For the Love of Film (Noir) Blogathon: Force of Evil

This is my contribution to the For the Love of Film (Noir) Blogathon hosted by Ferdy on Films and The Self-Styled Siren. Please visit their sites for more great posts, and please consider donating to an extremely worthwhile cause by clicking here.

Even in 2011, Force of Evil is a relevant cautionary tale against the ambiguities of Capitalism and how certain individuals can manipulate that system for personal gain at the expense of others – in particular how the banking system in America can be compromised. It's not just that the film is an expertly crafted noir that plumbs the depths of moral ambiguity like all good noir pictures do; no, writer/director Abraham Polonsky was interested in making a film that was much more socially conscience than that. As we all know, film-noir was always a subgenre that allowed the freedom for certain iconoclasts to voice their displeasure with minor issues (the Hollywood studio system) or bigger issues (Capitalism and government). The best film-noir employs a voiceover to usher us through the murky, moral dilemmas our protagonist must face; however, the best noir employ striking visuals, too, to make us feel what the protagonist is feeling: like the world is crashing down on them. Perhaps no moment in Force of Evil better articulates this than the film's final moments where both narration and amazing visuals put us in the shoes of our protagonist Joe (John Garfield) whose world is, quite literally, spiraling down to the very nadir of his existence as he looks for his missing brother, Leo (Thomas Gomez), who has been taken by the very criminals Joe has been helping.

It is here that Polonsky's film doesn't quite give itself over to the nihilistic and pessimistic tendencies of noir (I dare say a little idealism and optimism creep in at the end) as Joe finds the horrifying results of his actions: his brother's dead body washed up on the rocks. This doesn't lead him – as most noirs would – to take the ill-gained money and run off with the girl; no, instead he leaves with girl to go turn himself into the police. It's an idealistic ending to an otherwise cynical movie; an ending that suggests we think about one more time in terms of Biblical allegory as Joe tries to atone for his sins by turning himself in.

But let's back up for a moment in case you haven't seen Force of Evil. The story is a simple one: Joe is a lawyer who runs the books for some gangsters. His plan is to rig the lottery so that when his numbers hit (un a wonderfully subversive touch, Polonsky writes Joe's Lotto plan so that it is to be executed on July 4; also, not to be too obvious or anything, Polonsky writes it so that Joe rigs the lottery with the winning numbers being 776 – or, to put it all together, July 4, 1776) all of the banks will have to rely on him to help pay off their debts. Joe recruits his brother Leo who has not had as much fortune as he; Leo works at a small business in the slums. Joe pitties him and offers him a chance to make some big, albeit ill-begotten, money from his lotto scam. And so it is: Force of Evil is an exemplery example of what many audiences would come to love about films like The Godfather and Goodfellas; that is, it's a film about organized crime before such a thing was sexy in Hollywood.

You can see the influence all over Scorsese's films: for example, I love the opening shot where Barnes shoots a bird's-eye of Wall Street with the Trinity Church in the foreground – an obvious coalescing of the sacred and profane. The film is littered with Biblical references (parallels to Cain and Abel and Judas' betrayal just to name a few) and predates Coppola and Scorsese by nearly 40 years in melding something innocent (American Dream) with something corrupt (organized crime). In fact, I first heard about this film in Scorsese's seminal film seminar A Personal Journey Through American Films where Scorsese mentions the influence this film had on his pictures, especially Mean Streets. 


The film is everything you expect a good, standard noir to be: tough guys, crooked lawyers, numbers rackets, dames, beautiful black and white cinematography, great use of shadows, wonderful narration that makes one nostalgic for all things noir, and a brisk, no-nonsense film (it clocks in at 79 minutes) that doesn't try to pad its narrative. George Barnes' cinematography isn't just beautiful black and white photography (although it most assuredly is that...see the extra stills below), but it also understands Polonsky's dialogue. Barnes' camera wonderfull engulfs the film's characters in shadow, dwarfs them with on-location exteriors, frames things perfectly in showing isolated characters (especially the ones with a moral conscience) moving through an indifferent world (namely Wall Street); it's all so wonderfully executed and says what it needs to say without drawing attention on itself (Barnes' cinematography reminded me of the loneliness and isolation motifs found throughout Edward Hooper's work).

Most film-noir's are high on style at the expense of dialogue that is usually terse where exposition is fleshed out through voiceover narration; however, in Force of Evil, Polonsky's character speak quite poetically about morality and what it means to live. There's a great scene near the end where Leo talks about dying "while you're breathing," and we just know (and we don't have to wait long thanks to Polonsky's editing during the sequence) that something bad is about to happen when he utters those words. It's a slower, quieter moment before a more brusquely violent one in a subgenre that often doesn't lend itself to such dialogue. It shows that Polonsky was interested in making a different kind of noir picture than the ones that often got slapped with (perhaps unfair) label of "B-movie."

When Cinemascope pushed noir out of theaters and onto the smaller screens with 1953's The Robe, filmmakers found it harder to make these kind of "statement" films with a subgenre like film-noir because studios were no longer willing to finance them, and audiences seems ready to shed the weariness of post-WWII aesthetic for something more benign; audiences were tired of being dragged through the mud and being reminded of how they couldn't trust their government, and they wanted to instead see films on an epic scale that very clearly had no other intention except to distract people from what was going on around them. Force of Evil (which was met with mixed reviews) was a politically charged film that was released during the heyday of noir (10 years later Orson Welles would make the last "true" noir with Touch of Evil) and remains one of the finest examples of what the subgenre is capable of. Like the horror genre, noir allowed filmmakers to work on a film that most studios felt were just their B-pictures and weren't worth sweating over or micro-managing; therefore, filmmakers were left with a lot of room to maneuver to creatively both with aesthetic (mostly because they didn't have much of a budget, so they had to be creative) and with the themes of their pictures. Most of these films were considered nothing more than "dirty little noirs" (granted, some were more popular than others thanks to their casts and directors, but the majority of noir, just like the characters that inhabit the stories, exists in the margins), but Force of Evil proves that the subgenre was capable of so much more. 

This isn't some hidden gem dying to be re-discovered (it was labeled by the United States National Film Registry as being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant, therefore it was preserved and later produced by the film's biggest and most famous fan: Martin Scorsese); it's an important film of its time and of our time now; it's not at all surprising that such a politically antagonistic filmmaker would eventually get (unfairly) blacklisted from Hollywood. He was described as being "a dangerous citizen," and no doubt his refusal to testify before the HUAC had a lot to do this, but I have to believe that when the people that made the asinine decision looked at Force of Evil, they saw someone who was a "threat" because of its unfiltered commentary about Capitalism (it's also no surprise that the film resonated more with audiences in London upon its initial release). It was an important film then, and it's most definitely an important film now. And it's pretty damn entertaining, to boot. 

Extra Stills:

David Cronenberg Blog-a-thon: Videodrome

[This post is part of the David Cronenberg Blog-a-thon going on right now at Tony Dayoub's site Cinema Viewfinder. Check out the comments for this piece here]

What is probably one of the most unconventional horror films ever made, David Cronenberg's Videodrome is, perhaps, only matched by David Lynch's Blue Velvet as one of the oddest, most surreal horror experiences I've ever seen. Cronenberg's film is akin to Lynch's in the sense that both films sit on the fringes of horror (using the prototype of the genre to explicate darker, more postmodern themes that society marginalizes and deems taboo) and really ask us to consider what makes a horror film horrifying. It's not just the visceral nature of horror, and it's not just the getting-under-skin ideas at play – it's a mixture of both. On the surface both films seem to be something else entirely: Lynch's film is dark, yes, but it's also comical (mostly ironic in the way a lot of postmodern work is) in the same way Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (another film that stretches the genre) is darkly comical; whereas Videodrome is without laughs. There's nothing remotely comical about Cronenberg's exercise, an odd hybrid (as most of his movies are) of science fiction and horror; however, like Blue Velvet, there are deeper questions about sexuality and violence, and the effects those two things have (especially when combined) on society. Videodrome is as displacing a horror film that I've seen; a film that plunges the viewer into the depths of sexuality and violence to give us an otherworldly, uncomfortable experience that asks us not what we find objectionable about sex and violence, but how we consider platforms for these oft taboo subjects.




The film centers on a small softcore/hardcore channel run by Civic-TV's Max Renn (James Woods). One night his satellite pirate partner intercepts the signal of an odd, almost snuff-film-looking channel where a woman is being electrocuted. Unable to turn away, Max recommends that his partner makes tapes of the show so that they can show it, exploit it, and make a profit on it. However, Max soon learns that the channel is so addictive that he begins to have hallucinations where he's interacting with the program known as Videodrome. As Max begins to investigate the origins of Videodrome he is asked to participate in a talk show panel where he, a woman named Nikki Brand (Deborah Harry), and all-around smart guy Brian O'Blivian (apart from his great name he only agrees to appear on television as long as he himself is being shown on a television) discuss the merits of television and how the depravity of Max's channel and how it contributes to the growing societal desensitization to violence and sex.

Max begins a relationship with Nikki (in a great, sleazy scene, Max is being asked about sex and violence by the host of the television show, when she turns to ask O'Blivian a question, Max turns to Nikki and asks her out on a date), evolving into a kind of weird simulation of Videodrome where Max is living out his sadomasochistic fantasies with Nikki – thoughts aroused by the Videodrome channel. In one bizarre-as-hell scene, Max and Nikki make love on the floor of his living room while he sticks needles through her ears, and proceeds to lick the blood off the needle. This is just the beginning of Max's descent, however, as he begins to follow Nikki to Pennsylvania (where Videodrome is being broadcast, and where Nikki has decided that she wants to be a participant in the sadomasochistic game show they watch on their first date…the same show that Max has been hypnotized by) where he begins to unravel the mystery of Videodrome.

Now, on the surface the film is an interesting science fiction/horror hybrid with some great gross-out moments thanks to Rick Baker's make-up effects; however, as is the case with almost any Cronenberg film (and this is why he's one of my favorite filmmakers), Videodrome can be enjoyed on a whole other level. That level is primarily a postmodern one where Cronenberg challenges the viewer to think about their relationship to emerging technologies – not necessarily the content, but the purveyor of the content. These theories are based in the authoritative writings of Marshall McLuhan; however, before we get into the McLuhanian theories where you have lines in the film that are (this is a summary) essentially saying "you don't need to act on the violence, just think about it", there are other interesting themes and motifs at work in Videodrome. One of the most prevalent of these is the use of doors: a clear metaphor for the mental obstacles that Max must overcome throughout his quest to find the meaning behind Videodrome. In almost all key scenes you have doors – either shut or open depending on what the metaphor calls for – and in addition to these doors as signifiers, you literally have signs throughout the film popping up as representations for Max's journey through his hallucinogenic hell. In one key scene Max – under the mind control of Videodrome – shoots his bosses at the television station. In the scenes that follow (people frantically trying to escape) Max enters and exits many doors until he walks out through a door that leads to the back alley where we see contractors carrying doors and windows to a nearby building. Cronenberg, using a tracking shot, follows the doors and Max until Max turns the corner (both literally and metaphorically) and begins his new quest in revolting against Videodrome in the name of "the new flesh". He has, so to speak, shut the doors behind him, and, like the contractors ready to install the new doors, is ready to replace the pre-existing doors with some new philosophies.

Aside from the imagery of doors and signs, the film just works on the very basic, visceral levels that all horror films strive to work on. The music by Howard Shore is appropriately eerie and ethereal with its odd mix of classical string music and synthesizer; so you're never quite sure if what you're listening to is pure (like strings) or manufactured (synth/Moog). It's as effective a score that I've heard in any horror film, reminding me of the great Keith Emerson/Philip Glass score from Michele Soavi's Italian horror masterpiece The Church. The aforementioned make-up effects (and I'll mention them again later on) are some of the best that Cronenberg featured; Mark Irwin's cinematography evokes an almost H.R. Giger-like aesthetic (the Videodrome prototype "helmet" looks a lot like the Alien head that Giger designed); a kind of techno-noir where Max, an isolated figure, walks nearly empty streets (again, displacing and otherworldly) and feels solitary as a protagonist. The film also has the low-rent, grungy look appropriate for the type of character Max is, the company he keeps, and the type of programming his show produces.

It's clear to me that Cronenberg has always had a penchant for horror films, and in particular the tropes of horror films, and that his films really are about nothing more than what a lot of good horror movies find themselves to be about: fear of harm to the body. Cronenberg is intrigued by the metamorphoses of the mind and body. Perhaps made none clearer than when Max's stomach turns into a gaping vaginal slit; or when the tumors of videodrome escape from the body of Barry Convex. You also have examples from films like eXistenZ and Scanners, the latter with the famous 'exploding-head' scene. Regardless of the example the reoccurring theme in all of Cronenberg's works is clear enough: the body may be diseased and the mind may have a hard time differentiating between reality and fantasy, but the true source of evil is always in the technology, which is the catalyst for these various viral forms to metastasize and do harm to the body. The best example in all of Cronenberg's oeuvre is the character of Seth Brundle in The Fly; a brilliant man who is seduced not by the power of knowledge, but the power of technology; the same technology that eventually turns him into a monster as the disease metastasizes in his body. This theme of, to borrow a word from David Blakesly, of "metastasization" is prevalent throughout Cronenberg's work, too, and it's manifested brilliantly in Videodrome with the help of the aforementioned Rick Baker's bizarre make-up effects, Howard Shore's displacing (and ominous as hell) musical score, and Mark Irwin's seemingly low-rent cinematography that is actually quite brilliant in how unassuming it is.

Cronenberg has an uncanny ability to tap into a different kind of horror, an almost seductive rendition of surgically gruesome violence. It seems that Cronenberg finds that trope as an entry point into the viewers psyche so that he may strike a much deeper, more cerebral chord, all the while displaying the visceral tropes that so many come to expect from the horror genre.

Cronenberg has stated that he doesn't like cerebral movies, but that he also doesn't like films that are merely visceral exercises with no brains; thus, Cronenberg subscribes the theory that a good filmmaker must find a way to balance the two: the visceral and the cerebral. And it's not just about balancing the two in aesthetic, but in theme, too. Throughout Cronenberg's career you can point to countless films that find a way to externalize the eroticization of technology. Max's hand becomes something quite phallic when it turns into a gun; furthermore, he is pulling that phallic gun out of a gaping, vaginal slit in his stomach. Marilyn Chambers in Rabid – whose very casting causes one to think about the eroticism of the imagery – has phallic spores coming out of her body killing people. In Crash you have the literal crashing of metal/technology and the body in an extremely eroticized way. His final examination of this before moving to much smaller (in theme) films was 1999's eXistenZ, a film similar in theme to Videodrome in how humans react and interact with technologies, substituting television with videogames.. Cronenberg seems most comfortable when he's navigating these murky postmodern waters with his horror films, unlike his safer, albeit extremely entertaining, later literary adaptations on films like The Dead Zone. Perhaps Cronenberg's greatest representation of these themes is in Videodrome where he not only crystallizes a lot of what he introduces in films like Shivers and Rabid, but compounds upon his own themes by instituting McLuhanian theory into Videodrome.

Of course, it's hard to talk about Videodrome, and the effect television (and media in general) has on society without talking about Marshal McLuhan, perhaps the authority on such issues. With Videodrome, Cronenberg is explicating the deeper themes of emergent technologies and their power to not just control the mind, but the fear that they will – with their sex and violence (especially in Max's case) – physically alter the person who views material on said technologies. This fear manifested itself in the form of female parliament members picketing the film upon release; forcing Cronenberg to cut the film into three different versions: a butchered TV version, a less-butchered theatrical version, and the version we finally received on DVD thanks to the good people at Criterion.

I digress, though, and want to get back to one of the things that kept popping up in Videodrome: the idea of the destructive capabilities of emerging technologies (in this case television), and how the fear surrounding those mediums and how they may turn society into a horde of mindless monsters; a kind of sex-and-violence-crazed army of the walking dead. This idea coalesces with Marshall McLuhan's arguments that technology is a tool that shapes the individual's – and the community that individual is a part of – conception of self and reality. To invoke Blakesly's essay once again, he claims that:

What's important to notice, I think, is the way that Cronenberg collapses the mind-body dichotomy (and its parallel, culture-nature) into the biological, so that the social psychoses enabled by technology have the unintended by-product of refiguring the very flesh that sought satisfaction through material means. In other words, it is not strictly the case that the body's necessities are the mothers of invention, but that its inventions are the mothers of necessity. Technological "progress" taps into, transforms, the very biological processes that drive it. And thus, as Robert Haas has noted, Cronenberg's genetically and psychically mutated characters represent an alternative to the usual image of the cyborg as superhuman. In Videodrome in particular, Max Renn is a cyborg who, rather than transcending the material optimism that creates him and thereby exposing its destructive potential (e.g., like Frankenstein's monster), becomes the pure embodiment of Marx's idea that life (and materiality) determines consciousness.

McLuhan did not necessarily believe that content was the problem with these emerging technologies, and that the content of these various mediums all had little to no effect on a society as a whole.
This seems to be what Cronenberg is getting at with his over-the-top content in Videodrome, and that it's never about the sex or violence with Max, it's about the mindless nature of it all; it's the mindlessness—what McLuhan called the "massaging" that these technological "extensions" do to our body, senses, and psyche – and the avenue it provides as a means to circumvent life's deeper endeavors, real hands-getting-dirty experiences for projections; for experiences in nothing more than a simulacrum (represented in Videodrome as the prototype headpiece for the Videodrome channel). Blakely's likening to Max as a kind of "cyborg" is seen in the wonderful shot where Cronenberg slowly pulls back as Max sits in a chair with the Videodrome "helmet" on; a shot that makes Max look like the cyborg Blakesly is describing above: a different kind of monster that "transcend[s] material optimism" and becomes the embodiment of something, perhaps, even scarier (again, I like his example of Frankenstein's monster). It's an effective moment where the film slows down enough for us to contemplate the deeper themes at play; themes that Blakesly brilliantly broaches in his essay.

Videodrome is such an interesting entity: on one hand you could recommend it solely on the merits of the film's eerie tone (or if you can tell people: "hey, if you ever want to see the lead singer from Blondie put out a cigarette on herself, then this is the movie for you!") and gross-out effects; however, the film works on a scholarly level, too, urging the viewer to think about the bigger themes at play. It's an unconventional horror film – and again I'll invoke David Lynch – in the vein of something like Blue Velvet in the sense that there is always something more, something deeper and more postmodern lurking beneath the seemingly recognizable genre surface; something that is poking the audience and trying to draw their attention towards a subject matter that is often marginalized (or just not discussed at all) in our society, and these filmmakers are daring us to stare it right in the face, confront it, and think about how it effects our daily lives and the communities we interact with on a daily basis.

Two from John Huston: Prizzi’s Honor and Under the Volcano

[This post is my contribution to Adam Zanzie's John Huston blogathon; head on over to Icebox Movies to check out the rest of the great entries.]


When thinking about Adam's question and main theme for the blogathon – whether or not we can call John Huston an auteur – I knew that I wanted to consider this question while placing it within the context of Huston's late era; in this case two of the final three films he ever made. Prizzi's Honor – a dark comedy about the mobster genre – was unlike anything done at the time, and the film that preceded his penultimate project, Under the Volcano, perhaps the best movie about drinking ever made (containing one of the best performances of a drunk by Albert Finney). Each film's merits aside, were they proof that Huston was an auteur, and if they did prove that he was, what then is Huston's mark on the medium? The obvious answer is Huston's love for literature. Almost all of his films are adaptations of some sort, some from quite famous and important authors (Flannery O' Connor, Malcolm Lowry, and a little nobody with the last name Joyce, I think…), and even though his films aren't flashy or pretentious they may just be some of the most consistent pieces of work since the likes of Howard Hawks or John Ford. There's something warmly familiar about Huston's films, and there's something gratifying in the consistency at which he churns out quality picture after quality picture; in addition, there's always something postmodern or theological going on beneath the surface of his films; and the wrestling of those bigger topics is Huston's indelible thumbprint on film. To watch a John Huston film is somewhat of a con game; it's easy to find yourself thinking that what you're watching is simply quality filmmaking, but there's a lot more going on in the frame than a mere competence of filmmaking 101.
 

Prizzi's Honor feels like a postmodern gangster film as these rather cruel, violent, and extreme characters act so ordinary in one extraordinary situation after another. It's an interesting film that is only slightly flawed; a baroque comedy, very dark in nature, which is having some fun riffing on the more seriously baroque and operatic The Godfather with the way it effortlessly shows family feuds and how blood ties disintegrate marriages. What sometimes doesn't work about the film is the performance of Jack Nicholson. Yes, it's true that the actors all at least of a decent rapport with one another (as is accustom to a Huston film), but Kathleen Turner and Nicholson – Turner is absolutely great here – never really seem to coalesce into that kind of dynamic acting duo that we can't turn away from. And it pains me to say this since I love the man so much, but the major culprit for this is Nicholson. His ham-fisting is so distracting in certain scenes that I found myself laughing for all the wrong reasons. It's possible that he was riffing on the genre the way Marlon Brando did in The Freshmen, but I never got the sense that the characters were meant to be seen caricatures.


It's by no accident that the film begins at a wedding; Huston is playing with the familiar opening images of The Godfather here. The camera has a way of weaving through the crowds at the beginning rather effortlessly, and in a very subtle way introduces us to all of the main characters. We have Charley (Nicholson), a hitman who at a young age gave a blood oath to always be loyal to the Prizzi family; Irene Walker (Turner), a fellow assassin and the beautiful blonde that Charley becomes infatuated with at the wedding; Eduardo Prizzi (Robert Loggia) family lawyer (think Tom from The Godfather); Maerose Prizzi (Anjelica Huston), the daughter of Don Corrado Prizzi (the wonderful William Hickey); and there's others like Pop (John Randolph), Charley's father; Dominic Prizzi (Lee Richardson), son to the Don; and finally police lieutenant Hanley (Lawrence Tierney!), the policeman who is in bed with the Prizzi family. All of these characters swirl around the primary story of Irene and Charley's romance and subsequent marriage, and a hit gone wrong.

Irene, unbeknownst to her, shoots the Lieutenant's wife on a hit. Because of this the Prizzi family is getting a lot of pressure to rectify the situation by killing her. All kinds of convoluted double crossing and darkly comic hijinks ensue, and before we know it Charley and Irene both have orders to kill the other. They solve this problem by trying to double cross the Prizzi family, but as Charley meets with the Don, Eduardo, and his dad he is informed that for everything to be okay again he must kill his wife. It is here where we see one of Huston's favorite themes: the idea of the group or duo trying to negotiate love in a world where such negations are moot. 

Love is something that can be compromised in the name of "family" or blood ties. Love is not the conqueror of all; and the film ends on a hilariously postmodern note: Charley has just had to murder his wife. Sensing that being with someone is better than being alone; he calls up Maerose and asks her to dinner. She emerges from the darkness, sitting on the edge of her bed, and approaches the window as she asks Charley to elaborate on what "dinner" means. Charley gives a rather brusque answer and Maerose smiles as the image lightens and the light through the window begins to shine on her. She smiles and accepts the invitation, and flowery music plays and the fairy tale title card pops on the screen: THE END. Her gain, he chance at love with Charley comes at the expense of the man having to assassinate his own wife. Love is a twisted, fucked up thing in this world (and in the 80's and postmodern movement in general), and happiness is found for one in the death of another.

The best scenes come between Nicholson and Anjelica Huston (no surprise since they were lovers at the time), especially a scene where Charlie, distraught over his love for Irene and the dilemma of her also being a killer, visits Maerose for a late night booty call. Maerose cuts through all the bullshit in a wonderful moment from the actress, and she simply says: "well, what are we waiting for…let's do it." Charlie drolly replies "what, with the lights on?" It's a great moment (as is the subsequent conversation at the breakfast table between the two where Charlie confides in Maerose), a small moment that stands out as one of the best scenes of the entire film.

Huston's camera is usually stationary and he entrusts his actors to carry a lot of the weight of the film. The aesthetic isn't flashy, as mentioned before, but the film is always elegantly lit and framed (more on that later), and Huston – a lover of art in addition to his aforementioned love of literature – uses color (especially red) brilliantly, especially in the scenes where Hickey's pale white skin is juxtaposed nicely with the giant red velvet chairs that he barks orders from. I can't glean much from Huston's style here – other than it's always 'nice' looking, and there never seems to be a wasted or unnecessary shot – to firmly avow that, yes, this is what makes him an auteur; no, as I mentioned earlier it's something much more subtle that exists in the subtext or the margins of his films. Power, certainly, is a major theme of Huston's films (Sierra Madre and The Man Who Would Be King quickly come to mind), but the characters of Prizzi's Honor don't really seem to be seeking power (they already have it), and Huston isn't preoccupied (like most mob movies would be) with tired genre story threads like Charley trying to usurp the Don all in the name of love. Charley doesn't compromise his love for Irene easily, but he decides to go through it, cementing further that his role in the "family" is nothing more than a puppet. 


Now, the main purpose of this blogathon is to decide whether or not Huston is an auteur…well to (semi) quote Jake Cole of Not Just Movies (and his brilliant review of Wise Blood): show me another 70+ year old filmmaker who would be willing to make this kind of movie; a baroque, blacker than tar postmodern comedy. Prizzi's Honor is one of the auteur's (there, I officially said it) best films from his late era oeuvre, only surpassed by the film that preceded it, Under the Volcano.
 

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Under the Volcano, Huston's adaptation of brilliant and extremely difficult Malcolm Lowry novel, is one of the best films I've seen about people who drink. What's amazing about the film is not just Albert Finney's fantastic performance as former British Consol Geoffrey Firmin, but in the way that Finney and Huston seem to be in harmony about how to portray such a drunk. Huston film's the story with such lucidity and ease (the tone is somber, and you often feel like you're roving the streets of Mexico with the Consol…to call the pacing deliberate would be an understatement) that it's further proof that the viewer is in the hands of an old master. Under the Volcano is one of the more difficult books that I've ever tackled, and Huston wisely dispenses of the novel's multiple layers and subtext (in addition to being a novel about alcoholism it is also a novel about the parallels of self-destruction and the destruction of society, specifically Mexican society, in the face of WWII) and just gives us an unfiltered look at the final days of an alcoholic who is convinced he can "drink himself sober."

The film opens with an ominous bit of foreshadowing as Firmin (Finney) stumbles through a graveyard as Mexican natives are tending to the graves in preparation for Day of the Dead. In addition to the setting (as if that weren't enough foreshadowing) Firmin's shades reflect the images of skulls hanging off of a stand on the side of the road. The image is clear enough: we're going to see death in this film. Now, it can be argued that Firmin's drinking has essentially killed him already as he has lost his job as Consol (what good is a drunk diplomat?) and he prays in a church for his estranged wife to return to him, perhaps in some last ditch effort to realign his life. He frantically tries to keep the lose threads that connect him with family and community together, but he is unwilling to do so by giving up the bottle. Even when his estranged wife Yvonne (wonderfully played by Jacqueline Bisset) returns in hopes she can convince him to stop drinking for her, he sees her as nothing more than a hallucination at first, and continues to drink; the more he drinks the clearer he sees. The acting in this scene – the initial realization that Yvonne is indeed standing there looking at him – is one of the best bits of "drunken acting" I've ever seen. Finney is so understated (he doesn't do any of the hammy drunk actor shtick) here that he succeeds in not making us sympathize with him nor envy him; he's just there, he simply is, and Finney understands perhaps more than any other actor who has tried to tackle the role of an alcoholic. There isn't grandstanding and there aren't histrionics in the performances; here is a character who is convinced that they can remain lucid despite the fog they're enshrouded in. It's an amazing thing to watch the performance unfold throughout the film and to see how Firmin devolves even further than we're initially introduced to him. The rest of the film simply follows Firmin and all of the people he encounters and the situations he gets himself into during the final days of his life. It's really a simple film that, like most Huston films, is really more challenging than it appears.

The brilliance of Finney's performance is another example of Huston the director trusting his actors to do a lot of the heavy lifting. Like most of Huston's films the aesthetic here is rather pedestrian, making sure to not get in the way of the performance. Huston doesn't employ a lot of film trickery to put us in the place of the Consol (which again, is not the point of the film; this is simply a film were we observe the characters, not try to understand them); techniques like swirling cameras or messing with the focus (we see things as clearly as they must seem to the Consol). The closest Huston gets is using camera angles (tilted and low, and sometimes extremely close-up) to show the disorientation of the Consol, especially in a scene at a carnival where Firmin goes on a ride and the scene is shot in a delirious manner that gives us the feeling of inebriation, the feeling of being in that ride's cab with the Consol.


Under the Volcano is an odd film; a film where nothing much really happens, but we're always enraptured by what's unfolding in front of us. The destruction of someone, I suppose, is always interesting; even though Finney never plays the role for pathos, the inclusion of Yvonne into the story gives the film the dramatic weight it needs for the viewer to remain interested in watching how this man is killing himself. The tone of the film, as mentioned earlier, is quite deliberate; I don't know if I would call it contemplative because there doesn't seem to be much that Huston is trying to say here. The director has simply taken the most interesting aspects from his difficult source material and made a filmable story out of what many considered an unfilmable book. A story about a man who is content in his very real, very ugly hell; while his wife – who almost appears to him like a ghost or an alien – tortures him with thoughts of the utopia that awaits them outside of Mexico…if only he would stop drinking. That final request is what makes Yvonne's presence troublesome for Firmin (this is more pronounced in the novel, but Huston touches on it in the film's final half hour where Bisset has a powerful scene where she pleads with the Consol to "let [her] be [his] wife") as he proclaims – appropriately red faced – that hell is his "natural habitat". How do you save a person who thinks like this? This very personal, very human dilemma is at the core of Huston's adaptation, and, as mentioned at the beginning of this essay, is a reoccurring theme throughout Huston's work. The idea of the duo, the couple, having to make extremely difficult decisions that will have a drastic effect on their future is something that seemed to particularly intrigue Huston towards the end of his career (and life).

Like Prizzi's Honor, Under the Volcano is another example of how late-era Huston shows a filmmaker interested in the inner conflict. His late-era films don't have a lot of "action" (that is to say, there isn't much that happens in these films), but they're hypnotic in how introspective they are. Huston's care for his source material and his love for getting that source material onscreen is apparent throughout his career; not only that, Huston also gives his actors a wide breadth to do their best work. Watch how Albert Finney navigates his way through the world of a drunk; it's a completely mannered performance with countless nuances that you usually don't find in a performance of a drunk. Most actors would love to act to the back of the theater with a performance like this, to take away from the quite tone of the film and make it loud and masturbatory; Finney doesn't do any of that, and instead of obvious Oscar-bait moments we get subtle occurrences that cut much more deeply for Yvonne (especially that final scene in the whore house) and those who care about the Consol. It adds to the somber, melancholy tone of the film; a film that thankfully doesn't preach or grandstand or try to be something "more", it just simply is. Under the Volcano seems to exist int his uncategorical vacuum of greatness. It's an impossible film to place within a genre, and to describe it is even more difficult. One thing I can clearly state about the film is that it's one of the director's very best, and certainly the best film I've ever seen about drinking.


Of note: Hugo Stiglitz has a small role in the film. He doesn't have any dialogue, but he's there in all of his glory.

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After watching these two late-era Huston films I realized that his style reminds me a lot of some of my favorite old masters, directors like John Ford and Howard Hawks. Through this mannered filmmaking style (detractors would call it prosaic or stilted) doesn't lend itself to a flashy style that we associate with most auteurs. The idea behind the theory of auteurism (created by Truffaut) is that you can always see that filmmaker's indelible mark on the product, as if he or she were the author of the work. I haven't watched enough of John Huston's films to get a sense of an overarching style, or imprint he left on cinema, but I know that watching these two late films of his one thing I can associate with Huston is that not only does he employ a classic, old Hollywood aesthetic, but he doesn't get in the way of his actors (none more prevalent than in the film I ended up not reviewing for this blogathon, his final picture, The Dead). 


The other clear mark of auteurism here is that Huston was a very literary director. Yes, he wasn't as popular or flashy or pretentious as some his contemporaries like Orson Welles, but he was always consistent; in fact I would be hard pressed to find a really unpleasant viewing experience within his oeuvre. Huston was always most comfortable (and at his best) with his literary adaptations: The Asphalt Jungle; The Maltese Falcon; Beat the Devil; Fat City (a fantastic boxing film, which was clearly a labor of love from the former boxer turned director); The Dead; and the two films I reviewed here. However, Huston never thought of himself as an auteur: "I'm not aware of myself as a director having a style. I don't recognize it. I see no remote similarity, for example, between The Red Badge of Courage and Moulin Rouge…. I admire directors like Bergman, Fellini, Bunuel, whose every picture is in some way connected with their private lives, but that's never been my approach.'' (Quote taken from Obit-Mag.com)

I would argue that it's not just the literary thread that runs through most of his films that defines him as an auteur, but it's the very thing he draws attention to in the quote above; the idea that his films really have no underlying similarities, no personal imprint from his personal life. He wasn't flashy, sure, but he was versatile. His films are always perfectly framed and shot, and masterfully crafted to the point where it isn't noticeable; however, Huston was very conscious of how he framed his characters. Like a master painter he wanted to allow the mise-en-scene to do the talking for him. He didn't need to draw a lot of attention to his intentions with flash or an overt-elan, but that doesn't mean it isn't there, and if you watch any of Huston's films, pay special attention to the way he frames his characters in every shot. Even if Huston's approach was never to make films like Fellini or Bergman he still left a personal mark on the medium because of the obvious passion and love he had for his source material. Huston was a great lover of literature and art, and these can be clearly seen in how he adapts the work he love to the screen, and then in how he frames the work for everyone to see. 


Huston's films are different, and in some cases wildly different in tone (compare Prizzi's Honor with The Dead), and that is due to how true he remains to the source material that he loves to adapt. If there's an underlying theme between the work he loves to adapt, then it's the idea of the quest – either personal or communal – to better understand one's relation to their world, and sometimes, to God, and how they can negotiate that understanding in a context that isn't always made clear. Whether it is Charley's dilemma to kill his wife, Irene, in Prizzi's Honor; or, the Consol's decision to remain in his personal hell and further alienate himself from a wife and half-brother who want to do nothing but help him. That seems to me to be Huston's auteuristic mark on the medium, and it's one that is clearly his. He's too modest in the quote above; John Huston was definitely an auteur.

Summer of Slash: Wrap-up

Well, as you can can see apparently the summer only lasts a few months in my world. I know that technically I have an entrie month to watch more slasher/horror movies and write about them, but the truth is that I've pretty much covered all of the titles I wanted to cover. This isn't really the end of my horror movie writing, though (of course not!) as a month from now I will be joining three others in coutning down the best horror films of all time over at the place for movie polling, Wonders in the Dark. Since the four of us plan on taking our lists and finding common films among them to make the list, some of the films I will have placed on my list won't get featured, so I plan on doing my full countdown (all 100 movies!) over here in small, one-to-two paragraph reviews of each horror film. That way I can continue the horror theme (all the way through October, which this blog will once again host an Italian horror themed blogathon) while reviewing other movies, too.

Thanks to everyone who commented on my horror posts (and to those of you who read without commenting, too), and my apoligies for dropping the ball the last few weeks and not replying to comments. School is over for the summer, and work stuff won't really pick up until mid-September, so I plan on getting a lot of reviewing done here on the blog (I have a handful of 2010 films I've watched, ranging from:The Green Zone to Greenberg to Chole to The Ghost Writer, and so much more). Be on the lookout for my John Huston reviews for Adam's John Huston blogathon, and next month I'll be contributing a piece on Videodrome for Tony's David Cronenberg blogathon.  Go to those blogs and participate in the discussion.  See ya around.

Steve McQueen Blog-a-thon: Junior Bonner

The Steve McQueen blog-a-thon begins today over at Jason Bellamy's place, The Cooler.  Make sure to keep checking in as it runs through Friday, and there are sure to be a lot of great entries submitted throughout the blog-a-thon's run.  The full review of the 1972 western Junior Bonner can be found at the western blog I contribute to, Decisions at Sundown.

"I'm workin on my first million. You're still workin on 8 seconds."

This line spoken by Curly (Joe Don Baker) Bonner to his brother Junior (Steve McQueen) gets to the heart of Sam Peckinpah's elegiac western.  This bit of harsh insight comes after Junior, an aging rodeo star, says he can't accept Curly's, an opportunistic entrepreneur looking to exploit the nostalgic charms of the Old west in an emerging culture, job offer because he has to walk down his own road. But what does that road look like for an aging rodeo star in a world that is clearly passing him by?  That is the central question surrounding Junior Bonner, Peckinpah's misunderstood western.

Click here to read the rest of the review with comments

Get Pumped! Four days until the Italian Horror Blog-a-thon

We’re a mere four days away from the first annual Italian Horror Blog-a-thon here at Hugo Stiglitz Makes Movies (and my first attempt at hosting a blog-a-thon in general). Yes, I said first annual because in the weeks that I have been preparing for this blog-a-thon (which has taken me away from the blog for awhile) I’ve realized that there are so many Italian horror flicks that I haven’t seen, or classic ones that I won’t cover in the next couple of weeks, that I’ll have to do this thing again next year in order to cover everything I want to cover. The fact that the response has been so great for this blog-a-thon (thanks so far everyone!) before it has even started sealed the deal for me…I want to do this again next year. So, we start in four days and I’ve already proclaimed the blog-a-thon a success, hehe. Presumptuous? Perhaps, but I feel good about the quality of reviews from those of you who have voiced interest in participating.

Here’s how this will work: The first post will go up at 7am Pacific time on Monday the 19th. All subsequent posts will go up at the same time. If we’ve talked via email or through the comments section of the previous post then please just email me your review (by this I mean the text with attached pictures if you have any) with a link to your blog, or you can simply notify me of your contribution by posting the link in the comments for this post. You can submit a piece anytime between the 19th and the 31st, just let me know about it so I can properly pimp your blog.

I appreciate the interest so far. This endeavor has been received well beyond what I ever hoped or imagined, so thank you all for that. This should be a lot of fun…gruesome, bloody, gratuitous fun. See you on Monday.

* Picture courtesy of Dario Argento's Tenebre (seriously...how awesome are those guys?).

Brian De Palma Blog-a-thon: Raising Cain (1992)

[This post is cross-posted at Tony Dayoub's blog Cinema Viewfinder. You can find the original entry here, and be on the lookout for the other entries running through September 16th]

I think it's safe to call Raising Cain one of Brian De Palma's "lesser" films. By that I mean, start a conversation with any cinephile about the polarizing directors oeuvre, and it's unlikely that this 1992 thriller will be one of the first ten titles mentioned. Written and directed by De Palma, Raising Cain is one of the auteur's most underrated, surprising, and entertaining films. It's a swift 90 minute psychological thriller that owes a lot to Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and any of Argento's giallo films. De Palma takes key recognizable images, or moments, from those films and inserts them into his own story about a man named Carter (John Lithgow in a fascinating performance), who may or may not have a twin brother, and an infamous father who was a renowned doctor... before accusations of stealing babies for research resulted in him dying. What follows is one of De Palma's most playful plots; full of interesting allusions and a maniacally gleeful (and pitch perfect) performance by Lithgow.


The plot is pretty standard psychological killer stuff. The film opens with Carter talking to a colleague in the car about some of his research involving children. When the conversation turns heated Carter resorts to horrifying acts to get her to go along with his plan. As Carter figures out what to do in the car (which has now pulled off to the side of the road) a figure appears outside of the window. It is Cain, Carter's twin brother. Or, so we think. One of the most ingenious things about Raising Cain is the way De Palma plays with audience in regards to Carter's psyche. Is this really Carter's twin brother? In one brilliantly bizarre scene Cain visits his father, Dr. Nix, in a hotel room where they discuss his "escape" (a great use of words). Are we sure this is even really happening (De Palma shoots the scene in a way that suggests it isn't real)?


Well Cain indeed is not real, and we're led to believe that Dr. Nix and two other entities he assumes are also part of Carter's split personalities. DePalma blocks the hotel scene perfectly—like it's out of Caligari or other German Expressionist films—thus giving the scene its much needed uncertain, otherworldly feel... since the scene is essentially taking place in Carter's head. However, we do come to find that Dr. Nix is not dead and that he is just using his son's different personalities to get different jobs done so that he can finish the research he started before his baby thievery was brought to the forefront of the country.

As I already mentioned, one of the immensely entertaining things about Raising Cain is the way De Palma plays with the audience. His master and hero Hitchcock would be proud. I have to say that I was never quite sure what was going on until about the 20 minute mark (which I think is around the hotel scene), there the film slows down (as Cain has been put to rest after he disposes the body of Carter's aforementioned colleague) and briefly turns into an interesting domestic thriller. Carter is a weak man, and Lithgow plays him as kind of hapless fool (which is necessary since Cain is needed to be the assured one) who can't seem to please his wife or family. When things heat up between his wife Jenny (Lolita Davidovich) and an acquaintance (Steven Bauer), Carter snaps and is lost forever as Cain "escapes" again, becoming the primary controller of Carter's body.


As is typical for a De Palma film, there are countless allusions to great films throughout Raising Cain. Some of the best are a scene where Carter/Cain is trying to dispose of a body in the back seat of a car. He pushes the car into the river only to have the car stop half way. This of course is a nice, almost shot-for-shot, allusion to Psycho where Anthony Perkins is trying to get rid of Janet Leigh's body. Lithgow even manages to conjure up a little Perkins in his facial expressions throughout the film. Another great homage is when Carter/Cain happens upon his wife and her lover in the woods making love. He grabs the man's trench coat, dons black gloves, and pulls a knife as he prepares to kill a woman he has agreed to give a ride home to. This wardrobe is, of course, reminiscent of the "black-gloved killer" look found in all of the gialli by Bava, Argento, Lenzi, and Fulci (and of course, there's more).


Another Argento moment comes at the very end of the film, where we think that Carter is dead and everything is safe for Jenny and her daughter. While Jenny explains what happened to one of her friends (acting as the psychiatrist from Psycho who explains the entire plot for those not smart enough to initially realize what was going on), her daughter runs off into the woods. After Jenny tracks her down, her daughter asks where her dad is. Jenny's response is that he's not around anymore, but her daughter says "Yes he is," and at the moment Jenny bends down to pick up her daughter we see Carter dressed in drag (in another moment of allusion, this reminds the viewer of De Palma's own Dressed to Kill) standing behind Jenny. This shot was famously used in Argento's 80's giallo, Tenebre (1982). De Palma has used it again since, in his fantastic noirish thriller Femme Fatale (2002). The film's climax is typical De Palma, too: it's perfectly blocked, has a great location, and (of course) is shot in slo-mo. The climax made me think of Carrie (1976) and Carlito's Way (1993) with its adequate usage of slow motion, a device that a lot of filmmakers use ineffectively, but like the split screen, is almost always used to perfection by De Palma.


It's not just the look of the film that is one big giant homage to this very specific sub-genre that De Palma obviously loves (he also pays homage to Argento in The Untouchables), but it's the plot, too. In a great call back to these types of movies there is a moment where Dr. Lynn Waldheim (Frances Sternhagen), a former colleague of Carter and his father, walks into a police station to get the detectives up to speed on Carter's mental history. This is a great scene as Waldheim provides the classic moments of dialogue where through pseudo-scientific reasoning, Carter's illness is sought to be explained and reasoned out. This is a necessary staple for these types of films (it's especially evident in Psycho, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, Deep Red, etc.). However necessary this particular trope is, it's almost always excruciating because it's usually such a convoluted attempt to string together the loose strands of plot. Waldheim's speech is made interesting, though, by De Palma’s camera. In a virtuoso scene, he follows her and the detectives in a conversation as they walk through the multi-storied police building. The fluid camera and tilting shots (Dutch angles) as they walk down the stairs give interest to this rather blasé psychological thriller cliche. It’s a beautiful 4 minute and 50 second tracking shot that also reminds the viewer of the unbroken opening shot of Touch of Evil, with the way De Palma weaves his camera around through the building and in tight places like an elevator. The shot is there for a purpose (just like it is in Touch of Evil), as De Palma knows that his film's structure is not a linear one. This isn't a story that moves easily from point A to point B; no, these kinds of stories move in circles; they are askew plots with jagged turns, and De Palma shoots this long tracking shot accordingly—the shot is not as "smooth" (read: the film's plot) as it seems.


And then there's Lithgow's performance. He's playing three different characters, here. All of them filled with nuances and over-the-top greatness that separates them from each other. Lithgow is obviously having a lot of fun bouncing from character to character, and his Cain has to be one of the most underrated of horror villains. It got me thinking about Lithgow and his career. I don't understand how Lithgow did not become a huge star after this movie. His performance shows that he can play crazy without it being too obvious. It's all in the way he stutters as Carter, is so sure of himself when he's Cain, and the wisdom he exudes when he's playing Dr. Nix, their father. It's a brilliant multi-layered performance, and it was sad to look at his bio and notice that he never again received a film role this prominent. Sure, he went on to make his money from 3rd Rock From the Sun and the Shrek films, but never again would he headline a movie. That's a shame because I feel like Lithgow is one of the most underrated actors working today (he was phenomenal in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai and I have to admit...I really liked him as the evil Quinlan in Cliffhanger), and should get another chance at being the star of a movie.

I began by saying that there is no doubt people think of Raising Cain as a lesser De Palma film. I hope people will revisit this criminally underrated psychological horror film. It's one of the best experiences I've had with De Palma, and for those that read my blog you know that De Palma is a filmmaker I struggle with. There is no doubting his talent, or his eye for a great scene, but sometimes I find his allusions to be less than exhilarating (compared to say a Quentin Tarantino who does the same thing as De Palma, but with an élan that is more exciting). That leads to a general malaise about his films -- a feeling like I am out of the loop when it comes to people I respect (like the man hosting this here blog-a-thon), who rank him highly in their pantheon of great American filmmakers. That being said: I have a found a reason to re-visit some of De Palma's work in the most unlikely of places... Raising Cain.


Extra stills, since there is always so much good stuff to look at in a De Palma film: