Another Look at the Spies of X-Men: First Class

In my review of the latest X-Men movie, I looked at it (quite naturally) from a spy point of view.  Here's another interesting review that approaches the film from that perspective as well at the blog Overthinking It.  The well-written article by John Perich offers a fascinating argument for Matthew Vaughn's film as an examination of the dichotemy of the Sixties spy hero combining the worlds of Ian Fleming, Len Deighton and John Le Carré. Personally, I think I'd equate Xavier more with Smiley than Harry Palmer, but overall I agree with all of his points!

Movie Review: X-Men: First Class (2011)
The Superhero Tentpole As Sixties Spy Movie

While I love the richly textured period detail in the recent OSS 117 movies, those parodies also made me wish that someone would make a straight spy movie set in the Sixties, with Sixties fashions and attitudes, but contemporary fight choreography and special effects. Well, now Matthew Vaughn has done it, and it’s excellent! Some might not see it as a straight spy movie since it’s also got superheroes, but regular readers of this blog are no doubt aware of the long association between the spy and superhero genres, which actually thrived in the Sixties. Despite the title, X-Men: First Class is a spy movie with superheroes, not the other way around. And as it’s a prequel to the previous entries in the X-Men series, it is not required that a viewer have any prior knowledge of the characters to see this one… so even if you generally avoid superhero fare, but you like Sixties Bond movies, by all means do yourself a favor and see X-Men: First Class, post-haste!

Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake) takes his stylistic guidance primarily from Sean Connery Bond movies, Sixties heist flicks (including the original Ocean’s 11) and British television adventure series of the era, like The Avengers, The Champions and Department S. There are so many nods to Sixties spy sources that espionage fans will be in constant ecstasy savoring it all. First and foremost, X-Men: First Class has all the Jet Age globetrotting of the original Bond films. In the first half-hour alone (more or less), the plot jumps smoothly (more or less) from Germany to New York to London to Switzerland to Las Vegas to Langley to Argentina to Miami, and later makes additional stops in Moscow and Cuba. Vaughn savors all the locations in the same way that Terence Young did, providing lingering establishing shots of each new locale to stimulate the audience’s escapist travel fantasies too often ignored by modern Bond movies. (Or cut too quickly to take in, as was the case with the deplorable Quantum of Solace.)

The CIA has a millionaire villain named Sebastian Shaw under surveillance. They suspect him of collaborating with the Soviets, but they don’t know the half of it. Kevin Bacon plays Shaw, and in keeping with the character’s comic book origins which were torn wholesale (by writer Chris Claremont) from the classic Avengers episode “A Touch of Brimstone,” he ably channels all the louche decadence of Peter Wyngarde (who guest-starred on that episode). In the comics, Shaw had a confederate who wore that influence on his sleeve with a name that conjured both the actor and his most immortal character, Jason King (hero of the ITC show Department S and its spinoff Jason King): Jason Wyngarde. Sadly Jason Wyngarde isn’t in this movie, but Bacon’s svelte Shaw seems to owe as much to Wyngarde (both the character and the actor) as he does to the Shaw of the comics, who was based on the more solidly built Bond villain Robert Shaw. While he doesn’t sport Jason King’s (and Wyngarde’s) distinctive facial hair (which would have been rather anachronistic to this film’s 1962 setting), he does share his affinity for cravats and flamboyant velour suits (which is in itself a tad anachronistic, but more forgivably so). The character also shares Jason King’s taste for luxury. His private submarine/mobile lair (whose first appearance is one of the film’s biggest spy fan delights) is decked out in all the luxury trappings of a Sixties bachelor pad. Its velvet cushions, paisley wallpaper, shag carpets and stocked minibar (natch) all recall not only that crate (average on the outside) that Jason King used to smuggle himself into East Berlin, but also James Bond’s iceberg mini-sub in A View To A Kill.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. When we meet Shaw, he’s entertaining a selection of America’s richest and most powerful men at his Hellfire Club, which has been relocated from The Avengers’ London to Las Vegas. (The establishing shot of Vegas deliberately evokes Diamonds Are Forever, even if it’s a decade early.) The CIA is keeping tabs on the event from a car across the street, but agent Moira McTaggart (Rose Byrne) realizes the need to get closer and sees her opportunity, which comes right out of “A Touch of Brimstone.” Shaw’s right-hand woman, Emma Frost (again, Claremont deliberately appropriated Emma Peel’s first name for his Hellfire Club’s White Queen; Diana Rigg’s Peel was the Black Queen in “A Touch of Brimstone”), played by Mad Men’s January Jones (remaining safely in her comfortable Sixties milieu; more on her in a moment), is shepherding a bevy of lingerie-clad beauties into the Playboy Club-like event. Moira quickly strips down to her underwear, which, of course, is black lingerie sexy enough in itself that it might have been selected deliberately for the occasion, but as it happens, it’s a moment of inspiration. “What are you doing?” asks her male partner, aghast. “Using some equipment not issued by the CIA,” she replies (or something to that effect). That gives Vaughn the opportunity to keep his female spy in lingerie while she does her spying (yes, actual spying—something you don’t see too much in any spy movies anymore!), which seems very appropriately Sixties. Also appropriately Sixties is the spot-on art direction by Chris Seagers (Johnny English), which recalls not only Ken Adam’s Bond sets, but also his famous war room from Dr. Strangelove, which is lovingly recreated. In the club, there’s also a nod to Live and Let Die with a revolving booth. The only aspect that could stand to be more Sixties is Henry Jackman's score.  There's nothing wrong with it, and sometimes (as during the Maurice Binder-inspired end titles), it evokes the era plenty.  But I would have preferred a brassier, more John Barry-ish accompaniment throughout, akin to Michael Giacchino's Incredibles music.  Oh well.

When Moira’s intelligence gathering reveals the presence of mutants in our midst to the CIA for the first time (well, at least to her; her superiors require convincing), she sets out to recruit an expert on the phenomenon. That leads her to Oxford, where she meets newly-minted Professor Charles Xavier, played here by James McAvoy (and in the previous movies, at a more advanced age, by Patrick Stewart). Charles has penned a thesis on mutant genes, but keeps secret his own mutant power of telepathy, preferring to use it for parlor tricks to pick up girls in pubs. (He also manages to use the word “groovy” in his pick-ups—and, surprisingly, sells it!) With Charles she also gets his adoptive sister, Raven (Jennifer Lawrence), whose mutant power allows her to assume the form of any person she wants. (She’ll later become Mystique, played by Rebecca Romijn in the other X-Men movies.) Raven’s demonstration convinces the CIA that they need a mutant division, and it’s quickly established under the direction of an underused Oliver Platt.

Xavier’s first mission for the CIA (to locate Sebastian Shaw and the nefarious mutants already observed by Moira) takes him into contact with the movie’s real star, the future Magneto (played in the other films by Ian McKellen), Erik Lehnsherr. Erik is played by Inglourious Basterds’ Michael Fassbender in a truly star-making turn that also unspools as an extended audition for James Bond. People have been touting Fassbender as a successor to Daniel Craig since Hunger, but this is the first performance in which he’s truly sold me on the notion. (And then some!)

Fassbender’s part is by far the most complex and well-developed in the movie—and also the coolest. As a child, Erik’s mutant gift for manipulating metal (I know, it sounds like a really lame power but actually turns out to be the coolest one in the film!) first manifested itself when he was separated from his parents while interned in a concentration camp. The Nazis, led by Bacon’s character in a previous identity, conducted horrifying experiments on him and he watched his mother murdered before his eyes. When we catch up with him again in 1962, he’s using his powers as a revenge-driven Nazi hunter. He’s also dressing like James Bond (a suit he wears in Geneva could have come right off Connery’s back in From Russia With Love—complete with hat) and behaving like him as well. (And when he’s not in suits, he wears more black turtlenecks than Sterling Archer—and pulls off the look with great elan.) These moments of Erik exuding cool and exacting vengeance in Europe and South America are among the film’s most Bondian, and they’re utterly thrilling as filmed by Vaughn. The future Magneto’s quest to find his mother’s killer takes him from Argentina to Miami, where he engages in some Goldfinger-style scuba skulduggery and finally crosses paths with Charles Xavier in the film’s best spy setpiece.

Despite having vastly different outlooks on their mutant status, Charles and Erik share a common objective in tracking down Sebastian Shaw. Therefore, they team up and forge a moving friendship. Fassbender and McAvoy have excellent chemistry together, and I wish that events of this movie would have allowed for further adventures together, because they make a great team. Of course their ultimate destinies (explored in Bryan Singer’s compelling X-Men and X2 and Brett Ratner’s risible X3) lie light years apart, but this period of friendship is fertile enough that it easily could have (and probably should have) fuelled a trilogy rather than a single film. Vaughn accomplishes in this single movie what the entire Star Wars prequel trilogy failed to; he succeeds in making the character we all know turns out to be a villain into a thoroughly likable hero, and we’re rooting for him not to take the path we know he does. However, that ultimate choice feels a bit rushed crammed into the movie’s final fifteen minutes or so, and I wish it had played out over more films. Oh well. The friendship and ultimate schism between these two men provides the heart and backbone of X-Men: First Class, but the entire ensemble is for the most part successful.

Together, Charles and Erik recruit a small cadre of young mutants to the CIA team in a recruiting sequence reminiscent of great Sixties capers like Grand Slam, Topkapi and Ocean’s 11. They also find another mutant already working for the CIA in a Q capacity in the form of Hank McCoy (the future Beast, played by Nicholas Hoult). While the (slightly) older characters are the more interesting ones, the scenes of the young mutants exploring and developing their powers are expertly handled, leading to an action climax that incorporates each of their specific skills like a super-powered Mission: Impossible against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Shaw also has his own team of mutant hench-people, foremost among them the aforementioned Emma Frost. January Jones aims for ice queen but comes off more as wooden, though she makes a most attractive clothes horse for costume designer Sammy Sheldon’s fabulous Emma Peel-inspired attire. (Still, her performance here is a definite improvement over the one in the Liam Neeson neo-Eurospy caper Unknown earlier this year.) For a fairly major character from the comics, Emma Frost has remarkably little to do in the movie—and disappears for most of the second half. But when she is on screen, it’s always in an amazing take on Diana Rigg’s wardrobe, which is a welcome sight—if a tad anachronistic for 1962. Her catsuit probably should have been closer to Cathy Gale’s looser motorcycle leathers than Emma Peel’s body-hugging get-up… but that’s just not as much fun! And this movie is fun.

In X-Men: First Class, Matthew Vaughn has crafted not just a fantastic homage to Sixties spydom, but a fantastic movie in its own right—and the best in the X-Men series to date. Watching it makes me even sadder that his take on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. never came to fruition. Vaughn clearly loves the era and the genre. Thanks to him, I finally have that Sixties-set modern action movie I always wanted—and enhanced with well-executed superheroics. This is the spy movie to beat so far this year, and all fans of the genre should check it out.

For more on the connections between these X-Men characters and The Avengers (including wardrobe similarities), click here.

Book Review: The Last Run: A Queen and Country Novel by Greg Rucka

With his third novel in a franchise that also comprises an ongoing series of comic books and several mini-series (all conveniently collected into four omnibus-sized volumes), Greg Rucka happily maintains the high standards that Queen and Country fans have become accustomed to and then some. I would have been happy just to have these characters back after too long an absence from both bookstores and comic book stores, and might have settled for something less—but fortunately I didn’t have to. The Last Run is a fantastic spy novel, and probably the second-best in the saga so far, closely following A Gentleman’s Game. (And the second book, Private Wars, was no slouch either.) A familiarity with the previous novels or comics is not necessary to enjoy this book, as Rucka concisely reintroduces all of the major characters quite effectively—which is handy even for a longtime fan, since it’s been so long since we’ve enjoyed the company of Tara Chace, Paul Crocker and the rest of Rucka’s SIS crew. (However, if you have read the rest of the series, you’ll be rewarded with some rich payoffs to character arcs and political machinations that have been percolating for its duration.)

Tara Chace is Minder One, the head of the SIS’s Special Section. (Rucka’s minders are roughly the equivalent of Le Carré’s scalp hunters, Fleming’s Double O’s or—most directly—The Sandbaggers’ sandbaggers.) But her operational shelf life is fast nearing expiration. Aging roughly in real time since the beginning of the series, she’s been at it for over a decade, which is far longer than most agents are kept in the field in Rucka’s world. (And very probably in real life, I’d imagine.) Furthermore, she’s a mother now, and she doesn’t like leaving her daughter Tamsin for long periods of time—with no certainty of ever returning. Particularly poignantly, she’s forced to leave Tamsin in the arms of a babysitter while the child has the flu and is running a high fever as Tara embarks on her final mission. And it’s never in any doubt that this is, indeed, her final mission—one way or another. That doesn’t give anything away; Rucka makes that clear from the earliest chapters if not the title itself. Tara Chace submits her resignation to Paul Crocker, the Director of Operations (D-Ops), but considerately agrees to stay on until a suitable replacement can be found. She soon comes to regret that consideration, however, when the head of the service, C, insists (at the unappreciated behest of the CIA) that Minder One take on a potentially suicidal mission into Iran that seems suspiciously like a trap.

In all of his novels, Rucka divides his chapters between Tara’s point of view, Crocker’s, that of a supposed ally and that of a supposed enemy. (Forgive my vagueness, but to reveal who is actually what in books like these would be, in the words of The Prisoner’s Number 2, telling. Perhaps the characters are exactly as they appear, and perhaps they are not. Readers of Rucka’s past Q&C novels know it can go either way.) In The Last Run, the new characters are SIS’s newly-posted Tehran Station Number Two, Caleb Lewis, and Youness Shirazi, the head of Iran’s secret police, VEVAK, who spends much of the story pursuing our heroine. In every Rucka novel I begin by sighing when I come to a chapter focusing on one of these non-regulars and thumb ahead to see how many pages I’ll have to go until I get back to my favorite characters, and then very quickly I come to welcome the new characters just as much. In the comics, Rucka is limited by the space constrictions of the medium and can’t afford to spend so much time developing his antagonists. Those stories work wonderfully sticking to the POVs of Tara and Crocker, but the addition of other points of view differentiate the novels enough to make them a unique reading experience in the series—and to justify using two different mediums to tell his stories.

The too-good-to-be-true bait that Crocker reluctantly sends Tara after is a high-level would-be defector: no less a personage than the nephew of the Ayatollah himself. The Iran setting provides not only a backdrop torn directly from the headlines (as they say), but also the best opportunity to tell a Cold War-style spy story in the vein of Smiley and Samson in a modern context. In his (quite brilliant) short story “Section 7 (a) (Operational),” Lee Child pokes fun at the ubiquity of Iran-related plots in contemporary spy novels. But in The Last Run, Greg Rucka ably demonstrates all the advantages of setting a spy story in that country. It’s the closest scenario in today’s world to the European chessboard Len Deighton and John Le Carré once moved their pieces around. When the mission predictably goes to hell, Tara finds herself alone in a hostile country being pursued by VEVAK, the military and the regular police. Yet it’s a country she was able to travel freely into under non-diplomatic cover—and even blend in. How many other countries in the news today could a blond, female, Western spy believably do that in? Rucka handily puts a contemporary spin on all of my favorite Cold War tropes: the ambiguity of a defector (is he for real or not?), the embassy as refuge, imperiled networks and dead drops, the agent on her own behind enemy lines, the run for the border and ingenious crossings thereof. The Last Run has all that in spades.

As usual, poor Tara is put through the ringer. More than ever before, though, there is absolutely no certainty that she will come through it all. We know from the start that it’s her last run, but that can mean several things… and Rucka has shown time and again that he’s not above killing off main characters in this series. Meanwhile, as usual, Paul Crocker has his own battles to fight at home, and his navigation of the Whitehall bureaucracy is often as perilous in its own way as Tara’s flight from authorities in an unfriendly land. Paul Crocker is Rucka’s greatest creation, and I could easily read a whole novel (or comic) just about him… but it’s probably more fun to jump between the field and the office, as we do in Queen and Country.

If The Last Run has a flaw, it’s that the ending—whatever happens—is all too abrupt. While all the primary plot threads are resolved, I’d like to have known more about how some of them were wrapped up. But thanks to the point of view we see them through, that’s not possible. I closed the book with questions—not the sort that fuel my already eager anticipation for the next book or comic, but the sort that pertain specifically to the one I just finished and are unlikely to be addressed in the future. But that’s a minor complaint. The Last Run is a clearly well-researched and utterly thrilling read sure to satisfy fans of both the Desk and Field sides of the spy genre. I honestly can’t recommend this whole series highly enough.

DVD Review: Agatha Christie's Marple: The Geraldine McEwan Collection
Featuring one of Timothy Dalton's best TV roles!

Miss Marple is in the news right now thanks to a new project at Disney that apparently recasts the famous spinster detective as, well, Jennifer Garner. I’m not sure if the message to take from that is that 38 is actually Hollywood’s current idea of “old,” or that Disney is shelling out a huge amount of money to the Christie estate in order to buy a brand that younger audiences have zero awareness of and then alter it in such a significant way so as to completely alienate the older audiences who do know the character. The former is depressing and the latter seems just ludicrous, yet it’s still the more logical conclusion. Personally, I’m kind of curious. I’ve been a big fan of Garner since Alias and of screenwriter Mark Frost since his fantastic novel The List of 7 back in the 90s, so I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and at least see where this goes, even if I’m scratching my head as to why they didn’t just set Garner up with a different female investigator more appropriate to her age and image. (Honey West, perhaps?) Anyway, in the face of a contemporary, thirty-something American version of the character, surely Christie purists must be reconsidering their outcry over the comparatively subtle changes enacted upon Miss Marple for the current ITV series!

ITV’s latest take on Agatha Christie’s evergreen sleuth might annoy such purists with the way it shakes things up a bit, but if you’ve always responded to Christie’s pulpier sensibilities, as I have, then you’ll probably enjoy it. Marple (as its simply called), starring Geraldine McEwan (in its 2004-2007 seasons anyway; she was later replaced by Julia McKenzie), takes Christie’s least pulpy detective, the aged Jane Marple, plays up the most lurid and sensational aspects of her cases and then (and here’s the genius bit) doesn’t have Miss Marple bat an eye at any of it. In any version, Miss Marple was always pretty unflappable when it came to the dead bodies that always seemed to pop up in her life (even when they were charred beyond recognition), so why should she raise an eyebrow at some of the more lurid liberties this series takes? The murderous pair of illicit lovers from one story, for example, are transformed from heterosexual adulterers into lusty lesbians. Would the Grand Dame of mystery fiction have written it that way? No (not at the time when she was writing, anyway), but that doesn’t mean that such a twist isn’t right at home within the plot of her novel!

Miss Marple herself remains the prim and proper picture of post-war British class and manners, yet she still gets her hands dirty by investigating murders–an act in itself a most inappropriate breach of accepted behavior. Likewise, Christie’s mid-century readership could satisfy their own literary bloodlust by tucking into the adventures of such a lady in pages written by a bona fide Dame! Yet all this lip service to decorum hid a thirst for the macabre and the sensational just as insatiable as that of American readers devouring the works of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, which didn’t bother to disguise their lurid, pulpy roots. Indeed, Christie’s books barely disguised them themselves. The covers may not share the spattered blood, drawn guns and heaving breasts of American pulp magazines, but they did share the fonts–and at least the hint of blood. Each episode of this 21st Century Marple series also shares those fonts. The 1950s typefaces (ripped straight off a paperback!) that open each feature-length mystery set the tone for the adaptations to follow. They may change the details and they may sex things up, but they’re true to one aspect of Christie: they appeal to their audience’s basest instincts.

As in any British mystery series, espionage elements are bound to pop up in the odd episode of Marple. But more of what makes this series of interest to spy fans will be the guest stars. Practically every episode is packed full of familiar faces from the worlds of James Bond, The Avengers, Spooks, The Saint and other series well known to readers of this site. The debut episode in Acorn’s box set, “Murder At the Vicarage,” offers both spy stars and spy plot elements. (Though with Christie, it’s always possible such elements could prove red herrings.) Herbert Lom, for example (certainly no stranger to Sixties spy fans; he even issues a very Drefuss-like wheeze at one point that you expect to be accompanied by an eye tick and the exclamation, “Clouseau!”) plays a character named Augustin Dufosse who was a French resistance fighter during WWII, as was his grandson. (Unlike the eternal pre-war setting of Poirot, Marple is situated to great effect in post-war Britain.) Furthermore, another character turns out to have been an SOE operative engaged to that grandson. The Colonel who gets killed (and that’s no spoiler; Colonels are always getting killed in this sort of thing) commanded a desk in London during the war and saw to it that a supply drop meant for them went instead to his confederate so they could split the proceeds after the war. That background provides Lom and his confederate with suitable motives to murder him, but of course the intrepid Miss Marple (more frequently referred to in this series as "Jane") soon discovers that practically everyone had a motive for murder, so that’s really not much help. I’m just illustrating some of the spy connections. Other spy celebrities in the cast include Lucifer Box creator Mark Gatiss as a suspect assistant vicar, Saint veteran Jane Asher, Hannay star Robert Powell as a doctor, Spooks’ Tim McInnerny as the head vicar and Diana Rigg’s daughter, Rachael Stirling, as his wife.

I like the way director Charles Palmer (Doctor Who) handles the reveal as Miss Marple pieces together what actually happened at the episode’s conclusion: a montage of pans against a great, swelling bit of score as all the right images whirl around in her head. This sequence sets the tone for the very stylish series to follow. Every aspect of the production, from the direction to the opulent set design to the sweeping score to the lush cinematography is flashy, which might at first seem inappropriate for Miss Marple, but which really livens things up for modern audiences while at the same time serving to accentuate her overriding ordinariness amidst all this flash. And, similar to George Smiley, it is this apparent ordinariness, this unassuming quality, that enables Jane Marple to quietly unravel the most tangled murder mysteries to everyone else’s amazement.

“The Body in the Library” introduces former Avenger Joanna Lumley as Dolly Bantry, Miss Marple’s Watsonish sidekick. She returns to the series much later (after Julia McKenzie has inherited the role from McEwan), but her repartee with Jane is so good that I found myself wishing she were in all of them. As long as you’re shaking things up from the books this much, why not introduce a permanent television sidekick, like Captain Hastings in the early seasons of Poirot?

Here, Lumley is decidedly more Edina than Purdey, but she’s fantastic, and her New Avengers fans will enjoy her nonetheless. James Fox and Ian Richardson lend further gravitas to the formidable guest cast, and the tight Christie mystery plot (complete with her signature misdirection) remains intact even if the culprit or culprits themselves are slightly altered. McEwan’s Miss Marple is shown to be more knowingly worldly than the usual portrayal (wherein she at least pretends to be less so, for the sake of propriety), and things that might have shocked more classic incarnations of this sleuth roll right off of the Teflon-coated McEwan. (Um, but she’s still not a thirty-something American!)

There really isn’t a bad episode in the lot here, but far and away the highlight for spy fans has to be “The Sittaford Mystery.” (Despite the fact that Christie’s novel of that name didn’t even feature Miss Marple as a character, she’s been worked into the plot reasonably enough for the sake of television.) Personally, I was sold from the very beginning when we’re treated to a title reading “Egypt, 1927” over an image of Timothy Dalton in khakis and a pith helmet. And a mustache! In an Egyptian tomb! Even if you’re not a fan of Agatha Christie (in fact, possibly moreso if you’re not), if that’s the sort of thing that excites you, you need to track down this episode!

After some thoroughly satisfying archeological shenanigans, we cut to twenty-five years later, when Dalton’s character, Clive Trevelyan, is a successful politician meeting in consultation with none other than Winston Churchill (not a character in Christie’s novel, but played here by Robert Hardy… of course). We learn that Trevelyan is very likely his successor as Prime Minister… so long as nobody murders him, of course. Lots of newspaper headlines and newsreel footage stylishly fill us in on the character’s career in the interceding years as an Olympic skiier, adventurer, war hero and now politician.

As you might surmise from its sensational tomb-raiding beginning, “The Sittaford Mystery” plays up the pulpiness of the story more than any other. The direction goes overboard (in the best possible way) right from the start with canted angles galore. I honestly don’t think there’s a single level camera shot in the entire episode. It might get a little annoying, but at the same time it serves to appropriately sensationalize the proceedings and up the pulp ante that comes automatically with a story that begins with a mustachioed Timothy Dalton in an ancient tomb! The same gleefully over-the-top approach goes for the art direction and costumes and cinematography. We’re treated to great pulpy colors and purposefully studio-bound sets, like a taxi that Dalton and McEwan share in a snowstorm which doesn’t actually move. Only the camera does (canted, of course), in a motion to suggest movement of the stationary, studio-bound cab as artificial snow whirls all around.

Even though it’s stylized in a BBC-style, digital sort of stylized, “The Sittaford Mystery” still resembles nothing so much as a Hammer Gothic. And if Hammer and Miss Marple previously didn’t go together and still don’t sit well with some fans, well I’m sorry; I never knew it, but apparently that’s exactly what I wanted to see! (Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll say the same thing about Jennifer Garner playing Miss Marple.) Director Paul Unwin plays up the Gothic side of the story further by having Dalton brood alone in his study in his castle (Oh yes! Dalton lives in a castle. A snowbound castle, no less! How cool!), haunted very literally by the ghosts of his past, presented in the flesh (so to speak) in stark white video effects. The implication is certainly there, even, that these ghosts are literal, but Christie purists can easily choose to view them as figments of Trevelyan’s imagination, too. Besides living in a castle and talking to ghosts, Dalton goes for walks “out on the moor” to think (even Christie’s novel, which also features an escaped convict, owed a debt to The Hound of the Baskervilles—a connection the filmmakers waste no opportunity to drive home) and keeps a falcon.

If you’re thinking al this (plus a golden scorpion purloined from that Egyptian tomb said to carry a curse) surely foretells a bad death in a mystery of this ilk, then you’re right… but the good news for Dalton fans is that it doesn’t come until more than halfway through the story, and even then Trevelyan is still very much a presence via flashbacks. Despite a reliable ensemble (including a pre-Education Carey Mulligan), this is truly Dalton’s show here, and he makes the most of it!

If “The Sittaford Mystery” has a downside, it’s just that Miss Marple herself doesn’t really have that much to do in it—certainly not until the second half, at least. Instead, beautiful potential couple Charles Burnaby (Chaos' James Murray) and Emily Trefusis (Sherlock’s Zoe Telford, who is excellent) lead the on-site investigation, belying this story’s origin as a non-Marple novel. (The couple are the only detectives in the book.) But what it lacks in Marple herself, it makes up for in trains, castles, snowstorms, Lagondas, deaths foretold on Ouija Boards, Evil Dead-style zoom-ins on creepy cuckoo clocks at canted angles and Winston Churchill to boot! It’s all more Hammer than Christie (driven home by the controversial final shot), which might drive the great Dame’s fans a bit nuts, but is frankly fine with me. (And maybe after contemplating Jennifer Garner as their heroine, it will seem fine to them in retrospect, too.) I’ve seen and read enough Christie in my time to appreciate a slightly atypical take on the material, and for Timothy Dalton fans like myself, “The Sittaford Mystery” really can’t be beat.

While nobody can beat T-Dalt, there are still more spy stars to turn up in Marple. Other episodes include Live and Let Die’s Jane Seymour (in a meaty role), Keeley Hawes, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Richard Armitage. All in all, there’s a lot to like in Marple: The Complete Geraldine McEwan Collection, and it certainly proves that you don’t have to be entirely faithful to the text to make good entertainment. With that in mind, I think I’ll remain cautiously optimistic about the next incarnation of the character to feature a TV spy—Ms. Garner.

DVD Review: Danger: Diabolik (1968) [REPOST]

Mario Bava’s 1968 pop-art masterpiece Danger: Diabolik is not only one of my favorite spy films, but one of my favorite films, period, ever made. Top ten, easily. Diabolik may not be a spy movie per se, but as I’ve often argued on this blog, it is in many ways the quintessential Sixties spy movie, showcasing all the elements the genre requires–despite focusing on a criminal instead of a secret agent as its hero. It plays as a checklist of everything I look for in a great Eurospy caper: stunningly beautiful women, lavish settings, amazing costumes, spectacular setpieces, an infectious score, fast sports cars, underground lairs, bizarre deaths, Adolfo Celi, and, at its core, the most dashing, handsome, charismatic hero you could ask for in the person of John Phillip Law. It’s a near-perfect film (and a clear influence on later productions as diverse as Moonraker, The Beastie Boys’ "Body Movin’" video, CQ and V For Vendetta), from its witty writing (thanks to Bava, Dino Maiuri, Tudor Gates and Saint writer Brian Degas) to its polished look (primarily thanks to Bava and not credited cinematographer Antonio Rinaldi, according to Law on the commentary track) to its pitch-perfect performances. Best of all, it’s endlessly fun. I’ll never grow tired of watching Danger: Diabolik, and I still discover something new on every viewing.

The film follows the subversive escapades of Italian comic book hero Diabolik, a lithe, mirthful superthief clad in a skintight latex ninja outfit and matching face mask. His girlfriend and willing partner-in-crime is the iconic, criminally sexy Eva Kant (Marisa Mell, looking more ethereally gorgeous than ever in a fantastic blond wig and outrageously mod, barely-there fashions), and the two of them are relentlessly pursued by the single-minded Inspector Ginko (Michel Piccoli), the only authority figure in this world capable of rational, intelligent thought. And even he isn’t above ridicule: in one scene, Ginko munches on a tiny sandwich while boasting to a gangster over the telephone that "for once, we’ve got special powers!" With his mouth full. (Nicely undermining any talk of police special powers.) Overall, though, Ginko manages to escape the derision reserved for other officials because he is somewhat smarter than them, and certainly more noble.

Bava was fifty-four when he made Danger: Diabolik, but tapped completely into the zeitgeist of the late Sixties youth movement, delivering a candy-coated hymn to anarchy. Diabolik is James Bond for the revolutionary set, appealing equally to the decade’s conflicting appetites for consumerism and rebellion. The character is not a Robin Hood because he doesn’t aim to redistribute the wealth he steals. Then again, he’s not interested in moving it to some offshore account, either, and building a nest egg. After he heists ten million dollars ("the largest single shipment of dollars ever made... at six in the morning") from a disguised convoy at the film’s opening, the buffoonish Minister of the Interior (Terry-Thomas, doing a dead-on Terry-Thomas) suggests it only logical to conclude that he’ll do exactly that. "Logical suggestion, sir," says Ginko to Thomas' annoyance, "but I’m afraid quite useless. Diabolik will handle the ten million dollars, but in some quite different way." What quite some different way? "A way no mind but his could imagine." That way, quite famously, is by spreading the bills out all over his gigantic, rotating circular bed and making love to Eva while rolling around in the cash. (Were paper cuts were an issue?) He merely wants money out of circulation to disrupt commerce and government; what he actually does with it is his business–or, more precisely, his pleasure. (I always find it amusing that the $10 million appears to be largely made up of tens and twenties.)

It’s true that Diabolik already has the ultimate in lavish lairs (comprised entirely of very impressive matte paintings and foreground elements), fashionable clothing, a fleet of sleek and trendy E-type Jaguars and a beautiful, adoring companion, so he’s not above creature comforts. But he still wants more. ("Out for all he can take, caress or get away with!" blared the American posters.) What for? He shows no particular financial ambitions beyond his already immodest holdings. No, he doesn’t want riches to spend; he wants them to make love upon, to decorate his lair, so the government can’t have them. He wants to tear down the very fabric of law and order–and the financial institutions upon which that fabric is slung. He’s a paradoxical consumerist anarchist, the perfect combination for 1968.

All of Diabolik’s heists and crimes are perpetrated against authority. He’s liberal with his use of knives and bullets, but only against police, security guards, mob kingpins and other authority figures. And the movie does nothing to endear audiences to those authority figures, either. With the noted exception of Ginko (portrayed in the Guissani Sisters’ original comic books as Diabolik’s doppelganger), not one of them has an ounce of sense. Terry-Thomas is the Minister of the Interior for crying out loud! It’s certainly no accident that Bava cast someone known only for playing twits. The police officers guarding the initial cash shipment that Diabolik knocks off are equally idiotic. The slovenly, slouching cops fail miserably in their attempts to pass themselves off as upper-crust society types, out for a pleasant drive in the Rolls. And the helicopter that hovers overhead keeping tabs on the situation (what authority is higher than an eye in the sky?) identifies itself on the radio as "Aerial Surveillance Ship #1." Weird call sign? Go ahead, note the acronym. From the very first scene, we’re alerted that in this film, all representatives of the establishment are unmitigated asses!

Bava adheres closely to the character’s comic book roots both in visuals and narrative. In a nod to the fumetti, the story is episodic, but very deliberately so. Each act focuses on a different heist, but also advances the overall story. In Act 1, we see Diabolik pull off a flashy but fairly rudimentary robbery, knocking over the aforementioned disguised cash transport. In the course of his escape, we’re not only treated to a very exciting helicopter/car chase, but also introduced to the love story. And it’s Diabolik’s mad, passionate love for Eva that drives his actions in the second act.

Diabolik’s first crime enables the police to invoke "special powers," putting pressure on mob kingpin Valmont (Thunderball’s Adolfo Celi–dubbed to sound much less polished and charming than Largo) to do their work for them, and capture Diabolik. ("It takes a thief to catch a thief," reasons Ginko.) Act 2 centers on a more elaborate heist, with Diabolik liberating a priceless emerald necklace from a visiting British dignitary’s wife within a castle crawling with Ginko’s men. The episode of the necklace doesn’t end there, however, as Valmont snatches Eva (the one thing Diabolik cares about above all others), ostensibly to ransom her for the emeralds. We’re also treated to more fantastic action (including a freefall from Valmont’s airplane and a shootout on a beach) and one of the two best freak-outs ever filmed when police raid one of Valmont’s drug dens in order to pressure him. (For the curious, the other one occurs in a Patrick Macnee movie called Bloodsuckers.) The scene, set to some of Ennio Morricone’s trippiest music ever, is a hilarious parody of "hippy" culture. Yes (despite some influential pundits’ misunderstanding of the scene), it’s a parody–and very intentional. This isn’t out-of-touch filmmakers (like some at Hammer or ITC) trying in vain to replicate youth happenings; this is a joke. Don’t believe me? Check out the standout day player decked out in plants who frolics about high on whatever all the kids are taking, getting in a final pirouette as the cops show up! This is clearly Bava reveling in a comic mastery he wasn’t always able to display in his horror movies. Also laugh-out-loud funny is the ultra-square gangster in a pinstripe suit who remains rigid despite the vibe and distributes drugs to the youths in a hilariously surreptitious manner.

By the third act, things have escalated to the point that Diabolik must steal the world’s largest gold ingot (twenty tons–all of the country’s remaining gold supply has been melted into it), and heist it from a moving train. The plan involves Eva distracting a truck driver by wearing the shortest of short shorts, and the two of them in some Thunderball-like underwater action. This act also brings Ginko and his men to his very doorstep. It’s a very tight script, much moreso than the ones Bava often worked with. (Not that the director couldn’t do great things with the flimsiest of scenarios.)

Along the way, Diabolik revels in every opportunity to undermine the system. When Terry-Thomas’s minister gives a press conference about his first robbery, Diabolik and Eva show up disguised as photographers (each in some amazing sunglasses) and distribute laughing gas to the crowd (but only after carefully administering themselves handily labeled "anti-exhilarating gas capsules!"). Thus they make a literal laughingstock out of the minister, forcing his resignation. Later, when the government offers a huge reward for his capture, Diabolik decides that if they’re putting their money to such bad use they don’t deserve to have it. So he blows up all the banks and tax bureaus! Terry-Thomas is forced to grovel once more on TV, pleading with his people to come forward and pay the taxes they think they owe.

In addition to the structure, the film’s aesthetic also evokes comic books at every opportunity. Two animated sequences stand out: in one, we see the spread of Ginko’s police forces across a map of city streets leading into the freakout sequence. In another, Valmont’s men use an Identikit gizmo to recreate Eva’s face from a prostitute’s description. The hand-drawn face expands and contracts against multiple primary color backgrounds, changing many times before settling on a likeness not to Mell, but to the comic book depiction of her character. Both sequences play out to particularly trippy, discordant music.

Furthermore, the very composition of the shots also recalls comic books–specifically their panels. Bava frequently uses vertical and horizontal elements in his foregrounds and backgrounds to break up the frame into simulated panels, including the latticework of a telephone booth, an open bookcase and a car’s rearview mirror. He uses the latter again and again as Diabolik drives, so that you have a full-frame image of him and Eva in the car driving, with the road ahead (also in a panel of its own, framed by the windshield) and, in the form of the rearview mirror, an insert panel showing a close-up of one of their faces as they talk. Coolest of all, the director even uses the limitations of the effects at his disposal to his advantage. He plays up the thick greenish outline around characters’ faces in certain rear-projection shots to further establish panels within the frame.

That’s not the only instance in this film in which Bava uses perceived limitations of special effects to his advantage. After making off with the emerald necklace, Diabolik dashes out onto the roof of the castle and sees a catapult: a possible means of escape! The pursuing policemen burst out just in time to see the catapult spring forward, flinging what’s supposed to be Diabolik into the sea. To a jaded audience, well used to such special effects, it’s clear that no stuntman performed this feat; it’s only a dummy in his suit that was launched over the edge. The police are fooled, but the audience is not. We know it’s a dummy! We assume that we’re seeing through the artifice of the filmmaking. But we’re wrong! Bava’s tricked us! It was really a dummy, not just behind the scenes but in the world of the film as well! Diabolik’s still up here, naked. He put a dummy in his suit and launched it into the sea to fool the police, and it worked. It also worked on us, because Bava used our preconceptions to fool us. He played on our expectations. In doing so, he tips his hand, revealing the craft of movie making in a similar manner to his famous final shot in Black Sabbath when Boris Karlof is revealed to be riding a dummy horse in the confines of a movie studio.

On top of being clever and visually arresting, Danger: Diabolik is also an incredibly sexy movie. Even if they’re both a bit crazy, Diabolik and Eva share a genuine love and a very healthy sex life. When they meet in the middle of a job in a tunnel, fully knowing that the police are hovering just outside looking for them, the pair can’t keep their hands off each other. They’re so in love! As soon as they arrive back at the incredibly mod hideout (accessed via a fake mound in the landscape that lifts up to reveal an underground passage), she tells him to "be quick" in the shower. They can’t wait to find each others’ bodies once again. Despite being in a long-term relationship, they’ve lost none of the spark. (Of course, they do spice things up with games: making love in heaps of money, roleplaying as prostitute and john while reconnoitering a potential target, etc.) The two actors’ chemistry together is phenomenal, which may come partially from the fact that they were involved off-set at the time, one of many juicy facts revealed by Law in the DVD’s commentary track.

The characters aren’t the only ones with sex on the brain. Bava crams more sexual imagery into this movie than an entire Hitchcock film festival! From the stalactites in the cave leading to Diabolik’s underground lair to the vertical pipes in the organ that serves as its alarm to the gearshift in his Jaguar that Eva excitedly shifts for him when she’s turned on as he races down a winding road, there are phallic symbols everywhere. And after stealing the gold ingot, Diabolik sets about melting it down. Eva looks on eagerly as he wields a large hose between his legs, preparing to issue molten gold from it into a mold. We see him and his hose framed between her statuesque legs, just in case we still don’t get it. Then we see her bite her lower lip as the gold spurts out. It’s ridiculously over the top, but so appropriate for this movie! And really rather shocking for 1967. In poking fun at the sexuality in James Bond films with scenes like this, Danger: Diabolik actually manages to one-up 007 on that count.

From the shot compositions to the performances to the action to the suggestive situations, there is no part of Danger: Diabolik that isn’t a sheer joy to watch. Bursting with Sixties style and fashions, it is an absolute must for fans of the era, and also compulsory viewing for James Bond and Eurospy afficionados. But it’s not a movie that should be limited to any sort of niche audience; it’s a movie for all. It’s sheer entertainment.

I’m generally a fan of the cult favorite TV series Mystery Science Theater 3000, but they did a grave disservice to cinema in general when they wrongheadedly selected Danger: Diabolik as their final "experiment," thus poisoning a generation against what’s really one of the greatest movies ever made with their riffing. (It’s not even a very funny episode, since genuinely bad movies lend to better jokes.) Fortunately, a lot has been done since then to correct this misapprehension.

In 2005, Paramount issued a fantastic special edition DVD, boasting not only a great widescreen transfer (utilizing the better of the two available English language tracks; an inferior one had circulated widely as a bootleg before then), but also a number of excellent special features. Foremost among them is a truly stellar commentary track by John Phillip Law and the erudite publisher of Video Watchdog and Bava biographer Tim Lucas. It’s both informative and entertaining. Law candidly recalls lots of great stories from the set, and Lucas makes sure there’s never a lull in the track with a plethora of behind-the-scenes facts about nearly everyone involved in the production. (His book, Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark also contains an entire, exhaustively researched chapter on the movie–and is the final word to date on its making.) The Beastie Boys’ music video "Body Movin’" is also included, and that’s a real treat as well. It utilizes clips from the film mixed with new footage of the musicians playing the roles themselves. Beastie Boy and director Adam Yauch provides a commentary on that. There’s a good (if ultimately too short) featurette called "From Fumetti to Film" in which comic artist Steven Bissette makes the credible case for Danger: Diabolik being the best comic book movie ever, and both the U.S. teaser and theatrical trailer round out the special features. The disc is sadly out of print in America at present, though still easy enough to find used. (I’m hoping this moratorium is only temporary while the studio prepares an even better special edition for Blu-Ray, but I have no evidence supporting that theory.) It’s still available in Region 2, but sadly without the features.

Since then, Lucas’s book has fueled a much-deserved renaissance in Bava films in general, and Danger: Diabolik frequently makes the rounds of revival cinemas. Celebrity fans like Joe Dante and Edgar Wright have also done their part to reclaim this misunderstood classic from the schlock status unfairly bequeathed it by MST3K.

There is so much more I’d love to write about Danger: Diabolik, but a review can only be so long. In short: this is a truly fantastic film. If you’ve never seen it, make sure to rectify that at your earliest opportunity!

For more on the fabulous set design of Danger: Diabolik, be sure to check out Jason Whiton's fantastic article on the subject over at Spy Vibe.

This review was originally published on the Double O Section on March 7, 2009 here. Danger: Diabolik was the second entry in an ongoing series devoted to My Favorite Spy Films. Other entries so far include:

Deadlier Than the Male (1967)
Billion Dollar Brain (1967)