Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou? *****

It seems to me that there is a rule that if you don’t like certain directors, you are considered gauche.

For example, Robert Altman. And let me be blunt here.

I don’t get Robert Altman. I don’t know why everyone loves him. I can’t make it through any of his movies with the exception of M*A*S*H without at least two naps. I was personally offended by the arrogance of his take on Raymond Chandler’s classic, “The Long Goodbye.”

In Altman’s view, Chandler’s private detective, Philip Marlowe was a ridiculous anachronism that deserved to be skewered by a rumbled, clowning Eliot Gould. I don’t get the point. Even Chandler himself has said that the character was an anachronism even back in the ’30s and ‘40s, but was necessary to tell his stories.

You can modernize without belittling. I’m not a big fan of television, but I thought Jim Rockford was a fine update of Marlowe. To do a proper update, there has to be some affection for what you are updating and Altman doesn’t seem to have much affection for anything…maybe his dog.

Now, one of my favorite updates was a modern movie done a few years ago by two of the best filmmakers going today – the Coen brothers.

As a quick aside, there are times when I’m not sure if I’m watching the same movies as some of those film critics down there. I’m not talking about the clowns like Rex Reed, who would write that a movie about two donkeys fornicating is brilliant just to get the quote on the poster. I’m referring to the supposedly legitimate people. It doesn’t matter how many times I see Fargo, it’s just not that good. Maybe I’m just biased against North Dakota or where ever the hell it took place. Why do a movie about a boring place with boring people?

On the other hand, I loved “Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou,” the marvelous modernization of Odysseus, and I seem to be alone.

Roger Ebert, who I consider the one-eyed critic in a world of blind morons, said the story seemed wonderful in segments, but disjointed overall.

Mr. Ebert may need a refresher course on Homer’s classic. Last time I checked, the book was pretty disjointed as well. That was the point. It was the story of some lordly hero from the Trojan War who is desperately trying to find his way home, but the god Poseidon decides to try and stop him at every turn.

Now how do you update something like this from ancient Greece to the South in the Depression? Who would be the American version of Odysseus? Why a hustling con man who just broke out of jail just to keep his wife from marrying again of course. This is brilliant because it doesn’t make fun of the story. It makes fun of us. Odysseus is the best the Greeks can do. Ulysses Everett McGill and his lifetime supply of Dapper Dan pomade is the best we can do.

The best Poseidon can do is two monsters side by side and a Cyclops. The best we can do is a lynch mob and a one-eyed Bible selling Klansman. Plus, where Odysseus consistently succeeds, McGill constantly fails, but somehow survives.

(One of my favorite scenes is the one with the lynch mob impersonating the two monsters. How do I know they were impersonating the two monsters? While they were planning their escape, McGill kept saying over and over again, “We’re in a tight spot. We’re really in a tight spot.” Just great.)

On top of the insane characters and witty dialogue, the visuals are remarkable. The Coens absolutely capture the sandy, grayish, windswept South of the Depression. The way they film each character is also captivating, emphasizing each disability. The Klansman’s eye patch seems to take up his whole face and the entire screen as well. Doing this stays with the theme of our pock-marked culture as compared to the pristine ancient Greeks.

The best part of all of this symbolism is that it’s there – if you want it. If you don’t, it’s still a funny and captivating movie. It’s not only an interesting story, but its beautiful filmmaking as well.

Basically, what the Coens did is combine the avant-garde techniques of the pompous French New Wave with the story telling of Hawks.

See, Francois, I told you it could be done.

The Kid *****

The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell is widely considered to be the finest biography written in our shared tongue. I disagree.

The book is marvelous and often quite funny, but the subject himself just isn’t worthy of such lofty accolades. Granted, Johnson did write one of the most influential dictionaries chronicling the English language, but that’s not what the book is about. Instead, it basically drags you along with Johnson as he goes to one dinner party after another, tossing out funny lines and acting as his usual pompous self. I could have written a biography about Louis B. Mayer and accomplished the same thing. Except he wasn’t as funny.

My point in bringing this book and Johnson up is that old Sammy I believe is the first known “intellectual” to use his gifts to destroy rather than actually find answers. This form of intellectualism has permeated into modern society with the leading components of my generation being – all together now – the French; particularly the fine editors and writers of Cahier du Cinema.

I’m all for taking the contrarian view on a topic when it is necessary. For years, I was the sole person who argued that Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux was a magnificent movie when everyone else (and I mean everyone else) panned it. I didn’t take on that fight to be different. I took it on because I was right. History has proven me right, but you don’t see that movie around anymore because of the bad reputation it unjustly got back in the day.

Now, and this started with the boys from Cahier, not only are people trashing that one Chaplin film, but all of his works just to raise the profile of Buster Keaton. This comparison puts me in an awkward situation because I’m a big fan of Keaton’s work, but he doesn’t have the power of Chaplin. People don’t laugh and cry during Buster’s movies.

Overall, it’s an unfair comparison because their movies are so different. Keaton’s movies were a brilliant combination of pure athleticism, derring-do and perfectly timed gags tied into a tight storyline. Chaplin was more concerned with character development, knowing that the way to the heart of movie-goers were the people on the screen. This is why if you ask your standard people on the street to identify Chaplin or Keaton, you will find more people recognize Charlie, than Buster.

And this is exactly what I did not want to do. It’s the equivalent of asking me who is a better director – Ford or Hitchcock. I don’t know. Each is too different to compare. I probably prefer Hitchcock for the same reasons I prefer Chaplin, but that certainly doesn’t take away any of Ford’s brilliance. And it isn’t a truly intellectual answer.

But for the people like Francois Truffaut and Samuel Johnson, it is necessary to destroy one to build up the other. These are the same people that say Chaplin’s stuff is too melodramatic and hokey while they’re passing the tissues. Is the ended of “The Kid” hokey when the little boy is being taking away on the back of the truck, screaming and reaching out to Charlie while the Little Tramp desperately runs after him? Probably. Does each and every one of you tear up when you see it? Probably. So?

Now, I’m going to head off the obvious objection right now. What about James Cameron? You criticize him for doing the exact same thing. First of all, I’m offended by the comparison and I wish gangrene on everyone who said it or even thought it. Second, I don’t criticize Cameron for trying it; I criticize him for failing miserably at it. Cameron has no ability to make three-dimensional characters. For that matter neither does Keaton, but in Keaton’s movies that doesn’t matter. He doesn’t try. Buster’s more interested in entertaining you though humor and action, then emotion.

What I just gave you is an intellectual argument? At least intellectual by the old definition of the word. Intellectual meaning to look at an issue and find the truth though clinical observation and analysis devoid of emotion. With Sammy Johnson and my dear friends at that French hack-sheet, that definition has changed to one who looks at a popular issue and debunks it as being wrong because it has the support of the unwashed masses. If Joey the Teamster likes the movie, how could it be intellectual, goes the thinking.

Now, never it let it be me to come to the defense of the unwashed masses because I too am convinced that they are often wrong, but I tell you why. It is this portion of our populace that has allowed Steven Segal, James Cameron and Tom Laughlin to live in large mansions.

On the other hand, these contrarians who go opposite the popular view just to be “intellectual” and different have allowed Godard, Ozu and Ken Russell to move right next door.

My intellectual answer to the six of them is that they all suck.

Mobsters **

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.

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?

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.

On the Waterfront *****

On the Waterfront is one of the greatest movies ever made and I can't watch it because it makes my skin crawl. Make sense? No? Well, allow me to explain.

I usually can't stand the thought of this movie, but just the other day I was discussing this it with a friend of director Elia Kazan’s and an old movie pro by the name of Robert Jirus. Bob, who believes Kazan could do no wrong, basically dared me to review this fairly, so here I am.

Every critic has biases; just like every person has biases. The difference between me and all the rest is that I admit them. By admitting them, you can separate that opinion from your review. I’ll admit mine now. I don’t like Elia Kazan. I didn’t like him then and I don’t like him now.

I should give you some background here first. Kazan started his career as an jack-of-all-trades with the Group Theatre, the crew that popularized method acting and started the career of John Garfield, Clifford Odets and Lee Strasberg among others.Some members of this group were known for their liberal, even radical, politics and when the Communist scare started after World War II this crew was an easy target. Most of them held tough and protected their friends. Garfield refused to name names and saw his career and his life end as a result (he died of a heart attack in 1952 at 39).

Kazan on the other hand felt the need to protect his flourishing career, so he turned on six people including, Strasberg's wife, Odets and J. Edward Bromberg, who had been dead for a year when Kazan named him (talk about kicking you when you’re down). Kazan's public reasoning was that he couldn't take the guilt of knowing all those Communists were running around. Of course, he could take $500,000 that the studio offered him right after he proved his was a good American by burying his friends.

Now the problem was that the studios and Congress might love him, but ever since the days of Benedict Arnold, turncoats have never been popular with the public. So Benedict Kazan dilema is that he has to find a way to educate (brainwash) the public as to why ruining the lives of your friends is good for America.

Just about this time, Malcolm Johnson of the New York Sun was putting the finishing touches on a magnificent series of articles about the mob's control of the New York docks. Johnson started by looking stevedore Andy Hintz’s murder at the hands of union bosses John Dunn and Andy Sheridan and from there covered decades of corruption on the waterfront from the lowest grunt in the hole up to the Anastasia clan.

Screenwriter Budd Schulberg was inspired by this effort and did some further research on his own before buying the rights of the series from Johnson. Schulberg then finished the first draft of a screenplay and tried to peddle it to the mindless idiots that produce movies in Hollywood. Everyone passed on it. The movie seem dead until red-hot director Elia Kazan decided he wanted to work with Schulberg. Budd tried to push his waterfront script again and Kazan saw potential - potential to rework the story to show why squealing is as good for you as spinach and broccholi.

The final draft of the script is about longshoreman Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando), a former boxer and brother of union leader Charlie (Rod Steiger), who has a cushy job on the docks, but every once in a while has to help out the gangsters who run his local. One of those favors led to the death of Joey Doyle. This was a bit much for Terry and he begins to have his doubts about his brother and the union head, Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb). While the union tries to keep Terry in line, a priest (Karl Malden) and Joey’s sister, Edie (Eva Marie Saint), try and get Terry to join their movement against the union and do the right thing – testify before the commission.

From my earlier tirade, you can guess how it ends. As an aside, a commission was not involved in Johnson’s articles. In the cases mentioned by Johnson and Schulberg, the longshoremen used force and the democratic process to take back their unions.

The movie itself is phenomenal. The acting is top notch from Marlon Brando to Rod Steiger to Lee J. Cobb all the way down to the actual longshoremen playing bit parts. The location photography cannot be grittier or more appropriate. Budd’s screenplay is one of the best you’ll ever see. But here it all comes back to the acting.I hate to single out the obvious scene to point out why this movie is so good, but I want to look at something you might not have noticed. In the famous “contenda” scene, watch Brando’s reactions when his brother pulls out the gun. The standard here would be to look shocked or frightened. Brando just looks depressed and sad, which seems stupid at first, but then it makes perfect sense. What have these thugs done to my brother to make him pull a gun on his own blood? It’s scenes like this that show why early Brando was so good before he became a bloated parody of himself.

There are no scenes or even moments when I roll my eyes in the entire movie. It’s probably the most realistic film I’ve ever seen and a credit to everyone on the staff. And everytime I watch it I see the justification for John Garfield's death. On the Waterfront is a great movie. It is also a momument to Kazan's greed and cowardace. I hope you enjoy it.

Woodstock ****

If you have any desire to watch a live conniption, just mention “It’s All True” to Orson Welles and watch the memories flow back.

This seed was planted in 1942 when the folks at RKO were a little worried about Orson’s new film, The Magnificent Ambersons. Orson believed this was going to be his masterpiece and if the last two hours were anything like the first fifteen minutes I would be inclined to agree. The studio thought the whole thing was a little avant guard and asked Orson to edit it. Of course the dogmatic director said no and instead of pressing the issue, RKO sent him to Brazil to do a documentary about Carnival. While he was gone, “those pigs” did a complete reedit and “destroyed my beautiful film.”

As much as he hated it due to the above reasons, It’s All True, ended up being a good film as well as his other documentary, F is for Fake, where he looks at con men.

I often talked with Orson about It’s All True for two reasons. First, his vitriol on the topic always amused me.

The second and more important reason for our discussion here, is that he is one of the few directors that I know of that is equally adept when working on documentaries or feature films. One night, I asked Orson how he succeeded where others failed and he said, “It both cases, you’re just telling a story. In a documentary, you just have to find it.”

This brings up two subdivisions of documentaries - the propaganda film and cinema verite. Propaganda is not the correct word for the first type of film, but I can’t think of a better one. The basic difference between the two films is that in propaganda films you know what story you want to tell ahead of time and you manipulate the film to tell that story (think Michael Moore), in cinema verite, the film itself tells the story.

The one of the best cinema verite documentary that I’ve seen is Woodstock. As an aside, you might have noticed this if you have read many of my reviews, but I’ll take this moment to put it in black and white – I don’t care about politics in movies. What I mean by that is I will only look at how effective a director is in getting his point across, what that point is doesn’t concern me. I’m not a political writer. It’s not my job. (I will make an exception to this rule when I get to On the Waterfront, because politics has something to do with the actual making of the movie).

The key to filming an event like Woodstock is to capture the moment. The director’s job here is to convey the energy and passion being experienced by those who were there. This has really only been effectively done twice while capturing a once-in-a-lifetime event like this. One was a pseudo documentary called Medium Cool which contained live segments from the Chicago riots at the Democratic National Convention in 1968. The other time was Triumph of the Will, where Leni Riefenstahl captured the fury of the 1934 Nazi convention in Nuremburg. I think Michael Wadleigh, a director who hasn’t done much of note aside of this, accomplishes that goal here.

There are some editorial decisions that Wadleigh makes that serve as an unwanted distraction, such as his habit of using the mirror split screen for no apparent reason or putting on Arlo Guthrie (a musical criticism, not a political one) at all, but overall he gives his viewers an idea about what it was like to be at the 3-day event. The editing job must have either been tortuous or a labor of love because I can only image the amount of film they went through.

In addition, Wadleigh either must have had cameras everywhere or he’s a very lucky man because he was about to get some great footage of the rains and the mudslides.

To focus on the music here would have been a massive mistake because the music is almost secondary to the event if the director is looking to make a truly great documentary. Unfortunately you could have made many concert documentaries about Country Joe and the Fish (another musical criticism), but there is only one Woodstock. The crowd is probably even more of a story here than the musicians and Wadleigh correctly emphasizes that here.

Wadleigh also makes some interesting decisions in filming the bands. He changes styles which each new band, using the extreme close-ups on Country Joe, then going to the wide shots of Santana, giving each band a distinctive visual appearance.

One key to finding out if a music documentary is great is if a viewer can watch and enjoy the movie without having to love the music accompanying the movie because movies are a visual medium at heart and if you can’t enjoy the pictures first, then the director failed. I sat through two songs by Country Joe and his little tirade; so I guess that means Wadleigh succeeded.