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A subjective camera on the agent's disheveled office (it contemplates Humphrey Bogart posters, nudie centerfolds and cornflakes) posits Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) as closer to the noir shamus than to the Sixties superspy, thus The Big Sleep in the middle of the Cold War. Feints and allusions come thick and fast: The MacGuffin is a thermos full of virulent eggs, the password is from Shakespeare, risqué posters lead to a frozen corpse revealed à la Psycho. The glittering pile-up effect is Ken Russell's forte, to address the bewildered hero he has a towel-wrapped Karl Malden in a sauna amid Finnish snow, "come on, don't be so British!" Doctor Zhivago's glam Russkies inform the first half, from the ride with the femme fatale swathed in furs (Françoise Dorléac) to the grinning smugglers who barter with Beatles records. The second half is a gargantuan cowboy barbecue imagined by Leni Riefenstahl and presided over by Ed Begley's prophetic fire-breathing as a Texas general eager to slaughter for freedom. ("A bit noisy" is Palmer's description of the surroundings.) Not a matter of winnowing the genre for its despair (A Dandy in Aspic) or degrading it into clarity (Modesty Blaise), but of luxuriating in its Pop Art impudence. Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse for the eponymous computer, De Tothian themes of betrayal and uniforms, a Panavision screen continuously zapped with balmy gags. From Funeral in Berlin comes Oskar Homolka in full comic bloom, standing in long underwear beside Lenin's portrait and tear-streaked before Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony. Patriot games, once proud but "now... a little bit stupid." A slam-bang tribute to Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky yields to a punchline under Lord Nelson's stony gaze, so it goes with Russell's "momentary interests." Cinematography by Billy Williams. With Guy Doleman, Vladek Sheybal, Milo Sperber, and Susan George.
--- Fernando F. Croce |