Sunset Gun

Magnificent Melancholia: 11 Best of 2011

To ring in 2012, here is my number one movie of the year:

Melancholia (Lars Von Trier)

Universal and personal, blatant and mysterious, sorrowful and funny, nihilistic and yet, sublimely, romantically, celebratory, Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia takes the black bile of its namesake -- the depression of its heroine -- and transforms the “humor” into exaltation. A planet -- a terrifying, dazzling planet that, true to Dane Von Trier’s inspired swan dive (black swan dive) into German romanticism, is set to destroy life on earth: Götterdämmerung via "Tristan and Isolde" (which he uses in the picture’s rapturously beautiful overture), via Ophelia via Cassandra via Von Trier’s own personal mythology. 
Clinically depressed Justine (a stunningly raw Kirsten Dunst -- Von Trier’s surrogate) does what’s often expected of those afflicted -- wear a brave face and don that damn wedding dress (a creamy dream of a dress that Justine seems strangled by, until she lifts it up and fornicates with another man on a golf green…). Further, she must embrace love, work, family (no matter how dysfunctional) and rules.

Well, Von Trier cannot accept that fate, and in the picture’s first half, in which Justine destroys her nuptials, her actions serve as depressive, rebellious self awareness: “What did you expect?” She asks. Indeed. And then comes planet Melancholia, inching closer and closer, leaving stable sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) panic stricken while Justine, calmly, grimly and at times, cheekily, accepts annihilation, not as easy suicide but as a kind of cosmic extension of despair. Yes. Finally. Justine isn’t wallowing in depression, she’s embracing, seducing it, and in one of the picture’s most exquisite moments, lying beneath it naked -- basking in the glow of doom. 

Von Trier, a notorious and real sufferer himself, sincerely understands depression (just as he understood the horrors of anxiety in his brilliant and deeply misunderstood Antichrist), which may be why he maddens so many. How can he do this to these women? Well, because women do suffer, women get depressed, and not merely in simplistic, eye-rolling, I-cry-at-weddings ways (and Justine is not your usual runaway bride, god bless her), but in complicated, sometimes terrifying ways.  

Von Trier gets women. I've been stating this for years and have found myself in heated arguments over my stance. But here's something else --  he’s also both in awe and scared of them, which makes him one of the most truthful male filmmakers working. He certainly understands much about human nature -- male and female -- but to me, he is the consummate woman's director. Like George Cukor, Douglas Sirk, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder before him (but clearly, his own beast), the experimental, profound, bizarre, sickening, poignant and often genius Dane creates female characters of, sometimes, Joan of Arc proportions -- Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark and Dogville are the most prominent examples -- and lets them both fight and fold under the weight of their existence.  

His women, or martyrs, as many would, often rightfully assert, live in a hard, oppressive world, peopled with individuals who harbor little concern for their goodness or, at least attempt to understand their ugliness. They are human, and so, how they respond to such pressures or the conflicts within themselves often create knee-jerk reactions toward Von Trier. Chiefly, he must hate women. No. He does not. He appears to love women. And then, perhaps like most men, at times, he does not love them. They are maddening and victimized and glorious and, in the end, good (or not?). And master von Trier adds to it all a sardonic touch, spicing up his experimental melodrama with heavy doses of dark humor and personal reflection -- he surely both loves and hates himself as well. 

Weaving himself into his characters, he’s sadistic, masochist, empathetic, self obsessed, morbid and morbidly funny and then honest and honestly confused. With Melancholia he grants depressives a gift. Taking Justine’s depleted darkness and imbuing her with celestial life through doomsday, he, to recall another German Romantic, creates an Ode to Joy through heartbreaking and gloriously inspirational…woe. 

And ten more (with a tie) to be discussed further soon:

The Turin Horse (Belá Tarr)

The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)

 

The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodóvar)

 

Shame (Steve McQueen)

 

A Dangerous Method (David Cronenberg)

13 Assassins (Takashi Miike)

 

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

 

Hugo (Martin Scorsese) tied with

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Rupert Wyatt)

I will explain this tie further but, briefly, these were two of the most interestingly ballsy/subversive big studio pictures the year. A 3-D children's movie (yes, it was for adults too but...) about Georges Méliès (whom many adults non cineastes have never heard of) and the importance of film preservation? A ballsy move. And a popcorn prequel in which we root for apes to destroy mankind? Perhaps that's all I need to say.

Moneyball (Bennett Miller)

Sucker Punch (Zack Snyder)

And I will get to this choice also but, again, briefly, one of the most misunderstood, feminist, wildly experimental, anti-patriarchy pictures this year. Whatever Synder did, or didn't do, he tapped into something powerfully creepy and poignant regarding victimization. There's much more to discuss but for now...

Happy New Year.

Some Birds: Madeline, Melanie & Marnie

I'm currently working on an essay concerning the Hitchcock handbag -- they're quite fetishistic, vaginal things those handbags -- and I will post that soon, but while staring at all those crisp, snapped, hard bodied rectangular satchels and muffs, I wanted to return to a post about his women (three in particular) who clutched such wombs of wonder. Three wounded, weird, gorgeous, sexually strange but extraordinarily erotic women -- femmes who'd drive most of us to a state of amour fou. And Hitchcock understood such mad love. He also, despite some claims to the contrary, understood women, or rather, a certain kind of woman. Hitchcock, to whom people love to apply the actors as cattle quote ad nauseam, saw something deeply disturbed inside womankind -- especially blonde womankind. He understood their perfected calculations, their sexual mystery, their age-old competitions, and their alternately reserved and hysterical glamour and power.

Though I could point out numerous Hitchcock heroines (Janet Leigh in Psycho for one), three stick out: Vertigo, The Birds and Marnie. All reveal the director's predilection for leaving his heroines vulnerable to danger, dementia and doom. In these films, we can see Hitchcock's bent, or as Camille Paglia states in her excellent assessment of The Birds, his "perverse ode to woman's sexual glamour...in all its seductive phases, from brittle artifice to melting vulnerability."

Who more perfect to represent Paglia's declaration than Kim Novak, who gave the best performance of her life in Vertigo, and Tippi Hedren, a woman whose career seems to have revolved around Hitchcock's? The luminous Grace Kelly, whom I revere, may be considered the quintessential Hitchcock blonde goddess but she's not as cinematically artistic or powerfully damaged as Novak or Hedren. She is a supreme Hitchcock heroine for certain -- an assured actress with mathematically perfect features, a patrician on the outside and a sexual animal underneath, Kelly's not a simplistic princess. And I love that Kelly is interesting because she's too perfect (James Stewart's complaint in Rear Window and why Sinatra fell for her in High Society). And with that, she never touched the wounded, transgressive eroticism of Hedren or Novak. Part of that could lie in Hitchcock himself -- he never tortured her. The more neurotic Hedren and Novak appeared in his pictures (and Hedren was a particularly bizarre interest for the director), the more responsive they seemed to the darker situations their auteur placed them in.

Hitchcock explored truly disturbed female protagonists in his early films, but none matched the wrenching melancholy displayed by Kim Novak in Vertigo. While Stewart was lauded for his flawless performance as the detective who becomes morbidly obsessed with resurrecting the image of his dead lover, Novak unjustly received criticism (at the time) for her uncomfortable portrayal of that lover. She presented a woman whose beauty bequeathed her a power she was ultimately unable to control, making Novak's Madeleine/Judy both wise and naive, hard and soft. Novak revealed the sadness that lurked beneath the smiling facades of bombshells like Marilyn Monroe or Rita Hayworth, by allowing that nervousness to bubble to the surface. It's all in the way she holds herself, talks or furtively moves her eyes. It's as if her mind seems ill-suited for her body, unhealthy almost, making her something of a sexual contradiction. It’s not merely that underneath the classy, gray-suited, sternly coiffed Madeline there's an even bustier, tight-sweatered and common Judy -- it’s that she, like the picture itself, embodies the irrationality of desire.

Like Novak, Tippi Hedren was criticized for her performances in The Birds and Marnie. But time has proven them to be close to or perhaps just as brilliant and challenging as Novak's in Vertigo. The Birds is a movie of endless complexities--all helped, not hindered, by a terrific performance from Hedren. Hedren's Melanie Daniels, an independent rich girl in pursuit of Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) meets all sorts of problems when she journeys to Bodega Bay, including resentment from every other female character (though there's a strong homoerotic undercurrent in her dealings with Suzanne Pleshette).

But what makes the film so intriguing is that it's not just the millions of bloodthirsty birds messing with poor Melanie, it's the gals as well. Watching the weird interplay between Hedren and Mitch's mother (a wonderfully terse Jessica Tandy) brings up all kinds of strange scenarios -- is the mother just being overprotective, or is she a little too caring about her son? Why does she dislike her so much? Indeed, why does every woman in Bodega Bay seem to hate Melanie Daniels? In one of the film’s most telling scenes, a frightened mother blames the bird invasion on Melanie, screaming at her “I think you’re evil! Evil!”

Though a "carefree" playgirl, Melanie is truly a tightly wound bird herself. Her biggest challenge is handling the numerous flocks (human and otherwise) inhabiting the town. Mothers, sisters, earthy women, common townsfolk and birds crack Melanie's pristine exterior of white gloves, mint-green suits and matching handbags. And by the end, those suits and gloves are torn to bits. It’s not just birds against man, its birds against birds (the female variety) and if they’re flocking together, something is deeply, deeply wrong.

In the psycho-sexual thriller Marnie (a film I've seen too many times to count -- which makes me wonder about myself), Hedren's traumatized woman and criminal past leads her into the imprisoning, Freudian arms of Mark Rutland (Sean Connery). Hedren again plays an independent spirit of sorts, albeit an icy, frigid and mentally traumatized one. She can't stand the color red, she has an unusually strong bond with her horse (but then, what women doesn't?) and she loves her cold, flinty mother to the point of masochism. She's clearly never had a normal sexual encounter and though she shows flickers of attraction and flirtation, she appears to hate men. Or maybe just all of humanity.

But the movie expresses sympathy towards Marnie making it hard to blame the woman for her antisocial tendencies. In her experience, men (people) are beasts who've only done her harm (flashback to a very young Bruce Dern freaking out a very young Marnie). In return she violates them by lying, cheating and stealing without ever giving them the full pleasure of her lovely body. If Connery is going to have her, he must break her, via marriage, psychoanalysis and what can only be described as... force.

Like Novak's Madeleine/Judy in Vertigo, Marnie is a magnet for freaky men. And yet, in spite of her pathological frigidity, there's a feeling that somewhere, a ravenous woman could emerge oozing the kind of kinky sexuality that Judy displays in Vertigo.

And yet, through Hitchcock's subversive eyes (and our own), this unhealthy, yet accurate depiction of sexual madness becomes strangely, intensely romantic. Quite clearly Hitchcock, like Woody Allen (as he professed in Husbands and Wives) not so secretly loved his women a little crazy. I think we all do. And perhaps, also, gripping some nifty clutches -- creamy canals just waiting to be cracked.

Silent Night & Partner: Merry Christmas!

And now as the day comes to an end... here's to even more Christopher Plummer and more Elliot Gould in 2012. Excuse my brief post and pardon my hyperbole (the day calls for it), but both of these men are goddamn gifts. Merry Christmas!

Christmas: Lights, Trees & Eyes Wide Shut

I could write about countless Christmas or Christmas-themed movies I revere (Ernst Lubitsch's masterpiece, The Shop Around the Corner, which I watched last night and was properly destroyed by is a major example ... and then there's so many more), but I've got other things on my mind this morning. Chiefly, and for some, odd reason: Tom Cruise.

Well, it's not so odd --  as we all know, Cruise stars in the newest Mission Impossible, but it's more than the movie connection --  it's all that insanity-inducing yuletide stress (and then some) so perfectly conveyed in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. The picture's social, sexual, surrealist themes with the very festive, pretty and, in this case, creepy, wonderfully creepy (and often hilarious) Christmas background. Bathed in Christmas style, Eyes Wide Shut uses Christmas lights, background Christmas trees and traditional colors of red and green with almost perverse relentlessness. And perverse relentlessness is really what we're about this season. Well, perhaps I am. But this kind, strangely, makes me feel better. With that, I'm dipping into my archives to consider one of  Kubrick's most underrated pictures --  a film that in terms of love, sex, death, fear and träume remains timeless. And again, it's a terrific Christmas movie...

In  Kubrick's cinematic universe, reality, dreams, order and insanity progress on distinct, intersecting planes. Whether he was depicting an absurd, chillingly real war room in Dr. Strangelove, the disturbing but oddly sexy ultra violence of an Orwellian future in A Clockwork Orange, the siren call of insanity in The Shining, the hyper fantastical yet authentic Vietnam War in Full Metal Jacket, or the irony and powerlessness among such transcendent opulence in Barry Lyndon, life was a surreal work in progress -- an ambiguous joke that veered from hilarious to sexy to terrifying, sometimes within seconds. Attempting to understand order, or how any system designed to make our universe more rational or safe seemed fruitless. Think Sterling Hayden approaching such a predicament at the end of Kubrick's The Killing. He watches his life literally fly away on an airport tarmac and bitterly spits one of cinema’s greatest final lines: “Eh, what’s the difference?”

Which brings me to the final line of Kubrick’s frequently misunderstood Eyes Wide Shut in which Nicole Kidman states rather flatly, “Fuck” -- as in, that’s the answer, that’s what we need to do. A movie I’ve defended since its release, it’s a picture that deserves closer inspection and a worthy finale for the enigmatic auteur.

The controversial movie (some thought it silly, some, un-erotic) Eyes Wide Shut found the director once again studying the perplexing nature of dreams and reality, this time exploring them in a more personal and private arena: sexuality. As he did with Lolita, Kubrick created more than a film about sexual desire; he created a film about bitter romance, troublesome marital bonds, societal contradictions and, significantly, the fear of death.

An updating of the 1927 Traumnovelle (Dream Novel) by the sardonic Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler, the picture remains an unsettling blend of antiquated garishness and modern transgression -- an alternate sexual universe haunted by ghouls of the past, present and future.

In this universe “live” the healthy, handsome walking dead -- Dr. Bill Harford (an impressive Tom Cruise) and his wife, Alice (a slinky, wonderfully creepy Nicole Kidman), a glamorous, rich couple who appear the picture of storybook perfection. But like most supposed perfection, there are cracks in that portrait, and in their case, it’s the usual: they want to screw other people (or at least they think they do). At a sumptuous party given by Bill's obscenely wealthy friend Victor (Sydney Pollack), Bill almost strays upstairs with two models while Alice flirts with a bizarre Hungarian man who looks like one of the cadaverous party-goers from The Shining. The next evening, in a fit of jealousy over Bill's near indiscretion (he ended up contending with a beautiful, naked drug overdose instead of a debauched roll in the hay -- though the way her body sits in this shot is disturbingly erotic), Alice confesses that she’s had thoughts of cheating and, even worse, reveals that if things had been different, she would have thrown her entire life away for one flight of sexual fancy.

Unmasking something that should remain one of those deep, dark secrets you never confess to your significant other, Alice deftly rattles Bill's perception of her fidelity and the strength of their marriage in a speech that makes his mind spin out of control (Kidman's performance here is superb). After this confession, Bill is abruptly called away to confirm the death of a patient and keeping in tune with the love/death/sex of the picture, the daughter of the deceased makes a pass at him. The grief stricken but, considering the circumstances, kinky gesture aids in Bill’s decision to not immediately return home. Instead, he wanders the streets of New York and embarks on a sequence of actions that, though not as outwardly comic, somewhat resemble those in the Scorsese movie After Hours: He discovers a surreal sexual underworld that he’s both attracted to and repelled by.

A prostitute, a piano player, a bizarre costume-store owner and his Lolita-esque 14-year-old daughter lead Bill to the film's infamous ritualistic orgy sequence, during which participants are cloaked and masked, and naked women are used as sacrificial sex lambs. The gothic, terrifying yet titillating feel of this sequence walks a fine line between horror and parody and true to Kubrick’s genius, manages to cross into both camps. The magnificent, exacting camera work and unrelenting music compel us to look, no matter what happens, and though I was actually a little scared the first time I saw this moment, I found myself highly amused --laughing even. If ever a person was out of place in a Bohemian Grove-like orgy, it is Tom Cruise’s Dr. Bill. And yet, I was absolutely hypnotized, watching these moments like a waking dream and investing it with multiple meanings. What the hell is going on here besides a bunch of silly old rich men getting their jollies with beautifully breasted, long legged Helmut Newton models? And further, what do all of Bill’s adventures mean? Are Bill's encounters simply nightmares that will damage his marriage beyond repair, or are they mere titillating fantasy -- fodder for a closer relationship and better sex with his spouse?

Well, I can’t answer that. Given the picture's ominous tone, however, there is something definitely rotten within its slinky, Christmas-lit loveliness. Like the impeccable environment of The Shining, the aura of Eyes Wide Shut is one of beauty ready to be defiled, sexuality ready to be slaughtered, lovely exteriors that reek of formaldehyde. The pall that hangs over this picture is fear: fear of the unknown; fear of yourself or of others; and fear that if sex can lead to freedom, it can just as easily lead to death.

In fact, the picture can be viewed as a commentary on sexual attitudes in the last few decades -- a time when meaningless indiscretions can lead to horrifying blood-test results. It is no surprise, then, that Bill is a doctor and that throughout the film, he flashes his physician's ID as a police detective would his badge. "I'm a doctor," he constantly says, for both reassurance and intimidation. In a profession that requires intimate investigation of flesh that may well be on its way to the morgue, sex is serious. These unsettling references to AIDS, necrophilia and forbidden sex (not to mention Kubrick's own death upon bringing the film to completion, une petite mort of sorts) permeate the picture like one giant prick tease. In today's world, sex is still there for the taking, but at what cost and for what gain? Kubrick's frustrating, brilliant coda neither answers nor ignores its own questions. Rather, it leaves us in a mysterious, contradictory mishmash of dream and reality, where not only are our eyes wide shut, but our legs are too.

And again, it's a wonderful Christmas movie. Happy Holidays!

Three Obsessions: Black, Game, Jackie

It's that time of year to make lists, those ubiquitous year-end lists. I'm working on my best of of 2011, and I'm struggling, as usual. So, for now, I'm returning to some obsessions narrowed down to the nice number three.  

Of course, given the season, the first entry is an obvious one. For me, anyway...

1. Black Christmas (1974) I've already started watching it...

Black Christmas might be one of the greatest slasher films ever made. It's certainly my favorite. I've watched it too many times to count -- and not just around this holly jolly season. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Easter, on annoying friend's birthdays, the ones who expect 2000 Facebook greetings and so much attention you want to sic a drunken Margo Kidder on them (actually, that would be a treat, maybe just get John Saxon to tell them they're assholes...), it's perfect for any special occasion and any regular day. It's just perfect. Director Bob Clark (who I had the thrill of meeting after he introduced Black Christmas at the New Beverly just two years before he tragically passed away) is also famous for that little subversive yuletide favorite A Christmas Story, made a first of its kind: a sorority house slasher flick, complete with deranged lunatic (whom you never see), extra crazy obscene phone calls and sexy girls -- especially Margot Kidder and the lovely, sad-eyed Olivia Hussey. Darkly atmospheric, gorgeously shot, tense, wonderfully acted (Saxon is terrific here), filled with genuine goddamn scares while also being genuinely touching, Black Christmas is a masterpiece in any genre. Added bonus: Olivia Hussey claims that this was Elvis Presley's favorite Christmas movie. He had his own personal copy and watched it on Christmas. I don't know if that's true, but she told a packed New Beverly audience and I choose to believe her. I love the idea of Elvis forgoing his Blue Christmas for a Black one...

2. The Only Game in Town (1970) 

I'm fascinated by the saggy, depressing, accidentally (maybe not accidentally?) quirky picture. Something of a disaster in its day, the movie deserves consideration not only for its interesting and downright strange performances by Warren Beatty and Elizabeth Taylor but for its effectiveness in showing just how lonely and depressing the idea of winning can be. Any kind of winning. Earning tremendously bad buzz for going over budget and for catering to Elizabeth Taylor’s location demands (the film wasn’t shot in Vegas but in Paris so the star could be with Richard Burton while he was making another movie), the picture is indeed bizarre at times, but its claustrophobic weirdness and poignant sadness gives it a power that wasn’t appreciated in its day. Both Taylor’s ex Vegas showgirl and Beatty’s compulsive gambler are losers waiting for their jackpot (Taylor to marry a rich guy, Beatty, to simply win big) which makes their relationship understandable even while being somewhat... off. I like how they appear mis-matched and yet, perfect/terrible for each other at this stage of their lives (on-screen and off). Directed by George Stevens (his final film), the picture moves slowly, but it’s peppered by some intriguing dialogue and memorable interplay between a blousy, still beautiful Taylor and a beautiful, always beautiful Beatty. Incidentally, I own the original one sheet, it comes with the tagline: “Dice was his vice. Men, hers.”

3. Jackie Wilson again...

I love Elvis. But you can’t appreciate Elvis without understanding his influences, and one major artist who knocked the King for a loop was the sublime Jackie Wilson, a performer who burned bright and had one hell of a tragic ending. I’ve written about Jackie before (he was featured in my list of the tragically musically departed) and for good reason -- the man with the operatic range, boxing background and spine tingling octaves was one of entertainment’s greatest innovators. There are countless acts I would kill (kill!) to have seen live and Wilson, a.k.a. “Mr. Excitement” (whom Elvis attributed much of his style to) is very near the top of the list. Check out genius Wilson doing the most inspired, hair-raising, heartbreaking, soul stirring and about every word I can't articulate but the kind that utterly destroy me, version of "Danny Boy" on Shindig! Who sings like this anymore?

Three Make a Match: Design For Living

A "gentleman’s agree­ment" is not so easy -- not when it comes to Miriam Hopkins, Gary Cooper and Fredric March. As I mentioned yesterday, Criterion has released Design for Living on DVD and Blu-ray, Ernst Lubitsch's sublime, soulful and very, very sexy Pre-Code masterpiece. I was thrilled to write the accompanying essay/booklet for this release, and you can read a portion of it here: 

Ernst Lubitsch’s Design for Living (1933) is what sexy should be—delightful, romantic, agonizing ecstasy. And it’s not just sexy but also revolutionary, daring, sweet, sour, cynical, carefree, poignant, and so far ahead of its time that one could cite it as not only a pre-Code masterpiece but also a prefeminist testimonial. A uniquely Lubitschian picture in its elegance and graceful wisdom, with the gruffly intelligent, street-smart Hollywood writer and soon-to-be legend Ben Hecht collaborating, this take on the trials, titillations, and torments of a kind of relationship usually seen in true adult films, a ménage à trois (and one involving the gorgeous trio of Fredric March, Gary Cooper, and Miriam Hopkins), is unlike any other movie of its era.

What film, even before that killjoy schoolmarm Joseph Breen brought his Squaresville strictness to the Production Code in 1934, has ever presented the potentially salacious scenario of three-way love in such a wistfully complicated way? This is neither a bunch of hot-to-trot cheap thrills nor a moralizing sermon on the dangers of sexual transgression—it’s a soulful look at human desire.

Design for Living recognized that desire is not divided unequally between the sexes. It can, in fact, be genderless. A place where gentlemen can be women. And women can be wolves. And men can be romantic Red Riding Hoods, wandering through a quixotic forest only to stumble across a beautiful blonde with shimmering white teeth, delicate little feet, and a big, beguiling wit. “The better to share you with,” she will eventually declare, before not eating them whole but tasting their specific Coop and March delicacies with equal ardency. Here, however, is where the movie reveals clearly that men are indeed men. Male horniness is not to be trifled with. Best friends or no best friends, how can they resist? This is some woman. They surrender, dear.

And that surrender happens from the get-go, perfectly, in a favorite movie location for scintillating erotic interplay: a train. With a wonderfully wordless introduction, the movie—adapted quite loosely from Noël Coward’s notorious play—begins like a declaration: This is a movie. To those expecting two lumps of Coward in their Lubitsch, well, sorry; you’re getting a pinch (and thrown over the shoulder for good luck). This is not a play. This is a motion picture. Faces are the thing, faces writ large, gorgeous faces as directed by the sparklingly urbane Lubitsch.

Please read the rest of my essay at Criterion. And, don't be a gentleman, buy yourself an early Christmas present. Buy it for a friend, but most importantly, buy it for yourself. Cooper? March? Hopkins? Lubitsch? Hecht? You can't go wrong. Well, you, or rather they (the characters) can go wrong, but in all the right, sexy, elegant ways... And that's not exactly wrong. Viva unconventional love!

A Different Design: Something Wild

December is a good month for underseen masterpieces. Two pictures -- both far ahead of their time and both brilliant, are being released on DVD and Burn On Demand. Today, Criterion has released Design for Living, Ernst Lubitsch's take on the trials, titillations, and torment of a kind of relationship usually only seen in *true* adult films -- a ménage à trois -- and one between Gary Coopper, Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins, no less. Sublime, soulful and very, very sexy, the movie is funny, complicated and even, at times, heartbreaking. A "gentleman's agreement" is never easy. I have a lot to say about one of Lubitsch's greatest (adapted from Noel Coward's play by Ben Hecht) so I was incredibly happy to write the accompanying essay/booklet for this release. Please check it out (read a portion of my essay above this post). And then there's Something Wild (MGM Limited Edition Collection) directed by Jack Garfein and starring Carroll Baker and Ralph Meeker. I presented the picture for TCM last year as a guest programmer and am thrilled it's finally being released. With that excitement, I'm re-posting my original piece. 

It’s not wild, necessarily. But it's unforgettable.

I never understood the title of Jack Garfein’s beautiful, sad, confusingly romantic and richly empathetic Something Wild. If the title refers to the movie’s brutal rape, a wild animalistic act, it’s certainly nothing wild for the tragic protagonist, Mary Ann (played by a powerfully touching and brave Carroll Baker). Something dreadful is more apt, as she suffers the rough hands of a faceless brute, emerging from the trees like a demon spirit.

And her demise, repulsion, sickness, panic, alienation and finally, near-life-ending depression, isn’t worthy of wild either. Something despondent. She’s desperate to fling herself from her inner demons. She cannot discuss nor process the rape. She can’t even tell her parents. In a classic panic-stricken fight or flight scenario -- she flees from a crowded subway car, gasping for breath as commuters rub against every inch of her violated body. More and more, lovely Mary Ann turns into a withdrawn, clinically depressed, misunderstood woman -- a woman filled with terror and shame -- a woman who hates herself even if she did nothing wrong. A woman who was raped. This is how rape victims feel.

And rape is not something her potential savior/captor Mike (Ralph Meeker, who should have played more roles like this -- his range is extraordinary) can understand -- though in his own wordless way – he tries. He’s nothing wild either. A sad sack with a working class job, a dumpy demeanor (this is not smart alec Kiss Me Deadly Meeker) and a drinking problem, he’s not a healthy man, and not healthy towards women, but then…weirdly sympathetic. He wants this woman. He needs this woman. He needs her to save him.

The picture starts with the innocence of Mary Ann's name. Mary Ann exits off the subway and makes her way home, at night. This appears a usual walk for the woman, but something gives her a start. A rustle of trees, a paper cup blowing on the ground, a general feeling of unease. Her fear is well founded, as a large man, almost appearing like a monster, emerges from the trees, grabs the woman, and rapes her. And he appears to rape her for a long time – even tearing off the cross she wears on her neck. God is not on her side. This rape is not titillating. This rape is just sad and draining, and you feel like Mary Ann walked into a monstrous tree satyr.

The film continues for a good twenty minutes (or more, which seems unprecented for American movies at that time) without any dialogue, and we watch Mary Ann silently trudge her way home, where she bathes, scrubs, looks at the cuts on her body with horror, take all of her clothes and cut them into tiny pieces. She flushes the tattered garments down the toilet. And then she sleeps.

Since the rape has made it impossible for her to conduct herself in normal life, Mary Ann abandons home, unannounced, leaving her mother in a panic to find her. She gets a job where a bunch of judgmental/jealous women make fun of her, she takes a tiny, dumpy little NYC flat, where a bare light bulb offers her only illumination and a loud floozy (Jean Stapleton) cackles nearby. It seems Mary Ann can’t escape the depraved and the diseased – or perhaps, she’s throwing herself right into it – the belly of the best, so to speak. Repulsion meets The Tenantmeets The Collector. And yet, Garfeien’s picture was made before any of these.

But that beast and that belly are not what she expected. After becoming so despondent, that she decides the best choice is to take her own life, she nearly jumps off the Manhattan Bridge. She would have accomplished her act of self-destruction if not for another beast (Meeker), who saves her from leaping.

And then, he keeps her. At first, one thinks, she needs to stay. After all, he’s looking out for her – she can’t attempt suicide again. But the movie veers into far more complex areas after he locks her in – for good. Since confinement, the act of being held down and forced to submit has plagued this poor woman for months; she reacts with anger and panic. And for good reason – he won’t ever let her leave. Like The Collector, he’s keeping his sad little butterfly – a butterfly without wings.

But why? These are questions the picture never easily answers. You understand that he is also a cheerless, lonely person, an alcoholic, and a man who needs this woman near him. In his own twisted way he loves her. When he stumbles home drunk and attempts to molest Mary Ann, she reacts violently and with self-preservation, poking out one of his eyes. Suddenly the film merges Beauty and the Beast with Greek Tragedy --  Mary Ann turns Mike into a Cyclops. The next morning, he claims to barely remember the evening, and seems nonchalant about the eye patch he now must wear. He reckons he may have gotten into some kind of fight. Or maybe he does remember. Maybe he respects Mary Ann for fighting back. We just don’t know. And then again, we oddly can’t hate him.

And so there they continue living in his basement hovel of an apartment, biding their days with his “romantic” meals and need to be near Mary Ann. Mary Ann remains adamant to leave, but she will soon soften. Is this a positive step? Is this a romantic reaction to her savior? Is this indeed, the only man she can now trust? Is this Stockholm syndrome? In any case, it’s all very sad.

The movie, released in 1961, an expressionistic/naturalistic work of art that also recalls Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, before Polanski’s film was made, and Bergman, was far ahead of its time in its European sensibilties (and yet, with its actors and setting, it feels wholly American). Garfein (then Baker’s husband), who survived the Holocaust, well understood the idea of entrapment and subjugation. I have seen few films that not only deal with rape in a sympathetic light (that’s not so hard), but deal with it as a kind of submersion into a subterranean world of dirty rooms and dreams – dreams, in one terrifying moment, where girls have no faces (Lars Von Trier would love this movie) – a world where trauma is expressed through the sounds of vulgar good-time girls, the oppressiveness of the subway, the simultaneous attraction and repulsion to men, work, the city, and sex. If anyone finds Mary Ann’s feelings and actions unrealistic, they have no concept of the odd co-mingling of unreality and harshness that an act of rape can make a woman feel. For anyone wanting to forget the memory -- repression and submersion is natural.

And it’s all very much like a movie you were likely to have never seen in 1961, or now, for that matter. Garfein based his movie on the novel Mary Ann (a better title I think), and enlisted some superior talents to give the movie an expressionistic, gritty, dream-like appeal.

The great Aaron Copland provided the potent music; the legendary Saul Bass created the title sequence, and brilliant cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan worked as DP. Since Schüfftan lensed Lang's Metropolis, Carné's Port of Shadows, Gance's Napoléon and Franju's Eyes Without a Face (among many other accomplishments), the look of the picture is both grubby and dreamlike. It feels like trauma, it feels Jungian, dreamy, hyper real (with such wonderful location shooting). He seems to understand, visually, the horror and fairy tale nature of a victim floating above pain. Mary Ann wants to rid herself of anguish, she wants to float, and yet, she’s stuck in a basement.

Through his lens, Schüfftan both raises Mary Ann from her trauma, while keeping her firmly on the ground  -- like Thomas Hardy’s Tess of Tess the D’Urbervilles removing herself from rape by becoming diaphanous and floating above molester Alex huffing on top of her, Mary Ann keeps herself whisper light, and yet, stuck in the dirt.  She stays in that basement. It’s tragic, gorgeous, poetic, even mythic, how she lives in two realities, which makes the ending incredibly complex. Mary Ann stays with Mike. How should one feel about this? She’s damaged, she’s now pregnant, she’s in love and yet, she still looks heartbroken. The ending creates a false kind of happiness (intentional, I think) that sits in your soul with such sadness and complication that the movie will not leave you – after all these years, it’s never left me.

Rape is never easy to come to terms with, we know that. But rape isn’t always met with counselors and discussions and getting in touch with your feelings. Perhaps Mary Ann got in touch with Mike. Perhaps she did not. Whatever the case, poor Mary Ann. I hate her entrapment, and I hate that she feels she has nowhere to go, and yet, I pray Mike treats her sensitively. I feel wrong for this, but I want them to work out. This is a dream. Or a nightmare. I can only hope she’s truly happy one day. Not wild, but, happy?

Just Like a Car You're Pleasing to Behold

Mary was never dirty. She was un-hinged, a wild child, mouthy, strangely smart, and as sexy as Peggy Cummins shooting guns between her legs in a cowboy hat (I’ll get to Miss Cummins later), but again, she was never thoroughly dirty. Why Mary (as in Susan George Mary, she of the 1974 muscle-masterpiece Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry), wasn’t allowed to be the Crazy of the title has always irked me – just a little (after all, I like Dirty Girls).

Larry (that’s Peter Fonda, her partner in crime among other things), is allowed the nobler appellation of Crazy, and I suppose he’s just as nutty as Mary but…is he? He’s the would-be NASCAR driver, he’s the one who pulls off the heist, he’s the one who really drives and he’s Peter Fonda. And Peter Fonda, even while heavily tripping on acid, never appears crazy to me. Like his father and his sister, there’s something solid, intelligent, well bred about Peter. No matter how insane he allows his world to become, his default is rationality.  Even when satanic snakes cover his camper (Race with the Devil, with the brilliant Warren Oates). That’s why through the entire run of Easy Rider, you know he gets it. There’s a quiet complexity to Peter Fonda that reveals a troubled but organized mind.

So with that control -- I would trust him behind the wheel.

But Mary? No. Definitely, no. And not because she’s supposedly “dirty,” and not because she’s a woman (however, sorry ladies, I will concede that a lot of women are not enviable drivers), but because she really is the crazy one. The fact that she jumps in the car, joins the heist, faces impossible peril -- nearly killed numerous times, and generally gets her rocks off in all her untamed, half open halter-top, Susan George abandon (glorious abandon), that’s crazy. But wonderful crazy. Crazy, like a stone cold fox. Crazy like the girl your older brother dates and your mother can’t stand crazy. Crazy like the young woman your father dates and all of us kids prays he will marry (he didn’t). Crazy like a woman – deliciously deleterious.

And if Mary loves wild joy rides and police pursuits in some hot 1970’s muscle that range from a Dodge Charger, a Chevrolet Impala and a Dodge Polara, then she’s not so loopy. Not in my world anyway.

And now that I’m calling Mary crazy, I wish crazy Mary lived in my world. I wish she lived down the street from me. I’d roll with her in my Torino, we’d go for some In-N-Out drive-through, and we’d take in a double feature at the New Beverly.  Preferably Rolling Thunder, Two-Lane Blacktop, Gone in Sixty Seconds (the original!) and, of course, Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry. And no, not Drive. Walter Hill’s The Driver is more like it.

Where are the Dirty Mary’s in my life? Without them, as Bette Davis famously wrote, it’s a “Lonely Life. But one can dream, and since I’ve entered my  auto-erotic girl car-crush reverie here, there’s even crazier, and perhaps dirtier than Mary: Peggy. Peggy Cummins. 

As the femme fatale of Gun Crazy (also, appropriately called Deadly Is the Female), Cummins (named Annie Laurie Starr in the picture) the beautiful blonde bad girl of Joseph H. Lewis’s 1950 noir classic, not only, in one famous scene, drive the car, but she shoots a lot of guns -- very, very well. She loves guns. Her boyfriend, the equally gun obsessed Bart (John Dall), is entirely her match, and they meet all phallic, primal cute -- in a sharp-shoot-off. But they also drive.

And in a gritty, exciting, modern, pre-French New Wave moment, she drives Bart to the bank, waits in the car, talks to a cop, knocks him down, jumps in after Bart’s robbed the place, and he takes over the wheel -- all in one take. Brilliant.

Maybe Susan/Mary and I will let Peggy/Annie drive. After all, there’s a bank right down the street.

But to round out the team with a different type of woman, there’s Alice -- the one who doesn’t live here anymore. Yes, Alice. That’s Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese’s underrated Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Like Gun Crazy, it’s not necessarily a car movie, but there’s some majorly memorable moments in the automobile. Specifically, as Ellen flees her old life after her joyless husband passes away, and motors her enormous station wagon across the southwest with her pre-teen son Tommy in the car.

They talk, they bond, they argue, he tells confusing jokes that take too long and they listen to the AM radio. There’s no computers, no mini DVD players, no game-boys, no cell phones -- just mom and kid and heat and Elton John’s “Daniel.” And T. Rex’s “Jeepster” -- a funny musical moment matching a super cool glam song about a car while Alice and Tommy rumble down the road in a station wagon. Marc Bolan loved cars, and girls, hence the magical verse from “Get it On”: “You’re built like a car you’ve got a hub-cap diamond star halo.” Oh, Mr. Bolan. If only you knew what the verses meant to women who are so smitten with the vehicular.

I adore countless femmes in automobiles. There’s so many others, like Goldie Hawn in The Sugarland Express (I also love Dollars with Hawn and Warren Beatty, a movie not discussed enough); Maybe Thelma and Louise (but they kill themselves) and the sweet and sweely titled Heart Like a Wheel.

There's Katharine Hepburn sexily, insanely stealing cars in Bringing Up Baby; Faye Dunaway -- anytime she's near the car in Bonnie and Clyde (and is shot up to hell in one too); Lana Turner gorgeously losing her mind in the Bad and the Beautifull; Ann Savage's intense anger in Detour (there's so many noir pictures); and most certainly, all the women from Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! (Tura Satana would never allow that guy to enter the parking lot with Thelma around).

But as much as I adore those muscle speed sweeties, I’m going to dip from modern, real life this time, slam on the breaks, and… pick up Zoe Bell.

Bell, who plays Zoe Bell in the second (and better) half of Quentin Tarantino’s grindhouse homage, Death Proof.  I’ve discussed a few women in car movies and moments here, but so far, none have really been about chicks and sticks (sticks, as in gear shifts). But Tarantino’s ode to the glorious cinematic sleaze of the 1960s and 1970s is a female gearhead dream -- a movie that doesn’t just make one roar, but make one vroom.  Preferably in a 1970 white Dodge 440 Challenger (AKA the Vanishing Point car Miss Bell so covets).  

Tarantino gets women. Or he gets women who are frustrated by their lack of power in the world. His movies offer a lot of fantastical wish fulfillment, and that’s alright with me (after all, isn’t Spider-Man and its ilk wish fulfillment? Or anything with Jason Statham? Not that I don't like Statham. I do.) With his ball busting blast of female empowerment, Kill Bill, an operatic homage to Spaghetti Westerns, yakuza pictures, Hong Kong action films, Brian De Palma, Kinji Fukusaku, Giallo and the "Twisted Nerve" of Bernard Hermann (among others genres and filmmakers and Tarantino obsessions) and Inglourious Basterds, in which, really, a woman and not just the Basterds, takes down the Nazis (and a woman who loves movies – of course), Tarantino crafts pictures that are more aggressively pro-female (even if fantasy) than anything Nancy Meyer is offering the ladies. And he gives us mythic woman a la Charles Bronson, Bruce Lee, Clint Eastwood, Lee Marvin and (oh dear lord my favorite) Lee Van Cleef. We need that.

In Death Proof, after the girls specifically checked out a car simply because it’s the Vanishing Point car (which actually isn’t fantasy. I would do that. I have driven up to creepy houses and test driven cars. That’s how I bought my Torino. How many movies ever show women doing this?) they find themselves pursued by the rakish turned homicidal Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) in a psychosexual act of vehicular rape. The movie’s second set of fiery femme then enact their revenge on not just Russell's Stuntman Mike, but on all the creeps in the world who want to forcibly, well, ram them. It's inspiring -- almost overwhelmingly so -- when we see real life stunt woman Bell actually strap herself to that Challenger, at what looks to be about 80-90 miles per hour, and then un-strapped, clinging to and climbing on that car for dear life. And having a good time -- even while terrified. As Marlene Dietrich might say, had she appeared in Two-Lane Blacktop, this is some kind of gear head.

So daredevil Zoe’s on board. And crazy Mary. And kooky Katharine -- maybe for just a nice, non stunt-laden leisurely drive. I'm sure all of these women enjoy a long drive, eating chips, stopping for ice cream. It's not all about speed demonry. And of course, like perilous Peggy -- we need some cash. And, in a perfect world we need, oh why not (this is my dream) Marlon Brando, Pocahontas and me. The women deserve that kind of beauty. Or to be called Jaguar... if I may be so bold.