"The Red Machine" is a lean, intense thriller about a disgraced spy for the U.S. Navy and a jailed safecracker who team up to steal the secret of the Japanese version of Enigma, the Nazi cryptography machine. It’s set in Washington, D.C., in the 1930s when Japan and the United States still had diplomatic relations, and the target is a red cipher machine.
What strikes you immediately about “Anton Chekhov’s The Duel” are the visuals. The cinematography of Paul Sarossy composes shots as an impressionist romance, the colors tastefully softened, the elements arranged in classical symmetry. Unfortunately, this combined with the unwavering progress of the story results in much of a muchness, and we wouldn’t object to the occasional taste of vulgarity.
My entry in the 1959 essay contest of the United Republican Fund won me a free trip to Chicago and the chance to shake Richard Nixon's hand during a banquet at the Chicago Amphitheater. What I remember about that trip is stepping into a cab in front of the Conrad Hilton Hotel and telling the driver, "take me to the best burlesque show in town." He threw down the flag on his meter and drove me one block, to the Rialto on South State Street.
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