DON'T LOOK NOW 1973

There is nothing like a good scare at the movies. I don't mean those jarring, throw-your-popcorn-in-air, dig-your-nails-into-your-partner's-arm, moments (ah, sweet memories of Wait Until Dark). As fun as they can be, those moments are over much too swiftly. What I refer to are those far more satisfying, lasting feelings of intensifying disquietude that overtake you the moment a movie starts to touch upon an anxiety or sense of dread that runs deeper than mere surprise in the face of the unexpected. Those moments when the passive role of observer — the moviegoer's emotional safety valve—give way to the more interactive role of the projected participant. Suddenly, you're relating to the film on a visceral level, and all the while an electric current running through you is taking great delight in your being brought to such a vulnerable state of apprehension by mere flickering images projected on a screen.  

It happened once when I was a kid and saw Rosemary's Baby and it happened again as an adult with Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now. an opaque, atmospheric thriller that proves when it comes to scary stories, it's all in the telling.

  Julie Christie  as  Laura Baxter

  Donald Sutherland  as John Baxter

Hilary Mason as Heather, the blind woman with "second sight"

  Clelia Matania as Wendy

An off-season assignment to restore a decaying church in Venice Italy affords architect Donald Sutherland and wife Julie Christie the opportunity to leave behind mournful memories associated with their English country home—the site of a recent tragedy--the accidental drowning death of their young daughter. However, Venice in winter, a shuttered city blanketed in gray skies, desolate streets, and half-empty cafes and hotels, is so grim and foreboding it's hard to imagine a less suitable place to try to overcome depression. A feeling further intensified by the city being beset by a string of grisly, unsolved murders. With the “chance” meeting of a pair of eccentric elderly sisters, one blind and claiming to have a psychic connection with the deceased child, a chain of strange and uncanny events is triggered...events as labyrinthine and dark as the streets of Venice themselves.

                              The unforeseeable foreseen.
                              A sense of something not being right.
                              An accident. A premonition. A fate.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

What one considers scary is as subjective a designation as what one considers to be funny, so I'm aware my claim of Don't Look Now being one of the scariest movies I've ever seen is not the same thing as saying it's a scary movie. I'm certain that for many its premise and execution are far too leisurely and bloodless for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre crowd, and the label of "arty" would not be baseless in describing both its structure and visual style. But for whatever reason or whatever chord it struck, this darkly mysterious merge of the rational and paranormal just scared the bejesus out of me when I first saw it. And continues to do so even today.

Venice in Peril
A sign calling attention to the endangered status of Venice architecture also 
alludes ominously to the serial killer terrorizing the city.

PERFORMANCES
I claim no objectivity when it comes to Julie Christie. To the head-scratching bewilderment of my partner, who thinks she's fine enough but nothing to rave about, I find her to be an intelligently resourceful actress who brings an air of emotive conviction to everything she does. And it certainly doesn't hurt that she is a stone knockout, to boot. Her matter-of-fact naturalness proves an essential asset in a film such as this, lest her character be made to appear hysterical or unbalanced. Donald Sutherland underplays so well (usually, anyway) that the skill of his performances are often overlooked. In Don't Look Now he is at his relaxed best, making his character a believable skeptic in the face of the fantastic. Watch the play of emotions over his face as his character tries to sort out the mystery that his life has become. It's just the kind of in-the-moment urgency that is lacking in so many suspense films. Sutherland seems to be right with us, the audience, not a step ahead nor a step behind. I think he's fantastic here.

The much-discussed graphic sex scene between Christie and Sutherland is but one of many moments of genuine affection displayed between the couple. Moments that invest the film with a real sense of the pain of loss.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

There's a chilling sequence in which the couple venture out at night, looking for a restaurant they've heard about. The dark streets and alleys prove an insurmountable maze and they become lost and eventually separated. In the midst of this, an unearthly cry is heard and something terrifying is half seen. This scene just had my pulse racing. It is a brilliant bit of  cinematic tension.

Things only half seen and half heard.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

The film's title is really splendid. No matter how you say it, literal or ironic, whatever you think it means, whatever punctuation you add, or wherever you place the emphasis; it remains 100% appropriate to the film's themes. It speaks of warning, apprehension, sight, and danger. All elements of the film evocatively rendered in the recurring perception motifs of eyes, watching, seeing, and reflecting.

A woman without sight watches.

The city is full of windows but no one sees the murderer.

A child drowns because no one is watching.

Much of  Don't Look Now concerns itself with the concept of perception. Most certainly self-perception (Sutherland's character's fatal flaw is ignoring his own sixth sense) and awakening to the danger inherent in not heeding signs of warning, not being watchful, not seeing, not looking. 

Don’t Look Now is one of those movies so rich in content that it yields dividends with each re-visit. This brief insert shot reveals details of Donald Sutherland's nightstand: a photo of his children with the drowned daughter's face obscured. A glass of water with a symbolically significant red base. A paperback copy of Der Stellvertreter (subtitled, A Christian Tragedy) by Rolf Hochhuth - a play alleging the Catholic Church turned its back on (failed to heed, refused to see) the warning signs of The Holocaust. Playing further into the themes of not looking and paying little heed, in a later scene, a Catholic Bishop pondering the violence in the world wonders aloud if perhaps God has "other priorities" or perhaps "we have stopped listening."

A thriller in every sense of the word, Don't Look Now is one of those rare suspense films that doesn't lose its punch after it's revealed its mystery. Indeed, that's precisely the point when more questions are likely to spring to mind. Whatever level it's approached by -- a mood piece, a study of grief, a psychic mystery, a ghost story -- Don't Look Now delivers as a chilling, remarkably effective, and atmospheric suspenser that's as much a treat for the eyes (Venice has never looked more hauntingly beautiful) as the imagination. But keep your eyes peeled.

BONUS MATERIAL

Don't Look Now theatrical trailer:

Copyright © Ken Anderson    2009 - 2011

NEW YORK, NEW YORK 1977

It's an odd thing being a film enthusiast. One part of you regards film as an art form, worthy of all the aesthetic principles applied to fine art; the other makes peace with the fact that film is an entertainment industry "product" and just as likely the inspiration of tax shelters, hedge funds, and profit predictions. (I'm not naive to the realities of the movie industry, but I confess that I still find it a sobering experience watching the Academy Awards each year and hearing, instead of lofty speeches about their dedication to the higher principles of art, the gratified listing of professional associates like producers, agents, managers, and publicists.) 

It's for these reasons why, in this world full of directors more concerned with building an add-on to their Malibu beach homes than with building a legacy of work that has something to say about the human condition, I remain (sometimes blindly) faithful to and thankful for filmmakers like Martin Scorsese. Even when he falters, as I believe he does with New York, New York, he's still one of those directors who always appears to be trying to make films that matter.

Liza Minnelli as Francine Evans

Robert De Niro as Jimmy Doyle

I first saw New York, New York in San Francisco in 1977. Due to the success of Taxi Driver, Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese were extremely hot at the time, and San Francisco was all abuzz over the fact that, simultaneous to the release of New York, New York, Liza Minnelli was appearing at the Orpheum Theater in a pre-Broadway tryout of the Scorsese-directed musical, Shine It On (which became The Act by the time it reached Broadway). Minnelli had suffered a string of movie flops following 1972’s Cabaret, but the papers were full of gossip about her romance with Scorsese and predictions that New York, New York would return her to her former station as the queen of show biz.

Alas, despite high-running anticipations, New York, New York flopped rather spectacularly when it opened. The original version I saw on opening day was hastily re-edited within the week and a shorter version re-released to theaters, but to no great effect. The verdict was already in and the film pretty much declared D.O.A. by the critics.

DeNiro and Minnelli Make with the Goo Goo Eyes

The most extravagant film to date for the gritty Scorsese (the combined budgets of all his previous films didn't equal the $14-million spent here), New York, New York is a 1940s MGM backstage musical viewed through the dark prism of the '70s zeitgeist (individualism, commoditization of art, and feminism crop up amongst the nostalgia fetishism). Sweet-natured big band singer Francine Evans (Minnelli) falls for volatile saxophone player Jimmy Doyle (De Niro), and in the tradition of A Star is Born and Cover Girl, Francine’s professional ascendancy threatens De Niro’s ego and puts a strain on their romance.

Realistic Tensions on Stylized Sets

No expense is spared in giving the film the look and feel of those quaintly studio-bound romances of old, but Scorsese’s desire to contrast '70s naturalism with the stylized artificiality of '40s musicals doesn’t really gel, and the whole enterprise feels like an obscenely over-funded film school experiment.  

Without a doubt, Scorsese’s biggest and most fatal miscalculation is in mounting such a staggeringly sumptuous production and then neglecting to give us either characters to care about or a romance to root for (or, to be honest, much in the way of a story at all). What were the writers thinking in dreaming up De Niro’s Jimmy Doyle? Did Scorsese really think a guy this noxious (he's like a cross between Travis Bickle and Jake LaMotta) would make for an appropriate musical-comedy leading man? Even with the film structured as something of a dramedy, De Niro's lack of any kind of redeeming qualities leaves an emotional hole dead-center of this overstuffed opus. In addition, not only is De Niro’s character such a selfish, hot-headed, obnoxious bully that watching his scenes becomes an increasingly trying experience, but the level of passivity with which his abuse is met by Minnelli's character has the effect of souring our feelings toward her as well.

Robert De Niro: Star Quality? Yes. Charm? Not so much.

When veteran filmmakers lament the loss of the artistic freedoms that came with the "New Hollywood" of the '70s, one can't help but feel that a lot of the blame must fall at their own cocaine-dusted feet. Seventies darlings like Peter Bogdanovich and Michael Cimino provided the nails for their own coffins by misusing their success to cultivate costly, undisciplined vanity projects (At Long Last Love & Heaven's Gate, respectively), and Scorsese follows suit with New York, New York.

These directors, who were so resourceful with tiny budgets, all seemed to lose their minds when handed millions, prompting the studios and lawyers to ultimately step in, like stern governesses, and take back the keys to the candy store. Scorsese allows improvised scenes to drag on and on pointlessly, as if unable to ascertain when to cut; characters pop in and out with little information given as to their importance to the leads; and whole scenes look randomly assembled, able to be inserted and deleted with little effect to the plot. It's never a good sign when you can imagine a film being screened with its reels out of order, and it not making a whit of difference. I respect when a filmmaker tries to do something different, but creative self-indulgence on such a grand scale just feels needlessly wasteful.

Mary Kay PLace as Bernice Bennett

Barry Primus as Paul Wilson

Mary Kay Place (Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman) and Barry Primus (Puzzle of a Downfall Child) play peripheral characters whose significance to the plot varies significantly depending on which cut of the film you've seen.

 WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Given my criticisms, New York, New York might seem to be an odd choice to number among the films which inspire me. But I really do find something admirable in what Martin Scorsese attempted to do here, a feeling which has nothing to do with his inability to actually pull it off. It's a provocative idea to explore what a director known for his realist/naturalistic style could bring to a genre as grounded in artificiality as the classic Hollywood musical. To his credit, Scorsese doesn’t mock or cynically hold himself superior to the genre. He really appears to respect the dramatic and emotional potential of musicals and clearly has an affinity for their dream-factory allure. If anything, New York, New York makes a good argument for the unpopular theory that, in terms of professionalism and mastery of craft, contemporary directors can't hold a candle to even the most journeyman studio-contract directors of the past.

PERFORMANCES

This is the first love story I’ve ever seen that had the audience on its feet cheering when the lovers DON’T end up together! I’m really not equipped to judge Robert De Niro’s performance because the character he plays is so detestable I can’t tell if De Niro is simply miscast, or if he thinks his creepy stalker act is actually supposed to be charming (sad to say, but I've known many women -and men- who would willingly put up with such behavior if the guy looked like De Niro). What I can speak to is how terrific Liza Minnelli's performance is. I think it's her absolute finest post-Cabaret film work, and she is in the best voice of her career. Though ill-served by the script, she is exactly right and a perfect fit for what should have been the role of a lifetime and another Oscar nomination. After spending most of her career trying to distance herself from comparisons with her mother, Minnelli just goes all Garland on us here, and the results are fantastic. Any warmth and heart that the film has is chiefly due to her.

Minnelli's finest film moment: Singing the hell out of "The World Goes 'Round"

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

On par with how far afield this film goes emotionally, is how superbly the film works musically. Scorsese handles the musical sequences surprisingly well and displays a real knack for the ways in which music can be seamlessly integrated into a narrative. The score is chock full of great postwar standards, and the new songs by Kander & Ebb (Chicago) are among their best work. That the terrific title song failed to get an Oscar nod, and was otherwise largely ignored until covered by Frank Sinatra some two years later, attests to the level of public indifference New York, New York was met with on its release.

A great many subpar classic MGM musicals have been saved by spectacle. Unfortunately, New York, New York's many splashy musical numbers aren't enough to fully surmount the film's narrative shortcomings.

Diahnne Abbott (then Mrs. De Niro) appears as a singer in a Harlem nightclub

         

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Some people can forgive a film anything if there are lots of explosions or chase scenes. Me, I'm a sucker for a film that's beautiful to look at. Cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs (Easy Rider), costume designer Theadora Van Runkle (Bonnie & Clyde), and production designer Boris Leven (West Side Story) give New York, New York a period gloss that almost, just almost, makes up for the fact that, while all dressed up, the film ultimately has nowhere to go.

My Favorite Set: The Neon Nightclub

Obviously, everything I've written about New York, New York are the impressions I was left with after I saw the film. That's the fair bargain struck between the filmmaker and the movie-goer: let me have your attention for a couple of hours (or three) and you are free to take from this experience what you will, pro or con. That's straightforward and honest to me. I invest my time, they invest their ideas and inspiration. What pisses me off is when I've invested my time and it's nakedly apparent that the movie I'm watching is a product of pitch meetings, dealmaking, and ledger sheets.

Which is precisely why, flawed as it is, New York, New York still remains such a valuable piece of cinema to me. Love it or hate it, whether you think it's courageous or foolhardy, there's no getting around the fact that Scorsese was at least trying to do something interesting. Who's to say what part drugs and addiction played in giving the final film its hodgepodge feel (reports lean toward considerable); but I like that it's so obviously the work of someone vitally excited by filmmaking. The missteps are easier to take when there is some passion on display. I'll take a wrongheaded, artistically well-intentioned flop over a calculated, market-researched blockbuster any day.

THE AUTOGRAPH FILES
By the way, I was one of the many who went to see Ms. Minnelli at the Orpheum Theater that summer in 1977, and stood out by the stage door to get the photograph below autographed by both Scorsese (lower left) and Minnelli (w/smiley face). Considering all the pressures of the show, the movie, and everything else, you couldn't have met two nicer people.

Above: Larry Kert appeared in the "Happy Endings" number that was initially cut from the film and later restored. Got this autograph when he was appearing in a play in Los Angeles

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2011

REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE 1967

One of the more suspect affectations among the film-school cognoscenti (and there are many) is the lazy, ofttimes wholesale, approbation afforded offbeat, abstruse, or otherwise boring films in an effort to appear possessed of a more discerning aesthetic sense. Though rooted in the not-unfounded notion that the scope of film should encompass more than just mass-market fare, too frequently this democratic ideal gives way to a baseless elitism and a knee-jerk aligning of oneself with the unpopular just because it is unpopular. 

I know whereof I speak, because, as a former film student, I've been guilty of such behavior myself. More hours than I care to think about have been spent in dark theaters pretending to enjoy some execrable, masturbatory piece of self-indulgence merely because it was trashed by mainstream critics. A sophomoric game of "one-upmanship" was common practice with me and my friends at film school (The San Francisco Art Institute), each of us attempting to best the other in professing love for a film more unlikely and unknown than the last. 

"A peacock of a sort of ghastly green. With one immense golden eye. And in it these reflections of something tiny and grotesque."

I mention this as a kind of preemptory self-defense/explanation, noting my awareness that heralding John Huston's arty, much-maligned, Reflections in a Golden Eye may appear more than a little pretentious. That may be the impression, but I really think that this would be a widely-liked film if only more people knew about it. A victim of a transitional era in film that had no idea of how to market such an unusual movie, this is one amazing film that has (in my opinion) withstood the test of time. Distanced from the shock value of its once-taboo theme of homosexuality, and removed from the movie-star tabloid distractions of its two once-controversial stars, Reflections in a Golden Eye can at last be seen for what it is: a searing character piece boasting a host of fine performances and John Huston at his best as director.

 Elizabeth Taylor as Leonora Penderton

  Marlon Brando as Major Weldon Penderton

Julie Harris as Alison Langdon

Brian Keith as Lt. Col. Morris Langdon

Robert Forster as  Pvt.  L.G. Williams

Zorro David as  Anacleto

A last-gasp entry in the beloved (to me, anyway) sub-genre of "Southern Gothic," Reflections in a Golden Eye peels away the placid exterior of life in a peacetime military base to reveal the madness and repressed passions that lie beneath the imposed order of barracks, military protocol, and rigid conformity. 

Its plot is steeped in southern-fried dread: Robert Forster is a sexually repressed soldier who develops a scopophilic fixation on Elizabeth Taylor, the sexually rapacious wife of army officer Marlon Brando. Brando, who tolerates Taylor's affair with fellow officer Brian Keith (whose mentally disturbed wife, Julie Harris, has recently mutilated herself out of grief over the death of a child), is a latent homosexual who becomes sexually obsessed with Forester.  

Houston, rather ingeniously, takes a stylistic cue from the book's title and not only shoots the film in muted tones of gold, but films the events from an emotional remove. We are not invited into the minds of these characters so much as we are entreated to observe their piteously empty and sad behavior as though we are voyeurs ourselves: seeing it all from a distance, reflected and distorted in an immense, all-seeing, golden eye. When the film ends and we have time for the events that have unfolded before us to sink in, it dawns that the reflection has been of ourselves the entire time.

A favorite Elizabeth Taylor screen moment.
Leonora challenges her husband's masculinity:

"Son, have you ever been collared and dragged out into the street and thrashed by a naked woman? Huh?"

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

It's always a challenge for a movie to ask us to identify with characters which represent, in large part, aspects of ourselves we look to the movies to help us to forget. Reflections in a Golden Eye has much to tell us about pain, compassion, and the fact that everyone harbors within themselves something dark and hidden within themselves that they are certain would render them unworthy of love if revealed. Its a movie that doesn't ask you to approve of its characters, but rather, to merely acknowledge their humanity. Like Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Carson McCullers' Reflections in a Golden Eye is a novel without a hero, and as such, we're deprived of uplift, moral victory, or reassuring messages. What I admire about the film is how it shows, with sensitivity and insight, the ways in which  the bizarre and even perverse, when removed from the accusing eye of moral judgment, often reveals itself to be nothing more or less than just human vulnerability.

Symbols of desire: The  Major, surrounded by the fetish objects of a male physique photo and a silver spoon stolen from a fellow officer, fondles a phallic candy wrapper discarded by the soldier who has become the object of his obsession

  

PERFORMANCES

Marlon Brando has always been an uneven kind of actor to me, but his performance here is outstanding and my favorite of all of his screen portrayals. Its one of those naked performances that actually makes you uncomfortable because he allows you to see him so emotionally exposed. Jokingly referred to as "Mr. Mumbles" by co-star Taylor (as relayed in the terrific book on the making of the film, "Troubles in a Golden Eye" by William Russo & Jan Merlin), Brando's sometimes garbled line-readings are at last made intelligible thanks to the "subtitles" option on the DVD.

When I young, Elizabeth Taylor was such a gossip magazine staple that it was kind of easy to dismiss her as just a movie star. I always thought she was beautiful, but it was only after I grew up that I came to appreciate what a gifted actress she was. She is wonderful here, playing a kind of sexually self-assured bubblehead (note the scene where she writes out the party invitations) unwittingly leading men to their doom. A vision of perhaps the kind of woman The Day of the Locust's Faye Greener would have grown up to be. Also, special mention has to be made of Brian Keith who surprised the hell out of me. Always an underrated actor, the way in which he takes a macho stereotype role and fashions out of it something genuinely heartbreaking, is nothing short of alchemy.

 THE STUFF OF FANTASY

I'm crazy about cinema images that contain, in mere seconds of screen time, enough acuity, poetry, and beauty to equal a volume of written text or a concert of  music. The scenes wherein it is revealed that the sullenly distant Forester takes regular sojourns into the woods to doff his clothes and blissfully ride the horses he loves so much, are really haunting. Rendered even more so by the golden glow of the beautiful cinematography (reverted back to standard Technicolor a week after the film's release. The DVD edition restored Huston's original vision).

 THE STUFF OF DREAMS

There are many memorable sequences in the film, but the one that seems to stay with me is one that is almost Hitchcockian in its construction. It happens late in the film, at a point in the story when the major has so fully resigned himself to his obsession that he has taken to following the young soldier along the streets at night (something the soldier is not exactly unaware of). One evening, while following on a crowded street, an auto accident occurs behind the major. Everyone on the street, including the soldier, turns to see what has happened or runs to be of assistance. The major doesn't flinch or look behind him at all. Throughout, his eyes remain, fixed and unblinking, exclusively on the soldier. The effect of the scene is so powerful, the first time I saw it I recall feeling my abdominal muscles tense, as if receiving a blow to the stomach.

There's a real poignancy to the pain that must be felt by individuals who cannot, will not, or are unable to, openly express who they are and be true to their natures. To today's audiences, films that deal with  repressed homosexuality may appear dated and perhaps even a little quaint. But I caution those who would think that the broader freedoms of today signal inclusive liberation. They don't. Indeed, one might even argue that our society today has no fewer deeply closeted gay men than in McCullers' time; the only difference is that now they're more apt to manifest as "gay for pay" porn stars; homophobic recording artists; and married, anti-gay legislating politicians.

  

In a marvelous scene, the major poses the following provocative question to the intolerant lieutenant (and, more importantly, to himself) who has just stated that his wife's effeminate houseboy, Anacleto (the only remotely happy person in the film), would have been unhappy, but better off, had the Army been given a crack at making him into a man.
This question was posed by Carson McCullers 70 years ago and it remains one that should be asked of, say, the anti same-sex marriage proponents of today:

  "You mean that any fulfillment obtained at the expense of normalcy is wrong, and should not be allowed to bring happiness. In short, it is better, because it is morally honorable, for a square peg to keep scraping about the round hole rather than to discover and use the unorthodox square that would fit it?"

Just brilliant.

Leave The Children Home

Copyright © Ken Anderson