Carol Reed’s The Running Man – A Confused Sense Of The Incomplete

Carol Reed’s The Running Man is a strange film. Among Reed’s filmography it does not have a strong legacy. When we hear his name our first thought is The Third Man, quickly followed by other classics like Odd Man Out, Our Man In Havana or The Fallen Idol. The same is probably true for the film’s leads too; Lee Remick, Alan Bates and Laurence Harvey. Its not the film that springs to mind. The Running Man is strange then because it is unfamiliar to us despite the familiarity of its creators.

And its strange because there is something dissatisfying about it, but this disatisfaction is, counterintuitively, also its allure. Lee Remick and Laurence Harvey are a married couple who fake Harvey’s death, collect the insurance money and then hole themselves up in Spain – its sunshine and sangria. Alan Bates plays the insurance investigator, a kind and thoughtful man, who visits Remick just after her “bereavment”. A fly gets in their eye when Bates shows up in Spain, apparently on holiday, and decides to tag along. The mystery however, is whether he is onto them or whether it is merely a co-incidence.

Jokes that aren’t funny are fascinating because they create these odd moments that just hang in the air. Unfunny jokes provide us with the form of a joke but not the substance. They draw us in but do not give us the completion we were expecting and so we are left pensive. They are actually quite provocative and activate the critical thinking part of our psyche. Carol Reed’s The Running Man is a bit like this. For some curious reason the film just doesn’t quite land. Its not quite funny, its not quite a thriller, and its neither dramatic nor romantic but nor is it tragic although there are moments of each – it has the form of all of these at various times but as a whole is none of them. This formal frustration is the source of the film’s interest. It just leaves itself hanging in the air for us to ponder.

The effect of The Running Man is similar to that of other films from the history of European cinema. The Italian comedy featuring star actors from earlier decades can be placed in the same bracket. There is Antonio Pietrangeli’s The Magnificent Cuckold – another film with a weak legacy but featuring Claudia Cardinale and Ugo Tognazzi. Billed as an “Italian sex comedy”, it is has the structures and rhythms of comedy but is not funny, at least not to a 21st century British sensibility. Similarly, there is Ettore Scola’s “comedy in the Italian way”  Jealousy Italian Style with giants Marcello Mastroianni and Monica Vitti.  This is not to demean these films but to say they create this same simultaneous feeling of the familiar and the unfamiliar.

An Englishman on holiday in Spain may experience the same, strange feeling. The structure and order of life in Spain are much the same as in England. But the substance is different; the language, the architecture, the names.  Might this create, within the tourist, a confused sense of the incomplete?

OTHER NOTES
The Compassionate Actor – Ralph Richardson in Carol Reed’s The Fallen Idol

LINKS
Cast and crew list on IMDB
The Running Man on MUBI lists