The Anderson Tapes - 1971 film review

Over the years, I've somehow managed to miss The Anderson Tapes, a 1971 film directed by the gifted Sidney Lumet, and based on a novel by Lawrence Sanders. It's a heist movie starring Sean Connery at the peak of his powers, and I've long been familiar with the excellent theme tune by Quincy Jones. Finally, I managed to catch up with it, thanks to the admirable Talking Pictures TV.

It's apparent that Lumet was trying to do something more than direct a straightforward film about a robbery. This is a story, in part, about covert surveillance, and it pre-dates The Conversation, which is my favourite movie about surveillance, a genuine masterpiece. At the start of the film, Connery is released from prison. He is an angry man, who immediately reunites with his girlfriend, Dyan Cannon, who is being maintained by another lover in a posh apartment block. Connery decides to rob her fellow residents.

The trouble is that this is a two-hour film with barely ninety minutes of material. Lumet's approach may have been cutting-edge in its day, but it seems to me to have dated, and this film is much less effective, in my opinion, than some of his other work. I am a Connery fan, but I never warmed to his character, and the heist seemed to me to be hopelessly protracted, and so obviously doomed to failure that tension faded.

Even Quincy Jones' soundtrack seems, to a modern ear, to be intrusive and occasionally a bit irksome, despite the quality of that theme. The ending is meant to be ironic, but I'm afraid that by that stage, I didn't really care too much. You'll have gathered that I was disappointed by this one. Maybe it's a case of having had expectations that were too high. But in my opinion, it's nothing like as good as The Conversation.

The Lives of Others

I don’t watch too many German language films with sub-titles, even though there was a long ago time when I was very keen on studying German. Undoubtedly, though, The Lives of Others, which won the Academy Award for best foreign language film is the best German movie I’ve ever seen.

The film is written by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and stars Ulrich Muhe, Martine Gedeck and Sebastian Koch. The setting is East Germany in the 1980s, a time of severe state repression. A writer called Dreyman is having a relationship with an actress, Christa-Marie Sieland. A secret service man from the dreaded Stasi, Wiesler, is told by a superior to head a surveillance operation focused on Dreyman’s flat. The reason is that a minister is besotted with Christa-Marie and wants to find evidence of treachery on the part of his rival, Dreyman.

As Wiesler conducts the operation, he becomes fascinated by Dreyman and Christa-Marie, and his unquestioning obedience to the totalitarian regime begins to falter. He tries to warn Christa-Marie, but she finds herself trapped, and a series of cheerless events lead to tragedy. The ending of the film is, however, unexpectedly uplifting.

The Conversation, starring Gene Hackman, has long been my favourite film about surveillance, but this one runs it close. Muhe’s nuanced performance is excellent, and the claustrophobic feeling of a state-controlled society is conveyed with great power. One would like to think nothing similar could ever happen in Britain, but our surveillance society is developing apace, so who knows? This is a truly thought-provoking film, and it deserves the acclaim it has received.