Three Films Make A Post: The scene was the wildest freak-out in Vegas history…and the gig was to grab it all!

The Innocents aka De uskyldige (2021): Eskil Vogt’s horror movie about a group of kids who discover they are developing psychic powers and the pretty horrible things that follow is certainly a future genre classic, exploring uncomfortable ideas about childhood and poverty without becoming dishonest or grimdark or lacking compassion, while also providing some memorable and painfully effective horror set pieces that make most jump scare horror look embarrassing and pointless in comparison.

There’s also fantastic child acting, as well as filmmaking that finds un-kitschy ways to portray the way a child’s sense perceptions might feel when combined with the strangeness of telepathic and telekinetic powers taken seriously.

The Adventures of Arsène Lupin aka Les aventures d’Arsène Lupin (1957): I generally do tend to enjoy French genre movies made in this period, but Jacques Becker’s attempt at everyone’s favourite gentleman thief feels rather too close to the way German filmmakers of the time would have handled the material, which might have something to do with this being a French-German-Italian co-production. So expect only the most obvious kind of humour, a never-ending stint in the world of KuK (treated nostalgically, of course and alas). Not to blame on my native country are Robert Lamoureux’s one-note performance as Lupin, or the script’s difficulties when it comes to at least pretending its plot episodes are actually connected. And it’s not as if the film had any interesting heist set pieces.

The Came to Rob Las Vegas (1968): A criminal mastermind (Gary Lockwood) bites off more than he can chew in a daring (and murderous) armoured truck robbery (not really robbing Las Vegas, despite the film’s title), and soon has to cope not just with the normal police and the owner of the truck (Lee J. Cobb), but also the Mafia, the US treasury department (via Jack Palance), and the fact that his merry band of colleagues is mostly incapable of keeping a clear head or following instructions. At least there’s a particularly attractive Elke Sommer waiting for him, or might that be another problem?

This is another international co-production, with the late-60s cast to match, competently though not exceedingly well directed by Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi. If it were twenty minutes shorter, this would probably be a great example of the twisty, hard-boiled arm of the heist movie. With over two hours of running time, it does tend to drag its feet from time to time, taking its time with various subplots it doesn’t exactly need. On the other hand, there are some really cleverly staged set pieces taking place in the desert, and a great ending where everybody loses.

Ten Little Indians (1974)

aka And Then There Were None

Under various pretexts, the mysterious U.N. Owen invites a group of people (Oliver Reed, Elke Sommer, Adolfo Celi, Herbert Lom, Gert Fröbe, Maria Rohm, Charles Aznavour, Stéphane Audran, Alberto de Mendoza and Richard Attenborough) into an unused hotel smack dab in the Iranian desert next to some picturesque ruins.

On their first evening, a tape message by the voice of God, or Orson Welles, accuses everyone in the house of being responsible for the death of at least one other person. Usually, that would be quite enough to stop every party, but this one takes until Charles Aznavour sings a song with an invisible band to get antsy; or the sudden nervousness might be on account of his death by poisoning shortly afterwards.

Now, our protagonists find themselves trapped in the Hotel, for the desert seem rather unconquerable, and there are neither cars nor telephones around. Soon, more people die based on a free very interpretation of the “Ten Little Indians” nursery rhyme, and people become increasingly paranoid, convinced the killer must be one amongst their ten.

Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians seems to be a book that brings out the best in the people adapting it, perhaps because it lacks a single annoying detective and replaces her or him with a perfect opportunity for a bunch of actors to emote, chew scenery, or something of that kind.

Dubious yet sometimes lucky British producer Harry Alan Towers loved the material so much, he made three adaptations of it, about one every fifteen years. Okay, I suspect he needed to keep making them to keep a license alive, but given that two out of these three films are actually rather good, that’s not the worst that could have happened. As far as I understand, this second Towers version uses much of the dialogue from his first version, but it still retains a character very much of its own thanks to its acting ensemble, its locations, and Peter Collinson’s direction.

Collinson, a man with mediocre as well as quite great films on his CV, clearly saw the opportunities the locations Towers acquired gave him to build a rather macabre mood. His camera finds the inherent threat in the hotel’s interiors where spacious oriental kitsch meets occidental colour-blindness, he uses spectacular staircases for playing games of the audience watching someone watching someone else while he himself is being watched without needing more camera involvement than decidedly clever placement, etc, and so forth.

The film’s visual style seems highly influenced by the giallo, the camera generally being positioned in the more peculiar and telling ways available with no conversation – and this is a very conversation heavy peace – not enhanced by direction that seeks to express the mood inside a room via its own movement and positioning even before the actors do anything at all. Like many a giallo director, Collinson succeeds in leapfrogging an audience’s scepticism towards a faintly – or very – ridiculous plot by creating a mood that suggests dreamscapes and the workings of the subconscious, making it very easy to read the resulting films in a manner where what a film’s plot has to say becomes secondary to what its mood tells us about its characters and the meaning of the world surrounding them.

I am – obviously – very fond of that approach to filmmaking, perhaps even to a fault, but I think this particular Christie novel just calls for it. This is, after all, a film about members of the upperclass and the bourgeoisie having to show and confront the truths behind their masks and the lies they tell themselves to get to sleep at night. Why, two of the more working class characters might even be called innocent, which would probably be more telling in a class-political sense if the other two weren’t just as murderous the bourgeois.

These characters are brought to life in various ways between subtlety, thespian grandstanding, and good old scenery-chewing with most of the involved well able and willing to use all three approaches, depending on what any given scene calls for. It’s all rather lovely to watch, particularly in scenes like the surreal confrontation between Lom and Attenborough with two packs of matches and a billiard table as a prop.

This all adds up to a very fine movie, even if the ending eschews to embrace the darkness of the novel and goes for a rather more normal happy end that only fits the tone of what came before vaguely. Despite the problem of the ending, Ten Little Indians is another exception to my usual “Ugh, Agatha Christie” rule.

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,italian movies,french movies,spanish movies,german movies,reviews,mystery,peter collinson,oliver reed,elke sommer,herbert lom,gert fröbe,richard attenborough,alberto de mendoza,stéphane audran,adolfo celi,maria rohm,charles aznavour

The Venetian Affair (1967)

Warning: this is not a Solo for U.N.C.L.E. movie, so get over it.

Former CIA agent Bill Fenner (Robert Vaughn) is now an alcoholic reporter for a wire service, walking through life in the mandatory crumpled suit and trenchcoat. The end of Fenner's career had something to do with his wife, now ex-wife, Sandra Fane (Elke Sommer) working for the KGB, and left Fenner rather cynical towards his old life.

When a conference about nuclear disarmament in Venice ends in a bomb explosion, the CIA pressures Fenner's boss to send him to Venice, for Fenner's former CIA chief Frank Rosenfeld (Edward Asner) knows a few things Fenner will take some time to find out, namely that Sandra is now working for a rather nasty freelance spy named Wahl (Karlheinz Böhm), and had an affair with the US delegate for the conference, which can hardly be mere chance.

But before Fenner stumbles into this particular nest of vipers, he meets Pierre Vaugiroud (Boris Karloff), another freelance operator, but one with a more wholesome agenda. Vaugiroud has written a report that not only confirms that the bomb explosion was caused by a suicide bomb the US delegate of the conference wore, but he also has an explanation for that rather atypical behaviour the film will continue to play coy about. But before Vaugiroud can get his report into the hands of the powers that be, he disappears. Rosenberg sics Fenner to somehow catch his ex-wife and use her to get to the truth of the affair.

Of course, various trusts will be broken and Fenner's cynicism confirmed during the course of the narrative.

TV workhorse director Jerry Thorpe's The Venetian Affair stands in the rather uncomfortable part of the spy movie genre where a film is neither as realistically minded as a Le Carré novel, nor as outright silly as a Eurospy movie or a James Bond film. In honour of what most people on screen apart from Elke Sommer and Karlheinz Böhm are wearing here, I dub this the "trench coats and crumpled suits" sub-genre. We could also call it the "nearly existentialist but not quite" sub-genre. In these films, the spy business is rather dirty, and really not an adventure, but these films aren't generally intellectually or emotionally deep enough to be existentialist about it, nor is there much of a political bone in their bodies.

This doesn't mean that this part of the spy genre isn't worthwhile, it only means you need to bring a different set of expectations to them than you would either take into Eurospyland or into Smiley's office. Otherwise, you end up like the IMDB reviewers complaining this isn't like Solo for U.N.C.L.E. and miss out on a perfectly fine film.

And really, it's difficult to imagine a film with a cast like The Venetian Affair's being a complete loss - Vaughn is expectedly good at looking bitter and somewhat worse for wear, Sommer is ambiguous, Böhm a very polite monster, Asner expertly grumpy, and poor, sick, elderly Boris Karloff gives the poor, sick, elderly spymaster he plays true dignity. Other minor roles are filled out by capable actors like Felicia Farr, Luciana Paluzzi and Roger C. Carmel, so there's nothing at all to complain about on the acting front. Venice is also exceedingly convincing at playing itself with its usual mixture of beauty and decay that seems built for the shady dealings on screen.

Director Thorpe gets the job done in a straightforward yet not completely uncreative way. There's no moment I haven't seen in many other straightforwardly directed films done exactly the same way before, but then this is not the kind of film that needs anything more from a director than the ability to let the plot and the characters go about their business while he takes care of a wee bit of mood building; all this Thorpe does.

That leaves me with The Venetian Affair as a minor yet well enough realized film full of people looking grimly at each other, trench coats, conspiratorial meetings, threatening gestures, and a bit of mind control. I'll take it.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,spies,robert vaughn,elke sommer,karlheinz böhm,felicia farr,boris karloff,edward asner,luciana paluzzi,jerry thorpe,reviews