California Split October 20, 2006
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1970s , add a comment
Robert Altman’s California Split
Released in 1974, one year after Altman had teamed with Gould for The Long Goodbye, it fell in the middle of the director’s most prolific and fertile period. Altman’s films from the 1970s have only risen in stature as the years have passed and he has emerged as arguably the most important American director of that landmark decade for American film. The first time I saw California Split, on the Sony/Columbia DVD with roughly three minutes cut out due to music rights, I was a little underwhelmed. Charlie and Bill seemed like two immature men approaching middle age and undeterred by some of the seemingly inalienable truths of life (e.g., get and maintain employment, support a family, don’t run off to Mexico on a whim solely because of a dream you had). Yet, I was excited to see it again, this time in its full uncut form and in a cinema setting. I’ve now come to realize it’s place as a borderline masterpiece, possibly even as accomplished as any of the films Altman made in that fruitful ’70s era.
Much of the film’s success lies with the lead performances from Segal and, especially, Gould. The latter has the showier role and takes full advantage of his character’s idiosyncrasies. Charlie is incredibly charming and frequently hilarious, attributes of a great movie character, but not the type of person most sane people would actually want as a friend. It might just be pure coincidence, but Gould’s characterization reminded me of the Seinfeld character Kramer as played by Michael Richards. Given that character’s own problem with gambling (played for laughs on the television show), I would not be surprised if Richards was inspired by Gould’s performance in this film. Segal is quite effective as well, adding little touches here and there that make for a fully realized portrayal. He has the more difficult role, playing a character who evolves throughout the film, and Segal still manages to turn in a performance as good as anything he’s ever done.
After Charlie and Bill are first robbed and thrown in prison for being drunk and disorderly, Charlie’s semi-girlfriend Barbara (a name that Altman and screenwriter Joseph Walsh get a lot of mileage from here) and her roommate/co-worker Susan bail them out. We then see that Charlie also lives with these two women, who support themselves as occasional escorts. After returning to the house, Charlie instructs Bill to put warm shaving cream on his soon-to-be bruises and encourages him to eat breakfast. His choices are Lucky Charms, Froot Loops or the previous night’s half-eaten leftovers from the plates still on the table. Charlie then decides to have a beer with his cereal. The amazing part about this scene is that Charlie seems completely unflustered and prepared for this situation. The two men have gotten drunk, beaten up and arrested, yet Charlie acts like this is standard operating procedure. We can tell this is probably not the first time he has nursed his wounds with warm shaving cream, Lucky Charms, and a Budweiser.
California Split is, ultimately, about gambling as compulsion and addiction. Gould’s Charlie cannot pass up an opportunity to bet on most anything, even a brawl that breaks out in the audience of a boxing match on which he also has numerous bets. When the men are robbed for a second time, by a man with a gun pointed at him, part of Charlie’s rationale in offering the thief only half of the winnings seems to be a gamble on whether the man will actually take it or shoot him and grab it all. While the final segment in Reno provides Gould ample opportunity for comedy, the more telling result is that Charlie is at his most manic when Bill refuses to let him watch his high-stakes poker game or give him any money to gamble away. On the other end of the emotional spectrum, Bill’s calmness in the same scenes provide the realization that he’s not like Charlie and he understands it’s not healthy for him to continue as his gambling buddy. Charlie’s inability to see the amount of their winnings as an opportunity for anything other than more gambling money is a testament to the sickness of addiction.
There are a few things in the film that stand out for me as being especially well done. At the beginning, we see Gould watching an instructional film in the casino and a voiceover explains not only the rules of poker, but also much of what the audience is seeing on the screen. This brilliant stroke is reminiscent of the final intercom narration at the end of Altman’s M*A*S*H. The two men’s continued insistence on turning everything into a wager is also a nice touch, most notably when Bill bets Charlie he cannot come up with the names of the Seven Dwarfs. The humor in Charlie’s struggle to name them is matched by the seriousness in which he approaches the task.
Unfortunately, the R1 DVD is not only edited by about three minutes (which Altman apparently did himself when faced with the choice of making the film available without part of the music or it not being released on DVD at all), but it’s also now out of print for reasons not readily apparent. As of now, it’s still fairly easy to obtain (cheaply) at various internet retailers and through third-party sellers. There’s always hope that the music rights might be reacquired by Sony (the DVD Beaver review has a detailed description of the edits), but it seems doubtful that they would go to those lengths at this point. That’s a shame though, since the film is such an essential work in the career of a great director who’s always avoided compromise whenever possible.
Midnight October 13, 2006
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1930s, Billy Wilder , 1 comment so far
As the DVD medium enters its second decade, consumers have been blessed with more titles than many of us can find the time to watch. Nevertheless, there are still many, many deserving films from Hollywood’s golden age that remain unreleased. Warner Bros. and Fox are mostly doing their part to rectify the situation, but Universal, who controls almost all of Paramount’s catalog prior to 1948, has seemingly devoted most of its attention to re-releasing more contemporary films (often poorly). The digital crumbs that Universal has thrown out in R1, vis-à-vis classic cinema, have often been value-priced, with two or three feature films per disc. It’s difficult to complain about five or six movies retailing for less than $30 (as with the recent Glamour Collections), but these releases seem to be few and far between. This leaves Universal with a hefty library of unreleased gems, none more deserving than the classic 1939 comedy Midnight.
Midnight is not usually placed in the same category of great early comedies with the best of Lubitsch, Sturges, Capra, Hawks, et al., but perhaps it should be. The film begins with American Eve Peabody (the always charming Claudette Colbert) getting off a train after arriving in soggy Paris. “So this, as they say, is Paris, huh?” “Yes, madame.” “Well, from here it looks an awful lot like a rainy night in Kokomo, Indiana.” We soon find out she has no money, nowhere to stay, and she had to pawn off her luggage in Monte Carlo. Enter Tibor Czerny (Don Ameche), a Hungarian cab driver looking for his next fare. After the two settle on a wager to pay off the taxi fee, they spend the evening driving around Paris searching for Eve a singing job.
Somehow she ends up at a posh, invitation-only soiree and substitutes her pawn shop ticket for the invitation. There, she meets two men and a married couple, the Flammarions (played by John Barrymore and Mary Astor). The husband realizes right away that Eve is out of place, but realizes he can put her to good use - as bait for his wife’s playboy lover. From there, Eve transforms herself into Baroness Czerny while the real Mr. Czerny has cab drivers all over Paris searching frantically for her. When Czerny actually finds his fake wife, things really get out of control and you realize Midnight rivals the best comedies of its era.
The three lead performances, along with the breezy, smart script, provide much of the film’s success. It’s rare to have three actors and movie stars of this caliber in the same film without it turning into a mess or an “all-star spectacle.” Thankfully, Colbert, Ameche and Barrymore don’t try to outdo each other here and are content to bask in the spotlight at their given times. All three are wonderful, with Barrymore shining particularly bright in his brief comedic scenes. Colbert’s performance, as in many of her other roles, is so winning that you nearly believe someone like Barrymore’s benefactor would actually put her up in a fancy hotel and buy her that expensive wardrobe. Ameche is just as good, in a role that you’d think lots of other actors could pull of, yet once you’ve seen Midnight, anyone else is unimaginable.
The film has several funny, laugh-out-loud sequences that reminded me of screwball comedy, though I wouldn’t place Midnight in that category. While even a stone-face would get tickled by the screwball-esque “Francie” bit, overall, there’s more romance than farce. Midnight actually resembles the smart, sophisticated comedies of Ernst Lubitsch more than perhaps any other film not directed by Lubitsch. It’s not surprising, then, that it was written by the screenwriting team from Lubtisch’s own Ninotchka (also from 1939), Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, who always considered Lubitsch to be his mentor. More so than any other film Wilder wrote, including those he would later direct, Midnight has the elusive ingredients often found in Lubitsch’s films that came to be known as the ”Lubitsch touch.”
The man who actually did direct Midnight was Mitchell Leisen, a former art designer. Leisen is notable for inspiring two of the premiere screenwriters in 1930s and 40s Hollywood, Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder, to become directors after their frustrations in working with him. Since Sturges and Wilder are my two favorite filmmakers from that era, Leisen’s work with their scripts has a bittersweet quality for me. I can’t help but be glad that Leisen angered the two men enough to inspire them to direct, yet I wonder how films such as Midnight or Hold Back the Dawn would have turned out with Wilder at the helm (likewise for Sturges with Easy Living and Remember the Night). It’s probably doubtful that Wilder would have been accomplished enough to handle Midnight as well as the final product turned out. On the other hand, a sequence from the script for Hold Back the Dawn involving Charles Boyer talking to a cockroach in a Mexican hotel and which Leisen refused to film, the incident that Wilder claimed was the final straw and lead to him directing his next script himself, would have been quite interesting to see.
Getting back to Universal dragging their feet about releasing so many classic films on DVD in R1, it would be more excusable if there was a valid reason for withholding these releases, but I can’t seem to find one. The VHS copy I recently saw of Midnight looked very good and any restoration for a DVD release need be minimal. The low prices Universal has charged for their classic product thus far almost surely have helped with sales and there’s no reason to think consumers aren’t hungry for some of these unreleased treasures. While Midnight is prime material, there are still plenty of other worthy titles languishing in their library. Billy Wilder fans, in particular, are still waiting for two films he directed (The Major and the Minor and A Foreign Affair) as well as three more he wrote, the two previously mentioned and the Lubitsch directed Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife. A “Written by Billy Wilder” Glamour Collection (complete with slipcover and cheesy color glamour shot!), anyone?
The Departed October 7, 2006
Posted by clydefro in : Modern Films, 2000s , add a comment
Superlatives are building up in praise of Martin Scorsese’s new film The Departed
The story is deceptively simple. Boston mob boss Frank Costello (played by Jack Nicholson) grooms a young man to become a police officer (Matt Damon) just as the state police set up one of their own (Leonardo DiCaprio) to infiltrate the gangster’s clan. The two men’s paths never cross and eventually both men are given the task of finding their counterpart. The complexities of this twin paradox are explored with an intriguing amount of gravitas, especially with DiCaprio’s character, Billy Costigan. While Damon’s Colin Sullivan enjoys rising up through the police ranks and his new luxury apartment, Costigan leads the life his father worked tirelessly for his son to avoid. Sullivan is given greater and greater responsibilities on the state police force while Costigan deals with prison, witnessing murders and unspeakable violence. It’s not surprising that the female psychotherapist (Vera Farmiga, who will hopefully parlay this somewhat standard role into a higher visibility that allows her to show the acting chops she displayed in last year’s Down to the Bone) becomes interested in both men for different reasons. When Costigan entrusts her with an envelope presumably containing crucial details of the work he’s done, the contrast in how the two men view her is obvious.
DiCaprio is mesmerizing as Costigan, giving essentially two performances and finally showing the intensity that was lacking in some of his other efforts. There’s a particular point in the film where the character is in a nearly impossible situation, closer than ever to having his cover blown and struggling to deal with what has just happened to one of the two men who know he’s a cop. Stripped of a safety net, Costigan’s fear is palpable and DiCaprio is perfect. In fact, I would venture to say that his performance really elevates The Departed from what could have been a much more standard cops and gangsters action picture to a film with a hefty amount of emotional depth.
Even though DiCaprio is the stand-out of the remarkable cast, Nicholson is, as expected, delightfully over-the-top when need be. Because of his iconic status (how many other 69-year-olds would “Rolling Stone” put on its cover?), Nicholson’s involvement seems to be the most talked about aspect of the picture and the prologue prior to the opening title focuses on his character. Regardless of how much ink is spilled over whether Jack is playing an amped-up version of himself, Nicholson does what he should here, which is play an aging, eccentric crime boss brimming with explosive evil.
Damon is also effective, if overshadowed by DiCaprio, although I felt there could have been some more development as to how Sullivan could so blindly follow Costello on the basis of a free bag of groceries. I also never fully believed Damon was truly good as a cop or truly bad as a crook like I could with DiCaprio, who effectively showed a short fuse on more than one occasion while effortlessly switching back to being the tortured hero headcase. Rounding out the main cast are Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg as the two cops aware of Costigan’s undercover status and Alec Baldwin (who seems to have found his niche as a character actor lately) as Sullivan’s police boss. Wahlberg is certainly entertaining as well, if more so for the insults his character is frequently dishing out than his acting. The always interesting Ray Winstone, who does what he can with a limited role as Costello’s top thug, is here too.
As the film unfolds, the suspense reaches a fever pitch that lasts right up to the end credits. The ending manages to be mostly satisfying while also leaving a slightly bitter taste with the viewer. Refraining from going into too much detail, it feels somewhat like a cop-out and, without retaining any artistic ambiguity, fails to completely resolve several questions. It’s probably the film’s weakest segment, even if it had been slowly painting itself into that corner, or one like it, for much of the picture. Nevertheless, the 2 1/2 hours of running time is never excessive, and, given the smart tone and dynamic pacing, I certainly can’t hold screenwriter William Monahan’s decision against him too strongly.
Martin Scorsese’s fingerprints are all over this film - from the early strains of “Gimme Shelter” to the numerous quick and violent deaths. At this point in his career, these directorial touches serve more as comforting reminders of Scorsese’s mastery than attention-grabbing distractions. He’s not repeating himself so much as showing that these kind of men and their actions are what interest him, or at least that this is the type of story he understands and at which he excels. While it may be impossible not to consider his previous work in the gangster genre when thinking about The Departed, the new film just builds on his impressive career and legacy. I never imagined my lofty expectations could possibly be met, yet somehow Scorsese managed to exceed them.
Time Bandits October 4, 2006
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1980s , add a comment
I’ve never considered myself a big follower of fantasy films and I had only a slight interest in watching Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits
One night Kevin, the child protagonist, stuck with bickering parents who are obsessed with their latest technological appliances, goes to bed only to see men on horseback leaping from his closet. The next night the boy, eager for an encore, gets a different result as six dwarf-size men come barreling out of the closet doors. Kevin soon learns that his closet is a time warp and joins the small men who have a map of all such doors throughout history. Their plan is to rob some of history’s richest men and jump through the time warps before facing the consequences. Along the way they encounter Napoleon (a priceless Ian Holm), Robin Hood (John Cleese) and his not-so-merry men, and Sean Connery as King Agamemnon. They also wreak havoc for Michael Palin and Shelley Duvall (twice), an ogre with back problems and somehow end up aboard the Titanic. All this is done while trying to avoid the all-knowing Supreme Being, whom they stole the map from originally.
Stealing the show, though, is David Warner as the Evil Genius, a devilish character with a huge chip on his shoulder against the Supreme Being, whose decisions he humorously questions. (”If I were creating the world I wouldn’t mess about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o’clock, Day One!”) His dialogue hilariously borders on camp and, in a movie that’s quite funny, his scenes manage to be the funniest. “I feel the power of evil coursing through my veins, filling every corner of my being with the desire to do wrong! I feel so bad, Benson!” That line and Warner’s impeccable delivery are magic.
The real stars of Time Bandits, despite the opening credits and advertising materials, are the little bandits themselves. Gilliam recalled that he decided to use actors who would be roughly the same size as the young boy and that the small men were tirelessly pushing themselves past their limits to the point that one even broke his arm near the end of the shoot. Their characters are refreshingly normal as opposed to some sort of freakish portrayal as we’ve seen in numerous other films and television shows. I particularly liked the scenes with Napoleon, who was of course quite diminutive himself, and his love for all things little. The small stature of the men is never a burden and they even use their size as assets for their rescue from the Evil Genius.
After the screening, Terry Gilliam commented that the small studio that released the film was, understandably, hesitant of the darkly comic ending and wanted it changed. A preview screening was held in Fresno, California and the audio suffered from technical difficulties. By the time the film was over and the audience was asked to select their favorite part of the strange fable they’d just seen, the most popular choice was “the end.” Even if the responses were intended to mean that the audience was happiest once the picture was over and not how it ended, Gilliam was able to keep his demise of Kevin’s parents as scripted.
Overall, I was really delighted at how much I enjoyed Time Bandits. The original poster and DVD cover art both left me uninterested in seeing it and I wrongly inferred that the story was primarily set on a boat. Not surprisingly, the water scenes with the Titanic, the ogre or the giant were the ones I found to be the weakest, but there were so many other sequences that I didn’t mind those a bit. Apparently, the Criterion Collection’s DVD was one of their earliest efforts and surpassed by Anchor Bay’s release in terms of picture quality. While the Criterion version