With the 80th anniversary of its first release, I'm dipping into my archives to look at that hot and Hedy enchantress called Ecstasy.
Hedy. Just looking at the woman, it's easy to repeat her name after exhaling a delicious deep breath -- Hhheeeddeeey. Her name respires like the title of one of her most famous, and infamous films, Ecstasy. Though some consider the picture a novelty, a ye olden cinematic curio of Hollywood losing its nut over a Czech import, or simply a great place to watch Hedy Lamarr cavort around completely naked, Ecstasy (released in Prague in 1933) is a much richer, liberating, dreamily beautiful experience than all that.
An intense, enchanting (and, at the time, extremely taboo) study of a young woman's sexuality, the picture actually gets things right, either via magnificent, naturalistic, erotic imagery, or moments of blunt explanation. Without demonizing its subject, without overly squishy emotionality, without outright exploitation and yet, without embarrassing, soft-core erotica sensibilities (that kind of movie didn't really exist yet) and without words (mostly), Gustav Machaty's silent-to-talkies transition Ecstasy gets to the heart of some simultaneously simple and convoluted facts of life: Women desire sex. They enjoy sex. And if they find that attraction, they'll have sex, even if they're a little scared, and even if they're afraid of the resulting guilt. Given that we currently live in an often morally confused society, and specifically, confused about women (the Virgin/Whore dynamic has compounded with Hester Prynne/Fuck me/Stone Me complications), Ecstasy, though willing to explore the sadness, jealousy and tragedy sex can create, is a lot more honest about its confusion. But no stones for Hedy -- Ecstasy is actually fond of its sexed up lass.
Lamarr (then Hedy Kiesler -- her real name was Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler) stars as Eva, a young bride who marries an older man (Emil Jerman) only to discover on her wedding night that he's uninterested in love-making. With extreme D.H. Lawrence ennui and yearnings (the movie later ventures into Thomas Hardy territory), Eva can't endure this sexless union. Watching and sighing over the presence of blissful, satiated couples, she's filled with depression over her unexplored needs. Fittingly (some may think, perversely), she leaves the old man and runs home to her horse-breeder father, who embraces his sad little girl while huffing that he'll never understand women. Well, some understand. Or at least, attempt to try. And so comes the famous sequence.
Eva enjoys a nude swim while her horse stands in wait. Intrigued by the advances of another horse in the distance, the steed dashes off, taking Eva's clothes with him. Eva pursues this enormous figuration of coitus, until a young, handsome worker also helps and then, (happily) happens upon the naked nymph.
What beauty unfolds. The mesmeric scene is filmed like foreplay, as the water, sky, sweaty laborers, and fondling horses are continually referenced while Eva runs through the woods -- a once happy swimmer, now a frustrated, frightened, and soon-to-be thrilled woman. Looking at this obviously -- as a representation of her desires -- she, of course, collides into the most fetching man she's ever seen, aptly named Adam (the fantastic Aribert Mog, who sadly died before ever reaching the age of 40). But even after the smiling, flirtatious Adam shows he can place a bee in a flower (how could one resist?), the film wisely holds out -- at first.
Come nighttime, Eva's bedroom pacing is too much -- she must make her way to Adam's shed. And again, what beauty. The consummated act is shot lovingly and boldly, holding onto Lamarr's fervent face (she claims the director pricked her with a pin to induce her rapturous reactions).
Explained as such it may sound coarse, but Ecstasy paces its sexual awakening so perfectly and with such palpable chemistry between its two leads that its spell is almost overwhelmingly bewitching. Mingling mammals, insects, nature, weather and bodies with the mysterious ions charging a swooning man and woman, the nudity, voyeurism and sensuality feel natural, beneficial and so combustible that the sad ending makes perfect sense.
Naturally the movie was banned. No one was going to convince Joseph Breen that a movie containing nudity and an on-screen orgasm wasn't porn (he called the film "highly, even dangerously indecent.") No matter the picture is not classic exploitation, nor does it appear to have been made for mere shock value, but tell that to the judge. It was also one of the earliest films to be banned in the United States by the National Legion of Decency.
Though hailed a masterpiece when it opened in Prague, the film was long censored and much sought after in the states, particularly when its lead became Miss Hedy Lamarr, MGM movie star. Though the gorgeous Lamarr never proved to be a magnificent actress (I don't think she was given enough challenging parts), she was endlessly fascinating and intelligent (in real life too -- her early exploits before fleeing Austria, her invention of the "Secret Communication System," her later shoplifting). She was quite a creature -- especially opposite Charles Boyer in 1938's Algiers, and as the exotic Tondelayo in 1942's White Cargo, and of course, as a young, non-starlet, natural in Ecstasy.
I love watching Hedy Lamarr -- even in her lesser pictures (and she made some dull ones), which taps into another reason why Ecstasy remains so intriguing. Like the movie itself (and Machaty) you want to look at her, but not just, as stated earlier, because she'll eventually find herself in the raw -- but because you'll find yourself in her. Raw. Her curiosity and desire is primal and innate -- a simultaneous capitulation and freedom -- and yet, wistful, as if Eva is conjuring these events from a special memory.
Ecstasy is for female desire, but it's also for male desire, and it well understands impotence, jealousy and guilt, not through words, but through cinema, making it all the more mythical. Here, the aftermath of the act is human -- strong, but also delicate, perilous and hurtful. And it always hurts someone. No wonder Machaty was prodding his butterfly with pins.
"Crash is an autobiographical novel in the sense that it is about my inner life, my imaginative life. It is true to that interior life, not the life I have actually lived."
-J.G. Ballard
A survived car accident can be one of the most exciting, disturbing and hallucinatory events in a person's life, and not simply because of life endangerment and pain. Time is sped up, then suspended; physical and mental sensations are heightened, blurring reality. Life feels strangely, in the moment but dazzlingly surreal. And yet, a car accident is such a common occurrence that when we drive by one we frequently do so with a titillated, detached interest.
Inside cars, those speeding microcosmic shelters, we see distinct personalities -- aggressive, meek, and distracted -- the potential of which Godard envisioned in his extraordinary car wreck loop Week End. To enter these personal realms, we act in mildly subversive ways -- honking at a trucker, making an enraged cutoff, flirting on the freeway. Arranging this entry erotically so as to combine man with machine with sex is less familiar. But perversions often rear up in mundane environments, especially ones surrounded by seat belts, door locks and steel.
David Cronenberg, the auteur known for turning supposedly "safe" environments (apartment complexes, your psychiatrist, hospitals, the gynecologist, the small town family) into terrifying, sometimes terrifyingly funny, erotic and reality-shaking locales, penetrated the world of the automobile and stretches its "normalcy" tenfold. Adapted from J.G. Ballard's brilliant novel, Crash is a rare picture with unconventional plotting. Cronenberg constructs the exposition, action and conclusion (as well as its subtext) through sex scenes, scenes that open and flower or, depending on your viewpoint, grow increasingly perverse throughout the film's rather short running time.
The story: James Spader is the TV-commercial producer, James Ballard, who is introduced to the auto-erotic world of peculiar scientist Vaughan (Elias Koteas) by Dr. Helen Remington (Holly Hunter) a woman he meets via a near-fatal car accident, and with whom he first experiences the automobile's turn on potential. James, his wife Catherine (the strikingly icy Deborah Kara Unger) and Remington then join Vaughan and his subculture of dazed crash survivors. Most stunning is Gabrielle (Rosanna Arquette), a walking Helmut Newton fetish doll of scars, leg braces and support suits (she is a glorious vision). They swap partners not only to satisfy their craving for dangerous, pulse-quickening sex, but also for an exploration of what J.G. Ballard calls "psyhic fulfillment."
From its opening shot -- Catherine laying her breast on the cold wing of an airplane -- Crash immediately expresses its alignment of technology and the human body, a physical relationship that occurs daily, though we don't often notice it. Vaughan leads James and Catherine to a sexual awakening with their mechanical connections, infusing their human relationship with the charge its lost through deadened senses and alienation. There are negative ramifications to these people's sometimes gruesome acts, but there is also a broadened knowledge of the world around them and the creation of a strange beauty through their meticulously visual orchestrations.
Like contact between two cars (even tailgating), the movie's sex is rarely face-to-face, revealing the couple's disconnections, but also the idea that they're stretching toward something. As the picture unfolds, James' desire builds into a kind of perversion (though Cronenberg doesn't judge) yet, also becomes more personal: After Catherine's rough coupling with Vaughan in a car wash (the scene's commingling of cleaning fluids, sperm, car seats and human skin is the movie's best visualization of Ballard's language), James kisses her bruises with a tenderness previously unexpressed. At this moment, when we see that the couple is truly in love, we grapple with both the benefit of their experience and its implications, and questions that we cannot immediately answer bubble to the surface.
Obvious queries came to me: Is Crash a cautionary tale about people so numbed by the modern world that they must seek excitement in dangerous measures? Is it a healthy union of man, machine and sex? Is it simply a turn-on? I think the answers fall somewhere in the more morally abstract territory of, there is no yes or no. Though the novel's relentless descriptions of bodily fluids and organs coalescing with twisted steel ("his semen emptying across the luminescent dials that registered forever the last temperature and fuel levels of the engine") are rendered less graphic by Cronenberg, Ballard's vision of the "liberation of human and machine libido" remains potently intact. And by picture end, the movie feels auto-erotic romantic.
In both novel and film form, Crash takes a non-moral and non-celebratory approach (though the tableauxs are fantastic) to its subject matter, creating an alternative perception of the physical world that is as beautiful as its is horrific. And that amalgamation is, unlike many movies and, true to Cronenberg, disturbingly, unnervingly sexy. And very human. Enough to make you check yourself. Or at least check yourself in the rear-view mirror.
She was some kind of a woman and... some kind of semanticist. Josef von Sternberg may have crafted his own goddess in the form of leggy, sunken-cheek-boned and languid Marlene Dietrich, but Marlene took his tutelage and made herself...Marlene. With classic, otherworldly, baroque beauty (blonde beauty -- which functions almost as its own cinematic genre) the Sternberg Dietrich duo created their iconic masterstrokes The Blue Angel, Dishonored, Shanghai Express, The Devil is a Woman, The Scarlet Empress and Blonde Venus. Though I love them all (all of them), Blonde Venus always stood out as the ultimate blonde-semble with Dietrich playing the full spectrum of dar superblondine.
Here's the flaxen facts: She's an ex-German café singer who marries a good-hearted Englishman. She's a happy hausfrau and adoring mother. And then she's a cabaret star and harlot (but of course!) who dances in a gorilla suit and becomes incredibly famous. You know, the whole blonde journey. The picture features two iconic blonde numbers with Miss Marlene in her famed white tux, tails and top hat and, quite unforgettably in a gorilla suit. In one of the movie's most gorgeously surreal moments, Marlene removes her gorilla head to reveal her blonde-haloed face, grabs a handy golden Afro wig, places it on her head and sings "Hot Voodoo." Describing this moment requires two words you don't often see together, but should: blonde genius
After again watching Maximillian Schell's fascinating, unforgettable documentary, Marlene in which the term "kitsch" is uttered unlike no other being on earth (and cross yourself when you speak of Orson Welles), I have been in the midst of a kind of Marlene mania, which usually consists of me re-watching everything Dietrich (from Desire to Destry, Rancho to Evil), breaking out her numerous albums (I love how she announces "Burt Back-RACK!"), and reading the uber Blonde's own personal dictionary entitled Marlene Dietrich's ABC. This is a keeper. I came across the "wit and wisdom of one of the world's most wonderful women" (say that like Marlene) while working at a book store so many years back and it's become a bible. Originally published in 1961, the reference book (and it really is a reference book) contains random, but important words or terms met with Marlene's own special, specific definition.
And it's all great stuff. You're not going to find the meaning of say, impugnable or dislogistic but you will find Suave: "I can get along very well without the use of this word." You'll also flip through to find Morocco: "Looks better in films"; Credit System: "The American Tragedy"; Hardware Store: "I'd rather go to the hardware store than the opera. And I like the opera"; Medical Ethics: "They make me sick"; Pouting: "I hate it, but men fall for it so go on and pout" and Necking: "a dirty pastime." (Oh Marlene, surely you mean good fun dirty?)
But within her specific list is this oh-so-true statement regarding my own personal junkie paradise, the vanishing Stationery Stores: "People who adore stationery stores are like dope addicts about paper clips, paper clamps, felt tip pens...paper...thick stiff, hard, soft, rough, large like canvas, surfaces like linen or pigskin... I remember buying the most beautiful pale blue legal paper, which almost felt like silken blotting paper...I look at it every once in a while and it sends me." Oh, Marlene. You're actually making feel a tingle here.... a little hot. How she makes me long for carbon paper, manila envelopes and accordion files. Proof positive of her simultaneously mysterious and down-to-earth erotic potency, Marlene manages to make felt tip pens sound sexy.
This delectable concordance has been long out of print but look for it. Forget so many insulting, platitude abusing self help tomes pandering to weak women and men and simply turn to Miss Marlene -- her movies, her records, her dictionary. You never know when you might need to quote, say, Dietrich's take on soda pop: "The gooey, bubbly sea drowning our American children." The charming, alarming blonde woman...she's still correct about that.
Yesterday I was a guest on Allison Hope Weiner's show "Media Mayhem" discussing, live, among other topics, cinema, movie writing, tabloids, Bette Davis, Lindsay Lohan, Marilyn Monroe, Spring Breakers, William Friedkin and Roger Ebert, who sadly, I had just learned passed away minutes before appearing on camera. Thank you Allison, for allowing such a vast array of subjects. It's rare I get to discuss Bette Davis's performance in The Star on air and with such an enthusiastic Davis fan.
"I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state ... I am grateful for the gifts of intelligence, love, wonder and laughter. You can't say it wasn't interesting."
--Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert has left us today. Growing up watching Roger, and then, knowing Roger, sitting in for him in 2007, working with him a few years later and appreciating both his fine work, his bravery and all of the goodwill and friendship towards me and so many other writers has left me too speechless to properly articulate how I feel.
So there's Roger's writing -- uniquely his own. I felt misty watching this video essay, based on a moody, swoony piece written by Roger, beautifully edited by Matt Zoller Seitz and narrated by lucky me. I will miss you and your wonderful words, Roger.
Ray Charles. The genius. We all know Ray Charles was sensational. Or at least, we all should know. And yet, even when the enormously popular, Oscar winning Ray underscored this point (though missing some of the better, grittier details) way back in 2004, many need to be reminded again, and beyond that "and then this happened" biopic. Need I say it again? Ray Charles was cool as hell -- sublimely, raucously, heartbreakingly and effortlessly cool.
O-Gênio is a grand celebration of such cool and of course, "The Genius," or, in Portuguese,O Gênio. Unearthed a few years before Charles' death (from Charles' own vault) the 1963 Sao Paulo concert (and rehearsal) is a rare, somewhat astounding document that gives us Charles at one of his musical peaks -- a year after he'd recorded Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, when he was broadening the boundaries for the type of soul music he'd created. Already an innovator, blending gospel and blues (to many Christian's disapproval) and after he'd left Atlantic and signed with ABC-Paramount where he was the first artist to own his own masters, Charles was now positioned at the top, flying high. And higher. And higher still.
Taking on "What'd I Say," "Take These Chains from My Heart," and an absolutely swinging, gorgeous rendition of "You Are My Sunshine" during which the astonishing Margie Hendricks lets loose her growling solo so emblematic of Charles' stunning version. You'll never think of that typically safe sounding song in the same way ever again. He continues with "Set Me Free," "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny," "My Bonnie," a mesmeric, stirring "In the Evening (When the Sun Goes Down)," "Margie," "Hit the Road Jack," "Moanin'," "Birth of a Band," "Hallelujah I Love Her So" and an untitled jazz instrumental... I could list them all but I'll stop... But, and for lack of better words, Charles and band are, to put it simply, fu**ing brilliant.
Watching Ray, his extraordinary talent, his smooth sensuality, his perfect suits and that iconic sway (really, he doesn't sway or tick out as much as the impersonations show) and with his faultless band including Wilbert Hogan and the impossibly cool saxophonist David "Fathead" Newman and of course, The Raelettes (here, Hendrix, Gwen Barry, Darlene McCray and Patricia Richards) you'll wish (so much) that more of his concerts were recorded for posterity. Strangely, as ubiquitous as Ray Charles is, he remains ever mysterious, which is part of his power.
As many times I've watched Charles (in any early performance I can get my hands on), he never fails to leave me with an almost painful, yet delicious sensation of enigmatic... wow. With the tumults of his pain and unbridled joy -- from "Crying Time" to "Let's Go Get Stoned" (yes, let's) -- he's both immensely moving and beyond our reach. Part of this is Ray Charles real-life complexity. As Charles once told a reporter, “I’m the kind of guy, I conform when it suits me, and when it doesn’t suit me I don’t.” Straight-forward, but complicated, honest but mysterious. So provocative and magnetic was Charles, so private yet revealing, so smooth yet rough-edged, so troubled yet supremely business minded, so ready to laugh during an interview or cry onstage in classics like “Drown in My Own Tears,” Charles was, and is indeed... O Gênio. Watch.
When Madonna's "Sex" was released, actor Udo Kier, who was featured prominently in some of the photo book's best pictures (forever beautiful Udo does not take a bad shot), was asked about Ms. Ciccone. What she was like? But more specifically, since Kier had ample chance to see, What was her vagina like? Mr. Kier's answer? "Organized."
He could have been talking about Tippi Hedren's handbags in Marnie.
The Hitchcock handbag -- they're quite fetishistic, vaginal things. I'm not the only one who's noticed this predilection and I don't find it a stretch. With all those crisp, snapped, soft or hard bodied rectangular satchels and muffs, Hitchcock's women clutched wombs of wonder that, like, many ladies obsessed with their handbags, seem to serve the purpose to only mystify men. Who cares so much about a damn handbag? Women do. And not just for fashion, as Hitchcock so astutely noticed, but for what Kier also so astutely pointed out. Organization. Organization in that chaotic organ that will spill out of your satchel in messy, sticky, dysfunctional passionate disarray. And purses, they always lose control.
But back to Marnie, my favorite Hitchcock picture, I find her purses, suitcases, ID cases and wallets the most intriguing.
The yellow purse a raven-haired Marnie clutches while walking to the train looks (or feels?) vaginal. It can’t be an accident, at least I don’t want it to be -- she needs that thing. A cool blonde goddess, a compulsive liar and thief so traumatized by her past that her only arena for both escape and personal gain is work, she moves from city to city, nabbing jobs with her expert demeanor and skills (she is an efficient secretary) only to embezzle from employers. And dump that money in her various, vaginal bags.
Perhaps the imprisoning Freudian arms of Mark Rutland (Sean Connery) understands a well functioning handbag. Rutland. Yes. He'll fix her. Icy, frigid, a traumatized woman who can't stand the color red (of course she'll spill scarlett in liquid menstruation form) and one who has an unusually strong bond with her horse (saddles), she's clearly never had a normal sexual encounter and though she shows flickers of attraction and flirtation, she appears to hate men. Or maybe just all of humanity. But she does possess one heartaching weakness -- she loves her cold, flinty mother to the point of masochism.
In "The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory," author Tania Modlesk discusses other feminist takes on Hitchcock's use of purses, keys and safes. But she makes a fascinating case for Marnie, her mother and that fur wrap -- the luxurious non-utilitarian opposite of the clenched, accessory-stuffed purse. It's a sensual gift. And one her mother will reject. Modlesk writes: "But there is a fetish that no one to my knowledge has remarked upon, oddly enough since it is one of the most classic fetishes of all time -- the fur piece. On the first visit to her mother, Bernice, Marnie brings her this fur and wraps it around her mother's neck. A few minutes later, the fur set aside, Marnie watches with longing as Bernice combs [the young blonde girl visiting] Jessie's hair, captured in a signature shot of Hitchcock tracking into the hair at the back of the head, evoking desire and longing on the part of the one who looks [Marnie is the one looking]... Jessie leaves the house, and Marnie immediately places the fur around her mothers neck. Shortly thereafter the two go into the kitchen (to make 'Jessie's pie')..."
Jessie's pie. Well, that leads to a jealous argument. And Bernice admonishes her daughter with the potent demand, "Mind the drippings, Marnie." What a muddled household. Not unkempt, just mentally untidy. Brushing Jessie's hair and minding Jessie's pie are more important than stroking that sweet furry piece. And worse, her mother (an ex-prostitute), remarks that Marnie's hair is, well, whoreish: "Too-blonde hair always looks like a woman's trying to attract a man." Never mind her mother's hair is also quite light. Marnie needs to get out of there. It's time for her to change identities (Marnie Edgar/Margaret Edgar/Peggy Nicholson/Mary Taylor) and stash more jack in her pocketbook.
However, it's only a matter of time when Mark Rutland will figure her out. Here come the man readying to shake that pocketbook and empty the thing out, stick his hands inside, figure out her secrets, lies and perhaps the red-lipstick/hot sex within. Most women don't like it when you open up their very personal purses without asking (you think Catherine Deneuve wants you to spy the dead rabbit she's carrying in her Repulsion reticule?), and he doesn't. Gripping and grabbing (by force) her soft flesh, he'll take apart her clutches -- those creamy canals just waiting to be cracked. Vaginal satchels more than likely approved by Hitchcock but chosen by costumer Edith Head. Certainly Ms. Head understood the power of the purse. The male Hitchcock and the female Head (these names are just too much) must have enjoyed penetrating their pursey mystery and allure.
Though Mark's the romantic lead, he's a pervert himself, and maybe not the healthiest partner for this wounded woman. And yet, he is trying to understand her. The movie, Mark (and Hitchcock) are sympathetic towards understandably troubled Marnie, making it tough to blame the woman for her antisocial tendencies. In her experience, men (people) are beasts who've only done her harm (flashback to a very young Bruce Dern freaking out a very young Marnie). The world is a cold-hearted place and she finds no solace at home, no father and no maternal warmth.
In return she violates the world (men) by lying, cheating and stealing without ever giving them the full pleasure of her lovely body. There are moments (of which I can do nothing, this is Hitchcock filling the controlled receptacle) when I think Marnie should just flee Mark, everyone, in fact, and ride her horse Forio ("Oh, Forio, if you want to bite somebody, bite me!") and push her remaining pleasure into her sex-repressed satchels. She may move on to something better, something more loving. Like pretty, organized purses and their vaginal sisters, there is such a thing as productive, controlled chaos. Or, what the hell and why not sister Marnie? Embrace the pussy riot.
Some fine person has been rooting around the same purse I've been rooting around in:
John Garfield would have been 100 years old today and his simmering, gorgeous genius of masculine menace, charm and vulnerability is, still, sorely missed. He's one of my favorite actors (among a top five that alternate, but Garfield always remains), and an actor who almost literally knocked me for a loop when I first saw him on screen (in The Postman Always Rings Twice). I was a teenager and I was hooked. I had to know more about him. As a result, this blog has been properly Garfield obsessed since its inception. Dear Lord. All that sensitivity and rugged good looks, intelligence and intense, noir sex appeal and I was a goner. Sure Jessica Lange and Jack Nicholson's furious, flour-dusted fornication on the kitchen counter is damn erotic in the steamy re-make (which I do enjoy), but John and Lana need only to simply look at each other and... that's it. You know what they're up to later, and the wondering is part of the picture’s tremendous turn-on (not to mention Lana's lipstick).
But Mr. Garfield... perhaps like poor Priscilla Lane checking out all his tough guy artistry, smoking that ciggie while playing the piano in his unforgettable 1938 film star debut (Four Daughters) you're just too much! Like Joan Crawford’s wide-eyed attraction and anger during his virtuoso "Flight of the Bumblebee" interlude in Humoresque, women can’t function properly when looking at him or thinking about him. They become all moony and swoony and tongue tied and... hitch-hike away from that depressing roadside diner, a la Lana (they don't make it far. Only towards murder). Or take that long, sad walk on the beach like Joan. Poor Garfield-tortured Joan. But there's so much more to the man's intense, obvious sex appeal. So much more.
With all that, you'd think he'd be more famous. Though he's certainly picked up much more appreciation in the last several years, I still ask: why isn't he supremely famous? Why isn't he a household name? Why isn't he better recognized? For reasons I cannot decipher, this brilliant, brooding actor, though well respected by those who know better, isn't considered the legend a la Bogart, Clift, Brando or Dean. Why isn’t he properly appreciated? This massive talent with genuine bad-boy street cred (he was born Julius Garfinkle and raised tough on the streets of Brooklyn and the Bronx) was an acting innnovator and a huge star in his day, so much so that his 1952 funeral was attended by more folks than Rudolph Valentino's ceremony. So why, aside from true movie lovers, isn't he the huge star he was? He's certainly not dated. Watch Clift, Brando, Dean and other "method" actors and you see Garfield's complex, plain speaking, natural anti-hero influence.
If you've never seen a John Garfield performance, you have been (in a supreme understatement) missing out. If you've only watched one or two, you're sorely behind. If you need to catch up, check (among many other pictures -- please check the Warner Archive if you need to see some rare ones) his intense, oftentimes roughly romantic and edgy performances in movies such as Gentlemen's Agreement, They Made Me a Criminal, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Sea Wolf, Air Force, The Fallen Sparrow,
Body and Soul, Castle on the Hudson, Force of Evil, Out of the Fog, The Breaking Point (the superior version of Hemingway's To Have and Have Not featuring one of Garfield's most naturalistic, powerful performances), Nobody Lives Forever, Humoresque, Flowing Gold, Between Two Worlds, We Were Strangers and (one of my favorites) He Ran All the Way -- his last film and, tragically, a quite fitting one considering how he left this world.
And God...what an exit Mr. Garfield. In my mind, one of the first method actors (he trained in the famed Group Theater and worked with Clifford Odets), he was also victim to one of cinema's darkest, most shameful moments when the left-wing, progressive actor (and patriotic actor, he helped created The Hollywood Canteen for heaven's sake) testified at the scabrous House Un-American Activities Committee, who suspected him and certain colleagues, Communist. Unlike many other actors, writers and directors (including one of his former directors, Elia Kazan), Garfield refused to name names.
As both a once young street tough and a man of principle, Garfield would not rat. Not surprisingly, work was then harder to come by and at the young age of 39, Garfield died of coronary thrombosis. Many speculate an already present heart condition was worsened by the stress caused by the House's inquisition. I think this assumption is correct. His mislabeling and death is so tragic that it angers me to this day.
I had the pleasure of presenting John Garfield's final picture, John Berry's He Ran All the Way, for Turner Classic Movies when I guest programmed for them, and another time with his daughter, the wonderful, charming Julie Garfield at the Palm Spring Film Noir Festival. An acclaimed stage actress and teacher, Julie had much to say about her heroic, brilliant father when I interviewed her on stage. And the picture was so powerful to watch on the big screen with Julie at my side.
A picture made by many victims of the blacklist, including director Berry and co-writers Hugo Butler and Dalton Trumbo (who was jailed as one of the "Hollywood Ten"), the story of a criminal on the lam, a desperate man, a man in a panic who takes a family hostage only to be tortured by his conscience and the cold hands of fate, held extra resonance. There was the power of the film itself, the history and real life tragedy of its star, and then again, Julie sitting next to me. She had never seen her father's final film on the big screen, and experiencing her taking in daddy so beautifully shot by James Wong Howe, and his tough, vulnerable, wounded, complicated performance was especially moving.
Discussing the movie, her father and his life, from the kindness of New York educator Angelo Patri, who mentored the young, troubled kid Garfield and led him into acting, to the evils of HUAC, Julie (on stage and off) is what I imagine her dad was like. Fiercely intelligent, down to earth, funny, warm, and charming as hell -- a one-of-a-kind. If ever a woman is charismatic enough to play De Niro's wife inGoodfellas (and to make that much of an impression when Ray Liotta's Henry Hill testifies against him in court -- that look she gives!), it is Julie.
And she discussed this unforgottable bit of history about her father -- one of his early jobs was as a door-to-door diaphragm salesman. That's correct. John Garfield knocked on doors and sold contraceptives to women. What was I saying earlier? That he was too much? Now that is just too much. Can you imagine opening the door?
Happy 100th Birthday to one of the greatest actors who ever lived. And he didn't live long enough. Today is a day for John Garfield movies. I plan on watching the brilliant The Breaking Point again and maybe, dropping a tube of lipstick in his honor. We can always imagine him picking it up and not handing it back to you. My lord, to have John Garfield make you walk towards him to fetch your lipstick. You're not so cool, Lana. Once he leaves his indelible impression, he never leaves your mind.
Watch Julie Garfield talk about her father and Joan Crawford, Garfield's infidelity, her favorite roles, HUAC's hounding, renewed interest in her father, and a beautiful quote from He Ran All the Way director John Berry. Check out more of the interview here and here.
That's a terrible question to ask, I suppose. I'm not making light of addiction. But let's not kid ourselves. There's a reason drugs seduce. It's because they feel so damn good. And eventually so damn bad. In Otto Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm, McGavin's Louie looks good. And even better, he looks like he feels good. But as we know, just at first glance, he's a bad man with bad things. A bad man to know but a bad man we want to know.
McGavin's drug pushing Louie in Preminger’s seminal junkie picture, (adapted from Nelson Algren's novel, which I haven't read and may delve into Louie deeper) is one of my favorite roles by "The Night Stalker" star and one of his finest performances. And yet, it's one he’s probably least known for. Though Sinatra is the sparkling, strung-out star as drummer Frankie Machine, jonesing and shaking and horrifically withdrawing to the hilt (and he's good), it's McGavin who fascinates me.
Like the Big Bad Wolf dressed in dandy clothing, McGavin is sexy and predatory, charismatic and creepy, mysterious and so unabashedly blatant -- dangling all that sensuous smack in Frankie's face like a tormenting ex-lover. He promises just like an abusive manipulator when you're vulnerable and ready to feel something, anything. He knows you need him: "Oh, kicked it, wanna bet?" he taunts. "I mean it," says Frankie. Louie almost coos: "Sure, I'll be around."
Pushermen are always seducers and heroin orgasmic, I'm not discussing anything new, but I love that you see this best in a movie made in 1955. And that relationship is one between lovers. Heroin is the sex and Louie is all that hot and bothered foreplay. It's not a surprise Sinatra and McGavin look at each other with more than a hint of homoeroticism. They've got this sick, sexy chemistry going on. Everyone in the movie seems desirous of Frankie (including Arnold Stang's hero-worshipping style-cramper, Sparrow), but Sinatra and McGavin are the biggest turn-on. Frankie wants him. And when Frankie crosses the street to Louie's, relapsing to the determined jazzy score of Elmer Bernstein, Louie is waiting. He pulls down the shades. Frankie's ready to blast off. "The monkey is never dead, Dealer. The monkey never dies. When you kick him off, he just hides in a corner, waiting his turn." Indeed. He cannot miss a vein.
There are some movies that are so perfect, so exquisitely beautiful, so effortlessly elegant, they're almost painful. Like watching an overwhelmingly enchanting dancer — their beauty cracks something inside of you, inspiring/torturing you to tears or even a brief spurt of madness. Nothing is that lovely. And indeed, nothing is. The pain of manipulating those graceful muscles, and in the case of Max Ophüls' The Earrings of Madame de..., the pain of that shambolic muscle called the heart, reveals what threatens to stain one's resplendently spotless satin and silk — blood-red, human deception and guilt.
Glittering surfaces are the thing in the world of Ophüls' late 19th century France in which Comtesse Louise de... (Danielle Darrieux), the stunning, spoiled wife of the similarly stunning and wealthy Général André de... (Charles Boyer), who makes a decision with dire and even morbidly comical consequences: She secretly sells a pair of earrings, a wedding present from her husband, to pay off debts.
What proceeds is the Ophüls' intended carousal of uncertainties, the earrings moving from one wooden-cheval climber to the other, notably the wife's Italian lover, Baron Donati (Vittorio De Sica), cursing these elegant creatures with looming heartbreak. Ophüls fills every frame with such opulence — mirrored reflections, dizzyingly perfected montages and those famously inspired tracking shots that are so graceful, so seamless that, again, they feel as if they could cut you open. It hurts. But oh how I love the pain.
From MSN Movies 100 Favorite Films in which MSN writers pick their favorites. This is on my list with more to come. So far, we've ranked 100-81. Read them here. More soon.
Oh, Oscar. You always do this!
The Oscars In Memoriam Reel always leaves out important, deserving people and this year was one of the worst. I watched those we're to remember, shocked the entire presentation was over so quickly. Here's Marvin Hamlisch, may he rest in peace, and here's Barbra Streisand singing, beautifully, but rather ironically, "Memories."
Thank goodness the Academy had the memory to honor Ernest Borgnine as well as Chris Marker, but they, in oversight or without care, missed (among many others), Andy Griffith (so brilliant in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd), Levon Helm (wonderful in Coal Miner's Daughter), Larry Hagman (who, in addition to other movies, appeared in Sidney Lumet's The Group and Fail Safe), Harry Carey, Jr. (who worked in over 90 motion pictures for heaven's sake, many with John Ford), Phyllis Diller, Lupe Ontiveros, Susan Tyrrell and again, many more.
And then they missed Ann Rutherford. Oh, another for shame Oscar! Rutherford (who passed away June 11, 2012 at the age of 94) played Polly Benedict from 1937-1942 in thirteen of the Andy Hardy movies with Mickey Rooney. She also worked with Danny Kaye (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty), Jimmy Stewart (Of Human Hearts), Red Skelton (Whistling in the Dark, Whistling in Dixie, Whistling in Brooklyn), Errol Flynn (Adventures of Don Juan) and appeared in movies like Pride and Prejudice, A Christmas Carol and that one movie. Oh, what was that movie? Ah, yes, Gone with the Wind. Remember that one, Oscars?
I had the honor to interview Ms. Rutherford in 2009 at the Palm Springs Film Noir Festival. What a wonderful woman. She talked about her long and interesting career (take a look at herextensive work in pictures here), from her famous co-stars (and Errol Flynn's "naughty" monkey) and of course, making Gone with the Wind. She was delightful -- quick-witted, full of funny, heartfelt anecdotes and so lovely. She reflected on her years and adventures in movies, and specifically, the stars she worked with as "wonderful, enduring people." "Enduring people," Oscars. Take note. Rest in Peace, Ann. You'll always be remembered.
Do you remember the song "You'll Be In My Heart" by Phil Collins? It was from Tarzan and it won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 1999 (beating out Aimee Mann's "Save Me" from Magnolia for Christ's sake). Anyway, do you remember that "Tarzan" song over, say, The Who's "A Quick One While He's Away" from Wes Anderson's Rushmore the year before? That Phil Collins song was a hit, I know, but I'm going to say at this point, you, cinema lover, might not remember that tune. Phil Collins probably doesn't even remember "You'll Be In My Heart" over The Who. Or The Creation. Or The Faces. Or Cat Stevens. Or The Rolling Stones. Or the entire Rushmore soundtrack.
My point? Why not an Oscar category for Best Soundtrack? Or, rather, the best use of pre-existing music?
Though obviously Best Original Song should remain, and there's plenty of now iconic Best Originals, like "The Way You Look Tonight" (from Swing Time, 1936) or "Over the Rainbow" (from The Wizard of Oz, 1939), often the Best Original Song is NOT the song we remember. Why did Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life" show up on an ad for a cruise line? (They better have good drugs on that cruise.)
The ability to create a meaningful, visceral, powerfully edited soundtrack (and working with songs so damn perfectly and often songs not usually heard in movies, like the not one, but two songs by the band Love in Bottle Rocket, or Dignan running from the cops, tuned perfectly to The Stones' "2000 Man") is a specific talent that, thanks to Music Supervisors and the editors and directors who work with them (*note: a good question a commenter raised is, based on the collaborative nature of the process, who would win the award?) has created moments in movies so iconic, that we often can't imagine the song without the scene.
I can't even listen to "Born to Be Wild" unless I'm watching Easy Rider (as much as I love Steppenwolf), and The Byrds' "Wasn't Born to Follow" remains one of my favorite moments in that picture. And then there's the opening credits of Mean Streets scored to The Ronettes' "Be My Baby," the Stealers Wheel "Stuck in the Middle With You" ear severing in Reservoir Dogs, Margot Tennenbaum walking off the Green Line bus to Nico's "These Days," Billy Batts meeting his demise to Donovan's "Atlantis," and more and more and more.
From American Graffiti to Casino to Dazed and Confused to Crooklyn to Boogie Nights to 2001 to Dead Presidents to Pulp Fiction to Velvet Goldmine to Over the Edge (Cheap fucking Trick) to Trainspotting to Candy to Harold and Maude (even as some of the songs were written for the movie, other were on Stevens' "Mona Bone Jakon" and "Tea for the Tillerman") to Floyd Mutrux's Dusty and Sweets McGee to every freaking Wes Anderson movie (this year's Moonrise Kingdom gives us Françoise Hardy, Hank Willams and Benjamin Britten) -- I don't even know why I'm listing them. You know these movies. And their songs.
There should be an award. If this category existed, we might have be allowed the pleasure of watching Rodriguez sing one of his beautiful, soul wrenching songs tonight, from the Oscar-nominated documentary Searching For Sugarman.
Musical supervisors deserve some Oscars, Martin Scorsese deserves a lifetime achievement award for the Goodfellas helicopter sequence alone and The Coen Brothers should win some kind of trophy for making us remember how cool Kenny Rogers used to be via Lebowski's dream scored to "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)." Think about it Oscar. And listen.
From my Criticwire Survery answer to: What new category should the Academy add to the Oscars?
The Academy Awards -- one of cinema's most supreme accolades (or so they tell us). So prestigious that, as many filmmakers and actors claim, it's an "honor" just to be nominated. A gift from your peers, a historic milestone, a career changer, an ... oh ... where's Sacheen Littlefeather?
I like Oscars that go a little crazy. And not in those golly-gee speeches where someone, say, Anne Hathaway (the inevitable winner Sunday) reacts with such feigned shock that she giddily exhibits an actorly, cute-as-a-button manic depressive episode, stuttering out names that reveal how kooky, sweet, humbled and... enough, Ms. Hathaway. You're an actress so I do respect you for using your craft on the podium. I expect it. You're an actress so I do respect you for using your craft on the podium. I expect it. And I like you, Anne, (I really like you!). Actually, come to think of it, I hope you pull a Greer Garson five and a half minute gusher. That would be entertaining. That won't happen so... bring me Joan Crawford! Bring me Joan Crawford in bed, accpeting her golden boy (for Mildred Pierce). That's the speech I want to hear.
So with the Academy Awards telecast approaching, here are three (among many) of my favorite Oscar moments -- moments that simply make me happy. There are others of legendary lore: Rod Steiger thanking the Maharishi, George C. Scott not showing up, Brando's Littlefeather showing up, and again, Joan in bed, but I'm sticking to these three stars who, a la Lina Lamont, proved themselves shimmering, glowing stars in the Oscar firmament.
1. The Unshockable David Niven (1974)
This one is so famous that if you don't know it, I don't know you. Now, I adore David Niven. How can one not adore David Niven? It seems a part of one's biolgical makeup to adore David Niven. But David Niven plus Oscars plus streaker? In that case, I worship David Niven. Shaking up the normally demure affair in 1974 was one naked Robert Opel, a guy who'd managed to sneak onstage and streak past Niven while flashing the peace sign. Debonair Niven craftily upstaged the nude marauder, however, by handling the potentially embarrassing situation with amused aplomb. Not missing a comedic beat, the quick-witted Brit quipped, "The only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping and showing off his shortcomings." Wonderful.
Should we be surprised Niven handled this so beautifully? No. He was once close pal Errol Flynn's roommate in a house nicknamed "Cirrhosis-by-the-Sea." I'm thinking a naked hippie meant nothing to a seen-it-all-and-everything David Niven. One of the greatest Oscar moments and a sterling example of how to manage a sticky situation -- something many presenters should learn from. In case of emergency, break glass and resurrect David Niven.
2. Jack Palance Don't Need No Stinkin' Geritol (1992)
An old school, star-studded brand of my-grandpa-can-kick-your-grandpa's-ass moment happened when City Slickers star Jack Palance picked up his Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Not content with the requisite "thank you's" delivered by scroll (and Palance had been around -- he'd have a lot of shout-outs, instead he brought up a producer 42 years ago who thought he'd win an Oscar), the actor dropped to the floor and performed an impressive set of one-handed push-ups. Not bad for a 72-year-old. His City Slickers co-star and Oscar host Billy Crystal was so amused, Jack bettered his material for the rest of the evening with quips like: "Jack Palance has just bungee-jumped off the Hollywood sign." Or after a musical number performed by a host of kids, Crystal announced that all of the children had, in fact, been seeded by the virile tough guy.
No matter how much Palance deserved his award for earlier, superior films like Shane or Sudden Fear (in which he's brilliant), there's no doubt that he made a special kind of history that night. Also, he made co-nominee Tommy Lee Jones smile. That's something.
3. Dear Joan, Damned Bette (1963)
I respect the talents of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford so much, that I sometimes tire of their images looked upon (especially Joan), with only camped up, "Mommie Dearest" delight. But there's no denying it -- that's one part of their appeal. And so yes, I do love a good Bette vs. Joan throw-down and this is a great one. Furious when her What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? co-star Davis was nominated for Best Actress and she wasn't, Crawford got supremely crafty in the ongoing grudge match with Miss Bette (their feud went as far back as an affair with Franchot Tone). Joan exhibited some serious Harriet Craig-level manipulation when she wrote each of the other nominees (oh, how I would love to see those letters) and offered her services to accept on their behalf should one of them be unable to attend the ceremony. And wouldn't you know it? Anne Bancroft, who could not be present, won for The Miracle Worker.
Sweeping on stage and pawing that golden boy like a jungle cat, Joan basked in the limelight, starting with "Miss Bancroft said, 'Here's my little speech, Dear Joan.'" Dear Joan continued while Ms. Davis steamed in her seat, feeling more like Crawford's Blanche, never being able to leave that chair. Bette, I love you, and I'm not taking sides here, but in this case... Bravo and bitchily well played Joan. A diva to the death. And she looks fantastic, of course.
I have a real soft spot for a movie in which a drunken Richard Burton makes out with a mannequin while a wind machine blows through his hair but perhaps I’m easy. In any case, the critically maligned Candy (a huge flop in its day) fascinates me -- from its never-ending joke that the dirty old man is the establishment (or something), to its groovy soundtrack (Steppenwolf, The Byrds, David Grusin's fan-fucking-tastic "Ascension to Virginity"), to its parade of famous men groping beautiful, wide eyed Ewa Aulin (Burton, Marlon Brando, John Astin in two roles, Walter Matthau, James Coburn, Ringo Starr and John Huston -- not to mention a wickedly hot Anita Pallenberg), to its comic pretensions -- I find value and humor in this, for lack of a better term, chaos-ter-piece.
Written by Terry Southern (adapted from his novel) and Buck Henry and directed by French swinger Christian Marquand, the psychedelic sex mess is both an intriguing time capsule and a sexy, pervy comment on what the filmmakers really seem to be after -- presenting a "message" while feeling up the girl. You know, having your candy and eating it too.
I'm currently working on a Fredric March piece to be posted soon, this year (get on it, Kim). Five favorite or fifteen favorite -- there's so many to list. Nothing Sacred, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Road to Glory, Merrily We Go to Hell, Death Takes a Holiday, The Best Year of Our Lives, The Sign of the Cross, A Star is Born, Design for Living and more. More, more March! I'm watching Elia Kazan's Man on a Tightrope tonight. Fredric March and Gloria Grahame -- this will be interesting.
He's one of my favorite actors -- such expansive range filled with charm, intelligence, strength, sexiness, vulnerability and a wicked wit. March had it all. As I've been watching and re-watching his long career, flooding my mind in all things Fredric, I came across his 1954 appearance on the show "What's My Line?" Wow. The mystery guest was always an interesting feature, revealing which celebrity could or could not think on their feet and disguise their voice with panache. Proving, not surprisingly, his unique comedic talent and unpredictability, Fredric March kills. This is one of the greatest episodes I've ever seen. Watch him positively stump the panel.
Valentine’s Day. If you at all care about the day (though
many of us pretend not to) it can be a sweet time to remind your partner how
much you love them. That's very nice. It can also, well, sicken. Yes, yes, people can be wonderful on that day but they can also exhibit an icky display of
public affection (those horrifying balloon bouquets, those stilted dinner dates riddled with awkward pauses) and reveal passive agressive manipulations, aggressive aggressive manipulations and gift giving gluttony. It’s also a
day when many realize their partners don’t give a toss about them or,
vice-versa. Let’s face it: It is, with some exception, awful. That is, if you care. My advice. Don't.
I think, lonely people, that sometimes it’s better to be
alone on the 14th of February. And I say this with a significant other whom I plan on giving the day off to save both our sanity. Stay in, order take-out and be grateful an overly taxing significant other isn't bullying you into dinner plans in a restaurant filled with excessive PDA and eye-rolling waiters. Now, I don't loathe Valentine's Day -- I just loathe the pressure placed on people. Buy a single rose, if you must. Buy an Otis Redding album (always do that). Buy a car. Go ahead. That's nice. Heck buy it for yourself. And watch a movie, preferably a movie in which romance goes terribly awry - like Vertigo. And then drive out to Mission San Juan Bautista.
With
that, I bring you six of my favorite worst dates in movie history (there are many, but I was fond of these six from classic movies we've all seen). Some of them are so
spectacularly bad that I'd like to go on one of these dates -- preferably if directed by
Martin Scorsese. A break from work for some pie sounds nice. And a Plaster of Paris bagel and cream cheese paperweight does last a lot longer than a heart shaped box of chocolates.
Carrie (1976)
Poor Carrie White. There’s her crazy, Jesus freak mother,
her school full of merciless bullies, her creepy old house, her terrible
hormonal timing in the locker room,
her way with the knife drawer (actually that turns out to be a blessing and a curse), her… Satan’s pillows (which
really are spectacular -- see Prime Cut).
Carrie’s a beautiful, special young woman made to feel like the ultimate
outsider -- her life is an absolute nightmare. But when she’s invited to the prom
by a sweet natured fellow (William Katt, and his blonde afro), things are
looking up. A date, momma, a date! Damn momma if she doesn’t approve!
Carrie intends to look stunning at the dance, and she does! The topper, she’s
anointed prom queen.
But… back to all those mean girls (and guys). Do I need to
continue? You’ve seen Carrie -- I can distill this bad date in two terrible words:
Pig’s Blood. At least, in a telekinetic teenage rage, Carrie wreaks murderous revenge on her classmates (even the nice gym teacher!) but well, so much for that dream date. Beating out Ben Stiller’s stuck zipper
prom trauma in There’s Something About Mary for sheer high school hell, there really is something more about Carrie. She’s otherwordly awesome. We should all be so lucky to take her to prom.
Sunset Blvd. (1950)
Billy Wilder's cynical look at Hollywood was so scabrous
that, as the story goes; famed studio head Louis B. Mayer left a preview
hollering, "We should horsewhip this Wilder! We should throw him out of
this town that's feeding him!" Yes, the movie was that disturbing to its
own, and for an understandable reason -- Mayer and company didn't like their
dream factory revealed for what it often was: a nuthouse. The story of washed
up silent screen star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) and her deranged,
desperate attempts to re-enter pictures (for all "those wonderful people
out there in the dark") via a down-on-his luck screenwriter Joe Gillis (William
Holden) is indeed a powerful movie about Hollywood, but it also features on of
the most uncomfortable dates ever.
As Norma preps Joes for the big New Year’s
Eve party she’s throwing for presumably, a grand assortment of guests, he
realizes that it’s all for him. No guests. Just Norma Desmond, that marble
dance floor and the kept boy Joe in a penguin suit bought by his suitor. And
now he really does feels kept (no more lying to himself). And trapped. And how
the hell is he going to get out of this? I won’t ruin the ending with this since
it begins the movie, but he never will get out. Unless you count face down in a
pool a great way to end a relationship. Never cross Norma. And why should you?
She’s fantastically deranged. And she's fond of pet monkeyes. He should have just stayed there.
Taxi Driver (1976)
Travis Bickle -- he was off to such a good start. Even
though he’s severely anti-social, he’s not a bad looking fellow (he’s young
Robert De Niro after all) and in a spontaneous moment of romantic charm, he
actually convinces the woman he’s in love with/casing (“They. Cannot. Touch.
Her”) to take a break and eat some pie with him. That’s not the bad date – even
when he misunderstands her compliment -- likening him to the Kris Kristofferson
song "The Pilgrim" ("I'm no pusher," he asserts). It’s the
real date where he makes his colossal screw up, probably (consciously or
unconsciously), on purpose. He takes Betsy to a porn movie. She looks a little
game at first over the “dirty movie,” but is so repulsed, runs out of the
sleazy theater, never wanting to see Travis again. “Taking me to a place like
this is about as exciting as saying to me ‘Let's fuck,’” she says.
The scene reveals
that Bickle is so closed off and so drenched in the scum of the street, that he
has no idea how to date a woman or, he wanted to shock her goodness. In any
case, he should probably listen to more Kris Kristofferson. And get more
organizezed. But then, sticking with Jodie Foster worked out well for him …
Betsy comes back. At least in his rear view mirror.
After Hours (1985)
Griffin Dunne is a lonely New York word processor, living in
his boring beige world, 1980’s world filled with existential ennui. While
reading “Tropic of Cancer” in a diner a beautiful woman (Rosanna Arquette)
states “I love that book” and proves it by quoting the novel. A woman quoting Henry Miller? Yes. Intrigued, he asks her out. So far so good. Until he arrives
at her Soho loft where her roommate (who makes bagel and cream cheese
paperweights, something that will become even more hilarious in a scene with
Terri Garr) greets him, tells him to wait (she’s at the all night pharmacy) and
he puts up (if that’s the right term) with the sexy roommate’s mixed advances. When
Arquette finally shows up, she veers from loopy to downright bizarre. There’s
her story about her husband who yells “Surrender Dorothy!” whenever he climaxes,
there’s some kind of burn ointment she’s applying for whatever reason, there’s
shit pot and a lot of sobbing. An exasperated Dunne ditches the date with this
wonderful exit: “Where are those Plaster of Paris paperweights, anyway? I mean,
that's what I came down here to see in the first place. Well, that's not
entirely true, I came to see you, but where are the paperweights? That's what I
wanna see now!” As everything snowballs after this date, he pays for his exit dearly, eventually fleeing for his life in the subterranean
world of Soho, with a Mr. Softy Ice Cream truck in pursuit (explaining the
entire film would take too much room).
And poor
Rosanna Arquette... she kills herself. Some date. Dear Lord, with Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy (remember De
Niro’s Rupert Pupkin taking his date out on a stalking session to Jerry Lewis’
house?), Scorsese has directed some of the greatest worst dates in all of
cinema. He also directed one of the greatest – in Goodfellas – but he excels
at the bad ones. So much that he makes me want to buy one of those bagel
and cream cheese paperweights. Watching After Hours, you entirely understand when Dunne asserts: “I said I wanna see a Plaster of Paris bagel and cream cheese
paperweights, now cough it up… ‘get em, cause as we sit here chatting there are
important papers flying rampant around my apartment cause I don’t have ANYTHING
to hold them down with!”
The Graduate (1967)
Dustin Hoffman’s Benjamin Braddock has an affair with the married
and older (and smoking hot) Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) but winds up falling
for her beautiful daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross). That’s
awful sweet except that whole “dating the mom” part puts a little crimp in
their future. On their first date, which Mrs. Robinson forbids, poor, sad Benjamin
decides he’ll make the daughter hate him with one of the worst dates in
history. What does he do?
In a very Travis Bickle move (pre-Bickle) he takes
Elaine to a strip club and watches, with feigned glee (or a burst of sadism), a stripper rotating her tasseled
breasts over the young woman’s head. Elaine quiely cries, he feels terrible and they end
up wolfing down hamburgers, talking the night away. So, the horrible date ends
well, but what of the future? The picture concludes with the both liberating
and funny wedding scene, Benjamin gets his girl, but then there’s that last
shot on the bus – the couple collapse into their “now what?” faces. The future?
Who knows. Hopefully no dates.
The Birds (1963)
Oh, to be spontaneous. It’s a romantic, sexy and wonderful
thing for most people save for (and this is important here) a weirdly caustic Jessica Tandy,
jealous hysterical women and… millions of bloodthirsty birds. In Alfred
Hitchcock’s masterpiece, Tippi Hedren's Melanie Daniels is an independent rich
girl who dashes off to Bodega Bay in pursuit of the handsome Mitch Brenner (Rod
Taylor), lovebirds in tow. Oh… how sweet. Sweet until she comes across all
sorts of havoc destined to destroy any weekend getaway, chiefly mother, resentment
from every other female character (though there's a strong homoerotic
undercurrent in her dealings with Suzanne Pleshette -- she should have dated her)
and again, those damn birds.
The rapacious beasts are bad enough,
surely signaling some kind of end time for not just the town but perhaps, the
word, but then, adding to the terror another kind of bird, the women of Bodega
hating Melanie Daniels so much they could tear her apart before those crazy birds will. In one of the
film’s most telling scenes, a frightened mother blames the bird invasion on
Melanie, screaming at her “I think you’re evil! Evil!” Poor Tippi. She just
wanted to present some love birds to her crush and this is what she gets? Rod
Taylor is one charming fellow, I adore him, but Dear Lord, was he worth all of this?
I've been reading and watching more than blogging. That's a good thing. I think. No, it's not. There are too many movies I've seen, and seen in the last few years, that I haven't written about (like Cry of the Hunted, Wicked Woman and The Road to Glory, to name a few). I've been watching so many movies and talking about them (to friends) but not writing about them. Nevertheless, before January comes to a close, I will say my number one movie was The Master and I will post a top ten... sometime this year. Apologies. Now, back to reading. And watching. And more writing to come. The year is finally starting.
"As
far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster." So recalls
Ray Liotta's Henry Hill in one of the greatest movies about gangsters, Martin
Scorsese's Goodfellas. There's something more to that line. For Hill, it's real
life, but for those of us watching, it's a kind of fantasy we find strangely relatable (the American dream and all), or alien (if we've never been
involved in organized crime) and packed with a lot of crooked romance, even as Hill's downfall is not so romantic. Nevertheless, the charismatic outlaw has been a major subject
of cinema ever since movies were invented, and especially since they started to
talk. A character we're drawn to even if we're often repelled by such a
character's activity.
They intrigue and sometimes, perhaps scarily so, inspire
us. With that in mind, I’m looking at 10 terrific performances by actors (and
one actress) who played real-life gangsters on-screen. And, again, these are real life
gangsters, not the greatest gangster movies (that list would go on forever and include Scarface, The Roaring Twenties, The Public Enemy and more...), but with exception to Sam "Ace" Rothstein from Casino (so please excuse omissions like The Godfather and the brilliant
Scarface: The Shame of a Nation). Be them Mafia-oriented, bank robbers or drug lords, these stars came in
with a bang and, more than likely, went out with one, too.
Charles Bronson as Machine Gun Kelly in Machine Gun
Kelly (1958)
Directed by Roger Corman, this low-budget look at
the criminal misadventures of George "Machine Gun" Kelly is
surprisingly effective. And there's a good reason: A notable and
unforgettable mug is playing his first leading role, the young Charles Bronson.
Like Bonnie and Clyde, a considerably more famous and well-regarded
movie (though Machine Gun Kelly received nice praise as well),
Bronson's Kelly teams up with a woman, Flo Becker (Susan Cabot), who is a lot
bossier than Bonnie Parker.
As usual with these pictures (and real-life
characters) things go haywire: Kelly becomes public enemy No. 1, he pulls
an ill-fated robbery, Morey Amsterdam (his character, rather) loses an arm, and
Kelly holds the daughter of a wealthy businessman for ransom (according to this
movie, overbearing Flo made him do it). And then there's some double-crossing
and ... I won't say anymore. It's a punchy, nervy movie, and Bronson is
something to behold, as usual. More than the real life Kelly himself.
Paolo Seganti as
Johnny Stompanato in L.A. Confidential (1997)
He's got a small part in L.A.
Confidential, but it's such a memorable moment that it sits at the heart
of James Ellroy's corrupt movie star/mobster/cop connection of 1950s Los
Angeles. The right-hand man to Mickey Cohen and starlet seducer of
impressive proportions (Lana Turner? Good catch for one of Cohen's goons), the
moment involves straight-arrow cops Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) and flashy Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) approaching Lana Turner and her date, Johnny Stompanato (Paolo
Seganti), at the Formosa.
Exley accuses Turner of being a Turner look-alike
(alluding to a prostitution ring in which women were made to look like movie
stars), but after Vincennes says, "She is Lana Turner," the real Lana
rightfully throws her drink in his face. Good thing it didn't lead to more. The
real-life Stompanato was not exactly a nice guy. Turner's own daughter
stabbed him to death after an exceptionally distressing fight broke out between
the mobster and her mother.
But mother and daughter turned out OK. Lana made the greatest film of her career, Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life and Cheryl Crane eventually wrote the riveting Detour about growing up with Lana. Now, where's their movie?
Robert De Niro as Al Capone in The Untouchables (1987)
Brian De Palma's picture features one of the most
powerful, volatile performances of Robert De Niro as the infamous
Al Capone. Though Paul Muni played an inspired, brilliant version of Capone in
Howard Hawks' masterpiece Scarface: The Shame of a Nation (which De
Palma remade with his legendary, endlessly quoted Scarface starring Al Pacino),
De Niro really dug his fingernails into this one -- and scratched -- hard. Or,
rather, pummeled a poor man with a baseball bat.
It's based on the real-life
agents Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) and Jim Malone (Sean Connery) and
follows them as they pursue gang leader Capone during the Prohibition era.
The fascinating picture, with its gorgeous set pieces, smashing shootouts
and superb acting, was highly praised, though some thought De Niro was
over-the-top. Come on, he's playing Al Capone! He was right ... though no one can touch Paul Muni. I'm sure both De Niro and Capone would agree.
Ray Liotta as
Henry Hill in Goodfellas (1990)
Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas remains one of the director's most innovative, inspired, oft-imitated and
brilliantly crafted movies with one hell of a cast -- and Ray Liotta in the
performance of his life. Liotta's Henry Hill is powerful, scary, funny, sad,
sexy, ridiculous, understandable and inimitable. Hill's an interesting guy:
He's not as violent as his cronies (Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci), and he's
even the quiet one (as Pesci's mother, played by Scorsese's own mother, points
out), but he's so deeply entrenched in the life and lifestyle that he
starts losing control, brilliantly shown in the picture's third act.
Though the picture's
dirty deeds end up quite sad for many in the film (you don't want to mess with
Paulie), it's Hill's marriage with Karen, played by a spectacular Lorraine
Bracco, that feels just as heated and, finally, heartbreaking -- both saved and
doomed. They will have to enter the witness protection program. It's terrible
for Hill as he says by the end, "I'm an average nobody ... get to
live the rest of my life like a schnook." The real Henry Hill had a more colorful fate -- more arrests, guest spots on Howard Stern and even opening a restaurant in West Haven, Connecticut called, yes, Wiseguys. He passed away last year.
Warren Beatty as
Bugsy Siegel in Bugsy (1991)
Bugsy. That good-looking, charming, dapper and violent (that's an
understatement) gangster who built our dreamland/crazy town called Las Vegas.
The nattily dressed Siegel transformed a patch of Nevada land into what was
once a mobbed-up city of casinos (now a lot of theme parks, but I'm sure
those gangsters are still floating around). It paid off for a while, but not
so well in the end for Bugsy. So who better to play the good-looking so-and-so
than Warren Beatty, a walking icon of the American dream? And with Barry Levinson at the helm?
The movie, though very romantic, works:
The acting is superb, the direction is gorgeous -- Levinson crafts something historically and culturally significant in telling the glamour and horror
of Siegel's dream. The movie also features Beatty's future wife, Annette Bening, as Bugsy's true love Virginia Hill whom he called Flamingo, naming the famed casino after her. And it's still standing. My God, if those
walls could talk. Maybe it'd be best to not listen. Nah... of course we'd want to listen.
Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as
Bonnie and Clyde in Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Arthur Penn and Warren Beatty shocked the hell out of '60s
cinema with Bonnie and Clyde. This ingenious, modern and violent picture , though a period piece, was relevant to the times and still is. The 1967 picture, though heavily mythical in its beautiful look at
a pair of hoodlums even John Dillinger had little respect for, was based (obviously) on the
romanticized, real-life outlaw duo, a couple of in-love criminals (though
sexually frustrated -- guns come euphemistically in handy here) who proclaim,
"We rob banks." Indeed they do -- and they look good doing it in the absolutely gorgeous visages of
Warren Beatty (Clyde) and a ravishing, fashion inspiring Faye Dunaway (Bonnie).
Though the real duo wasn't as glamorous (they slept in their cars a lot) they're the epitome of romantic mad love, living by their own moral code. Never mind how scummy their life could really be. Or that Clyde may have liked men (though he clearly cared deeply for Bonnie). There's been talks of a re-make, and this is a story that could be told again, but could it top Penn's version? I don't think so. So far, only Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte
Bardot did Bonnie and Clyde proud.
Denzel Washington as Frank Lucas in American Gangster (2007)
Ridley Scott directed this epic, entertaining and splendidly
acted (especially by Denzel Washington in the lead role) account of drug lord
Frank Lucas, a notorious and major importer of heroin in 1960s and 1970s
Manhattan. Born in North Carolina, Lucas moved up the ranks in the Harlem crime
world after mentorshipby gangster Bumpy Johnson (which some real-life
accounts having taken into question). After Bumpy dies, Lucas become the fur coat-wearing and
seriously smart (though, obviously, morally dubious) drug king who nabbed his
product directly from the source, Thailand. Lucas managed to get soldiers
returning from the Vietnam War to smuggle the heroin via military planes.
It was all very successful, especially with his lower prices for the dope,
until he was busted (one of the reasons Washington reportedly agreed to take on
this role was the arc of the complicated character. Washington even met
the still-alive Lucas for research). Lucas is appealing, but Washington (and Scott working with a
smart script by Steven Zaillian) makes you think twice about glorifying Lucas. Lucas has been out of the slammer since 1991 and leads his life now in a wheelchair.
Robert De Niro as Sam "Ace" Rothstein (real life Frank Rosenthal) in Casino (1995)
As Sam "Ace" Rothstein, Robert De Niro gives one of his most poignant
performances in Martin Scorsese's ultra-violent, epic and underrated Casino, a movie that feels richer, more nuanced more masterful
each time you watch it. That, and it features Don Rickles.
My God, what's not to love? De Niro, based on real-life casino
runner Frank Rosenthal, says this: "Running a casino is like robbing
a bank with no cops around. For guys like me, Las Vegas washes away your sins.
It's like a morality car wash." Indeed. Gangsters, love, hate,
gambling and some terribly heartbreaking and, in the end, dysfunctional
interpersonal relationships worm their way into this slot machine of life. De
Niro is one of the "bad" guys, but you feel for him here as the
former bookmaker who once ran a tightly wound casino for the mob. And then he
makes some mistakes. Chiefly, he gets his friend and wife involved.
That's not
always a bad idea. Everything appears to be going OK until Joe Pesci, his
hair-trigger-tempered pal (maybe psychotic is a better word) rambles into the
dusty town. And then, in a spectacular love-at-first-sight moment, De Niro
falls hard for and marries gorgeous hustler Sharon Stone, a woman who can't
shake her pimp (a great James Woods).
Well, that's going to cause
problems. And it literally blows up in poor Frank's face. Scorsese managed
to make Casino even sadder by showing that even this, this dirty
world, exhibited Vegas' last gasp of glamour and decadence. Casino spirals so out of control and goes to such dark places (Pesci's death is
especially brutal), it's almost bizarre to see the end shot of all those
families now traveling to that vice-filled city and feeling bittersweet about
it. Ah, yes, the good old dirty days
Al Pacino as
Benjamin "Lefty" Ruggiero in Donnie Brasco (1997)
In Mike Newell's Donnie
Brasco, actors Johnny Depp and Al Pacino could qualify as guys
playing real-life gangsters, chiefly because Depp's character -- real name
Joseph Pistone, aka Donnie Brasco -- the FBI agent who goes undercover to
investigate the Bonanno crime family, really DOES become Donnie
Brasco. He's so accepted in the mob family on which he's spying that he's
left torn and confused. Al Pacino plays Benjamin "Lefty"
Ruggiero, a hit man who's seen better days and is now a
broken-down older soul. Some might say pathetic.
Why you feel sorry for this guy is the power (or
manipulation) of director Newell and the poignant performance by Pacino, who
you, against your own better judgment, begin rooting for. You like him, you
want him to make some more money and you're touched by his friendship with
Brasco. But that's the power of the movie: Depp makes us all feel a little bit
like Donnie Brasco.
Lawrence Tierney, Warren Oates and Johnny Depp as John Dillinger in Dillinger (1945), Dillinger (1973) and Public Enemies (2009)
Ol' Jackrabbit himself, John Dillinger, the infamous
Depression-era bank robber/Robin Hood, whose personal story is as interesting
as his crimes.
That great lug and real-life tough guy Lawrence Tierney seems
the perfect Dillinger, and he was a terrific one, but the role (so far) goes to
Warren Oates in John Milius' version of one of the most famous (and beloved)
gangsters in history.
Oates looks a lot like Dillinger, which is important, and
he possessed toughness and charm -- you understand his violent side. And, you know, it's Warren fucking Oates. It's hard for that man to do wrong, especially as John Dillinger. He's the best. Michael Mann's 2009
version, about which I was initially excited for, shot the period piece on digital,
and I'm still mixed as to how that worked.
Dillinger, the coolest of the
gangsters, the intelligent, good-looking, sharp-suited ladies' man who was
taken down in Chicago after the "lady in red" narced him out (and
after a movie!) may have needed the cracks and shadows and depth of good
old-fashioned celluloid. Still, Johnny Depp (as Dillinger) pulled off a
romantic, impressive performance and worked nicely as the more soulful counterpoint
to Christian Bale's intrepid FBI agent Melvin Purvis (the man who watched
Dillinger die).
But again, Warren Oates is the top dog in the Dillinger Department. And it's tough to play Dillinger. As Woody Allen said, John
Dillinger was "a genius ... in his chosen profession."
Since I have taken most of January off I'm dipping into my archives and revisiting... Phantom Lady.
There's a dangerous, sickly titillating sexuality to film noir that's not seen enough on screen these days. That thrill, that edge, that mixture of sadism and masochism, that passion, that cold-heartedness, that control and abandon. I'll speak mostly of the genre's women: Peggy Cummins coolly shooting between her legs in Gun Crazy. Decoy’s Jean Gillie laughing with maniac, orgasmic glee after she’s offed her duped boyfriend who’s just dug up the only thing that turns her on -- money.
Cloris Leachman running barefoot down a two-lane blacktop, panting and hyper-venting over Nat King Cole’s silky opening song in Kiss Me Deadly. Rita Hayworth's Gilda, who uses her considerable sexuality for her only clutch of power and is then, made miserable by it. Richard Egan getting an eyeful of beautiful six foot Wicked Woman Beverly Michaels -- a femme fatale who actually falls in love and is, in the end, alone to continue her manipulations in the next dump the bus drops her off at. Born to Kill's Lawrence Tierney tossing and turning over Claire Trevor -- wanting to rape, murder, kiss, kill -- and she wanting it too. And, dear lord, Lana and that lipstick in The Postman Always Rings Twice. The look John Garfield gives Lana when that tube of red rolls across the floor is worth a hundred contemporary sex scenes.
Noir reveals complicated sexuality that's not just dishy dames in sexy high heels or snappy men in fedoras (I don't have to say this to readers who actually watch noir). It's screwy sexy, frequently populated by losers (frequently attractive losers) made all the more erotic because even as sex, often toxic sex, motivates many of its character’s actions, the genre’s aim isn’t merely to steam your glasses. It can serve (directly or indirectly) as allegory for many of the power struggles we may endure in the tumult of relationships. If they're easy, they're usually boring. If they're hard, they're usually worth questioning. If they're hot and hard, they're nearly impossible to put down. If they're causing you to saunter into situations that sicken you, you're in mad love. Or a masochist. Usually both.
Which led me to a movie I hadn’t seen in years -- Robert Siodmack’s PhantomLady -- a picture that features a performance by Ella Raines that’s so sizzling, so, at times, sick and yet so alluringly poignant, you’re a little overwhelmed by it.
Adapted from the Cornell Woolrich novel, Phantom Lady was Siodmak’s first American screen success and he would later craft some sublime noir including Criss Cross, Cry of the City, The Dark Mirror, The File on Thelma Jordan and The Killers (among others). I’ll run down the story: Ella Raines (her character’s nicknamed “Kansas” -- which seems like a Wizard of Oz reference given the subterranean world she will find herself in) works as Alan Curtis’s secretary. When he’s framed for the murder of his wife, she sets out to help him because she doesn’t believe he did it.
She's also besotted with him (lucky man). Sexing up her image as cub private dick, she’s off to find this “Phantom Lady” with the help of Curtis’s friend (Franchot Tone) and an off duty police detective (Thomas Gomez, so wonderful in Force of Evil). OK, so that's the story, but what I really want to discuss is Raines's interaction with the hep cat, hopped up jazz drummer, played by noir staple, the great sap/sleaze Elisha Cook, Jr.
I am absolutely gob-smack over their famed moments together. Ella’s seduction of Elisha -- a freaky sexy, conflicted, crazily drugged sequence (you can practically smell the booze, marijuana, heroin and dexies permeating the joint) in which Raines plays hot-to-trot, seems to be eating up her vampy method of getting to the straight dirt and yet, is repulsed by both Cook (that kiss!) and herself for having to go this far.
Showcasing Siodmak’s (and cinematographer Woody Bredell’s) evocative, angled compositions (used gorgeously throughout the movie), the style brilliantly underscores the mounting hysteria and varied state of Raines’s psychology. This is an extreme example, but what Raines reveals is something many women feel when finding themselves in the belly of the sleazy beast. It's a little fun and a little horrifying and you're definitely not in Kansas anymore.
It's that screwy, supposedly joyful, yet depressing time of the year again: the holidays. And they're almost over. Thank God, the Master, Freddie Quell or my beloved Marilyn Monroe -- my woman of the year (I'll get to my movies in the next few days).
I despise all year-end parties, which is why I'm now enjoying New Year's Eve, safely tucked away in a sleeper car on a train, ringing in 2013 somewhere at the Oregon/California border. I only wish Sugar Cane was in the next sleeping car, Manhattan in a paper cup. Or better yet, champagne. Marilyn loved her champagne.
When I see MM holding a champage glass in a picture, I often think she is New Year's Eve -- a glistening light, all bright, blonde, silver, slinky-curvy and drunken and gorgeous and who gives a damn if she's had a few too many? Like our New Year hopes, she always embarked on a new start (and succeeded quite well, brilliantly, at times) but fell, like many of us into those ruts. Those fuzzy ends of the lollipops. But she tried. And even if she failed (or fell down drunk), it is she who so famously said, "It's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring." Thank you, Marilyn.
Marilyn was flesh and blood, but she's such a holiday to the eyes. I wish to god she'd been more careful and not mixed her meds but... I can't change that. She's many things, that artist Marilyn, but she's our drunken angel. She's my drunken angel, anyway.. I love her.
So, this New Year's Eve, I will think of Marilyn and one of my favorite New Year's movies, George Cukor's blissfully ebullient "Holiday." A picture that I think Marilyn (MM obsessive that I am) probably loved. And perhaps related to. Freedom! Expression! It's hard not to. Funny, carefree, silly, inspiring and yet, curiously sad -- sad because you get the feeling that all the exploring dreams its lead character (a joyous, lovable Cary Grant) hopes and plans for, well, they may not work out in the real world. Can one be that simple yet complex and happy and live their life that way?
So, for me, it's the perfect New Year movie, filled with fresh starts, all night parties, dreams and happy/poignant revelations -- those things we make lists of before the clock strikes midnight and usually ditch a few weeks into the month. But not Johnny, we hope.
An extended, wonderful portion of this movie does indeed take place on New Year's Eve during a society party where Johnny is set to announce his engagement to wealthy Julia (Doris Nolan). But he's falling in love wih her rapturous, different sister (a luminous Katharine Hepburn) who's attracted to his counterculture desires. The movie works subtly and elegantly, infused with an almost startling blend of comedy and pathos.
As Johhny and Linda clearly fall for each other and even literally tumble (in a jubilant scene, the two stars perform a beautiful bit of acrobatic talent) they leave us all bubbly MM intoxicated and charged up for something new ourselves. But what? Is it possible to ever feel elation like that? Is it? We can always do as Cary Grant's Johnny does and attempt a little blind faith. Blind faith can get you through the night. I'm sure it helped Marilyn more than a few times. That, and a sweet glass of champagne. Happy New Year.
It's not Christmas without Nat King Cole. I love "The Christmas Song" but "Stardust" is one of the most beautiful songs he ever recorded. And, I think, one of the most beautiful songs of all time.
Another Christmas, another posting of one of my favorite holiday movies -- Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. I could write about countless other Christmas or Christmas-themed movies I revere (Ernst Lubitsch's masterpiece The Shop Around the Corner is a prime example), but I've got other things on my mind, it's my day off and another Tom Cruise movie opened -- Jack Reacher. I'll see it, but not today. I'm interested in Tom Cruise (I always have been), and for Christmas, he's wrapped up in Kubrick. Cruise is a strange force. A movie star and a fascinating, sometimes brilliant actor, who thinks he's sincere and you really believe that he thinks he's sincere but, man, is he charismatically creepy. And wonderfully so. Is there any other actor like Tom Cruise? No. There is not.
And Stanley Kubrick must have understood this. All that insanity-inducing yuletide anxiety (and then some) is so perfectly conveyed in Eyes Wide Shut via his leading man that Tom Cruise is Christmas stress -- pretty, festive, overly serious, overly grinning, and often hilariously, creepily Christmassy. And then, scared. Terrified, even, delivering Kubrick's social, sexual, surrealist themes within the director's gorgeous holiday milieu. Bathed in Christmas style, Eyes Wide Shut uses Christmas lights, background Christmas trees and traditional colors of red and green with almost perverse relentlessness. And perverse relentlessness is really what I seem to be about this season (I think. And did I just write that?). Well, this year has been an odd one. Wonderful and horrible and inspiring and sad and fulfilling and mysterious. Whatever Tom Cruise is hiding underneath that perfect smile of his, however much he is "quietly judging me" (a la Magnolia), I sensed throughout this mercurial strange-love of a year. So this movie fits my mood. With that, I'm dipping into my archives to consider one of Kubrick's most underrated pictures -- a film that in terms of love, sex, death, fear and träume remains timeless. And again, it's a perfect Christmas movie...
In Kubrick's cinematic universe, reality, dreams, order and insanity progress on distinct, intersecting planes. Whether he was depicting an absurd, chillingly real war room in Dr. Strangelove, the disturbing but oddly sexy ultra violence of an Orwellian future in A Clockwork Orange, the siren call of insanity in The Shining, the hyper fantastical yet authentic Vietnam War in Full Metal Jacket, or the irony and powerlessness among such transcendent opulence in Barry Lyndon, life was a surreal work in progress -- an ambiguous joke that veered from hilarious to sexy to terrifying, sometimes within seconds. Attempting to understand order, or how any system designed to make our universe more rational or safe seemed fruitless. Think Sterling Hayden approaching such a predicament at the end of Kubrick's The Killing. He watches his life literally fly away on an airport tarmac and bitterly spits one of cinema’s greatest final lines: “Eh, what’s the difference?”
Which brings me to the final line of Kubrick’s frequently misunderstood Eyes Wide Shut in which Nicole Kidman states rather flatly, “Fuck” -- as in, that’s the answer, that’s what we need to do. A movie I’ve defended since its release, it’s a picture that deserves closer inspection and a worthy finale for the enigmatic auteur.
The controversial movie (some thought it silly, some, un-erotic) Eyes Wide Shut found the director once again studying the perplexing nature of dreams and reality, this time exploring them in a more personal and private arena: sexuality. As he did with Lolita, Kubrick created more than a film about sexual desire; he created a film about bitter romance, troublesome marital bonds, societal contradictions and, significantly, the fear of death.
An updating of the 1927 Traumnovelle (Dream Novel) by the sardonic Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler, the picture remains an unsettling blend of antiquated garishness and modern transgression -- an alternate sexual universe haunted by ghouls of the past, present and future.
In this universe “live” the healthy, handsome walking dead -- Dr. Bill Harford (an impressive Tom Cruise) and his wife, Alice (a slinky, wonderfully creepy Nicole Kidman), a glamorous, rich couple who appear the picture of storybook perfection. But like most supposed perfection, there are cracks in that portrait, and in their case, it’s the usual: they want to screw other people (or at least they think they do). At a sumptuous party given by Bill's obscenely wealthy friend Victor (Sydney Pollack), Bill almost strays upstairs with two models while Alice flirts with a bizarre Hungarian man who looks like one of the cadaverous party-goers from The Shining. The next evening, in a fit of jealousy over Bill's near indiscretion (he ended up contending with a beautiful, naked drug overdose instead of a debauched roll in the hay -- though the way her body sits in this shot is disturbingly erotic), Alice confesses that she’s had thoughts of cheating and, even worse, reveals that if things had been different, she would have thrown her entire life away for one flight of sexual fancy.
Unmasking something that should remain one of those deep, dark secrets you never confess to your significant other, Alice deftly rattles Bill's perception of her fidelity and the strength of their marriage in a speech that makes his mind spin out of control (Kidman's performance here is superb). After this confession, Bill is abruptly called away to confirm the death of a patient and keeping in tune with the love/death/sex of the picture, the daughter of the deceased makes a pass at him. The grief stricken but, considering the circumstances, kinky gesture aids in Bill’s decision to not immediately return home. Instead, he wanders the streets of New York and embarks on a sequence of actions that, though not as outwardly comic, somewhat resemble those in the Scorsese movie After Hours: He discovers a surreal sexual underworld that he’s both attracted to and repelled by.
A prostitute, a piano player, a bizarre costume-store owner and his Lolita-esque 14-year-old daughter lead Bill to the film's infamous ritualistic orgy sequence, during which participants are cloaked and masked, and naked women are used as sacrificial sex lambs. The gothic, terrifying yet titillating feel of this sequence walks a fine line between horror and parody and true to Kubrick’s genius, manages to cross into both camps. The magnificent, exacting camera work and unrelenting music compel us to look, no matter what happens, and though I was actually a little scared the first time I saw this moment, I found myself highly amused, laughing even. If ever a person was out of place in a Bohemian Grove-like orgy, it is Tom Cruise’s Dr. Bill. And yet, I was absolutely hypnotized, watching these moments like a waking dream and investing it with multiple meanings. What the hell is going on here besides a bunch of silly old rich men getting their jollies with beautifully breasted, long legged Helmut Newton models? And further, what do all of Bill’s adventures mean? Are Bill's encounters simply nightmares that will damage his marriage beyond repair, or are they mere titillating fantasy -- fodder for a closer relationship and better sex with his spouse?
Well, I can’t answer that. Given the picture's ominous tone, however, there is something definitely rotten within its slinky, Christmas-lit loveliness. Like the impeccable environment of The Shining, the aura of Eyes Wide Shut is one of beauty ready to be defiled, sexuality ready to be slaughtered, lovely exteriors that reek of formaldehyde. The pall that hangs over this picture is fear: fear of the unknown; fear of yourself or of others; and fear that if sex can lead to freedom, it can just as easily lead to death.
In fact, the picture can be viewed as a commentary on sexual attitudes in the last few decades -- a time when meaningless indiscretions can lead to horrifying blood-test results. It is no surprise, then, that Bill is a doctor and that throughout the film, he flashes his physician's ID as a police detective would his badge. "I'm a doctor," he constantly says, for both reassurance and intimidation.
In a profession that requires intimate investigation of flesh that may well be on its way to the morgue, sex is serious. These unsettling references to AIDS, necrophilia and forbidden sex (not to mention Kubrick's own death upon bringing the film to completion, une petite mort of sorts) permeate the picture like one giant prick tease. In today's world, sex is still there for the taking, but at what cost and for what gain? Kubrick's frustrating, brilliant coda neither answers nor ignores its own questions. Rather, it leaves us in a mysterious, contradictory mishmash of dream and reality, where not only are our eyes wide shut, but our legs are too.
“I have too many fantasies to be a housewife.... I guess I am a fantasy.” --Marilyn Monroe
Lists. Numbers. Number ones. My number one movie this year was Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master and my number one woman was Marilyn Monroe, a woman who, no matter how much I research, how much I study in photographs and moving pictures, how much I think about as a living woman and as a departed icon, remains powerful and powerfully vulnerable, real and unreal, obvious and inscrutable and in the end, an artist. A master at her art. She's one of my number one women of all time.
And yet, she often felt unloved. And frequently disliked. "I'm the only one that likes you!" The Master's Philip Seymour Hoffman hollers and repeats to the broken, ugly/beautiful, self medicating Freddie Quell, a line that manages to be simultaneously manipulative and completely honest. I thought of how I have heard that in real life, and how much that schoolyard taunt works when you're feeling especially vulnerable. It resonated so much that I thought of Marilyn, who surely heard the same, and probably from a few attempted Masters (good, bad or likely a mixture of the two) who could never contain her (Hyde, Lytess, Miller, the Strasbergs, Dr. Greenson). But in front of the camera, she was her own master, even if she wasn't entirely sure of it, and even if she, like Quell, popped the pain away with booze and pills and feared genetic insanity (real life Marilyn and movie-made Freddie both had mothers stuck in loony bins.)
Which led me to last year's number one movie, Lars Von Trier's Melancholia, a movie that never left my thoughts in 2012 and reached out to Monroe in dreamy reveries. I felt many personal things as I was writing about Marilyn (and Bob Dylan played a vital role) but Von Trier and Melancholia were right there, holding her up, not down in its beguiling, joyous expression of depression. I thought, My God would Lars Von Trier have understood the artistry of Marilyn! And he would have worked with her beautifully.
As I wrote of Cherie, her Bus Stop "angel" to Don Murray in this December's Playboy, "she’s an earthly woman. A woman who sleeps in
all day and a woman who probably bleeds on the sheets and spills liquor on her
clothes and continually embarrasses herself, and a woman so lost or sacrificial
that she just gives up her dreams and leaves with that insane Cowboy. But that
makes her even more interesting, and
almost guiltily desirable... I can imagine
Marilyn, like Kirsten Dunst’s Justine, basking under that doomsday planet, naked
and pale and accepting -- absorbing and eroticizing that pain -- and, as Marilyn did
in film, giving us the pleasure of looking at her beautiful body."
When I absorb my thoughts about Melancholia, I feel I could be describing Marilyn. She got it. When calling up photographer André de Dienes late at night, Marilyn insisted he snap photos of her as she was: tired, sad and disheveled. She directed the powerfully poignant and darkly beautiful shoot and she even titled it: "The End of Everything."
So before I discuss my new lists and those damn numbers (one and two and three) I'm returning to Melancholia. And Marilyn and Von Trier who are universal and personal, blatant and mysterious, sorrowful and funny, nihilistic and yet, sublimely, romantically celebratory.
Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia takes the black bile of its namesake -- the depression of its heroine -- and transforms the “humor” into exaltation. A planet -- a terrifying, dazzling planet that, true to Dane Von Trier’s inspired swan dive (black swan dive) into German romanticism, is set to destroy life on earth: Götterdämmerung via "Tristan and Isolde" (which he uses in the picture’s rapturously beautiful overture), via Ophelia via Cassandra via Marilyn via Von Trier’s own personal mythology. Marilyn and Milton (Greene) and Von Trier's sexy, gorgeous enigmatic "Black Sessions."
Clinically depressed Justine (a stunningly raw Kirsten Dunst -- Von Trier’s surrogate) does what’s often expected of those afflicted -- wear a brave face and don that damn wedding dress (a creamy dream of a dress that Justine seems strangled by, until she lifts it up and fornicates with another man on a golf green…). Further, she must embrace love, work, family (no matter how dysfunctional) and rules.
Well, Von Trier cannot accept that fate, and in the picture’s first half, in which Justine destroys her nuptials, her actions serve as depressive, rebellious self awareness: “What did you expect?” She asks. Indeed (Marilyn may have asked the same). And then comes planet Melancholia, inching closer and closer, leaving stable sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) panic stricken while Justine, calmly, grimly and at times, cheekily, accepts annihilation, not as easy suicide but as a kind of cosmic extension of despair. Yes. Finally. Justine isn’t wallowing in depression, she’s embracing, seducing it, and in one of the picture’s most exquisite moments, lying beneath it naked -- luxuriating in the glow of doom.
Von Trier, a notorious and real sufferer himself, sincerely understands depression (just as he understood the horrors of anxiety in his brilliant and deeply misunderstood Antichrist), which may be why he maddens so many. How can he do this to these women? Well, because women do suffer, women get depressed, and not merely in simplistic, eye-rolling, I-cry-at-weddings ways (and Justine is not your usual runaway bride, god bless her), but in complicated, sometimes terrifying ways. And sometimes they die.
Von Trier gets women. I've been stating this for years and have fallen into heated arguments over my stance. But here's something else -- he’s also in awe, baffled and scared of them, which makes him one of the most honest male (and female) filmmakers working. I often don’t understand myself, frequently, and many women engage in curious, sometimes destructive acts that leave their lovers, family and themselves baffled. Not solely because they’re weak (which is actually a forgivable trait in a person) or simply irrational or evil, but because they’re multi-faceted human beings. He certainly understands much about human nature -- male and female -- but to me, he is the consummate woman's director. Like Dryer, Cukor, Sirk, and Fassbinder before him (but clearly, his own beast), the experimental, profound, bizarre, sickening, poignant and often genius Dane creates female characters of, sometimes, Joan of Arc proportions -- Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark and Dogville are the most prominent examples -- and lets them both fight and fold under the weight of their existence.
His women, or martyrs, as many would, often rightfully assert, live in a hard, oppressive world, peopled with individuals who harbor little concern for their goodness or, at least attempt to understand their ugliness. They are human, and so, how they respond to such pressures or the conflicts within themselves often create knee-jerk reactions toward Von Trier. Chiefly, he must hate women. No. He does not. He appears to love women. And then, perhaps like most men, at times, he does not love them. They are maddening and victimized and glorious and, in the end, good (or not?). And master von Trier adds to it all a sardonic touch, spicing up his experimental melodrama with heavy doses of dark humor and personal reflection -- he surely both loves and hates himself as well.
Weaving himself into his characters, he’s sadistic, masochistic, empathetic, self-obsessed, morbid and morbidly funny and then honest and honestly confused. Which again, makes me think of Marilyn, on film and in photographs -- she weaves a similar spell. As I wrote in Playboy, "through it all, no matter what was happening in her life, Marilyn gave us that gift: pleasure. Pleasure in happiness and pleasure in pain and the pleasure of looking at her. And like the great artist she was, looking at her provoked whatever you desired to interpret from her."
Much like Melancholia, in which Von Trier grants depressives a gift. Taking Justine’s depleted darkness and imbuing her with celestial life through doomsday, he, to recall another German Romantic and again, Marilyn, creates an Ode to Joy through heartbreaking and gloriously inspirational…woe. "The End of Everything." Marilyn. Her beginning, middle and end is neverending.
