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"Homesick? Not sure I know where home is. Wherever I'm making a picture, I guess." The Hollywood exile in England, the first thing seen is his eyeball in the darkness (a doctor's visit). A film editor turned producer (Richard Basehart), married to the daughter (Faith Brook) of the studio honcho (Roger Livesey). The former flame (Constance Cummings) stars in his latest project, though the main drama springs from the aspiring actress (Mary Murphy) sending him compromising letters, the supposed mistress he's never seen before. A previous production also dealt with a blackmailing dame, "you'll be happy to know this one came to a bad ending." The expatriate dealing with memories of scandal and thrifty executives while hoping for contentment at the screening room, Joseph Losey knows this all too well. "Responsibility, running the show. You can't have that without paying the price." The wife is trusting up to a point, the unknown interloper's apartment has a signed photograph, a matter of "two selves," perhaps? Antonioni's La Signora senza camelie figures in the emotional façades of the backlot, and there's the current release titled Eclipse. To the brink goes the protagonist until the truth comes out in a sound-stage trench, amid ersatz skies and trees and barbed wire. "Prop guns, prop girls... Everything phony, story of your life." A cutting snapshot, filmed fast for a characteristic feel of fractious frenzy. Hot microphone and wandering spotlight comprise the climax at a looping session, just the coup for a suggestive auteur who's not allowed to sign his movie. "Not sure this is a good joke." Into Kazan's The Last Tycoon it goes. With Mervyn Johns, Vernon Greeves, and David Lodge. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |