The Valachi Papers (1972)

This Dino de Laurentiis production directed by Terence Young just about managed to beat The Godfather to the cinemas, but didn’t make much of a splash there; nor is it as well-remembered as even the least of Coppola’s gangster movie trilogy would eventually become.

Which certainly has a lot to do with how little this rates in any aspect compared to the Coppola film. Instead of turning the true crime plot about real life Mafia goon turned federal witness Joe Valachi (Charles Bronson) into an exploration of a man’s relationship to the criminal world he betrays, or even just an actual exploration of anything but the surface of that world, this just races through plot points probably taken from the book this is based on, hitting on anthropological bits of Mafia rituals, murders and Valachi’s love life (Jill Ireland inevitably makes her appearance there) in turn, but never stopping to connect any of this to become something you might want to call an actual narrative.

Watching this, it’s not difficult to imagine Martin Scorsese suffering through it as well, only to think he can certainly do this better by using actual themes and characters and even – gosh! – connecting those, while keeping to the life-long scope of the film, coming up with Goodfellas in the process, a film that’s directly comparable in its scope and basic set-up, but does everything right The Valachi Papers can’t even seem to imagine doing.

Despite the gritty visual quality native to movies made at this point in time, there’s a blandness to the film that’s more than just a little infuriating, a feeling as if nobody involved could actually be bothered to add any personality or depth to the proceedings. The sloppiness of the period parts – where no attempt seems to have been made to hide out of period background details to a degree even I noticed it – adds further to this air of a film that’s just not bothering. Which, as always, leaves the question why a viewer should.

Cold Sweat (1970)

Original title: De la part des copains

Korean War veteran Joe Martin (Charles Bronson) is living with his wife Fabienne (Liv Ullmann) and her daughter Michèle (Yannick Delulle) at the Côte D’Azur, working his own small boat charter service. The marriage seems somewhat tense thanks to Joe suffering from what we’d now call PTSD. He’s drinking too much and holds back emotionally. As it turns out when one a rather nasty character from Joe’s past named Whitey (Michel Constantin) turns up one summer evening, Joe has also been holding back some facts from his past, as well as his actual name.

You see, seven years ago, he was part of break-out from a military prison organized by one of his former commanding officers, one Captain Ross (the very American James Mason). When Katanga (Jean Topart), one of the other members of the group, murdered a random cop for not much of a reason during the break-out, Joe was having none of it, simply taking off with the escape car, leaving the rest of the men to fend for themselves.

For some reason, Whitey really needs Joe’s boat now, to transport something to or from a Turkish vessel anchored somewhere in the area, and he’s certainly not the kind of guy unwilling to threaten a wife and a kid (if available). Joe, on the other hand, is not the kind of guy to tolerate that very well, killing Whitey and getting rid of his body rather efficiently – with a little help from Fabienne.

Of course, this is not he end of the couple’s problems, for soon enough, the rest of the former break-out gang – Ross, Katanga, and one Gelardi (Luigi Pistilli), turn up. They, too are very much into threatening families and really want Joe’s boat, as well as, probably, a bit of vengeance. So our protagonist agrees to their demands, until the right moment comes to make his displeasure known more violently.

In theory, Cold Sweat is a French production, but it’s one of those international joints that really don’t feel specifically regional apart from its setting. The cast is a merry mixture of people from all over the globe, as is good tradition in European genre filmmaking of this era. Rather less common in this sort of thing, the director isn’t French or Italian but veteran British filmmaker Terence Young.

The script, indeed written by two Frenchmen, is based on a novel by Richard Matheson and follows the Gold Medal paperback style of late 60s, early 70s thriller, something a lot of French filmmakers (and one assumes producers) seem to have admired quite a bit. For good reasons, too, because this style of the thriller, with focussed plots that still manage to squeeze in some surprisingly deep characterization, and an update of a noirish philosophical outlook tend to adapt really rather well to the screen, often without there being too big of a need for major changes. Unfortunately, I can’t say if the film at hand does actually make many changes to the plot, because this is one of the Matheson books I’ve never gotten around to reading.

As it stands on screen, it’s a fine bit of early 70s thriller in any case, with sharp plotting, not terribly deep but effective characterization and a real sense for the tense set-up followed by a follow-through that always escalates the drama of any given situation. As we all know, Young was a wonderful director for this kind of thing, usually not showing himself beholden to the stodgier style of some of his British contemporaries but using the increased technical possibilities of changing times in filmmaking to the fullest.

Particularly the film’s final act where is Joe racing and scrabbling to save his loved ones through ever increasing problems and dangers is absolutely fantastic. There’s a brilliantly done car race against the clock that isn’t even the film’s proper climax to enjoy, for example. The sequence is edited and shot so sharply, Young can even check in on the quieter tension between the surviving rest of the characters during it without lessening its impact, instead ratcheting up the suspense with this device, as it is meant to do but all too often doesn’t.

Acting-wise, Cold Sweat is mostly a fine proposition, the cast of character actors performing just as good as you can expect them to (which is why people like I love character actors often more than the proper movie stars – consistency and quiet capability is the thing), Bronson’s suggesting much about Joe’s inner life by tensing and untensing his shoulders (seriously) and also gets some pretty fun tough guy lines, while Ullmann provides a stock character with actual life. The only problem spot here is James Mason, or rather, James Mason as played by his bad, oh so bad, American accent, a thing so awesome (like giant tentacled monsters are awesome) it apparently does not leave room for much of an actual performance.

But then, he would have been dubbed by someone just as bad in most Italian movies, so we do at least get to experience what this great actor believed Americans sound like.

Cold Sweat is obviously still a wonderful piece of European/International thriller.

In short: The Mechanic (1972)

Arthur Bishop (Charles Bronson) is working as a hitman for a large, secretive criminal organization. He is specialized in murders prepared and executed in complicated ways that make them look like accidents. Bishop clearly prides himself on being rather good at his job, yet his late middle age has brought him some existential discontent. It’s not just that he gets bad news from his physician, nor that his latest job was killing an old friend, Big Harry (Keenan Wynn), after he asked him for help, it’s something deeper, though we can be pretty sure it’s not a “conscience” or anything silly like that.

When Bishop meets Harry’s son Steve (Jan-Michael Vincent), it is very much love at first sight between the two, as if they had recognized each other as one of a kind at once. Steve, it turns out, is a sociopath and an asshole, and as such ideal for the profession of professional killer. Arthur decides to teach him his trade.

If you have any thoughts about Simon West’s remake of this one, just banish them at once. West’s movie leaves out everything that’s interesting about this Michael Winner film, leaving an empty husk of an action film where something much more thoughtful belongs. Yes, I’m surprised myself to use the term “thoughtful” to describe a Michael Winner film – or to actually like one so much I’m tempted to call it brilliant - but in The Mechanic, the old sleazebag managed to fuse his lurid tendencies and the required men’s adventure style violence with well-formed observations concerning the nature and character of his protagonist and his apprentice. Why, the longer the film goes on, the more it turns out to be deeply interested in questions of ethics, in the rules men of violence observe or not, and in exploring the conceptual borders between order and chaos. There’s also quite a bit about generational differences to be found here.

All that while his film also delivers on the fronts one typically would expect of a Winner/Bronson joint: there’s quite a bit of action, of course, though it is much less sloppily directed than typical of Winner. There are also some moments that made this viewer deeply uncomfortable – particularly the suicide sequence comes to mind – but for once, these moments are in a Winner movie for a thematic reason, making points about these men and their world where no woman even has an actual character name (the homosexual subtext hardly bothering with the sub at all). It’s not at all what I’ve come to expect of Winner.


Bronson and Vincent are perfect for their roles. Bronson uses his calm presence acting in the best way possible, applying nuances of posture and scowling in ways that often suggest much about the things his character would never be able to say to anyone. Vincent’s cocky smugness is terrifically on point here, suggesting that where Bishop has hidden depths and a hole he doesn’t know how to fill, Steve just has a hole that doesn’t need filling.

Breakheart Pass (1975)

An Army train secretly carrying diphtheria medication, a doctor (David Huddleston) and replacement soldiers led by Major Claremont (Ed Lauter) for Fort Humboldt, has to cross the Rocky Mountains. The train also carries US senator Fairchild (Richard Crenna) who accompanies his fiancée Marica (Jill Ireland) to her father, the highest officer of the Fort. Apart from the Doctor and the senator, nobody else on board knows about the diphtheria situation, and that will only change when the train will have reached the point of no return.

On the last stop before that point is reached, the train rather unwillingly picks up Marshal Pearce (Ben Johnson) who has just rather accidentally caught former doctor, con artist and murderer John Deakin (Charles Bronson). Ironically, Deakin will turn out to be the ideal detective when a series of curious accidents and murders begins to hinder the train’s journey.

Though Tom Gries’s (who was also responsible for the fantastic Will Penny) direction seems a bit perfunctory and TV movie like from time to time, lacking a bit of edge and sometimes even the sense for making the best out of some of the film’s set pieces, Breakheart Pass still turns out to be an excellent film. The script by Alistair MacLean based on his own novel provides a surprisingly clever, and often cleverly surprising mixture of the mystery and the Western genres, both working well together not just because of the relative (there are of course other genres mixtures of its type) novelty of the mix but because MacLean (and perhaps Gries) actually seems to have a very clear idea which parts of the Western genre and which of the mystery film mix well and which don’t.

Some of the film’s better red herrings are more effective if the audience involved has some working knowledge of the Western genre and its clichés and habits because they are at times running against exactly these expectations. Not with a grand gesture of deconstruction or from a position of ironic knowingness, as much as from the more practical kind of view the sort of commercial writer MacLean was for better (in this case) or for worse (in many other cases) comes to reach with experience in his craft, using the expectations of an audience against it not to necessarily to make it think about genre structures and what they might mean but to provide it with the joy of surprise. One might complain that this approach lacks a certain depth, but then one should by all rights be too entertained by the little games MacLean is playing here to care.

I certainly found myself too entertained to complain. Watching Breakheart Pass, I also found myself appreciating many of the little things the film does right: how it introduces the Bronson character as a man focusing on using his brain instead of using his brawn to make the latter scenes when Gries’s depiction of the action becomes more exciting and our hero suddenly does use his brawn a bit surprising and certainly more exciting, while still emphasising the character’s intelligence before his propensity for physical violence; the way Bronson makes tiny little shifts to his at this point well established screen persona that actually make his performance here very convincing; the excellent supporting cast of character actors doing what these people always do in the best, the worst, and the most mediocre films; the moments of witty dialogue that generally come when you least expect it; and how the film implicitly suggests more mysteries should end with a climactic Indian (and these are “Indians”, that is, a bizarre product of unexamined clichés, suppositions and plot functions rather than Native Americans, which are of course various generally mistreated culture groups who have little to nothing to do with Hollywood’s Indians) attack instead of a chunky guy with a fake Belgian accent explaining the plot to people assembled in a room.

All the competence and these minor delights probably don’t turn Breakheart Pass into what people are bound to call a classic, but it’s such a fine example of unassuming yet not stupid genre filmmaking, I can’t say I care if that’s the case or not.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,reviews,mystery,western,tom gries,charles bronson,ben johnson,richard crenna,jill ireland,ed lauter

Three Films Make A Post: Blood-curdling giant fly creature runs amuck!!!

Le Saut de l’ange (1971): This is a grim, rather cynical revenge movie by Yves Boisset about a bloody election in Marseille, or rather Jean Yanne coming back from a self-imposed Thai exile to take revenge for his wife and kid who are (quite uselessly) killed for reasons of politics and money he doesn’t actually have anything to do with anymore. In Boisset’s hands, it is a somewhat dry, deliberately paced crime movie with jabs of intense, sharp violence, a basic feeling of hopelessness, and a sense of barely repressed political anger. It is, as they say, quite a good film if you like that sort of thing, which I do, particularly when it includes the handful of moments of brilliant filmmaking this one does, moments when the film stops being dry completely and somehow turns its quite down-to-earth idea of how horrible violence works mythical without actually changing its posture at all. Call it alchemy.

Because Boisset is a director of taste, the film also features fan (that would be me) favourites Gordon Mitchell, Senta Berger and Sterling Hayden.

Espion, lève-toi (1982): Speaking of Yves Boisset, there’s also this spy movie with Lino Ventura as a French sleeper agent situated in Switzerland who finds himself reactivated only to stumble through a business so labyrinthine, he doesn’t even know if the people who tell him he’s working for them are actually who they say they are. On the pacing level, this is also rather slow, but it is again a sure-handed slowness the film needs to get to breathe. It’s less overtly violent than the older movie but that’s because it is really much more useful for the film’s goal of having its audience share its protagonist’s feeling of alienation and confusion to keep the violence off-screen and ambiguous.

If you’re the type to enjoy films that are structured like a peculiarly nasty kind of chess – abstract until they become all too personal – like I sometimes do, this is a pretty perfect example of it. Parts of the film are really about what very abstract strategic goals do to the people who are part of the strategy, the moment when the blind and indifferent forces of politics turn against you, or rather, use your personal loyalties, your humanity, to make you their chess piece until its time for you to disappear forever.

Breakout (1975): If there’s a place in your heart for middling 70s action movies, that’s where Tom Gries’s film probably lives. It’s not a bad film at all, but one that doesn’t make enough use of a great cast (Charles Bronson! Robert Duvall! Randy Quaid! Jill Ireland!), and could do quite a bit more with the basic set-up of a charming rogue (surprisingly enough Bronson) trying to get an innocent rich American (Duvall) out of jail because he’s rather fond of the rich man’s wife (Ireland). And money. I know, it’s “based on a true story” but when has that ever stopped a movie from changing the truth into something more entertaining?

Despite its lack of depth, it’s still a fun enough film, if only because it provides an opportunity to witness Bronson smile and emote and wisecrack.

Technorati-Markierungen: french movies,american movies,action,thriller,spies,yves boisset,jean yanne,gordon mitchell,senta berger,sterling hayden,lino ventura,charles bronson,robert duvall,jill ireland,randy quaid