Like all superior thriller movies, the 1978 thriller movie The Silent Companion introduces an intriguing thriller premise after which attaches issues and surprises that generate suspense and pressure all the way in which to the movie’s thrilling conclusion. The Silent Companion additionally takes the time to develop fascinating characters. The Silent Companion stars Elliott Gould as Miles Teller, a seemingly meek teller at a financial institution in a Toronto shopping center who suspects that the unsmiling mall Santa lurking across the mall intends to rob the financial institution.
By the point that ruthless legal Harry Reikle, disguised because the mall Santa, does certainly rob the financial institution, Miles has already stashed the financial institution’s day by day transactions, over $48,000, in a lunch field, leaving Reikle to flee with solely a small quantity. When Reikle realizes that he’s being outsmarted and shorted by Miles, Reikle proceeds to relentlessly stalk and threaten him in pursuit of the cash, which Miles has cleverly hidden. From right here, The Silent Companion develops an intense cat-and-mouse dynamic through which Miles and Reikle are restricted by their potential to implicate one another.
Launched with little fanfare in 1978, The Silent Companion was ignored by audiences on the time of its launch and took greater than 40 years to obtain the nice and cozy recognition the movie deserved in 1978. That includes clockwork plotting, fascinating characters and performances, Hitchcockian pressure, and skillful path, The Silent Companion deserves to be thought to be the most effective thrillers of the Seventies.
‘The Silent Companion’ Is a Masterpiece of Suspense and Stress
The Silent Companion
- Launch Date
-
September 7, 1978
- Runtime
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102 minutes
- Forged
-
Christopher Plummer
, Elliott Gould
, Susannah York
, Céline Lomez
, Michael Kirby
, Ken Pogue
, John Sweet
, Gail Dahms-Bonine
, Michael Donaghue
, Sean Sullivan
, Jack Duffy
, Nancy Simmonds
, Nuala Fitzgerald
, Man Sanvido
, Charlotte Blunt
, Aino Pirskanen
, Michele Rosen
, Ben Williams
, Sandy Crawley
, Jan Campbell
, Jimmy Davidson
, Eva Norman
, John Kerr
, Sue Lumsden
, Harry Amey
The Silent Companion transcends the financial institution theft style by a surprising opening reversal through which the meant goal of the theft, Elliott Gould’s financial institution teller Miles Cullen, turns into the precise robber, whereas the supposed legal, Christopher Plummer’s Harry Reikle, turns into a sufferer of Miles’ elaborate deception. Within the aftermath of the theft, Miles finally ends up with the majority of the cash, over $48,000, whereas Reikle, disguised as a mall Santa Claus, is on the run from the police.
With the flawless anticipation and timing with which Miles executes his swiftly assembled plan to steal the cash for himself, The Silent Companion demonstrates a degree of precision and talent that recollects Alfred Hitchcock in his prime. Really, The Silent Companion generates a lot the identical degree of pleasure and pressure as Hitchcock’s remaining masterpiece, the 1972 thriller Frenzy, through which an harmless man is implicated in a collection of strangling murders dedicated by his greatest buddy.
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In The Silent Companion, Miles turns into inexorably implicated within the sadistic Reikle’s crimes, particularly as Miles can’t say something as a consequence of his personal precarious scenario. In spite of everything, Miles has stolen greater than $48,000 from the financial institution at which he’s unhappily employed. In detailing how Miles extricates himself from this more and more nightmarish predicament, The Silent Companion, which was scripted by future Academy Award winner Curtis Hanson, emerges as a thriller of unusual ingenuity and intelligence.
Gould and Plummer Create a Diabolical Partnership in ‘The Silent Companion’
The Silent Companion options a superb leading-man efficiency by Elliott Gould, whose disarming quirkiness made Gould oddly trendy as a number one man within the Seventies. Gould’s unconventional look is very efficient in The Silent Companion in establishing the ability of underestimation that Gould’s character, the seemingly non-threatening Miles, wields like a magic spell within the movie, through which the timid Miles is the final individual anybody would suspect of masterminding a financial institution heist.
One one that doesn’t underestimate Miles is the harmful Reikle. As performed by Christopher Plummer in considered one of Plummer’s greatest display performances, Reikle embodies cruelty and wickedness. After being duped by Miles, Reikle brutally assaults a girl in an disagreeable scene that serves to focus on what Reikle is ready to do to Miles if Miles doesn’t give Reikle the cash.
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The connection between Miles and Reikle is considered one of worry but in addition mutual respect for what the opposite is able to. Reikle marvels at Miles’ cleverness and intelligence, with which Miles regularly frustrates Reikle by anticipating Reikle’s strikes. By the tip of the movie, there’s actual suspense concerning whether or not the deranged Reikle’s pursuit of Miles, who turns into satisfied that Reikle will kill him even when he provides Reikle the cash, is pushed as a lot by humiliation and wounded delight as pure greed.
Roger Ebert Liked ‘The Silent Companion’
The Silent Companion was financed by Canada’s Capital Value Allowance, which was created to spice up Canadian movie manufacturing by offering beneficiant tax deductions. The Canadian tax shelter period resulted in a stream of exploitation and horror movies that includes B-level Hollywood stars, such because the basic 1974 slasher movie Black Christmas with Keir Dullea and Olivia Hussey. Nonetheless, regardless of its doubtful level of origin, The Silent Companion, which was directed by Daryl Duke, turned one of the vital acclaimed Canadian movie productions of the Seventies.
Regardless of a lackluster promotional marketing campaign and theatrical launch, The Silent Companion acquired glorious important critiques on the time of its launch. One of many movie’s most ardent important admirers was the good Roger Ebert. In Ebert’s evaluate of The Silent Companion, Ebert, who mentioned that he approached the film with low expectations, praised The Silent Companion for its intelligent plotting and glorious performances whereas additionally evaluating The Silent Companion favorably to the work of Alfred Hitchcock. Ebert wrote:
“I used to be witness to a small miracle: To a thriller that was not solely clever and properly acted but in addition had essentially the most audaciously clockwork plot I’ve seen in a very long time. The Silent Companion’s plot, certainly, has such ironies and reversals and neatly inevitable triple-crosses that it’s worthy of Hitchcock.”
The Silent Companion is obtainable to lease on Prime Video and Apple TV.