The Offence (18.)
Directed by Sidney Lumet. 1972
Starring Sean Connery, Trevor Howard, Vivian Merchant, Ian Bannen, Derek Newark and Peter Bowles. 112 mins. Released on Blu-ray as part of Eureka's Masters of Cinema series.
Who is the Master of Cinema here? Connery or Lumet? If I had to choose I'd say Connery but maybe it's too difficult to call – they are both operating outside their comfort zone in this searing, unrelenting police drama that occasionally resembles an episode of Z Cars made in the style of A Clockwork Orange. The film takes an already grim topic – the arrest and interrogation of a suspect in a series of child sex abductions that have rocked an English town – and pounds it for every bit of misery and despair it can get out of it. It's not many films that can comfortably accommodate a score by Harrison Birtwhistle - the man who once spoilt the Last Night of The Proms with his jarring, discordant way with a tune - but in The Offence it works quietly but effectively in the background and you barely register it.
Either way The Offence is a cracking addition to the Masters of Cinema range, a forgotten gem that isn't wholly successful and isn't always easy to watch, but certainly deserves to be rescued from obscurity.
The film starts in the middle with the moment that Connery's Detective Sergeant Johnson snaps and gives the suspect Bannen a possibly fatal beating. From there the narrative jumps back and forth. Lumet shoots the crucial opening scene in nightmarish slow motion from the perspective of the other duty officers in the police station discovering what has happened. A circular reflection of the main ceiling light is seemingly screen burnt over the image, as if the film is an interrogation that is shining a light straight into its audience's face and demanding that it has ways of making you talk. Johnson is a copper scarred by all the things he's seen and done over his twenty years in the force – a selection of which we glimpse in a frantic montage while he drives home.
This is a vision of an England dominated by brutalist concrete and grim Victorian terraces; an England that is always cast under grey skies during daylight, and tinged with the metallic police lamp blue at night. Lumet knows how to get our worse side. Although this is set and shot in London, the look is reminiscent of Newcastle in its near contemporary Get Carter.
There is a creepily effective scene early on that communicates the way these crimes have set the community on edge: as the school day ends all the parents are scattered about in groups outside the school gates waiting for their kids to be let out and looking suspiciously over their shoulders at any passing car. They are like some of Hitchcock's Birds, geared up to pounce.
Lumet is generally remembered as a purveyor of gritty street realism, usually in New York, (such as Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon,) though during a five decade career he tried his hand at most things. I can't remember his attempting many thing quite as boldly experimental as this. It's a tad overwrought to be sure, but for around an hour it is a grizzly tour-de-force. At some point though this investigation has to uncover something and half way through we discover the hidden truth that the film has been working hard to obscure – that this is a film version of a play. The play is This Story Of Yours written by TV dramatist John Hopkins and it has been condensed into the last half of the film, which is basically three consecutive double handers, with Connery going head to head with Merchant, Howard and Bannen. These scenes are powerfully played - Bannen is particularly good - but it is still a bit of a step down after the wild first hour.
The Offence was the start of a Between Bond odyssey for Connery, as he tried to prove himself as an actor. After his first Bond retirement he had only been lured back to do Diamonds are Forever on the promise of funding to make this film and his desperation to shake the 007 stereotype, led him into some bizarre projects: after this he would make himself look a proper ninny in John Boorman's sci-fi fiasco Zardoz. For around ten years he tried just a bit too hard to prove himself.
(Of course there were some splendid choices during that time such as The Man Who Would Be King with Michael Caine, who during the same period was making almost no effort to prove himself as a serious actor and devoted himself to securing the most pleasant pay cheque available.)
To show how seriously he was taking his acting The Offence was his first wigless role. Wrapped in a sheepskin coat he looks more like a sinister, sarcastic games teacher - the type that would make you do P.E. in your undies if you forgot your kit and would have his advances rebuffed by the new young drama teacher - than a policeman. He delivers a powerhouse performance and you sense, all too vividly, the violence and menace that lurks within this man. But he still may not entirely convince. His screen presence, his intrinsic physicality is such that he is a bit too much for the role of a detective sergeant, even one with a bit of a reputation as a tough guy. Sean Connery isn't just another copper. So this pet project, while proving that he could indeed act and act very well, probably proves that this was not really his thing.
That's the thing about Connery, audiences couldn't really accept him as an ordinary person: not because he used to be Bond, but because he was Connery and that was not an ordinary figure. Then after a decade he seemed to come to terms with his stardom. He syruped up again to do Bond one more time in Never Say Never Again, and it may have released him. He realised he wasn't the man who would always be Bond; Bond was the role that would always be Connery.
Extras.
Four interviews but not with the people you'd really want to hear from. Lumet died a few years back and Connery has drifted out of the public eye so instead you get new interviews with composer Birtwhistle, the costume designer, the assistant art director and the director of the original stage production.
Birtwhistle fans also have the option of watching the film without dialogue and only his score, which I don't think is available elsewhere, and the sound effects can be heard. Pretty niche, but it makes for a Chris Morris's Jam vibe, if that reference is any use to you, accentuating the strangeness of an already strange film.
In the booklet there's a new essay on the film by Mike Sutton and an interview with Lumet, done before he went to England to shoot the movie.
The Offence (18.)
Directed by Sidney Lumet. 1972
Starring Sean Connery, Trevor Howard, Vivian Merchant, Ian Bannen, Derek Newark and Peter Bowles. 112 mins. Released on Blu-ray as part of Eureka's Masters of Cinema series.
Who is the Master of Cinema here? Connery or Lumet? If I had to choose I'd say Connery but maybe it's too difficult to call – they are both operating outside their comfort zone in this searing, unrelenting police drama that occasionally resembles an episode of Z Cars made in the style of A Clockwork Orange. The film takes an already grim topic – the arrest and interrogation of a suspect in a series of child sex abductions that have rocked an English town – and pounds it for every bit of misery and despair it can get out of it. It's not many films that can comfortably accommodate a score by Harrison Birtwhistle - the man who once spoilt the Last Night of The Proms with his jarring, discordant way with a tune - but in The Offence it works quietly but effectively in the background and you barely register it.
Either way The Offence is a cracking addition to the Masters of Cinema range, a forgotten gem that isn't wholly successful and isn't always easy to watch, but certainly deserves to be rescued from obscurity.
The film starts in the middle with the moment that Connery's Detective Sergeant Johnson snaps and gives the suspect Bannen a possibly fatal beating. From there the narrative jumps back and forth. Lumet shoots the crucial opening scene in nightmarish slow motion from the perspective of the other duty officers in the police station discovering what has happened. A circular reflection of the main ceiling light is seemingly screen burnt over the image, as if the film is an interrogation that is shining a light straight into its audience's face and demanding that it has ways of making you talk. Johnson is a copper scarred by all the things he's seen and done over his twenty years in the force – a selection of which we glimpse in a frantic montage while he drives home.
This is a vision of an England dominated by brutalist concrete and grim Victorian terraces; an England that is always cast under grey skies during daylight, and tinged with the metallic police lamp blue at night. Lumet knows how to get our worse side. Although this is set and shot in London, the look is reminiscent of Newcastle in its near contemporary Get Carter.
There is a creepily effective scene early on that communicates the way these crimes have set the community on edge: as the school day ends all the parents are scattered about in groups outside the school gates waiting for their kids to be let out and looking suspiciously over their shoulders at any passing car. They are like some of Hitchcock's Birds, geared up to pounce.
Lumet is generally remembered as a purveyor of gritty street realism, usually in New York, (such as Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon,) though during a five decade career he tried his hand at most things. I can't remember his attempting many thing quite as boldly experimental as this. It's a tad overwrought to be sure, but for around an hour it is a grizzly tour-de-force. At some point though this investigation has to uncover something and half way through we discover the hidden truth that the film has been working hard to obscure – that this is a film version of a play. The play is This Story Of Yours written by TV dramatist John Hopkins and it has been condensed into the last half of the film, which is basically three consecutive double handers, with Connery going head to head with Merchant, Howard and Bannen. These scenes are powerfully played - Bannen is particularly good - but it is still a bit of a step down after the wild first hour.
The Offence was the start of a Between Bond odyssey for Connery, as he tried to prove himself as an actor. After his first Bond retirement he had only been lured back to do Diamonds are Forever on the promise of funding to make this film and his desperation to shake the 007 stereotype, led him into some bizarre projects: after this he would make himself look a proper ninny in John Boorman's sci-fi fiasco Zardoz. For around ten years he tried just a bit too hard to prove himself.
(Of course there were some splendid choices during that time such as The Man Who Would Be King with Michael Caine, who during the same period was making almost no effort to prove himself as a serious actor and devoted himself to securing the most pleasant pay cheque available.)
To show how seriously he was taking his acting The Offence was his first wigless role. Wrapped in a sheepskin coat he looks more like a sinister, sarcastic games teacher - the type that would make you do P.E. in your undies if you forgot your kit and would have his advances rebuffed by the new young drama teacher - than a policeman. He delivers a powerhouse performance and you sense, all too vividly, the violence and menace that lurks within this man. But he still may not entirely convince. His screen presence, his intrinsic physicality is such that he is a bit too much for the role of a detective sergeant, even one with a bit of a reputation as a tough guy. Sean Connery isn't just another copper. So this pet project, while proving that he could indeed act and act very well, probably proves that this was not really his thing.
That's the thing about Connery, audiences couldn't really accept him as an ordinary person: not because he used to be Bond, but because he was Connery and that was not an ordinary figure. Then after a decade he seemed to come to terms with his stardom. He syruped up again to do Bond one more time in Never Say Never Again, and it may have released him. He realised he wasn't the man who would always be Bond; Bond was the role that would always be Connery.
Extras.
Four interviews but not with the people you'd really want to hear from. Lumet died a few years back and Connery has drifted out of the public eye so instead you get new interviews with composer Birtwhistle, the costume designer, the assistant art director and the director of the original stage production.
Birtwhistle fans also have the option of watching the film without dialogue and only his score, which I don't think is available elsewhere, and the sound effects can be heard. Pretty niche, but it makes for a Chris Morris's Jam vibe, if that reference is any use to you, accentuating the strangeness of an already strange film.
In the booklet there's a new essay on the film by Mike Sutton and an interview with Lumet, done before he went to England to shoot the movie.
