writers_reign The only thing I can figure out from this melange is that Bryan Forbes was attempting to make a sort of Lord Of The Flies substituting adults for children but his talent was woefully short of his ambition. On the 'oooh' counter Forbes allowed Michael Caine to refer openly to Eric Portman as a 'queer'. This was irony on time-and-a-half because Portman was seriously gay off screen but like, say, Harry Andrews, a stream of 'macho' roles deflected viewer realization and Portman could quite happily have continued with 'rugged' roles indefinitely. John Barry turned in a wince-making extended piece which allowed Forbes to intercut it with the main heist sequence in which Caine and Portman silently break into the large, home of the mark, who is, of course, in the concert hall watching the performance. Any credulity achieved by the sequence is blown sky-high when the mark jumps into his car and returns to his home the INSTANT the last note fades away rather than socialising with his friends for at least ten or fifteen minutes. Not this time, Forbesy.

Chrid Mann This movie has been described as a heist movie. May you be warned, dear reader, there is very little heisting here. The one real sequence, which comes after about forty minutes of turgid and unnecessary build-up, is intended to be tense and exciting, as the director cross-cuts repeatedly between the heist action and a concert hall (where house-owner is) with a performance of an absolutely horrendous Barry-composed piece for orchestra and guitar, in which the guitar is mostly drowned out by the loud and bombastic noises of the orchestra. The guitar music itself is very insipid, featuring mostly plain chords, with none of the fluid runs or flamenco riffs that one expects, especially in Spain, from the classical guitar. Nevertheless the performance receives thunderous applause and a standing ovation. Why?!As for the heist itself, we are expected to swallow a lot here. Firstly, the supposedly expert cat burglar (Caine) when shown a picture of his proposed entry window, opts for a torturous route whereby he has to use a grappling hook to climb up to the balcony of a higher floor and get himself over to the roof above said window, hang from the edge of this roof and then let himself fall and catch hold of the windowsill a floor and a half below - a marble windowsill mind which is not square but is ribbed and rounded at the edge! Caine then has to pull himself up from this position – and remember, he's a very big man – and onto the windowsill. When you're watching this you go WTF! All they needed to do was have a small extending ladder with them and he could have got to the windowsill in a fraction of the time, without having to risk his life to do it.Once inside he lets the old man in, whose job it is to open the safe, but he complains that the old safe has been replaced with a new one. Time ticks by, the concert is finishing (signalling return of house owner). Safe cracker admits defeat but not Caine, who proceeds to noisily smash the surrounding brickwork with a hammer and chisel. We now have to swallow that the three servants in the house hear nothing of this because they are eating and listening to the concert on the radio!Caine lugs the safe out to the car and they avoid in the nick of time the previously drugged but now awake guard dogs along with the returning house-owner.After this 'heist' Caine and the old man's wife start to get friendly, Caine gets a snazzy E-type and the film descends into a series of conversational set-pieces which totally fail in their desired intention of instilling fascinating and thought-provoking dramatic content into the movie. To give an example: Caine in one scene is lying motionless on his back on the bed and listening to the lead actress, who with mask-like expression (perhaps adopted to evoke high drama but more probably an expression of the actress's complete lack of personality) is droning on and on and on about some old personal history that is meant to be hugely significant but which is so boring that you (I did anyway) just turn off and stop listening and you see Caine lying there and you see that he's done the same and is presumably daydreaming about getting his final scene wrapped so he can collect his cheque and get out of there.The film stretches on in similar manner until the 'sad' and 'dramatic' ending where you don't feel sad but happy because it finally finished and you can leave the cinema/switch off the TV! Would have given this film two points but have to give three because of the beauty of the E-type Jag!

MartinHafer Sure, the late 1960s were a rather permissive time. Nudity and highly realistic violence had crept into films and once taboo topics were becoming more and more commonplace. Still, I think some of the plot elements in "Deadfall" must have shocked a few folks back then. That's because the plot involves more than just burglaries, as one of the main characters is gay---a novel idea for its time.The film begins with Henry Clark (Michael Caine) in rehab for alcoholism. A pretty lady (Giovanna Ralli) shows up with a business proposition--she knows he's a top burglar and wants him for a job with her husband (Eric Portman). The trio join forces and their goal eventually is to go for a seemingly impossible job--but they do an easier one first. This job does not go smoothly, but seeing this portion of the film is the highlight of the movie.By the way, although the plot left me a bit cold, the music by John Barry was great and the director's use of intercutting scenes during the first burglary are quite good. Along the line, Caine falls for his new partner's wife. This isn't a major problem, as her husband is gay. But, oddly, she is very loyal to him and won't leave him. However, there is an odd secret--something much stranger afoot that no one except the husband yet knows. What it is turns out to be kind of weird--and leads to a very anticlimactic and depressing ending. All in all, a creative caper film but one that is, at times, very talky and many won't like the downbeat ending. I think it's worth a look--a decent film but certainly not a must-see.

pstumpf With Shirley Bassey wailing a "Goldfinger"-ish song over some stylized credits featuring a seagull, one looks forward to viewing one of those great 60's heist movies. But "Deadfall" soon falls far short. Despite fine cinematography (by Gerry Turpin) with some offbeat angles, Bryan Forbes is too stodgy a director for this material - and the whole thing could have been edited down by half an hour. The cross-cutting in the first heist scene, for instance, just goes on for too long: OK, we get that the robbery is taking place during the duration of the concert - there's really no need keep cutting back to the concert hall until the very end of the sequence - especially just to focus on the performers and not the (oddly anonymous) victims of the crime. Not to mention that the suspense is undercut by the absurdity of a program which consists solely of one 20-minute guitar concerto; unlikely - no, impossible - that an audience would dress to the nines and pay for such a concert.Best aspects of the movie are the score (very much in the Bond mode)of John Barry, the swell Spanish settings, and Michael Caine's performance. What a sexy screen presence he had, with his heavy-lidded, sometimes cold (almost reptilian) eyes and cocky, self-confident voice conveying a mixture of indifference and condescension, which combine to equal utter cool. Caine's love scenes with the rather charmless Giovanna Ralli, however, lack warmth and spark, so the romance between them fails to convince; the bedroom scene is possibly one of the worst ever filmed (Ralli's phony emoting and the sheet between their two bodies put to pasture any notions of passion). Eric Portman makes a fine foil for Caine in their scenes together; but his character ends up being simultaneously over-complicated and underwritten, causing the last third of the movie to become, for me, just plain bewildering. Nanette Newman's role as "The Girl" is utterly pointless and she is so wooden (that dance scene!!!) that it's obvious that she's there only in the capacity of director's wife.A big disappointment. As someone mentions elsewhere, see "Gambit" instead.