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Man in the Middle

Starring: Robert Mitchum, France Nuyen, Trevor Howard

Director: Guy Hamilton

The film: Set and  partly filmed in India, Guy Hamilton's Man in the Middle features Robert Mitchum (Macao, Cape Fear) as a US army colonel roped into acting as the defence lawyer for an officer (Keenan Wynn) who has just murdered a British sergeant.

There's apparently no doubt as to his guilt. In the startling opening sequence we see him walk up to the sergeant and shoot him at point-blank range in front of 11 witnesses.

The British and American top brass want the case closed, but the ever languorous Mitchum, with little legal experience, plans to take his time.

Hamilton had a good novel by Howard Fast (who also wrote the novel Spartacus) and a great script by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall (A Kind of Loving, Billy Liar) to work with, and several actors who were in fine form. Best of these is Trevor Howard (Mutiny of the Bounty, Gandhi) as the army psychiatrist who provides an opening for Mitchum with his opinion of the accused's sanity.

Appealing as ever is France Nuyen as the love interest. She was the original choice for the title role in The World of Suzie Wong (1960), having already played the part opposite Star Trek's William Shatner on Broadway. (After shooting exterior shots with William Holden in Hong Kong, she later lost out to Nancy Kwan due to weight-gain issues.)

Half-French, half-Vietnamese, and born in Marseille,  Nuyen (above) later appeared as one of the mothers in Wayne Wang's The Joy Luck Club (1993), but mostly worked in television later in her career.

The back cover of this new DVD from Fox promises 'a mysterious conspiracy that could extend to the highest levels of military power', but this is somewhat off the mark.

The trial is a self-contained issue that's unlikely to have repercussions outside the military base whose officers are so desperate to get a conviction. And because of that it makes for a far more human story than expected, with Wynn's character neither sympathetic nor likeable in any way, but Mitchum's colonel willing to pass up promotion to see that he gets a fair trial. This quite compelling, if at times over-moralising scenario combined with some interesting  location shots in and around Delhi, make Man in the Middle a pleasantly surprising sleeper from a filmmaker who immediately moved on to direct Sean Connery in what many credit as the best of the Bond films, Goldfinger.

The extras: Light in the extra's department, this DVD offers a theatrical trailer and a series of stills and promotional shots that overplay Mitchum and Nuyen's romantic connection. The sound is offered in original mono or a new stereo version, and the excellent film transfer is pretty much faultless.



From the Vault: 1964