The Upturned Glass—surely in the running for “worst title in the suspense genre”—has a framing device that seems unnecessary, even detrimental, until it becomes the whole point.
It’s all contained in James Mason’s chilly, complex performance. Mason did a fair bit of leading man work—he had the skills and the dark, elegant handsomeness for it—but as magnetic as he is, he feels like he nonetheless found his best métier in supporting roles. He can be simultaneously too intense and too aloof. It’s a beautiful combination that makes him one of my favorite actors, but it also means he doesn’t quite gel with mainstream heroic parts.
But this offbeat noir, though second- or even third-tier in the genre as a whole, was co-written by Pamela Killino, Mason’s wife at the time, who knew how to tailor a role to his peculiar energy. The Upturned Glass even goes a step further and makes his peculiar energy, like the framing device, the whole point. They’re both the whole point, because they’re intertwined.
Mason plays an unnamed doctor who, in the frame, is giving a well-attended lecture on the criminal mind. Today’s subtopic is the sane criminal, an archetype Mason glazes to an eyebrow-raising extent: why, this man is essentially a hero! Society would be hard-pressed to punish him, wouldn’t it? It would feel pretty conflicted about that! His crime arises from a keen desire for justice! I hear he’s really good in bed, too.
When Mason begins to tell a case study of this sane, dashing, well-hung criminal, we find out, to no surprise, that “Michael Joyce” is also played by Mason! This was his life story all along! He tells the class—his precise, mellifluous voiceover turned to great effect—all about how Joyce was a lonely, unhappily married neurosurgeon who lived apart from his wife. He falls in love with the likewise married Emma (Rosamund John), the mother of one of his young patients, and after some oh-no-we-shouldn’t hemming and hawing, they begin a quiet affair, though it seems it can only come to a bittersweet end.
Alas, it comes to a worse one: Emma “accidentally” falls from a window, and Joyce quickly suspects that she was actually pushed by her heartless, conniving sister-in-law, Kate (Killino). He sets out on a campaign to find the truth, even if it means seducing a woman who makes his skin crawl. Kate is less legally liable than he imagined, but—at least to him—no less morally responsible, and he’s prepared to pass a death sentence.
Mason’s performance throughout is exceptional, especially when he’s opposite Killino: Joyce’s cool control (with an unalterable fury underneath) is the perfect contract for Kate’s snappish self-interest and venality. They both put up fronts to some extent, angling to get what they want, but she’s chasing ease and pleasure, while he—the “better” person, as he’ll tell you—has much more violent aims. When he finally gets her to Emma’s bedroom to restage his lost love’s death scene, now with the woman he’s deemed responsible for it, the escalating confrontation is chilling. Underneath all his gentlemanly behavior, there’s a brutal, vicious fury.
He can’t admit that, not even in his ostensible tell-all of a lecture, where we can assume he’s changed not only the names—which he admits to—but just enough details to keep all the facts obscure. He persists in believing his calm exterior runs all the way down to the bone, that this murder is a valor worth bragging about and that he’s in control enough to do it without consequences.
But he isn’t; there are well-adjusted killers out there, but he’s not one of them. One of his students picks out at once that the last thing this reasonable criminal should do is brag about it, and the fact that he’s clearly done that (to Mason, the student thinks) undoes his whole claim to reason. He doesn’t know how right he is. A well man does not air his not-yet-completed murder scheme to a roomful of eager listeners, chasing after applause he’s not going to get because the story they’ve heard is not the story he thinks he’s telling. Later on, after the crime is done, he same thing happens again, on a smaller but more intimate and more affecting scale.
He’s not the man he thought he was, and his actions are not what he thought they were. He could still be a good man, at least in some ways—he certainly cares more about saving a child’s life than another doctor in the last act, who is pleased about it only because it will be good for his business—but he is no longer a steady one. His purpose became possession. He wanted to frame the story, but the frame has broken.
The Upturned Glass is streaming on Tubi and Fawesome.
About the writer
Lauren James
Lauren James is a writer who wears many different hats (and pen names). She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two cats.
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Anthologized
Dan Duryea gets a shave and a second chance.
Anthologized
A little slice of American folklore that feels like it's been here all along.
Streaming Shuffle
You make your royal bed, and you lie in it.
Anthologized
Alone in vast space and timeless infinity: one man in a ghost town.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Justified, Season Four, Episode Eight, “Outlaw”
“I like you better than him.”
“I tried to kill you.”
“I still like you better.”
Really interesting scene with Ellen May here; she contemplates the idea of changing herself. I believe in two contradictory things: one, people are trapped in their circumstances, and two, a person of sufficient willpower can get whatever they want. I do also believe that the show believes in these things too.
Raylan sees his Dad off, and Arlo remains a bastard to his dying breath. There’s a line from Neon Genesis Evangelion where a character remarks that the protagonist doesn’t hate his dad, which is the problem in their relationship; I see the same thing here. I think it’s in the nature of children to love their parents, which is why that can mutate so horribly in the face of abuse or other evil; Raylan could have walked away at any time and he actually did for a while, but he had to stick around when his dad died.
Hunter observes that Raylan is only a cop to do what he wants to do anyway. I mean, that’s the ideal job to have, right?
“You telling me that Boyd just handed me his enemies list?”
Biggest Laugh: “Raylan, I want to be clear I was almost certain you weren’t a cop killer.”
Biggest Non-Art Laugh: “Jesus, I hope I got that right.”
Top Ownage: “I oughta make ya strip.”
Terrific episode. The scene culminating in the biggest non-Art laugh line is such a funny bit of escalating suspense, Ellen May’s become such a riveting character, and Arlo staying Arlo even with his last breath is so dramatically satisfying for him and so movingly devastating for Raylan (he’s learned who Arlo is time and time again, he’s known it since before the show started–as you pointed out, it’s part of why he left–but there’s always one last rock bottom to hit).
Split – The seventh Parker novel, named “The Seventh” (because Donald Westlake was that sort of guy), is one of the more interesting of the series, with one of the most flawless heists Parker ever pulled, and only after does hell break lose (and not because of anything Parker or his squad did). This movie is a very loose adaptation of the novel, spending far far more time on the heist, and borrowing maybe a few other elements from the book. And Jim Brown, playing the not-Parker role, is very clearly not Parker. But Parker fans know by now to set our expectations low. If we can get a decent movie out of things, we at least won’t start throwing things at the screen. And we get that. The heist is pretty well done (if altered in silly ways from the simplicity of the book), Brown is fairly good as mastermind McClain, who has to cope with the racism of the people he recruits and a girlfriend who wishes he would quit being a crook. The cast has a lot of actors on the cusp of being stars – Gene Hackman as a corrupt cop, Donald Sutherland as a grinning hired gun, Jack Klugman as the wheelman – and Ernest Borgnine as the muscle, plus Julie Harris making a rare trip off Broadway and Diahann Carroll as the girlfriend. But after the heist, things fall apart in a rather uninteresting and often cruel way, and last half hour of a ninety minute movie is a slog.
The Practice, “The Test” – Bobby has a client who confesses to a murder and then goes missing. Thinking the client was killed in revenge by the victim’s drug dealer boss, Bobby hints to the cops where to find the client. But then the client turns up alive, and blames Bobby for snitching on him when he’s arrested for another murder. Some attempt to explore the boundaries of lawyer-client privilege, but the memorable part is the client beating up Bobby in anger. More interesting is Jeffrey Dean Morgan before his fame and his beard as a man convicted of rape who asks for a DNA test to clear his name. The test clears him in one case but not another, and Lindsey and Helen try to find a way to get the man now implicated in that first case (in prison already, which is why the state has his DNA) to confess to both. What makes it work is both Morgan’s steadfast insistence on his innocence and Lindsey’s confession at the end that when she tried the case, she stopped believing in him and stopped trying.
The Split is definitely a “he’s not Parker” movie but is quite fun for all of that. You get at its main flaw — I think the movie is not wrong to spend so much time on the heist itself (which is barely in the book) because cinematic heisting rules, especially on location, but this gives short shrift to the interpersonal dynamics that drive the fallout (the main focus of the book) and that is less good, especially what happens to Parker’s girlfriend as opposed to the nonentity the book opens with. The other odd bit here is how the movie has Parker recruit the crew by … being massive if not life-threatening dicks to them? It’s to get some decent setpieces in but it’s bizarre and it winds up making the fallout almost justified — of course these guys aren’t going to trust Parker, look how he introduced himself to them! But still a good time and of course one of the best football movies ever made: https://www.mediamagpies.com/the-all-time-top-five-football-movies/
I had a snow day yesterday:
Primal, “Feast of Flesh”
This grasshopper is the best insect character since the cockroach in WALL-E, and Spear building a cairn for it made my heart hurt; I would have done it too.
Very poignant to see Spear losing more and more of his flesh (now one hand is purely skeletal–don’t think too much about how he can still move it–and his organs are falling out of an opening in his belly) as he regains more and more of his spirit (his visions of Fang are getting more conscious, more detailed, and more present, and this time, he takes the spear when he goes). The show being the show, it even finds the best way to braid these two processes together, with a naked Spear rediscovering the idea of clothing … as a way to stop his insides on the inside.
Unsurprisingly good ownage in the mass slaughter of the mole-people.
Inside No. 9, “The Devil of Christmas”
A delightful, spot-on pastiche of a low-budget ’70s horror anthology show gives way to something much darker. There’s some good setup for the ending (including one line that’s haunting in retrospect), but ultimately the logic of it doesn’t bear too much examination, which makes it have slightly less punch for me; I seem to be in the minority on that. Still, the affectionate pastiche is charmingly specific in its details–the trails on the candle flames, the act-ending close-ups, the staginess–and grounded in its own cheesy but effective plot (a family with a few squabbles spends Christmas at a rural resort in Austria, and once they hear about the legend of Krampus, the little boy starts finding switches in his shoes and scratches on his back), and that makes it work pretty well for me.
The Holly and the Ivy
1950s British Christmas movie. The first act feels melancholy but cozy–we have Celia Johnson, always beautifully warm but fretful, as an older sister who might miss her chance at marrying the love of her life because she’s too devoted to looking after her parson father (Ralph Richardson)–and then the story turns that coziness inside-out, openly questioning whether the homey innocence of the parsonage is maintained at the cost of the parson’s adult children’s happiness. There’s a lot of bitterness here (Johnson even brings up the bitter smell of holly, to drive it home) and a lot of hurt, poignantly embodied when Johnson’s “careerist” sister (Margaret Leighton) comes home and is revealed to be carrying around an immense tragedy she’s had to hide from her family because it also comes with a certain amount of scandal. It’s ambitious in its emotional scope and honesty for a small-scale “home for the holidays” movie, and trying for some healing at the end is part of that ambition. I’m not sure it entirely pulls it off–it allows Richardson a little too much ranting–but it comes close; this is a warm and forgiving look at a family that’s had some pretty toxic years, but it doesn’t go all the way to donning rose-colored glasses. It’s optimistic, but its optimism is the kind that accepts that failures and pain might happen: it just believes that these people can find a way back from them.
You can approximate the date this was made by everyone treating a dead child as a tragedy but (unspoken) one so common that it’s not really worth making this much of a fuss over. (Although the child’s illegitimacy probably also plays a role in that, as cruel as that is.)
Obsession
For Movie Club. I think I like De Palma best when he’s being a little less De Palma than this, frankly. (Blow Out is an exception.) This is obviously pulling from Vertigo, less obviously and possibly unintentionally reminiscent of Don’t Look Now, and prefiguring Oldboy, but I like-to-love all those movies (I’m a bit chilly on Vertigo, but I admire it) and could not get on with this. This wasn’t kinetic enough or stylistically engaging enough to get me to overlook how dumb the plot is. I’m willing to admit this may be a flaw in me and not De Palma (after all, I can’t get on with opera, either), but there it is. I will try to find more interesting things to say about this before the weekend.
I generally like De Palma’s blatant Hitchcock riffs but this one does pull a bit too much from a single film instead of mashing a few together. The ending is nicely unhinged though, as I recall.
Obsession’s ending is pretty much lifted from The Searcher’s as well. This film displays the promise of De Palma’s stylistic swagger but the attempt to put it in the service of a romantic thriller was sabotaged on a number of levels, both by its director and star. The end result shows both the director’s strength and weaknesses. I wonder how it would have worked out if Paul Schrader, the films screenwriter. directed it.
I often wonder about how easily and thoughtlessly we kill bugs and how little we value their individual lives (to the degree that I sometimes shoo away spiders and other critters rather than kill them; though I do kill them when necessary), and how little we consider their living experience compared to other animals, so the fact that the show can sell a sense of companionship between man an insect is nothing short of a miracle to me. Great sound effect of the grasshopper’s chirping too. It turns it into a real presence, even when it’s offscreen.
The Pitt, S1E7 – It occurs to me that the “trauma plot” is slightly more believable/satisfying over the course of One Bad Day because that’s often how grief and trauma work – situations bring them forward seemingly out of nowhere and eventually you crack, as Dr. Robby’s starting to. Dr. Collins calling him on this is immensely satisfying – just go fucking home, dude – in this respect. If there’s probably a distinction between this and ER, which I only watched a few episodes of, it’s that the latter took place in a country that was slightly more functional, where The Pitt is in an explicitly failing system with exhausted nurses, doctors, and patients. Santos is breaking serious boundaries with her patient and doesn’t feel she has much of a choice. (Of course she also has hilariously poor boundaries in general.)
Notes: My fellow autistic and I related heavily to the autistic patient not grasping the pain scale, what is 8 or 9 compared to 10 here? They have specifically cast the teenager’s mom to be the most irritating-looking person possible.
Yeah, there are certain parts of the storyline that are a bit absurd condensed into one day, but Robby’s trauma really isn’t one of them.
A new character in S2 proposes trying to stop people from calling it The Pitt, because it’s derogatory and implies this is a bad place, and it’s such a classic case of trying to fix the wrong problem. Maybe they’ll stop calling it that when conditions aren’t so shitty all the time!
Santos’s inability to read a room + general jockishness + actual deep commitment is a killer dramatic combo, and I love her for it.
Wish I could dim the lights and shut the door at my job, and it’s way less of a sensory hell than the ER.
The show is doing a pretty subtle job of nudging us that Mohan’s approach, especially with patients of color, is probably the best one and Robby is overly dismissive of it.
Heh, the admin Stupid Chief character does the same thing in the pilot and yup, don’t be surprised when someone in Pittsburgh gives an overcrowded, stressful ER a bad name!
Resident Evil – the Screen Drafts Paul W.S. Anderson episode had me craving some dumb fun and I’d never seen a single Resident Evil movie, so that seemed like a sensible way to go. This is a pretty good time despite some pretty terrible CGI effects (and the occasional pretty good one, hello Colin Salmon getting sliced up by lasers). Milla Jovovich is a compelling screen presence although the amnesia plot stops her from getting into full ass-kicking mode for an oddly long time. Definitely good switch-your-brain-off cinema and I’ll probably watch a few more of these at some point, I’m particularly intrigued by one of the non-Anderson ones being directed by Russell Mulcahy because I generally dig his stuff.
Yes! Russell Mulcahy directed Ricochet, which makes him revered in any right-thinking household.
Ricochet, Highlander and Razorback are all great fun, and full of style. The Shadow is also full of style, but it misses the fun somehow. I think I may have attempted Highlander 2 at some point and I’m not sure that’s full of anything. BUT we all make mistakes.
This sounds great! Right onto the watchlist.
Year of the Month update!
Coming in February, we’ll be looking at 1957, including all these movies, albums, books, TV, yadda yadda.
Feb. 2nd: Tristan J. Nankervis: Throne of Blood
Feb. 6th: Gillianren: The Story of Anyburg, USA
Feb. 13th: Gillianren: The Truth About Mother Goose
Feb. 16th: Tristan J. Nankervis: The Incredible Shrinking Man
Feb. 20th: Gillianren: Our Friend the Atom
Feb. 27th: Gillianren: Sleeping Beauty’s Castle
This March, you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, TV, etc. from 1980.
And here’s how we’re wrapping up January:
TBD: Ruck Cohlchez: Tim and/or Fables of the Reconstruction
Jan. 29th: Cori Domschot: Jewel of the Nile