Tag Archives: James Mason

North by Northwest (1959, Alfred Hitchcock)

Posted on 26 October 2012 | Leave a comment

North by Northwest seems a little like a Technicolor version of an early Hollywood Hitchcock–the regular man combating the bad guys against incredible odds (at an American monument no less), but it’s a lot more.

The film’s a tightly constructed proto-blockbuster; there’s not a bad frame in the film, not an imperfect scene. North moves steadily, its speed sometimes increasing and rarely decreasing. With that barreling pace, it always seemed to be just over ninety minutes. I was shocked to discover it runs over two hours.

It’s hard to imagine the film without Cary Grant, whose comic timing is essential to the picture. There’s one scene where Grant looks at the camera just for a moment and it feels like a throwback to Bringing Up Baby. Hitchcock and writer Ernest Lehman waste no time establishing Grant’s character (beyond a memorable name). The rest, done with Grant and his secretary talking, takes one short scene.

Speaking of Lehman’s script, he gets in a lot of great jokes. Hitchcock just works them into the narrative; its all so grandiose (even before the finish), there’s more than enough room for them.

The filmmakers get away with so much, for instance, one can’t even hold Jessie Royce Landis’s disappearance against them.

She, James Mason, Martin Landau and Eva Marie Saint, they’re all outstanding. It’s Cary Grant’s film, of course, but the supporting cast–can’t forget Leo G. Carroll (who’s dryly hilarious)–make it even better.

North by Northwest is a perfect film.

CREDITS

Produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock; written by Ernest Lehman; director of photography, Robert Burks; edited by George Tomasini; music by Bernard Herrmann; production designer, Robert F. Boyle; released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Starring Cary Grant (Roger O. Thornhill), Eva Marie Saint (Eve Kendall), James Mason (Phillip Vandamm), Jessie Royce Landis (Clara Thornhill), Leo G. Carroll (The Professor), Josephine Hutchinson (Mrs. Townsend), Philip Ober (Lester Townsend), Martin Landau (Leonard), Adam Williams (Valerian), Edward Platt (Victor Larrabee), Robert Ellenstein (Licht) and John Beradino (Sergeant Emile Klinger).

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Posted in 1959, Adventure, Color, English, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Mystery, Romance, Thriller, USA

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Salem’s Lot (1979, Tobe Hooper)

Posted on 15 April 2011 | Leave a comment

During Salem’s Lot’s finale, Hooper gets this amazing physical performance out of Bonnie Bedelia as she is exploring the vampire’s lair. At that moment, I realized Hooper was intentionally making Lot palatable for a television audience—he could have made the entire three hours terrifying, but he was handicapped by the format.

The miniseries issues are rampant. Screenwriter Paul Monash can write, but he’s drowning in nonsense from the novel. The first half has two characters—played by George Dzundza and Julie Cobb—whose story takes up nearly a fourth of the film… They don’t even appear in the second half. Their story in the first half does nothing to further the story. It’s just crap Stephen King had in the novel and Monash was stuck including it.

Lot had a shorter, theatrical European cut—it’s incomprehensible, which is a surprise—the full version is so fatty, a good editor should’ve been able to lop off an hour without any negative effect.

Except for poor James Mason, who’s fine in the first half and goofy in the second, the acting is nearly all good. Bedelia’s amazing, lead David Soul is surprisingly good. Dzundza is a little broad, but Ed Flanders, Kenneth McMillan and Lew Ayres make up for it.

Hooper saves his enthusiasm for the second half—including a couple lovely Hitchcock homages. It’s too bad he didn’t sustain it throughout.

Without the weak ending and the awful Harry Sukman score, it would have been better. As is, it’s decent.

CREDITS

Directed by Tobe Hooper; teleplay by Paul Monash, based on the novel by Stephen King; director of photography, Jules Brenner; edited by Tom Pryor and Carroll Sax; music by Harry Sukman; production designer, Mort Rabinowitz; produced by Richard Kobritz; released by the Columbia Broadcasting System.

Starring David Soul (Ben Mears), James Mason (Richard K. Straker), Lance Kerwin (Mark Petrie), Bonnie Bedelia (Susan Norton), Lew Ayres (Jason Burke), Julie Cobb (Bonnie Sawyer), Elisha Cook Jr. (Gordon ‘Weasel’ Phillips), George Dzundza (Cully Sawyer), Ed Flanders (Dr. Bill Norton), Clarissa Kaye-Mason (Majorie Glick), Geoffrey Lewis (Mike Ryerson), Barney McFadden (Ned Tibbets), Kenneth McMillan (Constable Parkins Gillespie), Fred Willard (Larry Crockett) and Marie Windsor (Eva Miller).

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Posted in 1979, Color, Columbia Broadcasting System, Drama, English, Horror, Mystery, Thriller, USA

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Age of Consent (1969, Michael Powell)

Posted on 13 April 2011 | Leave a comment

With Age of Consent, Powell bewilders. His approach to James Mason and Helen Mirren’s dramatic arcs is excellent, but then he includes this terrible comedy material. He’s got a bunch of slapstick in an otherwise very gentle drama.

Mason is a successful artist who feels like a sellout so he runs off to isolate himself and try to figure out why he started painting in the first place. There is a Gauguin mention but it soon becomes clear Powell and Mason aren’t going down that road.

Instead, Mason finds teenager Mirren—living a miserable life on an island paradise—and she inspires him to start caring about his work again.

Both Mason and Mirren are fantastic. Mirren looks youngish but not the age she’s playing (she was twenty-four), which might contribute to Mason not coming off like a dirty old man. But it’s clear he’s excited about the work. Powell fills the art creation with wonderment. It’s amazing.

In those scenes, Peter Sculthorpe’s score adds another layer. Mirren’s never been good at anything until Mason comes along; the music conveys her newfound pride.

Unfortunately, when it’s the comedy stuff involving the idiotic character played by Jack MacGowran, who’s a pest annoying Mason, Age of Consent flops. Then there’s Neva Carr-Glynn as Mirren’s evil grandmother. Carr-Glynn plays it like she’s the Wicked Witch, which hurts the film.

But those elements can’t do too much damage; Powell, Mason and Mirren are too strong.

They even survive the theme song.

CREDITS

Directed by Michael Powell; screenplay by Peter Yeldham, based on the novel by Norman Lindsay; director of photography, Hannes Staudinger; edited by Anthony Buckley; music by Peter Sculthorpe; produced by Powell and James Mason; released by Columbia Pictures.

Starring James Mason (Bradley Morahan), Helen Mirren (Cora Ryan), Jack MacGowran (Nat Kelly), Neva Carr-Glynn (Ma Ryan), Andonia Katsaros (Isabel Marley), Michael Boddy (Hendricks), Harold Hopkins (Ted Farrell), Slim DeGrey (Cooley), Frank Thring (Godfrey, the Art Dealer) and Clarissa Kaye-Mason (Meg).

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Posted in 1969, Australia, Biography, Color, Columbia Pictures, Comedy, Drama, English, Romance

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Return of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1937, Hanns Schwarz)

Posted on 30 August 2010 | Leave a comment

As Return of the Scarlet Pimpernel enters its third act, there’s this startling suggestion… one of the good guys has been sleeping with Robespierre to get in his good graces. I’m unaware of such an overt implication in any Hollywood films of 1937.

Unfortunately, that singularity is about all Pimpernel has going for it. Otherwise, it’s substandard adventure fare, with Barry K. Barnes’s Pimpernel coming off as one of the stupider screen heroes. If he were actually observant, the film’s plot line would have run out after thirty minutes.

Some of the problem is the script–the three screenwriters frequently create minor crises to be resolved in a couple scenes, just to perturb the plot. It’s melodrama at its worst.

Barnes is fantastic when he’s supposed to be playing a dandy who prefers playing in a clubhouse with his male friends (they’re trying to save France from Robespierre). However, when he’s playing opposite wife Sophie Stewart… he’s a lot less convincing. Stewart’s all right, certainly better than Barnes, but never particularly good. Her affection for Barnes is never believable, regardless of his much-lauded but never shown heroism (his titular Return is only to save her).

James Mason’s small role occasionally shows his ability, but not often.

On the other hand, villain Francis Lister is frequently fantastic, playing the only well-written character in the entire film.

Schwarz’s direction is on the weak side of mediocre. He speeds up the film for action sequences, which looks silly (especially with Barnes).

CREDITS

Directed by Hanns Schwarz; screenplay by Lajos Biró, Adrian Brunel and Arthur Wimperis, based on the novel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy; director of photography, Mutz Greenbaum; edited by Philip Charlot; music by Arthur Benjamin; produced by Arnold Pressburger; released by United Artists.

Starring Barry K. Barnes (Sir Percy Blakeney), Sophie Stewart (Marguerite Blakeney), Margaretta Scott (Theresa Cobarrus), James Mason (Jean Tallien), Francis Lister (Chauvelin), Anthony Bushell (Sir Andrew Ffoulkes), Patrick Barr (Lord Hastings), David Tree (Lord Harry Denning), John Counsell (Sir John Selton) and Henry Oscar (Maximilien de Robespierre).

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Posted in 1937, Black and White, Drama, English, UK, United Artists

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One Way Street (1950, Hugo Fregonese)

Posted on 18 March 2008 | Leave a comment

Here’s a goofy one–the title also could be The Doctor in the Sombrero–with James Mason as a mob doctor who makes off with two hundred grand and the boss’s girl, only to end up in rural Mexico, healing horses. It’s all pretty standard stuff, down to the excursion to Mexico, but Mason and Dan Duryea (surprisingly effective as the mob boss) bring some pep to it. The beginning, with a rapid setup, is great. Then the escape to Mexico, which quickly losses story potential, bogs down the rest of the movie. It’s fine for the most part, just painfully predictable. Mason’s a doctor who learns to care again, first about horses, then people, and finally romantic interest Märta Torén. All very predictable until the conclusion.

Where One Way Street (which makes little sense given the film’s content) is a little different is in its shedding of the film noir. The stopover in rural Mexico is somewhat genre-free. Predictable and a little boring, but it’s straight b-movie drama, not noir. Unfortunately, the return to Los Angeles ends up damaging the whole movie. First, the imperative for the trip is unclear (it’s just time for the movie to end) and, after a neat trick, One Way Street ends as dumbly as it possibly can.

Mason’s good at the beginning and the end and okay through the middle. There’s nothing for him to work with here. Torén’s mediocre and uninteresting. Of the Mexico portion, Basil Ruysdael comes out the best as a sympathetic priest. The real surprise is William Conrad as one of the gangsters. He’s great in his handful of scenes (and Jack Elam’s pretty good in an uncredited small part).

Another big problem is director Fregonese. He’s so uninteresting as a director–both in terms of composition and in directing actors–it’s hard to think he’d do anything to fix the script’s problems. With the terrible ending, the movie would be a little better, a standard b-movie, but it did have some potential for being better.

CREDITS

Directed by Hugo Fregonese; written by Lawrence Kimble; director of photography, Maury Gertsman; edited by Milton Carruth; music by Frank Skinner; produced by Leonard Goldstein; released by Universal Pictures.

Starring James Mason (Dr. Frank Matson), Märta Torén (Laura Thorsen), Dan Duryea (John Wheeler), Basil Ruysdael (Father Moreno), William Conrad (Ollie), Rodolfo Acosta (Francisco Morales), King Donovan (Grieder), Robert Espinoza (Santiago), Tito Renaldo (Hank Torres), Margarito Luna (Antonio Morales), Emma Roldán (Catalina) and George J. Lewis (Capt. Rodriguez).

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Posted in 1950, Black and White, Crime, Drama, English, Film-Noir, Universal Pictures, USA

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Hotel Reserve (1944, Lance Comfort, Mutz Greenbaum and Victor Hanbury)

Posted on 15 February 2008 | Leave a comment

Though Hotel Reserve is a British production of a continental story (in other words, British actors playing French and Germans), it does have a certain flare to the visual. It’s a spy thriller set in the south of France with lots of models standing in for buildings and lots of sets. It very often looks good, even if the three directors only give the impression of tense shots. When the trio needs to be their best–at the end–they manage a nice set, a handful of good inconsequential shots and then fumble on the most important one in the film.

There’s some problem with the timing–the film is set before the war and the script overdoes the foreshadowing, especially at the end. The film opens, uneasily because the espionage angle gets introduced right away, with people vacationing. At the end, instead of being about vacationeers, it’s about the looming war. The combination of the misfired climax and the wrong-minded close really hurt the film.

Most of the film, with James Mason investigating his fellow guests to prove his own innocence, is entertaining. The script’s simple, but Mason’s good and the visual elements are interesting. It doesn’t hurt there’s occasionally some nice banter between Mason and Clare Hamilton. Though most of the hotel guests are forgettable (to the point they’d be confusing if one spent too much time trying to figure them out), Raymond Lovell, Frederick Valk and Lucie Mannheim are not. Unfortunately, as the most sinister lodger, Herbert Lom is uneven.

The film’s a decent time passer, without any pretensions at being more, but given the combination of the production values and the cast, it could have easily been significantly better. Many British films of the era used similar special effects to the same good effect, but it’s as though the makers never realized they could do both–make a good film and have the same technical fervor.

CREDITS

Produced and directed by Lance Comfort, Mutz Greenbaum and Victor Hanbury; adaptation and screenplay by John Davenport, based on a novel by Eric Ambler; director of photography, Greenbaum; edited by Sidney Stone; music by Lennox Berkeley; released by RKO Radio Pictures.

Starring James Mason (Peter Vadassy), Lucie Mannheim (Mme Suzanne Koch), Raymond Lovell (Robert Duclos), Julien Mitchell (Michel Beghin), Herbert Lom (Andre Roux), Martin Miller (Walter Vogel), Clare Hamilton (Mary Skelton), Frederick Valk (Emil Schimler), Patricia Medina (Odette Roux), Anthony Shaw (Major Anthony Chandon-Hartley), Laurence Hanray (Police Commissioner), David Ward (Henri Asticot), Valentine Dyall (Warren Skelton) and Joseph Almas (Albert).

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Posted in 1944, Black and White, English, RKO Radio Pictures, Thriller, UK

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They Met in the Dark (1943, Carl Lamac)

Posted on 25 October 2007 | Leave a comment

They Met in the Dark offers James Mason as a romantic leading man in a thriller. For that one alone, it’s worth a look, but also because it’s an incredibly peculiar film. Not overall, unfortunately, because it descends into a routine wartime propaganda bit about fifth columnists–the details of the sinister plot are very familiar to anyone who’s seen 1930s Hitchcock films. But the point isn’t the plot–it takes some ludicrous turns–but the amusing turn… it reminds, especially at the beginning, of the Hollywood comedy mystery (maybe not a Thin Man but a Thin Man knock-off). It’s fun….

But, nicely, there’s more.

Something about the British filmmaking–even though Lamac was a Bohemian–makes They Met in the Dark quite different. It’s set in the small British village, in the small British pub, in the strange British country home, all staples of Hollywood films… seeing the British make a Hollywood film using those tropes makes for a constantly interesting viewing experience. Until the movie goes for the fifth columnists angle, which it doesn’t for quite a while and takes a little bit to get there even when it’s close, anything is possible and that possibility promises, unfortunately, more than They Met in the Dark delivers.

While Mason is great, once he’s got the girl–which happens a lot sooner than a) it should and b) it’s useful for the plot–his performance changes. It’s standard instead of singular. Mason gives such a wonderfully enigmatic performance–he is the protagonist–I kept suspecting him, along with the romantic interest, even though I knew it wasn’t him.

The female lead, Joyce Howard, is all wrong. She was twenty-one at the time of the film’s release–it was not her first role–her performance is too immature. It doesn’t fit the character’s actions. Phyllis Stanley, in the second female lead, is real good, so the contrast doesn’t help either. I mean, at the end–after I knew it wasn’t going to be Mason–I kept waiting for him to switch love interests, just because he and Howard are all wrong together. He and Stanley had three really nice scenes… Howard was only effective with him when she suspected he was a murderer.

Edward Rigby, David Farrar, Tom Walls, all good in supporting roles. Brefni O’Rorke has some funny scenes–he’s one of the characters who transitions from mystery comedy to wartime thriller the best.

The movie’s limited, obviously, by the plot and the genre, but there’s a lot good about it. Worth a look. The first twenty or thirty minutes are quite nice.

CREDITS

Directed by Carl Lamac; screenplay by Anatole de Grunwald and Miles Malleson, from on a story by Basil Bartlett, Victor MacLure and James Seymour, based on a novel by Anthony Gilbert; director of photography, Otto Heller; edited by Winifred Cooper and Terence Fisher; music by Benjamin Frankel; produced by Marcel Hellman; released by General Film Distributors.

Starring James Mason (Richard Francis Heritage), Joyce Howard (Laura Verity), Tom Walls (Christopher Child), Phyllis Stanley (Lily Bernard), Edward Rigby (Mansel), Ronald Ward (Carter), David Farrar (Commander Lippinscott), Karel Stepanek (Riccardo), Betty Warren (Fay) and Walter Crisham (Charlie).

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Posted in 1943, Black and White, English, General Film Distributors, Mystery, Romance, Thriller, UK, War

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Evil Under the Sun (1982, Guy Hamilton)

Posted on 5 April 2007 | Leave a comment

As innocuous as Evil Under the Sun can get–and expecting anything else from it seems unintended–the film does have a slightly discomforting feel about it. Perhaps it’s the extraordinary level of benignity, but at times, it really does seem like Peter Ustinov (as Hercule Poirot) is going to be murdered by each and every person in the film. Murder on the Orient Express, not to ruin it for anyone, along with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, makes Agatha Christie suspect. If there’s no good way out, she’ll just push on through… M. Night Shyamalan owes more to her than anyone else, in terms of wasting people’s engagement with a story and characters, anyway.

The difference between an Agatha Christie novel and an Agatha Christie filmic adaptation, as I just got done telling my fiancée, is simple. It’s about the actors, the location, and the running time. Evil Under the Sun runs around two hours and was filmed on a beautiful island in the Mediterranean. Ustinov’s amusing–though not as funny as when Ustinov’s really being funny, Maggie Smith and Denis Quilley have some good scenes, and James Mason has fun. No one’s particularly bad–Diana Rigg’s supposed to be incredibly annoying–though Nicholas Clay’s accent appears and intensifies after a certain point. It’s harmless, even if it isn’t particularly interesting.

Evil Under the Sun has an interesting structure–there’s no murder for the first hour. Then there’s a half hour of questioning, maybe a little less, then there’s a ten minute reveal and the end. While the scenery is pretty and the cast is okay, there’s nothing particularly dynamic about it. The film keeps the audience with the promise of the murder, as I imagine the book does, and offers them little else to do with their time. Guy Hamilton’s direction does very little with interiors–outside it’s pretty, inside it’s boring, but there are two days inside before anything happens and it could use some oomph. After a certain point, deep in the monotony of the supporting cast’s dramatics, I’d forgotten Ustinov was in the movie.

The end payoff, as delivered by Ustinov, makes the experience moderately worthwhile. Certainly nothing to watch again, but not a complete waste. Screenwriter Anthony Shaffer wrote The Wicker Man, so he’s obviously capable of a good twist and a good end, but the adherence to the novel really handicaps him….

CREDITS

Directed by Guy Hamilton; screenplay by Anthony Shaffer, based on a novel by Agatha Christie; director of photography, Christopher Challis; edited by Richard Marden; music by Cole Porter; production designer, Elliot Scott; produced by John Brabourne and Richard Goodwin; released by Universal Pictures.

Starring Peter Ustinov (Hercule Poirot), Colin Blakely (Sir Horace Blatt), Jane Birkin (Christine Redfern), Nicholas Clay (Patrick Redfern), Maggie Smith (Daphne Castle), Roddy McDowall (Rex Brewster), Sylvia Miles (Myra Gardener), James Mason (Odell Gardener), Denis Quilley (Kenneth Marshall), Diana Rigg (Arlena Marshall) and Emily Hone (Linda Marshall).

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Posted in 1982, Color, Crime, Drama, English, French, German, Mystery, Thriller, UK, Universal Pictures

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Frankenstein: The True Story (1973, Jack Smight)

Posted on 19 January 2007 | Leave a comment

While Frankenstein: The True Story singularly credits Mary Shelley as source material, the actuality is a little more complicated. A Universal-produced TV mini-series, True Story actually mixes some of the Shelley (basically, the end in the Arctic and a brother for Frankenstein), with Universal’s 1930s films, Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein (with a little of The Ghost of Frankenstein thrown in too). It also goes so far as to play Frankenstein as a bit of the patsy–he’s not particularly smart, just an assistant to a couple mad scientists. There’s also a serious homoerotic subtext to the film–first, Frankenstein rejects his fiancée for his mad scientist buddy, then becomes obsessed with the Creature’s physical beauty, rejecting it once it becomes ugly. The subtext disappears around the first hour mark, which is incidentally when Leonard Whiting, as Frankenstein, starts acting well. Until the point of betraying the Creature, he really doesn’t do anything but plead with his mad scientist friend to let him play too. However, once there’s some conflict, Whiting has something to work with, so much so, by the end, I was wishing True Story was a better story, just so Whiting’s acting wouldn’t be wasted.

There are a lot of good performances in True Story, but most of them follow the same pattern as Whiting’s. Slight in the first part, better and great in the rest. For example, Nicola Pagett was annoying as could be as Elizabeth (Frankenstein’s fiancée) in the beginning, but then she went from good to great in about twenty minutes. David McCallum as the first mad scientist is amusing, but nothing more. As the Creature, Michael Sarrazin is good once he starts getting ugly. When Frankenstein’s primping him around London (yes, True Story moves the setting to England for some ludicrous reason), Sarrazin looks like David Bowie glammed out. Once he gets ugly, he gets to show some emotion. Agnes Moorehead, unfortunately, gets stuck with this terrible housekeeper role with an awful accent. Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud both turn in small cameos (Richardson as the blind woodsman). Richardson’s terrible, but Gielgud’s great. However, whenever he’s onscreen, True Story belongs to James Mason. He’s playing this absurd, handless mad scientist (based on the one from Bride) but this time he’s got Chinese assistants and plans to takeover Europe. Mason realizes how crazy it is and he thoroughly enjoys it.

Unfortunately, True Story is a technical mess. The costumes seem to be intended to emphasis the men’s butts (given Whiting’s famous butt shot in Romeo and Juliet, I doubt it’s unintentional), while the set decoration looks like something out of the 1930s… at the latest. As True Story should be set in the late 1700s, I doubt I should recognize a chair as one I’ve sat in. Some of the sets are mildly interesting–like the lab–but once Mason’s pseudo-Chinese mysticism lab shows up, True Story‘s sets look like a farce. Jack Smight’s direction is, unsurprisingly, uninspired, but rarely bad.

For a mediocre three-hour film, True Story is actually pretty good. It moves fast and when it doesn’t have good performances, it has moments (the sets, the homoeroticism) to amuse the viewer in other ways. At times, in small ways, it comes close to being something special, particularly with Frankenstein and Elizabeth’s relationship, but more often than not, the writing stomps the life out of those moments.

CREDITS

Directed by Jack Smight; screenplay by Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, based on the novel by Mary Shelley; director of photography, Arthur Ibbetson; edited by Richard Marden; music by Gil Melle; production designer, Wilfred Shingleton; produced by Hunt Stromberg Jr.; released by the National Broadcasting Company.

Starring James Mason (Dr. Polidori), Leonard Whiting (Victor Frankenstein), David McCallum (Henry Clerval), Jane Seymour (Agatha), Nicola Pagett (Elizabeth), Michael Sarrazin (The Creature), Agnes Moorehead (Mrs. Blair), John Gielgud (the chief constable), Tom Baker (the sea captain) and Ralph Richardson (Mr. Lacey).

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Posted in 1973, Color, English, Horror, National Broadcasting Company, Sci-Fi, USA

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The Last of Sheila (1973, Herbert Ross)

Posted on 18 December 2006 | 1 Comment

The Last of Sheila has the most constantly deceptive structure I’ve seen in a while. Watching the time code on the DVD player (and on the laserdisc and VHS players before it, and the clock for televised films even before those inventions) really changes the way one experiences a film. I’m always telling my fiancée we watch films at home and see them at the theater. It’s a measure of control. One can pause, rewind–and stop (I guess this website is more about video-watching than theatergoing, otherwise it’d be called The Walk Receipt or something–it’d actually be called The Golden Ticket after a particular theater’s refund ticket). Anyway, during The Last of Sheila I kept frequent note of the time. It’s a mystery with a cast of familiar stars going somewhere and… mystery ensuing. Since it’s a closed location (a yacht) and Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins wrote (don’t know why I’m attributing this assumption to them, but I am), I figured it’d be stagy, like an adapted play. Obviously, I shouldn’t have made that assumption, just because the film’s all about Hollywood people. The film isn’t traditional–one could sit and use the time code alone to discuss how the story works. Lots of things happen at the thirty minute mark and then a lot happens around ninety minutes. It’s a two hour movie. Even with that frequent observation of the time code, I couldn’t tell where The Last of Sheila was going. I guessed at the culprit, but I never guessed at the eventual resolution, or how the film got there. It’s remarkable, especially since the film started out with director Herbert Ross doing all the lame stuff I associate with his name and it’s incredibly unfortunate Sondheim and Perkins didn’t go on to anything else. It’d be impossible for them to have topped Sheila, because one would have expected it from them–and the casting is incredibly important in ways I can’t possibly discuss without spoiling something–but I would watch a film, written by those two, about two kids who decide to open a pickle-farm. I imagine it would have been wonderfully effective.

As I said, talking about the cast is difficult, but there are some people I can point out. Obviously, Joan Hackett is quite good, but so is Ian McShane, who was once young and slim. James Mason is good. James Coburn I’ve never been able to figure out. He’s good in some stuff, but in other stuff he’s unbearably campy. I thought he was going to go campy for Sheila, but doesn’t. The only weak actor is Raquel Welch, who’s essentially playing herself. She can’t do it.

I was going to say one would have to be familiar with some film history to fully appreciate The Last of Sheila, but that judgment was wrong. It’s just a really good mystery. Even if the locations (and sets) bring more to it than Herbert Ross did.

CREDITS

Directed and produced by Herbert Ross; screenplay by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins; director of photography, Gerry Turpin; edited by Edward Warschilka; music by Billy Goldenberg; distributed by Warner Bros.

Starring Richard Benjamin (Tom), Dyan Cannon (Christine), James Coburn (Clinton), Joan Hackett (Lee), James Mason (Philip), Ian McShane (Anthony) and Raquel Welch (Alice).

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Posted in 1973, Color, Crime, Drama, English, French, Mystery, Thriller, USA, Warner Bros.

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