Some recent writing
1) Culture Vulture column for the NL:
This week sees a new DVD release of one of the great little-known gems of British cinema. The Offence, a powerful police drama which arrived in UK cinemas in 1972, was shot in England under the experienced direction of Hollywood’s Sidney Lumet and at the behest of the film’s star, Sir Sean Connery.
Connery’s decision to sign-on with United Artists for another Bond film, Diamonds Are Forever, had been made on the understanding that the studio would throw its weight behind the rather more modestly-financed project he had taken under his wing.
What followed was a familiar story of critical commendation, dismal performance at the box-office, and near total disappearance into obscurity. As Connery wryly quipped when interviewed by Belfast’s Mark Cousins for BBC television, ‘The Offence? My whole family went to see that one.’
Yet in defiance of the nigh-on four decades of neglect it has suffered since its cinematic release, The Offence has aged wonderfully well as a taut, memory-fixated study in psychosis and obsession which here and there recalls the great stage-plays of Harold Pinter.
In his towering, unmissable performance as the gruff, God-fearing Detective Sergeant Frank Johnson, Connery portrays a type of character that has perhaps become the stuff of cliché - the tough cop harbouring personal demons.
In Johnson’s case, these demons are constituted by the bottle, his broken marriage, and a growing inability to confine to the dark places of his mind the horrors he has witnessed during two decades in the job.
But here, unusually and refreshingly for a narrative about a CID officer, there is no question of these demons being battled against with what the audience may be supposed to regard as silent heroism, an affirmation of the character’s macho credentials. There is only the question of how much damage Johnson will do to himself and others as he succumbs to the gravity of his problems, a process which occurs as he works on a harrowing investigation into the rape of young girls in Berkshire.
The DS’s state of mind is brilliantly suggested by the cinematography of Gerry Fisher, which gives both interior and exterior shots a grey appearance, bleached of all vitality. We see from this that Johnson is moving through the shadow-world of the depressive, unable to engage properly with anything more substantial than his own tortured thoughts.
Though this may sound an unremittingly bleak scenario, there is some grim humour to savour in the friction between the old-school, sniffer-dog policeman Johnson and the well-heeled politesse of the resonantly-named Cameron. The latter is a Detective Inspector played by Peter Bowles (of To The Manor Born sitcom fame), who pops up among a fine supporting cast that is headed by Ian Bannen as an eccentric, manipulative, shabby-genteel suspect.
This simmering conflict with Cameron constitutes one aspect of the film which feels highly contemporary. It brings to mind in particular the Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson bristling against one of his professorial Continental peers, and in general the unstoppable rise of ‘modernisers’ and managerialists over the last decade or so.
What also feels contemporary about The Offence is its representation of England as a yellow sodium-lit concrete island - dank, grimy, and numbing. Much of post-1970s British cinema would have you believe that this un-Cool Britannia was left behind with the austerity of that decade.
However, recent films such as Eastern Promises and the otherwise disappointing Children Of Men (both, like The Offence, helmed by foreign directors) contain portraits of 21st Century London which echo that enduringly resonant vision of the cold, lonely soul of England’s urban landscape.
There is a certain timeliness, too, about watching The Offence in 2008, concurrent with 50th anniversary commemorations of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (innovative producers of the original Dr. Who theme among innumerable other soundtracks and radio jingles for the BBC). The Workshop-like ‘electronic realisation’ of The Offence’s aptly disquieting score was provided by Peter Zinovieff, a wealthy inventor who set up a studio to further the experiments of Workshop members.
It is difficult, indeed, to identify anything significant in the film which speaks only to an earlier time. Most troublingly, The Offence subtly unsettles the same kind of assumptions about our selfhood and agency that, for instance, the contemporary philosopher John Gray does when he writes, ‘Our lives are more like fragmentary dreams than the enactment of conscious selves.’
Cut to Connery’s DS Johnson, a man who has seen too much of the dark side of life, closing his eyes: 'All I can see are pictures.’
2) Belfast Festival film review for the NL:
Screened as part of the Belfast Festival’s celebration of Italian composer Ennio Morricone, The Bird With The Crystal Plumage is the 1970 debut of Morricone’s compatriot, the horror/thriller director Dario Argento.
Though both Argento and Morricone have long been figures of international renown, neither has quite been given his due by the critical establishment. Both men have worked extensively on films whose considerable artistic merit would be passed over by many who are unwilling or unable to see past these productions’ ‘trashy’ pulp veneer.
Unsurprisingly for a first effort, Bird… does not scale the same fearlessly innovative heights as later Argento films such as the delirious Gothic fantasy, Suspiria, and the nightmare in sunlight and white rooms that is Tenebrae.
Nonetheless, Bird… is an intriguing and satisfying creation of the director’s expressionistic stylishness and it remains one of his strongest works.
After it opens with a near-fatal assault in an art gallery that is partially witnessed by an American writer (Tony Musante) on a visit to Rome, the film enters tense murder mystery territory as the incident becomes linked to a series of knife-killings and - with dreamy associative thinking that is typical of an Argento movie - to a strange and violent naïf painting.
The superbly executed gallery sequence is arguably enough in itself to make the film worth a look. Here Argento conjures an uncanny feeling of primal fear among sculptures of giant talons and other exhibits that are imbued with a menacing aura.
Also memorable is the film’s teasingly ambiguous ending. Like the Joker in The Dark Knight Argento toys with our temptation to psychoanalyse, with the result that what drives the murderer is both explained and not explained and the denouement is either conventionally ‘happy’ or shadowed by foreboding (and therefore is both).
Morricone’s prominent music is a delight throughout. Ranging from feverish avant-garde combinations of Messiaen and free-jazz to bittersweet pastoral lullabies, it is intelligently attuned to Argento’s perception of the bond between love and death.
One of the many treasures among Morricone’s less famous work, it is pleasing to see it acknowledged by the Festival.
3) Counter Culture column for the NL (September)
