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The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) – Review

1968, of course, was a year where it seemed like the world was on fire. After the Tet Offensive that happened during the Vietnam War, while the North Vietnamese lost the battle, the battle itself convinced many in the U.S. the war could not be won, and the protests against the war increased significantly, not only in the U.S. (culminating in the notorious protests at the Chicago Democratic Convention), but around the world; the May riots in Paris that year being one of the more prominent examples. It’s important to remember, however, the protests that were happening that year weren’t entirely about the war, or anti-U.S. or anti-Western sentiment. 1968 was also the year of the “Prague Spring”, where, in Czechoslovakia, people were rebelling against the strictures of Soviet rule, and trying to reform the government to allow more freedom of speech, press, and travel. Unfortunately, the Soviet government did not take this lying down, and in August of that year, they invaded the country and restored the totalitarian government. It’s against that backdrop Philip Kaufman’s great film The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which he and Jean-Claude Carriere adapted from the novel by Milan Kundera, takes place.

Tereza (Juliette Binoche) and Tomas (Daniel Day-Lewis) after their wedding.

The film concerns Tomas (Daniel Day-Lewis), a surgeon in 1968 Prague, and an inveterate womanizer (his typical come-on line is, “Take off your clothes”). Though he sleeps around with a number of women, the one he always returns to is Sabina (Lena Olin), an artist. One day, while traveling to a small village, he meets Tereza (Juliette Binoche), a waitress at a bar. They soon fall in love and get married, and Tomas even encourages Tereza’s interest in photography. However, Tereza can’t stand the fact Tomas continues to sleep with other women. As if that wasn’t enough, when things in Czechoslovakia seem to be changing for the better, the Soviet Union sends troops and tanks in. Sabina, Tereza, and Tomas all flee to Geneva, where Sabina takes up with Franz (Derek de Lint, who played the collaborator in Soldier of Orange), a professor whom she likes, but doesn’t want to get emotionally involved with (among other things, as she puts it, “He doesn’t like my hat”). Tereza tries to sell the photographs she took of the invasion, but the magazine editors in Geneva consider the invasion old news, and suggest she take fashion pictures. Tereza tries to do so – she even visits Sabina, in a scene I’ll talk more about below – but finds herself unable to function in Geneva. She ends up talking Tomas in returning to Prague, even though the repressive government has been restored. Not only that, but Tomas cannot get a job as a surgeon anymore because he refuses to renounce a satirical article he wrote before the invasion criticizing the government (he gets a job as a window washer instead), and though Sabina has gone to America, he continues his womanizing, which continues to drive Tereza to despair, even though she has her own extramarital affair with an engineer (Stellan Skarsgard) she meets one night while at her old waitress job.

In his previous movie, The Right Stuff, Kaufman edited his actors into historical footage when Alan Shepherd was greeted by President Kennedy after his flight into space. He does the same thing with the invasion footage, as we see Tereza taking pictures of what’s happening, and he does it even more seamlessly. Since Czechoslovakia was still under Soviet control at the time, of course, this archival footage was the only part of the movie actually shot in Prague (Lyon, France doubled for Prague for the most part), but because of how well Kaufman and the great cinematographer Sven Nykvist shoot the rest of the movie, it doesn’t feel out of place. Other than the revolution, the sexual escapades depicted here were the main draw of the movie, yet Kaufman and Nykvist don’t shoot them for easy titillation. The best example of that comes in that scene where Tereza visits Sabina to photograph her. There’s definitely an eroticism about the scene, especially when Sabina decides to turn the tables and photograph Tereza (and even uses Tomas’ come-on line, “Take off your clothes”), but it feels genuine rather than cheap or exploitative. The movie packs a lot into its nearly three hour running time, yet it never feels rushed, as Kaufman is able to keep a light tone to the whole thing, even with all of the events happening.

In Kundera’s novel, he tells the story in a non-linear fashion, and the characters are as much symbols as they are flesh and blood. The characters are still symbols in the movie, but the actors make them come alive. In later years, Day-Lewis would disparage his own work here, and I don’t really understand why, as he’s never seemed more relaxed on screen, or funnier (the closest he came was in the title role in Steven Spielberg’s LINCOLN). Even when he’s sticking to his principles in not renouncing that article, Day-Lewis acts it in an offhand way, and he has marvelous chemistry with his co-stars. Binoche was early in her career (her most notable movies before this were Jean-Luc Godard’s HAIL MARY and Leos Carax’s MAUVAIS SANG), and this was her first role in English, but she’s up to the challenge. It seems Tereza represents the “darkness” that’s opposed to the light, which is not only a conceit, but a reactionary one, but Binoche makes her into a full-blooded character instead, as a woman who wants to live where she’s comfortable, and just doesn’t understand why men cheat; it’s when she and Tomas are alone in the country late in the movie, with their dog and other friends, that she only truly feels happy. Sabina is arguably the biggest conceit of all – the male fantasy of the friend with benefits – but Olin (most known at the time for appearing in Ingmar Bergman’s FANNY & ALEXANDER and AFTER THE REHEARSAL) likewise makes her a believable character of flesh and blood. Actors often say their wardrobe helps them define the character they play, and I don’t know if that’s how Olin felt about the bowler hat Sabina wears, but she makes it an integral part of the character. There’s also good work from de Lint, Skarsgard, Donald Moffat (as another surgeon), and Bergman stalwart Erland Josephson (as a janitor). Kaufman seems to have lost his way after this (his only other good film that I’ve seen is the 2000 period drama QUILLS), but THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING stands as a great movie about sex, politics, and freedom.

One Night in Miami (2020) – Review

Muhammad Ali (Eli Goree) about to fight Sonny Liston.

On February 25, 1964, Muhammad Ali, when he was still being called Cassius Clay, defeated Sonny Liston in Miami, Florida to win the heavyweight championship of the world. Malcolm X, one of the most prominent voices at the time in the U.S. Nation of Islam, was there that night for support, and had talked to Ali about converting to Islam as a religion. Jim Brown, one of the most famous football players of the time, was one of the announcers at the fight. And Sam Cooke, one of the greatest singers of the time (known as the “King of Soul”) was also in Miami that night. It’s from that point that the fine movie One Night in Miami, directed by Regina King and adapted by Kemp Powers from his stage play.

Before that night happens, King and Powers introduce the four; Clay (Eli Goree) fights Henry Cooper in London, Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) performs for an all-white audience at the Copacabana club in New York City and feels underappreciated, Brown (Aldis Hodge) visits Georgia and is welcomed by Mr. Carlton (Beau Bridges), a family friend, until Carlton uses a racial slur to let Brown know he’s not welcome inside his home, and Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) comes home to his wife Betty (Joaquina Kalukango), where he gives hints about what he’s hoping to accomplish when he meets up with the other three. That night, Clay of course wins the fight against Liston, while Brown helps call the fight and Cooke and Malcolm watch appreciatively in the audience. After the fight, Malcolm invites the other three to a “party” in his motel room, except when they arrive, the only ones there are Malcolm and his bodyguards (one of whom is played by Lance Reddick)*, as Malcolm intends this less as a party than a call to arms (figuratively speaking).

At this time, Malcolm had helped facilitate Clay’s conversion to Islam (which would lead to Clay changing his name to Muhammad Ali), but Malcolm at that time was also in the process of breaking away from the Nation of Islam and starting his own group (partly because he’s found out Elijah Muhammad (Jerome A. Wilson) has fathered children from several different women, partly because Muhammad suspended Malcolm for the remarks Malcolm made after JFK’s assassination, and partly because Malcolm had modified his own views on how to achieve equality for African-Americans even as he continued to call out structural racism by whites). However, that’s something Malcolm reveals later in the night, as he hopes Brown, Clay, and Cooke will join him. Before that, Malcolm calls out Cooke because he claims Cooke is pandering to white audiences by avoiding doing any music that reflects the struggles African-Americans have in American society (by contrast, Malcolm plays Bob Dylan’s version of “Blowin’ in the Wind” and wonders why Cooke hasn’t written anything like that) – Cooke, in turn, points out with all the people he employs and the money he’s making for them, he’s doing as much, if not more, for African-Americans than Malcolm is preaching. Clay, meanwhile, is having second thoughts about converting to Islam, as he doesn’t know if he’s up to the strict discipline. Finally, Brown, who has recently turned to acting, is thinking about quitting football altogether.

Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) calls his wife.

It must be said, of course, in addition to the fact we don’t exactly know what happened when the four of them met that night, King and Powers have taken a couple of liberties with the story. For starters, there was no real conflict between Malcolm and Cooke in the way that’s depicted in the movie – Powers took that conflict from his time working on Star Trek: Discovery as the only African-American writer on the show. Also, in the movie, near the end, Cooke debuts his civil rights anthem “A Change is Gonna Come” on The Tonight Show, implying it was his argument with Malcolm that helped convince him to release the song, when in fact that even happened before that night. Also, the weakest parts of the movie are the boxing scenes – no matter what King and her cinematographer Tami Reiker do, the fights look staged rather than like a real fight. Still, King and Powers tell a compelling story here. The “is it better to work within the system to make change, or to hammer at the system from the outside” is an argument that has been going on throughout human history, but King and Powers present it well here with the added edge of who is doing the best for African-Americans in U.S. society, as well as what it means to be truly African-American (Brown wonders if the reason why Malcolm is so zealous and unrelenting in his cause is because he’s of lighter skin than himself or Cooke, and feels he has to over-compensate). King and Reiker also open up the play – not just the fight scenes, but Malcom’s phone conversation with Betty and his family late in the movie, and Cooke’s scenes with his wife Barbara (Nicolette Robinson, Odom’s real-life wife) – without distracting from the core of the story, and they use a nice blend of sets and locations (the movie was shot in New Orleans), as well as a moving camera that adds to the charged dynamic between the four men. King and Powers also bring humor in, as when Brown explains why he hasn’t converted to Islam – “You ever had my grandmother’s pork chops?” – or when Malcolm recalls seeing Cooke in concert when the microphones had gone out, or when Clay and Cooke go out for a drink.

Ben-Adir and Goree arguably have the toughest jobs here, not only because Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali continue to be icons to this day (Cooke doesn’t seem to be as well remembered, while Brown’s treatment of women has tarnished his legacy as a football player), but because they’ve each been the subject of well-known biopics with iconic performances – Denzel Washington for the former and Will Smith for the latter. Yet if Ben-Adir and Goree don’t outshine their predecessors, they do justice to their roles. Ben-Adir captures Malcolm’s oratory skills, along with his passion and his feelings for his family. Goree resembles Ali physically more than Smith did, and if he isn’t as sharp at Smith at capturing Ali’s verbal dexterity, he does have an athlete’s swagger, and he’s also good at showing how Ali was a lot more thoughtful than at first glance. Odom, of course, showed in “Hamilton” (as well as the movie version) he had singing chops, and he does a good job of performing Cooke’s songs (as well as “Speak Low”, a song Odom wrote for the movie), but he also does a good job with showing Cooke’s charisma, as well the anger he has towards white society and towards Malcolm’s insinuations. The real surprise here is Hodge. I didn’t think much of Hodge’s performance in the first season of Friday Night Lights (he played Voodoo Tatum, the quarterback who was supposed to take over for Matt Saracen), but he also has an athlete’s swagger while also showing how cool-headed he can be compared to the other three while also cannier than he lets on, as when he realizes his football career is over. King and Powers do the immediate aftermath of the meeting – Ali converted to Islam, Brown retired from football for acting, Cooke released “A Change is Gonna Come”, and Malcolm’s home was firebombed – but the strength of One Night in Miami is how King and Powers portray that night.

*-Reddick isn’t the only actor known from HBO in the movie – Lawrence Gilliard Jr., his co-star from The Wire, plays Bundini Brown, while Michael Imperioli, from The Sopranos, plays Angelo Dundee.

Insignificance (1985) – Review

The Actress (Theresa Russell) demonstrates the theory of relativity to The Scientist (Michael Emil).

Like many directors who made their mark in the 1960’s and 70’s, Nicolas Roeg hit a bad streak in the 80’s. While I was a fan of BAD TIMING, it wasn’t well received by critics or the box office, and Roeg’s follow-up film, EUREKA, starring Gene Hackman as a prospector, ended up being barely released, to critical and public indifference (after rewatching it recently, it didn’t hold up for me for the most part). However, Roeg managed to recover to adapt, of all things, a play, when he took on a film version of Terry Johnson’s play INSIGNIFICANCE, and delivered yet another one of his best films.

The Ballplayer (Gary Busey) pleads with The Actress while The Scientist looks on.

As with the play, the film takes off from the famous image of Marilyn Monroe’s white dress blowing up while she’s standing over the subway grate in Billy Wilder’s THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH. Taking place over the course of one night, it imagines that Monroe (Russell), known only here as The Actress, goes to a Manhattan hotel where, as it happens, Albert Einstein (Michael Emil, brother of filmmaker Henry Jaglom), known here only as The Scientist, is staying. Einstein is in town to speak at a peace conference, though Joe McCarthy (Tony Curtis), known here only as The Senator, has other ideas; he wants Einstein to testify in front of HUAC and denounce communism. Meanwhile, Monroe’s ex-husband, Joe DiMaggio (Gary Busey), known here only as The Ballplayer, just wants Monroe to come back to him, but acts crazy jealous around anyone who shows interest in her (we first see him watching and seething during the recreation of that famous shot from Wilder’s film). Monroe, on the other hand, just wants to discuss with Einstein the theory of relativity, the creation and meaning of the universe, and other matters of, well, insignificance.

The main subject of Johnson’s story seems to be celebrity, in particular how a public persona can often hide what’s really underneath. Roeg’s contribution to this was, as usual, to show people’s pasts through flashbacks, from Monroe in auditions being ogled by talent agents to Einstein in war-torn Europe, to DiMaggio as a young player and McCarthy as an altar boy. And what the characters talk about, particularly when Monroe is demonstrating the theory of relativity to Einstein, is the clearest way of illustrating the huge gap between what we think we know and what we actually know, whether about the theory of relativity (Monroe admits while she can explain it, she doesn’t really understand it) or about a person in general (McCarthy thinks he can get Einstein to testify simply by either appealing to his intellect or by bullying him, while DiMaggio thinks if he cajoles Monroe enough, he’ll get her to come back to him. Both of them are wrong). And despite the fact most of this (except for the scene recreation and the flashbacks) is set in the hotel room and hallways, Roeg, Lawson, and cinematographer Peter Hannan (who shot, among other films, MONTY PYTHON’S THE MEANING OF LIFE and WITHNAIL & I) never make it seem stagy.

Because the characters are not really DiMaggio, Einstein, McCarthy and Monroe, the actors are a little more free to play around with the material. Busey, for example, may seem at first to be too energetic and mercurial to play the notoriously aloof DiMaggio, but he carries himself like an ex-athlete, and makes that manic nature work for him as someone who doesn’t like the fact the world no longer acts the way it should now he’s retired. I’m not familiar with Emil’s other work as an actor (I’m not a fan of Jaglom’s films, in which Emil was a regular), but he captures both Einstein’s intellect and his sadness that the world was becoming something more horrible than he imagined. Curtis gives one of his best performances as McCarthy, re-imagining him as if Sidney Falco hadn’t been killed, but had gone on to outdo J.J. Hunsecker in fake charm, intimidation and manipulation, though showing the sweat much more. Finally, while Russell may be nobody’s idea of Monroe, and comes off as a little too affected at first, gradually I warmed up to that once I realized her conception of Monroe was of someone aware of the affectation but resigned to it nonetheless even as she struggled to break free of it. For the movie, Roeg and Johnson added an elevator operator played by Will Sampson who claims Einstein is part Cherokee – meaning he has a deeper understanding of the world than anyone else – and that comes off as borderline patronizing (though Sampson at least plays the part well). And some of the scenes drag at times. Still, overall, INSIGNIFICANCE serves as an entertaining meditation on our knowledge of the world, or lack thereof.

The Bride With White Hair (1993) – Review

Brigitte Lin (Lian) and Leslie Cheung (Zhuo).

Ronny Yu is probably best known in this country for directing horror movies in America, particularly Bride of Chucky (among the most popular of the Child’s Play sequels, not least of which because of the voice performance of Jennifer Tilly as the bride) and Freddy vs. Jason, the crossover between Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street. However, he’s worked on different types of films, including Phantom Lover (perhaps my favorite version of “Phantom of the Opera”) and Fearless (not to be confused with the 1993 Peter Weir film starring Jeff Bridges, this is a combination of docudrama and martial arts film starring Jet Li). My favorite of his, however, is The Bride with White Hair, based on the novel Bai Mao Nu by Yusheng Liang (also inspired the 1982 film Wolf Devil Woman).

Elaine Lui and Francis Ng as the Wushuang twins.

In 17th century China, Zhuo (Cheung) is sitting alone in the freezing cold on a mountain, guarding a red rose. A group of men from the emperor show up, wanting the rose for the emperor, who’s ill, since the rose supposedly will heal him, but Zhuo fights them off. As he tells us in a voiceover introducing the flashback that makes up the bulk of the movie, the rose is meant for someone else. As a boy (played by Leila Tong), Zhuo was brought up to be the leader of the Wu Tang Clan* (which led the Eight Big Clans of China), but though he was skilled enough (when his master throws a sword at him, Zhuo catches it easily even though he was playing with a grasshopper at the time), he was never interested enough, or cold-blooded enough, to be the leader. Even when the evil cult the Clans are always battling – led by psychotic conjoined twins Ji Wushuang (Francis Ng and Elaine Lui) – attack a village near clan territory, Zhuo’s first instinct is to help a pregnant woman and her husband caught in the crossfire. He’s also drawn to Lian (Brigitte Lin), a woman raised by wolves (in the early part of the flashback, we see her playing a flute, which soothes the wolves the young Zhuo is afraid of) who has become an assassin for the evil cult (she uses her hair as a weapon). When Lu Hua (Yammie Lam), daughter of a general with the Wu Tang Clan, and who has been in love with Zhuo since they were younger, sees Zhuo with Lian, she shoots Lian with a poison arrow. Zhuo takes Lian back to the lake where she lives (he had followed her there before, and she attacked him), and gets the poison out. Zhuo and Lian then fall in love, but the enmity between the clans and the cult, as well as the twisted desires of the twins (the male twin lusts after Lian) threatens their relationship.

The original novel apparently concentrated more on the swordplay than the relationship, but Yu wanted to bring out the love story. To that end, he gives the movie an operatic tone, and treats the love story in an adult way; there’s nothing coy or voyeuristic about the sex scenes, but they feel organic, as does the love story. Cinematographer Peter Pau (who also worked with Yu on Phantom Lover, as well as with John Woo on The Killer and Ang Lee on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) uses familiar elements of the genre – low-angle shots, zooms, and slow motion – but in an imaginative way, and not just for the fight scenes. Cheung is more subdued here, but it works for him, and he’s also convincing in the action scenes. Lin had proved her mettle in action scenes in such films as Peking Opera Blues, and she does so again here, but she also retains an air of mystery, she accomplishes a lot with just the expressions on her face (as when she’s starting to develop feelings for Zhuo and is taunted for it by the twins), and she and Cheung have great chemistry together. There was a sequel to this, The Bride with White Hair 2, that takes up right from where the first one left off, but while it has its good parts, it doesn’t measure up to the original. Of all the films that came from Hong Kong during this time period, outside of John Woo’s best films, The Bride with White Hair is perhaps my favorite.

*-The Wu Tang Clan is a martial arts group that’s appeared in several works of wuxia fiction and films, including the 1983 film Shaolin and Wu Tang, which is where the hip-hop group took its name from. Click here to go back whence you came.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) – Review

John Huston is credited with saying there was no sense in remaking a good movie, that one should only remake a bad movie so it will turn out better. One movie that shows the validity of that argument is Frank Oz’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which is a remake of Ralph Levy’s Bedtime Story (Dale Launer rewrote Paul Henning and Stanley Shapiro’s screenplay for the remake). Both versions of the movie involve con artists in a Mediterranean resort town. Lawrence Jameson (spelled Jamison in the remake; played by David Niven in the original and Michael Caine in the remake) goes after rich, high-cultured women (or those who think of themselves as such) by pretending to be a prince who needs money for his kingdom. Freddy Benson (played in the original by Marlon Brando, and in the remake by Steve Martin) plays for lower stakes, and is cruder; in the original, he pretends to be a soldier who is visiting the house his grandmother used to live in (which a beautiful woman happens to live in), while in the remake, he pretends to be raising money so his grandmother could have an operation. When the two of them cross paths (Freddy comes to the town Lawrence operates out of), Lawrence tries to get rid of Freddy, first by having him arrested, then, after Freddy figures out who Lawrence really is, pretending him to take him as a partner while actually trying to drive him away. Finally, they decide to decide a winner between their duel by betting on who can fleece Janet (Walker in the original, played by Shirley Jones, and Colgate in the remake, and played by Glenne Headly) of her money.

The difference in the two movies is one of tone and of trust. Levy plays everything much too arch in the original, and encourages his actors to play it as such; I’m normally a fan or Brando, but this definitely ranks as one of his weakest, and most smug, performances, as he clearly thinks himself above the material (which might very well be true), and Niven, who can be very good when he’s got the right material (as in Bachelor Mother) is also too arch here. Not only this, but Levy and cinematographer Clifford Stine seem to have no idea how to shoot the movie to make it come off as funny. It certainly doesn’t help Levy also sets the tone as similar to other so-called “sex comedies” of the era in being too coy. Finally, the ending of the original, where Janet, after finding out Lawrence had lied (the psychiatrist he’s pretending to be actually died), decides to marry Freddy, comes off as too smug.

Oz, on the other hand, plays the tone just right, pushing the envelope whenever possible (In a PG movie, of course) towards making Freddy and Lawrence live up to being scoundrels. He’s helped enormously by Launer’s screenplay; as he did in Ruthless People, he shows it’s funny to watch a smart movie about immoral people and the games they play against each other. That also goes towards the treatment of the woman character. Whereas Levy’s movie played Janet’s character in a coy way (which Jones, who had done good work in Oklahoma! and Elmer Gantry, can’t do much with), Headly plays Janet with a kind of innocence and vivaciousness, which is crucial to making her character, and the story, work. As far as the trust goes, Oz and Launer never telegraph the twists the movie takes, unlike the original, trusting we as the audience can figure it out, while at the same time playing fair. It helps as the dueling scoundrels, Caine is effortlessly charming, while showing a streak of hatred towards Freddy, and Martin (who also worked with Oz and Launer on the script, especially on the ending) does some of his best physical comedy scenes (as when he’s pretending to be Lawrence’s deranged brother Ruprecht) while also, again, not afraid to make Freddy a real scoundrel. They’re supported well by Anton Rodgers (as Inspector Andre, the corrupt police detective in league with Lawrence) and Ian McDiarmid (as Lawrence’s butler Arthur). Credit should also go to cinematographer Michael Ballhaus (best known for his work with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Martin Scorsese), who gives the movie an elegant look and also knows hot to bring the comedy out, and composer Miles Goodman, who writes a light, airy score that sets the tone just right. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a great example, for me, of a remake superior to the original.

The Man who Knew Too Much (1956) – Review

As with the idea of a MacGuffin, the concept of “refrigerator logic” had been around for a long time in narrative (though obviously called something else before refrigerators, or iceboxes, had been invented, if there was a term for it at all), but it was Alfred Hitchcock who helped popularize it (though he referred to it as an “icebox scene”). The idea is, you’re watching a movie, you get caught up in it, then when you come home and open the refrigerator to get something, you stop and say, “Wait a minute – in THE FUGITIVE, where is Harrison Ford getting the money to do all of what he’s doing when he’s on the run, and how is it Tommy Lee Jones can be walking up one flight of stairs while Ford is going down another flight of stairs on the opposite side of the building, and yet Jones can make out who it is?” If you are truly caught up in the story, these kinds of things don’t matter; only if you aren’t will they occur to you while you’re watching/reading it. I say this partly because my first encounter with refrigerator logic came with Hitchcock’s remake of his own The Man who Knew Too Much.

Jo (Doris Day), Hank (Christopher Olsen), and Ben McKenna (James Stewart).

Before I get to that moment, a word about the story (the movie was written by John Michael Hayes, adapted from the 1934 version that was written by Charles Bennett and D.B. Wyndham-Lewis). Ben McKenna (James Stewart), a doctor, and his wife Jo (Doris Day), a former singer, are on vacation in what was then known as French Morocco (now just Morocco), along with their son Hank (Christopher Olsen). They’re on a bus ride when the bus swerves, and Hank, who has been walking down the aisle, accidentally pulls off a Muslim woman’s face veil when he’s trying to keep from falling. The woman’s husband starts to yell and Hank and Ben until Louis Bernard (Daniel Gelin), a Frenchman onboard the bus, intervenes and calms the husband down. A grateful Ben starts chatting Louis up, and even invites him for drinks back at the hotel, but while he and Jo both find Louis charming, Jo is suspicious of Louis because he won’t answer direct questions about himself yet seems to ask them about everything. Jo’s suspicions seem to be confirmed when Louis breaks a dinner date without explanation but shows up at the same restaurant as her and Ben with a woman, and without explaining anything to them. Also at the restaurant, Ben and Jo meet Edward (Bernard Miles) and Lucy Drayton (Brenda de Banzie), a British couple who had been staring at them (though Lucy says it’s because she thought she recognized Jo from when she was a singer). The next day, the McKennas (with Hank in tow) and Draytons go the market when they notice a man being chased, and that man also gets stabbed. Turns out it’s Louis, and before he dies, he tells Ben about an assassination plot in London involving Ambrose Chapel. The police want to question Ben about what happened, and so he and Jo go to the station, while Edward comes along in case they need a translator (as it turns out, the police captain speaks English quite well), and Lucy takes Hank to the hotel. However, during Ben’s interrogation, he gets a call from a mysterious man who warns Ben if he repeats a word of what Louis Bernard told him to the police, Hank will be killed. The rest of the movie involves Ben and Jo going to London to try and find Ambrose Chapel (at first, they think it’s a person, but Jo realizes it’s a place) without getting the police involved so Hank doesn’t get killed.

Louis Bernard (Daniel Gelin) charms the McKennas.

Aside from the length of the movies (the 1934 original is only 75 minutes long, while the 1956 version runs two hours exactly), the fact the main couple in the original is British (played by Leslie Banks and Edna Best, and called Bob and Jill Lawrence), and the fact in the original, they have a daughter who’s kidnapped (named Betty, and played by Nova Pilbeam), the main difference between the two versions is in the first half, as well as the climax. The 1934 version starts out in Switzerland, where Jill is competing in a clay pigeon shooting contest, and the two already know Louis Bernard (though the movie never really explains how). Louis is also killed here, but in the original, he tells Bob where to find information about the planned assassination as well (which becomes the movie’s MacGuffin), and the villains (led by Peter Lorre) kidnap Betty to keep Bob from talking. Although both movies have a similar set piece taking place at a concert hall (more on that below), after that, the original has a shoot-out between the villains and the police at a temple. This shoot-out is one of the reasons why I think the original doesn’t work as well as the remake does, as I don’t think Hitchcock builds much suspense out of it. Also, while Banks, Best and Pilbeam are good as the family, the relationship they have with Louis Bernard here doesn’t make as much sense as it does in the remake. Of course, Peter Lorre does make a compelling villain (as the assassin in the remake, Reggie Nalder is good, though not as good as Lorre), but I think the remake is better in every way.

Jo and Ben look at where they think Hank is being held.

For one thing, Hitchcock and Hayes take time in developing the McKennas as a family. Right before he catches sight of Louis Bernard being chased in the market, for example, Ben and Jo have a laugh about the fact their vacation is being paid for by all of Ben’s patients. We also get to see Jo singing, as she sings “Que Sera, Sera” for Hank before he goes to bed, and the song becomes crucial later when she performs it at an embassy, so we’re not just being told about her abilities (Day didn’t think much of the song – written by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston – at first, but it became her biggest hit). Hitchcock also ably mixes humor and suspense with the scenes in the Mckennas’ hotel room in London, where Ben and then Jo try to find out about Ambrose Chapel all while keeping Jo’s friends (played by Carolyn Jones and Alan Mowbray, among others) in the dark about what’s going on (leading to a good joke at the end). Also, Ben and Jo may represent the All-American couple here, but Hitchcock and Hayes aren’t afraid of making Ben uncomfortable – Hitchcock makes sport of Stewart’s height when he has to sit on the floor of a restaurant, as well as his clumsiness when he tries to eat according to Arab custom and fails – as well as unlikable (Ben may have good medical reasons for having Jo take a sedative before he tells her Hank’s been kidnapped, but Jo rightly calls him out for it). Finally, Stewart and Day work very well together. This is the one movie Stewart did with Hitchcock where he played a role more in line with his pre-WWII persona, and he does a good job with it. I must confess I’ve never been a big fan of Day (I’m not a fan of perky, and I think she’s too strenuous for the most part), but Hitchcock brings out some unexpected depth in her, especially in the scene where she finds out Hank’s been kidnapped, as well as when she realizes the truth about Ambrose Chapel. The rest of the cast is also good, with Miles being effective as someone who may seem like a nice person but isn’t, de Banzie as someone not comfortable with every aspect of her role in the intrigue, and Gelin is effectively mysterious.*

“A single crash of cymbals and how it rocked the lives of an American family”, as per the opening credits.

One major behind-the-scenes collaborator on this movie was composer Bernard Herrmann, in the second of seven movies they did together (The Trouble with Harry, Hitchcock’s black comedy from the previous year, was the first). Although his score may not be as famous as the ones he wrote for Vertigo, North by Northwest, or Psycho, it does help keep you in suspense throughout. However, there is one major piece of music in the movie (aside from “Que Sera, Sera) that Herrmann did not write, and that’s Arthur Benjamin’s “Storm Clouds”, a cantata being performed at the Royal Albert Hall near the end of the movie. “Storm Clouds” was also used in the original, when Jill, like Jo in the remake, follows the assassin to Royal Albert Hall, and Herrmann liked the piece so much that he decided to use it in the remake, though he expanded the orchestration of the piece and padded it out (Herrmann can also be seen conducting the orchestra and choir in a rare film appearance). Cinematographer Robert Burks (in the eighth of his ten collaborations with Hitchcock) and editor George Tomasini also make this work, knowing when to slow down (the conversation among the McKennas on the bus) and when the speed things up (the climax at the Royal Albert Hall, though Hitchcock also deserves credit for doing the scene without dialogue even though a speech was written for Stewart in the scene).

Jo performs the Oscar-winning song “Que Sera, Sera”.

Nowadays, it seems Hitchcock afficionados rank this movie low compared to other movies he did with Stewart, as they think Rear Window and Vertigo are more ambitious thematically (and contain more perversity), and even Rope had technical ambitions this movie doesn’t. But I think this movie has narrative perversity, which brings me back to the refrigerator logic in the movie. If you look at the second paragraph, where I’ve written the plot description, you’ll see it – if the bus doesn’t swerve, and Hank doesn’t accidentally pull the veil off the Muslim woman’s face, Ben and Jo never meet Louis Bernard, and the entire plot goes out the window. Only Hitchcock could get away with hanging an entire movie on such a monumental coincidence. In the book Hitchcock/Truffaut, Hitchcock told Francois Truffaut the original was the work of a talented amateur, while the remake was the work of a professional. Hitchcock apparently preferred the original version of The Man who Knew Too Much, but I prefer the version made by the professional.

*-Gelin also came up with a suggestion for the scene where Louis tells Ben about the assassination plot as he’s dying. It looks like Louis is wearing brownface to look Moroccan when he’s stabbed and when he approaches Ben. However, the makeup artists were unable to figure out how to get that makeup to slide off Ben’s fingers when he touches Louis’ face, so it was Gelin who suggested they put light-colored powder on Jimmy Stewart’s fingers so they would leave streaks on Gelin’s face.

Loving (2016) – Review

Mildred (Ruth Negga) and Richard Loving (Joel Edgerton).

Jeff Nichols is another acclaimed director whom I’ve never fully been able to get behind. He has a sharp visual eye, but his stories have never been quite satisfactory to me, even Take Shelter, his acclaimed 2011 film starring Jessica Chastain and his usual star Michael Shannon. Not until Midnight Special, Nichols’ take on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, did I start to warm up to him, and even that film lost its footing near the end. I had no such problems, however, with Nichols’ fine docudrama Loving (not to be confused with Irvin Kershner’s film of the same name, which I covered when I wrote about my favorite films of 1970).

Recreating the famous photo from Life magazine.

Richard Loving (Joel Edgerton) was a construction worker in Central Point, Virginia, who knew Mildred Jeter (Ruth Negga) since they were younger. When Mildred got pregnant by him, Richard unhesitatingly agreed to marry her, which by itself was not unusual. However, this was 1958, and Virginia was a number of states at the time that had anti-miscegenation laws outlawing interracial marriage, and since Richard was white and Mildred was black, they were forced to leave Virginia (though they came back briefly so Richard’s mother Lola (Sharon Blackwood), a midwife, could help deliver Mildred’s baby). The Lovings moved to Washington D.C., and while Richard was able to find steady work, and their three children seemed happy enough, Mildred never really felt at home there. One day, she wrote a letter to Robert F. Kennedy, then the U.S. attorney general, to ask if there was anything he could do to help her and Richard. Kennedy ended up referring the letter to the ACLU, and Bernard Cohen (Nick Kroll), a lawyer associated with them, took on the case, promising to work pro bono on the Lovings’ behalf. They ended up moving back to Virginia (Cohen suggested it, and Richard resisted, but in the movie, when one of their children gets hit by a car – though he doesn’t get hurt – Mildred told Richard they needed to move back). Cohen, with the help of constitutional law expert Phil Hirschkop (Jon Bass), ended up bringing the case to the Supreme Court, and in Loving v. Virginia, decided June 12, 1967, the court unanimously declared Virginia’s law was unconstitutional under the 14th amendment, and also declared such laws to be unconstitutional nationwide.

Oddly enough, for a movie about such an important case, Nichols devotes little time to specific legal details. We do see Mildred and Richard’s initial arrest by Sheriff Brooks (Martin Csokas), and their initial attorney Frank Beazley (Bill Camp) arrange a plea deal with Judge Bazile (Frank Jensen), as well as Cohen and Hirschkop presenting their initial arguments to the Supreme Court, but that’s about it. Instead, Nichols focuses on the day-to-day lives of the Lovings themselves, inspired by Nancy Buirski’s documentary THE LOVING STORY from 2011. Since both Mildred and Richard were reticent by nature, and were devoted to each other, this makes for a quiet, rambling film, rather than your usual muckraking or uplifting approach. Some critics were put off by this, but I was drawn in. Nichols and cinematographer Adam Stone (who also shot Take Shelter and Midnight Special) capture the slow rhythms of Central Point, and the ease at which Mildred’s family and friends have with each other there. He also shows how Mildred, in her own quiet way, was the one who forced the decisions; she was the one who wanted to have her first baby back in Central Point, she was the one who contacted Kennedy, she was the one who kept in touch with Cohen, she was the one who pushed Richard for them to move back to Central Point, and she was the one who did the publicity, which Richard wanted no part of.

Bernard Cohen (Nick Kroll), the Loving’s lawyer.

Negga, whom I remember best playing the somewhat sympathetic villain on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., brings a quiet dignity to Ruth. When she shows Mildred making her decisions on what to do, there’s no fuss about her manner at all, just simple determination. Edgerton, who was in Midnight Special, also brings a quiet reserve to his performance; when Cohen asks if there’s anything Richard wants him to argue at the Supreme Court, he replies, “Tell the judge I love my wife.” Kroll brings a charge to all of his scenes, and Shannon for once plays against type as the affable Life magazine photographer Grey Villet, who took the famous picture of the Lovings sitting on the couch, intimate with each other, while watching “The Andy Griffith Show”. Loving is more about the people involved in Loving v Virginia than the case, and Nichols makes it work here.

Loving 1970 – Review

Selma (Eva Marie Saint) and Brooks Wilson (George Segal).

When people extol the virtues of 70’s movies, they tend to focus on the big names, from directors – Altman, Coppola, Scorsese – and actors – De Niro, Nicholson, and Pacino. However, while it’s certainly true many of the best films of the 70’s (in my opinion) came from those singular talents, it’s important to remember there were other great films that came out during that time that also shared little in common with those other great films except maybe an emotional honesty about its story and characters. One such case is Irvin Kershner’s suburban drama Loving, which came out in 1970.

If Kershner is remembered as a director today, it’s usually for four genre movies he did late in his career; Eyes of Laura Mars, a strange but fascinating horror/thriller starring Faye Dunaway and Tommy Lee Jones, Never Say Never Again, the last James Bond movie to star Sean Connery, Robocop 2, the sequel to the 1987 hit film, and, of course, The Empire Strikes Back, which many people (myself included) consider to be the best of the Star Wars franchise. But before those films, Kershner seemed to be drawn to tales of people struggling to achieve dreams that don’t quite come off, like The Luck of Ginger Coffey (a highly underrated Canadian film starring Robert Shaw in the title role) and A Fine Madness (his first film with Connery). George Segal had already received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but his biggest days as a light leading man were still ahead of him. And Eva Marie Saint already had two iconic roles to her credit, as the grieving sister of a murdered dockworker in On the Waterfront and the sexy spy in North by Northwest, but hadn’t appeared in too many movies since then, and while some of them were good (The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming), most weren’t (Exodus, The Sandpiper). From these somewhat disparate talents came a terrific drama that, unfortunately, seems largely forgotten today.

Brooks gets into an argument with Grace (Janis Young).

Adapted by Don Devlin from the novel Brooks Wilson Ltd by J.M. Ryan (which I’ve never read, and which apparently is out of print), the movie tells the story of Brooks Wilson (Segal), an artist and freelance graphic designer. When we first see him, he’s in New York City painting in his studio, while his Grace (Janis Young), who works at a museum and who also is his girlfriend, sits at a desk. She soon storms off, and Brooks stops what he’s doing to chase after her. He eventually catches up to her, they argue (though we don’t hear it), they seem to make up, and he walks her to where she’s going, but when he tries to kiss her, she bolts. He then looks at his watch, realizes he’s late, and gets a taxi. Turns out he’s going to a play his daughter Lizzie (Lorraine Cullen) is in, and his wife Selma (Saint), and his other daughter Hannah (Cheryl Bucher) are there as well.

As it turns out, Brooks is also caught in his professional life as well as his personal life. The money he makes comes from his freelance work, and his agent Edward (Keenan Wynn) and Skip (Roy Scheider), who works at the ad agency Brooks is currently freelancing for, are both trying to land him a job with Lepridon (Sterling Hayden), a somewhat surly trucking company magnate. Yet while Brooks goes through the motions of trying to land the account – even, while somewhat drunk (more on that later), managing to impress Lepridon by saying how much he loves trucks – he’s not sure he wants the account. Or, at least he’s not sure he wants the trappings that come with it (if he gets the account, Selma wants to buy a bigger, more expensive house). What he really wants to do is just draw or paint (we see him do this even at his daughter’s school, just drawing on a blackboard), even though it won’t pay as much as the illustrating does, because he won’t have to put up with people correcting him all the time (we see Charles (James Manis), Edward’s assistant, trying to get Brooks to change some of his illustrations, to no avail).

Brooks gets drunk and belligerent at a bar.

Admittedly, we’ve seen this story many times before; the cry of the artist who thinks they’re too good for the real world. We’ve also seen it set against the context of the suburbs, with a character feeling stifled by the “conformity” of them and yearning to break free (usually a man, only occasionally, as in Diary of a Mad Housewife, a woman). What distinguishes Kershner and Devlin’s treatment of this material is how even-handed it is (this could very well be true to Ryan’s book, but again, I unfortunately have never read it). Brooks is in all likelihood a talented artist – at least from the work we see, including the nude painting he paints – but the movie doesn’t try to make him out to be a modern-day Van Gogh, or someone like that, stifled by the commercial world; he’s good enough to make a living. And while he drinks a lot, including at a lunch where he makes a few tasteless remarks, and at the party that takes up the last third of the movie, the movie doesn’t explain whether he drinks so much because he’s unhappy with his life, or if he’s unhappy with his life because he drinks so much. It’s just there. Also, while Brooks has a girlfriend (who is ready to leave him because he won’t leave Selma), and is also being pursued by Nelly (Nancie Phillips), wife of his neighbor Will (David Doyle, best known as Bosley on the original TV series version of Charlie’s Angels), Brooks obviously does love Selma and his two daughters, and again, the movie neither endorses nor judges his affair. Kershner and Devlin just show it, letting you draw your own conclusions. Obviously, this wouldn’t matter as much if Segal wasn’t so good as Brooks. Pauline Kael pointed out in her rave review of the film (which is what got me interested in watching the film in the first place) that because of Segal’s likable performance and persona, we can’t dismiss Brooks no matter how much we might not like his actions (as Kael puts it, dismissing him would be like dismissing almost all of humanity). He also plays drunk without ever overdoing it, and you even believe it when, while still somewhat drunk, he manages to charm Lepridon.

Although Brooks (and Segal) is the main focus of the movie, he’s not the only part. Kershner and Devlin pay attention to every character, no matter how small; when Brooks and Selma go visit that more expensive house Selma wants, the divorcing couple (Ed Crowley and Diana Douglas) that owns the house even gets a brief scene showing their humanity. Cullen and Bucher had never acted before, and except for Cullen’s appearance in Diary of a Mad Housewife that same year, never acted again, but they have a believable rapport as sisters, and add to the color of Brooks’ household. Wynn avoids the usual agent stereotype to make his character human and believable. Hayden only has one scene, but you see both his slightly eccentric nature and believe he could have made all that money. Finally, Grace is perhaps slightly underwritten, but Young never plays her as shrill (we see in a flashback how she and Brooks were in love), and we understand why she ultimately wants out of her relationship with Brooks.

But the film wouldn’t work nearly as well without Saint’s performance as Selma. The easiest thing to do to stack the deck in favor of Brooks would be to make Selma’s character frigid or repressed, or any variation of that. Saint may not be what she was in North by Northwest, but she’s still pretty and desirable. What’s more, she still loves Brooks, and still wants him, as we see in a scene where she’s posing in an embrace with him for a picture and she doesn’t want to let go. Yet at the same time, Selma won’t put up with his crap. She’s capable of deflecting his complaints with humor (when Brooks asks for a comb to get a hair out of his eggs, she plucks it out and jokes he needs tweezers instead), but she’s also unafraid of making her anger known (as when he refuses a dinner plate she’s saved for him when he comes home drunk and late, and she slams it down on the table). Saint never overdoes any of these actions, either, and always is able to suggest her own inner life. Late in the movie, at the party, Selma suffers a great humiliation (which I won’t spoil), and Saint is subtle in her reaction – she barely keeps her face composes, and brings her arm up partway to her neck, as if she wants to block out what she’s seeing but she can’t – which makes it all the more powerful. As necessary as Segal is to making us care about Brooks even when we don’t like him, he wouldn’t be the same without someone as powerful as Saint to react to.

There is one other valuable player in this movie, and that’s cinematographer Gordon Willis. When we think of Willis, we tend to think of his work on the Godfather movies, his work with Woody Allen (particularly Annie Hall, Manhattan and Zelig), and All the President’s Men, movies that all earned him the nickname “The Prince of Darkness”. But he was comfortable working with a wider range of genres than you might think, and among those were smaller scale dramas such as this one. This was only his second feature film (he started out making documentaries in the Air Force and, when he was discharged, became an assistant cameraman before his first film as cinematographer in 1969 with End of the Road). Already, it shows his talent for, as he has put it in interviews, taking something complex and making it simple. As is his wont, he uses a lot of long takes, whether the characters are moving or not, to let the emotions of the scene build up. And while there are plenty of scenes where he does earn his nickname, none of them are there just to show off, but make sense to the plot, especially a crucial scene between Brooks and Nelly at the party. Willis’ work, along with all the other principals, is just another reason why Loving, I think, is one of the great underrated movies of the 70’s.

Starship Troopers review

Along with Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein was one of the leading science fiction writers to emerge after World War II. He was praised for the accuracy he brought to the science part of his fiction. Heinlein was also the rare writer who seemed to be praised on both sides of the political aisle (reflecting his own political journey from left to right to being a libertarian). Stranger in a Strange Land (which I’ve never read) was widely praised by the counter-culture for its views on the sexual revolution. Starship Troopers, on the other hand, was praised by right-wingers for its unabashed militarism. To its detractors, the latter novel is a fascist novel disguised as science fiction. I’m not sure I’d go that far – when I initially read it in the 1990’s, I took it as being Sands of Iwo Jima set in the future – but there’s no question it is very gung-ho about war and the military (along with being gung-ho about corporal punishment and believing only certain people had the right to vote). So it makes you curious if producer Jon Davison and screenwriter Ed Neumeier secretly knew what they were doing when they pursued Paul Verhoeven (whom they had worked with successfully on Robocop), who had grown up in the Netherlands when it was occupied by Nazi Germany during WWII, to direct the movie version of Heinlein’s novel, because the resulting movie, Starship Troopers, took that pro-militarism attitude and turned it entire on its head.* When it came out in 1997, Starship Troopers was a box-office bomb, and critics weren’t much kinder (Gene Siskel was one of the few critics who liked it, and he only gave it a mild recommendation). Today, however, it’s become a cult hit for those who realize it was a satire on the novel, and while I don’t love it, I think it’s terrific.

As with the novel, the movie is set in the 23rd century, where Earth is ruled by the military under the guise of the United Citizen Federation, and they’re at war with bugs, who are fighting the Earth on planets Earth is trying to colonize from their home base on Kiendathu. It’s at this time Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien), a star athlete, enlists as a mobile infantryman, over the objections of his parents. Also joining up are Carmen Ibanez (Denise Richards), an ace space pilot and Rico’s girlfriend (at first), Carl Jenkins (Neil Patrick Harris), a psychic who ends up in military intelligence, and Izabelle “Dizzy” Flores (Dina Mayer), who joins the mobile infantry unit because she’s in love with Rico. While Carmen joins the space air force, breaks up with Rico, and becomes close to Zander Barcalow (Patrick Muldoon), another pilot, Rico goes through training with Izzy, under the command of Sgt. Zim (Clancy Brown), who respects Rico because he was taught by Jean Rasczak (Michael Ironside), who later joins the military again. While Rico initially impresses Zim enough to be promoted to squad leader, he later quits military training after an exercise he supervises inadvertently causes the death of one of his men. However, Rico goes back to the military when a bug attack kills his parents, and he and Izzy, along with Ace Levy (Jake Busey), who was in the training class with Rico, and Sugar Watkins (Seth Gilliam) to be part of the Roughnecks (led by Rasczak) fighting unit, who does the bulk of the fighting against the bug army., though the fight turns out to be tougher, and bloodier, than anyone expected

In his Dutch films, Verhoeven was allowed to explicitly show sex and violence, along with a satirical edge in movies like Soldier of Orange, Spetters, and The 4^th Man. In Hollywood, on the other hand, Verhoeven had to dial down the sex part, except for Basic Instinct and Showgirls (both movies have a cult following and are considered in some circles as being as subversive as Verhoeven’s Dutch films, but I think that’s giving too much credit to Joe Eszterhas, the screenwriter of both films) – he does have the nude shower scene here, which he got the cast to agree to when he and cinematographer Jost Vacano agreed to shoot the scene while nude – but has been allowed to show explicit violence. Yet as in Robocop and Total Recall (my favorite of Verhoeven’s Hollywood movies), the violence in Starship Troopers never feels gratuitous, but necessary to the story. Forgoing Heinlein’s novel, Verhoeven does not try to make war glorious, but makes it a living hell, yet at the same time, showing a society that produces people who seem to be equipped to do little else except fight bugs and maybe even get killed by them.

Of course, part of what makes the violence work so well in the movie – aside from the way Verhoeven, Vacano, and editors Mark Goldblatt and Caroline Ross help stage it – is the satire Verhoeven brings to balance the movie out. Verhoeven stated in interviews he took inspiration from movies Hollywood made during WWII, but especially the movies of Leni Riefenstahl, specifically Triumph of the Will and Olympia (George Lucas, of course, used imagery from the former in the final scenes of Star Wars: A New Hope, but Verhoeven takes it to another level here). Part of that comes through in the pro-military commercials and news segments that appear throughout the movie (similar to the ones in Robocop), with narration by John Cunningham (a veteran stage and TV actor who has also appeared in such movies as Mystic Pizza, School Ties, and Nixon) that always ends with, “Would you like to know more?” Part of that also comes from the costumes designed by Ellen Mirojnick, who outfits most of the characters in military uniforms that wouldn’t look out of place in Triumph of the Will. Part of that also comes from Neumeier’s dialogue, which also wouldn’t seem out of place in a military propaganda film (when experts are debating the war on TV, and one mentions the bugs may have developed intelligence, another one snorts, “Frankly, I find the idea of a bug that thinks offensive!”). Still, most of the satire comes from how Verhoeven cast the movie with actors who would have fit right in on Melrose Place, being blond and blue-eyed – and if you’re wondering about folks from Argentina (which is where the Earth scenes take place, though that part of the movie was shot in Los Angeles, where the bug planet scenes were shot the South Dakota and Wyoming) being blond and blue-eyed, remember a number of Nazis who fled Germany at the end of WWII to escape capture settled in Argentina.

In the years since the movie was released, a healthy debate has sprung up among fans of the movie as to which of the cast members were in on the joke. Although Van Dien had stated in interviews at the time that he recognized the film was meant to be a satire, his subsequent career choices (he was in one of the first Christian-themed movies, The Omega Code, as well as daytime and prime time soap operas on TV) doesn’t give you much confidence in that statement. On the other hand, it’s clear Brown, Harris, and Ironside recognize what kind of movie they’re in – Ironside especially when he’s espousing pro-military attitudes that even Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket might have blanched at – and I would argue Mayer also seems to get that it’s a satire, even if her character was changed from the novel (Dizzy was a man in the novel) to give Rico a love interest. Richards is an interesting case. In the DVD commentary, Verhoeven insists Carmen was meant to be a feminist character, while test audiences didn’t react well to her, even wishing she had been the one who dies. While a lot of that can be seen as the misogyny of the audiences of the time, and Carmen certainly gets shown as being capable of what she does, I always thought she should have been a more compelling character, and I’m not sure if it’s the fault of Richards, Verhoeven, the writing, or a combination. That said, based on the movies she did after this, particularly Wild Things and Undercover Brother, which are both tongue-in-cheek genre pieces (the former for the erotic thriller, the latter for blaxploitation movies) – and while I don’t think much of The World is Not Enough, the James Bond movies pre-Daniel Craig were tongue-in-cheek – it’s likely Richards did get the humor of the movie, even if she doesn’t come across that way. Regardless, the actors for the most part are good, particularly Brown, Harris, and Mayer. Starship Troopers doesn’t rank as my favorite Verhoeven, but I admire its audaciousness in turning the militarism of Heinlein’s novel on its head.

*-Neumeier had actually written an original screenplay called “Bug Hunt at Outpost 7”, but when he showed it to Davison, Davison pointed out the similarities to Heinlein’s novel.

Kiss Me Deadly review

The early-to-mid 1970’s in American movies is justly remembered as the time of the New Hollywood movement (or Hollywood New Wave), where directors wanted to depict a different kind of America than what had been put on screen during the studio era, and also combine a love for that studio era with a love of the type of non-English language films (especially European and Japanese) that had played on American screens in the 1950’s and 1960’s. What doesn’t get remembered as much is the 1970’s also saw a number of movies that were revisionist versions of genre movies of the studio era, particularly the western and the private eye movie, which encompassed both the amateur sleuth/drawing room mystery type of private eye movie (like The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes) and the hardboiled type of private eye movie. For the latter, The Long Goodbye (directed by Robert Altman), Chinatown (directed by Roman Polanski), and Night Moves (directed by Arthur Penn) are considered among the best examples. All due respect to those movies – I love Chinatown and Night Moves, and have come around on The Long Goodbye, though it’s still not my favorite Altman – but I would argue Kiss Me Deadly, directed by Robert Aldrich and based on the novel by Mickey Spillane (adapted by A.I. Bezzerides), beat them to the punch.

Spillane wrote in the tradition of hard-boiled detective fiction as established by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. However, whereas Hammett and Chandler wrote about flawed characters who nonetheless tried to adhere to a moral code, Spillane’s most famous character, private detective Mike Hammer, was unapologetically a brutalist who nonetheless saw himself as a moral crusader against anybody who Spillane didn’t like (especially drug dealers and Communists). Towards that end, Spillane, who started out writing for comic books until he switched to novels because they paid better, eschewed Hammett’s spare prose and Chandler’s romanticism (which admittedly could get wearying at times) for rat-a-tat, punchy writing that would seem like a parody of macho posturing were it not for the fact Spillane so obviously believed in it. Hammer was his hero, and it’s precisely this ideal that Aldrich and Bezzerides undercut with their movie version.

Hammer (Ralph Meeker) is driving one night when he comes across Christine (Cloris Leachman, in her film debut) running barefoot along the road, and wearing only a trenchcoat. She tells him, “Remember me” before some men drive Hammer off the road, take Christine, kill her, and leave him for dead. Hammer wakes up in the hospital, accompanied by Velda (Maxine Cooper), his secretary/lover, and Lt. Pat Murphy (Wesley Addy), his friend on the police force. Though Murphy tries to tell him not to investigate any further, Hammer tries to find out what happened to Christine, as he thinks it’s part of something big. He goes to Christine’s apartment, where he discovers Lily Carver (Gaby Rodgers), who claims to have been Christine’s roommate, and says she’s scared the people who killed Christine will come after her too. Hammer also ends up tangling with Carl Evello (Paul Stewart), a gangster who works with Dr. Soberin (Albert Dekker), a mysterious crooked doctor, as well as the search for a mysterious black box, or as Velda refers to it, “the great whatsit.”

The private detectives in earlier film noirs, such as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon or Philip Marlowe in Murder my Sweet and The Big Sleep, were involved in missing persons cases, and even though those cases ended up revealing a lot more, the detectives were darker than “amateur” sleuths like Philo Vance and the Falcon, and they also butted heads with the police (most notably the scene in The Maltese Falcon when Spade delivers an angry rant towards the district attorney, only interrupting himself to ask the stenographer if he’s getting everything down), there was still an air of respectability about them (the closest to disreputable is probably Jeff Bailey, aka Jeff Markham, the private eye played by Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past, and he finds out there are lines even he won’t cross). There’s nothing respectable about Hammer. He works on divorce cases – if it’s a husband suspected of cheating, Velda seduces him to catch him in the act, while if it’s the wife, it’s Hammer who does the work – and again, he tries to find out what happened to Christine not because of any sense of morality, but because he thinks he’s onto something big that will help him break out. Also, even though this was made during the Production Code era, Hammer is willing to manhandle anyone (including an opera singer and a coroner) to get information, as well as seduce any woman he comes across (even Evello’s girl). About the only redeeming qualities Hammer has are his friendship with Nick (Nick Dennis), his auto mechanic, his friendships with African-American characters (including Eddie Yeager (Juano Hernandez), a gym owner), and his drive to save Velda when she’s kidnapped. This is in direct contrast to Spillane’s novel, where Hammer’s actions are considered heroic, even by Murphy, whereas in the movie, he’s warning Hammer to stay off the case because he’s screwing everything up.

Along with the attitude towards Hammer, the other major change from the novel (even though Aldrich and Bezzerides keep a lot of it) is what Soberin, and eventually Hammer, are after. In the novel, it was heroin, as Spillane had it in for drug dealers, whom he considered on a par with Communists, whereas in the film, it’s an attaché case containing something nuclear-related. That part is hinted at in the film when Murphy drops the hint, “Manhattan Project, Los Alamos, Trinity” to Hammer in order to warn him off, as well as when Dr. Soberin describes the box as “Pandora’s Box”. It also gets hinted at when Hammer finds the case at an athletic club and opens it, only to close it immediately after the light and radiation burn his wrist. That sets the stage for one of the most infamous endings ever, when Lily – or, at least, the woman pretending to be Lily; she’s actually working with Dr. Soberin – shoots Dr. Soberin dead because he won’t share what’s in the case with her, then shoots Hammer before opening the case, only for that same light and radiation to emerge, burning her to death and causing the house she and the others are in to eventually explode. Oddly enough, in the studio-enforced ending, everyone dies, while in Aldrich and Bezzerides’ ending, a wounded Hammer manages to rescue Velda and they both escape.

One trait the film does share with the novel is Aldrich’s baroque style matches Spillane’s rat-a-tat prose, though without the macho posturing that made the novel wearying for me. Aldrich and cinematographer Ernest Laszlo (in the fourth of five movies together) deftly blend location shooting (the exteriors) with sets (the interiors). At one point in the movie, Hammer is kidnapped by Shug Smallhouse (Jack Lambert) and Charlie Max (Jack Elam), two of Evello’s thugs, and gets drugged, which was not new for film noir – in Murder my Sweet, Edward Dmytryk’s adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell my Lovely, Philip Marlowe gets drugged as well by the bad guys – but what makes this sequence different is Aldrich and Laszlo shoot Soberin (when he’s questioning Hammer) so you never see his face, making him all the more menacing and otherworldly. And the final sequence certainly shows Aldrich pulling out all the stops. This also serves as a nice contrast to Bezzerides’ dialogue, which is elliptical where Spillane’s was punchy, which is brought out with Dr. Soberin, who speaks almost entirely in flowery riddles, even near the end, when “Lily” is asking him what’s in the case (or as she calls it, the box), and he speaks of Pandora’s Box, among other things.

At the time, Meeker had been a contract player for MGM, as well as a stage actor (he replaced Marlon Brando on A Streetcar Named Desire, and originated the role of Hal, the drifter, in Picnic: William Holden played the role in the 1955 movie version), with his best role being the affable if somewhat troubled ex-cavalryman Anderson in Anthony Mann’s dark western The Naked Spur. Playing Hammer required Meeker to step up his game, and he does, using his physicality in a way that he’d never really do again. Meeker can go from superficially charming to menacing on a dime here, especially when he’s at Evello’s party and goes from coming on to one of the women there to beating up on Shut and Charlie. Of the three main actresses, only Leachman went on to have a prolific acting career, though Cooper concentrated on political activism and Rodgers was involved with songwriting. Still, all three are very good. Velda may be jaded, but she’s smart in ways Hammer never will be, and Cooper projects that well. Leachman doesn’t have a lot of screen time, but you certainly understand why Hammer is curious to find out what happened to her, as she projects an air of mystery. In an interview, Rodgers apparently said Aldrich told her to play the part as if she was a lesbian, which is a wrongful stereotype considering how psychotic “Lily” turns out to be, but Rodgers also projects an air of mystery that works for the character. Finally, while Dekker and Stewart did play good guys in their career, and well (Dekker as Gregory Peck’s editor in Gentleman’s Agreement, Stewart as an ace reporter in Deadline U.S.A. and a nightclub owner in the Elvis Presley vehicle King Creole), they were at their best in villainous roles, and they’re both appropriately menacing here. Though Kiss Me Deadly wasn’t popular with critics at the time, today, it’s rightly seen as a terrific film (influencing, among other films, Pulp Fiction, which also had a mysterious case as part of its plot), and again, a revisionist film noir long before the term came about.