The Medusa Touch - 1978 film review

In my youth, I used to see Peter Van Greenaway's books in the library quite often. When I looked at the blurbs and first few pages, I was never sufficiently enthused to borrow them, probably because it was clear he wasn't writing novels in the same vein as contemporary writers of the time whom I admired, such as Julian Symons. Probably this was a mistake (even if it wasn't a misjudgement of his type of writing) on my part, because I rather enjoyed The Medusa Touch, an unorthodox film made by Jack Gold from one of his unorthodox novels.

Nowadays, I'm much more receptive than I was then to genre-bending stories, and this film blends three distinct types of story - murder mystery, sci-fi, and horror. Let's take the murder mystery first. The film begins with an apparently fatal attack on a writer, John Morlar. The case is investigated by Scotland Yard in the unexpected person of a French cop who is there on some sort of exchange scheme. He is played, pretty well, by Lino Ventura. The first big surprise for him is that Morlar isn't quite dead from the bludgeoning he's suffered. He's rushed to hospital, while Ventura delves into his past.

A series of flashbacks follow. This isn't usually a good way to present information, but it's done fairly well. Morlar is played by Richard Burton and he has been seeking psychiatric help from Dr Zonfeld (Lee Remick). We learn that, throughout his life, Morlar seems to have had a strange power to inflict harm on people who get on his wrong side. And in recent times his misanthropy has been increasing.

The murder mystery element of the story proves to be quite perfunctory, so to that extent my youthful instincts may have been on the right lines. We're dealing with telekinesis here, though (spoiler alert) the source of Morlar's powers is never explained, and I find that irritating. The later stages of the film turn into a dramatic attempt to prevent Morlar inflicting colossal harm on institutions that he despises, and these action scenes are pretty well done. The supporting cast is terrific - it includes Jeremy Brett and Michael Hordern as well as many stalwarts such as Harry Andrews, Philip Stone and Norman Bird. To sum up, an odd film based on what I suspect is an odd book by a writer who was attracted to oddity. But interesting enough to make me curious about Van Greenaway's other work and - at last! - ready to try reading him.

The Deadly Affair - 1966 film review

I read John Le Carre's novel Call for the Dead a very long time ago, but I've only just caught up with the film made of it by Sidney Lumet, a director of distinction. It was retitled The Deadly Affair and stars James Mason as Charles Dobbs - the same character as George Smiley in the novel, but renamed for legal reasons as the naming rights were tied up by someone else. (I always tend to think, by the way, that a mutually sensible approach to negotiation could resolve these oddities, but alas, people don't always negotiate sensibly...)

The cast is excellent, starting with the ever-reliable Mason, who really was a good actor. Harry Andrews is a highly believable retired cop, while Simone Signoret, in a less than glamorous role, is terrific. So is Harriet Andersson as Anne, Mason's wife, who loves him but torments him with her affairs. Roy Kinnear, Kenneth Haigh, and Lynn and Corin Redgrave also make telling appearances. The script is by Paul Dehn, who had worked on Goldfinger and later teamed up with Lumet again on Murder on the Orient Express. The soundtrack is by Quincy Jones, and there's a decent title song, "Who Needs Forever" by Astrud Gilberto; the music isn't quite in the John Barry class, but it's still high-calibre 60s easy listening.

With so much talent involved, the film is very watchable, even if the story seems slightly stretched out and a bit predictable. The legendary Freddie Young was responsible for the cinematography and he gives the movie a distinctly dark look, with several very well-chosen London locations. It's quite a modern-seeming look, even if the Hyde Park restaurant in which one scene was shot was demolished about thirty years ago. The visual style of the film coupled with the performances contribute to a downbeat mood which works well, even if it lacks the pace and melodrama of, say, the James Bond movies. It wasn't a box office hit, and I can see why, but it's stood the test of time pretty well.

The premise is simple. After a tip-off, Dobbs interviews an agent who may be a spy. The agent promptly commits suicide - but did he really kill himself, or were dark forces at work? The answer to that question is easily guessed, but Lumet and his collaborators still kept me engaged from start to finish. 

The Mackintosh Man and Desmond Bagley

I've just watched The Mackintosh Man, a film dating back just over forty years, and based on Desmond Bagley's best-selling novel The Freedom Trap. The film was directed by John Huston, and boasted a dazzling cast, led by Paul Newman, and including James Mason, in one of his silky villain roles, and Dominique Sanda, as the glamorous young woman required by statute to keep the hero of thriller films company. Other notable actors to make an appearance are Ian Bannen, as the agent Slade, and Harry Andrews.

It's getting on for five years since I blogged about Desmond Bagley, a writer whom my late father really enjoyed. Like Alistair MacLean, another superstar thriller writer of the Sixties and Seventies, Bagley was a gifted entertainer, but the books of both men are not discussed very often these days, considering what dominant figures they used to be. At their best, though, they were both highly accomplished. I used to prefer MacLean when I was in my teens, because his books bore a closer resemblance to detective stories, but the quality of his work dipped in later years. That wasn't true of Bagley - he died while still at his peak.

The film follows the story of Newman's character, who agrees to take part in a scheme to track down The Scarperers, a gang specialising in springing major criminals from jail. Some sources suggest that Bagley drew inspiration for his plot from the jailbreak of the Soviet agent George Blake, but this is emphatiically a work of fiction. Newman attacks a postman and steals some diamonds, and is duly caught (the excellent Peter Vaughan plays one of the cops). Sentenced, rather improbably I thought, to twenty years inside for a first offence, he is contacted by the bad guys, and the story zips along from there.

Huston was a gifted director, and even though this is a long way short of being his best film, it's not at all bad. Some of the action takes place in Ireland, which Huston loved, and some in Malta, and a competent story is told with pace and efficiency. I never really warmed either to Newman's character or his lover, and this was part of the reason why I thought this was a decent film, but not a truly memorable piece of work. But it was good to be reminded of Bagley's brisk story-telling style.

A Touch of Larceny

A Touch of Larceny is a 1959 movie which remains hugely enjoyable and entertaining to this day. It is based on Andrew Garve's novel The Megstone Plot, but in the film the emphasis is on comedy  rather than suspense, although there is some of the small boat sailing that features so often in Garve's work. The director was Guy Hamilton, whose later work included Goldfinger, and the cast is superb. James Mason, Vera Miles and George Sanders take the lead roles, but the minor charactes are played by such notables as John Le Mesurier, Harry Andrews and a very young Peter Barkworth.

Mason, an actor I always enjoy watching, plays a rakish ex-submariner who is idling his time away in peacetime, working in the Admiralty and chasing pretty women. He bumps into an old acquaintance, played by Sanders (have there ever been two actors as suave as Mason and Sanders? I doubt it) and instantly falls for Sanders' American lady friend, played by Miles (who came to Hitchcock's attention, and had a role in Psycho).

Mason wants to get rich quick, and to get Miles, and so he conjures up a scheme whereby he will appear to be a traitor, causing the newspapers to libel him. He will then reappear and cash in with compensation claims. But of course, things do not turn out to be straightforward.

Amazingly, this is all still rather topical, given current debates about press freedom, and the ways in which reputations can be damaged (nowadays it's not just newspapers in the firing line, but bloggers and tweeters too.) As a lawyer, I'm fascinated by the law of libel. It does worry me that libel can be unintentional, and some compensation awards seem excessive. Equally, it's wrong to destroy people's reputations, and the law does need to protect individuals, not least those who don't have deep pockets enabling them to hire expensive lawyers. Any reform of the law needs to be focused on achieving quick solutions and the containment of cost.

Anyway, back to the film. The decision to concentrate on the comedy element of the storyline is extremely successful. The story moves along at a fast pace, and there are some very nice plot twists. The actors do a great job of making the most of the material. Heartily recommended.