This Connery-Caine classic from 1975 was shown as a tribute to the late actor. Bond fans of a certain age may recall seeing this on telly and hoping their man would step up to the acting plate - this he does, of course, and you noted that this was Connery's acting chops to the fore. The narrative arc is memorable as the two wily ex-soldiers go on an adventure to con the Indian natives but find events do not entirely go their way.
Watching it today, as I have since, I find that the two leads aren't quite as charming as I remembered. Okay, they're chancers and conmen so maybe not supposed to be. It's directed by the late great John Huston - well, alright, but he also did Escape to Victory. The film is an epic but he doesn't bring much of that I feel - there's more to an epic than pointing the camera at the natives or a mountain panorama. Huston had wanted to make the film with Bogart and Gable in the 50s but never got it off the ground. I do think the film needs a bit of the old Hollywood magic to make it work - face it, for the two roguish soldiers to make it several hundred miles north through the snowy wastes of north India would take magic really, but Huston doesn't convey this. Likewise, when they reach their destination, the mystic mumbo jumbo of the natives would work better in a film with the flavour of Black Narcissus or The Lost Horizon (the 1930s version) but here it actually gets a bit boring and is not convincing enough.
Admittedly this was.a time when Hollywood was demystifying itself and making grittier efforts so that magical flavour was out of favour.
On another post I wrote how Connery wasn't a great romantic lead - a sex symbol, yes, but he didn't have that way of giving himself up to another person. That applies here to this bromance, for that is what it is. Caine and Connery work well together. But this is a buddy movie that plays out like a romance, with the play out of breakup due to greed, another woman, ego or betrayal. You don't quite get that with Connery and Caine, they are mates but don't seem to have that bond.
The two actors are perhaps too old for this (if so, so would have been Bogart and Gable for sure) you can't forgive their excess as the folly of youth. Perhaps it might have been better in the mid 60s, with Connery as he was in The Hill and Caine the bolshy corporal from The Ipcress File. The middle-aged fellas actually might seem a bit dim to be going off on this adventure. On the other hand, one can't help thinking, well of course these two soldiers will succeed in their endeavour - they're Connery and Caine. And I never warmed to them so much that you feel the pain of their fallout as the film progresses. You should feel complicit in their wrongdoing and then later ashamed. You don't really get that arc in the movie.
One problem here is to avoid the essential narrative theme - this is really a Bob Hope Bing Crosby Road To... film. I mean the plot is pretty much the same and if it looked more Hollywood that might make it more obvious, and the gritty location work does help dispel this.
What has long struck me is that Connery's Danny changes his character and that's the nub of the film - but tbh it comes across less as Danny but just Connery being himself. I'd have liked a bit of the slight pomposity we saw in Connery's Name of the Rose or The Last Crusade to be seen here. Again, the double act doesn't quite come off as his Danny doesn't seem that well drawn initially.
The film was not a smash hit and the first half hour doesn't help. Even on repeated viewing I didn't quite catch that Caine is trying to pickpocket Rudyard Kipling's pocket but finds he's nicked the watch of a fellow freemason and feels duty bound as a fellow mason to return it. The thing about Masons is that being a secretive organisation, nobody is interested in them except Masons and those who think they secretly control the world and so on. It needs more prepping as a central plot advice, as this turns out to be. That said, this is the only film I've seen in which freemasonry is depicted relatively sympathetically rather than as the Illuminati. But it isn't clear why Kipling, even as a fellow Mason, would want or need any involvement with these two hucksters, esp as I've said, they don't seem nearly as funny or charming as I remember.
The end is stirring stuff and the rope bridge is another reason why Connery was so suitable for Indy and the Last Crusade, seeing as it featured in the previous film, Temple of Doom.
The third in Hammer’s trilogy and it’s really good. This time filmed in colour and Andrew Keir replaces Brian Donlevy as Quatermass. A Martian spacecraft is found whilst digging in a London Underground station and releases an ancient evil. Most people find this the best of the trilogy but Quatermass II remains my favourite. Well worth watching and Julian Glover has an early role as a young Colonel.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, 1965 *
Based on the book by le Carre, which I still regard as his best told tale.
Directed by Martin Ritt, who I'm not familiar with. Wikipedia tells me Ritt otherwise was known for "serious issues" type dramas, not crowdpleasing thrillers, and it shows.
Most important: starring Richard Burton, whose performance dominates this experience.
I believe I've never actually seen a film with Burton before, but he's got a hammy overacting style that is instantly recognisable from a hundred parodies. Brooding, surly, slurry speeched and constantly snarling. I bet Dalton's Bond owes more to this performance than it does to any previous cinematic Bond!
There's an actor playing Smiley who bears no resemblance to the character as described by le Carre, or as interpreted by either Guiness or Oldman.
Cinematically this is very black and white, all static camera shots of shabby interiors, magnifying every stain on the wallpaper and every wrinkle in Burton's skin. probably owes a lot visually to the Third Man (which borrowed from German Expressionism so it all comes full circle), but whereas that film was taut and suspenseful, this one is slow and stagey, plodding along like a verbose stage play.
I dont think any of it is actually filmed in Germany, despite opening and closing at The Wall (both sequences look great). (whereas Funeral in Berlin had much authentic Berlin content) First half is mostly set in working class London, and makes postwar English life look like a depressing grind (the kind of no-hope existence normal folks read Ian Fleming novels to escape from). Scenes in communist East Germany in the second half look scarcely more bleak than working class London.
I say above this is still my favourite le Carre novel. But while the adaptation is very faithful plot-wise, I think it worked much better as a book. As a film, especially a slow stagey film, it is overwhelmed by the incomprehensible dialog during Burton's long interrogation scenes.
But this is where I appreciate the casting of such a hammy stage actor. The characters job is too deceive his interrogators, and all the world, with his carefully rehearsed disinformation and manufactured persona as an embittered castoff from the Secret Service. So the fact we are so very aware He Is Acting!!! gives these long dialogs a second level of meaning, distracting from how boring the actual dialog is.
Bernard Lee has a cameo in this, He is the grocer whom Burton assaults near the beginning. Too bad, missed opportunity.
What they should have done: Bernard Lee should have had the office next to Control's, and at one point the two secret service chiefs encounter each other in the hall. Lee should glare at Control, then shuffle away muttering loudly:
"bloody Control bloody overcomplicated spy schemes. All you need to bloody do is send your damn man to sleep with the villains bloody girlfriend, then blow up the villains bloody headquarters, then youve saved the bloody world yet again, thats the job! Don't know why bloody Control has to make this dirty damn business seem so bloody difficult! grumble grumble mutter mutter now wheres my damn pipe etc..."
You missed a Bond reference - Michael Hordern pops up at one point as a homosexual going after Burton's expelled agent. Hordern would go on to voice Paddington in the 1970s TV series, later played of course by Ben Wilshaw, who also did Q.
Tonight I've been enjoying " Salem's Lot " (1979) still holds up as a
horror classic, I remember as a kid being really scared watching this
over two nights., and it got me in to Stephen King Books.
I absolutely love that. I remember being absolutely petrified but totally glued as a kid. I saw it not too long ago and it's still eerie. James Mason is fabulous.
I'm surprised it hasn't had a remake to be honest.
Walter Hill's '48 hrs.' (1982). Roger Spottiswoode (dir. TND) was a co-writer on this seminal 80s buddy movie. The racist jibes, played for laughs, make some of this uncomfotable viewing now - perhaps explaining the movie's long-since waned star - but the chemistry between Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy is strong and Murphy's comic business is mostly effective against the genuine drama of the movie and its sense of danger. The villain, James Remar, while hardly a cut above gritty TV cop show fare in terms of dramatic stature (he's 'The Streets of San Francisco'-level material), is a violent enough adversary to give the film some heft. Worth a spin for early 80s nostalgia. In part this was cliched already (Remar). In other respects, which also seem cliched now, it felt fresh at the time (the Nolte/ Murphy buddy riff).
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
Most important: starring Richard Burton, whose performance dominates this experience.
I believe I've never actually seen a film with Burton before, but he's got a hammy overacting style that is instantly recognisable from a hundred parodies. Brooding, surly, slurry speeched and constantly snarling.
Burton's hamminess is legendary--he's long been held up an example of a great stage actor who didn't know how to dial it down for the screen. That said, I actually think Leamas is one of his better film performances. . .though I do agree with Le Carre himself, who said that Peter Finch should have played the part.
And I for one like the film--I think it's a good adaptation of the novel and it stands in stark contrast to the fantasy of Bond and other '60s Bond stories. But I respect where you're coming from, CP!
Burton was pulled up on his hamminess in his final film, Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which he played O'Brien - the sinister interrogator of Mr Smith, played by John Hurt. It's one of those films that's simply never shown on telly any more, even as a curiosity. Burton it was said would then check himself when acting, sometimes calling 'cut' himself when he caught himself 'doing a Burton'. He also noted his hammy style in a film like Beckett I think when he was on the chat show Parkinson in the early 70s.
A legend when I was growing up, I was shocked some 15 years ago to learn someone a bit younger had never heard of him. But then, his films don't seem to endure. Cleopatra is rubbish, and The Robe is heavy going, as is Look Back in Anger frankly.
I loved Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf but again that's a film almost never shown on telly these days. Surely you've seen Where Eagles Dare, caractacus potts? What about my fave guilty pleasure, The Wild Geese, with Richard Harris, Hardy Kruger and Roger Moore?
Known for taking the big money roles, Burton doesn't leave the movie legacy he might have. It's odd, really.
And I for one like the film--I think it's a good adaptation of the novel and it stands in stark contrast to the fantasy of Bond and other '60s Bond stories. But I respect where you're coming from, CP!
I liked it too!
I was trying to describe the experience, rather than make a subjective value judgement.
Its a film we should probably discuss more round these parts. We talk about le Carre's books plenty. And lots of talk about more recent adaptations of his books.
But this one was the first ever le Carre adaptation, and it was coincident with Thunderball and the height of spymania, when there was dozens of mostly very silly Bond parodies competing. This grim grey superserious spyfilm contrasts strongly with all of these. Even the Ipcress File (which is funny in its own way) looks like a colourful spyspoof in comparison.
But this one was the first ever le Carre adaptation, and it was coincident with Thunderball and the height of spymania, when there was dozens of mostly very silly Bond parodies competing. This grim grey superserious spyfilm contrasts strongly with all of these. Even the Ipcress File (which is funny in its own way) looks like a colourful spyspoof in comparison.
One thing I find interesting is that Paul Dehn had a hand in both the script for Spy Who Came In From the Cold and Goldfinger! Talk about a man who could change hats. And I've always found Dehn fascinating--himself a spy (and, according to Le Carre, an ASSASSIN!), a screenwriter, and openly gay. A good movie could be made about him. . .
I've never heard of Paul Dehn before, but he seems very interesting. After googling him for a while the sources say very little about his WWII service. Most sources just say Dehn was an SOE officer, was an instructor at Camp X and he was on missions in France and Norway. Historynet.com also mentions more about the skills he passed on as an instructor, mostly classic espionage skills. Other than his connection to spy movies I was naturally intreaged by the mention of a mission to Norway. I'm above average knowledgable about espionage and special operations in WWII in Norway, and I've never heard of non-Norwegian SOE agents working here. There was a company of Norwegian agents in Scotland who knew the country and language, so why use a foreigner? I hope to find out more.
This is an action thriller starring Chadwick Boseman as a New York policman. Two men end up robbing far more drugs than they planned and killing half a dozen police officers in the process, making their chances of survival very small. Boseman character orders all travel into and out of Manhattan stopped to trap the cop killers, but gradually understands the case is murkier and more complicated than the thought. I expected a standard high-consept action movie, but this is closer to movies like Serpico, The Parallax View and Heat. 21 bridges has a high consept and a grand scale, but it also handles story and character very well. The director is an Irishman named Brian Kirk. He has only done high-end TV before, such as GoT, Luther, Great Expectations and Penny Dreadful. But making a few episodes of a major TV series today is comparable to a mid-level movie twenty years ago.
I think Brian Kirk should be considered as a Bond director, because he handles both both epic and personal, has a very good understanding of story and character and the movie looks and sounds great. He is also used to directing for series showrunners, and that's basically what Babs and Michael Wilson are.
Excellent movie!
Fine Bogart film with Lauren Bacall and Edward G Robinson.
Bogart is a former service man who visits a family in their Florida hotel (I think) because he was with their relative when he died at Cassino. But in a plot line that would anticipate The Spy Who Loved Me, he finds a sultry Russian spy there who's being terrorised by a man with steel teeth - no, not that one - he finds the hotel has been taken over by hoodlums.
Swaggering, cowardly and a star, Edward G Robinson's character really has all at the hallmarks of a certain departing US President, where unexpected natural events conspire to defeat his plans.
One support actor I swore was Saxby from Diamonds are Forever. He isn't/wasn't but Bruce Cabot in DAF had one hell of a career, dating back to the 30s, and died just one year after DAF.
He is notorious however his part in the downfall of Errol Flynn as recounted by David Niven in his Hollywood bio, turning on his mate when he was owed money and sent in the receivers to grab his possessions. No idea he played Saxby in DAF - still he gets shot so that' something!
High Society
Amusing slightly hollow classic musical. Great songs, great starts, great gags - something's.a bit off though. You know you're getting on a bit when you start to identify more with George, Grace Kelly's intended in the film, a stuffed shirt stitched up by Bing Crosby, whose machinations seem perhaps less amusing and rakish today, a bit like Roger Moore's card play to seduce Solitaire.
Sinatra has a Bond-like tux and is 'taken for a ride' by Grace Kelly in a speeding car that Thunderball seemed to borrow from; this and a similar scene in To Catch A Thief are a bit sad in view of how she later died.
Amusing slightly hollow classic musical. Great songs, great starts, great gags - something's.a bit off though. You know you're getting on a bit when you start to identify more with George, Grace Kelly's intended in the film, a stuffed shirt stitched up by Bing Crosby, whose machinations seem perhaps less amusing and rakish today, a bit like Roger Moore's card play to seduce Solitaire.
Sinatra has a Bond-like tux and is 'taken for a ride' by Grace Kelly in a speeding car that Thunderball seemed to borrow from; this and a similar scene in To Catch A Thief are a bit sad in view of how she later died.
Watched it tonight. Very dated. I'd never seen it before. Good songs. Performances a bit so-so. Best sequence was Grace Kelly drunk ar her bridal shower singing "Sensational".
I prefer the original "The Philadelphia Story" - no offence to Bing Crosby, but he's no Cary Grant. Jimmy Stewart won a leading man Oscar for a supporting part in that one. He was as miscast in the 1940 version as Sinatra is in this. Bing seems too old to have been married to Grace Kelly - though they had just made The Country Girl together to great acclaim, different kind of film though - and I rather fancy his and Sinatra's roles should have been reversed. Lush photography sets and costumes. A money spinner in its day but not much joy for this viewer.
The second Harry Palmer film can't match The Ipcress File and I've always found the plot too confusing with too many double crosses to keep tabs on. Still it's Caine looking young and doing his thing.
The Jewish woman working for the Israelis (is that the way to put it or do I have to report myself to David Baddiel's Twitter feed?) is obviously it seems dubbed by the same actress who dubbed Ursula Andress in Dr No.
One creepy character I recognised as the sinister Slugworth in the later Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
It cries out for John Barry but he only did the first film, on the other hand it's directed this time by Bond man Guy Hamilton.
Nice shots of Berlin too. Then we had Berlin again in Bridge of Spies
Enjoyed this a lot but it's a bit too polished really, that's Spielberg these days really. A bit 'on the nose' as they say. The era is almost done in the same way as Indy and the Crystal Skull.
I saw David Fincher's latest, Mank, on Netflix. If you've never seen--or don't like--Citizen Kane and/or if you have no interest in Hollywood filmmaking in the 1930s and '40s, you will probably be bored out of your mind. But if you're someone like me who loves those things, this is a real treat--a brilliant recreation of the filmmaking style of the '40s, down to black and white photography and reel cues in the upper right corner of the screen. And Gary Oldman puts in another great performance as the boozy, anarchic screenwriter Herman Manciewicz (uncle of the Tom Manciewicz who worked on all the Bond scripts of the '70s) who pounded out the script for Kane in the teeth of W. R. Hearst's opposition, Orson Welles's badgering, and his own alchoholism. Great fun--if you're in the right audience.
Topaz
Hitchcock, 1969
based on a novel by Leon (Exodus) Uris
One of only a few of Hitchcock's Hollywood films I've never seen before. And its a spy film, how did I miss this one?
Hitchcocks most recent film was another spy film, Torn Curtain. With A-list stars Paul Newman and Julie Andrews, that one was a taut human scale thriller about a phony defector scheme complicated when the defector's wife decides to join him. Very different from what was considered a spyfilm in the mid/late 60s, but a well told story. (and note how I can summarise the concept in half a sentence)
Topaz is an overlong sprawling convoluted "epic" with dozens of characters, several digressions, that neither knows where to start its story nor where to end. And, for the first time since Rebecca (?) no A-list stars. Mostly about a French secret agent's adventures in Cuba at the time of the missile crisis.
First half hour shows the defection of a highranking KGB officer and his family. This is all very exciting, but nothing to do with the films main plot or characters.
After half an hour, the American agent who managed the defection (who has a very familiar voice) meets with a French agent and asks him to travel to Cuba.
Which brings us to the real start of the story. This Cuban section is full of tense scenes, lots of detailed spycraft involving contraband photographs, eccentric supporting characters, a terrifying villain and the sympathetic widow of a hero of the revolution.
Then just when we think the story is over with its tragic climax, it continues to drag on for another half hour in Paris, with our French agent pursuing a tangentially related plot, and the really interesting events we just witnessed in Cuba (specifically the human cost) are never mentioned again.
Film just stops after 140 minutes with an ambiguous and morally unsatisfying scene at the airport. There had been three endings filmed, and this was Hitchcock's preferred ending.
I say no A-list actors, but there were at least three supporting actors I recognised:
- The American agent with the familiar voice was John Forsythe, the silver-fox lead from Dynasty and the unseen Charlie from Charlie's Angels. No wonder I recognised that voice.
- Speaking off great voices, the terrifying Cuban villain was John Vernon, Dean Wormer from Animal House! I always said that character had a great movie villain voice! wikipedia says his very first acting job was the voice of Big Brother in a 1950s adaptation of 1984, and that voice woulda been perfect!
- And most of interest to us, the Cuban leading lady is played by Karin Dor, from You Only Live Twice. Her character in YOLT was a bland rewrite of a better character from an earlier film, so watch this film to see her really get to show what she can do in a more interesting role. And she's doing cool spy-stuff, too.
But who is playing our hero, the French secret agent?
Frederick Stafford, who had been doing lo-budget eurospy Bond knock-offs before being discovered by Hitchcock. He had been the lead in a series of films about Agent 117! wikipedia claims Stafford had been one of the contendors to be the new Bond in OHMSS. say what you want about Lazenby's acting skills, but thankfully our Lazenby was more charismatic than this guy.
I would not ordinarily waste time reporting on a film I did not think was good, but this one is Hitchcock and is a 1960s spy film, so is doubly deserving of discussion.
Hitchcock's many spyfilms, from The Man Who Knew Too Much through to North By NorthWest, are usually said to be the inspirations for our Bondfilms, the Avengers, The Man From UNCLE and therefor ultimately the whole 1960s spy craze. Humourous, glamourous, spectacular, usually rather weird with largescale climaxes.
Interesting that as this Hitchcock inspired trend evolved into such nonsense as Matt Helm or Casino Royale, Hitch himself returned to the genre with a final spyfilm so dry dense humourless unglamourous as this one.
That's a brilliant review, caractacus potts, I really enjoyed reading that.
I saw Topaz maybe a decade ago when I'd regularly rent DVDs from LoveFilm, which would mail out the next DVD on your list when you sent back the last. It became a sort of self-perpetuating thing, never-ending, like scrolling down Twitter.
I just can't remember much about it, save one excellent death scene filmed from overhead, very Hitch. Convoluted plots aren't really his thing, are they? It's usually about one guy out of his depth and up against the State, or someone. Even Pyscho sort of follows that line, as it's from Anthony Perkins' pov.
thanks for saying so Napster!
though really what I do are reports, rather than reviews. Ordinarily I prefer to leave my subjective opinion unsaid and just suggest the experience, and maybe open up some topics for discussion.
I'm not sure which death scene you mean, unless its the death of...
Karin Dor
... but I don't remember if it was an overhead shot. It was suspenseful...
with the big baddy loudly promising in front of his men she would have to be tortured for her treason, then quickly shooting her in the back in a move so subtle his men would not notice
If the whole film does not add up, there are lots of great specific Hitchcock moments, especially in the Cuban scenes.
There's a lengthy oblique overhead shot in the final section of the film, where we watch several groups of NATO diplomats slowly realising which is the mole in the room, while we the audience already know. We silently watch the the groups of men move back and forth and whisper, while the mole begins twitching and is slowly isolated from the rest. A well choreographed bravura sequence, and the film is full of such impressive technical moves.
But no death in that scene.
Maybe you're thinking of Torn Curtain, which featured...
a lengthy and gruesome scene in a remote farmhouse, with self defense resulting in a slow gory death
And you're right, a Hitchcock plot is usually pretty highconcept, made interesting by its variations in suspense, humour and tricky camera moves. The odd plot structure of Psycho was exceptional, but that twist partway through was in itself part of the high-concept. Whereas the rambling story structure of Topaz is very different than how he usually made films.
Nice review Caractacus.
Topaz was very dull as I remember. It lacks Hitch's normal suspenseful sequences. You're right about the cast of relative unknowns here, but Rebecca did have a well known cast list (Olivier, Fontaine, Sanders, etc). I think 'Strangers on a Train' has probably his least starry cast of his post-war movies. You neglected to mention the film's an adaptation of Leon Uris' bestselling book, which I believe was based on an actual Cold War incident.
yes I meant starting with Rebecca, his films usually had at least one A-lister at the top of the bill.
Olivier, Grant, Stewart, Bergman, Kelly...
I think even his British films were led by actors who were stars at the time in Britain, even if theyre not so well remembered now.
On the other hand, I was thinking Psycho and the Birds may also have been led by lesser known actors. We know who Perkins and Leigh are now, but is their longlasting fame maybe because they were in Psycho? and Tippi Hedren I think of as a Hitchcock actress, cant think what else she's done.
But those two were meant to be lowbudget shockers, Hitchcock's challenge to himself to make something new to contrast with the large scale of 1950s films. And then his next two films starred Sean Connery (he's one of ours!) and
Paul Newman. Back to the A-listers.
hey I did so mention Leon Uris, in the third line! but thanks for reminding us of that point, and giving the author proper credit. I gather it was based on a true story too, not just the general context of the Cuban missile crisis.
We often forget Hitchcock based most of his films of novels, even if he usually radically rewrote them to suit his own interests. How many of his other films were based so directly on recent real world events?
I saw David Fincher's latest, Mank, on Netflix. If you've never seen--or don't like--Citizen Kane and/or if you have no interest in Hollywood filmmaking in the 1930s and '40s, you will probably be bored out of your mind. But if you're someone like me who loves those things, this is a real treat--a brilliant recreation of the filmmaking style of the '40s, down to black and white photography and reel cues in the upper right corner of the screen. And Gary Oldman puts in another great performance as the boozy, anarchic screenwriter Herman Manciewicz (uncle of the Tom Manciewicz who worked on all the Bond scripts of the '70s) who pounded out the script for Kane in the teeth of W. R. Hearst's opposition, Orson Welles's badgering, and his own alchoholism. Great fun--if you're in the right audience.
Interesting HB.
I saw it had landed on Netflix and thought it looks like my kind of thing. I've never seen Citizen Kane but I do like the film making aspect of it. Plus Gary Oldman is usually good value.
I haven't seen Topaz, but I know it's one of Hitchcock's leser movies. I suspect Frenzy was his last really good film, and that one has no stars in the cast.
Frenzy was v decent. Sleazy, but in mostly the right ways - though some odd boring stuff in it with the detective and his meal. One actor was Van de Valk and in The Wild Geese of course.
Yes, c Potts, the deaths scene was the one you mentioned. -{
yeh I just found an old review from Golrush where he includes a screencap of that shot. forgot it was an overhead shot, very geometrically bold composition. Blood spilled in this film is always a very brilliant scarlet, contrasting violently with the surrounding colour scheme.
I was thinking, if we could somehow curate an online video library of 1960s spyflick actors with one representative performance for each, I would include Karin Dor's scenes from this film rather than You Only Live Twice, regardless of which is otherwise the better film. Her acting and character arc in this film is really very good, as I say she does cool spy stuff, and is all beautifully filmed.
That screencap in Golrush's post, what an outro for a character.
Technically theres a lot of great moments in Topaz, and great performances from Dor and from Vernon. Its just the weak leading man, and moreso the rambling story structure, that make it lesser Hitchcock.
Frenzy was sleazy. A final return to the "wrong man" plot, but now Hitchcock is including the more graphic sex and violence that had become normal in the New Hollywood era. He'd made a career of implying this stuff in ever more creative ways, in defiance of the Hays code. But its less fun when he makes in explicit. Family Plot I haven't seen since I was a kid, and don't remember. But I think its a comedy rather than a spyfilm or a shocker. I do have it sitting on my shelf so should cue it up soon.
hey I did so mention Leon Uris, in the third line! but thanks for reminding us of that point, and giving the author proper credit. I gather it was based on a true story too, not just the general context of the Cuban missile crisis.
We often forget Hitchcock based most of his films of novels, even if he usually radically rewrote them to suit his own interests. How many of his other films were based so directly on recent real world events?
Oh. I apologise. I kinda expected to see it referenced in the bulk of the review because one of the reasons for the rambling structure might have been the complex and in depth detail of Uris' novel. I've read Exodus - it's good but seriously long and involved.
Goid follow up points caractaus.
Frenzy was sleazy. And I don't much care for it in terms of seeing it again. But it's a proper movie really and... again, as with Topaz one great death scene, and this one is implied.
The camera tracking back down the stairs of the flat and outside into the sunny street as the necktie strangler unseen and unknown goes about his business upstairs
Comments
This Connery-Caine classic from 1975 was shown as a tribute to the late actor. Bond fans of a certain age may recall seeing this on telly and hoping their man would step up to the acting plate - this he does, of course, and you noted that this was Connery's acting chops to the fore. The narrative arc is memorable as the two wily ex-soldiers go on an adventure to con the Indian natives but find events do not entirely go their way.
Watching it today, as I have since, I find that the two leads aren't quite as charming as I remembered. Okay, they're chancers and conmen so maybe not supposed to be. It's directed by the late great John Huston - well, alright, but he also did Escape to Victory.
Admittedly this was.a time when Hollywood was demystifying itself and making grittier efforts so that magical flavour was out of favour.
On another post I wrote how Connery wasn't a great romantic lead - a sex symbol, yes, but he didn't have that way of giving himself up to another person. That applies here to this bromance, for that is what it is. Caine and Connery work well together. But this is a buddy movie that plays out like a romance, with the play out of breakup due to greed, another woman, ego or betrayal. You don't quite get that with Connery and Caine, they are mates but don't seem to have that bond.
The two actors are perhaps too old for this (if so, so would have been Bogart and Gable for sure) you can't forgive their excess as the folly of youth. Perhaps it might have been better in the mid 60s, with Connery as he was in The Hill and Caine the bolshy corporal from The Ipcress File. The middle-aged fellas actually might seem a bit dim to be going off on this adventure. On the other hand, one can't help thinking, well of course these two soldiers will succeed in their endeavour - they're Connery and Caine. And I never warmed to them so much that you feel the pain of their fallout as the film progresses. You should feel complicit in their wrongdoing and then later ashamed. You don't really get that arc in the movie.
One problem here is to avoid the essential narrative theme - this is really a Bob Hope Bing Crosby Road To... film. I mean the plot is pretty much the same and if it looked more Hollywood that might make it more obvious, and the gritty location work does help dispel this.
What has long struck me is that Connery's Danny changes his character and that's the nub of the film - but tbh it comes across less as Danny but just Connery being himself. I'd have liked a bit of the slight pomposity we saw in Connery's Name of the Rose or The Last Crusade to be seen here. Again, the double act doesn't quite come off as his Danny doesn't seem that well drawn initially.
The film was not a smash hit and the first half hour doesn't help. Even on repeated viewing I didn't quite catch that Caine is trying to pickpocket Rudyard Kipling's pocket but finds he's nicked the watch of a fellow freemason and feels duty bound as a fellow mason to return it. The thing about Masons is that being a secretive organisation, nobody is interested in them except Masons and those who think they secretly control the world and so on. It needs more prepping as a central plot advice, as this turns out to be. That said, this is the only film I've seen in which freemasonry is depicted relatively sympathetically rather than as the Illuminati. But it isn't clear why Kipling, even as a fellow Mason, would want or need any involvement with these two hucksters, esp as I've said, they don't seem nearly as funny or charming as I remember.
The end is stirring stuff and the rope bridge is another reason why Connery was so suitable for Indy and the Last Crusade, seeing as it featured in the previous film, Temple of Doom.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
The third in Hammer’s trilogy and it’s really good. This time filmed in colour and Andrew Keir replaces Brian Donlevy as Quatermass. A Martian spacecraft is found whilst digging in a London Underground station and releases an ancient evil. Most people find this the best of the trilogy but Quatermass II remains my favourite. Well worth watching and Julian Glover has an early role as a young Colonel.
Based on the book by le Carre, which I still regard as his best told tale.
Directed by Martin Ritt, who I'm not familiar with. Wikipedia tells me Ritt otherwise was known for "serious issues" type dramas, not crowdpleasing thrillers, and it shows.
Most important: starring Richard Burton, whose performance dominates this experience.
I believe I've never actually seen a film with Burton before, but he's got a hammy overacting style that is instantly recognisable from a hundred parodies. Brooding, surly, slurry speeched and constantly snarling. I bet Dalton's Bond owes more to this performance than it does to any previous cinematic Bond!
There's an actor playing Smiley who bears no resemblance to the character as described by le Carre, or as interpreted by either Guiness or Oldman.
Cinematically this is very black and white, all static camera shots of shabby interiors, magnifying every stain on the wallpaper and every wrinkle in Burton's skin. probably owes a lot visually to the Third Man (which borrowed from German Expressionism so it all comes full circle), but whereas that film was taut and suspenseful, this one is slow and stagey, plodding along like a verbose stage play.
I dont think any of it is actually filmed in Germany, despite opening and closing at The Wall (both sequences look great). (whereas Funeral in Berlin had much authentic Berlin content) First half is mostly set in working class London, and makes postwar English life look like a depressing grind (the kind of no-hope existence normal folks read Ian Fleming novels to escape from). Scenes in communist East Germany in the second half look scarcely more bleak than working class London.
I say above this is still my favourite le Carre novel. But while the adaptation is very faithful plot-wise, I think it worked much better as a book. As a film, especially a slow stagey film, it is overwhelmed by the incomprehensible dialog during Burton's long interrogation scenes.
But this is where I appreciate the casting of such a hammy stage actor. The characters job is too deceive his interrogators, and all the world, with his carefully rehearsed disinformation and manufactured persona as an embittered castoff from the Secret Service. So the fact we are so very aware He Is Acting!!! gives these long dialogs a second level of meaning, distracting from how boring the actual dialog is.
Bernard Lee has a cameo in this, He is the grocer whom Burton assaults near the beginning. Too bad, missed opportunity.
What they should have done: Bernard Lee should have had the office next to Control's, and at one point the two secret service chiefs encounter each other in the hall. Lee should glare at Control, then shuffle away muttering loudly:
"bloody Control bloody overcomplicated spy schemes. All you need to bloody do is send your damn man to sleep with the villains bloody girlfriend, then blow up the villains bloody headquarters, then youve saved the bloody world yet again, thats the job! Don't know why bloody Control has to make this dirty damn business seem so bloody difficult! grumble grumble mutter mutter now wheres my damn pipe etc..."
You missed a Bond reference - Michael Hordern pops up at one point as a homosexual going after Burton's expelled agent. Hordern would go on to voice Paddington in the 1970s TV series, later played of course by Ben Wilshaw, who also did Q.
Okay, so it's an obscure reference.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I absolutely love that. I remember being absolutely petrified but totally glued as a kid. I saw it not too long ago and it's still eerie. James Mason is fabulous.
I'm surprised it hasn't had a remake to be honest.
Burton's hamminess is legendary--he's long been held up an example of a great stage actor who didn't know how to dial it down for the screen. That said, I actually think Leamas is one of his better film performances. . .though I do agree with Le Carre himself, who said that Peter Finch should have played the part.
And I for one like the film--I think it's a good adaptation of the novel and it stands in stark contrast to the fantasy of Bond and other '60s Bond stories. But I respect where you're coming from, CP!
A legend when I was growing up, I was shocked some 15 years ago to learn someone a bit younger had never heard of him. But then, his films don't seem to endure. Cleopatra is rubbish, and The Robe is heavy going, as is Look Back in Anger frankly.
I loved Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf but again that's a film almost never shown on telly these days. Surely you've seen Where Eagles Dare, caractacus potts? What about my fave guilty pleasure, The Wild Geese, with Richard Harris, Hardy Kruger and Roger Moore?
Known for taking the big money roles, Burton doesn't leave the movie legacy he might have. It's odd, really.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I liked it too!
I was trying to describe the experience, rather than make a subjective value judgement.
Its a film we should probably discuss more round these parts. We talk about le Carre's books plenty. And lots of talk about more recent adaptations of his books.
But this one was the first ever le Carre adaptation, and it was coincident with Thunderball and the height of spymania, when there was dozens of mostly very silly Bond parodies competing. This grim grey superserious spyfilm contrasts strongly with all of these. Even the Ipcress File (which is funny in its own way) looks like a colourful spyspoof in comparison.
Although worth a watch, to take the piss out of it.
One thing I find interesting is that Paul Dehn had a hand in both the script for Spy Who Came In From the Cold and Goldfinger! Talk about a man who could change hats. And I've always found Dehn fascinating--himself a spy (and, according to Le Carre, an ASSASSIN!), a screenwriter, and openly gay. A good movie could be made about him. . .
This is an action thriller starring Chadwick Boseman as a New York policman. Two men end up robbing far more drugs than they planned and killing half a dozen police officers in the process, making their chances of survival very small. Boseman character orders all travel into and out of Manhattan stopped to trap the cop killers, but gradually understands the case is murkier and more complicated than the thought. I expected a standard high-consept action movie, but this is closer to movies like Serpico, The Parallax View and Heat. 21 bridges has a high consept and a grand scale, but it also handles story and character very well. The director is an Irishman named Brian Kirk. He has only done high-end TV before, such as GoT, Luther, Great Expectations and Penny Dreadful. But making a few episodes of a major TV series today is comparable to a mid-level movie twenty years ago.
I think Brian Kirk should be considered as a Bond director, because he handles both both epic and personal, has a very good understanding of story and character and the movie looks and sounds great. He is also used to directing for series showrunners, and that's basically what Babs and Michael Wilson are.
Excellent movie!
Fine Bogart film with Lauren Bacall and Edward G Robinson.
Bogart is a former service man who visits a family in their Florida hotel (I think) because he was with their relative when he died at Cassino. But in a plot line that would anticipate The Spy Who Loved Me, he finds a sultry Russian spy there who's being terrorised by a man with steel teeth - no, not that one - he finds the hotel has been taken over by hoodlums.
Swaggering, cowardly and a star, Edward G Robinson's character really has all at the hallmarks of a certain departing US President, where unexpected natural events conspire to defeat his plans.
One support actor I swore was Saxby from Diamonds are Forever. He isn't/wasn't but Bruce Cabot in DAF had one hell of a career, dating back to the 30s, and died just one year after DAF.
He is notorious however his part in the downfall of Errol Flynn as recounted by David Niven in his Hollywood bio, turning on his mate when he was owed money and sent in the receivers to grab his possessions. No idea he played Saxby in DAF - still he gets shot so that' something!
High Society
Amusing slightly hollow classic musical. Great songs, great starts, great gags - something's.a bit off though. You know you're getting on a bit when you start to identify more with George, Grace Kelly's intended in the film, a stuffed shirt stitched up by Bing Crosby, whose machinations seem perhaps less amusing and rakish today, a bit like Roger Moore's card play to seduce Solitaire.
Sinatra has a Bond-like tux and is 'taken for a ride' by Grace Kelly in a speeding car that Thunderball seemed to borrow from; this and a similar scene in To Catch A Thief are a bit sad in view of how she later died.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Watched it tonight. Very dated. I'd never seen it before. Good songs. Performances a bit so-so. Best sequence was Grace Kelly drunk ar her bridal shower singing "Sensational".
I prefer the original "The Philadelphia Story" - no offence to Bing Crosby, but he's no Cary Grant. Jimmy Stewart won a leading man Oscar for a supporting part in that one. He was as miscast in the 1940 version as Sinatra is in this. Bing seems too old to have been married to Grace Kelly - though they had just made The Country Girl together to great acclaim, different kind of film though - and I rather fancy his and Sinatra's roles should have been reversed. Lush photography sets and costumes. A money spinner in its day but not much joy for this viewer.
The second Harry Palmer film can't match The Ipcress File and I've always found the plot too confusing with too many double crosses to keep tabs on. Still it's Caine looking young and doing his thing.
The Jewish woman working for the Israelis (is that the way to put it or do I have to report myself to David Baddiel's Twitter feed?) is obviously it seems dubbed by the same actress who dubbed Ursula Andress in Dr No.
One creepy character I recognised as the sinister Slugworth in the later Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
It cries out for John Barry but he only did the first film, on the other hand it's directed this time by Bond man Guy Hamilton.
Nice shots of Berlin too. Then we had Berlin again in Bridge of Spies
Enjoyed this a lot but it's a bit too polished really, that's Spielberg these days really. A bit 'on the nose' as they say. The era is almost done in the same way as Indy and the Crystal Skull.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Hitchcock, 1969
based on a novel by Leon (Exodus) Uris
One of only a few of Hitchcock's Hollywood films I've never seen before. And its a spy film, how did I miss this one?
Hitchcocks most recent film was another spy film, Torn Curtain. With A-list stars Paul Newman and Julie Andrews, that one was a taut human scale thriller about a phony defector scheme complicated when the defector's wife decides to join him. Very different from what was considered a spyfilm in the mid/late 60s, but a well told story. (and note how I can summarise the concept in half a sentence)
Topaz is an overlong sprawling convoluted "epic" with dozens of characters, several digressions, that neither knows where to start its story nor where to end. And, for the first time since Rebecca (?) no A-list stars. Mostly about a French secret agent's adventures in Cuba at the time of the missile crisis.
First half hour shows the defection of a highranking KGB officer and his family. This is all very exciting, but nothing to do with the films main plot or characters.
After half an hour, the American agent who managed the defection (who has a very familiar voice) meets with a French agent and asks him to travel to Cuba.
Which brings us to the real start of the story. This Cuban section is full of tense scenes, lots of detailed spycraft involving contraband photographs, eccentric supporting characters, a terrifying villain and the sympathetic widow of a hero of the revolution.
Then just when we think the story is over with its tragic climax, it continues to drag on for another half hour in Paris, with our French agent pursuing a tangentially related plot, and the really interesting events we just witnessed in Cuba (specifically the human cost) are never mentioned again.
Film just stops after 140 minutes with an ambiguous and morally unsatisfying scene at the airport. There had been three endings filmed, and this was Hitchcock's preferred ending.
I say no A-list actors, but there were at least three supporting actors I recognised:
- The American agent with the familiar voice was John Forsythe, the silver-fox lead from Dynasty and the unseen Charlie from Charlie's Angels. No wonder I recognised that voice.
- Speaking off great voices, the terrifying Cuban villain was John Vernon, Dean Wormer from Animal House! I always said that character had a great movie villain voice! wikipedia says his very first acting job was the voice of Big Brother in a 1950s adaptation of 1984, and that voice woulda been perfect!
- And most of interest to us, the Cuban leading lady is played by Karin Dor, from You Only Live Twice. Her character in YOLT was a bland rewrite of a better character from an earlier film, so watch this film to see her really get to show what she can do in a more interesting role. And she's doing cool spy-stuff, too.
But who is playing our hero, the French secret agent?
Frederick Stafford, who had been doing lo-budget eurospy Bond knock-offs before being discovered by Hitchcock. He had been the lead in a series of films about Agent 117! wikipedia claims Stafford had been one of the contendors to be the new Bond in OHMSS. say what you want about Lazenby's acting skills, but thankfully our Lazenby was more charismatic than this guy.
I would not ordinarily waste time reporting on a film I did not think was good, but this one is Hitchcock and is a 1960s spy film, so is doubly deserving of discussion.
Hitchcock's many spyfilms, from The Man Who Knew Too Much through to North By NorthWest, are usually said to be the inspirations for our Bondfilms, the Avengers, The Man From UNCLE and therefor ultimately the whole 1960s spy craze. Humourous, glamourous, spectacular, usually rather weird with largescale climaxes.
Interesting that as this Hitchcock inspired trend evolved into such nonsense as Matt Helm or Casino Royale, Hitch himself returned to the genre with a final spyfilm so dry dense humourless unglamourous as this one.
I saw Topaz maybe a decade ago when I'd regularly rent DVDs from LoveFilm, which would mail out the next DVD on your list when you sent back the last. It became a sort of self-perpetuating thing, never-ending, like scrolling down Twitter.
I just can't remember much about it, save one excellent death scene filmed from overhead, very Hitch. Convoluted plots aren't really his thing, are they? It's usually about one guy out of his depth and up against the State, or someone. Even Pyscho sort of follows that line, as it's from Anthony Perkins' pov.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
though really what I do are reports, rather than reviews. Ordinarily I prefer to leave my subjective opinion unsaid and just suggest the experience, and maybe open up some topics for discussion.
I'm not sure which death scene you mean, unless its the death of...
There's a lengthy oblique overhead shot in the final section of the film, where we watch several groups of NATO diplomats slowly realising which is the mole in the room, while we the audience already know. We silently watch the the groups of men move back and forth and whisper, while the mole begins twitching and is slowly isolated from the rest. A well choreographed bravura sequence, and the film is full of such impressive technical moves.
But no death in that scene.
Maybe you're thinking of Torn Curtain, which featured...
And you're right, a Hitchcock plot is usually pretty highconcept, made interesting by its variations in suspense, humour and tricky camera moves. The odd plot structure of Psycho was exceptional, but that twist partway through was in itself part of the high-concept. Whereas the rambling story structure of Topaz is very different than how he usually made films.
Topaz was very dull as I remember. It lacks Hitch's normal suspenseful sequences. You're right about the cast of relative unknowns here, but Rebecca did have a well known cast list (Olivier, Fontaine, Sanders, etc). I think 'Strangers on a Train' has probably his least starry cast of his post-war movies. You neglected to mention the film's an adaptation of Leon Uris' bestselling book, which I believe was based on an actual Cold War incident.
Olivier, Grant, Stewart, Bergman, Kelly...
I think even his British films were led by actors who were stars at the time in Britain, even if theyre not so well remembered now.
On the other hand, I was thinking Psycho and the Birds may also have been led by lesser known actors. We know who Perkins and Leigh are now, but is their longlasting fame maybe because they were in Psycho? and Tippi Hedren I think of as a Hitchcock actress, cant think what else she's done.
But those two were meant to be lowbudget shockers, Hitchcock's challenge to himself to make something new to contrast with the large scale of 1950s films. And then his next two films starred Sean Connery (he's one of ours!) and
Paul Newman. Back to the A-listers.
hey I did so mention Leon Uris, in the third line! but thanks for reminding us of that point, and giving the author proper credit. I gather it was based on a true story too, not just the general context of the Cuban missile crisis.
We often forget Hitchcock based most of his films of novels, even if he usually radically rewrote them to suit his own interests. How many of his other films were based so directly on recent real world events?
Interesting HB.
I saw it had landed on Netflix and thought it looks like my kind of thing. I've never seen Citizen Kane but I do like the film making aspect of it. Plus Gary Oldman is usually good value.
Yes, c Potts, the deaths scene was the one you mentioned. -{
'Reports not reviews'!
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I was thinking, if we could somehow curate an online video library of 1960s spyflick actors with one representative performance for each, I would include Karin Dor's scenes from this film rather than You Only Live Twice, regardless of which is otherwise the better film. Her acting and character arc in this film is really very good, as I say she does cool spy stuff, and is all beautifully filmed.
Technically theres a lot of great moments in Topaz, and great performances from Dor and from Vernon. Its just the weak leading man, and moreso the rambling story structure, that make it lesser Hitchcock.
Frenzy was sleazy. A final return to the "wrong man" plot, but now Hitchcock is including the more graphic sex and violence that had become normal in the New Hollywood era. He'd made a career of implying this stuff in ever more creative ways, in defiance of the Hays code. But its less fun when he makes in explicit.
Family Plot I haven't seen since I was a kid, and don't remember. But I think its a comedy rather than a spyfilm or a shocker. I do have it sitting on my shelf so should cue it up soon.
Oh. I apologise. I kinda expected to see it referenced in the bulk of the review because one of the reasons for the rambling structure might have been the complex and in depth detail of Uris' novel. I've read Exodus - it's good but seriously long and involved.
Goid follow up points caractaus.
Roger Moore 1927-2017