Jan 13, 2020
Stranger In The House (Cop-Out, 1967)
"You know... I feel pretty sure that if I were ever in any trouble... I wouldn't come to you for help."
"No, I don't suppose you would."
#Stranger in the House#cop out#british cinema#films i done watched#1967#James Mason#geraldine chaplin#bobby darin#Paul Bertoya#ian ogilvy#Bryan stanyon#Pippa Steel#Clive morton#Moira Lister#James hayter#Megs Jenkins#Lisa Daniely#Marjie Lawrence#Danvers walker#Ivor Dean#Pierre Rouve#georges simenon#A mixed bag adaptation of a Simenon novel. There's quite a lot going on and yet it's also fairly slight at the same time#Certainly a loose film in which a fairly simplistic plot is a little drawn out. There's a lot of late 60s generation conflict stuff going#On which doesn't really help. However: Mason gives a truly remarkable performance as a washed up barrister who's hit the bottle and#Abandoned his career. Ogilvy Chaplin and Stanyon all very strong as the rebellious (but upper middle class) youths who are as phony as#Everything they rail against. Bobby Darin makes some odd choices in his performance playing it all very breathlessly and hyper as tho he's#Hopped up on something; slightly odd but it kind of works. And for whatever shortcomings the script may have Rouve proves himself a much#Cannier director than scriptwriter: some great visuals playing with foreground and background and the flashbacks (shot on entirely white#Sets) are eerily disjointed and disorientating. Less than the sum of its parts but with some really interesting scenes