JAMES MASON: AGENT PROVOCATEUR Part Four

THE MACKINTOSH MAN (1973: Dir. John Huston)

With the glory of the Sixties behind him, Mason now had to face his advancing age and segue from leading man into character roles. Having cornered the market in his portrayals of refined gentlemen, and given Hollywood's affinity for British antagonists, a future resume replete with sophisticated scoundrels seemed inevitable. The part of Sir George Wheeler, the traitorous Russian spy in John Huston's The Mackintosh Man was tailor-made for Mason's unique brand of sherry-sipping sleaze. He even gets to reprise similar scenes from North By Northwest, albeit with a slightly more weary and cynical spin. The film itself is a leaden and generic thriller from an obviously disengaged Huston, whose highly underrated espionage entry, The Kremlin Letter (1970), is a near classic by comparison. Unfortunately for Mason, this yeoman professionalism in a sub-par entertainment, would be the rule, rather than the exception, for the rest of his career in films. DVD REGION 1 & 2

JAMES MASON: AGENT PROVOCATEUR Part Three

THE DEADLY AFFAIR (1967: Dir. Sidney Lumet)

James Mason was now facing middle-age and thanks to his hit with Hitchcock he hungrily devoured a full course of meaty roles that, in terms of quality, puts his run of films in the Sixties at the very pinnacle of his career. Lolita (1962), The Pumpkin Eater (1964), and Georgy Girl (1966) further polished his sterling reputation for impeccable screen acting. The Deadly Affair is the forgotten gem of this quartet, and the first of three great performances he gave for director Sidney Lumet - see also Child's Play (1972) and The Verdict (1982). Mason stars in this adaptation of John Le Carre's Call for the Dead, the novel that introduced his iconic spy master George Smiley, here, for contractual reasons, re-named Charles Dobbs. In keeping with Le Carre's bleak view of the Secret Service, Mason digs deep into the depressed life of Dobbs, a lonely man with marital troubles, in a profession predicated upon deceit and distrust. Despite a screenplay by Paul Dehn, co-writer of Goldfinger, the glamour of Bond is nowhere to be found here, replaced by a seediness and paranoia that makes this one of the most authentic films of its genre. DVD REGION 1 & 2

JAMES MASON: AGENT PROVOCATEUR Part Two

NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959: Dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

After failed attempts at broadening his appeal as a typical middle-class American leading man in films such as Bigger Than Life (1956), and Cry Terror (1958), Mason wisely retreated back into the role of the upper-class smoothie that Hollywood and the public had took him to be in real-life. The film that signaled this capitulation to popular tastes turned out to be one of the best films he would ever be associated with, Alfred Hitchock's archetypal spy thriller North By Northwest. As the perpetually unflappable Phillip Vandamm, Mason creates what is in essence a proto-James Bond villain: witty, erudite, cultured, and ruthless. Hitchcock contrasts Mason's cool corruption with star Cary Grant delivering his usual masterclass in dapper self-deprecation, and together they create an endlessly enthralling dynamic that never wears thin. A monster hit that brought Mason's career out of the doldrums. DVD & BLU-RAY

JAMES MASON: AGENT PROVOCATEUR Part One

FIVE FINGERS (1952: Dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz)

Actor James Mason was the perfect cinematic spy. Exuding natural charm and elegance, as well as being blessed with a voice as smooth as crushed velvet, Mason was born for big-screen espionage. His first foray as an agent was in the British film Candlelight in Algeria (1944), but this was a cheap B picture made for wartime audiences, and Mason was still learning his on-camera craft. It wasn't until the early Fifties, after coming to Hollywood and achieving success with The Desert Fox (1951), that Mason got his first crack at an espionage role of depth, that despite his working-class origins, perfectly suited his cultivated English aspirations. As the real-life Turkish mole code-named Cicero, Mason delivers a masterclass in moral turpitude as the British Embassy valet who sold Allied war plans to the Nazis. Written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, one of Hollywood's most respected intellects, the film provides scene after scene of thrilling literate suspense, galvanized by Mason's greedy cunning. His reputation as a consummate screen performer was now established and his future in America secured. DVD REGION 1 & 2

CINEMATIC PROPHETS: FILMS THAT WERE AHEAD OF THEIR TIME Part Three

WRONG IS RIGHT (1982: Dir. Richard Brooks)

One doesn't often refer to a comedy as "chilling" but there is no other way to describe Writer-Director-Producer Richard Brooks' lampoon of Reagan-era media and politics. In an uncanny turn of prognostication, Brooks (Elmer Gantry, Bite The Bullet) predicts the rise of Saddam Hussein, suicide bombers operating on U.S. soil, and a climax that culminates in a terrorist plot involving a landmark New York skyscraper (!!). The film is populated by a cadre of comic characters including intimidating black actress Rosalind Cash as a Condeleeza Rice-type vice-president, and Leslie Nielsen, running for President, while spouting reactionary rhetoric in George W. Bush Texas yokel mode. The film, however, belongs to star Sean Connery, who with tongue firmly in cheek, turns in a delicious performance as a superstar globetrotting news reporter. Memorable for its squirm-inducing critique of our post-millennial celebrity-obsessed culture, this was the Dr. Strangelove of its era, and was shamefully ignored at the time of its release, much to our future peril. DVD REGION 1 & 2

CINEMATIC PROPHETS: FILMS THAT WERE AHEAD OF THEIR TIME Part Two

LOOKER (1981: Dir. Michael Crichton)

Writer-Director Michael Crichton was Hollywood's preeminent science fiction soothsayer. In films such as Westworld (1973), The Terminal Man (1974), and Jurassic Park (1993), he re-visited the Frankenstein premise time and again, admonishing a world increasingly dependent on technology for work and leisure. Looker is his most underrated and forgotten work, a scathing satire on the burgeoning preoccupation with physical perfection, and its applications in the realm of digitally synthetic media. Crichton argues that our daily lives will become an absurd simulacrum of existence, as television and other communication devices become dominated by computer generated replicas of people, places, and things. Some might argue, that this has already come to pass, but it certainly makes for amusingly compelling viewing and stimulating food for thought. DVD REGION 1

CINEMATIC PROPHETS: FILMS THAT WERE AHEAD OF THEIR TIME Part One

ROLLOVER (1981: Dir. Alan J. Pakula)

The early Eighties are now acknowledged as the crucible for unbridled laissez-faire capitalism but few filmmakers at that time were sounding warning bells about the potential for economic disaster. With this film, director Alan J. Pakula, who had already flown the flag for crusading liberal journalism in The Parallax View (1974) and All The President's Men (1976), bravely took on the corporate elite and their plutocratic excesses, presaging their earliest efforts to re-shape world monetary markets into the juggernauts of de-regulated greed they would eventually become. Jane Fonda stars in her third and final lead performance for Pakula following her Oscar winning performance as the jaded hooker in Klute (1971), followed by her hard-bitten Depression era rancher in Comes A Horseman (1978). For Rollover, Pakula once again harnesses Fonda's beautiful but brittle screen persona, casting her as a wealthy widow who falls into love and business with a stylish financier played by singer/songwriter and former Rhodes scholar Kris Kristofferson. Their frightening foray into the hazardous battleground of international banking and high finance makes for an unsettling expose of the precarious system which we all depend on. The fact that the public chose not to heed these warnings left this unpopular anti-capitalist thriller a pariah at the box office, despite its fascinating and prophetic prediction of a world financial meltdown. DVD REGION 1 & 2

RICHARD LESTER: SWASHBUCKLING SATIRIST Part Four

THE RETURN OF THE MUSKETEERS (1989: Dir. Richard Lester)

Fifteen years after the their previous Musketeer film, Lester and Fraser reunited with cast and crew to make this creaky but fun adaptation of Dumas' Twenty Years After. Unfairly abandoned, it was pulled from North American release at the eleventh hour when Universal Pictures cowardly balked at pitting their aging feather-hatted heroes against the indestructible icons of Indiana Jones, James Bond, and Batman. Although hampered by the death of actor Roy Kinnear (Planchet) after an on-set accident, Lester admirably rallied a demoralized company into completing the film with very few seams showing. Despite their reaching middle-age, the actors playing the Musketeers, including the ever youthful Richard Chamberlain (Aramis), appear as physically game for adventure as their characters. This time they are joined by Kim Cattrall, bearing a striking facial similarity to Faye Dunaway, convincingly cast as the energetic rapier-wielding daughter of Milady. Alan Howard also pops up, in an artfully droll performance as Oliver Cromwell, and he is nearly bested by a lip-smackingly sly Phillippe Noiret, as Cardinal Mazarin (regrettably re-voiced). Lester's last narrative film and a satisfying epilogue to his idiosyncratic oeuvre. DVD REGION 2

RICHARD LESTER: SWASHBUCKLING SATIRIST Part Three

ROYAL FLASH (1975: Dir. Richard Lester)

With the great success of the Musketeers films behind them, Lester, and his screenwriter George MacDonald Fraser took the next logical step and adapted one of Fraser's own Flashman novels to the screen. Rather than starting with the first book in the series, they hedged their bets with the second, a clever reworking of an old Hollywood chestnut, The Prisoner of Zenda, featuring Harry Flashman, the now-matured bully from Thomas Hughes' novel Tom Brown's Schooldays, used as a brilliant foil to launch a pointed satirical attack on the hypocrisy of Victorian heroism. The film features a panoply of hilarious stuffed shirts including: Oliver Reed, seething Germanic menace as Bismarck, and Alan Bates, amusing himself and the audience, as slippery spy and bon vivant Rudi Von Sternberg. Malcolm McDowell, who at the time, had cornered the market on naughty schoolboys you loved to hate, is the very personification of the pompously preening and cowardly Flashman. Once again Lester is able to indulge his penchant for opulent costumes and luxurious old world production design, comically enhanced by trompe l'oeil visual gags and elaborate slapstick antics. Its unfortunate failure with audiences  put an end to the idea of an ongoing series of Flashman films. DVD REGION 1 & 2

RICHARD LESTER: SWASHBUCKLING SATIRIST Part Two

                                                                                                                                                                             THE FOUR MUSKETEERS (1975: Dir. Richard Lester)

Events take a darker turn in Lester's (unintentional) sequel to his much lighter first stab at Dumas' lengthy Musketeer saga. Now that D'Artagnan, as played by Michael York, has matured from the endearing country rube of The Three Musketeers, the tale switches focus onto Oliver Reed's morose and mysterious Athos who must face his tragic past with the treacherous Milady, haughtily personified by the icy Faye Dunaway. It all leads to a violent and disturbing retribution, but along the way, Lester still has time for more of his knockabout hijinks, most memorably, a harrowing and hilarious swordfight on an icy pond between York and Christopher Lee as the deadly blade Rochefort, cinema's longest reigning swashbuckler with over 50 years of swordsmanship to his credit. Not quite the box office hit of its predecessor, but a thrilling conclusion nonetheless. DVD REGION 1 & 2

RICHARD LESTER: SWASHBUCKLING SATIRIST Part One

THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1974: Dir. Richard Lester)

                                                                                                                                                                  American film director Richard Lester ( A Hard Day's Night, Superman II), a long time resident of Great Britain, was best known as the man who made The Beatles into film stars. However, his greatest cinematic achievement, is a quartet of irreverent swashbucklers made in his unique style of slapstick realism. The first of several films loyally adapted by author George MacDonald Fraser (Flashman) from Dumas' serialized novels, The Three Musketeers is a joyful cinematic adventure. A timeless classic that effortlessly enthralls with its impeccable cast, stunning production design, and sweepingly staged action sequences. These aesthetic pleasures are bolstered by Lester's particular interest in the gritty background to this opulent period, emphasizing the sloppy physicality of swordplay, the muttering complaints of the servant class, and the cheerfully ignorant stupidity of the monarchy. Originally conceived by maverick producer Alexander Salkind as a three hour plus roadshow feature with intermission, it was decided late in the filming to instead release the movie in two separate parts, much to the chagrin of the actors and technicians who were paid for only one film. The legal fallout of this decision resulted in a clause included in all motion picture contracts to this day, one that prevents producers from bifurcating a single feature film without properly compensating cast and crew. The story continues in THE FOUR MUSKETEERS...DVD REGION 1 & 2

THE BEST FORGOTTEN DETECTIVE FILMS OF THE 1970s Part Three

AGATHA (1979: Dir. Michael Apted)

                                                                                                                                                                 
A notorious failure upon its original release, this speculative mystery features one of Vanessa Redgrave's most heart-breaking performances as the emotionally fragile author Agatha Christie. A somewhat miscast Dustin Hoffman, is suitably believable as a persevering American reporter trying to investigate Christie's mysterious disappearance, but his short stature makes his attractiveness to the statuesque Redgrave nearly risible during their love scenes. A gallery of solid supporting talent is on hand including the wandering-eyed warmth of Paul Brooke as Hoffman's fellow journalist, and the stiff-mustachioed arrogance of Timothy Dalton (Redgrave's real-life paramour at the time) as her husband. The authentically lush period details of a conservative Twenties Britain are exquisitely captured by the painterly palette of cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now), creating a moody tale that grows in the memory. DVD REGION 1 & 2

THE BEST FORGOTTEN DETECTIVE FILMS OF THE 1970s Part Two

THE BIG FIX (1978: Dir. Jeremy Paul Kagan)

For years only available as an Hungarian DVD, this lost gumshoe classic must rate as actor Richard Dreyfuss' most forsaken cinematic effort. Dreyfuss, both starring and producing, brings his trademark vibrating intensity and effortless screen charisma to novelist Roger L. Simon's ex-hippie private eye Moses Wine, now facing the cynical post Watergate era in which, Sixties radicalism has congealed into political expediency. Adapted by Simon from the first in his series of Wine mysteries, this satisfying mix of suspense, tragedy, humour and social commentary, was truly a lost opportunity for a viable film franchise featuring a unique Seventies detective. DVD

THE BEST FORGOTTEN DETECTIVE FILMS OF THE 1970s Part One

                                     THE LATE SHOW (1977: Dir. Robert Benton)
                                             

The poster for this film features a classic Richard Amsel illustration that perfectly conveys the old fashioned whimsy of this superb murder-mystery. Written and directed by Robert Benton ( Bonnie & Clyde, Kramer Vs. Kramer), and produced by Robert Altman ( M.A.S.H., Nashville), this cheeky Seventies homage to the traditional detective genre of the Forties, is one of the most enjoyable cult films of its era. A poignant, suspenseful, funny and humane genre spoof starring broken-down relic Art Carney, and kooky new-age Lily Tomlin, as the most entertainingly mis-matched team of sleuths in cinema history. Benton would return to these same autumnal themes in Twilight (1998), a sort of geriatric Chinatown with Paul Newman as another jaded old private investigator, up to his cynical eyeballs in murder and corruption. Both films are equally rewarding for the inquisitive viewer. DVD REGION 1