Reeling Backward: "The Stalking Moon" (1968)

"The  Stalking Moon" is a largely forgotten Western, owing mostly I think to arriving around the time the genre was being reexplored with a more critical eye -- "The Wild Bunch," "Little Big Man," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."

But it contains some of those same questioning elements, including a subtle (maybe too subtle) examination of the relationship between an expanding America and the native peoples who were often trampled along the way.

Gregory Peck, a dramatic leading man who occasionally dabbled in cowboys, had been down this path before a decade early in "The Bravados," playing a rancher-turned-killer. Here it's the other way around, portraying Sam Varner, an Army scout helping round up American Indians who tries to settle down but finds his old life pulling him back in.

The first half is more interesting than the second, which oddly plays out almost like a slasher flick as the good guys are hunted by a seemingly unstoppable assailant. It's a rousing bit of Western action, abetted by the novelty of an Indian antagonist who clearly outskills the white hero. But in the end, it's just standard tension-and-release filmmaking.

How the movie got there has more merit.

Getting ready to muster out after 15 years with the Army, where he garnered a reputation as the best of the best, Sam is enticed to escort a white woman, Sarah Carver (Eva Marie Saint), who was kidnapped by Apaches 10 years ago when she was a girl.

(This would put the character in her mid-20s at the oldest, which is a bit of a stretch for the then-44-year-old actress. Peck, at 52, is a little closer to Sam's presumed age.)

Since then she has married and produced a boy of about age 8 (Noland Clay), a "half-breed" or "breed" using the parlance of the film, who has not yet been named in the tradition of his father's folk. After the vestiges of her tribe are captured and she is afforded the opportunity to return home to Columbus -- while the Apache will assumedly be taken to a reservation -- Sarah is desperate to leave right away, guilt-tripping Sam into being their escort.

It's eventually revealed that her husband is none other than Salvaje, a legendary killer feared even by his own people. Salvaje, which roughly translates as "ghost" or "he who is not here," is intent on getting his son back, if only for pride's sake.

Sam intends to put Sarah and her boy on a train and be done with them. But after all the people at a coach station are killed while they were off chasing down the boy during a runaway attempt, he's ready to be quit immediately.

There's a wonderful, largely wordless scene where Sam stares at the woman and her son as they wait at the lonely train station. He knows it's the smart thing to do, but he's also seen the looks and reaction the pair produces in white society and guesses what their future will hold. Carefully weighing matters, coupled with his own longing for stability (read: family), Sam invites them to come live with him at his ranch in New Mexico.

It's a fateful decision, yet knowing what the outcome is we suspect Sam would still make the same choice.

Salvaje soon comes a-knocking, wiping out Sam's new neighbors as well as his oldster caretaker, Ned (Russell Thorson). He's helped for a time by Nick Tana, another "breed" Sam took under his wing a decade earlier and shaped in his image as a scout.

The relationships between Sam and Nick and the boy are the film's most compelling dynamic. Certainly it's more worthy of note than the repressed romance that slowly builds between him and Sarah. Saint really isn't given a whole lot to do, other than sit stoically waiting for the menfolk to do stuff as she speaks in clipped cadences of her nearly forgotten English tongue.

Sam clearly regards Nick as a son, even if he's a somewhat resentful, churlish one. In an early scene Nick throws a knife at Sam's retreating back, clearly a demonstration of the arrival of his full manhood and commensurate independence. He feels like Sam is running away for him, and there is an unspoken hurt that the elder did not invite him to share in his new life.

Maybe Nick would've said no, but he's bothered by the lack of an ask.

All this is barely revealed in the dialogue. A rough caress of Nick's cheek as he dies at Salvaje's hand is all the evidence the film provides.

For his part, the boy largely remains an enigma -- but it's clear that he bears Sam even less regard. He's rebelling at being forced away from his people to live in a white man's world. He tries several times to escape and be reunited with his father. He steals a white man's knife and is tempted to use it on him before Sam intervenes.

Really, the best thing for all concerned would be for the boy to go back to Salvaje and for Sarah to marry Sam and produce another son. But that's not how a mother's love, or Western films, work.

"The Stalking Moon" has impeccable credentials. It's directed by Robert Mulligan, who made "To Kill a Mockingbird" with Peck five years earlier, with a screenplay by renowned scribe Alvin Sargent, who won two Oscars (for "Paper Moon" and "Julia") and found a second 21st-century spurt as the script man behind three of the Spider-Man movies. This was just his second feature film writing credit after starting out in TV.

Based on the novel by Theodore V. Olsen with an adaptation credit to Wendell Mayes, the filmmakers make the curious choice to depict Salvaje as little as possible. He's only glimpsed as a shadow or distant figure until the very end, and he never speaks a single word. His showdown with Sam is shot so as to avoid showing his face or revealing his humanity. It's basically a stuntman role.

I was struck by the musical score by Fred Karlin, best known for his music for "Westworld" and its sequel. It's more a collection of atonal sounds than melodies, with an oft-repeating discord strummed across a string instrument of some kind used for building tension.

(My ear isn't attuned enough to tell, so I'll take a stab that it's a mandolin, zither or dulcimer.)

Is there a hidden meaning to all this? If so, we're barely given more than a few wind-scattered tracks in the sand to decipher.

My guess is the theme has something to do with Sam facing a reckoning for his transgressions as an Indian hunter. He's reached an age where he wants to let go of that life, and finds that it has a hold on him he can't ignore. Having raised and ultimately rejected a half-Indian child, he is given another chance at fatherhood -- but has to endure a mountain of sacrifice as punishment.

The lack of a real character for Salvaje indicates he's more a remorseless force of history than a full-blooded human being, more existential threat than person.

"The Stalking Moon" is well-made, but seems like a sketch for a grander, grimmer tale the filmmakers weren't ready to tell. After the Peckinpahs and Penns of the world had their say, movies like this were destined to fade away.

Reeling Backward: "The Last Days of Patton" (1986)

This is a movie website, though I do occasionally wander into personal musings, politics and even television. I feel comfortable including the made-for-TV "The Last Days of Patton" here, since it is the largely unknown sequel to 1970's seminal "Patton."

General George S. Patton was surely the signature role of George C. Scott's long film career, and that's saying something. He won a Best Actor Oscar for the 1970 film (which he declined) and no doubt relished the chance to revisit the character, who died shortly following the end of World War II after being paralyzed in a freak auto accident.

It's the classic "lion in winter" sort of tale, with the grizzled old warrior facing his own mortality, his reputation tarnished as wartime gives way to peace and celebrated fighters like Patton quickly turned into anachronisms. Literally until his dying breath, Patton yearned for the chance to take on the "mongrel" Russians, allies of necessity whom he predicted would become America's greatest global foe.

Interestingly, despite the 16-year gap between the film and its made-for-TV followup, Scott was actually about the same age as the character during the second go-round. He was barely into his 40s when he first played Patton, who turned 60 shortly before his death.

Director Delbert Mann started and ended his career in television, though he helmed a bunch of seminal feature films in the 1950s and '60s, including winning an Academy Award for "Marty." Teleplay writer William Luce was a TV guy through and through, and co-script man Ladislas Farago wrote the historical book about Patton upon which the movie was based.

The movie is anchored by Scott's formidable presence as Patton. He's a mountain of a man, always seeming too large for whatever space he's occupying. Scott plays the character as an egotistical, hard-wound but genuinely audacious person, the sort that the study of history is made more interesting for having him.

It suffers a bit from the technical confines of television, especially the nearly square aspect ratio and tendency toward camera work that is slightly fuzzy and dominated by saturated colors. I would love to see the exact same story shot in widescreen with high-end equipment.

The first half of the movie is much more compelling to me than the second, which is entirely comprised of Patton laid up in his hospital bed, making gruff pronouncements to anyone who visits while experiencing wistful (read: out of focus) flashbacks to his youth and childhood.

As the story opens, Patton has been declared military governor of Bavaria, overseeing a stretch of Germany devastated during the war. It's an ironic twist of fate: the very men responsible for turning an area to rubble are now given the responsibility for feeding the people and rebuilding the infrastructure.

Ensconced in a magnificent German castle, Patton would much rather be fighting the Russians but still attacks his assignment with gusto. Soon the shipping canals are open, the German POWs are whipped into shape (Patton dreamed of using them to bolster his own troops against the Rooskies) and the threat of mass starvation during the winter of 1945-46 is averted.

Unfortunately, Patton largely accomplishes this by keeping the wartime civilian leaders in place, in defiance of General Dwight D. Eisenhower's edict to expel all Nazi party members from positions of authority. He (correctly) argues that most of them only paid the Nazis lip service in order to remain in power, and turning things over to a bunch of inept novices would devastate the populace.

Eventually, Ike (Richard Dysart) and Patton have a confrontation in which the war dog is dressed down and relieved of his command. It's clear that this also marks the end of their long, troubled friendship. Like his conflict with Omar Bradley in "Patton," it's another example of how filmmakers portrayed Patton as a man who knew he was destined for greatness, only to be continually confounded by lesser military minds who were more adept at the political maneuvering necessary to reach the highest levels of command.

Patton is placed in charge of Fifteenth Army, a literal "paper army" that consisted of a few clerks who were tasked with writing the official history of the war. He is despondent and writes to his wife, Beatrice (Eva Marie Saint), that he intends not to return to Europe following his Christmas leave beginning Dec. 10.

In the film's oddest sequence, Patton is given a surprise birthday party by a bunch of his old troops. Initially seeming perturbed, he soon warms to the occasion, even leading a bawdy sing-a-long about a British prostitute who's the ugliest girl in England, but still does brisk business owing to the darkness of the constant blackouts from German air raids.

Then she appears. Jean Gordon (Kathryn Leigh Scott, no relation to George) is Patton's niece, with whom he reputedly carried on a long affair during the war. She was a nurse who sometimes followed Patton in his postings.

Historians have argued about whether the affair really happened, noting that a bedridden Patton may have been boasting about his sexual prowess because he was facing the prospect of death or invalidism. Given that she committed suicide shortly after his death, and was found surrounded by his photographs and letters, I'd say there was plenty of merit to the charge.

Weirdly, Patton introduces Jean as his "half-niece." I'm not sure whether this was the filmmakers' appellation or a term Patton actually used to mitigate his horrid behavior. Either way, it's ridiculous. You can become someone's uncle by marriage -- as did I, picking up two nephews, a niece and now a grand-niece by saying "I do" -- but that does not make them your "half niece" or "niece-in-law."

(It is possible to have a half-niece, but only if your half-sibling has a daughter.)

The affair has a strange effect on how we regard Patton. Here is this huge, bombastic figure who helped crush Hitler's regime. And the scenes between him and Beatrice in the film's second half, as well as the many flashbacks to their younger life, make clear the love between them was strong and true. Yet he was having sex with his niece. That is 9th-circle-of-Hell sinfulness, folks.

Not to be judgemental of actual people from antiquity, but I'm not surprised things ended with a suicide.

Patton's accident is presented as it actually happened: a freak occurrence that should have resulted in, at most, a few bruises. (Indeed, none of the five other people involved were seriously hurt.) Patton's  limousine, which was carrying him and longtime chief-of-staff/pal Lt. Gen. Hobart "Hap" Gay (Murray Hamilton) to go pheasant hunting, collided with an Army truck at a railroad crossing. Patton struck the window partition and suffered a severe scalp laceration and spinal compression fracture.

I'm afraid I pretty well lost interest in the film after this point. There's some slightly interesting stuff about how the famous general's injury was described in the press, who in typical form are depicted as nameless, scurrying rodents nipping at the heels of truly important VIPs. One female journalist is shown complaining that she was thrown out after inquiring after the general's very personal hygiene.

Ed Lauter plays Paul Hill, the Army doctor in charge of Patton's recovery. At first they attach an anchor to the top of his skull to get traction to relieve pressure on the broken spine. Later this is exchanged for "fishhooks under the cheekbones," to use the non-medical colorful phrase. Ol' Blood and Guts literally smiles through the pain.

In the end Ike orders the doctors to transport the patient back to the U.S. because American authorities do not want to have one of their most famous generals die on German soil. But Patton succumbs to an embolism before this can happen. His final scenes have Patton declaring his devotion to Beatrice, then closing his eyes for the last time to the sound of Christmas carolers walking through the hospital.

I am glad they made a sequel to "Patton," though I wish it were a superior one not cramped by the limits of 1980s television. It's not a bad film, but two great men -- George S. Patton and George C. Scott -- deserved better.

Reeling Backward: "On the Waterfront"

Everyone's personal filmography contains some holes, and "On the Waterfront" was one of the biggest in mine. I'm glad I plugged it.

Some movies fade with time, or their setting or stories become antiquated. Right before I started watching "Waterfront" I put on another Marlon Brando movie, "Teahouse of the August Moon," and didn't get 10 minutes in before I turned it off. I'm sure it's a fine film, but I was too put off by Brando portraying a Japanese man, complete with eye prosthetics and pidgin English ("Sank you velly much.")

"On the Waterfront" has an immediacy and punch that renders it timeless. Even the setting of New York dock workers intimidated by mobsters feels like it could have jumped out of a New York Post headline in 2009.

Nowadays the film is remembered for one thing: Brando's performance, captured in the famous "I coulda been a contender" speech in the back of a taxi. It is indeed a knockout, and Brando embodied an entire new way of embracing film acting. Up until him and his ilk, movie performances were essentially seen as stage acting that is recorded. So everything is big and broad. Brando's more naturalistic approach makes you believe that Terry Malloy is just another street hood who shrugged his way into our lives.

The contender dialogue is great, but the moment of the film that floored me is when Father Barry, the priest played by Karl Malden, stands at the bottom of ship's cargo hull and gives a sermon over the body of a dead worker who's just been killed by a falling load of whiskey. It was made to look like an accident, but everyone knows he was offed for daring to testify against the corrupt union bosses. Malden stands there, his speech slowly building from a benediction to a call to arms, even as mob chief Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) stands at the top and glowers. Some of his flunkies throw vegetables and even bottles at Father Barry, but he keeps on thundering away. Terry decks one of the mobsters for throwing stuff at the brave priest, and this is the real turning point for his character, the moment of truth when he decides to defy the bosses.

Johnny Friendly looks upon Terry as something of an amusing pet. A former boxer, Terry took a dive at the orders of Friendly, who had fixed the betting, and became just another palooka with a bent nose and swollen eye sockets. Friendly tosses him cush jobs like a master turning over his scraps to a dog. Terry isn't really a member of the inner circle, but his brother Charley (Rod Steiger) is Friendly's right-hand man. So they get nervous when Terry falls for Edie Doyle (Eva Marie Saint), the sister of a guy he unwittingly set up to take the fall for Friendly's enforcers.

You want to talk about a great cast? "On the Waterfront" had three Oscar nominations for best supporting actor -- Malden, Steiger and Cobb. Brando won for Best Actor, and Eva Marie Saint won in the supporting actress category. Not to mention Academy Awards for best picture, director, screenplay, cinematography, editing and art direction.

Director Elia Kazan had one of the truly great careers, although his heyday only lasted from the late 1940s until the early '60s. He's reviled in some circles for testifying against fellow filmmakers in the McCarthy hearings. But his influence as a filmmaker is undeniable. Just watch -- and listen -- to any of the outdoor scenes, where the churn of machinery in the background seems almost timed to the rhythms of the dialogue, like another musical score beneath Leonard Bernstein's (also nominated for an Oscar).

"On the Waterfront" deserves its reputation as one of the greatest American films, ever.

4 stars

Reeling Backward: "Exodus"

"Exodus" is a big, sprawling (209 minutes) epic about the birth of Israel. It uses fictional characters, but infuses the production with enough historical fact to lend it a certain sense of verisimilitude.

Paul Newman plays Ari Ben Canaan, a Jewish commando responsible for transporting 611 Jewish refugees from a British internment camp on Cyprus to the land of Palestine, as it was then known. Eva Marie Saint plays Kitty Fremont, an American nurse who gets caught up in the exodus and eventually falls for Ari, in one of the most unconvincing cinematic romances I've ever seen.

The film was directed to Otto Preminger, one of the most active directors of the 1950s and '60s. It was notable that Dalton Trumbo was credited as screenwriter, since he had been blacklisted. He continued working steadily through the '50s, using other writers as fronts. "Exodus" marked the first major film in which he was given an official credit, and doing so effectively ended the blacklist. In 1960, besides "Exodus" Trumbo also wrote "Spartacus," another huge-scale epic. Not a bad year.

"Exodus" is a decent film, but its first half is stronger than its second. That deals with the actual exodus, which includes a neat bit where Ben Canaan impersonates a British officer and fools them into supplying their own trucks and crew to carry the refugees to a ship. The ship is promptly blockaded, but a hunger strike by the Jews draws world-wide attention, and eventually they are allowed to go on to Palestine.

From there, the middle section is taken up by a prison break to spring Ben Canaan's uncle, who's the leader of the Jewish terrorist organization. The last third or so deals with the United Nations vote to partition the land for a Jewish state, followed by the violent aftermath.

I should mention the strong performance by Sal Mineo as Dov Landau, a hotheaded young Jewish revolutionary. Mineo is one of those wonderful supporting actors who sometimes get forgotten with the passage of time. He was nominated for an Oscar for this film, as he was five years earlier for "Rebel Without a Cause," when he was just 16 years old. He was stabbed to death in 1976.

I have to admit that it's only in recent years that I've learned much about the founding of Israel. So "Exodus" acts as interesting document (somewhat fictionalized) of recent history that many people know little about. As a work of cinematic fiction, it's somewhat weak, but certainly an enjoyable spectacle.

2.5 stars