Mr. Smith

This short vignette starts with the morning routine of an ordinary, middle-aged British gentleman. His life appears without excitement and he is content attending to the little demands of his home and afterwards walking to his regular coffee shop for his breakfast. In the coffee shop he sits and watches others in the shop and those walking past the window, something which he and countless others have been doing during their uneventful lives. He strolls to a park where he seats himself on a bench, watching with detachment the activities of the people passing. Just when the movie-viewer is lulled into watching these boring sequence of events, he is suddenly startled by an expression of severe anxiety on Mr Smith's face. Amidst the contortions, Mr Smith takes out a pistol and places it against his temple. With a last grimace, he shoots himself. After watching this movie, one looks at other seemingly contented people and wonders what hidden trigger lies within them to perhaps end their lives. This movie was shown as a preliminary to Andy Warhol's Bad in a West Ealing,London, cinema. The combination is not for the sensitive viewer.

How strange - the previous reviewer remembers this on a double bill with Warhol's "Bad", and I saw it in Leicester Square, London, on a double bill with "The Hills Have Eyes" in 1977. Those were the days of creative programming gone mad. All I remember is being slightly irritated by what I thought was a rather self-conscious attempt at a half hour of "Art". But having said that, I was somewhat the worse for a bevy of Scotch and was impatient for the Wes Craven movie. I was also young and ... well.. in many ways a self-consciously "Arty" youth. So work out the psychology. I always liked Peter Barkworth's work, endearing and low-key, very British, like that other fine character actor Geoffrey Keen. I remember once talking to Barkworth in a Hampstead supermarket and complementing him on his work in "Telford's Change". He was of course suitably modest and charming. Gone, and not forgotten.