Films of the 60s, Part 27: All the Lonely People

“All the lonely people,
Where do they call come from?
All the lonely people,
Where do they all belong?”
- The Beatles, “Eleanor Rigby”



In Haruki Murakami’s critically acclaimed, latest novel, 1Q84, his character Aomame makes a distinction between being lonely and being alone. That passage, among many others, resonated with me on a deeply personal level. There have been times in my life in which I have felt incredibly alone and incredibly lonely, yet the two do not necessarily go hand in hand. One can feel lonely while being surrounded by friends and acquaintances, and in the reverse, one can be alone yet not feel the sting and pain of loneliness. When I was a teenager, prone to bouts of loneliness and depression, a wise man told me that I had to make a friend of loneliness. While at the time it seemed esoteric and nonsensical advice, that phrase stuck with me. As I grew older, that piece of advice became a mantra for me. The three films in this post all, in some way or another, made me recall the feelings of loneliness, as each director amazingly and heartbreakingly captures it in words, sounds, and images.



Vivre Sa Vie (My Life to Live) (1962, Jean-Luc Godard)

Vivre Sa Vie, Jean-Luc Godard’s fourth film, starts with an epigraph from Montaigne that was eerily similar to the advice I mention above. “Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.” What follows is a tragic tale of a woman struggling in the modern era, a victim of a changing world that values money and fame but objectifies people, especially women, in the process. Anna Karina is Nana, a young girl with aspirations of becoming an actress. Told in twelve separate vignettes, we follow episodes of Nana’s life, seeing her with different jobs, different men, and in some hopeless situations. Godard specifically shoots from behind Karina’s head, sometimes not allowing us to see whom she is talking to. It doesn’t matter in the slightest. We are Nana. We connect with her in her attempt to navigate a pop culture world that could easily, and does, chew her up and spit her out.

Like many of Godard’s films, Vivre Sa Vie is incredibly meta and has only become more so in recent years thanks to Quentin Tarantino’s homage. While Godard was paying homage with Karina's bob haircut to Louise Brooks, Tarantino was paying homage to Godard with Uma Thurman's character in Pulp Fiction. In his own inimitable style, however, Godard tends to blur the lines between reality, play acting, real acting, and everything in between. Failing to make her dream come true as an actress, a direct contrast with the real Anna Karina, we see Nana’s dreams dashed in increments amidst a world of consumerism. It is a brave new world that idolizes Americana, pop music, films, and gangsters. Particularly relevant to the story are references to Truffaut’s Jules and Jim and Poe’s short story, "The Oval Portrait," which somehow seems to reveal the nature of Godard and Karina’s on and off screen relationship. Nana works at a record store, essentially selling art as product. Eventually, Nana resorts to prostitution, feeling it is the only path to take in order to make ends meet. It is a searing indictment of the treatment of women in a capitalist world. If that weren’t convincing in and of itself, Nana is sold from one pimp to another, as a piece of property, as an object, as product.

Through it all, Nana stoically traverses her life, but her loneliness, desperation, and crippling sadness are there, just under the surface. At one point, Nana has a dance number, hoofing it to up-tempo jazz music in a pool hall. The men simply ignore her joyous dance, and she ends by embracing a pillar in the room. One can’t help but sense that “look at me” desperation and subsequently feel your heart slowly cracking. Godard’s choice of filming from behind Karina’s head, so that she eclipses whomever she may be conversing with, forces us to see her and only her. We don’t see her face, because that would allow us to personalize her loneliness and not actually experience it for ourselves. It is as if, even though she has people with whom she interacts, they don’t exist. She is utterly alone. There are two moments that are crushingly heartbreaking, bringing me to tears. One is the inevitable end of the film, awful, stark, and yet incredibly true to the character Godard and Karina have created together. The other moment comes when Nana goes to see Carl Dreyer’s Joan of Arc in the movie theater. As she sits watching this tale of a martyr, essentially alone against the English, Nana weeps openly, tears streaming down her face. What is amazing about this scene, at least in my mind, is that Godard truly captures the connections we make with art, how we see ourselves: our fears, grief, joy, and pain in artistic representation. This is what great art should do, and I certainly saw many aspects of myself in Nana.




The Fire Within (1963, Louis Malle)

Maurice Ronet is Alain Leroy. Alain has a crippling depression due to his alcoholism. He has been staying at a rehab clinic, often calling himself “cured,” but his cure seems to only have power while his is sheltered in the clinic. He hasn’t talked to his wife of two years. She fled to America and this event only further fueled his sense of shame and regret. In a great scene, we see Alain getting ready to visit the city for the first time in a long while. He picks out his shirt, a tie, cufflinks, and rehearses a telegram to his wife. He does not know how to interact with the outside world anymore. This is merely a precursor for a Homeric journey that will lead to a somewhat inevitable end. We soon realize that this is not an attempt to insert himself once again into the real world, to dip his toes in the water of reality, but is a “farewell tour” before leaving the world entirely.

Once back in the city, he decides to visit his old stomping grounds, including his old hotel apartment. He has been “replaced” by a young soldier back from the Algerian war. He has stepped in to his old apartment, and representatively, his old life. He goes to see old friends, one of which, played by the luminous Jeanne Moreau, could have been more than a friend in the past. She is the only one who seems generally comforting to him, the rest having either moved on without him and preoccupied with their own lives to give him any notice. Eventually, after feeling the emptiness of his life, he resorts once again to drinking. Ironically, at one point, he is even saved from being hit by a car. One could read into these events that he is being given reasons to live over and over again, but he cannot see them. This is what depression is. Despite the good that may be present, you simply can’t see past the darkness enveloping you.

Even though his friends know that he is an alcoholic, they allow him to drink, even commenting at one point that his first drink after detox will make him sick. Some friends. The men in his life are selfish enablers with no compassion. The women in his life have compassion, but are ultimately ineffectual. He finally breaks down and admits that he is scared of the women around him and he cannot feel desire. He says, “I can’t reach out with my hands. I can’t touch things,” and “I wanted so much to be loved.” Toward the end, he is seen reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which is resoundingly relevant for a number of reasons. For one, it is set during the prohibition and Alain is in detox. Gatsby is an enigmatic man who people can’t seem to figure out. Alain’s friends can’t seem to figure him out, nor do they seem to want to, and he can’t figure himself out. While Gatsby longs for Daisy Buchanan, Alain longs for his departed wife, who has gone off to America. The parallels could continue. And while the novel ends tragically for Gatsby, it likewise does for Alain. Upon returning to his room at the clinic, he shoots himself, unable to live with the loneliness that surrounded him.



Juliet of the Spirits (1965, Federico Fellini)

By 1965, Federico Fellini already had a number of films under his belt, including the now celebrated 8 ½ and La Dolce Vita, both masterpieces. Juliet of the Spirits is yet another visual stunner, and yet another film that continues Fellini’s streak of surrealism and strangeness. His wife, Giulietta Masina, plays the title role, and due to the fact that the actor and character have the same name, we can possibly read into the subtext of reality within the film. Fans of Fellini and Masina will also start to make connections between the sadness of this title character and that of the title character in the exquisite, Nights of Cabiria. We start the film at the anniversary party of Giulietta and Giorgio, which is “crashed” by neighbors and friends at the invitation of Giorgio, who we soon discover is a philanderer. We can see from Giulietta’s preparations that she desperately wants to be alone with Giorgio. We often see her face obscured by darkness, indicating the loneliness she feels in her marriage. Of course, his later actions show that he wants the opposite, desperate to be around people and take up the mantle of the object of desire. The party soon becomes the requisite dreamlike landscape that Fellini is known for, but this time in vivid color.

Giulietta is soon captivated by their glamorous neighbor, Gabriela. Gabriela is the epitome of independence, and thus the antithesis of Giulietta. Gabriela is somewhat flighty, new-agey, and at times, just plain ridiculously inane. Giulietta is taken to a Buddhist seminar that, like the party, takes a turn for the surreal. Fellini once again shows himself a master of the frame as he puts Masina against a bright red wall with a fan blowing in the corner, the two objects miniscule against the overwhelming presence of the wall. It is one of many ways that Fellini uses the camera to display her feelings of loneliness and being subservient to emotion. Eventually, she begins to see images and prophecies of what will or could come to pass, namely, being visited or haunted by spirits who will guide her in her near future.

One of these possible spirits is José, who gives her bullfighting lessons, telling her that the monster (read: husband) will be defeated. But, despite the repeated visits, the religious, philosophical, and mere friendly advice that she gets throughout the film, she still cannot resort to playing her husband’s game and cheat on him in return. Rather, still feeling hurt, she hires detectives to look into his cheating. At the close of the film, Giorgio tells her that he has not had sex with another woman, but instead has a deep and meaningful friendship with another woman. I honestly don’t know which is worse. I have been in this position, and it is not a comfort. The truly odd thing about this film is that Fellini intended it to be a “gift” to his wife, Masina. This gift seems to find excuses for his own possible philandering and encouraging Giulietta to become more independent. One also has to question the urgings from the last spirit that she must take her own life. This is just one interpretation, and anyone who has seen Fellini’s films will know that meanings are hard to come by. What is clear throughout is Giulietta’s pain and loneliness, which Fellini has captured exquisitely.

Films of the 60s, Part 26: Only the Good Die Young

“Come out, Virginia. Don’t let me wait
You Catholic girls start much too late.
Sooner or later it comes down to fate,
I might as well be the one,
You know that only the good die young.”
---Billy Joel, “Only the Good Die Young”



One glance at the title of this particular survey of 60s films should give you one big spoiler alert. Sorry about that, but I think in this case it is warranted. Though Billy Joel's lyrics are more of a plea of seduction, in this case, I am using them as words of sacrifice. As you will see, these are movies all about sacrifice. In regard to the "spoilers," these are not movies with surprise endings. Plot is not an isolated element here. Rather, these three films encapsulate everything films should aspire to be. They do tell a story, but they take advantage of visual imagery, symbolism, narrative tricks, and reflections on humanity. It’s true, very young characters die in each of these films, and each of them could be defined as “good,” but the films and characters represent the 60s in France and Russia as a time of post-war bleakness, a time, though not isolated, of man’s inhumanity to man, and the dichotomy of this darkness and a religious background.



Ivan’s Childhood (1962, Andrei Tarkovsky)

Ivan is a twelve-year-old Russian boy caught in the conflagration of World War II, specifically his countrymen’s fight with the German Wehrmacht along the Eastern front. As the film moves along, we are exposed to more of his story, both in the present day, and in a series of four “dreams” that serve as psychological flashbacks. We find out that Ivan is tragically orphaned by the war. We also learn that, in an effort to avenge his family’s deaths, he wants to fight on the front lines. The Russian army uses him as a reconnaissance spy, due to his innocuous nature as a child. Through these back-and-forth splits in the linear narrative, we see the comparisons of a life of innocence with those of the harsh realities of war.

Ivan isn’t the only character we follow through the film. We also follow a few of the Russian soldiers, some of whom very much want to protect Ivan. In effect, they make a compromise by allowing him to spy, but not to fight on the front lines. Another solider, Kholin, spends most of his time trying to aggressively woo a young nurse, Masha. Through all these characters, we are exposed to nearly every primitive instinct of man, from revenge to caring, and from violence to lust. War, by its very nature, tends to reduce man to his basest instincts, but yet even this message is not the central one in Ivan’s Childhood. Being a great film with many narrative and visual layers, there are perhaps many messages that can be taken from it. As we can say of all great art, there are many interpretations, depending on the viewer.

It is amazing to think that this is Andrei Tarkovsky’s first feature film. The imagery within seems to come from the eye of a seasoned director. Nearly every shot means something within the narrative. Take, for instance, an early shot of Ivan in a burned out house. As he enters it, several of the fallen, hanging beams frame Ivan, pointing to him as some kind of aura of a religious figure. Another lasting and powerful image involves the Russian soldier, Kholin. In a forest of starkly white bark trees in the winter, he straddles a foxhole trench and hugs Masha, her feet dangling over emptiness. It perfectly captures how we have to hold each other up through difficult times, and that often our lives are completely in the hands of others. These are just two of the stunning images among many in the film. They all serve to underscore the sacrifice eventually made by Ivan, a heartbreaking reminder of the fragility of life and the utter ridiculousness of war as the eventual result of the petty differences between men and nations.



Au Hasard Balthazar (1966, Robert Bresson)

Au Hasard Balthazar has been called one of the most powerful allegories of the life of Jesus Christ ever put on film. Even though it can certainly be interpreted in this way, there are various other interpretations that are just as certain. Balthazar is a donkey. We are introduced to him and his human counterpart, Marie, and then subsequently follow them through their horrifically tragic lives. Marie is among a group of children who are the first “owners” of Balthazar, there at the presence of his birth. As if that wasn’t symbolic enough, the kids then playfully “baptize” the newborn donkey. As the two grow older, they are eventually separated, though their lives mirror each other’s.

Balthazar goes through seven owners, again a hugely symbolic element, reflecting the seven sacraments, the seven words from the cross, or the seven deadly sins. His life, moving owner-to-owner, and suffering abuses and indignities, are representative of the Stations of the Cross, eventually ending in Balthazar’s death on a hillside, much like Golgotha. Balthazar is given a wreath of flowers to wear upon his head, like the crown of thorns. It is absolutely intended symbolism, one can easily see. But, the question becomes whether this is supposed to simply be an allegory, or could there perhaps be other interpretations?

Jean-Luc Godard, who eventually married the young girl who played Marie, Anne Wiazemsky, famously said that Au Hasard Balthazar was “the world in an hour and a half.” While those with faith may take this to mean that life is suffering, but through saintliness, like that which can be attributed to either Marie or Balthazar, there is redemption, I think Bresson could have presented an alternative alongside this. Bresson’s films are typically bleak. They show the world for what it is, a harsh, violent, depressing, and inhumane landscape filled with selfish people. Marie and Balthazar are not selfish. Rather, they are subservient and meek. While Christian religion tells us that the meek shall inherit the earth, Bresson presents a tableau that shows the meek are simply tragic figures, swallowed up by the harsh world, eventually sacrificed, though we may not know the value of that sacrifice. After all, Marie’s father lies dying at the end of the film, her mother desperately praying for God’s compassion, her prayers unanswered. Remember, this is a specific choice Bresson makes as a storyteller. My point is that this is ok. Two viewpoints can coexist, even in discussing the same piece of art, and I think Bresson would adamantly agree. Is there another life for those who have faith, or is this is all that we get, a cold, harsh reality where we make choices for the benefit of our fellow man? It’s impossible to know, but both of us can disagree and coexist.



Mouchette (1967, Robert Bresson)

Mouchette, like Ivan, Balthazar, and Marie, is a young, tragic figure. In French, the name means “little fly,” and this is perhaps the most fitting description of this female adolescent. Her mother is bedridden, her father is an abusive alcoholic, and she is a social outcast at school. In other words, Mouchette doesn’t have much going for her. Her life is as bleak as it can possibly be. Painfully, Bresson gives Mouchette a few moments when her life may begin to improve, small glimpses of hope that are then just as quickly dashed. For instance, she meets a young boy at a fair and after the two playfully flirt with each other on the bumper cars, her father viciously slaps her in front of her crush, interrupting and in effect, destroying their courtship.

But, this is just the beginning of Mouchette’s tragic tale. During a rainstorm, she becomes lost and disoriented in the woods, usually the only place she feels comfortable. The woods are generally Mouchette’s only refuge. Lost, she eventually comes upon a poacher who has just killed the village’s game warden. Because she is a witness, the poacher deviously connives her to become his alibi. In her state of shock, fatigue, fear, and sadness, she agrees, and further becomes his rape victim. Humiliated, she leaves for home the next morning and must not only relate the poacher’s concocted story, but also claim that the two are lovers due to her being out all night. Upon her arrival home, she finds her mother eventually succumbing to her illness and dying. At this point, Mouchette has been deprived of the last tenuous sanctuaries she has in life. An elderly villager offers her a dress and shroud, intended for her mother. In an eerie calm, she takes the garments, walks to a nearby lake, wraps herself in the shroud and rolls herself into the lake, committing suicide.

While there is an easy allegory to see in Balthazar, and an underlying hope, all hope seems absent from Mouchette, or at least one has to really want to see any positive message within its narrative. It is less about saintliness or transcendence and more about the utter ugliness and tragedy of human existence. It is, at most times, difficult to watch because of this, but Bresson’s images are still riveting and captivating in their simplicity. The film is, if nothing else, a stark reminder that all existences are not equal and that, while there is indeed beauty in life, there is also injustice, inequality, and evil. While some are given little boosts here and there due to social stature, wealth, privilege, and even luck, others are not so fortunate. It is also a reminder of the fragile nature of youth and the crippling nature of depression and hopelessness. Though we can argue over other possible outcomes for Mouchette, the narrative effectively seals her fate and serves as a stark depiction of inhumanity. I am also reminded of the saying, which is not in the Bible, that God doesn’t give us more problems than we can handle. Mouchette is a symbol of the flaws inherent in this belief.

Films of the 60s, Part 25: What If I Were Romeo in Black Jeans?

“What if I were Romeo in black jeans,
What if I was Heathcliff, it’s no myth,
Maybe she's just looking for someone to dance with.”
--Michael Penn, “No Myth”



Shakespeare. No one is more ubiquitous in world of English letters than the Bard of Avon. I’ll admit, though the current trend in education is to scale back on Shakespeare and supplement the curriculum with more current material, I am quite pro Shakespeare. It’s not that I don’t agree with keeping it fresh, it’s just that Shakespeare has been relatable to the human condition for over four hundred years. I have read every play and every poem. I have seen many of the plays performed at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Bill is my boy. Modern filmmakers and critics can hurl all the slings and arrows they like at him, questioning his identity or his legitimacy, and I will still be a fan. In other words, the play’s the thing. His work is so universal that it can be adapted into nearly any situation and still have relevance and connection. Cases in point, the following three films from the 60s, which took the classic works to entirely new levels.



The Bad Sleep Well (1960, Akira Kurosawa)

There have been many great portrayals and adaptations of Hamlet over the years: Olivier, Branagh, Tennant, Sons of Anarchy, Strange Brew… Yeah, you read that right. But, one of my favorites of all time is Akira Kurosawa’s take on the classic tale of revenge, The Bad Sleep Well. Toshiro Mifune certainly deserves to be considered alongside the best that have portrayed the tragic Prince of Denmark, though he was playing a businessman of Japan. Mifune plays Nishi, a young man who, at the start of the film, is getting married to Yoshiko, the daughter of a wealthy executive. In this way, we can already see how the story differs slightly from the classic tragedy. Hamlet never got married, though Ophelia’s grief-inspired dementia is symbolized in the fact that Yoshiko is hobbled. Reporters and police, the latter of which arrest one of the company men, Wada, for bribery, interrupt the wedding. As it turns out, this scandal was previously hushed up conveniently through another businessman’s suicide, and this is just one aspect of an untouchable corporate culture in which lower level employees sacrifice themselves for the higher-ups. Sound familiar?

Nishi seems at first to be complicit in the goings on, guiding Wada to the top of a volcano. Incidentally, this scene is how I always imagined the setting of the transformation of Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader as opposed to the ridiculous and overblown result. Anyway, Nishi ends up saving Wada and secreting him away as ammunition against the company that ‘killed’ his father. While he tries to find a use for Wada, he leaves a photo of the office building in the company safe, with a red ‘X’ over the window from which his own father jumped. That same building figures prominently throughout the film, taking the place of Elsinore Castle. Eventually, Nishi cleverly enacts scenarios in which Wada appears as a ‘ghost’ to scare the top executives, one by one. Nishi becomes an obsessed character, as any Hamlet model should, even becoming somewhat creepy as he whistles down the street, much like Omar in The Wire. There are great subplots with Yoshiko’s brother and Nishi’s best friend, all of which wrap up nicely in the end, but like Hamlet, there is indeed a tragic ending.

The Bad Sleep Well is one of those adaptations that is usually said to be “loosely” based on the original. In this case, there are several subtle changes. For one, the despicable union of uncle and mother is replaced by a corrupt corporation, but one is still a father-in-law. The brilliance of this change is to turn a revenge tragedy into one that also has social commentary on the state of corporate culture, an institution that did not exist in Shakespeare’s time. Kurosawa showcases something that we are seeing even today, a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, in which those being held down by their superiors still curry their favor. As Nishi says, “They starved you and my father with scraps from their table, killed you as scapegoats, and still you can’t hate them.” As we have learned from history, the only way change occurs is either through revolution or protest that alters minds, and eventually laws. As is said in the film, “It’s pointless trying to use the law against evil people.”



West Side Story (1961, Robert Wise)

There was a long period in which any high school class reading Romeo & Juliet was made to watch West Side Story as a way to bring the classic romantic tragedy more up to date. While the language of Ernest Lehman and Stephen Sondheim might have been more accessible to teens than Shakespeare’s, the language of musicals, at least before Glee, was seemingly foreign to those same youngsters. Now, Glee has performed a majority of the songs from the production and has made it somewhat more hip than it was in my time. In my previous survey of 60s musicals, I made a point about the logic of musicals, the difference between diegetic and non-diegetic sound, and how these affect my enjoyment of the films. West Side Story is one of those films in which people, and in this case incredibly unlikely people, spontaneously break out into song and dance.

We are introduced first to the Jets in the basketball courts of the projects of New York City. (Interestingly, this is now the location of Lincoln Center, which I recently saw as a location in The Changeling). Anyhoo, it’s fairly difficult for toughs to look…well…tough when snapping fingers in unison and then performing highly choreographed dance moves. This is exacerbated by the declaration of “Cokes all around” during the gang tête-à-tête. Nothing says a gang means business like an order of a round of sodas. While at first skeptical and put off, I was soon trying to suspend my disbelief and enjoying the mixture of dancing and fighting, seeing the dance as an artistic expression of anxiety, anger, fear, racial tension, and even love. In case you were wondering, no, I had not seen this film until recently, despite the fact that my parents had the original cast album on vinyl. While I don’t remember them every playing it in my presence, I found that I actually knew most of the songs, most likely due to their huge presence in the canon as musical classics. “America,” “Maria,” “Jet Song,” “Tonight,” and “I Feel Pretty” were all completely familiar to me.

West Side Story holds the distinction of being probably the most faithful adaptation of Shakespeare, up to a point. The Montague and Capulet families are smartly transformed into rival New York gangs, one white and one Puerto Rican. Like The Bad Sleep Well, it successfully adds a new social element, in this case being race relations and the inanity of gang/race/class warfare. “America” also nicely sums up the reason for immigration and the arguments between preserving culture and the concept of the melting pot. The lyrics and themes throughout the film are nothing short of brilliant. Add in the gorgeous cinematography, color, and wardrobe, and you have the reasons this film won 10 Academy Awards, is now a classic, and why I had to wait for about six months for a copy from Netflix. Luckily, in the midst of that wait, the Blu-Ray version was released and I was able to see the film in the way it was meant to be seen, sharp, vivid, and with glorious sound. The ending may be drastically different from its source material, but it is still more than a worthy adaptation, and indeed, all are punished.



All Night Long (1962, Basil Dearden)

To round out the trio of Shakespeare adaptations, we have another one of Bill’s most well-known works, Othello. I suppose the only other tragedy that would have been more infamous is the Scottish play. Basil Dearden’s All Night Long, like the previous two films surveyed above, places the familiar characters in a modern setting, in this case the London of the swinging 60s jazz set. Dearden even goes as far as to include actual jazz musicians in the film, including Dave Brubeck and Charles Mingus. Paul Harris plays Aurelius Rex, our Othello, married to Delia, our Desdemona. The great Patrick McGoohan plays Johnnie Cousin, our conniving Iago. We also have a Roderigo and a Cassio, Rod and Cass respectively, but most of their character traits are bundled up into Cass exclusively.

Like West Side Story, All Night Long is fairly faithful in its translation, up to a point. It, too, changes the ending. Whether this is done to make it “less” tragic, or to put a director or writer’s stamp on the story, I do not know. Regardless, the performances in this film are magnetic. It is perhaps not a classic film in the way that the previous two are, but it is entertaining, especially for those who are fans of jazz. The jazz slang seems a little cartoony now, but the drug and alcohol use is at least accurately portrayed. There are no “Cokes all around” in this film. And, while the choreography dulls the sting of the violence in West Side Story, the violence in All Night Long is fairly brutal. When Aurelius shows his anger, it is palpable.

Aside from McGoohan and Harris’ great performances, there is also a young Richard Attenborough playing Rod, a music promoter. He toes the line nicely, bridging the gap between the English and the Americans, and also between warring “friends.” This film also adds a new element, that being one of not just stealing a lover away and ruining a great man with violent tendencies for power and wealth, but also of stealing away a musician from one band to another, or out of retirement. Jealousy is still one of the central theme here, as well as Johnny’s (Iago’s) desire for the limelight. The added element may not be as heavy as corporate malfeasance or race relations, but the original story of Othello is powerful enough to survive in any setting without another substantially important point. However, this might be what leaves it out of “classic” status.

Films of the 60s, Part 24: The Man Ain't Got No Culture!

“I been Norman Mailered, Maxwell Taylored.
I been John O’Hara’d, McNamara’d.
I been Rolling Stone and Beatled till I’m blind.
I been Ayn Randed, nearly branded
Communist, ‘cause I’m left-handed.
That’s the hand I use, well, never mind!”
- Simon & Garfunkel, “A Simple Desultory Philipic”



Counterculture is somewhat a loaded term. While it was originally meant to denote a group that went against a cultural norm, today it has somewhat lost its definition as the country has, over time, become more of a cultural mélange, making it hard to find anything “counter” to it. Occupy Wall Street is probably the closest thing to a true counterculture I have seen in my time, at least as compared to the fight for Civil Rights, the Feminist Movement, the Hippies, the Beatniks, and the anti-Vietnam movement. Some would say that between the 60s and now, we have been complacent. Some would say that counterculture took different forms, usually artistically, in the form of punk, hip-hop, heavy metal, pop art, graffiti, etc. The three (or four, depending on how you look at them) films I am featuring today were the epitome of counterculture, one (two) at the core of the sexual and political revolutions in Sweden, one an example of political and social expression in a repressive English boarding school, and one that is probably the most recognized counterculture film of all time.



I Am Curious (Yellow) & I Am Curious (Blue) (1967-8, Vilgot Sjöman)

Director Vilgot Sjöman asked for a certain amount of money in order to make a film with complete creative freedom and no script. That film ended up to be the two-part study that is I Am Curious, split into the two colors of the Swedish flag, blue and yellow. People are on the fence about this film, and I don’t really get it. I take that back. I do somewhat understand, but time and distance has let us take a second, more studied look at what Sjöman was trying to do here. Back in 1969, Roger Ebert, two years into writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote a scathingly negative review that seemed to miss the point entirely on what these revolutionary ideas were all about. Looking at that review, with all due respect to Mr. Ebert, he seems to be the epitome of the uptight “square.” He seems to miss the point that the sexual revolution was one that celebrated nature and the human body despite a variance from any “norm” of beauty.

This pair of films is a mixture of a true to life love of the director for his “star,” a young Lena Nyman, her search for answers in love, sex, and politics, a film within a film, and interviews with Swedish people about the political system. One idea that resonates with today’s America is the question of a class system and a system that favors those with privilege and wealth. My favorite part of these two films is the appearance of the then 39 year-old Swedish Minster of Transport, who later became Prime Minister, leading the Swedish Social Democratic Party. Despite the number of people interviewed in the streets, who seem to resist change and are oblivious to reality, Palme speaks the truth, even as someone with power, admitting that there is a class system, gender inequality, and problems with the educational system. The director also interviews Martin Luther King, Jr. in a refreshing and revealing scene in which he talks about the concept of non-violence. Sjöman exposes the ignorance of the majority of the public by showing a citizen saying that she doesn’t understand King because he doesn’t “fight for what he believes in.” Ugh. The tragic part of the whole thing is, a month after the second film was released, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, and Olaf Palme was assassinated in 1986, a true Swedish and global hero, having stood up to injustices, not only in his home country, but around the world.

The point of these films, which is couched in the title, is that curiosity of all types is the only way to get at the truth of any issue, whether sexual dynamics, politics, or social justice. The second film, Blue, which was released about six months after Yellow, features some negative viewer reaction to the first film, which somewhat resembles Ebert’s take. In a way, it is a genius move on the part of the filmmaker to include these letters as they reveal the hypocrisy and out of touch nature of the public. With no script, these films are more of an experiment and exploration into ideas rather than a narrative. Going into it with this knowledge, I think more people might be inclined to understand it. This is something I am learning in my studies to become a teacher. You get a better result if you let your students know what your goal is ahead of time. Without it, you get mixed and varied results. As one last example of the interesting and truly counterculture messages we find within these important films is a scene in which soldiers are being trained. The trainer tells them that fraternization with the enemy is a good tactic as the point is to get the two sides to understand each other, not annihilate each other, a completely alien concept in most foreign policies.



if… (1968, Lindsay Anderson)

This film is just as, if not more controversial than the I Am Curious films. Set at the beginning of a new term in an English boarding school, this film explores a repressive microcosm and a possible reaction to that repression. A young and charming Malcolm McDowell plays Mick Travis, a student at the school who is somewhere in the middle, not a newbie by any means, but not one of the “elite.” There is a definite social hierarchy going on within the school, and we see a lot of abuse from not only headmasters, but also student prefects. It’s as if we are seeing the non-magical, dark side of Harry Potter. Throughout the film, we see Mick and his friends trying to escape, sometimes physically and at others imaginatively, from the overbearing structure of the school and the injustices within. His room is papered with pictures of foreign revolutionaries and he often plays African music to set a mood.

This is most definitely a surrealist film. At several junctures, the scenes alternate between color and black and white. While this certainly evokes a reaction in the viewer, making us wonder whether we should be seeing these scenes differently, they were done as a combination of cost-saving measure and necessity due to the light coming into the large boarding school halls and rooms. Even so, certain scenes, such as the one in the diner after Mick and his friend steal BSA motorcycles, blur the line between reality and fantasy, between what is and what is in the imagination. This is the point that many critics miss about this film, taking its violent imagery too seriously and not as a warning to the causes of such violent imagery, namely the repression inherent in certain hierarchical systems. The inevitable rebellion is foreshadowed in Mick's first appearance, showing up to school in a long black coat, a black scarf around his face, and a black hat, causing one of his schoolmates to call him Guy Fawkes.

Mick and his friends seem to be seeking some kind of realistic experience or feeling outside of their school environment. They steal motorcycles, flirt with townie girls, suffocate themselves with plastic bags, and revel in the drawing of real blood during a playful swordfight in the gym. This form of escape, however, is made all too real by the violence inflicted on them, especially on Mick, by the cruel prefects. Mick gets caned an excessive number of times by his nemesis, Rowntree, and, according to school protocol, must then shake his hand and thank him for the abuse. Meanwhile, the actual headmaster of the school is near absent, never involved, and seemingly oblivious to the actions going on within his own school. In a hyper-surrealist ending, one that will certainly make some uncomfortable given some school shootings in America, Mick and his friends take to the roofs and open fire upon the school children, their families, and the teachers. At the close of the film, the title, if…, appears in red on the screen. It is a chilling reminder of what can happen if people are abused and pushed far enough. These messages are highlighted, and perhaps somewhat undercut, by others that come up during the course of the film, such as “There’s no such thing as a wrong war. Violence and revolution are the only pure acts,” and “One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place.” Again, chilling.



Easy Rider (1969, Dennis Hopper)

Despite several people having told me that they thought Easy Rider was overrated and perhaps didn’t hold up over time, I ended up absolutely loving it. It could be argued that it is the ultimate counterculture film. We all, at some time or another, at least us liberal types, connect with these types of artistic portrayals of rebellion and exploration, such as in On the Road, or perhaps books by Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Ken Kesey, and Tom Robbins. What these books and films show us, and can be easily seen in Easy Rider, is that these counterculture expressions are not just an empty rebellion against society, but instead an existential search for meaning and a code of ethics to live by that may not jibe with the codes of others. This is best expressed by Wyatt, played by Peter Fonda, who is often remarking on the things he admires on his journey.

Wyatt and Billy, the latter played by Dennis Hopper, are named after Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid. The original intention was to make a modernized western, and the film still somewhat follows this model. Names and images mean everything in the film. Wyatt, like his namesake, is more attuned to find a code, more of a lawful person. His bike, helmet, and jacket are all draped in the American flag, and he is often called Captain America throughout the film. In essence, he represents a portion of Americans who are looking for an alternative to the Vietnam War fighting, unequal, and repressive society that existed at that time, and still somewhat exists today. Billy, on the other hand, is more of an outlaw. He wears the fringe leather jacket that represents an America that has been near eliminated, that of the Native American. He is often more paranoid, angry, and rebellious, wary of his surroundings.

As they begin their journey, Wyatt throws his watch away, signifying that they are no longer subject to any rules, even the rules of time. They spend time with a subsistence farmer who inspires Wyatt. He likes that he lives a somewhat simple life, supported by hard work and family. They encounter a hippie commune that exposes Billy’s pessimism as much as it reveals Wyatt’s unbridled optimism. They are two sides of counterculture America, opposite faces of the same coin. Through this journey, they are not only presenting themselves, but also different faces of America. We see the deserts of the west and the gorgeous creepers in the trees of the South. We also see the ugly side of America and its horrible prejudices, which ultimately results in a tragic fate for our counterculture heroes. Jack Nicholson, in one of his first roles as George Hanson, says it best, recounting what they represent to those who disparage and do violence against them:

George: Oh, no. What you represent to them is freedom.
Billy: What the hell is wrong with freedom? That’s what it’s all about.
George: Oh, yeah, that’s right. That’s what it’s all about, all right. But talkin’ about it and bein’ it, that’s two different things. I mean, it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don’t ever tell anybody that they’re not free, ‘cause then they’re gonna get real busy killin’ and maimin’ to prove to you that they are. Oh yeah, they’re gonna talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But, they see a free individual, it’s gonna scare ‘em.

In a shocking scene of brutality, George is killed, a terrifying example of reality, in which those who tend to speak the truth are often punished for it. Easy Rider was a film that pretty much changed the landscape of filmmaking and ushered in a decade of realism and grittiness that will not soon be forgotten. Oh yeah, and it has one heck of a great soundtrack.

Films of the 60s, Part 23: I'm Running Scared

“That final design, that self-destruct,
That condescending critic that’s out for blood,
The dark at the top of the stairs
I’m running scared.”
- Dead Moon, “Running Scared”



It’s the day before Halloween and I feel I have no other choice than the write about some more horror films. It’s certainly not that I’m disappointed in that result. In the past few months I have started on a journey of becoming a connoisseur of scary films. I’m not quite there yet, but give me some time. I’ve written about horror films from the 50s and 60s before on this blog and I still have quite a few more I’ve seen and about which I have not yet written. The three I’ve chosen below are due to their particular creepiness. In my quest to become a horror movie connoisseur, a side effect has been an inurement to being scared. It doesn’t happen as easy or as often. The three films I have chosen for this installment may not have had me jumping out of my skin or throwing my popcorn in the air, but they stick with you. Plus, they are just great stories, well told, which is usually the deciding factor for me on the likability of a film.



Carnival of Souls (1962, Herk Harvey)

Herk Harvey (what a great name) made this movie for only $33,000. Today, you can’t get catering for that amount of money. Despite its shoestring budget, Carnival of Souls is a captivating film. It is also proof that budget cannot constrain concept. Though effects and ADR may be primitive and clumsy, they do not detract from the final product, especially as the film moves on and ensnares you in its mystery. The story begins with a drag race. Mary, who we come to realize will be our main character, is in the girls’ car, racing the boys’ car. A slight bump throws the girls off of a bridge and into the water below. Only Mary survives. She becomes despondent and leaves her job at the organ factory, heading for Salt Lake City to take a job as a church organist. Her despondency and, well, the fact that she sees freakish ghouls make us begin to wonder about her sanity.

When Mary sees her first “ghoul,” shown in the passenger window of her car, it is quite shocking, even if primitively done. This made me realize that you don’t need gore, blood, hair over the face, or any other now stock imagery for a real scare. Just the idea of someone being where they shouldn’t be, and watching you is creepy enough. Mary moves into a small apartment that comes complete with a lecherous and brutish neighbor who preys on her, all the while she consistently has visions of the ghoulish man in her mirror. A new wrinkle is thrown in when she begins to experience moments when people around her cannot see or hear her. This, more so perhaps than the ghoulish visions, would be unnerving to me. In one instance, you would think you are hallucinating or seeing things, but in another, is there any way that you wouldn’t think you had somehow crossed over into the land of the dead?

Throughout the film, Mary is inexplicably drawn to the Saltair Pavilion, an old abandoned amusement park in Salt Lake City, and hears organ music that is distinctly different than the hymns she tends to play in church. The music she hears is wild, psychedelic, and unsettling. So, let’s recap: we have scary organ music, an abandoned amusement park, ghoulish figures stalking our heroine, and the occasional bout with invisibility. Yes, those are the perfect ingredients for a nightmare. The signature scene of the film comes when Mary somewhat lets the strange goings on influence her. Rather than being scared, she surrenders to it. In a mesmerizingly shot scene, Mary seats herself at the church organ and begins to play the eerie music that has been haunting her. She succumbs to the rapture of the music, and it is physically apparent. As her fingers somewhat suggestively stroke the keys, her bare feet are pressing down pedals. She is a woman possessed.

I won’t give away the ending, despite it being near fifty years old. It is too good and a predecessor for the later wave of “twist” endings that would be de rigueur for modern horror films. The scares that Harvey evokes with simple, low budget filming should be a lesson for all those filmmakers trying to get big scares with overdone effects. Of course, one can point to the success of The Blair Witch Project and the Paranormal Activity films as proof of this, but I’d be hesitant about putting all of these in the same bucket. Carnival of Souls ended up inspiring the likes of George A. Romero, whose low budget zombie films became the standard for that genre, and David Lynch, whose atmospheric and unsettling scenarios became his signature style. I can see elements of Carnival of Souls in work he’s done, Twin Peaks to Lost Highway and beyond. Don’t let its budget fool you; this is a wonderful and highly influential film.



Black Sabbath (1963, Mario Bava)

Black Sabbath (yes, from whence Ozzy’s band took its name) is, in actuality, three short films in one, all different in tone, but each a lesson in terror. I would expect no less from Mario Bava, the master of Italian horror. I’m still trying to get over one particular scene from Black Sunday. Depending on which version you see, the stories might appear in a different order, but I will recap them in the order I viewed. The horror pedigree doesn’t just stop with Bava; the narrator is horror legend Boris Karloff! He introduces each segment, in a somewhat Serling-ian fashion, and even appears in one of the stories. In this way, it is somewhat reminiscent of one of Corman’s Poe films or a Freddie Francis portmanteau film. However, Bava’s film is somewhat more terrifying.

Case in point is the opening story, “The Drop of Water.” Structured like a Poe tale, it involves a “beyond the grave” revenge and the slow, steady torture of a person’s sanity. In a way, I suppose it is a rip-off of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” but it is still entertaining and frightening. A nurse is asked to tend to the newly deceased body of a medium. As the nurse is doing her duty, she sees an attractive ring on the finger of the corpse and relieves her of it. Immediately, she starts to become pestered by a fly. Though this is innocuous enough, it is when Nurse Chester returns to her apartment that the terror is ratcheted up to the Nth degree. She begins to hear water dripping from her bathroom faucet, echoing the drips of water she heard from a glass that was tipped over at the medium’s apartment. The fly also returns, continually buzzing around her. However, that is nothing compared to the images she sees of the medium, alternately in her bed, and walking toward her, with the most terrifying rictus grin I’ve ever seen. Though you can probably guess Nurse Chester’s fate, the nice capper on the story is the suggestion that this cycle will continue.

The second story is “The Telephone,” a revenge play that is a bit Hitchcockian in nature. Rosy is a Parisian escort (let’s be classy about this, shall we?) who begins to receive haunting telephone calls from her ex-pimp (ok, not that classy), Frank, who has just been released from prison. You see, Rosy was the one who was responsible for Frank going to prison, and he is now out to get her! Rosy calls her ex-lesbian lover, Mary, to comfort her, only to find out that it was a trick played by Mary in order to be reunited with Rosy. Of course, Frank actually does show up to have her revenge on Rosy, but kills Mary by mistake, leading to a final confrontation between Rosy and her assailant. In this simple story, Bava presents psychological and stalking terror at its best, all isolated in one location, and exploring the depths of evil that some will go to in order to either have companionship or revenge. Apparently, the cut American version removes the lesbian subplot, showing the hypocrisy that prostitution and murder is just fine, but love in a different form is taboo. Ridiculous.

The final story is “The Wurdalak,” adapted from an Aleksey Tolstoy tale (Leo’s cousin). Bava faithfully sets the scene in 19th century Russia, in which a young gentleman on a long journey comes across a headless corpse with a dagger in its chest. He removes the dagger and continues on, finding a cabin and a family inside. It turns out that the dagger belongs to the patriarch of the family, played by Boris Karloff, who had left previously to hunt the dreaded Wurdalak, a term that they define as a walking corpse who feeds on the blood of the living. In other words, this is a vampire story, though it shares certain elements with zombie tales as well. The father returns, having been turned into a Wurdalak himself, cleverly and heartlessly preying on the members of his family, one by one. This segment combines many standard elements of great horror, including the supernatural, undefeatable monster, the idea of that monster being someone close to you, the stranger caught up in accidental terror, the isolated cabin in the woods, and people being picked off one at a time.



Kwaidan (1964, Masaki Kobayashi)

First of all, let me say this: Kwaidan is a gorgeous film. This is apparent from the first few frames of the credits, with images of ink in water, creating an ethereal atmosphere. The rest of the film is just as mesmerizing. Like Black Sabbath, Kwaidan is made up of a series of short stories, these based on traditional Japanese ghost stories as told by Lafcadio Hearn. The first story is called “The Black Hair” and is not one that is easy to forget. A samurai leaves his wife and an existence of poverty because he simply wants more out of life. He marries again into wealth and status, but his second wife is selfish and awful. He goes back to his first wife, having somewhat realized his error, and while everything seems fine at first, he wakes up to find that his original companion has turned into just a skull and hair. In payback for his selfishness, he finds that he too has become older, and ghoulish in appearance. Though the story is simple, it takes its time to set a tone and an atmosphere, making the payoff that much more satisfying. Additionally, like the Hammer Horror films of the time, it uses a magnificent color palette for a genre that doesn’t generally use them.

The second story in called “The Woman of the Snow” and may seem familiar to those who have seen the 1990 film, Tales from the Darkside, which was originally intended to be Creepshow 3. A terrible snowstorm hits two woodcutters and they take shelter in a small hut. The titular woman of the snow comes, kills one of the woodcutters, then spares the other, telling him that he cannot utter a word about what happened, or she will know and punish him. The spared woodcutter later meets a pretty young girl and they fall in love. He, of course, tells her the story of the woman in the snow and his young wife reveals herself to be that woman. But, rather than killing him, due to their having children, she decides his punishment is simply leaving him. Due to their happy existence, the punishment seems to be enough, though she does say that if the children complain about her absence, she will come back to kill him. Again, the greatness of this story is how it is drawn out, much like a great story that is told around the campfire, as well as the amazing color and imagery presented throughout the telling.

“Hoichi, the Earless” is the third story, and it is a doozy. It begins with the epic poem, “The Tale of the Heike.” A young, blind monk has been secretly performing this epic poem at the behest of the ghosts who actually fought in the battle as portrayed in the song. The elder monks, sensing the danger of the situation, punish him, but also tattoo the young monk’s body with protective kanji. This, in effect, leaves him invisible to the ghosts who seek his singing and storytelling. By mistake, they leave the young monk’s ears unmarked. In a clever bit of special effects work, the ghosts come looking for the monk and see a pair of floating ears, which are soon cut off by the warrior ghosts.

The final story is “In a Cup of Tea,” which finds a samurai haunted by the image of a man in his, you guessed it, cup of tea. Even more samurai later haunt him and they eventually drive him mad. This tale becomes a two-fer as it stops in the midst of a battle between the haunted man and his ghostly assailants, revealing that it is being told by a heretofore-unseen writer who has decided to let the readers determine their own ending. The writer’s wife returns to find her husband has disappeared. She screams as she looks into his cup of tea and you can guess the rest. Kwaidan is definitely an expressionist film, with realism being put on the back burner for effect and atmosphere. Kobayashi uses artificial backdrops, images of eyes appearing in the simulated sky, and created landscapes in order to make the point that these stories are mythologies, fairy tales, or campfire stories, to be taken as artistic presentations. In this way, the film works on two levels, as moralistic mythology and as entertaining terror. Again, it is a gorgeous film and well worth the time.

Films of the 60s, Part 22: When We Laugh Indoors

“When we laugh indoors,
The blissful tones bounce off the walls
And fall to the ground.”
- Death Cab For Cutie, “We Laugh Indoors”



It’s been said that stand-up comedians are the new philosophers. This was certainly true of Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Bill Hicks, and more current comics, such as Louis C.K., Marc Maron, and Greg Proops. Pointed and profound messages can be cleverly, but perhaps not easily, couched in humor. That’s not to say that all comedy has to be incredibly deep, philosophical, or political. It can just as easily be absolutely absurd. The three comedy films discussed below are all groundbreaking in some way, but what they all share is that they are hilariously funny.



What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966, Woody Allen)

Having just come off of writing and starring in What’s New Pussycat?, Woody Allen made his directorial debut with another film whose title asks a question. Long before the Mystery Science Theater gang started their meta commentary project, Woody Allen was breaking new ground in postmodern comedy. What’s Up, Tiger Lily? was certainly a unique project at the time. Allen took footage from two Japanese films, called International Secret Police: A Barrel of Gunpowder and International Secret Police: Key of Keys, and essentially made a remix / dub. So, instead of a taut spy thriller, we get to see Woody enmeshed in a mob battle over the hunt of the best egg salad recipe.

Any essay or article about the content of the film could not do it justice. Woody Allen’s writing, acting, scene construction, and jokes are so meticulous that they have to be seen and heard in context. For instance, his early nebbish delivery of how death is his bread and danger is his butter does not come over well in print. But, out of his performance, I was laughing out loud. I could be wrong about this, but this film seems to me to be the first of its kind, certainly influencing MST3K and perhaps even such Bond spoofs as Austin Powers. And, even though some wildly funny films had been made during the 60s and before, I don’t think the general public had seen anything as absurd as this, especially the non-sequitur ending featuring China Lee.

Woody Allen would go on to make not only some of the funniest films ever made, in Bananas, Take the Money and Run, and Sleeper, but he would also start to make films that were poignant, deep, philosophical, and related to the human condition. I’m not sure one can make that claim about Tiger Lily, but sometimes funny is just funny. Okay, so there are some Asian stereotypes that are played with a little fast and loose for today’s politically correct and progressive audiences, such as the sisters with the names Suki Yaki and Teri Yaki, but overall it is fairly unobjectionable. It has been said that The Graduate has every type of humor in it, from farce to puns, slapstick to sight gags, and I would argue that What’s Up, Tiger Lily has this wide range of elements as well. Had anyone else shown a visual of a supposed hair caught in the projector, and then a silhouetted hand trying to remove it? In this film, plot didn’t matter and the jokes were everything.



The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967, Roman Polanski)

After the truly disturbing films Repulsion and Knife in the Water, and before the equally disturbing Rosemary’s Baby, Roman Polanski made a farce, though it might be hard for American viewers to make any kind of attribution to Roman Polanski. What am I talking about? Well, apparently, an editor at MGM reedited Polanski’s film and made it even more kooky and cartoony than the director had originally envisioned. I couldn’t tell you which version I saw. From all the research I have gathered, it appears that the American recut of the film is now rare, and the original version must be the one I screened. (Yes, I don’t watch films, I “screen” them.)

In this film, we follow the titular “vampire killers,” one old and exceedingly eccentric, Professor Abronsius, played by Jack McGowan, the other young, shy, and enormously excitable, Alfred, played by Polanski himself. Like with Tiger Lily, there are different types of humor on display here, from Polanski’s physical humor, to the broad slapstick of a high speed coffin / sledding chase, to the abstract silliness and stupidity of the two spying on a hunchback building a coffin with the memorable exchange, “What’s he doing?” “He’s woodworking!”

Polanski had not really been known for comedy before this film and hasn’t really since, but this film is certainly not to be dismissed. It is not only funny, it also retains some of Polanski’s hallmark dark undertones, especially in the fact that the vampires end up defeating out heroes and evil wins out in the end. A scene that stands out as one that certainly inspired such later films as Young Frankenstein, the two hunters try to fit in with a group of vampires, participating in an elaborate dance, and try to have a conversation while being constantly interrupted by the movements and changing of partners. The vivid colors also make it a near-perfect Hammer Horror homage. Of course, this film is now notorious for featuring the gorgeous Sharon Tate, just one year before she married Polanski, and two years before her tragic murder.



Putney Swope (1969, Robert Downey, Sr.)

The aforementioned Louis C.K. has gone out of his to praise Putney Swope and how it directly influenced his comedy. The film, written and directed by Robert Downey, Sr., (yes, that Robert Downey, Sr.) is at once uproariously funny and socially as well as politically potent. The idea is simple: the CEO of an advertising agency dies, and in the pursuit of becoming his successor, the rest of the board vote for the one African-American member, as they can’t vote for themselves. Putney Swope becomes the new CEO and drastically changes the direction of the company, to hilarious results.

At first, Swope is dead set against the firm’s involvement with companies that produced alcohol, tobacco, and war toys. As such, he renames the company “Truth and Soul, Inc.” and tries to align the company philosophy with his own, replacing every white board member in the process. We are treated to some of the commercials they make, intercut throughout the film, and they are some of the funniest things I have ever seen, surely influencing later likeminded films, such as the Zucker and Abrahams movies. As the company grows in success, and profits, we see the new militant members of the firm become just as corrupted by money as their predecessors, including Putney, who has to come to some kind of reconciliation with himself.

Downey dubbed in his own voice over that of the actor who portrayed Swope, Arnold Johnson, claiming that the actor had a hard time memorizing his lines. The resulting effect is jarring, but also adds to the humor. The film was somewhat before its time in its skewering of Capitalism and modern advertisement, but right on time for its incisive commentary on the misunderstanding of the Black Power movement. I tend to think that those who gave this film a bad review, claim it isn’t funny, or that it misses the mark, just didn’t get it. It’s well beyond time that Putney Swope was reevaluated as one of the funniest films of the 60s. Appropriately enough, Downey’s son was later criticized in much the same manner for his portrayal of method actor Kirk Lazarus in Tropic Thunder, which was equally funny.

*Note: The poster for Putney Swope is the DVD cover, as the theatrical poster is somewhat more risqué.

Films of the 60s, Part 21: We Gotta Get Out of This Place

“We gotta get out of this place
If it’s the last thing we ever do
We gotta get out of this place
Girl there’s a better life for me and you.”
- The Animals, “We Gotta Get Outta This Place”



Many of the films of the 60s could be described as being stories of escape of some kind, including everything from Holly Golightly’s escape from country life and a loveless marriage in Breakfast at Tiffany’s to Marion Crane’s escape from low / middle class drudgery and harassment into a life of crime and eventual doom in Psycho. One could even describe some of the 60s films as audience escapes in such films as the James Bond series or exuberant movie musicals. These three films are more literal in definition, the first two being escapes from prisons of some sort, being the French prison of Le Trou and the German prison camp of The Great Escape, and the final, Dead Ringer, an escape not only from poverty, but also from identity.



Le Trou (1960, Jacques Becker)

I had never heard of Le Trou before I placed it in my Netflix queue (poetry unintended), but it ended up to be a film I will never forget. The title translates to “The Hole,” a word that is generally known as a slang term for a prison, but in the case of this film is also a literal reference to a hole that inmates dig in a corner of their cell in an attempt to escape. Le Trou is based on a true story, as it seems most prison escape films are, save The Shawshank Redemption and a small handful of others, and the director truly makes an effort to capture the realism of the tale. Becker, in fact, goes to great lengths in this endeavor in a few ways, one of them being the hiring of non-actors to fill the roles of the inmates, regular looking fellows one would perhaps expect to see in a prison environment. One of the actors is actually an inmate from the real life escape attempt from the La Santé prison in 1947. This “actor” introduces the film.

The film begins as we follow a young inmate, Gaspard, being put into a crowded cell with four other prisoners. The four are facing incredibly long sentences. However, we don’t know much else about them, allowing us as viewers to perhaps confabulate or ignore whatever their crimes may have been in order to curry our sympathies. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what they have done in order to fuel the plot and action. Quickly, these prisoners must decide whether or not they can trust Gaspard. In a brief enough time, they determine that it is, if not wise, at least necessary in order to complete their goal. The prisoners are nothing if not resourceful, volunteering for “box-making” duty, not only to keep themselves busy, but to have their stack of flattened boxes to use as a convenient cover to place over the titular hole in the corner of the cell.

Some of the more realistic aspects to this film, aside from the non-actors, are the absolutely meticulous scenes and the lack of a score. We see close-ups of the hands of prison guards as they slice up sausages into small segments, plunge their hands into soaps and cheeses, systematically going through every care package in the search for contraband. The first actions involved in the escape are equally detailed, with long, unbroken shots of the prisoners using a rod from a bed frame to start hammering into the concrete floor and not resorting to a montage until nearly five minutes later. In this way, we sense the arduousness, the anxiety, and the difficulties that these prisoners face in this endeavor. We are escaping with them. It is brilliantly put together. As mentioned, the only music that appears in the film is in the closing scene and credits. Otherwise, throughout the rest of the film, we are left to feel a realistic tension that is not “dramatized” or escalated by the presence of a score. There’s a twist at the end, one I won’t reveal, but the line that comes from one of the characters in response to the turn of events is profound.



The Great Escape (1963, John Sturges)

Whereas Le Trou is atypical as far as most Hollywood films go, after all, it was made in France, not Hollywood; The Great Escape is absolutely typical of the Hollywood film, and the antithesis of Le Trou in style and atmosphere. Instead of “real” looking people, we have the chiseled, blue-eyed Steve McQueen and the slightly less-chiseled but still attractive James Garner, along with our requisite tough guys, Charles Bronson and James Coburn. Instead of a music free tense atmosphere, The Great Escape is packed with a rousing score by Elmer Bernstein, which has since gone on to become one of the most recognizable pieces of film music in history. Further, the civility shown between the warring sides here is most likely fiction, even though it, too, is (somewhat) based on actual events, at least historical certainties of POW camps in WWII. Though, I suppose the POW camps could have been different than the concentration camps.

This is not to say that The Great Escape is a bad film, but rather just a different one as compares with Le Trou. With such big Hollywood and international film stars, the events tend to become more glamourized by default. Yet, the planning, choreography, and dangers in the escape are palpable and riveting. And, lest you think that this is an overly sanitized version of events, there are moments of cruelty and arguable unwarranted shootings. In a mirroring of heist films, each prisoner has a duty or an area of expertise. As such, they also get memorable nicknames such as “The Ferret,” “The Scrounger,” or “The Tunnel King.” But our main point of focus is “The Cooler King,” so named because of the time spent in solitary, played by McQueen. If there is one thing to truly criticize in the adaptation from real life events to novel to screen, it is the focus of Americans as the more cunning escapees and stars of the film. In reality, American prisoners had little to nothing to do with the actual escape attempts.

But, with those things in mind and set aside as mere annoyances in storytelling fiction as opposed to truth, this is an enjoyable film. McQueen’s performance is one that surely cemented him in Hollywood legend and perhaps elevated him to the status of icon, especially with his motorcycle stunts. The music helps to establish a dramatic tone throughout the film as one of hope amidst diligence, as opposed to what it could have been, which is incredibly dour and despairing. As an action film, the right decisions were made, but it is definitely interesting to see the comparison which a film as diametrically opposite as Le Trou, despite covering similar topics.



Dead Ringer (1964, Paul Henreid)

Dead Ringer is another film that was a pleasant surprise, as one that I had not heard of, despite its star director and legendary star. Bette Davis is magnificent playing twin sisters, Margaret and Edith, a feat she had performed eighteen years earlier in A Stolen Life. Karl Malden is equally magnetic and engaging as Police Sergeant Jim Hobbson, the man in love with Edith, the poor sister. While Edith is poor, living in a squalid apartment above a jazz club in an alley (albeit a Hollywood studio alley, nearly sterile), her sister, Margaret, is extraordinarily wealthy, living in a mansion that has been used in over 81 films and television shows, including The Social Network, The Big Lebowski, X-Men, and There Will Be Blood. Margaret’s husband dies and Edith, three months’ behind on her rent and about to be evicted, concocts a plan to eliminate her sister and take her place.

Whereas some of today’s thrillers might focus on the tension leading up to the murder, this film gets to it in a hurry, as the more interesting part is how Edith psychologically deals with the guilt (if any), smartly maneuvers through this new life, and ultimately is found out. Please, how else could it end? The murder itself is tastefully done, cutting quickly from the seated Margaret’s face as she turns to face the gun creeping in from the side of the chair to the jazz drummer’s sticks hitting the snare from the club below. At first, Edith’s plan seems flawless. She cleverly ensures that the murder looks like a suicide based on poverty and depression, and has the real Margaret’s arm fall from a position that would match a self-inflicted gun wound. She later uses subtle and sly tricks to make sure that the mansion’s staff doesn’t let on to her lack of knowledge about the geography. When it comes to a point at which she must learn to sign her sister’s signature, she cunningly, but perhaps insanely, picks up a hot poker with her right hand in order to be forced to sign with her left to mask the discrepancy.

Ultimately, a few unexpected wrinkles do her in. For one, Duke, the Great Dane that belonged to her late husband, hated Margaret, but loved Edith. Duke, the only non-human character in the film, is the first one and the only for quite a while, to know the difference. The maid and the butler seem to be taken aback by her unorthodox behavior, in opposition to the behaviors of the real Margaret, but remain in the dark. Peter Lawford, who plays Margaret’s boy toy, eventually tricks her into revealing her true identity, but his harsh treatment of her leads the dog to attack and kill him. As Edith is tried for the crime of killing Margaret’s boyfriend, she makes one desperate attempt to convince Sergeant Hobbson that she is, in fact, Edith, but he cannot believe that the woman he fell in love with could commit such heinous acts. She, somewhat unbelievably, gets the death penalty, and Hobbson asks if what she said was true, if she truly was Edith, but she denies it, knowing that she had truly succeeded in escaping her previous life, yet could not escape her resultant fate. One of the more moving moments of the film comes when the butler approaches her and asks her what she would like him to say at the trial. “You knew the whole time?” she asks him. It appears that Edith was much better to the staff than Margaret was, and that means something to them. It is a truly memorable moment.