Alan Pakula was the producer of To Kill a Mocking Bird, which couldn't be a more different film. This is a murky thriller in the seventies style (photographed by 'the Prince of Darkness' Gordon Willis) which is also a matter-of-fact dissection of the life of a prostitute. Jane Fonda won an Oscar for her performance, Andy and David Lewis were nominated for their screenplay. And Donald Sutherland is the out of his depth investigator who gets sucked in.
Most interesting for its use of sound. Surveillance tapes are seen being listened back to, but then the audio starts being dropped in all over the place, so we're not sure who's listening to them (which is effective as we don't know who the murderer is) and for the complex style of the piece; this becomes even more complex when bits of Fonda's therapy sessions also start popping up displaced to the action. I bet Dede Allen saw this and was very interested, as she started doing interesting stuff like this soon after. The editor is Carl Lerner, who cut The Swimmer and 12 Angry Men. He also quite rightly often favours Ms Fonda in conversations.
The therapist stuff is also great in getting into the mind of Bree Daniels.
Willis's lighting is just incredible. Michael Chapman is the operator.
I mean, is this scene below literally just lit with two lights - the practical behind them and the light source from behind the door?
- or is there some very subtle front lighting? And is this lit entirely by the torch?
(I would say I don't think so.) It's about top lighting, apparently, more evident in the Godfather films.
Michael Small's music adds to the tension. With Roy Scheider, Charles Cioffi, Dorothy Tristan.
Yes, very good, very interesting. A big hit for Warner Bros.
It was quite the decade for Donald Sutherland. He had already appeared in Kelly's Heroes and MASH, then starred in Don't Look Now, Day of the Locust, Bertolucci's 1900, The Eagle Has Landed, Chabrol's Blood Relatives, National Lampoon's Animal House and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
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