Le chat croque les diamants

Watched this film tonight on the BBC for the first time. What an unusual film! Written and Directed by Bryan Forbes it certainly added some new twists to the usual thriller plotline. Some odd mixing of plotlines, particularly mixing up sexuality with perversion, which maybe didn't come off too well, but with some brilliant music by John Barry and a belting Shirley Bassey opening titles song this does deliver great entertainment with good direction from Bryan Forbes.

I first came across this film in Ankara, Turkey in the 1970's and have been looking for it since. It's a "heist" film on the surface, a cat burglar after jewels. But it's far more than this, with troubling, dark sexual overtones. It features the actual "deadfall" against the background of Aranjuez' guitar concerto, and the suspense is terrific, especially the acting, with Caine at his underplaying best, and Eric Portman stealing the show with a subtle, great performance. Why this film is not a cult classic I don't know, unless its dark side is too much for viewers. It's really unforgetable, as proven by its 25 year hold on my imagination.

After seeing this, I could be persuaded why Caine's is so well known for making dud decisions as to the choice of his films. While comparisons are inevitably made with the earlier and strictly played for laughs Gambit, this is a thief movie with no humour whatsoever and as the film progresses from intrigue to jealousy, and then from drudgery to death.

Overdirected? Most critics say so, but in the main, this was one of the aspects I most liked about the film. An early scene where Caine talks to the a youthful Leonard Rossiter can be noted for the lack of any shot of them both together in conversation. Others however, are sheer melodrama and should never have made it to the final cut.

Interesting for early Caine fans only, as thereafter the attractiveness fades and only the director, Bryan Forbes, nice man as he is, can really be left to carry the can, so to speak. Speeding to a climax which is just plain odd, the film rather leaves too much detail unexplained. While it appears easy to fill in the gaps, not enough time elapses between the final revelations and the dramatic close, to believe that not one of the characters could have really thought sensibly about all of this, and therefore not taken such drastic actions. Bewildering though not without charm.

It's a shame this movie was such a failure, because subsequently one of the greatest 60's film scores I've ever heard has been buried along with it. John Barry has never done finer work, and even appears on-camera to conduct one of the brilliant pieces he composed. If you ever get a chance to see this film on TV, and you get bored by it, just leave the sound on. You'll get quite a treat.

Bryan Forbes wrote and directed 'Deadfall' quite late into his acting/directing career, and managed to make a strange yet compelling film, with an interesting cast and two fabulous pieces of music, a guitar concerto and a moody song for Shirley Bassey to sing over the opening credits.

I'm not saying that this film doesn't have its faults. It does. The whole sexuality angle is handled clumsily and could have been much better. Forbes has the tendency to overdo the extreme close-up, and clearly is more at home with odd angles, photographing at strange perspective, and so on, then he is with moving this jewel heist film plot along.

Michael Caine doesn't really make that much of an impression, more or less sulking his way through the picture. Much better is Eric Portman as the ageing jewel thief with a murky past, although I'm not 100% sure he was the best person for the role. However, there are three scenes which are particularly impressive - the break-in and the orchestral concert, shots of both interlinked, and a long time to have a film going with just music and no dialogue; the interlinking between the love scene between Henry and Fe, and Richard reading up on Henry, alone in his lonely house; and the final scene between Richard and Fe, which is very well done on the part of both actors. There's other good photography, notably the end sequences and any sequence Nanette Newman sidles her way through.

I liked it. A bit on the pretentious side, maybe, but I wouldn't dismiss it entirely.