We don’t often use topics that I chose, but when we do, we have a lot to talk about. Sean and I both love each of this week’s films so unabashedly that both halves of the episode are rather overstuffed, even after editing.
This time around we’re exploring the dark underbelly of media-based popularity, and while both of these films concentrate on television, this could easily be extended to social media. That’s how eerily prophetic these films turned out being, with the exception of a small detail that I’ll get to in a moment.
We start with 1957’s A Face in the Crowd, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Andy Griffith and Patricia Neal. The two are a couple whose lived become intertwined as Griffith’s character increases in popularity from local radio, to national television. It’s a fascinating study in “absolute power corrupts absolutely” and while Kazan gave us the breadcrumbs from the first frame in which we see Griffith’s character, we’re still left with a small “what happens next?” One character, played by Walter Matthau, has an idea, but it’s possible he’s being too cynical.
From there we move on to 1976’s Network, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Peter Finch, William Holden and Faye Dunaway. Finch is a television news anchorman who, on the cusp of being fired, decides to say exactly what’s on his mind, and the audience reaction is as unexpected as it is sensational for the network brass, who want Finch to keep doing the Angry Prophet of the Airwaves thing. It hardly matters that Finch’s character is starting to spiral in mentally; the executives are willing to exploit him for as long as he’s profitable…and no longer. So what happens next?
Screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky wrote such a perfect satire that people today don’t even seen the satire in it, because it’s so prophetic. As I mentioned, the film got one detail wrong: Media has tapped into conservative grievances and politics rather than the liberal side.
COMING ATTRACTIONS:
In our next episode we’ll be looking at a couple of political thrillers from overseas. We start with 1966’s The Battle of Algiers, and move on to Z (or Zed, if you prefer) from 1969. Join us, won’t you?
Sally (Meg Ryan) and Harry (Billy Crystal) talk about their recent bad dates with other people.
Many of my friends from high school and college, and whom I still keep up with, are women. I find it easier to relate to them, and easier to talk to them. So the idea of a movie whose professed message is, “Men and women can’t be friends” would, at first glance, seem like something that would be anathema to me. And yet Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally…, written by Nora Ephron, is a terrific and funny romantic comedy even if you don’t agree with that message.
Jess (Carrie Fisher) and Sally spot Harry in a bookstore.
Harry Burns (Billy Crystal) and Sally Albright (Meg Ryan) first meet in Chicago in 1977 when she drives him from Chicago to New York City (her best friend Amanda (Michelle Necastro) is Harry’s current girlfriend), where he’s getting work as a journalist, and she plans to be a political consultant. She’s turned off by his lack of manners (he spits grape seeds into her car window without checking to see if it’s open first) and his life view (he’s so obsessed with death, he reads the last page of any novel he reads first, so if he dies, he’ll know how the book ends). He’s bemused by her food ordering habits (she’s very much into ordering things on the side) and the way she plans out everything to the last detail. They argue about the ending of Casablanca (he thinks Ilsa really wants to stay, and only leaves because Rick put her on the plane, while she thinks Ilsa really did want to go with Victor). Despite everything, Harry makes a pass at Sally, which disgusts her even more. This is when Harry comes up with the idea that “Men and women can’t be friends”, because according to him, sex always gets in the way. So, when she drops him off at Washington Square Park in New York City, they assume they will never see each other again.
Harry and Sally the second time they meet each other.
Five years later, Harry walks by when Sally is saying goodbye to Joe (Steven Ford), her current boyfriend, at the airport. He pretends not to recognize her (instead, he greets Joe), but when they’re both on the plane, he talks to her after she orders something on the side from the flight attendant (the person next to Sally even offers to switch seats with Harry). He reveals he’s engaged to be married, while she says her relationship with Joe is good. He offers to take her out to dinner, she reminds him what he said about men and women not being able to be friends, and while he denies saying it at first, he admits saying it, tries to make an exception when the man and woman in question are each involved with other people, but then realizes that doesn’t work either. Once again, they go their separate ways.
Sally and Harry in Central Park.
Five years later, Harry and Sally are both living in New York City, but their circumstances have changed. Sally has broken up with Joe because she’s realized what she saw as their carefree relationship (having no kids, not getting married) really wasn’t making them happy, nor was it that carefree. Harry, meanwhile, has gotten divorced, and as he tells his friend Jess (Bruno Kirby), he’s found out his ex has been seeing another man. They run into each other in a bookstore (while Sally is with her friend Marie (Carrie Fisher)), tell each other about their situations, and, slowly, tentatively, start to become friends. But are they actually becoming more than that?
Jess (Bruno Kirby) and Marie find out separately Harry and Sally have finally slept with each other.
One rule I have about any genre movie, including romantic comedies, is if it fulfills the requirements of that genre, I’m willing to forgive quite a lot. There are other things for me to forgive in Reiner and Ephron’s movie aside from the central message of “Men and women can’t be friends”. Like many other comedies at the time, and afterwards, we don’t really see any of the characters work, and their jobs are only referred to a couple of times; when they tell each other, and when, while Harry, Marie, Jess, and Sally are on a double date, Marie ends up quoting something from a column Jess wrote, which leads the two of them to fall in love and eventually marry. Also, while only Woody Allen movies up till then were using standards as movie scores, as that’s the music he mostly only likes (this movie was heavily influenced by Allen’s movies like Annie Hall), the success of Reiner’s movie, as well as Harry Connick Jr’s recordings of standards for the film’s score (there are a few original recordings of standards as well) led every many other romantic comedies, or dramas, to assume they had to use standards for their music, not because it was organic to the movie, but just because. Finally, on the face of it, Harry and Sally as characters seem overly schematic upon first glance. Nevertheless, as I said, if a romantic comedy is both romantic and funny, I will forgive a lot, and Reiner and Ephron make this both romantic and funny.
The famous deli scene.
Obviously, the scene most people remember from this movie is the scene where Sally, trying to convince it’s possible one of the women Harry slept with might have faked an orgasm with him, fakes one in public when they’re having lunch at Katz’s Deli, and it remains as hilarious today, after rewatching it several times, as it was when I first saw the movie the summer before my senior year at Gonzaga (there were three women sitting behind me in the theater, and I thought all four of us were going to die laughing).* As funny as that scene is, however, it’s not the only funny part of the movie. The humor of the movie comes through the characters and how they react to each other and the situations they get into, from the way Sally orders (inspired by how Ephron ordered food in real life; when Reiner saw her ordering like this when they went out to lunch, he convinced Ephron to give that aspect to Sally), to Harry’s depressed view of life (which comes from how Reiner felt at the time the script was being developed). Even the scene where Harry, after finding out his ex-wife is getting re-married, takes his anger about that out on Jess and Marie, goes to funny places. At the same time, while I’ve often felt Ephron only goes to a very superficial level with her stories and her characters, that’s not the case here, as we really get the anger underneath both characters, as well as their unhappiness. Yet, that doesn’t take away from the comedy – Sally comforts Harry after a woman he went on a date with reminded him of his ex-wife, until she finds out he still slept with the woman – and nor does it take away from the romance. The climax, when Harry declares himself to Sally, works not just because of the sharpness of the writing – Harry tells Sally he loves her for all of her faults, which he lists, and Sally tearfully tells Harry she hates him – but because the relationship between them during the entire movie has built to that moment.
Harry and Sally get together at the end.
Barry Sonnenfeld shot the movie, and he doesn’t overwhelm the movie with showy cinematography, but makes the city look beautiful. At the same time, he frames the actors in just the right way, as in the scene on the airplane when Harry peers behind Sally’s seat after overhearing her place her drink order. As I mentioned above, while the use of standards in romantic movies has become a cliché, Reiner makes it work here, as the ones he does use (Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald’s recordings of “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” and “Our Love is Here to Stay”, Ray Charles’ recording of “Winter Wonderland”) haven’t become stale from overuse. And the cast members make it work. While Fisher and Kirby are very good in supporting roles, the movie depends on Crystal and Ryan, and they come through in spades. In later comedies, especially those directed by Ephron, Ryan would rely too much on tics and mannerisms, but here, she plays Sally’s eccentricities as normal instead of affected (even the scene where she’s putting envelopes in a mailbox one at a time, driving Harry crazy). Crystal, in turn, in movies often relies too often on the easy one-liner, but the one-liners here are funny (as when he’s discussing the difference between “high maintenance” and “low maintenance”), and digs deep into Harry’s anger. Even if, as I said before, I think men and woman can, and should, be friends, I also think When Harry Met Sally… remains a terrific romantic comedy.
*-On the DVD commentary, Reiner confirmed what I’d long suspected; the montage of scenes of Christmas time in NYC, before we get to Harry helping Sally take a Christmas tree to her apartment, was put in after the deli scene so audience members would have time to recover from having laughed so hard.
In addition to “devil” movies, another type of horror movie I tend not to be fond of are slasher movies. Part of the reason is they tend to go for excessive gore, and while I don’t mind violence in movies, I do mind what I think is gratuitous violence, or violence where it seems as if the sole purpose of the filmmaker showing you this violence is to invite you as a viewer to get off on it. Just as bad for me is the fact many of the victims in the slasher movies I’ve seen are girls or women, and even worse, many of the victims are killed after they’ve had sex, sending a message girls and women shouldn’t have sex, or enjoy it, and if they do, that they deserve to die, which is reactionary, to say the least. Having said that, I must admit one of my favorite horror movies is a slasher movie, John Carpenter’s original version of Halloween, about the night he came home.
Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis), Lynda (P.J. Soles), and Annie (Nancy Loomis).
“He” is Michael Myers, whom we first see as a little boy (played by Will Sandin) stabbing his sister Judith (Sandy Johnson) on Halloween night in 1963 in Haddonfield, Illinois. Subsequently, Myers is committed to a sanitarium run by Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance). However, Dr. Loomis is unable to get through to him, and becomes convinced Myers is a sociopath. On top of that, Myers escapes before Dr. Loomis can take him to appear before a judge, and returns to Haddonfield. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), a high school student who is stuck babysitting while her friends Annie (Nancy Loomis, now Nancy Kyes) and Lynda (PJ Soles) are planning nights with their boyfriends, is only vaguely aware of the menace that’s come to town until it’s almost too late.
Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance).
As with other Carpenter movies, Myers (the actor we see when the mask is taken off is Tony Moran, though Nick Castle plays him when he’s wearing the mask) is pretty much an unstoppable, and more importantly, an unknowable force. Much of the movie is simply Carpenter and cinematographer Dean Cundey shooting from Myers’ point-of-view, or, alternately, showing him just off in the distance, watching Laurie, which adds to the creepiness. Also helping with the suspense is the music Carpenter himself composed for the film; much like Bernard Herrmann’s score for the original version of PSYCHO (more on that film’s influence here below), it only uses a few notes, but they’re very well. Carpenter made this as less bloody and more creepy than most slasher films, which is another reason I like this. As for the fact the people killed here are either killed after sex (Judith, Lynda and her boyfriend) or when planning to have sex (Annie), Carpenter and Debra Hill (who co-wrote the film with Carpenter and also served as one of the producers) admitted they never intended for the movie to portray sex in a reactionary way, and that the victims in this movie were killed because they weren’t paying attention to what was going on around them, while Laurie survived because she was. Also, we’re left to intuit how disturbed Myers is when it comes to sex.
Laurie prepares to defend herself.
Carpenter often wore his influences on his sleeve, and Halloween is no exception; the sheriff is named Leigh Brackett, after the screenwriter who often worked with Carpenter’s favorite director, Howard Hawks (including his favorite Hawks film, Rio Bravo) – the kids Laurie babysit even watch Hawks’ The Thing from Another World (which Carpenter would remake in 1982) on TV – while Dr. Loomis is named after the character of Marion Crane’s boyfriend in Psycho, and while Carpenter was originally unsure of casting Curtis, once he found out Curtis was the daughter of Janet Leigh, who of course played Marion Crane, he signed her on. Curtis had never appeared in a movie before this (she had done some guest spots on a few TV shows, and had appeared in the TV series version of Operation Petticoat, from a movie starring her father Tony Curtis), but you wouldn’t know it from the assurance in which she holds the film together. She’s able to convince you of how smart Laurie is, as well as how resourceful she is, and able to take care of the children under her charge. And Pleasance is appropriately authoritative as Dr. Loomis (though I would have liked to have seen what Christopher Lee, who was offered the role and turned it down, would have done). As with Psycho, there have been a lot of ripoffs of Halloween, including the many sequels and remakes, but the original still stands as a great horror movie.
Oddly enough, I hate the artwork on this episode but I love the fact that I was able to match the films’ respective fonts. You win some, you lose some.
We conclude our mini-series with another pair of films that you can’t help but love. Unfortunately, they’ve also had a ripple effect, and the ripples weren’t so great.
We open with Halloween, from 1978. This film was directed by John Carpenter and stars Jamie Lee Curtis. She’s a teenager who has some truly weird adventures in babysitting. It also stars Donald Pleasance as the voice of reason that everyone ignores.
Halloween set many of the horror/slasher film tropes in motion, for sure. But Hollywood has this unfortunate habit where everything has to be bigger, and scarier, and gorier, and just…more. And so other films of the genre suffered specifically because they tried too hard to replicate the original.
From there we jump to 1989’s When Harry Met Sally…, which also set the template for a lot of films in that “star-crossed lovers” rom-com category. The bad news is that the films in its wake didn’t pay enough attention to what made this couple star-crossed, and Hollywood wound up cranking out a lot of films that looked the same, and (perhaps worse) sounded the same, soundtrack-wise, but were clearly not the same in terms of quality.
COMING ATTRACTIONS:
In Reel 79, we’re going to take you on a tour of the dark side of television. We’ll start with A Face in the Crowd (1957), directed by Elia Kazan and starring Patricia Neal and Andy Griffith, in one of the few times you’ll see him as this kind of character. From there we go to 1976 and Network, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Peter Finch and William Holden. These are two films that were so oddly prophetic that most people today don’t realize they were originally intended to be satire. Join us, won’t you?
This was originally written on Facebook as a post in talking about my favorite movies released in the U.S. in 1988.
Macon (William Hurt) and Sarah Leary (Kathleen Turner).
As I’ve been writing these reviews, you might have noticed how I’ve tried to bring up the ways even movies I love may have issues in how they deal with issues that have come under higher scrutiny today, such as gender identity and sex. But those aren’t the only issues that may change the way you might view a work of art today. Consider, for example, the fact cities throughout the United States, and arguably the world, have become more homogenized, especially New York City. To bring in tourist dollars and out-of-town business, the Powers That Be in cities have driven out much of what gives these cities an identity in the first place – arts, local cuisine, small businesses – and replaced it with businesses that could be found anywhere. The attitude seems to be people who visit cities don’t want to experience what makes that city unique, they want to know where they can find a McDonald’s when they visit. To be sure, this isn’t a new attitude. The hero of Anne Tyler’s novel – and Lawrence Kasdan’s movie adaptation – The Accidental Tourist – which was published in 1985 (while the movie came out in 1988) writes travel books for people who hate to travel, and who are looking for where to get a McDonald’s in Paris, rather than where to get the best example of French food, Given the caveat I find that kind of attitude abhorrent, I must admit I still find The Accidental Tourist to be a wonderful novel and movie (Kasdan and Frank Galati wrote the screenplay).
Macon with Muriel Pritchett (Geena Davis) and his dog Edward.
The writer of those books in both the novel and the movie is Macon Leary (William Hurt), who makes a living at this. Macon really doesn’t like to travel, which, according to his publisher Julian (Bill Pullman), makes him ideal to write the books. Macon, however, is cut off from life in other ways, especially since his son Ethan was murdered at a shooting in a fast-food restaurant (Jim True played the role in flashback scenes, but they were cut from the movie). Leary’s been unable to express his grief or reach out to people, and it’s because of this his wife Sarah (Kathleen Turner) decides to leave him. Macon retreats even further into himself, especially when Edward, his dog (actually, he was Ethan’s), leaps onto Macon one day, causing him to fall down and break his leg. Because of this accident, Macon moves in with his sister Rose (Amy Wright), and his brothers Charles (Ed Begley Jr.) and Porter (David Ogden Stiers). Because Edward starts to act out towards not just Macon, but the others, Macon finds he needs to get a dog trainer, and reluctantly reaches out to Muriel Pritchett (Geena Davis), who works at an animal hospital (called Meow-Bow) that also boards animals (Macon left Edward there at the last minute when he had to go on a trip and the usual place didn’t take Edward), because she also trains dogs. While Muriel is able to train Edward to get him to be more well-behaved, she also gradually draws Macon out of his emotional shell, even though (or maybe especially because) she’s much more outgoing than he is.
Julian Edge (Bill Pullman), Macon’s publisher.
When critic Nathan Rabin, then writing for the A.V. Club, reviewed Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown (my least favorite Crowe movie, though it did get better for me upon rewatch), he tagged the character Kirsten Dunst played in the movie, Claire, as a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl”. Rabin described this type of character as one who “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” In other words, these characters – most often girls or, in some cases, women – exist solely to bring the lead male character out of their funk, or teach them life lessons, and, in general, make them better people, without having a life of their own. Muriel may seem like this at first – this type of character, it should be said, has been around in literature for a long time – but Tyler and Kasdan are much smarter than that. Muriel does have a life of her own – she has her own son, Alexander (Robert Gorman), who is a sickly boy (the novel goes into more detail as to what he’s allergic to, which is a lot), and is barely able to make ends meet. Not only that, but she makes it clear to Macon she’s not just there to help him; when Macon says they should transfer Alexander to a private school (he thinks Alexander doesn’t know how to subtract), Muriel wonders if that means Macon is going to pay for it, and tells him in no uncertain terms not to make any promises he can’t keep, especially if he doesn’t plan to stick around. That comes into play even more when Macon runs into Sarah again, and it’s clear they still have feelings for each other.
Macon’s sister Rose (Amy Wright) on the day of her wedding to Julian.
There’s a review quote on the inside back cover of my copy of Tyler’s novel that reads, “(Tyler’s) second-greatest gift is tolerance. Her greatest gift is love…” To me, that’s a good summation of Tyler’s gifts as a novelist. While she can sometimes go overboard on the quirks, as well as in portraying people too set in their ways, at her best, she makes those characters come to life, and always brings out the real emotions underneath. Tyler treats the characters in a comic way – the Learys all play a card game called Vaccination, with rules no one but them seem to know; they also can’t seem to go anywhere without getting lost – but she’s able to make us laugh with the characters, rather than at them (other than this novel, my favorites she’s written are Digging to America and Saint Maybe). Kasdan may have had to cut out a lot in adapting Tyler’s novel (deleted scenes can be found on the DVD), but he retains the spirit of it. A scene early in the movie (which is in the novel, though later in it) shows Macon, while on the plane, running into a man (Bradley Mott) who, as it happens, uses Leary’s books as a guide not just to travel, but to life, and again, we laugh with Leary here, not at him. Of course, Kasdan, along with his usual collaborators – cinematographer John Bailey and editor Carol Littleton – also accomplish visually what Tyler did in writing, especially near the end, where Macon encounters a boy in Paris (where he’s on a trip) who resembles Ethan. Kasdan is able to show us this just from the way Macon looks at the boy.
Muriel (Geena Davis) gets a surprise at the end of the film.
Of course, Kasdan also gets help from the actors. Hurt makes himself shrunken and paler than usual as Macon. You truly believe he’s cut himself off (in contrary to the cynicism he showed in The Big Chill and his free-spirited nature in Children of a Lesser God), and he makes the process in which Macon learns to eventually engage with the world again seem natural. Turner, better known for playing either femme fatale roles (Body Heat, Prizzi’s Honor) or characters caught up in adventures (Romancing the Stone and its sequel), shows a lot more to her in playing the grief-stricken Sarah, though it turns out she’s also got more steel in her than you think, especially when she comes out to take over for Macon when he hurts his back. Pullman was best known at the time for comic roles in movies like Ruthless People and Spaceballs, but while he has his comic side here as well – when he finds out Rose had been looking for the right envelope to mail him Macon’s latest work, Julian dubs it the “Macon Leary 9 by 12 envelope crisis” – he shows a lot of depth, especially in the scenes where he’s with Rose. And Wright, Begley, and Stiers are believable as siblings who are comfortable with each other. But it’s Davis who makes the movie work as well as it does. Muriel could have easily just have been a collection of quirks, but Davis makes her real by underplaying. She also does a lot with her face, especially in the scene where Macon comes over to tell her he can’t see her and ends up finally opening up about Ethan; she just leads him inside, and with a look, we can see the empathy and sadness in her eyes. It’s also there in the end, when Muriel, leaving Paris (she’s followed Macon there, without his wanting her there), sees Macon, and the way she reacts shows you why she deserved to win an Oscar for her performance (even if you think it was for the wrong category). The scenes where Macon looks for American food abroad still make me wince (though there aren’t as many in the movie as were in the novel), but The Accidental Tourist remains, for me, a wonderful movie because of the care and affection for the characters.
Senator Paine (Claude Rains) and Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold) discuss what to do about a new senator.
Whenever Claude and I have talked about movies that were made during the Hays Code Era – specifically, movies made before and during World War II – we’ve always mentioned whenever those movies indulged in racial stereotypes that were ignored at the time but are offensive to watch today (to be sure, there were plenty of people who thought those stereotypes were wrong at the time, but for the most part, they didn’t work for the studios or for the Production Code office). However, there have also been movies from that time, or even today, that have no issues in that department but still make me feel uncomfortable in some ways because of an implicit (or even explicit) message in them that I take issue with. One such example is Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, adapted by Sidney Buchman (with uncredited help from Myles Connolly) from the unpublished short story “The Gentleman from Montana” by Lewis R. Foster, and the second movie in his so-called “Common Man” trilogy (following Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and following Meet John Doe).
Jefferson Smith (James Stewart) arrives in Washington while Saunders (Jean Arthur) looks on warily.
James Stewart plays the title character, Jefferson Smith, who leads a group of “Boy Rangers” (since Capra couldn’t get the rights to use the Boy Scouts name) in his state (unnamed) but is unknown outside of the state. But when Sam Foley, a U.S. Senator from that state, dies, Governor “Happy” Hopper (Guy Kibbee) must appoint a replacement senator. Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold), the businessman who got the governor elected, wants him to appoint Horace Miller (“A born stooge!” enthuses Chick McGann (Eugene Pallette), one of Taylor’s cronies), while various committee members from the state want him to appoint Henry Hill (whom Taylor dismisses as “that crackpot”). In desperation, the governor flips a coin, which lands on its side – right next to a newspaper article on Smith (whom his sons had talked up that night at dinner), so he decides to appoint Smith instead. Though Smith is someone who wears his patriotism on his sleeve, he’s flabbergasted at the appointment (“I can’t help but feel there’s been some mistake,” he admits at the banquet celebrating the occasion), but promises he’ll do nothing to disgrace his office. Smith also adds he feels like Joseph Paine (Claude Rains), who worked with Smith’s father when they were younger, is senator enough for both of them (Smith recalls how his father used to say Paine was the finest man he knew). Once he gets to Washington D.C., Smith is overcome by the place, though he soon gets set up by his cynical secretary, Clarissa Saunders (Jean Arthur), who sics the press on him so they’ll make him look like a naïve fool. When Smith angrily confronts those press members about this, they – led by Diz Moore (Thomas Mitchell), a friend of Saunders – point out Smith really is naïve about how the government works. Paine tells Smith to work on a bill to create a national boys camp, like the one he talked about to the press, and Smith eagerly signs on for. What Paine doesn’t realize until the day Smith reads the bill on the floor is Smith wants to set up the camp on a piece of land that Taylor and his cronies have already bought as graft, which Paine is involved in. What Smith doesn’t realize, until Saunders, who has gone from being cynical about him to falling love with him, tells him before leaving town that Taylor will stop at nothing to make sure Smith doesn’t screw up that land deal.
Smith shows Saunders what needs to be in his bill for a boys camp.
On the one hand, parts of this movie still ring true today. Saunders’ speech to Smith about how hard it is to get a bill through Congress (“Yes sir, the big day (to vote on the bill) finally arrives – and Congress adjourns”) definitely still holds up. More importantly, it’s still unfortunately true that bills that will help the American people most likely won’t get passed without amendments being added that either weaken the bill or involve a bit of graft, as in this movie where Taylor, through Paine, has attached an amendment involving his land graft onto an efficiency bill meant to provide financial relief to the American public. It’s also true that a lot of people who have decided to be a politician, and who had grand ideals about what they were going to accomplish, ended up betraying those ideals, as Paine has (and have justified that betrayal like Paine does when he tells Smith he’s had to learn to compromise). Finally, the fact Smith gets framed for using his boys camp bill for graft before Smith could expose what he knew about Taylor shows how rich, corrupt men like Taylor are able to crush those who try and stop him.
Saunders tells Smith the truth, while Diz (Thomas Mitchell) looks on.
However, it’s the way Smith (with Saunders’ help) decides to fight back that gives me pause today. Smith gets up right before the Senate is to vote on (a) whether to expel Smith from the Senate, and (b) before the Senate delivers its final vote on the efficiency bill, and once the Senate President (Harry Carey Sr.) allows Smith to speak, Smith filibusters the efficiency bill until he can have the people of his state expose what Taylor has been up to. As a historian, I know the filibuster has been around for a long time, and we aren’t the only country to use it. I also don’t believe this movie is solely responsible for the fact people have been reluctant to, or refused to, abolish the filibuster for so long (in its current form, if enough senators refuse to let a bill come to the floor, that’s considered a silent filibuster), as I don’t think movies have that kind of one-to-one relationship with society. Nevertheless, given how often the filibuster, either in its previous form or its current form, has been used to shut down bills that would have been helpful to people (the Civil Rights Bills of the 1960’s had to overcome several filibusters, for example, and any attempts to restore voting rights to African-Americans or pass any serious gun control laws have been stopped cold), and given how few times the filibuster has been used for good (for every Wendy Davis, there have been ten or more like Strom Thurmond), I’m uncomfortable with the fact Capra’s movie seems to romanticize the filibuster as the way one person can take on a corrupt system.
Taylor prepares to do battle with Smith.
Still, there’s a lot to like about this movie. Certainly, from a logistical standpoint, what Capra achieved here is remarkable. Art director Lionel Banks and his staff built the Senate chamber to scale on two different sets, and the fact Capra, cinematographer Joseph Walker, and editors Al Clark and Gene Havlick are able to make all of the scenes set in the chamber flow seamlessly (in his autobiography, Capra claims part of the reason was during the close-ups he shot of particular actors, they were miming along to their recorded dialogue from the master shots instead of doing those scenes cold) is . Capra and Buchman are also able to make the workings of the Senate comprehensible to the audience without dumbing the movie down, and make the workings of the Senate (including the committee that investigates Smith’s so-called wrongdoing, which I’m going to get back to below) entertaining as well. Capra and Buchman don’t downplay the seriousness of the proceedings, but they aren’t afraid to use humor either (after Smith nervously yells out to be recognizes when he’s about to propose his bill for a boys camp, the Senate President tells him to read the bill, “but not too loud”).
The President of the Senate (Harry Carey Sr.) encourages Smith.
Then there’s the portrayal of the press. In his autobiography, Capra would claim the press attacked him for telling “the truth” about how they operated. While it is true there were people in the U.S. government who attacked the movie (most famously Joseph P. Kennedy, father of JFK and RFK, who was ambassador to Great Britain at the time, and who thought the movie would harm America’s prestige in Europe), and the Washington press corps was also not happy with how they were portrayed, the critics were pretty much in the movie’s corner. That may be because the movie portrays the press firmly in the tradition of many movies of the 1930’s and 1940’s (most notably His Girl Friday) – cynical and hard-nosed, but ultimately on the side of good. Diz (Thomas Mitchell), Saunders’ friend on the press corps, stops Smith when he’s about to beat up Nosey (Charles Lane), the worst of the journalists (Diz calls him an “ambulance chaser”), and he and the others (including Jack Carson) school Smith on how naive he is and how useless that makes him in the Senate, but as soon as they see how crushed Smith is, they look ashamed, and Diz even tells Smith not to let things get him down. Later, when Saunders convinces Smith to filibuster the Senate, Diz works with Saunders to get the press behind him (though Taylor has the press bottled up anyway because of his connections). So, it’s clear Capra was not out to get the fourth estate, even if he sometimes claimed they were out to get him.
Smith during his filibuster.
Another interesting thing Capra and Buchman do here is how they distinguish the movie from the other two entries in Capra’s so-called “Common Man” trilogy. All three movies follow a similar trajectory – the hero, a naive man is plucked from obscurity into fame thanks to something that happens to him, he becomes a hero to many until the bad guys reveal something about the hero that brings him down, and the hero becomes despondent until the woman he initially fell in love with (and who’s fallen in love with him) convinces him to keep going, after which he redeems himself. However, Capra and Buchman run a couple variations on the theme here. In both Mr. Deeds and Meet John Doe, when the villains reveal something about the titular heroes, they’re telling the truth, just out of context (in the former, the lawyer who wants to get Mr. Deeds reveals many of his eccentricities to make him look insane, when in fact they’re just eccentricities similar to what others have, while in the latter, the villain reveals John Doe had no intention of jumping off a building on New Year’s Eve, though he doesn’t reveal no one had any intention Doe would do such a thing). In this movie, however, what Taylor and Paine cook up to frame Smith is about what they did, and Smith had nothing to do with it. Also, in both Mr. Deeds and Meet John Doe, the woman the heroes had fallen in love with had earlier betrayed him – in the former, Babe is a reporter who had been writing stories about Mr. Deeds’ eccentricities and he found out about it after she fell in love with him, while in the latter, Ann, the reporter who cooked up “John Doe” in the first place, wrote a speech for John Doe to give endorsing the villain – until she set things right when she declared her love for him; on the other hand, in this movie, Saunders never betrays Smith, and in fact reveals Taylor’s graft to him before storming out of town, and returns later to convince Smith to fight.
Smith remind Paine about “lost causes”.
Of course, Capra had a strong cast to work with that helped make the movie what it was. He had his usual stock company to work with (Arnold, Arthur, Lane, and Mitchell had all worked with Capra before, along with Beulah Bondi as Smith’s mother, Dub Taylor as another reporter, H.B. Warner as the senate majority leader, and Pierre Frechette – the only actor to appear in all three of Capra’s trilogy – as the senate minority leader) , and they’re all very good. In particular, Arthur may not have gotten along with Stewart during filming (she wanted to work with Gary Cooper, who had played the title character in Mr. Deeds, instead), but you wouldn’t know it from her performance (I especially liked the way she teasingly puts off Smith when he tries to guess her first name, and then how she reacts when Smith’s mother calls her by her first name). Rains, on the other hand, was new to Capra, but he also works well. Rains had played villains (The Invisible Man, The Adventures of Robin Hood) and unlikable characters (They Won’t Forget) before, but Senator Paine is more of a morally compromised one, and Rains makes you believe it, so his confession at the end of the movie is all the more powerful. Carey, another new actor for Capra (he was best known for westerns), may not be the first one you’d think of to play the senate president, but he brings dignity and a wry humor. But the movie wouldn’t work without Stewart. This wasn’t his only major performance that year – he was also very good as the title character in the comic western Destry Rides Again – but this was the first to show not only was he capable of comic timing (his clumsiness whenever Susan (Astrid Allwyn), .Paine’s daughter, is talking to him), but also dramatic work, as when he reminds Paine about what he used to feel about lost causes near the end. This was Capra’s last movie for Columbia studios, which had been his home for the decade (both he and Harry Cohn, the head of the studio, had strong egos), but my misgivings about what I think the movie does to romanticize the filibuster aside, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington remains one of Capra’s best.
To give you some idea of the lead time we have on our episodes, ponder this: we recorded this episode only a couple of days before President Joe Biden delivered his State of the Union address for 2024. And here we are, with me coincidentally composing this post shortly after Biden announced his withdrawal from his reelection campaign.
I tell you this not to get all political on you, but because it’s important to part of our discussion during the first half of our episode. But I’ll deal with that anon.
In this episode and the next, Sean and I will look at films that are great in many, many ways, but they’ve had an unfortunate side effect that rippled out since its release. And unlike our usual pattern, where the two films have something specific in common, each film has its own bad effect.
Having said that, there’s an interesting connection between the two films that we discuss in this episode; I address it at the start of Part 2. But anyway, we begin with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the very first film we’ve reviewed from that magical year of 1939. Directed by Frank Capra and starring James Stewart and Jean Arthur, Stewart is a naif in the wilds of Washington, D.C. where he accidentally finds himself at the center of a political firestorm.
And here’s where Joe Biden comes in: I was struggling to describe just why I thought the filibuster scene in this film gets to me. I understand that filibusters don’t work like that anymore, and more’s the pity. But a couple of nights later, I saw Biden’s State of the Union speech and afterward, when the pundits were doing the commentary afterward, one of them said that Biden is a “romantic” when it comes to America. And I realized that that’s what I was trying to convey. Jefferson Smith—and I, for that matter—are romantics when it comes to America.
But the downside of this is that too much romanticism can bite you in the back when there are other people around who will bend those same rules to a selfish purpose, and that’s what we see in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
From Washington we go to Baltimore for Part 2 of our episode, to look at 1986’s The Accidental Tourist, directed by Lawrence Kasdan. William Hurt and Geena Davis head up some high-powered talent as Hurt’s character, Macon Leary, navigates his life in the wake of a broken heart, a broken marriage and a broken leg. It’s all tough to do when you’re a popular travel writer. And the unfortunate side effect…well, it’s not what I thought Sean was going to bring up, I’ll tell you that much.
Also of note: when we recorded this, I was barely over a case of Covid, so my voice might be a little crispy here and there.
COMING ATTRACTIONS:
Next time around we view a pair of films that are wildly different in both tone and content. We begin with the original Halloween from 1978, directed by John Carpenter and starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasance. From there we go to 1989 for Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally… starring Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal. Join us, won’t you?
There’s been a lot written about the great director/actress relationships, ranging from the seven movies Marlene Dietrich did for Josef von Sternberg to all the movies Ingmar Bergman did with many different actresses, including Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, and Liv Ullmann. One of the stronger actress/director pairings in America was director Robert Altman and actress Shelley Duvall, who passed away on July 11, four days after her 75th birthday. Duvall would later become known for creating, presenting, and appearing in Faerie Tale Theatre, and for appearing in other movies such as Annie Hall, Time Bandits, Roxanne, and most controversially, The Shining, where her performance was derided when the movie came out (she was nominated for a Razzie), though there’s been a critical re-evaluation of her performance since then, especially considering the many takes director Stanley Kubrick made her do (the Razzies rescinded their nomination years later – also, for the record, Duvall would later say in interviews she enjoyed working with Kubrick). Still, I think Duvall’s work with Altman represents the best part of her career.
Ironically, Duvall never intended to be an actress. She was living with artist Bernard Sampson (whom she would later marry, though she would divorce him after 14 years of marriage), and would throw parties to help promote his work. Tommy Thompson (Altman’s assistant director on 14 movies up until his death in 2000) and Robert Eggenweiler (who was a producer on 11 of Altman’s movies) happened to attend one of those parties, and immediately told Altman about her. According to Mitchell Zuckoff’s oral autobiography of Altman, Eggenweiler and Thompson told Duvall a “patron” would like her to show him Sampson’s paintings, and that patron turned out to be Altman. Both of them were suspicious of each other at first – Altman thought Duvall was “full of shit”, while Duvall thought Altman was making a porn film – but they soon warmed to each other. Duvall (who would later give Altman the nickname “Pirate”) would appear in seven movies for Altman, starting with the movie Altman decided to cast her in even though he was already shooting it.
As Suzanne in Brewster McCloud.
Altman had a habit of making offbeat films throughout his career, but Brewster McCloud (1970), his follow-up to M*A*S*H (which came out earlier that year), was offbeat even by those standards. It involves the title character (Bud Cort), a recluse living in Houston Astrodome and building wings so he can fly, with the help of Louise (Sally Kellerman), a mysterious woman in a trenchcoat, while trying to dodge Frank Shaft (Michael Murphy), a detective investigating a series of murders Brewster is responsible for. There’s also an ornithologist (Rene Auberjonois) who lectures the audience from time to time while gradually developing bird-like characteristics like chirping and twisting his body to look like a bird. In addition to his playing around with the credits yet again (the opening credits start twice, while the cast is introduced at the end as if it they were circus performers), this was the first time Altman would step out of the more “realistic” genre deconstructions he was known for to strive for something more dreamlike. It’s definitely not to everyone’s taste (except for Roger Ebert, critics at the time, even Altman champions like Pauline Kael, didn’t know what to make of it), but if you’re on the wavelength of its humor, I think it’s a lot of fun, and a lot of that is due to Duvall.
Duvall plays Suzanne, a tour guide at the Astrodome, who ends up seducing Brewster. This was the type of performance where the actor is said to be playing “themselves”, as Duvall doesn’t seem to be acting at first. Though Suzanne does her job as a tour guide well enough, she is quite willing to go off on tangents whenever it suits her (when asked about bathrooms, she says they’re not real bathrooms, because “they don’t have a tub or anything like that”), and even in the uniform of a tour guide, she looks like someone from the cast of Hair, with her shoulder length hair and the eyelashes painted on the bottom of her eyes. One day, when Brewster is caught in the rain and gets in his car, Suzanne gets into the car with him and accuses him of stealing her car, though she doesn’t seem to mind. The way she talks about her ex-boyfriend Bernard (William Baldwin – not Alec’s brother) – who works for Weeks (William Windom), the politician who brings Shaft onto the case of the murders – so guilelessly charms Brewster, as does when she drives him away from the pursuing police (the impish grin Duvall gives when she puts on racing gloves before she drives away is one of her finest moments on screen), and they end up sleeping together. However, Suzanne recoils when Brewster tells her of his dreams of flying, and that he was responsible for the murders, and she immediately contacts Bernard to tell him. As sexy, and apparently kooky, as Suzanne is, there’s also a decency to her, and Duvall effortlessly plays that as if she was a veteran, rather than making her film debut.
As Ida in McCabe & Mrs. Miller.
Altman then proceeded to cast Duvall against type in his next film, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, which Claude and I talked about on our show. In the movie, Duvall plays Ida Coyle, a mail-order bride in 1902 Washington state (though the movie was shot in British Columbia) who becomes a widow when her husband (Bert Remsen) gets beat up and killed, and she’s forced to become a prostitute after this. In contrast to her earlier, cheerful persona as Suzanne, Ida is naïve and scared of the world, and Duvall does a good job showing that, as well as when she loosens up. While Julie Christie (Mrs. Miller) is the commanding presence in the scene where she convinces Ida she’ll be better off as a prostitute (pointing out at least now, she’ll be getting paid for it), Duvall manages to keep up with her.
As Keechie in Thieves Like Us.
Duvall also had nice chemistry with Keith Carradine, who brought his own guilelessness to the role of a cowboy (called Cowboy) who comes to town as soon as he’s heard of the whorehouse Mrs. Miller and John McCabe (Warren Beatty) have set up in town, and who becomes a steady client of Ida’s. Perhaps after seeing this, Altman decided to team the two of them up for Thieves Like Us (1974), his adaptation of the novel by Edward Anderson (which had previously been filmed by Nicholas Ray as They Live by Night). In some ways, even though I generally prefer Altman as a director (I’ve never been part of the cult around Ray), I prefer Ray’s version of the story, as there’s a charged romanticism between Farley Granger and Peggy O’Donnell as doomed lovers Bowie and Keechie, respectively. Altman is more interested in recreating the time and place of Anderson’s novel (it has not been made available to stream because of rights issues, as Altman uses radio shows of the period), but Carradine and Duvall again have a nice chemistry together. (Note: This is the one movie Altman and Duvall did together that I didn’t get to rewatch before writing this – I’m basing this on YouTube clips and my memories of seeing this years ago)
As L.A. Joan, with frequent co-star Keith Carradine (Tom), in Nashville.
Duvall then went against type for her next movie for Altman, Nashville (1975), which Claude and I have also discussed. She plays Martha (though she insists on being called “L.A. Joan”), who’s ostensibly in town to visit her uncle, Mr. Green (Keenan Wynn) – who wants her to visit her sick Aunt Esther in the hospital – but who seems more interested in chasing after Tom (Keith Carradine), the self-involved folk singer and one third of the folk trio Bill (Allan Nicholls), Mary (Cristina Raines) and Tom. L.A. Joan seems at first glance to be flirtatious (even with Kenny (David Hayward), the loner who ends up boarding at Mr. Green’s house) and self-involved (when Mr. Green tries to tear her away from Tom to get her to see her aunt, she firmly tells Mr. Green she’s busy). However, upon rewatching the movie, I noticed something about her character I hadn’t noticed before. As I mentioned in our podcast about the movie, perhaps my favorite scene is when Tom is singing “I’m Easy” in a bar, and while L.A. Joan and Opal (Geraldine Chaplin), the (supposed) reporter for the BBC who’s in town, think he’s singing about them – while Mary, who has also slept with Tom, sadly knows he’s not singing about her – Tom is actually singing about Linnea (Lily Tomlin), a married woman (and mother of two) who’s in the bar. While Opal is clueless about this, L.A. Joan, who looks happy at first, turns her head and notices Linnea, and then turns back with a look of sadness in her eyes as she realizes the truth. It’s the kind of off-hand moment Altman specialized in capturing, and allowing Duvall to show that moment gives her a dimension her character might not have had otherwise.
Duvall didn’t get as much to do in Altman’s follow-up to Nashville, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (1976). She plays the wife of President Grover Cleveland (Pat McCormick), and is only in one sequence in the movie, when the two of them visit the show put on by “Buffalo” Bill Cody (Paul Newman) that purports to tell the “truth” about the old west (in reality, the version of history that makes Cody look like a hero). This tries to subvert our notions of history in the same way that Altman successfully subverted the Western genre in McCabe & Mrs. Miller, but for some reason, Altman and co-writer Alan Rudolph aren’t able to bring it all together. About the only time Duvall gets any chance to show off any of her talent is the rather sweet moment when she introduces a friend of hers, Nina Cavallini (Evelyn Lear), before Nina performs an aria in Italian after the show.
As Millie, with Sissy Spacek (Pinky), in 3 Women.
I’ve found Altman’s attempts to ape Ingmar Bergman, one of the few contemporary directors he liked, to have mixed results, though I will admit 3 Women (1977) is his best effort in that regard, and it also has the side effect of contain what was probably Duvall’s best performance for Altman. She plays Millie, a physical therapist who works at a spa for seniors. While she seems to be good at her job, Millie is oblivious to a lot of things (as Ryan Gilbey writes in the chapter on Altman in his critical study of 70’s movies, It Don’t Worry Me, Millie fits in with other Altman characters who are motor mouths but don’t know much). For starters, Millie doesn’t realize while the patients seem to like her fine, her neighbors believe her cheerful disposition is annoying (they talk about her behind her back). More important, Millie doesn’t seem to realize Pinky (Sissy Spacek), a new hire at the spa, is obsessed with her (whether she’s in love with Millie, or wants to be Millie, or a combination of both, is something Altman and Spacek leave up to us to decide). Millie does act friendly towards Pinky, not just showing her the ropes at work, but also inviting her to live with her, and showing Pinky the places she likes to hang out at, such as a shooting range where Edgar (Robert Fortier), a stuntman and the husband of Millie’s landlady Willie (Janice Rule) – the “third’ woman of the title – likes to practice at. But then one day, Millie gets upset at Pinky’s meddling in her social life, for which she kicks Pinky out, and that leads to Pinky taking a drastic action, which is when the movie shifts gears.
Altman has said the movie was inspired by a dream he had, but it’s obvious Bergman’s Persona was also a major inspiration, and the comparison isn’t always flattering. Altman and cinematographer Charles Rosher Jr. do get some nice visual effects in the use of water from the pool at the building Millie lives at, but there was always an inner logic to Bergman’s movies (even Persona) that Altman can’t quite pull off. Still, he does know how to showcase Duvall and Spacek. Spacek is a more naturalistic actress than Duvall, which she had shown as early as her first movie, Prime Cut, as well as in Badlands and Carrie (Welcome to L.A., which she did for Altman’s mentor Alan Rudolph, isn’t as good a showcase for her talents, but she still manages to shine), and in her hands, Pinky’s dew-eyed innocence is completely believable (as is her turn away from that when the movie shifts gears). Duvall, again, is more of a personality, but she and Spacek work well together. Plus, Duvall isn’t afraid to make Millie unlikable, and yet she has her moments of self-awareness, as when she she reacts to Pinky’s drastic action, and Duvall does show for all of Millie’s affectations, she does really care about people.
As Olive Oyl, with Robin Williams as the title character, in Popeye.
Popeye was the very first Altman movie I ever saw. It brought Altman and Duvall together with a few other talents; playwright/screenwriter Jules Feiffer (Carnal Knowledge), producer Robert Evans (I’ve always thought he was crap as a person, but he certainly produced some terrific movies), and in his first starring role on film, Robin Williams, playing the title character. Unlike Altman and Feiffer, I was a fan of the Max Fleischer cartoons growing up (now, I confess I find them repetitive), and being only 12 when the movie first came out (I saw it in the theater), I didn’t appreciate how Altman, rather than making a “family” film (like other franchise movies of its type have been since), he was trying to put his own stamp on the material. After rewatching it, I no longer dislike it (it used to be my least favorite Altman movie, along with Quintet and Beyond Therapy, but no longer), though I don’t think it completely works either (Popeye not eating spinach until the end seemed silly, and Williams seems to struggle with the role). Even then, however, I did sense Duvall was just perfect in the role of Popeye’s girlfriend Olive Oyl, not just in the physical resemblance (Duvall originally didn’t want to play the role, as she had actually been teased by being called Olive Oyl when she was younger, but Altman talked her into it), but in the sweet-natured persona she brings to the role. The scene that shows Duvall off best is when she sings the song “He Needs Me” (written, as with all the movie’s songs, by Harry Nilsson) as Olive is sneaking, and dancing, around the dock where Popeye is. The fact she’s singing it as much to herself as she is about Popeye is what makes it so appealing (it’s little wonder Paul Thomas Anderson used the song – and quite effectively – in his movie Punch-Drunk Love).
Popeye proved to be the last collaboration between Altman and Duvall, as they had a falling out for reasons unclear (though he never liked it when actors in his stock company turned down roles, and she apparently turned down the lead female role in A Perfect Couple – which I think is one of his most underrated movies – because she was busy with The Shining; Marta Heflin eventually took the role). And as I mentioned before, Duvall did good work for other directors aside from Altman – she makes the rock critic she played in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall a real person instead of the conceit it was written as, she and Michael Palin are very funny together in recurring roles in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits, she showed she could play someone “normal” as Steve Martin’s best friend in Roxanne, Martin’s updating of Cyrano de Bergerac (directed by Fred Schepisi), and she made a memorable cameo as a nurse in Steven Soderbergh’s underrated neo-noir The Underneath. Finally, I do like her performance in The Shining, even if it took me a couple of viewings to appreciate it. Still, along with Faerie Tale Theatre (I never saw any of other, similar anthology shows she produced), I think the best legacy of Duvall’s career is the movies she did with Altman, who allowed the full force of her personality, and acting ability, to come through.
One of the best scenes in The Godfather is when Don Corleone (Marlon Brando) goes to a meeting with the heads of the other Five Families (as well as mobsters from other parts of the country), and they, led by Don Barzini (Richard Conte), try to convince him to take the deal he had rejected earlier; that is, go into the drug trade, which they would control, and Don Corleone would allow the others access to the politicians he’s been paying off. At the end of his pitch, Barzini acknowledges Don Corleone could, by rights, bill the other families for his services here; “After all, we are not Communists.” This line is meant to get a laugh, but it’s also a way of illustrating one of the themes of the film, on how gangsters had become like businessmen (what few could see, of course, is how many businessmen, inspired by the film, would go on to act like gangsters) and embraced the virtues of a capitalist system they nevertheless operated entirely outside of. John Mackenzie’s The Long Good Friday, therefore, wasn’t breaking new ground in depicting the gangster as businessman (for that matter, neither was The Godfather), but it pushed the parallel even further by linking its gangster character to the pro-business philosophy of Margaret Thatcher (who had recently been elected Prime Minister of Britain), and contemplating what happened when it went up against a fanatical group, in this case the IRA.
Harold with Charlie (Eddie Constantine) and Victoria (Helen Mirren).
Ironically, when writer Barrie Keeffe and producer Barry Hanson got together one night in late 1977, they were merely looking to make a good gangster story (originally for TV), as Keefe had been fascinated by gangsters since encountering Ronnie Kray in a bathroom when Keefe was a teenager. But when Keeffe became disgusted with how his old neighborhood had been gentrified, and some time later, had found himself inside a pro-IRA bar in North London, he decided to combine those two strands into the gangster script he would write. Called “The Paddy Factor” (after the term Scotland Yard used for unsolved crimes that assumed the IRA were the culprit), the script eventually made its way to John Mackenzie, then known mostly for his work on television (though, ironically enough, he had just made his own gangster film, A Sense of Freedom, a biopic of Scottish gangster Jimmy Boyle). Mackenzie loved the main character of Harold Shand (played in the movie by Bob Hoskins, then best known as the sheet-music salesman in the BBC version of Dennis Potter’s “Pennies from Heaven”), but felt the script was florid in many places and needed work. Out of that work came The Long Good Friday (a temporary title – used by Mackenzie because he felt the original title gave the movie’s plot twists away – that became the real title).
Pierce Brosnan in his film debut.
As the movie opens, Harold is sitting on top of the world; there’s been peace in the gangster world for the past 10 years, he’s made an awful lot of money, and he and his associates are about to make more, thanks to an upcoming deal he has with Charlie (Eddie Constantine), an American gangster who’s in town. Soon, however, Harold’s world starts to fall apart; Colin (Paul Freeman, soon to be best known as Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark), one of his best friends and closest associates, is knifed in a bathhouse (in his first film role, Pierce Brosnan plays the killer), a bomb goes off in the car taking Harold’s mother to church, killing the driver, and a bomb is found in a pub Harold owns. Not only that, but when Harold and Victoria (Helen Mirren), his mistress, take Charlie and his lawyer to another restaurant Harold owns for dinner, a bomb explodes inside right as they’re pulling up, injuring all of the staff and customers. While Victoria tries to placate Charlie and his lawyer Tony (Stephen Davies), Harold tries to get to the bottom of what’s going on, even pulling in some of the other gang bosses to interrogate them (in one of the film’s most memorable scenes, Harold has them hung by hooks in a meatpacking plant). Eventually, Harold discovers it’s the IRA who’s involved – Jeff (Derek Thompson), another one of his closest associates, was paying the IRA to avoid troubles with them, but Colin robbed them, and when the IRA learned Colin was associated with Harold, they targeted Harold. Everyone tries to warn Harold not to mess with the IRA, including Jeff, Charlie, and Parky (Dave King), the police detective on Harold’s payroll, but Harold thinks they’re no more dangerous than the usual thugs he’s dealt with. Of course, Harold is proven wrong.
In a famous scene, Harold confronts his associates in a butcher shop.
While Mackenzie insisted on beefing up the IRA angle, as he wanted not only to contrast the fanaticism of the IRA with the “it’s just business” attitude of Harold and the other gangsters, but also to contrast it with the Thatcher-like values Harold was espousing, it did prove for some rocky times when it came to getting the film released. The original company that was set to release it wanted to cut the film because of the IRA theme, and also dub over Hoskins’ voice. Hoskins eventually took them to court to get that stopped, and the producer bought the film back from the distributor, but it wasn’t until Eric Idle saw the film at a screening (at the behest of Hoskins or Mirren) and recommended it to Handmade Films (who had distributed Monty Python’s Life of Brian) that they picked up the film. And the IRA does add all of those elements to the film, making it more than just a gangster film. Of course, it’s also a character study, and Mackenzie and Keeffe bring that out as well. Early on in the film, George takes Charlie and other friends and associates (including Parky) on his boat, and announces the prospective partnership while they go under a bridge. Mackenzie and cinematographer Phil Meheux (who went on to shoot four more films for Mackenzie, including The Fourth Protocol, with Brosnan in a starring role this time) frame Harold in the center, making him a larger-than-life figure, which is of course setting him up for a fall. Harold at first seems to be, despite his working-class upbringing, a charming, if over-enthusiastic (Charlie has to warn Harold not to rush him), boss, and yet at the same time has to show the danger and anger lurking underneath, while also showing some vulnerability as well, and Mackenzie and Keeffe are able to bring all of that out.
Harold accepts his fate.
A lot of that is due to Hoskins, of course, He makes Harold into a dynamo despite his stature (watch the way he walks through the airport in his first scene), yet also someone who’s smart and capable of grief despite his toughness (as when he hears of Colin’s death, and after he kills Jeff in a blind rage after discovering Jeff’s betrayal). The most memorable demonstration of Hoskins’ ability (and the best, in my opinion) comes at the end of the film. After Harold finds out Charlie is pulling out of his deal because of all of the bombings and because of the IRA’s involvement, he chews Charlie out for being scared (“The mafia – I’ve shit ’em!”), and resolves to go into business with the Germans. He leaves the hotel where Charlie is at, and signals for a car, only to find out too late it has Brosnan and another IRA member inside (Victoria is trapped inside another car). Hoskins is able to go from disbelief to anger to acceptance, all without saying a word, and it’s a masterful example of good acting. Mirren is also terrific in making the role of Victoria more than just a gangster’s moll. She brings class to Harold, but she also brings intelligence (she’s able to guess Jeff is more involved with the story than he admits), and yet also toughness (she stands up to Harold when he berates her for spilling the beans to Charlie about the bombs) mixed with vulnerability (in that same scene, she also cries in fear, which was Mirren’s suggestion). Constantine, who replaced Anthony Franciosa as shooting started (Franciosa claimed he didn’t like the fact the script had changed so much before the film started shooting), was best known for playing the detective Lemmy Caution in a series of French films, and he may have been a bit flat in delivering his dialogue, but he has the right face for Charlie, and brings a nice presence as well. While Hoskins, Mirren, and of course Brosnan all went on to bigger things, Mackenzie and Keeffe never topped The Long Good Friday, but it’s a tough act to follow.
The following review was originally written in August of 2012 as part of a blogathon for TCM’s “Summer Under the Stars”.
Frank (James Caan) at work.
Anyone who follows movie history in general, and Hollywood history in particular, know it takes a combination of factors to become a star, most of all luck. But once you reach that level, there are two roads open to you. You can try to capitalize on your success by appearing in the types of movies that allowed you to become a star in the first place, or you can continue to try to follow your own path and hope the audience follows with you. James Caan falls into the second category. Though he wasn’t the biggest name to emerge from the success of The Godfather, the film did bring him an increased visibility after his sterling work in such films as El Dorado, The Rain People and the made-for-TV movie Brian’s Song. Caan could have cashed in on his persona as Sonny Corleone – and in recent years, he has done that – but instead, he basically took his cue from the title of one of his films of that period, The Gambler. Though Caan appeared in a sequel (Funny Lady) and a couple of tough-guy films (Freebie and the Bean and The Killer Elite), he also appeared in a futuristic drama (Rollerball), a pair of romantic dramas with Marsha Mason (Cinderella Liberty, Chapter Two), an anti-war drama (A Bridge Too Far), a pair of offbeat comedies (Slither and Harry and Walter go to New York), a Western (Comes a Horseman), an arthouse drama (Another Man, Another Chance), and even a drama he directed himself, Hide in Plain Sight. Pauline Kael once wrote about Burt Lancaster’s film choices in the 50’s and 60’s that whatever their quality – she liked some but hated others – they weren’t complacent choices, but were offbeat and showed a restless talent at work. The same could be said of Caan’s work in the 70’s.
Frank demands what’s owed him.
Still, there must have been something inside of Caan that made him think it was time to return to a more hard-edged role, and so he teamed up with Michael Mann, who made his Hollywood feature film debut (his first movie, The Jericho Mile, was released theatrically in Europe, but made for TV here) with their effort together, which was Thief. Caan has gone on record as saying that next to The Godfather, this is his favorite of all the film’s he’s done, and I would also agree next to Coppola’s film, this is Caan’s best work and best movie. It wasn’t a big hit when it was first released, and as with almost every Mann film, it had both its admirers (Roger Ebert, who put the film on his top 10 list for that year, called it “one of the most intelligent thrillers I’ve seen”) and detractors (Pauline Kael called it “highfalutin hype”, and hated it from beginning to end), as Mann’s films tend to do, but today, Thief is rightly remembered as one of his best.
Frank tells his life story to Jessie (Tuesday Weld).
Adapted by Mann from the novel The Home Invaders by Frank Hohimer (a real-life burglar), the movie is about the title character, named Frank (Caan). Frank and his partner Barry (Jim Belushi), in the movie’s parlance, take down scores, but only jewelry, and only from businesses, never homes, and always at night. Like most other crooks, he has a legit business on the side (a car dealership), but what he really wants is his version of the American dream, which includes a home, wife, kids, and getting Okla (Willie Nelson), another thief and the closest thing Frank has to a mentor, out of prison. And like his work as a thief, Frank wants to accomplish all of this on his own terms, though, ironically enough, he plans to leave thieving behind once he does. To that end, he courts Jessie (Tuesday Weld), a hostess at a restaurant he apparently frequents, and after one date that starts off as a disaster (he’s late for reasons I’ll get to in a minute) but ends up well, she agrees to marry him. She can’t have children, but he agrees to adopt. And he has a lawyer making arrangements to get Okla out of prison before his parole is up (Okla is dying).
Frank visits Okla (Willie Nelson) in prison.
But all is not well as far as Frank being his own man to get what he wants. His usual fence, Joe Gags (Hal Frank), is murdered, and the man responsible for that murder, Leo (Robert Prosky), a mob boss, wants Frank to come work for him. Frank doesn’t like the idea of working for anybody, but Leo is offering the type of money that’s hard to resist for someone thinking of packing it in (he accepts after Jessie agrees to marry him). And when Frank and Jessie are unable to adopt a baby by going through regular channels, Frank reluctantly turns to Leo, who immediately gets them a baby boy (Frank and Jessie name him David, which was Okla’s real name). Plus, the cops, led by Sgt. Urizzi (John Santucci), are constantly following him, saying they’re Frank’s new partners and he needs to take care of them. Finally, Frank finds out his new house is being bugged. So even before Frank finds out Leo is not going to give him all the money he was promised up front (the rest goes into fronts like shopping malls), and is not going to let Frank walk after just a couple of scores, we can tell things are not going to go Frank’s way.
Leo (Robert Prosky) lets Frank know in no uncertain terms who’s in charge.
Admittedly, this does sound sort of sentimental (which is part of why Kael hated it, I think), but what’s interesting is, with the exception of his attachment to Okla, there’s nothing sentimental in how Frank approaches any of this. When tells Jessie about what he wants, and why he wants her to be with him, it may be the least romantic proposal ever put on film. Obviously, he’s attracted to her looks, but there’s no appeal made on that level; it’s more the case of one soul who’s been beaten down by life appealing to someone in similar circumstances. And even in the speech he gives her about what his life was like when he was in a juvenile home and then prison, there’s neither bravado nor pathos, just a clearheaded directness (on the commentary track he does with Mann on the DVD, Caan calls this the best piece of acting he ever did). Later, that relationship will blossom into something more romantic, but there’s always something precarious to it as well. And as for Frank’s dealings with Leo and the cops, there is the metaphor of Frank being the individual being beaten down by The System, but Frank’s desire to work alone comes out of being a product of the rigidity of the prison system, and not wanting to play by anyone’s rules again, not out of any rebellious side. Finally, except for Okla’s picture, all the pictures on the paper he carries around that shows his version of the American dream are generic, as if to show his idea of what he wants is nothing sophisticated or romantic, just what he’s seen in magazines or on TV or in movies and what he thinks he wants.
Frank and Barry (Jim Belushi) plan their next job.
One of the hallmarks of any Mann movie is the verisimilitude he brings to his movies to match the sober tone of the storytelling. Caan is using real tools in the safe-cracking scenes, and that heightens the very meticulousness of his character. Mann also casts a number of real-life cops and ex-crooks in the film; Santucci was a former thief, while real-life cop, technical adviser, and future Mann collaborator (in the movie Manhunter and the TV series Crime Story, which Santucci also appeared in) Dennis Farina plays one of Leo’s goons (not the only future collaborator of Mann’s in the movie; William L. Petersen, who plays the lead in Manhunter, appears briefly as a bartender, while Michael Paul Chan, who was in Mann’s short-lived series Robbery Homicide Division, appears briefly as a waiter). All of that lends a grit to the movie to complement the slick visuals (Donald Thorin, who had served as camera operator on such movies as Bound for Glory and Annie Hall, made his debut as cinematographer for this film), and while some have charged Mann with being more concerned with style than content, they actually mesh well together here. Another theme that shows us in Mann’s movies is people, almost always men, doing the jobs they do because that’s what they do, and they don’t know how to do anything else. This movie is the one movie where the protagonist struggles against his nature the most, but at the end, he ends up having to embrace it. Finally, another thing that Mann does well in his films is his use of music, and while I know the Tangerine Dream score may date the movie for some, it actually fits. It’s not just what Mann says on the commentary about needing a score that sounded more mechanical to match the grittiness of the film, though there is that. The music in Mann’s films tend to be about evoking a general mood – think, for example, of the piece of music by Kronos Quartet that plays over the opening credits of Heat, or how Moby’s “God Moving Over the Face of the Waters” at the end – and though Tangerine Dream, an electronic music group, has been characterized as a “New Age” music group, they evoke the same kind of melancholy as in other Mann films. At the same time, the music is also appropriate for the big shoot-out scene at the end.
Frank goes after Leo.
A number of actors made their film debut here, and Prosky was the most prominent of them (he had made several television appearances, as well as appearing on stage in several plays). In the ensuing years, he split his time between playing essentially good-hearted authority figures (Broadcast News, Rudy, Dead Man Walking, and Sgt. Jablonski on Hill Street Blues) and tough guys and/or bad guys (The Natural, Things Change, Hoffa), with the occasional oddity thrown in (his memorable comic turn as an aging former TV star in Gremlins 2: The New Batch). But as far as playing bad guys and tough guys go, he’s never equaled his performance here. Leo can turn the charm on easily, and yet there’s a steeliness to him always that Prosky doesn’t overdo, especially when he’s threatening Frank. Weld is one of those actors who should have been a bigger star than they really were, radiating a sexuality and a toughness that suggested more than was often required of her. She may not look exactly like she did in movies like Lord Love a Duck and Pretty Poison, but her combination of toughness and vulnerability fit the role of Jessie, and in the scene where Frank tells her to leave, she’s able to go from desperation to anger without a sweat. Nelson could have easily let his role slip into bathos, but he avoids that for the most part. And given how many bad movies and smug performances he’s given, it’s easy to forget Belushi started out giving good performances in movies like About Last Night (as problematic as that film turned out to be), Salvador and this one. He doesn’t have as much to do as the others, but he does make a convincing robber, and considering his relative youth (27 years old when the movie was released) and experience (his first real movie role), he’s able to hold his own.
Writer/director Michael Mann.
But the movie rests on Caan’s shoulders, and he delivers. On the commentary, Caan makes a big deal about how he and Mann decided Frank should avoid using contractions in his speech whenever possible, as to show how direct (and uneducated) he was, but he doesn’t make a big deal of it in his performance. He doesn’t sentimentalize Frank’s “American dream”, or his background (the way he has Frank, in his speech about his background to Jessie, glide over the difficulties he had in prison). And yet when Leo double-crosses him, and Frank feels he has to shed all of his humanity to take revenge, the effect is chilling, both in how he completely dismisses Jessie, and also how easy it is for him to go after Leo. As a fan of Mann’s, I’d have to say Thief serves as a warm-up to better films such as Heat, The Insider and Ali, but it’s still very good, and I agree with Caan it’s one of his best films and best performances.
