"TAMPOPO" 1985 Dir- Jûzô Itami

What I Remember:


I have been a fan of Japanese Cinema since my first exposure to it, in the form of Akira Kurosawa’s “The Seven Samurai”. It seemed the more I saw, the more I liked Japanese made movies. I saw Mizoguchi’s ghost story “Ugetsu” and loved it. Next was the amazing MacBeth version by Kurosawa entitled “Throne of Blood”. Brilliant! Soon after, I saw “Ikiru”, “Rashomon”, “Sansho the Bailiff”, “Tokyo Story”, “Rashomon”. I was in love.

I am one of the few people in the United States who saw the Japanese versions of Spaghetti Westerns before ever seeing the Italian knock-offs. My disdain for the Leone catalogue is due to this order of viewings. It is probably unfounded, since many people adore his better efforts. “Once Upon a Time in America” is one that I found very appealing, maybe because there is no Japanese antecedent. I can tell you that if you see “A Fistful of Dollars” after seeing “Yojimbo”, it’s just not going to withstand the comparison.

When I heard that there was a new Japanese film out by a lesser known director, one that turned the Spaghetti Western back on it’s head, I knew I had to see it. It was a comedy, that basically took the plot of “Shane’, and transposed it to a modern day noodle shop. A stranger rides into town, and helps a poor lady restaurateur by supplying her with the greatest recipe for noodles in the known universe. It was like the Japanese were saying…you want Spaghetti? We’ll give you a Noodle Western!

My memory is that the film was original, funny, sexy and all about food. Comedy, Gluttony and Lust. What more could anyone want from a night at the movies?

After Re-watching:

“I'll kill you if you make that noise once the movie starts! Understand? And... I also don't like watch alarms going off. “ Man in the White Suit


PLOT SUMMARY

A trucker named Goro (Tsutomu Yamazaki) and his sidekick, Gun (Ken Watanabe), stop late on a rainy night for noodles at a noodle shop. The proprietor is a nice-looking middle-aged widow named Tampopo (Nobuko Miyamoto), who is struggling to keep her dead husband’s business afloat. Her food is sub-standard, and the trucker endeavors to help her learn how to make the best possible noodles. Throughout the film, there are short vignettes that all center around food in various ways; comic, tragic and ironic.

STORY/THEME

This is the 2nd of three movies directed by Jûzô Itami which stars Yamazaki and Miyamoto. The first, called “Ososhiki” (Funeral) I haven’t seen. The 3rd is called “A Taxing Woman”, which was another very funny and engaging film. “Tampopo”, is considered by most critics to be the best of the three.

The opening alone is worth the price of admission. A very handsome couple are sitting in a theater waiting for a movie to begin. The man, dressed in a white linen suit and panama hat, stands up and looks at the camera, observing that WE have come to see a movie too. He begins to complain about people who make a lot of noise eating during the movies, and threatens a guy right behind him. Then he complains about watch alarms, which puts you right back into the ‘80’s.

The noise of eating food is a major theme throughout “Tampopo”, particularly the slurping of noodles. In one very funny vignette, a very proper Miss Manners type is instructing her young female students about the proper way to eat pasta. She performs a soundless wrapping around her fork and ingestion, all the while there is a man across the dining room slurping his Linguine with gusto. The young women are overcome by the obviously amped up sounds, and respond in kind. Soon the soundtrack is a cacophony of eating noises accompanied by close-ups of young, proper women slurping their noodles with abandon.

This scene is in direct contrast to the opening of the main plot, wherein our truckers are driving through a deluge, the sidekick reading from a book that describes the proper way to eat noodles, Zen style. It’s ridiculously over the top; “Apologize to the pork so you can say, See you soon”. It reminded me of the “Honeymooner’s” golf episode where Ralph tells Norton to address the ball, and Norton looks down and exclaims, “Hello, ball!”

If “Tampopo” hails from any single film, it is of course “Shane”. Simply the idea of a Western influencing a Japanese film about noodles….well you get the joke on Spaghetti Westerns. In “Shane” the hero rides in and saves a widow and her young son from bad guys, then leaves, presumably to go help someone else. “Tampopo” riffs on this with the idea that helping the widow make a great bowl of noodles equates to rescuing a widow from bad men trying to steal her ranch. In true Western fashion, he drives off into the sunset, or rather the Tokyo freeway afternoon. It’s parody in its finest form. Goro is such a cowboy that his truck is festooned with longhorns, and he wears a Stetson even into his bath. When he first enters the noodle shop, he sits at the counter and orders in the misdst of some pretty nefarious looking guys. It is an exact reference to all those “stranger enters a saloon” scenes. Later there is a fight between Goro and the ruffian who fancies Tampopo. It starts stylistically in silhouette, then emerges into an all out donnybrook. At the end, the two men become friends, and team up to help the widow’s transformation. The whole sequence is straight out of a John Ford classic; the Japanese version of John Wayne and Victor McLaglen. When they say their goodbyes at the end of the movie, Goro says “So long, partner.”

The vignettes are all about food and some of them are laugh out loud funny. One of the first is at a fancy French restaurant, where there is a group of businessmen dining in a small private room. Most are older well-dressed men, and the youngest one comes in oafishly bumbling his books. When it’s time to order, they all order consommé and Sole meuniere. The young man then proceeds to order like a 4 star chef, asking about the Boudin and a particular wine vintage. Later on, a skit with a group of homeless guys who are all gourmands also points out that you don’t have to be wealthy or well-heeled to appreciate the glory of food. The disconnect makes for good comedy, but it also makes a point.

Food and its relationship to sex and death are also investigated, thanks to the Man in the White Suit and his quite attractive woman. They are involved in three separate vignettes besides the opening; the first is like a scene from “9 ½ Weeks”, where food is eaten off body parts, and it gets more and more absurd as the scene goes on. The second vignette has them transferring a raw egg yolk from mouth to mouth like an erotic camp game. The third has the man doing a death scene wherein he remembers hunting Wild Boar in winter, when all the Boars eat is yams. You cook their intestines to have yam sausage. It’s the strangest death scene in film history.

FILMMAKING

Itami’s camera has some very interesting tricks up its sleeve. Many scenes take place in a downpour, which is never the kind of atmosphere that you like for comedy. The silhouetted fistfight under an elevated highway is a real treat. However the interweaving of main plot and skits is where the film really shines. The transitions are subtle, but obviously thought out. One noodle shop seamlessly turns into a fine dining establishment for our Miss Manners moment. A man runs past our heroes as they return from a night out and we follow him into his house where his wife lays dying, and a new, quite tragic food vignette begins.
The score also plays a great role in the film’s comic delivery. When one of the “Haute Hobos” cooks a rice omelet for Tampopo’s son by sneaking into a restaurant’s kitchen, the score sounds like a silent film soundtrack. It’s fitting, because the cooking must get done before the night-watchman catches them.

PERFORMANCES

Tsutomu Yamazaki embodies the tough guy with a heart of gold, and plays his role straight as can be, which is perfect for what the film needs. No winking at the camera, no over-the-top tough guy stuff. He is the quintessential strong, not so silent type. As for Nobuko Miyamoto, her Tampopo is fetching, pliant but resilient, and shows some real cleverness when she gets a chef to spill his recipe for his noodles. Watanabe is there just to be a foil for Yamazaki's character. He was quite young when “Tampopo” was made, and has become an international star with turns in “Inception” and “Memoirs of a Geisha” amongst others. Kôji Yakusho plays the Man in the White Suit, and is one of the main sources for laughs. His role is somewhat of the narrator/Greek chorus. Again, like Yamazaki, he plays it seriously, which makes the absurdities of his actions that much funnier. The supporting cast are all letter perfect.

ON SECOND LOOK

If you love food, you need to see this film. It’s a very fun way to spend two hours, and I think a very original work. If you watch it when hungry, be forewarned; your appetite will be raging by the end. “Tampopo” is just as delicious and filling as I remembered it to be.

1st Look-★★★1/2 2nd Look-★★★1/2

DOUBLE FEATURE--"SHADOW OF A DOUBT" & "BLUE VELVET"

“SHADOW OF A DOUBT” (1943) Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
“BLUE VELVET” (1986) Dir: David Lynch (I didn't get it)



What I Remember:

Obviously this will deviate from my normal M.O. in that I will be (as we used to say in 7th grade) comparing and contrasting two films with a very similar theme. Most critics will tell you that “Shadow of a Doubt” is one of Hitch’s finest films, and I will wholeheartedly agree with them. Many will also wax poetic on the virtues of “Blue Velvet”, to which I will take exception.

Originally “Blue Velvet” was going to be one of my “I don’t get it” entries. I thought that the film’s acting was either wooden or WAY over the top. The entire film came across as a cartoon of sorts, or a Hardy Boys “The Crack House Mysteries” movie. It seemed that Lynch’s point of the seamy underside of the American Dream was without real value; a kind of American take on all those Victorian dramas about suppressed hormones and buttoned up sexuality. This, to me, is a very worn out subject.

Anyway, what got me interested in the double feature concept was that I already had “Blue Velvet” ready in my DVR, and just before watching, I was distractedly flipping around the channels. I saw “Shadow of a Doubt” was on Encore Mystery Channel, and I watched a bit of it. That was when the idea struck me.

Hitchcock’s take on this subject had much less to do with sexuality, although there is definitely a weird incestuous undercurrent to “Shadow of a Doubt”. His main subjects were always murder and insanity. Sure, sexuality was also an important part, but only when it served the main storyline for motivation was it visited with true detail, as in “Notorious”, “Marnie” and, of course, “Vertigo”. Most of the time he was concerned with the violent side of man’s nature, and what drives us to do the unthinkable.

My recollection is that where “Shadow” succeeded, and where “Blue Velvet” failed, was in the ability to get you to believe the innocence of the good, and the corruption of the evil. Hitchcock gave depth to the characters by letting them have quirks and individuality, while Lynch stayed with his Fairy Tale puppets, complete with painted blue sky backdrops and gingerbread cul de sacs.



After re-watching:

“You live in a dream. You're a sleepwalker, blind. How do you know what the world is like? Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know, if you rip off the fronts of houses, you'd find swine?”- Uncle Charlie from “Shadow of a Doubt”.

“I'm seeing something that was always hidden. I'm in the middle of a mystery and it's all secret.” Jeffrey Beaumont from “Blue Velvet”.

SUMMARY OF PLOTS:

“Shadow of a Doubt”: The Newtons are an average American family living in small town California. Their eldest daughter, Charlie (Teresa Wright) has graduated high school, and is bored by her life. She thinks the only way to bring excitement is to ask her Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotton) for whom she was named to come visit from the east. As she is about to send him a cable, she is told by the Western Union person that they just received one from Uncle Charlie saying that he is coming to visit. Charlie takes this as a sign, and thinks that their connection is very special. Yet when her Uncle arrives, it is apparent that things are not normal with him. She subsequently finds out that her beloved Uncle is one of two men being investigated for a series of murders. Charlie is an innocent, but she is also very sharp, and soon sees enough evidence that her faith becomes shaken, and ultimately destroyed.

“Blue Velvet”: Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) has come home to be with his family after his father has had a domestic accident. On his way between the Hospital and his house, he discovers a severed human ear, and takes it to the police. The Detective who he meets quickly tries to get Jeffrey to forget about the case, but he is not dissuaded. The detective’s daughter, Sandy (Laura Dern) steers him in the direction of a local singer named Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini). Sandy and Jeffrey stake out Dorothy’s house, and Jeffrey soon discovers that she is in a web of perversion, drugs and crime. He is soon sucked into this mess himself, and comes into confrontation with the criminally insane Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), who is both Dorothy’s lover and tormentor.


STORY/THEME

I feel that I was pretty much on target in recalling the thematic similarities of these two films. The innocents are thrust into a world of evil, and eventually Good wins. Ah, but there is so much more than that to the two movies. One major divergence (and this could have as much to do with the eras in which they were made) is seen in how our heroes react to the evil they contact. Charlie is repulsed by the new darkness she finds surrounding her Uncle. Jeffrey, on the other hand, is drawn to this evil in a moth/flame relationship. Charlie is looking for excitement, then finds that maybe it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. She loses her innocence, but never gives in to the Evil itself. Jeffrey breaks the law to conduct his investigation, then finds himself so attracted to Dorothy’s perversion that he actually succumbs to it.

Both of our villains are highly charismatic. Uncle Charlie is quite the charmer, and it is no surprise he has been able to romance old ladies into marrying him, so that he can eventually kill them and spend their fortunes. But Cotton does an amazing job of keeping his sickness right near the surface. Hitchcock makes it clear right off the bat upon Uncle Charlie’s arrival in Santa Rosa, by having him feign illness on the train, and yet as soon as he is off, he goes from hunched over to straightened up and spritely.
Dennis Hopper comes from a very different place in his rendering of Frank Booth. His charisma is that of the insane over the weak-minded, not unlike a cult leader. He is thrilling and chilling to be around, and a very dangerous man.

In the end, you feel that Hitchcock is trying to show the seamy side of the serial killer—the sheer desperation of the evildoer on the lam, the petty lies and phony posturing necessitated by his habit. Lynch, while not exactly glamorizing the psychopath, is certainly making him iconic. Uncle Charlie grows progressively more pathetic, while Frank grows progressively more nightmarish.

FILMMAKING

It’s been said that all great movies have at least three great scenes. I think that is true for both of these films, but the three great scenes in “Blue Velvet” do not add up to a masterpiece. This is simply because the scenes that are not great are sometimes ridiculously laughable, verging on straight out satire. We will get there shortly.

In “Shadow of a Doubt” the three great scenes are remarkable thanks to their restraint.
1) Uncle Charlie realizes for the first time that Charlie is convinced of his guilt and has turned on him. He treats it lightly, and sprints up the stairs. Halfway up, he stops-- the reality of the situation striking him with full force. He turns, and Charlie is standing and watching him from the doorway at the bottom of the stairs, framed perfectly. Now they both know exactly where they stand.
2) The next little brilliant moment comes when Uncle Charlie tries to asphyxiate Charlie in the family garage, and when their neighbor finds her before she expires, Uncle Charlie becomes the caring, doting Uncle trying to save her. You think she is unaware of his complicity, but when she regains consciousness while in his arms, she opens her eyes and says, so only he can hear, “Go away. Go away.”

3) But the finest scene of all is at the family dinner table, when Uncle Charlie begins to describe the women in cities that have useless lives. The scene transforms from a lively discussion to a monologue. As he starts to get more detailed about these women, the camera switches from innocuous group shots to a POV from Charlie’s angle, a profile head shot of Uncle Charlie. It slowly zooms in while his cold, emotionless portrayal of these women as animals gets more and more disdainful. Finally Charlie blurts out, “But they’re alive! They’re human beings!” He turns to look at her (actually the camera), and icily says “Are they?” It is beyond blood curdling. In my opinion it is one of the greatest of Hitchcock moments.

“Blue Velvet”’s three great scenes are remarkable thanks to their complete LACK of restraint.
1) The first time we see Frank, he bursts into Dorothy’s apartment, and while Jeffrey watches from the closet, proceeds to get high on some unnamed oxygen mask supplied inhalant, then brutally attack her and have a rough quickie; almost a rape. Now you know why she is so terrified.
2) On another day, Frank discovers Jeffrey at Dorothy’s apartment, and takes them on a joyride. His stream of profanity is endless, as he verbally abuses Jeffrey and takes hits from his mask. He is now looking even more psychopathic than before.
3) Breaking up the middle of that joyride the crew of Frank, Jeffrey, Dorothy and Frank’s posse end up at Ben’s, to grab a beer. Ben’s looks from the outside like a bar, but inside like a surreal apartment, with fat ladies in cats-eye glasses, and Ben (Dean Stockwell) himself, in full make-up. Frank keeps calling him “suave” repeatedly. Ben proceeds to lip-sync to Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams”, using an industrial handheld spotlight as both a microphone and a spot. It is beyond surreal, as Frank grows more and more emotional till he makes Ben stop.

“Blue Velvet” feels like a dream/nightmare from beginning to end. It is era-confused, for one. Representing the ‘50’s are a lot of vintage cars, and bobbysoxer type clothes on the schoolgirls. Conversely, a majority of the hairstyles (that thing that ALWAYS tells you the era) are ‘80’s specific; short sideburns and an earring on Jeffrey, long curly “Flashdance” hair on the girls.

(This is a fact that really makes me laugh; Hair in movies will always be influenced by the time that the film was made. Whether it be a Western, Sci-Fi or Toga movie, for some reason a ‘50’s movie will have ducktails and ponytails, a ‘70’s movie will have mustaches and long hair, 2000’s will have skinheads, Van Dykes and straightened hair on the ladies.)

There is also a lot of continuity errata in Lynch’s movie. Jeffrey gets nicked in the face by a kitchen knife wielded by Dorothy. The next day, there is no sign of a wound, but later that night it mysteriously appears. When in the closet, Jeffrey watches Dorothy strip, taking off her wig in the process. When she comes out of the bathroom in a robe, the wig is back on, even though we saw it get deposited on the couch.

The question remains, is this sloppy filmmaking, or purposefully mixed up so the film feels more like a dream, the absurdity and surrealism compounding the dream-state?

Three bad scenes are hideously bad in “Blue Velvet”.
1) When Dorothy is singing the title track at a nightclub, her performance sounds like you’d find it on “Thorazine’s Greatest Hits”. Her accompanist is also just as terrible, and trust me, this is something I know a LOT about. The audience is under mass hypnosis or something, and I just kept wondering how much the cover charge was.
2) The scene wherein Jeffrey brings the severed ear to the detective is acted so woodenly, and the dialogue is so trite, that it reminds you of Kubrick’s cliché ridden dialogue from the beginning of “The Shining”. In that film, the commonness of the exchanges contrast powerfully with the extraordinariness of the haunted hotel. However in the “Blue Velvet” scene, it is already a bizarre and abnormal circumstance, so the dialogue and acting seem completely out of place.
3) Sandy and Jeffrey are being chased in Jeffrey’s car. They are frightened that it might be Frank and his minions, but then it turns out to be Sandy’s jock boyfriend Mike and his buddies. As Mike is about to beat up Jeffrey, a stark naked Dorothy stumbles out of the yard. Mike first asks Jeffrey insultingly, “Is that your mother?”, then realizes that there are bigger issues then his jealousy, and splits. It’s a ridiculous moment. “I’m gonna kill you for stealing my girl!! Oh, wait a sec, there’s a naked woman on your lawn. Hey, man, this was all a big misunderstanding. Go ahead and sleep with my girl. In fact, go ahead and have a three-way with the weird naked lady. Sorry to have bugged you. Me and my buddies will be leaving now.”

You never find out why Dorothy is naked. Never. Something happened in her apartment, and the dirty cop is dead, her husband who belongs to the ear is dead, Frank is dressed up like an Italian car salesman, and you just scratch your head saying WHAT THE FUCK? The only thing that is truly clear is that good guys drink Heinekin, and bad guys drink Pabst Blue Ribbon.

The only parts of “Shadow” that might feel a bit forced are the scenes between the head Investigator (McDonald Carey) and Charlie, and their budding romance. I feel that Hitchcock needed there to be an attraction between the two so that Charlie would have some motivation to begin to suspect her beloved Uncle. As plot fodder, it works, even if it fails somewhat in romantic terms.

PERFORMANCES

Certainly the pivotal roles and performances in these two films are Uncle Charlie and Frank.
Joseph Cotton’s only turn with Hitchcock (except an episode he did for “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” that was directed by Hitch) gives us a villain to rival Hitchcock’s best. It’s on a level with Robert Walker as Bruno in “Strangers on a Train”, or Judith Anderson’s Mrs. Danvers in “Rebecca”. His shuttling between charming, furtive and outright hostile is done so deftly that you can’t predict which Uncle Charlie will emerge from scene to scene. Somehow they are all believable.

Dennis Hopper had revived his career in 1979 with his unforgettable manic photographer in “Apocalypse Now”. What followed was a bunch of very mediocre parts until 1986, when he nailed three amazing roles. Besides Frank Booth, he also played the perverted Feck in “River’s Edge”, an amazing film that will get its moment in this blog. His third tour-de-force in ’86 was in the great sports movie “Hoosiers”, wherein he plays the alcoholic “Shooter” in a very memorable performance.

His manic take on Frank Booth is unlike anything that came before, and is probably the main reason to watch this film. Much of his dialogue is profane, and it all seems improvised. At one point, to apparently cheer himself up, he yells, “I’ll fuck anything that moves!” Not a lot of people could say this line without getting a big laugh, but he is convincingly insane.

As for the other leads, In “Shadow”, Teresa Wright is given the heavy lifting that Hitchcock usually leaves for his male heroes. She does a fine job of maturing as the film goes on, and treading the line between star-struck teen and horrified woman. The only other Hitchcock film I can recall a great female hero without the presence of a strong male character is “Spellbound”, with Ingrid Bergman filling that role. How ironic for this article that her daughter, Isabella Rossellini is so god-awful as Dorothy in “Blue Velvet”. In any case, there is no questioning the virtue of Charlie. She is pure, and her confrontation with Uncle Charlie puts her in a quandary. She doesn’t want to turn him over to the police while he is in town, because it will break her Mother’s heart. Yet her life is in danger once he knows she has evidence of his murderous ways. Miss Wright had a few very meaty roles early in her career, as Lou Gehrig’s wife Eleanor in the magnificent “Pride of the Yankees”, and as Peggy in William Wyler’s masterpiece “The Best Years of Our Lives”. That’s quite a troika, and sadly the rest of her career offered nothing close.

The smaller parts are pretty small in “Shadow”, with Hume Cronyn’s first screen role as the nosy neighbor being notable, and Broadway veteran Patricia Collinge doing a unique take on the dotty mother, unaware of her baby brother’s deviances.

Kyle MacLachlan, who has shown post-Lynch that he is really a gifted comic actor, still turned in two of the most wretched performances to start a career I can imagine. First as Paul Atreides in “Dune”, followed by this film. I was never a fan of “Twin Peaks”, but my understanding is that it was more of the same. That show was very popular, but definitely not my cup of tea. Later we got to see him in “Desperate Housewives”, “Sex and the City” and most recently hilarious as the reggae bass-playing mayor of Portland in “Portlandia”. But yikes! Those first two roles. Like a piece of petrified wood. Even though I believe that was what Lynch wanted to help offset the mania coming from Hopper, it does NOT work.
As for Ms. Rossellini, the less said the better. She is not sexy at all in the film, she is pathetic and unbelievable as the victim who likes being victimized.

The only person allowed to have a normal acting turn in “Blue Velvet” is young Laura Dern, who does a very nice job especially when she shows her angst at seeing the naked Dorothy embrace her Jeffrey. She also handles with grace a difficult monologue about a dream of a cloud of robins descending from the sky.
Wait---that sounds like Hitchcock!

ON SECOND LOOK(S)

Hitchcock called “Shadow of a Doubt” one of his favorite films. It also happens to be one of mine. It treats with true finesse the nightmare that a loved one could be the source of true evil.

“Blue Velvet”, if you deal with it as a two hour dream/nightmare sequence, begins to at least make a tiny bit of sense. Otherwise, it’s a mess of imagery and depravity, with some laughably awful scenes and a few really crazily entertaining moments. I liked it a bit more once I figured out that it was supposed to be a dream realized, but the bad still outweighed the good by so much that I still don’t get it.

“Shadow of a Doubt” On 1st Look: ★★★★ On 2nd Look: ★★★★
“Blue Velvet” On 1st Look: ★★ On 2nd Look: ★★ 1/2

“THE STUNT MAN”- (1980) Dir-Richard Rush

What I remember:

This was a well-reviewed movie that came out near the end of the era of Big Studios dabbling in Independent filmmaking. The Evans effect, as I call it, was wearing off. Studios were now starting to doubt the stylized film as a money maker, and Reaganomics was about to take over the business minds of America. Basically a very dark time in our country’s history, signaling a very dark time in the arts.
“The Stunt Man” was a late shining beacon, a last bastion of creative ingenuity coupled with great action, humor and pathos. Virtual unknown Steve Railsback was cast in the title role, with the main co-leads being the ever frenetic Peter O’Toole and the ever alluring Barbara Hershey (alluring, that is, until “Black Swan”---boy did THAT movie destroy a sexual icon for me!).

I saw this one in the cinema, and was completely into it from the opening sequence. The really effective part was that you are never sure if Cameron (Railsback) is in trouble or not. It always seems like the Director, Eli Cross (O’Toole) is out to get him, or that he doesn’t really care as much about the sanctity of life when compared to the importance of his movie. There is also a God as Director or Director as God thread that is constantly amusing and confusing. The fact that his name is “Cross” was not lost on me.

I always enjoy a film that keeps me guessing about whether we are watching something that is real or imagined, especially when it’s the characters AND the audience that are unsure of this. That is the case with “The Stunt Man”, you and Cameron are never really in control. We spend the entire film hanging on for dear life, and it’s about as much fun as you can have at the movies.

After Re-Watching

"Do you not know that King Kong the first was just three foot six inches tall? He only came up to Faye Wray's belly button! If God could do the tricks that we can do he'd be a happy man!"—Eli Cross



PLOT SUMMARY

Vietnam veteran Cameron (Steve Railsback) is running from the police when he stumbles onto the set of a rather large WWI film. He nearly gets run over by a stunt man in a Dusenberg, and in the process seems to cause the car to go off a bridge and into the water. It turns out that Bert, the stunt man in the car drowns, and Cameron is enlisted by the film’s director, Eli Cross (Peter O’Toole) to cover-up for the fatality by posing as Bert. This serves the double purpose of misdirecting the police from busting both of them. Cameron learns to do stunts, some of them quite dangerous. All the while he wonders if Eli is actually insane, and trying to kill another stunt man, namely Cameron, all in pursuit of the most realistic action.

STORY/THEME

Ella Fitzgerald scats a few notes, hits a high G, and a glass shatters in the adjacent studio. The ‘70’s TV ad then asks “Is it live, or is it Memorex”. For you young’uns, Memorex was a brand of cassette tape (oh GOD please don’t make me explain THAT), back in the days when a decent quality of tape made the difference between music sounding like it was recorded in a toilet or music sounding like it was drowning in a tub. Let’s just say that there are a lot of reasons why digitally compressed mp3’s sound pretty damn good to me. In any case, the ad’s point was, their tape was so good at reproducing sound that a high note that could break crystal live, could also do it after having been recorded on Memorex tape. Never mind that they probably had the tape playing at 2 million decibels, and that at that volume Ella’s high note could have broken the windshield on a Hummer.

Why do I bring up this little tidbit of forgotten trivia? You see, that’s the underlying current of “The Stunt Man”, probably the most reverent AND irreverent movie about the movies. Is it live? Is this really happening? Is our hero really dancing the Charleston on the wing of a Sopwith Camel at 1,000 feet? Is he really falling off the roof of a hotel and through a skylight into a brothel?

Or, is it Memorex? I mean, did the entire action sequence happen as an elaborate “gag” for the picture? Is the director of this movie so hell-bent on fooling around with his cast, that he will orchestrate the most complicated shenanigans just to get the most out of his cast and crew? My understanding about filmmaking is that most directors spend the film hanging on for dear life, and praying that their vision comes through unscathed by the vicissitudes of neurotic cast members, strange weather happenings, technical disasters and egomaniacal studio executives. It seems a tad ridiculous that he would have time to do all these extra machinations.

Thematically, there’s just not a whole lot going on here, other than the very obvious idea that it’s all make-believe in the moving pictures, dahling. There is a bit of moralizing on behalf of our Vietnam Vets, particularly when Cameron tells Nina (Barbara Hershey) of how he got into trouble with the cops. There’s no question that he’s a good guy, albeit not the sharpest knife in the kitchen. You are never led to believe that perhaps he might be a bloodthirsty killer who is really taking advantage of the situation. Cameron is definitely a hero, and the juxtaposition of his low-brow street smarts with Eli’s erudition makes for much of the fun and conflict in “The Stunt Man”.

I was right in my memory of the allegorical spin; Eli Cross--director, God. Cameron/Lucky-- everyman, stunt man, lovable loser. It’s a bit like the story of Job, except, this God is having much more fun with his whipping boy. God is also allowing his whipping boy to get his own kicks thanks to an affair with the comely leading lady, and some cash for his gags.



Profundity is not what “The Stunt Man” offers. What you get instead is a great amusement park ride with a lot of twists and turns, and some profoundly clever film styling to make it all the more memorable.

FILMMAKING

The opening sequence informs the audience immediately that this is no slapdash action/comedy thrown together without care. Nope, it’s as intricately laid out and complex as a Rube Goldberg contraption. Everything connects until finally you see the police enter a luncheonette wherein our hero is finishing a sandwich. It’s always fun trying to figure out where Director Richard Rush will spin you next, as he guides you through his carnival maze.
The look of the film is very much ‘70’s soft focus, and there are lots of candid shots of regular folks who look like regular folks, not unlike Michael Ritchie would do in a film like “Smile” or “Bad News Bears”. Strangely, only one scene, the beach attack, is shot so the public can witness. Everything else in our unnamed film within a film is closed set.
Rush has Eli constantly swooping in on people, especially Cameron. He seems to be constantly lurking somewhere and pops in and out of scenes like Endora (Agnes Moorhead) in TV’s “Bewitched”. You get the idea that he is in complete command, no matter how much he denies it. This is why you question if he really was responsible for Bert’s death.

Rush claims he was the inventor of the “rack focus” shot. This may or may not be true, but it is obvious that he can be expert at camera and editing hijinks. When Eli and Cameron first meet at the beach shoot, Rush uses a circle tracking shot wherein you can’t tell who is circling what. The camera tracks around, Eli moves counter to the camera motion, Cameron keeps his distance from Eli. It’s balletic, and must have taken hours to block. “The Stunt Man”, it’s said, took 9 years to get made, and at times it feels like 8 of those years were spent concocting the difficult setups, gags and designs of the film.

Just a few other fine filmic moments:
1) The Hitchcockian cut from Cameron yelling upon finishing a dangerous gag cuts to his scream during an orgasm as he makes love to Nina.
2) In the garage, as Cameron realizes he can just drive away in the Dusenberg rather than do the perilous stunt, Nina’s smiling face comes into the frame reflected by the car’s windows. It is a hall of mirrors moment, similar to the end of Welles’ “Lady From Shanghai”.
3) As his car sinks into the river, Cameron, frightened that Nina is in the trunk and will drown, sees Eli and Nina on the bridge just before he goes under.

Other efforts by Rush pale in comparison to this amazing piece. He also made the early ‘70’s counterculture anthem “Getting Straight”, which played at being a serious spin on the Kent State tragedy and other campus protests. “Getting Straight” was a mess when it was released, and has been subsequently forgotten. His attempt at a buddy movie, “Freebie and the Bean” was another misfire. Only “The Stunt Man” was a critical success. Generally when this happens, you must conclude that you are dealing with a lesser talent that just got lucky. But this is truly a case wherein luck was the residue of design, and “The Stunt Man” is designed like a great Italian sports car.



PERFORMANCES

Steve Railsback seems an odd choice for so prominent a role against such heavyweights as O’Toole and Hershey. Yet in a way he is perfect as the kind of good looking but lower class shlub, who really only has his youth and survival instinct to counter the predicament in which he finds himself. At times he is so natural, it is hard to think of him as acting, and he comes across as some guy they found and threw into the leading role. We know he had range, since he played Charles Manson in that lovely biopic “Helter Skelter”.

The other two leads, are nicely played by our well known stars. Peter O’Toole is typically the persona we all know; slightly effeminate, very erudite, charismatic, brilliantly funny, staggeringly British. He yells and laughs his way through the part of Eli Cross like he was born to play it. One of my favorite scenes comes when he is trying to elicit “shame” from Nina. He lets it drop in an obviously planned way that her parents (visiting the set on her birthday) were allowed to see rushes from the movie, and one of those scenes had her bare-assed naked in bed with the movie’s lead. You can see how upset she gets when she finds this out, and Eli simply goes, “Now….shame.”

As for Barbara Hershey, well, in this era she could be changing a tire dressed in a burlap sack, and I’d still love her. The first time we see her, she is in full old lady make-up, and succeeds in talking to the cast and crew without being recognized. She subsequently falls into the ocean, and Cameron rescues her. She begins tearing off her prostheses, revealing the beauty we all know and love. It is a great moment, and it amplifies her attractiveness. She has other fine moments, particularly a scene when you realize what a self-centered actress she is, and how intrinsic to this kind of person egotism can be. As I said in my piece about “In A Lonely Place”, it always helps when you are portraying something you know well.

Also worth mentioning is the performance by Alan Goorwitz (nee Garfield) who we all know from his great supporting turns in “The Conversation”, “The Candidate” and other classics. He is perfectly cast as Sam, the screenwriter. He is at times Eli’s conscience, at other times simply the voice of reason, and at other times the typical Hollywood lifer who would sell his firstborn for an option. I’m a fan, and always have been. Nobody delivers comedy or pathos as perfectly as Alan.

There are no stinkers in the cast, even Alex Rocco as the local police chief does the job very believably, even though it’s not a well-written part.

ON SECOND LOOK

It’s definitely not “The Tree of Life” in about every way possible. It isn’t very weighty. It isn’t slow and labored either. “The Stunt Man” accomplishes beautifully what it sets out to do: It shows the movie making process as a series of believable lies and tricks, and helps us to understand just how much energy, hardship and sheer elbow grease must go into making a good film. All the time, it is a fun joyride that keeps the audience constantly on their toes, with lots of eye candy on the icing.

1st Look- ★★★★ 2nd Look-★★★ 1/2

"THE THING" (1982) Dir- John Carpenter

If you’ve been checking out this blog, then you know I am not a horror film devotee. It’s a genre I avoid as a rule, but as Leonard Bernstein once said, “It doesn’t matter what style of music you play, there is good and bad in all genres.” That is a paraphrase to be sure, but you get the point. I just feel that there are a lot less great films in the horror genre than in others. There sure is a lot of Drek-ula.

1982 was a huge year for me. I met my wife in 1982. I went on my first nationwide tour as a musician with the band “Skyy”, opening for Kool and the Gang, and sharing the stage with such legends as Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Luther Vandross, Rick James, The Time, Al Jarreau and many more. I played in places I’d only dreamed of, like Radio City Music Hall, Cincinatti’s Riverfront Stadium, The Cotton Bowl, the Greek Theater, Reunion Arena.

We spent a lot of time watching movies on the tour bus, because we spent a LOT of time on the tour bus. There were some movies we watched once or twice, and some we watched multiple times. “The Thing” was one that got a bunch of viewings. It was very popular, and rightfully so. For the time, the effects were quite impressive, even on a smaller than small screen. The tension was on such a high level, the pacing so measured that time flew by.

I’ve never been a big fan of John Carpenter. He made some films that were cartoonish, almost unintentionally satiric. I am thinking primarily of “Halloween”, “Escape From LA” and “The Fog”. Then there were those movies that showed exactly what the guy could do with the right plot and attitude, like “Big Trouble in Little China”, “Assault on Precinct 13” and “Starman”.

Leading this pack was “The Thing”. Supposedly a remake of the Howard Hawks classic starring “Gunsmoke”’s James Arness as a “kitenous alien being” discovered in the Arctic. The setting of extreme cold and isolation, and the presence of a malevolent extraterrestrial are the only two factors the original and Carpenter’s remake have in common. The films otherwise couldn’t be more different. Hawks’ movie is a talky, low tension detective story masquerading as a horror film. It does hold a role as the first scientist vs. monster movie that treats the scientists as scientists, not madmen.
Apparently much more true to the original story by John W. Campbell Jr., Carpenter’s is a tumultuous shape-shifter tale, with a high level of gross-out, mistrust, and general badass-ness in the person of Kurt Russell. Carpenter and Russell had a great relationship with “The Thing”, the 2 “Escape From..” films and “Big Trouble”. These movies changed Russell from the Disney nice guy to “Snake Plissken”—a wise-cracking charismatic tough guy in the mold of Bogart’s take on Phillip Marlowe. Russell’s R.J. McReady is a paranoid loner, the perfect hero for a story like this. The scientists want to analyze the situation, but he is all about action.

AFTER RE-WATCHING

“I know you gentlemen have been through a lot, but when you find the time, I'd rather not spend the rest of this winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH!”- Garry

PLOT SUMMARY

A U.S. scientific post in Antarctica is on the verge of winter. They witness a Norwegian helicopter in pursuit of a fleeing Siberian Husky, the passenger firing at the dog with a high-powered rifle. The dog makes it to the U.S. camp unharmed, and the chopper lands. It soon blows up by a mishap, killing the pilot. As the dog runs to the Americans, seemingly for protection, the Norse shooter fires and hits one of the Americans in his leg. A different American shoots and kills the armed Norwegian. The dog is rescued, the Americans assume the Norwegians had psychotic cabin fever, and head to their camp to find out what the situation is. The gruesome scene at the decimated camp includes a corpse with two heads that was burnt alive. Upon bringing the deformity back to their camp, they realize something is wrong with the dog, who in captivity with other huskies, has caused the other dogs to snarl and attack. The Norwegian dog begins to transform grotesquely and take over the other dogs. The Americans now realize that this is an alien life form that can transform itself into any other life form given enough time. They need to stop it, but have a huge problem. Some of them have already been infected, and they can’t tell whom.

STORY/THEME

Here’s the pitch—“Invasion of the Body Snatchers” meets “Ice Station Zebra”. That simply does not do this movie justice.
However, comparisons to “Body Snatchers” are inevitable, since the major cold war theme of an alien society coming over and stealing your soul, your individuality, your unique YOU-ness, and turning us all into walking automatons simply geared to do their bidding, is what “The Thing” is all about.

Or is it?
By 1982, this was not as fascinating and horrible a thought as it was in the ‘50’s. In the ‘50’s, they sold us a bill of goods that we, as capitalists, were all good and free cowboys, and that they, as commies, were all soulless and enchained bureaucrats. By the time the ‘80’s came around, we were no longer cowboys, that’s for sure. We were bureaucratic as HELL. We were capitalistic, warmongering, dictator supporting, hush money laundering LIARS. The only thing we had to fear was US ourselves.
Oh yeah, we also had to fear viruses, like AIDS, and our own incompetence, like Three Mile Island. Let’s not forget malevolent psycho serial killers like Son of Sam and the Green River Killer. NOW it seems like I’m getting somewhere.
John Carpenter’s version of “The Thing” was obviously a product of its time, not just in the available film technology, but also in the national ethos. The mutating alien obviously represents a disease that can take you over at any time. Our inability to identify and contain it is pure incompetence. Like a serial killer, it takes you over one at a time.
Disease, incompetence, violent psychosis. Ding, ding and ding.

The fact that the camp is isolated in Antarctica and yet still vulnerable, might just represent even more of the American ethos. We have always felt buffered by the oceans, our safety as a nation supported by the distances. The Cuban Missile Crisis ended that, and global trading, our involvement in foreign wars that had no bearing on our societal well-being, Iranian hostages and Central American revolutions began to shrink these distances.

Right now you’re saying, SHEEEEIT, Wayne. It’s just an alien horror movie! Stick to Hollywood, will ya? True. It IS just an alien horror movie, the template for which was set by Ridley Scott’s revolutionary Sci-Fi “Alien”. Unlike Scott’s horror masterpiece, which is totally a serial killer parable, “The Thing” tries (and succeeds) to speak to ALL of our fears during that strange era of cultural and political waste known as the ‘80’s.

FILMMAKING

The star of this movie is not Kurt Russell, although he does a fine job in his role of the tough chopper pilot. The stars are the effects, the make-up and the grossest of gross out images, concocted by Rob Bottin and Stan Winston. Apparently the workload was so heavy for Bottin that he had to be checked into a hospital for exhaustion at one point. The mutation scenes pre-date “Terminator 2” by 9 years! They are also much more disgusting than anything I think I have seen in any other horror film. There will be at least 4 times when you say “auggghh…no!” At one point, Palmer sees Norris’ disembodied head sprout King Crab legs and start to scuttle along the floor to escape the flamethrowers, and he says what we are all thinking; “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding.” All of the transformation sequences take the amazing make-up/animation concepts and techniques from the previous year’s “An American Werewolf in London”, and raise the ante.

There are tons of flammable and explosive moments, of course. The film is sometimes a bit of overkill in this way. After all, this is a quintessential “dick flick”. In fact, it is completely devoid of female presence whatsoever, with the single exception of the voice of McReady’s computer chess opponent, supplied by Carpenter’s then wife, Adrienne Barbeau.

Carpenter turns the Spielberg model (adding normal everyday life events to heighten the realism) a bit on its head with a few comic turns to lighten the unbearably tense atmosphere. One of my favorites is when Palmer is watching “Let’s Make a Deal”, and he runs up to the video console, turns it off, and declares “I know how this one ends”, ejecting the video tape. Boy did that moment hit home on the tour bus! Ironic that there was this dig at Spielberg, since “The Thing” can blame it’s box office futility on a far more benign story of aliens landing on Earth that was released at the same time—“E.T.”!

The decision by Carpenter, et al to not reveal whether either of the last two survivors are infected I found both courageous and fascinating. The film ends unresolved, like so many contemporary art house flicks. Think about it; there are so many ways they could have gone with the end of this film. 1) McReady and Childs both get rescued, but you don’t know if one of them is infected. 2) One of them kills the other, and it turns out that he was right, and the one he killed was infected. 3) One of them kills the other and it turns out he was wrong, the man was still human. 4) They decide to blow themselves up. 5) The alien wins and takes over the human. 6) The actual ending—we never know what happens. I like both 1 and 6 of these endings, which are pretty much the same. This lack of resolution probably hurt the movie at the Box Office, but I believe it will help the film have a long and happy life as a cult classic.

Ennio Morricone of Spaghetti Western fame supplied the score, and it is typical for a horror film. Lots of droning synth sounds are punctuated with a persistent low pitched heartbeat. There’s no great theme like his melodies for “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”, or both “Once Upon a Time…” films. Whatever—it’s about a million times better than that cheesy crap Carpenter wrote for “Halloween”!



PERFORMANCES

As stated earlier, Kurt Russell is the hero/anti-hero McReady, and despite apparently wearing eyeliner, he is a tough as nails, scotch swilling sonovabitch. If you identify with anyone in this film, it’s McReady. Most of us remember the shock when Russell, a Disney heartthrob, went WAY out of character to play Texas tower spree killer Charles Whitman in “The Deadly Tower”, a very well known made for TV movie. However, his real breakout role in the raunchy and hysterical comedy “Used Cars” gave us a clue of the future actor we had on our hands. Right on the heels of that was Russell’s first true actioner, and his first team-up with Carpenter, “Escape From New York”. At this point we knew there was a great male lead in Russell, and that he was someone you could count on for humor, toughness and range.

There is little to no character exposition in the film. You get the idea that Wilford Brimley’s character, Dr. Blair is the head of the science crew, and that Garry, played by Donald Moffat, is the main muscle guy, supported by Childs (Keith David) and Clark (Richard Masur). Windows (Thomas Waites) is communications, the other scientists are Dr. Copper, Norris, Fuchs and Bennings. Nauls is the cook, and Palmer—well, we just know he likes to get high. Brimley does a great job in trying to destroy everything when he realizes that the alien must be contained or else it might infest the entire planet. It’s probably the most real acting anyone does in the film, and he handles it as beautifully as he handled anything else he ever performed.

One other performance worth noting in the film is by Jed, the husky who plays the “dog thing”. So much of the tension and eeriness of the beginning of the film comes from watching Jed check things out. He watches the goings on from a window, far more interested than a typical dog. He goes in the cage with the other huskies and lies down in a very sentient manner, knowing they are going to be able to recognize his malevolence. It’s a great, bravura animal performance. No, seriously!

ON SECOND LOOK

Oh, man. Just go get a nice doobie, settle back and watch this movie again. It’s a wild trip, and something very different than your typical alien monster horror pic. Get (Mc)ready by listening to some tunes from “Thriller”, or maybe even better yet, Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone”. Get in that 1982 mindset. Oh, and don’t make the mistake I made and cuddle your dog while watching. In fact lock the dog in the other room. And definitely don’t eat rich food right beforehand. No red meat! Prepare to be grossed out, and to be scared and entertained by a great horror film—one of the best.

1st Look- ★★★1/2 2nd Look ★★★ 1/2

“A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH” (1946) Dir- Powell/Pressburger

What I Remember:

Another of those great films from the Channel 13 WNET vault they used to play from time to time that I would make a point of watching if home. There were generally three studios that provided these films: Janus, J. Arthur Rank and Toho. If the film was Continental European, then it was Janus (the 2-faced Drama/Tragedy mask). If it was British, then it was Rank (the guy hitting a gigantic gong). If it was Japanese, then the Toho logo showed up (just the name and some Japanese writing). If I saw any of those openings, then I knew I was in for a treat.

One evening I was home and flipped over to 13. The gong guy came on. The titles started and it was a British film called “Stairway To Heaven”, starring David Niven and Kim Stanley. I knew Niven from “The Pink Panther” and “Casino Royale”, two very silly movies wherein he played a dashing, debonair character. Kim Stanley I only knew as Stella from “A Streetcar Named Desire”. The movie began and the most riveting scene ensued: an RAF pilot about to die in a burning plane is on the radio with an American WAC. She is trying to ascertain his situation and summon help for him, he is spouting poetry and hopeful fatalism. She is captivated by his bravery and erudition, he by her wholesomeness and earnest character.

He miraculously survives, but it turns out he cheated death. Unfortunately that’s pretty much all I can recall nowadays. I remember some very cool effects, especially this incredibly long stairway that seems to be the Roslyn Metro Escalator on steroids. Vaguely I remember a heavenly trial, and a very effeminate Frenchman from the 17th Century as this film’s version of Clarence the angel from “It’s a Wonderful Life”. The movie was very touching, and extremely poignant having been made just as the war ended.

After Re-watching:

“Don't be upset about the parachute, I'll have my wings soon anyway, big white ones. I hope it hasn't gone all modern, I'd hate to have a prop instead of wings!” – Peter Carter

PLOT SUMMARY

Peter Carter, an RAF pilot (David Niven) is going down in his disabled plane. He has no parachute, so his choice is to jump and die in the fall, or go up in a ball of fire with his aircraft. He is on the radio with a young WAC named June (Kim Stanley), who is trying desperately to help a no-win situation. The urgency of it all forges a bond between the two. When contact is lost, the WAC is obviously distraught. In heaven, his co-pilot waits for him, but he never shows up. You soon realize that this is a special wing of heaven, where only victims of the War are processed. We find Carter dragging onto a beach, apparently unharmed. He assumes it is heaven, but in actuality it is a beach very near where June is stationed. They meet, and fall in love. Meanwhile, heaven figures out that a foppish Frenchman/Angel from the 17th Century named Conductor 71 (Marius Goring) who was supposed to deliver Carter, lost him in the British fog. They must bring him back to heaven where he belongs, but he contends that his falling in love exempts him, especially since it was no fault of his own. Eventually a trial ensues, and his fate is decided.

STORY/THEME

Apparently the reason the film has two names is that the USA distributors felt that putting the word “Death” in the title would not be good for box-office so soon after the end of WWII. Pretty much everybody was related to, or friends with someone lost in that conflict. Therefore the change to “Stairway to Heaven”; which stuck until a recent restoration effort of all the Archer films. Their most well known effort is of course “The Red Shoes”, a monumental treatise on the subject of art vs. life. Interest in this film has recently been sparked by the success of “Black Swan”, which took so much from the Archer classic as to almost be a remake.

What superficially seems to be a story of love conquering all—even death, has some very interesting undercurrents. The most obvious and pervasive of these themes is the Anglo/American connection, so clearly strengthened by the Allied effort to defeat the Axis. The love affair in the film is between a British pilot and an American woman. It is somewhat symbolic of the gratitude the British felt to Americans for their help in subduing the Nazis. There is also a feeling of respect from the American side for the courage under fire the British showed during the war years. When an American revolutionary (Raymond Massey) is appointed to prosecute the case, his anti-British prejudices weaken the bond, but merely temporarily. The writing is down to earth (with the exception of the poetry recitations) and tautly paced.

Yet there are some plot issues which detract a bit from the film. As the story goes on, June’s friend, Doctor Reeves (Roger Livesay) has decided that maybe Peter has some kind of brain illness from a concussion that is causing him to see the messenger from heaven. He urges that surgery be performed, and the operation occurs on Earth concurrently with the trial in heaven. This is confusing, since the whole thing is a fantasy anyway. I mean, Carter survived plummeting thousands of feet into the sea. Why bring in Earthly matters into something so blatantly spiritual? You are never as invested in the surgery as you are in the trial, since none of it feels like reality.
When Reeves dies in a motorcycle crash trying to get to the ambulance which will take Carter to surgery, everybody feels bad, but life goes on. Why is Carter’s life so much more important than Reeves’? Because he’s in love? Wait—next we’re supposed to feel good that Reeves dies so he can be Carter’s defender in the heavenly trial? Nobody seems to care that this poor schmuck gave his life up just so Peter and June can be together.

FILMMAKING

“A Matter of Life and Death” is a fantasy, a romance and a war film all wrapped up together. There is also an element of science thrown in. The film starts with a narrator (God? Carl Sagan?) talking about the vastness of the universe (“the problems of two people don’t amount to a hill of beans…”). Look at that dust cloud, it’s space gas! Uh-oh, a super-nova is destroying a solar system. Maybe someone was playing with Uranium atoms. Considering what’s to come, the whole intro is a touch weird. To us in 2011, it’s rather quaint. However, when I think of it, the whole intro and all the very cool scientific trappings like the camera obscura scene must have been very cutting edge to those watching in 1946. It’s hard to hold that against the movie. It would be like making fun of “The Day The Earth Stood Still” because its all-powerful robot, who could stop the Earth’s rotation, can’t speak even rudimentary English.

One fascinating film choice was to exclude mention of the enemy from the halls of heaven. There are plenty of ethnicities there, but no Germans, no Spaniards, no Italians and no Japanese. I think the words that explain this are “TOO SOON”.

Probably the biggest filmmaking decision was Powell’s to make Earth beautifully Technicolor, and Heaven drably monochrome. When Conductor 71 appears on Earth to bring Carter back to heaven, he even comments about the Technicolor as he holds a flower in his hand. This anti-Oz treatment works beautifully. It makes the Earth a place you want to stay in, while heaven seems somewhat like the set from “Metropolis”. I guess if heaven was so great and amazing, why wouldn’t the lovers just both die so they can be in the better place together? Incidentally, when some Americans are entering heaven, they both look wide-eyed (you don’t see what they see) and one says, “This is nothing like home”. The other retorts, “It is like MY home.” Hmmm. The whole thing resembles a bureaucratic nightmare. The celestial courtroom looks like a colorless Rose Bowl. It’s certainly not the typical cinematic heaven. Whatever you may think about these set and camera choices, it keeps the film interesting.

The other great set piece is the giant, infinite stairway, festooned with huge statues of the great figures from mankind’s history. It’s an amazing effect, and it never gets old. When Carter feels he is being tricked into ascension, he turns and runs down the up escalator as fast as he can. This scene makes the climax in “Vertigo” seem like a step-aerobics class.

PERFORMANCES

Niven and Stanley are charming and perfectly cast. Their opening scene is unforgettable. Afterwards, the real heavy lifting is given to Livesay and Massey. Good old Dr. Gillespie (that was my into to Massey, in the Dr. Kildare series) had had some big time roles to that point, in particular “Abe Lincoln in Illinois”, which showcased his formidable trial lawyer chops. As the prosecutor in “A Matter of Life and Death”, he does ‘bombastic’ beautifully. Livesay, who is magnificent in the Archer classic “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp”, has a smaller but perfectly played part as the sacrificial doctor/ defense counsel. Goring is the perfect fop; he is concerned about his job, but those concerns are outweighed by his French respect for true love. As always in these Powell/Pressburger efforts, the acting and casting of all smaller roles are pitch perfect. When the writing is this good, it takes a real amateur to screw up the performances. Look for a VERY young Richard Attenborough in one of the early celestial scenes.

ON SECOND LOOK

“A Matter of Life and Death” or “Stairway to Heaven” is a moving and fun post-war effort, regardless of what you call it. It is a touching tribute to those who gave their lives in armed conflicts. It is a romantic fable of love conquers all, even when that love is between two war-tossed nations.

1st Look- ✭✭✭1/2 2nd Look- ✭✭✭1/2

“FREUD” (1962) Dir: John Huston

What I remember:

“Freud” is the second film in this blog that was directed by John Huston. He obviously had no problems taking on big subjects, or disparate subjects, for that matter. A man who could direct “Treasure of the Sierra Madre”, “Asphalt Jungle”, “Moby Dick” and “Freud” is certainly no slave to genre, nor can he be classified as an Auteur.

I saw this on TV back during my high school years. The opening alone was on such a high level of writing and directing that I recall being simply stunned (I probably would have used the term “blown away” at the time). The camera focuses on some strange hypnotic drawings, while Huston’s voice-over describes man’s three great revelations/humiliations. “Before Copernicus, man thought he was at the center of the universe, Before Darwin he thought he was separate from the animals. Before Freud, he thought he could control his own mind”. Or something like that. So yes, maybe it was dime-store intellectualism, but I wasn’t even a college Freshman yet, so Sophomore-ism seemed pretty cool. Now, I’d probably think, why is Noah Cross talking about Freud? Shouldn’t he be saying something like “You've got a nasty reputation, Mr. Gittes. I like that.”

I vividly can recall the dream sequence from the Susannah York character’s hypnosis as being visually very different and compelling. This was years before I saw Hitchcock’s “Spellbound”, with dream sequences that are a direct antecedent to those in “Freud”. Salvador Dali designed the “Spellbound” sequences, so it’s possible that when I watch now, I will think that the “Freud” scenes pale by comparison. All I can say is that I thought it was brilliant as a pretentious, artsy fartsy teen.

Nonetheless, “Freud”’s subject matter was fascinating to me, and I still find mental illness one of the most misunderstood, misdiagnosed and misrepresented conditions of human existence. So little progress has been made since the period represented in this film. Maybe it’s time for a movie about THAT.

This film, listed as “Freud: The Secret Passion” (are you kidding me?) is unavailable on DVD. That galls me beyond words. Why the hell can you buy a piece of garbage like “Children of the Corn” on Blu-Ray for fuck sake and you can’t get “Freud” or “Porgy and Bess” on regular old DVD? I am forced to watch this on some very crappy transfer on YouTube. Looks like I am set up to be disappointed. Kee-rist, I hope not.

After re-watching:

“What a splendid thing to descend to Hell and light a torch from its fires!” Dr. Meynert


PLOT SUMMARY

Sigmund Freud (Montgomery Clift) is a young Viennese neurologist who is fascinated by neurosis and its main symptoms, hitherto categorized as “Hysteria”. Along with his colleague, Dr. Breuer (Larry Parks), he pursues the sources of neurosis, but eventually comes upon a theory which even Breuer, his closest ally, must reject.

STORY/THEME

As far as biopics go, “Freud” has many of the run-of-the-mill characteristics; it compresses much of the man’s story into a very small window, it hyper-dramatizes some of the key moments in his career, his personal life and relationships are trivialized, and the work that brought him his fame and notoriety is simplified into terms that most of us can understand. Think about some recent efforts like “Ray”, or “Pollock”. This is, sadly, the nature of the beast. No great person’s life/work/torment can be adequately captured in a two hour film. Also, thanks to the film being made in 1962, Freud’s addiction to cocaine, and his mistaken use of the drug as a treatment for his patients, is never even referenced in the slightest. You’ll need to find another missing masterpiece, “The Seven Percent Solution” to see that story.

Yet “Freud” does some things very differently than others in its genre. There is filmmaking of the highest order going on here, and parts of the script are as brilliant as anything you might read in the finest of novels. Supposedly, the first draft of the script was written by Jean-Paul Sartre, as commissioned by Huston. Jean-Paul Sartre! It is assumed that some of what he wrote survived the rewrite by Charles Kaufman (No, not THAT one. The man who brought us “Adaptation” was about 4 years old when this made).

The importance of this film has to do with our understanding of just how huge a breakthrough it was for mankind to discover the unconscious mind. Our knowledge of ourselves is paramount to our mental health. Our collective mental health is paramount to the health of our society. Should one, as the opening monologue insists, place Freud on the same pedestal as the great thinkers in history; akin to Galileo, DaVinci, Newton, Copernicus, Darwin, Einstein, Marx? Or is he simply just one of the cogs in the slowly turning machine of Psychiatry? Well, this film would have you believe, Freud was a man who bucked the system, who stood for what he believed regardless of the condemnation of his colleagues. A man who risked career and livelihood for the chance to destroy some myths about the human mind. I think he was a hero.

Apparently, so did John Huston.

FILMMAKING

As I stated earlier, what makes this better than the typical biopic is the filmmaking itself. The more I watch the films of John Huston, the more I am inclined to put him with the masters of the medium. This movie must have had some major obstacles- obstacles not unlike those Freud himself might have encountered. When your star is in the midst of committing a decade-long suicide (as Clift’s close friend Elizabeth Taylor described his last years) then you will probably have some trouble shooting your film. Universal Pictures sued Clift since his problems caused the film to go way over budget. More on this later.

Huston manages to overcome these problems, and he also manages to evoke the period with very few outdoor shots. The film was shot in Germany, but one would never know. Most of the “action” takes place in drawing rooms and lecture halls. The set designs are very impressive- all the décor looks like you’d imagine the 19th Century halls of wealth and learning to look. The dream and memory sequences have a soft focus blur, and much of the imagery is reminiscent of German Expressionism of the ’30’s. These sequences are great, but nowhere close to the brilliance of those in “Spellbound”. Perhaps the enlistment of a visual genius like Dali would have helped Huston reach that level.

In any case, the revelations in the dreams are beautifully realized, using camera, costume and set. One of Breuer’s and Freud’s patients, Cecily Koertner (Susannah York) tells of going to a hospital in Naples to identify the body of her father. She tells of how the nurses looked at her funnily. You see that the nurses in the dream lounging around in frilly skirts, some sitting suggestively. As the Doctors strip away the artificial layers with which her unconscious has shrouded this memory, you see that the nurses are really prostitutes, that the hospital is in reality a brothel, and that the doctors who came to get her were police.

John Huston’s great achievement was to make the plot of “Freud” a very elaborate, psychiatric whodunit. We want to understand exactly what causes Ms. Koertner’s paralysis and blindness as much as Freud and Breuer do. Did her father molest her? Did she seduce him? Did her mother reject her? As the layers of her past are revealed concurrently to Freud, the audience and Koertner herself, the film becomes as hypnotic as one of their spells.

Speaking of which, a major problem with the movie comes from the act of Hypnosis and how it is portrayed. There are some times when Freud simply waves a pencil in front of a patient’s eyes, says “You’re getting sleepy”, and the man falls unconscious in a manner of seconds. “Look at the candle”….and boom! Sometimes, that part is just laughable. How better it would have been for them to show the real process once, and then subsequently just said, “I’m going to put him under” and dissolve to the state of hypnosis.

Jerry Goldsmith wrote the score, and it is brilliant and haunting. There is not a moment where it calls attention to itself, and yet subtly it adds to the eeriness and tension of any scene. Interestingly, Ridley Scott borrowed the title music from “Freud” for use in “Alien”, a score written by Goldsmith too.

PERFORMANCES

In the ‘50’s, Montgomery Clift was as big a star as the movies had. He, like Marlon Brando, could have named his price in modern day Hollywood. By the time “Freud” was made, he had had a terrible car accident, which started an addiction to pills. There are times in this film when you wish he could have been more animated, more angry. His piercing eyes and soft-spoken delivery seem much better suited to a mysterious love interest, not an intellectual scientist.
It is an uneven portrayal. On one hand, he has some very fine moments. One scene, when he realizes that a patient of his is sexually obsessed with his own mother, he is repelled and his professional detachment is shattered. As he realizes what is happening, Clift perfectly embodies the disgust and ambivalence he feels. Yet in another scene where Cecily threatens suicide, his pleading with her seems almost half-hearted. The lines are well written; Clift just puts nothing into them.

Huston does all the voice-over, not just the prologue and epilogue. You have to wonder during those times when the voice-over is supposed to be Freud’s inner thoughts, if those lines were supposed to be spoken by Clift, but he was unavailable. It feels incongruous having the narrator’s voice come in and start speaking lines that should be coming from the character’s mouth.

Larry Parks, of “The Jolson Story” fame plays Dr. Breuer. This is also Larry Parks, of “Blacklist” infamy. He was one of the artists who testified against colleagues in the McCarthy hearings, admitting his involvement in the Communist party, and yet still found himself banned from work. This is probably his most famous role besides Jolson, and he is very good. When he realizes that Ms. Koertner is in love with him (psychiatrists call this symptom “transference”), he has to decide to stop treating her, or else ruin his marriage. His frustration is palpable. One wonders what he might have accomplished had he been allowed to freely pursue his career.

Susannah York as Cecily is beautiful and flirtatious. She shows remarkable range for a young actress. She was just 23 at the time of the film’s release, and she cold not look more luminous. Her energetic portrayal of the psychosomatically riddled woman is as hyperbolic as Clift’s Freud is static. When the two share the screen, particularly in the suicide attempt scene, the disparity is conspicuous. Ms. York is probably the “On Second Look” mascot; I will be writing about her in two upcoming blogs about “Tunes of Glory” and “The Silent Partner”. Talk about your underrated, underused actress. Sadly she just passed in 2011. I’m a fan.

As for the supporting cast, David McCallum (‘60’s heartthrob who played Ilya Kuryakin in “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”) takes a short turn as the young man with the Oedipal complex, and does a splendid job. Character actor Eric Portman as Dr. Meynert is a stand out. Ingenue Susan Kohner as Freud’s wife gets little to work with, and does less with it. Sigmund and Martha were supposed to have a very passionate relationship, and that is nowhere to be found here. Interestingly enough, she is the only Jewish actor in the film. Both Freud and Breuer were Jewish, as of course were Martha and Frau Freud, the mother of all mothers. Apparently Eli Wallach campaigned very hard to play Freud. He even went so far as to grow a Freudian beard for the audition. Rumor is he never got a chance. Considering Montgomery Clift’s problems, one wonders if Wallach could have made this film even better. Certainly his being Jewish would have helped the Waspy Huston understand that part of the story.

ON SECOND LOOK

I still love this film, despite the obvious central flaw of the casting of the lead. It is remarkably intelligent, and the writing is at times transcendent. Huston’s gothic/noir style is a perfect atmosphere for this story about the removal of shrouds of ignorance. This is a film that should be required viewing for anyone interested in mental illness, or simply the machinations of the mind. And by that I mean everybody. Sadly, the only way to see this is to either have it on tape, hope it comes on TCM, or watch it in pieces on YouTube. Criterion---are you listening?

1st Look-★★★★ 2nd Look-★★★1/2

“MIDNIGHT RUN” (1988) Dir- Martin Brest

I didn't get it.

What I Remember:

Buddy movies were all the rage in the late ‘70’s. Then came the ‘80’s wave of Anti-Buddy movies, wherein two characters are thrust together who may or may not be alike, but who definitely have antipathy for each other. The ‘90’s developed the “Bromance” flick, which is a trend that continues, and has yet to evolve into something new.

“Midnight Run” was pretty much the apex of the “Anti-Buddy” film. Starring Robert DeNiro and Charles Grodin, the movie derived much of its humor from the two stars’ discongruity. Ex-cop DeNiro was as tough as tough guys come. Mafia accountant Grodin was a typically fussy egg-head, neurotic but not pathetic. Bob Hope and Bing Crosby pioneered this pairing, but it was really developed by Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Of course, Dino was not a tough guy, more like a “smooth” guy. That was the Crosby role too. DeNiro was probably the first pairing of a tough guy with the nudnik character.

Trying to recall what so underwhelmed me about “Midnight Run” is difficult. I know many consider it a masterpiece of comedy/action. My immediate recollection says, “Hmmm. Grodin. Not funny. Never funny. Bad timing. Deadpan delivery. Not good at physical comedy. Basically a no-talent”. Well, there you have it. I think DeNiro is a genius. I obviously don’t feel that way about Charles Grodin. He used to host SNL it seemed like all the damned time back in the ‘80’s, and I was always disappointed to see his name in the TV guide. I loved the show back then, and couldn’t wait to see Steve Martin or George Carlin host. But Grodin? Bleh.

It always seems to me that there are people in show biz who make it big, and you just scratch your head and wonder what is it that everybody else loves about this actor/band/comic/broadcaster? My short list: Neil Young, U2, Madonna, Rob Dibble, Charles Grodin, Dane Cook, Julia Roberts, Emeril, Gallagher, Kevin James.

I guess that tells the tale. A comedy starring a person who I don’t find funny. Can I get past my obvious prejudice, my being “Anti-Grodinic” and enjoy a film that Rotten Tomatoes critics give a 97? A film that has joined, amongst others, “The Godfather” and “Citizen Kane” in Filmspotting’s Pantheon? Damn good question.


After Re-Watching:

"You're OK, Jack. I think... under different circumstances… you and I probably still would have hated each other!"- Jonathan Mardukas


PLOT SUMMARY

Jack Walsh (Robert DeNiro) is an ex-cop who is now a very tough and bitter Bounty Hunter. He has been offered a big time bounty; track down Mob Accountant Jonathan “The Duke” Mardukas (Charles Grodin) and bring him back to LA within 4 days to collect $100,000. He has little trouble finding The Duke, but runs into a lot of interference from 3 sources; The FBI, the Mob boss and another Bounty Hunter, Marvin Dorfler (John Ashton). All the while, Mardukas tries to convince Walsh to let him go, but Walsh refuses to give in, obsessively trying to beat the clock and complete the task.

STORY/THEME

To say that “Midnight Run” has a few holes in its plot is like saying that Boy George occasionally indulged his feminine side. Just keepin’ the ‘80’s theme consistent, people.

Holes? The movie “Holes” has less. I’ve never seen it, but still, I am sure of this fact.
For starters; Mardukas has supposedly given the bulk of the money he embezzled from the mob to charity. So where exactly is the 4 million for the bond coming from?
Second- how is it that everyone in this movie can move instantaneously from place to place without any time lapsing, when it takes Walsh and Mardukas forever to do the same trip? Regardless of where they go, someone gets a tip and hundreds of people are waiting at the next bus station, train depot, airport, cow pasture.

Next, the bondsman (played by Joe Pantoliano) calls Marvin at his home, and the phone rings in what is obviously a hotel.

Wait, there’s more. In the climactic airport scene, Walsh has arranged to swap some discs that have all of the info Mardukas has on his ex-boss’ dirty business for Mardukas himself. The FBI has to wait till Jack hands over the discs before they can arrest the boss. Why? We already know that the discs are fake. Why couldn’t they just arrest the mob guy on a kidnapping charge when he brought Mardukas into the airport terminal?

But the most ridiculous plot point is that Jack finds The Duke in 24 hours, when the mob and the FBI have supposedly been searching for him for years. I don’t care how good he is, we are talking about THE MOB. Generally, they can find anybody anywhere. In fact, Mardukas spends a lot of time saying that witness protection is useless, that the mob will get him before he even makes it that far. Still, these crooks seem dumb as rocks. To make it look possible, they staff the henchmen with a couple of dodos. The boss, Jimmy Serrano (Dennis Farina) spends much of his time explaining what horrible thing he’s going to do to theses “morons” if they don’t get Mardukas. I think it’s supposed to be funny, but the result is violent and unimaginative. Direct quote from Serrano :

“You and that other dummy better start getting more personally involved in your work, or I'm gonna stab you through the heart with a fuckin' pencil. Do you understand me?”

Is that the best they could do? It feels like the Scorsese template is being satirized, but sadly not for laughs here. Like a Scorsese film, there’s a lot of profanity, but it never feels as edgy, and it never makes you laugh.

All this notwithstanding, the heart of the film is the two leads and their interaction. If you believe that these two characters could exist, and that they might communicate the way they do, and you find them funny and entertaining, then you will buy this film, holes and all. For me, it’s a swing and miss on all pitches.

FILMMAKING
Martin Brest had kind of a brief career in Hollywood considering the fact that he had some pretty huge successes in this film and it’s predecessor, “Beverly Hills Cop”. Maybe the quick end of his career can be attributed to his more recent efforts; “Scent of a Woman”, “Meet Joe Black”, and the ultimate career killer, “Gigli”. He almost took down Pacino, Affleck, J Lo, Brad Pitt and a ton of others with these horrific movies. Brest was the original director of “War Games”, an ‘80’s film I really enjoyed, but he was replaced by John Badham. Supposedly a tiff with the producers got him fired. Maybe they wanted it to be good.

In Brest’s defense, there are a lot of difficult action scenes in “Midnight Run” that are executed well. Standout scenes are a “Blues Brothers” like car chase, a shootout near a bus station and a boat-less trip through rapids. The action is well played and filmed throughout. Not so for the comedy.

Danny Elfman’s score sounds more like Bruce Springsteen than Oingo Boingo; lots of guitar and horn section stuff, very blues-rock influenced. Then it kind of deteriorates into an imitation of Harold Faltermeyer’s “Beverly Hills Cop” soundtrack, with pervasive little bits of the original theme tucked underneath any scene that has neither dialogue or action. I’m not a fan of this use of music. Can’t we just watch DeNiro walk around New York without his own personal E Street Band?


PERFORMANCES

DeNiro is typically himself, he rarely played a different role during that era. He’s not given a great bunch of lines to work with. It’s pretty much a lot of “shut the fuck up”. Still, he does a great job with his part physically, and is very convincingly emotional when forced to confront his ex-wife and estranged daughter at one point.
It’s a terribly written scene, but Bob does such a great job with his actions and face that you feel the emotions.

You might think that Mardukas gets the lion’s share of the laughs, but again, there’s that Grodin thing. He has his moments, for sure. There is a great scene when he cons a redneck bar out of some money, and you realize that he is both more courageous and resourceful than previously imagined. You can almost see how he has evaded the FBI and Mafia for so long. For the rest of the time, he’s kind of annoying. You can tell early on that there’s more to him than he’s showing. His little needling of Jack for his diet, smoking, and lonely life is supposed to come across as condescending, but it’s obvious he’s trying to get under Jack’s skin. Grodin doesn’t play this for laughs at all, he asks these questions, and the deadpan delivery just makes it all fall flat. I think the concept was to underplay it, make it more intellectual. Maybe in a different kind of film this could work, like “My Dinner With Grodin”. This is an action/comedy. The laughs need to equal the intensity of the suspense and the action scenes. “48 Hours” did this beautifully, and Brest’s own “Beverly Hills Cop” works well. The difference? Eddie Murphy instead of Charles Grodin. Big, broad comedy, not deadpan subtle snickers. Apparently Robin Williams was originally supposed to have the inside lane for the Mardukas role, but he never got a chance to audition, since Brest liked the Grodin/DeNiro matchup. Wait there’s my finger- pointing back in the same direction, Mr. Brest.

As for the supporting cast, Ashton’s burly bounty hunter is by the books, but not as meaty and interesting as his turns as Taggart in the “Beverly Hills Cop” films. Joey Pants is a bit one-note, lots of desperation and yelling. The really fun performance here is by Yaphet Kotto as FBI agent Mosley. His role is like Ronny Cox in “Beverly Hills Cop”, but he is much funnier and is a better foil for DeNiro than anyone else in the movie.

I feel the need to point out that, other than the brief appearance by Walsh’s estranged family, there is not one significant female role in this film. In fact there is not even the slightest hint of love/sex interest. At least in BHC they go to a strip bar!

ON SECOND LOOK

I still don’t get it. “Midnight Run” has its moments, and it’s not a BAD film at all. In fact, it’s entertaining, and has some pretty funny and suspenseful scenes. To me, “48 Hours” is by far the best of this genre, and it’s thanks to Eddie Murphy’s hysterical turn. Charles Grodin makes this movie second rate, in my opinion. I got more laughs from Yaphet Kotto. Hell, I got more laughs from the moron mobsters!

1st Look-★★ 2nd Look-★★