The Deadly Affair

Whenever possible I do my best to avoid sounding like an arrogant American moviegoer.  No nudity and no explosions?  Count me out.  I do my best to at least give movies a try regardless of the country they're from.  If it sounds halfway decent, that's all I need.  Movies from England are usually a safe bet starting with the lack of a language barrier or subtitles, although in some cases, those subtitles wouldn't hurt.  That's where I'll start with 1966's The Deadly Affair.

A British production through and through, 'Affair' is the anti-Bond movie with its lack of action, sex and any sense of humor.  Typically, I can keep up with thick/heavy British accents (a talent derived from years of watching Michael Caine movies), but subtitles or closed captioning always helps in a pinch.  Directed by Sidney Lumet -- typically one of my favorite directors -- this semi-spy flick has so many actors mumbling and whispering through their parts that I was more than a little confused just 10 or 15 minutes in.  Even trying to keep up, the story was difficult to follow...to a point.  A "twist" late seemed incredibly obvious to me, but maybe I had time to think about, being confused and all.

After meeting with a possible Communist working for the British government, agent Charles Dobbs (James Mason) is shocked to find out the man killed himself -- even after a positive ruling from Dobbs to their superiors. An old friend and former agent, Dieter Fry (Maximilian Schell), is visting but Dobbs must put his friendship to the side as he investigates.  With some help from a retired detective (Harry Andrews), he begins to piece things together with much of the mystery surrounding the death coming back to the man's wife (Simone Signoret).  Through it all though something isn't adding up, and Dobbs realizes he's stepped into something much bigger than he anticipated.

First off, the casting is impeccable.  Not so impeccable?  Mason mumbles his way through his part, Signoret's thick French accent is tough to decipher at times, and Andrews talks in an ultra-fast fashion that combined with his own accent makes most of his lines nearly impossible to understand.  Combine all three of those elements, and I was confused almost from the start.  The story features a fair share of twists -- which obviously didn't help -- but even then the it is so slow-moving that often enough these twists don't register as a surprise.  It's clear this English man didn't kill himself.  It's only a matter of who was involved and most importantly, why.

On to a theory I have that I've dubbed 'the Law and Order guest star rule.'  Watch an episode of Law and Order.  If there's a guest star in the cast, put all your money on them being the bad guy/killer/rapist/thief/kidnapper.  Figure that NBC didn't pay them just to hang around.  Their services are going to be put to use.  The theory applies to movies too involving any sort of mystery.  In 'Affair,' it is the question of who is the murderer.  SPOILERS  STOP READING SPOILERS  Not surprisingly, it's Schell.  He makes an appearance early and then reappears in the last 15 minutes.  It is obvious from his entrance he's the bad guy.  One, he is Maximilian Schell, and two, he's still Maximilian Schell.  END OF SPOILERS

Beyond the murder mystery and the government intrigue, the pacing lacks any sort of energy.  Mason is having marital problems with wife Ann (Harriet Andersson) because she basically sleeps with anyone who says 'howdy' to her.  Mason's Dobbs is unbelievably forgiving in a storyline that goes nowhere.  One semi-twist involves who Ann is sleeping with, but you should really see it coming from miles off.  There are other little oddities that include long scenes of watching Shakespearean plays while Dobbs and Andrews' Mendel try to piece things together.  Out of place and with the ability to grind the story to a complete halt, I'm sure I missed something important, but by that point I just didn't care.

Not much else to say here.  Disappointing of course because Lumet is typically such a reliable director, and the cast he's working with is certainly impressive.  I'll recommend this one for fans of any of the actors or Lumet completists, but for not much else.  I'm sure some subtitles couldn't hurt a second viewing, but that first one was painful enough.

The Deadly Affair <----TCM trailer (1966): * 1/2 /****       

Ship of Fools

In 1933, the Nazi Party took over in Germany, a power that would run through the end of WWII in 1945.  At the time, no one really could known what was coming with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in charge of Germany, but it was a turning point in history for how it changed the world and the millions of lives it impacted.  Even at first, did the German people know what they were voting for when the Nazi Party took office?  We'll never know, but 1965's Ship of Fools explores the idea of what is to come.

Director Stanley Kramer made a name for himself with movies just like this, big pictures with big casts and some big ideas.  'Fools' has the feel of a 1970s disaster movie except without the disaster.  Throw a group of people into a confined setting and let the fireworks begin.  Here though, there's no fireworks.  It is a movie that at 149-minutes is one of the most dialogue-heavy movies I've ever seen, some good and some bad.  With a huge cast, lots of tumultuous relationships, and some bigger takes on love, prejudice, and common decency, 'Fools' has a lot going on, too much if you ask me.  A streamlined version couldn't have hurt.

In 1933 in the port of Vera Cruz, Mexico, a German cruise ship leaves port bound for a quick stop in Cuba and then on home to mother Germany.  On board is a good sample section of Germans, Jews, Austrians, a few Americans from a variety of backgrounds, and over 500 field workers being sent back to Cuba because the work has dried up.  The Nazi Party has taken power in Germany, and the election is still at the forefront of discussion.  The trip to Germany is expected to take almost a month, and on this trip, nothing is going to go smoothly.

Don't take any of that to mean this is an action movie, far from it.  Here is just some of the characters involved.  The ship's doctor (Oskar Werner) is coming off heart troubles and is generally depressed at the plight of the world, but he bonds with an upper-class woman (Simone Signoret) who helped arm a workers rebellion.  A boorish German Austrian (Jose Ferrer) spouts the power of the Nazis and their plans to build a super race. A young American couple (George Segal and Elizabeth Ashley) try to figure out if they're meant to be together.  A hard-edged, washed up American baseball player (Lee Marvin) tries to figure out what to do with his life, all the while talking often with a recent divorcee (Vivien Leigh).  A German Jew salesman (Heinz Ruhmann) tries to shrug of the increasingly anti-Semitic feelings on board. The problem isn't with the strength of the casting -- all those mentioned turn in fine performances -- but with the fact that all those mentioned are about half of the storylines.

There is many more storylines with many more characters as Kramer attempts to show a wide variety of people, families, and individuals on board this second rate ship.  It's just too much as the camera bounces from story to story -- some much better than others -- instead of focusing on the key, interesting ones.  There's an odd inclusion of a Spanish flamenco group who are really nothing more than a pimp who sells his dancers and also feature two satanic little kids who at one point throw a dog overboard.  Many of these characters could have been more interesting with some more development, but it felt like Kramer was more interested in quantity over quality, and he throws a lot at the viewer before quickly moving on to another subplot.

'Fools' is based off a novel, but to me it had the distinct feel of a stage play with almost nothing to distract from the always ongoing dialogue.  Besides a tangent here and there, the 149-minutes is almost all dialogue, sometimes between two people and others among a group.  With all these presentations of what love is and its power/effect, the story does tread that line between intellectual and pretentious, usually ending up on the right side.  Michael Dunn (Dr. Loveless in Wild, Wild West) plays Glocken, the character who opens and closes the movie by addressing the viewer, telling us what we are to see and then summing it up.  It was a performance that earned him an Oscar nomination, and for good reason.  Dunn was a dwarf, and in any other movie he may have seemed out of place, but here he's probably the most normal of them all.

With such a dialogue-heavy movie, it's the actors/actresses who shine.  Leigh in her last-ever movie is remarkable in a very strong performance.  Werner isn't easy to like because he seems so down on himself and the world, but the character comes around in the end -- which is a downer.  Signoret and Werner have a chemistry together that is unlike a typical budding movie romance.  Ruhmann and Dunn have a similar chemistry -- hold the romance -- as two Jews forced to eat separately from the rest of the German passengers, both men able to laugh off the prejudice.  A scene late in the movie as they discuss this growing prejudice is eerie because as viewers we of course know what is to come during the Holocaust.

If this was from any other director, the rating might have gone up, but Kramer has Mad, Mad World and Nuremberg to his name among others, and 'Fools' just doesn't live up to those expectations.  It could have though, and that's what is disappointing.  The potential is there for a great movie.  Cut about 30 minutes and some of those extra, wasted characters, and you've got a gem of a movie.  Still, it's not a bad movie, just one with some fairly major flaws.  Check it out for the depth of a great cast and a window into 1933 and what was coming down the road. Don't be thrown off by the DVD either, this is not some light-hearted romance.

Ship of Fools <----trailer (1965): ** 1/2 /****

Army of Shadows

Having seen three of French director's Jean-Pierre Melville's films in recent weeks, I wanted to check out the one that's often labeled his best, a WWII French resistance movie called Army of Shadows. This isn't your typical portrayal of French resistance fighters, no gorgeous women in black berets, tight, black sweaters and red lipstick, no macho killing machines with bandoleers across their chests. These were real people with fears and worries as they went about their jobs trying to do their best to slow down the German war effort.

The movie has very little action and in style terms is very similar to the other Melville films I saw. Dialogue seems to be used as a last resort with whole scenes with only a few words spoken, instead looks are exchanged and long tracking shots of characters moving keep the story going. One painfully tense scene involves two prisoners under guard speaking in French so the German won't understand them. Hearing them, we know their desperate plan to escape, but a camera pan around the little room while waiting for the move has the scene dripping with tension. Another scene in one long shot is the Germans entering Paris in 1940. It goes on for minutes as a column and band comes into frame far off in the distance and then approaches the camera. It's only as the lead soldier is about to step on the camera the shot freezes and the opening credits roll. The shot is so simple but it looks so cool. Melville is a master at turning the simple into the supremely cool. Here's the first ten minutes.

And that's what I liked about the movie, it doesn't go for the easy story with lots of ambushes and Frenchmen gunning down hundreds of Germans. Shadows is more about the behind-the-scenes, the everyday life of the men and women of the resistance. It's a long movie at 2 hours and 25 minutes, but it moves along quickly all the way until the final, somewhat surprising cut before the credits. I guess I should have figured by now, but Melville isn't one for neat, tidy endings.

Lino Ventura is the lead here as Phillippe Gerbier, a civil engineer who escapes from the Germans after a short stay in an internment camp, not quite a concentration camp but the same idea. It's not long before he's a key member of the resistance, leading his close-knit squad of fighters. Ventura's performance is an understated but memorable one, a man who wants to get the job done whatever it may be. Paul Meurisse co-stars as Luc Jardie, the chief, the head of the resistance, an intellectual now fighting with a "carful of killers" as Gerbier says.

The rest of the team includes Jean-Francois (Jean-Pierre Cassel), a young man looking for a way to get back at the Germans, Mathilde (Simone Signoret), the lone woman in the group who is as brave as any of the men she works with, quickly building respect/admiration, Le Masque (Claude Mann), a man who at first doesn't think he'd be able to do what is required of him but becomes as integral a part as anyone, Felix (Paul Crauchet), Gerbier's right hand man, and Le Bison (Christian Barbier), the scrounger and getaway driver. Knowing very little about these characters, I still found myself sympathizing with them, a testament to Melville's ability.

The Criterion Collection DVD, only saw Disc 1, has a menu that says Army of Shadows was not released in the U.S. until 2006. Don't miss out on your chance now to see this classic. Here's the American re-release trailer.