Pierrepoint

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  August 27, 2008

  johnattridge

  There's an unnatural chill to the execution scenes in Adrian Shergold's 'Pierrepoint'. The atmosphere is dry yet suffocating; cold and detached, but reeking of the potential of humanity. To take a life is always a hot topic of debate, and its effect can have far-reaching, damagin...( read more)g consequences. In society, and in the mind.
  
  As Albert Pierrepoint follows in his father's footsteps, he is admired for his work. Disposing of murderers, rapists, and nazi's. He insists it is merely a job, a duty. He tells an assistant that he never mixes his-self with his hangman; that the two are separate, and must remain that way. But as the attitude toward the death penalty alters among public conscious, Albert Pierrepoint is branded a killer. A murderer. And he struggles to repress the feelings that have been boiling away for so long.
  
  The film chronicles the life of Pierrepoint from 1932 to the abolition of the penalty in '65, and if the picture has a notable flaw it is only that it moves between time too frequently, and at too much haste. But the drama is strong and genuine, and the dismal, gloomy cinematography makes for an authentic look at the time era. The film never drops that sense of bleakness that heightens the character's dilemma's when they float to the surface.
  
  Timothy Spall is always better in serious roles; for some reason he is considered a pantomime actor in Hollywood, (Harry Potter, Enchanted, Sweeney Todd...) but unfairly so. He is tolerant and stoical as Pierrepoint, just as he insists he should be. Emotion is a sign of weakness, and those seconds away from death should be dealt with respect. Albert works to break the record; to give his - customers? victims? - a clean and quick departure. Spall holds his own for the entire picture. Juliet Stevenson is also impressive as his ambitious, if suffering wife, exuding an indifference to her husband's work until he begs for her to speak of it. All she can show is disgust.
  
  The film's success lies at avoiding being anti-capital punishment but instead offering a balanced view at this man's life - a man extremely affected by the subject. Pierrepoint is modest and enjoys his private life, so that when his work is made public, he doesn't know how to separate the husband from the workman. As the two inevitably converge he struggles to hide his guilt and fear, a theme that climaxes with the sentence of one of Pierrepoint's local acquaintance's. Many famous names - Timothy Evans, Ruth Ellis - crop up in the cell, but this death is by far the most shocking, gut-wrenching, and sad.
  
  'Pierrepoint' is a confident and mature look at wartime England and one man's struggle with his own conscience. The film ends with the claim that Pierrepoint hanged 608 people. And that in later life, he believed all the death penalty offered was revenge. I wonder at what stage in his life he came to that conclusion. If while still in his profession, what made him feel compelled to continue.

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  June 16, 2009

  jfvirey

  Albert Pierrepoint was a XXth century hangman who is said to have hanged 608 people, including 200 Nazi war criminals and several women. The film covers about thirty years of his life, though the main actor (Timothy Spall, the photographer from "Shooting the Past") does not age, ...( read more)and one does not really get a real feeling of the flow of time, unless one pays close attention to clothes, especially in the few newsreels that are integrated into some of the scenes.
  
  The subject is rather bleak, and the film is very slow, but one execution did make me cry, and the whole experience left me with the feeling of sharing some of Pierrepoint's guilt or at least his "impurity" for having hanged so many people. There is an immediacy to some of the death scenes that makes you feel you are both victim and executioner, and have actually been through the process on both sides.
  
  The issue of the death penalty has not been one that has troubled me much. To be honest, I am more concerned about the mass murder of civilians in war or animals in the food industry, i.e. with the suffering and death of the innocent. My main problem with the death penalty is that occasionally, innocent people do get killed (some such people are shown in the film, like Timothy John Evans, who was falsely accused of murdering his daughter, while his necrophiliac landlord did it, but being unfamiliar with any of them, the whole thing escaped my attention until I did some additional reading.) But what the film made me realise was what it felt like to be the man who actually performed the deed with his own hands, or the woman he touches with those same hands.

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  April 19, 2009

  Budgeburgess

  Originally made for television, "Pierrepoint" is the story of Britain's most prolific hangman (not the last, there were nearly forty further executions after he retired from the duty). Albert Pierrepoint was, in fact, the third generation of executioner in his family (his fathe...( read more)r and grandfather had fulfilled the role before him).
  
  Given the subject matter, this is a surprisingly moving film, carried along by a superb performance by Timothy Spall and by an outstanding sense of period and place. Set in the austere decades of wartime and postwar England, direction and design capture a real feel for the era and for the gradual passing of time which led to a change in attitude, culminating in the abolition of the death penalty (abolished in 1969, though the last executions were carried out in 1964).
  
  The film portrays Albert Pierrepoint as a conscientious, dignified man who took no gratuitous pleasure in his profession, but who sought to make the last moments of condemned prisoners as calm and as dignified as possible. The film slowly acquaints us with the ordinariness of the executioner's task and routines. Surprisingly, it was a part time job - Pierrepoint worked as a delivery man before taking on the proprietorship of a Manchester pub, being summoned by appointment to the various prisons in England where he carried out his duties.
  
  Spall presents the man as decent, as determined to hold on to his anonymity - it was years before he even told his wife what he did on his 'trips'. The call to execute Nazi war criminals after the Nuremberg trials, however, plunged him into the public spotlight and, thereafter, he was subjected to pressures from both the pro- and anti-capital punishment lobby. A private, decent man, he could nevertheless enjoy himself during his leisure time, performing an impromptu cabaret act with a friend in his local pub.
  
  Spall voices opinions recorded by Pierrepoint in his autobiography - his insistence that, once executed, the dead person had served their sentence and they were entitled to have their remains treated with respect and dignity. He takes great professional pride in the speed and sensitivity of his actions. However, the responsibilities he carried appear to have placed him under greater and greater strain, and his exposure to publicity and occasional personal attack took their toll.
  
  It's a film which avoids the sensational, the morbid, or the macabre. What comes across is the sheer ordinariness of the job - and the extraordinary compassion of the man and his sense of humanity. Spall is a fine, fine actor, and he is ably supported by Juliet Stephenson as his wife and the excellent Eddie Marsan as his friend and fellow public house performer.
  
  Pierrepoint would, after his retirement, state that he felt capital punishment failed to act as a deterrent, and recorded that many of the people he executed (over 600) had gone to their deaths with courage and resignation. What the film possibly does not capture is a real insight into this enigmatic character and the conflict he apparently felt about the need to perform his task decently while doubting its very validity. Did he only conclude that the death penalty was not a deterrent after he retired, or had it been a concern during his career?
  
  Nevertheless, an exceptional film, beautifully made and very well performed, and a thoroughly engaging piece of cinema.

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  August 30, 2008

  friskyflugette

  Timothy Spall was simply brilliant in the title role. It was fascinating to watch the detirmination of the hangman and what it was like back in the days of capital punishment.

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  August 25, 2008

  rsla1993

  Timohty Spall was amazing in this role because it was so real..like you could really imagine him actually being Albert Pierrepoint

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