The Best American Poetry

See "Picnic" on Labor Day [by DL]

Hal Carter (William Holden), a football star in college and a failure at everything since, hops off a freight train with nothing but the ragged shirt on his back. He arrives at a last resort: the small town in Kansas where his fraternity mate, Alan Benson (Cliff Robertson), the well-to-do son of an industrialist, lives. It is Labor Day, 1955, and everyone has the day off, but Hal offers to do back-yard work for Mrs. Potts (Verna Felton), the kindly old lady who feeds him and obligingly offers to wash his shirt, thus giving us a look at his buff, shaven chest.

The “us” in that last sentence includes Benson’s girlfriend, Madge Owens (Kim Novak at her most stunning). At the town’s annual Labor Day picnic, Madge will be crowned the Queen of the Neewollah (Halloween spelled backwards). Many, including Millie (Susan Strasberg), Madge’s young sister, drink too much at the picnic, and Hal gets blamed for everything that goes wrong.

Neither Holden nor Novak is a natural dancer, but when they dance at the picnic to the tune of “Moonglow,” the sparks fly. Whereas Novak and James Stewart play out a passionate romance on the interior level of the psyche in Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the physical attraction between Novak and Holden is electric. Benson castigates the “same old Hal” to whom he had earlier promised a job, albeit as a “wheat scooper” rather than the executive positon Hal had unrealistically hoped for. Hal leaves town the same way he arrived, only this time, Madge packs a suitcase and plans to take a bus to meet him in Tulsa.

Rosalind Russell and Arthur O’Connell give outstanding performances as the town’s frustrated schoolmarm and her reluctant suitor, who must settle for what small-town life can give them. Joshua Logan directed this film adaptation of William Inge’s Broadway play. See Picnic on Labor Day weekend if you can. It’s hot.

For recommendations on movies for Halloween (Arsenic and Old Lace) and Thanksgiving (Hannah and Her Sisters), click here  for my "Talking Pictures" feature that appeared in The American Scholar of August 28, 2021.

from the archive; posted Labor Day 2022

"Angelic Autism: The Boy Who Could Fly" [by Joe Lehman]

        With the exception of Dustin Hoffman’s role in 1988’s Rain Man, a great many representations of autism in fiction, particularly in Hollywood movies, focus on autistic children and young adults. The inevitability that people with autism are bound to face the responsibilities of adulthood is something that filmmakers often sidestep or overlook altogether. As a result, Hollywood movies depicting autistic youths tend to romanticize them, sometimes even rendering them with mystical traits. One such mystical trait is the ability to set oneself free from the constraints of the uncertain world by flying in the style of Peter Pan.

        The 1986 family feature The Boy Who Could Fly, directed by Nick Castle, stars Jay Underwood in the title role, a Peter Pan-like figure of an autistic teenage boy, and Lucy Deakins as his doting Wendy-like love interest. Here is the plot. Millie, a lovely and kind-hearted fourteen-year-old girl, along with her recently-widowed mother Charlene (Bonnie Bedelia of Die Hard), and precocious younger brother Louis (Fred Savage of TV’s “The Wonder Years”) have settled in to a new suburban town. Living next door is Eric, a boy Millie’s age who (we soon learn) is severely autistic, unable to speak or connect socially with others.

        As a natural fish out of water and still grieving the loss of her father, Millie, finds herself drawn to Eric, who spends most of his time sitting on a window ledge, with his arms outstretched, as though dreaming of flying. Eric, it just so happens, was orphaned at a young age, leaving him in the care of his often-disoriented and inebriated, but otherwise, well-meaning uncle Hugo (Fred Gwynne of TV’s “The Munsters”). The other adult figures in the film, including school officials and social workers, observe that Millie has made reaching Eric a project to compensate for her own losses. But Millie’s attraction to Eric is as much romantic as it is figuratively maternal. Just as Wendy Darling play-acts the mother figure to Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, she is also Peter’s sweetheart.

        The Boy Who Could Fly is, without question, a youth-oriented film. As such, the young characters are portrayed as always in the right, while the adults are either wrong-headed or perhaps they mean well but are otherwise clueless. Millie has to fight strenuously to prove to her authority figures Eric’s uniqueness and brilliance. She maintains that he should not be institutionalized. Rather he should remain in a mainstream school setting.

The movie is about more than just an autistic boy who dreams of flying and the girl who cares for him. It is also a salute to the kind of transformation that Eric makes from boy to angel. It is this theme that can be considered somewhat controversial: the trope of the autistic boy with mystical traits. The audience is led to believe that there is something special about Eric in an otherworldly way. He has the ability to appear on Millie’s windowsill and then reappear on his own windowsill next door in the blink of an eye. Millie also has a long dream sequence in which she and Eric are flying across the nighttime sky, in a scene reminiscent of Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder soaring over Metropolis in 1978’s Superman.

        Without knowing the exact details of the film's surprise conclusion, the audience infers that Eric may in fact be a kind of seraph. There is, however, no plausible explanation offered by the filmmakers for this assumption. Audience members are just expected to run with the idea, no questions asked. These magical themes would be far less likely in a movie aimed at an adult audience. Consider Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, is very much a human being throughout the picture.

    The Boy Who Could Fly is heartwarming and a slice of pure fantasy. The acting is fine. Jay Underwood and Lucy Deakins, as Eric and Millie, are a cute couple to look at. People who have grown up during the 1980s will adore this movie; that much is certain. It is a perennial favorite of this author. It evokes feelings of nostalgia and sentiment. Viewers put off by the film’s folk lore might be more comfortable watching Rain Man instead, but I say why not enjoy both.

-- April 2021 (first published by Challenge Workforce Solutions)

The Conqueror Worm [poem by Edgar Allen Poe]

Who better to usher in Halloween than Edgar Allan Poe, the master of horror, suspense, and the macabre. Does your lifelong fear of being buried alive originate with Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”? Do you ever lie awake imagining a heart is beating from beneath the floorboards? You have Poe to thank for your nightmares. He brilliantly locates our collective fears and animates them in the short stories and poems written over the course of his brief and mysterious life. His ballad “Annabel Lee” hovers over Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita,” whose protagonist’s first love is “Annabel Leigh.”  (“When I was a child and she was a child, my little Annabel [Leigh] was no nymphet to me”). Then there’s  “The Conqueror Worm,” an appropriately creepy poem that comes to us from beyond the grave. Poe describes a theater performance; the actors are “mimes,” the hero is a large worm that eats the actors. The curtain falls. Boo!

The Conqueror Worm

Lo! ’t is a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly—
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Wo!

That motley drama—oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout,
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

Out—out are the lights—out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”
And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.

 

        -- Edgar Allan Poe

(Ed note: The poster, above, is from the final of three films by British director Michael Reeves before his untimely death from a barbiturate overdose at age 25. Have you seen it? -- sdl)

---

Mr. Lucky Didn't Know Who He Was [by David Lehman]

Cary Grant on location in Paris, France, for Charade, 1963 (Everett Collection)

 

Arguably Hollywood’s handsomest leading man, Cary Grant was a big box-office draw: tall, sophisticated, devilishly debonair in dramas, suitably wacky in screwball comedies. For more than three decades, directors paired him with the most glamorous actresses of the day. But Cary Grant didn’t know who he was. “Everybody wants to be Cary Grant,” he said. “Even I want to be Cary Grant. I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me. Or we met at some point.”

By all accounts, Grant made the most of his lifelong identity crisis. Lacking a certain persona—being “Nobody,” which is what Odysseus calls himself when confronting the Cyclops in The Odyssey—meant that Grant could convincingly play anybody, serious or comic: a spy in South America, a jewel thief on the Riviera, Hollywood’s idea of what Cole Porter should have looked like. He even plays a ghost, the male half of a duo of friendly spirits who set out to liberate a nowhere man from the shackles of boredom (Topper, 1937, with Constance Bennett as the ghostly spouse). He is also the aptly named title figure in 1943’s Mr. Lucky (directed by H. C. Potter), a fast-talking gambler wooing an heiress played by Laraine Day.

The following link takes you to The American Scholar website, in which this  "Talking Pictures" piece  went up yesterday (September 28: https://theamericanscholar.org/mr-lucky-didnt-know-who-he-was/
Or click here to read the rest of the essay.

The Boy from the Garden: Review of "Timothy Green" [by Joe Lehman]

 

Lin Manuel-Miranda in The Odd Life of Timothy Green

Disney’s The Odd Life of Timothy Green deserves credit where credit is due, yet leaves its viewer with a feeling of incompleteness in that it doesn’t achieve all that it could. The viewer is presented with the story of a childless couple, Jim and Cindy Green (Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Garner) who one night find that a boy of about ten years old has appeared from out of the soil in their garden—and he has leaves growing out of his legs (leaves, which cannot be removed) and he immediately addresses the befuddled Jim and Cindy as “Mom” and “Dad.”

        The movie wisely does not to go into a long explanation of how this miraculous event came to be, leaving this to the viewer’s imagination. The Greens don’t ask questions, they accept this gift from God or Mother Nature without hesitation and agree to raise the child as their own, all the while keeping his legs covered in long socks so as not to reveal his telltale leaves. Two things are made clear:  he is a composite of all the traits the parents had wished for in a son and he seems to be of a species of botanical origin. This is apparent by his consistent show of basking in the glare of the sun throughout the movie. The kid — the Timothy of the title — of course, is perfect. So well-behaved it is almost too good to be true. The kind every parent longs to have. He goes to school, is oblivious to the jokes and pranks that bullies make at his expense, tries out for the soccer team, proves to draw expertly with a pencil, and even shows talent with a drumbeat.

            Watching Timothy Green evokes the memories of similarly themed films as 1985’s superb D.A.R.Y.L. and 2001’s moodier A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Like the preteen-aged boys of those movies, Timothy is not quite human, and it shows in his quirky, offbeat behavior. Unlike the earlier films, Timothy Green fails to explore the full depths of this behavior, preferring to focus more on the parents and their observations of and reactions to this miracle child of theirs. This is a mistake on the movie’s part, as Jim and Cindy, despite the complexities of their characters and their obvious insecurities with being thrust full-time into parenthood (Jim is determined to become an improvement over his own less-than-supportive father Jim Sr., played by David Morse) do not sustain as much interest as the fantastical Timothy.

            Consider the early scene where Timothy is bullied in school for his noticeable differences — he is brand new to this world and needs to be told how things work and what they mean. This theme was visited in D.A.R.Y.L when the boy-robot of the title is winked at by a girl and responds by blinking with both eyes, not knowing the meaning of the gesture. Only in Timothy Green, Timothy’s relationships with other kids are not adequately explored. His friendship with an alienated girl Joni (Odeya Rush) is presented without much dialogue at all. Joni figures out early on Timothy’s secret physical characteristics, i.e. his leaves and origins. But the interplay between the two does not go much further. Joni’s presence does not lead Timothy’s character development in any new directions. This is in direct contrast to the much more dynamic relationship between Daryl and his young friend “Turtle” in D.A.R.Y.L., where Turtle teaches Daryl that, because parents don’t want their children to be too perfect, he needs to display a mischievous side once in a while. Timothy Green does not offer Timothy such opportunities for exploration.

        Timothy spends the most screen time interacting with the adults. These include Jim’s father, Cindy’s sister (Rosemarie DeWitt), who can always be counted on to brag of her own children’s many talents, Cindy’s elderly aunt and uncle (Lois Smith and M. Emmett Walsh), her unhappy boss, the town matriarch, played by Dianne Wiest, and the frustrated soccer coach, played by rapper Common. The supporting cast is impressive, and each actor has something to contribute. What is consistent about these characters and their relationship to Timothy is that he manages to bring out the positive side in each of them. This is nice, but could be more interesting if their responses were more varied. They, in turn, bring out Timothy’s vast talents, although he is not quite perfect in all of them — his performance at the pivotal soccer game speaks to that — another wise decision on the movie’s part. The problem is that once the viewer is introduced to Timothy’s many talents, they are left unexplored. Timothy displays his gifts at music and drawing and then does not do much with them.

        Looming in the background is a subplot about the town’s primary base of industry, the beloved pencil factory that is in danger of shutting down, leaving Jim and most of the townsfolk out of work. Timothy’s cheerfully optimistic personality encourages Jim and Cindy to take a step to save the factory, which turns out to be an inspired idea, best not to be revealed in this review. There is of course the obligatory threat from the factory bosses to take credit for this step and the conflict between them and the parents. Such elements are standard movie fare, but effective in this case.

        Ultimately, Timothy Green is a respectable film that deals with its themes with grace and maturity. It is certainly appropriate for the whole family to enjoy. It is charming in many ways. It just does not go the entire distance. There are too many missed opportunities, times when the film left the door open to explore certain elements and ideas and then abandoned them before going any further. It is a pretty good movie that could have been great.

from the archive; first posted September 12, 2012.

Lin Manuel-Miranda in The Odd Life of Timothy Green

Disney’s The Odd Life of Timothy Green deserves credit where credit is due, yet leaves its viewer with a feeling of incompleteness in that it doesn’t achieve all that it could. The viewer is presented with the story of a childless couple, Jim and Cindy Green (Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Garner) who one night find that a boy of about ten years old has appeared from out of the soil in their garden—and he has leaves growing out of his legs (leaves, which cannot be removed) and he immediately addresses the befuddled Jim and Cindy as “Mom” and “Dad.”

        The movie wisely does not to go into a long explanation of how this miraculous event came to be, leaving this to the viewer’s imagination. The Greens don’t ask questions, they accept this gift from God or Mother Nature without hesitation and agree to raise the child as their own, all the while keeping his legs covered in long socks so as not to reveal his telltale leaves. Two things are made clear:  he is a composite of all the traits the parents had wished for in a son and he seems to be of a species of botanical origin. This is apparent by his consistent show of basking in the glare of the sun throughout the movie. The kid — the Timothy of the title — of course, is perfect. So well-behaved it is almost too good to be true. The kind every parent longs to have. He goes to school, is oblivious to the jokes and pranks that bullies make at his expense, tries out for the soccer team, proves to draw expertly with a pencil, and even shows talent with a drumbeat.

            Watching Timothy Green evokes the memories of similarly themed films as 1985’s superb D.A.R.Y.L. and 2001’s moodier A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Like the preteen-aged boys of those movies, Timothy is not quite human, and it shows in his quirky, offbeat behavior. Unlike the earlier films, Timothy Green fails to explore the full depths of this behavior, preferring to focus more on the parents and their observations of and reactions to this miracle child of theirs. This is a mistake on the movie’s part, as Jim and Cindy, despite the complexities of their characters and their obvious insecurities with being thrust full-time into parenthood (Jim is determined to become an improvement over his own less-than-supportive father Jim Sr., played by David Morse) do not sustain as much interest as the fantastical Timothy.

            Consider the early scene where Timothy is bullied in school for his noticeable differences — he is brand new to this world and needs to be told how things work and what they mean. This theme was visited in D.A.R.Y.L when the boy-robot of the title is winked at by a girl and responds by blinking with both eyes, not knowing the meaning of the gesture. Only in Timothy Green, Timothy’s relationships with other kids are not adequately explored. His friendship with an alienated girl Joni (Odeya Rush) is presented without much dialogue at all. Joni figures out early on Timothy’s secret physical characteristics, i.e. his leaves and origins. But the interplay between the two does not go much further. Joni’s presence does not lead Timothy’s character development in any new directions. This is in direct contrast to the much more dynamic relationship between Daryl and his young friend “Turtle” in D.A.R.Y.L., where Turtle teaches Daryl that, because parents don’t want their children to be too perfect, he needs to display a mischievous side once in a while. Timothy Green does not offer Timothy such opportunities for exploration.

        Timothy spends the most screen time interacting with the adults. These include Jim’s father, Cindy’s sister (Rosemarie DeWitt), who can always be counted on to brag of her own children’s many talents, Cindy’s elderly aunt and uncle (Lois Smith and M. Emmett Walsh), her unhappy boss, the town matriarch, played by Dianne Wiest, and the frustrated soccer coach, played by rapper Common. The supporting cast is impressive, and each actor has something to contribute. What is consistent about these characters and their relationship to Timothy is that he manages to bring out the positive side in each of them. This is nice, but could be more interesting if their responses were more varied. They, in turn, bring out Timothy’s vast talents, although he is not quite perfect in all of them — his performance at the pivotal soccer game speaks to that — another wise decision on the movie’s part. The problem is that once the viewer is introduced to Timothy’s many talents, they are left unexplored. Timothy displays his gifts at music and drawing and then does not do much with them.

        Looming in the background is a subplot about the town’s primary base of industry, the beloved pencil factory that is in danger of shutting down, leaving Jim and most of the townsfolk out of work. Timothy’s cheerfully optimistic personality encourages Jim and Cindy to take a step to save the factory, which turns out to be an inspired idea, best not to be revealed in this review. There is of course the obligatory threat from the factory bosses to take credit for this step and the conflict between them and the parents. Such elements are standard movie fare, but effective in this case.

        Ultimately, Timothy Green is a respectable film that deals with its themes with grace and maturity. It is certainly appropriate for the whole family to enjoy. It is charming in many ways. It just does not go the entire distance. There are too many missed opportunities, times when the film left the door open to explore certain elements and ideas and then abandoned them before going any further. It is a pretty good movie that could have been great.

from the archive; first posted September 12, 2012.

Is Poker like Poetry?

Name the players, the spectators, the movie they're in, the card game being played, and the three who are not there. Then name the painter responsible for the picture below: Now you are abe to mount an argument for why poker is like poetry. -- DL

The Century Martini: Vive la republique de France a quatorze juillet

 

(art by Hilary Cooper, 2020; clip from Casablanca)

La Marseillaise

Allons, enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé.
Contre nous, de la tyrannie,
L’étendard sanglant est levé;
L’étendard sanglant est levé.
Entendez-vous, dans les campagnes
Mugir ces féroces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras
Égorger nos fils, nos compagnes.
Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons, marchons!
Qu’un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons.

"La Marseillaise" was written in one night, (April 24, 1792) by Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle.

"In the Line of Duty: The FBI Murders" (part three) [by Joe Lehman]

III.

Why did these former soldiers behave as they did? Was it greed pure and simple? As Ed Mireles opines, “Platt and Matix wanted the good life, and in Miami that means a big home, preferably on the beach, a new car, boats, trips to Disney World and lots of leisure time. That is the common profile of drug dealers and people who commit fraud on a grand scale. So, in that respect, they were normal criminal minded people.” 

Perhaps the most revealing scene near the climax of the movie takes place on the morning of Friday, April 11, 1986, when mere hours before the firefight, Mike Platt is driving his teenage stepson to school. Playing on the radio is a news report announcing U.S. military airstrikes against the rogue state of Libya. The airstrikes were conducted in response to evidence linking Libyan dictator Colonel Qaddafi and his agents to the terrorist bombing of La Belle disco tech in West Germany, which killed two American servicemen, just earlier in the month. (The airstrikes indeed occurred three days after the shootout.) Platt casually exclaims that “it’s about time we did something about that Qaddafi. If you ask me, it’s time to take him out.” Platt’s stepson nods in agreement and then tells Platt that he is writing a term paper on the Vietnam War. It is here, in an unusually rare moment of clarity, Platt reveals the sullen truth, that contrary to his earlier claims of battlefield heroics, he spent his entire Army career based stateside or in Seoul, South Korea, but he never served in Vietnam at all. He was “all ready to go, and then some wimp in Washington pulled the plug.” But, he says almost prophetically, “the way things are going in the Middle East, you might not need to worry about writing the paper. Why don’t you just join the service and kick butt?” The stepson chuckles nervously. It is here that Platt is exposed for what he really is, a narcissistic coward and a braggart, the irony of his prophecy about U.S. involvement in the Middle East notwithstanding.

In the aftermath of the shootout, numerous media reports played up the fact of Platt and Matix’s veneer of being upstanding, law abiding, and patriotic American citizens. But this brings to mind, Dr. Samuel Johnson’s classic saying that “Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels” in studying the contradiction between the villains’ outward appearances and the reality of their violent criminal activity.

One undisputed fact was that during the shootout, in real life, and as seen on the television reenactment, the bad guys, armed with automatic weapons, took an incredible number of bullet wounds, but managed to continue firing at the agents, who were less heavily armed. Why didn’t they surrender? What was their endgame? Had they actually managed to escape, they would have had to request medical attention; they could not have simply wandered into a hospital with a made-up story. Doctors are required by law to report gun injuries. Yet unbelievably, the dastardly duo made one last-ditch effort to drive away, after limping from their stolen car to a vehicle belonging to some of the deceased or wounded agents. When someone is running on pure adrenalin they act on pure impulse. in mind.

Mireles is shown preventing the killers’ attempted escape by firing final shots into them. The words “It’s over, you bastards” come from the televised Mireles’s mouth. In real life, Agent Mireles recalls shouting some much harsher language. Who can blame him? Two of his buddies—Grogan and Dove were killed in cold blood—and Mireles and the rest of the team were critically injured. As the real Mireles recalls:

“They did not hesitate to fire their weapons and shoot people in cold blood. Was it their military training? Partly yes, the rest was their psychopathic personalities. As far as their ‘not giving up’ goes, that is also, a very large part military training. But somewhere in the DNA mix is their psychopathic personalities. Those two main factors, training and personality, equate to how a person reacts, what a person does.”

Francois Truffaut is believed to have said that it is impossible to make an antiwar film. On screen, the action looks too exciting for the audience to be properly repelled by the idea of combat. The FBI Murders’ climactic firefight is sufficiently action-packed. But Ed Mireles has written in his own account the experience of feeling battle fatigue and survivor’s guilt.

C.S. Lewis once wrote “The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity.’… …by putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it.”

Perhaps, though, with all due respect to Lewis, there are some experiences that can never be familiar to audience members and critics and scholars. These are just a few minutes of combat situations. The televised depiction of the events that culminated in this infamous episode is certainly shrouded in myth and creative license. The FBI Murders’ value is that it takes the things we don’t know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of unfamiliarity.’ That is where the relationship of docudrama to reality merges positively.

Casino brought to life [by Mitch Sisskind]

Casino is the best Mafia film although some might say that Casino
could not exist without the preceding Goodfellas so Casino is sort
of like Goodfellas 2. Be that as it may characters in Casino derive
from guys in the so-called Outfit -- the Chicago Mafia -- who ran
Las Vegas. A lot of us poetry readers, while we are familiar with
Joe Pesce and Robert De Niro in Casino, might not know about
their real life counterparts so a few of them can be seen below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joey Aiuppa, on the right, was the CEO of the Outfit at the time 
in which Casino takes place although the character upon which
he is based is supposed to be from Kansas City in the film and
only appears in one or two scenes. I don't know who the guy on
the left is. 

                                                                                                                                                       

                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robert De Niro plays Lefty Rosenthal in Casino and Sharon
Stone plays his wife. This photo shows the real Lefty Rosenthal 
on the right along with his wife so you can see how incredibly
hot she was just like Sharon Stone in the movie. The other guy
is Michael Spilotro. He was the brother of Anthony Spilotro,
who was played by Joe Pesce in the film. I don't know who 
the woman on the left is. Maybe Michael's wife?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's a rare and unusual picture of Anthony Spilotro -- Joe Pesce's character --
playing ping-pong. Anthony Spilotro looks kind of pudgy and baby-faced in the 
picture but he was actually violent and hot-headed like Pesce portrayed him. 
Maybe it's not explicit in the movie but in real life Anthony Spilotro had sexual 
intercourse with Left Rosenthal's hot wife which made waves so Joey Aiuppa
okayed the execution of Anthony Spilotro. The real life hit of Anthony Spilotro 
happened somewhat like in the movie except Anthony's brother Michael was 
also whacked at the same time and they were not whacked in a cornfield but 
were subsequently transported to a cornfield and buried there. Why was 
Michael also whacked? Who cares. Furthermore, the bodies of Michael 
and Anthony were soon discovered by a farmer whereas if they had been 
buried a scant few yards away it would have been on remote public land 
where they probably would never have been found and there would have 
been no heat brought down. So the guy who chose the cornfield burial site
got whacked. 

"In the Line of Duty: The FBI Murders " (part two) [by Joe Lehman]

Oscar Wilde [left], in his 1899 essay “The Decay of Lying,” wrote “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” It makes sense then that the mimetic relation of life and art is a vicious circle, as we see in books and films portraying True Crime stories.  There has been an accelerating demand for True Crime in the past half century since the publication of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood marked its inauguration. NBC wasted no time in producing the TV movie In the Line of Duty: The FBI Murders, which aired two years after the shootout. The usually-affable actors David Soul and Michael Gross play against type as the killers, Platt and Matix, in performances that one anonymous internet commentator describes as “too bad to be believed,” and yet they were "Freddy Kruger" and "Michael Meyers" incarnate, and as despicable a pair of murderers as were ever imagined by producers of the Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween series of dead teenager splatter flicks.”

The FBI Murders is a televised product of the latter half of the Reagan Era. The heroic FBI agents embody the bright, optimistic and virtuous side of ‘Morning in America.’ Ben Grogan and Jerry Dove, the slain officers are played with brightness and enthusiasm by Ronny Cox and Bruce Greenwood. Grogan is the wise veteran agent—"Fifty-three years old, and still the best shot in Miami.” Dove is the vibrant rookie—"I’m thirty years old, I live on the beach, and I drive a sports car.” When Dove’s girlfriend reminds him that he has to go to work, he says “that’s the good part.” The surviving agents are shown in exactly the same light. Gordon McNeill (Doug Sheehan) and Ed Mireles (Ronald G. Joseph) are both devoted family men, who instill a sense of idealism and scout-like preparedness in their children. McNeill is protective of his teenage daughters, to the point that as the two as-yet unidentified maniacs are running around loose, he fears for their safety at social activities as there may be an armored car present nearby. Mireles is shown having a heart-to-heart discussion with his young son, in which, he explains why he hopes he can arrest bad guys without violence. But, he explains, sometimes the use of deadly force is necessary—although he hasn’t yet had to, (but eventually will.) Nearly all of these scenes are fictitious. But they create the audience-friendly atmosphere conducive to recounting the actual events. The film captures the zeitgeist.

The movie’s villains, Platt and Matix, embody the dark and sinister underbelly of ‘Morning in America.’ The themes are greed; avarice; sloth; promiscuity; infidelity and spousal abuse; even religious hypocrisy.

David Soul and Michael Gross play up the “redneck” persona to the umpteenth degree. In fact, they wear it as a badge of honor, even at one point, citing “Rednecks, White Socks, and Blue Ribbon Beer,” the Johnny Russell song, as an ample description of themselves. Though they served as Army Rangers, they seem to have few discernable skills necessary to navigate civilian life, nor do they have the moral inclination to make the effort to do so. Their values are hopelessly selfish and materialistic. Despite several failing business ventures, such as landscaping and installing pinball and jukebox machines, they amass new wealth through chaotically executed armed robberies and the insurance settlement from the bloody murder of Matix’s first wife, Patty.

Despite their outward image as simple family men, they are abusive and unfaithful toward their longsuffering wives and children, to whom they explain their newfound earnings by pretending to be mercenaries contracted by the CIA to assassinate drug dealers. In spite of their Walter Mitty-style fantasies of acting as mercenaries, Matix and Platt, display a squeamishness at the prospect of armed confrontations with drug dealers, who in Platt’s words are “all a bunch of greasers, and they have all kinds of weapons.” They are, as Platt says, “safer going up against cops,” who by 1980s standards, are lighter armed and easier to dominate. There is an obvious correlation between the villains’ brutish behavior at home and their crimes by day.

Matix is a born-again Christian, but it is revealed that he often has used church services as a place to seduce, bed, and then abandon vulnerable young women. The representation of the villains as religious hypocrites, merges with the larger picture of the rot setting into the milieu of religious revivalism in the Reagan Era, where a number of televangelists were ensnared in financially and sexually-based scandals. As Greg Barnhisel writes in the Pittsburg Post-Gazette: “Inevitably, they were felled by the old sins: lust and greed.” Lust and greed. Ed Mireles, the retired surviving agent, in several emails to this author, cuts through Platt and Matix’s façade of humble piety: “Their only motive was money.  They robbed, stole and killed for money to maintain the life style they wanted to have.  Nothing but greed…”

In nearly every scene, Platt and Matix appear as sweaty and crude; grunting their words while munching down potato chips and fast food.

It makes sense that NBC TV was inclined to embellish the true history of the lives and crimes of the two killers, as with both of them rendered dead by the final firefight, they are in no position to answer questions about their motivations or their interactions with each other. The myriad of scenes with Platt and Matix interacting with each other are clearly fabricated. Who knows for sure what their private conversations were really like? The filmmakers get around the dilemma of this type of speculation, by keeping the back-and-forth dialogue plain and simple and without much effort in developing.

Part three of this essay will appear next week.

The Great Miami Shootout (Edited for Television) [by Joe Lehman]

In some ways a Manichean story about the clash between the forces of good and evil, the 1988 television true-life docudrama In the Line of Duty: The FBI Murders exemplifies the tendency of such programs to fictionalize what they purport to be true. Retired FBI Agent Edmundo Mireles Jr., in correspondence with this writer, has called the movie “about 50% accurate,” and having “taken a lot of liberties which led to a lot of embellishment and rewriting history to suit a script.” Nevertheless, on its own merit, The FBI Murders is an arresting movie, well worth examining, because it reveals an amazing symbiosis of truth and fiction in the presentation of crime and makes us understand the complicated relation of a docudrama to the events it depicts.

The villains in the movie conceive of themselves as believers in a militaristic code. They cloak their criminal behavior in the guise of commando operations. The heroes are federal agents, some of whom are military veterans and staunch believers in law and order, who engage in violence mainly or only to protect the lives of the innocent. While the movie’s conventions are stereotypical of American society in the 1980s, a decade that has been largely defined by the reign of President Ronald Reagan, these stereotypes convey a nostalgia for the clarity of values extolling right and wrong. Audiences generally flocked to the Rambo and Indiana Jones franchises because they longed for that clarity. The FBI Murders follows this trend. Interestingly in some scenes, agents apply the labels “Soldiers of Fortune” and “Rambos” to the villains. This suggests a fusion of the era’s pop culture icons into both the heroism and the wickedness depicted in the events of the story, which speaks to their lasting power in art and cinema.

In his 1770 speech “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontent,” Edmund Burke proclaimed, “When bad men combine, the good must associate, else they will fail, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” A political party by implication can be translated as a community. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, as depicted in the movie, is a form of clan and community, united in its duty and purpose to root out criminality. The movie’s heroes are a band of brothers. Like any club, this particular Miami-based reactive unit—nicknamed “Funsters” by its members— has its code phrases, its initiation rituals, its training procedures, and its individual monikers for every member.

The backstory is as follows: Over a several-month period from late 1985 to the spring of 1986, Miami, Florida, as well as the surrounding rural areas, were subjected to a series of related violent crimes, committed by two heavily armed, well trained, army ranger veterans, identified later as Michael Platt, 32, and William Matix, 34. Together, these two devoted family men formed a folie à deux—shared psychosis—not dissimilar to that of Hickock and Smith, murderers of the Clutter family in Kansas, as chronicled by Truman Capote in 1966’s In Cold Blood.

Platt and Matix murdered motorists in order to steal ‘drop cars’ for the purpose of committing armed heists of banks and armored cars. During these robberies they maimed and killed guards and terrorized civilians in hails of wild gunfire. It is widely believed that both Matix’s and Platt’s first wives met fatal ends at their husbands’ hands, because the women were inconveniently in the way. According to Mary Thornton of the Washington Post, on Christmas Eve 1984 in Miami, “Platt's wife Regina died of a shotgun blast to the head. Police at the time ruled it a suicide.” Agent Gordon McNeill would later lament this ruling: “If she was a suicide, that would make her the first woman in the history of the FBI to kill herself with that kind of a gun that way.”

Just one year earlier, on December 30, 1983, in Columbus, Ohio, Matix’s wife Patty had been murdered in a purported robbery gone awry, along with a coworker Joyce McFadden at the hospital at which they were employed at. Reporter Michelle F. Solomon recounts Patricia Matix’s demise in vivid detail: “Joyce McFadden has been bound and gagged and stabbed to death. Patricia Matix is stabbed 16 times and her wedding ring is stolen.” There is no doubt this double homicide outdoes the imaginations of the creators of iconic slasher movie characters Michael Meyers and Freddy Krueger.

On April 11, 1986, when cornered by a unit of plainclothes FBI agents, following a highspeed chase, the suspects engaged the officers in a minutes-long firefight that left the two killers, along with the agents Benjamin Grogan and Jerry Dove, dead on arrival, with several other agents critically wounded. Since then, the case continues to be shrouded in infamy as one of the bloodiest shootouts in law enforcement history.

Part two will be posted next week.

Happy birthday, Dean Martin (June 7)

 

Happy birthday, Dino. Ain't that a kick in the head?

 

Marilyn Monroe as Chanteuse [by David Lehman]

We don't think of her as a singer, but Marilyn Monroe (whose birthday it is ) sang -- and sang well. Unlike Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak in Pal Joey, Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Natalie Wood in West Side Story, and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, she needed no dubbing. (They shouldn't have dubbed Ava Gardner in Show Boat but that's another story.) See Marilyn as the very embodiment of curvaceous sexuality in Niagara, or making the most of a minor role in The Asphalt Jungle, or fighting with her beau in Bus Stop, or teaming with Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, or joining Ethel Merman and Donald O'Connor on the Irving Berlin bandwagon in There's No Business Like Show Business, or cavorting with cross-dressers Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like it Hot. She sings in each of these movies and the songs are noteworthy, each and all. 

Some songs with male chorus and big brass solos, such as "Heat Wave," are extravaganzas of sexual desire and energy. You can't keep your eyes off her, which is as it should be, but one consequence is that you don't hear enough of the voice. Her rendition of Irving Berlin's "After You Get What You Want You Don’t Want It," is a seductive masterpiece based on a profound insight into human nature. In her rendition of the same songwriter’s "Lazy," she lies on a divan while Donald O'Connor and Mitzi Gaynor dance around her. Mitzi is mighty pretty, mighty talented, but Marilyn is in a different league of voluptuousness.

Listen to her sing "I'm Through with Love," or "I Wanna Be Loved By You," "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" or "Bye Bye, Baby" -- but listen to the songs without looking at the visuals. You'll hear a melodious voice of limited range, thin but accurate, with a husky low register, a breathy manner, and a rare gift of vibratro. When her voice trembles over a note -- over "you" or "baby" -- the effect is seductive and yet is almost a caricature of the seductress's vamp. The paradox of her singing is that she reveals her sexual power and flaunts her vulnerability -- to flip the usual order of those verbs. She can be intimate and ironic at the same time.

Compare her version of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" with Carol Channing's definitive Broadway treatment, and you get the essential difference between theater and cinema, New York and Hollywood. Channing's is the superior theatrical experience: funny, charming, a show-stopper of the first order. But Channing serves the song where Monroe makes her songs sound like illustrations of her life. Monroe's treatment of "Diamonds" may not be as effective as Channing's in its service to Leo Robin's marvelous lyric for Jules Styne's delightful tune. But Monroe's version is younger, friskier, sexier. When she sings it, the song is about her. Music is the food of love, and sexual ecstasy is on the menu, for dessert.

Nowhere is she better than "I'm Through with Love," which she sings in Some Like It Hot. Gus Kahn's lyric, which rhymes "I'm through" with "adieu," is as apt for Marilyn as "Falling in Love Again" was for Marlene Dietrich. In "I'm Through with Love," the singer feigns nonchalance, affects an uncaring attitude. But melodically during the bridge, and lyrically in the line "for I must have you or no one," the song lets us know just how much she does care. Monroe implies this pathos in "I'm Through with Love" at the same time as she struts her stuff. She vows that she'll "never fall again" and forbids Love -- as if the abstraction stood for a Greek god or for the entire male sex -- to "ever call again." But we don't quite believe her, because we know temptation is just around the corner. In a sense, her voice thrusts out its hips when she sings. It's a feast for all the senses.

 -- DL   June 1, 2019; from the archive

14 Fellini films [by Lewis Saul]

Criterion's FELLINI box

 

14 films, lovingly restored

Criterion put together this gorgeous box set in 2020, in honor of Fellini's 100th birthday.

I hear you, you've seen 'em all. Or most of 'em ...

Maybe you saw La Strada years ago in a semi-mutilated print with emulsion scratches, projector noise, and gate jitter.

Here's your chance to rewatch these restored masterpieces (mostly).

**

My ratings in the 80's indicate a very good film, worth watching. The 90's are must-watch films, worthy of repeat viewings ...

1. Variety Lights (1950)

 

Co-directed with Alberto Lattuada, this tale of the variety acts -- hired by theater owners anxious to draw in customers, which preceded the advertised film to be shown -- was a short-lived phenomena in the war and postwar years of the 40's and early 50's.

The director of this zany troupe of entertainers is Checco (Peppino De Filippo) and his eternal fiancée, Melina (Giulietta Masina, Fellini's wife). A curvaceous newcomer -- Liliana (Carla Del Poggio, Lattuada's wife) talks her way into the act, and of course Checco falls hard for her.

The vaudeville is dated, but extremely entertaining.

89

 

2. The White Sheik (1952)

 

Fellini's solo directing debut came about because Rossellini didn't want to direct Fellini's script. Anxious to get paid, FF pleaded with the producer, until the money men asked him to direct it himself. The nervous young (31) Federico didn't dare refuse.

"Rome!" the straight-laced provincial Ivan (Leopoldo Trieste) exclaims as the train enters the station. His mousy wife, Wanda (Brunella Bovo) trails behind him.

The plot hinges on the duality of the couple -- Ivan has big-shot relatives who plan to take the newlyweds to meet the Pope the next day.

Wanda has other plans. Consumed by the fotoromanzi (which was a staple divertissement of the middle and lower classes) she hid from her husband, she leaves the hotel in search of "The White Sheik" -- Fernando (Alberto Sordi) -- and ends up being cast as a harem girl in the production. [The confounded director (Ernesto Almirante) is a stand-in for future Fellini).

Masina has a cameo as the prostitute, Cabiria. It would be five more years before Fellini fleshed out the character in an early masterpiece.

89

3. I Vitelloni (1953)

 

vitellóne, noun:

Year-old calf, held to fatten in the stable,meat of the slaughtered animal; fig. idle young person of the provinces, often an eternal student

 

IRL, Fellini's youthful gang was just a trio -- but he expanded it to a quintet for this first of his many "I remember" films.

Moraldo (Franco Interlenghi -- the Fellini stand-in, as he is the first to leave the town for Rome), Alberto (Sordi), Fausto (Franco Fabrizi), Leopoldo (Trieste), and Riccardo (Fellini's brother) make up these five unforgettable goofballs. Fellini's genius is apparent in his careful delineation of each of them, with unique cinematic tricks that the viewer catches through dialogue and visuals.

As the old neorealism gave way to a more fanciful style, Fellini seemed to have touched the right nerve with the public, who rewarded the director with his first mildly successful film. It it had flopped, we might never have known the name of the great Federico Fellini.

88

4. La Strada (1954)

 

Casting his wife as Gelsomina was no mere act of nepotism -- she is a star, and as one who grew up in the silent era, absorbed all of Chaplin's tramp mannerisms, and transforms them into the sad clown incarnate here.

You probably know that until very recently, all Italian films were dubbed in post, regardless of the actor's nationality. Fellini -- perhaps more so than any other Italian director -- learned to use the Cinecittà studios as tool to recreate reality.

Anthony Quinn (Zampanò) and Richard Basehart (The Fool) deliver inspired performances.

Despite a deep dive into the issue, I have yet to find any other comments on the great Nina Rota's gentle rip-off of a famous classical work. See for yourselves:

La Strada theme
Dvorak's Serenade for Strings, 4th mvmnt.

90

5. Il Bidone (1955)

 

A flop in '55, thankfully reappraised these days as a very fine film.

 

A bidone is a trash can; thus, a swindler, a dirty con man.

Augusto (Broderick Crawford), Picasso (Basehart) and Roberto (Fabrizi) pull off a scam on a naive country woman. The ruination of her life is completely left off-screen. Fellini makes no comment, as the bandits return to Rome to party.

Masina plays Iris, Picasso's wife, trying desperately to get her hubby to consider changing occupations.

In the final scene Augusto's fate mirrors Zampanò's in La Strada. Will the wretched find salvation, even as they take their final breaths, after living a life of evil?

Fellini isn't saying, so the viewer is forced to confront the very Catholic ideal with his or her own conscience.

89

6. Nights of Cabiria (1957)

 

One can imagine the philandering Fellini saying to his wife, "I'm truly sorry, my dear, but look what I did with Cabiria -- I made you an international star.:

 

And indeed, the Cabiria character is one of Fellini's greatest creations. From the opening scene, the viewer immediately realizes that this woman is terribly naive. Her best friend Wanda (Franca Marzi) knows it. The famous actor, Alberto Lazzari (Amedeo Nazzari) knows it, but doesn't have time to take advantage of it because his girlfriend, Jessy (Dorian Gray) butts in -- even the hypnotist (Aldo Silvani) in the vaudeville show must have sensed it, using his skills to bring out her laughable innocence in front of a crowd of rowdy, horny Italian men.

Worst of all, Oscar (François Périer) knows it.

 

94

7. La Dolce Vita (1960)

 

The adjective Felliniesque enters the world's vocabulary, as well as the eponym for a character named Paparazzo (Walter Santesso).

Marcello (Mastrioianni -- in the first of two consecutive roles as Fellini's doppelgänger) -- is the spectator; a disenchanted tabloid reporter who is too distracted to seek a better office.

Sylvia (Anita Ekberg) is a goddess -- a major distraction from Marcello's fiancée, Emma (Yvonne Furneaux). Then there's Maddalena (Anouk Aimée), who whispers her love through magical conduits in the castle. (Note how beautifully Fellini uses the widescreen format to pin Marcello sitting on a chair in the middle of the huge frame!)

 

There are also a few men around to confound poor lost Marcello. Consider Steiner (a brilliant Alain Cuny), a disturbed intellectual who is the only one around capable of speaking truths to Marcello. Fellini's shocking handling of the character's trajectory is unsettling.

One character worth keeping your eyes on -- although she has only three minutes of screen time) is young Paola (Valeria Ciangottini).

 

This magnificent film might seem like eye-candy at first -- but the discerning viewer will see the wider essence of satire and ironic detachment, which is easy to miss amongst the studio recreation of the Via Veneto and the chicken feathers. Fellini is not recreating all these scenes of revelry and debauchery to elicit your approval.

 

95

8. 8½  (1963)

 

There is nothing in the film universe as unique, unqualifyingly honest and truly spectacular as 8½.

There are various ways of counting the ½: could it be the collaboration on Variety Lights; the segment in Love in the City (1953); or Boccaccio '70 (1962)?

The film director Guido Anselmi (Mastroianni) is stuck in a traffic jam; he escapes and flies away in a Christ-like post until he is in the clouds. Claudia (Cardinale)'s agents pull him down with a rope attached to Guido's ankle. He falls into the ocean and then awakes from his dream in a room at the spa, where he is undergoing a health treatment.

The film is populated with fantastic characters: the rotund, devilish Saraghina (Eddra Gale); a mistress (a luminous Sandra Milo), a wife, Luisa (Aimée, an obvious stand-in for Masina).

There is Guido's intellectual collaborator, Daumier (Jean Rougeul), who never has anything positive to say, and warns Guido that his Catholic guilt and attitude is not clearly expressed as Suetonius did for the Caesars. A nice, obscure reference.

After some brief appearances, the virginal Cardinale peels Guido away from an important screen test, and drives off for a truth session.

The finale -- where Guido cowers beneath his gigantic spaceship set, trying to avoid the inane questions from the press -- reminds me of Bresson's grilling at Cannes, where his final film (L'argent [1983]) was being shown. He simply refused to answer even one of the ridiculous queries of the reporters.

As the decision to cancel the "film" is made, Maurice (Ian Dallas) leads the entire cast in a cheerful round.

Suddenly, Guido regains his confidence. He picks up the bullhorn and begins shouting orders to everyone. He is finally ready to make his film.

 

96

9. Juliet of the Spirits (1965)

Turning the tables, Fellini makes 8½ from Masina's viewpoint.

The film -- his first in color -- Juliet is a coded palette of mostly red and white (heaven and hell?) -- just study the scene with the the androgenous Bishma (Valeska Gert, last seen in 1931's The Threepenny Opera as Frau Peachum!) ...

But the film fails on so many other levels; what are we to make of this weary cuckolded woman who is first curious, then enchanted by her mysterious neighbor, Suzy (a wonderfully kooky Milo) ... and finally terrified when she actually enters her realm?

Giorgio (Mario Pisu) is a handsome stand-in for the unfaithful Fellini -- idealized as a loving, if distant, husband until Juliet discovers the truth.

Many female characters [Valentina (Valentina Cortese) and her mother (Caterina Boratto) seem posed like the dainty ladies of La Belle Époque.

One of the more entertaining characters -- arising out of Juliet's childhood memories -- is her philandering grandfather (Lou Gilbert), who runs off with a young dancer in a rickety aeroplane.

86

10. Fellini Satyricon (1969)

The film posits an entire relatively unknown universe -- full of faces, costumes, masks -- and perhaps most importantly -- behavior that seems totally alien to our modern society.

And it all works. Episodic in nature, Fellini lifted some Petronius intact -- Trimalchio (Mario Romagnoli)'s feast, the widow (Lucia Bosè) and the soldier (Joseph Wheeler), etc. Other scenes emerge purely from Fellini's outrageous imagination.

The leads, Encolpius (spider) (Martin Potter); Ascyltus (spider) (Hiram Keller) and Giton (Max Born) are all splendid.

Check out the Buddy Hackett look-alike with the hand-clappers at 0:26:42!

 

93

11. Roma (1972)

Considered by some as "minor Fellini," this film demands multiple viewings. Fellini has purposely made a non-narrative film with one outlandish image after another, that resists comprehension on first look.

If the dead cows don't get you, the bishop in the blinking neon suit will!

Peter Gonzales is brilliant as the horny 18-year-old Fellini, as is Dolores (Fiona Florence), the come-hither prostitute who Fellini wants to date.

Gore Vidal -- an ex-pat living in Rome -- makes a cameo, seemingly completely self-deprecating, in keeping with all the surrounding satire ...

Perhaps the most touching moment occurs when Fellini follows the great Anna Magnani to her doorway. "Go to bed, Fredri!" she exclaims, seeming truly annoyed.

A long section at a variety show (Fellini cleverly slips in the detail of the exact date, July 19, 1943) recalls Variety Lights, but is infused with pathos and a penetrating stare at the Roman attitude!

 

92

12. Amarcord (1973)

The title is a univerbation of the Romagnol phrase a m'arcôra ("I remember") -- further meaning "nostalgic revocation" in Italian.

Fellini ("I'm a born liar") remembers his childhood in a small town near Rimini as a fictional autobiography.

Titta (Bruno Zanin) might be Fellini; Aurelio (a scene-chewing Armando Brancia) and Miranda (Pupella Maggio) might be his parents. All the unforgettable characters in this film might be memories of a filmmaker far removed from his childhood reality. So we might think of this is "invented memories."

Some great characters: Gradisca (Magali Noël) -- a liberated woman; object of the boys' attention; Uncle Teo (Ciccio Ingrassia) -- furloughed from an insane asylum, is he really crazy for climbing a tree and shouting that he "wants a woman"?; Patacca (Nando Orfei) -- another uncle, effeminate, committed Fascist; the "lawyer" (Luigi Rossi) who narrates the proceedings; and most memorable, the tobacconist (Maria Antonietta Beluzzi), to whom Titta boldly makes an unsuccessful advance:

In its two-hour running time, Amarcord advances through the seasons -- bookended with the coming of spring and the arrival of the "puffballls" (poplar seeds).

If there is a must-see in Fellini's oeuvre, this is it.

 

96

13. And the Ship Sails On (1983)

Set in July 1914 (weeks earlier a Bosnian Serb assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, which was the firecracker that set off World War I).

The wealthy passengers have chartered the Gloria N. to travel to the island where the late great diva, Edmea Tetua (Janet Suzman, seen only in silent B&W film clips) was born, and scatter her ashes in the sea.

Most of the entourage consists of other divas, tenors, and conductors -- with the exception of the young Grand Duke (Fiorenzo Serra) -- presumably a fan of Tetua's -- and his blind sister, The Princess (played by the great dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch).

The film begins in silence and B&W, and gradually gains sound and then color -- a wonderful touch.

Orlando (Freddie Jones) -- a journalist -- is our tour guide, narrating the tale and introducing us to the characters, always looking directly into the camera.

The plot thickens when the captain rescues a group of Serbian refugees. Their dance scene and another where the opera singers delight the scruffy men working the boiler room with some operatic gymnastics are cinematic marvels.

Oh yes -- one more important character -- a lovesick rhinoceros.

90

14. Intervista (1987)

Four films in one:

1. A Japanese television crew films the proceedings;
2. An autobiographical section set in 1940 where the young Fellini (Sergio Rubini) (put a pimple on that nose!) sets out to interview the famous actress Greta Gonda (the gorgeous Antonella Ponziani), and is so nervous he can barely utter a sound;
3. The making of a fictional film, an adaptation of Kafka's Amerika;
4. Intervista itself.

Fellini's up to his old tricks, hanging a bunch of semi-interesting episodic spectacles onto the clothesline of cinema.

The 56-year-old Fellini appears in the film frequently, shouting out fictional orders.

The film is saved by the appearances of Mastroianni and Ekberg.

Mastroianni first appears in an obviously choreographed scene as Mandrake the Magnificent, bursting through the window of the production office (accompanied by balloons and confetti), asking Fellini if he's in his usual trouble with finances or sexual escapades. His magic wand will cause an erection.

Probably staged -- Anita initially refuses Fellini entrance to her gated estate, guarded by snarling dogs, but eventually invites the entire entourage in to feast on roasted chestnuts, wine and Schnapps.

Mandrake magically produces a sheet which serves as a screen as we watch the scene from La Dolce Vita where they dance, and Ekberg sloshes her way through the Trevi fountain. Ekberg's tears of remembrance seem real, as the Japanese reporter tries to do yoga magic on Mastroianni to get him to quit smoking.

The ending is too good to give away. It concerns Indians with TV antennas instead of rifles or bows, and a final nod to his nagging producers who wanted him to at least put in a "ray of sunshine."

 

90

 

lewissaul3.blogspot.com

 

 

Happy birthday, Robert Frost

 

Who said poetry makes nothing happen? -- SDH

 

"The Wild Bunch": Last of the Great Westerns [by David Lehman]

My latest "Talking Pictures" column for The American Scholar (February 23, 2023) is titled "Brilliant Carnage: Sam Peckinpah’s slow-motion bullet ballet"

I have seen The Wild Bunch, Sam Peckinpah’s 1969 masterpiece, many times. The film marks the definitive end of the truly Western Western, a farewell to the time when desperadoes played poker in frontier saloons, gunfighters fought legendary battles, and the cavalry saved the day or died with their boots on. A righteous man could be John Wayne romancing Claire Trevor in Stagecoach or Gary Cooper taking on three killers in High Noon, and a little boy could end the movie by begging “Shane! Shane! Come back!” Once, when my son Joe, then twelve, and I watched The Wild Bunch together, he came up with the perfect two-word description of the movie: “brilliant carnage.”

Myths die not all at once but in stages, and the Western always owed something of its appeal to the knowledge that the era it depicted—and, to some extent, invented—was long since gone by the time talking pictures filled movie screens. With each year, the cowboy-as-hero, whether lawman or bandit, grew more distant. Of the horsemen making up The Magnificent Seven (1960), Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen are the only two who ride off into the sunset. Though they have defeated the bad guys who terrorized Mexican farmers, they know their days are numbered. “Only the farmers won,” Brynner says. “We lost. We always lose.”

In The Wild Bunch, Pike Bishop (William Holden) leads the eponymous outlaws with Dutch (Ernest Borgnine) as his right-hand man. Tector (Ben Johnson) and Lyle (Warren Oates) are brothers with bad tempers and a healthy lust for liquor and ladies. Angel (Jaime Sanchez) is the one Mexican among them, passionate and brave, while Sykes (Edmond O’Brien), a good-natured elder statesman, remains behind the scenes, because he can no longer meet the physical demands of a hold-up job. The bunch would have had one extra fellow, but Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), Pike’s closest friend, was arrested, flogged mercilessly, and blackmailed by a vicious railway baron (Albert Dekker) into leading a team of “peckerwood” trash to hunt down the gang. The actors up and down the line give sterling performances.

The movie begins on the outskirts of San Rafael, a small Texas town, with children gleefully burning straw atop a battle of ants and scorpions. It is a powerful image, conveying the idea that cruelty and an impulse to destroy may be innate in even the youngest and most innocent human beings. In sharp contrast, a salvation salesman leads an open-air temperance meeting in the center of town, where a pathetic crowd swears off alcohol and sings “Shall We Gather at the River?”

It is then that Pike and his men, dressed in U.S. army uniforms, ride in to rob the railway’s offices. Their plans have been anticipated, however, and an ambush organized against them. In the ensuing crossfire, only Pike and five others ride their horses to safety. One of them will die of his wounds minutes later. And their bags of stolen treasure turn out to contain no treasure—just dime-store metal washers.

from The American Scholar https://theamericanscholar.org/brilliant-carnage/
for more click here

She Got Pinched in the Assss. . . tor Bar! [by Stacey Harwood]

[In 2011] I visited my mom for a couple of days and while with her I went through some of her old photo albums.  Whenever I do, I find something that had previously escaped my attention.  This time, I came across this bit of memorabilia from a different age (below left, click to enlarge):

  



The Hotel Astor stood at 44th Street and Broadway, a stunning example of Beaux-Art architecture that was demolished in 1967 to make room for a 50-story office tower.  It was  walking distance from the Milk Barn, the coffee shop where my mother worked as a waitress.  Many of her customers were "garmentos" (as those who work the rag trade are now called) who would on occasion give her gifts of belts (she had a tiny waist) and monogrammed hankies.  I love imagining my mother stopping in at the Astor Bar for a post-work cocktail.  Did she?  She won't say.  But it was quite the place,  made even more famous by Cole Porter's "Well Did You Evah/What a Swell Party."  There are many great versions of the song (I like Debbie Harry and Iggy Pop's subversive take here. Listen for raunchy lyrics that Porter would have loved) but you really can't beat Der Bingle and Ole Blue Eyes in High Society as rivals for Grace Kelly, who is betrothed to another.

from the archive; first posted on February 14, 2011.

Kurosawa's 30 [by Lewis Saul]

In 2010 -- a Baker's Dozen ago -- the Film Forum ran 28 of Akira Kurosawa's 30 films. (Ran [1985] and Madadayo [1993] weren't shown). Your Editor invited me to make a few comments, which I did in a verbose 63,136 words. You can read them here. [This post tracks in at 1,963 words. I'm trying.]

Today, I make an attempt to merely summarize all 30 films -- the worst of which* is still worth seeing.

Wartime

1. Sanshiro Sugata (1943)

 

After a fruitful apprenticeship as an assistant director with Kajirō Yamamoto (Horse, 1941), Kurosawa got his chance to direct when he snapped up the options on a novel by Tsuneo Tomita.

Initially, Kurosawa wanted to be a painter. Just watch the opening shot and one can see the Meiji-era scene come to life. In a pan, we move down an alley and meet Sugata (Susuma Fujita).

The story of human struggle to attain perfection attracted the military censors. They weren't so happy about the love story and thus that subplot was mangled.

Hansuki Murai -- the girl's father -- is played by Takashi Shimura.

 

2. The Most Beautiful (1944)

 

A girls-only factory produces optical devices for fighter planes. Yōko Yaguchi is the heroine. She would soon become Mrs. Akira Kurosawa.

Check out the Eisensteinian montage of the volleyball game.

Shimura plays Chief Goro, the head of the factory.

*3. Sanshiro Sugata Part II (1945)

 

A sorry and soggy sequel. A Turk -- Osman Yusuf -- plays the bullying American sailor. The plot hinges on the superiority of Judo compared to the vicious American sport of boxing. Fujita returns, but Shimura wisely skipped this one. 

4. The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail (1945)

 

Based on the kabuki play Kanjinchō -- itself a remake of the Noh play Ataka -- the 12th-century general Yoshitsune Minamoto and his retainers are disguised as monks and who must evade his evil brother, Yoritomo, who controls the border checkpoint. The ambiguity of the denouement demonstrates the ingenuity of the young Kurosawa.

Shimura plays one of the monks. The comedian, Ken'ichi Enomoto, enlivens this short film with astonishing humor.

Occupation-era

5. No Regrets for Our Youth (1946)

 

General MacArthur and SCAP encouraged Kurosawa to make a film which help the populace understand the earth-shattering transition from militarism to democracy. Set in the mid-30's, Kurosawa seeks to humanize rather than simply caricture the militarists.

Fujita returns as the unfortunate pacifist martyr who is lucky enough to marry the incomparable Setsuko Hara (her first of only two films with Kurosawa). The great Denjirō Ōkōchi is her father.

 

6. One Wonderful Sunday (1947)

 

Struggling young lovers (Isao Numasaki and Chieko Nakakita) meet on Sundays, only to find nothing to do -- they can barely afford a cup of coffee. Schubert's "Unfinished Symphony" features prominently in the plot.

7. Drunken Angel (1948)

 

Having discovered Toshiro Mifune and teaming him up with Shimura, Kurosawa finally had made a legitimate masterpiece. Gangster and alcoholic doctor become frenemies, while the viewer is treated to a documentary-like look at postwar Japan.

 

8. The Quiet Duel (1949)

 

A minor picture, liable to induce some cringing at the overwrought characters and their reactions to the then nearly incurable disease of syphillis. Mifune and Shimura are father and son.

 

9. Stray Dog (1949)

 

A fine noir, featuring a young cop (Mifune) learning the ropes from an old pro (Shimura). Mifune has lost his gun to a pickpocket on a sweaty, crowded bus, and we perspire along with him, as we count the number of bullets left.

 

10. Scandal (1950)

 

Considered a minor picture by most critics, but this reviewer begs to disagree. Mifune is a serious painter, whose career is threatened by a scandal sheet which prints a false rumor about an illicit affair with a famous singer (the gorgeous Shirley Yamaguchi). Shimura is his bedraggled lawyer, who must win the libel case in court, despite being bribed by the deep-pocketed opposition.

There is one unusual spiral wipe.

11. Rashomon (1950)

 

Marge: "You said you liked Japanese films?"
Homer: "That's not the way I remember it!"

12. The Idiot (1951)

 

Kurosawa -- a lifelong fan of Dostoevsky -- was furious when the producers couldn't stomach the running time. "Cut the damn thing right down the middle of the strip," he cried, more or less disowning the truncated release print.

Setsuko Hara returns as Nastasya/Taeko Nasu, the woman who stands between Masayuki Mori (Myshkin/Kameda) and Mifune (Rogózhin/Akama).

Post-occupation

13. Ikiru (1952)

 

Mifune took a leave of absence, leaving Shimura to star in this unforgettable tale of "it's-never-too-late," inspired by a short story by Tolstoy.

14. Seven Samurai (1954)

 

My old 8,984-word post will have to do. I was really into studying filmic punctuation back then -- There are 1,467 total cuts in the film; 1,399 straight cuts; 15 fade-to-blacks; 32 horizontal wipes left; 13 horizontal wipes right; and eight dissolves.

15. I Live in Fear (1955)

 

The 35-year-old Mifune plays an elderly factory owner who wants to move his entire family (mistresses included) to Brazil, where he believes they would be safe from a nuclear bomb. Godzilla -- from the previous year -- was meant to reflect similar fears then ever present in the Japanese public.

Shimura is a dentist who volunteers in a family court assigned to help the family sort things out.

 

16. Throne of Blood (1957)

 

Minoru Chiaki (Woodchopping samurai of the Seven) co-stars with Mifune as warlord generals in this adaption of Macbeth.

 

17. The Lower Depths (1957)

 

Based on the play by Gorky. A masterpiece of ensemble theater, Kurosawa as at the top of his game here. Mifune plays the thief (Vaska/Sutekichi), but Kamatari Fujiwara steals the show as The Actor. Bokuzen Hidari (Luka/Kahei) is golden as The Pilgrim.

Look for an incredible musical performance in the final scene. It may sound like a jazz improvisation to Western ears, but is called bakabayashi -- literally, "fools' orchestra" -- and has the poverty-stricken characters singing about the "avarice and hypocrisy of the Buddhist monks," as they sing sarcastic praises of all the  things salvation money can buy.

18. The Hidden Fortress (1958)

As the widescreen format reached Japan, Kurosawa immediately took advantage. This wonderful adventure romp stars Mifune as a general on an important mission and Fujiwara and Chiaki as two peasants along for the ride. (The latter was the inspiration for the droids in Star Wars.)

19. The Bad Sleep Well (1960)

 

Time to get serious again. Loosely based on Hamlet, Mifune plays Kōichi Nishi, buttoned-down secretary to Iwabuchi, the important Vice President of the "Public Corporation" (Mori, aged beautifully). Nishi is not what he seems, however, his late father standing in for Hamlet's ghost ...

 

20. Yojimbo (1961)

 

Forever copied, but never equaled, this megahit features Mifune as a ronin, with smarts. If you ever wonder why John Belushi's SNL samurai imitation is always scratching himself -- as Mifune does here -- it is because he never had clean clothes, and was being bitten by fleas.

 

21. Sanjuro (1962)

 

The studio, of course, demanded a sequel, and Kurosawa was not about repeat his youthful mistake with Sugata II.

 

Although Mifune's ronin yojimbo is the same character (thirty [sanjuro] going on ...), this is a very different film than Yojimbo, set in a different time-period and involving very different circumstances.

Now the wise ronin is made to advise ten young, rather stupid, samurai retainers of a lord thought to be corrupt. Once again, the widescreen format allows for amazing compositions. Tatsuya Nakadai is the delicious villain who makes film history in the final scene.

 

22. High and Low (1963)

 

Loosely based on King's Ransom by Ed McBain, this powerful police procedural has Mifune playing a shoe company executive who is unwillingly drawn into a kidnapping. The film is bifurcated into two equally suspenseful halves. The young Tsutomu Yamazaki (Tampopo) is the kidnapper.

23. Red Beard (1965)

 

In Kurosawa's final black-and-white film, and Mifune's swan song with the director, he is again beautifully aged to play "Red Beard" -- a Japanese expression for any physician who was trained in the medical arts at Nagasaki by the red bearded Dutch.

In fact, it is the young Yasumoto (Yūzō Kayama) who passes on his Nagasaki training to the elder Mifune.

185 minutes flies by in this -- one of Kurosawa's great masterpieces.

 

Post-Mifune

24. Dodes'ka-Den (1970)

 

He surely must have missed Mifune as often as he cursed television for drying up the money he required to make films. Joining with three other prominent Japanese directors, "The Four Knights" club was formed with the intention of producing each others films.

Kurosawa went first with this tale of a retarded boy who pretends to be a trolley car (thus the title: dodes'ka-den is the sound he makes imitating the engine), along with all the inhabitants of a Tokyo slum. A fascinating watch, the film tanked and Kurosawa tried to kill himself. Thank God, he did not succeed.

 

25. Dersu Uzala (1975)

 

But with no funding available to him, he set off to the Soviet Union to visit Tarkovsky, who was in post with Solaris. Inspired, he signed onto Mosfilm, and went as far away from civilization as possible -- to the frozen tundra of Siberia.

Here he found his Dersu (Maxim Munzuk) -- a Tuvan actor -- and made an extraordinary film about humanity surviving in the indifferent conditions of Mother Nature. Vastly underappreciated.

26. Kagemusha (1980)

 

Finally, three very successful American directors (Lucas, Spielberg and Coppola) recognized a genius in trouble and provided much-needed financing.

In the five-year period between films, Kurosawa had hand-painted complete storyboards and the only major hiccup in the production occurred in casting. Kurosawa imagined that the great Shintaro Katsu (Zatoichi) would make a great Kagemusha (shadow-warrior) in a 16th-century story involving a great warlord who employed his look-alike brother as a double. Realizing the need for a third "double," they recruited a thief was about to be crucified as a stand-by. Katsu was to play both the warlord and the thief.

But his swelled ego blew his chance on the first day of shooting (he brought along his own film crew and argued with AK, until he was thrown off the lot.) "Call up Nakadai -- see if he's available," and the whole thing was fixed. Nakadai played the dual roles, with Yamazaki (High and Low) playing the brother.

 

27. Ran (1985)

 

King Lear, with sons instead of daughters. Color-coordinated so as to never lose track of who's who, Kurosawa raised the epic to new levels. Nakadai stars.

28. Dreams (1990)

 

Eight vignettes, each preceded by a caption "and I dreamed that ..."

Uneven, but the episodes that work really work! The first two for example: "Sunshine Through the Rain," and "The Peach Orchard" are miniature masterpieces. Disappointments follow until we reach "The Crow" starring Martin Scorsese as Vincent Van Gogh. The final dream "Village of the Watermills" stars the great 86-year-old Chishū Ryū playing a man who is 105.

29. Rhapsody in August (1991)

 

Ooh, how the American critics savaged this for just one scene where the kids ask why there is no American memorial in the Nagasaki Peace Park. "Because they were the ones that dropped the bomb."

A survivor is grandma to a bunch of thoroughly Americanized kids, who gradually come to realize the horror that was visited upon her in her youth. Richard Gere steps in to smooth things over, and a Schubert song on an out-of-tune organ plays a big part in the story.

Watch for the ants crawling up the rose in the Sutra scene.

30. Madadayo (1993)

 

The 83-year-old filmmaker was "not yet" done. This heartwarming tale of a German professor traverses time and space and features a lot of beer drinking. The title refers to a kid's expression when playing hide-and-seek: "Are you ready?" ... "Not yet!" (Madadayo).

"Scarface Nation" [by Ken Tucker]

Highly recommended.

Scarface Nation: The Ultimate Gangster Movie by Ken Tucker (St. Martin’s Press)
Not merely the behind-the-scenes making of the 1983 De Palma/Pacino film (and the 1932 Howard Hawks/Paul Muni version), but also a critical analysis of how Scarface has influenced pop music, TV shows, YouTube videos, and political culture (see the chapter “President Scarface,” starring Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney, among others). "Insightul, intelligent, memorable, true." -- Lawrence Starling

The Critic [film by Mel Brooks]

Some Cinematic Suggestions [by David Lehman]

For The American Scholar, I've posted short essays on the movies I've listed here. Here are links to, and brief excerpts from, the articles. To this post, which first  appeared on March 27, 2020, I have since added my piece on The Manchurian Candidate from January 22, 2022. Click here to see other Talking Pictures features.

-- Robert Mitchum in Cape Fear 
https://theamericanscholar.org/the-shadow-of-evil/#.Xn5LrNJKiM8 ("The Shadow of Evil")

<<< Horror is what we feel witnessing the aftermath of a fatal car wreck. Terror is what we feel in anticipation of something terrible that has not yet happened.

What Cape Fear (1962) offers is a pure example of a third kind of sensation, one that attracts even as it repels: menace. Menace is Robert Mitchum as Max Cady, newly released from an eight-year prison sentence, a cigar in his mouth and a Panama hat on his head, into the heat of summer in a small, southern town. Cady embodies evil and Mitchum embodies Cady, a character who is as cunning as he is vicious.

Although he plays an unreformed sex offender who beats up women and has no business gaining control of the viewer’s attention, Cape Fear is Mitchum’s picture from the moment he appears on the scene, confronting the attorney who put him behind bars. “Hello, Counselor. Remember me?” Cady is back with a vengeance. >>

-- William Holden, in two POW films, Stalag 17 and The Bridge on the River Kwai 
https://theamericanscholar.org/william-holden-model-prisoner/#.Xn5LANJKiM8 ("Model Prisoner")

<<< In each movie, Holden says something that communicates his capacity for irony and irreverence, as well as his distaste for the boyish conception of war as a “game.” In The Bridge on the River Kwai, Shears says to Warden: “You and Colonel Nicholson, you’re two of a kind, crazy with courage. For what? How to die like a gentleman, how to die by the rules—when the only important thing is how to live like a human being.” In Stalag 17, he offers this wonderful parting shot: “If I ever run into any of you bums on a street corner, just let’s pretend we’ve never met before.”

The slam-bang conclusion of The Bridge on the River Kwai is magnificent, and I shall say nothing more about it here except to reveal that the movie’s last word is “madness!” At the end of Stalag 17, Sefton takes wire-cutters to cut through the barbed wire, rescue a lieutenant the Germans want to kill, and guide the two of them to freedom. Duke: “The crud did it.” Harry Shapiro: “I’d like to know what made him do it.” Animal: “Maybe he just wanted to steal our wire cutters. Ever think of that?” >>>

-- The Best Years of Our Lives with Fredric March, Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright, Dana Andrews

 https://theamericanscholar.org/souvenirs-of-war/#.Xn5LL9JKiM8 ("Souvenirs of War")

<<< A great scene: lovesick Peggy confronts her parents, saying they can’t understand her because they “never had any trouble.” To which Milly responds, turning to Al: “We never had any trouble. How many times have I told you I hated you, and believed it in my heart? How many times have you said you were sick and tired of me, that we were all washed up? How many times have we had to fall in love all over again?”

I am always moved by a scene in which Fred climbs aboard a discarded bomber, his “office” during the war, which is now rusting in an aircraft boneyard. The scene has no words, just music, as Fred sits and stares into his turbulent past and blank future. This may be my favorite moment in the film, but there are others very nearly as affecting, including the one in which, at a formal dinner of bank officers and trustees, Al gulps down too many highballs but manages not to hiccup when he makes a speech that begins unsteadily but ends with eloquence. >>>

-- Gentleman's Agreement with Gregory Peck

https://theamericanscholar.org/a-matter-of-pride/#.Xn5LT9JKiM8  ("A Matter of Pride") 

 

<<< Gentleman’s Agreement is one of two late 1940’s pictures that wrestle with the ugliness of anti-Semitism. The other is Edward Dmytryk’s Crossfire, also from 1947, a noir featuring three Roberts: Robert Young as an investigator, Robert Mitchum as a friend of a suspect, and Robert Ryan as a demobilized soldier who brutally murders the hospitable Jewish man whom he and his army buddies meet in a bar. But while Crossfire centers on a homicide for which the only motive is drunken anti-Semitism, Gentleman’s Agreement deals with the sort of suburban, exclusionary anti-Semitism practiced by those who claim that “some of my best friends are Jews.” >>>

 

 

 

 

The Killing (directed by Stanley Kubrick; with Sterling Hayden, Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook, Jr., Vince Edwards, etc)

https://theamericanscholar.org/epitaph-for-a-genre/#.XptjCVxKiM8 ("Epitaph for a Genre")

<<<
The Killing ends with the greatest money shot in the movies, its nearest competition being the shower of love bestowed on James Stewart on Christmas Eve at the end of It’s A Wonderful Life. Johnny (Sterling Hayden) and Fay (Coleen Gray) are at the airport about to board a flight to Boston and freedom. He doesn’t want to let go of the suitcase, but it is too big for the overhead compartment, so he reluctantly yields it. He and Fay watch the suitcase totter atop the checked luggage in the cart taking it from terminal to plane. When a spectator’s dog runs into the cart’s path, the driver swerves, and the suitcase falls off. It pops opens, and the money flies around like snow in a swirling wind.

The set-up has been executed perfectly and yet, because of a stray event, a tiny happenstance, all is for naught—all the blood spilled, all the careful calculation.
>>>

The Manchurian Candidate
January 22, 2022
Political scientists used to define politics as the art of the possible. If it has morphed into the craft of manipulative paranoia, the change dates back to the assassination of President Kennedy. The Warren Commission’s report satisfied few skeptics, journalists, or serious historians, and the credibility of politicians (who used to be called “statesmen”) keeps ebbing.

The Manchurian Candidate, which presaged the change, presents a plot to assassinate a presidential candidate by long-range rifle during his party’s nominating convention in Madison Square Garden. The movie’s conceit was so scary that studio executives at United Artists felt the project had to be cleared with the White House. Frank Sinatra dutifully called JFK, who greenlit the film, which Sinatra believed in so strongly that he volunteered the use of his private plane for an early scene in the movie.

Talk about serendipity: On October 22, 1962, only two days before the picture’s release, President Kennedy announced to the nation that he had ordered a naval blockade to repulse Russian ships, equipped with missiles, heading to the Caribbean. The Cuban Missile Crisis has been seen ever since as the tensest moment in the 45-year Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, and here was a movie advancing the thesis that a Communist assassination plan was in the works.

The Manchurian Candidate is wickedly satirical. Senator John Yerkes Iselin (James Gregory), a demagogue in the manner of Joe McCarthy, is revealed to be an imbecile under the thumb of his ambitious, intellectually superior wife, Eleanor Shaw Iselin (Angela Lansbury at her best). What happened to her first husband? The movie, mum on the point, offers an Oedipal triangle in which Mrs. Iselin controls her war hero son, Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey), and gets him to eliminate her rival, his bride (Leslie Parrish), the daughter of Senator Iselin’s fiercest, most principled opponent (John McGiver). Lansbury was less than three years older than Harvey. In the novel, she seduces him; in the film, just a kiss on the lips, but it’s enough.

What most distinguishes The Manchurian Candidate is its opening. If you miss the first five minutes of Hamlet, you can catch up (at the cost of some excellent verse), because the ghost does not appear to Hamlet until act I, scene 4 and doesn’t speak to him until scene 5. But, as the movie’s theatrical release poster accurately proclaimed, “If you come in five minutes after this picture begins, you won’t know what it’s all about.” The film begins in Korea, 1952. Betrayed by a guide, an American army unit is ambushed. After Saul Bass’s marvelous title credits, featuring the queen of diamonds on an oversize political campaign button, we go to an American airport, where Sergeant Shaw, survivor of the ambush, is honored with hoopla for the valor he is said to have displayed under fire.

In the following scene, the camera slowly approaches Shaw’s commanding officer, Major Bennett Marco (Sinatra), asleep beside an insomniac’s paradise of books, among them The Trial, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Ulysses. Marco, who nominated Shaw for his medal, slides into a recurring nightmare of what really happened in Korea.

The brainwashing sequence begins with the captive GIs in their army fatigues on a stage. The audience appears to the men, in their trance, to consist of dowagers in sunhats who have gathered to talk about hydrangeas at a suburban garden party in New Jersey. In fact, the ladies in the audience are Russian and Chinese bigwigs, and Frankenheimer switches us back and forth between alternating versions, the harmless old women and the malevolent Communists in suits or uniforms. Then we watch in horror as, under orders, Shaw kills two of his fellow POWs while the other soldiers look on, affectless.

Like Major Marco, Corporal Al Melvin (James Edwards) has recurrent nightmares culminating in a public murder committed by Shaw. And, like Major Marco, he is programmed to say, when asked, that “‘Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.” Everyone says so, and it’s odd, because Raymond is a singularly cold, humorless fellow whom the men dislike..

The buried truth—that the recipient of a Congressional Medal of Honor, feted with fanfare, is a secret, trigger-ready weapon concocted by the enemy—created a mental shock to anyone who saw The Manchurian Candidate in 1962. (I was 14 years old, and amazed.) The plot: to engineer the nomination of the clownish Senator Iselin for the position of vice president, then to kill the man at the head of the ticket, paving the way for Iselin’s rise to that position. The paranoid paradox: the extreme right-wing John Iselin is really a clueless Communist placeholder. The brains of the operation: Eleanor Iselin, as icily ruthless as Lady MacBeth.

Marco, the veteran suffering from PTSD who tries to save Shaw from his predestined fate, looks like a man having a nervous breakdown, but he must have something going for him, because the glamorous and beautiful Rosie Cheyney (Janet Leigh) is willing to break her engagement to her fiancé on the basis of a shared cigarette with Marco on the train between Washington, D. C. and New York City. Although Leigh is extraneous to the plot, I have published a poem contending that the only justification needed for Janet Leigh’s presence in the movie is that she is Janet Leigh. More creatively, Roger Ebert argues that in the paranoid universe of The Manchurian Candidate, Leigh may secretly be Sinatra’s controller.

I will not give away other surprises and speculations except to say that the guises assumed by the queen of diamonds will endow that particular card with a rare significance if you are a part-time poker player. An amusing scene takes place in Jilly’s, Sinatra’s favorite New York hangout. When the bartender, telling a story, says, “Go up to Central Park and go jump in the lake,” Raymond—a solitaire addict who has just encountered the trigger card—does as told. Marco has to fish him out.

The Manchurian Candidate has altered political discourse, and the very word brainwashing has acquired a stink. The evil mesmerist-in-chief, Dr. Yen Lo (Khigh Dhiegh), crows that Raymond Shaw’s “brain has not only been washed, as they say; it’s been dry-cleaned.” In 1967, George Romney shot his presidential candidacy in the foot when he said he had supported the Vietnam War because US generals had “brainwashed” him. Recently, Donald Trump has been depicted as a “Manchurian candidate,” allegedly willing to favor the Russians in exchange for lucrative real-estate deals.

But The Manchurian Candidate offers more than a linguistic afterlife, thrilling paranoia, and the cunning of Eleanor Iselin. It succeeds as well as it does because of the strong sense of the uncanny that informs it, as if we were watching our own history rendered as a spooky hallucination, delivered with the plausibility of a newsreel.

https://theamericanscholar.org/the-prophecy-of-an-assassination/