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

1980 Week: Flash Gordon

          For many geeks of a certain age, Flash Gordon conjures warm memories of seeing the film in theaters, listening endlessly to the soundtrack LP featuring original songs by Queen, and revisiting the picture during its regular airings on cable. Over the years, the movie has generated not only a large cult following but also plentiful ancillary material—action figures, DVD reissues, a loving tribute nestled inside the comedy blockbuster Ted (2012), directed by Flash Gordon superfan Seth McFarlane. That’s quite an afterlife for a flick that producer Dino Di Laurentiis extrapolated from on old Saturday-matinee serial in order to capitalize on the success of Star Wars (1977). Even though Di Laurentiis spent lavishly on costumes, sets, and special effects, Flash Gordon originally seemed destined for oblivion after its lukewarm box-office reception. Many critics and fans embraced the picture as a kitschy delight, but others merely rolled their eyes at the silliness of the enterprise.

          After all, it’s hard to take a movie seriously when it includes corny dialogue, one-dimensional characterizations, and a terrible leading performance by former Playgirl model Sam J. Jones. But then again, that’s the weird fun of Flash Gordon—the movie embraces its own goofiness, in essence presenting an outer-space adventure while simultaneously satirizing outer-space adventures.

          Flash Gordon’s plot recycles narrative elements from the original serials, so the story begins when outer-space tyrant Ming the Merciless (Max Von Sydow) rains catastrophic ruin onto Earth for sport. Through convoluted circumstances, eccentric scientist Hans Zarkov (Topol) kidnaps New York Jets quarterback Flash Gordon (Jones) and stewardess Dale Arden (Melody Anderson) for a trip to space, because Hans plans to confront Earth’s tormentor. Upon reaching the planet Mongo, which comprises several distinct realms (each with its own climate), Flash pisses off Ming but wins the favor of Ming’s slutty daughter, Princess Aura (Ornella Muti). She frees Flash from Ming’s prison even as Ming prepares to marry Dale, with whom he’s become smitten. After several death-defying adventures, Flash rallies several “princes of Mongo,” including the Robin Hood-like Barin (Timothy Dalton), for a revolution against Ming’s oppressive rule.

          The filmmakers’ tongue-in-cheek approach doesn’t always work, but Flash Gordon has a vibe uniquely its own. The juxtaposition of ’30s-style production design with ’70s-style arena rock is bizarre, the clash between bombastic supporting performance by classical actors and inept work by Anderson and Jones is jarring, and the presence of the great Von Sydow lends something like credibility to certain scenes. Plus, to give credit where it’s due, some of the movie’s ridiculous action scenes are genuinely exciting, such as a mano-a-mano duel that takes place on a giant revolving disk filled with spikes and an epic air battle involving flying “bird men,” souped-up “rocket cycles,” and phallic-looking spaceships. Best of all, perhaps, is the movie’s opulent color scheme, since Di Laurentiis went to the same pop-art well from which he drew the look of Barbarella (1968).

          Ace screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr., who earned nerd-culture immortality by writing the pilot for the 1966 Batman TV series and thus creating she show’s campy style, brings a playful sensibility to his script for Flash Gordon. The plotting is deliberately adolescent, with heavy play given to the boy-friendly themes of heroism and lust. Semple also jams the script full of jokes, some cringe-worthy and some sly. Meanwhile, director Mike Hodges—a hell of a long way from the gritty noir of Get Carter (1971)—mostly tries to mimic the way George Lucas mimicked serials while shooting Star Wars.

Flash Gordon: FUNKY

Wuthering Heights (1970)

          Despite its enduring stature as one of the most exquisite novels ever written, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847) has yet to receive a definitive screen adaptation. If only by default, the most acclaimed version to date is a 1939 drama starring Laurence Olivier as brooding romantic antihero Heathcliff. Yet by dint of the era in which it was made, the Olivier movie is chaste, even though the level of implied sexual tension is high, so there was ample reason to revisit the material in the '70s, by which time restraints upon the depiction of taboo subjects had loosened. Ironically, however, pushing cinematic boundaries is not the defining characteristic of the 1970 Wuthering Heights, which was a rare venture into the world of highbrow cinema for B-movie specialists American International Pictures. Although Patrick Tilley's intelligent script both accentuates the lurid elements of Brontë's story and adds a few dark flourishes (such as intimations about Heathcliff's parentage), the movie is, by comparison to other pictures released at the same time, as restrained as the 1939 version was in its day.

          Making this stylistic choice even more surprising is the involvement of director Robert Fuest, who later made his name helming gory but visually inventive thrillers including The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971). Rather than running with the supernatural elements of Brontë's tale, Fuest and his collaborators offer a straight transposition of the novel, albeit with a handful of additions to and/or deletions from the original narrative. What emerges from this creative process is a movie that's perhaps a bit too respectable. The image-making, mood-setting, and storytelling are all exemplary, but leading actors Anna Calder-Marshall and Timothy Dalton fail to generate the necessary romantic heat. Make no mistake, this isn't some uptight Masterpiece Theatre take on Brontë. Quite to the contrary, this Wuthering Heights is filled with betrayal and cruelty and heartbreak, often pitched at a high level of emotional intensity. The minor but important caveat is simply that the actors living inside Fuest's artfully composed frames don't reach the transcendent heights, no pun intended, to which they aspire.

          Still, there's a lot to admire here. The underlying story, of course, is remarkable—a twisted ordeal of capricious fate, overpowering love, and spiteful violence set against the metaphorically rich backdrop of remote estates dotting the hills and valleys of the English moors. Contributing fine elements to the movie are cinematographer John Coquillon, whose claustrophobic and crisp images capture the story's inherent fusion of danger and intimacy; composer Michelle Legrand, whose plaintive melodies speak for the characters' tortured souls; and title designer Maurice Binder, who sets the atmosphere perfectly with grim tableux of ragged peaks juxtaposed with overcast skies. Plus, even if Calder-Marshall and Dalton seem too controlled to get lost inside their animalistic characters, the performers look their parts thanks to unruly hair and wild eyes—the image of Cathy and Heathcliff as two halves of one otherworldly entity comes across clearly.

Wuthering Heights: GROOVY

Agatha (1979)

          Elegant and smart, Agatha has so many virtues it should be a better movie, but a sloppy script and questionable casting get in the way of the film’s lush production values and sensitive performances. An imaginary exploration of what might have happened in 1926, when the internationally famous mystery novelist Agatha Christie disappeared for 12 days, the movie presents a complex intrigue involving adultery, deception, romance, and a wicked plan to kill someone using an offbeat weapon—obviously, the idea was to entangle Christie in a murder plot as ornate as those found in her books. Alas, the piece is more ambitious than successful, largely because the filmmakers fail to properly define Christie and the other main character, an American journalist working in England, before things get weird; thus, viewers are forever racing to catch up with what’s happening, which precludes any real emotional involvement in the storyline.

          Furthermore, leading lady Vanessa Redgrave, playing Christie, and leading man Dustin Hoffman, as the journalist, are mismatched aesthetically and artistically. While it’s refreshing to see a female star tower over her male counterpart, the duo lacks chemistry, and Redgrave’s spacey detachment feels natural while Hoffman’s affectation of globe-trotting sophistication feels contrived.

          The story proper begins when Englishwoman Christie has a quarrel with her awful husband (Timothy Dalton), who wants a divorce so he can marry his attractive secretary (Celia Gregory). Meanwhile, popular columnist Wally Stanton (Hoffman) has become infatuated with Christie, whom he saw from afar at a press conference. When a distraught Christie flees her home, Wally tracks her down to a spa, where she has registered under an alias. He also learns that the secretary is a guest there. Disguising his true identity, Wally courts Christie and determines she means to harm the secretary.

          As written by Kathleen Tynan and Arthur Hopcraft, Agatha wobbles indecisively between drama, romance, and thrills for much of its running time, thereby failing to excel in any of the three genres. Versatile director Michael Apted guides actors well (even though the geography of scenes is muddied by arty camera angles), and legendary cinematographer Vittorio Storaro elevates the material considerably with his luminous images. Both leading actors are strong, though they seem to be starring in totally different movies: Hoffman’s charming turn is all surface, while Redgrave’s intellectualized performance is all subtext. So, while Agatha has many admirable qualities, not least of which is a genuinely imaginative premise, the lack of a solid narrative foundation prevents these qualities from coalescing into a satisfying whole. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Agatha: FUNKY

Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)

          A dense historical drama bursting with sex, treachery, and violence, Mary, Queen of Scots features enough narrative for a miniseries, so viewers not already versed in the backstory of the British royal family (myself included) might have difficulty grasping all of the picture’s nuances. That said, the broad strokes are (relatively) simple. In the year 1560, 18-year-old Mary Stuart (Vanessa Redgrave) ascends to the French throne after the death of her husband, the Gallic monarch. Stuart is also, by birthright, the queen of Scotland. Advisors send Mary to Scotland as a means of ensuring her security (female leaders were perpetually under threat in Mary’s era), but Mary’s return to Scotland alarms her cousin, England’s Queen Elizabeth I (Glenda Jackson).

          A fervent Protestant, Elizabeth recognizes that Mary’s potential claim to the English throne could make her a rallying point for Catholic factions looking to reclaim power over the British Empire. Before long, the respective queens are locked in mortal battle. Others caught in the palace intrigue include Mary’s ambitious brother, James Stuart (Patrick McGoohan), who believes he can manipulate his sister and claim Scotland for himself; David Riccio (Ian Holm), a clever representative of the Vatican who aids Mary; and Lord Damley (Timothy Dalton), an aristocrat sent by Elizabeth to tempt Mary into a marriage with political advantages for Elizabeth.

          It’s quite a lot to follow, though the principal focus is the contrast between the two queens: Elizabeth is a master strategist who remains unwed lest a husband diminish her stature, whereas Mary is a naïve optimist who tumbles into impetuous romances until time and tragedy make her wise.

          The leading performances are impeccable. Jackson rips through dialogue with wicked glee, adroitly illustrating how Elizabeth had to be smarter than every man around her simply to survive, and yet Jackson also shows intense undercurrents of longing and rage; though onscreen for less time than Redgrave, Jackson commands the picture with a deeply textured performance. Redgrave gradually introduces layers of complexity behind her luminous beauty, succinctly demonstrating the maturation of a woman in impossible circumstances. As for the men surrounding these powerful actresses, they’re a mixed bag. Dalton and Holm play their arch roles well, though each succumbs to florid excesses. McGoohan is quietly insistent in his vaguely villainous role, and Nigel Davenport (as Mary’s protector, Lord Bothwell) gives a virile turn marked by equal amounts of bluster and bravery.
          The film looks fantastic, with immaculate costumes and sets creating a vivid sense of the story’s 16th-century milieu, and composer John Barry anchors key moments with a typically lush musical score. Mary, Queen of Scots may be too arcane for casual viewers—it’s not as accessible, for instance, as the ’60s royal dramas The Lion in Winter and A Man for All Seasons—and clarity suffers because the movie barrels through so many eventful decades. But as a showcase for great acting and as an introduction to an amazing historical figure, it’s well worth examining.

Mary, Queen of Scots: GROOVY

Sextette (1978)

          If there’s one scene that epitomizes the spellbinding strangeness of Sextette, a big-budget musical comedy that’s both tone-deaf and completely unfunny, it’s an extended romantic duet between the heroine and the younger man she just married. The leading lady is none other than Mae West, the notorious actress/writer who first achieved fame in the 1920s for scandalous stage shows. The bridegroom is played by Englishman Timothy Dalton, a decade before his brief run as 007. At the time, West was 84 and Dalton was 32, yet the scene features the actors sharing vocal chores (and they are chores, since neither can sing) on a lifeless, quasi-disco version of the Captain and Tennille hit “Love Will Keep Us Together.”

          Dalton’s a slim young man wearing an elegant tux, and West is an overweight senior hidden behind gallons of makeup, acres of Edith Head-designed sequined costuming, and a haze filter thick enough to trigger a smog alert. At the most ludicrous moment of this sequence, Dalton sings the laughably re-written lyric, “Young and beautiful, your looks will never be gone.” The camera then cuts to a close-up (shot from about 20 feet away) of West writhing seductively, her looks very much gone.

          And that’s pretty much the tone of this whole excruciating picture, which features an old-fashioned lark of a plot about legions of men lusting after West’s character, Marlo Manners. Marlo is a Hollywood movie star who just married her sixth husband, Great Britain’s Lord Barrington (Dalton). Their honeymoon is being celebrated by the public and documented by the media as a major event, but before the duo can (shudder) consummate their union, Marlo’s agent (Dom DeLuise) says the U.S. government wants Marlo to seduce a foreign leader (Tony Curtis) into cooperating with an international peace initiative. Meanwhile, Marlo’s fifth husband, gangster Vance Norton (George Hamilton), has resurfaced despite everyone believing him dead, and he’s intent on reclaiming Marlo’s hand.

          Also thrown into the mix are a fey fashion designer (played by The Who drummer Keith Moon), an imperious Russian film director (played by Beatles drummer Ringo Starr), real-life broadcasters Rona Barrett and Regis Philbin (as themselves), and cameo players Walter Pidgeon and George Raft. Oh, and shock-rocker Alice Cooper shows up at the end, without his trademark ghoul make-up, to (quite effectively) croon a number as a singing waiter.

          This whole mess is based upon the last play West wrote, also called Sextette, and because the play opened in 1961, questions of “why” are unavoidable. Why was a film adaptation deemed necessary almost 20 years after the play opened? Why was a West comeback deemed necessary, more than 30 years after her last starring role in a movie? And why the hell didn’t anyone realize how wrong all of this was? Answers to these puzzlers are lost to the ages, so we’re merely left with a cinematic curio. Sextette is filled with images that would be innocuous in other circumstances but are mind-warpingly bizarre given West’s advanced age: a roomful of bodybuilders flexing their muscles to curry West’s favor; a roomful of diplomats (including a stand-in for then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter) singing and dancing as West holds them in her thrall; West cooing sexual puns as she lounges in bed and drives men like Curtis, Dalton, and Hamilton to erotic distraction.

          West’s performance is abysmal, since she tries to mimic the sass of bygone days without acknowledging the passage of time; the poor woman looks close to toppling when she tries to shimmy in tight dresses. About the only good thing one can say about Sextette is that even though much of the dialogue recycles past favorites (“Why don’t you come up and see me sometime,” and so on), West had not completely lost her flair for penning ribald one-liners, like this zinger: “I’m the girl who works for Paramount all day, and Fox all night.”

Sextette: FREAKY