Limbo (1972)

          Early cinematic explorations of the Vietnam War largely focused on military action, draft dodgers, or the emotional lives of returning veterans. Limbo investigates the Vietnam era from a different angle by dramatizing the lives of three women whose husbands are MIA. Mary Kay (Kathleen Nolan) channels her anguish into antiwar activism. Sharon (Katherine Justice) hides behind a shield of unquestioning patriotism. And Sandy (Kate Jackson) finds herself caught between her obligations to an absent husband and the happiness offered by a new lover. In terms of narrative structure, Limbo is schematic to a fault, neatly assigning one set of emotions to each storyline, though there’s a bit of overlap since Mary Kay also takes a lover. Yet this heavy-handedness doesn’t completely obscure the sincerity of the endeavor—so even though Limbo feels like an earnest TV movie, it’s still a poignant take on a worthy subject.
          Notwithstanding a quick framing sequence, the picture begins on an Air Force base in Florida, when Sandy gets the news that her husband is MIA. After meeting Mary Kay and Sharon in a support group, Sandy moves in with the other women. Soap-style plotting ensues as Sandy gets courted by amiable gas-station attendant Alan (Russell Wiggins) and as Mary Kay succumbs to advances from a homely everyman named Phil (Stuart Margolin). The contrast between these storylines is the picture’s strongest element. Coloring the Sandy/Alan scenes is the fact that Sandy’s marriage was rocky before her husband departed for overseas service, so she doesn’t perceive her actions as a romantic betrayal. Conversely, because Mary Kay and Phil are older, their dalliance plays like a pragmatic means to an end—two adults dulling each other’s pain. All the while, Sharon becomes more and more judgmental of her friends, even as she resists acknowledging that the institutions to which she’s pledged herself—not just the Air Force but also the U.S. government—may not deserve her devotion. Running through the whole piece, of course, is profound ambiguity toward America’s involvement in Vietnam.
          Cowriter Joan Micklin Silver, later to become a significant director, based her original script on interviews with wives of MIA soldiers. She was rewritten by the experienced James Bridges, a storyteller whose humanism was often undercut by his perfunctory approach to plotting. The blend of their styles is not ideal; many scenes are so gentle and understated as to feel lifeless, while others awkwardly strive for impact by expressing sociopolitical angst through underwhelming speeches. Also working against the movie’s goals are bland staging by director Mark Robson, an impossibly square musical score, and several pedestrian performances. Nolan has a few believably impassioned moments, Justice connects when her character’s façade cracks, and Margolin’s squirrely energy brightens his scenes. Alas, leading lady Jackson captures the surfaces of her character’s plight but only hints at the depths—note the many shots of Jackson looking into the distance with wide eyes and a gaping mouth, as if she’s as lost in her performance as her character is lost in a sad life.

Limbo: FUNKY

1980 Week: Urban Cowboy

          Part character study, part cultural exploration, part epic romance, and part musical, Urban Cowboy is s strange movie. On some levels, it’s as serious and thoughtful as any of the other fine films that James Bridges directed. And yet on other levels, it’s very much a corporate product—one can feel the hand of producer Irving Azoff, the manager of the Eagles, in the way the film stretches out during musical sequences, the better to showcase tunes featured on the picture’s soundtrack album. Even the presence of star John Travolta in the leading role reflects the film’s identity crisis. He plays a good-ol’-boy type from Texas, even though Travolta is unquestionably a product of his real-life New Jersey upbringing. This egregious miscasting makes sense whenever the movie drifts into a dance sequence, since audiences loved seeing Travolta move in Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1978). Yet about halfway through its storyline, the movie shifts from domestic drama and dance scenes to a mano-a-mano duel involving two men testing their mettle while riding a mechanical bull. Why hire a dancer if dancing’s ultimately not that important to the role?

          Anyway, the convoluted story beings when Bud Davis (Travolta) relocates from his hometown to the city of Pasadena, Texas, near Houston. Bud’s kindly uncle, Bob (Barry Corbin), takes Bud to a gigantic honky-tonk called Gilley’s, where Bud meets the spirited Sissy (Debra Winger). The two commence a tumultuous relationship that culminates in marriage, estrangement, and separation while Bud starts his career working at a refinery alongside Bob. Concurrently, Gilley’s adds the mechanical bull, which becomes a metaphor representing the stages of the Bud/Sissy relationship. His initial mastery of the bull impresses Sissy, but his subsequent obsession with the machine causes friction. Later, when Sissy decides she wants to try the bull, Bud’s objections represent his inability to respect her. And when Bud squares off against Wes (Scott Glenn), an ex-con who conquers the bull and becomes Sissy’s lover while she’s separated from Bud, the mechanical bull becomes the stage for a climactic battle. Rest assured, the story feels exactly as disjointed and episodic as the preceding synopsis makes it sound, because there’s also a subplot about Bud’s affair with a pretty heiress, Pam (Madolyn Smith).

          The funny thing is that despite its unruly narrative, Urban Cowboy is quite watchable. Bridges and cinematographer Reynaldo Villalbos give the picture a moody look by borrowing from the Alan Pakula/Gordon Willis playbook. Glenn and Winger give impassioned performances, effectively illustrating the way id rules the decision-making of people with limited formal education. And Travolta tries his damndest to make his hodgepodge characterization work, using intensity to power through any scene that he can’t energize with skill alone. Furthermore, the honky-tonk atmosphere is intoxicating, at least for a while, because watching acts ranging from the Charlie Daniels Band to Bonnie Raitt rip it up on the Gilley’s stage is as fun as watching cowboys and cowgirls brawl and dance and drink. The movie also makes effective use of two theme songs that became pop hits, Johnny Lee’s “Lookin’ for Love” and Boz Scaggs’ “Look What You’ve Done to Me.”

          Most surprising of all, however, is the abundant ugliness in Urban Cowboy. Men treat women horribly in this picture, and women respond by using their wiles to drive men insane. Some of this gets to be a bit much (notably Winger’s eroticized calisthenics while riding the mechanical bull), but there’s something believable about the way the characters play out romantic drama that’s suited for the lyrics of a great country song.

Urban Cowboy: FUNKY

The Baby Maker (1970)

          James Bridges, the eclectic but sensitive filmmaker whose cinematic career peaked with The China Syndrome (1979), marked his directorial debut with this intimate drama about a hippie chick who becomes a surrogate mother for an affluent but childless couple. Even within the confines of its small story, the picture is a bit too ambitious for its own good, trying to situate the lead character within the zeitgeist of the ’60s/’70s counterculture. Nonetheless, nuanced performances and sincere curiosity about the emotional lives of the characters make the movie worthwhile. Plus, since a huge aspect of the counterculture involved people discarding old inhibitions about sexuality, the notion of a freespirited young woman exploring various dimensions of her reproductive identity represents a fresh approach to familiar subject matter. More specifically, The Baby Maker exists a world away from the myriad ’60s/’70s pictures about May-December romances between hippies and straights (Breezy, Petulia, etc.); this picture is tender instead of tawdry.

          Barbara Hershey stars as Tish, an upbeat flower-child type who lives with her stoner boyfriend, Tad (Scott Glenn). He makes handcrafted leather goods, but he’s prone to losing time on drugs and parties. Through a broker, Tish arranges to carry a child for Jay (Sam Groom) and Suzanne (Collin Wilcox-Horne). They’re a loving couple, but Suzanne is infertile. Some of the best scenes in The Baby Maker are the early ones, which have the feel of a procedural: the first meeting and initial negotiation, the dinnertime conversation during which Jay and Suzanne learn about Tish’s background, the laying out of concerns and expectations. (It’s worth noting that Bridges handles the actual conception scene with restraint.) Adding a layer of unspoken tension to these early scenes is the possibility of Tish falling in love with the unborn child and reneging on her promises. Another effective trope involves Tish’s steadily deteriorating home life with Tad. At first, he accepts her choice and even indulges himself with some of the money that she’s paid in advance. But later, jealousy and old-fashioned notions of gender roles make Tad bitter—a believable repercussion for men in Tad’s unique situation.

          Not everything works in the picture, with a jarring protest sequence and a too-long psychedelic lightshow scene contributing to the movie’s sluggish pacing. However, the pluses easily outweigh the minuses. Hershey has many luminous moments, conveying a sense of innocence tinged with sadness, and the supporting cast is excellent. (Glenn reteamed with Bridges years later to play a villain in the director’s 1980 movie Urban Cowboy.) More than anything, The Baby Maker strikes an effective balance between capturing the sociopolitical vibe of a historical moment and telling a specific story about individuals.

The Baby Maker: GROOVY

The Paper Chase (1973)

          If you have difficulty envisioning a gripping drama about the travails of first-year students at Harvard Law School, your suspicions will be validated—and undone—by The Paper Chase. While the movie is hardly the most dynamic film of the ’70s, it’s consistently interesting, and often very entertaining. Based on a book by John Jay Osborn Jr. and written and directed by James Bridges, The Paper Chase creates tension by treating naïve Minnesotan James T. Hart’s first year at Harvard as a character-defining quest. When we first meet James, he’s an amiable longhair prepared for hard work and ready for a little fun on the side; in fact, very early in the year, he becomes involved with Susan (Lindsay Wagner), a pretty young woman who lives near the Harvard campus.

          Yet James’ illusions of a smooth ride through school are shattered when he encounters Professor Charles W. Kingsfield Jr. (John Houseman), a demanding contract-law instructor. Defined by his open contempt for all but the most exceptional students, Kingsfield terrifies students previously accustomed to being considered the best and brightest. As the year progresses, James struggles to reach the “upper echelon” of the contracts class. Meanwhile, James continues his relationship with Susan—in the move’s least persuasive contrivance, she turns out to be Kingsfield’s daughter—and he wrestles with the strong personalities in his study group. For instance, James’ friend Kevin (James Naughton) represents the low end of Harvard’s academic spectrum, so poignant scenes depict Kevin buckling under pressure. Most of the picture, however, comprises James’ interactions with Kingsfield, whom the student alternately regards as a father figure, a guru, and a tormenter.

          While generally a solid movie, The Paper Chase is not without flaws. James is a bit on the insufferable side, with his unrelenting self-centeredness, although he’s leavened somewhat by the concern he demonstrates for Kevin. And if the rotten way James treats Susan serves a story purpose—demonstrating the problems law students face while seeking life/work balance—it’s not much fun to watch James act like a schmuck. The Kingsfield character is a bit of a cartoon, as well. That said, wonderful performances in key roles compensate for shortcomings. Bottoms fills moments with vulnerability and warmth, while Houseman—a veteran theatrical producer who made an astonishing transition to acting with this film—turns derision into an art form. (Houseman won an Oscar for his indelible performance.) Supporting players Naughton, Franklin Ford III, Edward Herrmann, Robert Lydiard, and Craig Richard Nelson (as the members of James’ study group) portray camaraderie and friction well. Only Wagner, best known for TV’s The Bionic Woman, underwhelms.

          The movie’s secret weapon is cinematographer Gordon Willis, the maestro behind the Godfather movies and myriad other ’70s classics; his elegant frames, filled with empty spaces and shadows, imbue the film with a sense of serious purpose. Bridges, marking his directorial debut, employs methodical pacing that lets Willis’ beguiling images weave their spell. All of this craftsmanship in front of and behind the camera elevates The Paper Chase into something that might be called sophisticated escapism. FYI, The Paper Chase became a TV series in 1978, running for four seasons (first on CBS and then on Showtime); of the actors from the movie, only, Houseman remained in place for the series, earning two Golden Globe nominations for reprising the Kingsfield role.

The Paper Chase: GROOVY

September 30, 1955 (1977)

          A minor work by writer-director James Bridges—whose more impressive credits include The Paper Chase (1973) and The China Syndrome (1979)—September 30, 1955 revolves around a bold premise that sounds more interesting in conception than it is in execution. The titular date is when movie star James Dean died in a car wreck, so Bridges focuses on the reactions of several Dean fans in small-town Arkansas. The idea, so promising in the abstract, was to convey why Dean’s incarnation of angst-ridden teen rebellion spoke so deeply to a generation of postwar adolescents. Unfortunately, Bridges stretches this already-thin material way past its breaking point, and he features characters whose behavior is so extreme (and inexplicable) that he leaves recognizable reality far behind. Perhaps Bridges would have been better served tackling this topic with a short film.

          In any event, the central character of September 30, 1955 is Jimmy (Richard Thomas), a high-strung youth afraid of the life that awaits him after he graduates high school in a few weeks. Having fallen under Dean’s thrall after seeing East of Eden (1955) four times, Jimmy is more than eager to demonstrate that he, too, can be a rebel. Hearing about Dean’s death gives Jimmy license to release his id, so the picture depicts the misguided mischief Jimmy creates along with friends including Charlotte (Deborah Benson), Frank (Dennis Quaid), Hanley (Tom Hulce), and especially Billie Jean (Lisa Blount), who’s an even bigger Dean freak than Jimmy. The youths steal booze from a store, run away from cops, hold a séance, terrorize classmates at a lover’s-lane spot, and eventually trigger a near-tragic accident. While it’s easy to believe that Jimmy’s friends are bored kids looking for laughs, accepting Jimmy’s characterization is nearly impossible—whether he’s stripping down to undies and slathering himself in mud or claiming he’s receiving signals from Dean’s spirit, Jimmy comes across as a lunatic. He’s also a boring lunatic, especially in the film’s interminable climactic scene, which features Jimmy giving the dullest monologue imaginable in an utterly absurd circumstance.

          Thomas, who enjoyed a big ’70s TV career on The Waltons, wears out his welcome here, reaching for but not seizing the kind of intensity that seemed to come effortlessly for better Dean-esque actors (e.g., Martin Sheen, etc.). Thomas’ castmates fare better, but they can’t fully surmount the iffy material, and an atrocious score by Leonard Rosenman only makes things worse. Only the great cinematographer Gordon Willis contributes something unassailably special to September 30, 1955, with moody imagery dominated by shadows and silhouettes, although whether his dark style is actually “right” for this story is anybody’s guess.

September 30, 1955: FUNKY

The China Syndrome (1979)

          For viewers of a certain age, the title The China Syndrome recalls one of the eeriest synchronicities in the history of movie distribution. Starring and produced by Michael Douglas, this terrific thriller revolves around a whistleblower taking control of a nuclear power plant—as a TV reporter and her cameraman record the unfolding crisis, the whistleblower grabs a gun and forces a hostage situation in order to put national attention on safety problems at the facility. Intense, smart, and topical, The China Syndrome would have been a provocative picture in any circumstances, but an extraordinary coincidence made the movie seem downright prescient. Twelve days after the picture opened, a real-life accident occurred at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, accentuating the film’s theme about the potentially catastrophic risks of nuclear energy.

          Directed and co-written by serious-minded humanist James Bridges, The China Syndrome works equally well as a dramatic film and as a suspense piece. As the story progresses, hard-driving reporter Kimberly Wells (Jane Fonda) and her idealistic cameraman Richard Adams (Michael Douglas) shift guises several times: They start out as observers, become opportunistic voyeurs, and finally transform into activists once they’re terrified by the prospect of a “China Syndrome,” a nuclear meltdown so severe that a plant’s core burrows through the entire globe. (Science tells us this eventuality is impossible, but the notion is nonetheless a sexy scare tactic.)

          The emotional heart of the movie, of course, is Jack Lemmon’s impassioned performance as the whistleblower, Jack Godell. A normal man pushed past his limit by his employers’ reckless indifference, Jack represents the quiet voice of reason exploding into scared-shitless rage, thus reflecting the tenor of anti-nuclear activists in the era of the No Nukes benefit concerts. Bridges channels this disquieting historical moment through meticulous storytelling, creating a rational narrative framework that counterpoints the edgy behavior of the characters. Furthermore, the picture taps into the conspiracy-theory vibe that permeated many grown-up ’70s flicks, and Bridges orchestrates the work of veteran character actors—including Wilford Brimley, James Hampton, Richard Herd, and James Karen—who balance the stars’ more flamboyant work. Best of all, The China Syndrome is an expertly mounted slow burn with a dynamic payoff, since the tension Bridges generates during the climax is quite potent.

The China Syndrome: RIGHT ON

Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970)

          Offering an imaginative sci-fi companion to Fail Safe (1964)—the chilling “what if?” drama in which a technological glitch triggers nuclear conflict—this brisk but overly talky thriller imagines what might happen if America relinquished control of its nuclear arsenal to a supercomputer. Setting aside the kitsch factor of now-dated movie imagery featuring a computer so massive it occupies the entirety of a hollowed-out mountain, Colossus has, well, colossal logic problems. The movie assumes that none of the geniuses who built the computer anticipated its likely evolution; that nobody imagined what might happen if similar systems were built by other countries; and that the entire U.S. government okayed a system lacking an “off” switch. (The script provides an explanation for that last item, but the explanation is a dodgy storytelling workaround.) Even with its flaws, however, Colossus is a noteworthy entry in the continuum of stories about the dangers of runaway artificial intelligence, a topic that gains more importance with each passing year.

          In the opening scenes, Dr. Charles A. Forbin (Eric Braeden) celebrates the launch of Colossus, a supercomputer authorized by the U.S. government to automate decisions related to the country’s nukes. As explained by Forbin, the idea is that Colossus can cycle through countless potential scenarios in seconds and then take immediate action without the impediment of emotions. Soon after Colossus goes live, America learns the Soviets have a similar system called Guardian, and Colossus demands the ability to communicate directly with Guardian. Unwisely, the American and Russian governments okay the interface, which starts a chain of events that may or may not lead to Armageddon. Meanwhile, Forbin struggles to reclaim control over Colossus, even though he designed the system to resist human intervention. And that’s basically the totality of the narrative, excepting a quasi-romantic subplot involving scientist Dr. Cleo Markham (Susan Clark)—characterization is not a priority here.

          Scripted by deft James Bridges (later to make The China Syndrome) and helmed by reliable journeyman Joseph Sargent, Colossus zips along with respectable momentum, notwithstanding the occasional lull. It also boasts consistently intelligent dialogue and a handful of clever maneuvers—for example, the sly means by which Forbin slips information out of the Colossus facility without the pesky computer noticing. The movie also benefits from an exciting and suitably futuristic score by Michael Colombier. Yet the aforementioned logic problems are mightily distracting, and it’s easy to imagine another actor doing more with the leading role than Braeden does. He’s fine whenever scenes require mild derision or smooth charm, but too often his limited range of expression flattens moments that should have radiated tension. Luckily, he’s supported by a deep bench of proficient players, including Georg Sanford Brown, William Schallert, Dolph Sweet, and—in one of those tiny roles that contributes to the epic scope of his filmography—James Hong.

Colossus: The Forbin Project: FUNKY