MIRAGE

US, 1965, 108 minutes, Black and white.
Gregory Peck, Diane Baker, Walter Matthau, Kevin Mc Carthy, Jack Weston, George Kennedy.
Directed by Edward Dmytryk.

Mirage is a thriller based on a novel by Howard Fast and adapted for the screen by Peter Stone (who adapted the very popular mystery thriller, Charade, two years earlier).

This is a star vehicle for Gregory Peck, as an accountant who enters a building and finds himself completely disoriented, thinking that he has amnesia, trying to puzzle what has happened and put the pieces together, and trying to deal with murders happening around him. Diane Baker is his girlfriend and various supporting actors loom ominously and suspiciously including Walter Matthau, Kevin Mc Carthy and George Kennedy.

The film was directed by Edward Dmytryk who began his career in the 1940s with such films as Murder My Sweet but fell foul of the Un American Activities and was named as one of the Hollywood Ten. After the crisis, he went back to Hollywood and made a number of interesting and sometimes spectacular films including The Caine Mutiny, Raintree County and The Young Lions.

1. The tone of the title and its implications? How suitable for this puzzle?

2. The use of black and white photography, the New York backgrounds, the atmosphere of city and offices?

3. What thriller techniques were used? how well? The giving of enough clues? The element of surprise? The lights going out and the beginning of a nightmare? The gradual increasing of flashbacks to full knowledge?

4. How did the screenplay make the audience identify with David? Sharing his lack of knowledge, puzzle, growing memories and flashes? Sympathy for his plight? Sharing his amnesia?

5. The insight into a man with amnesia and his feelings? Discovering the real self that he is unaware of? The capacity for good or for evil? For idealism or crime? The fact that David was used by criminals?

6. The insight into big business and the criticisms of the use of science for crime? The lack of idealism in American capitalism?

7. The character of Cassell? Walter Matthau's style? The light and humorous touch amidst the puzzle? The gradual belief of Cassell in David's story? The sudden pathos of his murder?

8. How interesting as a person was Sheila? Her sudden intrusions into David's life? a convincing woman of mystery? Was she convincing in her turning against the major and the finale with David?

9. How puzzling were the villains? The pursuit? The shootings? The Major? How puzzling were the intrusions of these men, the final explanations? The Major and Josephson as types?

10. The use of chases, murders, risks and dangers?

11. How successful a film of its genre was Mirage?