Bequest to the Nation (1973)

          It’s not accurate to say that making historical dramas insulates filmmakers from bad reviews, but it’s obvious that critics sometimes tread gingerly when analyzing posh costume pieces laden with unquestionable thematic weight—one never wishes to find oneself in the position of denigrating a piece for mustiness only to later learn that the piece has earned high marks for illuminating some chapter of the past with which the critic was previously unfamiliar. Conversely, occasional overcompensation is a factor, hence the dismaying tendency of some reviewers to dismiss all historical dramas as cheap ploys for accolades. These realities help contextualize Bequest to the Nation, which was made in the UK and released in America as The Nelson Affair. Despite somewhat lurid subject matter, the picture ticks many familiar costume-drama boxes, from high-wattage casting to lofty dialogue, so it’s plainly catnip for the Masterpiece Theater crowd.

          That does not mean, however, that it’s entirely a stuffed-shirt sort of a picture. Thanks largely to Glenda Jackson’s gleefully overwrought performance, Bequest to the Nation is entertaining and even a bit crass. Moreover, it’s only peripherally a history lesson, since the focus of the narrative is an unusual love story. In sum, Bequest to the Nation neither wholly ratifies nor wholly undercuts presumptions associated with its genre, so giving this one a fair shake requires close inspection. Revisiting historical episodes previously depicted in the Vivien Leigh/Laurence Olivier picture That Hamilton Woman (1941), Bequest to the Nation explores the relationship between Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson (Peter Finch), England’s greatest naval commander of the Napoleonic era, and his extramarital lover, Lady Hamilton (Jackson). Despite considerable scandal, Lord Nelson abandoned his wife and took up residence with Lady Hamilton, granting her a sort of title by default even though she was common.

          At the apex of England’s sea battles with Napoleon’s forces, according to the script by Terence Rattigan (who adapted his own play), Lord Nelson withdrew from military service for an extended idyll with Lady Hamilton because she had grown weary of waiting to hear whether Lord Nelson had died in battle. A duel over Lord Nelson’s soul ensues, with Lady Hamilton arguing for civilian life while a sense of duty to country gnaws at Lord Nelson’s conscience. Woven into the narrative is the question of what status Lord Nelson might be able to offer Lady Hamilton should he die in combat, since she doesn’t have the protection of marriage. As is the norm for most films adapted from plays, Bequest to the Nation is intimate and talky, but effectively so; Finch and costars including Michael Jayston and Anthony Quayle speak beautifully, lending the piece old-fashioned luster, while Jackson achieves something closer to alchemy, blending insouciance, wickedness, and vulnerability into a persuasive characterization.

          Although the dialogue tends toward the pretentious (“England has no need of a saint at this point in history, Master Matcham, but they have great need of a hero”), posh cinematography and scoring by, respectively, Gerry Fisher and Michel Legrand, helps the film unfold smoothly. Better still, the piece concludes on a suite of poignant notes rendered vividly by Jackson. Thus it’s wrong to reject Bequest to the Nation out of hand as some safe museum piece, because it’s made of tougher stuff than that, and yet the idiom of the film has the familiar rigidity of entertainment aspiring to literary heft. The ferociousness with which Jackson channels her character’s vulgarity ameliorates the picture’s most off-putting impulses.

Bequest to the Nation: GROOVY

1980 Week: The Ninth Configuration

          Scary, strange, surreal, and yet also very funny at times, the offbeat drama/thriller The Ninth Configuration marked the directorial debut of William Peter Blatty, the Oscar-winning novelist and screenwriter of The Exorcist (1973). Blending themes of madness and militarism with a narrative setup suitable for some old-fashioned haunted-house shocker, Blatty adapted the movie from his 1978 novel of the same name, which was in turn extrapolated from one of his earlier books, the 1966 novel Twinkle, Twinkle, “Killer” Kane! Employing an exceptional group of actors, some of whom reconvened for Blatty’s only other directorial endeavor—the underrated sequel The Exorcist III (1990)—The Ninth Configuration uses humor and terror to weave a bizarre tapestry of existentialism, spirituality, and violence. Superficially, it’s about psychiatry, space travel, and Vietnam, and there’s even room for a bar brawl. The Ninth Configuration doesn’t always work, because some scenes are confusing, and because parsing what the whole thing means once it’s over is challenging. Nonetheless, this is a unique piece of work from a wildly creative individual unafraid to tackle the heaviest of subject matter.

          Set in the Pacific Northeast, the picture takes place in a castle that the U.S. government has repurposed as an asylum. (If you’re already have trouble buying that outlandish notion, this movie is not for you.) One stormy night, a fierce-looking Marine officer named Colonel Kane (Stacy Keach) arrives to join the psychiatric staff at the facility. He encounters a spectrum of bizarre patients. Major Namimak (Moses Gunn) dresses like Superman and believes he has extraordinary powers. Lieutenant Reno (Jason Miller) fancies himself a theater director as he oversees rehearsals for a production of Hamlet featuring dogs instead of humans. The sensitive Captain Cutshaw (Scott Wilson) trained to be an astronaut until he had a nervous breakdown just before takeoff for his moon shot. And so on.

          In its wildest scenes, The Ninth Configuration features the tightly wound Kane walking through the corridors of the castle with absurd behavior happening all around him, suggesting the idea of an emotionally vulnerable individual grasping for pieces of sanity in a world gone mad. The man responsible for all of the chaos is Colonel Fell (Ed Flanders), the facility’s chief administrator, who believes letting patients act out fantasies helps the healing process. Another nuance? Fell and Kane are tasked with determining which patients are genuinely ill and which are faking to avoid military service. Yet the most explosive X factor in this fraught environment is Kane, whose frightening capacity for rage has surprising connections to an ugly battlefield incident in the past.

          Working with the great British cinematographer Gerry Fisher, whose images mesh intimacy with grandiosity in clever ways, Blatty generates a one-of-a-kind feel. Since anything can happen, owing to the lunatics-running-the-asylum milieu, The Ninth Configuration is consistently surprising even though it’s rarely believable—or, to be more precise, even though it’s rarely believable in terms of logic. On an emotional level, the movie connects big-time, especially because the acting is so robust. Keach’s signature intensity has terrifying power. Wilson reveals heartbreaking vulnerability. Flanders, Gunn, Miller, Neville Brand, Robert Loggia, Joe Spinell, and others populate the hospital with wounded souls distinguished by amusing eccentricities and/or poignant psychological wounds. Does it all spin out of control toward the end? Somewhat. But does Blatty create dozens of unique moments that radiate beauty and pain and wonderment along the way? Absolutely.

          FYI, the picture was released into theaters twice, once as The Ninth Configuration and once as Twinkle, Twinkle Killer Kane. Although it flopped both times, subsequent exhibition on home video and television has earned the picture well-deserved status as a minor cult classic.

The Ninth Configuration: GROOVY

Juggernaut (1974)

          It’s tempting to lump Juggernaut in with the various disaster epics of the early ’70s, and, indeed, the movie is quite enjoyable if consumed as a thinking-person’s alternative to the campy escapism of, say, Irwin Allen’s mayhem-filled productions. Yet in addition to being a British film instead of a Hollywood picture, Juggernaut is really a terrorism thriller rather than a proper oh-the-humanity destruco-fest. For instance, the tragedy that the film’s heroes attempt to overcome is not a natural occurrence such as an earthquake or a tidal wave—it’s a bomb planted on an ocean liner. Accordingly, Juggernaut eschews the standard disaster-movie formula of introducing various characters whom the audience knows will later fall victim to capricious fate. The movie focuses almost exclusively on bomb-squad technicians and maritime officials.

          Set largely aboard the cruise liner Britannic, the picture begins when an unseen terrorist who identifies himself as Juggernaut makes phone contact with ship’s owner, Porter (Ian Holm). Juggernaut says he’s rigged the Britannic to blow unless he’s paid a hefty ransom. Soon afterward, the British government sends in a bomb squad led by the intrepid Fallon (Richard Harris). The rest of the film comprises parallel storylines—Fallon’s attempts to find and defuse bombs (turns out there’s more than just one), and endeavors by a police detective (Anthony Hopkins) to find Juggernaut’s hideout on the mainland. There’s a good deal of tension in Juggernaut, so even if you feel as if you’ve seen a million “Cut the blue wire!” scenes before, the care with which director Richard Lester executes the suspenseful passages is visible in every claustrophobic close-up and every nerve-rattling edit. Lester, though best known for his exuberant Beatles movies and his lusty Musketeers pictures, apparently joined Juggernaut late in the project’s development and then supervised a heavy rewrite. It’s therefore unsurprising that the final film is very much a director’s piece, with characterization and story taking a backseat to pacing and texture. Perhaps because of this focus on cinematic technique, Juggernaut is excellent on a moment-to-moment basis, but not especially memorable overall.

          That said, the movie promises nothing more than a good romp, and it delivers exactly that. Contained within its fleeting frames, however, is fine acting by a number of posh UK actors. In particular, Harris and David Hemmings have strong chemistry as bomb-squad teammates, with both actors articulating believable characterizations of men who face unimaginable stress in the course of their daily activities. The picture’s production values are exemplary, and the cinematography and music—by British stalwarts Gerry Fisher and Ken Thorne, respectively—contribute to the overall intensity and polish of the piece.

Juggernaut: GROOVY

See No Evil (1971)

For the most part, actress Mia Farrow avoided the thriller genre after starring in Rosemary’s Baby (1968), perhaps because she knew no subsequent shocker was likely to reach the heights of that Roman Polanski-directed classic. And sure enough, when one examines the two outright horror flicks Farrow made during the ’70s, Rosemary’s Baby only grows in stature by comparison. The latter of the two pictures, The Haunting of Julia (1977), is an atmospheric but tedious psychodrama about a woman tormented by the experience of losing a child. The earlier of the two pictures, See No Evil, is a trite riff on Wait Until Dark, the 1966 play and 1967 movie about a blind woman terrorized by a murderous assailant. Yet while Wait Until Dark has a solid story and thrilling jolts, See No Evil spends 89 repetitive minutes mindlessly exploiting the gimmick of a victim unable to sense nearby danger. And because Farrow’s performance is mediocre—her melodramatic gestures and over-the-top whimpering exacerbate the shortcomings of an underwritten role—the only strength of the picture is the imaginative cinematography by ace British DP Gerry Fisher. Fisher’s camera rides along the floors of spaces to spotlight objects lying in Farrow’s path, and peers around corners to peek at things Farrow can merely detect by sound; these flourishes lend a small measure of dynamism. As for the story, Farrow plays Sarah, a young woman living in the English countryside with her aunt and uncle. Sarah recently lost her sight in a horse-riding accident, so while she seems psychologically adjusted to her change of life, she’s still physically awkward. Therefore, when a killer slaughters Sarah’s relatives while she’s away, it takes our heroine a while to notice the bodies. And then, of course, the killer returns to reclaim a bracelet he lost during his crime spree—cue scenes of Sarah trying to escape the house undetected, et cetera. See No Evil takes forever to get started, and the plot is painfully predictable. Nonetheless, Fisher (and director Richard Fleischer) pump as much life as they can into silly scenes of Farrow cowering and fleeing and lurking—although it should be noted, with the proper degree of scorn, that the storyline relies on ugly stereotypes of gypsies as roving bands of criminals.

See No Evil: FUNKY

Man in the Wilderness (1971)

          The opening sequence of this strange Western is striking and memorable: A large expedition of fur trappers treks through the rugged American frontier, dragging a giant ship on wheels, the sea vessel’s towering mast dominating the skyline like a crucifix. Things only get weirder from there, and luckily for adventurous viewers, robust actors Richard Harris and John Huston deliver over-the-top performances that suit the bizarre material. Huston plays the expedition’s villainous leader, Captain Filmore Henry, an obsessed adventurer with a tentative grasp on reality and an almost utter lack of morality. With his black wardrobe, lanky frame, and phlegmatic voice, Huston personifies Captain Henry as a vision of sickly death. Harris is Zachary Bass, one of the captain’s trackers. Venturing away from the group at one point, Bass gets mauled by a bear, so Captain Henry orders him left for dead.

          Man in the Wilderness gets trippy after this turn of events, because vast wordless swaths of the movie depict Bass crawling through the woods as he tries to rebuild his strength, drifting in and out of delirious flashbacks all the while. This material exists somewhere on the border between fascinating and interminable, because Harris’ solo scenes are so repetitive and uneventful that at a certain point viewers become as disoriented as the character. Adding to the offbeat nature of the film are interludes of the expedition as it moves on from the site of Bass’ presumed demise; the superstitious trappers get the idea that Bass’ spirit is haunting them, so they guard the wheeled boat in shifts, waiting for some awful apparition to strike at them from the darkness of the forest. Huston goes to town in these sequences, depicting Captain Henry’s decline into guilt-ridden paranoia with gusto. By the time these two extreme characters reunite for their inevitable confrontation, Bass’ desire for revenge has, to a certain degree, become the audience’s desire as well.

          Harris spent much of the ’70s making violent Westerns about characters enduring horrible abuse, and Man in the Wilderness is the most surreal flick of the batch, which is saying something. The actor’s gift for portraying intense physicality makes the picture watchable in a masochistic sort of way, because his evocation of pain and suffering is excruciatingly vivid. With a characteristic lack of restraint, Harris plays to the cheap seats in every scene, even when he’s facedown in sludge, and that, too, adds to the effect: Harris seems like such a powerful force that it’s believable his character could survive an extraordinary ordeal. Therefore, despite the monotony and weirdness, the movie can’t be dismissed because of the fiery performances and because of the lushly textured widescreen images created by British cinematographer Gerry Fisher.

Man in the Wilderness: FREAKY