Winter Kills (1979) resides somewhere in a narrow spectrum of genre space between comedy and conspiracy thriller. For this reason, it often gets called a “dark comedy” or “political satire.” Written & directed by William Richert (from a 1974 novel by Richard Condon), the film is a hyper-paranoiac romp through a maddening maze of political conspiracy, organized crime, and family betrayal. The cast is literally star-studded like that of a blockbuster, but a troubled production history and general oddness killed any chances the film had with the box office. Almost immediately upon release it plunged into obscurity, only to emerge later as a cult favorite eventually restored to its proper cultural status. In recent months a new 35mm IB Technicolor print has been making the rounds at revival cinemas. (See the new trailer below.)
The film is deadly serious in its subject matter — the assassination of a President and its subsequent cover-up — but along the way offers a number of laugh-provoking moments, largely due to the humor of pathos and absurdity. Some of the jokes are likely intentional, but several humorous moments just as likely are not. Still, the overall experience of the film is not the ponderous feeling one experiences after watching JFK or The Parallax View, but more akin to the slightly bemused and confused reaction of, “What the hell did I just watch?”
The cast is led by Jeff Bridges, playing Nick Kegan, the younger brother of the assassinated President Timothy Kegan. Nick is the sensitive younger brother, a would-be jazz pianist living off his father’s dime. Unlike Tim, Nick never took any interest in politics. John Huston portrays “Pa” Kegan, the father of the political clan, with a wacky exuberance than only Huston could provide. The resemblance of the Kegan family to the Kennedy clan is hardly coincidental. More than once it’s evident the film wants you to think of the Kennedys. During one scene, Pa challenges Nick to guess how many women Tim bedded while President. “One thousand seventy-two,” the old man tells him.
The mysterious Yvette
Nick doesn’t care: he is more of a romantic than his sybaritic father and brother. Nick is in love and wants to marry Yvette Malone (played by Belinda Bauer), a gorgeous French journalist whose libertine lifestyle sometimes troubles him. Ironically, Yvette more closely resembles Pa or Tim Kegan rather than Nick. She callously mocks his romanticism and flippantly dismisses his marriage proposal. With her arrogant confidence and promiscuous lifestyle, along with a powerful ambition that shows itself when Nick lets her in on the secret, Yvette could fit in well with the callous power-players Nick clearly abhors. Either his naiveté or his infatuation seem to prevent Nick from fully realizing this: Yvette will do anything for a story, just as Pa Kegan will do anything for power.
Nick faces opposition.
As with most conspiracy thrillers, the plot is one misleading scene after another: theories proffered and negated, questions answered with more questions, various contradictory stories, all of which eventually grow into an even more confusing enigma. Largely guided by his father, Nick is led through a series of meetings with millionaires and criminals, each of whom points a finger in a different direction. These encounters reveal little other than the lack of much contrast between a businessman and a gangster. The meetings become both threatening and absurd as Nick pursues confusing leads. In Philadelphia at the site of the assassination, three men are suddenly killed as they sit in a car with Nick (he is strangely untouched). A maid tries to murder Nick in his bedroom as his bumbling butler stands by watching. Driving to meet an eccentric millionaire, Nick finds himself on a mock battlefield where armored tanks pursue one another for the amusement of the rich man, then chase Nick from the property, firing their cannons and barely missing his car. While meeting with a New York mobster, Nick narrowly avoids both being poisoned and bombed. A colorfully dressed woman riding a bicycle seems to be both a harbinger of disaster and somehow connected to the conspiracy.
The confusing labyrinth eventually leads Nick directly to the source of the conspiracy and the identity of his brother’s killer. But not before what is likely the oddest performance in the film. In a movie that features John Huston chewing scenery, Toshiro Mifune struggling to speak English, and Elizabeth Taylor uttering not a single line, the performance of Anthony Perkins stands out as the most bizarre and memorable.
Cerruti knows.
Perkins appears as the strange John Cerruti, a man who works for Pa Kegan as the chief of their private intelligence network. Cerruti holds office in a Brutalist concrete building and presides over an austere cathedral-like room with vast cabinets of files that stretch floor to ceiling. Dozens of anonymous employees labor at computer terminals in the background. According to Pa Kegan, Cerruti is a wealthy man who chooses to live in a tiny apartment in New York City. Cerruti is a man singularly obsessed with his job. He explains to Nick that this is the true center of Pa Kegans power: information that can be bartered or used to extort, financial data that can leverage corporations or collapse entire nations, contracts governing every aspect of the business empire. Perkins delivers his lines in a clipped and detached tone, almost inhuman, his rapid delivery spilling numerous facts and conjectures in an eerily poetic manner.
It is Cerruti who eventually spells it all out for Nick, exposing both the futile absurdity of his quest and the danger of searching for answers. There’s no chance of a happy ending with this search, Cerruti warns. Nick’s determination to solve this puzzle will only result in a solution Nick is unwilling to hear. When he finally forces the truth out of Cerruti, the solution to the mystery is really not all that surprising. The only person who is really shocked is Nick.
Conspiracy thrillers typically feature a climax that resembles that of the classic “drawing room” murder mystery, where all the suspects are gathered into one room for the revelation of the killer. In the conspiracy thriller version, the few individuals remaining alive are somehow brought to one place, where the final truth is revealed. The key difference in the two forms is that the revelation of the murderer always gives resolution to the plot: the detective describes known events, explains mysterious clues, clears up any contradictions, and then fingers the killer (who is usually swept away to receive justice by law).
The revelation of the conspiracy thriller provides no neat summaries, only a summation of the confusing course of events and information that brought us to this point. While the chief culprit may be revealed, there is seldom legal justice for the conspirators, and even their demise does not provide much resolution or satisfaction. The hero remains in a world where such things can occur, and will occur again in the future. In the murder mystery, the murderer gets caught, justice is served, and everyone goes home feeling safer. At the end of a conspiracy thriller, we are left in a world where the bad guys evade justice, the system covers for them, and we are all powerless to effect change or feel safe.