Permission to Kill (1975)

          “You’re a very clever man,” the revolutionary says to the spy. “What a waste you’re an evil one.” That sharp dialogue indicates the provocative themes pulsing through Permission to Kill, a European/US coproduction released in America with the graceless title The Executioner. Elegant, meditative, and restrained, this picture won’t be for everyone’s taste, since it’s not purely the action/suspense piece one might expect. Yet neither is it purely cerebral in the vein of, say, some Graham Greene adaptation. Permission to Kill occupies an interesting middle ground, spicing its intricate plotting and thoughtful characterization with a dash of luridness. Defining the film’s icy tone are Dirk Bogarde’s soft-spoken performance in the leading role of a ruthless manipulator, and cinematographer Freddie Young’s classically beautiful compositions. Whereas many espionage thrillers of the ’70s opted for grittiness, Permission to Kill luxuriates in European elegance.

          Although the central premise is simple, the pathway the storytellers take toward presenting the premise is slightly obtuse, presumably by design—in the spy world, nothing is ever simple. Alan Curtis (Bogarde) works for a mysterious agency that wishes to prevent leftist Alexander Diakim (Bekim Fehmiu) from returning to his home country, where it is assumed he will foment a communist revolt against the totalitarian powers-that-be. Thus Alan recruits four civilians and one professional. Each of the four civilians has some connection to Alexander, either financial or personal, so Alan blackmails them into pressuring Alexander, who is presently exiled in Austria. The professional is a beautiful French assassin, Melissa (Nicole Calfan), hired as an insurance policy should the others fail to impede Alexander’s disruptive homecoming. Much of the film explores Alan’s fraught encounters with the people he’s using, all of whom regard him as a soulless monster. For instance, Katina (Ava Gardner), Alexander’s former lover, is appalled when Alan reveals his willingness to involve the child she had with Alexander, long since given up for adoption. Eventually, Alan’s cruelty inspires two of the pawns, British government functionary Charles (Timothy Dalton) and American journalist Scott (Frederic Forrest), to engineer a counter-conspiracy against their tormentor.

          While Permission to Kill has a ticking-clock aspect, it’s as much a character piece as a potboiler. Even Vanessa, about whom little is revealed beyond her lovely figure, comes across as complicated and dimensional. Writer Robin Estridge, who adapted the script from his own novel, revels in the duplicity and gamesmanship of spycraft, so when Alan coolly says, “The truth is what I make it,” the remark doesn’t seem like empty posturing. None of this is to suggest that Permission to Kill is flawless, since the performances are uneven (Forrest delivers clumsy work and Gardner’s breathy melodrama feels old-fashioned), and since some viewers may rightly grow impatient between bursts of action. For those who lock into its downbeat groove, however, Permission to Kill is smart and vicious, a palliative for the cartoonish superficiality of Bond flicks and their escapist ilk.

Permission to Kill: GROOVY

Death in Venice (1971)

          “Sometimes I think artists are rather like hunters in the dark,” remarks composer Gustav von Aschenbach. “They don’t know what their target is, and they don’t know if they’ve hit it—but you can’t expect life to illuminate the target and steady your aim.” Heady ruminations of this sort permeate the elegant but slow-moving Italian drama Death in Venice, which was produced, cowritten, and directed by the venerable Luchino Visconti. Based on Thomas Mann’s novel, the stately film tells the sad story of a middle-aged artist becoming fascinated by a beautiful young man—while, at the same time, the artist faces the bitter inevitability of mortality. Pictorially beautiful and underscored with transcendent selections from Gustav Mahler’s canon, Death in Venice is designed to cast a hypnotic spell even as it presents extended discussions about the nature of art and the tragic impermanence of human existence.
          For viewers who lock into the film’s singular frequency, Death in Venice undoubtedly has the impact of classical art. For mere mortals, it’s a highly admirable work that combines challenging subject matter with challenging themes.

          Set early in the 20th century, the film opens with well-dressed but desperately uptight gentleman Gustav (Dirk Bogarde) arriving in Venice by launch. Simultaneous with using point-of-view shots to revel in Venice’s architectural beauty, Visconti situates Gustav perfectly. The composer is first seen on the deck of the launch, slumped in a chair with a blanket over his legs, like an invalid. Then, when he squabbles with a gondola driver and fusses over his luggage, Gustav reveals his distance from the common man. This distance remains intact for nearly the entire story.
          As Gustav relaxes in a luxury hotel, occasionally venturing out to walk around the city, he spies Tadzio (Björn Andrésen), a gleaming blond lad visiting the city with his wealthy family. Sometimes Gustav regards Tadzio like a piece of exquisite architecture, and sometimes he regards the boy with romantic longing. Although they share enigmatic glances, they never speak. Meanwhile, Visconti cuts to flashbacks of Gustav in healthier times, when he debated lofty topics with colleagues while exploring the limitations and potential of his own talent. Cast over the whole movie is the ever-present specter of death, since Gustav and Tadzio had the bad luck to arrive in Venice just before an outbreak of cholera. The irony of the story is that Gustav rediscovers emotional and spiritual virility too late to make a second run at life. (In the flashbacks, a friend accuses Gustav of having shut down his sensuality in favor of pure intellectualism, making his slow death seem like a decay of the soul.)

          At 130 minutes, Death in Venice has the pacing of an epic even though the story is quite contained; one can imagine a truncated version of the movie gaining urgency while losing none of its potency. Sprawl aside, Death in Venice is dark and resonant. Gustav’s journey says something profound about the way we all struggle to find our places in the world, often mistaking false rewards for real ones, and his preoccupation with Tadzio dramatizes the trap of pursuing unattainable dreams.

Death in Venice: GROOVY

The Night Porter (1974)

          Disturbing and provocative, the Italian film The Night Porter belongs to a small subgenre of movies exploring the sexual depravity of Third Reich officers. Yet instead of taking the obvious route by simplistically portraying black-hearted Nazis exploiting innocent victims, co-writer/director Lilina Cavini presents a more complicated vision in which predator and prey become symbiotic; accordingly, The Night Porter can be taken literally or as a cruel metaphor representing the human tendency to embrace humiliating entanglements that generate electrifying sensations.
          The story takes place in 1957 Vienna, where Max (Dirk Bogarde) works the night desk at a posh hotel. One evening, he spots a beautiful woman in the hotel’s lobby, and recognizes her immediately as Lucia (Charlotte Rampling). Over the course of several flashbacks, Cavini reveals the nature of the couple’s relationship during World War II. Max was part of a group of SS officers who transformed prisoners into sexual playthings, and while Max grew infatuated with Lucia (he refers to her as “my little girl”), she succumbed to his aristocratic handsomeness despite his sadism. Now, years after the war, Lucia is married to an American orchestra conductor, and Max is associated with a cabal of former Nazis who purge war records in order to shield themselves from war-crimes prosecution. Initially, Max worries that Lucia will expose him, but when he confronts her, their old psychosexual attraction rekindles—so Max hides Lucia from his fellow Nazis, creating a private world of pain and pleasure.

          The first movie that veteran Italian filmmaker Cavini made in English, The Night Porter is challenging and perverse, with the film’s glossy surfaces and classical-arts milieu (ballet recitals, orchestral performances) communicating the thorny concept of sophisticated savagery. For instance, Max is a fastidious gentleman with immaculate grooming and manners, but he also derives erotic glee from hurting Lucia. Similarly, Lucia is something other than a mere victim; she finds satisfaction in subjugation. Throughout the film, Cavini toys with traditional associations. In the picture’s most famous scene, Rampling serenades a group of Nazis while wearing an officer’s cap, black leather opera gloves, and men’s trousers tethered to her rail-thin body with suspenders; Rampling’s casual toplessness and Cavini’s brazen mixture of contradictory signifiers elevates the scene into a study of abnormal desire.

          Despite consistently graceful camerawork and editing, The Night Porter occasionally succumbs to excess—the pacing is precious and slow—and some viewers will find the central relationship impossible to accept. Plus, Bogarde and Rampling are so icy that we mostly observe their dynamic from the outside, rather than getting drawn into their passions. Yet while The Night Porter probably alienates as many viewers as it intrigues, it’s inarguably a bold film bursting with artistry, ideas, and integrity.

 

The Night Porter: GROOVY

A Bridge Too Far (1977)

          Go figure that a movie about a military operation that was thwarted by excessive ambition would itself be thwarted by excessive ambition. Based on the doomed World War II campaign code-named Operation Market Garden, which was staged in late 1944 by Allied forces eager to maximize the gains of D-Day by ending the European component of the war with a push across Holland into Germany, A Bridge Too Far features one of the most impressive all-star casts of the ’70s, in addition to spectacular production values and a few powerful depictions of heroism and tragedy. Furthermore, the movie deserves ample praise for bucking war-movie convention by dramatizing a campaign that didn’t work. And, indeed, the theme evoked by the poetic title—sometimes, just one X factor stands between glory and ignominy—comes across in several key performances. Yet occasional glimpses of effective storytelling do not equal a completely satisfying movie, and A Bridge Too Far fails on many important levels when analyzed in its entirety.

          The movie is hard to follow, because it tracks too many characters in too many locations, and because, quite frankly, director Richard Attenborough fails to give greater dramatic weight to crucial moments. Everything in A Bridge Too Far is presented with almost exactly the same measure of gravitas, so Attenborough squanders interesting potentialities found throughout the movie’s script, which was penned by two-time Oscar winner William Goldman. Clearly, Attenborough and Goldman were both stymied, to a degree, by the sheer scale of the undertaking; producer Joseph E. Levine made it plain he wanted this movie to equal the 1962 epic The Longest Day, another all-star war picture based on a book by Cornelius Ryan.

          Yet while The Longest Day had the advantages of a triumphant subject (D-Day) and a receptive audience (moviegoers still embraced pro-military themes in the early ’60s), A Bridge Too Far is a far different creature—a story of battlefield hubris made at a time when America was still reeling from the traumas of the Vietnam War. So, even if the movie possessed a clearer narrative, chances are it still would’ve been the wrong movie at the wrong time.

          Having said all that, A Bridge Too Far has many noteworthy elements. The subject matter is fascinating, since Ryan’s book itemized the innumerable strategic errors made by the Allies in planning Operation Market Garden—beyond problems of scale, since the campaign involved things like an air drop of 35,000 paratroopers, the plan was so contingent upon component elements that if any one piece of the plan failed, the whole campaign would collapse. Therefore, the movie is a study of men who represent the margin of error that Operation Market Garden cannot afford—whether they’re Americans, Brits, or Poles, the soldiers in this movie try to achieve the impossible even when it’s plainly evident success is beyond their grasp.

          The most vivid moments involve Sean Connery and Anthony Hopkins as British officers trying to hold the Dutch town of Arnhem for days on end despite a crippling lack of reinforcements and supplies. Robert Redford dominates a key sequence in the third and final hour of the movie, playing an American officer who leads a seemingly suicidal charge across a heavily fortified river in broad daylight. Maximilian Schell makes an elegant impression as a German commander capable of mercy and ruthlessness, while Dirk Bogarde is appropriately infuriating as Schell’s opposite number on the Allied side, a British general who refuses to acknowledge the possibility of failure.

          Unfortunately, many promising characterizations are merely sketches: Actors Michael Caine, Edward Fox, Elliot Gould, Gene Hackman, Hardy Kruger, Laurence Olivier, Ryan O’Neal, and Liv Ullmann each have colorful moments, but all are badly underutilized. And as for James Caan, his entire showy sequence could have been deleted without affecting the story, since his subplot feels like a leftover from a World War II movie actually made during World War II. Ironically, though, his are among the film’s most memorable scenes.

A Bridge Too Far: FUNKY