A Dandy in Aspic

A Dandy in Aspic (Anthony Mann, Laurence Harvey, 1968) Another spy thriller from the 1960's, just one of dozens that were released post-James Bond boom, hoping to capitalize on the success of those films.

 

In this one, Laurence Harvey plays a double agent—Alexander Eberlin—working for the British Secret Service. He's upper-class, arrogant, and a snob, but quite good at his job, and when we first see him he is in the business of burying a colleague—killed by the Soviets, apparently, the third agent to meet such a fate recently. The Service is in a tizzy With three men down, they assign Eberlin the job of tracking down the suspected soviet agent behind the killings, whom they identify as Krasnevin. They want the agent tracked down and killed before any more harm can come top one of their own. Seems easy enough.

 

The only complication—which the British do not know—is that Eberlin himself is Krasnevin. He has been working for the Soviets for years, infiltrating the British Service for years. The man identified in the briefing as Krasnevin is actually his Soviet contact "Pavel" (Per Oscarsson). Somehow, he must convince the British that he can do the job, while at the same time, get back to his masters in the USSR, before he is found out. 

One can see why the story would attract director Anthony Mann, who directed a slew of fine films (mostly in the film-noir and western genres) about conflicted men pushed to their self-imposed limits by individuals just that much worse than they are. For Eberlin, it's his fellow agent Gatiss (Tom Courtenay), who is determined to find the traitor in their midst and has a sociopathic zeal to do whatever it takes to bring him to ground. Gatiss, ironically, is the perfect spy, while Eberlin is not. And they're pitched in a mano a mano battle, while Eberlin fights his on a larger scale between nations and their bureaucracies.

The film itself is not so interesting, save for that one aspect. It has the curious distinction of being one of those spy films with no one to root for, everyone in a pitched battle of wits with merely the size of the arena being the distinction. No, the curious thing is that it feels like two distinctly different films, owing to the fact that it's Mann's last film—he died after finishing principal photography in Britain and while filming in West Germany, where star Laurence Harvey (who had directed The Ceremony in 1963) was picked to complete the film in mid-filming to protect the project's investment. And their styles are decidedly different.

This (I'm fairly certain) is an Anthony Mann shot.

Where Mann has a composer's eye for interesting angles and communicating relationships with where he puts his camera relative to its subject, Harvey's style is less classically-trained (especially with wide-angle compositions) and more geared to current catch-as-catch-can fashion. Mann, also, traditionally, tried to fill the frame with as much detail as possible, those specifics forming patterns to direct the eye to what he thought was important, whereas Harvey seems satisfied just to "get the shot" artfully or not.

This looks like something Harvey shot.

Mann's way has a scope to it, a dimensionality, whereas Harvey's compositions are flat and uninteresting, almost static and off-kilter (something Mann was more than capable of, but to a narrative purpose). It makes it a distracting watch, not because it's a good movie, but because one ends up playing "who shot this?" as a way of passing the time, until, finally, one just runs out of good material to admire and admits that "Harvey did this" for the remainder of the movie.

"Harvey" again

Hardly a way to generate suspense. But a way to get through it, at least. Plus, one has early roles for Mia Farrow, Peter Cook (playing straight but in a disorientingly comic way) as well as Lionel Stander, who's always fun to watch.

Mann directing? The shadows make me think so.

So. A potentially good film, tragically not living up to it. The film didn't do well at the box-office as the 1960's "spy-craze" was waning, and about to go undercover as comedies. And although Mann is officially credited as being the director on it, I have a hard time thinking of A Dandy in Aspic as his last film.

The Golden Compass

Written at the time of the film's release...

"Remember, man, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return"

Genesis 3:19

Oh, there have been howls in the wilderness over the film The Golden Compass, and not the kind you'd expect from anything like armored polar bears. 

No, indeed. The Catholic Church (which's taken a few knocks lately) and the Catholic Legion of Decency have awakened like vampires and condemned this film, based of Philip Pullman's trilogy of novels (under the title "His Dark Materials" published between 1995 and 2000)--though the Legion is remarkably silent over the Church's own trespasses. 

Then there are those fans of the books who are beating their breasts with their Anniversary Editions saying that it doesn't do "justice" to them.

Well, checking my own personal Alethiometer, I can say they're both wrong, if not downright irrelevant in their arguments. The Catholics' stance won't do anything but help the movie.* If they really wanted to prove they meant business they could excommunicate Catholic Nicole Kidman, but I think that would generate so much sympathy that folks might even forgive her for Bewitched! And the "chapter-and-versers" will just have to live with the fact that "books is books" and "movies is movies", and both media have their story-telling strengths that are oftentimes incompatible with each other.**

Enough of the controversy, how's the movie? Immensely satisfying for a first chapter (and half-a-movie). There are unresolved issues galore, confused motivations, and the lurking feeling that things might have played out a bit faster than the time it takes to say "To Be Continued" three times fast. But the production design is killer, the performances are good (though Daniel Craig has little to do, or offer, as Lord Asriel), and the effects work is exemplary. The Golden Compass takes place in a world not too unlike our own, except that, instead of souls, people have "daemons," animal-like wraiths who shape-shift until maturity sets in for the host. 

The academics are attempting to trace the cosmic origins of "dust," a move frowned upon with great furrows by the Magisterium (headed by Derek Jacobi and...Christopher Lee, so you know they've got to be bad!) As is shown often in the film's many scenes of combat, when a person is killed their daemons go *poof* into little whisps of CGI powder with the "glimmer" program turned on "HIGH." It is this "dust," which The Church...sorry...Magisterium wants to suppress all knowledge of, despite the fact that it's right there before your very eyes. Evidently, this "dust" is a threat to the Magisterium's political power in this World. Hence, the conflict between them and the "academics." Lord Asriel has photographic evidence of this dust falling from the heavens and entering humans through the daemons--so our link to the cosmos is via "dust-bunnies" of a sort.

That's the background dust...er, stuff.

Our heroine, Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards), is a headstrong urchin of an orphan living at Oxford as the ward of Lord Asriel, an explorer-adventurer of some note and seeker of the truth about this "dust" business, the mention of which is considered heresy by (and produce much paroxysms in) The Magisterium. Lord Asriel goes off adventuring and Lyra is entrusted with an Alethiometer, a Golden Compass, which will tell her the truth of a subject if its asked in precisely the right way--not unlike a Press Spokesman. She also comes under the slinky thumb of Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman, in full "evil-squint" mode), who does "official business" for The Magisterium, whom, she explains, "tells people what to do...but in a nice way...to keep things working." 

Lyra is always being told to behave, yet, she has, as her two mentors, two head-strong people who like to say "no one tells me what to do." So, soon Lyra is rebelling, and escapes from Mrs. Coulter (in a scene that, in all the discourse, is given dramatically short-shrift) and embarks on a series of adventures that entails the kidnapping of two of her friends, a hook-up with a band of the takens' parents, a countrified aeronaut (Sam Elliott, never more twinklingly courtly), and a displaced prince of a polar bear playing "Hamlet."

It's this section where the film really shines. The bears are marvels of CGI animation with wonderful actors like Ians McShane and McKellan (What? Him...again? Can they make a fantasy film without this guy?) breathing life through their vocal performances. One sight that made me laugh was during the Big Fight for "Polar Bear King," when Iorek Byrnison (McKellan's bear) has his armored head-piece knocked off and the camera (computer?) follows it to the edge of the ring, where the spectator-bears stare curiously dumb at it. The film is awash with pictorial touched like that, that fill in and make this world real whenever the story-telling turns miserly.

Performances are uniformly fine--though Craig under-performs. Perhaps he'll be given more to do later, although it's pretty apparent who of the characters you're supposed to be rooting for early on. Time will have to tell. But it's quite good for being half-a-movie. Certainly it makes you anticipate the sequels.

It has been reported in the news that the Vatican has been "consoled" by the film's less-than-golden opening receipts. But probably less than they were when "Deliver Us From Evil" or Spotlight underperformed.

HBO is doing a marvelous 3 season series of Pullman's books, with lovely detail to the material.

* Showing off my talents as a prognosticator, the film did poorly at the box office and plans for other films in the series were canceled by NewLine. The entire series of films is being done—and done quite well—for HBO, which has so much money from "Game of Thrones," they can afford to offend the Catholic Church. By the way, with my margin or error, I have the makings to be your average pollster!

** Trouble is NewLine Cinema, which was perfectly alright with 3.5 hour versions of Tolkien, but did not want this one to be 3 hours long and so they took back the film from Chris Weitz and cut a great deal of material from it, rendering it a bit hedgy in the exposition and transition department.

Operation Crossbow (aka The Great Spy Mission)

Operation Crossbow (Michael Anderson, 1965) There actually was an "Operation Crossbow" during the second World War of the 20th Century, designed to stop the next generation of weapons the Nazi's were dabbling in, after the costly Battle of Britain and before an anticipated amphibious landing on the shores of Great Britain—the V-1 (or "buzzbombs") and the V-2 rockets (predecessor to both the American and Russian space programs, but designed to deliver explosives and blind destruction). The reality was a bit more mundane than here, which is staged like The Guns of Navarone (the script was initially drafted by Emeric Pressburger of "The Archers") with a team of experts charged with infiltrating the German development complex with a plan to destroy it from without and within.

As with so many of these "true stories" of the war, it's only partially true:  the threat was real; dealing with it was another matter. The film is comprised of two sections: the administrators of the mission (Richard Johnson, Trevor Howard, John Mills) coming up with various strategies to deal with the pilotless weapons and the recruits (George Peppard, Tom Courtney, and Jeremy Kemp) whose job it is to drop behind enemy lines, pose as dead or missing German engineers and infiltrate the Peenemünde rocket-works, gather information and/or sabotage the facility.

Bunker windows are letter-boxed!
Watching a V-1 test—actually the most interesting part of the film.

From the beginning, the mission is sabotaged by a lack of complete intelligence and by infiltrators in the process: one of the missing Germans is missing for a reason—he's wanted for murder and sticks out like a sore thumb to the authorities when he suddenly shows up in plain sight; one of the specialists volunteering to break into the rocket plant is a German spy (Anthony Quayle) who goes back to Germany and runs interference throughout the rest of the film.

"You want us to...what?"  Courtney, Kemp and Peppard
Operation Crossbow

Then there's Peppard's alias—seems his German has a wife (Sophia Loren) who comes looking for him when she learns that he's suddenly turned up in a German hotel. Well, that complicates things when she discovers the man with her husband's name and identity is a total stranger. She's kept under wraps by a resistance couple (Lili Palmer, Philo Hauser) until the trio can escape the scrutiny of the German authorities.

"Uh...what's she doing here?"

Loren's role is completely unnecessary—and very brief—as there are enough complications with the purloined identities to make things rough going. No, she's there to be confused, wistful, play slightly drunk, and exit, and not too quietly. Oh...and get top billing to bring in the crowds, and to provide the unnecessary (and frankly irrelevant and mislabeled) "love interest"—although it hardly qualifies—for a film that is essentially all-male in character and scope.* 
While the historically valid "Crossbow" occurs in the skies over London with the various anti-aircraft measures designed to blow the missiles out of the skies or at least knock them off-course, the trio of infiltrators (minus one) get recruited at the vast underground missile complex and begin the process of finding the weaknesses of the weapons (while ironically working to fix them to maintain their cover) and the complex (which they, unironically, intend to destroy).

Peppard and Kemp compare notes on missiles—Peppard has appeared to be
beaten up, although that sequence was cut from the film.

The film did not do well at the American box-office, prompting the studio to re-name the film The Great Spy Mission (check out the poster paste-over to the right) upon re-release as they thought the "Crossbow" reference might have confused audiences into thinking it was involving knights and archery (and as the movie-going public was in the midst of being bombarded with everything James Bond...hey, it couldn't hurt). The film, whatever its title, has more in common with The Guns of Navarone than with Bond, although the next year the Bond producers would begin work on You Only Live Twice, which, itself, more resembled Navarone and this film than anything from Fleming's source-novel. Certainly, Crossbow's imagining of Peenemünde has as much basis in reality as a hollowed-out volcano space-command does. And the writers-producers have upped the ante by introducing a new weapon that has come online—the "New York" bomb, that city presumably being the target because, hey, bombing London just isn't enough, especially if you're trying to sell a film to an American audience.

Peenemünde looks like a very big place...

As dumb as that idea is, and the whole puffery of the thing, you do have to give some sort of pointage to a film that had the balls (Spoiler Alert) to kill off two its major stars before the half-way point of the film and eliminate all of its heroes by the film's end. For all the fantasy that the film imparted to the war, it dared to not reward courage but show the indiscriminate horror of war, despite all efforts and good intentions. America was in the midst of the Vietnam war at the time, and despite its trappings of fantasy amidst the threads of the true story, it dared to show the true nihilism of war—in the generation of deliberate destruction, no one gets out alive. Operation Crossbow has real problems as a film, but it dared to not cave in to a happy ending with garlands and celebration, or even of satisfaction with a mission accomplished. It leaves the viewer with a realization of cost towards the noble in the most ignoble of times.

*Not entirely true, that: some of the best scenes involve a German aviatrix, Hannah Reitsch—yes, she did exist—who worked on the project investigating why early test pilots of the V-1 in its planning stages were being killed trying to land the thing.  She discovered the V-1's had a tendency to stall and lose all guidance capabilities—not good if you're targeting something.