1974 and 1975 saw Delphine in more workmanlike supporting roles, putting her distinguishing touches on a variety of integral characters, just before her next great lead performances later in 1975, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles and Marguerite Duras’ India Song. But these three films, not especially noteworthy in and of themselves, were no doubt instructive steps towards Delphine’s subsequent preferences for female filmmakers. Work is work, but if it was going to be like this consistently, then she needed to change some things up.
American director Don Siegel had a long and distinguished career as a journeyman genre director, from the late 40s to the early 80s. (Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, The Killers, Madigan, Charley Varrick and a number of Clint Eastwood vehicles including The Beguiled, Dirty Harry and Escape From Alcatraz.) Despite over 40 feature films to this date, Siegel’s first film in Europe turned out to be The Black Windmill (USA / UK, 1974). Produced by Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown a year before they brought us Jaws, it was primarily a vehicle for Michael Caine, who had been working since 1946 (as a 13-year-old Teaboy in a made-for-TV film) and hit his watershed in 1964’s superb Zulu. He’s worked steadily (and famously) since then. (His IMDB page lists 176 roles.)
MI-6 (UK foreign intelligence) is investigating a Russian/Irish smuggling ring that’s providing weaponry to the IRA. They’ve tracked a large cache of weapons en route to England and have acquired £517,057 (pounds) in uncut diamonds to set up a sting transaction. Major John Tarrant (Caine) poses as an army veteran ex-con named Lampton to ingratiate himself with two of the smugglers, an Irishman named Sean Kelly and his cohort-in-crime, Ceil Burrows (our Delphine!). Tarrant meets with Burrows and seems to convince her of his sincerity, but Kelly’s unavailable; he soon learns Kelly’s been killed, by MI-6, but they’ll stay on Burrows.
Soon afterwards, Tarrant learns that his son David has been kidnapped; the perpetrators have contacted Tarrant’s ex-wife Alex (Janet Suzman). At her place, a man calling himself Drabble calls again, this time demanding to have one of Tarrant’s supervisors on the phone later that evening – Cedric Harper (the great Donald Pleasence), Mi-6’s Director of Subversive Warfare (nice, huh?). Harper is amenable and takes the call. David’s ransom? £517,057 (pounds) in uncut diamonds. What?!! Drabble is actually a mercenary named McKee (John Vernon, very good as always), and we had previously seen his kidnapping of David at the film’s start. McKee’s lovely assistant? Ceil Burrows, who likely spoke with “Lampton” a few hours after the kidnapping, and no doubt knew exactly who he really was.
Understandably, Tarrant just wants his son back. Understandably, Harper wants to know how they know about the diamonds. And everyone wants to know who the kidnappers are working for. Tarrant eventually suspects they’re working for someone else in MI-6. MI-6 suspects the kidnapping may have been staged by Tarrant, and the kidnappers are promoting that idea actively.
Siegel’s crime-thriller-with-spy-seasoning evinces his usual propulsive efficiency and veteran sense of pace and rhythm, and he pushes the nastiness a bit further than most might in how the kidnappers treat their kid hostage. It seems, however, that the script fails us here. The narrative is mostly a quilt of formulaic bits and pieces from superior previous sources, and the underwritten characters don’t give the actors much to work with. Caine is solid, but uncharacteristically chilly, bereft of the slyly dark humor he brings to other similar dramatic characters. Vernon and Delphine stretch a bit more, but they’re the bad guys, and are allowed, if not expected, to be broader. Delphine’s Ceil is seductively dangerous, and intriguing in her early scene with Caine. But her further appearances become less urgent, just filling narrative function rather than taking advantage of what she’s capable of. The film, it seems, was shot during the mid-seventies screenwriters’ strike as well; a few scenes between Caine and Suzman feel tacked-on, perhaps improvised, and I suspect writer Leigh Vance wasn’t available to provide better after his initial script. By no means a bad film; more of a pleasant timewaster rather than a genuinely good thriller.
Claude Lallemand found producers with agreeably deep pockets for his only feature film, Le Cri Du Coeur (Cry Of The Heart) (France, 1974). The producers, Guy Azzi and André Génovès, were film veterans, with Génovès being one of Claude Chabrol’s primary producers through the sixties and seventies. Lallemand’s screenplay seems to have been written with Chabrol in mind – I can only speculate, but I suspect Chabrol was to direct this, but bowed out, and Lallemand convinced his producers to let him make it. Chabrol, indeed, would have delivered a far better film – it’s about the dark secrets domesticity can hide, and the unpredictable places where those conceits fester, reveal themselves and explode. This is Chabrol’s wheelhouse. Lallemand, on the other hand, doesn’t have much of a sense of visual narrative rhythm and dynamics, and gives us a bit of a mess. Again, speculation, but I think our Delphine was looking forward to working with Chabrol, and was a pro about working with Lallemand instead.
Alexandre (Eric Damain) is a standard adolescent schoolboy; he’s pretty smart, plays piano well, rides horses, hangs out with his pal Alain (Emmanuel Dessablet) and indulges his newfound fondness for sex with cute girls. (Not that he’s made good on his aspirations there, but it’s not for lack of trying.) We learn that his parents, Claire (Stéphane Audran) and Mathieu (Maurice Ronet), are very well off, own a fair-sized estate and don’t pay a lot of attention to him. (He’s their only child.) Today Alex needs help fishing his kite from the top of a tall tree, but Dad (typically) has to race off on business, and Mom has bolted as well. So, Alex climbs the tree, tragically falls 40 or 50 feet, and loses the use of his legs (one’s paralyzed, the other amputated). Doomed to life in a wheelchair, young Alex blazes new trails in anger, resentment, self-pity and the acting out thereof; he can’t work the piano pedals, nor can he ride his horse any longer. But one thing that manages to assuage him is his dad’s gift of a camera, with a variety of lenses and an in-house darkroom. He snaps pictures of Mom and Dad, pictures of amorous couples on park benches, and even a strikingly beautiful woman he happens upon in a grocery store (who’s a bit disturbed by his attentions). (Our Delphine!) But what he’s primarily documenting is the hypocrisy of his privileged parents – Mathieu is a weak-willed nervous wreck who allows himself to be bullied by his business partner, Bunkermann, and Claire is carrying on an affair under Mathieu’s nose. Alex blackmails his driver and groundskeeper Jean (Paul Frankeur) to assist him in spying on Claire to get photographic evidence of her trysts. Alex leaves those pictures for her to discover; mortified, she further learns that Alex has an addictive porn habit; he orders her to send Mathieu out to get more porn for him, and this time the expensive stuff, Mom!
Lallemand can’t commit to making an exposé of the existentially empty nouveau riche landed gentry, nor examining the trials and tribulations of families when tragedy strikes, nor a creepy thriller starring a beleaguered kid who turns evil. Eric Damain hams it up shrilly as the bratty lead, but he’s following direction and ultimately holds up his end – he’s not bad. Audran and Ronet are reliable pros, but they can toss this stuff off in their sleep, and Lallemand doesn’t have any better ideas for them. Our Delphine Seyrig is the lovely woman in the grocery store, but, invited over for dinner, she turns out to be the wife of Bunkermann, his dad’s odious business partner. Alex sees his photos of Mme. Bunkermann as inspiring, almost spiritual – he thinks she’s an ‘angel.’ And he and she get on surprisingly well – she’s gracious and patient with his awkwardness. But tawdry gossip and touchy egos ruin the dinner, and Alex isolates in a different, potentially lethal manner.
At 92 minutes the film still feels overlong. Delphine’s reliable supporting turn displays her usual creative decision-making and psychological depth, even if it’s ultimately wasted here. They can’t all be good, and this one is decidedly not.
In The Garden That Tilts (Le Jardin Qui Bascule) (France, 1975), Guy Gilles has lots of good visual ideas but doesn’t use them very well in the service of his narrative. And he has some intriguing narrative ideas but can’t marry them to his visual conceits. A veteran of documentaries, shorts and TV work, I can only surmise that full-length narrative feature films were a bridge too far for his talents. Like Claude Lallemand, though, he too had access to surprisingly good talent: veteran cinematographer Jean-François Robin, and actors (our) Delphine, a friendly cameo from Jeanne Moreau, and Sami Frey.
The film opens with a festive nighttime small-town square celebration of Bastille Day. The square is brightly lit, there’s music and dancing, circus performers, and the nearby shops and cafes are busy. We start to follow Karl (Patrick Jouané), a sullen but strikingly handsome young man, through a pinball arcade full of young men. We overhear a conversation between a café owner and a young female customer. Both the camera and soundtrack skitter haphazardly, trying to capture the amiable chaos. But what we eventually learn is the real reason for Karl’s presence; he’s a hired killer, in town to kill the café owner. Karl tends to keep to himself, but plunders conversations from passing strangers to manufacture his own identity and past.
Karl works for Paul (Howard Vernon) and meets with him for a new assignment. Paul pairs him up with a young thief, Roland (Philippe Chemin) to double their prospects of success – they are to kill Kate (Delphine), a beautiful rich woman with a small but well-appointed estate in the country. She lives there with her partner Michel Pointclair (Sami Frey), but he seems to be more friend, companion or protégé rather than lover. Karl and Roland track Michel and contrive a meeting, explaining to him that they’re having trouble finding a place to lodge or camp. Michel invites them to the estate, puts them up in the former domestics’ coachhouse and presto, they’re in.
There’s a marked contrast between Karl’s prowling familiarity in the nighttime city scenes and the rural pastoral isolation of Kate’s home. The first week is relaxed and indulgently languid, and the four of them get along well. Kate’s neighbors, the Garcias (Guy Bedos and Anouk Ferjac), come to visit; Maurice Garcia met Kate in Algeria and reveals a bit of her past; we learn, here and later, that Kate was a very exclusive, and subsequently wealthy, prostitute, escort, what-have-you. Karl works subtly but diligently to win Kate’s favor, plying her with soft-spoken tales of his youthful travel and lost loves (all fabrications). And, slowly but surely, Kate responds, indulgently bedding Karl. Karl is genuinely smitten with her, much to the consternation of Roland and, from a distance, Paul. Karl declares his love for her, but Kate travels to the beat of a different drum, and refuses to commit in any way. Feeling rejected, Karl retreats to the small hotel he and Roland stayed in before meeting up with Michel. “One day you will forgive her,” advises Nanou Garcia, but Karl persists. Does he love her enough to not carry out his assignment? Or will his anger at her rejection make it easier?
This screenplay feels like something he presented for the actors to figure out. There’s a rough narrative here, and some good ideas in the character sketches, but, honestly, if Guy Gilles doesn’t tie all of the disparate details together, no one else will do it for him, least of all pros like Delphine or Sami Frey, or even Guy Bedos. Karl and Roland, at the start, are clearly gay males, and the seduction of Kate feels like an odd indulgence for Karl to give himself; an additional challenge, perhaps. But nothing interesting is ultimately made of this. Roland meets one of the wealthy neighbors and is given a tour of all of the abandoned estates, carelessly left behind by their fickle privileged owners. The film is a collage of sorts, and has points it wants to make, but ultimately isn’t thought through enough to really register with any cohesion. It’s languid, looks nice, but just doesn’t go anywhere interesting or memorable. Needless to say, Delphine is far and away the best thing in the film. The rest? Meh…
Nest we’ll get back to some rarified and refined Delphine Seyrig landmark work with her first of a number of films featuring female co-filmmakers.
Periscope In The Bathtub 