Three Films Make A Post: Just how far will a government go to hide the truth?

Defence of the Realm (1985): This British conspiracy thriller by David Drury makes an interesting contrast to comparable American films where journalism beats a government conspiracy in that the British view on journalists is much less heroic than the American one – at least once the 60s rolled in - often is. Which is what a press dominated by various models of scandal rags will do to one’s opinions. Our protagonist, wonderfully embodied by Gabriel Byrne, is a bit of a shit, perfectly willing to lie, cheat and probably steal, to then turn what he writes into melodrama; but as it turns out, he’s also – to his own surprise - unable to let the lies and injustices committed by those in power go, and turns heroic despite of himself. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have much of a movie.

And it’s a bit of a classic, probably a bit slow-paced for many, I’d assume, but very good at portraying the process of research, and the looming understanding of how big and at once petty this thing that’s being violently suppressed actually is. Drury’s dry but effective direction works very well with the material, and the cast includes greats like Greta Scacchi, Denholm Elliott and Ian Bannen even in the smallest roles.

Bell Book and Candle (1958): For its first two thirds, Richard Quine’s fantastical romantic comedy is pretty much the sort of delight you’d expect this sort of thing to be, with so many clever script and staging ideas one can get a bit drunk watching it. Yet it also turns into a film that seems to be not too fond of its own supposed happy ending, something that equates romantic love with pain, and can see the process of an independent woman becoming part of a couple only in a way where the woman becomes lesser. There’s certainly a feminist perspective at the way this time and place treats women and romance buried rather shallowly in the film, but it’s also too conservative a thing (plus, a big studio movie from the late 50s) to go somewhere different than the times tell it to go.

Which leaves us with a film that tries selling a woman losing her magic, her fashion sense, and her taste in exchange for tears and fifty year old James Stewart as an actual happy end, something that leaves this heterosexual male viewer rather sceptical.

Death Comes at High Noon aka Døden kommer til middag (1964): If you want to look at it that way, you can find the influence of the giallo – or influences on the giallo – everywhere. Case in point is this Danish mystery directed by Erik Balling, where an amateur detective (Poul Reichhardt) – he’s a crime writer – stumbles upon a corpse and then a whole series of other crimes committed by a very honourable citizen indeed. Its political subtext, its stylish production, and the intense way Sander flirts with female lead Helle Virkner’s character – and vice versa, in a way that would have had contemporary censors in my native Germany screaming in horror – all seem to parallel developments elsewhere in European film while also having enough regional specificity to delight friends of the regionally specific like me.