Nothing But the Night - 1973 film review

Nothing But the Night is a curious film with a first-class pedigree and an outstanding cast. It's fair to say that the whole is less than the sum of its considerable parts, but I found it watchable and interesting, despite several significant flaws. It's a film that spans more than one genre: crime, sci-fi, and horror all play a part. Overall, though (and I'm trying to avoid spoilers here), it would be a stretch to describe it as a crime film.

The stars are Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, two actors who were never less than watchable. In fact, this was the film that Lee made just before The Wicker Man, and there's one scene which has slight Wicker Man aspects to it, although this movie doesn't compare in quality to Anthony Shaffer's classic. Lee here plays a retired senior cop called Bingham, who is convinced that there is a connection between three recent deaths.

Those deaths get the film off to a dramatic start. They are all incidents which are designed to appear as accidents, but the viewer knows from the start that they are murders. It turns out that all three victims are trustees of an orphanage on a Scottish island. In fact, when I first saw a brief synopsis of this film, I did wonder if the story might bear a resemblance to Gallows Court. It's always irritating when you come up with an idea, and then find someone else had the same notion years earlier! But I needn't have worried. Suffice to say that it is a very, very different sort of story.

The script was written by Bryan Hayles, who was an accomplished exponent of sci-i, and based on a novel by John Blackburn, whose work did span several genres. The cast includes Keith Barron, Georgia Brown (better known perhaps as a singer), Diana Dors (a very over-the-top performance), Fulton McKay, and a young Michael Gambon. The soundtrack was written by Malcolm Williamson, later the Master of the Queen's Music. With all that talent involved, one would have hoped for a less uneven film than this, but it's not bad entertainment. 

Gosford Park - DVD review

Robert Altman's acclaimed and award-winning 2001 film Gosford Park is a whodunit that isn't really a whodunit. The first time I watched it, rather naively I focused on the whodunit aspect of the story and the plot, and found the film enjoyable but not quite the masterpiece it was supposed to be. Now I've taken another look at the DVD version, which includes some useful bonus features, and I'm even more impressed than I was originally.

Really, Altman took the idea of a Golden Age whodunit in a country house setting and used it as a context for a story about the class divide in the age of masters and servants. More or less everything is seen from the perspective of "below stairs", and the amateur detective work, such as it is, is undertaken by a servant. There's a lot of humour in Julian Fellowes' script, and there are many nice observations. I've never watched Downton Abbey, but there's no doubt he's a talented writer.

There is a large ensemble cast, and one of the doubts I had about the film originally is that this means that many of the characters are undeveloped. A large cast also makes it difficult to care about many of the suspects, and the plot of the story isn't its strong point, though there is a pleasing and inventive use of tropes such as the body in the library, the double killing, and impersonation.  Stephen Fry's police inspector is amusing but buffoonish, perhaps excessively so.

As for that cast - wow! Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith (in brilliantly waspish form as the Countess of Trentham), Kristin Scott Thomas, Charles Dance, Tom Hollander, Geraldine Somerville, Jeremy Northam (as Ivor Novello!), Helen Mirren, Kelly Macdonald, Laurence Fox, Alan Bates, Clive Owen, Derek Jacobi, Emily Watson, Eileen Atkins, Richard E. Grant...There's a lot of pleasure to be had from simply watching such stars in action. I can recommend this DVD; it's definitely a film worth watching more than once.

Quirke - BBC One - TV review

Quirke, which began with the first of three episodes tonight, has an impeccable pedigree. The original books about the character, an Irish forensic pathologist working in the Fifties, are written by Man Booker prize winner John Banville (using the name Benjamin Black.) The screenplay came from Andrew Davies, one of the most notable writers of television scripts of the past forty years. And the cast, led by Gabriel Byrne as Quirke, was very strong, and included Michael Gambon.

Even so, on a wet Bank Holiday Sunday, Quirke wasn't exactly feelgood viewing. In fact, it made noirish old Hinterland (the fourth and last episode of which was excellent, by the way) look like sun-soaked Death in Paradise. The depressing mood didn't just come from the story, a grim affair about child trafficking. It was reinforced by the background music and, most of all, by the relentlessly dark lighting. All very gloomy.

But was it good television? Well, the story was based on Christine Falls, the first Black book, and one I enjoyed reading. I'm not sure how easy it would have been to follow for anyone who hadn't read the book. The pace seemed rather uneven, with quite a lot of action near the end, when the scene shifted from Ireland to Boston in the US, after some rather sluggish and borderline dull periods. The quality of those involved in producing this show guaranteed that I paid attention, but I think I'll reserve judgment on its success for another week.

There's been a lot of debate about Banville's attitude to crime fiction. His comments have been interpreted as being rather disrespectful towards genre fiction, although you can argue that he's right to be sceptical about the very idea of genre. There was a famous debate which I witnessed at Harrogate a few years ago where he crossed swords with Reginald Hill, and didn't win too many friends in the audience. Reg wasn't impressed, either, I think it's fair to say. But I was lucky enough to be commissioned to interview Banville for Mystery Scene, a few years ago, and in the course of two long telephone conversations, I found him engaging (after a rather guarded start) and not at all dismissive of crime stories. Yes, his tastes run to Simenon and the Americans rather than Christie and Sayers (and Hill, I suppose) but this is simply a matter of personal preference. The fact is, he's a gifted writer, and crime fiction can only gain if the world's finest novelists try their hand at it. My interview with him, by the way, is to be found on my website, in the articles section here. Lots of other stuff there, incidentally!

Restless: TV review

Restless, a BBC TV two-parter which began this evening is based on a novel by William Boyd, and benefits from a marvellous cast, including Hayley Atwell, recently impressive in Falcon, as well as the eternally entrancing Charlotte Rampling. Add in (among others) the excellent Rufus Sewell and the magnificent Michael Gambon, and you were almost guaranteed something watchable.

And Restless certainly was watchable. Even its sedate pace (perhaps a total of three hours is more than strictly necessary to tell the story?) was fairly appealing. So were the various scenes in Cambridge, one of the most photogenic of cities. It's also a city associated with spies, of course, and Rampling played Eva, who in the 1970s reveals to her daughter that she has another identity; the woman her daughter knows was created when Eva was persuaded to join a branch of British Intelligence at the start of the Second World War.

There are two stories: first, what happened to young Eva (Hayley Atwell) during her career in espionage, and second, what happens to Eva in later life.Tension in the latter story-line builds because Eva is convinced that someone is out to kill her. Why this would be, after so many years, is the great mystery of Restless. I'm hoping for a strong and convincing explanation.

Although I have never been tempted to write a spy story, I do rather enjoy them, if they are well written. Spies trade in secrets, and secrets are always interesting. I used to enjoy Michael Gilbert' spy novels, and his stories about Calder and Behrens, for instance; they deserve to be better known. I haven't read Boyd's book, but the screenplay has me engaged, and I'll be watching episode two for sure.

Layer Cake

I like good gangster movies, but mediocre ones can be very tedious – and the really good ones are rather thin on the ground. So I approached the film of J.J. Connolly’s book Layer Cake with some trepidation, drawn as much by the fact that it starred the excellent Daniel Craig as by optimism that I’d enjoy the story.

But enjoy it I did – very much. In fact, Layer Cake now lines up alongside Get Carter, The Long Good Friday and The Italian Job as one of my absolute favourite British gangster films. Craig is predictably cool and classy in the lead role, but he is assisted by a first rate cast which includes, as senior Bad Guys, those fine actors Kenneth Cranham and Michael Gambon, both of whom perform with gusto.

The plot is complex – multi-layered like some cakes, in fact. Briefly, Craig is planning to retire young to enjoy his ill-gotten gains, but a hapless henchman called Duke lands him in the mire by stealing a vast quantity of drugs from some seriously menacing Serbian villains, while Craig finds it impossible to keep both Cranham and Gambon off his back. There are some very violent moments, which are not for the faint-hearted – Cranford this is not! - but also some very funny lines and scenes.

Craig moves smoothly from one messy situation to another, pausing only (though this is entirely understandable, I think) to pick up Sienna Miller, who dumps Duke’s unstable nephew, with consequences that in the end prove very unfortunate. I liked the pace and twists of the story-line, and as long as you don’t mind violence and bad language, this is a film that can definitely be recommended.