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"The writer's life would be ideal, but for the writing." My Gun Is Long and The Knee Trembler are among the Spillanean hits of the hack novelist (Michael Caine), whose prose is enough to tingle a roomful of typists (and their editor) during a manuscript transcription. The intrigue unfolds "somewhere in the Mediterranean," as befits Mike Hodges' gloss on Hustonian derision. (Bogie and Lorre lookalikes point to a Maltese falcon, though Beat the Devil is the true model.) He's commissioned to ghost-write an expatriate movie-star's memoirs and, on the way to the island villa, comes to realize that the plot will really be about itself. For Hollywood gangsters there's Mickey Rooney's vibrating study of Cagneyisms, for the noir angle there's Lizabeth Scott's stream of smoky putdowns. Femme (Nadia Cassini), manager (Lionel Stander) and assassin (Al Lettieri), plus the British stranger (Dennis Price) who spells out Tweedledee's monologue to a couple of Texan tourists. "Are these characters for real?" The purple verbiage and cheeky winks are dreadful, just what's needed for the best satire of bad writing prior to Polanski's Bitter Moon. Availing himself of the private-eye genre's murder and sex and phobia, Hodges continues the ruthless style of Get Carter with intricate visual gags—rally placards scrambled to spell out an obscenity, a wizened hitman sipping Coke through a straw while profiled against an Antonioni blank wall. "A death rattle in paperback, eh?" The modern hero watches home movies upside-down ("Don't blame me, you shot the projectionist!") and faints at the sight of his own blood, the old shamus from Chandler and Hammett has long become a cornered warthog. Frears' Gumshoe is a salient counterpart. With Leopoldo Trieste, Amerigo Tot, Giulio Donnini, and Robert Sacchi.
--- Fernando F. Croce |