Review of The Chapman Report (1962) by Daryl C — 20 Jul 2008

First of all, it's 1962, not 2001 (though the sci-fi mix-up is typical of this film). Totally unavailable (because it was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck but released through Warner Brothers, but exactly who owns the copyright is a cause of debate), it used to play a lot on TV in the 1970s and 1980s. But I remember going to see this during its first run (it was one of those movies that year - another was Kubrick's LOLITA - which just made me feel so grownup for going to see it at the age of 9).

This is the kind of movie which is easy to dismiss as trash, and well it should be... and yet, it is also a film which is touched with extremes of lasciviousness (the lighting on so many of the young male costars seems to accentuate their crotches or their asses) and brilliance. That's right, brilliance, because some of the performers, in particular, Claire Bloom, Glynis Johns and Jane Fonda, give incredible depth, wit, and insight into their parts. Bloom, in particular, was never more incisive, more insistently sexual, more piercingly poignant. The way her movements get progressively looser as the character loses her control, her dignity, and then all her self-respect is just so precisely done, and it takes her character into the realm of the tragic. Claire Bloom was always a great actress; this role, even in the circumstances of a messed-up piece of commercial exploitation, is proof.