Great Directors: Polanksi (re)defines a genre

***This is the fifth of five in-depth essays on great directors.***

Chinatown is an examination of genre. Many films have sampled from the film noir lexicon, movies like Body Heat, with its devious femme fatale. A movie like Dark City used some of film noir’s rules and dramatic lighting but used them in a science fiction universe of special effects and horrific imagery. Some, like Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye or the first Naked Gun film, have tried outright parody of film noir to a certain degree of success. L.A. Confidential did a blatant neo-noir exaggeration that effectively appealed to every film noir convention, from the hard-boiled detective to the labyrinthine corruption of power. But if there is any film that truly supports the original spirit of the golden age of film noir, it is Chinatown, Roman Polanski’s stubborn vindication of his talent and personal life inside a Hollywood that would turn against him.

More than any film outside the true film noir era — which ran roughly from 1940 to the mid 1950s — Chinatown adheres to what made the genre great, with only a few notable exceptions: it was shot in color using a subtle lighting scheme; the dialogue, while suggestive, is not nearly as titillating as any of the great film noirs; and it was shot after the abandonment of the Hays Code, which, as detrimental to films as it was, gave film noir its hidden edge. Everything else about Chinatown, though, is true-blue film noir in the greatest respect. Consider first the opening credits that reveal the entire cast and crew in an almost sepia-tinted simplicity. By 1974 movies had long ago stopped running complete credits this way at the beginning of the film, but Polanski adopts the technique to begin developing his film noir essay, by slowly transporting us back to another age. Consider next the character of J.J. Gittes, the hard-boiled detective who’s sent into a seething curiosity with each new lie — “You shortchanged me on the story,” he tells Evelyn Mulwray. Gittes could be a Sam Spade or a Philip Marlowe, a Bogart or a Mitchum, and not just because he’s a private detective, but because his quest for the truth is almost his undoing. “[Is this] business or obsession,” Evelyn asks. With Gittes it’s a little of both — business at the beginning, obsession at the end. Evelyn isn’t quite the femme fatale from most film noirs, but she assumes the role as best she can. She lies a great deal, manipulates the truth, endangers Gittes, but overall she’s not doing these things for selfish reasons like a Brigid O’Shaughnessy (The Maltese Falcon) or a Phyllis Dietrichson (Double Indemnity). In fact, her intentions could be almost understood as noble ignoring the implications of her previous relationship with her father. In the end, all she desires is to protect her daughter from a man who bears some right to her as a daughter and grand-daughter. Does she deserve a bullet to the eye? No, but it’s Chinatown and the rules are unforgiving.

Polanski dives deeper into film noir with his setting (Los Angeles), his plot (a murder mystery), his time period (1930s) and Gittes’ obsessive spiral into the water corruption case. We, like Gittes, learn the facts, or maybe the half truths, as they are presented to us. In a sense, the viewer is investigating the case as much as Gittes, who flies by the seat of his pants from one deadly encounter to the next. Even the title of the film is a nod to film noir. Consider The Long Goodbye and The Big Sleep, euphemisms for death; or Sunset Boulevard, a place where men go to die; Double Indemnity, a death clause written into an insurance policy; or Touch of Evil, which references the doomed path men take to the grave. These are classic titles that hint at the film’s narrow descent into darkness. It’s as if film noir’s main compositional work was the exploration of death and its many subterranean avenues. Chinatown is no different; the title refers to a place where law and order (i.e. death) are circumvented by the tragedy and corruption of life. Roman Polanski wasn’t creating just a mystery; he was bowing to the greatness in which mystery thrived — film noir.

But what is Chinatown? And is it coincidence that Gittes is sharing a joke about a “Chinaman” when he meets Mrs. Mulwray and then later is with her as she’s killed while fleeing from Chinatown? I don’t think it’s just coincidence, and Polanski — with Oscar-winning writer Robert Towne — was knowingly exemplifying Gittes’ fear of Chinatown long before we ever step foot there. And by exploring Gittes’ apprehension to returning to his old police beat — watch the slow zoom on his face when he’s told an address in Chinatown — we are aware of its power and aware that by going there we risk the death the title so convincingly tempts us with.

Great Directors: Bertolucci chews the scenery

***This is the third of five in-depth essays on great directors.***

The Conformist might not be Bernardo Bertolucci’s greatest film (it is in no way my favorite), but it fulfills the essence of what the famous director believes: challenge authority, topple the norm, be subversive at all costs. The incestuous, riot-provoking teens of The Dreamers obliged to this mantra, as did Paul and Jeanne in that steamy apartment in Last Tango in Paris. Even to a certain extent did Lucy Harmon, the tattered soul in search of resolution in one of Bertolucci’s tamer films, Stealing Beauty. His films deal with moral corruption at the basest levels, on levels that are so human and so simple that to even question them is in its own right a subversive act. Notice in The Conformist how Marcello, during his confession, argues with the priest so vehemently the priest must stop and correct him — “You are talking to a priest,” the man of the cloth says. Marcello waves it off, as if no priest will hold his beliefs hostage. He talks about his “carnal sin” and a murder and then rails on the priest when he wants to know more about one and less about the other. “You don’t care that I murdered, only that I never went to confession,” he says. I think this scene is evocative of Bertolucci’s style because confession is a rather simple act, but because his characters deal in truth — or just subverting the truth — a simple confession can turn into a hateful rage fueled by a man’s lust for self-worth, which is maybe why Marcello was a cog in a very large Fascist machine. The confessional scene is also very funny to me: all Marcello had to do was complete a confession for his wife, but he makes it this big argument, this massive revelation of his character. It signals his uncompromising position in the film’s landscape.

Every time I see The Conformist it reminds me more and more of three movies. The first one is Jean-Luc-Godard’s Breathless, which was released a decade earlier. More on the other two later. Breathless, the film that sparked the powder keg called French New Wave, was told utilizing a technique I call Abstraction Interaction: it broke the fourth wall, it featured a staccato composition of jump cuts and other camera trickery, and frequently did nothing at all inside its story — yet nothing at all, of course, is very much something. The Conformist, which is also set in Paris like Breathless, rolled forward (literally, too, as Marcello drives to the assassination) on a series of flashbacks, utilizing a hard-to-follow story structure, allowing room for his characters to vent and mull over their lives. Occasionally the film would jump between points with such sharp precision, and to jarring effect, that it would unseat the viewer inside its time loop. Notice the way Marcello gets out of the car at the beginning and begins walking in the mist and fog. The scene cuts quick to the tree-lined street where Marcello, as a young boy, meets the chauffer. Then back to the mist and fog, and finally back again to the boy and his first homosexual experience. Or notice in the scene when Marcello agrees to go to confession that there is an obvious jump cut, or maybe just a continuity error (which is unlikely). One moment he’s leaning against a wall, the next he’s away from it embracing his wife who is happy he has agreed to talk to a priest. Are we seeing a subjective perspective of Marcello’s life? I think we are and Bertolucci utilizes an almost New Wave-like style to hammer it home.

The other two movies it reminds me greatly of are rather strange comparisons to make: The Godfather and Star Wars, both because they share interior space. Bertolucci gave his Conformist interesting rooms to work in. They’re large spacious halls, marble-lined antechambers, padded green rooms and the claustrophobic professor’s homes. With each, though, they have character. That’s what reminds me of The Godfather, with its large offices and meeting rooms with darkened corners. The settings don’t serve the story so much, but they become great because great things are discussed in them. And even though the characters barely interact with furniture, lamps or fixtures in the room, they are memorable and full of character and personality. That’s the way I feel about The Conformist and its various interiors. There’s also another element, the Fascist element to the interior designs and the architecture. This is what reminds me of Star Wars, which had numerous empire sets designed to look cold and evil, fascist to a certain degree. The echoing chambers of the Ministry of the Interior, the colorless Greek-like insane asylum, the large waiting areas where men with falcons and busts criss-cross the halls … these are rooms that bolster the fascist elements of this film. I find humor in the way George Lucas borrowed camera angles and setups from Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of Will, a film that chronicled Hitler’s ascent to power at Nuremberg in 1934. Maybe Triumph of the Will, through Star Wars and The Conformist, was the film that told us large, stone rooms with high ceilings and cold surfaces made for fascist imagery.

It’s not just the rooms, though, it’s the way Bertolucci and his cinematographer move through them. Some things are framed slightly askew, or completely crooked, while others are just framed in a very unorthodox manner, using Camera Thirds (divide a frame horizontally and vertically into thirds and then center subjects on the intersections of those lines). Watch the blind party — as large a metaphor you can make without venturing into parody — how the camera hangs above people’s heads, making things almost out of frame completely. Then also watch the scene in the park as Marcello’s assassin comrade walk in the park talking to himself; watch as he sits down and the camera pans so the man is behind a tree. Through all these devices, Bertolucci was showing us the shifty perspective of Marcello’s narrative. As a whole I don’t much care for The Conformist, but the details, like the cinematography and the interiors, have always intrigued me. They’ve also shown how subversive Bertolucci can be with his filming style. He really does provoke us to think outside of what we already know and understand.

Great Directors: Kubrick indicts us all

***This is the second of five in-depth essays on great directors.***

Stanley Kubrick deals with isolation. He deals with men who have been secluded from society, from their morals, from their own agency. Consider Colonel Dax from Paths of Glory, who’s removed from the decision making of his World War I fighting unit. Or Dave from 2001: A Space Odyssey, who is removed from his command by his ship’s computer, HAL 9000. The list could go on: Private Pyle from Full Metal Jacket, Jack Torrance from The Shining, Dr. Harford in Eyes Wide Shut, the bomber and its crew in Dr. Strangelove … even robotic boy David in Artificial Intelligence, Steven Spielberg’s interpretation of a Kubrick idea, exhibits this theme of isolation. All of these human and non-human characters are marginalized by the forces near them, scorned by an abnormally cruel world or set of fates. But what makes a Kubrick film so decidedly a Kubrick film is the way in which the characters react to their isolation, the way they process it all together and make informed — and sometimes brash and violent — decisions.

And this is where Alex from A Clockwork Orange steps in. Alex always seemed to me to be a loser hero, a stock character crafted under the film noir genre. Loser heroes tried to make the right choices, but were hopelessly misguided, usually by women, which is how femme fatales were born. Alex was never led astray by women, just his unquenchable urge for self-indulgence (ultra-violence, horror show, “in-out/in-out”). He lived a great but terrible life — great to him, terrible to us — and was betrayed by the Droogies he thought he had tamed. There his isolation begins. And the rest of the movie, he spirals downward by a society eager to punish. It’s ironic that at the end of the movie he’s spiraling back up thanks to the society he so callously abused. I’m reminded of the opening lines of The Departed: “I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me.” Alex and his malicious batch of Droogies, all nihilists to a moderate degree, had tried to make their environment products of themselves, to Alex’s downfall.

I’ve always been curious with this film why Kubrick would have used the fashion and architectural choices he picked. The clothing was off-the-wall with purple overcoats, the padded jock straps and purple wigs; and the buildings were modular geometric patterns that seemed to confine the characters inside them. The film, in many ways is very dystopian, a sinister and depressing look at a future society. In some ways — for instance, the milk bar, the Durango 95 car, and the elaborate decorations in Alex’s room — the film is as comparable to science fiction as 2001. I felt that Kubrick was trying to place us outside of the norm, away from what we know and fear to give us new things to know and fear, like the ultra-violence of Alex and his misanthropic stooges. Even the primary colors in the opening and closing credits seem foreign and distant, too bright to even be real — then I remember what Alex said about the blood in the films: “It’s funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on a screen.” I think Kubrick was involving us on an almost subliminal level. Just as Alex’s videos were brainwashing him, we were being “told” on an almost subconscious level that the world we were watching was somehow more real than our own, and that elements of that world (clothes, architecture, themes) were designed to imprison us inside fortified walls.

In many ways Kubrick was also trying to show us the characters’ glaring inconsistencies. Notice how Dim assists in the rape of a woman in one scene and then speaks with kindness to a mannequin milk dispenser he has named Lucy in the very next. Or notice how Alex views himself in the crucifixion of Christ — dressed in an outfit just as gaudy as his purple record-store robes — as a soldier flailing away on Christ’s back. Yet later in the film, he is the martyr, he is the sacrifice of the immoral Ludovico Technique. So is he a messiah figure or the Messiah’s executioners? The movie would have us believe both, but at different times. Lastly, look at his prison number: “six-double-five-three-two-one” — 655321. It’s almost a perfect sequence in the wrong direction. Was Kubrick playing with us? Was he showing us our descent with Alex in a number that was slightly skewed? I think so.

A Clockwork Orange is a complex movie, a film that can be viewed in too many ways to suggest that any answer is 100 percent correct. It’s my belief that Stanley Kubrick wanted us to interpret the film as we wanted. In some ways I think it does glorify violence to a certain degree. It’s impossible to not enjoy the film’s pacing, the music and that silly dialogue, even as rape and murders are so brazenly and wantonly committed on screen. I also believe that violence is also an adequate anti-violence, and that by showing the scenes he did Kubrick was indicting us right along with Alex; we were his voyeuristic cohorts. By the end of the film, it seems to shoot in all directions, mainly back at the society that allowed such a boy to be created. That, in my opinion, is the ultimate message.

Duck, Sucker: A review 36 years in the making

And from the heavens fell a film. A great film. A Sergio Leone film. And the world was good.  


Many audiences have found and enjoyed Leone’s “lost” film Duck, You Sucker or, as it’s been widely known, A Fistful of Dynamite. But not until June, with the release of the Sergio Leone Anthology, did us silly ’Mericans get a good, long glimpse of the original edit of the quasi-western. Since its 1971 release, it’s been hacked up, gutted and pretty much devoured by a variety of editors, and even then it still never landed a wide-scale American release. Maybe movie enthusiasts didn’t make enough of a fuss about it in ’71 to make it a classic, or maybe moviegoers were still gushing about The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West for Sucker to get its share of praise. Maybe, dare I say it, people didn’t like it … (gasp here). I wasn’t around, so I can’t speculate further. But I can recommend it now that it has an official release inside the Leone Anthology, which also features Clint Eastwood’s “Man With No Name” Spaghetti Westerns — A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

Sucker stars James Coburn as John Mallory, an IRA explosives expert, who is drawn to Mexico as a hired demo-expert during a Mexican revolution (or maybe the Mexican Revolution). Rod Steiger — in the form of a smelly bare-footed peasant with the ferocity of a lion and the accent of Tony Montana off his medication — plays the sucker, Juan Miranda, a Mexican bandit pillaging under the skirt of a great frontier. The Irishman and the Mexican meet during a hold-up on a lonely road. Juan shoots out John’s motorcycle tire, so John returns the favor by blowing up Juan’s stagecoach. The explosion is preceded by the first of three references to the title: “Duck, you sucker,” John tells Juan as his various sons and fathers, all bandits as well, run for cover. In typical Leone style, this chance encounter makes up the entire first act of the movie, stretching to the absolute breaking point when Juan exhaustingly convinces the IRA thug to join in on a bank robbery.

Just as the movie saddles its burros (do burros even where saddles?) to head off for a bank heist, it drastically switches gears as John and Juan find political prisoners, not bags of gold coins, inside the bank’s vaults. Leone, with that sleight of hand worthy of a Vegas table, follows his cowboy opera Once Upon a Time in the West, a moving musical picture about railroads and redemption, with another movie about loftier goals than gold bars or bags of loot. In a way, it’s a buddy picture set against the Mexican Revolution, the same way Good/Bad/Ugly was a buddy flick amid the Civil War. Although it was lost in time and space somewhere between video stores and the Spanish frontiers where it was filmed — and after better pictures nonetheless — Sucker is the quintessential Leone picture: the music, of course by Ennio Morricone, is rich and layered deep within Sucker’s dirty skin; the plot is an allegory involving race and friendship, and the trust that binds them together; the tempo is methodical and intricate, not the kind of 158-minute movie you step into halfway through; and the cinematography is picturesque if “picturesque” can also describe dusty, blistering landscapes chock full of machine gun nests, pre-planted explosive packs and ambushing revolutionaries.

It should also be noted that the body count of Duck, You Sucka is high enough to get mentioned on a United Nations watch list. As soon as the two protagonists arrive in the bank’s keeper city, an Orwellian western town called Mesa Verde, armed patrols start executing political dissidents. And once they start, they don’t stop. Soldiers are mowed down with machine guns, revolutionaries (including children) are blasted mercilessly in a cave and a derailed train makes for a bloody turkey shoot. In one uninterrupted long take, the camera pans across several concrete corrals of political prisoners as soldiers rain hot lead down onto their heads in a genocidal rage. Before that John and Juan stage a firefight that ends with results so conclusive that it may be the only time in cinematic history an entire army is defeated in a fraction of a second. For comparisons to other films, I consulted Movie Body Counts, a morbidly fun site that counts the dead in action films. The top five body-count movies: two Lord of the Rings movies, where computer war sequences rack up nearly 1,200 dead; John Woo’s Hard Boiled, in which bad guys inexplicably shoot evacuating patients as they flee a hospital under siege; We Were Soldiers, with lots of dead American and North Vietnamese soldiers; and Equilibrium, with Christian Bale dispatching sci-fi cops with geometrical kung fu. Duck, You Sucka isn’t listed on the site … yet. If it were, I would put its body count well into the 500s, thus high in the top five list.

Body count aside, though, this sweltering hunk of a film is a wonderful addition to your Eastwood/Leone pictures. Don’t expect it to be like the Eastwood pictures, or even so much like its sister film, Once Upon a Time in the West; just expect a truly unique Leone experience. He brings it to you gift-wrapped from 1971.