The Night Visitor - film review

Even before Scandi-noir was a thing, there was The Night Visitor. A film from 1971 with a very chilly feel. If you are in the mood for cheery entertainment, be warned. This film is'n't for you. It's all about madness and murder, and Bergman's muse Liv Ullmann is in the cast. The film's alternative title is Lunatic, and there are enough shots of snowy landscapes to chill you to the marrow. And yet - it's also a sort of locked room mystery. A locked prison cell, in fact.

One winter night, an inmate called Salem (played by Max von Sydow with even more than his customary gloom) escapes from an asylum. He heads for a lonely house, where his family are bickering. Two years ago he was convicted of a murder. But was he guilty, or was the perpetrator really his brother-in-law (Per Oscarsson),? This chap is a doctor, and decidedly creepy. He's married to Liv, and they have a fractious relationship with Liv's sister.

Murder is done. The doctor sees Salem, but when the police become involved - in the extremely unlikely form of Trevor Howard - there is no evidence that Salem ever got out of the asylum. He's back in his locked cell, and there seems to have been no way that he could have got out. The detective is perplexed, and Salem continues to carry out a diabolical plan before all is finally revealed.

I found this an intriguing film, but it's also rather strange. There are some odd casting choices - not just Trevor Howard, but Rupert Davies, Arthur Hewlett, and Gretchen (EastEnders) Franklin feature in rather unlikely roles. And the music is written by Henry Mancini, though the film and soundtrack are a world away from both The Pink Panther and Breakfast at Tiffany's. Overall, worth watching, but very slow.

Three Days of the Condor

Three Days of the Condor was a successful 1975 thriller movie, which I saw when it first came out in my long ago student days. I enjoyed it very much at that time, and wondered how it would stand up to a second viewing in 2012, especially as the techno-thriller aspects of the story-line have inevitably been overtaken by time. The answer was that it remains very watchable indeed, a real credit to the excellent director, the late Sydney Pollack, many of whose films I've enjoyed.

The story is based on the debut novel of James Grady (someone I've never read); the book is called Six Days of the Condor. The cast is superb, with Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway as glamorous leads, and Max Von  Sydow as a suitably enigmatic assassin. John Houseman plays a minor part as a senior CIA man with his customary gusto.

The set-up is terrific. Redford is a nerdy researcher at a strange kind of library in New York, and just because he pops out of a basement exit to avoid the rain while getting a quick bite to eat, he is lucky enough to escape an attack by a group of gunmen who burst into his workplace and mow down everyone there. Within minutes, Redford is on the run. It turns out that he is in fact a researcher for the CIA. But one of his superiors seeks to lure him into a fatal trap. It seems he can trust no-one.

He therefore kidnaps Faye Dunaway in an attempt to get away - a very good choice of victim, not least because they fall for each other, and she helps him to fight back against those who are out to kill him. We move into fairly standard conspiracy thriller territory, but the pace is well maintained, and although I had some reservations about the later scenes,and the assassin's behaviour, the ending is pleasingly ambiguous.Good entertainment.