WHERE’S POPPA (1970) Dir. Carl Reiner

What I remember:

Talk about your raunchy comedies, this was the pinnacle of raunch in the ‘60’s/’70’s. There are tons of senility jokes, almost more than in Neil Simon’s “The Sunshine Boys”. This type of humor is probably considered in terrible taste now that we know about Alzheimer’s and other types of Dementia associated with old age.

Yet “Where’s Poppa”, has it’s comedy evenly distributed throughout. It attacks the elderly, the young and impetuous, the officious, the desperate. It’s another uproarious black comedy from the age of iconoclasm that brought us “Little Murders”, “Putney Swope”, “M*A*S*H”, “Harold and Maude” and “Brewster McCloud”.

As with many Mother-centric films, front and center is the put-upon son, usually Jewish, who must contend with the eccentricities and demands of his Mother to the detriment of his personal and professional life. George Segal, handsome but with a huge touch of nebbish, fits this bill to a tee. As the mother, our ultimate New York ptitsa is played by Ruth Gordon, who reprised this kind of character more than a few times. Ms. Gordon also played a demented mother in “Inside Daisy Clover”. As Mrs. Hocheiser in “Where’s Poppa”, she is both lovable and horrid.

What made “Where’s Poppa” special was the outrageous dialogue and premise that makes movies like “The Hangover” seem tame and mainstream. When I talk about how important it is for a comedy to actually make me laugh, then you know this one had to have that going for it. There were certainly no redeeming characteristics to be found.


AFTER RE-WATCHING

“He made a CACA in the bed”- Louise.
“That son of a BITCH!”- Gordon


PLOT SUMMARY

Gordon Hocheiser (George Segal) is a trial lawyer who lives at home with his widowed mother (Ruth Gordon), who is suffering from dementia. She is extremely difficult to take care of, and Gordon has struggled to find a nurse that will stay with her. During interviews with prospective caretakers, he meets the beautiful Louise (Trish Van Devere) and both are immediately smitten. She agrees to meet his mother, and finds out that their relationship is a little stranger and deeper than she thought. Gordon’s brother, Sidney (Ron Liebman) tries to help, but has his own issues. He also reminds Gordon that they promised to never put their mother in a home.


STORY/THEME

Yes, it’s another black comedy from the ‘70’s. What is it about this genre that I find/found so appealing? Maybe it’s just that the kind of fare we’d been fed in the ‘60’s was so happy, so uplifting, so “YAY LIFE”! My built in BS detector just couldn’t deal with watching “Dr. Doolittle” and “Mary Poppins”. I needed to see what seemed real to me. Now this movie is about as far from real as you get, but it was honest in exposing the reality of our inner minds. This is the stuff you can’t, shouldn’t EVER talk about. But you know it crosses your mind. You can’t help it. You are a sick bastard at heart. Your Id is the sickest of sick bastards. Thank goodness you have a Super-Ego to tell it to go stand in the corner. Howard Stern has made a billion being your unchained Id. Your Id can be damned funny.

The question is, is your Id funny all the time? Absolutely not. Sometimes it is just sick and repellant. I hate to say it, but now that I am getting older, “Where’s Poppa” has lost it’s appeal for me. Sure, there’s a lot of stuff that is still funny, but there is a ton of stuff that is uncomfortable and just plain awful. 15 year old Wayne and 56 year old Wayne are not on the same page here. When I rewatch “Little Murders” or “The Producers”, films that have a lot in common with this one, there is never a moment where I want it to end. There were a whole bunch of those moments watching “Where’s Poppa”. Scenes I remembered fondly seemed poorly drawn and not at all as uproarious as I thought.

When Sidney has to run through the park to help Gordon, he keeps being confronted by a gang of African-American muggers. The torments they devise for Sidney are clever and different, but not close to as funny as I had it in my mind. Amongst the muggers is Garrett Morris, I was surprised to discover. Also making his film debut later in the movie is Paul Sorvino. The Director’s son, Rob Reiner, is in his second movie, his first being Carl’s “Enter Laughing”.

Both the famous “Tush” scene and the monologue by Louise about her first husband’s incontinence are less funny than I thought, they are just plain weird. Maybe the problem is that the shock value just isn’t there anymore. We can thank Kevin Smith and Judd Apatow for that.

Interestingly enough, the parts that were funniest I had no memory of! A scene wherein Gordon is defending a young radical played by Rob Reiner (predicting his Mike Stivik character from “All In The Family), is made side-splitting by veteran character actor Barnard Hughes’ depiction of a profane, racist Army Colonel. Another great moment is when a New York cabbie passes by a black woman to give a ride to Sidney, dressed in a full-out ape costume.

At the heart of this movie is subject matter that we once considered funny, but now that so many of our parents and grandparents are victims of senile dementia and Alzheimer’s, it has lost it’s comic charm. I assume that this would be the same for “The Sunshine Boys”, but I was never a big enough fan of that film to watch it again.

FILMMAKING

Carl Reiner was known both for his writing and as a producer of the groundbreaking “Dick Van Dyke Show”. He was also the straight man to Mel Brooks’ classic “2,000 Year Old Man”, one of the funniest comedy teams to ever be on record. His best work as a director was probably his run of films starring Steve Martin in the ‘70’s; “The Jerk”, “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid”, “The Man With Two Brains” and “All of Me” are all very funny comedies. “Dead Men..” really was a stand out if you are an aficionado of B&W films, and in particular film noir. Reiner seamlessly integrates his film and star into clips from old movies, and it’s just a whole lot of fun watching Martin interact with Bogie, etc.

Carl’s work with Mel Brooks and Sid Caesar probably prepped him well for the helm of “Where’s Poppa”. Watching it now, however, really exposes what a beginner he was at directing. There are some very strange choices being made, a lot of chances at huge laughs that are undercut by bad timing and strange shot choices. For example, the climax of the movie is shot from a great distance, what seems like hundreds of yards. You hear the dialogue, but you can’t see what’s happening to be in on the film’s punch line the way you would like.

The shock value of the opening, where you watch Gordon wake up, perform his ablutions, get dressed in the ape suit and try to scare his mother to death, is also not played up as drastically for the surprise as it could be. It is shown with a sort of filmic diffidence that is hard to comprehend. Brooks would have played the scene for huge laughs.

Yes, it was low budget. Yes it was 1970, and film technology was not what it has become. But again, this movie loses out to both “The Producers” and “Little Murders” in every way.

One great bit is the song for the opening credits. If I tried to describe it I would be doing it a disservice. Suffice it to say that it is a stream of consciousness lyric that sounds like a bunch of non sequitors that could be said by an old senile person. The lyric is put to a Burt Bachrach type track.

One great filmmaking decision was going with the ending that we see. On the DVD you can watch an alternate ending which continues on from the last scene. It is disturbing, and not funny or even ironic. “Sick, sick, sick”, is all I could think of, in the parlance of the period.

PERFORMANCES

The two leads, George Segal and Ruth Gordon are exceptional in their roles. Segal plays “harried” better than anyone except maybe Gene Wilder. Ruth Gordon has her character down, and she really gets going when Louise enters the story. When she realizes that Louise is not just a nurse, but a love interest for her son, she becomes sharp as a tack while still being addled. It’s amazing to watch her pull off this dichotomy. Trish VanDevere as Louise, is attractive, but not much of a comic source, even as a straight man/woman for the leads.

Ron Liebman provides a lot of the humor from his supporting roll. His funniest moment concerns his reaction to getting flowers from the undercover male cop in drag that he was forced to rape by the gang that keeps mugging him. Yeah…the comedy is THAT dark.

ON SECOND LOOK

With the passing of Amy Winehouse at age 27, there have been a lot of discussions about music stars that died at that age. A few of my 30-something friends all agree that Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain were all deserving of their stardom. However they single out Janis Joplin as someone who really wasn’t so good, and they can’t see why she was considered amazing by my generation. When I listen to her stuff now, I kind of see what they mean.

What they don’t understand is how different she was to all those who preceded her in pop music. For a white girl, hell -- for ANYONE to sing with that intensity and commitment, it was just unheard of. It wasn’t that her chops were so great, but that she was so raw and unfettered by artifice. They say that for success in the entertainment field, you have to be the best, the first or different. Janis was more than different….she was totally unique.

Well, at the time of its release, “Where’s Poppa” was different. Maybe that’s what I saw in it back then. It’s level of outrageousness was unprecedented. It was not the first sicko comedy, and certainly not the best. 40 years have reduced that edge to a dull razor, and now the film is simply abrasive.

1st Look-★★★1/2 2nd Look-★★

"In a Lonely Place" (1950) Dir: Nicholas Ray

What I remember:

I believe the old adage amongst writers is, “When you’re stuck, write what you know.” And the one thing all writers know best is themselves.

This can apply to the autobiographical story based either on reality or fantasy. I always hear a little bell going off when I read a book or see a movie wherein the protagonist is a writer. Ahhh, I think, so you were stuck, and couldn’t come up with a REAL story. Often these stories take place in academia (see/read “Wonder Boys”, “Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf” or “The Human Stain”). These usually smack of some truth and reality. Then there are the more fantastic stories, like “Misery” by Stephen King, and “Deathtrap” by Ira Levin. These usually strike me as a tale invented from the imagination of some dreary life event, like King being harassed by some over-ardent fan, or Levin being brow-beaten by some older colleague.

In movies, there is the occasional screenwriter protagonist. Interestingly enough, three of my all-time favorite films have screenwriters at the center of them. Charlie Kaufman’s “Adaptation”, the Coen Brothers’ “Barton Fink” and Billy Wilder’s “Sunset Boulevard” are, to me, all masterpieces. A bit lower on my list comes “In a Lonely Place”. Nicholas Ray directed this very intense movie, and cast Humphrey Bogart in the lead role as tough guy writer Dixon Steele, a man with a violent streak who is under investigation for murder. The premise seems a bit unreal. Most writers you come across are intellectual, pacifist types. I guess there’s always the Hemingway prototype to lean on, although he seems the anomaly.
I remember it as a bravura performance by Bogie, maybe one of his best. That usual Bogie aplomb, the controlled fire we all know is not to be found. His Dixon Steele is all rage and impudence. Ray also cast his ex-wife Gloria Grahame in the role as the sexy neighbor who becomes Steele’s lover. Grahame is smoldering and for me, a real revelation when I saw this film. We all remember her as Violet in “It’s a Wonderful Life”, and she is likeable and attractive in that classic. In this film, she is equal to any of Bogie’s most comely co-stars, even Bacall.

I was really very impressed with and absorbed by this movie, and found it’s slightly sketchy premise to be eclipsed by the powerful performances and Noir stylings of Ray’s direction.


After re-watching:

“I've been looking for someone a long time... I didn't know her name or where she lived - I'd never seen her before. A girl was killed, and because of that, I found what I was looking for. Now I know your name, where you live, and how you look.”- Dixon Steele

PLOT SUMMARY

Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart) is a screenwriter who has a serious temper, but who is obviously quite intelligent and talented. He gets into a lot of fights, and can be a lout, but his agent stands by him, and his friends put up with him because at the core he is a good guy. He is asked to adapt a trashy book, and rather than spend the energy reading it, he asks the coat-check girl at his favorite haunt to come to his apartment and tell him the story. She is a little ditzy and star-struck, so she agrees. At his building he runs into a new neighbor, the attractive Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame). Mildred, the girl from the restaurant, tells Dixon the flimsy story, then he sends her home with cab fare. Mildred is discovered murdered the next day, thrown from a car in the canyon. Dixon’s alibi is Laurel, who says she saw him send the girl on he way. Laurel soon becomes Dix’s lover, and helps him finish his screenplay. All the while, she sees the violent side of him, and begins to suspect that maybe she was wrong to give him an alibi. The investigation begins to fray their relationship, and soon the trust between them erodes to almost nothing.

STORY/THEME

There’s an expression I once heard back when I was in college about the sacrifice an artist makes, and it is quite simple:
“Perfect in life, or perfect in art.”
I immediately found that fascinating and haunting. Is it really true, I wondered. Does one have to give up all real relationships in order to be great? Or is it a fact that you need to have a personality disorder to have the single-minded dedication in order to achieve greatness? Bi-polar behavior seems prevalent amongst the geniuses in the arts. The list is long (though not proven): Pablo Picasso, W.A. Mozart, Charlie Parker, Vincent Van Gogh, Jaco Pastorius, Graham Greene, Edgar Allen Poe, Brian Wilson and Virginia Woolf were all said to be afflicted with this problem.
Though it’s never said, anyone who knows about this connection can see that this is the problem with Dixon Steele. He has manic episodes, and these are often hostile unless he focuses the mania on his work. Eventually what makes you great becomes your undoing, as it did for Van Gogh, Bird, Jaco, Mozart and Woolf. I originally thought in remembrance that this was a writer’s fantasy, but after watching again I realize that this is a portrait of the tortured artist, unable to harness the insanity. I’m sure both Ray and Bogart were thinking of people they knew in the business when drawing this portrait.

As for the movie itself, what starts out as a typical LA Noir whodunit, turns smoothly into a relationship and character study. It’s not simply a descent into madness, it becomes the tale of two people who can save each other, and how the mental illness of one is both the creation and destruction of this salvation.
To quote my old friend, “Mr. Bass Man” Ronnie Bright, “That’s some deep shit”. Unfortunately, he was referring to the lyrics of the song “If” by Bread, so maybe his estimation of “deep” might be a bit suspect.
Anyway, the turn from Noir to love story is paralleled by the turn from the audience’s identification with Dixon to its identification with Laurel. This is accomplished with maximum finesse by Nicholas Ray and writer Andrew Solt. At first, before the relationship really kicks in, you are completely with Steele. Then, as the two become lovers, you are with both as one unit. Then, as suspicion and lack of trust pulls them apart, you go with Laurel. I can’t remember another film, with the exception of “Psycho”, that does this so well.

One other theme in the film bears mentioning. You get the feeling while watching that you are getting a serious insider’s look at the movie business circa 1950 (and maybe always). It is a bit melodramatic in representation, but then again there seem to be elements of candor that I suspect were rare, and that we don’t really see back then except in “All About Eve” and “Sunset Boulevard”, both of which, coincidentally or not, were made that same year.

FILMMAKING

There is a symbiosis with Ray and Bogie, that you see only in the great works. It is on a level with Ford and Wayne, or Hitchcock and Grant, or Truffaut and Leaud, or Scorsese and DeNiro, or Kurosawa and Mifune. Director and Actor working together almost as one unit, creating a persona and atmosphere to make the movie take on it’s own life.

Normally I will discuss the acting of a lead in my next section, but because of what I just said, I think Bogart’s performance needs to be discussed now. In one very Hitchcock-like scene, Steele directs his friend Brub (who is also one of the investigators of the murder) and Brub’s wife Sylvia into reenacting how Dix thinks the murder was committed. As he orders them around, there is a light across Bogart’s eyes that illuminates them, adding to his manic look subtly, producing a hypnotic concoction that is horrifying and reassuring at the same time. What a delcate line they (Ray and Bogart) both walk during this scene.
There is also no care taken to make Bogart look good during the movie. Laurel says she likes his face, and acts like that is why she is attracted to him, but it is clear it is the kind of person he is that she falls in love with. His fire, his creativity, his artistry, and by proxy his edginess are the magnet. He is obviously much older than Laurel (in fact Bogie had 24 years on Grahame- he was 50 and she 26 during the filming). There is no attempt to play down or even acknowledge this gap. One is simply left to believe the moth and flame situation that we are proffered. I didn’t doubt it for a second.

As in all films about writing, the dialogue is snappy, and without cliché. At times it is a bit over the top and leaden. After one of his episodes, Steele says this line to Laurel: “I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.” He says he is putting that in the script. Probably at the time it’s a line that was a focal point and 1950 audiences might have needed the hook. Today, it plays heavy handed, to say the least.
Full disclosure--When I first saw the film, it inspired me to write a song entitled “I Lived For a Day”.
Guilty as charged, your honor.



The score by George Anthiel is way too pervasive; always there, always highlighting the emotions which need no help. I think it takes away from the power a bit, and would love to see this film with just a few touches of music instead.

PERFORMANCES

As I stated before re-watching, Gloria Grahame is a revelation in the film. She captures the character changes in Laurel so perfectly throughout. Her coolness to Dix early on is controlled fire, and very alluring. Then, when deeply in love with him, she embodies that high so captivatingly; you just can’t take your eyes off of her. Finally, as she begins to fear him, her apprehension is powerful and visceral. It’s bravura acting from start to finish, and one wonders where performances like this were in other films.
Both Ginger Rogers (!) and Betty Bacall were considered for Laurel, but Bacall was under contract, and Ray held out for Grahame, who not incidentally was his wife.
Fascinatingly, in real life, she and Nicholas Ray were in the midst of a divorce during the shooting of this movie! They kept this under wraps, which I guess was more great acting. It gets weirder; Grahame got remarried to Ray’s son from a previous marriage.
To quote the Dan- “Hollywood, I know your middle name”.

Frank Lovejoy and Jeff Donnell as Brub and Sylvia are very believable, but not standouts. As for the rest of the supporting cast, there is really only one role that is interesting- Martha, Laurel’s masseuse and confidant, played by Ruth Gillette. She plays it like a bastard offspring of two Hitchcock characters, Judith Anderson’s chilling turn as Mrs. Danvers in “Rebecca” and Thelma Ritter’s wisecracking Stella the physical therapist in “Rear Window”. Martha keeps calling Laurel “Angel”, and comes across with heavy lesbian overtones, which must have been a risky take in those days. She knows Dix is trouble for Laurel, but because of her persona it feels like she’s always saying, “you’d be much better off with me, Angel.”
Art Smith as Dix’s agent Mel is standard issue Jewish nebbish. The role could have been played for more comic relief, but thankfully was not. There is also a piano bar scene featuring Hadda Brooks singing the Ray Noble classic, “I Hadn’t Anyone Till You”. Fun trivia: Her contralto led her to a job as the first black woman to host a TV show.

ON SECOND LOOK

This is probably the first re-watched movie that went higher in my estimation than it was originally. For the performances, the difficult subject matter, the intense direction and crushing ending, it should be considered one of the masterpieces of American Cinema, and for certain a top 3 Bogart role, along with “African Queen” and “Casablanca”. You’ve probably never seen it. Change that as soon as possible.

1st Look-★★★1/2 2nd Look-★★★★

“A SLIGHT CASE OF MURDER” (1938)- Dir. Lloyd Bacon

What I Remember

This was a true mash-up of a gangster movie and a screwball comedy. Edward G. Robinson plays a bootlegger who wants to go legit with his business once Prohibition is repealed, but doesn’t realize that the beer he has been selling is vile.

EGR did more than a bit of self-parody in this movie, and I recall that this "meta factor" really enhanced the comic elements. He carried the film almost single-handedly, although the premise itself, that I believe came from Damon Runyon, is funny enough. It’s a big cast for such a short film, and there are loads of sub-plots, including a Sopranos-like plot with his oblivious daughter and her boyfriend from college.

I have no memory of where and when I first saw this film. I am sure it was on television, and probably on broadcast in New York. That would mean commercial interruptions for things like crossplugs for The Joe Franklin Show , ads for Martin Paints, PC Richard, or Chock Full O’ Nuts coffee. A guess would be “Million Dollar Movie” on channel 9, WOR.

HAH! Million Dollar Movie. That used to mean the most expensive, big budget blockbusters of all time. Nowadays a million only covers the cost of George Clooney’s trailer.

Anyway, this movie struck me as original, and very funny. It was pretty much as if Preston Sturges had made a gangster flick.

After re-watching;

“I was gonna speak ta dem about it, but Boss—I don’t t’ink dem people are in a position ta listen too much. Dey don’t seem ta be alive.” – Mike


PLOT SUMMARY

It’s the evening that Prohibition is repealed, and bootlegger Remy Marko has decided to turn his illegal beer making business into a legitimate brewery. Nobody who works for him seems to have the heart to tell him straight out that his beer is undrinkable. Cut to four years later, and the once flush Marko is now on the verge of bankruptcy, with the bank about to take over his brewery unless he can come up with a half a million dollars. Meanwhile, Remy’s daughter, Mary comes home from being schooled in France, and announces that she is engaged to a blueblood scion. Even though he is wealthy, she wants her fiancée, Dick, to get a job. Dick decides to become a State Trooper, adding to the comedy and tension of the situation. Up in Saratoga, five gangsters have robbed the local Bookmaking establishment of, you guessed it, a half a million dollars. They plan to settle a score with Remy, too, but things go wrong. One of them overhears the others about to cut him out, so he kills all of them, but just as he is about to escape, the Marko’s show up at the house. Outnumbered, the lone gangster left hides in the guest room, which is soon to be occupied by an obnoxious orphan Remy has brought up for some clean air and relaxation.

Let’s see: a comedy that features a gangster going legit, class differential engagement, bad seed causing trouble, murder, revenge, theft. Whew. All this in about 85 minutes. And that riveting drama “Somewhere” was 97 minutes long. Go figure.



STORY/THEME

The first question I always ask of a comedy is, did it make me laugh out loud? I like to laugh, and I love a good comedy. But the humor has to hit me a certain way. “Bridesmaids” made me laugh a lot, and hard. “There’s Something About Mary” did not. That might actually be a good one for my “I Didn’t Get It” entries.

“A Slight Case of Murder” made me laugh more than a few times. Yes, there’s a lot of plot. But it never got in the way of the laughs to the point where you spent more time trying to figure out what was going on, than just enjoying what was up on the screen. The source of the comedy was mostly the one joke, of a bunch of people from the lower class putting on airs. This is a running gag in all of Damon Runyon’s work, in particular Apple Annie of “Pocketful of Miracles” posing as a member of New York’s elite class for her visiting daughter, and of course Sky Masterson romancing Sarah in “Guys and Dolls”. Putting bluebloods in proximity with lower class citizens (like this movie) or wack jobs (“You Can’t Take It With You”) was a big source of humor during the Depression. Often in these films, it’s not the central characters who do the heavy comic lifting, but the sidekicks.

This is true in “A Slight Case of Murder”, but the main character is also a major part of this levity. Remy is one of those people who think big, and use street smarts to get what they want and need. Bootleggers usually get a pass from depression era audiences. They were supplying a needed staple of life that the government had shut off. They were considered human, almost Robin Hood types. Bank robbers, on the other hand, were killers and stole our money. No comedies about them would be popular.

Of course the truth is, Al Capone and most of the really bad guys from gangster land did everything criminal, and bootlegging was a major part of their income. Bootleggers shot each other over territory, strong-armed (beat into submission) innkeepers and storeowners into selling just their brand. They were not nice guy, Robin Hood types at all. They were brutal criminals, making an illegal buck regardless of the consequences.

Geez….lighten up, Francis.

Regardless, they made good Hollywood stories, and I can only imagine how different “A Slight Case of Murder” was when it came out. Having a host of actors known for playing tough guys and criminals do it for laughs really makes this film a treat.

FILMMAKING

Director Lloyd Bacon may be most famous for directing movies wherein the only memorable elements are those with which he had minimal involvement. By that, I mean he directed a lot of the movies that included Busby Berkeley production numbers; those stunning dance and showpieces which included the camera as part of the experience. Bacon cranked out feature after feature, rolling up an unthinkable 130 credits as director over 32 years. He seems like the epitome of a studio director. He did comedies, musicals, sports films, gangster pics, war movies during WWII, jail epics, and even westerns. I think that makes him a good fit for a gangster/comedy/family drama like this movie. Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m surprised there was no prize fight somewhere in here!

There are some well-timed shenanigans with the hold-up man who is hiding out, and a big party with a lot of action that is surprisingly easy to follow considering how much is going on. Otherwise, it’s typically Hollywood for the ‘30’s, the stars are really the dialogue, the acting and the pacing. Bacon handles all quite well, and never gets in the way of the laughs. To be sure, in Sturges’ hands, the movie could have risen much higher, but there are a lot of directors from the period that I think would have messed this little gem up with their imprimatur. Lloyd, you were a hard-working SOB, and someday you will get your props. Meantime---good job on this one.

PERFORMANCES

You probably think I am going to wax rhapsodic about Edward G. for the next three paragraphs, and I certainly could. A 5 foot 4 inch leading man, who could play a tough guy as good as anybody (Johnny Rocco in “Key Largo” for example), and also turn in moving performances like Christopher Cross (no not THAT one) in Fritz Lang’s “Scarlet Street”, or thoughtful, incisive characters like Barton Keyes in “Double Indemnity”—why, that’s an actor’s actor. EGR said that playing Remy Marko was one of his favorite experiences as an actor, and he sure seems to be having a great time. It’s a great role, and he is wonderful in it.

For me, the revelation is Ruth Donnelly, as Remy’s wife, Nora. She switches back and forth between aristocrat and moll effortlessly, and to great comic effect. You’ve probably seen her in many films; she too has over 100 titles in her resume. She acted on Broadway until the stock market crash, then moved out to Hollywood just in time for talkies. A good thing, since her skill at repartee is up to par with her great facial expressions.

Sidekicks Lefty (Edward Brophy), Mike (Allen Jenkins) and Guiseppe (Harold Huber) provide perfect foils for the Marko family members. One of the best moments comes when Remy is telling them about the bookies getting their take stolen, and while they are all saying things like “how terrible”, they are smiling and laughing and getting a huge kick out of it. Their interplay with orphan Douglas Fairbanks Rosenbloom (played by Bowery Boy veteran Bobby Jordan) is also a great source of humor throughout.

If there is a weakness in the movie’s performances it comes from Jane Bryan and Willard Parker as the daughter and fiancée, Mary and Dick. They feel like placeholders, and even at the climax when Dick has a chance to really do some slapstick, it’s Robinson that makes it work.

ON SECOND LOOK

If you have yet to see this great comedy, make a point of guide searching for it on Turner Movies or ordering from Netflix. I promise you one thing, you will not be bored, and I am sure you will get some huge laughs out of it. It holds up beautifully.

1st Look-★★★1/2 2nd Look-★★★1/2

“THE BRIDE WORE BLACK”- 1968 Dir: François Truffaut

What I Remember:

I saw this on television, probably on PBS, in the ‘80’s. My guess is it was at least the partial inspiration for “Kill Bill”. The groom at a wedding gets assassinated on the chapel steps, to the horror of all in attendance. The bride proceeds to go about finding out who did it, then wooing each person involved, and finally killing them. As I’m sure you all know, all of Tarantino’s films are referential. Almost every idea he has had is derivative, and yet he puts an original spin to make it uniquely his own. In the case of “Kill Bill”, he even names his character “The Bride”. In case you’ve never seen “Bill”, she and her entire wedding party are shot at the ceremony, and she wakes in a hospital assuming that the baby she was carrying is among the dead as well. She then proceeds to track down each person she knows responsible for the melee, and murders them one at a time.

When a film aficionado (like me, for instance) thinks of Truffaut, he (me) is immediately mindful of the great classics of his early works; the Antoine Doinel series, and of course, the superb “Jules and Jim”. Other early classics include “The Soft Skin”, and “Shoot the Piano Player”. Truffaut’s involvement in the New Wave of French Cinema cannot be overstated; he was one of the driving forces along with Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer, Alain Resnais, Claude Chabrol and Jacques Rivette. Truffaut seemed the most approachable to American tastes of this crew. His main influences were from American Cinema, in particular Alfred Hitchcock. But Truffaut did not imitate Hitchcock the auteur, he was most interested in how Hitchcock considered his audience and their reaction to every scene and bit of dialogue that his films proffered. With Hitch, the audience was paramount. This rubbed off on Truffaut.

Just as Hitchcock would have you identify with a Norman Bates, as he nervously watched and hoped that Marion Crane’s car (with her mutilated body in the trunk) would fully submerge in the pond, Truffaut asked us to identify with Jeanne Moreau’s bride, who avenges her groom’s death by seducing and killing those responsible, rather than let the law do its job. As I recall, you root as hard for this bride as you do for Tarantino’s.

As far as I can tell, this is a forgotten classic. I remember being totally bowled over, and wondering how it was that I missed seeing this film in theater, when I was so enamored of Truffaut and Moreau. I count “Jules and Jim” in my top 20 all time. It seems in the pantheon of French Cinema, you never hear or read about “The Bride Wore Black”. Let’s see if it deserves that fate.


After re-watching:

“I didn’t come here for love!” Julie Kohler

PLOT SUMMARY:

Prevented from suicide by her mother, a mysterious woman subsequently tracks down 5 men to murder, men whom she holds responsible for the murder of her newlywed groom on the steps of their nuptial church. She uses her feminine mystique, her cunning, her looks and her single-mindedness to trap and eventually kill her targets.

STORY/THEME

Truffaut freely admits that this is his homage to Hitchcock. Having just completed the famous coffee-table masterpiece Hitchcock/Truffaut, wherein the younger man probed in depth (via interviews) the entire canon of the elder’s work, Truffaut was suitably inspired to make this film. He went so far as to adapt a story from the same author who’s work was the foundation for “Rear Window”, his use of Eastmancolor resembles the Technicolor of Hitch, and for the final and most convincing touch, his score was composed by the great genius Bernard Herrmann.

The similarities don’t end there. Many shots and stylistic elements are direct references to the portly master of suspense. The POV shot of Julie pushing her 1st victim off a terrace is straight out of Raymond Burr attacking Grace Kelly in “Rear Window”. A leitmotif of pouring a glass of liquid into a plant or flowerpot becomes a plot device that helps a man remember where he saw our killer. Hitch was well known for these moments of revelation. Many of the scenes take place in open air, friendly environs, places you would never expect evil to be afoot. The schoolyard crow attack in “The Birds” and the Senator’s soiree where Bruno strangles a dowager in “Strangers on a Train” are prime examples of this juxtaposition that Hitchcock adored.

Be that as it may, there are so very many things in “The Bride Wore Black” that you would NEVER see in a Hitchcock movie. The bride does not ever reveal how she found out who these men are. Hitch would have found some clever way to explain this. Why does Julie Kohler know, and the Police don’t? More importantly, there is no real protagonist other than our bride. In a Hitchcock film, there would be someone with whom the audience can completely identify, someone whose humanity overcomes their desire for revenge. Exoneration is the driving force of Richard Hannay, of Roger Thornhill, of Barry Kane, of Guy Haines. Revenge is something for the bad guys.

Yet this is also French New Wave, and that movement’s disregard for Hollywood conventions developed a troop of anti-heroes. Our bride, Julie Kohler, is a standard-bearer. As I wrote before re-watching, you find yourself rooting for Julie to succeed, to not get caught, to continue. This theme is a twist from Hitchcock, who loved to manipulate his audiences in uncomfortable ways, but would always give them a more suitable target in which to invest their allegiances. It would take “Bonnie and Clyde” for American Cinema to finally give us anti-heroes akin to the French.

As for the suspense, it’s only important for Julie to stay at large until she finally gets all 5 men. You are only invested in this intellectually. You wonder how she is going to get away after pushing the first man off his terrace, but you don’t find yourself begging her to run, for God’s sake! You are fascinated why she doesn’t deface a painting of herself on the wall of the artist she has just killed, but you don’t find yourself yelling at her to wipe it out.

Why do I continue to harp upon this subject? It’s at the root of what I think makes this less of a classic than it could be. Hitchcock understood that unless the audience is emotionally tethered to a character, it is nearly impossible to create true tension and release. Therefore the audience’s experience at the cinema is one of lessened returns—a far less affecting film than “Notorious”, or “Spellbound” even. Check me out…defending Hollywood formula. Go figure. I guess it just got real cold down in hell.

FILMMAKING

I’ve already spent some time describing a number of the homages to Hitch, but there are some other elements that are worthy of discussion. Cinematically, there are some very fun moments provided by François. The final scene is a long static shot, and the action takes place off screen. Shakespeare would have been proud.

Julie’s first appearance in disguise is as an apparition, which symbolically shows her as the ghost she is, already dead inside. The billowing, white outfit is at once revealing and angelic. You can see why the men are fascinated with her, even though her target is at his own engagement party. Her scarf gets blown off the terrace and onto the awning, which allows the fiancée to go over the edge to grab it, and for her to push him off. Later after we watch her quickly walk away from the building, the camera follows the scarf as it wafts around the sea winds of the Cote D’Azur. It reminded me of “The Red Balloon” more than a bit. Eventually the scarf comes to rest in the fronds of a palm tree, and we see a jet taking off through those leaves. Of course, Julie is on that plane.

The music of Herrmann makes such a visceral connection to Hitchcock, almost in the way a song from your youth can bring a time and place physically to mind. Music can be a form of time travel, and when a composer references his own work on an earlier film, it’s almost like you’re watching both films at the same time. The score of “The Bride Wore Black” reminds me of Herrmann’s work on both “Vertigo” and “Psycho”. I rank “Vertigo” at the very top of my favorite; it is for me in a revolving door with “Chinatown”, “Citizen Kane” and “The Conversation” at the pinnacle of Cinema. Note: none of these films end happily. Just sayin’. Where was I going with this? Oh yeah- having the score bring to mind “Vertigo” and it’s near flawless majesty, probably went a long way towards pointing out just how “The Bride Wore Black” did not measure up. In fact, it helped me to realize what a thin line between homage and satire Truffaut walked while making this film.

PERFORMANCES

If you don’t fully identify with Julie Kohler and her quest to rub out her husband’s murderers, don’t blame Jeanne Moreau. I read some talk about how Truffaut should have used the typical icy blonde of Hitchcock, maybe Catherine Deneuve instead of Moreau. My contention is that Moreau’s performance alone places the movie in a different strata. She is so wonderfully oblique, then suddenly shows chinks in her wall, and even has a full on breakdown while describing marrying her childhood sweetheart only to watch him be gunned down on the chapel steps. At one point, she realizes that one of her victims-to-be has legitimately fallen in love with her, and her face registers the pain of knowing that this emotional connection could never derail her juggernaut of a revenge train. It is a masterful turn, and I believe she is perfectly cast.

The men all do a great job in their reduced roles as misogynists, womanizers and losers. You do almost feel bad for them..well not ALL of them. Certainly the guy who’s kind of a flop with chicks (to quote Jerry Lieber) is a tad sympathetic, as is the artist who falls in love with Julie. The family man is kind of a self-obsessed prick, and you don’t really mind that he gets locked in an airless cupboard. All the other roles are at most one-liners, so it’s really about the killer and her victims. There is a building clerk that does a bit something like Dennis Weaver’s motel clerk in “Touch of Evil”, but it’s totally for laughs.

ON SECOND LOOK

Hitchcock never did an homage to other filmmakers, and neither did Bergman, Kurosawa or Fellini. Woody Allen has a bunch, as well as Tarantino, and here we see Truffaut take a stab. You’d think when one master references another it would be a very special, magical moment. Ivan Lins did a full record of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s songs. Herbie Hancock did a full record of Joni Mitchell. I want to hear the masters do their own material. There are plenty of lesser lights out there that can do the job of homage to a master. Truffaut is at his best doing Truffaut. Don’t get me wrong here—it’s a fun and surprising suspenser with twists and turns and great movie moments. It just doesn’t reach the heights of “400 Blows”, “Love on the Run”, and particularly “Jules and Jim”.

1st Look-★★★★ 2nd Look-★★★

THE ROCKING HORSE WINNER (1949) Dir: Anthony Pelissier

What I Remember:

Based on a story by D.H. Lawrence, I recall this movie as a kind of Twilight Zone episode, only longer, more British, and without a major plot twist. It was kind of like the “Franklin” episode of the Zone, where a slot machine takes on a personality as it calls the newly gambling addict like a siren, luring him to a plunge from a Vegas high-rise hotel window.

In the case of “The Rocking Horse Winner”, a lower income English household is in trouble, and their child hears the house itself demanding money. He gets on his Rocking Horse, and suddenly finds that riding the horse very hard causes him to predict the winners at the local track. If that ever happened to me, my family would have probably taken me out of school on the spot, installed a TV on the horse’s nose, and had Lutece cater all my meals while I rocked away all day and night. “Sleep? There’s time for sleep later, Wayne. Now get on that damn horse and tell me the Exacta winners from the 4th at Aqueduct!”

So right now you’re thinking, “Oh, that Wayne. Exaggerating again for comic effect”. Not this time, bub.
Example 1; Most people have grandparents who break their hip in a fall, and that usually is their undoing. Sadly, this was true for my wonderful Grandma Pearl. However, Pearl slipped and fell running to the cashier at Belmont after she nailed a longshot in the 2nd race.
Example 2; The other side of my family lived at the track also. There is actually a room at Monmouth Racetrack in New Jersey named after my Grandfather. When told of this honor, he responded by saying, “All the money I lost at this track- they should name the whole damn place after me!”

Anyway, my college girlfriend and I were sitting at her place relaxing with the TV on, and this movie came on Public Televison. She literally jumped up, and said, “I love this movie. We have to watch it!”. Remember, I was a film major, and I went “Oh great. Some precious British kid’s film with a ‘40’s version of Hayley Mills and a rocking horse. Just how I want to spend my night. Aren’t the White Sox on or something?”

On the inside, of course.

On the outside it was, “Sounds great, baby.” Needless to say, the movie completely shocked and surprised me, in a very positive way. This was no Disney does Darby. It’s a serious film about child abuse and neglect, and an allegory about how parents can exploit a child with talent to the child’s detriment.

After re-watching:

“Don’t send me away till after the Darby! Please Mommy, please Mommy, please!” – Paul Grahame


PLOT SUMMARY

The Grahames are an Upper Middle Class family who are running out of money. Mrs. Grahame spends like there’s no tomorrow, and Mr. Grahame gambles at cards to try and generate enough to handle her needs. They have 3 children, the oldest of whom, Paul, is a happy young boy who strikes up a friendship with their landscaper/handyman, Bassett (John Mills). Mrs. Grahame’s brother, Oscar, is well off, and is also her trustee. He has helped them many times, but is running out of patience. Mrs. Grahame’s mantra, “we must get more money” becomes part of Paul’s unconscious, until he believes the house itself is saying it. His new Christmas present is a Rocking Horse that he rides with intensity, believing it will bring him the luck his parents don’t have. With Bassett, he begins to pick the winners at the track, and rides until the inspiration hits him. Uncle Oscar gets in on the deal, and takes his winnings to replenish his sister’s money, telling the family it’s trust disbursement. Soon the luck runs out and Paul becomes desperate, riding his rocking horse maniacally.

STORY/THEME

Wow, did I have this one wrong! The parents are not lower class, and they are totally in the dark about the boy’s special talent. They don’t even really know where the new money is coming from. It seems like they don’t care to know. They are simply ready to spend and live extravagantly without asking questions. Just now, it occurs to me that if there’s an allegory here, it’s to today’s USA. Spend, borrow, spend more. Live the high life, don’t ask questions until the collection agent shows up expecting a payback. Then the excrement hits the propeller. It’s an endorsement of the Protestant ethic, for sure.

Nobody realizes that Paul is destroying himself with his maniacal riding except maybe the nanny, who is worried initially, but later seems to lose track. The Mother is totally oblivious, then out of nowhere, gets this sixth sense that something is very wrong with Paul. It’s very hard to believe, and is a pretty huge flaw. The Father is a real nothing in this movie, he ignores the children, and is obviously a failure at providing for the family.

Is there a villain in “Rocking Horse Winner”? Maybe the horse itself, but it’s not Uncle Oscar, who despite being snarky and brusque, genuinely tries to help. It’s not Bassett, who is a lower class nice guy, with a real code of honor. The parents are products of their upbringing, spoiled, yes, but not malicious. The real enemy is greed, just like it is today in the good old U S of A.

The moral of the story? Greed kills. Money is the root of all evil. Check in on your kids once in a while.

To wit, there’s a great scene early on, where the mother puts her children to bed, and she remarks to the father that it was so easy, and she has no idea why Nanny complains about how hard it is all the time. Meanwhile, we cut upstairs to the previously placid bedrooms, now with mayhem breaking out. She has NO CLUE about her own children, because she is obviously so self-involved.

On a side note, there is an awful scene which I had no memory of, and it might have been cut from the version I saw. Trust me, if I’d seen it, I would have remembered it. Mrs. Grahame, faced with the prospect of having a bill collector stay in her home unless she produces 40£ to pay him off, goes to a ghetto neighborhood to sell some of her expensive clothes to a tailor. The tailor, a Mr. Tsaldouris, is obviously Jewish, despite the name. He has a Central European accent, acts and looks the part with coke bottle glasses, carrying a dog around in his dank tailor shop. And he’s a tailor. After they “hondel” (bargain) they settle on a price that gets her to the amount she needs, only if she throws in the expensive bag that she is carrying the clothes in. When he pays her, he asks, “Aren’t you going to count it?” She replies, “No, Mr. Tsaldouris, I trust you”. In that one sentence, she puts him down so thoroughly, and elevates herself. It is classic Brit Anti-Semitism. Only four years after the war. It made me almost as sick as Watto, that huge nosed flying Jew-bug in The Phantom Menace episode of Star Wars, who sells Annakin’s mother into the slave trade, explaining that “Business is business”, with a buggy shrug.

Fuck you, Lucas. You haven’t made a decent movie since “The Empire Strikes Back”. Man, that felt good.


FILMMAKING

I had never heard of Anthony Pelissier, and with good reason. Nothing else that shows up on IMDB is well known. Mr. Pelissier both directed and did the screenplay adaptation of “Rocking Horse Winner”. The screenplay has its moments, and I’m sure Mr. Lawrence supplied much of them. The Direction is ambitious, and often succeeds. There are great Noir-ish lighting stunts, and the horse itself looks exceptionally demonic at times.

Probably my favorite moments are;
1) The first time we see Paul on the horse, it cuts from the children cowering in the corner watching him, to Paul’s POV while riding. The camera tracks in and out very fast on a fuzzy, filtered vision of the mother and Nanny. You can see that he is in another world, and that the reality of his room is like a separate dimension. It’s very effective.
2) When Mrs. Grahame finally gets the mental idea that something is terribly wrong, and she rushes home to find Paul on the horse, she opens the door, and there is a remarkable shot of her head in the lower right corner of the screen, while the rest of the box is filled with the giant shadow of Paul on the rocking horse. Yes, I am sure Mr. Pelissier was familiar with the works of Fritz Lang and Alfred Hitchcock.

Music is used very dramatically throughout the film, and the score by William Alwyn is powerful, indeed. Mr. Alwyn also wrote for the great wartime documentary “Fires Were Started”, and Carol Reed’s two lesser-known masterpieces “Odd Man Out” and “Fallen Idol”. This is interesting, since Pelissier’s ex-wife remarried Reed! The score is typical, but much of the tension in the movie is provided by its presence in scenes that otherwise would seem quite mundane.

PERFORMANCES

John Mills, who played Bassett, also produced the film, and he is very convincing in the role as the slightly dim but good-hearted handyman. Paul is played by John Howard Davies, a child actor who had two other quite meaty roles as Oliver Twist and Tom Brown in “Tom Brown’s Schooldays”. Davies had a short career as a young actor, but a very long one as a TV director, including helming many episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and more importantly, directing the greatest sitcom of ALL TIME, “Fawlty Towers”. When I read that little factoid, I decided not to trash him for being way over the top in “The Rocking Horse Winner”. Actually, he is only slightly over the top. The kid who plays Phillipe in “Fallen Idol” (Bobby Henrey) does a better job, but frankly that film is far superior to this one.

Ronald Squire as Uncle Oscar does a decent job of delivering his sarcastic dialogue, but he looks decades older than his sister. In fact, IMDB research revealed that he was indeed 30 years senior to co-star Valerie Hobson, who played Hester Grahame. Hobson had had two very big roles to her credit at the point this film was made; as the adult Estella in “Great Expectations”, and Edith D’Ascoyne in “Kind Hearts and Coronets”. Her performance in this film is fairly shallow, even at the end when she is transformed, the character lacks depth and personality. We take for granted how terrific British actors are, so when they are a bit substandard it really can undermine a film.

ON SECOND LOOK

This was not the film I remembered both in substance AND in quality. There are some fine moments in imagery and sound, but the poor acting and shallow characters take away from the power of the film. We’ve seen this kind of story many times in Twilight Zone, so the novelty of it, which must have been quite compelling in 1949, has little to no effect on us now. In any case, if I had been on the fence about “The Rocking Horse Winner”, that little trip to the London shtetl pushed me off of it.

1st Look-★★★1/2 2nd Look-★★

BRAZIL (1985) Dir. Terry Gilliam

I didn't get it.

What I remember:

This is the first entry of my “I Didn’t Get It” section of this blog. These are movies that seem to have a life of their own, “legs” I think some people call it. Film freaks and critics alike adore these movies, which I found underwhelming at best, and in some cases just plain awful.

My credentials for loving “Brazil” are unassailable; I enjoy sci-fi, I am a huge proponent and performer of Brazilian music, I am a geeky Monty Python devotee, I adore off-beat and original movies. All bets should have been on a “two thumbs up” reaction to Gilliam’s opus. All bets would have made mad loot for the bookies.

About 25 minutes into the film I can recall wanting out of the theater. It was a cacophonous mess of dangling wires and poorly conceived stunts, devoid of humor or plot, with nasty sharp teeth and floppy ears and run away run away RUN AWAY!!!!! It was as if Dinsdale had nailed me head to the coffee table. I was pining for the fjords.

I did not, however, walk out on “Brazil”. I sat through the entire 132 minutes hoping against hope that the movie would give me a reason to like it. It did not. Most people feel that it is Gilliam’s greatest film. It is rated at 98% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer. That’s higher than “Pulp Fiction” or “Goodfellas”!

So what the hell film was I watching? How could I be so absolutely off base about it? It’s not like I just don’t like Gilliam’s movies. I really enjoyed “Holy Grail”, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and “Time Bandits”. You know how, in the great “Cheese Shop” skit from Python, Michael Palin says how clean the shop is, and John Cleese responds, “Well it’s certainly uncontaminated by any bits of cheese, isn’t it?” That describes my memory of “Brazil”. For a comedy, it is certainly uncontaminated by any bits of humor.

Isn’t it?



After re-watching

Kurtzmann: Information Retrieval has got him down as "inoperative." And there's another one - Security has got him down as "excised." Administration has got him down as "completed."

Sam Lowry: He's dead.

PLOT SUMMARY

In a dystopian society of the late 20th Century, Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is a mid-level bureaucrat from a rich and powerful family. He is obviously very intelligent, but without drive. He dreams constantly of being a flying avenger, and of a certain woman whom he can rescue from the clutches of an evil giant samurai. When he catches a glimpse of this woman in “reality”, he pursues her and begins to get in trouble with the Orwellian authorities. He takes a promotion he had earlier turned down, and uses his new level of information to find her and rescue her from the bureaucracy which has mistakenly targeted her and her neighbors.

STORY/THEME

Do you remember having a childhood friend who you used to have play-dates with, who was really creative and a bit hyperactive? We all knew those kids, right? The first hour with them was really cool. They had a lot of interesting shit to play with, and all these fun, manic things to do. Then, after about an hour, it started to get a little annoying. Soon, everything the kid did was irritating and why the hell doesn’t he just shut up and can’t we watch TV and don’t you have anything to EAT for God’s sake and can I call my folks to come get me now?

This is “Brazil” in a nutshell. The theme is nothing new, of course. “1984” had already covered this territory quite well, maybe with not as much humor. I will admit there are a few funny bits in the film. One of my favorite moments happens after freelance heating engineer Harry Tuttle (Robert DeNiro) fixes Lowry’s AC/Heater, and a couple of repairman show up from Central Services (Bob Hoskins and Derrick O’Connor) looking very suspicious and quite unofficial. It’s not what Hoskins says, but how he says it. The character is rife with smiling malevolence.

Yet so much of this movie is over the top, that whatever lingering pleasure one might get from the humor and creative vision is just swamped in noise for both your eyes and ears. One scene, where Lowry hand delivers a refund check to the widow of a wrongly arrested man, is beyond shrill- it is absolutely unwatchable. The movie keeps assailing your senses to make its point: We ignore the disaster we’ve created with our modern society so we can enjoy the fruits of technology. But these fruits are poisoned, and our future can only get worse as we let this beast take over.

In 1985 when “Brazil” was made, there was really no Internet as we know it now, nor was there anything close. Gilliam tried to predict this age of mis-information and his satire has a sharp edge. My issue is not with the film’s message, but with it’s methods.

FILMMAKING

A Terry Gilliam movie is a trip inside his head, one supposes. Whereas most of us have a barrier between subconscious and conscious mind, Gilliam’s is down like the Berlin Wall. The attic of our brain is kept at bay so we can actually concentrate on the important stuff at hand; What time is my next appointment? Where did I leave my keys? What should I buy Aunt Millie for her birthday? Gilliam’s attic is wide open and spewing vast amounts of mental sewage and diamonds constantly. Unfortunately we are left to wade through the muck to find the gems.

“Brazil” has a lot of references and influences. Besides “1984”, there is “Metropolis”, “Battleship Potemkin”, “Duck Soup” and “Things to Come”. Why did Gilliam make the overall style of the film 30’s and 40’s Art Deco? It could be that he just likes that look. Or it could be that it makes the technology running rampant even more discordant in comparison to the styles of a more simple time. I believe that it is an outright salute to the sci-fi movies of that era like “Metropolis” and “Things To Come”.

Michael Kamen’s score is perfect if you want to heap extra abuse on the ears of the audience. It is orchestral, with quotes from the title song “Aquarela do Brasil”, and other familiar themes that come and go with a freneticism that matches the movie. It is relentless.

Visually it is a unique and, at times, wonderful feast. The ducts and wires are everywhere; they are almost a character unto themselves. One of the earliest scenes in the Dickensian Ministry of Information is truly balletic in presentation. Workers weave amongst each other down a long crowded corridor with absurd precision. Another stunning bit happens when arresting officers come to claim the wrong man in his home. Like a Storm Trooper invasion, they bust in through the door, the ceiling and the windows at once, tie the man up in a burlap sack that covers him from head to toe, make his poor wife sign a receipt for him, and whisk him away, while she and her children cower. It is disturbing to say the least. It reminded me of the great nightmare scene in “An American Werewolf in London” when David has a vision of the Gestapo invading his suburban home. One moment you are enjoying a quiet evening at home, the next you are plunged into violence and chaos.

Lots of laughs, huh?

At this point you are probably saying, “Come on, man. You love “Little Murders” and there is no blacker comedy than that!” My response is….that movie is FUNNY. Repeatedly funny. Uproariously funny. Sarcastically funny. Not so for “Brazil”. It just doesn’t get me that way. The overall effect is like being at the Fun House. There are lots of weird and somewhat cool things, but a lot of the time it’s just annoying, like the wind jets, or the tilted room. Most Fun Houses are not fun. I sure wouldn’t want to buy a second ticket for this one. I am not really a Tim Burton fan, but I do love “Beetlejuice”. Now THERE’s a Fun House I would go back to!

PERFORMANCES

The cast is actually one of the strengths of “Brazil”. From top to bottom, everyone does what they are supposed to do. It’s exactly WHAT they have been told to do to which I take exception. Jonathan Pryce’s Sam Lowry is perfectly fine as the harried, daydreaming hero. Of course, putting one of Python’s standout comic talents in the role, such as John Cleese or Graham Chapman, would have dialed up the comedy and made the film far more tolerable.
Iam Holm, who is always wonderful, does a superb job as the incompetent boss, Kurtzmann. There are also very strong bits from veteran TV actress Katherine Helmond as Sam’s mother. Ms. Helmond was very well known at the time as Jessica Tate from the popular sitcom “Soap”, a role she reprised on the show “Benson”. I like character actor Jim Broadbent as Mrs. Lowry’s plastic surgeon, Michael Palin as the evil friend Jack Lint, and, as I already said, Bob Hoskins is hilarious. Kim Greist as Lowry’s dream girl, Jill Layton, does a nice job, but not a standout.

The big question is, why DeNiro? His Harry Tuttle is really the hero of our story, the guy who keeps rescuing Sam for no apparent reason. Don’t get me wrong, he turns in a good performance, but he is such a powerful presence on screen, and so recognizable, that it’s a bit of a distraction. Like having George Clooney show up on “Mad Men” as a janitor.

ON SECOND LOOK

Is “Brazil” as terrible as I remembered? No, not at all. It’s noisy and abrasive. It’s like having your brain in a pinball machine. The movie does take on some very important issues, particularly the way technology and industrialization are dehumanizing us all. It’s a harrowing vision, for certain. The satire, however, is not funny enough to help balance the film’s intensity and chaotic demeanor. NO WAY does this film warrant a place in the “Classics” of modern cinema.

1st Look-★★ 2nd Look-★★★

DEAD MAN- 1995 Dir. Jim Jarmusch

What I remember:

Whether you like him or not, Jarmusch is one of the few true auteurs out there. I guess you could call the entire Pixar group an auteur, but after Jarmusch, is there any one person who’s body of work is so singular, so completely separate from the bulk of what else is being done, and yet so uniform to itself? Yes, there’s Almódovar, no argument here. Other names that come to mind are Woody Allen, Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, The Coen Brothers, Tim Burton, Noah Baumbach, Ramin Bahrani, Tom McCarthy, Suzanne Biers. The first four each have a body of work that has similarities throughout, but there are also variances that keep me from proclaiming them auteurs. Woody’s serious side usually is imitative of other great directors; “Interiors” is his Bergman, “Stardust Memories” his Fellini, “Match Point” his Hitchcock. Tarantino, Anderson, the Coens and Burton each have enough of their own sideways trajectories to make them questionable for this nomenclature. As for the other four younger directors I mentioned, their oeuvre is still in formation. We shall see if they continue their very individual work.

Digression over. Jarmusch has such a strong hold on every film he makes that genre has no effect. You want a hitman flick? “Ghost Dog”. How about an episodic travelogue? “Night on Earth”. Relationship movie? “Broken Flowers”. All of these films have the trademark leisurely paced, quirky dialogue, stranger in a strange land narrative that has defined a Jarmusch film.

His western, “Dead Man” is no exception. I consider it his finest movie. I saw it over a year after it’s release and was very impressed. It had some of that great humor we associate with Jarmusch, but the title alone shows just how dark and intense the film is. The fact that it is shot in black and white adds to the general gloominess of the proceedings. Johnny Depp was fine in his role as William Blake, but he does come across a bit like Edward Scissorhands in bearskins. The real star of the film, besides Robby Müller’s cinematography, was Gary Farmer as the Indian, “Nobody”. Farmer is indeed a Native American (yes I know he’s Canadian- that is part of America), and his performance here is nothing short of astonishing.

“Dead Man” is all about atmosphere, hopelessness, disorientation, isolation. Other than that it’s a fun, light-hearted romp!

After re-watching:

William Blake- (holding up a gun) “Why do you have this?”
Thel Russell- “Because this is America.”

Nobody- “ I was then taken east, in a cage. I was taken to Toronto. Then Philadelphia. And then to New York. And each time I arrived at another city, somehow the white men had moved all their people there ahead of me. Each new city contained the same white people as the last, and I could not understand how a whole city of people could be moved so quickly.”
PLOT SUMMARY

Accountant William Blake (Johnny Depp) is traveling to the far west to take a job with Dickinson Metalworks in a town called Machine. When he arrives, he finds the position is already filled. Broke and alone, he drinks outside a bar, and assists a flower-selling woman named Thel Russell (Mili Avitel) who has been accosted. The two sleep together, and are surprised by Thel’s ex-lover Charlie in the morning. The man shoots Thel, then William, wounded by the bullet that has passed through Thel, shoots Charlie. He takes Charlie’s horse and escapes into the forest. In the forest he meets Nobody (Gary Farmer) who is a lone Indian. Nobody mistakes Blake for the poet of the same name, and befriends him. Meanwhile, bounty hunters and U.S. Marshalls are hired by Dickinson himself, who, it turns out, is Charlie’s father. While on the run, Blake becomes a legend like Billy the Kid, with Wanted Posters all over the area.

STORY/THEME

If the plot summary I just wrote gives you the impression that this is an action-packed oater, then I am sorry to say that you are mistaken. In fact, the pace of all the violent scenes in the film is 16 RPM. People even react to being shot with a 1,2,3 OUCH! Many times, characters that are drawn upon fumble with their weapon or don’t even move, simply awaiting their fate. Unlike the violence in “The Wild Bunch” or “Taxi Driver”, shown in slow motion to exaggerate the blood and guts, there is no gushing geyser of blood, usually just a minute bullet-hole appears, and seconds later a hand goes to the site of the wound. Languid pacing is what a Jarmusch film is about, and there are other hallmarks of his work in “Dead Man”. One I forgot to mention earlier is the juxtaposition of the strong, silent type with the guy who just won’t shut the fuck up. John Lurie and Roberto Benigni in “Down By Law” supply the archetypes, as do Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Cinque Lee in “Mystery Train”. In “Dead Man”, these roles are supplied by characters Cole Wilson (Lance Henriksen) and Conway Twill (Michael Wincott).

Much of the dialogue is mystical, especially when uttered by Nobody or the train fireman (Crispin Glover). The theme becomes about the transition from life to death, how the white man sees it and how the Indian sees it. In Jarmusch’s vision, the Old West is a place where life is cheap, death comes easy, early and often. It is not so much a land of opportunity, but a place where hope runs out. In this place, the rule of law is a rumor, a man is very close to his feral roots, the veneer of civilization is threadbare, like everyone’s clothing.

Makes for a lovely weekend trip.

I think Jarmusch has always been drawn to society’s marginal folk, the Jersey losers in “Stranger Than Paradise”, the Finnish alcoholics in “Night on Earth”, the hit man in “Ghost Dog”. It is that theme and also the “Stranger in a Strange Land” dichotomy that he continues to explore and expound upon in all of his movies. “Dead Man” is the film I would use to introduce a person to Jarmusch’s catalogue, simply because it is the best and most poignant. And, oh yeah, there are some VERY funny moments along the way. If you have been reading this blog, you know that humor is a necessity for me to enjoy a film. Depp plays the Barney Miller-like straight man, while the humor comes from various sources; Nobody, the Bounty Hunters, even Dickinson. Comic relief mitigates this otherwise dismally dark piece, and the two work beautifully together to make a very strong statement.

FILMMAKING

I guess 16 years is not so long a time that I couldn’t remember the best things about this movie. I was right that Robby Müller’s camera work is amongst the best you will ever see, and certainly the best in a film by Jim Jarmusch. There is a look to contemporary black and white films that transcends the old silver screen concept. The Coen’s “The Man Who Wasn’t There” has a luminous quality that only a few other films can muster. This one is in that group. I also remember seeing some restored prints from the classic years, especially “The Big Sleep” which are very special to watch in monochrome. So maybe it’s the condition of the old prints that have made them lose that lustrous quality. “Dead Man” has luster in spades. Don’t get me wrong, it is not a beautiful film. The imagery is quite bleak and often disturbing. The first time you see the town of Machine, you are introduced to the Coffin maker, and the skulls of dead animals are hung everywhere. The Indian fort near the end of the film is shot like a Nazi ghetto. There are times when you feel like you could smell the stench of where you are; the maneur, the burning animal flesh, the rotting corpses.

The opening sequence is truly memorable. As the tedious train-ride to the west progresses, both the landscape and the other passengers go from civilized and familiar to savage and strange. William Blake, in his ridiculously dapper get-up, notices this change between naps, making the movement towards the primitive starkly envisioned. Right before the credits, Glover’s soot-covered fireman (the coal shoveler) sits across from Blake, and talks of visions. At one point, when he finds out where Blake is headed, he responds with “The end of the line. Why would someone want to go to hell?” It’s a premonition for the entire film before the title rolls.

A quick note about the score: Neil Young plays both acoustic and distorted electric guitar throughout the film. Thank the Lord he doesn’t sing! At times it sounds like they rolled the film with a mic on his amp, and he just picked up his axe whenever it seemed like a good time to add some tension. At first I loved it, but as the film goes on it becomes repetitive, annoying and distracting.

PERFORMANCES

This is quite an ensemble that Jim put together. Iggy Pop is not only clothed, he is dressed as a woman in one very creepy segment, where he is reading Goldilocks to two other men, played by Billy Bob Thornton and Jared Harris. Other notables are Robert Mitchum as Dickinson, and Gabriel Byrne as Charlie. Everyone is perfect in their parts, but as I said earlier, the transcendent performance is from Gary Farmer as Nobody. It is a star-making turn, and I cannot figure out why he didn’t get a boatload of great parts after this. He did reprise this role in “Ghost Dog”, wherein he gets to say the signature line of Nobody- “Stupid fucking white man”. I also love a moment when he grabs Blake’s hat, puts it on and rapidly moves his lower jaw like he is a corporate bigwig talking to an underling. This is physically and verbally one of the most singular and indelible performances you will ever see.

As for Depp, he underplays the role so much, that it is hard to recognize the Johnny Depp we have all grown to know so well. No Jack Sparrow or Ed Wood here. His William Blake is simple, not very clever and truly without artifice. It’s just what the film needed out of him.

ON SECOND LOOK

“Dead Man” was my favorite film by Jim Jarmusch, and re-watching hasn’t changed that. “Dead Man” is Jarmusch’s “Annie Hall”, or “Strangers on a Train”, or “Fargo”. It’s the one movie in an auteur’s career where he gets it all right.

1st Look-★★★1/2 2nd Look-★★★1/2