4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
On this day, 110 years ago, Martin Ritt was born in New York City. Like many of the Hollywood directors who came to prominence in the 1950s, he started his directorial career in the theater before moving over to live TV. In 1952, his television career was derailed when he was accused of being a communist. Blacklisted, it would be five years before Ritt could get another directing job. When he did start to work again, he moved from television into the movies, starting with 1957’s Edge of the City. Perhaps due to his own experiences, his films always had a social conscience and always defended the individual against corrupt corporations and governments. In 1976, he directed one of the first films about the Hollywood blacklist, The Front.
As a director, Ritt was known for his skill with actors. More than anyone, he played a huge role in making stars out of both Paul Newman and Sally Field. He was also one of the few directors to understand how to harness Richard Burton’s self-destructive tendencies and, as a result, Burton gave one of his best performances in Ritt’s adaptation of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.
It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Martin Ritt Films
Hud (1963, dir by Martin Ritt, DP: James Wong Howe)
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1965, dir by Martin Ritt, DP: Oswald Morris)
The Front (1976, dir by Martin Ritt, DP: Michael Chapman)
Nuts (1987, dir by Martin Ritt, DP: Andrzej Bartkowiak)
4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films is just what it says it is, 4 (or more) shots from 4 (or more) of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films lets the visuals do the talking.
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to the one and only Martin Scorsese! It’s time for….
6 Shots From 6 Martin Scorsese Films
Taxi Driver (1976, dir by Martin Scorsese, DP: Michael Chapman)
Goodfellas (1990, dir by Martin Scorsese, DP: Michael Ballhaus)
Casino (1995, dir by Martin Scorsese, DP: Robert Richardson)
Shutter Island (2010, dir by Martin Scorsese, DP: Robert Richardson)
Hugo (2011, dir by Martin Scorsese, DP: Robert Richardson)
The Irishman (2019, dir by Martin Scorsese, DP: Rodrigo Prieto)
The 1993 action film, Private Wars, tells the story of a neighborhood, a big evil businessman, and one drunk private investigator who likes to shoot things.
The big evil businessman is Alexander Winters (played by Stuart Whitman). Winters is so evil that he probably spends at least three hours every night practicing his smirk. He’s the type who will plot someone’s death and then laugh about it just to make sure that it’s understood that he’s totally evil. Winters wants to build a new business complex but there’s a neighborhood sitting on the land that he wants to use and no one’s willing to move.
However, Winters has a plan to bring about change. If the people in the neighborhood won’t move voluntarily, he’ll just make them flee for their lives. Winters pays off some local gangs to create trouble in the neighborhood. Soon, stores are exploding and windows are getting broken and obscene graffiti is showing up on walls. Everyone in the neighborhood keeps going to the community center and debating what to do. You have to wonder why the gangs are wasting their time vandalizing storefronts when they could have just blown up the community center and taken out every who was in their way.
Eventually, the community decides to hire someone to teach them how to defend themselves. After auditioning a series of ninjas and other wannabe soldiers of fortune, the community hires Jack Manning (Steve Railsback). Why do they hire Jack Manning? Well, he’s a friend of one of the community leaders. He’s also an alcoholic who shoots his car whenever the engine starts giving him trouble. How exactly anyone could look at Jack — who is not only almost always drunk but also a bit on the short and scrawny side — and think that he could protect the neighborhood is an interesting question that the film doesn’t really explore.
Anyway, the community is soon fighting back, which turns out to be a lot easier than anyone imagined. Eventually, Jack ends up in jail as a result of Winters’s corruption but fortunately, it’s while in jail that Jack meets a few guys who all have mullets and who all come back to the neighborhood to help Jack out when a bunch of ninjas try to take over the streets. Winters may have ninjas but Jack has a bunch of petty criminals who look they’re all heading to a hockey game in Toronto. It’s a fair fight.
To be honest, the main thing that I will always remember about Private Wars was just how unnecessary Jack eventually turned out to be. For all the money that he was apparently being paid, he really doesn’t do much. I guess he does teach people in the neighborhood the techniques of self-defense but the film is so haphazardly edited that it’s hard to be sure of that. It’s entirely possible that everyone already knew how to fight but they were just hoping Jack would do it for them. Watching the film, it’s easy to get the feeling that the folks in the community center took one look at Jack and said, “Well, shit …. I guess we gotta do this ourselves.” Even the final confrontation between Jack and Winters is resolved by a third character. Imagine Roadhouse if Patrick Swayze spent the whole movie sitting at the bar and you have an idea what Private Wars is like.
Private Wars is really silly but, possibly for that very reason, it’s also occasionally fun in its own stupid way. If nothing else, Stuart Whitman and Steve Railsback appeared to be enjoying themselves. The movie’s on YouTube. I watched it last Monday as a part of the #MondayActionMovie live tweet and I enjoyed myself.
How did you spend your Labor Day weekend? Me, I spent it visiting with my family down at my uncle’s place. Sunday afternoon, I was laying out by the pool and listening to my cousins Peter Paul and Paul Peter have a conversation. (And yes, I do call both of them “Paulie.”) They were talking about the Dallas Cowboys and I have to admit that I could not understand a word that they were saying. It was like attending a Latin Mass, in that all I could do was hope that I was nodding at the right moment. I can’t help it. Football goes right over my head. I know that the players are trying to score touchdowns and I know that whenever fall and winter come around, everyone I know is going to be complaining about the Cowboys. But that’s it. (I also know that, what we in America call soccer, the rest of the world calls football. But, to be honest, I really don’t care.) Football talk might as well be a secret language.
However, I’m clearly in the minority as far as that’s concerned. America loves football and so does Texas. (Yes, I do consider my home state to be its own independent nation. Take that, Vermont.) And the American film industry has a long tradition of making movies — like All The Right Moves — about football.
In All The Right Moves, Tom Cruise plays Stefan Djordjevic. Stefan lives in a poor town in Pennsylvania and happens to be one of the stars of the Ampipe High School football team. And that’s a pretty good thing because this town is obsessed with football. The proud Coach Nickerson (Craig T. Nelson) is under constant pressure to win and Nickerson responds by pushing all of his players. However, it finally looks like his approach is going to pay for both him and Stefan. Nickerson is being considered for a college coaching job. Meanwhile, Stefan has a chance to get a scholarship to play football in college. Interestingly, Stefan’s ambition is not to play professional football. Instead, he wants to go to a good college so he can get an engineering degree. Stefan’s main fear is to end up like everyone else in the town, working in a steel mill and not having any way to escape from a life of poverty.
All The Right Moves starts out as a standard sports film but, halfway through, it takes an unexpected turn. Ampipe High plays a game against their main rival, Walnut Heights High School. This is the big game. This is the game that most sports movies end with. This is the game that you watch knowing that Nickerson and Stefan will overcome their differences (Nickerson is stubborn, Stefan is cocky) and that they will manage to narrowly win.
Except, of course, Ampipe doesn’t win. As the result of a last minute mistake, Ampipe loses their lead and they lose the big game. Nickerson yells at the team in the locker room. Stefan yells back and Nickerson kicks him off the team. Suddenly, Stefan finds himself with no future. And Nickerson finds himself and his family being targeted by the angry, football-crazed citizens of the town…
For a football movie, All The Right Moves is actually pretty good. Of course, it’s not really about football. It’s about the desperation of people who have found themselves trapped in a cycle of poverty and how something as seemingly inconsequential as the high school football team can become an entire town’s life. It’s about how two stubborn men — Stefan and Nickerson — allow their own fear of being trapped to keep them from thinking and acting rationally.
The film is also distinguished by good performances from Tom Cruise (who, in the same year, would play a much different high school senior in Risky Business), Craig T. Nelson, and Chris Penn (who plays Stefan’s best friend on the team). However, the film’s best performance comes from Lea Thompson, who is so good in the role of Lisa, Stefan’s girlfriend, that you can’t help but wish that the film had been more about her than him. In probably the film’s best scene, she calls out Stefan for being selfish and points out that, regardless of what happens in Stefan’s future, she’s going to be stuck in the town that he’s so desperate to escape from. The scene where she and Stefan make love is sensitively handled and it also features a split-second or so of Tom Cruise full front nudity.
Through the Shattered Lens 