Mirage

One summer afternoon in 1965,  I was in New York City with my parents.  As tourists, we were wandering around the streets of Manhattan looking for something to do.  We passed a cinema on Broadway and decided to go in and watch a movie.  It was called Mirage and starred Gregory Peck.  In those days, his name on a marquee was enough to attract the movie-going public.  This black and white film was directed by Edward Dmytryk and had an excellent supporting cast of Diane Baker, Walter Matthau, George Kennedy, Kevin McCarthy, Leif Erickson, and Jack Weston.  The screenplay was written by Peter Stone, who two years earlier had written the screenplay for the very successful film, Charade (which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song), starring Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, along with the same Walter Matthau and George Kennedy.

When we entered the cinema that day, Mirage had already begun.  But for us, this was normal.  When we would go to the Oswego Theater in my home town, the decision to go would usually be a spur of the moment one and our arrival would have no relationship to any movie schedule.  We would watch the movie from the point at which we arrived until the end.  Then we would sit through previews, newsreels, cartoons, serials, and sometimes a second feature, until finally our movie would begin again.  When the point of the movie arrived when we had entered the theater, we would get up and leave.  One of us would say, “This is where we came in.”  To me, that was normal.  Today, I think it a very strange way to see a movie.  Today (and for most of my life) I am guided by the movie schedule.  I would not think of entering a theater after the movie had started.  

However, that day in 1965, I am glad we entered the cinema when we did, after the movie had already begun.  Why?  It had to do with the story and how it should have been told.

Mirage begins when David, a chemist who works for a private foundation, has discovered a way to neutralize nuclear radiation, which is a good thing.  However, it creates the possibility of radiation-free atomic bombs, which can be a bad thing.  He takes his yet undeveloped discovery to the office of the president of the foundation, which is on the twenty-seventh floor of a New York City skyscraper.  David believes his discovery is too dangerous and decides to destroy the only copy of its formula.  He opens the window and starts burning the paper it is written on.  The president of the foundation, a humanitarian who believes in the formula’s peaceful uses, tries to stop him, loses his balance, and falls out of the window.

David, utterly shocked at seeing this man whom he admires fall to his death, suffers “unconscious amnésia.”  He walks out of the president’s office forgetting who he is and what he has just witnessed (this is where film actually begins).  At exactly this point in the movie, my parents and I entered the cinema.  Like David, we had no idea what had just happened.  All four of us were confused.  However, the rest of the theater audience knew exactly what had happened (wrong).  Slowly over the next hour and a half the mystery is solved.  The shock gradually gives way and David’s memory slowly returns.

In my opinion, the story should have been told in this manner (and it was):  both the protagonist and the audience equally in the dark.  It would have created a more interesting detective story similar to an earlier Gregory Peck movie (Spellbound directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1945) where his character also had amnésia.  There, both Peck and the audience had to simultaneously try to put all the pieces together. 

Mirage plays out as a Hitchcock-like suspense thriller.  After the shock, David doesn’t remember who he is, but a beautiful woman tells him they have a relationship.  That is a good thing.  On the other hand, two gunmen threaten him for some unknown reason, which is a bad thing.  It all relates to sinister forces that are trying to obtain his formula, which he has forgotten all about.  However, by the end of the movie, good triumphs over evil.  If you get a chance to watch Mirage, which I recommend, it will be a good lesson in how movies should be edited.