1960's – Sat In Your Lap

Euromaxing

***This Review Contains Spoilers***

I bestow Jacques Deray’s The Swimming Pool (La Piscine) with the oddly specific accolade of being the 2^nd best 1960s swimming pool-centric movie. The other film of this double feature I am referring to is Frank Perry’s The Swimmer (1968). Both movies not only share aesthetic similarities but also explore a seemingly idyllic existence that isn’t quite what it seems, with the use of swimming pools as a metaphor. A pool creates a refracted, warped image, and it’s only when seeing through the surface that things become clear.

The majority of The Swimming Pool takes place within the confines of a holiday villa in the French Riviera town of Saint-Tropez (which I am reliably informed is pronounced san troh-pay for us word ending consonant pronouncing English speakers). This setting makes The Swimming Pool an oxymoron of a film in that it is a thriller, yet a relaxing one at that. I find myself watching on in jealous enchantment as the sexy, shirtless and effortlessly cool Alain Delon and his glamorous, bronzed-fleshed co-star Romy Schneider flex their sculpted physiques as they relax and make love in the nostalgic, rustic, sun-soaked atmosphere (as 60’s lounge music along with the film’s repeated song of choice Ask Yourself Why sung by Ruth Price echo in the background). Jean-Paul Leroy (Delon) and his girlfriend of two years, Marianne (Schneider), are madly infatuated with each other as they intensely make out (back scratching and all) and engage in light-hearted power plays and one-upmanship. However, there is soon trouble in paradise with the unexpected arrival of the couple’s old friend Harry Lannier (Maurice Ronet).

Harry is a figure who gives off mid-life crisis vibes; a cringeworthy dad with his prized sports car and top shirt buttons always undone. Harry, however, merely goes from being a figure of cringe to one of great suspicion from the accompaniment of Penelope (Jane Birkin), a girl he claims to be his daughter. Harry speaks of his daughter and interacts with her in a very intimate manner, commenting to others that she is pretty and telling her that her skin is smooth and that she smells nice. Both Jean-Paul and Marianne are surprised to discover their old friend even has a daughter. Penelope is apprehensive to talk about her background when Marianne asks her questions, while Harry simply tells Jean-Paul, “Her mother is simply an Englishwoman, you don’t know her”. Even the very scenario of a father and daughter going on a European road trip together is an unlikely one, with the film never making it clear if Harry is her Daddy or her “daddy”.

Throughout the film, Penelope wears short dresses and skirts (even to a funeral), although regardless of whether she is trying to provoke, she ignites a lust within a youth-chasing Jean-Paul. Even from their first meeting, Jean-Paul grabs her by the hand and asks, “How old are you?”, to which she responds mildly nervously, “Eighteen”. This eventually culminates in the two making love and, by extension, the dissolution of his relationship with Marianne. Delon and Schneider were real-life ex-fiancés, with the word through the grapevine being that he continued to be infatuated with her, with Delon being instrumental in getting Schneider cast in the film. Regardless, I’m sure their real-life background contributed to their on-screen chemistry and to the emotional weight of the gradual, undramatic breakdown of a relationship and the quiet acceptance of such within the film’s very slow build approach.

Harry brings about Jean-Paul’s gradual emasculation, both through Harry’s subtle flirting with Marianne but more so through his low-key taunting of Jean-Paul in relation to his failed and abandoned career as a writer. Jean-Paul now works for an ad agency while Harry has no issue showing off the expected-to-be hit music records he is producing (he even has to rub it in his face that Mariane herself is a successful writer). After several days, the once cool Delon is now grumpy and carrying a bad posture. The glamorous film star now comes off as a loser. It is this aspect of The Swimming Pool which makes the film strangely comforting, that the rich and beautiful, our betters, are just as miserable as John Doe. On the surface, Jean-Paul has an incredible life, from a gorgeous girlfriend to a high-paying job that permits him to enjoy month-long summer holidays. Deep down, however, he is unhappy as he gave up on his ambitions of becoming a professional writer (with it even being revealed that he has attempted suicide in the past). Just like how social media in the modern day shows other people’s seemingly perfect and amazing lives, the swimming pool offers a distorted reflection that hides what lies beneath.

On a more humorous observation, The Swimming Pool showcases the dangers that arise when close friends start living with each other and/or spend prolonged periods of time together when travelling. The Swimming Pool takes it to the extreme, with the outcome being murder, as the tension between Harry and Jean-Paul reaches its boiling point (both Delon and Ronet had previously appeared alongside each other in Purple Noon (1960), to which both characters see a similar fate). The film’s final act delves into Columbo-like territory, as an inspector (Paul Crauchet), questions Jean-Paul and Marianne about the irregularities in the investigation of Harry’s death. These being Harry wearing a non-waterproof watch when he was found in the pool (which is itself foreshadowed earlier in the film when Harry asks for his watch immediately after coming out of the pool), and perhaps the biggest smoking gun, the clean, perspiration-free clothes lying next to the pool (like someone had taken clean clothes and just put them next to the pool, hmmm). It is this final act in which the picture increases the suspense as the possibility of Jean-Paul being outwitted by the inspector feels dangerously close. Was it an irrational decision for Jean-Paul to remove the clothes from Harry’s corpse and lay clean ones next to the pool, or should he have just left Harry as he was? I guess when you’ve just committed murder in a fit of jealous rage, you cease to think rationally.

During Jean-Paul and Harry’s final confrontation by the pool, both men are dressed in corresponding white tops and blue jeans. The two look like mirror images of each other, a metaphor that Jean-Paul’s interest in Penelope is partly an expression of Harry’s taboo desire for his own daughter. Likewise, when Jean-Paul is dunking Harry beneath the water, it echoes the myth of Narcissus, in which a young mortal, in love with his own beauty, drowns while trying to possess his reflection. Just like The Swimmer before it, The Swimming Pool takes its setting to its ultimate metaphorical height. The pool only reveals its true depth once you look beneath the surface.

What Car Company Do You Work For? A Major One

Hit And Run (a direct translation from the film’s Japanese title Hikinige) aka Moment Of Terror, has never been released via official means in any country (home media, streaming etc), yet I was able to get hold of an unofficial physical DVD copy which was in shockingly good quality (and in English subtitles) for such an obscure film, and what a film it is! Ah the joy (and in some parts frustration) of discovering a motion picture which knocks your socks off, yet you are the only person who knows about it.

Hit And Run is Mikio Naruse’s foray into a Hitchcockian-style thriller and a film which shares a number of similarities with Akira Kurosawa’s High And Low (1963), albeit a bit more schlocky (in line with the type of films Bette Davis or Joan Crawford spent the 1960’s appearing in). After the unfaithful wife (Yoko Tsukasa) of a business mogul named Kakinuma (Etaro Ozawa) accidentally kills the child of single mother Kuniko (Hideko Takamine) in a hit-and-run accident, they conspire in order to save the bottom line of the company (as well as the wife covering her own back) by having their lowly chauffeur (Yutaka Sada) be the fall guy. However once Kuniko hears word of this conspiracy, she plots her revenge by posing as a maid in the house of the killer. Hit And Run is the final of the 14 film collaboration from Naruse and Hideko Takamine, as the vigilante mother whose love is taken too far. Takamine delivers one intense, angry and histrionic performance of maternal anguish, completely losing her mind come the film’s conclusion in which she becomes a nervous scenery-chewing wreck. However, the film’s more subtle moments do showcase Takamine’s impeccable ability to convey so much without the aid of dialogue.

Comparisons to Kurosawa’s High And Low quickly become evident in Hit And Run, as the business mogul of Yamano Motors Kakinuma attempts to justify his reasoning to cover up the incident in order to save the company’s bottom line as well as their new product (which is ironically a high-speed motorcycle), and the calm manner in which he does so is fascinating in how it portrays the banality of evil. This is reminiscent of how Toshiro Mifune’s character in High And Low attempts to do the same by justifying not paying a ransom in order to save the life of someone else’s child in order to save his company. Likewise, both films showcase the stark differences between the upper and the lower classes, with both films featuring families living in a property up in the hills overlooking the plebs. Additionally, the chauffeur who takes the fall is indeed played by the same actor who portrayed the unfortunate chauffeur in High And Low, Yutaka Sada. There are no moral actors present in the Hit And Run. Kuniko’s revenge goes beyond “an eye for an eye” for “a child for a child” as she attempts to murder the wife’s son but at least struggles to fully go through with her intentions. The unnamed wife however (whom has a child of her own at the same age of the one she killed) is a highly reprehensible character. I never derive any sympathy for her, even when she continues to be plagued by bad dreams of the incident. Although it is never stated, it wouldn’t be unlikely that the husband and wife are in an arranged marriage due to their age difference and lack of commitment.

One scene from Hit And Run involves a flashback to how Kuniko meet her late husband, a Japanese soldier who is pushed into a ditch by prostitutes as they mock him for losing the war, to which he is retrieved by Kuniko as a more sympathetic prostitute followed by a subsequent fast forward to the birth of their son. This flashback however appears to be from another movie starring Hideko Takamine as evidenced by the fact that she appears significantly younger alongside the drastic change in film grain and tone. The inclusion of this flashback is the one criticism I would have with the Hit And Run as its inclusion feels very out of place as this other film is more saccharine in tone nor does it add anything to the larger narrative. Likewise, it also throws into disarray as to when the film is actually set as the flashback is clearly set in the immediate aftermath of the war yet the film’s setting is clearly contemporary for the mid-1960s. That said, would any cinema sleuths be able to identify this film within the film?

Regardless, any other criticism aimed at the very tightly plotted and brisk Hit and Run is largely inconsequential as it doesn’t negatively affect the film based on the strength of its material. Some suspension of disbelief is required that the family at no point would have seen an image of Kuniko (even with her brother doing all the negotiating on her behalf, she is still seen in court). Likewise, what happened to the original maid from whom Kuniko stole the identity from? There is also a piece of set-up in which the housekeeper tells Kunkio “the boiler is dangerous, let me handle that”, however, this never leads to any payoff. Throughout the film, there is also the recurring use of heightened lighting when portraying Kuniko’s murder fantasies. These are cheesy and cliché but do add to the film’s enjoyable schlock value, while the use of a rollercoaster to create a sense of unease is something that would be repeated time and again for years to come (Fatal Attraction, False Face, the aptly titled Rollercoaster).

At its core Hit And Run is about the dangers of automobiles and those who drive them (not exactly news to me having lived in Northern Ireland my whole life with our incredibly graphic road safety adverts). There is however a historical context for this as Takashi Oguchi of The University of Tokyo states:

“Japan has experienced an enormous increase of traffic accidents as a result of the country’s rapid economic growth from the late 1950s to the year 1970. Observers in the early 1960s called the proliferation of traffic accidents the “Traffic War” as the annual traffic-accident fatalities exceeded the average annual fatalities during the First Sino-Japanese war…”

There are several moments in Hit And Run featuring some very impressive two-dimensional shots of automobiles driving by so fast in the street as the drivers give no heed to any children attempting to cross (even as a child stands alone in the middle of the road) while the film concludes on a shot featuring a scoreboard detailing the injuries and deaths from road accidents in a local area to hammer the point home. Then there is the additional metaphorical irony that the company featured in the film itself is an automobile manufacturer that is currently testing high-speed motorcycles while using the intentionally provocative slogan “gamble your life on the moment” (and even laughing that the police object to it). The film ultimately goes as far as it can with this theme without crossing the line into being preachy or overbearing. There is something all the more unsettling at the sight of a body outline when it’s that of a child. Women drivers, amirite?