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This film has also been released with the English language title THE EAVESDROPPER. Its original French title is LA MÉCANIQUE DE L'OMBRE. It is set in Paris and the central performance by Francois Cluzet is absolutely perfect. As for the direction by Thomas Kruithof, who also co-wrote the original screenplay, it is a master class model of how to make a thriller which never loses its pace for a second. But this is not one of those thrillers with car chases and gun battles. It is primarily a surgical examination of MENACE, and it has a profound psychological element to it. Cluzet plays a man who becomes involved in a mysterious surveillance project. His job is to listen to taped phone conversations and type them out on a typewriter, as computers are not considered safe. He sits alone in a bare flat doing this and becomes increasingly alarmed at what he hears. One day he hears a murder take place. He is a man of few words and few friends. He can tell no one. He goes on with his work. He notices articles in the newspapers about the people whose conversations he overhears. There are hostages being held by terrorists, and someone is delaying their release. Politics is involved, but who is doing it? Some of the conversations recorded are those of security chiefs. The level of security access suggested by this mysterious operation is very high. Cluzet tries to quit, but is prevented from doing so by threats. He becomes compromised in a murder. Things get worse and worse, and then they get still worse. The director is clever at building the tension, and the musical track aids this superbly. The settings and the direction itself are what could be called 'minimalist'. This is highly effective. It is easier to be scared when things are bare and there are no visible clues. What transpires, who is behind it all, and whether Cluzet will survive, are all things which the reviewer's code prevents me from revealing.

MARLOWE (2022)

Not a good film, and not Raymond Chandler

This is a really bad film which gives the impression of being based on the work of Raymond Chandler because it uses the character Philip Marlowe, detective. But otherwise it has nothing to do with Chandler, and is based on a novel by John Banville, writing under the name of Benjamin Black, entitled THE BLACK-EYED BLONDE. The story is bad, the script is bad, the direction is bad, the cinematography is terrible, and some of the actors are very bad. What is good is the art direction. An excellent job of has been done of creating sets which truly evoke late 1930s Los Angeles. The best performance in the film is by Colm Meaney as a policeman named Bernie. He is entirely authentic for period and type. Liam Neeson is miscast as Philip Marlowe. He seems to have had little direction and even less motivation. He ambles through the film with insufficient dialogue of his own. People talk around him. But he has little opportunity to become anyone, and is just a cipher moved from scene to scene in a terrible script. The cinematography is indescribably awful, as many scenes are so dark it is nearly impossible to see the actors. Someone thought making everything dark might make the film mysterious and atmospheric: big mistake! The painful truth is that the film has no atmosphere whatever, despite the excellent sets and props. Neil Jordan directed this flop, and co-wrote the script. Neil, pull yourself together, man! OK, so I got the line about Marlowe having served in the Irish Rifles during the First World War. You got your Irish plug in. Yes you were born in Sligo. The sound fails sometimes in the film, not helped by Liam's habit of speaking too softly. Diane Kruger and Jessica Lange both seemed uncomfortable in their roles. Danny Huston was effective as an arrogant villain, and he pulled that off. The story concerns a complex array of criminals, with drugs and murder and sadism thrown in according to some imagined formula which simply did not work. So a guy faked his death. So a gal wants him found. So several baddies want what he has, whatever it is. Liam beats up a couple of guys. He gets beat up. Come on. Show some originality. Raymond Chandler could do all this and make it work. But this team could not.

This early BBC feature film written by Stephen Poliakoff has re-emerged this evening after 34 years of being forgotten, and it is a mind-blower. The film is so brilliantly written, the screenplay is like a combination of Sophocles and Aristophanes, since the unspeakable tragedies portrayed are also mixed with sardonic humour, most of it black and weighted with satire. What an overwhelming mixture! And it works. It was directed by Sir Peter Hall with impeccable flair and the performances are all outstanding. Geraldine James's performance as Harriet Ambrose is so fantastic that it is what I call a ten-Oscars performance. We have all seen Geraldine James is countless things, but I think this role was her absolute triumph. Young Jackson Kyle is amazing as her son, Dominic. James Fox is excellent as her husband. And the central star is the amazing Peggy Ashcroft, whose last film it was. The story is overwhelmingly tragic, as Peggy Ashcroft plays Aunt Lillian who has been locked away in an asylum for 60 years but has to be taken out because the asylum is being knocked down by property developers. Her nephew, James Fox, loaded with fellow-feeling and good intentions, takes her into his home, despite the fact that she barely speaks and does strange and unpredictable things. We get flashbacks of what had happened to her when she was young, where she is played passionately by the wonderful Rebecca Pidgeon. What ensues is so complex that it defies any attempt at summary. Whether anyone will be able to see this film again is unknown. I have a DVD box set of Poliakoff's early films, but it is not included. It has never been released and maybe never will be. The showing of the film on BBC-4 was preceded by Poliakoff speaking for ten minutes about the film's genesis and production. The script was violently hated by everyone at the BBC, who did not want it to be filmed. The BBC seems to have done its best to suppress it afterwards. But the film was shown in 1989 at the Venice Film Festival where it won many awards, and frankly it deserves to be smothered in retrospective awards of every conceivable kind. Of all the outstanding films written by Poliakoff, it is ironical that this early and forgotten work, cast into the outer darkness by the BBC for three and a half decades, may be the best work of a lifetime of magnificent achievements. It would be unfair for any future viewers (if there are any) to tell what happens as the story progresses. But it gets more and more involved and unexpected. And the latter part of the film is where we find the most fantastic performance by Geraldine James, which is historic and a real milestone in the history of acting. I despair to think that this film will possibly never be seen again. Aunt Lillian was locked up for 60 years, and the film was locked up for 34 years. That is nothing less than a crime against humanity.