LONDON CINEMA
Nearly new
To Palmer
The Grissom Gang ('X' Carlton, Haymarket) is what you might call a modern cops-and-robbers, except that it is set in the prohibition era. Small-time thieves snatch society dame's necklace, killing her boyfriend en route. Bigger-time thieves rob smaller-time thieves, rather nastily killing smaller-time thieves en passant. Bigger thieves ransom wealthy society dame for a million, yes, a million dollars, and set up hoodlum hide-out and drinking parlour on the proceeds. The inevitable gun battle results in the death of almost everybody except — and here's the modern twist — the wealthy society dame who has fallen 10 love with the lunatic son of the lunatic Ma Grissom. Consequently, at the end, the wealthy society dame's Dad, having paid over a million dollars, yes, a million dollars, to recover his daughter, refuses to acknowledge her. All of which implies I'm not quite sure what, except that a hell of a good time has been had by all. Oh, and I forgot to tell you about the blonde nightclub singer and the high-speed car chase at the dying moments of the movie. And then there's Rudy Vallee singing the title song (Bonnie and Clyde were not available) plus, and it's a big plus, the lunatic SO n of the lunatic Ma Grissom mentioned above. You can tell he's a psychopath from the way he yummies through plateloads of Ma's cookies and frequently lets his tongue hang out because that's what they all do. Psychopaths, that is. And of course they gurgle every time they kill someone. I don't think I've left any cliché out, except maybe the good cop and the bad newspaper reporters, but if I have I'm sure You'll unearth them.
So why modern? Well, you can't go on remaking those old movies (this one derives from No Orchids for Miss Blandish, She being the wealthy society dame) without recognising that in the present climate n! psychological awareness every pervers,,,100 has its emotional rationale. Director Robert Aldrich has always demonstrated that he's heard of this modern trend. After all, whatever happened to Baby Jane was a question he must have asked himself several times while producing and directing that particular film. And then there was the killing of Sister George which he did quite effectively. Unfortunately, of late he seems to have got himself so concerned With motivation that he has abandoned the reSt to a do-it-yourself computer-gangster
Thus, the detail is superb. But so is its Pedigree.
Now Klute (Warner West End) really is modern. For example, it stars Jane Fonda as a call-girl with a heart of hundred dollar bills, falling in love (ah, geriatric greer, Where now is thy sting?) with a private e. Ye from Cabbageville who's in town looking for his best friend believed lost, probably murdered. Says freedom-fighting Miss
Fonda: "The prostitute is the only truly liberated woman." And just so no one misses the point, Miss Fonda pops into her friendly local psychoanalyst from time to time to spell it all out. The important thing, she stumbles, is to be in control and thus be able to, determine what you do. Or, as we prostitutes say, honi soit qui mal y pense. In its struggle to be where it's at, however, Klute is a cut above Ma Grissom and her twitching upper lip (twitching upper lip according to latest research is thought to be a symptom of advanced schizoid-megalomania). But somehow its parade of the familiar is rescued from its almost predestined banality by the poise of the director, Alan J. Paluka, who is content to let the camera squat far back and merely observe the absurdities of mankind rather than indulge them. And although a cops-and-robbers like The Grissom Gang, the cops in the person of Donald Sutherland do move about the wreckage with an unspoken dignity, while the robbers — in this instance, a murderer who turns out to be the cop's boss — are seen to be as sad and pathetic as the world they inhabit. Miss Fonda, complete with modern haircut, binds the two together with a splash of contemporary amorality which she questions but says she never understands. Eventually, the strain proves too much for the team; the dark areas of the human psyche seem too frightening and what promised to be a fascinating exploration of emotional weakness slides away into sentimentality. Thus the curse of Hollywood, the death of any film having pretensions to currently fashionable modernity, wins again.
Previous page
