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Reviews
Alexis Zorbas (1964)
The dance of life
In 2005 I went to the UCLA campus to see one my favorite films, ZORBA THE Greek, starring Anthony Quinn with an able assist from Alan Bates. I've seen this film many times over the years. In the 1980's, when VCR's were coming into vogue, ZORBA and WOMEN IN LOVE (also with Bates)were the first two videotapes I ever purchased. But to see it once again on the big screen was moving. This story of the unlikely friendship of an earthy Greek peasant and a repressed English writer still can bring me to tears. Love and hate, good and evil, joy and grief, courage and cowardice engulf Bates' character Basil in the small village on Crete where he comes to discover himself. In the bittersweet climax, when Zorba and Basil say their farewell on the beach, Basil asks Zorba to teach him to dance. They clasp shoulders as Zorba leads him in the steps. Through their adventures, Zorba, a Christ-like figure who brings hope and comforts in death, has metaphorically taught Basil to do the dance of life.
It is one of the most exhilarating and emotionally satisfying endings in cinema. The film, based on the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, has been beautifully restored in a sparkling new print with a vibrant rendition of the famous soundtrack. If you haven't seen it (or it's been a long time), I highly recommend it.
Nashville (1975)
The vaunted status of this movie as director Robert Altman's finest achievement escapes me.
The director casts a mean-spirited look at 24 dislikeable characters that for the most part behave atrociously throughout this interminable film.
Marriage, family, romance, music, politics, fashion, celebrity, religion, aspiration, and the media are pitilessly skewered. Geraldine Chaplin as a BBC reporter making a documentary about Nashville is a blathering idiot. Gwen Welles, ludicrously self-deluded in her belief she could become a singing star, sacrifices her self-respect for ten minutes of notoriety as she is cajoled into stripping for the boorish men at a political funders. Keith Carradine expresses his self-loathing by ruthlessly bedding any woman in sight. Lily Tomlin (blazingly real, but she is not given enough screen time to save this picture) and Ned Beatty grate on each other as a bored married couple struggling to raise two disabled children. Barbara Harris careens wildly out of control as a chickie-boom-boom girl looking for a break, Ronee Blakley collapses as a brittle singer buckling under the pressures of fame that include her abusive manager-husband, Henry Gibson preens as a marginally talented icon who has made it by cynically exploiting popular tastes. Barbara Baxley, stuck in a time warp as his washed-up wife, endlessly rehashes her glory days as a volunteer in the Kennedy presidential campaign. Keenan Wynn, the only decent character among the lot as an elderly man facing his wife's imminent death, seems mainly concerned with hopeless attempts to corral his uncaring groupie of a niece, played by Shelley Duvall, into a properly mournful mode. Michael Murphy wanders wide-eyed as political operative who looks on this freak circus with cynical wonder. And on it goes. Playing themselves in cameo roles, Elliot Gould and Julie Christie--of all people--turn up mainly to contrast these second-rate performers who rank as stars in their limited sphere with the genuine article. Their surprise appearances serve little purpose in the storytelling and jar the viewer right out of the film.
Originally, Joan Tewkesbury seems to have written a quirky ensemble comedy about some colorfully eccentric characters that habituate the country music milieu in Nashville. Somehow, Robert Altman, deeply disturbed by the revelations of the Watergate scandal in the Nixon White House that were unfolding at the time, saw in this stew a vehicle for a dark parable about the rot at the roots of the American body politic. He tried to turn the froth into a cautionary musical outing with a theme similar to CABARET, that is, perpetual partying and mindless entertainment can corrode the soul of otherwise decent people who become numbed to growing social evils by it. Whether the highly specialized Nashville music scene could be considered representative of contemporary America in the 1970's when this film was made is questionable. Nor does the sinister overlay really work. The shocking act of violence at the end stuns the viewer with its complete arbitrariness, bearing no relation to anything that has gone before in the depiction of the characters and their motivations, or in what exists of the storyline.
Country Western music has given us some world-class artists: Johnny Cash, Patsy Kline, Willie Nelson. Perhaps the saddest aspect of NASHVILLE is its scorn for the people who produce the genre and how it dishonors the music itself. I am decidedly not a country music fan, yet even I found the shabby treatment of the music disheartening. Some of the cast (Ronee Blakley, Karen Black, Henry Gibson) wrote and performed their own songs for the film--and it shows. Their weak and quavering voices hardly do justice to their own material. Perhaps that was the point, as none of the characters is meant to be especially talented. But why depict that by embarrassing your stars, Mr. Altman? Furthermore, there seems to be no compelling reason why the characters should be dubious talents. Singers whose genuine gift is offset by unattractive offstage behavior might have made the film vastly more interesting, not to mention musically bearable.
Yes, Keith Carradine did write the Oscar-winning "I'm Easy," a passable entry. Carradine's terrific "It Don't Worry Me," should have been the Oscar winner. Barbara Harris' electrifying rendition of the song at the climax finally brings into focus the ironic bite that the film has been groping for all along. But by then, we hardly care.
I assume many revere NASHVILLE for its improvisational-style ensemble acting. Now an established device in our cinema lexicon, this film first brought Altman's approach to mainstream attention as a startling new technique. After many Altman movies in the decades since, the approach seems less original, but no less compelling to watch. Only Chaplin seems stilted and scripted, but that is the nature of her character, the incredibly annoying ersatz journalist lost in her own incoherence. The rest of the actors truly listen and play off each other, being fully present in the moment. Altman has a great knack for helping players find one throwaway gesture that vividly reveals everything about a character. For example, catch what Carradine does right before the cut in the scene where Tomlin departs from his motel room. Or, to cite an instance from another Altman film, watch Alan Bates' salute in the mirror in GOSFORD PARK as a textbook piece of bravado acting.
For those who enjoy fine acting, NASHVILLE is a gem. The cast is top-notch, and Altman is a force to be reckoned with as a director. But for Altman's pinnacle film-making achievement, I'd recommend GOSFORD PARK, which has more sympathetic characters with some genuine humanity, a less repulsive setting, and a beautifully designed storyline.
Charade (1963)
Sheer Bliss
CHARADE would be a movie-lover's treasure for no other reason than it gave Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn their only on-screen pairing. Were there ever two film stars easier to look at than Grant and Hepburn, who epitomized elegance, glamour and sophistication over two generations? Despite their 25 year age difference, their on-screen chemistry is like watching cotton candy being spun out of the air. "You know what's wrong with you?" a querulous Hepburn demands of Grant after a trying evening out. "No, what?" out-of-sorts Grant replies. Hepburn leans over to him with her liquid doe eyes and dreamily intones, "Nothing." That triple entendre, meltingly spoken by Hepburn, delights as a moment of cinematic perfection. Another is Walter Matthau's impeccable comic timing as he corrects Hepburn's mistakenly calling the CIA the "CIO." It's worth waiting for.
But the stars, gorgeous and witty as they are (check out Hepburn's hilarious final line of the film) are not the only element that makes CHARADE sparkle. The script shines as much as the acting and the direction. The film is unashamedly full of Hitchcock touches (why apologize for borrowing from the best?) yet never feels derivative. The clever original story by Peter Stone and Marc Behm, and fine pacing by director Stanley Donen keeps the audience guessing through the many twists and turns that lead to Hepburn's climactic discovery of Grant's true identity--the "charade" of the title.
My only quibble would be the shower scene--perhaps taking the borrowings from Hitchcock into parody. It feels unnecessary and slows down the story. Seeing Cary Grant embarrass himself in this way with his effeminate gestures as he washes in his "drip-dry" suit jars the viewer temporarily right out of the picture. And the trio of heavies that dominate the first 2/3rds of the film, played by James Coburn, Ned Glass, and George Kennedy, seem to be working too hard to be frightening when no one seems particularly scared of them. Hepburn's panic only begins to register when she confronts Grant at the end. Hepburn saved her intense terror for WAIT UNTIL DARK five years later, so why not let these villains lighten up a little and get into the spirit of the fun?
These are minor distractions. With its effervescent score by Henry Mancini, gorgeous wardrobe by Givenchy for Miss Hepburn, and shimmering photography in Paris and Swiss locations by Charles B. Lang, CHARADE is the assured work of old pros, supremely confident movie makers who set out to entertain and did so while barely missing a beat. Even The Master himself was charmed. Hitchcock wanted Grant and Hepburn for the lead roles in THE BIRDS.
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
A small town lawyer reluctantly defends a self-confessed killer.
Perhaps I've seen too many movies. Throughout the first half of "Anatomy of a Murder" I waited for the revelation of a surprise twist meant to make the audience gasp. Gradually, I began to understand that the concerns of this lengthy courtroom drama were very different from the usual Hollywood fare. The jazz score--not a musical genre usually associated with the Upper Peninsula of Michigan--and words like "spermatogenesis" coming from Jimmy Stewart's mouth (Mr. Smith has indeed been to Washington) were clues that this picture was not meant as a "Witness for the Prosecution" type of clever courtroom thriller.
Once I got past the "Perry Mason" expectations, I found the film a spellbinding exercise in American jurisprudence. The ambiguity in the married couple's motives and behavior (played by Lee Remick and Ben Gazzara) is there by design, as is the unresolved ending. The viewer is placed in the position of the jurors--weighing conflicting and confusing evidence and forced to decide what really happened. Given the O.J. Simpson trial more than three decades later, the message of the film is timeless: trial by a jury of one's peers with all the safeguards of our legal system may not always be foolproof, but it's still the best system around. The sobering reality the film raises is the possibility of how easily the legal system can be outwitted by ill-intentioned people who are not legal masterminds.
Regarding the script and direction, I was troubled by what appeared to me to be some problems with the plot. If, as was suggested, Lt. Manion was cruel and abusive to his faithless wife, why was she so adamant about defending him? That point was a little too ambiguous for me. And, in contrast to, say, Paul Newman's Frank Galvin in "The Verdict"--a disgraced attorney searching for redemption--I couldn't figure out why Stewart's easygoing, devil-may-care lawyer became so adamant, almost to the point of blindness, about defending Manion, even when the red flags about Manion's claim of temporary insanity were hard to miss. He seemed to take everything Manion said at face value. Simply to say Biegler represented the spirit of justice to which all attorneys are ready to rise was not enough for me, as Biegler was not intended as an allegorical or Everyman type of character. I wanted to see some human flaws or frailties in him beyond that he was a little too laid back about his legal practice, at least in Eve Arden's view as his put-upon and unpaid secretary.
I've always wondered how well-meaning attorneys can defend sleaze-balls. In the end, I concluded that this film gave me more insight into the defending attorney's duty--to provide the best defense possible regardless of personal feelings--and let the jury decide. It's what everyone is entitled to in our democracy, and thus this well-acted film stands as a useful civics lesson--which is not to say it is dull, but rather thought-provoking.
Above and Beyond (1952)
At last we know for certain why the atomic bomb was dropped
According to this film's take on the dawning of the atomic age, Col. Paul Tibbetts rushed the bomb to the skies of Hiroshima to save his marriage. The premise of this simplistic look at a complex and critical event in human history is every bit as pernicious as it sounds. The top secrecy surrounding the preparations to drop the bomb put an intolerable strain on the commander of the operation's marriage. To reassure his wife required the deaths of 80,000 Japanese, but hey, Tibbett's family life was saved.
Given what they had to work with, Robert Taylor and Eleanor Parker as Mr. and Mrs. Tibbetts do manage to create some mild emotional interest. Given the film was made only seven years after the event, multidimensional analysis or a nuanced reassessment of this watershed event in history could hardly be expected. Taylor's character merely reiterates the self-justifications that the real Paul Tibbetts always offered for his actions in interviews. It was an awful thing thing to have to do, but it was his job, and it shortened the war, saving lives. In the sixty years' since, history has built a far more complex explanation of the forces that led to this ghastly conclusion to the war. The film shows no such hesitations about the morality of the project, and in several scenes characters confidently and without irony pray for God's blessing on the enterprise.
The film is of some scientific and historical interest in its depiction of the technology that went into the Enola Gay's mission. The sequence of the bombing itself is compelling. The remorse Taylor displays in these scenes was probably his finest acting moment in a lengthy career that earned him little distinction for acting ability. However, the simplified technological explanations at times have the quality of a scientist in a b&w grade B sci fi movie of the 50's explaining where the giant ants or octopus came from. The viewer must remind him or herself that fantastic as it sounds, this was real, which only reinforces the horror of atomic weapons.
In short, this attempt to stuff the life of Paul Tibbetts and the outcome of the Manhattan Project into the standard formulas of Louis B. Mayer's post-war Hollywood is inappropriate, unwieldly, and in the end, offensive to today's post-Cold War sensibilities.