Frenzy - film review

Frenzy was Alfred Hitchcock's penultimate film. It dates from 1972, and boasts a fine cast and a screenplay by Anthony Shaffer, based on the book Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square by Arthur La Bern, whose work I have not read (but I don't think he specialised in crime.) It's a story about a psychopathic serial killer, and Hitchcock tried a number of tricks with the movie, as well as combining black humour with a very dark subject. The result is a curious mish-mash, which has some strengths - yet one feels it could and should have been better.

Hitchcock returned here to his native London, and much of the action takes place around Covent Garden, just before it ceased to be a traditional market. Women are being strangled by a "necktie killer", and a bad-tempered loser called Blaney (the charismatic Jon Finch, an actor who never quite achieved as much as he seemed capable of) becomes the prime suspect. But the suspense derives from the fact that the audience soon realises that he is being set up by a false friend, played by Barry Foster.

Other members of the cast include Barbara Leigh-Hunt, whom I once saw on stage in the 80s, Anna Massey, Jean Marsh, Vivien Merchant and Alec McCowen. All very good actors, and there is one superb moment of film-making when we see Marsh enter the office of her boss, Leigh-Hunt. We know the latter has been murdered, but are made to wait before Marsh discovers the body, and we hear her scream. Very clever, but there are also some lapses of taste (I know taste is very subjective, but I don't think the women characters would be treated in the same way today). There's some nudity and the overall feeling I had is that Hitchcock was trying to "get with it", but with only limited success.

Apparently La Bern hated the film, which was not an uncommon reaction among writers whose work Hitchcock adapted. I felt the film was too long, and that its length blunted its edge. We also never really understand the killer's psychology. But - and it is a big but - I also feel it would be a mistake to dismiss this film as a failure. It's interesting and watchable even with its faults.

The Secret Adversary

Very belatedly indeed, I have just watched the television adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Secret Adversary, first screened as long ago as 1983. The book itself was Christie’s second, a light-hearted thriller, and it’s safe to say that it would now be pretty obscure had its author not proceeded to write some of the finest of all whodunits. The plot has its ludicrous moments, but it’s a very lively story with likeable protagonists, and the adaptation by Pat Sandys played to these strengths, as well as treating us to some sumptuous photography.

This was the story which introduced Tommy Beresford and Tuppence Cowley, who went on to marry, and cropped up occasionally in Christie stories for the rest of her career. Here, just after the First World War, they are at a loose end and in search of adventure. Tommy overheard a conversation about someone called Jane Finn (overheard conversations were to become a Christie trademark) and events move rapidly from there, as they become unofficial secret service agents and set off on the track of a missing treaty that, if it falls into the wrong hands, may lead to a general strike and the overthrow of the government.

The producers cast two very good-looking actors as Tommy and Tuppence – James Warwick and Francesca Annis. Francesca Annis in particular performs her role with gusto: she really is one of my favourite tv stars. This pair later starred in a series based on the linked short stories featuring Tommy and Tuppence, Partners in Crime, which again I did not see at the time. My question to any of you who did watch it is: was it any good?

The supporting cast was excellent, including Peter Barkworth doing his usual reliable Englishman as the secret service supreme, Mr Carter, Toria Fuller (who seems to have ended her screen career prematurely, according to a quick search I made on the internet), and Alec McCowen. Oh, and George Baker plays a bad guy – yes, our own Inspector Wexford, who earlier in his career quite often took villainous roles that would be almost unthinkable today! All in all, this show was pleasant entertainment, and the twists in the story-line do give at least a hint of the skills that Christie went on to develop with such extraordinary single-mindedness.