The Deadly Affair: (1966. dir: Sidney Lumet) What is it with John le Carre and faithless, nymphomaniac wives? This government snoop, played by James Mason, might be George Smiley under not so very different circumstances. As usual with le Carre, there's espionage afoot to be coaxed to the surface and crushed under heel by a rather ordinary, unassuming, and secretly heartbroken civil servant. This time it's communists causing mayhem in mid-'60s London, and we get to venture more than once into the thriving heart of the theatre scene in pursuit of the bad guys, running into Lynn and Corin Redgrave and David Warner en route, Lynn Redgrave in particular giving a lovely, warm turn as a committed but ditzy stage manager.
As in most le Carre, the world here is a shabby one, peopled largely by schmoes of one stripe or another struggling to find some dignity in day-to-day life and largely failing. The plot and characters are engaging, albeit slightly depressing (again, welcome to le Carre's world), and for the most part well-played (how I love Harry Andrews, this time as a patient, hard-working DCI with a menagerie in his bachelor flat, no tolerance for guesswork, and a marked tendency to nod off when between tasks). If this screenwriter had found the graceful device which last year's Tinker Tailor did, in which we never experience the heartbreaker wife directly but only through the husband's perceptions of her, the story might more readily have found its wings. As it is, the subplot of uxorious devotion and its continuing betrayal, although germane to the story at large, clunks awkwardly along the ground because le Carre's cheating wives tend to come across as wafer-thin and falsely reported, as this one does.
There is one especially wonderful piece: a climactic scene taking place in the audience during an RSC production of Edward II, in which Schell gives us a magnificent, tacit soliloquy of intensifying emotions as he figures out what to do. After that, his soft-spoken end-scene is just right.
Judgment at Nuremberg: (1961. dir: Stanley Kramer) For years I have railed against the unfairness of a world which refused to give Paul Newman his richly-deserved Oscar for the Hustler, tossing him instead a belated bone for his pale reprise in its sequel, the Color of Money. This seemed to me a plateful of contumely which no such beloved and hard-working Hollywood royalty should be forced to stomach.
Although I still love that performance, I have suffered my moment of revelation while watching Nuremberg for the first time in many years, and for the first time in its entirety. Schell's Oscar-seizing performance as the brilliant defense counsel for the Nazi judges inhabits an area just short of stunning, particularly in its context. Imagine, if you will, a huge studio venture starring Spencer Tracy, Marlene Dietrich, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, and Judy Garland. Imagine going to the cinema to see it on its release. Now imagine the shock of seeing, against the backdrop of this collection of Hollywood's Eminences Grises (all accomplished to the point of greatness, but in that comfortable, studio manner), a performance, delivered in a language not his own, with such intelligence, exactness of gesture and spontaneity of expression as Schell gives here. It must have knocked the Academy sidelong, and suddenly it looks like a gesture of uncharacteristic honesty, lauding the new European kid on the block over our own beloved blue-eyed boy.
I left Montgomery Clift off the list because the scene in which Schell gently and ruthlessly dismantles his slow-witted baker's assistant is one of the most painful you'll ever see, and that's due as much to Clift's spontaneous gestures of vulnerability as to Schell's easy mastery. My favorite scene, though, occurs not in the courtroom but in an antechamber: Lancaster's prisoner has declared he will make a self-damaging statement and his lawyer has this one chance to talk him out of it. Schell's monologue is a perfect blend of emotional honesty and the lawyer's tendency to histrionicize, and I think I will never tire of it.
Kramer is already playing with the extreme camera moves which will make Ship of Fools so visually striking, using slow pans behind characters and the occasional quick zoom to arresting effect. The way he reveals Dietrich in her final scene is perfect, and the moment in which, after extended and stubborn silence, Lancaster rises in the courtroom to demand, "Are we going to do this again?" is one of the greats in cinema.
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