"I am a product of violence myself. By the age of 15 I'd been through Auschwitz and Belsen and my family destroyed... Without motivation, without warning. One's whole life is literally changed by making oneself cope with violence. The force cannot destroy the sensitive... Tennessee Williams believes that violence destroys sensitivity but I don't believe this -- we go on, the life force goes on in spite of it." - Jack Garfein
I'm honored to be presenting the work of Jack Garfein at this year's Telluride Film Festival. He's a master. A master with only two feature films. But he's accomplished so much more in the world of theater, film and life. Garfein has stories. So many stories. Stories from decades ago and stories from two weeks ago. Warm, bracing, brilliant, funny and empathetic, he is both powerful and pleasant to talk with in person. It will be wonderful to interview him on stage. The man is a force.
Garfein is a filmmaker so ahead of his time that, even after 50 years, his two features The Strange One (1957) and Something Wild (1961) continue to inspire, shock, provoke empathy and amaze. You can’t believe these complicated, human stories remain so modern and experimental to this day. But this is Garfein – an artist who beautifully combines expressionistic lyricism with raw naturalism while exploring still controversial subjects; never preaching, simplifying or insulting his characters: The fascistic military dehumanization and homoeroticism of The Strange One, and the complexity of rape and entrapment in his masterpiece, Something Wild.
Garfein, born July 2, 1930 in Czechoslovakia came to the U.S. after surviving Auschwitz, joined the Actor’s Studio, directed, in his early twenties, “End as Man” with Ben Gazzara and founded the Actors Studio West. His accomplishments are too vast to list, but he remains one of the great acting teachers, and continues to instruct in Paris. He’s chronicled his return to Auschwitz with his documentary The Journey Back, and has written “Life and Acting - Techniques for the Actor.” He remains a power in the world of acting and film.
On Saturday (today), I'll be presenting a picture I programmed for Turner Classic movies a few years ago and have written about here -- the extraordinary Something Wild. Garfein’s brave, emphatic, confounding, mysterious and
in the end, darkly beautiful Something Wild is a picture so powerful, that it shocks
and distresses viewers to this day. This expressionistic and naturalistic work
of art (the location shooting is remarkable) dared observe the complexity of
rape by following a young woman (a brilliant Carroll Baker, Garfein’s then
wife) after she is viciously attacked by a stranger in the park.
The psychologically
chaotic aftermath – her anxiety, repulsion, depression and eventual withdrawal
from society -- not, and then by her own choice – is given a potent punch with the
arrival of a tremendous Ralph Meeker in a performance you’ve never seen before.
Not one to oversimplify (as rape never should be), this story of victimization
turns into a twisted Stockholm syndrome/true love (or not, which makes it even more intriguing) fairy tale that still provokes
argument. With a score by the virtuoso Aaron Copland, title sequence by legendary
Saul Bass and cinematographer by the remarkable Eugen Schüfftan, Something
Wild is an un-sung masterpiece.
On Sunday I'll be presenting The Strange One, which is strange and not so strange when considering the extent of human sadism. But the film remains shocking and potently violent -- both physically and emotionally. Adapted from Calder Willingham’s novel and play End as a Man (directed on stage by Garfein), The Strange One looks at a sadistic, little Hitler of a sociopathic cadet Jocko De Paris (a remarkable Ben Gazzara) as he terrorizes and manipulates underlings in a Southern military academy. Garfein’s picture boldly took on the abuse of power in such a system and the fearful acceptance of abuse -- sick abuse that goes well beyond boyish hazing.
It also dared to delve into undercurrents to overt moments of homosexuality. Along with Gazzara in his film debut, the cast includes George Peppard, Pat Hingle, Geoffrey Horne, James Olson, Larry Gates and Arthur Storch. It's a major first effort by a young director with a mighty new leading man in Gazzara. The synergy is obvious between these two young talented men and it's not just raw, though it's unafraid of raw emotion and almost feels natural born -- but it's more fine tuned, intelligent and observant. They were thinking but they were never over-thinking. Garfein believes in instinct and his movies and performances flow -- you're swept into worlds both shocking and recognizable.
Jack Garfein is a maverick -- a sensitive, perceptive maverick. Cinema needed him then (but stupidly resisted) and cinema needs him now. Once you've seen his work, it's impossible to forget.
With Jack in Telluride, high in the mountains at Gray Head.
Since it was Roman Polanski's birthday on Saturday. A brief repost/revisit of his crazy-great Cul-de-sac.
Roman Polanski seemingly emerged from the womb understanding the art of filmmaking. Or, rather, understanding the art of wombs -- diseased, depraved, disordered and of course, provocative wombs. Cruelty, violence, twisted sexuality, madness, absurdity -- many of Polanski's hallmark obsessions -- are almost always confined to one space. The director loves nothing more than trapping his characters in devil worshiping apartment buildings, phallic, knife-wielding boat trips and unhappy, unsound houses. And water continually means something.
The superb Cul-de-sac (1966) is his bats in the belfry, bat shit crazy house picture (not a Rosemary, Trelkowski apartment -- with evil prying neighbors who holler at you when you attempt to take the garbage down the stairs), and what weird, sexy, subversive, screwy fun it all is. Party at this twisted abode? I'm there. Even if The Tenant's Shelley Winters shows up (she doesn't, of course). But Lionel Stander sure does.
A precursor to themes he would continually study: tortured relationships, bizarre, often charming alarming blonde woman behavior, infidelity, cross-dressing, even a bit of film noir, aided by the stalwart, gravel voiced Stander (alas, best known to some for his role in Hart to Hart -- "Mrs. H, she's goooorgeous!" -- but who should also be remembered as the blacklisted, veteran hard-boiled American character actor) Cul-de-sac is stunningly, at times, brilliantly unhinged with a Pinteresque touch while remainingpure Polanski.
Donald Pleasence is the odd fellow (a grand understatement) who lucks out (or not) with a gorgeous, beguiling wife (the ever poignant Francoise Dorléac; sister to Catherine Deneuve, and an actress who left the world too soon), whom he keeps in an enormous, isolated house on a tiny island off the northeast coast of Britain. Playing like an especially kinky Desperate Hours, the couple will be forced to host two escaped criminals (Stander and Jack MacGowran) after the thugs land at their nutty abode. And then things get...really interesting. But it's not just crime and entrapment that make the story compelling, it's all of the Polanski touches, particularly when he observes the idle activities of Dorléac.
I love her character. Her feral nature mixed with mischief and intelligence and some other quality that might be a bit crazy but... no... she's not crazy. Some may dismiss her as merely childish, but this is a woman -- a woman who can revert to a girl (and what man hasn't ever reverted to a bratty boy?) Dorléac is cheating on her husband (who takes to wearing ladies clothes a la Roman's tortured Tenant Trelkowski), she's also perpetually bored, stuck in the house like a more spirited, extra primal Virgin Suicide sister, and engages in childlike activities to amuse herself. She tears around the house barefoot, applies exaggerated eyeliner (or helps her husband with his), messes with rifles and, the best, most hilarious, lights a sleeping Stander's feet on fire with burning pieces of newspaper between his toes ("It's called a bicycle" she taunts). Oh...you just don't do that to Lionel Stander. Or perhaps, you do. Between these two mismatched misfits, it's disarmingly sexy. Stander with a... belt. She bolts. Oh, what a moment. Polanski so expertly builds up to it, taking his time for us to observe. And listen. And laugh. And flinch. And laugh again. And then feel a little... sexually unnerved (in a good or bad way -- or both). He's good at that.
These characters don't establish things like "safe" words nor do they understand the concept of such a thing, so the perversity, stark beauty, the isolation, the bleakness, the menacing sexuality and the insanity make the whole experience a black humored good time. A romp, in fact. It's oppressive and ominous, of course, but a special kind of Roman romp.
"Once you’ve touched the real world, there’s nothing more fascinating and nothing stranger than the real world and the people." -- Tony Scott
Tony Scott had ideas. He had so many ideas that, the day I interviewed him (in 2006) for his then newest picture, the remarkable Deja Vu, he talked to me (often off the record) for nearly an hour. We talked about Helmut Newton, Hunter S. Thompson (Scott wanted to bring “Hell’s Angels” to the big screen), film noir, painters he especially loved and how The Last Boy Scout is something of an underappreciated masterpiece (my words). He was exceedingly bright. He was also incredibly personable. He asked me questions about myself. He was curious about what I was doing with my career and life, and asked about any creative endeavors I may have. He offered advice and encouragement. He was clearly interested in real people. He was larger than life and down to earth at the same time. It didn't seem like an act. He was genuine.
What follows is that interview, shortened for my particular outlet due to the many detours the discussion took and off the record talk (I yearn to find my original tape). In person, he was inspired -- one with such enthusiasm, sparkling eyes, warmth, intelligence and excitement for the next thing, that his excitement was infectious. I’ve always heard his crews loved him. I’m not surprised. When I think of Tony Scott, I think of his last, and one of his finest, most beautifully crafted and heartfelt movies -- Unstoppable. What a tremendous loss.
Tony Scott may well have been one of the most influential, yet underrated directors working. He was also one of the most talented, interesting and multi-layered in terms of truly merging that difficult task of style and substance – something lazier critics have a hard time understanding. For as flashy and big budgeted and beautiful as his pictures can be, they’re also both surreal and real, and often powerfully sincere. Unstoppable showcased pure Tony Scott but was as lean and as old fashioned as a Richard Fleischer picture with the added dimension of working class Americans -- and Washington in particular --disenfranchised from his job, sticking it to the man, sticking up for himself and stopping that goddamn train. From his artistic, sensuous debut, The Hunger; to his massively successful and influential Top Gun; to his Quentin Tarantino-penned, adored now classic True Romance; to his solidly entertaining Crimson Tide; to his complex and funny, The Conversation-like Enemy of the State; to the Pitt/Redford teaming in Spy Game; to his ambitious, hyper speedy Domino; to all the other films that have been underrated (like the great, unfairly maligned The Last Boy Scout and the soulful Man on Fire), Scott has influenced, infuriated and entertained people with a boundless energy – on film and in person.
Here, he was discussing the time travel thriller Deja Vu, starring Denzel Washington (in their then third collaboration. Washington would continue with The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 and one of my top ten of 2010, Unstoppable). Scott found the time to discuss work, inspiration, real life, movies and his famous older brother Ridley. I wish I could include more of this conversation. Like his movies, Scott proved to be both endlessly interesting and interested.
What filmmakers inspired you?
Two influences. My brother and Nick [Nicholas] Roeg. My first movie, The Hunger, was a direct knock-off of Nick’s movie Performance. And Ridley really inspired me…You know, I can talk about Polanski and all the other guys. I steal!
And a lot of filmmakers, as you say, “steal…”
A lot of them deny it though! They’re liars! (laughs) Because that is what art is about. Art is about reproducing and recreating and my background as a painter involves the same choices. Canvases and scripts: You’ve got cast, you’ve got wardrobe and locations. It’s the same mental process.
Your films are incredibly stylistic while being rooted in the real world -- you base so much on real people and events, like Domino.
Domino. I should have slowed down a bit (laughs). But I have no regrets. I love the fact that people will continue to employ me and pay me to do what I want to do, which is attempt another world. That’s what so great even about this. I get the opportunity to do new things. I get the chance to do the research, educate myself and I get the chance in touching bounty hunters, touching this word. But… (laughs) all the fucking guys I met were on speed! [He wanted the film style to match that feeling] And little Domino, God bless her, I knew her for twelve years. She was like my daughter.
Your style mixes different film technologies in really intriguing personal ways. Man on Fire is such a moving story of redemption.
It sounds very intellectual and its not, it’s just a fact -- I let style be dictated by material. The style of Man on Fire and its vision and it’s my point of view of how I want to tell the story. With Man on Fire I had a rule of thumb -- if Denzel thought it, I would see it. To me the movie was about paranoia, betrayal and redemption, so therefore I wanted to work the inner psyche of Denzel’s mind so if he thought it, I would see it. And I would articulate it with the different techniques from a hand crank camera to the flashbacks.
Deja Vu is an interesting kind of suspense - thriller. And it’s ambitious in terms of how real it all feels. And I like the idea of an ATF agent falling in love with an image through “a time portal” of a dead woman. It reminded me of Otto Preminger's Laura. Was that at all intentional?
Yes! The Deja Vu writers were inspired by Laura. This movie terrified me more than anything because it’s creatively so dangerous, the science fiction. This movie is a dangerous movie because its science fiction that I wanted to make science fact. And if you get these movies a little bit wrong it can go drastically wrong. So all the technology we used in the movie is used in the world today.
This is the third time you’ve worked with Denzel Washington, why do you like working with him?
One, I love what he does. I love that he always comes up with the goods, he always delivers. I also love his work ethic. He and I are very similar, not just with his ethic but with his process. He loves research. I love research. And he always looks back into the real world for inspiration. And so, in each of the movies, I’ve found a role model for him -- a real guy. Denzel’s very serious about what he does. He loves doing homework.
Jim Caviezel is so powerfully creepy in this movie, were you thinking specifically of him for this role?
For J.C. (as I call him)…it’s hard trying to pass the bad guy or terrorist because in the end in can be so arch or archetypal and I was trying to think of who I was going to use. And I took a meeting with J.C. only because his agent was Denzel’s agent and I thought, I don’t know about Jim Caviezel, he played Jesus Christ. But when I sat with him for thirty seconds and he barely said anything. I said, “You’ve got the part.” [Scott underscored how talented Caviezel was and how he should play evil more often. He felt he could play Jesus just as easily as the devil.]
You’ve worked with a lot of great and legendary actors -- from Gene Hackman to Christopher Walken to Dennis Hopper to Rober De Niro to Robert Redford (and more), and at the same time you’ve showcased a lot of new talent, like Keira Knightley in Domino and Tom Cruise in Top Gun. How do you work with actors?
A director’s like the shrink. You have to adapt to the personality in front of you. So someone like Chris [Walken] is that he’s an adaptation to himself. What’s funny about Walken and Hackman is that in their early days, they almost didn’t have a funny bone in their body, and now they’re so funny. You think of Chris when he was in The Deer Hunter (a great film), and now he’s the funniest guy. His sense of timing. He can read the telephone book and you’ll laugh.
From the flight sequences in Top Gun to the creative and layered vision of violence (and romantic and darkly funny too) in pictures like True Romance and The Last Boy Scout, you’ve been very influential. Do you see a movie and go, I thought of that?
I’m pleased that I do influence things. I see it on television mostly, things like “C.S.I.” It makes me happy when it’s done well. When I did The Hunger, I called up Nick [Roeg] and said, “I think I just ripped you off -- I ripped off Performance” and he said, “Well dear boy, as long as you did a good job, I don’t give a fuck!”
Do you have a favorite film?
True Romance. I love all my films but True Romance was the best screenplay I ever had. And all that was Quentin [Tarantino]. It was so well crafted. But I did change the end. Originally in Quentin’s version, Patricia [Arquette] pulls over on the freeway and she puts a gun in her mouth. I shot the film in continuity, so by the time I got to the end of shooting the movie I had fallen in love with the two characters and it was a love story so I wanted these characters to live.
You’ve sometimes been criticized for the violence in your pictures but I think there’s always meaning attached. I especially admire the ferocious sequence in True Romance between Patricia Arquette and James Gandolfini. Arquette’s trying so hard to fight back and we’re rooting for her -- it’s truly a woman doing everything she can to survive. It hits the viewers with all kinds of emotions and sensations.
That particular scene. It was so multi-layered in terms of charm, humor and violence at the extreme…and James added a lot to that. Patricia is unique; she’s fantastic in that movie. She’s got this angelic childlike quality yet she’s got this strangeness. She was amazing in True Romance.
What’s happening with The Warriors re-make?
With The Warriors, I’m going to set it in L.A. I’m not going to do a re-make, I’m going to do a re-think. I want to do it in L.A. and make it contemporary but instead of the gangs being thirty guys, it’s going to be 300. I got to meet all the gang members, all the drug cartels. To me, that’s exciting. And I’m not just being hip. I’m meeting tough guys. It’s great to do that. You can’t reproduce those faces in Hollywood with extras. Once you’ve touched the real world, there’s nothing more fascinating and nothing stranger than the real world and the people.
Would you ever direct with your brother Ridley?
There would be bloodletting! Someone would die on the first day! Ridley and I are great in terms of business, there’s nothing stronger than blood. But we’re very different… Ridley’s a father figure. He’s always coaxed and guided me through lots of trials and tribulations in my life and I’ve always looked to him. As a family we’re very close. Without sounding corny, he’s my best friend.
The critics kicked Citizen Kane to the number two curb in favor of Vertigo. Directors lauded Tokyo Story, placing the almighty Kane in a tie with 2001. Quentin Tarantino loves The Bad News Bears more than you ever knew (God bless him). That list! Or rather, those lists! Everyone's been talking, dissecting and arguing about Sight & Sound's greatest films lineup that comes once a decade (see the top 50 here). The internet was abuzz -- exciting and agitating cineastes and as usual with lists, provoking discussion about what their picks would consist of. I wanted to know more about individual choices (here's the director's tallied top ten) and since I have access to Guy Maddin, one of the filmmakers invited to the Sight & Sound soiree, he has allowed a look at his personal list (Sight & Sound will post the 358 directors’ entries on August 22). Discussing each movie with me (his official write-ups will be at S&S) and pleased to include his honorable mentions (all twenty of them) here's his terrific, toiled-over tally.
1. Zero de conduite (1933) Jean Vigo
Vigo knows exactly how we sort and reconfigure our childhood memories, how we tear them up into shreds of pure sensation and sloppily collage them back together into heightened and giddy mythologies. This is film assembled with the logic of music, a song you need to hear over and over again, and each time out it's more thrilling, mysterious and revolutionary.
2. The Unknown (1927) Tod Browning
Tod Browning's lean, unpredictable circus melodrama is as bizarre as this macabre auteur's work gets, yet far more universal than one would think possible. Long under-praised genius Lon Chaney plays that dishonest part of us all who prefers to tack indirectly upon his lust object, preferring any approach, no matter how self-mutilatingly impractical, except the direct one. Perhaps the most savage, nightmarish and honest melodrama of all time.
3. Man’s Castle (1933) Frank Borzage
Submerged in the most silvery and darkly enchanted emulsions of 30s Hollywood romance, yet minutely, unhurriedly observed, this masterpiece expresses itself in a mannered naturalism, unique to Borzage, who details the human heart like no other studio titan.
4. Tree of Life (2011) Terrence Malick
Malick thought it time to project directly from his wrung heart to the screen, resulting in a purity of intent something like minimalism (no matter how many near-baroque detours through grief and memory he may take) in this account of a brother's long-ago suicide -- gorgeous and cathartic.
5. L’Age d’or (1930) Luis Buñuel
Essay film or dream? After 82 years, this singular hybrid is still the most assuredly jagged, trope-packed, gleeful, swaggering and mischievous filmic salvo of all-time. We'll never quite catch up to this picture.
6. The Long Goodbye (1973) Robert Altman
This movie feels shambled together by Elliot Gould and his director, both in some cocky visionary state when every move they made together was exactly right for the moment and, sadly, after the also brilliant California Split, impossible to duplicate. Some sort of evanescent miracle that produces viewer euphoria and regret in equal portion.
7. Mulholland Dr. (2001) David Lynch
Fairy tale inside nightmare featuring false bottom and healed-over escape hatch. The master's most vertiginous peak.
8. Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) Max Ophuls
Maybe the most bracingly masochistic comedy possible. Take ten parts pure unrequited love, let fester in heart for two decades, then shatter. The laughs may have a strange aftertaste.
9. After Life (1998) Hirokazu Kore-eda
Singular use, reuse and re-reuse of memory and film-as-memory in this strangely playful yet moving wonder. What a structure!
10. Zvenigora (1928) Alexander Dovzhenko
This guy Dovzhenko has his own film vocabulary -- quirky, mythopoetic, brazen and downright perverse -- and he wields it to create the oddest portraits of whatever he's thinking about, unlikely subjects treated in a style that comes from an eccentric place film might have evolved toward in another, parallel, pass through time. No one has the heart and voice of this man.
20 Honorable Mentions:
The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955), Scarface (Howard Hawks, 1932), Blonde Venus (Josef von Sternberg, 1932), Mother and Son (Aleksandr Sokurov, 1997), His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940), The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941), The Tenant (Roman Polanski, 1976), Ace in the Hole (Billy Wilder, 1951), The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963), Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945), City Lights (Charlie Chaplin, 1931), Swing Time (George Stevens, 1936),
Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959), The Overcoat (Grigori Kozintsev, Leonid Trauberg, 1926), Women in Revolt (Paul Morrissey, 1971), Possessed (Curtis Bernhardt, 1947), The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch, 1940), Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah, 1971), Pink Narcissus (James Bidgood, 1971), The Chase (Arthur Ripley, 1946)
On the 50th anniversary (and what a sad anniversary) of Marilyn Monroe's death August 5, 1962, I'm revisiting one of her most interesting performances -- "Don't Bother to Knock" -- a movie that not only boasts Monroe's early skills as an actress, but foreshadows the sadness that had preceded her life and would follow the star to her last gasp. And yet, she was always, always so wonderful.
Oh, Marilyn. I know, I know, we all love Marilyn Monroe (or we're supposed to) but I’m not going to stray from Norma Jeane simply because she’s so popular. The tragic princess to every aspiring starlet or little girl or grown woman is our coffee mugged goddess, so ubiquitous that, I think, we sometimes take her for granted (I have written more specifically about her here). Especially in her early and later roles (my two favorite periods for Marilyn). From the fresh faced, sublimely natural starlet sporting jeans in Fritz Lang’s Clash By Night, to the methody, lonely lady of John Huston's The Misfits, I find Marilyn’s first and last hopes at proving herself on screen immensely powerful. And touching.
Such is the case in Monroe's first starring vehicle, released a decade before she passed, 1952's Don't Bother to Knock. There’s a prophetic sadness permeating her moving, fascinating performance, and for a picture of this period, her delusional babysitter (freshly released from an insane asylum) is surprisingly sympathetic. Knowing all we do about the troubled star, it most likely wasn't a stretch for the then-relative newcomer to understand the pathology and despondency of her character.
A film noir of sorts, director Roy Baker's part-thriller, part-character-study is a tense tale with plenty of pathos geared toward Marilyn -- the Marilyn who wasn't the full-blown MM superstar yet. As Nell, a mysterious young woman who takes on a babysitting job in a hotel (the hotel locale, with its windows, elevators, phones and speaker system is utilized brilliantly here), a place where her creepy, sad-sack uncle (the great Elisha Cook Jr. -- perfect casting) neurotically works, Monroe enters the picture in plain clothes, darker blonde hair, and little makeup. Though she's no plain-Jane, (she's gorgeous, in fact) she looks like a "nice girl" -- nice enough for hotel guests the Joneses (played by Jim Backus and Lurene Tuttle) to allow a stranger to watch over their cute little daughter Bunny (Donna Corcoran). After quickly putting the girl to bed (clearly Nell's not interested in the kid), the bizarre, but beautiful babysitter plays dress-up in Mrs. Jones' fine silk robe, perfume, and diamond jewelry. Norma Jean no more. Oh, to be glamorous. Who can blame her?
Meanwhile, cocky, self-absorbed airline pilot Jedd Towers (a layered, and sexy Richard Widmark) is stinging from rejection after the hotel chanteuse (a young, gorgeous Anne Bancroft) dumps him. Spying the beautiful Nell from his window to hers (in an incredibly erotic flirtation) he views some new action when lonely Nell signals him from her room. He comes over for a good time, likes what he sees, and puts up with her strange behavior until it gets a little too freaky, a little too desperate, a little too sad. When she comes on strong, something most men would dream of, he exclaims, confused and annoyed: "You bother me! I can't figure you out! You're silk on one side and sandpaper on the other!" MM answers all breathlessly tragic: "I'll be whatever you want me to be!" No, Marilyn. No, Nell. No.
Well, this is just too strange, especially from a woman this beautiful. Surely she could get any man she wanted. And so he asks the sensible, though perplexed question: "Why?" Indeed. A man, even Richard Widmark, even Tommy Udo Richard Widmark (well...maybe that's a stretch) can only take so much, and so, when Nell hangs Bunny out of the hotel window, he really starts thinking she might not be worth the tumble. But here’s the poignant part -- Nell doesn't really mean any harm. She's disturbed, frequently suicidal -- something terrible happened to this poor woman. She needs help. And here’s a novel idea -- she desires a man to take care of her, appreciate her without abusing her for seeming odd, or hollering at her not-so-strange desire to look gorgeous. In this movie, men believe she should be normal dammit!
But, why? Why must MM, and all women for that matter, have to be so normal? Sure, please the darker desires of that virgin/whore/little girl lost while in bed, but then resent her (or women) for embodying all of those combustible ideals once she's risen from the sheets and put on her clothes. Though suffering from deep-seated psychological problems that need to be addressed by professionals (but not in an asylum, as in the movie, and, in real life, where Monroe's mother landed and later, for a spell, Monroe herself), I sense that it’s this type of "normal" pressure that's making her crack (the punishing and smarmy Cook Jr. doesn't help either).
Monroe portrays these pressures with beautiful soulfulness, so much so, that I wondered how much of her real life was seeping into her performance. I kept wishing that she could just get out of that hotel, doll herself up and have some fun with a man who might understand her, or a woman for that matter (Thelma Ritter, Monty Clift and Clark Gable would come so much later). Widmark isn't really the one, even though underneath his smirk and swagger, he’s essentially a good heart for not taking advantage of this broken woman. But then, the moral of the story comes at Nell's expense -- Widmark’s Jedd becomes a better, more decent man by not giving into temptation with a supposed psycho (which, in Widmark's strong, able hands, is entirely believable).
And so Nell will stay Nell. Crazy. On her way back to the nuthouse. Poor Nell, and poor Marilyn. In real life, most men wouldn't be sensitive enough to resist. And yet there's a wonderful strength to Monroe (the woman endured so much in her own life that she was, as Elton knows, more than a candle in the wind) -- she was such a strong, singular performer (there will never, ever be another Marilyn) that her vulnerability gives her a special power, even as we want to hide her from every skulking Uncle Elisha Cook, ready to pounce. So bless her for revealing such powerful sadness. And bless her for holding on as long as she did. And bless her for never, ever being normal.
My car was trying to kill me. Not in any cinematic supernatural way, a la Christine or The Car. It was actually far worse than that (for me). My car was torturing me like an abusive boyfriend or in the case of that crazy year (2009), Arch Hall Jr. in The Sadist. Though my sturdy muscle-mobile -- my 1971 Ford Torino, had rarely steered me wrong, my deceptively adorable Datsun had quite suddenly become a holy terror. But why? For years I’d tended to the thing/bad seed/ “Shape of Rage” Brood creature like a spoiled child and it had remained well behaved, reliable – a precious little angel. But one, two, three, four (five?) dark and desolate nights later, everything changed and that devil in disguise had turned against me -- Henry Lee Lucas style. Breaking down repeatedly, stranding me on scary streets, leaving me in high desert dereliction, and fending for myself in gas stations that make the Texas Chainsaw Massacre family pump look like a cheery Travel Center of America truck stop, life with my car had become a real horror show.
And I don’t mean horror show the way Orange’s Alex proclaims the dark wonders of life -- those bizarre, deviant, wonderfully perverse moments that strike you in the most unusual or, sometimes, the most banal of circumstances (and I’ve encountered some strangely intriguing situations while stranded on the road). No, I mean quite literally, the cliché of slouching towards civilization, in the black of night, losing cell phone reception, and only finding aid in a man turned aggressive creep.
And yet, when you’re almost amused by how ludicrously cinematic your life has become (“It’s only a movie, it’s only a movie.... wait. Oh Rosemary, this is no dream this is really happening!”), you nearly forget to be scared. Nearly. Through all that personal vehicular peril, I’m convinced 2009 was actually laid out by The Hitcher’s John Ryder (the Rutger Hauer version) and that John Ryder is a real person. But with a few years in front of me, I can allow those memories to flicker across my mind -- making my thoughts wander towards horror movies, and more specifically, the car in horror movies. Strangely, these thoughts settle my nerves. Perhaps after two recent, lovely maniac-free road trips across America and the fact that my dramatic Datsun ('78 280 Z) is running much more smoothly these days. For now.
In horror cinema, the car is a foremost force -- an angel of mercy, an agent of doom or a ghastly, terrorizing, torture trap -- sometimes all in one movie. There are numerous pictures to discuss, and I'm going to run off a long list (and sentence) -- movies from Night of the Living Dead (those goddamn keys!); to Race with the Devil (the great Warren Oates’ line, “I don’t believe a school bus on a Sunday!” has become my mantra towards anything unusual on the road); to Duel, a movie that struck fear in the heart of every traveling salesman just trying to get down a California highway; to Zodiac (the opening scene, set to “Hurdy Gurdy Man” remains one of the scariest auto slaughters in cinema); to non-horror movie but no less horrific Bonnie and Clyde’s painfully orgasmic, bullet strewn, auto slaughter;
to Psycho (even the police officer seems creepy while pulling over poor, desperate Janet Leigh who drives and drives and drives – with credit to Bernard Hermann who makes driving even more compelling) and meets her demise at the Bates' Motel under the spout of a shower only to have that car ditched in a watery bog; to that other watery grave in Carnival of Souls (not a carnival I wish to visit on one of my journeys); to the family vacation gone to mutant hell in The Hills Have Eyes (I honestly think I saw some of that clan while driving through rural Pennsylvania a few years ago -- no offense to the state); to the astonishingly beautiful, yet horrific auto-water grave Shelley Winters suffers, seaweed entwined in her hair in the brilliant The Night of the Hunter (not technically a monster movie, but fulfills enough moments -- Mitchum's arms outstretched as he chases the kids out of the cellar); to Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Black Cat, where David Manners and Joan Allison share a bus ride and crash with (but of course) Béla Lugosi only to be given shelter by his great friend, Boris Karloff (wonderful), who intends to… sacrifice Ms. Alison in a satanic ritual. Whatever will David Manners do? (Frankly, I think I’d just stick with Boris and Béla.)
Again, there are countless pictures to discuss (and I've written about cars in cinema -- Two-Lane Blacktop-is-the-greatest -- a lot -- and moviemotor meldtown too), but as I road trip, especially in remote areas, I often think of that great horror road and house massacre-masterpiece -- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. While not regarded as a car movie, the picture achieves the above auto trifecta of vehicular rescue, ruse and ravage. (Don’t pick up a crazy hitcher; don’t get into that creepy guy’s truck and … holy God! Jump right into that man’s semi. Now!) The picture strikes a personal cord with me since I so enjoy wandering to/getting lost in remote places.
As I stated, Massacre (and other movies) fuels a morbid fascination, or a sense of danger in myself, mixed with the imprudent notion that my car will keep me safe. Not sure. But I like to think of myself as curious. Though I’m not looking for a meat hook hanging (naturally), I often brazenly stop off at anything or anywhere I find fascinating -- a vacant creepy house, a broken down fun park, or a carnival in the middle of the desert. On a family trip, I once begged my father to drop me off at a prison. I thought we could tour it like the Tillamook Cheese Factory or the Jamestown Buffalo Museum.
So I’m fairly certain I would make a pit stop at a Slaughter House. I think. Though I would avoid picking up the creepy, head-cheese-loving, hand-slicing-psycho hitchhiker Edwin Neal (would you pick up Edwin Neal? Detour's sexy-scary Ann Savage I can fall for. Tom Neale, sure. But Edwin Neal?), the free-wheeling kids in Tobe Hooper’s classic are forced to kick him out of the van for being weirder than their ‘70s, let-it-all-hang-out hearts can stand. And if that’s not enough, once poor Marilyn Burns is chased (quite spectacularly) by Leatherface, chainsaw a blazing, screaming through bramble and brush, she finds refuge at a seemingly kindly man’s gas station. Not so fast Miss Burns. Once in the truck, he stuffs her in a sack. Waking up at a dinner table, complete with lunatic family, and blood sucking, half-alive gramps, a culinary event Hannibal Lecter would take issue with (how rude!), she frees herself and is finally saved by (bless you White Line Fever boys of the road) a trucker.
And though not a trucker, god bless you, son-of-a-bitch fugitive Ralph Meeker, for helping Barry Sullivan in John Sturges’ Jeopardy, even after you took over his car, forced his tough-as-nails wife Barbara Stanwyck to succumb to you while gobbling down all the crackers in her car and nabbing her husband’s gun. Oh my. The repartee between Stanwyck and Meeker is angry, sick and sexy (he triple slaps Stanwyck!) and his confession for cheap perfume is a peach (albeit a rotten one): “It doesn't last as long, but it hits harder.” (Horror movies should follow this formula.) Like Chainsaw, Jeopardy also fulfills the rescue, ruse and ravage formula (well, ruse, ravage and rescue) but with a better looking psychopath. And Meeker knows his way around a car -- see Kiss Me Deadly -- and my writeup of the picture's fantastic opening scene.
So… there’s always a nutty Meeker who’ll come through, even after so much auto-trauma (Barry Sullivan needs him!). With this, I say damn any cinematic warning signs. Driving across the country, into the sticks, toward the freaks, toward the beauties, taking in the gorgeousness of the Badlands or that vast Montana sky or those charming small towns un-corrupted by predatory Walmart (fingers crossed for Beaver, Utah), or just into oblivion, the vanishing point, I remain tied to the road. And now that my Dad isn’t behind the wheel, perhaps I could tour that Nevada Prison from years back. If that remains a bad idea, well … it might make for one hell of a movie. Preferably with Meeker, Charles Bronson, Lon Chaney Jr., William Talman and Broderick Crawford. Another film (Big House U.S.A.). I’ll watch that in my hotel. And now… back to the blacktop.
Below is a gallery from my recent road trip with not-so-scary photographs. Nothing bad can happen at the El Bambi Truck Stop:
Oh me, oh my... Al Green is performing tonight, in Los Angeles at the Greek Theater -- something that's filling me with love and happiness and his version of "Light My Fire" and a channeling of my inner "I'm a Ram" and ... well, take me to the river! In excited anticipation, I'm reposting my ode to the Reverend. I've written about him frequently here and I hope to update after the show. Unless he hands me a rose. If he does that I might not be the same for a few weeks ...
Since Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Jackie Wilson, Curtis Mayfield, Ike Turner, Wilson Pickett, Willie Mitchell, Solomon Burke and so many more have left us, I have to ask how any self respecting (or self flagellating) Christian thinks I that should believe in God is beyond me. Not that I need God necessarily, or that I don't believe (in something), and yet, when I hear that true soul survivor, Al Green, I start to think ... Jesus Christ ... maybe I do need the Lord. Green, one of the greatest soul singers ever placed on this God-forsaken planet, is still living, still putting out records and still performing live. One of the last real soul singers blessing our landscape -- especially a musical landscape populated by lip-syncing video vixens, pop punk whiners and faux transgressive bores, Al Green will make you believe. And, again, dear sweet lord ... I will witness Al Green, live tonight.
The Arkansas–born, Michigan–raised, Memphis-living Green crafted brilliant albums during his Hi Records heyday (Al Green Gets Next to You, Let’s Stay Together, I’m Still in Love With You, Call Me), his live performances (which I’ve fanatically collected over the years) are something to behold -- sexy, inspirational, transcendent experiences that weren’t simply swoon-worthy (though the ladies love Al Green), but genius examples of tightness and improvisation. Al Green can riff off the margins, break from his sensuous mid-range to talk to the audience, and then lift to falsetto only to bust into a goose-bump–inducing raw growl that comes from a place so deep it’s nearly impossible to describe its power.
To use simpler terms, Green performs with raw, soulful intensity in its purest form. And where do you see that anymore? Heaven? Green is heaven on earth. And in trying times, listening to Green say "Help me, I'll help you, Jesus, save my soul, I'll live for you, I'll do my best to just, do what I can to, stand up and be a man." Well, chriiiist. Never mind I'm a woman, goddammit, I want to stand up and be a man.
A man indeed. Green’s realness can be achieved anywhere, from the soundstages of Soul Train to his awe-inspiring Midnight Special appearances, to still-packed concert halls to his Full Gospel Tabernacle where the soul icon remains the residing reverend. If you’re ever in Memphis, don’t miss the chance to possibly catch Mr. Green presiding over worship -- an experience that, years back, one of my atheist-leaning friends caught and was so significantly inspired by, the guy was moved to tears. If you’ve ever watched Green perform the baptism-by-orgasm “Take Me to the River,” you’ll completely understand his reaction.
So, judgement day. Green makes me want to pop a doll, worship God and face the white horse all at once. Especially when he sings the sexy, slinky, scary, haunting “Jesus Is Waiting.” You can interpret this Soul Train performance as pure holy high or, pure holy high-high (check out Green's eyes) or whatever kind of godliness you apply to your Green, but one thing’s for sure, it’s on a holy high mountain of silky hot brilliance. This is religion. This is rapture.
"Because they're building a dam across the Cahulawassee River. They're gonna flood a whole valley, Bobby, that's why. Dammit, they're drownin' the river...Just about the last wild, untamed, unpolluted, unfucked up river in the South. Don't you understand what I'm saying?...They're gonna stop the river up. There ain't gonna be no more river. There's just gonna be a big, dead lake...You just push a little more power into Atlanta, a little more air-conditioners for your smug little suburb, and you know what's gonna happen? We're gonna rape this whole god-damned landscape. We're gonna rape it." -- Lewis (Burt Reynolds)
John Boorman's Deliverance is a seminal picture that plays just as jolting, powerful and oddly beautiful today. Released in 1972, the movie was a shocker, not solely for the infamous rape scene that's haunted men and women for decades, but for its bold choice of layering its story with such darkness and soul wrenching detail. With a screenplay adapted from his own novel, James Dickey didn't spare us the depth and horror. Dickey and Boorman told an entertaining, tension-packed adventure story about four men on an Appalachian canoe trip down the Cahulawassee River (filmed on the Chattooga River), but within its wild rapids, brief joy of dueling banjos and ominous mountain terrors, it explores nature, civilization and the dark, muddled hearts of men -- their inner struggles, their sadness, their guilt, their values and their humanity. In turn, the movie tests the audience by refusing to give us a standard adventure tale, lacing the story with moments so intensely disturbing and so ultimately heartbreaking that one can't imagine this picture being made today. At least through a major studio. It's too intense. Too upsetting. Too sad.
And now forty years later, the movie and its ideas have not aged a day. It still feels ahead of its time -- even dangerous. And it was dangerous, literally. The star's Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox did nearly entirely all of the film's stunts and have never forgotten the experience. In Los Angeles promoting the picture's 40th anniversary, the four stars sat down to discuss this masterpiece, its themes and what went into making such a challenging picture. Often when you talk to actors about movies they made decades ago, they speak in more general terms -- even of their classics. Not this group. They remember specific stories. And they remember each other. And what a lively group.
Burt Reynolds was still full of swagger, quick-witted, smart and charmingly flirtatious. Ned Beatty was jokingly ornery while being genuinely curious about how his wife's golf game was going. Jon Voight was warm and pensive but quick to laugh. Ronny Cox was thoughtful and down to earth. They were all surprisngly easy to talk to, in fact, and all incredibly intelligent. Watching them interact I, at times, felt like I had sat down at a poker game among good buddies -- playfully ribbing and riffing off each other, these men were so comfortable with one another they clearly bonded during that tough shoot all those years back and that bond remains.
It was a rare opportunity to talk with them, all four -- together. Not a roundtable, not a press conference, but Reynolds, Voight, Beatty, Cox and a somewhat amazed movie writer looking at all these fascinating mugs sitting across from her. Since time was crunched (they were readying to get on stage and present) I only had ten minutes. Maybe fifteen.Ten minutes! Not enough time and so many questions. Each man required an hour at least. This was quite something. All of these actors have been a part of such phenomenal movies -- Midnight Cowboy, Coming Home, Bound for Glory, Total Recall, Network, Nashville, The Longest Yard, Smokey and the Bandit, Boogie Nights, and have worked with directors as legendary as Hal Ashby, Sidney Lumet, Francis Ford Coppola, Alan J. Pakula, Michael Ritchie, Robert Aldrich, Robert Altman, Paul Verhoeven and the list goes on and on and on. Dear lord, I could have rambled on for hours with one of my favorite actors, Burt Reynolds on White Lightning and Gator alone (the great Reynolds is truly underappreciated for his terrific range -- see Starting Over -- but that's another piece). So please excuse the brevity here. What follows is my short, sweet, ornery, funny, insightful and, for me, personally historic discussion.
Me: What an honor to sit with all of you and discuss such a legendary movie. Just to say a few things: Deliverance never feels dated. It still plays so revolutionary and daring today. There really has never been another movie like it. And one that truly, truly explores its themes: civilized man having to face their uncivilized, more savage natures, and not making any easy moralizations about it. And you just feel these characters -- what they're going through -- I have to think much of that was based on the way it was shot. You shot it chronologically. And then... all the beauty, power, attraction and fear of nature. It’s so potent, making it one of the many reasons why it sticks with viewers for such a long time.
Reynolds: I think you’re right on the money. You said it very well. I’d also like to mention...as Ronny has said too... that women get this movie much quicker than men. Women also understand. You know, for so many years men threw the word rape around and never thought about what they were saying. And I think the picture makes men think about something that’s very important, that we understand the pain and embarrassment and the change of people’s lives.
Cox: I think also, the thing that you mentioned. That we did it together, and that we did it in sequence. Because typically movies especially this day of CGI and things like that, there’s a part of your brain that knows that is CGI and you sort of willingly believe that characters are going through these things, but then, you don’t REALLY. Whereas, if you look at this film, and there’s, for instance, a long shot of guys in canoes...and they say, “Stay on that shot! Stay on that shot!" -- it pays off viscerally in ways that other films can’t. I think that’s one of the reasons why it’s such a visceral experience today. Because it’s forty years old now, and it still stands up.
Me: Your characters go through so many changes in the film, obviously, Mr. Reynolds, you start out as, what in any other Hollywood movie, would serve as the hero but then you get that compound fracture…
Reynolds: You know where that bone that came out of my leg came from? Well I went to a butcher in Clayton and I said, “I really want that really huge bone that you have there.” And then I broke it backwards and I said, “I need some blood.” And he said, “I’ve got a lot of blood.” And he gave me a huge pail of blood, real blood, so it didn’t look like that stupid ketchup that they have in movies, and when I went out and stuck it through my legs and I poured the blood over it. I must say, a lot of guys got kind of ill over it.
Cox: Me! (Laughs)
Reynolds: But it had a wonderful effect. It had the effect that I wanted it to have, which that it was frightening. And it worked internally for me. It was an external thing that worked internally.
Cox: There were so many shocking things, I mean, of course the rape. But my shoulder being out of place. Their stomachs were turned by that.
Voight: A lot of reasons to get sick in this movie.
(Everyone laughs)
Reynolds: (Pointing to Cox) His shoulder is amazing. Have you seen him do that?
Me: In person? No.
Reynolds: He can do it. Ronny?
Voight : You can’t do it any longer, can you?
Cox: I’m too old. (Laughs) But the film, when they find Drew, with his arm around -- that’s actually my shoulder. I actually did that. I’ve had a whole lot of people say, that’s the most unbelievable shot. That movie was believable except that! And it was real!
Me: (To Voight) One of my favorite scenes is when you have to scale that mountain, and you have to take over the “hero” role, but it’s not as simple as that. And I know you really did get on that mountain, so the feelings there are so authentic and it’s so sad and terrifying. One of the most powerful moments is when you lose your family photos, when they drop out of your hands… it’s just so heartbreaking.
Voight: Yes, yes. When he's losing his touch with his family. What that reminds me of is all the guys that we send to war. You understand what they go through. They go through all of those feelings and then they have to put themselves on the line… they don’t know if they’re coming back. All of those guys -- that’s true bravery. Anyway, that piece of the film in the book is brilliantly written, of course when you’re doing a film, as opposed to the novel you can’t get all this stuff in. But with these two brilliant imagists, Dickey on the one hand and Boorman on the other -- one gives you the visual poetry and the other gives you the verbal poetry. But in the book it goes on for five pages… It was exciting to participate in that [scene]. It was the one thing that drew me to the film, that scene, that moment that you’re talking about. When he has this catharsis in the middle and a crisis and he almost breaks apart halfway up the climb, and he loses his touches with his family and civilization, and then he has to get himself together and then continue on the way. It was exciting to be the person to embody that one chapter in the book.
Me: Mr. Beatty, this was your very first feature film.
Beatty: Me? No! My very first film role was for the FBI.
Me: For the FBI?
Beatty: Yeah, I played a bank robber in a film for J. Edgar Hoover. I thought I was making this to train FBI officers…
Me: It wasn’t a feature film it was a… [Note: This was Beatty's first feature film]
Beatty: (Joking) Let me finish! (He then stands up and with ornery playfulness, makes more jokes.) I’m just kidding. I like being the bad guy. You wanna know why? (He leans in). You make more money and it’s more fun.
Beatty: So anyway, I went into this place…
(Everyone starts laughing)
Beatty: (To everyone, joking) Shut up, I’m talking here dammit! (Calls out to the publicists) Hey! Can I have someone in here to control these three guys? I don’t care who it is! Send three or four women, they can take care of them! They’re old guys! They can’t do nothing. Anyway, I made this movie for the FBI and when I walked in the door to the audition, I dressed up like an FBI guy because that’s what I thought I was going to play. When I walked in the door the guy said, “That’s our bank robber right there!” So I robbed a bank.
Reynolds: (Amusingly exasperated) This is longer than the movie!
Beatty: (Playfully) Shut up Burt! Burt knows that I love and respect him… so anyway that was my first movie and they sent it out to all the police officers all around the small towns of America and when I was still working in the theater, I used to go to a small town and do a play or something and I got arrested right away.
Cox: (Offers) It was my first film.
Beatty: Are you doing a book on this?
Me: No, I’m not doing a book...
Beatty: You snatch my story. This is real story. (Says jokingly) The rest of this is a bunch of artistic poof!
Me: But again, this was a daring first major role to take on, and a lot of actors now would even shy away from it.
Beatty: You know what, at that point in my acting career, I thought I could act anything. And I could. So what would be the problem?
Me: To all of you. What was it like working with James Dickey? He was on the set for some of the time…
Reynolds: It was not easy. Not easy. No. He’s a big man and he’s a poet and he’s full of …
Beatty: Himself.
Reynolds: Himself.
Cox: And he actually wasn’t on the set except when he came back to play the sheriff maybe because he was asked by John Boorman to not be there.
Reynolds: He was asked by us! By us!
Cox: The problem with Dickey, he’s a wonderful poet and novelist and he had written the screenplay, but he also had a mammoth ego and wanted to run everything. He really wanted to direct the picture. He really wanted to be in charge of everything. James Dickey’s talent goes a long, long, long way before it runs out of gas. But it does run out of gas and it runs out of gas just short of knowing how to make a film, and so it became problematic.
Reynolds: He also was an alcoholic. He was usually pretty smashed by two o clock.
Cox: Yes, several times, we would come back from rehearsal or whatever, and he never called any of us by our real names.
Reynolds: No, he called us our character’s names.
Cox: Yes… our character’s names. I figured out why that was. He owned those characters. He owned Lewis. He didn’t own Burt. He would come in with his cronies and say “Drew! Come over here and do that scene!” And want you to play that scene for his cronies.
Me: He was wonderful as the sheriff...
Reynolds: He was.
Cox: He was good. And he’s a wonderful poet.
Reynolds: He was bigger than life.
Voight: There’s a secret to that scene too.
Me: What’s the secret?
Voight: When John [Boorman] shot that scene, Jim Dickey had written the part for himself and he had a whole section, he went on and on, so I was looking at it saying going, “Woah… this is going to be difficult.” And he was very convincing as the sheriff, he was really terrific and he had great presence, but he had all of these extra words so John said, “OK, Jim, say these words over here… and you get up in front of the hood and say the rest of these words, and then you come over and talk to Jon...” And what John [Boorman] was going to do in the beginning, was take those sections by the headlights and cut them out. So he just had this first section, and you see him arrive and talk with me. So he had designed for himself a major scene that wasn’t in it. But, listen, he was very brilliant, the writing was all good, but it was not needed. And if he’d known that it was going to be cut out, there would have been a big argument.
Beatty: (Joking) I thought he sounded a little bit too southern.
(Everyone laughs)
Reynolds to Beatty: Would you like another drink?
[Oh to have more time!]
"Deliverance" has been released in a 40th anniversary Blu-Ray edition which features commentary by John Boorman, multiple featurettes with the cast and crew, a vintage behind the scenes documentary that includes James Dickey and more. The Blu-Ray is packaged in a nice hardback, 42 page book with all kinds of information and production stills.
And here's that famous scene. I love this moment, not just for the joyful, now iconic music, but that this joy is mixed with such a portent of doom. Joy does not last long. Burt Reynolds' Lewis smiles, but you get the feeling he knows before the song is over -- this is not going to be easy, in so many ways.
When Joan Crawford is angry, it is serious business. Many viewers may laugh at her ire, most especially later Crawford and her Straight Jacket-style histrionics (a movie I revere), but one should pause when doing so. Pause and look at what she's doing, even if it's utterly over-the-top at times. Later-era Joan should never, ever be boxed into only camp (not that there's anything wrong with camp, quite the contrary, and not that no one should laugh -- sometimes she's hilarious, which makes her all the more complicated) but I'm always irritated by people who view her in such simplistic wire hanger terms. Crawford could be terrifying, even humorously so, or valiantly (I have uttered a "hell YES, Joan!" while watching her contend with the likes of Steve Cochran in the great The Dammned Don't Cry) but she had the power and humanity to reveal a vulnerability underneath her anger and was always, even in her lesser pictures, mesmerizing.
Queen Bee, a 1955 movie directed by Randall McDougall, is for those who stick with Joan through thick and thin. Fans who love The Unknown, The Women, A Woman's Face, Possessed, Humoresque and Mildred Pierce, but are also enraptured by the older, severe, yet still-sexy Joan in Flamingo Road, any movie co-starring the fantastically sleazy David Brian, William Castle's I Saw What You Did, the criminally underrated Robert Aldrich picture Autumn Leaves and the Polly-Bergen-gone nuts vehicle, The Caretakers -- a movie in which Joan instructs her nurses in Judo. (You must see The Caretakers.)
In Queen Bee, Crawford plays Eva Phillips, a deceptively personable woman who lords over a Southern mansion with her husband Avery (the terrific Barry Sullivan, an unsung, multi-facted actor I will watch in any movie), whom everyone calls "Beauty" for the large scar on his face (for me, the scar makes Sullivan even sexier). Those close to Eva know she's evil and corrupt, but young Jennifer Stewart (Lucy Marlow), a cousin who comes to live in the manor, is not so sure -- at first. As the picture makes quite clear (from a character's speech about bees, to another character actually reading a book about bees...bees...bees...so many bees... Nicolas Cage must have studied this movie), Eva is, not surprisingly, the Queen Bee and those buzzing around are her are mere drones. She will sting anyone who crosses or interrupts her ambitions to get what she wants -- which is, apparently, everything.
Eventually Jennifer witnesses Eva's machinations, including the destruction of sister-in-law Carol's upcoming nuptials to Judson Prentiss (Betsy Palmer and the great John Ireland). Judson, for reasons we can only believe to be pure sexual masochism (Crawford is the master of this hot dynamic and it only amped up as she got older), has been Eva's lover, while Eva has tortured her understandably ill-tempered, drunkard husband.
It's a tawdry affair, this movie, but its tasty arguments, splendorous tragedies, powerful moments via Ireland and Sullivan (Fay Wray also co-stars), and of course, that force -- Ms. Crawford -- keeps the viewer riveted. And yet, Queen Bee was released to some poor reviews; Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called it the "height of mellifluous meanness and frank insincerity." He's right and wrong. Yes, the cruelty is often dished out with sugar (not a bad thing either), but there is something sincere about Queen Bee. The actors sincerely appear to be afraid of Ms. Crawford, and Joan sincerely looks like she understands her character's turmoil and sadism, with lines like the following (which Eva drops on her husband): "Darling, parties are to women what battlefields are to men, but then... you weren't in the war were you? Something about drinking."
And when the act of packing up a room mounts from simply throwing dolls onto the floor to a psychotic crescendo of Joan trashing the place with a riding crop (a riding crop) -- like a Born to Kill Lawrence Tierney, Crawford doesn't appear to be acting. The actress was not method, but whatever was going on in her life, or whatever she's thinking about her past -- it's seeping into this performance. No wonder it was rumored that young Christina ran from the theater while taking in the dolly destroying/ riding crop massacre (though I don't believe all uttered by Christina Crawford...).
Joan is one of the most fascinating actresses of all time and, I think, uniquely gorgeous. Gorgeous when she was younger and softer and, at times breathtaking (see George Cukor's haunting A Woman's Face) and gorgeous when she was overdrawn and hard and butch. That kind of charisma does not fade with age (see Nicholas Ray's brilliant Johnny Guitar). So with Queen Bee, watching those thick, painted eyebrows, hunter's-bow mouth, and huge shoulders saunter across a room ready to explode in a rage of bizarre evil is like anticipating a beautifully seasoned Jason creeping around the summer camp in Friday the 13th. No wonder one of Queen Bee's actresses, Betsy Palmer, went on to play Jason's mother in that franchise -- but who was more terrifying? And who was more complicated? And who was more touching? Well, that's easy. Joan. When her devil was in full effect, there was always a poignant angel crouching underneath -- quite possibly hiding behind her eyebrows, revealing itself in eyes moistened by tears or a look of panic-stricken fear -- fear of aging, fear of career or, as Fassbinder understood and filmed, fear of fear. Life is hard. Love is hard. And happiness -- happiness is just too damn simple sometimes. And that thought is often like Joan who, though a sufferer and a survivor, and powerful and poignant, often seemed sad. And sad can be scary. Sublimely scary.
