Movie Review: Compulsion (1959)

Genre: Crime and Courtroom Drama

Director: Richard Fleischer

Starring: Dean Stockwell, Bradford Dillman, E.G. Marshall, Orson Welles

Running Time: 103 minutes

Synopsis: In Chicago of 1924, wealthy college law students Judd (Dean Stockwell) and Artie (Bradford Dillman) bludgeon fellow classmate Paulie Kessler to death and dump his body in a ditch. Judd believes his superior intellect will help him get away with murder, and yet he is emotionally dependent on the more playful Artie. Judd starts to develop emotions towards Ruth (Diane Varsi), while her boyfriend Sid (Martin Milner), a budding journalist, uncovers evidence linking Judd to the crime scene. District Attorney Horn (E.G. Marshall) investigates, while Judd's family hires celebrated veteran lawyer Jonathan Wilk (Orson Welles) to mount a defence.

What Works: Director Fleischer and writer Richard Murphy adapt Meyer Levin's book, a fictionalized account of the Leopold and Loeb murder case, as a chilling exploration of evil lurking within privilege. Guilt is never in question, just the bewildering, conniving, and wrecked emotional state of two murderers brought to life by Bradford Dillman and Dean Stockwell in complex performances. A frumpled Orson Welles arrives in the final third and proceeds to dominate a gripping courtroom drama where mental state and justice-as-bloodlust are the central questions. Fleischer and cinematographer William C. Mellor are alway seeking interesting perspectives, including excellent use of mirrors and eyeglasses, and emphasis on the grandiosity of elite internal spaces.

What Does Not Work As Well: Welles' prolonged final monologue to the packed courtroom goes on well after he makes his key points.

Conclusion: A stinging journey into the maze of damaged psyches and societal consequences.



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Movie Review: Gold (1974)

A thriller set in the high-stakes mining industry, Gold is ambitious but uneven. 

The setting is South Africa, where an explosion at the Sonderditch gold mine results in multiple fatalities despite the best rescue efforts of underground manager Rod Slater (Roger Moore). The explosion was caused during an unsanctioned dig towards an underground dike ordered by the mine's director Manfred Steyner (Bradford Dillman), who is married to Terry (Susannah York), the granddaughter of the mine's owner Hurry Hirschfeld (Ray Milland).

Manfred is part of an evil international syndicate led by London-based gold investor Farrell (John Gielgud). By breaching the dike and flooding Sonderditch and adjacent mines, the syndicate aims to profit on the markets. The unsuspecting Slater is promoted to general manager, and also starts an affair with Terry. Manfred orders Slater and his crews to dig towards the dike, and potential disaster. 

With Roger Moore enjoying international fame after his first 007 outing, producer Michael Klinger assembles a Bond-like crew featuring director Peter Hunt, editor John Glen, production designer Syd Cain, and titles designer Maurice Binder. Gold is a not-bad adaptation of a Wilbur Smith book, the Stanley Price script not lacking in scope, characters, locations, and effort.

The film starts and ends strongly. The opening is literally a bang, the dangerous world of mining introduced through an explosion and breathless rescue operation. The climax is a similarly thrilling race to avert a complete catastrophe. In between, the narrative chugs along but the pace slows as the conspiracy unfolds and plenty of screen time is occupied by a rather tepid romance between Slater and Terry.

Mostly filmed in apartheid-era South Africa, Gold features plenty of travelogue material and sometimes cringey attempts to avoid the obvious. Only one character is overtly racist, and Black culture is represented through tribal dances and soccer matches. Black miner King (Simon Sabela) has a prominent and heroic role, but it's a whites-only affair at the cocktail parties and serious meetings.

John Gielgud's ruthless market manipulator and Bradford Dillman's slimy germophobe combine for a potent duo of antagonists lined up against Moore's unbuttoned-shirt heroics. The production values are adequate, and the film enjoys a reasonable layer of gloss. Gold may not bedazzle, but neither is it dull.



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Movie Review: Sanctuary (1961)

A steamy drama dealing with all manners of shocking behavior from rape and abuse to illicit love and murder, Sanctuary conjures up a thick but lumpy brew.

It's 1928 in the deep south of Mississippi, and Nancy (Odetta), a black housekeeper, is sentenced to death for murdering the infant son of her employers Temple and Gowan Stevens (Lee Remick and Bradford Dillman). Nancy seems content and accepting of her fate. On the day before the execution, Temple rushes to her father Governor Drake (Howard St. John) to appeal for a pardon. She recounts her story in flashback.

Six years prior, Temple was a young woman flirting with Gowan. He takes her out on a drunken joy ride to the backwoods, where they fall into the clutches of suave bootlegger Candy Man (Yves Montand) whose ramshackle crew includes Nancy. With Gowan passed out Temple is raped by Candy, despite Nancy's warnings. Temple anyway falls in love with her abuser and he installs her in a brothel, where she enjoys a life of blissful nihilism. Their turbulent relationship is interrupted by a fiery automobile crash, and Temple is thrown back into a life of boring domesticity with Gowan, with a lot more turmoil to come.

William Faulkner made his reputation with the book Sanctuary, published in 1931, and the sequel Requiem for a Nun followed twenty years later. Pre-Code Hollywood took a quick crack at the first novel with 1933's scandalous The Story of Temple Drake, starring Miriam Hopkins. With the Code just beginning to wobble, the 1961 version of Sanctuary provides plenty of sizzle but cannot overcome the inherent weaknesses of the story.

Director Tony Richardson surrenders to the plot's convulsions and does not exhibit much control. The film jumps between scenes, settings and eras with jerks rather than transitions, and with insufficient character depth to cover up the cracks. A governor's daughter disappears in the backwoods and reappears living in a New Orleans brothel, and no one seems to care enough to look for her. She re-enters civilized society with no questions asked.

The psychological turmoil driving Temple to love a criminal like Candy as he rapes and abuses her exists only by extension, and not by any conscious script definition. The motivation for the murder of the infant, once it arrives, is much less than convincing.

Despite the shortcomings Sanctuary provides transfixing adult-level entertainment, the 90 minutes filled with memorable and stark events. Temple's full embrace of life as an exploited and kept woman is presented as a terrifying dance with darkness, Candy Man a metaphor for all that feeds the flesh and destroys the soul. Surrounded by limp drunkards like Gowan, Temple's thrill seeking search for primal masculine danger is almost understandable, and Richardson at least opens the door on the conversation as to what compels some women to seek the embrace of a reprehensible debaucher.

The backwoods scenes are excellent preludes to the characters in Deliverance, and the film takes an intriguing turn towards horror as Temple faces threats from inbred assailants only for the exceptionally well dressed and seemingly out of context Candy Man to emerge as the real gateway to hell.

Lee Remick does her best with the material, but could have benefitted from more scenes to colour in her spirit. Yves Montand is all smoky menace, an almost spectral presence demanding absolute submission.

Sanctuary may lack some credibility and coherence, but compensates with dark magnetism.

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