Category: Drama

Categories
Action/Adventure Mystery/Noir Drama

Gun Crazy

The excellent film Trumbo includes a colorful performance by John Goodman as the real-life raffish independent movie producer Frank King. King and his brothers (whose real family name was Kozinsky) were never respected by Establishment Hollywood but were daring in way the big studio suits were not. In what at first might have been an effort to move into prestige pictures, they purchased the rights to a story by MacKinlay Kantor, who had written the source material for the massively popular and Oscar-laden 1947 classic The Best Years of Our Lives. But Kantor proved unable to turn his story into a solid screenplay, leading the King Brothers to fall back on their common practice of secretly using blacklisted writers, in this case a prison-bound Dalton Trumbo. He turned Kantor’s draft script into the sexually-charged and violent cinematic miracle that is 1950’s Gun Crazy.

The plot: Bart Tare (John Dall) has been gun-obsessed from boyhood, which eventually lands him in reform school after he can’t resist committing a smash and grab robbery of a gun shop. After a tour in the army, where he thrives as a firearms instructor, he visits a travelling circus and is enthralled by the trick shooting show of the alluring Annie Starr (Peggy Cummins). Mutually besotted, they run away together, quickly burning through all of Bart’s savings. Annie suggests they turn their formidable skills to a career in armed robbery. Bart is scared someone will get hurt…Annie, not so much. But he can’t say no to her, leading to a Bonnie and Clyde-esque crime spree with shattering consequences.

In my recommendation of My Name is Julia Ross, I noted how that film’s 12-day shooting schedule was actually a luxury for Poverty Row veteran Joseph Lewis. Imagine how happy he must have been to have a whole month to direct this movie on a budget almost a third as big as a typical Hollywood film! He coached his compelling lead actors to express, as much as one could in 1950, wanton hunger for each other as well as, in Cummins’ case, a nearly orgasmic delight in violence.

Lewis and cinematographer Russell Harlan pursue a breathless, arresting style throughout this film. This includes, among other inspired camera placements, a deservedly legendary extended take with the camera in the back seat as the lovers commit and flee a bank robbery. As the audience, we are pulled along with the criminals by a fast-moving stream of images, wanting to pause for breath but afraid to let them out of our sight. It’s tough competition, but shot for shot, Gun Crazy ranks with the most visually stunning works in film noir history.

The story’s evolution and resolution turns on an implicit question: why are the two characters fundamentally different in their morals, despite their shared fascination with firearms? The early scenes of the film suggest that while Bart appears never to have had a relationship with his parents, he was at least raised by a loving older sister (Anabel Shaw) and had two childhood friends (Harry Lewis and Nedrick Young). Annie’s backstory is never told, leaving the audience to wonder if even that little love is more than she ever experienced on this earth. The movie never makes this femme fatale explain or justify her motivations, and in film noir that’s a feature, not a bug.

p.s. The black beret Faye Dunaway wears in another of my recommendations, Bonnie and Clyde, is a tribute to Gun Crazy by director Arthur Penn.

Categories
British Drama

A Night to Remember

The story of the Titanic is so well-known today (not least due to James Cameron’s mega-budget mega-hit 1997 movie) that the The Onion could run the headline “World’s largest metaphor hits iceberg” confident that everyone would get the joke. But the modern cultural obsession with Titanic goes back less than 70 years. The liner’s sinking was worldwide news in 1912, but two world wars and four decades later, it had faded in popular memory. This changed in 1955, when a virtually unknown advertising copywriter named Walter Lord published a riveting minute by minute account of the disaster based on historical archives and interviews with survivors. A Night to Remember quickly became an international best-seller and has never been out of print since. Producer William MacQuitty, who had seen the launch of the mighty ship as a child, knew an opportunity when he saw it, and with input from Lord made one of the greatest films in British cinema history, 1958’s A Night to Remember.

This would normally be the part of the review where I summarize the plot, but that would be supererogatory here. How the story unfolds in the excellent script by Eric Ambler (who also wrote the script for another of my seagoing recommendations, The Cruel Sea) is however worthy of description. Setting the template for countless subsequent disaster films, the movie intersplices the main event with small moments of human drama, brilliantly carried off by an army of British actors under the direction of Ray Ward Baker, who never rose to a greater height.

Kenneth More, perhaps Britain’s biggest movie star at the time, convincingly leads a matchless cast as the resourceful, brave, and dutiful Second Officer Lightoller (who was like most of the characters in this docudrama film, was a real person). I also admired Laurence Naismith’s turn as the captain of the doomed ship, particularly how much emotion and thought he conveys without words. Of the character parts, John Merivale as Robbie Lucas saying goodbye to his wife Liz (Honor Blackman) and their little children with false assurances that he will see them ripped my heart out. Another unforgettable moment: Ronald Allen leading fellow working class passengers from steerage in a desperate run for the boats until all of them stop in their tracks, dazzled by the sight of the opulent first-class dining room.

Of course a movie like this needs visual spectacle to work, and a Night to Remember is a huge success on that front. The budget was well-spent on lavish, realistic sets, including some that tilted with such convincing groans from their machinery that these sounds were left in the film to convey the heaving of the ship. The special effects are out of date of course, but still credible. And Geoffrey Unsworth, soon to become one of Britain’s most respected cinematographers, is in fine form (I have highlighted his other work here, here, and here) N.B. Be sure to see the Criterion Collection restored version and not one of the battered prints that circulated for decades.

A Night to Remember was a hit in Britain, but didn’t draw much of an audience in the United States, perhaps because it’s so very British in sensibility and also because it gave the American passengers little attention (the most visible being the Unsinkable Molly Brown, who is played by Tucker McGuire mainly as comic relief). But its critical reception was very warm indeed and it is today justly appreciated internationally as a cinematic masterwork.

p.s. Trivia for spy film fans: this film is packed with future espionage stars including Blackman (The Avengers and Goldfinger), David McCallum (The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) and no less than 4 men who went on to play Q in James Bond films.

Categories
Drama

The Rapture

For decades, Hollywood movies that took Christianity seriously were nearly guaranteed to make money and to receive reverent reviews as well (sometimes deservedly so, e.g., Black Narcissus, Song of Bernadette). But in our more secular age, they often divide audiences and critics. Ebert and Siskel exemplified the split when they reviewed the 1991 film The Rapture. The former put it on his 10 best films of the year list, while the latter said he considered it “more preachy than provocative”. I am much more inclined to Ebert’s view of Michael Tolkin’s directorial debut.

The film opens with an evocative shot of a bevy of telephone operators who looked caged in their cubicles as they near-mindlessly answer request after request for directory assistance. One of them is named Sharon (none of the film’s characters have a last name). Sharon’s (Mimi Rogers) dreary daytime existence stands in sharp contrast to her nights, which she spends cruising hotels for group sex with her friend Vic (Patrick Bachau). One of the men she encounters, Randy, (a then little known David Duchovny) takes an enduring interest in her and they start to share their regrets and hopes.

Meanwhile, Sharon becomes aware of coworkers who, unlike her, seem happy, and learns they are involved in a religious community that dreams (literally) of the coming rapture in which the faithful will be raised to heaven. In a superbly executed scene, two door-knocking Christians also begin to shake her lack of faith. Like Augustine, she abandons her sexually wanton ways and begins praying and worshipping until she too is convinced that the end of the world is nigh. This precedes further astounding plot developments that you will turn over in your mind long after the final credits roll.

Tolkin has made a challenging movie that is absolutely not for all tastes, but I admire his courage for unflinchingly following a theme out to its conclusion. This is not an evangelical film: Tolkin portrays what it would it mean if people who believe a certain theology are in fact correct, but he neither endorses nor condemns it. His dialogue is searching and at times even searing as his characters struggle with what life means, whether God exists, and if so what he expects of humanity. His film weakens a bit in its unique concluding act, which was almost inevitable given his limited budget, but overall this is one of the most impressive debuts by a writer-director in recent decades.

Mimi Rogers deservedly received universal acclaim for her no holds barred performance. She is by turns sensual, sad, yearning, inspiring, frightening, damaged, and defiant. Taking the role of Sharon was a big risk and it pays off artistically in an Oscar-caliber performance. Sadly, it did not pay off in terms of box office receipts or wider recognition that she is much more than just another Hollywood sex bomb.

To return to where I began, let me close this review by quoting Roger Ebert: “Movies are often so timid. They try so little, and are content with small achievements. The Rapture is an imperfect and sometimes enraging film, but it challenges us with the biggest idea it can think of, the notion that our individual human lives do have actual meaning on the plane of the infinite.”

p.s. Tolkin also wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay of another of my recommendations, Deep Cover.

Categories
British Drama

Brideshead Revisited

I ventured that Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy is the best thing the BBC has ever put on television. If asked the same question for ITV, on most days I would plump for the 1981 mini-series Brideshead Revisited.

As everyone knows – or should know – the story is based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Evelyn Waugh. The plot is a series of recollections by Charles Ryder of his long, complicated, and life-changing relationship with a Catholic, aristocratic family who are the heriditary owners of a magnificant house and estate known as Brideshead. In the early 1920s, Charles (Jeremy Irons) is charmed by his eccentric, rich, and gorgeous Oxford classmate Lord Sebastian Flyte (Anthony Andrews). Despite their differences in religion and social class, an intimate friendship blossoms, to the point that Charles is eventually almost adopted into Sebastian’s family at Brideshead, which includes his glamorous sister Julia (Diana Quick).

But as the years roll by, Sebastian and Charles’ friendship founders on the former’s self-hatred, resentment of his family, and growing addiction to alcohol. Charles is pained by the loss of closeness with Sebastian, but comforted when Julia steps in to replace it. All of this unfolds as the country is enduring two tumultuous decades when old certanties were overturned and traditional hierarchies undermined.

All three leads sparkle throughout this sweeping series. Remarkably, Irons was originally cast as Sebastian, but agreed to switch roles at Andrews’ request. Their skills as actors is such that it’s now impossible to imagine the casting any other way. Remarkably, due to a technician’s strike bringing ITV to a halt in the middle of making the series, the original director (Michael Lindsay-Hogg) had to be replaced by Charles Sturridge, yet the acting and tone do not miss a beat across those episodes.

Appropriately for a multi-generational story, the cast includes leading lights of a prior era. Laurence Olivier appears as Lord Marchmain, though he isn’t given a great deal to do. Two other famous performers light up the proceedings much more. John Gielgud is both hilarious and a bit terrifying as Charles’ waspish father, who knows how to effortlessly and mercilessly inflict a withering remark. Claire Bloom (last seen on these pages in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold) is also quite effective as Lady Marchmane, the family matriarch. Bloom’s is a rich characterization, mixing virtues and vanities as she grapples with the decline of her son’s health, her religion, and her family’s fortunes.

The less-familiar cast members also sparkle, including Simon Jones as the stuffy family heir “Bridey”, Phoebe Nicholls as the compassionate youngest child Cordelia, and Nickolas Grace in an endearingly campy turn as Charles and Sebastian’s flamboyant friend Anthony Blanche.

Producer Derek Granger and his team at Granada Television also hit it for six with peerless sets, clothing, cars, makeup artistry, and locations. Geoffrey Burgon’s regal yet wistful baroque theme music is another asset.

What, in the end, is this 13-hour wonder about? Certainly more than one thing. In some respects it’s a nostalgic toff-a-logue like Downtown Abbey (except that it’s good). If you want sympathy for working people you will not find it here: the only mention of labor rights is when Charles helps put down a strike. The mini-series is also an exploration of Catholic life in Protestant-dominated England as well as a compelling narrative of how families change over time in response to marriages, deaths, and historical events.

Most of all, I consider Brideshead Revisited a story about friendship. You can read a pile of critical debates about whether Charles and Sebastian are lovers and indeed the series itself invites such discussion: a dance hall prostitute calls them gay and Lord Marchmain’s mistress (Stéphane Audran) delivers a speech about the English tradition of romantic but not sexual relationships between men. But it doesn’t in my opinion matter, because Irons and Andrews are so sympathetic and believeable as they illuminate how the friendships we make when we are young form and how they change us and then change themselves. And Quick dancing in and around their friendship while managing her love for both men feels utterly real.

Even with this longer than usual review, I really haven’t done complete justice to Brideshead Revisited. If you watch it yourself you will see more things to appreciate than I could cover here, and understand why it remains one of the most respected and beloved shows in British television history.

p.s. Were I asked what else in ITV’s history might compete for the top spot with Brideshead Revisited, I would include the superb mini-series Anthony Andrews starred in just before it: Danger UXB.

Categories
Comedy Drama

The Matador

Because James Bond is one of the world’s most long-running and successful film franchises, any actor who essays agent 007 is to at least some extent stuck with the image for the rest of his career. Of all the ways to cope with this, Pierce Brosnan’s is my favorite: Playing parts that riff on the famous role. In The Tailor of Panama — a film I really must write a recommendation of someday — Brosnan gave a dark, sleazy, and unsentimental portrayal of the life of a foreign espionage agent (as you would expect in a John le Carré story). Even more fun is his brilliantly bizarre turn as a down at the heels hitman in writer/director Richard Shepard’s 2005 film, The Matador.

The plot: Two men who are on the surface completely different meet at bar in Mexico City. Danny Wright (Greg Kinnear) is a straight-laced, boring American suburbanite businessman whereas Julian Noble (Brosnan) is a once-dashing but now scruffy, dissolute contract killer whose only hobbies are visiting prostitutes and alcoholism. Yet both are similar in their desperation. Danny is still grieving the loss of his son, his marriage to his high school sweetheart (Hope Davis, perfect in a small but important part) is stressed, and this business trip is make or break for him financially. Julian, after years of globe-trotting wet work, is mentally and physically shaky, emotionally isolated from other people and himself, and losing the confidence of his boss Mr. Randy (Philip Baker Hall, good as ever). At first the men connect, but at a critical moment in the conversation (and arguably the critical moment of the film) Danny shows some vulnerability and Julian proves himself incapable of responding in a humane fashion. Danny stalks off and our story would seem at an end…but there’s so much more to come with these two characters which it would be a sin to spoil.

If Brosnan has to argue for his place in heaven, I would suggest he make his case with his portrayal of Julian Noble. At one level, he’s a terrifyingly cold killing machine. But simultaneously, he’s like a socially rejected school kid trying but failing to form a genuine human connection with anyone else. When he visits the Wrights’ home and sees how in love the couple is, he is visibly unable to understand what they experience together. But rather than conveying resentment or rivalry, Brosnan looks like a puppy who’s just been adopted from the pound.

Brosnan’s role is the showier of the lead parts, but don’t make the mistake of overlooking how effective Kinnear is here, in some ways also twisting his own screen image for comic and dramatic effect. He’s particularly good at bringing across the ambivalence we feel when we drive by a horrible traffic accident: We know it’s wrong to stare but we desperately want to…that’s his relationship with Julian in a nutshell.

The Matador is also a outstanding-looking movie. Along with top-flight work by cinematographer David Tattersall, the production and set designers outdo themselves across a range of eye-catching locations around the world.

Richard Shepard mainly works in television, and this is the first of his movies I have seen. Viewers might argue about whether Shepard is going mainly for black comedy, off-kilter drama, or character study here, but regardless of where you come down on that, you should agree that he’s created an utterly original movie and secured superb performances from his cast including career-best work from ex-Bond Pierce Brosnan.

Categories
Drama

Shattered Glass

Before Johann Hari, before Jayson Blair, there was a journalistic fraud named Stephen Glass who conned readers and fellow journalists at multiple respected outlets, most notably The New Republic. Buzz Bissinger wrote an sterling account of Glass’ rise and fall for Vanity Fair magazine which writer/director Billy Ray subsequently translated to the screen in 2003: Shattered Glass.

The plot: Stephen Glass (Hayden Christensen) is the hottest staff writer at The New Republic as well as a frequent contributor to many other respected outlets. Glass’ interpersonal manner is humble — even obsequious — as well as ingratiating to the point of seeming desperate to please. His editor Mike Kelly (Hank Azaria) and his fellow writers, including his friend Caitlin Avey (based on journalist Hanna Rosin and played by Chloë Sevingy) are all under his spell, with the exception of another writer, Chuck Lane (Peter Sarsgaard), who becomes the editor when Kelly is fired. Things almost immediately start to come undone as Lane grows suspicious when a rival publication finds holes in Glass’ latest story. Glass scrambles to offer evidence in his defense, while also trying to turn the staff against Lane for not backing him up. Superb journalistic drama ensues.

Of the many things to appreciate in this movie, most people will fixate on Christensen’s tremendously jittery, whiny, scheming portrayal of Glass. But in the less showy leading role, Sarsgaard matches Christensen step for step as an ethical person who is slowly disabused of his expectation that his colleague has anything like the same values. Azaria, Sevigny and Steve Zahn are also solid in supporting roles.

The overriding triumph is Ray’s both for getting such strong performances from his cast and also for maintaining pace and tension in a story largely composed of journalists having conversations with each other. Ray uses each lie, each seeming exposure, and each subsequent lie which starts the cycle again as the engine of the drama, and it works very well, as does the internal dynamic within the magazine’s staff over whom everyone will ultimately believe (the only weakness of the script was that the final scene wrapped that storyline up a bit abruptly, but it’s still a strong close).

Sadly, this fine movie did not do well at the box office. But it deservedly wowed the critics. Having seen it when it came out and again 20 years later, I consider it one of the great films about journalism, as well as an intriguing character study of a creative but destructive person.

p.s. The film leaves open the question of whether Glass was simply a pathetic, needy person who wanted approval so much that he lied compulsively to get it, or, a calculating sociopath who took delight in fooling those around him. If you want more insight into the answer, Glass’s interview years after the scandal is must see.

p.p.s. If you are wondering what happened to Jonathan Chait, Glass’ friend and colleague at TNR, Ray turned him into a female character named Amy Brand (played by Melanie Lynskey) for the movie.

Categories
Drama

The Little Foxes

It’s challenging to engage moviegoers in stories in which most of the characters are awful people. Even directorial talents like Mike Nichols and Martin Scorsese can’t consistently pull it off. But it’s a superlative cinematic experience when it works, as evidenced by William Wyler’s 1941 classic The Little Foxes.

The plot: As the 20th century dawns in the Deep South, the Hubbard clan are scheming to entice a Chicago businessman to enrich them by building a cotton mill in their town (“lowest wages in the country!”). But they are already squabbling about the division of their investment and the profits thereof. Brothers Ben (Charles Dingle) and Oscar (Carl Benton Reid) already have money inherited from their father, while their sister Regina (Bette Davis) is financially dependent on her wealthy, ailing, and unloved husband Horace (Herbert Marshall). Oscar is also in a loveless, transactional marriage with his gentle, browbeaten wife Birdie (Patricia Collinge), whom he married solely to gain control of her family’s plantation. And Oscar has more cold-hearted plans, namely to have his wastrel son Leo (Dan Duryea) marry Horace and Regina’s sweet-natured daughter Alexandra (Teresa Wright) to gain control of Horace’s money when he dies. Genteel nastiness and double crosses ensue.

Lillian Hellman’s literary reputation has declined significantly over time, as evidence has mounted that she lied so often that she makes Johann Hari look honest. But her Little Foxes largely holds up today, both as a play and a movie. In addition to some quotable lines (most of them delivered acidly by Davis) Hellman is particularly acute at portraying the different ways that women react to oppression. Birdie responds to her husband’s exploitation and denigration of her by becoming fragile and alcohol-addicted, whereas Regina reacts to being cut out of her father’s will by becoming ruthless and avaricious. The story shows that despite her flaws, Regina’s not unsympathetic in that, had she been male, she would have inherited some of her father’s estate and not need to manipulate and battle men to survive.

On the other hand, the deferent Black servants of the Hubbard family are all flatly drawn. Hellman’s script thus doesn’t extend compassion to those underfoot across racial lines.

Made up as deathly pale, Davis delivers one of her career-defining performances. Most of the movie’s cast came from the stage version, but Tallulah Bankhead was replaced as Regina by Davis due to the latter being seen as a bigger box office draw. Davis’ Regina is tougher and nastier than Bankhead’s apparently was, and is a joy for her many fans. The rest of the cast also sparkle, particularly Dingle and Collinge.

Early in his legendary career, William Wyler had to make movies quickly and on the cheap (He directed 19 films in 1927!), but with growing reputation and budgets he transformed into the meticulous “40-take Wyler”. His actors — certainly including Davis who fought him throughout this production– were sometimes exasperated. But they also knew that their best performances were likely to emerge under his direction.

Wyler’s craft is evident here not only in the sterling performances by the entire cast, but also in the blocking and staging of each scene. Most directors direct the viewers’ gaze to a particularly point, but Wyler was comfortable with audiences choosing where to look. Sometimes the most interesting actor to watch in a Wyler film is the one who isn’t speaking (no wonder an incorrigible scene stealer like Davis put up with him).

Of course all that marvelous blocking and staging and opportunities to choose where to direct your eyes work enormously better because of Gregg Toland being behind the camera. In another of my recommendations, The Bishop’s Wife, I analyzed how deep focus opened up new possibilities in film beginning in the 1940s. That reality is even more on display here. The set is so, well, deep, with Hubbards huddling and repositioning themselves physically just as they are doing so emotionally and tactically throughout this delightfully vicious family drama.

Categories
British Drama Mystery/Noir

This is Personal: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper

It’s challenging to make compelling movies about crimes when almost everyone knows the culprit and many of the facts of the case from the beginning. Yet ITV and producer Jeff Pope took the risk in the aughts to make a trilogy of docudrama miniseries about notorious British murders, with great success. The first has the clunkiest title, but it’s aces in every other respect: This is Personal: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper.

The plot is based on the multi-year effort to catch Peter Sutcliffe, a serial killer who attacked his female victims with bestial ferocity in the late 1970s. Unlike many movies of this genre, there is almost no focus on the killer. Instead, we see the reaction of the community (including the then-rising women’s movement, the families of victims, and the countless women who lived in fear) and even moreso the political, emotional, and practical demands on the police and how they handled and mishandled them in an environment of institutitional sexism and intense political pressure. And as in the real case, the police have to struggle whether the taunting letters and cassette tapes they keep receiving from “Wearside Jack” are from the killer or are a cruel hoax.

Viewers suckled on Dixon of Dock Green-style cinema and television will find the conduct of the police here unbelievable, but every blunder happened in the real case. Unlike carmelized portrayals of old-style British policing, Neil McKay’s script is unsparing about the lack of professionalism and lack of capacity that was widespread before some major reforms (some of which were inspired by the Yorkshire Ripper case). Most notably, the lack of computerization meant all leads were kept on a mountain of index cards that literally came close to collapsing the floor of the building, and vital connections between pieces of evidence were missed (in real life, Sutcliffe was interviewed by police 9 times before his was caught). Equally disturbing: the police at one point pressure a suspect with such ferocity that he confesses even though he is innocent.

I appreciated the chance to see Alun Armstrong headline a film. A stage trained actor from County Durham who’s augmented the quality of many films I enjoy (e.g., Get Carter, Braveheart, Our Friends Up North) he also had a wonderful late career revival as an extremely eccentric police detective on the TV Series New Tricks. Here he inhabits the role of the hard-smoking, hard-drinking, grief-wracked Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield, whose health and life are consumed by the demands of leading the investigation. As his right hand man, Richard Ridings is also excellent at portraying a mixture of toughness and humanity. Under David Richards direction, the rest of the cast also acquit themselves well.

There are other touches to admire. Rather than show the Ripper’s handiwork, the camera only shows people looking at it and reacting to it. And we don’t see the killer’s face until the very end, where with the banality of evil he has no particular reaction to being confronted by Oldfield. Full marks as well to Peter Greenhalgh for appropriately moody cinematography that accentuates the emotional impact of this grim but engrossing mini-series.

p.s. This 2000 film ends with a post-script noting that while Sutcliffe was sent to prison, “Wearside Jack” was never identified. But thankfully, five years later he was identified, arrested, and sentenced to prison.

Categories
British Drama

The Damned United

I’ve only been to a few English football matches in my life, and like most people who didn’t grow up with it, I don’t find it as engaging as do the locals. Yet one of my all-time favorite sports movies is about English football, which is a testament to the skills of everyone involved in The Damned United.

The plot of this fact-based 2009 film: Brian Clough (Michael Sheen) is a cocky, quotable ex-football star who establishes his brilliance as a manager by leading the once pathetic Derby County club to greatness. Throughout his rise he makes no secret of his contempt of mighty Leeds United and of their legendary coach Don Revie (Colm Meaney) whom he believes snubbed him. In a shocking twist of fate, when Revie departs to coach England’s national team, Clough is tapped to manage the squad he has denigrated, and accepts with the goal of remaking the team in his image and proving that he is superior to Levie in every way. But his arrogance leads him to grossly overestimate how easy the task will be.

Frequent Sheen collaborator Peter Morgan was one of the producers and also wrote the script (They also also made another of my recommendations, The Special Relationship). Based on a novel that many people thought was scurrilous (author David Peace was successfully sued for libel), Morgan’s script makes Clough more sympathetic and integrates many choice quotes that Clough and those around him said at the time. Kudos to Morgan and to director Tom Hooper for their skills as storytellers, particularly in going back and forward in time while never losing narrative momentum. Hooper would win the directing Oscar for his next film, The King’s Speech, but he’s in just as fine form here.

Sheen again shows his facility for playing characters based on real people. He gets Clough’s mannerisms and almost sing-song Northern speech cadence right, and fleshes him out as a rounded person with clear defects and impressive strengths. The supporting performances are excellent, with Timothy Spall being particularly endearing as Assistant Manager Peter Taylor, whom Clough needs to succeed more than his ego can readily concede. Hats off as well to everyone involved in location scouting, set design, costuming, and art direction for visually transporting us convicingly back to the hard-scrabble period that was England in the 1970s.

As I mentioned, you don’t need to know anything about English football in general or the specific events portrayed to appreciate this movie. As long as you appreciate a well-acted, well-told story, with vivid characters, The Damned United is for you.

Categories
British Drama

The Deadly Affair

Alec Guinness so inhabited the role of John le Carré’s master spy George Smiley that even the author said he could no longer think of one without the other. But Guinness was not the only fine actor to essay the role. James Mason also had his turn, even though for copyright reasons the character was renamed Charles Dobbs. The resulting 1967 film has been almost completely forgotten, but it more than merits a revival: The Deadly Affair.

The plot: Put-upon and dutiful spook Charles Dobbs is given an assignment that seems a doddle. An anonymous letter has accused a recently promoted Foreign Office official named Samuel Fennan (Robert Flemyng) of being a security risk, based on his long ago flirtation with Communism as a university student. Dobbs’ discussion with Fennan raises no concerns and even seems enjoyable to both men. But Dobbs learns through his “Adviser” (Max Adrian) that Fennan apparently went home and shot himself! When Dobbs interviews Fennan’s widow (Simone Signoret), something strange happens that raises suspicions that things are not so simple, so Dobbs digs deeper with the aid of an aged but reliable copper (Harry Andrews). Meanwhile, on the home front, Dobbs tries to endure the many affairs of his wife Ann (Harriett Andersson), including one with an undercover operative he used to run that he still considers a friend (Maximilian Schell).

As you can gather from the above, there’s a great deal of talent in front of the camera here (And I didn’t even mention Roy Kinnear, who shines here as an underworld figure in a performance with superb physicality). Mason gives more fiery frustration to Smiley than did Guinness, both in his work and in his failing marriage. I also love his artful interactions with Signoret (as good here as I ever seen her) as he steadfastly uncovers the truth. Andrews, a gay man who ironically spent much of his career playing dead butch British military officers and other authority figures, is also terrific in support as a police officer in the twilight of his career but still retaining intelligence and toughness. Because his is probably the most relatable character in the story and his performance of it so assured, the audience is likely to end up caring about him more than anyone else.

The team behind the camera is equally impressive. The superb director Sidney Lumet loved actors and knew what to do with them. The script is by Paul Dehn, who won an Oscar co-writing another of my recommendations, Seven Days to Noon. Dehn made some plot simplifications in adapting le Carre’s novel Call for the Dead, which I imagine makes the film more comprehensible to viewers who haven’t read the novel. Dehn also added in subplots about Ann that make her a much more prominent part of the movie than the book. I thought this worked fairly well but le Carré purists may disagree. The other major virtue of the movie is Freddie Young’s cinematography, which used pre-exposed film to create the drab colors and shadowy streets that reinforce the emotional tone of le Carré’s world.

The only thing about this movie I actively disliked was, surprisingly, the score by the great Quincy Jones. Purely as music, its jazzy and memorable, but as a soundtrack, it simply doesn’t match the downbeat story and meditative visuals. Indeed, the disjunction at times is so jarring that it takes the viewer out of the story.

The Deadly Affair is not in the same league as the other le Carré based adaptations I have recommended, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. But those are two of the best spy films ever made, and a movie doesn’t need to ascend to such Olympian heights to be watchable and engrossing. The Deadly Affair definitely clears that bar as a grim, effective, translation of the work of a legendary espionage novel writer and a portrayal of his most famous character.