How about a spy thriller by the team of Powell & Pressburger? You remember P&P, don't you? We did a retrospective of their films at the CSUN Cinematheque, back in Fall 2014. They always worked in tandem, with Michael Powell directing and Emeric Pressburger writing the screenplays. P&P were similar to the Hollywood Craftsmen in that they were capable of making any type of motion picture and indeed they did, producing everything from the wistful romance "I Know Where I'm Going" to the Technicolor dance fantasy "The Red Shoes", to "Peeping Tom", one of the creepiest crime flicks (bordering on downright horror) since "Psycho", which came out the same year, in 1960. The duo also made several war-related movies, like the classic "49th Parallel", "Blackout", and "The Small Back Room". And tonight, thanks to another Youtube recommendation, we discovered their espionage gem "The Spy in Black"(1939), an early P&P effort that has been restored to cinematic perfection by the British Film Institute.
The legendary Conrad Veidt (from "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari") stars as "Captain Ernst Hart", the commander of German U-Boat 29, which is sent to the Orkney Islands north of Scotland (pronounced Skiort-lnd or Skeert-lnd), to sink a dozen Royal Navy ships stationed therein. Please note that Scottish pronunciations will take more practice than most of the dialects we've encountered, so perseverance is stressed.
Britttissh Intelligence, as always being aware of plots hatched against them, are on to Veidt's surprise attack, thanks to a female counterspy they've installed at Orkney in the form of a schoolteacher (Valerie Hobson). Naturally there will be a romantic subplot, as the angular Veidt - with his German Expressionist face - presses Hobson for a tryst. But she's posing as his superior officer, the woman in charge of the U-Boat mission, and is therefore successful in rebuffing him by chain of command. But in reality, Hobson is a counterspy, working with "Lieutenant Ashington" (Sebastian Shaw) of the Royal Navy who is posing as a traitor to fool the Germans.
The story is even more confusing at first than last night's "Yellow Canary", and has it's hard-to-decipher segments of Britspeak as well. But you are hooked from Frame One by the impeccable camera eye of Michael Powell, one of the greatest photographers in all of cinema, with a talent for composition that is second to none. We were talking in the last blog about Hollywood Craftsmen vs. Auteurs, and I suppose you could say that P&P qualify as both. We've already noted their abilities as Craftsmen (though they didn't work in Hollywood), but they also left their own stamp on each picture - a mark of the Auteur. For instance, there are bits of English humor that you wouldn't normally see in a spy film, as when Veidt, as "Captain Hart", is being prepped to impersonate an Englishman during his furtive stay in Orkney. Due to the war, there are food shortages in the UK but even moreso in Germany, so when Veidt sees a large block of butter on the table of his language coach, he exclaims : "Ah, finally some butter"!, pronouncing it "boo-ter". His coach has to correct him on this word later at a restaurant, and it becomes one of the light-hearted running gags that P&P sprinkle throughout the film. Another one involves an engine room sergeant on a British destroyer, who every so often pops his head up from below decks to complain, in Scotty/Star Trek style but using Cockney slang, that he'll never be able to generate enough power to satisfy the captain's orders.
A similar light touch marks almost all of Powell and Pressburger's movies (with the exception of "Peeping Tom), that you might call a trademark English optimism of the kind seen in Monty Python's Knight, even after all his limbs are sliced off.
Veidt was an incredible actor, however, and he's mostly here to inject menace. I don't wanna reveal too much of the plot because one spoiler could ruin the whole story, but there will be a point where Veidt is in deep trouble and will pull out a technique from his Silent film days. You'll know it when you see it; his facial expressions in this scene are harrowing and he looks like a man who is actually in this situation in real life.
The lovely Valerie Hobson (a P&P regular) goes toe-to-toe with Veidt, matching him scene for scene as his superior officer, the spy turned schoolmarm. And yes, "The Spy in Black" features grade-A espionage, but it's also part Submarine Movie, so you'll get a minor sub fix and also some highly detailed close ups of the English destroyer's artillery at work : the loading of the shells, the hydraulic aiming system. It's incredible stuff, and as with the rest of the movie, Michael Powell gives it a look that is hyperrealistic, using a full grey scale that is somehow richer than the sum of it's parts. This is one great looking picture, and I was happy to see that it's been restored by the British Film Institute, so the Youtube print is Criterion quality.
Man, we've been on a roll with these English Spy Flicks, and I could watch a dozen more, at least, so let's keep looking. "The Spy in Black" gets Two Huge Thumbs Up and is not to be missed, it's the best one we've seen so far. ///////
And now for our second feature :
Last night I stepped away from the spy game just on a whim, and I kind of wish I hadn't. Instead of browsing my trusted movie lists, I chose the first recommendation that popped up on Youtube. They base those on your viewing history, and in my case their suggestions have usually been pretty good. This one looked promising as well, a noir entitled "One Way Street", and best of all it starred Chames Mason. How could I go wrong, right? Mason is never less than stellar and his co-star Dan Duryea delivers in every film regardless of the role. Add in the movie's title and it sounded like you had a heck of a hard-boiled noir.
But as one reviewer noted, it's really an Oreo cookie of a noir : dark on the outside but white and fluffy in the middle. It's like the director wanted to make a humanistic film but didn't have a context in which to frame it, so he chose film noir. Strange is the direction this picture takes, and I will now explain it to you.
The movie opens in the aftermath of a bank robbery. Dan Duryea is the boss of the operation, one of those "legitimate businessman" hoodlums with henchmen in tow, in this case several stooges who pull off the bank job while he waits in a hotel, ready to divide up the take of 200 Grand. But something's gone wrong - one of his boys has not yet returned, and of the two who are back at the hotel, one has been shot. Duryea remains calm enough to summon his crooked doctor, who happens to be stationed down the hall. That is Mason, who removes the bullet from the wounded man's arm, then tends to Duryea with some asprin for a headache. After some tough-guy talk between the hoods, Mason picks up his bag to leave, but then Duryea notices that he's got a second satchel in hand - the one with the money in it.
"Whataya think you're doing"?, he demands.
"Exactly what it looks like", Mason tells him, as he strides towards the door with the 200k in bank money. "I've just given you a pill that will cause convulsions within 30 minutes and death within an hour. Before you shoot me you should know I have an antidote, which I have hidden but will reveal the location by phone if you allow me to leave this room. And really.....what choice do you have"?
All of this is recited in the most Chames Mason-est of tones, and I urge you to picture it for yourself.
Okay, so Duryea allows Mason to leave, with the promise of the antidote callback, but Mason goes one step further by taking Duryea's gal with him, too. That's the final straw : "You'd better just let me die", he snarls at Mason, "because I'm gonna find you and kill you no matter how long it takes".
"No, I'm man of my word", Mason replies. "I shall call you within an hour as I promised".
But once they are in his car, Mason tells "Laura" (Marta Toren) that there's no need to call Duryea back. "I only gave him an asprin, but he fell for it", meaning the poison pill deception. But he knows that once Duryea figures this out, he's gonna come looking for them, so he has a plan. "We're going to Mexico City", he tells his new ladyfriend.
Okay, so far so good, right? An excellent noir set-up. But all of this only takes 10 or 15 minutes, and now the movie is gonna take such a turn that it becomes a different picture altogether. To get to Mexico City, the pair cross the border then ditch Mason's car, figuring Duryea could trace it. Mason then hires a local pilot to fly them there, but on the way, his Cessna's fuel pump breaks down and they are forced to land in a rural area. Freezing in a field in the middle of the night, they are discovered by a priest from a small Mexican village, who invites them back to his adobe for some food and a place to sleep. Okay fine, but is the chase still on?
No, it isn't. What happens is that, over the next few scenes a transformation occurs. Suddenly, Laura, previously Duryea's gangster moll, is now wearing peasant clothing, preferring to stay in the small Mexican village rather than accompany Mason to Mexico City. She's decided she likes the stress-free lifestyle. For his part, Mason is still planning to leave as soon as the pilot's plane is repaired. But five minutes later, he's become a convert too, after using his medical skills to heal a farmer's sick horse. Suddenly he's like a Saint to the superstitious villagers, who previously relied on a Witch Doctress to treat their ailments. Mason decides he likes using his skills for good, whereas before he always felt guilty stitching up bullet riddled criminals.
"Okay, Ad......but is the chase still on"?
No, I told ya it's not. I mean, there are occasional cutaways to the hotel room back in an unnamed American city, where Dan Duryea fumes to sidekick William Conrad. "Have you traced that licence plate yet?! Well get on it already"!!
But basically the noir is over until the last ten minutes of the 79 minute picture. What you get in the middle hour is more or less a human interest story about Mason's transformation from amoral MD to third world missionary. It's like he's joined the Peace Corps all of a sudden, and it's such a 180 for his character that you have a hard time believing it. It's true that Mason specialised in playing Men Torn. Witness his conscience-stricken IRA terrorist in the classic "Odd Man Out". So you could say this change of heart is par for the Masonic course, but there are other problems as well. Nothing really adds up or amounts to anything in the plot, such as when Laura is briefly terrorised by a trio of village banditos. Nothing comes of this diversion, so there was really no reason to include it. There is less than meets the eye here, and the ending is so manipulative and just plain unfair that you feel as if the director wanted to put you through the wringer.
Having said all of that, it's not a boring film by any means. It moves, and it'll hold your interest. But it's too far fetched, and it's not a real noir, so even with Mason's presence I can't recommend it, unless you need a Chames Mason fix. One Thumb Up, for his performance, otherwise skip it. /////
That's all for the moment. Daylight savings time is here, hooray for long evenings! Have a great one yourself, and tons of love as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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