But the marvel of it all was the light show, and the way toys and machines assumed a new life as the lights passed over them. Roy becomes the victim of common obsession: He makes shapes out of mashed potatoes that imitate the mesa where the alien craft may land, and like a driven pilgrim, he goes there. There’s no question that the film worked, and works, because its sci-fi elements were locked into very basic human behavior. Vilmos Zsigmond (with a host of others) was shooting the lights, with special effects by Douglas Trumbull. But the picture had a lovely emotional kick and a feeling for the childlike in adult characters.
The materialization of François Truffaut as Claude Lacombe, the professor who speaks to the aliens in sound waves, was a good deal more far-fetched, yet Truffaut’s lack of fluent English placed him quite nicely somewhere between humans and aliens. It worked too. And thirty years ago, when we were just babes, the climactic light show was awesome. Hear those notes and we are humming. If anything else was clear, it was that Steven Spielberg had grand ambitions, few of which had yet been spelled out. The film was an immense success, and it’s still a good deal more emotionally satisfying than you’ll expect. The power of renewal and repeated surprise was clearly a vital part of Spielberg’s being. Don’t forget, this was the same year as Star Wars. Look at the two pictures again, and the lesson is obvious: Spielberg believes in people—his capacity for close encounters is growing. Also with Teri Garr, Bob Balaban, and J. Patrick McNamara. The picture ran 135 minutes, but a later TV version was 10 minutes longer. The phrase “director’s cut” was first heard.
Close-Up (1989)
Propose to the average American citizen that one of the most fertile and appealing national cinemas of the last fifteen years has been that of Iran, and a look comes into his eye that perhaps he is about to be made a fool of. At the very least, I suspect, his brainwashed state of thinking on things Iranian will anticipate the possibility of some guerrilla filmmaking operation, in the mountains and in great peril, challenging one part of the “empire of evil.” That is the simpler response. There is another already, accompanied by sighs and groans and the general understanding that we—the citizens of the greatest of all nations, the citizens of the saved—have helped to make fools of ourselves.
There is one available mercy: Close-Up may or may not be among the finest or the most characteristic Iranian films, but a large part of its subject and its impact is to make us more tolerant of foolishness, especially the sort that we insist on wearing as we make fools of ourselves. Close-Up is that rarity—a film made in gentle irony, straight-faced wonder about the vagaries of human nature, and a patience and faith that believe all these things can be worked out. Not very much happened. The film is not very long. But it is as if we have been on the sidelines at the odd events that will inspire a story by Gogol or a report by W.G.Sebald.
The story goes like this: A man, unemployed, is arrested for attempting to impersonate the lofty Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf—a real person, albeit as much of a legend in his own time as Stanley Kubrick. (Let us agree to agree: There are some film directors who somehow gather this kind of mystique.) A rich family, the Ahanhahs, bring the charges in the hope that the great director will come to their house and make a film about them! And we have to admit that there are people who nurture the absurd notion that it might be fun or prestigious to be in a great man’s films. There is talk of fraud and even planned burglary. In fact, those fears seem groundless. The fellow simply wanted to be the great man. He is sheepish about it now, on the downslope of discovery. And, of course, the more shy he becomes, the less plausible he is as a director.
All that Abbas Kiarostami has done is follow the incident and its amiable, long-winded trial with a documentary camera that keeps teaching us to see how much of the pose, or acting, there is in all of us. For as the story unfolds, we realize, more or less, how much of life is taken up by rather modest acting. Life would be so much simpler and clearer if people acted better. But no, they falter, they fumble for words, they seem ill prepared. Close-Up has no obvious directorial style. It is as if Kiarostami—or someone hoping to suggest him—had simply observed the outward signs of fraud and asked us to pass judgment. All of which begins to suggest some traces of culture in Iran as ancient and intricate as one might suspect.
Colorado Territory (1949)
You can expect to hear in every commentary that Raoul Walsh’s Colorado Territory is a Western remake and relocation of his 1941 movie High Sierra, with Humphrey Bogart and Ida Lupino, adapted from the novel by W. R. Burnett. But a rather more interesting possibility is that this very strong, tough Western—shot in a deliberate and severe black and white by Sid Hickox—was intended as something of a correction to David O. Selznick’s lurid Duel in the Sun (1946), a picture that—in the eyes of some Western fans—introduced enough hysteria and sexual overtness to make strong men and women flinch. Walsh was not the man to point fingers or preach, but I think it’s possible he felt too many tough decencies had been squandered in Duel in the Sun.
So the admirable Joel McCrea is Wes, an escaped convict who would like to go straight but is led by fate toward his own destruction. Dorothy Malone is the girl he helps and might marry, but she is too feeble for him. Colorado, an untamed girl with Indian blood, is his more natural mate—and Virginia Mayo always found an extra vitality for Walsh.
But the best thing about the film is the way its landscape changes from pastoral and gentle to austere and rock-ridden as Wes moves further away from any chance of survival. This is a film with a strong feeling for the implacable natural savagery in so much of the Western landscape, and of the few men who will find themselves only within it. Cliffs or mesa walls tower over the human figures and make a superb contrast with the laconic courage and self-sufficiency of McCrea.
When the lovers recede into the bleakest terrain, we know what awaits them, but Walsh rejects the sadomasochistic tangle that exists between Lewt and Pearl in Duel in the Sun. He satisfies himself with one strangled but instinctive reaching for contact on the part of Wes. It is an eloquent and touching moment, and it reveals the depth of Walsh’s faith that emotion can remain as the subtext signaled by telling gesture. He was not persuaded by a cinema that went deeper. Indeed, I suspect he thought that to go deeper was to grovel and humiliate yourself.
Joel McCrea now looks about as epic and unquestioning as Harry Carey in his silent films for John Ford. And McCrea was the kind of actor who could do a Colorado Territory or a Preston Sturges picture with the same shy good nature. He wasn’t going to stoop to acting, because he reckoned that acting looked pretty silly next to the glories of this landscape, or the dance in a Sturges picture. He was the kind of actor who stood up to be photographed, and Walsh and Sturges alike took amazing richness from his determined simplicity. For what happened was that, in his calm and quiet, the viewer begins to feel increasing subtlety and doubt. McCrea trusted that if he believed in his material, then the integrity would work. And so it does. He kills and he makes love with the same sweet shyness.
Come and Get It (1936)
Edna Ferber’s novel Come and Get It was published in 1934; it dealt with Wisconsin lumber people over two generations. Sam Goldwyn bought the screen rights for $40,000. The key role is Lotta, a barmaid who marries a lumberman and then has a beautiful daughter (another Lotta) on whom another lumberman, Barney Glasgow, lavishes money and opportunity. Howard Hawks had signed a contract with Goldwyn (against his better judgment), and he was penciled in to direct the Ferber novel.
Edward Chodorov wrote one script, not much liked, and then Jane Murfin did a better version. Miriam Hopkins and Virginia Bruce were both talked about for Lotta, but Hawks kept looking. He put Jules Furthman on the script, and then he saw a Bing Crosby musical, Rhythm on the Range, with Frances Farmer in it. Hawks was married, to Athole Shearer; she was pregnant for the third time. But he seems to have turned discovery into an affair with Farmer. In his words, she was the most beautiful and the best actress of the many he “d
iscovered.” She was hired on at a pittance, but eager for the opportunity. Edward Arnold was cast as Barney, Joel McCrea as the young male lead, and Walter Brennan as the man who marries the first Lotta (Farmer). They were filming with Gregg Toland as cameraman.
You can see for yourself, still: Farmer is dazzling. But Hawks was apparently using Furthman to take the script further away from Ferber and make it more of a showcase for Farmer. It was then that Goldwyn became angry and aggressive. The facts are hard to pin down now, but as William Wyler finished Dodsworth, Goldwyn fired Hawks and told Wyler to finish the film. Wyler was not happy about it, and Frances Farmer took it into her head to loathe him. There is a point in the film where something seems to have happened, and it may well be that Hawks was making something for Farmer that would have infuriated Ferber. On the other hand, when Hawks got an idea like this, it was wise to go with it. There is a frankness and a humor in Frances Farmer that is stunning: she was like Carole Lombard with Katharine Hepburn’s intelligence.
Wyler felt uneasy about the whole venture and wanted no credit. The Directors Guild was as yet not recognized by the studio. So Goldwyn agreed to give both men credit. The problems had pushed the budget over $1 million. Goldwyn sometimes claimed he had made a new picture; this is nonsense. The outline of a Frances Farmer vehicle is clear and unalterable. The Hawks plan shaped the existing footage, and as far and away Farmer’s best film, it furnished the tragedy of her decline.
Richard Rosson deserves credit for directing the tree-felling sequences which Rudolph Mate shot. Walter Brennan won a supporting-actor Oscar. Richard Day was the art director. The cast also includes Andrea Leeds, Frank Shields, Mady Christians, Mary Nash, and Clem Bevans.
The Conformist (1970)
When it opened, The Conformist contained many lessons that modernist filmmakers were eager to make gospel. Above all, it asserted that private and public politics were as one: When Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant) advanced on an assassination attempt, a putative seduction, or merely a furtive backtrack to pick up his forgotten hat (that closing lid on his being), all purposes were in his scuttling motion (he moves as Gregor Samsa might—and decades later it is Trintignant who seems to own the film). Surely it was a proof that cinema was ready to come of age if one gesture contained all those dimensions of meaning.
After the flagrant abruptness and fragmentation of the French New Wave (which had been a huge influence on Bertolucci), The Conformist harkens back to a stylistic sophistication of the 1930s, a sinuousness, and a way with light, décor, and clothes that brought back memories of Max Ophüls, Josef von Sternberg, and even Mitchell Leisen. But, of course, The Conformist was set in the thirties, so it was natural for the movie to use reflections, separating walls, mirrors, and depth of focus.
Then there was the fruitful integration of so much artistry in the film’s very pronounced look—not just Bertolucci, but Vittorio Storaro as lighting cameraman and Ferdinando Scarfiotti in charge of production design. This brilliant unification of resources had a very strong impact on Coppola, Scorsese, Schrader, and others. In time, Storaro and Scarfiotti became figures who did work in America, and there’s no doubt that the look of The Conformist (and its underlying faith in the emotional content of imagery) was a vital infusion for American film.
It was also Bertolucci’s wish to match Jean-Luc Godard, I think, that made the structure of The Conformist so ostentatiously difficult. In later films, Bertolucci gave up on that structural crosscutting and the obliqueness of omissions—he became a much more conventional storyteller. And The Conformist still works best, I think, in the motif of delayed or evaded pursuit that is built on Gastone Moschin’s assassin (he reappeared in The Godfather: Part II), the sinister black car used, and the stealthy waltz in Georges Delerue’s music (indeed, Delerue shows many signs of wanting to bind the broken structure back together again). That car trip could be the basis for every flashback. But as it is, the incidents are so scattered that the film becomes needlessly obscure.
There’s another problem: The association of fascism and Clerici’s suppressed gayness now seems hopelessly glib and naïve and a part of Bertolucci’s urge to see sex in everything. That works very well in terms of the wife—flirty and mediocre, and beautifully played by Stefania Sandrelli. But Dominique Sanda’s wife/lover/whore/lesbian is too tricky and infinite and good to be true, or credible.
Never mind, The Conformist is a great film, very beautiful and deeply disturbing, and that last look from Trintignant, over his shoulder, goes into the past and the future simultaneously and speaks volumes on his dread need not to be noticed.
The Conversation (1974)
Two young people are strolling in San Francisco’s Union Square at lunchtime, talking. They might be lovers, but they seem suspicious of the air and the passersby. Why is a mime artist following them? We see and hear them by means of a network of surveillance systems, set up by Harry Caul, the best bugger on the West Coast. It is his job. He hires himself and his equipment out to rich clients, no questions asked. All Harry does, it seems, is record stuff in the air, stuff that is out there. And in many respects, Francis Coppola’s film was a bow to the techniques and the ingenuity of modern security agencies, just as it is a showcase for the brilliant editor/soundman Walter Murch, who had been an associate of Coppola’s since college days in Los Angeles.
The setup is beguiling. Caul is austere, ungiving as a person or a lover, withdrawn. Yet he is loaded with the possibility of guilt. It’s interesting to note how far The Conversation turns on conscience and its agony, whereas The Godfather is most novel and perhaps most modern in the absence of that very thing. But Caul feels he is a failure. Such an invader of other people’s privacy, he cannot muster or depend on a private life of his own. And so he begins to wonder why he is recording this young couple in Union Square, and he believes that he may be a distant accomplice to a murder.
The paranoid mood works very well, apart from one crucial implausibility: We simply cannot credit that the alert Harry Caul would accept the plant of a souvenir pen at a trade show and then be distraught when it turns out to be a microphone that has recorded his own intimate conversation.
In addition, the key line from the set-piece bugging is altered in tone to accommodate its second, later reading. It is not the same line. These touch-ups hurt more than you might think in a film full of atmosphere and worry but desperately tidy as it unfolds.
We know that Murch really completed The Conversation in postproduction, as Coppola was compelled to move on to The Godfather: Part II, and Murch has a tendency to bury impulse in the very precise working out of everything. So The Conversation can feel like the tightening of a diagram, as opposed to the gradual trapping of the viewer in its moral dilemma. Still, as a thriller it has a remorseless, building tension that is hard to shake off. It’s only in the inevitable comparison with Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up that one is bound to recognize the limits to this game.
Gene Hackman is superb as Caul, and there are other fine performances: from John Cazale as Harry’s assistant, Allen Garfield as his rival, Elizabeth MacRae as a floozy, Harrison Ford as a young suit, Robert Duvall (briefly) as the villain or victim, and Frederic Forrest and Cindy Williams as the young couple, looking too pale and amiable to be dangerous.
The Covered Wagon (1923)
The year 1923 was a big one in film history. The Ten Commandments (with its modern story and the Biblical epic) and Lon Chaney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame were rival contenders for box office. But no picture did as well as James Cruze’s The Covered Wagon. Costing $782,000, it supposedly grossed $3.8 million in the United States alone. It’s a measure of how far in the silent years certain films were advertisements for a way of life. After all, producer Jesse Lasky had encouraged Cruze to shoot the film in Utah and Nevada, terrain unfamiliar to most Americans. The West had been sold to the world first in pulp fiction and still photographs; and the first moving pictures had a similar impact.
So people interested in
the history of American realty may want to see The Covered Wagon (and try guessing where it was shot). For those of us interested in the development of the movie, alas, it’s not a great deal more than a marker in time—it’s hard while watching it not to keep longing for the way Greed identifies a certain landscape (or cityscape) and makes it luminous in our sense of the nation developing. The emblematic use of Death Valley in Stroheim’s film means so much more than the moralistic distinction between gold-beset California and arable Oregon in the Cruze picture.
The Covered Wagon came from a novel by Emerson Hough, and Jack Cunningham adapted it for the screen. Two wagon trains meet and join forces in Kansas City as they take on the hazards of the West, crossing rivers, up and down the mountains, fighting those red Indians, and surviving winter. There’s a very tedious love story along the way. Tully Marshall plays scout Jim Bridger, and Guy Oliver is Kit Carson. Karl Brown did the beautiful landscape photography, Dorothy Arzner edited the picture. Hugo Riesenfeld wrote an original score, and a young Delmer Daves worked in the props department. The cast was J. Warren Kerrigan, Lois Wilson, Alan Hale, Ernest Torrence, and Ethel Wales.
Whatever its reputation, The Covered Wagon is not to be compared with The Iron Horse (1924), John Ford’s tribute to the building of the railways. Still, it is remarkable that the Western was not a front-rank genre in the silent era. Of course, there were personality cowboys, from William S. Hart to Tom Mix. But it was not really until the late 1930s that the Western acquired prestige and the confidence to pursue uniquely Western stories as opposed to clichéd material.
Yet again, Greed is the signal film, the indication of a fascination with stories about the West, a territory and an idea that was developing at almost exactly the same time as the movies. Stroheim’s picture, and the Frank Norris novel it was based on (McTeague), see the West as a living, changing place. Too many early Westerns settled for exotic backdrop and seemed to be made for people who were not likely to go to the real place. What Greed guesses is that the West is the real America, as distinct from the European footprints left on the East Coast.
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