La blonde de la station 6

Only got to view this Film by accident as it followed another Film whose conclusion I was viewing, so frankly my finger was always hovering next to the Switch-Off Button but something held me there, you really couldn't quite figure out what it was all about but you constantly felt that something was going to happen but you had no idea what. So full marks to the Script-Writers, Brian Clemens and Bryan Forbes, and the splendid acting from all the Crew including, of course, the ever delightful Carroll Baker, but my personal favourites were Denholm Elliott as Ex-Major Macey and Peter Van Eyck as The Sahara Desert Oil Station Boss, Mr. Kramer. The feeling of foreboding I had throughout this Film is exemplified by the ending, it is Shocking, Grim, and emotionally draining, in the tradition of those Half-Hour shows that Robert Stephenson used to put on for Alfred Hitchcock, so give it a go and stick with it, the story-line might seem off the planet, but the Script, the Acting, and the Plot will leave you reeling, shocked, and I suspect very much lost for words, at the end. Banality, Mundaneness, Drudgery, Loneliness, and Frustration analysed to an entirely New Level in the Film.

A quite wonderful discovery. Intelligent and involving with well drawn characters and everybody performing well with precise direction, brilliant editing and exciting musical score from Ron Grainger. This fascinates from the very start and explodes when Carroll Baker bursts upon the scene. Based upon a play by Frenchman Jean Maret with a screenplay by Bryan Forbes and Brian Clemens this smoulders like crazy and contains one of Baker's finest performances.

So tensions build at a lonely oil pump station in the middle of the Sahara where the men steal or buy dirty postcards and love letters while the more handsome among them fight over poker when a car wreck brings in Catherine Starr and her injured husband, Jimmy, who she's trying to split up with. Kramer and Martin become rivals for her love in some steamy scenes. Jimmy's revenge is a spectacle to behold. But really, what do 5 men have to work on living by an oil pump? Mostly any broads they can talk into meeting them there, I guess. Bryan Forbes directed one of his best early works and one less re-edited with a more coherent plot. Baker is at her dramatic best also. It's interesting that the ex-husband who crashes the car is named Jimmy and Catherine Starr is played by Baker, who made a lot of films in Europe during the sixties where her car crashes. James Dean, her co-star in Giant, died in a car crash, too. The trauma of losing him haunted many people long after his death.

This film begins with a young man named "Martin" (Hansjörg Felmy) being driven to a remote oil pumping station in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Upon arriving he is then gradually introduced to the other members of the small team with which he will spend his time every day and night. As one might expect this small group of men have their own personalities with two of them, "Fletcher" (Ian Bannen) and "Macey" (Denholm Elliott) constantly at odds with one another. But it isn't until a beautiful young woman by the name of "Catherine" (Carroll Baker) accidentally arrives that these personalities come out in the worst way possible. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a very good film which captures the loneliness of men cutoff from society and forced to endure each other's company in a remarkable manner. Likewise, having such an attractive actress like Carroll Baker certainly didn't hurt this film in anyway either. In short, although not a great film necessarily, it was still quite interesting and I have rated it accordingly. Above average.

Jean Martet's title for his play ' Men Without a Past ' is much better than the film's title, as we know next to nothing about the five men trapped in a contract to be in a Sahara outpost. Isolated in the wilderness of sand they tease and torment themselves playing games for money, and one of them a speciality in mental cruelty ' buys ' a letter from one of them giving a month's pay for it, then teases its impulsive seller with its possibly incriminating ( sexual ? ) content, not revealing who sent it. These scenes were the highlight of the film, and the visible and often spoken about need for female company. This does arrive in a bus of three prostitutes to satisfy them, and clearly these women go from outpost to outpost. Most of this happens in the first 50 minutes in the film, and the breakdown tension between the men in their own particular interior cells of isolation is finely acted and the film excellently directed by Seth Holt. Sadly I thought the arrival of Carroll Baker, superb though she is as an actor, fell into the usual female among too many men scenario and the poor ending played out as a variation of Fritz Lang's version of Zola's ' La Bete Humaine ' called ' Human Desire ' ( an underrated film, better in my opinion than the Jean Renoir version. ) The cast were uniformly excellent with Peter Van Eyck standing out as the so-called tough commander of the rest, using his power over the others so as to perversely conceal his inner pain. Carroll Baker fell into too many stereotypes of heterosexual fantasy for my taste, playing the morally ' loose ' woman who deserves punishment and consequently the last half of the film, after her literally accidental arrival, drifts into melodrama. The pure drama of the first brilliant half dissipated because of this, and so did my interest.