Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place is one of the most heartbreaking love stories ever committed to film. It's certainly one of the most poignant pictures (violently poignant at times) within the canon of film noir, a genre haunted by doomed love.
Noir love -- the kind that causes characters to throw that "Baby I don't care" caution to the wind -- is frequently a cynical fancy that won't survive the angst and ugliness inside the man or outside the world. Its happiness is typically intense, but brief. Love or lust often motivates action in noir, particularly via a femme fatale (as in Double Indemnity or Out of the Past). But it also holds up a mirror to myriad themes, largely existential, that hang over characters with profound malaise. Ray approaches the torments of Camus and Sartre with In a Lonely Place (1950) showing, not only the delicacy of true love, but the delicacy of creativity, violence, trust, and a person's own position in an often ugly, alienating world and the inner nausea it creates.
So begins my video essay on Nicholas Ray's 1950 masterpieceIn a Lonely Place, a movie I love and admire and one I understand better each each year I live in this often alienating city -- Los Angeles.
Many thanks to Matt Zoller Seitz for putting this piece together so beautifully. I think I sound like a teenager who smoked about five packs of Pall Malls, but this is the voice God, and many sleepless nights gave me so deal with it. With that, watch this appreciation of Bogart's brilliant performance and one of Ray's finest (as well as one of the greatest Gloria Grahame roles), In a Lonely Place (orignally posted at The L Magazine). Watch.
I miss New York City. I miss the New York City I've never seen -- the one I've only seen in movies. And after spending time in the Capital of the World a little over a year ago, I thought of all kinds of New York movies (from Manhattan to Rosemary’s Baby to 42nd Street to The Naked City to Midnight Cowboy to Something Wild -- the Carroll Baker Ralph Meeker version, to After Hours to Broadway Danny Rose to The Lost Weekend and on and on and on). But strolling through some beautiful areas and others much too cleaned up (Times Square), my mind wandered to James Cagney and John Garfield growing up so gorgeously tough and talented in various, rough and tumble areas, and the Dead End Kids gaining advice from both of those street-wise geniuses as they, cinematically speaking, brawled and cracked wise on those corners. And then my mind returned to a movie that for me, is this city -- Mean Streets.
And of course much has been written about Martin Scorsese’s masterwork and most of us love it (if you love movies, how can you not?). But it had been quite some time since I watched the picture, and upon returning, my ardor was re-ignited. As Woody Allen would say, I don’t just love the movie, I luurve it. And with further reflection, I thought the picture, of late anyway, just doesn't get its due anymore. Do we take it for granted? We shouldn't. It's absolutely perfect.
Let’s just start with the opening -- an opening that ranks as one of the greatest title sequences of all time. The screen is black. A faceless narrator exclaims: "You don't make up for your sins at church; you do it in the streets; you do it at home. The rest is bullshit, and you know it." A young man wakes up in the middle of the night. The sounds of the city are outside. He walks over to his bedroom mirror, takes a look at himself and then returns to bed. As his head reclines toward his pillow, he is suddenly moving in slow motion. The thumping beat of the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" begins and the scene shifts to a screening of Super-8 films of the young man and his friends. Just as Ronnie Spector breaks into the beautifully sweet chorus of "Be my, be my baby," the film reveals its title in plain, typewritten letters: Mean Streets.
Yes. This opening always gets me right in the gut and mysteriously both the hard and soft places of my heart. It even, at times, almost makes me cry. No, not almost. It does make me cry. It’s just so raggedly lovely and wonderfully bittersweet and beautiful and tough and tender. It's reminiscent of a past that isn't entirely mine and yet, Scorsese makes me feel like it was -- almost one hundred percent. It gets me the way Wes Anderson gets me when Margot walks off that bus to Nico's "These Days" or Harold drives his car to Cat Stevens' "Trouble" or Benjamin Braddock depressively swims and fornicates to Simon and Garfunkle's "April Come She Will" or Sam Rothstein falls for Ginger to "Love is Strange" (I could list more than a dozen Scorsese music moments that touch me in multiple ways).
Released in 1973, Mean Streets, a masterpiece of story, substance, music, camerawork and color, is one of the most influential movies of the last 30-odd years. Inspired by, among other influences, classic Hollywood cinema, the documentaries of David and Albert Maysles, the French New Wave, and of course, Scorsese’s own life growing up and observing life in New York City, Mean Streets' raw, blood-soaked power has still, in my mind, found no cinematic equal. Aesthetically and thematically honest, as well as experimental and purposeful, it’s a work of art that’s never faded through time. It still makes me revved up and emotional and depressed and happy and, yearning. There’s a yearning to Mean Streets that not only taps into creating something within your own personal life, but to create something, anything outside of it. As with all of Scorsese, there's a sensuality to it that's bloody and lovely and in moments, profoundly moving.
The story is noir bathed in red light. Harvey Keitel plays Charlie, an inhabitant of New York's Little Italy who is raggedly progressing toward manhood. His best friend is Johnny Boy (Robert DeNiro), a volatile, immature but ultimately lovable character who gets Charlie in more trouble than he needs. Charlie is trying his best to become something, but he is met with constant dilemmas. He works for his uncle (Cesare Danova), an old-school Mafioso who would like to move him up in the business. But Uncle disapproves of Charlie's friends, chiefly his epileptic lover, Teresa (Amy Robinson), and Johnny Boy, who is "touched in the head" and an instigator of unnecessary disorder. Uncle advises Charlie to remove them from his life. But this is not so easy. Nothing is easy for Charlie. Strongly Catholic, he is guilt-ridden by his every move. While he sits at the bar in his neighborhood hangout, questioning his penance, he watches Johnny Boy walk toward him and almost humorously asks: "You talk about penance and this is what walks through the door?"
Johnny Boy certainly walks through the door. His entrance is a tour de force of exciting visual and sonorous stimuli. Bathed in the bloody red light of the bar, shot in slow motion and accompanied by the Rolling Stones' "Jumpin Jack Flash," the joy and ambiguity of Johnny Boy is summed up in less than 30 seconds. He is the streets; he is exciting, nervous energy; he is trouble amidst trouble; he’s your future if you don’t watch out. And he’s also one hell of a fighter on a pool table -- the way he kicks with such intent. In fact, that “Mook” fight tuned to “Please Mr. Postman” is one of my favorite fight scenes in a movie. It’s so sloppy and real yet funny and repugnant. This is how fights really happen. They're a scary mess but sometimes, oddly hilarious.
And Johnny Boy is kind of hilarious. The symbol of uncertainty that, like the streets, threatens the picture's world with kinetic violence, he’s an attractive force. But like many reckless forces, they burn out. Charlie attempts to ride this out with some semblance of control, but he can’t avoid the tumult that will engulf around his own life. What is so unequivocally brilliant about this film is that Charlie never has to tell us as much. Because of Scorsese's expert technique, we know the picture's nature instinctively. Scorsese displays the randomness of these people's lives with saturating experimentalism; his inventive style is not a glaring gimmick but a natural expression of street and conscience.
Mean Streets contains so many influential techniques it would require pages to list them all, but some do bear mentioning--particularly for how they are abused in present cinema. As most of us know, Mean Streets, like other filmmakers of the period utilized the New Wave technique of a moving camera, now seen often in movies and TV commercials. It used Super-8 film stock to convey happy, jumpy memories, which is now an overused, trite standard á la The Wonder Years and countless other more recent examples. Mean Streets employed the character-introducing title sequence, where key figures are shown doing something (Johnny Boy blows up a mailbox), and then their names are typewritten on the screen. This was used in Trainspotting, a movie that has more than a few references to Scorsese. It was scored with pop music as an interesting counterpoint to violence (clearly, Scorsese's musicality has been imitated effectively in films like Blood Simple and Reservoir Dogs). Mean Streets' film references -- Charlie watching John Ford's The Searchers and Uncle watching Fritz Lang's The Big Heat- -- contained a specific potency that plays differently than the reference-soaked movies of Quentin Tarantino. I love Tarantino's operatic movie mélange but with films now so readily available on DVD, Mean Streets snippet from The Searchers feels rarer, and in a way, more sacred.
I'm not one to downgrade the importance of Citizen Kane and its influences (and certainly Scorsese wouldn’t as well) but Mean Streets is at this point, just as influential. Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas may make the AFI lists, but Mean Streets deserves high mention. So many films emulate Mean Streets, but very few have achieved its beautiful, ugly, vulnerable, violent and thrilling power. If a movie could talk me into having sex in a dirty bathroom in some dive bar in NYC, Mean Streets could. If a movie could serve as my most beloved dysfunctional ex boyfriend, Mean Streets would be him. It's one of the great loves of my life.
With the great, titan of acting and frequent genius Karl Malden passing (at 97 years of age god bless him), I'm posting one of my favorite Malden movies and performances -- Baby Doll. Though there's many brilliant Malden performances to choose from, this one will leave you fuzzy and buzzy. And I think we all need some of that right now.
"There isn't much of you, but what there is is choice. Delectable, I might say... You're fine-fibered. Soft and smooth…You make me think of cotton. No! No fabric or cloth, not even satin or silk cloth, and no kind of fiber, not even cotton fiber has the absolute delicacy of your skin.”
So says a predatory Eli Wallach to an aroused and “hysterical” Caroll Baker in one of the most notoriously erotic mainstream films ever produced at that time. The movie was Baby Doll, director Elia Kazan’s tragic-comic follow up to his already steamy masterpiece A Streetcar Named Desire, his controversial On the Waterfront and his poignantly powerful East of Eden. Used to a certain amount of censorship and hullabaloo (especially for Streetcar), Kazan was most likely, not prepared for the maelstrom of controversy when Baby Doll, a sultry Southern gothic he intended as a “sleeper” was released in 1956.
Denounced by the Legion of Decency and deemed “Just possibly the dirtiest American-made motion picture that has ever been legally exhibited" by Time Magazine, Baby Doll, though not as “dirty” through time (at least in the common, modern comedy manner -- our current accessibility to salacious cinema isn't dirty in the right way...) still remains as sexually charged, perversely interesting and psychologically complex as it did then. It’s also incredibly funny, superbly acted and weirdly beautiful. Though somewhat, inexplicably forgotten through time (it finally got a DVD release a few years ago), Baby Doll is one of Kazan’s greatest accomplishments -- a masterpiece that stands on equal footing with Streetcar and Waterfront.
Written by that genius of Southern turbulence, Tennessee Williams (Baby Doll was his first original screenplay -- adapted from parts of two earlier one-act plays), the film gave Carroll Baker her first starring role with an entrance that, in terms of cult cinema, is about as sexually iconic as Marilyn Monroe’s upswept dress in The Seven Year Itch. Gorgeous, blonde 19-year old child bride Baby Doll (Baker) lies in an infant’s crib, sucking her thumb while her middle aged husband Archie Lee (a wonderfully frustrated Karl Malden|) leers at her through a peephole.
But why must he leer at his own wife? As we soon learn, Baby Doll is a virgin -- she married Archie for what she thought would be a cushy life of prosperity and Southern comfort. But at this point Archie’s lost his cotton gin to a Syndicate Plantation and is so in debt that his furniture (or, as she drawls "fornichore" which is how what every woman should call a sofa) has been removed from the house. An exasperated, angry Baby Doll threatens to leave Archie while he desperately waits out the day -- the eve of her birthday -- for their especially provocative “agreement:” that when she turns 20, he can finally sleep with his wife.
But things take a turn when lumbering, impetuous Archie loses his temper and burns down the Syndicate Plantation and Cotton Gin, managed by the cocky Sicilian Silva Vacarro (Wallach). Seeking revenge, Vacarro finds the one thing that’ll make Archie murderously angry -- Archie’s wife. And not just his wife but, perhaps (not to be revealed here) his wife’s maidenhood as well. That is, if you could call the sassy, sexually curious tease Baby Doll a “maiden.” She’s certainly not-as-infantile-as-she-looks -- and she will reveal herself to be smart--making her all the more sexy.
The cat and mouse games and tricks played by Baby Doll and Vacarro result in the picture's gleefully demented, yet supremely hot seduction sequence on a porch swing that some viewers thought was downright pornographic. What were his hands doing? (I know) Why is she swooning that much? (We all know) This hyper eroticism is heightened by the film’s lovely counterpoint of a blonde, summer dress-wearing Baby Doll to the darkly dapper, swarthy Italian who picks floating cotton off her dress and holds a riding crop, no less. And to further amp things up, after some antics in the shell of a house, Wallach will be seen riding Baker’s hobby horse to the rock tune of “Shame! Shame! Shame!” The beautifully seamy shot of his shadowy rocking suggests a whole helluva lot more is going on here. Yes, lots of s-e-x. Good, bad, dirty southern s-e-x.
But there’s more to the film than just overheated sensuality. Starkly but stunningly shot in black and white, the picture showcases a sad, crumbling South which is perfectly encapsulated via Malden’s distressed and ultimately crazed performance as a cotton farmer being taken over by big business. You feel for poor Malden, as dumb as he is, and the intelligent actor nails sleazy, desperate, sad, cruel and touching all at once. Malden could be a powerful passive aggressive (check A Streetcar Named Desire, in which his "nice" guy ends up being one of the most despicable characters in the picture), and a powerful, noble aggressive aggressive (like his tough priest in On the Waterfront). Here he's just a lost soul who strikes out, but like his relationship with Baby Doll, his fire will ultimately be extinguished. No (for lack of a better word) orgasmic pleasure will come from this. He can't keep anything. Not his gin, not his wife, and not the old Southern way. He can't even be a proper southern gentleman without becoming a leering pervert (after all, in a time when he could have taken her by force without much condemnation, he is honoring her wish to remain a virgin). So as loud-mouth and as stupid as he seems hollering "Baby Doll!" at the top of his lungs, you can see that Williams, Kazan and Malden understand this is a man who has lost all dignity -- and though frequently funny, this is just plain sad.
And really, everyone here, save for his stray plantation hands whom he sneaks shots of hooch with, are sad. And, in their own way, creeps. But they're all-too-human creeps and earn sympathy for each of their dire situations. Baby Doll as the unhappy, clever though unschooled wife, Archie as the out-moded Southerner and Vacarro as the despised outsider. No one is inherently good, but none of are purely evil either. They are corrupted, vindictive, mean and in the case of Baker -- achingly sexy on top.
I would, in fact, go so far as to say that Baker’s Baby Doll is one of the sexiest film performances in screen history. With that alone shouldn’t the film earn greater respect through time? It did somewhat in its DVD release (in conjunction with the Tennessee Williams’ box set which also includes that other underrated depiction of frustrated sexuality and a sizzling Lolita Sue Lyon -- The Night of the Iguana) with an accompanying short documentary. Chronicling the film’s scandal (happily all three spectacular leads are alive to discuss the movie -- god bless you Karl Malden for even making it thatfar) and appreciating the picture’s placement within Kazan’s esteemed canon of work, it’s a nice addition. But I wanted more. I always want more with Baby Doll. More movie, more respect, more thumb-sucking and ice cold glasses of lemonade.
As Baby Doll express at the end of the film, “we got nothin' to do but wait for tomorrow and see if we're remembered or forgotten.” Thankfully and respectfully (maybe ironically so) Baby Doll is indeed remembered. Really, how could it have ever been forgotten?
What is Michael Bay trying to say? We know he’s an entertainer, first and foremost (or so he thinks). So if one asked him directly, he’d more than likely answer (I’m thinking arms akimbo): "I’m just here to blow your minds with these amazing transforming robots created by Hasbro, OK?" Of course. Whether through his not-so-exciting, yet oddly watchable misfire of Pearl Harbor or the weirdly invigorating carnage and surprising cleverness of Bad Boys II, the man is the Ethel Merman of action movies -- the hostess with the mostest (and biggest budget) on the ball. And with Transformers 2 he’s definitely in Ethel territory -- he wants to please everyone (Ernest Borgnine, you can step aside).
But again, what the hell is this man trying to say? And furthermore, what is his aesthetic? While watching the second installment of Transformers (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen) my mind reflected on this for a good, long while (the picture is 2 hours and 24 minutes after all). While staring at a multitude of muddy looking robots flying by (or smashing about) in strangely (one would say poorly) crafted action sequences, or John Turturro revealing his rear-end in a g-string, or Shia LaBeouf running around Egypt yelling nonsense like “Bumble-bee!” or his continual hyperactive stream of “no, no, no, no, no!” (technically, I’m not sure if he said “no” that many times in a row, but with LaBeouf, it always feels that way), my eyes scanned the enormous IMAX frame, searching for…meaning, for the Bay way.
And after settling into the second hour of the movie, dismayed I had over another hour ahead of me, it started to come to me: Michael Bay is a surrealist. He may not know he is, he may not like that I’m calling him one, but the money sucking action filmmaker extraordinaire would do well by Bunuel or Jodorowksy or Gilliam or hell, Aqua Teen Hunger Force (which is absurdist surrealism at its finest, especially the ingenious movie, and the characters would have featured brilliantly in this picture -- better than Bay’s “jive talking” bots). If the filmmaker had some chutzpah, if he truly tapped into the melting pocket watch corner of his brain, if he understood his full dream weaving potential (because I do believe Michael Bay can “get me through the night”), the next Transformers would be titled Un Chien Andalou LaBeouf.
The story? OK…well…there’s a prologue set in 17,000 B.C. (which is truly bizarre, and strangely gorgeous) and then we’re thrust into U.S. Army world, via Capt. Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and Sergeant Epps (Tyrese Gibson), whose elite squad (called NEST) use real live people and Autobots to smoke out Decepticons. If you understand the Transformers universe, you’ll know what the hell I’m talking about. If not, no matter. After aqua imprisonment at the bottom of the ocean, the bad transformers seek to free their leader, Megatron (voiced by Hugo Weaving), and then something about shards of a cube (called “the Spark”).
Enter Shia, or rather the ridiculously named Sam Witwicky (is he a character from Dickens?) who is trying to simply attend college like every normal kid but just can’t shake these damn deceptions. In this case, one comes in the form of a sexed up freshman girl (freshmen girls are deceptions…oh…that’s saying something). After Sam goes off on some nutty Rain Man prophesying created by the Spark (Rainn Wilson shows up as a college professor un-amused by Sam’s tic-like compulsion to save the world) he’s eventually pushed out of school and into Egypt where much scrambling around occurs. Yes, there’s a story, there’s a mythology, there’s even an ending, but you can decipher that for yourself. That, and just how Megan Fox’s white pants never, ever get dirty. OK, they get dirty, but manage to magically clean themselves.
But then why should they stay dirty? In the Bay universe, time and space are suspended, action is indecipherable and sense isn’t important. Sensory overload is, albeit occasionally beautifully shot sensory overload, and again, surrealistic sequences of elegance that I noticed in the corners of the frame (almost as if Bay had sprayed acid in the theater -- something Gaspar Noe would heartily approve of). There’s a scene very near the end, in particular, in which Sam stands in some alternate universe talking to the robots that could have hatched from one of Hunter S. Thompson’s drug benders. But is that the point Michael Bay? If so, you’re on to something. And I want more of it.
But will he ever give it to me? The Wachowski’s did with their amazingly underrated and misunderstood Speed Racer, Ang Lee did with his gorgeously over the top, ridiculously maligned masterpiece Hulk, Mel Gibson did with his compelling, gloriously insane bit of the old ultra violence, The Passion of the Christ -- better pictures, and ones many could not understand or get behind because, well (and I’m speculating here) they were actual works of art. Bay has artistry (or hires others to), and he has more power than the aforementioned directors so he could get away with murder (as he did, almost quite literally with the great Bad Boys II). I just wish he would have pushed it further with Transformers. Throw in a tiger emerging from a fish, give us an Elephant Celebes, make Meatwad the hero. Please -- you have the sensibility.
If, in the next Transformers he replaces Megan Fox midway through the movie with Jessica Alba (a la Bunuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire) I will have faith in him. As for now, I’m just waiting for his newest treachery of images. And if you dig Magritte, you’ll know I mean that as a potential compliment.
In Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher, the taciturn piano teacher cites Schubert and Schumann as her two favorite composers. Both German, both “Romantics” both tortured in art and life -- the composers are apt choices for this cinematic creature. Schubert, the bigger genius, outward bohemian and poet, was Schumann’s greatest admirer. Schumann cried over Schubert’s death at 31 and later went insane, dying in an asylum at 46. Schumann said he could not talk about Schubert unless he spoke “to the trees and the stars.”
Schubert worship runs through Haneke’s picture as teacher Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert) instructs in Schubert’s dynamics from “scream to whisper, not loud to soft.” Such is her disposition, and, like Schumann, she, the outwardly ordered woman is inwardly screaming -- one step away from the nuthouse herself, where as we learn in passing, her father is suffering through the rest of his life.
But that’s only one aspect to Haneke’s intensely complex study of a woman living on the precipice. As with all of Haneke’s philosophical “horror” pictures from Benny's Video to the brilliant, terrifying Funny Games (and the underrated, powerfully horrifying re-make) to Code Unknown, there’s a consistent theme of claustrophobia, voyerism and perversion -- perversion of not only the characters, but also of audiences wishing to lap it up and beg for more (master). But Haneke (and this is where many cannot stand the director) wants you to think while salivating and, in his own cleverly cinematic way, punishes you for doing so (it's no wonder Haneke was -- as he states on the DVD -- profoundly influenced by Pier Pasolini’s Salò). He likes to rattle your brain and moral center, making you ruminate long and hard on what you’ve just witnessed. With The Piano Teacher, it might be when our fine character lies in a bathtub and...I'll get to that moment later.The Piano Teacher, as squirm inducing as it can become, may be the director's most powerfully unsettling, erotic and at times, comic film.
The moviehas the 40-ish Erika still living with her unpleasant mother (Annie Giradot) in a relationship so antagonistic, unhealthy and, for lack of a better word, close that the two still share a bed (and you’ll see what that’s like through the course of the film). Erika is a distinguished professor at a prestigious Viennese school who’s worshipped but feared as she harshly criticizes students: “A wrong note in Beethoven is better than a bad interpretation.”
But she’s a loner with some pretty intriguing outlets for her sexuality. Trolling sex shops, sitting in the booths to smell the refuse left by horny patrons, she’s more than just a repressed female seeking release -- she’s a sadist as well. And there’s something proud about her thrills that, amid the beautiful classical piano music, works some convoluted ideas about the human condition. Gorgeous depravity or rather...is anything truly exalting unless you’ve witnessed the sullied? The disgusting? The sexually deviant? She's something you rarely see in cinema --- a beautiful female creep. And that (for men possibly more than women...but possibly not) is simultaneously erotic and especially scary.
When a curious, handsome young student, Walter (Benoit Magimel), becomes interested in her musically and sexually, he falls hard for the seemingly placid teacher. He changes a public performance of a Schoenberg piece to Schubert just for her (and that is quite a difference -- modern discordance to Romanticism), and she begins to test his limits of sexuality, specifically in a masterful sequence in the conservatory’s bathroom where a bizarre, painful dance of erotic control commences.
Few films really dissect "odd"/neurotic female desire on film (Polanski's Repulsion, so far, for me is the greatest study of this. Hitchcock's Vertigo and Marnie and Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves ranks high as well), and The Piano Teacher goes right (as Edward Albee's Martha would say) to the meat of things. This may be the only film I can think of where the female protagonist is something of a lurker, a sadist/masochist (in one scene she places broken glass in a student’s coat pocket; in another she cuts her vagina in the bathtub -- tough to watch but weirdly mesmerizing) and yet, she is oddly sympathetic. We feel for her. Some may even like her (I did).
In one of film’s bravest performances, Huppert creates a character of such intrigue and bottomless depth that we can’t possibly crack her. Though something of a female "pervert" (whatever that means) she remains reserved -- acting through pinched, near non-expressions that explode into manias, she's never obvious, never entirely fathomable, never strained or trying too hard to be transgressive. Somehow, the actress feels naturally perverse, at times frightening. And though a lover of Romantic music, she is anything but romanticized. Subversive, meditative and poetic, The Piano Teacher, thanks largely to Huppert, is a daring work of sexually strange, unmitigated genius. Like truly feeling music, which comes from precise craftmanship and then spins you into mysterious, emotional and exalted places, so can the workings of love and all the other, stuff. Sex, desire, neurosis and romance are often quite specific and yet deeply enigmatic sensations. For that, the movie, though disturbing remains unsettling erotic and yet unusually romantic. To the trees and the stars and the beds and to the...sex shops.
David Carradine has passed away. When I heard the news, and how it might have possibly happened, I was incredibly, almost weirdly sad. Carradine could be a handful (and his recent appearance at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica after a Bound for Glory screening proves as much). But he could also be a superior actor -- in Martin Scorsese’s Boxcar Bertha (co-starring one of his famous partners, Barbara Hershey whom he had a child with, named Free), and then that bloody, drunken cameo in Scorsese's Mean Streets (he's shot by brother Robert), Walter Hill’s The Long Riders (alongside brother's Keith and Robert), the legendary Kung Fu, Paul Bartel’s Death Race 2000 (I love that movie), Ingmar Bergman’s The Serpent’s Egg (a great, intense performance), Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill (his speech about Superman was especially memorable and more heartfelt and soulful -- moreso than probably written), and Hal Ashby’s wonderful, lyrical Bound for Glory, in which he played Woody Guthrie to many viewer’s surprise.
Through the passage of time, and especially with all the scandal, many forget the more sensitive side to Carradine. Yes he was Kwai Chang Caine and Bill and maybe even kind of a "weird-o" whatever that means (and god bless the real weird ones, not the pseudo eccentrics). He was a man who walked his own path (which makes him nothing strange, only more exceptional). He was also something of a hippie (for a time) and his own man, a one of a kind -- probably for good and for bad. After all, as Tammy Wynette sang “he’s just a man.”
Hailing from an acting family, he was born right here in Hollywood, California, the son of Ardanelle Abigail and famous American actor John Carradine, “the voice” (a favorite of John Ford). He was also the half-brother to Bruce, Keith (who is the most famous, acclaimed brother -- “I’m Easy” -- so great) , Christopher and Robert Carradine. His dad was something of a hell-raiser, he witnessed quite a lot, I’m sure, and Hollywood families are often problematic units to grow up in. But then, a lot of families are.
With all of these salacious stories scuttling out like fiending cockroaches -- classless ex wives declaring Carradine kinky (yeah...so?). He rode his horse clad only in a Speedo (what’s wrong with that?). He used to tie himself to calm down (big deal…) etc. and so on; Carradine is getting more press than when he walked among us. And then there’s the lame jokes (please no more Bill has been killed jabs) and the alleged sexual nature of his death, which will be Hollywood Babylon material for years on end. People are always curious by sexual deaths because, I believe, they wonder these things in themselves, and then after that moment of self reflecting fright, some (not all) start throwing stones. As such, Carradine is not being treated most honorably and I think even Beatrix Kiddo would be pissed off by this. I only wish she could walk into that ex wife’s house with all that beautiful fury and start some serious hand-to-hand combat in the kitchen -- a heavy duty, pots and pans, Kaboom style tangle. But that’s the movies.
And yet, Carradine, whose career spanned so many years and directors and genres and quality, was the movies. The actor who struggled as a B-lister (I hate saying that -- I hate using letter grades, but this is how Hollywood viewed him) -- a man who made some bad and great exploitation pictures, as well as some genuine masterpieces and some memorable television along the way, got his Hollywood ending. His big screen, mysterious, exploitation/art-house finale -- an ending Abel Ferrara or Joseph Sarno or Gaspar Noe might have directed. Which isn’t bad company, cinematically speaking.
And which leads me to…so what? So he might have been a little freaky. So he might have been playing a dangerous game (the death remains tragic -- for his family, his loved ones, anyone not expecting such a quick exit for a man who appeared pretty damn healthy at 72 -- no matter how many chemicals he's surely consumed). But...who the hell are we to judge? David Carradine was a talent, a personality, an icon all his own (and in an almost inscrutable way), and a force of nature. Tell all the stories you want ladies, laugh at his alleged curious ways of getting off you hypocritical finger-wagging moralists, break him down and park him in the darkest corner, but nothing will take away what he could bring to the screen. To borrow from a Woody Guthrie song, he may have been going down a dusty old road but he “ain't gonna be treated this way” -- not by me. Rest in noble, crazy and enigmatic peace David Carradine.
Had she lived long enough to see the day, June 1marks the birthday of cinema’s ultimate fractured sex goddess.
On this day, Marilyn Monroe would have been 83-years-old.
And despite all those coffee mugs emblazoned with her image, countless MM impersonators in their fluttery white dresses and so many sexy starlets naming her as an influence (Madonna, Mariah, Christina and most recently Lindsay) she remains fascinating.
It’s not just that she died tragically and in mysterious circumstances though, that has certainly added to her legend. It’s not just for her famous husbands and her Happy-Birthday-Mr. President dalliances with the Kennedy's (something I've always found incredibly sad -- what else was going on there?). And it’s not just for her iconic beauty and glamour.
No, there’s something more to Marilyn that makes her continually interesting. It's all her now legendary tragic contradictions -- her messy, mixed-up life, her massive consumption of pills and champagne, her continual and final mental instability juxtaposed with her peaches and cream gorgeousness, her absolute command of the big screen (in spite of her problems with lines) and her ultimate, natural talent. It’s her ability, after all these decades, to still pop off the screen with such undeniable “It” that we almost take her for granted. Of course Marilyn Monroe is one of the most famous women in the world, who doesn’t know how wonderful she is?
But then, watch her again perform “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes with effortless charisma and cleverness, observe her studied, but certainly real and potent melancholy in The Misfits (and every scene with Montgomery Clift - her beautiful brother in brilliance, and never-ending ennui), enjoy the Freudian fantasy -- the erotic fun she’s having in The Seven Year Itch, think about all that sexed up sadness from Some Like It Hot (and yes, she makes you actually think about it: "I'm through with love, I'll never love again..." at that moment, she really means it). Further, view her va-va-voom bad girl in Niagara, her tragic, heartbreaking instability in Don't Bother to Knock, her jeans-wearing authenticity in Clash By Night, and revel in her garish vulnerability and sweetness (and my God those beautiful close-ups) in Bus Stop -- she is just. So. Wonderful.
I had a thing for MM ever since I was a little girl (we were born on the same day). I even composed a slightly scandalous speech in the 7th Grade proclaiming the movie star was murdered (I think she ended her own life now, by accident or on purpose. As I go through life in general, and see how mentally sick this town can be, I better understand why she felt so alone). But even without young conspiracy theories, most little girls love MM in some way, especially those obsessed with movies. My love would would re-ignite later in life after I watched nearly all her films by high school and moved on to other celluloid icons. Rita Hayworth, Jean Harlow, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Veronica Lake, Tuesday Weld, Brigitte Bardot, Lana Turner, Hedy Lamarr, Louise Brooks, Gene Tierney -- the list could go on and on and on -- I’d work through all of their movies before watching Marilyn yet again. But I always came back to her. Like re-reading a great novel or play, you understand her better with age.
And though people love to discuss Marilyn Monroe the underrated actress (which is true -- she was a great comedienne), rarely do they argue about MM the underrated singer. As proven in Some Like it Hot, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, River of No Return, Bus Stop (oh lord...her sexy, warbled, scared, ripped fishnet version of "That Old Black Magic"...so brilliant) and the less classic Let's Make Love (where her rendition of "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" is one of the best versions of that song ever recorded), the woman had distinct pipes.
Marilyn could sing. And she could sing with great soul, humor and character, with an unmistakable voice no other singer possessed. Isn't that the sign of an original artist? I think so.
Again, I realized later in life that I favored Marilyn both early in her career, when she was so fresh and un-mannered in films like All About Eve, Don'tBother to Knock and one of my favorite MM performances, Clash By Night (Marilyn slopping around in jeanseating that candy bar! So natural, so her.)
I adore her work during her so-called decline, like her odd glamour-puss beatnik performance from Let's Make Love, her sad eyed, superb method style in The Misfits and the absolutely mesmerizing bits and pieces I’ve seen of her in the ill-fated Something's Got To Give. She looked so stunning, so fit, who would think she was to die mere months later?
I also became even more fascinated by her later photo sessions; especially Bert Stern’s final sitting. MM is less made up, wearing simple clothes (if you ever look at the Christie's book on her auction, you'll notice how basic her personal style was) and you notice her skin aging, her fascinating flaws -- you can even see her appendectomy scar. But there is something so fantastically real, morbid almost, about these pictures. She looks a little modern (I always think of Debbie Harry or what Edie Sedgwick might have aged into when I look at these), very drunk and wonderfully rough around the edges -- less the big eyed-blonde and more the world weary movie star.
As Norman Mailer wrote of her in his perceptive ode Marilyn (so much better than Gloria Steinem's victim-oriented tome -- Mailer understood Monroe's sometimes complicitness, thereby making her no dummy) she was, “a female spurt of wit and sensitive energy who could hang like a sloth for days in a muddy-mooded coma; a child girl, yet an actress to loose a riot by dropping her glove at a premiere; a fountain of charm and a dreary bore…she was certainly more than the silver witch of us all.”
Yes. Lying on that mattress on the floor in that modest little house at the end of her life, so many women (and men too) can understand and/or relate to her sadness -- and so many can see what demons led to her demise...and yet, she remains mysterious.
And though she may be ultra ubiquitous she also remains important. Sexy, breathy, objectified, so-called dumb blonde? Someone's got to show them how to do it. And perhaps even more important, someone's got to reveal so much joy and pain yet remain so very specifically enigmatic. The cracked fantasy.
Someone has to be the real movie star.
Happy Birthday Marilyn. You really were something else
This year's Film Noir Festival in Palm Springs honors the most brilliant, baneful brats of them all, Patty McCormack in The Bad Seed. The picture shows today, followed by a discussion with Miss McCormack, who most recently played Pat Nixon in Frost/Nixon. She's got a lot of intriguing things to say about her evil little cutie Rhoda, along with numerous other things -- like working with Orson Welles on the ill-fated Don Quixote -- and more. Since she's one of my all time favorite movie villains, I'm running my Bad Seed worship, yet again.
The baby blonde. That symbol of purity, beauty and goodness. In 1950’s America who wouldn’t want to have a lovely, flaxen haired child to adore and spoil? Everyone, of course. But by 1956, two important films emerged -- showing the underbelly of these perfect specimens. The more esteemed, and notorious (it was condemned by the Legion of Decency) was Elia Kazan’s Baby Doll, in which the gorgeous child bride Carroll Baker destroys Karl Malden’s masculinity whilst sleeping in a crib and sucking her thumb (never mind she’s 19 going on 20). While other relevant issues pervade Kazan’s masterful take on Tennessee Williams, the lingering image is of Ms. Baker in that crib…an iconic vision of arrested sexuality.
But just as viewers took a gander at Baby Doll, they had another blonde to contend with -- a much younger, smarter and deadlier one -- The Bad Seed. Pretty 10-year-old Patty McCormack playing an 8- year-old in pig tails and pinafore skirts as Rhoda Penmark, a curtsying, cutie-pie brat who’ll manipulate, terrorize and kill anyone who gets in her way. Both actresses’ were deservedly Oscar nominated for their performances but it's Mervyn LeRoy’s picture, though much loved by cultists, that remains highly underrated.
Part of the problem may lie in the transfer from play to film. LeRoy rightfully transported nearly all of the actors from the successful stage play (most likely to the annoyance of Warner Brothers who probably desired a bigger star for Rhoda’s mother) but was forced to change the ending. In the play, an unstoppable Rhoda continues her evil while after her killings, she chillingly plays her continual practice piece, "Claire de Lune" on the piano. Perfect. In the picture however, she is socked with a lightning bolt. O.K, also perfect. But, (and I'm not endorsing the harm of children here, even evil children), Warner Brothers made LeRoy further punish Rhoda, or in this case Patty, by having cast members spank little McCormack --assuring the audience this was all a bunch of fun. You know, burning, drowning, murdering kids with tap shoes -- fun!
And yet, in an early bit of camp -- The Bad Seedis fun. Gleefully, unapologetically and relevantly fun. In its own way, the end changes just make the picture even more inadvertently subversive. How we love to hate little Rhoda. And for some of us (myself included), how we love to love her…she’s just too damn full of vicious personality. I even go so far as to nearly (I say nearly) champion her actions and wish she would invoke more harm (film wise) before her inevitable demise.
But enough of my sick adoration and to the movie itself. Living with her mother Christine (an understandably neurotic Nancy Kelly) and mostly absent father (William Hopper -- Hedda Hopper's son) Rhoda's life is one of privilege and attention. When kissing her father goodbye he asks “What would you give me for a basket of kisses?” Rhoda coos back: “A basket of hugs!” Landlady and supposed expert in psychology, Monica Breedlove (Evelyn Varden) dotes on Rhoda, applauding her out-moded manners and showering her with presents -- one being rhinestone movie star glasses that Rhoda, of course, loves. As she prattles on about Freud and abnormal psychology, the rather ridiculous Breedlove cannot see the freakish behavior in front of her. She's blinded by all that bright, beauteous blonde.
But Leroy (a scene stealing Henry Jones), the disturbed, somewhat perverse handyman disrespected by the household can see right through Rhoda (you even get a sense he's got a thing for her), leading to some of the picture's most inspired moments. Man does Leroy dig into snotty Rhoda after a fateful class outing leaves one child dead; not coincidentally, the class-mate who won the penmanship medal over the all perfecting Rhoda (“Everyone knew I wrote the best hand!” she hollers in sour grapes dramatics). The little boy is drowned and Rhoda returns home as if nothing happened. "Why should I feel bad? It was Claude Daigle got drowned, not me" she insists. And then she goes roller skating. Meanwhile, her mother becomes increasingly rattled and the boy's mother (an inspired, heartbreaking Eileen Heckart).
Though some have a tough time with The Bad Seed’s talkier sequences (especially when Rhoda’s not around), to me they are an intriguing look into ideas that would later be seriously considered, scientific even. They also point out how psychology can’t explain everything (hence, a bad seed) as the one woman (Breedlove) who brags of her knowledge, fails to sense anything wrong with a child who is, at the very least, self obsessed to the point of vapid narcissism. Never mind she’s a murderer.
And, the golden moments come, again, between Leroy and Rhoda who argue like two prison inmates waiting for lockdown. Though Rhoda finds him revolting, he’s the only adult who can actually frighten the child with his taunts of “stick blood hounds” or the dreaded electric chair, a fate he swears she'll meet. “They don’t send little girls to the electric chair!” Rhoda protests. “Oh they don’t?” He answers. “The got a blue one for little boys and a pink one for little gals!”
Though films like The Omen or The Good Son have tried, nothing compares to The Bad Seed -- and no child actor has out-seeded McCormack. Calm and cool, she can also rip into fits of rage that are both terrifying and hilarious. Perfectly balancing a disarmingly adult demeanor with the tantrums of a little girl, her performance is even more impressive in that it’s the blueprint. Where did McCormack learn this wonderful balance of over-theatrical camp with an icy, realistic serenity? And before John Waters became obsessed with her?
A classic and first of its kind, the then shocking Bad Seed holds up, albeit with a tad more camp, but with just as much psychotic gusto (I'm not sure what to think about the talked about re-make). Revel in McCormack’s Rhoda, a character even the obnoxiously talented Dakota Fanning couldn’t play. Agree with Leroy who spits out: “I thought I saw some mean little gals in my time, but you're the meanest!” And, what the hell, worship little Rhoda -- the itty bitty ultimate queen bitch goddess.
In real life, memories don’t follow the patterns of a typical movie. Recollections are not played out in fully developed narrative timeframes, perfectly balanced and structured strands of thought, or tangible, easily understood events. Memories can be visited but never wholly embraced. They can be strong and unforgettable, but bit by bit, they lose their edges, making them, for many, even more melancholic. The more they elude us, the less simplistic they become -- never just happy or sad, but mysterious and bittersweet, replete with or bereft of emotion for reasons often beyond comprehension.
Sofia Coppola's poetic, tragic and mysterious The Virgin Suicides (released nearly ten years ago and, which emerged to me today, a memory itself while thinking of my siblings), captures the ambiguity of such hazy recollections with tender, albeit horrifying ennui.
Adapted from the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, Coppola's picture doesn't tell a story; instead, it leaves a swoony, foggy impression, a darkly beautiful intangibility filled with almost torturously elusive feeling. Set in Michigan in the early '70s, the film is marked immediately with the pall of death and the dangling unknown of why it happened. The five teenage Lisbon sisters -- all blonde and beautiful -- kill themselves, and a group of smitten teenage boys struggle to understand why. The suicides are a defining period in these boys' lives, but even as they narrate the film, they have never gotten their heads around the loss. In an unusual narrative and cinematic point of view, the boys wistfully re-create the girls' lives through a swiped diary, bits of bric-a-brac memorabilia and remembrances of voyeurism, idealism and fleeting carnality. Never really understanding these girls as living, breathing flesh, their communication acts much like modern ways of "connecting" -- through the computer, through online social networking, through pictures, through texts. Just as now, interacting with the real person as opposed to an idealized representation is usually much messier, much more real and much scarier.
Which connects to the death of 13-year-old sister Cecilia (Hanna Hall). The suicide places sisters Lux (Kirsten Dunst), Bonnie (Chelse Swain), Mary (A.J. Cook) and Therese (Leslie Hayman) into a mourning period marked not by obvious wailing drama, but by a peculiar inwardness that only sisters can understand. When one feels alienated by their parents, the bonding of siblings is frequently strong -- so intense that secret languages and, in the case with my sisters, coded words and private hand signals, are created to invent one's own world. These are the people who understand you. But blood bonds can be frightfully concentrated, and in the worst cases, veer into madness.
So when a psychiatrist tells the grieving parents (Kathleen Turner and James Woods) that the girls need more social contact, they allow the sexually curious Lux (with sisters and their assigned dates in tow) to attend a homecoming dance with heartthrob Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett). After an innocent, oddly heartbreaking transgression occurs, the strict Roman Catholic family (led mostly by Mom) cloisters the girls in the house, taking them out of school and depriving them of all social contact. Of course, this can't come without consequences. The girls will grow ever closer, ever secretive, and ever destructive.
But Coppola doesn't place those consequences within a moral straitjacket -- no one is demonized, and no one is entirely understood. Many criticized the picture for its lack of fully developed characters, but that is exactly the point. Who are these girls? These girls are memories, these girls are tragic beauties put on pedestals. These girls are characters one writes books about, but one never truly knows. And the not knowing is part of the tragedy (does anyone really want to know them? Or do they want to keep them? Or stare at them? Or, after a night of passion, leave them waking up alone and cold in a football field?). And then these are girls, who committed, really, in the plain light of day, an ugly act that turned their young, lilting beauty and promise of a full life into rotting corpses. Death. The urn your heartbroken, morbidly curious stepsister opens after a game of Scrabble.
The Virgin Suicides is shot with a gauzy, haloed beauty that is obsessive but never perverse (and the haunting music by Air is especially poignant and otherworldly). The point is to capture an adolescence lost, both to the sisters and to the boys themselves. Coppola's intelligence, sensitivity and ethereal style avoids obvious irony and easy interpretation, which can be maddening -- but then suicide is maddening, both for those who achieve the act and those who suffer the aftermath. Coppola's vision of this uptight suburbia is made both erotic and exotic by these fairy-tale Rapunzels who live there -- troubled, creative and intriguing girls trapped in the unfathomable and misty glaze of worship and memories.
I've been suffering from terrible insomnia. In dishonor of my frequent affliction, I've turned off the Roy Acuff (note to self: Roy Acuff is haunting brilliance but he does not make me go to sleep...my mind wanders to birds and night trains and murder). So in went Erik Skjoldbjaerg's "Insomnia," the original and better picture (Christopher Nolan re-made it with Al Pacino and Robin Williams). Not only does the movie put me in touch with my depressive Swedish roots, but it reminds me why I revere Stellan Skarsgård. I'm re-posting my original take...fresh words coming soon.
Film noir is characterized by certain essential ingredients: the duality of a man's tormented soul; expressionistic black-and-white lighting; dusty rays of sunlight barely peeking through thick venetian blinds in a private detective's office; Barbara Stanwyck; Humphrey Bogart; Raymond Chandler. For hardcore purists, noirish films such as John M. Stahl's Technicolor melodrama Leave Her to Heaven, Raoul Walsh's western Pursued and Alexander MacKendrick's gloriously talky, Clifford Odets-scripted Sweet Smell of Success do not fit into the formula. The settings aren't right; the stylistics are off. But that's just nit-picking academic/nerd soulessness.
And so, despite the stylistic and thematic tenets that unify the genre, it need not conform to its literal meaning of "black film." As in the aforementioned films, black can be Gene Tierney's heart, black can be a Spanish-American-War veteran, black can be a wicked gossip columnist. Nowhere is this so provocatively demonstrated than in Swedish director Erik Skjoldbjaerg's Insomnia, a picture that proves that light can obscure as much as it reveals.
After a jarring opening sequence -- the artistically lyrical murder of a young woman -- Insomnia begins with deceptive simplicity. Jonas Engström (Stellan Skarsgård), a Swedish detective, and his partner, Erik Vik (Sverre Anker Ousdal), are brought to Norway to investigate the slaying. Stumping local authorities, the proficient killer has left little clues -- he even shampooed the girl's hair after her death (kinky clean). Hence the need for Jonas, who, though caught in "intimate conversation" with a witness in his last case, is considered the best homicide detective in the field.
Using the victim's backpack as a lure, Jonas entices the murderer to the shed where he committed the crime. An easy trap, but not too easy. The criminal sees his pursuers and flees. During a confusing chase through a thick Norwegian fog, Jonas shoots a figure he presumes to be the wanted man. Unfortunately, it's his partner, who dies before his very eyes. To avoid getting busted for his blunder, Jonas covers up the crime, then must make a disturbing pact with the person who knows the truth: the killer himself.
What happens next pushes the film into the territory of a noir thriller wrapped inside a morality tale wrapped inside a character study of a man plagued by neurotic and sociopathic decay. Rather than simply rely on the standard methods of a crime story (which Nolan did to a certain degree with his re-make), Insomnia indulges the viewer with scenes inside Jonas's disturbed, haunted head. An insomniac, Jonas constantly battles with the useless shades covering the window of his hotel room. He cannot stand the light. Stuck in the throes of a blinding Arctic summer, Jonas becomes more and more agitated and, without his partner around to keep him in check, outright despicable. He tampers with and plants evidence and displays a selfish and altogether conflicted personality.
Yet because of his ambiguity, I cannot hate him. He's far too human. Despite his icy exterior, he's filled with a feverish lust (insomnia can bring on odd rushes of sexual longing at the strangest moments). Such lust emerges in two situations where he mistakes innocent flirtation for something much more significant than it really is. On the way to a crime scene, a teenage witness allows him to stick his hand between her legs, but the moment, not surprisingly hot and forbidden and exciting for a moment, rapidly sours. Of course. And then, while willingly receiving a pass from a pretty hotel receptionist, Jonas takes things too far by roughly biting at her breasts and her body -- she runs away terrified. He blows that one too. Yearning for more, only to be repelled, he is left a broken-down, dirty old man. A creep. And yet, we feel sorry for him. I certainly do.
Much of this lies in Skarsgård's complexity. Repressed and unctuous yet oddly handsome and sickly swaggering, he gives a performance so compelling that one could easily picture him as Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. Skjoldbjaerg did right in casting Skarsgård, for the director's vision of a man being suffocated by light would not have worked with a predictably "disturbing" actor. Skjoldbjaerg also did right by not making his neo-noir a typically pedestrian display of expressionistic shadowing to reveal the dualities of a man's soul (how many times have we heard that?). He instead creates a world of pale yellows that envelop his character like a humiliating urine-stained sheet a terrible mother would shame her son with. A sickly, stifling and embarrassing world that darkness can't obscure.
