Mirage

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source: Mirage

A first-rate suspense premise: Gregory Peck realizes that he has apparently been suffering from amnesia for two years, and various sinister figures conspire to keep him from remembering...what? something crucial, but he has no idea what it is. Unfortunately, after an hour of great build-up, the film fails to deliver on this premise, and the ending is (perhaps inevitably) a disappointment, which leaves at least one huge plot-issue unresolved. Perhaps this failure is because the scriptwriter makes the mistake that Hitchcock never made; he tries to explain the MacGuffin and make it significant and central to the plot--which just doesn't work at all. In fact, the ending is ludicrous, though the absurdity doesn't detract very much from the great stuff that came before it. It might be best to stop watching about 20 minutes before the end--after Peck's second visit to the doctor... The film takes a refreshingly cynical view of modern American culture, especially politics and business--full of thugs in suits who speak eloquently about peace and progress, but are really interested only in profit. It is also sometimes jarringly brutal--perhaps to make its point. The black and white photography is lovely, and manages to make New York City, its parks, streets, sidewalks, and office buildings, into a striking character in its own right. Walter Matthau steals the film as a sympathetic detective (on his first case) who helps Peck. Everyone else Peck meets is either in on the secret or just not interested.

David Stillwell (Gregory Peck) makes his way down several flights of stairs in the dark after the lights suddenly go out in his office building. He is accompanied by an attractive woman (Diane Baker). Thanks to his flashlight, he can see her, but she can't see him. Still, she assumes she knows him by his voice and talks to him about someone named The Major, as if he should know who that is. The day becomes stranger when he gets outside the building and discovers that someone has apparently committed suicide by jumping out of a window. And then, when he gets to his apartment building, things get dangerous. Within the next two days, David will encounter a chubby gunman (Jack Weston), a rude maintenance man with horn-rimmed glasses (George Kennedy), an abrasive psychiatrist (Robert H. Harris, giving an off-putting performance) and an inexperienced but shrewd private detective (Walter Matthau). He'll also meet up again and again with the attractive woman. Most important, he'll encounter himself - because who he thinks he is and who he really is are two different things. The opening ten minutes of this mystery-thriller, directed by Edward Dmytryk, promise a great ride. But the story is structured so that things become murkier - rather than more tantalizing - as it progresses, until there are so many bizarre circumstances to explain that we're pretty sure by the end we won't believe the explanation or care. The likable Diane Baker, a girl-next-door type, is all wrong for a character who should be mysterious. Quincy Jones's awful score sounds like TV movie pap, further interfering with our pleasure.

A New York cost accountant realizes his entire existence for the past two years may be a sham, and that his "unconscious amnesia" may be connected to the apparent suicide of a World Peace advocate who fell from a window during a power blackout in the accountant's office building. Peter Stone's screenplay is fun at first, looping itself in knots and causing great consternation for our hero, appealingly played by Gregory Peck. The presentation is stylish, and there's some effective editing throughout (blending together the past with the present), but Stone doesn't play fair with the audience. As bodies (and plot-holes) begin to add up, our expectations for an exciting, satisfying wrap-up are increasingly dimmed. When we finally do get to the denouement, it plays like standard television stuff. Well-dressed and designed picture has excellent location work and a solid supporting cast (despite moments of over-acting). A near-miss. ** from ****

I watched this movie on the recommendation of a fellow film buff, who referred to it as "like Hitchcock." As are most movies labeled as "Hitchcockian," it was a great disappointment. Gregory Peck gives his usual irritatingly blank and wooden performance, and, aside from excellent performances by the incidental characters, the film was a waste of time. There were so many echoes of earlier movies that I found myself waiting for the next. Others have noticed some of them, but there were more: The shot of the murdered man falling to his death---opening credits of Vertigo, his speech in the office when he is standing by the window: Orson Welles in "The Third Man," cinematography and use of New York locations---"Odds Against Tomorrow." The "working for world peace while attempting to subvert same": George Saunders in "Foreign Correspondent," and undoubtedly more. Some things that make Hitchcock's "wrong man" or "lost character" appealing are his resourcefulness and wit and our ability to empathize with him. Peck demonstrated none of these. He didn't even demonstrate the swooning weakness he displayed in "Spellbound," and Diane Baker was no Ingrid Bergman. I'd recommend potential viewers skip "Mirage" and watch any of the movies I've mentioned above, or those mentioned by others as its antecedents.

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.

This is a terrific film well done from all aspects. The use of flashbacks are a great touch as an amnesiac, played by Gregory Peck, desperately tries to figure out his predicament and piece together the last 2 years of his life. Matthau is great, as always, as the PI trying to help him out. The scenes in the Psychiatrist's office alone are worth the effort to see this film.

Sharing not a passing resemblance to The Manchurian Candidate from three years before, this is a sadly neglected thriller that would have been a classic if the director's credit read Hitchcock instead of someone HUAC blacklisted at the time. It couldn't have been any better too, with Hitch involved. There's really nothing the movie sets out to do that it doesn't do pretty damn well. The fights are clumsy and 15 years too old-fashioned, like something taken from a film-noir and edited in the same awkward fashion, but other than that the movie is a rousing success. Dmytryk's career took a massive blow after the fifties and his decision to finally cooperate in order to be released from prison earned him the contempt of subsequent Hollywood people, but a good ten years later, the director of still had it in him to deliver a stonecold classic with Murder My Sweet. Gregory Peck is David Stillwell, an accountant working for a NYC firm who realizes he can't remember anything from his life the past two years. The movie opens in a blacked-out skyscraper where he meets with a mysterious young woman who seems to know him. She then disappears in the subbasements of the building. When he searches for these basements the next morning, they're not there. That's just a taste of the hallucinatory mindgames the film has in order for the viewer. Wisely photographed in clear black and white, with an intriguing premise and plot that will have fans of conspiracy thrillers salivating at the prospect of paranoid twists and turns, this is a minor gem that deserves to be rediscovered from the cracks it slipped through. There is a plot hole regarding these basements and where they really are after all but if we accept the psychological explanation of Peck's condition (it's only a movie after all), it's a smooth ride. The multiple flashbacks of the ending and the way Dmytryk handles them is something to see.

Seeing a wonderful movie with a bad resolution to the plot is like getting married only to find your spouse announces they want a sex-free marriage--it's THAT big a disappointment. This is my reaction to "Mirage". The film got me excited by its creative plot--but the ultimate resolution of the plot really left A LOT to be desired...no, wait,....it SUCKED!! The first 3/4 of the movie is a lot like the wonder 1990s TV series "Nowhere Man". If you saw this TV show (and only six people did), it was wonderful as a seemingly ordinary man suddenly finds his identity is gone...and no one recognizes him. Well, in this movie, Gregory Peck is in just this situation--he suddenly finds that his reality and his memories are not real! But, unlike the show, Peck IS recognized--but he does not recognize the people...and many are trying to kill or threaten to kill him!! This is great and you wonder just what sort of bizarre conspiracy is afoot. Sadly, however, when you DO get to learn the dark secret, it all seems VERY disappointing and preachy. It's sad, as up until then the film was great--really, really great. But the conclusion just didn't pay off or make any sense at all. I think what really happened was that they had a great idea but had no idea how to make it all come together. Would I recommend this film? Probably not...though it is, for a while, a heck of a ride.