After he won his only Oscar in 1951, Humphrey Bogart "joked" that the only way to judge actors is to have the five nominees take on Hamlet and then decide. I put joked in quotes since he did have a flippant tone while making the coment, as he usually did, but there is some truth to what The Man said.
The art of acting really isn't important or at least anywhere near as important as casting. For example, Ernie Borgnine, who couldn't act his way out of a cracked paper mache, has not only made a nice living for decades in the business, but he actually won an Oscar. Why? Because he was always cast well. Ernie does lovable schlubs and sadistic heavies as well as anyone. Why reinvent the wheel?
The one way you can tell if a movie is truly great is if you can't picture anyone one else in the lead roles. You're a director assigned to remake Casablanca. Who's Rick Blaine? That is not only a tribute to Bogart, but the casting director. Bogart used the analogy of five actors playing Hamlet. Well, I'll turn that around. The best Hamlet I've ever seen was Olivier. How do you think Lord Larry would do if given a shot at Sam Spade? I don't care how good the actor is, if he's miscast, it's not going to work. Don't believe me. Go check out Lord Larry in the Jazz Singer.
I was thinking of all this when I started to watch this modern day movie call Mobsters. Chris Penn was up here describing the plot to me and I thought it was a great idea for a movie and decided to check it out. To go one step further, I'm shocked that this movie hasn't been done before.
The basic story is the steps leading to the Castellammarese Gang War in New York resulting in the establishment of the Commission and New York's Five Families. You want to talk about great characters? How's Charles Luciano, Benjamin Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Arnold Rothstein, Frank Costello for starters?
I started to get a strange feeling in my stomach when I saw that the movie starred Patrick Dempsey and Christian Slater. I'm not personally offended by the talents of either actor, but in my mind's eye, they seemed to lack some...what's the word...gravitas.
But I got past that. It wasn't until I saw the credits roll when I got really annoyed.
We'll call this James' Movie Rule #23. There are certain actors, no matter how big the roll, that all movie-goers should know will be in there before they drop down the cabbage. People like Jerry Lewis, that guy with the bug-eyes in all of Mel Brooks's movies, Tippy Hedren, Steven Segal, Doris Day, Gena Lee Nolan, Richard Chamberlain, Dom Deluise all need to be put at the top of the billboard as a flashing warning signal to stay away. If the producers don't like this, then don't cast these people. At the top of this list is Richard Grieco, so the second I saw that he was portraying Benjamin Siegel, my martini glass went flying toward the screen.
"He's really not that bad," Penn told me. I didn't bother answering him.
Anyone who spent any time in Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s and knew some movie stars spent some time with Benjamin Siegel. I didn't know Ben well, but I knew him enough to say "hello." I also knew him enough to never call him by that nickname. I won't even write it. Ben has been dead for over fifty years and he's still not dead enough for me to dare call him by that nickname.
This guy did not intimidate by size. He intimidated because you were afraid of him and he wasn't afraid of you and you both knew it. He was nuts. Between us, mind you. He had this look in his eyes, even when he was in a good mood, that said that he would rip you head off at any moment. I meant that literally. Take a switch blade. Take your head off.
And of course I was right, Grieco couldn't pull it off. He emphasized the playboy aspects of his personality, which was there, but that wasn't what defined him. The guy was barking mad; that's what defined him.
The rest of the crew did a noble job. Dempsey did not embarrass himself as Lansky. Slater was kind of feeling it here as Lucky. F. Murray Abraham was absolutely superb as Rothstein. He just nailed it. But it wasn't enough.
You can always tell when a actor is doing well when he's paired with a pro like Abraham or Tony Quinn, who is playing one of the mob family bosses. No one here can match up with those two.
I know the mobsters were young back then, but look at it this way. Arnold Rothstein saw something in them back then. Rothstein was the Red Auerbach of the mob world, the man knew talent. There must have been some type of gravitas here to begin with if Arnold recruited them to do his very profitable rum running and it doesn't completely come across.
The movie looks great. The writing is solid. The story is great. But the casting sinks it. We need a remake here.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
The Big Sleep *****
Politics is not my job. It's an interest of mine, but it's not my job and I don't even claim to be an expert on the matter. But recently politics have become involved in movies and in my opinion have caused a deterioration of today's films. Now, it is my job.
If I was a history teacher, the one thing I would want to get across is Newton's Third Law. What does physics have to do with history? Let me explain. The law states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This law not only regards two physical objects, but two or more social forces as well.
Union's started only because large Trusts in a thirst for money deprived their workers of a livable wage. This situation left many coal miners and factory workers living with large families in single room slum apartments. The social force of the trusts' pushed until the reaction was inevitable and the result of Newton's Third Law is the powers of unions that you see today.
In late 18th Century France, King Louis XVI tried to support his government by taxing the lower classes since the wealthy would not accept a tax. Newton's Third Law takes effect and the result is the bloody French Revolution.
What does this have to do with movies? In the 1960s and 1970s, the outdated New Dealers were frantically trying to retain power and their savage tax rates and unnecessary programs led to Newton's Third Law going into effect - meet the Christian Conservatives, who even scared right wing stalwarts like Barry Goldwater. These characters have been running the show for about 13 years now down there and have made every effort to rip the First Amendment out of the Constitution.
Now here's where the movie part comes. You are starting to see the reaction now and in all societies, revolutions, not matter how beign, usually begin with the arts. The result in these cases is a series of outlandish and extremist fringe movies that are getting publicity that is completely undeserved. The first is a documentary about men who fornicate horses. The second is a film containing a scene where you see a 12-year-old girl being raped. Not off camera, mind you, but right there - front and center.
Back in the day, when people promoted common sense instead of political agendas, it would have been universally agreed by all that these films are completely outrageous and the directors would have been drummed out of the business.
That can't happen today because the extreme left is afraid to insult their "base" and the extreme right has no credibility anymore after doing things like accusing the creators of some stupid kid's cartoon named SpongeBob Squarepants of promoting a gay agenda. And there's no one left in the middle.
This new shock tactic further hurts movie-making today because the act of subtlety has been obliterated. Thirty years ago, you'd hear the toilet flush and see Archie walk down with the newspaper. It was crude, but funny. Today, you'd be right in there with Archie reading the funnies. Just hysterical.
Back in the days, you could talk about anything, as long as you were smart about it. The writers and directors were creative enough back then to imply just about anything. It made you think, God forbid.
Take the Big Sleep - directed by the great Howard Hawks and written by the equally great Jules Furthman and William Faulkner. Bogart and Bacall are both great, but I'm not concerned with that here. It's the sublety that Hawks and his writers used to get points across.
The basic premise is a nonsensical adaptation of a nonsensical detective novel by Raymond Chandler. (As an aside, Bogart and Hawks got into an argument about who killed a certain character. They sent a telegram to Chandler to get the definitive answer. Chandler wrote back, "How the hell do I know?" Of course, Jack Warner got pissed about the cost of the telegrams.) The movie and book are about a Los Angeles detective hired by a rich dying magnate to find out why his daughters are being blackmailed. Chandler's books are not about the plots as much as they are about the scenes - the interplay between characters - and this is right up Hawks alley.
There's one scene where Bogart, who plays private investigator Philip Marlowe, finds the daughter of his client in an empty house. He looks in another room waiting for her. Bogart knows she's there, but looks away. She walks into the room looking discheveled and acting flighty. Bogart looks through draws in a desk and finds a case. He opens the case, looks inside, looks at the woman in disgust, and puts the case back. In the same desk, he finds pictures. After looking at the pictures, he give the woman the same look and pockets the pictures for evidence.
What does that scene tell you? You have drugs involved, a potential rape, and pornography. All told through implication.
Why can't something like the be done today? Is it laziness, crudeness or a combination of the two? I don't know. But the bottom line is this, no matter how much you want to shock, what is not on screen is always more powerful that what is. Let's call that James's First Law of Movies.
There was a German film called M made in the 1930s. During one pivotal moment, you see a man in the shadows (you can't see his face) walking behind a little girl bouncing a red ball. The girl walks down an alley and the man follows off camera. The director holds the shot for a moment and all you see is a long red ball bounce across the screen.
Can you think of anything scarier than that?
If I was a history teacher, the one thing I would want to get across is Newton's Third Law. What does physics have to do with history? Let me explain. The law states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This law not only regards two physical objects, but two or more social forces as well.
Union's started only because large Trusts in a thirst for money deprived their workers of a livable wage. This situation left many coal miners and factory workers living with large families in single room slum apartments. The social force of the trusts' pushed until the reaction was inevitable and the result of Newton's Third Law is the powers of unions that you see today.
In late 18th Century France, King Louis XVI tried to support his government by taxing the lower classes since the wealthy would not accept a tax. Newton's Third Law takes effect and the result is the bloody French Revolution.
What does this have to do with movies? In the 1960s and 1970s, the outdated New Dealers were frantically trying to retain power and their savage tax rates and unnecessary programs led to Newton's Third Law going into effect - meet the Christian Conservatives, who even scared right wing stalwarts like Barry Goldwater. These characters have been running the show for about 13 years now down there and have made every effort to rip the First Amendment out of the Constitution.
Now here's where the movie part comes. You are starting to see the reaction now and in all societies, revolutions, not matter how beign, usually begin with the arts. The result in these cases is a series of outlandish and extremist fringe movies that are getting publicity that is completely undeserved. The first is a documentary about men who fornicate horses. The second is a film containing a scene where you see a 12-year-old girl being raped. Not off camera, mind you, but right there - front and center.
Back in the day, when people promoted common sense instead of political agendas, it would have been universally agreed by all that these films are completely outrageous and the directors would have been drummed out of the business.
That can't happen today because the extreme left is afraid to insult their "base" and the extreme right has no credibility anymore after doing things like accusing the creators of some stupid kid's cartoon named SpongeBob Squarepants of promoting a gay agenda. And there's no one left in the middle.
This new shock tactic further hurts movie-making today because the act of subtlety has been obliterated. Thirty years ago, you'd hear the toilet flush and see Archie walk down with the newspaper. It was crude, but funny. Today, you'd be right in there with Archie reading the funnies. Just hysterical.
Back in the days, you could talk about anything, as long as you were smart about it. The writers and directors were creative enough back then to imply just about anything. It made you think, God forbid.
Take the Big Sleep - directed by the great Howard Hawks and written by the equally great Jules Furthman and William Faulkner. Bogart and Bacall are both great, but I'm not concerned with that here. It's the sublety that Hawks and his writers used to get points across.
The basic premise is a nonsensical adaptation of a nonsensical detective novel by Raymond Chandler. (As an aside, Bogart and Hawks got into an argument about who killed a certain character. They sent a telegram to Chandler to get the definitive answer. Chandler wrote back, "How the hell do I know?" Of course, Jack Warner got pissed about the cost of the telegrams.) The movie and book are about a Los Angeles detective hired by a rich dying magnate to find out why his daughters are being blackmailed. Chandler's books are not about the plots as much as they are about the scenes - the interplay between characters - and this is right up Hawks alley.
There's one scene where Bogart, who plays private investigator Philip Marlowe, finds the daughter of his client in an empty house. He looks in another room waiting for her. Bogart knows she's there, but looks away. She walks into the room looking discheveled and acting flighty. Bogart looks through draws in a desk and finds a case. He opens the case, looks inside, looks at the woman in disgust, and puts the case back. In the same desk, he finds pictures. After looking at the pictures, he give the woman the same look and pockets the pictures for evidence.
What does that scene tell you? You have drugs involved, a potential rape, and pornography. All told through implication.
Why can't something like the be done today? Is it laziness, crudeness or a combination of the two? I don't know. But the bottom line is this, no matter how much you want to shock, what is not on screen is always more powerful that what is. Let's call that James's First Law of Movies.
There was a German film called M made in the 1930s. During one pivotal moment, you see a man in the shadows (you can't see his face) walking behind a little girl bouncing a red ball. The girl walks down an alley and the man follows off camera. The director holds the shot for a moment and all you see is a long red ball bounce across the screen.
Can you think of anything scarier than that?
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Nightmare Alley *****
Horror movies today just aren't scary. And this is why. If you go out for a night at the movies, go home and have a nightmare that the doll in the corner of your room could pick up a knife and chase you around the house, you're an idiot.
If you come out of the theater and look at your car twice because you're not sure whether or not it's going to come to life, P.T. Barnum would like to have a word with you. When you go camping, and can't sleep because you're not sure whether or not a man in a hockey mask that you've never met is going to come after you, there's a sale on the Brooklyn Bridge. If you have done any of the above three things, I guarantee you have watched one of those informertials about how any moron could make a million with this revolutionary real estate program and made a phone call. Why not? Plus, if you call by the end of the show, there's a 10 percent discount for you.
I shouldn't indict people today for this because we had our share of beauts back in the day (Frankenstein vs. the Wolfman, anyone?). Stupid people are eternal as are hustlers to make money off them. Why make honest money though effort when you can dupe the masses?
True fear for functioning minds lives in realism. I still insist that the final frame of M is the scariest in the history of film, especially if you have children. Horror exists in this world. The movies that deal with this are the ones that should keep you up at night.
Nightmare Alley was listed as a melodrama, but that's not accurate. It's a horror movie, and an effective one at that because it deals with the ultimate nightmare - the worst case scenerio. The worst case scenerio in Nightmare Alley is the show business boogey man. That creature which exists in ghost stories that we tell each other by the jukebox light. The geek. Children today use the phrase in the playground as an insult without knowing it's true meaning. Oh, the geek existed. Today, it would be a metaphor for using people at their weakest for profit because the geek is no more.
At least I hope it's not. I thought it wasn't in 1947 after Nightmare Alley came out, but Tyrone Power set me straight. Ty was the star of the movie and while we were having a drink, I asked about the use of the geek as a metaphor in the film.
"Metaphor?," Power said while grinning that sardonic grin he used so effectly in the movie. "Oh, make no mistake, you can still find a geek."
What? I didn't believe him. Couldn't be. Power offered to show me. I wasn't sure I wanted to actually see this, but he insisted. Power was still a little mad at me over an incident that occured earlier in the evening when I had a little too much amazement in my voice while telling him how great he was in Nightmare Alley. It was an award-winning effort, but let's not fool ourselves, no one ever confused Ty with Lawrence Olivier.
Nonetheless, we picked up a cab and head to the Valley where Power knows of a floating carnival in the area. He wasn't lying. We walked over to the sideshow part of the carnival in the front and there was the sign advertising the geek. I refused to pay money for this, so Ty paid. Slowly creeping in, I saw the pit and inched my head over the threshold like one looking over the edge of a cliff. And there it was. I refuse to address what I saw with human pronouns. It had long greasy hair, was missing teeth, reeked of moonshine, but the look in its eyes had nothing to do with moonshine; other substances were involved. The creature was wearing shorts and a blood-stained white t-shirt. The geek had one job and one job alone; it bit the heads off of live chickens.
Most performers wont work at a carnival with a geek because by the grace of God go thee. I call these creatures it, but they weren't always an it. They were once a him or her that made mistakes. Bad mistakes. And with people being people, they're happy to pay and collect money to watch this pain. There's where the horror lies.
Nightmare Alley is the story of how a him turns into an it and the finished product deprived me of sleep for years.
The movie starts with Tyrone Power (playing carny hand Stanton Carlyle) asking the carnival director how someone could become a geek. Or why? These are questions you don't ask. It's a sensitive topic since the morality and legality of the act is beyond debate as the always great Joan Blondell (as mentalist Zeena) tells him just that.
Stanton is Zeena's assistant. Her act involved getting questions from the audience that she answers without actually looking at the written queries. This is accomplished by giving the question to another assistant, a rummy called Pete, that signals her from under the stage. After the show, Power discovers that this isn't always the way the act went. Once Zeena and Pete used a code system that made them quite successful before Pete fell off the wagon.
The code is an old trick. It goes something like this. Blindfold the mentalist and have the assistant go into the audience. Say she holds up an earring from a volunteer and asks the mentalist, "What am I holding here?" Here, hear, ear, earring. That's how it works. From what Zeena says here, their code is much more involved with words representing numbers and cadence changing meanings.
While Zeena, Pete and Stanton are driving between shows, Stanton inquires about the code. Zeena tells him that they have been offered a lot of money for it, but it's their nest egg. She won't give up on Pete because he's in his condition because of her. She "has the heart of a artechoke, a leaf for everyone" (a great subtle line in a great subtle screenplay by the underrated Jules Furthman).
Zeena considers using the code in the act, but after looking at her Tarot cards, she discovers that while the future looks great for Stanton and herself, Pete drew the death card.
Stanton disregards this nonsense until Pete begging for booze one night sets an unfortunate series of events in motion. Stanton hid his quart of moonshine in Zeena's clothes trunk. After hearing Pete's sob story and listening to him tell lucid and entertaining stories of the old days, Stanton breaks down and give him his clear unlabeled bottle. Stanton's motive for giving Pete the bottle at first is unclear and that's thanks to Power's marvelously nuanced performance. In this movie, everything lives in the noir shadows within the screen.
The next morning, Stanton discovered that he grabbed the wrong bottle. He accidently gave Pete the pure alcohol that Zeena uses to take off her makeup.
After Pete's death, Zeena decides to teach the code to Stanton and a young beauty in the carnival, Molly. Stanton learns quickly and the act is quite successful. Until, that is, Stanton is discovered sleeping with Molly. It was assumed that Stanton was with Zeena, but he rested his hat on the fact that he never said that. That's how Stanton works.
Molly and Stanton end up getting married, leave the carnival and take their act to the nightclub circuit where they start raking in the cash. The Great Stanton becomes the hottest mentalist act around.
But that wasn't enough. Stantion wanted more. Greed can blind even the smartest of men and here it started to corrupt the act. Stanton decided to expand his repetitour to include speaking to the dead. With little information, this can be done by filling out what you know with generalities such as people walking though a field with a dog. "Every boy has a dog."
Before adjusting the act, Zeena returns to congratulate Stanton and Molly on their successes. At the end of the night, Zeena does a Tarot card reading for Stanton and she sees disaster is he takes this next step. Stanton disregards her and, with the help of a local psychologist, dupes a local socialite into believing that he could hear her daughter. (Actually, the introduction of the psychologist was marvelous. She was at one of the acts and asked about her mother. Stanton correctly saw though this and gambled by saying the mother was dead. She was.)
In the end, the psychologist was hustling the hustler. Something Stanton should have caught if greed didn't get the best of him. His great plan blew up on him and the demons of what he did to Pete and others in his path came back to torment him. Booze and mental illness broke Stanton and down he fell. All the way down.
I don't give away endings, but this wasn't a surprise, which made it scarier. We all knew it was coming. We all knew how Stanton was going to end up. Hitchcock aways said the difference between shock and suspense is simple. Shock is when a bomb goes off under your table. Suspense is when we see the bomb there, ticking, as the victim sits unaware. Suspense is harder. This was suspense. We all knew it was coming and there was nothing to do to stop it.
Stanton wasn't a really sympathic character. Actually, no one was. Zeena, Pete, Molly, the psychologist...saints need not apply here. But the geek is something you never wish on anyone.
By the grace of God, go thee.
If you come out of the theater and look at your car twice because you're not sure whether or not it's going to come to life, P.T. Barnum would like to have a word with you. When you go camping, and can't sleep because you're not sure whether or not a man in a hockey mask that you've never met is going to come after you, there's a sale on the Brooklyn Bridge. If you have done any of the above three things, I guarantee you have watched one of those informertials about how any moron could make a million with this revolutionary real estate program and made a phone call. Why not? Plus, if you call by the end of the show, there's a 10 percent discount for you.
I shouldn't indict people today for this because we had our share of beauts back in the day (Frankenstein vs. the Wolfman, anyone?). Stupid people are eternal as are hustlers to make money off them. Why make honest money though effort when you can dupe the masses?
True fear for functioning minds lives in realism. I still insist that the final frame of M is the scariest in the history of film, especially if you have children. Horror exists in this world. The movies that deal with this are the ones that should keep you up at night.
Nightmare Alley was listed as a melodrama, but that's not accurate. It's a horror movie, and an effective one at that because it deals with the ultimate nightmare - the worst case scenerio. The worst case scenerio in Nightmare Alley is the show business boogey man. That creature which exists in ghost stories that we tell each other by the jukebox light. The geek. Children today use the phrase in the playground as an insult without knowing it's true meaning. Oh, the geek existed. Today, it would be a metaphor for using people at their weakest for profit because the geek is no more.
At least I hope it's not. I thought it wasn't in 1947 after Nightmare Alley came out, but Tyrone Power set me straight. Ty was the star of the movie and while we were having a drink, I asked about the use of the geek as a metaphor in the film.
"Metaphor?," Power said while grinning that sardonic grin he used so effectly in the movie. "Oh, make no mistake, you can still find a geek."
What? I didn't believe him. Couldn't be. Power offered to show me. I wasn't sure I wanted to actually see this, but he insisted. Power was still a little mad at me over an incident that occured earlier in the evening when I had a little too much amazement in my voice while telling him how great he was in Nightmare Alley. It was an award-winning effort, but let's not fool ourselves, no one ever confused Ty with Lawrence Olivier.
Nonetheless, we picked up a cab and head to the Valley where Power knows of a floating carnival in the area. He wasn't lying. We walked over to the sideshow part of the carnival in the front and there was the sign advertising the geek. I refused to pay money for this, so Ty paid. Slowly creeping in, I saw the pit and inched my head over the threshold like one looking over the edge of a cliff. And there it was. I refuse to address what I saw with human pronouns. It had long greasy hair, was missing teeth, reeked of moonshine, but the look in its eyes had nothing to do with moonshine; other substances were involved. The creature was wearing shorts and a blood-stained white t-shirt. The geek had one job and one job alone; it bit the heads off of live chickens.
Most performers wont work at a carnival with a geek because by the grace of God go thee. I call these creatures it, but they weren't always an it. They were once a him or her that made mistakes. Bad mistakes. And with people being people, they're happy to pay and collect money to watch this pain. There's where the horror lies.
Nightmare Alley is the story of how a him turns into an it and the finished product deprived me of sleep for years.
The movie starts with Tyrone Power (playing carny hand Stanton Carlyle) asking the carnival director how someone could become a geek. Or why? These are questions you don't ask. It's a sensitive topic since the morality and legality of the act is beyond debate as the always great Joan Blondell (as mentalist Zeena) tells him just that.
Stanton is Zeena's assistant. Her act involved getting questions from the audience that she answers without actually looking at the written queries. This is accomplished by giving the question to another assistant, a rummy called Pete, that signals her from under the stage. After the show, Power discovers that this isn't always the way the act went. Once Zeena and Pete used a code system that made them quite successful before Pete fell off the wagon.
The code is an old trick. It goes something like this. Blindfold the mentalist and have the assistant go into the audience. Say she holds up an earring from a volunteer and asks the mentalist, "What am I holding here?" Here, hear, ear, earring. That's how it works. From what Zeena says here, their code is much more involved with words representing numbers and cadence changing meanings.
While Zeena, Pete and Stanton are driving between shows, Stanton inquires about the code. Zeena tells him that they have been offered a lot of money for it, but it's their nest egg. She won't give up on Pete because he's in his condition because of her. She "has the heart of a artechoke, a leaf for everyone" (a great subtle line in a great subtle screenplay by the underrated Jules Furthman).
Zeena considers using the code in the act, but after looking at her Tarot cards, she discovers that while the future looks great for Stanton and herself, Pete drew the death card.
Stanton disregards this nonsense until Pete begging for booze one night sets an unfortunate series of events in motion. Stanton hid his quart of moonshine in Zeena's clothes trunk. After hearing Pete's sob story and listening to him tell lucid and entertaining stories of the old days, Stanton breaks down and give him his clear unlabeled bottle. Stanton's motive for giving Pete the bottle at first is unclear and that's thanks to Power's marvelously nuanced performance. In this movie, everything lives in the noir shadows within the screen.
The next morning, Stanton discovered that he grabbed the wrong bottle. He accidently gave Pete the pure alcohol that Zeena uses to take off her makeup.
After Pete's death, Zeena decides to teach the code to Stanton and a young beauty in the carnival, Molly. Stanton learns quickly and the act is quite successful. Until, that is, Stanton is discovered sleeping with Molly. It was assumed that Stanton was with Zeena, but he rested his hat on the fact that he never said that. That's how Stanton works.
Molly and Stanton end up getting married, leave the carnival and take their act to the nightclub circuit where they start raking in the cash. The Great Stanton becomes the hottest mentalist act around.
But that wasn't enough. Stantion wanted more. Greed can blind even the smartest of men and here it started to corrupt the act. Stanton decided to expand his repetitour to include speaking to the dead. With little information, this can be done by filling out what you know with generalities such as people walking though a field with a dog. "Every boy has a dog."
Before adjusting the act, Zeena returns to congratulate Stanton and Molly on their successes. At the end of the night, Zeena does a Tarot card reading for Stanton and she sees disaster is he takes this next step. Stanton disregards her and, with the help of a local psychologist, dupes a local socialite into believing that he could hear her daughter. (Actually, the introduction of the psychologist was marvelous. She was at one of the acts and asked about her mother. Stanton correctly saw though this and gambled by saying the mother was dead. She was.)
In the end, the psychologist was hustling the hustler. Something Stanton should have caught if greed didn't get the best of him. His great plan blew up on him and the demons of what he did to Pete and others in his path came back to torment him. Booze and mental illness broke Stanton and down he fell. All the way down.
I don't give away endings, but this wasn't a surprise, which made it scarier. We all knew it was coming. We all knew how Stanton was going to end up. Hitchcock aways said the difference between shock and suspense is simple. Shock is when a bomb goes off under your table. Suspense is when we see the bomb there, ticking, as the victim sits unaware. Suspense is harder. This was suspense. We all knew it was coming and there was nothing to do to stop it.
Stanton wasn't a really sympathic character. Actually, no one was. Zeena, Pete, Molly, the psychologist...saints need not apply here. But the geek is something you never wish on anyone.
By the grace of God, go thee.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
