the disappearance

For cinephiles, the first question one asks upon watching The Disappearance (1977) is “why haven’t I seen this…or even heard of it!” Starring Donald Sutherland, David Warner, John Hurt, David Hemmings and Christopher Plummer, the cast alone only deepens the mystery behind the film’s unceremonious shelving by an uninterested distributor which drastically recut and rescored director Stuart Cooper’s existential hitman drama…then let it languish for nearly 35 years. Labeled as too “European” for a mainstream audience, The Disappearance has made a miraculous hi-def reappearance thanks to indie label Twilight Time, whose 3000 copy limited edition premieres a startlingly beautiful 91 minute cut and the full 101 minute director’s cut on standard def.

Donald Sutherland made some excellent choices in the ‘70s. Following his famous roles in M.A.S.H. and Klute, the actor chose a number of eccentric projects including Nicolas Roeg’s haunting Don’t Look Now and the best adaptation of Jack Finney’s novel Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Between those two came Cooper’s film about a hired assassin, Mallory (Sutherland), whose complicated relationship with his wife wreaks havoc with his unorthodox profession when she vanishes from their apartment one day. As the movie – and their lives together – plays out in flashback, Mallory begins to suspect that her disappearance is somehow connected with his next target.

As photographed by the great John Alcott (A Clockwork Orange, The Shining), much of The Disappearance has the look and feel of a newly discovered Stanley Kubrick film with an icy coldness surrounding both the scenery and the characters. And Sutherland is a perfect match for the material, chilling and emotionless on the outside while stewing with inner emotional rage. Cooper’s style, which incorporates a constant series of flashbacks to drop hints and define characters, is one of the film’s greatest assets. Like Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, the challenging structure rewards your attention with details that pop up on second and third viewings…while making the “big reveal” – standard stuff in any mystery story – much more emotionally significant.

Does it all sound too arty? Don’t make that mistake. The Disappearance comes from a time when cinema was still willing to take chances, when audiences weren’t spoon fed their stories, when a movie wasn’t expected to make back its budget on opening weekend. Let’s just sit back and relish it for a while, shall we?