Tag: Lee Marvin

Cat Ballou (1965)

Zany western comedy, a little dated, but with almost enough good jokes

Director: Eliot Silverstein

Cast: Jane Fonda (Cat Ballou), Lee Marvin (Kid Shelleen/Tim Strawn), Michael Callan (Clay Boone), Dwayne Hickman (Uncle Jed), Nat King Cole (Sunrise Kid), Stubby Kate (Sam the Shade), Tom Nardini (Jackson Two-Bears), John Marley (Frankie Ballou), Reginald Denny (Sir Harry Percival)

In a town out West in Wyoming, Cat Ballou (Jane Fonda) is to be hanged as a notorious outlaw. How did she end up here? Let Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye tell you as they recount ‘The Ballad of Cat Ballou’. This young, would-be school-teacher ended up on the gallows after a feud over her father’s (John Marley) land with Sir Harry Percival (Reginald Denny). Percival has a brutal hired gun, Tim Shrawn (Lee Marvin). So, Cat hired her own gunman, the legendary Kid Shelleen (Marvin again) who has become an equally legendary drunk. After the death of her father, Cat, Kid and her friends and love interests form a gang to bring Percival’s corporation down.

Cat Ballou stems from an era when audiences were not quite ready for the violent, nihilistic Western revisionism that would spawn the likes of McCabe and Mrs Miller and The Wild Bunch, but could no longer take the Ford/Wayne style Western seriously. Instead, it takes its inspiration from Swinging Sixties comedy, playing like Tom Jones or a Dick Lester Beatles movie. It’s zany, tongue-in-cheek, daubed in primary colours and nothing in it is meant to be taken particularly seriously, not even the bullets. It’s a fast-paced entertainment and if it looks rather dated today, at least it has its moments.

It’s most notable as the film that won Marvin the Oscar for his double performance as the drunk, shambling Kid Shelleen and the Marvinesque heavy Tim Strawn (with missing nose). Marvin revelled a chance to showcase his comic skills – and even have his stereotypical role as a bruising, violent killer as a contrast. Kid Shelleen doesn’t turn-up until almost a third of the way in, but all the film’s most memorable moments involve him. Slurring, scruffy, stumbling and only able to shoot straight when a little bit pissed (in an early shooting test he literally can’t hit a barn door), Marvin offers not only a red-eyed piece of comedy acting just this side of hammy, but also a neat jokey commentary on the truth behind an army of Western heavies (Cat is hugely disappointed to find the stories she’s read of Kid’s exploits, in no ways matches the mess she sees before her).

Marvin, rather graciously, always claimed of his Oscar “that half of this belongs to a horse somewhere out in San Fernando Valley”. It’s a touchingly modest reference to the film’s closing sequence – the inevitable rescue attempt on Cat – where Kid turns up pissed, riding a horse that seems as drunk as him (a neat shot, that took much careful animal wrangling, shows both Kid and his horse leaning lopsidedly against a wall, the horse with its legs drunkenly crossed). But Marvin’s performance works because it nails the tone of the film in a way no-one else really does.

That’s arguably true of Jane Fonda, who seems either slightly bemused or mildly contemptuous of the role she’s ended up in. When the film throws in moments close to tragedy, she reacts with more emotional realism than a zany comedy can support. She’s not willing to surrender herself to the moments of farce or flirtation, not helped by the dull or forgettable performances of her love interests. Callan lacks charisma or flair as outlaw Clay Boone, Dwayne Hickman overeggs as Boone’s comedic partner-in-crime Uncle Jed while Tom Nardini tries hard but lacks grace as Jackson Two-Bears. Fonda is also stuck in the only role where she can’t corpse at the drunken antics of Marvin.

The film bounces along, from its animated opening, via a series of comedic twists on Western tropes (a dance, a fight, a train robbery etc). Personally, I’ve never really been a fan of zany comedies, and my mind wasn’t changed here. Mixed with its very 60s view of the West, all colour splashed checked shirts, the try-hard craziness of Cat Ballou can start to wear cynical modern viewers like me down.

Which isn’t to say there isn’t a good joke here or there, or that Marvin isn’t worth the price of admission. Silverstein directs with a professional smoothness that leaves the actors to get on with it (perhaps a little too much). The darker moments of the film don’t always marry up successfully with the tone – Cat’s reaction to the death of her father is from a different movie altogether – but generally it glides along, helped with some catchy tunes well sung by Cole and Kaye as a ballad-touting Greek Chorus.

Cat Ballou might actually be best enjoyed by taking a leaf out of Kid Shelleen’s books: get a couple of whiskies inside you and you’ll find the accuracy of your laughter jumping up several notches.

The Big Heat (1953)

Lee Marvin, Gloria Grahame and Glenn Ford feel The Big Heat coming on

Director: Fritz Lang

Cast: Glenn Ford (Det Sgt Dave Bannion), Gloria Grahame (Debby Marsh), Lee Marvin (Vince Stone), Jeanette Nolan (Bertha Duncan), Alexander Scourby (Mike Lagana), Jocelyn Brando (Katie Bannion), Adam Williams (Larry Gordon), Kathyn Eames (Marge), Willis Bouchey (Lt Ted Wilks)

Films like Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat were generally seen at the time as easy-to-overlook pulp thrillers. Today however, they are seen as classics and few look as ahead of their time as The Big Heat, a skilfully constructed, almost nihilistic, revenge thriller that turns its view of America into that of a land big, grim and full of corruption.

Detective Sergeant Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) is called in when a senior policeman is found to have committed suicide. All is not what it seems though: the wife Bertha (Jeanette Duncan) doesn’t seem as sad as she should, there are conflicting reports that the death might be suicide and the dead man’s possible lover is found brutally killed shortly after Bannion talks to her. Bannion is a stubborn, bull-in-a-China-shop type, so he quickly assumes smooth local gangster Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby) is connected up in all this, not least after his wife Katie (Jocelyn Brando) receives a threatening phone call. But Bannion’s methods lead to tragedy, and he soon finds himself going rogue to find justice, with the eventual help of Debby Marsh (Gloria Grahame), gangster’s moll of brutal sadist and Langana lieutenant Vince Stone (Lee Marvin).

Lang’s film is a strikingly un-rose tinted view of America. The very first shot of the movie is a gun, and violence is endemic in this corrupt world, where justice is for sale. We barely see a character who doesn’t have some whiff of corruption. Bannion finds cops doing guard duty outside Lagana’s home while he throws a party and half the higher-ups in the department are either in the pocket of the gangsters, or determined to do as little as possible to rock the boat. The lives of the families of those causing trouble for this system don’t account for much either, with any unpalatable truths brushed firmly under the carpet.

Thown into the middle of this is Glenn Ford’s Detective Bannion. At first glance Bannion looks like exactly the hero we would want – a straight-down-the-line type who says what he thinks, and determined to let nothing stand in the way of, or water down, his investigation. Better known for comedies, Glenn Ford is very good as this bullish man, who very clearly thinks of himself as “the only good cop in town”, and whose determination to stop at nothing very soon tips over into recklessness. Because reckless is what he is: Bannion is fixated on revenge after a tragic attack on his family, and he has no compunction – or even it seems moral awareness – that this path causes danger and consequences for other people around him.

Bannion’s situation is largely self-inflicted – is it sensible going straight to the house of a leading local gangster and threatening and humiliating him? – and Bannion turns out to be largely a destructive force for those who meet him. Most affected are the four female characters he interacts with in the film. A mixture of innocent, corrupt, in denial and cruel, all four of these women find themselves thrown into often mortal danger, with Bannion barely stopping to consider the risks to them. Bannion, it becomes clear, is the ultimate ends-justify-the-means kind of guy, willing to accept collateral damage of almost any kind if it means he can take down the bad guys who have done him wrong. It makes for an intriguing anti-hero at the film’s centre, with Bannion increasingly resembling a sort of proto-type Dirty Harry, the hard-boiled cop who’ll do things his way and damn the consequences.

Mind you, it doesn’t mean he isn’t right about the corruption in this damn dirty town. Preening gangster Mike Lagana (played with a wispy arrogance by Alexander Scourby) has everyone in his pocket, and couldn’t give tuppence for any small fry causing him problems. First introduced lazily in bed setting in chain events that will cover up the reason for the suicide of a leading policeman, he has fingers in every pie. He’s also – the film economically suggests – sexually indiscriminate and a bit of a mummy’s boy to boot, sure signs of cadism in any 1950s detective story. His decadent home and personal cowardice (for all his speed in ordering deaths) make his corruption probably even more galling for straight-shooter Bannion.

In fact, I’m not sure Bannion can even accept Lagana as a “worthy foe” and he increasingly zeroes in on Lagana’s number two, the brutish Vince Stone as the man he intends to take down. Played with a star-making swagger by Lee Marvin, Stone is a force of nature, an act-first-think-next-week kind of guy, who terrorises people around him and will resort to anything from fists to pots of boiling coffee to exact obedience. Marvin scowls and prowls his way through the film like a caged bear, constantly on the verge of violence. It’s a brilliant performance.

It also makes clear why he’s pushed Debby – played with a wonderful fragility behind all her femme fatale looks by Gloria Grahame – so far under his thumb. As she says, why intercede against anything he does when she could be next to take a beating. Grahame is excellent as a woman who has suppressed her conscience about what is going on around her, and learned to use her sexuality as a tool for getting what she wants. Watching her slowly begin to come to life as a moral force provides one of the film’s finest stories – her desire to do the right thing and get revenge, a firm contrast with Bannion’s more hardline goals.

All of this is packaged neatly and without fuss by Lang into a superb indictment of America. Every official is at least shady, if not outright bent. Every scene bubbles with the possibility of violence and danger. The innocent are swiftly trampled and the heroes need to bring themselves down to the same brutal, intimidating rough and tumble as the villains to have any chance of cracking the crime. Bodies pile up, lives are ruined, but at the end you still wonder if any of it will have any lasting impact. For Lang it feels like America is a constant spiral of danger and corruption that begins and end with a gun. Either way The Big Heat is a true classic.

Bad Day at Black Rock (1956)

Spencer Tracy is the only just man in town, in brilliant modern Western Bad Day at Black Rock

Director: John Sturges

Cast: Spencer Tracy (John J Macreedy), Robert Ryan (Reno Smith), Anne Francis (Liz Wirth), Dean Jagger (Sheriff Tim Horn), Walter Brennan (Doc Viele), John Ericson (Pete Wirth), Ernest Borgnine (Coley Trimble), Lee Marvin (Hector David), Russell Collins (Mr Hastings), Walter Sande (Sam)

A man walks into a town. It’s a dust bowl town, looks like it’s just one street with a few buildings. The natives sit warily outside the bar and treat the stranger with suspicion. Trigger fingers are itchy. Is it the Wild West? No it’s 1945, but the new guy in town is about to find out just how unfriendly the American West can be. Just as well that, despite only having one hand, he’s more than capable of looking after himself.

Spencer Tracy, perfect as a man of rigid principles and certainties who won’t waver in the face of any intimidation, is our no-nonsense hero Macreedy. Arriving in town, he’s looking for Japanese-American farmer Komoko, father of a deceased colleague from the war, but no one wants to talk about where he is or what happened to him. Sheriff Horn (Dean Jagger) is an alcoholic who doesn’t want to know anything, the local doctor (Walter Brennan) doesn’t want to get involved and hotel clerk Pete (John Ericson) doesn’t want to give Macreedy a home. Macreedy is tailed on arrival by a couple of intimidating heavies (Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin – the go-to guys at the time for these sort of roles), and quickly works out the town is run by local businessman Reno Smith (Robert Ryan) – and any secrets it holds ain’t coming out easy.

Bad Day at Black Rock is a classic western, set in a time when the world of the West had been left far behind. American culture has a romantic longing for rural, small-town America, and the heroic past of the pioneers of the old West. Bad Day inverts a lot of this mythology: this America is horribly corrupt, unspeakably racist and hiding no end of dirty linen in its cupboards. In fact, small-town America is horrible, while the man from the big city represents all that is good – that in itself is quite a surprise turnaround from what you might expect from Hollywood.

In many ways it’s a very simple, very gripping, film. Macreedy’s arrival in the town sparks guilty consciences and sets the town bully, Reno Smith, into a quiet, panicked breakdown. We know watching it roughly where the film is likely to go. However, what Sturges does well is to invest this with so much attention. Huge chunks of the film involve both Macreedy and the men of the town, tensely trying to work out what is going on, or watching and waiting to see what opportunities there will be. It’s a film packed with moments of waiting or characters sitting and watching, talking around subjects rather than tackling the big questions they want to ask. It sounds slow but it actually builds up an extraordinary amount of danger and feeling of danger.

It’s a drama that works on the slow burn while also being a very short, snappily paced film. The best part of the first half-hour of the film is the careful establishing of the atmosphere, the relationships between the different characters, and the politics of this Western town. In the middle of this we have Macreedy, the man of mystery whom we know nothing about, who never seems to rise to the unfriendly intimidation he meets from every corner. You know that all this tension is going to erupt into something serious – but the film constantly leaves you guessing exactly how it will pan out and keeps you surprised about who ends up on which side.

You couldn’t get a better actor for this role than Spencer Tracy. There is something so rigidly determined about Tracy in this film, so adamantine and determined – the sort of man who operates in rights and wrongs, who even in this world of intimidation and terror tries to play by some sort of rules for as long as he possibly can. What’s so great about Tracy in this film is that he seems like both a stranger in black and a disappointed dad, with the people in the town constantly letting him down. The film also teases us for a long time – we suspect throughout that Macreedy is more dangerous and more capable of looking after himself than he appears. (It was Tracy who insisted, by the way, that Macreedy be made one-armed, as he thought it could give Macreedy an interesting vulnerability to overcome).

The film makes us wait for its three action set-pieces: a car chase, a bar fight and a shoot-out. But it’s perfect in its patience, because violence always seems like it could burst out at any time. Marvin and Borgnine as the obvious heavies do great work as different types of overt muscle. Robert Ryan as the corrupt guy who really runs the town is especially good as a man who seems, under his dominance, to only just be holding onto his self-control, going to great lengths to prevent himself getting into trouble. It’s a point that Macreedy himself makes – deep down, Smith doesn’t have the guts to do his dirty work alone, and gets his strength from controlling others. All this delicate mixture of guilt and fear that bubbles under the surface of Smith is apparent in Ryan’s excellent performance.

But then no-one in the town is in control. Dean Jagger’s moral weakling sheriff is a drunk and a pathetic loser. Walter Brennan’s (very good) doctor wants to do the right thing, but lacks the guts to do it. John Ericsen’s hotel clerk knows he’s in the wrong, but isn’t brave enough to stand his ground. Their lack of control is in fact the root of the problem – Macreedy would never have suspected there were any dark secrets to uncover in the town if the people there hadn’t treated him with such overt suspicion. Sturges captures this perfectly (even if I think the Cinemascope width of shot isn’t perfect for a film that gets so much play out of claustrophobia and suspicion).

Politically the film is pretty simple – racism ain’t good you know – but as an example of brilliantly assembled Western tension and moral righteousness, mixed with a bit of action, adventure and claustrophobia, it works really well. Brilliantly directed, and very well written as a piece of expressive theatre, this is terrific with some wonderful performances. And front and centre is Spencer Tracy as the ultimate man in black, a man with moral certainty and courage, whom it’s impossible not to admire.

Gorky Park (1983)

William Hurt investigates murder in Soviet Russia in ace adaptation Gorky Park

Director: Michael Apted

Cast: William Hurt (Arkady Renko), Lee Marvin (Jack Osborne), Brian Dennehy (William Kirwill), Ian Bannen (Prosecutor Iamskoy), Joanna Pacula (Irina Asanova), Michael Elphick (Pasha), Richard Griffiths (Anton), Rikki Fulton (Major Pabluda), Alexander Knox (The General), Alexei Sayle (Golodkin), Ian McDiarmid (Professor Andreev), Niall O’Brien (KGB Agent Rurik)

Martin Cruz Smith’s novel Gorky Park was a bestseller in the early 1980s. It looked at grim goings-on behind the Iron Curtain, a trio of grisly murders in Moscow’s Gorky Park (the bodies are faceless, toothless and fingerless to avoid identification). The murders are investigated by Arkady Renko (wonderfully played in this film by William Hurt), a chief investigator for the Moscow militia who feels out of place in the corruption of Soviet Russia, but is equally scornful of the consumerism of the West. The investigation delves into a complex web of Soviet relationships with American business and the dissident community, not least an American millionaire fur trader Jack Osborne (Lee Marvin), and a would-be defector and possible friend of the victims, Irina Asabova (Joanna Pacula).

What I loved about this film is the novel is a rather overwhelming 500+ pages, but this film is a brisk and pacey two hours – and I literally couldn’t think of a single thing missing. But then that’s what you get when you have a master writer adapting your screenplay. Gorky Park has Dennis Potter, perhaps the greatest British TV writer of all time – and this is a sublime script, which keeps the pace up, covers all the tense greedy wrangling of the villains, and also makes subtle and telling points about the Soviet system, all in a punchier and clearer way than the books. The dialogue is also absolutely cracking, ringing with a brusque, icy poetry, with a brilliant ear for a turn of phrase.

Filmed on location around Helsinki and Glasgow among other places, what the film misses in actual Russian locations (needless to say the Soviets were not keen to host the production of a film that showcased murder and corruption at the heart of their capital city), it makes up for with Apted’s taut direction and eye for the general crappiness of Soviet life. Everything is run down, everything is dirty, everything looks cold and unappealing, even the houses and luxury bathhouses of the party leaders look a bit middle-class and uninspiring. By the time (late in the film) that you find yourself in one of Osborne’s houses you are immediately struck by the quality of the furnishings – it’s literally a different world.

This atmosphere not only creates something a bit more unique, it also allows us to relax and enjoy the quality of Smith’s story. I found it overstretched in the book, but the film gives it an urgency and a sinister creepiness that grips your attention. Apted has a brilliant eye for the little tricks to survive living in a police state, from watching what you say, to carefully placing a pencil in a dialled telephone wheel to prevent bugs from activting. Every moment is well paced and nothing outstays its welcome. Characters are introduced with skillful brushstrokes, and the relationships feel real and lived in. With such strong dialogue, it’s also great they got such good actors to do it.

William Hurt takes on the lead, and he is perfect, affecting a rather clipped English accent (all the Russians speak with various regional or RP accents). With his unconventional looks (part boyish, part stone-like), he looks the part and he totally captures the yearning unconventionality of a character who deep down probably would be a true believer in a good society, but can’t believe in the corruption around him. Far from the stereotypical would-be dissident, Hurt makes him a man who loves his homeland, but not always the people running it. He’s exactly as you would picture Renko in the book – a guy who will go for justice with the bit between his teeth, a semi-romantic hero, no superman (he frequently is bested in combat), who is looking for something to love and believe in.

The rest of the cast are equally fine. Lee Marvin is cast against type as a suave, hyper-intelligent, manipulatively greedy businessman – although his reputation for playing heavies comes in handy when the gloves come off. Joanna Pacula mixes sultry Euro-siren with an urgent yearning for freedom. Ian Bannen is wonderfully avuncular as Renko’s supportive boss (extra points for Tinker Tailor fans that Bannen is reunited here with Alexander Knox, in a dark reflection of their Control-Prideaux working relationship from that series). Michael Elphick seizes on the part of the down-to-earth Pasha, Renko’s friend and comrade, a role greatly improved from the book (largely to give Renko someone to bounce ideas off).

Apted’s film has a great sense of tension and a wonderful feeling for Soviet Moscow’s dark underbelly. The mystery is increasingly gripping and involving as the film goes on – and, in a nice rug-pull, turns out to be about something totally different than what you might expect. Even the final shootout is assembled and shot with an unexpected vibe. It avoids any Cold War pandering – the main villain is a sadistic American allied with Russians, our hero a noble Russian who partners up with a salt-of-the-earth but decent American cop (Brian Dennehy, also very good). For a late night mystery thriller, with a touch of everything thrown in, you can do a lot worse than this. I enjoyed it far more than I expected. I’d almost call it an overlooked B-movie gem.