In depth, personal and opinionated reviews across the whole of film history. Old and new, classic and turkey I review them all: some you might agree with, some I'll sure will infuriate you!
Exploitation and barmy courtroom and steamy romantic couplings abound in this silly but fun mystery
Director: Richard Marquand
Cast: Glenn Close (Teddy Barnes), Jeff Bridges (Jack Forrester), Peter Coyote (DA Thomas Krasny), Robert Loggia (Sam Ransom), John Dehner (Judge Carrigan), Karen Austin (Julie Jenson), Guy Byd (Matthew Barnes), Marshall Colt (Bobby Slade), Louis Giambalvo (Fabrizi), Lance Henricksen (Frank Martin), Leigh Taylor Young (Virginia Howell)
Teddy Barnes (Glenn Close) is done with criminal law after her time at the DA’s office, working under ambitious, unscrupulous Thomas Krasny (Peter Coyote). But she’s dragged back in to defend handsome newspaper editor Jack Forrester (Jeff Bridges), accused of brutally murdering his wife and her maid (for the money naturally). Teddy takes the case and soon crosses that line marked “personally involved” as she and Jack swiftly move from riding horses to riding each other. But what if Jack is really guilty after all?
Jagged Edge is a big, silly courtroom drama, a sort of erotic thriller B-movie that got some serious notice because two critically-acclaimed, three-time Oscar nominated actors fleshed out the cast. Written by Joe Eszterhase (for whom this was the springboard for a career of sex-filled, murder-and-legal dramas that would culminate, via Basic Instinct, with Striptease), Jagged Edge is full of pulpy, super-tough dialogue that its cast loves to chew around their mouths and spit out. It’s got the sort of courtroom dynamics that would see a case thrown out in minutes and would make its lead character unemployable in seconds. It’s daft, dodgy and strangely good fun for all that.
What it is not, really, is either any good or in any way surprising. One look at rugged, casually handsome Jeff Bridges and sharp-suited, charming-but-whipper-smart Glenn Close and you just know its only a matter of time before they end up in bed together. This leads to all sorts of unprofessional sex-capades and legal decisions, not to mention the sort of pathetically readable poker-faces in courtrooms that I would definitely not want from my lawyer.
Jagged Edge makes no secret of its hard-boiled, pulp roots. It opens with a POV home invasion as the killer breaks into his victim’s house that is only barely the right side of exploitative. Marquand doesn’t shirk any opportunities to chuck crime scene photos up on the wall. Peter Coyote’s uber-macho DA loves to say lines like “he has a rap sheet longer than my dick”. Best-in-show Robert Loggia (Oscar-nominated) is the sort of grimy flatfoot investigator who has a fridge full of booze and can’t go more than five words without cussing (when asked if his mother ever washed his mouth out with soap he simply responds “Yeah. Didn’t do no fuckin’ good”).
It’s similarly open about its sexy energy. Close and Bridges have a blue-filtered, late-night roll in the sheets, made even more exciting (perhaps) by the fact she spends half the film suspecting he did the deed. That’s the question the film challenges us with. On the one hand, Bridges seems far too boyish and aw-shucks to have slaughtered two women with a jagged knife. He sure looks upset when he visits the crime scene. Problem is there doesn’t seem to be any other possible suspect, and all that circumstantial evidence just keeps stacking up around him.
Close plays all this with a great deal of force and emotional intelligence, far more than the part (or the film) really deserves. She’s amicably separated from her husband (a very decent guy) and the film even finds a little ahead-of-its time space to make clear that Kransky’s animosity for her (and her loathing of him) is based on his sexual harassment of her as much as his flexibility with courtoom rules. Close balances the whole B-movie set-up with a real dedication – it’s effectively a warm-up (in a way) for the nonsense she’d play in Fatal Attraction.
Bridges is also pretty good, always keeping you guessing from scene-by-scene. How bothered is he when he spreads his wife’s ashes off his yacht? But then how affronted and hurt he looks when he is accused of the crime? It’s a tricky part, but he does a great job of constantly shifting the audience viewpoint and his relationship with Close’s Teddy is just smooth enough to have you guessing how genuine it is.
Wisely – perhaps – he doesn’t hit the stand during the trial. It would probably lead to drama meltdown. The courtroom is full of unbelievable curveballs, witnesses crumbling in a way they never do in real life. Every single disaster for each case is signposted by the fixed horror on the faces of the lawyers. Revelations fly-in and a new suspect effectively incriminates himself mid-trial to the delight of all (this suspect even enforces his caddishness by threatening Teddy in a car park in another moment where the film tries too hard).
The film culminates in the inevitably silly reveal, with plot twists abounding, where we are asked to believe that a killer who has ingeniously considered every single angle of his crime casually leaves incriminating evidence hanging around waiting to be discovered. Its final scene, where the killer is revealed, is either tense or unbearably, ridiculously stupid, depending on your viewpoint (everyone behaves ludicrously out-of-character and takes stupid, unnecessary risks). But for the bulk of its runtime, Jagged Edge is dirty, cheap fun.
Keaton is cast adrift in a film that is all gags and no story or stakes and not the better for it
Director: Buster Keaton (& Donald Crisp)
Cast: Buster Keaton (Rollo Treadaway), Kathryn McGuire (Betsy O’Brien), Frederick Vroom (John O’Brien), Noble Johnson (Chief), Clarence Burton (Spy)
Buster Keaton claimed The Navigator was his best film. With all due respect he’s wrong. The Navigator was born out of the ahead-of-its-time failure of Sherlock Jr. When that marvel of cinematic invention didn’t land with audiences, Keaton played safe. He put a lid on the tricks and focused on the gags. In fact, he cast himself away in a boat with only Kathryn McGuire for company and they told jokes for 45 minutes. That’s the basics of The Navigator and, for me, the lack of plot, stakes or character ends up in a much weaker film.
Buster is Rollo Treadaway, a rich sap, who one day decides to get married and books the honeymoon before he’s asked his planned intended Betsy (Kathryn McGuire). When she says no, Rollo goes on honeymoon anyway but in a confusion at the docks ends up on the wrong ship, The Navigator. It’s owned by Betsy’s father – but spies for a foreign power plan to set it adrift. In further confusion, Betsy also ends up on board and she and Rollo wake-up drifting at sea. How will two pampered rich people work out how to look after themselves on a deserted ship?
The Navigator keeps things simple, cranking up the jokes in a film much closer in spirit to his shorts, all designed to be easy to digest and just tickly the funny bone. You feel they genuinely did just cast the ship out to sea and waited for Keaton to work out as many gags as he could until the camera ran out of film. Donald Crisp was hired to direct the dramatic stuff, but Keaton quickly realised he didn’t need him and didn’t like Crisp’s vague prologue about wicked spies (he was right, it’s totally forgettable unlike the equivalent opening of Our Hospitality) so set off to sea without him. (Crisp makes a visual cameo as the painting of the ship’s captain that swings in front of a porthole).
There are, for me, three key gags that work in The Navigator. Rollo’s spontaneous decision to get married (based on seeing a happy couple outside of the window), after which he distractedly bathes fully clothed then gets his chauffeur to drive him to Betsy’s house – on the opposite side of the street (the car does a big circular loop across the street). After the rejected proposal he informs the chauffeur, he needs a walk home to clear his mind.
This is, in many ways, the funniest, most inventive moment in The Navigator. It’s a great little showpiece as well for the (passionately not-getting-married) Kathryn McGuire and the finest example of Keaton’s capacity for easily led saps, overwhelmingly influenced by things they see around them. It’s the part of the film I enjoyed the most and its over after ten minutes.
The Navigator starts to drift as soon as it heads to sea. There is some neat camera work that suggests the haunting emptiness of the ship (it’s so vast we get an amusing series of visual jokes as Keaton and McGuire consistently miss bumping into each other while walking around it), but where other Keaton films would have explored more the ghostly darkness of this technological marvel (or the oppressive nature of it emptiness) The Navigator largely shies away from this.
The best sequence on the ship follows McGuire and Keaton’s attempts to cook a meal in a massive galley, hampered by the fact that (a) everything on the ship is set-up to cook for hundreds not two and (b) the two pampered souls have no idea how to open a tin can or boil a kettle, let alone cook a meal. Three potatoes are thrown into an enormous vat. Keaton goes through a series of trial error involving drills and carving knives to get into tins. McGuire can’t work out that sea water isn’t drinkable or how much coffee is needed for a cup. They are both befuddled by fish (which they basically eat raw) and can’t find cutlery so make do with kitchen utensils. It’s a sharply observed, well-constructed scene.
But other than this, the film struggles with a series of gags that rather disappoint. There is a painfully overlong underwater sequence where Keaton wrestles with a fake swordfish. There is a lack of Keaton’s trademark physical stunts (aside from a bit of business with a deckchair). An encounter with an island tribe – a bit uncomfortable today to watch these Black-skinned savages – is overlong and heads into a siege that is never particularly funny (other than a gag of Keaton accidentally dragging around a miniature cannon that no matter where he turns is always aimed at him – a gag later lifted for Jar-Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace).
The main problem I have about The Navigator is that this bag of gags never engages me because the film isn’t about anything. Neither of these people feel like real people (and, lord knows, Keaton characters were often lightly-sketched comic roles, but this is ridiculous), the film has no stakes and has no plot momentum, drifting like the boat they are stuck on. I need more for a comedy, to feel invested. Without that investment, it’s just stuff happening. A Keaton’s I won’t revisit. It was, however, his biggest hit. What do I know?
A film of two halves, in more ways than one: the swashbuckling original and its dark sequel
Director: Richard Lester
Cast: Michael York (d’Artagnan), Oliver Reed (Athos), Frank Finlay (Porthos/O’Reilly), Richard Chamberlain (Aramis), Raquel Welch (Constance Bonacieux), Jean-Pierre Cassel (Louis XIII), Geraldine Chaplin (Anne of Austria), Charlton Heston (Cardinal Richelieu), Faye Dunaway (Milady de Winter), Christopher Lee (Count de Rochefort), Simon Ward (Duke of Buckingham), Spike Milligan (Bonacieux), Roy Kinnear (Planchet), Georges Wilson (Captain de Treville)
All for one and one for all! The Three Musketeers is probably the greatest adaptation of Dumas’ rollicking classic, a wonderful mix of swashbuckler, romance and Hellzapoppin comedy, that never takes itself particularly seriously and is crammed with actors having a whale of a time. It’s not quite a send-up, but it’s also not quite a straight re-telling either. Instead, it’s gunning all-out for entertainment – and it succeeds most of the time.
d’Artagnan (Michael York) arrives in Paris in 1625 desperate to join the musketeers. After various adventures along the way – including a rivalry with suavely villainious Rochefort (Christopher Lee) – the impulsive young man forms a friendship (after bumps in the road) with the famed musketeers Athos (Oliver Reed), Porthos (Frank Finlay) and Aramis (Richard Chamberlain). Falling in love with the unhappily married Constance (Raquel Welch), maid to Queen Anne (Geraldine Chaplin), d’Artagnan and his friends are dragged into foiling a plot by the ambitious Cardinal Richelieu (Charlton Heston) to use the ingenious Milady de Winter (Faye Dunaway) to expose the Queen’s infidelity with the Duke of Buckingham (Simon Ward). Will our heroes manage to foil the scheme in time?
The Three Musketeers adapts the first third or so – the most famous and by far the most enjoyable part – of Dumas’ novel. With an irreverent script by Flashman author George MacDonald Fraser, its framed as a rollicking romp with a tongue-in-cheek humour. Richard Lester, famed for his cheeky Beatles comedies (and the film was originally envisaged as a vehicle for the Fab Four), added his trademark scruffy, opportunistic comedy.
The film is awash with muttered asides – many of them well delivered by Roy Kinnear’s exasperated servant Planchet – that are only just picked up by the sound mix. My favourite? d’Artagnan bursting into a room full of guards, yanking a rug with a yell in an attempt to upend them, succeeding only in tearing the corner off it, then immediately jumping out of a window, leaving the bemused guards one of whom plaintively mutters “He’s torn our carpet” – I find this funny on multiple levels, from York’s all-in energy to the stillness of the shot, to the underplayed sadness of the punchline.
Lester’s film is full of long-shot gags – passengers in litters being dropped in a lake, d’Artagnan swinging on a rope to knock someone off a horse, missing and falling in the mud or his jump from a third storey window only to immediately reappear having landed on a (anachronistic) window cleaner cart. While the film does have its moments of drama, danger and intensity, it doesn’t ease up on visual humour, or gags (“This ticket is for one man” “I am one man. This is a servant”). It’s all part of Lester’s plan to make a fast-paced, pantomimic entertainment in which nothing is intended to ever be too serious.
It’s all played with maximum commitment by the cast, all of whom buy into the films’ tone. Michael York leaves very little in the locker-room with a performance full of youthful bravado, lusty hurrahs and naïve, winning eagerness. It’s a very hard balance to get right but he is never overbearing, but provides a relatable, likeable lead. He’s physical commitment to a series of Buster Keaton style gags is also commendable. He sparks a rather sweet romance with Raquel Welch, who is not the world’s strongest actress, but gamely delivers a series of pratfalls as the eternally clumsy Constance.
Around these two, a series of experienced actors delight in larger-than-life roles. Reed brings a surly intensity to Athos, a reminder of how great a career this charisma laden actor could have had. Finlay gives a Falstaffian joie de vivre to Porthos. Chamberlain (with little to do) strikes a gamely romantic figure as Aramis. As the baddies, Heston clearly enjoys subverting his grandiosity as the scheming Cardinal, Dunaway has a kittenish sensuality as Milady and Christopher Lee is so perfect as the debonair Rochefort that his eye patch (unmentioned in Dumas) has become de rigour for every Rochefort performance afterwards.
The Three Musketeers is crammed with swashes being buckled. The sword fights come thick and fast and are all shot in a series of impressive locations (the camera work of David Watkin, design of Brian Eatwell and costumes of Yvonne Blake do a wonderful job creating a sumptuous period setting). At times they do look a little ragged today – producers the Salkinds ran a tight budget, and there are multiple reports of the slightly-under-rehearsed fights leading to near-serious injury (this slapdash preparation would lead to tragic consequences when Roy Kinnear was killed on the belated second sequel 15 years later). But the actors enter into them with a firey commitment (a little too much so in Reed’s case according to the terrified stuntmen) and rumbunctious energy that really sells these as gripping action. They are also give a certain air of peril that gives just enough weight to the film.
The Three Musketeers has moments of dated clumsiness – the bizarely arty slow-mo opening with blurred motion feels totally out-of-keeping with the rest of the film – and not all the jokes land (Spike Milligan in particular is completely over-indulged in the film’s least successful comic moments). Not every performance works – Chaplain in particular is weak as Anne of Austria – and not all the jokes pay off. The musical score by Michael Legrand, catchy as it is, sometimes overeggs the “isn’t this all such fast-paced fun” angle. But the stuff that lands, really does well and there is more than enough fun, action, adventure and rollicking good humour to keep you entertained on a weekend afternoon.
And then there were two (or rather four)
There is always a twist in the tale. At some point while making The Three Musketeers the Salkinds realised they would never get it ready for the Paris premiere. But they could get half the film ready. So, they released that and cheerily announced at the end a sequel was already in the can. Problem was no one had mentioned it to the cast, who discovered they had shot an entire movie for free. A court case exploded, which the Salkinds lost, settling with actors and leading to a new clause being inserted into all contracts for actors preventing such a dodge happening again.
The Four Musketeers covers the second, less famous, much less fun part of Dumas’ novel. Rather like novel, it’s a rambling affair that lacks the compelling narrative thrust (We’ve got to get those diamonds and save the Queen!) which made The Three Musketeers so entertaining. It doesn’t help that its also considerably darker, serious and bleaker as bodies pile up and things get serious.
This makes the sequel a very different beast to the first. Energetic heroism prevented villainy in the first film, but here it often fails . Milady (Faye Dunaway) has sworn revenge and is ordered by Cardinal Richelieu (Charlton Heston) to assassinate Buckingham (Simon Ward). Along the way she kidnaps Constance (Raquel Welch) and seduces d’Artagnan (Michael York) seduced. The Musketeers rescue Constance, fight at La Rochelle and do their best to defend Buckingham – but nothing goes to plan, especially after Athos (Oliver Reed) realises Milady and his criminal ex-wife (thought dead) are one-and-the-same.
The Four Musketeers keeps up the humour, but it is frequently at odds with the darker film it sits in. Gone is the high-paced musical score of Michel Legrand, replaced with a lyrical series of melodies by Lalo Schifrin. It’s telling that Welch – whose comic clumsiness was a large part of the first movie – appears only briefly here. Similarly, Cassell’s shallow monarch (dubbed by Richard Briers) pops up just once, Roy Kinnear’s Planchet isn’t in the first hour and Spike Milligan’s free-wheeling improvisation is missing completely (in that case, no bad thing).
The film feels tonally at odds with the first film and even, at times, with itself. The Three Musketeers was full of sword fights but no deaths – here sword strokes are lethal. As the Musketeers comically bounce around at La Rochelle sight gags abound – but it feels at odds with a film where the death is very real. The more realistic feel means some set pieces – such as Rochefort and d’Artagnan fighting on an inexplicably frozen lake in the height of Summer – become harder to swallow.
Some performers do flourish. Oliver Reed comes into his own as an increasingly dark and vengeful Athos, giving into temptations of shocking revenge. Faye Dunaway laces her role with cold, murderous fury. They have most of the film’s most compelling scenes – but the incredibly dark ending (which involves our heroes actively perpetrating judicial murder with a terrified victim) while loyal to the book, feels far too heavy for a pair of films that started with Buster Keatonish comedy.
The loyalty to the book and the commitment to follow it is partly to blame. There is a reason why most adaptations chuck away this section of the book. It lacks a clear narrative line for emotional connection and is highly episodic. d’Artagnan, in the book, does indeed sleep around after Constance disappears – but when the film requires their relationship to be the emotional heartbeat, is it a good idea to have him jump into bed with two women within days of her disappearance?
Lester announces the more sombre parts by filming them in a very framed, artful way inspired by the old masters, with a static camera and medium shot, reliant on Schifrin’s maudlin music. He’s far more at home with the comic business delivered by Finlay (very good) and Chamberlain (still with nothing to do). At other points he surrenders initiative to legends like Heston (suavely menacing), Lee (whose Rochefort steps up a level in lip-curling contempt) and Dunaway.
The finest thing on display are the sets and the sword fights, which are even more desperate, ragged and violently dramatic than last time (when Rochefort and d’Artagnan stop in one to take a breath, you are not remotely surprised given the total commitment we’ve seen). The action set pieces all look really impressive and staged with confidence and brio. It’s just a shame that much of the rest of the story feels like its being told by a natural comic trying hard to be King Lear, but not able to resist throwing a few gags in. It makes for an entertaining, but tonally messy film that feels it has come from a totally different place than its flawed but fun predecessor.
It’s got almost no plot but what it does have is mesmeric, balletic fighting – for three hours
Director: Chad Stahelski
Cast: Keanu Reeves (John Wick), Ian McShane (Winston Scott), Donnie Yen (Caine), Bill Skarsgard (Marquis Vincent Bisset de Gramont), Laurence Fishburne (The Bowery King), Clancy Brown (The Harbinger), Hiroyuki Sanada (Shimazu Koji), Shamier Anderson (Mr Nobody), Lance Reddick (Charon), Rina Sawayama (Shimazu Akira), Marko Zaror (Chidi), Scott Adkins (Killa Harkan), Natalie Tena (Katia)
John Wick (Keanu Reeves) wants revenge against The High Table, the shadowy criminal organisation that (for various reasons) wants to punish him for various transgressions. The High Table are raising the stakes, giving the psychotic Marquis (Bill Skarsgard) carte blanche to destroy John, including levelling the Continental hotel of John’s ally Winston (Ian McShane). With destruction all around him, hunted by two deadly assassins the blind (and old friend) Caine (Donnie Yen) and the relentless dog-loving Nobody (Shamier Anderson), John’s only chance of survival is an arcane ritual duel between him and the Maquis.
John Wick: Chapter 4 is, in many ways, less a film and more an experience. Over stretched at nearly three-hours, its effectively three mammoth fights scenes (in Osaka, Berlin and Paris) loosely stitched together with a plot that doubles down on the arcane ritual of the franchise’s criminal underbelly. It was also a massive hit, the franchise’s biggest yet. Why? Because John Wick: Chapter 4 speaks a little bit to all of us who are bored with endless big-budget, special effects filled action films where nothing is real.
In John Wick: Chapter 4 you watch real people – stunt men and actors who have clearly trained for eons – set about a series of awe-inspiring action set-pieces with stunning realism. There is the same visceral thrill of watching Reeves dish out beatings as there was watching Gene Kelly dance steps: in both cases we are watching a master at work, turning his expertise into cinematic realism in front of our eyes.
So, in some ways, it doesn’t matter there is no real plot in John Wick 4 or that the characters are lightly sketched. Because we are here for elaborate, stunt filled fight scenes in the Osaka Continental. To see Donnie Yen move with the fluidic grace of a ballet dancer. To be gripped by Reeves punching his way through a brutal brawl with a fat-suit clad Scott Adkins (a martial arts superstar himself) in a neon lit Berlin nightclub. To watch Reeves fight his way up the Rue Foyatier steps, fall back down them, then fight back up again. Why these things are happening doesn’t really matter. It’s about the beautiful realism of watching actors actually do them.
That’s what powered this film to a record-breaking haul. Its why Reeves spent time in development, Steve McQueen like, ripping lines out of the script (he says little more than 500 words in the whole three hours). Who wants to see a monologue when a Reeves weary half-shrug on having to fight his way back up those stairs speaks volumes? When we need a break from the action, the script throws in some tense verbal show-pieces that Skarsgard chews up as a politely psychotic bully or McShane and Fishburne riff on with cod-Shakespearean grandeur.
It’s all thrown together with a great deal of style by Chad Stahelski, who has grown in cinematic confidence the more of these films he has directed. It takes some balls to effectively open the film with a homage to one of the most famous edits of all time from one of the greatest films ever made, as Fishburne blows out a match to cut to the desert sun rising. But then, I’m here for a film that wears its love for Laurence of Arabia on its sleeve (and even shoots a sequence on the actual location of Lean’s classic). Alongside this, Stahelski continues to find new ways to shoot this mayhem: from tracking shots, Steadicam immediacy to a sprawling birds-eye view (inspired by computer games) that tracks Wick taking out a building full of baddies.
There are a few thematic links in the film that brings the series full circuit. Wick’s two frenemies are reflections of himself. Donnie Yen – very cool – reflects Wick’s love for family, with his “doing the bare minimum” actioning to protect his daughter, while Shamier Anderson’s softly-spoken Nobody reflects Wick’s famous dog love. John Wick: Chapter 4 also hints at the existential crisis of its hero – when you are literally taking on the entire criminal world, leaving hundreds of bodies in your wake, what chance is there that this will ever end?
It’s these little grace notes that keep the film grounded enough for us to care about Wick while he slices his way through another army of thugs. But it’s not why you are there. John Wick 4 can easily – perhaps best – be watched in chunks. Soak in one action scene, have a breather, and then throw yourself into another. Because these are some of the best, coolest, most relentless action scenes you will ever see, executed with a stunning skill. And that is what differentiates John Wick at a time when everything else feels sterile. There might be far too much of it, but at least it is life.
Keaton invents Looney Tunes in this master-class in both cinema and comedy
Director: Buster Keaton
Cast: Buster Keaton (Projectionist/Sherlock Jr), Kathryn McGuire (The Girl), Joe Keaton (The Girl’s Father), Erwin Connelly (The Hired Man/The Butler), Ward Crane (The Local Sheik/The Villain), Ford West (Theatre Manager/Gillette)
If there is one thing you learn from watching Keaton’s masterpiece, Sherlock Jr, it’s this: all Looney Tunes cartoons are Buster Keaton films. The level of astounding, frantic, comic genius in Sherlock Jr hits new heights and its mix of slapstick, improbable stunts, chases and poker-faced reactions basically makes it resemble nothing less than the world’s greatest cartoon made real. There is something either delightful or double-takingly how-did-they-do-that impressive in every scene and the entire film is assembled and designed with invention dripping from every pore.
Buster is an absent-minded, day-dreaming projectionist in a local theatre. But what he really wants to be is a detective. He gets his chance when he discovers that the father (Joe Keaton) of the girl (Kathyn McGuire) he’s in love with has had his watch stolen. We know it’s her villainous suitor (Ward Crane), but Buster’s clumsy investigation only ends up getting himself framed, with only the Girl to clear his name. Back in the theatre, Buster daydreams himself into the film he’s projecting, where he is the famed Sherlock Jr, master-detective besting scheming villains and winning the heart of the Girl, all of whom now look like the people he encountered in the real world.
Sherlock Jnr resolves almost its entire plot in the opening fifteen minutes after Buster fails to prove his mettle as a detective. Bless, he goes about his investigation with a robotic lack of imagination, slavishly following the steps in his How to be a Detective book right down to following his suspect by almost literally dogging his footsteps (requiring a parade of sudden jerks, turns and dodges to avoid being seen). Fortunately, the Girl solves the crime for him, clears his name and heads to the theatre to tell him while he drifts off to sleep. What this means is that we can enjoy Buster’s day-dream of the movies without ever worrying about how he will solve the pickle he is in in real life.
Sherlock Jr can focus on its delightful fantasy sequence. In an oft-imitated stroke of double exposure shooting, the dream Buster emerges from the body of the sleeping Buster, picks up his (dream) hat and walks out of the projection room to the theatre where he is flabbergasted to see people he knows playing roles in the film. Why shouldn’t he be tempted to walk down the aisle and try to climb into the picture? Of course, the villain responds by tossing him out of the frame and back into the auditorium (just to reassure us again, Keaton cuts to the sleeping Buster in the projection room).
Keaton’s film has hugely inventive, creative fun with the medium as Buster re-enters the movie only to find – with the power of editing – his location changing with dizzying speed, without his position changing from shot-to-shot. He steps down a flight of stairs to find it turn immediately into a bench. He tries to sit on the bench but lands in a busy road. He walks down the road to find himself on a cliff edge. He peers off the edge to find himself among lions, then crawling through the desert, sitting on the shore, diving into a snow drift. This whole sequence is effortlessly, brilliantly assembled with Keaton’s position seemingly never changing but the location changing almost a dozen times. Think that cartoon when Daffy Duck goes to war with the cartoonist. No one before had understood the comic potential of editing, shifting locations and changed perspectives.
It’s perhaps the stroke of defining genius in a film crammed with moments from here to the end that leave you breathless with their chutzpah, daring and invention. From here, Sherlock Jr is full to the brim with hilarious comic stunts that Keaton makes look effortless but required such complex planning (and endless repetition on set to get right) that your admiration for their humour is matched only by the wonder at the dedication and sweat it took to deliver them.
In the dream-film, Sherlock Jr has just enough of Keaton’s comic clumsiness to be amusingly recognisable, but every detecting trick he plays turns up trumps. He tails suspects successfully, locates stolen jewels, unmasks criminals and he is never outwitted by the criminals (saying that he can also ride on the handlebars of a motorbike for miles not noticing that the driver has long since fallen off). Through it all, Keaton gives every set-piece the sort of physical commitment Hollywood wouldn’t see again until Tom Cruise started to embark on Impossible Missions.
All of this needed time. Imagine, if you will, the innumerable takes Keaton needed to execute a deluge of seemingly impossible trick shots in a game of pool, where every ball is pocketed except the number 13 (which has been replaced by a bomb). This is the sort of Newtonian logic of a Bugs Bunny cartoon but done for real. It’s doubly funny later when you realise Sherlock Jr wasn’t being phenomenally lucky but was in fact aware the ball was a bomb and was missing deliberately. Even without that knowledge, watching balls bend round the number 13 or divide perfectly so that two balls pass by without contact is breath-taking.
Equally so a stunt which sees Keaton fold up a disguise dress in a window, head into the room, then dive out of the window, straight into the dress, and walk away. The stunt is so incredible, Keaton even dissolves part of the wall of the building so we can see it done in one take. If that’s not enough, moments later he will seemingly dive into a wall through the chest of an accomplice who will then walk away – all in one take. Keaton wanted these magic tricks to seem impossible, to leave the audience helplessly trying to work out what they have seen. The answer, in every case, was endless attempts and vaudeville expertise. Just as Keaton worked out the comic potential of editing could transport him, in a single step, hundreds of miles – so he also worked out it could make impossible events look effortless by removing all the failed attempts.
The film culminates in a chase scene the Looney Tunes cartoons would riff on endlessly (the entire Wile-E-Coyote/Road Runner series is effectively a long version of the end of Sherlock Jr). Sherlock Jr races to rescue a girl, on the handles of a rider-less motorbike, racing over roads, blockages, train tracks and all sorts then switches with her to a car, that similarly does a series of improbably manoeuvres before it crashes into a lake and turns into a slowly sinking boat. All hilarious, all directed and played with a super abundant energy.
And then he wakes into a romantic reconciliation where our hero, slavishly, follows the romantic gestures of the man in the movie he is watching to win a kiss from the Girl. We knew the happy ending was coming – that’s why we enjoyed, pressure-free, the fantasy sequence where nothing was at stake. Sherlock Jr delivers a comic tour-de-force so packed with delightful tricks, committed stunts and joyous invention that it feels like it sails by even quicker than its 45 minutes. It’s a perfectly sustained and balanced series of gags all wrapped up in something that uses the medium perfectly. It’s the first and best Looney Tunes cartoon ever made.
Technicolour musical delight in this unashamedly nostalgic and feel-good Minnelli musicial
Director: Vincente Minnelli
Cast: Judy Garland (Esther Smith), Margaret O’Brien (“Tootie” Smith), Mary Astor (Mrs Anna Smith), Lucille Bremer (Rose Smith), Leon Ames (Mr Alonzo Smith), Tom Drake (John Truett), Marjorie Main (Katie), Harry Davenport (Grandpa), June Lockhart (Lucille Ballard), Henry H Daniels Jnr (Lon Smith Jnr), Joan Carroll (Agnes Smith), Hugh Marlowe (Colonel Darly), Robert Sully (Warren Sheffield), Chil Wills (Mr Neely)
“There’s no place like home” is the message lying behind two of Judy Garland’s most iconic films. While it might be at the heart of Wizard of Oz, that longing may be even stronger in Meet Me in St Louis. From the Arthur Freed production stable, this technicolour delight is relentlessly gentle and optimistic. It went down a delight in a year when so many Americans dreamed of the end of a war that had separated families and kept soldiers from their home and remains a delightful paean to a lost America (that perhaps never even was).
Set, of course, in St Louis in 1904 during the build-up to the World’s Fair (the gleam of the electric lights turning at the exhibition are the film’s final shot), Meet Me in St Louis follows the lives and loves of the Smith family. Patriarch Alonzo Smith (Leon Ames) is a lawyer (or something, the film doesn’t trouble itself too much), his wife Anna (Mary Astor) a devoted home maker. They have four daughters: Rose (Lucille Bremer) hopes for a proposal from Warren Sheffield (Robert Sully), youngest children Agnes (Joan Carroll) and especially “Tootie” (Margaret O’Brien) are perpetually in trouble and Esther (Judy Garland) is just starting to make eyes at next door neighbour John Truett (Tom Drake). But their contented life could all turn upside down when father announces they will be moving to New York. Surely, they can’t leave St Louis behind?
In many ways Meet Me in St Louis is an inverse The Magnificent Ambersons. While Welles’ film brilliantly charted the decline of a family of wealthy snobs (the Ambersons would certainly recognise the Smiths as equals) with technology an intruder, upending everything they understand about the world, Meet Me in St Louis is a gloriously entertaining celebration of nostalgia with new technology either a source of jokes (scrambled long-distance calls, jolly cable-car songs) or wonder (that closing light-show). Both have stylistic comparisons: from their use of title cards to their fluid camera showcasing sumptuous sets and costumes. But only one of them is about cheering you up.
Meet Me in St Louis only barely has a plot, so concentrated is it on charm and whimsy (father’s announcement, which introduces the real drama, arrives over half-way through). Adapted from a series of short stories by Sally Benson, it’s an episodic film built around events – parties, cable-car rides, a Halloween adventure and a Christmas Eve ball – with a few threaded plotlines of flirtation, principally between Esther and John. Freed sprinkles in a series of songs from his collected rights holdings (including the title song) with a few additional tunes from writers Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, the most notable being The Trolley Song (a ludicrously catchy-number you can’t get out of your head) and the iconic Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (although their original far more depressing lyrics were hurriedly re-written).
These last two are performed with astonishing bravura by Judy Garland in possibly her finest hour (until A Star is Born). Garland’s singing is almost effortlessly graceful and beautiful, and she matches it with a very warm, feisty and engaging performance. Esther lands perfectly between two stools: she can be rebellious, impatient and judgemental but also caring, sensible and forgiving. Garland is reassuringly collected, funny and luminous through-out – so much so it’s striking to read what a nightmare the shoot was, with the star frequently absent as she succumbed to the mental and physical ailments that would plague the rest of her life.
Part of the success of her performance was the closeness that developed between her and Minnelli – the first director to really treat her as an adult and collaborator (they started an affair during the film). Minnelli, in only his third film and first in colour, directs with the assurance and visual beauty of an accomplished pro. Meet Me in St Louis was his first Freed musical and it might just be his best. The sumptuousness of the visuals and design were to a large part due to him – you can see the influence this had on the later work of Visconti among others, particularly the ballroom scene – and Minnelli worked labouriously with the actors to build a sense of family between them.
This pays off in spades throughout the film, where the close chemistry between the actors only helps create a nostalgic glow for happy days gone by. Ames and Astor have a relaxed ease of a long-married couples, while the four sisters interact with each other with an easy, unstudied naturalness – sharing chairs, food from their plates and time together with an unfussy ease. In particular Minnelli helped guide Margaret O’Brien to the one of the most delightful child performances on screen: the Halloween sequence, where “Tootie” confronts a scary neighbour is a masterclass of childish excitement and fear, matched later by O’Brien’s affecting distraught tears at the prospect of leaving St Louis.
Minnelli shoots the film with a technical confidence and imagination that quickly makes you forget it’s simple plot. That Halloween sequence is an eerie wonder, shot with a low-angled, tracking shot unease that leaves a haunting impression. He and cinematographer George J Folsey deigned a gorgeous gaslight dimming sequence as Esther and John go through her house dimming the lights, the camera moving in a single, complex, take up-and-around them while Folsey adjusts the set light in sync. Later there is a brilliant shot that seems to pass through a window to lead us straight into the ball, which seems years ahead of its time in its technical accomplishment. The ‘Trolley Song’s sequence uses framing and costumes perfectly to turn a cable car into something that feels as large as a small theatre. It’s an exceptionally well-made film.
You could argue certainly that it is a conservative and unchallenging film. It’s a celebration of small-time life, an argument for staying where you are and embracing the status quo. It never crosses its mind to consider that it’s a lot easier to do that if you have a huge house and servants. Not a moment of anger or serious disagreement is allowed to enter the picture. Everyone is unendingly nice all the time. But does that matter? Sometimes you need a film like a warm hug. And, when you do, don’t you want it also to be a masterclass in filmmaking with a star like Garland at the top of her game? Of course you do.
Faith is thoughtfully questioned in Ingmar Bergman’s spare, bleak and striking masterpiece
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Cast: Gunnar Björnstrand (Pastor Tomas Ericsson), Ingrid Thulin (Märta Lundberg), Gunnel Lindblom (Karin Persson), Max von Sydow (Jonas Persson), Allan Edwall (Algot Frövik), Kolbjörn Knudsen (Knut Aronsson), Olof Thunberg (Fredrik Blom), Elsa Ebbesen (Magdalena Ledfors)
It would surprise many to hear Bergman held Winter Light in the highest regard among his films. An austere chamber piece, largely set in a cold, naturally lit church, it’s the middle chapter of his thematic trilogy on faith and it serves to correct any sense of hope left remaining from in Through a Glass Darkly. Winter Light – with its lead character a semi-biographical combination of Bergman’s father (himself a Lutheran Pastor) and Bergman himself – begins with a robotic preaching in a Church and ends firing up another such sermon to an empty Church. This is a world where, if there ever was a God, he has long since gone silent and disappeared over the horizon.
You could argue Tomas Ericsson is the most ill-suited priest in the history of cinema. He’s played with a peevish, grumpy lack of hope, inspiration or joy, self-loathing seeping from every pore by Gunnar Björnstrand in what might just be his finest hour. Björnstrand, more comfortable with comedy, struggled with this counter-casting (and his cold, which was written into the script), the bottled-up pressure of the role almost shattering his friendship with Bergman. Following a single afternoon in Ericsson’s life, Winter Light charts his complete disillusionment with his faith, his utter failure to provide spiritual comfort to parishioners and his mix of dependence, indifference and contempt for schoolteacher and some-time lover Märta (Ingrid Thulin), herself a needy, unhappy woman content to play second-fiddle to Tomas’ deceased wife.
Tomas’ faith in God has long since vanished. Winter Light is his own Gethsemane, a parade of painful events and conversations where he waits desperately for some sort of sign or word from the Almighty and is left instead wondering, like Christ, why God has forsaken him. Tomas has become bitter, self-obsessed and self-loathing, going through the motions with a dwindling congregation and unable to muster even the faintest bit of belief in the words that pass his lips.
Winter Light follows up ideas of Through a Glass Darkly (Tomas even talks of a “Spider God”, a destructive force at the centre of a world made of pain). There is an echo throughout of the idea that, if God is love, then letting love into your life (or acknowledging the existence of Love in the world) is proof enough that there is a God, even if he is now silent. If so, Tomas’ rejection of any form of love goes hand-in-hand with his rejection of faith. If he felt love, it was for his late wife – and her death matches the decease of his faith in God. Now he angrily slaps away offers of affection with the same contempt he addresses towards questions of faith.
That offer of love comes from Märta, a mousey teacher trapped under an unflattering hat, the bags under her eyes and spinsterish clothes. She’s played in a performance of sustained, emotive brilliance by Ingrid Thulin. Märta captures her feelings for Tomas – right down to her acknowledgement that she knows he does not love her – in a sprawling, stream-of-consciousness letter (which Tomas has delayed reading – and when he does, he scrunches it into a frustrated ball).
That letter is conveyed to us in a stunning, almost interrupted, seven-minute take where Bergman focuses the camera on Thulin in close-up who delivers the contents of the letter straight to camera. This is a tour-de-force from Thulin, by terms unblinking, honest, self-denying, pained, resigned, hopeful and frustratingly simpering, a masterclass that marks one of Winter Light’s most striking moments of directorial and actorly technique. Few actors could pull this scene off with the grace and emotional commitment Thulin brings to it – and still leave us understanding why Tomas later, with anger frustration, cruelly tells her he has simply had enough of her all-forgiving love.
There is no place for that sort of saintly, Christ-like, love in Tomas’ life. His focus remains his own self-loathing. When meeting with Jonas (Max von Sydow – even more carved from granite than normal, his fixed stillness contrasted with Björnstrand’s twitchy unease), who has come to Tomas for spiritual reassurance to help overcome suicidal thoughts, Tomas can only complain of his own lack of faith. Tomas fails utterly to offer any solace to Jonas, a further mark of his own failure as both a priest and human. Jonas’ suicidal misery at the dread of oncoming Armageddon in the nuclear age, becomes grist to Tomas’ own misery and our priest in turn feels no shame in turning to Märta immediately for reassurance and comfort.
The only person who seems to have considered the nature of faith is disabled sexton Algot (a marvellous performance by Allan Edwall). Algot reflects that the suffering on the cross was not Christ’s true sacrifice – after all that was over in hours. The real suffering was hearing God’s silence on that cross, of the horror of suddenly thinking your life’s work may have been a waste of time, that he evangelised for someone silent or indifferent or worse. It would tie in directly with Tomas’ own doubts – except it’s pretty certain Tomas isn’t listening to him.
Maybe that’s partly the problem. We don’t listen to God, because we no longer expect him to talk. At one point, Tomas asks why God has fallen silent while behind him light suddenly pours through the Church window. Is that a sign of a sort? If it is Tomas doesn’t look and when he does, he doesn’t think. Instead, he contributes to the silence of God – as the closest thing to his vessel he fails to listen, fails to help and focuses only on his own pain.
Winter Light is a gorgeous film, full of striking light and shade by cinematographer Sven Nykvist. It’s also a bleak, grim, hopeless film, the best hope it can offer being God might have been real but he’s long since turned his back on us, just as we’ve turned out back on him. It’s magnified when we reject the thing he might have left for us, love itself. Winter Light is intensely thought-provoking, but rivetingly intelligent in the way the best of Bergman is. Björnstrand is superb and Thulin is extraordinary, in a film that carries worlds of meanings in its spare 80 minute runtime.
Eastwood enters into cinematic legend in this grippingly entertaining pulpy cop thriller
Director: Don Siegel
Cast: Clint Eastwood (Inspector Harry Callahan), Harry Guardino (Lt Al Bressler), Reni Santoni (Inspector Chich Gonzalez), John Vernon (Mayor), Andy Robinson (Scorpio), John Larch (Police Chief Paul Dacanelli), John Mitchum (Inspector Frank DiGiorgio), Mae Mercer (Mrs Russell)
“Do you feel lucky? Well do ya? Punk” With these words, .44 Magnum in one hand and remains of a hot dog in the other (yes, Harry Callahan was so cool he didn’t even stop having lunch to take on a bunch of armed robbers), Clint Eastwood made a permanent mark on cinematic history. In 1971 Dirty Harry was condemned by some as fascist or reactionary, but really it’s just energetic, punchy, impossibly entertaining pulp. In a year where tough, rule-bending cops were de rigour, Dirty Harry may have more of a B-movie vibe than Friedkin’s Oscar-winning The French Connection but there is no doubt which one is the most viscerally entertaining.
“Dirty” Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) – so called because he gets all the jobs no-one else wants – is a tough-as-nails Inspector who values the Rule of Law over the Rules of the Law. Taciturn, not-suffering fools and always on the hunt for criminals (as the prototype gruff cop maverick, of course he works best alone), he prowls the streets of San Francisco and stops at nothing to take down bad guys and protect the innocent. He’s the guy you want on the case when the ruthless Scorpio killer (Andy Robinson) holds the city to ransom, shooting innocent people at random, seizing hostages and sending notes demanding payment to prevent more outrages.
Dirty Harry is lean, mean and a simply perfect piece of pulpy action. Directed with a tautness by Don Siegel, that never let’s go, it riffs on real life events – Scorpio is an obvious stand-in for the Zodiac Killer – and basically shifts a shoot-first-ask-questions-later cowboy into the heart of a modern city. Harry, embodied with sublime suitability by Eastwood (cementing his image) has a waspish sense-of-humour, speaks as he finds, never-ever-stops, has the ruthless determination we all wish we had and carries inside himself (buried deep) a maudlin sadness at his fundamental loneliness.
Dirty Harry doesn’t shirk in showing how a cop who bends the rules to deliver real justice can be an attractive figure. Harry doesn’t quite shoot first – he gives a cursory warning every time – but he always responds with lethal force when people are threatened. He’ll carry out illegal search operations of despicable offenders, he’ll follow a psychopath because he knows he’ll offend again (he’s right, but still) and when Scorpio won’t tell him where a hostage has been hidden, he doesn’t think twice about effectively torturing the guy to get him to talk.
Siegel’s film knows that this makes Harry the sort of guy we liberals tut about but, when push-comes-to-shove we need. Harry clones run through film and television history – what is 24’s Jack Bauer, but Dirty Harry fighting nuclear terrorists? – and it’s rooted in the fact that, although we know we should respect the rights of criminals, secretly we don’t want to. Surely, it’s not an accident that the film was set in San Francisco, the nirvana of liberalism in 1970s America. What makes that possible – cops like Harry.
The film stacks the deck slightly by making most of the besuited bosses Harry rubs up against punch-clock rules followers who place the letter of the law above its spirit. Of course, the DA will release Scorpio back onto the street because the damning evidence Harry has collected needs to be thrown out. Of course, he’ll order Harry to leave the clearly-mad-as-a-bag-of-bats Scorpio in peace. Of course, almost every other law official we see can’t hold a candle to Harry’s ruthless skill. Eastwood is so cool, we need to take a beat to remind ourselves that Harry is a widower who lives in an empty apartment, has no friends and he looks on with a quiet envy when his wounded partner is comforted by his wife.
But Harry is made for other things. Siegel’s character-defining set-piece early on, irrelevant to the plot, introduces everything we need to know about Harry. He effortlessly surmises a robbery is taking place at a bank across the street, calls for back-up and when he realises it will arrive too late, grabs that .44 Magnum and hot dog and strolls across the street into a shoot-up. At the same time, it’s a miracle no one is caught in the crossfire or crashing cars. He then bluffs another robber to stand down with a hard-as-nails bad ass speech, despite his chamber being empty of bullets.
To take on a guy like that, you need a truly inspired villain. Andy Robinson, his performance a master-class of twitch with a high-pitched giggle that acts like nails on a blackboard, provides it. He makes Scorpio a deeply unhinged, unpredictable predator who compensates for his slightness and youth (opposite Eastwood’s chiselled masculinity) by simply being an utterly unpredictable lunatic, with no sense of moral compass. Robinson pitches the performance just right, avoiding obvious histrionics to present a character larger than life but terrifyingly plausible.
The duel between them is shot by Siegel like an extended, grimly tense mix of chase and spy thriller. Opening the film with Scorpio searching the horizon for a new victim through a rifle’s telescopic lens, it throws us into a dark nightmare of San Francisco, with parks and baseball grounds places of unimaginable danger and a closing tense game of cat-and-mouse at an industrial plant. Through it all, Eastwood brings his softly spoken charisma to a man who knows full well there is little too him but the chase, but who puts the rights of the guilty a very, very distant second to the victims.
Dirty Harry plays like a punch to the guts, a superbly (and seductively) entertaining film that gives just enough hints at the dangers of Harry’s methods, while making their effectiveness abundantly clear. Siegel’s direction is pitch-perfect – this is one of the greatest cop thrillers ever made – and Eastwood’s performance is iconic. The French Connection maybe a more complex film – but Dirty Harry is more entertaining and the one you’d choose to put on with some popcorn.
Keaton’s feature-length debut is a masterpiece of comic invention and slapstick stunt thrills
Director: Buster Keaton (& John G Blystone)
Cast: Buster Keaton (Willie McKay), Joe Roberts (Joseph Canfield), Natalie Talmadge (Virginia Canfield), Ralph Bushman (Clayton Canfield), Craig Ward (Lee Canfield), Monte Collins (Parson), Joe Keaton (Train engineer), Jack Duffy (Train conductor)
It starts with a dark and stormy night. If that sounds like cheap melodrama that’s kind of the point. Keaton’s first feature length comedy would be different from his joke-crammed shorts. This would be plot-led comedy, a drama full of jokes. As part of that, Keaton started the film with a storm-filled, joke-free, DW Griffith-inspired opening salvo that sees the lead character’s father dead in Intolerance inspired opening. With its gun flashes and bodies, we know in this film bullets kill.
The father is John McKay and he dies along with James Canfield in a deadly exchange. It’s part of a long-running feud betwixt McKays and Canfields (any similarity to the legendary Hatfield-McCoy feud is entirely deliberate), and the rest of the Canfields swear revenge on McKay’s baby son-and-heir. Twenty-one years later, Willie McKay (Buster Keaton) has grown up in New York, ignorant of the feud. When he returns to his father’s ranch, he finds himself in the awkward position of having fallen in love with Virginia Canfield (Natalie Talmadge), daughter of his newly discovered deadly enemy Joseph Canfield (Joe Roberts). How will matters be resolved?
With a great deal of laughs and a breath-taking series of stunts. Our Hospitality is early Keaton but already it cements his legend of comic invention and physical daring as well as his dynamism and imagination as a filmmaker. Our Hospitality is crammed with comic bits of pieces that Keaton would go on to explore and finetune in even greater detail in later films, but also culminates in a (admittedly slightly tongue-in-cheek) but still surprisingly gripping action sequence as our hero battles to survive a mountainous waterfall and save his love from toppling.
The film neatly divides into four acts, each subtly different in tone but all unified by Keaton’s creativity. Stone-faced and implacable, Keaton never mugs or goes overboard for the laugh but trusts that, with the intimacy of the camera, the smallest inflection or slightest turn of the head will raise a chuckle. He’s also charmingly innocent, refreshingly resourceful and rather brave – a perfect combination for a little guy (it helps, as always, that Keaton is literally a little guy) we root for.
That charm powers a lot of the film’s second act, a long incident-filled train journey McKay takes to the South. Keaton was fascinated by the comic potential of early technology – watching Willie, po-facedly, cycling with an early peddle-free bike, his feet alternately propelling the bike and lifted in the air is hilarious (the Smithsonian even asked if it could display this perfect replica) – and he deliberately set the film in 1831 to introduce a Stephenson-style rocket train, pulling its open carriages behind it. This vehicle not only looks hilariously ramshackle and strangely incongruous, it also opens an ocean of possibilities.
It is, for starters, hilariously slow – Willie’s dog has no problem keeping up with it. Its tracks have been laid with a rigid rule-following lack of imagination – at one point they ride up over a fallen tree log, the train and carriages bumping over it. The train is forced to stop by a donkey that refuses to leave the line (eventually the engineer simply drags the tracks around the donkey). There is an on-going feud between the Engineer (played by Keaton’s father Joe) and ticket-master about who is actually in charge of the train. At one point it veers off the tracks and down a road (everyone comments about how much more smoother this is) and later gets separated from the carriages at a junction, requiring Keaton gymnastics to bring it together. By the time it trundles into the station – and note how beautifully the train is filmed – you’ve had more comic invention than most other comedies.
During this journey Willie falls in love with fellow passenger Virginia (played, a little awkwardly, by Keaton’s wife Natalie Talmadge), little knowing she is a Canfield. The Canfields swiftly discover his identity: Willie asks one of her brother’s directions to his ranch, and the brother guides him there, all the while darting away at every opportunity to try and borrow a gun to take his revenge.
Most of the second act, which gives the film its title, revolves around Willie’s invite from Natalie to dinner at the Canfield house. Southern gentility declares the Canfields cannot take revenge on Willie while he is their guest – as soon as Willie realises this he does everything he can to remain in the house, as the (literal) instant he steps outside the door, guns come out. (Keaton also gets a lot of comic mileage from the cumbersome one-shot guns, which Willie frequently pinches to discharge to give himself a few precious moments to move outside while various Canfield’s reload).
When Willie eventually flees the house – disguised as a lady – it leads into a glorious, action-packed chase scene. Scaling mountains and cliffs, shot with a vertigo inducing brilliance (in reality Keaton placed the camera on its side and made it appear with his genius physicality that he was climbing rather than crawling). There are falls into rapids, Willie is dragged behind a racing train carriage and finally bobs and floats down a rapid (including one shot, kept in the film, where Keaton’s rope snapped and he was literally washed head first down a river). It culminates in an athletic, stunt-filled, precarious balance on a log suspended over a waterfall (a brilliant backdrop shot makes this feel impossibly high), swinging desperately on a rope to save Virginia from falling.
Our Hospitality is awash with comic energy and genius touches of business but it’s also an impressively ahead-of-its-time in the skill of its plotting and structure – you could pretty much remake it exactly today (but with words) without changing a detail, and it would still be a hit. But it wouldn’t be a legend because the only thing you wouldn’t have is Keaton. And he’s the lodestone that balances the whole thing.
Emotional but a little too worthy Vietnam message movie, well-directed with great performances
Director: Hal Ashby
Cast: Jane Fonda (Sally Hyde), Jon Voight (Luke Martin), Bruce Dern (Captain Bob Hyde), Penelope Milford (Vi Munson), Robert Carradine (Robert Munson), Robert Gintu (Sgt Dink Mobley), Mary Gregory (Martha Vickery), Kathleen Miller (Kathy Delise)
Vietnam is a jagged scar on the soul of America but, more than that, it’s been a literal scar for the veterans. Luke Martin (Jon Voight) was a college athletic star, now returned from the frontlines as an angry paraplegic, struggling with post-traumatic stress. Helping him – eventually – is old school-friend Sally Hyde (Jane Fonda), married to a Marine captain Bob (Bruce Dern) who has himself shipped out to Vietnam. Sally and Luke find themselves growing closer and closer emotionally, as their hostility towards the brutal war grows. But how will Bob – still loved by Sally and himself ever more scarred by trauma – react when he returns from the front?
Coming Home was released in the same year as The Deer Hunter and makes for an interesting comparison. While Cimino’s film is a horrific plunge into the grisly horrors of war, combined with a sort of mesmeric epic poetry, Ashby’s Coming Home is a quieter, more domestic piece, an earnest attempt to explore trauma. There is no doubting the passion of all those involved: but Coming Home is at times a little too earnest. Despite its moments of undeniable emotional impact, its sometimes feels a little too pointedly like a “message” film, worn a little too heavily on its sleeve.
But, saying that, there are many positives. It’s shot with a skilful casualness by Ashby, whose unobtrusive camera makes us a witness to events (at one crucial point it is even half obstructed by a door). Ashby has a poetic sensibility that flies in the face of what could have been its soapy roots. He lets scenes unfold with such ease and gentleness of touch that you only slowly notice how extremely well assembled the film is. There is a whimsical, lyrical sadness about the whole thing – matched with a striking lack of condemnation of people, only for a system that bends and twists human beings into killing machines.
It uses a parade of hit songs, but the songs play not as snippets but as full performances, playing out over several scenes, scenes which at first seem to be directly counter to the lyrics and tone of the song itself. Then you notice the skill with which the film has been edited to the beat of the music, and how much The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Hendrix, Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan and many others set the tone for a whole era. Coming Home captures this tone, an era of optimism crushed by brutal contact with the cold, dark realities of the world. The songs weave themselves in and out of scenes, capturing an overwhelming sense of a nation lost and confused.
It’s in this framework the relationship between Luke and Sally flourishes as Luke begins finding purpose in his life. Heavily based on the life of Ron Kovic, Jon Voight won an Oscar for his extraordinarily committed performance. From early outbursts of naked fury and pain, wheeling himself around on a hospital bed, his outbursts seemingly only prevented by medication, Voight charts the development of Luke as a humanitarian and compassionate man, committed to helping others overcome their pain and loss.
He also develops an attachment to Sally that transcends physical attraction: the two are kindred spirits. Fonda (effectively the film’s producer), generously takes on the film’s least interesting role as the disengaged, homespun Sally, increasingly horrified by the war’s impact on veterans – and the lack of interest from others (capturing the whole sweep-it-under-the-carpet attitude of the armed services, her military wives’ club refuses to include a report from Luke’s hospital in their newsletter because it’s too depressing). This translates into a deep attraction for Luke, the only other person who truly shares her growing resentment for the war.
Coming Home gained much attention at the time for its frank depiction of sex, with Luke and Sally tenderly overcoming the barriers of his disability. (Although today, their coupling – with Fonda replaced by a body double – culminating in Sally’s first ever orgasm feels a little too obvious in its comparisons with her passionless flings with Bob). But sex is less important than sharing their feelings, from Luke’s talk of dreams where he can still walk to Sally’s doubts about her life choices.
If there is a problem with Coming Home, it’s that the film doesn’t really know what to do with these characters other than showcase their pain. It tends to make sharp jumps – Luke’s recovery from initial rage to tender, thoughtful man feels very swift. And although Penelope Milford is good value as Sally’s best friend, struggling to deal with her veteran brother’s collapsing mental health, her plotline and performance is a little too obviously designed to contrast with Sally’s.
The film’s most interesting plotline actually follows Dern’s Bob Hyde. Dern gives the film’s most complex performance as a dedicated solider, struggling with deep denial about his growing disaffection and unacknowledged PTSD, confronting his wife’s infidelity with a mix of anger and desperation to receive a comforting hug from her. Hyde’s discovery of the affair is its most melodramatic moment, but also strangely its most unpredictable – and a film exploring this character’s switch in perspective might just have been a little more challenging.
But Coming Home has plenty to recommend it. Voight has never been better, warm, tender and throbbing with emotion, his closing speech to a roomful of students exhorting them not to fight and choking back tears that taking another life is never worth it, is worth the price of admission alone. Ashby’s film has a poetic sensibility to it and if it sometimes feels a little too self-righteously earnest about its anti-war credentials, and a little too aware of its status as a “message movie”, at least it is a message that needs to be heard.
Movie Musings 