{"id":14762,"date":"2012-03-25T23:58:56","date_gmt":"2012-03-25T22:58:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=14762"},"modified":"2012-03-26T00:35:13","modified_gmt":"2012-03-25T23:35:13","slug":"film-notes-4-the-offence-1972","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2012\/03\/25\/film-notes-4-the-offence-1972\/","title":{"rendered":"Film Notes #4: The Offence (1972)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/The-Offence.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-14763\" title=\"The Offence\" src=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/The-Offence.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"560\" height=\"280\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Sidney Lumet&#8217;s\u2019 dark 1972 feature about a police interrogation forms the fourth instalment of my 30-day film program.<\/p>\n<p>For newcomers, the deal is that I must watch a film every day and make notes about it, with the following rules:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It must be a film I&#8217;ve already seen.<\/li>\n<li>I must make notes whilst I\u2019m watching it.<\/li>\n<li>Pauses are allowed but the viewing must all be one session.<\/li>\n<li>It can\u2019t be a cinema release.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The point is to capture my instant thoughts about a movie and my overall film diet for 30 days, as well as post interesting links to the film in question.<\/p>\n<p>Here are my notes on <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0070468\/\">The Offence<\/a><\/strong> (1972) which I watched on a DVD on Saturday 18th March.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Connery was allowed make this film as part of the MGM deal for DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1972)<\/li>\n<li>Lumet keeps the visuals impressively dark &#8211; no obvious day-for-night stuff<\/li>\n<li>Great visual motif of the circles of light at the beginning, only becomes clear once you&#8217;ve seen the film.<\/li>\n<li>Drabness of suburban England is expertly evoked but it is never made clear where the action takes place.<\/li>\n<li>The town remains nameless although exteriors were shot in Bracknell and interiors were filmed in Twickenham Studios.<\/li>\n<li>Connery is very good indeed &#8211; it was a brave film for him to star in at this point in his career.<\/li>\n<li>Scene at school near the beginning was shot at Wildridings, Bracknell.<\/li>\n<li>Brilliantly effective visuals as the girl goes under the bridge.<\/li>\n<li>Connery&#8217;s flat is at Point Royal, which is the same place that Jenny Agutter&#8217;s character lives in I START COUNTING (1969).<\/li>\n<li>Audience are forced to work to see the details in certain scenes.<\/li>\n<li>Trevor Howard is also a powerful presence as a senior police officer brought into to investigate Connery.<\/li>\n<li>Ian Bannen is brilliant in what must have been a very difficult role to play.<\/li>\n<li>Vivienne Merchant also gives a heartbreaking performance as Connery&#8217;s long suffering wife.<\/li>\n<li>There is dialogue and physical action which even modern writers and directors would shy away from.<\/li>\n<li>It is a rare film that deals with the emotional cost of policing, which is still a taboo subject in a world obsessed with the police procedural.<\/li>\n<li>Clever flashback structure keeps us guessing but the reveal is disturbing because it doesn&#8217;t offer a conventional twist.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><script src=\"http:\/\/storify.com\/filmdetail\/film-notes-4-the-offence-1972.js\"><\/script><noscript>[<a href=\"http:\/\/storify.com\/filmdetail\/film-notes-4-the-offence-1972\" target=\"_blank\">View the story &#8220;Film Notes #4: The Offence (1972)&#8221; on Storify<\/a>]<\/noscript><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sidney Lumet&#8217;s\u2019 dark 1972 feature about a police interrogation forms the fourth instalment of my 30-day film program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2487],"tags":[2498,2497,2496],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14762"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}