OVP: The Rock (1996)

Film: The Rock (1996)

Stars: Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, Ed Harris, David Morse, John Spencer

Director: Michael Bay

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Sean Connery: click here to learn more about Mr. Connery (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As I mentioned in our last entry on Saturdays with the Stars, Sean Connery's career got a new life in the late 1980's when he won an Oscar for The Untouchables and followed that up with a mammoth hit in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  These two films set up the course for the remainder of his career-Connery would still star in major action films, but would take on an advisory role, frequently the vaunted elder who would mentor younger, more "age-appropriate" leads like Richard Gere, Wesley Snipes, and in today's film, Nicolas Cage.  These movies were hits.  Much was made (we'll get there in a second) about how Connery really ended his career with a sluggish slump into retirement, but this ignores that during the late 1980's, 1990's & into the 21st Century, when Connery was being knighted and being named the oldest man ever to achieve the title of "Sexiest Man Alive" from People Magazine, Connery starred in a number of smash hit movies like The Hunt for Red October, First Knight, The Rock, and Entrapment.  While other actors of his generation like Paul Newman and Marlon Brando had, by-and-large, been relegated to old man dramas (and in more cases than not, cemetery plots), Connery was a box office draw in the way that men decades younger than him were and was talked about as a still-relevant movie star.

(Spoilers Ahead) Perhaps this is best boiled down by talking about The Rock, the biggest hit he had during this era (the film would make $335M, adjusted for inflation that'd be $709M, which is basically impossible to do today without it being established IP).  The movie itself is made by Michael Bay, who at the time would've been short-hand for crap (or at least was headed in that direction), and in the past decade, has been saved by Millennial film fans (nostalgic for an era when IP wasn't the only way to make a movie) as being more worthy-of-praise than he was at the time.  The movie makes little sense, and not just because its politics so closely resemble Bay's rather sketchy takes on Libertarianism.  We have Brigadier General Frank Hummel (Harris) holding Alcatraz hostage in hopes of securing $100M for the families of those who died in top secret missions.  He is holding dozens of hostages on the island (tourists who have visited it), and the government sends in a team of agents, though they're quickly boiled down to just two: Dr. Stanley Goodspeed (Cage), a chemical weapons expert with little field experience, and retired Captain John Patrick Mason (Connery), the only man to ever successfully escape from Alcatraz.  The two team up to not only stop Hummel from detonating a chemical weapon that could destroy tens of thousands, but also to see if Mason can get his freedom, which is dangled as incentive but all involved know is just a ruse to get his help.

The real enemy in this movie, it's worth noting, isn't Harris's general, but instead FBI Director James Womack (played by John Spencer), and that's because you don't get a government that wants to help the people in a Michael Bay picture.  Even more so than Clint Eastwood, Bay's films are quintessentially glorious, tech-savvy propaganda for government incompetence.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing (lord knows there's a case to be made that government incompetence dominates our collective consciousness in the Trump Era, and has to a degree in every administration), but it also means that The Rock is a movie you don't really want to think about too much, as it becomes too ridiculous & frequently too absurd to consider it technically.  A lot of your mileage with the movie will depend on your take on Connery & Cage's unlikely friendship, and your tolerance for gratuitous violence.  The violence here is less artful and more just disgusting, and I will own that I don't think Cage & Connery work at all.  Connery's performances with Costner & especially Ford in the late 1980's worked better because there was a subtlety, a clear driving friction with which they can find common ground.  But Cage is not a subtle actor, and Connery can't seem to find any sort of chemistry with him...it just feels like they're making two different movies.

Connery would continue making films regularly until 2003.  He ended his career with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a bad superhero movie that made a lot of money, which hadn't been the case for some of Connery's most recent endeavors like Playing by Heart and The Avengers (for the record, not a superhero movie).  He retired, and with the weird exception of an animated adventure film, never made another movie despite entreaties to join later installments in the Indiana Jones & 007 franchises, dying in 2020 at the age of 90 from a combination of pneumonia & dementia.  Despite decades of trying to escape it, the first line of his New York Times obituary of course included the words "James Bond."

Next month we're going to talk about one of Connery's peers, someone who would dominate action films in the 1960's and especially the 1970's.  Like Connery he wouldn't really get the credit for being the fine actor that he was, but unlike Connery, he didn't seem to care, finding "selling out" a bit more palatable when one gigantic smash hit that changed his career's trajectory captured the public consciousness (and divided critics, both cinematic & political).

OVP: The Untouchables (1987)

Film: The Untouchables (1987)

Stars: Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Charles Martin Smith, Andy Garcia, Robert de Niro

Director: Brian de Palma

Oscar History: 4 nominations/1 win (Best Supporting Actor-Sean Connery*, Art Direction, Costume Design, Original Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Sean Connery: click here to learn more about Mr. Connery (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We're going to cover two Connery films today as I missed last week, but didn't want to short-change him, so we'll talk through both his time in the 1980's and, this evening, the 1990's.  Connery was, by the early 1980's, a movie star but not a consistent box office presence.  While he had made hits (Time Bandits dwarfed its production costs in 1981), nothing he had done had, quite frankly, approached what he had achieved with James Bond, and as a result Connery was talked into making his final installment in the franchise in 1983 with Never Say Never Again.  This was something he did without Eon Productions (traditionally the production house for Bond films), and he did so in a head-to-head competition with Roger Moore, who had Octopussy out that year.  Both films were huge successes at the box office, though Moore's film ended up on top.  Connery hated the experience, and stuck to his commitment to "never again" after this one (he would never appear in a Bond film again), and indeed wouldn't even make a movie for two years after this.

(Spoilers Ahead) Connery probably could've played his types of middling, increasingly aging rogues & fictional knights forever for the rest of his career, the memory of Bond so appealing to nostalgic movie producers who grew up idolizing him, but it was today's film that truly changed the course of his career & legacy.  The Untouchables is a film where Connery gets second billing to Kevin Costner, not remotely as famous as him at the time, but it was a smart move to choose a supporting part.  The Untouchables is a highly-fictionalized look at Eliot Ness (Costner), the federal agent who led the efforts to take down Al Capone (de Niro), and features Connery in a role as a rogue cop, one who is brought in as part of Ness's operation, which is ultimately successful in beating Capone (or at least sending him to jail), but (because this is a Brian de Palma film) not without a lot of very bloody corpses along the way.  Like most of de Palma's films, I struggled with this.  Costner's one of the blandest leading men of his era, gorgeous but blank-faced and rarely a compelling figure in the lead (and if we're judging solely on looks, Andy Garcia is even prettier than him at this point), and Robert de Niro is actively terrible in this movie, a hint of the many cash-grabs the acting icon would have in the decades to come.  The best part of the movie, for me, was Ennio Morricone's score (and that flawless Giorgio Armani tailoring).

Connery is solid, though, not nearly as good as he is in, say, The Man Who Would Be King, but he's winning and very good at embracing the role of "aging sexy guy who mentors a younger star," something that he'd started with Christopher Lambert in 1986's Highlander, and which would become the bulk of the remainder of his career.  For much of the catty press he took back in 1983 for Never Say Never Again, about how he and Moore were far too old to be believable as aging action stars bedding women young enough to be their daughters, it did feel like Connery's place as an action star would soon fade.  But here, he showed how well he could fit in-he was a tough guy, someone who was grizzled but had "one last go in him" and this would be something he'd ride for the next 15 years or so, but also would carve out for others like him.  Action stars, because of Connery's work in this and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade a few years later, had a path for a second act, one with a lot of box office (The Untouchables was a massive hit, the sixth highest-grossing film at the domestic box office in 1987, and made 3x as much as de Palma's now much-obsessed Scarface), so the paydays (and movie stardom) could continue even as the stunt work became less intense.

It also would define Connery's career because it made him one of the only action stars to date to win an Academy Award.  In the 1980's, with a lot of Golden Age actors aging to the point where they were near death, we saw a lot of the leading actors of that era winning "sentimental" Oscars.  Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn, Geraldine Page, Don Ameche, Paul Newman, & Jessica Tandy would all take home Oscars at the time, and with this movie, Connery would as well.  Connery's win is one that it's hard to fault the Oscars (it's cool that he won a sstatue, even if I don't know that I'm going to agree with them in the 1987 OVP), and certainly they did worse in the era, but it gave him a nobility that would become a trademark the remainder of his life, and gave him a further distinction over future James Bond actors none of whom (to date) have ever gotten so much as a nomination.

OVP: The Wind and the Lion (1975)

Film: The Wind and the Lion (1975)

Stars: Sean Connery, Candice Bergen, Brian Keith, John Huston

Director: John Milius

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Sound, Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Sean Connery: click here to learn more about Mr. Connery (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

To most filmgoers, certainly in the 1970's, Sean Connery was essentially James Bond.  While other actors at that point (Roger Moore, George Lazenby, even David Niven) had played the part, Connery was Bond...and he wasn't super happy about it.  Connery is not the last of the actors this year we'll profile who struggled with being taken seriously as a thespian having enormous success in the realm of action movies, but he might be the most perturbed of the bunch.  Connery is a good actor, one who even during the height of Bond was working with important directors like Alfred Hitchcock & Sidney Lumet, but all the public saw him as was 007.  Literally-Michael Caine (Connery's longtime friend) would tell an anecdote about how upset Connery would get when someone would call him James Bond rather than his real name in the streets.  So it's not surprising that after Diamonds are Forever, a massive hit for United Artists in the early 1970's, that Connery largely eschewed the role, and in 1975 made two films involving Huston (one as his costar, the other as director-star) that would stand up as attempts for Connery to be taken more seriously as an actor.  One of these, The Man Who Would Be King, would become a classic, while the other would be quickly forgotten.

(Spoilers Ahead) We're choosing The Wind and the Lion and not The Man Who Would Be King because I always choose "new to me" movies for this series, and not only have I seen The Man Who Would Be King, but I also genuinely love it, so I couldn't go in unbiased if I tried (if you haven't seen it, add it to the Watchlist).  The Wind and the Lion is a weird amalgamation of historical drama and at least (to a degree) a romantic film, based in part on a true event involving President Teddy Roosevelt.  The film follows the kidnapping of Eden Pedecaris (Bergen), a wealthy woman stying with diplomats in Morocco by Mulai Ahmed Er Raisuli (Connery), as a way to start a Civil War in his country, one that will result in the Sultan leading Morocco to be publicly shamed.  They bond in a bit of Stockholm Syndrome as Eden comes to understand Raisuli's plight, though this is told with long swaths of the film going back to DC where President Roosevelt (Keith) is in the middle of his 1904 presidential bid, and attempting to use the kidnapping as a way to win over voters to win the election.

The Wind and the Lion is a weird movie, made stranger by the fact that it's based in part on a true story (though in real life Bergen's character was a man, almost certainly changed to a woman to help aid the romantic angle, as this was in the era where a giant epic needed to have a beautiful woman for the lead to fall in love with).  Connery is actually playing a real person, one who (like Connery) would live long after the events of this film.  The problem is that the film feels cartoonish in the many cutaways to the White House.  The movie might've been able to skate by without much chemistry between Bergen & Connery (Bergen is an odd actress, in that I don't generally like her in straight dramatic roles, but she's so compelling as a classy comedic role & she's so insanely gorgeous that I always hope I will find the drama that works for me), but these diversions distract too much, and make it feel silly, even if I adored the Jerry Goldsmith score.

And Connery does work in this role, and it's not a coincidence that the actor would excel for many years in epics and David Lean-style films for the remainder of his career (even if Connery would sadly never work with Lean directly).  He plays the part with a sort of majesty, an inherent otherworldliness that he would bring to roles like The Man Who Would Be King and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, two of his finest roles that I've seen.  It's also probably why he would eventually be offered the part (and then turn it down) as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings (given the deal that Connery got, had he taken the part it might've made him the highest-paid actor in cinema history (based on the rumors that have leaked about his offer and the percentage of the profits, he may well have made upwards of half a billion dollars from the part over the course of the series).

OVP: Thunderball (1965)

Film: Thunderball (1965)

Stars: Sean Connery, Claudine Auger, Adolfo Celi, Luciana Paluzzi, Rik van Nutter

Director: Terence Young

Oscar History: 1 nod/1 win (Best Visual Effects*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Sean Connery: click here to learn more about Mr. Connery (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Our shift from Errol Flynn to Sean Connery in part also shifts us into the modern definition of an action star, and in some ways we should've gone with our next two month's stars (who are far more focused on the 1970's, but wouldn't have much legacy as action stars in the blockbuster sense beyond that), except that if we're going chronologically Connery became famous first.  He also just managed to live long enough as an action star to become a leading man alongside the heyday of the genre in the 1980's & 90's.

But we are shifting into Connery because he defined action in the 1960's, and he did so as the quintessential movie hero: James Bond.  While Bond was originally a book character, in a highly-popular spy series by Ian Fleming (which would eventually have every single novel be brought to the big-screen), Connery's inhabitation of it would make it an essentially cinema-derived product to the minds of billions.  Connery got the role of Bond pretty early in his career.  He was a leading man at that point, having appeared in Darby O'Gill and the Little People (a live-action Disney movie), but he had not had a traditional breakthrough, which would change with the colossal success of Dr. No.  The film would make Connery a household name, but as we'll find in the coming weeks, it was more Bond that would be the household name than Connery himself.

(Spoilers Ahead) Connery would make seven Bond films in his career, and I had before this just seen two (Dr. No and Goldfinger).  We're only going to do one Bond film this month (there's a lot to Connery's career that I want to cover so we won't have time for more), and I didn't want it to be one of his post-1960's pictures, so I kind of just drew a name out of a hat and went with Thunderball (both because of its Oscar win and because I love that Tom Jones theme song).  This film won Bond his first (and to date only) Visual Effects Oscar, and is a story about Bond once again taking on SPECTRE, this time with their #2 leader Emilio Largo (Celi), who is planning on destroying a major US or UK city unless their governments pay him 100 million pounds.  Connery eventually starts to infiltrate the spy's den, all the while bedding a half dozen women, including those closest to Largo, before eventually defeating him with the help of the curvaceous & stylish (seriously, that black-and-white bikini could make a comeback so fast on Instagram if someone wanted to bring it back) Domino, played by Auger.

The movie is not one of Bond's most-celebrated outings, and many clock this as the first weak link in the Connery era of films, generally considered the best until Daniel Craig, and they're right.  Connery is still there, charming and brutishly sexy as ever (the film's now heavily-criticized sexual politics have a cringe moment early on when Connery toes the line with Molly Peters' physiotherapist, eventually having sex with her despite protestations earlier in a steam room), but there's not enough to do.  The biggest problem is that there are too many women in this (I know that's opening up for ridicule as a gay man saying it, but it's true)-they feel frequently interchangeable and none of them stand out.  This film would be remade in 1983 in Connery's final Bond film (Never Say Never Again), and Domino would be played by future Oscar winner Kim Basinger, so I'm curious when I eventually get to that (not for this series, but in terms of Bond completionism) if it'll be better.

I do want to talk about the visual effects before we go, since this is a big Oscar blog, and I'd be remiss if I ignored them.  I think the effects are impressive-the opening sequence with Connery using a jet pack is crazy (it actually worked), and the underwater fights and the explosions later in the picture are top-notch.  I have to assume it was the underwater photography that got it the win though, given how revolutionary it looks.  I've seen a film like Beneath the 12-Mile Reef, which was a CinemaScope spectacle 12 years earlier starring Robert Wagner & Terry Moore, and it was considered revolutionary at the time (it even got nominated for Best Cinematography at the Oscars) in the way that it shot underwater so well in color, but 12 years later, Thunderball is on another level.  This looks like it was shot with green screens it's that impressive, and is a real step up compared to anything you'd see of this nature, likely inspiring everything in the future from Jaws to Titanic.

Saturdays with the Stars: Sean Connery

Each month of 2026 we are looking at an actor or actress who found their fame in action films, fighting bad guys & saving the day.  Last month, we talked about Errol Flynn, perhaps the quintessential Golden Age action star, something that really didn't exist in the 1940's & 1950's in the way we think of it now.  This month, we'll head into New Hollywood, and talk about the man who really invented the concept of the modern action movie star, so much so that he would not just dominate the 1960's, but would still be making action films regularly into the 1990's, when his decades of cool would still have him being name-checked as one of the "Sexiest Men Alive" well past the age that men typically got such accolades.  This month's star is Sean Connery.

Born in Edinburgh to a truck-driver and a cleaning woman in 1930, Thomas Sean Connery was hardly what you'd think of as a man who would someday become a household name at the cinema.  He had a stereotypically blue-collar, hyper-masculine childhood (he would claim that he lost his virginity to an older woman when he was 14), would join up in the navy at the age of 16, and briefly had a run as a Mr. Universe contestant in the early 1950's (sources vary on the exact date).  In his early twenties, fresh out of the Navy, Connery joined an acting troupe as a way to make money, spending much of his early years alternating between theatrical runs (including appearing with Michael Caine in a production of South Pacific) and a smattering of extra work, including Lilacs of the Spring with last month's star Errol Flynn.

Connery's early work as a leading man including turns opposite Lana Turner (during production he famously drew the ire of the mob by punching out Turner's abusive boyfriend Johnny Stomponato) and even playing the lead in a Disney film (Darby O'Gill and the Little People).  But it was in 1962 that Sean Connery became a legend.  That was the year that Dr. No came out, and James Bond was born as the textbook, greatest cinematic action hero.  In March, we're going to tackle one of the remaining Bond films that I have never seen of Connery's (he made 7 in total), as well as talk about Connery's struggles with getting out of the shadow of Bond (a legacy he would long struggle with), playing more serious roles in the 1970's and 1980's, and getting to see not just one of the only Oscar-winning performances I've never seen, but also talk about how Connery paved the way for future generations of action stars to stay relevant far after their explosive heydays.

Robin and Marian (1976)

Film: Robin and Marian (1976)

Stars: Sean Connery, Audrey Hepburn, Robert Shaw, Nicol Williamson, Richard Harris, Denholm Elliott, Ian Holm

Director: Richard Lester

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Audrey Hepburn: click here to learn more about Ms. Hepburn (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Audrey Hepburn's time as America's Sweetheart can pretty much be bookended between two of her signature roles: Princess Ann in Roman Holiday and Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, but that doesn't mean that she stopped acting after these roles.  As New Hollywood was rolling out, she starred in Two for the Road, which is a now-beloved film (that honestly fits the New Hollywood motif better than most films starring Classical Hollywood stars) and Wait Until Dark, a thriller that won Hepburn her fifth and final Oscar nomination.  But Hepburn wasn't a great fit for New Hollywood, and after the stress of two flops (How to Steal a Million and Two for the Road), she was more interested in a quiet life of domesticity with her family.  She only acted occasionally after 1967, working with Steven Spielberg on Always and with Peter Bogdonavich in his famed flop They All Laughed.  The film that feels the most at-home to her style of the movies Hepburn made during this "retirement" period was Robin and Marian, the first film she made nine years after Wait Until Dark, starring then one of the biggest leading men in Hollywood, Sean Connery.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on the legend of Robin Hood (Connery) when he is old.  We are long beyond the days of his youthful dalliances with Maid Marion (Hepburn), and when he returns to England after the death of King Richard (Harris), he finds her to be a nun, and one that's about to be arrested by the Sheriff of Nottingham (Shaw).  This sets in motion a final stand sort of film, as Robin Hood, now an aging legend, having to once again fight for Maid Marion, but both of them are older, wiser, and filled with the regrets that youth cannot understand.  The film also shows the Sheriff, understanding his best days are behind him, and with some regret over having to kill the man who also made him notorious.  In the end, both men die, with the Sheriff giving Robin a wound that will leave him crippled the rest of his life before Robin stabs him through the stomach, and in a twist, Maid Marion kills both herself & Robin Hood (in most stories, this is an Abbess who does it for the reward money), with them soon to be buried by L'il John (Williamson) outside the priory for all time.

The movie is weirdly reminiscent of a lot of films we've seen in the past 25 years.  The idea of taking a lighter story, making it somber & giving it a more modernist gaze has been used on everyone from Batman to Archie Andrews in film and television.  The problem with Robin and Marian is that it doesn't fully go this route.  The 1970's was not a time when we saw a lot of successful historical epics similar to those that had been popular in the 1950's & 60's; arguably the best one was The Man Who Would Be King the year before that also starred Sean Connery.  This meant that the story tries to have some lighthearted moments that don't work at all, and it moves too quickly.  We need more investment in the love story or in the Robin Hood history to make the dramatic, heart-wrenching ending work.  The juxtaposition of Hepburn & Connery is a good pairing.  Despite Connery becoming a movie star a decade later than Hepburn (and continuing to star in movies well into the 1990's), he's just a year younger than Hepburn, and so they pair nicely (and age appropriately).  But the script can't capitalize on the unusual chemistry between the two, chiffon-and-sandpaper laced together beautifully.

Hepburn, as I said, rarely worked in the years that followed, either on stage or on screen.  She did continue to work with UNICEF, though, through charitable work she'd started in the 1950's.  As a child, she had endured the German occupation of the Netherlands, and so had great sympathy for how war & poverty impacted young people, and worked steadily on vaccination & hunger missions throughout the world in conjunction with UNICFE.  She would win the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award (a second Oscar) and the Presidential Medial of Freedom for her work, but abdominal cancer cut her life short.  At a funeral where Elizabeth Taylor bought the flowers and Gregory Peck read a poem, Audrey Hepburn, America's Sweetheart, died at the young age of 63.

Next month, we're going to talk about an actress who lived much longer than Hepburn, but was her peer, both in terms of their career peaks occurring during the 1950's, but also in a self-imposed retirement that happened as New Hollywood took away their title of America's Sweetheart.  We will talk about her more on Wednesday.

Marnie (1964)

Film: Marnie (1964)

Stars: Tippi Hedren, Sean Connery, Diane Baker, Martin Gabel, Louise Latham

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Tippi Hedren-click here to learn more about Ms. Hedren (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As I mentioned on Monday, we are going to start Hedren's career not with The Birds, which would make her a household name, but with Marnie, as I only watch films I've never seen for this series & I've seen The Birds countless times.  In a year where we have profiled dozens of Hitchcock films, Marnie stands apart as a particularly important one, because depending on who you ask, it is either The Birds or Marnie that would be Hitchcock's last "great" picture.  Contemporary reviews tended to favor the theory that it was the former, but many retrospective reviews have salvaged Marnie's reputation, and as someone who adores The Birds, I was curious to see what would happen when I finally caught this, one of the most important movies in Hitchcock's filmography I hadn't seen prior to 2021.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie plays a bit like a riddle.  The beginning of the film involves Marnie (played by Hedren, she goes by multiple names in the picture but we're going to refer to her as Marnie to help continuity), who has recently stolen $10,000 from her employer Sidney Strutt (Gabel).  In her next job, she meets Mark Rutland (Connery), who recognizes her as the thief from before, but doesn't say anything initially.  He becomes fascinated with the beautiful woman, and curious as to why the color red & thunderstorms are emotional triggers for her.  When she tries to steal again, Mark blackmails her into marrying him, and she agrees despite the protestations of Mark's sister-in-law Lil (Baker), who is clearly in love with Mark.  On their honeymoon, they initially avoid physical intimacy, but at a crucial point Mark rapes Marnie, as he's become obsessed with her.  He slowly works to reimburse her victims to get the charges to go away, but while he's doing this Marnie is hating him more for trapping her.  In the films final moments, Mark decides to do something about the emotional instability of his wife, and he takes her to see her mother Bernice (Latham).  There, during a manic state, Marnie realizes that her mother was a prostitute, and one of her clients, after attempting to molest Marnie, was killed by Bernice, which is why the color red (blood) and thunderstorms (it was raining) are triggers for Marnie.  Afterward, Marnie & Mark decide they can make it work, now knowing where Marnie's troubles stem from.

The movie is marvelously shot & edited.  The opening scene of the film, which includes a raven-haired Hedren clutching a yellow purse (that looks, let's face it, a little bit like a vagina), while walking carefully down a train platform is so fascinating & brilliant, you'd honestly assume that the film wouldn't be able to follow it with anything as terrific, but you'd be wrong.  The first half of Marnie is a mystery, with us at first trying to understand this strange woman who clearly is suffering from psychological trauma, and then at the midpoint we are given a true twist when Mark ends up being a bit of a psychotic, raping Marnie & basically holding her captive, obsessed with finding out the truth about this woman he has basically tricked into marrying him.

The movie's ending feels like a letdown as a result.  For a modern audience (but I suspect considering the many discussions about whether it should be included in the film, contemporary ones as well), it's hard to imagine wanting to cheer on Mark after he assaults Marnie, and the film doesn't really know how to deal with this.  In a modern film, we'd end with Marnie getting revenge on Mark, but neither he nor the audience getting to know her in the process, leaving her a cool, unknowable figure-in that, we'd have gotten a great movie.  Here, we get them trying to rehabilitate Mark's image, and a relatively groundbreaking bit of psychoanalysis that goes nowhere.  Still, this is a brilliantly-acted movie.  Connery is vicious & is giving some of his best work as Mark, a complicated he-man figure who has never been told "no" before Marnie.  Diane Baker is excellent as his scheming, in-the-wings sister-in-law, and Latham stands out in her two big scenes.  And yes, Tippi Hedren can act, and does so wonderfully here, finding rich layers under a sheen of hardened plastic.

Marnie would be Hitchcock's last film with Hedren, and that appears to be more her choice than his.  Hedren has in the years since been quite adamant about how little she liked the director, and his predatory behavior on-set.  According to Hedren, he had her followed, and would tell cast-and-crew not to speak to her on set (her costar Baker would later confirm this to be the case).  He became sexually obsessed with her, making overt requests for sexual favors, and threatening to "ruin her career" if she didn't honor her contract after Marnie (as she said she didn't want to appear in any of his future movies).  As she was under contract, he knew he could bankrupt her because she couldn't support her aging parents or her daughter Melanie without her income from movies.  For three years after Marnie, Hedren did not, indeed, work, and she would never have the career that The Birds and Marnie would've insinuated she would.  As promised on Monday, though, we will take a look at the career she did have in the coming weeks, and next Saturday we'll discuss a film she made with a director who, believe-it-or-not, is as culturally significant as Hitchcock himself.

OVP: The Longest Day (1962)

Film: The Longest Day (1962)
Stars: John Wayne, Richard Todd, Robert Mitchum, Richard Burton, Sean Connery, Henry Fonda, Red Buttons, Peter Lawford, Eddie Albert, Jeffrey Hunter, Stuart Whitman, Rod Steiger, Leo Genn, George Segal, Paul Anka, Fabian, Roddy McDowall, Tommy Sands, Curd Jurgens, Frank Finlay, Sal Mineo, Richard Beymer, Robert Wagner, Alexander Knox, Edmond O'Brien, Mel Ferrer, Arletty
Director: Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, & Bernhard Wicki
Oscar History: 5 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Art Direction, Editing, Cinematography*, Special Effects*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Does size matter?  That's the question looming over much of The Longest Day, our last film in a week dedicated to Best Editing nominees.  The Longest Day might well have deserved a nomination for least edited film, considering it clocks in at three hours long, and it's honestly very difficult to review, as we'll find below.  The film was gargantuan at the time, one as you see above that's filled with star cameos (we'll get into this in the review), and one that cost upwards of $8 million at the time, but earned that back 4x over to a sum of $30 million (the modern day equivalent of about $250 million, a blockbuster by any standard).  The movie is certainly big, and something to behold-the war film is realistic, frequently showing unfathomable aerial and maritime shots, and it's an achievement, without a doubt.  The question I kept coming back to as I watched the (VERY) long war movie is...is it any good?

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is told in a somewhat documentary style (at least by 1960's standards), with characters identified with name plates rather than more expositional dialogue, and focuses on the lead-up to D-Day.  The planning & battle are really the central characters in the movie; no character takes on the role of "lead" in the film, though certain actors like John Wayne & Robert Mitchum are in more of the movie than most of the cast-of-characters (today everyone would be marketed as a supporting actor here, but I suspect these two would've been lead if the film had scored acting nominations).  Again, especially in a pre-The Wild Bunch era, the film is merciless in its body count, even if the effect of the violence isn't what it would be in later war classics simply due to keeping the obvious bloodshed off screen.

For a three-hour movie, you'd expect a longer summary paragraph, but The Longest Day is unusual because it doesn't really have a proper narrative story.  The film's script is its weakest asset not just because there's no character development, but also because other than D-Day, there's no real story.  To a modern audience member, The Longest Day is weird because I don't have the "I lived through it" mentality that most people in 1962 would have of the sheer size & scope of D-Day (even if you weren't at Normandy at the time, most would've lived through the war, read about this in the newspaper, and heard from people they knew who were at Normandy).  As a result, you have to be a student-of-history to know a lot of the names flashing up onscreen, and while I knew some of them, I didn't know all, and with no character development or better grounding of the D-Day invasion's place in the war, the movie lacks a bit of context, and occasionally even purpose.

The star cameos by this point in the 1960's had become a recurring theme in epic films (look at Around the World in 80 Days or Pepe for other examples), and this would prove to be the biggest for this trend.  There are so many it becomes kind of like a game of "Where's Waldo" with certain faces.  You're like "oh, there's Mel Ferrer" or "I think that's Red Buttons," but the shocking thing about it is how many of these cameos are onscreen for mere seconds.  I had to rewind to confirm the Sean Connery scene, and Roddy McDowall's face is onscreen for roughly a minute.  This makes the movie one I'd theoretically re-watch just to confirm I caught all of the cameos, but it also means you aren't really emotionally-invested in the characters onscreen, just in awe of the cast.  It's too much-the film feels bloated and sort of a "so what" by the end of the picture.

And so I'm going with 2-stars here, which I honestly didn't think I would pick.  The Longest Day is very watchable, and the technical achievements are impressive.  The visual effects are glorious, extensive, and surely cost a fortune, particularly the aerial & maritime shoots.  Ditto the cinematography, which shot from the air, land, or sea is fascinating & beautiful-this is one of the last black-and-white films of the era to really capture a sense of majesty in the camerawork (it seems like most of the best cinematographers had moved to color photography by this era).  The editing is easy to mock because of the film's length, but it has extended longshots (also a nod to the cinematographer) on the beach that gave the film a smoother focus, and while you don't care about the characters, you're never bored-there's always "more, more, more" coming at you visually.  Best of the bunch is the art direction, meticulously recreating multiple battle scenes, war rooms, and seemingly a whole, destructed town.

But technical achievements, while novel at the time, don't make a strong movie, and in many ways this feels like Transformers or Armageddon with a better cast-it's large, advanced, and surely meant a lot at the time, but in retrospect it feels bloated, without any sense of passion, and is using the memory of one of the 20th Century's most important days to coast on not having anything to say.

The 8 Living Women (and 2 Men) Who Have Starred in an Alfred Hitchcock Movie

In the past month, while prepping for NaNoWriMo, I was thinking a lot about my relationship with classic film, and in particular how few links we still have to the Golden Age of Hollywood.  It feels like at this point it's more of a scrounge to find living actors from this era rather than the multitudes that were still alive even only twenty years ago, and in the process, I began to wonder how many of Alfred Hitchcock's leading ladies were still alive.

Focusing on Hitchcock in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein allegations feels a bit seedy, considering that he had famously complicated relationships with his leading ladies, including allegedly sexually assaulting Tippi Hedren and exerting enormous control over women like Grace Kelly.  However, this isn't celebrating Hitch, but the women who made his films special, and specifically the eight leading ladies in his movies that are still with us.  Without further adieu (I'm imagining you're trying to guess in your head who they are anyway), here are the eight living women who have headlined an Alfred Hitchcock picture (listed chronologically by film):

Editor's Note: Since the publication of this Barbara Harris passed away on August 21, 2018.  I've maintained Ms. Harris's profile below, however.

Shirley MacLaine

Film: The Trouble with Harry (1955)

Age: 83 (Born April 24, 1934)

Career: This was actually MacLaine's screen debut, though she's not really known for her work with Hitchcock.  She'd get a Golden Globe nomination for Best Newcomer in the film, and would be an Oscar nominee three years later for Some Came Running (and soon a screen legend).

Doris Day

Film: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

Age: 95 (Born April 3, 1922)

Career: Day was enjoying the "dramatic" period of her film career when she partnered with Hitchcock (an odd pairing in hindsight, though her iconic "Que Sera, Sera" would become a signature tune).  She'd be getting her sole Oscar nomination a few years later when she made Pillow Talk and kicked off the most successful period of her career.

Vera Miles

Film: The Wrong Man (1956)

Age: 88 (Born August 23, 1929)

Career: Miles is a strange case of an actress that made a lot of classic films in a brief period of time (she also starred in the John Ford classic The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance), who is best remembered by modern audiences for her supporting work in Psycho.  She was originally intended to be Hitch's leading lady in Vertigo, but due to a pregnancy he had to replace her with...

Kim Novak

Film: Vertigo (1958)

Age: 84 (Born February 13, 1933)

Career: Novak's eternally known as Madeline in Vertigo, her most iconic role, but the reality is that the film was a turning point in her career, and not in the right direction.  Though considered today to be one of the greatest films ever made, Vertigo was a box office disappointment at the time, and Novak (coming off of hits like Picnic, Pal Joey, and Bell, Book, and Candle) watched her career dissipate after this, with her brief period as a leading woman soon over.

Eva Marie Saint

Film: North by Northwest (1959)

Age: 93 (Born July 4, 1924)

Career: Saint had made a name for herself at this point in her career playing downtrodden women in black-and-white dramas (winning an Oscar for On the Waterfront), so this was a very atypical movie for the actress, and one that sort of would signal the end of her short career as a leading woman.  Saint made surprisingly few pictures in her very long career, and would soon be playing third fiddle to Richard Burton & Elizabeth Taylor in The Sandpiper.

Tippi Hedren

Film: The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964)

Age: 87 (Born January 19, 1930)

Career: Hedren has the distinction on this list of being the only woman to headline two Hitchcock films (while Miles starred in multiple Hitch projects, she only got top billing in one).  Hedren's career  was, well, bizarre after Hitchcock with her most notable film being the troubled production Roar, and she famously hated her filming experiences on Hitch's pictures, but it cannot be denied that these aren't an iconic legacy for her as an actress.

Julie Andrews

Film: Torn Curtain (1966)

Age: 82 (Born October 1, 1935)

Career: Andrews had just two years earlier made her screen debut, but at this point was a major leading lady in Hollywood, and was enjoying what would be the biggest period of success in her career with back-to-back mammoth hits that scored her Oscar nominations (and her one win).  Still, she's hardly what you'd consider an obvious choice to headline a Hitchcock picture considering her well-noted warm and kind characters.

Barbara Harris

Film: Family Plot (1976)

Age: 82 (Born July 25, 1935)

Career: Despite being a decade after Andrews, she's slightly older than the Torn Curtain star, and appeared in the lead of Hitch's last picture.  She was enjoying a peak moment in her career at this point, having just been a part of the classic Nahsville and would receive TWO Golden Globe nominations this year, for her work here as well as in Freaky Friday (she'd lose to Barbra Streisand in A Star is Born).

Initially I thought that I'd do a sequel with the leading men of Hitchcock's career, but unfortunately only two of Hitch's leading men are still with us, so let's also list them right now...

Sean Connery

Film: Marnie (1964)

Age: 87 (August 25, 1930)

Career: Connery at this point had found his most iconic role at this point in his career, James Bond, and would later this same year give his best 007 performance in Goldfinger.  Still, Connery's debonair charm and sex appeal seem like a natural fit for a Hitchcockian film, and I'm surprised he didn't end up starring with him again later in his career.

Bruce Dern

Film: Family Plot (1976)

Age: 81 (June 4, 1936)

Career: Dern is the youngest-living person to have headlined an Alfred Hitchcock movie.  At this point in his career he'd been a character actor for over a decade, and had actually appeared in a small part in Marnie, but was most well-known for his villainous work in The Cowboys opposite John Wayne.  Two years after this he'd win his first of two Academy Award nominations for Coming Home.

There you have it-the eight women (and two men) who are still with us who have headlined a Hitchcock picture.  Share your favorite memories of these women and which of these nine performances are your favorites?