Amok

and worth seeing more than twice. This film has a haunting quality that stays with you.

Shelley Winters as a nagging wife- Peter Finch as the beleaguered husband. He is tired and bored. Much of the film is located on Isle of Wight, and the scenes are rainy and moody. His marriage is falling apart, his job bores him.

Finch (Harry ) meets a young woman hitch hiking and decides to help her out. There are many commentaries on the transiency of his life, his job; life in general. Overall this film conveys a sense of alienation and disturbance. It almost seems like psychological horror, in retrospect. Do not miss it. 9/10.

Peter Finch as an unhappily married man, brow-beaten by his coarse and vulgar wife (Shelley Winters, in a bit) as well as on the job by his supervisor at the Town Council on the Isle of Wight. A fight between the couple on Christmas night ends with a wine bottle shattering; the next thing we know, the shrewish spouse is "away" and may not be returning. Meanwhile, the husband has picked up a belligerent, pregnant and unmarried teenager whom he allows to stay at his house (but not for long because the neighbors might gossip!). Writer-director Alastair Reid, adapting Nicholas Monsarrat's 1963 novel, pitches this melodramatic material too high; it's grating and off-putting instead of interesting, despite yet another solid job of acting by Finch. British production went unreleased in the States until 1976, where it usually played under the title "Shattered". *1/2 from ****

This film always played around Christmastime. I watched it late one night, and it has haunted me ever since. It is a must see. Watch it 3 or 4 times to really absorb what the characters are experiencing. Powerful performances make this thriller haunting. One must pay special and careful attention throughout the entire film. It contains surprises, very interesting characters, and a truly haunting story line. It is a perfect film to watch on a cold afternoon with a cup of tea or hot chocolate. The stormy British weather adds so well to the stormy plot. Even the supporting characters in this film are intriguing. The contrast is excellent. The juxtaposition of Winters and Finch is unnerving. You will not forget this one. Everyone seems together when they mention their being haunted for years.

"Something To Hide"? A better title would be "Something To Regret" as that would accurately describe how I felt after watching it.

This is the director, Alastair Reid, trying his hand at the French style of cinema, and he has proved that French cinema is an art-form best left to the French. It is a craft that needs to be learned from masters of the art.

They know how to use strange camera angles, close ups of random objects, long, slow pans and short scenes using un-connected, incidental characters to produce atmosphere, build interest and intrigue, and hold attention. I'm afraid Reid's attempts are a flop.

His close ups (a boiled egg, a typewriter, an eyeball and many other objects), his long, slow pans (one being totally out of focus), the random shots of people on a beach, children playing, frequent shots of a mechanical digger cleaning the beach, noisy old women in a shop are meant to be atmospheric and evocative, but they are perfect examples of how to get things not-quite-right when an un-trained hand tries to copy a style.

Had those techniques worked as they should, then the music would have been right too, but playing behind such bland and uninteresting scenes, the accompanying music - "Concerto For Harry" played by The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra no less - simply seems pretentious.

I'm sure Reid was strongly influenced by Jean-Luc Godard's Weekend (1967), "Something To Hide" even has a scene where Harry is stuck in a traffic queue caused by a car accident ahead, as does Weekend. I'm afraid that even fans of French cinema will feel let down by this attempt. Just as you don't want a dentist trying his hand at heart surgery, you don't want a British director trying his hand at French cinema.

But perhaps the plot can uplift this film into something worth watching. Sadly, no, as it doesn't really have a plot, it is just a series of events, as is Godard's Weekend, that lead up to a climactic ending.

Harry Field (Peter Finch) is a man with a drink problem and something to hide, and having something to hide, he constantly covers up, makes excuses and lies, very much like the character he played twenty-three years earlier in Train of Events (1949).

The opening scenes are of Harry and his wife, Gabby, (Shelley Winters) spending an evening together and having dinner. It is the energy and charisma of Winters that makes these scenes worthwhile. She could have delivered her lines to a shop window mannequin or even an empty chair with equal success, such is her performance. Finch need not have been present.

Then, Shelley Winters was gone and we were left with the unbearably cheerless and grumpy Harry going about his life, and this was where the tedium set in as we followed Harry's domestic routine.

He gets up, shaves, goes to work, or some days doesn't go to work because he has a hangover, he cooks a meal and it is all mundane and dismal until he gives a lift to a young woman, Lorelei (Linda Hayden) who coerces him into putting her up for a few days. She disturbs his domestic routine and is thoroughly troublesome.

Then lots more of the French style - a man lighting a bonfire, long, sweeping shots of the outside of the house and later, one like that but at night, people building a huge sandcastle, a close up of the knobs on the stereo system - Reid must have thought these shots were interesting additions to his building the relationship between Harry and Lorelei, but they just slowed things down so much that it was hard to sit through.

This was too slow, too much time-wasting, no actual plot, just happenings, unlikeable characters and by the time it got to the climactic ending, I didn't really care, and so the emotional impact was lost on me.

When it got to the end, I wished that I hadn't wasted my time. I've seen films before that I didn't enjoy, but I'd never before seen one that was so utterly devoid of anything to make it worth watching. If ever there was film that wasn't worth watching, this is it, a total waste of time. See Jean-Luc Godard's Weekend to see how it should be done.

Harry Field had a drink problem, and trying to sit through this was such hard work,it almost drove me to drink.

Dire. Avoid! Harsh words, but deserved.

SOMETHING TO HIDE is a rather strange and dreamy low budget thriller shot on the Isle of Wight. It's a little like THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA but has nowhere near the same level of power. Peter Finch plays a regular guy harrassed by his nagging wife (a powerful Shelley Winters cameo) who picks up pregnant hitchhiker Linda Hayden. It all goes wrong from there, but I didn't feel much until the admittedly powerful climax.