Deadfall

It's a shame this movie was such a failure, because subsequently one of the greatest 60's film scores I've ever heard has been buried along with it. John Barry has never done finer work, and even appears on-camera to conduct one of the brilliant pieces he composed. If you ever get a chance to see this film on TV, and you get bored by it, just leave the sound on. You'll get quite a treat.

Henry Stuart Clarke (Michael Caine) is a cat burglar who has his work down to a fine art. While under cover in a retreat for recovering alcoholics, he is approached by an alluring woman Fé Moreau who has a proposition for him, he's suspicious but agrees to meet her aging husband, Richard,(Eric Portman)himself a professional burglar who is now struggling to pull off the big jobs due to his age. Together they agree to pull off a seemingly impossible heist. Derided on its initial release, Forbes' film is nonetheless an interesting if slow film, especially if you like films of its ilk, its also beautifully filmed and makes wonderful use of the stunning Spanish setting, it also has a memorable score by the great John

After spending most of the sixties specialising in low-keyed black & white slices of life this marked Bryan Forbes' chance to provide a slice of cake. The package of Michael Caine (sans glasses) playing a dashing jewel thief against a backdrop of glamorous Spanish locations with a score by John Barry obviously made it easy to get backing. Just so you get the message it also has a credit sequence complete with a song by Shirley Bassey.

Although the heist itself delivers the goods, the principals spend far too much time languidly talking (and talking) about their emotions. Vladek Sheybal (also a Bond veteran) offers an unsettling cameo as a psychiatrist (who manages to give hitherto unsuspected menace to the single word "ma-ssage"); while in addition to the inevitable Nanette Newman - at one point briefly seen snogging David Buck to Barry's theme from 'Beat Girl' - Giovanni Ralli and Eric Portman (in his last film) are memorably poisonous as Caine's partners in crime.

After seeing this, I could be persuaded why Caine's is so well known for making dud decisions as to the choice of his films. While comparisons are inevitably made with the earlier and strictly played for laughs Gambit, this is a thief movie with no humour whatsoever and as the film progresses from intrigue to jealousy, and then from drudgery to death.

Overdirected? Most critics say so, but in the main, this was one of the aspects I most liked about the film. An early scene where Caine talks to the a youthful Leonard Rossiter can be noted for the lack of any shot of them both together in conversation. Others however, are sheer melodrama and should never have made it to the final cut.

Interesting for early Caine fans only, as thereafter the attractiveness fades and only the director, Bryan Forbes, nice man as he is, can really be left to carry the can, so to speak. Speeding to a climax which is just plain odd, the film rather leaves too much detail unexplained. While it appears easy to fill in the gaps, not enough time elapses between the final revelations and the dramatic close, to believe that not one of the characters could have really thought sensibly about all of this, and therefore not taken such drastic actions. Bewildering though not without charm.

Bryan Forbes wrote and directed 'Deadfall' quite late into his acting/directing career, and managed to make a strange yet compelling film, with an interesting cast and two fabulous pieces of music, a guitar concerto and a moody song for Shirley Bassey to sing over the opening credits.

I'm not saying that this film doesn't have its faults. It does. The whole sexuality angle is handled clumsily and could have been much better. Forbes has the tendency to overdo the extreme close-up, and clearly is more at home with odd angles, photographing at strange perspective, and so on, then he is with moving this jewel heist film plot along.

Michael Caine doesn't really make that much of an impression, more or less sulking his way through the picture. Much better is Eric Portman as the ageing jewel thief with a murky past, although I'm not 100% sure he was the best person for the role. However, there are three scenes which are particularly impressive - the break-in and the orchestral concert, shots of both interlinked, and a long time to have a film going with just music and no dialogue; the interlinking between the love scene between Henry and Fe, and Richard reading up on Henry, alone in his lonely house; and the final scene between Richard and Fe, which is very well done on the part of both actors. There's other good photography, notably the end sequences and any sequence Nanette Newman sidles her way through.

I liked it. A bit on the pretentious side, maybe, but I wouldn't dismiss it entirely.