John Frankenheimer's sometimes overwrought but mostly powerful version of Bernard Malamud's novel stars Alan Bates as a Jewish handyman in Tsarist Russia who faces myriad charges when he attempts to pass himself off as a Christian. Not always easy to sit through, the film throws horror after horror at Bates, who goes from sneaky to self-righteous to insane to martyr. Bates gives a towering performance and the strong supporting cast includes Dirk Borgarde as his (oddly debonair) lawyer, Georgia Brown as the sleazy mother of a murdered boy and Hugh Griffith as a drunken anti-Semite. Elizabeth Hartman is strangely cast as Giffith's amorous daughter. David Warner and Ian Holm are in it too and there's a very outré cameo by Murray Melvin as a priest (hoping to convert the very uninterested Bates). Frankenheimer and scriptwriter Dalton Trumbo do a very good job recreating a really horrible time in Russian history and the Hungarian countryside makes a good substitute as a decidedly cold Kiev. There's stunning cinematography by Marcel Grignon. The chilling music score by Maurice Jarre is marred by some really shrieking violin solos.
Review of The Fixer
