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!
95 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
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1958, dir by Richard Brooks)
Cool Hand Luke (1967, dir by Stuart Rosenberg)
The Verdict (1981, dir by Sidney Lumet)
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994, dir by the Coen Brothers)
Speaking of the good, old-fashioned star power of Paul Newman, The Hustler and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were not the only films to receive an oscar nomination as the result of his charisma. There’s also The Verdict, a 1982 best picture nominee that would probably be forgotten if not for Paul Newman’s performance. However, since Paul Newman did play the lead role in The Verdict and he did give an amazing lead performance, The Verdict was nominated for best picture and, 33 years later, it ended up on TCM where I just watched it.
That’s the power of good acting.
Paul Newman plays Frank Galvin, a Boston-based attorney. At one time, Frank was a lawyer at an elite firm. But he has since fallen on hard times. Now, he’s the type of attorney who crashes funerals and hands out his card. He spends his spare time at his favorite bar, playing pinball and telling long jokes while stumbling about in a drunken haze. In many ways, Frank represents everything that people hate about personal injury attorneys but, since he’s played by Paul Newman, you know that he’s going to turn out to be a good guy.
Frank only has one friend left in the world, his former mentor Mickey (Jack Warden). Looking to help Frank out, Mickey sends Frank a medical malpractice suit. A woman at a Catholic Hospital was given an anesthetic during child birth that has led to her now being brain dead. Both the woman’s family and the Archdiocese are looking for a settlement. The family needs the money to pay for her medical care. The Archdiocese just wants the case to go away. All Frank has to do is accept whatever settlement deal is offered…
However, something has changed for Frank. He’s visited the comatose woman and, looking at her trapped in a vegetative state, he’s decided that the hospital needs to be held responsible for its mistake. He rejects the settlement and takes the case to court, looking for both justice for the victim and redemption for himself.
That’s easier said than done, of course. The Archdiocese has hired Ed Concannon (James Mason, perfectly cast), one of the best and most powerful attorneys in Boston. Ed has a huge legal team working on the case. Frank has Mickey. As well, the Judge (Milo O’Shea) makes little effort to hide his contempt for Frank.
Probably the only bright spot in Frank’s life is that he’s met a woman. Laura (Charlotte Rampling) meets him in a bar and soon, they’re lovers and Frank is confiding in her about the case. What he doesn’t suspect is that Laura herself is a spy, hired by Concannon.
It looks like all is lost but then Frank discovers that there is one nurse (Lindsay Crouse) who might be willing to tell the truth about what happened at the hospital…
In many ways, The Verdict is a predictable film. From the minute we first meet him, we know that Frank is going to be redeemed. From the minutes that we hear about the case, we know who we’re supposed to root for and who we’re supposed to hiss. Just about every courtroom cliché is present, right down to a surprise witness or two…
But no matter! The Verdict may be predictable but it works. As he proved with 12 Angry Men, Director Sidney Lumet knew how to make legal deliberations compelling and the entire film is full of small but memorable details that elevate it above its simplistic storyline. As a director, Lumet gets good performances from his cast and, as a result, this is a film where the hero is flawed and the antagonists aren’t necessarily evil. Even the Bishop of the Archdiocese of Boston (who, in most films, would have been a cardboard villain) is given a scene where he’s allowed to show some humanity.
And, of course, Paul Newman is great in the role of Frank. When we first meet Frank, he looks and sounds terrible. Indeed, it’s strange to see Paul Newman playing a character who is essentially such a loser. (Even Eddie Felson in The Hustler had an appealing swagger about him.) It’s during the scenes where Frank considers the woman in a coma that Newman starts to reveal that there’s more to Frank than what’s on the rough surface. By the end of the film, Frank may be a hero but Newman doesn’t play him as such. He’s still has that alcoholic rasp in his voice and his eyes still betray hints of insecurity and a fear that, at any minute, he’s going to screw up and mess everything up. It’s a great performance, one for which Newman received a nomination for best actor.
Speaking of star power, Bruce Willis also shows up in The Verdict. He’s an extra who appears as an observer in the courtroom. He’s sitting a few rows behind Paul Newman. (He’s also sitting beside Tobin Bell, the Jigsaw Killer from the Saw films). It’s probably easiest to spot Willis towards the end of the film, when the verdict is read. Bruce breaks out into a huge grin and almost looks like he’s about to start clapping. Bruce only gets about 10 second of screen time but he acts the Hell out of them!
Thanks to Paul Newman, The Verdict is a memorable and entertaining film. Be sure to watch it the next time it shows up on TCM.
Sad news came across the news wire this morning as it was confirmed that one of the most esteemed filmmaker in America has passed away at the age of 86. Sidney Lumet was considered by many as one of the best filmmakers of all-time. He definitely is one of the best, if not the best, American filmmaker of all-time.
Lumet was quite prolific as a filmmaker since he began to work behind the camera starting in 1957 with the classic drama 12 Angry Men and ending with his most recent work in 2007 with Before the Devil Knows Your Dead. In between these two films he would direct another 43 films with all of them received positively by critics and audiences everywhere. He was the consummate professional and never waited for the perfect project to come along. He always went into a film project because he either liked the script or, barring being in one which didn’t have a script he liked, it had actors he wanted to work with or he wanted to test his abilities as a filmmaker with new techniques.
Sidney Lumet began his career directing Off-Broadway plays and summer stock productions. He would soon move into directing tv shows in 1950. It would be his time as a tv director where turn-arounds between episodes were so short that a director had to work quite fast that he would earn the reputation as a filmmaker who didn’t spend too much time shooting too many takes of a scene. Lumet became known as a filmmaker who would shoot one to two takes of a scene and move onto the next. Another tool he learned as a tv director that served him well once he moved into film was to rehearse for several weeks with his actors the script before starting up actual production behind the camera.
It was in 1957 when he finally moved into filmmaking with 12 Angry Men (itself previously a teleplay for a TV drama) which would catapult him into prominence in the film community. The film was well-received and still considered by many as one of the most influential films of its kind as it highlighted social injustice in a time when such themes were not considered profitable by studios and the people who ran them. This was the film which would help build the foundation of Lumet’s filmmaking-style as he would continue to use filmmaking as a way to tell the audience about social injustices not just in his preferred film location of New York, but in America and the world, in general. Some of the best films in American history were done by him during the 1970’s when he would take the chaos and public distrust of long-standing public institutions in the US and crafted three of the finest films of the 70’s and America as it was during that decade with Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon and Network.
Sidney Lumet’s legacy as a filmmaker will continue to inspire young filmmakers long after his passing. He was a man who looked at filmmaking as an artform and not just a way to entertain the audience. His films never talked down or pandered to the very general public who watched them unlike some of the filmmakers working in the industry today. His legacy as being the consummate “actor’s director” meant that one didn’t need to be dictatorial with his cast and crew to create a great piece of filmmaking. That there were other ways to make a film and do it in such a way that everyone were still able to give their best without being alienated to do so.
My very first experience when it came to Sidney Lumet had to have been watching his Cold War classic, Fail-Safe, in high school history and it was one of those films which got me looking at film as something more than a form of entertainment. Here was a film that was entertaining but also one so well-made and acted that it’s ideas and themes were not lost. It opened up my eyes to the possibility of film as a medium that could be used to teach, raise issues to debate in society and highlight both the good and the bad of the human experience.
Sidney Lumet has made such an impact not just on those who were fans of films and grow up to become players in the industry, but also those people who would work in other fields of life whether they were lawyers, judges, police officers or politicians (professionals he would use over and over in his films throughout his career). Even Supreme Court Justice SOnia Sotomayor would look at Lumet as an inspiring figure in convincing her that she made the correct choice in choosing law as the path for her professional life.
I find it one of the most fitting tribute for Sidney Lumet that his time as a filmmaker and doing what he enjoyed doing the most became inspirational for people of all color, stripe and creed. This was a man who didn’t just take from the public but gave back just as much in the end. America has truly lost one of its best artists.
Through the Shattered Lens 