Today is Faye Dunaway’s birthday and today’s scene that I love comes from the film that made Dunaway a star, 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde.
In this scene, Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) first meets Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty). Interestingly enough, Warren Beatty originally wanted Bob Dylan to play the role of Clyde and, at one point, he envisioned Bonnie being played by his sister, Shirley MacClaine. That would have been interesting, to say the least. Fortunately, in the end, Beatty decided to not only produce the film but to play the role of Clyde himself. Natalie Wood, Tuesday Weld, Leslie Caron, and Jane Fonda were among those who turned down the role of Bonnie before Faye Dunaway, who had done two films at that point, was eventually cast in the role. And the rest is film history!
Filmed in 1957 for a television program called Westinghouse Studio One, The Night America Trembled is a dramatization of the night in 1938 when Orson Welles’s adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds reportedly caused a panic amongst listeners.
For legal reasons, Orson Welles is not portrayed nor is his name mentioned. Instead, the focus is mostly on the people listening to the broadcast and getting the wrong idea. That may sound like a comedy but The Night America Trembled takes itself fairly seriously, complete with Edward R. Murrow narrating and taking drags off of a cigarette.
Clocking in at a brisk 60 minutes, The Night America Trembled is an interesting recreation of that October 30th. Among the people panicking are a large collection of future stars and character actors. Ed Asner, James Coburn, John Astin, Warren Oates, and Warren Beatty all make early appearances.
It’s an interesting historical document and you can watch it below!
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 81st birthday to the one and only Faye Dunaway. In honor of this day, I want to share a scene that I love from 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde.
Now, Bonnie and Clyde was not Dunaway’s first film. After appearing on Broadway, she was cast as a hippie kidnapped in a forgettable crime comedy called The Happening. Otto Preminger, who could always spot talent even if he didn’t always seem to understand how to persuade that talent to work with him, put her under contract and featured her as the wife of John Phillip Law in his legendary flop, Hurry Sundown. (Dunaway later said she had wanted to play the role of Michael Caine’s wife, a part that went to Jane Fonda and she never quite forgave Preminger for giving her a less interesting role.) Dunaway reportedly did not get along with Preminger and didn’t care much for the films that he was planning on featuring her in. One can imagine that she was happy when Warner Bros. bought her contract so that she could star opposite Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde.
Despite the fact that the real-life Bonnie Parker was notably shorter and certainly nowhere as glamorous as as the actress who was selected to play, Faye Dunaway proved to be the perfect choice for the role. Bonnie and Clyde proved to be a surprise hit and an Oscar contender. It made Dunaway a star, a fashion icon, and it resulted in her first Oscar nomination. Dunaway would go on to appear in such classic 70s films as Chinatown, The Towering Inferno, Three Days of the Concord, and Network before her unfortunate decision to star as Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest would slow the momentum of her career. Unfortunately, she would later become better known for having a difficult reputation and for engaging in some very public feuds, with the press often acting as if Dunaway was somehow uniquely eccentric in this regard. (To Hollywood, Dunaway’s sin wasn’t that she fought as much as it was that she fought in public.) Though Dunaway’s career has had its ups and downs, one cannot deny that when she was good, she was very, very good.
In this scene, from Bonnie and Clyde, Bonnie Parker (played by Faye Dunaway) writes a poem and tries to craft the future image of Bonnie and Clyde. Though it has none of the violence that made Bonnie and Clyde such a controversial film in 1967, this is still an important scene. (Actually, it’s more than one scene.) Indeed, this scene is a turning point for the entire film, the moment that Bonnie and Clyde goes from being an occasionally comedic attack on the establishment to a fatalistic crime noir. This is where Bonnie shows that, unlike Clyde, she knows that death is inescapable but she also knows that she and Clyde are destined to be legends.
(Of course, Dunaway and Beatty — two performers who one epitomized an era but only work occasionally nowadays — are already legends.)
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind…
— “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” by William Wordsworth
The 1962 film, Splendor in the Grass, takes place in Kansas shortly before the start of the Great Depression. Deanie (Natalie Wood) and Bud (Warren Beatty) are two teenagers in love but, as we learn, youthful love does not always translate into adult happiness.
Bud and Deanie are idealistic and in love but they’re from different social classes. Bud is the son of a boisterous oilman named Ace (Pat Hingle) and Ace acts much like you would expect a millionaire named Ace to behave. Bud’s parents are determined that he attend Yale and that he marry someone else from a wealthy family. They don’t want him to turn out like his older sister, Ginny (Barbara Loden), who drinks, smokes, and is rumored to have recently had an abortion. Meanwhile, Deanie is repeatedly told by her mother that she must always remain a “good girl” and not give in to the temptation to have premarital sex with either Bud or any other boy. If she does, she’ll be forever branded a bad girl and she’ll pretty much end up with a reputation like Ginny’s.
(Interestingly enough, Ace doesn’t have any problem with Bud finding himself a bad girl, nor does he have a problem with taking his son to a speakeasy later in the film. As far as society in concerned, being “good” and following the rules only applies to women.)
Needless to say, things don’t work out well for either Deanie or Bud. Bud is so frustrated that Deanie won’t have sex with him that he dumps her and then has the first of several breakdowns. When Deanie’s attempt to win Bud back by acting more like Ginny fails, she ends up going out with a classmate named Toots Tuttle (Gary Lockwood). Nothing good ever comes from going out on a date with someone named Toots Tuttle. That’s certainly the case here as Deanie and Bud both struggle with the demands of a hypocritical society that expects and encourages Bud to behave in a certain way but which also condemns Deanie for having desires of her own. And, of course, the entire time that Bud and Deanie’s drama is playing out, we’re aware that the clock is ticking and soon the stock market is going to crash and change everyone’s lives forever.
It’s kind of a depressing film, to be honest. I’ve always found it to be rather sad. When we first meet them, Deanie and Bud seem as if they’re perfect for each other but, throughout the entire film, the world seems to be conspiring to keep them apart. By the end of the film, they’ve both found a kind of happiness but we’re painfully aware that it’s not the happiness that either one was expecting while they were still in school. The film suggests that type of happiness might be impossible to attain and a part of growing up is realizing that there is no such thing as perfection. Instead, there’s just making the best of wherever you find yourself.
There’s a scene in this film where Natalie Wood nearly drowns and it always freaks me out, both because of my own fear of drowning and the fact that it foreshadows what would eventually happen to Natalie in 1982. (The fact that Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner’s yacht was called “Splendour” doesn’t help.) Natalie herself was also deeply scared of drowning and just filming the scene undoubtedly took a lot of courage on Natalie’s part. But then again, Natalie Wood’s entire performance is courageous. Natalie Wood gives an emotional and intense performance as Deanie, holding nothing back and it’s impossible not to get emotional while watching her. Making his film debut, Warren Beatty is a bit of a stiff as Bud, though he’s certainly handsome and you can tell why Deanie would have found him attractive. (In high school, you always assume that the boring, handsome guys actually have more depth than they let on.) By the end of the film, you understand that Deanie deserved better than Bud. Then again, Deanie deserved better than just about everything life had to offer her. But Deanie survived and endured and made the best of what she was given because, really, what else could she had done? What other choice did she have?
For her performance in Splendor in the Grass, Natalie Wood received her second Oscar nomination for Best Actress. She lost to Sophia Loren for Two Women and …. well, actually, Loren deserved the award. But so did Wood. 1961 would have been a great year for a tie.
Today is the 79th anniversary of Orson Welles’s infamous War of the Worlds broadcast.
In 1938, Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater of the Air performed a radio adaptation of H.G. Welles’s War of the World. Presented as a live news program, it was one of the first mockumentaries. It also caused a panic. How big the panic was is open for debate. Some say only a few people took it seriously. Other sources say that it was a nationwide crisis. But, regardless, Welles made history on that night. Not only did he illustrate the power of the media but he also scared the Hell out of a lot of people. All in all, a pretty good night…
Filmed in 1957 for a television program called Westinghouse Studio One, The Night America Trembled is a dramatization of that night. For legal reasons, Orson Welles is not portrayed nor is his name mentioned. Instead, the focus is mostly on the people listening to the broadcast and getting the wrong idea. That may sound like a comedy but The Night America Trembled takes itself fairly seriously. Even pompous old Edward R. Murrow shows up to narrate the film, in between taking drags off a cigarette. (I enjoyed the show but, whenever Murrow showed up, I was reminded of a grumpy old teacher complaining that none of his students cared about the Spanish-American War.)
Clocking in at a brisk 60 minutes, The Night America Trembled is an interesting recreation of that October 30th. Among the people panicking: a group of people in a bar who, before hearing the broadcast, were debating whether or not Hitler was as crazy as people said he was, a babysitter who goes absolutely crazy with fear, and a group of poker-playing college students. If, like me, you’re a frequent viewer of TCM, you may recognize some of the faces in the large cast: Ed Asner, James Coburn, John Astin, Warren Oates, and Warren Beatty all make early appearances.
As I said, it’s an interesting little historical document and you can watch it below!
If you’re ever visiting my former hometown of Denton, Texas, you owe it to yourself to do two things.
Number one, go to Recycled Books and Records. It’s right across the street from the old courthouse and it’s perhaps the greatest used bookstore in the world. When I was going to college at UNT, I would spend hours in Recycled Books. Not only do they have three floors of books but they have some really nice apartments on the fourth floor. I attended my share of hazily remembered parties in those apartments.
The second thing that you must do is stop by the Campus Theater. The Camps Theater is located on the other side of the old courthouse and it is a true historical landmark. (It’s also the home of the Denton Community Theatre.) When you step inside of the theater, be sure to look for a plaque on the wall. The plaque will inform you that, in 1967, Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde premiered at the Campus Theater.
Bonnie and Clyde not only premiered in Denton but it was also filmed around North Texas. This was a pragmatic decision, made to minimize studio interference. Even with that in mind, that’s still the way it should have been because Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are true Texas legends. In the 1930s, they were young, they robbed banks, and they killed people. Much like many of the outlaws of the era, they became folk heroes and they died in a hail of bullets.
In the picture above, Clyde is short, scrawny, and slightly handsome in a class clown sort of way. Bonnie, meanwhile, is even shorter than Clyde and has the hard look of someone who has never known an easy life. Both of them have a look that should be familiar to anyone who has spent any time in the small towns that dot the North Texas landscape. They look like real people. They don’t look like film stars.
Here’s the movie’s version of Bonnie and Clyde:
In other words, Bonnie and Clyde is not a documentary. But that doesn’t matter. 50 years after it was first released Bonnie and Clyde remains a powerful and, even more importantly, extremely entertaining film. When the film was released, it was controversial for it violence and, having recently rewatched it, I have to say that the violence still makes an impression. When guns are fired, the shots seem to literally explode in your ear. When people are torn apart by bullets, they die terrible deaths and the film’s most graphic demises are reserved for its most likable characters. Towards the end of the film, with the Texas Rangers relentlessly closing in on Bonnie and Clyde, the tension becomes almost unbearable.
What makes the violence all the more disturbing is that it often interrupts scenes that, until the bullets started flying, were often humorous. A bank robbery starts out as a lark, becomes an exciting chase scene as Bonnie and Clyde attempt to escape, and suddenly turns into an act of shocking of violence when Clyde fire a gun and shoots a man point-blank in the face. Later, stopping to help an old farmer change a tire leads to a sudden ambush. Perhaps the film’s outlook is best captured in a scene in which the Barrow gang cheerfully bonds with a hostage until they suddenly find out that he’s an undertaker, a reminder that the promise of death is always present.
“Get him out of here!” Bonnie snaps.
Like many of the great gangster films, Bonnie and Clyde presents its outlaws as being folk heroes. They may rob banks and occasionally kill people but they look good doing it and they seem like they would be fun to hang out with. The thing that set Bonnie and Clyde apart from previous gangster films is that it refused to even pretend to condemn its bank robbers. The cops and the Texas Rangers are all on the side of the banks and the banks are on the side of big business. Bonnie and Clyde aren’t outlaws. They’re rebels. When they rob banks, they’re not just taking money. They’re standing up to the same establishment that was feared in the 30s, resented in the 60s, and hated today.
Clyde is played by Warren Beatty (who also produced the film) and Bonnie is played by Faye Dunaway and both of them give performances that literally define screen charisma. You never forget that you’re watching two movie stars but, at the risk of repeating myself, Bonnie and Clyde is not meant to be a documentary. At times, it almost seems as if Beatty’s Clyde and Dunaway’s Bonnie know that they’re characters in a gangster movie. They know that they’re doomed because that’s how gangster movies work so, as a result, they’re determined to live as much life as possible before that final reel. The supporting cast — Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Michael J. Pollard, Gene Wilder — are all great but the film is definitely a celebration of Beatty and Dunaway.
Bonnie and Clyde went from premiering at the Campus Theater to a best picture nomination. However, it lost to In The Heat of the Night.
The Story of Suicide Sal
A Poem by Bonnie Parker
We each of us have a good “alibi”
For being down here in the “joint”;
But few of them really are justified
If you get right down to the point.
You’ve heard of a woman’s “glory”
Being spent on a “downright cur,”
Still you can’t always judge the story
As true, being told by her.
As long as I’ve stayed on this “island,”
And heard “confidence tales” from each “gal,”
Only one seemed interesting and truthful —
The story of “Suicide Sal.”
Now “Sal” was a gal of rare beauty,
Though her features were coarse and tough;
She never once faltered from duty
To play on the “up and up.”
“Sal” told me this tale on the evening
Before she was turned out “free,”
And I’ll do my best to relate it
Just as she told it to me:
I was born on a ranch in Wyoming;
Not treated like Helen of Troy;
I was taught that “rods were rulers”
And “ranked” as a greasy cowboy.”
Then I left my old home for the city
To play in its mad dizzy whirl,
Not knowing how little of pity
It holds for a country girl.
There I fell for “the line” of a “henchman,”
A “professional killer” from “Chi”;
I couldn’t help loving him madly;
For him even now I would die.
One year we were desperately happy;
Our “ill gotten gains” we spent free;
I was taught the ways of the “underworld”;
Jack was just like a “god” to me.
I got on the “F.B.A.” payroll
To get the “inside lay” of the “job”;
The bank was “turning big money”!
It looked like a “cinch” for the “mob.”
Eighty grand without even a “rumble” —
Jack was last with the “loot” in the door,
When the “teller” dead-aimed a revolver
From where they forced him to lie on the floor.
I knew I had only a moment —
He would surely get Jack as he ran;
So I “staged” a “big fade out” beside him
And knocked the forty-five out of his hand.
They “rapped me down big” at the station,
And informed me that I’d get the blame
For the “dramatic stunt” pulled on the “teller”
Looked to them too much like a “game.”
The “police” called it a “frame-up,”
Said it was an “inside job,”
But I steadily denied any knowledge
Or dealings with “underworld mobs.”
The “gang” hired a couple of lawyers,
The best “fixers” in any man’s town,
But it takes more than lawyers and money
When Uncle Sam starts “shaking you down.”
I was charged as a “scion of gangland”
And tried for my wages of sin;
The “dirty dozen” found me guilty —
From five to fifty years in the pen.
I took the “rap” like good people,
And never one “squawk” did I make.
Jake “dropped himself” on the promise
That we make a “sensational break.”
Well, to shorten a sad lengthy story,
Five years have gone over my head
Without even so much as a letter–
At first I thought he was dead.
But not long ago I discovered
From a gal in the joint named Lyle,
That Jack and his “moll” had “got over”
And were living in true “gangster style.”
If he had returned to me sometime,
Though he hadn’t a cent to give,
I’d forget all this hell that he’s caused me,
And love him as long as I live.
But there’s no chance of his ever coming,
For he and his moll have no fears
But that I will die in this prison,
Or “flatten” this fifty years.
Tomorrow I’ll be on the “outside”
And I’ll “drop myself” on it today;
I’ll “bump ’em” if they give me the “hotsquat”
On this island out here in the bay…
The iron doors swung wide next morning
For a gruesome woman of waste,
Who at last had a chance to “fix it,”
Murder showed in her cynical face.
Not long ago I read in the paper
That a gal on the East Side got “hot,”
And when the smoke finally retreated
Two of gangdom were found “on the spot.”
It related the colorful story
of a “jilted gangster gal.”
Two days later, a “sub-gun” ended
The story of “Suicide Sal.”
The Story of Bonnie and Clyde
Another Poem by Bonnie Parker
You’ve read the story of Jesse James
Of how he lived and died;
If you’re still in need
Of something to read,
Here’s the story of Bonnie and Clyde.
Now Bonnie and Clyde are the Barrow gang,
I’m sure you all have read
How they rob and steal
And those who squeal
Are usually found dying or dead.
There’s lots of untruths to these write-ups;
They’re not so ruthless as that;
Their nature is raw;
They hate all the law
The stool pigeons, spotters, and rats.
They call them cold-blooded killers;
They say they are heartless and mean;
But I say this with pride,
That I once knew Clyde
When he was honest and upright and clean.
But the laws fooled around,
Kept taking him down
And locking him up in a cell,
Till he said to me,
“I’ll never be free,
So I’ll meet a few of them in hell.”
The road was so dimly lighted;
There were no highway signs to guide;
But they made up their minds
If all roads were blind,
They wouldn’t give up till they died.
The road gets dimmer and dimmer;
Sometimes you can hardly see;
But it’s fight, man to man,
And do all you can,
For they know they can never be free.
From heart-break some people have suffered;
From weariness some people have died;
But take it all in all,
Our troubles are small
Till we get like Bonnie and Clyde.
If a policeman is killed in Dallas,
And they have no clue or guide;
If they can’t find a fiend,
They just wipe their slate clean
And hand it on Bonnie and Clyde.
There’s two crimes committed in America
Not accredited to the Barrow mob;
They had no hand
In the kidnap demand,
Nor the Kansas City depot job.
A newsboy once said to his buddy;
“I wish old Clyde would get jumped;
In these awful hard times
We’d make a few dimes
If five or six cops would get bumped.”
The police haven’t got the report yet,
But Clyde called me up today;
He said, “Don’t start any fights
We aren’t working nights
We’re joining the NRA.”
From Irving to West Dallas viaduct
Is known as the Great Divide,
Where the women are kin,
And the men are men,
And they won’t “stool” on Bonnie and Clyde.
If they try to act like citizens
And rent them a nice little flat,
About the third night
They’re invited to fight
By a sub-gun’s rat-tat-tat.
They don’t think they’re too tough or desperate,
They know that the law always wins;
They’ve been shot at before,
But they do not ignore
That death is the wages of sin.
Some day they’ll go down together;
And they’ll bury them side by side;
To few it’ll be grief
To the law a relief
But it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.
The Alliance of Women Film Journalists (of which I am not a member and what’s up with that!?) announced their picks for the best of 2016 earlier this week.
And here they are:
AWFJ BEST OF AWARDS
These awards are presented to women and/or men without gender consideration. Best Film
Arrival Hell or High Water La La Land
Manchester by the Sea Moonlight
Best Screenplay, Adapted
Arrival – Eric Heisserer
Lion – Luke Davies
Love & Friendship – Whit Stillman Moonlight – Barry Jenkins
Nocturnal Animals –Tom Ford
Best Documentary 13th – Ava DuVernay
Gleason – Clay Tweel
I Am Not Your Negro – Raoul Peck
OJ Made in America – Ezra Edelman Weiner – Elyse Steinberg and Josh Kriegma
Best Actress
Amy Adams – Arrival
Isabelle Huppert – Elle Ruth Negga – Loving
Natalie Portman – Jackie Emma Stone – La La Land
Best Actress in a Supporting Role Viola Davis – Fences
Greta Gerwig – 20th Century Women
Naomie Harris – Moonlight
Octavia Spencer – Hidden Figures
Michelle Williams – Manchester by the Sea
Best Non-English-Language Film
Elle – Paul Verhoeven, France
Fire At Sea – Gianfranco Rossi, Italy The Handmaiden – Chan-Wook Park, South Korea
Julieta – Pedro Almodovar. Spain
Toni Erdmann – Maren Ede, Germany
EDA FEMALE FOCUS AWARDS
These awards honor WOMEN only
Best Woman Director Andrea Arnold – American Honey Ava DuVernay -13TH
Rebecca Miller – Maggie’s Plan
Mira Nair – Queen of Katwe
Kelly Reichardt – Certain Women
Best Woman Screenwriter Andrea Arnold – American Honey
Rebecca Miller – Maggie’s Plan Kelly Reichardt – Certain Women
Lorene Scafaria – The Meddler
Laura Terruso – Hello, My Name is Doris
Best Breakthrough Performance Sasha Lane – American Honey
Janelle Monáe – Moonlight and Hidden Figures
Madina Nalwanga – Queen of Katwe Ruth Negga – Loving
Outstanding Achievement by A Woman in The Film Industry Ava DuVernay – For 13TH and raising awareness about the need for diversity and gender equality in Hollywood
Anne Hubbell and Amy Hobby for establishing Tangerine Entertainment’s Juice Fund to support female filmmakers
Mynette Louie, President of Gamechanger Films, which finances narrative films directed by women
April Reign for creating and mobilizing the #OscarsSoWhite campaign
EDA SPECIAL MENTION AWARDS
Actress Defying Age and Ageism Annette Bening – 20th Century Women
Viola Davis – Fences
Sally Field – Hello, My Name is Doris Isabelle Huppert – Elle and Things to Come
Helen Mirren – Eye in the Sky
Actress Most in Need Of A New Agent Jennifer Aniston – Mother’s Day and Office Christmas Party
Melissa McCarthy – The Boss and Ghostbusters
Margot Robbie – Suicide Squad and Tarzan
Julia Roberts – Mother’s Day
Shailene Woodley – Divergent Series
AWFJ Hall of Shame Award Sharon Maguire and Renee Zellweger for Bridget Jones’s Baby
Nicholas Winding Refn and Elle Fanning for The Neon Demon
David Ayer and Margot Robbie for Suicide Squad
David E. Talbert and Mo’Nique for Almost Christmas
So, if you’ve ever wondered what happened to Robert Redford’s Bill McKay after he was elected to the U.S. Senate at the end of The Candidate, I imagine that he probably ended up becoming something like the protagonist of 1998’s Bulworth, U.S. Sen. Jay Bulworth.
As played by Warren Beatty, Bulworth is a veteran senator. A former liberal firebrand, he may still decorate his office with pictures of him meeting Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King but Bulworth sold out a long time ago. Now, he just says whatever has to say in order to get elected, including pretending to have a happy marriage. He has become a part of everything that’s wrong with Washington.
Sick of both politics and life in general, Bulworth decides that he’d rather be dead. But, in order to make sure that his daughter collects on his $10,000,000 life insurance policy, Bulworth cannot commit suicide. Instead, he arranges for a contract to be taken out on his life. In two days, Bulworth will be assassinated.
Returning to California for his campaign, Bulworth gets drunk and suddenly starts to say what he actually believes. He attacks the Washington establishment. He attacks the voters. He attacks the insurance companies and comes out for single payer health insurance. With his desperate press secretary (Oliver Platt) chasing behind him, Bulworth spends the night dancing at a club where he discovers marijuana and meets a girl named Nina (Halle Berry).
(Platt, meanwhile, discovers that he really, really likes cocaine.)
Soon, Nina and Bulworth are hiding out in the ghetto, where Bulworth meets both Nina’s brother (Isiah Washington) and local drug dealer, L.D. (Don Cheadle), and gets a lesson about how economics actually work in the ghetto. Soon, Bulworth is appearing on CNN where he raps his new political platform and suggests that the solutions for all of America’s problems would be for everyone to just keep having sex until eventually everyone is the same color.
Of course, what Bulworth doesn’t know is that Nina also happens to be the assassin who has been contracted to kill him…
I have mixed feelings about Bulworth. On the one hand, the film starts out strong. You don’t have to agree with the film’s politics in order to appreciate the film’s passion, Bulworth is an angry film and one that’s willing to say some potentially unpopular things. It’s a film about politics that doesn’t resort to the easy solutions that were proposed by some of the other films that I’ve reviewed for Shattered Politics. Warren Beatty does a pretty good job of portraying Bulworth’s initial mental breakdown and Oliver Platt is a manic wonder as he consumes more and more cocaine.
But, once Warren Beatty starts rapping, the film starts to fall apart and becomes a bit too cartoonish for its own good. You get the feeling that Warren Beatty, at this point, is just trying to live out the liberal fantasy of being the only wealthy white man in America to understand what it’s like to be poor and black in America.
Bulworth starts out well but ultimately, it begins better than it ends.
Judging from the films that the decade produced, the 1970s were truly a paranoid time. (Of course, 2015 is a paranoid time as well, which is probably why so many of the classic films of the 70s still feel incredibly relevant.) Some weekend, you should watch a marathon of 1970s films and I guarantee that, by the time Monday rolls around, you will be looking for lurkers in every shadow and automatically distrusting any and all authority figures. The 1970s were a good time to be paranoid.
And it’s really not surprising at all. The previous decade was a time of turmoil and upheavel, a time when some people feared protestors and some people feared the establishment but, ultimately, everyone was afraid of someone. When you think of the 1960s, you think about all the leaders who were violently assassinated — John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy, and more. (And that’s just in America!) And then the 70s came along, with Watergate and the revelations about the CIA partnering up with the Mafia to try to kill Fidel Castro.
The 70s were a good time to be paranoid and the films of the 70s reflected that fact.
Take for instance, 1974’s The Parallax View. The Parallax View opens and ends with assassination. In both cases, the victims are U.S. politicians who are running for President and whose ambitions have caused concern for the shadowy and rarely seen leaders of the established order. In both cases, the official story is that the assassin was a lone gunman, a nut with a gun and absolutely no political or religious motivations. Of course, both accused assassins were apparently involved with the shadowy Parallax Corporation and, over the course of the film, anyone who knows anything about Parallax ends up dying. Reporter Joe Frady (Warren Beatty) goes undercover to investigate the group but, as he does so, he grows increasingly paranoid and unstable, until finally it’s easy to mistake him for any other paranoid madman, ranting in the street and, in many ways, indistinguishable from the accused assassins that he’s been investigating. In many ways, Joe becomes like a character in a H.P. Lovecraft short story who, upon laying eyes on Cthulhu, is driven mad as punishment.
It’s a good film, one that’s enhanced by Gordon Willis’s trademark shadowy cinematography and the convincing desperation of Warren Beatty’s performance. In the film’s best scene, Frady applies for a job with the Parallax Corporation. As a part of his job interview, he’s taken a dark room and he’s told to watch a short film. His reactions will help to determine what role he could possibly play at Parallax.
Needless to say, The Parallax View feels just as relevant today as it did when it was first released. We still live in paranoid times and hints of conspiracy are still everywhere to be seen. Perhaps the only thing that has changed is that, back in 1974, conspiracies could still take people be surprise.
Let’s continue to embrace the melodrama with the 1991 best picture nominee Bugsy.
Gangster Benjamin Siegel (Warren Beatty) may be known as Bugsy but nobody dares call him that to his face. Siegel may be best known for his quick temper and his willingness to murder anyone who gets in his way, but Ben insists that he’s not as crazy as everyone considers him to be. Instead, Ben knows that he’s a very special person, a visionary businessman whose business just happens to be organized crime. Along with his childhood friends Lucky Luciano (Bill Graham) and Meyer Lansky (Ben Kingsley), Siegel is one of the founders of the modern American crime syndicate. Unlike his more practical-minded partners, Siegel revels in being a public figure. Bugsy examines how Siegel became a celebrity gangster and how that celebrity eventually led to his downfall.
As the film opens, Luciano and Lansky send Siegel out to Los Angeles, specifically to look after their west coast business operations. Before Siegel leaves, he is specifically told to keep a low profile. So, of course, as soon as Siegel arrives in Los Angeles, he starts hanging out with actor George Raft (Joe Mantegna) and having a very public affair with actress Virginia Hill (Annette Bening). Siegel quickly falls in love with the glamour and glitz of Hollywood and starts to think of himself as being a movie star. When he’s not working with violent gangster Mickey Cohen (Harvey Keitel) to control the Los Angeles underworld, Siegel is attending film premieres and even shooting a Hollywood screen test. Back in New York, Luciano and Lansky can only watch as their childhood friend goes out of his way to defy their instructions and become the most famous gangster in America.
Eventually, Siegel goes on a gambling trip to Nevada and comes up with an idea that is destined to change America forever. With funding from Lansky and Luciano, Siegel begins construction on the Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. However, Siegel’s plans are so extravagant and, in many ways, impractical that the budget soon soars out of control. Not helping matters is the fact that Virginia is embezzling money from the casino’s budget. Even after Siegel finds out, he can’t bring himself to be angry at her. He understand that he and Virginia are essentially cut from the same cloth.
However, back in New York, Luciano grows more and more frustrated with Siegel’s wasteful ways and Lansky comes to realize that he can only protect his friend for so long…
Bugsy is a big, extravagant movie that tries to be a few too many things at once. Over the course of two and a half hours, it attempts to be a love story, a biopic, a classic gangster film, an allegory for the American dream, a history lesson, a period piece, and finally, a metaphor for the act of filmmaking itself. (When Siegel complains that Luciano and Lansky don’t understand why the Flamingo has to be huge, it’s hard not to feel that he’s meant to be a stand in for every director who has ever had his budget cut by a meddling studio executive.) When a film tries to be so many different things all at once, you can’t be surprised when the end result is a little uneven. Bugsy starts out slowly but gradually picks up speed and the final part of the movie is everything that one could hope for from an epic gangster film.
The film works best as a character study of a man who, in the best American tradition, attempts to reinvent himself by moving out west. Back in New York, Ben is known as a cold-blooded and dangerous killer. However, once he arrives in Los Angeles, Ben attempts to recreate himself as a celebrity and then as a visionary. For him, the Flamingo is about more than money. The Flamingo is about being remembered for something other than his nickname. The Flamingo is his way to escape from his past. However, as Bugsy makes clear, the past can be ignored but it never goes away.
Through the Shattered Lens 