Focus Features

Lee Marvin in Point Blank

The birth of the French New Wave was one of the seminal moments in the evolution of cinema, one of those rare moments when the language of movies changes. The use of light-weight cameras, jump-cuts, shooting on real locations using available light, the director as auteur all had an incredible impact on how films were subsequently made – even in America.

Take 1967 - Bonnie and Clyde and Point Blank were released that year. The original director of Bonnie and Clyde was supposed to be Francois Truffaut – you can sense the influence of the New Wave on how the film was written and made. At the time Andrew Sarris said: "Bonnie and Clyde has confirmed Arthur Penn's position as the American Truffaut."

Similarly, the cross-cutting time shifts of Point Blank echo those in the films of Resnais – Hiroshima, Mon Amour, Last Year at Marienbad, Muriel – and the use of color is similar to that of the Italian New Wave, specifically the Antonioni of Red Desert and Blow Up.

So the next time you see Point Blank, watch it not as a John Boorman film or as a Lee Marvin film, but as if it's the American cousin of Breathless.

John Boorman has this to say about how the film came about:

“The producer Judd Bernard sent me a script based on a Richard Stark pulp novel. It was appalling. He also gave it to Lee Marvin, who was in London shooting The Dirty Dozen, and arranged for us to meet. I suggested a modest Italian restaurant in Soho. I was intimidated by Marvin's presence: his height, his huge head, the deep resonant voice. Everything around him seemed diminished. I felt like a miniature creature from another, tinier planet. He had just won the Academy Award for Cat Ballou.

Lee had no interest in small talk. 'What do you think of this piece?' I said it was a collection of clichés. Judd was kicking me under the table. Lee said, 'I agree. It's a piece of shit. So why are we here?'

'The character, Parker, is interesting,' I said, 'and I like the idea of a man betrayed by his wife and best friend and the futility of his quest for revenge.' I stumbled on, not saying much more than that; perhaps there was some kind of emotional resonance in my voice that Marvin picked up.

Director John Boorman

Lee left as soon as he had eaten. Judd was furious with me. Never demean your material. All you had to do was tell him how great the rewrite would be. I get you in a room with a major star and you blow it.

He made me promise to call Lee and try to retrieve the situation. It took me several days to gather the courage to do so. When I finally called Lee, he invited me for a drink at the flat he was renting. I talked about the character. I suggested that he had been emotionally and physically wounded to a point where he was no longer human. This made him frightening, but also pure, in a certain sense. He was beyond vanity and desire. His only connection with life was through violence, yet he lacked the conviction or cruelty or passion to take pleasure from it, or satisfaction from vengeance. I realized I was painting a bleak picture.

Lee was intrigued. He began to speak of his war as a marine fighting the Japanese through the islands of the Pacific. He had killed, been wounded, knew fear, had committed terrible acts. He was afraid that he had lost some essential element of his humanity in the brutal experience. The story, as I described it to him, touched on something that he dreaded to confront in his own life, yet was drawn to.

At the end of the evening, Lee looked me in the eye and said,' I'll do this flick with you, on one condition.'

'What's that?'

He tossed the script out of the window. It floated down two storeys, opening out, the pages fluttering like wings, until it came to rest in the gutter, a dying bird. It was a defining gesture. His acting was a continuous search for the cinematic metaphor, and this one was so perfect that both he and I were in its thrall. How could we not follow an enterprise so beautifully begun?

Many years later Mel Gibson did a remake of Point Blank, called Payback. I was asked at a press conference what I thought of it. I replied that although I had not seen it, I had read the script and that it bore a remarkable resemblance to the one Lee had thrown out of the window. I could only surmise that a very young Mel had been passing and picked it up from the gutter."

Extract taken from John Boorman's memoir, Adventures of a Suburban Boy (Faber & Faber, 2003).

Essential Viewing: Point Blank [Buy], Hell in the Pacific [Buy], Leo the Last [Buy], Deliverance [Buy], Excalibur [Buy], Hope and Glory [Buy], The General [Buy]

Lee Marvin in Point Blank

The birth of the French New Wave was one of the seminal moments in the evolution of cinema, one of those rare moments when the language of movies changes. The use of light-weight cameras, jump-cuts, shooting on real locations using available light, the director as auteur all had an incredible impact on how films were subsequently made – even in America.

Take 1967 - Bonnie and Clyde and Point Blank were released that year. The original director of Bonnie and Clyde was supposed to be Francois Truffaut – you can sense the influence of the New Wave on how the film was written and made. At the time Andrew Sarris said: "Bonnie and Clyde has confirmed Arthur Penn's position as the American Truffaut."

Similarly, the cross-cutting time shifts of Point Blank echo those in the films of Resnais – Hiroshima, Mon Amour, Last Year at Marienbad, Muriel – and the use of color is similar to that of the Italian New Wave, specifically the Antonioni of Red Desert and Blow Up.

So the next time you see Point Blank, watch it not as a John Boorman film or as a Lee Marvin film, but as if it's the American cousin of Breathless.

John Boorman has this to say about how the film came about:

“The producer Judd Bernard sent me a script based on a Richard Stark pulp novel. It was appalling. He also gave it to Lee Marvin, who was in London shooting The Dirty Dozen, and arranged for us to meet. I suggested a modest Italian restaurant in Soho. I was intimidated by Marvin's presence: his height, his huge head, the deep resonant voice. Everything around him seemed diminished. I felt like a miniature creature from another, tinier planet. He had just won the Academy Award for Cat Ballou.

Lee had no interest in small talk. 'What do you think of this piece?' I said it was a collection of clichés. Judd was kicking me under the table. Lee said, 'I agree. It's a piece of shit. So why are we here?'

'The character, Parker, is interesting,' I said, 'and I like the idea of a man betrayed by his wife and best friend and the futility of his quest for revenge.' I stumbled on, not saying much more than that; perhaps there was some kind of emotional resonance in my voice that Marvin picked up.

Director John Boorman

Lee left as soon as he had eaten. Judd was furious with me. Never demean your material. All you had to do was tell him how great the rewrite would be. I get you in a room with a major star and you blow it.

He made me promise to call Lee and try to retrieve the situation. It took me several days to gather the courage to do so. When I finally called Lee, he invited me for a drink at the flat he was renting. I talked about the character. I suggested that he had been emotionally and physically wounded to a point where he was no longer human. This made him frightening, but also pure, in a certain sense. He was beyond vanity and desire. His only connection with life was through violence, yet he lacked the conviction or cruelty or passion to take pleasure from it, or satisfaction from vengeance. I realized I was painting a bleak picture.

Lee was intrigued. He began to speak of his war as a marine fighting the Japanese through the islands of the Pacific. He had killed, been wounded, knew fear, had committed terrible acts. He was afraid that he had lost some essential element of his humanity in the brutal experience. The story, as I described it to him, touched on something that he dreaded to confront in his own life, yet was drawn to.

At the end of the evening, Lee looked me in the eye and said,' I'll do this flick with you, on one condition.'

'What's that?'

He tossed the script out of the window. It floated down two storeys, opening out, the pages fluttering like wings, until it came to rest in the gutter, a dying bird. It was a defining gesture. His acting was a continuous search for the cinematic metaphor, and this one was so perfect that both he and I were in its thrall. How could we not follow an enterprise so beautifully begun?

Many years later Mel Gibson did a remake of Point Blank, called Payback. I was asked at a press conference what I thought of it. I replied that although I had not seen it, I had read the script and that it bore a remarkable resemblance to the one Lee had thrown out of the window. I could only surmise that a very young Mel had been passing and picked it up from the gutter."

Extract taken from John Boorman's memoir, Adventures of a Suburban Boy (Faber & Faber, 2003).

Essential Viewing: Point Blank [Buy], Hell in the Pacific [Buy], Leo the Last [Buy], Deliverance [Buy], Excalibur [Buy], Hope and Glory [Buy], The General [Buy]