Word: films
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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ANTHONY MANN, a director commonly associated with several good westerns, turned to modern melodrama in his last films, and made some mistakes. For careful balancing of expansive exterior composition, he substituted that betenoir of camera technique, the zoom lens, with its infinite capacity for making an audience think suspense is present when none actually exists. In The Heroes of Telemark, some corny zoom technique was at least in part redeemed by controlled visual construction and a sensible linear narrative. Perhaps A Dandy In Aspic could have similarly transcended its endless zooms to close-ups of anguished eyeballs and urban details...
...some masterful close shots (chiefly of Harry Andrews), and indicates the high level of photographic composition and lighting in the interiors. A later confrontation between Eberlin and his Russian colleague Pavel (superbly played by Per Oscarrson) uses both lens and set distortion to accentuate the plot tension, creating the film's only interesting relationship despite its vain efforts to generate suspense from the conflict between Eberlin and his inhuman associate Gattis (Tom Courtenay). Mia Farrow, as Eberlin's naive girlfriend, looks interesting about every fourth shot, mishandles some dreadful dialogue about sex and photography (the two seem to go hand...
...plots, Russell's ordeals and Madigan's manhunt, alternate formally, cross on occasion, finally come together tragically when Madigan dies and his wife accuses Russell of indirectly murdering him. Russell doesn't know his life has influenced Madigan's, and the film ends ambiguously with no one either innocent or guilty, no one understanding himself or his effect. The small troubles that pervade the film become more tragic in retrospect: Madigan's domestic squabbles are at first banal, finally significant because Madigan dies before they can be resolved in such manner as usually satisfies audiences; his wife's final lament...
...this respect, Madigan is a truly realistic film, complemented by Siegel's lean, often tough, style. Occasional spurts of fast cutting, Madigan intimidating a suspect and the final gun battle, are doubly powerful because of the stylistic restraint in the preceding scenes. Steve Ihnat's high-style performance as a psychopathic satyr is a welcome change from the suave ruthlessness of Aspic's urbane spies...
...CHAMPAGNE MURDERS (originally, Le Scandale), desrving of much more space than this column can devote to it (its re-release was announced alarmingly close to press deadlines), is far and away the most fascinating film to appear in Boston this year. The work of nouvelle-vague director Claude Charbol (Les Cousins), The Champagne Murders unfolds web-like with the violent surrealism of a nightmare. A decadent party suddenly is no longer what it has been, the guests have become a process-screen behind Anthony Perkins, who in turn finds himself virtually assaulted by a grotesque woman who claims she knew...