Revisit: The Hunger

An MGM film 1983

Directed by Tony Scott

Written by James Costigan, Ivan Davis & Michael Thomas

Based on the novel by Whitley Strieber

An ancient vampire seduces a famous gerontologist after her similarly ancient husband begins to fade away.



Tony Scott's studio debut has become somewhat of a cult classic since its release in 1983. The Hunger is a vampire flick cut from the Anne Rice tradition -- elegant, ageless, and refined. Much of the film focuses on the seductive powers of the female, played by the always beautiful Catherine Deneuve. Likewise, the main theme is the quest for immortality, and the consequences that come with it.

However, once you strip away the film's glamorous atmosphere, it falls rather flat. Tony Scott's films always seem to be in montage mode; he's a fan of cutting back and forth between planes of action while synchronizing voice-over to wring out double meaning, a trick I always found to be a bit obnoxious. It can be done well but here (and in another one of Scott's films, Spy Game) the cuts move so fast there's barely any time to process the visuals. It's rarely a good sign when a film starts out with a flurry of quick cuts and crazy images, and this one turned me off almost right away.

The performances aren't too great either. Say what you will about Miss Deneuve's looks, but her acting here is stoic, aloof, and disengaging. Likewise for Susan Sarandon, who looks great but is unconvincing as a doctor who specializes in aging research. Casting David Bowie, however, as Deneuve's rapidly aging husband was a very inspired choice. Bowie is by no means an extraordinary actor, but he plays the role straight and does a serviceable job. Marrying the fading vampire character with Bowie's androgynous persona, openly bisexual orientation, and frequently reinvented image adds a lot of intertextual depth that would not have been present otherwise.

If you like gothic vampire lore, you've probably already seen this flick. Otherwise I wouldn't recommend it.

The Western Heroes Dual Part III

Starring two of the genre’s biggest names – John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart – The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance strips the Western of its window dressing, providing a reflection on the motifs and common themes that only a director as experienced in the genre as John Ford could produce. However, perhaps most striking are its competing protagonists who, through their dual natures, become a commentary on the Western hero and on the power of mythmaking, the film’s central theme.

Liberty Valance makes its dual protagonist structure quite clear from the very beginning. Stewart’s character, an established politician named Ransom Stoddard, heads to the small town of Shinbone for a funeral. Acting as narrator, he recounts the story of the deceased – John Wayne as Tom Doniphan – through flashback. This structure, coupled with the billing of two top stars, immediately implies dual protagonists.

Doniphan, “the toughest man south of the Picketwire”, is pragmatic and bound to nothing. Like Shane, he represents the savage side of the West: he lives in a house well outside of town, is nomadic and authoritative, and, most importantly, believes in the power of a gun. Doniphan doesn’t see much use for the law books and school teaching that Stoddard brings to the town of Shinbone. Stewart’s character represents civilization in its most pure, democratic, idealized form. A young lawyer from the East headed west to strike it big, Stoddard’s knowledge of the law, ability to read and write, and sheer idealism prove to be quite useful. However, over the course of the film, Stoddard finds that he needs to adapt to Doniphan’s more savage ways to survive. In the end, he comes out on top, remembered forever as “the man who shot Liberty Valance.”



This myth is the central point of the film: while Stoddard is memorialized for ending Valance’s reign, it was Doniphan who actually did the deed. Liberty Valance pits these two characters in direct competition and uses this structure to comment upon the myth-making abilities of the West. The fact that Stoddard is remembered for Valance’s death, and not Doniphan, shows how the West as an open frontier was rife with possibility for a man to prove himself – and how rumors could easily become truths by way of the press. As Maxwell Scott, editor of a now civilized Shinbone Star says, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

Doniphan is forgotten by nearly everyone at the end of the film. Unlike Shane, his valiant efforts and self-sacrifice are not lauded or memorialized, but hidden, rejected by those who control the myth-making process for the sake of civil progress. However, Stoddard’s civility is not portrayed as cut-and-dry as that in Shane either. Stoddard lapses into savage ways, and finds his well-intended career built on a myth. It is in such a way that the themes of Liberty Valance differs from that of Shane; whereas one films finds honor in the Western Hero, the other exposes a bittersweet reality.

Check out The Western Heroes Dual Part I & Part II!

The Western Heroes Dual Part II

Directed by George Stevens and featuring Alan Ladd in the title role, Shane tells the story of a mysterious gunfighter who comes to the aid of an oppressed group of homesteaders. The film maintains much of the traditional iconography of the genre, from vast, sweeping landscapes to a sinister, gun-slinging villain. While consciously working within this set of images, Shane produces a vision of the West in which savage means are necessary for civil progress. The title implies that Shane, the almost miraculous gunfighter, is the main protagonist, but there are in fact two: Joe Starrett (Van Heflin), leader of the homesteaders, is equally important. These two protagonists are inexplicably linked, but embody certain opposing semantics of the West.



Shane is portrayed as a weary gunfighter, a wanderer with no place to hang his hat. He literally rides in from nowhere, his past a mystery never discussed. From the first shot of him riding on his horse, it is clear that Shane represents a dying breed of cowboy. Conversely, Joe Starrett is a family man who believes in the notion of private property and democratic organization. He represents civility, a new order of prosperity. Much of the narrative structure of the film relies on their relationship, their strengths and their weaknesses, to shape meaning.

Though wary of each other at first, the two are quickly presented as a team, working together to mutually improve quality of life. Joe hires Shane as an extra hand on the farm, providing him a temporary home, and the film shows how Shane’s cowboy qualities come in use. One scene boils it down into an easy metaphor: a tree stump too heavy for Joe to move by himself is lifted, with some strain, when he works with Shane. This scene could be interpreted as a summation of the movie; Joe can’t seem to shake the ranchers that want him off the land, but together with Shane, the two manage to put up a fight.



The oppression from the ranchers is much greater than that of a stump, however, and develops a much more complex relationship between the two protagonists. Both Shane and Starrett can fight physically – an extended fight sequence in the saloon exhibits this fact – but Shane’s quick-shot skills are necessary in keeping the film’s ultimate villain, a gun-for-hire named Jack Wilson (Jack Palance), at bay. Conversely, Shane’s presence irks some of the homesteaders, some of which feel they “don’t need no bodyguard” while others simply want to pack up and quit. Starrett’s unending optimism and oratory skills, coupled with his American ideals of individualized prosperity, manage to keep the homesteaders aligned even in the darkest of times, something Shane could not do. In turn, Shane and Starrett bridge together traits from both the savage and civil West that are necessary in accomplishing the plots ultimate goal – winning the land for the homesteaders.

However the narrative also pits the two characters in competition with one another, especially in relation to the Starrett family. Joe’s young son is constantly sizing his father up in comparison to Shane. He asks Joe many questions – “Could you shoot better than Shane? Could you whip him?” – that elaborate upon why Shane’s presence is so necessary for the homesteaders. Likewise, Joe’s wife, precautious but intrigued by the gunfighter, develops a flirting infatuation for Shane, which Starrett comes to recognize towards the end, admitting that if something were to happen to him, he’d at least know she’d be “taken care of and in good hands”.



This competition elaborates upon why the savage Westerner was so crucial, and helps glorify his nature, but the film remains conscious that he is a dying breed. Shane’s gun-toting way of life, though helpful in the circumstances, cannot work in the civil setting. He is conscious of this: “There's no living with a killing. There's no goin' back from one,” he says. “Right or wrong, it's a brand... a brand sticks. There's no goin' back... And there aren't any more guns in the valley.” The film ends with Shane riding back into the wilderness, but the shouts from Starrett’s son are a reminder that he is one cowboy that will not be forgotten.

Such is not the case for The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance...

Check out Part I
The Western Heroes Dual Part III coming soon!

The Western Heroes Dual, Part I

As a film genre deeply rooted in the transposition of civilized and savage elements, the Western inherently allows for the exploration and establishment of specific, individualized moral codes. In turn, the Western offers a variety of protagonist archetypes: the outstandingly upright Ladds, the forthright and masculine Waynes, the morally ambiguous Eastwoods, the slightly on edge Stewarts. These Western Heroes may have spurs and a sense of ruggedness in common, but it’s their distinct moral personalities that made them legends. Perhaps this is why it is most interesting when a film places two protagonist types in a dual narrative structure. Aside from adding layers of tension to melodrama, dual protagonists allow for a tiered representation of the civilizing process; a kaleidoscope that refracts concepts of a blossoming America.



However that is not to say all Westerns with dual protagonist structures reach the same conclusions. Both Shane (1953) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) feature dual protagonists, but their reflections on the civilized West are much different. Each film contains a ‘savage’ and ‘civil’ protagonist, and both favor the prospect of democratic growth. But where Shane shows clear praise for it’s savage hero, Liberty Valance paints a storybook West in which one myth is exchanged for another. The next few posts will be dedicated to exploring dual protagonists as they exist in these two films.

The Western Heroes Dual Part II coming soon!

Revisit: Ride the High Country

An MGM film 1962

Directed by Sam Peckinpah

Written by N.B. Stone Jr.



Ride the High Country is a eulogy for the traditional western. The film is conscious of the myth of the American Frontier, presenting it as dying legend that can, and has been, manipulated. Here is a version of the West where Eastern civilizing culture and ideals have pushed savage lands to the very corners of the Earth. However, that’s not to say that such savage ideals don’t exist. The film doesn’t exactly regret the loss of traditional Western values, but rather appears to celebrate moral ambiguity in the genre, desiring to push that trend even further.



The film provides three male heroes: Steve Judd, moral and upright, the Gary Cooper template for the classical Western hero; Gil Westrum, a good but morally gray man, the John Wayne type; and Heck Longtree, a youngin’, the next generation of cowboy. While Judd is presented as upstanding, his character is constantly referred to as old and out of date; even from the beginning, when he mysteriously rides into town in the most classical fashion, it is made clear that this character’s function in the genre is no longer effective. In the end, he is the only one killed off. Westrum, seemingly corrupt and villainous at times, is redeemed, rewarded in the end for his ability as a character to make sacrifice and overcome immoral temptation. Likewise, Longtree grapples with morality, ultimately establishing an honor code from both Judd and Westrum.

Peckinpah finds good humor in the banter between the two dying breeds of hero, but the real excitement in the film comes through the villains. These men are equally morally blurred, as they exhibit knowledge of moral codes, but choose to ignore them, instead settling for insincere symbolic measures that clean the appearance of their evil ways. The Hammond Gang represents tiers of damaged psychology, from sharp and sly to straight crazy, and they incite all of the riotous action in the film. While Ride the High Country is aware that it is declaring the end of one classical mode, it appears to be celebrating a newfound interest in damaged characters, and ambiguity in savagery.

Revisit: Force of Evil

An MGM film 1948

Directed by Abraham Polonsky

Writing by Abraham Polonsky & Ira Wolfert

Lawyer Joe Morse (John Garfield) wants to consolidate all small-time numbers racket operators into one big powerful operation. But he is met with conflict from his elder brother Leo (Thomas Gomez), who as one of those small-time operators prefers not to deal with the gangsters who dominate the big-time.



Watch a clip from Force of Evil here!

Abraham Polonksy's directorial debut is a noir masterpiece, a film that effectively depicts a world rampant with greed, corruption, and dispair. Polonsky, who had already achieved a name for himself as a scriptwriter, most notably for the gritty boxing film Body and Soul also starring John Garfield, was eventually blacklisted under the HUAC communist investigations. Watching Force of Evil, it's hard to separate Polonsky's political views from the story, which comes off as a strong critique of capitalist practices. However, the film contains with such beautiful wordplay and lingual puns that it's almost breathtaking. Likewise, the complex relationship between the brothers forms a delicate psychological, emotional and narrative core - a great example of powerful noir filmmaking. The film was a key influence on Scorsese's Raging Bull and, surprisingly enough, was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. A must see.

Revisit: The Facts of Life

An MGM release 1960

Directed by Melvin Frank

Written by:
Melvin Frank (screenplay)
Norman Panama (screenplay)

Bob Hope and Lucille Ball fall in love during a romantic getaway in Acapulco. There's only one problem - they're both already married!



Not to be confused with the classic TV show of the same name, this adult comedy contains some racy material, considering the year of its release. Bob Hope and Lucille Ball fall in love, but both are already married with children, and hilarity ensues as they try to cope with an extramarital affair. It's probably the only classical Hollywood film I can think of that tries to place a humorous spin on adultery. Its very much a reaction to the tedium brought upon by the construct of the American family in the 1950's; tension is derived from the difficulties of trying to keep the affair a secret, and the affair is not criticized as harshly as the home life. In fact, the film forces you to root for the adulterers, because they are 'in love' and their marriages are so poor. Of course this is a Hollywood film, and things do go sour in the end as they realize their actions are wrong. But it succeeds in making quite the case for adultery. It's also interesting that Ball acts as the films narrator; we're given much of the "woman's" perspective (written by males), but no real insight into the man's desires. Hope and Ball are at the top of their game in a film that is far more serious than most of their previous roles, and the picture was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one for Costume Design.

Revisit: Julius Caesar

An MGM release 1952
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Written by William Shakespeare (play)

An epic version of Shakespeare's classic play of betrayal and repentance.



Brando recieved his third of four consecutive Oscar nominations for this film, in which he appears all of about twenty minutes. In that twenty minutes, however, Brando gives one of the most intense performances of his career as Marc Antony, delivering Shakespeare's classic "Friends, Romans, Countrymen" speech with such unbridled passion that it almost makes sitting through the rest of this snoozefest worth it. Edmond O'Brien makes an appearance as well, and is the only other actor on the screen who can seem to captapult this epic-in-scope retelling of Caesar beyond being a mere big-budget stage play. Mankiewicz has some interesting shots in there, but this one is for Brando fans only.

Revisit: Child's Play

An MGM release 1988

Directed by Tom Holland

Written by Don Mancini

The spirit of a serial killer seeking revenge possess a young boy's toy doll.



This flick scared the crap out of me as a little kid, but looking back, it's pretty ridiculous. I mean, it's a doll for christs sake, it's not threatening, just get rid of the damn thing! It really only works cause Chucky is so damn creepy looking. Look at that thing!



Terrifying!

A better concept would have been toying with audience perception on whether the doll or the boy were actually responsible for the murders. The original has since spawned 4 sequels, turning the franchise into a sort of black comedy. It's a horror classic, I guess, but I'm using that term lightly.

Revisit: North By Northwest

An MGM release 1959

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Written by Ernest Lehman

A hapless New York advertising executive (Cary Grant) is mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies, and is pursued across the country while he looks for a way to survive.



Working with screenwriter Ernest Lehman, Hitchcock was originally comissioned to do an adaptation of the novel The Wreck of the Mary Deare by Hammond Innes, but the two hit a road block. After scrapping the project, Lehman said that he wanted to write the ultimate Hichcock flick. The legend goes that Hichcock had always wanted to make a film featuring an intense climax atop Mount Rushmore, and within days North by Northwest was born.



In many ways, North by Northwest is the ultimate Hitchcock film. Perhaps his most well known, it features two iconic scenes in Hitch's canon - the intense plane sequence and the even more intense chase atop Mount Rushmore. As always with Hitchcock, the film is visually brilliant; beautiful high angle crane shots and quick pans give way to resounding depth. The film deals with traditional Hitchcock themes of mistaken identity, blurred reality, and doubling, and features the most pure example of the Hitchcock 'MacGuffin' (a physical object that everyone in a movie is chasing after but which has no deep relationship to the plot): the microfilm containing government secrets which the spies are attempting to smuggle out of the country.



Cary Grant supposedly felt the script was convoluted and didn't make sense, but that doesn't show in his performance, which comes across as effortless and breezy. Grant was almost entering the 'grouch' phase at this point is his career, but he's a pleasure to watch as an affable victim of circumstance.



A must see for anyone who enjoys the cinema.

Revisit: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

An MGM release 1954

Directed by Stanley Donen

Writing credits:
Stephen Vincent Benet (story The Sobbin' Women)
Albert Hackett
Frances Goodrich
Dorothy Kingsley

Adam (Howard Keel), the eldest of seven brothers, goes to town and convinces Milly (Jane Powell) to marry him. Milly sets out to reform the uncouth siblings, who are anxious to get wives of their own.



One of my top three favorite musicals, Seven Brides is an absurd exploration o love as filtered through hyper-accentuated representations of gender. Adam - the manliest man imaginable - marries Milly - the most hopless romantic of women imaginable - and they sing lovely backwoods songs about lonliness and love. The film is a great example of widescreen formatting - MGM crams somewhere upwards 15 characters on screen at once, dancing intensely. Makes a great case against adjusted TV formatting. Fantastic entertainment.

Revisit: Annie Get Your Gun

An MGM release 1950

Directed by
George Sidney

Writing credits:
Dorothy Fields (book)
Herbert Fields (book)
Sidney Sheldon

The story of the great sharpshooter, Annie Oakley (Betty Hutton), who rises to fame while dealing with her love/professional rival, Frank Butler (Howard Keel).



A musical plauged with production problems from the get-go, Annie Get Your Gun went through three directors and two lead actors before settling on a final cast and crew. Original director Busby Berkeley was also replaced, first by Charles Walters and finally by George Sidney; likewise, Annie was originally supposed to feature the reunion of Wizard of Oz stars Judy Garland and Frank Morgan before Morgan passed away and Judy was fired for poor health.

Normally I'd say Garland's presence would make any musical better, but thank god she dropped out of this one. I couldn't find it online, but if you rent the Annie DVD, there is lots of deleted footage from her scrapped performance and you could tell she was all hopped up on something - jittery, unfocused, really poor stuff. Plus she doesn't fit the role of Annie whatsoever.

Betty Hutton, on the other hand, was made for the part. Easily the most underrated, unseen talent of her time, Hutton had more punch and pep in her pinky finger than most stars today have in their whole lives. She really threw herself into every performance, using complete physicality to put on a fantastic, energized show. Every part of her body is accented, particularly her face, which alone was capable of literally hundreds of expressions. She had this wonderful, wacky spirit, and could throw her voice better than most singers to boot! Check out this clip of her and Fred Astaire from Let's Dance...



See? Hutton was a ball of energy waiting to explode; she was, as Bob Hope once put, a vitamin pill with legs. Unfortunately, Hutton's road to stardom wasn't an easy one, and she quit the business early. Recently, she did an interview with TCM host Robert Osborne that is worth checking out. But I highly suggest you to go out and see Annie Get Your Gun, if anything to pay tribute to this forgotten legend of song.

Review: Casino Royale

This one's been out for a while but I figured I'd post the review anyway...

There’s a scene towards the end of the new James Bond film Casino Royale in which Bond, looking anxious and dreary-eyed, orders a martini. Duly, the bartender asks, “Shaken or stirred?” Bond coarsely replies, “I don’t give a damn!”

The scene embodies the direction the classic franchise appears to be taking after forty years of exciting audiences across the world with stories of espionage and intrigue. Bond is back, but he’s brittle, battle torn, and emotionally unstable.

He’s also blue eyed and blond – not exactly the traditional Bond look. Many questioned the decision to cast Daniel Craig as the sophisticated suave super-spy, but fans of the series can rest easy – Craig is the toughest, most intense Bond to date and the film, which is an origin story of sorts swiped from both the 1967 spoof and 1953 novel of the same name, is smart, slick, and action packed. But is the franchise really starting over, or is it simply offering more of the same?

Casino Royale starts things off at the beginning, with Bond committing his first two kills and earning OO agent status. The script, which was penned by previous Bond scribes Neal Purvis and Robert Wade along with Academy Award winning Crash screenwriter Paul Haggis, is intermittently brilliant, with a relatively low-tech plot involving terrorists and a card game that doesn’t escape into the absurdity of 1999’s The World is Not Enough or the sci-fi schematics of 2002’s Die Another Day. Director Martin Campbell delivers the good at a brisk, calculated pace and the result is a focused, easy-to-swallow story with a heightened sense of realism, plenty of tension and twists. It even leaves room for Bond to act!

And yet, even with all that emoting, one can’t help but feel like they’re watching just another Bond flick. The story follows the same narrative arch as any of the other films (it’s all just a platform for Bond to run from exotic locale #1 to exotic locale #2) and contains all the necessary elements (fast cars, faster women, and a creepy villain who weeps blood) without attempting to raise the bar in terms of spectacular stunts or singular storytelling. Rather, the subject of this film is Bond himself; his unwavering ego, the way he struggles with his work, and his state of mind. Bond is depicted, finally, as a vulnerable character, both mentally and physically.

The origin angle, which acts to justify Bond’s new state of psychosis, is too fleeting – is this a psychological study, or an uneven attempt at adding depth to a character that’s been one dimensional for almost four decades? The film doesn’t flesh out Bond’s back-story much beyond what we already knew (minus an interesting explanation for his misogynistic tendencies towards women), and the whole soul-searching, self-preservation thing wouldn’t have worked if Daniel Craig weren’t so damn good.

The franchise has really found a winner in Craig, who brings the same effortless intensity from his breakout performance in 2004’s drug-fueled British ganger film Layer Cake to his portrayal of a cockier, more complicated Bond. With his baby blue eyes and Steve McQueen type looks – as well as his buff physique – Craig remains somewhat an odd choice but wears the Bond moniker surprisingly well. And, luckily for him, the script has more juicy acting bits than all the Pierce Brosnan-era Bond films combined.

At over two hours and twenty minutes long, Casino Royale does drag on a bit – too much poker, perhaps – but it also features some heart-stopping action including an energetic, off-the-cuff introduction involving jumps that rival what Spiderman can do in terms of distance. In fact, many elements of the film seem to have taken a cue from the modern superhero movie: the internally torn protagonist, the flawed and vulnerable villain, the super-psychological storytelling. Even the swooping camera that follows Bond around during the action scenes seems to be taken from a page right out of the Spiderman textbook. But for a franchise that has long suffered from flaccid dialogue and frivolous storytelling, these somewhat timeworn techniques for revitalizing a well-known character work, at least for now. Whether we’re actually seeing a newer, better Bond or merely a franchise riding the high of replacing its lead actor is hard to say; we’ll have to wait for Bond #22 to find that out. But if Casino Royale is any indication of where things are heading, it should be a fun ride.

An MGM release 2006

Directed by Martin Campbell

Writing Credits:

Neal Purvis (screenplay)
Robert Wade (screenplay)

Paul Haggis (screenplay)
Ian Fleming (novel)

Revisit: The Affairs of Dobie Gillis

An MGM Release 1953
Directed by Don Weis
Screenplay by Max Schulman

Grainbelt University has one attraction for Dobie Gillis (Bobby Van) - women, especially Pansy Hammer (Debbie Reynolds). Pansy's father (Hanley Stafford), however, does not share her affection for Dobie. A plagarized essay which almost revolutionizes English instruction, and Dobie's role in a chemistry lab explosion convinces Mr. Hammer to send broken-hearted Pansy to New York, but with the help of best pal Charlie Trask (Bob Fosse), his girl Lorna (Barbara Ruick), and Happy Stella Kolawski's (Kathleen Freeman) all-girl band, Dobie secures Pansy's return to Grainbelt.

This movie is truly absurd. It's a musical-comedy in the classical sense, but it swipes a lot from rock'n'roll and really reflects the care-free attitude of the era. I don't think I've ever seen a film that reinforces an "no work, all play" attitude so strongly as this. It'd be interesting to see a comparison between Gillis and Frank Tashlin's 1954 film The Girl Can't Help It, as they appear to be rooted in the same material while being polar opposites on almost all levels; one is a simplistic, black and white, classical musical 'updated' for the rock'n'roll age, the other a real rock'n'roll movie with biting satire and bright colors. Both have a certain cartooniness to them as well - the whole chem lab explosion has served as a plot point for almost every modern cartoon I can think of. The performances here are stellar - Debbie Reynolds shines with starry eyes and a sensational singing voice, and Bob Fosse's footwork is impressive as always. Not a must see, but a fun way to kill a quick 90 minutes.