Category: Small town drama

Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980)

Biography of Loretta Lynn, faithful to the official line but sometimes lacking in dramatic interest

Director: Michael Apted

Cast: Sissy Spacey (Loretta Lynn), Tommy Lee Jones (Doolittle Lynn), Beverly D’Angelo (Patsy Cline), Levon Helm (Ted Webb), William Sanderson (Lee Dollarhide), Phyllis Boyens (Clara Ramey Webb), Bob Hannah (Charlie Dick)

Born in poverty, in a Kentucky coal mining community, Loretta Lynn became one of the biggest Country and Western stars in America. Based on her hugely successful biography, Loretta and husband Doolittle were closely involved in this faithful translation of her life story (or at least the official version of it) to the big screen, Lynn handpicking Sissy Spacek to portray her from age 13 to 35. Coal Miner’s Daughter traces her life from teenage marriage to Doolittle (Tommy Lee Jones), to leaving her family home, Doolittle pushing her into performing with her musical talents, through to success with their loving but sometimes tumultuous marriage as a backdrop.

Coal Miner’s Daughter really splits into two halves. The first is an extremely well-observed and respectful portrait of Lynn’s working-class routes among a coal mining community which, while far from perfect, is a community full of honesty and decency despite the odd bad apple. It’s in this half that it feels the heart – and much of the drama – lies. Strangely, once Lynn starts singing (nearly an hour into the film), its second half feels a lot less dramatic, much more of a ticking off of various landmarks in what feels like a mostly uninterrupted march to success (this is despite the odd marital feud, the death of Lynn’s mentor Patsy Cline and a nervous breakdown).

Perhaps that’s because the film hues so closely to the Lynn “official line” that the film ends up feeling very curiously structured. A lot of this is in the portrayal of Lynn and Doolittle’s marriage. I don’t doubt the undoubted strength of this marriage – or the devotion of these two for each other – but, with an outsider’s eye, it’s hard not to feel its presentation here is a little odd. Apted’s film frequently presents it as borderline abusive and toxic relationship, while simultaneously celebrating it as a romance for the ages. The mismatch in tones can be hard to process when watching it, the film setting up narrative zigs before offering up layer and layer of zags.

Loretta Lynn was devoted to her husband, while cryptically saying it was a relationship she fought for. Perhaps today one of the strangest things about it is that Lynn aged herself down by two years (a fiction the film repeats), meaning that here she marries the 22-year-old Doolittle at 13. It’s harder to see this as charming today, instead seeing Doolittle as a borderline groomer. Especially as he caps the wedding night by playfully raping Loretta, who has been wildly unprepared for married life (she seems to not fully understand what has happened to her here, so is pleasantly untraumatized feeling instead guilt at not being good enough at sex for Doolittle’s high standards). Before the marriage of their first child, Doolittle will have: thrown her out of the house as a punishment for her domestic failings; cheated on her; raised his hands against her in an argument (breaking a cardinal promise he made to her dad).

He also merrily breaks the other without a second thought by carrying her hundreds of miles away to start a new life. Under the influence of booze and drink, Doolittle can have a slightly childish, sulky temper – although Lynn herself will give as good as she gets (at one point she breaks his finger by walloping him with her handbag). The two of them frequently seem never quite on the same page at the same time. Alongside this, Doolittle drives his timid wife into performing at bars and honky tonks at least partly to show her off, as much as enjoying hearing her sing.

What’s unusual – and in some ways anticlimactic – in Coal Miner’s Daughter is that these marital negatives remain un-resolved and unengaged with. Perhaps it’s because, not that far down, Doolittle really is proud of his wife and does love her music. He dedicates himself to furthering her career – at least in part so he can share in the rewards – and as she grows in fame, the power subtly swings in the relationship. Now she drags him out of the backseat of a car from a floozy, harshly deals with his bouts of drunkenness, and rejecting his attempts to try and control her image (including repeated demands that she should never wear make-up, because he doesn’t like it).

It’s never quite clear to me what the film wants us to make of all this. Is this Lynn turning the marriage into one of equals? Doolittle being put into his box? A subtle commentary on a relationship that perhaps didn’t always bring out the best. What you end up with – and I’m aware this is way more likely to be an issue today than in 1980 – is a relationship presented with several obvious negatives, continuously celebrated as a force of good. And I get that the Lynn’s themselves saw the marriage that way – but I wonder if a film they were less involved in the making of might have raised a bit more of a critical eye.

You can’t doubt the chemistry between the two actors though. Sissy Spacey won an Oscar for a near-note-perfect capturing of Lynn, and her quirky oddness fits very well for a timid country girl struggling to find her place, even as her spikey self-confidence grows. It’s a very well observed and interesting performance, Spacek also very effectively transitioning from child to adult without jarring. Tommy Lee Jones is also excellent as Doolittle: charming, relaxed, capable of real anger but also of a deep and lasting affection, loyal in his own way even when he’s disloyal. It’s a relaxed, impressive performance that makes a slightly unclear character work.

But the finest parts of the film are in the perfectly observed Kentucky mining community of Lynn’s childhood – far more dramatically interesting that watching her tick off local stations on her way to the Grand Ole Opry. Apted’s documentary experience perfectly captures the casual poverty – bedrooms lined with newspaper, a radio that needs to be turned off because there is no money for batteries, the permanent dirt of the coal dust everywhere, the moonshine. It’s all wonderfully pulled together, and Lynn’s childhood home is one of love and gentleness, helped by very impressive performances from Levon Helm and Phyllis Boyens as her devoted parents (who just about come to terms with her young marriage to a slightly wild man).

It’s a shame that backend of the drama doesn’t capture either the same depth or carry the same dramatic energy, largely because the sort of resolution (or even addressing) of the complexities the film has been displaying never comes. Despite strong performances, Coal Miner’s Daughter eventually feels like it offers little real challenge or exploration of its subject’s self-image.

American Graffiti (1973)

Comforting, nostalgia-tinged film, full of wit and comedy, but without a real sense of insight

Director: George Lucas

Cast: Richard Dreyfuss (Curt), Ron Howard (Steve), Paul Le Mat (John), Charles Martin Smith (Terry the Toad), Candy Clark (Debbie), Mackenzie Phillips (Carol), Cindy Williams (Laurie), Wolfman Jack (Himself), Bo Hopkins (Joe), Harrison Ford (Bob Falfa)

Years before he went a long time ago to a galaxy far, far away, George Lucas went not nearly so far back or away: Modesto, California 11 years earlier for a story seeped in nostalgia about the America he remembered growing up in. Much like Star Wars, studio execs thought this hardly sounded like a film people would pay money to see – only the support of a red-hot Francis Ford Coppola got it the green light. It then became one of the most profitable films ever made, repaying its tiny investment many, many times over – not to mention helping kick-start a nostalgic wave that would also (in a way) help Star Wars become a mega-hit.

Told over the final night of the summer vacation, four late teenage friends go through various coming-of-age quests. Curt (Richard Dreyfuss), having second thoughts about leaving for college, spends the night in a Quixotic quest for a girl who mouthed ‘I love you’ to him from a passing car. Best friend Steve (Ron Howard) is more keen to depart, despite the pleas of his girlfriend (and Curt’s sister) Laurie (Cindy Williams). Their geeky friend Terry (Charles Martin Smith) desperately tries to impress Debbie (Candy Clark) with a borrowed car. And cool kid John (Paul Le Mat), is saddled with 12-year old Carol (Mackenzie Phillips) while fending off a challenge for his drag-racing crown from Bob Falfa (Harrison Ford).

There is an undeniable charm to American Graffiti so it’s not remotely a surprise it was a smash hit – or that, with its warm nostalgia for what felt a simpler, happier time, it helped inspire (among many other things) hit sitcom Happy Days. Lucas made the film after the disappointment of his debut, THX 1138, a chilling piece of dystopian sci-fi unlike anything else he ever made again. His segue into something fun, unchallenging and entertainingly crowd-pleasing as this marked a shift that stretched over the rest of his career: a desire to produce stuff the regular cinema-goer wanted to see.

American Graffiti is brilliantly assembled, cut together with a superb sense of pace by Marica Lucas and Verna Fields as it moves between what is effectively four short films. What’s particularly striking about its well-timed pace is that it never jars that, fundamentally, all four stories are thematically the same: horny young men learn lessons and reach surprising decisions in comic situations that place them out of their comfort zones. It’s further helped by its sharp dialogue – Lucas turned over his storyline to Gloria Katz and Wiliard Huyck to punch it up (as Stars Wars prequels viewers know only too well, dialogue was never Lucas’s strength).

It’s all then extremely well-executed by the cast. Best in show, not surprisingly, is Richard Dreyfuss who rode the wave from here to create one of the most impressive 1970s CVs. Dreyfuss – already nearly 25 when playing this teen – has just the right balance of naïve, dreamy decency and cheeky charm as a young man struggling to leave childhood behind to grow-up. He has a brilliant sense of comic timing for his smart-aleck one-liners, while totally convincing as the sort of romantic kid who wants to believe in love-at-first-sight. From awkwardly covering-up a dime-store theft, to impishly sabotaging a police car, or launching into a romantic plea for help in locating the woman who has stolen his heart with a glance, it’s a stand-out performance.

Ron Howard as the want-away Steve who begins to question his decisions, has less spark not helped that the interplay between him and Cindy Williams’ Laurie makes for the film’s dullest and most earnest pairing (both actors went onto play versions of these characters in Happy Days). Especially since they are contrasted with the comedy of mishaps (failed attempts to get alcohol, car jackings, bungled attempts to tackle thieves) of a very funny Charles Martin Smith (cementing a career of geeks) and Oscar-nominated Candy Clark, funny and very sweet as a cool girl who wants something meaningful from the boys fawning over her. The final pairing has some similarly sparky interplay between Paul Le Mat’s frustrated cool-kid, secretly worried his best days are already behind him and Mackenzie Phillips’ precocious pre-teen.

All this take place in a setting marinated in nostalgia and charm. It is a reassuring, unchallenging and romantic view of a particular era in American cultural history. One before the challenges of counterculture, Watergate and Vietnam. It harkened back to an era where kids had neatly cut-hair and wore plaid-shirts tucked into their trousers; where the most dangerous thing a teenager might do is thumb their nose at bossy cops or bum a bottle of booze. All four of the kids are the sort any girl could bring home to their parents without any concern about how they would be received, and even the film’s nominal bad boy is a stand-up guy with firm principles and loyalty.

In fact, what becomes clear is, unlike films from the likes of Fellini (which partly inspired Lucas) this is without any real introspection at all. Other films – take a look at Last Picture Show – would have looked at this setting and wondered if there are darker elements underpinning small town America. Prejudices, jealousies and the like – or the sort of dark foreshadowing of historical traumas like Vietnam and Nixon being just round the corner. There is none of that there – so little in fact that it’s a little jarring when the film’s on-screen “what happened in next” reveals two of its leads would suffer tragic early deaths, one in Vietnam (it’s also jarring – even at the time – that these on-screen captions tell us nothing at all about the futures of the female characters).

It’s a reminder that Lucas is an entertainer, not a director looking to challenge or explore deeper truths. And, to be fair to him, if he had really allowed American Graffiti more space to acknowledge the darkness to come, or some of the less seemly sides of small-town life, it certainly wouldn’t have become one of the most profitable films of all time. Instead, this is a film that served as a warm hug, a rose-tinted memory of what their childhoods might have been like, when everything was simpler, safer and more straight-forward and the biggest problem you could possibly face was finding the girl you liked and dealing with college. It’s undeniable entertaining, fun and heart-warmingly enjoyable, but it’s also a carefully reassuring view of a far more complex world.

Since You Went Away (1944)

Overlong attempt to make an American Mrs Miniver which can’t sustain its focus over three hours

Director: James Cromwell

Cast: Claudette Colbert (Anne Hilton), Jennifer Jones (Jane Hilton), Joseph Cotton (Lt Tony Willett), Shirley Temple (Bridget Hilton), Monty Woolley (Colonel William G Smollett), Lionel Barrymore (Clergyman), Robert Walker (Corporal William G Smollett II), Hattie McDaniel (Fidelia), Agnes Moorehead (Emily Hawkins), Nazimova (Zofia Koslowska), Albert Basserman (Dr Golden), Keenan Wynn (Lt Solomon)

With America embroiled in the Second World War, David O. Selznick felt it was his duty to do his bit. And what better way than making a movie. So was born Since You Went Away, adapted by Selznick himself from Margaret Buell Wilder’s epistolary novel, about a woman writing letters to her husband while he fights the good fight abroad. It was nothing more or less than Selznick’s attempt to create a Mrs Miniver for America, to bring the tribulations of those left behind to the screen.

Our family is the Hiltons. Over the course of 1943, they wait for news of husband and father Tim as serves abroad. With Tim’s income gone, wife Anne (Claudette Colbert) needs to make economies and bring in a lodger, avuncular retired Colonel Smollett (Monty Woolley). This brings into their lives Smollett’s nephew Bill (Robert Walker), who begins a romance with Anne’s oldest daughter Jane (Jennifer Jones), while her younger daughter Bridget (Shirley Temple) builds a friendship with their lodger. The family is aided by friends, not least Tim’s best friend Tony Willett (Joseph Cotton), the subject of a long-standing crush of Jane’s and is himself in love with Anne. Over the year, the family does everything they can to support the war effort.

There is probably a fine couple of hours in Since You Went Away. Unfortunately, it’s buried in a film so long it sometimes feels like you are living a year in the life in real-time. It’s not helped by the film’s sentimental scope often repeating the same beats over and over again, a soapy message of the overwhelming importance of hearth and home and the unbreakable bonds of love that keep families faithfully together forever (it’s ironic that this paean to duty and fidelity was made while Selznick was breaking up his marriage for an affair with Jones, while she ended her marriage to Robert Walker).

Essentially, the film has made most of its points and observations by the half-way mark, and is reduced to repeating them again in the second half, all accompanied by Max Steiner’s overly insistent score (which won the film’s only Oscar) which hammers home every single emotional point with laboured riffs on songs like No Place Like Home or Come Let Us Adore Him. Much of the drama is undermined by having almost no sense of threat: unlike Mrs Miniver there is zero chance of any of the characters actually being bombed at home but, just like that film, there is also absolutely no chance at all that Anne will be tempted by the heavily suggestive flirtation of Tony.

Instead, there is a slightly cosy air of gentleness under Since You Went Away. We are told the war, and loss of Tim’s salary, has caused hardship for the family – but it’s the sort of hardship that sees a hugely wealthy family adjusting to merely being comfortably well-off. The main concessions seem to be setting up a vegetable patch and taking in a well-paying lodger (who, of course, becomes an honorary family member). Even their Black maid (Hattie McDaniel, in a truly thankless part) is so devoted that she continues to serve them during her time-off from her new job (for no pay). There is never even a suggestion they may need to move from their massive five-bedroomed house or stop moving in their affluent circle.

This circle is represented by Agnes Moorehead, sneering like a suburban witch wrapped in ostentatious furs, who scorns any idea of pulling her weight during the war and crows about how cleverly she’s exploiting rationing loopholes. This is contrasted with the families growing civic duty, embodied by Jennifer Jones’ Jane casting aside her giddy teenage years to devotedly work as a volunteer nurse with war wounded (much to the disgust of Moorehead) and Anne’s shift to training as a welder in a munitions factory. Since You Went Away heavily pushes the angle that everyone must do their bit, hammered home by refugee welder Nazimova who gives a misty eyed reading of the famous Statue of Liberty message.

What Since You Went Away starts to feel like at times is an over-inflated, Little Women-ish drama, with war as a backdrop. There are moments of loss: Tim is reported missing, cause for much stoic resilience and heartbreak and the son of the local store is killed early on. The film has a tragic romance in the form of Jones and Walker’s Smollett Jnr, which goes through a gentle flirtation, playful hay-rolling into an overly empathetic departing train goodbye (expertly parodied in Airplane!), that holds together due to the charm of the actors. But the main message is one of cosy reassurance: it’s a million miles away from the more doubtful The Best Years of Our Lives – there’s no doubt Tim will settle straight back into a world unchanged from that he left behind.

The characters are pretty uniformly predictable and conventional, but are delivered effectively. Colbert, in many ways with a rather dull part, effectively underplays as the endlessly patient, dutiful and calm Anne, bottling up her doubts and fears into her diary. She makes a generous still centre of the film, even if the film doesn’t call for one minute of playfulness for her as an actor. She cedes much of the best ground to Jones (Selznick’s complete control of the film surely played a role in this), who is full of radiant sparkiness, even if her teenage giddiness gets a little wearing. Jones, looking in her twenties, plays the role as if she was in her teens while Shirley Temple, looking in her early teens, plays her like she was still at elementary school. Needless to say, there is no chance of either of these girls causing serious trouble or going off the rails.

Opposite them, Monty Woolley delivers exactly what is required as the outwardly gruff Colonel whose frosty exterior inevitably melts over time. Woolley does bring a lot of depth to Smollett’s quiet grief and playfulness from Smollett’s love-hate relationship with the families pet bulldog. Joseph Cotton just about manages to make Tony charming – charming enough that his hanging around and constantly flirtation with both mother and daughter isn’t too reminiscent of his psychopathic uncle in Shadow of Doubt. (In many ways, Tony is an overly insistent creep).

But the successes of the film are drowned by its absurd length and overly insistent sentimental hammering home of every single point. It does look fabulous – the shadow-laden photography of Lee Garmes and Stanley Cortez adds a great deal of noirish emotional depth – but it’s flatly directed (Cromwell was one of many directors on the project, including Selznick himself) and lacks pace. In trying to present a reassuring celebration of all-American family values, it frequently lets character and drama drift and never presents a plot development that surprises or challenges. It’s no Mrs Miniver.

Boomerang! (1947)

Effective journalistic investigation into a murder case turns into engaging courtroom melodrama

Director: Elia Kazan

Cast: Dana Andrews (State’s Attorney Henry Harvey), Jane Wyatt (Madge Harvey), Lee J Cobb (Chief Harold Robinson), Cara Williams (Irene Nelson), Arthur Kennedy (John Waldron), Sam Levene (Dave Woods), Taylor Holmes (TM Wade), Robert Keith (‘Mac’ McCreery), Ed Begley (Paul Harris), Karl Malden (Lt White)

In Bridgeport, Connecticut, a popular priest is gunned down in the street, the killer escaping into the night. The police are baffled. The city turns against the reformist mayor’s administration. Then, after several weeks, there is a lead as twitchy ex-soldier John Waldron (Arthur Kennedy) is dragged in and, after hours-and-hours of interrogation without sleep, signs a confession. But who cares about small details like that, when everyone is sure the police has their man? But State’s Attorney Henry Harvey (Dana Andrews) has doubts – and no pressure from the public or officials will make him build a case against an innocent man.

Based on an actual 1924 murder case, Boomerang! is told with journalistic sharpness by Elia Kazan that smoothly moves from investigative into courtroom drama. Boomerang! was cited by Kazan as when he started to find his voice, establishing a style that would carry him to Oscar-winning success in On the Waterfront and beyond. Shot largely in location (though admittedly in a different Connecticut town than Bridgeport), it’s full of the immediacy of the streets, avoiding sets and forced studio locations. Kazan leans into the journalistic feel, with a voiceover explaining events and an earnest attempt throughout to make it feel like we are watching real events unfold.

It captures people going about their everyday lives: gossiping over laundry, strolling down streets, pounding typewriters in press rooms, gathering in church and shops. This is a film designed to convey a full sense of a real world. That goes as well for reflecting the investigation, which is full of the visceral pounding of pavements and hustling of suspects into police cars as well as the interrogations of the worn-down Waldron, taking place in an inhospitable room where never-ending questions means Waldron’s head has to be literally picked up to continue answering the questions.

The observational strengths of the film’s opening eventually moves into something more straight-forwardly melodramatic, but Kazan’s documentary restraint tries it best to not make this shift too jarring. As Harvey’s doubts grow, he becomes under increasing pressure from officialdom, principally from Ed Begley’s sweaty Paul Harris (who is too noticeably dodgy from the start for his villainy to be anything like a surprise). This is before a series of courtroom dynamics that hue towards the sort of fireworks you find in larger-than-life films than the journalistic reserve Boomerang! starts with.

Which isn’t to say that these courtroom dynamics are not very well-handled, especially by the under-rated Dana Andrews, who brings just the right amount of humanity and dignity to an otherwise stiff-on-paper character of a crusading, too-good-to-be-true attorney. Andrews delivers the courtroom speeches, and the detailed breakdown of the flaws in the police case, with a real quiet passion – just as he brings a nice degree of moral outrage to the bullying attempts to silence him.

Boomerang! provides several opportunities for compelling character actors, many of whom went on to work again for Kazan to great success. Lee J Cobb’s bulldog fierceness is perfect for put-upon police Captain Robinson who lets his determination to prove he can crack the case compromise his judgement. Cobb gives Robinson a powerful sense of authority – there is a wonderful scene where he faces down a would-be lynch mob with little more than growling disapproval. There is also a lovely moment, where he lifts the sleeping Waldron and carries him into his bed with all the care of a loving father. He’s well backed by Karl Malden as an eager-to-please inexperienced cop.

Arthur Kennedy produces one of his expert portraits in weakness as Waldron, an embittered veteran who has found peace offers little more than failure. While never losing track of what makes Waldron suspicious, Kennedy finds a neat line in vulnerability and fear keeps him sympathetic. Opposite him, Cara Williams explodes with righteous fury as a former girlfriend who believes herself wronged, eager to see Waldron condemned. It’s a more interesting role than any other female role in the film, although Jane Wyatt finds some engaging warmth in the dull role of Andrews’ loyal wife.

Boomerang! at heart is a film about the barrel being fine, aside from a few rotten apples. The crime takes place after the old machine politics system has been cast aside by new politicians, not beholden to the system, willing to introduce reforms. And, by and large, they are shown to really mean it – even if, at one point, some express the view that it doesn’t matter if Waldron is guilty or innocent, since winning means the reformists can remain in power. But all the real sins are collected in the hands of Begley’s character: even the police are absolved, despite the fact we watch them essentially brow-beat a man into confessing (a sergeant even suggesting they rough him up a bit to speed things along, which makes you wonder what the system was like for people are not veterans the police captain feels sorry for).

Boomerang! pulls any punches of really exploring systemic flaws, even while it covers an innocent man being bum-rushed into a trial. But then it puts complete faith in the idea that the same system will turn around and do its job by ensuring he is completely absolved – with the only danger from corrupt elected officials, not the blindness of a potential system. It’s a factor Kazan (to be fair) felt the film made too many compromises on – and he’s right. It might tell a scare story, but Boomerang! is fundamentally a reassuring film that is sure everything will turn out right in the end.

The Shootist (1976)

Wayne’s final elegiac Western as a dying gunslinger tries to go out on his own terms

Director: Don Siegel

Cast: John Wayne (JB Brooks), Lauren Bacall (Bond Rogers), Ron Howard (Gillom Rogers), James Stewart (Dr Hostetier), Richard Boone (Sweeney), John Carradine (Beckum), Scatman Crothers (Moses), Richard Lenz (Dobkins), Harry Morgan (Marshall Thibido), Sheree North (Serepta), Hugh O’Brian (Pulford)

It’s 22^nd January 1901 and Queen Victoria has passed. Automobiles are starting to chug down roads, towns filled with electricity, telegraphs and trams, no longer look like the beat-up, dust-bowls the likes of Wyatt Earp policed. It’s a new age and the end of the Wild West. Which also means it’s the end of the gun-toting cowboys, like JB Brooks (John Wayne), who rode freely and grabbed their six-shooters faster than anyone else. Brooks rides into Carson City, his cancer terminal, his life lonely and full of enemies, wanting to live (and die) in his final week on his own terms.

You don’t need to be a psychologist to see more than a few parallels between Brooks and the man playing him, Hollywood legend John Wayne. Wayne himself was struggling with a cancer that claimed his life three years later and you could argue he too had outlived his time. The glory days of the Westerns were gone along with men like John Ford who built it. The Shootist draws huge piles of its elegiac emotion from this – with even more retrospectively added when it turned out to be the star’s swan song.

It’s strange to think Wayne wasn’t even first choice for the role (the producers were worried his health might not last), because he is so perfect for it that the line between Wayne and Brooks seems paper thin. Wayne still has the spark under the weakness of a sickly one who downs laudanum and relies on a cushion to sit comfortably. He’s a vulnerable man, raging quietly against the dying of the light. Lonely, devoid of friends whose entire life’s possessions are wrapped up in a saddle bag. But he’s also dangerous who can still be extraordinarily ruthless. He kills without hesitation when called on and resorts to violent threats (backed with a gun) when he needs to. But he needs to believe there is more to him than this.

Brooks is a man ‘scared of the dark’, quietly terrified about how he will be remembered. He sees himself as a ‘shootist’, a prowling man’s-man who shot when he needed to. What he doesn’t want to be seen as is a ruthless blood-soaked assassin dealing death left-right-and-centre. He humiliates a journalist (the weasily Richard Lenz) who wants a blood-and-guts killer’s story, sending him packing with a gun in his mouth. He turns away a funeral director (John Carradine, a lovely cameo) who offers a free funeral so he can sell tickets to see the dead killer. He’s desperate for some sort of positive legacy.

This overlaps with Wayne who, if he didn’t know this was his final film, surely knew it was probably his final Western. Siegel opens with a montage from Wayne films past (including Red River, Hondo and Rio Bravo) before crashing into a wide-screen, Fordian landscape that sees Wayne swiftly get the better of a would-be robber. Wayne’s performance is, whatever you think of him, undeniably heart-felt. His drawling pain-wracked face, full of fear and frustration, when told his fatal diagnosis by an old friend (an almost equally emotional cameo from that other drawling icon of the Western, James Stewart) is very moving.

You can see Brooks regrets when an old flame (Sheree North) arrives to suggest they marry – and the hurt when it becomes clear she only wants marriage so she can sell his story. The closest thing he has to a friend – Stewart’s doctor – he hasn’t seen for fifteen years (coincidentally the exact length of time since the two actors shot The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance). In fact it becomes clear the people in his life are enemies and rivals. From Richard Boone’s weasily rancher who blames Brooks for his brother’s death to Hugh O’Brian’s suave gambler who wants the chance to take down a legend. Even that’s better than Harry Morgan’s nervous Marshal, who bursts into relieved laughter when he hears cancer is going to take care of Brooks so he doesn’t have to.

In his final week, Brooks finds some sort of connection not based on fear, envy or greed with Lauren Bacall’s (yet another golden-voiced legend) Bond Rogers, a widow with a tearaway son Gillom (Ron Howard), whose initial suspicion of Brooks soften. Bacall is excellent, full of humanity and sharp no-nonsense sincerity that hides a warmth you feel she’s had to crush down over years of holding hearth-and-home together. Brooks and Mrs Rogers form a quiet friendship, based on mutual loneliness, both actors playing beautifully in a series of quiet, sombre but gentle scenes, with Bacall drawing even more humanity from Wayne.

Mrs Rogers’ son, Gillom, becomes the embodiment of Brooks battle for a legacy. Ron Howard makes Gillom a cocky, immature dreamer, exactly the sort of guy who’d lap up the sort of blood-and-guts stories Brooks is worried his life will be turned into. He’s wowed when Brooks – alerted by his pain-ridden body keeping him awake – takes down two would-be assassins. But his mother is terrified that he could lead the wrong sort of life. And, eventually, Brooks himself starts to worry that all he’s doing spending time with him is leading Gillom towards an end like his: lonely and dying in a guest house, surrounded by strangers. It becomes the thematic struggle of the film, which is handled (like the rest) with an unlaboured patience.

It’s all building of course to Brooks deciding to go down on his own terms, clutching a gun not a laudanum bottle. The Shootist ends with a blood-soaked shoot-out that we all suspect its heading to, expertly assembled by Siegel. Siegel’s direction throughout is faultlessly smooth, avoiding all temptation to layer on sentimentality but instead let the sad tiredness of Wayne carry the emotion without loading the deck. It’s a beautifully done, quiet, restrained and perfectly elegiac picture that makes for a perfect final role for John Wayne. A sad, touching film about a strong-willed man fighting a last battle he can’t win, it’s a compelling watch.

Weapons (2025)

Creepy and unsettling horror with a fascinating puzzle-box structure

Director: Zach Cregger

Cast: Julia Garner (Justine Gandy), Josh Brolin (Archer Graff), Alden Ehrenreich (Paul Morgan), Austin Abrams (James), Cary Christopher (Alex Lilly), Toby Huss (Captain Ed Locke), Benedict Wong (Marcus Miller), Amy Madigan (Gladys), Sara Paxton (Erica), Justin Long (Gary), June Diane Raphael (Donna Morgan)

At exactly 2:17am, seventeen young children from the same third-grade class all wake up and run from their houses, their arms trailing behind them like aeroplane wings. The disappearance shatters the local community. Fingers of blame point quickly, most of them at their teacher Justine (Julia Garner). It feels like some bizarre conspiracy, but are there darker forces at play? That mystery will rope in obsessed father Archer (Josh Brolin), troubled cop Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), drug-addict and thief James (Austin Abrams), decent school principle Marcus (Benedict Wong) and the only child from Justine’s class who didn’t disappear, young Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher).

Cregger’s creepy horror movie tells its story from all these character’s perspectives, each section opening like a book’s chapter with their name on the screen. Events re-play from different angles and perspectives and our understanding of events (and their horror!) grows as each person sheds more light on the overall picture. There is a deeply unsettling sense of dread and menace hanging over Weapons, built from the start by an unsettling child narrator who promises us that we are set to see things so unbelievable and ghastly, the authorities covered the whole thing up.

Weapons is influenced by some of the best ensemble dramas – Cregger specifically name-checked Anderson’s Magnolia as an influence – and I also felt it follows very much in the footsteps of Kubrick’s The Shining. It embraces the deeply unsettling dread and horror of quiet menace and the tension of disturbing background events. Which isn’t to say it doesn’t miss out on shattering blood and guts and body horror inspired by Cronenberg and The Thing: when the gore comes in Weapons it’s visceral, gut-wrenching and impossibly bloody.

It taps into everyday fears and horrors then takes them to the nth degree. What parent hasn’t feared the inexplicable disappearance of a child? And when disasters like that happen, people often lash out the suspicious. Poor Justine – a fine performance of outer abrasiveness hiding gentleness and vulnerability by Julia Garner – sticks out like a sore-thumb in this small community. An outsider with a prickly personality and a destructive streak a mile long, a little too fond of vodka (which she buys by the bucketload) and extra-marital sex with married men (which cost her a job at her previous school).

Her stumbling attempts to sympathise with the parents is made worse by the fact she has no clues to offer them. Not helpful (and you can’t help but sympathise with Justine here, as this is a true nightmare set-up) when everyone else is convinced she must know something. Further modern fears are tapped into when Justine faces a campaign of silent intimidation in her home by a faceless persecutor and her car is painted with the word ‘Witch’ (a brilliant little touch making her car instantly recognisable in all the other perspectives that follow).

The loudest voice of this fractured community becomes Archer, played with gruff guilt and fury by James Brolin, pestering the police with his Justine-centred theories and bulldozing other parents for evidence. It’s a dark irony of course that Archer’s paranoid investigations – focused on triangulating a shared route from the direction the children are seen running in doorbell cameras – turns out to be much closer to the truth than the official investigation (but then the police don’t realise they are in a horror movie here, whereas Archer surely starts to think he might be). Similar to Justine, Archer surprises us with his concealed decency and emotional vulnerability, another success in Cregger’s film where greater character depths are constantly revealed.

It works both ways as the more we see of Alden Ehrenreich’s police officer Paul, the less we like him. At first he seems a slightly luckless soul with a gentle heart, but he emerges more and more as a selfish bully who doesn’t think about twice about hurting people around him then worries endlessly about the consequences. Similarly, Austin Abrahm’s drug-addict burglar stumbles far closer to the truth than anyone else – but his interest in it is connected solely to his desire for $50k reward (and it’s hard not to start to think Paul is fairly interested in that as well).

The storyline of these characters unspools in Cregger’s short story structure very effectively, the camera frequently trailing behind each character in a series of tracking shots (this means we often only see the facial reactions when the scene repeats from a different perspective). Cregger’s shies away from jump scares (not that he doesn’t use these quite effectively at several points) in favour of simple shots and draining out sounds to let quiet background moments create dread. Perhaps most chilling of all sees a character sleeping in a car being slowly approached by a mysterious woman, a scene of such sustained but simple tension it will have you twitching in your seat.

To reveal anything of what the secret cause of this horror is would be spoil things considerably – Weapons works best the less you know about it. But it’s not a spoiler to say there are dark forces at play – Weapons clues you in fairly quickly that a creepy house, with newspaper coated windows, is likely to be the centre of what nightmares may come. A big part of this is a performance of crazy off-the-wall freakishness by Amy Madigan, a gift of a role she rips into with gusto, an eccentric presence dripping with unsettling menace, both vicious and then eerily calm. Madigan bites into the role like Hopkins did Lecter, doing terrible things with a calm smile, making threats with calculated menace. Genuinely terrifying, truly memorable.

Weapons opens up a pot of terrifying, unsettling nightmare fuel. From the unnervingly unreal way the children run (arms trailing behind them) to background events that carry real terror. But there are moments of black comedy in here as well: the final sequence is both blood-soaked horror and also darkly hilarious (Cregger using distanced perspective shots to expert effect) and a housebound fight plays like a horror-slapstick. The main success of Weapons is it’s creeping sense of menace, the unsettling thought of horrific dark powers just on the edges of reality, that lack any sense of morality or decency. That what we can’t imagine is even more terrifying than what we can.

Bound for Glory (1976)

Beautifully filmed but psychologically and politically un-insightful film, easier to admire than enjoy

Director: Hal Ashby

Cast: David Carradine (Woody Guthrie), Ronny Cox (Ozark Bule), Melinda Dillon (Mary Jennings Guthrie), Gail Strickland (Pauline), Randy Quaid (Luther Johnson), John Lehine (Locke), Ji-Tu Cumbuka (Slim Snedeger), Elizabeth Macey (Liz Johnson), Mary Kay Place (Sue Ann), M. Emmet Walsh (Trailer Driver)

Woody Guthrie was a sort of poet of American folk music, his music influencing a generation of artists, from Bob Dylan onwards. His music spun a vision of the enduring strength of the working man and their rights to a share of the American Dream. It’s mythic stuff, so feels perfectly positioned to be spun into a modern fable in Ashby’s Bound for Glory. Coated in period detail, a sort of Grapes of Wrath by way of Barry Lyndon, it’s a lyrical piece of historical memory making with a nominal grounding in social and political issues. Is it a complete success? Perhaps it’s a film easier to admire than love.

It takes the title from Guthrie’s (David Carradine) biography, and follows his journey from Dust Bowl Texas in the 1930s to the hopes of employment in California, where he joins a mass of not-particularly-welcomed economic migrants. He discovers there an audience for his politically tinged folk music, but steadfastly refuses to compromise his principles. Actually, aside from these broad sketches and Guthrie himself, almost everything in this is essentially fictional. It’s a myth being spun, building a legend of a sort of John the Baptist of American folk music, a nostalgic vision of 30s America which makes little room for Guthrie’s actual politics.

Actually, that’s one of the most fascinating things in Bound for Glory. So keen is this to create a nostalgic view of an America from yesteryear, celebrating the perseverance of blue-collar America, it avoids talking in detail about anything Guthrie actually believed in. Although possibly not a card-carrying member of the Communist party, Guthrie was certainly at least a fellow-traveller. He had sharply left-wing, pro-worker, anti-capitalist views. His music echoed this – ‘This land is your land’ is actually about land ownership. But most traces of this have been carefully rinsed out of Bound for Glory.

That isn’t to say that it doesn’t take a deepe dive into Depression era America than any film since The Grapes of Wrath. Guthrie’s pilgrimage – and there is something distinctly Saintly about how he is presented here, making him more comfortable a figure than a left-wing radical – features plenty of dwelling on injustice and poverty. It opens in the ramshackle poverty of Dust Bowl Texas, where winning a dollar in a bet is potentially life changing. Migrants to California are at hurled from goods trains, then risk being shot (as one of Guthrie’s friends is) when attempting to jump on them as they puff past. They are barred entry on the road to California (in cars weighted down with their few possessions) if they can’t produce $50. The migrant camps are run-down, overcrowded and run by baton-wielding work-bosses who have complete power to decide who works and who doesn’t and don’t hesitate to wield their weapons to enforce their will.

Bound for Glory however avoids saying anything too firm against all this. It can carry sympathy for the plight faced by the working man but, much like The Grapes of Wrath, it’s terrified about saying or doing anything that could possibly be seen as promoting left-wing politics. Guthrie sometimes mumbles vague statements about the working man finding his slice of the American dream, but never anything too pointed about the fact that unfairness and having-and-have-noting is built into the system, like a spine in a body. The bravest shot the film takes is at a complacent priest, who smugly turns a hungry Guthrie away from his large church because he only hands out soup to people who have worked that day. Otherwise, the furthest it allows Guthrie to go is asking his wealthy lover (Gail Strickland in a thankless part) if she feels guilty having so much when others have so little. It’s the washed down, simplistic politics of the playschool.

And, to be honest, it robs Bound for Glory of much of its life and blood. It fails to replace this with a fierce personal story (like The Grapes of Wrath) and it never even attempts to make anything like a political statement as Ashby’s old collaborator Warren Beatty would do five years later with the similarly luminously beautiful Reds. Quite frankly, as Bound for Glory unrolls slowly and deliberately it does so with precious little fire and guts to it and (at times) very little interest. In other words, it’s very possible to sit and watch it and (while admiring it very much) kind of wish you were watching Rocky instead (as the voters for Best Picture at the Oscars that year clearly did).

It becomes instead a triumph of style, photography and design, rather than an enlightening biopic or making a statement about the Great Depression (other than it was tough). David Carradine hasn’t quite got the charisma to bring the vague threads Ashby gives him together. (Almost every single big name actor in Hollywood turned it down, which tells you something). Guthrie remains a vague, drifting blank, whose views and beliefs are undefined and to whom events frequently seem to just happen. Of the supporting roles (several women in particular get dull, thankless parts) only Ronny Cox gets something to get his teeth into as a musician turned union activist.

The real merits of Bound for Glory is it’s Barry Lyndon like recreation of a time and period. A lot of that is due to the breathtaking photography of Haskell Wexler – not for no reason was he the first person billed on the film. Wexler’s work is extraordinary, creating a sepia-toned view of Great Depression America that feels like its been taken straight from a photo library and placed on screen. Bound for Glory also astounded viewers at the time with the first Steadicam shot captured on screen, which starts with an aerial view, glides down to Guthrie and then follows him through a crowd of hundreds of extras to fail to be picked for a work party. It was the cherry on top of the Oscar-winning cake for Wexler.

It’s just a shame that these surface delights are all that really come to life. Other than that, this is distant, reserved and (in truth) slightly empty work from Ashby that presents the basic facts in a mythologised way that you feel removes much of the core truth. It turns a fascinating man of real conviction, into an unknown enigma, an Orpheus of the Dust Bowl who goes on a Pilgrim’s Progress that leads to (if we’re honest) nowhere in particular. It’s a film that strains a bit too hard for high art at the cost of passion or entertainment.

Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936)

Capra’s brilliant comedy lays out his world version – and is extremely entertaining to boot

Director: Frank Capra

Cast: Gary Cooper (Longfellow Deeds), Jean Arthur (Babe Bennett), George Bancroft (McWade), Lionel Stander (Cornelius Cobb), Douglass Dumbrille (John Cedar), Raymond Walburn (Walter), HB Warner (Judge May), Ruth Donnelly (Mabel Dawson), Walter Catlett (Morrow), John Wray (Farmer)

If any film first set out what we think of today as ‘Capraesque’ it might well be Mr Deeds Goes to Town. This was the film where so many of the elements we associate Capra – the honest little guy and his small-town, homespun American values against the selfish, two-faced, disingenuousness of the elites – really came into focus. Mr Deeds Goes to Town develops these ideas with a crisp, sharp comic wit, with Capra’s reassuringly liberal-conservative message delivered to perfect, audience-winning effect. It led to the even-better Mr Smith Goes to Washington and the template for every film which celebrates the little guy asking ‘why’ things have to be done this way.

Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper) is just your-average-Joe from small-town Mandrake Falls in Vermont who suddenly finds that he has inherited the unheard-of sum of $20million from a recently deceased uncle. His uncle’s assorted lawyers, led by suavely corrupt John Cedar (Douglass Drumbille) expect the naïve Deeds will happily allow them to continue riding the gravy train they’ve enjoyed for years. However, Deeds proves to have a mind of his own, refusing to kowtow to opportunists.

However, Deeds has an Achilles heel: he’s fallen hard for Babe Bennett (Jean Arthur), who he believes to be an out-of-work office girl but is in fact a star reporter, spinning the stories she picks up from their dates into articles about Deed that make him a laughing stock (the ‘Cinderella Man’). When Deeds discovers the truth – and is simultaneously threatened by Cedar with institutionalisation over his plans to give away his fortune to help the poor – he’s flung into a desperate court case to establish his sanity. Will a heart-broken Deeds defend himself?

Mr Deeds, with a sparkling script from Riskin, captures Capra’s idea of true American values. Deeds is a softly-spoken, unfailingly honest, no-nonsense type who won’t waste a minute on flattery and forlock-tugging and respects hard-work and plain, simple decency. He’s an independent spirit: be that playing the tuba, sliding down the banisters of his grand home, jumping on board fire trucks to help out or sweetly scribbling limericks, he’s as endearingly enthusiastic as he is lacking in patience for pretension.

He also proves an honest man is no fool, but a shrewd judge of character – expertly recognising a lawyer who turns up pushing for his uncle’s ‘common law wife’ to take a share of his fortune is an ambulance-chasing crook – and he’s no push-over or empty suit (made the chair of his uncle’s Opera board, he shocks the rest by actually proceeding to chair the meeting and make decisions). He’s the sort of humble-stock, common-roots, middle-class hero without any sense of snobbery or self-importance, just like his hero President Grant, judging people on their merits not their finery.

It is, in short, a near perfect role for Gary Cooper, at the absolute top-of-his game here: funny, charming and hugely endearing. Cooper can also convincingly back-up Deeds’ affability with a (literal) fist when pushed too far. Cooper is an expert at preventing an otherwise almost-too-good-to-be-true character from becoming grating or irritating. He’s also extremely touching when called upon – his giddy, bed-rolling phone call to Jean Arthur’s Babe is as sweet as his broken edge-of-tears sadness when he discovers she’s been lying to him (I can think of very few 30s actors who would have been comfortable looking as emotionally vulnerable as Cooper does here).

But Capra’s world view was always more complex though than we think. It’s easy to see Mr Deeds as arguing we should re-direct our efforts to helping the poor and needy, and the greed and hypocrisy of the rich (the sort of snobs who mock Deeds to his face at the dinner table). That might be closer to screenwriter Robert Riskin’s views: but actually, Capra’s vision has more of an Edwardian paternalism to it. He sees Deeds’s destiny – once he renounces the wild living of suddenly being loaded – not be a Tony Benn style-radical but the sort of paternalistic benefactor of the deserving poor you might see in a cosy Downton Abbey-style costume-drama.

Because the people Deeds ends up helping share his view of the world, as one where hard-work and having the right attitude should lead to rewards (with the implicit message, that if you can’t succeed then, it’s your fault). Deeds is tugged out of his slowly forming playboy lifestyle by John Wray’s desperate farmer. Wray is at the heart of a genuinely affecting sequence, determined to cause Deeds harm (believing stories of him frittering away money on eccentric trifles) and ending it in shameful tears, accepting Deeds unasked-for help. Like this man, those Deeds helps have lost farms and land due to the depression, screwed by the games of the financial elites.

But Mr Deeds Goes to Town never once tries to suggest there is anything fundamentally wrong with this system – only some of the people who have risen to the top. And even then, it’s their personal greed and inverted snobbery that’s their crime, not the fundamentally unbalanced financial system. The main strawman for elite’s financial frippery is the Opera house committee Deeds chairs for: he can’t see the point of taking a loss on an art institution, essentially arguing it should focus more on commerce to earn its way – the sort of art view that it’s only good if loads of people pay for it (on that basis Avengers Endgame is the greatest film ever made).

It’s part of a criticism of snobbery that the homely, common-man, Deeds can’t abide: captured in the idea that enjoying the plays and books ordinary people don’t want to read is somehow proof of an elitist coldness that doesnt value ordinary people. There’s an inverted Conservative snobbery here.

Now, don’t get me wrong: there’s still a decent world-view in Capra at valuing hard working people who want to help themselves. In the big city where life is a “crazy competition for nothing”, it’s refreshing to have someone who doesn’t care about societies ins and outs society, but does care that hungry farmers have a sandwich to eat. But it’s also a more conservative, and safe message than people remember.

Saying all that, Mr Deeds is a hugely entertaining film. The romance between Cooper and Jean Arthur (absolutely in her element as the screwball femme fatale with a heart-of-gold) expertly mixes genuine sweetness with spark. The film’s Act Five trial scene is perfectly executed, a brilliant parade of snobs and slander leading to an inevitable final reel rebuttal from Cooper that the actor knocks out of the park. (It works so well, the whole structure would be largely repeated in Mr Smith with the twist that here Deeds doesn’t speak at all) There are a host of superb performances: Stander is perfect as the cynical hack who finds himself surprised at his own conscience, perfectly balanced by Drumbrille as the suave lawyer who has no conscience at all.

All of these elements come together to sublime effect in a film that is rich, entertaining and genuinely sweet – with a possibly career-best performance from Cooper (Again, it’s refreshing to see an alpha-male actor so willing to be vulnerable). Capra’s direction is sublime: dynamic, witty and providing constant visual and emotional interest. Its politics are more conservative and simplistic than at first appears, but as a setting-out of Capra’s mission statement for warmer, kinder, small-town American values of simplicity, plainness, honesty and decency it entertainingly puts forward as brilliant a case as Deeds does.

The Music Man (1962)

A star-turn and some good songs can’t quite make a shallow, over-long musical really work

Director: Morton DaCosta

Cast: Robert Preston (Harold Hill), Shirley Jones (Marian Paroo), Buddy Hackett (Marcellus Washburn), Hermione Gingold (Eulalie Mackechnie Shinn), Paul Ford (Mayor George Shinn), Pert Kelton (Mrs Paroo), The Buffalo Bills (The School Board), Timmy Everett (Tommy Djilas), Susan Luckey (Zaneeta Shinn), Ron Howard (Winthorp Paroo)

The Music Man is an ever-popular Broadway smash, the sort of charming, light, fun-filled musical with some good songs that makes it undemanding fun. It doesn’t, honestly, gain anything on screen – in fact, if anything, it’s fundamental lightness and lack of emotional or thematic substance gets rather exposed. The movie version may be ridiculously over-extended and frequently feel more like a slightly up-market filming of the Broadway production, but it’s still got some fine songs the best of them delivered with absolute aplomb by Robert Preston, masterfully recreating the Broadway role he had played nearly a thousand times already.

Preston plays Henry Hill, who arrives in the town of River City in Iowa in 1912 determined to sell instruments and uniforms to form a children’s band. Or at least that’s what he says he’s here to do: he’s actually a con man, whose plan is to sell the concept to the town, get them to invest, pass himself off as a music professor and then skip town with their money. Inciting a moral panic over a new Pool club opening in the town corrupting the kids (it will be ragtime next!), he wins them over. But it’s not all easy-sailing: librarian Marian Paroo (Shirley Jones) suspects Hill is not who he says he is. To try and protect his scheme, Hill aims to seduce her. But will this relationship actually help him find a conscience?

It’s a feel-good Hollywood musical so… I’ll leave you to guess. The Music Man is an odd musical. In many ways, you can see it as a slice of nostalgia, with its gentle 1910s setting and portrait of small-town America as a gentle, easy-going place where everybody knows everybody else, nobody locks their doors and the most dangerous thing is a pool table. But, at the same time, The Music Man frequently portrays its townspeople as staggeringly gullible (no one doubts Hill’s ‘imagination’ method of learning – don’t practice, just imagine you can play an instrument and you can!) and very hostile to outsiders (Hill receives the coldest, most suspicious of welcomes when he first gets off the train, even before he has announced any plan). Then, when he is exposed, their plan to tar-and-feather him sounds dangerously close to a lynching.

Put frankly, I have no idea what The Music Man is trying to say about small-town life or really anything else, seeming to want to have its cake and eat it by making the townspeople both a joke and an idealist past we can aspire to. Each of the characters is, in any case, a reassuring cliché. From Shirley Jones’ librarian (a mousy, but independently-minded intellectual who has never been kissed) to her mother (a blowsy, loud-mouthed Irish-woman who just wants a good man for her daughter), to the Mayor (a puffed-up, self-important idiot) and his wife (an attention-seeking moralist grande dame) to its sweetly love-struck teens, every character more or less feels like a stock figure carefully placed for comic or emotional impact.

It also rather fudges the semi-redemption arc it feels like its aiming for with Hill. He brings back memories of Elmer Gantry (the presence of Shirley Jones – here cast to type as the sweet, virginial mark rather than an infuriated floozy – also helps with this), and you can see a certain similarity between that shameless opportunist and this egotistical showman determined to make an immoral buck. The Music Man, I think, wants to show Hill’s conscious growing as he gets closer to the townspeople: it’s slightly under-mined by the fact it continually plays the townspeople as jokes and Hill’s character has no real depth (he remains, more or less throughout, a friendly, amoral opportunist).

As such, it needs a surprisingly sudden pivot to give some genuineness to Hill (a few minutes before changing his mind, he’s literally joking about not leaving town until he’s earned the fruits of his seduction campaign by bedding Marian). The fact that this even vaguely works is largely due to Preston. In fact, almost anything that works is due to Preston. He had a Broadway triumph with the role, and Da Costa (director of the stage production) and writer Meredith Wilson insisted he got the role over preferred choices Bing Crosby, James Cagney and (most inexplicably) Cary Grant. And it’s great they did, because Preston is triumphant: magnetic, charismatic, funny and delivering the film’s best numbers with an energetic, sublime aplomb. His comic timing is perfect and he successfully makes a persistently lying, opportunistic shit immensely likeable.

He also nails the best songs. The Music Man may be slightly fudged in its themes and its exploration of its central character, but it does have some very striking, catchy musical numbers. ‘Ya Got Trouble’ (essentially an energetically sung, word-heavy, fast-paced monologue) is funny and brilliantly performed by Preston. Similarly, ‘Seventy-Six Trombones’ is a show-stopper from Preston and he brings real lyrical charm to ‘Gary, Indiana’. There are further fine numbers, from the inventive ‘Rock Island’ that opens the film (sung in imitation of a steam train) and ‘Shipoopi’ a high-kicking dance number.

This is all filmed with a decent competence but very little flair. Da Costa essentially re-creates his stage production with very little of the sort of dynamism and flair someone like Stanley Donen had. Da Costa also doesn’t accelerate the pace – the light plot stretches over a very long, two and a half hours (almost nothing really happens in the middle hour). Remove Preston from it and I’m not sure there would be enough there to hold anyone’s interest. In fact, with its shallow plot, lifting and shifting of an existing musical to a (more expensive) real location with no re-thinking of the material for a different medium and its over extended, epic run-time, you can sort of see in it the DNA that would go on to become some of the mega-flop musicals that would weigh down the studios in a few years. The Music Man was a smash hit (probably because when it works, it is fun) but many of those that followed would not be.

And, as a side note, I was stunned to find out, that this beat West Side Story to the Tony Award for Best Musical.

Places in the Heart (1984)

Overcoming adversity and racism are themes not always successfully balanced in Benton’s family epic

Director: Robert Benton

Cast: Sally Field (Edna Spalding), Lindsay Crouse (Margaret Lomax), Danny Glover (Moze Hardner), John Malkovich (Mr Will), Ed Harris (Wayne Lomax), Amy Madign (Viola Kelsey), Yankton Hatten (Frank Spalding), Gennie James (Possum Spalding), Lane Smith (Albert Denby), Ray Baker (Sheriff Royce Spalding), Terry O’Quinn (Buddy Kelsey), De’voreaux White (Wylie)

Partially based on his own childhood memories, set in Texas 1935 as the Depression grips America, Robert Benton’s Places in the Heart is a tear-jerking tale of overcoming adversity, mixed with an earnest attempt to look at Southern racism. It’s often a little heavy-handed in the former, and a little fudged (if very well-meaning) in the second. Places in the Heart is a frustrating film with a genuinely engaging, engrossing story that, for various reasons, the film never manages to quite bring into focus, for all the undoubted skill in its making.

Sally Field plays Edna Spalding, a widow after her sheriff husband (Ray Baker) is accidentally shot and killed by a drunken Black teenager (promptly brutally lynched by the Klan the same day). With the bank pushing to foreclose on the farm she can no longer afford, poverty and homelessness seem certain until a chance meeting with Black drifter Moze (Danny Glover) offers hope. Moze is an experienced cotton worker, and he coaches Edna through getting the fastest cotton crop of the season (and the $100 prize for that feat). Edna and her children throw themselves into the task, and she starts to build a new family with Moze and blind war-veteran lodger Mr Will (John Malkovich). But will weather, the Klan and the banks allow it?

Benton’s film is, in many ways, a master-class in constructing a framework of highly impactful scenes. Places in the Heart is carefully paced with metronomic precision to give us an impactful, powerful scene roughly every ten minutes. From the shockingly sudden shooting of Sheriff Spalding and Edna cleaning his deceased body on her dining room table it gives us scenes that build perfectly to showcase high impact moments. Confrontations, tornadoes that place children in peril, triumphant confrontations with arrogant bankers and facing down corrupt cotton sellers, inevitable fireworks after a disastrous double date and heart-rending racist attacks. It’s a film almost completely constructed of tent-pole moments, to illicit maximum impact.

However, where it fails are the moments in-between. It’s so focused on nailing those big moments, that it allows the emotional journey that should inter-connect them (and make the story truly satisfying) to falter. The clearest example is Malkovich’s blind Mr Will: in no more than three scenes he goes from a man bitter at his disability, dumped on Mrs Spalding by a family who can’t be bothered to care for him, resenting her ‘hooligan’ children to risking his life to becoming their surrogate uncle. It’s a tribute to Malkovich that he sells this lightning fast emotional turn-around, but a more patient film would have spent this change feel organic (rather than, essentially, relying on a tornado act-of-God to complete the arc).

Similarly lightning fast work covers the bond between Edna and Moze: swiftly we go a few scenes from her greeting him with slightly less racist discomfort than her sister, to Jean-Valjean-like claiming she asked him to deliver to a friend the silver spoons he steals from her house, to him becoming another surrogate uncle to the kids and treated in the house like an equal (he notably doesn’t cross the door threshold for the first hour of the film). Now you can admire the efficiency here – for example, the film is good at establishing without fanfare the rope aids hung up around the farm to help Mr Will (vital for a later confrontation). But you can also regret that it is so keen to get to the emotionally cathartic moments, it skims on showing us the journey (after all, a one hundred mile walk seems less impressive if you only see the start and end).

Part of the problem is Benton keeps dragging us away from these engaging plotlines to wallow in a side-plot involving Mrs Spalding’s sister and her wayward husband’s affair with a school teacher. This storyline barely intersects with events on the Spalding farm, in no way serves as a commentary on events there (a braver film would have contrasted it with a romantic relationship between Edna and Moze, which you can be sure would not have been as genteelly resolved as that affair in a South as racist as this). All it really does – for all the efforts of Crouse (Oscar-nominated, presumably due to her husband-slapping confrontation scene), Harris and Madigan, it’s meandering, dull and feels pointless even while you are watching it.

And it always takes us away from the real interest on the farm. The depiction of triumph over adversity is fairly straight-forward – with a host of hissable strawmen, led by Lane Smith’s patronisingly sexist banker – but it’s told with such professional skill it can’t help but land. Who doesn’t enjoy a woman who never believed she amounted to anything, suddenly discovering an inner-fire and sense of purpose she never knew. You may notice the similarity to Sally Field’s other Oscar-winning role (Norma Rae). Her performance here is cut from the same cloth, only this time she can’t find the same naturalness: she is frequently mannered, precise and actorly when she should feel raw, grounded and real.

The real daring interest here is the way the film tries to address racism. You can’t deny there is a certain romanticism in its looks at the Ol’ South, but its balanced with putting on screen something of the real horrors of racism. Perhaps even more shocking than the sudden shooting of Sheriff Spalding is the sight of young Wylie’s disfigured body dragged behind a truck full of gun-totting racists. (And that this is objected to, not for the violence, but for the poor taste of dragging a dead man to Spalding’s wake). Needless to say there is no investigation or punishment for this crime whatsoever.

Moze’s story captures some of the perils of being Black in Depression-era Texas. Danny Glover, in the film’s finest performance, perfectly captures both the anger of the unjustly oppressed and the fear (and shame of that fear) that death could come from the wrong word or looking at someone the wrong way. Moze constantly shuffles himself to the back, casting his-eyes down and changing the timbre of his voice to something slower and more humble when confronted with white men of power. It’s markedly different from the warmth, decency and sharp opinions he shows with people he trusts. And Places in the Heart’s most appalling moment is when he is confronted with the white-hooded face of the South’s ‘defenders’.

At times this sometimes over-balances a film that, at heart, wants to be optimistic. (As you can tell, all too clearly, from its bizarre, overly demonstrative, deliberately dream-like ‘we-can-all-be-the-same’ ending which must have felt meaningful to Benton but to me feels shockingly trite). Moze’s suffering is shown with real compassion, but he is still presented as a character who magically shows up at exactly the time he is needed and then disappears when his task is done. It’s a film that imagines a utopia where a desperate mother, a blind white man and a Black man can learn all men are equal, while struggling to accept that this is nestled in a land riddled with Klan racists where the n-word is so casually used it doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. In the end cold, hard reality is a little too much for Places in the Heart to digest.