granted a posthumous pardon. 

Christie cleans up after a fresh kill

Within this simple structure, complex events unfold. Suspense develops quietly but unrelentingly and a creeping sense of foreboding remains with the viewer right to the end of the story. Scenes merge smoothly into another like perfect gear changes and the dramatic tension is helped along in no small part due to a staggeringly convincing performance by Richard Attenborough as Christie. John Hurt too, does a very fine job as the almost childlike, naive Tim and the supporting cast is faultless. According to some sources, the real Timothy Evans, while possessing an unpredictable temper, had the mental age of a boy of eleven.


Also of note is the seemingly 'removed' relationship between Christie and his wife Ethel - they act almost like contemptuous strangers who pass creepily in the musty rooms of the apartment and as the drama develops Mrs. Christie's at first subtle vibe of despair and repulsion becomes evermore obvious. Attenborough has spoken of his reluctance at the time to accept the role: "I do not like playing the part, but I accepted it at once without seeing the script. I have never felt so totally involved in any part as this. It is a most devastating statement on capital punishment."Rillington Place has a chilling atmosphere, but is filmed with an almost clinical detachment, described aptly as “like physically watching the crimes behind a piece of unbreakable glass”. There's no doubt this is a discomforting story, but the film is so finely structured and played out you don't really want to miss anything. The viewer is a silent witness at 10 Rillington Place, transfixed by a claustrophobic dreariness and the ominous presence of something very, very bad...

Double Indemnity

DOUBLE INDEMNITY
Directed by Billy Wilder
1944
Back in the days before late night television was devoured by infomercials, some channels used to feature an enticing range of vintage black and white films. Among this treasure trove of monochrome was the definitive film noir classic, Double Indemnity. More atmosphere than substance,it's one those films that hangs around in your unconscious...you never quite erase it. Recently released on DVD, I received a copy last Christmas and I must say, I had to be careful when I slipped it out of it's cover, because after over half a century, this film is still hot.

The plot is straightforward enough and loaded with moral ambiguity--deadly temptress in the form of peroxide victim Phyllis Dietrichson [ Barbara Stanwyck] corrupts highly corruptible cynical insurance salesman Walter Neff [Fred Macmurray] with the twin baubles of sex and money--a dynamic combination for a man stuck in a rut. A murder plot is hatched, a husband disposed of and all that remains is some hefty insurance to collect. It all ends badly of course. We know this from the opening scenes, as Macmurray confesses all to a tape recorder intended for Barton Keyes [the always terrific Edward G Robinson], an investigator who lives, breathes and eats insurance fraud.

That the story is told by Walter in flashback is no detriment to the tension and suspense and it's mesmerizing to watch Neff's life unravel. The flashback format gives the story a hazy,dreamy feel and the viewer feels carried along with the drama at all times. Fred Macmurray is perfect as a man sweating on the edge of self-destruction. As one reviewer put it, "you almost have to wipe the perspiration of the screen".

Emminently Watchable

Barbara Stanwyk too, is eminently watchable as Phyllis Dietrichson. Stanwyk is the only actress I can think of who can manage to sneer without perceptibly moving a facial muscle. She's as tough and brittle as her platinum hair and so is the dialogue. It blisters with bold sexual frisson. Yet in spite of the rapport between the characters, there's a loneliness about Neff which pervades the narrative and reminds us of our inescapable solitude. Walter is very human and thus very flawed. At one point Barton Keyes tells him:
I thought you were a shade less dumb than the rest of the outfit. Guess I was wrong. You're not smarter, Walter... you're just a little taller. 

Double Indemnity has mood...dark and compelling. In classic film noir tradition, the director has made full use of light and dark contrasts. The atmosphere is both claustrophobic and languid, especially in Stanwyk's hacienda style California bungalow, on a tree-lined street where "murder smells like honeysuckle". Wilder has paid attention to detail, from the sun streaking through the venetian blinds to Stanwyk's flirtatious ankle bracelet dangling in the light.

Why do I like this film so much? Maybe because I recognized in myself both a fascination and a repulsion with life's darker underbelly and saw in it something of the absurdity of human existence. That may sound grandiose for a forties suspense flick and it's not Dostoevsky by any stretch, but it does have all the elements of a good tragedy--desire, greed, betrayal, conflict, frailty,guilt and finally annihilation.

Also, I have to confess to a faint desire to one day lean against a mantlepiece with a cigarette smoldering in my hand and say to some poor miscellaneous man, "Dont get involved with me baby. I'm rotten to the core..."

What can I say? I'm a romantic...

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Camp Chic-Flick meets Psychological Thriller.

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
Directed by Robert Aldrich (1962)

Baby Jane Hudson

Bette Davis fans already know this film is an absolute must but for anyone who doesn't know about it, it's a real hoot. Bette is hypnotically repulsive in the role of tragically grown-up former child star Baby Jane Hudson and once having seen her performance, it's impossible to imagine another actress playing the role. Two words come to mind here.... gusto and fearlessness. Davis throws herself into the role.

The adult Jane has almost no redeeming features at all. She is slovenly, wears a gruesome pistache of make-up and her clothes look like something the Kranksy sisters might wear if they were going to a tea-party at the cemetery.

Jane is horrible to her crippled sister Blanche, [played with admirably composed hysteria by Joan Crawford], a former movie star who is relegated to an upstairs bedroom and at every whim and malevolent fancy of her demented sister. Yet a trickle of sympathy for Jane still manages to seep through to the viewer and by the end of the film some of us might be wondering if we should switch loyalties..[yes there is a twist!]
 
Maybe it's just that I've read Mommie Dearest but as an actress Crawford's cool exterior always seem to hint at a bubbling cesspool of neurosis underneath but in this case her artificial composure provides an effective contrast to Davis's surface histrionics. Rumour has it there was some, shall we say...tension on the set between Davis and Crawford. Certainly in the film, the mutual fear and loathing seems genuine and beautifully realised in the scene below:
  
Delicious...

Such a Bitch

You wouldn't be able to do these things to me Jane if I weren't stuck in this chair...
But y'are Blanche...y'are in that chair!!

The rat-lunch scene is now a Hollywood classic and indeed, the film has achieved a cult status among movie officianadoes, with Baby Jane Hudson making it into the Film Institute's top 50 Best Villains of American Cinema. Not a bad achievement when you consider the competition.

As the film progresses Jane slips further away from reality, especially after learning Blanche's intentions to sell the house from under her and pack her off to a sanitarium. Not that anyone can blame Blanche, for as Jane's craziness increases, so does the terrorization. Eventually, Jane lose it completely and makes the insane decision to retrieve her early career as Baby Jane Hudson, hiring a piano accompanest in the portly form of 'mummies boy' Edwin Flagg, played with suitably sneering camp by Victor Buono.

Flagg wonders what he's struck when, in an extreme mutton- dressed- as -lamb scenario, Jane trots out in her adult-size childrens dress, complete with girlish bows and sausage curls. Her coquettish, child-like posturing is a sight to behold and Bette's performance of I've written a Letter to Daddy is possibly one of the most hilariously cringe-inducing scenes in Hollywood film history.

Almost fifty years after it's release, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? remains vivid entertainment and is still popular with modern audiences....[it has it's own facebook page]. Perhaps the jam-packed eternal themes have ensured longevity -sibling rivalry, the vagaries of fate, blurring of fantasy and reality and the perils of celebrity-but much of the credit for Baby Jane's success must go to the powerhouse performance of it's leading lady. This film resurrected Bette Davis's career and allowed her to avoid the dumping-ground of aging romantic leads to become a character actress..a smart move on her part and the industry's.

The film's success was also a smack in the eye for Warner studio head Jack L. Warner who reputedly said: "I wouldn't give a plugged nickel for either of those two old broads."

Slightly disturbing Dennis Allen Beltran "Baby Jane" doll.

Rosemary's Baby

Even in a still shot, you can sense the menace.

The 1968 suspense, Rosemary's Baby was a seminal film for expatriate Polish director, Roman Polanski - what could have been another pedestrian schlock/horror turned out to be a corker of a film, notable for a number of reasons.

Stylistically, Rosemary's Baby was a departure from the stilted, campy horror films of the era and at the time of its release melded the hip contemporary with off-centre horror in a perfectly seamless merging. Polanski once remarked: "For as far back as I can remember, the line between fantasy and reality has been hopelessly blurred"...and that's pretty much the effect he achieves in the film.

Nor was the film burdened with the usual quota of blood, gore and heavy panting typical of horror; rather, it relies on suggestion and innuendo. Polanski's insertion of contemporary cultural references, such as Mia Farrow's funky Vidal Sassoon urchin cut part way through the film, somehow helped supply the storyline with a strange credibility.

 Although the entire cast did a sterling job, the  stand-out performance was that of Ruth Roman as the nosey, gregarious, Satan-worshipping neighbour Minnie Castavet, backed up admirably by Sydney Blackmer as her sultry screen husband Roman Castavet. The Castavets colourful presence gives the film its tangy, off beat flavour and provide a menacing foil for the young, modern couple in the apartment across the way. . In the tile role, Mia Farrow projects just the right amount of fragile, appealing innocence and John Cassavettes' naturalistic performance, as her convivial but ambitious husband, works for me, though some critics have been less than enthusiastic about his performance.

Guy and Rosemary

 Beware of Neighbours Bearing Herbal Drinks

There's something strange about the Castavets and it's not just Minnie's bold makeup and Roman's pierced ear (an exotic sight on an elderly man in 1968) - everything about this couple hints of a mysterious past and bizarre agendas beneath the surface. Minnie and Roman are compelling to watch and fascinatingly rich as characters, with their half friendly/half threatening presence. Polanski doesn't keep us in the dark for too long and suspense and tension is built more upon what we do know than what we don't.

Based on the Ira Levin novel, which featured a plot thick with witches and demons, Polanski actually makes the film's premise almost believable, within its own framework at least.  The plot revolves around young couple,  Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse, who are elated to be moving into an old apartment building, dripping with 19th century Gothic period atmosphere. Early on, the viewer forms a suspicion that dark forces are down the hall and when Rosemary falls pregnant after a particularly vivid dream (blame the chocolate 'mouse') where she is ravaged by a creature with luminous, demonic eyes, the suspicion moves closer to certainty.

The Casavetes presence absorbs more and more of Guy and Rosemarys lives - they take over the pregnancy, Rosemary's prenatal care and Guy's time and when Minnie starts arriving with a daily glass of 'tonic', we're already convinced she should toss it down the sink.

The Bramford Apartment building (The r/life Dakota)

 Titbits from the Making Of..

Roman Polanski in the 1960s

• In his 1984 biography, Roman, Polanski wrote that he wanted to make the apartment building the "star of the film" and apart from the real-life exterior shots, the interior set of both the Castavet and Woodhouse apartments, designed by Dick Sylbert and built on the Paramount lot,  created the perfect ambiance for the action.
• Although Ruth Roman departed from Ira Levin's vision of Minnie Castavet as 'big and jolly', Polanski was impressed with her abilities and rightly noted that "Ruth proved extraordinarily effective in as a small, bird-like, quintessential New Yorker". 
• According to the director, British actor Laurence Harvey badly wanted the role but lacked the all-American clean cut looks necessary for the part. Polanski gave the script to Warren Beatty but he procrastinated and in the end rejected the role because it was 'not important enough'. ..though he did throw out the parting shot, "Hey, can I play Rosemary?" Robert Redford was first choice but at the time was in a battle with Paramount. Finally Polanski approached John Cassavettes, whom he considered a 'cerebral actor', as an 'acceptable compromise' and he was given the role.
• Several actresses were put forward for the role of Rosemary, however Polanski hired Mia farrow without an audition because he was impressed with her acting ability, even though, like Ruth Roman, she didn't precisely fit Levin's description of the character.
• For the supporting cast Polanski had a Paramount artist draw up character sketches of ideas he had in his head, which were then matched to veteran actors such as  Ralph Bellamy and Sydney Blackmer.
• When filming started, Cassavettes, true to his reputation, was 'difficult' on the set but the director enjoyed a  'marvellous' rapport with his leading lady, Mia Farrow. Three quarters of the way through shooting Mia's then husband Frank Sinatra had a flunky send surprise divorce papers to her dressing room on the set - a move which didn't endear Sinatra to the director.