Don't Look Now - 1973 film review

There are a lot of hopeless horror movies around, but there are also several masterpieces. My three all-time favourites are The Wicker Man, Rosemary's Baby and Don't Look Now (Midsommar, which has grown on me, is not too far behind, but I don't think it's quite in the same league, while The Shining didn't impress me quite as much as it did most people). I first watched Don't Look Now in the 70s and the shock ending made a great impact on me. It's an arty film, perhaps too self-consciously so, but a recent viewing confirmed that it hasn't lost its power.

The premise is simple and is based on a short story, rather than a novel, by Daphne du Maurier. Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland play a married couple, the Baxters, whose young daughter dies tragically in a drowning incident. The little girl was wearing a red coat at the time. The couple are deeply affected by their dreadful loss but some time later travel to Venice, where John Baxter is working on an ancient church. In Venice, they meet two elderly sisters, one of whom (superbly played by Hilary Mason) is blind and psychic and claims to be able to see the little girl. Meanwhile, a series of murders is being committed in the city... 

The first time I watched the film, I found it quite bewildering. At that time, I'd never visited Venice, which makes a fantastic setting for the story. Venice is gorgeous, but it also has its macabre side, with all those bewildering twists and turns of the alleyways and the ever-present canals. Water is a central theme of the screenplay and the camera work is dazzling.

I've always been a Julie Christie fan and although the casting of Donald Sutherland must have seemed like a gamble, he is terrific too. This is a film that could easily have slipped into pretentiousness, but the performances are so effective that the risk is averted. The result is a haunting gem.

Kate Paul's Journal

I've mentioned Kate Clarke's writing about real life crime several times on this blog. Her career as a true crime specialist got off to a cracking start with the much-admired Murder at the Priory, co-written with Bernard Taylor, and since then she's produced a range of interesting books, as well as contributing an essay to Truly Criminal, last year's CWA anthology of work about real life cases, some of them notorious, some pretty obscure..

I've never met Kate in person, but she's a terrific correspondent. Some time ago, she sent me a copy of her Journal, published under her maiden name, Kate Paul. It took me far too long to get round to reading the Journal, but once I made a proper start on the story, I was hooked. It is, simply enough, a diary of a young woman's life experiences from the late 50s onwards, and it's fascinating on more than one level.

First, for the insight it gives into a young woman's mindset as she embarks on adult life, trying to work out her attitudes to the world in general, and more specifically the men she knows, art (which she studied at college), and teaching. Second, for the picture it gives of English society at the time, seen through the eyes of a young person shortly before the Beatles arrived on the scene, and the cultural changes we now associate with the Sixties really got going. And as a bonus there are mentions of some of the extraordinary people she got to know. Kate's circle in those days included David ("Dave") Hockney, Spencer ("Spence") Davies (later to have a big hit with "Keep on Running") and Julie Christie.

As a slice of social history, it really is hard to beat. If I were ever to write a story set in the early Sixties, I'd refer to the Journal for insight into how young people thought and behaved at the time. Kate was, as the photograph of her makes clear, most attractive, and yet it's clear that she also felt, at times, insecure and melancholic. In some ways, one would have thought the world was at her feet, and yet clearly it often didn't seem like that to her.

The Mass Observation archive at Sussex University has a good many of Kate's early papers, many of which relate to the period covered by the journal. For researchers into the period, I suspect this is treasure trove. And I hope that in the fullness of time, Kate's researches into criminal cases will also be properly archived. Her work on two principal subjects, British society during her lifetime, and criminal behaviour, is quite invaluable.

(Incidentally, my thanks to those who have pointed out the glitches on my website and blog over the past week or so. I thought the Russians or Chinese were hacking away, but it turns out the explanation is a more prosaic I.T. problem. So if you've seen and been perplexed by an early draft of this post previously, my apologies.)

American Gigolo - film review

I watched American Gigolo not too long after it first came out in 1980, and found it a reasonably enjoyable thriller, though not in the same league as Taxi Driver, which also had a screenplay written by Paul Schrader. When it cropped up on the TV schedules,I decided to take another look. It's still perfectly watchable, but it's also a very good illustration of the fact that nothing dates faster than fashion. American Gigolo was quite stylish thirty-odd years ago, but now it is in some respects a period piece.

Richard Gere plays Julian, the eponymous gigolo, and Lauren Hutton, the wife of a rising politician, falls for him in a big way. Unfortunately, Julian is mixed up with some very dodgy people, and is hired to perform with a rich financier's wife while the rich financier, who is keen on violence towards women, watches. A couple of days later, the wife is murdered, and Julian becomes the prime suspect.

The crime plot is straightforward, and not terribly interesting, something which originally was quite well disguised by the sexy style of the film, but which is now rather more obvious. Lauren Hutton is a woman of legendary beauty, and Richard Gere is a very good-looking man, and (although the likes of the equally charismatic Julie Christie, and also John Travolta, were considered for the parts at one time) their appeal helps to explain why the film was, and I think remains, quite popular. Nina van Pallandt (remember the singing duo Nina and Frederick?) also features, but although the film has quite a few good moments, overall it now seems excessively long, with less to it than meets the eye.

There's an interesting contrast between the music used in Taxi Driver and the soundtrack of this movie. Bernard Herrmann scored Taxi Driver, and although at the time he was coming to the end of his career, and had been abandoned by Hitchcock, there is a timelessness about his music which helps to make it memorable. Giogio Moroder composed the soundtrack of American Gigolo, and although I like his work, again that electronic sound now has a very Eighties feel about it. This is not by any means a bad movie, and is still a perfectly good time-passer. But the fashionable flourishes that were integral to its original success are now more like an encumbrance.