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3:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
The Flame and the Arrow (1950 USA): Here’s a Burt Lancaster film I’ve managed to overlook for almost 50 years - probably because I’m more partial to his "contemporary" pictures (The Killers, Brute Force) than I am to his frock flicks (The Crimson Pirate, The Leopard). Though I’ve never seen The Flame and the Arrow, it caught my eye thanks to the behind camera presence of director Jacques Tourneur, a filmmaker then at the height of his powers with recent highlights such as Out of the Past (1947) and Stars in My Crown (1950) dotting his resume. Set in medieval Lombardy, the film stars Burt as Dardo Bartoli, a freedom fighter doing battle with evil Hessian occupiers whilst pitching woo to milady Anne de Hesse (Virginia Mayo). To be honest, this brief précis sounds pretty awful, but with Tourneur behind the camera, a screenplay by Waldo Salt, and Aline MacMahon and Norman Lloyd in the supporting cast, how bad it can really be? Time to find out!

3:30 AM Flix
A Shine of Rainbows (2009 IRE-CAN): Sure and begorrah, ‘tis an Irish film about rainbows! Surely there’s a leprechaun, too, and a pot o’ gold? Well...no. A Shine of Rainbows is actually a heart-warming family drama about a pre-pubescent orphan (tousle-haired John Bell) who’s getting the crap beaten out of him on a regular basis by bullies. Enter Mary Poppins - er, Maire O’Donnell (Connie Nielsen) - a woman with a heart of gold who aims to cheer up the lad and provide him with the love and support he needs to get through his rough patch. Yes, she adopts him, but a gruff new dad (Aidan Quinn) and unexpected tragedy loom in the not too distant future. It’s pretty predictable stuff, but the cast is game and I do feel obliged to occasionally recommend films suitable for the entire family.

1:00 PM Fox Movie Channel
La métamorphose des cloportes (1965 FRA): Now this is the sort of thing that really gets the ol’ heart racing. At first I didn’t believe it, but a quick trip to the Fox Movie Channel website confirms the truth: this long forgotten French feature will be screening this afternoon, and in widescreen, no less. Released in the US simply as Cloportes, it’s a very good crime comedy about a gang of smalltime hoodlums (including Charles Aznavour, Lino Ventura, and Pierre Brasseur) whose heist scheme goes awry, leading to prison time and plans for post-stir revenge. Will Fox also be treating us to a subtitled print, and are more obscure Euro treats awaiting us in the future? I’m not getting my hopes up, but La métamorphose des cloportes will keep me satisfied for now.

5:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Householder (1963 IND): I’ll happily admit to not being a big fan of Merchant-Ivory productions - they’re a little too bourgeois for my taste. However, even this dedicated philistine will make an exception for The Householder, a shot in India drama helmed by James Ivory and penned by frequent collaborator Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. It was, in fact, the very first Merchant-Ivory feature, and relates the story of the unhappy marriage of middle-class Indians Prem (Shashi Kapoor) and Indu (Leela Naidu). The conflict stems from Indu’s indifference to housework, which cheeses off Prem to the point where he summons his Mom (Durga Khote) to give his wife lessons and advice on the care and feeding of husbands. (I guess feminism had yet to arrive on the sub-continent.) It all hews pretty closely to the Merchant-Ivory template, but as The Householder came first it feels substantially fresher than their later efforts.

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