I called this review "Romantic beginner". Maybe I was referring to myself because True Romance (1993) is great.

Yet another variation on the "lovers on a crime spree" theme, this was the first movie written by Quentin Tarantino, in part made of elements out of a frustrated project called My Best Friend's Birthday which he attempted while still working as a video store clerk. It suffers from the same unevenness his stories have ever shown on other's hands -- Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers aside --, but the screenplay itself, all in all, is a far cry from his best work. (At least, the chronologically reorganized screenplay used by director Tony Scott.) Both the prologue and the scene with the hero's father and the evil henchman stand out, but there isn't much more -- and each of them would be perfected in Reservoir Dogs.

With Christian Slater as the hero (a more handsome version of the author), Patricia Arquette as the only girl in the world who thinks he's cool, and a moving Dennis Hopper as his father. By the way, the henchman is played by Christopher Walken. 6/10

1 December 2005

On the Waterfront

On the Waterfront (1954) is Kazan's ultimate masterpiece, and he is, as I from my most utterly subjective self see it, the greatest filmmaker of all times.

Waterfront has some curious legacy, among the films it has either inspired or influenced since its release. For instance, both Rocky and Raging Bull (considered by many to be opposite conceptions of the boxing movie genre) are born and bred Waterfront children. It is funny, but in a way the Caprian Rocky is even more Kazanesque than the Scorsese film.

My favorite moments are all those blink-and-miss ones that prove Brando's very greatness. Like the sudden nervous tic on Terry's face when Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) is putting some money in his shirt pocket for having helped to murder one of the dock workers. Look at the rictus! (By the way, Pacino borrowed that for Dog Day Afternoon and turned it into a masterful gimmick.) Or when he is on the roof talking to the detective about that important fight he lost, and he is doing the moves, and he says: "My own..." He doesn't say "brother", but even the guy from the commission seems to guess. Waterfront is thoroughly filled with all those minute touches of sheer genius because Kazan himself admired Brando as much as we do.

Terry Malloy is arguably the best role in the history of film-making. Brando's unsurpassed ability to convey the deepest of feelings through the tiniest of gestures found in Kazan's mise en scène its ideal showcase. That was subtlety at so profound a level and high a standard, that it is almost embarrassing to call it acting. In a way, there is no acting at all in the part.

From Kazan to Ray

For all its schematism and now seemingly formulaic plot line, Rebel Without a Cause (1955), the most famous output of the careers of both outsider filmmaker Nicholas Ray and protégé, awkward and eccentric actor James Dean, remains a triumph of pure cinematic enlightenment.

Dean was the talk of the town in Hollywood circa 1954-55. He had only just finished starring in Kazan's East of Eden when got involved with the long-postponed Rebel Without a Cause project. This originally had Brando in the lead even before Brando played in the stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Kazan himself.

Ray had worked with Kazan and was no less impressed with him than Dean was with Brando. Rebel Without a Cause is said to be modeled under Kazan's On The Waterfront. Also, there are evident traces of Brando's performances in Streetcar and The Wild One in the character development of Rebel.

By the way, I wish to credit actor Corey Allen. A renowned UCLA graduate who would retire from acting too early to ever make it in the movies like his Rebel mates Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo and Dennis Hopper, his portrayal of Buzz Gunderson, Dean's ill-fated rival, is actually of note. Allen resembles Brando, hence matching the Brandoesque mannerisms displayed by the star. In the "chicky run" scene -- one of the best set pieces of filmdom -- , his line "You gotta do something, don't ya" echoes The Wild One's most memorable one: "Whadda ya got". Buzz is as confused a kid as Johnny Strabler and, for that matter, as innocent a victim as Jim Stark. And this equality was what Rebel intended to point out.

"The Untouchables" The Snowball (1963)

Good acting and well-paced storytelling make this episode from a vintage TV-series real worthy. As the brilliant college student turned relentless hoodlum, the young Redford brings everything for the role to be the pivotal one that it is supposed to be: A sharp toughness that can reveal cruelty in such a believable way, that soon you are looking forward to his next Machiavelian move; a coldness to his overall behavior that makes a definite contrast to his youthful beauty, yet feels thoroughly congruent with his ultimate goals. Redford's last scene together with Gerald Hiken as Benny Angel is especially hard to see. Robert Stack as Eliot Ness and the menacing Bruce Gordon as Frank Nitty round out a recommendable hour.

Three Days of the Condor (1975)

A spy (mis)adventure, originally called Six Days of the Condor, featuring a typical rather-wasted de luxe cast. Its plot is a crude Kafkian labyrinth of greedy motives. The acting (Faye Dunaway in particular) is restrained; Robert Redford, the CIA agent who just reads books, stars almost like an urban Jeremiah Johnson --minus the beard. Bergmanian actor Max von Sydow, in a wonderfully upstaging but considerably concise supporting part, actually gets to reveal the nastily intriguing nature of the state of affairs; he would shine again in a similar mode as General Patton's assassin, in the much less appreciated Brass Target (1978). Sydney Pollack's elegant setting, including the well-directed violent scenes, gives the movie an overall quality of craftsmanship.

Girl with a Suitcase (1961)

Expecting just a decent vehicle for Claudia Cardinale, I found yet another class act in her résumé. Deservedly famed for her sultry beauty, Cardinale was also the muse of artists like the master Sergio Leone, for whom she co-starred in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Incredibly sexy and lovely a woman as she was, Cardinale's dramatic abilities were put to test again and again, and I for one acknowledge her a winner. She was fiery in The Professionals (1966), ethereal in Eight and a Half (1963), aristocratic in The Leopard (1963); she could act, in other words, and marvellously she did. So Italy, you can't be glad only for Sophia. Even though I haven't seen much of her in a while, miss Cardinale actually has never stopped working.

Girl with a Suitcase is a tender love story with none of the cheesiness and flat contrivances that harm even the love stories of yesteryear. And what is more remarkable, a romance which is not fantastic at all, but has the taste of reality that marks the best of Neorealist cinema. Perhaps director Valerio Zurlini doesn't possess the personality of a Vittorio De Sica, yet his film does have a strong enough one. Scripted by five writers, among them Zurlini and Giuseppe Patroni Griffi (author of The Divine Nymph), its subtlety and humour are standouts from the start. The delicacy of the writing is shared by Zurlini's commanding cinematography, with Tino Santoni behind the camera. In truth, it is a masterful job: non arty-crafty shots that tell the characters' feelings and thoughts. Cardinale has the presence to fill a role that in other actress' hands would have made sink the entire picture. She is an enigma that compels the viewer's attention, but by the end she remains one just for being a woman with a past merely glimpsed, and that's a tribute to her acting props; Cardinale makes us feel for Aida, a woman who can't avoid to be wanted by every guy she meets, and whose life has forced her to do a practical transaction: ultimately, she may not be exactly a (golden-hearted) whore, yet comes close.

The performance of Cardinale's co-star Jacques Perrin matches hers all the way; it's the portrayal of a sensitive teen-aged as a figure from Visconti's or out of De Sica's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970). Perrin was to continue a prolific career after Girl: he appeared in Z (1969), one of his collaborations with Constantin Costa-Gavras; he also was the adult Salvatore in the huge hit Cinema Paradiso (1988); and he still has appeared in a success as relatively recent as The Chorus (2004). There are also two good actors in minor but significant parts: Romolo Valli (the family's father in The Garden of the Finzi-Continis) as the priest and a slim Gian Maria Volonté, best known for his Indio in Leone's For a Few Dollars More (1965), as Aida's angry ex-lover. Finally, the attractive soundtrack is made of Verdi and Dimitri Tiomkin, and it's well used too. A title that is almost as fine as its leading lady, definitely worth at least a watch.

The Chase (1966)

Brando in one of those tour-de-force performances -- Reflections in a Golden Eye and Burn! also come to mind -- that make his longtime overlooked 1960s work such a delightful surprise. In fact, Brando's Sheriff Calder is so understated that it could be somehow easily underestimated, were not for the brilliance with which he delivers lines so memorable as "With all the pistols you got there, Emily, I don't believe there's room for mine." And, of course, there is the scene where Brando takes probably the bloodiest beating of his career, even reminiscing of On the Waterfront in that the viewer can see through Calder's eyes for a few seconds. His face is just a pulp, and his painfully Quixotic quest to do right in this wronged town materializes shockingly before the bunch of towners looking at him as if they couldn't feel any compassion at all; that image of a lawman doing justice no matter what summarises the filmmakers' point of view and the core significance of this film, one of the key titles to understand America at the time.

Produced by Sam Spiegel (On the Waterfront, Lawrence of Arabia, The Last Tycoon), and directed with typical bravura by Arthur Penn, The Chase is a piece which dares to touch the most taboo, shameful social and political issues of a nation, from the contemporary perspective of such a conflicted decade. Not only the courage to speak their minds is to commend on everyone involved, though. From the intelligent widescreen framing to the somber, ominous cinematography in Technicolor, to another fine score by John Barry, this ethical statement is a work of art too, and one that is quite a great film in strictly cinematic terms.

Check out Robert Redford as the tragic Bubber Reeves, a victim of a malaise with Biblical connotations. There is something mythical in the story, but there is also something mystic about it. Brando is beaten up for the sins of others this time. Yet, there is a Pontius Pilate kind of role for his somewhat Christ-like Sheriff. Both him and Redford are misunderstood to the point that one of them has to die because of that distorted perception. Redford's Bubber is one of those figures doomed right from the start -- his runaway fellow kills a man gratuitously and gets in the dead's car alone, already in the movie's first sequence --, and the soon-to-be star plays it beautifully. Jane Fonda as his wife and, especially, James Fox as his friend and Fonda's lover make the most of their roles. Other good job from the cast is Robert Duvall's, reading another Horton Foote's screenplay after his mesmerizing debut in To Kill a Mockingbird; his Dustin Hoffman-like, weak husband would have been sometimes unbearable without the actor's solid technique. Also of note is E. G. Marshall as the local tycoon who has a relationship not less damaged with his son Fox than Miriam Hopkins, yet another worthy performance, has with her boy Bubber.

All in all a compelling picture that is on top of it a great entertainment, a real suspenseful thriller.