A randomly comprehensive survey of extraordinary movie experiences from the art house to the grindhouse, featuring the good, the bad, the ugly, but not the boring or the banal.
Another world premiere in Florida, this time in Miami for one of the year's most memorable films.
This film needs no introduction, but I'll show you a trailer anyway. FilmTrailersChannel uploaded this version to YouTube.
One person does it, then everyone does it. Yesterday it was Milwaukee; now Miami has a Taylor-Burton double bill.
The funny thing about this trend is that it seems to underline how unknown Burton still was despite toiling in Hollywood for a decade -- he starred in The Robe, for Chrissakes. Yet I wouldn't be surprised if some of his films earned more in these Cleosploitation double bills than they did in their original releases in a lot of places. At this rate people will be seeing a lot of Burton before Cleopatra itself comes out.
As a movie producer, John Wayne deserves credit for, among other things teaming up Randolph Scott and Budd Boetticher and releasing William Wellman's film version of the novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, whose The Ox-Bow Incident Wellman had directed a decade earlier. Wellman had made to airborne dramas for and with Wayne, Island in the Sky and The High and the Mighty, but neither those nor anything else the furiously prolific director had made over more than a quarter-century since Wings really prepares one for the in-your-face aesthetic experimentation he unleashes here. That it bears the Wayne (or Wayne-Fellows) imprimatur is perhaps even more staggering. While one can imagine the Duke taking Randolph Scott's place in Seven Men From Now, the mind reels at the prospect of Wayne playing Robert Mitchum's role in this almost freudian "psychological" western.
On the other hand, Mitchum seems to fit the weird world Wellmen and art director Al Ybarra designed for him like a glove. Something about Mitchum seemed to inspire expressionistic excess in the Fifties; Track of the Cat is one of the few films that looks like it might have taken place on the same planet on which Charles Laughton filmed the legendary Night of the Hunter. There's a deliberate artifice to Wellman's presentation that seems still more stark and more deliberate whenever he cuts from the blatant soundstage where the Bridges family lives to the tremendous, man-dwarfing wintry mountain locations where the "black painter" lurks. Without knowing too much about the production history, I presume that the stagy look of the home scenes is absolutely intentional, highlighting the theatrical exaggeration of the snowbound family drama and contrasting the stunted, stifled fate that threatens the younger Bridges children with the gigantic landscape where Mitchum, as the eldest son, hunts the cat and strives to reaffirm his mastery.
Nurture (above) and nature (below) contrasted in Track of the Cat.
The Bridges are perhaps the most miserable family presented in a Fifties Western. We're told that they're powerful ranchers and landowners, but cooped up at home for the winter they appear petty and pathetic, with only the semi-crippled Indian Joe Sam as a servant and young Gwen Williams (Diana Lynn) as a guest for the season. The paterfamilias is a drunk. The mother is a bible-reading harpy whose only concern seems to be with preserving the ranch intact for Curtis (Mitchum) to inherit. The two younger brothers and their sister seem repressed by the attention given Curtis, while Curt himself seems resentful and spoiled at the same time, lording it over his siblings but preferring to roam the mountains. The rampage of a "painter" becomes a family crisis, as Curt's brothers in turn seek to prove themselves, the youngest, Harold (Tab Hunter) torn between duty to family and desire for Gwen, who sees clearly that he'll be crushed by family pressures if something doesn't give.
A view from the grave: Tab Hunter faces a choice between love and death.
A documentary on Clark on the disc makes the novel sound more symbolically pretentious than it probably is, but the main drama of the movie is clear enough. As a spoiled heir and aggressive hunter and enforcer -- we're told he's driven numerous squatters off the ranch -- Curt has convinced himself that he's the master of his fate and capable of anything on his own. He's become a kind of incubus on the rest of the family, the parents focusing their hopes and his siblings sacrificing theirs for his sake. He intends to prove himself again by killing the cat, and seems contemptuous of brother Arthur, even after Arthur is killed by the "painter." Having borrowed Arthur's coat, Curt finds a copy of John Keats's poetry. The most use Curt finds for the pages is as kindling. He's as stunted as his siblings in some ways, but his tragic flaw is his assumption that, however dependent he's been all along on his family, that he is a lone champion and provider. But when he loses his provisions and faces the prospect of starvation, he breaks quickly, while the surviving brother, Harold, rises against the odds to both crucial occasions of his life: standing up to his mother for Gwen's sake and taking up the hunt for the cat.
The story is a little heavyhanded, portraying Curt perhaps too literally as an incubus whose departure promises to redeem his entire surviving family. But that's the kind of thematic excess that seems to go with the visual excess of Wellman's direction in both directions, from the staginess of the home scenes to the god's-eye view of the winter landscape. Wellman testified that he meant Track to look as much like a black-and-white movie as was possible for a color film. Cannily, he accentuates what he's up to by throwing in isolated bits of blazing color like Curt's red coat or the distant glow of a watchfire. He also jolts us with unexpected moments of pure pictorialism, as when he cuts from the family bringing in Arthur's body to a screen-spanning view of the monochrome quilt on which the body will lay. Cinematographer William H. Clothier does a mighty job realizing Wellman's vision, though contemporary viewers might not have appreciated the experiment.
Black and white in color
As a Warner Bros. release, Track of the Cat would have made a fascinating (or infuriating) double feature with another exercise in stylization, Victor Saville's The Silver Chalice. While the adoption of widescreen processes and the hegemony of color drove demand for heightened realism, these films defiantly and recklessly aimed for often alienating pictorial effects. Of the two, Track maintains a steadier balance between style and substance because Wellman is just too good of a classical storyteller to let the film get out of control. In the end, however, style is what makes Track stand out among Fifties westerns. While Boetticher, Mann and Daves strove for naturalistic expressionism, Wellman took the "psychological western" label seriously and tried for the best of both worlds: the abstract aesthetic of the interior world and the turbulent romanticism of western landscape. How well it succeeds is probably a matter of taste for each viewer, but the overall power of Wellman's direction and Mitchum's performance are indisputable.
This extraordinary collaboration between Warner Bros. and Toei, Warner's Japanese counterpart as its country's definitive producer of gangster films, is less a merger of the two studios' distinctive approaches to organized crime than a blend of Toei's more romanticized yakuza-film tradition with American film noir, embodied authoritatively by Robert Mitchum. Directed by Sydney Pollack from a screenplay by the Schrader brothers and Robert Towne, The Yakuza follows Harry Kilmer to Japan, where he'd served in the postwar occupation force and fell in love with Eiko (Keiko Kishi). Harry wanted to marry her, but her brother Ken's return from the Philippines five years after the war ended put the kibosh on that idea. Now an old pal (Brian Keith) sends him back to Japan to rescue his daughter, who's been kidnapped by a yakuza gang, and Harry needs Ken's help. The resentment is mutual between these two, though understated, but Ken believes himself indebted to Harry for the American's protection of Eiko. Though he quit the yakuza himself some time ago, Ken considers himself bound by the principle of giri to help Harry. Together they rescue the American girl, but by killing two goons in the process Ken's life is forfeit to the kidnappers' gang. Worse, both Ken and Harry now know too much about the Keith character's shady business dealings with the Japanese, so Harry's life is forfeit, too. But not if either of our heroes can help it. Helped by Dusty (Richard Jordan), a Keith man sent to keep an eye on Harry who turns under the influence of Ken's code of honor (and a crush on Eiko's daughter), Harry and Ken take the battle to their enemies, but still have their own old conflict to resolve, once Harry learns its true nature....
The melodramatic nature of the romance of Harry and Eiko and the rivalry of Harry and Ken takes The Yakuza away from the hard-boiled bluntness of Kinji Fukasaku's movies, the representations of yakuza cinema with which I'm most familiar. A Fukasaku fan would probably also scoff at this film's idealization of Ken as a sincere, resolute devotee of giri. But the quasi-triangle adds an American noirish flavor to the proceedings, as the difficulty of Harry's romance with Eiko, which he blames on Ken's bigotry or domineering nature escalates into impossibility as he comes to understand Ken's actual position. One problem with the screenplay is that Harry has to be told the truth by an otherwise almost superfluous character instead of any of the actual interested parties. Maybe the writers thought that James Shigeta (who is, after all, an American) could be trusted with the burden of exposition more than the actual Japanese actors. In any event, it shows how the action and romance plots seem rather awkwardly patched together.
Fortunately, as an action film The Yakuza delivers the goods with some brutal gun and swordfight scenes. Among the highlights is Ken's slicing off a gunman's forearm; its finger spasmodically pulls the trigger while the severed limb flies through the air. Editing also accentuates the violence of moments without gore. When Mitchum empties a handgun into an enemy, Pollack makes a jump cut every time the actor fires to jolting effect. An attack by yakuza on the home of Harry's American friend, where Eiko, her daughter and Dusty are staying, is edited at a breakneck pace, while Harry and Ken's storming of their antagonist's headquarters is an extended climactic ordeal.
Robert Mitchum here sets a standard for action heroes aging ruggedly. He was 57 when he filmed this and looks it, but he could still pass for a plausible badass without juicing himself up into a freak like Sylvester Stallone. This film and The Friends of Eddie Coyle show that Mitchum still had it after thirty years of stardom. His co-star, Ken Takakura, is actually a little too young for his role. The actor was 14 when World War II ended, and I have a suspicion that the American producers probably wanted the more age-appropriate Toshiro Mifune for the part. I haven't seen any of Takakura's native yakuza films yet, but he impressed me in his second English-language film. His voice is accented enough for me to think it's his own, but he sounds fluent and his soft-spoken delivery gives him the advantage on more guttural Japanese actors who had a hard time making themselves understood in English. His role seems designed to be accessible to U.S. audiences: a lone-wolf rather than someone embedded in mysterious institutions. That alienation makes Ken a noir hero in his own right, albeit one who's set up for a happy ending if he takes Harry's advice.
The Yakuza is another offering from Vutopia, the newly-available on-demand movie service on my local cable system. Regrettably, the film was offered pan-and-scan; the fight scenes would certainly look even more impressive in a letterbox edition. I also learn from IMDB that the film was released in Japan a few months before opening in America, and in a slightly longer cut. That makes me wonder what a definitive version of The Yakuza would look like. I wonder because I'd like to see it someday.
There's no original-release trailer available online, but ssuto has crafted his own widescreen "trailer" incorporating some of the film's best action. Check it out below.
Read the novel by George V. Higgins or watch the movie adaptation by Paul Monash, directed by Peter Yates, and it's like you have the Rosetta Stone in front of you. It's as if you've found the proverbial missing link grazing on the savanna. Cinematically you have Robert Mitchum and his whole film noir heritage integrated almost seamlessly into Seventies cinema. Add a remarkably faithful screenplay and you may get a glimmering of what I'm getting at. But go back to the novel (Higgins's first) and it really hits you. The dialogue is the key. It's discursive, digressive, anecdotal, and Higgins tells his story almost entirely through this kind of dialogue. Let me give you a sample:
"Now there is a strange thing," he said, "When I came up here I more or less take the long way around, to see if anybody else is interested and who that might be, you know? So I walk along and then I cross the street and come on back down past the pair of them there and the woman says: 'Unless you accept Jesus, who is Christ the Lord, you shall perish, perish in the everlasting flames.' "Now who am I to think about a thing like that, can you tell me that?" Dillon said. "Couple weeks ago these two gentlemen from Detroit came in and had a couple of drinks, and then they sort of look around and the next thing I know they inform me that we are going partners. They give me some time to think about it, you know, and while I think I make a few phone calls. So that when the few minutes are up I had maybe six or seven friends of mine in there and I took the opportunity to go out in the back and get a piece of pipe that I keep around. I hit them a couple of good ones and we throw them out in the street in front of a cab. "Then two nights ago I get five of these Micmacs come in, real Indians, for a change, and they have a little firewater and begin to break up some of the furniture. So me and a few friends hadda use the pipe on them. "So this broad hollers at me there, just a few minutes ago, about the everlasting flames, and I consider myself a fairly intelligent guy and all that, pretty good judgment, I get drunk once in a while now and then, but I got this strong idea that I would like to go up with that piece of pipe under my coat and say: Well, what do I do about those fellows from Detroit, you want to tell me that? The Indians too. Jesus going to punish me for that? And then whack her once or twice across the snout to bring her to her senses."
Remind you of anything? How about this?
"He didn't show up," Foley said, "I sit there for about half an hour, and I have a cheese sandwich and a cup of coffee. Jesus, I forgot how bad a thing a cheese sandwich is to eat. It's just like eating a piece of linoleum, you know?" "You got to put mayonnaise on it," Waters said. "It's never going to have any flavor at all unless you put some mayonnaise on the bread before you put the cheese on." "I never heard of that," Foley said, "You put it on the outside, do you?" "Nah," Waters said, "you put it on the inside. You still put the butter on the outside and all. But when the cheese melts, there, it's the mayonnaise that gives it the flavor. You got to use real mayonnaise, though, the stuff with the eggs in it. You can use that other stuff that most people use when they say they're using mayonnaise, that salad dressing stuff, you can use it. But it isn't going to taste the same. I think that other stuff scalds or something. It doesn't taste right, anyway."
It goes on further. You shouldn't exactly have a total flash of recognition, because Higgins's style is, as I said, a kind of missing link. It might be more clear if the gangster in the first excerpt or the cops in the second started talking about movies or TV shows, but this is a matter of form rather than content. What I'm suggesting is that Higgins is like the Old Testament of the bible that is Quentin Tarantino's writing style. Higgins's style has a clear purpose. Like Tarantino, there's rarely such a thing as purely expository dialogue, just as there rarely is such stuff in real life. People ramble and digress. But in Higgins it's clear that this manner of speaking is also a form of sociability, a kind of code of etiquette. It allows people who are always on the verge of stabbing one another in the back to communicate with one another, to have something to say to each other besides that they don't trust each other. As Higgins ultimately illustrates, it's a way to shield your true feelings or true intentions. You keep up this kind of bluster to keep a man from knowing you think he's a rat, for instance, or that you're planning to kill him. It's a code that lets people act as if they're all friends when they aren't.
The "friends of Eddie Coyle," for instance, include Dillon the bartender, who seems at first to be an eccentric go-between who relays messages among the real criminals, and Dave Foley the police detective, who hints that Coyle might avoid a two-year stint in stir if he informs on some of his other friends. Dillon and Foley are friends as well. Some more friends of Coyle are the gang of bank robbers for whom he's buying stolen guns. More like an acquaintance is Jackie Brown (see!), from whom Coyle buys the guns. They might be friends, but Brown has got to prove himself, and Coyle is the kind of friend who might pay for his guns but then tell the cops that Brown has machine guns to spare for sale to student radicals.
Steven Keats as the original Jackie Brown
If Foley is a friend, that might be enough for him to convince the judge up in New Hampshire to go easy on Eddie. If it isn't, or he isn't, Coyle has other friends he could mention. But he's never the only person out to share information with friends, though he might be the one you want to blame when The Man says someone should pay. And yes, this is the 1970s, and there is someone called The Man to whom the wiseguys answer. Don't doubt that The Man gets his way, either.
Eddie Coyle is a lifelong loser down to his last chances. He's a little older in the movie than in the novel, and Robert Mitchum is a few years older yet than the character he plays. This is one of his Seventies performances that proved that Mitchum could still bring it, but it's no star turn. Coyle is no hero, though the film makes a little more effort to make him sympathetic by showing a little more of his home life than Higgins does and emphasizing more the prospect that imprisonment would mean his family goes on welfare. Mitchum brings authority to the role while demonstrating that Coyle has no power to speak of. Second-billed Peter Boyle seems like the only person who could play the Dillon character from the novel (though the Criterion liner notes state that Monash and Yates originally wanted Mitchum for that part). They're supported by a bunch of familiar Seventies faces, including Richard Jordan as Foley and Alex Rocco as the lead bank robber.
Having read the novel over the weekend and watched the DVD tonight, I can say that apart from some structural alterations this is one of the most faithful adaptations of a novel that I've ever seen. The dialogue is just about all straight from the novel, though a pre-Tarantino sensibility makes it inevitable that Monash cuts bits that might have stayed in now. Some added elements include an opening-credits sequence that shows the bank robbers casing the commute of a bank manager and an abortive car chase (perhaps mandatory from the director of Bullitt) involving Jackie Brown and the police. The only noteworthy omission is a change in who actually rats out the robbery gang, an alteration that virtually eliminates one of the novel's very few female characters while making a major male character more of a villain than he already was. The essence of Higgins's story remains the same: in an underworld of constant deal-making and double dealing, any slip can be fatal. You won't know it from the way people talk to you, but you're finished.
With the story very fresh in my mind, I didn't expect to experience much suspense during the film, but Yates and editor Patricia Lewis Jaffe do a great job elaborating on Higgins's descriptions of the robberies and the stakeout that nabs Jackie Brown. The action scenes are crisply done, even with the violence kept to a minimum, as in the novel. The location work and Victor J. Kemper's cinematography are outstanding. I always get a kick out of period actuality footage, and whether we see an old-school strip mall or the old-school Boston Garden with the "Broons" playing and Mitchum and Boyle in the crowd, it's all a bonus as far as I'm concerned.
Pictorially speaking, it's a Criterion disc, so draw your own conclusions. There might have been more extras beside a still gallery and Yates's commentary track, but I guess I didn't mind paying ten dollars less -- I'd just gotten paid for a project and treated myself. Any fan of Seventies cinema and the American crime genre will probably feel the same way when they see this, again or for the first time.
Criterion wouldn't even spring for a trailer, but UQBAR8 found one to post on YouTube last week, so here it is.
