Deathtrap (1982)

Successful playwright of stage mysteries Sidney Bruhl (Michael Caine) has his difficulties coping with the giant flop of his newest play. Sure, his rich wife Myra (Dyan Cannon) – I assume a former actress going by her enormously dramatic personality - would be perfectly okay to take care of both of their needs, and she’s clearly not the kind of woman who’d care about this as saying anything about him. Alas, that’s not something Sidney’s ego seems to be prepared to deal with.

He’s so obsessed with regaining success, he begins having rather murderous thoughts when a former workshop student of his, Cliff Anderson (Christopher Reeve) sends him a copy of a new play he hoped Sidney might help him sell. Which shouldn’t be a problem at all, for Sidney finds the play not just to be eminently marketable but also basically perfect. So perfect, murdering Anderson and stealing his work if the opportunity arises becomes more than the joke Myra believes it to be to him.

And that’s where I shall hold the plot synopsis part of this write-up, before any of twists in this utterly brilliant Sidney Lumet adaptation of Ira Levin’s only successful play start happening. Actually good twists that work with established characters, details and motivations are much too rare to waste, after all, and the film at hand does have rather more than one of them.

That Lumet is a great director hardly needs mentioning, but it is probably worth saying that this one lacks the didactic manner he sometimes could fall into, replacing it with a large amount of wit. Particularly seen as the adaptation of a stage play, Deathtrap is a very energetic film. Lumet often seems to put his camera into the scenes as another actor instead of going the respectful and a bit dull route of many of a screen adaptation of a stage where you might as well watch the stage play itself and not a movie. There’s never a feeling of the director doing too much, visually, though, or of getting in the way of the script or the actors. He’s there to enhance, deepen and assist, and he’s doing an incredible job at it.

Of course, the script (adapted by Jay Presson Allen) is rather on the brilliant side. It doesn’t just present a twisty, and often very funny, murder mystery, but also pokes and prods at the form it is working in on a meta level. Never in an obnoxious, too-clever way, mind you, but always deepening what’s going and making it more interesting and more emotionally and intellectually complex, as little  getting in the way of pace or characters as Lumet’s direction is.

The acting is up to the same standards, all three members of the main cast shifting the tones of their performances in ways that feel natural and logical, without showing off with it. That Michael Caine is brilliant in any film he’s in not only to pay his rent is obviously no surprise, but Christopher Reeve is also so good it’s basically revelatory to me, putting a guy I’ve never had all that much time for as an actor (though he was a perfect Superman, of course) really on the map for me. Dyan Cannon was apparently a victim of a critical drubbing when this came out, but really, she’s playing an incredible high-strung woman just as extremely as she needs to be played. Cannon’s also not leaving it at “high-strong”, but also shows the nuances of emotion and thought under that obvious surface layer; that the woman she’s playing isn’t subtle about her emotions and thoughts does not mean her emotions and thoughts have no subtlety, and Cannon’s performance is a masterclass in how to show this, at least to my eyes. The only performance here that’s really rather one-note and over the top is Irene Worth as our detective of the evening, psychic Helga ten Dorp, but that’s the perfect choice for this character in the context of this particular movie as well.

Masterclass really is the word that comes to mind for the whole of a film where script, direction and acting come together to reach astonishing heights as easily as Deathtrap seems to do.

A Couple of Remarks About Superman (1978)

For a long time, Richard Donner’s film and its sequel were the best contenders for superhero movies that successfully took their material somewhat seriously and were able to make an actual emotional impact on their audience.

Seen today, it is a weirdly paced movie, going through about three prologues (including the set-up for the sequel!) featuring a lot more Marlon Brando than it strictly needs before something like a plot develops, but it also does the difficult job of getting Superman right. It does this by accepting the cornball elements of the character, realizing the dignity of its core ideals (and as with Captain America that “American Way” in his motto doesn’t mean the practice of America, but instead the dream of it) but also giving him, with large assistant from Christopher Reeve’s lifetime best performance, a humanity the character can easily lack. The film’s main flaw is that its Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) is basically a long-winded (unfunny) comedy routine instead of a proper villain. It’s a curious decision in a film full of thoughtful and good ones, and Hackman’s performance stands out like a sore thumb between Reeve’s mixture of earnestness as Superman and twinkling eyes when he’s Clark Kent, and Margot Kidder’s note perfect Lois Lane.


However, I’m not sure the film as it stands even needed a big villain at all, seeing how much of its genuine impact is driven by the childlike (not childish, mind you) sense of wonder that may be the best way to treat its main character at all. This guy’s just not meant to be grimdark, and the film realizes this much better than most attempts at Superman that came after. I do understand what later filmmakers (and comics writers) attempted to do with acquainting Superman with the Dark Side, or just making him less powerful. An all-good and all-powerful being is, after all, pretty difficult to relate to, not exactly an obvious engine for dramatic conflict, and unless you’re Grant Morrison, perhaps not even all that easy to like – or rather, not someone where “liking” is a concept that really applies.