Rod Taylor

  • The V.I.P.s (1963)

    The V.I.P.s (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) In the end, I expected too much from The V.I.P.s. Admittedly, it’s easy to be seduced by the all-star cast and the simple premise: As fog envelops London Airport and prevents departures, an ensemble cast of characters has a last chance to resolve their problems. How can you resist a cast headlined by Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Orson Welles, Maggie Smith, Rod Taylor, Louis Jourdan and many others? But in the execution, the film falls flat — the rhythm is not a match with the sense of urgency that the characters are supposed to feel, the subplots scatter, the drama doesn’t build up and the pieces don’t come together to make something more than a collection of subplots. (Had they added a mad bomber à la Airport, mayyybe we’d have something to pull the strings together.)  The characters aren’t the only ones stuck here — viewers may tap their feet often during the nearly two-hour running time. This being said, it’s not a complete waste of time either — the accumulation of familiar actors has something interesting, and there is at least a minimum of drama going on, even disguised under British restraint. It does, if nothing else, offer the chance to hang out in an elite airline boarding lounge in the early 1960s, which is not a bad privilege. But even that may outstay its welcome in the end.

  • Hotel (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) As someone who read almost all of Arthur Hailey’s novels as a teenager, I knew what I was getting into in approaching Hotel: A sprawling, ensemble-cast look at a particular environment, with a narrative built of subplots exploring that environment. Some call it didactic fiction — I just liked the stuff. Now, novels like Hailey’s can’t very well be replicated in film: viewers won’t stand for it in the same way that readers do, and there’s only so many subplots you can fit in a two-hour film (as opposed to, say, a miniseries). So, it’s not a surprise if Hotel-the-film is a markedly simpler thing than Hotel-the-novel, nor if the depths of the docufiction aren’t as satisfying. Accordingly, I got far more fun out of the film’s first half than the second, as the job of the hotel manager protagonist is demonstrated, as the subplots are set in motion, as the film takes some time (even fleetingly) to explore its setting. There’s a beautiful one-shot, for instance, coming out of an elevator into the hotel lobby, tracking the protagonist as he takes care of business, then goes back into the elevator. After that, well, the subplots take over and don’t necessarily converge toward a happy ending, and the hotel itself is not allowed to remain the central character like it did in the book. Still, I liked the final result quite a bit — Rod Taylor brings his square-jawed charm to the role of the hotel manager, Catherine Spaak plays a great femme fatale in very 1960s style, the incredible racism of the hotel owner is a reminder of how far we’ve come in fifty years, the production design is impressive and Richard Quine’s direction has its moments. There probably wasn’t room to fit anything more in the film short of turning it into a TV show (which is still not a bad idea, hint). Fleetingly, Hotel did take me back to earlier days reading through Hailey’s brick-sized novels, and that’s also a plus.

  • The Glass Bottom Boat (1966)

    The Glass Bottom Boat (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) It’s not always a bad thing for a film to be dated. You can very precisely identify The Glass Bottom Boat as a mid-1960s film in at least three ways. Obviously, there’s the technological element, as it’s a comedy set around the world of space exploration, specifically revolving around the iconography of the Gemini capsules that preceded the Apollo program. You could also pinpoint it thanks to the presence of Doris Day as a gaffe-prone PR person who attracts the eye of a CEO played by square-jawed Rod Taylor—Day is clearly in her later-stage persona here, too old to play ingenue like she did in the 1950s but still of a stature that would justify a star vehicle like this, along with Taylor, who was at the height of his popularity as a leading man. (As it turns out, The Glass Bottom Boat was Day’s last big box-office hit.)  Finally, there’s the naughty-nice tone of the romantic comedy, a bit freer than the Hays Code standard but not quite as vulgar as what we’d see later on in New Hollywood movies. Mix in the Cold War comedy of a military/industrial establishment and director Frank Tashlin’s cartoonish style and you’ve got something that could only have been created in the mid-sixties. It has definitely aged: the soundtrack highlights every joke twice, Day plays a character that would be embarrassing to later generations, and the blunt broad humour goes better with a big dose of period atmosphere. But it’s not that bad if you’re willing to play along. Day was a gifted comedienne no matter the circumstances, and the goofier moments (including a portrayal of an automated kitchen—complete with an antagonistic cleaning robot) are straight out of space-age silliness. Comedy notables such as Robert Vaughn, Dom DeLuise, and Dick Martin appear in various small roles, adding to the period feel. (You will probably hear Vaughn’s split-second appearance more than you’ll see it.)  It turns out that a dated film gets a few additional viewing bonuses along the way—it’s not what we’d expect to see today, but it’s a welcome throwback to an entirely different time. So it is with The Glass Bottom Boat, which has aged into a unique curio that sometimes tells us more about the 1960s than the respectable films of the time, or any attempt to re-create that period.

  • Sunday in New York (1963)

    Sunday in New York (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) The more I explore early-1960s Hollywood movies, the more I’m seeing—especially in silly sex comedies—the rumblings of the social changes that went on during the decade. Hollywood was not well equipped, especially pre-New Hollywood, to do justice to these changes. Hampered by the inertia of the Production Code, hesitant to challenge audiences that were also used to a certain kind of Hollywood, the major studios poked and prodded (especially in jest) at the social changes but tried to keep some decorum about it. That’s how you end up with the quaintly charming subgenre of 1960s sex comedies that nodded toward greater liberalization, while not giving in to any uncharacteristic crassness. Sunday in New York clearly plays by those rules. It makes a fuss of discussing premarital sex (even the poster cheekily states that the film is “dedicated to the proposition that every girl gets… sooner or later”) and complicating the romantic situation of its heroine, but it ends up very traditional in its conclusions. The execution, working from a fast-paced script based on a theatrical play, benefits from some serious acting talent: Jane Fonda is terrific (and sexy) in the lead role, while she’s surrounded by none other than Rod Taylor, Cliff Robertson and Robert Culp as brothers and suitors. The jet-setting lifestyle that was so hip in the 1960s is showcased as a vision of life in then-Manhattan. As a farce, Sunday in New York is more successful than not: even if it has been outdone in raciness several times over by generations of spiritual inheritors, it remains a fun fine comedy with a bit more class than many of the similar sex comedies of the time.

  • World Without End (1956)

    World Without End (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) From the first few moments on, it’s clear that World Without End dates from the early rough days of Science Fiction as a self-aware movie genre. The science is so spectacularly wrong that it’s not even worth nit-picking. The production values are lower than what even a cheap modern made-for-video movie would accept, and the acting… well, the acting is typical 1950s histrionics. The film momentarily becomes more interesting when our plucky astronauts sent forward in time land on a future Earth and discover an underground society of survivors. But just wait, because it only takes a few more minutes to realize that we’re watching a cheap watered-down version of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine with its effete Eloi and brutish Morlock. Anyone allergic to the way gender roles were defined in the 1950s will be aghast at the film’s built-in politics, with future men being portrayed as wimpy degenerates, even as future women are beautiful and ready for romance with the hunky “real” men from the past. There’s even a shirtless scene that defines the entire film’s rough approach to how it approaches its themes… and it’s almost as hilarious as it’s terrible. (There’s some irony in how the said shirtless hunk is played by Rod Taylor, who would later go on to star in the authorized version of The Time Machine.) To be entirely fair, World Without End was not meant to be a prestige picture, nor an intellectual picture, or even anything more than a low-budget B-movie. But it’s in those down-and-dirty pictures that we can often get a clearer reflection of the cultural matrix of their creation, and if you can look past the ramshackle sets, ridiculous dialogue and derivative plotting, there’s something really interesting in here, and it’s something most often seen in exploitation genre pictures than slick contemporary dramas. There’s clearly a terrific double feature to be had with World Without End and Queen of Outer Space (also directed by Edward Bernds!) as complementary illustrations of the way blunt 1950s gender politics were clearly expressed in science fiction movies.

  • The Birds (1963)

    The Birds (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2017) I remember seeing at least a good chunk of The Birds as a kid, but I’m surprised to find out, upon revisiting it, that I like it far less than I’d thought. Oh, the basics of the movie are there: the suspense sequences involving the birds themselves are strong, and the dread of the film’s second half is still striking. Director Alfred Hitchcock’s mastery of suspense remains unquestionable, and it’s a testament to his skill that the film remains effective even when the scenes don’t make much sense from a logical perspective. You can recognize in this film the prototype for two or three subsequent generations of horror movies, even when these strike out “birds” for “zombies” in their scripts. Where The Birds doesn’t work as well is when it’s considered as a complete movie. The lack of an ending is as troubling as it’s meant to be, but it doesn’t offer much closure. It’s even worse when considering that the first half of the film focuses heavily on a romance (dramatic or comic remains open to consideration) only to trash that subplot once the birds attack and never really come back to it. This is all intentional—but even intentional frustration remains frustration. While The Birds may remain distinctive even today, it doesn’t feel finished from a narrative perspective. Even arguing that it’s not the point of the film isn’t much comfort. It’s true that much of what made The Birds special back then is now commonplace today: The electronic soundtrack and special effects are either substandard or invisible by today’s standards. Fans of the film will note that HBO’s The Girl recreates the making of The Birds in service of an effective suspense thriller in which Hitchcock is an unrepentant sexual harasser toward Tippi Hedren. Speaking of which, Hedren is as good as it gets as the icy blonde protagonist, while Rod Taylor is effective as the square-jawed protagonist. (If icy blondes aren’t your thing, then Suzanne Pleshette is the brunette for you).  But even with flaws, The Birds remains an interesting film—the Hitchcock touch is obvious, and its lack of narrative satisfaction becomes daring at a time when everything is neatly wrapped up for mass consumption.

  • The Time Machine (1960)

    The Time Machine (1960)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, December 2017) The bad news is that The Time Machine isn’t particularly faithful to the H.G. Wells novel, but the good news are that the film is at its most fascinating when it does diverge significantly from the source material. While the film suffers a partial lobotomy in not really taking an interest in Wells’ social-class parable about the Eloi and Morlocks (instead presenting the Morlocks as straight-cut monsters) and isn’t geared toward the melancholic far-future envoi of Wells’ narrative, it does make up for these deficiencies by strong period content. Diverging from the novel in order to update our Victorian-era protagonist on the evolution of the twenty-first century up to the film’s release, The Time Machine touches upon both World Wars and a nuclear holocaust, inserting them where the original novel could only imagine. The film being from 1960, this means that we get twice-filtered atmospheric content, as we look at the late 1950s look at Victorian England look at the far future. Whew. It may be scientifically indefensible (I rather liked the way our protagonist ends up in 1966 right on time for a nuclear war … and then outruns a lava flow) but it is interesting in its own way. Director George Pal concocts an entertaining blend of SF concepts, then-ground-breaking special effects and intriguing set design. Rod Taylor makes for a likable square-jawed hero, while Yvette Mimieux is fetching enough as promoted-to-love-interest Weena. Special-effect evolution aside, this 1960 version is significantly better than the dull 2002 remake.