10 Rillington Place (Fleischer, 1971): Prince Charles Cinema, 6pm
This 35mm presentation is part of Bleak Week at the Prince Charles. Details here.Time Out review:
As
infamous serial murderer John Reginald Christie, Richard Attenborough
is just exaggerated enough to remain credible. With his vaguely
threatening countenance (shiny bald pate, pupil-magnifying spectacles)
and lulling wisp of a voice, this genial strangler might be the bastard
child of anarchy and politesse—or at least Elmer Fudd and Droopy. Christie’s cartoonishness is appropriate considering that director
Richard Fleischer is the son of animated-film pioneer Max Fleischer. Yet
the character never seems a gag come to life. Both the director’s sober
approach to the very lurid subject matter and Attenborough’s
appropriately one-note performance help to illuminate this ostensible
villain’s psychopathic philosophies, which are never treated as unholy
gospel. Unlike many a film serial killer, Christie isn’t preaching an
alternate way of living to a secretly receptive audience. He remains a
nondescript loner whom Fleischer and Attenborough insist we pay
attention to, even as he slowly shatters the existence of his illiterate
boarder (John Hurt, doing the definitive take on “two sandwiches short of a
picnic”). When Christie thereafter spirals into an undistinguished
purgatory, the film gains in methodical momentum. The inevitable end—the
killer’s apprehension on the banks of the Thames—sticks troublingly in
the mind, as if justice has swaddled nothing more than a heavy-breathing
black hole. It’s the perfect, downbeat grace note on which to end this
underseen gem.
Keith Uhlich
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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