And one can smile and smile… Villain (1971)

I had no idea that Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais had been such prolific producers of feature films prior to their career in TV sitcoms. I grew up in time for Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads, Porridge and then Auf Wiedersehen Pet, but it’s only latterly I’ve caught their films such as To Catch a Spy (Kirk Douglas and Marlene Jobert spy caper), the magnificent Otley (Tom Courtney and Romy Schneider Notting Hill spy caper) and Jokers (Michael Crawford and Oliver Reed crime caper…). These films are patchy but ambitious and attempt to create very British products both in terms of location and humour.

With Villain they turned their sights on real crime and the huge impact celebrity criminals like the Kray twins had on British society even after they had both been locked up for good. They enlisted Richard Burton to play a crime lord along their lines, this one apparently brought up in the East End via South Wales with an accent flitting about somewhere between the two. In all other respects Burton is perfectly believable as the hardman with a soft spot for his mum and young Ian McShane. For the period it’s perhaps a juxtaposition to have a gay-hearted gangster but Ronnie’s sexuality was never a barrier to his free expression of violent intent.

Wolfie and Vic

The film’s a bit coy on the men’s relationship, concerned with Burton’s believability perhaps and a more explicit sex scene was cut over concern with audience reaction. The man himself took it in his stride telling McShane that he reminded him of Elizabeth: it may have been the hair perhaps?

Interestingly, the story was based on the book Burden of Proof by James Barlow, and a treatment by the American actor Al Lettieri, a 'tough-guy' in films such as The Godfather and who had actual connections with the New York Gambino Family. This coupled with some crisp dialogue and strong performances – what a cast list - ads a level of believability that leaves this film not that far behind the more stylised Get Carter and the under-rated The Reckoning.

Burton is Vic Dakin, master of hard-won turf in the East End – the location shots are a great window on those streets 48 years ago – and is coolly in control using violence to control the streets and anyone unfortunate enough to descend into his demi-monde. The opening sequence shows a well-to-do business man being violently taken to task and ending up dangling from his Knightsbridge window ledge with his girlfriend in hysterics.

Gerald looks to make new connections with Wolfie's friend Venetia

Vic’s got his fingers in many pies and runs parties at which the supposedly well-to-do can be entertained with and then blackmailed. One MP, Gerald Draycott (a nervy-pervy Donald Sinden) apparently based on Lord Boothby, has a weakness for younger girls and Vic is only too happy to oblige so long as Gerald scratches his back too.

Vic’s left-hand man is Wolfe Lissner (Ian McShane) who has a way with the ladies and procures the required talent. Wolfie’s smart and does what he must but his attempt to lead a life of his own with girlfriend Venetia (Fiona Lewis) is compromised by his being the apple of Vic’s eye too, still, he just about manages the balance.

Vic’s other henchmen are well cast Tony Selby, cockney-dubbed as Duncan, Del Henney – always believable in these roles - as Webb and John Hallam as Terry. You wouldn’t want to cross any of them.

Del and Tony

Out to catch them is Detective Bob Matthews (an impeccable Nigel Davenport) and his partner, Sergeant Tom Binney (Colin Welland); men who are from the same backgrounds but who chose a different path: whilst the villains hang out in strip bars and West End flats, plod tends their gardens in suburbia. The interplay between Vic and Bob (oh yes!) is a joy to watch with Burton and Davenport clearly relishing playing two sides of the same coin.

Vic has always relied on his mother to keep whatever sanity he has and, whilst she seems oblivious to his profession, Mrs Dakin (Cathleen Nesbitt) is of failing health and this starts to undermine her son’s judgement. He gets approached buy a man called Brown (James Cossins), a disaffected employee with secrets to sell concerning the payroll where he works but this is on the patch of rival boss, Frank Fletcher (T. P. McKenna).

Colin Welland, Nigel Davenport and Ian McShane

Against Woolfie’s advice, Vic meets with Frank and his nervy, hypochondriacal right-hand man Lowis (an unsettling and febrile performance from Joss Ackland) and eventually agree that the deal is just too good to miss.

If the plot has one major flaw it’s that these two bosses would get involved in the actual robbery, especially given the power Vic wields in the straight world… but, as his mother passes away and he becomes emotionally, as well as physically-dependent on Wolfie, he is intent on proving himself.

Will the job go as plan and will there be honour amongst thieves? Events play out with well-crafted action sequences, all shot on rugged locations in London which looks impressively careworn in 1970 as the cops and robbers’ career around in top of the range Rovers.

Joss Ackland, TP McKenna, John Hallam and Richard Burton

Dusty Verdict: The film makes some interesting points about criminal charisma but ultimately falls short of the class of say The Robbery or Get Carter. That said, Burton is eminently watchable – if not listenable – and carries the right menace to the end. There’s great support from Ian McShane – what a career he’s still having – he manages to make Wolfie a sympathetic schemer who’s just wheedled himself in to Vic’s world too deep to escape the man’s control and his – now unwelcome – passion.

Fiona Lewis is, as always, highly-watchable – the very model of a theatrically-trained, modern player amongst so many greats of the previous generation. It is a superb cast throughout. Plus, there's great motors, lots of them; Jags, Rovers, Fords... all high performance and driven at speed! Yes, I am shallow.

Fiona is highly watchable...

Victim’s breathless ending leaves open the question of whether right is might and this – as ever – remains pertinent; there are still Vic Dakins out there and not all, necessarily, in the business of crime…

The film pops up on Talking Pictures and on a 2007 Studiocanal DVD available from Amazon etc.

Horse discourse… Equus (1977)

As the recent revival of Peter Shaffer’s extraordinary play showed, almost forty years on it retains an uncanny power, dividing opinion between those who find it too uncomfortable and those who are willing to look it straight in the eye… Eyes feature a lot in the film, from those below Richard Burton’s tortured brow to those belonging to the Alan’s father as he watches his son’s bizarre bed-time rituals and of course those of the horses blinded by Alan for reasons the film takes almost its full length to examine.

One Guardian blogger dismissed the favourite play of her teenage years as so much “psycho-babble” (check out this thoughtful piece in the same paper by therapist Adam Phillips for balance) but most contemporary critics at least tried to contextualise their view of the play with its period: it hasn’t dated – we have. More to the point, religious, psycho-sexual abuse and repression are still very much “now”: the human brain hasn’t changed… our psychosis isn’t “dated” nor “of its time”.

Equus’ reputation has always gone before it and I must confess to being put off by the thought of too much naked man on horse action but on first viewing, 37 years after release, it’s a thoroughly-engaging, mood-altering experience held together by a mighty performance from Richard Burton who was Oscar nominated and Golden Globe winning for his efforts matched by the wide-eyed physicality of former Double Decker Peter Firth (who also “Globed”). Equus is essentially a double header between the two but there are excellent support performances from some of the best actors of their generation: a heavyweight cast.

Burton plays psychiatrist Martin Dysart a man of unconventional commitment to his work and who has possibly seen it all too many times. The film opens in close-up on his face as he begins to discuss the disturbing case that has brought him to his own crisis of faith. The camera pulls away to reveal this troubled man sat behind his desk in his consulting room: he has been struck to the core and the disquiet has invaded even his professional inner-sanctum: an area he is used to controlling totally.

The film winds back to the middle of the narrative arc, from where we’ll see the full story unfold through the “flashbacks” of patient consultation. A social worker Hesther Saloman (Eileen Atkins) has come to Dysart to discuss a boy who has committed an atrocious act – blinding six horses using a metal scythe.

The first response is that this is mindless criminality but Hesther thinks there is something special about the boy – Alan Strang (Firth) - and thinks that only someone of Dysart’s experience and sensitivities could help him recover… otherwise he will be institutionalised for life.

There’s an interesting point about criminality and punishment here: is Alan best being cured or is his crime unforgivable. Shaffer seems pretty clear that reform rather than revenge is the way forward… and there is indeed a complex cause to be uncovered no matter how horrible the effect.

Alan duly arrives communicating only by singing snippets of TV advertising jingles. Undeterred, Dysart perseveres and begins to open lines of communication by swapping one truth of his own for each of his patient’s revelations. It’s not always easy going but Alan is a most unusual case.

Dysart goes to examine his home life and finds his father Frank (Colin Blakely) uptight and not a little disgusted by his boy whilst his mother (Joan Plowright) may be free with tea and biscuits but her social nicety hides a zealous fundamentalist religious views. She shows Alan’s bedroom and the painting of a horse which has replaces a tortured image of Christ’s face during crucifixion…

Dysart gets Alan to relive the moment when his fascination with horses began and we see him on the beach deep in a large sand castle and encountering a huge black horse ridden by an imposing dark man (John Wyman). Firth plays himself as a child and the camera makes it appear as if he is overwhelmed by the man and the horse: almost as if they are one and the same. He touches the horse’s head and is whisked off for a ride along the beach…

The child, the horse and the man

Is this code for abuse or just the impact the combination of Christ-like authority figure and sensual beast had on his impressionable mind? Whatever, he never recovered from the moment and his life-long equine fascination grew into something far more obsessional and confessional…

Alan’s father reveals his confused disgust at having found his son late at night conducting a ritual in which he pulls his head back in a home-made string bridal whilst spurring himself with the beat of a ruler… This masochistic display could be a sign of repressed desire but also his belief that Man’s restraint of horses deserves punishment. The horse or rather the Horse God Equus sees all and has become his object of worship.

Looking for an opportunity to get closer to these animals Alan meets a young woman Jill (Jenny Agutter who won a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress) who gets him an introduction to the stable owner Harry Dalton (Harry Andrews). For a while all is well and he spends an apparently uneventful year as a stable boy.

Yet, as Dysart uncovers, Alan has been sneaking in every three weeks or so and taking out a horse for a midnight ride, undressing and mounting the creature in an act of unfettered sensual liberation… This relationship between boy and beast is one of the things that makes the film difficult: bestiality is always a tough one… but this isn’t sex this is something more spiritual.

Over this time he becomes friendly with Jill and the two agree to go on a date to see a Swedish skin flick. As they sit there smiling at the soft core silliness Alan’s father enters the cinema and, spotting Alan who then spots him... hauls them both out. He has a story about having a meeting with the cinema owner… but his insistence that the incident be never spoken of again betrays the sad reality. Does Alan notice?

Leaving his father the take a troubled bus home, Alan and Jill head off to the stables to put into practice some of the things they have just seen on screen. Well, that’s certainly what Jill has in mind but as their coupling begins Alan reels away: he can’t continue, too confused by the sensuality of the horses just below the stable loft…

Spoilers… Jill leaves… and Alan’s anguished face contorts into anger as he leaps down to the tables below and begins to exact his horrific revenge on the all-seeing Equus.

We’re back in Dysart’s consultancy room: he’s achieved a breakthrough and knows now that he can “cure” his patient but he’s increasingly unsure whether this is the best thing for Alan. He may have committed an atrocity but joyful relationship with horses as an emblem of utter freedom will have to be lost for ever. For the psychiatrist, trapped in a love-less marriage, finding an expression of his own passion in researching ancient history, this seems too much: he can’t fly like Alan has and despairs of finding the right balance... we’re all as constrained by the watchful eye of secular and religious instructors… forever obstructed in our pursuit of joy.

Dusty Verdict: Sidney Lumet directs with stark economy and allows his performers maximum room for expression: rage from Harry Andrews finding his horses crippled, compassion from Jenny Agutter who sees so much in Alan, resolution and integrity from Eileen Atkins and a combination of repression and uptight frustration from Joan Plowright and Colin Blakely.

But Firth and Burton get most of the screen time and whilst the younger man gives his all it’s undoubtedly a great performance from Richard Burton who didn’t always get this quality of material in his high-flying Hollywood career. He operates superbly well in the close-quarters of the film’s set piece monologues and it is through him that our natural responses to Alan and his crime are channelled in a slightly more complex direction…

A film to watch when you’re in a receptive mood and, for once, the nudity is fully justified: the only thing more naked than a horse is a human being…

Equus is readily available on DVD from Amazon and Movie Mail.