Baffled! (1973)

          Following three years each as an ensemble player on Star Trek and Mission: Impossible, Leonard Nimoy apparently took just one stab at becoming the lead of his very own TV series, notwithstanding multiyear runs hosting the nonfiction shows In Search of . . . , Ancient Mysteries, and History’s Mysteries. (Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke!) Nimoy’s wannabe star vehicle, Baffled!, could just as easily have been titled Baffling!, seeing as how it’s confounding that anyone thought the concept could sustain an entire series. Even just watching the feature-length pilot episode, the only installment that was made, requires patience. Adding to the offbeat nature of the project is the sheer Englishness of Baffled!, which was photographed in the UK and coproduced by the British company ITC. Even the pilot’s costar, Susan Hampshire, is British. (One version of Baffled! was released theatrically in Europe, and a slightly different cut aired on American TV.)

          Yet the peculiarity of the project’s geographical origin pales next to the strangeness of the storyline: Nimoy plays a racecar driver who suddenly manifests psychic abilities, then teams with a paranormal specialist to solve supernatural crimes in Europe. Quite frankly, even Nimoy’s presence is odd, thanks to the actor’s aloof demeanor and lanky appearance—fascinating as he could be in the right role, Nimoy was not the matinee-idol type this sort of project requires. In any event, Baffled! opens during a race, when daring driver Tom Kovack (Nimoy) has a series of weird visions that cause him to ride off the road. For no good reason, he explains what happened on TV, attracting the attention of Michelle Brent (Hampshire). Tracking Tom down, she determines that his visions relate to a particular manor home in England, so away the two go for an adventure filled with danger and intrigue. The plot has something to do with a blowsy innkeeper (Rachel Roberts) tormenting an American movie star (Vera Miles), with the movie star’s teenaged daughter (Jewel Blanch) caught in the middle.

          Baffled! hits viewers with lots of hokey old-dark-house stuff, plus listless sequences of attempted violence; the bit of Nimoy falling off a cliff and safely landing in deep water is about as exciting as it gets. The acting is indifferent, the plotting is turgid, and the supernatural element—mostly comprising shots of Nimoy squinting while he has visions—adds little. Through it all, tinny music that could have been copped from  a trove of Avengers outtakes—as in Steed & Peel, not Captain America and Iron Man—honks and tweets on the soundtrack. Nearly the only rewarding aspect of watching Baffled! is listening to Nimoy croak lines in a ridiculous UK approximation of American slang. “I like you,” he says to Hampshire. “You’re warm, enthusiastic, and—why shouldn’t I use the word—you’re a great-lookin’ chick.”

Baffled!: FUNKY

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

          Although Australian director Peter Weir had been working steadily on feature and TV projects in his homeland since the late ’60s, he first scored worldwide acclaim with this evocative literary adaptation, which is often mistaken for a depiction of a real historical incident. Novelist Joan Lindsay, who wrote the book upon which the film is based, has given so many cryptic answers about the inspiration for his story that some interested parties have tried to prove that three girls from a private college (and one of their adult caretakers) really disappeared in 1900 while exploring Hanging Rock, a massive geological formation in South Australia. As written by Cliff Green, this film adaptation fuels the speculative fire by presenting Lindsay’s narrative like a true-life unsolved mystery. Moreover, Weir casts a beguiling spell by exploring the multilayered psychological impact of the disappearances on people throughout the area containing both the college and Hanging Rock. (The geological formation, at least, is real.)

          The film reveals characterization through crisis. Stern headmistress Mrs. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts) frays when the careful order of her school dissipates; fragile orphan Sara (Margaret Nelson) crumbles after the loss of a fellow student with whom she was infatuated; and a wealthy young man, Tom (Tony Llewellyn-Jones), becomes obsessed with finding the missing girls. Lingering over all of these characters is the specter of Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert), the leader of the group that went missing. An ethereal beauty, she represents a life force whose loss the world cannot abide. This is all very heady stuff, and Picnic at Hanging Rock is perhaps most successful as a conversation piece, since it raises all sorts of provocative questions about what happens when the lives we build for ourselves get shaken by unforeseeable events.
          Furthermore, Weir’s filmmaking is unassailably tasteful, with eerie pan-flute melodies floating over gossamer images of beautiful girls in white-linen dresses wandering through the volcanic outcroppings of Hanging Rock. Yet after the memorable first half-hour, which depicts the prelude to the disappearances and the actual Hanging Rock excursion, the narrative becomes muddy and turgid. Weir and his collaborators seem indecisive about which characters should be most prominent, and Weir vacillates between flights of dreamlike fancy and hard-edged vignettes of character-driven realism. The movie is also painfully humorless, so the middle stretch is quite tedious. Things cohere bit more during the finale, when viewers are finally shown the lasting impact of the disappearances, although it’s frustrating that certain climactic events are dismissed in a closing voiceover instead of being depicted onscreen. All in all, Picnic at Hanging Rock is filled with interesting insights, moments, and textures, but its restraint is stifling.
          Still, the picture helped Weir get noticed as a filmmaker of unusual sensitivity, so just a few years later, he directed his first Hollywood movie, the similarly moody The Year of Living Dangerously (1982). Six Oscar nominations later (so far), Weir is firmly entrenched as one of the world’s most respected cinematic storytellers.

Picnic at Hanging Rock: FUNKY