Sunday, December 05, 2010
A person who don't look out for himself is too dumb to look out for anyone else
By Edward Copeland
The best films grow in your esteem over time and that is the case with The Grifters, which debuted 20 years ago today. I liked the movie when it debuted, but each time I've seen it since, again most recently, it just gets better and better.
As I mentioned two days ago when I reviewed this year's The Killer Inside Me, this remembrance of The Grifters is the third time this year I've written about a film adaptation of a Jim Thompson crime novel (the
third being After Dark, My Sweet). What I've found most interesting in comparing the three films is the approach to what time period they set them in. All three of the novels were pretty much set in the same era that Thompson wrote them: roughly the late 1940s through the early 1960s. In the film After Dark, My Sweet, it was updated to modern times. The Killer Inside Me, the most faithful adaptation in all respects, was a period piece that took place in the same era as the novel. The Grifters, produced by Martin Scorsese and directed by Stephen Frears, takes the most unusual course of all by placing its tale in sort of a time limbo. The women dress as if they are in the 1940s, everyone drives cars that look like they're from the 1970s and John Cusack's character wears 1980s Armani suits and tries to pull off his initial short con at a Bennigans.Then again, of the three Thompson novels I've read that were turned into films, The Grifters is the least faithful, even though the book is short. However, the changes make for a leaner, sleeker, better film. The nurse who appears fleetingly in the movie has a larger role in the novel and the movie makes no mention of
the fact that Roy Dillon (Cusack) holds down a job as a salesman in addition to his part-time action as a hustler. They even changed the spelling of Annette Bening's character's first name from the novel's Moira to Myra. Still, the changes that the late screenwriter and crime novelist Donald Westlake made actually improves the film over the novel while the same cannot be said for the other two Thompson films I've discussed. There are a couple of weaknesses (and this may lead to spoilers for those who haven't seen the film or read the book). The novel makes a point early on of having Roy comment on the physical resemblance between his mother Lilly (Anjelica Huston) and Moira (height, hair color, body type, facial structure), but you can't really say that about Huston and Bening. Also, Lilly is supposed to look young enough to be Roy's sister since she had him at 14, but Huston does look old enough in her nearly white wig to have given birth to Cusack, even though she actually was the right age in real life for the character. These are minor criticisms though because the performers, Huston and Bening especially, are so superb that it doesn't matter."Grifters got an irresistible urge to beat a guy who's wise. There's nothing to whipping a fool. Fools are made to be whipped, but to take another pro, who knows you, who has his eye on you, now that's a score."
Mintz (Eddie Jones), the grifter who schooled Roy on some of the tricks of the trade, tells him that in a flashback explaining how Roy got his start taking suckers. It's those cons that unite the three principals of the story, though each has a different approach. Roy is a solo artist who does the quick hit. Myra, especially back when she had a partner (J.T. Walsh in flashbacks) before he went nuts, prefers the long con with the bigger payoff, where you work someone over a long period of time before you take him. Lilly is almost a professional, working for Bobo Justus (Pat Hingle, in a frightening performance) purposely placing large amounts of money on horses with long odds to bring those odds down before the start of a race. Of course, she's also taking discarded losing tickets here and there and grabbing some winnings for herself to keep in a stash hidden in a compartment in the trunk of her car. She just has to make sure Bobo doesn't find out. He's not a forgiving boss.
Westlake's streamlining of Thompson's novel makes for a truly efficient film, aided by Frears' direction and Elmer Bernstein's great score which seems to accelerate the momentum as it goes on. In the commentary, Frears gives Westlake the credit for introducing the three characters through the brilliant tri-screen opening
that perfectly sets up where Roy, Lilly and Myra are at this stage in their various nefarious careers. Lilly is the pro. She know exactly what she is doing, how not to get noticed, either by the authorities or (at least she tries) the unforgiving Bobo. Roy, the youngest of the three, has become pretty good at what he does, but he's still strictly small time and sometimes has the misfortune of getting caught by would-be marks. Myra, who works well with a partner, is a bit at sea on her own and finds herself relying on sex more and more often to get what she wants, even if it means banging her landlord (Gailard Sartrain) because she needs to hang on to what little cash she still has (and the roof over her head) or putting the moves on a geeky jewelry store proprietor (Stephen Tobolowsky). What separates Myra from Roy and Lilly is she is the only one of the three who has an air of desperation about her, though she tries not to let it show.Fate more or less brings these three into the same circle. Even though Lilly is Roy's mother, they've been estranged for years, though when Bobo, who is based out of Baltimore, assigns Lilly to California tracks, she decides to look Roy up in Los Angeles. Myra and Roy have been lovers for quite a while. In fact, for a long
time during their relationship, Myra didn't even realize Roy was in on the grift until they took a train trip and she spied him taking a group of young sailors (again dressed outside of any discernible period) in a common dice con called the "tat." (Look close: one of those young sailors is Jeremy Piven.) After that, she's always trying to get Roy to join her as a partner in the long con, to re-create the glories of her past, but that's one lesson Mintz emphasized to him in his tutelage: Work alone. Myra keeps trying though, comparing her institutionalized ex-partner and Roy, "I kissed a motherfuckin' frog and you're my prince." When it turns out that a would-be mark injured Roy worse than he thought, Lilly takes over and gets him hospitalized, that's when she and Myra meet and take an instant dislike to one another. They are like jealous lovers fighting over a man.
Unfortunately, because Lilly's maternal instinct chose this time to reassert itself (She tells the doctor she finally gets to take her seriously that he knows who she works for and if Roy doesn't make it, she'll have him killed), she missed some races she needed to cover and cost Bobo some money and Bobo doesn't like to lose money. He makes a special trip to the coast to mete out punishment. Anyone who has ever seen the late Pat Hingle in his countless roles, be it as Commissioner Gordon in the Tim Burton Batman films or countless
television appearances such as the original owner of Cheers who comes back and tends bar for a night, they won't be prepared for his malevolent Bobo Justus. The scene isn't quite as explicit as it is in the novel, but if you've read it, you know what Lilly is in store for when he asks her if she has a long coat to cover her dress. His abuse is equal parts physical and psychological, making Lilly wrap up oranges in a towel and having her explain what happens if people don't hit others with them correctly, causing her to stutter in fear, then faking her out and letting her off with just a cigar burn on her hand. Then, everything's back to normal and he's having a friendly conversation with her on the veranda, even joking with her about if she's stealing that much from him and acting as if he doesn't mind and she's going along with it — because she knows she got off easy. "A person who don't look out for himself is too dumb to look out for anyone else," she tells him with a nervous grin. Lilly may be the pro of the three main characters, but she always has to be looking over her shoulder. Her paranoia is well justified, given her employer.As I mentioned in the review of The Killer Inside Me, Westlake says that Thompson belongs to America's second generation of crime novelist, following his forefathers such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, only Thompson, based a lot on the life he actually lived, was far more nihilistic than either of the
earlier writers. Thompson also had a source that Chandler and Hammett didn't, Westlake pointed out: the early movies and film noirs as wells as the novels. Thompson though was a true crime novelist. It's a mistake to place his works exclusively in the noir column. Granted, I've only read the three books and seen Coup de Torchon, Bertrand Tavernier's 1981 film that transferred Thompson's novel Pop. 1280 to a 1938 French colony in Africa. Of all those though, only After Dark, My Sweet comes close to the usual noir trappings, and even that's by the loosest definition of the term. Thompson didn't play by the numbers in anything he wrote. Even though The Grifters concerns con artists, unlike the innumerable films about the subject there aren't the twists, reversals or set-ups you'd expect. The usual con artist tale can't help but get you wrapped up in the fun of the scheme, but The Grifters isn't that type of story. It's dark and unsettling; a character study where you can't be certain where the characters will end up. In one of the extras on the DVD, Frears told Westlake and others repeat similar ideas: Thompson wrote a Greek tragedy for the underclass.
What keeps this from being a grim undertaking is its stellar cast. Annette Bening had a few films under her belt before she made The Grifters (including Postcards from the Edge the same year and Milos Forman's Valmont, ironically playing the role Glenn Close did in another version of the same story Frears directed as Dangerous Liaisons), but her performance as Myra might as well have been her debut because from the moment she slinks into the film, a star is born. Myra doesn't just seduce the various men in her path, but the camera as well. She's sexy, funny and moves like a cat, earning a well-deserved Oscar nomination for supporting actress in the process. That Bening, Diane Ladd's crazy turn in Wild at Heart and Lorraine Bracco's work in Goodfellas all lost to Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost can be labeled nothing short of ridiculous. She's really what keeps some lightness in the film. It's as if her performance actually skips along in tune to Bernstein's evocative score.
In contrast, though he was the youngest of the three leads, John Cusack was practically a veteran, having made his film debut in 1983 in Class. Still, The Grifters marked a real turning point in his career, showing that he could play a different type of adult role. Aside from being part of the ensemble in John Sayles' Eight
Men Out and a small but significant part in Fat Man and Little Boy, his roles were almost exclusively in teen romances and comedies, ranging on a realism scale from Say Anything and The Sure Thing to farces such as One Crazy Summer, Better Off Dead and Tapeheads. He even had that minor part in Sixteen Candles. He'd played leads before, but not like The Grifters' Roy Dillon. He really has to anchor the film between the two women, being a convincing lover for Bening and an estranged but still caring son for Huston. Cusack pulls the role off perfectly. When the film reaches its climax and one of the women tries to pull off an unbelievable lie (and perhaps go even further to pull it off), he excels at the shock and torn feelings he has at the moment. In another scene, where he's called to make an identification and realizes it's not who it's supposed to be, he gives the perfect sly, small grin, just enough for the audience to catch, but out of reach of the authorities.Which brings us to the magnificent Anjelica Huston. Five years after her father John directed her to an Oscar for her killer supporting performance as Maerose Prizzi in Prizzi's Honor and a year after she scored a second nomination for her delightful turn as one of Ron Silver's wives in Paul Mazursky's Enemies, A Love Story (the
same year she played Martin Landau's mistress in Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors), Anjelica stepped up to lead with her stellar Lilly Dillon. She lost to Kathy Bates in Misery (a mistake in my opinion, not that Bates hasn't deserved the prize at other times), but Huston's Lilly is a wonder. She's a tough cookie but like most cookies, she can break. It's difficult to point out how great she is because she gets the toughest scenes to pull off but to describe them in detail, except in cases such as the Bobo scene, would be spoilers for those who haven't seen the film. In the vaguest terms possible, Lilly is a survivor and she will do whatever it takes to prevail. The ends always justify the means for her, even if they're accidental or emotionally destructive. As long as Lilly lives another day, she'll live with the consequences. The way Huston plays Lilly, she's hard to get a beat on except in those moments when her entire being is an open wound and her body completes her tasks by instinct. There's a shot in the film where Lilly takes the elevator in the hotel where Roy resides that makes it appear as if she's descending into Hell, at least that's what Frears says his intention was. I don't buy it. Lilly Dillon was born in Hell and has resided there her entire life. The Grifters, on the other hand, isn't remotely hellish as far as film experiences go. It just gets better with age.
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Labels: 90s, A. Huston, Bening, Books, Fiction, Huston, Jim Thompson, K. Bates, Landau, Mazursky, Movie Tributes, Sayles, Scorsese, Television, Tim Burton, Woody
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Friday, December 03, 2010
Spending time in a psychopath's head
By Edward Copeland
With two anniversaries of adaptations of Jim Thompson novels and a new film based on another of his books released this year, I've spent a lot of time in the crime author's milieu, reading the three novels the films were based on this year. Michael Winterbottom's 2010 version of The Killer Inside Me (a 1976 version starred Stacy Keach) came and went this year without much notice despite some good reviews and the fact it might be the most faithful Thompson adaptation put on screen.
Given that the title itself serves as a spoiler or sorts, readers can expect that plot points will be given away freely from this point on. Casey Affleck stars as Lou Ford, deputy sheriff in a small west Texas town, who has managed to lived there for most of his life hiding the uncontrollable sociopath within himself.
Now, this isn't another serial killer story. When Lou strikes, he always has a reason, at least within his own warped mind, but when the town's powerful construction magnate Chester Conway (Ned Beatty) asks Lou to run what he considers to be a loose woman (Jessica Alba) out of town because of her involvement with Conway's son Elmer (Jay R. Ferguson), it sets in motion a course of events that unleashes all the demons living inside Lou that he'd more or less successfully kept hidden from his friends and neighbors. Unfortunately for Lou, the chain reaction proves too long and messy for him to hide his true self from them any longer.
As I mentioned, this has been a Jim Thompson kind of year for me. Earlier this year, I revisited After Dark, My Sweet on its 20th anniversary and in two days I will do the same for The Grifters on its 20th. On one of the DVD extras of The Grifters, its late screenwriter and a crime novelist in his own right, Donald Westlake, mentioned that Thompson was the most nihilistic of America's second generation of crime novelists. Based on the small sampling of Thompson I've read or seen, Lou Ford may be his darkest creation.
The first inkling viewers get of Lou's "darkness," other than his inner narration, comes when he encounters a bum (Brent Briscoe) on the street and instead of offering him some change or even a smoke or some booze, Lou takes his cigar and, grinning widely, burns it into the flesh of the man's hand. He also fails in his mission for Chester Conway when he goes to the woman, Joyce Lakeland (Alba), who turns out to be a prostitute, starts to get rough with her, but instead ends up falling into bed with her and beginning a fling, despite his long involvement with the sweet Amy Stanton (Kate Hudson).
Both the book and the movie take an unusual tact because it isn't often that you hear a story from the point-of-view of a killer. The book provides a few more details as to what made Lou that way, but I'm always one who prefers it when the cause behind a psychotic's spree remains mostly a mystery. It's really unnecessary to know the motive when the violence occurs as suddenly and brutally as it does here. In fact, some of Lou's acts seem to come out of nowhere with so much force, even when you've read the book, that it still shocks.
What separates this Jim Thompson adaptation from After Dark, My Sweet and The Grifters is that it keeps it firmly set in the time period in which the book was set. It also boasts a fine cast. In addition to Affleck's superlative work, there's solid support from Beatty, Hudson, Briscoe, Elias Koteas as a suspicious reporter, Tom Bower as the unsuspecting sheriff, Simon Baker as the district attorney and Bill Pullman in a single scene as a defense attorney.
The Killer Inside Me also held extra interest for me since a great deal of it was filmed near where I live, so I recognized many of the sites. Winterbottom moves John Curran's sparse and faithful adaptation at just the right pace and really knows how to give the viewer a kick. It's one of the better efforts from such an eclectic director. It's a shame it didn't gain more notice when released.
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Labels: 10s, Books, C. Affleck, Fiction, Jim Thompson, N. Beatty, Remakes
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Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Sun-baked noir drawn from a dime store novel
By Edward Copeland
As I watched After Dark, My Sweet again, in preparation for this 20th anniversary piece, I was struck once again by the melancholy that often hits people like myself who have spent much of their lives trying to
devour works in various fields of artistic endeavor. My readers realize my film obsession and my brief and expensive addiction to New York theater, as well as to various television shows. I've also tried to be a voracious reader, which I have been for most of my life except for frequent periods when severe headaches interfered. There simply isn't enough time in the day to watch and read (and listen: I like music too) and then write about them. I feel like Burgess Meredith in the classic Twilight Zone episode, though at least my eyesight is holding out so I don't have to worry about breaking my glasses after the bomb falls. Anyway, among the many regrets in my life is that I've never read any of the classic Jim Thompson pulp fiction novels, which enjoyed a resurgence in terms of film adaptations in the late 1980s and early 1990s of which James Foley's After Dark, My Sweet was the finest example. Even though my finances always hover in a precarious state and Thompson's books can't be bought for two bits anymore, after I rewatched the film, I did put out $7 to read the novel before sitting down to write this tribute. Of course, I had heard Thompson's words before because he'd also worked as a screenwriter, most notably on Stanley Kubrick's The Killing and Paths of Glory.What makes Foley's film work so well is its casting of Jason Patric in the lead role of former boxer and recent mental institution escapee Kid Collins. One difference between the novel and the movie: His first name in the
book is William, but the screenplay by Foley and Robert Redlin christens him Kevin, though it hardly matters since he's almost always referred to as Collins or, once he encounters the widow Fay Anderson (Rachel Ward), Collie. The book also describes him as blond, which the dark-haired Patric certainly is not. The movie, which like the novel, is narrated by Collins, doesn't make it clear what his problem is. Has he been punched a few too many times in the ring? Did guilt over killing another fighter in the ring set him off? Maybe he just has criminal tendencies, though at times he seems as gentle as Lennie in Of Mice and Men. Still, he's also prone to sudden rage that you don't want to find yourself on the receiving end of. On the first page of the novel, Collins shows the reader the classification card that has accompanied him through four mental institutions:William ("Kid") Collins: Blond, extremely handsome; very strong, agile. Mild criminal tendencies or none, according to environmental factors. Mild multiple neuroses (environmental) Psychosis, Korsakoff (no syndrome) induced by shock; aggravated by worry. Treatment: absolute rest, quiet, wholesome food and surroundings. Collins is amiable, polite, patient, but may be very dangerous if aroused...
Except for the name change and the updating of the time period, the film sticks fairly closely to the book. Both are narrated by Collins, except the book shows that he isn't the swiftest guy in the world in terms of mastery of the English language while some of the internal lines the film gives him come off as a bit too well-formed for the character. The novel also makes his motivations much clearer than the film which by leaving things out make some scenes seem like a cheat or purposely vague. In a way, the Collie of the film is even more of an unreliable narrator than the Collie of Thompson's novel.
Of course, noir purists might dismiss a story set in modern time and filmed in sun-drenched color (to match its southwestern locale, it even includes a nice score from Maurice Jarre, the great composer of Lawrence of Arabia), but it hits all the marks. Still, as good as Foley's film is, Patric holds the key to its success in his
portrayal of Collins. It's the best role of the talented actor's odd film career. Whether Collie has just been hit in the head one time too many or is just naturally mentally unbalanced (or perhaps he's smarter than we think and it's all a put on), Patric handles the turns of uncertainty in his part beautifully. The year following After Dark, My Sweet he had another good role opposite Jennifer Jason Leigh in Rush playing an undercover cop who becomes too involved in the drugs he is investigating, but that film and performance were overshadowed by Patric's tabloid fame as the man who broke up Julia Roberts and Kiefer Sutherland before they could wed. Given that Patric also is Jackie Gleason's grandson and the son of Jason Miller, Oscar-nominated actor for The Exorcist and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of That Championship Season, I can't help if all that attention has played a role in a purposeful obscurity. If so, it's a shame, because Patric has remarkable talent that's not seen nearly enough as it's on display in After Dark, My Sweet or in a handful of other films such as Your Friends and Neighbors.The plot's engine ignites simply enough. Collins steps off the hot road into a saloon to get a cold beer from a disinterested bartender named Bert (Rocky Giordani) while sitting further down the bar is an attractive woman whose name he'll learn is Fay (Ward). Collins, as is his habit, tends to ramble, but in a good-natured
way, telling about how he's lost track of his friend Jack Billingsley, but he's certain he'll wander in that bar at some point. Bert and Fay, recognizing that Collins may be a bit slow, have a bit of fun at the kid's expense, until it ceases to be fun for them anymore because Collins just won't shut up. Bert grabs the beer back before Collins can even finish it and tells him to get out. Collins insists that he hasn't done anything wrong: He's a veteran and just waiting on a friend. Bert doesn't care and reaches across the bar and grabs Collins' shirt. That's a mistake. Before you know it, Bert lies sprawled and Collins has hit the road again. He's surprised when Fay pulls up alongside him in her car, offering a ride. He thinks it's a scam and she'll take him back to the bar and the cops, but Fay insists that Bert is the last person who wants to be involved with the police. Reluctantly, Collins climbs in the vehicle and they drive to Fay's rundown plantation.At her place, Fay reveals to Collie that she's a widow (she doesn't need to reveal that she's an alcoholic; even someone as slow as Collins can figure that out) and offers him a trailer on her property as a residence. As the two are getting acquainted in the main house, a car pulls up and Fay rushes out to see the man, almost as if she wants to steer him clear of Collie. That doesn't last long. As Collie and Fay go out that night, the man stumbles upon them again. His name is Garrett Stoker (played with a wonderful sleaze quotient by Bruce Dern), but everyone knows him as Uncle Bud. Thompson's, i.e. Collins', description of Uncle Bud in the novel truly hits the mark in a delightful introductory sequence:
You meet guys like Uncle Bud — just over a drink or a cup of coffee — and you feel like you'veknown them all your life. They make you feel that way.
The first thing you know they're writing down your address and telephone number, and the next thing you know they're dropping around to see you or giving you a ring. Just being friendly, you understand. Not because they want anything, you understand. Sooner or later, of course, they want something; and when they do it's awfully hard to say no to them. No matter what it is.
Uncle Bud says he's a former police detective and, yes, he does want Collie for something: to be part of a scheme he's been trying to sell Fay on for several months: kidnapping the young son of a wealthy family and collecting a big ransom. Fay and Collie both humor Uncle Bud, but later at Fay's house, she tells him that Uncle Bud has been trying to find a third for his cockeyed plan for a long time and it would be in Collie's best interest to get as far away from both of them as fast as he can.
Collins takes Fay's advice and stops off at a diner, where he bring his own booze much to the counterman's anger (as well as his usual spiel about waiting for Jack Billingsley). The counterman asks him to at least go wait in an out-of-the-way booth so he won't get in trouble and Collins complies, though being slightly tipsy, he
stumbles into the booth of a man who turns out to be a doctor named Goldman (George Dickerson). The doctor recognizes the signs in Collins of someone who's been in a mental health facility and offers him some help. Collins refuses, though the doctor gives him his card anyway. Later, without any prospects, Collins looks up Doc Goldman, figuring he has nothing else to lose, so he might as well work some odd jobs and maybe find a nice place to stay for awhile. The doctor, who practices out of his home, is glad to see him and lets him do yard work in exchange for room and board. He tries to talk to Collins about his past and whether or not he needs to go back to an institution or, at the very least, quit boozing, but Collins isn't receptive to the idea. The biggest problem concerning Collins is that he can't get Fay out of his mind and he wonders if she's safe from Uncle Bud's plotting. His worry eventually leads him to flee again, back to Fay and getting himself neck deep in the kidnapping plan.
While After Dark, My Sweet exists at its core as a thriller and contains the many twists you'd expect, Foley's keeps his pacing loose, yet it never loses your attention. I'll spare you the details, in case you haven't seen the film or read the book, but it's riveting and suspenseful without building tension so taut it breaks. The one misstep I think Foley makes is an extended sex scene between Patric and Ward. It is important for a plot development, but the romp wastes too much screentime and almost brings the film to a halt. In the novel, Thompson accomplishes the same thing in a mere paragraph that's mostly allusion but the film's version goes on way too long. As Orson Welles once famously said, the two things that always look fake on film are praying and making love, and Foley certainly proves that adage with the length of the boinking here.
Still, that criticism is a minor one for an otherwise great film anchored by such a magnificent performance. Since I read the novel after having seen the film multiple times, it's hard to say which is better, though the book certainly makes things clearer and works more efficiently. Foley managed to come up with a more ambiguous ending than Thompson did and how often does that happen in a film? Not nearly enough anymore really, but 20 years ago it did and thank goodness that Foley cast an actor as talented as Jason Patric to pull it off. I just wish we got to see Patric put his gifts to use in worthy projects more often.
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Labels: 90s, Books, Burgess Meredith, Fiction, J.J. Leigh, Jim Thompson, Julia Roberts, K. Sutherland, Kubrick, Movie Tributes, Welles
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Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Into the trenches
By Edward Copeland
Seven years before movie fans met Gen. Jack D. Ripper and Gen. Buck Turgidson, Stanley Kubrick brought us another off-his-rocker military man, this time a French general named Paul Mireau who was introduced 50 years ago today in Paths of Glory, one of Kubrick's greatest films.
Paths of Glory takes place in 1916 France, not that any of the actors, especially lead Kirk Douglas as Colonel Dax, sound particularly French, but that hardly matters because this tale about the absurdity of war could have been set in any time in any country in any war. Kubrick's film is unusually short, at least for a war film, running less than 90 minutes. For those who haven't seen it (and shame on you who haven't), Paths of Glory centers on one particular battle between the French and the German, where the poor French troops are outmanned and outgunned, but that's no excuse for disobeying orders in the eyes of Gen. Mireau. Mireau believes anything is possible and some things aren't. When he asks a soldier if he's ready to kill more Germans and the catatonic man can't respond, he refuses to accept the explanation that the man suffers from shellshock because he doesn't believe there is such a thing as shellshock.
When the soldiers are forced to retreat, Mireau even orders his artillery men to unleash their barrage on his own troops. With most of his troops unable to take the hill he seeks and others under his command refusing to carry out his lunacy, Mireau smells mutiny in the air and demands satisfaction. "If those little sweethearts won't face German bullets, they'll face French ones," Mireau declares before meeting with his superior, Gen. Broulard (the great Adolphe Menjou) and Dax, who oversees the men, to start court-martial and execution proceedings. Dax clearly sees Mireau's derangement, as the general first asks to execute 100 of the surviving soldiers. Dax even volunteers to stand in for his men, before Menjou brokers a compromise, first getting the numbers down to 12 before settling on 3 (1 from each company). Mireau unhappily accepts, though he'd prefer to see more bloodshed instead of less. "Few things stimulate morale like seeing a man die," he insists. Dax, clearly the voice of reason and principle in the film, agrees to represent his men in the court-martial, a farce of a trial reminiscent of other court proceedings where the defense might as well not show up.
The focus of the movie, whose script was written by Kubrick, Jim Thompson (the famed cult crime novelist) and Calder Willingham (who would 10 years later co-write The Graduate), doesn't focus solely on the ranking officers involved, but also uses the fate of three soldiers: Pvt. Ferol (Timothy Carey), Pvt. Arnaud (Joseph Turkel) and Capt. Paris (Ralph Meeker) as an occasion to discuss a multitude of issues. The three were picked almost at random, with the brass passing on the decision of choosing "examples" to the leaders of their divisions. Ferol says he was picked because he was "undesirable." Paris was picked to cover the ass of his lieutenant (Wayne Morris), who he'd caught drunk on duty at the cost of several lives. Arnaud really doesn't know why he's facing a firing squad.
Once the men have been found guilty and spend their final night of life together in a cell, a priest comes to comfort them, but Paris turns justifiably angry when the clergyman tries to comfort him with the idea that, "We're all gonna die." His confrontation over the futility of religion finally gets to be too much for the other condemned men, one of whom attacks him, leading to an eventually fatal skull fracture. However, Mireau want his "examples" conscious for their executions, so they work to keep Paris alive with a plan of pinching his cheeks at the crucial moment so he'll be able to see the bullets coming. The message: Don't ask questions about religion or warfare. It's not really a plot spoiler to say that the three are executed. (Mireau thinks "the men died wonderfully.")
Prior to the firing squad, Dax learns of Mireau's order to fire on his own troops and brings it to the attention of Broulard, but he's reluctant to interfere. After the executions, Broulard meets again with Mireau and Dax and confronts Mireau about his order and of his intention that Mireau will face a court-martial, albeit too little, too late for the three soldiers. Mireau remains defiant, insisting he's "the only completely innocent man in this affair." While Dax is glad to see that Mireau won't get off scot-free, he's appalled when Broulard suggests that Dax reported Mireau's actions as a political move so he could get promoted to general. Broulard, in the end, might be even sicker than Mireau.
The final scene often seems out of place, but it really underscores the whole message. The tired soldiers gather in a dance hall where a captured German girl is forced to dance for them. Kubrick may well have been the master of making anti-war war films, be it Paths of Glory, the hilarious Dr. Strangelove or the underrated Full Metal Jacket. Paths of Glory is a great place to see Kubrick's talents really begin to emerge.
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Labels: 50s, Jim Thompson, K. Douglas, Kubrick, Menjou, Movie Tributes
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