Price was born 111 years ago, in St. Louis, Missouri. When he first began his film career in the 1930s, he was promoted as a leading man and he was even tested for the role of Ashley Wilkes in Gone With TheWind. (Imagine that!) However, Price would find his greatest fame as a horror icon.
Among the fans of Price’s horror films was a young animator named Tim Burton. In 1982, Price and Burton would work together for the first time, with Price providing the narration for a short, stop motion film that Burton had written and directed. Called Vincent, the film was about a seven year-old boy named Vincent who wanted to be — can you guess? — Vincent Price! The six-minute film follows Vincent as he gets involved in all sorts of macabre activities. Of course, as Vincent’s mom points out, Vincent isn’t actually a monster or mad scientist. He’s just a creative child with an overactive imagination. (To say the short feels autobiographical on Burton’s part would be an understatement.) The animation is outstanding and full of wit but it really is Vincent Price’s wonderful narration that makes this short film a classic.
Both Price and Burton would later call making this film one of the most creatively rewarding collaborations of their respective careers.
Released in 1979, Fast Company is a Canadian film about fast cars and the fast-living people who drive them. Lonnie Johnson (William Smith) is a veteran drag racer who is so good at his job that his nickname is “Lucky Man.” He rarely loses a race. He’s never without an adoring fan or two, though he always remains loyal to his girlfriend, Sammy (Claudia Jennings). Lonnie is so lucky that, even when one of his cars explodes, he walks away without even a scratch.
Lonnie and his protégé, Billy (Nicholas Campbell), are being sponsored by Fast Company, an international oil consortium. The money is okay but Lonnie is getting old and he would like to step back and spend some more quality time with Sammy. Unfortunately, the team boss is Phil Adamson (John Saxon) and the viewers knows that Phil is a bad guy because he’s played by John Saxon and, instead of driving to the races, he pilots his own private plane. When Lonnie starts to rebel against Phil’s management, Phil schemes to not only replace him and Billy with rival driver Gary Black (Cedric Smith) but he also plots to repossess Lonnie’s prized car!
Okay, so it’s kind of a silly and predictable film. In fact, there’s really only two reasons why Fast Company is remembered today.
One is because it was the last film to feature B-movie star Claudia Jennings before her death in a traffic accident. Jennings was nicknamed the “Queen of the B movies” and, over the course of her brief career, appeared in a lot of films about fast cars. She gives a likable performance as Sammy, even if the film’s script doesn’t really give her much to do.
Secondly, this film was directed by David Cronenberg. This was Cronenberg’s first time to direct a film that he hadn’t written. This was his first job as a “director for hire” but, interestingly enough, it was while directing this film that Cronenberg first worked with some of his most important future collaborators, including cinematographer Mark Irwin and actor Nicholas Campbell. Cronenberg directed Fast Company in between Rabid and The Brood and Fast Company might as well take place in a different universe from either of those films. To be honest, there’s not much about this film that would lead anyone to suspect that it had been directed by Cronenberg if they hadn’t already seen his name in the credits. Cronenberg’s signature style is really only evident when the camera lingers over the scenes of the mechanics working on the cars. In those scenes, there’s a hint of the Cronenberg that everyone knows, the Cronenberg who is fascinated by both the relationship between man and machine and how things work inside the body of both the driver and the car.
For the most part, Fast Company is a typical 70s racing film, one that was made for drive-in audiences and which makes no apologies for that fact. (Nor should it.) There’s a lot of shots of denim-clad Canadians cheering as their favorite driver crosses the finish line. William Smith brings a world-weary dignity to the role of Lonnie Johnson but, while John Saxon is always fun to watch, Phil Adamson is so evil that he threatens to throw the tone of the film out of whack. The light-hearted scenes of Lonnie, Billy, and head mechanic Elder (Don Francks) don’t always seem to belong in the same movie with scenes of John Saxon scheming to cheat and risk the lives of his drivers.
In the end, though, the important thing is that the cars are fast and so is this quickly paced movie. I’m enough of a country girl that I have to admit that I have a weakness for fast cars that leave a cloud of dust behind them. On that level, I enjoyed the film and really, that’s the only level that matters when it comes to a film like Fast Company.
With the 2022 Cannes Film Festival coming to a close in the next few days, I’ve been watching some of the films that previously won the prestigious Palme d’Or. They’re an interesting group of films. Some of them have been forgotten. Some of them are still regarded as classics. Some of them definitely deserve to be seen by a wider audience. Take for the instance that winner of the 1984 Palme d’Or winner, Paris, Texas. This is a film that is well-regarded by cineastes but it definitely deserves to be seen by more people.
Though released in 1984, Paris, Texas opens with an image that will resonate for many viewers today. A dazed man stumbles through the desert while wearing a red baseball cap. Though the cap may not read “Make America Great Again,” the sight of it immediately identifies the owner as being a resident of what is often dismissively referred to as being flyover country, the long stretch of land that sits between the two coasts. Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) is lost, both figuratively and literally. After he stumbles into a bar and collapses, he’s taken to a doctor (played by German film director Bernhard Wicki) who discovers that Travis has a phone number on him. When the doctor calls the number, he speaks to Travis’s brother, Walt (Dean Stockwell). Walt has not seen Travis for three years and the viewer gets the feeling that Walt spent those years assuming that Travis was dead. Walt agrees to travel to West Texas to retrieve his brother and take him back to Los Angeles.
When Walt retrieves his brother, he’s annoyed that Travis refuses to explain where he’s been for the past three years. In fact, for the first fourth of the film, Travis doesn’t say anything. He just stares into space. Finally, when he does speak, it’s to tell Walt that he wants to go to Paris. Walt tells him that going to Paris might have to wait. Travis elaborates that he wants to go to Paris, Texas. He owns an empty parking lot in Paris, Texas.
It takes a while to learn much about Travis’s past. Like many of Wim Wenders’s films, Paris, Texas moves at its own deliberate pace and it features characters who tend to talk around their concerns instead of facing them head-on. What we do eventually learn is that Travis has a son named Hunter (Hunter Black). Travis’s wife, Jane, (played by Natassja Kinski) disappeared first. Travis disappeared afterwards, leaving Walt and his wife (Aurore Clement) to raise his son. At first, when Travis arrives in Los Angeles, he struggles to reconnect with Hunter but eventually, he does. He tries to be a father but, again, he sometimes struggles because, while Travis has a good heart, he’s also out-of-step with the world.
As for Jane, we eventually learn that she’s in Houston. She’s working in a tacky sex club, one where the customers and the strippers are separated by a one-way mirror. The customer can see and talk to the stripper but the stripper can’t see the customers. It’s all about manufactured intimacy. The customer can delude themselves into thinking that the woman is stripping just for him while the woman doesn’t have to see the man who is watching her. There are no emotions to deal with, just the illusion of a connection.
Even as Travis begins to make a life for himself in Los Angeles, he finds himself tempted to return to Houston to search for his wife….
As I said, Paris, Texas is a deliberately paced film. With a running time of 2 hours and 20 minutes, it feels like it’s actually three films linked together. We start with Travis and Walt traveling back to Los Angeles. The second film deals with Travis’s attempts to bond with his son. And the third and most powerful film is about what happens when Travis finally finds Jane. It all comes together to form a deceptively low-key character study of a group of lost souls, all of whom are dealing with the mistakes of the past and hoping for a better future. The film’s most memorable moment comes when Travis delivers a long and heartfelt monologue about his marriage to Jane. Beautifully written by Sam Shephard (who co-wrote the script with L.M. Kit Carson) and wonderfully acted by Harry Dean Stanton, it’s a monologue about regret, guilt, forgiveness, and ultimately being cursed to wander.
Despite the heavy subject matter, Paris, Texas is an undeniably joyful film. In a rare leading role, Harry Dean Stanton plays Travis as someone who is full of regrets but who, at the same time, retains a spark of hope and optimism. Life has beaten him down but he has yet to surrender. Once he reaches Los Angeles and Travis starts to fully come out of his fugue state, there’s a playful energy to Stanton’s performance. The scene where he dresses up as what he thinks a dad should look like is a highlight. For Travis, being a responsible adult starts with putting on a suit and walking his son home from school. Stanton’s excellent performance is matched by good work from Dean Stockwell and, especially, Natassja Kinski.
Visually, the film is all about capturing the beauty and the peculiarity of the landscape of the American southwest. Like many European directors, Wim Wenders seems to be a bit in love with the combination of rugged mountains and commercialized society that one finds while driving through the west. In the scenes in which Stanton wanders through West Texas, the landscape almost seems like it might consume him and, later, in Los Angeles and Houston, the garishness of the city threatens to do the same. Wherever he is, Travis is slightly out-of-place and the viewer can understand why Travis is compelled to keep wandering. At times, it seems like Travis will never fit in anywhere but the fact that he never gives up hope is comforting. In many ways, Travis’s own journey mirrors Stanton’s career in Hollywood. He had the talent of a leading man but the eccentric countenance of a great character actor. He may have never been quite fit in with mainstream Hollywood but he never stopped acting.
The film itself never visits Paris, Texas. Travis just talks about the fact that he owns an empty lot in the town and that he would like to see it. Still, I like to think Travis eventually reached Paris and I like to think that he did something wonderful with that lot.
With the Cannes Film Festival underway, I have been watching some of the past winners of the prestigious Palme d’Or. On Thursday night, Jeff and I watched the winner of the 1970 winner of the Grand Prix (as the Palme was known at the time), Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H.
There are, of course, three versions of M*A*S*H. All three of them deal with the same basic story of Dr. Hawkeye Pierce and his attempts to maintain his sanity while serving as a combat surgeon at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean war. All three of them mix comedy with the tragedy of war. However, each one of them takes their own unique approach to the material.
The one that everyone immediately thinks of is the old television series, which ran for 11 seasons and which can be found on Hulu and on several of the retro stations. The television series starred Alan Alda as Hawkeye. I’ve watched a handful of episodes and, while the episodes that I’ve seen were undeniably well-acted and well-written and they all had their heart in the right place, the show’s deification of Hawkeye can get to be a bit much. Not only is Hawkeye the best surgeon at the 4077th, he’s apparently the best surgeon in all of Korea. In fact, he may be the best surgeon on the entire planet. Not a single thing happens in the camp unless Hawkeye is somehow involved. When a nurse is killed by a landmine in one episode, the focus is not on the other nurses but instead on how Hawkeye feels about it. When bombs are falling too close to the camp, the focus is again only on Hawkeye and how much he hates the war. If you didn’t already know that he hated the war, Hawkeye will let you know. Wish Hawkeye a good morning and he’ll yell at you about how many people are going to be wounder by the end of the day. Even when one agrees with Hawkeye, the character’s self-righteousness can be a bit much.
Less well-known is the first version of M*A*S*H, a short and episodic novel that was published in 1968. The novel was written by Dr. Richard Hornberger, who actually had served in Korea at a M*A*S*H unit and who reportedly based Hawkeye on himself. The book is a rather breezy affair. Reading it, one can definitely tell that it was inspired by someone telling Hornberger, “Your stories about Korea are so funny and interesting, you should write them down!” The book avoids politics, reserving most of its ire for military red tape. Hornberger was a Republican who so disliked Alan Alda’s interpretation of Hawkeye that, when he wrote a sequel to M*A*S*H, he included a scene in which Hawkeye talked about how much he enjoyed beating up hippies.
And then there’s the version that came in between the book and the television series, the 1970 film from Robert Altman. The film retains the book’s episodic structure while also throwing in the anti-war politics that would define the television series. (Though the film was set in the 50s, Altman purposefully made no attempt to be historically accurate because he wanted it to be clear that this film was more about Vietnam than Korea.) From its opening, the film announces its outlook, with shots of helicopters carrying severely wounded (possibly dead) soldiers to the camp while a song called Suicide is Painless plays on the soundtrack. The song was written by director Robert Altman’s fourteen year-old son, Mike. Reportedly, it took Mike five minutes to come up with the lyrics. When the instrumental version of the song was later used as the theme song for the television series, Mike Altman made over a million dollars in royalties.
The film opens with Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland) and Duke Forrest (Tom Skerritt) arriving at the 4077th MASH in a stolen jeep and it ends with them getting sent home in the same jeep. Though Duke is set up to be a major character, he soon takes a backseat to another surgeon, the unfortunately nicknamed Trapper John (Elliott Gould). Much as with the television series, the movie centers around Hawkeye and Trapper John’s antics. When they’re not in the operating room, they’re drinking, carousing, and playing pranks that are far more mean-spirited than anything the television versions of the characters would have ever done. (Indeed, the book and movie versions of Hawkeye probably would have hated Alan Alda’s Hawkeye.) Unlike the television version of Hawkeye, the film’s Hawkeye is not the best surgeon in Korea. In fact, he’s not even the best surgeon at the 4077th. (That honor goes to Trapper.) Instead, he’s just one of many doctors on staff. They’re rotated in and then, at the end of their tour, they’re rotated out. Hawkeye loses as many patients as he saves. The film’s doctors are not miracle workers, nor are they crusaders. Instead, they are overworked, neurotic, often exhausted, and frequently bored whenever there aren’t any wounded to deal with. The film emphasizes that the doctors are as professional inside the Operating Room as they’re rambunctious outside of it. Unlike the television series, Hawkeye doesn’t joke while working. He’s usually too busy trying to stop his patients from bleeding to death to tell jokes or to complain about the war that brought them to the OR.
Indeed, the film version of M*A*S*H communicates its anti-war message not through indignant speeches but instead through bloody imagery. The operating room scenes don’t shy away from showing the ugliness of war and they are occasionally so visceral that they almost seem to shame the audience for have laughed just a few minutes earlier. One of the film’s more famous (and controversial) sequences features Hawkeye driving Frank Burns (Robert Duvall) to insanity by crudely taunting him about his affair with head nurse Margaret Houlihan (Sally Kellerman). Burns attacks Hawkeye, a response that actually seems rather justified even if it is played for laughs. A scene of Burns being driven out of the camp in straitjacket is followed by a close-up of a geyser of blood erupting from a wounded soldier’s throat. It’s a jarring transition but one that makes a stronger anti-war statement than any self-righteous monologue would have. While Hawkeye and Trapper are taunting Burns and Margaret, soldiers are still being sent off to die.
The humor in M*A*S*H is often brutally misogynistic. Margaret is described as being “a damn good nurse” but is continually humiliated because she believes in maintaining military discipline. One can disagree with her emphasis on following all of the proper regulations while also realizing the Hawkeye and Trapper’s treatment of her is unreasonably cruel. The scene where Trapper and Hawkeye expose her while she’s taking a shower is especially difficult to watch and there’s no way to justify their actions. It’s frat boy humor, the type of stuff that you would expect from a bunch of former college football players, which is what we’re told Hawkeye and Trapper are. (That, of course, is another huge difference between the film and television versions of the characters.) That said, it’s debatable whether or not were supposed to find either Hawkeye or Trapper to be heroic or even likable. As a director, Robert Altman shied away from making films with unambiguous heroes or villains. Just as Margaret could be a “damn good nurse” and a “regular army clown” at the same time, Hawkeye can be both a dedicated doctor and a bit of a jerk.
After 90 minutes of bloody operating room scenes and Trapper and Hawkeye making crude jokes, M*A*S*H suddenly becomes a sports film as the the 4077th plays a football game against their rivals, the 325th Evac Hospital. The change of tone can be a bit jarring but it’s perhaps the most important sequence in the film. For a few hours, the doctors bring “the American way of life” to Korea and the end result is a game that’s played for money and which is only won through cheating and deception. (Future blaxploitation star Fred Williamson made his film debut as the ringer who the 4077th recruits for the game.) For all of the broad comedy of the game, it’s followed by a shot of the doctors playing poker while a dead soldier is transported out of the camp, wrapped in a white sheet. Football may provided a distraction. The money may have provided an incentive. But the war continued and people still died.
Much of M*A*S*H‘s humor has aged terribly but the performances still hold up and the anti-war message is potent today. Though Sutherland and Gould are undeniably the stars of the film, M*A*S*H is a true ensemble film, full of the overlapping dialogue and the small character performances that Robert Altman’s films were known for. One reason why the film works is because it is an immersive experience, the viewer truly does feel as if they’ve been dropped in the middle of an operating field hospital. Though Hawkeye and Trapper may be at the center of the action, every character, from the camp’s colonel to the lowliest private, seems to have their own story playing out. This a film where paying attention to the little things happening in the background is often more rewarding than paying attention to the main action. I particularly liked the performances of David Arkin as the obsequies Staff Sergeant Vollmer and Bud Cort as Pvt. Warren Boone. Boone, especially, seems to have an interesting story going on in the background. The viewer just has to keep an eye out for him. Also be sure to keep an eye out for Rene Auberjonois, who reportedly improvised one of the film’s best-known lines when, after Margaret demands to know how Hawkeye reached a position of authority in the army medical corps, he deadpanned, “He was drafted.”
One of the first major studio films to be openly critical of the military and the war in Vietnam, M*A*S*H won the Palme d’Or, defeating films like Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion and The Strawberry Statement. Unlike many Palme winners, it was also a box office success in the United States. Though controversial, it received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. However, unlike the Cannes jury, the Academy decided to honor a different film about war, Patton.
The very first Cannes Film Festival was held in 1946. (The festival was originally schedule to debut in 1939 but the start of World War II put those plans on hold.) 45 films from 18 nations were entered into competition and, when it came time to announce that winner of the Grand Prix (which later became known as the Palme d’Or), the result was a tie. With the number of films competing, that’s not surprising. In fact, there have been many ties over the history of Cannes. What is surprising is that the tie was between a total of 11 films: Brief Encounter, Hets, The Last Chance, The Lost Weekend, Men Without Wings, Neecha Nagar, Red Meadows, Rome Open City, La symphonie pastorale, Velikiy perelom, and Maria Candelaria.
Last night, Jeff and I watched Maria Candelaria on YouTube.
Directed by Emilo Fernandez (who many consider to be the father of the Mexican film industry), the majority of Maria Candelaria takes place in Mexico in 1909, shortly before the start of the Mexican Revolution. Delores del Rio plays Maria, an indigenous woman who is shunned by the people of her village because her mother was a prostitute. The corrupt and greedy store owner, Don Damian (Miguel Iclan), is entranced by Maria’s beauty and wants her for himself. However, Maria loves a poor but honest farmer named Lorenzo (Pedro Armendariz). Though Maria and Lorenzo want to get married, they find their efforts thwarted at every turn by the jealous Don Damian, with Damien going so far as to shoot the pig that Lorenzo was hoping to be able to sell to have the money to not only marry Maria but also to pay off a long-standing debt that he owed Damian. When Maria grows ill, Damian spitefully refuses to sell Lorenzo the medicine that she needs. When Lorenzo breaks into the store and attempts to steal it, he’s sent to prison. Now desperately needing money to get Lorenzo out of prison, Maria poses for a well-meaning painter (Alberto Galan). When the villagers find out that Maria is posing, a chain of events are unleashed that lead to tragedy.
After reading all of that, you may be wondering how many bad things can happen to one well-meaning and loving couple. Nothing seems to go right for Maria and Lorenzo over the course of this film but, at the same time, their love never falters. They remain innocent, regardless of how much they are wronged by the greedy Damian and judged by the hypocritical villagers. Though the film focuses more on melodrama and romance than politics, the pro-revolutionary message is easy to see. The Mexican Revolution, the film argues, had to be fought for the honor of people like Maria and Lorenzo.
It’s all a bit heavy-handed but it’s effectively directed and acted and it’s hard not to get caught up in a film that is so unapologetic about embracing the melodrama. Delores del Rio was a Hollywood starlet who, tiring of the stereotypical roles that she was being offered, returned to Mexico and made several films with Emilo Fernandez. She and Pedro Armendariz have a very real chemistry as Maria and Lorenzo and they both bring a certain world-weariness to their parts that prevents Maria and Lorenzo from becoming idealized stereotypes. Maria and Lorenzo may be optimistic and often naïve but they’re not fools. They know that life will never be easy. Visually, the film is full of striking images of the Mexican countryside, which Fernandez portrays as being slowly corrupted by the growth of civilization.
Maria Candelaria was a hit not only at Cannes but also in Mexico. It’s still regularly cited as one of the best movies to come out of Mexico’s film industry. Though she eventually tired of working with the moody Fernandez, del Rio would continue to appear in movies in both Mexico and Hollywood. Fernandez went on to spend several decades as Mexico’s most popular director, before eventually falling out of favor for Luis Bunuel. Today, most cineastes remember him for playing the evil General Mapache in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch.
With the Cannes film festival underway in France, I’ve decided to spend the next few days watching and reviewing some of the films that previously won the Festival’s top prize. In 1952, what would eventually become the Palme d’Or was known as Grand Prix du Festival International du Film and it was actually awarded to two separate films. One of those films was Renato Castellani’s Two Cents Worth of Hope. The other was Orson Welles’s adaptation of Othello.
Oh, Othello. Where to begin, with this well-made Shakespearean adaptation that, by today’s standards, many would consider to be problematic?
Othello is one of Welles’s most important films, not just because of its quality but also because it was one of the first films of his European exile. It was also the first Welles’s production to last for over a year. In this case, it took three years to finish filming Othello. As Welles himself often pointed out, one of the film’s key sequences began in Morocco but ended in Rome. Working with a low budget, Welles would take roles just to have enough money to shoot another few feet of film. (Reportedly, his salary for The Third Man went right into Othello.) Pieces of scenes would be filmed years apart, often with the actors speaking to the camera as opposed to another performer. Actors regularly became unavailable and were replaced. And yet somehow, Welles managed to edit all of the seemingly random bits and pieces into a coherent and frequently powerful film. Over the years, the chaotic production of Othello would become the norm for Welles and he would become as known for the films he was forced to abandon as he was for the films that he had made. But, in 1952, Welles’s perseverance and his determination to bring his vision to the screen were still appreciated and the Cannes jury, headed by author Maurice Genevoix, saw fit to honor his achievement.
At the same time, this is also the film in which the white Orson Welles played the Moor of Venice. Of course, in 1951, it was still pretty much a tradition that every Shakespearean would eventually play Othello and that he would wear dark make-up while doing so. Welles opts for a light bronzer, one that makes him appear to have a deep tan. While it’s undeniably jarring to see Orson Welles playing a North African, it’s still not quite as jarring as seeing what Laurence Olivier did in his Oscar-nominated version of the play.
Laurence Olivier’s Othello
Orson Welles’s Othello
I have to admit that I held off on seeing this film precisely because I didn’t want to watch a film featuring Orson Welles, a director who I greatly admire, in blackface. Many people are probably never going to see this film for precisely that reason and that’s certainly understandable. In the end, it’s a decision that everyone will have to make for themselves. That said, having watched the film, I can now say that Orson Welles gives one of his best performances as Othello, playing him as a brilliant warrior who knows that, because of his background, he will never be fully accepted by the people of Venice. They’ll expect him to fight their battles for him but, when he marries the white Desdemona (Suzanne Cloutier), he is still expected to prove that he’s not some sort of savage. In fact, the only thing that prevents him from being brought up on charges is that Venice needs him to fight in another battle. Being a permanent outsider leaves Othello open to the manipulations of the evil Iago (Michael Mac Liammor), who pretends to be a friend but who instead views everyone around him with contempt and jealousy. Welles captures Othello’s anger but also his emotional vulnerability. As a permanent outsider, Othello is so used to being betrayed that it doesn’t take much from Iago to push him over the edge.
Welles directs the film like a film noir, filling the screen with menacing shadows and framing the film’s tragic finale like a horror film. He makes the film’s low-budget works to its advantage. As opposed to the grandeur that one normally associates with Shakespeare, there’s a seediness to the locations in Welles’s version of Othello. As Othello’s jealousy and paranoia grows, Venice itself appears to become more cluttered and cramped. It’s as if the viewer is seeing the location through Othello’s eyes, a once imposing city that, with each little secret or lie, edges closer to death. As both a director and an adapter of Shakespeare’s original text, Welles tells the entire story of Othello in less than 90 minutes, a pace that reflects Othello’s quick decent into irrational paranoia.
Admittedly, it’s not a perfect film. Mac Liammor was reportedly the best Irish stage actor of his time but his inexperience with film acting is obvious and it makes him a less than ideal Iago. Traditionally, Othello is usually dominated by whichever actor plays the role of Iago, as it’s Iago who pushes the story forward and narrates the action. However, Welles removes the moments when Iago narrates and speaks to the audience. Welles gives us an Othello that is clearly about the title character and this production is less interested in the reasons behind Iago’s betrayal than in what happens to Othello as a result. (Othello becomes yet another Welles film that is ultimately about the importance of friendship and loyalty.) Not surprisingly, with the film firmly centered on Welles’s performance, the rest of the cast struggles to make as strong of an impression. Only Suzanne Cloutier, cast as Desdemona, manages to give a performance that escapes from Welles’s shadow.
At Cannes, Othello defeated, among others, An American In Paris, Detective Story, Umberto D., and Viva Zapata. As often happened with Welles’s later films, it didn’t get much of an initial release in America but it has since been rediscovered by film connoisseurs. Needless to say, the Criterion release is the one to check out.
With the Cannes Film Festival underway in France, I decided that I would spend the next few days watching and reviewing some of the previous winners of the Palme d’Or. Today, I got things started with the 1991 winner, Barton Fink.
Directed by the Coen Brothers and taking place in the mythological Hollywood of 1941, Barton Fink tells the story of a writer. Played by John Turturro, Barton Fink is a playwright who has just had a big hit on Broadway. We don’t see much of the play. In fact, we only hear the final few lines. “No,” one the actors says, in exaggerated “common man” accent, “it’s early.” From what we hear of the reviews and from Barton himself, it seems obvious that the play is one of those dreary, social realist plays that were apparently all the rage in the late 30s. Think Waiting for Lefty. Think Hand That Rocks The Cradle. Think of the Group Theater and all of the people that Elia Kazan would later name as having been communists. These plays claimed to tell the stories of the people who couldn’t afford to see a Broadway production.
Barton considers himself to be the voice of the common man, an advocate for the working class. He grandly brags that he doesn’t write for the money or the adulation. He writes to give a voice to the voiceless. When his agent tells him that Capitol Pictures wants to put Barton under contract, Barton resists. His agent assures Barton that the common man will still be around when Barton returns from Hollywood. There might even be a few common people in California! “That’s a rationalization,” Barton argues. “Barton,” his agent replies with very real concern, “it was a joke.” Barton, we quickly realize, does not have a sense of humor and that’s always a huge problem for anyone who finds themselves in a Coen Brothers film.
In Hollywood, Barton meets the hilariously crass Jack Lipnik (Oscar-nominated Michael Lerner). Lipnik is the head of Capitol Pictures and he is sure that Barton can bring that “Barton Fink feeling” to a Wallace Beery wrestling picture. Barton has never wrestled. He’s never even seen a film. The great toast of Broadway finds himself sitting in a decrepit hotel room with peeling wallpaper. He stares at his typewriter. He writes three or four lines and then …. nothing. He meets his idol, Faulknerish writer W.P. Mayhew (John Mahoney), and discovers that Mayhew is a violent drunk and that most his recent work was actually written by his “secretary,” Audrey (Judy Davis). He seeks help from producer Ben Geisler (Tony Shalhoub), who cannot understand why Barton is having such a difficult time writing what should be a very simple movie. Barton sits in his hotel room and waits for inspiration that refuses to come.
He also gets to know Charlie Meadow (John Goodman). Charlie is Barton’s neighbor. Charlie explains that he’s an insurance agent but he really sells is “peace of mind.” At first, Barton seems to be annoyed with Charlie but soon, Barton finds himself looking forward to Charlie’s visits. Charlie always brings a little bottle of whiskey and a lot of encouragement. Charlie assures Barton that he’ll get the script written. Barton tells Charlie that he wants to write movies and plays about “people like you.” Charlie shows Barton a wrestling move. Barton tells Charlie to visit his family if he’s ever in New York. Charlie tells Barton, “I could tell you some stories” but he never really gets the chance because Barton is usually too busy talking about his ambitions to listen. Charlie tells Barton, “Where there’s a head, there’s hope,” a phrase that takes on a disturbing double meaning as the film progresses. Just as Barton isn’t quite the class warrior that he believes himself to be, Charlie isn’t quite what he presents himself to be either. Still, in the end, Charlie is far more honest about who he is than Barton could ever hope to be.
When it comes to what Barton Fink is actually about, it’s easy to read too much into it. The Coens themselves have said as much, saying that some of the film’s most debated elements don’t actually have any deeper meaning beyond the fact that they found them to be amusing at the time. At its simplest, Barton Fink is a film about writer’s block. Anyone who has ever found themselves struggling to come up with an opening line will be able to relate to Barton staring at that nearly blank page and they will also understand why Barton comes to look forward to Charlie visiting and giving him an excuse not to write. It’s a film about the search for inspiration and the fear of what that inspiration could lead to. Towards the end of the film, Barton finds himself entrusted with a box that could contain his worst fears or which could cpntain nothing at all. There’s nothing to stop Barton from opening the box but he doesn’t and it’s easy to understand why. To quote another Coen Brothers film, “Embrace the mystery.”
There’s plenty of other theories about what exactly is going on in Barton Fink but, as I said before, I think it’s easy to overthink things. The Coens have always been stylists and sometimes, the style is the point. That said, I do think that it can be argued that Barton Fink’s mistake was that he allowed himself to think that he was important than he actually was. Self-importance is perhaps the one unforgivable sin in the world of the Coen Brothers. Like most Coen films, Barton Fink takes place in a universe that is ruled by chaos and the random whims of fate. Barton’s mistake was thinking that he could understand or tame that chaos through his art or his politics. Barton’s mistake is that he tries to rationalize and understand a universe that is irrational and incapable of being explained. He’s a self-declared storyteller who refuses to listen to the stories around him because those stories might challenge what he considers to be the “life of the mind.”
Barton Fink is a film that people either seem to love or they seem to hate. Barton, himself, is not always a particularly likable character and the Coens seem to take a very definite joy in finding ways to humiliate him. Fortunately, Barton is played by John Turturro, an actor who has the ability to find humanity in even the most obnoxious of characters. (As obnoxious as Barton can be, it’s hard not to want to embrace him when he awkwardly but energetically dances at a USO club.) Turturro has great chemistry with John Goodman, who gives one of his best performances as Charlie. It’s putting it lightly to say that most viewers will have mixed feelings about Charlie but the film makes such great use of Goodman’s natural likability that it’s only on a second or third viewing that you realize that all of Charlie’s secrets were pretty much out in the open from the start. Michael Lerner deserved his Oscar nomination but certainly Goodman deserved one as well. The rest of the cast is full of Coen Brothers regulars, including Jon Polito as Lerner’s obsequies assistant and Steve Buscemi as Chet, the very friendly front deskman. And finally, I have to mention Christopher Murney and Richard Portnow, who play two of the worst cops ever and who deliver their hardboiled dialogue with just the right mix of menace and parody.
Barton Fink won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, defeating such films as Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever and Lars Von Trier’s Europa. It also won awards for the Coens and for John Turturro. It’s perhaps not a film for everyone but it’s one that holds up well and which continues to intiruge. Don’t just watch it once. This isn’t a film that can fully appreciated by just one viewing. This isn’t a Wallace Beery wrestling picture. This is Barton Fink!
Usually, I am inevitably seem to end up spending Friday the 13th up at the Lake, sitting out on the deck of the lake house and suspiciously looking over at the nearby woods for movement. This week, however, I’m spending Friday the 13th at home so I should be safe!
(For the record, the Lake is next week.)
Anyway, everyone knows that Tuesday the 13th is a far more dangerous day than Friday the 13th but, for whatever reason, Friday the 13th is what gets all the attention. In fact, I’ve written several posts all about Friday the 13th. Here they are, for your reading enjoyment:
Anyway, have a good Friday the 13th! I would tell you to stay out of the woods but …. you know what? We, as a society, need to be willing to take more chances. So, go into the woods. Skinny dip in the lake. Ignore the signs that say stay out. Make love in a deserted cabin. Smoke weed at the deserted summer camp. Laugh at the camp fire stories about Jason. Strip down to your underwear and then wander around in the rain as if that’s the most sensible thing that you’ve ever done. Yes, Jason might get you. But you also might have a lot of fun. It’s worth the risk.
Believe it or not, Gasoline Alley is not that bad.
Don’t get me wrong. Gasoline Alley is definitely a pulpy film. The plot is full of twists and turns and it doesn’t always hang together. There’s more than a few holes to be found in the story. There’s also a few threads that are left hanging. Much as in real life, characters appear and then disappear almost at random. In many ways, the film plays out like a dream, a jumbled mix of concerns and ideas and images. The viewer is often left to figure out how to fit everything together on their own. Obviously, that type of approach won’t appeal to everyone but, for me, it was the perfect way to tell the film’s story. The world of Gasoline Alley often doesn’t make sense but neither does the world outside of your window. Gasoline Alley‘s mystery often feels like a jigsaw puzzle where someone has jammed pieces randomly into each square and then pounded on them until they managed to fit in the slots. It’s chaos but it’s an appropriate approach for a film that takes place in a chaotic world.
Gasoline Alley also one of the final films that Bruce Willis made before his retirement and, with all the rumors about whether or not Willis was pushed into spending the last few years of his career appearing in low-budget and B-movies, it’s often undeniably awkward to watch him in his final films. As is the case with almost all of Willis’s recent films, he doesn’t get much screen time in Gasoline Alley. He’s only in a handful of scenes and his dialogue is limited and delivered in a flat monotone. He plays a key character but much of what the character does and says occurs off-screen and is described to us second-hand. And yet, at the same time, Willis still has enough natural presence that his performance works as far as the basic needs of the film are concerned. He’s playing a character who is meant to be intimidating and Willis still has enough of that tough guy energy that his performance is effective.
Willis plays a homicide detective named Freeman. Freeman and his partner, Vargas (Luke Wilson), are investigating the murder of four prostitutes and their number one suspect is a tattoo artist named Jimmy Jayne (Devon Sawa). Jimmy’s father was a decorated police detective. His mother was a prostitute. Jimmy spent several years in prison for assault, though Jimmy claims that he was simply acting in self-defense. (“He came at me with a screwdriver,” Jimmy says, without further elaboration.) While he was in prison, Jimmy befriended an actor who was doing time for DUI. Having been released, Jimmy is now the tattoo artist to the stars. He has his own tattoo parlor, called Gasoline Alley. Because one of the murdered women was found with one of Jimmy’s personalized lighters on her body, Jimmy is a suspect. Jimmy, however, claims that he merely met her in a bar.
Jimmy starts to investigate the murders on his own and it quickly becomes clear that he’s a better investigator than either of the detectives who are on the case. Though Jimmy is trying to clear his name, he’s also determined to get justice for the murdered women, all four of whom appear to him as either ghosts or drug-induced hallucinations at a key moment in the film. Jimmy’s investigation leads him into the world of human trafficking, police corruption, and the darkest corners of the film industry. Indeed, one of Gasoline Alley‘s major points seems to be that everyone in Hollywood is corrupt. The actor who Jimmy saved in prison is a pretentious loser who, at one point, goes off on a rant that was obviously based on Christian Bale’s infamous Terminator meltdown. Meanwhile, the adult film industry is represented by a sleazy director who snorts cocaine, tells bad jokes, and throws parties that are almost exclusively populated by crooked cops. As one cop puts it, “He knows whose lives matter.”
Gasoline Alley has gotten terrible reviews but I think those reviews have more to do with the fact that this is a low-budget Bruce Willis flick than the film itself. Gasoline Alley is actually not bad at all. It’s an entertaining work of pulp fiction, a quickly-paced film that takes a look at how life is lived and lost in the shadows of “decent” society. Because he’s an ex-con, Jimmy is destined to be an outcast, regardless of how many stars come to him for their tattoos. But, at the same time, it’s Jimmy’s outcast status that allows him to infiltrate and understand the dark side of Los Angeles. It’s because Jimmy’s an outcast that he’s determined to get justice for the victims that respectable society would rather just ignore. Director Edward Drake fills the movie with images of neon-suffused decadence. The atmosphere may be sleazy but it’s also undeniably plausible. Luke Wilson does a good job playing Willis’s talkative partner but the film is stolen by Devon Sawa, who brings a mix of weary dignity and righteous fury to the role of Jimmy. Sawa has been through his own well-publicized troubles and perhaps that’s why he seems to instinctively understand why it’s so important that Jimmy not only clear his name but also get justice for those who have been victimized in the shadows. As played by Sawa, Jimmy is cynical and often tired but he still hasn’t given up his desire to make the world a better place.
No, Gasoline Alley is not a bad film at all. Instead, it’s a portrait of a harsh world and a look at the people who are simply trying to make it from one day to the next. Much like Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly, Gasoline Alley is a journey through a brutal world where people get what they want at the cost of their own souls. It’s a film that, like many of the classic B-movies and film noirs of the 40s and 50s, will be rediscovered and better appreciated in the future.
Today, we celebrate May Day with this short film from 1974. A Good Days Work: Selling is all about how exciting it is to work in a fish market. I guess these film were made so that children in school could mentally prepare for the careers that were ahead of them and, indeed, I imagine a few kids in 1974 probably grew up to work in a New England fish market.
Anyway, I find this short film to be kind of moody and …. I don’t know, weird. The grainy images and the voyeuristic children are, to be honest, kind of unsettling. There’s a lot of ennui to be found in this film. Though it’s not the film’s fault, it’s hard to watch anything that was filmed in New England without expecting some sort of weird Stephen King thing to start happening. But, at the same time, it also taught children about fish markets so I guess that’s a good thing.
Through the Shattered Lens 