Monthly Archives: June 2014

The Wrong Man [1956)

Gut-wrenching.  No Cary Grant, nor crop duster:  this is the eponymous instance of Hitchcock’s grand trope.  Those hands.  Only a director who started in silent cinema could do this story justice.  Those lean fingers…slowly clenching into gentle, balled fists of soft-spoken anger.  This, dear friends, is the story of the NSA.  This is the story of the security state.  Ever speak an ill word about the government?  Then you might be one of Them.  They are the goblins which appear 24/7 on Fox News as if real.  They are only as real as the distortions in the mind of a paranoid schizophrenic (like Vera Miles in the latter part of this movie).  How slight a slip from being outspoken to being blacklisted (as they would once have said).  Now you’re on a list, true–but you don’t know which list.  When you pass through airport security you can only wonder.  That is the horror of being the wrong man; of judging a book by its circumstantial cover.  This is Alfred the auteur being locked up as a young boy.  It is the trauma of that parental “lesson” in its most visceral manifestation.  Never again did Hitchcock capture the despair which a wrongly-accused prisoner must feel.  Witnesses get it wrong.  Police procedures are not perfect even when at their best.  And as we are reminded in the film:  the onus is on the prosecution.

To persecute.  To indict.  To prosecute.

Where’s the body?  Where are the matching fingerprints?  This was long before DNA forensics, but do we not still get the wrong man sometimes?  Once is too many times.  The rule of law has been perverted and circumvented.  We trample over crime scenes.  We just want to get Someone/Anyone.  Makes it awfully easy to frame a person nowadays.  There are honest mistakes and dishonest mistakes.  Our politicians learn to lie from the cradle and they seemingly go to their graves with no remorse.  I’m afraid the misreading of Nietzsche has found a whole new generation of acolytes in the neoconservatives who conned the world now some 15 years ago.  The wrong man worked for us.  We called the tune he played on his bass fiddle in Afghanistan.  We even provided the instrument.

In this highly religious film Hitchcock draws upon his own general upbringing.  The theme is guilt.  Guilt in all the wrong places. Same for blame.

Poor Henry Fonda…he just looked the part.

I have no words to describe the solemn brilliance of this film. It is vanity to attempt such. The real terror is the state security apparatus. If one scoffs at legal end-arounds, one is (at times) Literally unpatriotic. Sometimes we have only hours; minutes to do the right thing. The officer turns back around and reenters the 110th Precinct police station. The germ of conscience has sprouted.

My metaphors may be all wrong. It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is the lives of our fellow human beings. Six million wrong men, women and children. The Nazis didn’t plan the final solution in caves. They were very advanced. And it was not but 70-80 years ago.

It takes great maturity to sit through this movie. Deep focus. The millionth remake of Godzilla will not impart this lesson. Let it be branded upon your brain. This is what we fight for. A civilization can be judged as civilized only according to its ideas of justice.

-PD

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The Pink Panther Strikes Again [1976)

This is a brilliant film. And though I doubt the Quasimodo disguise kit which Clouseau just happened to have on hand prior to learning of Dreyfus’ escape was spun-off into a product tie-in, it should have been.

The problem with the prior film (The Return of the Pink Panther) is remedied here in spades with liberal experimentation. Having Dreyfus form a S.P.E.C.T.R.E.-like crime organization is as ingenious as it is utterly ridiculous. Students of German cinema may be left wondering whether Professor Fassbender is actually a reference to Rainer Werner Fassbinder. No matter: the joy of this film is how little it takes itself seriously.

Clouseau once again is buoyed by his charmed existence: like Charlie Chaplin meets Forrest Gump. The world’s top assassins (assigned to kill our beloved Inspector) are no match for Clouseau’s fateful luck–stumbling over each other like a bunch of amateurs in his wake–and he is none-the-wiser (being both detached and oblivious).  Peter Sellers was pure nitrous oxide when he was at his best. His visual humor has been near-unparalleled in the history of cinema. His performance in this film ranks with The Party as among his best.

Awkward men everywhere can exult in the clumsy attempt Clouseau makes near the end of the movie to simply get undressed (similar to his misadventures with Capucine in the original installment of the series).

Director Blake Edwards expanded on the “psychedelic” touches of The Return of the Pink Panther by having more outrageous slow-motion scream-groans in the primary karate skirmish between Cato and Clouseau. It is a truly masterful instance of surrealism.

In short, it is a viewing experience not to be missed. This is your dossier.

-PD

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On Her Majesty’s Secret Service [1969)

Lazenby.

Not Connery.  Not Moore.

After the bloated disaster of You Only Live Twice, my expectations were not very high.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

This is perhaps the best Bond movie up to this point in the series.  I know it is blasphemy to say so.  I love Connery.  I adore Moore.  The achievement in question is perhaps best attributed to the director (new to the series in this capacity):  Peter Hunt.

Telly Savalas is masterful as the cat-petting Blofeld.  He adds a depth to the character which was missing in the previous depiction by Donald Pleasence.  It is interesting to note the similarities of Blofeld’s allergy institute (a cover for brainwashing) to the CIA’s dirty program Project MKUltra which was headed by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb.  The ghastly “research” was administrated from 1953 onwards by Dr. Gottlieb.  Blofeld’s methods in this film bear a striking resemblance to those of MKUltra’s head experimenter Dr. Ewen Cameron.  The world can thank CIA agent William Francis Buckley (“Bill”, but not the one of which you’re probably thinking) for blowing the whistle on this dark, dark period in CIA misadventure.  Buckley observed the deplorable results in Montreal at McGill University.

But back to fun stuff 🙂  High-speed chases!  The Bond series from Eon Productions redeems itself with a great ski chase down Piz Gloria (atop which is Blofeld’s “clinic”).  While not as epic as the underwater battle in Thunderball, it is much more entertaining that the autogyro sequence in You Only Live Twice.

I really must compliment Lazenby.  His was no easy task.  It was the right decision for him to not speak in an affected Scottish accent after Connery.  Lazenby could have been a great long-term Bond.  Thankfully he contributed this one fine performance to the annals.

Peter Hunt is to be equally (if not more so) congratulated.  This was a unique ending for a Bond movie.  It was handled deftly and had just the right amount of suspense to keep the incredulous at bay.  I’m speaking of course about 007 getting married.  You’ll have to see it for yourself to find out just how Eon Productions managed to finagle a continuance of the series after this “blow” to the womanizing lead character.  Of course, in today’s world marriage wouldn’t be a hindrance at all in a similar dramatic case.

This film is really an odd duck, but it should stand as an example for the series.  It is a bit humorous to hear John Barry give the famous 007 guitar line to a harpsichord in the opening credits.  The effect is similar to “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.”  Louis Armstrong even sings a song especially recorded for this film!  He was near the end of his life and it is as touching as Billie Holiday’s album Lady In Satin.  Armstrong never recorded another song (dying two years later from a heart attack).

 

-PD

 

 

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