The 1967 film, Tony Rome, is about a detective named …. can you guess it?
That’s right! Tony Rome!
Tony works out of Miami and, because he’s played by Frank Sinatra, you can be sure that he’s a tough guy who knows how to throw a punch but who, at the same time, also knows how to have a good time. He’s got a bottle of liquor in the glove compartment. He’s got his own boat. He’s got a snappy quip for every occasion and a properly cynical sense of humor but at the same time, he also cares about doing the right thing. He says what’s on his mind and if that hurts your feelings, tough. Again, none of this should be a surprise, considering that he’s played by Frank Sinatra and Sinatra could play these type of sentimental tough guys in his sleep.
That’s not to say that Sinatra sleepwalks through the role, of course. Far from it. As played by Sinatra, Tony comes across as an authentic tough guy, as someone who has seen it all and who, as a result, understands that importance of stopping to have a drink and appreciate the world around him. Tony Rome might be a Rat Pack-style private investigator but that doesn’t mean he can’t solve the case and, even while Tony’s having a good time, Sinatra never lets you forget that he takes his job very seriously.
As for the film, it’s a story that beings when Tony is hired to drive a passed out rich girl back to her home. This leads to him investigating a jewelry theft and eventually discovering an extortion plot. Sue Lyon plays the rich girl. Gena Rowlands plays her stepmother while Simon Oakland (the psychologist at the end of Psycho) plays her father. Richard Conte, who played bad gangster Barzini in The Godfather, plays Tony Rome’s best friend on the police force. (Every good private eye has a best friend on the police force.) Jill St. John plays Ann Archer, who helps Tony out with his investigation. Ann is recently divorced. Will Tony claim her heart or will she go back to her husband? It wouldn’t be a Sinatra film without a little heartbreak. (To a large extent, St. John’s performance here feels like a slightly more serious version of the performance she would later give as Tiffany Case in Diamonds are Forever, which is perhaps as close as we’ll ever get to a Rat Pack-style James Bond film.)
The story itself is surprisingly easy to follow. This is not one of those detective stories that will leave you shocked over who turns out to be the bad guy. For a film that often takes something of a light-hearted approach to Tony’s efforts to solve the mystery, it’s also a rather violent film. More than a few people get killed. Tony gets kicked in the ribs at one point and the sound of the 50-something Sinatra groaning in pain is disconcerting. Of course, Tony recovers quickly and immediately gets his revenge. When you watch the scene, you think to yourself that anyone who would try to beat up Frank Sinatra has to be a fool. That’s largely because Tony is Sinatra and Sinatra is Tony.
It’s an entertaining film, one that works well as a time capsule of what it was like to cool and swinging and middle-aged in 1967. Tony Rome is smart enough to focus more on Sinatra’s charisma than on trying to impress the viewers with its own cleverness. If I ever have to hire a private detective, I hope he’s like Tony Rome. I hope he gets the job done. I hope he has a good time while doing it. And I hope he comes with his own Nancy Sinatra-sung theme song. That’s not too much to ask, is it?
The 1965 biblical epic, The Greatest Story Ever Told, tells the story of the life of Jesus, from the Nativity to the Ascension. It’s probably the most complete telling of the story that you’ll ever find. It’s hard to think of a single details that’s left out and, as a result, the film has a four hour running time. Whether you’re a believer or not, that’s a really long time to watch a reverent film that doesn’t even feature the campy excesses of something like The Ten Commandments.
(There’s actually several different version of The Greatest Story Ever Told floating around. There’s a version that’s a little over two hours. There’s a version that’s close to four hours. Reportedly, the uncut version of the film ran for four hour and 20 minutes.)
Max von Sydow plays Jesus. On the one hand, that seems like that should work because Max von Sydow was a great actor who gave off an otherworldly air. On the other hand, it totally doesn’t work because von Sydow gives an oddly detached performance. The Greatest Story Ever Told was von Sydow’s first American film and, at no point, does he seem particularly happy about being involved with it. von Sydow is a very cerebral and rather reserved Jesus, one who makes his points without a hint of passion or charisma. When he’s being friendly, he offers up a half-smile. When he has to rebuke his disciples for their doubt, he sounds more annoyed than anything else. He’s Jesus if Jesus was a community college philosophy professor.
The rest of the huge cast is populated with familiar faces. The Greatest Story Ever Told takes the all-star approach to heart and, as a result, even the minor roles are played by actors who will be familiar to anyone who has spent more than a few hours watching TCM. Many of them are on screen for only a few seconds, which makes their presence all the more distracting. Sidney Poitier shows up as Simon of Cyrene. Pat Boone is an angel. Roddy McDowall is Matthew and Sal Mineo is Uriah and John Wayne shows up as a centurion and delivers his one line in his trademark drawl.
A few of the actors do manage to stand out and make a good impression. Telly Savalas is a credible Pilate, playing him as being neither smug nor overly sympathetic but instead as a bureaucrat who can’t understand why he’s being forced to deal with all of this. Charlton Heston has just the right intensity for the role of John the Baptist while Jose Ferrer is properly sleazy as Herod. In the role Judas, David McCallum looks at the world through suspicious eyes and does little to disguise his irritation with the rest of the world. The Greatest Story Ever Told does not sentimentalize Judas or his role in Jesus’s arrest. For the most part, he’s just a jerk. Finally, it’s not exactly surprising when Donald Pleasence shows up as Satan but Pleasence still gives a properly evil performance, giving all of his lines a mocking and often sarcastic bite.
The Greatest Story Ever Told was directed by George Stevens, a legitimately great director who struggles to maintain any sort of narrative momentum in this film. Watching The Greatest Story Ever Told, it occurred to me that the best biblical films are the ones like Ben-Hur and The Robe, which both largely keep Jesus off-screen and instead focus on how his life and teachings and the reports of his resurrection effected other people. Stevens approaches the film’s subject with such reverence that the film becomes boring and that’s something that should never happen when you’re making a film set in Judea during the Roman era.
I do have to admit that, despite all of my criticism of the film, I do actually kind of like The Greatest Story Ever Told. It’s just such a big production that it’s hard not to be a little awed by it all. That huge cast may be distracting but it’s still a little bit fun to sit there and go, “There’s Shelley Winters! There’s John Wayne! There’s Robert Blake and Martin Landau!” That said, as far as biblical films are concerned, you’re still better off sticking with Jesus Christ Superstar.
We’re way overdue for a Cleaning Out the DVR post – haven’t done one since back in April! – so let’s jump right in with 4 capsule reviews of 4 classic crime films:
SINNERS’ HOLIDAY (Warner Brothers 1930; D: John Adolfi) – Early talkie interesting as the screen debut of James Cagney , mixed up in “the booze racket”, who shoots bootlegger Warren Hymer, and who’s penny arcade owner maw Lucille LaVerne covers up by pinning the murder on daughter Evalyn Knapp’s ex-con boyfriend Grant Withers. Some pretty racy Pre-Code elements include Joan Blondell as Cagney’s “gutter floozie” main squeeze. Film’s 60 minute running time makes it speed by, aided by some fluid for the era camerawork. Fun Fact: Cagney and Blondell appeared in the original Broadway play “Penny Arcade”; when superstar entertainer Al Jolson bought the rights, he insisted Jimmy and Joan be cast in the film version, and…
Nifty is not really a word that I ever use, mostly because I’m not 80 years old and I’m not totally sure what the word means. I’ve always assumed that nifty is way of saying that something is good without being too good and, if that’s true, then I have to say that the low-budget 1954 film noir, Highway Dragnet, certainly is a nifty film.
Highway Dragnet opens with Jim Henry (Richard Conte, who decades later would play the evil Barzini in The Godfather) in Las Vegas. Jim’s just gotten out of the army and he’s visiting his friend, Paul (Frank Jenks). Paul is a secret agent who is often unexpectedly called away. Unfortunately, this means that Paul is not around when Jim is accused of murdering another man. Since Jim was previously seen hitting on the dead man’s girlfriend, the police naturally assume that Jim’s the murderer. When Jim says that Paul can provide an alibi whenever he gets back from doing his super secret spy stuff, the cops assume that Paul doesn’t actually exist.
Under the direction of the stern Lt. White Eagle (Reed Hadley), the cops are doing a lot of assuming! Now, if Jim was smart, he would say, “Hey, White Eagle, you know what? When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me!” But Jim’s not smart so he decides to fire a gun at the cops and then go on the run!
Hey, Jim …. none of that makes you look innocent!
Anyway, while making his way across the desert, Jim comes across two women who are having car trouble. Mrs. Cummings (Joan Bennett, who went from nearly getting cast as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With The Wind to becoming a low-budget noir mainstay) is a fashion photographer and Susan Willis (Wanda Hendrix) is her model. Jim fixes their car and then asks them for a ride. They agree, little knowing that they’re heading straight into a …. HIGHWAY DRAGNET!
Of course, it turns out that Jim’s new friends have a connection to the crime of which he’s been accused. The plot of Highway Dragnet hinges on a totally implausible coincidence. This is perhaps not surprising when you consider that the script for Highway Dragnet was written by the legendary Roger Corman. In fact, it was the first script that he ever sold and, though the film was directed by Nathan Juran, Highway Dragnet feels very much like a Corman quickie. The plot is whatever it needs to be to get the story from the beginning to the end in 71 minutes. Whether it all makes sense or not doesn’t appear to be all that much of a concern.
So, here’s what does work about Highway Dragnet. First off, director Nathan Juran (who was also an award-winning art designer) manages to capture some memorable images of the Nevada desert and the film ends with a wonderfully over-the-top and atmospheric confrontation in a flooded house. Secondly, Joan Bennett is as passive-aggressively menacing in Highway Dragnet as she would later be in Dario Argento’s Suspiria. I also liked the performance of Reed Hadley, playing the unstoppable and incorruptible Lt. White Eagle.
Last Saturday, I watched Highway Dragnet with my friends in the Late Night Movie Gang and we enjoyed it. It’s undoubtedly a minor film noir but it’s still entertaining when taken on its own terms. If nothing else, the box office success of this low-budget production (which was shot over ten days) reportedly inspired Roger Corman to get serious about pursuing his own career in the film industry and, for that, movie lovers will always be thankful.
(ATTENTION: There’s a surprise waiting for you at the end of this post, so read on…)
Joseph H. Lewis started his directing career with low-budget Westerns starring singing cowboy Bob Baker and East Side Kids programmers, and ended it back on the range doing epsiodes of THE RIFLEMAN, GUNSMOKE, and THE BIG VALLEY. In between, he created some of the finest films noir the genre has to offer: MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS , SO DARK THE NIGHT, THE UNDERCOVER MAN, and especially GUN CRAZY . His last big screen noir outing is the culmination of his work in the genre, 1955’s THE BIG COMBO.
The plot is fairly simple: Police Lt. Leonard Diamond is out to crack gangster Mr. Brown’s “combination”, which controls crime in the city. But Philip Yordan’s screenplay takes that plot and adds exciting twists and turns, indelible characters, and a level of violence audiences weren’t…
“I got something for your mother and Sonny and a tie for Freddy and Tom Hagen got the Reynolds Pen…” — Kay Adams (Diane Keaton) in The Godfather (1972)
It probably seems strange that when talking about The Godfather, a film that it is generally acknowledged as being one of the best and most influential of all time, I would start with an innocuous quote about getting Tom Hagen a pen.
(And it better have been a hell of a pen because, judging from the scene where Sollozzo stops him in the street, it looked like Tom was going all out as far as gifts were concerned…)
After all, The Godfather is a film that is full of memorable quotes. “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.” “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.” “It’s strictly business.” “I believe in America….” “That’s my family, Kay. That’s not me.”
But I went with the quote about the Reynolds pen because, quite frankly, I find an excuse to repeat it every Christmas. Every holiday season, whenever I hear friends or family talking about presents, I remind them that Tom Hagen is getting the Reynolds pen. Doubt me? Check out these tweets from the past!
But all that love also makes The Godfather a difficult film to review. What do you say about a film that everyone already knows is great?
Do you praise it by saying that Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, James Caan, Diane Keaton, Marlon Brando, John Cazale, Richard Castellano, Abe Vigoda, Alex Rocco, and Talia Shire all gave excellent performances? You can do that but everyone already knows that.
Do you talk about how well director Francis Ford Coppola told this operatic, sprawling story of crime, family, and politics? You can do that but everyone already knows that.
Maybe you can talk about how beautiful Gordon Willis’s dark and shadowy cinematography looks, regardless of whether you’re seeing it in a theater or on TV. Because it certainly does but everyone knows that.
Maybe you can mention the haunting beauty of Nina Rota’s score but again…
Well, you get the idea.
Now, if you somehow have never seen the film before, allow me to try to tell you what happens in The Godfather. I say try because The Godfather is a true epic. Because it’s also an intimate family drama and features such a dominating lead performance from Al Pacino, it’s sometimes to easy to forget just how much is actually going on in The Godfather.
The Godfather tells the story of the Corleone Family. Patriarch Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) has done very well for himself in America, making himself into a rich and influential man. Of course, Vito is also known as both Don Corleone and the Godfather and he’s made his fortune through less-than-legal means. He may be rich and he may be influential but when his daughter gets married, the FBI shows up outside the reception and takes pictures of all the cars in the parking lot. Vito Corleone knows judges and congressmen but none of them are willing to be seen in public with him. Vito is the establishment that nobody wants to acknowledge and sometimes, this very powerful man wonders if there will ever be a “Governor Corleone” or a “Senator Corleone.”
Vito is the proud father of three children and the adopted father of one more. His oldest son, and probable successor, is Sonny (James Caan). Sonny, however, has a temper and absolutely no impulse control. While his wife is bragging about him to the other women at the wedding, Sonny is upstairs screwing a bridesmaid. When the enemies of the Corleone Family declare war, Sonny declares war back and forgets the first rule of organized crime: “It’s not personal. It’s strictly business.”
After Sonny, there’s Fredo (John Cazale). Poor, pathetic Fredo. In many ways, it’s impossible not to feel sorry for Fredo. He’s the one who ends up getting exiled to Vegas, where he lives under the protection of the crude Moe Greene (Alex Rocco). One of the film’s best moments is when a bejeweled Fredo shows up at a Vegas hotel with an entourage of prostitutes and other hangers-on. In these scenes, Fred is trying so hard but when you take one look at his shifty eyes, it’s obvious that he’s still the same guy who we first saw stumbling around drunk at his sister’s wedding.
(And, of course, it’s impossible to watch Fredo in this film without thinking about both what will happen to the character in the Godfather, Part II and how John Cazale, who brought the character to such vibrant life, would die just 6 years later.)
As a female, daughter Connie (Talia Shire) is — for the first film, at least — excluded from the family business. Instead, she marries Sonny’s friend Carlo Rizzi (Gianni Russo). And, to put it gently, it’s not a match made in heaven.
And finally, there’s Michael (Al Pacino). Michael is the son who, at the start of the film, declares that he wants nothing to do with the family business. He’s the one who wants to break with family tradition by marrying Kay Adams (Diane Keaton), who is most definitely not Italian. He’s the one who was decorated in World War II and who comes to his sister’s wedding still dressed in his uniform. (In the second Godfather film, we learn that Vito thought Michael was foolish to join the army, which makes it all the more clear that, by wearing the uniform to the wedding, Michael is attempting to declare his own identity outside of the family.) To paraphrase the third Godfather film, Michael is the one who says he wants to get out but who keeps getting dragged back in.
And finally, the adopted son is Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall). Tom is the Don’s lawyer and one reason why Tom is one of my favorite characters is because, behind his usual stone-faced facade, Tom is actually very snarky. He just hides it well.
Early on, we get a hint that Tom is more amused than he lets on when he has dinner with the crude Jack Woltz (John Marley), a film producer who doesn’t want to use Johnny Fontane (Al Martino) in a movie When Woltz shouts insults at him, Tom calmly finishes his dinner and thanks him for a lovely evening. And he does it with just the hint of a little smirk and you can practically see him thinking, “Somebody’s going to wake up with a horse tomorrow….”
However, my favorite Tom Hagen moment comes when Kay, who is searching for Michael, drops by the family compound. Tom greets her at the gate. When Kay spots a car that’s riddled with bullet holes, she asks what happened. Tom smiles and says, “Oh, that was an accident. But luckily no one was hurt!” Duvall delivers the line with just the right attitude of “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!” How can you not kind of love Tom after that?
And, of course, the film is full of other memorable characters, all of whom are scheming and plotting. There’s Clemenza (Richard S. Catellano) and Tessio (Abe Vigoda), the two Corleone lieutenants who may or may not be plotting to betray the Don. There’s fearsome Luca Brasi (Lenny Montana), who spends an eternity practicing what he wants to say at Connie’s wedding and yet still manages to screw it up. And, of course, there’s Sollozzo (Al Lettieri, playing a role originally offered to Franco Nero), the drug dealer who reacts angrily to Vito’s refusal to help him out. Meanwhile, Capt. McCluskey (Sterling Hayden) is busy beating up young punks and Al Neri (Richard Bright) is gunning people down in front of the courthouse. And, of course, there’s poor, innocent, ill-fated Appollonia (Simonetta Stefanelli)…
The Godfather is a great Italian-American epic, one that works as both a gangster film and a family drama. Perhaps the genius of the Godfather trilogy is that the Corleone family serves as an ink blot in a cinematic rorschach test. Audiences can look at them and see whatever they want. If you want them and their crimes to serve as a metaphor for capitalism, you need only listen to Tom and Michael repeatedly state that it’s only business. If you want to see them as heroic businessmen, just consider that their enemies essentially want to regulate the Corleones out of existence. If you want the Corleones to serve as symbols of the patriarchy, you need only watch as the door to Michael’s office is shut in Kay’s face. If you want to see the Corleones as heroes, you need only consider that they — and they alone — seem to operate with any sort of honorable criminal code. (This, of course, would change over the course of the two sequels.)
And, if you’re trying to fit a review of The Godfather into a series about political films, you only have to consider that Vito is regularly spoken of as being a man who carries politicians around in his pocket. We may not see any elected officials in the first Godfather film but their presence is felt. Above all else, it’s Vito’s political influence that sets in motion all of the events that unfold over the course of the film.
The Godfather, of course, won the Oscar for best picture of 1972. And while it’s rare that I openly agree with the Academy, I’m proud to say that this one time is a definite exception.
Hi there! It’s Saturday morning — are you still with us? If you’re not, don’t worry. You have all day to get raptured. Until then, here’s the second part of this weekend’s edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Trailers.
Seeing as this could very well be the last things that I ever post or that you ever read pre-Rapture, there’s no way I can’t start things out without including this trailer for Jean Rollin’s unique, twisted, and very French vampire fairy tale, Requiem for a Vampire. One thing to note here is that when this film was released in the U.S., the American distributor felt the need to emphasize that the two girls were virgins and even went so far as to retitle the film Caged Virgins. However, the original French print of this film makes no reference to whether or not the girls are virgins and, despite all that happens to them in the film, the girls themselves are never presented as being helpless. Whenever I feel the need to explain the difference between American culture and French culture, this is one of the examples I always cite.
8 ) Kenner (1969)
Jim Brown is Kenner! And that’s about all I really know about this film. Well, that and small bundles of heroin are worth millions…
9) The Three Dimensions of Greta (1973)
I was recently reading about 3-D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy, a movie from Hong Kong that is apparently setting box office records because it’s being advertised as the first 3-D pornographic film. And, as the linked article shows, a lot of people are reporting that claim as fact. And they’re wrong. 3-D Sex and Zen might be the first recent 3-D porn film but it’s hardly the first. There was a spate of 3-D porn films in the mid-70s and one of my favorite trailers (which I can’t post here because 1) it’s too explict and 2) I can’t remember the title of the film) features a stereotypical, curly-haired, guy with a mustache type of porno actor going, “Soon, my giant schlong with be hanging right over the head of that redhead in the 3rd seat in the backrow.” And of course, I was all like, “Oh my God, can he see me through the screen!?” Anyway, the 3 Dimensions of Greta was a part of this wave. This is another one of those trailers that will probably be yanked off YouTube in a few more days (assuming there isn’t a Rapture first).
(By the way, why were so many porno films made about girls named Greta? I mean, was that name a turn-on? Were the films of the 70s exclusively made by guys named Hansel? Seriously, boys are weird.)
They’re violent alright! Before the Italian exploitation industry devoted itself to cannibals and zombies, they devoted themselves to ripping off The French Connection and The Godfather. This film from Sergio Martino actually features Don Barzini himself, Richard Conte.
If I didn’t tell you this film was from 1968, you’d guess it just from watching the trailer. The soundtrack was done by George Harrison. Though this film was certainly not designed to be an exploitation film in the way most of the other films featured here were, it definitely is one.
Can you believe I went this long without featuring the trailer for Lucio Fulci’s best known (after Zombi 2) film? Well, I love Fulci, I love this film, and I was waiting for the right occasion to feature this trailer. And the end of the possible end of the world seemed like the right time. Anyway, this is one of those love it or hate it films (and I know that one of our regular readers is not a huge fan of this film but I love him anyway). At his best, director Lucio Fulci made some of the most visually stunning and dramatically incoherent films ever and never was that more apparent than with the Beyond. Out of the film’s cast, Catriona MacColl plays one of the few strong women to ever appear in a Fulci film while David Warbeck (a personal fave of mine) is the perfect hero. My favorite performance in the film (and a lot of this has to do with the fact that she co-starred in one of my favorite movies ever, Beyond the Darkness) is given by Cinzia Monreale, who plays the blind Emily.
And so there you go. If you do get raptured later today, thank you for reading. It’s been a pleasure telling you about the films I love and hopefully, someday, we’ll all meet in the beyond.
And if, as I suspect, there is no rapture today, I look forward to sharing even more.
Through the Shattered Lens 