SLIFF 2014: The Dark Valley

Title: The Dark Valley

Country: Austria

Score: 8

                Black-clad figures on horseback silhouetted against alpine snow. A taciturn stranger, calling himself Greider, arrives in a remote Austrian village that squirms restlessly under the thumbs of the six brutish Brenner boys. Greider is here, so it seems, to take some photographs. His camera, like a Winchester repeater that he stows in secret, is a novelty on this frozen fringe. But Greider’s real purpose, sealed away inside but almost oozing from his eyes, is revenge. Some men are going to die.

                The Dark Valley is a western that would drip with atmosphere if it wasn’t too cold for dripping. It has an immediate lived-in look and feel, albeit a time and place we wouldn’t want to live in, look at or touch. None of the timber is machine sawn. The dark, heavy and dirty clothes are hand-made and utilitarian. The snow isn’t fake; the actors (led by a mesmerizing Sam Riley) are clearly freezing their asses off.

This is a film of raw elements: water, wood, stone. Man, horse, gun. Even the characters are stripped to their essence, sans psychological complexity or explicit dialog. There are some florid touches in the edgy soundtrack and the arguably injudicious use of slow-motion, but mostly the film succeeds on its lean ferocity.

The first half of Dark Valley is a patient exercise in mounting tension. Then the tension is released, in an inevitably violent bloodbath. There is a scene where the villagers are sending fresh lumber down the mountain, after the first snow has caked the flumes with ice that has a palpable sense of cold and danger and death. The shotgun blasts and swinging fists of the climax, well-choreographed as they are, just don’t have the same subtlety. But another might just as easily feel the other way around. This is a film with a lot to like in it and a must-see for fans of revisionist westerns.

Film Atlas (USA): Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Country: United States of America

Title: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Butch and Sundance are two outlaws in 1890s Wyoming, members of the successful smalltime Hole-in-the-Wall Gang. Butch is the brains and Sundance the crack shot. Despite differing personalities, the two are best friends and irresistible thieves. However their latest scheme, robbing a Union Pacific train both coming and going, makes them the target of an unprecedented manhunt. Finally cornered on a cliff, the pair memorably leaps into a river below and absconds to Bolivia, with Sundance’s schoolteacher girlfriend in tow, where they reboot their career as bank robbers. For a time their life of romanticized crime is idyllic and their moods improve, but the nagging threat of being tracked wherever they go eventually wears down their morale. They try going straight for a while as security guards on a payroll route, but Mexican bandits give them their first taste of real violence. Finally forced into a showdown surrounded by the Bolivian army, the two antiheroes, still cracking jokes, go out in a blaze of glory.

The United States is home to Hollywood, headquarters for many of the oldest and best-known studios like 20^th Century Fox, Warner Brothers, MGM, Paramount, RKO, Universal, Columbia and United Artists. Despite competition from India, Hollywood still dominates, for better or worse, the cultural mindshare of the movie-going public, setting trends, establishing stars and breaking records at international box offices. The US has also fostered a thriving network for independent and experimental film in cities across the country.

I’ve seen almost ten times as many films from the US, my home country, than any other country which makes it even more impossible than usual to think of a single film to represent it. But Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid encapsulates a lot of the trends associated with American cinema: it’s a western, a star vehicle, an action-comedy hybrid, a buddy film, a revisionist history and a glorification of outlaws who nevertheless get their due in the end. Though made by a relatively lesser-famous director (George Roy Hill), it’s an early example of New Hollywood, a movement that brought rejuvenating technical, thematic and narrative sophistication and European art film influences to the mainstream and made household names of American auteurs like Stephen Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen and George Lucas.

Crucial to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s success was the onscreen chemistry of Paul Newman and Robert Redford in the central roles. Wisely discarding stuffy old historical accuracy, the film depicts them as handsome, charismatic, classy, droll, good-humored and non-violent. The fact that they are on the wrong side of the law only increased their allure and tapped into the zeitgeist’s love affair with anti-authority rebels.  The script’s judicious blend of gruff banter and gritty action gave life to the well-worn trappings of the western genre, and maintained a pace of unflagging entertainment. That said, viewers are divided over the film’s famous scene featuring the Academy Award-winning song “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” which serves as a sort of intermission or, less kindly, a jarring  interruption. 

However this sequence, along with an oddly tinted montage, a fade-to-sepia freeze-frame ending and frequently stylized editing that has you laughing one moment and mutely tense the next, are testaments to Hill’s willingness to explore the medium despite making what is ostensibly popcorn cinema. Meanwhile his ambiguous treatment of modernization, mistrust towards the anonymous ‘Establishment’ and unabashed glamorization of criminals gave audiences food for thought and marked an influential shift in the perennially refashioned metaphor and mythology of the American West. 

Review of West and Soda

It’s hard for me not to approach any old western parody with skepticism (I’ve seen so many not worth the hype), but an animated spaghetti western parody is another matter. Much of the appeal of spaghetti westerns comes from their ability to push genre conventions over-the-top and take glorified violence, vigilante justice, frontier resourcefulness and elegiac existentialism to extremes. What better way to take things up a notch than to abandon live-action limitations entirely?

Indeed, “West and Soda” (1965) is at its best when it pulls gags that wouldn’t be possible outside of animation:

Slim and Ursus, a pair of sadistic henchmen, walk into a bar and everyone freezes in fear, including a card shark’s deck as it arches through the air.

Cattivissimo, the land-grabbing villain, tells time with a clock that fires bullets at his birdcage to mark the hour (the poor bird obligingly cuckoos in terror as it dodges lead).

Clementine, the beautiful rancher who owns the only square of green (literally) in the otherwise barren desert valley, gets up in the morning, walks over to her cow and opens a refrigerated compartment in its stomach to get a bottle of milk.

Johnny, our taciturn hero with eyes perpetually hidden under the brow of his cowboy hat and posture so laidback he’s ever on the brink of falling backwards, puts on a final shootout performance that would shame most circus acts let alone gunslingers.

These quick one-off jokes are gimmicky, impractical and borderline non-sense, in short, everything a good cartoon comedy should aim for. “West and Soda” doesn’t apologize for introducing cleverness for its own sake and is frequently willing to venture into the absurd to get a laugh.

Where “West and Soda” is at its worst is in the same places most novelty and comedy westerns flag: story and delivery. The typical pattern is to set up some obvious old west cliché, only to “subvert” it by changing one aspect (in this case, by animating it) or “defying our expectations” at the last minute. In theory, this is supposed to be a surefire formula for hilarity, but in practice this means that we sit through 90% clichéd rehash for 10% payoff, with the payoff usually all too obvious far in advance. I know “Destry Rides Again,” “Blazing Saddles,” and “Cat Ballou” have a lot of fans out there, they spend so much time retreading familiar territory on their way to punchlines.

That’s not to say “West and Soda” is boring, but whenever it tries to move the story along one can see straight through the coat of paint and right through to the bare bones skeleton. I appreciate that Westerns often rely on simple stories, and that’s fine, because it’s a genre that usually distinguishes itself through performances, setting and cinematography. However, those elements are hard to simulate in animation and often less satisfying. Director Bruno Bozzetto does try, and he makes up some lost ground with his ingenuity and sense of humor, but he doesn’t go far enough.

The voice acting and character designs take advantage of revisionist western templates: underplayed protagonists vs. overwrought villains. But personality is missing, especially for the female characters caught in between, like virtuous rancher Clementine and barroom hostess Esmeralda.

The background animation is also pretty lacking, though it emphasizes the emptiness and desolation of the landscape. The color palette sticks to brown earth tones, sometimes with a suitably muddy watercolor texture rather than a solid hue, but the painted terrain rarely musters the majesty of a Ford or Mann movie, or even a good painting. One exception is a sequence of shots pulling outward from a jutting rocky pillar where Cattivissimo is raving his maniacal plans. The series of cuts diminishes him to a distant fly speck and silences his tirade as the desert canvas overtakes him. Ultimately the low-budget intrudes further than one can ignore (the final chase is particularly flat), and it becomes tiresome to look at images with no detail, variation or beauty.

Even in the most minimalist westerns, formerly unimportant details (the wind blowing dust across dirt, a bead of sweat running through the hero’s unshaven bristle, weathered planks of knotty wood creaking under the villain’s leather boot as he rises from his barstool, etc.) move in to fill the vacuum. Without details, “West and Soda” doesn’t have that atmosphere or sense of place that it needs. It feels too much like a Saturday morning cartoon: amusing, but forgettable and interchangeable.

So I found myself experiencing a continuous conflict in enjoying “West and Soda” between the crazy little inspirations that made it funny and different and the big overriding issues that made it dull and typical. In some ways I just wish it had just been more ambitious; more aggressive. Some of the money could have been diverted away from filling in the classical story and put into spinning off into its intricate tangents. This is exactly the tactic Bozzetto would later take with his most famous film, “Allegro Non Troppo” (1976) a pessimistic parody of “Fantasia” as envisioned by a profiteering hack.

So is “West and Soda” funny enough to be worth seeking out? It depends on your tolerance for comedy westerns and your expectations for animation as art. I’m not a big fan of classical westerns or comedy westerns, but I’d say overall this one nudged my thumb upwards.

Walrus Rating: 6.0

Let's Just Be Friends: John Ford

John Ford vs. Anthony Mann

John Ford may be the most influential and respected director ever. He was universally well-regarded by his peers. He won best director Oscars four times (a record) and has 18 films, more than any other director, on the TSPDT top 1000 films, the largest compilation of critics’ lists from around the world. He also holds the record, at 10, for most films I’ve disliked.

Ford and I were just never meant to be. His specialty, classical westerns, is one of the very, very few genres that I don’t particularly like. His stock company includes some of my least favorite actors of all time, from leading man John Wayne to character actors like Victor McLaglen. I hate (not dislike) his taste in music. I find that his themes of courage, honor and manliness are undermined by his jingoism, hawkishness and chauvinism. I’m bothered by many of his reoccurring motifs, like favorable depictions of alcoholism, advocacy of boxing/brawling to settle differences and his use of extended dancing scenes.

I’m sure a lot people reading that last paragraph are thinking, “Wow. That’s just a list of personal hang-ups.” Yup. Pretty much.

I just don’t get the whole cowboys versus Indians infatuation. I don’t fall in with the cavalry uniform fetishism, the manifest destiny bravado or the gung-ho militarism. I can’t accept Wayne’s iron-jawed stoicism and paternal dictatorship as the American ideal. I can’t stand his condescending attitude towards women, which occasionally crosses over into outright misogyny (see “The Quiet Man”). Ironically, I think Ford did a better job casting women than men (who act about as real as toy soldiers), but he forced them to bear up under restrictive, monotonous roles.

Do I have anything good to say about John Ford? Yeah. I like his gorgeous outdoor photography. One can hardly overestimate the importance of moving the shooting location from the creaky sound stages of most studio westerns – where a fire in the foreground, a cardboard cactus in the midground and a painted backdrop were considered good enough – to the awe-inspiring vistas of Monument valley.

There’s also a few Ford films I can tolerate, namely “The Grapes of Wrath” (because it is so fantastically well-shot) and “Stagecoach” (for its neatness, balance and efficiency). Of what I’ve seen, I consider “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” to be his only masterpiece.

My preferred alternative to Ford would have to be Anthony Mann. Mann shares the predilection for westerns and built up his own reputation for location shooting. Though Mann entered the genre decades after Ford, their careers overlapped and cross-influenced. They are both famous for their work with James Stewart, though they gave him markedly different roles.

Anthony Mann’s background in noir, a genre I really savor, certainly helped give his westerns an inflection I could appreciate. His heroes have doubts, flaws, fears, troubled pasts, questionable motives and dangerous obsessions. The old west isn’t [as] idealized, and anyone wishing to survive there has to contend with more than just Indians. There’s vicious bandits, unscrupulous business partners and corrupt lawmen, not to mention the harsh landscape, tight economy and “frontier justice.” Add a host of inner demons like revenge, addiction and lust, and you’ve finally mussed up the western’s buttoned-up, waxed-mustache image.

Though John Ford was a self-proclaimed progressive, his films tend to implicitly embrace a conservative agenda. Mann’s films come off as more concerned with the personal than the political, with a more ambivalent stance towards the government, military and society. This emphasis on the lone character has an existential quality I enjoy.

Mann doesn’t shy away from complicated plots and unusual structures. He often covers multiple winding lines of action with characters forced to fight or unite in unexpected combinations. His “Winchester ’73” is a good example of his structural innovation, following a rifle as the protagonist as it passes through the hands of men who cheat and kill to possess it. However, his dark and unusual spins on the western genre made him less popular than Ford, who was better tuned to the type of “good old-fashion” entertainment and classical Americana mythology that audiences loved.

Mann clearly borrows a lot of his cinematography from Ford, particularly in the triumph of capital-n Nature. Both directors held the opinion that the great outdoors was not to be tamed; rather it should be respected as an indomitable force that spared only the resourceful. They also knew its beauty and majesty, its faithful companionship and its generous gifts of food, shelter, hideouts and gold. To my mind, Mann took things a step further than Ford, adding to his visual toolbox by delving into the shadows and crevasses of the countryside and contrasting deep-focus close-ups of human faces with landscape long-shots that diminished men to decals.

I’ve mentioned before that I consider Anthony Mann the bridge from classical westerns to revisionist ones. He was the forward patrol that explored territory later settled by Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci. Ford fits into the lineage as well, and I can acknowledge that he is a necessary step, even a foundational one, in the evolution of an important American genre, yet I doubt I’ll ever be able to bring myself to idolize him as a grandmaster on the level of Welles, Hawks, Huston, et al.

Review of Border Incident

Billy Wilder, John Huston, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang and Orson Welles are all director’s who made some of the signature film noirs of the 1940’s and 1950’s, while earning enduring reputations as great directors in a variety of genres. Then there are a handful of names that I mentally associate almost exclusively with film noir, whether fairly or not, such as Otto Preminger and Robert Siodmak. Anthony Mann occupies an interesting state in-between. His fame rests on exactly two genres: film noirs and westerns.

In not particularly remarkable that Mann made films in both genres, as most directors in the 1940’s and 1950’s were expected to make films in any genre the studio selected. The unique quality was in the way he transitioned, making almost exclusively noirs in the 1940’s and primarily westerns in the 1950’s (he would transition again, this time to sprawling epics, for a notable stint in the 1960’s). In a casual sense, based on the setting and time period, it is easy to draw a clear line between his first and second period, yet it’s Mann’s continuity of style and theme that makes his work so interesting.

[Image: All-American good-guy James Stewart menaces a “naked spur” (it will soon be used as a murder weapon) in this noirish poster for the 1953 western.]

Of course, the term “film noir” wasn’t known during Anthony Mann’s heyday, and its pretty doubtful that directors like Mann considered the type of films they made to be a genre unto itself (modern academics still argue against the term even being applied as a genre, but fans know better), so it’s not hard to see why the line might get blurred between film noir and, say, gangster films, thrillers, mysteries, etc.

In Mann’s famous westerns (Winchester ’73, Bend in the River, The Naked Spur, The Far Country, The Man from Laramie, The Tin Star, Man of the West), of which I’ve only seen a few, he brought over noir’s dark perspective, moral ambiguity and troubled protagonists. His work provides the bridge into the great revisionist westerns of the 1960’s and 1970’s (which I prefer over the classic period) and helped shaped the state of the genre today. I toyed with tracing some of the noir influences in the director’s early westerns, but I still need to see them all. For now I’ll take things from the opposite side of the fence, reviewing one of Mann’s last noirs: “Border Incident” (1949).

“Border Incident” is, true to its title, situated near the territorial zone between the two genres. The story, two undercover cops trying to break an illegal immigration racket, unfolds in the noir tradition, but the expressive use of outdoor wastelands, the cowboy hats and sombreros with rugged rurals underneath and the recruitment of rifles to the usual handgun arsenal, hint that Mann’s next phase is just over the horizon.

“Border Incident” (1949) opens in a somewhat documentary style, with an impossibly solemn narrator explaining about the need for hardworking migrant labor, while decrying the evil men (American and Mexican alike) that subvert the permit system and smuggle workers into low-paying exploitive positions only to rob and kill them on the return trip. It’s surprisingly progressive in its careful assignment of blame on the corrupt criminals, businessmen and officials that run the human traffic trade and away from the shoulders of the braceros (the Mexican migrant workers), but it’s painfully cheesy in its delivery. The same narrator pipes up at the conclusion, but everything worth watching happens in between.

The main action occurs along two lines, both following agents from opposite sides of the border as they adopt criminal identities and insinuate themselves into the system. Pablo Rodriguez pays his way into a group of desperate laborers willing to undergo the danger of cover transport into America while Jack Bearnes arranges to meet with the white ringleaders to sell them stolen work permits (which is probably entrapment, but whatever).

[Image: Before being trucked north in a secret truck compartment, the worker’s hand’s are checked. Smooth palms are a dead giveaway for undercover agents unfamiliar with 10-hour days of manual labor.]

Mann’s two-pronged approach is a great excuse to keep the action coming and the tension constant. The film has the suspense of a good spy film, with all the quiet sneaking and quick-thinking, the nimble physical and verbal escapes, but with none of the high-tech gadgetry to fall back on in a pinch. Ricardo Montalban and George Murphy are on par as Pablo and Jack, sharing the spotlight and alternating the tension and fear. Though they aren’t particularly interesting alone, their interactions and particularly their undercover personas make them quite watchable (the villains are unquestionably more so). I’ll mention that one of them doesn’t make it to the end of the sting operation, but I won’t spoil which one.

The visuals are a real thrill as well, tapping the talents Mann is famous for from both genres. As is often the case in noir, nighttime dominates, swallowing seedy bars and dusty canyons in equal shadow. John Alton, Mann’s frequent cinematographer, is more willing than most to dip things into overwhelming blackness (as he would do most famously in “The Big Combo”), often relying on nothing but silhouettes, though never sacrificing clarity to the point of frustration.

Out of his burgeoning bag of visual signatures, Mann pulls an amazing touch for finding and developing set pieces. He’d later become famous for the expressive personalities of his western landscapes and the first evidence of this skill can be seen in “Border Incident.” The main setting uses two real-life towns on the California-Mexico border that symbolize their proximity and interconnectedness with their amusing names: Mexicali and Calexico. In the region nearby are more eccentric locales, like a water tower prison and a quicksand ravine.

[Image: (Top) A water-tower prison set leads to a scene that will feel familiar to anyone who enjoys the Metal Gear Solid videogames. (Bottom) A great example of noir mentalities taken to pessimistic extremes.]

Even an empty field at night takes on a terrifying potential under Mann’s selective lighting and frantic, yet rhythmic, editing.

[Image: An enormous plow bears down on its victim. Oh, the untilled horror! ]

A more subtle example is the use of bridges in several scenes, a reminder of the many connections across borders (Mexico/California, legal/illegal, etc.) that have both productive and destructive implications.

[Image: (Bottom) A crook escapes across a rail bridge on a motorcycle while being tailed by the police.]

One interesting effect of Anthony Mann shooting on the noir/western borderlands is his use of deep focus and staging in depth. By the mid-1950’s Cinemascope had become de rigueur for westerns and the increased edge-to-edge real-estate reduced the need for layered staging in depth. “Border Incident” comes at a time where it can benefit from Mann’s location shooting while still using noirish deep focus effects that would make even Welles and Wyler proud.

[Images: Just a few of the many deep-focus flourishes.]

There’s a lot to like in “Border Incident” in terms of action, suspense and visuals. In addition, it makes for an enlightening glimpse into the director’s key transition period and, in so doing, marks a notable entry point for revisionist westerns and an ancient ancestor of today’s generation of genre re-visitation (2007 certainly saw its share). Situated precariously between his two most famous cycles, “Border Incident” has tended to fall between the cracks of Mann’s career, but it deserves its own recognition.

Walrus Rating: 7.5

Review of Lemonade Joe

In a rowdy Arizona town, Doug Badman runs a seedy whiskey den overflowing with trigger-happy ruffians and all manner of vice. Tornado Lou dances on stage and provides other services upstairs. Outside, in the dusty Old West town, lawlessness prevails. Only a single preacher and his daughter Winnifred, a devout temperance campaigner, attempt to stem the tide. Both Lou and Winnifred pine for a champion on which to bestow their love, much to the frustration of the lustful Badman. The stage is set for a hero to come in a clean up the town in this all-American 1930’s musical western.

[Image: (Top) Doug Badman and (Bottom) his newly arrived nemesis.]

Except that this isn’t America or the 1930’s. It’s Czechoslovakia circa 1964. You’re watching “Lemonade Joe,” a Czech New Wave satire of American westerns!

Lemonade Joe is a yellow-clad cowboy with a good-natured grin, a hunger for justice and a thirst for Kolaloka lemonade. But is his brand of gun-slinging do-goodery literally just a brand? The clear-cut morality of white-hat vs. black-hat westerns is suddenly not as simple as it seems when Joe is revealed to be a sales representative of the Kolaloka Company, ousting their main competitor, whiskey, under the guise of reform.

It hardly bothers Winnifred that her knight-in-yellow-leather is a traveling salesman nor does director Oldrich Lipsky ever flinch from treating Joe as anything but the valorous hero worthy of song that such films require. Joe’s adventures, particularly his battle with Doug Badman and his villainous brother, the magician Hogofogo, are a fair bit more surreal and anarchic than your typical John Ford feature, but Oldritch is hilariously loyal to the outward look and sound of classic-era westerns.

[Images: Hogofogo puts to practice all sorts of parlor room chicanery to outwit Lemonade Joe, including offering artificial arms to be cuffed by the self-appointed Sheriff. After shooting him with his real hand, Hogofogo uses the artificial limb for general creepiness.]

Oldrich lenses the film in slightly-faded black-and-white, color-tinted by the old-school rules of silent cinema: sepia outdoors, blue at night, red for romance, etc. The musical numbers are belted out with over-the-top gusto, lending operatic pomp to even the most trivial remark. The overture theme is particularly amusing, garbling Czech and pseudo-English without regard to grammar or meaning in a shameless acknowledgement that the lyrics aren’t important anyway.

[Images: Note the varying tone for indoor versus outdoor. Unfortunately Facet’s release, from which my screenshots are derived, is in a cripplingly cropped aspect ratio. The original 1:2.45 is itself an object of humor that lampoons the landscape-luxurious Cinemascope westerns of the 1950’s.]

Yet such is the nature of Czech New Wave ambitions that Oldritch indulges in endless virtuosity, investing the tired genre with new life. The film’s exhilarating plot contortions, exaggerated situations and nearly random camera-chaos is like the Marx Brothers meets “A Hard Day’s Night” or something akin to a Wild West version of Godard’s “Pierrot le fou.” An elaborate jump-cut-strewn shootout with Hogofogo playing the trumpet while in blackface and a white suit is particularly memorable.

Oldrich also explores several interesting special effects that link it to “Who Wants to Kill Jesse?” and the circus sequence from “The Cassandra Cat.” (Czech films show an interest in mixed-media possibilities, popular in the static arts of the 1960’s, more so than other countries.) There is a flashback done using cartoon stills, a nested tale using crude blue-screen, a comical fata morgana (mirage) sequence using matte shots and a scene where Doug Badman blows numerical smoke rings to tip off his brother during a poker game.

[Images: Some of the many visual experiments and special effects in “Lemonade Joe.”]

No Czech New Wave film would be complete without a political dimension, and “Lemonade Joe” is no exception. The underlying critique of collusion between capitalist forces and government is central to Oldrich’s satire. Kolaloka is clearly an anagrammed stand-in for Coca Cola, itself a symbol of American consumer culture. Joe’s role as a spokesperson for the beverage often times grinds the action to a halt for commercial-like endorsements, and I can’t help appreciating it as a prescient parody of product placement.

The film intentionally adopts all sorts of moral and ethical contradictions, a frequent complaint of the “vigilante justice” westerns that still stirs debate today. From an outsider’s perspective the “traditional values” on display in any given John Wayne film must have looked downright hypocritical. The East European skepticism leaks through the lining in several exchanges of dialogue: “What’s good for Kolaloka is good for the law” being the most overt example. The incorporation of the American frontier is also skewered by the ultimate punishment: not death, but signing a contract. Near the end, Kolaloka tries to recruit Hogofogo, brushing off his criminal record by telling him that “Our business needs all kinds of talent.”

[Image: It must have really amused Oldrich to cast Playboy model Olga Schoberova (Jesse of “Who Wants to Kill Jesse?”) as the saintly evangelist Winnifred, Joe’s love interest and an exaggerated symbol of virginal goodness.]

[SPOILER paragraph] The ending of the film is in perfect sync with the satire, providing one of the most hilariously overdone happily-ever-after finales. Birthmarks reveal that Lemonade Joe, Tornado Lou, Doug Badman and Hogofogo are all siblings, separated as infants from their father, the founder of Kolaloka, during a hurricane. It seems like little more than tragic irony since they have already killed each other off, but Joe magically reappears in perfect health to reveal that Kolaloka also cures death! With the whole family revived and united, their father gives his blessing to Joe and Winnifred’s marriage, thrusting his cane in the ground with happiness and striking oil. Winnifred discovers gold a few feet away and a man runs in from off-screen to announce that Kolaloca stock has just surpassed a billion dollars.

“Lemonade Joe” may not have the universal appeal of “Who Wants to Kill Jesse?” but it will please anyone with an interest in westerns, an absurdist sense of humor and a taste for technical eccentricity. As a western satire this is far ahead of “Destry Rides Again” or “Blazing Saddles,” though for a viable attempt at revisionism you’ll have to look elsewhere. I’ve been enjoying Spaghetti westerns for a while now, but I’ve had little experience with so-called Osterns (aka, Red Westerns or Eastern Westerns) so I can’t comment on how it stacks up against others. Resorting to comparisons might be misguided anyway, given how unique and free-wheeling this film is.

Walrus Rating: 8.0

[Image: Vladimir Mensik, Czech character actor extraordinaire, pops up yet again, this time as a mustachioed bartender.]

Ramble on Westerns

Having recently though about what I like to read in other blogs, I’ve decided to introduce a new series called Rambles. These will be more casual, free-form posts in which I’ll talk a little about what I’ve been thinking, doing and watching in regard to films. It will give me a chance to briefly mention some of the movies I don’t intend to review and also to spout opinions that aren’t necessarily about a single picture. Hopefully it will provide a little extra personality to the Film Walrus, although feel free to skip them if this type of thing bores you (they’ll be clearly marked).

For my first ramble, I’d like to talk a little about westerns and my relationship with them, because they have been on my mind a lot recently. I’ve also been viewing (and enjoying) far more than I usually do from a variety of cycles including the classical (“The Naked Spur”), the revisionist (“Heaven’s Gate”), the spaghetti western (“Sabata”) and the contemporary (“3:10 to Yuma”).

The western has traditionally been on of my least favorite genres. Even when I became seriously interested in film I often consciously avoided them because even “the greats” (especially those by John Ford) left me unimpressed at best and incensed at worst. I found them to be uninspired, ugly and dated. I was annoyed by the simplistic morality and disagreed with the painfully conservative patriarchal model that preached isolationism, vigilantism, imperialism and sexism as obvious moral rights. Plenty of them have an implicit fear of progress, technology, intellectualism and diversity. Throw in the racist depictions of American Indians, flat stock characters and low production values and you have a pretty unappetizing menu.

I still don’t like many of the first wave, the B/W B-movies from before the 1940’s and I’m yet to get over my disdain for Ford, Wayne and much of the classical regulars. However, discovering the revisionist American westerns of the 60’s and 70’s and the underrated spaghetti westerns awakened me to a whole new set of possibilities. The often brutal amorality of the protagonists was a breath of fresh air and the realism-smashing creativity provided something to get excited and interested in. There was Ennio Morricone’s brilliant scores (and other composers with daring, grandiose music) and plenty of darkly charismatic characters that weren’t just self-important meatheads (every John Wayne character) or lame Jesus surrogates (Shane). I don’t think that expressionistic violence and cynical anti-heroes are absolutely necessary to keep me entertained, but it took a fundamental shake-up to the underlying assumptions and conservative approach latched to the genre before I could see its more subtle attractions.

There are still duds amongst the more modern westerns and gems in the old-school oeuvre. I’m remain skeptical of whether the wheat-to-chaff ratio makes investigating your average western worthwhile, but these days I do occasionally get excited about one. There is something fascinating about the artificiality (across all generations of the cycle) and the industry/audience obsession with this quintessential “genre.” There is so much tradition; so many clichés and rules that span setting, plot and themes. Perhaps only Tolkien fantasy comes close the repetition of so many arbitrary (certainly history provides only the slimmest takeoff point) elements. By comparison, science-fiction has almost no rules and spans into an enormous array of subgenres and unique variations.

What this allows is a unique opportunity to examine an artist(s) at work within the very narrow confines of self-imposed constraints, a bit like learning to appreciate Dogma 95, a nursery of bonsai trees or some equally specific craft. Rather than attacking westerns as repetitious, I’m coming much closer to enjoying the minor variations on old formulas, the idiosyncratic touches on basic stereotypes and the once-invisible presence of specific styles, techniques and influences that distinguish each film.

It still doesn’t make the average western rival the occasional creative spark that leaps from the nearly uniform tangle of wires. My favorite westerns are still some of the most conspicuous exceptions to the old formulas: “Dead Man,” “American Astronaut,” “El Topo,” “Django,” “Keoma” and “Johnny Guitar.” However, I can now tolerate a much higher number of films, and adopt a simpler aesthetic appreciation for doing an oft-done cliché particularly well.

This brings me to “3:10 to Yuma” a western remake in theaters now (Sept 2007). It doesn’t seriously vary or subvert the genre in any drastic way, but it is quite brilliant in its use of character dynamics, scene construction (not just the sets, but the situations, atmosphere, blocking and cinematography) and not-quite-what-your-expecting genre devices. Not all of the recent attempts at reviving the genre (“Open Range,” “The Proposition,” “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada”) have impressed me unduly, but this one did. I’m actually makes me excited to see what new cinematic stranger might shamble into town next.

Iceberg Arena: Celestial Entranceways

Technically speaking, there is very little in common between the content of “Heaven’s Gate” (1980) and “Gates of Heaven” (1980). The first is a big-budget western epic with a now-famous cast and the latter is a low-budget documentary about the relocation of a pet cemetery. The fact that the two movies bear similar names and were released exactly a month apart (Nov. 19 and Oct. 19 respectively) must be regarded as pure coincidence, but it is upon this coincidence that I am basing today’s Iceberg Arena comparison.

If I put in my mental aerobics tapes and do some serious stretching, I suppose I can come up with some other commonalities. The films were both landmarks in important auteur careers and changed perceptions about the role of directors and the viability of their respective genres. Both movies performed unexpectedly at the box office, but came into their own on the small screen.

Gates of Heaven:

“Gates of Heaven” (1980) marked the feature debut of director Errol Morris, now widely regarded as one of the greatest working documentary makers after such brilliant works as “The Thin Blue Line” (1988) and “The Fog of War” (2003). As an amusing side-story, prior to completing this movie Errol Morris had made the acquaintance of Werner Herzog. The German director stated that if Morris ever finished a film, he’d eat his shoe. Les Blank’s documentary short “Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe” shows Herzog true to his word (an authorized torrent is available here under "les blank").

The inspiration for this film was a headline Morris came across: “450 Dead Pets Going To Napa Valley.” Morris traveled to the city and began shooting footage about the current presence and the possible relocation of a California pet cemetery. Morris’s choice of topic and approach were groundbreaking at the time. He took a rather apolitical, unspectacular suburban story and delves into it through a process of interviewing that often strays, digresses and travels tangentially to the main “scoop.”

What fascinates Morris is clearly not the topic itself so much as the people involved. Their inoffensive quirks, personal reactions and often comical idiosyncrasies become the focus of a humanist odyssey into the relationships between mankind and their domestic animals. Extensive interviews introduce us to the owner of the pet cemetery, a competitor who “reprocesses” animal corpses, a developer who wants the property, vets, taxidermists and the many pet owners who share their loneliness and happiness; their obsessions, dreams and eccentricities.

At 85 minutes, the film runs fairly lean, with Morris able to pick and choose from a vast repository of interview footage. His approach isn’t always much to look at, but his honed editing, keen observation of human interest and natural humor and the somewhat stream-of-conscious all-over pursuit of whatever seemed interesting to follow up on, established Morris as documentary auteur. His film, without particularly compromising that bare minimum of integrity the subject warranted, threw out the detached elitism of classical documentaries and ushered in an era of adventuring free-wheeling directors who found exotic subcultures without needing to travel to Africa or South America. Michael Moore’s “Roger and Me” (1989) owed a clear debt, adapting the approach into the idea of the director as muck-raking star.

Heaven’s Gate:

Michael Cimino became a household name after the success of his Vietnam war/homecoming tale of friendship, love, suffering and disillusionment: “The Deer Hunter” (1978). The 1970’s had continued building on the indie success of films like “Easy Rider” (1969) and the concept of the auteur director with complete artistic control was reaching a peak. Cimino had long harbored a desire to shoot an ambition western based around the Johnson County War in Wyoming and United Artists agreed to fund the project for the newly “hot” director to the tune of $11.6 million. 40 million dollars and 220 hours of celluloid later, Cimino completed his epic (numbers according to wikipedia).

The nearly four hour original cut featured Kris Kristofferson as James Averill, a Harvard graduate who becomes the sheriff of a Wyoming county cracking along an economic divide. Dirt-poor immigrants fill the street and are forced to steal cattle for food from the rich land barons (led by a young Sam Waterston) who all but control the region. The Stock Growers Association (as they call themselves) hires out-of-town killers including Nathan Champion (Christopher Walken, also young) to kill some 125 immigrants that they deem to be criminals or anarchists. Hours pass before the movie gets to the real action, and Averill and Nathan pass the time by fighting for the love of a kindly whorehouse owner, Ella Watson (Isabella Huppert).

Vilmos Zsigmond helps carry the film with some fantastic cinematography. The rich, golden sunset hues give the film a rustic tone and the audience is literally swept through the enormous authentically-recreated city by the craning camera work and ever-swirling gusts of dust, dirt, steam and smoke. The art department nails the look and feel of the 1890’s burgeoning frontier town with a sense of population mass and attention to detail missing from run-of-the-mill western productions.

Despite the cohesive visual design and historical fidelity, much of the plot and character core fails to attract interest. The lead three (Kristofferson, Walken and Huppert) are quite passable, if not particularly charismatic or memorable, but the minor cast is packed with flat, uninteresting roles. Though they hardly lack for screen-time, Cimino’s script seems to treat the cast like minor chess pieces, to be moved about like props and disposed of in empty gambits at emotional reaction. Often they speak only their foreign language (with no subtitled translation) and they spend most of the film being loud and ignorant. It is hard to believe that we are expected to sympathize with the immigrants when we see them spending their time gambling on cock fights and engaging in illegal activity (granted they don’t deserve to be murdered but they shouldn’t be stealing either). In the worst of the three final battles, they are shown to be utterly incompetent and even suicidal, circling around the exposed enemy without actually firing back.

There are two other battles at the end of the film that are significantly better. They serve as a belated reward for anyone still watching and awake. The siege of a meager log cabin by an army of gunslingers is particularly strong, with the editing set to a strict metronome. The jarring visual, aural and temporal disparities highlight the abruptness and madness of the chaotic violence. The technique is used again in the final showdown, diving in and out of the combat to convey the grit and trauma of the local “war.” These scenes function like a western-era “Apocalypse Now” complete with the alienation, disillusionment, political overtones and unglamorous portrayals of the participants.

Ultimately, the monochromatic yellow-brown of the film and the grandiose composure of the picture wears out its welcome and then some. Cimino’s lingers about his ho-hums scenes in a way that all too clearly reveals his self-indulgent pride for every frame. Twenty minutes hunks go by with nothing really happening and enough extraneous material is left in to create an entire film of its own (perhaps, “Heaven’s Gate: The Masochist’s Cut”). The producers sensed this and cut 70 minutes for the theatrical release. It’s really hard to blame them. Accusations that the film was a bloated disaster can only be refuted by taking refuge behind the camera techniques and soundtrack.

After dismal box office returns (breaking the current record for loss), United Artists was on the rocks and ended up being sold to MGM. Although many other factors were involved, blame is piled on the film for ending the age of auteur directors with unlimited creative control. Michael Cimino was unofficially blacklisted along with the entire genre of westerns, which were all but abandoned for the next decade (until Costner’s “Dances with Wolves” in 1990). In the mid 80’s Channel Z aired Cimino’s 226 minute version (coining the term and concept of the “Director’s Cut”) to critical acclaim (a complete turnaround).

I tend to consider everyone to be partially in the right. Cimino really did have a breathtaking vision and driving ambition. The producers correctly assessed the project as too expensive, long and unwieldy. The critics in 1980 were right to attack the opulent waste and excruciating tempo. The critics in 1985 were right to claim that it wasn’t as bad as the initial reaction implied. The truth at the heart of it all is that “Heaven’s Gate” is just an inflated, mediocre film whose essential dynamics and message are delivered better by any number of films (say, “The Great Silence” (1968)). The sad truth is that even if it isn’t a complete disaster, who has time to drop almost four hours on a mediocre movie?

Conclusion:

Although our competitors look a little like David and Goliath, the outcome is hardly in question. Errol Morris’s little pet project (heh) “The Gates of Heaven” is easily the superior film, with its witty and winning immersion in the minutia of suburban eccentricities. Meanwhile, Michael Cimino’s pet project is a thrashing yeti with matted fur and a weight problem. Maybe when it dies it can be buried in Bubbling Well Pet Memorial Park.

Review of A Bullet for the General

[Image: “Like the Bandit... Like the Gringo... A bullet doesn't care who it kills!” -US tagline]

“Senor, you are an American? You like Mexico?” asks a chipper Hispanic boy. Bill Tate, jaded anti-hero of “A Bullet for the General” (1967), looks down at the smiling youth.

“No, not very much.”

It’s tough to imagine a more joyless and Machiavellian protagonist than Tate, a ruthless bounty hunter who makes similar characters in other spaghetti westerns look downright noble. Perhaps it’s because “A Bullet for the General” was early in a wave of Zapata westerns, a subgenre of spaghetti westerns with much more overtly Marxist underpinnings and extremely dark worldviews.

Set during the Mexican Revolution in 1913, Damiano Damiani’s film is at once a shameless action buddy flick and a daring social critique of capitalism. The film stars Lou Castel as bounty hunter Tate and El Chucho (Gian Maria Volontè, villain of the Leone’s Dollars Trilogy) as a Mexican bandit who frees him from the police while robbing a train. The two become fast friends, although Chucho doesn’t know that Tate’s rescue was staged as the first act in his play for 100,000 pesos. Tate is merely manipulating Chucho to get close to General Elias, the leader of the Mexican revolution. In his valise is a golden rifle bullet, which if properly applied to the right political skull, could make Tate a very rich man indeed. It would also forever end the dreams of closet-revolutionary Chucho and the oppressed Mexican peasantry.

Though the film opens with Tate blankly watching a firing squad gun down a batch of scraggly Mexican revolutionaries, its politics remain largely submerged within the action set pieces and character dynamics for the first 2/3. The early train robbery scene is a masterpiece of upping-the-ante on traditional westerns. The conductor pulls the engine to a stop as he comes into sight of an obstruction on the tracks: a crucified military captain still barely alive. Anyone who tries to help him is gunned down by the encircling bandits. Chucho is in charge of the attackers, and soon has the passengers riddled to rags with gunfire. Tate cuffs himself a dead soldier’s manacles and allows himself to be taken in by the thugs. They’re pleased to have what they presume to be an American outlaw in their company.

[Images: Crucifixion on a railroad track.]

Chucho’s gang includes the beautiful Adelita (Martine Beswick) and Chucho’s idealist brother El Santo (Klaus Kinski). When Kinski is playing the moral anchor and most sympathetic character in the movie, you know you’re in for nihilistic fun! Tate offers to help them bandits slaughter the government forces and gather arms to sell to the revolutionaries. Chucho becomes enamored with the idea of holding out in a poor town with their stock of weapons and volunteers, but his greedier pals don’t want to risk their lives without a clear profit to be made. When Chucho discovers a brand new machine gun, Tate decides to steal the weapon to lure the Mexican onward to the general.

[Image: Chucho describes his glorious new machine gun as “more beautiful than any woman,” shortly before making out with the device.]

The two lead men show plenty of chemistry, actually enhanced by the audience’s knowledge that Tate isn’t on the level and that both of the men are merciless killers. Chucho is enthusiastic and not very bright, an easy target for Tate’s manipulation, but the Gringo clearly warms to the companionship and brotherhood that Chucho offers. When Chucho finds Tate’s golden bullet, the bounty hunter claims it’s a lucky charm. The viewer can feel that their luck is soon to go down hill.

[SPOILERS next five paragraphs]

True to his hopes, the wagon full of rifles topped by the machine gun fetches a mouthwatering sum of $5000 for the small-thinking Chucho. He has fooled himself so well into thinking that he has supported the revolution with all his might that he is brought low when General Elias confronts him about abandoning the village. Apparently, the ill-trained, ill-equipped men that Chucho left behind were slaughtered in his absence. His brother Santo survived, and now jumps at the chance of getting his revenge. Chucho is so depressed and penitent that he agrees to be executed in the wasteland behind the camp. Meanwhile Tate loads his rifle on a nearby hillside.

Chucho hears the first gunshot, but it’s the second one that catches his attention when it kills his brother. Though his life has been saved, Chucho is bereft and stumbles back towards the revolutionary camp in a daze. The second bit of bad news hits him even harder: General Elias was assassinated by the first bullet.

Jump ahead to some time later and we see Tate collecting his bounty in gold (he turns down the paper money saying it’s “not the same.”) and returning to a fancy hotel. A drunk and distraught Chucho breaks in planning to kill his former friend, but Tate reveals that he has been waiting for him for several days. Tate is genuinely happy to see the only friend he ever made and readily splits the money with Chucho. In a state of shock, Chucho allows himself to be bathed, dressed and fed like a rich man.

Tate wants to take him up to the United States, but as he waits in the train station for Tate to buy the tickets, he begins to question his position. He gives a coin to a poor shoeshiner and tells him to “buy bread” and suddenly feels the guilt of his ill-got wealth. The train starts to pull out with Tate trying to pull Chucho onboard, but the Mexican finally realizes he must do something he doesn’t understand. “I have to kill you, Nino.” “Why?” “I don’t know, Nino. I only know I have to kill you.” And he does.

[Image: Having killed his only surviving friend and companion, Chochu breaks into uncontrolled laughter.]

Running between the tracks with the police in pursuit he whoops, throws off his hat and shouts back to the shoeshiner, “And don’t buy bread with that money, hombre. Buy dynamite!”

[SPOILERS END]

On the most superficial level, “A Bullet for the General” is an excellent revisionist western with regularly spaced action sequences that are clever and thrilling. Damiani knows exactly what additive touch will send a scene from cliché to inspired. Blowing a hole into a police fort by hiding explosives in a prostitute’s luggage too mundane? Why not synchronize the explosion with a cork popping off and have the prostitute take cover beneath her dainty parasol!

There’s a rambunctious caprice throughout the film that goes beyond mere violence and destruction. The film seems determined to have a good time and enjoy the ride no matter how despicable the murder, mayhem and manipulation may get. The visuals aren’t as over the top as other Italian features, but the gliding, striding camera work is clearly propelled by the same sense of excitement and destiny. The score by Luis Bacalov and Ennio Morricone also lives up to the energetic pitch, with some of the genre’s most memorable tracks.

On a deeper level, the film manages to show the balance between friendship, greed and political idealism. Unlike the Dollars Trilogy or the Django and Ringo characters, some serious consideration is given to the choices and consequences that Tate and Chucho live with. Tate certainly has the ice cold cynicism and premeditated betrayal that fans of amoral hired gunmen expect, but he is also human enough to respond to Chucho’s infectious extroversion. That the bounty hunter’s isolationist veneer masks a loneliness not fully satisfied by gold, make him only slightly less evil and quite significantly more interesting. It also sets up Chucho for a devastating inner struggle and ultimately leads to the unforgettable ending.

So whether you’re a fan of spaghetti westerns, buddy movies, dark anti-heroes, Marxist politics, moral crises or sprawling epics, this is a film that deserves your viewing.

Walrus Rating: 8

[Image: Martine Beswick has a rather decent role (by women in westerns standards) as the only character who is sagely skeptical of Tate’s “charms.”]