Ain't No Caine on the Brazos

To get the taste of the last blog post's subject out of my mouth, I decided to watch the HD-DVD version of Batman Begins. I forgot, or more accurately relearned, that video and aural bells and whistles ("mixed metaphor there, doc") cannot strengthen a meandering script--in the case of this film, who's the real villain. I liked the actors, but the action was too choppy and disjointed, so I spent my time trying to figure out which portions of Chicago* were real, and which portions the product of CGI. (Lower Wacker Drive--again!?)

Michael Caine's effortlessly polished performance as Alfred, the butler ("Nevv-ah!"), though, led me to pop in a movie I had been meaning to watch, Get Carter (NOT the abominable remake with Sylvester Stallone). In the original 1971 production, Caine plays a London gangster who journeys north to Newcastle to investigate the death of his brother. My ulterior motive for watching this was the portrayal of a Newcastle gangster chief by John Osborne--his only appearance, as far as I know, in films.

Well, Osborne's performance was languidly reptilian and Newcastle's industrial grunge pictorially fascinating (was that why they picked Seattle for the remake?). But the movie as a whole was unsatisfying, maybe because it was too knowing. On the train ride north, Carter is reading Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely--the title is shown twice, in case you miss it. OK, nice in-joke--except a spiv like Carter would read Mickey Spillane if anything--not Chandler's simile-sodden prose and period wisecracks. And the plot itself, while suitably quest-like (and it's Chandler who names a character Orfamay Quest, and in FML, Mrs. Grayle), just gets too numbing. And director Mike Hodges overuses telephoto shots--why use that lens in an over-the-shoulder shot when the blur of the person in front obscures the face of the speaker?

But one moment of pure movie acting made my viewing worthwhile. After bedding a northern gangster's girlfriend, Carter turns on a 16mm porn movie for some entertainment. As the movie goes on, Carter realizes the identity of one of the participants, and the way that Caine shows that dawning revelation, both cognitively and emotionally, is masterful. In that moment of pure film, I "got" Carter.


*It's ironic that here they use Chicago as a model for Gotham City, because in the comics Gotham City was modeled on New York, and Metropolis on Chicago. Smallville was in Illinois.