A DANDY IN ASPIC: Blu-ray (Columbia, 1968) Indicator

Leaving an unfinished ‘masterpiece’, arguably, in lesser hands, director Anthony Mann, who died of a heart attack one windswept eve, after enduring frigid temperatures while shooting in Berlin on A Dandy in Aspic (1968) could rest his reputation uneasily on this neo/noir spy thriller’s swan song, albeit with an affecting final twist. By the time co-stars, Mia Farrow and Laurence Harvey were summoned to the director’s hotel suite it was all over; Mann, lying dead on the floor and Farrow – admittedly never having seen a dead body before – kneeling next to Mann to gingerly hug him, jerked back to her feet by co-star, Tom Courtenay, who rather brutally instructed Farrow not to be so morbid.  Perhaps Farrow had connected in a queer sort of kinship with the newly widowed Mrs. Mann. After all, Farrow was well on her way to becoming estranged from her hubby, Frank Sinatra, who had refused to accompany her to Europe. Indeed, Sinatra – then, age 50 - was vehemently against Farrow – barely 21 - pursuing her acting career. As far as ‘ole blue eyes’ was concerned, life for the former super model and TV soap star as Mrs. Sinatra ought to have been enough.  Farrow had, in fact, promised her new husband she would throw in the towel on her movie star plans to be his wife, but then, did an about face, signing on to two thrillers almost immediately; the other, being Joseph Losey’s Secret Ceremony made the same year as A Dandy in Aspic. From 4,000 miles away, Sinatra fumed, making professional demands on Farrow and Mann to wrap up the shoot by a certain deadline. This greatly strained Farrow’s participation on the project. And Mann, whose most recent movies had been epics – not thrillers – was nevertheless at his most ambitious, transforming Derek Marlowe’s best-selling novel into an engaging bit of celluloid nonsense.

Viewing A Dandy in Aspic today, one is directly dumb-struck by its uncommon fusion of nimble espionage – which, frankly, does not amount to a hill of beans – and the more prescient and purposeful concentration of Marlowe’s screenplay, deviating from the novel’s plot-driven contrivances, almost exclusively, as a movie about a crisis of identity. We should, I suppose, first consider A Dandy in Aspic came at the tail-end of a decade overrun by spy movies; whether Ian Fleming-based James Bond escapist adventure romps or their varied tongue-in-cheek reincarnated lampoons and knock-offs (Our Man Flint, 1966; Casino Royale, 1967) or the bitter and cynical forays into darkness a la Richard Condon (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) and John le Carré (The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, 1965), the 1960’s effectively bludgeoned the public’s fascination for this sub-genre. Perhaps wisely reasoning as much, Marlowe’s screen adaptation of A Dandy in Aspic deviates considerably. The personal crisis afflicting Alexander Eberlin (Laurence Harvey) – a double agent, hired by MI6 puppet master, Fraser (Harry Andrews) to assassinate KGB operative, Krasnevin, after another of their covert operatives, Nightingale (John Hamill) is gunned down, attempting a high dive into a pool while on holiday – is now the paramount focus. First problem: Eberlin is Krasnevin – and very likely Nightingale’s assassin. Second problem: the man MI6 suspects of being Krasnevin is actually his contact, Pavel (Per Oscarsson), the pair managed by Russian spymaster, Sobakevich (Lionel Stander).

Immediately following the Columbia Studio logo, we are privy to the sight of a faceless puppet bathed in lurid color filters, being jerked under the main titles by an unknown handler, an obvious metaphor for Eberlin’s predicament.  There is little doubt, Nightingale’s assassination was on orders from Moscow. Only now, attending his funeral as one of the pallbearers, Eberlin is faced with a Catch-22 – not of conscience (he has none), but compromised identity. His Brit-based superiors, suspicious of a mole, have absolutely no idea the man they are hunting is among their most valued inner circle of spies. Of these, only Eberlin’s superior, Gatiss (Tom Courtenay) harbors a deep-seeded dislike of him and ventures the right guess he just might be more than he pretends. Gatiss’ rather tempestuous relationship with skilled field agent, Brogue (Calvin Lockhart) is not exactly based on mutual trust either. Perhaps tearing a page from The Ipcress File (1965), spy work in A Dandy in Aspic is portrayed as a rather mind-numbing affair being conducted by men barely recognizable to anyone, even themselves; their isolation from the rest of society already branded them social pariah or worse: disposable arrogant, pompous pieces of work.  Despite his outer austerity, Eberlin, now masquerading as someone named George Dancer, is coming apart at the seams; courting the uncommonly plainspoken fashion photog, Caroline (Farrow) while keeping his guard up. When she casually suggests she is in possession of a candid picture of him, snapped the year before while on holiday in Portofino, Eberlin’s dander and blood-pressure rise until he finagles an opportunity to take the photo away from her.

From here, the plot only becomes more convoluted. Eberlin implores Sobakevich to send him packing back to Moscow. Alas, he is too important in Britain. As Gatiss closes in, Eberlin frames Pavel, who is a morphine addict and dying anyway. Now, Eberlin tries to smuggle himself into East Berlin – escape plan #2, regrettably thwarted when the East German secret police suspect him too of working for the British and deny him access into the Communist sector. Intermittently, Eberlin’s path crosses with Caroline. Despite his initial arrogance, she is enthralled and the two become lovers. Eberlin’s total lack of compassion is strangely endearing to her. Yet, he cannot bring himself to tell Caroline what he really does for a living. Even so, there is no remorse – not for her, or even the men he has killed. Eberlin is merely burnt out – revealed as a generally disagreeable sod who cannot handle the stress load of his job. This characterization fits Laurence Harvey to a tee. Despite being a close personal friend of ‘the Sinatras’, Harvey’s nature has always leaned to implacable prigs – great type-casting to convince us of the character’s – um… ‘character’…or lack thereof.  Upon inveigling Caroline in his cloak and dagger, the two make love, and are almost immediately confronted by Henderson (John Bird), whom Eberlin dispatches with rather quickly, leaving him unconscious in a bathtub inside the public restroom at the end of the hall. Meeting Sobakevich at a nearby theme-park, Eberlin threatens to kill Gatiss unless he is removed from his assignment – a decision that quietly amuses the wily Soviet puppet master; not so much Gatiss’ sycophantic right hand, Prentiss (Peter Cook), who toys with Eberlin’s waning patience.

Not long thereafter, Eberlin and Caroline are reunited, furthering their affair – the one shiny spot of hope in this ever-constricting noose tightening around Eberlin’s neck. Certain Henderson will be able to identify the man they are looking for, Gatiss has Eberlin stake out the underground garage. Assuring Henderson Gatiss is out to kill him, instead, it is Eberlin who shoots Henderson dead to conceal his identity yet again. Now, Gatiss and Eberlin are confronted by Sobakevich who agrees to give up Krasnevin in a money exchange the next afternoon. Instead, he gives them one of their own – Copperfield (Norman Bird), found strangled to death in a photobooth inside a shopping plaza after hours.  Wounded by this discovery, Gatiss confides that he always believed Eberlin was Krasnevin. Now, Eberlin and Gatiss go to their prearranged destination, a Formula-1 car race, to pay Sobakevich the remainder they owe for revealing ‘the mole’. Eberlin meets up with Caroline for the last time. He is also confronted by Sobakevich, who addresses him by his code name, George Dancer. Sobakevich plays a dangerous game of cat and mouse, offering Eberlin a drink in a paper cup, at the bottom of which is a contact number for him to use. Alas, it will be the last opportunity these two comrades have to stay in touch. Having staged a hellish wreck on the race track, merely to ‘create a diversion’, Gatiss hunts down and murders Sobakevich while the crowd is looking the other way.  Mercilessly, Eberlin cuts Caroline loose, heading for the airport to make his final getaway. Alas, he learns from his Russian handlers that Pavel was not killed by KGB but the British, which can only mean one thing. All this time, Gatiss and the rest have known he is Krasnevin. Sure enough, as George prepares to board his plane, Gatiss appears in his car on the tarmac, running down Krasnevin as he prepares to assassinate his old nemesis.

Despite this somewhat exhilarating last act, most of A Dandy in Aspic remains sluggishly paced. Difficult to assess how much of the picture was actually shot by Mann before his untimely demise and what sequences were later staged – or perhaps, even re-staged by Laurence Harvey, who took over, not only directing the movie, but overseeing its final edit. The periodic focal zooms and extreme pans and blurs to indicate scene changes, then utilized as clever and cutting edge, have, in hindsight, badly date the picture today. The virtues within are a very fine performance by Tom Courtenay and Mia Farrow. Alas, the lynch pin of the movie, Laurence Harvey’s double agent, is a stale subordinate by comparison – moved about as though he possesses no will of his own, with Harvey adding an even more stifling layer of world-weariness to his performance as the laconic loner, briefly to have found solace in the arms of a good woman…or, at least, one who implicitly understands him from the inside out. Christopher Challis’ cinematography captures the Cold War grit and grime of the period, only occasionally subverted by Caroline’s spry and sexy uber-wit and sleek sophistication. For those appreciative of this sort of plodding and pedestrian spy movie that was, for its time, occasionally in vogue in Britain, A Dandy in Aspic is a minor thriller with a slam-bang finish that takes far too long to unravel.

Powerhouse/Indicator have released A Dandy in Aspic on Blu-ray in the U.K. in a ‘region free’ offering that leaves something to be desired. For the most part, the image is softly focused with varying degrees of fine detail left wanting. Colors are dully saturated, in keeping with Challis’ verve for showcasing the stark despair of these Cold War settings. Optical zooms and other process shots exhibit elevated levels of grain that otherwise look fairly indigenous to the source. Flesh tones are more ruddy than natural. There is also some minor, if infrequent edge effects and haloing, plus intermittent age-related dirt and scratches. The DTS mono audio is adequate.  Author and critic, Samm Deighan weighs in with an informative audio commentary. One can also choose to watch the main feature while listening to the 107 min. BEHP Interview with Christopher Challis. The rest of the extras are distilled into very brief featurettes; the newly produced, A Time to Die (10 min.), Pulling Strings (22 min.) Inside Mann (12 min.) and London to Berlin (6 min.) Cumulatively, these shorts cover various aspects of the making of A Dandy in Aspic without ever going beyond the surface. We also get Berlin: The Swinging City – a 1968 puff piece, plus an isolated music track showing off Quincy Jones’ score, and, an image gallery and original theatrical trailer. Indicator’s 28-page booklet contains new essays by Jeff Billington and Derek Marlowe. Bottom line: A Dandy in Aspic is a passable piece of sixties spy fluff. This Blu ranks about the same. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

3

EXTRAS

4