Welcome to Day Twelve, the final day of the Camp & Cult Blogathon! Don’t forget to read the submissions here on the main page. If you have one to submit today, please email me or comment here, and it will go up later tonight.

Thanks go out to so many of you for the terrific submissions, great comments, retweets, participation, and general revelry during this really, really long blogathon. It has been an amazing time, and I hope you’ve had as much fun as I have.

***

For my final entry, I hope you will forgive me for submitting a short post. My acromioclavicular joints are madly protesting these twelve long days of typing and won’t allow me to do much today.

But that is probably for the best, since I have very little to say about Modesty Blaise (1966) that has not been said before. A terrific run-down of the film can be found at Cult Movie Reviews here, and it is highly recommended reading.

Monica Vitti is Modesty Blaise, fabulous international spy-slash-jewel thief. She is hired by Sir Gerald Terrant (Harry Andrews) of the British government — I think, but I’m not sure, for reasons I’ll explain momentarily — to make sure £50 million in diamonds gets to the proper Middle Eastern sheik in exchange for oil reserves. Modesty warns them that if she is not told the full story about the diamonds and the plans to rob them en route, she will consider herself a free agent and steal the diamonds for herself. Thus begins a strange series of events that are part spy spoof, part random stream of consciousness events, and partly based on the long-running comic strip begun in 1963.

Something that this ‘thon has solidified for me is that a film can be as crazy, stupid, strange, inept or dull as possible, but as long as there is a cohesive internal theme running throughout, I will forgive a lot. A lot. For instance, Sh! The Octopus is one strange damn movie, irritating on all fronts, but the finale explains the entire film and thus redeems it for me. You’ll Find Out sticks to its really silly guns for the entire film; Where Love Has Gone insists upon being trashy for every second of its run time. Meanwhile, Lace only dreams of being as trashy as WLHG, Island of Doomed Men simply can’t keep its focus for even a short run time, and Modesty Blaise, similarly, jumps all over the place like a bad Vaudeville act. You don’t like that joke? I got another, and another, and another, and eventually you will laugh.

Truth be told, you probably won’t. The plot is obviously secondary, which is why it’s impossible to know why the British government hired Blaise in the first place. They keep important information from her and try to send her on pointless errands in the same way they try to fool the actual thief, Gabriel (a tremendous Dirk Bogarde). Maybe they want to keep an eye on her in case she steals the diamonds, or maybe they were hoping to fool her into helping, or perhaps knew she could get the diamonds to the Middle Eastern powers they want to have them because she knows Arabian royalty.

It’s all unclear, which would be fine if the action or if the satire was worth watching on its own. There are times when Modesty Blaise is truly playful and fun, mostly when Dirk Bogarde and Rossella Falk are on screen, but so often it’s just inexplicable. For instance, the humor intended in the scene where Modesty sneaks into her sometimes-boyfriend’s apartment is completely unfocused. It’s impossible to tell if she’s there to spy on him because she believes he’s working for the government that is trying to trick her — and of course we have no idea why they would be anyway — or if she thinks he’s after the diamonds too, or what. There’s a moment where he thinks she’s an ex-girlfriend of another name, and it’s possible Modesty was once in disguise as that other woman, but what does it mean? Was he previously in a relationship with both Modesty and her alter ego? Or did he just find out he was dating Modesty the whole time and never knew?

Scilla Gabel, Lex Schoorel,  Rossella Falk, Joseph Losey, Monica Vitti, Dirk Bogarde, Tina Aumont

The biggest question, though, is why the viewer should care. There has to be a reason to care about Modesty and her antics, but when a character has no actual character to relate to, it kills audience interest. Modesty in the film is whatever the filmmakers wanted her to be at that moment. If bumbling seemed funny, then they made her bumbling. If hyper-intelligent was funnier, then that’s what she was. That said, I wondered often if Vitti’s obvious disinterest (or inability) to pull off the more gymnastic action scenes was responsible for her seeming to be so bumbling.

Joseph Losey, responsible for films such as Boom! and Secret Ceremony (1968), These Are the Damned (1963), and The Boy With the Green Hair (1948) knows how to craft a film. But imagine a film made up entirely of the slower, unfocused parts of Boom! and Secret Ceremony, with added forced wackiness and a hint of stunt casting, and you’ll have Modesty Blaise.

***

That’s it for the official SBBN contributions to the ‘thon! I’ll be back with a final wrap-up post on Saturday. Meanwhile, it’s not too late to get your own submissions in! Any posts I receive today will go up later this afternoon and evening.

Welcome to Day Eleven of the Camp & Cult Blogathon! Tomorrow is the last day, so if you have any submissions, make sure to get them in soon. I do accept late submissions, though not too late. Don’t show up in 2013 hoping to be added to the list, is all I’m saying. The master list of submissions is here, with new posts added every day.

***

Joanna is a film I first saw on Encore nearly 20 years ago, back when the channel was my go-to place for old films. Truly, while TCM has been my self-inflicted Master’s degree in filmology and filmonomy, Encore was my undergraduate degree, and of the amazing 1960s and 1970s films I saw, Joanna was probably the most influential. But it had been twenty years and I quite honestly didn’t realize how much of this film I carried with me, how many moments in this film informed my own viewing, completely unconsciously of course, never quite remembering when or how I first saw a certain tracking shot or specific editing technique.

Because it was so hard to find, I didn’t know how influential Joanna was for me until I saw it again tonight, a full two decades after it last showed on Encore. Now, I watched it whenever it was on for those few months, as Encore had a habit of repeating shows several times. That explains why, to this day, the theme song from the finale of Joanna will get stuck in my head, often at random times but most especially if I hear the word “Cinemascope.”

The opening of the film is black and white, turning to color when Joanna arrives on a train. The same technique would be used in Sarne’s Myra Breckinridge on the DVD restoration, which was discussed extensively by Marc at The Projector Has Been Drinking in a wonderful post for the Camp & Cult ‘Thon.

As you can see from the title screen, the aspect ratio is not quite accurate. Some of the left side is missing, which shows in the long-focus shots with action on the far left edge and in the credits. After years of not being able to find this anywhere, I got the recent “Flipside” version from the UK, which comes with both DVD and Blu-Ray. This article states it is the theatrical release aspect ratio, but I’m not convinced; it does accurately note the density fluctuation, which is prominent in many scenes. Areas that look like they were damaged during a pan-and-scan transfer still remain, too. This print, however, is the best you’re going to get, and it comes with two of Sarne’s early shorts including Road to Saint-Tropez with Udo Keir. I mean, c’mon man. UDO. Also the extremely rare Death May Be Your Santa Claus. The full release is discussed here at BritMovie. Why don’t you own this already?

The IMDb — and lord knows where they got this, but it’s the plot most people are going to see when they look this film up — is “A provincial girl is entangled in the mod morality of London,” but that’s not really what it’s about. Joanna is about modern life in its way, of course, the modern life in the world of 1968, but Sarne has the wonderful ability to focus on the bits of life that transcend eras, that are common at any time in the history of humanity, and if you’re willing to look past the fashions and the makeup these themes become unmistakeable.

Joanna was quite influential in cinematic circles. In it you can see the seeds of Pennies From Heaven, both the original UK miniseries and the later Steve Martin version. My beloved Cleavon Little unquestionably channels Calvin Lockhart’s character Gordon for Sheriff Bart, and the film anticipates by several years the trend toward 1920s and 1930s nostalgia that hit its peak in the 1970s. Michael Sarne’s direct referencing of classic Hollywood film stars mirrors the homage and imitation from La Nouvelle Vague, but with a more vicious edge, basically praising the image of old Hollywood by deconstructing it to the point of destruction and re-forming it into a 1968 context. It rids these images of much of their sentimentality, and truly, I don’t think one could ethically indulge in a sentimentality of 1930s Hollywood while also exploring the issue of race in the 1968 Western culture; at the very least, waxing nostalgic over unmodified 1930s films and all that they represent — including base, undiluted racism — would undermine the relationship between Joanna and Gordon in this film.

Both Fellini and the New Wave were obviously influential on Sarne, especially in his dedication to a non-linear narrative. The conceit of showing a flashback to something a few moments before, sometimes maybe only 15 seconds prior, is interesting and it grounds Joanna’s intent, but by explaining Joanna’s thoughts so literally there is a loss of ambiguity. That narrows the perspective of the film and cuts off viewer interpretation in a way that I’m not entirely sold on, however.

Michael Sarne is clearly quite knowledgeable about cinema but also loves them, which isn’t always true of those who know a lot of about film. His love of films is also a love of filmmaking, which is quite evident throughout. There is a terrific sequence early on where Joanna is seen in a dark sage green jacket and white jumpsuit, walking away from her art class and telling her friend she doesn’t know where she’s going.

As she skips off, her clothes begin to match her surroundings completely, the green of the plants the same green as her jacket, the white of the walls the white of her shorts. She wanders into a friend’s studio, with the railings the same green and the walls the same white. Joanna meets new people, all having details of their wardrobes the very same shade of green. It’s absolutely delightful, drawing all characters together while visually acknowledging the shallow, surface relationships these people are forming during these scenes.

One can’t discount that the color coordination of outfits is not some sly metaphor for the color-coded society Sarne explores in Joanna. The title character (played by Geneviève Waïte) is an 18-year-old in London to attend art school. She’s not particularly appealing, being selfish and rude and naive and greedy, but she gets away with it like pretty much every ultra mod beauty in the Swinging Sixties did — by being adorable and willing to hop into bed with anyone.

The fourth wall is broken frequently, and the iconic images of classic Hollywood films are literally papered over much of the background.

Joanna meets up with Beryl (Glenna Forster Jones) and her brother Gordon (uber-dreamy Calvin Lockhart), who both know Lord Peter Sanderson (an amazing Donald Sutherland). Sanderson takes his girlfriend Beryl, Joanna and her boyfriend Dom on a trip to the tropics, spending his copious funds to treat others to a fun time and have as much fun as he can before his unspecified illness eventually kills him.

Throughout the film, Joanna finds herself in a series of inappropriate relationships, being hit and insulted and destroying marriages almost daily. She finally finds her true love in Gordon, and after a series of events straight out of a gangster-themed pre-code, she loses Gordon and is forced to grow up. There are larger themes of social hypocrisy, as well as exploration of Joanna’s deep neuroses.

What I’ve noticed in a lot of reviews is that her dream/daydream sequences are taken as literal, or as just random shots inserted by a confused Sarne, though they are obviously comedically Freudian dreams and I fail to see how that isn’t easily recognizable. When she’s threatened by Beryl she daydreams about having the black woman as her servant; when she’s rebelling against Daddy she dreams of finding him mostly dead but still with enough strength to beat her. When real life with Gordon starts to mirror her fantasy daydreams of a better, more glamorous past, she finally finds the world she wants to live in.

That’s not to say there are no faults to this film, because there is a lack of focus and a desire to be as candy-coated and ultra mod as possible. Take this series of shots, beginning with Sanderson, Beryl, Joanna and Dom having lunch, then a transition shot of the nearby sea, then the three friends later that day discussing whether Sanderson is ill or not:

Beautiful, saturated colors, lovely composition, probably some of the nicest cinematic shots of a glistening sea I’ve ever seen. Yet the acting in these scenes in some of the weakest in the film, almost as though a script malfunction required an impromptu ad lib from actors completely unable to meet the challenge.

Even the most ardent Michael Sarne fan — and I include myself, given my undying love for Myra Breckinridge — must admit that there is precious little context for the social commentary he strives for, and that the story of a flighty art student’s sexual escapades needs more than earnestness to become a full-fledged film. Still, for anyone who can get past Joanna‘s questionable reputation and not be distracted by Waite’s generous selection of wiglets, it’s more than worthwhile.