The Disappearance *** (1977, Donald Sutherland, Francine Racette, David Hemmings, Christopher Plummer, John Hurt, David Warner, Peter Bowles, Virginia McKenna ) – Classic Movie Review 8160

Director Stuart Cooper’s 1977 Canadian neo noir thriller The Disappearance is a sleekly made and intriguing upmarket mystery, based on Derek Marlowe’s novel Echoes of Celandine, starring Donald Sutherland as a contract killer called Jay Mallory.

The hitman, who is obsessed with the vanishing of his wife Celandine (Francine Racette) from their home, is working for an international organisation who has hired him to carry out a hit, and begins to think is responsible for Celandine’s disappearance, somehow associated with his last job. Christopher Plummer plays Deverell, his sinister boss, who assigns Mallory another job, in England, which he starts to think is a setup, again connected with Celandine’s disappearance.

Well cast and on good form, Sutherland is great at the head of a top cast, and some of the film is exciting, and all of it is intriguing, even if there is a tendency to put style before content and some audiences were put off by the refusal to buckle down to a good thriller yarn. Cooper is going for an art movie and Paul Mayersberg certainly likes to write a tricksy screenplay, but that is okay too.

It runs 101 minutes but the 88 minutes version is the muddled American release cutdown.

David Hemmings produces as well as stars, along with John Hurt, David Warner, Peter Bowles, Virginia McKenna and Michèle Magny, Robin Sachs and Dan Howard.

Francine Racette has been married to Donald Sutherland since August 1990. They have three children. They also starred together in Alien Thunder (1974).

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8160

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