Sunday, December 31, 2017
365 - The Player, United States, 1992. Dir. Robert Altman.
Movies. Now more than ever!
Movie producer Griffin Mill explains what he does.
"I listen to stories and decide if they'll make good movies or not. I get 125 phone calls a day, and if I let that slip to 100, I know I'm not doing my job. And everyone that calls, they wanna know one thing. They want me to say Yes to them and make their movie. If I say Yes to them and make their movie, they think that come New Year's that it's gonna be them and Jack Nicholson on the slopes of Aspen. That's what they think. Problem is, I can only say Yes--my Studio can only say Yes--twelve times a year. And collectively we hear about 50,000 stories a year. So it's hard. And I guess sometimes I'm not nice, and I make enemies."
Mill's explanation is clear and reasonable, and, as well as being a good monologue, it also elicits sympathy from the viewer.
We never actually see Mill not being nice to writers. In fact, as played convincingly by Tim Robbins, Mill seems open, honest, and fair throughout the film. We see multiple pitch meetings, including three in the famous eight-and-a-half minute one-take opening shot, and in every pitch meeting Mill listens to the writer with attention and respect as he tries to understand him and follow along. We never see Mill treat a writer with scorn, sarcasm, or superiority. In fact, there is a running theme where he tells the writer to pitch in twenty-five words or less, the writer uses more than twenty-five words, and Mill lets him. If anything, he comes across as, if not a nice man, at least a professional man sincerely doing his job. The only thing that might constitute a hard-ball play is when he gives a pitch to his new rival Larry Levy (played by Peter Gallagher), thinking the movie will bomb and send Levy packing. Mill does this to protect his job, which, despite the year and a half left on his contract and assurances from his boss Joel Levison (Brion James), Mill rightfully feels is being threatened.
Nevertheless, screenwriter David Kahane (Vinent D'Onofrio) views Mill as an enemy. What did Mill do to Kahane? Was he not nice to him? No. Did Mill pass on Kahane's pitch? No. He simply told Kahane that he would call him back and then did not do so. Mill did not believe Kahane's story was one of the 12 out of 50,000. It was lacking elements the studio needs to market a film successfully. Of course with those odds it is possible for a screenplay to be amazing and still not make the top twelve, but Kahane's story was not amazing. Even his girlfriend June Gudmundsdottir (Greta Scacchi) does not believe he has talent. In fact, she herself has never read his screenplay. And when Mill looks up Kahane on his secretary's computer, he sees that Kahane is still an "unproduced" writer. Despite that, Kahane, like another fellow writer Phil, feels that the universe owes him a picture deal. That Mill himself owes him a deal.
So when Mill, under the duress of receiving anonymous postcards threatening to kill him, goes to the trouble of tracking down Kahane, apologizes for not following up, and offers him a deal, Kahane still spits in his face. "F*** you, man. You're a liar." Kahane exits the bar where they are meeting. Mill walks to his car alone. Kahane then follows Mill back to his car and starts up again. "It's me, the writer. Still want to buy my story?" Despite his insolence, Mill says Yes. "I told you I'd deal. Stop by the studio. We'll work something out." But Kahane has not come to make a deal with Mill. He has come to vent on him. To spew. "Who will I ask for, Larry Levy?" Kahane then takes Mill's phone, forcing Mill to follow him around to the back of the movie theater, and pretends to call Levy. Kahane mock speaks on the phone, showing nothing but contempt for Mill. He refers to Mill as a "dumb son of a b****." Mill appeals to him. "Let's forget this. Just stop all the postcard s***." They reach Kahane's car and stand next to it on the passenger side. Kahane antagonizes him some more. Mill appeals again. "I said, Let's forget this." Kahane shoves open the passenger door, slamming it into Mill, knocking mill backwards over the railing, and down at least a dozen feet to the down-ramp pavement below. Mill lands flat against the concrete and hits his head. When Kahane comes down to check on him, Mill reacts and shoves Kahane's face under four inches of water. There is a moment lasting about two or three seconds when you can see Mill has lost it. Then he begins to walk away. Then he begins to realize Kahane is not moving. Then he checks on him and realizes he is dead.
People imprecisely say that Griffin Mill murders David Kahane, but he does not. At most, he commits accidental homicide. He does everything in his power to placate the angry writer, who, to his knowledge, has been sending him a drawer-full of death threats for five months. He walks away, tries to drive away, tries to drop it, and still after being persistently verbally abused is violently thrown to the concrete from above, where he himself could have died, could have been knocked into a coma, could have lost the use of his limbs, or at least suffered a concussion. By the time Kahane comes to him he is practicing self-defense. In those two or three seconds at the end, it may have technically moved past self-defense into momentary rage, but that lasts for only two or three seconds and then subsides. When Mill comes to he believes Kahane is still alive. Only after does he realize what has happened.
Robert Altman is brilliant in staging the film this way, and Tim Robbins is brilliant in how he plays the character, because they create a satire in which we sympathize with the studio executive protagonist from beginning to end.
Novelist and screenwriter Michael Tolkin himself states that he wanted this. He says that writers are the ones doing the writing, so they have a tendency to create characters who are writers and who are morally superior. And they take their frustrations out on publishers or editors or in this case studio executives because it makes them feel better. Tolkin decided not to do that. Instead of creating a writer or writers who were morally superior and using them to bash the executive, he flips it. He makes the writers the immoral antagonists and gives the producer the audience's favor by telling it from his point of view.
Am I saying that Griffin Mill is without fault? No. Does the film satirize him? Yes. But he is never shown being unkind to writers and he is not shown committing murder.
But going back to Altman's genius, The Player is entertaining. It does not take itself too seriously. It does not sermonize. It is not, as people have said, "scathing," "biting," "acidic," or "bitter." If it were, it would be hypocritical. Self-righteous. But The Player is a loving satire, a film made by Hollywood that is able to make fun of Hollywood and laugh at its own human, all-to-human ways.
The Player openly does everything it makes fun of. It is a Hollywood movie with almost as many Hollywood stars as any movie ever made, and with a Hollywood ending.
Griffin Mill tells June which elements need to be present to market a film successfully. They are suspense, laughter, violence, hope, heart, nudity, sex, happy endings. Mainly happy endings.
This film contains all of them. And it is wonderful.
* * * * *
Question: What do you get when you combine D. W. Griffith (1875-1948) and Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959) and tweak it a little bit to keep it from being obvious?
Answer: Griffin Mill!
I could write an entire blog entry on the opening 8-1/2 minute shot, but that will have to wait.
With The Player Robert Altman returns to the style and success of his best films of the 1970s.
And while he focuses on a few players and features Tim Robbins as the uncontested star, he has a greater ensemble here than ever before. You may find yourself watching the film just to see all the cameos. Just to see Jack Lemmon playing the piano!
Here are the actors who play characters: Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi, Fred Ward, Whoopi Goldberg, Peter Gallagher, Brion James, Cynthia Stevenson, Vincent D'Onofrio, Dean Stockwell, Richard E. Grant, Sydney Pollack, Lyle Lovett, Dina Merrill, Jeremy Piven, Gina Gershon, and Peter Koch.
Here are the actors who play themselves: Steve Allen, Richard Anderson, Rene Auberjonois, Harry Belafonte, Shari Belafonte, Karen Black, Michael Bowen, Gary Busey, Robert Carradine, Charles Champlin, Cher, James Coburn, Cathy Lee Crosby, John Cusack, Brad Davis, Paul Dooley, Thereza Ellis, Peter Falk, Felicia Farr, Kasia Figura, Louis Fletcher, Dennis Franz, Teri Garr, Leeza Gibbons, Scott Glenn, Jeff Goldblum, Elliott Gould, Joel Gray, David Allen Grier, Buck Henry, Anjelica Huston, Kathy Ireland, Steve James, Sally Kellerman, Sally Kirkland, Jack Lemmon, Marlee Matlin, Andie MacDowell, Malcolm McDowell, Jayne Meadows, Martin Mull, Jennifer Nash, Nick Nolte, Alexandra Powers, Burt Reynolds, Jack Riley, Julia Roberts, Mimi Rogers, Annie Ross, Alan Rudolph, Jill St. John, Susan Sarandon, Rod Steiger, Patrick Swayze, Joan Tewkesberry (Altman's writer on Nashville), Brian Tochi, Lily Tomlin, Robert Wagner, Ray Walston, Bruce Willis, Marvin Young.
Note the scene where Pasadena Police Detective Avery visits Griffin's office and picks up one of his two Oscars. The role is played by Whoopi Goldberg, and she picks up the Oscar with relish, lifting it, talking about how heavy it is, as though it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see one. Yet in real life she had one sitting at home. She had won it the year before filming The Player, for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Oda Mae Brown--with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore--in the Jerry Zucker film Ghost (1991). She had been nominated five years before that for Best Actress for her dramatic performance as Celie Johnson in Steven Spielberg's film rendition of Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple (1986).
We saw the brilliant Richard E. Grant earlier this year in 1987 film debut in Bruce Robinson's Withnail & I. I intend to work with him one day.
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/10/284-withnail-and-i-united-kingdom-1987.html
The great producer and director Sydney Pollack appears here as Griffin's lawyer Dick Mellen, and how wonderful it is any time you can see him as an actor! Did you know Pollack wrote the Introduction to Sanford Meisner's acting book, Meisner On Acting? He was an acting student under Meisner! You know him for directing Jeremiah Johnson (1972), The Way We Were (1973), Three Days of the Condor (1975), Bobby Deerfield (1977), The Electric Horseman (1979), Absence of Malice (1981), Tootsie (1982), Out of Africa (1985), The Firm (1993), Sabrina (1995), Random Hearts with Harrison Ford (1999), and The Interpreter with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn (2005)--not to mention all the films he produced. (He won an Oscar for producing as well as one for directing.) But he also acted here, in Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives (1992), Steven Zaillian's A Civil Action with John Travolta (1998), Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999), his own Random Hearts, Roger Michell's Changing Lanes with Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson (2002), and his own The Interpreter. Whenever he acted it was delicious. If only he had acted more!
Vincent D'Onofrio and Greta Scacchi were together during the filming, so when you see her pregnant it is with his baby!
It was on the set of this film that Lyle Lovett and Julia Roberts met and later got married.
THE RIALTO
The big incident happens during a screening of Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief (1948), now retitled to the more accurate translation Bicycle Thieves. The theater is The Rialto in "Pasadena." In real life The Realto is on Fair Oaks Avenue in South Pasadena, just a few blocks south of Pasadena.
We saw his movie Umberto D (1952).
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/06/160-umberto-d-1952-italy-dir-vittorio.html
We celebrated his acting in the FRENCH film, Max Ophuls' The Earrings of Madame de . . . (1953)
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/04/093-earrings-of-madame-de-1953-france.html
I want to remind you that the director of The Bicycle Thief directed 37 films but acted in 157 films!
The Rialto Theater appeared again in the movie La La Land (2016).
This theater is particularly special to me, as I watched quite a few films there when I lived in Pasadena.
It was at The Rialto that I first saw, on the big screen, Federico Fellini's classic film La Dolce Vita (1960), with those openings shots of the helicopters flying through ancient Rome into modern Rome, one of them carrying the statue of the Christ.
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/06/156-la-dolce-vita-1960-italy-dir.html
It was at The Rialto that I saw Wong Kar-wai's Hong Kong film In the Mood for Love (2000). I do not have it yet, but I do have his other Criterion film Chungking Express (1994), and we saw it earlier this year.
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/01/022-chungking-express-1994-hong-kong.html
https://cinephiliabeyond.org/robert-altmans-player-intelligent-hilarious-hollywood-satire-sharp-knife/
Sunday, December 31, 2017
Saturday, December 30, 2017
364 - 3 Women, United States, 1977. Dir. Robert Altman.
Saturday, December 30, 2017
364 - 3 Women, United States, 1977. Dir. Robert Altman.
Pinky Rose's life is going Willie-Millie.
She has made a new best friend at the Desert Springs senior spa.
And she keeps running into a mysterious woman painting strange murals on pavement and in swimming pools.
Millie is her new workmate and roommate. All the men want her and all the women want to be her.
Well, actually, the men take her for granted and the women ignore her.
Edgar, Willie's husband, is willing to have her, but Tom always seems to have a cough when she is around.
But Pinky wants to be her. In fact, Pinky wants to be Millie really, really badly.
She tells her, "You're the most perfect person I ever met."
Then she clocks in using Millie's time card, and she submits Millie's Social Security number as her own. She wears her robe. She takes over her diary.
How convenient that they both have large, penetrating eyes, are both really named Mildred, and both come from Texas.
Pinky Rose is the female Tom Ripley.
3 Women is Robert Altman's Persona. And another prototype for David Lynch's Mulholland Dr.
Pinky spends the first part of the movie idolizing Millie and wanting to be her.
Then the crisis happens. The death. The rebirth. The transformation. The stillbirth. The identity theft. So much of it in the water. Under water. Through the water. The spa. The aquarium. The swimming pool. The undulating waves.
And those double reflections in the mirrors and the windowpanes.
And the twins.
Doppelganger.
Trebleganger.
Verdreifachenganger.
3 Women.
Three Sisters.
Three Fates.
The Moirai. Clotho. Lachesis. Atropos.
The child is the mother of the woman.
The mother-daughter. The grandmother-daughter-granddaughter.
If you are looking for Edgar, you might just find him underneath that pile of tires.
(Fried Green Tomatoes?)
Pow! Pow! Pow!
364 - 3 Women, United States, 1977. Dir. Robert Altman.
Pinky Rose's life is going Willie-Millie.
She has made a new best friend at the Desert Springs senior spa.
And she keeps running into a mysterious woman painting strange murals on pavement and in swimming pools.
Millie is her new workmate and roommate. All the men want her and all the women want to be her.
Well, actually, the men take her for granted and the women ignore her.
Edgar, Willie's husband, is willing to have her, but Tom always seems to have a cough when she is around.
But Pinky wants to be her. In fact, Pinky wants to be Millie really, really badly.
She tells her, "You're the most perfect person I ever met."
Then she clocks in using Millie's time card, and she submits Millie's Social Security number as her own. She wears her robe. She takes over her diary.
How convenient that they both have large, penetrating eyes, are both really named Mildred, and both come from Texas.
Pinky Rose is the female Tom Ripley.
3 Women is Robert Altman's Persona. And another prototype for David Lynch's Mulholland Dr.
Pinky spends the first part of the movie idolizing Millie and wanting to be her.
Then the crisis happens. The death. The rebirth. The transformation. The stillbirth. The identity theft. So much of it in the water. Under water. Through the water. The spa. The aquarium. The swimming pool. The undulating waves.
And those double reflections in the mirrors and the windowpanes.
And the twins.
Doppelganger.
Trebleganger.
Verdreifachenganger.
3 Women.
Three Sisters.
Three Fates.
The Moirai. Clotho. Lachesis. Atropos.
The child is the mother of the woman.
The mother-daughter. The grandmother-daughter-granddaughter.
If you are looking for Edgar, you might just find him underneath that pile of tires.
(Fried Green Tomatoes?)
Pow! Pow! Pow!
Friday, December 29, 2017
363 - Nashville, United States, 1975. Dir. Robert Altman.
Friday, December 29, 2017
363 - Nashville, United States, 1975. Dir. Robert Altman.
The film Nashville is a mesmerizing, meandering, intoxicating piece of storytelling--and a terrible work of satire.
If you look to it for honest insights into the city or the music industry, you will be disappointed. Maybe angry. Altman did not bother to understand the subject matter about which he was filming. Nor did he try. Nor did he care. And he admitted it. He did no research in a library or with consultants or by spending time with actual people or events in the industry. He simply came into town and started filming. Years later on the DVD commentary he doubles down on his own ignorance, stating that he does not like the music.
He allowed his actors, not composers and singers, to write and sing their own songs. While that approach fits his filmmaking style and is a dream for actors, the results are embarrassing. The film contains over an hour of music, little of it worth listening to outside the context of the film. Much of it not worth listening to inside the context of the film (although several of the songs, as songs can do, grow on you). Not only does Altman show a lack of artistic integrity in this area, but he also shows a lack of business acumen. What studio today would allow a music film to be made where you cannot sell the soundtrack? And where the performers are supposed to be the top stars of the day! The television series of the same name certainly corrected this offense.
But where Altman fails as an anthropologist, cultural historian, or satirist, he succeeds as a filmmaker.
The story in and of itself is hypnotic. Altman has created a world--maybe not the real world, but a world--and he peoples it with complex and quirky characters.
And here is where he does what he does best.
The film snakes its way through the lives of twenty-four credited stars and several more supporting characters, moving endlessly back and forth among them over the course of five destiny-building days. They all have their backstories, where they came from, how they got here, and why they are here now. They all have their virtues and their vices, their needs and desires, their personalities, their relationships, their secrets.
The film was cut down from four hours to two hours and forty minutes, and frankly when you get to the end you wish it would keep going. Four hours would have been fine.
The characters elicit the viewer's sympathy. All of them.
You feel for Norman, the chauffeur for folk group Bill, Mary, and Tom, who has talent and wishes he were recognized for it. When British reporter Opal, who otherwise lunges at everyone to get an interview, informs him she cannot talk to the "servants," after seeing him treated as a near equal by Bill, you understand the struggle of a large swath of artists. His gifts run as deeply as theirs, and yet due to the seemingly random nature of popularity--who gets discovered when, by whom, and by how many--he must bide his time serving others while waiting for his break.
Thus, note that the most prominent role in the film for a real country music artist is held by Merle Kilgore as Trout. Kilgore was a monster musician and songwriter, co-writing "Ring of Fire" with June Carter and writing Johnny Horton's hit "Johnny Reb." Yet he also spent his life in service to the Hank Williams family, starting with Hank Williams at age fourteen and continuing to manage Hank Williams Jr., and his Bama Band, among others, until the day he died. How many supporters of great talent are great talent themselves?
Then there is Lady Pearl, the girlfriend of singing legend Haven Hamilton, stuck in the past, a lone Catholic in a Protestant world, who still grieves over the loss of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, and is able to provide specific vote counts by county regarding past Presidential elections.
Meanwhile, Haven Hamilton is king inside his recording booth--he can dump on keyboard player Frog when he misses a chord--but grovels in the presence of bigger stars--Elliott Gould at Hamilton's house and Julie Christie at the Grand Ole Opry. He makes adjustments throughout the film in order to navigate the unstable world he inhabits.
Bill of Bill, Mary, and Tom loves his wife Mary, but Mary secretly loves Tom. Unfortunately for Mary, however, Tom loves everybody. Or nobody. Or only himself. Or maybe he has finally met his match. In a poignant scene he sits on stage and sings--a song written and performed by actor Keith Carradine which won Carradine an Oscar--as four different women sit in the audience, each in her own private moment, each thinking he is singing specifically to her. He is in fact singing to one of them, the one least likely, and she finally succumbs to his long-term efforts, only to be unaffected by his efforts later to make her jealous. She is too practical. She has too many responsibilities at home to let him break her heart.
There are two women on the outside looking in. Sueleen Gay (Gwen Welles) and Albequerque (Barbara Harris) have both come to Nashville to try to make it--the latter with her husband Star hilariously chasing her. One of them cannot sing a note to save her life, and her steadfast delusion provides the film with some of its greatest heartache. The other sings beautifully and powerfully, and in a brilliant turn, after spending the entire film struggling against all odds and without any promise, is thrust into the spotlight through a series of circumstances, providing the film with its payoff twist.
Keenan Wynn, son of the legendary Ed Wynn and himself a star of the 1940s, powerfully plays the sympathetic Mr. Green. He lovingly cares for his wife Esther, who is in the hospital down the hall from music star Barbara Jean, and he perpetually tries to get his niece Martha ("L.A. Joan", played by Shelley Duvall) to come see her. He rents a room in his home to fiddle drifter Kenny Fraiser (David Hayward), and that decision might just turn out to be a mistake.
Lily Tomlin plays Linnea Reese, the wife of music manager Delbert "Del" Reese, played by Ned Beatty. Here you have two top actors playing together. Beautiful. I had the most wonderful pleasure of seeing Lily Tomlin live at the Ahmanson in her one-woman performance of The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, and it was one of the most outstanding performances I have seen. For the length of the show she kept the audience enthralled with a dozen or more characters using nothing on stage but her own body, morphing effortlessly from one character to the next. Unfortunately here, she plays the lead singer of a black gospel choir and she looks uncomfortable and out of place. On the DVD commentary, Altman admits that she informed him ahead of time that she was not ready for that part of the role and that he did not give her the time to prepare. Just get in there and do it. The results are disappointing. Here you have one of the female masters of physicality looking awkward and inauthentic. She wins us back in spades, though, with her very sympathetic character, mature, maternal, raising two deaf children, trying to keep her marriage intact, negotiating with her own heart when it is placed under pressure, not giving in to emotion over duty. And her physical genius returns when she signs with her children and sings with them the Joe Raposo Sesame Street song "Sing," made famous by The Carpenters.
Ned Beatty, meanwhile, is as fantastically layered as always. I touched on him earlier this year when we watched Shock Corridor (1963), mentioning that his work in Superman (1978) was not indicative of his talent as an actor. He is a major talent, and his work in Deliverance (1972) and Network (1976), for example, is tremendously powerful and nuanced. (I was using him as an example to promote the talent of James Best, who has been pigeonholed for his role as Roscoe P. Coltrane in The Dukes of Hazard. He showed a much greater depth and range in Shock Corridor.)
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/02/036-shock-corridor-1963-united-states.html
Speaking of which, Gailard Sartain has a role here, and he is another example of an actor much more talented than that for which he is most known. Sartain became a star doing sketch comedy for twenty years on the television variety show Hee Haw, but one look at his resume will demonstrate how much more he had in him. Consider this list of accomplishments: The Buddy Holly Story (1978), Carl Reiner's The Jerk (1979), Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders (1983), Carl Reiner's All of Me (1984) (with Lily Tomlin!), Jim McBride's The Big Easy (1986) with Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin (and Ned Beatty!), Alan Parker's Mississippi Burning (1988), Ron Shelton's Blaze (1989), Stephen Frears' The Grifters (1990), Irwin Winkler's Guilty By Suspicion (1991), Jon Avnet's Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), Alan Rudolph's Equinox (1992), Lee David Zlotoff's lovely film The Spitfire Grill (1996), Michael Mann's Ali, starring Will Smith (2001), and Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown (2005). And that is not half his resume.
Musician Steve Earle is an extra in this movie!
Actors love to work with directors like Robert Altman. They have so many tools at their disposal which other directors often overlook. But Altman understands that film is a collaborative effort, and he gives his fellow workers room to work. How wonderful it would have been to have been a part of his team. It is no wonder that so many of his actors came back to him time and time again.
So despite the lack of verisimilitude, the film itself is a wonderful, sprawling, intoxicating journey into a world and through the lives of the people who inhabit that world. Its greatest triumph is that the viewer cares about the characters and wishes he could spend more time with them.
363 - Nashville, United States, 1975. Dir. Robert Altman.
The film Nashville is a mesmerizing, meandering, intoxicating piece of storytelling--and a terrible work of satire.
If you look to it for honest insights into the city or the music industry, you will be disappointed. Maybe angry. Altman did not bother to understand the subject matter about which he was filming. Nor did he try. Nor did he care. And he admitted it. He did no research in a library or with consultants or by spending time with actual people or events in the industry. He simply came into town and started filming. Years later on the DVD commentary he doubles down on his own ignorance, stating that he does not like the music.
He allowed his actors, not composers and singers, to write and sing their own songs. While that approach fits his filmmaking style and is a dream for actors, the results are embarrassing. The film contains over an hour of music, little of it worth listening to outside the context of the film. Much of it not worth listening to inside the context of the film (although several of the songs, as songs can do, grow on you). Not only does Altman show a lack of artistic integrity in this area, but he also shows a lack of business acumen. What studio today would allow a music film to be made where you cannot sell the soundtrack? And where the performers are supposed to be the top stars of the day! The television series of the same name certainly corrected this offense.
But where Altman fails as an anthropologist, cultural historian, or satirist, he succeeds as a filmmaker.
The story in and of itself is hypnotic. Altman has created a world--maybe not the real world, but a world--and he peoples it with complex and quirky characters.
And here is where he does what he does best.
The film snakes its way through the lives of twenty-four credited stars and several more supporting characters, moving endlessly back and forth among them over the course of five destiny-building days. They all have their backstories, where they came from, how they got here, and why they are here now. They all have their virtues and their vices, their needs and desires, their personalities, their relationships, their secrets.
The film was cut down from four hours to two hours and forty minutes, and frankly when you get to the end you wish it would keep going. Four hours would have been fine.
The characters elicit the viewer's sympathy. All of them.
You feel for Norman, the chauffeur for folk group Bill, Mary, and Tom, who has talent and wishes he were recognized for it. When British reporter Opal, who otherwise lunges at everyone to get an interview, informs him she cannot talk to the "servants," after seeing him treated as a near equal by Bill, you understand the struggle of a large swath of artists. His gifts run as deeply as theirs, and yet due to the seemingly random nature of popularity--who gets discovered when, by whom, and by how many--he must bide his time serving others while waiting for his break.
Thus, note that the most prominent role in the film for a real country music artist is held by Merle Kilgore as Trout. Kilgore was a monster musician and songwriter, co-writing "Ring of Fire" with June Carter and writing Johnny Horton's hit "Johnny Reb." Yet he also spent his life in service to the Hank Williams family, starting with Hank Williams at age fourteen and continuing to manage Hank Williams Jr., and his Bama Band, among others, until the day he died. How many supporters of great talent are great talent themselves?
Then there is Lady Pearl, the girlfriend of singing legend Haven Hamilton, stuck in the past, a lone Catholic in a Protestant world, who still grieves over the loss of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, and is able to provide specific vote counts by county regarding past Presidential elections.
Meanwhile, Haven Hamilton is king inside his recording booth--he can dump on keyboard player Frog when he misses a chord--but grovels in the presence of bigger stars--Elliott Gould at Hamilton's house and Julie Christie at the Grand Ole Opry. He makes adjustments throughout the film in order to navigate the unstable world he inhabits.
Bill of Bill, Mary, and Tom loves his wife Mary, but Mary secretly loves Tom. Unfortunately for Mary, however, Tom loves everybody. Or nobody. Or only himself. Or maybe he has finally met his match. In a poignant scene he sits on stage and sings--a song written and performed by actor Keith Carradine which won Carradine an Oscar--as four different women sit in the audience, each in her own private moment, each thinking he is singing specifically to her. He is in fact singing to one of them, the one least likely, and she finally succumbs to his long-term efforts, only to be unaffected by his efforts later to make her jealous. She is too practical. She has too many responsibilities at home to let him break her heart.
There are two women on the outside looking in. Sueleen Gay (Gwen Welles) and Albequerque (Barbara Harris) have both come to Nashville to try to make it--the latter with her husband Star hilariously chasing her. One of them cannot sing a note to save her life, and her steadfast delusion provides the film with some of its greatest heartache. The other sings beautifully and powerfully, and in a brilliant turn, after spending the entire film struggling against all odds and without any promise, is thrust into the spotlight through a series of circumstances, providing the film with its payoff twist.
Keenan Wynn, son of the legendary Ed Wynn and himself a star of the 1940s, powerfully plays the sympathetic Mr. Green. He lovingly cares for his wife Esther, who is in the hospital down the hall from music star Barbara Jean, and he perpetually tries to get his niece Martha ("L.A. Joan", played by Shelley Duvall) to come see her. He rents a room in his home to fiddle drifter Kenny Fraiser (David Hayward), and that decision might just turn out to be a mistake.
Lily Tomlin plays Linnea Reese, the wife of music manager Delbert "Del" Reese, played by Ned Beatty. Here you have two top actors playing together. Beautiful. I had the most wonderful pleasure of seeing Lily Tomlin live at the Ahmanson in her one-woman performance of The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, and it was one of the most outstanding performances I have seen. For the length of the show she kept the audience enthralled with a dozen or more characters using nothing on stage but her own body, morphing effortlessly from one character to the next. Unfortunately here, she plays the lead singer of a black gospel choir and she looks uncomfortable and out of place. On the DVD commentary, Altman admits that she informed him ahead of time that she was not ready for that part of the role and that he did not give her the time to prepare. Just get in there and do it. The results are disappointing. Here you have one of the female masters of physicality looking awkward and inauthentic. She wins us back in spades, though, with her very sympathetic character, mature, maternal, raising two deaf children, trying to keep her marriage intact, negotiating with her own heart when it is placed under pressure, not giving in to emotion over duty. And her physical genius returns when she signs with her children and sings with them the Joe Raposo Sesame Street song "Sing," made famous by The Carpenters.
Ned Beatty, meanwhile, is as fantastically layered as always. I touched on him earlier this year when we watched Shock Corridor (1963), mentioning that his work in Superman (1978) was not indicative of his talent as an actor. He is a major talent, and his work in Deliverance (1972) and Network (1976), for example, is tremendously powerful and nuanced. (I was using him as an example to promote the talent of James Best, who has been pigeonholed for his role as Roscoe P. Coltrane in The Dukes of Hazard. He showed a much greater depth and range in Shock Corridor.)
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/02/036-shock-corridor-1963-united-states.html
Speaking of which, Gailard Sartain has a role here, and he is another example of an actor much more talented than that for which he is most known. Sartain became a star doing sketch comedy for twenty years on the television variety show Hee Haw, but one look at his resume will demonstrate how much more he had in him. Consider this list of accomplishments: The Buddy Holly Story (1978), Carl Reiner's The Jerk (1979), Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders (1983), Carl Reiner's All of Me (1984) (with Lily Tomlin!), Jim McBride's The Big Easy (1986) with Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin (and Ned Beatty!), Alan Parker's Mississippi Burning (1988), Ron Shelton's Blaze (1989), Stephen Frears' The Grifters (1990), Irwin Winkler's Guilty By Suspicion (1991), Jon Avnet's Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), Alan Rudolph's Equinox (1992), Lee David Zlotoff's lovely film The Spitfire Grill (1996), Michael Mann's Ali, starring Will Smith (2001), and Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown (2005). And that is not half his resume.
Musician Steve Earle is an extra in this movie!
Actors love to work with directors like Robert Altman. They have so many tools at their disposal which other directors often overlook. But Altman understands that film is a collaborative effort, and he gives his fellow workers room to work. How wonderful it would have been to have been a part of his team. It is no wonder that so many of his actors came back to him time and time again.
So despite the lack of verisimilitude, the film itself is a wonderful, sprawling, intoxicating journey into a world and through the lives of the people who inhabit that world. Its greatest triumph is that the viewer cares about the characters and wishes he could spend more time with them.
Thursday, December 28, 2017
362 - McCabe & Mrs. Miller, United States, 1971. Dir. Robert Altman.
Thursday, December 28, 2017
362 - McCabe & Mrs. Miller, United States, 1971. Dir. Robert Altman.
The town is called Presbyterian Church.
A church building sits in it, but it does not seem to be used much.
The men congregate in the saloon. They are drinking when the stranger man rides into town.
He enters the saloon, walks through, and exits the back door. What is he up to? Is he casing the joint? Is he planning a hold-up?
He goes out back to his horse and retrieves something.
While the man is out back, another man argues with Bart Coyle. You better get away or I'll bash you in the face, you ignorant . . .
This is foreshadowing. The talk about Bart Coyle's face getting bashed in.
Someone identifies the stranger man as McCabe. Pudgy McCabe. Didn't he once kill a man? Didn't he kill Bill Roundtree?
Who is Bill Roundtree? He was a friend of a friend. I never heard of him. He was nobody to mess with. He was a governor. He was running for governor in Wyoming.
That man out there shot him. He's got a big rep. He really is a gunfighter.
The stranger man enters and clears a table. He opens a table cloth and spreads it on the table. He pulls out a pack of cards.
Let's play.
Five-card stud with a three bet roof on the card. 15 cents on an open pair on the last card. . . . Unless you have objections about that.
The man negotiates with the bar owner. Patrick Sheehan. Who will buy a bottle on the house? Who will split the winnings? Who will split the losses? The man does not want to split his winnings with Sheehan if Sheehan will not equally cover his losses. He offers to pay two dollars for a bottle of whiskey to pass around the room. Sheehan says it is three dollars, but a patron reveals it was two dollars yesterday.
Someone asks Laura what's for dinner.
One man asks another man if he should shave his beard and leave his mustache. The other man recommends he shave the sides and keep the middle.
These background and side conversations are part of the movie. Part of the world of Robert Altman.
What's the matter with you, Sheehan? You got a turd in your pocket?
John Sheehan wins over the men. He has come to town to set up shop. To build his own saloon. To build his own whorehouse. The best little whorehouse in the Pacific Northwest.
The construction workers on the crew are extras on the set. They build the sets--the saloon, the whorehouse, the bathhouse--in front of the camera. The story of the townsmen building the buildings is told by the crew building the sets.
McCabe uses his reputation as leverage in the town. He builds the building, procures three women, and gets ready to go into business.
But then Mrs. Miller comes into town. Mrs. Constance Miller. She tells him she is a whore and a madame. She knows how to run a place, how to keep it clean, hygienic, free of the clap, how to make it fancy, special, luxurious, how to get men to keep coming back and paying more, how to keep the women from lying about cycles to get days off. She schools him.
He needs her. She will go into business with him and use the proceeds to pay off all his debts and split the net profits 50-50. He resists. He acts tough. He denies the men are about the fineries. She convinces him they will be once they get a taste of it. He agrees.
Before long McCabe and Mrs. Miller own the town.
And everything will continue to go along smoothly and wonderfully for them.
If only those men from the mining company had not come.
They want to buy out McCabe. Buy out the mines. Buy out the town. They are the big boys. Engaging in mergers and acquisitions. He is the little guy. Trying to keep from being swallowed.
He tries to negotiate but does not know how. He acts tough. Overstates his price. Runs them off. When he tells Constance about it, she is shocked. What were you thinking? Those men were offering you good money. The alternative is that they will send men back to shoot you in the back.
You either take their deal or die.
McCabe listens to her. He has learned that she is a good businesswoman. Even if she does have a little thing for opium. And we are learning that he is not as tough as his reputation. We are about to learn that he has never shot a man.
He tries to undo the damage but it is too late. And it is all downhill from here. With a showdown in the falling snow. As the church burns. And the townspeople run to set up a fire brigade. Not knowing that bullets are flying behind them.
What sets this film apart is Robert Altman. He developed a unique style. He "flashed" the negative filmstock to make it look old, like sepia tone filmed in color. He encouraged the actors to improvise and allowed them to talk at the same time as one another. He miked everyone on set and ran their voices into different channels so that during post he could select which voices were heard. He ignored conventions and focused on details. And he included the songs of Leonard Cohen, at the time still early in his career. He told the story in fits and spurts. While spending time with other characters in other stories. Their stories.
If only the big corporation had not come into town.
If only Mrs. Miller were not addicted to opium.
If only McCabe knew how to negotiate.
They could have had a great life.
In the town of Presbyterian Church.
On the backs of their fancy whores.
In this un-Western. This Northwestern.
362 - McCabe & Mrs. Miller, United States, 1971. Dir. Robert Altman.
The town is called Presbyterian Church.
A church building sits in it, but it does not seem to be used much.
The men congregate in the saloon. They are drinking when the stranger man rides into town.
He enters the saloon, walks through, and exits the back door. What is he up to? Is he casing the joint? Is he planning a hold-up?
He goes out back to his horse and retrieves something.
While the man is out back, another man argues with Bart Coyle. You better get away or I'll bash you in the face, you ignorant . . .
This is foreshadowing. The talk about Bart Coyle's face getting bashed in.
Someone identifies the stranger man as McCabe. Pudgy McCabe. Didn't he once kill a man? Didn't he kill Bill Roundtree?
Who is Bill Roundtree? He was a friend of a friend. I never heard of him. He was nobody to mess with. He was a governor. He was running for governor in Wyoming.
That man out there shot him. He's got a big rep. He really is a gunfighter.
The stranger man enters and clears a table. He opens a table cloth and spreads it on the table. He pulls out a pack of cards.
Let's play.
Five-card stud with a three bet roof on the card. 15 cents on an open pair on the last card. . . . Unless you have objections about that.
The man negotiates with the bar owner. Patrick Sheehan. Who will buy a bottle on the house? Who will split the winnings? Who will split the losses? The man does not want to split his winnings with Sheehan if Sheehan will not equally cover his losses. He offers to pay two dollars for a bottle of whiskey to pass around the room. Sheehan says it is three dollars, but a patron reveals it was two dollars yesterday.
Someone asks Laura what's for dinner.
One man asks another man if he should shave his beard and leave his mustache. The other man recommends he shave the sides and keep the middle.
These background and side conversations are part of the movie. Part of the world of Robert Altman.
What's the matter with you, Sheehan? You got a turd in your pocket?
John Sheehan wins over the men. He has come to town to set up shop. To build his own saloon. To build his own whorehouse. The best little whorehouse in the Pacific Northwest.
The construction workers on the crew are extras on the set. They build the sets--the saloon, the whorehouse, the bathhouse--in front of the camera. The story of the townsmen building the buildings is told by the crew building the sets.
McCabe uses his reputation as leverage in the town. He builds the building, procures three women, and gets ready to go into business.
But then Mrs. Miller comes into town. Mrs. Constance Miller. She tells him she is a whore and a madame. She knows how to run a place, how to keep it clean, hygienic, free of the clap, how to make it fancy, special, luxurious, how to get men to keep coming back and paying more, how to keep the women from lying about cycles to get days off. She schools him.
He needs her. She will go into business with him and use the proceeds to pay off all his debts and split the net profits 50-50. He resists. He acts tough. He denies the men are about the fineries. She convinces him they will be once they get a taste of it. He agrees.
Before long McCabe and Mrs. Miller own the town.
And everything will continue to go along smoothly and wonderfully for them.
If only those men from the mining company had not come.
They want to buy out McCabe. Buy out the mines. Buy out the town. They are the big boys. Engaging in mergers and acquisitions. He is the little guy. Trying to keep from being swallowed.
He tries to negotiate but does not know how. He acts tough. Overstates his price. Runs them off. When he tells Constance about it, she is shocked. What were you thinking? Those men were offering you good money. The alternative is that they will send men back to shoot you in the back.
You either take their deal or die.
McCabe listens to her. He has learned that she is a good businesswoman. Even if she does have a little thing for opium. And we are learning that he is not as tough as his reputation. We are about to learn that he has never shot a man.
He tries to undo the damage but it is too late. And it is all downhill from here. With a showdown in the falling snow. As the church burns. And the townspeople run to set up a fire brigade. Not knowing that bullets are flying behind them.
What sets this film apart is Robert Altman. He developed a unique style. He "flashed" the negative filmstock to make it look old, like sepia tone filmed in color. He encouraged the actors to improvise and allowed them to talk at the same time as one another. He miked everyone on set and ran their voices into different channels so that during post he could select which voices were heard. He ignored conventions and focused on details. And he included the songs of Leonard Cohen, at the time still early in his career. He told the story in fits and spurts. While spending time with other characters in other stories. Their stories.
If only the big corporation had not come into town.
If only Mrs. Miller were not addicted to opium.
If only McCabe knew how to negotiate.
They could have had a great life.
In the town of Presbyterian Church.
On the backs of their fancy whores.
In this un-Western. This Northwestern.
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
361 - Straw Dogs, United Kingdom/United States, 1971. Dir. Sam Peckinpah.
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
361 - Straw Dogs, United Kingdom/United States, 1971. Dir. Sam Peckinpah.
David Sumner wants to be left alone.
He is a mathematician and he has work to do. He has recently received a grant for a year's sabbatical, and he has chosen to do his work out of the country. He has married a beautiful young British woman named Amy, and he has come with her from America to her childhood home in Cornwall, Trencher's Farm. Her father's farm. Full of her father's memory. Full of her father's chairs.
What a perfect situation. She gets to come home and live where she grew up. He gets to experience her village culture and meet her old friends. They can live in a quaint stone house in the Cornish countryside and enjoy one another's company. He can get his work done.
If only things could work out so easily.
Amy is lonely and jealous of David's time. He does his work on a large chalkboard in his office, and the chalkboard for her represents a rival for her attention. She is jealous of it. She plays games with him as a way of having fun, such as changing a plus sign to a minus sign on a long and complicated formula to see if he will notice. He does notice, but he is not amused. He takes his work seriously and does not appreciate her attempts to play with him. This disappoints her.
She spends time with their cat. At night, however, when his work is done, they love each other. They play chess. The play games. He does his exercises. They make love. But then daytime comes again and he is busy and she is alone.
David wants to be left alone in other ways. He left America as anti-war protests were spilling over into political upheaval. He has no use for such distractions. He has work to do. Amy calls him "uncommitted." She wishes he would take some kind of a stand. He is passive, not pacifist, and it affects her. She wishes he were more active. Not only in politics but also in more domestic matters. If only he could step up and be strong for her. Be a provider and protector. Be a defender. Be a man. Do things such as swing a hammer, rid the house of rats, finish the garage, participate more freely in social situations, be a good host to visitors such as the local vicar and his wife, stand up to interlopers, defend the home. Defend her.
David tries. He goes to the tavern and buys everyone a round of beer. He agrees to go duck hunting with the locals. He attends the church social. He even decides to confront the men finishing garage to see if one of them hanged the cat and left it in the closet for them to find.
David sees the good in people. Amy knows better. She grew up here. She was here when the large, slow Henry Niles got in trouble the first time. She knows what Janice Hedden is like. She understands Norman Scutt. And she used to date Charlie Venner.
Charlie Venner.
He has not forgotten Amy. And he has not gotten over her either. She has brought something else back from 1971 America. Form-fitting, cream-colored sweaters with no bras. And he spots her entering the village from the moment she tops the horizon.
And the moment David first enters the tavern to buy a pack of cigarettes, Charlie makes his move. He leans into the car. Puts his arm around Amy's shoulder. Leans into her. Whispers in her ear.
"Remember when I took care of you, Amy?"
She resists him.
"But you didn't. Remember?"
He insists.
"There was once a time . . . Mrs. Sumner . . . when you were ready to beg me for it."
She stands her ground.
"Take your hands off me."
This was not the Welcome Home she was looking for. If only David would hurry up out of the tavern.
If only he had not invited Charlie to come to the house tomorrow to help finish the garage.
Why is he so naive?
David is delayed inside the tavern because he is witnessing the drama of Tom Hedden. Tom is Janice's father. He looks like her grandfather. He is an elderly man. She is a teenager. Underage. Jailbait. And she seems to take a liking to the married American adult just as quickly as Charlie takes to David's wife. Uh-oh. Her father Tom is the town drunk. He does not have time for Janice. He spends his days here at the tavern. Leaving her brother Bobby to look after her. It is not clear at first that Bobby and Janice are brother and sister. At first they appear to be dating. Apparently, Janice longs for attention pretty badly.
Tom is in the middle of causing a scene. The bartender, Harry Ware, has announced it is closing time. But Tom is not finished. And he is willing to tear up the bar and pay for the damages if that is what it takes to get another drink. The locals watch. The locals put up with it. Things flare up. Things calm down again. Even the local magistrate, Major John Scott, does not do much. It all seems like a routine incident in the life of the local village.
In some ways David Sumner should fit right in to this village. All of the town leaders are passive. The magistrate, John Scott. The bartender, Harry Ware. The vicar, Rev. Barney Hood. And Henry Niles' brother, John Niles. All are nice, amiable men who do little to upset the flow of things. But what good are they when their services are really needed?
Needed because of the other men. The ones who are not leaders. The ones who spend all day drinking. Or wandering the streets. Or pretending to work when they are not working.
Tom Hedden. Chris Cawsey. Riddaway. Norman Scutt. Henry Niles. The girl, Janice Hedden. And of course, Charlie Venner.
In her loneliness Amy turns to Charlie for attention. Unfortunately, he gives her more than attention. What she never asked for. What she never wanted. And in her subsequent despair she finds no way to communicate with her own husband.
David cluelessly invites trouble into his home. His home is breached without his knowledge. His home is violated without his knowledge. His wife is violated without his knowledge. He harbors a fugitive without his knowledge.
And when it all comes to a head, when the final showdown comes, there is going to be payback. And a heavy price to pay.
David might find that he is active after all.
He might step up. And be a man.
But in the process he might go too far.
And it might cost him too much.
And he might lose everything.
Maybe not.
Maybe so.
Either way, will he be able to find his way home?
361 - Straw Dogs, United Kingdom/United States, 1971. Dir. Sam Peckinpah.
David Sumner wants to be left alone.
He is a mathematician and he has work to do. He has recently received a grant for a year's sabbatical, and he has chosen to do his work out of the country. He has married a beautiful young British woman named Amy, and he has come with her from America to her childhood home in Cornwall, Trencher's Farm. Her father's farm. Full of her father's memory. Full of her father's chairs.
What a perfect situation. She gets to come home and live where she grew up. He gets to experience her village culture and meet her old friends. They can live in a quaint stone house in the Cornish countryside and enjoy one another's company. He can get his work done.
If only things could work out so easily.
Amy is lonely and jealous of David's time. He does his work on a large chalkboard in his office, and the chalkboard for her represents a rival for her attention. She is jealous of it. She plays games with him as a way of having fun, such as changing a plus sign to a minus sign on a long and complicated formula to see if he will notice. He does notice, but he is not amused. He takes his work seriously and does not appreciate her attempts to play with him. This disappoints her.
She spends time with their cat. At night, however, when his work is done, they love each other. They play chess. The play games. He does his exercises. They make love. But then daytime comes again and he is busy and she is alone.
David wants to be left alone in other ways. He left America as anti-war protests were spilling over into political upheaval. He has no use for such distractions. He has work to do. Amy calls him "uncommitted." She wishes he would take some kind of a stand. He is passive, not pacifist, and it affects her. She wishes he were more active. Not only in politics but also in more domestic matters. If only he could step up and be strong for her. Be a provider and protector. Be a defender. Be a man. Do things such as swing a hammer, rid the house of rats, finish the garage, participate more freely in social situations, be a good host to visitors such as the local vicar and his wife, stand up to interlopers, defend the home. Defend her.
David tries. He goes to the tavern and buys everyone a round of beer. He agrees to go duck hunting with the locals. He attends the church social. He even decides to confront the men finishing garage to see if one of them hanged the cat and left it in the closet for them to find.
David sees the good in people. Amy knows better. She grew up here. She was here when the large, slow Henry Niles got in trouble the first time. She knows what Janice Hedden is like. She understands Norman Scutt. And she used to date Charlie Venner.
Charlie Venner.
He has not forgotten Amy. And he has not gotten over her either. She has brought something else back from 1971 America. Form-fitting, cream-colored sweaters with no bras. And he spots her entering the village from the moment she tops the horizon.
And the moment David first enters the tavern to buy a pack of cigarettes, Charlie makes his move. He leans into the car. Puts his arm around Amy's shoulder. Leans into her. Whispers in her ear.
"Remember when I took care of you, Amy?"
She resists him.
"But you didn't. Remember?"
He insists.
"There was once a time . . . Mrs. Sumner . . . when you were ready to beg me for it."
She stands her ground.
"Take your hands off me."
This was not the Welcome Home she was looking for. If only David would hurry up out of the tavern.
If only he had not invited Charlie to come to the house tomorrow to help finish the garage.
Why is he so naive?
David is delayed inside the tavern because he is witnessing the drama of Tom Hedden. Tom is Janice's father. He looks like her grandfather. He is an elderly man. She is a teenager. Underage. Jailbait. And she seems to take a liking to the married American adult just as quickly as Charlie takes to David's wife. Uh-oh. Her father Tom is the town drunk. He does not have time for Janice. He spends his days here at the tavern. Leaving her brother Bobby to look after her. It is not clear at first that Bobby and Janice are brother and sister. At first they appear to be dating. Apparently, Janice longs for attention pretty badly.
Tom is in the middle of causing a scene. The bartender, Harry Ware, has announced it is closing time. But Tom is not finished. And he is willing to tear up the bar and pay for the damages if that is what it takes to get another drink. The locals watch. The locals put up with it. Things flare up. Things calm down again. Even the local magistrate, Major John Scott, does not do much. It all seems like a routine incident in the life of the local village.
In some ways David Sumner should fit right in to this village. All of the town leaders are passive. The magistrate, John Scott. The bartender, Harry Ware. The vicar, Rev. Barney Hood. And Henry Niles' brother, John Niles. All are nice, amiable men who do little to upset the flow of things. But what good are they when their services are really needed?
Needed because of the other men. The ones who are not leaders. The ones who spend all day drinking. Or wandering the streets. Or pretending to work when they are not working.
Tom Hedden. Chris Cawsey. Riddaway. Norman Scutt. Henry Niles. The girl, Janice Hedden. And of course, Charlie Venner.
In her loneliness Amy turns to Charlie for attention. Unfortunately, he gives her more than attention. What she never asked for. What she never wanted. And in her subsequent despair she finds no way to communicate with her own husband.
David cluelessly invites trouble into his home. His home is breached without his knowledge. His home is violated without his knowledge. His wife is violated without his knowledge. He harbors a fugitive without his knowledge.
And when it all comes to a head, when the final showdown comes, there is going to be payback. And a heavy price to pay.
David might find that he is active after all.
He might step up. And be a man.
But in the process he might go too far.
And it might cost him too much.
And he might lose everything.
Maybe not.
Maybe so.
Either way, will he be able to find his way home?
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
360 - Medium Cool, United States, 1969. Dir. Haskell Wexler.
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
360 - Medium Cool, United States, 1969. Dir. Haskell Wexler.
Summer of '68.
John and Gus work for Channel 8 News in Chicago. John is a cameraman. Gus is a sound man. They drive a station-owned station wagon. They each wear a Motorola Pageboy on their belt.
They cover the news. Social unrest in Chicago. Marching on Washington. Car crashes. Race riots. War protests. The Hippie scene. The Democratic National Convention.
In the opening scene they record a car crash. The woman is lying on the freeway, still alive, in need of immediate care. They stand over her. Filming. Recording. Without emotion. After they get their footage they walk back to their car. At a normal pace. Then they announce that they should call an ambulance.
John and Gus get into conversations about the ethics of journalism. Is it right to be a neutral bystander and record while people are dying around you? Do you have a responsibility to get involved? Are you even neutral? Do you merely report the news or do you sensationalize it? Do you only report people and events that are loud, extreme, and violent?
Eileen Horton and her son Harold live in an apartment building in a poor neighborhood in Chicago. Harold raises homing pigeons on the roof. Like Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) in On the Waterfront (1954). He rides the L. Opens his basket. Lets the pigeon fly free. He knows it will return.
John is dating a nurse. Ruth. Someone is stealing hubcaps and antennas from his station wagon. She tells him not to worry about it. Channel 8 has plenty of resources. He says that is not the point. Journalists resent that wherever they go, in the course of doing their job, they are made into a target.
John catches Harold stealing his hubcaps. He chases him through the parking lot. Harold drops his basket. Harold loses John. John picks up Harold's basket. He takes it home. Gus and Ruth are sitting in the car waiting for him. What is in the basket? Dinner.
John takes Ruth to a Roller Derby. Violence as entertainment. Back at the apartment they talk more about his work as they make love.
Later he takes the pigeon back to Harold. The address is on the basket. He and Ruth are no longer dating. He begins to see Eileen.
Everything culminates at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The fictional story. The real convention. The real riot.
The narrative is a work of fiction filmed during, in, and on top of real footage. The actors step into real demonstrations and riots as Wexler's camera watches. Sometimes the people at the real events, unknowing extras, interact with the cameras. Both cameras. John and his prop camera. Haskell and his real camera. Wexler anticipated that a riot would break out at the DNC Convention, so he prepared for it. The result is a cinema-verite fictional narrative interwoven with a documentary of the time.
The journalist is a human being. The cameraman is a person. At times he is working. At times he is living his life.
Sometimes what is filmed and what is lived come together. Crash together.
And the cameraman experiences life.
On the other side.
* * * * *
Haskell Wexler was a great American cinematographer. He was nominated for five Academy Awards and won two. He was known for his work on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), In the Heat of the Night (1967), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Bound for Glory (1975), Coming Home (1978), Matewan (1987), Colors (1988), Other People's Money (1991), The Secret of Roan Inish (1994), and Mulholland Falls (1996). Throughout his career he also made documentaries and shorts about subjects that were important to him.
Robert Forster plays John Katselas, the cameraman. (IMDb lists it as John Cassellis and Wikipedia repeats it, but in the movie it is clearly Katselas.) He got his start as Private L. G. Williams in Reflections on a Golden Eye (1967). Not long after this film he got his own television series and became a household name as Miles C. Banyon on Banyon (1971-3). He got another series as Deputy Nakia Parker on Nakia (1974), and later had recurring roles on Karen Sisco (2003-4), Heroes (2007-8), Last Man Standing (2012-15), and now Twin Peaks (2017). Forster worked steadily throughout the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, but he flew below the radar until Quentin Tarantino made him a star again with his role as Max Cherry in Jackie Brown (1997).
Peter Bonerz plays Gus the sound man. He became known in American households as the beloved dentist Dr. Jerry Robinson on The Bob Newhart Show (1972-78) and went on to become a prolific director of television while also continuing to act.
Verna Bloom plays Eileen, the mother of thirteen-year old Harold. Eileen and Harold moved to Chicago from West Virginia, where Harold's father lost his job when the coal mine shut down. They say that Harold's father is fighting in Vietnam, but they do not know where he is. Verna Bloom worked with Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter (1973) and Honkytonk Man (1982). She played Marion Wormer in Animal House (1978), June in After Hours (1985), and Mary the Mother of Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988).
Marianna Hill plays Ruth. She also appeared in High Plains Drifter, as Callie Travers, as well as Deanna Corleone in The Godfather: Part II (1974).
Peter Boyle plays the "Gun Clinic Manager." He had a prolific career in film and was known to American households as Frank Barone, the father of Ray Romano on Everybody Loves Raymond (1996-2005).
Jesse Jackson appears in real footage, as well as Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr, in archival footage.
Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention provide songs for the film, but the band seen playing is a different band, called The Litter.
The title comes from a concept by Marshall McLuhan. You may remember him from Woody Allen's film Annie Hall (1977). While Alvy Singer and Annie Hall are standing "on line" for a movie, they overhear a man pretentiously pontificating about Marshall McLuhan's ideas. Alvy Singer then produces the real Marshall McLuhan from behind a sign so that McLuhan can set the man straight. McLuhan published a book in 1967 called The Medium is the Message: An Inventory of Effects. His concept is that a hot medium involves more interaction with the audience while a cool medium involves less interaction with the audience. TV, and TV news, is a Cool Medium, because it requires little interaction. The audience is passive.
360 - Medium Cool, United States, 1969. Dir. Haskell Wexler.
Summer of '68.
John and Gus work for Channel 8 News in Chicago. John is a cameraman. Gus is a sound man. They drive a station-owned station wagon. They each wear a Motorola Pageboy on their belt.
They cover the news. Social unrest in Chicago. Marching on Washington. Car crashes. Race riots. War protests. The Hippie scene. The Democratic National Convention.
In the opening scene they record a car crash. The woman is lying on the freeway, still alive, in need of immediate care. They stand over her. Filming. Recording. Without emotion. After they get their footage they walk back to their car. At a normal pace. Then they announce that they should call an ambulance.
John and Gus get into conversations about the ethics of journalism. Is it right to be a neutral bystander and record while people are dying around you? Do you have a responsibility to get involved? Are you even neutral? Do you merely report the news or do you sensationalize it? Do you only report people and events that are loud, extreme, and violent?
Eileen Horton and her son Harold live in an apartment building in a poor neighborhood in Chicago. Harold raises homing pigeons on the roof. Like Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) in On the Waterfront (1954). He rides the L. Opens his basket. Lets the pigeon fly free. He knows it will return.
John is dating a nurse. Ruth. Someone is stealing hubcaps and antennas from his station wagon. She tells him not to worry about it. Channel 8 has plenty of resources. He says that is not the point. Journalists resent that wherever they go, in the course of doing their job, they are made into a target.
John catches Harold stealing his hubcaps. He chases him through the parking lot. Harold drops his basket. Harold loses John. John picks up Harold's basket. He takes it home. Gus and Ruth are sitting in the car waiting for him. What is in the basket? Dinner.
John takes Ruth to a Roller Derby. Violence as entertainment. Back at the apartment they talk more about his work as they make love.
Later he takes the pigeon back to Harold. The address is on the basket. He and Ruth are no longer dating. He begins to see Eileen.
Everything culminates at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The fictional story. The real convention. The real riot.
The narrative is a work of fiction filmed during, in, and on top of real footage. The actors step into real demonstrations and riots as Wexler's camera watches. Sometimes the people at the real events, unknowing extras, interact with the cameras. Both cameras. John and his prop camera. Haskell and his real camera. Wexler anticipated that a riot would break out at the DNC Convention, so he prepared for it. The result is a cinema-verite fictional narrative interwoven with a documentary of the time.
The journalist is a human being. The cameraman is a person. At times he is working. At times he is living his life.
Sometimes what is filmed and what is lived come together. Crash together.
And the cameraman experiences life.
On the other side.
* * * * *
Haskell Wexler was a great American cinematographer. He was nominated for five Academy Awards and won two. He was known for his work on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), In the Heat of the Night (1967), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Bound for Glory (1975), Coming Home (1978), Matewan (1987), Colors (1988), Other People's Money (1991), The Secret of Roan Inish (1994), and Mulholland Falls (1996). Throughout his career he also made documentaries and shorts about subjects that were important to him.
Robert Forster plays John Katselas, the cameraman. (IMDb lists it as John Cassellis and Wikipedia repeats it, but in the movie it is clearly Katselas.) He got his start as Private L. G. Williams in Reflections on a Golden Eye (1967). Not long after this film he got his own television series and became a household name as Miles C. Banyon on Banyon (1971-3). He got another series as Deputy Nakia Parker on Nakia (1974), and later had recurring roles on Karen Sisco (2003-4), Heroes (2007-8), Last Man Standing (2012-15), and now Twin Peaks (2017). Forster worked steadily throughout the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, but he flew below the radar until Quentin Tarantino made him a star again with his role as Max Cherry in Jackie Brown (1997).
Peter Bonerz plays Gus the sound man. He became known in American households as the beloved dentist Dr. Jerry Robinson on The Bob Newhart Show (1972-78) and went on to become a prolific director of television while also continuing to act.
Verna Bloom plays Eileen, the mother of thirteen-year old Harold. Eileen and Harold moved to Chicago from West Virginia, where Harold's father lost his job when the coal mine shut down. They say that Harold's father is fighting in Vietnam, but they do not know where he is. Verna Bloom worked with Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter (1973) and Honkytonk Man (1982). She played Marion Wormer in Animal House (1978), June in After Hours (1985), and Mary the Mother of Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988).
Marianna Hill plays Ruth. She also appeared in High Plains Drifter, as Callie Travers, as well as Deanna Corleone in The Godfather: Part II (1974).
Peter Boyle plays the "Gun Clinic Manager." He had a prolific career in film and was known to American households as Frank Barone, the father of Ray Romano on Everybody Loves Raymond (1996-2005).
Jesse Jackson appears in real footage, as well as Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr, in archival footage.
Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention provide songs for the film, but the band seen playing is a different band, called The Litter.
The title comes from a concept by Marshall McLuhan. You may remember him from Woody Allen's film Annie Hall (1977). While Alvy Singer and Annie Hall are standing "on line" for a movie, they overhear a man pretentiously pontificating about Marshall McLuhan's ideas. Alvy Singer then produces the real Marshall McLuhan from behind a sign so that McLuhan can set the man straight. McLuhan published a book in 1967 called The Medium is the Message: An Inventory of Effects. His concept is that a hot medium involves more interaction with the audience while a cool medium involves less interaction with the audience. TV, and TV news, is a Cool Medium, because it requires little interaction. The audience is passive.
Monday, December 25, 2017
359 - The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare, United Kingdom/United States, 1971. Dir. Roman Polanski.
Monday, December 25, 2017
359 - The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare, United Kingdom/United States, 1971. Dir. Roman Polanski.
Shhh!
You have now entered the theatre.
Please do not speak the name of the Scottish play out loud. Kindly refer to it henceforth as "The Scottish Play."
We wish to do no harm to the theatre.
And since the main characters share the same name as the play, please refer to them as The Scottish King and The Scottish Lady.
Thank you for your kindness and cooperation.
And now for our play.
Whew!
That was close. We diverted a disaster.
Now let us exit the theatre. We are back in the realm of the blog. You may now speak the name of the play and the names of the characters. Thank you.
Proceed.
With Hamlet we had the Dane.
With Macbeth we have the Thane,
Malcolm, and his brother Donalbain.
Now let us go to Dunsinane!
Roman Polanski has created a film which, among other things, is exceedingly clear. If you are unfamiliar or only slightly familiar with Macbeth, or if you are otherwise intimidated by the writing of Shakespeare, then you will be pleasantly surprised by this film. You can follow it.
It begins by being visually stunning. You may watch it regardless of the story and be swept up in the look of the film. Polanski as always creates superior visual images, an artist to the end. He returns to his cinematographer from Repulsion (1965) and Cul-de-Sac (1966), Gilbert "Gil" Talyor.
He also returns to Lindisfarne in Northumberland, the island with the wide sand and the great castle where he filmed Cul-de-Sac. In addition to Lindisfarne, he travels to Bamburgh and its castle, also in Northumberland, Harlech and its castle in Gwynedd, Wales, and other parts of Gwynedd, all of which transport us back in time, not to Shakespeare's day, but to Macbeth's, which is centuries before.
Polanski brings on literary giant Kenneth Tynan to help him write the screenplay and research the world--and research it they have done. They have researched everything to the minutest detail--the clothing, the chainmail, the saddles on the horses, the way the men ride the horses, styles of combat, architecture, weapons, accessories, the crown, animals, sleeping habits. All of the things the viewer sees have been meticulously designed to be as authentic to the time period as possible.
Kenneth Tynan began as a theater critic, and at the time of his working on Macbeth he was the literary manager at the National Theatre Company. Later he moved to California to continue his work as a writer. He was thought of as a literary giant, and his contributions to the film are considerable.
Polanski has thought deeply about his casting, and he has cast exceptional actors. He directs them to speak their lines naturally, as real people really speak, and not as if performing on the stage. Consequently, the characters speak in a way that feels contemporary and easy to follow. They are not putting on as if they know they are performing for the camera. They are simply living life.
Here is a brief synopsis.
Duncan is the king. Macbeth is the Thane of Glamis. Another man is the Thane of Cawdor and yet another man the Thane of Ross.
The men have just fought in battle. The Thane of Ross advises King Duncan on how they behaved. The Thane of Cawdor acted treasonously, while Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, acted heroically. Duncan decides to execute Cawdor and promote Macbeth to his position.
Meanwhile, Macbeth and his colleague and friend Banquo are riding on their horses. They pass by a group of witches who have been preparing a brew. The witches stop them to tell them their prophecy. Macbeth will be made the Thane of Cawdor and later will become the King. Banquo will not be made king but his offspring will be. Macbeth and Banquo laugh at the witches. They do not believe them but are entertained by them.
Messengers from the king arrive and inform Macbeth that he is to be made the new Thane of Cawdor. He will also retain his position as Thane of Glamis. Macbeth and Banquo look at one another. They cannot believe what they have just heard. The witches have made a prediction and within moments the first part of it is becoming true. They follow the messengers to the king, where he promotes Macbeth as the new Thane of Cawdor.
At this point all is well. Macbeth is a good man. Brave. Heroic. Honest. True. He serves the king and has not sought to overstep his station. The witches predict good things for him. The king believes in him. He is rewarded for his fidelity. If he were to do nothing, assuming the witches are correct, he will become king one day anyway.
But something changes seemingly all in an instant. Duncan promotes one of his sons, Malcolm, as the new Prince of Cumberland. This places Malcolm in royal succession as the next in line for the throne. Malcolm's brother, Donalbain, is not pleased, and neither is Macbeth. He does not trust fate or providence to work things out. He believes he will have to act in order to make the prediction come to pass.
In that sense, Macbeth becomes the opposite of Oedipus. The Oracle predicted that Oedipus one day would kill his father and marry his mother, so Oedipus did everything in his power to keep that from happening. Yet all of his actions to keep it from happening became the things that caused it to happen.
Macbeth, on the other hand, does everything in his power to cause the witches' predictions to happen. Yet all of his actions to make them happen become the things that prevent them from happening.
Apparently one should not fight fate. At least according to these stories.
Macbeth writes letters to his wife. And Lady Macbeth is filled with visions of her husband as king. O to see that day! She plots her own conspiracy.
When he arrives she shares the plan.
Macbeth decides to abandon the plan and be faithful to Duncan, but his wife eggs him on. She says, "But screw your courage to the sticking place, and we'll not fail."
Duncan comes to call. When you have the favor of the king--and when you live in a castle--he will visit your home. They have a feast. They have a dance. That night they poison his bodyguards and Macbeth goes in to the king's bedroom with a dagger.
The scene is all the more treacherous after the set up, after we see how much Duncan loves Macbeth, and how loyal Macbeth has been to him, and how much good Duncan intends to do for Macbeth. And then, as Macbeth hovers over Duncan's sleeping body, Duncan wakes up. Sees him. Realizes it. Looks him in the eyes. Speaks his name.
Why do it, Macbeth? Why?
This film makes the deed deeply personal.
A major part of Polanski's vision is to cast Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as young--not older people as had been traditionally done--but people in their twenties, who are filled with energy and desire and ambition. It works well.
After the deed is done, Macbeth succeeds in making people think Duncan's sons killed their own father, and they in turn flee to England and to Ireland.
It works out. No one suspects Macbeth. They crown him king. He has made the witches' prediction come to pass.
But something else begins to happen.
Guilt.
Fear.
Paranoia.
Mental illness.
They cannot be happy. They look perpetually over their shoulders. Who knows? Who is plotting to kill them? They trust no one.
As Macbeth says, "O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!"
As she says to him, "This is the very painting of your fear."
He has Banquo killed. He blames Banquo's son Feance. He sees Banquo returned as a ghost. He is haunted. Tormented.
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
359 - The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare, United Kingdom/United States, 1971. Dir. Roman Polanski.
Shhh!
You have now entered the theatre.
Please do not speak the name of the Scottish play out loud. Kindly refer to it henceforth as "The Scottish Play."
We wish to do no harm to the theatre.
And since the main characters share the same name as the play, please refer to them as The Scottish King and The Scottish Lady.
Thank you for your kindness and cooperation.
And now for our play.
Whew!
That was close. We diverted a disaster.
Now let us exit the theatre. We are back in the realm of the blog. You may now speak the name of the play and the names of the characters. Thank you.
Proceed.
With Hamlet we had the Dane.
With Macbeth we have the Thane,
Malcolm, and his brother Donalbain.
Now let us go to Dunsinane!
Roman Polanski has created a film which, among other things, is exceedingly clear. If you are unfamiliar or only slightly familiar with Macbeth, or if you are otherwise intimidated by the writing of Shakespeare, then you will be pleasantly surprised by this film. You can follow it.
It begins by being visually stunning. You may watch it regardless of the story and be swept up in the look of the film. Polanski as always creates superior visual images, an artist to the end. He returns to his cinematographer from Repulsion (1965) and Cul-de-Sac (1966), Gilbert "Gil" Talyor.
He also returns to Lindisfarne in Northumberland, the island with the wide sand and the great castle where he filmed Cul-de-Sac. In addition to Lindisfarne, he travels to Bamburgh and its castle, also in Northumberland, Harlech and its castle in Gwynedd, Wales, and other parts of Gwynedd, all of which transport us back in time, not to Shakespeare's day, but to Macbeth's, which is centuries before.
Polanski brings on literary giant Kenneth Tynan to help him write the screenplay and research the world--and research it they have done. They have researched everything to the minutest detail--the clothing, the chainmail, the saddles on the horses, the way the men ride the horses, styles of combat, architecture, weapons, accessories, the crown, animals, sleeping habits. All of the things the viewer sees have been meticulously designed to be as authentic to the time period as possible.
Kenneth Tynan began as a theater critic, and at the time of his working on Macbeth he was the literary manager at the National Theatre Company. Later he moved to California to continue his work as a writer. He was thought of as a literary giant, and his contributions to the film are considerable.
Polanski has thought deeply about his casting, and he has cast exceptional actors. He directs them to speak their lines naturally, as real people really speak, and not as if performing on the stage. Consequently, the characters speak in a way that feels contemporary and easy to follow. They are not putting on as if they know they are performing for the camera. They are simply living life.
Here is a brief synopsis.
Duncan is the king. Macbeth is the Thane of Glamis. Another man is the Thane of Cawdor and yet another man the Thane of Ross.
The men have just fought in battle. The Thane of Ross advises King Duncan on how they behaved. The Thane of Cawdor acted treasonously, while Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, acted heroically. Duncan decides to execute Cawdor and promote Macbeth to his position.
Meanwhile, Macbeth and his colleague and friend Banquo are riding on their horses. They pass by a group of witches who have been preparing a brew. The witches stop them to tell them their prophecy. Macbeth will be made the Thane of Cawdor and later will become the King. Banquo will not be made king but his offspring will be. Macbeth and Banquo laugh at the witches. They do not believe them but are entertained by them.
Messengers from the king arrive and inform Macbeth that he is to be made the new Thane of Cawdor. He will also retain his position as Thane of Glamis. Macbeth and Banquo look at one another. They cannot believe what they have just heard. The witches have made a prediction and within moments the first part of it is becoming true. They follow the messengers to the king, where he promotes Macbeth as the new Thane of Cawdor.
At this point all is well. Macbeth is a good man. Brave. Heroic. Honest. True. He serves the king and has not sought to overstep his station. The witches predict good things for him. The king believes in him. He is rewarded for his fidelity. If he were to do nothing, assuming the witches are correct, he will become king one day anyway.
But something changes seemingly all in an instant. Duncan promotes one of his sons, Malcolm, as the new Prince of Cumberland. This places Malcolm in royal succession as the next in line for the throne. Malcolm's brother, Donalbain, is not pleased, and neither is Macbeth. He does not trust fate or providence to work things out. He believes he will have to act in order to make the prediction come to pass.
In that sense, Macbeth becomes the opposite of Oedipus. The Oracle predicted that Oedipus one day would kill his father and marry his mother, so Oedipus did everything in his power to keep that from happening. Yet all of his actions to keep it from happening became the things that caused it to happen.
Macbeth, on the other hand, does everything in his power to cause the witches' predictions to happen. Yet all of his actions to make them happen become the things that prevent them from happening.
Apparently one should not fight fate. At least according to these stories.
Macbeth writes letters to his wife. And Lady Macbeth is filled with visions of her husband as king. O to see that day! She plots her own conspiracy.
When he arrives she shares the plan.
Macbeth decides to abandon the plan and be faithful to Duncan, but his wife eggs him on. She says, "But screw your courage to the sticking place, and we'll not fail."
Duncan comes to call. When you have the favor of the king--and when you live in a castle--he will visit your home. They have a feast. They have a dance. That night they poison his bodyguards and Macbeth goes in to the king's bedroom with a dagger.
The scene is all the more treacherous after the set up, after we see how much Duncan loves Macbeth, and how loyal Macbeth has been to him, and how much good Duncan intends to do for Macbeth. And then, as Macbeth hovers over Duncan's sleeping body, Duncan wakes up. Sees him. Realizes it. Looks him in the eyes. Speaks his name.
Why do it, Macbeth? Why?
This film makes the deed deeply personal.
A major part of Polanski's vision is to cast Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as young--not older people as had been traditionally done--but people in their twenties, who are filled with energy and desire and ambition. It works well.
After the deed is done, Macbeth succeeds in making people think Duncan's sons killed their own father, and they in turn flee to England and to Ireland.
It works out. No one suspects Macbeth. They crown him king. He has made the witches' prediction come to pass.
But something else begins to happen.
Guilt.
Fear.
Paranoia.
Mental illness.
They cannot be happy. They look perpetually over their shoulders. Who knows? Who is plotting to kill them? They trust no one.
As Macbeth says, "O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!"
As she says to him, "This is the very painting of your fear."
He has Banquo killed. He blames Banquo's son Feance. He sees Banquo returned as a ghost. He is haunted. Tormented.
Lady Macbeth begins to sleepwalk. The handmaid calls in the doctor. He witnesses her delusions. You may know her famous line. "Out, damned spot!" But did you know that she says it while asleep? While sleep walking? While washing her hands where there is no water? She too is haunted. Tormented.
The doctor cannot help her. "Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?"
"This disease is beyond my practice."
She needs more than a doctor.
"More needs she the divine than a physician. God! God forgive us all!"
Macbeth knows not what to do. He returns to the witches. They are midbrew. Throwing in everything that you might imagine you do not wish to ingest. He entreats them to help him. Tell him more. They oblige. He looks in the cauldron. He sees himself speaking back to himself.
First Apparition - Beware Macduff.
Second Apparition - None of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth.
Third Apparition - Macbeth shall never vanquished be until / Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill / Shall come against him.
That second apparition is going to give Macbeth false hope. No one born of a woman shall harm him. He believes that means everyone. Everyone is born of a woman. Therefore, no one shall harm Macbeth. He does not consider that a C-section might make an exception to the rule.
Macduff was born of a C-section. Macduff will harm Macbeth. Lay on, Macduff.
He should have listened more closely to the first apparition.
The film contains special effects.
When Macbeth sees a dagger in the air, we see it too. We do not have to imagine it. When Lady Macbeth refers to "the very air-drawn dagger which, you said, / Led you to Duncan," we know what she is talking about, because we have seen the air-drawn dagger floating in the air.
The men come bearing trees, as the great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill.
The catapults shoot fireballs over the castle walls.
They invade the castle.
There is a showdown. A swordfight. A swordfight that must have been choreographed with the fighting of the time in mind. It does not look contemporary.
And then the violence.
"Macbeth is a play steeped in blood. To smooth it down just for the satisfaction of some film critics would be wrong. The violence should not be palatable." - Roman Polanski.
There is a lot to be said for this movie. It is not a small entry into the Shakespeare film canon. It is a major player.
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor playerThat struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Sunday, December 24, 2017
358 - Rosemary's Baby, United States, 1967. Dir. Roman Polanski.
Sunday, December 24, 2017
358 - Rosemary's Baby, United States, 1967. Dir. Roman Polanski.
Rosemary Woodhouse hears things. She hears things through the walls.
Voices. Some kind of chanting. Music. Fur Elise for example. Someone playing the recorder. Her husband Guy says it is a man named Dr. Shand. How does he know?
Sometimes she hears what sounds like a crying baby.
Who is it? What is it?
Something seems a little off about this apartment building.
Mrs. Gardenia went senile.
Donald Baumgart went blind.
Hutch went into a coma.
Terry Ginolfrio jumped off the window ledge to her death.
Maybe the Bramford is not the best choice for a new home after all.
Rosemary loved it when she and Guy first looked at it. She begged him to take. But now she would just as soon move.
Their neighbors, Roman and Minnie Castevet, are the friendliest people in the world. But that does not help anything. In fact, it might just be part of the problem. It might even be the problem. They are always coming over. Bringing food. Talking her into using their doctor. Making her drinks with vitamins in them. Giving her something to wear around her neck. Some kind of herb. Or root. Tannis root? What is that anyway? And chocolate mousse. Or . . . chalky mousse.
After a few bites, Rosemary secretly throws the rest away. But she seems to have eaten just enough to pass out. Too bad, because tonight was the night she and Guy were going to make a baby.
She has strange dreams. Something about her Catholic upbringing. Nuns. Windows. Bricks. People from her life. A man on a sailboat. And, well, in her dream she seems to be making a baby after all. Just not with Guy. And not with another man either. But with something, well . . . thank goodness it is only a dream.
She is most relieved when she awakens.
Honey, I had the awfullest dream.
No worries. We made a baby after all. Everything is going to be fine.
But what exactly are those scratch marks on her back?
Guy's fortunes take a turn for the better. When Donald Baumgart goes blind, Guy gets the role instead. Paramount is calling. Universal is also interested. They may be moving to the Hills of Beverly.
But as his career ascends, her pregnancy seems to go in some unusual places.
And she grows more frightened.
Is it all just in her head? Prepartum depression? Or is there really something going on in that apartment next door?
And what secret lurks inside that hidden closet?
Rosemary's Baby came out in 1968 and took the nation by storm.
It had been somewhat of a risk. An unprecedented type of horror story. A B-picture schlock producer. A foreign director making his first American studio film. A television actress making her first film. An independent director and improvisational actor as the leading man. Filming that ran beyond schedule. And above budget. And a first edit that came in at over four hours. Paramount could lose a lot of money.
Paramount made bank. And the film won an Oscar. And started a new genre. And launched a few careers.
All of this came together during a second Golden Age at Paramount.
It all started with a wunderkind named Robert Evans. He and his brother Charles Evans and a tailor named Joseph Picone had started a line of women's clothing called Evan-Picone, and they revolutionized the industry by popularizing women's slacks. They added a fly to skirts and darts to pockets, and the rest is history. They sold out to Revlon in 1962 and became multi-millionaires.
During Evans' time in women's apparel Norma Shearer, the widow of another producing wunderkind, Irving Thalberg, hand-picked him to play her husband in a movie. He was not an actor, and he was 26 years old, but he made his debut and then, after acting for awhile, went on to become one of the great producers in film history.
And at only 36 he was named the head of Paramount Studios. He had a golden touch, and under his leadership Paramount experienced some of its greatest successes and enjoyed some of its finest days. He had his hand in some of the great films in history, from The Godfather (1972) to Chinatown (1974), and his output as studio chief or producer stretched from Barefoot in the Park in 1967 to How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days in 2003. In 1994 he published his memoir, which itself became a runaway bestseller and introduced him to a new generation of film fans, The Kid Stays in the Picture. It was also made into a film in 2002.
Ira Levin was a novelist and playwright who had had success on Broadway, beginning in 1956 with No Time for Sergeants, a vehicle that had made Andy Griffith a star on stage and later on screen. That year his first novel, A Kiss Before Dying (1953), was made into a film starring Robert Wagner and Joanne Woodward. (It would be remade in 1991 with Matt Dillon and Sean Young.) He would go on to write the novels The Stepford Wives (1972) and The Boys from Brazil (1976), and the Tony-award winning play Deathtrap (1978), all of which would be made into movies.
But in 1967 he was looking for a topic about which to write his second novel, and he thought about horror, how the suspense and tension build before the actual dramatic events--that the horror comes not from the climatic events but from the dread leading up to them. He thought of a pregnancy because it gave him nine months in which to build the tension. The novel that came out of it, Rosemary's Baby, became the top selling horror novel of the entire decade and launched a new boom in the genre.
William Castle bought the rights to the novel. Castle was yet another producing wunderkind, who had started working for Harry Cohn at Columbia at age 23. As a horror producer, he was known for rigging the actual theaters to correspond to the films being shown. For one film, a skeleton would fly overhead with its eye sockets glowing red. For another, certain seats would vibrate during climactic moments. He himself had directed many movies, but when he approached studio head Robert Evans about directing Rosemary's Baby, Evans knew that the material was too good for a B-picture. He had Castle produce, but he would have to find a major artistic talent to direct it.
Robert Evans turned to Roman Polasnki, a Polish Jew who had survived the Holocaust as a little boy while losing his parents. He was born in Paris, went to film school in Poland, made his first film in Poland, and made his next three films in England. When Evans called upon him, he had just four films under his belt--Knife in the Water (1962), Repulsion (1965), Cul-de-Sac (1966), and The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)--the last one being a parody and the three before it all considered international masterpieces. His first film had been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, so he was on people's watch list. Evans knew good filmmaking, and he wanted his films to be good, so he brought him in.
Mia Farrow was the daughter of director John Farrow and actress Maureen O'Sullivan. At the time of the film she was series regular Allison Mackenzie on the television series Peyton Place. She had appeared in a couple of films but had not yet had a significant role in a film. Roman Polanski wanted Tuesday Weld for the role but the Studio had him consider Mia Farrow, and he grew to like the choice.
Polanski himself selected John Cassavetes. The Studio wanted Robert Redford, but they were in the process of suing him, so he was not available! Cassavetes was himself a writer and director, and his style was very different from Polanski's. The two clashed on set, and Polanski speaks of Cassavetes as being difficult to deal with, but his final performance is strong.
Consider how many filmmakers came together to make this film.
Studio head Robert Evans was himself an actor and producer.
Producer William Castle was himself a director.
Director Roman Polanski was himself a writer and actor.
Actress Mia Farrow was the daughter of a director.
Actor John Cassavetes was himself a writer and director.
And actress Ruth Gordon was herself a screenwriter! (See below.)
Meanwhile, a couple great character actors should be noted.
Ralph Bellamy, who plays Doctor Sapirstein begin his long and prolific career in the early 1930s and worked all the way through to Pretty Woman in 1990. We saw him recently as Bruce Baldwin, Cary Grant's rival, in His Girl Friday (1940). In that film Cary Grant makes the inside joke when he says of him, "He looks like that fellow in the movies. You know, Ralph Bellamy."
The always reliable droopy dog Elisha Cook plays landlord Mr. Nicklas. It is he who discovers the secret closet through which Rosemary will later go. He also started in the early 1930s and worked through to the 1980s. He appeared in some of the finest films of the 1940s, including the "first" film noir, Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), and Sergeant York (1941). He supported Bogie in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Big Sleep (1946). We have seen him in The Killing (1956) and One-Eyed Jacks (1961).
Charles Grodin, at age 33, also launches his career here, in the role of Rosemary's first doctor, C. C. Hill.
Today is Christmas Eve, a time when we are celebrating the Virgin Birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Coincidentally, the list of film titles which was set up before the beginning of the year has us watching and writing about another birth.
Another baby.
And a conception that was less than immaculate.
* * * * *
Rosemary's Baby was nominated for the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and it won for Best Supporting Actress for Ruth Gordon. She was nominated the year before for Inside Daisy Clover, and she was nominated three times for Best Screenplay for A Double Life (1948), Adam's Rib (1951), and Pat and Mike (1953). Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Ruth Gordon was a successful screenwriter as well as actress.
* * * * *
John Cassavetes
031 - Shadows, 1959
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/01/031-shadows-1959-united-states-dir-john.html
032 - Faces, 1962
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/02/032-faces-1968-united-states-dir-john.html
033 - A Woman Under the Influence, 1974
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/02/033-woman-under-influence-1974-united.html
034 - The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, 1976
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/02/034-killing-of-chinese-bookie-1976.html
035 - Opening Night, 1977
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/02/035-opening-night-1977-united-states.html
Roman Polanski
024 - Repulsion, 1965
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/01/024-repulsion-1965-united-kingdom-dir.html
040 - Tess, 1979
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/02/040-tess-1979-united-states-dir-roman.html
243 - Knife in the Water, 1962
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/08/243-knife-in-water-1962-poland-dir.html
Ralph Bellamy
307 - His Girl Friday, Howard Hawks, 1940.
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/11/307-his-girl-friday-united-states-1940.html
Elisha Cook, Jr.
347 - The Killing, Stanley Kubrick, 1956.
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/12/347-killing-united-states-1956-dir.html
354 - One-Eyed Jacks, Marlon Brando, 1961.
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/12/354-one-eyed-jacks-united-states-1961.html
358 - Rosemary's Baby, United States, 1967. Dir. Roman Polanski.
Rosemary Woodhouse hears things. She hears things through the walls.
Voices. Some kind of chanting. Music. Fur Elise for example. Someone playing the recorder. Her husband Guy says it is a man named Dr. Shand. How does he know?
Sometimes she hears what sounds like a crying baby.
Who is it? What is it?
Something seems a little off about this apartment building.
Mrs. Gardenia went senile.
Donald Baumgart went blind.
Hutch went into a coma.
Terry Ginolfrio jumped off the window ledge to her death.
Maybe the Bramford is not the best choice for a new home after all.
Rosemary loved it when she and Guy first looked at it. She begged him to take. But now she would just as soon move.
Their neighbors, Roman and Minnie Castevet, are the friendliest people in the world. But that does not help anything. In fact, it might just be part of the problem. It might even be the problem. They are always coming over. Bringing food. Talking her into using their doctor. Making her drinks with vitamins in them. Giving her something to wear around her neck. Some kind of herb. Or root. Tannis root? What is that anyway? And chocolate mousse. Or . . . chalky mousse.
After a few bites, Rosemary secretly throws the rest away. But she seems to have eaten just enough to pass out. Too bad, because tonight was the night she and Guy were going to make a baby.
She has strange dreams. Something about her Catholic upbringing. Nuns. Windows. Bricks. People from her life. A man on a sailboat. And, well, in her dream she seems to be making a baby after all. Just not with Guy. And not with another man either. But with something, well . . . thank goodness it is only a dream.
She is most relieved when she awakens.
Honey, I had the awfullest dream.
No worries. We made a baby after all. Everything is going to be fine.
But what exactly are those scratch marks on her back?
Guy's fortunes take a turn for the better. When Donald Baumgart goes blind, Guy gets the role instead. Paramount is calling. Universal is also interested. They may be moving to the Hills of Beverly.
But as his career ascends, her pregnancy seems to go in some unusual places.
And she grows more frightened.
Is it all just in her head? Prepartum depression? Or is there really something going on in that apartment next door?
And what secret lurks inside that hidden closet?
Rosemary's Baby came out in 1968 and took the nation by storm.
It had been somewhat of a risk. An unprecedented type of horror story. A B-picture schlock producer. A foreign director making his first American studio film. A television actress making her first film. An independent director and improvisational actor as the leading man. Filming that ran beyond schedule. And above budget. And a first edit that came in at over four hours. Paramount could lose a lot of money.
Paramount made bank. And the film won an Oscar. And started a new genre. And launched a few careers.
All of this came together during a second Golden Age at Paramount.
It all started with a wunderkind named Robert Evans. He and his brother Charles Evans and a tailor named Joseph Picone had started a line of women's clothing called Evan-Picone, and they revolutionized the industry by popularizing women's slacks. They added a fly to skirts and darts to pockets, and the rest is history. They sold out to Revlon in 1962 and became multi-millionaires.
During Evans' time in women's apparel Norma Shearer, the widow of another producing wunderkind, Irving Thalberg, hand-picked him to play her husband in a movie. He was not an actor, and he was 26 years old, but he made his debut and then, after acting for awhile, went on to become one of the great producers in film history.
And at only 36 he was named the head of Paramount Studios. He had a golden touch, and under his leadership Paramount experienced some of its greatest successes and enjoyed some of its finest days. He had his hand in some of the great films in history, from The Godfather (1972) to Chinatown (1974), and his output as studio chief or producer stretched from Barefoot in the Park in 1967 to How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days in 2003. In 1994 he published his memoir, which itself became a runaway bestseller and introduced him to a new generation of film fans, The Kid Stays in the Picture. It was also made into a film in 2002.
Ira Levin was a novelist and playwright who had had success on Broadway, beginning in 1956 with No Time for Sergeants, a vehicle that had made Andy Griffith a star on stage and later on screen. That year his first novel, A Kiss Before Dying (1953), was made into a film starring Robert Wagner and Joanne Woodward. (It would be remade in 1991 with Matt Dillon and Sean Young.) He would go on to write the novels The Stepford Wives (1972) and The Boys from Brazil (1976), and the Tony-award winning play Deathtrap (1978), all of which would be made into movies.
But in 1967 he was looking for a topic about which to write his second novel, and he thought about horror, how the suspense and tension build before the actual dramatic events--that the horror comes not from the climatic events but from the dread leading up to them. He thought of a pregnancy because it gave him nine months in which to build the tension. The novel that came out of it, Rosemary's Baby, became the top selling horror novel of the entire decade and launched a new boom in the genre.
William Castle bought the rights to the novel. Castle was yet another producing wunderkind, who had started working for Harry Cohn at Columbia at age 23. As a horror producer, he was known for rigging the actual theaters to correspond to the films being shown. For one film, a skeleton would fly overhead with its eye sockets glowing red. For another, certain seats would vibrate during climactic moments. He himself had directed many movies, but when he approached studio head Robert Evans about directing Rosemary's Baby, Evans knew that the material was too good for a B-picture. He had Castle produce, but he would have to find a major artistic talent to direct it.
Robert Evans turned to Roman Polasnki, a Polish Jew who had survived the Holocaust as a little boy while losing his parents. He was born in Paris, went to film school in Poland, made his first film in Poland, and made his next three films in England. When Evans called upon him, he had just four films under his belt--Knife in the Water (1962), Repulsion (1965), Cul-de-Sac (1966), and The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)--the last one being a parody and the three before it all considered international masterpieces. His first film had been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, so he was on people's watch list. Evans knew good filmmaking, and he wanted his films to be good, so he brought him in.
Mia Farrow was the daughter of director John Farrow and actress Maureen O'Sullivan. At the time of the film she was series regular Allison Mackenzie on the television series Peyton Place. She had appeared in a couple of films but had not yet had a significant role in a film. Roman Polanski wanted Tuesday Weld for the role but the Studio had him consider Mia Farrow, and he grew to like the choice.
Polanski himself selected John Cassavetes. The Studio wanted Robert Redford, but they were in the process of suing him, so he was not available! Cassavetes was himself a writer and director, and his style was very different from Polanski's. The two clashed on set, and Polanski speaks of Cassavetes as being difficult to deal with, but his final performance is strong.
Consider how many filmmakers came together to make this film.
Studio head Robert Evans was himself an actor and producer.
Producer William Castle was himself a director.
Director Roman Polanski was himself a writer and actor.
Actress Mia Farrow was the daughter of a director.
Actor John Cassavetes was himself a writer and director.
And actress Ruth Gordon was herself a screenwriter! (See below.)
Meanwhile, a couple great character actors should be noted.
Ralph Bellamy, who plays Doctor Sapirstein begin his long and prolific career in the early 1930s and worked all the way through to Pretty Woman in 1990. We saw him recently as Bruce Baldwin, Cary Grant's rival, in His Girl Friday (1940). In that film Cary Grant makes the inside joke when he says of him, "He looks like that fellow in the movies. You know, Ralph Bellamy."
The always reliable droopy dog Elisha Cook plays landlord Mr. Nicklas. It is he who discovers the secret closet through which Rosemary will later go. He also started in the early 1930s and worked through to the 1980s. He appeared in some of the finest films of the 1940s, including the "first" film noir, Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), and Sergeant York (1941). He supported Bogie in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Big Sleep (1946). We have seen him in The Killing (1956) and One-Eyed Jacks (1961).
Charles Grodin, at age 33, also launches his career here, in the role of Rosemary's first doctor, C. C. Hill.
Today is Christmas Eve, a time when we are celebrating the Virgin Birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Coincidentally, the list of film titles which was set up before the beginning of the year has us watching and writing about another birth.
Another baby.
And a conception that was less than immaculate.
* * * * *
Rosemary's Baby was nominated for the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and it won for Best Supporting Actress for Ruth Gordon. She was nominated the year before for Inside Daisy Clover, and she was nominated three times for Best Screenplay for A Double Life (1948), Adam's Rib (1951), and Pat and Mike (1953). Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Ruth Gordon was a successful screenwriter as well as actress.
* * * * *
John Cassavetes
031 - Shadows, 1959
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/01/031-shadows-1959-united-states-dir-john.html
032 - Faces, 1962
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/02/032-faces-1968-united-states-dir-john.html
033 - A Woman Under the Influence, 1974
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/02/033-woman-under-influence-1974-united.html
034 - The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, 1976
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/02/034-killing-of-chinese-bookie-1976.html
035 - Opening Night, 1977
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/02/035-opening-night-1977-united-states.html
Roman Polanski
024 - Repulsion, 1965
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/01/024-repulsion-1965-united-kingdom-dir.html
040 - Tess, 1979
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/02/040-tess-1979-united-states-dir-roman.html
243 - Knife in the Water, 1962
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/08/243-knife-in-water-1962-poland-dir.html
Ralph Bellamy
307 - His Girl Friday, Howard Hawks, 1940.
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/11/307-his-girl-friday-united-states-1940.html
Elisha Cook, Jr.
347 - The Killing, Stanley Kubrick, 1956.
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/12/347-killing-united-states-1956-dir.html
354 - One-Eyed Jacks, Marlon Brando, 1961.
http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/12/354-one-eyed-jacks-united-states-1961.html
Saturday, December 23, 2017
357 - Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, United States, 1970. Dir. Russ Meyer.
Saturday, December 23, 2017
357 - Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, United States, 1970. Dir. Russ Meyer.
Roger Ebert gives this film a thumb's up.
Of course he does. He wrote the screenplay.
Wait. What?
If you are a film buff you may already know it, but in case you do not, the film critic Roger Ebert once wrote a screenplay for a movie. Russ Meyer asked him to. Then he did it again. Again for Russ. With Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens (1979). Under an assumed name. Afterwards he never wrote a screenplay again.
Russ Meyer's mother gave him an 8mm movie camera when he was 14 years old. Later he went to war, World War II, and served as a cameraman. He made pictures and film footage that was used in newsreels. Later it was used in the film Patton (1970). Patton, which won 7 Oscars, including Best Picture. And which was nominated for Best Cinematography.
Its cinematographer, Fred J. Koenekamp, later won the Oscar for The Towering Inferno (1975) and was nominated again for Islands in the Stream (1978). He worked as Russ Meyer's cinematographer on Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
How did all that happen?
In the late 1960s 20th Century Fox had sustained some big box-office flops. They had not kept up with the new youth culture. The Summer of Love. The Hippie Generation. One day a studio executive was looking at The Wall Street Journal and saw that there was this independent filmmaker out there who was making money. And he was spending one-tenth of what it took Fox to make a movie. Maybe they could bring him in. Maybe he could appeal to the young generation. Maybe he could make movies inexpensively. Maybe he could make money.
They had recently had success with Valley of the Dolls (1967), so how about a sequel. They reached out to this independent filmmaker. They offered him to make the sequel. They brought him on board.
Russ Meyer had carved out a niche for himself in 1959 with a film called The Immoral Mr. Teas. It launched a decade of filmmaking that would become known as sexploitation, or skin flicks. It appealed to a broad, working-man audience. However, because he was a trained cameraman and he took his work seriously, he won the admiration of serious film critics.
Over the next decade he made films by working quickly, efficiently, and economically, and his films made money. He also gained a reputation for treating his cast and crew with respect and making them feel as though they were doing important work, despite the subject matter. He was not known for taking personal proclivities with his employees. People respected him.
So when Fox brought him on the lot, he had access to their resources, including a professional crew. He who had been making movies with a crew of seven was now making a movie with a crew of seventy. He who had been using his own equipment now had access to any piece of equipment he wanted. They also offered him the use of stars. He declined. He insisted on sticking to his tradition of working with unknown actors.
Then he called in Roger Ebert. Ebert had been a film critic in Chicago for just two years. He wrote for the newspaper. He was not yet known across America. He was not yet seen on television. He was local. But somehow Meyer, who was just getting to know him, felt that he would be able to get what Meyer was doing and help him to do it. So Ebert took a six-week leave of absence from the paper and went to Los Angeles to write a screenplay.
It did not take long for them to abandon the idea of filming a sequel. Instead, they would make a parody. A satire. And they would throw in everything that their imaginations could imagine. The bottom line was, Let us have fun and not take this thing too seriously.
Meyer made the movie. Ahead of schedule. Under budget. And with bright, bold production design and beautiful cinematography (with color by DeLuxe). He also brought his quick-cut editing style to the fore, something that would not be commonly known until a decade later with the launch of MTV. Meyer had discovered that he could work with actors who were not as talented if he could cut away from them quickly enough. Cut to them. Show their beauty. Let them say a line. Cut away. He also employed montages throughout the film, not only quick-cutting on the actors but also on the locations and inserts.
Depending on your taste, this film will be either a wonderfully fun romp or a brilliant send-up or an incomprehensible indulgence. It precedes and predicts another campy parody that would come out a few years later, The Rocky Horror Show (1973) on stage and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) on screen. In fact, critics have wondered why this one does not have the midnight showings where fans dress up in character and throw things at the screen while quoting the lines.
Well, now that it is out on Criterion and will be getting more attention, perhaps that is to come.
357 - Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, United States, 1970. Dir. Russ Meyer.
Roger Ebert gives this film a thumb's up.
Of course he does. He wrote the screenplay.
Wait. What?
If you are a film buff you may already know it, but in case you do not, the film critic Roger Ebert once wrote a screenplay for a movie. Russ Meyer asked him to. Then he did it again. Again for Russ. With Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens (1979). Under an assumed name. Afterwards he never wrote a screenplay again.
Russ Meyer's mother gave him an 8mm movie camera when he was 14 years old. Later he went to war, World War II, and served as a cameraman. He made pictures and film footage that was used in newsreels. Later it was used in the film Patton (1970). Patton, which won 7 Oscars, including Best Picture. And which was nominated for Best Cinematography.
Its cinematographer, Fred J. Koenekamp, later won the Oscar for The Towering Inferno (1975) and was nominated again for Islands in the Stream (1978). He worked as Russ Meyer's cinematographer on Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
How did all that happen?
In the late 1960s 20th Century Fox had sustained some big box-office flops. They had not kept up with the new youth culture. The Summer of Love. The Hippie Generation. One day a studio executive was looking at The Wall Street Journal and saw that there was this independent filmmaker out there who was making money. And he was spending one-tenth of what it took Fox to make a movie. Maybe they could bring him in. Maybe he could appeal to the young generation. Maybe he could make movies inexpensively. Maybe he could make money.
They had recently had success with Valley of the Dolls (1967), so how about a sequel. They reached out to this independent filmmaker. They offered him to make the sequel. They brought him on board.
Russ Meyer had carved out a niche for himself in 1959 with a film called The Immoral Mr. Teas. It launched a decade of filmmaking that would become known as sexploitation, or skin flicks. It appealed to a broad, working-man audience. However, because he was a trained cameraman and he took his work seriously, he won the admiration of serious film critics.
Over the next decade he made films by working quickly, efficiently, and economically, and his films made money. He also gained a reputation for treating his cast and crew with respect and making them feel as though they were doing important work, despite the subject matter. He was not known for taking personal proclivities with his employees. People respected him.
So when Fox brought him on the lot, he had access to their resources, including a professional crew. He who had been making movies with a crew of seven was now making a movie with a crew of seventy. He who had been using his own equipment now had access to any piece of equipment he wanted. They also offered him the use of stars. He declined. He insisted on sticking to his tradition of working with unknown actors.
Then he called in Roger Ebert. Ebert had been a film critic in Chicago for just two years. He wrote for the newspaper. He was not yet known across America. He was not yet seen on television. He was local. But somehow Meyer, who was just getting to know him, felt that he would be able to get what Meyer was doing and help him to do it. So Ebert took a six-week leave of absence from the paper and went to Los Angeles to write a screenplay.
It did not take long for them to abandon the idea of filming a sequel. Instead, they would make a parody. A satire. And they would throw in everything that their imaginations could imagine. The bottom line was, Let us have fun and not take this thing too seriously.
Meyer made the movie. Ahead of schedule. Under budget. And with bright, bold production design and beautiful cinematography (with color by DeLuxe). He also brought his quick-cut editing style to the fore, something that would not be commonly known until a decade later with the launch of MTV. Meyer had discovered that he could work with actors who were not as talented if he could cut away from them quickly enough. Cut to them. Show their beauty. Let them say a line. Cut away. He also employed montages throughout the film, not only quick-cutting on the actors but also on the locations and inserts.
Depending on your taste, this film will be either a wonderfully fun romp or a brilliant send-up or an incomprehensible indulgence. It precedes and predicts another campy parody that would come out a few years later, The Rocky Horror Show (1973) on stage and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) on screen. In fact, critics have wondered why this one does not have the midnight showings where fans dress up in character and throw things at the screen while quoting the lines.
Well, now that it is out on Criterion and will be getting more attention, perhaps that is to come.
Friday, December 22, 2017
356 - Valley of the Dolls, United States, 1967. Dir. Mark Robson.
Friday, December 22, 2017
356 - Valley of the Dolls, United States, 1967. Dir. Mark Robson.
Anne Welles takes the train from Laurenceville to New York City.
She gets a job at a talent agency. She is hired by the father, Mr. Burke, but works directly with the son, Lyon Burke.
He sends her over to a theater where they are rehearsing a new musical. She needs to get the star, Helen Lawson (Susan Hayward), to sign some contracts.
When Anne arrives she sees them rehearsing. Jennifer North (Sharon Tate) is modelling a grand headdress. She has a great look. Neely O'Hara (Patty Duke) is practicing her song. She has a great voice. Anne cannot believe the talent and energy in the room. This industry looks fascinating. She is going to enjoy her job.
She enters Lawson's dressing room. The grande dame. She is chewing out a man. Anne asks her to sign the contracts. Miss Lawson begins to do so. But then Anne makes the mistake of complimenting the girl she just heard singing downstairs. Helen is threatened. Cut the musical number. Reduce Neely to a minor role. Force her out. Anne cannot believe what has just happened. This industry looks terrifying. She is going to hate her job.
She is going to quit her job, but Lyon talks her out of it. They have a moment. The chemistry between them begins.
Neely has a run-of-show contract with the musical, meaning they must pay her $200 a week for the run of the show regardless of how much her role may swell or shrink along the way--even if they cut her out of it completely. To her this means she is getting paid to sit backstage in her dressing room, feeling bored and depressed. She did not sign up for that. The show's producer offers her to walk away to maintain her dignity. Her friend observes that he just wants to save $200 a week. Why not get your agent to fight for you? But he will advise her to stay. Why fight for her? It is worth 10% to him to do nothing. She quits the show. With her "dignity."
But showbiz has its way of creating unexpected twists and turns. If you have talent and work hard, then new roads will open up for you when old ones close. Neely gets a gig on a national telethon. She sings live on air. The phones start ringing. The public loves her. She gets a job at a nightclub. She is on her way.
The three young women--Anne Welles, Jennifer North, and Neely O'Hara--are all at the beginning of their careers, trying to get noticed, trying to get established, trying to get going. Together they will learn the ropes and climb the ladder, moving back and forth between New York and Los Angles--and Laurenceville--falling in and out of love with the men in their lives, working through relationships with mothers and grandmothers, struggling with the pressures of show business, and hopefully finding a way to stay clean and sober along the way.
Unfortunately, however, when those pressures press hard, those who are pressed upon might find themselves turning to substances to help them get through. Booze. Drugs. Pills.
The phrase "valley of the dolls" does not mean what it sounds like. It is not a place full of young, pretty girls. It is a low point in the mind, a place of desperation, when someone has turned to pills.
A doll is a prescription pill used for recreation or self-medication. Here a barbiturate. The slang use of the word seems to be limited to this film and the book upon which it is based. It does not appear that it was in common use even at the time.
The film takes the women and their careers seriously. It follows their hearts and sees the world through their eyes. It is beautifully filmed (contrast the city with the beach with the snow) and offers moments of touching insight. It is not clear why it has been marketed and treated the way it has over the years, as pulp camp, as sexploitation, even to this day, even by Criterion. Perhaps to some degree time has tamed it. Perhaps their professional appearances and polite manners obscure to us what to them seemed lowbrow. If they are lowbrow, then what are we? Do you even know anybody who can dress that well and speak with that level of courtesy?
Yes, there are lines of dialogue, taken from the book, that jump out at the viewer as being artificially written for broad effect. But one can think of hundreds of films where that is the case and yet nobody pays it any mind.
This movie offers something especially special for the viewer--the opportunity to see Sharon Tate act. Many people know of her as the young and pregnant wife of Roman Polanski who was brutally murdered at the behest of Charles Manson. Consequently, many people have a place in their hearts for her. But how many have ever seen her act? She was 26 when she died. Before that, she appeared as an extra in two popular films and as an actress in five mostly unwatched ones. And then this one.
Sharon Tate plays Jennifer North as having a tender and loyal heart. She falls for crooner Tony Polar, who falls for her while singing to her at the nightclub, despite his sister Miriam's (Lee Grant) protestations. When he comes down with a chronic and terminal genetic disease she stands by him, does whatever it takes to take care of him, and seeks to be with him. What she goes through to help him, and how her mother compounds it, is heartbreaking.
Her good heart extends to her friends as well as to her husband. Anne Welles, who has not had any particular ambitions beyond being a secretary, happens to be pretty and is hired by a client in the office to be the face of a line of beauty products. In a scene where Jennifer is sitting on the floor working on her fingernails while watching television, Anne's commercials begin airing and Jennifer's face lights up with joy. She is genuinely and deeply happy for her friend. She is sweet and kind and good.
Barbara Parkins plays Anne Welles. She was popular at the time for a television show called Peyton Place, the Sex and the City of its day. She played the naughty girl in her television show, and Patty Duke, who was on The Patty Duke Show, played the good girl in hers. They switch places in this film. She was 20 at the time of the film and had already had an Oscar for four years, having won at age 16 for playing Hellen Keller in The Miracle Worker (1962).
Judy Garland was originally hired to play Helen Lawson, and she filmed a few scenes. I have read or heard multiple and contradictory stories as to why she left and whether she quit or was fired. I do not know which one is accurate so I will not speculate.
This film also played a role in the early careers of John Williams, who composed and arranged the score, and Dionne Warwick, who sang the theme song.
Check out the film.
It is more than what it appears.
356 - Valley of the Dolls, United States, 1967. Dir. Mark Robson.
Anne Welles takes the train from Laurenceville to New York City.
She gets a job at a talent agency. She is hired by the father, Mr. Burke, but works directly with the son, Lyon Burke.
He sends her over to a theater where they are rehearsing a new musical. She needs to get the star, Helen Lawson (Susan Hayward), to sign some contracts.
When Anne arrives she sees them rehearsing. Jennifer North (Sharon Tate) is modelling a grand headdress. She has a great look. Neely O'Hara (Patty Duke) is practicing her song. She has a great voice. Anne cannot believe the talent and energy in the room. This industry looks fascinating. She is going to enjoy her job.
She enters Lawson's dressing room. The grande dame. She is chewing out a man. Anne asks her to sign the contracts. Miss Lawson begins to do so. But then Anne makes the mistake of complimenting the girl she just heard singing downstairs. Helen is threatened. Cut the musical number. Reduce Neely to a minor role. Force her out. Anne cannot believe what has just happened. This industry looks terrifying. She is going to hate her job.
She is going to quit her job, but Lyon talks her out of it. They have a moment. The chemistry between them begins.
Neely has a run-of-show contract with the musical, meaning they must pay her $200 a week for the run of the show regardless of how much her role may swell or shrink along the way--even if they cut her out of it completely. To her this means she is getting paid to sit backstage in her dressing room, feeling bored and depressed. She did not sign up for that. The show's producer offers her to walk away to maintain her dignity. Her friend observes that he just wants to save $200 a week. Why not get your agent to fight for you? But he will advise her to stay. Why fight for her? It is worth 10% to him to do nothing. She quits the show. With her "dignity."
But showbiz has its way of creating unexpected twists and turns. If you have talent and work hard, then new roads will open up for you when old ones close. Neely gets a gig on a national telethon. She sings live on air. The phones start ringing. The public loves her. She gets a job at a nightclub. She is on her way.
The three young women--Anne Welles, Jennifer North, and Neely O'Hara--are all at the beginning of their careers, trying to get noticed, trying to get established, trying to get going. Together they will learn the ropes and climb the ladder, moving back and forth between New York and Los Angles--and Laurenceville--falling in and out of love with the men in their lives, working through relationships with mothers and grandmothers, struggling with the pressures of show business, and hopefully finding a way to stay clean and sober along the way.
Unfortunately, however, when those pressures press hard, those who are pressed upon might find themselves turning to substances to help them get through. Booze. Drugs. Pills.
The phrase "valley of the dolls" does not mean what it sounds like. It is not a place full of young, pretty girls. It is a low point in the mind, a place of desperation, when someone has turned to pills.
A doll is a prescription pill used for recreation or self-medication. Here a barbiturate. The slang use of the word seems to be limited to this film and the book upon which it is based. It does not appear that it was in common use even at the time.
The film takes the women and their careers seriously. It follows their hearts and sees the world through their eyes. It is beautifully filmed (contrast the city with the beach with the snow) and offers moments of touching insight. It is not clear why it has been marketed and treated the way it has over the years, as pulp camp, as sexploitation, even to this day, even by Criterion. Perhaps to some degree time has tamed it. Perhaps their professional appearances and polite manners obscure to us what to them seemed lowbrow. If they are lowbrow, then what are we? Do you even know anybody who can dress that well and speak with that level of courtesy?
Yes, there are lines of dialogue, taken from the book, that jump out at the viewer as being artificially written for broad effect. But one can think of hundreds of films where that is the case and yet nobody pays it any mind.
This movie offers something especially special for the viewer--the opportunity to see Sharon Tate act. Many people know of her as the young and pregnant wife of Roman Polanski who was brutally murdered at the behest of Charles Manson. Consequently, many people have a place in their hearts for her. But how many have ever seen her act? She was 26 when she died. Before that, she appeared as an extra in two popular films and as an actress in five mostly unwatched ones. And then this one.
Sharon Tate plays Jennifer North as having a tender and loyal heart. She falls for crooner Tony Polar, who falls for her while singing to her at the nightclub, despite his sister Miriam's (Lee Grant) protestations. When he comes down with a chronic and terminal genetic disease she stands by him, does whatever it takes to take care of him, and seeks to be with him. What she goes through to help him, and how her mother compounds it, is heartbreaking.
Her good heart extends to her friends as well as to her husband. Anne Welles, who has not had any particular ambitions beyond being a secretary, happens to be pretty and is hired by a client in the office to be the face of a line of beauty products. In a scene where Jennifer is sitting on the floor working on her fingernails while watching television, Anne's commercials begin airing and Jennifer's face lights up with joy. She is genuinely and deeply happy for her friend. She is sweet and kind and good.
Barbara Parkins plays Anne Welles. She was popular at the time for a television show called Peyton Place, the Sex and the City of its day. She played the naughty girl in her television show, and Patty Duke, who was on The Patty Duke Show, played the good girl in hers. They switch places in this film. She was 20 at the time of the film and had already had an Oscar for four years, having won at age 16 for playing Hellen Keller in The Miracle Worker (1962).
Judy Garland was originally hired to play Helen Lawson, and she filmed a few scenes. I have read or heard multiple and contradictory stories as to why she left and whether she quit or was fired. I do not know which one is accurate so I will not speculate.
This film also played a role in the early careers of John Williams, who composed and arranged the score, and Dionne Warwick, who sang the theme song.
Check out the film.
It is more than what it appears.
Thursday, December 21, 2017
355 - Carnival of Souls, United States, 1962. Dir. Herk Harvey.
Thursday, December 21, 2017
355 - Carnival of Souls, United States, 1962. Dir. Herk Harvey.
She sees this face.
It haunts her.
It appears in glass panes. Her car window. Her bedroom mirror.
It appears in bodily form. The sanctuary where she plays organ. The boarding house where she is staying. The water fountain. The shrink's chair.
And then it appears under water. Out at that pavilion. Sometimes alone. Sometimes with others.
That water thing haunts her too.
She herself came up out of the water. After the boys pushed the girls' car off the bridge. While drag
racing.
She was supposed to be dead. Drowned. But she emerged like a baby born. Like Beloved. Covered in amniotic river sludge.
When Mary Henry came up out of the water, she moved out of town. Out of Lawrence. Out of Kansas. Bleeding Kansas. Take note when someone in the movies leaves her Kansas home.
I shall see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.
Being run off the bridge has been traumatic for her. She was underwater for awhile. Her two girlfriends died. They are still missing inside the car somewhere at the bottom of the river. How did Lawrence become Chappaquiddick?
She quits her job as an organist at the local church. She drives to Utah. Out into the salt. The Great Salt. Gets another job at another church. Moves into a boarding house.
The man across the hall, John Linden, comes on to her. Wants to get inside her pants. Wants to get inside her.
But he is the least of her worries. He does not scare her. In fact, he comforts her. She wants to be near him. To feel safe.
Because of this face. This face that keeps following her. And the body that comes with it.
There is an abandoned pavilion outside of town. A closed amusement park. With rides. And games. And snacks. And a ballroom.
That ballroom.
Do not go in there.
You might be asked to dance.
By . . . people. Or maybe they are not quite people.
Something inside her compels her to go.
She cannot stay away. She cannot find peace. She has to go.
Uh oh.
And when she goes she sees the bodies walking across the salt.
The great salt.
They approach her.
They ask her to dance.
If only she could.
If only she could click her heels together. And go home.
After all, there is no place like home.
Back in Lawrence.
Inside the car.
At the bottom of the river.
355 - Carnival of Souls, United States, 1962. Dir. Herk Harvey.
She sees this face.
It haunts her.
It appears in glass panes. Her car window. Her bedroom mirror.
It appears in bodily form. The sanctuary where she plays organ. The boarding house where she is staying. The water fountain. The shrink's chair.
And then it appears under water. Out at that pavilion. Sometimes alone. Sometimes with others.
That water thing haunts her too.
She herself came up out of the water. After the boys pushed the girls' car off the bridge. While drag
racing.
She was supposed to be dead. Drowned. But she emerged like a baby born. Like Beloved. Covered in amniotic river sludge.
When Mary Henry came up out of the water, she moved out of town. Out of Lawrence. Out of Kansas. Bleeding Kansas. Take note when someone in the movies leaves her Kansas home.
I shall see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.
Being run off the bridge has been traumatic for her. She was underwater for awhile. Her two girlfriends died. They are still missing inside the car somewhere at the bottom of the river. How did Lawrence become Chappaquiddick?
She quits her job as an organist at the local church. She drives to Utah. Out into the salt. The Great Salt. Gets another job at another church. Moves into a boarding house.
The man across the hall, John Linden, comes on to her. Wants to get inside her pants. Wants to get inside her.
But he is the least of her worries. He does not scare her. In fact, he comforts her. She wants to be near him. To feel safe.
Because of this face. This face that keeps following her. And the body that comes with it.
There is an abandoned pavilion outside of town. A closed amusement park. With rides. And games. And snacks. And a ballroom.
That ballroom.
Do not go in there.
You might be asked to dance.
By . . . people. Or maybe they are not quite people.
Something inside her compels her to go.
She cannot stay away. She cannot find peace. She has to go.
Uh oh.
And when she goes she sees the bodies walking across the salt.
The great salt.
They approach her.
They ask her to dance.
If only she could.
If only she could click her heels together. And go home.
After all, there is no place like home.
Back in Lawrence.
Inside the car.
At the bottom of the river.
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
354 - One-Eyed Jacks, United States, 1961. Dir. Marlon Brando.
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
354 - One-Eyed Jacks, United States, 1961. Dir. Marlon Brando.
A one-eyed Jack is a playing card of the Jack (Knight, Knave) value where the face of the Jack is shown in profile. These are the Jack of Spades and the Jack of Hearts. Because the Jack of Spades and the Jack of Hearts are shown in profile, we see only one eye. The Jack of Clubs and the Jack of Diamonds are shown facing forwards, and we see both eyes.
In certain card games, the one-eyed Jacks hold special value. In some forms of poker, the dealer may also call one-eyed Jacks as being special.
So what does it mean when you call someone a One-Eyed Jack?
He is two-faced. Like the moon, you can only ever see the side of him that is facing you. The other side of his face is hidden. Dark. And possibly different. He shows you his friendly side. He hides his true side.
Rio and Dad are partners. Bank robbers. They are in the middle of robbing a bank in Mexico. They are successful. They get away.
But they stop to enjoy the company of women.
Dad is upstairs in a woman's room. He takes off his shoes. He woos her.
Rio is in the enclosed porch area of a building. He tells his woman how good she makes him feel. He gives her a ring that used to be his mother's. He actually took it off a girl in the bank earlier in the day. But his story touches the woman, and she begins to fall for him.
The posse catches up to them. They leave in a hurry. Rio takes his ring back. Dad runs out without his shoes.
They ride their horses to the top of a bluff. They succeed in defending themselves for now. But the chasers go back to get help. In a few hours the men will be surrounded on all sides. They have lost one horse. Their other horse is tired. They cannot run.
Rio remembers a stick town with a corral about four miles down the canyon. One of them could ride their horse there and get two fresh horses. He could come back and they could mount and then ride off and continue their flight.
They draw to see who goes. Dad picks one of Rio's fists. The one with the bullet in it goes. Dad picks the one with the bullet in it. Dad goes. Rio has palmed a bullet in both fists. Rio rigged it so that Dad would go. It is not obvious why Rio would want Dad to go. Is he just tired? Because the one who goes has the two bags of gold and the horse. And he might not come back.
What happens next?
You guessed it.
Dad does not come back.
In his defense he is riding barefoot on a tired horse. And when he gets to the corral in the stick town it takes longer than expected to buy the horses. And the boy, the son of the man who sells them, accidentally knocks over his saddle bag. And all the gold spills out. Dad has to get on his knees and pick it all up. In front of the man and his son. Now, that is awkward. He tosses them a couple gold coins and rides off.
By now the posse is back and surrounding Rio up on the bluff. And the man and the boy from the corral in the stick town may be reporting Dad to their local authorities.
Dad cuts and runs.
Is he justified? Not really. He has abandoned his friend. Dad goes free with two bags of gold as Rio goes to prison in the Sonora, Mexico pen.
And over the next five years he never looks back. Never looks for his friend. Never tries to find out what happened. Never tries to help him. He does not even know he was captured and put in jail. He simply starts life anew.
When Rio gets out of the pen five years later, he has one thing on his mind. Find Dad. Exact vengeance. Dad is a One-Eyed Jack. A man who betrayed his lifelong friend.
Rio and Dad are played by lifelong acting friends Marlon Brando and Karl Malden.
They first appeared together on screen in Elia Kazan's film version of Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) as Stanley Kowalski and Harold Mitch Mitchell. ("Stella!")
Then they made history, again, in Kazan's classic On the Waterfront (1954), as Terry Malloy and Father Barry. ("I coulda been a contender.")
Malden is a strong foil to Brando. He is the straight-laced good guy to Brando's wild man. So here they give us a fresh variation on the theme. Malden's character Dad becomes the honorable Sheriff of Monterey, with a wife and step-daughter, but he begins life as a bank robber and a traitor to his own friend, the embodiment of no honor among thieves. And he disguises his prominent appearance with both accoutrement and character work.
Who is the director of this film?
None other than Marlon Brando himself. In the only film he directed.
How does he do? Just fine. He is smart enough to have at his side an outstanding DP, eighteen-time Oscar-nominated and one-time winner Charles Lang, who was nominated for this one and who won for A Farewell to Arms (1932). One-Eyed Jacks celebrates the open expanses of the real locations, from Sonora to Durango to Monterey to Death Valley to Pebble Beach.
It is a two-hour, twenty-one minute film that never seems long.
Rio's revenge does not come easily, if at all. There is that step-daughter. And another man, the deputy Lon Dedrick, played by Slim Pickens. And his own gang, Bob and Harvey (Ben Johnson and Sam Gilman). And his own conflicted feelings.
Maybe he could let it go. Maybe he could forgive.
Or maybe it is too late.
354 - One-Eyed Jacks, United States, 1961. Dir. Marlon Brando.
A one-eyed Jack is a playing card of the Jack (Knight, Knave) value where the face of the Jack is shown in profile. These are the Jack of Spades and the Jack of Hearts. Because the Jack of Spades and the Jack of Hearts are shown in profile, we see only one eye. The Jack of Clubs and the Jack of Diamonds are shown facing forwards, and we see both eyes.
In certain card games, the one-eyed Jacks hold special value. In some forms of poker, the dealer may also call one-eyed Jacks as being special.
So what does it mean when you call someone a One-Eyed Jack?
He is two-faced. Like the moon, you can only ever see the side of him that is facing you. The other side of his face is hidden. Dark. And possibly different. He shows you his friendly side. He hides his true side.
Rio and Dad are partners. Bank robbers. They are in the middle of robbing a bank in Mexico. They are successful. They get away.
But they stop to enjoy the company of women.
Dad is upstairs in a woman's room. He takes off his shoes. He woos her.
Rio is in the enclosed porch area of a building. He tells his woman how good she makes him feel. He gives her a ring that used to be his mother's. He actually took it off a girl in the bank earlier in the day. But his story touches the woman, and she begins to fall for him.
The posse catches up to them. They leave in a hurry. Rio takes his ring back. Dad runs out without his shoes.
They ride their horses to the top of a bluff. They succeed in defending themselves for now. But the chasers go back to get help. In a few hours the men will be surrounded on all sides. They have lost one horse. Their other horse is tired. They cannot run.
Rio remembers a stick town with a corral about four miles down the canyon. One of them could ride their horse there and get two fresh horses. He could come back and they could mount and then ride off and continue their flight.
They draw to see who goes. Dad picks one of Rio's fists. The one with the bullet in it goes. Dad picks the one with the bullet in it. Dad goes. Rio has palmed a bullet in both fists. Rio rigged it so that Dad would go. It is not obvious why Rio would want Dad to go. Is he just tired? Because the one who goes has the two bags of gold and the horse. And he might not come back.
What happens next?
You guessed it.
Dad does not come back.
In his defense he is riding barefoot on a tired horse. And when he gets to the corral in the stick town it takes longer than expected to buy the horses. And the boy, the son of the man who sells them, accidentally knocks over his saddle bag. And all the gold spills out. Dad has to get on his knees and pick it all up. In front of the man and his son. Now, that is awkward. He tosses them a couple gold coins and rides off.
By now the posse is back and surrounding Rio up on the bluff. And the man and the boy from the corral in the stick town may be reporting Dad to their local authorities.
Dad cuts and runs.
Is he justified? Not really. He has abandoned his friend. Dad goes free with two bags of gold as Rio goes to prison in the Sonora, Mexico pen.
And over the next five years he never looks back. Never looks for his friend. Never tries to find out what happened. Never tries to help him. He does not even know he was captured and put in jail. He simply starts life anew.
When Rio gets out of the pen five years later, he has one thing on his mind. Find Dad. Exact vengeance. Dad is a One-Eyed Jack. A man who betrayed his lifelong friend.
Rio and Dad are played by lifelong acting friends Marlon Brando and Karl Malden.
They first appeared together on screen in Elia Kazan's film version of Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) as Stanley Kowalski and Harold Mitch Mitchell. ("Stella!")
Then they made history, again, in Kazan's classic On the Waterfront (1954), as Terry Malloy and Father Barry. ("I coulda been a contender.")
Malden is a strong foil to Brando. He is the straight-laced good guy to Brando's wild man. So here they give us a fresh variation on the theme. Malden's character Dad becomes the honorable Sheriff of Monterey, with a wife and step-daughter, but he begins life as a bank robber and a traitor to his own friend, the embodiment of no honor among thieves. And he disguises his prominent appearance with both accoutrement and character work.
Who is the director of this film?
None other than Marlon Brando himself. In the only film he directed.
How does he do? Just fine. He is smart enough to have at his side an outstanding DP, eighteen-time Oscar-nominated and one-time winner Charles Lang, who was nominated for this one and who won for A Farewell to Arms (1932). One-Eyed Jacks celebrates the open expanses of the real locations, from Sonora to Durango to Monterey to Death Valley to Pebble Beach.
It is a two-hour, twenty-one minute film that never seems long.
Rio's revenge does not come easily, if at all. There is that step-daughter. And another man, the deputy Lon Dedrick, played by Slim Pickens. And his own gang, Bob and Harvey (Ben Johnson and Sam Gilman). And his own conflicted feelings.
Maybe he could let it go. Maybe he could forgive.
Or maybe it is too late.
Tuesday, December 19, 2017
353 - Blast of Silence, United States, 1961. Dir. Allen Baron.
Tuesday, December 19, 2017
353 - Blast of Silence, United States, 1961. Dir. Allen Baron.
Frankie Bono is born. The train rumbles through the tunnel like a fetus rumbling through the birth canal. It bursts screamingly into the sunlight as an infant breathing its first breath.
It stops at Penn Station.
Frankie Bono gets off. A hit man. A hit man who is more than a hit man. He is also a man.
Frankie boards the Staten Island Ferry. He sees the skyline. He reads the paper. A stranger asks him for a match. Frankie tells him he is from Cleveland. And we know. He is not a stranger. He is giving the password. Initiating the job. Hiring the hire.
The man passes Frankie a plastic bag. The instructions are inside. Half the money is inside. He will be paid the rest when the job is done.
We know that story. But we do not know this story. So Allen Baron tells us this story.
Frankie is from Cleveland. Originally from Chillicothe. New York now. Brooklyn. He prefers the big city. He can be alone. He can hide.
Killing is not personal. It is professional. A killer does not know the man he is killing. He is merely doing his job.
But Frankie has to make it personal. He has to find a reason to kill. A reason to do the job. Otherwise, he cannot do it. He watches his target. Makes up things about him. Imagines his weaknesses. Invents things to hate. Creates, invents, and nurtures hate.
Artificial hate. Manufactured hate.
For the sake of doing a job.
He stands like an escort looking for a lover as he leans against the railing, watching his prey.
He thinks he is a gentleman just because his shoes are shined. Therefore, I will hate him. Therefore, I will kill him.
A professional is always alone. Baron explores that idea. Why is a man ever alone? When he is a hit man we do not think about it. When he is a man we see the personal and social side of it. So let us look at him as a man.
Frankie goes to a party. He is out of place. A misfit. As a professional he is in his element. Alone and strong. As a man he is out of place. Alone and awkward.
People at the party want to talk to him. He does know what to say. They play music. He does not know what to do. Dance? No. Hey, let us play a game. Push a peanut across the floor with your nose. Yeah. Okay.
He goes home with a girl. She pours them drinks. He makes a pass at her. Aggressive. Forceful. Awkward. She pushes him away. I'm sorry, Lori. She tells him to forget it. Just go. He asks if he can stay. She pours him coffee. He apologizes profusely. He does not know why he did it. She tells him he needs a girl. Someone to comfort him. To make him feel better. Someone to come home to.
He goes and kills a man. A large man. Who lives alone in his apartment with rats. Not pest rats. Pet rats. The large man is not a target. The large man is what happens when things go wrong. Frankie has to eliminate him.
He places a phone call from a pay phone. I had to kill Big Ralph. Yeah. So? But that is not the point. I want out. He starts to explain. They do not want him to explain. Now you are in trouble. You will finish the job. And you are in trouble.
Frankie realizes he is lonely. Lori was right. He needs a girl. Someone to comfort him. To make him feel better. Someone to come home to.
He goes to Lori. Her boyfriend is there. You misunderstood me. I said you needed a girl. I did not mean me.
He walks away.
Frankie does his job. He breaks in to the target's house. He lies in wait. He hits the target. The target and the teddy bear. The teddy bear apparently for the target's grandson. A little boy has just lost his pawpaw. The target. He too is a man. He too is human.
Frankie kicks him over for good measure.
Allen Baron takes us on a tour of New York. Brooklyn. Manhattan. Harlem. The Apollo Theater. Penn Station. Rockefeller Plaza. Greenwich Village. McDougal Street. Commerce and Barrow. Bleecker Street. Spring Creek. The East River. The Village Gate. Long Island. Manhattan Bridge. The Brooklyn Bridge. The Staten Island Ferry. Jamaica Bay.
Yeah. Jamaica Bay. Not at Roxbury. Not at Breezy Point. Not at Rockaway Park. But in the estuary.
Or more precisely, the marsh. The morass. The quagmire. Which pretty much sums up his life.
Frankie crosses the plankbuilt footbridge to try to get away. To be alone again. As a man it is not good to be alone. As a professional he had better be alone. Otherwise . . . well, remember that phone call? He should not have made that phone call. Now he is in trouble. Frankie did the job. But he is in trouble.
And now he is alone.
Forever.
Sunk in the slough. Slumped in the sludge. Dumped in the muck. Submerged in the slush.
Frankie was born in the train in the tunnel.
And he dies in the ooze of the brine.
Goodbye, Frankie.
Now you can be alone.
At least it was not personal.
As long as we see you only as a hit man.
And do not see you
as a man.
353 - Blast of Silence, United States, 1961. Dir. Allen Baron.
Frankie Bono is born. The train rumbles through the tunnel like a fetus rumbling through the birth canal. It bursts screamingly into the sunlight as an infant breathing its first breath.
It stops at Penn Station.
Frankie Bono gets off. A hit man. A hit man who is more than a hit man. He is also a man.
Frankie boards the Staten Island Ferry. He sees the skyline. He reads the paper. A stranger asks him for a match. Frankie tells him he is from Cleveland. And we know. He is not a stranger. He is giving the password. Initiating the job. Hiring the hire.
The man passes Frankie a plastic bag. The instructions are inside. Half the money is inside. He will be paid the rest when the job is done.
We know that story. But we do not know this story. So Allen Baron tells us this story.
Frankie is from Cleveland. Originally from Chillicothe. New York now. Brooklyn. He prefers the big city. He can be alone. He can hide.
Killing is not personal. It is professional. A killer does not know the man he is killing. He is merely doing his job.
But Frankie has to make it personal. He has to find a reason to kill. A reason to do the job. Otherwise, he cannot do it. He watches his target. Makes up things about him. Imagines his weaknesses. Invents things to hate. Creates, invents, and nurtures hate.
Artificial hate. Manufactured hate.
For the sake of doing a job.
He stands like an escort looking for a lover as he leans against the railing, watching his prey.
He thinks he is a gentleman just because his shoes are shined. Therefore, I will hate him. Therefore, I will kill him.
A professional is always alone. Baron explores that idea. Why is a man ever alone? When he is a hit man we do not think about it. When he is a man we see the personal and social side of it. So let us look at him as a man.
Frankie goes to a party. He is out of place. A misfit. As a professional he is in his element. Alone and strong. As a man he is out of place. Alone and awkward.
People at the party want to talk to him. He does know what to say. They play music. He does not know what to do. Dance? No. Hey, let us play a game. Push a peanut across the floor with your nose. Yeah. Okay.
He goes home with a girl. She pours them drinks. He makes a pass at her. Aggressive. Forceful. Awkward. She pushes him away. I'm sorry, Lori. She tells him to forget it. Just go. He asks if he can stay. She pours him coffee. He apologizes profusely. He does not know why he did it. She tells him he needs a girl. Someone to comfort him. To make him feel better. Someone to come home to.
He goes and kills a man. A large man. Who lives alone in his apartment with rats. Not pest rats. Pet rats. The large man is not a target. The large man is what happens when things go wrong. Frankie has to eliminate him.
He places a phone call from a pay phone. I had to kill Big Ralph. Yeah. So? But that is not the point. I want out. He starts to explain. They do not want him to explain. Now you are in trouble. You will finish the job. And you are in trouble.
Frankie realizes he is lonely. Lori was right. He needs a girl. Someone to comfort him. To make him feel better. Someone to come home to.
He goes to Lori. Her boyfriend is there. You misunderstood me. I said you needed a girl. I did not mean me.
He walks away.
Frankie does his job. He breaks in to the target's house. He lies in wait. He hits the target. The target and the teddy bear. The teddy bear apparently for the target's grandson. A little boy has just lost his pawpaw. The target. He too is a man. He too is human.
Frankie kicks him over for good measure.
Allen Baron takes us on a tour of New York. Brooklyn. Manhattan. Harlem. The Apollo Theater. Penn Station. Rockefeller Plaza. Greenwich Village. McDougal Street. Commerce and Barrow. Bleecker Street. Spring Creek. The East River. The Village Gate. Long Island. Manhattan Bridge. The Brooklyn Bridge. The Staten Island Ferry. Jamaica Bay.
Yeah. Jamaica Bay. Not at Roxbury. Not at Breezy Point. Not at Rockaway Park. But in the estuary.
Or more precisely, the marsh. The morass. The quagmire. Which pretty much sums up his life.
Frankie crosses the plankbuilt footbridge to try to get away. To be alone again. As a man it is not good to be alone. As a professional he had better be alone. Otherwise . . . well, remember that phone call? He should not have made that phone call. Now he is in trouble. Frankie did the job. But he is in trouble.
And now he is alone.
Forever.
Sunk in the slough. Slumped in the sludge. Dumped in the muck. Submerged in the slush.
Frankie was born in the train in the tunnel.
And he dies in the ooze of the brine.
Goodbye, Frankie.
Now you can be alone.
At least it was not personal.
As long as we see you only as a hit man.
And do not see you
as a man.
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