Dead Calm (1989)

Dead Calm is a 1989 Australian suspense thriller directed by Phillip Noyce, based on a novel by Charles Williams.

It’s a nautical thriller. John Ingram (Sam Neill) is an Australian naval officer whose son was killed in a car accident. His wife Rae (Nicole Kidman) survived the accident. The accident was not her fault. They both need time to recover. A cruise on John’s yacht seems like the perfect answer.

They spot a black schooner. A guy in a dinghy rows across from the schooner. He is Hughie Warriner (Billy Zane). He claims to be the sole survivor of a bizarre tragedy. The other five people on board the schooner died of food poisoning. Hughie claims the schooner is slowly sinking.

John is no fool. He’s spent twenty-five years at sea. He isn’t the slightest bit convinced by Hughie’s story. He locks Hughie into a cabin and rows across to the schooner to investigate. It becomes apparent that very bad very strange things went on aboard that schooner. Meanwhile Hughie has escaped and he’s hijacked John’s yacht, with Rae aboard.

John is stranded on the schooner. There is no wind and the engine doesn’t work. Rae is stuck on the yacht with a guy who could be merely a bit unbalanced but could be a total psycho. The latter seems more and more likely. Either way he’s extremely dangerous.

There are now essentially two stories going on. John, on board the schooner, tries to unravel what really happened on that unlucky vessel. It seems to have been some sort of sex cruise, with some very dangerous games being played.

Rae, on the yacht, has to find some way to subdue or trick Hughie so that she can stay alive and rescue her husband. This is becoming rather urgent. The schooner is slowly sinking.

Hughie’s intentions are frightening because they’re unknown. He might be a killer, he might have been a victim. He may be sexually obsessed with Rae. Or, more worrying, he may have created some weird romantic fantasy in his head, a fantasy in which he and Rae sail the South Pacific together. He may intend to kill Rae. He may intend to rape her.

It’s Rae’s story that becomes the main focus. That puts a lot of pressure on Nicole Kidman who was at that time a young relatively inexperienced actress and unknown outside Australia. She is more than equal to the challenge. This is the movie that demonstrated that Kidman could easily carry a film as a lead actress. And Rae is an interesting character. She’s no action heroine, just a resourceful woman fighting for survival. And she’s fighting to save her man. That will make her fight very hard indeed. Kidman makes Rae likeable and convincing. Rae could make things easier for herself by simply killing Hughie but, quite realistically, she is very reluctant to take that step. She’s an ordinary woman. Killing does not come naturally or easily to her.

Rae has one thing going for her. She’s a Navy wife. She knows boats and she knows the sea.

While Kidman is the standout performer both Sam Neill and Billy Zane are excellent.

These three people are the only significant characters in the movie, in fact for most of the running time they’re the only characters. The three leads had to be good and they had to work well together. They’re all equal to the job.

The cinematography is gorgeous. The location shooting was done on the Great Barrier Reef and the natural beauty nicely counterpoints the unnatural horrors.

The only character developed in any detail is Rae. Having lost her only child she comes to the realisation that her husband is all she’s got, but she loves him so that’s enough. She will do whatever it takes to save him. Nicole Kidman never goes over-the-top but she does a fine job letting us know what makes Rae tick.

We don’t know exactly what makes Hughie tick but that’s a plus rather than a minus. It makes him more frightening. It also means that Rae cannot reason with him.

Dead Calm doesn’t try to do anything too fancy. It’s a suspense thriller and it doesn’t get bogged down with extraneous details to any great extent. It just happens to be an extremely well-executed suspense thriller. It’s obviously a must-see if you’re a Nicole Kidman fan. Highly recommended.

The DVD release is barebones but the transfer is very good. There’s been a Blu-Ray release as well.

Philip Noyce went on to direct the criminally underrated erotic thriller Sliver (1993).

The Indian Tomb (1921)

Joe May’s 1921 silent epic The Indian Tomb was based on Thea von Harbou's very successful 1918 novel The Indian Tomb. Thea von Harbou was of course married to Fritz Lang. Lang and von Harbou wrote the screenplay for the film.

The novel, although extremely good, contains one very serious flaw. Interestingly enough that flaw is corrected in the movie. I don’t know whether it was von Harbou or Lang or May who made the change but it was very much a change for the better.

The movie is in two parts, Part I: The Mission of the Yogi (Die Sendung des Yoghi) and Part II: The Tiger of Bengal (Der Tiger von Eschnapur). It is in fact a single story with no obvious break between the two parts and the only reason it was originally released that way was the 3 hours and 40 minutes running time.

The story begins with a prologue. A yogi buried alive is resuscitated by the fabulously rich Ayan III, the Prince of Bengal (Conrad Veidt). According to legend when this happens the yogi must grant the person who revives him one wish. The prologue is important because it establishes that the yogi, Ramigani (Bernhard Goetzke), has supernatural or at least paranormal powers. And it establishes that Ramigani is compelled to carry out out the Prince’s commands even when he disagrees with them.

The Prince instructs Ramigami to persuade famed architect Herbert Rowland (Olaf Fønss) to travel to India to build a tomb for him. Herbert understands that the tomb will house the body of a princess, the beloved of the Prince. Herbert is persuaded that he must leave for India immediately without informing his fiancée Irene Amundsen (Mia May). Herbert departs on the Prince’s steam yacht. Irene is however a resourceful woman and she sets off for India as well.

On arrival in India Herbert discovers that there are very important things he hadn’t been told. The tomb is not to house the body of the Princess. It is to house the memory of a Great Love. A love betrayed. The Princess is alive. She has betrayed the Prince with a dashing but unscrupulous British officer and hunter, MacAllan.

The Prince has plans for revenge but his plans are not straightforward.

Herbert suffers several misfortunes, the most serious being that he is infected with leprosy. Nothing can save him. Or perhaps something can. But the price will be terrible.

MacAllan is a hunted man.

Irene is more or less a prisoner. The Prince’s feelings towards her are ambiguous. It’s possible that he desires her but his feelings about women are more than a little distorted.

Herbert and Irene become involved in attempts to rescue the Princess.

There is plenty of action and adventure. Narrow brushes with hungry tigers! Crocodile-infested rivers. A desperate escape across a rickety rope bridge over a chasm. A shootout at MacAllan’s bungalow. All filmed with style and energy.

This is however mostly a story about love. It’s a story of love betrayed, of misguided misplaced love, obsessive love, unhealthy love. But also noble love and faithful love.

Conrad Veidt is perfectly cast. He could play heroes or villains or victims or mysterious ambiguous characters and the Prince is all those things. He is probably mad, but he was probably once a very good man. Veidt also had tremendous magnetism. He’s in top form here.

The whole cast is good.

There’s plenty of interesting ambiguity. The Prince is not a mere villain. He is a man so shattered by emotional betrayal that he is no longer quite sane. The Princess is no innocent victim. She did betray the Prince’s love. And MacAllan is no hero. He not only seduced the Princess but boasted about it afterwards. Hebert Rowland is perhaps a little ambiguous as well, a man who allowed his artistic ambition to override his judgment. The yogi seems sinister at first but then we start to wonder.

This is a breathtakingly lavish production. The sets are jaw-dropping.

The movie might be better remembered had Lang directed it himself but I can’t fault May’s direction. This is a stunning emotionally complex movie and it’s very highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed Thea von Harbou's novel The Indian Tomb and also Lang’s own 1959 version, Fritz Lang's The Tiger of Bengal and The Indian Tomb (1959).

I’ve also reviewed another worthwhile Joe May movie, Asphalt (1929).

Shampoo (1975)

Shampoo is a 1975 sex comedy which was something of a personal project for Warren Beatty. He came up with the idea, he co-wrote the script with Robert Towne and he produced. It was a huge box-office hit. It’s intriguingly untypical of 1970s Hollywood movies, with definite hints of a European sensibility.

Right from the start the pacing is frenetic and the plotting is chaotic. But that’s intentional. It reflects the complete chaos of the life of the protagonist, George (Warren Beatty).

George is a very fashionable Beverly Hills hairdresser. Despite being a hairdresser he is very interested in women. Maybe too interested for his own good.

His ambition is to have his own beauty salon. He’s an excellent hairdresser and would have no difficulty attracting clients. Every rich fashionable woman in L.A. wants her hair done by George. The problem is that George is thirty-five going on sixteen. There’s no way he is responsible enough to have his own business. But self-awareness is not George’s strong suit.

His biggest problem is juggling all his women. He is currently sleeping with quite a few women. In fact lots of women.

He has a cute girlfriend Jill (Goldie Hawn). He’s also sleeping with a rich client, Felicia (Lee Grant). Felicia thinks she can persuade her rich tycoon husband Lester (Jack Warden) to advance George the money to open his own beauty shop. Fortunately Lester doesn’t know that George is sleeping with his wife.

Lester has a glamorous mistress, Jackie (Julie Christie. Fortunately Lester doesn’t know that Jackie is George’s ex-girlfriend. It’s even more fortunate that Lester doesn’t know that George is still sleeping with Jackie. It’s also probably lucky that Lester doesn’t know that George is sleeping with his daughter Lorna (Carrie Fisher). Felicia knows, and it seems to excite her.

George is so self-absorbed that he has no idea that he is self-absorbed. He knows his life is over-complicated but it’s never occurred to him that this may be his own fault. He is good-looking but he is so charmless and selfish that you wonder why women are attracted to him. Perhaps it’s the bad boy thing. Or the irresponsible naughty boy thing. Or they think they can change him.

This is the world of the rich and vacuous in L.A., decadent shallow people living shallow meaningless lives with enough money to shelter them from reality.

The movie begins on November 4, 1968, the day before the election that swept Nixon into office. There is presumably some political satire intended but what’s interesting is that it’s the achingly liberal wealthy middle-class elites who are being satirised. This is a Hollywood movie savaging the middle class rather than the working class or rural Americans who were usually Hollywood’s favoured targets.

But this is not really a political movie. It’s a social and sexual satire, and a social and sexual melodrama. It’s an intelligent sophisticated sex comedy. And as social and sexual satire it has real bite.

What Shampoo really takes aim at is deception. It’s not the sexual promiscuity of the various characters that does the damage, it’s the lies they tell.

Jack Warden pretty much steals the picture but Warren Beatty is very impressive. George is not an admirable person but Beatty brings him to life. We may still not like George but we start to see what makes him tick. Julie Christie and Goldie Hawn are excellent.

At the time Shampoo got an X rating. There’s some mild nudity and some mildly graphic simulated sex but mostly it got the X rating because it’s a very grown-up movie. It deals with grown-up subject matter in a grown-up way.

Even though it’s a product of mainstream Hollywood this movie has more of an affinity with sophisticated European sex comedies such as Pasquale Festa Campanile’s The Libertine (1968) than with the general run of mainstream Hollywood movies. Shampoo was a very unusual Hollywood movie at the time and it’s still unusual. It takes sexual relationships seriously and it dissects them mercilessly. But with sensitivity. These are people with chaotic personal lives. They play emotional and sexual games and they forget that people, both men and women, can get hurt.

Shampoo is also very funny.

The Criterion Blu-Ray looks good and includes a very good interview with Warren Beatty.

Casino Royale (1954 teleplay)

There have been several attempts to bring Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, to the screen. The 1967 attempt was of course one of the most epic trainwrecks in movie history. The first attempt however was an American television production which went to air in October 1954. It was an episode of the Climax anthology series.

It has huge huge problems but these were not necessarily entirely the fault of the people who made this teleplay.

This was live television. All we have is a crude kinescope recording. Being live means it’s very studio-bound. Live television dramas were shot entirely on two or three sets. And the sets had to be simple. There was no way to do live TV any other way. Very early television, from the late 40s and early 50s, is extraordinarily clunky and stodgy mostly due to the extreme limitations of the technology. If you want an example, try watching Racket Squad (1951-53). If you can endure it.

But progress was rapid. Within a year or two of this teleplay’s broadcast TV was becoming much more assured and much more polished. Series like Alfred Hitchcock Presents (which premiered in 1955), Maverick (premiered 1957) and M Squad (premiered 1957) represent a staggering quantum leap from series like Climax.

There was no way to do exciting action scenes on live TV so the action in Casino Royale is very limp.

The other thing to consider is that in 1954 Ian Fleming and James Bond were totally unknown in the United States. Only one Bond novel had been published in the US at that stage and sales were miserable. Even in Britain Bond was still far from being a pop culture icon. In the US nobody had heard of James Bond. So it’s not surprising that in this adaptation he’s an American named Jimmy Bond (played by an American actor) and he’s a totally conventional American screen tough guy.

There is almost no mention at all of espionage. The villain, Le Chiffre, could just as easily have been a regular gangster. Bond could have been an FBI agent.

This is Casino Royale done as third-rate stock-standard hardboiled crime. It just doesn’t feel like a real spy thriller.

The glamorous deadly and sexy Vesper Lynd from the novel is nowhere to be seen. She is replaced by a dull colourless good girl heroine, Valerie Mathis (Linda Christian). Casino Royale without Vesper Lynd is like Double Indemnity without Phyllis Dietrichsen.

All that’s left from the novel is the confrontation between Bond and Le Chiffre at the gaming tables, and a very sanitised version of the scene in which Bond is tortured by Le Chiffre.

The gambling scene is done reasonably well. It’s the kind of scene that could be made to work on live television. Having Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre certainly helps.

Bond’s CIA contact Felix Leiter becomes a British agent, Clarence Leiter (played by Australian Michael Pate).

It’s hard to judge the acting because you always have to remember that this is all done within the constraints of live TV. And in 1954 actors were vaguely aware that TV acting was not like either stage or film acting but they hadn’t yet quite figured out the right approach. It’s amazing to see such entertaining actors as Peter Lorre and Michael Pate coming across as slightly stodgy.

Barry Nelson as Bond is terrible. You have to make allowance for the fact that he’s not actually playing Bond as Bond, he’s playing Bond as a generic American tough guy cop type. But he’s still very dull.

Anything recorded on kinescope (the predecessor to videotape) is going to look rough and this teleplay does indeed look rough. It was apparently thought to be lost fir many years until a copy turned up in the 80s.

Unless you’re a Peter Lorre completist or a Bond completist there’s no particular reason to watch this one. It doesn’t feel even remotely like a Bond thriller.

Ladyhawke (1985)

Ladyhawke is a 1985 fantasy film and it really is a bit of an oddity. I think it’s a wonderful movie but I can see why it flopped at the box office. It’s totally out of step with other movies of that genre of that era. It’s also to some extent out of step with the mainstream filmmaking approaches of the 80s.

It was produced and directed by Richard Donner.

The setting is northern Italy. The time period is not specified precisely but references to the exploits of the hero’s grandfather during the Crusades might suggest the 13th or 14th centuries.

A young thief, Phillipe Gaston (Matthew Broderick), escapes from an escape-proof dungeon.

Local authority is vested in the Bishop of Aquila (played by John Wood) and the bishop wants Phillipe recaptured. He sees the young thief’s escape as a challenge to his prestige and authority. The bishop is something of a tyrant and seems to rule mostly by fear.

Phillipe encounters Etienne of Navarre (Rutger Hauer). Navarre is a rather brooding figure, obviously a man in the grip of some obsession, but in his own way he seems to be a decent man who can even be almost kindly at times. Navarre has a hawk, an impressive bird of which he is inordinately proud. There is clearly a bond between the man and the hawk.

But at nightfall Navarre disappears completely and a beautiful lady appears. She is Isabeau of Anjou (Michelle Pfeiffer). She has an animal companion as well, a wolf. There is clearly a bond between the woman and the wolf.

In fact Navarre and Isabeau are the victims of an awful curse. They were lovers, until they aroused the ire of the bishop who called on the powers of darkness to afflict with a cruel and ingenious curse. During the day Isabeau is transformed into the hawk. At night Navarre is transformed into the wolf. They can never be together in human form. They are in fact doomed to be forever together and forever apart.

A nice touch is that in their animal forms they have no knowledge of their human natures. All the wolf knows is that for some reason he must protect this woman. All the hawk knows is that somehow she belongs to this man. They can never communicate. They can only communicate very indirectly, through Phillipe.

Another very nice touch is that Phillipe is a likeable pleasant resourceful young man but he is a chronic liar. That turns out to be useful. Whenever Isabeau asks if Navarre has spoken of her Phillipe assures her that Navarre speaks constantly of the strength of his love for her. That isn’t true. Navarre is a man of few words who could never articulate his feelings in this way. Phillipe tells Isabeau lies, but they are true lies. They are the things that are in Navarre’s heart. When Navarre asks if Isabeau has spoken of him Phillipe tells him the same sorts of true lies. There are things Isabeau cannot bring herself to say but Phillipe has survived as long as he has by being extremely astute. He knows how Isabeau feels about Navarre.

When the hawk is wounded crazy old monk Imperius (Leo McKern) enters the picture. He knows something very very important, but he doesn’t know how to make Navarre and Isabeau believe it.

By the mid-80s the established formula for adventure or fantasy movies was non-stop action, spectacle, some humour and a dash of romance. When the sword-and-sorcery genre emerged the formula remained the same but with a slightly tongue-in-cheek edge.

Ladyhawke ignores this formula completely. The focus is entirely on the love story. There’s some action and some excitement but it’s handled in a low-key way and there are no spectacular action set-pieces. This is a movie that relies on mood rather than spectacle. It’s a beautiful movie but it’s beautiful in a subtle slightly dreamy way.

This is a movie that seems to be aiming for the tone of 19th century medievalism - the romantic harkening back to the days of chivalry of Sir Walter Scott’s novels, of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and of Pre-Raphaelite painting. I think it does this very successfully.

The casting is perfect. Rutger Hauer was a guy who could wear medieval garb and make you think that he’d been dressing that way all his life. He plays Navarre as a brooding but very sympathetic figure. Nothing matters to him except for the woman he loves. It’s an obsession, but a noble obsession. Hauer does not give a conventional action hero performance. He’s much more subtle than that. We feel Navarre’s pain, but the pain is not on the surface. It’s deep within Navarre’s soul. He simply cannot live with Isabeau.

Michelle Pfeiffer is just right. The first time we see her we are struck by her fragile ethereal beauty. And we know that this is a high-born lady. There’s nothing arrogant about Isabeau, just the placid assurance of a woman who has known since childhood what it means to be a lady. Isabeau is definitely not a kickass action heroine or a feisty girl heroine. She has courage, but it is a woman’s courage.

When Phillipe meets her he knows that he is going to devote himself to the service of this lady without any hope of reward. To serve such a lady is an honour. What’s extraordinary is that Matthew Broderick and Michelle Pfeiffer make this devotion totally convincing. Somehow all three leads are able to make us believe that this world of fairy-tale romance and chivalry is real.

The Bishop of Aquila is not a conventional adventure movie larger-than-life villain. He is a man in the grip of an obession. It has lewd him to do great evil, but the obsession started as love.

Ladyhawke never really had a chance at the box office. It’s a very uncommercial movie. It goes its own way. It’s a beautiful fairy-tale romance and I adored it. Very highly recommended.