Roland Curram Movies
- 1988
- PG13
Shirley MacLaine is Madame Sousatzka, an aging piano instructor of Russian extraction. Entrenched in a dilapidated London rooming house, the Madame gives lessons only to the most gifted. She does not stop at mere instruction; Sousatzka insists that her pupils conduct their lives in the same genteel, cultured manner in which she was raised. Her prize student at the moment is an East Indian teenage boy (Navin Chowdhry), who forms a strong and loving bond with the old woman. Director John Schlesinger occasionally cuts away from the Madame and her pupil to allow comic space for the other tenants in Ashcroft's building, including an erstwhile songstress (Twiggy) and a gay osteopath (Geoffrey Baydlon). Navim Chowdhry's mother is played by Shabana Azmi, an important star of Indian films. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Shirley MacLaine, Navin Chowdhry, (more)
- 1972
In this comedy, two men pursue four very valuable women who have tattooed the location of stolen bonds upon their rumps. The Mafia is also in pursuit of the marked women. The two fellows are lead to Rome where the lead character tries to sell the Sistine Chapel to American tourists. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Dick Emery, Derren Nesbitt, (more)
- 1970
- R
This offbeat comedy finds Teddy (Marty Feldman) as a television advertising man given a seemingly meaningless project. Slated to make frozen porridge commercials, he comes up with the idea to find an erotic Goldilocks to sell the product. Soon a nationwide search is launched for the female spokesperson. He has trouble at home because his wife is the leader of the "Keep Television Clean" movement. Teddy dreams up a wild bunch of commercials and his daydreams harken back to silent era comedies. This was the first full length film for Feldman, the bug eyed comic who parlayed his television success in Britain into a comedy film career in Hollywood. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi
- Starring:
- Marty Feldman, Shelley Berman, (more)
- 1968
In this feather-weight version of Evelyn Waugh's novel Decline and Fall, Paul Pennyfeather (Robin Phillips) is an Oxford divinity student who finds himself expelled after a gang of drunken freshmen remove his pants and he is accused of exposing himself to a girl. Looking for work, he retains the services of an unsavory employment agency that secures a position for him at a sleazy Welsh boarding school for boys, presided over by the colorful Dr. Fagan (Donald Wolfit). On staff at the school are an assortment of distasteful screwballs; Mr. Prendergast (Robert Harris) is a withdrawn former clergyman; Captain Grimes (Leo McKern) is a one-legged two-timer with his eye on Fagan's daughter Flossie (Patience Collier); and Soloman Philbrick (Colin Blakely) is an undercover criminal posing as Fagan's butler. All hell breaks loose during the school's annual Sports Day, but Paul manages to meet a wealthy patron of the school, Margot Beste-Chetwynde (Geneviève Page), who hires him to tutor her son. At her estate, Margot seduces Paul, and Paul proposes marriage. But before the wedding, Margot asks Paul, as a favor, to travel to Tangiers on a business trip. He agrees but is soon arrested for trafficking in prostitution. Sent to jail, he runs into Philbrick and Captain Grimes, and now Margot has to scheme to get Paul out of jail. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi
- Starring:
- Robin Phillips, Geneviève Page, (more)
- 1967
- Add I'll Never Forget What's 'is Name to QueueAdd I'll Never Forget What's 'is Name to top of Queue
The imprisoning aspects of Success are humorously analyzed in this British-made film. Oliver Reed plays a wealthy advertising man who feels he has sold his soul and wishes to return to his happier earlier existence as a poor but swinging Londoner. Reed is goaded on by his boss, Orson Welles, who represents all the mercenary crassness that Reed despises. Handed a crucial commercial account, Reed plans to destroy himself by producing as offensive and confusing an ad campaign as possible. But Welles and the client are delighted by the "insult," and the disgruntled Reed is more successful than ever. Directed in the fragmentary "psychedelic" style typical of the late 1960s, I'll Never Forget What's'is Name gained notoriety upon its initial release by being the first mainstream British film in which the "F" word was spoken on-screen. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Orson Welles, Oliver Reed, (more)
- 1966
In this crime melodrama, a Swiss woman finds herself unwittingly involved in a plot to steal from her employer, a London diamond merchant. Her boyfriend is behind the scheme. First he sends two accomplices disguised as German jewelers to see the boss. He is not fooled by their ruse and is killed while the woman is knocked unconscious. She awakens with amnesia and begins aimlessly wandering the London streets. Thinking that his girl has squealed to the police, her boy friend begins scouring the town to find her. Meanwhile, she is taken in by a boxer who returns to the ring to win the money needed to get her out of the country. Trouble ensues when her lover finally finds her after the match and begins beating on the exhausted fighter. To stop him, the woman shoots the villainous lover. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- 1966
The attempted assassination of a Middle Eastern potentate is tied in with a company specializing in making fantasies come true. In order to verify this link, Steed becomes a boon companion to the potentate, while Emma joins the ruler's harem. The sight of Diana Rigg in a flimsy harem costume performing "the dance of the six veils" was too much for American censors, which is why "Honey for the Prince" was yanked from ABC's Avengers package. English viewers were privileged to see this Brian Clemens-scripted installment on March 23, 1966. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Julie Christie won an Oscar for her portrayal of a bored, amoral fashion model in this cynical melodrama from director John Schlesinger. Following the break-up of a teenage marriage, Diana Scott (Christie) drifts into the world of modeling and acting, where she meets a television news reporter, Robert Gold (Dirk Bogarde), who leaves his family for her and introduces her to a more powerful and wealthy set. Soon Diana meets somebody more attractive: public relations mogul Miles Brand (Laurence Harvey). After briefly leaving and then drifting back into Robert's life, experiencing an orgy and even getting an abortion, Diana eventually leaves the swinging London scene behind and settles down to an unfulfilling if comfortable life as the wife of millionaire Italian widower Cesare (Jose-Luis deVillalonga). Shocking in its day, Darling (1965) won Oscars for its costumes and script from Frederic Raphael. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi
- Starring:
- Julie Christie, Dirk Bogarde, (more)
- 1964
Documentary filmmaker Stanley Goulder directed this disturbing thriller which was shot independently at a budget of $75,000 in only twenty-four days. The film deals with a mentally retarded boy, released from the hospital prematurely, who wants to make friends with some neighborhood kids at the local movie house. In the hospital, he came across what he thought were some colorful candies; they were, in fact, barbiturates. He dispenses the drugs to the children at a matinee showing and the children end up drugged and extremely ill. The parents frantically call in the police to investigate as the retarded child's mother frets about what may happen to her son. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi
- Starring:
- Roland Curram, Bernard Archard, (more)
- 1961
In this fast-paced actioner, an aging race-car driver finds that he is losing his competitive edge. He tries racing under the sponsorship of an American tire company. He soon falls in love with the sponsor's daughter who pleads with him to stop driving. Adding more pressure to the man's life is his younger brother who swore to his mother that he would not drive until his older brother retires. The older brother still wants to prove himself, and so enters a 1,000-mile Italian race. When his mechanic-navigator is killed, the aging driver quits and the younger brother finally gets to drive. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Bill Travers, Ed Begley, Sr., (more)
Michael Powell's controversial meditation on violence and voyeurism effectively destroyed his career when it was first released, but later generations have come to regard it as a masterpiece. Karl Heinz Boehm stars as Mark, the son of a psychologist who kept a video journal of the boy's upbringing for research purposes. The constant intrusions profoundly affected the boy, who grew up to be a photographer himself; but his principal subject matter consists of women whom he murders before the camera. He then runs the films of his victims in their final throes so that he can study their reactions to death--a perverse extension of his father's experiments, which tormented Mark to analyze his reactions to raw fear. The British press had long been hostile to the unorthodox films of Powell and his partner Emeric Pressburger; when Peeping Tom came around, they used the film to castigate him as "sick" and tawdry. The passage of time has proven Peeping Tom as profound and accomplished as any of Powell's earlier films, and it ranks with Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958) as a landmark exploration of the links among voyeurism, violence, and male sexual desire. Powell himself plays the evil father in the flashback sequences, and his son Colomba plays Mark as a child. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Karl Heinz Böhm, Moira Shearer, (more)
- 1957
Paradise Lagoon is the American release title of the British The Admirable Crichton. In this Technicolor adaptation of James M. Barrie's oft-filmed stage play, Kenneth More stars as Crichton, the super-efficient butler for a family of haughty British aristocrats. Though More is true master of the household, he keeps his place, honoring the tightly regulated social structure of turn-of-the-century England. When the family, and its servants, are shipwrecked and marooned on a desert island, only Crichton has the skill and resourcefulness to keep everyone alive. Within a few months, the social order has been reversed: Crichton is the "governor", while his former employers are his willing and eager servants. Lady Mary (Sally Ann Howes), assuming that she will never be able to return to her veddy proper fiance, falls in love with Crichton. But once the castaways are rescued and returned to their London estate, the original master-servant status quo is restored. His marriage to Lady Mary now an impossibility-a fact stressed in no uncertain terms by the young lady herself-Crichton calmly packs his bags and leaves, in the company of maidservant Tweeny (Diane Cilento), who has loved him all along. Barries' satirical jabs at class consciousness (notably in the closing "interrogation scene", conducted by the imperious Lady Brocklehurst Martita Hunt) were not altogether relevant in 1957; thus, Paradise Lagoon concentrates on the property's farcical and romantic elements. Taking advantage of its tropical setting, the film also permitted the tired businessmen in the audience to gaze upon the luscious Sally Ann Howes and Diane Cilento in halter tops and short-shorts. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Kenneth More, Diane Cilento, (more)
- 1954
In this remake of Jack Ahoy! (1934) a sailor is left alone on a South Sea island to guard supplies by the British Royal Navy. Unfortunately, they forget about him. A decade later he has become one of the native islanders. The trouble begins when the navy suddenly remembers and sends a ship to save him. Unfortunately, the man is happy and doesn't want to go back. He ends up staying and training navy jungle commandos for an assignment to recover a stolen submarine. The hapless sailor ends up captured himself. Fortunately, his native lover saves him and helps bring back the purloined submarine. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- 1953
Johnny Fraser is a middle-class Briton jealous of the conspicuous consumption of his next door neighbors (Peter Reynolds, Lana Morris). To show them up, Fraser buys his wife (Eileen Moore) a valuable mink jacket. He goes deeply into debt, then goes deeper still as he borrows to pay for the loan that he's already taken out. Overwhelmed by his creditors, Fraser ends up selling the mink coat to pay for the loan that paid for the loan that paid for the mink coat... A "good beginning", indeed! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- 1953
A remake of the 1937 British comedy Where There's a Will, Top of the Form top-bills perennial comic relief Ronald Shiner as a Bilko-like bookmaker. Circumstances dictate that Shiner find himself in charge of a boys' school, where all the students show a natural affinity for gambling. Taking the boys on a tour of the European gaming tables, Shiner gets entangled in a plot to steal a Mona Lisa (not so far-fetched; such a theft actually took place in 1913). With the help of his young charges, Shiner rescues the Da Vinci classic from artnappers. Among Shiner's students are such future luminaries as Anthony Newley and Ronnie Corbett. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
