The Basic Plot in Six Words or Less: That kooky, zany Queen of Diamonds!
My Basic Ramblings: They showed this movie at Vassar while I was there, but I didn't go see it. I think I had to work that night or something. Anyway, my friends saw it, and it soon became an in-joke with us to recite Frank Sinatra's lines, adding "Shoo-be-doo-be-doo" after each one.
I finally saw the movie a few years later (and read the book by Richard Condon) and recently saw it again (I purchased it as part of the Grand Honkin' Laser Disc Haul of February '97) so I'm passing on my comments to you!
After I saw this movie, I felt compelled to pass the time by playing a little FreeCell on my computer. When the King of Clubs popped up (because I'm obsessed with clubs because they're not clubs, they're clovers), I got a message to my brain that I should write this review. So here it is. (Putting the pieces together, I think my brainwashing occurred while I worked at Wegmans supermarkets. It's the only time when I had a certain mentality forced upon me. It's also where I was denied a $1,000.00 college scholarship because I didn't smile enough.)
Some movies based on novels vary wildly from the text. L.A. Confidential and Trainspotting are two I can name right off the top of my head. This movie follows the text very closely, except for one scene toward the end. Certain scenes have their dialogue taken directly from the novel. It's interesting that movies can approach the text in different ways and still be successful in conveying the novel's message.
A little piece of trivia that I always found interesting was that Angela Lansbury, who plays Raymond's mother, was only two years older than Laurence Harvey. She should have won a few Academy Awards for her role in this film - cold, calculating, etc. Quite a world away from Murder She Wrote and Beauty and the Beast.
I was always a bit perplexed by Janet Leigh's role in the movie - that scene with her and Frank Sinatra in the train seems to have been written on crack - but Roger Ebert came up with an interesting take on it - Ben Marco (Sinatra's character) is another programmable assassin, and Leigh is his American controller, and their weird little chat was setting him up to do something....what, though. (Maybe to block this movie for about 20 years after its initial release.)
Another little piece of trivia that I always found interesting (I love movie trivia - if you ever need to buy me a present for something [My birthday's 10/27], buy me a movie trivia book) is that the dream sequence of Sinatra's character and the other character (whose name I unfortunately forget) was thrown together as a rough cut to show Sinatra, edited together by the screenwriter, just a complete "Oh, let's throw this together and see how it looks to show Frank," and he liked it so much it was kept almost exactly the same in the finished product. The 360 degree shot that begins the sequence was filmed with a railroad track moving pieces of the scenery around. That's cool.
So, anyway. On to more important matters. Laurence Harvey is pretty cute. This is the only movie I've seen him in, although he's apparently been in quite a few. Frank Sinatra does a good job; only once did I think of him saying "Shoo-be-doo-be-doo" (and that was the part my friends and I always reinacted, the "we're tearing out the wires, if someone tells you to play solitaire you tell them it's over, etc., etc,. etc." scene). Angela Lansbury, as I said before, is wicked cool.
So if you want a black and white movie about paranoia and political assassinations and dysfunctional families, go see this flick. Then pass the time by playing a little solitaire.