A couple of months ago, the New York Times Magazine ran a cover piece by Mark Leibovich on Fox News's wackiest windbag, Glenn Beck. For me, the most surprising revelation in the lengthy profile (which I admit to reading with nostrils pinched firmly between thumb and forefinger) was that Beck is a big fan of Orson Welles. It seems that Beck keeps a picture of Welles on his office wall and named his own production company, Mercury Radio Arts, after Welles's famed Mercury Theatre.
Has no one informed Beck that Welles was (gasp!) a lifelong progressive, the political species Beck claims to despise most? That Welles considered running for office as a New Deal Democrat? That among the likely reasons for his self-imposed European exile was (as Joseph McBride has persuasively argued*) to escape the blacklist and the anti-leftist witch hunts?
Apparently, Beck's admiration for Welles stems from his youthful exposure to a recording of the latter's notorious 1938 "War of the Worlds" broadcast—a radio play (based on the H. G. Wells novel about Martian invaders) that managed, unintentionally, to panic thousands of listeners who mistook its fake news flashes for the real thing. Gee . . . concocting fiction disguised as news that scares people—that's a pretty good description of what Beck does, so I guess it's no wonder he was impressed.
I'm reminded of the moment in Citizen Kane's famous breakfast scene when Kane's first wife says, "Really, Charles, people will think . . ." and Kane finishes her sentence with an emphatic ". . . what I tell them to think!" That exchange was part of Welles's withering indictment of an arrogant media mogul's sense of entitlement and readiness to abuse his power. I suspect that Beck, if he ever saw Kane, thinks of those words as simply a sound professional axiom.
__________
* See McBride, What Ever Happened to Orson Welles? (Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 2006).
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Arthur Penn, 1922–2010
In my previous post, I marked the passing of Claude Chabrol. Alas, I now have to note further sad news. Last week, on September 28, Arthur Penn died. Understandably, his obituaries all led with some variant of the phrase "best known as the director of Bonnie and Clyde." I won't repeat here the received wisdom on that 1967 film's importance as a taboo breaker and harbinger of the "New Hollywood." For a short recap along those lines, see Dave Kehr's piece in the op-ed section of this past Sunday's New York Times, which focuses on some intriguing contrasts and parallels between Penn's career and that of actor Tony Curtis, who died just a day later. If you're interested in a broader, more in-depth perspective on Bonnie and Clyde's place in film history, check out Mark Harris's excellent book Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood (2008).
For me, though, Penn's finest film is not Bonnie and Clyde but a moody detective picture from 1975 called Night Moves. It stars Gene Hackman as a private investigator who takes on a missing-persons case that he quickly solves—or so he thinks until the troubled teenager he was hired to find is killed amid suspicious circumstances, thus sending him, guilt ridden, back on the trail of clues he may have missed. The film is not, as the usually sensible Richard Schickel wrote at the time, "just another private eye flick." Rather, working within genre-convention boundaries while simultaneously subverting those conventions, Penn and screenwriter Alan Sharp offer a thoughtful meditation on the limits of individual perception and knowledge—a theme that foreign directors such as Kurosawa (Rashomon) and Antonioni (Blow-Up) had gnawed on in previous decades. And Penn's treatment of it, I would argue, is just as serious as those of the art-house giants. Decidedly down-beat, Night Moves didn't do especially well at the box office upon release—it was one of many films lost that summer in the churning wake of Steven Spielberg's Jaws—but I'm gratified to see that it has had some real staying power among cinephiles. For example, the current issue of the Web journal Senses of Cinema contains a very interesting article on the film that I recommend.
Penn had a rather spotty career—in late films like Target and Dead of Winter he seemed to have sacrificed his directorial personality for a paycheck—but at his best, or near-best, he was never less than intelligent and provocative.
For me, though, Penn's finest film is not Bonnie and Clyde but a moody detective picture from 1975 called Night Moves. It stars Gene Hackman as a private investigator who takes on a missing-persons case that he quickly solves—or so he thinks until the troubled teenager he was hired to find is killed amid suspicious circumstances, thus sending him, guilt ridden, back on the trail of clues he may have missed. The film is not, as the usually sensible Richard Schickel wrote at the time, "just another private eye flick." Rather, working within genre-convention boundaries while simultaneously subverting those conventions, Penn and screenwriter Alan Sharp offer a thoughtful meditation on the limits of individual perception and knowledge—a theme that foreign directors such as Kurosawa (Rashomon) and Antonioni (Blow-Up) had gnawed on in previous decades. And Penn's treatment of it, I would argue, is just as serious as those of the art-house giants. Decidedly down-beat, Night Moves didn't do especially well at the box office upon release—it was one of many films lost that summer in the churning wake of Steven Spielberg's Jaws—but I'm gratified to see that it has had some real staying power among cinephiles. For example, the current issue of the Web journal Senses of Cinema contains a very interesting article on the film that I recommend.
Penn had a rather spotty career—in late films like Target and Dead of Winter he seemed to have sacrificed his directorial personality for a paycheck—but at his best, or near-best, he was never less than intelligent and provocative.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Claude Chabrol, 1930–2010
It was sad to learn of Claude Chabrol's death last Sunday. One of that handful of critics-turned-directors who made up the core of the French New Wave (for a related post, click here), he specialized for the most part in sardonic thrillers that skewer the habits and mores of the suburban/provincial bourgeoisie. While he counted Hitchcock and Lang among his influences, his work has a peculiar tone that's like no other filmmaker's. Marked by irony and black humor, it is not to everyone's taste. Chabrol's narratives can tilt toward the absurd, his characterizations toward caricature. Seldom, if ever, are his protagonists' motives pure. Indeed, corruption, betrayal, and guilt are among his movies' key concerns, and murder is usually the central plot element. From early on in his career, Chabrol was accused of cynicism and coldness. Yet, as unlikable or appalling as his characters and their actions often are, his films also display a bemused detachment and stylistic economy that make them consistently compelling.
I've seen only a fraction of his considerable output (maybe twenty films out of a total of fifty or so), and I'm still trying to catch up. Chabrol stayed active right up to his death, and his last film, Inspector Bellamy, will hit U.S. screens before the end of this year. I'll be in line.
I've seen only a fraction of his considerable output (maybe twenty films out of a total of fifty or so), and I'm still trying to catch up. Chabrol stayed active right up to his death, and his last film, Inspector Bellamy, will hit U.S. screens before the end of this year. I'll be in line.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
A Rare Bird Indeed
Here I depart from my usual subject matter to plug a new book that has nothing to do with the movies. (Actually, there is a film connection of sorts, but I'll get to that in a moment.)
Titled Ghost Birds, the book describes how, during the late 1930s, a young Cornell graduate student named James T. Tanner undertook an ornithological expedition that led to what probably remains the most remarkable field research ever conducted on one of America's rarest birds, the ivory-billed woodpecker. It's a great story that takes the reader on a twisty tour of remote wetlands in eight southern states. While Tanner had disappointments along the way—his extensive searches in Florida, stretching from the panhandle to the Everglades, led to not a single sighting—he also experienced an extraordinary triumph: in a remote swamp in northeastern Louisiana, he was able to study several ivory-bills, including a young nestling that he handled, banded, and photographed at close range.
Full disclosure: This book is published by my employer, the University of Tennessee Press, and I had the privilege of copyediting the manuscript, a process in which I worked closely with the book's genial and gifted author, Stephen Lyn Bales, a naturalist at Knoxville's Ijams Nature Center. So I'm biased, but no matter: it's still an immensely enjoyable read, and I highly recommend it. For more about the book, here's a link to the UTP Web site. Also, this month's Smithsonian Magazine carries an article that Lyn wrote about how Tanner came to photograph the ivory-bill nestling. That story is an amazing mini-drama in itself.
Now for the movie connection. Coincidentally, a documentary called Ghost Bird (singular in this case) was released earlier this year. It focuses on a much more recent hunt for the ivory-bill, the one that followed reported sightings in Arkansas in 2005. Those sightings made national headlines because the bird was thought to have gone extinct in the decades that followed Tanner's groundbreaking research. Unfortunately, a lengthy Cornell investigation (eventually suspended) was unable to produce definitive confirmation. Birders remain hopeful, however, that the ivory-bill is still out there.
I haven't seen the documentary yet, but that will soon change. On October 21, UT Press (in cooperation with the Tennessee Clean Water Network) will host a screening of the film at the Knoxville Museum of Art. Lyn Bales will be there to sign copies of Ghost Birds, along with Nancy Tanner, Jim Tanner's widow, who played a big role in the writing of the book. (Mrs. Tanner was also interviewed for the film.) If you live in the area and are interested, click here for more information.
Full disclosure: This book is published by my employer, the University of Tennessee Press, and I had the privilege of copyediting the manuscript, a process in which I worked closely with the book's genial and gifted author, Stephen Lyn Bales, a naturalist at Knoxville's Ijams Nature Center. So I'm biased, but no matter: it's still an immensely enjoyable read, and I highly recommend it. For more about the book, here's a link to the UTP Web site. Also, this month's Smithsonian Magazine carries an article that Lyn wrote about how Tanner came to photograph the ivory-bill nestling. That story is an amazing mini-drama in itself.
Now for the movie connection. Coincidentally, a documentary called Ghost Bird (singular in this case) was released earlier this year. It focuses on a much more recent hunt for the ivory-bill, the one that followed reported sightings in Arkansas in 2005. Those sightings made national headlines because the bird was thought to have gone extinct in the decades that followed Tanner's groundbreaking research. Unfortunately, a lengthy Cornell investigation (eventually suspended) was unable to produce definitive confirmation. Birders remain hopeful, however, that the ivory-bill is still out there.
I haven't seen the documentary yet, but that will soon change. On October 21, UT Press (in cooperation with the Tennessee Clean Water Network) will host a screening of the film at the Knoxville Museum of Art. Lyn Bales will be there to sign copies of Ghost Birds, along with Nancy Tanner, Jim Tanner's widow, who played a big role in the writing of the book. (Mrs. Tanner was also interviewed for the film.) If you live in the area and are interested, click here for more information.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Accidental Ambiguity
This is a story about how a tiny technical mishap led me to think a little more deeply about a movie than I might otherwise have. But first, a warning: If you've not yet seen Brothers in either of its forms—Susanne Bier's Danish original, a.k.a. Brødre (2004), or Jim Sheridan's American remake (2009)—you may wish to read no further. Spoilers follow.
I already had Brødre in my Netflix queue when the remake came along. Wanting to see the original first, I avoided Sheridan's movie during its theatrical run, though I did read reviews that supplied a few plot basics about both films.
In Bier's version, the brothers of the title are called Michael and Jannick. The former is a straight-arrow U.N. military officer, the latter a seemingly hopeless ne'er-do-well. Early on, Michael ships off to Afghanistan, where he's captured by Taliban insurgents and presumed dead. Back home, Jannick, having just finished a prison term for a botched bank robbery, starts putting his life in order and strikes up a warm, protective relationship with Michael's wife, Sarah, and her two preadolescent daughters. Sarah and Jannick briefly consider sleeping together but think better of it. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, Michael is rescued. He returns home, severely traumatized, and soon, amid mounting jealousies and misunderstandings, he seems headed toward an emotional meltdown.
What the reviews didn't reveal was the central plot twist that drives the action during the film's second half. And, thanks to a smudged DVD, I missed that twist completely as I was watching Bier's film for the first time. The movie's midsection focuses mostly on Michael's imprisonment and his relationship with a fellow Danish captive, Niels Peter, a young radio technician. In one scene, the insurgents order Niels Peter to demonstrate the use of a captured rocket launcher, but having no advanced weapons training, he can't help them; Michael, the more experienced soldier, has to do it. It was around this point as I was watching the DVD that the image began to stutter and stall. But before I could retrieve the disc and clean it, the problem resolved itself, or so I thought. The film continued as Michael is being rescued. But now Niels Peter is nowhere to be seen. What's happened to him? Subsequent scenes—a questioning by Michael's superiors about the young man's whereabouts, an awkward visit with Niels Peter's wife, and finally a climax in which Michael, brandishing a pistol, threatens to kill his family and then himself (Jannick, now the stabilizing force his brother once was, intervenes)—all suggest that something terrible befell Niels Peter and caused Michael's trauma. Exactly what it was, however, is never clear. In the final scene, Michael is in a military prison, with Sarah telling him that unless he confides in her, she'll leave him for good. "He had a little boy," Michael sobs, referring to Niels Peter. End of movie.
Now that was interesting, I thought, immediately assuming that Bier meant to leave Niels Peter's fate an open question. After all, I reasoned, this was a European film, and in European films (especially if the director's name happens to be, say, Michelangelo Antonioni or, to use a living example, Michael Haneke) things often aren't spelled out with Hollywood-style explicitness. My guess was that Michael had had to witness his countryman's execution, doubtless a brutal one (a beheading perhaps?). But for whatever reason, Bier had chosen to leave us in the dark about the specifics. I sealed up the disc in the Netflix envelope, planning to mail it off the next day.
The irresolution nagged at me, however, and soon a bit of Web research revealed that, indeed, I had missed something vital: Michael had not simply witnessed Niels Peter's execution; he had been forced to carry it out himself at gunpoint. I unsealed the Netflix envelope, cleaned the DVD, and returned it to the player. Sure enough, there it was: the insurgents, having decided that Niels Peter is of no use to them, hand Michael a steel pipe and order him to bludgeon his comrade to death; otherwise, they'll just shoot them both. Later, back in Denmark, as Michael's guilt and rage boil over, he screams at Sarah, "Do you know what I did to get back to you?" The irony, of course, is that Michael now appears poised to destroy the very thing—his family—that had determined the dreadful choice forced upon him.
The accidental ambiguity that came with my first experience of Brødre spurred some intriguing thoughts. In some ways the truncated version of the film seemed, however unintentionally, more interesting, more provocative, more artful, than the movie Bier had actually made. Smugly basking in a sense of my "superior taste," I attributed my response to an aversion for works whose moral geometry seems a little too tidily delineated, a little too obvious. But if I had seen the film with the critical scene intact, would I have judged it differently? It's hard to say because my first impressions, based on an incomplete viewing, were so vivid. Any subsequent viewings would inevitably be colored by those impressions.
And then I had another thought: What really happened between Michael and Niels Peter turned out to be worse than the scenario I had imagined. Why did I assume a less awful alternative? Did I have such conventional notions about the qualities befitting a film protagonist that I wasn't prepared to admit that an ordinary, decent man like Michael was capable of so terrible an act? And even if what Michael did was somehow understandable—the alternative would have been his own death as well as Niels Peter's—his subsequent actions, as he slides into denial, are troubling to say the least. He lies to his superiors; he lies to Niels Peter's wife. He can't open up to Sarah. He almost annihilates his family. Bier's film, in its concrete conclusiveness, is actually darker than the reading I gave to the "ambiguous" version. Maybe my taste isn't so superior after all.
This brings me to a truism I too often forget. Like many of us who aren't film professors or professional critics, I'll frequently watch a film, register whether I liked it or disliked it, assimilate it in some way, and move on. Yet, if one claims to take movies seriously—those worth taking seriously, anyway—thinking about them seriously is an imperative. I'm grateful that a thumbprint on a DVD reminded me of that.
A postscript: I've now seen Sheridan's remake, which closely follows the original. Interestingly, on the commentary track, Sheridan says he toyed with the idea of not showing the execution scene until late in the film, when it would have been revealed in flashback (which is what I kept expecting to see, first time around, in Bier's version). But ultimately Sheridan opted for the same structure Bier had used. What difference would it have made if either director had gone this alternate route? Hmm, I guess I'll have to think about that some more.
I already had Brødre in my Netflix queue when the remake came along. Wanting to see the original first, I avoided Sheridan's movie during its theatrical run, though I did read reviews that supplied a few plot basics about both films.
In Bier's version, the brothers of the title are called Michael and Jannick. The former is a straight-arrow U.N. military officer, the latter a seemingly hopeless ne'er-do-well. Early on, Michael ships off to Afghanistan, where he's captured by Taliban insurgents and presumed dead. Back home, Jannick, having just finished a prison term for a botched bank robbery, starts putting his life in order and strikes up a warm, protective relationship with Michael's wife, Sarah, and her two preadolescent daughters. Sarah and Jannick briefly consider sleeping together but think better of it. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, Michael is rescued. He returns home, severely traumatized, and soon, amid mounting jealousies and misunderstandings, he seems headed toward an emotional meltdown.
What the reviews didn't reveal was the central plot twist that drives the action during the film's second half. And, thanks to a smudged DVD, I missed that twist completely as I was watching Bier's film for the first time. The movie's midsection focuses mostly on Michael's imprisonment and his relationship with a fellow Danish captive, Niels Peter, a young radio technician. In one scene, the insurgents order Niels Peter to demonstrate the use of a captured rocket launcher, but having no advanced weapons training, he can't help them; Michael, the more experienced soldier, has to do it. It was around this point as I was watching the DVD that the image began to stutter and stall. But before I could retrieve the disc and clean it, the problem resolved itself, or so I thought. The film continued as Michael is being rescued. But now Niels Peter is nowhere to be seen. What's happened to him? Subsequent scenes—a questioning by Michael's superiors about the young man's whereabouts, an awkward visit with Niels Peter's wife, and finally a climax in which Michael, brandishing a pistol, threatens to kill his family and then himself (Jannick, now the stabilizing force his brother once was, intervenes)—all suggest that something terrible befell Niels Peter and caused Michael's trauma. Exactly what it was, however, is never clear. In the final scene, Michael is in a military prison, with Sarah telling him that unless he confides in her, she'll leave him for good. "He had a little boy," Michael sobs, referring to Niels Peter. End of movie.
Now that was interesting, I thought, immediately assuming that Bier meant to leave Niels Peter's fate an open question. After all, I reasoned, this was a European film, and in European films (especially if the director's name happens to be, say, Michelangelo Antonioni or, to use a living example, Michael Haneke) things often aren't spelled out with Hollywood-style explicitness. My guess was that Michael had had to witness his countryman's execution, doubtless a brutal one (a beheading perhaps?). But for whatever reason, Bier had chosen to leave us in the dark about the specifics. I sealed up the disc in the Netflix envelope, planning to mail it off the next day.
The irresolution nagged at me, however, and soon a bit of Web research revealed that, indeed, I had missed something vital: Michael had not simply witnessed Niels Peter's execution; he had been forced to carry it out himself at gunpoint. I unsealed the Netflix envelope, cleaned the DVD, and returned it to the player. Sure enough, there it was: the insurgents, having decided that Niels Peter is of no use to them, hand Michael a steel pipe and order him to bludgeon his comrade to death; otherwise, they'll just shoot them both. Later, back in Denmark, as Michael's guilt and rage boil over, he screams at Sarah, "Do you know what I did to get back to you?" The irony, of course, is that Michael now appears poised to destroy the very thing—his family—that had determined the dreadful choice forced upon him.
The accidental ambiguity that came with my first experience of Brødre spurred some intriguing thoughts. In some ways the truncated version of the film seemed, however unintentionally, more interesting, more provocative, more artful, than the movie Bier had actually made. Smugly basking in a sense of my "superior taste," I attributed my response to an aversion for works whose moral geometry seems a little too tidily delineated, a little too obvious. But if I had seen the film with the critical scene intact, would I have judged it differently? It's hard to say because my first impressions, based on an incomplete viewing, were so vivid. Any subsequent viewings would inevitably be colored by those impressions.
And then I had another thought: What really happened between Michael and Niels Peter turned out to be worse than the scenario I had imagined. Why did I assume a less awful alternative? Did I have such conventional notions about the qualities befitting a film protagonist that I wasn't prepared to admit that an ordinary, decent man like Michael was capable of so terrible an act? And even if what Michael did was somehow understandable—the alternative would have been his own death as well as Niels Peter's—his subsequent actions, as he slides into denial, are troubling to say the least. He lies to his superiors; he lies to Niels Peter's wife. He can't open up to Sarah. He almost annihilates his family. Bier's film, in its concrete conclusiveness, is actually darker than the reading I gave to the "ambiguous" version. Maybe my taste isn't so superior after all.
This brings me to a truism I too often forget. Like many of us who aren't film professors or professional critics, I'll frequently watch a film, register whether I liked it or disliked it, assimilate it in some way, and move on. Yet, if one claims to take movies seriously—those worth taking seriously, anyway—thinking about them seriously is an imperative. I'm grateful that a thumbprint on a DVD reminded me of that.
A postscript: I've now seen Sheridan's remake, which closely follows the original. Interestingly, on the commentary track, Sheridan says he toyed with the idea of not showing the execution scene until late in the film, when it would have been revealed in flashback (which is what I kept expecting to see, first time around, in Bier's version). But ultimately Sheridan opted for the same structure Bier had used. What difference would it have made if either director had gone this alternate route? Hmm, I guess I'll have to think about that some more.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Commentary Track Gush
Early in the commentary track on the Duplicity DVD, writer-director Tony Gilroy says he hates those commentary tracks in which the filmmaker just starts "gushing" about everyone he or she worked with on the movie. So then what does Gilroy proceed to do? He gushes about the actors. And the crew. And (with a few feints toward modesty) himself. Gilroy's commentary turns out to be indistinguishable from dozens of others that often sound like long versions of Oscar-acceptance speeches.
It's not that I advocate a ban on DVD directorial commentary. If you accept that a certain amount of congratulatory blather is inevitable, there are almost always intriguing things to be learned from even the most self-serving commentary track. Regarding Duplicity, for instance, it's not uninteresting (if hardly earthshaking) to find out that the Bahamas stood in for both Miami and Dubai, or that the cafeteria of a Manhattan girls' school was dressed to look like a posh hotel suite in Rome, or that Gilroy used a handheld camera in one scene because he wanted to suggest that at this point in a story otherwise brimming with misdirection and con games, the "real reality" was being shown for once. For me at least, understanding how cinematic illusions are created, or how specific techniques express meaning, has always been part of the movies' appeal.
That said, I certainly prefer the commentary tracks one typically finds, say, on a Criterion Collection DVD. Usually, Criterion enlists a well-credentialed film scholar to talk about style, theme, historical context, and so on. Sound a little dry? It can be, but at least you don't have to hear that this or that actor was "such an amazing pro" or how a "brilliant" DP, editor, or production designer—and they're never anything less than brilliant—helped save the director's butt.
It's not that I advocate a ban on DVD directorial commentary. If you accept that a certain amount of congratulatory blather is inevitable, there are almost always intriguing things to be learned from even the most self-serving commentary track. Regarding Duplicity, for instance, it's not uninteresting (if hardly earthshaking) to find out that the Bahamas stood in for both Miami and Dubai, or that the cafeteria of a Manhattan girls' school was dressed to look like a posh hotel suite in Rome, or that Gilroy used a handheld camera in one scene because he wanted to suggest that at this point in a story otherwise brimming with misdirection and con games, the "real reality" was being shown for once. For me at least, understanding how cinematic illusions are created, or how specific techniques express meaning, has always been part of the movies' appeal.
That said, I certainly prefer the commentary tracks one typically finds, say, on a Criterion Collection DVD. Usually, Criterion enlists a well-credentialed film scholar to talk about style, theme, historical context, and so on. Sound a little dry? It can be, but at least you don't have to hear that this or that actor was "such an amazing pro" or how a "brilliant" DP, editor, or production designer—and they're never anything less than brilliant—helped save the director's butt.
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