Behind The Mask (1958)

Notable for being Vanessa Redgrave's cinematic debut, Behind The Mask is a fairly accurate and engrossing, albeit somewhat slow-moving, look at the life of a newly qualified surgeon and the old boys network that exists within the NHS.

Tony Britton stars as our hero, Philip Selwood, a freshly qualified surgical registrar on the firm of the respected but ailing consultant Sir Arthur Benson Gray, played by Michael Redgrave. Selwood is also engaged to his mentor's daughter, Pamela (Vanessa Redgrave) which makes them rather tight, until an issue of malpractice within the hospital rears its head.

Carl Möhner co-stars as Dr Carl Romek, a Polish anaesthetist who is something of an outsider from 'The Pack' (the title of the novel by John Rowan Wilson that this film is based on) whom Selwood takes pity on and becomes rather friendly with. It's clear from the off that Romek is a troubled individual; he has a tragic past thanks to his time in a concentration camp and has a habit of staring off into the distance with a faraway look in his eyes as he talks about himself, so it comes as no surprise when his former girlfriend (Brenda Bruce) reveals to Selwood that Romek is a dope-fiend, hooked on barbiturates since an accident in the camp during the war. He assures Selwood he is clean, but it's a lie and the pair enter theatre to operate on a patient, leading to devastating consequences that threaten to tear Selwood and Pamela apart...

Behind The Mask may be a trifle stiff and dated looking (not helped by the green tinge to the antiquated colour film) but its exploration of medical surgery and the old boys network/'the pack' feels suitably and worryingly authentic. It's certainly more believable and interesting than any current episode of Holby City! Of particular interest is a scene which features an example of early open-heart surgery, though quite why the observation camera prefers to concentrate on the perspiring brow of Redgrave rather than what his hands are actually doing makes a mockery of the realistic edge much of the film is striving for.

It's rather lovely to see Michael and Vanessa Redgrave playing opposite each other, replicating their real life father and daughter relationship. Indeed there's a great cast on display here overall, even though some of them have very little to do (hello, Lionel Jeffries) I especially liked Ian Bannen as a whitecoat forever cadging cigarettes off his colleagues. Oh and eagle eyed viewers will spot a certain William Roache aka Ken Barlow pacing around, pulling on cigarettes in a couple of early scenes as a young doctor. I may be wrong but I think this might be his only other credit aside from Coronation Street which he has been in since the very first episode in 1960. 

Kudos too for realistically conveying the ethnic diversity inherent within the British medical world and how the NHS welcomed immigrants from the commonwealth and the like because of their talents and dedication; something which has stupidly come under threat thanks to the Brexit vote.

A New Career In A New Town

Sean Connery had called time on James Bond in 1967, thoroughly sick of the role that made his name and determined to prove himself as an actor.


However following George Lazenby, the enfant terrible of Eon's dismissal of any further Bond films in 1971, United Artists had to lure Connery back to the role. They did this by pledging to finance and produce any two projects of Connery's choosing. 


Which is what took Connery to the new town of Bracknell in 1972 for The Offence

At the risk of sounding like Sir John Betjeman, I hate new towns. I have never been to one I liked. 

Such ugly bleak architectural crime chiefly occurred in the post war years to clear out slums and bomb damaged areas, re-homing communities in concrete warrens and walkways that had previously been rich green and pleasant land. It's primarily a South of England offence (geddit?) however the North did suffer some (Runcorn, Skelmersdale and Wythenshawe) but the main examples are south bound;  Milton Keynes, Stevenage, Welwyn Garden City, Hatfield,  Basildon and of course our setting here, Bracknell in Berkshire.  

Grim hmm? 

Apologies to any Bracknell or new town readers! 

However, the locale suits the mood of the film. Connery stars as DS Johnson, a hard nosed policeman of twenty years service, hunting a child rapist and killer. He's tormented by all the evil and horror he has seen in his line of work and as the dark thoughts start to seep out into the open, the bleak, brutal and sparse architecture around him becomes a character in its own right; too new and too fresh looking to be anything but innocent, but too ugly to be anything but evil. It's a claustrophobic unrelentingly hard and grim film and as we see Connery traipsing through the rain drenched concrete precinct, harassing homosexuals and known kiddie fiddlers or heading home to his tower block flat at gone two in the morning to his plain wife played by Vivien Merchant (as he asks of her "Why aren't you beautiful? You're not even pretty") we feel he's as much a prisoner as any of the felons he has captured.

Balding, bullish, haunted and weary; married to a dowdy woman and living in a drab tower block in a new town...James Bond he isn't!

The film was directed by the excellent Sidney Lumet (who had got a similarly brilliant performance from Connery in The Hill) and based on a stage play by Z Cars scriptwriter John Hopkins. It's a heavy film but with dialogue that crackles and spits like bacon in a frying pan. A solid police procedural that doesn't flinch from portraying what demons our public servants must face and one that hasn't dated, standing up splendidly today. For my money it's the best film Connery did, yet on release it bombed and failed to find an audience. The result being, UA decided not to fund Connery's next project an adaptation of Macbeth giving Roman Polanski a clear field to push ahead with his own version of Shakespeare's classic.

I'll not give too much away about the film, because I feel it's one that needs to be seen and to discuss it will give a lot away. Needless to say it's a brilliant psychological exercise that really heats up when the police arrest a man they feel responsible for the rape and kidnapping of a twelve year old girl played brilliantly by Ian Bannen, who forces Connery's character to take a good look within himself.

It's a film with a genuinely unnerving tense atmosphere. Once watched, never forgotten.