Hitchcock's Experimental, Art-House Monster Movie: "The Birds" at 60.

 

Spoilers for The Birds and Psycho

Do I own The Birds on Blu-ray and can watch it comfortably at home? Yes. Did I still head out to a theatre to see a 60th anniversary showing of the film? Also yes. There's something cool about seeing classic cinema on the big screen and since it's one my favourites from my favourite director, I'm almost obligated to go). It got me thinking that there was a time where you had to see a movie in theatres, it wasn't as easy as it is now to see films. There was something special about something being shown on TV or getting re-released. Now it feels like something's in theatres for a week before it hits streaming. But anyway, back to The Birds. This was Hitchcock's follow-up to Psycho and its notable the only two horror films in his career were made consecutively. They actually make pretty good companion pieces: with both of them displaying Hitchcock experimenting in the later part of his career (he was in his 60s when he made them) Psycho was a lower budget film shot in black and white with his crew from his TV show Alfred Hitchcock Presents, coming on the heels of the proto-blockbuster North by Northwest nd was subversive in its plot structure, particularly the murder of its supposed main character almost an hour in. The Birds showed Hitchcock forgoing plot almost all together in favor of atmosphere and metaphorical/apocalyptic horror. 

The first way Hitchcock experiments in The Birds (and Psycho) is how he subverts genre expectations. The thing is, people walked in to Psycho knowing there was going to be a character who was a psycho. They also walked in to The Birds knowing there were going to be bird attacks. The suspense comes from how long Hitchcock takes to get to the shower scene and the initial bird attack. What Hitchcock does mischievously is begin the films not as horror but as a noir crime film (Psycho) and a romantic comedy (The Birds) It's almost a hour before Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), a bank clerk who steals money from work to start a life with her boyfriend, is killed in the infamous shower scene.  

In  The Birds it takes a half hour before a gull attacks socialite Melanie Daniels. The film begins with her being spotted at a bird store by Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), a lawyer whom recognizes her from court appearance regarding a practical joke. He pretends to mistake for a employee, giving her a taste of her own medicine. He thinks she should've gone to jail. She thinks he's "a louse." Basically, it's the "He's arrogant, she's stuck-up but they're obviously attracted to each other" romantic comedy set-up. Mitch inquired about some love birds for his sister Cathy (Veronica Cartwright's) birthday so Melanie gets two and travels all the way to his family farm in Bodega Bay. While she's watching Mitch discover them from her boat, a gull attacks her. The gull attack parallels the shower scene- a stroke of violence in the midst of water, in a moment of  calm. It also puts the audience on edge for another instance of violence. 

The Birds also has something in common with one off Hitchcock's earlier film,  Shadow of a Doubt (1943). In both, a small community is invaded by a sinister force. In the former it's a serial killer played by Joseph Cotton, in the latter it's, well...birds; but not only birds, but normally docile birds. In in the indispensable book Hitchcock/Truffaut, which transcribes interviews between Hitchcock and filmmaker Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock says "I think that if the story had involved vultures, or birds of prey, I might not have wanted it. The basic appeal to me is that it had to do with ordinary, everyday birds."  Hitchcock contrasts these normal birds' usual docile nature with random bursts of violence. And like Shadow of a Doubt, the violence is juxtaposed with a low-key setting. 

Truffaut later on in the interview says of The Birds' structure: 

    The story construction follows the three basic rules of classic tragedy: unity of place, of time, and of     action. All of the action takes place within two days' time in Bodega Bay, The birds are seen in ever        growing numbers and they become increasingly dangerous as the action progresses. 

Screenwriter Evan Hunter and Hitchcock understand the need to make each attack bigger, until the film takes on apocalyptic overtones. By the climax it feels the like the world is ending. However, keeping the story in one setting and focusing on a small set of characters also makes the story intensely intimate. M. Night Shyamalan was clearly inspired by Hitchcock and this film when making his alien invasion thriller Signs, which I wrote about here: Davies in the Dark: The Essential Films: "Signs" (2002) (thenoirzone.blogspot.com)  

I want to take some time now to focus on the character dynamics which foreground much of the film, particularly the relationship between Melanie and Mitch's mother, Lydia (Jessica Tandy), whom she meets after Mitch has looked to her wound. Mitch invites Melanie over for dinner where she also meets Cathy, who takes a immediate liking to Melanie, clearly liking her present. Lydia, however is more aloof. Melanie is staying with schoolteacher Annie Heyward, who once had a relationship with Mitch. That night, Melanie and Annie discuss Annie's former romance with Mitch and her complicated relationship with Lydia.

Annie: I was seeing quite a lot of him in San Francisco, you know. And then, one weekend, he asked me up to meet Lydia.

Melanie: When was this?

Annie: Four years ago. Of course, that was shortly after his father died. Things may be different now. 

Melanie: Different?

Annie: With Lydia. Did she seem a trifle distance? 

Melanie. A trifle.

Annie: Then maybe it wasn't different at all. You know, her attitude nearly drove me crazy. I simply couldn't understand it. When I got back to San Francisco I spent days trying to figure out just what I'd done to displease her.

Melanie: And what had you done.

Annie: Nothing. I simply existed. So what was the answer? A jealous woman, right? A clinging, possessive mother. Wrong. With all due respect to Oedipus, I don't think that was the case at all.

Melanie: Then what was it?

Annie: Lydia liked me, you see. That was the strange part of it. In fact, now that I'm no longer a threat, we're very good friends.

Melanie: Then why did she object to you?

Annie: She was afraid.

Melanie: Afraid you'd take Mitch?

Annie: Afraid I'd give Mitch.

Melanie: I don't understand.

Annie: Afraid of any woman who'd give Mitch the only she can give him- love.

Melanie: Annie, that adds up to a jealous, possessive woman. 

Annie: No, I don't think so. She's not afraid of losing her son, you see. She's only afraid of being abandoned.   

On a sidenote, Hunter's dialogue is so good. While Hitchcock always believed in the idea of "pure cinema," telling the story strictly through the visuals, his films often had stellar dialogue passages. What I like specifically about this passage is it's all about small but significant differences. While everything points to Lydia being a "jealous, possessive woman," Annie doesn't feel it's that simple. She can't see Lydia as purely jealous, she even says Lydia liked her. Annie also makes distinctions between fear of giving vs. fear taking and fear of lost vs. fear of abandonment. Minute differences but they tell us about how Annie views things and maybe tells us something about Lydia as well.

We get to understand Lydia quite a bit in a later scene, which comes after Lydia's seen the dead body (with eyes gouged out by birds) of a neighbor. She's alone with Melanie and in a vulnerable position. She talks about the death of her husband, her reliance on his strength throughout  the years and her wish to be a stronger person. It's the first time Lydia warms up to Melanie and she says something surprising to her, which is she's not sure if she even likes Melanie. A honest statement, and one that reflects Lydia's complicated feelings towards Melanie and her relationship with her son. It'd be easy to just have Lydia outright hate Melanie but her confession feels more nuanced and sympathetic.

Mitch also has his own complicated relationship with Melanie. His lawyer side dislikes her troublemaking side but when he spies her on the boat, he smiles, amused, and probably surprised she went though all that trouble to bring hum those birds. He's clearly concerned when she's attacked by a gull and invites her over for dinner. So, he's not completely hostile towards her. And I suspect there was likely already an attraction towards her. There's something playful already at play in the initial encounter,  

And how are we, the audience, supposed to take Melanie? She's maybe not as easily "likable" as the main character is "supposed" to be. Hitchcock, Hunter, and Hedren allow us to feel our way through the character as we learn more about and spend more time with her. I personally find Mitch to be kind of a judgmental ass at the beginning, though as I said, he's compensating a little for his attraction to her.. Watching the movie this time, I quite liked Hedren's performance. She has the right amount of cool and warmth needed for a character who goes from socialite who glides through life to a more mature, deeper feeling person who becomes part of the Brenner family. Just before the first bird attack at Cathy's, Melanie and Mitch have a conversation where Melanie, like Lydia a few scenes later, shows her vulnerability. We learn Melanie's mother abandoned her when she was young and Melanie tells about the things she does with her life, including putting a Korean boy through school. Of course, it's obvious what's Melanie is missing in her life- a family.  

Okay, let's come back to how Hitchcock is experimenting in this film. What I find notable about The Birds in contrast to Hitchcock's other work is it's virtually plotless. Hitchcock usually has a Macguffin (the thing every character wants but doesn't matter what it is, it's just there to get the ball rolling), a murder, or an innocent man on the run. According to Hunter there was almost going to be a murder mystery plot, with the birds being the culprits. Instead, there's no real mystery except when the birds are going to attack. Hitchcock once used the example of a bomb under the table to highlight surprise vs. suspense. You see two men at a table. A bomb suddenly goes off- that's surprise. What's suspense is seeing the bomb under the table and wondering when it's going off. The film goes for the latter approach and I think that's the proper choice. It also allows the film to foreground the characters more.

I mentioned earlier the escalation of the bird attacks gave the film apocalyptic overtones, which again shows Hitchcock playing with something new- a world ending scenario, as well as a "monster movie." Hitchcock's monster were typically serial killers or Nazis. But here, the monsters aren't really monsters. Mother nature is simply fighting back against humanity for taking them for granted, or at least this was Hitchcock's explanation. I believe the film is thematically more fascinating and starker if there isn't an explanation for the bird attacks. In his book, Hitchcock's Films Revisited, Robin Wood views the birds as 

    a concrete embodiment of the arbitrary and unpredictable, of whatever makes human life and human     relationships precarious, a reminder of fragility and instability that cannot be ignored or evaded and,     beyond that, of the possibility that life is meaningless and absurd.

He also compares the bird attack to Marion murder in Psycho, in that they're both unprovoked and unearned. Horror often has a nihilistic streak to it. In horror we witness innocent people die and evil winning out. It's a ruthless genre and Hitchcock showed how ruthless he could be in Psycho. He further shows this mercilessness when Annie is unceremoniously killed by the birds offscreen. Annie's death is more painful because it's not seen and it demonstrates Hitchcock's preoccupation with placing us in the mind of his characters. We have to imagine Annie's end as Melanie and Mitch must do. 

Aside from providing no clear explanation for the birds' war against humans Hitchcock also doesn't give us a neat ending either. Melanie and the Brenners live but the final shot is the car driving off in to an uncertain future, with the birds still covering the Brenner house, in what we already know is a short reprieve from the attacks. This is arguably the most ambiguous ending Hitchcock ever concocted, though Psycho and Vertigo's endings also create a sense of unease in the audience. The Birds was ahead of its time, for a Hollywood movie at least, in providing no clear finish for the story. The film end before it seems to end. 

The only resolution the ending contains is the shared look between the injured Melanie and Lydia in the backseat of the car, suggesting Lydia has finally accepted Melanie and will care for her in her weakened state. Is the ending partly hopeful? I don't know. However, it does suggest that as the world is ending, people will stick together, that we need each other and must accept one another. It's also the resolution to Melanie's arc, where she starts out as an aloof loner but becomes part of a family.    

Adding to the film's escalating terror is Hitchcock's choice to forgo an accompanying score, another experimental choice. During the bird attacks all you hear is the flapping of wings and squawking sounds. This accomplishes two things: giving you the felling of being in the middle of  a bird assault, with your senses being overwhelmed. It's also another way the film sets itself apart from a traditional Hollywood feature. We may not first notice the absence of a musical score but when you realize it it's a brilliant way to an even stronger sense of fear in the audience. When Melanie is waiting outside the school for Cathy, the children's choir is the ironic soundtrack to the birds gathering behind Melanie on the jungle gym. George Tomasini's editing is so in tune with Hitchcock's dark sense of humour as the editing steadily builds the flocking of the birds behind the oblivious Melanie. Tomasini deserves recognition as being a key Hitchcock collaborator, editing several of Hitchcock's most famous films, including Psycho, Rear Window, and North by Northwest. He also edited the original Cape Fear, which I wrote about on this blog as having a heavy Hitchcock influence.

Why did Hitchcock move towards something more experimental, forgoing plot and certain Hitchcockian tropes. It may have something to do with Hitchcock's fascination with the international art house cinema of the 60s. Richard Allen, in his essay "Hitchcock and the Wandering Woman: The Influence of Italian Art Cinema on The Birds," argues that Hitchcock was 

        challenged and provoked by the remarkable and rapid developments taking place in European art            cinema. The Birds was conceived by Hitchcock in part as a response to this challenge, a work that         at once would continue continue his commercial success and confirm his status as an auteur on a            par with the European directors he so admired. Hitchcock engaged with art cinema to inspire                  creativity and sustain his critical reputation

In an interview with Charles L.P. Silet, Hunter also makes the claim that Hitchcock want be seen as a serious artist: 

    Hitch also told me later, and I learned later from other sources, that he was looking for some 'artistic     respectability' with The Birds. This was something that always eluded him, and he deliberately chose     to work with a successful New York novelist, rather than a Hollywood screenwriter.

Hitchcock was embraced by the French critics as a genuine artist, an auteur, whereas he wasn't as highly regarded in the states, seen as more of an entertainer than an artist. Of course, he wasn't one who was reclaimed by the French: Howard Hawks, another great mesher of entertainment and artistry, was another to whom the French applied the Auteur Theory approach of criticism, the idea that the director was the "author" of their films and had a singular visual style and consisitent themes running through their work.

Not only did Hitchcock go to a novelist for screenwriting duties, he chose a short story from Daphne  Du Maurier, the author who wrote the basis of his first American film, and the only one of his that won Best Picture: Rebecca. While Hitchcock considered Rebecca as belonging to its producer, David O.Selznick, he may have felt the Best Picture victory and Du Maurier's literary pedigree could provide him with the basis for a true artistic picture. 

As relating to the thesis of Hitchcock being influenced by European cinema, Allen argues that The Birds shares quite a bit in common with F.W. Murneau's 1927 silent film, Sunrise, where a woman enters a small town to seduce a man who lives with the family. Allen argues that Hitchcock drawing from Murneau displays a return to Hitchcock's roots in the 1920s as a young filmmaker, where he also took inspiration from directors he admired. Allen also sees a reverse influence by way of Michelangelo Antonioni recontextualizing Rear Window and The Lady Vanishes in the shape of his 1960 film L'Avventura. In that film a woman goes missing, after which her boyfriend and friend engage in an affair, which echoes the disappearing women plots of the former films.

Allen further develops the Antonioni connection by citing David Bordwell's classification of the art   house protagonist, a wanderer who is in a passive relationship with the environment. "The wandering woman" walks without purpose, and is both observed and observing. This is a character that can be found Antonioni's films in the form of actress Monica Vitti. Allen relates Melanie to the archetype of the wandering woman but stresses that the difference between the women in Hitchcock's film have agency, whereas the women in Antonioni's film don't. In the early parts of the film, where Melanie travels to Bodega Bay show us a woman on a mission but by showing us every part of her journey suggests something distinctly European in terms of plot, or lack of plot I should say. It's all very banal, but in its banality it creates the proper contrast to the gull attack. 

I'd say Hitchcock combined the art-house with the monster movie, but also blurring those lines, where the birds take on the same thematic weight as the environments do in Antonioni. Admittedly, it wasn't until this viewing of The Birds and reading up and thinking about the connection between the art-house and Hitchcock that I saw it as the experimental work it really is. While Hitchcock would eventually retreat in to familiarity with Torn Curtain, when looking at Psycho, The Birds, and his next film, Marnie. these films showcase what could be called Hitchcock's art-house phase- and I think you can certainly add Vertigo in there as well. While some see these films as quaint, I'd argue they represent an artist in his later years re-thinking of what he was capable. The Birds is singularly Hitchcock, however one looks at it, however, and one of his boldest experiments in suspense.

"No One Will Save You"

Some spoilers below

My favourite director, Alfred Hitchcock, always believed in the concept of "pure cinema," which is basically telling of a film's story purely through the visuals. Hitchcock thought many films were "photographs of people talking" and that the silent cinema was more ideal than the "talkies.". Writer/director Brian Duffield seems to taken Hitchcock's commitment to pure cinema to heart for his sophomore film, No One Will Save You, which asks the question "What if Signs was a silent, one-woman show?" It's another ambitious venture for Duffield, whose 2020 film Spontaneous took a "How do you make out of that" premise and made an unexpectedly emotional love story out of it. As with Spontaneous, No One Will Save You is a character piece with a genre conceit as its background, grounding its fantastic premise in something authentically human and relatable.

Kaitlyn Dever stars as Brynn Adams, a woman who lives in a huge house all alone, doesn't really have any friends and is still mourning the loss of her mother from several years earlier. One night her house is invaded by alien...and that's pretty all I can tell, one- because that's pretty much what the movie is. As I said it's Signs but with one person, but also, where the film eventually goes is perhaps too vague on Duffield's part and honestly, I'm still not sure about what these aliens want or what happens in the film's final act and closing scene. It also feels like it has three big emotional climaxes, with Duffield not knowing where to end it or tie all three together. 

But if the film doesn't completely live up to it's potential, it's a still worth seeking out due to its commitment to visual storytelling and also to is lead performance. Dever was so good in Olivia Wilde's Booksmart and last year's Shakespeare-inspired comedy Rosaline, and this is a great showcase for her underrated talents. She creates a sympathetic and dimensional character out of the sparsity of Duffield's script. From the very beginning, with Brynn waving to herself in the mirror, Dever reveals Brynn's awkwardness in social situations, and Dever carries herself as someone who's only really comfortable building model houses. Dever has such an appealing face and a down to earth to beauty that you have no problem watching her.

Though there are scenes with other people, the lack from Brynn to them or them to her gives us this isolating feel, putting us in Brynn's shoes and making everyone feel as much like an uncomfortable presence to us as they are to Brynn. Everyone feels...alien. The only time Brynn comes close to speaking to anyone, the parents of her friend Maude who died years ago, she's spit on by Maude's mother. Then, when Brynn's on a bus attempting to leave an the initial attack, a man sits behind her on the bus. We expect this is some kind of creep, but then it's revealed it's an alien in disguise who attacks her. Everyone feels like they could be a threat to Brynn and since Duffield so effectively puts us in Brynn's head, it's like a radical form of empathy.  Coming back to Hitchcock, he was adept at putting you in the minds of his characters, good or bad. Remember when Norman is cleaning up the mess after "shower scene"? Remember how Hitchcock makes you worried Norman is going to be caught when the car doesn't sink in the river? Part of why Hitchcock's films are so suspenseful is because you're feeling the suspense the characters are feeling.   

I want to talk a little about the aliens. Duffield and his VFX artists go for a retro look with the invaders, which I think works. A more original look would've put the focus more on them than on Brynn. There's also something humorous about this young woman killing aliens right out of a 50s B movie. On a side note,  it's always hard not to think about Home Alone when you see someone preparing for a home invasion. Spielberg's shadow, like a mothership, will always hover over the alien visitor sub-genre, so Duffield was also likely thinking of Spielberg's own retro take on aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, another film that's essentially a character piece. And if Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) was a family man who becomes a loner who runs away from his life, Brynn is a loner who has to deal with her past.  

We admire Brynn for her resourcefulness in facing off against the aliens. There's a believability to how Brynn interacts with these creatures, a simplicity to how these kills them. It's close encounters in closed in spaces. While the aliens do have psyhic powers, it's the only advantage they really have. They're Kryptonian warriors from Man of Steel or even the terrifying tripods from Spielberg's War of the Worlds. Again, there's kind of a humorous touch to the proceedings, without dipping in to full comedy. 

So yeah, I would say check this one out. Again, I think it needed a little more clarity in the final act to bring it together seamlessly but it's a worthwhile experiment. So, what's your favourite alien invasion/contact story. Comment and let me know.

 

The Essential Films: The Terminator (1984)

A series of writings on films that I feel are essential for film lovers, coupled with films that are important to me. Spoilers for those who haven't seen the film. 

The Terminator is maybe my favourite movie. Many people prefer Terminator 2: Judgment Day but I always go for the first one. T2 is more of a crowd pleasing summer action film about a boy and his pet terminator (I like the movie but have complicated feelings about it) but The Terminator is much bleaker and dirtier, a mixture of sci-fi and horror which its writer and director James Cameron called "tech noir." Like most first films in a franchise there's a real purity to it. There's no formula or call backs, just an inventive story its director, like George Lucas with the original Star Wars, wanted to put on screen.

While Lucas had the success of American Graffiti to his name when he did Star Wars, Cameron had Piranha 2: The Spawning, which bombed with critics and audiences. It was during post production of that film where Cameron got sick and had a fever dream/nightmare about a robot skeleton dragging itself along the floor with kitchen knives. This obviously stuck with Cameron and became the basis for The Terminator. The film is often considered a horror film and of all the Terminator films it's the only one that feels like a pure translation of Cameron's nightmare on screen. The sequels go more for bombastic action than the pure terror of an unstoppable killing machine. And while Cameron could've just made a killer robot movie, he places the "slasher" element within the context of a intriguing time travel narrative that has, what I think, is one of the most underrated twists/payoffs in any movie.

In terms of the slasher genre, Cameron clearly took inspiration from John Carpenter's Halloween. Both Carpenter and Cameron show us ordinary women being stalked by hulking killers who feel out of place in the normal world. Tension is created through this unease and question of when they'll strike at the main character. Cameron's original conception of the Terminator was that of a normal looking guy who could come up to you in a crowd and kill you. But when he met Arnold Schwarzenegger, he rein-visioned it as what we see in the film. This is one of rare instances of Schwarzenegger playing a villain. The image we have of him is the goofy cartoon come to life but here Schwarzenegger is actually quite intimidating, a real beast. We see him kill a couple of innocent women point-blank. Before he kills the first Sarah Connor (he only knows the name of the woman he's after), there's that striking shot of him in the door frame, emotionless. Arguably, one can't call the Terminator evil. Rather, it's just a machine with a program.  

At first we don't know why the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) wants to Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), a waitress who's barely making it by. All we know is there's some future war between humans and machines and, as the opening text crawl tells, the final battle will be fought in the present day- with the Terminator , as well as another guy, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), coming from the future. We eventually learn that in the future her son John Connor will lead the human resistance against the machines and winning the war. In a last ditch effort the machines have sent back the Terminator back to kill John before he's even born. 

The key to good exposition is to make the audience forget they're hearing an info dump. Cameron does this creating a sense of urgency during these scenes.  When Reese tells Sarah about her son and the future war, they're on the run from the Terminator, hiding in a car and then attempting to get to another. Cameron also avoids using flashbacks during this scenes so we're allowed to imagine Connor leading the humans against the machines. And when Reese is being interrogated at the police station, talking about the time displacement field, he's talking to a psychologist who clearly doesn't believe him. We're sharing in Reese's frustration with Silberman (Earl Boen), since we know the Terminator is going to arrive at any moment. Reese is captive and Sarah is isolated.  

A more routinely structured film would've given us all this information via Reese being told his mission at he film's beginning Reese would be this version's main character and the story would be that of a cool time-travelling action hero. Instead, Cameron takes a more subversive path, withholding the information regarding Sarah's significance from the audience until she learns it. Cameron wants this to be Sarah's story, a human story rather than just merely a time-travelling action movie.

Cameron also subverts the typical male action hero archetype of the time. Physically, Biehn is not a big guy but pretty skinny. And Biehn plays the character in the early parts of the film as very sketchy individual, possibly as dangerous to Sarah as the Terminator. He doesn't scresm "heroic" but makes Sarah nervous when she first sees him, thinking he's the ma who killed the other Sarah Connors (the Terminator doesn't know what Sarah looks like). It's only when Reese saves Sarah from the Terminator at the "Tech Noir" club that it becomes clear he's there to protect her. Cameron slows everything down as the Terminator approaches Sarah. In one of my favourite shots in the film- it points a laser target at Sarah. The suspense builds as Kyle takes out his shotgun and then everything goes back to normal speed as Kyle fires, almost as if the action has brought everything up to speed.

Biehn's performance is all raw, gritted teeth, sweaty, fried out energy. It's the type of character the franchise never revisited, even when they brought back Reese in later sequels. With the sequels, it's always Schwarzenegger as the robotic protector who fight another Terminator. Here, it's two humans against a unstoppable killing machine. It makes things more intimate, especially when Sarah and Reese do have sex. It's implied that Reese is a virgin before this and I can't think of another action movie of this kind that infers this about the main guy. 

Even barring the "mother of the future" thing, Sarah is understandably skeptical of Reese telling her there's a robot from the future trying to kill her. It's only when the Terminator mows down the police station that she truly and fully believes Reese is telling the truth. My favourite moment from the film is when Sarah thinks the Terminator is coming through the door but it's Reese. She's relieved it's him and the two share a brief moment before escaping. It's at this moment that the two are completely together, and will be for the rest of the film

Cameron knew he wouldn't have the budget to do a story set in the future so he wrote this smaller story which has big implications. The fate of the human race depends on the outcome of this chase thriller, and by the end we realize what has occurred is even more monumental and mind-bending, which is that Kyle is John's father. We can also  put 2 and 2 together and realize Sarah trained John because she knew about the future. The whole thing is a time loop and this chase thriller takes on a more mythic quality. 

Unlike most of the sequels, we never see John on screen. I prefer this because I believe John works better as off-screen presence, a symbol. "I'd die for John Connor," Reese tells Sarah, and I don't know if any of the actors who've played John have conveyed what we get from Reese talking about the guy. It also puts the focus on Sarah. She's the hero of the story, not John John can only become the man he is because of his mother's training and being told the truth about his father, the man Sarah loved. At the end she questions whether she should tell John this, if it'll influence his choice to send Kyle back. I believe it's because John Kyle is his father that he sends him back. "No fate but what we make" becomes the philosophy of Terminator 2 but the original implies there can only be one path. Could Sarah ever have done anything different than tell John the truth. I don't know. 

While the film concerns a future war, it's one of the great time capsule films of the 1980s. Sarah's hair is one of the most memorable images and the Tech Noir club, the music, the dancing, its just all drenched in 80sness. The film is also one of the great unsung L.A movies, especially L.A. at night. Cinematographer Adam Greenberg's shooting of the city at night has a Michael Mann-esque quality. I love the shot of the Terminator looking over the L.A cityscape, a city full of people who don't know of the coming apocalypse. And Brad Fiedel's score, that throbbing sound that's like the Terminator's mechanical heart, the mournful and metallic main theme, it's so good.  

The biggest challenge Cameron when writing, casting and direction, was how to convincingly take Sarah from this timid waitress to a survivor who drives off in to a storm at the end, symbolizing, not subtly. the coming apocalypse and the dark days ahead. Even when Sarah accepts there's a terminator after her, she still can't see herself as the actual person it's after. I think we as the audience are also supposed to wonder how this person could ever train a child to become the leader of the human race. But by the end, when Sarah drives off, it feels like we've been on an epic journey with Sarah. Again, Cameron took a small story and makes it feel bigger through its implication. Hamilton is convincing as both the afraid young woman but also the woman at the end who says "You're terminated, fucker." Cameron puts Sarah through so much, and has her bond with so Reese so deeply, that it's completely believable she would harden and be able to save herself, as well as taking on the responsibility of training John. And as I argued earlier, the film is fatalistic. There's only one path for Sarah to take. 

What brings back me to the movie is Sarah and Reese's relationship, as short-lived as it is. This feels like the most intimate of the Terminator films because, as I said earlier, it's two humans up against a machine rather a machine against a machine as in the sequels. Reese dies tragically while destroying  the Terminator's legs, a brutal hit to the audience but necessary for Sarah to eventually survive. That The Terminator ends up as a tragic but also triumphant love story is what makes this film stand out amongst other 80s action movies. While the Terminator is cold without feeling, the film itself, like the Tin Man has a real heart.

Oceans of Time: "Bram Stoker's Dracula"

Spoilers Below

We don't make films that look and like Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula anymore. It belongs to the era that also gave us Tim Burton's Batman Returns and Joel Schumacher's 2 Batman films, as well as

Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, singular, director driven movies with big budgets and based on popular source material. Dracula and Batman Returns owe themselves more to German expressionism and silent movies than Hollywood conventions. While we have auteur driven big budget films from the likes of Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve it's hard to imagine either them making something as campy, avant-garde and erotic as this film. They're both too sexless to make an sexual film. Robert Eggers is doing his Nosferatu remake but that's probably going to be a more somber affair without the camp humour of this film. But to be fair, the guy who put a decapitated horse's head in a guy's bed and had Marlon Brando talk about polio doesn't necessarily seem like anyone's idea of a sexy filmmaker. However, Coppola's career and style has always been varied and unpredictable. 

Coppola's style is defined by its fluidity and adaptation, fitting his style to what the film needs- from the novelistic quality of The Godfather films, the surreal nightmarishness of Apocalypse Now, the chilly paranoia of The Conversation, and the lowkey fantasy of Peggy Sue Got Married. He also doesn't box himself by genre. He took the gangster film and put on a Shakespearean scale with both parts of The Godfather, combined the gangster and musical genres with The Cotton Club, and made a war film as strange and atmospheric as Apocalypse Now. Dracula is a horror film but it's also a gothic romance blended with the avant-garde and camp. It also wasn't the first time Coppola delved in to the gothic. When he enrolled in UCLA film school, he directed couple of short horror films, Two Christophers, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's William Wilson, and Ayamonn The Terrible, about a sculptor's nightmares coming to life. In 1963 Coppola was one of several uncredited directors on Roger Corman's The Terror, starring Boris Karloff and a young Jack Nicholson. Coppola's first full length feature was the Psycho-inspired Dementia 13.  And one can detect Coppola's horror roots in the horse's head and murder of the five families sequences from The Godfather. 

Before Dracula, Coppola returned to this greatest financial and artistic success with The Godfather Part III. And thematically Dracula begins where that film ends. After seeking legitimacy throughout the film  Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) witnesses his daughter Mary (Sofia Coppola) murdered by assassins meant to kill him. In 1462 Romanian knight Vlad Dracula (Gary Oldman) returns home from his war against the Ottoman Empire to find his wife Elisabetta (Winona Ryder) has committed suicides after the Ottomans reported him dead. Dracula is enraged that after fighting for God this same God didn't prevent his wife's death (and since it was a suicide she won't be allowed in to Heaven). Dracula renounces God and, in an expressionistic piece of storytelling. drinks the blood from a stone cross,  making him in to a vampire. Both Michael and Dracula lose loved ones to their enemies and if Godfather Part III's ending reminds us of King Lear, Dracula's prologue brings to mind Romeo & Juliet, which Coppola does reference in one of the behind the scenes documentaries, as well as Ophelia's suicide from Hamlet. So, Coppola, as he did with the Godfather films, is taking a piece oggenre fiction and reinterpreting it as operatic tragedy. Dracula's howl of pain before cutting to the title is probably the film's most effective emotional moment, for me. 

Coppola said in interviews he felt the other adaptations of Dracula never really did the book, so with his interpretation is was an attempt to follow Bram Stoker's novel more closely- the official title of this film is Bram Stoker's Dracula and Coppola always likes giving the author credit. However, I believe the love story element is something screenwriter James V. Hart added (Hart also did two other literary adaptations, Steven Spielberg's Hook. Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein and, of all things, Muppet Treasure Island). I've never read Stoker's novel but I do know it's told via letters and journal entries, which Hart and Coppola reference throughout the film. And of course there's this great (practical shot of Jonathan Harker's (Keanu Reeves) diary in the foreground while a train runs across the screen in the background. The diary was an oversized book and the train was an actual miniature train. 

Harker (Keanu Reeves) is  the young solicitor who, in 1897, comes to Dracula's castle to arrange his real estate acquisitions in London. His fiancee, Mina Murray (Ryder, again), is the reincarnated Elisabeta and when Dracula sees her picture it becomes his goal to seek her out. Without the use of flashbacks, we're left to imagine the hundreds of years Dracula has been undead. He feels like the loneliest, most haunted Dracula to grace the screen. This was Oldman back when he really threw himself in to these offbeat villain roles and such a chameleon that I remember knowing someone who joked he wasn't sure what Oldman actually looked like. Oldman certainly knows what kind of movie he's in and is able to pull off the campy, gothic and theatrical side of the character while also bringing real pathos to his tragic longing, specifically when he transitions from decrepit count to handsome and seductive Prince Vlad. 

Reeves. dodgy accent aside, is endearing as Harker, and works as a proper contrast to Oldman. Reeves' Harker is sexually non-threatening, kind of dull, as opposed to Prince Vlad, a more sexually exciting prospect, challenging the Victorian restrictiveness Mina she's used to. But the relationship between Dracula and  is where my problems with the film begin. I just have a hard time getting swept up emotionally as much as I'd like with the film's love story. I'm not even sure if Oldman and Ryder even have chemistry. I do wonder what the film would've been like with a young Kate Winslet or Rachel Weisz. I also have a problem in general, I think with these kind of heightened love stories. I prefer lower-key, more developed and slower burn romances instead of the more melodramatic kind. for which the film is going. It's a little bit like what Coppola's friend and contemporary George Lucas was attempting in Attack of the Clones with Anakin and Padme. I liked the idea behind the romance but I don't believe it pulled it off that well. However, I think the romance in Dracula is better acted. 

Dracula is one of those films that leads with its aesthetics and mood rather than strong storytelling. If the first 2 Godfather films are like a great novel on screen than Dracula feels like an overproduced Broadway play. This isn't to say there aren't visual pleasures to be found here. The in-camera practical effects are terrific, and they make the film, especially with the stuff in Dracula's castle, reminiscent of a 1920s silent film. Honestly, I'd watch a whole film set in this film's version of late 15th century Transylvania, an expressionistic fairy tale where Dracula fights silhouettes of shadow puppets instead of actors. I also love Dracula's armour, which is like a sci-fi take on Japanese samurai armour. In Elizabeth Joy Glass' piece on the film's costumes (Designing Fear: Bram Stoker's Dracula - The Art of Costume), she discusses how at  the beginning of  production, Coppola said "The costumes will be the set." Glass adds that Coppola "wanted the costumes to be visually exciting set pieces, and set the film's atmosphere." Coppola enlisted Eiko Ishioka, who had designed the Japanese poster for Apocalypse Now,  and who at the time only had a couple of costume credits but she would go on to win the Oscar for Best Costume Design. The Simpsons homaged the film's most famous outfit, Dracula's red coat, along with his hundred-of-years-old white make up and what I once heard described as the "boob head." Lucy (Sadie Frost), Mina'a friend who Dracula turns in to a vampire also has a striking funeral/death dress that's a highlight "set piece Watching the film, it's clear what Coppola was going for. Moreso than the settings, the film's costumes- significantly Dracula's different looks, which rival Padme's in The Phantom Menace- define the film's mix of realism and stylization, where certain scenes feel like they're an authentic depiction of the period, while others, like the scenes in Dracula's castle, feel very theatrical and exaggerated. This helps create a distinction between Dracula's world and the more normal world of Victorian England, which then becomes invaded by Dracula's presence.

But coming back to what I was saying, the storytelling and character work does take a backseat to the costumes and the mood. Don't get me wrong, I'll all about visual style and I hate the expression "style over substance." And I do feel strong visual style and directing can overcome a film's other issues. But like Ridley Scott's Legend, a film that also draws me back because of its strong aesthetics (I know, I'm using that word a lot), I wish I could get more in to Dracula emotionally or at least on a entertainment level. There's some grade A Anthony Hopkins ham from his performance as Professor Abraham Van Helsing, who's brought in to the fray after  Lucy is turned in to a vampire. Hopkins was right off his Oscar win for The Silence of The Lambs and one wishes the movie was just Hopkins vs. Oldman, in a similar vein to the Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing Hammer Horror Dracula movies. There's definitely a more entertaining film in here about Helsing and Dr. Jack Seward (Richard E. Grant), Lucy's fiancée, Arthur Holmwood (Cary Elwes), and Texan Quincy Morris (Billy Campbell) facing off against Dracula. 

So, the film isn't emotionally engaging on the love story level, and it's not fun enough despite the Hopkins bits, so it ends up unsatisfying as both a romance and an entertaining horror film. The sincere romanticism and the camp are also never completely reconciled. Though the film's unwieldy nature gives it its beguiling and esoteric allure. Like Lucas, Coppola is a experimental director at heart, more so than his populist success would lead you to believe. I feel that if Lucas would've kept directing movies after the original Star Wars, he may have eventually become who Coppola is now, a director whose films are outside of the mainstream and experimental. Dracula is one of Coppola's last true commercial films, followed by Jack (1996) and the John Grisham adaptation  The Rainmaker (1997).  He has just completed production on his long-gestating project Megalopolis, a sci-fi film about an architect attempting rebuild New York in to a utopia after a disaster. 

Dracula is a film I always return to, wanting to love it more than I do and it has grown on me in certain respects, though I can't say it's a complete success. However, it's such an distinctive film of excess and theatricality that I'll always go back to for its strong visual design fun performances. A little over 30 years after its release, there's still never anything quite like Coppola's gothic, camp, whatever you want to call it, opus.

Normalcy, Psychopathy, and The Hitchcock Influence on "Cape Fear" (1962)

Spoilers Below

In 1961, after filming The Guns of Navarone under the direction of J. Lee Thompson, Gregory Peck hired Thompson to direct a film adaptation of novel for which Peck bought the rights for his production company,  John D. MacDonald's' The Executioners. Not liking the title, Peck changed it to Cape Fear, since he believed films named after places did very well commercially. And just typing the words Cape Fear alone bring to mind Bernard Herrmann's classic score. While the film has bee  overshadowed by its 1991 remake, directed by Martin Scorsese, Thompson's original is still a startling, tight-knit thriller of psychological torture. It's also one of the best riffs on Alfred Hitchcock ever made. This essay will delve in to the master's influence on the film in terms of style and narrative.  

Like Hitchcock's films, Cape Fear explores the intersection of normalcy and psychopathy. Think of Shadow of a Doubt, where a serial killer returns to his quaint home town, or of Strangers on a Train where a tennis pro gets embroiled in the plot of a psychopath. In Psycho, Hitchcock showed us the darker side of seemingly ordinary people like Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), a bank clerk who steals money from a client. Her path crosses with hotel proprietor Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), another seemingly ordinary, if slightly strange man, who is eventually revealed as the titular psycho. Then there there's Rope, where a dinner party is taking place in the unknown presence of a corpse and two murderers. In Cape Fear a ordinary lawyer, Sam Bowden (Peck) had prior to the events of the film intervened in the attack of a woman by Max Cady (Robert Mitchum). Bowden acted as a witness and got him convicted. At the film's beginning, Cady, now out of prison has come to Georgia, blaming Bowden for his conviction. So, like in Hitchcock we have the ordinary (Bowden and his wife and daughter) and the preternatural evil (Cady). Cady brutally beats a woman before and during the events of the film. He wants to rape Bowden's daughter, Nancy (Lori Martin), and even attempts to blackmail Bowden's wife (Polly Bergen) into giving consent to sex in exchange for sparing Nancy. He's a vile animal, a smart animal, but an animal nonetheless. 

Hitchcock's villains often had similar qualities to Cady, a sort of otherworldly evil, and a lack of remorse for the crimes they've committed: Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotton) in Shadow of a Doubt or Brandon Shaw (John Dall) in Rope. Brandon killed a college friend solely because he believed he was superior to him. And Charlie didn't think  much of  of his victims. Look at this exchange between him and his niece Little Charlie (Teresa Wright):

Uncle Charlie: The cities are full of women, middle-aged widows, husbands dead, husbands who've spent their lives making fortunes, working and working. And then they die and leave their money to their wives, their silly wives. And what do the wives do, these useless women? You see them in the hotels, the best hotels, every day by the thousands, drinking their money, eating their money, losing the money at bridge, playing all day and all night, smelling of money, proud of their jewelry but of nothing else, horrible, faded, fat, greedy women.

Young Charlie: But they're alive. They're human beings.

Uncle Charlie: Are they? Are they, Charlie? Are they human or are they fat, wheezing animals, hmm? And what happens to animals when they get too fat and too old?

Cady has this same hatred towards women. He got horrible revenge against his ex-wife for divorcing him and marrying a plumber, raping her, forcing her to write Cady a love letter than threatening to show it to the plumber if she ever phoned the cops. He views them as animals. Again, Cady has no remorse, blaming Bowden for winding up in prison. That's what makes  him and the premise so terrifying. Interfere with evil and evil will bite you back. With Peck and Mitchum you have the perfect casting to represent these good and evil. Peck is the stalwart everyman, blandly likeable, conventionally handsome. Then you have Mitchum, a rougher kind of actor, whose face often seems drawn by someone rather than birthed. He often played anti-heroes but was capable of playing true, other-worldy, almost comedic evil, as in The Night of the Hunter, which I wrote about many years ago: Davies in the Dark: The Essential Films: "The Night of the Hunter" (1955) (thenoirzone.blogspot.com)

Coming back to Hitchcock, the director always had a distrust of the police, which can be seen in his work, which is full of innocent men on the run, attempting to prove their innocence. The law can't protect you in Hitchcock's world, and it can't in Cape Fear either. The film posits the law cannot protect you but can only respond to a crime. And even when Cady beats up Diane Taylor, she won't testify due to the fear of repercussions from Cady. Essentially, she wants to avoid being in Bowden's position. She can put him away but it won't stop him from coming back and exacting revenge. "No good deed goes unpunished" could've been the film's tagline. Bowden did the right thing in the law's eyes but now it can't remove Cady from Bowden's life. Bowden is a fine upstanding lawyer who believes he can get rid of Cady pretty easily with the help of his friend and police chief, Mark Dutton (Martin Balsam). You'll be forgiven if you assume Dutton will be seen climbing some stairs before getting stabbed, since Balsam will always be associated with Psycho. But no, Cady understands that he can psychologically torment Bowden and his family without breaking the law. . The only way the law will work in Bowden's favor is putting his family in extreme danger, putting them on a boat, so he can trap Cady in the act of attempted violence.

I've talked about the thematic connections between Hitchcock's work and Cape Fear. Now, I want to discuss the stylistic similarities between the two. First, Bernard Herrmann, a frequent Hitchcock collaborator, was brought on to do the score. Like his score for Psycho, his theme for Cape Fear has a stalking terror- something evil is coming for you. Herrmann's scores fitted Hitchcock's expressive style-Hitchcock always wanted to communicate things without dialogue, i.e. visually and auditorily, so Hitchcock provided the images Herrmann's provided the emotion.   

On the DVD making of documentary, director Thompson discusses how he studied Hitchcock,  actually working with him in England years prior. Thompson says he always approached a scene wondering how Hitchcock would do it. One thing Thompson highlights about Hitchcock's style is that he always liked to clue the audience in on something the character didn't know. The footage shown while Thompson is talking is when of Cady's victims, deputy Kersak, who's protecting the Bowden women on a boat, is being stalked by Cady. This is quintessential suspense, obvious, maybe, but it was crucial to Hitchcock's approach to storytelling, the camera being a character that saw things others didn't, and was unable to prevent things. 

Thompson also says he only saw the film in black and white, that the blacks and shadows would enhance the story, that color would ruin it. Like Psycho, it's hard to imagine the film being as effective in color. The world of both films exist in the shadows. Cape Fear's stark cinematography is courtesy of Sam Leavitt. His work provides much of the film's unnerving atmosphere. And it's just styilized enough without drifting in to complete unreality. 

Another Hitchcock collaborator working on the film was Robert Doyle,  Due to his own relationship with Hitchcock, knew what Thompson was looking for in terms of production design. For example, the bed that becomes a cage for Diane Taylor. Then there's the sequence where Nancy is behind a gate, being stalked by Cady. Thompson wanted to the gates to be black. The gates Thompson found were painted extra black by Boyle. What makes this sequence truly Hitchcockian is the payoff at the end when who we think is Cady following Nancy is someone else. George Tomasini, who edited Psycho and Vertigo, obviously knew what he was doing with the editing of that sequence. 

Paying homage can result in a wane amalgamation of that person's style, but  while Cape Fear may not be Rear Window or Psycho, it's a respectable and effective thriller that stands well amongst Hitchcock's ouevre. It doesn't force the Hitchcockiness but comes by it organically. It subtly reminds us of Hitchcock, why creating its own unique personification of evil in Max Cady. Mitchum's performance is arguably up there with Anthony Perkins in Psycho, Joseph Cotton in Shadow of a Doubt, and Robert Walker in Strangers on a Train. Bowden lets Cady live at the end, knowing he can punish him more by sending him to prison than killing him. I can understand why this can strike some as a cop out, that the film should've had Bowden cross the line, having Cady win. But I'd argue Cady has won, permanently scarring Bowden and his family.  He's shown Bowden the lengths how the law, the thing he's dedicated his life too, won't protect him unless he goes to the methods he's gone, almost killing a man. We don't see the family happy at the end as they're being escorted home. They're silent, worn down by the ordeal through which they've gone. Just like the psychiatrist's explanation at the end of Psycho doesn't really matter because Norman can't truly be summed up so neatly, neither can this so story wrap up so easily. Both Norman and Cady can't allow a truly happy ending for anyone in their stories. 

My Favourite Best Picture Winners

Spoilers Below 

In my last post I wrote about 10 films which didn't get nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. Now, I want to discuss my favourite winners in this category, ones where I think the Academy got it (pretty much) right. The Oscars are always a fascinating snapshot in time. They're reflective of what people liked in the moment more than what lasts. But these films certainly have. So, let's get on with the list.

Casablanca

The late Roger Ebert once wrote of Carol Reed's The Third Man, that more than any film he had seen it embodied the romance of going to the movies. I feel that way about Casablanca. From its witty and poignant script, to the intrigue, the romance and its heroic finale, Casablanca has everything. It's pretty much a perfect film, maybe the best film to come out of the golden age of Hollywood. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, even if they had never starred in anything else significant, would still be immortalizes forever as Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund. Rick is the cynical cafe owner, Ilsa is the woman he loved and left him because she was secretly married to resistance leader Victor Lazlo, and whom walks back in to his life. Rick. who's in possession of stolen letters of transit, is the only one who can help Ilsa and Victor out of Casablanca. But will his torch for Ilsa stop him from doing so? Yes, we know he'll do the right thing but its how we get there that matters. 

Lawrence of Arabia

The king of al epic movies, only rivaled by The Lord of The Rings, if you count that as one movie. The reason I call Lawrence of Arabia such is it's a great character study as well as a technical marvel. You have movies like the Star Wars prequels which  are conceptually and technically impressive but character and story-wise needed some script refining. And then you have certain superhero films which have some great character stuff but are compromised by formula, weak spectacle and uninteresting direction- but with Lawrence of Arabia, neither the character work or the grand-scale filmmaking feel anything less than stellar.. Another thing thing that impresses about the film is how effectively it both romanticizes T.E Lawrence while also portraying him as a complex, sometimes terrifying figure whom the audience is free to interpret the character, the man, however they like. In the greatest screen debut in cinema history, Peter O'Toole is beautiful, almost feminine, giving a performance that combines grace and madness. This is a mythic and majestic film.

The Godfather and The Godfather Part II

The great epic of American cinema, and still the only time a film and its sequel have both won Best Picture. It's hard to imagine that feat ever being replicated. I guess it's cheating to list both Godfathers under one heading but they compliment each other so well and tell one sprawling story that it makes sense to list them side by side. Michael Corleone's (Al Pacino) transformation from war hero and the good son who didn't want to become part of the family business to ruthless mob boss who will murder his own brother for his act of betrayal is possibly cinema's greatest character arc. That Pacino didn't win for either is one of Oscar's greatest travesties. Michael's arc is complimented by Part II's showing of how his father Vito went from orphan in Sicily to Don in turn of the century New York. These flashback add to the sprawling nature of the narrative, with Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro both winning Oscars for their performance as the Don. 

Director Francis Ford Coppola and novelist Mario Puzo, working from Puzo's popular novel, took the gangster film and put it on a Shakespearean scale while creating a lived in world with authentic people. The films are operatic yet subtle and nuanced. They also transport us back in time to early 1900s New York, post war New York and late 1950s Havana, just before revolution. These are simply unrivaled feats of filmmaking from the Hollywood studio system.

The Silence of the Lambs

The last film to win the top five Oscars (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay), and one that has only gotten better with age. While Anthony Hopkins is iconic as Dr. Hannibal Lecter, it's Jodie Foster as F.B.I trainee Clarice Sterling, on the trail of serial killer Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) who gives this film its grounding and heart.  The film's director, the late Jonathan Demme, was a master of the close-up, using them to show the perspective of characters looking at each other. The film blends the gothic and realistic in such a way that we accept them both as existing in the same world. And again, it's Foster who grounds the whole thing.

The Apartment

The optimistic cynic, Billy Wilder, along with his longtime collaborator, I.A.L Diamond, crafted a perfect screenplay for The Apartment, the story of C.C. "Bud" Baxter, an office worker who lends his apartment to his superiors for their extramarital affair. It's already a difficult situation for Bud, having to spend nights out in the cold, getting him sick. Things get more complicated when he discovers his boss Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) is having an affair with Elevator girl Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), the object of Bud's affection. All of this could be contrived but Wilder and Diamond's script, along with Wilder's direction, create believable characters whose actions make sense, even in a scenario such as this. It's established that this whole apartment lending situation started out with just one guy wanting to use Bud's apartment and then escalated to many men at the office wanting to use the apartment, with Bud using it to his advantage, being granted perks by the higher-ups. Bud is selling his soul but Lemmon is such a likable and sympathetic everyman that we aren't immediately offput by his actions. Bud's not a bad guy and we can see how we could end up in a predicament like this. 

I always feel that Wilder's dramas were very funny and his comedies very dark. The Apartment walks the line between comedy and drama so expertly that that it feels unbalanced. And like many other Wilder films, it ends on the perfect note.

No Country For Old Men

I just re-watched this and man does it hold up. This is a fantastic movie that's only gotten better with age. It's one of the perfect matches of source material (Cormac McCarthy's novel) and filmmakers (the Coen brothers). From their first film, Blood Simple (1984), the Coens have played around with genre conventions, creating films that both belong in their respective genres but also exist somewhat outside them. There's an offbeat quality to their work, with No Country For Old Men being populated by familiar types who are also different from anyone else we've encountered before. Hit man Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem in an Oscar winning performance), with his weird haircut and pre-occupation with a coin toss- a flip of faith- is one of the most unusual villains in recent memory, genuinely terrifying whenever he shows up. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is the "good old boy" who's smarter than we may at first realize, a character who would be a supporting player, killed off pretty early in another film but takes center stage here. And then there's Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), who we assume is maybe going to be killed when he catches up to Chigurh, but narrowly misses him. 

The movie sets us a up for a showdown between Moss (Josh Brolin), who has stolen 2 million from a drug deal gone bad, and  Chigurh but Moss is killed offscreen,  and the final scene is Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) talks to his wife about two dreams he had- "Then I woke up" is the final line, cutting to black. There's no satisfying resolution to anything. It's a bleak but it fits the noir style, where there are no heroes or heroic endings. The villain gets away and the survivor, Bell, retires because he doesn't know how to deal with the new kind of evil he's seeing in the world now, though ultimately this kind of evil, the evil Chigurh represents, has been forever, with Chigurh being a devil/grim reaper figure, haunting the whole film

Amadeus 

Maybe it's my own feeling of mediocrity that makes Amadeus the most relatable film to be, but I think it's also a brilliant idea to tell the story of a great artist through the perspective of the bitter rival who wasn't as great. Peter Shaffer's play was the basis for Milos Foreman's glorious film, one of the best of the 80s, a decade that's not one of my favourite, despite some great films. F. Murray Abraham, received a Best Actor Oscar for his performance as the proud but jealous and old-fashioned Antonio Salieri, while Tom Hulce was nominated for his performance along Abraham for his mischievous performance as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart is childish but also serious when it comes to music. The fact that such an immature young man could be so talent enrages Salieri but he but he feels guilt for Mozart's death, believing he killed him.

On the Waterfront

If you were going to ask me what my favourite performance of all time is, I would say Marlon Brando's Oscar wining performance as Terry Malloy in Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront. This is Brando at the peak of his physical beauty and acting abilities. While A Streetcar Named Desire established his image, and The Godfather his most iconic, On the Waterfront is his most sensitive and tender work, masculine but feminine. Movies are time capsules that can keep an actor forever young in their prime, and that's what this film is for me when it comes to Brando. 

Of course, the film's director, Elia Kazan, was the ultimate actors' director, his films being defined by a rawer, more naturalistic style of acting, and the film is full of other superb performances, including Eva Marie Saint (who won Best Supporting Actress), Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden and Rod Steiger When Kazan won an honorary Oscar in the late 90s (on of Oscar's most controversial moments), Martin Scorsese called Kazan a poetic realist, and you can see why just by looking at this film, which blends realism with stylish flourishes. 

The story is that of  Malloy, who testifies against the mob boss (Cobb) who runs the docks. Malloy has to decide between loyalty to this father figure and doing the right thing, which could lead to redemption for Malloy after being involved in the murder of another dock worker.

Rebecca

Hitchcock's first film in America, and the only Hitchcock film to win Best Picture (Hitchcock's other 1940 film Foreign Correspondent was also nominated) and on Hitchcock attributed more to producer David. O Selznick than himself. However, the Hitchcock is not absent in this entertaining gothic melodrama, base Daphne Du Maurier's splendid novel (one of my favourites), about a  unnamed woman (Joan Fontaine) who marries a rich widower, Max de Winter (Laurence Oliver), who former wife's presence still haunts his home of Manderley. Fontaine and Oliver were both nominated for their performances (Fontaine would win the next year for another Hitchcock film, Suspicion, with Cary . Grant) and Judith Anderson is sublimely creepy as Manderley's housemaid Mrs. Danvers, who still adores Rebecca. I wrote more about the film here: Davies in the Dark: The Essential Films: "Rebecca" (1940) (thenoirzone.blogspot.com)  

So, what are your favourite Best Picture winners? Comment and let me know. 

11 Great Films That Were Not Nominated For The Best Picture Oscar

Spoilers Below

The history of the Oscars tell their own narrative regarding the greatest films in the history of the medium. While what we consider great is subjective, the Oscars, I would argue, provide a limited view of cinematic greatness. Genre films are often left out, actors of color ignored, great actors and directors never won. But specifically, I wanted to take a moment and look at 11 films that were not nominated for Best Picture, films which have lived on longer some winners. Some may surprise you, but I think it's important to understand why certain films were not appreciated in their moment, that it took time for them to attain classic stature. So, let's get started. These aren't in specific order, but I will be starting with three by a director who never got his due from Oscar.

1. Rear Window  (1954)

Alfred Hitchcock is defined by his dark and twisted portrayals of human nature in the guise of entertaining Hollywood thrillers. One of the most purely entertaining of films, Rear Window isn't just about whether a man has killed his wife, it's about a peeping tom, kind of a pervert, and the human desire to watch. The film is essentially  a meta commentary on cinema in general, on the need for excitement in our ordinary lives. 

We're watching L.B "Jeff" Jefferies, a photographer who's in a cast, stuck in his apartment (after being injured taking a picture of a race car crash) watch his neighbours in the courtyard of apartments, everyone with a story, an entire universe in and of itself. He needs these stories the same way we need films, which give us the ability to view other peoples' lives (albeit fictional). When Jeff suspects businessman Lars Thorwold (Raymond Burr) of killing his invalid wife, his obsession with proving his guilt gives him the ultimate reprieve from boredom, even bringing him closer to his socialite girlfriend Lisa Friedmont (Grace Kelly). But as much as the film deals with the investigation of Thorwold, the other apartment dwellers are just as important. All these people become as familiar to us as they are to Jeff. 

Hitchcock would get a Best Director nomination for the technical brilliance on display ( the whole film is shot on a set, with Hitchcock giving directions via earpiece to his actors), as well as nominations for Best Writing- Screenplay, Color Cinematography, and Best Sound Recording, but oddly not Best Picture. The five nominees were On the Waterfront, The Caine Mutiny, Seven Wives For Seven Brothers, The Country Girl (for which Kelly won Best Actress), and Three Coins in the Fountain. On the Waterfront was the winner, with its director, Elia Kazan, winning Best Director. For me, I would split the two, giving Hitchcock Director and On the Waterfront Picture. 

2. Psycho (1960)

Hitchcock once again received a Best Director nomination (his last) for this proto-slasher film, but without the film getting in to Best Picture. And like Rear Window, it also received four nominations (Hitchcock, Best Supporting Actress for Janet Leigh, B&W Cinematography, and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (B&W). 

While the film can be argued to be the first modern slasher film, pre-dating Black Christmas and Halloween by nearly 20 years, it starts out as a film noir about real-estate Marion secretary Crane (Janet Leigh) stealing a client's money so she can start a new life with her boyfriend. She winds up at the Bates Motel, where the whole dynamic shifts with the introduction of proprietor Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). The film seems to have- like Marion- taken a detour as we spend a lengthy conversation between the two over supper. Norman is a sad and lonely man who's only relationship is with his invalid mother. 

When Marion is killed in the infamous shower scene it's the film's first interjection of horror, upsetting the narrative we thought we were watching. The sequence is still startling in its violence and impressive in its filmmaking. George Tomasini's sharp editing reflects the knife going in to Marion's body and Bernard Herrmann's screeching score has become synonymous with 'crazy.' The film has spent so much time with Marion that the sudden burst of violence unsettles. There's only 2 murder scenes in the film- this and the murder of Private Investigator Arboghast (Martin Balsam) bu the film relies more on atmosphere and build-up to create a sense of subtle horror in the audiences' mind. 

It's revealed Norman killed his mother and her lover and took on a split personality- he and his mother. The film was never about the money or Marion, it was about Norman's psychosis, with every thing else being a distraction from the truth about Norman  Perkins' performance is so convincing that he could never escape the role. Perkins is deeply sympathetic as Norman; I never view him as the film's villain but as a tragic character, despite the horrible crimes he commits. 

Hitchcock's direction displays his mastery of visual storytelling and his ability to place us n the minds of both Marion and Norman, two people who are closer in spirit than either of them realizes, two people who are tragically torn apart by "mother."  

The Best Picture Nominees that year were The Apartment, The Alamo, Elmer Gantry, Sons and Lovers, and The Sundowners. The winner was The Apartment, which, like On the Waterfront, is one my favourite Best Picture winners. Again, I would give Hitchcock the directing Oscar (Billy Wilder won), while giving Best Picture to The Apartment.

3. Vertigo  

Yes, another Hitchcock, but probably the biggest one to be left out of Best Picture. Not surprisingly, since Vertigo took many years to earn the critical acclaim it now enjoys. The film which was voted the greatest of all time by Sight & Sound back in 2012, and holds at # 2 in 2023, only got two Oscar nominations, for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration and Best Sound. Bernard Herrmann's swooningly melancholic and romantic score, James Stewart and Kim Novak's layered performances, Hitchcock's visionary direction, all ignored. And I get it, I get in 1958 why this was seen as a misfire, why it takes a rewatch or two to really appreciate this film. It took me a second viewing to begin to embrace it. It's probably Hitchcock's most purely artistic and audacious film, one whose D.N.A can be found in other films like David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, George Sluizer's The Vanishing, and Brian De Palma's Obsession. But despite being the influence behind several films, the story remains fresh and unique in the way it moves from ghost story to romance and finally, to obsession. 

It's the story of an acrophobic detective, Scottie Ferguson (Stewart). hired by a old college friend, Gavin Elster, (Tom Helmor)  to follow his wife, Madeleine (Novak), whom he believes has been possessed by the ghost of her great-grandmother. Scottie falls in love with Madeleine but fails to stop his suicide. Afterwards meets another woman named Judy (Novak), who looks like Madeleine, whom he tries to make over in to the image of his dead love. 

Vertigo has an hypnotic power that brings me back time and again, and time is a big theme in the film. Scottie didn't get to Madeleine in time, the past is coming back to haunt Madeleine and then Scottie, near the film's end Scottie says he needs to do one thing to be free of the past.        

The nominees that year were Gigi, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Auntie Mame, The Defiant Ones, and Separate Tables, with Gigi being the winner (its director Vincente Minnelli won Best Director), which I've still have yet to see.

4. The Searchers

John Ford had already won 4 Oscars for directing by the time he did the The Searchers, and a fifth one wouldn't have been out of the question, except Ford and the film were completely shut out at the Oscars (Ford did get a DGA nomination, however), which now seems inexplicable considering The Searchers stature as an American classic. It's a difficult film to reconcile, a story dealing with racism that also still has some racist leanings, but it nonetheless a great film, though I still prefer Stagecoach. John Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a confederate soldier returning to his brothers' home after the Civil War. When his brother Aaron, and Aaron's wife are murdered by Comanche Native Americans,, Edwards, along with his adopted nephew Martin (Jeffrey Hunter) go off in pursuit of Ethan's kidnapped nieces. 

The film, courtesy of Ford cinematographer of Winton C. Hoch, has some of the striking visuals of any western, capturing what director John Milius said felt to him what the real American west was like. And even with the many revisionist westerns that followed, The Searchers still feels like the most realistic western of its time, especially in terms of its violence, which is still unsettling. The most disturbing aspect of the film is the notion that Ethan will kill one of his nieces Debby (Natalie Wood) after she's "gone native" living with the Comanches for several films (the other, Lucy (Pippa Scott) was killed). 

Wayne plays his most complex role in a performance that, as Martin Scorsese said, makes you hate him but still love him when he returns Debbie home by film's end. And of course, there's that great closing shot of him walking away, as a door closes, bookending the opening door at the beginning. It's wistful and, honourable and poetic. 

The nominees that year where Around the World in 80 Days, Giant, Friendly Persuasion, The King & I, and The Ten Commandments. Around the World in 80 Days, directed by Michael Anderson and produced by Elizabeth Taylor's then husband Mike Todd, who would die a year later in a plane crash. The extravagant film is probably one of the weaker Best Picture winners but is still worth seeing for the sheer scale of it, it's a fascinating time capsule. 

5. Days of Heaven

After establishing his esoteric sensibilities in Badlands (1973), Terrence Malick came back with his voice and style fully formed with Days of Heaven, one of the most ravishing films of all time. It won the Oscar for Best Cinematography- given to Nestor Almendros, though Haxell Wexler took over after after Almendros had to fulfill his commitment to shooting Francois Trauffaut's The Man Who Loved Women.

Taking what 20 years earlier what would've been a 3 hour plus epic, Malick strips down the story of a Chicago steelworker, Bill (Richard Gere) on the run after killing his boss, his sister Linda (Linda Manz), his girlfriend Abby (Brooke Adams), and the dying farmer (Sam Shepherd) Abby marries, in a compact 90 minutes, showing us the fragments of a story through an impressionistic visual style that favours mood and setting over complex characterization.  

The nominees that year were The Deer Hunter, Coming Home, Heaven Can Wait, Midnight Express, and An Unmarried Woman. The Deer Hunter won, which I'm ashamed to say I still haven't seen.

6. Alien 

Ridley Scott's Alien has only gotten better in age, a genuine masterpiece of horror sci fi. The story is so simple but what it's doing is difficult, essentially blending the slow pace of 2001, the lived in junky feel of Star Wars, and the grisliness of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, all while updating a 50s sci-fi creature and placing it in an symbolic haunted house. The alien could've looked goofy, the setting cheap, the pace too slow, but this didn't happen. The pace is slow but with a great sense of dread. The alien is kept in the shadows so we only get glimpses of it and the production design is immaculate, making us believe in the film's unglamorous vision of the future.

A brilliant choice by the film's screenplay- by Dan O'Bannon, with a story by Ronald Shusett-  is conceiving the ensemble of characters as "truckers in space" rather than explorers or scientists.  The characters have a lived-in-ness, a believability as blue collar workers. Them being truckers is also why the Nostromo is so junky- this isn't supposed to be the Enterprise. Michael Seymour's production design and Derek Vanlint's cinematography make the Nostromo one of the most atmospheric settings in horror cinema. 

Like the shower scene in Psycho, the chestburster sequence hasn't lost its shocking impact. Both scenes happen just when things feel like they're getting better, in moments of peace. When Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt) is killed, it really feels like things are at their worst. And then Ash (Ian Holm) is revealed as an android who has been working against them, leaving only Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Parker (Yaphet Khotto) and Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), the feeling of claustrophobia is palpable. 

Weaver became a star for her performance as Ripley, giving her assertiveness, sternness but also vulnerability. Her fear during the final stretch of the film feels authentic and her decision to go back and save the cat is a relatable human moment  Her ultimate survival is almost surprising, given this was the decade of the downer ending but it's not completely triumphant either. She's lost her ship and crew, and has found out she was viewed as expendable by the company for which she works. Still, there is a sense of peace for Ripley at the film's end, as she goes back in to cryosleep, going back in to a dream after a nightmare

The nominees that year were Apocalypse Now, Kramer vs. Kramer, All That Jazz, Breaking Away, and Norma Rae. I personally would go with All That Jazz.

7. The Innocents

Completely shut out of the Oscars, though nominated for the Palme d'Or, this is the spookiest film ever made, as well as the best haunted house movie. Governess Miss Giddens? (Deborah Kerr, in a performance that should've earned her an Oscar nomination) is sent to look after two orphaned children , Miles and Flora, whose uncle has no use for them. After learning about the influence of the late Peter Quint and Miss Jessel on the children, Miss Giddens begins to see apparitions that match their descriptions. She soon comes to the conclusion these ghosts are controlling the children. 

The ambiguity surrounding whether Miss Giddens is actually seeing the ghosts or imagining them is what keeps The Innocents so fascinating 60 years after it premiered. Cinematographer Freddie Francis' Widescreen black and white compositions are immaculate and director Jack Clayton captures a certain Victorian-era Britishness in the performances and characters. The film's chilly atmosphere also makes it-like Stanley Kubrick's The Shining- a perfect alternative Christmas film.

The nominees that year were West Side Story, The Hustler, Fanny, The Guns of Navarone, and Judgement at Nuremberg, with West Side Story winning, along with nine other wins. I prefer Spielberg's new West Side Story (My thoughts here :Davies in the Dark: Tonight, Tonight: "West Side Story" (thenoirzone.blogspot.com) and if I were picking from these nominees I would go with The Hustler (which I wrote about here: Davies in the Dark: Search results for the hustler (thenoirzone.blogspot.com)

8. Carrie

Brian De Palma's masterpiece is also the first Stephen King adaptation and one of the best. A hallucinatory film, but one that has moments of sweetness that only make the tragedy of its climax hit even harder.

 Carrie may be the best film about teenage isolation ever made. Despite being incredibly stylized the film finds emotional truth through Sissy Spacek's nominated performance as Carrie White.  What stood out watching it this time is how Spacek makes Carrie both incredibly unusual but also very sweet and nice. We see her coming out of her shell as things being to go- and then when she's humiliated she really comes out of her shell as she unleashes her telekinetic powers against her tormenters. 

The whole prom sequence and how it leads to the pig blood pouring over Carrie is virtuoso filmmaking. In De Palma fashion it feels like he's showing off but you don't mind because it's so impressive. Then there's Carrie's return home and her final confrontation with her religious zealot mother, Margaret (Piper Laurie, in the film's other nominated perfomances), another amazing stretch of filmmaking. This is one of those films you could watch on mute and still understand what's happening.  The emotions and story are all communicated through the visuals. 

Mario Tosi's cinematography gives the film a hazy dreamlike quality that turns in to a nightmare during the prom sequence- and Carrie covered in blood is one cinema's indelible images.  

The nominees that year were Rocky, Taxi Driver, All The President's Men, Network, and Bound For Glory. Bound for Glory is the only one I haven't see but it's a pretty strong line-up overall. 

9. Close Encounters of the Third Kind

My second favourite Spielberg, right behind Jaws. This is also the ultimate Spielberg film, made a couple of years after Jaws, with his voice fully formed. He received his first Best Director nomination (the only time he and pal George Lucas were nominated alongside each other- Lucas was nominated for Star Wars). The film was beat out in most categories by Star Wars, though it won Best Cinematography for Vilmos Zsigmond's stellar work on the film and won a special award for sound effect editing.

It's a darker film then you may remember, with Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) becoming obsessed with U.F.Os after a close encounter with one and alienating his family. But it's also awe-inspiring and wonderous, encapsulating what Spielberg does better than anyone else. It's hard to imagine a blockbuster movie like this getting made now, given it doesn't have a big action climax, but a climax involving the attempt to communicate with an alien mothership. Denis Villenueve's Arrival is the only equivalent I can think of.

Dreyfuss won for The Goodbye Girl (which I haven't seen) but I also would argue he could've been nominated for this instead, making Roy a relatable and likable character even as he becomes more unhinged.

The nominees that year were Annie Hall, Star Wars, The Turning Point, Julia, and The Goodbye Girl. Annie Hall was the winner, with Woody Allen winning for direction and screenplay. The film has plenty of baggage attached to it, but it's a very fine winner overall 

10. 2001: A Space Odyssey

Maybe the greatest film not to be nominated for Best Picture, and the best film about contact with alien beings, mostly because we never see them. Stanley Kubrick (who was nominated for Best Director) keeps them mysterious and kind of spooky. The film is a visual marvel (it won Best Visual Effects and it still feels ahead of its time, even as we've long since passed the year in which it takes place. The nominees that year were Oliver!, The Lion in Winter, Funny Girl, Rachel, Rachel, and Romeo & Juliet. Oliver! was the winner, with Carol Reed winning Best Director. I feel Reed should've won for The Third Man instead. Oliver! is okay but I think I would go with The Lion in Winter or Romeo & Juliet

11. Singin' in the Rain

The greatest movie musical of all, and a great film about Hollywood, Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly's Singin' in the Rain is superior to the previous year's Best Picture winner, another Kelly musical, An American in Paris. The film is about Hollywood's transition from silent films to talkies, with movie star Don Lockwood falling in love with chorus girl Kathy Selden (Debby Reynolds), while his screen partner Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen in an Oscar nominated performance), whose shrill voice doesn't make the cut when it comes to talkies, becomes jealous. Donald O'Connor lends support as Don's friend Cosmo Brown, a performance that also should've garnered a Oscar nomination. 

The dancing is off the charts great, the songs funny and poignant, Kelly is at his most charismatic, Hagen is hilarious, and Reynolds becomes a star right before our eyes. It's a truly joyous film, technically brilliant and with a lot of heart. A great example of Hollywood studio filmmaking done right.

The nominees that year were The Quiet Man, The Greatest Show on Earth, High Noon, Ivanoe, and Moulin Rouge. The Greatest Show on Earth won, with John Ford winning for The Quiet Man (his fourth Oscar). The film is usually considered one of the worst- if not the worst film to win Best Picture, though I haven't seen it. For me, I would go with The Quiet Man, maybe my favourite of Ford's films, along with Stagecoach.

So, what films do you think should've been nominated for Best Picture? Comment and let me know.