Doctor in Distress (1963 Ralph Thomas)

Dirk Bogarde, James Robertson Justice, Samantha Eggar, Mylene Demongeot.
Briefly: Dennis Price, Leo McKern, Fenella Fielding, Frank Finlay, Reginald Beckwith, Richard Briers, Ronnie Corbett (one line).

YES, just goes to prove that '63 not a vintage year. Once we get over the shock of two leads calling each other Lancelot and Simon, there's nothing but unfunny and perplexing situations. Rank at its poorest.

Hot Enough for June (1964 Ralph Thomas)

Dirk Bogarde, Robert Morley, Leo McKern, the rather good-looking Sylva Koscina.

Terrible BBC2 print looks like video, 14x9. Pinewood-set Czechoslovakia.

Sylva's credits include the sexy L'Assoluto Naturale 1969, looks good but not on DVD (though is avilable through iOffer), with Laurence Harvey and music by Morricone.
Then Hornet's Nest (70) Rock Hudson Italy war film, A Lovely Way to Die (68) Kirk Douglas, Eli Wallach, Casanova & Co (77) Tony Curtis, Lisa and the Devil (74) Mario Bava, Boccaccio (72), Deadlier than the Male (67).

The Shooting Party (1985 Alan Bridges)

James Mason, Edward Fox, John Gielgud, Gordon Jackson, Cheryl Campbell (from Pennies from Heaven to Funland), Judi Bowker.

Ph. Fred Tammes

Since You Went Away (1944 John Cromwell)

Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones, Shirley Temple, Monty Woolley, Joseph Cotten, Robert Walker, Hattie McDaniel.

Despite length and subject matter doesn't hit the mark like Best Years.. Perhaps Selznick shouldn't have written it too. Gloriously dark photography from Lee Garmes and Stanley Cortez. Music Max Steiner.

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975 Peter Weir)

Rachel Roberts, Helen Morse, Anne-Louise Lambert

Wonderful sun-drenched Eastmancolor photography by Russell Boyd: the interiors are great too.

Maurice (1987 James Ivory)

James Wilby, Hugh Grant, Rupert Graves, Denholm Elliott, Simon Callow, Billie Whitelaw, Barry Foster, Judy Parfitt, Phoebe Nicholls, Ben Kingsley.

Sadly not as great as the other Merchant Ivory E.M. Forsters, perhaps beacuse Ruth Prawer Jhabvala didn't write it.

Ph Pierre Lhomme.

The Black Swan (1942 Henry King)

This immediately set me on a tangent about the Spanish Main, which was the wealthy Spanish territories of Central America and included Mexico, Florida and northern South America (bearing in mind Mexico used to include California, until the Yanks nicked it in 1848), attracting pirates such as Henry Morgan, who really did become Governor of Jamaica (a colourful story worth reading up). He's Laird Cregar in Leon Shamroy's most colourful adventure, and George Sanders is most improbably in red wig and whiskers. Maureen O'Hara looks like she could have been a bit of a bitch. There's room for a proper pirate film, surely? (Polanski's looks worth checking.)

Fire Down Below (1957 Robert Parrish)

Jack Lemmon, Robert Mitchum (partnership doesn't work), Rita Hayworth, Edric Connor (was Trinidadian), Bernard Lee, Bonar Colleano

Ph. by Desmond Dickinson (shot mainly UK films since 1927 incl. Hamlet, Importance of Being Earnest) in CinemaScope, though BBC shows cropped print.

I was musing that the 'fire down below' was further south than the heart, as suggested by theme song, but then there's a real fire down below. Not wholly successful story but quite diverting, interesting cast.

The Round-Up / Szegénylegények / The Hopeless Ones (1966 Miklós Jancsó)

Photographed by Tamás Somló in Agascope.

A man tries to flee in a vast, open plain from where women bearing food have appeared. The soldiers don't race after him, but then horses appear from either side of the camera and round him up.

I always thought it was Janscó, so that's a salutary lesson. Also, after all these years, the scene with the naked woman isn't at all yummy, so that's another.