Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland

Google Image search for Charles Bronson and you will probably not find these pictures. You have to search his wife Jill Ireland's name and you'll come up with all kinds of interesting pictures of the couple together. That may or may not say a lot about our cultural assignment of gender roles, I tend to lean towards "Says a lot". It should go without saying that I knew neither of these people but I like Bronson movies a lot (understatement) and I find Charles and Jill's relationship interesting because in my mind they seem kindof like opposites, he the quiet reserved type, and her the prissy high maintenance type. I have no idea, I'm just guessing here. I also find it interesting because they worked together on numerous movies during their marriage (which ended with her death in 1990), more than one of which involved scenes of Bronson raping her, or nearly so. On the Blue Underground DVD of Violent City (in which Bronson both almost-rapes and kills her) director Sergio Sollima talks about the oddness of their relationship (I was not paying much attention so I forget what it was but it was similar to my thoughts)
According to IMDB, her first husband David McCallum introduced her to Charles on the set of The Great Escape which starred both men.

Of their working relationship Jill is quoted (on IMDB) as saying:
"I'm in so many Charles Bronson films because no other actress will work with him".

My personal favorite quote of his (also from IMDB):
"I guess I look like a rock quarry that someone has dynamited."

If even half of it is true there's one hell of a bio on Bronson at IMDB which I recommend checking out.

Violent City

Violent City (Citta Violenta)

Aka: The Family

Italy - 1970

Director – Sergio Sollima

Blue Underground, 2008, DVD

I picked up this movie simply because my boy is in it. Before I got a chance to watch it though, I discovered the soundtrack at Manchester Morgue, and found out that it was done by none other than Ennio Morricone. The music is so damn good I knew the movie would be too and I was downright anxious to watch this thing.

Sailing around on an expensive looking watercraft, and wasting no time at all, Jeff (Bronson) gets busy with the very very attractive Vanessa (Jill Ireland, who as we know by now, was actually his wife). Later during the credits Jeff and Vanessa wander around the city while a menacing hidden observer takes surveillance photos of them. Normally this might not warrant much notice but in this case largely thanks to Morricone, the credits are quite good and ratchet up the tension quite well.

Debarking from a plane the couple take a car but are soon being followed. Jeff drops the hammer to try and escape, a little bit hard to believe with the painfully fake overlay of passing roadway in the oddly static windows but we’ll take what we can get with Bronson at the wheel. Jeff drops Vanessa off and tries to lead the pursuers away but the car gets boxed in. In the subsequent shootout, Jeff manages to kill all his attackers despite being shot himself, but lands in an Italian jail with a couple of typically hyperbolic oddballs (thank the Italian talent for subtlety). An excuse it would seem to philosophize obtusely about the killer mentality with one of his cellmates and drop a little back story in the form of a flashback; that seductive mistress of plot development so many covet but so few can satisfy. We’ll see how this illicit relationship pans out in Citta Violenta.

The remarkably similar strange and distressing relationship between Jeff and Vanessa may be a clue. Back on the streets at last, Jeff tracks down Coogan, the man who shot him and Vanessa who it is now revealed, (again in a flashback) got into Coogan’s car during the gunfight.

Jeff will spend the rest of the film repeatedly torn between the ample and unquenchable ivory flesh of Vanessa and her absolutely inextinguishable desire to sell his ass out to every possible rung of the criminal hierarchy right on up to Jeff’s employer the head of the crime family, Weber played by a grinning Telly Savalas who seems to be having a lot of fun. Fortunately, as the accumulation of flashbacks (usually a dire sign) piled ever upward, Jeff began to grasp the breadth of Vanessa’s betrayal at about the same time I did. Jeff is a prisoner of his own lifestyle, mistrustful (rightfully I might add), unable to stop thinking like a killer, and unable to keep his mind off of Vanessa. (the quintessential and stereotypical sex/violence male dilemma) I’ll admit, I felt a little lecherous myself every time she was on screen wearing nothing but a smile and a conveniently placed piece of foreground scenery. Despite his severe reservations, as the intrigue is laid bare Jeff seems to come to terms with the confines of his own emotional prison, taking the final measure in an awesome climax that fairly neatly sets all those flashbacks in line and makes one hell of an imperfect movie.

Looking back across 40(!) years it’s easy to say that this is a pretty basic premise; professional killer wants to retire but his boss won’t let him. But even if the editing is a little to artsy for its own good, the film is still really good looking and just manages to keep its head above the tide of time-changes.

Violent City is available from Netflix.

An alternate DVD cover, German and Dutch VHS covers an Italian DVD cover and the cover of Morricone's soundtrack which I can't recommend enough.



A Japanese poster or one-sheet(?), the best promo piece I've found for Violent City.

Someone Behind the Door

Someone Behind the Door

France - 1971

Director – Nicolas Gessner

Gemstone Entertainment, 1988, VHS

Despite Bronson's decent performance in Rider on the Rain, it was a French film, as is Someone Behind the Door and that in itself is a tiny tragedy in a bottle. I bought this film, which is based on a French novel, strictly because of the Bronson name. I am above all loyal.

Mr. Bronson is dropped of in a daze at an English hospital where a brain doctor, Anthony Perkins takes him to a room and does cursory diagnosis and injects him with a tranquilizer before suggesting they return to his house where Perkins can “observe” him, something he does with his patients “occasionally.” OK, crude insinuation noted.

At his mansion, Perkins makes a lot of blunt suggestions, postulating explanatory possibilities for Bronson's loss of memory. While Bronson is out of the room Perkins plants a gun in his jacket pocket and drops several more tranquilizers in his orange juice. Really? When Bronson passes out Perkins dictates his sinister plot-like diagnosis onto a reel-to-reel tape. His wife, Jill Ireland wakes up and the two of them exchange bitter, hateful insults through a veil of coy and practiced friendliness. She leaves for a trip to visit her brother and Perkins goes through some kind of stiff awkward attempt at estranged husbandyness.

Bronson awakens and wanders the empty house inspecting fruit and searching for some purpose to his employment in this film. The waxen Perkins returns with a suitcase that contains a bunch of conveniently suggestive evidence, and a letter detailing infidelity and a sordid love triangle. Perkins further insinuates hypothetical explanations in order to rile Bronson, speculating all kinds heavy adulterous situations. Finding himself playing across from a disinterested two-dimensional wet blanket, Bronson decides he really ought to flip his wig if he’s going to make this film interesting.

Perkins shame unravels when Ireland's brother shows up looking for her, and its revealed that the whole thing is an elaborate harebrained scheme to frame Bronson for the murders Perkins intends to commit using the very justifications he’s been feeding to Bronson.
For reasons beyond my comprehension, it works, Ireland and her lover show up, and Bronson plays his role with glee, shooting the lover repeatedly, and tearing Ireland's clothes off in what amounts to a near-rape. (Keep in mind Bronson and Ireland were actually married at this point)

The many faces of emoting Bronson in Someone Behind the Door.

The whole thing takes on a depressing dimension because it’s quite clear that it is all an elaborate and subtle vilification of Perkins own sexuality and homosexuality in general, whether or not he realizes it or the film ever suggests anything overt is beside the point. In fact, that’s the real catch, it can’t be mentioned. Perhaps too it’s an accusation of a society that forces gays to hide themselves away and live double lives. That’s the second tragedy of this movie, I can’t tell who it’s pointing the finger at and if I keep it up I could dissect this thing for hours and that would be more boring than the film.

Perkins shuffles in pale and sweaty, withered by shame and the monstrous relief of being released from living his own double life. He breaks the news about the whole fake wife brainwashing thing and Ireland slips comfortably back into her sex object role, coolly mocking him with dripping disappointment and accusations, even slutty women (the deplorable/desirable patriarchal trope) it would seem are superior to the gays.

Bronson meanwhile has exited very quickly and is wandering the beach wondering what the hell happened.

Some alternate covers for the film, all of which vilify Bronsons character. The last one from Unicorn Video is my favorite but sadly does not improve the film.