Neither Thrilling nor Noir

Pretty sure I saw this in the 70's, though I can't remember what I thought of it then. Now it seems tired and uninteresting. Start is very slow setting the scene with Marlowe (Elliot Gould) who doesn't appear to be a working private eye, more a loser who talks to his cat. A long drawn out joke about cat food hardly tells us anything about the character (although our dog watched it intently).

Once the story begins it moves along ok, although the threads are initially disconnected there is no sense of mystery or confusion which one might expect from the classic Chandler films -Leigh Brackett who wrote the screenplay was also co-writer of The Big Sleep (1946) but was way off the mark here.

The wisecracking by Marlowe doesn't sparkle - perhaps because there isn't a female co-lead to spark off, so his foils are indifferent. The main women (the writer's wife and the gangster's moll) are merely long haired west coast stepford wives with no character.

The writer, a Hemmingway type, Roger Wade (Sterling Hayden) doesn't carry the heavyweight drunk role well - he is too soft. The creepy doctor Verringer (Henry Gibson) is simply a creepy nerd with no menace or indication that he might have any power over Wade.

The shooting at the end is a surprise, but packs no punch as Marlowe didn't seem to have any difficulty tracking down his friend or any particular reason to act as he did - it was neither moral nor justified.

All in all it's not even worth 3 stars, never minfd the 4 I thought I might give it immediately after, so I'm downgrading it to 2.

Initially engrossing but fades in the end

A good story unfolds. Occasional time skips are a little disconcerting as you struggle to catch up with what has happened in the gap. Once Claudy has died it is clear Lorna regrets her involvement as she ever so gently goes off the rails. I found the ending with her hiding out in a cabin in the woods talking to herself slightly unconvincing

A True Story, Truly Told

Truly told given the testimonies of the participants (still living and mostly still radical) given in the DVD 'extras' interviews.

Personally I was 18 at the time (Nov'70) and in my first term at Uni - I remember nothing of the event (no TV, didn't read the papers much) and I don't event remember it being discussed. I do remember that the Miss World contest was considered by young men my age to be pretty tacky since the late 60's - like racism, there was a rising awareness in the hippie generation that women were generally treated pretty badly in The Man's world.

The film tells the story very well, it is entertaining, well paced, well acted. The relationship between Sally (Keira Knightley) and her partner is not explored (he seems a bit bemused). The politics behind the rise of the women's lib (or indeed the anti-apartheid and Angry Brigade movements which were also on the case) is beyond what the film could reasonably be expected to cover. Also the consequences, both for the women's movement and the racist backlash against the result, are not properly mentioned.

It focuses on telling the story of the action itself, some of the details are clearly tweaked for dramatic effects (eg Jo Robinson's recollection doesn't mention sitting next to Sally Alexandria), but it makes a good story.

Lovely to see some of the details - silk screening posters from stencils, life in a communal squat - which were common currency in activist circles then.