The Mind Benders

It is Dirk Bogarde's collaborations with Joseph Losey (five films) and Luchino Visconti (two films) that are made the most of by the critics. But what of his four-film association with Basil Dearden? It was under Dearden's direction that the world got its first glimpse of the dark side of Dirk - as Tom Riley in 'The Blue Lamp'. They did their finest work together with 'Victim' - an incredibly brave, taboo-busting film which helped change public perception and attitudes towards gay men. For these two films alone, Bogarde and Dearden can be forgiven a couple of misfires: 'The Gentle Gunman', more John Mills's show than Bogarde's and a film that leaves a nasty taste with me in its confused quasi-sympathies with its IRA protagonists; and the production under consideration today, 'The Mind Benders'.

It's a curate's egg of a film, starting out with a tense bit of scientist-on-the-run business which recalls the Boulting Brothers' 'Seven Days to Noon', then edging into scientific/behavioural paranoia territory that would be exploited far more effectively in the later '60s and in the '70s ('The Mind Benders' was made in 1963) in everything from 'The Manchurian Candidate' to 'The Parallax View'. Both of these are about brainwashing. 'The Mind Benders' treads a similar path, but is more concerned with the mind's susceptibility and how isolation experiments change the subject: their behaviour, their personality, the likelihood of their responding to influences which would normally be alien to them.

All the ingredients for ... well, whatever you want to make of them. Tense thriller. Social satire. Just-round-the-corner speculative sci-fi. Dearden and writer James Kennaway could have gone anywhere with the material. In the hands of a bizarro visionary like Dario Argento (okay, I know he'd barely started out in cinema by then; indulge me), there would be scope to go crazy with the material. Hell, even Ken Russell would have turned it into a subversive symphony of brain-boggling visuals. Dearden arranges slab-like utilitarian Sixties architecture into some decent compositions and conjures a moodily effective image of hero-by-default Professor Longman (Bogarde) as his personality begins to change, but for much of its scant 95-minute running time 'The Mind Benders' is crushingly ordinary.

So why select it for the Dirk-fest? Truth is, I ran a little short of material this time round. There is so much of Bogarde's filmography still unavailable on DVD. 'Providence' is floating around on the personal faves list and I'm tempted to write about it from memory (even though it's a good fifteen years since I've seen it) but the ever-hopeful part of me opts to bide its time until that belated DVD release occurs. Quite a few of the titles that are available, I don't want to write about - films that Bogarde owed his matinee idol status to (the 'Doctor' films, for example) but are actually pretty lame. I notched up seven films apiece on the First and Second Annual Dirk-Fests, and between what's in the collection and what the Lovefilm queue has come up with I've only just made it to seven this year.

(I'm already thinking that next year's Dirk-fest might of necessity focus on Dirk Bogarde the writer, principally his autobiographical works.)

Also, 'The Mind Benders' is not entirely without merit. The isolation experiment Longman undergoes, robbed of all sensory stimuli as he floats underwater, is effectively realised, particularly when Longman realises the movement of his hand through the water can restore one of the senses - touch - to him; the eroticism with which his mind seizes on this is demonstrated by a simple but effective overlay:

The cast is strong: a host of British cinema stalwarts (some at the very start of their careers) turn in sterling work - John Clements, Michael Bryant, Wendy Craig, Terence Alexander, Edward Fox, Geoffrey Keen and an excellent, often underrated Mary Ure. Bogarde, needless to say, is peerless. A scene where he is confronted with his own culpability in an experiment that mentally scarred a colleague sees him swing between defiance and doubt, bitterness and regret. Bogarde doesn't miss a beat in his multi-faceted characterisation. He gives the material a credibility it probably doesn't deserve.

Dead of Night

For even the most passionate movie lover, there are aspects of cinema which are capable of striking terror into the heart. Such as (speaking for myself) the title card “based on a true story” or the credit “directed by Michael Bay”.

Or portmanteau films.

Portmanteau films, one the whole, aren’t very good. Pick any of the Amicus crop from the ’70s: average. Or the ill-advised Tarantino/Rodriguez/Anders/Rockwell collaboration ‘Four Rooms’ from 1995: a better framing device than most, but still a heinous waste of talent. Even ‘Three Extremes’, by those masters of the offbeat Fruit Chan, Takeshi Miike and Chanwook Park, worked better when its most accomplished segment, ‘Dumplings’, was expanded to feature length.

It’s almost doing ‘Dead of Night’ a disservice to describe it as the best portmanteau film ever made. That’s akin to saying it’s the least awful of a generally bad lot. But ‘Dead of Night’ deserves more than a backhanded compliment. More than just an excellent portmanteau film or an excellent horror film, it deserves to be freed from genre pigeonholes – it’s a great film, period.

Produced by Ealing Studios in 1945 (and proving, alongside gritty dramas like ‘Went the Day Well?’ and ‘It Always Rains on Sunday’, that they didn’t just make comedies), ‘Dead of Night’ brought together four directors on the cusp of immense commercial success and popularity: Alberto Cavalcanti, Basil Dearden, Charles Crichton and Robert Hamer.

Cavalanti had already directed ‘Went the Day Well?’ and went onto helm ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ and ‘They Made Me a Fugitive’; Dearden had a string of hits over the next two and half decades, including ‘The Blue Lamp’ and ‘Victim’; Crichton called the shots on perennial Ealing faves ‘The Lavender Hill Mob’ and ‘The Titfield Thunderbolt’ and would prove that he’d lost none of his flair for comedy when he made ‘A Fish Called Wanda’ in 1988 (44 years after his directorial debut); and Hamer, whose death from pneumonia in 1963 cut short his career, made one of the best of all Ealing films ‘Kind Hearts and Coronets’ as well as the ever-popular Terry-Thomas starrer ‘School for Scoundrels’.

‘Dead of Night’ opens with architect Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns) arriving at a Suffolk cottage where he’s been invited to spend the weekend with prospective client Eliot Foley (Roland Culver). Threading his way down the country lanes, his first glimpse of the property imbues him with a troubling sense of déjà vu. Inside, the realisation clicks: the cottage has featured in a recurring dream – a nightmare – that’s been plaguing him for weeks.

He’s introduced to Foley’s other guests, including psychiatrist Dr van Straaten (Frederick Valk), and his disorientation worsens. Asked what’s wrong, he haltingly explains that not only does the house feature in his dreams, but all of them play their part. Increasingly agitated, Craig comes to feel that he should leave as soon as possible, otherwise something terrible will occur. Dr van Straaten reasons with him, urging him to stay and thereby overcome his neuroses.

The stage is set for five tales of the supernatural (based on works by H.G. Wells, E.F. Benson, Angus MacPhail and John Baines) as the guests give individual accounts of some brush with the unexplained, some encounter with the ethereal, while Dr van Straaten insists on keeping everything rooted in reality by pursuing a logical, scientific discourse.

Racing driver Hugh Grainger (Anthony Baird) recounts his near-death experience on the track; convalescing afterwards, he hallucinates a hearse outside his hospital window, the driver (Miles Malleson) lugubriously looking up and saying “Room for one more inside.” Discharged shortly afterwards, he encounters the same man, this time in a bus driver’s uniform. “Room for one more inside,” he urges as Grainger hesitates. The briefest story in the anthology, as well as the most obvious in its set-up and denouement, it’s still a decent curtain-raiser and played straight enough to come across as a simple tale of coincidence.

A ghost story in the English tradition follows, and what could be more traditional than a Christmas setting? Teenager Sally O’Hara (Sally Ann Howes) recounts a festive game of hide and seek in a big old house. Escaping the tactile attentions of would-be suitor Jimmy (Michael Allan), who’s been trying to creep her out with a story of filial murder in the upper rooms a hundred years ago, Sally comes upon a long corridor which leads her to another part of the house and the realisation that Jimmy’s story might have a little more truth to it than she imagined.

The past also impinges on the present in the next story. Bride-to-be Joan (Googie Withers) buys an antique mirror for her betrothed, Peter (Ralph Michael), only for its reflection to change whenever he looks in it. Peter finds himself in another room – a room, he’s certain, where something nasty has happened. Or is going to happen. Joan worries for his health (all she sees in the mirror is the reflection of their bland fitted bedroom) and then, when his moods turn ugly, for her safety.

In penultimate place – and the least of the film’s offerings – is the shaggy dog story of rival golfers George Parratt (Basil Radford), Larry Potter (Naunton Wayne) and the woman, Mary (Peggy Bryan), who comes between them. A gentlemen’s wager involving eighteen holes, the hand of the delectable Mary for the winner and the loser to “vanish from the scene”. Unfortunately, the winner cheats and the loser takes his forfeit literally, wading out into the water hazard and drowning himself. So far, so dark and twisted. Things quickly become farcical, though, all pratfalls and “humorous” misunderstandings. First time I saw ‘Dead of Night’ this section annoyed me: the shift in tone seemed awkward; it was the odd one out in a quintet of stories that grew progressively more sinister.

On reflection, though, I think the golfing sequence (from one of H.G. Wells’s lesser short stories) is needed – it’s a cleansing of the palate before the film’s piece de resistance. Introduced by Dr van Straaten as the “one case that really made me wonder”, Michael Redgrave stars in a career-best performance as Maxwell Frere, a ventriloquist controlled by his wheedling, temperamental dummy Hugo. Atmospherically directed by Cavalcanti, the sweltering lights and dingy dressing rooms of the venues Frere and Hugo play are brought evocatively to life. Frere’s nervy descent into paranoia is thrown into sharp relief by the calm rationalism of fellow ventriloquist Sylvester Kee (Hartley Power), whom Frere comes to suspect of having designs on Hugo.

And then there’s Hugo himself. Smiling, goading, waspish, sarcastic Hugo. One of British cinema’s greatest villains, period. Hugo, whom Dr van Straaten thinks he can use to probe Frere’s condition. A mistake on the good doctor’s part, but not as a great a mistake as his insistence that Craig stays in the cottage as each facet of the evening draws together the strands of his nightmare.

The framing narrative climaxes with an act of brutality and a dizzying lurch into surrealism, coda becoming prologue as ‘Dead of Night’ twists itself into an ouroboros.

Victim

Much has been made of Bogarde’s five-film partnership with Joseph Losey, but Basil Dearden comes a close second* – he and Bogarde made four films together, beginning with ‘The Blue Lamp’.

‘Victim’ was their third outing and a pivotal film both in Bogarde’s career and in the history of British cinema. At the time of its release in 1961, homosexuality was still illegal in Britain. The so-called “Buggery Act” of 1533 wasn’t repealed until 1967. (Four hundred and thirty four fucking years to overturn an utterly pointless law … I’m straight, but I’m damned if I understand why homophobia runs so deep.) ‘Victim’ led to questions being asked in the House, to the law against homosexuality being re-evaluated and – finally – repealed.

Dirk Bogarde and Basil Dearden – along with scriptwriters Janet Green and John McCormick – played a part in changing the law … for the better. I raise a glass to them.

‘Victim’ opens in a burst of energy as Barrett (Peter McEnery), a young labourer on a building site, panicking as he sees a police car pull up outside the site office, goes hurtling along a vertiginously high section of scaffolding, rides a rickety makeshift lift down to the ground, and takes to his heels. He petitions various friends for help in getting out of London, but is rebuffed. He places a call to respected barrister Melville Farr (Bogarde), who brusquely curtails the conversation, hanging up on him. Arrested at a transport café, he hangs himself in police custody.

The lad’s crime? Fiddling the wages on the building site, claiming for non-existent employees. The police note his spartan lifestyle (a flea-bitten bedsit; nothing in the way of creature comforts), and conclude that he was skimming the money to pay off a blackmailer.

From this point on, ‘Victim’ dons the mantle of a taut, moody crime thriller (the guilt-ridden Farr determining to expose the blackmail ring), which it wears comfortably till the end credits. Yet, between the generic set-pieces (including a heavy-handed red herring subplot designed to conceal the blackmailer’s identity), a much more serious film emerges. A film about social attitudes, and about one man’s refusal to live in denial any longer.

Regarding social attitudes, ‘Victim’ is both ahead of its time and very much grounded in its time. It’s ahead of its time because it refuses to portray its gay characters as mincing and effeminate (“cissies”, to use the colloquialism of the day), but as fully rounded and (mostly) sympathetic characters. Indeed, the most ambivalent character is Sandy (Derren Nesbitt), the blackmailer’s hired muscle. Full-lipped, almost lisping, an etching of a male nude on his apartment wall, there’s no doubt that he’s a study in repression, right down to his name (cf. popular British radio show ‘Round the Horne’ in which Kenneth Williams played a camp shop-owner given to exclaiming “Oooooh hello, I’m Julian and this is my friend Sandy”).

It’s grounded in its time in terms of its vocabulary. Farr’s wife Laura (Sylvia Syms) recoils from garage-door graffiti reading “Farr is a queer” – fast forward four decades and the word has been reclaimed by the gay community – and cannot bring herself to say the word when pressed. In a fantastic scene between Farr and Laura (and kudos to Sylvia Syms for a performance that attains glass-shattering intensity by dint of being so controlled), the barrister owns up to “seeing” Barrett even though he realised they might both be compromised; Laura asks why; Farr rounds on her – “Because I wanted him!” Bogarde’s absolute frustration is held in cinematic equilibrium by Syms’s glacial response. Watch the film and you’ll barely breathe as this scene plays out, it’s that powerful.

‘Victim’ achieves true greatness in this scene – and in at least one other (where Farr, taunted that he married Laura out of guilt, loses his professional cool and throws a punch at someone who, all things considered, has basically spoken the truth). In these moments, the film’s subtext breaks cover and eviscerates the screen. Farr is by no means the hero of the piece. He’s a man who’s spent his life denying himself, denying his very nature. By the end, he stands to lose everything just by doing the right thing. In the final scene, when Laura, despite everything, offers her support, Farr finally accepts who he is. Bogarde reins his performance in admirably (oh, the power of understatement). Part way through, he turns away and coughs, as if the very words he is trying to say had become stuck in his throat. That one cough says it all.



*Actually, Losey and Dearden come second and third respectively, since Bogarde’s most frequent director was Ralph Thomas – the, ahem, ‘talent’ behind ‘Doctor in the House’ and its turgid sequels, as well as formulaic but crowd-pleasing fare like ‘Campbell’s Kingdom’ and ‘The Wind Cannot Read’. He and Bogarde made nine films together. For the purposes of this article, though, I’m factoring in artistic integrity and showing Ralph Thomas the red card.