"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
Week End - Una donna e un uomo da sabato a domenica (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.
