timothylmayer

In The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl, Daniele Gaubert showed she had the acting ability to go with her sultry looks. Released a year before Camille 2000 made her an international sensation, Cat Girl is the one movie she should be remembered for. It was also released right around the same time as Mario Bava's quirky Danger Diabolik!, which you can see from the same face mask both anti-heroes wear. The title is a little strange: the original French title was La Louve Solitaire, which roughly translates as Lone Wolf in English or, to be accurate, The Solitary She Wolf. I'm guessing some advertising maven went with the sensationalist title for the American Dive-In circuit.

The film begins with a burglary. A masked thief steals into a country Chalet and rips off the toff owners of the place while they are throwing a party. When said burglar pulls off the mask, it is revealed to be Françoise Tilmont (Gaubert) a real estate agent by day and cat burglar by night. She uses the knowledge gained from showing off posh estates to snobs as a means to case the joints. But Ms. Tilmont's second story work has attracted the attention of the wrong people in high places: two government officials who need a clandestine operative to break-up a drug smuggling ring. They find out about Ms. Tilmont and decide she's perfect for the job.

The government officials who recruit her team the cat girl up with Bruno (Michel Duchaussoy), a minor functionary who has another gift they desperately need: lip reading. Bruno lost his hearing in a bomb explosion at an early age, but got it back a few years previously while skin diving. However, he learned how to lip read while he was deaf. The plan is to put Françoise and Bruno in a hotel room across from the office the drug dealers use. Bruno can lip read what is going on across the street and, when the moment arrives, Françoise can scale into the office building and grab all the evidence the government officials need to put the crooks behind bars.

But the plan goes out of control. In the few days Bruno and Françoise are together, they develop feelings for each other. This doesn't compromise the mission, but it complicates it. Because when the entire operation spins out of control, Bruno and Françoise are willing to sacrifice everything for each other.

I had to play the sequence where Bruno and Françoise are together in the hotel room over several times to understand what was going on between the two. There's a lot of dialogue, which made me grateful for the dubbed English version I watched. It's subtle, but obvious. Something has changed in their working relationship. But when Françoise walks into the room wearing Bruno's shirt, there's no doubt. It was still 1968 and filmmakers found it pertinent to exercises a little caution as far as sexual relations on screen were concerned. The key to understanding what transpired is buried in the dialogue. Earlier in the film, after Françoise has been recruited by the government, she's seen leaving a nightclub in the early morning with her clueless date. As they approach her car, Françoise's date makes a comment as to how "making love in the morning can prevent wrinkles". After Bruno and Françoise have been working on the case he enters her room quietly in the morning with a breakfast tray. It's not hard to fill in the blanks beyond that.

I should also point out I'm basing everything off the English dubbing, which can be less than precise. For instance, when Bruno is about to see Françoise off on her mission, he gently strokes her ninja mask, kisses her on the forehead and says something. In the English dub, it gets translated as "Pussyfoot". What? I went back and played the French dialogue through several times until I could understand what he really said. Turns out it's "Fe garrie", which is an idiomatic French term meaning "Take care." Essentially, he's asking her to be careful.

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The influences of Cat Girl extend far and wide. The composer would later write the memorable score for Love Story. I'm sure it inspired Luc Besson, who has made his career with movies about Girls Who Kick Butt, but are tender on the inside. I see a lot of it in La Femme Nakita and The Fifth Element.

On another level, Cat Girl is every comic book nerd's fantasy woman. Françoise drives a nondescript Minicooper with a white top when she's in her Sister Jekyll mode, but switches to a cherry red Dodge Firebird for her nighttime activities. In one scene, where she ditches her dull date, Françoise drives the mini into an elevator and comes out driving the Firebird. Holy fuel injection, Batman! Bruno is a minor functionary in the French foreign service who gets recalled from Istanbul to utilize his talents. He's the nowhere man who finally gets his big chance with the striking athletic Amazon. And he charms her: "How do you look so beautiful in the morning?"

But in the end the cat woman remains very much alone. An anomaly in a world that has no use for her other than the occasional suicide mission. If anything this movie made me want to read the novels the character was based upon. But they're only available in French, dammit. http://www.z7hq.com/pulp/golden-claws-cat-girl-1968.php

The Yin and Yang of Mr. Go has the distinction of being the only feature-length film directed by Burgess Meredith. It also has the distinction of being the only spy movie narrated by the Buddha. From the introduction:

"During the fifth moon of the year 5000 B. C. Chun Li Chu'an discovered the Elixir of Life and invented the power of transmutation.

Chu'an was the chief of the eight immortals.

This power was lost in the 10th century B. C.- some say through vanity and rediscovered by Gautama Buddha in the 6th century before Christ.

Buddha has never again lost the secret but uses it sparingly and only at certain cycles of time.

The cycle is during the fifth moon of each 50th year.

Should the course of human events need changing, Buddha sends a beam of light from his inner eye and it strikes just one human being. Whatever that human being is doing, he or she does just the opposite.

Sometimes the great Buddha himself is amused at the results."

The esteemed British actor James Mason plays Y.Y. Go, a man of Chinese and Mexican ancestry who works as an influence peddler in Hong Kong. "We exist in the vacuum between enemy nations", he later mentions. The first scene has him undergoing acupuncture therapy from Burgess Meredith. Meredith, best remembered as the arch-villain Penguin in the original Batman TV series, plays "Dolphin", a traditional medical herbalist who, although obviously Caucasian, dresses in Chinese robes. Mr. Go asks Dolphin to arrange his funeral.

We next see Mr. Go in the presence of a recovering American scientist. The scientist (Peter Lind Hayes) was rescued by Mr. Go's minions after the plane he was traveling in was shot down over mainland China. Mr. Go wants to buy the scientist's anti-ballistic missile laser system. The scientist refuses, but Mr. Go has some information on the scientist he will later use.

And then there's Jeff Bridges in one of his first film roles. He plays an expatriate American, Nero Fitzgerald, slumming and living off his Chinese girlfriend, Tah-ling (Irene Tsu). It's not said how she makes her money, but a sex work is implied. To get some cash to support his writing aspirations, Nero goes to see Mr. Go. Mr. Go has a job for him: pay a visit to the scientist with the laser weapon. The scientist likes young guys. With the um evidence of Nero and the scientist tryst on film, Mr. Go has no trouble getting what he wants from the scientist

But the American government isn't taking all this back action without doing something. The director of the CIA, played by mega- heavy Broderick Crawford, dispatches a top-secret agent to prevent the laser weapon from falling into the wrong hands. Their agent, Leo Zimmerman, is played by famous Irish stage actor Jack MacGowan. He's been selected for his James Joyce knowledge. You see, bohemian Nero is a JJ fan and has an encyclopedic knowledge of everything the great man has ever written. When agent Zimmerman hits the soil of Hong Kong, he makes his way to the nearest location of Nero and the two head off into the night spouting Joycean lines.

But, as he is "the embodiment of pure evil", Mr. Go has decided that Nero and his lady friend have become a problem that needs solving. While he arranges for Tah-ling to be kidnapped by Zelda, an enemy agent with her own designs on the laser weapon, Mr. Go takes Nero for a helicopter ride. While another henchman levels a gun on Nero, Go tells the young man how he and his lady friend know too much. "It's a great story,"Nero sobs."Too bad I won't be able to write about it."

And then the Buddha intervenes….

I've watched this movie several times. As another commentator has noted, you find something new in it each time. There's the joy in watching James Mason deliver his lines flawlessly while in character. Burgess Meredith hams it up all he can, leading the bad guys on a chase through Hong Kong at one point. Jeff Bridges is busy channeling his inner "dude". And Irene Tsu is mighty pleasing to look at, but she can also create the most vulnerable expressions when needed. And the music: it's a light breezy pop score similar to what the 5th Dimension was producing at the time.

I just can't figure out how much of the final movie was director Burgess Meredith's original idea and how much the producers added to the final film. Or took away. It has a wonderful ending where everyone gets what they want. James Mason plays the villain to perfection: a bad guy who doesn't see himself as such. Meredith would later disown the movie and claim little remained of his ideas. The scenes with the CIA director and the narration by The Buddha appear to have been added by the producers.

Another problem with film is the pathetic condition of the source print. I doubt very many copies were struck when the movie was first released. It wasn't released in the US until 1973 and supposedly by National General Pictures, a holding copy which closed down the same year. The print from which most video and digital copies have been sourced looks washed-out and faded. Not every film gets the library of congress archival treatment. Perhaps a decent copy or negative will surface someday.

In the meantime, you can find the movie on the Internet or in budget DVD. It's no President's Analyst, but Yin and Yang of Mr. Go is far better than I had expected. It was produced toward the end of the spy movie craze of the 60's, when producers where looking for different ways to keep the genre relevant. I can think of few other existentialist spy movies. http://www.z7hq.com/pulp/ying-yang-mr-go-1970.php