The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

I've been in the mood for some classic noirs lately. After all, just last week I wrote about The Third Man. That's a personal favorite, and I've seen it many times. Right now my queue at Netflix is full of my favorite noirs, but with a few classics I never got around to mixed in. This is one of those; I'm a little embarrassed to admit that until early this morning I had never seen The Postman Always Rings Twice.
It's also the first time I've ever seen John Garfield, though of course I knew the name from studying the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee. I knew he was one of their main victims; though not a Communist, he was a well-known liberal, and he worked for good jobs for black and latino actors and crew, and of course he was Jewish, and that was enough for the fascists on the HUAC, who thought Hollywood could only be trusted to conservative christian racists. They hunted him relentlessly, had him blacklisted, and when he returned to Broadway (he got his start on the stage) even hounded him there. He had a bad heart, and they literally hounded him to death before he was forty. So I had some regard for Garfield as a martyr to liberal causes, particularly political freedom, but somehow that never translated into watching any of his movies.
Lana Turner, of course, I know. Even more than I love classic noirs, I love classic horror, and she was in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with Spencer Tracy. That's how I know her best. I have that on DVD and will inevitably write about it, but for now I'll say that she was passably good in a passably good movie. Turner herself, though, always considered this her best role, and so I feel like I know her a lot better now that I've seen it.
The thing is, I'm not sure this really is a film noir. The genre is a little nebulous, but this doesn't have the sort of photography and camera tricks that you'd expect from a noir, and the characters are subtly different. The overall drift of the story is pretty standard for the genre, to be fair. A drifter, Frank Chambers (Garfield), takes a job at a roadside gas station/burger joint, owned by affable middle-aged Nick Smith (Cecil Kellaway). Frank and Nick's beautiful young wife, Cora (Turner), fall in love. Nick wants Cora to run away with him, but Cora refuses to give up the restaurant; she knows Nick will cut her off without a penny if she divorces him, and she doesn't want to return to the life of wage slavery. So the young lovers murder Nick, and spend the rest of the movie wilting under suspicion and turning on each other while still being unable to resist each other.
Like I say, fairly typical. It's in the details that this distinguishes itself from the typical fare of the genre. Cora is not your everyday femme fatale. In the first place, she doesn't seduce Frank; he seduces her, and in fact is a bit more aggressive in his courtship than modern sensibilities would be perfectly comfortable with. She not only resists Frank, but goes out of her way to demonstrate that she is happy with Nick. Nick himself sort of drives them together. There is one scene that seems almost comical with regards to Nick's cluelessness: he plays guitar and asks Cora to dance. She doesn't want to, because she doesn't want to turn Frank on, so she says that she feels silly dancing alone. Frank offers to dance, but Cora says that she and Nick should turn on the jukebox and dance together. Nick insists, saying that he would rather watch dancing than dance himself, so Cora says they can't dance in the living room anyway, since there's not enough room. So Nick moves them all into the restaurant, where instead of dancing to the light tune Nick had been playing on his guitar, they dance to a sexy latin song on the jukebox, with Cora getting more uncomfortable by the moment. In a more modern film, you'd almost expect Nick to be the kind of man who likes to watch his wife having sex with other men.
The idea that it would be nice if Nick died occurs first to Frank, not Cora, though it is Cora who insists upon going through with it, and who plans and carries out their first attempt on Nick's life. That's more typical, and we begin to feel more comfortable with the plot, but it doesn't really last. When the second attempt works, but Frank is injured, the District Attorney, Kyle Sackett (Leon Ames), briefly convinces Frank that Cora actually intended to kill them both; Frank signs a complaint against her, and both murder and attempted murder charges are brought against Cora. At this point Cora turns on Frank, but we understand why: if he had trusted her and stuck to their original story, there would have been no evidence to convict them. Frank's statement might well send her to the gallows. She turns fierce then, and yet it's hard not to side with her against Frank. I wonder if that wasn't less true in 1946; maybe back then a woman who had turned on her husband was automatically more to blame than the lover who had helped her, but to a modern audience she is far more the injured party.
Also, I'm sympathetic to Cora when we learn that Frank plans to sell Twin Oaks (the road house) and move to Canada to take care of his paralyzed sister. He hasn't even considered Cora's feelings, which is especially bad since he's committing Cora to becoming a nurse for his sister. She doesn't want to spend the best years of her life washing and cleaning up after a woman she's never met and has no loyalty to. We might well revere a woman who was willing to make this sacrifice for her selflessness, but we don't condemn a woman who isn't that selfless; the selflessness is notable because it's so rare, and I doubt many of the folks watching the movie (or reading this) would be willing to make this sacrifice, and so if we're fair, we can't think less of her for her unwillingness. Just in case we can, Frank has to stop Cora from committing suicide over it.
It's the only moment where Nick is the bad guy, and of course it's the impetus to the second, successful murder attempt. We can feel, and sympathize with, Cora's desperation here. Something clearly has to be done. Of course, in the real world, we would want Cora to divorce Nick rather than murdering him, but she still has our sympathy to some extent.
I've been thinking about Out of the Past, and Jane Greer's role in that. Greer's Kathie is the perfect model of the character type, and I've always referred to her as the most fatale of all femmes. Greer begins that film as the sort of dangerous, amoral woman that Cora becomes in this one, the woman who fights off the blackmail attempt, who threatens to turn Frank in as revenge for his infidelity. I think that perhaps what makes Cora so memorable is that she isn't a femme fatale; rather she becomes one during the course of the story, and we get to watch it happening. In effect, I fell like this is how Kathie became Kathie.
In this genre, we usually watch the hero make mistakes, fall gradually into a state of despair and degradation, and usually he does this under the influence of a character like Kathie. In this movie we watch her make mistakes, bad decisions that seem to be her only option in desperate moments. She is the nascent belle dame sans merci. And then of course there's the end of the film, where she is willing to sacrifice herself in order to regain her humanity and the love and trust of her relationship with Frank; very few femmes fatales have done the same, and we almost feel that she dies with a clear conscience.
In effect, within the regular tropes of the noir, she's the hero and Frank is the femme fatale. It's a great and, within the genre, unique role. No wonder Turner thought it her best. So, how is she in it? Well, I've always considered Turner to be very much of her time, I think. Most of the things I've seen her in seem fairly dated now. Look at her contemporary, Ingrid Bergman. When we watch Casablanca or Notorious we belong to her; her star power is undiluted by the years, and I don't think we can say that about Turner. On the other hand, when we watch someone like Jean Harlowe, she's almost a joke. It's hard to understand what anyone ever saw in her. Turner is somewhere in between. She isn't Bergman's equal, but she's risen a lot in my estimation. The years have somewhat diminished her, but she is still powerful, and I doubt anyone else could have played the part better.
You get solid support from Ames and Hume Cronyn (as Cora's lawyer), and also from Audrey Totter in what amounts to a cameo appearance. I love Totter, no matter what she does. The big supporting role, the one that makes the film work, is Kellaway's, though. Aside from the one scene I mentioned above, he's just so likeable, so naïve and trusting. He just feels like a nice guy, and that's another important distinction between this movie and many similar ones: we don't get to feel that the plot against him might be justified, like in Out of the Past. He's just too...well, again, nice. If he's an ogre, this movie loses half its power.
Garfield is very good as Frank, as well. Like I said, I don't know his work well, but I like him. He's nearly as emotionally complex as Cora. He feels very natural in the part, not like he's playing a rough-and-tumble tramp, but like they cast a rough-and-tumble tramp in the part and let him play himself. I've moved Body and Soul, which I've always heard was his defining film, up to number one in my queue; this movie makes me want to see more of him, because this is really about Lana Turner. Even though Garfield has more screen time, even though it's told from his perspective and largely through his narration, this is her movie, a great performance in an iconic role. Everyone else in the movie is secondary.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: I'm saying the story. Just the complexity of it, the way Cora's and Frank's feelings for each other change constantly throughout the film. As good as Turner and Garfield are, they have a lot to work with. It's an accomplishment, so let me give credit to screenwriters Harry Ruskin and Niven Bush, and also maybe to James M. Cain, who wrote the novel the film is based on. I haven't read it and don't know how true they are to the original, but regardless Ruskin and Bush did some fine work here. The dialog is only pretty good, but the way the story unfolds is definitely special.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: The direction and cinematography aren't bad, but they aren't really noirish enough, in my opinion. I suppose that makes sense, since neither director Tay Garnett nor DP Sidney Wagner had worked much in the genre. It's perfectly well-shot, don't get me wrong, but it isn't quite what I wanted. I'm a bit unforgiving with my noirs.

SCORE: 8/10

LISTS: Favorites of the Forties

Now You See Me (2013)

The first time I saw a trailer for this, I fell in love. I love magic, I love heist films, I love several of the actors. So a movie with good actors playing magicians who rob banks? Oh, man, I'm so totally in. I was sure this was going to be my #1 film of the year, and hoped it would be one of my favorites, period. I'm sorry to say that it is neither, but it's still pretty good.
The story is an interesting one. Four magicians (a mentalist played by Woody Harrelson, an escape artist played by Isla Fisher, and two sleight-of-hand guys played by Jesse Eisenberg and Dave Franco) set up a big show in Vegas, during the course of which they rob a bank in Paris and shower the audience with the loot. The FBI and Interpol are after them, but of course they don't know how the trick was done. The quartet give two more shows and pull of two other big-time heists, each time giving the money to the audience, and then at the end we find out who's behind the heists and why he's doing it.
There are some problems with the film. A few plot points are pretty convenient. Some of the magic tricks are pretty clearly impossible without the use of CGI; I would rather they had stuck to actual stage magic. And Michael Caine, the wealthy man backing the magicians, just kind of...disappears. Not in a magic way, just in a “the writer forgot about him” way.
Also, the characterization is a little thin. None of these characters are particularly memorable. It seems that director Louis Leterrier and his writers (Boaz Yakin, Edward Ricourt, and Ed Solomon) were very caught up in the way the plot was moving, and didn't want to slow down to develop everyone. Instead, they hired a very good cast and trusted them to put more into the roles than what was actually on the page. To be fair, I think it worked pretty well; the four magicians (unfortunately given the terribly clichéd name “The Four Horsemen”) are all very likeable, and you end up wishing you could spend more time with all of them. Harrelson in particular doesn't get anything like enough screen time, and Fisher spends a lot of time just looking pretty, but both have their moments. Franco is supposed to be the clear #4 behind the other three, but actually he gets some of the best bits, especially the ridiculously fun takedown of Ruffalo and his partner when they raid the Horsemen's apartment. Eisenberg stands out among the four. He is playing basically the opposite of the character he played in Zombieland, which is interesting, given that everybody says he's a one-note actor. Anyway, if the point is to leave your audience wanting more, those four people did a damned good job.
A little more time is spent on the FBI agent leading the investigation (Dylan Rhodes, played by Mark Ruffalo). As an actor I like him more than any of the magicians, but his character isn't quite as interesting. And then there's Mélanie Laurent as the Interpol agent working with him. I suspect that once I've seen more of her work she's going to be one of my favorite actors, but prior to this I'd only seen her in Inglourious Basterds. She was magnificent in that, and was the biggest draw in this cast for me. And, you know, she did a fine job, but there just wasn't a lot there for her. Although she had more screen time than anyone but Ruffalo, her character was a little flat. Like Ruffalo, she was overshadowed by the magicians, and it's kind of too bad we didn't see more of the Four and less of the Law. Still, both are very charming actors, and I'm not complaining about them too much.
Caine is Caine; he can't do a bad job. Morgan Freeman is a surprise. I've gotten so used to seeing him play wise, kind old men that it took me a while to realize that he's the villain in this. I kept thinking, “Well, if they want me to like him just because of who he is, in spite of his asshattery, they've badly misjudged me.” I was halfway through the movie before I realized, no, I'm NOT supposed to like him. So if I'm going to name a cast member who confounded my expectations, it's got to be him, and the final resolution of his story is pretty rewarding; that's a good scene.
So all the actors are somewhat underserved but do good jobs anyway, in the service of keeping a fairly intricate plot moving. It's quite a good plot, as well; sure, it's implausible, but didn't we expect a story about magicians robbing banks to be a bit implausible? And Leterrier deserves a lot of credit for his direction: the film looks and sounds great, and moves very, very fast. The closest it comes to getting bogged down is when the Four have a brief, out-of-nowhere moment of doubt just before the last show, but it resolves itself quickly into Franco's best scene, the one I mentioned before. There were a few occasions where I was thinking, "Whoah, Louis, stop moving the camera around so much, let us see what's happening," but mostly I was pleased with his work.
I think this is a movie that tells you something about yourself when you watch it. It tells you what kind of movie watcher you are. Some people can lose themselves in a movie; they can suspend disbelief and just go along for the ride. Others can't; they analyze each scene, pick at each plot hole. I happen to be the former, and so for me this movie was a good time. I'm not blind to the holes in it, but they don't ruin the film for me. Most of the people writing about this movie on the IMDb message boards, on the other hand, appear to be of the latter type. There's an awful lot of haters on there. I'm not saying those people are bad, or stupid, or wrong, but I'm glad I'm not one of them.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: I really like the interrogation scenes. Harrelson and Eisenberg really shine there; I love the bit where Eisenberg tosses the handcuffs onto Ruffalo. On the other hand, that really shows up what I was saying earlier about the magicians not getting enough screen time: why didn't we get to see the interrogations of Fisher and Franco? That would have been perfect.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: No particular moment. There isn't really anything I dislike about this film; there's just a sort of general, mild disappointment. It's an entertaining movie, but I have to think that with a little more polish on the script, some holes plugged and loose ends tied up, a few more character moments here and there, it could have been great. It was a very good time, and I liked it very much, but as I said at the start, I really wanted to love it.

PUNCH THE AIR MOMENT: There isn't one. There really should be. How could they not include a punch the air moment?

SCORE: 7/10. A pretty low seven, but still a seven.

The Third Man (1949)

I love film noir. Horror is my favorite genre, and as I get older I seem to be falling more and more in love with science fiction as well, but noir just accesses something in me that seems to need letting out once in a while. The tough guys, the dangerous women, the human frailty, and of course the light and shadow, always put me slightly, deliciously on edge.
The Third Man, written by the great Graham Greene and directed by Carol Reed, didn't invent the noir, of course. It didn't come out until 1949, years after The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, and Out of the Past. What it did, though, was perfect it. I'm not calling it my favorite, but no noir (and almost no movie, period) was ever more well-made.
Start with Greene's screenplay, based on his own novella. It's pretty nearly perfect, and if I was teaching a class on screenwriting, I'd start with this script. It's got absolutely no fat, not a wasted line or tangential scene. Everything we see or hear advances the story, yet Greene doesn't rush through, doesn't ignore any important details. Reed is very much his partner in this, maintaining a very steady pace and only pausing occasionally to let us breathe and to show off a particularly nice bit of cinematography.
And, oh, what cinematography! When I say that this film perfected the noir, this is what I mean. The film is just masterfully shot and lighted. The shadows on the Vienna streets, stretching to impossible lengths, vanishing into deeper shadow...the oppressiveness of the sewers...the ever-present rubble. Plus, even half-destroyed by Allied bombing, Vienna is such a beautiful city, one of the loveliest in the world. The images of this film really are magical. And Reed experiments so much with where he places his camera, and at which angles, that rumors have always persisted that Orson Welles actually directed the film, or at least participated in the direction. I don't believe that, myself, but it's clear that Reed was a student of Welles' work, and had learned his lessons.
But the film isn't just a technical marvel. Greene's story is engaging: an American writer of pulp westerns, Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) has come to occupied post-war Vienna in search of his old school friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles). Holly's novels aren't terribly successful, and Harry knows he's a bit short of cash, so he's offered Holly a job. Holly shows up in Vienna to discover that Harry has been killed by a car, but suspects that the death might not have been an accident. The local police don't seem to care much, taking the stance that Harry (who, they allege, was a black marketeer) deserved what he got and they have more important things to do, even if it was murder, than track down the man who killed one of the worst criminals in Vienna. So, Holly sets out to reconstruct the last days of his friend's life, and ends up causing all kinds of trouble.
Cotten is very good as Holly Martins. He's an unusual sort of hero; he's a bumbler, a drunk. He's arrogant but also incompetent. He is occasionally capable of an insight or a penetrating question, but for the most part he gives the impression of being the only person in the whole city who doesn't know what's really going on. He's as far removed from Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe as any noir hero could be. Spade, for example, is always two steps ahead both of the audience and the other characters throughout The Maltese Falcon. At the end of the movie we learn that he knew who the killer was very nearly as soon as the murder took place, but we don't know who it was 'til he confronts the murderer at the end of the picture, by which time we've gotten so caught up in the hunt for the falcon that we've almost forgotten that the movie began with Spade's partner gunned down in an alley.
That's not true of Holly. He's very much the audience, a part that would usually be played by a supporting character; he's the fool, and we learn what's really happened through him because he isn't capable of any great leaps of logic that we can't follow. Not only does he not know anything that we don't know; if we've been paying attention, he knows a good bit less than we know. Also, whereas the noir hero is typically a tough guy, able to stand up to punishment and dish it out, we never see Holly successfully use violence in the whole film. The only time he tries, he gets put on his ass with a single punch and has to be helped up. Otherwise, whenever there are threats of violence, he's the target, trying to escape it. He's not a larger-than-life hero, but he's the lead in a larger-than-life movie and his presence keeps us engaged in the story. That makes him one of the most interesting leads in the history of the genre, in fact, and if he's less worthy of emulation than Philip Marlowe, he is much more accessible, all the same.
His character arc is fascinating. At the beginning of the movie he's very much the ugly American, certain that only he is in the right, intent upon imposing his will onto the Allied authorities and the city's underground. During the course of the film, though, he is ground down. He is humiliated at nearly every turn. He is constantly reminded of how out-of-place and helpless he is. His amorous advances are rejected, and he finds himself becoming more and more contemptible in the eyes of his would-be lover. Ultimately he is faced with a choice, to betray his principles, or to betray his other principles, a dilemma with no answer he can live with. He is resilient, and we don't find him a broken man at the end of the film, but he is a changed man, an aged man, one who might never be quite sure of himself again.
Alida Valli is also quite good as Anna Schmidt, a performer in a comic opera and Harry's lover. Her character is interesting, far more competent and aware than Holly, but deeply flawed herself. She is so in love with Harry, dead or alive, that she remains blind to his faults even when they're placed directly in front of her. She is not an emancipated woman. In fact, for most of the film she is very much property to be traded or dealt for. Harry has discarded her, offering her to the Russian authorities for his own benefit. The police use her as a bargaining chip to make Holly do what they want. It is interesting, though, that she rarely takes Holly's advances seriously, and on the rare occasions that she does, it seems that she's using him to replace Harry. She even calls him “Harry” a couple of times. She is simply not interested in him; she's too in love with Harry. Her affections are obviously misplaced, but it's a relief that she doesn't fall into Holly's arms. She sees him as clearly as we do, whatever blinders she might be wearing otherwise.
And then there's Orson Welles. I wouldn't rank him among the screen's greatest actors, but he had few equals as a pure screen presence. According to the filmmakers, Welles was a bit of a handful during production, not showing up on set, not cooperating when he did show up, but you don't see that on the screen. When that kitten finds him, when the light across the street comes on and we see his face, the look of surprise instantly fading into a mischievous smirk, the movie suddenly belongs to him. I read somewhere that he's only on screen for eight minutes total, and yet he's what we remember when we look back after watching the film. I personally consider this the best on-screen work he ever did, and Harry Lime is one of the screen's most memorable characters. If I ever get around to making my personal all-time Oscar list, I suspect that Welles will win Best Supporting Actor. He'll at least get a nomination.
The rest of the cast is perfectly fine. Trevor Howard is Major Calloway, the chief of the English authorities. He's, well, very much the picture of a gentleman soldier. It's not an earth-shaking performance, because it isn't an earth-shaking part, but Howard is exactly what it requires. Bernard Lee is extremely enjoyable as his right-hand man, Sgt. Paine. He's got a bit of a tough-but-cheerful, Brendan Gleeson air about him, and is probably the only genuinely likable character in the film (except, guiltily, for Harry himself). Ernst Deutsch and Siegfried Breuer are appropriately sinister as Harry's criminal associates, and also interestingly effeminate. That's a bit of a trope in the classic noir, presumably because of Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet.
Paul Hörbiger is great as Karl, the porter of Harry's building. The actor couldn't speak English very well, and Reed supposedly used that to add realism to the picture. It's fun, watching him try to communicate with Cotten. Actually, one of the best things about the film is that it's full of actual Austrian actors, outside of Cotten, Welles, Howard, and Lee (well, Valli is Italian, but to American ears of the forties, foreign was foreign). As result, a large part of the dialog is in German. Reed never bothers to translate any of it, and it's okay; we can understand perfectly well what's being said, even if we don't speak the language, and it adds a great deal of realism to the picture. Hedwig Bleibtreu as Anna's landlady is equally entertaining, and for the same reason. She spends all her scenes ranting about the police and Anna bringing shame upon the house, and somehow we get it.
It's also nice to see Wilfrid Hyde-White in a very small (but in a way important) part as the head of the Cultural Reeducation Society, a propaganda service for “civilizing” the former Nazis. He always plays the same guy, and I always enjoy it. But, if I'm going to be honest, the supporting actor I like the most is the little boy who thinks that Holly has committed a murder that occurs halfway through the film. That kid is amazing, with a big booming voice and a great, round, expressive face. I hate child actors, but that little boy makes me so happy. I laugh every time I watch him. In fact, they don't give out an Oscar for “Best Actor under Ten Years Old,” but if they did he'd win my all-timer for that even more surely than Welles would get Best Supporting Actor.
I suppose I can't write about this movie without mentioning the zither. Every time I watch the movie, when it starts off, I hear the music and think, “Oh, that's a bit cheesy, isn't it?” but five minutes in it just seems to fit. It's certainly unique. I've heard many people praise its originality, how expressive the instrument is or whatever. I won't go that far, but I like it okay, and I agree that the movie would be very different, and possibly not as good, with a typical orchestral score.
I also love the ending of the film, and if you haven't seen it you might want to skip the paragraph between the asterisks:

* * * * * * *

We've just left Harry's funeral. Anna is present, as is Holly. Afterwards, Reed sets his camera at the end of a long street. The street is lined with trees, and leaves are gently falling. In the far distance, we see Anna walking towards us, and in the left foreground, we see Holly leaning against a cart on the side of the road, waiting for her. It takes her forever to get to him, and Reed never cuts away. Finally she reaches Holly, and us, and she just walks right past without even looking at him or the camera. He stands for another second, then lights a cigarette. It's one of the best endings in the whole history of movies. Absolutely perfect.

* * * * * * *

Some classic movies are hard to watch for modern audiences. Sometimes it can be hard to engage with the styles and preferences of an earlier age, and we miss the advances film has made in the intervening decades. But this one...this is still great. It's pleasure to watch almost sixty-five years after it was made, and I suspect it always will be.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: The scene between Cotten and Welles on the giant Ferris Wheel. Welles is magnificent. The menace on his face while Cotten's back is turned, the switch to the open, friendly smile when Cotten turns to face him. The simple admission, when Cotten suggests that he'd be easy to get rid of: “Pretty easy.”

Look down there. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you £20,000 for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money? Or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spend?

If Holly hadn't mentioned that the police had dug up his grave, Harry would have killed him on that ride. He's charming and completely without conscience. He says evil things with an affable face. I can't even call him one of the great villains, because he's impossible to see as a villain. Holly takes a lot of convincing of the awful things Harry has done, and Anna never really is convinced, or maybe doesn't care. We're with them. Surely he isn't that bad. Surely he can be redirected. The police must be exaggerating; how could that smile hide a heart so black?
He is contemplating the murder of his oldest (and possibly only) friend as a regrettable necessity, and possibly he won't even regret it all that much. And we see him the same way: we know he must be stopped, imprisoned if not killed, but it really is regrettable. That smile just won't be the same seen through the bars of a cell.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: There's really nothing serious to complain about in the picture. The only reason it isn't a perfect ten is that, for reasons I don't completely understand, it doesn't move me the same way that The Maltese Falcon does. But objectively, the film is flawless; it deserves to be called the best noir ever made.

SCORE: 9/10. I recently learned that the Criterion edition of this film has gone out of print. That's inexplicable and unforgivable.

LISTS: Favorites of the Forties, My Top 100(ish).

Zombieland (2009)

I don’t know why it took me this long to get around to watching this.
It doesn’t seem that long ago that everyone assumed that you couldn’t make a decent horror comedy. It was just kind of a truism that horror and comedy simply don’t mix; you could do a comedy that had some horror themes, like Young Frankenstein, or you could do a horror that had a few jokes, like the Nightmare on Elm Street films, but that was about it. Attempts had been made and they’d all failed, at least in the perception of the public, except for a few campy B-movies (I love Killer Klowns from Outer Space and Evil Dead 2 is one of my favorite movies, but come on…) where the laughs were as likely to come from the silliness of the film as from any humor written into the plot. It seemed impossible.
Shaun of the Dead changed all that, of course. It was funny as hell from start to finish, but it had a few moments that might well have come straight out of a George Romero film. Suddenly there was a template for a good horror comedy, and since then we’ve been in a bit of a golden age. Severance, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, Slither, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, all entertaining films with the odd dash of ultraviolence or even genuinely creepy moments here and there. And some more serious horror has at least added humorous elements, like Cabin in the Woods or Drag Me To Hell. That’s a relief, really; the genre seems to have decided for the most part that it isn’t allowed to be fun anymore. There’s no joy, no playfulness, in a film like À l'intérieur or Martyrs. Straight horror has gotten hard to watch recently, but horror comedy is saving the day.
Zombieland just feels good. Most of the jokes hit, Jesse Eisenberg (Columbus) and Emma Stone (Wichita) are extremely likeable, the kid (Abigail Breslin) rarely aggravates me, and this is BY FAR my favorite performance by Woody Harrelson (Tallahassee). He’s the best horror hero since, well, Shaun. I like my heroes competent, unhinged, and speaking with southern accents, and he just rips into the zombies with such glee that you have to smile. Ruben Fleischer’s direction is pretty unobtrusive, but he paces the film extremely well; it bogs down very slightly when Stone, Harrelson, and our special cameo performer hit the hookah, but otherwise it clips right along. I was never bored for a second. A couple of the emotional beats even land, which surprised me, though the scene where Wichita and Columbus get drunk was a little clunky. And there's a deleted scene where the kid convinces Wichita to go back and pick the boys up after the girls have stolen their car that really should have been included in the film, but on the whole, it's very well put together indeed.
I hear this was originally intended to be a television series, but they couldn’t get any network interest, so they just made a film. I’ve also heard that they tried to make it into a web series last year and failed pretty ignominiously, through having no budget and being unable to land any of the original actors but still trying to use the same characters. That’s a shame; I would absolutely be into this if it became a series, even without Harrelson, Eisenberg, and Stone. It would be nice to have a cheerful counterpoint to The Walking Dead. Surely SyFy or somebody could pony up a few bucks. There must be a market.
So I'm gonna give this a solid seven, damn near an eight. Harrelson himself is a 10, and most of the rest of the movie is pretty damned good. This isn’t going to be at the top of my list, but it’s a definite eventual purchase.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: Columbus' rules for survival, or rather, the way the rules keep popping up in the background every time one of them comes into play. I especially liked when Tallahassee runs over a zombie twice with his truck and “#2: Double Tap” is printed on the pavement, but basically every time it happened I grinned. But then, I watched the whole thing with a big dumb smile on my face.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: The blossoming relationship between Wichita and Columbus could have been better, as mentioned above. Sometimes it works, as when Columbus puts his seat belt back on, and other times it doesn’t. When it doesn’t it’s a little aggravating, but I don't think it drags the film down. I can live with it.

SCORE: 7/10

B. Monkey (1998)

I want to make two things clear about this film: first, I love it; second, most folks won’t. It's hilarious that the DVD cover includes a blurb that it's a “roller coaster of thrills.” No, it really isn't. It's not a thriller, it's not an action movie, it's not even really a love story, though a romance is central to it. It's really a study of some very interesting characters.
The plot is pretty standard stuff. There’s a thief named Beatrice (Asia Argento), who we’re informed is called “B. Monkey” by her peers because she can get into any building. That makes her sound like an expert cat burglar, and I never get tired of that sort of thing, but in fact all we see her do in the film is commit armed robberies. That's disappointing. She lives with her two partners, Paul (Rupert Everett), who runs the little clan, and his cradle-robbed lover Bruno (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), who goes out to commit the actual crimes with B. Paul is an addict, though what he's addicted to is never made clear, and he's been turning the trio's profits into drugs. This has left him dangerously in debt to a crime boss named Frank (Tim Woodward). Meanwhile, Paul's relationship with the increasingly unhinged Bruno has taken a turn for the worse, and B is beginning to feel like it might be time to grow up, get a regular job, and abandon her criminal activities.
Meanwhile, there's Alan (Jared Harris), a schoolteacher by day who spins discs at a hospital at night. I never heard of a hospital with a DJ, but I think it's a pretty cool idea, provided the DJ has Alan's tastes; he's very into the music of John Coltrane and Charlie Parker. He has a rewarding life, but it's a little bit dull. Alan could use a bit of excitement.
So, he's living a quiet life and looking for adventure, and she's living a raucous life and looking for peace, and of course they meet and fall in love. But their relationship is threatened by B's difficulty in adjusting to ordinary life, Alan's fears of B's past, and of course the possibility that Frank will just get fed up and have everyone shot.
So from a story standpoint, this is very ordinary. Furthermore, there are a lot of rumors about studio interference and forced re-shoots and re-edits, which might explain why the plot seems a bit disjointed at times (well, most of the time). Looked at as a narrative, the film doesn't exactly fail, but it isn't very strong.
It is strong, though, just as a sensual experience rather than a story. It's not the most beautiful film I've ever seen, but it is very lovely. The cinematography is excellent. The movie takes place on the streets of London and Paris, and ends in a highlands rural community, and the scenery is great. I adore both Alan's apartment and Paul's house, and even the little French inn the couple stays at on vacation. The movie is full of great sets. It doesn't really have a score, or at least not much of one; instead it has a soundtrack, and a great one. It's half the cool jazz that both Alan and Paul love, and half the techno and trip-hop that B and Bruno fancy. The film, lovely as it is, is also worth just listening to, between the music and the voices of the cast. It's very evocative.
Although the story isn't the greatest, the characters are well-drawn and well-played. I've always thought of Harris as a terribly underrated actor, and he sort of holds this movie together as the only stable character. There are certainly moments where I feel like he's being a bit of dick: when B enlists Bruno's aid to intimidate a troublesome woman into silence, Alan flips out, whereas a discussion ("B, I appreciate that you're trying to help me, but I'd rather you didn't assault people...") would seem like a more reasonable response than disappearing for a few days. Still, it's understandable; Alan is doing his best, but he's in a situation (and dealing with people) that are beyond his experience and capabilities. His character has a boring life, perhaps, but Harris doesn't play him boring, and while he's frequently frustrated with B, it's clear that he's always in love.
That bit might not have been so hard to play, though. Argento's B is a force of nature, one of the most desirable women I've ever seen in a movie. She's fierce and fearless and always on top of every situation in her own world, though Alan's world confounds her. At the same time, though, she's sweet and forgiving and just very genuine. She feels everything so deeply, and it's natural to her to act on those feelings. Anyone would love her. Her criminal past isn't terribly well-done; she seems like more a dilettante than a career criminal. The part of her past that does work is her affection for Paul and Bruno. In fact, for most of the film, her love for Paul is more obvious on the screen than her love for Alan, though perhaps that makes sense. Everett's Paul is the best character in the film.
That's not unusual for him. He's stolen practically every scene in every movie he's been in. He's just one of the most talented and magnetic actors in the world. This part suits him. Paul is very ironic, very nihilist, and very charming. He is utterly pathetic; I spend a lot of the movie angry at him, for being weak, for being cruel, for thoughtlessly endangering B, and yet I ache for him, too. Everything that happens to him is his own fault, he deserves what he gets, but I keep hoping he can somehow be saved. When Alan physically throws him out of the house, I want to slap Alan for it.
Meyers was very young and still learning to act here. He's mostly just ridiculously beautiful, that's very clearly why he was cast, but I like the way he plays Bruno. He's wild-eyed and ardent and always on the verge of an explosion. Whereas Alan and Paul are the grown-ups in the movie, Bruno and B seem like children together. When they just sit and talk and laugh, they're perfect together. And really, though there are scenes where Meyers could possibly have been better, there are none where he isn't good. His last scene, where his motivations change twice in just a very few seconds and he wraps up the plot basically all by himself, is surprisingly good. It's a bit of a heavy responsibility, and it doesn't help that the scene isn't terribly well-written, but with the support of Argento and Harris, he totally pulls it off. This established him, for me at least, as someone to watch, and over the years he has rarely let me down.
To some extent, I suppose the love story is the tale of Alan learning to fill the space in B's life that had been filled both by Paul and by Bruno. Right from the get-go he's very much like Paul in her life, the calm, the obvious affection. He has to learn to be like Bruno, though, with his wild passion and recklessness. I guess that's the point of Alan advancing on Bruno in that final scene, refusing to back down, declaring that he'd die for B in a situation where he might actually do just that. I think it works, but mileage may vary.
The supporting cast is okay. There are a couple of familiar faces. Clare Higgins, who will always be the scheming Julia of Hellraiser, has a couple of not-bad scenes as the headmistress of Alan's school. Julie Wallace is utterly disgusting (meaning that as a compliment) as an abusive mother. My favorite appearance, which of course meant nothing to me or anyone else in 1998, is an impossibly young Eddie Marsan as an out-of-his-depth thug. Seriously, he looks 15. It's hilarious.
I've never recommended this film to anyone. It's very flawed. The believability of the relationship between B and Alan is sometimes perfect but occasionally a bit shallow, the story is both convoluted and predictable (a difficult combo), and the denouement is a bit too...sweet, maybe. It feels a little contrived. It has nothing to say, offers nothing new. But to me, the beautiful things about this film are extraordinary. I don't ignore the flaws, but I can forgive them for the sake of the characters and their surroundings. They're worth it to each other, and to me, as well.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: The four stars and the varying mood they create. Everett brings a darkness or sadness, Meyers a sense of danger, and Harris sanctuary and stability. Argento floats effortlessly among the three, sometimes taking on the atmosphere of her scenemates, and sometimes conflicting with them, but it all works. I always feel what I'm meant to feel. Also, it's insignificant, but I like the bit near the end where Asia imitates the women at the cricket match. It's a nice moment.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: Asia's closing narration. It's superfluous and a bit cloying. I mean, it might have been left to our imaginations that B and Alan would settle into their new lives, but I guess it's okay that they show us the cricket match and the pub. As I said above, I enjoyed a bit of the cricket match, really. But the narration just tells us what we're seeing, along with the fact that they never saw Bruno again, which is information we didn't really need. It's such an amateur touch from a very talented director (Michael Radford, Il Postino) that I really want to blame the studio for it. “Who knew I would find happiness in the middle of fucking nowhere?” is just a terrible closing line, and the film deserved better.

SCORE: 7/10
LISTS: Favorites of the Nineties

So, DO the Eighties Hold Up?

Wrap-up for “Do the Eighties Hold Up?” August
Well, it's a bit of a toss-up, really. I rated all six films before I started, according to how good they seemed to be in my memory. Here's a quick table showing the ratings I expected them to have, and the ratings I gave them after watching them last month:

So it looks pretty even, and note that none of them is bad. Three of the films were at least as good as I remembered, and three of them were not. Overall, more stars were lost than gained (narrowly), so we might possibly say that on the whole, the films aren't as good as they were, but it's still pretty close. Can we use these six films to chart definite trends in the films of the Eighties? Well, they were all highly-regarded in their time. All but Prick Up Your Ears were nominated for at least one Oscar (the screenplay for Witness actually won, which astounds me). So it might not be a bad cross-section, although I don't know that anyone would say this list represents the best of the decade. Only one of these films made my personal Eighties top 25, and I doubt the others would make anyone else's lists, either. But, let's use them anyway and see what we can say.
Are there common threads here? Well, let's start by looking at the music. The Elephant Man had the only good original score. Of course the music in Amadeus was brilliant; it would have to be, but that music wasn't original to the film, obviously. Diner relied mostly on diagetic music (I've only just learned the word “diagetic,” or music that is actually played by characters or devices during a scene, and am pleased to get to use it), and because it was jazz and good early rock & roll, it works. Prick Up Your Ears also relied on diagetic music, but did have a score, which although rarely present was not very good. Educating Rita had a terrible score, and Witness was even worse, so we're one-for-six on good original music. That sort of reflects what I remembered of the Eighties, actually. Soundtracks were relied upon more heavily than scores, but when original music was used it seems like everybody took to heart the good work Vangelis did on Chariots of Fire (a score which, by the way, does still hold up) and tried to imitate it, and did so poorly. The Eighties was the era of crappy synthesizer scores. These films provide evidence of that.
Good writing, though. Diner, Educating Rita, Amadeus, and Prick Up Your Ears all had excellent scripts, and in the case of Rita I would go so far as to call it brilliant. The Elephant Man was solid, if a bit heavy-handed, and I've already complained at some length about the TV drama-quality script for Witness, but collectively these films represent some brilliant screenwriting. I always call the Eighties the “Dumb Fun Decade,” but each of these movies has intelligence and emotional depth that belies that (even Witness, though that's due as much to performances as to what's actually being said).
Cinematography is a bit of a problem. The Elephant Man and Amadeus are both gorgeous, and Prick Up Your Ears has some interesting, moody photography, but the other three just didn't look that good. None of them are ugly, but visually they don't offer much. I'm beginning to suspect, though, that this might be due in part to crappy DVD transfers. Those films aren't even available on blu-ray, and the DVDs are from that first wave of DVDs, where the transfers were often a bit spotty, especially for films that didn't have huge followings. I kind of feel like I can't judge their visual style too harshly until they get a blu-ray release, or I get hold of a time machine and can go watch them in theaters. So I'm retracting some of the mean things I said about how Educating Rita looks. Not all of it, though.
The acting was quite solid. The leads in every film were at least very good, and many were brilliant. The supporting cast in Educating Rita wasn't very strong, and in Witness the supporting cast wasn't good mostly because they were given nothing to do. There were no bad performances in Amadeus, but I do think that a few actors might have been miscast and sort of overcame it. In The Elephant Man and Prick Up Your Ears the supporting casts were very strong, and in Diner nearly every role was played perfectly. If I was giving out an ensemble-cast Oscar (which the Academy really needs to institute) for the Eighties it would definitely go to Diner.
And finally, direction. I'd say the class job of the bunch was done by Milos Forman in Amadeus (hardly controversial, since he won the Oscar), and Stephen Frears did an excellent job with Prick Up Your Ears, as well. A lot of credit has to go to Barry Levinson for getting strong performances out of unknown actors and holding together a story that isn't really a story in Diner, and since that was his debut it's even more impressive. While sometimes David Lynch drags The Elephant Man off into weird places, and I complained about this at some length already, he's still David Lynch, and I love him. I can't say I love the work done by Lewis Gilbert and Peter Weir, but they weren't actually bad, just maybe a bit uninspired.
So if we take these six films as a valid cross-section of the Eighties, the typical movie of the decade had very strong writing and great performances by its lead actors, decent supporting work that occasionally shined, good-but-not-great direction, spotty cinematography (or at least bad DVD transfers) and appalling original music. Does that sound like the Eighties you remember? Discuss.