The Films of Anjelica Huston: Part 1
Working In Dad's Store (1967-1969)
John Huston was on location in Uganda shooting The African Queen in July of 1951 when a long-delayed cable arrive to tell him that his wife, former ballerina and model Enrica Soma, had given birth to a daughter in Los Angeles and had named her after her own late mother. Anjelica Huston’s earliest film experiences were helping out on her dad’s productions and her debut as a leading lady, the critically maligned A Walk With Love And Death in 1969, was one she performed with all the enthusiasm of a kid forced to help out with the family business. Her first decade on screen, a series of mostly forgettable appearances, was also marked by tragedy when Soma died in a car accident when Anjelica was only eighteen years old. Despite the critical beating she took for her film debut, she continued acting, but it would be a long time before she was truly celebrated for it, as she would first make her mark as a model and famous girlfriend.
Casino Royale
Val Guest, Ken Hughes, John Huston, Joseph McGrath, Robert Parrish, 1967
Rating: BB
Cast: Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress, David Niven, Orson Welles, Joanna Pettet, Daliah Lavi, Woody Allen, Deborah Kerr, William Holden, Charles Boyer, John Huston, Kurt Kasznar, George Raft, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Terence Cooper, Barbara Bouchet
This parody of James Bond movies was probably funnier when it first came out in 1967. David Niven plays the famous superspy as a tottering old fart who gallivants about in a clunky car and speaks like the perfect British gentleman complete with Sherlock Holmes hat and pipe. Very freely based on Ian Fleming’s novel of the same name, the story has Bond recruited out of retirement to fight the evil SMERSH organization and save the world from a collapse of civilization. He is assisted by a former agent who is now a Lady in a Scottish castle (Deborah Kerr at her most delightfully loopy), his illegitimate daughter with Mata Hari, Mata Bond (Joanna Pettet) and his questionably motivated nephew Jimmy Bond (Woody Allen). Ursula Andress does a hilarious sendup of her own image as one of the dangerous femme fatales who are thrown at Bond to get in his way. The only really good thing to come out of this boring comedy is the beautiful theme song “The Look Of Love”, which has since been rerecorded endless times and was even used in a more successful Bond parody, Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery. Huston helped her dad out by performing the inserts of Deborah Kerr’s hands.
Sinful Davey
John Huston, 1969
Rating: BBBB
Cast: John Hurt, Pamela Franklin, Nigel Davenport, Ronald Fraser, Robert Morley, Fidelma Murphy, Maxine Audley, Fionnula Flanagan, Donal McCann, Allan Cuthbertson, Eddie Byrne, Niall MacGinnis, Noel Purcell, Judith Furse, Francis de Wolff, Paul Farrell
John Huston attempts to cash in on the popularity of Tom Jones with another bawdy tale of a capricious rogue, this time an early nineteenth-century Scot named Davey Haggart. John Hurt plays the lead with effortless charm, a rapscallion whose father was executed for crimes when he was only 21 and exists solely as a monument that young Davey built for him out of the stones he found near the workhouse where he grew up. Now an adult and free to roam the earth, Davey intends to repeat all the crimes of his notorious father, abandoning his post playing the drum in the royal marching band, then holding up a stagecoach, breaking out of jail by creating his own brothel within its walls and, his ultimate goal, heading to the Duke of Argyll to rob him as his father did before. The director later complained that producer Walter Mirisch took over final cut and ruined his vision of the film, but what remains is a delight, frothy and fun and its picaresque narrative paced well to match the breathless passion of its young and naïve protagonist. Brenda Fricker and Fionnula Flanagan appear in early roles (as does Anjelica as an extra, though I couldn’t spot her), while Robert Morley puts a delicious finishing touch to the conclusion as the targeted duke.
A Walk With Love And Death
John Huston, 1969
Rating: BBB
Cast: Anjelica Huston, Assi Dayan, Anthony Higgins, John Hallam, Robert Lang, Guy Deghy, Michael Gough, George Murcell, Eileen Murphy, Anthony Nicholls, Joseph O’Conor, John Huston, John Franklyn, Francis Heim, Melvyn Hayes, Barry Keegan, Nicholas Smith, Antoinette Reuss, Gilles Ségal, Med Hondo, Luis Masson, Eugen Ledebur, Otto Dworak, Max Sulz, John Veenenbos, Dieter Tressler, Paul Hör, Myra Malik, Michael Baronne, Yvan Strogoff
John Huston casts his daughter Anjelica in her official movie debut for this strange romantic drama set in medieval Europe. The ravaged French countryside has the distant troubles of battle made that much worse by a peasant revolt that has seen the masses take their anger out on the country’s nobles. A wandering young man (Assi Dayan) makes a beautiful girl his personal responsibility after finding her alone in a church, despite the fact that she was prepared to go to a nunnery following the murder of her family. Instead of allowing her to be cloistered, he accompanies her to her cousin’s estate, but when that is fraught with misadventure as well, they are forced to keep moving in search of safety while love between them blooms.
Great chemistry between the leads and a chance to see Anjelica so young and dewy is a real treat; it’s as obvious that she has talent as it is that she’s uncomfortable doing the equivalent of working in your dad’s store, but what really keeps this movie from achieving classic status is the weird middle ground between genres that it navigates. The archly poetic nature of much of the romantic dialogue is at odds with the gritty presentation of the period, and the film can never decide if it wants to be seriously historical or something out of a fairy tale. That said, it’s far more enjoyable than it could be even if it is no classic.
Hamlet
Tony Richardson, 1969
Rating: BBB.5
Cast: Nicol Williamson, Judy Parfitt, Anthony Hopkins, Marianne Faithfull, Mark Dignam, Michael Pennington, Gordon Jackson, Ben Aris, Clive Graham, Peter Gale, Roger Livesey, John J. Carney, Richard Everett, Robin Chadwick, Ian Collier, Michael Elphick, David Griffith, Anjelica Huston, Bill Jarvis, Roger Lloyd Pack, John Railton, John Trenaman, Jennifer Tudor
Richardson directed a production of Shakespeare’s tragedy about the great Dane at the Roundhouse Theatre in the late sixties, then transferred the production to film for posterity. Shot using more or less the same cast and turning the theatre into a studio, it’s filmed in a straightforward fashion with little flourish but never feels like a play on film, there’s enough ingenuity with camera angles to give it the dimensions of a full-blooded cinematic adaptation, while the script is pared down, clocking in at half of the play’s usual running time and featuring a couple of scenes boldly re-arranged. Nicol Williamson’s interpretation of the lead role favours the countercultural spirit of the day, playing Hamlet without much brooding and focusing instead on upending the corrupt ruling order with his increasingly erratic ways. Marianne Faithfull makes a haunting, lovely Ophelia while Judy Parfitt appears as an incisive, elegant Gertrude, but what impresses most is Richardson’s pace, it moves at a healthy trot without ever feeling rushed, and includes a number of Hamlet’s soliloquies (more than Olivier held on to in his version) that don’t slow the experience down. Look for a teenaged Anjelica as one of the court ladies (she was Faithful’s understudy in the stage version).