Cinema
Black Rod and Steiger
Kenneth Robinson
Hennessy Director: Don Sharp. Stars: Rod Steiger, Lee Remick, Richard Johnson, Trevor Howard, Eric Porter 'AA' Empire (105 minutes) I've seldom s had such mixed feelings about a film. Not simply because the Royal Family is used in the near blowing-up of Parliament. But because the makers don't have the courage of any particular convictions.
Is the film a propaganda piece? For me it begins ,as just that. It shows more clearly than any news-reel the true horror of children fighting British soldiers in Belfast. I was shocked to realise how little the original reports of such terrible battles had affected me.
Is the film also an exciting thriller, exploiting the Irish situation? For me it is that as well. The plot has a peace-loving Irishman (Rod Steiger) making a bomb attack on Parliament's State Opening after his wife and daughter are killed in a Belfast riot. His IRA friends try to stop him. They feel that mangled peers and Royalty would merely harm the cause of the Irish. The film develops into a race between Steiger's friends and the police to exterminate him. This is a nice ironic theme, but in no time at all we have forgotten how it all began — as a realistic look at street-fighting in Belfast.
In this exploitation? It is certainly odd to be yanked so quickly from killings in Northern Ireland to games of cops and crooks. There is . real horror in the machine-gun killings by a crazy, wounded soldier. But when the gun-fire is transferred to London, with amusing car chases and crashes, we are in the startlingly different world of violence as entertainment. Some of the violence is even played for comedy. A police inspector gets laughs for his sadism. But there is a serious side to this humour. The man is warned that his cruelty is an infection he caught during his service in Northern Ireland. The actor who plays this part, Richard Johnson, also wrote the extremely intelligent script. Intelligent but, with the help of the director, showing agood many lapses of taste and credibility.
Taste? Well, it really was an impertinent to cut in newsreel track of the Queen's speech over scenes of Mr. Steiger trying to blow up her audience. It was equally impertinent to cut in news-reel shots of Mr Heath looking impassive, the Archbishop of Canterbury looking inquisitive and Prince Charles looking as if he would rather be somewhere else. This was. worse than impertinent. It was unwise. The Saturday audience at the Empire rocked with laughter at each celebrity appearance. They were also convulsed When Mr. Steiger blew himself up with thirty tons of gelignite, leaving a Hiroshima-like cloud rising from a patch of grass beside the Palace of Westminster.
As I left the Empire a sandwichboard warned me about 'the sting of death'. I knew what the prophet meant. I had never been so glad to get out of a cinema. Half-way through the film the manager and staff started looking for bombs just behind me. This, I gather, is a regular feature of the film's showing. I'm not ashamed to say that I moved to the seat furthest away from the action. It was also one of the furthest from the screen. I can now report that the Empire is big enough for you to reduce the screen size, by retreating, to something you can see all at once without getting Wimbledon-neck.
There were several reasons I found myself sorry to be quite so far away. I thought I detected a little smile on Her Majesty's face, almost as wry as the one Mr. Steiger produces with such a lot of Method acting behind it. I also felt Lee Remick demanded closer attention. • Not for the acting she was probably doing, but for her extremely attractive striped shirt and the well-cut slacks that went so well with it. And then, of course, the whole Monty Python atmosphere of the State Opening deserves to be seen properly. Including all that business of Black Rod walking backwards and the lovely chorus that surrounds Her Majesty, looking like the Foolish Virgins or a carol concert at the Albert Hall.
'These things,' I said to myself, 'are worth fighting for, or something'. And then I remembered those British tanks in the opening scenes, as they rumbled past the Belfast Woolworths.) Anyway, the conbest touch in the film. There is something so very basic about Woolworths). Anyway, the contrast between the pomp in Parliament and the tragedy in the Belfast streets gave a pathos I'm sure the director had not intended.
The banning of this picture is not a subject for intensive protestations about integrity. The film is merely an entertainment, not a cure for lung cancer. Anyone who prefers not to show it is doing no disservice to art. But I do think the film says more than it set out to say about motives for violence and killing.
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