John Boorman (1967)
A man hunts down other men, who owe him his share of the proceeds of a robbery they did together on Alcatraz island. It could be a B-movie plot and much of the acting in Point Blank is undistinguished (the star, Lee Marvin, is a notable exception). As a piece of film-making, though, it’s ambitious, and the incongruence of style and substance – technical sophistication versus formula plot and characters – makes the picture more remarkable. John Boorman concentrates on the geometry of modern buildings and their component parts and contents: doors, windows, slatted blinds, striped curtains. The scale of the physical settings, mainly in and around Los Angeles, is often huge: one of the most impressive moments in Point Blank is the shooting of the pin-sized figure of a man who’s trying to run away in a vast, desert-like space. Boorman and his cinematographer Philip H Lathrop use the sunshine of LA where you might expect noir darkness – this anticipates the use, in the outdoor sequences of Chinatown, of light on the subject as a counterpoint to shadowy goings on. There’s a merciless quality to this light as there is to Boorman’s spectacular staging of the several deaths that occur in the course of the film. There’s an increasing consonance too between the director’s and the film’s protagonist Walker’s preoccupation with how things get done – and between the soulless landscape and that of Walker’s own mind. (In the end, Walker doesn’t bother to collect his money even when it’s there for the taking.) The source material is The Hunter, a 1962 novel (the first of a long series featuring the same central character), which Donald E Westlake wrote under the pseudonym Richard Stark. The screenplay is by Alexander Jacobs, David Newhouse and Rafe Newhouse. Whoever decided on the change of title earned their fee: the literal meaning is obvious but Point Blank also gets across the existential emptiness and nullity of the world that Boorman creates.
The privileging of style over substance in the crime thriller genre has become very familiar in the decades since Point Blank was made. But it must have looked innovative at the time of its original release; and because this is unmistakeably a 1960s piece, it’s distinctive from much of what followed – so that it still seems unusual, almost aberrant. I didn’t enjoy watching but I understand and accept the cachet the film has acquired. Lee Marvin’s combination of a persistent persona, utter physical relaxation and deadpan verbal wit makes him seem a hybrid of an old-time star and a modern actor. The volatile relationship between Marvin’s Walker and a woman called Chris is central to, and the strongest human element of, Point Blank. As Chris, Angie Dickinson’s prettiness and great figure are made more interesting by her used, tawdry quality. One of the best sequences in the film occurs when Walker and Chris are in a house together: he wonders where she’s got to – she’s always one room ahead of him. Walker’s search begins in a vast kitchen in which Chris has turned on a noisy orchestra of electrical appliances. His disorientation is complete when, in a games room, she whacks him over the head with a pool cue. The cast also includes Keenan Wynn, Carroll O’Connor, Michael Strong, Lloyd Bochner, Sharon Acker, James Sikking and John Vernon. The opening credits include ‘Introducing John Vernon’: he’s an unusually mature debutant (thirty-five) but this was indeed Vernon’s first appearance in cinema, although he was already well known as a stage and television actor.
9 April 2013
