Keepers: The Greatest Films of a Moviegoing Lifetime

by Richard Schickel

  A couple of weeks before the company decamped for Canada, I asked Clint if I could read the script. He sent over a copy, which I read before having dinner with him one Sunday. I thought it was masterful. I said to him, “If you don’t screw this up, it can be your masterpiece.”

  Clint chose to fly reasonably close to the ground on this one. He didn’t title it—Unforgiven, of course—until a few weeks before its release, and it turned out to be (borrowing a phrase from the script) “lucky in the order.” There had not been a serious western in some time, and the world was ready for one when it went into release in August 1992. The critics generally liked it. It stayed long in the theaters, eventually grossing more than $100 million and generating serious Oscar buzz and, eventually, a number of Academy wins, including a director award for Clint, which I felt he deserved.

  Unforgiven is a well-plotted film. Clint’s Will Munny hears that a group of hookers are offering a reward for doing a potentially murderous job in a remote town. He is aging and no longer what he once was—one of the faster guns in the West—but he’s broke, a widower, and he reluctantly decides to take a chance at winning the reward. Along his way he picks up two companions—Morgan Freeman and Jaimz Woolvett—and proceeds to get a severe beating when he reaches his destination. He ultimately triumphs over Hackman’s sadistic (and gorgeously played) sheriff. It’s a brutal yet at times humorous film. “I was lucky in the order,” he comments mildly after the great shootout that brings it to its climax, when, single-handedly, he kills all his enemies in one fell swoop.

  At a stroke, the film restored Clint to the top level of his profession, from which he has not retreated in the years since. He has made some fine works during that time, and endured a few disappointments. On the whole, however, his run has been spectacular: the wonderfully complex Mystic River; another Oscar winner with the powerful Million Dollar Baby; two potent war pictures, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, which uniquely tell a World War II story from the enemy’s perspective; the underrated J. Edgar. In this period, I think his track record is pretty much beyond compare—particularly for a man who was being written off such a short time ago.

  Remarkably, he seems to me the same fellow I met in 1976—dryly humorous, attending to a vast array of interests, perhaps reading a little more than was formerly the case, but always projecting an easygoing manner. He is interested in everything. I admire him enormously, and there is no one I’d rather have dinner with. There’s no one whose movies I anticipate with more pleasure. He is the only movie person I have known across so many years with so much good nature. Make of that statement what you will. Has it affected my critical judgment? You be the judge.

  41

  Tarnished Gold

  A vein of slightly tarnished gold runs through the sixties and seventies. I’m thinking of Blow-Up, and other films of Michelangelo Antonioni. L’Avventura. La Notte. L’Eclisse. They might get booed at Cannes (as the first named notoriously was), but they also had something that tugged at some people. I know a completely intelligent fellow who for a period of some weeks went obsessively to L’Avventura, so smitten was he by its mysteries. (A woman disappears and is not found.) I think it is firmly of its time and place; I’m not sure I’d like it now.

  Films so moored don’t seem to me to travel very well from the moment when they are all the rage. But yet they have a conviction that cannot be denied, which complements their sometimes maddening languidness. These are the movies that Pauline Kael characterized as coming “dressed as the sick soul of Europe,” and she had a good point. You had to admit, though, that you felt awfully smart in a world-weary sort of way, running around New York appreciating the hell out of these films at the time.

  There is something about Blow-Up (1966) that allows it to rise above its frivolities. You know the plot: A photographer (David Hemmings) goes to a park, sees a woman (Vanessa Redgrave) in conversation with a man and takes some casual snaps of them. Afterwards, she follows him home, insisting he surrender his pictures. She takes off her shirt, smokes a joint and still does not get the pictures. Now he’s more interested than he thought he would be—and the film takes off cinematically. Maybe the pictures hold evidence that a murder has been committed. The photographer begins madly blowing them up to see what he has not seen. Teenyboppers intrude on the scene. And pubic hair. And what seemed a rather staid film becomes jazzy.

  Against all odds it becomes, well, fun—inexplicable fun, with a certain sobriety snapping at its heels. The mystery never gets fully unraveled, but life is full of enigmas that eventually we have no choice but to shrug off. I don’t suppose that Blow-Up is all we cracked it up to be at the time. (There’s a review of it in my files that makes my ears burn now.) But I think it taught us a lesson. You start out to make a sober movie full of existential meaning that will furrow brows, then something in the process takes over and the thing becomes giddy. You fight to get it back on track, and it just won’t go there—not fully, anyway. You end up with something you never planned on—an entertainment, of all things.

  Possibly I tend to overvalue those; Antonioni undervalued them. He tried to rescue this film with metaphorical seriousness, with a concluding sequence in which people played tennis without a net or balls. He damn near ruined the whole thing.

  42

  Kubrick Again

  We left Stanley Kubrick in a good place—with a comic masterpiece and much promise. Also, Lolita (1962) had had some nice acting in it. Though it was not Nabokov, one could surely live happily with the demented fussiness of Peter Sellers—wrong for the role, but fascinating—and the curious reserve of James Mason’s grand passion. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) was, frankly, labored. It was good musically, and I quite liked that cute little computer, but there was a great deal of pretense in it, too. It was not a movie that one warmed to. One was beginning to worry about Kubrick by the time he undertook A Clockwork Orange, in 1971—so brutal a film, such a wicked enterprise.

  By now, however, Kubrick had indulgent studio backing—his movies made money, and they were events. I came to know him when I wrote a Time cover story welcoming Barry Lyndon (1975). I liked the movie—impeccable filmmaking and existential hugger-mugger. I’m a sucker for both.

  What drew Kubrick to Thackeray, I’ll never know. What possessed him to cast Ryan O’Neal in the title role is also an enigma to me, though somehow his basic fecklessness suited the part. As the years wind on, the film seems somehow to gain in stature. It is such a beautiful film—the low light levels in important sequences is riveting, worth talking about, as they were endlessly when Lyndon went into release. But the important thing about it was its sadness. I know of few films so relentless in their sorrow, their exploration of existential pointlessness. I think the funeral of Barry’s child is one of the great sequences in cinema, and the film’s conclusion, in which the narrator simply says that all the people it has concerned itself with are now dead and forgotten, is devastating. There are very few fictions—possibly none—in which someone goes to the trouble of creating a complex narrative, only to conclude that the exercise is essentially pointless. I mean, everybody simply dies, which is the inevitable conclusion to all stories if you follow them to their logical end. I have no idea how Kubrick talked a studio into doing such a film—especially after diddling them for years with an unmade Napoleon project. It is, at the least, a brave and subversive film, and it moves me mightily, despite its sorrow.

  Kubrick never repeated himself. Every film was entirely new when it came to subject matter. Only the attitudes he struck remained constant. His next film was The Shining (1980)—technically, I suppose, a horror film—about a novelist isolated with his family in a hotel closed for the winter, intending to write a novel and going bonkers because he has everything he needs except the talent to write same. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” he types endlessly. There are those who think it’s Kubrick’s masterpiece—it is fundamentally a genre piece, though most of his pictures are, come right do
wn to it—but I think that’s just patronizing him. I like the film, but I don’t think it’s his best. But, hell: “Here’s Johnny.” And thwack goes the ax into the door, accompanied by a demonic cackle. It’s a lot of fun. Except, of course, when it isn’t.

  You don’t think about acting very much when you talk about Kubrick, though his films contain a lot of good performances (like Jack Nicholson’s in The Shining). But I think his emphasis was elsewhere. He was imbued with the not uncommon belief that he was working in a visual medium. Duh! His first success—the film that made people take notice of him—was a routine but well-made heist movie, The Killing (1956), which starred Sterling Hayden. Typical of its type, it did not have a lot of dialogue. Shot in black and white, it consisted essentially of a lot of fast-paced and well-staged action, with a nice, ironic ending. (The loot blows away in an airplane’s prop wash, just when you think the crooks are going to get away with their crime.) It’s pure Kubrick, basically inarticulate, and I think it set the pattern for everything that was to follow, in more and more sophisticated form. The man really could not abide conversation. Almost all his sequences that we remember most fondly are silent. We don’t notice that particularly, because they are rich in sound and knockout visual material.

  He didn’t really care about anything else, which is why he drives a lot of critics nuts. Let’s face it: Most of the people who review and theorize about movies are literary types. They are there for the talk. That’s why they remain suspicious of Kubrick. And that’s why the people who revere him most highly (Steven Spielberg is a good example) are people who actually make movies. Do I think he might have thrown a few more bones to the talking-picture fans? Sure. But this way was his way. It’s not the only way, of course, and I would not like it to be the movies’ only way, but he achieved some sort of an apotheosis with it.

  As Kubrick’s career wound on, I think there is a falling off in energy in his work—not an unusual occurrence. I don’t care greatly for Full Metal Jacket or for his final film, the posthumously released Eyes Wide Shut. I will say, however, that they were ambitious and contained sequences of great force. I think he gave up more than he acknowledged by his confinement in Great Britain and by the pace at which he worked.

  There is one thing more to be said about this odd, halting career: It is unduplicable. He carried himself always as an artist; he was never merely a movie bozo. He found himself a studio, Warner Bros., that indulged him and was, yes, amused by him. They were impatient with him—how could you not be?—but he always, in the end, seduced you with his intelligence, his earnestness and the richness of his interests. You never had a bad time with Stanley. You never came away from time spent with him unenlightened—he told you of a book or a movie you had to see, an idea you had to pursue.

  When Stanley died suddenly, people at the studio, guessing that I would probably write his obituary for Time, called to stress the affection they felt for him. There was no need. I felt it, too. I don’t to this day know why—he was scarcely a hail-fellow-well-met. But the memorial service at the Directors Guild was rich in warm feelings for a man nobody really knew. Later, a picture by his wife arrived at many of our homes. It was of Stanley sitting calmly by a pond near his house—keeping his secrets.

  43

  The Force Is with Us

  It is 1977, the year of Star Wars. It is, to say the least, an extremely entertaining movie that turned out to be a phenomenon. I came upon it quite casually. A friend and I wanted to see a movie. This one happened to be on offer—a Twentieth Century Fox film, for some reason screening at MGM.

  We had vaguely heard of it. It was directed by George Lucas, who had enjoyed deserved success with American Graffiti. Its stars were, at the time, largely unknown, though that didn’t make much difference. I later learned that Lucas’s expectations for this film were not much higher than ours. It was not until it was scored, a few weeks before its release, that he began to harbor some hopes for it. The music seemed to give it an unexpected lift.

  John Williams’s music kicks in brilliantly right from the get-go. The dialogue is first-class in the wise-guy vein. The villain is first-rate. The action is relentless and full of nice surprises, and the actors are fresh and cheeky. Which says nothing about the pell-mell (but not careless) fun of it—I slid over from show-me mode to sheer pleasure in about five minutes. Even my somewhat more dour pal seemed to be going with it. Your first sight of a Wookie is not easily forgotten.

  I’m not a very good prognosticator about a movie’s potential for making money. I let aesthetics into the mix. But Star Wars was going to be a hit—there was no question about that in my mind. All the same, I don’t think anyone could have predicted what grew out of it.

  I had recently met George Lucas. We were thinking about doing a little documentary for television. A couple of weeks earlier, I had flown westward to discuss it with him and with his wife, Marcia. We had a very pleasant dinner at a Mexican restaurant. I had another gig in Los Angeles that summer, so the timing was agreeable. I was looking forward to the gig inordinately.

  But we hadn’t reckoned with the phenomenal success of Star Wars—for a time the top-grossing film in history. A short time after that became clear, I received a call from one of George’s associates, asking me if I’d like to do a documentary about it. I was easily persuaded. I made the film over the summer. The largest pleasure of the job was getting to know George.

  He had not expected success of the magnitude that this picture attained, and he was determined to play it cool. He kept on living in his modest house, wearing his boyish shirts and driving his usual car. He went on writing the sequels to his mighty hit, coming into the office perhaps once a week to attend to his other business. He was not going to let this unprecedented success change his ways. He would occasionally putter about in the kitchen making simple dinners, which I sometimes shared with him, as did others.

  I continued to make documentaries for him. Every time a Star Wars sequel appeared, I put together a “making of” film about it. They were relatively easy to do, they paid nicely and George was a far from exigent boss. It was about as pleasant a job as the movies have on offer. He had thought a lot about movies, and his wit and wisdom were casually and unpretentiously on display. He, of course, made tons of money out of his work. But he was a generous man; everyone associated with him was well rewarded for his or her labors.

  44

  Losing It

  Starting around 1985, there were quite a few good movies made (in addition to those already discussed herein): Prizzi’s Honor, Salvador, The Untouchables, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, The Silence of the Lambs, Groundhog Day, Talk to Her, The Pianist—there could be more, of course. These titles simply sprang to mind when I tipped back in my chair, shut my eyes and let some recalled pleasures float in.

  You take my point, I’m sure. Not to be a cockeyed optimist, but pretty good, and occasionally great, movies are made on a fairly regular basis—not a lot of them, but not a few of them, either. You know how it goes: You go out looking for no more than a good time and stumble across something like a masterpiece (vice versa applies, too). Much of the fun of moviegoing derives from the way that paradox keeps working itself out. If it didn’t, the movies might as well shut up shop; we could all stay home and watch the endless parade of commercials for patent medicines on television. (I had no idea we were so sickly a nation until I recently took to watching TV after a long absence.)

  I’m working my way up to one final theory here. I’ve come to think that movies now—the best of them, the ones that concern the most thoughtful section of the public, at least—very largely concern psychopathic behavior. This is not entirely a new phenomenon. Cagney referred to his character in White Heat as a “nut job,” beyond sanity’s redemption. But full-on criminal psychopathy was not, shall we say, a favorite movie topic—until, suddenly, it was.

  Why this happened when it did is something of a puzzlement. It has to do with the new kids in town, I suppose
, and the continuing loosening of strictures on what was acceptable screen content. Before I develop my thesis, let me mention two of my favorite movies of the era.

  Let’s begin with The Leopard, which is based on one of my favorite novels of the late twentieth century and was made into quite a faithful film by Luchino Visconti (released in 1963). It was subsequently re-released in multiple shorter versions, none of which—putting it mildly—were superior to the 205-minute original. At its right length and in the glorious color Giuseppe Rotunno achieved in the original—a tall order, as things turned out—it is a plain masterpiece.

  It stars Burt Lancaster, always an ambitious (and powerful) actor, playing an Italian aristocrat at the time of Italy’s reunification, in the 1860s. He knows that he—everyone—must change if, paradoxically, the most potent values of the country are to remain intact. I think it is among the most glorious of Lancaster’s performances, though the most daring thing about The Leopard is that something like one-third of the movie is devoted to a wedding that I never tire of. There is romance in it (between Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon), but not much of the action we expect of epics. It has something better—or at least rarer: “crowd splendor.” It’s a phrase coined by one of film’s first critics, Vachel Lindsay, the pop poet, and what it means is that there is a stirring and almost ceaseless bustle about the film. I’d say that’s the biggest change in emphasis in the adaptation to the screen, and it works strongly in the film’s favor. It gives it an energy that is sometimes missing in the novel, which is, of course, pursuing other values. In any event, it seems to me that this is among the finest adaptations of a novel to the screen, which is a way of saying that you must have a very good fiction to start with or the effort is going to be foredoomed.