Showing posts with label robert surtees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label robert surtees. Show all posts

Sunday, March 8, 2015

Lost Horizon (1973)



          Despite the commercial failure of its 1937 adaptation, which was directed by Frank Capra, Columbia Pictures took another shot at bringing James Hilton’s 1933 novel Lost Horizon to the screen. The bloated 1973 version, featuring twee songs by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, fared just as poorly at the box office as its predecessor. Key among the 1973 movie’s problems is the way the songs clash with everything else onscreen. For instance, the first properly sung-through number doesn’t appear until nearly an hour has elapsed, which has the effect of suddenly changing the picture from a straightforward drama to a ridiculous musical spectacle. The remaining 90 minutes of Lost Horizon boast such attributes as an inherently compelling storyline and some vivid performances, but it’s impossible to take the movie seriously.
          Lost Horizon begins with diplomat Richard Conway (Peter Finch) fleeing a war-torn country in the Far East, accompanied by several other refugees. The group’s getaway plane is hijacked by a mysterious stranger, who crashes the vessel in the snowy peaks of the Himalayas. Soon afterward, Richard’s party is rescued by the enigmatic Chang (John Gielgud), and then escorted to the glorious realm of Shangri-La. Despite its storm-tossed surroundings, Shangri-La is a tropical utopia where people live in seemingly perfect harmony. Friction divides Richard’s party. Some, including Richard’s swaggering brother, George (Michael York), want to leave Shangri-La in order to resume their old lives. Others, including troubled reporter Sally (Sally Kellerman), embrace the chance to start anew. Meanwhile, Richard is introduced to Shangri-La’s spiritual leader, The High Lama (Charles Boyer), who explains that Richard has the opportunity to fulfill a special role in Shangri-La.
          Narratively and thematically, this is fascinating stuff, even though pundits have spent years parsing political (and even racist) messages from the source material. Ironically, the strength of the storyline is what makes the intrusion of songs so absurd. Had the songs added anything, the result would have been different. Alas, the tunes merely express infantile notions, as when Kellerman and costar Olivia Hussey warble the line “different people look at things from different points of view” during the spirited duet “The Things I Will Not Miss.” As for the movie’s performances, they’re all over the place, an issue compounded by the use of professional singers to lip-sync vocals for many of the actors. Finch is expressive and regal; leading lady Liv Ullmann is luminous, within the constraints of an underwritten role; York is impassioned; and dignified costar James Shigeta is as welcome a presence as ever. Boyer and Gielgud acquit themselves well despite outrageous miscasting. Hussey, Kellerman, and costar George Kennedy, however, play their roles so melodramatically that the actors come across as cartoonish.
          On a technical level, director Charles Jarriot and cinematographer Robert Surtees shoot the movie quite well, providing scope and splendor even if their presentation of singing-and-dancing nonsense feels indifferent. In the end, Lost Horizon is a bizarre mess, though patient viewers can conceivably power through the musical sequences and latch onto the dramatic scenes, which are vastly superior. FYI, the screenplay for Los Horizon is a minor credit for the important writer Larry Kramer, whose activism and creativity coalesced in his iconic play The Normal Heart (1985), which was endured through celebrated revivals and an Emmy-winning 2014 television adaptation.

Lost Horizon: FUNKY

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Oklahoma Crude (1973)



          John Huston and Elia Kazan, among many others, have been credited with the quote that “90% of directing is casting.” To understand what this remark means, check out Oklahoma Crude, a handsomely produced but frustrating period drama about a belligerent woman operating a wildcat oil well in the early 20th century. The picture has four main characters, but only one is cast perfectly. The protagonist, Lena Doyle, is a tough-as-nails loner who works with her hands and dislikes people so much that she expresses a wish to be a third gender, complete with a matched set of sex organs, so she can tend to her own carnal needs. Improbably, she’s played by Faye Dunaway, a cosmopolitan beauty who seems more suited to a Paris fashion runway than a rugged work site. Further, because Lena rarely speaks during the first half of the picture, the role requires a performer with expressive physicality. Dunaway’s greatest gifts are her face and voice, so she’s wrong for the part on every level, even though it’s easy to understand why she relished a chance to try something different.
          The next important character is Noble Mason, a scrappy rogue whom Lena reluctantly hires as a laborer/mercenary once representatives from an oil company try to seize her well by force. Since the Lena/Noble relationship has a Taming of the Shrew quality, the obvious casting would be a handsome rascal along the lines of Steve McQueen or Paul Newman. Instead, Noble is played by George C. Scott, unquestionably one of the finest actors in screen history but not, by any stretch, a romantic lead. Rounding out the troika of casting errors is the presence of dainty English actor John Mills as Cleon Doyle, Lena’s estranged father. Seeing as how he plays the role with an American accent, why didn’t producer-director Stanley Kramer simply cast an American? Well, at least Kramer got the villain right, because Jack Palance is terrific as Hellman, the sadistic enforcer whom the oil company sends to menace Lena.
          The intriguing plot of Marc Norman’s script revolves around Lena’s ownership of a nascent well, which gains Lena unwanted attention once clues indicate the well might produce oil. Hellman makes a cash offer that Lena refuses, so Hellman simply steals the well, in the process ordering his people to beat Lena and her employees nearly to death. Then, with the assistance of ex-soldier Noble, Lena reclaims the well, sparking a lengthy standoff that culminates in a bittersweet combination of tragedy and victory.
          Oklahoma Crude gets off to a rocky start, because the first 20 minutes—in which the Lena/Noble relationship is established—simply don’t work, largely because of the aforementioned miscasting. Things pick up once Palance arrives, and the last hour of the picture is fairly exciting. Legendary cinematographer Robert Surtees contributes his usual vigorous work, and composer Henry Mancini’s music keeps things bouncy. (Occasionally too much so.) As with most of Kramer’s pictures, the tone rings false at regular intervals, since the filmmaker can’t decide whether he’s making a dramedy or a serious picture. The novelty of the story and the strength of the primal good-vs.-evil conflict ultimately sustain interest, but it’s a bumpy ride—especially when the syrupy, Anne Murray-performed theme song, “Send a Little Love My Way,” gets played on the soundtrack for the zillionth time.

Oklahoma Crude: FUNKY

Sunday, January 19, 2014

The Last Picture Show (1971)



          While the career of novelist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry overflows with great accomplishments, there’s a special magic to the 1971 film The Last Picture Show, the screenplay for which McMurtry and director Peter Bogdanovich adapted from McMurtry’s semi-autobiographical novel. The elegiac film represents a magnificent fusion of two gifted storytellers, with Bogdanovich’s precocious classicism providing the perfect frame for McMurtry’s beautifully sad vision of a small Texas town in decline. The director provides elegant cinematography, taut dramaturgy, and vital performances; the author/screenwriter gives the piece its soul. The result of this combined effort is a wrenching little masterpiece about alienation, betrayal, disillusionment, loss, maturation, and sex. Shot in evocative black-and-white by master cinematographer Robert Surtees, The Last Picture Show is one of the highest accomplishments in screen art from any American studio in the ’70s.
          Based loosely on McMurtry’s memories of growing up in Texas during the postwar era, the film takes place in tiny Anarene, Texas, circa the early ’50s. Although it’s basically an ensemble piece, The Last Picture Show focuses on high school buddies Duane (Jeff Bridges) and Sonny (Timothy Bottoms). At first, Duane seems to have the world by the tail, because he’s a good-looking, popular jock who dates the prettiest girl in town, Jacy (Cybill Shepherd). Conversely, Sonny seems like a lost soul as he breaks up with his high-school girlfriend and commences an affair with Ruth (Cloris Leachman), the desperately lonely wife of his football coach. Yet as the months drag on, it becomes clear that Duane’s future isn’t so rosy; Jacy is a manipulative striver willing to do nearly anything to achieve her goal of marrying into money. Partially as a result of his entanglement with Jacy, Duane discovers not only his own personal limitations (culminating in a rueful instance of impotence) but also the bleak realities of the larger world.
          As they stumble from adolescence to adulthood, watching the town around them decay from neglect and population shifts, the boys occasionally receive life lessons from an older friend named Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson), owner of the local movie theater. The ways in which Sam and his beloved business suffer the ravages of time reveal profound metaphysical concepts that Duane and Sonny must come to understand. Bogdanovich and McMurtry weave a complex tapestry in The Last Picture Show, because the story also involves significant characters played by Ellen Burstyn, Clu Galager, Randy Quaid, and—most heartbreakingly—Sam Bottoms, the real-life younger brother of costar Timothy Bottoms. The irony that a story about a small town is densely populated provides just one of the literary nuances permeating The Last Picture Show. The film is also rich in allegory, metaphor, and subtext.
          Yet the movie is just as impressive in terms of cinematic technique. Bogdanovich shoots street scenes in a style heavily influenced by John Ford, so every dirty window and every wind-blown scrap of garbage says volumes. Similarly, the director films interiors with meticulous care, often framing one character prominently in the foreground, with others situated a distance behind, thereby accentuating the inability these people have to form real connections. And the performances! Johnson and Leachman both received Oscars, and rightfully so. Longtime screen cowboy Johnson unveils a lifetime of repressed feeling in his climactic monologue, and Leachman etches a poignant image of longing. Meanwhile, Timothy Bottoms conveys an unforgettably soulful quality, Bridges tempers his signature exuberance with hard-won wisdom, and Shepherd effectively illustrates the cost Jacy pays for her avarice. Fitting the bittersweet tone of McMurtry’s best writing, The Last Picture Show also features one of the most meaningful downbeat endings of the ’70s. Imprudently, most of the principals returned to the material for the 1990 sequel Texasville (again based on a McMurtry novel), but the follow-up is merely adequate, a faint echo of the original’s thunder.

The Last Picture Show: OUTTA SIGHT

Friday, November 8, 2013

Lenny (1974)



          Leaving the discussion of whether this Bob Fosse-directed biopic “accurately” captures Lenny Bruce’s soul to others with more knowledge of the matter, it’s fair to describe Lenny as one of the boldest attempts ever made to find a cinematic style perfectly suited to a real-life subject. In many ways echoing the vibe of the smoky jazz clubs where the real Bruce earned his reputation as an iconic counterculture comedian, Fosse employs a freewheeling storytelling approach that jumps back and forth in time, frequently lingering on extended re-creations of famous Bruce monologues. Furthermore, Fosse presents the whole picture in stark black-and-white cinematography that suggests rare footage of an underground performer caught in the act. One could easily argue, in fact, that Lenny has an overabundance of directorial imprint, bludgeoning its story with razzle-dazzle showmanship and a self-consciously grim tone. Yet that might actually be how Fosse employs his artistic license to the greatest effect. Perhaps this isn’t a film about who Lenny Bruce was, per se, but rather a film about what Lenny Bruce meant—in the sense of representing onscreen the milieu that Bruce painted with the incendiary words of his comedy routines.
          Accordingly, the world of Lenny is a dour space filled with drugs, rage, sex, and trouble. Moreover, just as Bruce eventually succumbed to his own darkness, wasting the last years of his life on fruitless censorship battles before dying of a drug overdose at age 40 in 1966, Lenny hurtles into bleaker and bleaker terrain with each passing scene. It’s unlikely anyone will ever make a more depressing film about a funnyman.
          Cast wisely for his skill at channeling Bruce’s self-destructive intensity, rather than any superficial ability to replicate Bruce’s comedic technique, Dustin Hoffman drives the film with a merciless performance. He incarnates Bruce as a self-involved, self-righteous son of a bitch who fascinates and repels people at the same time. Admirable for his chutzpah and for his messianic crusade to draw taboo subjects into the light, Bruce comes across as a man who must die for postwar America’s sins—in aggravating the establishment, Bruce changes the world even as he damns himself.
          Amid this provocative situating of Bruce as a free-speech hero, Fosse investigates Bruce’s private life primarily through Bruce’s courtship with and marriage to a stripper named Honey. Working from a literate script by Julian Barry, who adapted his own play of the same name, Fosse lingers on curvaceous actress Valerie Perrine (who plays Honey) in a way that echoes Bruce’s fascination with sleazy sexuality. (One typical flourish: Fosse intercuts a threesome in the Bruce bedroom with the nightclub routine it inspires, during which Bruce memorably opines in a sing-song voice, “I like dykes.”) Advancing the idea of Bruce-as-martyr, much of the film explores Bruce’s attempt to clean up his act for the mainstream, an endeavor that results in spectacular failure. Then, finally, the film dramatizes Bruce’s descent into oblivion with harrowing realism.
          Despite its exquisite artistic and technical qualities—notably Fosse’s quicksilver storytelling and Robert Surtees’ crisp cinematography—Lenny is a rough ride, presenting a barrage of anger and emotional abuse and wasted talent. A bit much? Perhaps. Nonetheless, the film garnered myriad accolades, including Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Cinematography. The film also serves, although to a much lesser degree than All That Jazz (1979), as something of a veiled autobiography for Fosse, whose life had parallels to Bruce’s toxic combination of onstage pizzazz and offstage extremes.

Lenny: GROOVY

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

The Cowboys (1972)



          Although John Wayne’s actual cinematic swan song was The Shootist (1976), which depicts an aging gunfighter’s quest for death with dignity, the Duke’s earlier film The Cowboys is in many ways a richer closing statement about the themes Wayne spent decades exploring in Western movies. Instead of merely pondering the question of whether a man who lives by the gun must die by the gun—the poignant central theme of The ShootistThe Cowboys explores all the qualities, bad and good, that defined the Duke’s screen persona. His character, Wil Andersen, combines frontier values, heroic self-sacrifice, macho stoicism, and, of course, that most American of qualities: rugged individualism. The fact that Andersen’s journey inadvertently inspires a group of boys to become young men molded in Andersen’s honorable image perfectly echoes the manner in which Wayne’s characters inspired generations of moviegoers. So, whether you love or hate Wayne’s on- and off-screen politics, it’s easy to appreciate the elegance of this picture’s symbiosis between star and story.
          Based on a novel by William Dale Jennings and adapted for the screen by Jennings and the husband-and-wife duo Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., The Cowboys tells a simple story about noble characters clashing with craven ones. In the beginning of the movie, rancher Andersen preps for a cattle drive until his crew abruptly quits to join the Gold Rush. In short order, Andersen finds himself interviewing an unlikely set of replacements—several schoolboys, some teens and some even younger. When the kids display unexpected determination, he agrees to hire them. However, word of available work also attracts a gaggle of varmints led by Asa Watts (Bruce Dern), whom Andersen quickly identifies as a dangerous type. Andersen refuses to hire Asa’s gang, and then sets off on the drive with the kids as his crew. A series of frontier adventures ensues, during which Andersen gruffly mentors the boys on what it takes to succeed in the cattle biz. Meanwhile, Asa’s nefarious gang trails the cowboys, eventually leading to an infamous showdown between Dern and Wayne—the climax of the duel won’t be spoiled here, but suffice to say one single moment helped cement Dern’s typecasting as a crazed villain.
          Although the storyline of The Cowboys is so schematic as to seem a bit like a fable, the piece works—mightily—because of immaculate craftsmanship and vivacious performances. Director Mark Rydell, himself a thespian, does a gorgeous job of blending different types of acting, so everything from Wayne’s stylization to Dern’s improvisation feels unified; Rydell also draws fine work from young performers including Robert Carradine, who made his screen debut in The Cowboys. (Grown-ups in the fine supporting cast include Roscoe Lee Browne, Colleen Dewhurst, and Slim Pickens.) Cinematographer Robert Surtees captures the rugged beauty of untarnished landscapes, while composer John Williams’ music strikes just the right balance of excitement and wistfulness. And if the movie’s a bit bloated at 131 minutes, so what? Thanks to its careful treatment of resonant themes, The Cowboys is arguably Wayne’s best film of the ’70s.

The Cowboys: RIGHT ON

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Summer of ’42 (1971) & Class of ’44 (1973)



          Featuring one of the most lyrical love scenes in all of ’70s cinema, Summer of ’42 is an offbeat romance involving a teenage boy and a grown woman. Compassionately directed by Robert Mulligan, the film takes a bittersweet look at characters moving through profound life changes, conveying a sense of how deeply two people can comfort each other in times of need despite coming from different worlds. Screenwriter Herman Raucher, who adapted his original story into a novelization after completing the script—the book version eventually became a best-seller, just like the movie eventually became a sleeper hit—has said that the tale is autobiographical.
          According to Raucher, he was a confused 15-year-old vacationing with his family on Nantucket Island during World War II, and he became friends with a beautiful woman named Dorothy and her husband, a U.S. soldier. After the soldier was summoned to active duty, young Raucher remained friendly with Dorothy. Then, one afternoon, young Raucher arrived at Dorothy’s house moments after she learned of her husband’s death in combat. Distraught and lonely, she took young Raucher to bed, and then departed the island the next day, leaving her adolescent lover only a note.
          In the film version of this story, young Raucher is “Hermie” (Gary Grimes), a curious and kind-hearted teen spending the summer with his pals Benjie (Oliver Conant) and Oscy (Jerry Houser). Dorothy is portrayed by the mesmerizingly beautiful model-turned-actress Jennifer O’Neill. The teen high jinks that comprise much of the movie’s first half are forgettable, but all of the scenes with O’Neill have a certain magic. Not only does Mulligan guide O’Neill to a higher performance level than she ever reached in another project, but Mulligan captures the wonderment Hermie feels at connecting with a sophisticated adult. The entire movie has a nostalgic feel, with cinematographer Robert Surtees capturing the stark beauty of East Coast shorelines and composer Michel Legrand contributing tender melodies. Yet the appeal of the picture stems almost entirely from that one key scene—handled with unusual elegance and restraint, Hermie’s encounter with Dorothy is beautiful and bewildering and sad. The sequence is poetry.
          Alas, the success of the movie compelled Raucher to write a thoroughly unnecessary sequel titled Class of ’44, which was produced and released two years after the original film. Neither director Mulligan nor costar O’Neill returned, though Grimes reprised his role as Hermie. (Conant and Houser return, as well, portraying Hermie’s pals, but they remain in supporting roles.) Set during Hermie’s college years—which are heavily fictionalized extrapolations of Raucher’s real-life experiences—the bland and meandering picture primarily concerns Hermie’s romance with Julie (Deborah Winters), a high-strung coed. Julie comes off as difficult and domineering, and Winters’ performance is strident, so it’s difficult to get excited about the prospect of these two forming a lasting bond.
          Worse, Hermie emerges as a deeply ordinary collegiate who neither changes significantly during the course of the story nor has a major impact on those around him. Yes, he suffers a few coming-of-age blows, such as the death of his father, but these events feel trite compared with the transcendent experience Hermie had in Summer of ’42. The likeable Grimes does what he can with bland material, however, leavening the story’s inherent navel-gazing quality with admirable toughness. In sum, while the execution of Class of ’44 is more or less acceptable—particularly in terms of period details and production values—the whole enterprise feels perfunctory.

Summer of ’42: GROOVY
Class of ’44: FUNKY