Sneak Peek: In the Loop

The Hurt Locker isn't the only politically-minded independent film lurking amidst the waters of racially-insensitive robots and Harrys Potter; there's also Armando Ianucci's In the Loop, about a public relations disaster initiated by a tongue-tied British bureaucrat.

 

The film looks promising, perhaps shades of Dr. Strangelove. Very excited to see James Gandolfini in a serious movie, even if not too serious a role. I'm going to an advance screening next Wednesday; click it back here for the full report.

Sneak Peek: The Hurt Locker

If you haven't been made aware by the countless interviews with pulp machismo satirist Kathryn Bigelow, husband of James Cameron, her new film is called The Hurt Locker. Click on the link for the trailer. The film stars Jeremy Renner, whom this blog has romanticized since his bit part in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. All the reviews indicate this will be some film.

The Vault #24 Lost Redford Western Edition: Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here

In 1969, Robert Redford was in a movie co-starring Katherin Ross and photographed by master swordsman Conrad Hall. It was a western set around the turn of the 20th century which centered on a manhunt. The movie was not called Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

From time to time, perhaps too many times, The Chances We Take has focused on westerns. Its cliche at this point to call it the most original American genre, or to say that of all genres, the western, even at its most formulaic, offers the most relevant commentaries on law, criminality, human nature and morality that cookie-cutter films can muster. There are a LOT of westerns worth looking at, from the classics (Stagecoach, Shane), to the darker takes (The Searchers, Ride Lonesome) to spaghetti Westerns (The Man With No Name Trilogy)  to anti-westerns (Cassidy, The Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid) to post-anti-western commentaries (Unforgiven, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford). The western is a genre which film geeks delve into more than any other, including noir. 

Which means its easy to find a great western without even trying, under a rock, that no one has ever keyed you to. This brings me back to Redford, Ross, Hall, the manhunt and the other 1969 anti-western. It's easy to see why Abraham Polonsky's Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here is not considered an all-time classic. It would be had it been made, say, 15 years earlier. It has the stiff upper lip machismo and women to the side ethos of High Noon, and the classically tragic loner ending of The Searchers, but it was made in a time when the status quo was in upheaval, and when its star, Redford was in a much more experimental, comedic, New-Wave inspired spurs n saddle flick. Next to Cassidy, Willie Boy could be called a B-picture, the work of a stooge, a must miss dustup which shamelessly casts a white man as a Native American at least a decade after that was socially acceptable. These criticisms would be totally out of line. Sure, it was directed by Abraham Polonsky, who I've never heard of. But no movie with Redford shot by hall is to be missed.

Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here is the apparently all true story of Willie Boy, a Native American ex-con who, in 1909, became the subject of a multi-county manhunt in Southern California while President Taft was visiting the region. Willie Boy is played by Robert Blake, who was coming off his chilling turn in In Cold Blood. Willie comes back from prison to be with his best girl (Katherine Ross), but her father, who has assimilated to white culture, does not think Willie is a good influence. The two meet anyway in an orchard to elope, but their plans are foiled when her father appears, and Willie kills him in passion. The couple run into the mountains Bonnie and Clyde style, assuming no white sheriff will bother with a couple of Indians. But, because the President is in the area and the press start asking questions, Sheriff Cooper (Redford) is forced against his will to hunt a young couple in love. 

Willie Boy should be praised for multiple reasons, the first being its sympathetic attitude towards Native Americans. The predicament Blake finds himself in is not unlike Ving Rhames in Rosewood; he's a little bad, but his race makes him evil in the eyes of society. Redford and Blake acquit themselves nicely in what is, admittedly, a pretty flat script. The real star however, are Hall's compositions, which go from lone figure in the desert to tightly packed shots between rocks and under horses. The film alternates between the wide-open freedom of virgin territory to the highly ordered and civilized banquet held for Taft. One particular set-piece where Willie Boy ambushes a posse on horseback is not to be missed.

Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here is not the first Western one should see. But to give it one more compliment, the film is not dated at all. The cinematography and editing hold up, and the locations and sets are most convincing. For a western, or any film, of this particular era, that is saying a lot. Solid B+/A-

Eating, Sleeping, Breathing and Watching Crap: Righteous Kill

Jon Avnet's much anticipated follow up to 88 Minutes had everything going for it: a groundbreaking screenplay, the unexplored backdrop of the NYPD, am unthinkable twist ending and most importantly, the two most relevant and committed young actors working today: Robert Deniro and Al Pacino. It's too bad the studio had to go and slap the B-movie title Righteous Kill on this prestige picture in the making.

Whoa, Fitty is in this jaint! Hold your horses! This wouldn't happen to be bottom of the barrel schlock amounting to a Saw movie minus the gore, would it? Not with multiple Academy Award(r) winners Donnie Wahlberg and John Leguizamo providing backup? And the music of the Rolling Stones? It is irrefutable that Jon Avnet has seen most of Goodfellas, and that therefore, Righteous Kill is gonna be some righteous entertainment, bro!

It's nowhere near as bad as it looks, however, and that's the disappointment. For a post-Heat Pacino movie, Al is surprisingly under control, which makes for less unintentional comedy, and Bob is, well, napping. It's easy to imagine the two of them making this bad decision 15 or twenty years ago and coming up with the same results (although before movies like The Usual Suspects and Se7en, it's hard to imagine this "psychological" "serial killer" movie with "surprises" being made at all). Really, it would have been better had a director like Friedkin or Lumet been attached to this disaster that it might be a triple-crown of past-its-primeness. 

As it stands, Righteous Kill is a lurching insult of a movie, replete with a half dozen baseball analogies that hint at a thoughtful idea of a story. It's definitely worth watching if you pass it on cable, which I just did. Otherwise, see Heat if you want to see our faves in action together.

The Vault #23: Basic Instinct

Despite what you may have heard, Basic Instinct is not soft-core pornography - it is a work of art from a master of eroticism, suspense and explosion. In 1991, Hungarian-born Joe Esterhaz sold the script of Instinct for over a million dollars, to be directed by Dutch master Paul Verhoeven, who was coming off the successes of Robocop and Total Recall. I emphasize and include the nationalities of the filmmakers to assure you that, while this film appears to be a low work of smut executed with a minimum of effort within the feint tropes of film noir, Basic Instinct is in fact an intensely self-aware parody of American culture and genre filmmaking.

Verhoeven clearly studied the work of Alfred Hitchcock, and does not mind letting us know. The insane blonde, the San Francisco location, the political intrigue hammered in from the first scene but never remotely explained; MacGuffins abound, but this is the 90s. They can't just be present, they have to propagate. Every 15 minutes or so delivers a edgy sex scene or a brutal murder. When you watch, keep and eye on your watch. This is a crowd-pleasing blockbuster in the truest sense; sex and violence are not just part of the story, they are clearly the reason that we AND the characters are drawn into the experience.

This effect could not be achieved without the perfect double casting of Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone. Douglas, the cocksure leading man coming off of Wall Street and Romancing the Stone can't wait to tell his buddies about "the best fuck of my life"; his demeanor is reminiscent of Sonny Crockett on Miami Vice. He's such a coke addicted loose cannon no one can stop him. Stone, the starlet willing to do anything to succeed, must show a naked portion of her body a dozen times. So starved for sex she'll murder just to get the right man's attention. And this is hardly exaggeration; it's almost all right there in the script. 

I love Basic Instinct because it doesn't pussy foot around the issue by making this a film about rape or sexual harassment, or a commentary on crooked cops or violence in the media. It realizes all those negative influences from poorly conceived but ubiquitous genre films and ups the ante in every way. Lesbians? Car chases? Full on bush shots? You asked for it, America. Everything you ever wanted but were afraid to ask for.

Tetro Postmortem: Coppola???

After the horrendous flip-flopping dead fish noises of Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro die down later this week, film geeks will be left with the now three decades-old question: is this guy any damn good? We all know the story of the boy wonder who penned an oscar winning script for the George C. Scott vehicle Patton, then got attached to Robert Evans' last chance to save Paramount, The Godfather, winning three more oscars in the process while producing, writing and directing the minimalist thriller The Conversation. 

At that point, awash in success, Coppola set out to make Apocalypse Now, which consumed nearly four years of life and limb, came out in an abridged cut, was considered a failure by many, and sent Francis into a debt fueled shame spiral that resulted in films like Peggy Sue Got Married, The Godfather Part III and Rumble Fish. While his S.E. Hinton adaptations will always hold a soft spot for those of us of a certain age, the bloom of American auteur was off of Coppola's rose. Unlike Scorsese, he did not branch out artistically after a fabulously successful 1970s. Unlike Spielberg, he did not make bigger and more popular films year after year. Frankly, Coppola made worse and worse films, more and more boring and conventional until, after the highly watchable The Rainmaker, he basically dropped off the face of the earth completely.

He has returned with two navel-gazing "art" pictures. Had Youth Without Youth and Tetro come out in the early 80s, after Coppola seemed to be on the road to reclusive Kubrick type genius territory, their reception might have been different. One about a man who is given dozens of years at the end of his life to finish a masterwork (of linguistics), another about a troubled novelist afraid of publishing his opus, both are about creative types saved by deus-ex-machina screenwriting. 

If Francis is trying to tell us what he wishes for is to be saved by supernatural forces, I think few of us are willing to listen. These last two films confirm what Apocalypse Now Redux merely hinted at; Coppola, left to his own devices, does not have much idea of what a good film makes. And I don't see a Departed  in his future.

The Vault #22: Dreams

After back to back historical epics Kagemusha and Ran, Akira Kurosawa continued his late-life painterly period with less a film than a collage entitled Dreams, which follows a nameless "I" from childhood into alienated middle age. The film is presented in 8 vignettes, from 16th century Japan to the near future. Along the way, topics of religion, art, war and death are tackled in staggering set pieces that range from radioactive, man-sized dandelions to painted landscapes.

Dreams might be a great place for a casual film-watcher to start with Kurosawa. Though it has an unconventional structure, it provides a great short-hand of the director's major themes, with special focus given to Kurosawa's hope for peace and hatred of war, especially nuclear war. Each segment features a none-too-subtle monologue delivered to "I", teaching him and sometimes terrifying him into doing the right thing in his unseen waking life. I don't want to say too much about the film; just rent it. Visually, it is as good as any made by Kurosawa in his lifetime. Thematically, it pack even more. 

Tetrocalypse Now

Watch.

What follows is a review of Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro, the story of a Argentine-Italian family of artists struggling with its troubled past. This review will focus on four major facets:

1. The Story of Tetro

2. Artistic vision and creative expression in Tetro

3. Vincent Gallo 

4. Overall impressions

1. The Story of Tetro

Tetro takes place in Buenos Aires in present day, although it seems to be the 1960s. Angelo "Tetro" Tetrocini is living in anonymity, hiding out from the fame of his composer father, Carlo. Flashbacks eventually reveal a falling out between Angelo and his father centered around the idea that there "can be only one genius in this family". Angelo's wallowing is interrupted when his kid brother Bennie (Alden Ehrenreich) shows up demanding answers, presenting a cryptic goodbye note which promised Angelo (Tetro) would come back for him. Tetro does not want to be found, does not want anyone in Argentina to know who he is, and most of all, does not want to talk about the past with Bennie.

2. Vision and Expression

Any way you slice it, Tetro is claiming one thing for certain: its director, Coppola, is a genius. The audience is reminded of this through over-rich black and white photography, copious references to Powell & Pressburger, quirky music cues and characters looking directly into bright, flashing lights. The black and white is the kiss of death; its very rare post 1967 to see a movie that is black and white and in Cinemascope (2.35:1). I remember an interview with the Coen brothers in connection with The Man Who Wasn't There where they talked about black and white closeups, especially with modern film stock, appearing "hyper-real". Scope emphasizes and exaggerates the physiognomy of facial features, so most, if not all black and white films of the pst 40 years have opted for 1.85 (This is what the Coens chose; also Scorsese in Raging Bull). Coppola, on the other hand, would be the first to tell you he is a genius who will employ every technique possible to create "art". The fact that this movie is about troubled geniuses makes each one of these moments of pretension all the less tolerable (the credits literally scrawl parallel to out-of-focus beams of light.

3. Vincent Gallo

Let's get this out there: I am a Gallo apologist. I love Buffalo '66 and will more than defend the long-winded and masturbatory The Brown Bunny. With Tetro, Gallo has officially worn out his welcome. He hasn't only worn out his welcome, he has ensured that he will never be invited back. Amidst an absolutely awful cast, Gallo stands out as the sorest thumb (perhaps because he's the only familiar face). He basically plays Vincent Gallo, troubled genius; while this has always been in the background of his self-directed performances, [SPOILER] Coppola seems to have cast him with the specific intention of bringing Gallo's bristling artistic talent to the forefront of the national discourse, saving Gallo in the way that Bennie seeks to save Tetro. What ends up being revealed is that Gallo is a terrible actor. Not just without range. Not just inexpressive. Without controlling every phase of the production, Gallo is not able to convincingly play himself. He's the weakest link in a movie almost completely comprised of weak links. 

4. Overall Impressions

I wanted to love Tetro like a son. I love Coppola and Gallo. I like what they've done recently even when critics were divided or outright negative. Though certain pieces of the film (Mainly those which directly borrow from The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffman) are moving and beautiful at the same time, Tetro generally operates at a low, tone-deaf hum, rarely accurately representing human emotion and actually descending from obscure, artistic enigmas into predictable formulae by the third act. Without the dialogue, I can imagine giving it a B+ for its intoxicating visuals. With the sound turned full blast, its torture.

New Scorsese Movie: Shutter Island

Um, this looks suspiciously generic for a Marty movie. Anybody have any idea what might be up here? Max Von Sydow, Mark Ruffalo, Michelle Williams, Patricia Clarkson, Ben Kingsley and of course Dicaprio don't just get out of bed and go to a CGI island for nothing. Hitchcock reference? Someone please explain.

The Vault #21: Narc

"To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe the truth." -Voltaire

In the opening scene of Joe Carnahan's Narc, a heroine addled and body-tattooed Jason Patric emerges from a pile of greasy hair and dirty clothes and, in a single shot, chases a junk-addled skinhead wielding syringes loaded with hot shots out of a dark Detroit low-rise project, over a few fences and into a playground that has seen better days. The primary colors are gray, black and brown. The camera frequently catches the sun's rays directly and hurriedly repositions. Patric's show down with the junkie turns sour: he shoots a pregnant bystander in the stomach.

Take it all in: the bleak setting, Patric's Sundance-perfect look, the experimental photography and the unflinchingly brutal murder, and one conclusion can be drawn - this is not Training Day. However, Narc is about narcotics police, a buddy movie not unlike the Hollywood lovefest Denzel appeared in the year earlier. Only here, the young cop is no angel. Patric is shamed by the shooting incident, and goes from his undercover work (which had him deeper than he could handle) to the investigation of the death of another undercover. He is paired with a vicious, older detective who was the slain man's partner. This man is played by Ray Liotta. 

This was a big comeback piece for both Ray and Jason, who have made their share of mistakes, both on and off the screen. Narc is a procedural, the kind of thing you might expect a B-list cast to shoot for a buck and a half somewhere in East L.A. and come straight to video. However, setting it in Detroit, and following the lead of films like The Pledge by not revealing any pat answers, makes it more than worth while. The real center of the film is Liotta, who Ethan Edwardses his way into the classic evil purveyor of justice role. The grimy style and unsettled editing make the film unpleasant like Seven and Irreversible, with a conclusion that offers little uplift.

The most interesting and unique part of Narc is its exploration of drug addiction from the perspective of undercover cops, who must use to allay suspicion. Patric does a great job of portraying a recovering addict trying to re-immerse himself in humping a desk and a squad car. It's an old cliche you have to become the devil in order to catch him, and Narc does a good job of jostling cop movie cliches of right and wrong by putting some of the most righteous deeds at the feet of the increasingly questionable Liotta, while the more virtuous Patric is left helpless battling his affliction. Narc is a good little movie hiding in the crannies of one of American film's most well-worn genres.

Our Cult Could Be Your Life: Gerry

In Gerry, Gus Van Sant marries the silly with the cerebral in a way only previously tried by Samuel Beckett. Two men slowly lose their distinguishing features and personae wandering deeper and deeper into an ever-changing landscape. Casey Affleck and Matt Damon were credited as screenwriters for this controversial Sundance entry simply for having improvised dialogue in front of Van Sant's roving lens.

The first things I and others heard about Gerry were negative. Everywhere it played, whether in America or Europe, there were walkouts. One of the first entries in the mumblecore revolution, Gerry combines sparse and muffled dialogue with delicately crafted natural compositions, which recall moments from expressionists like Bela Tarr and Werner Herzog. Critics called it boring, self-indulgent, plotless, pointless and a waste of time. 

Return to Gerry seven years later however. As big as Damon was in 2002, he still was not Jason Bourne. And Casey Affleck was the twelfth credit in Ocean's Eleven. Seeing these men re-emerge on the screen younger and more daring makes watching Gerry now something of a treat. These are big stars doing something very strange. While that does not a whole movie make, the masterfully photographed and edited production fills in the character blanks. This is a movie about nature swallowing man, not one in which man rules over and drowns out his surroundings. 

In critical terms, the importance of Gerry to the revival of Gus Van Sant's career cannot be stated enough. After the shot for shot remake of Psycho and Finding Forrester, Van Sant had lost his good credit rating with both the independent and mainstream markets. While Gerry was in no way a critical or box office success, it diverted Van Sant's creative energy into the audacious Death Trilogy.

Though none is a rousing success to be considered among the greatest films of all time, taken together, Gerry, Elephant and Last Days form unified passage in the life of a great American artist worthy of study. The endless sequence shots, the pregnant pauses, the improvised dialogue all lend an eerie naturalism to a series of (at least on paper) surreal ideas for films. Nowhere is this line between verite and artifice, neorealism and science fiction more blurred than in Gerry. The faraway piano music and blank looks of the actors at once detach us and bring us right into their frontal lobes. 

An action movie it isn't. But on a day I saw The Hangover, Gerry was a very interesting companion piece. Men shouldn't wander to the desert alone.

Summer Movie Orgy Part 3: The Hangover

From the unsavory mind of Todd Philips (Old School, Road Trip) comes the next logical step. Too old to be in college, too old to pretend to be in college, Philips takes his audience to their next life cycle event: shooting Yaeger in Vegas reminiscing about college. 

The Hangover is a movie about men who are hungover. They are not happy-go-lucky types, they are in the vague spot between youth and middle age where one era's behavior begins to make the next one worry. On a road trip/bachelor party, three men loose their groom-to-be. They wake up after a night of revelry with no memory of what has happened, how they picked up a baby and a tiger, and must not only solve the mysteries but make sure no one else does afterwards.

Some slapstick, cameos and Heather Graham breastfeeding follow, all pretty painlessly. The Hangover is oddly not too crude and not too cheesy. Maybe this is a problem, but after a slew of Apatow produced/directed efforts in which pop culture references are showered on the audience as stopgaps for a lack of interesting characters, The Hangover is mildly refreshing. Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zack Galifinakis (the clear gem of the film) are all just bros, who are not very close friends, trying to survive and go back to their boring lives. It's not overly cute, but it isn't Bad Santa either.

The fact that the film has no mugging Vince Vaugn or eye candy Luke Wilson also makes it not your average comedy. There are weird silences, intrusive music cues and a general feeling of discomfort that makes the film sometimes play like a more mainstream version of movies like Sideways and The Big Lebowski. It's a Vegas mystery Hunter S. Thompson might scribble. Of course its less than all the influences I've just invoked, but that those come to mind at all is enough to keep me interested. 

Grade: 88/100

Hats off: David Fincher and Making the Fall Matter

Check out this item from the Criterion Current, published as part of their recent release of David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. A few people thought it strange when Criterion made the announcement they would be the first to issue a version of this film. This is by far the most mainstream and recent film ever issued on Criterion, and it was met with fairly tepid reviews. 

If Benjamin Button was flawed (too long, overly sentimental, political ham-fisted and just generally shallow), it also confirmed Fincher as a master of style on par with Alfred Hitchcock and Steven Spielberg. One common criticism was that Eric Roth simply wrote a new version of his previous script, Forrest Gump, with all the manchildren, pixie dream girls, and historical changes money could buy and CGI could recreate. 

If this is in fact correct, and I'm not entirely sure that it is, then what remains critically is to notice the quantum leap from Robert Zemeckis' American Dreams style Cliff-Notes version of the Baby Boom to Fincher's richly stylized, fully saturated New Orleans epic. Where Zemeckis was making a glorified "through the years" life insurance commercial, Fincher relied on minimal history, instead making the time pass through the accumulation of small details in a film whose lavish atmosphere and stately pace remind one more of Gone With the Wind than any movie made since the suspension of the production code. 

It's funny that Fincher's last two films (Zodiac in 2007) are about the passage of time, the erosion of memory and events and character, because time was Button's downfall. A script that was in development for over a decade, F. Scott Fitzgerald's twenty page short story was re-imagined and resurrected more times than Godfather 4. Had it come before or in lieu of Gump, maybe Fincher would not have made it, and we'd all be the worse off. As it happened, something just doesn't sit right in this film. But it is a most stimulating fiasco.

The Vault #20: The New World

It's finally time to cover the monster. We've looked at a lot of films here at The Chances We Take, and for the 20th, I present one of the more underrated films of the decade, Terence Malick's visionary retelling of the Pocanhontas/John Smith fable, which starred Colin Farrell, Christian Bale, Christopher Plummer and newcomer Q'orianka Kilcher. The film was released in two different versions in 2005 to moderate fanfare and soon forgotten. As silly as "Colin Farrell Pocahontas movie" sounds, The New World is a startling and beautiful work of art which exemplifies an American master at the top of his game.

I will update this post in a few days with a review of the recently released 172 minute version of the film. (new posting starts here) Sorry this got a little delayed folks; I've been in a Malick reverie for a few days.

Terence Malick's The New World: Extended Edition both improves upon and clarifies the original 135 minute cut. It adds a great deal of exposition and strengthens the character of Pocahontas played by Qorianka Kilcher. Sure, there are more nature shots, but there's also a plot, one that deals with American origins, capitalism, race, colonialism, father/motherhood and, of course, love. 

It's hard to fathom why The New World was not released during the Christmas Awards Season, hyped as a patriotic fable starring Hollywood hunks. The long New World plays, at times, like a romantic epic on par with Lean's Dr. Zhivago. Sure, at others it seems a never ending post-rock collage of flowing water and soaring eagles, but this did not seem to bother the studio about The Thin Red Line. In The New World, we have Malick's most compelling and complete film, not as sparse as Badlands, as arty as Days of Heaven, or as scattered as The Thin Red Line. 

This is not to say it is without flaw. Malick is known for writing and shooting wordy screenplays, then cutting a good portion of the dialogue in the editing room, leaving only reaction shots from the actors. This version restores some of the dialogue, sapping some of the mystery of expressions, especially in the case of Farrell and Bale. Both seem a bit less convincing, perhaps because their emotions and motivations are spelled out a bit too much. Which is to say that at some points The New World: Extended Edition plays a bit more mainstream, which is not exactly Malick's strength. A master of plot he is not.

The overally effect of this film is devastating. Emmanuel Lubezki's impeccable photography, an intricate editing scheme (watch out for overlapped dialogue), and the pristine beauty of the Virginia location make The New World a breathtaking vision and a moving story.  

The Vault #19: The Naked Spur

"When men were men." There is a wistfulness, a yearning for lost innocence in that phrase that implies, or misconceives that in simpler times men were more ideal versions of themselves. As though times were ever simpler or men ever more ideal. Technology and knowledge worse perhaps. The center still the same. 

The conclusions drawn by noir masters like Tourneur, Huston and Wilder were not mere part and parcel of the urban labyrinths in which those tales were set. Huston broke the barriers of noir by setting his greed epic The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) in the middle of the barren, if still threatening, wilderness. Without all the noise and grit of the big city, he paints the evil desires of men in broad strokes, almost filming a play, and finds their fates to be the same. And while John Ford was making Westerns, Anthony Mann planned a way to merge to the two most American of genres.

One of the best results of this experiment (like similar Western specialists Boetticher and Peckinpah, Mann made several variations within the Western framework) in 1953's The Naked Spur. The story of three men who capture a criminal and his best girl in the middle of nowhere (in this case the Northern California wilderness standing in for Montana) and must bring him across the void to justice. Three men, one cash cow of a bounty. Much like Huston's Madre, only this time in Technicolor and with one more juicy prize: the dame, a young Janet Leigh (Psycho, The Manchurian Candidate).

Critics dubbed Mann's films "psychological Westerns", which certainly put them at odds with those of the more classical John Ford (The Searchers, Stagecoach) and Fred Zinneman (High Noon). The Naked Spur is not about heroes, or our conceptions of heroes, like those films, which were clearly aware of the archetypes they were inventing and reinforcing. There's no sheriff to be found in this film. These films get the tag "psychological" because they pit several basically equal individuals in a sort of desert island scenario (again, Madre), wherein each must face his inner demons and those of his fellows in order to survive. There is no backdrop of a town, or American history (save a skirmish with a few Indians). These people are really left out on their own to turn on each other. 

What separates Mann's film from the B-work of Bud Boetticher is the high quality of the acting and action. There are several thrilling setpieces that highlight the danger of the natural setting. Among these perils Jimmy Stewart delivers one of his finest performances, and Leigh and Ryan are not far behind. I would not go as far to say that Stewart's performance is akin to Wayne's in The Searchers because within the genre, Stewart's presence means infinitely less than Wayne's. While Wayne is playing a fallen version of himself, there is nothing theatrical or meta about Stewart. He is a man at the end of his rope. The camera is irrelevant. 

The Vault #18: Rebecca

Alfred Hitchcock's first film for an American studio is also one of his best. The only feature by the master of suspense to be awarded Best Picture by the Academy, Rebecca is at once a sitting room thriller akin to Gaslight, and a poetically realistic fairy tale worthy of Marcel Carne.

Joan Fontaine is a young governess type drawn into marriage with an evil baron type played by the unmatched Laurence Olivier. What ensues is a cat and mouse game of strangely staid talkabout scenes, long monologues with stories of Olivier's first wife, and the nonstop meddling of the suspicious Mrs. Danvers, the maid of the manor. Rebecca is perfectly shot and paced, one of Hitchcock's most unsettling but also calm films. 

If the film seems to be missing something, it may be because of the strict Hollywood production code. Daphine du Maurier's source novel featured some truly evil doings by Olivier and some outright lesbian content, both of which were no-nos in prewar Hollywood. Hitchcock negotiates these controversial waters masterfully, pulling together a film whose subtlety is unmatched in his work.

Long Post: An Essay I Once Wrote Very Late at Night About Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven

Over two decades after his ascension from wiry, laconic gunfighter to bombastic, hippie-killing badass in Dirty Harry (1971), Clint Eastwood returned to his roots with the high gloss, saturated epic Unforgiven. However, it was not a friendly visit; the film that resulted from this nostalgia trip was not another flight of vengeful fancy like High Plains Drifter (1973) or a morality play like The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), or even a rollicking thrill ride like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). Unforgiven is a eulogy; it represents the return of the Western’s greatest living icon to the base truths of the genre that is the only truly American one remaining. Eastwood had to be the one to make this film; for he is the only one with the power to deliver the death blow to the murky myths of the lawless frontier, the legendary setting where good met evil at high noon in an unassuming shanty town on a seemingly daily basis.

            The picture is a reconciliation of the fundamental contradictions of avarice and virtue, a final compromise which Eastwood presents on behalf of all filmmakers with respect to westerns. Here, and only here, do we see the unimpeachable character of Alan Ladd’s Shane (1953) tussle with John Wayne’s unforgettable turn as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers (1956) in the countenance of one man, Eastwood’s ironically silent William Munny. Munny is not introduced as most men with their own code are in this sort of film, the swing of the saloon doors or the thud of a body. This is not to say he is not to be feared from the beginning; he is said to be “a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition”, but this is done through a mournful scroll centered on his dead wife, not a gun battle and the murders of several unimportant characters. Amazingly, a gun is not fired with the intent to kill in the first half of the film.

            Eastwood was quoted as saying, “this film represents everything about the Western that needs to be said.” The setup is simple: a whore in Wyoming is mutilated by two drunken cattle herders, the sheriff gives them a slap on the wrist and, outraged by this execution of the law, the rest of the prostitutes in the brothel put up a bounty of one thousand dollars for the first assassins to enact “proper” retribution against the criminals. Munny, in Missouri, retired from his days of killing and robbing which are only vaguely referenced in the opening act, still mourning and now caring for his two young children, is visited by a young man calling himself The Scofield Kid. The youth is the nephew of one of Munny’s former notorious partners, and wishes to enlist the old man to help him collect the reward. The boy, played with subtle ignorance by Jaimz Wolvett, exaggerates the extent of the torture, and after some deliberation and an initial rejection of the offer, we see Munny haltingly mount his horse, give instructions to his son of no more than ten years, and ride out over the prairie after Scofield.

            The plot, as well as the film itself, is a journey back to the sins of the past. To make a pair a threesome, Munny insists his steady-handed partner Ned Logan, played with regal grace and impeccable dread by Morgan Freeman. In one scene, when the kid has fallen asleep and the two veterans sit staring into the fire, Munny confesses to Logan that he cannot remember what one man he killed he did to wrong him. He speaks of watching the man’s teeth fly from the back of his head, and then says that when he sobered up, he could not remember why he had done it. In the next scene, when Freeman offers him a bottle of whisky, Eastwood declines. There is temptation in it, temptation ostensibly cured by Munny’s idealistic late wife. However, she is gone now. And what’s worse, it comes out that The Kid is half blind, and may not have killed as many men as the intimidation of his nickname would suggest. Logan and Munny are going to have to do the lion’s share “on this killing”.

            Let us not forget that this film must cover all of the concepts of the Western in order to forever put to sleep the genre. The film cuts away from our renegades to the perceived purveyor of order, the sheriff. There are two types of Western: the outlaw bringing vengeance upon corruption as part of a personal moral quest, or a lawman helping the innocent townspeople from criminal forces they cannot possibly hope to quell themselves. Of course, in an act of ambiguity that befits every aspect of Unforgiven, Eastwood’s final product is neither. Gene Hackman plays grizzled Marshall Little Bill, a man whose ordinances against firearms and swearing keep the town of Big Whisky, Wyoming incident free. In the opening sequence, we see his mandate respected by the brothel manager and the reprimanded cowboys. As his deputy says “Little Bill come out of Kansas, boys. He worked them tough towns,”; implicit is the fact that the relative quiet of Big Whisky allows towering Hackman to rule the town like a god.

            The film’s strangest interlude is between Little Bill and the first assassin who comes to get his day’s pay, the aristocratic English Bob, played with the utmost dignity and sly wit by Richard Harris. The choice of the actors cannot be a mere coincidence; to make the characters so old and therefore those men who fill the roles so distinguished heightens the clash that is about to occur. Harris is accompanied by a biographer, in whom we see the first postmodern touch added by Peoples to his masterwork; we learn that essentially this man’s function is to write pulp novels based on stories English Bob imparts to him about previous escapades and close calls with the law. That this character is a metaphor for the old formula western writers is undeniable. Within minutes of entering the town and loudly insulting the recently assassinated President Harrison, Bob is beaten in the street by Bill and put in jail for the night for carrying two revolvers. The punishment is yet again incommensurate to the crime committed.

            What transpires in the jail can be seen as greater symbolism for the commentary  the entire film makes on its predecessors. A semi-illiterate Little Bill sits struggling through a volume of “The Duke of Death”, a serial about Bob’s life, at which point he finds an error in the narrative. This film assumes a cartel of bandits, outlaws, and rogue lawmen of whom only a few remain from “the old days”, only a few left who can remember what murky events Bob has conferred to those pages. Reading the particular passage, Little Bill claims to remember the “true” events differently. He claims instead of beating a two gunned shooter to the draw and killing him dead, English Bob got lucky as the man, who was called “Two-gun” not for his firepower but for his natural endowment, was betrayed by his gun misfiring, an accident which cost “Two-gun” his hand. Bill then tells the biographer English Bob executed a one-handed, unarmed man. The message is clear: the West is not a glorious place; instead it is crude, violent and random. Those storytellers of the frontier, here to be interpreted as the films of John Ford, George Stevens, Sergio Leone and others, have it wrong in a big way.

            To prove his point, Hackman offers a gun to the biographer. He prompts him to shoot him, take the keys, free English Bob and leave. However, the biographer outwits him and offers the gun to Bob himself. Regarding the gun, and deciding it is probably not loaded and just a trick to give Little Bill an excuse to kill him, Bob does not take it. When Bill reveals to him the live rounds in the chamber with a malicious grin, we see the point of what some viewers have interpreted as the unnecessary English Bob episode: the difference between a hero and a villain in this film, and implicitly, in the American West, is merely chance and a few ounces of tin formed into a star.  

I will stop there in the semi-synopsis and leave it at this. Like Straw Dogs and The Departed, Unforgiven is a case of a director well aware of what his audience expects, and in doing so, knows full well how to toy with them. These tend to be the best movies, not only when an auteur is working at the top of their game, but also staying one step ahead of their own reputation.

The Vault #17: Straw Dogs

When Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch (1969)) decided to leave behind the Western in pursuit of more serious subjects, he did not intend to forsake its themes in the process. The value of loyalty, territorialism, the trials of manhood and their ultimate, gory consequences – these are all present in Straw Dogs, the story of an American astrophysicist’s clash with local thugs on his sabbatical in Cornwall, England. However, this film, set in the present day, even placed into specific historical context with reference to the social upheaval that was going on in the States at this time, sublimates Peckinpah’s favorite subjects from the mythic parable of the Old West to the terrifying reality of here and now. The point is to justify his earlier work; killing a man is a sacred ritual, both past and present, Peckinpah wishes to tell us, something just as necessary in times of law as in times of chaos and disorder.

Sound small-minded, medieval and cruel? Don't go thinking Bloody Sam was unaware. If Straw Dogs is anything, it is intentionally controversial. One of American cinema's first explicit rape scenes is shot with such masculine cruelty that reaction by the characters as well as the audience must come with equal measure. Dustin Hoffman's lily-livered protagonist is put deliberately at a disadvantage to the violent brutes just so we may dislike him all the more, and sympathize with the aggressors. 

It is watching Hoffman (spoiler!) move out of this shell that makes his performance so incredible and Dogs  so enjoyable. As much as the audience wants vengeance, so too does Peckinpah deliver. In the long march from John Ford to Quentin Tarantino, there has always been a tension between wanting justice meted out satisfactorily and not descending into animalistic rage. Straw Dogs deftly toes the line, glorifying the violence in specifically erotic and appealing ways, while assuring us that what we are viewing is justified. Though Straw Dogs was reviled by critics and audiences alike, its acting, acuity and overall interactive experience are unparalleled in Peckinpah's filmography.

The Vault #16: The Last Picture Show

Below Earth, we are told, lies Hell. And below that, Peter Bogdonavich and co-writer Larry McMurtry propose, lies Anarene, Texas. The Last Picture Show, which examines life, love and eventually loss in the setting of a tiny, depressed, post-war oil town, has the feel of one of the great European objectivists. These emotions, these tragedies are so affecting the film is presented with calm angles in a black and white palette so as to separate us from the true scope of the drama. For if we come to close, we may experience the daunting truths presented for a final time.

You can hurt and hurt, but if you don’t remember why, the hurt will eventually leave you. No one forgets in Anarene. The cast of characters is plagued each by their own squandered romance, their lives rapidly slipping away as they sit in the town with nothing to do but go to the movies; those will be leaving soon enough. 

Picture Show is a masterpiece of the first order; Bogdonavich would counter with the lighthearted yet satisfying Paper Moon, but he would never return to the neorealist silence of his West Texas composition. Bridges, Shepherd, Bottoms, Leachman and a scene-stealing Ben Johnson are all at the top of their games. This film is the sad case of a one-off; its director stumbled upon something so brilliant he had nowhere to go but down. A drama on par with The Deer Hunter, this film is a must watch.