|
Bit 1
|
The first strange thing you notice about David Mamet's The Spanish
Prisoner is the dialogue. It's not so much what is said, but the way
it's said. The characters are developed in a manner that focuses on
words over physical acting, and as distinct from the urban realism of
Mamet's Glengarry, Glen Ross (1992) the total absence of swearing in The
Spanish Prisoner lends an unnaturally staged tinge to the proceedings.
The performances betray a carefully shielded angst which seeps through a
veneer of artificiality and gives the film a slanted tone. The art
direction is also superb, combining many old vehicles and technology
with modern architecture in order to make the film look off-kilter and
anachronistic. The mood of The Spanish Prisoner is stimulating, and the
cast negotiates the dialogue and sets with great skill, especially
Rebecca Pidgeon whose steady eye contact and calm, quirky retorts drive
the films tricks: 'I'm a problem solver, and I have a heart of gold.'
|
|---|
|
Bit 2
|
The plot owes a lot to Hitchcock. The title refers to an elaborate con
game which revolves around Joe Ross (Campbell Scott). He's pure Alfred;
simultaneously naïve, self interested, polite and victimised. Ross is a
brilliant inventor whose `Process' promises to make his bosses an
enormous amount of money. When Ross befriends a tycoon, Jimmy Dell
(Steve Martin), during a Caribbean business trip, seeds of concern
regarding his cut of the profits are sown by the streetwise and charming
money spinner. Ross, while fervently pursued by office understudy
Susan Ricci (Rebecca Pidgeon), is determined to take Dell's advice and
protect his own invention. As a result an elaborate con game ensues
where 'no one is quite what they seem', as the self-referential dialogue
constantly reminds us.
|
|---|
|
Bit 3
|
The Spanish Prisoner is a very polished film and its style works
beautifully. As the awkward tone becomes familiar another strange
quality emerges, one where the whodunit genre is justified by refusing
to take itself seriously. When villains are revealed it comes as no
surprise, the film revels in clichés and stereotypes, and the good guys
win in an abruptly banal manner. The film implies that we are all in on
the joke from the start, a privilege earned through our overfamiliarity
with the 'twist after twist' flick. It's as if Mamet regards genre-film
culture as being exhausted of newness, while maintaining that the
skeleton of this sort of film has a great deal of substance. The Spanish
Prisoner is simultaneously a celebration of the suspense thriller and a
rejection of the overused narrative engines which drive it. The
overall effect of the film raises questions about the film-maker's faith
in the contemporary audience's potential to be hooked up to events of a
genre film's by the invisible thread of sight.
|
|---|
|
Bit 4
|
Rebecca Pidgeon's memorably overstated line, 'who in this world...is
what they seem?' applies to the film itself as much as it does to the
characters within it. More importantly, The Spanish Prisoner fits into a
growing category of films in the New Hollywood which make cynical
references to their story and genre through production, dialogue and
narrative techniques. Vastly different films such as Scream (1997),
Deconstructing Harry (1998), and The Spanish Prisoner are, in the same
way, changing the nature of some viewing pleasures by textualising their
own role in media culture. In each of these films this is achieved by
overstating stereotypes, and by bringing the film's components to our
attention through implicit or explicit references to film craft, popular
culture, or, in the case of The Spanish Prisoner, by gently mocking the
narrative that this sort of film would typically depend on. The various
sorts of deliberate mechanisms employed to distance the audience are a
fascinating symptom of contemporary media culture: these films are
achieving a fresh narrative by reminding us in different ways of the
culturally inherited devices that keep us coming back to the theatre.
|
|---|
| |
Bit 5
|
Details
The Spanish Prisoner, by Sony Pictures Classics, 1998.
Writer/Director: David Mamet.
Cinematography: Gabriel Beristain.
Cast: Campbell Scott, Rebecca Pidgeon, Steve Martin, Ben Gazzara.
|
|---|
| |
Bit 6
|
Citation reference for this article
MLA style:
Ben King. "It's Not What's Said, It's the Way It's Said: 'The Spanish Prisoner'." M/C Reviews 15 Dec. 1998.
[your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/screen/prisoner.html>.
Chicago style:
Ben King, "It's Not What's Said, It's the Way It's Said: 'The Spanish Prisoner'," M/C Reviews 15 Dec. 1998,
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/screen/prisoner.html> ([your date of access]).
APA style:
Ben King. (1998) It's not what's said, it's the way it's said: 'The Spanish Prisoner'. M/C Reviews 15 Dec. 1998.
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/screen/prisoner.html> ([your date of access]).
|
|---|
|
|
![[image]](http://www.spe.sony.com/classics/spanishprisoner/stillsclipspics/cs1-t.jpg)