10 Rillington Place

10 Rillington Place

1971. Great Britain. Directed by Richard Fleischer. Screenplay by Clive Exton, based on the novel by Ludovic Kennedy. With Richard Attenborough, John Hurt, Judy Geeson. Alexander Payne (Nebraska, The Descendants, Sideways) introduces 10 Rillington Place to kick off his Carte Blanche selection and this year’s To Save and Project preservation festival. He calls the film “a sensational, haunting, and unjustly neglected psychological thriller in the unjustly neglected canon of Richard Fleischer, featuring wonderful performances by Richard Attenborough and John Hurt.” Fleischer was a Hollywood director of great versatility, deft at period drama (The Happy Time, Mandingo), the war movie (Between Heaven and Hell), and sci-fi and adventure (Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Fantastic Voyage, and Soylent Green). But Fleischer particularly excelled at the crime thriller and the police procedural, from noir-tinged nail-biters like Armored Car Robbery, The Narrow Margin, Violent Saturday, and The Last Run to headline-ripping true-crime stories like The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (a highlight of To Save and Project 2011), Compulsion, and The Boston Strangler. One of the terrific rediscoveries of this year’s festival, 10 Rillington Place is his taut and eloquent recounting of the sensational crimes of postwar British serial killer John Christie. Focusing equally on the miscarriage of justice that led an innocent man to the gallows, the film crystallizes Fleischer’s lifelong fascination with “criminality as an illness, capital punishment as barbarity.” Preserved print courtesy Sony Pictures Repertory. 111 min.