French Dressing

But actually the plot is an excuse for a series of sketches centred around the hero and heroine, with a rite of passage for both before they realise their love is more powerful than their ambitions.

She is played by newcomer Alita Naughton who is seriously cute, wearing a sailors costume and looking like a female Tadzio from Death in Venice- "the carnival is fancy dress- come as a girl". The sailors costume frequently appears in Russell films.

The film is black and white and has all of Ken Russell's eye for imagery. The editing and pace, and the good non-professional acting, are similar to Dick Lester's Beatles work.  The film was scripted as a light comedy, and the set jokes don't work, but this gives the film a charm, as two innocents share the events that unfurl around them.

James Booth (right) and Roy Kinnear, television actors, star. Alita Naughton is the newcomer. Later she appears in Ken Russell's Isadora Duncan television film. Ken met Alita when filming the documentary Watch the Birdie about photographer David Hurn, as she was then Hurn´s girlfriend.  Bryan Pringle, playing the mayor, also appears in The Boyfriend, and Sandor Elés would later appear in Isadora.

Shirley Russell is costume designer.  Cinematography Kenneth Higgins (Elgar), Editor Jack Slade. The screenplay was by Peter Brett who Russell chose because he knew him as an actor from Elgar.  Ronald Cass and Peter Myers also worked on the screenplay, as well as on the similar Summer Holiday.  Russell is credited as Kenneth Russell.

The deckchairs floating face down in the water.

Closely followed by Alita on the beach using her typewriter, framed into the entire screen.  Closely followed by the rowing boat sailing under the pier.  All highly visual scenes.

The elements water, fire, earth and air (including lightning) play a central role in the plot.

The French film star seems to escape disguised as a nun. She sits at the railway station smoking a cigarette.
There is a film within the film.

Wheelchairs and Holocaust (inflatable dolls)

Billion Dollar Brain

There is some Bergman-like close photography of faces but it comes across as pretentious.  Michael Caine plays his usual bespectacled detective/spy role without any variation.

In the sauna wearing a large fur coat he claims to be hot but he doesn't sweat. Awaking among a pile of dead bodies (the people he had partied with the night before) the feeling is of the inconvenience of crawling out rather than revulsion or sorrow.

The plot concerns a computer (predictably the billion dollar brain), eggs, taking over the world etc etc etc.   The computer will be used to help spread a virus, but not a computer virus, the old fashioned human virus.

In the credits the title is also given in digits though the number is well above a billion (even above a British billion) having 18 zeroes.  The plot meanders from London to Finland and to studio Russia and studio America. But the Finnish locations are not used well and could just as well be London.  There is a rich Texan anti-communist General Midwinter ("now is the winter of our discontent") who wants to start a revolution in Latvia. He has some of the phobias of anti-Communist General Jack Ripper from Dr Strangelove (minor actor Paul Tamarin plays in both).

The army on the move look more like a group of people starting an expensive caravan holiday, and the large cast often doesn't work: the opposite of his television work- how to make a large cast seem tiny. The coup fails when Soviet planes bomb the ice and his army sinks under the water.

	Michael Caine stars.  Francoise Dorleac co-stars. Having just completed Polanski´s Cul-de-Sac she was a rising talent but sadly died shortly after Russell's film was completed. Both Cul-de-Sac and Billion Dollar Brain feature an island which is accessible by land, either when the tide is out, or over the ice.  Dorleac is the sister of Catherine Deneuve, who appeared in Polanski´s previous film Repulsion.
	The then unknown Donald Sutherland plays the computer expert. His only line is "What's going on?".  He appeared alongside Caine in Hamlet three years before.

Russell regulars Vladek Sheybal (Boyfriend, The Debussy Film etc), Alexei Jawdokimov (Isadora, The Music Lovers) and Iza Teller (Christina Rosetti in Dante´s Inferno, as well as Isadora and The Devils) have minor roles.  Stanley Caine (Michael's brother) has an appearance.  Cinematography Billy Williams, Editor Alan Osbiston.  The writer is John McGrath who also wrote Russell's Diary of a Nobody. It is based on Len Deighton´s novel. In the novel the girl is younger "she ran across the airport like a newly born antelope unsteady on its legs".  Original music is by film and classical composer Richard Rodney Bennett.  The piano is especially effective.  A Beatles song, A Hard Days Night, is also used, one of the few occasions a Beatles song has been used in a film.  Copyright restrictions and costs may have caused difficulties in re-releasing the film.

Michael Caine traps an intruder who has just picked up a packet of Corn Flakes. "Put your hands up": as he does so the cereals from the corn flake packet fall slowly to the ground.  But the scene is a bit too forced.

Caine squares up to the burly soldier who strips for a fight, but it turns out he is only stripping for a shower.

The horsemen emerging from a haze in the white snow is similar to Dr Zhivago.
Russian sailors wear their "Death in Venice" sailor costumes.
A record in Harry Palmer's room is the music of Berlioz, more the choice of Russell than Palmer. The Russian commander meets Palmer at a performance of Shostakovich's Leningrad symphony.
There are numerous train journeys including a steam train.

The computers are similar to those in Fritz Lang's Metropolis (above).
The elements play a role, with fireballs dropping from the sky, and ice turning to water.

The holocaust imagery of the dead bodies in the bath.
There is a film within the film.