North by Northwest
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock (1959)
"You gentlemen aren't really trying to kill my son, are you?"
North by Northwest occupies an fascinating position in the filmography of Alfred Hitchcock. Having off-loaded his most profoundly emotional piece the previous year, the hallucinatory heartache that was "Vertigo" (1958), Hitchcock sprang back with the most luxurious and glamorous entertainment of his career - "North by Northwest".
It wasn't originally planned that way, however. In 1958, Hitchcock had been hired by MGM to work with writer Ernest Lehman on an adaptation of "The wreck of the Mary Deare". Unable to work up any enthusiasm for the project however, Lehman quickly proposed to Hitchcock a happier alternative - he wanted to write a completely original work which would also be the ultimate Hitchcock chase thriller. Immediately enthused by the idea (and possibly keen to get back to having a little fun with his storytelling after the angst of Vertigo), Hitchcock told him to go ahead.
I saw "North by Northwest" on the big screen at the BFI last week. The first observation to be made about the film in its early stages is how snappily it gets down to business: we are barely five minutes in before Cary Grant as super-confident Madison Avenue man Roger Thornhill is kidnapped at gunpoint by spies who have mistaken him for another man, George Caplan. In another ten minutes, he survives the first of several attempts made on his life throughout the movie. Hitchcock's American films up to this point had typically worked their way into their narratives far more gradually. Shooting across America, from New York to North Dakota, in the autumn of 1958, "North by Northwest" emerges as a particularly fast-moving and action-filled movie by the standards of the late 1950s - and indeed by Hitchcock's own standards. It's also a fantastic big screen experience.
It has been suggested that Ernest Lehman's incident-packed script, more set-piece driven than probably any other Hitchcock, is the prototype for the Hollywood blockbuster, and Bond movies in particular. If so, when watching the film now, one can only marvel at the precision of the storytelling and the lightness of touch that modern movies can only dream of. "North by Northwest" is a crazy, colourful, comic nightmare of a movie; the idea of an innocent man being mistaken for another man, nearly killed as a result, later on accused of murder, and finally being chased across America by spies (who want him dead) and cops (who want to lock him up for something he didn't do) really isn't at all funny. Actually, it's positively Kafka-esque: Grant's Roger Thornhill is put through terrifying ordeal after terrifying ordeal as he tries to figure out what the hell's happening to him and why, but Hitchcock treats all of this as though it were the breeziest of comedies.
How innocent is Thornhill really though? Well, he's obviously no killer - Cary Grant characters don't go round stabbing people in the back, after all - but in the opening scenes of the film, he is presented to us as a charming though casually amoral advertising executive, somewhat lacking in substance, a master at manipulating the world around him to his advantage. He expertly does one poor soul out of his taxi in the first scene as though this were part of his daily routine. He leaves most of his less glamorous chores to his PA, all the better to enjoy his daily round of business meetings and swanky lunches at the Plaza. "There is no such thing as a lie in advertising" he casually drawls to his PA in the back of a taxi, "only the expedient exaggeration". If Mad Men's Don Draper has a progenitor, then it's surely Roger O Thornhill. By the end of his adventures however, Thornhill has emerged as a man of genuine substance, a man fully able to commit to a woman he has fallen head over heels in love with, slinky American agent Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint). At its heart then, "North by Northwest" is the story of a man who goes looking for a man who doesn't exist, and instead finds himself for the first time. This is as much a road movie as anything else, and the Roger Thornhill we wind up with in North Dakota is quite a different man from the one we met in New York.
Opening with a chic, voguish title sequence courtesy of Saul Bass, we are plunged into a typical day on Madison Avenue - people swarming like ants in and out of building, subways and vehicles. Thornill is virtually indistinguishable in this setting, but he's clearly completely at ease here. At exactly midway point however, the film dumps Thornhill into the middle of a desert outside Chicago as he waits for the increasingly elusive Mr Caplan. Here Thornhill has not only been robbed of his identity, but also of his very environment. There are no buildings, no other people, just a crop-dusting plane dusting crops where there ain't no crops. There is little I can say about this famous sequence that hasn't been already written about countless times in various Hitchcock retrospectives over the years, except to say that the careful use of silence, space, sudden intrusive ambient noises, and pace add up to a masterclass in how to construct a suspense set piece.
The authorities come over very badly in this film, as they do in all of Hitchcock. The American secret service is supposedly headed up by a kind-faced, mild-mannered, bespectacled gentleman known only as "The Professor", who thinks nothing of leaving Thornhill at the mercy of the wolves if it can benefit his investigation into the activities of enemy spy Philip Van Damm (ultra-smooth, unflappable James Mason). The Professor's and Van Damm's spy games are revealed to be ultimately meaningless (Hitchcock shows no interest whatsoever in Van Damm's smuggling activities, further suggesting that the power struggles between him and the Professor really serve no great purpose). But Thornhill rescues Eve from both men's clutches, revealing himself in the process to be a genuine romantic hero.
It almost feels inappropriate to be analysing in great detail such a breezy and enjoyable picture, but beneath all the witty, sexy banter, Robert Burks' luxurious cinematography and the exciting set pieces, this is an astonishingly rich piece of work. Like Vertigo, North by Northwest benefits from being seen more than once and, if possible, several times. And if you can, see it on the big screen. Hitchcock would never make anything this purely entertaining again.
Monday 27 August 2012
Sunday 12 August 2012
The Beguiled
Dir: Don Siegel - 1970
"If this war goes on much longer, I'll forget I ever was a woman..."
1970's The Beguiled, the first financial flop of Eastwood's career, also heralded his first important step in steering himself away from the laconic, tough action-adventure films that had made him a major success. A peculiar though riveting hybrid of art-house movie, western and gothic melodrama, The Beguiled is perhaps more daring, startling and uncharacteristic a piece than Eastwood or Siegel would ever attempt again. Universal studios, baffled as to how to market the film, mis-sold it as an action movie; audiences, baffled as to how to approach it, stayed away.
A sense of confidence, audacity and extreme care is evident right from the opening credits: a doleful drum sounds over a series of authentic civil war photographs, complete with eerie sound effects. We then move to a forest. Colour literally bleeds into the picture and we meet a small girl, Amy, gathering mushrooms in what appears to be a magical neverland, a world away from the grim scenes of conflict that we have just witnessed. Hell is not far away though; coming across the bloody leg of wounded Union soldier Corporate John McBurney, Amy is forced to hide from oncoming soldiers with the weakened McBurney. He forces her to kiss him while the soldiers pass on, a sure sign that the picture is already taking us into dark and troubling territory.
The narrative properly begins when McBurney makes it back to the Seminary from which she has come, run by the formidable Miss Martha Farnsworth and her delicate assistant,.Edwina Dabney. The place has a run-down, decaying quality, much like the women living within it. The very few pupils who remain include the voluptuous siren Carol and the Union-despising Doris, along with Amy herself. What follows is as much a portrait of masculinity in crisis as it is femininity in crisis, and a subtle battle of wills develops between the beleaguered women and their handsome and manipulative male guest. Not overkeen on being handed over to the South as a prisoner of war, the cunning, deceitful McBurney deploys all the masculine weapons at his disposal (his charm, his beauty and finally his superior physical strength and vengeful wrath) in order to prolong a comfortable stay at the Farnsworth Seminary.
The women remain the real focus of The Beguiled. They first appear to us almost as the living dead, going through the deadened routines of french and etiquette classes, routines which have long since ceased to have any meaning in their lives. The war has stripped them of all femininity and purpose: "If this war goes on much longer, I'll forget I ever was a woman" intones the frail voiceover of Miss Martha early on. The sudden masculine presence of McBurney has a dangerous effect on these women, who begin to experience harrowing feminine emotions that have long been buried. McBurney, like all the soldiers roaming around on the outside, is in one sense "the enemy", representing a sexual as well as a physical threat. Yet he is the enemy with a beautiful face and a lithe body (Eastwood was never more beautiful than in this picture) and they are unable to resist his devious, rough-hewn charm. For much of the middle third of The Beguiled, McBurney is seen in a white night gown which once belonged to Martha's brother, giving him an angelic appearance, as if he has come to bring divine salvation to the women. But McBurney's over-confidence is also his undoing, and he finds himself at the mercy of the women, having made the fatal mistake of going to the bedroom of the wrong woman....
The Beguiled is put together with an expert's eye for mood and detail. Chilly feminine voiceovers are used sparingly but effectively. Dream sequences are boldly incorporated into the centre of the film, the hinge at which the more leisurely first half gives way to the far more harrowing second. Bruce Surtees's sepia-tinged cinematography perfectly suggests a series of old photographs that have come to life. Lalo Schifrin's thoughtful score, incorporating ghostly organs and flutes, maintains the sense of dread and unease. The performances from the whole cast are spot on, with Eastwood coming over particularly well in an uncharacteristically unphysical part. Geraldine Page and Elizabeth Hartman provide solid support as the strong-willed Martha and the fragile Edwina respectively. At an hour and forty minutes, the film is perfectly paced and is not a minute longer than it needs to be.
As a dark, claustrophobic and increasingly unsettling portrait of sexually confident man becoming unravelled by the dangerous emotions of a powerful female foil, The Beguiled would dovetail perfectly into Eastwood's next movie, his directorial debut, Play Misty For Me.
Sunday 24 June 2012
Two mules for Sister Sara (Don Siegel, 1969)
The second of five collaborations with star Clint Eastwood, and the weakest by some distance, 1969's rambling western Two Mules for Sister Sara found Eastwood and Siegel on slightly shakier ground than in their previous Coogan's Bluff. Originally dreamed up as a package for Eastwood and Elizabeth Taylor on the set of the previous year's Where Eagles Dare, the part eventually went to Shirley MacLaine after Taylor had second thoughts about spending several arduous weeks filming in Mexico.
Perhaps the oddest aspect of Two Mules from today's point of view is the idea of Eastwood sharing the screen with a high profile and established leading lady (in fact, Eastwood is second-billed to MacLaine in the credits), a situation that would not occur again until 1995's Bridges of Madison County with Meryl Streep. There were of course Jessica Walter and Genevieve Bujold in later years, but these were talented though lesser known actresses hired by Eastwood himself. The plot of a tough, grizzled mercenary hooking up with a suspiciously bawdy nun in 19th century Mexico to sock it to the French occupying forces plays like a kind of western African Queen, with the two leads running the usual gamut of initial wary antagonism-burgeoning mutual attraction-romantic closure to be found in countless romantic comedy-dramas over the years. Though oddly cast, MacLaine is nonetheless great as Sara, giving a ballsy, spirited performance that contrasts nicely with Eastwood's more typically subdued and bemused performance, though watching the film confirms that Eastwood was always more effective when he alone was the centre of his films. The romantic pairing at the centre of Two Mules for Sister Sara ensures that Eastwood's grizzled hombre Hogan becomes an unusually garrulous and verbose role for him, proving that the less he says in his movies the more effective he is, something he had demonstrated quite ably already in his collaborations with Leone.
Two Mules for Sister Sara is a patchy, though intermittently entertaining western. Various highlights include the spectacular dynamiting of a railway trestle and an equally explosively staged final raid on the French garrison, though the film slumps for a good half an hour in between these two set pieces. There is a nice scene of Sara tending to a wounded Hogan following an attack by vicious tribesmen which, though well acted by both Eastwood and MacLaine, runs too long and slows the film down at a crucial point. Siegel directs in an uninterested fashion far below the quality of his best work, only becoming focused for an atmospherically shot title sequence, featuring Hogan riding amidst various Mexican wildlife (panther, snake, scorpion), and the exciting finale (though such gory details as a machete in the face and a lobbed-off arm seem gratuitous and out of place, especially in comparison to the rather more jaunty tone built up elsewhere). Similarly Ennio Morricone's score, though reminiscent of his earlier work with Leone in its use of choral chants and animalistic squawks, nonetheless falls far below what he had achieved in those films. Gabriel Figueroa's arid, atmospheric cinematography captures a parched, sweltering 19th century Mexico quite effectively.
Two Mules is a pleasant enough diversion from a period in Eastwood's career when he was still negotiating his way towards the kind of artistic control over his films that he would come to enjoy from the 1970s onwards. Fortunately, his next collaboration with Siegel, the highly atypical gothic melodrama The Beguiled, would prove to be a far greater demonstration of the talents of both men.
Perhaps the oddest aspect of Two Mules from today's point of view is the idea of Eastwood sharing the screen with a high profile and established leading lady (in fact, Eastwood is second-billed to MacLaine in the credits), a situation that would not occur again until 1995's Bridges of Madison County with Meryl Streep. There were of course Jessica Walter and Genevieve Bujold in later years, but these were talented though lesser known actresses hired by Eastwood himself. The plot of a tough, grizzled mercenary hooking up with a suspiciously bawdy nun in 19th century Mexico to sock it to the French occupying forces plays like a kind of western African Queen, with the two leads running the usual gamut of initial wary antagonism-burgeoning mutual attraction-romantic closure to be found in countless romantic comedy-dramas over the years. Though oddly cast, MacLaine is nonetheless great as Sara, giving a ballsy, spirited performance that contrasts nicely with Eastwood's more typically subdued and bemused performance, though watching the film confirms that Eastwood was always more effective when he alone was the centre of his films. The romantic pairing at the centre of Two Mules for Sister Sara ensures that Eastwood's grizzled hombre Hogan becomes an unusually garrulous and verbose role for him, proving that the less he says in his movies the more effective he is, something he had demonstrated quite ably already in his collaborations with Leone.
Two Mules for Sister Sara is a patchy, though intermittently entertaining western. Various highlights include the spectacular dynamiting of a railway trestle and an equally explosively staged final raid on the French garrison, though the film slumps for a good half an hour in between these two set pieces. There is a nice scene of Sara tending to a wounded Hogan following an attack by vicious tribesmen which, though well acted by both Eastwood and MacLaine, runs too long and slows the film down at a crucial point. Siegel directs in an uninterested fashion far below the quality of his best work, only becoming focused for an atmospherically shot title sequence, featuring Hogan riding amidst various Mexican wildlife (panther, snake, scorpion), and the exciting finale (though such gory details as a machete in the face and a lobbed-off arm seem gratuitous and out of place, especially in comparison to the rather more jaunty tone built up elsewhere). Similarly Ennio Morricone's score, though reminiscent of his earlier work with Leone in its use of choral chants and animalistic squawks, nonetheless falls far below what he had achieved in those films. Gabriel Figueroa's arid, atmospheric cinematography captures a parched, sweltering 19th century Mexico quite effectively.
Two Mules is a pleasant enough diversion from a period in Eastwood's career when he was still negotiating his way towards the kind of artistic control over his films that he would come to enjoy from the 1970s onwards. Fortunately, his next collaboration with Siegel, the highly atypical gothic melodrama The Beguiled, would prove to be a far greater demonstration of the talents of both men.
Friday 15 June 2012
Coogan's bluff (1968) - "Tex" finds something about New York he likes....
Coogan's Bluff isn't a great movie, but its importance in the Eastwood filmography cannot be underestimated. It was Eastwood's first collaboration with director Don Siegel. It was the first time Eastwood played a cop in a big city. And it set the style for Eastwood's movies for years to come: fast, terse and economical.
The plot is simplicity itself: deputy sheriff Walt Coogan (Eastwood) of Piute County, Arizona, is assigned to to extradite a hippie-gone-bad named Ringerman (Don Stroud) from New York, but ends up tracking him alone through the sprawling urban jungle after his prisoner easily escapes him. The film opens brilliantly with a wide angle shot of the empty Arizona desert, not at all unlike the opening shot of the Almerian desert from For A Few Dollars More. Then a jeep rolls into view and audiences of 1968 got their first big screen taste of Clint Eastwood in the guise of a 20th century lawman, tracking down and capturing an escaped Native American with the kind of wordless, ruthless efficiency that had by then become his trademark. During the excellent opening scenes set in Arizona, we get to enjoy a little gratuitous police brutality courtesy of Coogan, a suspect denied his rights, a warm and extremely willing female acquaintance, and an angry and very harassed superior officer. So far, this plays like Eastwood's half-way house between his Italian westerns and Harry Callahan.
Then we cut to Coogan's arrival in New York. He steps out of the helicopter in a big Stetson and cowboy boots, clean-shaven with short back-and-sides. Compared to the scruffy cool of The Man With No Name and Harry Callahan, Coogan's hick-out-of-water look is a more than a little comical. It's as well to remember here that Midnight Cowboy's Joe Buck (Jon Voight) was using this kind of get-up a year or so later as a means of picking up wealthy Park Avenue ladies, then instead finding himself a reluctant gay icon on the seamier streets of New York. Thankfully, Coogan is too preoccupied and too coolly Eastwoodian to have to endure this kind of ritual humiliation, though at least one blowsy femme fatale, coolly spurned by Coogan in the hotel they share, gets to chide him for being a "Texas faggot".
Coogan's Bluff works very effectively when it gets down to the business of being a decent action movie. Eastwood's scenes with Lee J Cobb (playing the weary older mentor to the increasingly impatient Coogan) crackle with biting wit. The action scenes are tightly filmed, edgy and very impressively edited, most notably a fantastically vicious tear-up in a pool hall (this scene alone is a masterclass in powerful editing) and a brilliantly shot motorbike chase through Fort Tryon Park at the climax. You almost feel as though you're on the back of that bike, clinging to Eastwood. But then the film gets bogged down in a romantic subplot that it doesn't really want or need. Coogan wastes no time hitting on sensitive probation officer Julie Roth (Susan Clark) the moment he has clapped eyes on her. He takes her to dinner. She shows him the sights. She cooks him spaghetti. She acts all puppy-eyed and concerned when Coogan gets taken off the case. These scenes go on far too long and become rather tiresome, particularly as Eastwood and Clark get some pretty ropey dialogue to work with ("The colour of pity is red", Eastwood boldly informs her at one point). More irritatingly, Julie serves no real function in the plot beyond providing Coogan with a clue to the whereabouts of Linny Raven, Ringerman's zonked-out hippychick girlfriend.
Things suddenly ram up a couple of gears in the final third however, once Coogan is on the trail of Linny Raven. At this point, the film almost feels obliged to accelerate towards the climax, having wasted so much time on the boring-Julie-sympathy-and-spaghetti-romantic-subplot routine. The "Pigeon-Toed Orange Peel" nightclub scene is like a middle-class Conservative's nightmare of a late-sixties "happening", but as funny as it may seem today, it is a riot of colour, costume and music, which comes as a welcome relief to the rather too sedate pacing of the film's middle third. Eastwood regular Albert Popwell turns up in this scene as whacked-out, switchblade-wielding heavy Wonderful Digby, and though he's only on screen for about thirty seconds, he's typically magnificent. One imagines it would be a lot more fun to spend a night on the town cruising the scene with Digby than cosying up to Julie in her apartment and sampling her spaghetti.
Clocking in at a brisk 94 minutes, Coogan's Bluff is both a fun movie and an effective little action film. Both Eastwood and Siegel would go on to do far better and more interesting work after this, but this was an effectively simple tale for them to find their feet with each other. Don Stroud gives an enjoyably wired performance as the basket-case Ringerman, paving the way for Andy Robinson three years later in Dirty Harry (physically both characters are not unalike). After the "play it safe" western Hang Em High, Coogan's Bluff provided a striking way forward for Eastwood as he developed a screen persona and a friendship with his director that was to pay great dividends in the new decade to come.
The plot is simplicity itself: deputy sheriff Walt Coogan (Eastwood) of Piute County, Arizona, is assigned to to extradite a hippie-gone-bad named Ringerman (Don Stroud) from New York, but ends up tracking him alone through the sprawling urban jungle after his prisoner easily escapes him. The film opens brilliantly with a wide angle shot of the empty Arizona desert, not at all unlike the opening shot of the Almerian desert from For A Few Dollars More. Then a jeep rolls into view and audiences of 1968 got their first big screen taste of Clint Eastwood in the guise of a 20th century lawman, tracking down and capturing an escaped Native American with the kind of wordless, ruthless efficiency that had by then become his trademark. During the excellent opening scenes set in Arizona, we get to enjoy a little gratuitous police brutality courtesy of Coogan, a suspect denied his rights, a warm and extremely willing female acquaintance, and an angry and very harassed superior officer. So far, this plays like Eastwood's half-way house between his Italian westerns and Harry Callahan.
Then we cut to Coogan's arrival in New York. He steps out of the helicopter in a big Stetson and cowboy boots, clean-shaven with short back-and-sides. Compared to the scruffy cool of The Man With No Name and Harry Callahan, Coogan's hick-out-of-water look is a more than a little comical. It's as well to remember here that Midnight Cowboy's Joe Buck (Jon Voight) was using this kind of get-up a year or so later as a means of picking up wealthy Park Avenue ladies, then instead finding himself a reluctant gay icon on the seamier streets of New York. Thankfully, Coogan is too preoccupied and too coolly Eastwoodian to have to endure this kind of ritual humiliation, though at least one blowsy femme fatale, coolly spurned by Coogan in the hotel they share, gets to chide him for being a "Texas faggot".
Coogan's Bluff works very effectively when it gets down to the business of being a decent action movie. Eastwood's scenes with Lee J Cobb (playing the weary older mentor to the increasingly impatient Coogan) crackle with biting wit. The action scenes are tightly filmed, edgy and very impressively edited, most notably a fantastically vicious tear-up in a pool hall (this scene alone is a masterclass in powerful editing) and a brilliantly shot motorbike chase through Fort Tryon Park at the climax. You almost feel as though you're on the back of that bike, clinging to Eastwood. But then the film gets bogged down in a romantic subplot that it doesn't really want or need. Coogan wastes no time hitting on sensitive probation officer Julie Roth (Susan Clark) the moment he has clapped eyes on her. He takes her to dinner. She shows him the sights. She cooks him spaghetti. She acts all puppy-eyed and concerned when Coogan gets taken off the case. These scenes go on far too long and become rather tiresome, particularly as Eastwood and Clark get some pretty ropey dialogue to work with ("The colour of pity is red", Eastwood boldly informs her at one point). More irritatingly, Julie serves no real function in the plot beyond providing Coogan with a clue to the whereabouts of Linny Raven, Ringerman's zonked-out hippychick girlfriend.
Things suddenly ram up a couple of gears in the final third however, once Coogan is on the trail of Linny Raven. At this point, the film almost feels obliged to accelerate towards the climax, having wasted so much time on the boring-Julie-sympathy-and-spaghetti-romantic-subplot routine. The "Pigeon-Toed Orange Peel" nightclub scene is like a middle-class Conservative's nightmare of a late-sixties "happening", but as funny as it may seem today, it is a riot of colour, costume and music, which comes as a welcome relief to the rather too sedate pacing of the film's middle third. Eastwood regular Albert Popwell turns up in this scene as whacked-out, switchblade-wielding heavy Wonderful Digby, and though he's only on screen for about thirty seconds, he's typically magnificent. One imagines it would be a lot more fun to spend a night on the town cruising the scene with Digby than cosying up to Julie in her apartment and sampling her spaghetti.
Clocking in at a brisk 94 minutes, Coogan's Bluff is both a fun movie and an effective little action film. Both Eastwood and Siegel would go on to do far better and more interesting work after this, but this was an effectively simple tale for them to find their feet with each other. Don Stroud gives an enjoyably wired performance as the basket-case Ringerman, paving the way for Andy Robinson three years later in Dirty Harry (physically both characters are not unalike). After the "play it safe" western Hang Em High, Coogan's Bluff provided a striking way forward for Eastwood as he developed a screen persona and a friendship with his director that was to pay great dividends in the new decade to come.
Tuesday 12 June 2012
Dirty Harry - When Harry met Scorpio
The opening line of the original trailer for the iconic Dirty Harry is so memorable and apt that it virtually renders further critical analysis of the film redundant - "This is a story about two killers; the one with the badge is Harry". For sure, the original Dirty Harry still packs one hell of a wallop for a film that's just passed its fortieth anniversary, its status as the Godfather of the modern policier still unchallenged. But why does it remain so powerful after all these years?
1971's Dirty Harry was Don Siegel's masterpiece, his fourth and penultimate collaboration with Clint Eastwood, and one of his very few cinematic excursions into pure nihilistic terror (along with his sci-fi classic "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"). Beyond Eastwood's justifiably famous "Do you feel lucky?" speech and the still-electrifying action sequences, Dirty Harry remains an eerie, genuinely frightening piece of work. The plot of a frustrated cop, hampered by rules and bureaucracy, out to stop a deranged killer by any means necessary is already highly familiar, and has indeed become the stuff of cliche over the last forty years. It may be stretching things a little to suggest that Harry and his quarry, the monstrously malevolent Scorpio, are two sides of the same coin, but almost from the start, the film finds ways of linking the two together. On a rooftop, a leering Scorpio meticulously selects his victims with the aid of his telescopic sight; a few scenes later, on a similar rooftop while on a stakeout, Harry casually spies on the local neighbourhood with the aid of his binoculars, taking particular interest in a pair of nude flower children in a nearby apartment; our first look at both men is as they prowl the empty rooftops of San Francisco, lonely figures framed against the deep blue San Franciscan skyline, high above the hustle and bustle of the city far below; both men wear their hair long and untidy, displaying a preference for brown, nondescript clothing; both men show distinctly sadistic tendencies, Harry taunting the black bank robber (played by Eastwood regular Albert Popwell) in one of the opening scenes; in Scorpio's case, every fibre of his very being screams "sadistic nutjob at work".
Much of the action in Dirty Harry takes place at night, with San Francisco becoming a gloomy, neon-lit hunting ground for both men. Bruce Surtees's cinematography is often so dark that faces and bodies become indistinct, illustrating the enormity of Callahan's task in trying to hunt down Scorpio, who keeps himself well hidden within the dark shadows of the San Franciscan nightlife for the first half of the film. The usually picturesque San Francisco is filmed as a cold, forbidding place where vicious criminals blend in with young hippies, caught in the slow aftermath of the death of the counter-cultural revolution.
Despite Eastwood and Siegel's considerable input, two other key figures add immeasurably to the sense of menace. First, composer Lalo Schifrin; having composed three scores already for Eastwood, here he created something so creepily effective that it is hard to imagine the film with any other composer. Schifrin's use of other-worldly child-like voices and stinging guitar riffs suggest perfectly the twisted workings of Scorpio's sick mind. Secondly, Andy Robinson, as Scorpio; Robinson's performance as an unreadable, wild-eyed creature from beyond the realms of human understanding is so astonishing in its intensity that it's arguable that no other bad guy performance over the past forty years since has quite matched it. Siegel gives us some great close-ups of his spooked-out eyes throughout the film and Robinson's contorted, almost effeminate features add considerably to the overall sense of malevolence that he brings to the character.
Both Harry and Scorpio are presented to us as outcasts from society, on the outside looking in. Neither man has any real motivation in what they do beyond the hunt and the kill; Scorpio demands money, but it's obvious that payment isn't likely to stop him from killing again. "He'll kill again," Callahan informs the prissy DA Rothko, "'cause he likes it." It takes one to know one. A few scenes later, Callahan is chatting to the wife of his recuperating partner, Chico. "This is no life for you two," he informs her, perhaps the only time in the film in which he genuinely connects with another human being with some degree of warmth and sincerity. "Why do you stay in it then?" she wants to know. "I don't know. I really don't," comes the resigned reply. Harry's life has no meaning beyond the hunt.
No matter how many times one sits through Dirty Harry, it's impact is never diminished.
1971's Dirty Harry was Don Siegel's masterpiece, his fourth and penultimate collaboration with Clint Eastwood, and one of his very few cinematic excursions into pure nihilistic terror (along with his sci-fi classic "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"). Beyond Eastwood's justifiably famous "Do you feel lucky?" speech and the still-electrifying action sequences, Dirty Harry remains an eerie, genuinely frightening piece of work. The plot of a frustrated cop, hampered by rules and bureaucracy, out to stop a deranged killer by any means necessary is already highly familiar, and has indeed become the stuff of cliche over the last forty years. It may be stretching things a little to suggest that Harry and his quarry, the monstrously malevolent Scorpio, are two sides of the same coin, but almost from the start, the film finds ways of linking the two together. On a rooftop, a leering Scorpio meticulously selects his victims with the aid of his telescopic sight; a few scenes later, on a similar rooftop while on a stakeout, Harry casually spies on the local neighbourhood with the aid of his binoculars, taking particular interest in a pair of nude flower children in a nearby apartment; our first look at both men is as they prowl the empty rooftops of San Francisco, lonely figures framed against the deep blue San Franciscan skyline, high above the hustle and bustle of the city far below; both men wear their hair long and untidy, displaying a preference for brown, nondescript clothing; both men show distinctly sadistic tendencies, Harry taunting the black bank robber (played by Eastwood regular Albert Popwell) in one of the opening scenes; in Scorpio's case, every fibre of his very being screams "sadistic nutjob at work".
Much of the action in Dirty Harry takes place at night, with San Francisco becoming a gloomy, neon-lit hunting ground for both men. Bruce Surtees's cinematography is often so dark that faces and bodies become indistinct, illustrating the enormity of Callahan's task in trying to hunt down Scorpio, who keeps himself well hidden within the dark shadows of the San Franciscan nightlife for the first half of the film. The usually picturesque San Francisco is filmed as a cold, forbidding place where vicious criminals blend in with young hippies, caught in the slow aftermath of the death of the counter-cultural revolution.
Despite Eastwood and Siegel's considerable input, two other key figures add immeasurably to the sense of menace. First, composer Lalo Schifrin; having composed three scores already for Eastwood, here he created something so creepily effective that it is hard to imagine the film with any other composer. Schifrin's use of other-worldly child-like voices and stinging guitar riffs suggest perfectly the twisted workings of Scorpio's sick mind. Secondly, Andy Robinson, as Scorpio; Robinson's performance as an unreadable, wild-eyed creature from beyond the realms of human understanding is so astonishing in its intensity that it's arguable that no other bad guy performance over the past forty years since has quite matched it. Siegel gives us some great close-ups of his spooked-out eyes throughout the film and Robinson's contorted, almost effeminate features add considerably to the overall sense of malevolence that he brings to the character.
Both Harry and Scorpio are presented to us as outcasts from society, on the outside looking in. Neither man has any real motivation in what they do beyond the hunt and the kill; Scorpio demands money, but it's obvious that payment isn't likely to stop him from killing again. "He'll kill again," Callahan informs the prissy DA Rothko, "'cause he likes it." It takes one to know one. A few scenes later, Callahan is chatting to the wife of his recuperating partner, Chico. "This is no life for you two," he informs her, perhaps the only time in the film in which he genuinely connects with another human being with some degree of warmth and sincerity. "Why do you stay in it then?" she wants to know. "I don't know. I really don't," comes the resigned reply. Harry's life has no meaning beyond the hunt.
No matter how many times one sits through Dirty Harry, it's impact is never diminished.
Sunday 10 June 2012
The Black Windmill - Drabble gets a kicking
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.
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.
Charley Varrick - The Last of the Independents hits back
Charley Varrick, the titular character from Don Siegel's hard-as-nails 1973 crime thriller very obligingly offered up the inspiration for the title of my new blog - "The last of the independents", a pithy little one-liner that sums up not only Varrick's modus operandi in the world of small-time crime, but also possibly director Don Siegel's view of himself as a filmmaker.
I have written about Charley Varrick previously, but it is perfectly apt that it is this movie that I have chosen to kick off the blog, so I am coming back to it once again.
Charley Varrick opens with the kind of explosive, efficiently orchestrated, tightly edited action sequence that undoubtedly secured Siegel's reputation as one of the outstanding American B movie directors. A small bank in a sleepy, nothing sort of town, Tres Cruces, New Mexico, is hit by three professionals, bringing heat down on the town and themselves. By the time they are clear of the town border, one robber is dead and another, Charley Varrick's wife Nadine, is mortally wounded. That just leaves the unflappable leader Varrick and his not-altogether-stable partner, Harman, alive to figure out what to do next. So far, this is classic Siegel territory - protagonists defined wholly by their skills (cops/criminals) at odds and independent from mainstream society, plying their trade with brutal efficiency, a stark economy of storytelling with not a frame wasted, an edgy score from Lalo Schifrin - but then the pace winds down for the second third, as Varrick, having discovered that his supposedly modest little tickle is in fact a ton of mafia money on its way out of the country for laundering, is forced to set up a thoroughly devious but highly effective plan to escape the murderous attention of the seemingly unstoppable mafia thug Molly (a never-better Joe Don Baker). From here, Charley Varrick focuses more on duplicitous plotting and vicious characterisation before seriously revving up once again at the climax for a fantastically staged (though somewhat improbable) high speed chase between Varrick's bi-plane and Molly's thoroughly intimidating set of wheels.
Siegel brings what is on first inspection a fairly convoluted piece of storytelling in at a most acceptable 106 minutes, while successfully keeping things tight and focused, ensuring that the audience is never completely lost at any point. The abiding characteristic of Charley Varrick in fact is the utterly cynical world view on show; everyone is on the take here, from crippled gun shop proprietors to the higher echelons of big business (John Vernon's mafia chief is seen directing operations from the boardroom of an ultra-modern office block). The authorities on the case are bureaucratic automatons. Varrick himself is no action man. His main weapon is his cunning ability to turn the avarice of the world around him back in on itself, thereby allowing himself a clear run. Though he loses his wife early on, Varrick can only allow himself a moment of regret at her passing before coldly switching himself back into the role of ruthless professional. Charley Varrick is never that violent, but the world view is as bleak as hell.
Many of Siegel's stock company turn up here, giving highly enjoyable turns - Albert Popwell, John Vernon, Woodrow Parfrey, Tom Tully. Andy Robinson, fresh from his role of Scorpio in Siegel's previous film, Dirty Harry, gives another very entertaining portrait of snivelling villainy (Harman being this film's arrogant, youthful sidekick whose main role in the events of the story is to be thoroughly expendable). Lalo Schifrin creates another highly atmospheric score, complementing the attractively stark landscape, beautifully captured by DP Michael Butler, perfectly. Best of all though is Matthau himself, his craggy features and laconic delivery ideally suited to the hard-boiled proceedings here.
So economic is the filmmaking here that Siegel chooses to end the film not with standard credits, but with the film's obvious subtitle "Last of the Independents" burning away into nothing, as apt a conclusion to this bleak but highly enjoyable caper movie as one could possibly hope for.
I have written about Charley Varrick previously, but it is perfectly apt that it is this movie that I have chosen to kick off the blog, so I am coming back to it once again.
Charley Varrick opens with the kind of explosive, efficiently orchestrated, tightly edited action sequence that undoubtedly secured Siegel's reputation as one of the outstanding American B movie directors. A small bank in a sleepy, nothing sort of town, Tres Cruces, New Mexico, is hit by three professionals, bringing heat down on the town and themselves. By the time they are clear of the town border, one robber is dead and another, Charley Varrick's wife Nadine, is mortally wounded. That just leaves the unflappable leader Varrick and his not-altogether-stable partner, Harman, alive to figure out what to do next. So far, this is classic Siegel territory - protagonists defined wholly by their skills (cops/criminals) at odds and independent from mainstream society, plying their trade with brutal efficiency, a stark economy of storytelling with not a frame wasted, an edgy score from Lalo Schifrin - but then the pace winds down for the second third, as Varrick, having discovered that his supposedly modest little tickle is in fact a ton of mafia money on its way out of the country for laundering, is forced to set up a thoroughly devious but highly effective plan to escape the murderous attention of the seemingly unstoppable mafia thug Molly (a never-better Joe Don Baker). From here, Charley Varrick focuses more on duplicitous plotting and vicious characterisation before seriously revving up once again at the climax for a fantastically staged (though somewhat improbable) high speed chase between Varrick's bi-plane and Molly's thoroughly intimidating set of wheels.
Siegel brings what is on first inspection a fairly convoluted piece of storytelling in at a most acceptable 106 minutes, while successfully keeping things tight and focused, ensuring that the audience is never completely lost at any point. The abiding characteristic of Charley Varrick in fact is the utterly cynical world view on show; everyone is on the take here, from crippled gun shop proprietors to the higher echelons of big business (John Vernon's mafia chief is seen directing operations from the boardroom of an ultra-modern office block). The authorities on the case are bureaucratic automatons. Varrick himself is no action man. His main weapon is his cunning ability to turn the avarice of the world around him back in on itself, thereby allowing himself a clear run. Though he loses his wife early on, Varrick can only allow himself a moment of regret at her passing before coldly switching himself back into the role of ruthless professional. Charley Varrick is never that violent, but the world view is as bleak as hell.
Many of Siegel's stock company turn up here, giving highly enjoyable turns - Albert Popwell, John Vernon, Woodrow Parfrey, Tom Tully. Andy Robinson, fresh from his role of Scorpio in Siegel's previous film, Dirty Harry, gives another very entertaining portrait of snivelling villainy (Harman being this film's arrogant, youthful sidekick whose main role in the events of the story is to be thoroughly expendable). Lalo Schifrin creates another highly atmospheric score, complementing the attractively stark landscape, beautifully captured by DP Michael Butler, perfectly. Best of all though is Matthau himself, his craggy features and laconic delivery ideally suited to the hard-boiled proceedings here.
So economic is the filmmaking here that Siegel chooses to end the film not with standard credits, but with the film's obvious subtitle "Last of the Independents" burning away into nothing, as apt a conclusion to this bleak but highly enjoyable caper movie as one could possibly hope for.
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