Best Film I've Ever Seen - Period

Not the best film I've ever seen, but a solid 7.

One things that stands out to me is the scene where Connery finds the missing girl in the woods. The way he tries to console her seems somehow sinister, almost how you'd imagine her attack might have been. Of course that makes sense in the end, but at that moment I already knew something was wrong with the man (beyond what we already knew from the opening).


BTW - when you say Howard, I think you are referring to Baxter (Ian Bannen) character.



You saw Dingleberries?

Lumet also directed Connery & Bannen, in 1965's The Hill, another excellent film.


Carpe Noctem!

I also think that Bracknell in the early 70's lent itself well to this film. The bleak modern boxes and flats and brutalist architecture, unfinished estates and muddy fields leading nowhere. And it's still like that! (Well only a bit)

i like your write up very much. for a piece entitled "best film ever -period" it's very objective, balanced and well observed. i totally agree, that to call the film merely "grim" is to dismiss it. somehow the film isn't quite as ugly as the subject matter would suggest and i'm at a loss to explain why. perhaps it's leavened by connery's awareness that he is not much different from ian bannen's probable molester. the film refuses to take the easy route by allowing us to hate any of the characters outright.
i like your observation about the car bumping the kerb. if it was a deliberate indication of connery's preoccupation on the part of the filmmakers it was very understated. as was the part where he gets home and tries to get in the wrong flat. an object lesson in how to tell a whole story without saying very much.

Couldn't agree with you more, dmorris13. This is a superb film, and, like you, I saw it as a kid - I must have been 13 or 14. The core sequence that I found devastating (well, the whole story of his breakdown is deeply moving) were his description of the murders he's had to deal with and the montage of each incident, told through pragmatic murder scene images; the blood dripping off the child's fingers; the cops climbing the ladder to get onto the railway; the body hanging from the tree; the cop running through the streets to get help. These images burned into my mind then and, watching the DVD recently, these images have lost none of their power. We see exactly what Connery has seen, there is no need to articulate the dehumanising effects this has on him, and indeed, on all police officers who have to investigate the dreadful results of the nadir of the human condition.

I've got it on DVD and have introduced a few friends who are Connery fans but know nothing about this film. It's such a shame because Connery's performance is, in my opinion, a career best. He got the chance to make this because he agreed to do another Bond, and wanted a two-film contract - films of his choice - included into the bargain. The choice of Sydney Lumet was his request as well. Unfortunately, the other film he wanted to make was MacBeth, but the financiers pulled out of that one because Polanski's version had just been made. Now that project would have been interesting.



"Do you want to go to the toilet, Albert?"

Although this film came out in a very creatively fertile period for mainstream films it suffered from a number of issues that we would dismiss today with incredulity.

1) The very desire on Connery's part to break out of the iron maiden image of James Bond met with great opposition at the box office. Films like this and The Molly Maguires, another fine though not at all as intense non-Bond film, tanked badly.

2) The subject matter intentionally challenged the deepest, most feelings in setting an act of police brutality against the crime of pedophilia, though the film pointedly does not confirm that Ian Bannen's character actually did it. Similar but not so deeply cutting to films now weighing torture against safety from terror attacks. It simply was too dark and off-putting for its time.

3) On a much more minor scale, when I first saw it in a New York theater that purports to be a diverse crowd, there was a lot of murmuring during the first 20 minutes or so of the film about not being able to understand the non-posh/regional British accents. This was the important setup of the film.

4) There was a convergence of challenging, breakthrough aspects such as the white outs, the use of slow motion depicting brutal actions, the flashback structure and the avant-garde score by the 20th Century classical composer, Harrison Birtwistle.

5) And last there was the sustained dark mood and downbeat cast to Sean Connery's character's life such as a beautifully framed scene with his wife played by the great Vivien Merchant where he appears so huge as to being so tightly, so uncomfortably boxed in by the room at his home.

I do not in any way take issued with your assessment. Great art and this is a punch in the solar plexus variety should always be able to challenge your worst fear and prejudices, to take on the consensuses that frequently strangle us and prevent us from trying to figure out the moral quandries of our time.