The Pleasure Principle August 25, 2006
Posted by John Hodson in : Film General , add a commentPleasure.
In film, at least, it’s what you see and hear that produces a reaction in the brain, releasing all the right chemical and electrical stimuli. These resulting little jabs of joy make you either (depending on level, possibly circumstance, but certainly the concurrent state of mind) smile or yelp with sheer ecstasy. I have been known to do the latter, upon which people around edge away from me, slowly and deliberately…
Thankfully, despite Thomas Jefferson’s assertion that we are born equal, we don’t come off life’s production line all to the same specification, so one man’s yelp can be another’s yawn. I’m fascinated by what presses my own particular buttons; sometimes obvious, sometimes obscure. But it’s these little moments of sheer pleasure - out of hundreds - that I look to to lift me when I’m down, and, no matter how many times I see or hear them, or even simply think of them, lift me they do:
- ‘Come on! Get up or I’ll plug ya right where you are!’ Stetson pulled down over his face (hats feature prominently in The Magnificent Seven), James Coburn has had enough. He looks up, briskly stands, marches over to his spot, points like the gim reaper for his opponent to face him and stands there like a coiled spring. His fingers are drumming down his thighs. He can’t wait to kill this man. It’s what killers - very, very good killers - do best. James Coburn, lean and mean, itching to get it over with. Beautiful.
- Robert Shaw’s Quint goes through several character changes during the filming of Jaws - from flint-hearted shark killer, to a passable Walter Brennen impersonation and all shades in between. But it’s the slightly maudlin ex-Navy sailor who will ‘never put on a life-jacket again’ that earns him a place in this list, and the beautifully held pause between the chilling end to his tale and the false cheeriness of ‘Anyway, we delivered the bomb…’ In that split second of silence I am awestruck.
- James Stewart’s first appearance in The Naked Spur. Crouched, back to the camera, Stewart grabs and cocks his gun, then lithely glides away from the camera, with a steely determination that is somehow obvious. despite never seeing his face. I can’t tell you why I love this simple camera set-up, maybe it’s the melding of man with handgun into one being, but I just do.
- So Harry’s dead, Anna is lost, spiritually and figuratively, and poor Holly, who loves them both deeply, well, the poor sucker has hopes. And they’re lost too by the way. At the end of The Third Man, Carol Reed plants his camera and let’s us voyeurs watch as Alida Valli walks purposefully between an avenue of Linden trees at the cemetery where Orson Welles has just been buried (for the second time in the film), and Joe Cotton waits, and waits. The walk takes forever, the moment she sweeps on by, not even granting Cotton a glance, is magnificent cinema.
- Lt. Col. Owen Thursday is about to blunder into history, taking more good men from Fort Apache than is decent into hell with him. His troops are ready, each one, as per his orders, looking as if they’ve just stepped out of West Point, uniforms pressed, guideons fluttering. The camera set-up is simple; as Thursday, Henry Fonda on horesback is shown in sideview, distinctive in his forage cap. Behind him, his bugler, above them both a simply breathtaking sky; it’s monochrome but you can ’see’ the mountainous clouds, whites and grays against a sky so blue it hurts your eyes. There’s no movement, then Thursday simply points forward, his bugler puts his instrument to his lips and these ‘50 cents a day soldiers in dirty shirt blue’ ride into history. Bliss.
- Ford again from She Wore a Yellow Ribbon; Captain Nathan Brittles is coming up 60 and a dreaded retirement. It’s just another day at Fort Starke, a cold dawn, the sun’s not yet fully up and breath is still foggy. As Brittles, John Wayne emerges from his quarters into light that makes him squint, stretches his old bones and sucks in two great lungs full of that chill morning air; it’s so bitter, it hurts, and he grimaces. He’s getting old, he knows it - beautifully acted and observed.
- Pat Garrett (James Coburn again), one time hell raiser now lawman, is pursuing his friend Billy. He’s resting up by a river, when he spots a raft and on it a family as poor as dirt, all their worldly goods tied up in a few small bundles. The father, is taking much needed pot shots at a bottle and not making a good job at it, so Garrett decides to lend a hand from the shore. Either misinterpreted as an aggressive act, or simply out of plain cussedness after years of being kicked around, ‘pa’ fires at Garrett, missing him by only a couple feet. Coburn smiles, laughs gently. He stands in plain view, taking careful aim with unblinking eye at the river raft. The rafter reciprocates, and then, hesitantly, lowers his gun. Garrett is not a man to back down and he knows how to use that rifle. Wordlessly, again, Sam Peckinpah, the director of Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid, tells his about men and the country in which they live.
- The fight between Shane (Alan Ladd) and the foul Chris Calloway (the marvellous Ben Johnson) is one of my favourite filmed bare knuckle scraps; it’s mean and vicious stuff, with George Stevens eschewing any kind of musical score save for the slap of fist on face. But there are three little blissful moments from this bruising encounter which lift it, easily into this list. The first is Calloway, eyes blazing with anger, wiping blood and snot across his face after he’s been busted in the mouth by a ‘pig farmer’, the second is Brandon De Wilde, wide-eyed and excited as Joey, as he snaps down on his hard candy stick, the crack perfectly timed to coincide with another crunching blow. The third, and my favourite, is of Shane standing over a beaten Calloway, Ladd bouncing around on the balls of his feet, waiting until Calloway has dragged his beaten carcass off the bar room floor high enough so he can pound him back down there again. That little bounce, that swagger - mighty fine.
- Walker’s on the trail in Boorman’s wonderful Point Blank. The click-clack of his heels, ringing percussively on a brightly polished floor is still bouncing around my head, when he explodes into the apartment, hurls his former girl to the ground and bursts into the bedroom - the bedroom where’s he’s had her - like the wrath of God. The bed’s unoccupied, but that doesn’t matter; Walker empties his gun into the mattress. The moment in all this highly explosive action is when he catches sight of himself in the mirror and jumps back slightly. His brow furrows; what’s he doing here? What’s he just done? And who the hell was that in the mirror?
- Every list I compile seems to contain some element from The Searchers; why should this be any different? Ethan Edwards rides out of the canyon as if he’s being chased by the hoards of Hades. He leaps from his horse and hits the good earth of Monument Valley on legs made of pure rubber. Slumping to the ground, he barely notices his riding companions; there are images buzzing around his head that he never wants to see again, can’t help but see. He snatches the knife from his belt and tries to do something, anything to distract himself; he thrusts the knife into the sand again and again, and, though he doesn’t know it, he’s digging Lucy’s grave all over…
I’ve just noted that there’s an awful lot of violence in there; now what does that say about my ‘concurrent state of mind’..?