Now fully into the groove Don Siegel's 70s oeuvre, I thought I'd go right ahead and tackle his rather curious and self-conscious follow-up to the excellent Charley Varrick, 1974's Michael Caine-starring espionage thriller, The Black Windmill.
For various reasons, some more obvious than others, The Black Windmill has never quite been anyone's favourite Don Siegel movie. You can perhaps chalk this up mainly to the fact it exchanges the violent heartland of America for the rather more genteel workings of the English spy thriller, not perhaps an ideal genre for this very American director of such raw, brutal classics as The Killers and Dirty Harry. All of which is fair enough. That said, the precision of the filmmaking, the clipped pace and the enigmatic stoicism of the main protagonist mark this piece out as unmistakeably Siegel in tone and effect.
The Black Windmill has tended to be rather unfairly neglected in the company of its tougher American cousins like Dirty Harry and Charley Varrick. Sure, it's minor Siegel, a filmography-filler, but to dismiss the film in such terms is to miss a slickly-made, highly polished and surprisingly entertaining little movie. From the Siegel stock company, only John Vernon got to pack his suitcase for this assignment, Siegel probably figuring that to have a familiar face around for support could only be a good thing (prior to this, Vernon had turned up in both Harry and Varrick). Apart from him, we have Michael Caine (whose hardened stare and miminal body movements mark him out as the perfect Eastwood substitute for this project), with such dependable British thesps as Donald Pleasance, Joss Ackland and Dennis Quilley filling out the supporting cast. Delphine Seyrig turns up to add a little wafery European glamour to the rather glum proceedings as bad guy John Vernon's flirtatious accomplice and no. 1 squeeze.
What comes across most surprisingly for a Siegel movie is how restrained the first half is. Following an intriguing opening in which hardened spycatcher John Tarrant's (Michael Caine) son is kidnapped by an ultra-slimy John Vernon, the opening fifty minutes are uncharacteristically conversational, though the pace is consistently taut and the plot is never boring. It is only around half-way mark, when Caine turns into one-man-against-the-whole-world that we find ourselves back in familiar Siegel territory. We get for our money a pretty good chase along the London underground, before the plot briefly whisks us off to France for another pretty good chase along a footbridge, before finally whisking us back again to the titular black windmill of the title, where a MAC 10 wielding Caine gets to sweat and seethe his way through a rather humdrum climax. Apart from a tense and highly striking set piece involving an empty coach filling up with holidaymakers (at the back of which hides a trapped, exhausted Tarrant) and bold use of the prowling camera and ambient engine sounds, Siegel's direction never really rises to the occasion, remaining businesslike without ever really being inspired. Caine is very comfortable in his role of the controlled spycatcher under duress and he is typically solid, but it's a performance that motors along in second gear for the most part. Pleasance is typically great as his nervous boss Harper, though. Adding a token feminine presence to the proceedings is Janet Suzman as Tarrant's beleaguered wife, who gets to do some shrill emoting throughout the main body of the film, before snapping into the role of a practical, loyal and supportive wife in the closing ten minutes, a character development that would have been very satisfying had it been handled with a little more care and attention.
And therein lies the main problem with the whole movie itself. With a director-star combination like Siegel and Caine, clearly a movie match made in heaven, a great supporting cast and a plot that echoes Hitchcockian classics such as "The man who knew too much" and "North by Northwest", we had every right to expect an absolute belter of a spy thriller. Sadly we only get some of the way there, but what remains is still reasonably diverting stuff from an old pro which should not be dismissed too casually from the Don Siegel filmography.
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