White Of the Eye (1987, Dir. Donald Cammell)
Synopsis:
After the latest in a series of brutal murders of young women, hi-fi salesman, Paul White (David Keith), who was working nearby, comes under suspicion from the police. Protesting his innocence, his wife Joanie (Cathy Moriarty) begins to suspect that there’s a dark and disturbing side to her husband.
In my post about Nic Roeg’s Eureka a few years back, I talked about the huge influence Roeg’s films had upon me when I first encountered them as a teenager. The one that had the most profound effect was Performance, which as most of you will know was actually co-directed by Roeg and Donald Cammell. Perhaps because Cammell made so few films and that the non-linear narrative style that the two of them ended up creating in Performance (jump cuts, flash forwards and flashbacks) was then subsequently used heavily in Roeg’s other films, it can be tempting to dismiss Cammell‘s contributions. However, this doesn’t seem to be a true representation of their collaboration at all. Cammell was just as responsible as Roeg for the way Performance was shot and edited, something that I only discovered once I watched the brilliant BBC documentary on Cammell – Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance – released a year or so after his death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1996. Co-incidentally, the documentary was broadcast alongside White Of The Eye, which would be my first introduction to the film and if you can track the Arrow Dual DVD/Blu-Ray disc from a few years ago, the documentary is included amongst the extras.
Cammell would go on to direct just 3 other films after Performance, often struggling to adapt his cinematic vision to the demands of Hollywood. Of those 3, White Of The Eye is the one which gets closest to showcasing his unique cinematic style. According to Mark Kermode in his introduction to it on BFI player it’s a film which is now finally being recognized as „a milestone of experimental 80s exotica“ instead of, as critic David Thomson called it: „one of the great secret works of cinema“.
Adapted from the novel Mrs White by Margaret Tracy (actually the pseudonym of brothers Laurence and Andrew Klavan), White Of The Eye, with its bleached out, modernist Arizona landscape seems as far away from the nocturnal world of Performance as humanly possible. However, the opening sequence featuring Cammell‘s use of subjective Steadicam tracking shots, intercut with close ups of eyeballs or leftovers on a kitchen unit and framing that makes the viewer complicit in the killer’s male gaze in the Argento-esque slow motion murder, leaves you in little doubt that the two films stem from the same unique cinematic vision.
The film’s visual style, from its fragmented, stylized depiction of murder as a work of art (a theme shared with Performance), to the desaturated, blown out flashback scenes from when Joanie and Paul first meet, remains stunning almost 40 years after its release. Cammell along with Larry McConkey‘s cinematography and Terry Rawlings‘ (Alien, Blade Runner) editing, create a film of surfaces – whether it’s the literal surface detail of things (hi-fi components, reflecting swimming pools, faces warped in mirrors, sunlight bouncing off of buildings) or the metaphorical surface that Paul presents the world – it’s all beautifully presented, even when what is being presented is horrific.
The visuals are well complimented by a score from Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason and 10CC guitarist Rick Fenn. The pair scored several movies together, of which this was easily the most high profile one. Using an interesting mix of ambient synth sounds, Ry Cooder-esque slide guitar and powerful drums, they create a palette of sounds that fits both the film’s Arizona setting and its surreal and disturbing imagery.
With all the attention paid to the visual side of the film, you might think that the performances would suffer. However, both David Keith and Cathy Moriarty give possibly the best performances of their whole career. Keith manages to be both charming and chilling before finally becoming totally unhinged in the film’s climax. His speech when he tries to explain to Joanie why he did it is possibly the single most disturbing moment in the movie, precisely because he seems so calm and believes utterly in his own twisted logic. Moriarty has to navigate between some extremely touching and naturalistic scenes between her and her on-screen daughter (played increadibly well by Danielle Smith), rage when she suspects her husband of having an affair and pure terror when she discovers what sort of person he really is. However, not once does she come across as a victim and her anguish at discovering that her husband is a complete monster is palpable. There’s also some great supporting performances particularly Art Evans as the sympathetic detective in charge of the murder investigation and Alberta Watson as a married seductress. Only Alan Rosenberg‘s performance as Joanie‘s ex-boyfriend, Mike, feels a little out of place. The character is meant to be a loud mouth idiot at the beginning, which is fine. However, his transformation into someone with mental health problems, following a stint in prison, is rushed through and not given enough space in the story. It seems only there to provide a (not very successful) red herring and because of this, his appearance at the film’s climax feels slightly forced. Personally, I feel it would have been more satisfying for Joanie to face off against Paul alone.
While the film’s explosive climax is visually impressive, its rather flippant (and frankly 80s) coda of Joanie and Detective Mendoza sitting talking feels like it’s trying too hard to give the audience some kind of upbeat ending – which the film doesn’t really need or deserve. For me, it’s the movie‘s one slight narrative misstep in an otherwise fascinatingly offbeat treatment of a very familiar story – would a spouse know if their partner was a serial killer? It’s a theme that has been re-used many times over, especially in the 80s and 90s when serial killer films were particularly popular. Yet, it’s hard to think of an another film that takes that idea and runs with it in the same way this does. Like its director, this film is quite unique, which is all the more reason to hunt it down.
