shinock

Is this Sean Connery's best performance?...well it's certainly up there among his best and it has always struck me as something of a pity that this movie was virtually ignored on it's release, it deserved better. Made in Spain with wonderful photography and with a quite haunting music score it seemed to have everything going for it, but alas it was a failure at the box office and even now it's rarely shown on T.V. Perhaps it was a little too radical and while Robin was still a hero, Marian was now not only older but far wiser than her former lover. The evil sheriff had finally been defeated and Robin was once again the victor, but while he was high on the strength of his win, Marion knew his race was won and there would be no more days like these. Although she had been in a convent for many years her love for Robin was as strong as ever and rather than watch him decline and either end his life in chains or at the point of the sword of some inferior warrior she eased his way from this world to the next and made sure he died as he had lived as a hero. A haunting movie beautifully shot with and outstanding score and also notable as Audrey Hepurn's final movie appearance. Maybe in years to come it might well be appreciated more than it is now...it deserves to be!

Sometimes I awake in the early hours of the morning and for a few minutes I am not in bed, or in my room even, I am in some strange shadowy place where people long dead are still alive, or I am a child again or maybe I am an old man. This "foggy" period might last a few minutes and then I either wake up fully or drift back to sleep. But for those few minutes I am in the world where "Jennie" lives. This place which we all visit from time to time was captured in a movie that is now rightly regarded as something of a masterpiece of macabre film making. Portrait of Jennie is a movie that draws you in to a strange world where there is no difference between yesterday, today or tomorrow..where the people you meet appear friendly..yet.. they are somehow different..somehow not real. Jennie is one of these people while you are not. You can never join them until you leave your world behind..a world which is bright and crisp and real and enter their strange dream like world. You want to be with Jennie but there is something misty and dark and threatening felt, but unseen in the background. Sometimes it can be seen in Jennie's eyes..what is it?....Portrait of Jenny is a genuinely haunting film and a classic of American cinema of the forties. This movie captured perfectly the strange atmosphere of that place between sleep and consciousness, this world and the next. A great film that like Jennie, has never aged and never will.

The final edited or, in this case butchered version of Major Dundee was not the film either Peckinpah, Heston or the studio intended it to be. But the studio must take nearly all the blame for a very flawed movie which could easily have been so much better. Still, that it remains watchable gives some indication of just how good it could have been and, as the problems which beset production are now near legendary, the following might be of interest to those who have not so far delved into the subject too deeply. Charlton Heston wanted to make a movie about the civil war, the studio wanted to make an epic cowboys and indians adventure while Peckinpah was intent on creating a monumental, and lengthy western, complete with an intermission!.The original budget was three million dollars but, the studio back tracked on this and instructed Peckinpah to keep to a budget of one million as well as reducing the length of the shoot. It's a well know fact now that as the film ran over budget, Charlton Heston offered to forego his salary to help with costs, never thinking for a second that the studio would accept such a selfless offer... they did and Heston was poorer by some three hundred thousand dollars! Of all the film that ended up on the cutting room floor due to the studio's butchery, perhaps the greatest loss to us and the movie itself, was a long elaborate, operatic battle scene, which Peckinpah intended to be shown in what would soon become his trademark ie, slow motion. One final snippet which shows how hard and frustrating the shoot was in the extreme heat where even the normally laidback Heston lost his cool, occurred one evening as the sun was setting and Peckinpah wanted Heston to lead his men down hill at a canter. This he did and the director called for a retake but this time he called Heston a stupid P....K Hestons own words! and told him to lead his men down at a gallop!. Heston flipped and raising his sabre, charged full speed at Peckinpah sending him diving for cover. Heston said many years later that this was the only time during his long career that he ever lost control to such an extent. In anycase, the scene and the movie were eventually completed and Major Dundee today remains a classic example of both malign studio interference and a lost opportunity of creating a great film.