Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Centennial Tributes: Jules Dassin Part III
By Edward Copeland
Between the years 1949-54, any opportunity Jules Dassin had to make a movie anywhere failed to materialize. Following his work on Night and the City in London, he returned to the United States only to find that people he once considered friends did their best not to be seen with him. In 1951, while Dassin attended the Cannes Film Festival he learned that he had been named by a cooperating witness during the second round of hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Before he had been an unofficial blacklistee because he'd been called to testify and hadn't — being named by a friendly witness was another matter. This wasn't just any friendly witness who had named him either — it was director Edward Dmytryk, the only member of The Hollywood Ten, the 10 artists who had lost their court fight claiming that they had the constitutional right NOT to testify before HUAC. The 10 lost their appeals and received six- to 12-month jail
sentences. Dmytryk served six months in jail, but still turned friendly witness anyway so he could work again, something for which most of the other nine men never forgave him. Dmytryk, whose best known films include Crossfire, The Caine Mutiny and Raintree County, said in his defense, "I had long been convinced that the fight of the Ten was political…I believed that I was being forced to sacrifice my family and my career in defense of the Communist Party, from which I had long been separated and which I had grown to dislike and distrust.…I would have to name names, and I knew the problems this would cause…my decision was made easier by the fact that…I couldn't name anybody who hadn't already been identified as a Party member. Weighing everything — pro and con, I knew I had to testify.…I did not want to remain a martyr to something that I absolutely believed was immoral and wrong." The Criterion DVD for Rififi contains the 2000 interview with Dassin which discusses in the most detail what the blacklist did to him and how the atmosphere affected others as well, especially the pressure families could put on the artists. "Your wife would say, 'What do you want us to do? What about raising your children? We don't care about your principles — think of your family.' A lot of that happened," Dassin said. That's one thing I've always thought about when the subject comes up now. It's easy for people like us who are discussing that era in theoretical terms to say we'd act with principles and fight against the forces of evil, but we might behave differently if we actually were in the situation and had families to support. Look how few people raise their voices against governmental abuses now. The Occupy protests have been heartening, but they've still been rather small in number and struck down by the establishment rather easily while the majority getting screwed today, as always, keep quiet. If you missed either Part I or Part II of this tribute, click on the appropriate link. 
Dmytryk's main motivation was to keep working while other members of The Hollywood Ten went straight from jail to the blacklist though many, such as Dalton Trumbo, wrote screenplays using pseudonyms. Several Oscars during the 1950s went to people who either didn't exist or were fronts. In the 2000 interview, Dassin admitted that Darryl Zanuck would buy story ideas from him during this xperiod. Dassin also told, "one particular story that was really so painful." Dassin went on to discuss Robert Rossen, writer-director of All the King's Men and The Hustler and director of Body and Soul. Like so many in the creative community, Rossen found the witchhunt deplorable, the politicians behind it despicable and the studio chiefs who caved to them cowards. At first, Dassin said in the interview, Rossen declared, "You can't do this to people. I will not cooperate with these committees and questions." Dassin told of vandalism that occurred at the homes of people whose names were mentioned in passing during the hearings, a detail I'd never heard before. Rossen had kids at the time to worry about but, "He explained to them why it was wrong to name friends and betray people and made the kids understand that and they handled it well," Dassin said. Unfortunately, the pressure got to Rossen and he broke down and named names. Rossen "named all kinds of people. Now he had to explain that to his kids. Those kids — I don't know how they are now — but they were in bad shape for many years," Dassin shared with the interviewer.
For the many like him who were denied employment because in their youth, they joined a party they soon renounced and had had no part of for years, it was frustrating. Dassin said they always waited for some kind of hero who could stand against them and when the natural choices to fill that role such as Elia Kazan or Clifford Odets instead broke down and named names, "It was heartbreaking," Dassin said. The director also told of how people such as him got so use to old friends trying to avoid them that he would try to spare them the embarrassment by hiding if he saw them first. In the same 2000 interview, Dassin told of attending the Cannes Film Festival once, though he couldn't recall the year — he was 89 then; I think he'd earned the right to forget some Cannes Film Festivals — and spotting Gene Kelly, Dassin went and hid around the corner when he felt this strong grip on this arm. "What do you think you are doing?" Kelly asked and led Dassin into the party where most of the Americans were hanging out. Not everyone was as gracious as Kelly though — Dassin described one former friend who hid under a table to avoid being seen with him.
Moviemaking opportunities seemed closed to Dassin. An American producer had arranged for him to film a movie called Public Enemy No. 1 in France featuring Zsa Zsa Gabor as one of its stars. Gabor called Dassin in tears to tell him that she'd been warned that if she made a film with him, her career would be through so she was forced to back out. Soon after, the producer told him that unions had delivered
the message that if he made the film, no film of his would ever receive distribution again. The film fell apart, though the French got angry and declared him a member of the French Director’s Union. His U.S. passport was revoked, but the French gave him papers which allowed him to travel He went to Rome with plans to make a film of the novel Mastro-don Gesualdo by Giovanni Vergan but Italy asked him to leave the country, ruling that he was an "undesirable." Dassin went to the U.S. Embassy for help, but they wouldn't even receive him. The U.S. Ambassador to Italy at the time was Clare Booth Luce who refused to see him. Dassin returned to the states and Broadway. Theater didn't recognize the blacklist and he directed Two's Company: Charles Sherman's Musical Revue starring Bette Davis. During the show's pre-Broadway tour of many U.S. cities, Dassin again received notice to appear before HUAC, but he declined because of the show's tour. By the time it opened in New York, he received a telegram informing him that his hearings had been canceled. Sherman wrote the sketches with Peter DeVries while among the various contributors to the songs in the show were Vernon Duke, Ogden Nash, Sammy Cahn and Sheldon Harnick. The dances were staged by Jerome Robbins, another person caught up in HUAC who was forced to name names by Ed Sullivan who threatened to expose his homosexuality if he didn't. One of the other members of the cast was Tina Louise aka Ginger on Gilligan's Island. It opened Dec. 15, 1952 and ran through March 8, 1953 at The Alvin Theatre before going on a road tour. Hiram Sherman won the Tony for best featured actor in a musical. Despite the musical's success, enough was enough and an offer to make a movie there combined with the warm treatment her received from the country led Dassin to move his family to France in 1953 where he was about to make his other masterpiece, Rififi.The 2004 L.A. County Museum of Art interview on the Criterion Naked City DVD took place after a screening of Rififi, part of a retrospective on the films of Dassin, so the bulk of the conversation concerned that movie. The person asking the questions was Bruce Goldstein, founder of Rialto Pictures and repertory director at New York's Film Forum. This was four years after his long interview where he spoke about the blacklist in detail, but it did show that he still kept abreast of current issues involving civil liberties well into his 90s.
GOLDSTEIN: How did you come to make a film in France?
DASSIN: A man was producing a film called Du Rififi Chez Les Hommes and he told me I was the only man who could make this film. Now this was after five years of nada, no work at all, but he still couldn't say why he needed me. He said he had a problem with Rififi — "All the bad guys are North Africans and at this time, France is having such problems with Algerians, you can make the bad guys Americans. When I said to him, "Have you thought of making them French?", he hadn't. Well, anyhow, I got that job for the same reason I was blacklisted.
GOLDSTEIN: That's all you wish to say about the blacklist?
DASSIN: Enough. We've got other things to worry about these days. I was thinking about The Patriot Act.
In his book The Films in My Life, François Truffaut wrote about Rififi, "Out of the worst crime novels I have ever read, Jules Dassin has made the best crime film I've ever seen." I haven't read the Auguste Le Breton novel, but I don't doubt Truffaut's word. Many people have said one of the elements Dassin didn't transfer to the movie from the novel were acts of necrophilia, so I think Dassin made the right choices in his adaptation of what might be the greatest heist film ever made. Dassin structures the film like
a solid three-act play. Act I: Planning the heist. Act II: Carrying it out. Act III: The aftermath. As has been the case since Brute Force, the technical aspects reach the highest levels of excellence from Alexandre Trauner's production design to Auguste Capelier's set decoration, from Roger Dwyre's editing (he'd go on to edit most of Dassin's films and had cut Rene Clement's Forbidden Games) to the evocative cinematography of Philippe Agostini. Much credit for the look belongs to Dassin, who admits in the 2000 interview on the Rififi DVD that he drove the producer crazy by refusing to shoot in sunlight because he wanted the film to be gray. Truffaut also wrote in his book that "Dassin revealed Paris to Frenchmen just as he revealed London to the English (Night and the City) and New York to the Americans (The Naked City)." Bosley Crowther was The New York Times film critic for 27 years until 1968. He tended to be a stick-in-the-mud who got off on meanness and dumping as many 10-cent words into a single sentence until it could hold no more, but he even managed a nice turn of praise phrase for Rififi: It has a flavor of crooks and kept women and Montmartre "boites" that you can just about smell. As great looking as Rififi is, a limited budget hampered what Dassin could do in terms of casting so for the part of Cesar the Milanese, the safecracking expert from Italy ("There's not a safe that can resist Cesar and not a woman that Cesar can resist."), he had to employ the actor Perlo Vita, which was the screen name used by a man known as Jules Dassin. In many of his later films, Dassin would end up playing a role because he'd run out of money to hire an actor with more experience. 
Having "Perlo Vita" play Cesar play a significant role didn't really cause a problem because for the most part, none of the performers were known outside of France and the one who was best known there — Jean Servais, who played Tony, the leader of the jewel thieves — hadn't made a film in France in a couple of years. Servais gives the film's performance as the stoic Tony, newly released from prison after five years and mad as hell that his girlfriend Mado (Marie Sabouret) has taken up with Louis Grutter (Pierre Grasset), the sleazy owner of the night club L'Âge d'Or, named after the famous Buñuel film on which Trauner also served as production designer. When Tony first gets out, his old pals Jo (Carl Möhner) and Mario (Robert Manuel) try to talk Tony into cutting out the display window of the jeweler Mappin & Webb (a real jewelry store who agreed to let their name and store be used in the movie. Tony opts out until he learns about Mado's betrayal and sees all the gifts that Grutter lavishes on her, so he contacts Jo and Mario with plans to go for the safe instead. They enlist Cesar the safecracker for the heist which will net them about 240 million francs worth of jewels. Ahh, but nothing comes easy, does it? In a way, Servais delivers the only performance, but Dassin fine-tunes each of the film's element to the point that Rififi practically runs as a machine all its own, rendering the quality of the acting nearly irrelevant. The various characters behave more as chess pieces to be moved around as the story's game requires than as representatives of people.
Dassin holds on to this material tightly, yet he still allows for some flourishes. At the club, a singer named Viviane (Magali Noël) performs a dance and sings the song "La chanson 'Le Rififi'" while a silhouette of a man with a gun dances behind a screen behind her. Among the lyrics: "It's the lingo of the streetwise/the battle cry of real tough guys/Rififi" followed by the sound of a gun punctuating the beat. By the way, Rififi is French slang for tough guy posturing by criminal elements in Paris. (If you haven't seen Rififi — and shame on you if you haven't — spoilers will abound from here on out, so I'd look away for the rest of this paragraph.) Grutter realizes that Tony
and his cohorts were behind the robbery when Cesar pockets a ring from the loot and shows it off to one of the girls who works at his club. First, Grutter gets rough with Cesar to get the address of Mario out of him. When Mario refuses to tell Grutter and his men where the jewels are, they demand he call Tony. Mario refuses, but his wife gives in and does it, only she warns Tony on the phone and Grutter's men kill them both. When Tony discovers the scene, he finds Cesar tied up at L'Âge d'Or, Cesar apologizes for giving up the address. In a departure from the novel, Tony tells Cesar he knows the rules for turning in your friends and kills him. Dassin admits in one of the interviews he added that because he was thinking of all those who betrayed friends by naming them to HUAC. Later, Grutter's gang kidnaps Jo's son and demand the jewels. When two of Grutter's men grab the little boy while he's in a park with his mom and push him in a car, his balloon floating aimlessly away, a passenger on a bus who witnesses the abduction warns his child, "Hold your balloon tight — see what can happen."
One single sequence though makes Rififi a landmark both in films and particularly in heist movies: the robbery itself. The way Tony and the guys steal the gems from Mappin & Webb is by breaking in to the apartment above the store and going in from above to do the rest of the safecracking, etc. Dassin films this in a 32-minute long silent sequence. No one speaks. Keeping everything as quiet as possible becomes the thieves' No. 1 priority. It's absolutely riveting. You'll be holding your breath as if you were involved in the crime yourself. Composer Georges Auric wrote Rififi's musical score.
Auric provided music for films from around the world including, up to this point in his career, Roman Holiday, The Wages of Fear, The Lavender Hill Mob, Orpheus, Beauty and the Beast and Blood of a Poet (the last three for Jean Cocteau) and Auric's first film score, Rene Clair's À Nous la Liberté. When Auric heard that Dassin had a 32-minute robbery sequence planned, he got excited and told him he was going to compose a huge piece of music for it. Dassin told him he didn't need to do this because he wanted it to play in silence, but Auric insisted and wrote the music anyway. When both the sequence and Auric's composition were done, Dassin asked Auric to come watch it with him — once with music, once without. Auric did as Dassin asked. Afterward, Auric turned to Dassin and told him to play the heist in silence.
Before Rififi began to be screened for public or professional consumption, Dassin showed it to his friend director Lewis Milestone, who won the Oscar for comedy direction the only time it was ever given for Two Arabian Knights as well as a second prize for All Quiet on the Western Front, and happened to be in Paris. His other credits included 1931's The Front Page and 1939's Of Mice and Men. Rififi wowed Milestone who advised Dassin that he should "make this film all your life and you'll be like Hitchcock." With the exception of one film in about a decade that was more or less a comic takeoff on the heist genre, Dassin did not follow Milestone's advice, compiling a quite eclectic filmography. Once Rififi began to be seen, critics kept saying Dassin owed a debt to John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle, a film that Dassin had never seen. Several years later, Dassin did see The Asphalt Jungle, but he failed to see specific comparisons except slightly in that an attractive woman becomes a character's undoing. One of the funniest revelations that Dassin made in one of the DVD interviews was that, though he is referred to as one of the masters of film
noir, he had never even heard the term until he moved to France. Rififi received such good word-of-mouth that it was accepted into the official competition at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival. Dassin himself was so broke he could barely go. When one of the film's producers gambled at a casino, he begged for a little cash so he could play. He asked what date they started shooting the movie. "The eighteenth," he was told. Dassin put all he was given down on the number 18 on a roulette table and it hit, providing his family with funds to live on for awhile. As for the festival, the perceived front-runner was the film Stella directed by Mihalis Kakogiannis (who would soon change his name to Michael Cacoyannis before he got around to directing Zorba the Greek) and featuring the film debut of actress Melina Mercouri. The Palme d'Or ended up going to the American film Marty while best director was shared between Dassin and Sergei Vasilyev for Heroes of Shipka. Six actress from the Russian film Bolshaya semya (A Big Family) shared best actress, leaving Mercouri empty-handed but she and Dassin met and soon became lifelong collaborators in every sense of the word, though he didn't divorce his first wife until 1962 and wed Mercouri until 1966. Ironically, the 1955 Cannes jury also awarded a prize for best dramatic film to Elia Kazan for East of Eden. I don't know if he and Dassin ran into each other. Of course, Dassin couldn't avoid controversy. There were complaints that Rififi could be viewed as a how-to film for would-be thieves. Dassin said his response always was that, if anything, the film showed that the price was too high and usually ended badly for those who attempted such adventures. When they captured the culprits behind a robbery spree in Mexico, they cited the movie as an inspiration. Critics of the film accused Dassin of making the core group of thieves too sympathetic (never mind that when Tony learns that Mado took on a new lover while he was in prison, he removes his belt and beats her savagely, though offscreen). Dassin admitted in one of the interviews that he couldn't help himself. "It's what's left of the old rebel in me — I always want my guys to succeed," he said.
Dassin's next film went in an entirely different direction from anything he had made before. According to Truffaut's book, Dassin considered the movie, "'the film of my life,' the first film he really chose to make, and made with complete freedom, a film in which he succeeded in expressing totally." Based on Nikos Kazantzakis' 1948 novel The Greek Passion (which was published in England as Christ Recrucified) took place in Lycovrissi, a Greek village in the 1920s held under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. Despite being Muslim, the Agha (Grégoire Aslan) who controls the village for the Turks allows the Greeks to stage the passion play they hold every seven years, even
though in private the Turks comment that "Allah is a cheerful artist, Jesus a melancholy god." Father Grigoris (Fernand Ledoux) picks who will play all the various roles and upsets some when he selects a stuttering shepherd named Manolios (Pierre Vaneck) to play Jesus. As you'd expect, the village's prostitute, Katerina, (Melina Mercouri, in her first film with her future husband) is cast as Mary Magdalene, An angry blacksmith Panagiotaros (Roger Hanin) who holds lots of grudges, including being passed over for the role of Christ, gets picked for the role of Judas. Outside the casting, there are other interesting characters such as the village's now figurehead of a leader, Archon Patriarcheas, who the Turks still allow to live well and for his own pleasure (played by Gert Frobe, who would go on to play Bond's best villain in the best 007 film, the title role of Goldfinger). The conflict comes when Greeks uprooted by Turks from another village arrive, starving and looking for shelter. They're led by their own priest, Father Fotis (Jean Servais from Rififi) but Father Grigoris suspects these new people aren't looking for charity but for land and spreads rumors of cholera about the newcomers, quarantining them to a mountainous area. It's all the reason the richer citizens of Lycovrissi need to ostracize them but, as you might expect, those involved in the passion play, start to take their roles seriously and Manolios dares to reach out to help the refugees. Georges Auric composed a boisterous score for the film and He Who Must Die contains many positive attributes, but I think Truffaut nailed the film's problems in his review in The Films in My Life:
"This time there is nothing but nobility, nobility, and more nobility — too much nobility for a film that displays an intellectual confusion seldom displayed in the history of cinema.…I must admit that this kind of subject, in which everyday people must transcend themselves by identifying with characters they personify, irritates me because it is so theatrical and so obvious. Knowing in advance that Judas will betray Christ, we pay attention only to how the blacksmith will betray the shepherd.…During the film, which I saw twice, I noted this sentence in the dialogue: 'The human brain is a fragile machine; one turn too many and it breaks down.' Jules Dassin gave one turn too many to his film; he has everything mixed up, tangled it all together, preaching and plasticity, reflections in mirrors, the lack of bread, rejected lovers, and children who die of cold."
He Who Must Die was in competition for the Palme d'Or at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, but lost to Friendly Persuasion. It did receive the OCIC (The International Catholic Organization for Cinema) Award — Special Mention.
Dassin went from the all-too-literal to the all-too-obscure with his next film, which didn't open in the U.S. until 1960 (and when it did, it was called Where the Hot Wind Blows!). Though Italy kicked Dassin out the last time he tried to make a movie there, the country allowed him to film there for his adaptation of French author Roger Vailland's 1957 La loi, which won France's highest literary prize, The Prix
Goncourt. Though the novel was written in French and Dassin would film the movie in French, it took place in a southern Italian fishing village on the Adriatic called Porto Manacore and starred Italian acting icons Gina Lollabrigida and Marcello Mastroianni and took its name from a game native to that part of Italy. Some non-Italians made the cast as well including French stars Yves Montand (The Wages of Fear) and Pierre Brasseur (Frédérick Lemaître in Children of Paradise) and, of course, Melina Mercouri. Brasseur plays Don Cesare, the aging, de facto leader of Porto Manacore. Lollabrigida is Marietta, one of the don's housekeepers, the object of lust for most of the village's men, and the object of scorn for others, especially Don Cesare's other
female servants who torture Marietta when they can since no one dreams of them. Montand, who gives the best performance of the film, plays Matteo Brigante, the local crime boss who loves to throw his weight around, but does it in a most charming way since he wants to assume Don Cesare's place of respect and wouldn't mind Marietta as well. He has his own personal problem in that his young son Franceso (Raf Mattioli, who died of a heart attack the next year at the young age of 24) has been having an affair with the judge's wife (Mercouri) and plans to run off with her. Mastroianni is Enrico Tosso, an agronomist from morthern Italy visiting the village who falls for Marietta (and she for him) but lacks the funds for a dowry. Marietta sets out to steal cash from a Swiss tourist so they can be together while Don Cesare advises that Enrico should go observe a session of The Law to see what it's all about, since it's such a regional phenomenon he's unfamiliar with the game. Almost nightly, men gather in a town tavern to play the game, but when Enrico shows up to be a spectator, Brigante forces him to participate even though he doesn't know the rules. Explaining The Law (the movie) proves less complicated than describing the game it's based on. Author Vailland appeared on the French talk show Lectures pour tous on Dec. 4, 1957, where host Michel Butor interviewed him about the game. The two-disc Oscilloscope DVD set of The Law includes the interview. VAILLAND: First off, it's a card game (that only exists) in southern Italy.
BUTOR: It's a card game that shows the feudal system still strong in this region…Let's say first the rules…and who plays…
VAILLAND: The rules are very simple. First, you need a winner, like in any game, but the game only starts when the winner has been designated by luck — by a card game or a dice roll — and The Law becomes an exciting and cruel game because the winner can impose The Law on the loser.
BUTOR: What does that mean?
VAILLAND: It means asking questions that they must answer which insult them in a more or less subtle way and they must endure it, even if it wounds their honor.
BUTOR: Is it the game of Truth?
VAILLAND: In the sense of honor, which is very strong in southern Italy. The same insult in real life would provoke a violent response, but in the game of Law, it's in the rules. The loser must lay his hands on the table and be subjected to The Law.
Did that clear things up? Didn't think so. It doesn't really match the movie's depictions of the game either. (He doesn't bring up the winner
being given the title of "the boss," picking a deputy boss, naming an idiot, etc.) In the end, it hardly matters. I imagine if you hail from southern Italy, it's conceivable that additional layers of meaning might be found in The Law that escapes viewers from the rest of the world. Since that includes the overwhelming majority of us, let's just forget about the game's relevance to the plot. They might as well be playing Quintet. In spite of The Law lacking a truly coherent story, Dassin does have a great, fluid sequence toward the opening of the film that begins with the release of a pigeon from the first scene landing on a building. From there, in seemingly one take, the camera moves along the windows of the building, catching the various goings-on in the apartments as if we're Jeff in Rear Window gazing through our telephoto lens as the people in the different rooms strain to see the source of a siren's song that turns out, of course, to be Marietta warbling while she washes the don's boots on a balcony of his nearby villa. Nearly the entire cast make the effort watchable, especially the great Montand who revels in Brigante's sleaze, even if you're unsure at the end what the hell you just watched.
I didn't get a chance to re-watch this one, but when I first saw this a few years back, I was underwhelmed, but it may be Dassin's most important post-blacklist film, not in terms of quality but in what it represented. First of all, it was a huge hit. Second, 1960 more or less brought an official end to the blacklist on several fronts. Kirk Douglas released Spartacus and defied the list by allowing screenwriter Dalton Trumbo's credit to appear. When the Oscar nominations came out, Dassin was nominated for both best director and best story and
screenplay for Never on Sunday, the only two Oscar nominations Dassin ever received. The movie as a whole received five nominations, including best actress for Melina Mercouri and won best original song for the title track. Mercouri had won best actress at Cannes, tying with Jeanne Moreau for her work in Peter Brook's Seven Days…Seven Nights (known as Moderato cantabile in France). Not everything was perfect: Nedrick Young who co-wrote Inherit the Wind was nominated under the pseudonym Nathan E. Douglas, though the Academy restored Young's name to the records in 1993. In one of the DVD interviews, Dassin told another funny anecdote. When he was making Never on Sunday, he ran short on financing and again had to cast himself, this time as the lead. Before the film had been released outside of Greece (where it was a huge hit anyway), Jack Lemmon happened to be Athens and Dassin showed it to him, hoping somehow that he could come up with money to re-shoot his scenes with Lemmon playing his part. After watching it, Lemmon told Dassin, "You're terrible in this film, but it's charming." He advised him to leave it the way it was. With Dassin's terrible performance intact, the movie was a hit everywhere, grossing an estimated $8 million as of January 1962 off a $151,000 budget. He returned to New York briefly in early 1962 to direct a new play on Broadway by Robert L. Joseph about a dying child called Isle of Children. It starred Patty Duke, the same year she would repeat her stage success as Helen Keller in movie of The Miracle Worker. The cast also included Bonnie Bedelia. The play got mixed reviews and ran for a mere 11 performances.
This attempt to do a modern twist on the ancient Greek myth of Phaedra falls into overheated melodrama and little else. Dassin manages some nice shots and the cinematography by Jacques Natteau and especially Max Douy's art direction are exceptional. Raf Vallone does what he can as the Greek shipping magnate and Melina Mercouri floats between good and bad as the title temptress, but Anthony Perkins at times almost goes as over-the-top as Vallone's son as he did as the weirdo priest in Ken Russell's Crimes of Passion.
Sometimes it can be hysterical when someone satirizes one of their most famous roles or movies (Think Marlon Brando in The Freshman). Dassin should have been more than capable to do a comic riff on Rififi, but Topkapi is not that movie. It throws Maximilian Schell (who, by coincidence, would be hysterical in The Freshman), Melina Mercouri (as always), Robert Morley and Peter Ustinov, sweating up a storm and winning his second Oscar for supporting actor as the chase begins to abscond with a jeweled dagger from a museum in Istanbul. It's meant to be funny, but the jokes fall flat. What's most notable is that 22 years after Dassin directed his first feature film, Topkapi marked the first time he filmed in color. What always has bugged me is that, as much as I love Ustinov generally, how could he win the Oscar in 1964 for this? His official competition that he beat was John Gielgud in Becket, Stanley Holloway in My Fair Lady, Edmond O'Brien in Seven Days in May and my choice of their nominees, Lee Tracy in The Best Man. This doesn't include people who didn't make the cut such as Sterling Hayden and George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove, Gert Frobe in Goldfinger, Richard Attenborough (Seance on a Wet Afternoon) — that's just a handful that come to mind.
I haven't seen Dassin's next film, 1966's 10:30 P.M. Summer, based on Marguerite Duras' novel Dix heures et demie du soir en été. Duras and Dassin co-wrote the screenplay. I borrowed part of a post that Roderick Heath wrote at Ferdy on Films
10:30 P.M. Summer looks to me like a transitional film. Today, spare, cryptic portraits of the psychic and sexual life are more common; how to create psychologically and emotionally penetrating works of film was a major question for earlier directors. This film, like Losey and Pinter’s Accident (1967), which possibly had an easier time of it for centering more happily on male sexual transgressions, or Tony Richardson’s Mademoiselle (1966), stand somewhere between the stylistics of the “alienation” films of the early ’60s and the playfulness of the new wave, and the approaching full-bore works of Bertolucci, Breillat, Eustache and others.
…
Whilst no masterpiece, it’s far better than its reputation reflects, and it’s a film worth finding.
Dassin and Mercouri decided for their next project to return to the material that gave them their greatest success and they turned Never on Sunday into the Broadway musical Illya Darling. Mercouri repeated her role, but Dassin was glad to stick to directing and writing the musical's book. He let Orson Bean play his part from the movie. This might have been a sign that they were making a good move: the musical was booked into The Mark Hellinger Theatre, named after the independent producer of his first two great films, Brute Force and The Naked City, but who had a career as a New York theater critic and columnist prior to that. It no longer exists as a theater as the Nederlanders has leased the theater to the Times Square Church since 1989. The musical's cast also included Hal Linden and had music by Manos Hadjidakis and lyrics by Joe Darion (who wrote the lyrics for Man of La Mancha). Illya Darling received six Tony nominations (best musical, best composer & lyricist, best director, best choreography, best actress for Mercouri and best featured actor for Nikos Kourkoulos). Though it didn't win any Tonys, the show ran for 320 performances.
While Dassin and Mercouri were in New York with the musical, a military coup took place in Greece. The couple were vocal in their opposition and accused of helping to finance the opposition so they were banned from returning to Greece for seven years. At first, they toured with the musical. Later, Dassin decided to make a documentary about the six-day war in the Middle East, another film I haven't seen. Titled Survival '67, it was filmed in Israel, written by Irwin Shaw and released in 1968. Here is an excerpt of Renata Adler's New York Times review:
By Renata Adler for The New York Times
"describes itself as 'a paean to Israel.' What gets lost is the brave, tragic war itself. (There is hardly any documentary war footage at all.) The film, which keeps crossing what little moving footage it has — wounded men, monuments to Babi Yar and Buchenwald — by an inability to shut up, is poor and ineffective propaganda.
…
It is also poor reporting — it simply does not tell us anything that we did not know already, and what it does tell — in fuzzy interviews about, for example, the Arab refugee problem — it tells unclearly. Everything about it is off."
While Jules Dassin and Melina Mercouri were exiled from their home in Greece, they lived in New York. For the first time since Thieves' Highway, Dassin contracted to make a feature for an American studio (Paramount). For the first time since He Who Must Die, he also was making a feature that didn't have Mercouri in the cast because Uptight had an all-black cast. Truly a film of the moment, Uptight takes place in Cleveland four days after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. In another respect, it wasn't of the moment since Dassin was remaking The Informer, the film the won John Ford his first directing Oscar in 1935 and changing the milieu from Irish revolutionaries to black militants. It starts with a hyperactive animated credit sequence set to music by Booker T. Jones. Dassin co-wrote the screenplay with Ruby Dee and Julian Mayfield, both of whom played roles in the film. As a time capsule film, Uptight remains an interesting experience and it contains some really good performances, especially by Raymond St. Jacques as a militant leader and Roscoe Lee Browne as a smooth operator who'll sell anyone out for the right price. Dassin takes a lot of flights of fancy, particularly in one drugged-out sequence involving crazy mirrors at an amusement park.
In 1970, he directed Mercouri in Promise at Dawn. Of the film, Roger Ebert wrote:
Jules Dassin's Promise at Dawn is a warmly drawn love poem in two parts, one dealing with style and the other with the story. Of the two, the first is more interesting: Dassin's treatment of his wife, Melina Mercouri, is a marriage of script, photography and performance designed to showcase her talent and beauty. The second love story — the love Melina's character has for her son — is rather static and even a little distracting in these decades after Freud.
In 1974. as described on the Melina Mercouri Foundation website, "On the occasion of the November 1974 Athens Polytechnic student revolt, Dassin, still exiled, filmed in New York The Rehearsal, a political documentary with the free participation of Olympia Dukakis, Lillian Hellman, Melina Mercouri, Sir Laurence Olivier, Manuella Pavlidou, Maximillian Schell, Mikis Theodorakis and others. Dassin considered this to have been one of his best films. It was due to be distributed on the day of the fall of the dictatorship and became untimely. Therefore it was never released. After the collapse of the junta, Jules Dassin and Melina Mercouri returned to Greece where they settled for the rest of their lives. Melina was actively involved in the establishment and promotion of the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Party."
Dassin's penultimate film, A Dream of Passion, came out in 1978 and told the story of an actress (Mercouri) preparing to play Medea who spends time with an imprisoned American woman (Ellen Burstyn) who, like Medea, killed her own children. I'm ashamed to admit that Dassin's final film happens to be the first film of his that I saw, It was 1981's A Circle of Two starring Tatum O'Neal as a college-age student obsessed with a famous artist played by Richard Burton. This was on either HBO or Showtime soon after we had it for the first time and I was in junior high. All I knew was the girl I had a crush on since The Bad News Bears and Little Darlings took off her top in it. I couldn't tell you anything about the movie and I didn't know who the hell Jules Dassin was. I certainly do now. Everyone should.
Dassin continued to direct plays once he stopped making movies and Mercouri turned to politics, becoming the longest-serving cultural minister in Greece's history. She made it a campaign to get the Parthenon or Elgin Marbles returned to Greece from the British Museum in England that had held them for more than 200 years. Unfortunately, the debate has continued past the deaths of both Dassin and Mercouri, though popular opinion in both countries side with returning the marbles to Greece.
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Labels: Bette, blacklist, Brando, Buñuel, Burstyn, Ebert, Harold Pinter, Huston, J. Robbins, John Ford, Julie Christie, K. Douglas, Kazan, Lemmon, Mastroianni, Milestone, Montand, Olivier, Oscars, Truffaut
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Sunday, August 07, 2011
A soul is never lost, no matter what overcoat you put on
By Edward Copeland
As people who read me regularly know, it takes a lot to get me to see a remake of a movie I deemed very good or better because I find that it is usually A). Pointless. and B). Almost certain to disappoint. The instances where a remake turned out better than a good or great original have been few. I hadn't established this rule when I saw 1978's Heaven Can Wait starring Warren Beatty, co-written by Beatty and Elaine May and co-directed by Beatty and Buck Henry. At the time, I didn't even know it was a remake of 1941's Here Comes Mr. Jordan, which marks its 70th anniversary today. Those two films mark a rare time when the original and its remake nearly equal each other in quality (The third time was not a charm when Chris Rock tried to re-do it as Down to Earth). Today, we celebrate Here Comes Mr. Jordan on its birthday and watching it again, the movie continues to hold up, though I admit that Beatty's version bests it in some areas.
Here Comes Mr. Jordan didn't begin as an original screenplay. Sidney Buchman & Seton I. Miller adapted Harry Segall's play Heaven Can Wait and rechristened it with the new title, though Beatty brought the orignal moniker back when he remade the story in 1978. Both versions were nominated for the Oscar for best picture, though both lost. (To add a little confusion to different titles for the two best picture nominees, in 1943, Ernst Lubitsch directed the film version of the play Birthday and called it Heaven Can Wait and it received a nomination for best picture. So there are two best picture nominees called Heaven Can Wait, but they have nothing to do with one another.)
Here Comes Mr. Jordan begins with some words on the screen telling us about "this fantastic yarn" they heard from Max Corkle that they just had to share with us. Then following the credits, more words set up the movie's opening locale, telling us, just a few words at a time, accompanied by images of nature:
where all is…
Peace…
and Harmony…
and Love…
After the literal punchline, we meet boxer Joe Pendleton (Robert Montgomery) as he finishes his sparring match and climbs out of the ring to speak with his manager Max Corkle (James Gleason). Max has news for his prized fighter — it appears that he has finally managed to get Joe a chance at the world title with a bout against the current champ, only they'll have to leave their ideal New Jersey training camp immediately and hop the train to New York. Pendleton can't wait to leave, but he'll meet them there — it will give him some time for his hobby — flying his plane. Corkle begs him not to fly, but Joe tells him not to worry, he will have his lucky saxophone with him, which he begins playing much to Corkle's annoyance. Joe takes to the air, lucky sax with him. He even tries playing it and flying at the same time — until part of the plane starts to rip apart. He puts his sax down and tries to regain control of the aircraft, but it's too late — the plane spirals to earth and crashes.
With the impact with which the plane hit, leaving nothing but crumpled wreckage, it's understandable that someone such as Messenger 7013 (the always delightful Edward Everett Horton) would presume Pendleton was toast. Unfortunately, 7013 is new to his job as an afterlife guide and this is his first assignment. He
breaks a cardinal rule: He removes Joe's soul before it's confirmed that he would have died in the crash. So, when Joe, still clutching his sax, and his guide arrive in the cloud-strewn weigh station where the newly dead board a plane to their final destination, Joe protests quite adamantly that he isn't dead. He's in great shape "in the pink," as he says. His assignment annoys 7013 quite a bit and he's making so much noise that he's attracted the attention of the man in charge of the weigh station, Mr. Jordan (Claude Rains). When Jordan finds that Pendleton isn't on the list of new arrivals, he has the plane's co-pilot (a young Lloyd Bridges) radio for information on when Joe Pendleton was due to arrive. The information comes back: Joe would have survived the crash. He wasn't scheduled to die until 1991. (Robert Montgomery almost made that in real life: He died in 1981.) Jordan chastises 7013 for being premature and decides to handle Joe's case himself: They'll have to return him to his body.
Easier said than done. When Mr. Jordan and Joe arrive at the crash scene, his body already has been retrieved, so he's been discovered and likely declared dead. Joe suggests they find Corkle so they head to New York, passing a newspaper boy touting the news of his death in a plane crash. When they get to Max's apartment, a devastated Corkle greets mourners, including a group of neighborhood kids saying what a swell guy Joe was. They'd been planning to take flowers to where Max says they took Joe, but couldn't remember what he called it. "Crematorium," Max reminds them. Uh-oh. Not only has Pendleton's death been reported already, his body no longer exists for Mr. Jordan to re-insert his soul even if a resurrection could be rationally explained at this point. Joe demands satisfaction for this screwup — they owe him 50 more years of life — so Mr, Jordan proposes that they find another body for him. Inside, he'll still be Joe Pendleton, but on the outside he'll take on another person who was due to die's identity. Joe does have some demands: He was on the verge of getting a shot at the world boxing title so whatever body they find has to be in shape so he can accomplish the same task. After previewing countless bodies around the world, none of which meet Joe's standards, Jordan takes him to yet
another one, saying he thinks this one might be promising. Pendleton reminds him again that he needs to be in good physical condition because, "I was in the pink." Jordan, who seems an extremely patient sort, has grown tired of finicky Joe, particularly this phrase. "That is becoming a most obnoxious color. Don't use it again," Jordan tells him. They are outside the gates of a mansion. Jordan explains the wealthy banker inherited his fortune and his name is Bruce Farnsworth (though it was changed to Leo in Heaven Can Wait because in the '70s, no one liked the name Bruce for some reason. Just ask TV's The Incredible Hulk). Jordan sits down at the piano and calmly starts flipping through sheet music. Joe asks where this Farnsworth is and Jordan explains he's upstairs being drowned to death — murdered by his wife and personal secretary. Joe goes nuts. Shouldn't they be calling the police? Jordan has to remind him again that no one can see or hear them. Joe already has made up his mind not to take a body that's mixed up in murder and they should skedaddle, but Jordan has to wait and collect Farnsworth, regardless of whether Joe accepts his body or not. Jordan stops looking through the music and turns and faces Joe. "It's over," he says, indicating that Farnsworth is dead.
Jordan, though he works on Heaven's side, does have a bit of devilish manipulation in him (as Rains always played so well, and would five years later as the devil himself in another film from a story by Harry Segall, Angel on My Shoulder). Until Farnsworth's body is discovered, Jordan still has time to talk Joe into taking his body. They eavesdrop as the co-conspirators come downstairs and the personal secretary Tony Abbott (John Emery) tries to calm the nerves of Farnsworth's wife Julia (Rita Johnson), reassuring her that they won't be caught and that Bruce certainly is dead. Watching Here Comes Mr. Jordan this time, it's
impossible not to say that Heaven Can Wait certainly did a better job in the casting of Abbott and Julia. It isn't that Emery and Johnson are bad, but their characters are far less important in the original film while in the remake when the parts were placed in the very capable hands of Charles Grodin and Dyan Cannon, not only were the roles beefed up, they also were hilarious villains. Emery and Johnson play straight-faced villains for the most part whereas Grodin and Cannon added to the comic ensemble. You're laughing as they botch attempt after attempt on Warren Beatty's Joe Pendleton. Back in the 1941 version, while Robert Montgomery's Joe finds it interesting that he can listen in on these newly minted murderers, he also finds it frustrating that he can't punish them somehow. He asks Mr. Jordan what happens if these two killed him again. Won't he be in the same predicament he's in now? Jordan describes the human body as nothing more than an overcoat. What makes a person who he or she really is resides inside. "A soul is never lost, no matter what overcoat you put on," Jordan tells Joe. Then, the game changer enters in the form of a beautiful woman (Evelyn Keyes) asking to see Mr. Farnsworth. Now, Joe is intrigued.Her name is Bette Logan (when Julie Christie played the role in Heaven Can Wait along with many of her details being changed to explain her British accent, they also changed the spelling of her first name to Betty for some reason) and she wants to see Farnsworth because her father has been accused by the currently dead
tycoon in a stock swindle that Farnsworth himself perpetrated and framed Bette's father for, putting the man behind bars. Bette knows her father is innocent and wants to plead to Farnsworth to look personally into the story and help prove that he didn't steal anything from him. At first, Abbott and Julia act quite sympathetic to Ms. Logan, mainly because Abbott has whispered to Julia before the butler Sisk (Halliwell Hobbes) showed her in that she'd help their story if they are meeting with her when Farnsworth's body is found. Joe and Jordan serve as invisible witnesses to Bette's story and it touches Pendleton, who tells Jordan he wishes he could help her. Jordan tells Joe he can — if he becomes Bruce Farnsworth. Joe stays on the fence, but that's when Abbott sends Sisk upstairs to fetch the dead man. Jordan reminds him that there isn't much time to decide now. As Sisk heads upstairs, Abbott and Julia turn on Bette, saying her father is guilty of all of
which he is accused. Joe asks Jordan if he can just use Farnsworth's body long enough to help Bette and then find a body in better shape. Jordan agrees and before he knows it, the two are upstairs in Farnsworth's bathroom. Jordan wraps a robe around Joe as he climbs out of the tub, but Pendleton looks in the mirror and still sees himself and when he opens his mouth, he sounds the same. Sisk knocks on the door, asking if he's OK. Jordan assures Joe that he only looks and sounds the same to himself. The rest of the world will see and hear him as Bruce Farnsworth. Joe answers Sisk that he'll be out in a minute and Sisk doesn't appear suspicious. Pendleton remains worried as he leaves the bathroom wearing the robe, obviously too big for his body. He almost marches straight downstairs until Sisk reminds him what he is wearing and that perhaps he should get dressed first. Then Sisk notices something he's never seen before and asks his employer if it's his. Of course, Pendleton says, taking his lucky sax.Once Sisk has helped dress Joe/Farnsworth in what appears to be a more dapper-looking robe, he heads downstairs, much to the shock of Abbott and Julia. If the conspirators weren't confused enough that he isn't dead, they become downright dumbfounded when he starts speaking to Bette in a friendly tone and indicating that he's sure they can solve her problem. Abbott, who's aware that Farnsworth committed the crime himself, steps in and tries to scuttle the inroads Joe tries to make until a frustrated Bette leaves. Joe orders Abbott and Julia out of the study so he can practice his saxophone. When they exit, he consults Mr. Jordan, dejected because Bette hates him but Jordan tells him to give it time. Then Joe sets out to get to work on his other project — getting Farnsworth's flabby body into fighting shape and he's going to need Max Corkle for that.
Gleason most decidedly deserved his Oscar nomination as Corkle. He was another in the seemingly endless line of dependable character players of the 1930s and '40s, usually in comedies, but he never seemed to let the moviegoer down even if he was in a film that did. He's joined in Here Comes Mr. Jordan with another
example in Edward Everett Horton, but his role is a rather small one and doesn't equal the best of his work from the 1930s. Then of course, they've got the versatile Claude Rains along too, who could seemingly do it all — lead or supporting — in every possible genre: comedy, drama, action, adventure, horror, you name it. However, Here Comes Mr. Jordan is Gleason's time to shine, earning him his sole nomination the same year he was one of the best parts of Capra's Meet John Doe. His career lasted well into the late '50s, including Charles Laughton's sole directing effort The Night of the Hunter with arguably Robert Mitchum's most indelible role and his penultimate film was John Ford's great political drama The Last Hurrah starring Spencer Tracy. Gleason also has some credits as a director and a writer (which unfortunately includes being responsible for the dialogue in my choice for the worst best picture winner of all time, The Broadway Melody). The scene where Corkle shows up at the
Farnsworth estate — and nearly gets kicked out by Abbott who doesn't know why he's there, not that Max does either — is a comic highlight as Joe inside Farnsworth's body works overtime to convince his manager that he really is Joe Pendleton and not some insane rich guy. Corkle is just convinced Farnsworth is a nutjob, especially when he begins talking to the invisible (to Max anyway) Mr. Jordan asking how to convince him. Finally, Joe thinks of the obvious and pulls out the sax. Max starts to believe. Joe explains he wants to get ready to get back in the ring, but he needs him to train him. He even promises to give Corkle 40 percent of whatever he wins. This is another area where Heaven Can Wait makes a bit more sense. Farnsworth would still have to fight his way up to get near the championship. It's a little less ludicrous when Warren Beatty's Farnsworth simply buys the football team and makes himself a player on it, but then Montgomery's Farnsworth won't have to worry about any bouts. As Corkle continues to try to believe what he's heard, Sisk interrupts to announce that Ms. Logan has returned, so Joe excuses himself for a moment and it's funny as Gleason's Corkle talks to the now-departed Jordan and feels around to see if he's there.
Needless to say, not only does Joe as Farnsworth get Bette's father off the hook, the pair fall in love as well. Bette worries, since Farnsworth has a wife, but Joe tries to explain the state of their relationship. He can't go into his real identity since she wouldn't know who Joe Pendleton is and saying that Julia and Abbott tried to kill him has risks as well, so he just leaves it as they are separated and she's cheating on him. He's very unhappy one day when Messenger 7013 shows up, telling Joe that it's time to exit Farnsworth. He orders him out, telling him he's "always gumming up the works." Now that he loves Bette, he's fine with Farnsworth. Mr. Jordan returns and reminds Joe that he asked to use Farnsworth on a
temporary basis. Joe ignores him and proceeds to make a phone call until a shot is heard and he falls to the floor, but he's fighting. Jordan has to coax him into leaving Farnsworth's body before it's too late. Abbott and Julia are thrilled that it worked this time and hide his body. Bette is beside herself, Corkle can't believe it's happened again, commenting that "Forty percent of a ghost is forty percent of nothing" and a new character, Inspector Williams of the police department (Donald MacBride) starts investigating Farnsworth's disappearance since Corkle tells him that Abbott and Julia killed him once before, but since he phrased it that way, Williams suspects Corkle may just be a kook. Max remains persistent while Abbott and Julia try to point suspicions at Bette, even though her father was cleared. The inspector just gets frustrated with the nonsense.Even if you haven't seen Here Comes Mr. Jordan or any of its remakes, good or bad, you probably have a good idea how things resolve themselves and while both it and Heaven Can Wait pack plenty of laughs for most of their running times and the romances in both films are rather run-of-the-mill, they still manage to be quite touching in their final moments, not just in the resolution of Joe and Bette/Betty but even more so with the realization that when Joe gets placed in his permanent body, his Pendleton memories are lost and both James Gleason and Jack Warden perfectly captured that bittersweet moment for Max Corkle in their respective films.
Admittedly, for a film I enjoy as much as I enjoy Here Comes Mr. Jordan, I never remember who directed it. Even when I see the name Alexander Hall, it rings no bells. Only one other title on his filmography sticks out and that's Rosalind Russell in My Sister Eileen. I have seen the last film he directed and it's somewhat ironic that it's that one. It's the 1956 Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz vehicle Forever, Darling where Ball's character gets advice from a guardian angel who takes the form of her favorite actor, James Mason. I only saw the film because I was working on my centennial tribute to Mason back in 2009. Otherwise, I can't imagine any other circumstances that would have made me watch it, but it is funny that the final film Hall helmed featured Mason as a guardian angel and then 22 years later Mason would play Mr. Jordan, another character from above, in Heaven Can Wait. Mason is very good in the role, but for me, there is only one Mr. Jordan.
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Labels: 40s, Buck Henry, Capra, Grodin, Jack Warden, John Ford, Julie Christie, L. Ball, Laughton, Lubitsch, Mason, Mitchum, Movie Tributes, Oscars, Rains, Remakes, Roz Russell, Tracy, W. Beatty
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Friday, June 24, 2011
He was just some Joseph lookin' for a manger
By Edward Copeland
When Robert Altman made a Western, you could be certain it wouldn't be a conventional one. At the same time, when McCabe & Mrs. Miller opened 40 years ago today, it did use genre basics to launch its tale before it ventured on its own idiosyncratic path. The camera opens on the vivid yellow, green and brown foliage that covers the mountains — the lush vision shown in the wide Panavision ratio of 2:35:1 without which you shouldn't see this film — then it pans right as the trees begin to vanish and we see the stranger on horseback appear on the dirt path, pulling another horse behind him. As the camera continues to chart the progress of the man wrapped in a fur coat, yellow credits begin to scroll on screen from right to left in direct opposition to the movement of the man and the camera. Accompanying both on the soundtrack is Leonard Cohen singing "The Stranger Song." The lyrics seem haunting and wholly appropriate, even though they weren't written specifically for this film. "Like he was giving up the holy game of poker." As the stranger finally gets closer to the Pacific Northwest mining town of Presbyterian Church, he loses his coat for his standard black suit and places his black bowler atop his head. We see that it's our film's star, Warren Beatty.
The minute the man stores his horses and steps into Sheehan's Saloon and Tavern, run by Patrick Sheehan (Rene Auberjonois, one of many members of Altman's already growing repertory company present in the film), the film's magnificent interior look, engineered by cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, entrances you. The sharp-dressed stranger attracts the attention of everyone present — Sheehan even offers him a bottle of liquor on the house. He hasn't been there too long when he asks if there's a back door and exits through it, puzzling Sheehan and the rest who think he's gone already. However, he's just fetched a blanket from the pack on his horse and returns, clearing off a table and carefully placing the covering over it like a tablecloth so he can engage the locals in a game of cards. He reminds Sheehan of his offer, but Sheehan worries that he's not going to make up for it. "How about we go fifty-fifty then?" the stranger suggests. Sheehan asks if he means he'd share his profits. "You want to share the losses?"
Sheehan points out that he is the one supplying the place for the game. "Yeah, but I think I supply the customers," the new arrival says. "Nobody's bought nothing yet," Sheehan complains. The stranger tells him he'll buy a $2 bottle for the rest of the table, stand on his own profits and Sheehan can make a profit off the whiskey. Sheehan agrees. He proposes five-card stud and since he doesn't know any of them and they don't know him, puts the price at a nickel a game. As Sheehan prepares the drinks at the bar, another patron asks if he realizes who the stranger is. Sheehan does not. The patron says that it's the gunfighter John McCabe who killed Bill Roundtree. When Sheehan returns to the table, he pours him a drink and says, "It's on the house, Mr. McCabe." He thanks him. "You didn't say your name was McCabe when you came in," Sheehan says. "I didn't say it now either. You did," McCabe replies. Sheehan asks if he's a gunfighter. With cigar in his mouth, McCabe answers, "Businessman." As the film will develop, we'll learn that John McCabe isn't much of either, but he isn't one who's about to let a good legend go to waste if it serves his purpose in the short run, even if it will cost him in the end. Most of the time, I've always found Beatty to be a very limited actor — more star than actor. However, revisiting McCabe for the first time in a long time, this may well be the best performance he's ever given. Now, Altman never worshipped at the altar of plot, even when his name appeared as co-writer on a screenplay as it did here. He spoke at length on the subject in the DVD commentary which I wrote about yesterday if you didn't read it. Altman's credited co-writer on the screenplay is Brian McKay, a writer for whom McCabe & Mrs. Miller appears as his sole feature film credit on IMDb and no television writing credits appear after a 1982 episode of Cagney & Lacey. The movie was based on the novel McCabe by Edmund Naughton. However, these facts are merely incidental — just as McCabe & Mrs. Miller isn't exactly a Western as most have come to know the term, it's not strictly a character study either. First and foremost, it's a Robert Altman film, one of those times when the late director got a hold of financing, cameras, actors, a crew and the things he needed for what intrigued him at that moment and did his cinematic dance, part strictly thought out, much improvised and lots that came about by happy accident. That style didn't always work throughout his long career that still ended too soon, but when it did, as in McCabe & Mrs. Miller, movie magic resulted. As Pauline Kael wrote in her July 3, 1971, review of the film in The New Yorker, "Though Altman's method is a step toward a new kind of movie naturalism, the technique may seem mannered to those who are put off by the violation of custom — as if he simply didn't want to be straightforward about his storytelling.…He can't be straightforward in the old way, because he's improvising meanings and connections, trying to find his movie in the course of making it…"
Writing this 40th anniversary tribute, it isn't easy deciding where to go with it. Even the briefest plot synopsis would seem to be pointless and a disservice to Altman, yet there are bits of dialogue here and there worth repeating that need context. Heaping individual praise on the various artists involved in the work might get repetitive after awhile. I did just cite a long Kael quote, but this should be what I think not what someone else
did or does. For me, watching McCabe & Mrs. Miller again not only was it better than the last time I saw it (each viewing raises it in my estimation), but it also was the first time I watched it post-Deadwood. Back in 2006, The House Next Door, before it became part of Slant Magazine and existed as its own blog, it held a Robert Altman blog-a-thon in honor of the director finally receiving an honorary Oscar. My friend and House founder and editor emeritus Matt Zoller Seitz interviewed Deadwood creator, executive producer and head writer David Milch about the influence of McCabe & Mrs. Miller on his HBO series. I felt like an idiot at the time because the parallels were so obvious I couldn't believe I hadn't picked up on it before. Besides the obvious similarities of communities being formed around dirty little camps, where people seek escape in various vices such as gambling, prostitution, liquor or other substances to bring on highs (opium in McCabe, laudanum in Deadwood), Milch had this to say about the film's title characters and how they explain the film.by the impulse to impress Mrs. Miller, who is herself moved to sort of organize her life upon the embrace
of illusion. These characters pile one illusion upon another illusion and they end up building something bigger than themselves. 'McCabe and Mrs. Miller' presents the agreement upon illusion as the liberation of an energy that is greater than one person can generate."
That's actually as good a segue as any to start talking about Mrs. Miller as played by the incomparable Julie Christie. Beatty and Christie were a real-life couple prior to the making of the film and while Beatty's McCabe was a drunk who let others' mistaken perception of him build a small powerbase in the zinc mining town,
Christie's Constance Miller was an admitted Cockney whore with limitless ambition to succeed and an unfortunate opium habit. From the moment she arrives in Presbyterian Church, when McCabe only has three iffy prostitutes working out of tents, she hits him up with the idea of how things should be. "I'm a whore and I know about whorehouses," she tells him. "I'm talking about a proper whorehouse with class girls and clean linens and proper hygiene." McCabe isn't keen on taking on partners — he's already turned down one from Sheehan — and certainly not entering a partnership with a woman. The feisty Miller eventually walks out on him, saying that she "don't have a lot of time to spend talking to a man who don't see a good proposition when it's put to him." In a typical film, there would eventually be a romance between these two and while they do unite in business and in bed, the carnal coupling comes when she's high and he's paid. When she isn't stoned though, Mrs. Miller
displays far more savvy when it comes to business and other matters than McCabe does. When her whores arrive, in a memorably muddy, rain-drenched sequence, the quality — and the prices go up considerably from the trio of "Bearpaw whores" McCabe had been using out of tents, who then got transferred to other jobs such as cooks and laundresses. Mrs. Miller knows what she's doing, even though McCabe complains about his cost outlays for a bathhouse, transportation, towels, linens, enema bags. "I've paid for things those chippies of yours don't even know how to use," he says to her, to Mrs. Miller's frustration. "You think small because you are afraid to think big," she tells McCabe. She also takes care of the new widow Ida (Shelley Duvall), who arrived as a mail-order bride for miner Bart Coyle (Bert Remsen) who dies in a fight when a man mistakes Ida as one of the whores. With Bart dead, Ida is forced to work for Mrs. Miller. Ida explains that when she had sex with Bart, it was out of duty and she doesn't know if she can do perform as a prostitute. Mrs. Miller spells it out for Ida. "It wasn't your duty. You did it for your room and board. Now, you'll do it for your room and board and get to keep some for yourself after."The other similarity between McCabe and Deadwood really follows more along the lines with the main storyline of Milch's third season, when rich business tycoon George Hearst invades the town and starts pushing his weight around to get a hold of the rich gold mining interests and control of the town itself. John McCabe
and the rest of the inhabitants don't own the zinc mines where most of Presbyterian Church's citizens work, but the mines' owner, the company Harrison Shaughnessy, are anxious to control the small piece of civilization that McCabe has developed. Though when he first arrived, he called himself a businessman, he's not much of one and when two agents for the company (Michael Murphy, Anthony Holland) arrive attempting to buy his holding, the inebriated McCabe sees it as a game, refusing their offer
and giving much higher ones when he's not drunkenly sharing jokes about frogs and eagles and offering them whores on the house. He tells them he'll meet them for breakfast in the morning and talk some more. The younger of the agent, Sears (Murphy) thinks he's just negotiating and is more than willing to stay and talk but the older agent Hollander (Holland) doesn't have his patience, telling Sears that after 17 years doing this, he's too old to be hunting snipe and he's leaving and Sears agrees and exits with him. That night when McCabe tells Mrs. Miller who was there and that he turned them down, but he'll see them in the morning, she's horrified. She warns McCabe that Harrison Shaughnessy would just as soon put a bullet in his back. He laughs her off then, but when he comes down the next morning and realizes they left, he understands that he might have made a fatal error. McCabe visits a lawyer (William Devane) in a nearby town who promises him that they can stop them in court and he'll work in free. They are there to protect the small businessman, the lawyer says, even floating the idea of an eventual dinner with William Jennings Bryan.Mrs. Miller is right and the lawyer won't have any time to get McCabe to court because the company sends three bounty hunters to take care of him: a short-tempered kid (Manfred Schulz), a half-breed (Jace Vander Veen) and their leader Butler (Hugh Millais), who arrives in town wearing a large goat-fur coat, shotgun astride him that makes him slightly resemble the look that Marlon Brando's bounty hunter would have in Arthur
Penn's The Missouri Breaks five years later. Prior to their appearance, McCabe's paranoia makes him suspicious of everyone and everything, such as when a young cowboy (Keith Carradine) rides into town, but he's just looking to get laid. "I heard you had the tastiest whorehouse in these parts. It's been so long since I had a piece of ass," he tells McCabe who gladly shows him to Mrs. Miller's place. Once the cowboy has finished days later having his way with most of the girls, he ends up in one of the film's most memorable sequences as he's trying to cross that rope bridge while the young bounty hunter target practices with a jug on the ice. He asks him to stop so he doesn't get shot, but the kid tricks the dimwitted cowboy, who admits he's a bad shot, into showing him his gun and kills him, leaving his body to float away in the icy creek. Combined with Remsen's death earlier, it displays the idea of sudden, unjustified violence.When the very nervous McCabe first sits down to meet with Butler, he still thinks there's a chance for him to negotiate. Butler asks what his price was and McCabe tells him, but explains it was just a position and starts lowering what he'd accept down to almost what they offered. Butler notes they weren't that far apart, were they? Then he adds, "I don't make deals." McCabe explains that he was under the impression that he worked
for Harrison Shaughnessy and Butler says he has at times, but that's not why he's there. "I came to hunt bear," Butler declares, before changing the conversation around to Bill Roundtree saying that he was the best friend of a friend of his and he'd heard he killed him. McCabe stammers and denies it, saying something about being at a card game where he was killed, but that he didn't do it. Eventually, he gets out of there. Butler pulls Sheehan over and asks him where he got the idea that he killed Roundtree and Sheehan tells him that someone else told him. Butler looks toward the door that McCabe just exited through and says, "That man never killed anyone in his life." McCabe goes back to Mrs. Miller who tells him she fears that, "They'll do something awful to you." McCabe, in a rare moment of courage, tells her, "Comes a time in every man's life when he has to put his hand in the fire and see what he's made of." Indeed, McCabe will see.On the commentary, Altman talks about how stupid it would be for people to in the Old West to face off in the middle of the street in gunfights and that's certainly not how the climax happens in McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Instead, we get a hunt in the form of a chase — and not a high speed chase — a slow chase that takes up the last 20 minutes of the film and, eventually, gets counterbalanced by the coming together of the rest of
the community — all races: the majority white Europeans, the black barber, the Chinese — to work together to save the burning church which gave the town its name. Also, this isn't the barren, sunny setting of most Western climaxes: It's the height of winter, with deep banks of snow and more of the white stuff falling from the sky. The blaze starts because of the pursuit of McCabe, who first thinks to climb up to the church's steeple to try to spot the killers' location. Unfortunately, he leaves his shotgun at the foot of the ladder so when he climbs back down, he finds that it has been taken by the wreck of a church's reverend (Corey Fischer) who holds the weapon on him and berates him for bringing it into a house of the lord. McCabe tries to explain that men out there plan to kill him and he needs the gun, but the minister won't give it up so McCabe makes a hasty exit. However, Butler must have seen him enter the church but not exit it. He arrives at the front door, kicks it open and fires, blasting the reverend and knocking over a lantern he'd lit, igniting the fire while McCabe, hiding in back of the building makes haste to another building to find another weapon. He literally crawls his way into McCabe's House of Fortune, because remember he has three men in pursuit of him, not just Butler.
The closing act of the movie, while it is a kill-or-be-killed sequence should be something that you'd describe as suspenseful, but McCabe & Mrs. Miller is nothing if not about mood. Certainly, we have developed a certain affection for John McCabe, but Altman doesn't direct it as your usual edge-of-your-seat action climax — it's just another form of the daily fight for survival in the frequently harsh conditions where they live. As I mentioned in my piece yesterday, Altman said that he thinks it's always better when you see a movie a second time and can relax and stop worrying about what happens, which really defeats any fear about spoiling twists or endings. As clumsily as it happens and unlikely as it would seem, McCabe fares fairly well against his would-be assassins — managing to dispatch both the kid and the half-breed with relative ease and some smart planning as he moves in his circuitous route through practically every building in the town, most of which he built. This life-and-death struggle goes on while almost the entire town stays oblivious, banding together to save the church, though it no longer has a minister and from the brief look we had at its innards, no one had been using it anyway.
Now, McCabe starts making his way through the deep snowbanks, hoping to flee through the woods. It's not exactly the fastest way to run, but he figures it's as good as way to escape as any. However, Butler wasn't exactly lying about hunting bear, because he's still tracking McCabe. When he spots his man taking a break behind some wooden obstacle, Butler aims his rifle and fires and McCabe collapses in the snow. As Butler goes in closer to inspect his kill though, he learns that drunken gamblers can play possum too and just at the right moment, McCabe raises his gun and puts one in Butler's forehead.
The man living off a fake legend has managed to beat the men out to kill him, but he didn't make it out unscathed, he's got a bad belly wound. McCabe still tries to make it back to the town he built up and now calls home. He makes it to the outside of one of his buildings, but he finally collapses in a snow drift and as the white stuff keeps falling from the sky, McCabe gets practically buried. The community is too busy celebrating their victory over the fire to notice McCabe, so he dies there alone. Altman depicts McCabe's frozen death in a slow series of ever closer shots on his snow-covered head.
One citizen of Presbyterian Church wasn't helping with the fire. Constance Miller, out of her own supply and worried about McCabe's fate, and taken her own refuge in the Chinese opium den. Similarly, Altman focuses on her in a series of closer and closer shots as she gazes at the bowl of the opium pipe until it seems to merge with her eyeball and become the universe itself.
While McCabe & Mrs. Miller may take place in 1901 in a Pacific Northwest zinc mining town, there is something universal about it as there is the greatest Altman works, whether they are set in Nashville, the Korean War, Los Angeles or even Hollywood.
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Labels: 70s, Altman, Arthur Penn, Brando, Deadwood, HBO, Julie Christie, K. Carradine, Kael, Milch, Movie Tributes, Oscars, Television, W. Beatty
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