Tag Archives: Paul Newman

Film Review: Fort Apache, The Bronx (dir by Daniel Petrie)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Fort Apache, The Bronx.

Shot on location, the 1981 film of the same name takes place in one of the toughest police precincts in New York City.  The film opens with a prostitute (Pam Grier) walking up to a police car in the middle of the night and promptly gunning down the two cops inside.  (The scene emphasis on the blood splattering in the squad car makes it all the more disturbing and frightening.)  As soon as the cops are dead, people come out of the shadows and immediately start going through their pockets, collecting everything that they can.

Why were the cops killed?  There is no real motive, beyond Grier’s prostitute being high on drugs and enjoying the kill.  Indeed, we know from the start that Grier is the killer but the cops investigating the case continually ignore her, despite the fact that she’s always wandering around in the background.  (Grier is perfectly frightening in the nearly silent role.)  The new captain of the precinct, a by-the-book type named Dennis Connolly (Ed Asner), assumes that the killing must have been an organized assassination and he is soon ordering his cops to arrest and interrogate almost anyone that they see.  If someone jaywalks, Connolly wants them in the back of a squad car so that they can be interrogated.  He offers to give the men two weeks of extra vacation time for every lead that they find.  When veteran detective John Joseph Vincent Murphy III (Paul Newman) says that the reward is going to do more damage than good, Connolly dismisses his concerns.  Connolly is convinced that he knows how to run the precinct.  He views the people who live in the Bronx as being enemies who have to be tamed and controlled.  Murphy, who comes from a long line of cops, believes in working with the community as opposed to going strictly by the book.

It’s an episodic film, following Murphy and his partner, Corelli (Ken Wahl), as they try to keep the peace in a neighborhood full of empty lots, abandoned buildings, and horrific poverty.  (The film is all the more effective for having actually been shot on location.  Looking at the scenery in which everyone is living and working, it’s easy to understand why tempers get so easily frayed.)  Corelli is ambitious.  Murphy is cynical.  When Murphy meets a nurse (Rachel Ticotin), it seems like love at first sight.  They’re both survivors of the toughest city in America.  But the nurse has a secret of her own.  There’s a lot of stories that are told in Fort Apache, The Bronx but few of them have a happy ending.

It’s an effective film, though the structure is occasionally a bit too loose and the generic “cop music” on the soundtrack sometimes makes it seem as if the viewer is watching a cop show on one of the nostalgia channels.  The film works because it allows the Bronx itself to be as important a character as the cops played by Newman, Asner, and Wahl.  There’s a grittiness to the film that overcomes even the occasional melodramatic moment.  In the end, the film suggests that, while cops come and go, the precinct will always remain the same.  Killing two drug dealers just allows two more to move in.  Reporting on a bad cop, like the one played in the film by Danny Aiello, will only lead to the ostracization of a good cop.  To the film’s credit, neither Newman nor Asner are portrayed as being totally correct or totally wrong in their different approaches to police work.  Newman is correct about Asner’s heavy-handed tactics creating mistrust and resentment in the community.  Asner, however, has a point when he says that a cop killer cannot be allowed to go unpunished.

Paul Newman gives a great performance as Murphy, a role that a lesser actor would have turned into a cliche.  Murphy is the latest in a long line of cops and he’s on the verge of abandoning the family business.  Newman does a good job of portraying not only Murphy’s burnout but also how his affair with the nurse briefly inspires him to believe that he still might actually be able to make a difference in the world.  The film ends on an ambiguous note, one that leaves you with the impression that Murphy couldn’t stop being a cop if he tried.  The job may be burning him out but it’s still the only thing he knows.

Fort Apache, The Bronx is not an easy movie to find.  Though it did well at the box office (and reportedly inspired shows like Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue), the film was also controversial because of the way the Bronx was portrayed.  While it’s not currently streaming or even available to rent on any of the major sites, I did find a good, age-restricted upload on YouTube.  Look for it before someone takes it down.

Film Review: Winning (dir by James Goldstone)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1969’s Winning, Paul Newman plays a race car driver.

That’s certainly not a surprise.  Newman was very much a fan of racing and owned a few race cars himself.  In Winning, he looks totally comfortable and believable behind the wheel.  There’s not a moment that you look at Paul Newman and think to yourself that he couldn’t be exactly who he’s playing, a very successful and very ambitious race car driver.  At its best, the film is a visual love letter to the sport of racing and the thrill of driving fast.  When Newman is on that track, Winning is an exciting film.

Unfortunately, Winning doesn’t spend nearly enough time on the track.  Instead, we spend way too much time examining the bad marriage of Frank (Paul Newman) and Elora Capua (Joanne Woodward).  Frank meets Eulora at a car rental place, where she’s working behind the counter.  After a whirlwind romance, they get married and Frank becomes a stepfather to Elora’s annoyingly sensitive son, Charley (Richard Thomas).  (The film doesn’t necessarily mean for Charley to be annoying but he most definitely is.)  Still, Frank remains obsessed with winning.  He remains so obsessed with winning that Elora has an affair with Lou Erding (Robert Wagner), another race car driver.  With his marriage in shambles, Frank throws himself into preparing for the Indianapolis 500.

Winning is very much a film of the late 60s.  There’s really not much of a story so the film tries to get by on frequent jump cuts, intentionally skewed camera angles, and frequent montages.  It’s one of those American films that desperately wants to be mistaken for the type of movies that were coming out of Europe at the time.  I tried to count all of the jump cuts during the first few minutes of the film and I quickly gave up.  While there’s nothing wrong with a good jump cut, the frequent cuts in Winning feel more like an affectation than anything else.  Basically, someone in production said, “The kids like jump cuts so toss them in whether they’re necessary or not.”  The film’s attempt to be arty only further serve to remind us that there’s very little actually going on.

Paul Newman had charisma to burn and, in Winning, he looks like he’s enjoying himself whenever he’s behind the wheel.  The marriage of Newman and Woodward was one of Hollywood’s great love stories but that doesn’t come across in the marriage for Frank and Elora.  A lot of that is because there’s really not much that can be said about who Elora.  She’s a blank.  Paul Newman had the screen presence and the cool confidence to get away with playing an underwritten character.  Woodward, however, can’t overcome the shallow script.  (Though Robert Wagner was nowhere near as good an actor as either Newman or Woodward, he has the right look for the role and his stiff line delivery actually works well for the character.  For whatever reason, Wagner often seemed to do his best work in Paul Newman films.)

Really, I shouldn’t be surprised that Winning turned out to be stylish but empty.  The film was directed by James Goldstone, who also directed the painfully portentous Sidney Poitier-as-Jesus film, Brother John.  Eventually, Goldstone straightened up and gave us enjoyably bad films like Rollercoaster and When Time Ran Out.  Newman is in When Time Ran Out as well.  Just as with Winning, he’s the best thing in the movie.  That’s one of the benefits of being one of the great actors.  Even when they’re appearing in a less-than-impressive film, you just can’t stop watching them.

 

Film Review: Hud (dir by Martin Ritt)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1963’s Hud, Paul Newman plays a monster named Hud.

Hud Bannon is the son of rancher Homer Bannon (Melvyn Douglas).  Hud lives in a small Texas town, where he’s known for his pink Cadillac, his heavy-drinking, and his womanizing.  When we first meet him, he’s leaving the home of a married woman and narrowly escaping the rage of her husband.  Throughout the film, he mentions that he’s heading into town to meet “Mrs.” So-and-So.  Hud’s father fears that Hud might be incapable of caring about anyone but himself.  Hud’s nephew, Lonnie (Brandon deWilde), at first looks up to Hud but, over the course of the film, he comes to see his uncle for who he truly is.  Though Hud is quick to defend Homer from others, he himself views Homer with contempt and even plots to have the old man declared incompetent so that he can take over the ranch.  His flirtation with the family housekeeper, Alma (Patricia Neal), soon crosses the line into something much more dangerous.  Hud is charming and handsome in the way that only a 30-something Paul Newman could be.  But he’s also a complete monster.

In Hud, Newman gave one of his best performances and director Martin Ritt and cinematographer James Wong Howe captured some haunting images of the most barren parts of the Texas panhandle.  Howe’s black-and-white imagery not only captures the harsh landscape but also the harsh outlook of the people who live there.  Hud’s ruthless personality as is much a product of the demands of the land as his own narcissism.  The characters in Hud live in a land that doesn’t allow sentimentality.  It’s a land that’s allowed Hud to become the monster that he is.

At least, that’s the way that Paul Newman saw Hud.  That was also the way that the film’s director, Martin Ritt, viewed Hud.  They viewed him as being about as villainous and unlikable as a character could be but, to Newman’s surprise, audiences actually walked out of the film embracing the character and making excuses for him.  Newman was shocked to learn that teenagers were putting posters of him as Hud on their walls.

Why did viewers embrace Hud?

Some of it is due to the fact that Brandon deWilde gives a remarkably bland performance as Lonny.  We first see Hud through Lonny’s eyes and we are meant to share Lonny’s growing disillusionment with his uncle.  But Lonny comes across as being such an empty-headed character that it’s hard to really get emotionally invested in his coming-of-age.  When Hud eventually dismisses Lonny and his concerns, Lonny really can’t defend himself because there’s not much going on inside of Lonny.  On the other hand, Paul Newman gives such a charismatic performance as Hud that we find ourselves continually making excuses for his bad behavior.  When he talks about how he was raised and his difficult relationship with his father, we have sympathy for him even though we know we shouldn’t.  The viewer makes excuses for Hud because that’s what we tend to do when it comes to charismatic bad boys who don’t follow the rules.

Indeed, Hud is proof of the power of charisma and screen presence.  As a character, Hud does some truly terrible things and yet, because he’s Paul Newman, we want to forgive him.  We want to try to figure out why someone who is so handsome and so charismatic would also be so angry.  Lonny may be the “good” character but Hud is the one who we want to get to know.  When Lonny flips through a paperback to read the sex scenes, he comes across as being creepy.  When a drunk Hud flirts with a woman who he has just met, we ask ourselves what we would do if Hud ever tried that with us.  The truth is that we all know what we would do.  That’s what makes Hud both a dangerous and an intriguing character.

In the end, Hud is an excellent film that features Paul Newman at his best and which uses the downfall of Homer’s ranch as a metaphor for a changing American society.  Though Hud was  not nominated for Best Picture, it was nominated for almost everything else.  Melvyn Douglas and Patricia Neal won acting Oscars.  James Wong Howe’s cinematography was also honored.  Paul Newman was nominated and perhaps would have won if not for the fact that Sidney Poitier was nominated for playing the exact opposite of Hud in Lilies of the Field.  Hud was meant to be a picture about Lonny discovering his uncle was a monster.  Instead, the film became about Hud’s refusal to compromise.  It turns out that people like good-looking rebels who do what they want.

Even if viewers missed the point, Hud was one of the best films of the early 60s and Paul Newman’s powerful performance continues to intrigue.

 

 

Film Review: Paris Blues (dir by Martin Ritt)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

1961’s Paris Blues tells the story of four Americans in Paris.

Ram (Paul Newman) and Eddie (Sidney Poitier) are expatriate jazz musicians.  Ram has come to Paris to try to find success as a musician.  He’s a little cocky.  He’s a little arrogant.  However, he’s talented and he believes enough in his talent that he takes it a little bit personally when he’s told that he should just focus on being a composer instead.  Eddie is Ram’s best friend and someone who has no interest in ever returning to America.  In America, he’s judged by the color of his skin.  In Paris, no one cares that he’s black.  In Paris, they just care about his talent.

Lillian (Joanne Woodward) and Connie (Diahann Carroll) are best friends who are spending two weeks in Paris.  They love jazz and eventually, Lillian comes to love Ram while Connie comes to love Eddie.  Connie tries to convince Eddie to marry her and come back to America with her but Eddie tells her that “the struggle” in America is not “my struggle.”  Ram also finds himself torn over whether he should stay in Paris or return to America with Lillian.  In the end, one man leaves and one man stays.  It’s not really much of a surprise who does what.

Paris Blues was directed by Martin Ritt, a director who had been blacklisted during the 50s and whose career was revived by several films that he made with Paul Newman.  (Newman and Joanne Woodward first met on the set of Ritt’s The Long Hot Summer.)  Ritt was one of those reliably liberal directors who made message films that dealt with political issues but were never quite radical.  Paris Blues features a lot of talk about the civil rights movement and it makes an attempt to be honest about why two Americans would chose to live in a different country.  And yet, as was so often the case with Martin Ritt’s films, the film presents itself as being far more daring than it actually is.  Yes, Ram initially hits on Connie but he loses interest once he sees Lillian.  Though the film is based on a novel that featured an interracial relationship, there’s never really any doubt that, in the film, Ram is going to end up with Lillian and Eddie is going to end up with Connie.  And while the film makes it clear that Ram and Lillian sleep together within hours of first meeting each other, the relationship between Connie and Eddie is romantic but chaste.  Paris Blues may be a mature film for 1961 but it’s still definitely a film of 1961.

That said, the music’s great (Louis Armstrong shows up to jam with Ram and Eddie) and Newman and Woodward’s chemistry is off the charts.  Ram is like a lot of the characters that Paul Newman played in the 50s and 60s.  He can be self-centered and he can be petulant and he can be self-destructive.  But he’s never less than honest and the fact that he refuses to compromise or give into self-doubt makes him very appealing.  While Poitier struggles with a script that refuses to allow him too much personality (he’s affably pleasant, even when he’s explaining why he doesn’t want to live in America), Newman dominates the film in the role of an artist determined to share his vision.

Paris Blues is never the masterpiece that it tries to be but Paul Newman makes it more than worth watching.

Pocket Money (1972, directed by Stuart Rosenberg)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In this slow but amiable film, Paul Newman plays Jim Kane.  Kane is a down-on-his luck cowboy who finds himself in Arizona with nearly a dollar to his name.  Because Kane’s a likable sort, he has people who are willing to help him out but eventually, he finds himself with no choice but to accept a job offer from Stretch Russell (Wayne Rogers) and shady rancher Bill Garrett (Strother Martin).  Kane agrees to Mexico to round up a heard of cattle.  Helping Kane out on the job is an old friend by the name of Leonard (Lee Marvin).

Pocket Money was the last script to be written by Terrence Malick before Malick began his own directing career and the script’s dialogue shows off Malick’s skill at capturing the unique dialect and sound of the Southwest.  It’s an episodic film, where the emphasis is more on the journey than the destination and it could be argued that the movie never really reaches its destination.  The plot is far less important than the way Kane and Leonard talk to each other and view the world around them.  Pocket Money is not for everyone.  It’s the type of movie that will inspire some to complain that nothing really happens.  For fans of Newman and Marvin, though, there’s a lot of enjoyment to be found.  Newman and Marvin reportedly did not get along during shooting but that didn’t do a thing to harm their chemistry in their scenes together.  This film reunites Paul Newman with Cool Hand Luke director Stuart Rosenberg and and also with two co-stars from that film, Strother Martin and Wayne Rogers.  Newman gives a relaxed and likable performance.  Lee Marvin gets to show his skill with comedy.  If you’ve ever wanted to see Lee Marvin ride a horse while wearing a suit, this is the film for you.

Pocket Money was the first film to be produced by First Artists, a production company that was started by Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, Barbra Streisand, Steve McQueen, and Dustin Hoffman.  The company closed its doors in 1980 but not before giving the world not just this movie but also The Getaway, Straight Time, The Gauntlet, An Enemy of the People (starring Steve McQueen), The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, and The Gumball Rally, amongst others.

 

Song of the Day: Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head, performed by BJ Thomas

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Because today is Paul Newman’s birthday, I figured today’s song of the day should come from one of his films.  There’s a tendency amongst some critics to be dismissive of the use of Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and it’s true that it’s not really the type of song that brings to mind robbing trains and dying in South America.

(Though we all know that Butch Cassidy — and maybe the Sundance Kid, too — actually survived and eventually returned to America.  We all know that, right?)

But, you know what?  It’s a song that really gets stuck in your head and somehow, it just feels appropriate for Paul Newman, an actor whose life wasn’t always happy (his son overdosed in 1976) but who was still almost always described as being one of the nicest guys around.  Plus, look at Paul on that bicycle!  How can you dislike this song?

 

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Paul Newman Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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!

101 years ago today, Paul Newman was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio.  He would go on, of course, to become one of America’s greatest film stars, an acclaimed actor who was active from the mid-part of the 20th century to the beginning of our current century.  He made his film debut in 1954 with The Silver Chalice (and subsequently paid for an ad in which he apologized for his performance in the film, which I think was a bit unnecessary as he wasn’t really that bad in the film) and he made his final onscreen appearance in 2005 in Empire Falls.  (He did, however, subsequently provide the voice of Doc Hudson in Cars, along with narrating a few documentaries.)  Time and again, he proved himself to be one of the best actors around.  According to most report, he was also one of the nicest.  When he died in 2008, the world mourned.

In honor of his cinematic legacy, here are….

4 Shots From 4 Paul Newman Films

The Long Hot Summer (1958, dir by Martin Ritt, DP: Joseph LaShelle)

Hud (1963, dir by Martin Ritt, DP: James Wong Howe)

The Sting (1973, dir by George Roy Hill, DP: Robert Surtees)

Slap Shot (1977, dir by George Roy Hill, DP: Victor Kemper)

Scenes That I Love: “What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate” from Cool Hand Luke

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today would have been director Stuart Rosenberg’s 98th birthday.  Our scene of the day come from one of Rosenberg’s best-known and best-remembered films, 1967’s Cool Hand Luke.

This is a scene that featured the line that’s been kept alive by cops, drill sergeants, and angry teachers to this day.

The Color of Money (1986, directed by Martin Scorsese)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

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If you grew up in the 80s or 90s, you probably had at least one friend whose father kept a pool table in the garage.  This movie was probably the reason why.

Fast Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) was once The Hustler, the legendary pool player who recovered from having his fingers broken with a bowling ball and went on to defeat the legendary Minnesota Fats.  That was a long time ago.  Now, Fast Eddie is a slick liquor salesman in Chicago.  Eddie stills hangs out at the pool halls, despite his bad memories of the game.  When he sees a cocky young player named Vincent (Tom Cruise) and his girlfriend Carmen (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), he takes them under his wing and teaches them how to hustle.  It’s not always easy because Vincent doesn’t like to lose, even if it means a chance to score an even bigger victory later on.  Eddie finds himself being drawn back into the game, even as he starts to wonder who is hustling who.

I always forget that The Color of Money is a Martin Scorsese films.  It’s a film that Scorsese made at a time when he had a reputation for only being able to make art films that critics loved but audiences stayed away from.  After the box office failure of The King of Comedy and his abortive first attempt to make The Last Temptation of Christ, Scorsese took The Color of Money to prove that he could work with a studio.  This is a Disney Scorsese film, with his signature camera moves but not much of his religious torment.  Even if it’s not one of his personal films, Scorsese makes pool look exciting, a battle that is as much about psychology as physicality.  Watching The Color of Money, you can smell the chalk on the tip of the pool cue.

Scorsese brings the seedy pool halls to life but it’s Paul Newman’s performance that dominates.  The Color of Money won Newman his first and only Oscar and he deserved it.  Newman had first played Fast Eddie Felson in 1961, in The Hustler.  Returning to the role twenty-five years later allowed Newman to show what would eventually happen to the angry young men that he played in the 60s.  Eddie has grown up and he’s got a comfortable life but he’s not content.  He finally has stability but he misses the game.  He needs the thrill of the hustle.  Newman is at his best in The Color of Money, building on The Hustler but also revealing new sides of Eddie Felson.

Newman is so good that Tom Cruise often gets overlooked but both Cruise and Mastrantonio hold their own against Paul Newman.  Cruise especially does a good job as Vincent, playing him as someone who is too cocky for his own good but also not as dumb as he looks.  Just when you think you’ve got Vincent figured out, Cruise surprises you.  The Color of Money came out the same year as Top Gun and Cruise’s Vincent feels like a commentary on the talented, troubled, but cocky characters that Cruise was playing at that time.  Cruise, Scorsese, and Newman make a good team in this more-than-worthy sequel.

Film Review: Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (dir by Robert Altman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

1976’s Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson takes place in the waning years of the Old West.  Civilization is coming to America and the “wild” west’s days are numbered.  And yet, even as the days of outlaws and gunslingers come to an end, America is already in the process of building up its own mythology.

Buffalo Bill (Paul Newman) owns a popular wild west show, one where his stars put on a show that claims to recreate the great moments of western history.  The show is made up of a motely collection of performers, some of whom are more talented than others.  This is a Robert Altman film and, as usual, the emphasis is more on watching how his large ensemble of actors interact as opposed to highlighting any one actor.  Indeed, it can be hard to keep everyone in the film straight and one gets the feeling that this was intentional on Altman’s part.  Buffalo Bill and the Indians may be a revisionist western and a satire of American history but it’s also a showbiz film.  The emphasis is on people continually coming and going, sticking around long enough to either prove their worth as a performer or moving on to a hopefully more receptive audience.

Geraldine Chaplin plays Annie Oakley, the sharp shooter who takes joy in firing her gun and who barely seems to notice that her husband (John Considine) is terrified of getting shot.  Joel Grey serves as the unflappable manager of the show while Harvey Keitel is miscast as Buffalo Bill’s somewhat nerdy assistant.  (Keitel, with his natural intensity, seems like he’s desperately waiting for a chance to explode, a chance that never really comes.)  Burt Lancaster plays Ned Buntline, the writer who made Buffalo Bill into a celebrity and who provides a somewhat sardonic commentary as Bill’s current activities.  Shelley Duvall shows up as the wife of President Grover Cleveland (played by Pat McCormick), who comes to the show and is amused until an Indian points a gun towards the president.

Throughout it all, Buffalo Bill enjoys his fame and pushes his vision of the Old West on those who come to see his show.  Newman plays Bill as being a blowhard, an eccentric who is obsessed with opera and whose entire persona is a fake.  He can’t shoot straight.  He can barely ride a horse.  His trademark long hair is actually a wig.  The only people who take Bill seriously as those who come to see his show.  Those who know him view him as being a buffoon but they also understand that he’s a very successful and very famous buffoon and that ultimately matters more than any sort of historical truth.

What conflict there is in the film occurs when Sitting Bull (Frank Kaquitts) and his translator (Will Sampson) arrive on the scene.  Sitting Bull has agreed to appear in the show but only under his own terms.  Buffalo Bill grows frustrated with Sitting Bull and his refusal to pretend to be a savage but he also knows that this audience wants to see the last remaining great Indian chief.

It’s a big and sprawling film and it’s really not entirely successful.  Altman was an intelligent director who was willing to take risks and no one deserves more credit for popularizing the idea of the ensemble film.  That said, he could also be a bit heavy-handed and that’s certainly the case here.  It takes a certain amount of courage to cast a star like Paul Newman as a thoroughly unlikable character and it also took a bit of courage on Newman’s part to give the performance that he did.  At the same time, neither the shallow Buffalo Bill nor the dignified Sitting Bull are really compelling enough characters to carry a film that runs for more than two hours.  The film’s message is an obvious one and it’s also one that Altman handled in a much more memorable way with Nashville.

That said, the film is a memorable misfire.  It’s at its best when it abandons the politics and just concentrates on the community of performers that popular Buffalo Bill’s show.  The film’s best moments are not the ones with Paul Newman growling but instead the ones with John Considine hoping that Geraldine Chaplin won’t accidentally shoot him.  As with many of Altman’s film, Buffalo Bill and the Indians works best when it focuses on the misfit community at the center of its story.