Three Films Make A Post: A gripping puzzle of pursuit and escape

The Lurking Fear (2023): I’m not enough of an optimist to expect something like a Tubi adaptation of one of Lovecraft’s worst – though also fun despite of itself – stories to be much good, even though you could arguably make a nice ninety minute piece of pulp entertainment out of the material. What we actually get in Darren Dalton’s film is a bit of mock-POV horror, followed by long, long, long sequences of characters wandering through underground tunnels, disrupted by bad make-up effects and what the film laughingly calls its plot. Add to that an inability to edit action sequences or parallel plot lines – of different character groupings wandering through those damn tunnels, so don’t get too excited – that borders on the anti-genius (the Anti-Christ’s less fun brother), and not even Robert Davi playing a bad guy wearing a ridiculous hat can do much to save this thing.

Reportage November (2022): In some aspects this fake documentary style piece of POV horror from Sweden by Carl Sundström is a bit more competently made than your usual movie about filmmakers/ghost hunters/random fools walking panicked through the woods, wielding cameras. At least, the script seems to have a basic understanding of dramatic structure, so there’s a pleasant lack of scenes where characters just fart around, and the plot progresses in a reasonable and mostly efficient manner.

Of course, the narrative still only works like the filmmakers want it to because a quartet of supposed professionals acts ridiculously unprofessional, and most of it consists of the usual tropes and clichés of your typical wood wandering POV horror movie (without the green night camera, though), with a bit of a vague conspiracy angle pasted on. It’s still watchable, which is more than I’d say about many of its peers. Plus, at least the forests are Swedish for a change.

The Odessa File (1974): Ronald Neame’s Odessa File recommends itself mainly through its very post-War sensibility, a portrayal of an early 70s Europe that still lies under the shadow of the kind of people responsible for World War II. This makes it unpleasantly topical in a Europe where the Right is on the rise yet again. And like the Nazis here, there’s still the assumption of victimhood, the pretence at culture, and so on, and so forth coming from these people. The films hits the tone of parts of particularly German post-War culture and the things it liked to hide from itself rather well, so much so that its more contrived conspiracy elements as well as its general sense of paranoia feel plausibly grounded.

As a thriller, the film’s pacing tends to be a little slow, but once it gets going, it does develop more than enough drive to satisfy. The acting, with a merry mix of German and British actors playing the Nazis, and Jon Voight pretending to be Gerrman, as well, is strong throughout. Maximilian Schell hits the note of the whiny, self-satisfied mass murderer, particularly well.

In short: St. Ives (1976)

Former crime reporter, now hapless professional writer who doesn’t get his book done and recreational gambler who can’t win, Raymond St. Ives (Charles Bronson) is hired by the eccentric rich Abner Procane (John Houseman) to work as his middle man in re-acquiring Procane’s stolen journals. Rather curiously, the thieves asked for St. Ives by name, but Procane doesn’t seem all that distrustful about it, and St. Ives acts as if this sort of thing happened to him every day. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much his reaction to everything.

Unflappability is a useful trait to have for St. Ives, too, for the handover of the money the thieves demand for Procane’s precious diaries goes very wrong indeed, and dead bodies start to pop up around our hero with a certain disturbing regularity. Instead of getting dissuaded by this minor piling up of bodies, the intense interest of dumb cops Deal (Harry Guardino) and Oller (Harris Yulin), and the friendly persuasions of his old cop friend Blunt (Dana Elcar), or by various attempts on his own life, St. Ives allows himself to be drawn into the situation further and further, teaming up with Procane, his live-in assistant Janet (Jacqueline Bisset), and his pet psychiatrist Dr. Constable (Maximilian Schell) for some rather dubious plans.

Frequent Bronson director J. Lee Thompson does his best to help the actor transition into a somewhat different persona than his usual kind, the kind of charming rogue with morals you’d find Roger Moore overplay and have turn out as an insufferable smart-ass. Bronson is certainly willing (who wouldn’t be, in his case) but I don’t think he’s actually convincing in a role that demands more smiling and a very particular kind of swagger instead of dead-eyed glaring and quite a different kind of swagger. That could have been quite a problem in a more involved film but this Ross Thomas adaptation does hold deeper human emotions at arms length for most of the time and can therefore live with the central performance that is more trying to be convincing than it is actually convincing.

In fact, part of the film’s semi-comedic charm lies in the sense of old-fashioned stylization with a big nod to Old Hollywood Thompson tries to maintain, and often manages rather successfully to build, turning the film into one giant homage to film’s of an earlier time. And, while Bronson isn’t looking too convincing with his new persona, he still is fun to watch, enough so that I think it’s a bit of shame he only got to let loose this way very seldom during the rest of his career; I wouldn’t be surprised if a few more films of pseudo-Saint shenanigans had turned Bronson into as much of a pro in this kind of role as he seems have to been in doing his usual shtick.

Be that as it may, the film at hand is a sometimes charming, sometimes very 70s, piece of old-fashioned entertainment, the sort of thing I’d call “diverting” if that did not sound quite as damning with faint praise when what it actually means is that St. Ives fulfils its function as an escapist piece of entertainment excellently, and there’s never any shame at all in that.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,j. lee thompson,charles bronson,john houseman,jacqueline bisset,maximilian schell,mystery,crime

The Deadly Affair (1966)

Shortly after intelligence officer Charles Dobbs (James Mason) interviews civil servant Samuel Fennan (Robert Flemyng) because of anonymous letters hinting at least at communist sympathies, Fennan commits suicide, supposedly driven by his talk with Dobbs. The thing is, though, Dobbs was quite convinced Fennan was perfectly innocent on anything beyond having ideals, and told him he was cleared of any suspicion of being a spy.

Dobbs is also less than happy to find his boss, The Adviser (Max Adrian), and the rest of the intelligence community all too willing to write the situation off as a suicide for which he is somewhat responsible. Particularly when Dobbs finds certain things about Fennan’s suicide as well as the behaviour of the man’s wife Elsa (Simone Signoret) do not add up as they should. Dobbs is so angry about the whole situation he even decides to step down from his position completely. At least, until he has investigated the suicide to his own satisfaction. With the help of retired copper Mendek (Harry Andrews) and his now former colleague Billy Appleby (Kenneth Haigh), Dobbs does stumble upon rather interesting facts, even while he’s living through another crisis in the marriage to his wife Ann (Harriet Andersson).

Sidney Lumet’s The Deadly Affair is actually an adaptation of John Le Carré’s first George Smiley novel, Call for the Dead. Lumet couldn’t use the Smiley character name because Le Carré sold it off together with the rights to The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, which only goes to show that copyright can get pretty bizarre. At least we got some fine films out of the situation.

Tonally, the film still is very much a Le Carré adaptation, with all the sadness, the guilt, and betrayal that suggests. Smiley/Dobbs as performed by James Mason is clearly a man who has seen and done too much already to should have any illusions left about life but who is still trying to cling to a concept of human decency, in his business life as well as in a marriage that has become painful both him and Ann for reasons they both don’t really have control over.

In fact, the film is very good at not seeking any guilty party in the rather messed-up marriage but treats Dobbs’s and Ann’s respective helplessness with compassion. As it also does treat most of its other characters, all the betrayals and hurts and crimes notwithstanding. As always in Le Carré’s world, there are possibly moral and emotional grounds worth defending, yet his characters have lost any idea of moral certainty long ago, the best of them – like Dobbs – demonstrating a tired and sad way to go about the things that they think they have to do, even if they aren’t even sure why anymore.

Lumet films this in his concentrated mode (except for one or two lame jokes I could have lived without), keeping the camera and his eye close on the actors, while subtly supporting them without showing off. The cast is rather perfect for this approach too, full as it is of middle-aged and aging men and women who all look as if life had battered them in one way or another. In some cases, this is the consequence of some really fine acting, while in other’s, like Simone Signoret’s, the role and the actor’s actual state of mind seem to be rather close; perhaps even too close for comfort. While some of the actors may be tired, their performance aren’t, though.

What The Deadly Affair isn’t – of course, given the material it is based on, but people sometimes go into films with strange expectations – is much of a spy thriller of the more outwardly exciting kind. While the film’s two action scenes are staged by Lumet with perfect and appropriate ruthlessness, this isn’t a film whose spy story is meant to provide surface thrills as much as it is meant to enable a better look at life and what it does to some people.

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,reviews,spies,sidney lumet,james mason,simone signoret,maximilian schell,harriet andersson,harry andrews