zeus-2's Reviews

Love at Large (1990)

4 March 1999

This is a love story in the format of a comedy. Or, more appropriately, a love quest story. Like the Detective saga it parodies, the characters are on a search for absolution. But in Rudolph's screwball world where, for instance, every car is at least 20 years old and carries the model name "classic", all of this light madness works toward one, central theme: love is almost impossible to find, but, oh, so much fun to search for.

All the characters that are in long-term relationships are either breaking up, cheating on each other, or completely self-deluded. The other characters are in perpetual seek mode, from Miss Dolan who flirts and swoons wherever her whimsical heart takes her, to Stella, who studies "The Love Manual" and bitterly says things like, "the one who is in love always waits. It's the lover's signature."

Ultimately, this makes for light, entertaining fare. There aren't many bellylaughs, but there is a continual glow and a delightful, endearing glee about the film. Director Rudolph's cinematic sense is so keen that everything seems larger than it is, and more meaningful.

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Miss Sadie Thompson (1953)

A True Goddess

4 March 1999

With not so quite as glamorous an entrance as "Gilda", Sadie arrives in paradise like the proud mainmast of the ship. And she IS propulsion. Immediately, reaction to her causes hormonal chaos among the gyrenes and moral outrage with the missionaries. But, what do you expect? A Goddess has descended to earth, where, as Mr. Davidson says, "all of nature seems to conspire against us. Everything grows with a sort of savage violence". This is Aphrodite--not Athene--and she comes to party, not conquer.

Unfortunately, she pulls her incantation out of the wrong century. She appears as a vision from Titian or Rubens, not Playboy or Penthouse. This is Rita's last film, really. But she plays it with zest and vitality, dazzling with a smile and flirting with a flip of the skirt. Considering her "Life" magazine cover was the number one pinup of WWII, it's a true delight to see her dancing in a red dress with a room full of beer-salivating soldiers. It's an icon being finally animated. But once the tribute is paid, the Goddess departs, leaving the celluloid alter to the inept rituals of the Hollywood moralizers.

And off we go. Themes like intolerance, justice, punishment and atonement are dusted off and brought forth, veiling their true covenant of female servitude and demonic spirit-breaking. Every soldier's nightmare of coming home to a "breezy dame" is acted out with O'Hara's self-righteous explosion to Sadie's confession that she worked at the Emerald Club. Never mind that he was a patron. This is "Rosie the Riveter" becoming "Rosie the Reveler". At least Mr. Davidson is upfront about his emotional Nazism. His offered choice of facing one's fears and standing trial for one's mistakes is actually better than O'Hara's insidious sentence. The scriptwriters would have you believe otherwise, but Sadie's indomitable spirit is not furthered by becoming a "decent woman". O'Hara is selling love under the guise of protection; which is kinda like going to war to preserve peace.

Too bad Aphrodite couldn't stay longer. But like a true mythological Goddess, she lives on in the hearts of us who believe in her.

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You Only Live Once (1937)

You Only View This Once

4 March 1999

Warning: Spoilers

"They made me a murderer," Eddie Taylor tells his wife after he's escaped from Death Row. He's been falsely convicted of a bank job involving tear gas and 6 dead guards, then, on the eve of his execution while making an escape attempt, he's miraculously pardoned. But, since he's been lied to all along, he doesn't believe them and seals his fate with an irrevocable act of violence. The innocent become the guilty, not because of the crime, but because of the accusation.

Guilt is not so much the issue here as blame. Eddie wants to go straight. Sure, he's had a few bad run-ins, but he's been rehabilitated through the unswerving love of his girl, Joan. But his past keeps being thrown in his face, unsettling his pride. When he puts a down payment on a house but loses his job before he can pay for it, Eddie gives in to his bitterness. It's a quick skip to the false arrest for the crime he didn't commit, and an even more fated one to the lam of the fugitive's road. For the last reel, Eddie and Joan become the quintessential Desperado Couple before they fall to a predictable end. It's all a tidy, little diatribe about good, honest people being ruined by a corrupt, heartless society.

But wait.

Eddie's originally in the slammer because of crimes he DID commit.

Eddie DOES dally on his job and his boss takes action.

Eddie DOES execute a brutal, cold-blooded crime.

The truth is that Eddie's a skunk and he lets other skunks spray at him until he stinks back, that's all. Lang's strength is that he doesn't make judgements according to political, ethical, or racial belief systems. Humanity is at fault, not Nazis, Negroes, or Rockefellers. If anything, the inevitability of civilization is the culprit in "You Only Live Once". There's an inordinate amount of time spent in the oppressive architecture of prisons, jail cells, and courtrooms. And machinery always seems driverless, like the railroad car (read cattle car) that Joan finds a wounded Eddie hiding in, or the parked, and later submerged, armored car that so conveniently spews the filthy lucre leading to Eddie's dismantling. It's raining a lot when the kids are feverishly trying to escape or pull off a dirty deed, and subsequently sunshiny and open when they're resting or cuddling. The child's born in a shack--a structure abandoned by the current society. If there is a Rousseau-like, Naturalistic bent to the narrative, it doesn't extend to the people. For instance, the gas station attendants who are robbed don't befriend Joan and Eddie, but take advantage of their plight to line their own pockets. There's not even a smidgen of Depression, folk-hero classicism in the script. This isn't "Bonnie & Clyde", after all.

In Lang's world, people are greedy, petty, jealous, and self-serving. And they've created a civilization that reflects those values. Jo and Eddie's relationship is the only worthwhile thing outside the "stain of the world". Love is the only hope we've got. Father Dolan's no help. He'd rather go out as a martyr, babbling on about death being "another chance at remembering who we are before we're born again." And, although the syrupy, resurrected voice of the priest coos "open the gates" from his rarefied perch above the film's final scene, it is the shot through the gun's cross-hairs on Eddie's vulnerable and defenseless back that is really the definitive image--and the one we'll remember and take to our own, respective graves.

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The Bear (1988)

A Rare Bear

16 February 1999

I hate Grizzly Bears. I hate them because I'm terrified of them. Nothing in the woods is gonna set you free like confronting a bear (well, maybe the Zodiac killer). Whenever you're out there, away from it all, there is the looming threat of The Bear. He is nature raw; he's a wake-up call, saying, "it's time to prove who you are and where you belong, now!"

Imagine loving a film from the point of view of your worst enemy. Think about feeling empathy and compassion for your most horrible nightmare. That's this film for me.

Sure it helps that the narrator is an innocent child, abandoned in the woods. Sure, he has dreams just like you do. He even chews mushrooms and trips around like you did as a teenager. He learns, he grows up, he faces trials, he is loved and protected.

The Indians say that when you kill an animal, you must respect his living soul. His rights are the same as yours. Maybe you had the edge this time, maybe you live a little longer. But, in the end, you are one in the same. Only the arrogance of man makes you think you're more important. The hunter supplicates because he's out-brawned. It's only later that he realizes that he is The Bear. Maybe not now, or before, but sometime. What would happen if everyone thought of themselves as an integral part of it all? That the trees, the rocks, the animals, the clouds, hell, everything of the earth was impossible to separate from humanity's own lifeforce?

It is rare when a work or art can change a perspective that's been locked in for a lifetime or re-enforced by centuries of civilization. But, for one magical moment, I was The Bear.

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On Dangerous Ground (1951)

Humane Film Noir

13 February 1999

Director Nicholas Ray considered this film to be a failure, but I think it is one of his best. Conforming to Film Noir's boundaries, the film presents an individual clearly controlled by his environment. Yet, as Jim Wilson moves from the seamy, mean streets of the city into the pure, snow-covered landscape of the country, Ray stages it like a compassionate, caring moralist who is unwilling to let any fatalistic excuses usurp society's responsibility to its members.

The visual, tonal changes are what's so startling about "On Dangerous Ground". The film opens completely submerged in the Noir world. The lighting is stark, the sets are oppressing, and the pace is brutal and quick. By contrast, the countryside is presented in pristine, high-key lighting with interiors softened by warm firelight. Everything is open and expansive, engendering more a feeling of peace than of solitude. The editing is slower, more comforting, and friendly.

Although it is similar to the way Tourneur handled the same conflicts in "Out of the Past", Ray's visual interpretation is far more poetic and effective. Ugliness and crime can only produce more of the same. It is up to us to return things to their natural order if harmony and nurturance are to prevail. Considering society's progress since this film's debut 48 years ago, we are certainly still "On Dangerous Ground".

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Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Look deeper to see the real Dog

9 February 1999

An incident/procedural drama studying all roles in its unfolding--perpetratorss, hostages, cops, the media, and spectators. The sum of the parts is greater than the whole, and all parts have a responsibility in any moral judgement of its outcome. Especially criticized is the relationship between the perpetrator of actions and the media, and the media's position to both report to and represent the spectator public. What starts out as an act of personal desperation escalates into public forum as self-described "good Catholic" Sonny instigates his own gladiatorial trial of grievances using the loudest voice in the land--media--to build camaraderie and incite sympathy. "Attica! Attica!" is the mantra of the day. Sal, Sonny's fellow perpetrator, has no such self-cleansing need. His inner demons have never heard of the Geraldo show.

The film quickly takes an hysterical tone. Most of the dialogue is shouted. As the heat increases, Sonny's neuroses are paraded out.

Halfway through the Nixon years, the steam ran out of the protest movement. Why? One reason was that the powers that be--government and big business--had re-gained control of the media by learning the lessons taught by the radicals in how to manipulate it. Demonstrating became passe. Counter-culture was absorbed into the mass media--Mod Squad, Laugh-In, Alice B. Toklas, etc--and its idealism trivialized. TV sees only surface. It does not have the attention span to unearth deeper thoughts.

Sonny is a good man using the wrong means for his hopes and dreams. He becomes a symbol of a larger body of protest and anger.

As a result, the movie negates the moral crux of its time by making Sonny subject to such hysterical judgment. It is saying it was all a temper tantrum collectively thrown by a bunch of neurotics who couldn't work out their personal problems. Sonny, as a character and a symbol, is finally deemed pathetic and small, his power diminished to nothing more than the deafening but harmless noise of jets at the airport.

Ultimately, this film constricts the art and possibilities of cinema into the confines of its bastard child--TV.

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Body Double (1984)

Double Bubble Gum

8 February 1999

With an opening on a horror set followed by two--count 'em, two!--moving backdrops interrupting a Tail-o'-the-Pup LA landscape overlaid with string-heavy love music while our hero enters his abode to find his girlfriend playing Ride the Naked Horsie--PHEW!--De Palma, as usual, humorously overstates his Appearance verses Reality theme. No stranger to borrowings, he loves flirting with the cliche, but he does it so deliberately, you have to admire his bravado.

Unfortunately, everything feels, well, so filmic. But, so does Hitchcock--well, some Hitchcock, anyway--and so does Hawks. Cinema is primarily entertainment, right? So, if you make a little Message in there, it's better than making a mess, right? It's just that De Palma never fully commits to his vision. He always leaves just enough tongue-in-cheekiness lying around to fall back on. For instance, when Jake first enters the observation tower-like house he'll be staying in, he says "what a set-up!" This is effectively De Palma saying, "See, I'm just kidding. It's only a silly movie, guys, nothing heavy!"

And "Body Double" is a real twinkie. You know you shouldn't eat it, but, man, does it taste good. There's ample titillation--brutality, sex, violence, flesh--but the main forbidden savor is voyeurism. And it has happened to the best of us. Jake is not a pervert, he's just an average shmoe sucked in and fooled by the glittering bauble. It's easy. It's available. Jake is all of us watching this stupid yet mesmerizing film, crumbling another tiny piece of our lives into another two hours of secondary, vapid non-experience. Jake's quest to understand Gloria Ravel's situation proves to be a mockery of what he thinks he's perceiving. His real core experience--that of claustrophobia--is denied by him at every turn. It's easier for him to believe he can save--and seduce--a beautiful woman than it is to solve his own problems. Besides, it's a hell of a lot more fun and stimulating, isn't it? Forget that a diet of twinkies leads to an early heart attack. That's later, far later.

But, De Palma can't stay out of his own refrigerator. Like a glutton, he gorges on past films. He spits out "Rear Window" and "Vertigo" plottings like rotten teeth, and completely trivializes the use of subtextual symbolism.

Jake has to become a sleaze ball to solve the riddle. By acting, he acts, not only vanquishing the villian but his own inner phobia. His reward? He gets to act and get accepted. As a result, everything in the film implodes in on itself, leaving about as much savor as junk food. De Palma pulls his final rabbit for the end credits. By utilizing the vampire film as a framing device, he firmly establishes his film as a Black Comedy, chewing up even itself. But then, how else are you gonna live with yourself when your job is to create artifice that sucks the life out of people?

Without wisdom, there's always wit, right?

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Bite the Bullet (1975)

A Bite into Boredom

8 February 1999

With a promising cast and premise, this oater winds down like a lather-slick horse. Just as Hackman and Coburn can barely cross the finish line, the viewer is similarily beaten into boredom.

The plot is a horserace across 700 miles involving seven riders. Candice cuts a proud profile sans character development or dialogue. Ben Johnson is an early retiree, dropping from pump failure, but not before he effortlessly adds authenticity and good lines like, "I've never met a man who could hold his liquor better'n a bottle." Director Brooks nods to most western conventions--even pays a little ironic homage to "Mag 7" with Coburn kicking Vincent's boot to get his attention early into the film. But all the endless shots of the riders in uninspired, noon-sun landscape slows the pace to a crawl. The inner struggle and machinations of the group prove to be just as tedious. Although there are some good soliloquies--Johnson and Hackman's pontifications on recognition and loss, respectively--they seem strangely distant from the action of the film. And Hackman's character, for being such a horse lover, spends little time nurturing his hoofer, as director Brooks does with anything interesting or creative in this film. Even his use of slow motion camerawork views as dated and ill-advised.

For light-hearted fare from a post-classic era film, try "Cat Ballou" instead.

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Strangers on a Train (1951)

the hero as villain

8 October 1998

I think this is Hitchcock's first of two undisputed masterpieces ("Psycho" being the second). It is insidiously subtle, which makes it a great candidate for subsequent viewings. His "strangers" are ingenious, opposing illustrations of malevolent opportunism.

Like the tennis match, the opponents are set. Bruno, the villain, with the mommy-manicured hands that kill, verses Guy, the upwardly-mobile victim-hero. Yet, you agonize with suspense when Bruno stretches for the cigarette lighter in the storm drain, hoping for his success just as you cheer Guy on to win in three sets. But Bruno is a twisted maniac--you even get a sense of why from his parents--yet Guy is really an enigma, waffling so much you believe he's really going to kill Bruno's father. That's because Guy is really the veiled villain of the film. Nothing is known of his past. His handling of his wife in the record store could indicate merely poor choice in a life-mate, or an undisclosed violence vicariously lived through by Bruno. Opportunistic, placating, unctuously pleasing--that's Guy. He's at least partially responsible for his wife's murder by not taking Bruno seriously, and he certainly benefits by becoming unburdened to make a politically advantageous marriage to Anne Morton. He wants to "avoid trouble" rather than bring Bruno to justice. His way is the back stab--beautifully played out by his falsely-attempted murder of Bruno's father. Is it no wonder that he wants to become a politician?

Hitchcock never gives us black and white. Just two more looks at the multi-faceted face of evil.

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Vertigo (1958)

muddle or masterpiece?

27 September 1998

Sandwiched between "The Wrong Man" and "North By Northwest" in the 1950s, this film seems condimented with both of those films' faults without their redeeming qualities. "The Wrong Man" is extremely tedious. I know film lovers who've never seen the incredible final act. And "North By Northwest" is, well, melodramatic, genre-oriented fluff. But it never pretends to be anything else. Now, "Vertigo". . . A ghost story? A tale of obsession? A love story? Detective? As Scotty stalks Maddy, I found myself wondering if the film makers were the only people in San Francisco. No cars on Golden Gate, no crowds at the Palace of Fine Arts. The Batista mission unlocked at night for midnight strolls. Wow, what a wonderful fantasy. But, was this conspicuous absence of anyone else a subtle hint that it's all self-illusion? (Enter "Romeo Is Bleeding" into the long list of Hitchcockian scene stealing). Then, would the dated, dreamscape graphics (multi-colored vortex, falling, falling, woo!) be a fantasy within a dream? The dream theory is certainly the most forgiving and romantic interpretation. It acquits the film's blatant plot implausibilities and abrupt, unsatisfactory ending. How did that nun get up in the tower? But if it's all a dream, who's is it? Judy has a point of view, complete with her own flashback that is essential to the main plot spring. Who's dreaming who here? Is this Scotty's even-deeper obsession with transvestitism (he sure enjoys making over Judy, and, earlier, Midge chides him about wearing a girdle) and falling into the vaginal whirlpool of a big G-spot? The alternatives bury this film even further. As a mystery, it has no crackle in the deception/revelation tension. It's too laden with subconscious obsession and implosion. Maybe a boy gets-loses-gets-loses girl love story. But based on what emotion, exactly? These people are not in love with the same person at the same time. There is no ignited love, and therefore no forlorned loss. When Judy takes a header, Scotty seems more befuddled than bemoaned. Maybe it's a ghost story of possession with a gender reversal precluding "Dead Again", with Scotty as the past Spanish female cuckold. But that doesn't quite work either, does it? It seems that whatever intrepretation is reached for, the ground gives way, and suddenly everything's falling, falling. . . Maybe this film's just a muddled mess. Technical support doesn't help much. Unfortunately, Hitch's lead actresses during this era were mostly pretty window dressing. His cinematic ideas were beyond the skill level of a Kim Novak, Tippi Hedrin, and, yes, even the legendary Grace Kelly. The multiple role of Madeleine/Carlotta/Judy is flatlined by Novak's signature, mystery-woman performance. Even the helpful, photographic posturing--soft focus for eerie cemetery ambiance, overexposure for ghostliness, etc--cannot raise the characterization further than Judy's grossly-thick eyebrows. Stewart fares better, but lacks the furtive quirks of a man obsessed with his own twisted desires and/or disabilities in the third act. Or maybe you just can't put Hitch in a niche, period.

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