Reach out to the stillness of eternity.

The Avengers

3.14: The Secrets Broker

Wine seems to go down quite well in The Avengers (2.11 Death of a Great Dane, in which Cathy gets a bit blotto), and if The Secrets Broker isn’t quite of that vintage, it does involve a winning ruse (spiritualist séances as a cover for the passing of secrets) and several first rate performances, from Patricia English, Avice Landone and the inimitable, irrepressible Jack May.

Steed: I’m, uh, going to a wine tasting party.

Cathy: Do you really think you’ve got the palate?

May is Waller, the ringleader, but the group’s steeliest and most imperious member is Landone’s Mrs Wilson, effortlessly single-minded and callous whereas May, posing as the manager of a wine shop, is given to sucking a cigar and engaging in broad banter with Steed. “Wine and spirits” was probably the dubious connection that inspired writer Ludovic Peters (his only contribution to the show), and it works reasonably well, if entirely randomly, a sign of the eccentric arrangements that will become the norm.

Mrs Wilson: You think us fakes, yet we know so much about you.

The actual business being investigated is rather by-the-by, and not terribly intriguing, with a fairly involved plot in which two brothers, Frederick (John Stone) and Allan Paignton (Ronald Allen) are pressured into murder and theft (via instructions given at the séance; analysing quite why the séance is necessary will probably get you nowhere, even if adds to the heightened milieu). The wine shop produces a wine list that includes part of plans for a breach mechanism for an anti-tank gun; again, the intricacies of this are elusive (Steed surmises the full plans aren’t held so the instigators can’t double cross each other).

Cathy: (presented with a bottle of apricot brandy) What makes you think I have depraved tastes?

Steed: I can’t imagine, my dear.

Cathy goes undercover, as usual, at the research station where a colleague of Steed worked (Frederick’s victim). Marion (English) is working there, engaged in an affair with Allan, while her husband (John Ringham) remains oblivious; the villains’ aim is to steel plans, blackmailing Marion to cut the alarm system.

Waller: He seems like a gentleman of some means. I think, he might brighten up the proceedings a bit.

Steed’s interaction with Waller is a delight, as the former casually orders bottles of plonk and they discuss Rieslings and hocks. Steed arrives in the cellar for the showdown and, asked what the devil he’s doing there, advises he came for the wine list (“Oh, very droll” responds Waller). While fighting Steed warns “Mind the burgundy, Mr Waller” and is told “It’s a bad year, Mr Steed”. May comes across like a Peter Cook who can act, while given to the kind of hearty dialogue chewing that would make Iain Cuthbertson proud.

The rest of the cast is also memorable, with English (previously in Mission to Montreal), offering a believably beset turn as a woman caught in an unenviable predicament and a loveless marriage. The scenario of spying through stagecraft rather recalls The 39 Steps (the Hitchcock version).

Waller: Mrs Wilson and her daughter, Julia. Help yourself to anything you fancy, Mr Steed.

Steed: (eyeing up Julia) That’s very generous of you.

Steed is on particularly suggestive form, be it making innuendos about Cathy’s character or getting all Sid James over Mrs Wilson’s daughter. It must be all that vino (“Partaking of a few wines, in the company of Frederick Paignton” he informs Cathy: “What, again?” she responds wearily), particularly given the coda in which he and Cathy imbibe some of Waller’s cellar that got away.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

Mondo bizarro. No offence man, but you’re in way over your head.

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Isn’t it true, it’s easier to be a holy man on the top of a mountain?

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Schnell, you stinkers! Come on, raus!

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It’s not as if she were a… maniac, a raving thing.

Psycho (1960) (SPOILERS) One of cinema’s most feted and most studied texts, and for good reason. Even if the worthier and more literate psycho movie of that year is Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom . One effectively ended a prolific director’s career and the other made its maker more in demand than ever, even if he too would discover he had peaked with his populist fear flick. Pretty much all the criticism and praise of Psycho is entirely valid. It remains a marvellously effective low-budget shocker, one peppered with superb performances and masterful staging. It’s also fairly rudimentary in tone, character and psychology. But those negative elements remain irrelevant to its overall power.

My Doggett would have called that crazy.

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You have done well to keep so much hair, when so many’s after it.

Jeremiah Johnson (1972) (SPOILERS) Hitherto, I was most familiar with Jeremiah Johnson in the form of a popular animated gif of beardy Robert Redford smiling and nodding in slow zoom close up (a moment that is every bit as cheesy in the film as it is in the gif). For whatever reason, I hadn’t mustered the enthusiasm to check out the 1970s’ The Revenant until now (well, beard-wise, at any rate). It’s easy to distinguish the different personalities at work in the movie. The John Milius one – the (mythic) man against the mythic landscape; the likeably accentuated, semi-poetic dialogue – versus the more naturalistic approach favoured by director Sydney Pollack and star Redford. The fusion of the two makes for a very watchable, if undeniably languorous picture. It was evidently an influence on Dances with Wolves in some respects, although that Best Picture Oscar winner is at greater pains to summon a more sensitive portrayal of Native Americans (and thus, perversely, at times a more patr

I don't like the way Teddy Roosevelt is looking at me.

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You’re a disgrace, sir... Weren’t you at Harrow?

Our Man in Marrakesh aka Bang! Bang! You’re Dead (1966) (SPOILERS) I hadn’t seen this one in more than three decades, and I had in mind that it was a decent spy spoof, well populated with a selection of stalwart British character actors in supporting roles. Well, I had the last bit right. I wasn’t aware this came from the stable of producer Harry Alan Towers, less still of his pedigree, or lack thereof, as a sort of British Roger Corman (he tried his hand at Star Wars with The Shape of Things to Come and Conan the Barbarian with Gor , for example). More legitimately, if you wish to call it that, he was responsible for the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu flicks. Our Man in Marrakesh – riffing overtly on Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana in title – seems to have in mind the then popular spy genre and its burgeoning spoofs, but it’s unsure which it is; too lightweight to work as a thriller and too light on laughs to elicit a chuckle.

The best thing in the world for the inside of a man or a woman is the outside of a horse.

Marnie (1964) (SPOILERS) Hitch in a creative ditch. If you’ve read my Vertigo review, you’ll know I admired rather than really liked the picture many fete as his greatest work. Marnie is, in many ways, a redux, in the way De Palma kept repeating himself in the early 80s only significantly less delirious and… well, compelling. While Marnie succeeds in commanding the attention fitfully, it’s usually for the wrong reasons. And Hitch, digging his heels in as he strives to fashion a star against public disinterest – he failed to persuade Grace Kelly out of retirement for Marnie Rutland – comes entirely adrift with his leads.

Look out the window. Eden’s not burning, it’s burnt.

Reign of Fire (2002) (SPOILERS) There was good reason to believe Rob Bowman would make a successful transition from top-notch TV director to top-notch film one. He had, after all, attracted attention and plaudits for Star Trek: The Next Generation and become such an integral part of The X-File s that he was trusted with the 1998 leap to the big screen. That movie wasn’t the hit it might have been – I suspect because, such was Chris Carter’s inability to hone a coherent arc, it continued to hedge its bets – but Bowman showed he had the goods. And then came Reign of Fire . And then Elektra . And that was it. Reign of Fire is entirely competently directed, but that doesn’t prevent it from being entirely lousy.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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