I'm reviewing what got onto my tape after Pontecorvo's KAPO ended. I'm a half hour into this 1967 Alexander Mackendrick film set in Malibu, the last outing for the director (who went on to live a quarter century longer. Why so abrupt a cinematic stop?) with a very small but select filmography, seemingly at home wherever this born Bostonian landed from Ealing in London (THE LADYKILLERS) to Jamaica (HIGH WIND IN...) to Broadway (SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS).

I'd always heard this was a puzzling aberration, premature senility and too much booze setting in, so I'd avoided it (mid sixties Tony Curtis was another warning sign). I shouldn't have. So far, it's an odd but very agreeable mix of fifties sex farce, sixties beach movie, Southern California seen with a documentarist's eye, and a variation on THE GREAT IMPOSTER (also starring Curtis and semi-remade as CATCH ME IF YOU CAN)

The cast doesn't hurt either. Claudia Cardinale is at her loveliest, and she's speaking her own Italian and English, something that can't be said of her Italian films of the time. Sharon Tate is Sharon Tate, beach girl quintessence. Robert Webber's proficient as always, but his estranged hubby Joanna Barnes is better than that, a sort of real life Doris Day type. And Curtis is really at his best, allowed to do his Cary Grant-suave act to maximal mystification after minimal introduction. We meet him as a seemingly countercultural type named Carlo (possibly? what's really real here is always open to question), apparently an on the road novelist sideswiped into penury and manuscriptlessness within five minutes by Claudia. This being amazingly restorative L.A., he instantly reinvents himself and proceeds to insinuate his way into every nook and cranny of power and whatever counts for culture out here. And the Byrds and Vic Mizzy duke it out on the soundtrack!

It's pretty funny too. What an odd blend. Any background info on this production, anyone?

Ah, DON'T MAKE WAVES! I was wondering if anyone else here was a fan; I was considering reviewing this one as one of my "underrated/yet to DVD" films for the board.

Leonard Maltin calls it "the one gem among 9 million bad Tony Curtis comedies" and I agree with him, and with your assessment. It is very funny, and we have quite the eclectic cast: Mort Sahl, Jim and Henny Backus as themselves (!), Dave "Mr. Universe" Draper (also seen in LORD LOVE A DUCK the year before, which is even wackier) and of course, the late Sharon Tate in probably her best big-screen role.

This was Mackendrink's last film, as you state. He reportedly went into teaching the following year, and did have a few aborted attempts at directing another film that never came to fruition. I can't recall which university, but he reportedly was teaching full time. He was 55 at the time DON'T MAKE WAVES came out.

I caught this on the late show about 20 years ago, and taped it with commercials. I checked out about half of it last night after I came home, and found it as funny as I remembered. I prefer it to THE GREAT IMPOSTER, which was a little too watered down for my taste.

Curtis' films in between CAPTAIN NEWMAN and THE BOSTON STRANGLER are mostly dismal, with two exceptions: this one and BOEING BOEING, in which he and an atypical Jerry Lewis (he's much less manic than usual) star in one of those sixties sex comedies that they just don't make anymore. If you're a LOVE THAT BOB fan, you'd love that one.

HCH

It is an interesting and amusing film, particularly the whole last part, in the collapsing beach house. Everything in it seems to come from out of left field. [And I also recorded KAPO.]

The circumstances leading up to Mackendrick's retirement from filmmaking are described here by his wife:

The lost queen

Additional information about his later years is furnished here:

Mackendrick: On Film-making

Fascinating. That puts his life story into a whole other light, a four acter successfully fulfilled (CalArts where he ended up is L.A.'s single greatest avant garde invention, incidentally; I'd love to know more about his impact on the alumni and alumna there he served); and a fifth act as pedagogue in print, the total film artist, partially enacted. I look forward to his collected writings. His facility with the pen for graphic art and storyboarding is attested to by the wonderful sketches you linked.

Is someone undertaking a critical study or bio of this very interesting maverick director?

Philip Kemp's critical study LETHAL INNOCENCE: THE CINEMA OF ALEXANDER MAC KENDRICK was published in 1991; Amazon lists a couple of used copies for sale. I don't know if anyone's working on one now.

According to Amazon, an American edition of ON FILM-MAKING is to be published in August.

A documentary by Paul Cronin on Mackendrick-as-teacher was shown at this year's Edinburgh Film Festival:

Mackendrick on film

A decent thumbnail bio can be found on the BFI website:

Mackendrick, Alexander

In the book MY FIRST MOVIE (a collection of interviews with established directors about their debut films), James Mangold, who attended Cal Arts has some interesting things to say about Mackendrick - Mangold had him as a mentor.