Fedora (1978)

          After cresting with the acclaimed one-two punch of Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960), Billy Wilder’s monumental film career began a slow decline, despite a brief return to form with The Fortune Cookie (1966). And though Fedora was not actually Wilder’s last film—he persuaded Fortune Cookie costars Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau to reteam for the pointless Buddy Buddy (1981)—Fedora is in many ways the nail in Wilder’s creative coffin. Everything in the movie is an echo of something Wilder did better earlier in his career. In fact, Fedora is so painfully old-fashioned that except for some coarse language and a brief nude scene, the movie feels as if it was made in the 1940s.

          Frequent Wilder leading man William Holden plays Berry “Dutch” Detweiler, an independent movie producer whose career has hit the skids. Berry travels to Greece in order to contact reclusive movie star Fedora, with whom he had a brief affair in the 1940s. Although she’s unofficially retired from acting after abandoning her last movie midway through production, Fedora is as a legend from Hollywood’s Golden Age who, incredibly, still has her looks. Upon arriving in Greece, Berry discovers that Fedora is a virtual prisoner inside her estate on a private island, and that the people around her will use any means necessary to repel intruders. Nonetheless, desperation coupled with growing concern for Fedora’s welfare compels Berry to solve the mystery of her circumstances.

          Fedora hinges on a massive plot twist that appears mid-movie, but the “twist” is obvious and predictable. Furthermore, the disastrous second half of Fedora comprises a lengthy series of dialogue scenes that trigger explanatory flashbacks. Alas, neither the dialogue scenes nor the flashbacks add much in the way of believability or dimension. Given the great heights to which Wilder and frequent writing partner I.A.L. Diamond had soared in previous films, the clumsiness that pervades their script for Fedora is shocking. So, too, is Wilder’s lack of directorial taste.

          Excepting a pithy running gag involving an obsequious hotel manager, most scenes drag on at torturous length. The casting of the Fedora role is calamitous, with leading lady Marthe Keller stuck doing an anemic Dietrich/Garbo imitation. The score by Miklós Rózsa is musty and oppressive. And the hard-boiled voiceover delivered by Holden serves virtually no purpose, since most of the information contained in the voiceover gets repeated during regular scenes. Worst of all, the basic storyline—about a vain movie star who ruins peoples’ lives in order to fight the aging process—is a sickly cousin to the plot of Wilder’s behind-the-scenes masterpiece Sunset Blvd. (1950). Therefore, despite sleek production values and an enjoyably cynical performance from Holden, the experience of watching Wilder struggle to reclaim past cinematic glory is just sad.

Fedora: FUNKY

1980 Week: The Formula

          While it would be exaggerating to describe this conspiracy thriller as a massive waste of talent, it’s fair to say that the luminaries involved in the project should have been able to generate something more exciting. After all, stars Marlon Brando and George C. Scott both had Oscars to their names by the time they costarred in The Formula, and director John G. Avildsen had recently scored a major hit with Rocky (1976). Even the movie’s deep bench of supporting actors is impressive: John Gielgud, Marthe Keller, Richard Lynch, G.D. Spradlin, Beatrice Straight. Yet The Formula is talky instead of thrilling, and the mano-a-mano faceoff between the top-billed actors that’s promised by the film’s poster never really materializes. On the bright side, The Formula is a handsome-looking movie that benefits from intricate plotting and (no surprise) skillful acting.

          Written and produced by Steve Shagan, the picture begins with a prologue set in Germany during the final days of World War II’s European action. A Nazi general is entrusted with a shipment of valuable papers that Third Reich officials hope to trade for protection after Germany falls, but U.S. soldiers seize the shipment before the Nazi general can escort the papers to a safe place. Next, the movie cuts to the present, where LAPD Detective Barney Caine (Scott) begins investigating the murder of a former LAPD chief. Caine uncovers connections between the dead man and oil magnate Adam Steiffel (Brando), and he also links the dead man to various mysterious people in Europe. Despite skepticism from his superiors, Caine treks to Germany and discovers that the dead man was part of a conspiracy involving a World War II-era formula to convert coal into oil. The ramifications are huge, since replacing petroleum as the world’s primary source of fuel would change the global economic map. Intrigue follows as Caine chases leads with the help of Lisa Spangler (Keller), a German model whose uncle has a tragic connection with the conspiracy.

          The premise of The Formula is interesting and workable, so the problem with the picture is one of execution. Nearly all of Caine’s investigative work takes the form of personal interviews, and there’s a numbing repetitiveness to the way people get shot and killed by unseen assassins immediately after giving Caine vital information. Worse, since the hit men never seem to aim at Caine himself, there’s not much real tension. By the time the movie climaxes in a lengthy (and surprisingly casual) chat between Caine and Steiffel—one of only two scenes shared by Brando and Scott—a general sense of lethargy has taken hold. Still, nearly everyone contributing to The Formula does solid work, from the way Brando hides his character’s evil behind an avuncular façade to the way composer Bill Conti accentuates scenes with robust flourishes. However, because the story never reaches a boiling point, The Formula ends up feeling like an episode from a well-made TV detective show, albeit with fancier actors and more elaborate location photography.

The Formula: FUNKY

Black Sunday (1977)

          Full disclosure: Even though I recognize its many flaws, I love this movie for its ambition, intelligence, and toughness—and especially for costar Bruce Dern’s searing performance. Black Sunday is bleak, long, and outlandish, but whenever I watch the picture, I perceive those qualities as strengths rather than weaknesses.

          Based on an early novel by Thomas Harris, who later created Hannibal Lecter and wrote the various books about the cannibalistic shrink’s exploits, Black Sunday is an old-school terrorism thriller. When a Palestinian extremist named Dahlia Iyad (Marthe Keller) surfaces on the radar of merciless Mossad agent David Kabakov (Robert Shaw), David methodically tracks her down to the U.S. and joins forces with an FBI agent, Sam Corley (Fritz Weaver), to identify her plan and stop her. It turns out Dahlia has recruited a PTSD-stricken Vietnam vet, American pilot Michael Lander (Dern), to fly the Goodyear Blimp into a Miami stadium during the Super Bowl, where Dahlia will activate explosives inside the blimp and send thousands of steel darts flying into the crowd.

          John Frankenheimer, a seasoned pro at tightly coiled action stories, directs the film in an expansive style, taking equal care with intimate scenes of Dahlia manipulating Michael’s fragile psyche and big-canvas action sequences. What makes Black Sunday unique, however, is its sensitive exploration of Michael’s mental state—despite being neither the film’s hero nor its villain, Michael is by far the picture’s most developed character, and this peculiar storytelling choice delivers fascinating results. As the story progresses, we learn that David (the Mossad agent) is a cold-blooded hunter for whom the ends justify the means. Dahlia, meanwhile, is a kind of psychic counterpoint to David, and the biggest distinction between them is Dahlia’s willingness to kill bystanders for dramatic effect. Therefore, the conflict between these characters is a draw, morally speaking.

          Caught between them, literally and metaphorically, is Michael, a haunted man who endured torture as a prisoner of war, only to return home to an ungrateful society. Even when Michael is carefully preparing explosives, he acts more like an artist than a potential mass murderer; we feel his suffocating angst and wish for him to escape Dahlia’s destructive influence. Dern soars in this movie, adding dimension upon dimension to a role that’s perfectly suited to his offbeat gifts.

          Keller is good, too, presenting a creepy sort of sociopathic sensuality, and Shaw, though regularly upstaged by Dern and Keller, has many vivid moments. His is not, however, a true leading man’s performance—his characterization is far too cruel for that. Adding greatly to the movie’s appeal is a robust score by John Williams, which jacks up the tension, and muscular cinematography by John A. Alonzo. Black Sunday goes overboard during the finale, during which the laws of physics take a beating and during which iffy special effects dull the film’s impact, but even with its goofy denouement, Black Sunday is a popcorn flick executed with a rare level of craftsmanship behind and in front of the camera.

Black Sunday: RIGHT ON

Bobby Deerfield (1977)

Two Hollywood heavyweights famous for intellectualizing their work succumb to bad habits in Bobby Deerfield, a plodding romantic drama without enough narrative substance to support its heavy themes. Ostensibly the story of a racecar driver mired in existential crisis, the big-budget misfire gets lost in a maze of pretentious dialogue and vague characterization. Despite all their obvious effort to craft something surpassingly sensitive, producer-director Sydney Pollack and director Al Pacino ended up making something utterly artificial: The storytelling lacks the depth found in Pollack’s best dramas, and Pacino’s performance is so internalized it validates every criticism about self-indulgence ever lobbed his way. Bobby Deerfield is especially disappointing because Pacino and Pollack should have comprised a dream team for fans of thoughtful movies. Based on a novel by Erich Maria Remarque and written for the screen by the literate humanist Alvin Sargent, Bobby Deerfield begins with narcissistic Formula One driver Bobby Deerfield (Pacino) watching a nasty crash that injures one driver and takes the life of another. Jarred by the realization that his career involves courting death, Bobby starts wandering around in an angst-ridden haze, eventually visiting the hospital where the surviving driver is recuperating. While there, Bobby meets a fellow troubled soul, Lillian (Marthe Keller), who has a whole different set of issues with human mortality. Even with Pollack’s consummate skill for constructing love stories, the dynamic between Bobby and Lillian holds zero interest. Bobby’s such a cipher it’s impossible to care whether he finds love, and Lillian’s an ice queen—thus, since their interaction is the whole movie (aside from a few moderately distracting driving scenes), Bobby Deerfield is a 124-minute spiral into a black hole of downbeat boredom. The movie is skillfully made and the acting is strong, within the limitations set by the murky writing, but who cares? Digging the good stuff from the muck simply isn’t worth the effort.

Bobby Deerfield: LAME

Marathon Man (1976)

          A year after Jaws gave a generation of moviegoers nightmares about great white sharks, the brilliant thriller Marathon Man made dentistry seem like the most terrifying thing in the world. Playing a Nazi war criminal obsessed with finding a cache of stolen diamonds, the venerable Sir Laurence Olivier scared the crap out of audiences by performing oral surgery without anesthetic on the movie’s hero (Dustin Hoffman), all the while muttering the unanswerable lunatic query, “Is it safe?”
          Hoffman plays Babe, a New York City graduate student and marathon runner unwittingly drawn into a race between the Nazi and U.S. government agents. In a deft touch, the movie’s narrative is intentionally convoluted—although screenwriter William Goldman, who adapted the story from his own novel, makes the basics of the story clear enough for viewers to follow along, he ensures that moviegoers as perplexed as Babe, which adds to the tension of watching the film. By showing people getting killed left and right, and by demonstrating that everyone in the movie is chasing everyone else, Goldman creates a dizzying vibe in which it’s impossible to tell who can be trusted. Yet Goldman also keeps viewers squarely in Babe’s camp, since he’s the one true innocent in the story.

          Director John Schlesinger, whose previous collaboration with Hoffman was the Oscar-winning Midnight Cowboy (1969), gracefully balances pulpy material with sophisticated execution, so even though Marathon Man is primarily a very effective thrill machine, it’s also a credible dramatic film with subtle textures like the layered relationship between Babe and his secret-agent older brother, Doc (Roy Scheider). There’s even an edgy love story between Babe and Elsa (Marthe Keller), plus a complex dynamic between Babe and Doc’s fellow spy, Janeway (William Devane). However, what makes the biggest impact is Szell (Olivier), the unhinged German with a nasty habit of jabbing drills and needles into healthy teeth, causing victims unbearable pain. Olivier’s performance, which earned an Oscar nomination, sits on the border between genius and camp, but his choices were validated by how deeply he unsettled audiences; Szell is inarguably one of the creepiest screen villains of the ’70s.

          Hoffman’s great acting in the picture is sometimes overshadowed by Olivier’s star turn and also by oft-repeated lore about Hoffman’s overzealous work ethic. In the most notorious incident, Hoffman stayed up all night as preparation for a scene in which his character is exhausted, only to have Olivier ask, “Why don’t you just try acting, dear boy?” Yet while the thespians used different methods, both delivered peerless results that, when combined with Goldman’s rip-roaring narrative and Schlesinger’s masterful direction, created 129 minutes of vivid escapist entertainment.

Marathon Man: RIGHT ON