I haven't posted at this blog in nine years-- am today because I'm closer to perfecting the technique of multidimensional fiction-- which I've been calling, in its latest iteration, hyper-pop.
The latest is this e-book novella, The Loud Boys, now available at Amazon's Kindle, at Kobo, and soon at other outlets-- with a print version coming. Check it out!
With Clint Eastwood’s film “American Sniper” receiving a flurry of attention, both bad and good, it might be time to examine his most famous Western movie, “Unforgiven,” made in 1992.
How good is it?
The American Film Institute ranks it #68 on its list of Top 100 Movies.
Yet I can think of at least one Western movie with similar themes that’s better than it. Namely, Marlon Brando’s 1961 flick “One-Eyed Jacks.”
“One-Eyed Jacks” is a better movie than at least half of those listed on the AFI list. As a work of art it’s better than all but a handful of them. Even that statement is modest. Is “One-Eyed Jacks” as deep in its subtexts and undercurrents as Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo”? Yes.
“One-Eyed Jacks” is a better film than “Unforgiven” on many levels, in many aspects. I’ll discuss here only one of them.
“One-Eyed Jacks” contains a scene when Sheriff Dad Longworth, played by Karl Malden, brutally whips Marlon Brando’s Rio in the center of town, with the community looking on. The sudden violence from the lawman comes as a surprise.
“Unforgiven” mimics this scene in two of its own. First, when Gene Hackman’s Sheriff beats up gunfighter English Bob, played by Richard Harris. The presentation is similar—a host of rifles and shotguns tell the gunman he has no chance. Hackman exhibits the power of authority over the cocky gunslinger.
Later in the movie, Hackman beats up protagonist Clint Eastwood, another aging gunfighter, in similar fashion, which sets up the film’s violent conclusion.
The scene in “One-Eyed Jacks” is superior, because it brings together several of the subtexts and themes that have been floating beneath the narrative. For the Malden character, his action is not simply a demonstration of authority. The beating is personal. It’s an explosion of tension which has been building between the two men from the film’s beginning.
There’s the self-hatred Malden feels for having betrayed his friend—hate which is projected onto Brando. There may be a deeper subtext, given that Brando was in effect his protege, having started riding with Malden from a young age. As the dialogue states, from when Brando’s character was little more than a kid. Is something psychosexual going on? It’s possible.
There’s the father-son dynamic, as expressed even in the characters’ names-- “Dad” and “Kid.” Adding to this is the fact that Rio has entered Dad’s stepdaughter, Louisa—transcendentally played by Mexican actress Pina Pellicer—and Dad knows or at least suspects this.
The beatings in “Unforgiven,” however powerful, contain none of this, and so carry less discomforting force. The greatest art will work its themes and meanings through every part of the narrative. “One-Eyed Jacks,” a true American movie masterpiece, accomplishes this.
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For more discussion of these two movies and other great Western films, pick up my ebook, ABOUT WESTERN MOVIES, available through Nook Books and Kindle.
Viewed carefully, the remastered 1964 Beatles movie, "A Hard Day's Night," reveals how an obscure Liverpool rock group was able to initiate massive cultural change.
The first thing Beatles' manager Brian Epstein did right with the film project was to not settle for the generic Elvis-movie route. Selected as director was the most cutting-edge talent to be found, Richard Lester. As a result, the editing was revolutionary, with unsurpassed style.
Every aspect of the film fits with the image Epstein wanted to present. From a business standpoint, perfect branding.
Note the pop art poster images of the Beatles behind the band as they play on stage. Note the witty interview excerpts. Note how even the George Harrison excursion into a fashion magazine office has a purpose. It says, subliminally, "These four guys are the height of fashion. They're the new arbiters of taste."
What director Lester did above all was keep the four young men in motion. Dynamic, not static. From the famous first chord of the title song, the Beatles are seen running and tumbling across the landscape. Their movement matches the hyperfast (for the time) editing.
All aspects of the presentation worked in harmony. That the young musicians could crank out catchy pop tunes on demand was the foundation of their success-- but without the look and style, their sense of newness, they'd have gone nowhere.
These are lessons which can be applied to a stagnant literary scene.
A new literary project I’m soon to be involved in is looking for writers. Talented writers. Exciting writers. Writers who have verve and personality in themselves and in their art. Writers who are ambitious to make noise, and writers who are eager to change the culture. Are any such writers out there? Let us know at:
THE CINEMA THEATER EXPERIENCE
WHY is the 55 year-old movie “Ben-Hur” with its leisurely pace and retro technology a vastly more satisfying cinematic experience than the state-of-the-art “Captain America” movie?
“Captain America: Winter Soldier” is forgotten the moment you leave the theater, while the images and music of “Ben-Hur” seen on a movie screen echo inside your head for weeks.
There are similarities between them. Both films present the theme of “order versus chaos”—as timely a theme as any now going, given that we’re on the brink of becoming a totalitarian society. The difference is that in “Captain America,” the Imperial Romans are everywhere, playing both good guys and bad guys. America—Washington D.C. specifically—is the New Rome, seat of the kind of power and empire which in “Ben-Hur” Messala lavishly praises. (Long-shot special-effect views of both Imperial towns show surprising similarities.)
Pontius Pilate tells Judah Ben-Hur not to judge the empire based on his experience with Messala, an overeager enthusiast—and anyway there’s no other choice. “The grown man knows the world he lives in, and for now, the world is Rome.”
This is also the message of “Captain America.” Despite rogue elements in the nation’s security apparatus, there’s no other choice but to rely on Shield’s superheroes and their agencies to protect the country. As Scarlett Johannsen’s Black Widow tells Congress at the end, “You need us.”
“Captain America” pays lip service to opposing totalitarianism, but its strategy is the same as the plan of the bad guys: Create a sense of chaos in order to justify the imposition of order. Which is exactly what “Captain America” and movies like it are doing. The difference between “bad guy” Robert Redford and “good guy” Samuel L. Jackson/Nick Fury is one of degree. Fury wants to take away only some of your freedoms.
“Captain America” is virtually the same movie as the recent “Iron Man III.” The same generic, monotonous techno-style musical score. Many of the same set pieces. There’s a freighter to be stormed; a corrupt politician inside D.C. betraying the country; plenty of aerial combat with amorphous high-tech planes; a plunge by the hero into an ocean; confusions about characters or even exactly what’s happening on screen. The plot complexities are given quickly and never fully explained. We know there’s a countdown of some sort; something vague will happen if something isn’t stopped; predictably it is stopped, though the heroes seem to have been or should’ve been killed many times over. Unlike the Roman Messala, they’re not vulnerable creatures. They never face the real consequences of their actions—as Messala in “Ben-Hur” so graphically faces them.
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Unlike “Captain America,” “Ben-Hur” has only three set pieces, all well prepared for. (The A.D.D. crowd would argue, too well prepared for.)
ONE.) The Roman sea battle with pirates. The special effects are dated, but appear no more fake than today’s CGI.
TWO.) The chariot race. All the overused fast crashes and speeding vehicles in today’s generic action movies don’t equal this sequence.
THREE.) The crucifixion/miracle sequence, the real climax of “Ben-Hur.” Its sound, music, and editing, combined with the story’s emotional climax, make it one of a kind. The emotion of family combined with spirituality make the effect overpowering.
About the movie Ben-Hur (1959), which I saw last week in a movie theater.
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Could a film that won eleven Academy Awards be considered underrated?
Yes, if in the years since its release it’s been consistently disrespected and downgraded by film critics.
(For instance, the American Film Institute rates it #100 of its top 100 American movies. In 2012, the Sight and Sound poll of film critics conducted by the British Film Institute ranked it #588 on their list. Only two critics voted for it. One of them, curiously, was Camille Paglia.)
When objectively examined, Ben-Hur belongs in the TEN Best list of American films. The problem is that from the beginning, the closed-mindedness of many important film critics toward religious themes prevented them from understanding what Ben-Hur is about. They failed to comprehend why it’s an artistic triumph, and why it’s important.
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First, the superlatives.
Ben-Hur has a very literate script. The dialogue is resonant and tight (except for a couple missteps toward the end). It concisely expresses the story’s theme of Community against Empire; Judea versus Rome. This is noteworthy in the words of the Roman characters played by Stephen Boyd, Jack Hawkins, and Frank Thring; advocates if not fanatics for their Imperial cause. They’re in no way stereotypes. The script was the product of intelligent writers Christopher Fry, Karl Tunberg, and Gore Vidal. The words show a thorough knowledge of life, society, and the world. The competing views presented are well balanced.
Ben-Hur is a spectacular, awe-inspiring viewing experience.
The movie is masterfully directed by William Wyler operating at the top of his form. Note the perfect compositions from the beginning, with the manger scene, or the line of goats viewing the intrusion of Messala and his Roman legions into their peaceful world.
Or note the variety of camera angles. Early, when he betrays his friend, Messala is viewed from above, which gives him the appearance of a toy soldier isolating himself from the world. At the finish of the chariot race, Messala is viewed at ground level, emphasizing how he’s been knocked down, his deeds come full circle.
Or, the framing device of the cave during the final storm; and a quick shot of Jesus on the cross, the reflection of the cross in a puddle; the montage comparison of Jesus’ hand with the hand of one of the women. The storm-and-miracle sequence shows great artistry. It’s great cinema.
Ben-Hur contains what remains, especially when viewed on a big screen, the most exciting action sequence in film, without a single CGI effect, and with stars Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd doing most of their own stunt work.
Ben-Hur contains the best galley-slave montage sequence ever, for whatever that’s worth.
The musical score by Miklos Rozsa, of prime importance for the overall effect—which is operatic—may be the best film score ever composed.
Above all, Ben-Hur, by the time it concludes after nearly four hours with intermission included, is an cathartic artistic experience, of a kind seldom equaled. Director William Wyler specialized in conveying the emotion of families (see “Best Years of Our Lives”). He was the perfect choice to direct this film.
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How have film critics for fifty years been consistently wrong?
THE INTELLECTUALS
The three most influential film critics of the day, Dwight MacDonald, Andrew Sarris, and Pauline Kael, hated Ben-Hur. They hated everything about it. You’d think they’d at least have enjoyed portions of it. The cinematography or music. The solid and subtle acting of Boyd, Hawkins, and Thring articulating the more “adult” words in the film. At least, certainly, the chariot race. Merely watching the competing horses racing in a perfect line, four white horses alongside four black ones, is a picture both thrilling and beautiful.
That these esteemed critics hated all of the movie (Sarris called it “unendurable”) says more about themselves than the film.
From the start, Ben-Hur is nakedly religious. The cynicism of the critics couldn’t accept this. One sees them viewing the perfectly composed manger scene with utter scorn.
A second problem is that the three critics were consciously intellectual. This was their identity—experiencing the world and the things of the world through the trained analytical mind.
But art at its best is about more then the intellect. It reaches into the individual’s heart. It provokes the soul.
The three critics had to have hearts of stone not to be moved by the last thirty minutes of the movie. How do we explain it? They had to have already walled themselves off from every part of the movie experience of Ben-Hur.
That they did, ironically, caused them to miss as well the intellectual elements of the story, which are there, layered within the images, music, and drama.
THEMES
Several story threads take place at once.
First is the overall “Tale of the Christ,” providing the film’s framework, from Jesus’ birth to death.
Fitting within this framework is the story of Judah Ben-Hur; his struggle to make himself and his family whole.
Within both threads—integral parts of them—is the larger theme of Empire versus Community; Rome against Judea.
The movie has a complex yet unified structure, which ranges in viewpoint from the most personal (family) to the broadest (the interplay of social and historical forces).
THE CHARACTER
It’s impossible to imagine anyone other than Charlton Heston in the lead role. Not because of his performance. Heston is at times acted off the screen, by friend and foe—which is the point. Heston is perfect for the part because he’s square, good, honest, upright—attributes integral to the character of Ben-Hur, and which the actor embodies.
From start to finish Judah Ben-Hur is a strong but passive presence in the movie. He’s there to be acted upon. His soul is the prize to be won by various competing forces. Male or female. Pagan or monotheistic. Sybaritic or domestic.
Messala wants to win his friend over to his own Imperial fanaticism. He promises that his friend will rise with him. Ben-Hur is too stolid and simple, or virtuous, to buy into the plan.
Quintus Arrius (Jack Hawkins) likewise sees Ben-Hur’s strengths and engages in his own tug-of-war with him. Circumstances help him win Ben-Hur over, briefly, to Rome. Despite pagan allures, greater are the other forces tugging at the Judean prince.
Ben-Hur must be persuaded by an Arab sheik to seek his revenge on Messala via the chariot race. “There is no law in the arena.” Even in the race itself, Messala is the one attacking the other and not the reverse, though Ben-Hur is the one ostensibly seeking revenge. His very presence causes resentment. (Stephen Boyd’s performance as Messala is near perfect.)
Charlton Heston has a strong enough film presence to endure plot-and-performance fireworks from all sides, from actors, actions, and miracles, yet by presence alone carry the film. A lesser actor would’ve been obliterated.
The final tug on Judah Ben-Hur comes from three women: his mother, sister, and would-be wife. Only via the new pacifist creed of Jesus, and accompanying miracle, is the character able to put aside both Rome and revenge. The women triumph.
VIOLENCE
Critic Dwight MacDonald at the time found Ben-Hur to be overly bloody and violent. How times have changed! Today it appears subtle and tame—especially when compared with the nonstop sadism of films like Passion of the Christ, whose scenes of torture obscure what Jesus was about.
Ben-Hur, on the other hand, shows the barbarity of the arena to show the barbarism of Rome. It’s a necessary part of the message, one kept in balance by the rest of the film. The violence is used as contrast to the pacifist message of Jesus. Jesus is an escape for Judah from the violence and tragedy of the world—the message an escape as well for the audience.
Hundreds of movies have been made since 1959 far more violent and bloody than Ben-Hur; most if not all of them lacking any balance to, or escape from, the carnage.
FAMILY VALUES?
As Balthazar urges him to, at the end of the story Judah Ben-Hur chooses life over death. Domesticity and the nuclear family—and religion—win out. Roman power and sensuality have been presented as inevitable temptation, but the wrong choice. The movie’s theme is politically liberal but socially conservative. One can see how atheistic film critics disliked the choice given them by the film. They saw or feared themselves placed on the wrong side of the equation, and reacted by blocking the dilemma (and the artwork presenting the dilemma) entirely from their heads.
The movie continues to be relevant. The dilemma, the choice, remains an impossible one for most of today’s film critics. Which means, that though it’s an intelligent film, an overpowering sensory experience, and a moving work of art, Ben-Hur will continue to be egregiously undervalued by the intellectual community, if not by the broader public.
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(COMING UP: A comparison between BEN-HUR and the current movie, CAPTAIN AMERICA, WINTER SOLDIER. I’m tentatively titling the piece, “New Rome and Old.”)
An oft-asked question is which famous or historical persons you’d like to have dinner with, if you could choose anyone. Most asked the question will answer with the names of pop stars or sports figures.
As for me, I would choose first two guys who were both intelligent and gregarious. Both were known, in fact, for sitting at tables, in ale houses or the like, with all kinds of people, high and low; reputable and disreputable. They also, in their own way, had a sense of humor.
I’m speaking of Jesus of Nazareth, and England’s Shakespeare. Both would be guaranteed to offer high levels of conversation and insight.
I’d also want to fill out the evening with a couple ladies. My first choices in that department would be two women known for their allure and charisma. Legendary allure. I’d be curious to know what they were like. Odds are they’d be more petite than women are now, possibly not quite as buff, but their intelligence would be sparkling, their eyes and smiles, fascinating.
Who else but Helen of Troy and Egypt’s Cleopatra?
A good time would be had by all.
What would be your choices?
THERE’S no need to praise the movie’s technical quality. This aspect of the film is amazing. As good as advertised. What most struck me about Gravity was its solipsistic viewpoint.
The main character, Sandra Bullock, exists in a kind of cocoon. Not just within her spacesuit, and the various spaceships, but also within her mind. It’s as if any moment she’s about to drift away into space, to be alone forever—not physically but psychologically.
This, more than the impressive special effects, explains the movie’s appeal. The audience identifies with the character. Sandra Bullock has an everyman quality about her that aids this identification.
It’s a mark of where we are as a civilization that the movie is so focused on the self. Previous rescue-in-space movies like Marooned and Apollo 13 were depictions of cooperative teams. The frantic struggle of the hive to rescue a few of their own.
In Gravity this takes place off-stage. “Houston” is never seen. One member of the mission, “Sharif”—thrown in for obvious p.c. purposes—isn’t seen up close until he’s dead. We know, in fact, as soon as he’s mentioned, that his mission in the movie is to be quickly destroyed.
The other crew member, George Clooney, is a voice and a smile. His purpose is to be ethereal. An intermittent intrusion into the solipsistic Sandra Bullock viewpoint.
The movie shows where our civilization is now—at least among the intellectual classes. It’s not a healthy place. The chief intellectual, Bullock, demonstrates a bare willingness to survive. That she eventually gains that will is the movie. Otherwise she’s detached, grieving at the inescapable pain and injustice of life—which for previous generations was a given, but which for her has become an unrecoverable-from surprise.
Interesting that the three nations whose technology is depicted—the U.S., Russia, and China; the first two definitely—are suffering from drastic demographic decline. A disbelief in themselves. A bare willingness to keep going. Instead: solipsism. Escape into technology or pain-numbing prescription medication. Or vodka!
Space, in the movie, is frightening. At the very moment our advanced populations could be plunging into space, to explore it and populate it, and advance the species (there are no aliens, folks; we’re all there is)—propelled by ruthless, fearless adventurers—there’s seen instead a desperate rush back to the safety of the womb. To gravity.
THOUGHTS ON 3-D VERSION OF 1939 FILM CLASSIC
I’d seen the 1939 classic movie “The Wizard Of Oz” many times, but in a sense I’d never really before seen it. I hadn’t seen it before on an actual movie screen. I especially had never seen it in Imax 3-D, which makes the film more amazing.
The added trick or dimension to the movie enhances its magic; its dream qualities. A gimmick, sure, but in this instance a gimmick which supplements the nature of the film, which is not fantasy so much as pure dream.
The 3-D is most impressive when the swept-away house lands—right before the switch from sepia-toned Kansas to Technicolor and Oz. This is the culmination of a very intense sequence filled with a tornado, tumult and noise. Then suddenly, all is silence. Quite a pause before Dorothy opens the door onto a new world. Seeing this scene on a large Imax screen emphasizes its effectiveness. Needless to say, the movie is masterfully made.
I noted the 3-D again most during the scenes with the Wicked Witch of the West. Margaret Hamilton’s terrific performance and green make-up become more striking, as the witch seems to stand apart from the rest of the scenery—if not jump out at us. Her over-the-top performance enhances the 3-D technical wizardry.
It’s a children’s movie, without question, but with impact on the rest of us, because most of us have watched it as children. I was struck throughout by how excellent the production is, everything about it—then wondered if my opinion was because of the cultural resonance the movie holds. Much of the movie, if not all of it, is part of the language of common culture—ruby slippers, yellow brick road, Kansas quips, the man behind the curtain, and not least the steadfast dog Toto, the most famous movie dog of them all. Watching the film again for me was an emotional experience.
“The Wizard of Oz” is a simple film. The greatest art is often the most simple. Basic, primal, striking chords not of the intellect, but something deeper within us. “Wizard of Oz” does this as well as any movie ever. It’s a dream, and as a dream plunges deep into the subconscious, so that we ask ourselves afterward what’s really going on.
MEANING IN “THE WIZARD OF OZ”
“The Wizard of Oz is a movie about fears and anxieties. They’re the anxieties of childhood, but remain with us on some level for all of our lives. The anxiety of losing a loved one—or even a dog. The fear of abandonment and death. The perception of impersonal forces outside our control, such as “the law” or the power of wealth, as hinted at near the beginning when Miss Gulch tries to take Toto away. (“Run, Toto. Run!”) The anxieties are stepped up in the Oz sequences.
There’s the anxiety of change. The notion of leaving the farm for the big city—metaphor for the excitement and fear of adulthood, of going out into the world to encounter new friends and adventures. There’s evident also, as part of this, American fears. Of being corrupted, becoming no longer so simple. Oz could be a metaphor for New York City but maybe also for Europe—seat at the time the movie was made of sophistication, civilization, and culture. The Munchkins are dressed like good European burghers. The Oz residents sound European. The movie mocks the pretensions of civilization, from decrees and death certificates (“most sincerely dead”) to war medals and university diplomas. That near the end the Wizard says “E Pluribus Unum” twice within a short time span shows his world—he’s a thoroughly and uniquely American character—stumbling toward an identity apart from yet part of the larger, more sophisticated world. In that sense, “Kansas” really means “America.” Oz is something foreign; more powerful but also more fearsome and corrupt.
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There are other, deeper fears happening in the film, through the character of Dorothy, who we strongly identify with, in part because of the portrayal of Dorothy by Judy Garland, whose performance isn’t just terrific, it’s definitive. In the movie, unlike the book, Dorothy is clearly an adolescent, leaving childhood behind her. Anxieties about the changes taking place within her permeate the Oz dream sequence. The symbolism of the ruby slippers then becomes palpable. No doubt the producers, when making the slippers red instead of silver, did this because red would look better in Technicolor. Yet much of the film seems to be crafted from their subconscious—from everyone’s subconscious—as if something deep within them, within all of us, was the true creator of the artwork.
Red stands for puberty and sexuality. It’s what Dorothy and the witch fight over. The tension between Dorothy and the witch/Miss Gulch is sexual. Miss Gulch’s hostility toward Dorothy is animated by sexual jealousy. Dorothy is becoming an attractive, healthy young woman—bursting with health, goodness, and energy; the qualities Miss Gulch, without knowing why, detests. This is pseudo-psychology, I know, but it’s also obvious. Amazingly enough, the witch, in her green make-up, has an evil, gothic appeal—picked up by the creator and fans of the book/musical “Wicked,” for instance. Margaret Hamilton must have found the costume liberating. What makes the character impressive and scary is that the pretences of civilization—which a Miss Gulch must adhere to—are gone. We see full-bore the inner person, which an adolescent dream would bring out.
The characters of the three friends take on larger meaning from this viewpoint. I was struck, while watching them, that the movie gives us how women view men. As bumbling, incomplete, but ultimately necessary (especially in the battle with her primal rival!) and liable, with some prodding, to perform great heroics, as the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion demonstrate in their rescue of Dorothy.
In her dream Dorothy is assessing the available possible suitors—alas, confined to the three farmhands! Her dream sees each one as flawed and incomplete—as the three low-rent farm hands, poor straggling victims of the depression, indubitably are. Yet she also sees their strengths, and at least in her dream, seems to make a tentative choice between them.
The final credits give the Kansas names of the performers, stressing that Kansas is the real world. The rest, the glorious Technicolor paradise/nightmare, was dream only. Ray Bolger, for example, is listed as Hunk, and not the Scarecrow. There’s one exception to this in the cast list. Can you recall who that is? It’s key to unlocking the rest of the mystery of the film story.
All the other major characters in the Oz story have analogs back in Kansas. The Wizard is Professor Marvel. The two witches: Miss Gulch. The Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion are the farm hands. Toto is Toto. But what about Glinda the Good Witch? That mysterious force which Dorothy mentions IN THE DREAM as watching over her? What’s her analog?
Glinda could only be Dorothy Gale’s mother—the memory of her mother, all-good and benevolently beautiful, as Dorothy is becoming beautiful, like her. That the absent mother is present throughout the dream story is what gives the movie, for all of us, the strongest resonance. We know this, subconsciously. We’ve always known who Glinda is in the film (the books are something other), which is the real reason why people love the movie so much.
BEST ENSEMBLE MOVIES
The other night I watched for the second time the superb 1959 Otto Preminger film, Anatomy of a Murder. I saw more in it than caught my eye the first go-round.
For one, I was struck by the way the attorney characters, and the society they represent, attempt to impose a semblance of order upon chaotic events and people.
At the beginning of the movie, the life of lead character James Stewart, a former district attorney in Michigan;s Upper Peninsula, is one of listless chaos. Fishing and drinking. This is manifested by a refrigerator overflowing with freshly caught fish. Stewart is becoming like his alcoholic friend Arthur O’Connell. That Stewart is given the opportunity to represent the defendant in a murder trial becomes a way for him to impose order upon his life.
We soon see that the defendant and his wife, Ben Gazzara and Lee Remick respectively, are embodiments of chaos. Neither properly fits the narrative which Stewart will need to create in the courtroom in order to win the trial.
This is as realistic a movie about the justice system as has ever been made. Shadings and uncertainties are everyplace. The verdict is acceptable because the formalities have been maintained. Stewart himself only appears to be an island of integrity—he uses his homespun facade to get what he wants. The integrity in the process comes from the process itself; giving justice its proper tribute in the form of an imperfect trial. Trials are often imperfect. Their deeper purpose isn’t to achieve justice so much as maintain order. This, at least, is the message of the film.
This is an ensemble movie, depending on the effectiveness of its array of characters to be effective. The acting is perfection itself—keeping us unable to pull away from what at its core is a simple story. Once the players take the stage we’re absorbed in them. The simple framework of the trial creates countless complexities. Black-and-white photography adds to the movie’s documentary feel.
The back-and-forth trial fireworks between James Stewart and prosecutor George C. Scott dominate the surface proceedings. Both men are terrific. Both do more with their roles than is written. Yet the greater acting honors go to the many-layered couple, Gazzara and Remick, and their love-hate relationship.
Lee Remick portrays white-trash sexuality with naked reality. Gazzara nails his character’s surliness, shrewdness, anger, and rough integrity. They’re not likeable but they’re recognizable and understandable, pushing the envelope of their relationship in the same way Stewart pushes the acceptable bounds on lawyer machinations in order to achieve his end. His lawyer performs for the jury, as James Stewart performs for we the movie audience.
Stewart and O’Connell, with help from sarcastic secretary Eve Arden triumph not because they’ve won the trial—a questionable verdict—but because they’ve restored meaning and purpose to themselves. For them, nothing else matters.
Setting, atmosphere, performance, seriousness, theme—all as believable as if the events happened today.
(See my Blue Jasmine review here: http://www.americanpoplit.blogspot.com/2013/08/blue-jasmine-surface-and-depth.html)
How do we define great film acting?
There are three kinds of film acting.
A.) PERFORMING
Think Richard Burton in any film role. Theatrical, using the tools of performance: eyes; hands; voice. The ability to suddenly amplify the voice for dramatic effect. Cate Blanchett does this in Blue Jasmine.
In movies like The Ten Commandments and The King and I, Yul Brynner performs for us, striding and pronouncing. Meryl Streep in her every role performs for us. With Streep, playing a variety of roles, one is always aware she’s acting. A Willie Mays losing his cap and doing somersaults catching a baseball, as opposed to Joe DiMaggio gliding to the ball, making every catch look natural.
B.) BEING
This applies to actors who present the same persona over and over. They merely add touches to the eternal character. Archibald Leach spent a lifetime creating the character “Cary Grant.”
Western movie stars like Gary Cooper, John Wayne, and Clint Eastwood fit this category. They’re effective not for their acting, but for who they are. In his mature years John Wayne could simply stand and emit a few lines in his trademark drawl and dominate everything around him, from big-name co-stars to the vast Western landscape itself. The effectiveness of the playing isn’t overt. It’s subliminal. We react on an instinctive level. Cinema is a unique art, because of the closeness of the camera, in allowing this.
See the 1954 Western Vera Cruz, in which A and B styles of acting co-exist. Burt Lancaster grins, laughs, leaps, twirling his revolver at every opportunity, the former circus performer unleashed on a movie screen. As his partner-in-larceny, Gary Cooper underplays. He stands still and carefully, oh so slowly moves a hand to caress a rifle, before firing it. Let the viewer judge which actor is most effective.
In Blue Jasmine, Alec Baldwin has attained the level of Be-ing. He’s playing: Alec Baldwin! A familiar role, onscreen and off, that he does very well.
The difference between Alec Baldwin and John Wayne is that Baldwin, while he’s become familiar, isn’t larger than life. Not a great, all-encompassing persona, yet one fit enough for supporting roles.
Or could it be that Cate Blanchett’s performance is so daunting that everyone around her shrinks in comparison?
C.) RESONATING
This is when a movie actor presents something deeper. When the performing allows us a look into the character’s soul, in so doing projecting emotion out of the screen into our own souls—striking resonant chords within us.
In my new ebook, About Western Movies, I write about the 1961 movie One-Eyed Jacks, in which both Karl Malden and Pina Pellicer achieve this. The director and star of the movie is Marlon Brando.
Brabndo performs, showing us several faces of his character, in the way Cate Blanchett does in Blue Jasmine. Brando pulls something greater out of his co-stars.
Pina Pellicer as his love interest is the human animal stripped naked. Embarrassment; shame; hurt; pain—everything is laid out for us. This is neither persona nor performance. She uses her eyes not to act, but as openings into herself. We jump into them.
Karl Malden as Brando’s rival does virtually the same thing. He amplifies his voice and uses his eyes, as Blanchett does, but the eyes don’t move. They become fixed, so that we the moviegoers have no choice but to see into them, to see into the character’s contradictions and conflicts.
Few film performers ever attain this level. Brando in On the Waterfront. Marilyn Monroe and James Dean perhaps in a couple of their movie roles. It happens when the actor blends performance with persona in such a way as to become larger than the film.
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(Pina Pellicer.)
One-Eyed Jacks was made in 1961. Curiously, that was a special year for film acting—even when one excludes the two award-winning flicks of the year, West Side Story and Judgment at Nuremburg. ESPECIALLY if one excludes them.
As I’ve mentioned, One-Eyed Jacks includes terrific ensemble acting. So does the 1961 adventure classic, Guns of Navarone, in which stars Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn, and David Niven give us a blend of persona and performance.
Then there’s The Hustler, starring Paul Newman in his best ever role as pool shark Eddie Felsen. Like a Cate Blanchett now, Newman’s at his best. He gives a top-notch dramatic performance full of gestures and rage, working the eyes, voice, and body to fullest extent.
Piper Laurie and George C. Scott emote mightily to keep up with him. The overall effect is dazzling.
As memorable as any of them is Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats. He becomes the character. Or makes the character him. Defines him. Makes Fats one of the most distinctive characters in the history of film. More than any of them, he’s a joy to watch. We can’t wait until he’s back on screen. His sadness at Eddie’s departure—his melancholy farewell—reflects the audience’s sadness that the game and the movie are over.
A similar acting battle takes place in The Misfits. Clark Gable is the tragic, Jasmine-like character at the center of the movie; growling, smirking, staggering, collapsing as a role, an actor, a persona in front of us. The part is fascinating because Gable is destroying his career-long creation, “Clark Gable.” By movie’s end, in his desperate, futile, mad fight with the mustang stallion, we’re at the stripped-down man. Fitting that this was Gable’s final role—that he died upon the completion of the movie.
As poignant, in a good-bad way, as Gable’s fight to establish himself as an actor is to us, he’s nearly overshadowed by two of the most resonant actors ever, Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift, here doing quite a bit of resonating. Going places few if any actors have ever gone.
As I said, curious that a single year, 1961, would give us perhaps the greatest ensemble movies ever.
(With that, the best film of that year, IMO, is El Cid—which when viewed on a large movie screen is every bit as emotional and powerful as these others. In fact, more so.)
That Blue Jasmine isn’t quite up to the level of the very best ensemble films isn’t due to Cate Blanchett. Her performance is one of the best I’ve seen. It’s fully a performance, one that stays with you—which means that, acting tricks and all, maybe it does resonate to us, just a tad, after all.
PART I OF A MOVIE REVIEW
SURFACE
Woody Allen’s new film Blue Jasmine is everything claimed for it. Cate Blanchett’s performance, as an upper-class woman losing all, is superb. She dominates the screen every moment she’s on it. More, Blanchett is backed by an able supporting cast. Sally Hawkins as Jasmine’s sister; Alec Baldwin as Jasmine’s ex, could scarcely be better. When a friend told me Hawkins is British, at first I didn’t believe it, so well does she fit the part laid out for her.
The plot is a take-off on “Streetcar Named Desire.” An elegant woman, down on her luck, fallen from substance, moves in with a low-rent sister and her raucous environment. In this case the setting is San Francisco—a gorgeous city in which to fall apart. Director Allen cuts back and forth between present San Fran and Jasmine’s past in Manhattan and the Hamptons, presenting the background to Jasmine’s horrifying collapse.
Woody Allen is an ensemble director. Which means, of all movie elements, from plot to music to look, his films depend most on the performances of the actors inhabiting them. Allen hands his performers a forum in which to perform.
Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects, for example, is an ensemble movie. So is Blue Jasmine.
When the main character in such movies is weak, the movie is weak. Think Owen Wilson in Woody Allen’s underwhelming Midnight in Paris. Wilson’s vacuousness leaves a vacuum at the center of that film; a gaping hole which all the plot gimmicks in Allen’s narrow New York imagination can’t fill.
Happily, Cate Blanchett is not Owen Wilson. The lady can act! Blue Jasmine is a showcase for Blanchett’s startling talents. Best performance of the year? Too limiting a concept. Of the past five years? That she’ll receive the Oscar is a given. It might be the first unanimous vote.
In sum, this is the best Woody Allen film in years. Probably in decades. Allen has the rare ability, when he’s on his game, to make his films both funny and sad. I laughed throughout. The situations are so comical in a Shakespearean sense—portraying the pathos and surprising tragedy of life—that often there’s no choice but to laugh.
Blue Jasmine is a very good movie. The question remaining: How good is it?
DEPTH
Woody Allen doesn’t make “great” movies. They’re seldom large. They’re not epic in scope; in music, cinematography, or relevance. Allen’s choice of music in Blue Jasmine reveals his technique: antique jazz, strumming and singing, simple and quiet in tone to allow his cast full sway. The movie is theirs. No dominating Jerome Moross or John Williams score. No David Lean movie-canvas landscapes. Allen depends on human relationships to give his films force. They’re as much drama as cinema.
That said, Woody Allen is not without tools in his cinematic toolbox. Note his use of space in Blue Jasmine. I’m sure others have remarked on it. The spaces of upper-class scenes in the Hamptons; or in San Francisco scenes with Jasmine’s new boyfriend, visually show the vast caste differences of our American world. Scenes of large residences resting on larger oceans. I was struck by this—an effect truly cinematic, because the effect can be achieved only via the size of a movie screen in an actual movie theater.
The largeness of wealth makes the sister’s modest San Francisco apartment by contrast seem more constricted than it is.
Given that this is ultra-pricey San Francisco, the sister’s apartment is impossibly roomy for a grocery store clerk. For the movie to work, one can’t ask too many questions! (“Why didn’t he do a Google search?” Or, “How is Baldwin’s fall so swift?”)
The movie is filled with plot contrivances. It’s not about believability or plot. Allen’s knowledge of how most Americans live is limited. We accept this.
Woody Allen knows the upper classes. I was struck by the difference even between the rich scheming ex-husband (Alec Baldwin) and the rich new boyfriend (Peter Sarsgaard). New Money and Old—the uncertainty of fresh income building an impressive but shaky tower able to collapse in a minute with a phone call, versus the solidity of long-time hereditary standing and sheltered wealth. Large-income Baldwin is a transparent “Boo! Hiss!” villain; the fall guy within the movie and outside of it. For the audience. For us. His character is the politically-correct target of progressive ire—as never is the refined liberal “State Department” aristocrat Sarsgaard, who glides out of the story as easily as he glided into it. Untouched. For Jasmine and for us, he’s a fantasy and sad reality both.
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Blue Jasmine rises toward excellence based on its acting. While viewing the film, you think the acting couldn’t be better. Even Andrew Dice Clay in a key role. Maybe especially Andrew Dice Clay; spot-on perfect within the context of Woody Allen’s vision, as the entire cast is spot-on perfect, within the context of the fully realized vision.
Any limits to the movie aren’t with the movie, but the vision.
When you think back on the characters, you realize most of them are stereotypes. One-dimensional caricatures, which is how Andrew Dice Clay fits in so well. This is acceptable. It’s how the characters achieve their humor. They’re Shakespearean fools. Their purpose isn’t to stand out themselves, but to provide a setting for the jewel that is Cate Blanchett’s Jasmine. They’re props for her to play with and off of.
Of the supporting cast, Bobby Cannevale as the sister’s boyfriend Chili most stands out. The only one who goes over-the-top, ripping phones off walls and emoting comically for us. He’s a blatant cross between Stanley Kowalski and any Nicolas Cage role. Nothing original about the performance—likely not intended to be original. He’s there for comic relief, along with other grotesques, including a short friend of his (a young Joe Pesci) and an obnoxiously smarmy dentist.
Jasmine requires antagonists. In her present life, Cannevale’s low-rent Stanley Kowalski is it.
What of Jasmine herself? How great truly is Cate Blanchett’s performance? One for the ages?
Blanchett knows all the tricks. A beautiful voice. The ability to switch between calm elegance and troubled distress. It’s wonderful to watch—but it’s always performance. Much of its effectiveness comes from Blanchett simply mugging for the camera. Close-ups of Blanchett frowning, down-in-the-mouth, doing stage business with her eyes borrowed from Olivier’s Othello or his mad Mahdi in Khartoum. The acting is with the camera—performing for us—and Cate Blanchett does this as well as anyone ever has.
Cate Blanchett performs on a very high level. She needs to be judged against the highest standards, to see if she, and the movie, reach into filmdom’s pantheon.
That’s a question I’ll address in Part II of this review, “Cate Blanchett and the Business of Great Acting.” Stay tuned.
In my new ebook, ABOUT WESTERN MOVIES, I discuss the importance of the entrance of key characters, using the example of “Frank Miller” in High Noon. So much is said in the movie about the character, when he finally appears he’d better not disappoint.
What are some of the best all-time movie entrances? Here’s five:
1.) ORSON WELLES in The Third Man (1949).
In corrupt postwar Vienna, Harry Lime is presumed dead—until glimpsed in a shadowy doorway with a cat at his feet!
2.) EDWARD G. ROBINSON in Key Largo (1948).
Evil gangster Johnny Rocco first seen smoking a cigar while luxuriating in a bathtub behind a large fan! Characterization created with a single shot.
3.) JOAN CRAWFORD in Rain (1932).
Her hands, her feet—then La Crawford herself appears with garishly made-up face. Again, character created in an instant via the magic of film.
4.) CLARK GABLE in Gone With the Wind (1939).
As with Orson Welles, a grand way to enter a movie is with a Cheshire-cat grin on your face. Gable appears not from an alleyway, but at the bottom of a staircase.
5.) JOHN WAYNE in Stagecoach (1939).
I have to get a Western on the list. John Wayne blocking a road while twirling a rifle about made him a star.
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What have I missed? Are there other more recent movies where an important character makes a grand entrance? If so, let me know.
THE PINA PELLICER STORY
Mexican actress Pina Pellicer made one American movie, but it’s a great one: One-Eyed Jacks (1961). Marlon Brando directed and starred in this offbeat Western. Rumor has it he had an affair with Pellicer during the film’s making—which for her must not have ended easily.
Undeniable is that Pellicer gives one of the most sensitive and haunting performances ever seen on a movie screen. I compare it to the film appearances of James Dean. The character’s vulnerability is naked. Pellicer was not a classically beautiful actress, but her eyes, her soul, her very being are extremely beautiful.
Too sensitive for this world. Like James Dean, she died young. Pina Pellicer committed suicide in 1964, a few years after the release of the movie.
(For more discussion about One-Eyed Jacks, buy my ebook, ABOUT WESTERN MOVIES by King Wenclas, Kindle or Nook.)
RESPONSE TO MICHAEL AGRESTA
It’s heartening to see The Atlantic magazine asking the question of what killed the Western. See the article, “How the Western Was Lost,” by Michael Agresta:
Agresta asks the right questions. He notes the importance of the Western film genre to the identity of the American nation. But he provides the wrong answers.
“What Killed the Western Movie?” is the chief subject of my new ebook, ABOUT WESTERN MOVIES. I spend the entire 40,000-word narrative answering the question, directly and indirectly. I can only summarize two of the points here.
A.) The Western movie became a popular worldwide art form because it presented the West as it was: a romantic, beautiful place. Think Frederic Remington and Charles Russell.
In the 1960’s, dark revisionism began: a reflection of the disillusion of the postmodern world. From Spaghetti Westerns to “Lawman” and “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” the West was portrayed as a thoroughly unattractive place, romance stripped away. A landscape which eventually became filled with killing-machine sociopaths and little else. All in the name of an “authenticity” that was a sad and sadistic distortion of Western reality.
B.) The Western reflected the views of the U.S. intellectual class—their loss of faith in American ideals, and, subliminally, in themselves.
This stands out in Michael Agresta’s essay. He’s right. the Western movie can, and at times should, address America’s history. But not if it’s addressed through the prism of America’s supposed collective guilt. That prism is based on a narrow view of history, and on a shallow understanding of historical forces.
The history of civilizations is the clash of peoples and cultures. More vigorous peoples with belief in themselves have been moving into vacuums for thousands of years. Recall that Julius Caesar slaughtered entire Gallic tribes in the name of civilization. Or that half of Europe was conquered by vigorous Islam. As recently as 1683, Vienna, gateway to Europe—in the heart of Europe—was besieged by Turkish armies.
The creation of the American nation, including the settling of a sparsely populated West, was one of the great achievements of human history. Objectively, maybe the greatest achievement, seeing the civilization that resulted, of which Michael Agresta, as well as the big-bucks high-tech “Lone Ranger” movie producers, are thoroughly part. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about!
(To talk solely of Indian massacres is a distortion. The word “genocide” is at best an exaggeration. There were massacres on both sides. The recent Glenn Frankel book on “The Searchers” makes clear that the Comanches were a brutal, warrior-centered people. The genocidal scene in “The Lone Ranger” is a fiction.)
Western movies used to reflect the history of American achievement. They did it without the “strictly white, male” perspective Agresta talks about. Ironically, it was later Westerns—both the Spaghetti and revisionist varieties—which eliminated women and families from the Western genre.
In my ebook I spend an entire section on a single film, “Westward the Women” (1951). A movie which gives a tiny sense of the difficulties faced by the pioneers. It’s also the most pro-women movie ever made. I invite Michael Agresta, and everyone else, to watch the film (then read my remarks about it) to realize what the Western movie at its best was about.
Incidentally, faith in the American dream isn’t confined solely to “Republicans.” Two modern-day Democrat Presidents, FDR and JFK, had vigorous faith in American idealism and exceptionalism. The winning of World War II; the moon landings and journey into space: these followed a direct line of American accomplishment—of American belief in itself.
The failure of the Western genre also isn’t due to distorted media-elite misconceptions of nationality and race. Anyone who spends much time online clicking on YouTube videos knows that Hispanics, Japanese, French, et.al., are among the biggest fans of the genre.
The bizarre framing device of “The Lone Ranger,” Johnny Depp on a guilt trip—crucifying himself for our sins—showed from the get-go the unappealing confusion of the film’s producers. (“The Lone Ranger” also failed for other reasons. Like the 1969 big-budget dud “Mackenna’s Gold,” it tried to do too much. “Keep It Simple, Stupid!” Westerns don’t require a large budget.)
We’ve had fifty years of disbelief in America, of self-flagellation by intellectuals taught by a bankrupt educational system to hate their country, and, as I said, themselves. It’s a ticket to failure, culturally and nationally. No nation can survive without myths. The Western movie is America’s myth. To replace it with a more historically inaccurate and distorted Anti-Myth is nutty. It’s to commit cultural and national suicide.
America has always been an awesome brand. The brand attracted the peoples of the world—and continues to attract them. But the brand needs to be the genuine article—populist; democratic; beautiful; believing; confident: expressing American values of simplicity, honesty, character, integrity—and freedom.
The great Westerns, from John Ford’s “My Darling Clementine” to Sam Peckinpah’s “Ride the High Country,” did this. Viewing them isn’t a mere amusement or distraction. It’s not a guilt trip or a university history lesson. It’s restoration, of ourselves, our roots, our souls.
These matters I address in my ebook. ABOUT WESTERN MOVIES by King Wenclas. 99 cents. Nook or Kindle. Read it now.
