The View from Pompey's Head

Miscegenation, that old reliable bugaboo of many a Southern-based novel, is at the center of Hamilton Basso's The View from Pompey's Head. The film version stars Richard Egan as a New York lawyer who returns to his Southern home town to investigate an embezzlement charge. The victim is an ageing ...more

The handsomely mounted and awkwardly titled The View from Pompey's Head is a good but uneven little film that tries to straddle two stools and therefore falls between them. On the one hand, Pompey's is a good old-fashioned steamy southern melodrama, with miscegenation threatening to demonstrate just how threadbare are the societal underpinnings of the small town portrayed in the film. On the other, it's an intelligent, literate drama about the way in which personal heritage can become a ...more