ithankyou: The large back room… Stranger in the House (1967), BFI Flipside, Dual Format

Wednesday 13 March 2019

The large back room… Stranger in the House (1967), BFI Flipside, Dual Format

Made around about the same time as The London Nobody Knows, a quirky documentary narrated by James Mason and exploring the capital’s oddest outposts, Stranger in the House features the Winchester and, indeed, Southampton that nobody knew… This is one of those oddly-balanced films that must have been so “even” at the time with one of our biggest movie stars playing Old Guard to a gaggle of RADA graduates who, it has to be said, do “wacky things”.

Led by Geraldine Chaplin and a baby-faced Ian Ogilvy, this funky group hang out in discotheques, smoke weed, stand up frequently in fast cars and boats and trespass on cargo ships. It’s all a far cry from the disciplined up-bringing of Angela Sawyer (Chaplin), whose father’s only vice is a 15-year long addiction to alcohol and isolating himself from fatherly affection since his wife ran off with another man… one who was far less serious about a legal career.

Geraldine Chaplin and Paul Bertoya,

John Sawyer (James Mason) is a man who is drunk “today, yesterday and tomorrow”, someone who cannot see a way forward beyond his past and whose magnificent Georgian house in Winchester is crumbling around in sympathy with his lost ambition, self-loathing and unkindness. In comparison, daughter Angela’s rooms are ablaze with pop-art colour, Peter Blake to her Dad’s Francis Bacon, with appropriated signs of youthful revolt; a traffic sign, advertising hoardings and so, much, pink!

John is beyond bitter and is simply disinterested yet Mason carries all of this off and still makes us care, injecting his character’s path to redemption with enough stubbornness that it is entirely believable. This is not an easy man and his investigations are as much into his own conscience as the causes of a murder, an approach very much in the style of the story’s original writer Georges Simenon, creator of Maigret and writer of over 500 (yes) reasonably-concise novels. Simenon liked to focus on his main characters and their mental processes faced with the horrifically-criminal and here Mason’s barrister reveals a surprising humanity when he eventually nails the killer; a moment when our sympathies are not as cut and dried as they might be.

James Mason aginises about lost love.

Directed and written by Pierre Rouve, who worked mostly as a producer as on Blow Up and others, the film is uneven, Mason aside, but whether by design or timidity, Rouve let his star make the running. The other players are more problematic chiefly because, Blow Up and some others aside, it’s quite difficult to capture The Spirit of ’67 without highlighting how British hippies were more formerly whimsical than say those in West-Coast America where, after all, they had a war to protest.

Sarah and her chums are not helped by being a bit posh… they’re all from nice homes and drive around in sports cars with matching fab gear in Winchester – hardly Haight Asbury – going down to Southampton to smoke joints in darkened clubs to the sounds of The Animals. No sign of Fonda or Hopper here although there’s a guy wearing an “I Hate You All” t-shirt who sells the drugs which are consumed by Angela and her working-class Greek boyfriend Jo Christoforides (Paul Bertoya), Peter Hawkins (Bryan Stanyon) and Sue Phillips (Pippa Steel) but not Desmond Flower (Ogilvy) who turns out to be rather more uptight than the rest.

What d'you mean I look like my dad?!

Peter is the son and heir of Harry Hawkins (the magnificent James Hayter) and his retail business whilst Desmond is the son of Colonel Flower (Clive Morton) and his wife (Moira Lister) who just happens to be John Sawyer’s sister.

One day the famous five are playing in Southampton harbour and they sneak onto a cargo ship where they find an American Barney Teale (Bobby Darin, literally, somewhere, beyond the sea…) who is anxious to take his leave and doesn’t mind blackmailing these rich saps into providing him accommodation at an abandoned Theatre owned by Peter’s dad. Darin provides great energy with an acting style out of step with the Brits – more method and manically-mannered but reasonably effective in a “am I watching the same film?!” kind of way. The film was an MGM production and this injection of American style creates an uneasy tension with the more cerebral intensity of Mason – A Small Back Room meets Rebel Without a Cause?

Kids yesterday...

Any road up, Barney has soon wheedled his way into staying in the loft of the Sawyer’s cavernous Georgian pile and the tension mounts leading to murder. Who dunnit and will John Sawyer be able to sober enough in time to save himself and his daughter’s relationship, not to mention her lover’s life? Apart from anything else, Jo Christoforides is a foreigner and the subject of the same unreasoned prejudice as you find in every civilized country from time to time. His mother is played by the great Megs Jenkins, who epitomised nuanced maternity for decades. She’s joined by Ivor Dean who is employed with equal surprise as the world-weary Inspector Colder – he might just have well walked straight off the set for The Saint and his role of Inspector Teal.

There’s also a tough-but-sweet-hearted cameo from “Aunty” Yootha Joyce in the fairground shooting rang where the boys steal a gun which is eventually used as the murder weapon…

Bobby Darin gives it some "more"

In the end we care less about who committed the crime than the healing powers of investigation which put familial squabbles in sharp relief; which may well be part of the appeal of this genre in the first place.

Stranger in the House is the 37th release in the BFI Flipside strand, comes in dual format - Blu-ray and DVD along with a stack of archival extras include photographer David Bailey’s 1966 film G.G. Passion (with Chrissie Shrimpton and Caroline Munro…), a psychedelic 1968 advert for coffee, an interview with James Mason, a new commentary and an illustrated booklet. There’s also a couple of odd shorts: Tram Journey Through Southampton (c1900) and Charlie Chaplin Sails From Southampton (1921), of interest to his daughter and us silent film fans.

Bored teenagers

Further details are on the BFI shop site – I personally like so many of the series, being, in most cases, far too young to have seen them in the first place and, in general, they always convey so much of the talent as well as the themes and sense of place long gone; in this case, the Winchester no body knows...