ManiakJiggy This is How Movies Should Be Made

Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Leoni Haney Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Benoît A. Racine (benoit-3) Is it a good idea to remake masterpieces? Usually not. The only reason Karel Reisz and Albert Finney decided to build on their great success of "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" and Finney's international triumph in "Tom Jones" to attempt just that by remaking this Richard Thorpe/Emlyn Williams 1937 classic, besides the fact that it was a great part for a flamboyant young actor like Finney, is that they figured that in those pre-video days, no one would remember the original film. Today's audiences however can compare the two films and I'd be surprised if more than a fraction of them would prefer the Reisz version over the Thorpe one. Why did it fail? Narcissism. Finney, who is a good actor, was popular enough to create his own company and tailor the film around his screen personality but not experienced enough to know that you can't get through that intricate play on just mugging, cute faces, a hand-held camera and modern editing techniques. Besides overlong cutesy-pootsy scenes like Finney racing his scooter with Susan Hampshire's Austin Mini, the spectator has to contend with seeing his naked body, open shirts and suggested musculature at every possible occasion the script permits. In order to make even more room for Finney's character and personality, Olivia's part has been rendered practically silent. She of the Greta Garbo good looks spends the film pouting mysteriously and letting us guess whether she has a soul or not and whether she is infatuated with Finney's character or not and whether she suspects him or not. The producers (Finney and Reisz) were apparently so worried that the film might be too talky that they removed every piece of inspired dialog (usually Olivia's) from the original and made the 101 minutes of running time feel infinitely longer than the original's 116 minutes in the process. The obligatory modernization of the play also necessitated a good dollop of sex where the original happily did without it so that Dora's character is made ridiculous and given a conspicuously vulgar turn by Sheila Hancock. Despite those flaws, the film is not a total failure and its marriage of image and music does deliver suspense and shocks commensurate to the post-"Psycho" era. Luckily, I don't think it will ever eclipse the originality and audacity of the first film or its importance in the history of film-making.

nixolympica Just watched this film on TCM. Quite enjoyable and not as bad as I'd heard from reviews I'd read over the years. My only problem was that I was expecting to understand more about Finney's character by the end of the film (ie: what lead to his psychotic behaviour, what had gone wrong in his childhood...that kind of thing), but never got any deep insight at all. Which for me made him rather a 1 dimensional screen psycho - and therefore the film was not as interesting as it should have been. And the end of the movie was a ..."so what?" affair.Did I miss something? Or was I expecting a movie with more depth than it actually had?

Neil Doyle Emlyn Williams would never recognize what the British have done to his play about a psychotic killer, recycled from the 1937 film that starred ROBERT MONTGOMERY, ROSALIND RUSSELL and DAME MAY Witty.What is supposed to be a tense household situation that slowly builds to a horrific climax, is treated like a stylish drawing room drama with modern British sensibilities that takes time establishing any of the characters. Only gradually does ALBERT FINNEY get under the skin of his character, the cheerfully casual Danny who charms the wheelchair-bound mistress of a secluded British household in the country. But unfortunately, he's even more theatrical in the role than Robert Montgomery was in the original, and that's saying something.In fact, the whole treatment here is more obvious than it should be. The glimpse we do get of Finney's inner torment is almost laughable, accompanied by discordant chords of frantic music on the soundtrack.His flawed performance is the centerpiece of the melodrama and weakens the film, just as Robert Montgomery's did in the '37 version. By comparison, this film opens things up a bit more and is less stagey than that earlier film in which Dame May Witty stole the show.MONA WASHBOURNE does nicely in the Dame May Witty role and the other players are competent enough, but the camera is almost always on Finney in his pivotal role. Finney and that elusive hatbox hiding a head.Chilling idea is less than chilling in the way it's executed here. The story is more of a tease than anything else. Would love to see what Hitchcock would have done with this material.Sadly, for too much of its running time it manages to be boring.

John Seal This remake of the 1937 film of the same name has one big drawback: a broad performance by Albert Finney as the stereotypical Mad Welshman. Turn the sound down and you'll enjoy a lovely looking film shot by Freddie Francis, who remains one of the great living cameramen (see his work for David Lynch in the magnificent "The Straight Story"). Everything about this film LOOKS great, and there's good acting by Mona Washbourne (as usual) but Finney doesn't know how to turn it off. A pity, considering he was just coming off Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, where he played an equally outrageous character to perfection.