GEORGY GIRL: it's the heart not the looks that really count

It's got the catchiest theme song ever to adorn the opening titles of a 60s movie. "Hey there Georgy Girl" by The Seekers will stick in your head for days afterwards. 
But not only is it infectious it also sets out in plain unambiguous English the premise for the story about to unfold. And just in case you are having trouble understanding the lyrics director Silvio Narizzano helpful matches up the words with images of Georgy "swinging down the (high) street (in London) so fancy free."
"You're always window shopping but never stopping to buy" warble The Seekers at the exact moment that Georgy pauses to look at the clothes in a shop window. 
GEORGY GIRL is not a subtle film. There's nothing here to interpret or decode. What you see is what you get. 

And what you get is a fascinating time capsule - a window on the working class end of the swinging 60s as they probably never existed but were purveyed by British movies of the time. Lynn Redgrave is Georgy, overweight, fat faced and ugly (her words) and longing for a boyfriend, a love life and a future not spent on her own. James Mason plays Mr Leamington,  a wealthy dirty old man who lusts after Georgy, and Alan Bates is Jos, the hedonistic, immature and dashingly handsome boyfriend of Georgy's beautiful flatmate Meredith, played by Charlotte Rampling.
Georgy is out of place not only because of her appearance but also because she doesn't subscribe to the live for today ethos which has infected everyone around her. She's an old fashioned girl with a heart of gold  looking for someone worthy of sharing her love with. 
GEORGY GIRL is not quite the story of the ugly duckling who blossoms into a gorgeous swan; it's more of a voyage of self-discovery filled with bittersweet moments on the way to a surprising conclusion.
Redgrave is magnificent as Georgy. Self deprecating and brutally honest about her shortcomings, there's not a trace of ego in her performance. Mason is superb as her oily benefactor while Bates is just about bearable in his hyper-exuberant interpretation of the swinging 60s made flesh.
Had Bates dialed down his performance a couple of notches and  events unfolded at a slightly less frantic pace it's possible that a more serious and meaningful film would have emerged. As it is the moral of the story gets buried under the film's brash, slick exterior and its focus on playing almost everything for laughs.

BIGGER THAN LIFE: exploding the myth of the nuclear family

BIGGER THAN LIFE is a brutal full-frontal assault on Eisenhower-era American family life.
Director Nicholas Ray exposes a reality distinctly at odds with the cosy paternalism of the nuclear family depicted in so many movies and tv shows of the time.

James Mason is schoolteacher Ed Avery, a man with a perfect wife, Lou (Barbara Rush) and a tousle-haired son (Richie). They live in a spacious, well furnished home in an unnamed New England town and life appears, on the surface, to be good.
But Ed's hiding a secret from his family. Several afternoons a week after school he heads to a second job, working as a dispatcher for a cab company. He's doing it for the money but he doesn't think his wife would approve.
But that's just a tiny crack in the facade of perfection compared to the enormous fissure that opens up when Ed's diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease and starts abusing Cortisone, the brand new miracle drug he's prescribed to keep him alive and healthy. He becomes psychotic. What starts out as a surfeit of physical energy escalates into rampant obsession, egotism, authoritarianism and talk of murder.
While it's slightly disconcerting to watch Mason play an American schoolteacher with no explanation offered for his obvious Britishness, he does a good job of portraying Ed's descent into psychosis. By the time his illness reaches it's final stages he is a genuinely terrifying figure, capable of doing absolutely anything including ritually sacrificing his own son.
It's Barbara Rush, though who has the toughest part to play. For the story to work she has to be convincing in her reluctance to call in outside assistance, even though her husband's behaviour is threatening to destroy everything that they have. Given her obvious intelligence and instinct to protect her son it would not have been plausible for her to simply have folded under the pressure and acquiesced to Ed's deluded ranting. 
Her success in portraying Lou's conflicted loyalties allows us to believe in the story. My one reservation is that it all happens too fast. The film's ninety five minute running time is not enough to allow events to unfold in what should feel like real time. Ed goes from normal to crazy in 45 minutes and the pace feels forced. In retrospect, I should have realised that the unseemly speed with which the opening titles were flashed on the screen was a subtle indicator of the pace of the storytelling ahead.   
The Criterion label, which is releasing BIGGER THAN LIFE on DVD later this month, describes it as "one of the great American films of the 1950s." That's an exaggeration, but it is an interesting film. I wouldn't recommend buying it, but it's definitely worth renting.
 

THE PUMPKIN EATER: most definitely not a date movie!

1964's THE PUMPKIN EATER is a bleak and depressing examination of mental illness and infidelity within the confines of a middle class marriage. Think of it as a British cousin to "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' and you'll have a good idea what to expect.
Jo (Anne Bancroft) has commitment issues and an obsession with reproduction. When we first encounter her she's on her second husband and fifth child. Before long she's left him for film scriptwriter Jake Armitage (Peter Finch) and a sixth kid is on the way.

Jake's convinced he can cope with the instant family but it's not too long before he finds himself resenting the constant noise, and the paucity of quality time with Jo, for whom the kids always come first.
Frustrated at the lack of attention at home he begins to look for it elsewhere, and while Jo is slow to cotton on to his extramarital activities, when she does, it shatters her mental equilibrium.
THE PUMPKIN EATER is as much a study as it is a story; a study in what educated, civilised adults can do to the person they profess to love most in the world, and the mental pain that behaviour inflicts. 
With a screenplay by playwright Harold Pinter this film is anything but uplifting but there is much pleasure to be derived from watching Peter Finch at work. In the hands of a lesser actor Jake could easily have become little more than a stereotypical male heartless bastard, but Finch endows the character with depth, breadth and complexity. Jake's behaviour is inexcusable but he has his reasons, and they are reasons not excuses.
Finch holds the attention whenever he's on screen and he makes it look so effortless. He really is one of the finest and most underrated actors of 1960s cinema, and I wish he would have had more scenes with co-star James Mason. The one substantial scene they do have together doesn't quite generate the same level of excitement as DeNiro's much anticipated head to head with Pacino in 'Heat' but I reckon it comes close.
Anne Bancroft, in contrast, appears slightly miscast. She performs well but it's a part for a British actress. Bancroft seems a little too foreign, too exotic, to be entirely convincing. 
THE PUMPKIN EATER is not a film with broad appeal. Many will find it too slow, too uneventful and too depressing, but it's worth it to watch a master practice his craft.