Pretty Poison

PRETTY POISON            A-                   

USA  (89 mi)  1968  d:  Noel Black

You do have quite a capacity for loving.        —Dennis Pitt (Anthony Perkins)

Another film that tanked at the box office, though this is a laceratingly dark comedy, shot by a first time director who mostly worked in television, adding many familiar 60’s themes and effects, such as a psychologically shifting narrative, an effective use of flashbacks or spontaneous brain fissures where one has fractured images going off in one’s head, accentuated by the use of dissonant music, and an examination of seemingly innocent reflections that results in a deeply dark interior disturbance.  Also, the generation gap was a prominent theme of the era, not to mention the aftereffects of Cold War espionage tales, used to excellent effect here in a fascinating study of near Altmanesque, small town Americana gone to seed, given a Hitchcockian twist that even the master himself would take delight in seeing, as this is a clever variation on his macabre and genre defining themes.  Adapted from Stephen Geller’s novel She Let Him Continue by screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr, who was a script consultant on the Batman television series (1966 – 68) before going on to write Alan J. Pakula’s weirdly modernistic The Parallax View (1974), one of the best paranoid conspiracy theory thrillers of the 70’s, right alongside Klute (1971), SOYLENT GREEN (1973), The Conversation (1974), CHINATOWN (1974), ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (1976), and again co-writer of THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR (1976), creating a uniquely subversive vision of 1960’s America, filled with paranoid delusions about conspiracy theories, largely fueled by the shocking speculations about the Kennedy assassination and the CIA’s connection to the Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion, where according to the Church Committee Assassination plots and schemes: Castro in the crosshairs - CNN, there were “at least eight plots involving the CIA to assassinate Castro from 1960 to 1965.”  Casting Anthony Perkins as a mentally unstable young man with a troubled past is a highly provocative choice, as it intentionally plays upon his Psycho (1960) persona, right along with his nervous tics and rambling monologues, where it’s easy to suspect him of nefarious acts.  Perkins as Dennis Pitt inflames the perception upon his release from a long stay at a mental hospital, making a joke about interplanetary space travel, where he’s harshly reminded that out in the real world, “It's got no place at all for fantasies.” 

Made a year after The Graduate (1967), a scathing satire on the American Dream, Pitt’s future expectations, in contrast, could hardly be less open-ended, as so little is expected of him because he has a criminal record, convicted of arson at 15, which resulted in the death of his aunt.  So from the outset, Pitt already has two strikes against him.  Cast opposite Perkins is the All American girl, Tuesday Weld as Sue Ann, one of the more original roles in American cinema, where Weld emphatically embraces the challenge, though she was quoted in an interview with movie critic Rex Reed afterwards thinking this was her “worst performance,” as she hated working with the director, but she enjoyed a lifelong friendship with Perkins, working together again in PLAY IT AS IT LAYS (1972), where her scathing performance was nominated for a Golden Globe.  Weld’s previous credits include the infamous ROCK, ROCK, ROCK! (1956), SEX KITTENS GO TO COLLEGE (1960), and LORD LOVE A DUCK (1966).  She joins what film critic Molly Haskell calls the “Lolita cult” of the 60’s, likely based upon Sue Lyon’s child nymphet performance in Kubrick’s LOLITA (1962), Yvette Mimieux’s titillating exploration of teen love in the coming-of-age comedy WHERE THE BOYS ARE (1960), Mia Farrow’s short-haired Allison MacKenzie role on the trashy TV soap opera Peyton Place (1964 – 69), not to mention Weld’s own tabloid history of dating older men as a teenager, including actor John Ireland and even Elvis.  Drop dead gorgeous and a member of her high school marching band, Sue Ann is the personification of all that’s good about youth, with all her dreams and idealizations intact, driving a powder blue 1965 Sunbeam Alpine convertible [seen here: http://www.ritzsite.nl/Tiger/1965_Sunbeam_Alpine_Mk_IV.jpg, a red one was driven by Elizabeth Taylor in BUtterfield 8 (1960)], uncorrupted by a cynical world, though like many overly constrained teenage girls, she wants not only to look and act older, but to be the center of attention, to be a part of a world she has yet to explore.  Yet in her drive to get what she wants, she may surprise a few people, as she does Dennis Pitt.  Initially amused by his invented secret agent persona in order to attract her attention, he’s blindsided by her fierce need to let no one stand in her way, to eliminate all obstacles which prevent her from getting what she wants, shifting halfway through the film from the manipulated to the manipulator, luring Dennis into her own deceitful web of intrigue and disaster.        

Certainly some of this may remind viewers of Terrence Malick’s BADLANDS (1973), but Sue Ann is a far different creature than the more benign Sissy Spacek, instead taking on the male characteristics of the Martin Sheen role, someone who acts impulsively, seemingly for no reason, leaving behind a litter of dead bodies in their wake, never stopping for a second to consider what they’ve done.  Dennis Pitt provides the lead role and instigates the action with his wild-eyed, made up games of espionage and undercover operations, all designed to bring them closer together, but for Sue Ann, that’s not enough and she wants more, continually doing the inexplicable, making sure the game they’re playing shifts just enough to carry out her own master plan, where she literally becomes the explosive force of the film.  All set in the small town world of Great Barrington, Massachusetts where everything looks in its proper place, this has the disturbing under-the-surface fury of deep-seeded malice, a predecessor to David Lynch’s nightmarish BLUE VELVET (1986), with the world slowly closing in on the unsuspecting Dennis like a noose around his neck, where the creeping paranoia is visible and real, a man who originally thinks he’s painstaking thought of all the meticulous details necessary until Sue Ann adds a few tricks of her own, seemingly improvising on the fly, always compounding the outcome, placing ever greater pressure on Dennis to sustain his balance, where at every passing moment he feels like he’s about to crumble and fall.  Interestingly, the sailor photograph seen in Sue Ann’s bedroom near the end is a picture of the director, which initiates a series of doubts and questions in his mind, seeing his future inevitably altered by the actions of a child, causing him to marvel incredulously, “I notice, you do have quite a capacity for loving.”  Providing a performance of great depth, Tuesday Weld is sensational in a role of seeming superficiality, stealing every scene she’s in, masquerading as the high school sweetheart while she’s really the Lady Macbeth, femme fatale in a film noir world with blood on her hands.  Initially entitled BITCHES BE CRAZY, this joins the motherlode of horror-tinged, comic and darkly disturbing psychological thrillers, where Sue Ann offshoots would have to include overweight jealous wonder Shirley Stoler in The Honeymoon Killers (1969), Nicole Kidman’s ruthless ambition in Gus van Sant’s To Die For (1995), and perhaps even Reese Witherspoon’s perky, not to be denied, Type A over-achiever in Alexander Payne’s Election (1999).   

The Debt

THE DEBT                              B

USA  (114 mi)  2011  ‘Scope  d:  John Madden

The truth is whatever we say it is.                  —Stephan (Marton Csokas)

This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.       

—Reporter from John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

This is another one of those paranoid Cold War espionage thrillers that were the rage of the 1970’s with Alan Pakula’s KLUTE (1971) and PARALLAX VIEW (1974), or the recently deceased Sydney Pollack’s THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR (1975), each one a tense, well acted, and highly suspenseful drama with dark political undertones marked by the cool exteriors of sterile architecture, featuring plenty of empty space, and a near mathematical structure on which the story rests.  This film is also well served by such an extraordinary cast and a director who knows what he’s doing behind the camera, shifting all the pieces around like a chess board, re-enacting history through a kind of morality chamber drama, much like Roman Polanski’s DEATH AND THE MAIDEN (1994).  This is actually a remake of a previously released Israeli feature by Assaf Bernstein, known by its Hebrew title HA HOV (The Debt) (2007), where in the 1960’s a group of three young Mossad agents are sent behind enemy lines into East Germany to kidnap a Nazi war criminal known as the Butcher of Birkenau and bring him back to Israel to stand trial.  This fictionalized tale is based on the horrific medical procedures of Josef Mengele, a German SS officer who performed grisly medical experiments on the concentration camp inmates, particularly young women, such as sterilization, shock treatments, limb amputations or injecting chemicals into children’s eyes, leaving them blind, where many died afterwards from untreated infections.  In real life, Mengele was hunted by the Mossad in the 60’s, but he evaded capture and died a free man in exile at the age of 67 in Bertioga, Brazil.  While adapted by three new screenwriters, it retains the original flashback structure, but it lacks a certain emotional urgency, not in the heart racing action sequences which are superb, but in the spare portrait of the characters whose real life personas are never fleshed out, where there’s never a sense that the audience is connecting with any of them, turning this into a kind of spy caper or a super hero Mission Impossible episode.      

At her daughter’s grand book opening celebrating her life by revealing the harrowing details of the historic mission, Helen Mirren as Rachel Singer is being lauded for her heroic work as an Israeli agent 35 years ago, but that concerned look on her face suggests she’s uncomfortable with all the attention.  Quickly flashing back to when she is played by young actress Jessica Chastain, we see the mission has gone terribly wrong, where the captured prisoner manages to escape by surprising his kidnapper and beating Rachel into a bloody pulp on the floor before making his way down a winding staircase, but somehow she summons the strength to crawl to the top of the stairs and shoot him before he could get away.  The book is a huge success, but the lives of the three remain in turmoil, remaining secretive and distant, where a disfiguring scar on Rachel’s cheek from a succession of kicks to her jaw is a daily reminder of this incident.  The Hollywood aspect to this story when told in flashback is adding a romanticized love triangle to the mission, which despite  the taut suspense of the precision of their operation adds an element of pure soap opera melodrama.  It’s hard to believe that secret agents actually have time for hanky panky, as one would suspect they need to eliminate distractions and focus on the business at hand.  As it turns out, that’s exactly the view of one of the agents, David (Sam Worthington), but not shared by the commanding officer Stephan (Marton Csokas).  This not only turns into a distraction but becomes a fatal flaw due to the intricate nature of what they need to do, which is kidnap a still practicing (under an alias) Doctor Vogel (Jesper Christiansen) after a series of routine fertility exams from Rachel as a pretend patient confirm he’s their suspect. 

Madden displays a deft hand in the action sequences, where each phase slowly unfolds with surgical precision, where the underlying tension, especially well drawn out during the visits when Rachel allows herself to be examined by a man she knows is a vile monster, couldn’t be more discomforting and creepy.  It’s all drenched in an eerie, completely detached calmness, shown with the cool veneer of excessive restraint, creating at times a dark, atmospheric mood of stillness that borders on horror.  Christiansen is chilling in his role as a Nazi-spewing Jew hater, which he uses against his captors every chance he gets.  Despite their meticulous planning, things go awry, and Vogel quickly realizes just how exposed and vulnerable his kidnappers have become, continually bickering among themselves about what to do.  The bumbling aspect of this Mossad crew is a bit unsettling, as instead of maintaining their hard corps discipline, as this is the elite of the elite, they lapse into moments of psychological weakness which their captive easily exploits.  Even with the elements of the narrative that one might find implausible, the choreography of the sequences moving back and forth in time is excellent, where the harrowing aspects of the kidnapping itself is a sheer delight and outweigh the misguided personal intimacies that evolve.  But a morality play is perhaps best expressed in the breaking down of trust and loyalty, where the bonds that hold relationships and even societies together may be shaken by the very root of their own unstable foundations, undermined by human miscalculations.  Rachel Singer is a complex figure, beautifully portrayed by both Chastain and Mirren, drawn by the opposing strengths offered by both David and Stephan, leaving her conflicted and perhaps even exiled from her own conscience, instead making an unholy alliance with history, where myth is always more captivating than the facts.