Touches You

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It all seems so perfectly comfortable and neat, with a lovely Anne Baxter in a great villa by the sea off Barcelona, a perfect paradise, and then someone turns up, who is not given any hearty welcome. A mystery enters of a most embarassing nature, since someone who has long been dead apparently isn't, or at least that death is most persistently disputed. There is an uncle who maybe could bring some relief to the situation, which however only gets constantly more complicated, as Richard Todd won't give in and mercilessly seems to get everyone on his side and keep the upper hand on the situation, which continues to build up...Well, it certainly is the perfect set-up for an extremely screwed up criminal plot, and there is even a murder, but it is never committed...More shall not be revealed here, enough said, that Julian Bream bandages the whole thing with his charming guitar music, the film is not without its romantic elements no matter how cool certain of the protagonists are, and a dead father also finally gets to be of some importance to the plot, since the whole matter actually is only about his suicide with its unfathomable consequences...A highly enjoyable criminal mystery for the intelligent mind, which might even afterwards bring forth some releasing laughs...

Okay, there are a few loose threads in the plot. But Michael Anderson's direction is so good and the performances so spot-on that who cares? Anne Baxter is a very rich young lady, holed up in a luxurious Spanish villa, who is understandably scared when a visitor shows up claiming to be her brother. Only problem is that her brother died a year ago and she identified the body. With the would-be brother come a lurking butler and a gaunt, steely-eyed housekeeper who have given the previous servants their notice. Oh, and there are some papers they want her to sign. Richard Todd is icily smooth as the visitor and Herbert Lom confused as a local policeman who doesn't know who to believe. Well worth watching.

I have to admit, I am a sucker for a plot with a good twist. The problem is they don't grow on trees. Think of the films of recent years and I can only come up with two, "The Usual Suspects" and "The Sixth Sense". Both come into the category of being worth a second look to see how they work and both pass the credibility test with flying colours. There was that detective novelist of yesteryear, Agatha Christie. I lapped up practically every one of her tales as a teenager and a young man. She must have tried out every permutation of the twist imaginable, always giving the satisfaction that, even if you did not guess it, the person who "dun" it was psychologically the only possible candidate. After "Aggie" the detective novel was never quite the same again. By trying to write "real" novels of supposedly literary quality, most writers in this field seemed more interested in realism than clever twists with the result that I rather lost interest in the genre. Again there are very few good twist movies from the time I grew up with cinema. "Les Diaboliques" and "So Long at the Fair" remain excellent examples that give pleasure on repeated showings even with the element of surprise missing. Worth mentioning that, although not quite on their level, I actually discovered a good little twist movie the other day from the same period, "Chase a Crooked Shadow" starring Anne Baxter and Richard Todd. Anne Baxter is in much the same sort of predicament as Jean Simmons in "So Long at the Fair". Instead of her brother disappearing, Anne's supposedly dead brother turns up as someone she does not recognise. She spends much of the film trying to convince friends and police that Richard Todd is not her brother but of course no-one believes her. I suppose that ultimately "Chase a Crooked Shadow" lacks the sense of style of the others I have mentioned. Michael Anderson's direction is rather pedestrian although he does manage a couple of sudden character appearances that made me jump. I don't suppose I shall watch it again as I rather think it has given up all it has to offer but I would certainly recommend it to lovers of Grand Guignol as an hour and a half of mildly pleasurably viewing.

When I was a little boy, I had seen the film, but remembered little of it. However, in the early sixties, my Dad took me on a holiday to Spain, to a little village south of Barcelona, called Sitges. During one coach journey, the courier told us that the mountain road that we were now on was the scene of a fast car drive in a film made a couple of years previously, called 'Chase a Crooked Shadow'. I remember the road well, with the cliff drops hundreds of feet below to the sea and this coupled with my fond memory of that holiday in Franco's long gone Spain and the fact that the film itself is a brilliant piece of old cinema with a terrific twist at the end, makes me watch this film over and over again. I see something in it every time I watch it - the sign of a good film!