The Sweeney: Contract Breaker

 "They've made up their mind it was me...."

Once again it's fun to see the world of half a century ago. Prison scenes straight out of Porridge. A retirement presentation at work where the booze flowsfreely and the air is clogged with tobacco smoke. Stock car racing. The clothes. The cars. And yes, people seemily did look much older then.

But this isa genuinely impressive episode, penned by one Robert Bank Stewart, whose work for Doctor Who is well known to me. The conceit is simple: Danny Keever, on day release before his release from prision, is framed for a bank job and it's up to Regan to prove his innocence when everyone else has made their mind up. We know from the start that Danny must be innocent, but the way this plays out, and how it resolves, is nicely done and very clever.

I particularly like the way the sub-plot with the aggrieved member of the gang with his posh car marries up with the rest of the plot. But it's not just the cleverness. As ever, it's the gritty realism of the acting, the dialogue, the direction. You feel utterly immersed in this world.

And wow... Warren Clarke certainly looks young here.

 

Hammer House of Horror: The Thirteenth Reunion

 "I don't know why we have a women's page. We don't have a men's page!"

Last episode was the fun and silly sort of Hammer Horror. This second episode could not be more dissimilar. Superbly and inteligentlly scripted and shot, it is a masterpiece of suspense that starts with a macabre mystery and ends with a truly nightmarish shot.

The opening scenes seem to promise, despite the witty and likeable nature of protagonist Ruth (the excellent Julia Foster), little more than an unusually brutal weight loss regimen presided over by Renton's dad from Trainspotting.Yet when Kevin Stoney appears we know that something's up and, by the time we meet the gang including Von Smallhausen from 'Allo 'Allo, the script is cleverly feeding us the morsels we need to work out exactly what it is that is happening and why, in a masterly use of the art of plotting.

This is subtle, intelligent, gripping horror and the best thing I've seen from Hammer since The Devil Rides Out. I have absolutely no idea what to expect next.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: How It All Fits Together

”One day that lack of moderation will be Karla’s downfall.”

Things are developing now, plot-wise, but plot is not, of course, everything. The slow pace allows for depth, character and, I think, commentary both on how youthful ideology fades into cynicism, as well as reflection once more on how Britain's place in the world has diminished into- to use a '70s phrase- managed decline. All so much more grown-up than the delusions of today's political class that we, a medium power since at least 1956, can somehow survive against the great powers of today without the solidarity of the European Union. But I digress.

Perhaps the central scene is the flashback to Smiley’s interrogation of Karla in New Delhi in the ‘50s, where Smiley talks and talks and expresses a cynicism about the Cold War and ideology that he assumes his counterpart shares- but Karla, a fanatical Communist, says nothing. And there is another interrogation- of Peter by Percy Alleline, who now knows of Ricky Tarr and believes him to be a defector. But this in turn proves to Smiley that the Witchcraft source is linked to the mile in that both are run by Karla. Soviet penetration of British intelligence is complete, and now we have to tell the Americans, who don’t trust us anyway. Such is our place in the world.

Not everything here is worthy of praise- there are once again no female speaking parts(!) and I note that Fawn, the only character not from the world of public schools and Oxbridge, has his accent mocked and is judged only in terms of his physical prowess. But things are heating up, and it’s all very compelling.

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

"You are now a murderer, little Alex."

Anthony Burgess may not be a fashionable author but I'm a huge fan of his. I've read a large amount of his work, from A Dead Man in Deptford to Earthly Powers and while, yes, there's certainly a fair amount of Catholic guilt in there as subtext, you can't reduce him to that as a writer; he has such fun playing with ideas in gloriously erudite prose. A Clockwork Orange is no exception- a treatise not only on sin but also on civil liberties vs. law and order, on free will, on the awkward fact that one can appreciate high culture and still be evil, whatever F.R. Leavis may think.

So how does Stanley Kubrick handle it? Well, with great aplomb. The entire film takes place amongst the brutalist architecture of the third quarter of the twentieth century, even the scenes set outside, with rose horrible associations not yet of decay (as I'm sure the same locations would have evoked a few years later) but of a brutal, soulless totalitarianism of the mind, which fits the totalitarianism of what happens to Alex. Yet law and order truly has broken down and totalitarian mind control is proposed as a solution; there is no role for decent liberals here, whom the script even seems to mock as elitists. It's a chilling echo of modern times. The fashions- while boiler suits, bowler hats, fake eyelashes- are striking and succeed in giving the film a sense of timeless in spite of the inevitable 1971-ness of various things, not least the police brutality.

The film would not be the triumph it is without a stellar central performance by a young Malcolm McDowell, who is not only convincing but successfully manages to imbue the psychopath Alex with sufficient charm to leaven the darkness of the film. McDowell is ably assisted by a strong cast including a startlingly young Warren Clarke. The directorial style is just as awesome as we might expect.

After a couple of crappy films it's such a relief to be blogging a true masterpiece like this. A truly seminal film.