The Black Windmill, 1974.
Directed by Don Siegel.
Starring Michael Caine, Donald Pleasence, Delphine Seyrig, John Vernon, Joss Ackland, David Daker and Janet Suzman.
SYNOPSIS:
An MI6 agent’s young son is kidnapped for a ransom that the British authorities don’t seem too keen on paying.
Just imagine that you’re looking for a movie to watch and you come across The Black Windmill, a title that may be unfamiliar. However, when you investigate further and words such as ‘spy thriller’, ‘directed by Don Siegel’ and ‘starring Michael Caine and Donald Pleasence’ are brought to your attention then the decision whether to watch it or not (you will) is made easier. As if to cement your decision to enjoy yourself by indulging in some 1970s spy capers, 101 Films have helpfully put the film onto a Blu-ray disc for you to get the most out of (because discs don’t lose Wi-Fi connection, etc.).
So we have the director of Dirty Harry overseeing a British spy thriller starring two icons of British cinema in a post-Bond period – there’s even a joke about Sean Connery from one of the Secret Service bosses who is sat next to Donald ‘Blofeld’ Pleasence, if that isn’t too close to the knuckle – in a film that seems to be fairly straightforward when it comes to plot. Throw in Canadian character actor John Vernon (Dirty Harry/National Lampoon’s Animal House) playing to type by being a nasty bastard, beautiful arthouse actress Delphine Seyrig (Daughters of Darkness) and her sexy, raspy voice, and a handful of familiar British TV and film actors (David Daker playing a heavy – who would have guessed?) and you have the makings of a potential classic but just because all of the ingredients are there doesn’t mean the end result will necessarily turn out as planned.
The main criticism of The Black Windmill that you will see is that it isn’t quite first-rate Don Siegel, that the film is quite workmanlike and that it runs out of steam before the end, and you can’t really argue those points until you start to look at what does work; Michael Caine is no Clint Eastwood in the tough guy stakes but he gives a believable performance as a father desperate to rescue his son but unable to show emotion about it due to his job. He plays Major John Tarrant, a former soldier now working as a spy for MI6 whose young son is kidnapped by McKee (Vernon) and his accomplice Ceil (Seyrig) after trespassing onto what the boy thought was abandoned government property to fly his toy plane.
Naturally, Major Tarrant wants his son back but McKee is demanding a consignment of diamonds in exchange for the boy, diamonds that are in the possession of Tarrant’s uptight boss Cedric Harper (Pleasence). Fearing that somebody on the inside knows about the diamonds and is feeding McKee information, Harper refuses to hand over the diamonds and begins to suspect Tarrant of staging the kidnapping as a setup to obtain them, forcing various agents to spy on, double-cross and steal from each other as nobody trusts anybody.
By the time Major Tarrant gets to take matters into his own hands you are convinced that he will use every trick he has been taught to achieve his goal. If only there were more movies where ordinary looking guys used their particular set of skills to get their kidnapped kids back…
But despite having Caine’s name above the movie’s title it is Donald Pleasence who steals the show as the upper class bureaucrat Cedric Harper, probably the greatest personification of Britishness ever put on the screen. Clearly an unpleasant(!) man from the moment he appears onscreen, Harper oozes every jobsworth characteristic you have ever come across and obviously dislikes Major Tarrant from the very beginning, and Pleasence adds so many small tics and habits to Harper that mark him out as someone we are supposed to dislike that he is almost a pantomime villain – “He’s behind you” but with a metaphorical knife to put in your back, Major Tarrant.
And yet with every actor on board giving top performances, some brutal violence and lots of clever spy trickery that James Bond doesn’t get to do much of anymore – checking for phone taps, recording phone calls on a reel-to-reel tape recorder (outdated but still mightily impressive), turning on the radio to cause a distraction, etc. – The Black Windmill never quite hits its stride in a way you could call exciting. There are moments where it starts to get a bit of momentum but thanks to Don Siegel being forced to rewrite the script due to a writer’s strike the end result feels a little flabby, especially as the first hour packs in quite a lot so that when it does slow down for a breather – i.e. when Tarrant comes back from Paris to England at around the 80-minute mark – it feels more like a natural ending for the story – but there are still 25 minutes to go!
But bloated writing and awkward pacing aside, The Black Windmill still delivers a solid, if unremarkable, spy thriller full of on-their-A-game actors elevating the material. The Blu-ray image quality is surprisingly fresh for a gritty British crime movie from the 1970s and 101 Films have done an excellent job in making London look more attractive than many of The Black Windmill’s contemporary movies do thanks to a tidy HD remaster. There are interviews with cinematographer Ousama Rawi and a now very old Joss Ackland – who pretty much confirms all of the movie’s flaws and even says it wasn’t one of his favourites to make – as extras and the disc also comes with a reversible sleeve featuring alternate artwork (that looks nothing like Michael Caine), and although The Black Windmill may not be up there with The Day of the Jackal or The Spy Who Loved Me for tense dramatic action or big screen knockabout fun it does have more than enough appeal for fans of hard-hitting 1970s crime thrillers to enjoy, especially if it is one you haven’t seen before.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
Originally published March 29, 2021. Updated May 16, 2022.
