'Have You Seen...?'

by David Thomson

  So Carl Franklin’s One False Move begins in Los Angeles, in the drug scene, with terrible violence—so much that some viewers are put off and anyone is left fearing worse. Two thugs, Ray Malcolm (Billy Bob Thornton) and Pluto (Michael Beach), kill some other people in the drug war and then they leave town fast, with a girl, Fantasia (Cynda Williams). At which point, the picture changes tone and direction. The cops have a lead that the killers are headed way east, and the action will settle eventually in a small town in Arkansas where a man named Dixon (Bill Paxton) is the law.

  Two Los Angeles detectives (Jim Metzler and Earl Billings) go out to the country to consult with him, and there’s a delightful clash of cultures—Dixon is a big talker, a line shooter, who thinks he’s got one hook in a big case. He’s charmed by his visitors and they’re amused by him—they’ve never seen such a young and enthusiastic attitude. The new situation seems ripe for comedy, but then the action takes another turn and the rural police story slips over into a tragedy.

  It was written by Tom Epperson and Billy Bob Thornton, and gradually it reveals itself as a movie intent on believing in a few lost souls. It prefers the country life, but it has no great illusion about anyone being especially safe or secure there. Indeed, this is a twisting, turning story about the way the past can catch up with you. It’s made very simply—it can’t have cost more than a million dollars—and it’s the sign of some great talents. Carl Franklin is a very good director, indeed; Devil in a Blue Dress and the remarkable One True Thing came later in his career. The script is a series of misdirection clues. Cynda Williams holds the screen with a lazy authority that makes it all the stranger that she’s not been seen much since. And the whole film brings sleepy, back-road Arkansas to life until we feel it as the center of the world and this story. So never trust the numbers.

  One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

  In that very brief window between the exposé of Richard Nixon and the Iranian hostage crisis, there were a few cultural events that spoke of bitter victory. One of them was the movie of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which seemed to believe that everything that might be wrapped up in the loose coat named “Jack Nicholson” was admirable, anarchic, liberated, and hopeful, while all those practices living beneath the white shroud tunic of Nurse Ratched were dead, destructive, chilling, and antilife.

  But times have passed, and thirty years later I suspect that there are earnest, well-informed voices in favor of judicious shock therapy and deep narcotic immersion, just as there are those who would be very wary of the kind of dramatic sexual liberation of the Billy Bibbit character (the passage where Ratched sees what he has enjoyed and then reconstructs a trauma in his mind that will make for his suicide is her greatest act of evil—or fascism). Just as I have heard of young audiences nowadays who charge that James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause is self-pitiful and a pain in the neck, so I can believe that there are young makers of today’s brave new world who would disapprove of Randle P. McMurphy.

  The Ken Kesey novel was published in 1962. Then there was a play from the novel, with Kirk Douglas as McMurphy—and then he was convinced that a film had to be made of it. For this was Spartacus set in the lifestyle revolution of the sixties and seventies. No one would take it on until Michael Douglas and Saul Zaentz got the picture mounted—and walked away with the Best Picture Oscar. Casting Milos Forman as director was a brilliant move, for it meant that Kesey’s anti-authoritarian attitudes took on the antibureaucratic experiences of someone who had grown up behind the Iron Curtain.

  Moreover, Forman had the great insight of seeing the whole thing as a conflict in acting styles. So McMurphy is like a rogue teacher at the Actors Studio while Ratched represents the school of orderly and respectful public speaking. The vitality and the philosophy of the picture are alike in Nicholson’s delighted role of lord of the rebels over a cast of oddballs—William Redfield, Brad Dourif, Sydney Lassick, Christopher Lloyd, Danny DeVito, and Will Sampson (as Chief Bromden). The script is by Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman, and it amounts to a testament of sixties radicalism—but I don’t think there would have been any point in making the picture without that faith.

  So here is the most drab and depressing of institutions risking insurrection as the inmates claim rights over their own scattered lives. And this just a few years before—to save money—President Reagan restored many inmates in mental hospitals to the streets. In which case, the nuts might as well speak up for themselves. The full tragic impact may have been confined to when the film opened. But Haskell Wexler’s camera catching the shy, emerging realism of these crushed boys is something to be seen still.

  Additional Oscars went to Forman, Nicholson, the script, and Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched.

  Only Angels Have Wings (1939)

  Oh, take me back to Barranca, where the steaks are the best and the coins are double-headers, and where a pilot’s wife looking like Rita Hayworth is going to… Well, don’t ask what she’s going to do except wash her hair, file her lines, and read a little Hemingway while her husband flies the mail over the mountains. (Don’t forget that while you’re flying the mail, the other males can be floating your wife.)

  If only the Nazis in 1939 had really been doing their background research on American camaraderie—if they’d looked at pictures like Only Angels Have Wings, couldn’t they see that the insouciant brotherhood of Allied flyboys was going to be insuperable? Or did they, with all their deadly German efficiency, study the same picture and conclude that enemy purpose and heroism were all predicated on the most outrageous sense of fantasy?

  Barranca is somewhere on the shoulder of Ecuador, a raffish seaport where sometimes a passing showgirl will be put ashore. The Dutchman has a kind of half saloon, half general store, half post office where he keeps a few pilots to operate the mail franchise—like Cary Grant and Thomas Mitchell, and a few young daredevils, one of whom, Joe, will risk a landing if it means getting a steak dinner with the showgirl. And, as Todd McCarthy has pointed out, Howard Hawks reckoned that the whole thing had the spice of documentary, while anyone else in sight could see that it was a set of guy dreams.

  Apparently Hawks had written a few stories about the flyboys of Barranca, and the inevitable Jules Furthman turned them into a screenplay that swings for 121 minutes with nearly every line, gimmick, or MacGuffin hooking into others so that the whole thing feels like one shaggy dog story. With…

  Well, what has it not got? First of all, it’s got real flying stuff done in Nevada and Utah, with Paul Mantz and Elmer Dyer flying, with a 360-degree tracking shot to show the difficulty and the success of a plateau landing. And then it has the flagrant, Sternbergian set-making on $1.99 for the Barranca airfield (with plastic trees) and the mountain lookout where condors drift by like punch lines looking for a joke (art direction by Lionel Banks).

  Joseph Walker shot it: Dimitri Tiomkin did some music. Richard Barthelmess is magnificent as McPherson, the pilot who has to recover his nerve and his reputation, and Rita Hayworth is not so much a discovery as his wife, Judy, as a shaky sensation. In truth, Hawks has some problems with Jean Arthur as Bonnie Lee—she wasn’t too happy at the improv stuff and the casual attitude to continuity and what the whole cool thing was about. You feel Hawks being drawn to Hayworth.

  But in the end it’s a film about the guys, and Cary Grant’s Geoff Carter, in gaucho pants, leather jacket, and sombrero, is in no danger of losing his nerve. He’s uproarious in every way, except how he talks, and that’s where the film is not just ecstatic, precise, and real but modern, absurd, and exhilarating. Here we are in 1939 as a genius sees that the medium is flimflam, and all the better for that.

  On the Waterfront (1954)

  Who’s afraid of On the Waterfront? Or try answering these questions: Did Sam Spiegel produce a heartfelt political statement, as opposed to a rigged game? Do we believe that Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) has spent time in the boxing ring, or is he just punch-drunk from Actors Studio improvs? Are we expected to believe
that Terry and the girl (Eva Marie Saint) are going to settle down after this is all over and have pigeons? Is it likely that the criminal boss, Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb), is going to sacrifice his mastermind, Charley (Rod Steiger)? And why is Charley killed? Finally, when the bloodied Terry staggers into work on the docks, what is that proving when this should be a picture about the need to strike against the corrupt waterfront practices?

  These are first objections to the most specious “masterpiece” in American film. But backstory first. Years earlier, Elia Kazan and his pal Arthur Miller had planned a waterfront movie. Arthur was working on a script called “The Hook.” At Columbia, Harry Cohn wondered if maybe the “problem” on the waterfront could be Red influence instead of criminal exploitation. Miller grew weary, and then worse than weary when he realized that Kazan (in 1952) was going to name names to the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

  Whereupon, with a tidiness hard to be surprised by, Budd Schulberg (another confidant to HUAC) said, Well, I’ve got a waterfront script, about this boxer who informs on his criminal associates (had he been a little influenced by Abraham Polonsky’s Force of Evil?). So off we go. Later on, Marlon Brando was one of the few who said he hadn’t realized that On the Waterfront was about informing, but if he had known…! All of which only goes to show that actors sometimes highlight their own lines in yellow and never read the whole script.

  Now as a boys’ melodrama On the Waterfront is good stuff—beautifully shot by Boris Kaufman in Hoboken, and directed with that lip-smacking, self-identifying glee that could make Kazan believe directing was more important than thinking. The waterfront becomes a kind of club in that everyone acts the same way: over the top, but with loving detail. For my money, Steiger’s Charley ought to be the center of the film—he’s the only character who behaves at all naturally. Everyone else is auditioning for posterity. And they’re in. The picture is too celebrated for these words of disquiet to threaten it. Kazan would make better films. Brando, alas, was overwhelmed by this triumph. As for watching Lee J. Cobb, it is like observing meat in the act of pickling—and it’s enough to destroy an ordinary appetite. On the Waterfront was nominated for twelve Oscars, and won eight, including Best Picture, Best Director (Kazan), Writing (Schulberg), Best Actor (Brando), and Best Supporting Actress (Saint). Leonard Bernstein did not win for music, and—here’s the best joke—the collective strenuousness of Cobb, Steiger, and Karl Malden was overlooked in favor of Edmond O’Brien in The Barefoot Contessa. I can hear O’Brien laughing—but that’s the end of The Wild Bunch.

  Open City (1945)

  Sometimes well-meaning critics say things like “Rossellini simply filmed the event, exactly as it happened in front of his camera.” But he was much better than that. Much more the visionary artist, even if, sometimes, he found himself reduced to proclaiming the basics of documentary. Here’s an example: there is a superb sequence in Open City—though still a difficult one to endure—in which we gradually appreciate the function of three adjoining rooms or spaces: a lounge, the office of the Gestapo, and the bare room where their prisoners are tortured. I don’t think, in practice, the Gestapo had to suffer such limited means. But what Rossellini has done in putting three sets in a row, and then by having sound link them up—the noise of beating and the screams—and then, finally, the tracking camera in which some characters see what is going on is the truth of great art and cinema. The alignment is far-fetched—and never forgotten. This is a great director—or a great talent prompted by the extreme peril of his world.

  I put it that way because the Rossellini before Open City is not as startling and innovative as the one I am describing. He was nearly forty when he did Open City and he had been a director since the late 1930s, without making a great impact. But Open City (it is often called Rome, Open City) is an episodic narrative film made only a short time after the events it describes. It had a tiny economy with scraps of film found here and there. But it is essentially the story of resistance to the German occupation. There again, the Germans are drawn in terms of stark villainy, whereas the Italians are allowed to be much more complicated. But what is most striking in the film is the sense of immediacy. Inside Italy and beyond, audiences felt they were seeing life under an occupation such as they had only imagined. Scenes like the carrying away of prisoners and the shooting down of Anna Magnani as she runs after the truck were devoid of artifice. Yet they are actually set in a real artistic context: For instance, we learn soon that Magnani’s gesture was fruitless—because the prisoners are freed by other means.

  The style is simple, direct, and authentic. Those who made it believed they were telling the truth as much as those—even Ingrid Bergman—who saw it. Years later The Battle of Algiers had a similar impact, though again we realize now that Pontecorvo and Rossellini were both accomplished, skillful shapers of what they wanted to see.

  The script was written by Rossellini, Federico Fellini, and Sergio Amidei. Ubaldo Arata photographed it. And the impact overseas, with the coinage “neo-realism,” was extraordinary, no matter that realism usually proves a tricky label. The script was nominated for an Oscar, and Ingrid Bergman was struck in the depth of her soul so that she felt compelled to work with the Italian. Alas, Rossellini would prove a trickier fellow than the genius of her imagination—but it is often difficult to know an artist too well.

  Open Range (2003)

  If you ever find yourself searching for an example of the sublime and lunatic manner in which films are our fantasies, without an atom of shame or irony, think of Kevin Costner. He had done very little until the late 1980s, when a rare stardom descended upon his Gary Cooperish humility. Give him his due, he never said he could act; and he has often revealed his awkwardness with a line. But he was handsome in an ordinary American way and got this notion of making films in which big dreams came true: I’ll make a baseball field in Iowa (Field of Dreams); I’ll have Sean Young, naked in my lap (No Way Out); I’ll be Elliot Ness (The Untouchables); I’ll be the spirit of baseball again (Bull Durham); I’ll be a soldier who loves the Indians (Dances with Wolves).

  It’s harmless stuff, though closer to religious idiocy in Field of Dreams (a tranquil version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as ghosts come back to improve upon failed lives). But then Costner felt his power and his oats and the films rattled in, to increasing mockery: I’ll be the man who defends JFK; I’ll have an affair with a black rock singer. You can fill in the titles. But then the reach expanded, with Waterworld, The Postman, and For the Sake of the Game (how can my girl leave me if I pitch a perfect game?), and look at me, standing beside JFK!

  It is a strange progress, yet our amusement stays quiet and generous. For there is an undeflected sincerity in Kevin’s eyes and a nutty taste for integrity in his parables. He knows he is doing the right thing. Lo and behold, suddenly he was—as actor, producer, and director. In 2003 (and with far less attention than the earlier films had received) he made an enchanting Western in which Kevin seems to have said to Robert Duvall, “Lookee here, old buddy, how about we’re the salt of the earth in the 1880s up on the high prairies.” And Duvall, another amiable monster of self-persuasion, says, I reckon we could do that.

  And I reckon they do. They play a pair of old pals, Boss Spearman and Charley Waite, who have been together a spell driving their cattle across the open ranges, never settling, seldom having a roof over their own heads, but protected against weather, hostiles, and progress by the great canopy of dream. Theirs is simple: they are good fellows, trying to get the other man to say two words where one will do. They have a dance, much aided by Duvall—the older, but far nimbler. And they come to a place where the local rancher (Michael Gambon) just can’t abide open rangers or their kind of underplaying. Did I say that Annette Bening is there to make a nice cup of tea and living with her brother (so that the pals both think he must be her husband)?

  Yes, it is like a scene preserved under a glass dome. It is quaint, nostalgic, and as daft as can be. But here in 2003
is a real Western, a Gary Cooper picture and a quite lovable thing. You can feel the breeze, smell Bening’s fresh-washed face, and marvel at the fond double act of cowpokes not quite poking each other but… think of it as Sean Young in your lap.

  Orphans of the Storm (1922)

  The Two Orphans was a melodramatic sensation on stage in 1874 (and for decades thereafter). It was a translation of Les Deux Orphelines by Adolphe-Philippe D’Ennery. A foundling, Louise, is left on the steps of the cathedral. In fact she is the child of the de Vaudrey family, but their noble daughter had married a commoner! The baby Louise is taken in by a poor man. But then a plague kills the man and blinds Louise. So her adopted sister, Henriette, pledges to take care of her. They go to Paris seeking a cure for Louise’s blindness. But they are separated. Henriette is kidnapped by the Marquis de Praille, and then rescued by one of the de Vaudreys (Joseph Schildkraut). Meanwhile, Louise is seized by Mère Frochard (Lucille La Verne), a wicked woman who turns her into a street beggar. Henriette and de Vaudrey search for Louise—they hear her voice singing in the street! De Vaudrey’s father has Henriette imprisoned.

  It’s time for the French Revolution!

  D. W. Griffith later admitted that it might have been rash of him to extend the established play into the era of the revolution—but anyone can see the appeal of the Terror, the guillotine, and panic in the streets. Under the pen name of the Marquis de Tolignac, Griffith wrote the screenplay himself, in which he established little bits of backstory like Henriette having made friends earlier with a man named Danton (Monte Blue) who can save them all. Not that we are deprived of a life-and-death race-against-time rescue mission with that eager diagonal blade wanting to kiss Lillian Gish’s neck.