Hold Back the Dawn May 26, 2008
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1940s, Billy Wilder , add a comment
There are two reasons I’ve been anxious to see Hold Back the Dawn. One is Billy Wilder and the other is a nonexistent cockroach. I’ve brought this up before, but it’s a good enough story that you really can’t tell it too many times. When Wilder was still under contract as a writer for Paramount, he took to writing an adaptation of the not-yet-published book that became Hold Back the Dawn with his usual partner Charles Brackett. The director Mitchell Leisen, who had previously helmed Midnight, also written by Wilder and Brackett, was assigned the picture and Charles Boyer had the starring role. His character is a Romanian dancer/gigolo (no doubt an “occupation” close to Wilder’s heart) named Georges who’s stuck in a Mexican purgatory while he waits for his immigration papers to be approved, estimated to be a few years because of the U.S. quota system in place at the time.
Early on in the film, after a cutesy opening where Boyer, in character, visits the Paramount lot (hello Veronica Lake) in search of a director he’d met in Europe (played by Leisen) to tell his story to in exchange for $500, Georges finds himself unshaven and holed up inside his Mexican hotel room. In Wilder and Brackett’s original script, a cockroach was to walk towards a broken mirror and Boyer’s character, frustrated by not being able to obtain his immigration papers, would interrogate the cockroach about the insect’s visa. As Wilder told it, Boyer nixed the idea as being idiotic and Leisen backed his actor. The writers weren’t even allowed on set to protest and Wilder decided that was the last time he’d write a script he couldn’t direct himself. Thus, out of a missing cockroach scene, Billy Wilder’s career as director was hatched. He’d deliberately pick a commercial project, The Major and the Minor, for his first directing job the following year.
So, after finally seeing Hold Back the Dawn, it’s pretty obvious where the cockroach would have appeared and it’s also pretty obvious that it wouldn’t have changed the existing picture much at all. Surely Wilder was looking to branch out into directing anyway and this little episode could have been a push, real or imagined, into that area. I say it wouldn’t have affected the film because Wilder’s gallows humor is already all over that first portion of the movie and hardly present for the remainder. It’s a very atypical Wilder script, briefly witty in the early goings but mostly a conventional romantic drama told quite well. The story is good, the acting is superb, and the direction by Leisen is unimaginative and adequate. Had the cockroach scene been filmed and put in the movie, the only difference would have been an odd little interlude unessential to the plot or characterizations. Yet, Wilder was notorious for demanding his scripts be adhered to by the actors without changing a word or even an emphasis. One wonders if he’d have been so strict later on had Leisen filmed what was written. (Probably so!)
Some of the most obviously Wilderian touches are, as I alluded to above, in the first act. Not only was Wilder likely able to step into Georges’ dancing and gigolo shoes, as he’d been in the same position while living in Berlin, but the Mexican layover before entering the United States was one Wilder had likewise experienced firsthand. After leaving Germany upon Hitler’s rise to power, he first went to Paris and then tried to come into the U.S. via Mexico. He apparently came across an immigration officer who was a film enthusiast and, after learning of Wilder’s desire to write movies, allowed him in the country with the instruction to “make good ones.” Boyer’s Georges isn’t so lucky. He’s stuck in the Hotel Esperanza when his former dancing partner Anita (Paulette Goddard) happens to show up. She tells him that marrying an American will get him into the country in just four weeks.
Here’s where Wilder’s classic opportunist model comes in, as Georges thinks back to the Californian schoolteacher he encountered earlier. Emmy Brown (Olivia de Havilland) had a car full of students on a field trip for the Fourth of July when she rear-ended another vehicle. The car must be fixed and Georges just happens to pass by the mechanic shop. She’s anxious to head back home, but Georges, after a brief and failed attempt on another woman, needs just a couple of hours to win her over. It’s loneliness finds loneliness when the two meet. Emmy can’t resist his charms. Georges then conspires with Anita to wait out the four weeks so that he can get a quick divorce and the two dance partners can bring their show to New York. The monkey wrench is Emmy showing up unexpectedly and Georges quickly taking her on an impromptu honeymoon. His feelings begin to change and he realizes he can’t just coldly discard Emmy.
This second act, where the Boyer character hardly resembles the scoundrel from earlier, plays exactly like a classic Hollywood movie. That is to say that it’s entertaining, but safe and predictable. The third act shakes things up a little by letting Paulette Goddard shine first and de Havilland follow in an Oscar-worthy scene that mauls over the other actors in its force of nature-type glory. The sequence isn’t overdone or played with histrionics, a nice reigning in from Leisen, but it’s powerful all the same. It sounds patently obvious, but de Havilland really was some kind of actress. Watching the movie with the knowledge that Wilder and Brackett were apparently still writing the final portion of the film when they learned Boyer had refused to soliloquy with their cockroach, it’s easy to recognize how they turned the actor from star to third banana.
I’m not going to say the film suffers from this transition in focus because it’s still a good picture, but the first act certainly feels like a Wilder movie whereas the rest just doesn’t. Georges changes, leading to the happy ending audiences expect even now from Hold Back the Dawn, and he’s far less interesting as a result. Again, his reform is one we can actively root for in the context of classic movie happy resolutions, but it somewhat betrays the original character and strips the film of any more of those Wilder touches I love so much. You put the cockroach scene in and we might have altered second and third acts, but, by itself, I don’t think it would have tipped the scales much either way in the version that exists now. My hindsight goggles are content to keep it out of the picture so we can enjoy Double Indemnity, Sunset Blvd., Ace in the Hole, The Apartment, etc. Seems like a fair trade-off.
(Hold Back the Dawn is not on DVD anywhere in the world to my knowledge and is controlled by Universal.)
The Getaway May 17, 2008
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1970s , 7 comments
It’s not very popular to assert the opinion that The Getaway is your favorite Sam Peckinpah film. As just a casual Peckinpah admirer, I might be able to get away with it, but I know I’m skating on thin ice among the faithful. I can only imagine the dismissive reaction I’d have if someone called Sabrina their favorite Billy Wilder movie. It could be generational. Peckinpah’s films now feel very much like the product of a bygone era. They’ve influenced countless filmmakers, but show almost zero modernity in comparison to what’s come along this decade. His patience is not particularly in style nowadays. Yet, that laconic quality is part of why I appreciate The Getaway so much. The film takes its time from start to finish. It’s an action movie with very little action.
As far as movie stars who understood subtlety in the ’60s and ’70s, the discussion begins and ends with Steve McQueen. The idea of him overacting is inconceivable. Detractors might view this as an emptiness, but I’d beg to differ. While the method style of acting gained notoriety for overdoing emotions to the point of fake realism, McQueen didn’t choose this particular path. His style was far more contemplative. A look from McQueen could eliminate half a page of dialogue. I’d love to have seen what Jean-Pierre Melville would have done with him. Instead, we know what Peckinpah was able to achieve while working with the actor both here and on Junior Bonner, two of McQueen’s four or five best films. In The Getaway, he’s Doc McCoy, who suffers the remedial prison life until his wife (Ali MacGraw) pays a porn-like visit to a man with bureaucratic pull named Benyon (Ben Johnson).
Even MacGraw’s terrible acting works here in this particular scene. She’s so stilted, so uncomfortable, that the character inherits a blank slate of determination at any cost. With Doc out of prison, the next step is to further appease Benyon by robbing a bank with two of his thugs. The title of the film obviously alludes to the aftermath and not the actual heist, instructive because Peckinpah handles the robbery with an uninterested coolness. It’s quick, messy, and little more than a slight curve in the road. A half million is siphoned out, but McCoy’s unwanted partners become thorns. One is killed and one kills. Rudy (Al Lettieri) somehow survives after ambushing Doc, whose lack of trust saves him, but still fails to eliminate his greedy cohort. And we’re off on a chase where Mr. and Mrs. McCoy transport the bag of money around Texas, losing it in the process, before realizing Rudy and his new traveling companions (Jack Dodson and Sally Struthers) are just a few steps behind.
McQueen and MacGraw fell for each other while making the movie, and even if you can’t really tell much of anything from looking at her face, McQueen hardly hides his attraction. The naive outrage he has upon learning that she had negotiated his release from prison with her body plays like natural hurt. His initial confusion after re-entering the outside world and sitting beside MacGraw in bed is similarly realistic. In McQueen’s best movies, including the two he did with Peckinpah, the viewer can just see an uncommon intelligence at work behind his eyes. Never one to relish much dialogue, the actor’s subdued performances have rarely been given their due. I miss that style of underacting. It rewards audiences willing to actually pay attention to what’s on the screen instead of bathroom and obesity break pausing. Much is made of McQueen’s enormous style and charisma (and deservedly so), but, in the right role, he really was a terrific actor.
His sequence on the train in this film is probably my favorite, where a small-time con man thinks he’s lucked into the fat case of money only to have Doc track him down and administer a beating to the point of unconsciousness. McQueen says maybe a line or two (”when you work on a lock, don’t leave any scratches”) and demonstrates what it means to be a screen icon. The black suit with thin black tie helps, but none of his peers (even Paul Newman, who was McQueen’s unofficial rival and a better actor) could have so convincingly pulled it off with so few lines. This is the beauty of The Getaway for me. Peckinpah trusts McQueen (who also had final cut) enough to allow him to hardly say anything throughout the entire picture. It’s a movie with a minimum of dialogue, and little action, but played out with surprising coherence, never leaving the viewer uninterested.
In a very logical sense, The Getaway is framed around a classic film noir plot. Several things negate it being a true noir (most obviously - when it was made, being filmed in color, and the ending), but the film’s structure of the protagonist being released from prison and subsequently taking part in an imperfect bank robbery is prototypical of the style. Indeed, McQueen would have been absolutely perfect as a film noir hero. This film is probably the closest he ever came to making what might be considered a neonoir, but the actor’s ingrown ability to play characters who seem to place an emphasis on survival over all else could have fit ever so neatly a couple of decades earlier. Doc’s relationship with the MacGraw character is both reminiscent of a femme fatale and a trustworthy moll. The actress’s vacuous inability to register on any level could only possibly be endearing in a film like this, where understated minimalism is applauded next to a vast landscape of unwritten Texas possibility. The less she says the more believable she seems.
It’s a bit absurd to try and figure out where the McCoys fit in among these criminals. Their almost total refusal to disrupt some fictional code of crime ethics prevents the viewer from harboring any ill will and McQueen’s charm tips the scales in his favor with spades. This overwhelming glamorization is a little disturbing for those who enjoy sleeping well at night. Doc is an ex-con bank robber who’s completely let off the hook by Peckinpah and screenwriter Walter Hill (working from Jim Thompson’s book). McQueen probably knew the audience would cheer him on and want his character to experience crisis without consequences. He’s right, of course. The thought of Doc receiving any kind of comeuppance would seem to be entirely foreign in lieu of how he’s portrayed throughout the film. These are glaring imperfections in a film that never makes claim of being anything but a fine entry in the McQueen legend. In that regard, it’s nearly flawless. In other facets, maybe less so. I tend to be forgiving to a fault with The Getaway because of its casual likability. Peckinpah was a director-for-hire and McQueen was out to further his legacy of cool, but I turn my head and forgive the blemishes.
This most recent watch of the film was on HD-DVD and it should be mentioned that an additional featurette about Jerry Fielding’s rejected score is here despite not being on the standard DVD release. Also absent but present on the high-definition release, I believe, are the bank robbery sequence with Fielding’s score and the entire film with his isolated score as an audio track. Quincy Jones scored the film as released and it’s mostly excellent, but Fielding was a close collaborator with Peckinpah up to this point and his contribution is an interesting addition. Certainly this hi-def version is superior to the regular DVD release because it contains additional supplemental material. However, I will add that skin tones are quite red, almost distractingly so early on, but detail and clarity are predictably excellent and better than the DVD.
99 River Street April 27, 2008
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s , add a comment
If film noir had an official sport it would be boxing. Black and white cinematography perfectly captures the sweat and grit of two men pounding their gloved fists into each other’s raw skin. Raging Bull isn’t a film noir, but it accomplishes the visual doom of a fight without the use of color, as does The Set-Up, Robert Wise’s brilliantly lean noir starring Robert Ryan. Boxing threatens to be the subject of Phil Karlson’s 99 River Street, too, but it’s soon shown to be a visual trick. The audience sees a match that turns out to be a television replay being watched by the man getting his eye punched into partial working order. Ernie Driscoll (John Payne) is now driving taxi cabs in New York City and his marriage to Pauline (Peggie Castle) seems ruptured. Things were probably better when Ernie was regularly winning fights, but his new dream of opening a filling station isn’t glamorous enough for Pauline’s taste.
Ernie’s boss and pal Stan (Frank Faylen) suggests a tried and true method of patching things up with Pauline: buy her a big box of chocolates, take her out on the town, mix in a few glasses of brandy, and whisper sweet nothings in her ear. The next thing you know a bouncing baby will pop out and everything will be good as new again. Ernie’s plan never gets off the ground, though. He has the chocolates, but it’s Pauline who surprises him by kissing her lover Victor Rawlins (Brad Dexter) at the flower shop where she works. Ernie is both devastated and livid. He then gets distracted by would-be Broadway actress Linda James (Evelyn Keyes) who confesses she’s killed someone. Ernie means well, but ends up with an arrest warrant for assault and battery. By the time the ex-boxer finds his wife’s dead body in the backseat of his cab, things seem like they could hardly be any worse
Though Payne is a generic noir protagonist, 99 River Street has enough other attributes to merit a closer look. Karlson’s direction is expectedly stellar, and Franz Planer, who would go on to shoot several Audrey Hepburn films, emits some strong noir camera work. There’s a very striking cut to Peggie Castle’s legs, with a mirror visible in the background between her two outstretched limbs and Brad Dexter appearing in the reflection. It’s an exquisite image. Another memorably framed shot comes when Linda, by now tagging along to help Ernie no matter the cost, meets up with Rawlins. Their cigarettes kiss and ash never looked so sensual. The entire scene, played out in a Jersey bar, gives Keyes the chance to fully steal the film.
Her performance is deserving of high praise as one of film noir’s essential female characterizations. Linda is first introduced as seemingly delusional, an actress who’s been in the city three years without a job and thinks she’ll land a lead role in a Broadway play. We next encounter her as a more hysterical figure, but learn this was merely her acting a part. This back story of the character as a struggling actress works perfectly within the film’s plot. Unhappy with letting down her friend Ernie, she remains loyal as a witness to his innocence and gets another opportunity to play a role, this time as a flirtatious barfly. The bedroom eyes she gives Rawlins make for an absolutely breathtaking shift that’s perfectly executed by Keyes. To see the importance of contextual performance in film noir, watch Evelyn Keyes here. She’s exceptional.
Another turn I enjoyed in the film was from Jack Lambert, a character actor who initially comes across as a poor man’s Lee Marvin, but sort of carves out his own B-movie villain niche in the process. He also pops up in Kiss Me Deadly alongside Jack Elam as Paul Stewart’s henchmen. That 99 River Street was obviously a low-budget film with modest expectations is a reality that probably should be taken into consideration, but it doesn’t really burden the picture in any way. Sure you could put Robert Mitchum in the Payne role and have a stronger film, but you’d also lose something. Mitchum would make it his own and distract from the narrative. As it is, the film curves through unpredictable paths and the audience can never be sure how Ernie, with a built-in volatility from his fighting days, will react. Payne’s a stiff, but the fact that his character has been placed in a very noir and desperate situation shouldn’t be overlooked.
One of the hallmarks of 1950’s film noir, as opposed to most of what came out of the 1940’s, can be found in the evolution of the protagonist into a wrongly accused innocent. It’s the paranoia angle that would especially rise up in the politically-themed films of the 1970’s. Hitchcock loved this motif, using it to good effect in The Wrong Man, I Confess, and the non-noir North by Northwest. It’s also found in The Big Heat, Crime Wave, Nightfall, and Karlson’s Kansas City Confidential, among others. The idea that someone not guilty of a crime would be hunted by law enforcement now seems very much like a movie plot, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that this basic insinuation betrays the ideal that the police are infallible. We know, of course, that they’re not, but we also know that criminals don’t always receive the justice they do in movies. Exploring these themes of vengeance owed and non-guilty protagonists getting framed for crimes they didn’t commit was a favorite of Karlson’s, as well.
In 99 River Street, the director was able to put both to good use. It seems like Ernie might have killed someone if given the chance, but his hands stay clean. He certainly has reason to lash out, and the overall tone feels bleakly pessimistic. By the film’s end, when we learn the title address is actually in Jersey City, desolate blacks cover the night sky of the waterfront and that unmistakable noir mood becomes all-consuming. The happy conclusion betrays the template, but it’s forgivable. Even with Payne’s shortcomings, which admittedly could be seen as strengths allowing the viewer to easily relate to the actor, this is still an important film noir, made by one of the movement’s unsung champions. A DVD release seems like an obvious prospect, but nothing so far. The theatrical print I saw was almost stunning in detail and rich black levels, nearly immaculate from start to finish. It was part of a United Artists’ 90th anniversary retrospective so here’s hoping MGM follows their noir releases of last summer with a fresh set very soon.
Weather Changes Moods April 18, 2008
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films , add a commentA bevy of exciting filmgoing experiences are in store for those in the New York area (which is, in all likelihood, no one else who will be reading this). Feel free to live vicariously and I’ll promise to reciprocate. I’ve just returned from opening night of a gorgeous print of Arthur Penn’s Mickey One, freshly struck by Sony. Penn was on hand to introduce the film, but only commented briefly about the score. That’s understandable, however, because it was being shown as part of the Museum of Modern Art’s extensive series “Jazz Score,” which lasts until September and features movies and shorts that prominently use jazz. I already have DVDs for most of what’s scheduled so far, things like Elevator to the Gallows and Sweet Smell of Success, but I’m especially excited to see a pair of Shirley Clarke films coming in May. Both The Connection (on DVD, but somewhat difficult to find) and The Cool World are showing twice in May. Second Run released Clarke’s Portrait of Jason, and I’d love to see similar attention given to that pair.
Before Mickey One, Penn mentioned that he had brought in Eddie Sauter to do the score, with the idea that Sauter would bring a similar unconventional attitude as Penn was planning for the film. What he said he didn’t know was that Sauter was good friends with Stan Getz, who tagged along to the recording sessions and ended up making an indelible impression on the film through his saxophone improvisations. Certainly the score sticks out in Mickey One, not to rival what Miles Davis did for Elevator to the Gallows, but with an undeniable strength nonetheless. Taking into consideration that this was only Penn’s third feature, after The Left-Handed Gun and The Miracle Worker, it was a blazing leap forward. With Warren Beatty as his star and Godard and Truffaut serving as obvious influences, Mickey One must have looked almost nothing like anything Penn, Beatty, or anyone else was making in America in 1965.
Beatty is the title character, a Detroit nightclub comic who may or may not have several thousand dollars’ worth of gambling debts to the mob. He moves to Chicago where he’s dubbed “Mickey One” and returns to his natural calling of strip clubs and bars before getting a shot at a bigger pond, the Xanadu, where the man calling the shots is a very weird, very gay Hurd Hatfield. Mickey sees his death in everything, with paranoia leaking through his pores, and resists the Xanadu for fear of the mob possibly having found him out. A few audacious cuts and playful edits recall Breathless and other films of the Nouvelle Vague. The black and white cinematography, absolutely a sterling effort from Ghislain Cloquet, whose credits include everything from Night and Fog and Le Feu follet to Au hasard Balthazar and Mouchette, sort of reminded me of the later film Lenny, Bob Fosse’s biopic about Lenny Bruce. There’s a definite Kafka feel to the whole thing, too. That existential question mark about Mickey’s involvement brings to mind The Trial. Overall, a very odd, but exceptionally interesting film that should be on DVD.
Meanwhile, in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the mayhem of 1968, the Film Society of Lincoln Center is offering up 1968: An International Perspective. With selections from Godard (La Chinoise), Marker (Grin Without a Cat), Oshima (The Man Who Left His Will on Film, aka The Battle of Tokyo or He Died After the War), and Antonioni (Zabriskie Point), among others, this looks to be an exceptional series of rarely shown films not readily available on DVD. I’ve only seen two in that series, WR: Mysteries of the Organism and Medium Cool. I’m afraid I’ll dislike Zabriskie Point, but I’m still anxious to see it. Film Forum also gets in on some ‘68 fever by showing five weeks of Godard’s films from the 1960’s. Not being a huge Godard admirer, I can’t say how often I’ll be partaking, but my sights are set on Made in the U.S.A. and Sympathy for the Devil. My favorite Godard film Vivre sa vie, and one which I do have total admiration for, will play for a full week in a new print, courtesy of Janus Films. Criterion will surely be releasing a comprehensive DVD later in the year.
Possibly the most anticipated program at the local repertory theaters for me personally comes later on when Film Forum will dedicate seven (!) weeks to legendary Japanese actor Tatsuya Nakadai, from June 20 to August 7. Words can barely contain my enthusiasm for such a tribute, which includes a pair of personal appearances by the actor. Hiroshi Teshigahara’s The Face of Another is one of my favorite films and will be shown in the retrospective, as will everything from Harakiri (with Nakadai present for a Q&A), Yojimbo, High and Low, Kagemusha, Ran, and three weeks of The Human Condition trilogy. The real gems are the things not yet on English-friendly DVD - films like Ichikawa’s I Am a Cat and Odd Obsession, Naruse’s Untamed, Kobayashi’s Black River, and Hideo Gosha’s Onimasa and Goyokin. As much as I hold Toshiro Mifune near and dear, Nakadai may be my favorite Japanese actor so I’m absolutely ecstatic at the possibility of seeing him in person. Kudos to everyone at Film Forum for having the guts to dedicate one of their screens for such a long period of time to Nakadai.
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes April 7, 2008
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1970s, Billy Wilder , 4 comments
When looking at Billy Wilder’s films as director, there are four that especially stick out in terms of incompatibility with the rest. The Emperor Waltz is a Bing Crosby musical and generally regarded as unsuccessful on most every level. The Spirit of St. Louis, despite being a fine film, puts Wilder in studio-constricted biopic land. Witness for the Prosecution, another excellent movie, has few, if any, of Wilder’s signatures and seems like it could have been made by at least half a dozen other competent directors. Then there’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, Wilder’s 1970 needling of Arthur Conan Doyle’s mythic detective. The film exists only in a version that was drastically shortened from the original intentions of Wilder and his longtime screenwriting partner I.A.L. Diamond, but it still manages to feel like a cohesive, brilliantly executed whole.
There are certainly several of Wilder’s fingerprints in the picture, it’s just that the use of such a well-known character and the Scottish locations, among other things, feels like fresh dust. It’s a perfect marriage of classic Hollywood filmmaking with the newfound freedoms that resulted from an especially creative period in American movies. For some people, the problem may be that it’s not entirely either one of those. The pacing is deliberate and relaxed, yet the first half hour has little to do with the remainder of the film. Holmes and the trusty Dr. Watson may be familiar names ingrained in most of our memories, but the portrayals are hardly consistent with interpretations up to that point. Holmes, in particular, is much more ambiguous and complex, with noncommittal sexual preference, questionable decision making, and an unapologetic dependency on cocaine.
These are attributes parsed from the original stories, to be sure, but they still vary significantly from the consensus of Holmes as an infallible master of deduction. Robert Stephens, whose cocktail of whiskey and sleeping pills during the shoot delayed production for weeks, plays Holmes as prim, proper and arrogant, all attempts to mask the character’s sadness. Colin Blakely’s Watson is just the opposite, convivial and slightly bumbling. Both performances are perfectly used by Wilder, regardless of how they fit in with Conan Doyle’s mythology. As we see in the film, Holmes scolds Watson repeatedly about his extreme glamorization of the detective’s work. Considering these are two of the most famous fictional characters in literary history, it’s undeniable that Wilder and Diamond had a difficult task in bringing their skewed version of Holmes and Watson to the screen. The interesting thing is that the film seems destined to disappoint both those looking for a Sherlock Holmes movie and the ones interested in a typical Billy Wilder effort. And yet The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is an exceptional film. No wonder it was a commercial disappointment! Who’s supposed to embrace this thing again?
People who enjoy quality filmmaking, for starters. That initial half hour, when Holmes and Watson are mysteriously summoned to a Russian performance of Swan Lake so that the star can request the detective’s paternal seed, is so good that you wonder why other films don’t frequently employ episodic structures. Of course, that was Wilder’s intention, to present a series of four episodes, all of which were filmed and ready to go. A story about a Belgian woman dropped on the doorstep of Holmes and Watson, leading the trio to Scotland and an apparent encounter with the Loch Ness Monster, comprises the remaining hour and a half while the other two portions were cut. In terms of holy grails of lost footage, as much as I’d like to see Orson Welles’ more complete version of The Magnificent Ambersons, I think I’d be equally anxious to see the full version of Wilder’s film. It’s a huge credit to Wilder’s ability as a director that even with the severe edits he was able to produce something as brilliant as the existing cut is here.
After Gabrielle Valladon (played by the lovely Genevieve Page) is deposited at Holmes’ Baker Street address, Wilder does well to produce a subversion of the famous character’s well-documented skills, veiled in a pretty good mystery. At some point, it seems natural to try and understand why Wilder and Diamond would bother in making a fairly difficult film with Holmes as the center. The best explanation I can come up with would be the desire to portray Holmes as a man wrongly described, whose actual attributes are far more humanlike than what’s shown in the stories. It’s the burden of brilliance, but also the inconvenience of not being as intelligent as your superhuman reputation. There are several chuckles, but the film certainly isn’t a comedy so I don’t think that was ever the aim, to place Holmes in a simple and slightly comic series of situations. It would seem more that the idea was for a repositioning of the Holmes character as a man unable to deal with his basic loneliness and alienation, soothed only by pompous one-upping of his sidekick Watson and frequent drug use.
The Holmes here is ultimately a failure at the hands of technology, bested by his brother Mycroft, who, in turn, suffers a major miscalculation of his own. So is it the dissolving of myths that Wilder is interested in? Is this his Liberty Valance? Yeah, I sort of think so. Though he was only 64 at the film’s release, and would churn out four more pictures afterwards, Wilder created his definitive “old man” movie here. The call-backs to a more classic style even than in his previous few efforts and the patience of experience he displays are both important elements to bridging the old with the new. Even when Wilder was younger, he didn’t normally employ the classical and calculated sense of purpose seen here. The structure is considered and nearly perfect. This is part of why it’s so incredible to think that the film was initially envisioned as much longer. The existing version feels appropriate as it is, only marred, in my opinion, a little by the first part of the Loch Ness Monster bit.
When Sherlock Holmes fails to really do much of anything right, despite his predictably shortsighted detective work, it’s at the expense of volumes of lionizing literature. The film thus works as a warning against the perils of smug overconfidence. For Holmes, the sticky truth isn’t that he’s a failure (something he seems to be fighting against throughout), but that a promising opportunity for romance has been squandered. It’s a slow realization, but by the end it’s obvious that he’s in movie love with the not-really Belgian Gabrielle/Ilse. The sexuality aspect here is interesting because Wilder and Diamond put it at the forefront for the viewer. Holmes’ reluctance to declare his heterosexuality to Watson early on seems to be due to one of three reasons: 1.) He’s being coy; 2.) He’s unsure himself as to his current feelings; or 3.) He’s so desexualized as to make it seemingly irrelevant. I think any of these three explanations work perfectly fine. With any of them, Holmes makes it obvious that he’s not actively searching for female companionship, making the presence of Gabrielle/Ilse a difficult situation.
The forced push at the end, when Holmes seems to realize his feelings for her just when she’s no longer attainable, serves as another reminder of how empty his life is. Watson and his silly stories are just about all the character has going for him. Then when it looks like the audience will be treated to the usual ending wrapped in sentimentality, Wilder continues the film and, in so doing, removes any trace of happiness. Watson is little more than a hyper-intelligent canine with a medical bag and Holmes the junkie can only shoot up and pass out (off-screen, of course). In essence, this is Wilder’s most daring film since Ace in the Hole, and it appeals to generally no one outside the director’s most devoted followers. He was able to completely demystify a legendary character with a huge following, using a fully sincere approach, while also putting together a deceptive genre story that proves quite entertaining. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is destined to remain largely unappreciated because it has few of the attributes Wilder is most known for, but it’s nevertheless an atypical slice of brilliance from the director.
Wilder himself apparently disagreed. In Cameron Crowe’s book Conversations with Wilder, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is characterized by its creator as basically a great film ruined by later editing after the director went off to another country (shades of Ambersons). Wilder retained final cut in his contract, but a terrible test screening and a supposedly misplaced negative resulted in the trimmed version, topping out at 125 minutes, being what hit theaters. Other reports seem to indicate Wilder was agreeable with the existing edit. Regardless, upon release it promptly sank, just like Ace in the Hole. Wilder had gone four years since the release of his last film, The Fortune Cookie, and it’s not surprising that audiences mostly stayed away from this one. The financially successful films of 1970 were either epic spectacles like Aiport and Patton or then-daring expressions of a new generation like M*A*S*H and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. Ironically, despite the freedom afforded Wilder that probably would have been unimaginable a decade or two earlier, his audience was no longer interested.
The saga of the film’s different incarnations is well documented on the R1 DVD, which ported over several of the laserdisc extras. A new 15-minute interview (from 2003) with Christopher Lee, who plays Mycroft Holmes, doesn’t shed a lot of light on the various cuts, but it does give Lee the chance to single out Wilder as the best director he’s ever worked with, and it also lets the actor reminisce on his own turns playing Sherlock Holmes. The film’s editor Ernest Walter, the man referred to by Wilder in Crowe’s book, goes into great detail about what was cut and so forth in a half-hour interview from the mid-nineties that was originally on the laserdisc. Then, you can see for yourself much of what was removed. A prologue with Colin Blakely as Watson’s modern-day grandson would have further set up the idea that these four episodes derived from material deemed too private to be published in Holmes’ lifetime. This particular portion is told on the DVD from still photos and script excerpts, but the viewer definitely gets a good feeling of how it might have turned out.
The crude reconstruction continues with one of the excised sequences, a lengthy story involving an upside down room. It has audio, but only photographs instead of video. I think this would have been an exceptionally strong portion of the film had it remained because it reinforces the idea that Watson cares deeply for Holmes and that the detective is sort of miserably entwined in his own intelligence. The next scene removed was a brief flashback where Holmes and Gabrielle/Ilsa are just about to go to sleep on the train. The scene was intended as a means for explaining some of Holmes’ reluctance to become romantically involved, stemming from an incident with a schoolboy crush who turned out to be a prostitute. This too would have fit perfectly within the film and improved the existing scene without bogging it down.
The final episode not in the finished film exists on the DVD in letterboxed video, but is missing the audio. The dialogue from the script has been inserted as subtitles. The scene is very funny and concerns Watson putting on Holmes’ hat (literally) and trying to solve a murder. In relation to the rest of the film, it seems to fit the least of the cut portions. If the movie had been made today, this little bit could have worked perfectly as a DVD-only extra or even a short intended to run before the film. All total, there’s over an hour of extra material here, all of which was shot and excluded from the final cut. The inclusion of this footage on the DVD is really something to be thankful for, but the hope that somehow Wilder’s full version could be restored still nags.
The Sniper April 3, 2008
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s , 4 comments
You know you’re in for a bit of “social enlightenment” when a prologue comes up even before the studio logo. In the case of The Sniper, Edward Dmytryk’s 1952 return from the Hollywood blacklist, the viewer is promised a “man whose enemy was womankind.” In several ways, this is a novel approach. Here we have a movie about a man who was sent away to prison for violently going after a woman with a baseball bat, placed in the psych ward, and paroled despite still being under psychological care. The film’s point of view could easily have been that Edward Miller (played by Arthur Franz) was a product of either his own insanity or, alternatively, society’s. Even the idea that an unstable criminal might have a reason for his madness is unusual for movies of this era, when the bad guys are often portrayed as shadowy black hats without the need for analysis. We accept villains simply because they do unseemly things the same way we recognize cops because they carry a badge and retain a serious demeanor at all times.
The much more humanistic path taken by Dmytryk’s film, trying to understand what causes men like Miller to inflict pain on others, is a tricky one, especially when dealing with someone who’s shown killing pretty brunettes in cold blood. Though not elaborated on, the culprit of Miller’s irrational violence towards women is implied to be his mother. A handful of years before the screen’s most famous mother complex, in Psycho, a man is shown indiscriminately shooting women from afar because he’s apparently trying to repeatedly murder the one who gave birth to him. The audience witnesses a test run when Wilson aims his rifle from above, steadies a female neighbor in his sight, and pulls the trigger, resulting in an empty click. In the first of many hints of sympathy, the man copes with his psychosis by struggling for help. His prison shrink isn’t available so he intentionally burns his hand on the apartment stove.
By the time Miller actually does claim someone’s life, his reaction veers significantly from remorse. A friendly customer of the killer’s dry cleaning delivery job, played by the always welcome Marie Windsor, is coldly shot outside the club where she plays piano, her head breaking the glass that encloses an advertisement with her own picture on it. The images are bold, abrupt, and startling. The killer’s answer is to have a drink at a bar. He’s happier now than at any other point in the film, acting as though some pressurized force has finally been unleashed. The second killing is even more striking and follows soon after. A woman at the same bar writes her address on a coaster, but soon rebuffs him upon sensing his instability. She then goes home, fixes herself a drink and stands behind an uncovered window. She too is shot in the head, as an efficient bullet leaves behind shattered glass. As we’ve seen and read about serial killers in the decades since, Wilson is the type who begs to be caught, and even writes a letter to the police anonymously seeking capture.
At this point, about midway in, the film shifts from a character study about a mentally ill serial killer to a rather conventional, sometimes preachy police procedural. Most surprising is that the headlining actor playing the main detective is none other than political wingnut Adolphe Menjou, one of the loudest voices of the HUAC-supporting Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. Showing his true stripes were dotted with green instead of faux red, white, and blue, Menjou here takes top billing in a movie directed by a man who was an admitted Communist for a brief period of time, and who had just recently been released from serving four and a half months of prison time for refusing to cooperate with the Congressional witch hunt. Values. Of course, Dmytryk by this time had groveled away his reputation (RIP Jules) and helped legitimize the whole sordid mess, so he was apparently “cured.” The involvement of message man Stanley Kramer as producer adds even more to the intrigue.
Reportedly shot, er, filmed in a remarkably quick amount of time (just 18 days according to this excellent article), The Sniper may have given Menjou a swift paycheck and top billing, but his character is underwritten and the true lead performance is from Franz as the troubled killer. Menjou’s most effective scene comes when a young punk is mistaken for the sniper and brought into the police station. The kid puts on a tough act, but Menjou gives him a good slap and he starts bawling. Is this the best way to handle those who have trouble coping with their problems? Give the whiners a swift kick in the pants so they’ll swallow their complaints? The crybaby is annoying, but the film still seems inconsistent. Miller can’t find anyone to save him from himself, yet he’s portrayed with incredible humanity given the circumstances. Menjou’s character slaps the potential junior sniper into place, but the entire movie bathes the actual killer in a warm glow of empathy.
Whether a result of intentionally ambiguous filmmaking or simply a sloppy narrative, The Sniper leaves quite a few blanks unfilled. Instead of seeming bothersome, it gives the film a tautness commonly found in such low-budget, quickly-shot films of the time. Proponents of the movie could easily argue that it urges the viewer to look deeper inside the killer’s mind and not be content to expect an explanatory flashback of the character’s various traumas. A criminal psychologist played by Richard Kiley preaches about the mentality of men like Miller, sketching out the makings of what we now know as profiling, and, though it can’t help but be slightly tedious, the scene is also fascinating because the methodology has proven true time and again. The Sniper was a decade or more ahead of its time, but it nevertheless resembles an early, truncated version of some of the finer serial killer films of the past two decades. The main difference, and the reason the film is still interesting, comes from the decision to spend well over half the runtime with the killer in a mostly non-judgmental tone, including a consistent, but still unexpected final scene that emphasizes him as a man more than a monster.
The Basement of My Brain March 16, 2008
Posted by clydefro in : Modern Films, Classic Films , 3 commentsI don’t think I want to make it a habit here, but this is a little chance to catch my breath and mention the reviews I’ve been writing for DVD Times. In case anyone reads this who doesn’t regularly visit the DVD Times site, here’s a link to all the reviews I’ve done. I’d prefer to mostly keep what I do here separate, but I’ve just put up something I wrote about one of my very favorite films, Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, and I’ve been so terrified I would screw it up that I had to put together some sort of addendum over here to help alleviate my anxiety. Like I do most of the time, I wrote the bulk of the piece in one sitting, and I’ve fretted and repeatedly read over the thing for nearly a week now. At some point, I just had to let it go and move on. I think it reads better the first or second time than the hundredth, for sure.
I also wanted to thank anyone who read or commented on my No Country for Old Men review, which has been predictably popular and yielded some kind words. I think it’s one of my favorite things I’ve written, and it’s always more fun to write about a film you love than something you’re indifferent to or flat-out don’t like. Night and the City was another one of those for me. I do like the variety of different works I get to review, and a look at what I have here coming up confirms that. The three Second Run releases I’ve reviewed have been especially rewarding, particularly Palms, and Miklós Jancsó’s The Round Up promises to be at least as challenging. Also in the near future, I’ll be writing about new volumes of The Untouchables and The Mod Squad television shows. Neither one is particularly great, but I do find something comforting and entertaining about both.
The BFI will be releasing an Otto Preminger double feature of his pre- and post-Laura films, Margin for Error and A Royal Scandal. I’ll aim to have that reviewed by the March 31st release date. There’s also the animated Bee Movie, from Jerry Seinfeld, which I just received on release date last week. That will get a run-through after I finish Eclipse’s “Lubitsch Musicals” set. There’s a certain aptness in moving through Wilder to Lubitsch to A Royal Scandal. Serendipity, I guess. I should also mention that I’m modestly proud of most likely being the first person to turn E.E. Cummings’ “anyone lived in a pretty how town” into a template for a film/DVD review of Last Holiday. I amuse myself in funny ways, not all of them successful.
Violent Saturday March 7, 2008
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s , add a comment
Richard Fleischer’s 1955 CinemaScope extravaganza Violent Saturday isn’t the small town film noir I was led to believe, but its dual climaxes certainly live up to the noir-appropriate title. I might more aptly characterize the film as some odd noir-melodrama hybrid, Stahl or Sirk via John Sturges maybe. Violent Saturday reminded me especially of Bad Day at Black Rock without the anxiety. In the Sturges film Spencer Tracy is an outsider who arrives to a suspicious town while trying to find a particular man. Fleischer’s movie also depicts outsiders, but they’re met only with smiles and courtesy despite being men with criminal intentions. Visually, the full-color dusty and dirt-filled landscapes of the two films are similar, but Violent Saturday has the distinction of including a much more inviting and active small town atmosphere. Yet, the Fleischer movie often gets a film noir label while Bad Day at Black Rock rarely does? Seems inconsistent to me. If anything, Sturges created a much more traditional noir, save for the color photography, than what we see in Violent Saturday.
For one thing, there is no true protagonist in Fleischer’s movie. Victor Mature gets top billing, but I think it’s a stretch to call his role or storyline the main thread in the film. He’s a mine engineer whose young son expresses disappointment that his best friend’s father has a war medal from Iwo Jima while Mature has merely a plaque of recognition. Macho notions of he-man masculinity and heroism require a somewhat predictable and safe ending. The idea that Mature can only make his son proud once he’s proven his “bravery” reeks of justifications for violence and I find it to be highly problematic. I’d like to think it’s just a misguided sign of the times, as outdated as the flowery dress his wife greets him in and the poptop beer can eagerly delivered by the maid as soon as he gets home from work.
The men Mature must somehow foil, for his son, his town, and, apparently, his manhood, are a trio of bank robbers who enter the small hamlet of Bradenville with their eyes set on a vault full of cash. Stephen McNally plays the leader and J. Carrol Naish is a bow-tied accomplice. Stealing the film in a gunmetal gray suit and hat is Lee Marvin as the third gang member. Marvin makes nearly every movie he’s in his own, but the scenes without the actor in Violent Saturday particularly suffer for his absence. Whether it’s stepping on a little kid’s hand after dropping his ever-present sinus inhaler or restlessly yammering on about his ex-wife to McNally in the middle of the night prior to the robbery, Marvin just keeps things more interesting when he’s around. The film slides into its turgid melodrama phase in the interim, but survives by never taking itself too seriously.
The audacity of Fleischer’s direction and Sydney Boehm’s screenplay now seems novel and almost precious. Boehm, whose other screenwriting credits include more typical noir fare like Anthony Mann’s Side Street and Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat, was working from a novel by William L. Heath. Without knowing anything about Heath or the source material, I can only assume that Boehm either emphasized the seemingly paradoxical crime thriller/melodrama aspect from the novel or that he put his own slant on the robbery aspect. Regardless, it makes for a somewhat strange animal that’s ultimately taken new places by Fleischer. All but the robbers (setting aside Marvin’s hinted neuroses) are given significant problems at home that are essentially relieved by the bank robbery. The swift crash of the title makes most everyone’s lives a little easier, with the added bonus of brief excitement, and the bad guys get their production code mandated consequence.
Fleischer takes us along for the ride with often beautiful blue skies, chirping birds and an altogether idyllic backdrop. Even the trio of criminals aren’t exactly menacing until Marvin spins around to fire a couple of convenient bullets during the robbery. The fact that one victim dies, setting up the opportunity for her husband to break off an unhappy marriage without the financial trappings of divorce, and the other (Tommy Noonan) turns out just fine enough to confess his near-stalking and peeping of his nurse (Virginia Leith) is like some kind of deranged male fantasy. The drenched-in-scotch Richard Egan should just barely eke out the time to wipe his tears away before scooping up Leith and keeping that suitcase nice and packed. Maybe it’s my cynicism, but the whole thing turns out mighty nicely for Egan.
Aside from the suds and tears (and well-orchestrated laughs thrown in for levity), it’s the idea of violence as some kind of therapeutic release that I found most intriguing about the film. As I said, the robbery becomes a magic key for the spectators and allows them to move on from the melodrama in their lives. It also gives Mature the heroism he missed in the war. We see humble reactions from the character, but no real remorse or psychological consequences. Then there’s the utterly peaceful Amish family man and farmer played by Ernest Borgnine. Very early on, the audience gets a lesson on the ways of the Amish when Naish encounters a family on a train. Later on, the robbers choose Borgnine’s farm as the place to cool off after the robbery. The Amish are portrayed as almost saintly and non-violent to a fault, espousing the message that God will watch over them. But when it comes time to throw a pitchfork into Lee Marvin’s back, it’s Borgnine, not God, who’s the hurler.
The Good Die Young March 4, 2008
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s, Gloria Grahame , add a comment
(There are a lot of spoilers here, more than I usually include.)
Late in Lewis Gilbert’s The Good Die Young, Miles “Rave” Ravenscourt, expertly played by Laurence Harvey, opines that the men of the film’s title perish in war while the surviving soldiers are, in my words, sort of like sediment shifting to the bottom of a glass. Rave himself is a supposed war hero, having killed six Germans “in the desert.” Two of the other men, both Americans, have military experience as well. Eddie Blaine (John Ireland) is an air force pilot stationed in England, but about to be shipped off to Germany, and Joe Halsey (Richard Basehart) is a Korean War vet whose two years of service are held against him as little more than missed time by his boss. A fourth man, Mike Morgan (Stanley Baker), is a boxer who’s unexpectedly won his final fight and loses the use of a hand in the process.
For varying reasons, all four are placed in desperate situations and consumed by the struggle of retaining the women they love or once loved. Rave is a careless, jobless professional gentleman with a wealthy wife who’s tired of his sponging and a wealthier father who tells him in no uncertain terms that he’d rather see Rave dead and buried than live for his share of an inheritance. A £1,000 check for losses incurred while gambling is set to bounce unless Rave can talk his way into the money. Failure to do so and the lure of financial freedom (at least for awhile) causes Rave to eye the bank notes at a nearby post office, £90,000 worth. The idea is for Rave and his three new bar buddies to catch the money as it’s being transported. And, of course, no one gets hurt.
Rave is the catalyst and each man, reluctantly, has to be convinced. Mike’s the classic boxer type you frequently see in older movies. He’s made a little from fighting, but not equal to the sacrifices of partial hearing and vision loss. The money he saved up gets wasted in lost bail money for his useless brother-in-law. Mike takes his anger out on his wife, not surprising since boxers are used to unleashing their aggression on whatever’s within arm’s reach. Eddie and Joe both have marital problems of their own. When the movie begins, Eddie’s on 48-hours leave and his wife Denise (Gloria Grahame) couldn’t care less. She’s sort of an actress, sort of a tramp, but Eddie’s all of a cuckold.
There’s a funny scene the first time we see Denise, when she’s coming home with her co-star, and a group of young girls swarm around the leading man for an autograph. He urges the girls to have Denise sign something, too. After she signs for the one fan with any interest, Denise adjusts herself and announces they have to be going now, barely fooling anyone. I love how Grahame makes the character so unapologetically bitchy and completely without sympathy. She’s a wolf fully dressed in wolf’s clothing. The last scene she has is my favorite in the film, when Eddie literally kicks the actor boyfriend in his backside and quits being so submissive. Denise likes this side of her husband and we see her warm up to him for the first time - only to have Eddie throw her into a bathtub full of water.
It’s not another man that stands between Joe and his wife Mary (Joan Collins), but another woman. Mary’s mother has been sick and so she flew to England from the U.S. to be with her, but, after a few weeks, Joe’s getting antsy. He flies over himself and learns the delay was because Mary’s pregnant. But when Joe’s ready to take Mary home, her mother fakes a suicide attempt. The flight money for tickets back to New York dries up quickly and Joe’s daily trips to a bar lead him to meeting Mike first, his old pal Eddie next, and, finally, the slithering Rave. The coincidence of film manifests itself into four guys, each with a lot to lose and all close to wit’s end. Rave is opportunistic and, as we find out, full of greed and evil.
The film’s final twenty minutes or so, post-heist, are cold-hearted and fascinating, played out on grimy and uninviting London streets. The Good Die Young isn’t really a heist thriller at all. It’s a fairly dark character study about these four men, their desperation and the reasoning for their involvement in a predictably ill-fated robbery. You could make comparisons to The Asphalt Jungle and The Killing, but, aside from this being inferior and missing Sterling Hayden, I think Gilbert’s film exists in a different, more noirlike area. It’s a very good picture and fits nicely in what I’d consider to be the style of film noir. Death, desperation, darkness - what more could you ask for?
Controlled, I believe, by MGM, there’s not yet a DVD for The Good Die Young in R1. The unfortunately named Wienerworld Ltd is listed as distributor for this in R2. Horrible cover art, and I can’t speak to the quality. The broadcast version I watched from a TCM recording looked a little weak, if acceptable, but the sound had a persistent hiss.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford February 17, 2008
Posted by clydefro in : Modern Films, 2000s , 12 comments
The American Old West has been mythologized to excess, especially the less-than-noble bandit criminals. Jesse James, then, would be the prince of these men, too often wrongly characterized as Robin Hood-like figures who were merely setting things “right.” James was popular enough to inspire numerous film versions in Hollywood’s classic period, including stabs by three of my very favorite directors - Fritz Lang, Samuel Fuller, and Nicholas Ray. Of those trio of films, Fuller’s I Shot Jesse James most closely resembles Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford because it lets Ford share some of the action. Bob Ford would, no doubt, be delighted with the attention.
Growing up, I can vaguely remember rumors that Jesse James had at one time resided in my county. Though I’ve never seen any documentation of this, I suppose it’s not completely out of the question. James was almost nomadic in his paranoid compulsion to relocate for fear of being caught or, presumably, killed. Though he was largely lionized and celebrated as an enemy only to the wealthy, James was also a murderous thief who’d shoot anyone he had to. For decades, Hollywood has mostly preferred to focus on the Jesse James myth instead of reality, despite such misleading film titles like Ray’s The True Story of Jesse James. Unfortunately, the story there is whitewashed and it’s one of Ray’s most disappointing films from his highly fertile output of the 1950s. Robert Wagner is no one’s ideal of a notorious outlaw. There are flashes of a good movie in there, but it’s ridiculous to try and squeeze anything of substance about James into 92 minutes.
The situation is similar with the earlier James films. Lang’s effort, The Return of Frank James, actually focused on Frank James following Jesse’s death and was a sequel to Henry King’s Jesse James, starring Tyrone Power. In many ways, they’re worse than the Ray film because they’re incredibly safe Hollywood fantasy. Slightly better is Fuller’s film, which places James as secondary to his killer Robert Ford and provides an interesting look at how shooting James affected Ford. Still, it was Fuller’s first directing job, and it’s mostly just a yarn, though not without merit. Since then, a few more Jesse James movies have popped up, though few with much of a profile. Walter Hill’s The Long Riders comes to mind, as does The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, directed by Philip Kaufman. The former had the neat trick of pairing real-life brothers with roles as outlaw siblings, casting Christopher and Nicholas Guest as the Fords, while the latter didn’t bother with Bob Ford at all.
Decades after Fuller and his less lofty ambitions scratched the surface, it took Dominik’s 2007 film to capture the essence of the relationship between Jesse James and Robert Ford. Here we have Brad Pitt giving a raw, but slightly reined-in performance as James, his fellow Missouri native and someone of equally ridiculous renown. Pitt has certainly been willing to peel away his movie star qualities before, in everything from 12 Monkeys and Snatch to Fight Club and Babel, but it’s exceedingly rare to see him as such a serpent like figure, and a boisterously arrogant one at that. His James is a coldblooded maniac who’s seemingly on the brink of losing his mind as a result of pent-up paranoia and godlike perception. Dime store books have described every detail of Jesse James, from eye color to height, and helped create a legion of acolytes.
One of those admirers was Robert Ford, given a characterization for the ages by Casey Affleck here. Affleck has quietly become one of the most interesting actors of his generation, an observation confirmed by his equally good lead role in brother Ben’s Gone Baby Gone, also from last year. His casting here is absolutely perfect. Having Pitt the movie star as the larger than life James and putting an on-the-brink Affleck as a sycophant who lays in wait was a brilliant stroke of serendipity. Affleck makes some bold choices as Ford, turning him into a creepily off-center idolater who somehow ends up both sad and sympathetic. The real beauty in the performance is revealed over the film’s 160-minute running time, as Ford evolves from a bright-eyed wannabe, into an angry punk, and, finally, as a disappointed antihero who’s fulfilled his destiny of the title without attaining the glamour he wrongheadedly thought would go with it.
In the film’s last twenty minutes, it shows its stripes as being more concerned with the effects, before and after the fact, of celebrity worship than anything normally associated with traditional westerns. This isn’t a movie interested in gunfights and galloping horses. There are roots spread out across John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, but the late 19th century time period is less a convenient excuse for comparison than an opportunity to portray the West as an early instance of false heroes built from ink on paper. We’ll defend our idols through every criticism and digest and collect each little piece of information we can find, but once the tides have turned, things can get extremely ugly.
There’s plenty more to glean from Dominik’s film, though. It certainly looks beautiful, thanks to Roger Deakins’ usually brilliant cinematography (earning an Oscar nomination this year where’s he up against, among others, himself, for No Country for Old Men). Even if it doesn’t really feel like Days of Heaven, many of the scenes resemble Terrence Malick’s film on an aesthetic level. The pacing is incredibly languid, but dreamy enough to never drag and actually lends itself to an even longer version. This is absolutely not a film filled with overly long takes of nature. I think it’s fair to call it a little bloated, but not in the sense of too many artfully crafted scenes. The story unfolds deliberately, maybe even to a fault, with a narrative more in the style of a novel’s chapters than simply allowing events to occur naturally, one after the other. A voiceover narration further adds to this approach, and helps maintain the film’s desired elegiac tone.
It does feel a little like you’re turning the pages of a book while watching the film, but I wouldn’t say this particularly bothered me. The performances, the camera work, and the well-explored underlying themes of celebrity, paranoia, and betrayal are all reason enough to set aside any lingering concerns. I don’t particularly think this fits the normal definition of a Western, though enthusiasts of that genre will hopefully still take something of value away from the film. It’s more of a Mafia drama with horses, and Brad Pitt is the obvious don. He’s a man with all the power, surrounded by underlings he can’t trust, and willing to establish his dominance through violent force against those who betray him. The only thing I have difficulty buying is how the title act is presented. That aside, the remainder of the film is as strong or stronger as anything that comes before, and, using some of the best parts found in Fuller’s version, Dominik establishes a nearly perfect epilogue. The mythology of Jesse James’ death turns into the proverbial “be careful what you wish for,” and Robert Ford has to endure the fate he’s created for himself, assassinating Jesse James 800 times before facing the cruel destiny of history repeating itself.