Our Man Flint

After Dinner Flint

Our Man Flint
20th Century Fox 1966
Directed by Daniel Mann
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Spoilers a-go-go.

Our Man Flint was one of my favourite movies when I was a kid in the 1970s and remains so to this day. Essentially it’s a ‘band wagon’ film, in that it’s trying to capture some of the box office magic which the EON James Bond movies had been doing since four years before. Once a popular version of Bond had finally been unleashed on a largely unsuspecting public (the films were pretty ground breaking in their day), everyone was trying to rush their own knock off versions out into the cinematic wild, with perhaps the Italians and French churning out many of these things. 

The Americans, also, did a fair few and perhaps their most successful were their spoofs such as the four Matt Helm movies, which were absolutely nothing like the books they were based on and starred Dean Martin in the title role, where perhaps someone like John Wayne might have been closer to the character as written in Donald Hamilton’s popular novels (I’ll be reviewing those movies for the blog at some point too, of course). Their other big contribution was the Flint series of two films (and, much later, a truly terrible, missed the point TV pilot which I’m not sure I can be subjecting myself to again for a review). 

The Flint movies were where the Americans really got the formula right and the writers must have had their tongues lodged firmly in their cheeks as the title character, Derek Flint played by James Coburn, out does and sends up, not just Ian Fleming’s beloved character but also the whole idea of the secret agent movie. It’s absolutely ridiculous but, because the leads, including Lee J Cobb as Flint’s former war commander and Gila Golan as the turncoat femme fatale, all play it absolutely straight... the silliness works beautifully until you’re left with an absolutely perfect storm of spy tropes, action and ‘I can’t believe they just got away with that’ gags. 

How silly is it? Well, it’s beautifully over the top. How about the idea of Flint, observed by his four female ‘assistants’, with just his head and feet resting between two chairs, his body suspended off the ground in this manner while he rests (which apparently is something Coburn was able to do and was filmed as was), stopping his own heart for three hours and woken only when a little metronomic attachment comes out of his watch and starts his pulse ticking over again. Or the scene where he kills a fly in a room with a blow dart. Or the scene where he attacks two of the guards at the headquarters of ZOWIE (Zonal Organization for World Intelligence and Espionage) because he realises they are imposters... as he recognises they are wearing Battle Of The Bulge medals. But wait, “there’s no such as Battle Of The Bulge ribbons”... “exactly!” Yeah, brilliantly silly. 

Or how about the scene where Golan, dressed as a harpist, uses the strings of a harp to launch a poisoned dart at Flint, only to hit his boss Cramden (Cobb)... Flint grabs one of his keys, presses a button and a blade pops out the end so he can cut the poison out of the fallen man. A little later, he saves another man’s life by removing a light bulb from an overhead fitting, jamming Cramden’s fingers into it and then using his and Cramden’s body to pass the electrical current into a fallen victim to restart his heart. 

But while all this silliness is going on... and it’s great fun... there’s also a level of ‘over the top’ procedural, as Flint follows a trail of bizarre clues that nobody else on the planet would ever find, to lead him to the enemy threatening the world (known as GALAXY). There’s also a level of ingenuity in terms of how far the gadgetry and inventiveness of the film goes which, for my money, elevates this movie far above the Bond films. I love the Bond series but, for me, the Flint films are the absolute epitome of the spy genre... along with The IPCRESS File (reviewed here) and The Quiller Memorandum (reviewed here). 

For instance, in addition to the key blade, his watch has a rim which can be pulled up at an angle and combined with his pen to form a miniature microscope on his wrist with which he can analyse physical clues. And, of course, his cigarette lighter which contains 82 different weapons... this last item is first revealed in response to Cramden who is trying to equip Flint for the field, with a variety of things which are all refused by Flint. And this is one scene of many where the film doesn’t just spoof the Bond films, it blatantly calls them out...

So, after offering Flint a Walter PPK (Bond’s gun, acquired at the start of both the film and novel of Dr. No (reviewed here), after his Beretta failed him on a previous assignment, he tries to give Flint a briefcase which, with its retractable knives, is clearly modelled on the one in From Russia With Love (reviewed here). But the Bond riffs don’t stop there...

There’s a whole fight scene as Flint and another agent, 0008 (triple oh eight clearly being a riff but one better on 007), exchange intelligence information under cover of exchanging blows in a fist fight. The actor Robert Gunner is made up to look just like Sean Connery (the resemblance is uncanny) and he puts on a Scottish accent to complete the caricature. And during that fight, 0008 clearly states that it’s not SPECTRE behind the threat to the world. Later on in the movie, when Gila Golan’s character is reading a book of The Adventures Of 0008, Jerry Goldsmith’s soundtrack quotes the four base line notes of part of John Barry’s contribution to Monty Norman’s original Bond theme, which I guess is just about as much as they could have gotten away with here without facing a lawsuit. 

And talking about that score. I don’t remember quite when my fascination with soundtrack music began, probably when I first saw the Flash Gordon serials but, Jerry Goldsmith’s absolutely stonking scores for Our Man Flint and its sequel In Like Flint really captivated me as a young ‘un and I still put the insubstantial (can we have an expanded version please Varese?) but absolutely amazing scores on for a spin at least a few times every year. It’s fantastic stuff and the original studio album recording (which is also way different but equally brilliant) featured a track, Galaxy A-Go-Go, which was co-written by a young Randy Newman.

Okay, I think that’s me done with Our Man Flint for the time being. There’s a scene were Flint quickly browns his face up, grabs a revolving towel out of its housing in a bathroom and uses it as a turban to appear Indian at one point which, I suspect, wouldn’t go down great with today’s overly politically correct crowd. But, who cares, it’s just a fun moment and it’s certainly not meant as a mockery in the context of the scene. And I have to say that, rather than pay out way too much money for a very pricey limited US edition, I found more or less the same Blu Ray edition in a French disc (and the second movie) and, although there are no extras (that’s okay, I have two different DVDs of the movie with different extras anyway), I have to say that I’ve never seen the films looking this good. And it’s the full cinemascope frame as always but in a stunning transfer so you can pick up little details you might have missed before. For instance, it’s not even made much of but, when Flint sends a GALAXY guard falling to his death, a quick look down at the body shows his hard hat spinning round and around on the floor at the left of the shot, which I’d never noticed before. 

All in all then, the Flint films are absolutely exceptional and, especially Our Man Flint. I’m not sure why these films aren’t being made more of these days. There’s no Blu Ray release in the UK, the US one was a blink and you’ll miss it affair and even the French editions I have were hard to get for the right price. These films deserve to find a new audience with a younger generation of film goers and, as far as I’m concerned, are absolutely essential viewing for any cinephile worth their salt.  

Pleasantville

Another Pleasant
Valley Fun Day

Pleasantville
USA 1998 Directed by Gary Ross
New Line Cinema Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: Spoilers Rave On.

Wow.

Where to begin with such a complex and brilliant film?

I saw Pleasantville when it first hit cinemas back in 1998 and was instantly bowled over by it. Then, it was a major movie for me at the dawn of the DVD era and a very early purchase for me on that format. It was a ‘go to’ film for me for a fair few years... I watched it often at the tail end of the 1990s and very early 2000s. Then I just kind of forgot about it until very recently when an expanded re-release of the amazing score to the film came out. So I imported a Blu Ray copy over form the US (Why the heck is an important film like this not on UK Blu Ray?) because, well, with the way colour and monochrome are treated in this film... it made it an easy, no brainer of a candidate for an upgrade. Although, well, I hadn’t seen it in at least two decades so I was kind of hoping I wouldn’t have one of those experiences where a much loved film of yesteryear went on to disappoint me when I revisited. I needn’t have worried... Pleasantville is as much of an all time classic now as when it was first released and I find it amazing that this film has such a low key reputation these days. It deserves to be rediscovered and reappraised as the sheer masterpiece it is... and soon.

Okay, there’s lots going on in the film but the basic premise is this... teenager David, played by Tobey Maguire, is a fan of an old black and white TV sitcom called Pleasantville, to the point he is going to go in for the cash prize quiz during the TV Pleasantville Marathon at the weekend. Meanwhile, his sister Jennifer, played by Reese Witherspoon, has invited her dream date over to watch a concert at the same time the marathon starts on TV. Brother and sister fight over control of the remote, which smashes. But, as if by magic (and accompanied by peels of sinister thunder), Don Knotts arrives playing a TV repairman who, after quizzing David about his knowledge of Pleasantville, leaves them a brand new, strange looking remote with ‘a little more oomph’.

The Pleasantville Marathon begins and while the son and daughter of the perfect 1950s sitcom family, Bud and Mary Sue, are fighting over a radio set, David and Jennifer are once again struggling with the remote in the same way, parallelling the action on the TV screen. And then the wrong... or right... button is pressed and, hey presto, they are both transported into the world of Pleasantville in 1958, replacing Bud and Mary Sue, wondering what the heck they are doing there and with Jennifer bemoaning the fact that she is now in ‘pasty’ black and white.

Their sit-com mother and father are played by Anne Archer and William H. Macy and the guy who runs the local diner is played by Jeff Daniels.  And as they live out their life in this perfect TV 1950s world... where the Geography teacher teaches classes about the only geography the residents know (consisting of two roads), everybody on the school team scores a basket at basketball (no matter where they throw it, it will always wind up in the hoop), the fire brigade knows only how to deal with cats in trees and wives stay home dutifully and prepare dinner for their working husbands... they, subtly at first, begin to inadvertently (at first) change and challenge the values of the inhabitants of the town, which slowly transforms objects and then people into full-on technicolour, in contrast to and amidst the monochromatic existence of the other residents.

So sex is introduced to the teenagers. Jeff Daniels’ character goes from not being able to make a cheeseburger himself because of the order of the routine changing when Bud is late at his part-time job at the diner, to becoming a painter (with real colours) while falling in love and having an affair with Ann Archer (who accidentally causes a tree to burst into flames as an instance of the world of Pleasantville reacting physically to her sexual discovery when she masturbates in the bath tub for the first time) and so on and so forth.

So its a film about social change and sexual revolution and the way a society deals with that. There’s an apple in Eden metaphor and a point where the black and white characters start rioting, burning books (which always used ot be blank until the pages started filling in by themselves) in an allegory of the Nazi regime and putting up signs in windows like ‘No Coloureds’... which means in the context of the film, no people who arent in black and white but is obviously a call back to the real signs put up in places in the USA in the fifties as a racial barrier (and I suspect some states in America probably still use them). 

When the owner of the diner paints a portrait of Joan Allen naked in the window and then later he creates, with ‘Bud’, a mural depicting the changes in society in Pleasantville, the two of them are put on trial. A trial which concludes with... oh heck, I’m not going to tell you everything because it’s a film which needs to be seen. A pure classic of 90’s cinema and one of the best films (if not the best) of that decade.

The acting in this is absolutely superb from everybody. You have brilliant performances from Maguire and Witherspoon who do some amazing things with just facial expressions and reactions to carry a lot of the weight of the changes going on around them. Meanwhile, you have William H. Macey having to limit his performance throughout a lot of the film to the way a character in a 1950s sitcom would behave... and coming a cropper (like Daniels) when his routine/scripted life has a spanner thrown into it. “Where’s my dinner?” he constantly asks of the void.

And then again you’ve got characters like those played by Daniels and Archer, who go through changes and transform from those same 50s sit-com ciphers to people learning to question and change their expectations of life and grow from it. It’s a real tightrope of performances brought together and, somehow, it all works. And a special shout out is required, I think, for Tobey Maguire’s love interest, played by Marley Shelton, who is absolutely glowing in this.

And the film itself is put together in an equally clever way too. Two things which stick in my mind are as follows...

One, as the town and people in it start to change, the music (asides from Randy Newman’s absolutely pitch perfect and beautiful score) begins to echo the kinds of changes they are gong through. Starting with the kids beginning to break out with rock n’ roll and then progressing into jazz. This is no better presented as when the local teenagers are consulting with Bud (who has somehow become their inadvertent figure head) about the world ‘outside’ the parameters of Pleasantville, which is all set to Dave Brubeck’s great jazz piece Take Five. I’m guessing the director chose this because it’s written in a less simplistic 5/4 rhythm. It’s a superb scene though, with the percussion beats echoing the volatile questions Bud is being asked, like little gut punches musically expressed.  

And the other thing is the opening scene which establishes Maguire’s character. In a film about the way change is wrought and perceived (and reacted against), the director experiments, following a montage sequence advertising the ‘Pleasantville Marathon’ on TV, with the semiotics of cinema. Now, visual language is generally something that most people don’t consciously realise they have quite a sophisticated command of. Pioneered, consciously or otherwise, by people like Georges Méliès, The Lumiere Brothers and D. W. Griffith at the dawn of cinema, a visual cinematic language soon evolved and this is something that any person, as soon as they start watching TV in their infancy, teaches themself how to decode... often without even realising it. And the director uses that same visual language here to quickly pull the rug from the audience and upend what they thought they were watching.

So let me just talk about two basic concepts... the establishing shot and the one/two/one/two sequence making up a conversation. So an establishing shot is usually a single shot or series of shots of a location so you can establish in your mind where the following scene is playing out. In a seventies TV show, for example, you might see a shot of a building in a street and then you might see another shot of a close up of a window on the building (or it might just dolly in or zoom to that window within the same shot) to establish that the next scene you see is taking place inside the room where that window is.

And the other sequence of shots I mentioned, a conversation between two people, is very quickly rendered by a close up or medium shot of one person speaking a line facing a camera, then a shot of another person either speaking to camera or reacting to those words, then back to the first person for the next line or reaction, then back to the other person etc... and the viewer instinctively, through early experiences with the visual language of film, immediately puts this together in their head as two sides of a conversation.

Where Ross is brilliant here is in the school yard where we first have a shot of Tobey Maguire talking to a girl he obviously has a crush on and is trying to ask out. He says something, then we cut to her reacting, then we cut back to him saying the next line, then back to her reacting... and so on for 30 seconds to a minute. And then, when you’ve got the message that it’s two sides of a conversation, the director cuts to an overview, establishing shot revealing that Maguire is standing in another part of the yard completely, talking to the air in an imaginary conversation with her, while her reaction shots were directed to a boy she was talking to just across from where he stands, alone... and it totally changes what you thought you were watching, disorienting the viewer for a second and setting up the mission statement, if you like, that this is a film which plays with metatextual ideas but not just in terms of what the characters in the film are perceiving.... but also in regards to the audience. The final shot of the film also does a similar kind of thing but in a different way.

And that’s me done, I think, with my thoughts on Pleasantville. It’s one of the true masterpieces of American cinema as far as I’m concerned and I’m amazed that more people haven’t cottoned onto it over the years. An intelligent film with an agenda of promoting self awareness, individuality and progression through change. As represented by sexuality, literature, music and art. If you are a friend of cinema and you’ve not seen this classic then you might want to do yourself a favour and rectify that real quick. One of the all time greats.

Maverick (1994)

 

Place Your Brets

Maverick
USA 1994 Directed by Richard Donner
Warner Brothers Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: This review contains a big
spoiler about a character from the outset.

Maverick was a big budget reboot, by director Richard Donner and actor Mel Gibson (the director/actor team of Lethal Weapon fame) of the classic James Garner small screen character of Bret Maverick, who had been in many iterations of the show (you can read my reviews of the various variants of Maverick here). And it’s kind of open to interpretation to just who Gibson is playing in this one as he’s called Bret Maverick and, just like Garner used to, provides a voice over narrative as he goes along on his adventure... although I could have honestly done without the added swearing here because it didn’t seem quite right sitting in the Maverick universe but, hey ho, I guess the writers maybe imagined it was edgy or something.

The thing is, though, James Garner also plays a major role in the movie, as a Marshall called Zane Cooper, which I’m assuming is an homage to the two Western writers Zane Grey and James Fenimore Cooper. However, at the end of the film he is revealed to also be a Maverick, running an elaborate con with his son, Bret. Now, you can either take that as he’s playing Pappy (as he did once in the original show where he played both father and son in one episode) and Gibson is the original Bret or, like me, despite the lack of timing continuity between pretty much every iteration of the show in various forms, you can interpret it as he’s still playing Bret Maverick and also called his son the same name. Either way, this is a fairly affectionate nod to the original show (asides from the swearing) and is a nice addition to the original stories.

It has a stellar cast such as Jodie Foster as the main romantic lead (another con woman and this is not unusual for what would have been an episode of Maverick), Alfred Molina as a villain and James Coburn in another prominent role in the last third of the movie. There are also a lot of old time cowboy show (and Maverick show) cameo appearances by various actors such as Leo Gordon (Big Mike in the original show and also one of the original series' writers) and Doug McLure, not to mention lots of uncredited cameos too, including Garner’s brother turning up once again, plus some country and western singers too, for some reason.

One cameo moment is wonderful when Danny Glover, Gibson’s co-star from the Lethal Weapon movies, comes face to face with Gibson while robbing a bank... and the music suddenly goes into a dead-on parody of Michael Kamen and Eric Clapton’s score for the Lethal Weapon films. That’s very nicely done.

Another great uncredited cameo, larger but still short, is the inclusion of a character played by Margot Kidder. Of course, Kidder also played James Garner’s regular love interest in his post-Maverick TV show Nichols (which I reviewed here) and it’s nice to see the two sharing the screen together again (come to think of it, she also worked for this particular director in her most famous role as Lois Lane in Superman The Movie and its sequels).

And, getting back to the musical cameos... Randy Newman’s score for the film incorporates a heroic melody line for Gibson’s Bret character that is almost, but not quite, an instrumental version of the shows original theme and song. It’s like he’s been asked to do it straight but delete one note and change two others and I can’t quite understand why because, well, Warners would surely have owned the rights to the music from the original show. Maybe, going with the idea that this was actually the original Bret Maverick’s son, the composer decided to make it a variant, possibly intending to bring the full version of Garner’s theme back later for... the big reveal. That doesn’t happen but, it’s quite close and fans of the old show will certainly hear the old theme in it when Gibson does anything heroic here.

And it’s a nice film with some interesting scenes, nice action and a real suspenseful finish to the big poker game near the end of the movie. It’s also very humorous, in exactly the way the original show was although, certainly Gibson’s young Bret is more willing to pull his guns out, it seems, than the original character was. There’s a big problem with the film though... and I’m not just talking about the waterwheel on the ferry changing speeds between long shot and close up in one scene either...

I’m sure the various plot twists... Jodie Foster actually after Maverick’s money whenever she can thieve it, the James Garner reveal, the Indian who turns out to be an old pal of Bret... would have seemed fresh or at least unpredictable to the younger segment of the audience who were unfamiliar with any of the various versions of the show over the years. Old hands at Bret’s game though, through Garner’s always pitch perfect and immensely entertaining portrayal, will see a lot of the reveals coming way before they happen because they’ve become almost cliché by this point in the franchise. So, yeah, I think this movie appeals to two different audiences but, luckily, it holds it own quite well and at least meets the expectations of an older and more familiar crowd.

Maverick, the movie version, is a real hoot, to be sure and definitely one to watch. It doesn’t come close, it has to be said, to many of the earlier versions of the character but, that’s okay, Gibson does well in the part, as does Foster and they’re both helped out tremendously, in my opinion, by the presence of James Garner returning, effectively, to his roots here. A lovely, romantic Western flavoured with just a favourable dash of its powerful legacy of ingredients. One to watch.