Stunning opening section thrown away by shifting tone and despite excellent performances by the Oscar-nominated Alan Bates and Dirk Bogarde drifts into Kafkaesque virtue-signalling.
But let’s get the title out of the way first. I had assumed a “fixer” was a manipulator, an underworld type of character who could, for a price or future favor, sort out problems or find someone a job or act as an intermediary between politicians or businessmen. Not so. Yakov (Alan Bates) is nothing more than a handyman, who can fix broken windows or railings and turn his hand to anything such as wall-papering or basic accountancy.
In the credit sequence he demonstrates his skills by fashioning with wood, a couple of screws and some steel, a razor, with which to remove the hair and beard that would identify him as a Hassidic Jew. He is, as soon becomes apparent, afflicted by dogs. As he departs his remote cottage in a cart, a vicious dog so disturbs his horse that it bolts, resulting in the loss of a wheel. He continues his travels on horseback, arriving in a small town in time to witness a parade and Cossacks rampaging through the streets.
As it’s set in Czarist Russia, his journey is accompanied by melancholy violin with, for some reason, a disturbing undercurrent of military drum. As the credits end, we cut to the Russian flag and a marching band. He hides in terror as the horsemen drag people along by the ear, slash with sabers, hang others. It’s a pogrom, the type of attack commonly experienced by Jews living in ghettoes.
Up to now, it’s just outstanding. Then it tips into the picaresque. Yakov helps an old drunk Lebedev (Hugh Griffiths) who’s fallen down in the snow in the street. As reward he is offered work wall-papering a room. He has a prick of conscience when he realises that Lebedev is an anti-Semite. Lebedev’s daughter Zinaida (Elizabeth Hartman) seduces him. But, on spotting some blood on a cloth, he refuses to go through with the act.
Luckily, my reading of crime novelist Faye Kellerman has alerted me to the fact that it is an act of faith for Jews not to make love when a woman is menstruating. Luckly, Zinaida isn’t so up on her Bible (Leiticus 15: 19-23 in case you were interested) that she catches on to this revealing fact, for, as has been pointed out earlier, minus the distinctive curl, Yakov doesn’t have the physical characteristics associated in those times with a Jew. In fact, you would say Lebedev would more easily pass for one.
Anyway, Lebedev gives him another job, of counting the loads leaving his brickworks because he suspects he is being swindled. But the foreman, who has been rumbled, and suspects Yakov of being a Jew, calls in the Secret Police, it being a crime for Jews to leave the ghetto.
Now we tip into Kafka. The initial charge against Yakov is that he harbored another Jew during Passover. But then things spiral out of control. He is accused of passing himself off as a Gentile (non-jew), attempted rape of Zinaida and then of ritual murder, killing a small child.
Investigating magistrate Bibikov (Dirk Bogarde) is sympathetic and manages to avoid the rape charge much to the fury of prosecutor Grubeshov (Ian Holm) but once the other charges mount, he is nailed, everyone determined to prove an innocent man guilty.
This is based on a true case and clearly was a case of persecution and Yakov’s transition from worker happy to hide his ethnicity to gain work to a man who rediscovers his religion is a piece of great acting from Alan Bates. But the points are hammered home endlessly and where director John Frankenheimer (The Train, 1964) so deftly dispensed with dialogue in the superb opening sequence, now he more than makes up for it with leaden speeches, and a film that would worked better for being considerably shorter.
It feels like Hollywood is hard at work. After some moments of mild happiness Yakov’s cinematic chore is to invoke sympathy for an entire nation rather than taking on the Holocaust directly. Dalton Trumbo’s (Lonely Are the Brave, 1962) screenplay is filled with brooding lines. But providing Yakov with an interior monologue when he dithers over having sex doesn’t work at all, certainly not next to the more effective use of that technique in John and Mary (1969).
At the outset, Frankenheimer treats violence with discretion. We don’t see the dog being impaled on a saber, just its corpse thrown at Yakov. We witness a rope being wound round a man’s neck, as innocent of any crime as Yakov, but not the actual hanging. So what begins as highly-nuanced turned into a battering ram of a picture and characters forced into lines like “the law will protect you unless you are guilty” and “I am man who although not much is still more than nothing.”
Alan Bates (The Running Man, 1963) certainly deserves his Oscar nomination and Dirk Bogarde (Modesty Blaise, 1966) might feel aggrieved he missed out on a Supporting Actor nomination. But too many of the rest of the cast over-act. It’s an all-star cast only if you’re British. But check it out if you’re a fan of Hugh Griffith (The Counterfeit Traitor, 1962), Elizabeth Hartman (The Group, 1966), David Warner (Perfect Friday, 1970), Ian Holm (in his sophomore movie outing), Carol White (Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting, 1969) and Georgia Brown (Lock Up Your Daughters!, 1969).
Frankenheimer at his best when he lets the action play without the overload and there’s one almost Biblical scene, lit only by candlelight, that demonstrates his cinematic virtuosity. But otherwise it’s drowned in the verbal rather than the visual. Trumbo based his screenplay on the Pulitzer Prize winner and bestseller by Bernard Malamud.
Some effective moments, but too long drawn-out to make the impact expected.
Effervescent mystery punching a hole in the traditional private eye caper. Look elsewhere for film noir as Frank Sinatra (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) reinvents his screen persona. On the one hand he’s such a cool cat, living on a boat in Miami, you half expect him to burst into song just with joy. On the other hand, you wouldn’t cross him. Corpses tend to pile up in his vicinity.
There’s a surprising self-awareness that’s dealt with through considerable subtlety, not with the usual angst of film noir where flaws not only tend to be magnified but spill over and drench the plot. Addicted to gambling, Rome steers clear of marriage and any long-term relationship, knowing such a move would be disastrous for the other party. A former cop, he is touchy though about his father, also a cop, who blew his brains out when some murky deal went wrong.
High on the glamorous side, houses the sizes of small cities, women parading in either next to nothing or with the current year’s hot fashion items. You’d be surprised there wasn’t a horse-riding scene, or one set at a hi-hat ball. But this is pretty much a procedural as the canny detective probes the low life as much as the high, bars where go-go dancing is the least of the illicit activities, jewellers who act as fences, and plumbs the life of millionaire Rudolph (Simon Oakland), tough on the business side, dumb as donuts when it comes to romance with former cocktail waitress (a profession often bracketed with quote marks) wife Rita (Gena Rowlands).
And oddly enough, romance here turns out to be touching, sex coming with responsibility rather than a free-for-all as you are initially led to believe. A lesbian scene for once is not exploitative.
Begins with one of the humdrum cases that must consume the bulk of a gumshoe’s time – the hunt for a valuable diamond brooch, lost from the dress of married drunken heiress Diana (Sue Lyon). Turns out he’s not the only one, inexplicably, looking. He takes a beating from a couple of hoods.
When his ex-partner meets his maker in a bathtub, it’s a cinch Tony Rome is next, which means he has a lot of explaining to do to his endlessly frustrated ex-colleague Lt Santini (Richard Conte). If it was a question of whiling away the time, Rome could spend it in the arms of Diana or multiple divorcee Anne (Jill St John).
As you might expect, everyone has secrets they prefer to keep hidden, and happy to do so with violence. Otherwise, they’re going to be knocked sideways by the past. There’s no shortage of suspects including the elusive Nimmo.
I’m assuming the censor enjoyed a chuckle when Mrs Schuyler (Templeton Fox) appeared rather than pursing their lips in disapproval at the way Sinatra wrapped his lips around the word “pussy.” There’s a certain amount of light-hearted sexual jousting but if you were looking for predatory behavior it’s women you’d point the finger at, though given a free pass since in Miami, apparently, men were vastly outnumbered by men and lasses who had not developed a come-hither would be left on the sidelines.
To properly appreciate the picture, you’d have to cast your mind back to a time before there was a surfeit of television detectives and when the general mystery picture (also encompassing spy movies) had gone AWOL or awry with balderdash plot and outsize villains whose only satisfaction in life was holding the world to ransom. In fact, in retrospect, it’s refreshing to find a picture where the director doesn’t pull the wool over your eyes and your hero isn’t an arrogant preening bantam.
So what you’ve got is a properly-plotted plot, clues aplenty that only our clever private eye can unravel, and, inevitably, in the Raymond Chandler tradition some heavy bursting through a door with a gun, and, in this case, also a shovel. This private dick doesn’t fall into the hard-working category of legend, often favors a Bud over the harder stuff, and though he can knock out the cynical one-liners they often come with a tinge of truth or melancholy.
And for once the MacGuffin (Maltese falcon might be a more apt reference) bears significance to the plot.
One of the interminable pot-shots critics took at Sinatra was his preference for working in a single take, the impression given that he was a lazy sod and a bit more effort would have resulted in a better performance. On the other hand, you could just be in awe of an actor who can hit the button stone dead in a single take.
Co-star Gena Rowlands, with something of a hard-boiled reputation herself, found him to be a “wonderful actor; he could do a whole complicated scene in one take…there was nothing pretentious about him, he was just awfully nice.”
Sinatra is no Bogart but for a time afterwards audience were saying of other pretenders to the shamus crown “he’s no Sinatra.” Jill St John (The King’s Pirate, 1967) makes the most of a more interesting part, including delivering the stinger in the tale. Gena Rowlands (Machine Gun McCain, 1969) reveals the little girl under the glam, Richard Conte (The Lady in Cement, 1969) tones down his typical belligerence, Sue Lyon (Night of the Iguana, 1964) good as a young woman confused by sudden wealth.
The under-rated Gordon Douglas (Stagecoach, 1966) directed from a script by Richard L. Breen (A Man Could Get Killed, 1966) and Marvin H. Albert (Duel at Diablo, 1966), also author of the source novel.
The poster designer pulled a fat one. In typical titillating fashion, you think Sinatra is staring down at a half-naked corpse. But, in fact, no female was harmed in this picture.
Takes a little while to get going but once it hots up it’s perfect entertainment.
Otto Preminger was beaten to the punch on this one, the scandalous Henry Morton Robinson bestseller snapped up in 1955 by producer Louis de Rochemont (The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone, 1961) who had a tie-up with Columbia. Due to interference from the Catholic Church, de Rochemont dropped his option which Preminger picked up in 1961 while working on Advise and Consent (1962).
The last section of the novel, set in Austria during the Anschluss, reverberated with the director who was born in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire and although a Jew was well acquainted with Catholic society. One of his most significant changes to the book was introducing the Austrian cardinal who endorsed Hitler.
The first two screenwriters James Lee (Banning, 1967) and Daniel Taradash (Castle Keep, 1969) failed to whittle down the complex novel to cinematic proportions. So Preminger brought in Robert Dozier (The Big Bounce, 1969) and began working with him in summer 1962 making other alterations to heighten the drama. The incident involving the unborn child of the sister of Fr Fermoyle (Tom Tryon) acquires greater emotional power in the film, touching on the ambiguities inherent in any institution and provoking the priest’s guilt.
Gore Vidal (The Best Man, 1964) also worked on the script, swapping the novel’s Italian countess for the Viennese Annemarie (Romy Scheider) who, abandoned by the priest had married and was reunited with him prior to the Anschluss, and is sympathetic to Hitler until her husband’s faith endangers them both. Ring Lardner, who had satirized the Catholic church in a recent novel, was the final screenwriter added, his main task to rewrite scenes “to achieve what he (Preminger) wanted,” and, more importantly, to introduce the flashback structure. Ironically, both Vidal and Lardner were atheists.
Tom Tryon and Romy Scheider meet again in Vienna.
The director considered five actors for the leading role – Hugh O’Brian (Africa – Texas Style, 1967), Stuart Whitman (The Commancheros, 1961), Cliff Robertson (The Devil’s Brigade, 1968), Bradford Dillman (Circle of Deception, 1960) and Tom Tryon (In Harm’s Way, 1965), the latter three advancing to the screen-testing stage. The 34-year-old Tryon won the role and a five-picture contract he would later regret. Carol Lynley (Bunny Lake Is Missing, 1965) who plays the priest’s sister also pacted for five movies.
Romy Scheider’s (Triple Cross, 1966) part was enhanced by the work of cinematographer Leon Shamroy who “fell madly in love with her,” resulting in the actress virtually shimmering on screen, never before “looking as beautiful.” Held in warm regard by the director, she was exempt from his tirades.
It took considerable persuasion on the part of Preminger for John Huston to participate. Curd Jurgens, initially cast as the Austrian cardinal, pulled out and was replaced by character actor Josef Meinrad whose lack of English meant he had to learn his lines phonetically.
Tom Tryon described Preminger as “tyrant who ruled by terror.” He was fired on the first day and probably wished the director had not rescinded the decision, for thereafter the actor was tabbed “lazy…a fool…stupid and unprofessional.” Commented Tryon, “I was so frightened he was going to scream that…I (just) wanted the experience to end.”
One scene with John Huston took 78 takes because Tryon could not deliver what the director wanted. And at one point first assistant director Gerry O’Hara (later director of The Bitch, 1979) found the star in tears and refusing to return unless the director agreed not to shout at him. Eventually, during the Italian section of the shoot, Tryon collapsed from nervous exhaustion, and was prescribed two days rest, and after this incident Preminger let up on his demands of the actor.
Explained Preminger, “I probably chose him without deliberation because he is weak.” He felt than an ordinary person would not side with the Church against a family member in a predicament, and that only a person “with weakness in his character” would be believable in the role. The character “fails because when you become a priest you substitute your own judgement and your own feelings for the law of the Church…The big decisions are made for him.” (Quite why he never chose an actor who could portray such weakness is not known.)
Tryon admitted that he owed a brief let-up in the bullying to “Schneider’s benign presence.” He commented, “The only fun I ever had on The Cardinal was a (ballroom) scene I did with Romy.” Prior to turning the cameras, Prior called both over, appeared ready to issue instructions, but instead waved them away “you know what to do.”
Added Schneider, “Preminger taught me an important thing: work fast. It’s true that it greatly helps our acting. Each of his directions, whether of gesture or of intonation, is precise and correct. Even better, it’s the only one possible…Each phrase, each world, each syllable are minutely weighed.” That dexterity applied to his positioning of the camera. He made decisions immediately, never hesitating “over the placement of the camera and each time…it was the simplest, the most natural and, dramatically, the best.”
Ossie Davis (The Scalphunters, 1968), who professed to have enjoyed a marvellous relationship with the director, observed: “I met actors whom Otto liked, I met actors that had no relationship or feelings one way or the other and I met actors who were almost absolutely destroyed, almost literally in panic because of Otto Preminger (who) was always looking for a spark…whether you had the spark or not, he was going to find it and even put it in you.”
But Patrick O’Neal stood his ground. “I woiuld not take it from him.” And they became friends.
The unit shot for five weeks in New England before heading to Vienna, Preminger choosing to stay in the same suite in the Hotel Imperial as appropriated by Hitler when visiting the city. Permission to shoot in the National Library, “one of the most beautiful monuments in the city” was attacked by the current minister of education who wanted the Hitler era erased from memory. And he was barred from using other government buildings for spurious reasons.
After four and a half months in Austria, the unit shifted to Rome, locations including St Peter’s Square and inside St Peter’s Cathedral and the Santa Maria sopra Minerva church, with priests and monks hired as extras for the various ceremonies. The Georgia scenes were shot in Hollywood on the Universal back lot.
Although generally dismissed by the critics and given a hard time as you might expect from the Catholic Church, The Cardinal hit a chord with audiences, who turned it into Premigner’s second-biggest hit of the decade.
Would appear resolutely old-fashioned except for Forrest Gump (1994) adopting same premise of the main character present at major events. Here it’s issues affecting the Catholic Church between last century’s two world wars and the protagonist is an American priest, Father Stephen Fermoyle (Tom Tryon) of Irish stock, who rises to the position of Cardinal.
So we move at a relatively stately pace through abortion, inter-denominational marriage, racism, a miracle, challenging church philosophy, and Hitler’s annexation of Austria on the eve of the Second World War, in which the church played an inglorious part. Along the way Fr Fermoyle is afflicted so badly by doubt that he takes a sabbatical only for his flesh to be sorely tempted.
Astonishingly, I saw this on YouTube (it’s still there) in a beautiful 70mm print preserved by the National Film and Television Archive. The roadshow print, to be exact, which begins with a marvellous five-minute overture. Oddly enough there’s something very settling about sitting in the darkness with the curtains drawn watching a blank (black) screen and listening to the majestic score by Jerome Moross (The Big Country, 1958).
And then it’s another few minutes of a stunning credit sequence, all sunlight and shadow, before the movie begins. The movie itself is over three hours long, so if you are put off by this kind of epic now’s the time to check out. But if you do, you will miss something genuinely to be savored.
For Otto Preminger (Hurry Sundown, 1967) certainly knows how to tell a story, even one as sweeping as this. For all its pomp, he manages to retain intimacy.
Immediately after his ordination just as America enters the First World War, Fr Fermoyle faces a crisis. His sister Mona (Carol Lynley) wants to marry a Jewish dentist (John Saxon) who refuses to convert to Catholicism. Fermoyle’s advice, in keeping with the church’s stringent rules: give him up.
A noted intellectual, Fermoyle is astonished to be sent by the worldly piano-playing cigar-chomping Archbishop Glennon (John Huston) to an impoverished parish to learn humility. There, he encounters the blind faith of parishioners and a pastor, Fr Halley (Burgess Meredith), so inclined to put others first that he will not seek help for a debilitating disease.
Meanwhile Mona, now a dancer and drinker, has become pregnant, and not by the dentist. But complications arise and she is forced to choose between herself and the unborn child. According to Church doctrine, as Fermoyle, advises, abortion being illegal, the mother must die to save the baby. Mona, not the sacrificial kind, does the opposite. Fermoyle, racked with guilt, wants to quit the church. Instead, he is promoted to Monsignor, and given a two-year timeout which he spends lecturing in Vienna.
There he falls in love with Annemarie (Romy Scheider). In the nick of time, he is recalled to the States and sent to the Deep South to help the black Fr Gillis (Ossie Davis) who is being harassed by the Ku Klux Klan. In standing by his colleague, Fermoyle undergoes a brutal whipping. Promoted to bishop, he is despatched to Austria “to instruct the princes of the church in the realities of the modern world.” Unfortunately, the clergy, siding with the Nazis, presides over the marriage of Germany and Austria.
Meanwhile, he is reacquainted with Annemarie, who has married a Jewish banker, and witnesses at first-hand Nazi treatment of the Jews, her husband so fearful of his future he jumps out a window. When a mob ransacks a church, Fermoyle isn’t so intent on facing up to them and instead, with Annemarie, manages to escape.
At its best and its worst by the narrative being forced through the prism of an individual. His reactions to issues are regulated by his employers, the Church, which exerts as much control over personal thought as the Communist Party, so, in effect, it becomes a tale of a person initially bristling against authority until, it turns out, the Church shares the same antipathy to the worst of the century’s scandals, the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis.
Father Fermoyle hardly seems suited to high office, given he is so often inclined to temptation, either in a sexual sense, or in taking the opposite view of the Church. And it’s almost as though the splendid backdrop as represented by the immense wealth of the Church has only been achieving by subjugation of the individual. That the worldly Glennon appears as the poster boy for the Church hierarchy is almost Preminger playing with the audience.
It might be sumptuously mounted, but once again Preminger takes no prisoners, showing up an institution that while purportedly set up for the benefit of mankind so often sabotages noble endeavor.
Tom Tryon (In Harm’s Way, 1965) is excellent in the leading role, personal conviction getting in the way of the easy path to the top. But the pick of the performers are the supporting stars, especially John Huston, more famous as a director (The Night of the Iguana, 1964) and here making his acting debut, and Romy Scheider (Triple Cross, 1966). Look out for Carol Lynley (Bunny Lake Is Missing, 1965), silent film star Dorothy Gish in her final movie appearance, Maggie McNamara (The Moon Is Blue, 1953) in her first picture in eight years, and John Saxon (The Appaloosa, 1966) before he was typecast as a heavy.
Otto Preminger (In Harm’s Way) directs in stately fashion from a screenplay by Robert Dozier (The Big Bounce, 1969) and Ring Lardner Jr. (The Cincinnati Kid, 1965).
Woefully underrated. Remove the weight of expectation and you’re left with a bittersweet romance. This just wasn’t what critics anticipated from stars Dustin Hoffman, coming off the back of Midnight Cowboy (1969), and Mia Farrow, previous film the coruscating Rosemary’s Baby (1968), and certainly it seemed there was resentment at the audacity of British director Peter Yates attempting to switch from his action roots, best shown in Bullitt (1968). Worse, that Yates was trying to introduce a New Wave vibe.
In the end-up it’s sweet, but getting there is a prickly affair and it’s precisely this unique approach that creates its appeal. Where the standard set-up comprises meet-cute, break-up, back together, for the most part this looks as if actual romance, as opposed to sex, will never get off the ground, the pair smothered by doubt expressed in internal monologue.
Whereas, in The Fixer (1969), for example, hearing a character speak of their feelings outside of dialogue almost torpedoes the picture, here it works a treat, because it’s dealt with as if it was dialogue of the unspoken variety. Past experience that forces both characters to make suppositions about the other’s intent creates a very amusing and essentially true barrier to progress.
Back in the day, at the dawn of the singles generation, the idea of two young people hooking up for one-night stands filled the moral majority with shock, not just that widespread use of the Pill in avoiding pregnancy invoked promiscuity, but that random encounters immediately ended up in the bedroom rather than the becoming the start of a wooing (and discovery) process. These days, of course, Tinder and other such social media inventions, create umpteen opportunities for attraction to translate into instant sex.
But it doesn’t reduce the type of anxieties that are so well addressed here.
You can start with the basic morning-after notion of “how do I get rid of her?” all the way through to assuming such easy attitudes to sex on either side would destroy an ongoing relationship, and along the way dipping into such minefields as how to get to know another person, does he/she even like me or would they fall into bed with the first person to ask them, are they even as attractive in the cold light of day than when perceptions are muddied by alcohol and excitement, and, of course, the ultimate, was performance up to scratch.
The Carlton was one of the smaller London West End cinemas and often used for prestigious openings to create the hold-overs that would build audience awareness and, such as here with box office increasing week-on-week, encourage cinema bookings.
This takes the unusual route of being peppered with flashback while the pair engage in spikier dialogue than you would find in the standard Hepburn-Tracy Hudson-Day romcom. And often what they say is the opposite of what they feel. Setting off in several directions at once – back a year or so, taking in the activity of the previous night and ploughing through the current day – could be off-putting but I found it worked a treat.
Anal retentive domesticated furniture designer John (Dustin Hoffman) hooks up in a singles bar with untidy politically-motivated sometime-actress Mary (Mia Farrow). His first reaction on waking up is to explore the apartment (rather large for New York), wonder when his wife will return, and think of all the deceptions he could pull. His first reaction borders on pure fear: she’s already planning to move in.
That neither has a genuine idea of the other person’s feeling provides the movie’s dynamic and the entire movie consists of them adjusting their expectations against a very contemporary backdrop of protests, politics, cinema verite and sex. Though primarily non-sexist and quite gender-equal, she isn’t looking to become a kept woman, for example, it does touch upon the notion that an easily-available woman is not far short of a whore, whereas, naturally, a promiscuous male is entitled to a free pass.
Her last relationship was with a married man (Michael Tolan), but she dropped him once he started talking about divorcing his wife. For John, girlfriend Ruth (Sunny Griffin) dramatically upped the stakes, arriving at his apartment with luggage, items of furniture and a rampant dog, enforcing on John responsibilities he did not want. Unusually, for the era, he is not politically involved and can cook, both of which attributes/skills we discover are the result of a mother so committed to politics that she neglected her children, never stocked her fridge and left her children to fend for themselves.
Each could press the nuclear button at any time. They’re attractive singles so more sex is just round the corner, going their separate ways the easier option, building a relationship far more difficult.
Dustin Hoffman shakes off a lot of the tics that were already showing and would inhibit later performances in a character far removed in sexual confidence from The Graduate (1967), but in some ways still touchingly naïve, and delivers a very believable performance. That it doesn’t fall into the usual Tracy-Hepburn battle of the sexes with witty put-downs owes much to the highly-nuanced performance of Mia Farrow who isn’t, as you might expect, in the least fragile and expresses her independence and challenges his views in a non-aggressive fashion.
Completely ignored by the Oscars, technically it won plaudits from Bafta, bracketed with Midnight Cowboy for Dustin Hoffman picking up the Best Actor Award, and with Rosemary’s Baby and Secret Ceremony for Mia Farrow in being nominated for Best Actress – such arcane rules later changed.
In small parts look out for Cleavon Little (Blazing Saddles, 1974), Tyne Daly (Cagney and Lacey TV series 1981-1988), Don Siegel’s son Kristoffer Tabori (Journey through Rosebud, 1972) and Olympia Dukakis (Moonstruck, 1987). John Mortimer (Bunny Lake Is Missing, 1965) wrote the screenplay from the Mervyn Jones bestseller.
Cinematically and narratively refreshing, manages to be entertaining and thoughtful at the same time.
You might well enjoy this if a) you are in a very good mood, b) you love psychedelia, Pop Art and the Swinging Sixties, c) you fancy a spy film spoof or more likely d) you are a big fan of one or all concerned. Otherwise, you might be well advised to steer clear because it either takes the mickey out of a number of genres, not just espionage, or plays merry hell with narrative and character and is only loosely based on the source material by Peter O’Donnell.
Bear in mind it originated in a comic strip – later turned into a series of novels – that had more in common with the likes of Danger: Diabolik than the more straightlaced adventures emanating from DC Comics or Marvel. In particular, Modesty had a neat habit of distracting the villains by appearing topless in moments of crisis – a trick adopted in movies like 100 Rifles (1969) and El Condor (1970).
Fans of the comic strip/book may have been left indignant by the audacity of the filmmakers to introduce romance between Modesty and her sidekick Willie Gavin since in the book their relationship was strictly platonic. There was no place, in either comic strip or book, for the musical numbers that pepper the movie. And – check out The Swinger (1966) – for the notion of a character acting out a fictionalized version of herself.
You should be aware that Modesty is a very rich version of the gentleman sleuth, an idea that belonged to the old school, of a person, such as The Saint, bored with wealth, who takes on dangerous assignments in the eternal battle between good and evil.
Anyways, on with the story.
Modesty Blaise (Monica Vitti) is hired by the British government in the shape of MI5 chief Sir Gerald Tarrant (Harry Andrews), in return for immunity for her previous crimes, to deliver a secret shipment of diamonds, part-payment for oil imports, to Sheik Abu Tahir (Clive Revill). Modesty happens to be the sheik’s adopted daughter. Meanwhile, criminal mastermind Gabriel (Dirk Bogarde), believed to be dead, has his eyes on the consignment.
Meanwhile (again), Modesty upsets current lover Hagen (Michael Craig), Tarrant’s aide, by hooking up with old flame Willie Garvin (Terence Stamp). Meanwhile (again again), Garvin hooks up with another of his old flames, magician’s assistant Nicole (Tina Marquand), who has information on Gabriel.
Various assassins employing a variety of methods are sent to kill Modesty so a good chunk of the picture is her avoiding her demise. Gabriel is a pretty touchy employer, so upset by failure that he assigns his Amazonian bodyguard Mrs Fothergill (Rosella Falk) to eliminate all such assassins. Gabriel, however, is something of a contradiction, very sensitive to violence. And just in case you are not keeping up with the plot, conveniently, the bulk of the conversations between Tarrant and his superior (Alexander Knox) will fill you in.
Through a whole bunch of clever maneuvers on Gabriel’s part, Modesty and Willie are forced to steal the diamonds themselves. And, meanwhile, Hagen is on their tail, infuriated at being jilted.
In between the umpteen shifts in plot, which basically lurches like a ship in a storm, the screen is ablaze with color. Nobody complained much when Raquel Welch found it necessary to change her bikini ever few seconds, or that a musical required continuous costume changes, and Modesty here seems to have fallen into the same pattern, the changes in outfit often so swift you imagine she has a disorder.
And be warned, this is a poster film for Pop Art, so if it’s not clothes that are being swapped, it’s décor. You might put Terence Stamp’s blond barnet in the discordant category. You can’t really complain about the plot because espionage storylines are usually something of a conjuring trick with the impossible little more than a standard mission. There’s much to enjoy if you’re of a mind and subscribe to one of the four ideas outlined in the opening paragraph and like the idea of the otherwise critical darling Joseph Losey (Accident, 1967) giving way to stylistic overkill.
Monica Vitti (Girl with a Pistol, 1968) inhabits the role with the necessary verve though Terence Stamp (The Collector, 1963) looks as if he has walked into a spoof and Dirk Bogarde (H.M.S. Defiant / Damn the Defiant!) appears still in experimental mode, having dumped the British matinee idol, unsure of what his screen persona should be. Evan Jones (Funeral in Berlin, 1966) is generally to be blamed/praised for the screenplay.
A movie for which the word confection was invented.
Director John Frankenheimer (The Gypsy Moths, 1969) tackles the movie’s off-putting central issue straight on. At various points, characters argue whether it’s worth risking lives to save a bunch of paintings, even if they are by masters like Cezanne, Matisse and Manet and even if they do constitute the “pride of France.”
Had this been an ordinary heist, some master criminal conspiring to steal a trainload of paintings, the loot would not have been so contentious, as there was little chance of lives being lost. And in any case, thieves, in the act of stealing, do have to accept that they might fall prey to the cops or, as commonly, fellow members of the gang.
There was another point. Art, then and now, was commonly perceived as a high-class aspect of life, especially once it diverted away from easily understood portraits and still lifes into the specific styles of a Monet or Picasso. Working-class people had little interest in it and felt excluded from it.
So, from the French perspective, coming towards the end of World War Two, post-D-Day and Paris close to being liberated, upper-class German Col von Waldheim (Paul Schofield) decides to hijack the contents of a museum and take hundreds of masterpieces to Germany, ostensibly to fund the fightback against the invaders, but more likely just a final act of a conqueror who has enjoyed, rather than destroyed, the captured French capital.
At first, station master Labiche (Burt Lancaster), while complicit in minor sabotage, has no interest in becoming personally involved, especially with liberation so close and the threat of death lifting by the hour. Others take a much more patriotic stand over the paintings and endeavor in small ways to prevent the trainload’s departure and slow down its progress to Germany.
A whole battalion of German soldiers, including Von Waldheim, who has commandeered a train in the first place, and railway workers, are aboard. But not all are in agreement with their commander’s aims, his deputy Major Herren (Wolfgang Preiss) outspoken in his opposition to this waste of manpower and diversion of energy.
Von Waldheim blames Labiche for the minor sabotage and forces him to take personal control of the train. And it turns out Labiche is much more than a bureaucrat, and knows everything there is to know about driving a train and how the tracks operate. And eventually it becomes a game of cat-and-mouse between Labiche and Von Waldheim.
But before that occurs and the movie really takes off, there’s tons of stuff that come into the sub-genre of a sub-genre category, to the delight of a railway-spotter but the irritation of the general audience as we are treated to endless scenes of the train running through the country or stopping and starting and points being switched. All very fascinating in its own way, but tending to the tedious.
I’m a bit pernickety when it comes to the heist picture and I’m just wondering how the Resistance, in what appears to be very short notice (in real time the movie only lasts a few days) to arrange for railway stations and towns along the route to manage to make massive signs, some I would guess 30-40ft long, to convince Von Waldheim he is taking the route he expects rather than being diverted along a different track. And then to get word to the Allied forces not to bomb a train that had a whitewashed roof. Try explaining the contents to an Army that is trying to get on with winning the war and couldn’t be less concerned about what might be interpreted as misplaced pride.
You would imagine that if those actions could be so easily carried out that there might have been a proper Resistance troupe ready to assist in blowing up the engine, but safeguarding the coaches, along the way. As the toll of ordinary Resistance members mounts, it’s left to Labiche, decidedly not an art lover, to save the day.
And that’s when the film does take off. He’s the most enterprising of individuals, managing, despite being wounded, to single-handedly derail the train twice, even with soldiers hounding him over the hills and patrolling the track.
Burt Lancaster (The Gypsy Moths, 1969) is superb as the doubter who becomes committed to the cause. It’s easy to forget just what a range Lancaster has. There’s not every actor you would believe when he’s twisting wires in the complicated business of setting an explosion or hammering loose sections of track. To slip effortlessly from the nuance and privilege of Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard (1963) to the hard muscular graft of this is quite an achievement.
Paul Schofield (A Man for All Seasons, 1966) was far more virile than his later screen persona suggested. He was a classic example of why Hollywood raided Britain, especially for villains. Outside of the stage, he was virtually unknown, only two previous films in the 1950s, so he was a fresh face. He didn’t quite master the art of cinema, a bit prone to shouting and facial expressions verging on the combustible. But he proves an excellent and inventive adversary.
It’s another for the futility of war department and it’s ironic that it’s the mutinous Maj Herren rather than the French who decides lives are not worth losing over a bunch of paintings.
The action, when it finally emerges from the trainspotting, is excellent. But a bit of judicious pruning in the earlier stages would have worked wonders.
In the Alistair MacLean book there’s no speedboat chase through the canals of Amsterdam. There’s not one female assistant but two, Maggie (Barbara Parkins in the film) joined by a Parisian, Belinda, (played by Suzanna Leigh, except her part was cut) on her debut assignment. The espionage newcomer’s role in the book is to question the actions of boss Paul Sherman (the film’s Sven Bertil-Taube), provide more of an outsider’s perspective on his character, since, as his lover, Maggie is much more accepting of his behavior. I can see why Belinda never made it into the film, the movie’s emotional heart, little as it is, coming from Sherman’s relationship with Maggie.
Needless to say, Paul Sherman is British in the book, not American, as is Maggie. Amsterdam cop Inspector Van Gelder (Patrick Allen) doesn’t have a niece, Trudi (Penny Casdagli), addicted to heroin but an adopted daughter. In the book, he is far closer to her than in the film, to the extent of conducting an illicit affair.
It’s always fascinating to see what changes from book to film especially since, as in this case, author Alistair MacLean has a screenplay credit, and that, from Where Eagles Dare (1968) onwards, he tended to write his books with movies in mind.
Like many Alistair MacLean characters, Sherman has a physical disability, the two sides of his face not matching following plastic surgery after a plane crash. So that’s the first element from the narrative of the novel (it appears on the opening two pages) excised from the novel. Nor does the book begin with an anonymous assassin gunning down three addicts. Instead, it starts at the airport where Sherman witnesses a colleague murdered.
Maggie doesn’t meet him in Amsterdam (as in the film) but is his companion on the plane along with Belinda. The novel sees Sherman attempting to prevent the shooting of his colleague Duclos rather than being a mere observer to the airport slaying. And again, rather than keeping out of the way to safeguard his anonymity, he pursues the killer and in so doing knocks over Astrid Lemay (Ania Marson).
On leaving his hotel (via the roof as in the movie) Sherman dodges his follower by nipping into a restaurant not (as in the film) the room of a sex worker. His pursuer is old not young. Sherman follows him on the subway not by foot. But when the tables are turned and Sherman is the pursuer, the man does enter the Morgenstern premises (trimmed from the book’s more unwieldy Morgenstern & Mugganthaler and with only one owner rather than two partners). The man he finds in his room is not the assassin but the hotel floor-waiter, an addict. After a fight, Sherman dangles him over the balustrade before killing him.
The paperback movie tie-in – see below – was virtually identical to the original cover of the first edition of the hardback.
Sherman’s first meeting with Colonel de Graf (Alexander Knox) is in the latter’s office not the more scenic canal boat as in the film. Understandably, the movie attempts to cash in on Amsterdam’s tourist and more sordid elements. The movie makes much more of the canals and not just the aforementioned prostitute-in-the-window (the only capital in the world where sex workers are a tourist attraction). The nightclub is tamer in the book, little more than an old-fashioned bait-and-switch type of strip club, and certainly lacking the panache of the more modern variety with topless waitresses and cool sexy dance routines worthy of a Bob Fosse or at least Pan’s People. But Morgenstern isn’t one of the club’s customers in the book and neither does Astrid reject his advances. In fact, one of the sub-plots of the book is that Astrid makes herself scarce, flying out of Amsterdam.
Obviously, a book can invest more in characters. Trudi is introduced as having “the nicest voice for speaking bad English I’d come across in a long time” but rather than, as with the film, just speaking of her addiction, Sherman simply leans over and rolls up her sleeves.
With two female assistants rather than one, the job of tailing various characters can be split. So it’s Belinda who follows Astrid from the church. Although the notion of the puppet dangling on a chain is a major theme, it’s not the way Maggie dies as in the film. Instead she is pitchforked to death by a bunch of women in what appears, in true Hitchcock fashion, initially to be little more than a harmless pagan rite. And the impotent Sherman gets to watch rather than just discovering the corpse as in the movie.
That’s about the most horrific scene in the book but it’s closely matched by Sherman sticking two recalcitrant villains, the nightclub owner and a slimy associate, in a safe until they decide to spill the beans. These two guys are part of a sub-plot the movie just doesn’t have time to fit in.
The purpose of having a pair of girls in the book is to heighten the tension when Maggie dies, leaving Belinda, betrayed and captured, ready to endure hanging by hook.
Alistair MacLean is clearly a student of heinous ways to die, topping hanging and murder by pitchfork with torture by the high-pitched amplified sound of chiming clocks. Quite why a villain sophisticated enough to dream up such means of death would tie a captive up with electrical wire is anybody’s guess. You couldn’t expect a criminal to imagine that his opponent would have the brainpower to consider sticking the exposed wires in a plug, thus shorting the power supply and ending the torture. But film follows book in anointing this unlikely escape. Once free, there’s no thought in Sherman’s head, as in the film, of making use of a speedboat and pursuing the villain through the canals. He merely takes the more normal route back to the puppet premises.
As I mentioned, the film makes greater use of the canals. When Sherman is trying to find the boat, Marianne, in the film he takes to the water, in the book he remains on shore and locates it via binoculars. The scenes of Sherman getting aboard the barge and the clandestine collection of contraband from the sea are largely lifted entirely from the book, although there’s no helicopter involved as in the film.
The climax of the film, as in the book, involves Trudi revealed as not an addict and Van Gelder trapped on the hauling chain. Shame they left out the wonderful MacLean line, “Her mental age is not eight, it’s older than sin itself.”
There was always money involved. For an author whose string of bestsellers made him a fortune, Alistair MacLean found it particularly hard, in part due to poor investment and advice, to hold on to his millions. Victimhood was his default position for he tended to view himself as underpaid, not to mention ripped-off, by filmmakers, especially when the likes of The Guns of Navarone (1961) and Where Eagles Dare (1968) scored so highly at the box office.
That Puppet on a Chain arrived in cinemas the way it did was the result of the financial complications inherent in the novelist’s life. He had been too busy to write a screenplay for When Eight Bells Toll (1971) mostly because he was consumed with unravelling his finances and setting up a more lucrative template for his movie ventures.
He planned to form a partnership whose sole aim was the production and exploitation of his books as vehicles for films. To this end, MacLean alighted on budding director Geoffrey Reeve, then merely a highly sought-after helmer of commercials and promotional films for industry.
You might accuse Reeve of a bit of double-dealing himself since at the time he met MacLean he was working for the author’s nemesis Carl Foreman, producer of The Guns of Navarone. Foreman had adapted that book for the screen, considerably altering the source material in the process. Excluding MacLean from the party, Foreman had his eyes set on a sequel with the dull and very un-MacLean title of After Navarone.
But the instigator of the Reeve-MacLean partnership came from an unusual source, London wine merchant Lewis Jenkins, who in alliance with the other two formed the equally un-MacLean-named Trio Productions.
Jenkins was more than a wine seller. He was a high-flier who moved with a grace the grumpy Scotsman envied in the kind of classy circles that were, despite his fame, closed off to a mere novelist. He had come across details in a trade paper of MacLean’s deal for Ice Station Zebra (1968) and felt the author was being underpaid and, in a letter, he said so.
You couldn’t get MacLean’s attention more easily than plugging into his sense of victimhood. But it wasn’t movie talk that first made Jenkins indispensable. Horrified at the state of the author’s financial affairs, Jenkins put MacLean in touch with international tax lawyer Dr John Heyting who in turn handed him over to David Bishop, one of whose first tasks was to upbraid Foreman about his temerity on jumping the gun on Navarone and excluding the author.
While the triumvirate’s first notion was of approaching Columbia to fund a sequel, soon they were dealing with a much bigger fish. As unlikely as it sounds, David Lean (Doctor Zhivago, 1965) had expressed considerable interest in turning the threesome into a foursome. But the tantalizing possibility of a Lean-MacLean movie fell at the first hurdle as the director was tied up in developing Ryan’s Daughter (1970)..
It cost MacLean £100,000 to extricate himself from a financial muddle in which his advisers raked in more money than the man they supposedly represented. But it wasn’t just money that was wreaking havoc with his life. Though married, MacLean had a complicated love life and was a very heavy drinker, so it was testament to his discipline that he got any writing done at all.
The idea for Puppet on a Chain originated from a trip to Amsterdam with Reeve, who had mooted the notion of a thriller with a drugs background, during which by chance MacLean alighted on the image that sparked the title. What the author saw was harmless enough, a puppet dangling like a toy from a warehouse in the docks, its purpose probably nothing more than advertising the goods inside. It took an imagination like MacLean’s to turn it into something more sinister.
Once MacLean had written Puppet on a Chain, published in 1969 to commercial and critical acclaim, he handed the rights over to Reeve to negotiate a deal with a major studio. And it says something for the solidity of their partnership that it hit the screens one year later, quicker than When Eight Bells Toll, published in 1966, which took five years to be turned into a film.
Although critics tended to argue that little altered from one book to another, most failed to comprehend that Puppet on a Chain represented a subtle evolution. “It was a change of style from the earlier books. If I went on writing the same stuff, I’d be guying myself,” he said.
But the New York Times noticed and in a lengthy review elevated him to stand comparison with Graham Greene and Eric Ambler, the doyens of the literary thriller. “It’s a top-drawer effort,” commented critic Thomas Lask “If you have any red corpuscles in your blood, you will find your heart pumping triple time…The writing is as crisp as a sunny winter morning and MacLean has provided a travelog for a part of Amsterdam the ordinary tourist is not likely to go.”
But to his intense disappointment, the author discovered that his name alone, while it opened doors, did not unlock sources of funding. One of the two top British studios, ABC, its film arm trading as the Associated British Picture Corporation, which also owned the country’s largest cinema circuit (a state of affairs outlawed in the U.S, since 1948), was interested. ABPC wasn’t entirely avowed of MacLean’s potential, having purchased his debut novel H.M.S. Ulysses but left the project on the shelf.
MacLean was so keen to get the green light he sold the project, including the screenplay and Reeve’s fee, for $60,000, a substantial drop from the $100,000 (plus significant profit share) he received for screenplay alone for Where Eagles Dare. There was a caveat. If the rushes didn’t appeal, ABPC could replace Reeve.
Since advertising scarcely qualified as filmmaking at all, the number of directors who made the jump from making commercials (itself in its infancy) to making movies was virtually nil. This was long before the Scott Brothers, Ridley (Blade Runner, 1982) and Tony (Top Gun, 1986), and Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction, 1987) established commercials as a feeder route for Hollywood,
Having purchased the script for a bargain basement price, ABPC’s Robert Clark sought to offset the costs by involving an American partner. After softening up MGM’s Maurice Silverstein over lunch about the prospects of a joint production, Clark sent him a rough script of Puppet on a Chain. Silverstein was not impressed. The plot was too familiar. “Thanks ever so much for letting us have a look at the script,” wrote Silverstein. But that was as far as he went. No enthusiasm, no money.
But the MacLean name was sufficient to interest independents. Israeli Kurt Unger, former United Artists European production chief, whose father had been a distinguished producer, was in the market for a prestigious production, having cut his teeth on Judith (1966) starring Sophia Loren and Jack Hawkins. His sophomore effort was less successful, The Best House in London (1969) starring David Hemmings, a feminist comedy set in a brothel.
But he set up the picture, albeit with a good bit less funding than had been available for Where Eagles Dare and unlikely to even approach the $1.85 million it cost to make When Eight Bells Toll.
Lack of finance limited the talent available. There was no question of approaching a Richard Burton, much less a Clint Eastwood. And it’s more likely that Swede Sven Bertil-Taube was approved as a name with European appeal and following The Buttercup Chain (1970) could easily be sold as the next big thing in America, bearing in mind that espionage had paved the way in the previous decade for stars like Sean Connery and James Coburn.
Barbara Parkins (Valley of the Dolls, 1967) would also help guarantee media attention in the U.S. You might be surprised to learn rising British star Suzanna Leigh (The Lost Continent, 1968) was also on board. Her part was cut from the final film. Supposedly, she played a villain, but it’s more likely she was hired for the role of Belinda, one of the hero’s sidekicks in the book.
While hardly a big name, Brit Patrick Allen (The Devil Rides Out, 1968) brought dependable support and was well-known enough in the home market. Pole Vladek Sheybal (Women in Love, 1969) was always good copy, having twice escaped concentration camps in World War Two. Another Pole, Ania Larson, was making her movie debut and is still working – you might have caught her in The Witcher (2021) mini-series. A maiden movie outing for Greek actress Penny Casdagli was also her last.
One of the names in the aforementioned David Bishop’s contact book was Piet Cleverings, Amsterdam’s police chief, so permission for use of locales and, more importantly, the city’s extensive canals, was readily granted. Unusually, and presumably due to his backing of the partnership, MacLean intended to spend time in Amsterdam observing the filming. He brought over quite a party including his brother and wife and publisher Ian Chapman and wife plus Bishop.
But any sense of triumph at his role in putting the picture together was dashed by the news that his protégé Reeve had been replaced. “It was Geoff Reeve’s first film on this scale,” reported Unger, “and there some things not right. We brought in Don Sharp as a second unit director responsible for such scenes as the motor-boat chases.”
Unger had already taken steps to re-shape the script, calling on television writer Paul Wheeler and Sharp to add an extra dimension. In the producer’s view, MacLean “was a good writer but he was not a screenwriter. And what he wrote as a screenplay for Puppet on a Chain, I’m afraid, had to be rewritten.”
Understandably, MacLean was incandescent with rage at this “rubbishy travesty of what I wrote.” You could almost feel his spleen dripping onto the page as he wrote to Unger, complaining about Wheeler’s involvement. “If he can improve on practically everything I write and is clearly of the opinion that he is so much the better writer, why is it I’ve never heard of him?”
He went on: “I feel like a doctor who has been called in after a group of myopic first-year medical students with hacksaws have completely misdiagnosed and performed major surgery on a previously healthy patient.”
It was a poor introduction to the role of co-producer, although clearly MacLean didn’t think he had to protect his screenplay in the way that someone like Foreman would. If surrendering the rights for a low price furnished him with any power, he didn’t know how to use it.
Sharp was an unusual addition. Rather than being a go-to second unit director he was an experienced director in his own right, a favorite of Hammer and independent producer Harry Alan Towers, for whom he had helmed such films as, respectively, The Devil-Ship Pirates (1964) and Our Man in Marrakesh / Bang! Bang! You’re Dead (1966).
Unfortunately, his movie career had turned turtle, film work drying up after The Violent Enemy (1967) – television (episodes of The Avengers and Champion in 1968) paid the bills – and again after the lackluster Taste of Excitement (1969). In fact, aside from Puppet on a Chain, he remained in movie limbo for another four years.
Sharp argued that the script for the boat chase was “not good enough,” especially if it was to be the highlight of the film. “I chose the location,” recalled Sharp, “I talked to the police, got the boats and worked with a wonderful bloke there called Wim Wagenaar, who ran a restaurant.” As well as driving one of the boats, Wagenaar orchestrated jumping the boats in the canal.
“We sketched out a whole sequence, and some of the things, other boatmen said you can’t do this. I wanted his boat to run up on to the back of another boat and push it along. They said it won’t… I said, all right, let’s try it. And it did work. And we ran into bridges and came spinning round the corner.
“One time we had to wait for a little while because I had broken, I think it was, four boat hulls and smashed about eight Mercury engines. And they couldn’t get another one, they had to fly them in from Canada. It got a bit expensive.”
Part of what made the chase so thrilling was the unusual manner in which it was shot. Rather than shooting it in small sections and then editing it all together, Sharp took the advice of his camera operator Skeets Kelly. “(He) said to me, don’t cut it into pieces if you can do it all in one. . . . I had considered doing it in a couple of cuts, and Skeets talked me out of it. He said no, there’s so much more impact if you don’t because the audiences are very intelligent these days, so au fait with cinema, that they will know . . . But to go and do it in the one [shot], it’s absolutely for real.
Four weeks had been allocated for the boat chase and once it was complete Sharp received another call from Unger who was dissatisfied with the Reeve version. Sharp met with Unger and Lenny Lane, who had provided American funding. His opinion was: “bit of a mess.” Unger was a bit more forthright. “We’ve either got to spend more money and fix it or we’ve got to cut our losses and not release it.”
Sharp’s response was: “It’s a great shame because the boat chase is good and there are some good things in it. So I said, first of all, give me a couple of days in the cutting room with it, to look at it and make some notes, then I’ll tell you whether I think you can save it.”
After spending time in the cutting room, Sharp drew up a list of amendments. Unger talked to the financiers, sorted out the extra cash and commissioned Sharp to reshoot certain sequences, alter the plot and change the ending. Working with a Moviola of the original footage, Sharp could ensure new footage matched whatever was in the can.
He noted that Reeve “didn’t have a story sense then, as a director…and each set-up…looked like part of a television commercial and wasn’t there for the drama of it or just to let the audience know what was going on.”
For example, Sharp had to re-edit and re-film parts of the nightclub sequence. “Seventy-five per cent of it was fine…I did have to go and reshoot it because to shoot a couple of really good, important, dialog lines to do with the plot (were shown) in a shot between the legs of a dancer… done for a visual effect” rather than to tell a story.
MacLean went off in the huff to the extent that he failed to show up for a press conference in Amsterdam only to be later found to be so inebriated that addressing the world’s media would have proved an embarrassment.
MacLean, however, had the last laugh. The movie was a huge hit in Britain on initial release, “making a mint of money,” an automatic candidate in 1973 for a reissue double bill with When Eight Bells Toll.
You couldn’t get higher praise that a James Bond producer finding inspiration in your picture. Added Sharp, “The funny thing was that, when it came out, Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli, who knew Kurt Unger, said, how did you do that boat chase? Because they’d never thought of one, and from that they did Live and Let Die. And they spent on the boat chase in Live and Let Die more than we spent on the whole film, both units and the reshoot, on Puppet. They did it marvellously, there’s no doubt about it, but cut, cut, cut . . .”
SOURCES: Jack Webster, Alistair MacLean, A Life (Chapmans Publishers, paperback, 1992) p142-145, 152-157; Dean Brierley, “The Espionage Films of Alistair MacLean Part 2,” Cinema Retro, Issue 14, p36-38; Thomas Lask, “End Papers,” New York Times, November 4, 1969, p43; Barry Norman, “Alistair MacLean, Occupation: Storyteller,” Daily Mail, April 27, 1970; Eddy Darvas and Eddie Lawson, Don Sharp, The London History Project, November 1993; John Exshaw, “Don Sharp, Director, An Appreciation,” Cinema Retro, Issue 20.
The spy genre was dying on its feet, even James Bond slipping into spoof territory, and it was left to Alistair MacLean to revive the genre with believable heroes and settings not just chosen for their scenic potential, fitting somewhere between the gritty policiers of Bullitt (1968) and The French Connection (1971) and with an emphasis on violence that Sam Peckinpah would be proud of.
Stylish bullet-ridden opening, crackerjack climax. In between depicting Amsterdam scenery and depravity side by side comes betrayal, duplicity, drugs, heinous deaths, plenty action, and as much as Bullitt (1968) reinvented the car chase this did the same for speedboats.
Tracking point of view follows an assassin into a house where he kills three people and removes something from the pendulums of clocks. U.S. narcotics agent Sherman (Sven Bertil-Taube) flies in to Amsterdam but before he can collect vital information from colleague Duclos he is murdered.
Top Dutch cops Col De Graaf (Alexander Knox) and Inspector Van Gelder (Patrick Allen) are helpless to stop the growing heroin traffic. Van Gelder, with addicted niece Trudi (Penny Casdagli), knows only too well the personal cost.The police force is riddled with leaks, the heroin gang out to stop Sherman from the get-go.
But Sherman has his own nasty medicine to deal out, and hands out beatings and death to those who get in his way. Helped by colleague Maggie (Barbara Parkins) and, inadvertently by Duclos’s girlfriend Astrid (Ania Lemay), the trail leads to the Morgenstern warehouse, which stocks all sizes of puppets, and a church run by shady pastor Meegeren (Vladek Sheybal) which has re-purposed Bibles.
Sherman has no sooner escaped one attempt on his life than he encounters another, so the action never lets up. Meanwhile, clues lead him to a boat in the harbor and he discovers how the heroin is being shipped. Maggie, on hand to offer romantic consolation, shares his tough assignment and questions his methods.
Although revivals were usually sold on the weight of a star, but by this point MacLean was a box office commodity and, let’s face it, neither Hopkins nor Bertil-Taube had much of a calling card.
The trail isn’t that hard to follow but the obstacles are considerable. Meegeren and pals take hanging to the extreme, strangling victim on steel chains, dangling them high as a warning to others. So, mostly, leavened, depending on your point of view, by titillating views of the Dutch capital and a sexy dance troupe that would put Bob Fosse to shame, its fist- and gun-fights all the way.
Except for his dalliance with Maggie, a romance that has to be kept under wraps, Sherman fits the tough Alistair MacLean template with a ruthless streak wide enough to have won plaudits from Where Eagles Dare team He gets a good dousing in the sea and is an unwilling candidate for a brainwashing technique that combines tradition with a personalized version of the sonic boom.
But the highlight without doubt is the high-speed speedboat chase through Amsterdam, beginning in the wider Zuider Zee before racing through the narrow twisty Dutch canals.
For the Dutch Tourist Board it was a game of two halves, organ music aplenty, cobbles and canals, and people dressed in traditional garb promoting the city as a desirable destination but the unsightly addicts and the sex trade as likely to put overseas visitors off (although for many that may well be the icing on the cake).
It was rare at this point, in a polished Hollywood-style picture, to dig so deeply into the seamy side of a city, but his one pulls no punches, nitty-gritty winning out over gloss, and where Easy Rider (1969) and others of that ilk opted to canonize drugs this favored grim consequence.
It seems particularly difficult to get the casting right for an Alistair MacLean movie of the lone wolf variety – the all-star war pictures by contrast having no trouble attracting major players – and if you turned up your nose at Richard Widmark in The Secret Ways (1961), George Maharis in The Satan Bug (1965) and Barry Newman in Fear Is the Key (1972) you might quibble at Swede Sven Bertil-Taube (The Buttercup Chain, 1970). But he makes a fairly decent stab at the standard dour character.
Barbara Parkins (Valley of the Dolls, 1967), way out of her comfort zone, does well as the tough woman with a soft center. But, all told, you would say it benefits from largely casting unknowns as it prevents the audience arriving with preconceptions. In her only movie Penny Cadagli is the pick of the support, especially as her role in the movie is to play a role.
Although Geoffrey Reeve (Caravan to Vaccares, 1974) hogs the directing credit, the speedboat chase, other action scenes and the tightening up of the picture was the work of Don Sharp (Bang! Bang! You’re Dead, 1966). And Alistair MacLean didn’t, as he might have expected, receive sole screenwriting credit either, sharing it with Sharp and Paul Wheeler (Caravan to Vaccares, 1974).
Not only plenty of bang for your buck, but a riveting chase and one of the first sightings of heroin supply as the key driver of the narrative.
The Magnificent 60s 