HOME CINEMAApril 2020 | Sight&Sound | 87the Locarno Film Festival in 2014, in which
Potrykus presents an elated Dario Argento
with a T-shirt worn in the film, its design based
on Argento-produced horror Demons (1985).
THE SON OF THE SHEIK
George Fitzmaurice; US 1926; Eureka/Masters of
Cinema; Region B Blu-ray and Region 2 DVD dual
format; Certificate U; 69 minutes; 1.37:1. Extras: video
essay by David Cairns; intro by Orson Welles; booklet.
Reviewed by Philip Kemp
The Son of the Sheik, observes David Cairns in
his enjoyably sardonic video essay ‘Loitering
Within Tent’, is to be regarded “not as a work of
art, because arguably it isn’t”. Hard to disagree.
For his part, Orson Welles in his intro suggests
we should consider it “a flamboyant, tongue-in-
the-cheek romp”. Certainly it’s not to be taken
seriously for a moment. It looks good, thanks to
George Barnes’s cinematography and William
Cameron Menzies’s production design. But its
chief significance is as the final movie of the
greatest screen heartthrob of the 1920s – or
perhaps of any era – Rudolph Valentino, who died
of peritonitis, aged 31, only days before its release.
It was always easy to mock Valentino, even
at the height of his stardom. (Stan Laurel, in his
pre-Hardy days, wickedly sent him up as Rhubarb
Vaselino.) Rumours persisted that he was gay;
his first wife, a lesbian, left him on their wedding
night. But his popularity was phenomenal: it’s
said there were more than 100,000 mourners
at his funeral, predominantly female, and that
three women committed suicide at the news of
his death. There was never much depth to his
acting, though he’d improved considerably since
The Sheik (1920), to which this is the sequel; and
he even plays a dual role, portraying the hero of
the earlier film along with his son. For its period,
the split-screen work is impressively convincing.
The film’s plot presents its problems, and
not just for being ludicrous. The hero falls in
love with a dancer, Yasmin, charmingly played
by Hungarian-born Vilma Bánky in only her
third Hollywood role. (Her second, The Eagle
in 1925, also teamed her with Valentino under
George Fitzmaurice’s direction.) But when
he’s led to believe she lured him into the
clutches of her father’s villainous gang, who
rob and torture him, he revenges himself on
her by raping her. Despite this, the two end up
blissfully united in the film’s lushly romantic
final shot, as he gallops off across the desert
on his horse with her in his arms. The episode
leaves a questionable tone on what’s otherwise
a diverting farrago of prime studio exoticism.
Disc: A clean and almost flaw-free
print, with entertaining extras.
SCANDAL
Michael Caton-Jones; UK 1989; BFI; Region B Blu-ray
and Region 2 DVD dual format; Certificate 18; 115 mins;
1.85:1. Extras: commentary by producer Stephen Woolley
and writer Michael Thomas; commentary by Michael
Caton-Jones; The Minister, the Model & the Russian Spy:
Making Scandal (2010); new interviews with Caton-
Jones and Woolley; Dusty Springfield/Pet Shop Boys
‘Nothing Has Been Proved’ music video (1989).
Reviewed by Kate Stables
Michael Caton-Jones’s debut film, an elegantly
shot, irreverent and surprisingly poignant
account of the Profumo affair, was carved out
of screenwriter Michael Thomas’s original
four-and-a-half hour miniseries after UK TV
outlets had been put under quiet political
pressure to refuse it. This release’s plain-
speaking extras – especially Stephen Woolley’s
audio commentary with Thomas – offer a
wealth of useful titbits like this, including a
fascinating account of Harvey Weinstein’s close
personal interest in the film’s nude scenes.
Reworked into a twisted platonic love story
between Joanne Whalley’s vulnerable, fun-
loving Christine Keeler and John Hurt’s louche,
social-climbing Stephen Ward, Scandal is a
Sirkian melodrama delivered with voyeuristic
verve. Orgies, kitschy, tit-flashing floorshows
and the infamous Cliveden skinny-dipping
are created with a knowing but resolutely
male gaze; and while the film takes aim at the
hypocrisy of the early 60s, it’s long on 80s female
eye-candy – only Bridget Fonda’s cheerfully
calculating Mandy Rice-Davies exhibits any
agency. Hurt’s fondly prurient Ward, procurer
and then pariah to the British Establishment,
becomes the film’s wounded protagonist in
a subtle and wrenching performance that
eventually overshadows Keeler’s predicament.
The final scene, with its slow-mo cigarette ashes-
to-ashes symbolism, is some of his finest work.
Disc: A luscious transfer, in which the much-
copied ‘warpaint’ dressing sequence, cut to
The Shadows’ ‘Apache’, pops with lipsticked
panache. Thoughtful, in-depth extras are a
boon, especially producer Stephen Woolley’s
appraisal of the different perspective that
he’d apply to Ward today. Caton-Jones’s free
and frank interview is the plum feature.STATION SIX-SAHARA
Seth Holt; UK 1962; Network; Region B Blu-ray/Region
2 DVD (separate releases); Certificate 15; 102 minutes;
1.66:1. Extras: trailer; stills; original campaign book.
Reviewed by David Thompson
“Torrid Carroll Baker and Five Lusty Men”
promises the trailer included on this firstrelease on disc of Station Six-Sahara, until now
a film so hard to find that I once chose it as my
subject for the ‘Lost and Found’ column (S&S,
September 2011). It has also long been a favourite
of Martin Scorsese, who values its intense,
sweaty atmosphere and sense of isolation.
The setting is a remote oil station in northern
Africa, where the fraught relations between a
group of workers from disparate backgrounds
(Scotland, Middle England, Spain, Germany)
are amplified by the sudden, surreal event
of an American car crashing into their base.
Its male passenger is injured, but his partner
emerges unscathed – Carroll Baker, a worldly
wise, sexually confident young women who
effortlessly provokes the lusts of the men.
Baker was renowned for the thumb-sucking
teenage temptress she played in Elia Kazan’s
Baby Doll (1956), and Station Six-Sahara
was one of her attempts to shed this image.
Nevertheless, the film’s distributors were very
keen to promote her as playing the role of an
ultimate male fantasy. Not that the screenplay- deftly written by Bryan Forbes and Brian
Clemens, and based on a stage play – neglects to
highlight the delusional posturing of the men
surrounding her. But ultimately what overrides
the undeniable absurdities and contrivances
of the plot is the totally cinematic direction of
Seth Holt, who showed so much promise while
working for Ealing and Hammer, but whose
career was cut short by alcoholism. Holt really
knew how to build sequences and possessed a
sophisticated grasp of image and sound while
eliciting strong performances from his cast
(which includes Denholm Elliott and a superb
Ian Bannen). It’s interesting that among the
credits are producer Gene Gutowski and editor
Alastair McIntyre, both of whom were key
collaborators on Roman Polanski’s Repulsion
(1965) and Cul-de-sac (1966), films curiously
foreshadowed in Station Six-Sahara. Apparently
Buñuel was Holt’s favourite director, and
there are plenty of echoes of his work, too.
Disc: A very good transfer, but otherwise
a frustratingly threadbare release.
Sandy denizens: Peter van Eyck, Carroll Baker and Mario Adorf in Station Six-SaharaNew releases