Friday, December 23, 2011
“I never dreamed that any mere physical experience could be so stimulating!”
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
One of my fondest memories of collegiate life was a weekend in 1982 in which the activities department at Marshall University put together a film tribute to actor Humphrey Bogart as part of their weekly showing of classic and cult movies. I can’t recollect the exact scheduling (the MU people would showcase a feature on Friday afternoons/evenings and then have a matinee on Sundays) but I do recall that Key Largo, The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca made up the lineup and this little event exposed me to three of Bogie’s major classics for the first time. The last film, which I have forcefully stated many times at my home base of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, is my favorite movie of all time. I still can remember the audience cheering wildly at Claude Rains’ discovery that Bogart, as Rick Blaine, has double-crossed him (“Not so fast, Louie…”) and will be helping Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid out on the next plane to Lisbon.
That weekend wasn’t my introduction to one of my favorite actors, however. Years earlier, through the magic of television, I saw the film that earned Bogie his best actor Oscar, The African Queen (1951), because my mother was a huge fan of the film and it soon became one of my favorites, one of those movies which gets watched to the very end if I should happen to see it playing on, say, Turner Classic Movies. Fortunately for classic movie fans, you don’t have to wait for its TCM scheduling — Queen made its Region 1 DVD debut (it had only been previously available in Region 2 releases) on March 23, 2010 (simultaneously with its Blu-ray debut) in a breathtakingly gorgeous restoration from Paramount Home Video. In fact, it was explained that its long absence from DVD was due to the difficulty in locating the film’s original negative. Queen, based on the 1935 novel by C.S. Forester, made the rounds of motion picture theaters 60 years ago today.
It is September 1914, and Anglican missionaries Samuel (Robert Morley) and Rose Sayer (Katharine Hepburn) spread the gospel to natives in the German Eastern African village of Kungdu when they receive a visit from Charlie Allnut (Bogart), skipper of the African Queen. Allnut is responsible for bringing their mail and supplies, and during his stopover informs the Sayers that since war has broken out between England and Germany, their mail delivery will be affected; he also advises the two of them to abandon their post because of his concern that the German army will recruit Kungdu’s able-bodied young men to fight for their cause. Samuel staunchly refuses, but only seconds after Charlie departs he and Rose are visited by German soldiers, who respond to Samuel’s protests with the business end of a rifle butt as his fellow conscripts start rounding up the natives and setting the village ablaze. With Kungdu in ruins, Samuel soon comes down with fever and dies — Charlie returns to the village in time to help Rose bury her brother and then agrees to spirit her away on his boat.
Despite the vessel being well-stocked with provisions, Charlie and Rose’s escape from their circumstances will not be an easy task; the Ulanga River presents obstacles in the three sets of rapids and a German stronghold in the form of a fort in the town of Shona. Because the ship’s supplies also include blasting materials (gelignite) and oxygen/hydrogen tanks, Rose, filled with both stiff-upper-lip patriotism and bitterness over her brother's death, proposes that the two of them fashion makeshift torpedoes out of the materials and use them to take on the Queen Louisa (or as the Germans refer to it, the Königin Luise), a large gunboat guarding the lake in which the Ulanga empties. Charlie is convinced that what Rose is suggesting will be a suicide mission, but he agrees to the plan only to get cold feet shortly after navigating the first set of rapids. He declares his intentions to have nothing to do with Rose’s plan after a gin-sponsored bender. The next morning, suffering from a hangover, Charlie watches helplessly as Rose pours every last drop of his precious gin into the Ulanga and follows this up with “the silent treatment,” Charlie reconsiders the mission.
German soldiers fire upon Charlie and Rose as they pass the fort at Shona, and though the two of them avoid being hit by gunfire, the men do manage to hit the African Queen’s boiler, disconnecting one of its steam pressure hoses and bringing the vessel to a temporary halt. (Charlie manages to reconnect the hose and they pass by the fort unscathed.) The boat then hits the second set of rapids and survives the ordeal with minimal damage, prompting the duo to engage in a celebratory embrace which leads to a kiss. It is by this time in their adventure that they cannot deny the strong attraction that has developed between them, which leads to an amusing scene in which Rose asks her new boyfriend awkwardly: “Dear, what is your first name?”
The couple finally navigates the final set of rapids, but in doing so sustain damage to the Queen’s shaft and propeller. Rose convinces Charlie that he has the skills to repair the boat and, using what is available on a nearby island, he restores the Queen to working order and they’re off again down the river. However, they soon discover the deception of the Ulanga River; they “lose the channel” and become stranded on a mud bank surrounded by reeds in all directions — with Charlie sidelined with fever (after an experience in which he emerges from the murky water covered with leeches). When all appears lost, Rose offers up a prayer asking that she and Charlie be granted entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven…and in answer to that prayer, rains from a monsoon soon lift the boat out of the mud and into the mouth of the lake — as it turns out, they were less than a hundred yards from their destination.
Charlie and Rose, having spotted the Louisa patrolling the lake, prepare the makeshift torpedoes and go after the German craft come nightfall, but en route they get trapped in a squall and the African Queen capsizes due to the holes made in its sides to accompany the torpedoes. The Louisa’s crew captures Charlie who is crestfallen because he thinks Rose has drowned, so much so that he stoically accepts the captain’s decision to hang him. Surprisingly, Rose has survived the Queen’s sinking and is brought aboard to face questioning where she proudly tells the Louisa’s captain of their plot to scuttle the ship, resulting in her sentence of execution as well. Before the couple's hanging, Charlie asks the Louisa’s captain if he’ll marry him and Rose; that buys enough time for the Louisa to run into the Queen’s wreckage, detonating the torpedoes and sinking the ship. The newly married Allnuts swim to safety toward the Belgian Congo as the film concludes.
Upon its publication in 1935, The African Queen originally was optioned for a film adaptation by several studios including RKO and Warner Bros. — Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester even made a movie (with a similar story, though the source material came from W.
Somerset Maugham) in 1938 entitled Vessel of Wrath (aka The Beachcomber). Over the years, several actors were suggested for the part of Charlie Allnut; John Mills, David Niven and James Mason being the most prominent — Bette Davis was the only actress in serious contention for Rose, but after an abortive attempt to do the movie in 1947 (scuttled because of Davis’ pregnancy) she was passed over two years later in favor of Katharine Hepburn when the production got underway. (Director John Huston, who had already chosen Humphrey Bogart for his Charlie, once stated in an interview that Hepburn was tabbed because Bogart had expressed an interest in working with her.) While it’s possible to see Davis playing the part, the choice of Hepburn (in what would be her first color film) was the right one despite some initial reservations on the part of Huston with Kate’s performance. Thinking she was making the Rose character a little too severe, John suggested that Hepburn imitate the indomitable spirit of former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who always remained cheerful despite any adversity. (Hepburn later observed that Huston’s suggestion was the finest bit of directing she’d ever received.)Hepburn’s performance in the film is a marvel because the actress bravely allowed herself to be filmed au natural, which no doubt stunned audiences at the time as they saw the great Kate playing her true middle-age (something that she would go on to do from that point in
her career, particularly in David Lean's wonderful 1955 film Summertime) and yet they witnessed a woman who transforms from a “crazy, psalm-singing, skinny old maid” into a spunky, sexy woman whose romance with the unlikely Charlie makes her giddy as a schoolgirl (I love the scene where she giggles and laughs uncontrollably at Charlie’s animal noises on the boat). The relationship between the characters is so genuine and feels so right, you literally watch the barriers between the two melt away during the course of their adventure. Pay particularly close attention when Rose helps Charlie pump water out of the boat and she stops momentarily, caught up in her romantic reverie. Charlie has got it bad as well. In assisting Rose with the task,c you can just see how dazed and delighted he is to have found true love. Director John Huston could scarcely ignore the magic between the two characters and decided to buck the tradition of most of his films (which tend to feature what one critic has called “beautiful losers”) by allowing Charlie and Rose’s torpedo scheme to succeed (in Forester’s book the plan doesn’t quite come off) and joining the two in holy matrimony (a plot device also designed to ward off criticism by bluenoses finger-wagging at Charlie and Rose’s cohabitation outside marriage).
Huston and Bogart were not only close friends in real life, they had made onscreen magic working together as far back as the director’s feature film debut, The Maltese Falcon, and as recently as one of Huston’s masterpieces, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. To accommodate the handicap of Bogart’s inability to do a Cockney accent, however, the character of Charlie Allnut became a Canadian, prompting a hefty rewrite of the script. Though the role of Charlie would seem a departure for Bogie, known for his tough-guy antiheroes, there are many shared characteristics between him and other Bogart characters (Allnut shares the same unshaven scruffiness as Sierra Madre’s Fred C. Dobbs, for example), particularly that of the individual who eventually comes around in support of the cause for the greater good. Bogart was nominated for a best actor Oscar for his performance (Hepburn also was tabbed, along with Huston for his direction and screenplay with co-writer James Agee) and despite stiff competition that year from Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift and Fredric March, the Academy got sentimental and awarded the actor the coveted trophy.
The realistic atmosphere and look of the film stem from the decision by Huston and producer Sam Spiegel (along with brothers John and James Woolf, who financed the movie through their Romulus Films company) to shoot on location in Uganda and the Congo in Africa.
Under normal circumstances, this production would have been daunting but because it was a Technicolor film (which necessitated large, unwieldy cameras), the shoot proved to be an ordeal for all involved. Hepburn later detailed the colorful history of the production in a book, The Making of the African Queen, or: How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind, and a fascinating featurette included on the Paramount Home Video DVD, Embracing Chaos: Making the African Queen, also contains enthralling anecdotes about this remarkable motion picture. The cast and crew survived any number of adverse conditions, chiefly among them sickness due to the dysentery resulting from contaminated drinking water. Hepburn, for example, became so ill that a bucket was placed near the pipe organ she plays in the opening church scenes. According to cinematographer Jack Cardiff, the actress was “a real trouper.” The only two individuals on the film who escaped illness, according to legend, were Huston and Bogart, primarily because the men subsisted on the imported Scotch they had brought with them. (Bogie later cracked: “All I ate was baked beans, canned asparagus and Scotch whiskey. Whenever a fly bit Huston or me, it dropped dead.”)The size of the African Queen also presented problems where the Technicolor cameras were concerned — because there was not enough room for the cameras on the boat (which measured 16 feet long and 5 feet wide), a mock-up of the craft was put together on a larger raft and the production used several such rafts to the point where the river hosted a small flotilla, with the last pontoon housing Hepburn’s “loo” (her contract stipulated that she be provided with private restroom facilities). The waters of the river, considered poisonous due to bacteria, animal excrement, etc., were never utilized in shots or sequences requiring Bogie and Kate’s immersal — they were filmed separately in studio tanks at the Isleworth Studios in London. Despite the challenges presented in the making of the film, what resulted was a certified masterpiece — at a time when “independent” films are the Hollywood darlings of today, The African Queen was a noteworthy example of that particular type of movie (made outside the dictates of the studio system) even though industry wags remained skeptical about its performance at the box office. (The film was a tremendous success, but director Huston never collected on the payday because of his desire to sever his ties with producer Spiegel; cinematographer Cardiff also had the option of taking a percentage of the profits to subsidize a lower salary but he begged off, having had a bad experience with another film he had worked on in that same year, The Magic Box.)
Queen enraptured me as a young movie fan, and continues to do so today — I think it would be the perfect film to introduce to classic movie-adverse audiences because of its skillful blend of adventure, romance and even comedy (There are some hilarious moments in this movie, chiefly the scene where Charlie sets down to tea with the Sayers). The fact that it’s in gorgeous Technicolor also is a plus, particularly since new generations often shrink from movies filmed in monochrome. Writer-director Nicholas Meyer observes in the Embracing Chaos documentary that “Movies are like soufflés — they either rise or they don’t — and people seldom are able to predict or tell you why. The African Queen is an improbably cinematic triumph, made against seemingly insurmountable odds and comprising a bunch of disparate, desperate characters who, saving the movie business, would probably not even be in the same world let alone the same room with each other.” The results of that grand moviemaking adventure captured on film make The African Queen a must-see for audiences of any age.
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Labels: 50s, Bacall, Bette, Bogart, Brando, Clift, Fredric March, Huston, Ingrid Bergman, K. Hepburn, Laughton, Lean, Mason, Movie Tributes, Niven, Rains
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Thursday, June 02, 2011
Schrader's return to safer ground
By J.D.
After dabbling briefly with a major studio on the debacle that became known as Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005), writer/director Paul Schrader returned to the relatively safe confines of the independent film scene with The Walker (2007). This film continues his fascination with loner protagonists ostracized by their profession as examined in American Gigolo (1980) and Light Sleeper (1992), or by their worldview as in Taxi Driver (1976).
Carter Page III (Woody Harrelson) is a popular socialite who works as a confidant, companion, and card player to the wives of politicians in Washington — a professional “walker,” a term coined for Nancy Reagan’s companion when she was First Lady. Carter is the epitome of the Southern gentleman. He plays a weekly card game with three women as they gossip and tell stories complete with salacious details about the denizens of Capitol Hill. Carter is finely groomed and impeccably dressed with only the finest suits, living in a beautifully furnished place.
With the stories Carter tells his dates, he hints at a rich backstory but he is careful not to reveal too much about himself. While waiting for Lynn Lockner (Kristin Scott Thomas), one of his dates, to meet up with her lover, she comes back in shock. Her lover is dead and she asks Carter to keep the incident quiet. Of course, he decides to get involved (he knew the victim). Carter used to trade in juicy gossip and now he has become the subject of it.
It doesn’t help that he lost considerable money on an investment that the victim advised and this gives the socialite a motive. As a result, he decides to investigate the murder using his own insider contacts and uncover a few dirty secrets that people in positions of power don’t want revealed. His efforts to clear his name become more urgent once the Feds apply pressure thanks to a particular nasty agent (William Hope). Pretty soon, events conspire against him and Carter becomes the prime suspect.
Woody Harrelson disappears into the role affecting a flawless accent and does an excellent job with Schrader’s witty dialogue and distinctive cadence. Every few years between amiable comedies Harrelson gets a juicy dramatic role to sink his teeth into and showcase his acting chops: Natural Born Killers (1994), The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), and now this film. Schrader’s screenplay, as you would expect, snaps and pops, especially the scenes where Carter and his companions banter and gossip. It doesn’t hurt that he has the likes of Lauren Bacall, Lily Tomlin and Kristin Scott Thomas delivering it.
The Walker is a fascinating inside look at a subculture that exists in Washington under the auspices of a murder mystery. It shows to what lengths politicians will go in order to protect themselves and their dirty secrets. Schrader has crafted a smart thriller with interesting characters that is driven by a well-plotted story and not a bunch of noisy, hastily edited action sequences.
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Labels: 00s, Bacall, Harrelson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lily Tomlin, Schrader
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Tuesday, February 08, 2011
“This is Duke Mantee, the world-famous killer…and he’s hungry!”
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
As the star of the hit Broadway play The Petrified Forest, Leslie Howard also had in his possession (as co-producer) the production rights to Robert E. Sherwood’s stage smash…and Warner Bros., was quite keen on bringing Howard’s triumph to the big screen. The studio wanted the actor to reprise his stage role as Alan Squier alongside contractee Bette Davis, with whom Howard had previously worked on Of Human Bondage (1934); a critically and financially successful vehicle that cemented Davis’ future success in the movie business.
For the role of mobster Duke Mantee, the antagonist of the play, Warners wanted their resident gangster thespian Edward G. Robinson — but Howard insisted that the studio cast the performer that originated the part on stage; an actor who had previously worked at the studio in films and answered to the name of Humphrey Bogart. The studio bosses were hesitant…but relented when Howard informed them that without Bogie he wouldn’t be doing the film either. Seventy-five years ago on this date, Howard proved to the studio his instincts about Bogart were on the money when Petrified Forest was released to movie screens and ignited the film career of one of moviedom’s best-known tough guys.
Bogart’s foray into movies began six years before the release of Forest with an appearance in a Vitaphone short entitled Broadway’s Like That (1930), and that same year he signed a contract with Fox that provided him his first feature film exposure alongside Spencer Tracy in the John Ford-directed comedy-drama Up the River. By and large, however, Bogie didn’t make too much of a stir in films, and often found himself shuttling back-and-forth between the picture business and the stage, on which he had been an active participant since 1922. Bogart had become frustrated with moviemaking by 1934, feeling that his ambition to become a leading man onscreen was destined to wither and die on the vine. He could, when not unemployed, fall back on stage work and after appearing in a production of Invitation to a Murder producer Arthur Hopkins hired Bogie for the part of on-the-lam gangster Duke Mantee in the production of Robert Sherwood’s new play, The Petrified Forest.
Hopkins had reservations about Bogart at first: Bogie’s stage rep was, in Hopkins’ words, “as an antiquated juvenile who spent most of his stage life in white pants swinging a tennis racquet.” Author Sherwood had based the character of Mantee on 1934’s “Public Enemy No. 1,” John Dillinger — and because of his physical similarity to Dillinger, Bogart was a natural for the part. Bogie upped the ante in portraying the role by studying film footage of the gangster and mimicking Dillinger’s mannerisms. Forest won Bogart the best reviews of his career at that time, and after the movie version came out the actor himself remarked that Forest “marked my deliverance from the ranks of the sleek, sybaritic, stiff-shirted, swallow-tailed ‘smoothies’ to which I seemed condemned to life.”
The Petrified Forest takes place inside the Black Mesa Diner in a remote area in northern Arizona, a garage/eatery run by Jason Maple (Porter Hall), his daughter Gabrielle (Davis) and “Gabby’s” curmudgeonly grandfather “Gramp” (Charley Grapewin), who proudly tells all and sundry of the time Billy the Kid shot at him…and missed. Gabrielle’s mother, whom Jason married during the First World War, lives in France but still corresponds with her daughter, sending her books of poetry on her birthday. Gabby’s mother grew weary of life on the desert and her husband (calling him “a dull defeated man”), which is why she retreated back to the land of her birth; Gabrielle herself has inherited her mother’s free spirit, painting in her spare time and fending off the advances of the unimaginative males who seem to populate the diner, notably former gridiron hero and now gas pump jockey Boze Hertzlinger (Dick Foran).
Into Gabrielle’s life walks Alan Squier (Howard), a failed author-turned-alcoholic drifter who stops by the Black Mesa for a meal and soon finds himself captivated by Gabby’s independent and artistic temperament. His attention paid to Gabrielle arouses Boze’s jealousy, but he assures Boze that he’ll be moving on and manages to cadge a ride to a destination in Phoenix with a wealthy couple, the Chisholms (Paul Harvey, Genevieve Tobin) and their chauffeur Joseph (John Alexander). The Chisholms’ automobile is stopped en route by Duke Mantee and his gang, who are fleeing the police after a shootout in Oklahoma City. Mantee and his boys commandeer the car in which Squier and the Chisholms were traveling, and while Chisholm and his chauffeur futilely attempt to start the automobile abandoned by the Mantee gang, Alan takes off on foot for help.
Squier arrives back at the diner to warn Gabrielle of his encounter with Mantee and Company but learns that the gang has already arrived and Mantee will be holding the diner’s denizens hostage until a second car with three other members of his gang and his girlfriend arrives to rendezvous. The group are eventually re-joined by Mr. and Mrs. Chisholm and Joseph, who have made their way back to the establishment through a snowstorm, and a tense situation grows more so when Boze’s attempt to overpower Mantee earns him a slug in his shoulder.
As Gabrielle attends to Boze’s wound, Alan makes a proposal to Mantee: he asks Duke to shoot and kill him before he leaves, since he’s planning to sign over his insurance policy to Gabrielle (with the Chisholms as witnesses) so that she will have the funds needed to leave Black Mesa and travel to France to be reunited with her mother and live out her dream as an artist. Mantee agrees to Alan’s request, and as the police begin to close in the gangster shoots Alan before being gunned down himself. Alan expires in Gabrielle’s arms, and she vows to bury him in an area where old redwoods have ossified into stone — the “petrified forest” of the film’s title.
The Petrified Forest, with its themes of crime and social realism, was an ideal property for Warner Bros. to adapt to film, as the studio had made its reputation as a producer of gritty actioners tinged with the social commentary of the day. It was a big success for the studio…and for Bogart as well — but despite such a prominent part in an “A” picture he would soon find himself typecast as snarling, sneering gangsters in a variety of programmers and B-pictures. Bogart’s now-iconic image as a cynical, wise-cracking hero would not take hold until the early 1940s with legendary productions such as The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Casablanca (1942).
Though he was never shy about complaining on being typecast in bad-guy roles, Bogart had an exceptional deference for Forest and his performance as Duke Mantee — a shining example of this was demonstrated when the actor agreed to reprise the role in a May 30, 1955 television adaptation of the play on the series Producers’ Showcase. (Playing the Leslie Howard role was Henry Fonda, and the part of Bette Davis’ character was essayed by Mrs. Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall.) This performance and a guest appearance on The Jack Benny Show (from Oct. 25, 1953) would be the only two TV projects in which the actor participated before his passing in 1957. 1955 was also the year that Bogart appeared in what would be his penultimate film, The Desperate Hours — his character in that movie, Glenn Griffin, also holds people hostage (this time a suburban family) while on the lam from the long arm of the law. (Bogart was quoted as saying that Griffin was “Duke Mantee grown up.”)
Because of its dark subject matter and characters whose destinies seemingly cannot escape the heavy hand of fate (Mantee’s last words to Alan before shooting him are: “So long, pal…I’ll be seein’ ya soon”), Petrified Forest is considered by some critics to be an early example of what would later be known as film noir. These facets of the film and Bogart’s mesmerizing performance as Mantee immeasurably help a movie that sadly hasn’t held up as well as one would like — though I’m certainly not shy about admitting a bit of guilt by pointing out that I never particularly cottoned to Howard’s work as an actor and that I’m disappointed that Bogart doesn’t shoot him from the get-go to avoid all of Leslie’s irritating speechifying. (Then again, I get a tremendous amount of pleasure out of seeing the two men reunited in the following year’s Stand-In, so there may be another explanation for my lack of enthusiasm.) For a Bogart fan, however, Forest is must viewing — from the moment Duke Mantee is introduced onscreen, there can be no doubt that 75 years ago “a star is born.”
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Labels: 30s, Bacall, Bette, Bogart, Edward G., H. Fonda, Jack Benny, John Ford, Theater, Tracy
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Saturday, June 26, 2010
From the Vault: Robert Altman
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED DEC. 23, 1994
NEW YORK (December 1994) — Loose structures and large casts are two things that immediately come to mind when director Robert Altman's name comes up. Both of those attributes are obvious in Altman's latest movie party, Ready to Wear, a light farce set during the Paris Pret-a-Porter fashion shows. The idea for Ready to Wear came to Altman when his wife dragged him unwillingly to one of the Paris showings about 10 years ago. It was originally titled Pret-a-Porter until it was decided that the English translation would come out of Americans mouths easier.
"I guess it's always when you dread something ... I was just surprised by it. It was like a circus. I just couldn't believe that nobody had used that, had made a film of that milieu. I found out why. It's very difficult. I spent 10 years trying to find out what kind (of film to make) and it ended up as you've seen it — a farce, essay material."
In fact, Altman is quite insistent that viewers realize the light nature of this work and not to expect something along the lines of his masterpieces Nashville or Short Cuts or even a brilliant satiric thriller such as The Player.
"A lot of attention is coming off of The Player. This thing was started in my mind eight years before I even thought of The Player. I wasn't trying to re-create The Player. It's not that type of a film. I think it's a very soft kind of farce."
The director, who co-wrote the script with Barbara Shulgasser, even told an audience prior to a recent screening of Ready to Wear that this wasn't a "serious" movie. In Ready to Wear the cast of main characters numbers about 31, a number that not only indicates Altman's love of ensembles but of his inability to turn down practically any performer who expresses interest in working with him.
"We did the script and at the same time, we cast people when I didn't have them in the script. I remember somebody told me, 'Tracey Ullman would sure love to play in a movie with you' and I said, 'Oh, great.' I had no idea what I was going to put her in."
Ullman ended up in the role of Nina Scant, the fictional editor of the British version of Vogue magazine, sparring with rival editors played by Linda Hunt and Sally Kellerman. Her casting was by no means a unique occurrence.
"Stephen Rea was kind of the same way. I didn't have that plot stuff worked out for him for a long time and I was quite worried that there wouldn't be enough for him to do. Sometimes you create the characters to fit the people you feel go into the ensemble and make it good, and some times you just fill the part."
That casting style contributed to a somewhat chaotic production, though Altman questions whether it was the most out-of-control set he's worked on.
"I'd say yes (that Ready to Wear was the film he felt least in control of while making), but if you could push me back in time to Nashville or some of the others I'd probably say no. Pain doesn't have any memory. You just remember that you didn't like it, but you don't experience the feeling of it."
However, Altman has no regrets and is quite proud of the finished product.
"I'm not prone to ulcers, thank God, but this was very tough. If we'd written this meticulously and tried to get everybody to stick to their lines, it would have been a stiff disaster. Ultimately, it always ends up in the hands of the performers."
Altman hardly suffered a shortage in talented actors in an ensemble that also features Lauren Bacall, Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimee and Sophia Loren.
"We had some very set pieces. The structure of Julia Roberts and Tim Robbins — that was a little short story that was fairly concise. Somebody like Tracey Ullman I can kind of turn loose on her own and know that if I can use two out of every 10 gags she comes up with that I'll be all right. Stephen Rea ... really thinks out his part and is consistent with it, and that grew into a very terrific character."
Making his third consecutive appearance in an Altman film is singer-songwriter Lyle Lovett, who plays a Texas boot mogul. Lovett does not appear on screen with Roberts, his real-life wife.
"I told Lyle, 'I want to waste you in this film. I want you to be like the leading man used to be in Flying Down to Rio and all those pictures.' There was always some guy who really was a nebbish. He was always the rich guy who was there, but really had nothing to do. I told him that I was looking for bad acting or nonacting. He was very courageous to tackle it and he did it well."
Altman believes one of the most desirable by-products of his ensemble technique is the soothing of actorly egos.
"Sophia, Marcello, Julia and Teri Garr are four of the easiest actors, the most creative actors I've ever worked with. That's not to say the others were difficult, but they do get concerned about themselves. Those four people I mentioned though, when I looked on the schedule and that's who I had that day, then I had a nice day ahead of me."
While Altman is well aware that Ready to Wear is unlikely to repeat the overwhelming critical kudos of The Player and Short Cuts, his last two films which heralded his umpteenth "comeback," the director still stands behind the work.
"I think it's a lot better film than anyone will discover until about a month after it's opened and played," Altman said. "I find that all of these films are like your children and you tend to love your least successful children the most, but they're finished and the cord's cut and it's out there and it ... doesn't belong to me anymore."
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Labels: Altman, Bacall, Interview, Julia Roberts, Mastroianni, Tim Robbins
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Thursday, June 07, 2007
My 10 favorite Sopranos episodes
By Edward Copeland
Since I can't see the finale early, I thought I'd toss this post up to tide you over until I can write my final thoughts on The Sopranos as a whole. It was tough pruning the many great episodes the show has produced to a mere 10, but I've done it. (Part of the way that helped is that I automatically excluded any Season 6 episodes) So here are my 10 favorites, in chronological order:
EPISODE NO. 5: COLLEGE
I almost resisted including this landmark episode, since it's always cited. It's almost become the Citizen Kane of Sopranos episodes, but that's no reason to leave it off the list. It was the perfect blend of Tony's attempted balancing act, taking Meadow to visit colleges while engaging, for the first time, in a literally hands-on murder itself.
EPISODE NO. 9: BOCA
I seem to be one of the few that stick up for this episode as one of my favorites. First, it's the first (of many episodes that show how gossipy and petty these wiseguys can be as word gets around that (gasp) Junior goes down on his girlfriend, something that the mobsters seem to think make men less manly, even though most of them admit to doing it as well. It also shows how a simple joke can escalate into deadliness. On top of that, it's balanced against the guys learning that their daughters' successful soccer coach may be leaving, something they want to prevent at all costs until they also learn that he's been carrying on with one of the teens, leading to one of the greatest episode endings ever where a drunken Tony chooses to let the police handle the coach and ends up flailing about his living room bellowing, "I didn't hurt nobody."
EPISODE NO. 25:
KNIGHT IN WHITE SATIN ARMOR
In the otherwise weak second season, this episode to me was by far the standout. You knew almost from the moment he was introduced that Richie Aprile was going to have to be taken out by year's end, but few saw it coming as it did, with a pissed-off Janice responding to a sock to the face by putting a couple of slugs into Richie as he ate dinner. Then, the episode kept building beyond that point with Tony coming to bail his sister out, the last great Livia scene as she dresses down Janice for "losing" another man and then laughs as Tony flees her house and falls flat on his face on her sidewalk. There's also humor to be found as Tony tries to reassure an about-to-go-on-the-lam Janice that Richie got a proper burial. The capper though was one of the many great uses of music on the series. As Tony returns home and tries to fill Carmela in without the details, Carmela remains pissed over other matters and tells Tony that she and Rosalie Aprile are going to take a trip whether he likes it or not. As she leaves Tony alone on the couch, the Eurythmics' "I Saved the World Today" begins playing as the perfect punchline/capper to the episode with its lyrics: Hey hey I saved the world today/Everybody's happy now/The bad things gone away/And everybody's happy now/The good thing's here to stay/Please let it stay
EPISODE NO. 30: EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH
In a way, a real change-of-pace episode and the finest showcase Lorraine Bracco ever got as Dr. Melfi. The sequence of her rape was shocking, but it's really the psychological aspects of this episode that makes it one of the series' all-time bests. It could almost be called "The Last Temptation of Melfi" as she struggles to resist the impulse to get vengeance on the man who raped her through the hands of her most famous patient. It may also be the only case in the history of dramatic television where the climax of an episode consists of the use of a single word, in this case, "No."
EPISODE NO. 33: SECOND OPINION
As much as some viewers hate to admit it, part of the joy of The Sopranos always came when Tony and the gang used their strong-arm tactics not against other criminals or innocents but against people who get away with victimizing others because of their status. No greater example exists than in "Second Opinion" as Uncle Junior struggles with cancer and can't get his busy well-off doctor to treat him like a human being. Having been a victim of this attitude from so-called "health professionals" many times, I couldn't help but cheer Tony and Furio on when they used subtle threats to get Junior's doctor to do his job and be decent. That would be enough to make this a memorable episode but then we also get Carmela finally going to her own psychiatrist who tells her what she should already know: "You'll never be able to feel good about yourself, never be able to quell the feelings of guilt and shame....as you're his accomplice." The doctor even refuses to accept her "blood money." "One thing you can never say ...that you haven't been told," he tells her. It gave Edie Falco one of her very best episodes, for which she deservedly won an Emmy, even if it did cost Bracco her Emmy the same year for "Employee of the Month."
EPISODE NO. 37: PINE BARRENS
Before Steve Buscemi appears as Tony Blundetto in Season 5, he directed one of the shows' most memorable larks with "Pine Barrens." I'm sort of like David Chase: I can't believe people are still out there waiting for the Russian to come back. Sure, I wondered about it at the time, but you had to figure he wasn't coming back when he failed to show rather quickly. (Now watch Chase go and prove we were all chumps by having him reappear in the series finale.) Michael Imperioli always was good, but this was the first episode that really gave Tony Sirico the chance to shine for an extended period of time as he and Chrissy fight and freeze in the frigid Pine Barrens, awaiting some sort of rescue from Tony, who has his own troubles back at home with the increasingly unstable Gloria.
EPISODE NO. 48: WHOEVER DID THIS
From the moment Joe Pantoliano appeared as Ralph Cifaretto, you knew he had a huge target on his chest, but once again the show managed to surprise us with when and how it happened. First, it gives him some of his strongest scenes as he struggles with the critical injury of his son in a bow-and-arrow accident. However, Tony can't stay in a sympathetic mood for long as the horse Pie-O-My dies in a stable fire that Tony is certain Ralph bears responsibility for. Besides, Tony still hasn't forgiven him for killing poor doomed stripper Tracee and he would have never bumped him up to captain if Gigi hadn't blown his gasket on the can. The brutal fight to the death comes suddenly and then the cleanup time between Tony and a high-out-of-his-mind Chris made for the perfect dark-humored tone.
EPISODE NO. 49: THE STRONG, SILENT TYPE
One of the funniest television nights I ever remember was Nov. 17, 2002 when I watched back-to-back this episode, with its hysterical mob version of a drug intervention, followed by Curb Your Enthusiasm's third season finale, "The Grand Opening," where an entire restaurant let loose with profanity so a chef with Tourette's syndrome wouldn't seem out of place. Not that all of "The Strong, Silent Type" was played for laughs: Tony's crew suspected he knew more about the missing Ralph than he let on, but Tony succeeded in blaming it all on New York. Meanwhile, Carmela seeks Rosalie's help with her obsession with Furio. Still, it's Christopher's drug problem that powers the episode, beginning with him accidentally crushing Adriana's dog Cosette to death when he sits on her. Junior advises Tony that Christopher is a liability that should be "put out of his misery," but Tony opts for the intervention route and it ends up being one of the funniest scenes in Sopranos history.
EPISODE NO. 52: WHITECAPS
Much like College, Whitecaps is such a fabled episode that I was tempted to choose others instead of it, but how can you ignore the episode where Carmela finally calls Tony on his shit and orders him out of the house when his ex-Russian goomah spills the bean about Tony's sexual encounter with her one-legged cousin. The tension was palpable as Carmela finally admits her feelings about Furio to Tony after Furio has fled the U.S. and dreams of a house on the Jersey Shore for the family collapse alongside the Soprano marriage. There is movement on other fronts as well as Christopher returns from rehab, clean and sober, Tony backs out of a deal with Johnny Sack to take out Carmine and Uncle Junior's trial ends up with a hung jury thanks to some tampering. Still, it's the domestic drama that dominates this episode, which even has some time for humor as Tony uses some hilarious pressure techniques to get out of a real estate deal with a prick of a lawyer. Who knew Dean Martin could be so persuasive?
EPISODE NO. 57:
IRREGULAR AROUND THE MARGINS
People tend to pick Long Term Parking out as the fifth season's best episode, but for me it was never a contest because this one seemed more pivotal and tense and was one of the best episodes they'd produced since Season 3. Tony and Adriana's flirtation bodes ill even before the highway wreck that prompts the ever-chatty wiseguys to start rumors that really begin the split between Christopher and Tony that lasted until this year's final batch of episodes. This is the episode that I think really won Michael Imperioli and Drea de Matteo their well-deserved Emmys, even more so than Long Term Parking.
Also, to prove I'm not just a blind Sopranos fanatic, I thought I'd toss in my choices for my five least favorite episodes. In this list, I am including Season 6, though once again I'm just going to list them chronologically.
EPISODE 20: D-GIRL
The first time an episode that attempted to delve more seriously into Christopher's Hollywood dreams went off the rails. Was it an excuse just to toss in cameos from Jon Favreau, Janeane Garofalo and Sandra Bernhard? It doesn't matter, because the entire enterprise didn't work and distracted from the episode's positive elements of Pussy's guilt over wearing a wire to A.J.'s confirmation.
EPISODE 42: CHRISTOPHER
Another example where a strong, emotional story strand, namely the death of Bobby's wife Karen in a car accident, is undermined by the silliness of the crew's anger over protests against the Columbus Day parade. Sure, this was David Chase trying to answer critics who think The Sopranos malign Italian Americans, but it just wasn't funny enough or thoughtful enough to make the enterprise work.
EPISODE 50: CALLING ALL CARS
I think I speak for many viewers when I hope and pray that no dream sequence is going to mar Sunday night's finale since more times than not, they've been a bad idea, and Tony's car trip with the ghosts of his past was another bad example. Unfortunately, the show's other major story thread didn't work either, namely Janice scheming to try to get widower Bobby for herself, going so far as to force him to eat his late wife's final baked ziti.
EPISODE 63: THE TEST DREAM
I know this episode has its defenders, but for me it's the definition of a time waster. The entire episode really has only one key development: Tony B.'s revenge killing of Phil's brother and botched killing of Phil himself. Unfortunately, it's wrapped so intricately with the snoozer of what has to be the longest dream sequence outside of The Wizard of Oz or that one season of Dallas. Why was Annette Bening there again? Never mind. I don't want to know.
EPISODE 72: LUXURY LOUNGE
It's really amazing that the payoffs to the "Cleaver" movie storyline ended up working as well as they did, since this episode with Carmine Jr. and Christopher venturing to L.A. to try to woo Ben Kingsley was so bad. Hey, Lauren Bacall can take a punch though, huh? Those scenes would have been bad enough, but they were countered with the worst Artie Bucco episode ever as the restaurateur gets into a feud with Benny Fazio over credit card scams and the hostess that Benny is having an affair with and that Artie has the hots for.
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Since I can't see the finale early, I thought I'd toss this post up to tide you over until I can write my final thoughts on The Sopranos as a whole. It was tough pruning the many great episodes the show has produced to a mere 10, but I've done it. (Part of the way that helped is that I automatically excluded any Season 6 episodes) So here are my 10 favorites, in chronological order:
I almost resisted including this landmark episode, since it's always cited. It's almost become the Citizen Kane of Sopranos episodes, but that's no reason to leave it off the list. It was the perfect blend of Tony's attempted balancing act, taking Meadow to visit colleges while engaging, for the first time, in a literally hands-on murder itself.
I seem to be one of the few that stick up for this episode as one of my favorites. First, it's the first (of many episodes that show how gossipy and petty these wiseguys can be as word gets around that (gasp) Junior goes down on his girlfriend, something that the mobsters seem to think make men less manly, even though most of them admit to doing it as well. It also shows how a simple joke can escalate into deadliness. On top of that, it's balanced against the guys learning that their daughters' successful soccer coach may be leaving, something they want to prevent at all costs until they also learn that he's been carrying on with one of the teens, leading to one of the greatest episode endings ever where a drunken Tony chooses to let the police handle the coach and ends up flailing about his living room bellowing, "I didn't hurt nobody."
KNIGHT IN WHITE SATIN ARMOR
In the otherwise weak second season, this episode to me was by far the standout. You knew almost from the moment he was introduced that Richie Aprile was going to have to be taken out by year's end, but few saw it coming as it did, with a pissed-off Janice responding to a sock to the face by putting a couple of slugs into Richie as he ate dinner. Then, the episode kept building beyond that point with Tony coming to bail his sister out, the last great Livia scene as she dresses down Janice for "losing" another man and then laughs as Tony flees her house and falls flat on his face on her sidewalk. There's also humor to be found as Tony tries to reassure an about-to-go-on-the-lam Janice that Richie got a proper burial. The capper though was one of the many great uses of music on the series. As Tony returns home and tries to fill Carmela in without the details, Carmela remains pissed over other matters and tells Tony that she and Rosalie Aprile are going to take a trip whether he likes it or not. As she leaves Tony alone on the couch, the Eurythmics' "I Saved the World Today" begins playing as the perfect punchline/capper to the episode with its lyrics: Hey hey I saved the world today/Everybody's happy now/The bad things gone away/And everybody's happy now/The good thing's here to stay/Please let it stay
In a way, a real change-of-pace episode and the finest showcase Lorraine Bracco ever got as Dr. Melfi. The sequence of her rape was shocking, but it's really the psychological aspects of this episode that makes it one of the series' all-time bests. It could almost be called "The Last Temptation of Melfi" as she struggles to resist the impulse to get vengeance on the man who raped her through the hands of her most famous patient. It may also be the only case in the history of dramatic television where the climax of an episode consists of the use of a single word, in this case, "No."
As much as some viewers hate to admit it, part of the joy of The Sopranos always came when Tony and the gang used their strong-arm tactics not against other criminals or innocents but against people who get away with victimizing others because of their status. No greater example exists than in "Second Opinion" as Uncle Junior struggles with cancer and can't get his busy well-off doctor to treat him like a human being. Having been a victim of this attitude from so-called "health professionals" many times, I couldn't help but cheer Tony and Furio on when they used subtle threats to get Junior's doctor to do his job and be decent. That would be enough to make this a memorable episode but then we also get Carmela finally going to her own psychiatrist who tells her what she should already know: "You'll never be able to feel good about yourself, never be able to quell the feelings of guilt and shame....as you're his accomplice." The doctor even refuses to accept her "blood money." "One thing you can never say ...that you haven't been told," he tells her. It gave Edie Falco one of her very best episodes, for which she deservedly won an Emmy, even if it did cost Bracco her Emmy the same year for "Employee of the Month."
Before Steve Buscemi appears as Tony Blundetto in Season 5, he directed one of the shows' most memorable larks with "Pine Barrens." I'm sort of like David Chase: I can't believe people are still out there waiting for the Russian to come back. Sure, I wondered about it at the time, but you had to figure he wasn't coming back when he failed to show rather quickly. (Now watch Chase go and prove we were all chumps by having him reappear in the series finale.) Michael Imperioli always was good, but this was the first episode that really gave Tony Sirico the chance to shine for an extended period of time as he and Chrissy fight and freeze in the frigid Pine Barrens, awaiting some sort of rescue from Tony, who has his own troubles back at home with the increasingly unstable Gloria.
From the moment Joe Pantoliano appeared as Ralph Cifaretto, you knew he had a huge target on his chest, but once again the show managed to surprise us with when and how it happened. First, it gives him some of his strongest scenes as he struggles with the critical injury of his son in a bow-and-arrow accident. However, Tony can't stay in a sympathetic mood for long as the horse Pie-O-My dies in a stable fire that Tony is certain Ralph bears responsibility for. Besides, Tony still hasn't forgiven him for killing poor doomed stripper Tracee and he would have never bumped him up to captain if Gigi hadn't blown his gasket on the can. The brutal fight to the death comes suddenly and then the cleanup time between Tony and a high-out-of-his-mind Chris made for the perfect dark-humored tone.
One of the funniest television nights I ever remember was Nov. 17, 2002 when I watched back-to-back this episode, with its hysterical mob version of a drug intervention, followed by Curb Your Enthusiasm's third season finale, "The Grand Opening," where an entire restaurant let loose with profanity so a chef with Tourette's syndrome wouldn't seem out of place. Not that all of "The Strong, Silent Type" was played for laughs: Tony's crew suspected he knew more about the missing Ralph than he let on, but Tony succeeded in blaming it all on New York. Meanwhile, Carmela seeks Rosalie's help with her obsession with Furio. Still, it's Christopher's drug problem that powers the episode, beginning with him accidentally crushing Adriana's dog Cosette to death when he sits on her. Junior advises Tony that Christopher is a liability that should be "put out of his misery," but Tony opts for the intervention route and it ends up being one of the funniest scenes in Sopranos history.
Much like College, Whitecaps is such a fabled episode that I was tempted to choose others instead of it, but how can you ignore the episode where Carmela finally calls Tony on his shit and orders him out of the house when his ex-Russian goomah spills the bean about Tony's sexual encounter with her one-legged cousin. The tension was palpable as Carmela finally admits her feelings about Furio to Tony after Furio has fled the U.S. and dreams of a house on the Jersey Shore for the family collapse alongside the Soprano marriage. There is movement on other fronts as well as Christopher returns from rehab, clean and sober, Tony backs out of a deal with Johnny Sack to take out Carmine and Uncle Junior's trial ends up with a hung jury thanks to some tampering. Still, it's the domestic drama that dominates this episode, which even has some time for humor as Tony uses some hilarious pressure techniques to get out of a real estate deal with a prick of a lawyer. Who knew Dean Martin could be so persuasive?
IRREGULAR AROUND THE MARGINS
People tend to pick Long Term Parking out as the fifth season's best episode, but for me it was never a contest because this one seemed more pivotal and tense and was one of the best episodes they'd produced since Season 3. Tony and Adriana's flirtation bodes ill even before the highway wreck that prompts the ever-chatty wiseguys to start rumors that really begin the split between Christopher and Tony that lasted until this year's final batch of episodes. This is the episode that I think really won Michael Imperioli and Drea de Matteo their well-deserved Emmys, even more so than Long Term Parking.
Also, to prove I'm not just a blind Sopranos fanatic, I thought I'd toss in my choices for my five least favorite episodes. In this list, I am including Season 6, though once again I'm just going to list them chronologically.
The first time an episode that attempted to delve more seriously into Christopher's Hollywood dreams went off the rails. Was it an excuse just to toss in cameos from Jon Favreau, Janeane Garofalo and Sandra Bernhard? It doesn't matter, because the entire enterprise didn't work and distracted from the episode's positive elements of Pussy's guilt over wearing a wire to A.J.'s confirmation.
Another example where a strong, emotional story strand, namely the death of Bobby's wife Karen in a car accident, is undermined by the silliness of the crew's anger over protests against the Columbus Day parade. Sure, this was David Chase trying to answer critics who think The Sopranos malign Italian Americans, but it just wasn't funny enough or thoughtful enough to make the enterprise work.
I think I speak for many viewers when I hope and pray that no dream sequence is going to mar Sunday night's finale since more times than not, they've been a bad idea, and Tony's car trip with the ghosts of his past was another bad example. Unfortunately, the show's other major story thread didn't work either, namely Janice scheming to try to get widower Bobby for herself, going so far as to force him to eat his late wife's final baked ziti.
I know this episode has its defenders, but for me it's the definition of a time waster. The entire episode really has only one key development: Tony B.'s revenge killing of Phil's brother and botched killing of Phil himself. Unfortunately, it's wrapped so intricately with the snoozer of what has to be the longest dream sequence outside of The Wizard of Oz or that one season of Dallas. Why was Annette Bening there again? Never mind. I don't want to know.
It's really amazing that the payoffs to the "Cleaver" movie storyline ended up working as well as they did, since this episode with Carmine Jr. and Christopher venturing to L.A. to try to woo Ben Kingsley was so bad. Hey, Lauren Bacall can take a punch though, huh? Those scenes would have been bad enough, but they were countered with the worst Artie Bucco episode ever as the restaurateur gets into a feud with Benny Fazio over credit card scams and the hostess that Benny is having an affair with and that Artie has the hots for.
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Labels: Bacall, Bening, Buscemi, Curb Your Enthusiasm, David Chase, Dean Martin, HBO, Kingsley, Lists, The Sopranos, TV Tribute
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Friday, December 08, 2006
Back to the Bing: Season 6 revisited
By Edward Copeland
Whenever a season of The Sopranos makes its way to DVD, I've always compulsively purchased it and rewatched it. This has been the case again with Season 6 (HBO can call it Season 6 Part 1, but a series of episodes a year apart, filmed at different times in different television seasons are separate seasons in my book). One thing I've seemed to always find, especially in the later seasons, is that they play much better upon second viewing than they did when they originally aired, which I attribute a great deal to the long hiatuses forced on the viewers in seasons 4 and later. Sure, each season still had its stinkers, but they played much better when watched again.
Re-visiting Season 6, the same reaction washed over me, to some extent, except that whereas Seasons 4 and 5 seemed to grow stronger as they went on, I found the opposite reaction to Season 6. The first half was much better than I remembered — "The Fleshy Party of the Thigh" with great guest star Hal Holbrook is still the season's standout in my mind — but the latter half of the season seems to be lacking and I think a great deal of that blame falls squarely on the "Luxury Lounge" episode, which still plays like such a time waster that it breaks the series' spell. Season 6 may also have suffered from being re-watched so closely to The Wire's Season 4 and Deadwood's Season 3, both of which outshined HBO's first great drama series this time. It's a shame too, because the season has such a fascinating throughline — Tony's reassessment of everything following his shooting by demented Junior — that it's a shame the followthrough sort of went off course as the season went along.
Not only was Tony's shooting in the premiere one of the series' most surprising moments, its dream sequences for once weren't infuriating as in the case of past episodes such as "The Test Dream." Tony's time in purgatory (or wherever he was) actually served a purpose for a change and really gave hope that the series was going to spin into a truly unexpected direction as it wound down. Tony's newfound belief that "every day is a gift" even though he later whines to Melfi "but does it have to be a pair of socks?" really shuffled the playing field, especially with the somewhat more pragmatic Johnny Sack languishing in prison while his hothead underling Phil Leotardo takes charge and wreaks havoc. The hospital scenes were some of the best ever for the series in terms of acting (as stellar as usual) and comedy (watching poor catatonic Tony, barely out of his coma being hit up by Christopher about his movie idea).
The incapacitated Tony gave Edie Falco even more great scenes as Carmela and her lack of an Emmy nomination was absolutely outrageous, not only as she displayed her concern for her husband but as she
opened up to Melfi about her fears about making her children criminal accomplices and her suspicions about Vito and Paulie's motives. On top of that, her exasperation with the shiftless A.J. (which also allowed the show to make some great jokes at Blockbuster's expense) and her growing suspicions about what really happened to Adriana later in the season were certainly award-worthy. This season also gave Steven van Zandt the chance to flex his acting muscles a bit more as Silvio, unexpectedly put in charge of the family and unable to deal with the pressure. The season also gave Steve Schirripa some great moments as Bobby, showing more sides to him than just the usual comic relief he's been relegated to in the past. I wish the same could be said for the great Aida Turturro as Janice. They've never seemed to really know what to do with her past Season 3. She's still funny, but she really deserves a story to do her talents justice.Upon re-visiting the season, the one thing that surprised me was how truly touching Vito's plight played. What started as a one-shot comic joke in Season 5 turned into something truly moving, not only for Vito but for Tony who really didn't think Vito being gay was that big a deal but couldn't express that to his neanderthal associates for fear they'd view him as weak. In fact, the entire season had a melancholy tone that was somewhat refreshing, from Paulie's reaction to the news of his true mother to Patsy lamenting the corporate takeover of old stomping grounds and Johnny Sack's sentimentality for his family and eventual caving in to the prosecution, just to make his problems go away. Though, the complete incompetence of the FBI and their luck with their snitches, is getting really old.
What really made Season 6 weak overall I'm afraid to say is Christopher. I love Michael Imperioli and while it was funny in Season 1 when he aspired to be a screenwriter, ever since when the story tried to go that route, it's proved a flop and "Luxury Lounge" may have been the most glaring example — and episode hurt even further with the other storyline focusing on Artie Bucco vs. Bennie. The entire hour seemed like filler, which given that there were only 20 episodes left seemed particularly insulting to the audience. Sure, it was funny to see Ben Kingsley play himself and hey, Lauren Bacall can take a punch, but the entire episode was pointless and a distraction and served to — at least temporarily — sever the nice tone the season was building. The later parts of the season with Imperioli and Julianna Margulies playing a mob variation of Days of Wine and Roses seemed particularly uninspired. With just eight episodes remaining, I hope they can turn it around and give Sopranos fans an ending we deserve. At least this time, the new batch of episodes will actually air within the same decade.
As for the DVD itself, the commentaries prove to be among the weakest batch they've ever put on DVD. When Edie Falco, Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Robert Iler provide a commentary track, they spend more time in silence watching than offering anything to say. David Chase proves particularly dull on his commentary for the season finale. Of the four commentary tracks, the one on "The Ride" with Tony Sirico and Imperioli ends up being the most entertaining, but then again I've never bought Sopranos DVDs for the extras.
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Labels: Bacall, David Chase, Deadwood, HBO, Holbrook, Kingsley, Television, The Sopranos
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Monday, August 14, 2006
When Oscar Drops the Ball
By Josh R
Josh R here — after several weeks without full Internet access (and a new computer that’s been a problem child), I’ve decided to celebrate my return to cyberspace by resuming one of my favorite pastimes: Oscar-bashing. As we all know, the year’s best performances usually go home empty handed — quite often, they aren’t even nominated. I decided to try to pick out the 20 most (to borrow a phrase from Dame Julie Andrews) egregiously overlooked performances in the history of the Academy Awards — the kind of omissions that just make you scratch your head, if not bang it against the wall out of sheer frustration.
Entertainment Weekly attempted something like this a year or two ago — I believe their list went all the way up to 100 — and the results ranged from the obvious and expected to the puzzling and obscure. I’m not sure if there’s anything on my list that wasn’t included on theirs (I don’t have it in front of me to cross-reference), but I’m not going to make any strained effort at originality; all of the performances cited are, I imagine, ones that most of the visitors to this site will be familiar with, if not through first-hand viewing experience, than certainly by reputation. If this doesn’t exactly reflect what I think the best unnominated performances of all time are in the strictest of order, it’s because, in the interest of fairness, I’ve decided not to cite any individual actor more than once — if I’d chosen to do otherwise, the performances of Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart alone might have accounted for at least 25% of what emerged from the elimination process.
Needless to say, paring down the list turned out to be very, very tough — there were a lot of painful cuts I had to make, but in the interest of time and space (and in order not to try Mr. Copeland’s patience more than I had to), I was determined to limit myself to 20. This has resulted in some bruised feelings in several quarters — No. 21, Danny Kaye from The Court Jester, still isn’t returning my phone calls. Based on the elimination process, I would not have difficulty finding enough performances to fill out a top 100, and might even make it to 200 if sanity would allow. My natural preference for older films will be is very much in evidence — the closest any “contemporary” performance came to making the cut was Gene Hackman for The Conversation — and only one of the performers cited is, in fact, still living. Feel free to agree or disagree with my choices, and mention any that you feel ought to have been included.
I realize that there are some purists out there who believe that Oscars should only be awarded for what falls under the traditional definition of “great acting” — that is to say, how an actor inhabits a role, how convincing or life-like they are as the character, how they
express themselves through their delivery of dialogue, outward displays of emotion, physical transformation, etc. I can’t fully agree with that assessment — if you want to be technical about it, the category is best performance by an actor in a lead or supporting role, and that term encompasses a whole lot more than what falls under the narrow definition outlined above. When people say that Mikhail Baryshnikov gave one of the greatest performances they’ve ever seen in Balanchine’s production of Swan Lake, or Jessye Norman in the title role in Tosca, they’re not talking about their acting, at least not in terms of what it is that makes the performance great. That being the case, I can say without hesitation that in Singin’ in the Rain, Gene Kelly gives one of the best, most skillful and most enjoyable performances in the history of motion pictures. For the record, I also think he does a good acting job, which is only incidental to what qualifies this performance for a mention on this list. Singin’ in the Rain represents Kelly at the pinnacle of his powers — the most complete and virtuosic demonstration of his ability and craft. Watching him dance the extended Broadway Rhythm ballet, lending his light, supple tenor to “You Were Meant for Me” or “You Are My Lucky Star,” navigating Hollywood traffic to get to Debbie Reynolds’ car with deftly executed acrobatics, or best of all, singing and dancing in the rain, is to understand what made Kelly one of the greatest talents the cinema has ever produced. The title number may be the purest expression of joy ever captured on film — a moment of unabashed euphoria that communicates more about the experience of being in love than anything any other actor could do with pages of dialogue. It is Kelly’s crowning achievement as an artist, and it deserved — at the very least — a nomination.Spencer Tracy was, in fact, nominated for best actor in 1958 — for his performance in an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea that managed to be both trite and stuffy at the same time. Right actor, right year…wrong performance. In John Ford’s
The Last Hurrah, Tracy is at his most engaged and assured — the role of an old-school, slightly shady machine politician, a shambling Irishman with a bit of the blarney in him, fits the actor like a well-worn glove, giving the Golden Age’s great naturalist the chance to show his full range. It’s a truly layered performance — irascible and slyly comic in one moment and frail and heartbreaking in the next, Tracy shows how the hyper-energized drive and charisma of an dynamic, outsized personality exists at painful odds with the weariness and strain of a body that can no longer comfortably accommodate such attributes. Several of Tracy’s 10 nominations seem more like ceremonial gestures made out of respect for the actor’s reputation than anything else — which is to say, all but a few seem to be based on the merits of the actual performances. Apart from the Hemingway adaptation, his four final best actor nominations came for playing grand old men delivering high-minded sermons; at some point, he stopped being an actor and became the nation’s conscience. The Last Hurrah brought out the mischief and the sadness in Tracy that few of his other later roles allowed him to express — it’s his most human and humane work as an actor.He was known for most of his career as The Profile — a giant of the stage and an iconic figure of celebrity who never fully found his
bearings on film. He was never nominated for an Oscar, despite several successful films and a measure of standing within the film community. Truth be told, he was more than a bit past his prime by the time the medium of film came into its own, and was mostly content to coast on his reputation. At least once in the sound era, he did rise gloriously to the occasion, in a role that made full and hilarious use of his theatrical brio and larger-than-life persona. In Twentieth Century, Barrymore is pure ham — narcissistic, domineering, pompous, preening, more than slightly crazed and wickedly, wickedly funny. His Oscar Jaffe, a theatrical impresario trying to con his wayward protégé into coming back to him, has the bulging, burning eyes of a man possessed, the twisted Machiavellian grin of a cat eyeing the canary, and the ridiculously florid cadence of someone for whom the concept of going over the top exists only in theory — he’s a daffy Rasputin whose cunning and wit become even sharper with each additional marble he loses. Watching him and the peerless Carole Lombard driving each other into fits of hysteria with endlessly inventive bits of comic business is a wonder to behold.Bette Davis was just a run-of-the-mill contract player of (what was judged to be) average ability until she landed the role that put her on the map — and it was a role than nobody else wanted. Every major star in town passed on the project, and given the nature of the
material, it’s little wonder. Crass, trashy, thoroughly unremarkable in any respect other than her utter lack of sensitivity, the character of Mildred in Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage was the kind of blatantly unsympathetic role that looked and smelled like a career-killer. No shrinking violet, Davis saw it as a golden opportunity, and convinced Jack Warner (over his objections) to let her do it. The results were so startling and unnerving that they forever changed the rules for actresses in Hollywood. Screen heroines of the '20s and '30s were affected and refined — even the bad girls never succumbed to total ugliness, or raised their voices beyond a respectable decibel level. Such was the conviction and raw energy that Davis brought to her performance that it must have landed like a shovel to the stomach for audiences of the time. It still does. The actress didn’t allow vanity or caution to temper her portrayal of the role — her cockney tart is stupid and vulgar, an altogether ordinary woman incapable of any thought or feeling beyond her own narrow self-regard. She’s a nightmare version of Eliza Doolittle as imagined by Zola, only barely a level or two on the evolutionary ladder above grisly creatures risen from prehistoric muck….you can understand why Leslie Howard’s wimpy masochist doesn’t stand any kind of a chance against her. When he finally tries to break free of her clutches, Davis unleashes a raw working of anger and hostility unlike virtually any ever attempted on film. Contorting her face and body like a rabid dog pouncing on its prey while the bile issues forth from her twisted mouth, you cower in your seat at the sheer volcanic force of it. Only you can’t look away.Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita features a spectacular trio of performances, with James Mason and scene-stealing Peter Sellers usually
commanding the bulk of the critical attention, but it’s Shelley Winters, in a career-best performance, that I keep coming back to. Winters’ Charlotte Haze, who has the bad luck of being the dumpy custodian to every middle-age man’s fantasy nymphette, is not, to put it mildly, the brightest bulb on the Christmas Tree. She’s a mass of silly pretensions and hormonal urges, driven in equal measure by a desire to attain of measure of sophistication and a panicky, menopausal sexual hunger. Of course, her ideas about what qualifies as sophisticated are mostly wrong, and her romantic ideals and sexual energies are woefully misplaced if not completely inappropriate. She's an clod who fancies herself the heroine in a play by Noel Coward; everything about her is based in folly, and it would be easy to write her off as a walking punchline — that is, if the actress didn’t give us such harrowing glimpses of the loneliness and desperation that have shaped her character’s ridiculousness. Of course, Winters is howlingly funny playing up her character’s vulgarity and idiocy, but what ultimately emerges is a genuinely tragic figure — one who is made all too achingly aware of her own pathetic limitations. Credit the talent and skill of Shelley Winters that Charlotte Haze is a joke that, in the end, is just too painful to laugh at.In 1940, Ginger Rogers dyed her trademark platinum tresses a dull shade of brown and got her Oscar — for serious hair and serious acting. Her earnest, unimaginative work in Kitty Foyle didn’t betray so much as an ounce of the spark and savvy that informed the performances for which she is cherished. There’s a charge and intelligence to Rogers’ work in Stage Door that the actress would never again equal in her career. Perhaps working alongside Katharine Hepburn brought out the best in her. They were the two biggest female stars at RKO in the 1930s — it was a notoriously unfriendly rivalry. Kate, along with everyone else, believed herself to be the better actress of the two,
and made it known in subtle ways that she didn’t really consider Ginger an equal — or a threat. Ginger was self-conscious, insulted, and ultimately, not one to back down from a fight. When the two trade barbs in their scenes together, what you’re hearing is an authentic battling rhythm fueled by genuine animosity and a spirit of competition. Maybe it took a slap in the face and a challenge to bring out both the toughness and the vulnerability in Ginger Rogers — whether that’s true or not, watching Stage Door, you’re glad it’s there, because the actress is unmistakably at the top of her form. As wisecracking chorine Jean Maitland, Rogers has a devastating way with a quip — her delivery of the film’s zingy one-liners is so quick, sharp and assured that it sounds like inspired improvisation. She’s a tough cookie, sure, but not immune to experiencing disappointment, or worse still, losing hope. The aspiring actresses at The Footlights Club live a precarious, uncertain existence — Rogers, more than any of the other performers, allows us to understand that comic banter is a necessary distraction from the fact that, at any moment, the girls might have their dreams and livelihoods taken away from them and fall off the grid. It’s not that Rogers simply lets us see the fear and fragility behind the snazzy retorts of these tart-tongued dames; she shows just how inextricably linked those seemingly self-contradictory properties are. She’s a smart-aleck blonde with a chip on her shoulder — as with any stand-up comedian, it’s the chip that’s the source of her comedy, even if the reality behind it is a source of hurt.Sex on the silver screen has taken many different forms since the cinematic medium came into being. It can be smart and subtle, or bold and in-your-face. Sometimes it can be a tad lurid (or more than a tad) and erotically charged, other times it can be light, sophisticated fun. It can take the form of a smoldering slow-burn, creeping up on you gradually, or it can hit you right smack between the eyes like a
guided missile. At its very best, when it’s done correctly, it can encompass all of those things, and that’s where Lauren Bacall comes in. In To Have and Have Not, she is pure sex, and it’s no wonder the characters go through so many cigarettes even when they’re just making chit-chat. Foreplay never felt so good. The film marked Bacall’s film debut — not that you’d know it from watching her. Her performance is so smooth and knowing that it feels like the work of a seasoned professional. She was (by her own admission) still a virgin when she made it, and you wouldn’t know that either. Her performance is so smooth and knowing that it feels like the work of…never mind. Her character’s name is Slim, a shady lady stranded in exotic, dangerous Martinique (sort of an island stand-in for Casablanca), and when she strikes up a flirtation with Humphrey Bogart, the sparks all but burn holes in the celluloid. Her husky-voiced sultriness is utterly intoxicating, and when, in the film’s most oft-quoted sequence, she instructs Bogie’s Steve how to whistle, it’s a moment of pure magic. Even if you’ve seen the clip or heard the words before, in context, it still sends shivers down your spine. Had anyone before attempted such a forthright sexuality on the screen? Would anyone do so as successfully again? Bacall created the template for all sirens to follow, and very few (if any) have ever really measured up to it.1927 marked the inaugural year of the Academy Awards. The acting nominations were largely forgettable. It would have been a golden opportunity for the Academy to recognize one of the screen’s great comic geniuses giving, quite possibly, his very best performance. At the time of its release, however, The General was not regarded as a masterpiece, or really, as much of anything at all beyond a slight and amusing comedy that hadn’t made money. Just as Keaton’s lovelorn hero, Johnnie Gray, must suffer the indignities of rejection by
the draft board and the subsequent disdain of his prospective bride, the film’s true worth would not be recognized until it had proved itself over the course of time. Keaton’s acrobatic style, his daredevil attitude toward stuntwork and athletic enactment of the slapstick element, marked him as perhaps the most versatile physical comedian in the history of the medium. The Keaton persona functioned, on some level, as a contradiction in terms, and to glorious effect; the juxtapostion of the vibrant, hyper-animated physical comedy with a face that rarely changed expression (deadpan, dour stoicism) heightened the audience’s enjoyment of the routine. Keaton understood the value of contrast; while his body was forever in motion, contorting itself in sublime and ridiculous ways, the earnest expression always remained intact. In The General, his clowning is inspired, to be sure, but he also provides the audience with a character worth rooting for. Endearingly mawkish in his sweetheart’s presence, he must summon his inner hero when she is placed at risk. Johnnie Gray has a wistful obliviousness to everything going on around him, which only serves to enhance the comedy — his pursuit of his kidnapped ladylove is so single-minded, and his focus on his objective so intense, that he barely has time to register the dangers in his midst. It’s a deft, dextrous performance that impresses with more than just the technical skill that went into it; Keaton imbues his character with an indomitable spirit and a plucky refusal to accept defeat that put the audience firmly in his corner.Robert Walker was a very ordinary looking man with a very ordinary looking career. He spent the 1940s trading on his bland handsomeness by playing blandly wholesome boy-next-door types. He played them blandly. For anyone bored or disbelieving enough to challenge this assertion, his most notable films of the period are Since You Went Away and The Clock. The Age of Bloodless Blandness ended abruptly in
the mid-'40s when the actor’s life took a precipitous tailspin into hell. His wife, Jennifer Jones, left him for producer David O. Selznick, taking their two young sons with her. His career went nowhere. He started drinking, became paranoid and prone to suicidal depression. Alcoholism and the mental strain of believing the world was against him gradually eroded his boyish good looks. He had a breakdown, and was institutionalized briefly. Then he met Alfred Hitchcock. The rest of the industry had written him off as a bland nicety onscreen and a walking trainwreck off — but Hitch knew exactly what he was looking at, and exactly how to exploit it. For the record, Walker died within a year of having completed Strangers on a Train — it’s tempting to think that by surrendering so completely to the sad wreckage of his life and madness in order to give the performance of a lifetime, he quite simply had nothing left. In the film, Walker plays Bruno, the mercurial, demented and diabolical architect of another man’s near-undoing. Disturbed and disturbing, there’s an eerie calm to the character as Walker plays him; it’s as if he can’t help but smile, ruefully and with a certain degree of fatalistic pleasure, at the sad joke that his life has become and the misery that his mere existence can inflict on others. It’s difficult to know how much of Walker’s performance qualifies as acting and how much of it is the genuine spectacle of tortured soul giving way to his inner demons, drowning before our very eyes. Either way, it’s mesmerizing.Robert Mitchum had the easy, insolent manner of a guy who knew he’d never be taken seriously by the snobs and didn’t really give a shit. He was a maverick, and by Hollywood standards, a bit of a punk. The media pegged him for a dumb lug, an inarticulate slab of beefcake with biceps for brains and a bad boy attitude — it was an image that stuck for years, in spite of the fact that it bore very little relation to
the man himself; those who worked with him invariably described him as both highly intelligent and a consummate professional. He received but one nomination — as best supporting actor for an early role in The Story of G.I. Joe — while his four-plus decades of work as a star were completely ignored. As if to shame the establishment’s self-righteous sense of the natural order, the lunkhead produced a body of work which made the careers of his Oscar-winning contemporaries (such as David Niven, Hollywood’s Mr. Class President, for example) look shallow and irrelevant by comparison. From a bumper crop of egregiously overlooked performances, I submit The Night of the Hunter as his very best. As the wayward preacher whose gleaming smile disguises a black heart, the actor creates a study in villainy that manages to be both charming and chilling at the same time. Traditional movie sociopaths (and there are several on this list) are withdrawn and enclosed, wound as tightly as watches and wrapped up in their own inner torment. Mitchum’s Harry Powell has a big, expansive personality, with the engaging manner, sweeping cadence and seductive charm of a born evangelist. A not-so-distant cousin to Burt Lancaster’s Elmer Gantry, he’s equal parts false prophet and barnstorming huckster — butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, and when he’s working his wiles on the gullible country boobs who comprise his congregation, they’re spoonfed easy-to-swallow morsels of fire and brimstone drenched in buttermilk gravy. He’s a counterfeit quarter that shines as brightly as a new silver dollar, and it’s only when you note the cold, dead look in his eyes that you can begin to hear the hollow ring of his sermons. It’s an astute, measured performance; the character is brazen, alright, but Mitchum resists the urge to turn him into a caricature. A cunning and deliberate predator as opposed to a wild-eyed maniac, Mitchum doesn’t run after his prey; whistling a tune, he strolls.Beloved by the public, Charlie Chaplin was never fully embraced by Hollywood. Nor was he particularly trusted. His work, which always contained subtle social commentary even when it was at its most side-splittingly comic, was suspected of being subversive — even when those made most uneasy by it couldn’t fully grasp what made it so. Perhaps Hollywood wasn’t quite ready for comedy with a heart, or
worse still, a mind. He was nominated twice for best actor — first for The Circus, and again for The Great Dictator, which was deemed acceptable since it was in keeping with the political sympathies of the establishment (Hitler was the villain, as supposed to modern industry or class hypocrisy). His two undisputed masterpieces, City Lights and Modern Times, were left out in the cold. As a film, I slightly prefer the latter, but Chaplin probably gave his best and most heartfelt performance in City Lights. As one might expect, Chaplin’s talent for physical comedy is on full display in City Lights, in several ingeniously conceived and executed sequences (the boxing match is one of the funniest ever filmed). But what really makes the performance shine is its humanity — more so than in any other film he made, Chaplin’s Little Tramp exists as beacon of hope and kindness in a cold and unfeeling world. He’s a resilient everyman whose fundamental decency keeps him afloat in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. It would have been easy to cast himself as a victim — he’s bullied, batted around and generally humiliated by the callous “respectable” people he’s encounters, including the police, but he always retains his dignity and his belief in the existence of good in the world. That’s the reason people cry at the ending of the film — the sensitivity and compassion of Chaplin’s performance convince us that life, in spite of its cruelties, can truly be beautiful.There are certain things in life I will never be able to explain or understand. I could not, for instance, explain the process by which a tennis match being played in Brazil can be viewed, live and as clear as daylight, in my living room here in Albany, NY — I take it for granted that it’s possible, but for the life of me, I have no idea how it happens. Similarly, I can’t even begin to fathom how Edward G. Robinson, in a career spanning more than 40 years, was not once ever nominated for an Academy Award. Was it the fact that no movie star has ever looked less like a movie star? Was he too old by the time he broke through, too much of a character actor as opposed to a traditional
leading man? Too much of a class act to play the campaigning game? Too Jewish? I have no idea. In any case, it’s a travesty which the Academy, bless them, attempted to correct with an honorary award toward the end of his life. I suppose it’s the thought that counts. In Billy Wilder’s classic tale of lust, murder and betrayal — generally regarded as the definitive film noir — Robinson plays Keyes, the chief claims investigator for an insurance company, who knows in his gut that “grieving widow” Barbara Stanwyck is a tarantula in sheep’s clothing. Dogged, determined, and shrewd to the point of having supernatural ability, Keyes is a bloodhound hot on the scent. He exists in the great tradition of classic sleuths such as Hercule Poirot — a keen student of human behavior with unimpeachable instincts, he doesn’t allow so much as the smallest detail to escape his bug-eyed vigilance. Such pillars of indefatigability can be one-note and wearying, often inspiring more admiration than affection, but Robinson makes Keyes such an endearingly idiosyncratic presence that you only sit back and marvel at his scowling certitude and inexhaustible vitality. Synapses clicking at warp speed, he paces back and forth while irritably chomping on his cigar in restless anticipation of a moment of clarity. When it inevitably comes, his face lights up like a kid on Christmas morning. You can understand how Fred MacMurray’s anxious murderer can’t help rooting for Keyes to figure it out, even though it means his own neck. As much fun as he is, Robinson’s performance ends on a note of almost unbearable grace and humanity. Having finally collared his criminal, all his hunches having born out, there is no room for celebration or smug self-satisfaction. Instead, Robinson shows us only disappointment, pity, and on some level, a rueful kind of empathy. Sometimes, there’s no pleasure to be had in having been right.For the first decade of her career, Ingrid Bergman’s halo never touched the ground. She was nominated for best actress four times in the 1940s, twice for playing angelic victims of male cruelty, and twice for playing saints. Even her Ilsa in Casablanca was wholesome girl at heart whom no one would think twice about bringing home to mother. Her style was so open and natural that, as beautiful as she was, it was impossible to conceive of anything base or impure in her; in every role, she positively glowed. Thankfully, Alfred Hitchcock was either canny or perverse enough to see things in popular performers that other people hardly even dared to imagine. Cary Grant was the personification of breezy affability onscreen — his wives (there were five or so) described him as guarded and remote. Hitch was the only filmmaker ever to catch a whiff of the coldness in Grant, and in Suspicion (and even more explicitly in this film), he brought it to the forefront. Similarly, he was the only one who ever picked up on Ingrid Bergman’s inner wantonness — by the end of the '40s, the actress
would be embroiled in a tabloid sex scandal involving Italian director Roberto Rossellini, denounced on the floor of the U.S. Congress as a scarlet woman, and find herself blackballed by Hollywood for seven years. It was the kind of mess you’d expect Alicia Huberman, the character she played so memorably in Notorious, to find herself mixed up in. Unfortunately, in 1946, the Academy simply wasn’t ready to accept a more complicated version of their reigning virgin goddess. When we first encounter Bergman’s character, it comes as something of a shock. Instead of the serene enchantress we’ve come to expect, we see a dissolute, damaged woman consumed by self-loathing and working with reckless abandon towards her own self-destruction. She holds herself in even lower regard than the men whom she allows herself to be casually used by. In a cruel twist of fate, once she finally gains a measure of self-respect and a reason to reform, she must literally prostitute herself for her country’s benefit. Bergman shows us the hurt and shame her character feels when Grant refuses to acknowledge the ways in which she’s changed; his withering contempt only stiffens her resolve to prove her worth — to him and to herself. As a government spy married off to a Nazi criminal, her entire life has become a lie, but she’s never had more of a sense of purpose. In the second half of the film, Bergman registers the growing dread of someone who realizes she’s been employed as a sacrificial lamb and is walking a tightrope through a minefield; the slightest misstep could spell catastrophe, but she keeps her nerve. It’s a fearless, gutsy performance, not least because of the uninhibited sexuality Bergman gets to express — the famous single-take kissing scene, where Grant and Bergman make out for no less than four minutes while the camera orbits around them in swoony delight, is such a decadent feat of showmanship that it’s a wonder they got away with it. Bergman is no less radiant here than in her other performances, but Notorious was the only film brave enough to give her a sexual appetite.There are other sociopaths on this list — Walker, Mitchum, and Cagney — but there was, and is, only one Psycho. For anyone who hasn’t seen it, proceed with caution — this entry includes some spoilers. As a young actor in Hollywood, Anthony Perkins never really fit in anywhere. Too skinny and self-consciously awkward to be a heartthrob, too delicately handsome to qualify as a character actor, in the 1950s he drifted with a reasonable degree of success through a series of juvenile roles, typically cast as a misunderstood adolescent. The fact that he never fully seemed comfortable in his own skin was only partially an act — Perkins was, up until the time of his death of AIDS in 1992, a closeted homosexual who was never able to shake the conviction that something was deeply wrong with him. From the late
1950s until his marriage in the 1970s, he received treatment from a controversial psychotherapist whose field of specialty was curing the “affliction” from which he suffered. Riddled with anguish and guilt, he never came to terms with who he was, nor managed to break free of the sense of stigma that was, to some degree, self-imposed. One of the themes to emerge from this assignment has been the canny ability of Alfred Hitchcock for pairing actors with roles that gave telling expression to their hidden selves. As Norman Bates, Perkins gives a painful account of an unformed personality, stunted in his growth by a cruel and overbearing mother who exerts her tyranny over him even from beyond the grave. A prisoner of his own isolation and sense of inadequacy, his attempts to reach out to another human being, Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane, are touching in their pathetic, halting ineptitude. For allowing himself to feel, whether it’s sexual attraction or simply a bond of kindred spirits, he must be punished, and the dispensing of bloody justice falls to his demonic alter ego. He simply isn’t equipped to handle the feelings that interaction with the kind, accepting Marion produces; in the end, both fall victim to Norman’s sense of shame. The way that Perkins registers the guilt and horror of what “Mother” has done is the crux of the film’s tragedy; the object of the murder is never to destroy Marion, but rather to suppress and ultimately extinguish the feelings that Norman has no means of coping with. It isn’t the celebrated shower scene that makes Psycho one of the most frightening films ever made; it’s the realization that Norman Bates isn’t a monster.One of the most shocking realizations of my adult life is that “Over the Rainbow” is not, in fact, a great song. The melody is simplistic and the lyrics are sappy to the point of revulsion — that is, unless you can keep a straight face when hearing about troubles melting like lemon drops and happy little bluebirds flying over pretty rainbows. Otherwise, one must concede that it’s the kind of sugary junk that would give even the cuddliest of Care Bears a toothache. This painful realization came only after I’d heard someone other than Judy Garland try to sing it — a few other people actually, and mostly very accomplished performers. The folly lay in the attempt, for Garland’s rendition has never, and will never, be matched. It is, without question, the greatest single piece of music ever created for the screen and the most hauntingly poetic, if not for any of its own qualities, then quite simply because she sang it. Make no mistake — there’s a lot more to the performance than “Over the Rainbow.” No role, with the possible exception of A Star is Born, made more demands of Garland as an actress, and not even the 1954 film brought her vulnerability as strongly into focus. As with the majority of the performances on this list, there’s a story behind the story — and perhaps no other characterization was informed as strongly by an actor’s reality. Although she is most closely associated with the timeless children’s tale by L. Frank Baum, Garland’s own childhood bore a closer resemblance to something out of The Brothers Grimm. At the age of 13, Frances Gumm was sold to MGM by an apathetic father and
opportunistic mother, neither of whom saw any need to question the studio’s peculiar practices regarding the management and maintenance of juvenile talent. In the dark, quasi-Dickensian era before the passage of child labor laws, the rechristened Judy Garland became a full-time working professional, was prevented from pursuing much of a social life beyond the iron gates of the studio, given pills to help manage her weight, and still more pills to see her through the grueling 14 hour work days. The scars of these early years, which the actress would ruefully recall as among the most difficult in her life, would never fully heal. Life only became more complicated with the transition to adulthood. As a film, The Wizard of Oz may be about as far away from realism one can get; yet somehow, in the midst of all the Technicolor sorcery, Judy Garland creates a character based in recognizable truth. It’s a deceptively simple, natural performance; in a way, Judy Garland and Dorothy Gale are one in the same, trying to make sense of the world around them and their own unspoken fears and insecurities. There’s a scene that stands out for me – when she’s trapped in the witch’s tower, terrified and alone, she cries out for Auntie Em (“Auntie Em, I’m frightened…”). The emotion that fuels the scene is visceral and genuine — doubtless Garland could relate to the desperate need for some kind of stable, nurturing influence, not only to shield and protect, but dispel the darkness that exists just beneath the surface of the wonderful world of make-believe and fantasy (Oz could just as easily be Hollywood). When she sings “Over the Rainbow,” leaning against a haystack and gazing wistfully up to the skies, it’s the ultimate expression of the inchoate yearnings of adolescence, the need for acceptance and deliverance from isolation and loneliness. The song promises escape to a world where contentment and freedom from worry are attainable properties. Listen closely to Judy Garland when she sings the words — she means them. The simplicity and the conviction with which the character’s inner life is made explicit in this moment is a marvel to behold — sad, beguiling and utterly haunting. Whenever the actress would perform “Over the Rainbow” in numerous late-career concert appearances, she did so with a catch in her voice and a tear in her eye — on some occasions she’d be sobbing profusely by the song’s conclusion. It’s more likely than not that there was an element of showmanship in these displays, but her delivery revealed the existence of something more — a sad recognition of the fact that, unlike the character she played, Judy Garland never quite made it to that place where troubles melt like lemon drops and dreams really do come true. Real life doesn’t often afford such opportunities.Rosalind Russell was a tall, almost ungainly woman with a raspy contralto voice and plain, sensible features. Her non-nonsense appearance, which was smart and well-tailored without being austere, suggested both a practical outlook and a bemused sense of irony. No one would ever mistake her for an ingénue or a sex goddess, which probably suited her just fine. Never beautiful in the conventional sense, she could generate more heat with an arched eyebrow and a deadpan retort than any of the glamour girls could with smoldering looks and coy
displays of their natural assets. She could be delightfully over-the-top in films that tapped into the zanier side of her nature — Auntie Mame is probably still the role with which she is most identified — but it’s His Girl Friday that really showcases the full and glorious spectrum of her talent. The role of Hildy Johnson was originally written for a man, and in its transmogrified incarnation could have easily come across as a shrill, insulting parody of the tough-minded career woman as a masculine (or worse still, asexual) entity. But Rosalind Russell was much too smart, and far too inventive, to fall into that trap — her Hildy is one of the boys, alright, but she’s more woman than ever. For the first time in motion pictures, here was a truly modern woman — not only the professional equal of her male counterparts, but with a quickness and creativity that leaves them in the dust. Russell’s Hildy is an ace reporter who can outtalk, outthink and out-maneuver every man in the room, and rather than resent her for it, they can only peer out from under their porkpie hats and newsman’s visors with a mixture of awe and respect as she runs circles around the rest of them. The actress is a whirling dervish of energy, and you’ll be amazed at how fast her motor runs — she sprints through entire pages of dialogue at warp speed without missing a beat, and her inflections throughout are priceless. She throws herself into the part with the same kind of edgy, go-for-broke tenacity that her character exhibits when chasing headlines, and makes it clear that, for Hildy Johnson, no other kind of life is possible. She needs the thrill of the chase, and a guy like Walter Burns who can not only keep up with her, but is only too happy to let her run with the wolves. That’s why nice, bland Ralph Bellamy has to be sent packing at the end of the picture — there’s no way he could avoid being blown away by this sonic boom in heels.The cartoon shenanigans of contemporary action and horror films are pretty tame fare compared to a show of genuine violence — whether expressed through deeds, behavior, or even something as simple as an attitude. Explosions and decapitations are all fine and good, and may even prompt a few happy hours of shrieking in the dark. But real violence — when it’s given a human face — can still make audiences squirm in their seats, and the sense of discomfort it produces can be much harder to shake in the days and weeks afterward. Cagney was emblematic of the movie tough guy — the pint-size bruiser from the wrong side of the tracks whose scrappy belligerence could detonate into bloody mayhem at a moment’s notice. It took a while for the Academy to get over their initial response of shock. His star-making turn in The Public Enemy was ignored, and an even more galvanizing performance in Angels with Dirty Faces was pushed to the
side in favor of Spencer Tracy’s benign Father Flannagan in Boys Town. It was only when Cagney stopped being scary and starting playing nice — for his spry, ingratiating turn in Yankee Doodle Dandy — that the Academy relented and awarded him his Best Actor trophy. The award was deserved, certainly, but the impact of that performance pales in comparison to what would become the actor’s most frightening and indelible creation. Once again, Oscar was too busy averting his gaze, most likely out of fear, to give the devil his due. For the role of Cody Jarrett, for whom the term ‘mentally imbalanced’ would only barely scratch the surface, Cagney dug deeper than he ever had before, and revealed a naked emotionalism that was all the more startling for its proximity to his character’s psychotic impulses. Jarrett is a ticking time bomb of a human being, given to panic attacks and fainting spells (shades of Tony Soprano) and apt to unleash his volcanic anger upon anyone or anything in his path at any given moment. He’s defensive, defiant, and gleefully unhampered by anything akin to a moral compass. Unable to experience anything like joy or remorse, he is almost equally incapable of love….almost, that is, because of the pathological attachment he has toward his rotten old crone of a mother. When he hears of her death in prison, Cagney’s trademark sneer gives way to a working of grief and pain that is so raw in its intensity that it tears right through the fourth wall and grips the audience by the throat. The time bomb has finally gone off, and it keeps going off over and over again. Reduced to a wounded animal, Cagney rages blindly through his despair, moaning, howling, punching at the wind. It’s unthinkable that any other actor of the golden era would be willing to make himself so utterly pathetic and wretched in service to his concept of character — nowadays, it’s used as the kind of flashy pyrotechnical trick employed to garner nominations. With Cagney, it amounted to sheer nerve.Where was the love for Humphrey Bogart? It finally revealed itself in 1951 when the criminally neglected actor received his one and only Oscar for his delightful performance in The African Queen. Taking nothing away from his acting in that film, it would have been just as nice if they’d acknowledged him when he’d really deserved it. His one prior nomination had been for Casablanca; history shows that he lost to someone named Paul Lukas, whose performance in Watch on the Rhine now registers as a complete zero — neither good nor bad enough to be memorable in any way, shape or form (it’s the kind of performance you’ll forget about even while you’re watching it). Bogart was not nominated for — among other things — The Maltese Falcon, High Sierra, To Have and Have Not,
The Big Sleep, In a Lonely Place and most shockingly of all, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. John Huston’s masterpiece, an unlikely fusion of film noir and western, is an intricately structured morality tale examining the corruptive influence of greed; as observed here, not only does it take away men’s souls, it erodes their sanity as well. Bogart plays Fred C. Dobbs, a down-and-out wastrel who is reduced to a state of twitching paranoia when he hits the mother lode, a mountain rich with untapped gold deposits. As the wealth accumulates, it brings with it an atmosphere of tension and mistrust. The actor creates an unflinching, harrowing study of a man unraveling before our very eyes, struggling to hold onto whatever clarity he may still possess and losing the battle in a spectacular fashion. Bogart’s monologues, when the character begins talking to himself (often referring to himself in the third person), are stunningly executed — they build in intensity as the character’s incipient hysteria bubbles to the surface and a sense of crazed panic overtakes his instincts. This was a Bogart no one had seen before — the consummate movie tough guy as the living embodiment of weakness…a loser. The physical transformation alone is striking, and not because the actor’s appearance was radically altered for the role, the change has more to do with body language. Whereas other Bogart performances are remarkable for their calm self-possession — their stillness, if you will — here the actor is a mass of tics and twitches, a walking catalog of the visible markings of human frailty. His slumped shoulders, the halting step of his walk, the slight tremor in his hands, and his darting eye movements communicate volumes about where Fred C. Dobbs has been, and the even darker depths toward which he’s bound.In a career filled with wonderful characters and performances, Katharine Hepburn always was her own greatest creation. In the 1930s, she stood apart from the crowd; none of her contemporaries could touch her for originality, incisiveness or audacity. Very few films she made in the early stages of her career had the courage to run with her — at her worst, and sometimes even at her best, she could seem hopelessly affected and refined, too rare a bird to be credible as a mere mortal. She was occasionally a tomboy, but always with an element of idiosyncratic New England exoticism — a haughty Bryn Mawr elitism coupled with an air of high-starch Yankee breeding. She was not the obvious choice for the role of a dizzy heiress in a screwball comedy directed by Howard Hawks — that would have been Carole Lombard. Offbeat casting decisions often yield the highest dividends. Bringing Up Baby is nearly everyone’s favorite Katharine Hepburn
film, and features arguably the best performance she ever gave. As Susan Vance, Hepburn decided to throw caution to the wind and let down her hair — there’s a spirit of giddy abandon in her performance, a willingness to act silly and be silly, that frees the actress from her own confining persona while at the same time referencing it in sly, nodding fashion. In a way, Hepburn spends much of the film poking fun at Hepburn. Susan has a refinement of manner and speech — doubtless the product of years of scrupulous training at the tawny prep schools and top-drawer society functions — but there’s a brittle frivolity to her cadence and attitudes that makes it impossible to take her too seriously (I could listen to clipped delivery of “No…to drop an olive…” all day long). Acting on whim and a freewheeling improvisatory logic that she alone can follow, she’ll say and do whatever pops into her head, with a blithe indifference to the precepts of decorum or any measure of reason. She seems to thrive on chaos - it brings out the romantic, adventurous side of her nature, and makes her impulsiveness that much more pronounced. When ever she utters her chirpy catchphrase — the ominous “Everything’s going to be alright” — the other characters hold their breath, waiting for the other show to drop. Breezing through the din like a typhoid Mary on roller skates, Hepburn is blissfully uninhibited and deliriously funny from start to finish; her teamwork with Cary Grant, as the bespectacled paleontologist who becomes the hapless object of her unwanted attentions, is one of the most exhilarating examples of great comic teamwork in all of films. There are so many moments to cherish — perhaps none more so when Hepburn dons the persona of ‘Swingin’ Door Susie,’ an East Side debutante’s hilariously off-kilter approximation of a hard-bitten gun moll. As much fun as she seems to be having, the actress never loses sight of what drives Susan’s eccentric and erratic behavior; at heart, she’s just a lovestruck, sentimental goof who just can’t keep her emotions in check long enough to act like a normal human being. Thank God.In the nearly 80 years of its existence, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ quaint system of awards-giving has never failed as conspicuously, or as disgracefully, as in the case of Cary Grant. He was nominated exactly twice — for those keeping score, that’s one less than Tom Cruise — and both times for subdued performances in lesser-known melodramatic weepies. He was never nominated for a comedy, nor for any of the films he made with Alfred Hitchcock. Although honored for his body of work in the form of a Lifetime Achievement Award, he never won a competitive Oscar. Theories abound for why Grant never received his full due as an actor, either from the critics of the period or from the Hollywood community. Some insist there was an element of jealousy involved: every man wanted to be Cary Grant, every woman wanted to be with him. Others credit it to the fact that he was considered, first and foremost, a comedian. The most plausible explanation is also the simplest — whether in comedy or drama, Cary Grant was guilty of Hollywood’s cardinal sin: He made it look easy. There’s a commonly held belief that the measure of great acting is the extent to which the effort is visible. This accounts for the fact that many of the cinema’s most celebrated performances are those which rely on strenuous theatrics or extreme transformation. From time to time, it’s been suggested that Cary Grant always played Cary Grant — the implication being that
he was more of a movie star than an actor. Nonsense. As Grant himself was quoted as saying, “I wish I actually was Cary Grant.” It’s a part that took talent and imagination to play, and the results were always fascinating. There are at least six or seven performances that should have been nominated; I can’t say that one is definitively better than any of the others, so the easiest thing to do is simply to go with my favorite. The character of Walter Burns in His Girl Friday — the altogether shameless editor of a metropolitan daily tinged with more than a bit of yellow around its edges — ties together every facet of the Grant persona. Dapper, clowning, brash, methodical, ingratiating, bullying, heroic, maddening, irresistible…he’s a mass of contradictions, and yet somehow, it all makes sense. In lesser hands, the character’s conduct might come across as boorish or even repugnant, but the actor places the behavior in context and keeps everything in balance. Even at his most tyrannical, he retains a certain jauntiness, a buoyancy of spirit that can’t help but turn everyone in the audience into gleeful co-conspirators. He’s a puppet master putting everyone through their paces with machiavellian delight, but there’s an integrity to what he does and why he does it. His methods may be dishonest, but the intentions are ultimately honorable — unscrupulous and oddly principled at the same time. Walter Burns knows, as the audience does, that a life of quiet domesticity will never do for Hildy Johnson; he treasures all the qualities in her that his rival is too dull-witted to recognize and appreciate. Hildy thinks he’s out to sabotage her happiness; we know he’s trying to protect it…and lest you mistake his impulses as being entirely noble, he’s also looking out for number one. If I make it sound as if Grant’s performance is too firmly rooted in an emotional reality, rest assured that the actor doesn’t forsake his obligation as an entertainer. The performance is all-out funny — the actor doesn’t just land a punch line, he pounces on it, and indulges in enough mugging to incur the jealousy of a thousand vaudeville clowns. You can’t help falling in love with Walter Burns, or with Cary Grant — as Hildy Johnson discovers, resistance is futile. It’s hard to encapsulate exactly what makes Grant’s performance so bloody good, or put into words the exact qualities that he brings to it. Whenever I review something, I try to avoid saying “so-and-so was brilliant” and just leaving it at that, as a stand-alone statement — I think big statements need to be backed up. In this one instance, I think I may have to just leave it at that. Grant is simply brilliant.Tweet
Labels: Bacall, Bette, Bogart, Cagney, Cary, Chaplin, Edward G., Garland, Gene Kelly, Ginger Rogers, Hackman, Ingrid Bergman, K. Hepburn, Keaton, Mitchum, Roz Russell, Shelley Winters, Tracy
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