Mirage (1965)

Wonderful character development!

Simply Perfect

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

After an office party, David Stillwell discovers that he has no memory of certain people, people who should be familiar to him, or of anything about his life from more than two years previously. Then he discovers that the same night his boss, the famous businessman and philanthropist Charles Calvin, committed suicide by jumping out of his office window. Now some violent thugs are out to get him. They work for a shadowy figure known simply as The Major.Interesting, but not compelling. The plot has a Hitchcockian feel to it, but the movie lacks a few things to get into Hitchcock's league. The plot isn't watertight and often feels contrived. Things happen rather conveniently and sometimes without much plausibility. Director Edward Dmytryck doesn't really build the suspense well (Hitchcock was superb at this) and the movie seems to just be on auto-pilot at times.This said, it is reasonably intriguing. Gregory Peck puts in a solid performance as Stillwell though at times seems miscast, especially during the tough-guy scenes. Good supporting cast which includes Walter Matthau and George Kennedy.

The Mid 1960's was an Awkward Period for Movies. It was a Netherland Between the Eisenhower Boom Years and the Post Cuban Missile Crisis Era When the Fear of the Bomb Became Not Just a Paranoiac Anxiety but an Almost All Too Real Residue of Recent Events.It was Also a Time in the Arts Between Elvis Relevance and the Beatles Breakthrough, the Breaking Down of the Production Code, and the Breaking Down of Cultural Conventions. Anyway, this Movie Could be Called One of the First Neo-Noirs. Most Film Historians Agree that the End of Classic Film-Noir, if it is Possible to Date, is Around 1959 or So.This One has Elements of Noir with Some Expressionistic Lighting, Especially in the First Act, Flashbacks, Amnesia, Time Distortion, Strong Up Close and Personal Violence, Witty Dialog, Chilling Psychopathic Villains, and a Strong Anti-Establishment Story and Script.A Good Cast with Gregory Peck as the Man Without a Memory, Walter Matthau as a Private Detective with the Ethics of Philip Marlowe but Lacking His Confidence. George Kennedy as a Psycho-Killer of Anyone Who Crosses His Path. A Nervous Diane Baker with a Demeanor Like a Frightened Fawn. Kevin Mccarthy as a Yes Man with Weird Beatnik Style Slang Dialog, Leif Erikson and John Weston Round Out the Oddball Cast with a Few Edgy Scenes.The Film is Complicated and there is Quite a Bit of Social Commentary Concerning Corporate Dehumanization and Military War Mongering. Overall, a Film this Complex and Rich in Quirky Characters and Timely Consideration, Lingers in the Subconscious of Those Who Have Seen it. It is So Stuffed with Suspense and Thrills, it Remains One of those Almost Forgotten Films in a Time Period when So Many Movies Deserved to be Forgotten. This One Needs to be Rediscovered.

***Spoilers*** "Mirage" is a lot like the previous Gregory Peck movie made 20 years earlier in 1945 called "Spellbound" where he goes through the entire film trying to find out the cause of his acute amnesia and when he finally does he wishes that he didn't. In this mind bender of a movie Peck as cost accountant David Stillwell finds himself in the darkened 65 floor Unidyne Bilding in downtown Manhattan after all the light mysteriously went out. What went out together with the light was Stillwell's memory of what happened to him over the last two years!Confused and disoriented Stillwell soon run into a number of people who for some reason or another try to both kidnap as well as kill him! Not knowing what exactly all this, the attempt to kidnap and murder him, is all about Stillwell tries to somehow recover his memory and get to the bottom of what exactly is going on! It's with the help of private detective Ted Casselle, Walter Matthau, that Stillwell uncovers that he in fact is not a cost accountant but a nuclear scientist connected with the California based Garrison Laboratories who's founder is non other then world famous renowned peace activist Charles Stewart Calvin, Walter Able. It was at the exact moment that Stillwell lost his memory that Calive jumped fell or was pushed out of his 27th floor office window at the Unidyne Building! With this vital piece of information, Calvin's tragic death, Stillwell starts to put all the pieces together in his past that somehow connects him to what's behind his sudden memory loss! And why he's being targeted by those mysterious persons in the movie for either assassination or kidnapping or both! It takes a while to figure just what exactly in going on in the movie with the totally confused David Stillwell on the run from those out to get him without him quite knowing why! It was the man who worked in the lobby at the Unidyne Building Mr. Joe Turtle, Neil Fitzgerald, who was about the only person in all of NYC who knew Stillwell before he lost his memory and could possibly help him. But Turtle ended up being beaten to death in a bathtub before he could enlighten Stillwell to who he is and what he was doing in the Unidyne Building at the time of Calvin's death! There's also the mystery woman Shelia, Diane Baker, who's part of the gang that's out to do Stillwell in but soon falls in love with him and tries to get Stillwell out of harms way even at the cost of her own life!***SPOILERS*** Slowly but surly Stillwell's memory comes back to him in that the shock of what he was involved at the Garrison Laboratories and world peace loving Charles Calvin as well as this mysterious Major,???,shocked the poor guy right down to his shoes and socks! It was Stillwell's discovery in being able to neutralized nuclear power,including that of both atomic and hydrogen bombs, by preventing the release of deadly radiation or fall-out that the crazed warmongering and deranged Major was after! The problem is that after finding out the Major's sinister plans to start nuclear wars, probably against the USSR & Red China, without fear of nuclear fall-out was just too much for David Stillwell to take. It was in Stillwell burning the blueprint of his secret equation in preventing fall-out after exploding nuclear weapons that in a way kept him alive. It was that action that had an almost crazed and wild eyed Calivn in trying to get the paper before Stillwell burned it that caused him to fly out, in trying to grab it before it burned to a crisps, of his office window and end up killing himself! And it was that unfortunate incident that Stillwell was innocently responsible for,in not realizing that Calvin was crazy enough to do it, that cause his sudden memory loss! ***MAJOR MAJOR SPOILER*** With all this now behind him, and his memory fully restored, Stillwell faced the Major who for some reason didn't have the guts to do Stillwell in by himself and gave the job to his chicken liveried assistant Sylvester "Sly" Josephson, Kevin McCarthy, instead. True to his spineless and cowardly nature Sly didn't have the guts, like the Major, to do Stillwell, who's a good friend of his, in. But Sly finally did come to his senses by realizing that he was completely off his rocker in calling the police on the now helpless and once powerful Major and have the him end up behind bars and face justice for all the crimes he had ordered, of course he didn't have the guts to do them himself, in the movie!

Edward Dmytryk may have been poaching in Alfred Hitchcock territory in directing Mirage, but I can hardly see how Hitchcock could have done the film any better. In fact I'm convinced that Gregory Peck was cast in the lead on the strength of his performance in the Hitchcock classic Spellbound, the parts are so similar.Gregory Peck when we first meet him is making his way down the stairs of a skyscraper that has sustained a blackout. As people talk to him who seem to know him he answers with the appropriate small talk, but he doesn't remember anything other than his name. At the same time, a prominent foundation leader, Walter Abel, plunged to his death from that skyscraper and of course the Peck's amnesia and Abel's death are connected. But in this case the whole point of Mirage is remembering how. And Peck better remember soon because people like Jack Weston, George Kennedy and House Jameson keep trying to kill him.As in Spellbound, the amnesiac Peck has a woman friend trying to help him. But there was no doubt about Ingrid Bergman's loyalty to Peck in trying to unravel his situation there. Diane Baker has the same function in this film, but there is some doubt as to whose team she's actually playing on. Similarly there is Kevin McCarthy who seems a friend at first, but later on we're not so sure. McCarthy has a key role in bringing the whole affair to a climax.The ruthless villain of the piece is Leif Erickson who started in films playing the fathead rival to whomever the hero was in a film. As he got older, directors saw greater potential in him and used him in a lot of more serious parts, mostly villainous and this one is one of his best.Although I think the film is great, Gregory Peck kind of fluffed it off, my guess is also that his role is too much like the part he did in amnesia. But he did according to the Michael Freedland biography of Peck, recommend to Eddie Dmytryk that he cast Walter Matthau in the role of the private detective who Peck goes to. Peck also consults Robert H. Harris a psychiatrist and both the shrink and the gumshoe come to the same conclusion that Peck really doesn't want to remember his recent past, possibly because of some trauma. Matthau's role in Mirage was one of his best character roles prior to getting stardom with his Oscar winning performance in The Fortune Cookie. Harris is also quite good, in fact he's my favorite in the cast.Although the similarities between Spellbound and Mirage are too obvious to overlook, one should not belabor the obvious. Mirage is a fine enough suspense thriller to stand on its own. And Alfred Hitchcock would not have minded being mistakenly credited with directing it.