Two men run across a beach at dawn with their hands tied behind their backs. After several shots of a helicopter frantically searching the landscape, it becomes apparent that the two men are escapees of some kind. It is later revealed that their names are MacConnachie and Ansell. The two continue running across barren land, trying to escape the sight of the helicopter. MacConnachie continuously berates Ansell as they run, showing that he is the leader, more or less.
The duo eventually get away from the helicopter and find a goat herder. MacConnachie sneaks up and kills him hoping to find any useful supplies, but does not find anything. The action, however, greatly upsets Ansell. They continue on through harsh terrain, sometimes being found by the helicopter, but they manage to escape again.
One night, they come across a small town. They sneak through, and get into a house, where the only inhabitant is a lonely widow sitting in a chair next to the bed of her presumably deceased husband. She doesn't seem to notice they are there, but she does however seem to be guarding a basket of bread. The two ignore her and loot the house, finding many supplies and even a rifle. While Ansell prepares to leave, MacConnachie takes a piece of bread from the woman's basket, causing her to drop out of her trance and scream, causing them to flee as the townspeople are alarmed. At the town limits, Ansell tells MacConnachie that he wants to continue travelling with him, which is against MacConnachie's idea of splitting up. He eventually consents and the two continue on. Ansell reveals that he formerly worked at Fortnum & Mason, in London.
They come across the helicopter again in the mountains. They come up with a plan for Ansell to distract the helicopter while MacConnachie shoots its gas tank in order to destroy it. Ansell goes to distract it, but instead of shooting the gas tank, MacConnachie shoots the observer in the helicopter's passenger seat. Ansell protests, but MacConnachie tells him that he did it to show power over the helicopter and to avoid injuring Ansell in a possible explosion. They also find a sub machine gun with the observer's dead body.
After being pursued by ground troops through a field, they then come across a military compound where the helicopter goes to refuel. They try to sneak through, but are caught, and are forced to fight and escape, in the process shooting up the parked helicopter. They continue travelling across a mountain range afterwards where the ice is melting.
Eventually, they arrive at a snow peaked mountain, which seems to be what they were searching for the entire trip. At the top there is a military post, presumably at the border, and several soldiers who come out to greet them. Ansell is overjoyed and runs out to them, though MacConnachie hears a kind of noise from behind him, which is the helicopter. Before joining Ansell, he decides to stage a last stand battle between himself and the helicopter. Despite shooting it many times, the helicopter fires at MacConnachie, killing him. Ansell feels remorse, but eventually returns with the soldiers to the compound.[4]
The New York Times critic Vincent Canby confers more accolades on Losey’s “magnificently photogenic, unidentified landscape” than on its allegorical elements- evidenced by his effort to “upgrade a genre movie by giving it an intellect.” Indeed, in this “stunningly realized adventure”, where the protagonists appear as metaphoric “Everyman” figures, the landscape itself provides as much drama as the interpersonal struggles of the two fugitives. [6]
Critic Foster Hirsch considers Figures in a Landscape a “visual tour-de-force,” in which Losey employs tracking shots, aerial long shots, and circular pans to convey the sense of impending doom of the two men trapped in a vast natural landscape.[8][9]
Losey makes use of striking visual contrasts between long-shot and closeup; between movement and stasis; between long takes and Eisensteinian fragmentation.[10]
Sound is also used to deepen the dramatic tension—“as varied and as kinetic as the camera movement.”[11]
Hirsch adds: "Sometimes sounds are used for shock effect...there are startling contrasts between sound and an utter, piercing silence. The dissonant, sparingly used score by Richard Rodney Bennett further underlines the film’s fatalistic worldview."[12]
Theme
Losey’s films are void of “old fashioned” heroes; nor anti-heroes. All the protagonists are subject to “menacing social realities” that threaten to crush any act of rebellion.[13] The image of the helicopter appears in Losey’s films as an oppressive instrument of the political establishment. Biographer Hirsch writes:
[T]he image of the political world that appears in many of his films is evocatively symbolized in the hovering, omnipresent helicopter that relentlessly pursues and finally overtakes the escaped prisoners in Figures in the Landscape.[14]
Hirsch adds: “Political society in Losey always contains potential violence.and the threat of annihilation.”[15]
Footnotes
^Johnson, Patricia (7 September 1969). "Losey's 'Landscape' Is Littered With Frustrations". Los Angeles Times. p. q28.
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