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Movies That Kick My Ass No. 16: Greed One of the saddest legacies of the era of early motion pictures is the staggering number of films that have been lost due to careless storage practices, fragile nitrate film stock, and intentional destruction by studios. It’s estimated that as few as ten percent of all the films produced during the silent era survive today. Most of these films and the people who made them would be unfamiliar to modern audiences, but take a look through a list of lost films and you will see the names of silent legends like D.W. Griffith, Thomas Ince, Lillian Gish, F.W. Murnau, and Lon Chaney. You’ll also see early films by great post-silent directors John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock. But of all those lost films, the most devastating and tantalizing must be the 7+ hours cut from Erich von Stroheim’s 1924 masterwork, Greed. A zealously faithful adaptation of Frank Norris’s novel McTeague, filmed on location in San Francisco and Death Valley, the most expensive film that had yet been made (running over $500,000, at the time a staggering sum), Greed’s initial director’s cut reportedly ran close to ten hours. Between its contractually obligated debut screening in January 1924 and its wide commercial release one year later, Greed lost more than ¾ its original running time. The cut footage, enough to fill 32 reels, was eventually destroyed in order to extract the silver contained in its nitrocellulose film stock. Under pressure from the studio, von Stroheim enlisted Rex Ingram (whom he called “the world’s greatest director”) to cut his film from over nine hours to under five. MGM head Irving Thalberg then instructed editor Joseph Farnham to cut the film even further. Farnham, who had read neither the script nor the novel from which it was adapted, hacked Greed down to its final length of 140 minutes. Supporting characters, entire subplots disappeared. When it was finally released, the final cut of Greed failed with audiences and critics. New York Times critic Mordaunt Hall called it “sordid,” and Variety wrote that “the province of the theatre is to provide amusement and entertainment, but Greed provides neither,” though it did also offer condescending praise for von Stroheim and his “little intimate touches” as director. ( Read the rest . . . ) | |
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Movies That Kick My Ass No. 15: Unforgiven Am I being obvious when I say that Unforgiven is the definitive Clint Eastwood movie, and the best western made in the last forty years? Sure I am. That doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Clint Eastwood is one of the few actors with a persona so iconic, so consistent that just seeing him walk onscreen creates certain expectations within us. His acting filmography is actually a lot more diverse than he’s generally given credit for, but even students of his work have to admit that his most successful films (commercially and, I’d argue, creatively) have been the ones where he’s played a violent loner with a severe sense of justice who’s good with a gun and quick with a cold-blooded quip. Movies like Dirty Harry and its four sequels, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and especially the trio of spaghetti westerns he made with director Sergio Leone in the mid-1960s — A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly — have outlined the classic Eastwood persona so indelibly that we know what he’s going to do in a given situation before he does it. Or we think we do. The genius of Unforgiven is that Eastwood starts with this well-known character, and spends most of the next two hours relentlessly playing against it. Just in case the knowledge of Eastwood we bring with us isn’t enough to serve as a proper set-up, the film begins with a crawl that describes its hero plainly and succinctly: She was a comely young woman and not without prospects. Therefore it was heartbreaking to her mother that she would enter into marriage with William Munny, a known thief and murderer, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition. When she died, it was not at his hands as her mother might have expected, but of smallpox. That was 1878. A few minutes later when we finally meet notoriously vicious thief and murderer William Munny, he isn’t robbing a train or fixin’ to shoot someone who tried to cheat him in a card game; he’s flopping around in the mud trying to wrestle a few of his sick pigs into a pen to keep them from infecting the rest of the herd. Alongside him trying to help out are Penny and Will Jr., his adorable daughter and son. “Kids?” we ask ourselves, confronted with this scene. “A pig farm? With fucking kids? How can Blondie have kids?”
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Movies That Kick My Ass No. 14: Away From Her The young nurse asks the older man how he responded when his wife blithely asked him, “Do you think it would be fun if we got married?” “I took her up on it,” the man tells the nurse. “I never wanted to be away from her. She had the spark of life.” Another scene. The man’s wife notices him standing in the common room of the nursing home, waiting. She excuses herself from her friends at the card table and approaches him, smiling. She chats, politely, superficially, and barely a minute has passed before she says she has to get back to the table. They have been married for forty-five years. This is the first time they have seen each other in a month. The man asks the nurse if his wife even recognizes him. Maybe not, the nurse tells him, but maybe tomorrow she will. You can never tell. Away From Her, written and directed by Sarah Polley, adapted from the short story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” by Alice Munro, is composed almost entirely of scenes like these. It is the story of Grant and Fiona, a retired couple in their sixties forced to deal with Fiona’s steadily encroaching Alzheimer’s Disease. It’s a heartbreaking movie, but not a bleak or depressing one. I’m giving nothing away by telling you that the film does not end happily, but neither does it end with death or abandonment. It never cheats, never feels false, and yet left me feeling strangely reassured when it was over. For Grant and Fiona, life will never be the same, and their marriage as it always existed is over, but they are still there, together. | |
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Movies That Kick My Ass No. 13: Out of the Past Chances are, when you consider the genre of film noir, the first example that comes to mind is Out of the Past. Though it isn’t the first, it includes many of the hallmarks of the great film noirs that preceded and followed it: lurid subject matter involving murder and betrayal, a complex story structure relying on flashback and voiceover narration, dramatic lighting and black-and-white cinematography, and a flawed but admirable hero who gets in way over his head. Out of the Past has one other essential element that quickly became synonymous with film noir: its cool, dangerous leading man, Robert Mitchum. It wasn’t Mitchum’s first film, by far. He’d been acting on screen for five years, and had appeared in over thirty features when he got the role of small town gas station owner and former private eye Jeff Markham. Mitchum even had a few film noirs under his belt already, notably supporting roles in 1944’s When Stranger’s Marry and 1946’s Undercurrent. With Out of the Past, however, Mitchum finally came into his own as an actor, and as the definitive noir protagonist. | |
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Movies That Kick My AssNo. 12: The Wolf Man One of the reasons the old Universal horror films were so successful (the ones that were successful — I’m talking Bride of Frankenstein here, not Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy) is that they treated their main characters as tragic figures. Dr. Frankenstein was so seduced by his experiments in reanimation that he and his loved ones were nearly destroyed. The monster he created, at least when played by Boris Karloff in the James Whale Frankenstein films, is one of the great tragic figures of American film, a pitiful, childlike hulk who can’t understand why he’s always being chased by torch-wielding villagers. It’s a bit of a stretch, but if you squint a little, even Universal’s Dracula can be seen as a tragic figure — strip his motives from the first film bare and all the poor guy really wanted was to buy a new house and settle down with a nice girl. Give him a break. The Invisible Man isn’t such a tragic figure . . . I mean, he is, sure — in many ways, he’s a typical film noir hero, a man who gets in over his head and can’t find his way back — but in many other ways, he’s just a big jerk. The most tragic of the Universal monsters, to my mind, is Larry Talbot, the poor sap who becomes the Wolf Man in George Waggner’s aptly titled 1941 film, The Wolf Man. Larry isn’t a mad scientist; unlike Frankenstein or Griffin (the Invisible Man), he doesn’t seek forbidden power, he hasn’t been driven insane by his work. He’s not an undead creature of the night or a misunderstood brute (well, maybe . . .). He’s an ordinary guy who finds himself cursed, through no fault of his own. Recently returned home to the Welsh village ruled by his nobleman father, he sees a wolf attacking a woman in the woods one night and comes to the rescue. He beats the wolf to death with his new silver-headed cane, but not before the wolf bites him on the chest. Larry soon discovers it was no ordinary wolf, and that he is now no ordinary man.
LOOOOOOK HERE: On October 20, which is this coming Saturday, at 5 P.M., the Smithsburg Library, under the management of the lovely and well-read Ashley, will be showing a horror movie triple feature of Horror of Dracula, Frankenstein, and this film I've just reviewed, The Wolf Man. It's free, but seating is limited, so call the library at (301) 824-7722 to reserve your seats, since they can only cram so many people in there. A great Hammer with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, and two of the greatest Universal horror films ever made. What's your excuse for not coming? You live in Sri Lanka or something? Five days is plenty of time to make it here. Get on a plane. | |
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Movies That Kick My Ass No. 11: Frankenstein This one’s been called the granddaddy of ‘em all, and it more than earns the title. First released in 1931, directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff in one of the most legendary of all screen performances, it was the first of the great horror talkies produced by Universal Studios in the 1930s and ‘40s. “But what about Dracula?” perhaps you ask. True, Tod Browning’s Dracula, with Bela Lugosi in the title role, did come first — it was released in February of 1931, while Frankenstein didn’t hit theaters until November. But to call Dracula the first great Universal horror talkie is to overlook a vital point about the film: it’s awful. The direction is static and stagy, the acting, especially by Lugosi, is clownish and overwrought, and the whole thing just seems dated and dull. Frankenstein, on the other hand, remains impressive on many levels. No matter how much time has passed, I’m still amazed whenever I watch Karloff as the monster. To communicate pathos and menace so elegantly is an accomplishment for any actor, nevermind one weighted-down by a heavy costume and stifling make-up, performing in what was still a fledgling medium, portraying a character unable to communicate except in grunts and growls. We all remember the flat head, the bolt-like electrodes protruding from the neck, the heavy platform shoes, but what a miracle Karloff pulled off back then, using all that to create such an indelible character. No one else in the Universal horror series comes close to matching Karloff’s triumph as the monster in Frankenstein and its two sequels in which he appeared, Bride of Frankenstein and Son of Frankenstein.
NOTE: Frankenstein, along with another Universal horror classic, The Wolf Man, and Hammer Film's Horror of Dracula, will be shown at the Smithsburg Library in lovely Smithsburg, MD, on October 20, starting at 5 P.M. We'll have snacks, and we've got a digital projector so we can show the films against the wall of the community room instead of on some lame-ass TV. Seriously, you should come. Seating will be limited, so call the library at (301) 824-7722 to reserve a place. | |
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Movies That Kick My Ass No. 10: Fargo Fargo is a tough film to pin down. It’s entertaining to read through the reviews written at the time of its release early in 1996, to see how different critics tried to define it within different genres. To some it was a thriller, to some a black comedy, to some a quirky post-modern horror film — the love-child of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Scream, perhaps. The range and diversity of its tone is what, aside from its many other virtues, ultimately makes it such a great and unique piece of work. Most other films, particularly those in the above genres, reveal their stories carefully so the audience will always know exactly what’s going on, double-back to make sure important details haven’t been missed, and cue viewers so they know how to feel about what they are seeing. Fargo utilizes the same techniques, but uses them to tease the audience rather than to spoon-feed them. To try and shoehorn the film into a particular genre is to miss the point, I think. It is primarily a comedy, but that isn’t immediately apparent. Structurally it’s also a classic film noir, which allows it to incorporate the thriller and horror elements I mentioned. The subject matter is dark, things occasionally turn shockingly violent, and several characters are eventually done-in by their own flaws. | |
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Movies That Kick My Ass No. 9: Elephant Gus Van Sant made Elephant four years after the massacre at Columbine High School. Watching it is like witnessing the slaughter from the inside. At Columbine, students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered twelve of their peers and one of their teachers, then each committed suicide. Van Sant’s film, inspired by but not a factual depiction of the Columbine shootings, is immediate and chillingly authentic, as though it’s all just happened again. He shot on location at an actual school in Portland, Oregon, with a relatively low budget (around $3 million), working with a cast composed almost entirely of unknown or non-professional actors, and made one of the most unsettling, emotionally devastating movies I’ve ever seen. | |
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Movies That Kick My Ass No. 8: Casablanca How do I write about Casablanca without repeating what’s already been said a hundred times by far better writers and far more insightful students of film? This is one of the most revered works of American cinema; it’s been praised so much, for so long, that it’s impossible to review without lapsing into cliché. It’s one of those few films that is unknowingly referenced by people who have never seen it. Phrases now a part of our popular culture — “Here’s looking at you, kid,” “He’s just like any other man, only more so,” “Round up the usual suspects,” “Play it again, Sam,” “This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship” — are spoken here for the first time by Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains. What in the hell’s so great about this movie, anyway? That cast is a good place to start. Humphrey Bogart was already a star when he made Casablanca, but it was his role as Rick Blaine that made him a legend. He’d made great films already — High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon, most notably — but it was Casablanca that elevated him to Hollywood royalty. Afterwards came more legendary roles in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Key Largo, and The African Queen, but he’ll always first and foremost be Rick, the tormented nightclub owner who gives up his true love for a greater good.
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Told ya’ll that film class would be a boon for the movie writing . . .
Movies That Kick My Ass
No. 7: Sergeant York Here now is a film made to be looked at from all sides. It is a fable blended into a war picture, a broad and affectionate portrait of country life that gives way to a gritty tale of military heroism, The Guns of August by way of Huckleberry Finn. It is a biography of a real-life hero of the First World War that saw wide release in the U.S. just over two months before the country’s entry into the Second. It is the story of a man who matures beyond the need for violence, who is then asked to kill for his flag. Of the films we’ve watched in class, it is the first instance where the hero does not seem to have sprung fully-developed from his mother’s womb; it is our first opportunity to watch the hero emerge. One of the most interesting aspects of the film is how its tone evolves to mirror the evolution of its lead character. When we first meet Alvin York (Gary Cooper, who won the Best Actor Oscar for the role), he is a drunk who rides his horse past the local church on Sunday and shoots his initials into tree trunks. The film in these early scenes is a cartoon — old men gather at the general store, gossiping and reading the paper, the local pastor (Walter Brennan, only 47 at the time) preaches against sin and wickedness while rain pounds the roof and thunder crashes outside, and the fleetingly mentioned Great War might as well be unfolding on the Moon as in Europe. | |
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Movies That Kick My Ass No. 6: Groundhog Day Granny ordered this movie on pay-per-view in 1993 because she was a fan of Bill Murray. I sat in the living room and watched it with her. She taped it, as she did many of the movies she watched on TV, and I liked the movie enough that occasionally when I’d come back to stay with Pap and Granny, I’d want to watch it again, enjoying it more every time. Eventually, she let me take it home with me. I still have that tape packed away somewhere, though I haven’t watched it since I bought the DVD. Until he starred in Lost in Translation a few years ago, Groundhog Day was the Bill Murray movie. You could certainly argue that Ghostbusters or Stripes or Caddyshack were better showcases for Murray’s skill as a comic; however it was Groundhog Day that first demonstrated his worth not just as a funnyman, but as an actor. He gets laughs both big and subtle playing disgruntled TV weatherman Phil Connors, but he also gets to portray a three-dimensional character who is affected and changed by his surroundings. Peter Venkman and Carl Spackler were funny characters; by the end of the film, Phil Connors feels more like a person. | |
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Movies That Kick My Ass No. 5: Superman II I guess the first time I saw this movie all the way through was when I was about six or seven years old, when ABC aired it on a Sunday night. They padded it out to three hours with commercials, and by adding a few scenes that had been cut from the original theatrical release. The one I’ve always remembered was a brief scene with Superman and Lois in the Fortress of Solitude. They stand side by side in a tight two-shot, Superman looking down nervously. “I’ve never done this before,” he tells Lois. “It’s all right. Just go slow.” “All right. Here goes.” Superman takes a deep breath and directs his heat vision downward. We pull back slowly to reveal a soufflé being cooked by the red beams from Superman’s eyes. Lois watches tensely for a few seconds, then waves him off as the soufflé starts to rise. She picks it up. “Perfect,” she says. “You should never over-cook a soufflé.” | |
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Movies That Kick My Ass No. 4: Miracle on 34th Street As a child I only knew of two classic Christmas movies. Both were beloved old films, both were spoken of by my parents with dreamy nostalgia, both were black and white and shown on TV at all hours of the day leading up to December 25. I decided I had to pick one to be my favorite Christmas movie. One was my father’s favorite, It’s a Wonderful Life. I thought that one was boring and sappy, so I picked the other one – Miracle on 34th Street. It was an arbitrary choice, it had nothing to do with which was the better film. I was seven or eight years old and I wouldn’t have known a good film from Superman IV: The Quest For Peace. But Miracle on 34th Street became my unchallenged favorite, the Heavyweight Champion Christmas movie. As I got older and saw more films, started to develop my own taste for what I liked and didn’t like, I still watched it every year. The black and white movie about the old man who thinks he’s Santa looked even better as a grown-up than it had when I was a kid. It’s my favorite Christmas film still. | |
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Movies That Kick My Ass No. 3: Annie Hall They tell me, “Don’t write about yourself.” Good advice, which I almost never follow. I’ve written enough stories with myself or a slightly fictionalized surrogate as the protagonist to start my own book store – I’d give it some nauseatingly hip minimalist name like “Self.” Not merely obscure losers like myself, but many great artists have also wantonly ignored that admonition. Your James Joyces and your J.D. Salingers. There’s a thin line between self-examination and self-importance. What decides whether an artist crosses that line is the presence genius. That’s why Woody Allen is one of the great American filmmakers of the last 50 years, and Kevin Smith is an occasionally interesting mediocrity. If you’re a genius, like Woody Allen (in 1977, at least), you write and direct Annie Hall; if you’re just a pretentious egotist, you write something not too far removed from The Tek Jansen Adventures. | |
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Movies That Kick My Ass No. 2: Horror of Dracula You can keep your Gary Oldmans, your Frank Langellas, your Jack Palances, your John Carradines, your Udo Kiers, your Charles Macaulays and your Bela Lugosises – I’ll take Christopher Lee, thank you very much. Those other guys are all fine actors (okay, not Lugosi, fuck Lugosi, but definitely the rest of them), but none had that sinister something Lee conjured from a black cape and a set of acrylic teeth. I know he has since starred in two of the abominable Star Wars prequels, and I know he was all over all three of those fucking Lord of the Rings movies – the last of which pulled off the impressive feat of fucking Clint Eastwood and Sofia Coppola and Peter Weir out of Oscars – but I forgive him. After Horror of Dracula, I’d forgive ol’ Christopher Lee just about anything. This isn’t the best Dracula film ever made (that distinction belongs both to F.W. Murnau’s original 1922 Nosferatu and to Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake of said classic), but it is the most thrilling, the most tightly scripted, the one which introduces us not only to Lee’s legendary Dracula, but also to Peter Cushing’s matchless Dr. Van Helsing. Though the two are onscreen together only very briefly, the battle between Dracula and Van Helsing is the central conflict of the film, a conflict that Hammer Studios unfortunately then proceeded to ignore in its subsequent Dracula sequels until 1972’s Dracula A.D. 1972, which brought both characters into contemporary London, and was really rather shitty. | |
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