elliott gould

Little Murders

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Elliott Gould and Marcia Rodd in a car

1971’s Little Murders gets the jump on Annie Hall by a handful of years. Woody Allen’s 1977 film was originally going to be called Anhedonia (an echo remains in his ultimate title) and was about a guy who couldn’t feel anything, which is what the condition of anhedonia is. Little Murders takes the same idea in a different direction – bleaker, less digressive and only funny in a weird way. Originally Jean-Luc Godard was going to direct but instead Alan Arkin ended up behind the camera, honouring Godard with a New Wave-style approach to the material – fast edits, scenes crashed into and out of, nothing too fancy in terms of lighting, as if … Read more

Capricorn One

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Sam Waterston, Josh Brolin and OJ Simpson as the astronauts on the run

According to conspiracy theorists, Kubrick shot the Moon landings. Peter Hyams is in some respects a better candidate. His Capricorn One is all about a faked journey into space, and is undoubtedly the inspiration behind many of the whisperings about Nasa making the whole thing up. Why does Kubrick get name-checked so much more often than Hyams then? Probably because Kubrick is a better film-maker, even though the space sections of his 2001: A Space Odyssey look far more obviously bogus than Hyams’s later mission-to-Mars movie. 1977’s Capricorn One is also a bit of a mess, whereas 2001, for all the messing around, is not. Hyams does his best work early on and … Read more

The Silent Partner

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Elliott Gould and Susannah York

The story goes that Elliott Gould screened The Silent Partner for Alfred Hitchcock after it was finished. Hitchcock apparently liked it, as well he might, since it’s about 75 per cent Hitchcock by look and theme. There’s a blonde, a bit of mistaken identity, a nobody who finds he’s a somebody when tested, and even a nod to Hitchcock’s set pieces, particularly in the finale. Gould plays a meek bank teller who discovers quite by chance that there’s going to be a raid on his bank, and that a guy disguised as Santa Claus is going to do it – I won’t explain but it’s either ingenious or ridiculous depending on which side … Read more

Mash

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Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould

An on-screen statement, put there at the behest of a nervous film studio, claims this film is about the goings-on at a field hospital during the Korean War. That statement apart, this is obviously a film about Vietnam, a war the Americans had already lost at home, if not yet out on the field of battle. Now, decades later, from the other end of the countercultural telescope, Mash’s relentless portrayal of the military hierarchy as being overrun by charlatans and buffoons seems a bit old hat. But the director making it had earned the right to his opinion. Robert Altman was a veteran of the Second World War who’d gone on to become … Read more