Play in a day… Secrets (1971)

Director Philip Saville main background had been in television plays and had pushed the technical boundaries by mixing film and video in support of a more flexible camera work within studio space as well as for external shooting.

This explains why Secrets feels  very much like a sauced-up Play for Today with a good deal of the action shot in tight focus on the main players giving an almost claustrophobic feel although there are some key sequences in London in and around Hyde Park… The film has had a limited release and has been noted chiefly for Jacqueline Bisset’s protracted nude scene but there’s far more to the film than this… really!

Jacqueline Bisset

The story takes place over a single, pivotal day in the lives of the Wood family. Allan Wood (Robert Powell) is a struggling actor who, realising his time is up, has decided on a career change and a move into the bold new world of computer programming. His relationship with his wife Jennifer (Bisset) is under extreme pressure: they married young with their daughter Judy (Tarka Kings) evidence of the reason why…

Under pressure

Pushing 30 with money worries and no career of her own, she makes a dispiriting trip to the laundrette with Judy a girl of about ten who has the look of someone used to caring for themselves… So it proves as Jennifer leaves her to her own devices and goes off for a walk to clear her head.

She heads towards Hyde Park and is spotted by a bearded man driving a Rolls Royce. He can’t take his eyes off this woman and Saville’s camera cleverly follows the car’s twists and turns as its driver tries to keep track of her movements.

Per Oscarsson and Jacqueline Bisset

Eventually he pulls up and walks over to talk… he is Raoul Kramer (Per Oscarsson) a Swedish textile millionaire and, after failing to win Jennifer over with a request for directions ot Stone Henge he hands her his card asking for her to call him…

By the time he has got back to his Rolls his car phone is ringing (yes even in 1970) and it’s Jennifer. He goes back to meet her and the couple end up going back to his house…

Meanwhile young Judy has started helping a young man Raymond (Thomas Ellice as Martin C. Thurley) wash his clothes at the laundrette – she travels with him back to the garden he is due to tend – his sister’s.

Robert Powell

Allan is having adventures of his own after completing the verbal interview he is now sitting the written paper under the watchful eye of pretty personnel officer Beatrice (Shirley Knight). He struggles with the questions, obviously intelligent but short on focus. Beatrice explains that mostly they are looking for conformists but that there is always room for more maverick mind sets…

Shirley Knight

And so the day goes as Jenny finds out that Raoul’s fascination is based on her resemblance to his late wife who died of cancer before the birth of their second child. He is still clearly heartbroken and has thrown himself into business. Raoul is continually interrupted by important business phone calls and as she explores his plush house and his sad past, Jenny finds his wife’s clothes still were she left them…

The empty life of a millionaire...

Judy is getting on with gardening with Raymond a diffident young man who seems harmless enough. His sister is a painter and he is at pains to make sure that the youngster doesn’t trespass into her workshop. Whilst his back is turned Judy sneaks in and hides, he finds her and she clings onto him as children do… confused by the contact he tries to kiss her, recoiling in horror when he realises what he’s done. He offers Judy a plant if she will keep their secret trying to make light but also to bind her to silence through apparent kindness.

Raymond is shocked with himself

This is a shocking sequence and I’m not sure what it means in the context of the girl’s parents: is it their fault she’s not better prepared and specifically, Jenny should have been on duty but she’s off finding herself and someone else…

Allan goes for a drink with Beatrice and ends up back at the nervous young woman’s flat providing her with neck massage to help calm her down. There’s an attraction between them even as they discuss fidelity and the state of his marriage.

Jacqueline Bisset

Meanwhile out of pity and attraction, Jenny makes herself up as Raoul’s wife and, once he has discovered this impossible doppelganger in his bedroom the two make “mad passionate love” in that early seventies way… I can see why Ms Bisset may frown on this aspect of the film as it’s a fairly lengthy and lingering event. It does perhaps show the depth of his loss and her compassion.

Consciously coupled

Allan and Beatrice have also moved things on  but I’m not sure they consummate their relationship – Allan offers her comfort and, as with Raoul and Jenny, you get the feeling that the “givers” have awoken something in themselves. This is how they can help each other – they have love left over in the course of their routines.

The family return home with gifts which they pass on to each other: Allan with Beatrice’s silver pill box (she may need them less, she hopes…), Jenny with a roll of finest cloth (something Raoul had been saving for his wife) and Judy with the plant.

Happy families?

All seems well as Allan reads the bedtime story although Judy turns her mouth away when he pecks her goodnight… something now makes her wary of male attention: is this a lesson learned, an awakening or just confusion she’ll suppress for ever?

Allan and Jenny go to bed and realise their love for each other is renewed… have they regained their focus after their altruistic sexual adventures and like their daughter learned the distinction between love and physical desire. I think Jenny should spend more time with Judy.

Dusty Verdict: Saville went on to great success on screens both small and large with his CV including The Boys from the Black Stuff and The Life and Loves of a She-Devil along with many films in a career stretching from the 1950s to 2000s. This film deserves more attention than it has had or at least credit where its due for its unusual structure and themes.

It's not available on DVD so guess I'll have to stick with my old VHS...

Lovely and shallow… The Deep (1977)

I remember this being viewed as some kind of follow up to the wide-screen horror of Jaws… same writer (Peter Benchley), same sea-sensibilities and advanced sub-aquatic film techniques… the same Robert Shaw. I didn’t see it at the time – I was too young to have seen Jaws but I sneaked in anyway – and have somehow avoided it over the ensuing decades put off by its lukewarm reputation. Did I miss much?

There are some obvious highlights and I’ll get to Jacqueline Bisset’s wet t-shirt in a minute… but, viewed on a modern big screen TV the film looks superb, huge wide-angled shots of Bermuda blue sea and white sand mixed with some genuinely stunning underwater footage: 70’s cinematography of the highest order from Christopher Challis and director Peter Yates.

You feel placed into the centre of these beautiful vistas and the colours are vibrant and richly-textured creating a hyper-reality you know from your best holidays. But there’s also vulnerability from this sensorial over-loading and Yates does well in maintaining unease throughout the film. It’s not quite the fear of sudden shark attack but there are human monsters at work even if they do move in mysterious and unfathomable ways…

Bermuda as far as the eye can see...

The underwater shots offer the highest levels of this sub-acute (submerged) anxiety as the characters exist in a state of danger from the outset… weighed down by tonnes of water, impeded in their movement and reliant on a flimsy supply of oxygen. In ordinary circumstances it’s a thrill but when you know there will be danger it’s… uncomfortable.

Bisset and Nolte go deep

So it proves from the long opening sea-section which shows us something like nine minutes of vacationing treasure hunters Gail Berke (Jacqueline Bisset) and David Sanders’  (Nick Nolte) exploration of the wreck of The Goliath a Second World War freighter. The setting is idyllic as the couple play with fish and octopus, relaxing in this warm blue world of near silence as they prod the ground for anything unusual. Jacqueline Bisset wears a skimpy white t-shirt and one the film’s producer credits with accounting for a large proportion of The Deep’s box office returns. It was the 70s and well this is hardly less blatant a device than say Baywatch…

With John Barry’s sumptuous lines sound-tracking the dive you are truly lulled into a false sense of relaxation in spite of the fact you know something’s going to happen…  And, shortly after uncovering a mysterious glass vial Gail reaches for another under part of the wreck with a wooden paddle and, with Jaws-like speed, is pulled by an unknown force towards the upturned hull. She struggles to escape, the paddle is on a strap wound tight on her wrist, but is slammed again and again onto the wood…

By the time she’s raised the alarm, by sending oxygen bubbles up to alert David, she breaks free and kicking his attentive arms away heads as quickly as she can for the surface to clamber exhausted onto their boat: there’s something down there but it’s soon forgotten – Gail is unnaturally resilient throughout the film – when they examine their small haul, the vial and something altogether more intriguing, an old Spanish medallion that would pre-date the ship they’d been investigating by over two hundred years.

Initial investigations back on land suggest the medallion’s possible origin whilst no one has a clue about the vial. Questioning does however bring a visit from a local crime lord, Henri Cloche (Louis Gossett, Jr.) – no one can keep a secret for long round these parts. The couple deny all knowledge but that doesn’t cut any ice with Cloche…    

There’s one man who may know about the area’s wrecks and he’s a grumpy seafarer living in a converted Lighthouse by the name of Romer Treece (Robert Shaw).  Gail and David go to visit him and he feigns interest in the medallion in order to palm the vial… he knows what it is a swell as Cloche but his motivations are not clear at this point. He offers to investigate the medallion further and fobs the couple off.

Robert Shaw

Cloche has tracked their every move and the next day forces their motor-scooters off the road and kidnaps them. He threatens them and forces Gails to strip in order to show there’s no hiding place for the vial… gratuitous and uncomfortable.

Treece and David dive to the wreckage where they uncover hundreds more of the vials as well as falling through the hull to an older wreck which contains more of the mysterious Spanish artefacts…

On their return  they encounter some of Cloche’s men whom David engages on the beach lift at the same time as Gail is being terrorised by voodoo in another gratuitous and bloody way – chicken feet and random off-cuts of poultry… Cloche is going to a lot of effort to put them off or at least to get his way.

But Gail recovers quickly from her grisly humiliation and starts to draw connections between what they have found and the real treasure down below whilst Treece has now established that the Goliath is carrying a fortune in medicinal morphine worth millions on the open drug market. Cloche was obviously there well before and wants a piece of the action.

Louis Gossett, Jr and Robert Shaw

Treece claims he has wired the wreck with explosives and strikes a deal with the gangster to allow them time to find the Spanish treasure and establish the provenance needed for David and Gail to be recognised as finders of genuine lost treasyre.

It’s a race against time especially as Treece’s weak-willed pal Adam Coffin (Eli Wallach) – a survivor of the Goliath – is still open to other offers…

Can they make the discovery before Cloche’s men lose patience and dive after them and is there anyway they can prevent the bad guys getting their hands on the drugs? The pace hots up for an explosive closing section…

Dusty verdict: The Deep has many fine qualities and is a good-looking ride or should I say dive. It feels a little lose and lacks the unexpected terrors of Jaws whilst the plot lines are a tad convoluted as can happen in adaptations of complex book plots for films.

Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset are individually very good but I don’t sense much chemistry between them: she’s just too sophisticated for him and for an archaeologist he looks like he’d make a great truck driver.

Jacqueline and Nick

Robert Shaw is likeably intense and gets an “ahargh Jim lad!” award for that accent (he was Lancastrian) whilst Mr Wallach does what Eli does…

It’s now available on Blu-ray which will enhance the visual treat no end – not just the Bisset bumps* – and is available from Amazon as usual.               

Just saying...

 *Yes I know…  but the film uses her assets as a considerable selling point so you have to make comment especially as such fore-fronting is hardly a technique left back in the saucy seventies is it? At least Jacqueline Bisset can act unlike so many others who have followed: Pam, Kelly et al…