A TRAMPY FILM THAT'S PURE GOLD

April 16 . . .

He was the most influential comic artist the movies ever produced – and arguably the single most important cinema artist, period. He rose from an impoverished, abused childhood that could have come right out of a Dickens novel to being the single most recognized film figure in the world.

Charles Spencer Chaplin was born this day in the tenements of London in 1889. His rise from miserable childhood (his father abandoned the family, his mother went insane, and he and his half-brother Sidney were separated and sent away to horrific child workhouses) to world-renown icon is a story that can’t begin to be told in a movie – though Richard Attenborough tried in ‘Chaplin’ (1992).

If you’ve never seen a Chaplin film, you’re missing one of the great joys of filmdom. His early two-reelers for Mack Sennett allowed him the space, spontaneity and freedom to grow as an artist in an incredibly short time. By the time he had signed with Mutual in 1916 he was the single most popular movie star in the world and was producing works of greatness: The Vagabond, Easy Street, and The Emigrant are masterful short comedies – deftly mingling inventive slapstick, pointed social commentary, and pathos. He expanded into feature films: The seriocomic The Kid (1921), the bittersweet The Circus (1928), the exquisitely romantic City Lights (1931) and the borderline social manifesto that is Modern Times (1936).

But the film he most wanted to be remembered by, and his crowning masterpiece, is The Gold Rush (1925). Chaplin’s iconic Tramp is “the Lone Prospector” in the frozen north during the Klondike Gold Rush. Packed with priceless bits (Chaplin’s celebrated “Oceana Roll” dance; sharing a meal of a boiled shoe, etc.) and pathos, The Gold Rush is Chaplin’s most sustained and enduring work. It’s also proof that comedy is borne of tragedy: The idea for the story was inspired by the real-life Donner Party.

Chaplin never again had such a virtuoso command of the camera and such an expansive, naturalistic canvas to work on. The Gold Rush is that rare thing – a truly epic comedy. (A note: Watch the original 1925 release if possible. Chaplin voiced a narration, added an original score and recut the film in 1942, but the original version is superior.)

Click here to see a little of The Gold Rush . . . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoKbDNY0Zwg

A TITANIC DISASTER

April 14 . .

Some days in history are loaded . . like April 14. In 1865, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. In 1881, Billy the Kid made his legendary escape from Lincoln County jail. And on this date in 1912, just before midnight, the world’s largest luxury cruise ship, the Titanic, struck an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland while on her maiden voyage from England to New York. Within the next few hours, the Titanic sank to the bottom of the sea, taking with it over 1500 lives. Of the 2,340 passengers aboard, only 745 were saved. There were only enough lifeboats for half of the passengers and crew, and many of those left the decks of Titanic only half full.

Everyone’s seen James Cameron’s soggy, waterlogged epic Titanic (1998) – and I won’t try to dissuade you from seeing it again if that’s your choice. Just try not to notice what an ineptly-written script it has. Ignore such plot holes as the fact that the famous paintings shown as sinking on the Titanic can’t be in two places at once (the bottom of the ocean and hanging in a modern-day museum.)

Overlook the nonexistent chemistry between the two young stars, who together generate about as much heat as the massive iceberg that does the ship in. Try to ignore the stupid dialogue (Leonardo DiCaprio telling Kate Winslet, “I’ll wait for you here”, as he’s handcuffed to a pole!) and idiotic melodramatics (villain Billy Zane chasing DiCaprio and trying to shoot him while the ship is going down.)

Wave aside the fact that if Cameron had jettisoned the hokey love story and concentrated on virtually any one or more of the real life participants, he might have had something glorious. Well, I suppose he did wind up with something glorious: Titanic was a massive hit. But, as a movie, Titanic lives up to its name: It’s huge, full of bilge water, and takes about 3 hours to sink underneath the weight of its own hubris.

Can you tell I loathe this movie?

For a more emotionally satisfying experience, try watching the gripping British film, ‘A Night To Remember’ (1958), instead. Clocking in at just over 2 hours, it’s significantly more streamlined than Cameron’s elephantine epic, but infinitely more rewarding. What it lacks in majesty and special effects, ‘A Night To Remember’ more than makes up for in a literate, compelling, and (mostly) historically accurate storyline – focusing on the courage, humanity and despair of the voyagers – most of whom will never return. Screenwriter Eric Ambler did a magnificent job in adapting Walter Lord’s book of the same title. Featuring a very young David McCallum (later Illya Kuryakin on The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) as a heroic crew member.

LISTEN UP!

April 13 . . .

Hey, movie geeks . . . for today’s installment, we have a little change-of-pace . . . a special :90-second audio program of ‘A Movie A Day’, featuring NPR personality, Joel Block. We think you’ll enjoy it! To listen, just click here . . .

http://www.movieaday.net/

. . click the 'April 13' show at the bottom of the page . . and let us know what you think!

The Shot That Divided A Country

April 12 . . .

The bloodiest war in our history (so far), the American Civil War was triggered by an event that happened this day in 1861. Fort Sumter, a government stronghold in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay, was attacked by Confederate forces under the command of General Pierre G. T. Beauregard. Three days later, President Lincoln issued a proclamation for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to help quell the Southern “insurrection.” By the time the war ended four years later, over 620,000 Union and Southern soldiers had given their lives.

Observe the occasion by watching one of the most monumental and compelling documentaries ever made: Ken Burns’ epic, “The Civil War”. Originally broadcast on PBS in 1990, ‘The Civil War’ is an exhaustive, meticulously detailed insight into the conflict. Thousands of rare photographs provide indelible images, and the voice-over narratives of various participants of the events – reading excerpts from letters, documents or journals – are profoundly affecting. A stunning achievement, and – at over 11 hours in 9 separate episodes - well worth spreading out over two evenings.

A BIRTHDAY YOU CAN'T REFUSE

April 7 . . .

Happy birthday today to one of the great mavericks of modern cinema, Francis Ford Coppola, born on this date in 1937 in Detroit, Michigan. He filmed his first movie on an 8mm movie camera at the age of 10 after recuperating from a yearlong bout with polio. In 1962 he finagled a job as assistant director and all-around errand boy for the patron saint of all young filmmakers, Roger Corman. After directing a low-budget horror flick in Ireland, he directed his own light-hearted coming-of-age comedy, ‘You’re A Big Boy Now’ (1967). Hollywood took note and entrusted him to direct two films, ‘Finian’s Rainbow’ (1968) and ‘The Rain People’ (1969). Both flopped, and Coppola was on the verge of bankruptcy when he signed on to helm ‘The Godfather’ (1972), one of the biggest moneymakers ever. And one of the great roller-coaster directorial careers in Hollywood was off to an auspicious start.

Over the years, Coppola has directed some of the most audacious, daring and occasionally successful movies in the American oeuvre (‘The Godfather, Part II’ [1974]; ‘Apocalypse Now’ [1979], - and quite a few that paled, flailed and failed with audiences (‘One From The Heart’ [1982]; ‘The Cotton Club’ [1984]; ‘Gardens of Stone’ [1987]). But one of his greatest achievements is one of his most rarely-screened experiments, the brilliant, taut, and unsettling piece called ‘The Conversation’ (1974).

In one of his most complex performances, Gene Hackman plays Harry Caul, one of the top surveillance experts in the country, a deeply moral man in a deeply sleazy business who feels guilty about what he does for a living: Invading people’s privacy. When wealthy businessman Robert Duval hires him to trail his wife (Cindy Williams), whom he rightfully suspects of having an affair, Caul stumbles across a murder plot. All is not what it seems in the labyrinthine puzzle of a movie, which is not so much a thriller as a fascinating character study of a man who has misplaced his moral compass. Featuring Harrison Ford in a rare role as a heavy and the late John Cazale as Harry’s worshipful assistant. ‘The Conversation’ was one of the first – and still the best – of the paranoiac thrillers. The DVD features a riveting feature-length commentary by Coppola.

THE WAR TO END ALL WARS: TAKE 1

April 6 . . .



On this date in 1917, the U.S. formally declared war on Germany and entered into World War I. It was supposed to be the ‘war to end all wars.’

Observe the sober anniversary with one of the greatest antiwar films ever made, Lewis Milestone’s unforgettable ‘All Quiet On the Western Front’ (1930), based on the classic novel by Erich Maria Remarque. At the instigation of their gung-ho schoolteacher, seven German youths enlist in the army and go to the battlefields of WWI, their imaginations fired with visions of patriotism and glory. Stuck in the trenches and experiencing the horrors of war firsthand, they quickly see there’s no glory in it.

An emotionally wrenching film that has lost none of its power in the ensuing decades, ‘All Quiet On The Western Front’ is at once lyrical and gritty, graphic and shocking. Lew Ayres excelled with the performance of his lifetime as the naïve enlistee through whose eyes we, the audience, come to see the horrors of war. A masterpiece of film not only as an art form, but as a potent weapon – the kind of weapon that can give the word propaganda a good name. (The film was actually banned in the U.S. during WWII to discourage pacifism.)

April 3 . . .

Marlon Brando was born this day in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1924, the son of a father who was a traveling salesman and a mother who acted in community theater. There was a method to Marlon’s mumbling, and he grew up to become the single most influential film actor of his age.

Audiences had never seen anything like him. Positively primal, grunting and scratching himself whenever and wherever he happened to itch, Brando was compulsively watchable, projecting a raw sexuality that leaped off the screen. Think of the width and breadth of his range – ‘The Wild One’, ‘On The Waterfront’, ‘Viva Zapata!’, ‘Julius Caesar’, ‘Guys and Dolls’, ‘Teahouse of the August Moon’. He fell into slack performances throughout the 60s, but then had one of the great comebacks in film history as Don Vito Corleone in ‘The Godfather’ (1972), followed by the grieving middle-aged American in Bertolucci’s controversial ‘Last Tango In Paris’ (1972). They’re all monumental performances. You’ve probably seen most of them.

Every film buff is familiar with Brando’s much-touted acting acumen, but have you ever seen Brando’s sole effort as director? For a special change of pace, celebrate Brando’s birthday with the only film he ever directed and starred in, ‘One Eyed Jacks’ (1961). A fictionalized take on both Billy the Kid and the theme of betrayal, set in the Old West, it was originally slated to be directed by up-and-coming Stanley Kubrick, but Brando took the reins at the last minute; apparently, some of Kubrick’s footage survives in the final cut.

Brando plays bank robber Rio, who is double-crossed by his partner and surrogate father, Dad Longstreet (Karl Malden). Released from a Mexican prison after 5 years, Rio tracks down his old partner, now the sheriff of a small coastal town in California. Rio plots revenge and begins an affair with Longstreet’s daughter (Pina Pillicer).

‘One Eyed Jacks’ is a muddled psychological study but a fascinating cinematic Rorschach test into Brando’s bizarre psyche. (Naturally, he includes a mandatory whipping scene; Brando often took a sadomasochistic beating at the box office.) He had the inspiration to film his movie on the beautiful Monterey Peninsula, giving the picture a sand-swept, bleached-out ocean-spray ambience that his unusual in a Western. Gorgeously shot, uniformly fine acting (except for the miscast Pillicer), and far from your average shoot-em-up oater. A great supporting cast includes Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, Elisha Cook, Jr. and the always interesting Tim Carey.

Click here for a taste of 'One Eyed Jacks' . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2x_Xhjofww

TAKE THIS DETOUR

April 2 . . .

It was a day pretty much like every other day in los Angeles in 1965. Spring was in the air but who who could see it through the smog and what difference would it have made anyway? Washed-up Hollywood B-movie actor and never-quite-star Tom Neal had fallen on hard times, living in a cheap dilapidated apartment, and all the days looked the same. His reputation for hard living and hard drinking had made him virtually unemployable in the industry. On top of all that, he was paranoid and suspicious that his wife, Gail, was having an affair.

The story that he later told police was that she had tried to kill him and the gun went off accidentally; the prosecution’s version of events was that he had shot her in the head while she slept on the couch. Strangely, the gun itself had vanished. Either way, accidentally or on purpose, on this day in 1965, Tom Neal killed his wife, along with whatever chance he had for a future.

The irony was thick. Years before, he gave one of the all-time great film noir performances as a down-on-his-luck drifter who meets one bad dame too many, gets a bad hand dealt him, and who accidentally kills his lover in the movie many consider the greatest film noir ever, the classic ‘Detour’ (1946). B-movie director Edgar Ulmer, working on a poverty-row budget, created a bleak, bitter, compelling masterpiece on the vagaries of fate. Neal is appropriately dim as the luckless hero, but it’s Ann Savage (an appropriate name if there ever was one) who steals the show as the brassy bitch Neal picks up hitchhiking in California. All in all, ‘Detour’ is an amazing movie, drenched in the darker hues of human nature; like watching a bad traffic accident, you’re compelled to look.

Neal, sentenced to 15 years for manslaughter, was paroled in 1971, but died August 7th, 1972. In a typical piece of Hollywood stunt-casting, his son, Tom Neal, Jr., played his old part in a 1992 remake of ‘Detour’. He hasn’t been heard from since. Like father, like son.

Click here for a clip from ‘Detour’ . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkwETw6mZ6k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maW4nFWyvz0