Amanda Knox, The Jinx and Bridget on Brexit – Reviews #246

A few things I've seen over the last couple of weeks.

FILM



I Married a Communist (Robert Stevenson, 1949) – If you’re interested in the history of Hollywood, then this is essential viewing: a movie released at the height of the communist witchhunt, which slips the commies seamlessly (and stupidly) into a standard crime melodrama template. And who else would have made it – at least like this – but red-baiting RKO studio chief Howard Hughes, his rationality thrown to the wind by three too many plane crashes.

Robert Ryan, whose presence is as dispiriting proof as any that prominent liberals were complicit in this dark chapter of American history, stars as the VP of a shipping line who’s targeted by his former comrades in the party, who like nothing better than seducing vulnerable young men and throwing older ones in the river.

It’s clear that the screenwriters either don’t want to expose the public to leftist ideas, don’t want to risk boring their audience with ideology or don’t know what communism is, as the sequences of indoctrinated worker John Agar making speeches at union meetings are done as a wordless montage (!), and the whole exercise is really extremely silly (compounded by Laraine Day’s terrible performance as Ryan’s concerned wife)… but there’s something about the movie that kept me enthralled.

Partly the rich characterisations from lovesick party whore Janis Carter and hired assassin William Talman – a womanising shooting gallery owner – partly the fact that it’s shot by Nick Musuraca and utilises RKO’s undeniable genre expertise, and partly the considerable curio value of seeing a film this vile, irresponsible and thick: Cold War paranoia writ large, if not very well. (2)

***

TV



The Jinx (Andrew Jarecki, 2015) – Capturing the Friedmans director Andrew Jarecki explores the life (and possible crimes) of real estate scion and suspected triple murderer Robert Durst, in this six-part HBO mini-series. It starts uncertainly, unnecessarily padding its run time and becoming frequently entangled in an unnecessarily complicated structure, but by the straightforward, utterly gripping Episode 4 (surely no coincidence) – based around a murder trial – it's really motoring, and the final two episodes are outstanding, some long-winded making-of elements compensated for by the sheer scale of the subsequent revelations.

I remember, when training as a journalist, my class being given reams of paperwork about an ongoing murder investigation. We spent a good half hour searching dedicatedly for the truth, before our trainer helpfully pointed out that we were journalists. "I'm not expecting you to solve the case," he said witheringly, "you just have to write a news piece about it."

We did, but it wasn't nearly as satisfying. And that's where The Jinx comes into its own. It's perhaps less effective as a creative exercise than either Serial or Making a Murderer, and yet unlike those retrospective pieces it actually moves the story along, and – incredibly – manages to solve the case. While there are serious questions to answer about the documentary's own timeline and its commitment to entertainment over, say, morality, the final 15 seconds are as extraordinary as anything I've ever seen on TV.

See if you can spot the almost imperceptible 'tell' that Robert Durst does when he might be telling an untruth. Lol. (3.5)

***



Amanda Knox (Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn, 2016) – The Amanda Knox story done Making a Murderer-style: though the teaser trailers and the opening monologue play with the idea of her possible guilt, this Netflix Original is a single-sided polemic aimed at clearing her name. Which has, of course, already been cleared by the Italian Supreme Court, so fair enough.

This film does a fine job of undermining the case against her and underlining the media feeding frenzy that assisted it, by letting tabloid sleazeball Nick Pisa and mad prosecutor Giuliano Mignini speak for themselves, and then elegantly slicing their testimony into finest fillets of unapologetically self-serving bullshit and dangerous, errant nonsense. Among Mignini's more outlandish pieces of deduction (and there are several) is that when he accused Knox of murder she put her hands over her ears because she was reliving the screams of her victim. Pisa is just an unmitigated arsehole, who either didn't know or didn't care what normal, empathetic people would make of his contributions. It takes something to be the most appalling person in a documentary about a murder, when you were just there to report on it, so well done to him. 'Nick Pisa-shit', am-I-right?!

Speaking about the case, and glimpsed in incredibly eerie home videos shot just before her trip to Italy, Knox is so appealing and so pretty that you can't help but hope that she's innocent (shallow, I know), and certainly there's no smoking gun included, though her decision to try to pin the murder of English student Meredith Kercher on her own boss was, at best, astonishingly selfish. Her then boyfriend and co-defendant Raffaele, meanwhile, is just an adorable bundle of cute, with his broken English and wide open face and, oh yeah, four years spent in prison for murder. Whoops.

This isn't the best true crime work you'll ever see, but it's professionally put together, and weirdly entertaining for a film that's about what it's about. It somewhat skids about on the surface rather than providing the depth of research or emotion that would blow you away, but for its multi-faceted approach and its access - if not its intimacy - it's well worth seeing.

So did Knox do it? Probably not. There definitely isn't enough credible evidence to say anything stronger against her: the most damaging piece is that Raffaele told the police that her alibi was false, but then he was under unfathomable pressure, the adorable bastard. (3)

***



Spiral: Season 4 (2012) – "Précédemment dans Engrenages..." This knockout fourth season of the French crime series is for the most part a return to realism after the silliness of the previous run, with Laure and co investigating both left-wing bombers and Kurdish paramilitaries. And while it never comes close to Season 2 – a devilishly intense, tightly-coiled beast of an eight-parter – it's the second-best series of shows that Spiral has offered, with Tintin given more to do than ever before, and a final episode that offers everything you could want, and then some. It's hard to recall a show with so many great recurring characters, the programme's nuanced view of its heroes and effortless way of manipulating our sympathies - either gradually or via short, sharp shocks - creating a litany of special moments that jar your emotions as they pull the rug out from under you. A dark, nauseatingly suspenseful joy. (3.5)

***

LIVE



Bridget Christie: Because You Demanded It (Leicester Square Theatre, 20 October 2016) – This new show from my absolute favourite stand-up is very good, but with a few obvious flaws. Christie's delivery is rarely utterly seamless, but at the Leicester Square Theatre on Thursday she stumbled over her words at least a dozen times and at others seemed to be almost reciting by rote: of course that's mostly what stand-up is, but the illusion of it just having occurred to the performer is central to its success. And while the material has some dizzying peaks (including one masterfully contextualised routine in which she argues that "A paedophile who voted for Remain is better than a non-paedophile who voted Leave"), it has just a handful of small additions to the show that premiered at the Edinburgh Festival a couple of months ago.

Since it's essentially a show about Brexit − set up with the premise that we all need a break, so the show will be about gardening, bringing her on to thoughts about foreign and indigenous plants − that's problematic. The news, particularly this news, is moving so fast that you could conceivably write five minutes of great new material every day, but then quantity was never Christie's strongpoint: while in her award-winning purple patch, she was essentially repurposing the same material across different mediums: radio, interviews, shows and even a (completely delightful) book. All of which makes it sounds like I didn't like enjoy the show, which I absolutely did.

My problem (well, one of my many problems) is that I wanted the things I like to be things I can love: I want Thea Gilmore to stop writing two songs an album about how you'll never be able to stop her from speaking out, and actually just speak out: as far as I'm aware, she's only ever written one real protest song, and that was 10 years ago. Christie can be staggeringly incisive, is superb at mining the humour from almost impossible sources (women's rights, feminism, FGM, an 80-year-old man falling down a lift shaft) and is better at building a routine than just about anyone I've ever seen, as evidenced by the brilliant (if familiar) story of the Daily Mail printing a photograph of her, believing it to be Charles II.

The material frequently spears the ludicrousness of racism, the decision to hold the EU referendum in the first place, and our decision to vote to punch ourselves in the face − and there's a brilliant bit about a short, fat, sweaty bald man propositioning her in a hotel lift − before a climactic piece of unexpected (and unexpectedly sublime) physical comedy, but the show doesn't quite deliver on the promise of the premise (Bridget Does Brexit), due to some uncertain delivery and the fact that, even in just two months, the story has rather moved on. (3)

***

Thanks for reading.

Joel McCrea, The Night of the Hunter, and feminism - Reviews #216

I've been busy writing and with work, but here are a few things I've watched or read lately. I also saw (and met!) Dave Gilmour, which was amazing. I'm listening to Dark Side of the Moon as I write this.



*SOME SPOILERS*
The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955) is one of the great films, a beguiling, bewitching, sometimes bewildering collision of Gothic horror and fairytale, a haunting, hypnotic vision of pure evil, of goodness, of redemption, of innocence lost and perhaps regained, of greed and guilt, loss, delusion, sexual obsession and puritanical perversion. It has some weak acting, wild lurches in tone and even a little Schufftan silliness, and yet also many of the most striking, magical sequences of its era, climaxing with a half-hour confrontation between good and evil that is amongst the most indelibly artistic and impossibly moving passages of pure cinema ever put onto celluloid.

Robert Mitchum is a psychotic, phony preacher on the hunt for a $10,000 stash hidden away somewhere by a recently hanged bank robber (Peter Graves). Inveigling his way into the lives of Graves’s widow (Shelley Winters) and two children – John (Billy Chapin) and Pearl (Sally Anne Bruce) – he seduces her, charms their friends at the local ice-cream parlour and a picnic in the park, and terrorises the young ‘uns, convinced that they know where the money’s hidden. Which they do. It’s in Pearl’s dolly.

Laughton, a famed stage and screen actor directing his first and only film, drew on the then-derided medium of silent film for his visual inspiration, basing his visuals primarily on the work of German Expressionist director F. W. Murnau: the early sections draw transparently on Nosferatu and Faust, the later ones on Sunrise and particularly City Girl. He’s helped, immeasurably, by Stanley Cortez, who had shot arguably the most ambitious and attractive film of the previous decade, Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons, before it was unfortunately slashed to shreds by a bunch of dicks. Almost literally.

Mitchum was one of the best actors of his generation, and a favourite of David Lean, but he got most of his power from underplaying, in movies like Out of the Past, The Lusty Men and The Friends of Eddie Coyle. In a role of this kind, that approach simply wouldn’t work, and so he plays it big: at first brilliantly – the ‘story of left hand, right hand’ is a dazzling set-piece – but then increasingly as a sort of satanic panto villain, hamming it up outrageously, and even growling in a way best filed under ‘extremely silly’. Laughton and Cortez use him superbly, as does the story, but I don’t see his performance as one of his best; in fact, not even close.

There are also weaknesses in the children’s performances: Bruce’s line readings are mostly exactly the same as one another, while Chapin alternates between articulating resourcefulness and stoic belligerence and just acting quite poorly: as in that moment where he blurts out something ill-advised and then belatedly gasps and clutches a hand to his mouth. At other times he’s spot-on, but essentially playing the Bobby Driscoll part from The Window, you can see the gulf in class between the two.

And yet despite those shortcomings, it’s never less than utterly astonishing, creating a seductive, artistically enriching world so rich with symbolism, so blessed by love, craftsmanship and even - dare I say it - genius that you can’t help but be enraptured. There’s the stunning, eerie use of wholesome American song. The shot of Mitchum framed as if in a chapel, as he clutches skywards, channelling his God. Winters in the water: one of the most astounding, unforgettable images in all of American film. The entrancingly beautiful boat ride, entirely fresh, yet utterly timeless.

And then, just when you think it can’t get any better, silent screen icon Lillian Gish turns up, armed with the only truly worthy role of her sound career: an aged version of the heart-rending heroines she played in Griffith’s rural tone poems, Way Down East and True Heart Susie, with so much love to give and so much empathy for the meek, the weak and those children who “abide and they endure”. It is as good a performance as I have ever seen in a movie, for once conceived and shot with as much intelligence and reverence for an actor of Gish’s mercurial, majestic gifts as she deserved; and every time she opens her mouth, I want to cry. The only other performance that has ever had that effect on me is Wendy Hiller’s Major Barbara: both performances are true and both characters are gentle and selfless, but have a rod of sheerest steel at their centre.

I must have seen the film 30 times and there are still new things to enjoy, to marvel at, to be astounded by: like the little tell-tale paper figures blowing unseen past Mitchum’s feet. But it’s the old things I love the best, particularly that incomparable scene in which Mitchum once again commandeers that wondrous hymn, Leaning on the Everlasting Arms, to creep the hell out of Chaplin and Bruce. But this time Gish, in silhouette and cradling a rifle as she sits in a rocking chair, joins in, her voice rising and harmonising, in perfect tandem over his haunting, horrifying vocals. He’s not on top any more – in the story or in the film – because Lillian Gish is here. (4)

***

Joel McCrea Westerns, because why the hell not?



Border River (George Sherman, 1954) - Everyone has comfort movies. Mine are mostly old rom-coms, and '50s B-Westerns starring Audie Murphy, Randolph Scott or particularly Joel McCrea - the only one of the three who could actually, like, act.

This McCrea oater is better and better-funded than most, with a nice balance of intrigue, action and romance, as his Confederate bank robber turns up in a Mexican town, attracting the attention of merciless mercenaries, a slick crime kingpin with his own private army, and the kingpin's girlfriend (Yvonne de Carlo), who likes money, but likes McCrea more.

There are some pleasant if sparing location shots, several unexpectedly fantastic lines - as well as a couple of sillier exchanges, including one about a pig - and plenty of plot twists, even if a few could be seen as mildly convenient. And though it wobbles a tad in the final third under the weight of a frankly ambitious number of subplots, the climactic set-piece delivers, with one fantastic stunt, and a fascinating piece of off-kilter imagery.

I doubt the film would work half as well without the effortless charisma, lovely voice and leathery tanned skin of McCrea, one of the most likeable and - within his limitations - underrated actors ever to grace the American screen, but with him in the saddle it's fine if admittedly flawed fun. (3)



Wichita (Jacques Tourneur, 1955) - A po-faced, pastel-shaded and action-packed Western about the cleaning up of Wichita, featuring a Wyatt Earp who's a little too good to be true. It's great fun, though, despite its artificiality, with plenty of incident, a fine cast led by Joel McCrea, and a theme song that works as a lovely motif, once shorn of its extremely silly words. There are also some cracking visual compositions, right from the get-go, and weightier observations than you might expect about gun control and law and order, the film rather more progressive on the former than the latter. (3)



Stranger on Horseback (Jacques Tourneur, 1955) - A sensational little Western about the coming of law and order, with gun-toting circuit judge Joel McCrea trying to bring the son of a powerful pioneer to justice.

Made by McCrea and director Jacques Tourneur the same year as Wichita, it's a vastly superior outing in every way: a tight, slim oater that does wonders with a tiny budget, boasting a riveting story, a crackling script that includes a superb monologue for villain John McIntire and a stunning climax making full use of whip-cracking desert dominatrix Miroslava. There's also a colourful supporting part for long-faced John Ford favourite, John Carradine.

McCrea's Westerns are one of my enduring cinematic pleasures, but they're rarely as good as this intelligent offering, one of the few as impressive as his central characterisation: which here is assured, multi-faceted and effortlessly imposing. The only real downsides are a couple of duff effects and the fact that no colour negative for this film still exists, so the existing print looks a little odd and oversaturated.

In creating a chamber Western that's credible, invigorating and constantly keeps you guessing, Tourneur and his writers effectively anticipated the 'Ranown' cycle: the Budd Boetticher movies starring McCrea's contemporary and rival, Randolph Scott, which kicked off the following year with the astounding Seven Men from Now. The two stars were eventually united in Sam Peckinpah's second and greatest film, Ride the High Country. (3.5)

***



Séance on a Wet Afternoon (Bryan Forbes, 1964) - A dark, atmospheric thriller about false-nosed asthmatic Dickie Attenborough being forced to kidnap a child by his wife, a terrifying, chameleonic psychic played by Kim Stanley.

It's extremely well-acted, with superb use of sound - augmented by John Barry's syncopated score - and one notably fine sequence making the most of London's Underground.

For all that, it's not exactly enjoyable, and while the shifting dynamics and periodic revelations keep you guessing, the forced withholding of information, Gothic-lite back story and excessive use of interiors prevent it from scaling the heights it otherwise might.

As ironic pay-offs go, though, that last line is very deftly done. (3)

***



Bitter Sweet (W. S. Van Dyke II, 1940) - Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald's seventh of eight films together is no match for their early classics - Naughty Marietta, Rose Marie and Maytime - with a poorly-paced story, unmemorable songs and an interminable gypsy opera finale.

It's set largely in Vienna, with exactly the supporting cast you'd expect (Felix Bressart, Sig Ruman and Herman Bing), as well as George Sanders proving comprehensively that amongst his considerable arsenal was not the ability to do accents.

The film starts quite well and thereafter occasionally sparks into life, courtesy of the Singing Sweethearts' singularly evocative harmonising or a funny scene with Bing that riffs cleverly on the absurdity of their image, but mostly it's distressingly mediocre, with barely any story at all - and then much too much. It's also somewhat garish and flatly directed by Woody 'One Take' Van Dyke, despite rather hilariously - in the wake of The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind - being billed as "Technicolor's greatest spectacle".

Noel Coward was reportedly so outraged by the changes made to his play that he never let Hollywopd touch another one; the result is a reheated reimagining of Maytime with little of the sweetness and none of the peril or intense romantic feeling.

Eddy and MacDonald's movies are often (and unfairly) dismissed nowadays as kitsch or camp, but at their best they do as good a job as any of crystallising the extraordinary escapism that MGM was capable of crafting: the Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life sequence in Naughty Marietta remains perhaps my favourite scene of the studio era. (2)

***

BOOK:



A Book for Her by Bridget Christie (2015) - A shocking, impassioned, insightful, incisive, passionate and hysterical* book about where comedy and feminism intersect**, from the most blistering, blissfully funny talent on the current stand-up scene. It notably overuses one joke format, is occasionally unfocused and has more than its fair share of typos, but I loved it to pieces. Give it to the feminist in your life. Or to the unreconstructed sexist prick. Either works. (3.5)

*as in 'funny'. I'm not saying Bridget is hysterical, or that all women are. Though they are. **this is a pun about intersectional feminism. Hear me roar.

***

THEATRE:



Hangmen (The Royal Court Theatre) - In Bruges writer-director Martin McDonagh returns to the London stage with a killer new play about the country's second best hangmen (David Morrissey) - on the day that hanging is abolished. It's both perilously dark and astonishingly funny, McDonagh weaving together his comic and thriller-ish strands with utter majesty, as a mysterious blonde stranger appears in Morrissey's Oldham pub, setting in motion a truly grisly chain of events. After the partial misfire that was his Hollywood debut, Seven Psychopaths, this is a stunning, seamless return to form from one of the sharpest, wittiest and most interesting writers working today, a work so incredibly entertaining that it's only when the dust settles that you realise there was real meat on these bones. Perhaps its ending is telegraphed a little too clearly considering the near-constant surprises served up beforehand, but it's a must-see for anyone who loves the stage, with a superb ensemble, a couple of dazzling coups de théâtre and the best new material you'll hear this year. (4) (Also in the interval I met Kate Tempest and she recommended me an early McDonagh play. I love Kate Tempest. I'll let you know when I've read it.)



The Play That Goes Wrong (Duchess Theatre) - A neat idea that doesn't quite work in practice, as we watch an am-dram production fall to pieces in a litany of minor ways. It's too slapsticky, its farcical elements don't make sense and too many of the running performances and running gags are unforgivably broad* (a sound engineer who loves Duran Duran? I mean, really?), though there are a few jokes that really land - including a killer one about improv - and the way that James Marlowe's incompetent thespian repeatedly breaks the fourth wall with his bashful grin is rather delightful. (2.5)

*unforgivably in a transitory theatrical context, I have forgiven them all now

***

Thanks for reading.