Last night's movie was "Circle of Danger"(1951), a murder mystery with World War Two as it's context. Ray Milland stars as "Clay Douglas", an American who travels to Scotland (Skaertlnd) to investigate the death of his brother during a British commando raid in Germany. Side note : his brother had enlisted with the Brits prior to U.S. involvement in the war. His death seems suspicious to Milland, who's been unable to get details from the British war department; no one has any information, except the name of his brother's captain.
So Milland goes to Scotland and locates the captain, a taciturn gent who greets him with a wary eye. Yes, he remembers Milland's brother. "He was a good soldier" is about all he'll say, adding that he was the only man killed during the raid in question. The captain's elderly mother is nicer, and asks Milland in the house for a cuppa tea, and all of a sudden we are thrown what proves to be a Big League Cinematic Curveball.
So far, we've been digging in for an engrossing mystery, when out of the blue a book falls on Ray Milland's head. It's been dropped by "Elspeth Graham" (Patricia Roc), who is reaching for the volume on a high shelf at the moment Milland walks in the door. Elspeth is ostensibly the captain's girlfriend, but the screenwriter wants to introduce both a conflict and a charm offensive all at once, and so he has Milland and Elspeth hit it off instantaneously, and with such familiarity that you'd think the characters had known each other for years. This steers the movie abruptly off course, into a romantic drama in which the romance is elusive and the dialogue conversational and time wasting.
British films from this postwar period are interesting, dialogue-wise (and I think I've mentioned this before), because they sometimes veer off into "small talk"; i.e. long winded repartees that only dialect-savvy English people would understand. It's as if the filmmakers were aware that their pictures would not have an American (or international) release, so they constructed them for UK audiences exclusively, by loading up on the kind of rapid paced "tea talk", replete with heavy accents and colloquialisms that only Brits would understand and appreciate. Watching now (70 years later), an American can get the gist, but not the literal wording.
None of this matters half as much, however, as the 180% shift in tone from mystery to romance, and it's such a swift turn that within seconds of the book hitting Milland, he and Roc are chatty, familiar friends. It's too quick for even a Hollywood romance to develop and not only does it seem contrived, it happens so fast you kind of go "huh"?, because three seconds ago you were watching a mystery.
I should add that this does not derail the plot, but does drive it way around the bend. The romance becomes the focus, while Milland's search for information on his brother is deliberately inserted from time to time. Every so often, he shows up at various places to talk to men who were in his brother's's unit, and always uses a variation on the same phrase - "I'm trying to get information about my brother" - as if the screenwriter is reminding us why we sat down to watch in the first place.
All of this meandering does lead to a payoff, and a fairly satisfying one, enough for you (or me at least) to forgive the endless small talk (I found myself wondering "who wrote this freakin' thing anyway"?). The ending is solid, thanks mostly to an actor named Marius Goring, who we've seen as evil Nazis in two or three films. Here, he's playing a foppish ballet instructor with a sinister side. He does in fact know the truth about what happened to Milland's brother, but will he reveal it?
The ending aside, "Circle of Danger" is built mostly on Ray Milland's debonair charm and Patricia Roc's pretty smile. It would've worked as a 58 minute thriller, with the romance at a minimum and a complete re-write of the dialogue, but at 82 minutes it's check-your-watch long. This is all the more surprising because the director is Jacques Tourneur, one of the best of the Hollywood Craftsmen, who helmed many excellent movies, including the horror classics "Cat People" and "Night of the Demon".
I'm still gonna give it Two Regular Thumbs Up, cause it has just barely enough to recommend it, as well as some nice Scottish locations a few good support characters. If you do decide to watch it, could you please tell me what the deal is with the opening scene? What in the world does it have to do with the rest of the movie, and why even include it? Ahh, the mysteries of life.......////
Now, going back to the previous night, what would you say about a Sci-Fi, tinged with melodrama and doubling as a murder mystery? You say you'd be intrigued? (Hang on, I may have to get this in writing). Okay, since you're willing to put your name to it, we'll add a dash of espionage, and I'll give you "Spaceways"(1953), an early effort from Hammer that's reasonably entertaining if you don't mind the ludicrous plot twists.
Howard Duff is "Dr. Stephen Mitchell", a rocket scientist working at a classified base in England. The place is so top secret and heavily guarded that - once inside - the scientists can't get out. This is stipulated in their contracts, of course, but after two years of lockdown, Duff's wife can't stand the isolation. At a cocktail party (on base, naturally), we see she's having an affair with another scientist, Duff's chief biologist. Duff later observes them in intimate embrace on the doorstep of his house, but says nothing to his wife. At bedtime he gives her the cold shoulder.
The next day, he's back to working on the program's latest project, an attempt to launch a three stage rocket into orbit. I must jump in to say that - for me - this is very interesting information. I don't know much about the early history of rocketry, nor much about any NASA experiments prior to Mercury, but I guess there must've been a lot of the science already on the drawing board, because this is 1953, four years before even Sputnik was launched, and they're already talking about three stage rockets and orbital missions.
Anyhow, back to the soap opera. Duff knows his wife is cheating, but the program is more important to him, so he puts the affair on the back burner. Millions of pounds are at stake, in addition to defense budget concerns, and - wait a minute : how'd the Brits become frontrunners in space exploration, anyway? Oh...sorry. That was just me, musing to myself.
With the help of his brilliant and beautiful mathematician (Eva Bartok), Duff convinces the military brass to fund his three stager, and soon it is ready to launch.
All the top brass are in the control room for liftoff. Everything goes well until the third stage is ejected. Then the capsule fails to reach orbital altitude. What could've happened? Bartok notes that it will take decades for the capsule to fall to earth, so the problem will not quickly be determined.
In the aftermath, an investigator shows up on base, posing as a replacement biologist.
"Oh", he says to Howard Duff, "didn't you know? You wife's gone missing, along with my predecessor". It's clear this "biologist" is really from military intelligence. He suspects Duff murdered his wife and her lover, and..........get this.........placed their bodies in the fuel tank of the experimental rocket, then sent it into outer space where he assumed it would orbit the earth forever.
Except it won't, because it hasn't reached altitude. But according to the mathematician Bartok, it'll still be up there for 30 or 40 years, so what's the diff? I suppose it's another screenwriter's contrivance, and in this case he's hoping no one notices.
Duff knows he's innocent, and volunteers to go up in a second launch, to retrieve the first rocket by tether and bring it back to Terra Firma. Then he can prove there's no bodies aboard and clear his name. The brass okays his mission and he's all set to go for it, when the investigator realizes Duff ain't B.S.-ing. Then he gets off his "Howard Duff" and really starts to investigate the case. Here's where the espionage aspect comes in : it turns out that the biologist and Duff's wife are not dead after all. They've escaped the "inescapable" base, because they're spies and have contacts. They're selling space secrets, which is extremely dangerous, because - as the top brass have already explained - in the future space may be used for the launch of nuclear weapons. Again, the dialogue is remarkably prescient, as this was three decades before Reagan's Star Wars proposal.
The soap opera aspect takes precedence toward the end, when it's revealed that Eva Bartok is in love with Duff. She sneaks aboard the recovery rocket to be by his side. I thought we were still working on the whodunit resolution, and that she was gonna kill Duff once they got to outer space, but hey........it's a really off beat movie. The rocket models look cool, and may be outtakes from a prior movie, and the capsule interiors are reliably the size of living rooms, in keeping with 1950s sci-fi tradition.
I'm gonna give "Spaceways" Two Solid Thumbs Up, which means we didn't have a Two Bigs in this blog, but I'm still gonna recommend it if you're up for something different, a mash-up of sorts. We've been on such a roll with our crime films of late, with almost every movie earning at least Two Big Thumbs Up, that it's a slight letdown to encounter two lesser works in a row, but as I say, give "Spaceways" a shot, and "Circle of Danger" too, for that matter. Neither is awful and both are watchable and entertaining to varying degrees if you're in a pinch. ////
Well, that's all for the moment. I finished the Brian Wilson book so I'm gonna head down to The Libe, to look for something else to read, then up to Aliso or out to Santa Su for a hike. Have a great afternoon and evening. I send you tons of love as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
No comments:
Post a Comment