#28: All About Eve

"Everybody has a heart... except some people."

I have been looking forward to rewatching Joseph Mankiewicz's masterful 1950 tale of backstage backstabbing, All About Eve, since the blog project began. I only saw it in college and never again since, and now after rewatching it, it's been reaffirmed as one of my favorite classics. (Found it on Amazon used for eight bucks: boom!) It's one of those rare films that seems not to have aged, aided by swift direction, out-of-this-world performances from top-tier actors and what is possibly the greatest screenplay ever written. Oh, and fourteen Oscar nominations (paralleled only by Titanic forty-seven years later).

Company: now that we're getting to the top of the list, it's easier to entice folks in for the night! Along for the "bumpy night" were Paul and Ryan, delightful actors and friends who celebrated their two-year anniversary the next night; Bonni, major fan and beauty; Alex, supplier of sweet snacks and disposition; Kecia, roommate and hostess who really ought to go as Bette Davis for Halloween; and Adam, whose obsession with the film is so great that his shirt purposely matched one of Bette Davis' signature dresses... even though the film is in black-and-white (he still knew).

Cuisine: popcorn with various spices, cheeses and/or truffle salts; a major bowl of M&Ms in various iterations; and beer aplenty.

After a brief prologue in which we see a young actress receiving a major acting award in front of people who are shooting daggers from their eyes at her face, harshly narrated by theater critic Addison DeWitt (Oscar winner George Sanders), we flash back. (Second flashback film in a row!) A year earlier, Karen Richards (Oscar nominee Celeste Holm) is going backstage after a performance to see her old friend, aging but respected Broadway star Margo Channing (Oscar nominee Bette Davis), when she happens upon a young fan, Eve Harrington (Oscar nominee Anne Baxter), who claims to have seen every performance of Channing's current outing, a melodrama called "Aged in Wood," but doesn't have the guts to introduce herself. Karen takes an interest in her and brings her backstage to meet her idol, and in the process also meets Karen's playwright husband Lloyd (Hugh Marlowe), Margo's fling Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill) and Margo's quippy maid Birdie (Oscar nominee Thelma Ritter). [ That's right folks, FIVE acting nominees, including four women (the second feat has never since been achieved by any film). ] Having piqued everyone's interest, even the jaded Margo, Eve tells her life story, particularly how it's been enhanced by Ms. Channing's performances. Margo, vain as she is, falls for the girl and gives her a job as her personal assistant.

Margo Channing is a fascinating character, first because of that remarkable switch. At first, Margo is hesitant, even cruel about meeting a fan, but when she hears Eve's tale of adoration, her compassion and tenderness flip on like a light. Birdie is rightfully put off by this new girl in Margo's employ and lays claim to the first sneaking suspicions about Eve. As an audience, we can tell there's something creepy about Anne Baxter's breathy delivery and Terminator-like focus, but nearly every character on screen takes it for sincerity and simplicity... at least at first. But Margo's initial trust of Eve slowly erodes and reveals layer upon drunken layer of paranoia and delusion.

What Eve plays off as simple dreams of a small-town girl Margo slowly starts to take as conniving betrayal. Divas in full force! But her friends don't share or endorse her apprehensions, and soon, it really does become a famously "bumpy night." Alfred Newman's score gives away a little of the surprise, but we're still clutching our pearls all the same.

Is Margo Channing right? Was she right from the beginning to distrust a fan, to even consider fans sub-human?

LLOYD: Have you no human consideration?
MARGO: Show me a human and I might have.

The film deceptively paints her as the villain at first, leaving Eve in the shadows and allowing Margo to wrestle her way to the top of the first half of the story. She appears her alongside her own caricature outside the theater: the audience believes her to be a cartoon, living in a delusional fantasy where every other actress is struggling to take her down. But Eve plays it cool, appearing aloof at even the slightest hint of aggression towards her. Soon, she manages to turn everyone against Margo: her friends, her confidantes, her lover, even the playwright who wrote the role Margo is so terrified of losing to Eve.

"Sink in your mink." -- Ryan Grimes

In order to teach Margo a lesson, Karen devises a plan to have her miss a performance, stalling her car and necessitating Eve's understudy performance that earns raves from critics who all happen to catch her one-night-only engagement. Little does Karen know that Eve planted the idea in her brain in the first place and will use it to her advantage later. Stuck in the car and awaiting help, one of the most telling conversations is also one of the most heartbreaking:

MARGO: So many people know me. I wish I did. I wish someone would tell me about me.
KAREN: You're Margo, just Margo.
MARGO: And what is that, besides something spelled out in light bulbs, I mean - besides something called a temperament, which consists mostly of swooping about on a broomstick and screaming at the top of my voice? Infants behave the way I do, you know. They carry on and misbehave - they'd get drunk if they knew how - when they can't have what they want, when they feel unwanted or insecure or unloved.

This is perhaps the most vulnerable and honest we'll see Margo, however short-lived. She reconciles her fame and her mortality, and seems on the verge of atonement. But she (and the rest of her duped friends) are about to "go to their battle stations."

Much of the film's success lies in Mankiewicz's unparalleled screenplay, endlessly witty and only rivalled on this list by Network, in my opinion, for originality and a generous dose of great characters. The whole affair is awash in backstage bitchery and depressing theater metaphors, which alone would make it must-see entertainment for actors and theater folk. Luckily, it's also blessed by flawless performances from a huge principal cast.

"Nice speech, Eve. But I wouldn't worry about your heart. You can always put that award where your heart ought to be."

George Sanders won an Oscar for his performance as the jaded critic Addison DeWitt, but you're not sure why until his phenomenal last scene. Though wooden for most of the film, Baxter's portrayal of Eve as a conniving skank is spot-on, and her come-uppance is cheer-worthy. Celeste Holm, Thelma Ritter, Gary Merrill and Hugh Marlowe all have chances to shine as well. How many films can you say that about -- SO many juicy roles? Not a lot, says I.

Has Eve become Margo by the end? Is that her greatest curse, or is it that the cycle could start all over again and come back to bite her in the ass? The film's famous ending had me reaching for the rewind button so I could watch it all over again -- or at the very least, finding it used on Amazon so I could watch it whenever, wherever. A total classic, and one I enjoyed even more in the company of friends invested in and intrigued by the bitch factor. A fantastic film, top to bottom.

How can you top that? Gary Cooper's gonna try: it's High Noon, folks.

#29: Double Indemnity

Double Indemnity is a 1944 thriller-noir by Billy Wilder, whose cultural impact on cinema cannot be understand thanks to such classics as The Apartment, Some Like It Hot and Sunset Boulevard (all on the list). There is a great economy in his work, and I'll be interested to compare this to the latter two films, which are yet to come on this blog. Honestly though, if you had told me that Hitchcock had directed this, I might have believed you, save the fact that Hitchcock doesn't make a trademark cameo. My last experience with noir was only a few movies ago (The Maltese Falcon) and I was much less taken with that one than I was here, so: a pleasant surprise!

Company: alone, although I had folks express interest, and since it's on instant Netflix I will definitely see it again!

Cuisine: a burger, a few chips and a diet Coke, left over from our Memorial Day barbecue

We open on Walter Neff (a very charming Fred MacMurray), an insurance salesman who looks like shit at the moment. He's taping a confession of a murder he's committed -- thanks for giving away the ending! -- and the entire film acts as a flashback to explain how he got to this sorry state. Somewhere out there there's a list of movies that do this exact thing (Saving Private Ryan and Forrest Gump come to mind). Anyway, his confession acts as an omniscient narration over top of the events surrounding this murder. At first we're agog: how could this seemingly mild-mannered insurance salesman get mixed up in this? I'll tell you how.

Meet "how."

Enter Phyllis Dietrichson (Oscar nominee and femme fatale to end all Barbara Stanwyck), a trophy wife and would-be merry murderess, whom Walter meets on a routine house call during which he had hoped to renew Mr. Dietrichson's auto insurance policy. She wants her husband dead, and the phenomenal first scene between Walter and Phyllis makes it all too clear how badly they want each other from the first moment. Their flirtation is mouth-watering and electric, but Neff senses that she's bad news and wants no part in her scheme. But he's already doomed: he can think of nothing but her. Supposedly Wilder put Stanwyck in a purposefully awful wig to show that something's not quite right about her, and how right he is.

The plan is simple (ha!): Walter sells Phyllis' husband an accident policy that insures the owner with a 'double indemnity' clause (hey, that's the title!), which basically covers the owner twice over in the event of an unlikely accident, for example, death in a train accident. Then the scheme goes that the pair will stage the husband's death, making it look like an accident, claim the $100,000 and be together forever. What could possibly go wrong? It's a film that constructs, at least in the mind of its anti-heroes, a perfect crime, and both MacMurray and Stanwyck make such believable bad good-doers that the audience can't imagine what could stop them.

Except, of course, for the one factor that they never thought about: the racking guilt of their crime. It's a great thrill to see their plan put into action, knowing exactly how it must happen and biting our nails when something happens that they don't expect. What did they forget? Will that man at the back of the train come back to haunt them? The pace of the thrills never lets up, especially not after the crime has been committed. One of the most chilling elements is the above shot of Phyllis, staring straight ahead as her husband is strangled next to her. So unfeeling, so calculated, so sure that it will work... right?

Unluckily for Neff, he's got a boss who hates when he can't see through a phony claim, and Barton Keyes (a fantastic Edward G. Robinson) is on the case. He's never been stumped by a claim before, and sets his mind to figuring it all out. The great thrills that come from watching those cogs turn as the murderers are right under his nose! How short my nails got as I bit them while Phyllis hid behind the door with Keyes not ten feet away! This is thrilling cinema, friends.

Because it's thrilling and because it's the not knowing that keeps you on the edge of your seat, I wouldn't dream of spoiling the ending, but suffice it to say that if I thought I knew where the film was going I was wrong. I think one of the master strokes of the film is how Wilder balances these three characters: whose side are you on? Do you want the plan to work, without any hitches? Are we hoping they'll get caught? Do we root for Keyes to discover their deeds? We're never fully on any one character's side; even though Neff narrates, it really feels like the same story told from three fully-developed angles, and the complexity of the heightened emotion of noir is never lost on Wilder.

Those Venetian blinds!

It's this complex story line, so smart and so involving, that keeps the audience guessing until the last moments. I read that this film was one of the first, if not the first, to really investigate and even justify the intricacies of a homicide, and boy does it ever. Perhaps it's these complexities that drew me in the way The Maltese Falcon just didn't. There, Humphrey Bogart's character was essentially alone in solving a crime of which we the audience were not a part. Here, we're presented with all the details of a crime, and then watch as the trio of detective, the detective-turned-murderer and the murderess play that lethal game of cat and mouse (and mouse), witnessing simultaneous sides of the crime. Genius.

Love it love it! Another wonderful surprise.

Nothing surprising about the next film, however, at least none that I don't remember fondly from the last time I saw it in college: buckle up, it's gonna be a bumpy ride with Joseph L. Mankiewicz's classic All About Eve.

#30: Apocalypse Now

"You understand, Captain, that this mission does not exist, nor will it ever exist..."

Francis Ford Coppola gave us some of the very best films of the 1970s and was a master of the age of New Hollywood. After the worldwide critical and commercial success of the first two Godfather films, how could a man possibly top that? He certainly tried with Apocalypse Now in 1979, based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and re-imagined in the context of the Vietnam War. This is the fourth Vietnam War film on this list (after Platoon, The Deer Hunter and M*A*S*H) so you know that American filmmakers were and are obsessed with this conflict and all its complexities and larger statements about the nature of humanity and war. This film does an excellent job of bringing us deep into the visceral horror of that conflict, but rings hollow for me thematically. I'll try to explain why.

Company: just me this time. Another tough sell.

Cuisine: charbroiled chicken rice from Jasmine Deli (Vietnamese food, delicious and appropriate) and a Diet Coke

"Every minute I stay in this room I get a little weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush he gets a little stronger."

After a spooky and silent prologue, we are introduced to our narrator and (anti-?)hero, Captain Willard (Martin Sheen, who looks eerily like his son Charlie here), a special operations veteran who has returned to Saigon after field deployment. Needless to say, he's doing super well adjusting to life off the battlefield, and when he's approached with a mission he's drunk, naked and probably pretty stinky. As my sister Stephanie once said about Amber Waves in Boogie Nights, Willard is "real messed up."

His mission: to "terminate with extreme prejudice" the command and life of Colonel Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a formerly respected general who has gone off the deep end himself and amassed a rogue army of dissidents in the jungles of neutral Cambodia. So we're on board with one crazy going to find and kill another even crazier crazy. Ready?

The film then follows Willard and his boat's crew down the fictitious Nung River, and at various times depicts in graphic detail the horrors of Vietnam combat, juxtaposed by lighter moments like the one above, in which Lt. Colonel Kilgore (Oscar nominee Robert Duvall) introduces the starstruck crew to a famous surfer who's joined the crusade (Sam Bottoms) amidst explosions and genocide.

"I love the smell of napalm in the morning."

The attack on the beach is famous for its use of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries," and surely influenced the similarly graphic opening of Saving Private Ryan. In his original review, Roger Ebert wrote that "Apocalypse Now achieves greatness not by analyzing our 'experience in Vietnam', but by re-creating, in characters and images, something of that experience." While I totally agree, there's a different level of satisfaction to be taken in meaningful analysis of experience than in simply recreating it. The imagery, specifically in this scene, certainly evokes a strong emotional response, but how to turn that response into action and discussion?

The journey down the Nung grows gradually darker as Willard's obsession with learning about Kurtz and his military record grows. At some point the obsession even leans to idolization, and you start to understand the rumor that an American photojournalist is now living under his command and spell. Meanwhile, the men come upon a USO show with Playboy Bunnies that devolves into total sexual rebellion and chaos as the soldiers rush the stage to take advantage of the women. Again, the imagery is so striking (in fact, I think the screen shots from this film are maybe my most consistently beautiful collection of any film on the list so far) but the scene then ends and what has been gained? What knowledge have we taken from it? Maybe it's that I'm far along on this project now and having seen several war films that depict the humane toll of war I'm immune to these messages, but I think it's been more clearly stated in other films.

But here's an interesting reaction: in the scene pictured above, the crew encounters a Vietnamese boat with crops which they deem to be suspicious. After boarding and searching the vessel, a young woman makes a start toward a barrel that she hopes the soldiers won't uncover and in an instant she and the inhabitants of her boat are shot down. It turns out she was hoping to protect her pet puppy. Now anyone who knows me knows that I'm a major sucker for a cute puppy, and though I jumped when the humans on the boat were shot, I flat out convulsed in fear and disgust when the soldiers grabbed the puppy forcefully to bring him onto their own boat. An hour or so of genocide that I've seen and I've barely reacted physically, but making a puppy squeal in fear is over the line? Then I think, "well that puppy is totally innocent!" Guess what, Max? So were ALL THOSE FOLKS ON THE BEACH. Now that's analysis, Coppola. Lesson learned.

Unholy hell.

Willard and his crew, some of whom have been lost along the way, finally reach the camp where Kurtz is presiding over a terrifying army of ghostly-white-body-painted natives. He's greeted by the photojournalist (Dennis Hopper)... and you know when you meet Dennis Hopper in a movie that it's not a good sign. ("Bluuuuuue velveeeeet...") And you know someone worse is in store when Hopper says that Kurtz has "enlarged his mind." Indeed, Willard and his crew are taken hostage and imprisoned, soon to be forced into labor by Kurtz and his jungle cronies.

"Are you an assassin?"
"I'm a soldier."
"You're neither. You're an errand boy sent by grocery clerks to collect the bill."

Willard's interactions with Kurtz, played with restraint and heft by a restrained and hefty Brando, are chilling, as we thought they might be, but Kurtz's rants lack cohesion for me. They're the babblings of a man driven mad by war and human suffering. Is Coppola telling us that we ought to be Kurtz, that we ought to be enraged by the degradation of human life? Answers are never given, only diatribes with lines like "Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies!" It's a war film that deals in poetry, not prose. Is it effective? Yes. Is it haunting? Of course. Does it stick with me? Not as much as I thought it would.

The climactic scene is scored to make everything seem terrifying, epic, and otherworldly -- and it succeeds. But suddenly the story is over and we are left with... what? A great story? Sure. Not a terribly complicated plot, but more a backdrop for musings on the terrible toll that war takes on human life, those living and dead. Perhaps the movie ends abruptly because it ought to. I hadn't thought of that. But man, what a ride.

I think I can be done with war movies for a while. They exhaust me!

Next up: Billy Wilder's 1944 thriller Double Indemnity.

Cine-Smackdown: #31-#40

70 movies down, chummies. Only 30 to go, and I am newly reassured that I will make it to the end in two years' time. That is, if summer and life don't get in the way. They might. Oh, they might. And now for the smacking!

31. The Maltese Falcon
32. The Godfather Part II
33. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
34. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
35. Annie Hall
36. The Bridge on the River Kwai
37. The Best Years of Our Lives
38. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
39. Dr. Strangelove
40. The Sound of Music

I had not seen The Maltese Falcon, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Best Years of Our Lives or The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (all four totally dude-bro movies) previous to the blogviews.

Of these ten, which would I move further up the list?
I think most people would say The Godfather Part II should be further up on the list, but I think it sits farther down the list than its predecessor for a few reasons. But I can't ignore how affected I was by The Best Years of Our Lives. I know, right? Black and white WWII weepie? WHAT? But it's true. I don't think it smashes any boundaries, but it's a great story well told and that's all I really want. It got to me and stuck with me.

Of these ten, which would I get rid of?
There's too many classics at this point on the list to be able to do this very easily, but it's probably got to be The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The Maltese Falcon comes in second. Sorry, Humphrey.

Who in these movies do I want as my best friend?
It's probably too easy to say Fraulein Maria (The Sound of Music), but come on: she's got confidence in me (and sunshine), she plays guitar and sings, and she's brave... once she gets over her love-phobia.

Who in these movies do I want to have my back in a bar fight?
Well, Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon) is clever enough to trick anyone out of knocking me out, and Captain von Trapp (The Sound of Music) could stop anyone will those Siberian-husky eyes, but I think the sheer loyalty and power of Michael Corleone (The Godfather Part II) would be unstoppable ... as long as you didn't make him think twice for any reason. I mean, ANY reason.

Who in these movies is your worst frienemy?
Michael Corleone (Godfather) takes the cake. Who wouldn't he betray? Who wouldn't he snuff out? But Dobbs (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre) would betray me pretty quickly too, although that's gold blindness talking, and there's a pair of female villains (in Cuckoo's Nest and Snow White) who seem cool and collected at first but who would just as soon feed you a poisoned apple or blame you for your buddy's death as look at you.

Who do I take home to Mom?
Homer (The Best Years of Our Lives)! She totally won't mind that he's got no arms, and neither would I. She'd probably be better enamored with Snow White or Annie Hall too, although they might both drive me nuts.

You're going on a date with these movies. Who do you agree to meet for coffee but never call again?
The Bridge on the River Kwai. We had a nice time, but I'm all set. And I don't want to end up in a POW camp in Burma, especially since my bridge labor is pretty much futile.

Who do you agree to meet for coffee, and then say you'll call but never do?
It's so weird for me to say this, but Snow White! I didn't hate it, but I have seen it and now I know I don't need to watch it again. But I think I maybe would. But I probably won't.

Who do you agree to meet for coffee, and then not show up?
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. They showed up, and meanwhile I stole their gold and headed back across the border.

Who do you meet for a first date, ends up staying the night and makes you breakfast in the morning?
Annie Hall. We'd talk a lot too, and the omelette would be kosher.

Who do you meet for a first date, ends up staying the night and then leaves in the morning without saying goodbye ... and steals your favorite sweater?
The boys in the Cuckoo's Nest, though they might not know any better... and Gutman (The Maltese Falcon) would probably also spike my drink and steal my artifactbird. And I think Rolf (The Sound of Music) would probably ditch me to be a Nazi. Harsh. Why am I choosing these people?!

What other questions would you have asked about these movies? I'd love more ideas! Leave your thoughts, reactions, passionate defenses and harsh critiques in the comments!

#31: The Maltese Falcon

It was a dark and stormy night...

Okay, it just goes to show that I'm a product of the 90s when I say that the next film on the list reminded me of a Tracer Bullet story (thanks, Calvin). John Huston's 1941 thriller The Maltese Falcon represents a film genre so far undervalued on this list -- film noir -- so while I'm not sure I agree that it's a brilliant film, it does perfectly personify the tropes of Hollywood crime drama that became so popular throughout the middle of the century, and which still heavily influence modern cinema.

Company: all on my own, like our antihero and our antiheroine.

Cuisine: chips and queso and a whiskey Diet.

The stories in this genre usually follow a certain number of rules: a cynical detective (here played by, who else, Humphrey Bogart) takes the case of a distressed damsel with a secret (played effectively by anyone, it seems, since little is required besides beauty, but here played well by Mary Astor) and solves it in moody lighting accompanied by alternately swoony and murky violins. The case usually has elements of deceit, long-kept secrets, ancient artifacts, or humongous booby trap boulders chasing you down. Okay, well, that last one is really just in Raiders of the Lost Ark (influenced, too, by film noir).

Here, in a screenplay based on Dashiell Hammett's novel of the same name (that had already inspired two films), Sam Spade (Bogart) is a hard-boiled copper with a cocked fedora and a cocky attitude. When his partner Archer, assigned to trail a man in question, is murdered, he forges on alone. It's telling that in the moment he learns of Archer's death, Spade hardly reacts, barely even emotionally registering that this has happened: we get the sense that this has happened before, and considering how swiftly he gets Archer's name taken off the window decals, Spade is probably used to it. One of the hazards of the trade. But there's no time for nonsense, and Huston believes it, too, as we're whisked immediately into this story.

Don't look now, Spade, but you're being trailed yourself.

Spade is an old pro at these sorts of cases, and he's a prototype: self-assured, clever, resourceful and attentive to detail. There's not much guesswork to be made here. This kind of film, although this was one of the first of its ilk in America, was made over and over again in the 1940s and 1950s, the way romantic comedies are churned out of Hollywood now, but in the same way that we know the guy and the girl will end up together at the end of those movies, we know here just what to expect ... and yet we're on the edge of our seats anyway. A man is following him! What is he up to? Who does he work for? I bet it's some fat cat, out to hurt/extort a dame!

"I'm so tired of lying, not knowing what's a lie and what's the truth."

Lookit! A dame!

Lookit! A fat cat (Oscar nominee Sydney Greenstreet)! Ooh, and don't forget a creepy villain with a whispery weirdo voice and whites-all-the-way-around eyes (who else? Peter Lorre)! All the elements are lining up! Add on top of that the low-key direction and high-contrast black-and-white style, and the audiences will start lining up!

I mention all these partially because The Maltese Falcon feels like a movie you've seen before, even if you haven't, because it's so purely noir, and that seems like the reason it's on this list rather than its quality. It represents an entire generation of moviegoers who grew up listening to these detective stories on the radio or reading comic books under the covers at night, hoping that Tracer Bullet would solve the case. Those people who grew up watching these movies are probably a big part of the reason why there's ten editions of Law and Order and three editions of CSI: Crime Investigation. An audience loves an exciting problem, stock characters and a quick, clean wrap-up. I don't mean to belittle this genre at all -- I love all those things too! -- but I mean to point out that sometimes you don't need to reinvent the wheel to make a classic story. That might be what I take away from this genre (which I should see more of, by the way).

Oooh, so creepy! Love it!

My legitimate complaint about this entry into the film noir genre is that in the climax of the film, where everything is explained... everything is explained. Nothing is visually created for us. So much of the story has to be summarized by characters summarizing it onscreen -- couldn't we see all this unfolding? Or maybe that would have given too much of it away? It does feel anticlimactic to me -- the title treasure is unwrapped, it looks just like you expect it to, and then you're told that it's a fake? So what happened to the real one? Well, let me explain it to y-zzzzzzz...

Now of course, this is one of the earliest films noir (?), and opened the door for the genre to define itself over many years and through many scholarly debates and inspired blogs like this one (ha), so it can't be blamed if it's not the pinnacle of the category. But it's John Huston, and it's Humphrey Bogart, so it's here. I'm not 100% entranced by it, but I'm intrigued enough to explore.

Wow. This entry's maybe half the length of the one for The Godfather Part II. Fitting, maybe, since the movie itself is about half as long too. Ah well. It's time for another cine-smackdown, and then -- more Brando, please! Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness was the book you read in high school, even though maybe you should have just watched Apocalypse Now instead.

#32: The Godfather Part II

Pretty much without fail, I've kept this movie-watching experience in order, starting at the bottom of the AFI's list and climbing up. Sometimes it feels like I'm Sisyphus, but I digress. I bring it up at all because Frances Ford Coppola's 1974 epic The Godfather Part II is the only sequel on the list, and so it felt weird not to watch the first film too, not because I hadn't seem them both before (I had), but because the second is such a companion piece to the first and benefits from the context of the original. It was all one book, folks (which I've read and highly recommend), and really, Coppola meant the first two parts to be a pair, with the third film (which I haven't seen all the way through) functioning as an epilogue. Food for thought. And SPEAKING of food!

Company: this was the biggest of all the diablogue events so far, and I hope it's a trend I can continue. A lot of movies here are a tough sell ("anyone wanna come over and watch Intolerance?") but The Godfather ranks among the best regardless of who you ask, and a lot of my friends hadn't seen it and had always meant to. Those folks included my roomie Kecia, Italian meatball maker; Alex, actress and Brando impersonator; Marisa, childhood friend and close buddy to Kecia; Marie, movie maven; Ali, movie maven; Anna, sister who is not that old; and Stephanie, sister who is not that much younger. A couple ringleaders had seen these: Matt, pianist and film fanatic, and Matt and Katie, bringers of salad and wine. All of us watched the first film (which I'll blog about in a few months, I suppose) but only the Matts made it all the way through both. That's eleven people in our little living room! Movies bring us together.

Cuisine: spaghetti with homemade meatballs and marinara...


... delicious Caesar salad...


... an incredible antipasto platter provided by pianist Matt ...


... along with garlic bread, gelato, and enough wine to keep the entire Corleone family good and drunk. It was a feast of epic proportions; would that they were all like this, that all the movies lent themselves so easily to thematic food!

Okay, onto the movie.

The second film in this series functions as a parallel prequel and sequel to the first, chronicling both the early childhood and young adult life of Vito Corleone in the early 20th century as well as the rise of Michael Corleone after his father's death in the middle of the century. Marlon Brando had already immortalized the Don in the first film (to Oscar-winning effect, although he famously declined the award), so the audience is hungry to understand the complex character. Orphaned at nine years old and sent to America to escape the mafia, he is destined to become the leader of one himself. This story serves the audience by emphasizing exactly how little he had starting out, while in the present day we see the immense scope of his power.

Cut to 1958, when the Corleone family, now led by Michael (Oscar nominee Al Pacino) after the death of father Vito and eldest son Sonny, has relocated to Nevada in order to gain controlling of the burgeoning gambling business. The shot above is beautifully reminiscent of the opening sequence in the first film, in which Michael's father sits in a very similar office, listening to pleas for help. This time, however, the Don is listening to Senator Pat Geary (G.D. Spradlin), who despises the crime family and demands kickbacks. Michael's counter-offer: nothing. Bad ass.

But life has grown more dangerous, not less, in Nevada. Michael and his wife Kay (Diane Keaton) are ambushed in their bedroom and luckily make it out alive, but the safety of the family has been compromised. Something must be done. Michael flees and leaves consigliare Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) in charge, not, as would be custom, his younger brother and underboss Fredo (John Cazale, gone too soon).

Meanwhile, young Vito (Oscar winner Robert De Niro) is depicted as having fallen into a life of crime, seeing it only as a way to attain the American dream and grow powerful enough to someday avenge his family's murders. This half of the story definitely supports the contemporary half, but it's interesting nonetheless to see the beginnings of friendship with criminals we've met later in life in the first film, and more importantly, his single-handed victory over Don Fanucci (Gastone Moschin), the reigning crime boss in his neighborhood who cost him his humble clerk job.

Revenge is sweet, and wrapped in a towel disguise so it's quieter.

What's most unnerving about these flashbacks is the easy tendency toward violence, whether inherited or out of necessity, that Vito possesses. Is Vito (Andolini) Corleone a man of nature or nurture? I think with these questions, Coppola and Puzo (who co-wrote all three films, based on Puzo's novel) are making a statement about the ruthlessness of American capitalism. Criminal politics don't function so differently from our own government, and in fact they are woven from the same thread in Coppola's overwhelmingly bleak vision.

And its downfall is at stake, as Michael meets tycoon gangster Hyman Roth (Oscar nominee Lee Strasberg) in Havana to discuss possible investments there that Michael believes will be rendered useless by the possible upheaval of the Cuban government and its takeover by a young Fidel Castro. This section is long and somewhat confusing to a first-time viewer, but essentially Michael is caught in the middle, believing that Roth ordered him dead, and betrayed by his brother Fredo. "I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart."

Doomed.

The film's dense plot involves so many subplots and sub-subplots that it's difficult to even summarize the film (go read the synopsis on Wikipedia and you'll see what I mean), but the film expounds on the first film's affirmation that the Corleone family's reach extends so far as to keep it safe from government interference, even when Michael and his family are put under federal investigation. The scenes in the court room are fascinating: while Michael appears to be lying out his nose, nothing around him would prove it since loyalty to him is so far-reaching that the frustrated men on the other side of the table have little to no corroborating evidence. The Matts and I were amazed.

"At this moment I feel no love for you at all. I never thought that it would happen but it has."

But Michael Corleone makes his ruthless father look like an angel in comparison. While Vito was calm, collected and relatively level-headed, Michael's let the power go to his head, and why wouldn't he? In his position, I can't say I wouldn't be a paranoid mega-bully too. But it's destroyed his relationship with his brother, about whom he says "I don't want anything to happen to him... while my mother's alive," and more fatally, his wife. The ultimate binding loyalties of marriage and brotherhood have been broken, and they'll have brutal consequences for all involved.

Only at the film's end, after the triple climax of assassinations and deaths, do we truly see Michael Corleone for the monster he's become. As he sits alone at the estate overlooking the lake, we contemplate his fate as the film fades to black. Betrayal and ruthless vengeance: a memoir. Harshest of harsh.

The Godfather Part II is longer than the first film by about 20 minutes, clocking in at nearly three and a half hours, and it can't claim the same sense of urgency and efficiency of the first, but the real power of the film lies in its dual depictions of father and son at the same age in parallel stories. Next time I watch these, I think I'll do it on different nights -- six and a half hours is a long time to watch one extended story.

I'll be excited to come back to this in a few months (December, if my pace holds and I can finish the blog by the new year) and compare the films side by side. Hope you'll join me!

Next up: from 1941, The Maltese Falcon. Another that I have no idea about, but I've been pleasantly surprised before and hope it'll happen again. Until then!

#33: One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

One flew east, one flew west...

Only three times in Academy Award history has a film won the Big Five (Picture, Actor, Actress, Director and Screenplay). We've already seen the other two here, and now the third: Milos Forman's 1975 adaptation of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I've read the book, but I've never seen the stage adaptation. From what I understand, this doesn't stray too far from that version, although Kesey was apparently pretty upset about Forman's decision to stray from the Chief as central narrator. I think the film works well without that detail, but ... I didn't write it.

Company: alone, on instant Netflix!

Cuisine: sugar-free vanilla latte from Bob's. All one needs.

It's 1963 and the film opens on a mountain range somewhere, presumably on the west coast, underscored by what sounds like a musical saw. It's eerie, weird and appropriate. Soon we move to the Oregon State Hospital, a mental institution where Randle Patrick McMurphy (Oscar winner Jack Nicholson), a criminal convicted of statutory rape serving his sentence on a prison farm, has been transferred for evaluation. He seems like a regular guy, and he's not crazy (just regular Jack Nicholson crazy), he's probably just trying to get out of hard labor. He makes a good pass at it, asking the audience what they define as "crazy." Is McMurphy just as crazy as any of the other patients?

Perhaps the craziest one of them all is the one who seems the sanest, and for that reason, is the most dangerous: the tyrannical and unflinching warden of the floor, Nurse Mildred Ratched (Oscar winner Louise Fletcher). She has a schedule, a plan, an unmoving dedication to crushing the spirits of the men she oversees with subtle humiliation, rationing and most of all that deadly stare. The men of the ward, varied in their mental states and afflictions, are too terrified of her to do much soul-searching or healing that would give them their freedom. When McMurphy sees this hierarchy with sane eyes, he plans to overthrow Ratched and free all his fellow bunkmates.

One great example is his act of defiance in watching the World Series that Nurse Ratched has refused to allow on a technicality. She will not turn the television on, but he sits in front of it anyway, and suddenly acts as though it's on. The men join him, much to Ratched's dismay, who provides the scene with her trademark icy glare.

Perhaps one of the masterstrokes of this film is Forman's simple direction, keeping everything nice and orderly, the way Ratched would like us to view the hospital, from simple, adequately lit angles. As McMurphy's hold over the ward increases, the filming of it becomes more antic. Brilliant. It doesn't hurt that every actor, especially the non-incapacitated men of Ratched's therapy group, is in top form, carving living, breathing characters from stutters, droopy eyes, limps, constant smiles, etc., and bringing them together to create the anguished landscape of this hellhole.

It's so much more rewarding, then, when by an amazing chance, McMurphy manages to steal the hospital bus and take the men on a fishing trip on a hijacked boat. The eight-minute fishing scene is truly the most relentlessly joyful of the film, and for a brief moment relieves us and reminds us that these are regular guys who for whatever reason are uncapable of functioning in regular society. They seem to do an okay job of it at sea.

The tables turn, however, when McMurphy has two major revelations: a) he is not, as he thought, guaranteed release, that he is at the mercy of Ratched and the psychiatrists of the ward who have the power to keep him incarcerated; and b) only some of the men in the ward share his fate. Many of the men actually have the power to leave at any time, but have chosen not to. I found this apathy to be one of the most culturally resonant themes in the film. How many of us are incapacitated, unable to fix something in our lives, but find it so much easier to live with it than to invite hookers with booze into our ward and have an all-nighter?

Whatever the larger social implications, Cuckoo's Nest really boils down to a fascinating dual-character study between McMurphy and Ratched. I'd say that Nicholson and Fletcher (both definitive in their roles and deserving of the accolades) won their Oscars just as much for themselves as they did for each other. Does that make any sense? What I mean is: their chemistry is so spot-on, their demented game of cat-and-mouse is so enticing that we can't help but watch. Even knowing the ending like I did, and having seen the film before, I found myself unable to stop watching either actor when they're onscreen. Luckily, they rarely appear in the same shot together, so the audience is hardly ever forced to choose which actor to watch. Nicholson has the simpler job (simple?!) in what is nearly a screwball comedy for its first half, but he provides McMurphy with such trademark dexterity and sexual energy that he entrances everyone onscreen.

For my money, I think Louise Fletcher has the much more difficult role, the one in which restraint and cold calculation are her main weapons. Fletcher masters this, never stooping to caricature or camp, but always keeping her cool. And my god -- that icy stare! Those arched eyebrows! Supposedly this role was offered to nearly a dozen other major actresses of the time, but for one reason or another they all turned it down. I think the film benefits from having a lesser known actress in the role, but poor Ms. Fletcher will now always be associated with this devilish bitch.

Is this what makes the film (and the story) so American? Devil's advocate warning: it's very clear that the good guys are the childlike men and the bad guys are the rule-enforcing women in charge. Is this just a tale of adolescent rebellion? That's maybe cynical, but a review for the most recent Broadway revival makes a fair point.

A battle to the death.

The final act, in which McMurphy hosts an all-night party for the patients with the aide of two booze-toting whores, only to fall into a drunken sleep before his planned escape and face the consequences in the morning, is mesmerizing and cathartic. I won't spoil it, since everyone should see this and be surprised, but it's a horrifying and wonderful ending to a great American film. "I feel as big as a damned mountain." AH!

Do I love the film? I don't know if I could say that. It's entertaining, certainly, and feels larger than itself, but because of the dreariness of the setting I'm not sure I could watch it very often. That's probably my one complaint, though I hardly think that was on anyone's mind while making it. Regardless of the misogynist undertones, it's a good story, well told. Isn't that what I always claim I want from a movie? Put it to bed.

Next up: the only sequel on the list! I'm not sure whether to watch The Godfather first before I watch The Godfather: Part II, even though the first film is #2 on the list. How big of a sequence-stickler do I have to be here? This might be the one exception I make, though I'll save the first film's entry until later.