Monty Python alumnus Eric Idle is in top form as writer/co-director and also on screen, including as Rutles bassist Dirk McQuickly (who bears an eerie resemblance to Paul you-know-who) and as a number of minor characters, including an “Occasional Visiting Professor of Applied Narcotics at the University of Please Yourself, California”. Neil Innes does marvelous work sending up John you-know-who and also by penning some inspired song parodies.
The film reviews the exploits of the “pre-fab four” from their early days in the Cavern in Liverpool, to the naughtiest street in the world in Hamburg to stardom under their eccentric manager Leggy Mountbatten, who loves their tight trousers. Even if you don’t know much about the Beatles, this movie is a laugh-filled treat, not least because so many comedy (including some Saturday Night Live stars from the glory days) and music legends (Mick Jagger and a well-disguised but still recognizable George Harrison) lend their talents at perfect moments. Telling the ridiculous story of The Rutles with an ostensibly straight face and a documentary style only makes it more hilarious, most particularly during a “very expensive” visit to discover the origin of the blues in New Orleans.
If you want to see what a fantastic job Idle and Innes did parodying both the Beatles’ music but also their stage presence and mannerisms, check out this clip of that famous night on the Ed Sullivan show…
p.s. A generation later, Idle revisited the same terrain in Can’t Buy Me Lunch. Not as fresh as the first time around of course, but still a pleasing follow-up to the original.
I admire Robert Flaherty and Neil Sheehan for the same reason: Their persistence in the pursuit of creation. Sheehan’s Pulitzer Prize winning book A Bright Shining Lie was almost never published because he lost 8 months of work in a computer hard drive crash and was so depressed that he nearly quit. Flaherty shot 30,000 feet of film in the Arctic in 1914 and 1915, but lost it all when he dropped a lit cigarette (This was in the days of nitrate). He too somehow persisted, returning to Northern Canada with a Bell & Howell camera and making one of the most influential films of the 20th century: 1922’s Nanook of the North.
The story: In an area of land as large as England that abuts the Hudson Bay of Canada, only a few hundred human beings scratch out an existence. Nanook and his family are among the Inuits who live in this bleak, deadly, yet beautiful environment. We see them fishing, hunting walrus, building igloos and interacting with white traders. We also see them laughing and playing and being a family. The tone is partly anthropological and partly human drama, and viewers find themselves fascinated by the lives of the Inuit family as well as rooting very much for their survival.
Generally hailed as the first documentary, it might better be termed the first docu-drama because it is assembled in a narrative form and because some of the sequences were staged. The family were not really a family; indeed the wife Nyla was Flaherty’s wife. The amazing walrus hunt sequence is real, but Flaherty asked the Inuit to use traditional spears when by this point in history they had firearms.
Cinéma vérité enthusiasts have raked Flaherty over the coals for the above and many other liberties he took with the “documentary” form. But in fairness to him, there was no documentary form at the time, so it’s not as if he overturned conventions upon which the audience had long ago come to rely. And whatever sins he committed as a story teller, it was a remarkable feat with 1916 technology to be shooting and developing film in such an unforgiving place.
Despite being known mainly for its historical significance, this movie is not “film school medicine” (in contrast, say, to the first 15 minutes of Häxan). There is something extraordinarily moving about watching fellow members of our species hanging on by the skin of their teeth yet also finding joy and love in an unimaginably remote, dangerous part of the planet. It is hard to imagine the sensation the film must have caused when it debuted, and it still has psychic weight today.
Nanook of the North is in the public domain and you can watch it for free here. This version has a lovely soundtrack which the original print did not (music was added in 1939).
George Roy Hill and Paul Newman scored two mega-hit, crowd pleasing films with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting (Recommended by Johann Koehler here). When they reunited in 1977, the commercial temptation would have been to more or less repeat themselves. Being highly creative artists, they instead challenged many of their fans’ expectations by making a foul-mouthed, violent, raunchy comedy set during America’s dreary blue collar decline: 1977’s Slap Shot.
Some (though not all) viewers were appalled. But, with critic Gene Siskel being the most well-known example, reactions to Slap Shot have warmed over time to the point that it is today justly regarded as a classic American movie.
The plot: The Chiefs are a minor league hockey team who lose more than they win under aging player-coach Reggie Dunlop (Newman). Meanwhile, the local plant is closing, leading the team’s owner (Newman’s frequent co-star, Strother Martin) to shop the franchise around. His career and marriage on the rocks, Dunlop knows he needs to gin up some victories and some interest for the team. The answer comes in the form of the Hanson brothers, who lead the team into a new style of hockey: Beating the crap out of their opponents! The dirty play pays off as The Chiefs start to win and the fans begin to rally around them. Meanwhile, there is lots of 1970s bed-hopping and retrograde attitudes under threat.
Some may be surprised that the script was written by a woman. But Nancy Dowd, whose brother was a minor league hockey player, knows her way around the game and also around people who use language that would make a sailor’s parrot blush. Hockey fans love the authenticity of the film, not least that Michael Ontkean (As a clean-cut Princeton grad who is the star of The Chiefs and disapproves of dirty play) and many of the other performers were in fact excellent hockey players. The resulting film is funny, rude, politically incorrect, and a jolly good time. Having lived myself though the 1970s de-industrialization of Western Pennsylvania and seen all the leather suits, huge shirt collars, towering heels and other fashion horrors I can vouch for this film’s accuracy about life at the time.
Newman, in a role that was a stretch for him (he apparently rarely even swore in private life), gives a very appealing comic performance as an over-the-hill jock. He also has great byplay with Strother Martin and with Jennifer Warren as his ex-wife. Andrew Duncan is hilarious as a radio announcer with hair from hell. Lindsay Crouse, as Ontkean’s binge drinking wife, delivers a one-note and eventually tedious performance, but all of the other smaller parts are well-turned by the actors.
Last but not least, the scenes of the hockey games are very well done. Everyone can skate and the crushing impacts and high-velocity shots feel real.
Slap Shot will never be shown at a church social or at a gathering of anti-violence activists. As long as that doesn’t put you off, get ready to laugh and be enormously entertained.
p.s. Some fun trivia: can you name ALL the films that Newman and Martin were in together? Martin’s Wikipedia entry claims six such pairings, but I could only come up with five so I am either forgetting one or gasp Wikipedia is wrong about something.
Gifted filmmakers are able to delve into the particularity of one group’s life to illustrate universal human experiences, thereby appealing simultaneously to those inside and outside the group. That’s part of the transcendent power of 1971’s Fiddler on the Roof. At one level, the film is steeped in the particularity of Jewish villagers under persecution of the Russian czar, and it’s a powerful story on those terms. But it’s also a moving treatment of crumbling tradition, parenthood, culture and faith which spoke to a whole generation of diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds.
The story focuses on a dirt-poor, devout and intelligent milkman named Tevye, his wife Golde and their marriageable daughters. The family scratches out an existence sustained by the bonds, traditions and religion in their shtetl of Anatevka. As suitors present themselves for his fiercely independent daughters, Tevye struggles to reconcile his traditional beliefs and concern about their material welfare with their desire to choose their own husbands based on love. Meanwhile, rumors of pogroms and forced exiles reach his ears, and he wonders when Anatevka will suffer a similar fate.
This is a very hard judgment to make, but of any Broadway musical, I would cite Fiddler on the Roof as having the best songs. “Sunrise, Sunset”, “Tradition”, “Matchmaker” are among the unforgettable musical pieces Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick created for the play. These show stoppers are brought beautifully to life in the film by director Norman Jewison (A Canadian Protestant who got the job because the Hollywood execs assumed that with a name like that, he must be Jewish!). Jewison and the fine cast are equally adept at the dramatic scenes, which are given more prominence in the film than in the play because Jewison wanted a more serious tone to what he saw as a largely grim story.
The big debate about this film concerns the non-casting of Zero Mostel as Tevye, the role he made famous on Broadway. To the bitter disappointment of Mostel and his many fans, the part went instead to Topol, the actor who had played Tevye in the London production of the play. It remains a stellar cast regardless, with an extraordinarily talented set of performers with both musical and dramatic talent.
This clip features one of the many wonderful, touching songs from the movie. It also shows how Jewison and top-flight cinematographer Oswald Morris did much much more than photograph a play; they created a remarkable piece of cinematic art using all the techniques the medium can offer.
My name is Harry Ross, and here’s the way my life has gone: First I was a cop and then a private detective. And then…a drunk. Also, in there somewhere, a husband and a father. You’d think with all that, the world would lose its power to seduce. But you’d be wrong.
So intones Paul Newman’s character in this week’s movie recommendation, the deliberately old fashioned 1998 film noir Twilight directed and co-written by the estimable Robert Benton. The film centers on a wealthy Hollywood family comprising former movie stars Jack and Catherine Ames (Gene Hackman and Susan Sarandon) and their teenage daughter Mel (Reese Witherspoon).
Let me pause to note that two sentences into this recommendation and I have already mentioned 5 Academy Award winners!
The plot: After a disastrous effort to take Mel away from a stupid, sleazy paramour (Liev Schreiber), Harry was injured and moved in with the Ames family. He has long since recovered, but sticks around ostensibly because Jack has been diagnosed with cancer. But the truth is he is desperately in love with Catherine. Jack sends him on a mission to pay off someone whom Harry suspects is blackmailing the couple. He cares about both of them, even if he doesn’t completely trust them, so he returns reluctantly to private detective work. Thus begins a tortuous mystery involving murder, betrayal and long-buried secrets.
Though intentionally packed with many 1940s noir elements, the film from another point of view is a twist on the old detective stories in that the classic private investigator (e.g., in The Big Sleep) was an outside critic of his rich and powerful clients, less wealthy but with better judgment and morals. Here, Harry Ross is not much more than a pet, living on the estate of his benefactors, doing menial work and longing for Catherine’s love when he is in fact (as Mel puts it) a bit player in a movie starring other people.
The unmatched cast also includes James Garner, Stockard Channing, Margo Martindale, John Spencer and M. Emmet Walsh (In a vivid part given that he doesn’t even say a word!). Directing such a seasoned and talented group must have been a pleasure for Benton, who clearly has respect for the genre. He also contributed a script with sharp dialogue as well as some well-timed funny lines. Many of the scenes recall either specific 1940s detective films or at least their general style. If that isn’t Old Hollywood enough for you, the Ames house was once the home of Dolores Del Rio and Cedric Gibbons.
Reese Witherspoon and Liev Schreiber were cast I assume in the hopes of bringing in some younger viewers, and perhaps as well for their sex scene, but they bring much more than that to the table. Both are strong performers who pass my newbie test of screen greatness: They are completely at ease in scenes with the established superstars around them.
The only thing that clanged for me in this movie was the introduction about 35 minutes in of a comic sidekick played by Giancarlo Esposito. His character just doesn’t fit the mood of the rest of the picture, and his scenes are the one part of the film where things drag a bit. Other than that, this is for me irresistible viewing and I find it mysterious that it was not a hit with audiences when it was released. I suspect it underperformed because it was aimed at an older audience in an era when said audience did not buy many movie tickets (As the Boomers age, films like this have done better box office, which is fantastic if like me you enjoy films that are aimed at someone other than teenagers and adults who think like teenagers).
In Vincente Minnelli’s brilliant The Bad and the Beautiful, Kirk Douglas gives one of his best performances as Hollywood Producer Jonathan Shields. Shields is self-destructive, ruthless and a user of people, yet he is also so talented and understands film so well that everyone in Hollywood wants to work with him anyway. I thought of Shields frequently as I watched the absolutely mesmerizing 2002 documentary about Robert Evans: The Kid Stays in the Picture.
This is MUST viewing for film buffs, as the raconteur/rascal/genius recounts his unique career from his discovery by Norma Shearer to his failed acting career to his shockingly successful transformation into a producer, to disaster, to saving Paramount, to more disaster, and to a late-life return to the business. Evans knew everybody (Steve McQueen, Ali MacGraw, Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Nicholson, and on and on) and may understand Hollywood as well as anyone.
You do not have to believe Evans is a factually reliable narrator to enjoy this film. He was clearly born to seduce other people, as his seven ex-wives could attest, and his stories glow from the luster of repeated tellings. But his love of cinema and his deep knowledge of stars and studios are unmistakable. There is also a great deal of humor in the movie, including a hilarious extended parody of Evans by Dustin Hoffman, who later went even further in that vein in Wag the Dog.
The other impressive thing about this documentary is that Producer/Co-Director Nanette Burnstein and her team created a kinetic, eye-catching film despite working heavily from still photos and old clips. The arresting look of this movie is almost as captivating as the content.
I generally don’t recommend made-for-TV movies because they generally aren’t worth watching (With some exceptions, such as Stephen King’s It). But there was a quality series of such films in the 1970s known as the “ABC Movie of the Week”. It gave audiences memorable moments such as Karen Black being stalked by an evil doll in Trilogy of Terror, Elizabeth Montgomery doing some ruthless ax work au naturale in The Legend of Lizzie Borden and Dennis Weaver battling a mysterious truck driver on a lonely road in Duel (An early Spielberg triumph).
I recommend two lesser known but still solid Twilight Zone-esque entries in this series of television movies: Night Slaves and The Screaming Woman.
Night Slaves is based on a novel by Jerry Sohl, a veteran TV writer for Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Outer Limits, among others (including the original Star Trek). Familiar plot elements from those worthy programs are all here: A mysterious isolated location, strange experiences, and a central character who can’t tell if he has stumbled across something bizarre and sinister or in fact is losing his mind.
James Franciscus and Lee Grant play Clay and Marjorie Howard, a toothsome married couple who are taking a vacation from the big city in order to help them recover from a recent trauma. Clay was in a terrible auto accident in which he suffered a head injury and two other people were killed. The Howards chance upon a sleepy little town and take a room for the night. But ’round midnight, Clay wakes up to see all the townspeople gathering in a trance-like state and then leaving town. He looks for Marjorie and finds that she too has become a glassy-eyed zombie. He receives cryptic clues about what is happening from an alluring stranger (Tisha Sterling) but she disappears before he can demand a full explanation. When Clay awakens the next morning, the town is apparently back to normal and everyone thinks his head injury has caused him to hallucinate the events he reports having witnessed. Is he going crazy, or is the town in the grip of some malevolent force of which its people are unaware?
The story unfolds slowly enough to be suspenseful without ever dragging — indeed like all the movies in the ABC series the whole thing runs only about 70 minutes. The actors are all believable and, as in a good Outer Limits episode, the resolution is clever and satisfying.
With made-for-TV flicks, I keep to my “B-movie standard” for cinematic releases, i.e., I don’t expect such movies to be more than they reasonably can be and frankly dislike it when they try. For that reason, the “TV elements” of Night Slaves don’t bother me, e.g., the set is clearly a studio back lot used in a million oaters, the reflected camera lights are visible in the store windows on one of the night shots, and there are some static one camera set ups that would have been replaced with more captivating cinematography if this were a big budget product for the big screen. If you can’t accept those sorts of things, don’t bother with this one. But if you can appreciate a solid TV movie as such, Night Slaves is quality entertainment.
An even better film along similar lines is The Screaming Woman, starring Olivia De Haviland in a role that you could consider a follow-up to The Snake Pit. She plays a wealthy woman named Laura Wynant who has just returned from the sanitarium after a mental breakdown. As she walks the grounds near the remnants of a bulldozed old smokehouse, she thinks she hears a woman calling for help from underneath the ground. As with Night Slaves, The Screaming Woman is based on a terrific writer’s (Ray Bradbury) story that depends on a character convincing other people that what has been witnessed is not an insane fantasy.
It’s pleasant as always to watch Joseph Cotten work (He plays Laura’s attorney) and the visuals of the screaming woman are effectively eerie. And the direction, by the accomplished Jack Smight, gets the most from the script and the actors. Again, it’s a TV movie, but it’s a fine TV movie indeed.
This film recommendation comes from Dr. Jean O’Reilly, a friend and colleague of mine at the National Addiction Centre at King’s College London. I am indebted to Jean for introducing me to the gut-bustingly funny, wise and sweet film Ruggles of Red Gap, about which she has done serious scholarly work. She can describe the virtues of this 1935 movie gem much better than I can, so let me turn things over to Jean:
Fans of actor Charles Laughton and director Leo McCarey will probably look askance at this choice of film, often regarded as an early, minor success in each man’s career. But it’s a charming film, with Laughton rising to the challenge of a rare comic performance and McCarey settling into the easy style of filmmaking that typified his later career.
Ruggles of Red Gap tells the story of an English gentleman’s gentleman (Laughton) who in 1908 is transported against his will from service in the household of an English earl to the American frontier town of Red Gap, Washington. In his strange new surroundings, Marmaduke Ruggles works as a manservant and dogsbody to the nouveaux riches Egbert and Effie Floud. After living for a time in Red Gap, Ruggles becomes infused with the spirits of democracy and equality and begins to consider abandoning a life of servitude to become his own man.
I love this film because it features, in nascent form, one of the attributes that became a hallmark of McCarey’s mature directorial style: the improvised scene. McCarey’s easygoing, collaborative approach to filmmaking is well documented, including the piano kept on the set for sing-alongs, the jokes and stories he told to lead his cast toward new scenes, and his keen eye for showcasing actors’ skills. He thought nothing of rewriting the shooting script on a whim, or spending a day shooting a new scene that had nothing to do with the storyline but that he thought might surprise viewers. As a result, McCarey’s films tend to be episodic, loosely structured, and peppered with inspired moments not always closely connected to the storyline.
The great director Sir David Lean is remembered mainly for lushly coloured 70mm epics with big international casts, sweeping stories and long running times (e.g., Lawrence of Arabia, A Passage to India, Bridge on the River Kwai, Dr. Zhivago). But he had a fine career before those triumphs during which he made tightly constructed black and white films with British casts, stories and locations. These early Lean films include two excellent Dickens’ adaptations, one of which is the 1946 version of Great Expectations.
The origins of Lean’s adaptation of the oft-filmed novel are visible in another film I recommend: In Which We Serve. Lean was an accomplished film editor when he got a chance to break into directing alongside Noël Coward on that movie. The cinematographer Ronald Neame is the producer of Great Expectations (and likely an influence on Guy Green’s trendsetting camera work). Bernard Miles and John Mills are back as actors, again adroitly playing off each other with emotional impact. Kay Walsh goes from acting to collaborating with Lean on the screenplay (along with Neame, Anthony Havelock-Allan, and Cecil McGivern), a masterpiece of economy which relates Dickens’ 500-page novel in just 118 minutes. Walsh went on to star in Lean’s excellent Oliver Twist and in private life to become the second in his series of six wives (imagine the alimony payments!). Alec Guinness was not in In Which We Serve, but Great Expectations, his first sizable film role, began his long-running cinematic partnership with Lean. All of this demonstrates what a small community British film was in its glorious period after the war, and the even smaller nature of the network Lean constructed around his own projects.
My friend Johann Koehler of the London School of Economics is a criminologist, an innovative thinker, and a lover of movies. I asked him to contribute a review of one of his favourites, The Sting. Over to Johann:
Fans of Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s pairing in 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid would have been raring for a cinema ticket in 1973 to see Hollywood’s most bankable leading duo in George Roy Hill’s multiple Academy Award-winning The Sting.
The plot revolves around a desperate revenge story shrouded in fanciful con artist scheme-ery. After the murder of his mentor, Redford’s Johnny Hooker, an impulsive neophyte in the world of confidence schemes, looks to Newman’s Henry Gondorff for instruction and assistance in bringing about the demise of the villainous Doyle Lonnegan (impeccably played by Robert Shaw). Shaw projects the same unpredictable brutality he mastered as Henry VIII in Fred Zinnemann’s 1966 classic A Man for All Seasons and the Newman/Redford team deliver a characteristically heart-warming performance redolent of Butch and Sundance.
While the film has been rebuked for a plot that drags at times, one can’t help feeling eager to find out how the final scene’s con plays out. In truth, the “long con” provides a deeply satisfying ending. In contrast to the “short con”, in which the con artist fleeces the mark for all that he has on his person, the “long con” is a much more deliberate and vicious scheme. It requires that the mark be seduced into the con artist’s deception and to participate in the construction of his own demise. In so doing, he ultimately becomes both the perpetrator as well as the victim. Lonnegan thus becomes either the most unsympathetic villain, or the least, depending on your mood while watching the film.
Scott Joplin’s jolly ragtime music, anachronistically written two decades before The Sting is actually set, imbues the film with enough whimsy to conceal the bitterness of the underlying storyline. And for a master-class in comic acting, be sure to look out for Newman’s show-stealing drunken poker scene on the train.
Closing trivia note from Keith: The money that Rick Blaine gives up to a needy couple using number 22 on a rigged roulette wheel finally gets paid back by Johnny Hooker in this movie.
