Mister Buddwing August 27, 2008
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1960s , add a comment
I propped up Mister Buddwing a couple of weeks ago in my weekly TCM picks. Some minor research left me hesitant but entirely intrigued. James Garner as a guy who wanders around the streets of Manhattan in search of himself sounded familiar. I’ve never experienced memory loss or found myself in Central Park without any idea of how I got there, but there are less literal ways of interpreting the plot.
There’s surprisingly little out there written on the film, and what there is seems mostly dismissive. My enthusiasm is often countered by dolts who act like this or that movie is so appalling as to have devalued their own ever-precious life. The disadvantage of everyone having an opinion on the internet is that, well, everyone has an opinion. Some are well-reasoned and considered while others are from the same type of people who desire, consume, and love the unchallenging byproducts of the entertainment lobotomies beamed directly into their living rooms daily. As someone who does in fact regularly give my own opinion on movies, I recognize the irony in those complaints. Still, dealing too much in absolutes makes me uneasy and I’d be the first person to encourage someone to watch based on one’s own views instead of a negative reaction elsewhere. If a movie sounds interesting, dive in headfirst and sort out the details later.
So that’s what I did with Mister Buddwing, directed by Marty helmer Delbert Mann and based on an Evan Hunter book. The film opens with a first-person point of view shot, black and white, in the city. The man whose eyes we’re looking through peers down at his hands. He’s wearing a ring, broken stone. An inscription of “From G.V.” lines the band. He starts walking from a bench in Central Park and to the Plaza Hotel. When we finally do see the man, he appears well-dressed in a suit and increasingly in need of a shave. At the hotel, he dials a phone number that had been written on a slip of paper he’d found inside the suit. A woman, Gloria, answers. Our man doesn’t know his name and he doesn’t know Gloria either so he has to navigate through some awkward introductions. Gloria, who’s played by the terrific Angela Lansbury, believes the man could be Sam, which is good enough for the stranger. The newly christened Sam makes plans to visit Gloria in hopes of getting this whole identity thing straightened out. He leaves the hotel, sees a Budweiser beer truck, looks at a plane flying through the sky, and decides on Buddwing as a last name.
It’s quickly established that the man is not actually Sam, which turns out to be the name of Gloria’s estranged husband. Gloria doesn’t know Mr. Buddwing any more than he knows himself. She asks him some questions that he doesn’t have the answers for, making the man more and more irritated at his lack of memory. He’s then sent on his way with a few extra dollars and still no idea what’s going on. At this point early in the film, and throughout actually, it’s most intriguing that the viewer is really no better informed than Mr. Buddwing. The line of defeat and frustration James Garner treads in his performance is equally shared by the audience.
I’ve always felt Garner was better as a screen presence than he necessarily was as an actor. He was adept at playing not just an everyman, but the ideal everyman. Who wouldn’t want to be James Garner? That deceptively easy ability to make the viewer identify with him was put to good use in Mister Buddwing. There’s a great deal of psychological undercurrent running through the picture. The mood it sustains reminded me of a less dystopian version of John Frankenheimer’s Seconds, released in the same year. Garner has to be believable as a guy we want to solve these personal mysteries, but there also has to be an air of danger where he could slip into almost insanity at any point. The reveal that a murderous mental patient has just escaped from a nearby institution adds enormous possibility, both for the film and Garner’s performance. The actor does well in never entirely hiding how unhinged his character is, creating conflict in the viewer by way of this lingering uncertainty as to Buddwing’s real identity.
More ammunition for Buddwing’s questionable mental health is sourced from the relationships the amnesiac develops with three random women he spots on the streets of New York. He sees a young brunette (Katharine Ross) and yells out the name “Grace,” but the woman ignores him as she gets into a taxi. Buddwing hails a cab, driven by Marty supporting actor Joe Mantell, and instructs the hack to follow the other car. En route, the driver recounts a fare he’d had recently, an attractive blonde woman who was drunk and less than candid on her $28 ride. Though this moment seems inconsequential, it comes up again later as we realize that much of the film feels like it was thrown into an unreliable blender. Everything doesn’t mix as it might should, leaving ample opportunity for false impressions.
Just as the nervous jazz score and frequent shots of Garner wandering around the city ply into the viewer’s consciousness, so do the perpetually ominous depictions of a city on a completely different pace as our protagonist. This constant unease amid a mass of people who at the very least know more than Buddwing because they know their own name is somewhat underexplored, but entirely effective when given the opportunity. The skyscraper-rich city is enough to induce confusion in anyone, much less a person in total disarray. As with much of Mann’s movie, the tension could have been ratcheted up even further, resulting in a bit of a missed opportunity. As a study in disorientation, however, Mister Buddwing should be re-discovered.
While the film hearkens back to amnesia-heavy suspense movies like Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, as well as foreshadowing more recent fare including Memento and The Bourne Identity, it seems to also accurately predict the oncoming paranoia found in the 1970s. Buddwing becomes so at odds with himself that he can hardly trust his own instincts. In another of the film’s interesting decisions, each potential Grace, starting with Ross, flashes back to Buddwing’s memories of the woman. With every glimpse of the past, the relationship between Buddwing and Grace grows devastatingly harsher. The vibrant optimism of their newlywed days is replaced by turmoil and acrimony, slowly shattering the dreams of youth. That each incarnation of Grace is played by a different actress highlights the stark changes life has to offer over time.
Perhaps done unintentionally, but there’s a strange juxtaposition between how the past versions of Buddwing and Grace move further apart and how amnesiac Buddwing gets closer and closer with his false Graces. Janet, the woman played by Ross, brushes him off completely, even involving the police, but actress Fiddle (Suzanne Pleshette) takes him into her home. The blonde woman (Jean Simmons) he meets next is even more friendly and carefree. Yet, Buddwing seems to become less balanced as he struggles to piece together his past. By the end, when the nobody and the blonde find themselves involved in a high-stakes dice game, his memories spin him into levels near madness.
In trying to get a handle on the film, I found myself curious as to why it’s so little cared about or known, and why there’s not much support among those who have seen this strange portrait of memory loss. It’s far from perfect, not a great film really, and always seems like it could go further than it does (in contrast to Seconds). But there’s definitely something there. That feeling it emits, one of suspense but also caution and deep empathy for the protagonist, is rare in such a tightly wound movie of its era. There’s also a building turmoil we can see coming, but are helpless to stop. Buddwing’s destruction becomes inevitable and that nearly horrific unfolding of how he got to Central Park may be painful for the invested viewer.
The ending changes the game too much for my taste, ultimately making clear that there’s some heavy Christian symbolism at work as it placates the mid-sixties studio film audiences. I’m not impressed with the result, but I do like how it’s handled. The decision to retain a considerable dose of ambiguity is assuring despite an otherwise flat conclusion. I can imagine how I’d like to have the film end, but it doesn’t really matter. Even the apparent happy ending, when kept in the context with Buddwing’s memories, promises little outside the veiled religious undertones.
(Mister Buddwing was made for MGM. Its rights should rest with Warner Bros., but the film is not on DVD.)
Intentions of Murder August 12, 2008
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1960s, Shohei Imamura , add a commentForever transforming intricate layers of sleaze into something profound, Shohei Imamura continued on the same path he’d journeyed in 1963’s The Insect Woman with its follow-up, Intentions of Murder. The 1964 film approaches many of Imamura’s favorite subjects, notably an unremarkable and unhappy woman dragged through conflict and emerging with complicated victory. The women in his films tend to be forgotten and ignored. If they had any discernible positives, you could also add underappreciated. Their greatest strength is often mere survival, and in the case of this particular heroine, Sadako, it’s achieved accidentally. Through her repeated displays of common, unrefined mediocrity, she transcends the nature of ordinary and demands interest, even sympathy. Sadako’s suffering becomes a theme of sorts, encompassing more than just herself, and her reactions, while appearing perverse at times, remain steadfastly human.
The lived-in commonness Imamura gives Sadako, a young, but frumpy common-law wife and mother, is consistent with the director’s interest in the lower middle class of postwar Japan. His films resonate through an artificial universality, as the audience may not truly share the heroine’s situational concerns, but Imamura’s jaundiced eye makes us feel like we do. There’s a griminess to witnessing Sadako’s invasion, of home, privacy and self. A man, later identified as failing musician Hiraoko, wields a knife as means to take only a few dollars, but becomes inspired in the process to force himself on Sadako. It’s a repulsive act given full horror by Imamura. What’s unexpected, leaving the viewer further disoriented, is the single tear that falls down Hiraoko’s face when he rolls off of Sadako. Aside from bringing to mind questions of character and motive, the tear humanizes, for better or worse, the rapist and presents him not as a crazed monster, but a multi-dimensional person whose actions disgust even himself.
This possibly makes it easier to accept, though not necessarily understand, Sadako’s behavior in the remainder of the film. Her rapist transitions into a stalker, an admirer, and, finally, a lover. When she has the chance to end the arrangement, Sadako summons up the nature of her own humanity by saving Hiraoko’s life. True to the film’s title, her intentions eventually do include murder, but Imamura warns that this is no answer for a much more complicated problem. Metaphor is tucked away inside Sadako’s actions. For such a seemingly simple woman, her strength in feeling and action lends itself to gloriously complex readings. Imamura’s films, especially of this period, are obsessed with showing that those treated as not mattering by more forward-thinking society people are usually the ones who best represent the hope within humankind. Sadako’s basic good, in the face of mistreatment and shunning to the point of not even being acknowledged as the mother of her own son, doesn’t triumph in a soul-stirring moment, but it does more realistically permeate her every action when those around her often deserve much harsher treatment.
Playfully, Imamura gives just such a fate to a particularly loathsome character, the long-time mistress of Sadako’s librarian husband. The director’s dark humor is almost always sprinkled unexpectedly throughout his films, and the shocking, morbidly funny dismissal of the bespectacled would-be spy is deeply satisfying, perhaps even too much so. One gets the feeling that Imamura especially detests the character and those like her who are so hypocritical as to be humorous. Hypocrisy was always a favorite target for the director, and in the case of Intentions of Murder, the heroine’s world crumbles partially due to the Japanese customs that stray far from consistent or fair. Sadako’s rape, of which she was entirely a victim, would have disgraced her entire family had it become known, yet her husband’s affair raises little concern. She develops, in her own primitive way, a plan to deal with the shame, but her ineptitude also becomes a savior.
Imamura may be too clinical to allow a reading of Sadako’s failed suicide as anything other than narratively pleasing. It’s simply one step, the lowest before reversing course, in the continued process of her experiencing life through tragedy. Some viewers have found Imamura cold in his depictions of those barely above the fray, but it’s really more of a chilly empathy, designed as objective though not always staying there. His endings, unlike many of his contemporaries in the Japanese New Wave, tend towards hopeful, perhaps not in a traditional sense, but nonetheless with some degree of optimism. Part of the merit in Imamura’s work is that he doesn’t simply draw attention to a problem and artfully snicker. Intentions of Murder and many of his other films offer subtle reminders that dealing with the issue can be a solution in itself.
Sadako begins the film without claim to her son or husband, not respected by her mother-in-law, and potentially in danger of losing everything. It takes harrowing circumstances to correct these problems, but she emerges, despite the psychological scars, with a more stable situation, and one far better than if she had ignored the rape. If you’re inclined to dig for broad metaphors. Sadako is Japan and her rape is the country’s defeat in World War II, including the twin atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Keeping that analogy, Sadako’s despair was only solved after she came to terms with the attack and its aftermath. Facing it head-on, regardless of intention, became the necessary option.
Though knowledge of Imamura’s films obviously helps put Intentions of Murder in context, it plays quite well even on its own, non-metaphorical terms. The black and white Scope photography is frequently beautiful and framed with great care. A shot of Sadako at the far right of the frame waiting for a train reminds us why 42″plasma televisions should never be the ideal point of reference. The snow storm that hits the Tokyo area near the film’s end cleanses some of the muck, adding purity in mind if not in truth. Visually, scenes like these give the film a richness that begs to be experienced more than simply watched. Another sequence, on a train, is quite commanding, as well. At one point during that particular section, the viewer can see shadows of the camera and its operator in the window. Usually the assumption would be that this was an unintentional error, but given some of the ideas explored in Imamura’s own A Man Vanishes, the director may have at least left it in on purpose. Probably not, but who knows for sure.
Likely to be entirely intentional, and a noted signature in many of Imamura’s films, is the presence of insects or other lowly creatures. Anthropological wonders crawl around the wide black and white frame in obvious parallel to the director’s tread-upon characters. Intentions of Murder has a flashback to a silkworm making its way along Sadako’s thigh before disaster strikes. The worms appear again late in the film and it’s difficult to forget the oozing insides crushed out of one particularly unlucky fellow. There’s also a pair of white mice, pets of Sadako’s young son, featured prominently by Imamura. Though the action isn’t shown, one literally eats through his companion. The image of a dead mouse with a hole through its midsection is another that’s hard to shake after seeing. These apparent interludes are done in such a matter-of-fact style as to be fascinating. I think of the ill-fated worm and mouse and then I think about how Intentions of Murder makes the viewer feel. It doesn’t seem entirely different. Imamura gnaws your insides when he’s not squeezing the life out of you and it’s oddly thrilling.
Harakiri June 21, 2008
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1960s , 5 comments
Living where I do and having an interest in some form of the popular arts (film, music, literature) has allowed for many opportunities to view people whom I admire up close. It’s a weird sensation, undoubtedly, but even stranger is when it stops seeming like a big deal. I never have anything worthwhile to say or ask so I usually just politely demur or thank the person if there’s an autograph involved. I’m always (overly) cognizant of trying to avoid embarrassing myself, first and foremost, and, additionally, not bothering anyone more than is absolutely necessary. I rarely take pictures, not because I wouldn’t like to have them, but more to avoid the trouble. So I play the role of observer and soak it all in. This establishes a bit of a routine that prevents nervousness and the like, but also keeps me from losing my marbles when so-and-so is a few feet away, especially if I’ve watched/read/listened to so-and-so’s work enough to imprint their sensibilities somewhere in the midst of my own budding tastes and opinions.
That’s a long, explanatory introduction to my experience of watching a beautiful Scope print of Masaki Kobayashi’s Harakiri at Film Forum and then immediately watching the film’s star, Tatsuya Nakadai, get up from his seat three rows in front of mine to read a few prepared statements and take questions from the small, 150-member or so audience. Difficult to not be affected by that kind of breaking of a 46-year-old fourth wall. The idea that Nakadai, whose films essentially are Japanese cinema of the 1960s, would be in the same place where I was still seems unimaginable. This is arguably Japan’s greatest, most versatile movie star. I’m with the Mifune mifunites as much as the next person, but Nakadai has him beat in terms of a filmography to rival most any actor in any country at any time. Nakadai’s versatility alone, moving from Kobayashi’s The Human Condition trilogy and Harakiri to The Face of Another, films with Kon Ichikawa, Mikio Naruse and Hideo Gosha, and starring in Kurosawa’s two epic achievements of the 1980s, Kagemusha and Ran, remains astounding. I’m not saying he’s Japan’s best actor or that Mifune was inferior, only that Nakadai showed a greater range and worked with a wider array of directorial talent than Mifune. I wouldn’t trade the latter for anyone, but if someone put a tantō against the skin covering of my entrails, I’d pick Nakadai over Mifune.
With that unpleasant image in mind, how about upgrading to the entirely gruesome shot of Akira Ishihama trying to commit the film’s titular act with a dagger made of bamboo. On DVD, reclining on one’s couch in privacy’s creature comforts, the scene feels affecting and uncomfortable. But projected onto a large screen, in a darkened room with a full audience, it’s nearly unbearable. The black and white cinematography hardly mitigates the palpable pain, even if the blood is inky black instead of deep red. That crude oil look that blood has in black and white films seems to be far more effective than the distractingly fake stuff of horror movies and Peckinpah westerns. Unless I’m seeing internal organs, this scene in Harakiri ranks with any in terms of audience discomfort. When the viewer is sitting helpless in a screening room, hardly able to even avert one’s eyes, the excruciating length of time Kobayashi lets it play out is squirm cinema at its best. Part of the scene’s extraordinary nature is that it comes in a film that’s largely nonviolent and only contains any action sequences in its very last part, which even then Kobayashi playfully avoids showing in their entirety.
Still, I think those final, vengeance-infused showdowns between Nakadai and everyone else, scored to perfection by Tôru Takemitsu, are what the viewer largely takes away from Harakiri. The actor admitted after the screening that he couldn’t compete with Mifune’s madman swordsmanship, but Kobayashi’s film is only concerned with the climactic scenes of Nakadai against everyone else in the aftermath of a great deal of background having already been established. Though Kobayashi aligned himself with the popular reading of the film as a plainly harsh attack against feudal Japan, as well as the more modern powers behind the country’s entry in World War II, I also think it’s important to remember how essential the title is. This is a film about, concerned with, and in critique of the practice of seppuku, and one wholly without an endorsement. It’s like the samurai equivalent of suicide bombing. Nakadai’s own words, when answering a not entirely well thought out question from an audience member, probably sum things up best. He said something to the effect of not being able to support any government that requires its citizens to kill themselves, regardless of the reason.
As an increasingly conflicted American who hopes to soon find the flame of hope in his own country, it’s too easy to forget the courage of filmmakers and actors like Kobayashi and Nakadai. Japan is hardly the first nation one associates with radical directors of the 1960s, despite the somewhat subtle subversions everywhere in the films of Teshigahara, Imamura, and Oshima, but the ones who did place their politics on screen did so with extreme skill. Certainly Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain is one of the most striking and compelling films against the practice of war that I’ve seen. Kobayashi was apparently outspoken all along, somehow navigating through Japan’s studio system for years before turning independent. Harakiri is a stark slap against the cheek of the country’s insincere history on film. Kurosawa romanticized the samurai to an extreme that wasn’t completely his fault, but nevertheless remains to this day. How many wasteful Americans proudly own an “authentic” samurai sword? The answer: too many.
I’m in the minority, but I’ll gladly take Harakiri over any of Kurosawa’s samurai films, or anyone else’s, for that matter. By facing the glaring hypocrisy head on and without apology, Kobayashi destroyed the Western myth of samurai as honorable warrior with one deft slash across cinema. There are few images more damning against a nation’s symbolic heritage than Nakadai destroying the armor edifice late in Kobayashi’s film. The director, as well as Shinobu Hashimoto’s expanded adaptation of the source material, simply refused to adhere to Kurosawa’s wandering ronin populist images found in Yojimbo just one year earlier. Harakiri’s retainers are insects with swords. They obey the orders of a corrupt master without considering any consequences, ethical or otherwise. As Kobayashi brilliantly lays out both with contained subtlety and obvious conviction, true honor is a foreign concept to these men. There’s the idea of maintaining total conviction to the samurai calling, but it’s all at the expense of freethinking. The parallels, essentially, are abundant for any military-based dictatorship, either in confirmed action or Orwellian doublespeak. Kobayashi would not be happy with my country circa the last seven plus years.
Politics aside, it’s a bit of a disservice to assign Harikiri as a film strictly concerned with an agenda. It’s a great movie period. I had it at number twenty in my 1960s list, and, while it may be difficult to really scare up a spot any higher, it’s completely deserving of that ranking. What begins somewhat deliberately envelops the viewer to an extent hardly common or easily explained. The simple storytelling of the Rentaro Mikuni character’s flashback, leading to Nakadai’s recounting of his experiences in broken parts, may be deceptive in its simplicity, but only a skilled combination of artists could keep the viewer repeatedly mesmerized. By the time Nakadai’s displaced ronin unveils one of the great minor twists in film history, affixed in an intricate topknot itself, the viewer is transfixed on the actor’s every move.
Merrill’s Marauders January 14, 2008
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1960s , add a comment
Samuel Fuller was trying to find a home for his pet project The Big Red One, intended as an epic account of the 1st Infantry squadron Fuller himself had been a part of in World War II, when studio head Jack Warner instead talked him into making Merrill’s Marauders. As Fuller writes in his autobiography A Third Face, the monolithic Warner Bros. boss insinuated that a successful experience adapting and directing Charlton Ogburn’s book The Marauders might result in an opportunity to get The Big Red One finally made. With this in mind, Fuller relented and the true story of an overmatched and resilient U.S. infantry unit who helped defeat the Japanese in 1944 Burma was set. Fuller had long wanted to work with Gary Cooper and wrote the part of Brigadier General Frank Merrill with him in mind, but Cooper hesitated because he thought he was too old for the role. Fuller’s book seems to imply that Cooper relented and was set to star in the film.
During preproduction, Cooper became sick with the effects of a terminal cancer that prevented him from playing Merrill and ended his life in May 1961. Jeff Chandler was brought in as a replacement and, tragically, would live only a month longer than Cooper. If there’s death in the air of Merrill’s Marauders, it’s unintentional, but nevertheless understandable. Merrill has a vulnerability rarely found in the powerful men of war movies. The heart condition he tries to conceal results in a nonfatal heart attack at the end of the film. Chandler gives the character so much understated pain and quiet suffering that it almost seems like he’s the one with the cardiac problems. In real life, it was his back that caused Chandler to suffer and a botched operation that killed him, a year before Fuller’s film (the actor’s last) hit cinemas.
Merrill’s Marauders isn’t a great film or one of Fuller’s best, but it’s worth seeing for a few reasons. The silence is chief among them. The soldiers don’t yak each others’ ears off with profound or witty permutations on life. There’s really not much dialogue at all. Fuller always felt that Hollywood consistently got it wrong on war movies, especially by giving the grunts meaningful lines they’d never really say. The men here are anonymously average (underlined by the fact that none of the actors are movie stars or particularly well known), and simultaneously frustrated and courageous. Merrill asks and demands more than they think is possible to give of themselves. The majority of the soldiers are killed and most of the survivors are seriously wounded. But the objective (so to speak) is accomplished, the mission’s ultimately victorious. Every member of the volunteer unit was rewarded a Bronze Star after returning home.
There’s no glorification of war or battle from Fuller, which is to be expected considering his previous combat films The Steel Helmet and Fixed Bayonets! are two of the bleakest (and most powerful) of the 1950s. He knew firsthand that war is the closest thing to Biblical hell that humans have ever dreamed up and he refused to patriotize it. The war films he made celebrate the soldiers’ penchant for doggedly carrying on and do so through multi-dimensional and reasonably accurate portrayals. Fuller doesn’t demean or judge them for doing what they’ve been told to do amid circumstances beyond their control. His movies play like honest depictions often at odds with the recruitment fantasies manufactured in Hollywood. Even Merrill’s Marauders, with its comparatively stoic and fatalistic sensibility, is somewhat atypical as a war movie despite the studio-forced ending that Fuller fought against.
Besides that real marching footage Fuller didn’t want, another scene from the film was altered from the director’s original idea because Warner Bros., Fuller claims, deemed it “too artistic” and used a second-unit director for more generic reshoots. Even with the clashes, the movie was well-received critically (the New York Times singled out Fuller in their short write-up as having a “dynamic visual sense” that “sets the film apart from others of the genre”) and made an $18 million profit at the box office when it opened in 1962. Instead of getting to do The Big Red One, Fuller’s reward was a Cadillac of his choice. He had to wait until 1980 to film his baby, bankrolled by the independent Lorimar production company and distributed theatrically by United Artists. Ironically, when The Big Red One was finally reconstructed to fit more closely with Fuller’s intentions in 2004, it was Warner Bros., after years earlier obtaining the rights to the Lorimar library, that put the film out on DVD.
In an odd move, Merrill’s Marauders was quietly released on R1 DVD in November exclusively via DeepDiscount.com. It’s unknown (though expected) whether the DVD will be available elsewhere or when. The only extra feature is a full screen theatrical trailer introduced by the production technical adviser Colonel Samuel Wilson. Video quality is outstanding, with a very impressive 2.35:1 anamorphic transfer. Warner Bros. released a couple of war-themed box sets already so maybe we’ll see the disc pop up soon. I’m sure there are lots of people interested in owning the DVD who aren’t aware it even exists or would prefer to buy it from a more familiar store.
Top 50 of 1960s November 1, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1960s , 4 comments
As the weather cools and the leaves fall, the Lists Project’s oversized, bespectacled head emerges once again. After working my way through the 1940s and 1950s, the decade of radical changes is now up. The 1960s marked a stinging decline in the quality of Hollywood films, but the international output blossomed beyond expectation, enjoying perhaps its strongest decade in cinema history. Unlike the previous two lists I contributed, I’m not terribly satisfied with the number of films I’ve seen in this period. There are many that remain unreleased and even some things available that I didn’t have time to view. I still had a really tough time whittling a full decade down to only fifty films. (I don’t know what happened in 1965, but nothing released that year made my top 50.) Any previous writing I’ve done about these films has been linked to, and I’ve tried to be as brief as possible in providing comments and justifications for each selection (though the intended couple of sentences often ballooned to a full paragraph or more).
1.) The Apartment (Wilder, 1960) - A very personal choice, not because of a kinship to the subject matter, but due to it being my favorite film by my favorite director. Billy Wilder’s beautiful and bittersweet triumph was always going to be number one and I’d imagine it always will be. I’m going to refrain from any more praise because hopefully I’ll be able to put together a more in-depth piece someday, but I adore The Apartment almost as much as C.C. Baxter adores Miss Kubelik. (Here’s that more detailed review I hinted at.)
2.) The Graduate (Nichols, 1967) - An amazing time capsule that somehow has aged very little. Simon and Garfunkel’s music feels a tad ’60s, but I think it still evokes the timeless confusion of love. The film is the youngest forty-year-old you’re likely to find. And it’s actually very funny, too. Benjamin Braddock’s familiar awkwardness is flawlessly captured by Dustin Hoffman and the idea of “arrested development” of the young American male was given its perfect representation in Mike Nichols’ film. They’ve been trying to loosely re-make The Graduate ever since the original, but nothing has really come close.
3.) Le Samouraï (Melville, 1967) - Melville’s most perfect character in all his films is Jef Costello. Played by Alain Delon, Costello is an emotionless assassin who lives a spartan existence. Trenchcoat and fedora perfectly in place, he follows a samurai’s code and maintains a lonely solitude comforted only by a pet bird. Like the bird, Jef is in a cage, but his is of his own creation and he must follow the rules that go along with his chosen profession if he wants to stay alive after an uncharacteristic misstep. This is the quintessential Melville film, arguably his best and definitely the one that most successfully exhibits the sparse, no-nonsense approach taken by the classic Melville protagonist. Its inspirations are numerous, notably This Gun for Hire and Murder by Contract, as are the films it inspired, namely The Killer and Ghost Dog.
4.) Persona (Bergman, 1966) - I’ve seen eight Bergman films from this decade and this one packs the biggest punch by far. It’s really the only unequivocal masterpiece of his I’ve found so far, but that’s good enough really. Telling a ridiculously involving story of two women, one an actress gone mute and the other a nurse, the Swedish master explores themes almost never approached by other filmmakers. The two women share a home and, eventually, much more. The implication that these two women somehow merge is both extraordinary and unnerving.
5.) Lawrence of Arabia (Lean, 1962) - Few movies make instant legends of previously little known actors, especially on the scale of Lawrence of Arabia and Peter O’Toole. Premiere magazine named his performance the greatest in movie history not too long ago and, notwithstanding personal preferences, it’s almost difficult to argue otherwise. I don’t usually go for “epics,” but I really can’t comprehend how someone can sit down to watch Lean’s film (assuming the screen they’re viewing is of reasonable size) and not be awestruck. The reason I don’t usually like epics is because they often seem to eschew normal film conventions for bombastic spectacle. That isn’t Lawrence of Arabia at all. It could have been split into two parts, released a couple of years apart, and both would be equally as good as the whole. And has the film ever been more timely than it is now?
6.) The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Leone, 1966) - I always hear people rave about how great Sergio Leone is and the quality of this film, yet I don’t consider myself one of those zealots. Still, put this DVD in and I can’t take my eyes off the screen. Three hours (in the newest cut) of incredible entertainment and near-perfect execution. When Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, and Lee Van Cleef spend what seems like an eternity staring each other down as the camera creeps further in, I can’t help but wonder if any other filmmaker could have gotten away with such a dynamic bit of bravado. Somehow, it works, as does most everything in the picture.
7.) The Manchurian Candidate (Frankenheimer, 1962) - Of all the re-watches, I think this got the biggest boost. It’s really an incredibly gripping political thriller, as well as technically brilliant. Frankenheimer’s film also holds up remarkably well. It’s a good decade ahead of its time, considering the paranoia conspiracy thriller subgenre that bloomed in the 70’s. Probably the most suspenseful film made in Hollywood this decade, and one of the scariest.
8.) The Face of Another (Teshigahara, 1966) - This is the film that started me on the journey of writing about what I was watching and it was also my introduction to the Masters of Cinema line. I still find it fascinating and haunting, painful even. Masks and identity, what makes us who we are, and how can we change ourselves are all topics approached, but never explained by Teshighara and writer Kôbô Abe. Certainly a face is only so important and the physical nature of appearance, again, defines our actions only to a limited extent. I didn’t get a chance to watch this again in compiling my list, and I struggled with exactly where to place the film, but it’s as philosophically powerful as anything I’ve seen from the ’60s.
9.) Army of Shadows (Melville, 1969) - I saw this last year for the first time at New York’s Film Forum and was entertained, but, as with nearly all of Melville’s films, felt somewhat deprived. More characterization, more action, more explanation. It’s not there, and it needn’t be either. Jean-Pierre Melville had an incredible foresight, intentional or not, to make films that demand multiple viewings in order to better understand his characters and their motivations. His heir apparent Michael Mann is currently doing the exact same thing in Hollywood. Army of Shadows develops additional power and resonates on each additional viewing in a way few films do.
10.) Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960) - The best pulling the rug out from underneath the audience in movie history, courtesy of Janet Leigh’s untimely and still-chilling demise. I’m not sure how to best think of Hitchcock’s film, as it’s basically two completely separate halves of a whole, but maybe there’s no need to, as the director fills the brisk running time with wrong turns, red herrings, and a $40,000 MacGuffin. Copied and ripped-off past the point of excess, Bernard Herrmann’s scoring of that scene has rightfully become perhaps the most famous combination of music and editing in film. The psychological wrap-up feels out of place, but it’s somewhat redeemed by setting up Anthony Perkins’ final scene.
The Manchurian Candidate October 16, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1960s , 8 comments
It’s easy to forget just how good John Frankenheimer’s 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate is. Despite the director’s lofty accomplishments, especially throughout the 1960s, he’s most remembered for this film and, perhaps, decades of struggles afterwards, probably reaching a low point with the Marlon Brando abomination The Island of Dr. Moreau in 1996. Sure The Manchurian Candidate ranked #67 on AFI’s initial list of the greatest American films ever, but it got bumped off completely the second time around this past summer. Before re-watching the film recently, I remembered that I had enjoyed it quite a bit the only previous time I’d seen it, but a new viewing found that my judgment has greatly matured since then. Where I looked mostly at plotting and story the first time, I now had my eyes opened to a bit more of what Frankenheimer was doing.
A good example of what I mean is when James Gregory’s Senator Iselin, the Joseph McCarthy stand-in who’s married to Angela Lansbury’s evil incarnate character and the stepfather of Laurence Harvey’s Raymond Shaw, spews anti-Communist venom by declaring an ever-changing number of Department of Defense members to be reds. I’ve never seen anything like this that I can recall. Frankenheimer puts Lansbury on the left of the frame, with Gregory behind her, and also on the technology-challenged television to the right. This is a scene to swoon over, to marvel at, and appreciate with everything I have to give. Not only is the McCarthy comparison spot-on, but it’s recreated in the same old-television look that countless news programs have recycled even in the decades since this film was made. And he’s got Lansbury on the screen too, giving as strong and complex a performance in such a hideous role as I can recall.
I don’t think that’s even the most impressive aspect of the film though. That honor would belong to the superb editing work done by the Oscar-nominated Ferris Webster. Early on, in flashback, Frank Sinatra’s Bennett Marco and Harvey’s Shaw are shown to have been brainwashed (or dry cleaned, if you will), along with the other members of their platoon, by a conspiracy of Communists. This scene alone should have secured Webster’s little gold man (alas, he lost). The soldiers think they are in a hotel lobby listening to a New Jersey ladies’ garden club party, when they’re actually surrounded by Communists of various nations. The seamless cuts between the innocuous women of a certain age dressed in their Sunday best to venal Communist military leaders is on a plane of brilliance all its own. It’s the kind of filmmaking you want to run up to a stranger in the street, give them the DVD, and beg them to watch. (Or maybe that’s just me.)
There’s at least one other moment in The Manchurian Candidate that’s good enough to be worthy of jawdropping disbelief. It’s the quite famous portion of the film when Sinatra is on a train from Washington, D.C. to New York City and he’s wracked with nerves, a victim of nightmares induced by the very real Communist brainwashing. He goes to the space in between two train cars and is followed by Janet Leigh. “Maryland’s a beautiful state,” she says. “This is Delaware,” replies Marco. “I know. I was one of the original Chinese workmen who laid the track on this stretch. But nonetheless, Maryland is a beautiful state. So is Ohio, for that matter.” Viewers of the film know the conversation doesn’t get any less strange from there, as both inexplicably ask each other if they’re Arabic, among other things. Normally, I wouldn’t endorse absolutely senseless dialogue that’s never explained, but it completely works here. Janet Leigh’s character is an enigma to end all enigmas, but it plays perfectly in the context of the film.
I can just imagine Leigh reading her script and being completely clueless as to anything about her character. This is a woman who makes zero sense throughout the movie. She makes a connection with Marco that the audience cannot understand on any level, picks him up at the police station, and breaks up with her fiance so that she can be with Marco. There’s absolutely nothing this woman does that can be rationalized in the normal world we live in. Leigh, who persuasively adds to my long-held theory that women often look their best when in their mid-thirties, plays it completely straight, never giving away anything about the character or letting on at the absurdity of the situation. You can watch that scene between her and Sinatra on the train as many times as you want and it never gets old because there’s no definitive explanation anywhere in the film for what takes place.
The easier to understand portions of Frankenheimer’s film more than make up for what’s inexplicable. The movie was closely adapted from Richard Condon’s 1959 novel by George Axelrod and his screenplay is a gem of a screen puzzle. The larger plot, of Shaw as a brainwashed Communist zombie commanded by solitaire and, specifically, the queen of diamonds, is executed with near perfection and culminates exactly how it should. Has there ever been a creepier kiss in the movies than when Lansbury plants one directly on Harvey’s mouth? That entire speech from Lansbury leaves the viewer feeling uncomfortable and confused. It’s easy to comprehend what she’s saying, but the revelations of how she says it send the audience’s collective heads spinning. And who did Angela Lansbury lose the Best Supporting Actress to in 1962? America’s sweetheart, Patty Duke, for her portrayal of Anne Frank Helen Keller. (Note: Lansbury has been nominated for 3 Oscars and 15 Emmy awards, losing every time.)
So back to my original contention, that it’s too easy to undervalue The Manchurian Candidate, I believe that what Frankenheimer did after this film maybe has lead people to believe his work here was a fluke or possibly even overrated. Firstly, it wasn’t and it’s not. Second, Frankenheimer was a key director this decade and highly influential as a controlling auteur for the Hollywood renaissance of the 1970s. His “paranoia trilogy,” consisting of this film, Seven Days in May, and Seconds, are all brilliant, essential works of the decade. Seconds, in particular, still looks innovative and daring, as well as giving Rock Hudson his greatest role, as a man who chose to leave his middle-aged existence in favor of a more youthful life as an artist who ends up looking like Hudson. Frankenheimer would, several years later, hit a resurgence with television work like Andersonville and the excellent miniseries George Wallace. His career still looks like a bit of unrealized potential, but nearly all of his films are worth watching.
As most people know, there was a remake of The Manchurian Candidate directed by Jonathan Demme a couple of years ago. I saw it in the theater once, and haven’t watched the film since, but I did like it. Why a film the caliber of Frankenheimer’s original needs to be done again is a question I can’t answer, but I thought Demme and, especially, Denzel Washington put everything they had into the effort. If the new version works at all, it’s because Washington brings an actor’s chops to the character of Marco. Sinatra was a good actor for a singer, but otherwise his abilities were limited. Washington added the depth, that quality of being on the brink of unhinged craziness, that Sinatra and the 1962 film just missed. As good of an actress as Meryl Streep is, though, she didn’t really approach Lansbury’s characterization. The least you can ask of a remake is that it doesn’t disgrace the original and certainly Demme’s movie accomplished that. Actually, after watching Frankenheimer’s film, I was anxious to watch the remake again. Whether that’s a compliment to the original or the second version, I don’t know, but I’m sure I won’t undervalue the former again.
The current MGM special edition DVD available in both R1 and R2 is outstanding. Picture quality is very good and the extra features are everything one could ask for. Older interviews with Frankenheimer, Axelrod and Sinatra, as well as recent pieces with Lansbury and admirer William Friedkin (who seems to think Lee Harvey Oswald was definitely brainwashed like Raymond Shaw), are highly worthwhile. There’s also a commentary with Frankenheimer. It’s a great value at only $15 retail and any self-respecting film fan should probably own the disc. There’s even a little booklet, a facet of DVD collecting that too many companies overlook, in my opinion.
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner September 19, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1960s , 4 comments
So many times I’ll look forward to seeing a film only to lose patience when I’m actually watching it, disappointed that my expectations haven’t been met. Then something extraordinary happens: the ending. Great endings should enhance everything you’ve seen earlier in the film. More than making up for the viewer’s wandering attention span, truly exceptional endings make the viewer better understand the path the film has been on throughout its running time, while also providing a near-epiphany as to the film’s overall merits. It’s not that a strong ending negates all the flaws from earlier in the film, but I’ve found that it can often provide a method to the earlier madness. All of this applies to The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, directed by Tony Richardson and starring Tom Courtenay.
Since first viewing Billy Liar a couple of weeks ago, I’ve thought quite a bit about that film and the things it’s stirred around inside of me. I was very anxious to see Courtenay’s earlier performance and further explore British films of this time period. I like this angry young man thing. I’m an angry young(ish) man. I’m in color and without the accent, but it seemed promising all the same. Too often change seems hopeless, rebellion impossible. Let’s plan to revolutionize the world tonight, even if we don’t remember it in the morning. That sort of thing. Then I’m watching The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and it’s not there. Who’s this Colin Smith? What’s his problem? His father died, his mother is cold and uncaring, he stole money, he’s punished in a juvenile detention center, and he runs. Where’s Billy Fisher? I can’t relate to this guy. I miss Billy.
But then the ending revs up and suddenly I get it. If the two Courtenay characters are different sides of the same coin, Colin is the strong-willed mischief maker and Billy is the harmless dreamer. They converge at the refusal to conform to society’s ideals regardless of what’s in their best interest. Just because everyone else justifies playing the conformist game doesn’t mean individual rebellion is impossible. I’m reminded of Holden Caulfield, but his fate is even less comforting. As invigorating as Billy Liar and Loneliness can be, they’re ultimately somewhat defeatist. That is, if you adhere to the societal definition of success and defeat. Individually, Billy and Colin both win, very much in their own ways, but they’re also doomed to lives undoubtedly plagued by the creeping intervention of reality. Each character makes a life-altering decision and each film conveniently ends without forcing the bitter pill of the resulting consequences down the audience’s throat.
But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. Richardson’s film, adapted by Saturday Night and Sunday Morning writer Alan Stilltoe from his own short story, seems less dazzling than the near-manic Billy Liar, but it plays heavier, more dangerous. Colin Smith’s present at the borstal institution is woven with his past at home. He faces troubles in both places - among his fellow delinquents and at the hands of his emotionless mother following the death of his father. The flashbacks (though they don’t really feel like flashbacks) frequently occur when Colin is running. He seems to derive little enjoyment from running, but he does it just the same. He runs during the opening titles and just before the film’s end.
It’s this running of long distances that puts him in good favor with the borstal governor (played by Michael Redgrave), who hopes that Colin can defeat a local public school rival. Through the governor’s endorsement, Colin is able to climb the ranks of the borstal social system, at the expense of the former top runner who becomes so distraught that he tries to escape and ends up in solitary confinement. Colin tries to mitigate the damages, but he’s instead awarded unsupervised practice time to run the grounds. The governor lets it be known that a win against the school competition would bode well for Colin’s future freedom. Does he care though? Is that what’s really important, returning to his mother, younger siblings, and whatever man is currently sleeping in his father’s bed?
After he robs the bakery, but prior to getting arrested by the “coppers,” Colin discusses the idea of work and, essentially, capitalism with his girlfriend. “It’s not that I don’t like work. It’s just that I don’t like the idea of slaving me guts out so the bosses can get all the profits. Seems all wrong to me,” he says. Seems all wrong indeed. So that’s what he has to look forward to when Colin regains his life on the outside of the detention center? Admittedly, this speaks to me and my ideals and my sense of justice. Refusing to accept one’s place in the cogs of society strikes a chord. Even now, this film seems severely foreign to my American indoctrination. The land of the free, as long as certain segments are just a bit more free than others.
Obviously, though, the idea of freedom is subjective. By denying the cheering onlookers the satisfaction of a win that means nothing to him, Colin lacerates their expectations and demonstrates a self-reliant independence all too rare in film and life. How dare someone have different ideas of what constitutes success and accomplishment. There are strict rules of normalcy we’re constantly told to abide by. Otherwise, we might seem different or unique, heaven forbid. Sputtering to a stop, Colin half-grins his way to a defiant personal victory. It’s one of the most satisfying displays of rebellion I’ve ever seen on film.
Courtenay plays it with absolute brilliance, as he does throughout the picture. He has such a unique face, his eyes sunken in over a hovering brow that make him seem much older. That works to his advantage here, giving Colin an automatic weariness beyond his years. Both this film and Billy Liar seem nearly unimaginable without the actor. Hard to believe that he’d be doing Leonard Part 6 twenty-five years later. I’m sure there’s some quality films of his that I haven’t seen, but I’m not sure there’s anything else quite of this caliber from the decade. I know he intentionally avoided Hollywood roles and such, but he’s so impressive in these two films that there seem like a few missed opportunities inevitably passed him by. He does appear to have an upcoming film lined up for Peter Yates, with whom he made The Dresser, so hopefully that works out. (And who am I to question his level of success anyway - didn’t this film teach me anything? My concerns are admittedly selfish.)
As with Billy Liar, I rented The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and now they’re both on my (imaginary) to-buy list. I do wish there were some extra features on the R1 Warner Bros. disc. The image quality might be a bit worse than what Criterion did with Billy Liar and it’s presented 1.78:1 aspect ratio instead of its original 1.66:1, but it still looks very good. The BFI R2 went out of print last year and had a commentary I’d like to hear, but no subtitles. Thankfully, the R1 does have subtitles since I kept them on most of the film due to some of the accents being a tad thick for my ears. With the R2 discontinued, perhaps rights have changed hands and an even better release might pop up. I sometimes wonder why major studios and specialty labels can’t get together across regions and share supplements, as the BFI commentary would have been ideal for the R1. But then, I’m an idealist at heart.
The Collector September 12, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1960s , 1 comment so far
The Collector is a terrifying film, much more so than the dozens of progeny it’s spawned, either directly or not, in the forty-plus years since the film was released. The story of a man so obsessed with “collecting” that he catches another human being for the purpose of making her fall in love with him is disturbing for all the reasons the modern serial killer films are not. Everything we see in The Collector feels like it could happen and it’s told to the audience almost entirely the way any other movie would be. No jump-cuts, no shaky camera, no throbbing death metal. Nothing to distinguish it stylistically from a typical Maurice Jarre-scored love story. In fact, the same year The Collector was released, 1965, Jarre actually did score David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago, which was chosen by the AFI as the number 7 love story in the history of American movies.
I’m not crazy about Jarre’s work on The Collector, but I do think it adds an eerie quality indicative of the wolf in sheep’s clothing aspect found in Terence Stamp’s Freddie Clegg. A former bank employee who hit some sort of monetary windfall, Clegg buys a large piece of isolated property in the English countryside. He dresses very normal and clean-cut, speaks with emotionless calm, and is a psychopath. His target is Miranda Grey, an art student he’s observed for years without gaining the courage to talk to. Freddie’s solution to this bit of shyness is to kidnap Miranda and throw her in what is essentially a well-stocked dungeon. He thinks she’ll eventually fall in love with him once she gets to know the type of person he truly is. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t work out quite like Freddie had hoped. Women, he finds out, are less submissive than the butterflies he captures in jars. If left in captivity long enough, the same result does occur, but only one of the two species can be pinned and framed.
The film was based on a popular novel by John Fowles published in 1963, two years before the big screen version. The structure of the book was apparently altered for the movie, with Freddie’s bank life reduced to a quick black and white flashback. Instead, we’re introduced to the collector in the film’s opening titles, hunting butterflies before finding a secluded house in Kent. The idea that this man views his hobby as an “entomologist,” as he later describes himself, much the same way he treats the pursuit and capture of his victim is obvious and intentional. Is there a larger point to be made though? Could such “collecting” be metaphorical for the vast need of man to essentially devour as much as he possibly can, be it material objects, sexual conquests, or anything else in his path? Humans are certainly a possessive lot, concerned less with need than want it seems, so such an analogy might fit. Like most of the questions I pose to myself when thinking about particular movies (in a non-pretentious way, of course), I really don’t know the answer, but it’s still fun to consider.
Something else I found interesting in The Collector was how director William Wyler and his screenwriters positioned the film as a demented love story. Stamp and Samantha Eggar as Miranda are the only two actors in the vast majority of the picture, feeding off each other’s conflicting styles. Both are absolutely superb. Eggar was nominated for an Academy Award and truly builds a dynamic performance out of her role, evolving Miranda from a somewhat spoiled, naive girl when she’s captured to a wiser, fully empowered woman by the end. Stamp (who couldn’t manage to surmount a stellar quintet of actors receiving Oscar nods that year - Olivier, Steiger, Werner, Burton and ultimate winner Lee Marvin) is so good the audience can never tell just how demented his character will be. I was even struck by a slight sympathy for Freddie at times. The closest cinematic relative I can think of from roughly this same time period would be Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, made five years earlier, and Stamp makes Carl Boehm’s performance in that film look almost embarrassingly shallow.
The strength of the two central performances in The Collector allows the film to function, like the poster tagline, as “almost a love story.” Freddie and Miranda have the perverse equivalent of a courtship and, then, a domestic life. Miranda’s shocking inability to secure her freedom near the end, when she chooses instead to save Freddie from further injury and potential death, seems to indicate that she has developed some attachment to him (or that she’s unable to kill, depending on individual interpretation I guess, though the two aren’t mutually exclusive). While there’s no love or potential for future friendship, a bond was nevertheless formed between these two. What Freddie’s unable to understand is that even after Miranda gets to know him, she’s never going to feel love for a man who’s trapped her for weeks against her will.
In the realm of films where a psychotic shares a non-romantic bond with a young woman, there’s only one other halfway accomplished denizen that I can think of. That would be The Silence of the Lambs, Jonathan Demme and screenwriter Ted Tally’s take on the novel by Thomas Harris. Though there are many, many differences between the two book-to-film translations, it seems a little obvious that Harris was familiar with The Collector, either in its book or film incarnation. Buffalo Bill in the latter film is also collecting women (Freddie Clegg’s victims seem destined to multiply) in dungeon-type rooms, though for a far more sinister reason. The relationship between Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling is at least reminiscent of some of what we see in The Collector between Freddie and Miranda. Also, coincidence or not, The Silence of the Lambs book cover and film poster both prominently feature a moth, which is quite similar to a butterfly. And I’d wager it’s definitely not a coincidence that Sony slapped a huge butterfly picture on their R1 DVD cover for The Collector instead of using something more restrained like the original poster art.
Thankfully, it’s restraint in Wyler’s film that makes it seem so iconoclastic today. I can’t think of other prominent films of this time that dared go to the places The Collector takes us. Calling it ahead of its time almost seems like a disrespectful understatement. If you removed Jarre’s score, the film could be made today exactly the same and still feel fresh and different. Having said that, I’m pleasantly surprised no one’s remade it yet. If that ever happens, I can only imagine it would be a disaster on all accounts. The reason The Collector works so well is because no one was making these types of movies in the classic Hollywood mold at the time. What may seem tame today for lacking excessive blood and violence plays as a more organically creepy look at the mind of obsession. It’s not nostalgia that makes the film so engrossing when watching it now, it’s the shocking and unexpected removal of the Hollywood safety net for two hours.
(The Sony R1 DVD is overpriced with a mostly sharp, but inconsistent image and disappointingly free of extra features. Contextual material, not necessarily along these lines, but maybe discussion of Fowles and interviews with Stamp and Eggar, doesn’t seem like too much to ask for.)
Attack of the B’s - Billy Liar, the British New Wave and Films Beginning with the Letter ‘B’ September 5, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1960s , 1 comment so far
Through a happy coincidence, the letter ‘B’ plays a vital role in this entry. For some unknown reason, I find myself drawn to films beginning with that letter, both in watching and in writing. I’ve written about this sort of ‘B’ film more than any other letter, as evidenced by my index. It’s not the number one letter among my DVD collection, but it’s one of the most popular nonetheless. I really have no idea why this is, but I do know it’s actually caused me to purposefully avoid writing about films beginning with the letter ‘B’ until things are more evened out. Equal opportunity and so forth.
I don’t know what my favorite ‘B’ film would be or why I’d really think about such a question, but when I went to check some of my favorite directors’ filmographies I noticed that Billy Wilder (whose given first name was actually Samuel and, thus, became a ‘B’ by choice) only made one film starting with ‘B’ - Buddy, Buddy, his last and most maligned. Nicholas Ray had two excellent ones, Bigger Than Life and Bitter Victory, and another that’s significantly less accomplished, Born to Be Bad. Fritz Lang also had good luck with the letter ‘B’ - directing The Blue Gardenia, The Big Heat, and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, all excellent films. Enough of that, though.
The real reason for this latest ‘B’ odyssey was a recent viewing of John Schlesinger’s film Billy Liar. I’d put off watching it for a few years after reading some less than favorable reviews from persons I no longer remember and from whom I now would never trust. I don’t know a great deal about the film’s star Tom Courtenay or its director, aside from the fact that Schlesinger made Midnight Cowboy, a great film that scarred me enough when I saw it initially that I’m not really anxious to see it again. I don’t like reading very much about movies I haven’t seen prior to watching them so I knew only the barest of details. Superficially, I liked the Criterion cover (original poster art, something the folks across the river should do more often), but had avoided buying it because of the scant extra features. The film is just over an hour and a half and has only a commentary and brief excerpt from a BBC program as supplements.
So I rented it and now I’m unhappy. I wish I had just bought the thing. The transfer was nothing extraordinary but more than acceptable and I didn’t have time to listen to the commentary, but I really enjoyed the film. I also realized that I have to get over my slight bias against British films. I’m afraid that most Americans fall into one of two camps regarding (non-comedic) British films. There are the small contingent of Anglophiles who love everything. I’ve not encountered these persons myself, but I know they’re out there. Then there’s the majority of Americans who have a preconception that British drama is somewhat stuffy, overly serious or with slight humor that doesn’t make sense to those who get their laughs from hearty doses of knee to the groin slapstick. I’m really not in either category, but I do admit to having a significant gap in my cinematic knowledge where it concerns British film.
Right now, I’m working my way through the 1960s in anticipation of the next entry in the Lists Project I’ve posted about previously. That means the so-called British New Wave has to be accounted for in my viewing. Thus, I finally threw Billy Liar to the top of my rental queue. I don’t have a lot of experience with this particular movement, and it doesn’t look like very many titles are currently available in R1 DVD. I did recently watch Lindsay Anderson’s If…., which I enjoyed but it didn’t give me the same emotional tug as Billy Liar. That film left me fascinated with Tom Courtenay and his film career, which is surprisingly meager and undistinguished. His performance in Billy Liar is an epic achievement and possibly my favorite from a British actor whose last name isn’t O’Toole (technically born in Ireland, but usually regarded as English). I can’t wait to dive headfirst into The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner now.
There’s so much to empathize with in Courtenay’s Billy Fisher. Apparently Courtenay understudied for Albert Finney in the stage version, but stepped in to the film when Finney was unavailable. Again, having a limited knowledge of these actors’ performances, but I think Courtenay really nailed the vulnerability of Billy much more than Finney would have. The character is portrayed as very easy to like (at least for me) and one whom the audience can immediately relate to (again, at least I could). Courtenay was the same age I am today when the film was released, despite Billy’s age supposedly being 19, I think. This just adds to the power of the film though. If Billy really was a tad older, like Courtenay, like myself, then perhaps he would have matured a bit, but his problems would seem even more difficult and affecting.
There’s a comparison that I made, after seeing the film, of Billy to Elwood P. Dowd, as played by Jimmy Stewart in Harvey. One of my favorite lines in movie history is Dowd’s “I’ve wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I’m happy to state I finally won out over it.” This, to me, is exactly what Billy is doing and what he decides at the end of the film when he heartbreakingly chooses to let Julie Christie take the train to London without him. There’s an air of giving in to the fantasy version of life and letting it rule over you while every last catastrophe goes unnoticed. An approach that’s somewhat tempting, if you ask me. Ultimately, it’s unrealistic, of course, but it seems so much simpler in theory. Instead of dealing with the world’s travesties, you’re gunning down the people who cause you grief.
It’s part of the life as futile objective approach, and sometimes I find it a little too persuasive. Still, the fantasy elements of Billy Liar are only part of what makes the film such a beautifully idealistic look at the possibilities of young dreamers. Even though the ending feels like a devastating blow to the nonconformist ideal (I was literally fighting back tears), I think Billy Liar remains a positive statement that the Billy Fishers of the world can conquer this empty abyss of humanity. Billy’s youth ultimately seems as persuasive an argument that he might one day escape the suburban jungle as the deflating feeling the audience gets from his reluctance to take that fateful train in the film. Regardless, Billy’s choice doesn’t have to be the viewer’s. I know I’d like to picture myself as across from Julie Christie rather than battling Billy’s parents each morning.
Even if Billy isn’t all of us, he’s at least a part of many of us. When I look at my own experience, I see someone who went from a rural Southern town with a population of 1,900 to living fifteen miles away from the largest city in the nation. There’s work still left to be done, sure, but it’s a start. For me, Billy is an inspiration as much as a lesson in never losing sight of the magic of individualism. Schlesinger’s film breezes by and, when it ends, you really wish it’d go on a bit longer. I’ve read that there’s a television show somewhere about Billy, and, of course, the original novel from which the play and film were adapted. I’m not sure I really want to know any more though. I’m quite happy with the version I’ve seen and can’t imagine anyone else bringing more to the character than what Courtenay did.
Pitfall July 28, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1960s , 1 comment so far
Pitfall was the debut feature from Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara, newly celebrated by the Criterion Collection in a superb four-disc box set. It’s what one might describe as an art film, less concerned with narrative and tying up loose ends than creating disturbing images that become etched into the viewer’s mind. But what images. Surreal ants carefully picked away from stale sweets by a female candy clerk. The skin of a frog gradually peeled off its body. A man’s spirit rising up from his body after he’s been brutally stabbed. Another man, one who shares a face with the deceased, collapsing out of the water and into a mud-soaked death as a butterfly flitters around him. Throughout, a young boy stands silently watching, captured in one memorable scene staring through a small opening in the wall as he peers at a police officer sexually attacking the candy shop woman, reproduced for the covers of both the Criterion release and an earlier edition put out by the Masters of Cinema series in the UK.
What Teshigahara and his collaborators, notably novelist and screenwriter Kobo Abe, composer Toru Takemitsu, and cinematographer Hiroshi Segawa, give the audience is an unparalleled combination of the political, procedural, supernatural and existential. Unsolved mysteries, enigmatic characters, bitter ghosts, and the problems of postwar Japan add up to a mesmerizing and hypnotic film, even if it may take multiple viewings to wrap your head around. I’ve seen it twice now and feel like there’s half a dozen viewings left before I’ll really grasp everything Teshigahara and co. were striving for. The first time I wasn’t prepared for the meandering plot and its misleading importance. By this I mean that the physical resemblance of the miner and the pit chief initially seemed like a notable development, but further viewing reveals it more as the equivalent of Hitchcock’s MacGuffin.
As I see it, the most important idea coming from the two men’s resemblance rises out of Teshigahara’s interest in identity, a theme later explored in his third feature with Abe, The Face of Another, and highlighted by Criterion’s choice of an embossed fingerprint for their box set cover. From this perspective, it’s mildly fascinating, if under-explored. The main character in Pitfall has his life ended solely because he’s mistaken for someone else, a man of importance in a petty dispute between mining organizations. At least that’s the impression the audience gets from the film. There’s no confirmation and the mysterious assassin, clad completely in white, remains a mythic question mark. Without any inclination of motive or speck of rationale, the audience is left assuming that the murderous man in white was employed to kill his initial victim’s lookalike. The only concrete evidence we have to verify this is an inconclusive piece of paper the killer removes from his victim’s body.
Pitfall is a film that largely requires the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions. We’re never left with any doubt as to Teshigahara’s political leanings (established almost immediately in the opening titles by the shot of a malnourished child’s swollen stomach), but most everything that happens in the film is either unresolved or explained with the vaguest of answers. The wordless child of the stabbed miner initially seems like an innocent, a victim of circumstance. As the film progresses, though, our sympathy wanes and his existence becomes mysterious. His ghost of a father never once laments the now-orphaned boy and we repeatedly see him as a silent observer of crimes. Why does he take the piece of candy from his dead father? Why does the only tear we see him shed come as a result of the death of the man who looks like his father, and not when he watches the ill-fated miner try to retreat from the violent stabbings of the assassin?
The film’s strange ending, showing the child running away from the village where he’s seen four people killed, provides more questions than answers. The young boy survives, along with the immaculately-attired killer, but we’ve seen nothing to make us think this is in any way a hopeful resolution. The assassin, exuding a strange charisma associated with well-dressed men, is undeniably a bad man. Had he killed only the miner, we might reluctantly sympathize with his professionalism, but the unnecessary murder of the candy woman tips the scales in favor of a more sinister characterization. By the end, the only living person who’s seen him and lived to tell was the miner’s young son. As James Quandt intuitively points out on the Criterion disc’s excellent video essay, this doesn’t bode well for the child’s future endeavors. His “escape” can be viewed with the devastating counterpoint that he really has nowhere to retreat and his life, assuming he survives, could just as easily follow the path of the assassin as the miner existence of his father.
Like the boy’s fate, much of the film is open-ended. As I mentioned earlier, we know little about the scooter-riding assassin or his motives, but the entire procedural aspect is mostly left unresolved as well. We see police inspectors in white coats and newspaper reporters investigating the initial murder, but both of these aspects are abandoned, shown little importance in relation to the deaths and ghostly incarnations. The audience knows the culprit of each murder, of course, but we see little resembling an investigation. Perhaps this is another political statement from Teshigahara, that of bureaucratic inefficiency, and it certainly adds to the film’s messy qualities of unresolved plot lines and ambiguous conclusions. Without any sort of closure, spiritual or otherwise, the audience is left just as frustrated as the characters in the film.
That’s not to say the film doesn’t achieve greatness. It does, in spite of its flaws. Teshigahara’s debut succeeds as a haunting entry into a world completely foreign to the great majority of 21st century DVD consumers. Though he directed very few fictional features in his career, the filmmaker made an undeniable impact in world cinema and became the first Japanese director nominated as Best Director at the Academy Awards for Woman in the Dunes, his follow-up to Pitfall. Personally, I find the work of Teshigahara and Shohei Imamura, both disciples of the so-called Japanese New Wave, far more interesting than more popular directors like Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu. Each liked to repeatedly return to the same themes, but I find more appealing and exhilarating ideas in the former two’s films.
- Masters of Cinema R2
- Criterion Collection R1
Criterion’s DVD for Pitfall has an impressively rendered picture (though windowboxed), and noticeably superior even to the MoC release. The image is strikingly clear, with intermittent specks of dirt seemingly on the lens that do nothing to inhibit the image quality. If anything, they make the film feel more real and alive in its lifelike reproduction of the grimy world faced by postwar Japanese miners struggling with conflicts both physical and political. I can’t say I like the overlaps between the two DVD outfits, but I’m glad that one is at least improving on the other. It should be pointed out, as well, that the informative Tony Rayns provides a commentary exclusive to the MoC edition, while the Criterion release, only available in the Teshigahara set, boasts the Quandt video essay. Both include a worthwhile original trailer for the film, creepy and accomplished in and of itself. Because I’m a sucker, I treasure both the MoC and the Criterion, but, if forced to choose, I’d probably pick the latter for its startling improvement in image quality. Teshigahara and Abe’s fourth and final collaboration The Man Without a Map (aka The Ruined Map) remains conspicuously absent on English-language DVD, and would have been a nice addition to the Criterion set