Wednesday, May 29, 2013
"A game-legged old man and a drunk. That's all you got?" "That's what I got."
BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post is part of The Howard Hawks Blogathon occurring through May at Seetimaar — Diary of a Movie Lover
By Edward Copeland
After the opening credits end, Howard Hawks begins Rio Bravo with a sequence somewhat unusual for a Western, or, for that matter, any film made in 1959. On the other hand, beneath the surface of Rio Bravo
you'll find many more layers than your typical Western. The scene almost plays as if it hails from the silent era as a haggard-looking Dean Martin tentatively enters a large establishment providing libations, meals and even barber services. Martin's character's face tells you that he wants to resist liquor's siren call, but he's weak and he struggles. A man at the bar (Claude Akins) spots him after purchasing his own drink. He flashes Martin a smile, gestures at his glass and asks with his eyes whether Martin desires one. Aside from the film score and the ambient noise of the establishment's environs, no dialogue emanates from any of the characters that Hawks' camera focuses upon in this scene that's practically choreographed in mime. Martin's character replies with an eager but wordless "yes" and Akins
tosses a coin — into a spittoon — laughing with his buddies (the closest thing to a human voice heard in this building) as Martin's character's desperation outweighs his pride and he
gets down on his hands and knees, prepared to retrieve the money from the spit-out tobacco. Before he can, a foot kicks the spittoon out of the way and he looks up to see John Wayne towering above him in a great low-angle shot looking up at The Duke and giving him one of his many great screen entrances. His character's arrival also sets several of the story's strands into motion. You see, the man (Akins) taunting Dude (Martin) happens to be Joe Burdette, the blackest sheep of a powerful clan that gets away with practically anything it wants to do. Joe oversteps this time though as he continues to tease Dude after a brawl that includes the man who kicked over the spittoon, Sheriff John T. Chance (Wayne), Dude's boss when he's sober enough to carry out duties as deputy. Joe and his buddies keep harassing Dude when a sympathetic patron (Bing Russell) steps in, urging Joe to cut it out — still through gestures, not words. Joe Burdette doesn't take criticism well and shoots the unarmed man to death and exits the building to stagger to another saloon. Chance soon enters behind and speaks the film's first line, "Joe, you're under arrest."
Burdette and his buddies don't take the sheriff seriously and seem intent to mow the lawman down when a still-shaky Dude arrives as backup, having composed himself enough to shoot the guns out of a couple of bad guys' hands. Seems Dude might have a drinking problem, but he's also Chance's deputy, and the lawmen take Joe into custody where the movie's waiting game begins. Can Chance, Duke (always battling the battle) and Chance's other deputy, Stumpy (Walter Brennan), aging and falling apart physically, keep Joe locked up until the U.S. marshal's arrival several days later to take Joe into custody for trial before Burdette's clan tries to free him In a few short minutes of screentime, the main story that drives most of Rio Bravo's 2 hours and 20 minutes has been set. Sideplots await, but all basically will converge in the main thread. Though nearly 2½ hours long, Hawks doesn't rush his film along, yet somehow he still keeps it moving and it holds its length incredibly well.
I'm not reporting earth-shattering news when I inform readers that Howard Hawks belongs to that select group of directors who excelled in every genre he attempted. One thing that sets Rio Bravo apart from Hawks' other works is that, while it resides in the Western genre, it snatches from many others — romantic comedies, war tales, detective stories, social dramas, even musicals. As film critic Richard Schickel says on a commentary track for Rio Bravo, Hawks liked saying
that he loved to steal from himself. He'd do it again by practically remaking Rio Bravo as El Dorado eight years later, once again starring Wayne but with Robert Mitchum in the Dean Martin role. The plots diverge enough, as do the characters, (Mitchum plays a drunken sheriff as opposed to deputy while Wayne took on the role of gunfighter for hire helping a rancher's family get even with the rival rancher who killed their patriarch) to prevent it from being an exact facsimile. (Another shared aspect between the two films: screenwriter Leigh Brackett, who co-wrote Rio Bravo with Jules Furthman and wrote El Dorado by herself.) In the case of Rio Bravo, dialogue in the romantic sparring between Chance (Wayne) and possibly shady lady Feathers (Angie Dickinson) sounds lifted directly from To Have and Have Not, which Furthman co-wrote with William Faulkner. The relationship between Chance and Stumpy seems like a continuation of the one Wayne's Dunson and Brennan's Groot had in Red River, only minus Dunson's darkness. Part of Howard Hawks' greatness grew from his gift of swiping things from his previous films while changing the recipe just enough to make it fresh — a skill other self-plagiarists such as John Hughes never pulled off since they lacked Hawks' inherent talent, skill and imagination.Hawks originally intended the action and imagery that runs beneath the opening credits to be its own sequence in the film, but later decided just to use it to accompany the list of cast and crew to a quieter piece of Dimitri Tiomkin's score before the set piece in the bar officially launches Rio Bravo. He films the footage of a wagon train caravan at such a distance that you can't readily identify its contents or characters, but a careful viewer connects it later as being the approach of the wagon train of Pat Wheeler
(Ward Bond), who turns up shortly after the opening incident. At first, the audience can't be certain how to take the arrival of this man and his large crew, which includes a young gunman named Colorado (played by Ricky Nelson, teen idol and sitcom star at the time, who turns in a solid performance). For all the audience knows, these could be people sent to break Joe Burdette out of the jail where Stumpy handles most of his supervision. Dude, by then sobered up and handling more of his duties as deputy to Chance's Presidio County Texas sheriff, stops the wagon train in the middle of the town's main thoroughfare and insists that Wheeler and all of his men remove their weapons and hang them on a fence. They'll be free to collect the firearms when they depart the town again. (Wouldn't you love to watch Rio Bravo with the National Rifle Association's head flunky Wayne LaPierre and see how he reacts to law enforcement working for John Wayne in a Western that enforcing those rules?) Wheeler and those in his employ grumble at first, but soon comply. When Chance shows up, we realize he and Wheeler go way back on friendly terms, though Wheeler advises the sheriff they need to be careful where they store their cargo — it contains a large amount of dynamite. (Paging Chekhov if you don't think that's going to pay off somewhere down the road.) Labels: 50s, Angie Dickinson, Blog-a-thons, Dean Martin, Faulkner, Hawks, John Hughes, Mitchum, Movie Tributes, W. Brennan, Wayne
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"My Rifle, My Pony and Me" (Rio Bravo tribute, Part II)
While Sheriff Chance took on a major task by arresting Joe Burdette and incarcerating him in his small Presidio County jail, with Stumpy left to guard the bad guy most of the time, he still bears the responsibility for maintaining the law elsewhere in his town, something he accomplishes through street patrols and his nights staying at The Hotel Alamo (of all the names to pick) run by Carlos Robante (Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez) and his wife Consuela (Estelita Rodriguez). One night, a poker game piques his interest as two of the players (Angie Dickinson, Walter Barnes) fit the profile of two hustlers warned about on handbills. After a cursory investigation, Chance arrests the woman, who goes by the name Feathers. She declares her innocence and Chance fails to find the crooked cards on her after she's left the table following a huge winning streak. When he returns though, he does find the stacked deck on the man, who has raked it in since her departure and tells him to return his ill-gotten gains and be on the morning stagecoach. He suggests that Feathers do the same, but she decides to stick around.
That next day, the Burdettes arrive as expected, led by Joe's smooth brother Nathan (John Russell, the gaunt, veteran actor of mostly Westerns where he usually played the villain. His second-to-last film was as the cold-blooded killer in Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider). He asks Chance why the streets appear so full of people. Chance offers no explanation, but suggests that perhaps gawkers came to town, drawn to the possibility that the Burdettes planned to put on a show.
Chance makes his nightly trek to the Hotel Alamo. When he gets there, Spencer pulls him over for a drink. The wagon master has heard of the trouble Chance faces. "A game-legged old man and a drunk. That's all you got?" Spencer asks in disbelief. "That's what I got," Chance responds. Spencer offers himself and his men as help against the Burdettes, but the sheriff expresses reluctance to take responsibility for others. He does ask about the confident young gunman Colorado that Spencer has hired. If he is as good as he thinks he is and lacks the family ties of the older men, Chance would be willing to take him on if Colorado agrees. Spencer calls Colorado over, but the young man politely declines, earning Chance's respect for being smart enough to know when to sit out a fight. Not long afterward, while Feathers flirts again and Chance urges her to get on the morning stage, shots ring out on the street and Spencer falls dead. Later, Nathan Burdette makes his first visit to see his brother Joe, despite Stumpy's withering verbal assaults, at the jail. First, Nathan wants the sheriff to
explain why his brother looks so beat up. "He didn't take too kindly to being arrested for murder," Chance tells Nathan while Joe denies the shooting was murder. Nathan asks how Chance can be so certain or, at the very least, why Joe isn't being tried where the alleged murder occurred. Chance nixes that idea, content to let the U.S. marshal handle Joe Burdette and try him elsewhere. Nathan silkily makes no overt threats, but certainly implies that Joe might not remain in the Presidio County jail by the time that marshal shows up, especially if the sheriff relies on a drunk and an old man as his backup. Chance isn't in a mood to hide his cards. "You're a rich man, Burdette. Big ranch, pay a lot of people to do what you want 'em to do. And you got a brother. He's no good but he's your brother. He committed 20 murders you'd try and see he didn't hang for 'em," the sheriff spits out. "I don't like that kinda talk. Now you're practically accusing me," Nathan Burdette says, but Chance continues. "Let's get this straight. You don't like? I don't like a lot of things. I don't like your men sittin' on the road bottling up this town. I don't like your men watching us, trying to catch us with our backs turned. And I don't like it when a friend of mine offers to help and 20 minutes later he's dead! And i don't like you, Burdette, because you set it up." If war wasn't brewing before, it was now.
The murder of Spencer fully incorporates the last two major characters more fully into the film and the action. With his boss dead, Colorado at first finds himself content to take his pay from the slain wagon master's possessions and remains determined to mind his own business. Once he witnesses some more of the Burdette brutality, Colorado decides to join up and Chance deputizes him. Colorado becomes part of the team and helps Chance escape an ambush, an ambush for which the sheriff seems prepared to occur, quickly pumping off rounds from his rifle. "You always leave the carbine cocked?" Colorado asks. "Only when I carry it," Chance replies. Originally, Hawks opposed casting Ricky Nelson, though the director admits he probably boosted box office. He had sought someone popular with young viewers, but felt Nelson — who turned 18 during filming — lacked age and experience for the part. Hawks had chased Elvis Presley for the role, but as often was the case, Col. Tom Parker demanded too much money for his client and the Rio Bravo production had to take a pass. The pseudo love affair between Feathers and Chance also heats up, though Wayne's discomfort with the romantic scenes with Dickinson is readily apparent. Wayne felt uneasy about the 25-year age gap between him and Dickinson. On top of that, nervous studio bosses wanted no implication made that Chance and Feathers ever sleep together. Double entendres and innuendos abound, but truthfully more sparks fly in brief scenes between Martin and Dickinson and Nelson and Dickinson than ever produce friction in the Wayne-Dickinson scenes. What becomes most interesting about the relationship between Feathers and Chance is Feathers' transformation into the sheriff's protector, keeping watch over him as he sleeps to make sure that no Burdette makes a move on him.
You don't need to know how the rest of Rio Bravo unfolds. Besides, part of what makes the film so fascinating and more than your ordinary Western comes from the multiple tones Hawks balances. A viewer seeing Rio Bravo for the first time couldn't positively predict what mood shall prevail by the final reel: light-hearted, tragic, heroic, romantic, some combination of those elements. At any given moment, you might change your mind. Most of this uncertainty reflects the nature of the character Dude. With the possible exception of Feathers, almost every other character in the film stays on a static path. Dude captures our attention the most because of the dynamics within him. Will he maintain the upper hand in his battle with booze or will he fall off the wagon again and if he does, what consequences does that
have for the others? Even sober, he's prone to depression, low self-esteem and self-pity. Still, he can croon a song or be a crack shot. A part this multifaceted requires a talented actor and back when Rio Bravo was made, Dean Martin wouldn't be one of the first names to jump to your mind. However, in the years 1958 and 1959, soon after the end of his partnership with Jerry Lewis, Martin turned in two impressive performances (perhaps three, but I haven't seen 1958's The Young Lions). In 1958, he gave a great turn as a professional gambler Bama Dillert in Vincente Minnelli's adaptation of the James Jones novel Some Came Running starring Frank Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine. He followed that with his astoundingly good work in Rio Bravo. While Martin continue to make entertaining films, for some reason those two years stand out as an aberration and he never got roles as good as Bama Dillert or Dude again.Hawks' behind-the-scenes collaborators provided as much of the magic of Rio Bravo as its cast. From Russell Harlan's crisp and lush cinematography to Tiomkin's score that complements Hawks' leisurely pacing well. Tiomkin also teamed with lyricist Paul Francis West for the film's songs — "Cindy" and "My Rifle, My Pony and Me" in the extended musical interlude by Dude, Stumpy and
Colorado as well as the title song. Reportedly, Wayne joined the singing at one point until they decided it inappropriate for the sheriff to take part (and also because the Duke allegedly could not carry a tune). In another instance of borrowing from past work, at Wayne's suggestion, Tiomkin actually reworked the theme to Red River into the song "My Rifle, My Pony and Me." Tiomkin also composed "Degüello," aka "The Cutthroat Song," which the Burdettes play to psych out the good guys guarding Joe. The film claims the music comes from Mexico where Santa Anna's soldiers played it continuously to unnerve those holed up inside the Alamo. Wayne loved the music and the story so much, even though the tale wasn't true, he used it in his film The Alamo the following year. His screenwriting team of Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett both had worked with Hawks as a team and separately before and after Rio Bravo. Previously, Furthman and Brackett co-wrote Hawks' classic 1946 take on The Big Sleep. Furthman also co-wrote Come and Get It and To Have and Have Not and did a solo turn on Only Angels Have Wings. The legendary Brackett, despite her extensive screenwriting work, made a name for herself as a novelist, largely in the male-dominated field of science fiction. In Schickel's commentary, he refers to Brackett as an example of a real life Hawksian woman. In fact, before her death, the last screenplay she co-wrote was The Empire Strikes Back. In another non-Hawks project, she returned to Philip Marlowe when she wrote the screenplay for Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye. In addition to the Hawks titles already mentioned for Brackett, she also wrote the screenplay for 1962's Hatari! and co-wrote 1970's Rio Lobo. The DVD commentary also includes director John Carpenter, who names Hawks as his favorite director, and paid tribute to Leigh Brackett by naming the sheriff in the original Halloween after her.Tweet
Labels: 50s, Altman, Angie Dickinson, Blog-a-thons, Dean Martin, Eastwood, Elvis, Hawks, Jerry Lewis, John Carpenter, MacLaine, Movie Tributes, Sinatra, Star Wars, W. Brennan, Wayne
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Saturday, May 19, 2012
Centennial Tributes: Richard Brooks Part II
By Edward Copeland
We pick up our tribute to Richard Brooks in 1956. If you missed Part I, click here. Of Brooks' two 1956 releases, I've only seen one of them. The Last Hunt stars Stewart Granger as a rancher who loses all his cattle to a stampeding herd of buffalo. Robert Taylor plays a buffalo hunter who asks him to join in an expedition to slaughter the animals, but the rancher, an ex-buffalo hunter himself, had quit because he'd grown weary of the killing. Brooks may be the auteur of antiviolence. Filmed in Technicolor Cinemascope, I imagine it looked great on the big screen. Bosley Crowther wrote in his New York Times review, "Even so, the killing of the great bulls—the cold-blooded shooting down of them as they stand in all their majesty and grandeur around a water hole—is startling and slightly nauseating. When the bullets crash into their heads and they plunge to the ground in grotesque heaps it is not very pleasant to observe. Of course, that is as it was intended, for The Last Hunt is aimed to display the low and demoralizing influence of a lust for slaughter upon the nature of man." The second 1956 film I did see and given the talents involved and the paths it would take, it's a fairly odd tale. The Catered Affair was the third and last film in Richard Brooks' entire directing career that he also didn't write or co-write.
It began life as a teleplay by the great Paddy Chayefsky in 1955 called A Catered Affair starring Thelma Ritter, J. Pat O'Malley and Pat Henning before its adaptation for the big screen the following year, the same journey Chayefsky's Marty took that ended up in Oscar glory. This time, Chayefsky didn't adapt his work for the movies — Gore Vidal did. Articles of speech changed in its title as well as the teleplay A Catered Affair became The Catered Affair for Brooks' film. (Chayefsky apparently wasn't a particular fan of this work of his — it never was published or appeared in a collection of his scripts.) We're at the point where the project just got screwy. The simple story concerns an overbearing Irish mom in the Bronx determined to give her daughter a ritzy wedding because of the bragging she hears her future in-laws go on about describing the nuptials thrown for their girls. Despite the fact that the Hurley family lacks the funds for it, Mrs. Hurley stays determined while her husband Tom sighs — he's been saving to buy his own cab. On TV, the casting of Ritter and O'Malley for certain sounded appropriate. For the film, which added characters since it had to expand the length, the cast appeared to have been picked out of a hat because they certainly didn't seem related, most didn't register as Irish and as for being from the Bronx — fuhgeddaboudit. Meet Mr. and Mrs. Tom Hurley, better known to you as Ernest Borgnine and
Bette Davis. Unlikely match though they be, somehow their genes combined and out popped the most Bronx-like of Irish girls — Debbie Reynolds. The new character of Uncle Jack does add a bit of real Irish flavor by tossing in Barry Fitzgerald for no apparent reason. Unbelievably, it made the list of the top 10 films of the year from the National Board of Review who also named Reynolds best supporting actress (nothing against Reynolds in general — just miscast here). You would think that this Affair would fade into oblivion, but you'd be wrong. In 2008, it changed articles again and re-emerged on the Broadway stage as the musical A Catered Affair. Faith
Prince and Tom Wopat(Yes — that Tom Wopat of Luke Duke fame) earned Tony nominations as the parents, Harvey Fierstein wrote the book and played the uncle (named Winston) and John Bucchino wrote the score. Why did Brooks make this one? Easy. He was under contract. MGM told him to make it, so he had no choice. From Tough as Nails: The Life and Films of Richard Brooks, some of the cast talked on record about how Brooks could be a bit of a prick as a director. "I didn't know it at the time, but Brooks ate and digested actors for breakfast," Borgnine said later. "If things weren't working, he let you know it, and not gently." When a particular scene was not working to his satisfaction, (Brooks) ordered Borgnine and Davis to figure out the problem. Borgnine suggested a different pacing and Davis agreed the scene was better for it — as did (Brooks), though he offered Borgnine not praise but a putdown. 'Goddamn thinking actor.'" Reynolds also tells the author Douglass K. Daniel that from the first day she met Brooks he told her that he didn't want her in the part, but it wasn't his decision. "'He said he was stuck with me and he'd do the best he could with me,' Reynolds recalled. 'He hoped I could come through all right with him, because everybody else was so great, but he wasn't certain I could keep up with the others. He actually said he was stuck with me. And he said so in front of everybody, too. He was so cruel.'" Davis and Borgnine coached Reynolds on the side and Bette, not known to be a shrinking violet, told Reynolds once, according to the book, "'Don't pay any attention to him, the son of a bitch,' Davis told her. 'The only important thing is to work with the greats.'" Davis did get help from Brooks in her fight against the studio that a Bronx housewife shouldn't be wearing movie star costumes they wanted, so he supported her decision to buy clothes at a store like Mrs. Hurley would shop at in real life. Years later, Davis referred to Brooks as one of the greats. This wasn't the first time Brooks had treated a young actress oddly on a set, Anne Francis told Douglass Daniel for his book that he practically ignored her during the filming of Blackboard Jungle and she received no direction at all. Daniel suggests and, given the way Brooks ordered Borgnine and Davis to come up with an idea to fix a scene, that writing had been his greatest gift, he grew into a solid visual storyteller, but Brooks proved limited when it came to directing actors. Daniel wrote, "…(the accounts of Francis and Reynolds) suggested he had a limited ability to communicate what he wanted. He either paid them little attention…or tried to bully a performance from them." Despite that problem, 10 actors in Brooks-directed films earned Oscar nominations and three took home the statuette.
The following year, Brooks made another film that revolved around the hunt of an animal, though that just leads to much bigger issues in Something of Value, sometimes known as Africa Ablaze. Starring Rock Hudson and filmed in Kenya, the film, which I haven't seen, concerns tensions that erupt between formerly friendly colonial white settlers and the Kenyan tribesmen. It also began a run of films that Brooks adapted from serious literary sources. Something of Value had been written by Robert C. Ruark, a former journalist like Brooks, who fictionalized his experiences being present in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion. In 1958, the two authors he adapted carried names more prestigious and recognizable. The first movie released derived from a particularly literary source and Brooks didn't do all that heavy lifting alone. Julius and Philip Epstein did the original adaptation, working from the English translation of the novel by Constance Garnett before Brooks began his work writing a worthwhile screenplay that didn't run more than two-and-a-half hours out of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. It wasn't easy. Brooks told Daniel that he "wrestled with the book for four months." What surprised me to learn, also according to what Brooks told Daniels, MGM assigned Karamazov to him. Brooks also said that he never initiated any of his films while under contract at MGM. I love Dostoyevsky. Hell, even a master such as Kurosawa couldn't pull off a screen adaptation of The Idiot. The only aspect of this film that holds your attention — actually it would be more accurate to say grabs you by your throat and keeps you awake for his moments — ends up being any scene with Lee J. Cobb playing the Father Karamazov. I don't know if Cobb realized that somebody needed to step up or what, but the brothers, with only Yul Brynner showing much charisma, also include William Shatner. It's almost embarrassing except for Cobb who got a deserved supporting actor Oscar nomination, the first of the 10 from Brooks-directed films.
The actor who Cobb lost that Oscar to that year had a major part in Brooks' other 1958 feature — the film adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. However, Burl Ives didn't win the prize for his great turn as Big Daddy, but for his role as a ruthless cattle baron fighting with another rancher over land and water in The Big Country. As with nearly all of Williams' works, movie versions castrated his plays' subtext (and sometimes just plain text) and this proved true with Cat as well, though the cast and its overriding theme of greed kept it involving enough. The film scored at the box office for MGM, taking in a (big for 1958) haul of $8.8 million — Leo the Lion's biggest hit of the year and third-biggest of the 1950s. It scored six Oscar nominations: best picture, best actress for Elizabeth Taylor as Maggie the Cat, best director for Brooks, best adapted screenplay for Brooks and James Poe best color cinematography for William Daniels and best actor for Paul Newman as Brick, Newman's first nomination and the film that truly cemented him as a star.
After the success of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Brooks decided to take an ocean voyage to Europe as a vacation. The writer-director packed the essentials for a lengthy trip: some articles on evangelism, a Gideon Bible a copy of Sinclair Lewis' novel Elmer Gantry and Angie Dickinson. By the time the ship docked in Europe, a first draft of a screenplay, based on the novel by one of the men who stood ready to
defend Brooks during The Brick Foxhole brouhaha with the Marines, lay finished. Dickinson, on the other hand, departed the cruise quite a while back, having grown annoyed by Brooks ignoring her for Elmer. For many lives, 1960 would prove quite eventful either professionally, personally or both. Brooks filmed the highly entertaining movie version of Elmer Gantry early in the year, directing one of his best friends, Burt Lancaster, for the first time in the title role, which is good since the film got made under the auspices of an independent Burt Lancaster/Richard Brooks Production. Lancaster gives one of his best performances and won his first Oscar. The film co-starred Jean Simmons, giving one of her greatest, most mesmerizing turns as Sister Sharon Falconer, the traveling tent show evangelist who gets Elmer into the biz. She fell for Brooks on the set. Within the calendar year, she ended her unhappy marriage to Stewart Granger and became Brooks' wife. Unfortunately, when the Oscar nominations came out the next year, Simmons got left out of the nominations for Elmer Gantry. It received five total. In addition to Lancaster's nomination and win for best actor, it received nominations for best picture; Shirley Jones as supporting actress, which she won; Andre Previn for best score for a drama or comedy; and Brooks for best adapted screenplay. That cruise paid off. Brooks won an Oscar and found a wife. Below, a bit of Lancaster at work — and singing too.With his next film, Brooks finally received the key that unlocked the leg shackles that bound him to MGM. The studio once again assigned him to a Tennessee Williams play. Though Sweet Bird of Youth did moderately well on Broadway, it wasn't one of The Glorious Bird's triumphs and took a long time to get to New York, starting as a one-act, premiering as a full-length play with a reviled ending in Florida in 1956 and, finally, the revised version's
opening in NY in 1959. (The play has yet to be revived on Broadway whereas, in contrast, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has been revived four times, including twice in this young century, and A Streetcar Named Desire 's eighth Broadway revival currently runs.) Originally, its plot concerned a retired actress and a gigolo with dreams of Hollywood who brings her to his old Southern hometown to get away and runs into trouble with the town's corrupt political boss (Ed Begley) when he woos his daughter (Shirley Knight). Williams said he'd hoped for Brando and Magnani to play the parts on stage. Eventually, she became merely an aging actress and Geraldine Page and Paul Newman played the leads on Broadway. When it came time for the movie, according to legend, MGM desperately wanted Elvis for Newman's part, but the Colonel nixed that because he didn't like the character's morals. Instead, the great Page and Newman repeated their stage roles as did Rip Torn as the son of the political boss. Once again, Hollywood castrated a Williams play or, in this instance, literally didn't castrate it (people who know both the play and movie get that joke. Page and Knight received Oscar nominations in the lead and supporting actress categories, respectively, and Begley won as best supporting actor. In this clip, you can see Newman's Chance try to get a handle on Page's wasted Alexandra in their hotel room.
Now a free agent, Brooks decided to stay that way — in essence becoming an independent filmmaker toward the end of his career instead of the beginning, as the path usually goes. He also defied that typical indie move of starting small — this wasn't John Cassavetes — but beginning this stage of his career more like the final films (and current ones for 1965) of David Lean. He went BIG. He even nabbed Lean's Lawrence to star in his adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim, a longtime obsession of Brooks that he bought the rights to in 1958 for a mere $6,500. The filming took place in Hong Kong, Singapore and, dangerously in Cambodia as things grew tense. The movie crew's interpreter happened to be Dith Pran, the man the late Haing S. Ngor won an Oscar for playing in Roland Joffe's 1984 film The Killing Fields. O'Toole hated his time there, complaining about the living conditions — he isn't a fan of mosquitoes and snakes. Later, he also admitted he thought he'd been wrong for the part itself. Portions of the film ended up shot in London's Shepperton Studios as Cambodia became full of anti-American rage. When the film opened, it bombed and badly. Sony put it on DVD briefly, but it's currently out of print so, alas, I've never seen this one. Brooks did make an impression on O'Toole though, who told Variety when he died that Brooks was "the man who lived at the top of his voice."
Having a flop on the scale of Lord Jim the first time you produce your own film could really discourage a guy. However, it sure didn't show in what he produced next because The Professionals turned out to be the most well-made, entertaining film he'd directed up until this point in his career. (His next film swipes the most well-made title, but The Professionals continues to hold the prize for being one hell of a ride.) Based on a novel by Frank O'Rourke, the movie teamed Brooks with his pal Lancaster again. Set soon after the 1917 Mexican Revolution, early in the 20th century when the Old West and modern movement intermingle near the U.S.-Mexican border, it almost plays like a rough draft for Sam Peckinpah's admittedly superior Wild Bunch. Ralph Bellamy plays a rich tycoon who hires a team of soldiers of fortune to go in to Mexico and rescue his daughter who has been kidnapped by a guerrilla bandit (Jack Palance, hysterically funny and good despite making no attempt to appear Mexican). The team consists of Lancaster as a dynamite expert, Lee Marvin as a professional soldier, Robert Ryan as a wrangler and packmaster and Woody Strode as the team's scout and tracker. The film turned out to be a huge hit with audiences and critics alike and earned Brooks Oscar nominations for directing and adapted screenplay. The Academy also cited the cinematography of its director of photography, the master Conrad L. Hall, who would do some of the finest work of his career in Brooks' next film. Below, one of The Professionals' action sequences.
I hoped to complete this in two parts and considered breaking out the next film as a separate review because In Cold Blood stands firmly as Richard Brooks' masterpiece (and then there remain some other films to mention after that). So, another temporary pause.
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Labels: Angie Dickinson, Bellamy, Bette, Borgnine, Chayefsky, Debbie Reynolds, Geraldine Page, Jean Simmons, Lancaster, Lee J. Cobb, Liz, Marvin, Newman, O'Toole, Peckinpah, Rip Torn, Shatner, Tennessee Williams, Vidal
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Monday, October 04, 2010
Arthur Penn: The Chase
By Edward Copeland
With the talent gathered for 1966's The Chase, for awhile the movie seems like a mistake. Arthur Penn directing a screenplay by Lillian Hellman adapted from a novel and play by Horton Foote with a cast that includes Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda, Robert Redford and Robert Duvall. Angie Dickinson even turns up as Brando's wife. How did this talent get hooked up with what feels like, for the first hour or so, one of those Southern soap opera potboilers so prevalent in the '50s and '60s. The younger members of the cast were early in their career, so they have an excuse, but it's puzzling to see Penn and Brando attached to something that resembles one of those longish bores with too many story strands and boozy characters. Thankfully, a larger purpose develops eventually as The Chase goes along, but not enough to make it worthwhile. No wonder Penn expressed dissatisfaction with what they did to this film too.
The person holding The Chase together over its early rough patches turns out to be Brando who turns in one of his committed performances as Calder, the sheriff of the unnamed Texas town who gets little respect from its citizens who see him as little more than a puppet for the local oil tycoon Val Rogers (E.G. Marshall). If Brando ever had an excuse to sleepwalk through one of his films or go bizarre just to amuse himself, this could have been it. The truth that escapes the small-minded, cliquish community who swap spouses as if they were baseball cards and treat alcohol as one of the five basic food groups, is that Calder holds a true commitment to the law and doesn't share their knee-jerk judgments about people or races.
What sets the town in motion is the news that its infamous former resident Charlie "Bubber" Reeves (Redford) has escaped from jail with another inmate and many of the citizens expect him to return to settle scores such as Edwin Stewart (Duvall) who really stole the money that got Reeves sent to his first reformatory and started the domino effect of bad luck that ruined Reeves' life. The escape hasn't made things better as the inmate he fled with murders the man whose car they planned to steal and strands Bubber on the side of the road, leaving him to take the blame for the slaying.
Complicating matters at home, Bubber's wife Anna (Fonda) has fallen in love with Val Rogers' son Jake (James Fox) (wed to someone else, of course) and has been having an affair with him, even though she's still devoted to Bubber as well. The various affairs between the upper crust can be very confusing and frankly not that interesting. When The Chase finally gets going is when you realize that Calder stands alone against a town full of armed drunks and rowdy kids (look close for a young Paul Williams) and their desire for vigilantism, be it against Bubber or a black man who dares to be seen walking in a white neighborhood.
That trio of ne'er-do-goods, with more booze flowing through their veins than blood and always packing heat presumably to compensate for other shortcomings, are led by Richard Bradford with Clifton James and Steve Ihnat on backup, and they seem to be there to harass the sheriff at every turn, including giving him a Major League asskicking to keep him from stopping Val Rogers from interrogating a black prisoner downstairs they believe knows Bubber's whereabouts.
As the film builds toward its climax, the chaotic town has transformed into a horror show that's half apocalypse, half block party. It's just a shame we have to suffer through the dull and soapy muddle of the more than first hour to get to its real point about mob violence. The Ox Bow Incident, it ain't.
Still, once we get to the final act, Penn directs with real verve and Brando's solid and laid-back performance throughout deserves thanks for keeping audiences from fleeing until we get to that point.
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Labels: 60s, Angie Dickinson, Arthur Penn, Brando, Duvall, E.G. Marshall, J. Fonda, Redford
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Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Hawks' Rio Bravo marks a half-century
By David Gaffen
The era of the revisionist Western is generally associated with the early 1990s, but the reality is that the subversion of the genre began in earnest several decades earlier. It picked up steam with Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns and films directed by Don Siegel and Sam Peckinpah, but Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo was one of the earlier entries to play with the conventions of the genre.
It is well known that Hawks disliked High Noon, which was released in 1952, seven years before Rio Bravo — in part because of the anxiety and insecurity displayed by Will Kane, the hero played by Gary Cooper. In and of itself, this was already a subversion of the archetypal protagonist of the western, although the stoic nature of Cooper’s character fit squarely into the conventions established already within the Western’s short history on film.
Rio Bravo features John Wayne in another performance as the towering authority figure, but after his iron-clenched performance a few years earlier as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers — another film directed by John Ford that presents a protagonist as separate from the family he serves — his John Chance is another stoic, laconic type, but his relationships with the other principles have a more relaxed, lived-in quality, particularly Dean Martin, the town drunk who later redeems himself. This was Wayne entering the latter stages of his career, when his performances brought with him a quiet steadiness, devoid of the coiled rage one saw in The Searchers, which remains his best performance.
The other characters in the film are archetypes in and of themselves — the drunk, the kid, the grizzled codger — but they’re invested with a light spirit. While Hawks and Wayne may have wanted to answer High Noon’s supposed take on blacklisting with one that did not show society abandoning a man who was protecting them (the very position taken in The Searchers), this take was in some ways a more liberal, community-oriented one. Wayne’s allies are of varying ability, what with a drunk, an inexperienced kid, and a coot to protect the town against the rancher seeking to bust Joe Burdette (Claude Akins) out of prison — and Wayne’s Chance is constantly turning down entreaties from other townspeople who want to help him.
It’s hard to believe that Hawks’ chief problem with High Noon was its political bent and what they interpreted as weakness in the main character, particularly as Rio Bravo works more effectively as a rejoinder to the somber High Noon. Much of the film’s relaxed nature comes from Wayne’s interaction with Angie Dickinson’s Feathers character and the elderly deputy, Stumpy, played by supporting actor du jour Walter Brennan. Dickinson more than holds her own here — the film has several gentle moments of interaction between her and Wayne, always underrated, who as usual says more with the phrasing of one line or a reaction than plenty of actors could with a five-minute soliloquy.
And the movie remains a great showcase for what can only be described as the enjoyment of filmmaking, best illustrated by two of Martin’s big moments. One, of course, is the scene where he walks into a bar to find a character’s killer, and spots drops of blood falling into a beer mug, cluing him into the outlaw’s presence in the rafters; it’s the kind of moment Quentin Tarantino lives to include in his films.
Of course, there’s the brilliant scene prior to the climax where Martin and Nelson — both possessing terrific voices, as it was well known — sing “My Rifle, My Pony and Me.” The scene serves its purpose as a break from the rising tension throughout the latter part of the film, but who could cast a movie with Martin and Nelson and not have them collaborate with a vocal performance?
Rio Bravo is one of those films that a person could see once and feel they’ve seen it five times, so lived-in is its appeal, so comfortable its presence. In a sense one could see it three times while only seeing it once, as
Hawks and Wayne teamed up for two more versions of the tale. El Dorado (1967), in a way, improves on the original (Robert Mitchum and James Caan are superior actors to Martin and Nelson), but the villains are stronger in the original, but these are minor differences. It’s hard to say to whom this film belongs. Martin was never stronger than in this movie, a surprisingly effective cowboy who generates a ton of empathy as a result of his character’s struggle with booze. He commands the screen in his scenes in part because Wayne was a consistently generous performer on-screen, allowing the other actors room to breathe while he comfortably let his presence do the work for him. Wayne’s ability to slip comfortably from the foreground to the background in favor of his co-stars was among his greatest strengths — the subtle approach is also probably what kept him from winning awards until he took on the more colorful Rooster Cogburn role in True Grit — but Rio Bravo is one of his best roles. It is justly remembered as one of the classics of the genre.
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Labels: Angie Dickinson, blacklist, Caan, Cooper, Dean Martin, Don Siegel, Hawks, John Ford, Leone, Mitchum, Movie Tributes, Peckinpah, Tarantino, W. Brennan, Wayne
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Saturday, May 26, 2007
Centennial Tributes: John Wayne
“Wayne was never an actor, and because he wasn’t an actor, he had to do everything real. There wasn’t anything in Duke that would allow him to pretend he was something. He couldn’t be French, he couldn’t have an accent, he couldn’t be Olivier. Whatever the actor was called to do in the script, he did it. It wasn’t a question of acting, it was a question of reality.”
Henry Hathaway
By Wagstaff
With more than 150 films to his credit, John Wayne has given us many moments that are genuine. To commemorate the 100th birthday of Marion Morrison, known to all his friends as Duke, I hereby give you a half-dozen of my favorites. The task was difficult — there were so many to choose from. What are some of your favorite John Wayne moments? Drop a comment and tell me what they are.
His reputation precedes him. Everybody on the Overland Stage to Lordsburg that day had heard of the Ringo Kid, but few thought they’d ever meet him. Then, in one of the greatest screen entrances in history, we hear a rifle shot that pulls the team of horses up short. We first see him in the middle of the road, against a Monument Valley backdrop. His tall frame stands solitary and assured. One hand holds a saddle and blanket, the other hand twirls his Winchester. The camera swoops in on the figure beneath the hat, loses focus momentarily, and then sharpens into a closeup of the handsome, friendly face of the Ringo Kid. It’s the one indelible image that made John Wayne a star. After this single shot, Duke runs away with the picture — and that’s saying something, considering that the stagecoach is packed with talent such as Andy Devine, George Bancroft, Claire Trevor, Louise Platt, John Carradine, Donald Meek, Berton Churchill and Thomas Mitchell.
“Figured you’d be in Lordsburg by now,” the marshall says.
“No. Lame horse,” the Kid says.
“Well, it looks like you’ve got another passenger.”
“You’re under arrest, Kid. I’ll take the Winchester.”
“You may need me and this Winchester, Curley.”
And indeed they do. That trusty Winchester comes in mighty handy when fending off Apache Indian attacks in the desert, or when taking on the Plummer Boys single handed once the Kid gets to Lordsburg. Ten years and more than 60 B-Westerns and serials had given Duke a lot of practice at this sort of thing. John Ford was once asked why he didn’t put John Wayne in a major role before Stagecoach, even though the two had been good friends for more than ten years. The director replied, “Duke wasn’t ready, he had to develop his skills as an actor … I wanted some pain written on his face to offset the innocence.” When Orson Welles was asked to name his influences, he said “John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.” Sometimes I think what he really meant was “Stagecoach, Stagecoach and Stagecoach.”
Thomas Dunson is a hard man. A cattle baron who drives his men past the point of endurance; he tolerates no dissent. In his mind, why should he? He created his
empire from scratch, starting with a bull, a couple of calves, and a lot of open Texas grassland. His only companions back then were a crotchety old cook (Walter Brennan) and a young pup of a lad named Matthew Garth. The “Red River D” was his brand. He worked hard for it. He vowed a day would come when he would add an “M” to that “D” and bequeath all that he’d built to Matt. That was all years ago, though. Now Dunson and his group of cowhands are driving a herd of ten thousand cattle up Missouri way, and forging the Chisholm Trail. As the hardships mount on the dusty trail, and the men grow weary, Dunson grows more and more fanatical. He becomes a ruthless tyrant. When he tries to horsewhip a couple of cowboys for desertion, Matt, now all grown up into Montgomery Clift, can no longer take it. He usurps Dunson’s authority at gunpoint and takes the herd. Dunson is to be left behind. Feeling betrayed, dejected and all alone, he’s a man with the look of true hatred in his eyes. With his wounded leg, he stands slumped up against his horse. He fumes silently, his hand clinging to the saddle horn. Matt approaches for a fare-thee-well and Dunson delivers the following lines:“Cherry was right. You’re soft, you should have let ‘em kill me, ‘cause I’m gonna kill you. I’ll catch up with ya. I don’t know when, but I’ll catch up. Every time you turn around, expect to see me, ‘cause one time you’ll turn around and I’ll be there. I’m gonna kill ya, Matt.”
The determination in John Wayne’s eyes says it all — it’s a done deal, a fait accompli. I sure wouldn’t want Mr. Dunson coming after me. In many ways, Red River tells the same story as Mutiny on the Bounty, with Thomas Dunson as Captain Bligh and Matthew Garth as Fletcher Christian. It was the first time Duke worked with Howard Hawks, and in the part of the aging Dunson, Hawks gave him his deepest role yet. John Wayne was only 39 at the time. John Ford, after seeing Red River, cracked to Hawks “I never knew that big son of a bitch could act.”
Sgt. Stryker meets Mary when his squad has ten days leave in Honolulu. She approaches him. He’s too gruff and weary to give her any play at first, but things warm up a little when he finds out her name is Mary, and that they’re both unhappy. She invites him back to her place. “The drinks are cheaper.” The bottle at her place is almost empty, so he gives her a sawbuck to get another. While she’s gone, Stryker discovers Mary’s baby in the next room. He realizes that she needed that sawbuck for more than just booze. When Mary returns he immediately spots the cartons of Pablum she’s bought and begins to open one. Mary is relieved to see him pour the cereal into a bowl for the infant’s dinner.
“So, you know about babies” she says. Stryker’s eyes smile a little, and then he sighs “Yeah, I know about babies.”
Sands of Iwo Jima is the quintessential Marine Corps movie. It sets the paradigm for all subsequent men-training-for-combat films. Sgt. John M. Stryker is your great granddaddy — Mr. Tough Love himself — he’s John fucking Wayne for God’s sake. He is a tough-as-nails papa bear to his men. He licks his dogface grunts into shape for some of the fiercest fighting in the Pacific — fights over places like Tarawa and Iwo Jima, two of the most hellish holes during the island hopping campaign. These two particular battles are filmed in an effective and often startling manner. Note how well actual combat footage (some of it quite horrifying) is integrated into the scenes shot on a soundstage. It was seamless for its day. As to Stryker’s men, well, you’ve seen it a thousand times. Rebellious animosity gives way to grudging respect, and finally, to loving memory after Stryker is tragically killed in an act of heroism: offering someone a cigarette. Remember, this is a paradigm movie. That the aforementioned scene with Mary and her baby comes quietly out of nowhere gives us a glimpse into the other side of what our boys were fighting for.
There is a wonderfully touching moment in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, the second film in John Ford’s cavalry trilogy, when Duke’s men line up their horses and present him with a gift. It is a silver watch and chain, and to read the engraving Capt. Nathan Cutting Brittles must put on his spectacles. He fumbles a little, somewhat embarrassed as he removes the specs from his jacket, and then reads the inscription. The words almost choke him up. “To Capt. Brittles — from C Troop … Lest we forget.” The hushed silence while his men listen will break your heart. They’ve just caught a glimmer of their captain’s frailty. John Wayne handles the moment perfectly, and without histrionics. It is said that George Washington once did something similar during the Revolutionary War. In front of his men he put on his spectacles to read something, saying “Forgive me, for my eyes have grown weary in your service.” This naked look at the man touched their hearts, and rallied them to his cause.
Duke was never so easygoing and loose as he was with Howard Hawks. They made five films together. Duke trusted Hawks. He would do things for him that he wouldn’t do for other directors. Exhibit A is from Rio
Bravo. John Wayne is Sheriff John T. Chance. Angie Dickinson is Feathers, a sexy Hawksian woman. The two have been flirting for most of the movie, after which it is strongly implied that they’ve gone to bed together. The morning after, John T. leaves the hotel and walks down the street with a spring in his step. His demeanor is so cheerful — it must’ve been quite a night! You can almost hear the song he’s whistling in his head. Oh yeah, the Duke just got some. He goes to the jailhouse to check on Stumpy (Walter Brennan.) A brief exchange ensues. Stumpy complains that he’s underappreciated. “Maybe you’re right, Stumpy” he says. “You’re a treasure. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Just as Duke is about to leave, he sneaks up and playfully kisses the old codger on the top of the head and quickly skips out, his ass getting a swat from Stumpy’s broom. “Go back to being yourself. Leastwise I’m used to that” cries an irritated Stumpy. This is John Wayne at his most whimsical...then he gets to dealing with the bad guys.
Just talking about Rio Bravo makes me want to go on and on. Like about how its dialogue is a blueprint for Quentin Tarantino’s, and provides the underlying structure. Go ahead, ask me about it. Or about how it came at a precious time in the history of the Western. Rio Bravo was made well after the genre’s unabashed pioneer spirit and Manifest Destiny had evolved into adult-themed drama. Yet it came well before a period that strived for revisionism. Rio Bravo exists in a happy stasis somewhere at the middle. It all adds up to maximum entertainment. How good is Rio Bravo and John Wayne in it? Well, to quote John T. talking about Colorado Ryan “I’d say he’s so good, that he doesn’t feel he has to prove it.”
What can you say about this final moment that hasn’t already been said? We know he’s departing because he’s hardly arrived. Ethan Edwards’ years-long obsessive search is finally over. He has brought little Debbie home. The darkened interior of the homestead is like a picture frame that surrounds the brilliant sunlight streaming through the doorway. Never mind that those beautiful Monument Valley mesas out there are nowhere near Texas. This is mythmaking. Ethan halts outside uncomfortably as everyone else is ushered inside. He stands at the threshold … and here I am indebted to Ronald L. Davis’ book, Duke: The Life and Image of John Wayne:
“Then comes a moment of cinematic nostalgia. Wayne raises his left hand, reaches across his chest, and grabs his right arm at the elbow. It is a gesture that Harry Carey, Ollie’s husband, had often used in the movies Duke had seen as a boy in Glendale. Wayne stares at Olive for a couple of seconds, then turns and walks away, as the cabin door closes. ‘Ollie and I had talked about Harry in that stance on occasions,’ Duke remembered. ‘I saw her looking at me, and I just did it. Goddamn tears came to her eyes. I was playing that scene for Ollie Carey.’”
It was a scene that only John Wayne could do. Everything is wordlessly conveyed through the familiar shape of his body. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a purely cinematic moment like this one is worth many times more. It remains Duke’s legacy shot.
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Labels: Angie Dickinson, Clift, Hawks, J. Carradine, John Ford, Olivier, T. Mitchell, Tarantino, W. Brennan, Wayne, Welles
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