MIDNIGHT COWBOY 1969

I’m sometimes asked if I only like movies about women, or if a film has to have a female protagonist in order for me to enjoy it. Granted, even a cursory look at the films I list amongst my favorites would lean toward the answer being, yes; but the truth is, I’m not drawn specifically to movies about women so much as I have a strong aversion to what passes for manhood in a great many motion pictures. Preoccupied as most films are with perpetuating a narrow, outmoded, and distinctly white, hetero-normative vision of manhood, often consisting of oversimplified macho/hero stereotypes and care-worn heroism tropes, I have merely grown weary of outsized masculine totems standing in for fleshed-out, human-scale men.

Never being one to find plot-driven action and adventure to be a preferable alternative to the intensity of simple emotional conflict, I gravitate instead to movies about flawed characters grappling with the human condition. That these have largely been movies about women says more about our culture’s rigidity in its onscreen depiction of masculinity than it does any gender preferences I may hold in the way of  narrative central characters. 

Joe Buck sees the cowboy as the epitome of hetero-masculinity

Hollywood has never lost a dime trafficking in gender stereotypes. In the standard Hollywood film, men “do” while women “feel”; men propel the action, women do all the emotional heavy-lifting. The prototypical American male movie hero is a stoic, unemotional, lantern-jawed man of action, rarely given to moments of self-doubt, diffidence, or introspection. He’s the strong, silent type, indigenous to westerns, war movies, crime dramas, espionage thrillers, sports films, sci-fi, or any testosterone-leaden genre requiring things being “blowed up real good,” or cars raced fast and furiously. Few things are more boring to me than films about men fearful of losing their "masculinity." I really have no idea what that means, and I suspect if I did, I'd have a hard time being convinced of it being anything of value to lose.

Happily, a great deal of this changed (albeit briefly) in the late-'60s with the emergence of the movie anti-hero. The New Hollywood, in its youthful repudiation of America's cinematic status-quo, challenged the old-fashioned concept of masculinity and reimagined the traditional Hollywood leading man as an individual of unprepossessing countenance (Elliott Gould, Richard Benjamin, Malcolm McDowell, et. al.) capable of uncertainty, and more apt to be at war with some inner aspect of his character than to be found pointing a .44 Magnum at some punk and asking, “Do you feel lucky?”

Urban Cowboy
Archaic notions of masculinity collide with the modern world 

A perfect example of the American male redefined can be found in one of the films I consider to be a true, genuine-article, movie classic: John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy. A buddy film for a new generation which in every way embodies the kind of perceptive, complex characterizations I love to see in movies. When a film is this textured in exploring emotional isolation, vulnerability, loneliness, and (a favored theme of mine) the human need to connect—from the relatively rare perspective of the male—it only emphasizes how much time has been wasted and how many rich stories we've missed out on due to Hollywood's persistence in depicting men in terms of masculine archetypes rather than authentic, recognizably flawed individuals.

Jon Voight as Joe Buck

Dustin Hoffman as Enrico Salvatore Rizzo

Sylvia Miles as Cass Trehune

Brenda Vaccaro as Shirley

Midnight Cowboy is the story of Joe Buck (Voight), a naïve Texas dishwasher with a sad, abandoned past who, possessed of little beyond an elemental self-awareness—“The one thing I ever been good for is lovin’”—seizes upon the tin-pot ambition of going to New York and making it big as a sought-after gigolo, servicing the sexual needs of neglected, Park Avenue socialites. Unfortunately, a string of bad breaks (not the least of them being Joe’s ignorance of the largely homosexual implications drawn from his beloved cowboy attire in a Metropolitan setting) results in a drastic reversal of fortunes for Joe, leading to his forging an unlikely friendship/bond with a tubercular, disabled grifter and pickpocket: one Enrico Salvatore Rizzo (Hoffman), or, as he's loath to be called, Ratso.

In detailing the tentative alliance between these two wounded misfits, director John Schlesinger (Darling, The Day of the Locust) and screenwriter Waldo Salt (from the James Leo Herlihy novel), have not only fashioned one of the screen’s great (platonic) love stories, but in the bargain create a terribly moving and heartrending essay on isolation and the need to be needed.

"Joe sees how profusely Ratso is sweating and untucks his shirt to pat down his friend's hair. Ratso, not used to such tenderness, holds onto him, his eyes closed in a stolen moment of bliss."

                        - Dustin Hoffman commenting on one of the film's most poignant scenes

The kind of mature-themed major motion picture unimaginable in today’s teen-driven multiplex marketplace, the then X-rated Midnight Cowboy fairly knocked me for a loop when I saw it in 1969 (I was fairly shaken by it, finding some parts absolutely harrowing, later feeling heartbroken and bawling my eyes out at the end...then staying to watch it all again). I was just 12-years-old at the time, and in my film fan fervor, Midnight Cowboy looked to me like the future of American movies. Strange to think of it now in the age of Iron Man and The Avengers, but try to imagine: I was only an adolescent movie enthusiast, but already I'd had the good fortune to have been exposed to the brilliance that was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Rosemary’s Baby, Secret Ceremony, and Bonnie and Clyde…and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? was just around the corner.

Like an unspoken promise, the quality of these movies led me to the optimistic (naïve?) belief that American films were headed in an entirely new direction. I thought that motion pictures, freed from the constraints of censorship by the dissolution of the Production Code and recently-relaxed definitions of obscenity, could at last take their place as the emergent pop-cultural art form of the 20th century. Alas, conservatism and consumerism ultimately won out, but for a brief time there, Hollywood was turning out the most AMAZINGLY offbeat and thought-provoking movies.  Small wonder that the '60s and '70s still linger in my memory as my absolute favorite era in American film. I see now that it's because we were both growing up at the same time.

X-Rated
Bernard Hughes appears as Townsend "Towny" P. Locke in one of Midnight Cowboy's most  controversial scenes

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Putting aside for a moment Waldo Salt’s absolutely incredible screenplay (and if you've read Herlihy's novel you know what a splendid adaptation it is), as far as I’m concerned, cinematographer Adam Holender (Puzzle of a Downfall Child) and composer John Barry (and all sundry music contributors) are as much the stars of Midnight Cowboy as Voight and Hoffman.
Displaying the kind of seamless collaboration which served to both feed and mislead auteur theorists critics back in the day,  Holender and Barry create a look and sound for Midnight Cowboy so cinematically well-suited to its themes of fractured dreams and abandoned hopes (the use of disorienting flashbacks and subjective audio were considered innovative for its time), that the mode of storytelling becomes as important as the story itself. And, of course, who can listen to Fred Neil's Everybody's Talkin' (sung by Harry Nilsson) without visualizing Joe Buck strutting like a peacock down the crowded Manhattan streets, the diminutive Ratso Rizzo at his side, struggling to keep up.

Repeat viewings reveal the incredible amount of backstory and character exposition that's relayed through the film's economic and artful use of flashbacks and dream sequences. Everything you need to know about Joe Buck's troubled past is revealed in jarring flashes, like memories he's trying to repress. But I find the true richness of this device in that it reveals so much without explaining anything. It's both refreshing and challenging when a film asks you do some of the work yourself.

Shown in flashback, Joe is sexually assaulted by town rowdies jealous of the attention paid to him by the town goodtime-girl, Anastasia Pratt, aka Crazy Annie (Jennifer Salt, daughter of screenwriter Waldo Salt). 

PERFORMANCES

Midnight Cowboy is so chock full of amazing performances that it becomes an exercise in futility to extol the virtues of any one particular actor. Still, each time I watch it, I find I'm left with lingering impressions of newly-discovered bits of brilliance in performances I thought I was long-familiar with.

Making his film debut, long-time favorite Bob Balaban is appealingly vulnerable as the young student who, even in his naif outing as a sexual outlaw, has it over Joe Buck in the street-smarts department

"I got a strange feelin' somebody's bein' hustled!" - Doris Day in Calamity Jane
Oscar-nominee Sylvia Miles makes more out of 6 minutes-worth of screen time than any actress I've ever seen. As the Park Avenue "socialite" with the braying voice and whiplash temper, Miles creates a vividly dimensional character out of little more than a sketch. I could go on about what I adore about her performance, but I couldn't put it any better (or more hilariously) than a fellow blogger does HERE

Sylvia Miles had the showier part, but I have a soft spot for Brenda Vaccaro and what she does with her thoroughly unique role as the emancipated woman who gets a kinky kick out of paying for sex with, as she puts it, a "cowboy-whore" she meets at a party. Like almost every supporting role in Midnight Cowboy, hers is a character one can easily imagine having a life beyond the frame of the screen (judging by her apartment, possibly a pretty fascinating one).   

Midnight Cowboy was my first exposure to both Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, both of whom give the kind of performances that make stars. Some of the actors considered for the role of Joe Buck include: James Caan, Don Stroud, Alan Alda (!), Michael Sarrazin, Lee Majors, Alex Cord, Gary Lockwood, Robert Forester, and Michael Parks.

Hoffman is, of course, a revelation, especially in light of the extreme departure Ratso Rizzo is from his work in The Graduate; but it's the sad-eyed Jon Voight who ratchets up the film's pathos by way of achieving, in his portrayal of the hapless hustler Joe Buck, what I've always admired in the work of Julie Christie: the ability to instill in shallow, not-very-bright characters, a considerable amount of inarticulate depth.

Haunted
If it's disappointment and sadness that leads Joe to willingly accept sexual objectification as a viable means of existence, then Midnight Cowboy qualifies as the male perspective of a tragic real-life circumstance we tend to see played out in public most often by women. Consider the doomed fates of sexualized small-town girls, Dorothy Stratten and Anna Nicole Smith.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Fantasy isn't perhaps the best word to describe what I mean, but I adore the seedy, grimy look of late '60s New York captured in Midnight Cowboy. It's an Alice Through the Looking Glass view of Manhattan inspired, one can't help but assume, by Brit director John Schlesinger's unfamiliarity with the city, and his fascination with its sordid contrast to the cheery image of America presented in advertising and TV commercials. As would be the case in later years in films like Klute (1971) and Taxi Driver (1976), Midnight Cowboy uses New York as though it were another character in the story.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
As it is rare for a director to even turn out ONE classic film in the entirety of their careers, I find it sometimes a little baffling how easily John Schlesinger's name—the man who gave us Midnight Cowboy, Darling, and The Day of The Locust...three genuine classics, in my book—is so often bypassed in discussions of great directors. Even the gay community rarely gives it up for this director (to my knowledge, the only "out" director working in mainstream film at the time) whose body of work is decidedly uneven, but nonetheless yields several impressive efforts. Happily, Schlesinger won the best directing Oscar for Midnight Cowboy, and the film won Best Picture that year (Salt also won for his screenplay).

There’s no telling what, if any, impact Schlesinger’s sexuality had on the way Midnight Cowboy turned out (after all, the original novel was written by a gay man, but adapted by a straight). But even by today’s standards, what still impresses me about Midnight Cowboy is how strongly it stands as one of mainstream cinema’s most persuasive examples of the purposeful deconstruction of the masculine myth.

Joe Buck embraces a traditional concept of masculinity no longer considered relevant or even valid in an urban (modern) environment. In fact, Joe is rather stunned to learn that everything he once thought represented masculinity and manhood (macho posturing, sexual pursuit, and dressing like a cowboy) has, somehow, become perversely feminized ("You're gonna tell me John Wayne's a fag?!"). Manliness of the sort he admired as a boy in the movies, or copied from the rodeo cowboys that populated his grandmother’s bed, had transmogrified into the macho “drag” adopted by homosexual prostitutes plying their trade on New York's Forty-Second Street.

Joe discovers he's but one of many Midnight Urban Cowboys

Like a great many men who haven't a clue as to how to view themselves without clinging to an antiquated hunter-gatherer/alpha-male paradigm; Joe, without a defined code of “masculinity” to follow, is at a loss. Ironic, because, as revealed in the novel and an early draft of the screenplay, what inspires Joe to come to New York in the first place is his learning that the urban phenomenon of the overworked businessman has resulted in a surplus of sexually frustrated city women. In short, Joe believes there is a shortage of "real men" in New York, and his goal is to step in and fill the void, so to speak.

Even within the sex trade where he hoped to make his fortune, Joe finds himself unwittingly cast in the feminine role of being the one pursued by males rather than in the (equally passive) part of easygoing stud sought after by women. Yet, in his inarticulated longing to love and be loved (his only familiarity with it is as a purely physical act) Joe finds the closest thing he has ever known of it in the deep friendship he develops with another male. One every bit the misfit he is. 

Scenes of Domesticity

Over the course of the film, as Joe and Ratso come to need and depend on one another, Joe’s deep-rooted masculinity anxiety shows signs of being replaced by both a fragile sense of self-worth, and a broader concept of what it means for him to be a man. Joe even tables his dreams and awakens to the reality that he's not cut out for hustling. He places the needs of someone else before his own, and though he commits a violent act out of desperation, it's one born of a genuine concern for the only person that has come to mean anything to him (the only person he has, in fact). Rico drops his tough-guy front and reveals his vulnerability (who could call a man in a Hawaiian shirt Ratso?) forcing Joe to abandon his own false macho attitudinizing, resulting in two individuals at last becoming defined (in our eyes and their own) by their humanity; not the empty labels of masculinity.

And for a rather bleak and somber film, I think that's a really lovely, bittersweet  message to end with.

THE AUTOGRAPH FILES

Bernard Hughes - 1980

Copyright © Ken Anderson

THE SENTINEL 1977

The search to find a horror film as gratifying to me as Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby has largely proved a futile one, but through my efforts, I've discovered several reasonable and unreasonable contenders for the crown which I've nevertheless enjoyed a great deal.

Of all the films released in the post-Rosemary’s Baby Modern Gothic vein, the real standouts for me have been: The Mephisto Waltz (1971), Don’t Look Now (1973), The Exorcist (1973), The Stepford Wives (1975), The Omen (1976), Burnt Offerings (1976), and Polanski’s The Tenant (1976). All are films for which I held high hopes before release, all are excellent-to-exceptional movies in their own right; yet none come close to capturing Rosemary’s Baby’s distinctive way of drawing the viewer into an empathetic identification with its protagonist through the skilled manipulation of the medium of film and an understanding of the central, elemental vulnerabilities of fear.

When a book critic in 1974 described Jeffrey Konvitz’s new novel The Sentinel as a cross between Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, I was instantly intrigued. When sometime later I read in the movie magazine Rona Barrett’s Hollywood that Universal Studios had acquired the motion picture rights and that Kate Jackson of The Rookies (Charlie’s Angels was just taking off) was being considered for the lead, I was interested. Later still, when I heard that Jackson had passed on the role and Nashville’s relatively unknown Cristina Raines was to head an all-star cast opposite Dog Day Afternoon Oscar/Golden Globes nominee Chris Sarandon (whose rising star was not yet tarnished by the still-to-be-released Lipstick), I was completely sold. 

Cristina Raines as Alison Parker

Chris Sarandon as Michael Lerman

Deborah Raffin as Jennifer

Eli Wallach as Detective Gatz

Burgess Meredith as Charles Chazen

What am I saying? I was stoked! I got the book from the library and positively raced through it, the cliché “I couldn't put it down!” a most apt description of how engrossing I found it. A novel so influenced by Rosemary’s Baby that it bordered on plagiarism, yet taking its overlay of then-trendy Catholic-based horror to effectively creepy and unexpected twists.

Meanwhile, the Hollywood trade papers ran items on an almost daily basis announcing which new star (Eli Wallach, Ava Gardner, Martin Balsam…) had just been signed to the film. A good book, a good cast, a high-profile director (Michael Winner of Death Wish, who, had I been familiar with his work at the time, would have given me pause)…I had the feeling that The Sentinel could be the post-Rosemary’s Baby Satanic thriller I’d been waiting for.

Like Rosemary’s Baby, The Sentinel is a story of a lapsed Catholic who comes to pay dearly for her loss of faith. The godless infidel in this case being beautiful New York model Alison Parker, a fragile, two-time suicide attempt with father issues and a sleazy, albeit caring, lawyer boyfriend with a shady past (Sarandon). Afraid of duplicating her mother’s unhappy life of emotional and financial dependence, Alison seeks to live on her own for a time before committing to marriage, her search leading to a picturesque riverfront Brooklyn Heights brownstone that is to die for...literally.

Contemporary audiences are apt to find The Sentinel’s most startling, gasp-inducing scene to be the one in which real estate agent Ava Gardner informs Raines that the outlandishly spacious, fully furnished apartment is available to her for only $400 a month! A detail so outlandish in relation to today's housing crunch that even after the story begins dropping hints that the building is built over the very entrance to Hell itself, I doubt if any modern viewer would find that bit of info to be a deal-breaker for such a bargain. More than likely it would only serve as a reason to take on more renters insurance. 

Predictably, it's the renting of the too-good-to-be-true apartment that seems to trigger all manner of maladies and calamities for Alison. The strange neighbors, the noises coming from the empty apartment above, the piercing migraines, the blackouts, the hallucinations. And just what is it with the blind priest on the top floor who sits all day at the window, seemingly watching all the events unfold? What does it all mean? 

Finding out the answers to these questions makes for devilishly good, often unpleasantly gross-out, entertainment. The Sentinel is nowhere near as accomplished as Rosemary’s Baby (indeed at times it’s downright amateurish) but it’s a nicely constructed, slightly old-fashioned thriller of considerable suspense and scares that veers agreeably back and forth between chilling and campy, depending on which scene and whose performance you’re watching.

Sylvia Miles and Beverly D'Angelo play Gerde and Sandra, a quirky lesbian couple residing in the mysterious brownstone. Thanks to Ms. Miles' questionable Swedish accent and D'Angelo's, shall I say, commitment to her craft, their scene has become something of a cult classic.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

It’s clear from the start that the makers of The Sentinel are shooting for an unholy union of Rosemary’s Baby's brand of sophisticated urban horror crossed with the graphic gross-outs of The Exorcist and The Omen. There’s the emotionally fragile heroine plagued with guilt over abandoning her faith; the ominous-looking apartment-house filled with elderly eccentrics; a disturbing, cryptic nightmare; the suggestion of a plot against our heroine that her shady boyfriend may or may not be involved in; and the heroine’s deteriorating mental and physical health. It’s all there…cloaked in a solemn portentousness worthy of a religious parable on sin and redemption. 

Alison  seeks the counsel of Monsignor Franchino (Arthur Kennedy)
In The Sentinel, the battle between good and evil is metaphorically evoked (and a good many plot points telegraphed) by the colors black and white. 

The Sentinel never quite comes together as a great horror film (the script is too weak and performances all over the map), but as your better-than-average, big-budget B-movie, it’s very much like one of those amusement park haunted house rides. You get scared, you jump, sometimes you have to cover your eyes, other times you laugh - but through it all there's a great great time to be had, provided you don't take any of it too seriously.

Photographer Jeff Goldblum offers assistance to a headache-plagued Cristina Raines while concerned friend and fellow model Deborah Raffin looks on.

Here's a tip for budding screenwriters: if you really want the audience to like and feel sorry for a character, don't make her a fashion model. We don't take models seriously. For starters, nobody considers what they do to be real work, secondly, deep down we're all slightly envious or resentful of their genetics-based charmed lives and therefore tend to harbor secret hopes that terrible fates befall them. However, I must add that scenes of beautiful, heavily made-up women suffering in high-fashion attire awfully entertaining, even if the pleasure derived from it leans a bit towards camp and unintentional laughs.

Top Model: Slightly slouching model Cristina Raines (who did indeed model in real-life)
like looks like she could benefit from a Tyra Banks outburst about her posture.  

PERFORMANCES

In the I Love Lucy episode titled “Ricky’s Screen Test,” it’s learned that the producers of Don Juan plan to cast a newcomer in the lead and build him into a star by surrounding him with big-name performers. Pretty much sounds like what they had in mind with the casting of the lovely but largely unknown Cristina Raines in her first major screen role. 

Raines possesses an overall impassive countenance, a somewhat flat speaking voice, and a very un-model-like way of walking and standing, yet in spite of all this, I found myself being totally won over by her in this movie. Aside from liking the whole preachy Catholic thing used as a basis for horror, Raines is the main reason I've seen The Sentinel so many times. I know that sounds strange given what I've just said, but in roles that require an actor to be the one upon whom an audience must invest its sympathies and identification, personal appeal and likability can often trump technique. Cristina Raines registers rather stronger in the scenes of her character's decline than she does in the film's earlier scenes, as such, she makes for an appealingly vulnerable protagonist in the war between good and evil. 

Top-billed Chris Sarandon followed his attention-getting supporting role in Dog Day Afternoon with two career-killing unsympathetic lead roles in two poorly-received motion pictures. He was a sweaty serial rapist in Lipstick, and in The Sentinel, he plays a corrupt lawyer with an unflattering '70s porn-stache that makes him look way too much like Paul Snider (of Dorothy Stratten/ Chippendales infamy). Sarandon has proven himself to be a wonderful character actor, but I'm afraid he makes for a stiff, blank, leading man.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Even more than I love seeing all those bell-bottomed jeans and '70s fashions; more than I love the New York locations; more than I love Gil Melle's ghoulishly symphonic score—I really get a kick out of the roster of talent assembled for this movie.

Clockwise from top left: Arthur Kennedy, Ava Gardner, Martin Balsam,
Christopher Walken, Jose Ferrer, and John Carradine.

Clockwise from top left: Jeff Goldblum, Jerry Orbach (the original Billy Flynn in Chicago), Charles Kimbrough (Murphy Brown), Reid Shelton (the original Daddy Warbucks in Annie), Hank Garrett (Car 54, Where Are You?), and William Hickey (Prizzi's Honor).

That's Richard Dreyfuss in this brief street scene and Tom Berenger  makes an appearance in the film's epilogue

THE STUFF OF DREAMS NIGHTMARES

Every horror film worth its salt in the 1970s had a big setpiece moment. The Exorcist had projectile pea soup, and The Omen had that spectacular beheading. The big moment in The Sentinel—not exactly a surprise, as it was prominently featured in the paperback cover art and on the movie poster for the film—is the rising of the demons and denizens of hell. The gates of hell spill open and all of Satan's minions come forth to terrorize and unleash (more) evil into the world. It is a peak horror moment and everyone involved with making The Sentinel knew it was going to have to top The Omen and The Exorcist if it had any hope of doing similar business.  

What many people apparently knew but failed to let me in on at the time (there was some pre-release controversy that somehow got by me) was that director Michael Winner had decided to take a disturbing page from the harrowing conclusion of the 1932 cult horror film classic Freaks, and used people with genuine physical disabilities to portray the demons. 

To say this sequence is unsettling is a major understatement. It's creepy, it's gory, it's so weirdly grotesque it borders on the distasteful. To this day I still can't bring myself to watch it except through extremely close-knit fingers over my eyes. But one critic at the time made the very good point that audiences are just as likely to view these individuals with empathy instead of fear, undercutting the effectiveness of Winner's questionable creative decision. 

In 1979 I had an opportunity to speak briefly to Cristina Raines and asked her about this scene (I was working at a Honda dealership at the time and she came to pick up her car. My asking about The Sentinel must have struck her as totally random, but how could I let an opportunity like that go?). She relayed to me that the entire film was very difficult to shoot, but this sequence, in particular, was especially tough because Winner, intent on extracting genuine reactions from her, was prone to springing surprises on her. 

It appears that many of Raines' screams and shocked reactions are the real deal, owing to the fact that much of what we're seeing is something she is seeing for the first time, as well. Raines also said that the individuals hired for the finale sequence (I think she said it took a week) appeared to be enjoying their time as movie stars. While not privy to whether or not any of them felt exploited or were disdainful of Winner's desire to present them as fearful grotesques, she did tell me that they all formed a kind of fraternal clique and seemed to enjoy the attention and special treatment that came with making the film.  

With the horror genre currently in the hands of many filmmakers I'm not particularly fond of (Rob Zombie, Sam Raimi, Eli Roth...the inauspicious list goes on....all of whom make Michael Winner look like Alfred Hitchcock), and favorites like Roman Polanski, David Cronenberg, and Brian De Palma all in their 70s and beyond; I've more or less put an end to my search to find a horror film as flawless as Rosemary's Baby. And maybe that's how it should be. Perfect is great, and you're lucky when you find it...but The Sentinel is a terrific reminder of how imperfection can sometimes be a lot of scary fun, too. 

"Blind? Well, then what does he look at?"

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2013

EVIL UNDER THE SUN 1982

Of the many films adapted from the Hercule Poirot mystery novels of Agatha Christie, I definitely consider 1974s Murder on the Orient Express to be the most elegant, effective, and classiest of the lot (that cast!). But when it comes to which Poirot film distinguishes itself in my memory as the wittiest and the most consistently entertaining, none can hold a magnifying glass to 1982s Evil Under the Sun. Striking the perfect balance between deliberate camp and the appropriate-for-the-period sophisticated light touch of a 1930s Thin Man movie, Evil Under the Sun is an unflaggingly charming little murder mystery whose many gifts (visually, narratively, and dramatically) become even more pronounced with repeat viewings.

Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot

Maggie Smith as Daphne Castle

Diana Rigg as Arlena Marshall

Roddy McDowall as Rex Brewster

James Mason as Odell Gardener

Sylvia Miles as Myra Gardener

 A suitably chi-chi tone is set from the start thanks to a credits sequence comprised of Hugh Casson’s stylishly character-based watercolor sketches accompanied by sweepingly lush orchestrated arrangements of Cole Porter standards. It should be noted here that the outstanding musical score (arranged and conducted by John Lanchbery) is very nearly my favorite thing about Evil Under the Sun and practically functions as another character in the proceedings. Happily, the soundtrack album is available on iTunes.

Evil Under the Sun doesn’t deviate from the usual tried-and-true Agatha Christie setup: An assemblage of well-heeled characters with hidden agendas and interwoven alliances finding themselves circumstantially confined to a picturesque locale where a murder has taken place. The cast, budget, locale, and designated sleuth may change (either Hercule Poirot, or Jane Marple), but everything else about the Christie formula is as reliable and religiously adhered-to as the plot of a Beach Party move.

Bathing Beauty
Monsieur Poirot prepares for une baignade dans la mer

And beach parties are an apt reference, for you see, Evil Under the Sun gives us a Hercule Poirot on holiday. A working holiday in any case, as the eccentrically fastidious detective is dispatched to a tony island resort owned by former courtesan Daphne Castle (Maggie Smith) to investigate a simple insurance fraud that (of course) turns into a puzzling case of whodunit. Gathered this season for fun in the sun is a gaggle of guests, all of whom share an unpleasant past association.
There’s fey columnist Rex Brewster (McDowall); bickering and boorish theatrical producers, Myra and Odell Gardener (Sylvia Miles &James Mason); ill-matched newlyweds Christine and Patrick Redfern (Jane Birkin & Nicholas Clay); disgruntled industrialist Horace Blatt (Colin Blakely); and, most ostentatiously, abrasive Broadway star Arlena Marshall (Diana Rigg) with her new husband (Denis Quilley) and reluctant stepdaughter (Emily Hone) in tow.

Hotel proprietress Daphne Caste (Smith) and guest Sir Horace Blatt (Colin Blakely) react to yet another Poirot eccentricity

While the mystery at hand is puzzling enough, with red herrings more plentiful than pebbles on the beach; the particulars of what follows in Evil Under the Sun are of less consequence than the flair with which they are presented. Screenwriter Anthony Shaffer (Sleuth, The Wicker Man) has fashioned a delightfully witty script of clever wordplay, colorful characters, and ceaseless bitchiness.
Director Guy Hamilton, who I felt seriously botched the 1980 Miss Marple film The Mirror Crack’d, redeems himself rather stupendously with Evil Under the Sun, seizing on every opportunity for highlighting the character-based humor and conflict. His direction displays exactly the sort of zest and deftness of pacing missing from that earlier film. Granted, Hamilton is greatly assisted this time out by a cast of accomplished, largely British actors surrendering themselves to creating distinctly vivid characters while sticking to the genre's demand to remain a tightly blended ensemble piece.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

There's something I find very funny in this collection of testy and ill-tempered society folks trying in vain to relax on their vacation. In a way, each is out of their element (none more so than the seasick prone, non-athletic Poirot), and the strain shows in the All About Eve exchanges and edgy interactions.

Rex Brewster attempts to get the Gardeners to talk about their recent flop:
Rex: "Would either of you care to comment on that?"
Odell- "Why don't you go and play with yourself?"
Myra- "Excessively."
Rex - "Is coarseness a substitute for wit? I ask myself."

And if you're going to have a script crammed with catty dialog, you couldn't ask for it to be delivered by better actors than those twin masters of the articulate put-down; Diana Rigg and Maggie Smith.

Arlena- "Linda, do stop standing there like a cough-drop and say hello to Monsieur Poirot!"

Daphne- "I hope you haven't come here to practice your sleuthing games on my guests. They've all got far too many skeletons in their cupboards to join in with enthusiasm."

PERFORMANCES

The cast assembled for Evil Under the Sun is not only one of the strongest of the Agatha Christie series (it's Ustinov's second go-round as Poirot and he pretty much makes the role his own in this outing), but, stylistically speaking, it's wonderful how they all manage to be on the same page and hit the same notes throughout. The cast plays it serious enough to make the drama work, yet succeed in sustaining an air of caricature and cocktail party flippancy that is so deliciously amusing and makes Evil Under the Sun a delight from start to finish. 
Years before I became a Downton Abbey addict, I've worshiped at the altar of Maggie Smith; an actress who has always had a singular way of getting words to do her personal bidding. That she is so good is no surprise; that she upstages even the well-cured hamminess of Ustinov is miraculous. Bad girls are always good fun, and the ever-classy Diana Rigg sinks her teeth into her über-bitch role with assurance.

Nicholas Clay and Jane Birkin are excellent as a mismatched couple

I was taken by surprise by how much Sylvia Miles made me laugh. Giving an unsubtle performance to say the least, Miles is nevertheless perfectly cast as the Ugly American in a film loaded with Brits (Lauren Bacall served the same function in Murder on the Orient Express). And the pairing of this vulgarian with the genteel and distinguished James Mason is really inspired. Their scenes together smack of an urbane George an Martha, or perhaps they give a glimpse of what Lolita's Humbert Humbert's life might have been had Charlott Haze not had that nasty accident.

The happiest, biggest surprise for me is Roddy McDowall. An actor who has literally given the same one-note, non-performance in film after film for years, at last decides to create a distinguishable character, and he's marvelous. His Rex Brewster has the attitude of Rex Reed, the body language of Noel Coward, and the voice of Tallulah Bankhead. It's as if after all those years in the closet, McDowall could only let loose by playing an openly gay character in a film. He's the best I've ever seen him.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

As a movie fan who's also a fan of the male physique, I can't tell you how weary I've grown of the decades-long tradition of mainstream films always representing the heterosexual male gaze. It's a given that if a camera is going to focus on a comely face, appealing chest, desirable derriere, or long leg; those body parts will belong to a woman, and the surrogate eye of the camera, that of the male. Let's go back to the Beach Party reference made earlier. Here's an entire genre of film that never missed an opportunity to train a camera lens on a wiggling female butt or heaving bikini top, yet never considered that there were those in the audience (women, gays, guys OK with their masculinity) who might want a close-up of Frankie Avalon's behind for a change. No such luck. The heterosexual male gaze was all that counted.
When one happens to come across that rare film that keeps its female stars clothed and trades the cheesecake for beefcake, attention must be paid. My hat is off to Evil Under the Sun for providing so much memorable footage of the handsome physique of actor Nicholas Clay (a fave since Excalibur) in nothing but a barely-there swimsuit. I've seen Evil Under the Sun at least 10 times over the years. Five of those times I'm afraid were strictly so as to take another look at Nicolas Clay's ample derriere. Vive la différence!

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

There's no way to talk about Evil Under the Sun without making mention of the wryly outrageous costumes by Anthony Powell (101 Dalmatians), the only man who can design clothes with a punch line. Seemingly taking his inspiration from a Wonder Bread wrapper, Powell's whimsical creations are the physical embodiment of the arch wit and self-aware humor of the film.

Sylvia Miles sports a black & white ensemble (check the gloves!) worthy of
Cruella De Vil

I first saw Evil Under the Sun at a theater when it opened in 1982. During certain scenes the audience laughed so loud and long that you couldn't hear the dialog for long stretches. I thought the film was going to be a big hit, but it's seldom spoken of today and only rarely shows up on cable TV. As I said, it remains my favorite of the Agatha Christie films and is definitely worth discovering if you've never had the pleasure. Certainly if only to see a pre-Downton Abbey Maggie Smith continuing to lay waste to the unwary. 


THE AUTOGRAPH FILES:

I got this autograph of Maggie Smith  when she was in L.A. making "Hook"

The late actor Nicholas Clay is not very well-known, but apparently very well-liked:
 Random Ramblings,Thoughts & Fiction has a great Nicholas Clay post HERE
Another good post on Nicholas Clay can be found at Poseidon's Underworld HERE

Copyright © Ken Anderson