And let’s not forget that Jack Lemmon got the Oscar as Harry Stoner (in a year when Brando, Nicholson, Pacino, and Redford were his rivals on split-screen night—your assignment tonight is a one-act play in which that quartet discusses the awards, the first line of which is Redford saying, “Of course, the thing about Jack is he always has done real”).
Steve Shagan wrote this very actable piece, and it is pretentious enough to summon up a vague memory of Fellini at the end as Stoner, disconsolate to the nth degree after a night with a hooker, watches children playing ball—they are so innocent, he is so guilty. You sort of wish the kids would call the cops and accuse him of molesting them. How richly that would fit Stoner’s horror of the world and its abuse of his tenderness. Lemmon rants, rails, laments, and assails. He goes unshaven. He stands there in the midst of it all, like a battered fighter offering up his reliable jaw—it is Rocky Balboa, at last, deserving to be champion griper. And surely we long for the script to hit him with more bad luck, low blows, and assaults on his faith in human nature.
This is the kind of terrible gravity that lifelong comics aspire to—it is Nobel stuff, with Jerry Lewis cooking up the dynamite. And it is a woeful glimpse of what plenty of Americans regard as art. Lemmon is unstoppable, untoppable, and yet so low you can’t get beneath him either. It is so real and wearying you want to fall asleep, and it comes as a horrible shock after so many years of movies to find that the medium needed to read us this ill-tempered lecture about the awfulness of modern times.
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
The decision to open off Omaha Beach in one landing craft as dawn comes up on D-day is indicative of Saving Private Ryan in its great task—as a manual and philosophy of combat itself. We had had war movies since the beginning of film, but in those first twenty minutes Steven Spielberg established new standards for the din and chaos of combat, for the terrible, deafening blast and explosion of it all, for the natural terror and the decisive urge to stay attacking. And it is Spielberg’s contention—and our hope—that that urge comes from ordinary moral decency. It’s not that the Germans are badly treated in this movie, but Saving Private Ryan believes in the justness of its war.
The men under Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) make their objective; they secure the first beachhead in their section of German occupation. And then the wand of magic comes down on them. General Marshall (Harve Presnell—excellent) discovers that three out of four Ryan brothers have been lost already. The fourth, somewhere in Normandy, must be saved. It is an American sentimentality, if you like, the tremor of decency. Yet Miller’s band of brothers may be lost in the saving attempt. Still, they will try, no matter that they grumble at the sudden illogicality of it all. Trained to survive, they are now to be educated in sacrifice. That’s the theme of this remorseless study of combat—and I think it’s fair to say of Spielberg and his America (of his filmmaking, too) that the grace note is the crown worn by democracy. Not that democracy ought to believe in kings.
The open-air stuff in Normandy (this is virtually the entire film) is staggering: Janusz Kaminski’s photography is aware of passing grace notes as well as the great central thrust. The second set piece—the German attack on the bridge of Reimen—is actually more lucid and gripping than the first invasion: It’s like an Anthony Mann attack. The use of the Upham character—educated, German-speaking, enlightened, afraid—is part of the overall stress on necessary force in combat. At the end, there is the attack and nothing else. In the heat of battle prisoners will be killed.
I would have had a few things different. When we learn who Miller is back home, it proves to be a classic Capra situation. I would have liked him to be a mess in real life, but a man who has found himself in war. And I would cut the finale, when Ryan the old man comes with his family to a cemetery to honor the grave of Miller and to wonder whether he deserved saving. We assume all these things—though it is nice to see Kathleen Byron as Ryan’s wife.
Hanks is simple, ideal but infinite. Tom Sizemore has the blood of every screen sergeant. Among the men, look for Edward Burns, Matt Damon (as Ryan), Barry Pepper (as the sharpshooter), Adam Goldberg, Vin Diesel, Giovanni Ribisi, Jeremy Davies (as Upham), Ted Danson, and Paul Giamatti.
Sawdust and Tinsel (1953)
In choosing films for this book, the greatest directors present the most awkward problems. When I thought of Bergman first in relationship to 1,000 films, I thought of Persona, Cries and Whispers, Wild Strawberries, and The Seventh Seal as automatic choices, no matter that The Seventh Seal is by far the weakest of the four. But it was a landmark, and may still be the first Bergman picture the average person thinks about. Was that enough? I quickly thought of Frenzy (1944), because of the several things it introduced, not knowing how easily I (or readers) would see it again. In the later films, Fanny and Alexander? The Shame? Autumn Sonata? Through a Glass Darkly? You begin to wonder whether you can omit any films by the best directors. Which Bresson film is minor? And then I thought of the face of Harriet Andersson in Sawdust and Tinsel, and I looked at the film again. It’s in. But something else will be out.
Bergman was born in Uppsala in 1918 and educated at Stockholm University. He moved straight into film and theater, a writer at first for movies and a would-be director onstage. Frenzy, in 1944, was his first scripting job, for the Alf Sjöberg film. He directed his own debut, Crisis, the next year. There is extraordinary development in his career, but that does not mean there are any stupid, juvenile, worthless films. By the time he made Sawdust and Tinsel, he was both a filmmaker and director of the Malmö City Theatre. Onstage, already, he had done A Streetcar Named Desire and The Threepenny Opera, and right after Sawdust and Tinsel he would do Six Characters in Search of an Author. By my count he had already had three wives and six children.
I spell it out like that to convey the small world he moved in and the almost academic intensity with which he scoured his own emotions. The third marriage had broken down because on location for Summer with Monika he had had an affair with Harriet Andersson—it is palpable in that authentically erotic film. He was living with Andersson but perhaps growing bored when he made Sawdust and Tinsel, which is a picture about the relationship between a circus master (Hasse Ekman) and his mistress (Harriet Andersson).
That Sawdust and Tinsel showed a deepening in Bergman’s talent was almost entirely because of the nakedness with which he exploited his own relationship with Andersson. A little like The Blue Angel, it is a film about sadomasochism, humiliation, and betrayal, just as it reflects upon the endlessly renewable need of the director for a female muse and an obedient talent. It is the first film that defines the parameters—ugly but fascinating—of Bergman’s relations with his actresses. This is not unique to Bergman, of course: Sawdust and Tinsel could easily be shown in a series and sequence that included The Red Shoes, Lola Montès, La Strada, the early work of Godard, and so much else.
In the totality of his career, Sawdust and Tinsel may reveal the nastiest side of Ingmar Bergman, but it is vital to the progress of a man willing, or even determined, to expose himself.
Scarface (1932)
The full title is Scarface: The Shame of the Nation. This refers to the add-on imposed on the Hughes company as it released its immensely enthusiastic endorsement of a certain Chicago gangster as “entertainer of the year.” More or less, before enjoying the wanton strut, snarl, and tommygun fire of its gangsters, Hollywood had gone into a brief lamentation that social conditions should drive aimless young men to outlawry, and so on. Nobody was fooled. The nation was greedy for the rat-tat-tat of fire (with every detail and enhancement sound allowed) and the tumble of bodies that went with it. If only because of the presence of Jimmy Cagney in this new genre, it was not easy to split it from the musical or even a kind of antic, screwball comedy in which the kids’ guns fired real bullets. (This dream goes on. I have just watched Al Pacino interviewed by James Lipton on Inside the Actors Studio, and when the turn came to discuss Scarface [1983], the audience gave a pr
olonged round of applause—hardly because of the moral uplift of that film but because it is one of the most enjoyable things even Pacino has ever done.)
Working for Howard Hughes, Howard Hawks approached Ben Hecht and suggested a ruling family in modern Chicago like the Borgias—the incestuous brother-sister relationship was there at the outset. Hecht told everyone that he wrote it very quickly, but research shows that other hands had a part, including W. R. Burnett, John Lee Mahin, Fred Pasley, Seton I. Miller, and Hawks himself. But what emerged is the portrait of a monstrous animal, closer maybe to King Kong than the regular tight-lipped Hawks hero. That role went to the sidekick, Guino Rinaldo (George Raft), unlucky enough to get involved with Tony’s hot-blooded sister, Cesca (Ann Dvorak—also in bed with Hawks).
Nobody has suggested that this incest operated with any of Chicago’s real mobsters, least of all Al Capone, but it clearly offers a way of reading the violence as coming from sexual dysfunction—that is even more pronounced in the remake, where cocaine has added to Montana’s delusion.
That said, this is a sardonic, black-humored treatment of gangsters, full of gallows humor and X-marks-the-spot diagrams. There’s no need to take sides, but who can resist the sport of this local war? Even without the later lectures that were tacked on to save face with law enforcement, this is a mocking treatment of law. United Artists said it was unforgivable. They wanted an ending with Camonte being hung. There were different cuts in different states.
There is a zest and intimacy in the playing that is shocking and gleeful. Paul Muni is brilliant in the title part, and his presence touches on all the ironies about being an American success. Dvorak is very sexy, Raft is taciturn, and then you’ve got Karen Morley, Osgood Perkins, C. Henry Gordon, Vince Barnett, Boris Karloff, Purnell Pratt, and Tully Marshall. Lee Garmes shot most of it and helped create the sultry twilight of lamps and wet streets. It cost $700,000 and earned about $1.2 million on its first run.
Scarface (1983)
Yes, crime and drug selling and the kind of violence that apply buzzing chain saws to human limbs are all very bad things, and if nations knew what shame was anymore they might feel ashamed. Do not repeat these practices at home, and do not even stoop to them on the road.
But still, by 1983, driven by two self-indulgent would-be hoodlums, Brian De Palma and Oliver Stone, there was no doubt that it could be a lot of fun to be Scarface. There is a moment near the end when Tony Montana, in his stupor from cocaine, feels that killing children may be going too far. And it’s bogus, because everything rich and wondrous about Al Pacino’s Tony is about going too far. If nothing else, as the terminal dullness of Reagan’s America became intolerable and undeniable, someone made a film that was all about excess, delirium, and being out of control. There was a kind of nostalgia in it that longed wistfully for those great American days of murder, rape, and free enterprise.
And it is the absence of shame or moral reference in the story that is most exultant. To that end, it is a proper accompaniment that there is hardly any authority in evidence in Scarface. The one cop we ever meet—the terminally cynical Harris Yulin—is a complete sellout, horrified to realize in his last seconds that there’s no dealing with Tony, that Tony is personally going to put a bullet in his stomach because that is known as the slowest and most excruciating way to die.
It is true that in the end Tony is alone and destroyed. He has killed his best buddy. He has seen his beloved sister die. And now his mansion is invaded by an enemy gang—we see the worms writhing in the cheese as the surveillance cameras pick up every detail of the Colombians’ approaching menace. Tony will die in a hail of bullets and cocaine, and that’s cool. But really the logic and the drive of the film should have him becoming mayor of Miami or governor of Florida, or… Why should there be any limit? Democracy can yield to this thug just as easily as Elvira, the wan Wasp princess he steals on the way up his ladder. And we have to wonder whether Michelle Pfeiffer ever guessed at the time, coming down in an aqua sheath dress and a glass elevator, did she know that nothing was ever going to get better? (Ferdinando Scarfiotti “helped” on the design.)
So the movie thrills to its own set pieces, which are everything from the way Pacino says “mon” and does his Cuban accent to the gradual vengeful process that will culminate in having F. Murray Abraham tossed out of a helicopter in flight. De Palma seems to know in this film that his “talent” was always training for the orgy, and this is the occasion where he relinquished all claim upon taste, refinement, or mercy. He gives the public what it wants and his method of direction is to tell Pacino to take ever greater risks. You can see the starch of Michael Corleone being purged from the actor’s soul. He has been Montana ever since, brazen and excessive.
A masterpiece, and persuasive proof that so many movies lean toward trash.
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
A few years had passed since the moment when Josef von Sternberg delivered Marlene Dietrich to Paramount—and realized that just as he might possess her for a moment, though unreliably, she would haunt his dreams forever. But several things had emerged: Marlene had many love affairs, but stayed “loyal” to her husband, Rudy; Paramount had seen the shine fall from their new star—Blonde Venus and Dishonored had done poorly; she was urged to make films with other directors; and as the Depression extended, so Paramount fell on evil times.
All of which was perfect timing and positioning for The Scarlet Empress, the most extreme and by far the most expensive of her films with Sternberg. This time she would be the Princess Sophia of Prussia (played as a child by Marlene’s own daughter, Maria), who becomes Catherine the Great, empress of all the Russias and—apparently—bedmate to most of her soldiers. The historical accuracy was regarded with disdain. This was the story of a sexual conqueror. And whereas once upon a time at Paramount, Marlene had had real men to challenge her—Gary Cooper and Cary Grant—now the men are just faceless, phallic uniforms, Sam Jaffe (the very image of a feeble, demented husband) and John Lodge, who was not really selected for acting ability. The empress is in a world of her own—and the film suffers because of it.
Everything went into the décor and the light and the recurring image of Marlene as a burning bloom in the center of so many hysterical arrangements. You can believe the statuary and the wall hangings were Russian if you like. It doesn’t matter. This is the Russia of fever dreams. There is no attempt to measure the history or the politics of Catherine’s rise to power. Her authority exists simply to make manifest the sexual glory of the woman who is in command of all this.
The Scarlet Empress is often hailed as the fullest demonstration of Sternberg’s genius. In truth, I think it’s out of control—and it is not a picture he talks about very much in his self-serving autobiography, Fun in a Chinese Laundry. The script (allegedly from Catherine’s diaries) is by Manuel Komroff—and it showed how much Sternberg needed Jules Furthman (who did three of the previous four films). Hans Dreier did the sets, Travis Banton the costumes, and Bert Glennon photographed it. There were yards of classical music on the sound track. It was a disaster. Maybe people had had too much of this ogling of Marlene. Maybe Sternberg was being allowed to hang himself. But, in general, Hollywood in the thirties rather liked royal family stories. It admired and envied monarchy. When Edward VIII abdicated for Mrs. Simpson, there were people in Hollywood who were heartbroken. In short, the satire Sternberg intended cut against the ground of republican respect. He was doomed—but he would have said that that was his plan.
Scarlet Street (1945)
Wasn’t there something going on between Fritz Lang and Joan Bennett? Hers was not the greatest of careers, but after Lang had used her as the whiny-voiced hooker in Man Hunt, he seems to have grown more and more interested. And Scarlet Street (derived from Jean Renoir’s La Chienne—The Bitch), is the picture that digs into her casual, blowsy sexuality. Bennett was show business upper class—the daughter of Richard, she was the sister to haute snob Connie Bennett, and she was by now Mrs. Walter
Wanger, but Lang delighted in revealing the slut in Joan Bennett. And nowhere is that clearer than in her “Lazy Legs” in Scarlet Street. There may have been a love affair, but it never stopped Lang from deriding Bennett’s acting ability.
It was a wartime production of Diana Pictures, the company Wanger had set up with Bennett and Lang. But the project was one for which Ernst Lubitsch had bought the rights for Paramount. That it never got done there had to do with censorship objections. After all, in the old story Renoir had done, the Sunday painter killed his awful wife, let her pimp take the fall for it, and then wandered away into the world of Boudu. In America, no crime goes unrebuked (it is said), so what would become of the guy?
There was a brief association between Lang and Ludwig Bemelmans on the script before the author of Madeleine walked away with this riposte: “Am not overly fond of sitting in a rat trap and listening to the pronouncement of the pedantic professor that you are.” So Dudley Nichols took care of the script with his customary ease. Milton Krasner did the photography, and the excellent sets—all silky clutter and garish mirrors—are by Alexander Golitzen. As for the paintings done by the Edward G. Robinson character, they were by John Decker.
Of course, in theme and central triangle, this was The Woman in the Window over again. But Chris Cross, the bank cashier and Sunday painter, is a tricky part: He must be homely but not absurd; he must have soul and desolation. Robinson was at his peak—remember, this is the moment of Double Indemnity, too. Suppose that insurance man, Barton Keyes, had a naggy wife at home, could Keyes become Cross? You feel that Robinson has all these characters in his mind, shuffling around each other. There was no star like him, and in his daring he opened up a range of parts usually given to supporting players.
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