Fragile archives

A colleague of mine has let me borrow his personal collection of 1960s Monthly Film Bulletin issues.  As the only other place I have found these is in the BFI library, having access to them at home is quite an advantage. However, when I'm handling them I feel very nervous. At some point, probably around fifty years ago, he decided to tape each year together to make them into annual volumes. This means that when I'm trying to scan reviews I have all these fragile, yellowing pages flapping around desperately trying to tear themselves away from each other.

 

I have managed to scan several original reviews for some of the movies I have come across in the course of my research, and thought I would post a couple of them here. Dolls of Vice was a German prostitution drama, a surprisingly popular topic back then. This was probably for the exploitation potential, as highlighted here; "Beauty contests, striptease and undressing scenes."

More intriguing is the mention of a "sympathetic dwarf". And yes, several "climaxes" were censored. I have seen the original BBFC documentation, which included:

Reel 2: Remove all shots of girls wrestling

Reel 3: In strip-tease act remove shots of girls stroking their breasts

I have also come across Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace, an early giallo that established Bava's style and influenced a whole rash of Italian and German crime movies, all seemingly obsessed with killers in black gloves and rain coats.

Blood and Black Lace is given a fairly complimentary review for a dubbed Italian horror film, with particular attention paid to the look of the film. Hardly surprising for Bava, although the reviewer is critical of other elements, describing the film as "derivative, for the most part poorly acted and written, and risible in its several descents into pathos." I must confess that I haven't seen this film yet, despite its classic status. I keep hoping that Arrow Video will eventually pick it up, as they have done such brilliant work with many other Bava titles. (edit - within a month of my writing this, Arrow did indeed announce a blu ray release of Blood and Black Lace)

I intend to continue my way carefully through these copies of Monthly Film Bulletin. Ideally I would love to talk to people who remember going to the flicks and saw some of these films, but I have come to realise that is an almost impossible task. The opinions of reviewers like those in MFB at least give me some idea of the contemporary reception of most of the movies my research is digging up.

1961

Today I've been through the Monthly Film Bulletin index for 1961 to catalogue all the international films reviewed in that year. This is the most complete record I have found to work out what was distributed. The MFB were very thorough and reviewed virtually every film released every month, and they also include production and (most importantly for me) the distributor.

In 1961 there were one hundred and forty-eight international films distributed and seen by British audiences. Sixty-two of these are some form of co-production, the most common being France and Italy. The variety of countries that had films shown here is quite astonishing. It is no surprise to find Italy and France, but also in cinemas were films from Pakistan, Kenya, East Germany, Brazil and many more. Twenty-two different countries in total.

There are some hilarious titles in there, such as The Cow and I (La Vache et le prisonnier), a France/ W. Germany co-production, or the exciting Death Comes From Outer Space (La Morte viene dallo spazio), an Italian/ French co-production, and possibly Italy's first science fiction film.

Amongst the films of 1961 are a few that were distributed by Compton Films, including Assassins in the Sun (Assassinos), from Brazil, and The Captive (Vacances en enfer) from France.

There are no prizes for guessing why the Italian I Piaceri del sabato notte, which translates as "the pleasures of Saturday night", was retitled Call Girls of Rome by Gala Film Distributors. This kind of import was something of a speciality for Gala, and I expect to see their name crop up frequently amongst the sexploitation titles.

These are scans of press books that I found amongst the vast collection at the Cinema Museum. I need to go back there some time soon.