COP-OUT / STRANGER IN THE HOUSE (1967)

Drinking steadily since losing a hanging case sixteen years ago, dropping friends, family, position and reputation over time before a promising, but difficult new case brings a chance for renewal . . . if only he can keep it together once he gets to court.  Paul Newman played the type at 58 in THE VERDICT/’82; and here James Mason, sober adversary then, takes on leading dipsomaniac barrister 15 years earlier when he was also 58.  Too bad he didn’t get Newman’s script and director.*  Instead, writer/producer Pierre Rouve, no doubt using his success as exec producer of BLOW-UP/’66, directed for the first and last time.  Michelangelo Antonioni he ain’t.  Other than costumes and London location, there’s little ‘Mod’ about this one, a reset George Simenon novel which must have gotten by on character & atmosphere.  Both gone missing with the switch to ‘60s London.  (The search for ‘Mod’ elements the likely reason for retitling this COP-OUT Stateside.  Note psychedelic poster art.)  Brittle Geraldine Chaplin, in career free-fall after DR. ZHIVAGO/’65, and Bobby Darin, in general free-fall, are around as daughter and nasty interloper to little effect.  So too the film.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Mason did get that film’s director immediately before this, playing in similar world-weary mode for Sidney Lumet in their underrated early John Le Carré adaptation THE DEADLY AFFAIR/’66.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-deadly-affair-1966.html