Celebrity can be a blessing, a curse and a drug -- often all, and for the same person.
Consider the lifespan of movie stardom. Maybe one out of 10,000 young film actors breaks out of the pack, and even then their heyday usually lasts a few years at most. You can be one of the most famous people in the world, and just a few beats of a lifetime later you're largely forgotten.
"Val," the new biographical documentary about (and largely by) Val Kilmer is a testament to the fleeting, fickle nature of celebrity. It's essentially one actor's cinematic diary, shot by himself using handheld video cameras dating back to his childhood when they first became available to the general public, and he and his brothers made all sorts of movies.
He looks back on his life and movies with the sort of clear-eyed honesty you don't get from a Hollywood celebrity, even a washed-up one.
"I Walk the Line" came out 14 years after Johnny Cash released the ubiquitous song with which it shares its name, and 25 years before the Cash biopic starring Joaquin Phoenix that also bore that title. Thematically it bears little relation to the song, which is all about devotion to a loved one and rejecting temptation, while the movie is about a man who does exactly the opposite.
Cash actually re-recorded "I Walk the Line" for the 1970 movie and, apparently inspired, wrote a bunch more songs and wound up supplying the entire soundtrack. One track, "Flesh and Blood," ended up hitting the top of the country charts, so the soundtrack is better remembered than the movie.
It's not a particularly good film but it is an interesting one, and sometimes that's a better thing -- particularly when being discovered decades down the line.
John Frankenheimer surely belongs in the sad pantheon of "best filmmakers never to receive an Oscar nomination." He's often confused (even by me) with his similarly monikered contemporary, William Friedkin, who released "The French Connection" the following year. Frankenheimer would direct its 1974 sequel, and continue on to be a busy director through the early 2000s.
The film stars Gregory Peck, a star with whom the word "decency" seems almost synonymous. So playing Tawes, the Sheriff of an unnamed rural county, is very much against type. Tawes seems resolute and upstanding, but it turns out he's a very weak man indeed, capable of capriciousness and even cruelty.
No first name is ever given for Tawes -- even his wife, Ellen (Estelle Parsons), and teen daughter refer to him as "Sheriff." He's had this post a long time and, it seems will keep the job as long as he wants. There's not much to it, mostly driving around resolving conflicts between neighbors over cut-down trees and the like.
But when he lays eyes on Alma McCain (Tuesday Weld), all bets are off. Tawes is completely swept away by her, even after learning Alma is the daughter of notorious moonshiner Carl McCain (Ralph Meeker). He enters into a strange, strained dance with the McCain clan, where he essentially rents Alma for sex in return for looking the other way from their illicit activities.
But then the stakes are raised, both criminally and emotionally as Tawes actually falls in love, or least convinces himself he is. It's quite apparent to the audience and to Alma that their relationship is just an arrangement, but the Sheriff is the only one who can't see it.
Frankenheimer wanted Gene Hackman to play Tawes, and as much as I admire Peck I can't help wondering what that version of the movie would be like. This film really required a tortured portrayal of inner turmoil, but Peck is more of the "stare hard and don't show weakness" generation of film actors.
My initial reaction was also that Hackman was too young to play an aging lawman, but the two men are actually only 14 years apart in age.
The script by Alvin Sargent, based on a novel by Madison Jones, is more notable for what it doesn't say or show than what it does.
There are references to events in Tawes' past that might leave him vulnerable to such a temptation, but they're not fleshed out. Apparently he lost his mother and sisters in a car accident some years back, which rendered his father (J.C. Evans, Frankenheimer's wife's grandfather) a doddering mess who keeps expecting his family to walk in the door.
Parsons is terrific as Ellen Tawes, who manages to be both headstrong and utterly submissive at the same time. She refers to throwing herself at the Sheriff and more or less forcing him to marry her, but now he barely speaks to her. The scenes inside their house are hard to watch, with Tawes hardly looking his wife or daughter in the eye or saying a word, as if blaming them for his lack of devotion to them.
Even after suspecting that her husband is playing around on her, Ellen makes it clear she's willing to accept his occasional philandering as long as he returns home. (Speaking of, it's an awfully big, nice house for a poor public servant.) Tawes feels like a man trapped, but this is the sort of gilded cage many a man would willingly place themselves inside.
It's also hard to grasp what it is he sees in Alma. Weld plays her as a coy, calculating but not hateful person who is more than happy to trade her body for her family's security. The McCains have been moonshiners for generations, picking up everything they have every once in a while when the feds come around sniffing. She seems as surprised as anyone when Tawes starts talking about running away together to Chicago, California or whatnot.
"You've got your people, and I've got mine," is how she puts it, which is the extent of her understanding.
Tawes and Carl McCain don't even meet until halfway through the movie, when a chortling federal agent, Bascomb (Lonny Chapman), starts investigating the interstate flow of illicit alcohol. Tawes tries to play the high-and-mighty lawman, but McCain knows he's already got the Sheriff under his thumb. He's not at all bothered by offering his daughter up for sex, seeing her as just another family asset to be leveraged.
"We'll take our chances. After all you won't be gettin' the worst of it, ya hear? You keep on gettin' the best of it," he says.
Alma has two younger brothers, Jeff Dalton as 18-year-old hothead Clay and Freddie McCloud as towheaded rapscallion Buddy, who's maybe 10. Her job is to cook and care for the men as her mother is long gone. There's a brief tender moment between her and her father that has incestuous connotations; even if he doesn't sexually covet Alma the elder McCain certainly considers her his property.
The other player is Charles Durning as Hunnicut, Tawes' only deputy. He's the sort of man, quick to a laugh or a drink, who everyone dismisses as fat and stupid. But Hunnicut is cracker cagey, constantly watching his boss out of the side of his eye.
He's the first to sniff out Tawes' affair, though it's never made clear what he intends to do with this information. Blackmail him? Take his job? Durning takes a rather underwritten role as a standard-issue redneck cop and gives him all sorts of nefarious shadings that make us fear him, even more so than the McCain patriarch.
"I Walk the Line" is a simple piece of clockworks with only a few moving pieces. There's the McCains, happy to keep to themselves and ply their trade, and willing to make whatever reasonable (to them) accommodations are necessary to keep doing so. Sheriff Tawes, the most upright man in the county but desperate for affection -- even though he's got plenty of it at home, and can't tell when presented with an ersatz replacement.
There's a good movie in here somewhere, or could be. What we're left with is a lot of interesting pieces that don't really fit together.
For a film with a silly premise, "The Train" is a really gripping action/thriller. It's about a French Resistance member outwitting the Germans to prevent them from shipping hundreds of great paintings to Berlin in the waning days of the war. The protagonist, played by Burt Lancaster, demands early in the story why his men should risk death for a bunch of art. "The Train" never adequately answers this question.
In fact, the antagonist -- splendidly played by Paul Scofield -- articulates exactly thus in the movie's final moments. Alone, defeated, he confronts his opponent and taunts him:
"Labiche! Here's your prize, Labiche. Some of the greatest paintings in the world. Does it please you, Labiche? Do you feel a sense of excitement at just being near them? A painting means as much to you as a string of pearls to an ape. You won by sheer luck. You stopped me without knowing what you were doing or why... "Now, this minute, you couldn't tell me why you did what you did."
And he's exactly right. Paul Labiche (Lancaster), the Paris train station master who's secretly the ringleader of a Resistance cel, had already refused to stop the train. If any action were to be taken, he would have preferred to simply blow it up. His primary mission was to make sure another train was delayed long enough to be destroyed in an Allied air raid. Once that was accomplished, though, Labiche suddenly finds an unexplained need to keep the paintings in France.
The Allies' thinking of why exactly they should stop the paintings from leaving is fuzzy. Surely they knew the Nazis would not destroy such prized art. And by August of 1944, with the liberation of Paris days away and the German war machine in full retreat, they must have known it would only be a matter of time before Berlin fell and the paintings were reclaimed.
The reason provided by Scofield's German colonel, Franz von Waldheim, holds no more water. He convinces his recalcitrant superiors to allocate a much-needed train to the paintings' transport by arguing that they're worth a billion German marks, and could supply their fatherland with a trove of weapons and supplies for its defense.
Not likely -- exactly which nation or private enterprise would be in the market of selling massive supplies of guns and artillery to Germany, when it was clearly losing the war? Even assuming they could somehow get through the Allied lines? Col. von Waldheim's claim that the art is a commodity that can be traded like gold was doubtless a ploy to convince his bosses in the Reich. He simply wanted the paintings for himself, or the glory of his nation. He makes it clear in the same final speech:
"The paintings are mine. They always will be. Beauty belongs to the man who can appreciate it. They will always belong to me, or a man like me."
Finally, there's the central question that goes unasked throughout the story: Why is it the Germans can locate an entire train when they're in critically short supply, but keep having to rely on French engineers to operate them? Especially when one after another turns out to be part of the Resistance? Surely there was a Franz or Hansel somewhere in the local German forces with knowledge of running a train. Or they could have even brought in a German civilian engineer.
And yet, despite all the illogic of the narrative, the film works on most every level. I credit the presence of director John Frankenheimer, who was brought in after Lancaster had original director Arthur Penn fired. Penn wanted to do a more contemplative film that would barely show any of the train stuff, but Lancaster desperately needed an action-filled hit. The studio gave Frankenheimer double the budget, final cut and (according to Wikipedia) a Ferrari to turn it into a taut thriller.
He succeeded. Although I do sort of wonder what the Penn film would've been like.
I really liked Michel Simon as Papa Boule, an ancient train engineer given the assignment of driving the art train. When he learns what is on board, he risks his life to race it out of the bombing attack. We sense that he does so based on his barroom musing that he once had a girlfriend who posed for Picasso; perhaps he thinks her portrait is among the absconded paintings.
Papa Boule has the face of a troll, and the temperament of one, too, but beneath that craggy surface beats the heart of ... well, not a poet, but someone who at least knows what poetry is.
After saving the train, he sabotages the engine by placing French franc coins in the oil line. When it is brought back to the train yard for repairs, the German major demands Papa Boule turn out his pockets, revealing the telltale oil-smudged francs. Old fool, the major says before taking the engineer away to be shot. Why didn't you simply throw them away?
"Four francs is four francs," he says, which is about the only thing you can say when you're about to be machine-gunned full of holes.
Jeanne Moreau shows up as a French tavern/hotel owner where Labiche holes up when he's on the run. She demands to be paid for every scrap of help rendered or damage sustained to her property, and spouts a lot of talk about how men are such fools to always be playing at war. As written, the role feels rote.
The action scenes hold up really well nearly five decades on. And that's because Frankenheimer crashes real steam locomotives on several occasions -- including a three-way pileup that puts any modern Jerry Bruckheimer CGI conflagration to shame. You can't fake the incredible mass of those machines, and the devastating effects when they collide.
There's also a really clever sequence where Labiche, now piloting the art train himself, tricks the German officers on board into thinking they're traveling to Germany, when in actuality they've turned around and headed back for Paris. They get a small army of station masters and collaborators to disguise the names of French towns with German ones, post guards in German uniforms, etc.
The premise of "The Train" may be silly, at least in my view, but that does not preclude it from being based on historical fact. The screenplay, by Franklin Coen and Frank Davis, was based on a non-fiction book by Rose Valland, "Le front de l'art."
In reality, though, the French Resistance stopped the train not through brave sabotage or explosive plastique, but by entangling it in bureaucratic red tape. Proving once again that in real life, desk jockeys trump action heroes every time.
"Seven Days in May" is considered one of the all-time great political thrillers, but I found the 1964 film directed by John Frankenheimer a bit stiff and theatrical. It's still a good ripping yarn, but hardly worthy of the accolades that have been heaped upon it.
Partly is that its subject matter -- about an attempted military coup of the United States -- felt a bit stale, even in 1964. The nuclear age spawned a tidal wave of anxiety and fear, and movies like this played upon them. Frankenheimer's own previous film, 1962's "The Manchurian Candidate," touched upon very similar themes.
Also in 1964 we had "Fail Safe" and "Dr. Strangelove," two movies with schockingly similar stories about a runaway American military setting off war with the Soviet Union, that approached the subject from polar opposite ends -- straight and satirical, respectively.
I can only imagine what it must have been like in that year, right after the assassination of an American president for reasons that still remain murky, with all these movies coming out about sinister plots to subvert the presidency and the democratic process. In some ways, it makes the previous decades' duck-and-cover drills seem reassuring.
Rod Serling wrote the screenplay based on the book Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II, which was the best-selling novel in the country for almost an entire year. Serling's version centers around three pivotal characters: General James Scott (Burt Lancaster), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Jordan Lyman (Fredric March), president of the United States; and Col. Martin "Jiggs" Casey (Kirk Douglas), the man caught in the middle.
Lyman has just agreed on a proposed treaty with the Soviets to disarm all nuclear weapons. A great outcry has risen up against the movie, calling it foolish, and a gripping opening scene shows a riot between protesters in front of the White House. (Astonishingly, this was shot in front of the actual building. President Kennedy, before his untimely demise, gave his permission due in part to his relationship with Kirk Douglas.)
Scott is the shadow leader of this movement, and Jiggs Casey is his unknowing right-hand man. Casey's internal radar is set off by some communications among senior military leaders over secure channels regarding a wager on the Preakness horse race, to be held next Sunday. Only the leader of the Navy (an uncredited John Houseman) has declined to place a bet.
Casey also gets a visit from "Mutt" Henderson (Andrew Duggan), an old friend who says he's just been given a new post at eComCon -- an installation he's never heard of. With a little digging, it turns out to be a secret military base in the Texas desert established by Scott to train special forces for a military takeover.
Interestingly, the wondering part is quite small -- Casey immediately goes to the president with the plot, and from there it's a battle of wits between the president's advisers and Scott and his cohorts to outflank each other. Lyman was scheduled to attend a huge military practice operation on the Sunday in question, and he correctly guesses that he would have been kidnapped and possibly executed while in Scott's custody.
This is the part of the movie I found weak. Once the president learned of the plot, why wouldn't he immediately fire Scott and have him arrested? There's this whole long section where Lyman frantically searches for proof of his joint chiefs chairman's treason before he can make a move. He sends top advisor Paul Girard (Martin Balsam) to coerce the Navy holdout into signing a confession, while the lush of a senator from Georgia, Raymond Clark, is dispatched to drive around in the desert looking for this mysterious military base. (Edmond O'Brien earned an Oscar nomination for his colorful portrayal.)
All this is hooey. All the president's cabinet and advisers serve at the pleasure of the chief executive, and can be dismissed by him or her at any time, for any reason. Lyman could fire Scott because he doesn't like the way he parts his hair.
There's a powerhouse of a scene near the end where Scott and Lyman confront each other, alone, in the Oval Office. The president reveals that he knows all about the plot, laying out his evidence in a prosecutorial fashion. Scott angrily denounces Lyman as a "weak sister" whose treaty amounts to a willing surrender to the enemy. Lyman persistently demands that Scott resign, and Scott refuses.
It's a fun scene, with Lancaster thundering away about protecting the country, and March makes a tidy speech about democratic processes must be respected or the nation into an abyss. Great acting, fiery dialogue, and all built on a premise that's utterly ridiculous. (My understanding is that in the book, Scott immediately resigns when confronted by Lyman.)
There's also a whole left-handed side plot about Ava Gardner as Scott's former mistress who supposedly has some incriminating letters written by him. Casey, pretending to pitch woo at her, gets his hands on the letters and turns them over to the president to use as leverage against Scott. But Lyman resists the urge to use the underhanded tactic -- which is supposed to demonstrate what a noble character he is.
It's a good, engaging movie -- great-looking, too, with top-notch photography and production design -- but it tends to fall apart when you start kicking the tires and peek under the hood.
Good movie, but they got the title wrong: Robert Stroud kept and studied birds for decades while imprisoned in Leavenworth. When he got transferred to Alcatraz, he was not allowed to have pets or scientific equipment. The "Birdman" spent 17 years at Alcatraz, with nary a bird to call his own.
But I guess the title "Birdman of Leavenworth" doesn't sing as sweetly.
This 1962 drama about a two-time killer who was saved from the hangman's noose to serve a life term studying birds is fairly typical of its era. The truth -- that Robert Stroud was a pretty hateful and despicable guy who also happened to be brilliant -- is rewritten and glammed up by Hollywood.
Played by Burt Lancaster, one of the most handsome men to ever grace a screen, Stroud is turned into a symbol of the nobility of man, and the wrongness of locking that away in a dank corner when he could be contributing to society.
Although, given the real-life narrative of Stroud's incarceration -- which the film follows fairly accurately -- it's pretty hypocritical to spend the first third or so of the movie in which Stroud and his mother fight to prevent him from getting the death penalty, and then spending the last two-thirds sermonizing about awful it is to deny him parole.
When Stroud stabs a prison guard to death in the cafeteria because he insists on reporting Stroud for a minor infraction, thus preventing him from seeing his mother, it's presented as a moment of supreme oppression -- against Stroud. That guard -- nay, the very penal system -- is just a big ol' meanie, so as the music soars and director John Frankenheimer sends his camera into opera-esque swoops and swoons, we're meant to see him as the hero striking back against a corrupt system.
Stroud goes on to mellow out quite a bit, becomes a leading authority on the anatomy of birds, and even ends the movie by heroically ending a prison riot, sagely advising the hot young guns that all life is precious. But never once does he express any remorse for his crimes.
Although I don't agree with the socio-political conclusions "Birdman of Alcatraz" steers its audience toward, I still enjoyed it. It's a skillfully-made film by a top-notch filmmaker who could still crank out a lean, mean thriller like "Ronin" at age 68.
There's a really nice crop of supporting performances. Karl Malden plays Harvey Shoemaker, Stroud's first and last warden, who vows to keep him locked in solitary until the end of his days. Their relationship starts out adversarial, morphs into something more or less civil, but retains a steel edge of enmity even into their old age.
A young Telly Savalas, who started and ended on television, plays Gomez, a dim-witted but amiable fellow prisoner who gets caught up in Stroud's affection for birds, and starts keeping some of his own.
Thelma Ritter plays Stroud's mother, who stood by him, even petitioning President Woodrow Wilson to commute his death sentence, but cut ties when he marries his business partner (Betty Field) to generate publicity. (Stroud sold birds and medicine that he made right in his cell.)
Neville Brand gives a really touching performance as Bull, a crotchety guard who forms a grudging respect for Stroud. On the day they come to pluck Stroud out of Leavenworth to transfer him to Alcatraz and back under Shoemaker's control, Bull shakes his hand and calls Stroud a friend. Because the film has patiently taken its time to sketch their relationship over the years, the moment feels true and right. It's the sort of thing a lot of modern filmmakers skimp on now.
Narrative film lends itself better to fiction, because facts almost never have a satisfying story arc. Real life is inconvenient. The real Robert Stroud was diagnosed as psychotic and possibly was a pedophile, and his bird-filled cell was a hygiene nightmare. But good stories need inspiration, and the life of Stroud certainly provided that.
