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84 | Sight&Sound | April 2020of effective comedies, thrillers and wartime
morale-boosters: The Lady Vanishes (1938)
for Hitchcock, Millions Like Us (1943), the St.
Trinian’s films... It’s sad that, having contributed
so much to British cinema, Gilliat was cast off at a
relatively youthful 64 after the lukewarm critical
response for this adaptation of one of Agatha
Christie’s least typical novels. Saddening not least
because it’s a fascinating, enterprising film which
sits more comfortably with the baroque Italian
giallo of its day than the usual snooze-worthy
British expectations of a Christie whodunnit.
From the moment the opening sequence packs
in weird colour-filters and a faceless masked
woman over a turbulent Bernard Herrmann
score pitched to higher levels of anxiety by an
interjecting Moog synthesiser, we know we’re
not in the realm of Miss Marple and Hercule
Poirot. What follows is an ominous slow build, as
socially mobile chancer Hywel Bennett and his
super-wealthy new wife Hayley Mills build their
dream house on the English south coast, only to
be assailed by doomy rumblings about a curse
on the property, her nasty scheming family and
bitchy best pal Britt Ekland – until, more than an
hour in, death enters the fray. There follows a big
reveal which suggests that everything we’ve just
seen is an elaborate deception, viewed through
the distorting prism of a very frayed psyche.
The frisson of that expert rug-pulling moment
aside, the film’s period trappings deliver their own
delights, what with production designer Wilfred
Shingleton’s outrageous modern mansion for the
ill-fated couple (including interior swimming-
pool under retractable floor), snooty relative
Lois Maxwell’s flower-power dresses, and an
eye-catching advert for Green Shield Stamps. An
array of British acting notables, including George
Sanders (his final film), Peter Bowles and Windsor
Davies, adds worthwhile texture, while Gilliat’s
disorienting formal flourishes provoke sudden
chills Dario Argento would have been proud of.
A very useful reissue for an unjustly overlooked
title, which did great business in Italy under the
even better title Champagne After the Funeral.
Disc: A truthful 4K transfer preserves the murky
early 70s skin tones, while the disc’s archive audioelements add considerable value. These include
Gilliat’s recollections of his formative years in
the industry, and a remarkable document of a
Bernard Herrmann appearance at the BFI, giving
his opinionated take on the distinctive nature
of film music, plus horse’s-mouth testimony
on the making of Citizen Kane, The Magnificent
Ambersons and Psycho – all of which he scored.THE DOUGLAS MACLEAN
COLLECTION
ONE A MINUTE / BELL BOY 13
Jack Nelson/William A. Seiter; US 1921/23; Undercrank
Productions; region-free DVD; 56/44 minutes; 1.33:1.
Extras: new Ben Model scores, promo short A Trip Through
the World’s Greatest Motion Picture Studios (1920).
Reviewed by Michael Atkinson
A beacon in the briefly lit firmament of Thomas
Ince’s studio empire, Douglas MacLean thrived
as a comedy leading man from the late teens to
the cusp of the talkie era, averaging three films a
year for a dozen years before retiring into a low-
key 30s career producing and writing comedies
for W.C. Fields, Wheeler & Woolsey, Bing
Crosby and Charles Ruggles. MacLean’s screen
character is always alert, acutely sympathetic,
never quite clueless, and endearingly upbeat,
with a great display of startled anxiety when
the scenario demands it. In other words, he put
no one off – like a sophomore Harold Lloyd,
but with no airs of auteurship about him; his
films are polished mainstream programmers,
built to wash easily over audiences.
The stories are classic hokum of the day,
but the quickness of editing and acting makes
them feel something less than dated. One a
Minute has MacLean’s law student return to his
late father’s failing drug store, only to revive
it – amorally, it would seem – by concocting
an entirely fake ‘patent’ panacea which does,
however, seem to actually cure everyone of
everything. Complications with the law ensue,
but the path the film takes toward moral
messaging is tortuous, to say the least – and it
visits multiple racist stereotypes along the way.
Bell Boy 13 is a more trad rich-boy-goes-to-work
affair, with an always-scrambling MacLean at onepoint treading on a high-up hotel window ledge,
months before Lloyd’s Safety Last (but not nearly
as daringly). The lavishly illustrated title cards can
be on the nose, but the action is deft, detailed and
comically sharp, if not particularly inventive.
Disc: Restored by the Library of Congress,
the films look great, though Bell Boy 13 is the
fuzzier of the two. The accompanying Ince
studio promo short is fascinating, advertising
stars as well as showing us how negatives are
rolled, sets are built and studios are maintained.
Ben Model’s new scores are, typically, bouncy,
unobtrusive and faithful to the day and age.RELAXER
Joel Potrykus; US 2018; Anti-Worlds; region-free Blu-ray;
Certificate 18; 91 minutes; 1.85:1. Extras: commentary by
Joel Potrykus; selection of Potrykus’s shorts 1999-2019 –
The Ludivico Treatment, The Ludivico Testament, Coyote,
Test Market 447b; deleted scene; behind the scenes and
rehearsal footage; Potrykus-directed music video; trailer and
promos. Disc Two: Potrykus’s feature Buzzard (US 2014, 97
minutes, 1.78:1). Extras: commentary by Potrykus; alternative
version of Buzzard comprising rehearsal footage; deleted/
alternative scenes; behind the scenes footage; guide to
film’s ‘Easter eggs’; short documentary Buzzard at Locarno
International Film Festival; image gallery; trailers; booklet.
Reviewed by Josh Slater-Williams
Although only one title makes the front cover,
this package from new distribution outfit Anti-
Worlds is evenly split between two of Michigan
writer-director Joel Potrykus’s four independent
features to date: Relaxer (2018) and Buzzard (2014),
both unreleased in the UK. His genre-bending
films have earned him regular backing from the
US distributor Oscilloscope and ardent fans in
generational peers like Alex Ross Perry, writer of a
Filmmaker essay republished in this set’s booklet.
Both features here star Joshua Burge and
are portraits of stunted masculinity and
stagnation – literally in the Buñuelian Relaxer,
in which Burge is confined to a couch for the
narrative’s months-spanning entirety. In the
commentary for Relaxer, Potrykus notes the
influence of The Exterminating Angel (1962) and
Buster Keaton, the latter due in part to Burge’s
facial resemblance to the deadpan icon.
Potrykus’s (hardly) working-class young men
could be described as rudderless, except they do
have a few clear aims – just self-destructive ones.
Abbie in Relaxer tries to break an unbeatable
video-game record in one filmed sitting, only
to suffer a psychological collapse. The angry
Marty in Buzzard commits excessive effort to
the most idiotic small-time scams, and makes
a passion project of transforming a Nintendo
accessory into a Freddy Krueger-like claw.
A fascinating supernatural energy pervades
both, though more explicitly in Relaxer’s
alternative future of a Y2K apocalypse, which
also features a shadow-shot conversation that
could come straight out of a Pedro Costa effort.
Another unlikely European influence on these
empathetic explorations of ‘Rust Belt’ working-
class milieux would seem to be Finnish director
Aki Kaurismäki, whose laconic comic style
Potrykus filters through his own uniquely
grubby scenarios and distinct eccentrics.
Disc: A particularly sweet extras highlight
Christie love: Hayley Mills, Hywel Bennett in Endless Night is a video diary of Buzzard’s appearance atNew releases