Last night we watched "Beyond the Curtain"(1960), a cold war drama that begins when a commercial flight from Berlin is forced down in East Germany after straying into that country's airspace. Eva Bartok, who we just saw in "Spaceways", is a stewardess for an American airline. She lives in West Berlin but hails from Dresden, which is now part of the communist bloc. When her plane is forced to land by Mig fighters, she's at first despondent, fearing she'll be imprisoned for defecting, but instead, after being processed by the Stasi (secret police), she's allowed to go visit her mother, whose home has been commandeered by the Commies. Mom's been put up in the attic of the house she once owned, because it's bourgeois (booszhe-wah) for an individual to posses private property, when The Needs of the People are considered. Why, the Commies are so magnanimous they've even provided Mom and her new roommates with a minder, a stern woman who "looks after them" but is really there to make sure no one says anything against the government. Such is the mindset of communism and don't even get me started on totalitarian philosophies.
Yet the visit home transforms Bartok's feelings. Suddenly she feels back where she belongs, but when her fiancee Jim (Richard Greene) - the airplane's pilot - is told she doesn't want to return to the West, he's understandably confused. "We were just about to get married", he tells a colleague. He believes that the local administrators in Dresden are either lying about Bartok's intentions or telling her what to say, so he finagles his way back into the country after initially getting kicked out. When he shows up at her Mom's house, Bartok confirms the official story. "I'm sorry, Jim. Things have changed. I belong here, my mother needs me. I can't marry you now". Jim leaves, still believing she's either been brainwashed (she hasn't) or coerced (not that either). Really she's just plain homesick.
Mom, however, knows that her daughter did the right thing the first time, by escaping, and wants her to leave again while she still can, so she removes herself as a burden by swallowing sleeping pills. Now Bartok is devastated, and has only her fiancee to lean on, which is how her mother wanted it, because Mom wanted her out of East Germany.
But then we find out the real reason she's being kept there by the Stasi. Her brother Peter (George Mikell) is a member of the underground resistance. He helps dissidents escape to the West via an elaborate relay system. A family friend named "Dr. Kortner" (Marius Goring) pretends to be concerned about Bartok's welfare, but in reality he's a Stasi agent, trying to locate her brother and using her as bait.
It's a very good story but the direction is dry, and the script could've benefited from a 10 to 15 minute cut. We're learning a lot about the power of shorter, more concise movies, which get to the point without bogging the viewer down in a lot of mish mash.
Anyway, there is an excellent chase scene involving Peter's collaborator "Linda", my favorite character in the movie. Linda's a whiz on a motor scooter, and with Bartok on the back, she outsmarts and outruns a carload of Stasi, led by the snarling "Inspector Krumm" (great name), played by British actor Denis Shaw, who you'll recognise from his many portrayals of Nazis. But other than a few action scenes like this, the movie doesn't have much zip, and Eva Bartok overacts at the end. We're really missing our British crime thrillers right now, and I hope we can find more. We kind of got spoiled by them. "Beyond the Curtain" isn't a bad film, just slow in places, and we've been used to the ultra tight direction of the 60 minute Brit flicks.
Marius Goring is good as always, and another chase scene near the end, over a rubble-strewn landscape, makes up for some of the slowness.
Let's give it Two Regular Thumbs Up, but a solid recommendation, just because the message against totalitarianism is always important, and especially nowdays. ////
The previous night we did have a crime thriller, a Shortino, simple but super tight. In "The Painted Smile"(1962) three newly minted college grads are out for a night on the town in London. They're after one last fling before the world drags them down into the conformity of jobs and adult responsibility. One of them - Tony, a science major - is engaged to be married. At first he doesn't want to go to the dance club, feeling it'd be disloyal to his fiancee. But his buddies egg him on, and after all three get hammered, Tony ends up going home with "Jo" (Liz Fraser), a bimbo working an extortion game with her boyfriend "Mark" (Peter Reynolds).
We first see Jo at the beginning of the film, where she's arguing with Mark about their racket, known as The Badger Game. It involves a girl taking a drunken married man back to her apartment, having sex with him, and then an "outraged" male appears, posing as the woman's husband. The two then blackmail the married drunk, threatening to tell his wife unless he pays up. During their argument, Jo tells Mark that she doesn't wanna do it anymore. "One last time, baby", he responds. "Then we'll quit".
So she picks up young Tony (who isn't married but engaged, close enough), and takes him to her place. But just as she's stripping down to seduce him, her phone rings. A creepy male voice tells her to look in her bedroom. "There's some rubbish in there for you to throw out". We've already seen what he's referring to. While Jo was at the club, a man named "Kleinie" showed up at her apartment and stabbed Mark to death. It's unclear if Kleinie is her pimp or a previous blackmail victim, but he's definitely a bad hombre (as played by Kenneth Griffith, who was so kind as the club owner in the recently viewed "Rag Doll").
After the phone call, Jo opens the bedroom door and discovers the body of her boyfriend Mark. Tom the college boy freaks out. He runs in, still drunk, and pulls the knife from the body, putting his fingerprints on it and smearing blood all over himself. He also cuts his hand, which Jo bandages. as she does so, she gets an idea.
"You've gotta help me get rid of him", she insists. "If you don't, I'll say you did it. Your fingerprints are on the knife and your're all cut up. The police'll believe me so you'd better help". Tom's terrified by now, so he does what Jo tells him. He pulls his car around, then carries her boyfriend's body downstairs. After placing it in the back seat, he drives off. "Just dump it someplace", Jo tells him. "Remember, if you don't I'll call the police".
Jo's afraid to tell the truth because she's frightened of Kleinie. It would be nice to know his relationship to her (pimp or blackmail victim) but he's not someone to fool with.
While Tom is driving with the body, a police car makes a u-turn to follow him. He ditches his car, and after a cool looking foot chase through a graveyard and a bread factory - where Tom sneaks out on a packaging conveyor belt - he's able to elude the cops and make his way back to his fiancee's apartment. By now, it's early the next morning. Tom's name is in the paper because his car's been found with the body inside. His fiancee "Mary" (Nanette Newman) demands an explanation and Tom tells her everything about his night with Jo. After she chews him out for cheating, she settles down and calls his two friends, Glynn and Roy. The four of them go in search of Jo, to force her to tell the truth. Jo's fled by now, so they have to track her down. Their stops will take them to some hazardous places, all of which are frequented by Kleinie. Will they cross his path unexpectedly?
"The Painted Smile" has a very simple plot but good energy and some great London locales. The direction is extremely tight and the 56 minute script wastes nothing. A very young David Hemmings appears in the minor (but solid) role as Tony's pal Roy. He of course not only went on to star in Antonioni's "Blow Up" but also served as the narrator on Rick Wakeman's classic "Journey to the Center of the Earth" album. Liz Fraser is very good as Jo, the amoral hooker who doesn't care what happens, as long as she doesn't get caught.
It's a basic story without a lot of mystery, but quite effective, and the acting and atmosphere suffice to earn it Two Big Thumbs Up. ////
Well, that's all for the moment. Last night I finally finished the "Danger Man" TV series, which I own on dvd and began watching early this year. There are 86 episodes, 39 of which are a half hour long, the latter 47 running an hour. It was one of the first television shows I can remember watching, when I was four years old, and in America it was known as "Secret Agent" and came with the famous Johnny Rivers theme song, which became a radio hit. I actually bought the dvd set several years ago, maybe as far back as 2011 or thereabouts, and I began watching it then, but I only got about halfway through because the show was challenging to follow. The plots are so detailed and the dialogue fast; it was a blink-and-you'll-miss-something situation. I did okay on the half hour episodes, but when I got to the hour long ones, I had trouble paying attention. As a result, I put the box set away until this year. In the interim, I purchased Patrick McGoohan's other well-known series, "The Prisoner", which began in 1967. It ran only 17 episodes, but has become something of a cult classic. I myself became a big "Prisoner" fan and have watched the whole series through, several times. In doing so, I slowly grew curious to revisit "Danger Man". Maybe I'd be able to follow it now? I hoped so, and I was encouraged by the fan reviews at IMDB, many of which hailed it as one of the greatest tv shows of all time. I knew it was my favorite, when I was four years old haha, but I didn't have to worry about the plots back then. All I knew was that McGoohan was super cool.
Long story short, I did re-immerse myself at the beginning of this year, and I'm really glad I did, because this time I was not only able to get into the style and pace of the show, but to really become wrapped up in the complexity of it's plots and in Patrick McGoohan's multifaceted character "John Drake", the secret agent working first for NATO, then for M9 in the sixty minute episodes. I came to think of Drake as "the real James Bond", and while I love the Bond movies (who doesn't?), McGoohan's portrayal of an intelligence agent is more realistic than what we see in those films. Over the course of the 86 episodes, which I finished last night, I came to love the show and now, I wish there were 86 more! If I were awarding Thumbs, it'd get Two Gigantic Ones (my highest rating), and I'll go so far as to call it the best show of it's kind ever made. Give it a shot if you've never seen it. As for me, I'm on to "The Avengers", the box set of which I recently purchased from Amazon (helping Bezos to go to the Moon, or wherever he's going).
That's all for tonight. I hope you had a nice day and I send you tons of love as always!
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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