Catching Up With Susannah York, ‘the Blue-Eyed Beauty’ of ‘Swinging London,’ at Metrograph

As befits the Metrograph’s status as a proud outpost of a dying breed — that is to say, an independent movie house — the venue established on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 2016 is given to a healthy catholicity of taste in its scheduling of films. There’s no telling what might pop up on a given day. The highbrow jostles against the lowbrow, the foreign butts heads with the domestic, and the marginal flirts with the mainstream. No one will be happy about all of the programming, but everyone is bound to find something they love. “Also Starring … Susannah York” only goes to emphasize the venue’s idiosyncratic nature. I mean, how many people at this point remember Susannah York (1939-2011)? I daresay heterosexual men of a certain age hold fond memories of the British actress. Was she, as the Metrograph’s blurb states, “the blue-eyed beauty … of sexy, sultry Swinging London”? With her luminous skin, lithe frame, and beaming smile, York cut a distinctive figure.York achieved fame as Sophie Western, the primary love interest in “Tom Jones” (1963), director Tony Richardson’s adaptation of the 18th-century novel by Henry Fielding. She garnered significant notice as Cecily Koertner in “Freud: The Secret Passion” (1962) — yes, that’s a real title — and was nominated as Best Supporting Actress for “They Shoot Horses Don’t They?” (1969). Adept at both drama and comedy, York was, over the long haul, not as discerning in her choices of roles as a fan might have hoped.The Metrograph confirms this with its current run of films. Unlike recent series devoted to Karen Black and Pam Grier, “Also Starring … Susannah York” is a hodgepodge of right-ons and near-misses. Yes, it does feature “Tom Jones,” but where is the caper film co-starring Warren Beatty, “Kaleidoscope” (1966), or the British television production of “Jane Eyre” (1970) in which York played the title character against George C. Scott’s Edward Rochester? “The Silent Partner” (1978), a Canadian thriller that delivered on a tagline that read “comedy … sex … terror,” is also missed.Instead, New Yorkers will have to put up with “Sands of the Kalahari” (1965), a hairy-chested clunker that channels “Lord of the Flies” and presages “Planet of the Apes.” Not only does York have to endure the blazing African sun and a disgruntled troop of baboons, but she falls in love — again, I’m not making this up — with Brian O’Brien (Stuart Whitman), a pathological big-game hunter who spends the better part of two hours roaming the deserts with a gun, a frown, and less clothes than any man over 30 should venture outside in.More interesting is “The Maids” (1975), an adaptation of the 1947 play by Jean Genet. Although director Christopher Miles engages in some choppy post-Godardian editing and sweeping camera movements, the film never escapes an inherent staginess — which is kind of the point. “The Maids” was one of a series of films made by the American Film Theater, a short-lived organization that presented limited runs of notable plays “translated” for the big screen.“The Maids” recalls the story of Christine and Léa Papin, French domestics who murdered their employer’s wife and daughter in 1933. The Parisian intellectual elite took an interest in the case as it was emblematic, don’t you know, of the continuing class struggle. The deeds of the two sisters corresponded to Genet’s tendency for employing perversity as a conduit for artistic provocation.I’ll leave it to historians of sensationalist murders and the theater to discern just how faithful the film is to its sources, but “The Maids” is kind of wild — not as cinema, mind you, but as an exercise in affectation. As adapted by Robert Enders and Christopher Miles, the picture revels in its nose-thumbing conflation of incest, lesbianism, masochism, and privilege, all the while allowing York and co-star Glenda Jackson to ham things up in a grand manner.“The Maids” won’t be to everyone’s taste, and one suspects its revival at the Metrograph is due to how neatly it dovetails with currents in contemporary culture. The same can’t be said about “Tunes of Glory” (1960), a drama about the Scottish military and York’s debut picture. Although no less an authority than Alfred Hitchcock claimed it as “one of the best films ever made,” others were less enthusiastic, noting the film’s absence of anything even remotely tawdry. Cinephiles requiring that low standard are recommended, of course, to the exuberant mess that is “Tom Jones.” York is splendid in it, which is, for many of us, recommendation enough.

Catching Up With Susannah York, ‘the Blue-Eyed Beauty’ of ‘Swinging London,’ at Metrograph

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