Movie Mahal

* * *

Since the 1970s American film canon is so rich, much has slipped through, which makes discovery altogether more pleasurable. The work of director Frank Perry is a major blind spot for me. I think the only film of his I had seen was The Swimmer (1968), a counter culture work which stars Burt Lancaster as a guy who literally swims his way through American suburbia. Man on a Swing is a murder mystery set-in small-town America and strangely enough functions as an insubstantial precursor to David Lynch and Twin Peaks. I mean there is a queasy underbelly that Perry continually points to which is bubbling away on low heat, or perhaps it is the unsettlingly benign nature of suburbia that actually conjures moods of perverted dread.

When a young woman is murdered, the lack of motive or evidence and any real suspects, leaves detective Lee Tucker (Cliff Robertson in commendable form) in a discombobulated state that spirals into an unhealthy obsession. If anything, the murder points to the limitations of Tucker’s detective skills, and which quickly reach a dead end and in turn signals the entry of Frank Wills (Joel Grey), a clairvoyant who claims to be able to see the murder. Grey’s hysterics involve him going into trances and passing out, perhaps visual affirmation of his clairvoyance, something which Tucker is never able to figure out if it is real or not.

It turns out that Wills might just be doing his best imitation of the mad hypnotist from Caligari and whom we come to suspect might be brainwashing vulnerable people around him to commit heinous acts of murder. But the thing is Tucker’s intellect is no match for that of Wills; as a self-taught pathological liar who uses the guise of an ordinary factory job and an ordinary family, Wills harbours an altogether disturbing personality and which hints at a repression than seems far more indicative of small-town suburban anxieties than anything else. A brilliant undiscovered gem from the 70s, and has put Perry’s work firmly on my radar.