Tag: Jack Palance

Le Mépris (1963)

Godard’s film mixes virtuoso film-making with what feels a hard contempt for audience and characte

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Cast: Brigitte Bardot (Camille Javal), Michel Piccoli (as Paul Javal), Jack Palance (Jeremiah Prokosch), Giorgia Moll (Francesca Vanini), Fritz Lang (Himself), Jean-Luc Godard (Lang’s assistant director), Linda Veras (Siren)

The title translates as Contempt and, to be honest, it’s hard not to feel a bit of the contempt when watching. Of all the Great Directors, the one I find the hardest to like is Godard. When you settle down to watch Godard, it’s hard not to escape the feeling you are steeling yourself to be looked down on. Godard wants you to know he’s watched more, read more and thought more than you about everything. Godard is playing out his fantasy of being a Hollywood director and a Great Artiste and wants you to know it. In fact, the further you move away from his debut À Bout de Souffle, the more his films become (for me) overly pleased-with-themselves statements rather than actual films.

Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli) is a writer, who wishes he could be producing great novels or plays, but is actually banging out crapola dialogue to fill American producer Jeremiah Prokosch’s (Jack Palance) Odyssey-opus, a film its director (Fritz Lang, one of Godard’s idols, playing himself) is trying to turn into art rather than the cheap sword-and-sandals epic Prokosch wants. But by taking the shilling, Paul earns the contempt of his glamourous wife Camille (Brigitte Bardot), who sleepwalks her way into an affair with Prokosch. Things come to head (as such) at Prokosch’s villa on Capri.

It was shot with a larger budget and a more controlling producer than any previous (or subsequent Godard film). God alone knows what they made of this – one suspects them reacting rather like Palance’s tantrum-filled producer when he inspects the arty dailies of statues and coastlines Lang has shot (“You lied to me Fritz!”). On some level Le Mépris is Godard playing a joke on his money men. The want a steamy relationship film, with plenty of Bardot on display? Have a slow series of elliptical conversations, a languid (but wonderfully filmed) argument scene in which Piccoli takes both a bath and a crap, and here are some deliberately functional shots of Bardot’s naked back on the bed while she and Piccoli intone empty dialogue. For a film that involves extra-marital sex, groping, a gun and a fatal car crash it’s deliberately unsensational – as if Godard was showing the money men he could ram anything they demanded into the film and still make it feels like a ticking-off.

To be honest, there’s also in Le Mépris a bit of Godard’s contempt for himself for selling out, as if he realised part way through he’d made a terrible mistake by taking the money and wanted everyone to know it. You can see it in the film’s visuals, that turn the demanded cinemascope wideness (which Godard loathed) into a series of pan-and-scan shots and tight close-ups that wipe-out the impact of the grand visuals. Godard may appear in the film himself, but is real substitute is his hero Lang, here a visionary polygot (the only person who can speak the full hodgepodge of languages the characters communicate in), who gives voice to Godard’s most closely held views about cinema and the only person completely assured and comfortable with what he is doing.

Not that there isn’t an awful lot to admire in Godard’s work here. As fits a director steeped in a love of film, Le Mépris drips with homages to cinema technique. Godard speaks the credits – Welles in Magnificent Amberson’s style – over an opening shot which is itself of an opening shot filming a crew filming the opening tracking shot of Le Mépris. There are touches of Ford, Hawks and Lang in the stylistic love of Godard’s heroes. Paul dresses like a mix of Sam Spade and Dean Martin and loves chatter about old movies (he’s very excited about the prospect of catching an old Hawks film). The tattered film studio is lined with film posters (including those depicting Godard’s former wife Anna Karina). We see the intricate procedures of film-making and post-production and Bardot even reads books about cinema in her downtime.

There is some astonishing film-making – Godard may be self-important, but he can shoot a film with grace. The tracking shots through the seemingly abandoned Cinecittà studios in Italy are beautifully done, as is the intriguing framework of the unique Capri villa and its striking staircase. The film’s highlight (and finest sequence by far, as well as its most human) is its middle act, a virtuoso choreographed sequence in the Javal’s under construction apartment (including French doors without glass, bathrooms without doors and intermittent furniture). The camera moves, brilliantly at a distance, to constantly frame these two characters interspersed between doorways, or kept apart by walls in the centre of the frame, barely ever managing to ever be in the frame together, the disjointed visual language perfect for communicating a conversation where they are never on the same page. It’s a superb way of filming partly an argument, partly a drifting out of love, partly a fumbling attempt to find common ground. There is a real emotional reality to this scene, something that isn’t present anywhere else in the film.

Even there though, it works because of its distance. Le Mépris is a strikingly distant film, Godard presenting a deliberately cold, hostile film that lacks any real warmth, empathy, wit or lightness, like he’s challenging us to swallow down this filmic medicine of cinematic inspiration and beautiful framing. Le Mépris also seems to despise its characters. Palance’s film producer (and this is a deeply uncomfortable performance from Palance, who constantly looks like he’s woken up suddenly and doesn’t know where he is) is a boorish philistine and an idiot. Piccoli’s writer is a shallow, preening lightweight who wants to be a Godard but is a hack with pretensions.

Interestingly the most intriguing character in it is Bardot – but she remains elliptical, perhaps because part of Godard can only see her as some sort of trophy or status symbol, something Paul fails to ‘deserve’ because he can’t maintain his principles. Her motivations remain a mystery and one wonders if there is much place for them in Godard’s masculine view of the world, where women are either secretaries or muses. Camille herself seems to see herself as sort of property, suspecting her husband of pimping her to a producer but then seemingly embracing that in any case (despite her contempt for Prokosch). There is an air in Le Mépris that Godard can’t really imagine either Bardot or Giorgia Moll’s Francesca (a striking presence, who has the best running joke with her rudimentary translations of Javal’s dialogue for Prokosch) as collaborators or equals to either the brutish producer or the tortured men, but people who can only be defined by their attitudes towards them.

Above all, Le Mépris wants you to know your place when watching it. To admire it, but also to know that you wishes for something more dramatic or humane are shallow, base desires. That really you should be seeking out the sort of arty stuff Fritz Lang is shooting on the island, not the page-turning nonsense the executives wanted. It’s an attitude that pours out of the film, and after a while its one that makes you want to spend your time elsewhere. Godard may be a clever guy, but he can be very poor company.

Batman (1989)

Comic book movies get a jump start in the very first attempt to take the genre really seriously on screen

Director: Tim Burton

Cast: Jack Nicholson (Jack Napier/The Joker), Michael Keaton (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Kim Basinger (Vicki Vale), Robert Wuhl (Alexander Knox), Pat Hingle (Commissioner Gordon), Billy Dee Williams (Harvey Dent), Michael Gough (Alfred Pennyworth), Jack Palance (Carl Grissom), Jerry Hall (Alicia Hunt), Tracey Walter (Bob), Lee Wallace (The Mayor), William Hootkins (Lt Max Eckhardt)

Strange to think, but there was a time when comic book movies were not Hollywood’s be-all and end-all. Instead, they were slightly embarrassing, campy messes, big-name actors were a little ashamed to appear in and studio executives were convinced no-one outside a comic-book shop would be remotely interested. So, you could say Batman is one of the most influential films of the last 30 years, a massive box-office smash that treated its source material fairly seriously. For the first time ever, it was suggested these films could be dark and adult, as well as fun. Sure, there is a lot more goofy humour in it than you might remember, but it changed how this genre was perceived.

It’s an origin story of sorts. Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) has just started his campaign as Batman, the masked vigilante terrifying criminals at night in crime-ridden Gotham city. A late-night scuffle at a factory stuffed with toxic waste (but of course) sees psychopathic gangster Jack Napier (Jack Nicholson) tumble into a vat of chemicals. Napier emerges, disfigured and insane, as The Joker and starts a campaign of terror across Gotham. A campaign only Batman can end.

Fans feared during its production that the film would follow in the footsteps of the campy 60s TV show. So many letters of complaint (at least 50,000 – imagine how many tweets that would translate into today) at the casting of ‘comic actor’ Keaton hit the officers of Warner Bros, the company’s share price even took a dip. Fans were only reassured when the film opened – and you know you’re in for something heavyweight, as soon as Elfman’s strikingly gothic yet bombastic score echoes out.

Gothic is the word here: Gotham is imagined as world where Art Deco meets Steampunk by way of German Expressionism – it’s like a Fritz Lang explosion in a graphic novel panel. The film was a brilliant twist on noir, with every street hosting a looming nightmare. This was a dark, sinister world where it was always night (fitting for the Dark Knight) and horrors lurked around every corner.

The nightmare at the heart of the film is of course the Joker. Nicholson was so uncertain about doing the film that he struck a deal giving him unprecedented control over the hours he worked, the length of the shoot, the billing and above all a huge back-end salary on box-office and merchandise (the deal was so good, he also made millions from Batman Returns, the sequel he didn’t even appear in). But it was worth it as the film benefits hugely from Nicholson’s cultural and artistic cache, but also his flamboyantly, unashamedly demonic performance, a grinning imp clearly having a whale of a time. Shrewdly, Burton recognised the Joker was such an outrageous character he could provide all the campy, OTT humour some viewers expected – and because it was in tune with the anarchy of the character, the fans wouldn’t mind. Which of course they didn’t, because it’s Jack.

Nicholson soaks up nearly all the energy of the film, leaving very little left for Keaton. Almost certainly very aware of the overwhelmingly negative reaction to his casting, Keaton plays the role absolutely dead-straight. So dead-straight in fact, that he all but forgets to bring any life to the character what-so-ever. Batman is a humourlessly sober hero (the rubber headset also meant Keaton couldn’t hear anything on set) while Wayne has a timid shyness that masks personal trauma. Keaton hits the notes very carefully and seemingly has decided to hide all the manic energy he had shown elsewhere. He effectively concedes the film to Nicholson – and it says a lot that he even looks overawed by Kim Basinger’s greater vibrancy as love-interest Viki Vale.

Watching Batman today, with our attitude to this sort of material changed completely (not least by Christopher Nolan), it’s striking how much more goofy this film seems. It actually says a lot that this was hailed as the darkest, most serious comic-book movie ever. It’s crammed with Burtonish pratfalls and visual humour, from tea trays blocking bullets to Basinger fainting when surprised by a jack-in-the-box. Classic Hollywood imagery is spoofed – at one point the batwing flies over the clouds, holds position dead-centre of the moon and then dives down while everyone in the film is dressed in a mix of pastiche 1930s style and 1980s clothing. In no way could you mistake anything here as happening in something approaching the real world (compare and contrast the few-degrees-to-the-left reality of Batman Begins).

Burton was in fact an odd-choice for director, with only two live-action films under his belt. He’s not been fond of Batman – he called it “mainly boring to me…more of a cultural phenomenon than a great movie” – and the film is an odd fusion of styles. Burtonish dark humour and surreal dashes, mixed with blockbuster action and Prince songs. The film itself has a drifting and unfocused plot (part of constant studio rewriting – shooting the climax Nicholson asked Burton “Why am I climbing up these stairs?” to which Burton responded “We’ll work it out when you get to the top”) which plays around with ideas of trauma motivating these characters but goes nowhere with it. The Joker has no scheme and the film gives him no real personality depth or manages to explore his anarchism in the way The Dark Knight did. Events sort of happen with a shady logic and an unconnected inconsistency, until the film decides to end with a parade climax and rooftop fight.

What’s also striking is how little the comic books are treated like Holy Text by the film-makers (a complete no-no today, where even the slightest deviation from the writ leads to an avalanche of on-line criticism). Batman offs criminals without a second thought, his backstory is radically altered, the continuity merrily distorted. He seems less like a highly-trained fighter and detective, and more a gamely-trying brawler dependent on gadgets. Every character outside Batman, Vale and, I guess, the Joker is a clueless old buffer. While the film is inspired by the look of some of the comic books, it basically has no interest at all in their mythology or deeper themes.

Batman is entertaining but manages to feel long – largely because its plot is vague and drifts, without a tightly controlling theme or plot arc. It’s at times rather inconsistently edited – watch the sequence in the art gallery that is rife with continuity errors – and the film is slightly in awe of Jack Nicholson’s exuberant performance that dominates the film and crushes the life out of any narrative. But it showed that comic books could take place in a world that was dark and imposing rather than primary coloured and that superheroes didn’t need to wear their underpants over their trousers to get the crowds in. For all its flaws, it’s the first stone in the road to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and yes I know it’s a DC comic).

Shane (1953)

Alan Ladd as the mysterious gunslinger Shane

Director: George Stevens

Cast: Alan Ladd (Shane), Jean Arthur (Marian Starrett), Van Heflin (Joe Starrett), Brandon de Wilde (Joey Starrett), Jack Palance (Jack Wilson), Ben Johnson (Chris Calloway), Edgar Buchanan (Fred Lewis), Emile Meyer (Rufus Ryker), Elisha Cook Jnr (“Stonewall” Torrey), Douglas Spencer (“Swede” Shipstead), John Dierkes (Morgan Ryker), Ellen Corby (Liz Torrey)

On the surface Shane is pretty much the definitive “white-hat-black-hat” Western. Crikey, Jack Palance’s vicious gunslinger Wilson practically wears nothing but black. Alan Ladd’s heroic Shane does what needs to be done, and the kid loves him to bits. But Steven’s film is more complex and intriguing than that. Because Shane is in fact only a few degrees away from Wilson. When he rides into the homestead, he is already weighted down by the memory of all the people he’s killed. Shane is no saint. He’s a tired man whose shed too much of other people’s blood to ever feel anything but an outsider.

Shane arrives at the Starrett farm. Joey (Brandon de Wilde), the boy-of-the-house immediately hero-worships this mysterious stranger with the distinctive guns. Joe Starrett (Van Heflin) is at first hostile but takes Shane in as a farm worker and he and his wife Marian (Jean Arthur) – maybe particularly Marian – are drawn towards this reserved but good-natured man. Starrett and the other homesteaders are in the middle of a feud with local cattle rancher Rufus Ryker (Emile Meyer), who wants to drive them off the land so he can use it for his cattle. Violence seems inevitable – but how long can Shane keep his unspoken pact to himself to put down his guns and try a life of normality?

Shane is one of Steven’s finest films, beautifully filmed with Oscar-winning photography and told with a lavishly poetic sense. It works so well because it juggles both a simple story, with a deep poetic understanding of humanity. You can see why this is “a Western for those who don’t like Westerns”. It’s got a beautiful, understated sense of struggle to it – the homesteaders against the bullying of Ryker – beautifully mixed with a sense of the dangerous glamour of violence. Match that with some wonderfully hissable villains and the honesty and decency of the Starretts and Shane’s quiet dignity, and you’ve got a perfectly judged morality play.

But the film works because there is so much operating on multiple levels. Which brings us back to Shane himself. Sure, he’s a decent guy. We expect him to be the hero. He fulfils much of that function in the plot. He’s kind and loving with the kid. He holds his cool and never seems to get angry. But why is this? The film makes clear that Shane has a past. A past of gun-slinging violence. And if Shane is still standing at the end of a life like that, he must have been good. And ruthless.

What was it that made Shane so desperate for a change? To try a life of normality, chopping down stumps and putting up fences on a farm? I suspect Shane in his prime wasn’t that different from the calm, cool and ruthless Wilson. You can see the guilt in his eyes when he finally shoots his weapon (at a rock!) two thirds into the film. This is a man who knows that killing carries a terrible burden – and he clearly knows all too well after sending so many to their graves. At the end of the film, with his emotional pean to Joey (“There’s no living with killing”) he’s speaking from the heart. And only someone who has killed many, many people – who doesn’t look remotely worried when facing off with Wilson and Ryker – could really know that.

It’s an idea that you could miss in the film, but it’s there all the way through. The casting of Alan Ladd – who was never better – is crucial to the success of this. Imagine the strength and power a Wayne or Cooper or Stewart would have given Shane. They would never have felt so slight, or beaten down by a life of violence. But Ladd’s smallness, his sadness and his reluctance works for the part. Stevens continually shoots him as an outsider, on the edge of scenes or even isolated in crowds. He can fade into the background in the way other stars couldn’t have done. He feels like a man who knows he has been a moral failure, who isn’t redeemed by star quality.

Stevens plays with our expectations of Shane through the reactions of the Starretts. Joe is (tellingly) instinctively hostile to him at first, before Shane wins him over. Marian’s reaction is however fascinating. She is both slightly repelled by what she can see as Shane’s past violence, but also increasingly drawn towards him. Is this because Shane’s internal knowledge, his worldliness, his depths of sadness make him more of a thoughtful kindred spirit than her husband can be? Joe is a simple man, decent beyond words, but not a thinker. Shane is more – for all his danger – and Marian feels like a woman who has accepted her place but perhaps dreamed of more. She would never act on this, but Shane to her seems to represent a path not taken.

And Joey? Shane is everything a boy could dream of in a hero. The man with few words who appears over the horizon with nothing but a six shooter. Stevens camera cuts back again and again to Joey’s adoring, worshipping face – and it’s an excellent performance from (the Oscar-nominated) Brandon de Wilde, as a young boy on the edge of becoming a teenager who wants to be a man, but still looks with the eyes of a child. Stevens throughout places the audience on the same level with Joey. Like him we want to believe in Shane, to see him play the hero. It’s part of the films skilful construction that it finishes before it occurs to you that the character the audience most closely related to was the uncritical, unknowing child. On first viewing we stare at Shane with the same hero worship as Joey.

Shane wants a life of normality. Shane isn’t a million miles away from Eastwood’s revisionist Unforgiven. In fact, Munny’s life in that film is basically Shane’s, without Ladd’s humbleness. The brutal killer who wants to leave it all behind, but is dragged back in. Who finally faces off and guns down a horde of enemies in a saloon bar before riding off into legend. Sure, Shane will be remembed with more fondness by those he leaves behind – and he saves the homesteaders – but just like Munny he does it by leaving a trail of bodies behind him.

Steven’s beautiful film is both a compelling narrative of goodies and baddies, but also a profound, fascinating and challenging film. It’s wonderfully made and has a host of reliable actors at the top of their game. Ladd is superb, Jean Arthur brings great depth to Marian, Van Heflin’s Joe is a the sort of simple, decent, salt-of-the-Earth type the West was made of. Facing them, Jack Palance makes the most of limited screentime (and got an Oscar nomination) as the sneering, bad-to-the-bone Wilson. It’s a perfect mixture of small, intimate scale that seems to be taking place in an epic environment. It’s influence has been so profound it’s virtually an archetype. An American classic.

Panic in the Streets (1950)

Paul Douglas and Richard Widmark race against time to prevent plague in Panic in the Streets

Director: Elia Kazan

Cast: Richard Widmark (Lt Commander Clint Reed), Paul Douglas (Captain Tom Warren), Barbara Bel Geddes (Nancy Reed), Jack Palance (Blackie), Zero Mostel (Raymond Fitch), Alexis Minotis (John Mefaris), Dan Riss (Jeff), Guy Thonajan (Poldi), Tommy Cooke (Vince Poldi)

It feels like a very modern nightmare: a plague of catastrophic proportions breaking out in a major city and threatening to wipe out thousands of people. This feeling helps to make Panic in the Streets feel more like a film from today rather than the 1950s. The only thing missing is a terrorist angle – everything else could have been pulled from the nightmare fuel of our modern age.

In New Orleans, a murdered man is found near the docks. The emergency button is pressed when the coroner detects a deadly infection. Naval doctor (and emergency co-ordinator) Lt Commander Clint Reed (Richard Widmark) quickly takes command and determines that the victim carried pneumonic plague before being shot. Tracking down the men who killed him, and who may also be carrying the disease, becomes urgent, before the infection spreads. The authorities don’t want panic, so Reed and Captain Tom Warren (Paul Douglas) – initially of course reluctant partners – must work together to quietly track down the killers. The killers meanwhile, Blackie (Jack Palance) and his crew, continue regardless with their small-town crime empire building.

Panic in the Streets was one of the first films to shoot extensively on location – and it’s a brilliant choice, as Elia Kazan’s use of real life, grimy, New Orleans locations, from back streets to the docks, is pivotal for the sense of urgency and realism that runs through the entire film. Kazan’s camera work is brilliant throughout, and it adds a real gritty sense of danger to the entire film. It’s also brilliant that he selects possibly the least attractive parts of New Orleans for his locations – Blackie’s world of run-down buildings and dives just feels perfect for the film.

Kazan keeps the focus tight and avoids too many distractions from the film’s narrative – except maybe some tiresome insights into Reed’s slightly troubled domestic life (with Barbara Bel Geddes in a particularly thankless role as his wife, who alternates between supportive and the inevitable just wanting him at home more). Other than that, the film follows Reed’s search in forensic detail, from questioning suspects to working out the radius of possible infection. There is more tension here in a meeting with the city mayor to try and wrestle the authority Reed needs to carry out his job than in dozens of car chases.

The script is tightly written, and focused on plot over character, but still allows moments for character beats that good actors can seize upon. Widmark makes Reed a driven professional, who still has enough personal insight to register that his flaws include arrogance and impatience. In many ways an interesting piece of counter-casting, Widmark’s slightly menacing air is inverted really well as a doctor frustrated by the lack of understanding he encounters from those he is trying to save from a potentially deadly infection. He’s the perfect actor for a character who is a hard-bitten professional with a ruthless streak, and who’s a little hard to like.

He has a great foil in Paul Douglas as a professional, down-to-earth, but skilful and whip-smart police detective. One of the film’s pleasures is the bond that slowly grows between this odd couple – it’s not unexpected if you’ve ever seen a movie before, but it is very well done. The film, however, is almost stolen by Jack Palance as the villainous heavy, intent on empire building and oblivious to the fact that he is probably carrying a deadly plague that could wipe out half the population. Equally good is Zero Mostel as his weaselly, sweaty side-kick.

It’s odd watching it now that the authorities aren’t more terrified by the prospect of such a deadly infection – but that is a sign of how things have changed since the film was released. It’s sometimes a rather cold film, fascinated by slimmed down procedure – from the procedures of tracking people down, to the inoculations Reed administers right, left and centre to those who may be exposed. Despite this general mood, Kazan still gets the tone just right for the later shoot out that tops off the film.

Panic in the Streets does have a few too many slower moments. The scenes showing Reed’s home life are particularly drab – although we do get a marvellous scene with his wife where Reed acknowledges that his attitude to Captain Warren has been arrogant and condescending. The politics of lowlife New Orleans criminals are completely dependent on the charisma of the actors – remove Palance and Mostel’s performances and they would be exposed as dull and irrelevant. But the rest of the time, the film has a genuine feeling of grimy reality and keeps the pace up a treat. It’s a little B movie gem that feels ripe for discovery in our terror-obsessed modern world.