Every scene change is an assault. When this movie cuts, it inflicts pain.
Point Blank (1967)
The film is now available on a smashing new 4K+Blu-ray two-disc edition from the Criterion Collection. The film is also available on Blu-ray.
Riding high after winning an Academy Award in 1966 for his comedy-Western Cat Ballou (1965), Lee Marvin had earned the right to "final cut," as well as casting.
While filming his starring role in Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen, the actor met with director John Boorman, who had recently completed his first feature, known in the U.S. as Having a Wild Weekend, which was meant to launch the Dave Clark Five into the territory where The Beatles lived after Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night. (It did not.)
Their meeting point was a script for MGM, based on The Hunter, an excellent crime novel by Donald E. Westlake, writing under his pen name Richard Stark. Major movie star Lee Marvin asked young British director John Boorman what he thought of the script. Boorman did not think the script was very good, but told Marvin that he very much liked the lead character. Marvin tossed his copy of the script into the garbage, and told Boorman that he agreed.
Thus, an unlikely partnership was formed. Marvin was so impressed by Boorman that he ceded his "final cut" and casting authoritty to the young director, giving him power that was unprecedented for such an inexperienced filmmaker.
John Boorman took full advantage of his newly-vested power, directing a stone-cold classic.
The story is simple. Lee Marvin stars as Walker -- renamed from Parker in the novel -- who escapes from Alcatraz with a single goal in mind: recover the $93,000 that his former friend and partner Mal Reese (Canadian actor John Vernon in his first screen role) stole from him. Oh, and perhaps exact some revenge for Mal stealing Walker's wife and shooting him. (Or, perhaps Mal actually murdered Walker in the opening moments of the film, and the entire narrative takes place in the moments before he dies; that's one interpretation that director Boorman never entirely dismissed.)
Walker marches from Los Angeles International Airport throughout Los Angeles in search of his $93,000. He makes his first stop at the apartment where his wife Lynne (Canadian actress Sharon Acker in her first screen appearance) has been shacking up with Mal Reese, but Mal is no longer there; he's taken up with another woman and moved out. She gives Walker a clue.
Walker keeps looking for his money. He meets with Lynne's dispirited sister Chris (Angie Dickinson), and starts working his way up a criminal food chain, dealing with car dealer Stegman (Michael Strong), then with Mal, then with Carter (Lloyd Bochner) and Brewster (Carroll O'Connor).
His relationship with Chris waxes and wanes. She hates him, she resists him, she lays down with him, she rejects him. Walker doesn't seem to know or care about her.
He has continual encounters with the mysterious Yost (Keenan Wynn), or maybe he's called Fairfax? It's all a bit spatial and strange and suspicious.
Point Blank is strange and mysterious, layered and complicated and perplexing and transfixing. Lee Marvin is stoic, yet his eyes contain multitudes. Angie Dickinson is tired and fiery and alluring and frightening. Together they are a scary pair. Apart they are beautiful and dangerous.
In the audio commentary, director John Boorman notes that, since this was his first picture in color, he undertook a deep study of the subject, to understand the psychology of colors, and also how they affected the viewer.
Thus, he decided for a gradual shift in the colors from the beginning of the narrative to the end. He also decided to shoot each scene with a different primary color, which prompted one MGM studio person to call a scene planned with 'seven men, all in green, in a green room' untenable; it would be unreleasable.
Of course, from his study of the subject, Boorman knew that there are many shades of green -- some would read brown, and some would tend toward yellow -- and, thanks to Lee Marvin's help, Boorman could ignore the concerns, since he had final cut.
On the 4K disc, the purity of celluloid in color is beautifully manifested. None of the colors really jump out, like some digital productions of recent vintage. Instead, the colors look burnished and deeply ingrained.
Where the 4K edition truly shines is in the booming sound, which makes the pounding, hammering sound of Lee Marvin walking down the Los Angeles Airport hallway thunderously loud and incredibly striking, like a sonic boom with each step. The details are finely rendered; it's a great transfer.
The special features complement each other, digging far into how and why the film has affected filmmakers, film critics, and the general public alike.
First is the audio commentary, available both on the 4K disc and the Blu-ray, recorded in 2005 for a Warner Home Video release. It's led by Steven Soderbergh, who has a number of questions that he puts to John Boorman throughout the movie. It's not incessant chatter; it is, instead, a conversation between two filmmakers that is informative, friendly, respectful, and quite wonderful.
The other special features are only available on the Blu-ray. Film critic and historian Geoff Dyer visited Boorman in his country home in 2021 and talked with him for 41 minutes, mostly about Point Blank. Coming 16 years after the audio commentary, some of the same information is covered, but the two cover other points of abiding interest in the film, including a story that Boorman shares about Angie Dickinson's relationship with Lee Marvin.
Author Mark Harris, who knows the late 60s era in Hollywood intimately, as evidenced by his outstandingly excellent book Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, contributes an excellent 35-minute visual essay on the film, dissecting it from a critical and social viewpoint.
Filmmaker Jim Jarmusch talks about his love of crime films (?!), and spends 17 quite entertaining minutes narrating an essay about his special love for Point Blank -- and why.
Writer, television producer, and historian Alison Martino (Vintage Los Angeles) narrates a 9-minute tour of the locations used in the film, which is fabulous. Thanks to her, I realized that the Tiffany Theater, which is across the street from the apartment belonging to Lee Marvin's ex in the first part of the film, is the same theater where I first saw Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (!!!). Talk about film noir coincidences!
A two-part promo film, running about 16 minutes in total, was produced around the time of the theatrical release of Point Blank. Titled The Rock, it understandably focuses on Alcatraz, since Point Blank was the first film that was shot on location at the prison, which closed in 1963. With behind-the-scenes footage and brief interviews, it's quite interesting, especially Part 2, which features an interview with a former inmate who was confined in the prison.
Some 22 minutes of The Dick Cavett Show, broadcast on American television in 1970, covers the interview portion with Lee Marvin. I was surprised by how awkward the normally very smooth Dick Cavett sounded as he tried to get a conversation going with Marvin, who goes against modern-day talk show rules by not being terribly chatty. It's also surprising to see him chain-smoking (?!). Jeanne Moreau and Truman Capote are also show in the segment.
The film's original trailer is included, which, again, is fascinating for the contrast with modern-day trailers.
The package include a printed booklet containing Geoff Dyer's essay "A Dream of Full-Color Noit" that is expansive, critically incisive, and wonderfully written.
The handsome new cover is by Jay Shaw.
Point Blank is a great film that rewards multiple viewings. Criterion's new 4K edition is a keeper that gives Lee Marvin, John Boorman, and Angie Dickinson their proper due.