Andrew Cartmel's Blog, page 4

July 12, 2020

The Tall T by Elmore Leonard and Burt Kennedy

I know, I know, it's not like me to be writing about Westerns... 

But I love a good Western as much as any other genre, especially when it's as well written and well directed as this little low-budget gem from cult film maker Budd Boetticher (pronounced "Betticker").

Budd Boetticher did an excellent job directing The Tall T but the movie's crucial strengths lie in a skilful screenplay by Burt Kennedy based on a strong and efficient little short story by Elmore Leonard.

Yes, that Elmore Leonard. Before he moved on to crime fiction he made a respectable career writing memorable Westerns.

In this case, a story called The Captives. The interesting names in the movie — Rintoon, Tenvoorde — originate with Leonard. Indeed Burt Kennedy is gratifyingly faithful to Leonard's material.

Basically The Tall T is the story of some bad men — very bad men — who want to rob a stage coach. But they get the wrong stage coach. 

Instead of the regular vehicle, which is set to be carrying a large sum in payroll cash, they accidentally swoop on an unscheduled coach, specially commissioned by a honeymoon couple. 

Also hitching a ride on the stage coach is hardbitten loner Brennan (Randolph Scott) and the doomed bad guys take him prisoner along with the honeymooners.

They're doomed because Brennan is a classic Elmore Leonard hero — intelligent, practical and ruthless.  

Having blown their chance at the payroll robbery, the gang of thieves led by Frank Usher (Richard Boone) come up with the scheme of ransoming the honeymoon bride Doretta (Maureen O'Sullivan), who is the daughter of a rich man.

So they take Doretta and Brennan as their captives, hence the title of Leonard's story. Doretta's cowardly heel of a husband Willard (John Hubbard) has only married her for her money and is only too pleased to act as a cooperative  bag man between the kidnappers and his wealthy father in law. (Much good it does him.)

The Tall T came out in 1957. In an interview many years later Elmore Leonard said it was his favourite among his Western movies. "Richard Boone recited the lines just the way I heard them when I wrote the story." 

He was, however, quite dismissive of the material that Burt Kennedy added to the screenplay, padding his original story: "it takes about 20 minutes to get going."

But in fact these early sequences add enormously to the power of the film. Because it begins with Brennan riding into an isolated stage coach station out in the wilderness. 

Here he knows the station master and the man's young son, a typical cute freckle faced little Hollywood urchin. Brennan promises to buy the kid some candy.

But when he gets back on that ill fated stage coach he finds that Usher's gang have murdered the station master and his little boy and put their bodies "down the well".

This sort of horrific offhand cruelty is almost unprecedented in a Hollywood movie of the period. The Tall T has a succinct savagery which gives it real stature.

The original Elmore Leonard tale builds up a powerful feeling of dread as we wait for Usher's gang to execute Brennan and Doretta — they're going to kill them even if they get the ransom. 

The story exerted an almost sickening suspense even though I knew how it turned out because I've seen the movie (and, let's face it, because I know Elmore Leonard).

Of course, Brennan manages to turn the table on their captors, and in a surprisingly ferocious fashion. He gets a shotgun under the chin of one and pulls the trigger... "Don't look at him," he tells Doretta.

The Tall T is hard hitting, vivid, and years ahead of its time. Apart from the quality of the writing, directing and acting (Richard Boone is particularly fine), there's memorably beautiful photography by Charles Lawton which is pin-sharp on the Blu-ray.

This is one of half a dozen Budd Boetticher Westerns that are said to be classics. If any of the others are as good as this, I'll report back to you. 

(Image credits: All from IMDB.)
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Published on July 12, 2020 02:00

July 5, 2020

Don't Breathe by Alvarez & Sayagues

As part of my personal film festival in these strange days I've been revisiting some favourite movies from recent years, and I was very pleased to catch up with this one again. 

Don't Breathe is often described as a horror film. Indeed, the Blu-ray cover trumpets it as the "best American horror film in twenty years." But I wouldn't call it a horror film at all...

I'd call it a suspense thriller. For a start, there's nothing supernatural about it. It's the story of three young burglars in Detroit.

And that crumbling, semi-abandoned, post-industrial city — a sprawling and eerie urban ghost town — is one of the stars of the movie. 
Indeed, some of its images that remain most vividly in my mind are director Fede Alvarez's breathtaking, moody aerial shots of Detroit.

The highly talented Fede Alvarez comes from Uruguay. He made his feature debut with the Evil Dead remake and would go on to direct The Girl in the Spider's Web, another movie I admire. 

He also co-wrote the excellent script for Don't Breathe, with his regular collaborator Rodo Sayagues. It charts the story of Rocky (Jane Levy), Alex (Dylan Minnette) and Money (Daniel Zovatto).

Incidentally, 'Money' is a bad choice of name...  at a crucial point in the movie Rocky sends a text about him and we don't know what the fuck she's talking about.

But that's just about the only slip up in this taut, perfectly plotted and beautiful thriller...

Anyway, Money is a scumbag criminal who is on this robbery spree for the money. (What else?)

So is Rocky — but with her, the money is a means to an end. She's a single mother and wants to escape to a better life for her and her daughter.  

Alex is providing them with entry codes for the alarm systems of houses, purloined from his dad's security company.

He is nominally in it for the money, too. But actually he's in love with Rocky, who is going out with Money, the scumbag.

The three of them have a fairly successful little burglary business going on, until they overreach themselves breaking into the isolated house of a blind man (Stephen Lang) who is supposedly sitting on a fortune...

If I tell you that the blind man is actually a tough and resourceful war vet, then you may be able to see how this home invasion could go badly wrong.

Indeed, in other hands, this would be the story of how a plucky handicapped fellow overcomes all odds, and triumphs over the young thugs who break into his house...

But thanks to the cleverness of Alvarez and Sayagues, this is completely inverted. 

The blind man is the menace in the story and we are choked with terror, desperately hoping that Alex and Rocky, at least, will be able to escape from his house alive.

Don't Breathe is expertly written and beautifully shot, with cinematography by Pedro Luque and music by Roque Baños, both also Alvarez regulars.

But perhaps the film's greatest asset is Jane Levy, who so movingly communicates Rocky's terror in this hellish situation she finds herself trapped in — you can see the fear in her face in the superb stills illustrating this post, by ace photographer Gordon Timpen.

Don't Breathe is a meticulously constructed roller coaster ride and when it finally concludes, leaving the sweat of fear to dry on us, all the loose ends seem neatly tied up.

So I would have said, don't hold your breath waiting for a sequel.

But in fact one is in production. And, since it is co-written by Alvarez and Sayagues again — with Sayagues moving up to director this time — I would suggest you make a note of it.

If it's half as good as Don't Breathe it will still be on my must-see list.

(Image credits: All are from IMDB where the superb stills are by the aforementioned  Gordon Timpen of the Society of Motion Picture Still Photographers, © 2016 CTMG, Inc. All rights reserved. And all images are the property of Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. and are for promotional use only. Okay, dude?)
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Published on July 05, 2020 02:00

June 28, 2020

The Turquoise Lament by John D. MacDonald

John D. MacDonald is one of my favourite writers, and his creation Travis McGee one of my favourite characters. 

McGee is a kind of unofficial private detective who specialises in attempting to recover large sums of money which have been stolen or otherwise taken from the victim by unscrupulous means.

The deal is, if he's successful, he keeps half the loot and the other half goes back to his client. As he points out — half is a lot better than nothing.

This is a late Travis McGee adventure, number 15 in the series, published in 1973, and both MacDonald and his hero are on absolutely top form. 

The book has the fabulous, densely organised readability of Thomas Harris's Cari Mora and it is full of vivid interest on every page.

I often compare MacDonald to Harris. They are both writers who, with these books, are at the absolute peak of their craft.

The Turquoise Lament is gorgeously written, suspenseful as hell and terrifically funny.

It begins with McGee, summoned by a damsel in distress, jetting to Honolulu and glimpsing "a single tilted vista of Los Angeles in morning light" as he takes off in his connecting flight.

The purloined booty in this particular adventure is literally sunken treasure — pirate gold. And the methodical procedure of a modern undersea treasure hunt is masterfully evoked.

McGee and his fellows use electronic probes and high pressure hoses to search the silt on the ocean floor, with barracuda watching them "like old men at a contruction site."

Like his creator, McGee is respectful of wildlife and very prescient in his environmental concerns. He notes that, "The eerie savage predators of the deep have gotten a very bad press." 

Such ecological interests keeps MacDonald entirely modern and indeed at the cutting edge, as in him talking about ancient geological events, "when mankind was only an unborn threat to the distant future."

The story of the treasure hunt is told with bravura economy. Here is the first sentence of  Chapter 3: "Yes, we found the cannon and we found the gold."

But within a few pages the vast fortune it is snatched away from our protagonists by a hurricane.

Don't worry, though, there is more treasure under the ocean. And the huge wealth at stake makes a young woman the target of a charming, manipulative — and utterly murderous — psychopath.

Which is where McGee comes in.

This book is full of priceless descriptions. A bully's countenance "looked more like a fat boiled fist than a face." 

In the frantic run up to Christmas in Florida: "Counter clerks radiate an exhausted patience leavened with icy flashes of total hate."

Up in the sky there is the "thunder-roll of a jet.""A big raw Saturday wind" blows through the streets. The parking meters by the beach look like a "small lonely forest of Martian flowers." Golf carts are "whining contrivances."

Another great virtue of the Travis McGee novels is that McGee is not a solo act. MacDonald had the great good sense to equip him with a comrade in arms, a brilliant semi-retired economist called Meyer (we never find out his other name).


Meyer is much more than a Watson to McGee's Holmes. Their partnership is more like Aubrey and Maturin in the brilliant seafaring novels of Patrick O'Brian.

This friendship is a thing of beauty and adds a huge extra dimension to these books. The McGee stories are never more compelling than when Meyer is in peril, as he is here.

And he's not the only one. I mentioned the young woman targeted by the psychopath. This antagonist is a classic John D. MacDonald monster...

He is memorably referred to at various times as "a very cold and strange entity", "an amiable maniac", a "jolly sociopath" and a "monstrous... non-person."

In the clutches of such a formidable villain, our heroine is up against overwhelming odds and appears certainly doomed.

But that very cold and strange entity and amiable maniac is, in turn, up against one Travis McGee...

So suffice to say this jolly sociopath and monstrous non-person gets what's coming to him.

If you haven't read any John D. MacDonald, or any of his Travis McGee books, I would say this supremely well crafted novel is an ideal place to start

I can scarcly convey to you just what an effortless pleasure it was to read. 

(Image credits: The $1.25 Fawcett paperback and the rather rubbish British Hale hardcover (leg and gun) are scanned by me from my own library. The other covers are from Good Reads, with these exceptions — the Pan cover is from the Cotswold Library on eBay. The German paperback is from Mord Lust. The German three volume compendium — "blaue krimis" is from Book Looker.)
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Published on June 28, 2020 02:00

June 21, 2020

The Dragon Masters by Jack Vance

Science fiction was my first love as a young reader and recently I've been delving back into the wondrous work of Jack Vance.

Vance also wrote fantasy — terrific, distinctive fantasy: Dungeons and Dragons drew heavily on his writings. But, despite its title, The Dragon Masters is solidly science fiction.

It's set on the planet Aerlith, settled by humans in the distant future, and hinges on their periodic conflict with an alien race called the grephs (or the Basics — we'll explain that in a minute) from the star system Coralyne.

It's periodic because it takes place whenever Coralyne's orbit brings it close enough to Aerlith to enable an attack.
 
The grephs have an overwhelming technological advantage and raid and enslave the humans at will, carrying them back to their home planet and breeding them into different specialised forms to serve their warlike ends — Weaponeers, Heavy Troopers, Giants.
 
But, eleven generations before this story begins, the humans win a victory that enables them to capture a signifcant group of the grephs, or Basics.

"Basics" because the humans then proceed to turn the tables on their enemies and selectively breed them into a variety of forms, developed from this basic orginal. These new creatures are called dragons, and they are bred to be used in battle.

And what a variety:

"Termagants darted into the lead, followed by silken Striding Monsters and the heavier Long-horned Murderers, their fantastic chest-spikes tipped with steel. Behind came the ponderous Juggers, grunting, gurgling, teeth clashing together with the vibration of their steps. 

"Flanking the Juggers marched the Fiends, carrying heavy cutlasses, flourishing their terminal steel balls as a scorpion carries its sting; then at the rear came the Blue Horrors, who were both massive and quick, good climbers, no less intelligent than the Termagants."

The genetic manipulation makes this story solidly science fiction, while the symmetry of the conflict gives it a certain savage, poetic irony.

The rich and colourful depiction of this alien world is indeed like a fantasy novel and allows Jack Vance to draw the reader into his story swiftly and seductively.

And he makes the alien seem real by the confident use of exotic terminology, much of it invented but much of it also real, abstruse and archaic — like 'sacredote' (literally, a priest) or 'curvet' (a series of jumps on the hind legs performed by a horse — or in this case, a creature called a Spider).

Vance also writes quite beautifully: "Over them the flier darted, veered, fluttered, settling like a falling leaf." Or his description of a Dragon Master with "eyes black and blank as drops of ink on a plate."

And it's a beautiful, warlike world he describes: "With the cold rain of dawn pelting down upon them, with the trail illuminated only by lightning-glare,  Ervis Carcolo, his dragons and his men set forth... the dragons mumbled and muttered fretfully... watching an opportunity to kick each other or to snip a leg from an unwary groom."

Soon enough the Basics land for another attack and battle is joined and Vance keeps us turning the pages with a prose which is both dryly ironic and downright thrilling. 

"With silken ferocity the Blue Horrors ripped them apart.. What a terrible day... What awful events; what a great victory."

It was a great pleasure to discover that this novel still sparks that same sense of wonder that made me love science fiction in the first place.

(Image credits: The covers are all from the very useful Goodreads; I was pleased to be able to avoid most of the more sword-and-sorcery flavoured ones.)
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Published on June 21, 2020 02:53

June 14, 2020

Red Dragon (the script) by Ted Tally and Thomas Harris

As you may well know, I am an ardent admirer of novelist Thomas Harris, most recently the author of Cari Mora, but still probably best known for Silence of the Lambs.

Harris has fared surprisingly well with screen adaptations of his books, not least because he had the good fortune to have two of his films scripted by the American playwright Ted Tally.

Seldom has such a stupendously talented novelist been adapted by a comparably talented screenwriter.

One reason Ted Tally's movies are so good is that his first instinct is to stick as closely as possible to the source material — an unusual attitude in the world of movies.

When he wrote his adaptation of Silence of the Lambs, Tally even included scenes from the book that I thought could never work on the screen — they were so rooted in the magic of Thomas Harris's prose...


But they did work, and so brilliantly that Silence of the Lambs was a massive hit as a film, and Ted Tally won the Oscar that year for best adapated screenplay.

Unfortunately, no one saw fit to publish this award winning script in book form. (Maybe they'd like to rectify that error now...)

But Tally's script for another Thomas Harris adaptation — Red Dragon — has indeed been published, and if you're interested in the art of screenwriting you should immediately get hold of a copy.

Movie scripts are often a dull, demanding read, requiring your full attention to keep track of characters, locations, and generally what the hell is going on...

Not Ted Tally's Red Dragon. It reads like a dream. I genuinely couldn't put it down. I found it as a dark, scary and profoundly compelling as Thomas Harris's original novel.

Once more Tally has remained impressively true to the book, but he has a made a couple of canny changes.

The story of Red Dragon takes place before Silence of the Lambs, but the film came out ten years after Silence, with Hannibal Lecter already firmly embedded in the public consciousness.

Therefore Tally provides a brief prologue giving us a taste of the cannibal psychiatrist's schtick...

The Boston Symphony Orchestra has a dud flute soloist, so Hannibal thoughtfully helps them out by killing him and serving him up at a dinner party for members of the symphony board...

And the film ends differently from the book, with a coda of Hannibal in his cell being told that the unseen agent Starling is waiting to see him.

In between, Tally gives us an exquisitely riveting plot, told in clear, concise, dramatic scenes with first rate dialogue.

As I say, a lot of this is drawn directly from Harris's novel. But the choice of what to include and what to leave out (and a lot has to be left out) is Tally's.

And he also adds his own beautiful touches... At the bad guy's gothic mansion of a house, there's a veranda where "ancient rocking chairs stir in the breeze, ridden by ghosts."

Later, when that house is torched and becomes an inferno Tally describes, "The rocking chairs on the porch, moving eerily as flames take them. One last ride for the ghosts."

I recently included Thomas Harris's Red Dragon in a list of my top ten favourite crime novels

What a pleasure to report that this screenplay based on it is a masterpiece in its own right.

(Image credits: The front and back cover of the script book are scans by me of my own copy. The other images are from IMDB, where most of the photos are by Glen Wilson and copyright either Glen Wilson or Universal Studios.)
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Published on June 14, 2020 11:02

June 7, 2020

The Big Goodbye by Sam Wasson

Chinatown is one of my favourite films of all time, so when I discovered that someone had written an entire book about the making of it, I immediately rushed out and bought it.

Okay, so that's not true... I immediately rushed to ask my sister to buy it for me, for my birthday.

The book is called The Big Goodbye, a title that invokes the novels of Raymond Chandler, as well as summarising one of the major themes of this impressive study...


To wit, that the era when Chinatown was made — the 1970s — was a high point in the history of Hollywood film making, and a quality of work was achieved then that has never been rivalled since.

Indeed, as Chinatown hit the screens of the world and began its long fade into history, we already began to bid farewell to an age of greatness.

Sam Wasson was familiar to me through the splendid TV series Fosse/Verdon, which was based on his biography of Bob Fosse. 

I'll have to get hold of that, as well as his book about Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Wasson has done a thorough and admirable job of research. 

Whenever he couldn't go to primary sources — either because they're beyond his reach, or dead (beyond anybody's reach) — he's dug deep into previously published interview material, but never settled for the obvious.

And he's ferreted out facts that have added immensely to my appreciation of the film.

For instance, in an account of the troubled journey to create the music for the film, Wasson reveals that Susanna Moore, then girlfriend of Richard Sylbert, the movie's production designer, made a crucial pivotal contribution.

She suggested including the lovely, lilting 1937 song 'I Can't Get Started' by Bunny Berigan. This worked beautifully to evoke the period of the film. 

But more than that, because Berigan was a star trumpeter, it led to a lone trumpet being the signature sound of Chinatown.

To my delight Wasson even devotes a section of the book to Uan Rasey, the virtuoso session trumpeter who plays so unforgettably on the soundtrack.

And of course he also discusses Jerry Goldsmith, whose stellar music is no small part of Chinatown's greatness.


Naturally Sam Wasson also understands the importance of writers, so a major portion of The Big Goodbye is spent on Robert Towne, who wrote the film.

Robert Towne is one of the great screenwriters and I admire him considerably.

However, instead of his single credit on Chinatown, there should be three names on the movie.

Ever since the film appeared, it's been an open secret that Roman Polanski, the director, made a significant contribution to the script. Notably its indelible conclusion.

Here is a website discussing "The memorable ending of the classic 1974 movie Chinatown, written by Robert Towne."

In fact Towne didn't write a word of this sequence. He refused to have anything to do with what Pauline Kael would call Polanski's "gargoyle's grin" of an ending.

More than that, Roman Polanski was responsible for taking Towne's brilliant but vastly overlength and unfocused screenplay and hewing it down so that it unwaveringly followed private detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) and his story.

But the big surprise in The Big Goodbye is that through all the preliminary years of developing what became Chinatown, Robert Towne had a writing shadow partner, a friend named Edward Taylor.

Taylor who did extensive, unacknowledged work on not only Chinatown, but virtually every screenplay Towne wrote.

None of which diminishes Towne's importance here. But it puts it in perspective, confirms Polanski's contribution and, crucially, finally brings Edward Taylor out of the shadows.

If you haven't seen Chinatown, I'd suggest you do so immediately.

And if you love it as much as I do, you should then buy this book.

Or get someone else to buy it for your birthday.

(Image credits: The cover is from Amazon UK — fair enough, since that is where we bought the book. The other images are all taken from IMDB, where they also have a fine selection of posters I may well draw on when I write about the film itself.)
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Published on June 07, 2020 03:55

May 31, 2020

A Touch of Death by Charles Williams

One thing that distinguishes Charles Williams and makes him such a favourite of mine is the sheer originality of his plotting.

He specialises in compelling stories that don't fit into the usual recognisable templates of the crime novel.

And part of his approach is to propel his protagonist into a lethal situation which he, and the reader, don't fully understand. 
 
Surviving the story will require working out what is going on and unravelling the mystery.
 
However, in A Touch of Death (also published as Mix Me a Redhead) it has to be said that understanding the situation is not going to be much help to our hero...

Lee Scarborough is an ex-college football player down on his luck. Like Jerry Forbes in The Concrete Flamingo he meets a beautiful woman who decides she has a place for him in a crooked scheme of hers.

But in this case the lovely and nefarious woman, Diana James, turns out to be merely a warm-up act, so to speak, for an even lovelier and more nefarious woman glorying in the name Madelon Butler.

Madelon is "Brunette, with a magnolia complexion and big, smoky-looking eyes."

Effectively Williams is giving us two femmes fatale here for the price of one.

Diana James enlists our hero's help in a plot which is, essentially, to rob a thief. She tells Lee that Madelon Butler murdered her husband and got away with it.

Madelon's husband was a banker who'd apparently embezzled $120,000 (a lot of money in 1953, when this was written), planning to run off with another woman — Diana James.

Now the larcenous husband has gone missing ("he had vanished like a wisp of smoke" ) and Diana is sure Madelon worked out what was going on, murdered him, and kept the money, which she still has in her house...

So Diana sends Lee to steal it. What could possibly go wrong? 

Just about everything, as it happens. Because nothing in this set-up is quite what it seems, and soon the reader is experiencing agonising suspense.

And Lee is crawling along the ground trying to avoid being shot by a mysterious sniper: "I could feel the cross hairs of a telescope sight crawling all over me like long-legged spiders."

I mentioned that this is an early book by Charles Williams, published in 1953, and it has some minor flaws that would soon vanish from his writing, 

Chiefly these consist of some unconvincing hardboiled dialogue from our hero ("I like my women warm to the touch. And not quite so deadly with a gun").

But Williams's gift for sharp, amusing dialogue is also emphatically present. Particularly after Madelon and Lee team up, albeit reluctantly.

When Madelon makes a reference to Homer's Odyssey and Lee doesn't get it, she says, "I guess they haven't made a comic book of it yet."

Lee is seriously out of his depth with Madelon Butler, and not just in the discussion of literature. 

He finds himself assaulting a cop, dodging police road blocks, and generally feeling such tension that he's afraid his "head would blow up like a hand grenade."

And there is no escape from the situation. "This thing was like a swamp. Every time you moved, you sank into it a little deeper."

A Touch of Death is a gruelling, harrowing noir tale that hurtles towards an unforgettable, darkly sardonic conclusion.

This is the fifth novel I've read by Charles Williams and I am impressed at how different all of them have been.

I can't wait for the next one.

(Image credits: The lovely blue Gold Medal cover which I used for my main image is from Good Reads, as are the other covers, with the following exceptions... The Hard Case Crime US edition is courtesy of Charles Ardai, the man behind Hard Case. Many thanks, Charles! The French Gallimard Carré Noir paperback with the rather unhappy man's face and the pigeon is from Librairie Dialogues. The Gallimard paperback with the Gallic looking guy in a scarf smoking a ciggie is from Scylla. The standard Série Noire edition with the black cover and yellow type is from Rakuten. The yellow and black French hardcover is from eBay. The Cassell Crime Connoisseur hard cover, retitled Mix Yourself a Redhead, is from Ipernity. The Pan edition, also Mix Yourself a Redhead is from Amazon.)

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Published on May 31, 2020 06:09

May 24, 2020

Dial M for Murder by Frederick Knott

Dial M for Murder isn't considered to be one of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest movies, but I loved it, and it's now one of my favourites.

Because while it's true this may not be great Hitchcock, Dial M for Murder is a great stage play — a masterpiece of suspense and surprise — and Hitchcock did a fine job of adapting it to the screen.

The play was written by Frederick Knott and it is considered one of the all time great stage thrillers, listed by Ira Levin in Deathtrap as being up there with Sleuth and Angel Street (aka Gaslight) — and, I should add, Deathtrap itself.

Not to mention Agatha Christie's masterpieces, The Mousetrap, Witness for the Prosecution and Go Back for Murder.

I've been making a study of these classic theatrical thrillers and Dial M for Murder was next on my list. I'm looking to get a copy to read, but meanwhile I wanted to see Hitchcock's film, so I ordered the Blu-Ray.

The movie was originally released in 3D and indeed the Blu-Ray had a 3D option — if I had all the appropriate kit (I don't). 

But, more importantly, it had a very useful documentary detailing the origins of Dial M for Murder.

I'd always thought it was an American play and had originated on Broadway. Far from it...

Frederick Knott was a British writer who had worked for Hammer Films and the 'M' in the title stands for Maida Vale, a London suburb where the BBC has long had studios — highly appropriate. 

Because Dial M for Murder began its long life as television play on the BBC TV anthology series Sunday Night Theatre in March 1952. 

Apparently Knott had originally written it for the stage, but it had been "turned down by seven London producers." More fools, they.

Within three months of appearing on television, the play was on stage at the Westminster Theatre in London — and four months later it was on Broadway.

Dial M for Murder was a smash hit (what morons those seven producers were) and by 1954 it was being filmed by Hitchcock. 

Nice going, Frederick Knott. (And screw you, Seven Stupid Producers.)

It's difficult to discuss too much about Dial M without revealing the fantastic, twisting snake's-nest of a plot devised by Knott (a perfect name for this writer, by the way).

Essentially, though, it's the story of a love triangle — Tony, a former professional tennis player is married to the wealthy Sheila. But she is in love with Max, a crime writer.

But very little is what it seems as Frederick Knott unleashes a serpentine series of plot twists involving blackmail, murder, a deadly phone call, a crucially important housekey and a miscarriage of justice...

Which will take both Max the crime writer and Inspector Hubbard the cop to puzzle it out.

Or to put it differently, it's the story of a perfect murder which almost succeeds...

When I wasn't squirming with suspense, I was laughing out loud with pleasure.

Although the trappings of Hitchcock's film (for instance, the phoney back-projection) are dated, the essential story remains fresh and powerful. 

And Hitchcock's approach with successful plays was to do the very minimum to make them filmic... essentially he wanted to preserve the nature of the stage experience.

A very smart move, because Frederick Knott's play is simply brilliant.


Knott would go on to write very little else — notably two other suspense thrillers for the stage, Write Me a Murder in 1960 and Wait Until Dark, another massive hit, in 1966.

I remember the movie of Wait Until Dark scaring the heck out of me on TV when I was a little kid.

I may have to watch that next.

(Image credits: The retro airbrushed looking poster of the telephone dial with the bloody fingerprint — my favourite — is apparently a modern specimen by Clark Orr and is from Pinterest. The genuinely vintage 1950s posters are from Etsy ("Is that you, darling?") and Heritage Auctions ("Better let it ring"). The vintage blue horizontal poster is from Amazon. The silhouette of Hitchcock with the phone dial on him is designed by Monster Planet and is from Redbubble. The red poster with the hanging phone is from eBay UK. The French poster (entitled "The Crime Was Almost Perfect") with the blue key is from Original Film Art. The other French poster is from the Official Alfred Hitchcock Facebook page. The Italian poster is also from Original Film Art. The poster by Suzanne Powers (red stain on a grey background) is from Fine Art America. The pale blue theatre poster is from Bygone Theatre. The purple poster is from Ten Blade Media.)
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Published on May 24, 2020 02:00

May 17, 2020

Twilight by Robert Benton and Richard Russo

Like a lot of people these days I am curating my own personal film festival. 

My approach is to listen to interviews with directors who particularly interest me, archived on the DGA's invaluable website. These are often terrific, deep-dive interviews that last for several fascinating hours.

It's an approach that is leading to the discovery of some real gems, none of them more wonderful than this 1998 detective thriller by Robert Benton.

Benton started out in movies as a screenwriter — he co-wrote Bonnie and Clyde. 

And then went on to direct Bad Company, The Late Show, Kramer vs Kramer, Places in the Heart...

And Twilight. Not to be confused with a series of teen-favourite movies about vampires and werewolves moping around the Pacific Northwest.

No, this Twilight was entirely the creation of Robert Benton and Richard Russo. Russo had written a novel called Nobody's Fool which Benton had filmed, starring Paul Newman. 

The novelist did some work on that script and Benton enjoyed collaborating so much that he sat down with Russo to dream up a private eye tale set in Los Angeles, a sort of modern day film noir.

And, my word, were they successful.

I don't know how I missed Twilight when it came out, but it's an absolute beauty of a movie. Dark, sardonic, funny and thrilling, it pushes all the right buttons.

And it begins with one of the most perfectly formed brief anecdotes I've ever seen in a film. 

We meet ex-cop and private eye Harry Ross (Paul Newman) in Puerto Vallarta where he has come to bring home runaway teenager Mel Ames (Reese Witherspoon, never more beguiling).

Mel is down in Mexico with her deadbeat boyfriend Jeff (a magnificently dodgy Liv Schreiber).

Jeff is not very pleased to have their idyll interrupted by a middle aged detective. There's a scuffle, a gun goes off and...

Well, suffice to say, the entire premise of the ensuing story is set up here, beautifully and efficiently.

It's a story that will involve Mel's parents, Hollywood power couple Jack (Gene Hackman) and Catherine (Susan Sarandon). Mr and Mrs Ames are both movie stars, though now somewhat in decline.

Beside the swimming pool of their stunning mansion, Catherine tells Harry that she and her husband are broke. Harry is having none of it. "I'm broke," he says. "You're over extended."

And not just financially. Jack and Catherine are out of their depth in a rising tide of blackmail and murder. And it's Harry's task to save them.

Complicated somewhat by the fact that Jack is Harry's best friend, but Harry's in love with Catherine.

In no time at all Harry is being shot at and arrested, as he tries to work out who is doing what to whom and why.

This is a classic detective tale, immaculately fashioned and deeply satisfying. Also, very funny, with priceless supporting performances by Stockard Channing as a cop and James Garner as another private eye.

Twilight may not have the stature of say, Chinatown or Night Moves. But it's certainly worth including in the same discussion. 

And it's wonderfully, richly enjoyable, with luminous photography by Piotr Sobocinski and an enticing score by Elmer Bernstein.

In fact, I think I'll go and listen to Bernstein's music now.

(Image credits: The white English language poster is from Imp Awards. The black and white photo of Newman with the gun is by Lorey Sebastian and, along with the black poster is from IMDB. Reese Witherspoon with Newman out of focus in the background is from Zimbio. The Spanish poster and all the other images are from the extremely useful Movie Screen Shots.)
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Published on May 17, 2020 02:00

May 10, 2020

Stain of Suspicion by Charles Williams

Hurray. Another addictive suspense novel from the masterful Charles Williams.

Like The Sailcloth Shroud it throws a sympathetic character into an inexplicably deadly situation. 

This is one of the things that makes Williams's books so clever. The lethal menace makes the story a thriller, while our hero's attempts to find its source makes it simultaneously a mystery.

And, as with The Sailcloth Shroud, the satisfying explanation turns out to be a plausible and ingenious crime, lurking under the surface of recent events.

Bill Chatham is a disillusioned ex cop from San Francisco who is driving to start a new life in Florida when he gets into a minor collision in a small town in the north of the state.

The damage to his car means he will be stranded there for three days while it's repaired. They will prove to be a very eventful three days...

What ensues is a brilliantly engineered story as Chatham is caught up in the persecution of a young widow who runs the motel where he is staying. 
 
Georgia Langston is the victim of vicious local gossip — the original title of the book was the ironic Talk of the Town — not to mention a systematic campaign of harassment.

The locals believe she killed her husband and got away with it. Chatham believes differently and sets out to clear her name.

And almost ends up getting killed himself. More than once.

The blazing heat of smalltown Florida is acutely evoked: "Shadows were like ink in the white sunlight."

The anonymous voice muttering obscenities over the phone to Georgia Langston is  "like something crawling across your bare flesh in a swamp."
 
And the pressure is starting to tell on Georgia. "One of these days she was going to come apart like a dropped plate."

But not if Chatham can help it. And his interference is resented by those who really did kill Georgia's husband. 

Soon he is the victim of a near lethal ambush and watching his blood flow out onto the dry ground in "little tapping drops of red."

Chatham isn't as subtle as he might be in his investigation — he's "about as hard to keep track of as a moose in a phone booth" according to one sardonic observer.

And he finds himself up against the head of the local police, Kelly Redfield, a good cop going bad under some mysterious intolerable pressure: "Somewhere inside Redfield a bunch of mice were eating the insulation off his nerves."

But the real villain is someone else entirely, someone so driven by greed that they're  fundamentally nothing " but an elemental force, a sort of disembodied and symbolic act of devouring."

I don't want to give the secret away, so I won't say anything else, except that you might like to check out this taut, gratifying and superbly written tale.

(Image credits: The British Pan paperbacks are scanned by me from my own copies. The British Cassell hardcover is from LW Currey. The Mysterious Press eBook edition and the French Folio Policier are from Good Reads. The French Gallimard Serie Noire is from Amazon USA. The front and back cover of the Dell Talk of the Town are from Flickr. The Pocket Book edition with impressively irrelevant cover art by George Alvara is from Ipernity.)
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Published on May 10, 2020 03:01