Big Ideas Simply Explained - The Movie Book

REBEL REBEL 199 What else to watch: Le Corbeau (1943) ■ Shadow of a Doubt (1943) ■ Les Biches (1968) ■ The Unfaithful Wife (1969) ■ La Rupture (1970) ■ Just Before Nightfall (1971) ■ Wedding in Blood (1973) ■ L’Enfer (1994) Claude Chabrol Director The final act brings revelations and confrontations in an intense Claude Chabrol admirer of Alfred Hitchcock, scene that shows as much about was born in but he was the only one of his the couple’s similarities as their 1930 in Sardent, peers to gravitate toward differences. The audience is left in rural France, the thriller, making a series grappling with more questions where he ran a movie club as a of murder mysteries until his than answers. In the very last child. Before directing his own death in 2010. shot, Chabrol returns to a scene movies, he worked as a critic for of the River Dordogne, with which influential magazine Cahiers Key movies he had started the movie. “I adore du Cinéma. Like the other symmetry,” Chabrol once said. directors of the French New 1970 Le Boucher “But I’m not for simple symmetry. Wave who emerged from that 1971 Just Before Nightfall Symmetry doesn’t mean putting magazine, Chabrol was an 1994 L’Enfer one chandelier on the right and another on the left.” The credits Why wasn’t Hélène scared? This is the Upper Paleolithic era. Hélène roll, and we are left to wonder the dynamic that Chabrol chooses gives her class a guided tour, noting about the nature of loyalty, the to deal with in a movie that doesn’t that the paintings were the first step desires that take the people so much resemble a woman-in-peril taken by man toward civilization. experiencing them by surprise, saga as a beauty and the beast story. “Do you know what we call desires and the dark mystery of what Comparisons could be made with when they lose their savage goes on between couples. ■ Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a quality?” Hélène asks. “Aspirations” Doubt (1943), in which a young girl is her answer. The teacher seems Hélène is drawn to Popaul and his discovers that her favorite uncle is a to respect Cro-Magnon man and his gauche advances despite, or perhaps killer of elderly widows. violent purity, which suggests a lot because of, the fact that he has been about her fascination with Popaul. damaged by his violent past. Violent purity The second murder scene explains the movie’s unusual opening credits, which depict the Cougnac grottoes in southwestern France, home to a series of paintings from Le Boucher has us always thinking. What do they know, what do they think, what do they want? Roger Ebert

SOME DAY AND THAT DAY MAY NEVER COME I WILL CALL UPON YOU TO DO A SERVICE FOR ME THE GODFATHER / 1972



202 THE GODFATHER IN CONTEXT F rancis Ford Coppola’s movie Overflowing with life, rich The Godfather changed with all the grand emotions GENRE the gangster-movie genre and vital juices of existence, American gangster entirely, with its depiction of up to and including blood. gangsters grappling with complex DIRECTOR existential dilemmas, rather Kenneth Turan Francis Ford Coppola than as one-dimensional, lowlife hoodlums. Previously, all such Los Angeles Times, 1997 WRITERS gangster stories had been told Francis Ford Coppola from an outsider’s point of view, of his own about how the script (screenplay); Mario Puzo and the gangsters themselves were should be written, and he and Puzo (novel and screenplay) seldom portrayed sympathetically. worked together to complete the final draft. Coppola’s insight was to STARS The Godfather was also the first see that the essence of the story, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, movie to show a Mafia organization and the focus of the movie, should James Caan, Robert from the inside. Its sprawling be the personal transition of Duvall, Diane Keaton portrait of the Corleone family and Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) from their travails acquires the grandeur respectable, law-abiding young man BEFORE and scope of an ancient Greek and decorated war hero to eventual 1931–32 Little Caesar (1931), tragedy, in which honor, duty, and head of a crime family, when he The Public Enemy (1931), and loyalty to family are seen as the takes over from the Godfather, Don Scarface (1932) whet the public characters’ main motivating forces, Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando). appetite for gangster movies. rather than criminal intent. Coppola also saw the story as a metaphor for American free-market AFTER The background capitalism. The Corleones aspire 1974 The Godfather: Part II is The Godfather is based on a best- to the American Dream and fight the hugely successful sequel, selling novel of the same name focusing on Michael Corleone by Italian-American author Mario (Al Pacino) as he becomes a Puzo, which was published in 1969. brutal Godfather. Within a year, Paramount Pictures had commissioned Puzo to write 1990 The Godfather: Part III, the screenplay. the less successful third movie, concludes the Corleones’ story. A successful screenwriter himself, Coppola, who had been hired as the director, had firm ideas Minute by minute 00:45 01:54 02:32 After refusing to help Carlo beats the heavily Don Corleone collapses and 00:01 a narcotics gang, Don pregnant Connie. She dies while playing with his At his daughter Connie’s Corleone is gunned down speaks to her brother grandson. Just before he dies, wedding to Carlo, Don Corleone in the street. He is shot five Sonny, who goes to see he warns Michael that he will receives a series of men seeking times but survives. her, but he is gunned be betrayed. favors. His son Michael is there down at a toll booth. with Kay, who is introduced to the family. 00:00 00:30 01:00 01:30 02:00 02:30 02:58 00:33 01:29 02:04 02:38 Movie studio boss Jack Michael shoots Michael’s new As Michael Woltz wakes up with his drug baron Sollozzo Sicilian wife, attends his godson’s prize horse’s head in and corrupt police Apollonia, is killed christening, his rivals his bed. This persuades chief McCluskey. He by a car bomb. are killed across the him to cast Johnny then leaves for Sicily. Fabrizio, Michael’s city. He also has Fontane, as requested by bodyguard, has Carlo killed. consigliere Tom Hagen. betrayed him.

REBEL REBEL 203 What else to watch: Little Caesar (1931) ■ The Public Enemy (1931) ■ Scarface (1932, p.339) ■ White Heat (1949) ■ The Long Good Friday (1980) ■ Rumble Fish (1983) ■ Once Upon a Time in America (1984) ■ Goodfellas (1990) The Corleones want to appear as a respectable American family. The marriage of Don Corleone’s daughter, Connie, is a lavish affair, but the invited senators and judges stay away. to establish their place in the world. Few movies have focused quite so starkly on the moral contradictions involved in this pursuit. Justice and loyalty daughter outside of the law. It is no exchanges such as this are central to The movie opens with the wedding accident that the movie begins at a this portrayal of the Corleone family. celebration of Don Corleone’s family gathering. The Corleones are There are, in fact, many more scenes daughter, Connie (Talia Shire), presented as a family that must set around the dinner table than there at which the undertaker Bonasera, remain close-knit in order to survive are shoot-outs. The men describe a family associate, seeks a private in the world. Loyalty is everything. what they do as business, which they audience with Don Corleone. Later in the movie, Michael warns keep strictly separate from family. Bonasera asks the Godfather’s his brother Fredo, “Don’t ever take “This is business, not personal,” they help in avenging the beating and sides with anyone against the insist. They see themselves simply rape of his daughter by men who family again. Ever.” Domestic as men doing their job. ❯❯ escaped justice through being wealthy and well connected. “I believe in America,” Bonasera says. “America has made my fortune. And I raised my daughter in the American fashion.” He has bought into the American Dream, yet America has betrayed him. To Don Corleone, then, falls the task of getting justice for Bonasera and his Marlon Brando Actor A Hollywood actor renowned first Academy Award for playing for his brooding presence and a longshoreman in Elia Kazan’s the championing of the “Method” On the Waterfront. In the 1960s, style of acting, Marlon Brando Brando’s career hit a low, but was born in 1924 in Omaha, was revived in 1972 with The Nebraska. After being expelled Godfather and Last Tango in from military school, he enrolled Paris. He died in 2004. in Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio in New York, where he was coached Key movies by Stella Adler. In 1947, he was a sensation in Tennessee Williams’ 1951 A Streetcar Named Desire play A Streetcar Named Desire. 1954 On the Waterfront Four years later, he reprised his 1972 The Godfather role in the movie. He received his 1972 Last Tango in Paris

204 THE GODFATHER Carlo Rizzi Tips off RIVAL Don Corleone, FAMILY the Godfather, is Married Constanzia at the center of “Connie” Kills a web of family Frederico Father of Corleone-Rizzi and associates, “Fredo” Corleone Santino “Sonny” bound together Father of Corleone by respect, honor—and violent revenge. Kills Adopts Don Vito Corleone Father of Tom Hagen The Godfather Ally to Apollonia Married Father of Betrays Salvatore Tessio Vitelli-Corleone (1st wife) (killed by bomb) Michael Married Kay Adams Corleone (2nd wife) Coppola is careful to avoid showing but others maintained that it the victims of the family’s criminal captured perfectly a man wearied enterprises—the drug addicts, by power and its obligations. Puzo prostitutes, and ruined families. told Brando that he was “the only The only victims of the Corleones’ actor who can play the Godfather.” brutality that the viewer sees are Studio executives were initially the members of rival gangs who wary of the actor’s disruptive posed a threat. And so the viewer reputation and box-office credibility, sees the Corleones as they see but he won a Best Actor Oscar for themselves, as a quasi-respectable his performance. family fighting to maintain supremacy in a dangerous world, Although Brando supplies the rather than as a bunch of thugs. face of the movie, it is Al Pacino’s They have a code of honor, and Michael who carries the story. when Don Corleone finally dies At the start, he is a college while playing with his grandson graduate, engaged to a beautiful in his vegetable garden, we see it as the passing of a giant, the The Godfather changed my sad end to a titan. The effect is life, for better or worse. reinforced by Nino Rota’s lush musical score, which gives the It definitely made me have movie a heroic and tragic feel. an older man’s film career. Francis Ford Coppola Acclaimed cast Brando was given prosthetic jowls Most telling of all are the remarkable to give him the appearance of ravaged performances from the universally seniority. He was just 48 years old at superb cast. Marlon Brando gives the time of filming. an iconic performance as Don Corleone. At the time of the movie’s release, there were critics who felt his rasping delivery was affected,

REBEL REBEL 205 I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse. Don Vito Corleone / The Godfather non-Italian girl, Kay, played by out of reach of their family. They Francis Ford Coppola Diane Keaton. He appears to have may have senators in their pockets Director every hope of living a crime-free but, in public, the senators will life, of fulfilling the American always shun them. Coppola was born in 1939 Dream. Pacino, then a little-known to a Detroit family of Italian actor, received an Oscar nomination The sequel descent. His father Carmine for Actor in a Supporting Role. The Godfather: Part II returns to the was a composer who would Corleone family once Michael has work on the scores of The Family destiny taken control. While he may have Godfather: Part II and Michael is drawn inexorably into been reluctant to step into his Apocalypse Now. In his early the gangster world of the Corleone father’s shoes, Michael soon loses twenties, Francis enrolled in family, finally pledging by his both his morality and the family’s the University of California, father’s hospital bed, “I’ll take care respectable aspirations. Unlike his Los Angeles (UCLA) film of you now. I’m with you now. I’m father, Michael no longer has ties school, and was soon writing with you.” When his brother Sonny to Sicily, the “old country,” and its screenplays for Hollywood. (James Caan) is gunned down, code of honor, however skewed He began making movies Michael becomes the new heir and violent. Nor does he have the during the New Hollywood apparent. His descent from a bright same belief in the New World. He movement, also referred to hope is the movie’s central tragedy, becomes, in the end, more brutal as the American New Wave, yet we understand how strongly than old Don Corleone. ■ which aimed to tackle new he feels that he has no choice. Don subjects using different styles. Corleone had wanted Michael to Sonny (James Caan, left) is Corleone’s The Godfather, one of the become a senator or a governor, eldest son. When his brother-in-law highest grossing movies in but the movie hints that such Carlo (Gianni Russo) hits Connie, Sonny history, was the first major respectability will always be beats up Carlo in the street. movie he directed, and he cemented his reputation with a string of hits throughout the 1970s. Considered one of America’s most energetic, if erratic, filmmakers, his later movies have not quite matched his early successes. Key movies 1972 The Godfather 1974 The Conversation 1974 The Godfather: Part II 1979 Apocalypse Now

206 THAT MAN IS A HEAD TALLER THAN ME. THAT MAY CHANGE AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD / 1972 IN CONTEXT W erner Herzog’s Aguirre, hardships as Aguirre’s expedition: the Wrath of God is one climbing mountains, braving rapids GENRE of the most original on makeshift rafts, and hacking Adventure pieces of cinema ever created. It through jungle. Kinski went beyond is based on the doomed 1561 the confines of “temperamental” DIRECTOR expedition of Spanish conquistador into the outright unhinged, regularly Werner Herzog Lope de Aguirre to find El Dorado, raging at Herzog, the crew, and the mythical Amazonian city of gold. local extras. At one point, he shot WRITER Herzog’s story is of an obsessive off an extra’s fingertip. Werner Herzog quest that descends into madness, driven by a mesmeric performance The fact the movie was even STARS from Klaus Kinski as Aguirre. finished is due to Herzog’s ability to Klaus Kinski, Helena Rojo, see possibilities on the spot. He Ray Guerra, Del Negro Extreme location made up much of the dialogue as The filming of Aguirre has become he went along, and frequently BEFORE something of a legend. It was shot incorporated incidents into the 1968 In Signs of Life, Herzog in the Peruvian rain forest in a movie that occurred among the explores how isolation causes matter of weeks, and the cast and extras. Herzog’s cinematographer, a man’s madness, a theme he crew endured many of the same Thomas Mauch, produced a visually would develop in Aguirre. stunning movie, described by a AFTER Werner Herzog Director 1979 Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now pays homage Werner Herzog He made his first feature movie to Aguirre by using “visual is a director Signs of Life in 1968. Four years quotations” from the movie. with a singular later, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, cinematic brought him international fame. 1982 Fitzcarraldo, Herzog’s vision. Born He has also made many second movie about a deluded in 1942, he grew up in a remote acclaimed documentaries. European in the Amazon, also village in Bavaria, Germany. He stars Klaus Kinski. was a rebel at school, but at 14 Key movies he read in an encyclopedia about 1987 Cobra Verde is Herzog’s filmmaking and, as he later 1972 Aguirre, the Wrath of God final work with Kinski as a admitted, stole a 35mm camera 1979 Nosferatu the Vampire madman lost to civilization. from the Munich Film School. 1982 Fitzcarraldo

REBEL REBEL 207 What else to watch: The African Queen (1951) ■ Deliverance (1972) ■ Apocalypse Now (1979, p.338) ■ Fitzcarraldo (1982) ■ The Mosquito Coast (1986) ■ Platoon (1986) ■ El Dorado (1988) ■ The New World (2005) ■ Apocalypto (2006) German reviewer at the time as “a dynasty the world has ever seen.” Mr Herzog… is a poet who color-drenched, violently physical He lets nothing stand in his way. constantly surprises us with moving painting.” This look, When a man talks of turning back, unexpected juxtapositions… combined with a churchlike he says, “That man is a head taller musical score, gives the movie an than me. That may change.” Then This is a splendid and almost mythical quality. he beheads him while he is still haunting work. talking. Aguirre’s brutality and Smashing taboos resilience are so breathtaking, we Vincent Canby Aguirre is a monstrous figure, so might almost find him heroic. overtaken with ambition that he The New York Times, 1977 completely ignores all social rules But Herzog leaves us in no and human obligations. He shows doubt that Aguirre’s ambition is to the monkeys. The scene is no mercy or sympathy. Left alone futile and destructive. The final bathetic in the extreme. Aguirre is in the jungle, he contemplates an scene shows Aguirre alone on a man to be ridiculed and pitied, a incestuous relationship with his a raft, and his only company is man who has brought nothing but teenage daughter. “I, the Wrath of hundreds of monkeys. He grabs destruction through his own folly. ■ God, will marry my own daughter, one, and his heroic declamation, “I and with her I will found the purest am Aguirre, I am the Wrath of God. From the outset of the Who else is with me?” is addressed expedition, Aguirre’s eyes shine with the insanity of I am the Wrath of God! The earth I his obsession. The pass will see me and tremble. movie’s message warns of the dangers of myths Aguirre / Aguirre, the Wrath of God on the human psyche.

208 THE GUESTS ARE HERE SIR THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE / 1972 IN CONTEXT L uis Buñuel was a master of why. In The Discreet Charm of the social satire and the surreal, Bourgeoisie, Buñuel carries out a GENRE who had been making droll variation on the theme, as six Art-house drama movies for nearly half a century by well-to-do friends attempt to have the time he made The Discreet dinner together but are continually DIRECTOR Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Le charme thwarted by a brilliantly unhinged Luis Buñuel discret de la bourgeoisie). Buñuel series of mishaps. took the idea for the movie from an WRITERS anecdote told by his producer, At first, the problems are Luis Buñuel, Serge Silberman, about guests mundane: the hosts were simply Jean-Claude Carrière turning up at his home for dinner expecting the guests to arrive the only to find his wife in her robe and following day. But soon, a dead body STARS no food, since he had forgotten to shows up to disrupt the proceedings. Fernando Rey, Paul tell her he had invited them. Thereafter, flamboyant sexual Frankeur, Delphine Seyrig, escapades and the interruption of Bulle Ogier, Stéphane In Buñuel’s earlier movie, The the army on maneuvers are just Audran, Jean-Pierre Cassel Exterminating Angel (1962), guests some of the obstacles. The movie at a dinner party are marooned becomes increasingly surreal, yet BEFORE there for weeks, unable to leave shows the guests behaving as if 1929 Luis Buñuel’s first movie, without them or us ever knowing nothing untoward is going on. Un Chien Andalou, a short made with Salvador Dalí, is Luis Buñuel Director a startling surrealist work. Luis Buñuel was Andalou, and a second, L’Age 1962 In Buñuel’s The celebrated for d’Or (1930). Buñuel moved to the Exterminating Angel, guests his surreal US during the Spanish Civil War, are unable to leave a dinner. movies, biting then to Mexico, and finally social satire, and interest in France in 1955. He died in 1983. AFTER religious fanaticism. He was 1977 Buñuel’s last movie, born in Calanda, Spain, in 1900, Key movies That Obscure Object of and studied as a Jesuit before Desire, is about the frustration he met playwright Federico 1929 Un Chien Andalou of an aging man’s desires for Garcia Lorca and painter 1967 Belle de Jour a young Spanish woman. Salvador Dalí, with whom he 1972 The Discreet Charm made his first movie, Un Chien of the Bourgeoisie

REBEL REBEL 209 What else to watch: The Rules of the Game (1939, pp.60-61) ■ Divorce Italian Style (1961) ■ The Exterminating Angel (1962) ■ Pierrot le Fou (1965) ■ Belle de Jour (1967, p.336) ■ The Ruling Class (1972) ■ Amarcord (1973) Buñuel is not remotely concerned satirized through the The poster for the with conventional narrative flow. movie as, for instance, cinema release had Intercut with the frustrated efforts the bishop is thrown a suitably surrealist of the dinner guests are dream out when he is design in the style sequences that pop from their heads mistaken for a mere of Belgian painter and sometimes overlap with each gardener, then René Magritte. other, as well as skits involving prop welcomed fawningly food, flashbacks, and at the center when he returns in his countryside, a of it all, the ambassador to the Latin episcopal vestments. metaphor for their American Republic of Miranda hollow obsession (entirely fictional), who finds himself Road to nowhere with status. drawn into a bizarre terrorist plot. Even as the world crumbles around Buñuel won the Class and convention them and everything Oscar for best Dinner is the occasion on which begins to fall apart, foreign picture for the social elite can come together the six friends are determined to the movie, and many directors to display their taste, refinement, press on with their dinner, and no acknowledge its influence. Its and material wealth. It assumes obstacle, no matter how absurd, message about the self-obsession a symbolic place far ahead of will stop them. Throughout the of the well-to-do is as relevant as anything else in these people’s movie, the six are often seen ever, and the inventiveness of lives. The party’s snobbery and striding purposefully down a Buñuel’s playful vision remains superficiality are continually seemingly endless road through the hugely fun. ■ You’re better suited for making love than for making war. Rafael Acosta / The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie In one of the movie’s digressions, a soldier tells how he poisoned his stepfather as the ghosts of his real father and mother looked on.

210 DID YOU REALLY SEE HER? DON’T LOOK NOW / 1973 IN CONTEXT D on’t Look Now opens What can and cannot be “seen” is with the death of a child, the enigma at the heart of this GENRE but it’s more concerned devastating movie, whose title Supernatural thriller with the fate of her parents, John (Donald DIRECTOR Sutherland) and Laura Nicolas Roeg Baxter (Julie Christie). The grieving couple WRITERS relocate from their home Allan Scott, Chris Bryant in Britain to wintry, out- (screenplay); Daphne of-season Venice, where du Maurier (short story) John busies himself with the restoration of a church STARS mosaic. When Laura Donald Sutherland, befriends two elderly Julie Christie sisters—one a blind clairvoyant—her husband BEFORE begins to catch glimpses of 1970 Roeg’s twisted crime a figure that resembles their drama Performance stars Mick dead daughter. Is John Jagger as a reclusive rock star. seeing things? Or could it be that Christine has come AFTER back from beyond the grave? 1976 David Bowie plays an alien in Roeg’s sci-fi odyssey The movie poster hints The Man Who Fell to Earth. at the ending without giving anything away. Like John, 1977 Julie Christie is attacked the audience only finds out by a computer in Demon Seed, at the end of the movie what directed by Donald Cammell. the “warning” was all along.

REBEL REBEL 211 What else to watch: Dead of Night (1945) ■ Peeping Tom (1960, p.334) ■ The Birds (1963) ■ Rosemary’s Baby (1968, p.336) ■ Death in Venice (1971) ■ Walkabout (1971, p.337) ■ The Wicker Man (1973) ■ The Shining (1980, p.339) The movie opens with a slow- motion sequence in which John drags Christine’s lifeless body from a pond. It introduces many of the movie’s key motifs, including water and the color red. seems to be a warning. “Don’t look quick, disjointed cuts between contemporary viewers assumed the now!” it screams, begging the the couple in bed and the two of sex was real. This is a movie that audience to avert its gaze. But, as them dressing for dinner later in forces us to look again, to ask with many things in Nicolas Roeg’s the evening. The result is a sex ourselves, “Did I really see that?” paranormal chiller, the title is not scene unlike any other—intense, John cannot see what is in front what it seems. In fact Roeg wants touching, melancholic, and comic; of him: that he possesses the gift of the viewer to look carefully, and so realistic that many second sight. He doesn’t believe in especially at the patterns created psychics, and when Laura tells him by his strange, kaleidoscopic that the clairvoyant has “seen” their arrangement of images. daughter in Venice, he reacts by getting drunk and angry. Even The director experimented with after he sees Christine’s reflection complex visual editing in his in a canal, rippling across the ❯❯ previous movies, Performance (1970) and Walkabout (1971); in Don’t Look Now, he uses these techniques to convey both a sense of menace and the fractured psychological states of his two main characters. Images are repeated and echoed at jarring moments: ripples on water; the color red; breaking glass; close-ups of gargoyles and statues. The viewer glimpses them here and there, just as John catches sight of the scarlet-coated figure from the corner of his eye, and they accumulate to build an atmosphere thick with paranoia. Love scene Perhaps the most celebrated example of this fragmented editing style is the sequence in which John and Laura make love for the first time since Christine died. Roeg makes This one who’s blind. She’s the one who can see. Laura Baxter / Don’t Look Now

212 DON’T LOOK NOW water, he refuses to open his mind mistaken for a peeping tom while traps; St. Mark’s Square, for example, to the existence of ghosts. In Don’t searching for the home of the makes a single, easy-to-miss Look Now, seeing is not believing: peculiar sisters. Other characters appearance. The movie sticks to the you must believe in order to see. have no problems navigating the backwaters, creating a trap of its city, but John is forever getting lost own from a maze of dank passages, Roeg and his writers, Allan Scott and finding himself back where he churches, and empty hotels. and Chris Bryant, find moments started. For him, time and space of sly humor in John’s willful are jumbled up and compressed, Much of Roeg’s Venice is unseen: “blindness.” When he loses his just as they are in Roeg’s editing. the audience hears cries in the way in the labyrinthine alleyways night, a piano playing somewhere of Venice, he pauses beneath an Venetian setting nearby, footsteps that echo all optician’s sign (in the shape of a Venice is the perfect backdrop for around. “Venice is like a city in huge pair of glasses). “Do look now!” a horror movie about déjà vu; there aspic,” says the blind clairvoyant. it seems to say, but he ignores it and are reminders of death and decay “My sister hates it. She says it’s hurries on. In another scene, John is around every corner, and its bridges like after a dinner party, and all and canals all seem to look alike. the guests are dead and gone. John follows the red coat on Shot on location in and around the Too many shadows.” The camera the Calle di Mezzo to the gates Italian vacation destination, Don’t lingers on dust-sheeted furniture of the Palazzo Grimani where he Look Now mostly avoids the tourist and shuttered windows, suggesting encounters the dwarf. something concealed from view.

REBEL REBEL 213 The fanciest, most carefully assembled enigma yet put on screen. Pauline Kael 5001 Nights at the Movies, 1982 The sense of danger intensifies the sisters know more than they The danger of falling is ever present. when the audience learns that a are letting on? Eventually, Roeg Laura is taken to hospital after a fall in serial killer is on the loose. This pulls focus on fate and a truly the restaurant. John is nearly killed in revelation comes late in the movie, macabre finale, the kaleidoscope a fall, their son is injured in a fall, and but Roeg leaves a bread-crumb trail resolving itself into an image of Christine died after falling in the lake. of clues leading up to it: the killer is pure Gothic horror. seen in one of John’s photographic Finally, in a fog-chilled Venetian slides, hidden in plain sight, in the Closing montage chapel, memories come to life and very first scene; a police inspector Roeg saw his movie as an “exercise tragedy descends in a queasy flash doodles a psychotic face as he in film grammar.” This is never more of horror and recognition. Roeg interviews John at the station. evident than in its extraordinary crowned the movie with a dizzying “What is it you fear?” he asks. climactic sequence, which begins montage of moments, images, and with a séance and ends with a overlooked clues from the past 108 The subplot of the murderer funeral. Don’t Look Now forces minutes of story. Much too late, the adds another layer to the movie’s John to stare death in the face. audience sees everything. ■ kaleidoscope, forcing the audience to question everything it has seen so far. Is Christine in fact a ghost or something even more sinister? Do Nicolas Roeg Director Roeg first made his mark as the and the complex relationship cinematographer for such cult between time and space. Don’t classics as Roger Corman’s The Look Now is often referenced Masque of the Red Death (1964) by other filmmakers, but Roeg and François Truffaut’s Fahrenheit has directed many fascinating 451 (1966). In 1970, he teamed movies since, including The up with the writer and painter Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). Donald Cammell to create Performance, a gangster movie that Key movies starred Mick Jagger as a reclusive rock star. Roeg’s next two movies, 1970 Performance Walkabout (1971) and Don’t Look 1971 Walkabout Now (1973), continued to explore 1973 Don’t Look Now his fascination with sex, death, 1976 The Man Who Fell to Earth

214 YOU CAN TALK TO HIM WHENEVER YOU WANT. JUST CLOSE YOUR EYES AND CALL HIM THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE / 1973 IN CONTEXT Even though he was going it is so slow-moving and enigmatic blind, cinematographer Luis that the censors believed it would GENRE Cuadrado shot every frame never find an audience. Historical drama of The Spirit of the Beehive (El espíritu de la colmena) in honey- Finding the monster DIRECTOR colored sun and earth tones, rich in The movie opens with the arrival of Victor Erice texture and deep, soft hues. Yet the a traveling cinema in a village. The movie’s true beauty lies in the way movie playing is James Whale’s WRITERS director Victor Erice immerses us 1931 monster flick Frankenstein. Victor Erice, Ángel in the imagination of a six-year-old The child Ana is thrilled by the Fernández Santos, child, unforgettably played by the monster, but baffled by the Francisco J. Querejeta wide-eyed Ana Torrent. scene in which he appears to drown the STARS The movie is set in 1940, the year little girl—thanks to Fernando Fernán Gómez, after the Spanish Civil War ended in a misleading cut Teresa Gimpera, Ana victory for Franco’s Nationalists. It made by Spanish Torrent, Isabel Tellería was a violent period of bloody censors, who were retribution, about which it was still showing the movie BEFORE not possible to talk openly in Spain, as propaganda 1961 In British movie Whistle even in 1973. General Franco was that equated Down the Wind, a little girl still in power, and censors strove to the monster finds a fugitive in a barn curtail any criticism of the regime. with socialism. and believes he is Jesus. Erice’s movie not only depicted a controversial era, but also contained AFTER coded messages about the state of 1976 In Carlos Saura’s Cría the nation. Yet the movie made it Cuervos (Raise Ravens), Ana past the censors, possibly because Torrent again plays a little girl haunted by visions. Ana (Ana Torrent) offers an apple to the 1983 Erice’s second movie, The fugitive she finds South (El Sur), is about a girl hidden in the fascinated by the secrets her family outhouse. father left in southern Spain. She believes he is the monster.

REBEL REBEL 215 What else to watch: Pather Panchali (1955, pp.132–33) ■ Whistle Down the Wind (1961) ■ Cria Cuervos (1976) ■ Fanny and Alexander (1982) Obsessed by visions of the monster, Ana and her sister Isabel talk with Victor Erice Director although not afraid of him, Ana goes their father (Fernando Fernán Gómez). home. Here, in echoing, shadowy He keeps bees, and writes of his Victor Erice is regarded by rooms behind honeycomb-shaped revulsion for their mindless lives, one many as Spain’s finest movie windows, her bookish beekeeper of many allusions to Francoist Spain. director. Yet he has made father and her far younger mother few movies. Indeed, his high seem impossibly far apart, literally tender relationship, but the reputation rests on just two Francoist troops are never far away. poetic works, The Spirit of the and emotionally, as her mother Ana has more visions of the monster, Beehive and The South, both Teresa (Teresa Gimpera) writes although the doctor reassures her of which are period pieces sad letters to an unknown mother that the delusions will pass. centering on rural childhoods. young man. Ana’s sister Isabela fuels Political allegory Erice was born in Karrantza Ana’s visions, telling her to The movie ends with an image of in the Basque country (Spain) close her eyes and call the Ana at the window, her eyes closed in 1940, around the same time monster, like a spirit. When again. When the movie was made The Spirit of the Beehive is set. Ana closes her eyes and in 1973, Franco’s regime was He studied economics, law calls, “It’s me, Ana,” she already faltering; its end would and politics at the University finds, hidden in the outhouse, have felt very near to a Spanish of Madrid before going to film a haunted-looking young audience. Telling a story from the school in the early 1960s. He man, presumably a Republican past, The Spirit of the Beehive also worked for almost a decade as on the run, who she believes gave Spain a glimpse of its future. ■ a film critic before making a is the monster. They develop a series of short movies. Little but the walls remain The Spirit of the Beehive of the house you once knew, was Erice’s first feature-length movie, but he did not make his I often wonder what became second, The South (El Sur), of everything we had there. until almost 10 years later. Ten years after that, he made a Teresa / The Spirit of the Beehive beautiful documentary, The Quince Tree Sun, about the painter Antonio López García. While Erice has contributed to other work, these have been his only feature-length movies. Key movies 1973 The Spirit of the Beehive 1983 The South 1992 The Quince Tree Sun

YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS TO NOSY FELLOWS? CHINATOWN / 1974



218 CHINATOWN R oman Polanski’s movie Time has lessened our sense Chinatown is a gripping that this superlative 1974 IN CONTEXT thriller with a truly nasty film is simply a pastiche of sting in its tail. Jack Nicholson the classic ’30s gumshoe GENRE plays the seedy private detective thrillers—it now looks like Neo-noir crime thriller Jake Gittes, who investigates a straightforward classic. a conspiracy surrounding the Peter Bradshaw DIRECTOR Los Angeles water supply in Roman Polanski the 1930s. During the course The Guardian, 2013 of his investigation, he uncovers WRITER a disturbing personal tragedy as Robert Towne he becomes involved with the chief water engineer’s wife, Evelyn STARS Mulwray, played by Faye Dunaway. Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston Powerful script becomes Hollis Mulwray, and the Key to the movie’s power is Robert story turns into a fictional tale of BEFORE Towne’s Oscar-winning script, the corrupt manipulation of the 1941 John Huston’s movie which is widely regarded as one Los Angeles water supply for profit. noir The Maltese Falcon is of the finest screenplays ever released, and Polanski studies written for Hollywood. It was partly Towne wrote the script with it avidly before he embarks inspired by the true story of William Jack Nicholson in mind for the on making Chinatown. Mulholland, chief engineer of the character of Gittes, the private Los Angeles Water Department, eye who becomes unwittingly 1968 Rosemary’s Baby is who, on March 12, 1928, declared embroiled in the shadowy affairs Polanski’s acclaimed horror that the St. Francis Dam was of Mulwray’s associates. Nicholson movie about a young woman, safe, just hours before it failed is said to have been responsible for played by Mia Farrow, who catastrophically, with the resulting is impregnated by the devil. flood killing at least 600 people. In Towne’s screenplay, Mulholland AFTER 1988 Frantic, starring He owns the police! Harrison Ford, is Polanski’s first successful return to Evelyn Mulwray / Chinatown the thriller genre since making Chinatown. Jack Nicholson Actor Jack Nicholson is one of the Pieces (1970) was widely leading American movie actors of acclaimed. Both movies brought the last half century, renowned him Oscar nominations for his for playing difficult outsiders acting, while One Flew Over who can disarm with charm and the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) earned humor. He was born in 1937 in him his first Oscar win. Neptune City, New Jersey, where he grew up. His Hollywood acting Key movies career was slow to take off, and he had more success with writing 1970 Five Easy Pieces screenplays. He had his first big 1974 Chinatown acting break in Dennis Hopper’s 1975 One Flew Over the Easy Rider (1969), and a year later, Cuckoo’s Nest his performance in Five Easy 1980 The Shining

REBEL REBEL 219 What else to watch: The Maltese Falcon (1941, p.331) ■ The Big Sleep (1946) ■ Kiss Me Deadly (1955, p.134) ■ Vertigo (1958, pp.140–45) ■ The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) ■ L.A. Confidential (1997) Gittes has his nose slashed as he gets too near the truth about the plot to dump water from the LA reservoirs. He is warned that if he continues to snoop, his whole nose will come off. the hiring of Polanski, renowned detective movies such as The the wrong conclusions. At the for the psychological thrillers Maltese Falcon. The audience start of the movie, for instance, Repulsion (1965) and Rosemary’s knows that Marlowe will triumph he is commissioned by the wife Baby (1968). Polanski was in Europe in the end, but it becomes apparent of Hollis Mulwray to prove her at the time, having left the US after that Gittes is going to mess up husband’s adultery. Very quickly the murder of his wife in 1969. He again and again, as he jumps to all Gittes hands her the seemingly was tempted back by the strength incriminating photos—only he’s of Towne’s script, although Polanski got it wrong twice over. First, and Towne had many differences the woman who commissioned over the final version. him is not Mulwray’s wife but an impostor. Second, the young There were two elements in woman that he snaps out with particular that Polanski changed. Mulwray is not his mistress at First was the tragic and disturbing all, as he, and we, the audience, ending. Second was the decision will discover much later. Later in not to use the voice-over narrative the movie, Gittes wrongly assumes that so many private-eye film-noirs that the real Evelyn Mulwray had employed in the past. Polanski murdered her husband. ❯❯ insisted on letting the audience discover each new twist as Jake Noir conventions overturned Gittes does. The effect of this is that both Jake and the audience are Genre convention Chinatown subversion much more in the dark and far more unsettled by each new revelation. Female lead is typically Evelyn is revealed a “femme fatale” to be a victim Protagonist is a hard-boiled Gittes is incompetent, private investigator missing clues and making mistakes Antagonist gets punished Noah Cross escapes to continue his crimes Incompetent sleuth Protagonist succeeds in Gittes leaves town Gittes’ desperate attempt to make resolving crime or issue after failing sense of everything makes him a different kind of private eye from Narrative closure No resolution Humphrey Bogart’s Philip Marlowe a generation earlier in hard-boiled

220 CHINATOWN An audience familiar with the roles supply to his own advantage different from other crime thrillers, of femmes fatales in earlier noir leads to the murder of his former and makes it linger long in the movies would naturally assume the business partner, Evelyn’s mind. In most movies about power same. But Mrs. Mulwray is the real husband Hollis Mulwray. and corruption, the detective victim, and the truth is so unsettling simply homes in on, and then that Gittes can barely take it in. Unexpected twist exposes, those responsible for a The real villain of the piece, it turns There is a twist at the end of crime and its cover-up. But at the out, is the seemingly urbane old crucial moment in Chinatown, man Noah Cross, Evelyn’s Chinatown that makes the focus is diverted away from father. He is the wealthy the movie disturbingly Cross’s efforts to control the water man whose determination supply. Instead, we are faced with a to use the city’s water shocking revelation that appears to Gittes confronts Mrs. come out of the blue. Right at the Mulwray with his theory that end of the movie, we are left she killed her husband. But with the deeply disturbing Gittes still has no idea what image of Cross—who appears is going on. to have got away with everything—comforting his granddaughter. Controlling men Chinatown, it turns out, is not just about power and corruption. Minute by minute 00:42 01:30 01:57 After nearly drowning in Gittes follows Mrs. Mulwray to Gittes arranges for Mrs. 00:19 a water channel, Gittes is a house in which her husband’s Mulwray and her sister to escape Evelyn Mulwray reveals threatened at knifepoint “mistress” is staying. Mrs. Mulwray to Chinatown. He then confronts to Jake Gittes, the private and his nose is slashed. tells him that she is her sister. Noah Cross with the glasses. detective, that he has been duped in a ploy to discredit her husband, Hollis Mulwray. 00:00 00:15 00:30 00:45 01:00 01:15 01:30 01:45 02:10 00:31 01:15 01:45 Gittes turns up at the Gittes and Mrs. Mulwray After finding the woman who had dam just as the police follow the paper trail of the pretended to be Mrs. Mulwray dead, Gittes are pulling Mulwray’s property sales, which leads them goes to the Mulwray house and finds a pair body out of the water. to an old people’s home. Gittes is of glasses in the pond. He confronts Mrs. shot at and narrowly escapes. Mulwray, who tells him the shocking truth.

It also concerns the whole notion You have to show REBEL REBEL 221 of male control. At one point, Gittes violence the way it is. asks Cross why he feels the need Roman Polanski to be richer: “How much better can If you don’t Director you eat? What can you buy that you show it realistically, can’t already afford?” “The future, then that’s immoral Born in Paris in 1933 to Polish Mr. Gittes,” Cross replies, “The parents, Roman Polanski grew future.” Women and water are the and harmful. up in Poland. During World source of the future that Cross Roman Polanski War II, his parents were sent wants to control. And in his own to a concentration camp where way, Gittes, too, is pursuing control, The problem for Gittes is that his mother died, but Roman probing and sticking his nose in he is living, metaphorically, in survived by hiding in the where it is unwelcome. Chinatown, a place that holds countryside. After the war, he bad memories for him, which went to film school. His first His investigations lead to one date back to his time spent in feature movie, Knife in the of Chinatown’s nastiest and most the police force. Yet it is Gittes Water (1962), was acclaimed memorable scenes. Gittes has internationally, and he moved his nose slit by a thug, played by himself who in to the UK to make movies such Polanski himself: “You know what the end chooses as the chilling Repulsion. In happens to nosy fellows? Huh? Chinatown, a 1968, he met actress Sharon No? Wanna guess? Huh? No? Okay. world where Tate and moved to the US, They lose their noses.” It is a kind of anything goes, where he made the horror emasculation, and Gittes’s dogged for the movie’s movie Rosemary’s Baby. The determination to solve the mystery tragic denouement. following year, Tate was reflects his need to regain control. There is no point murdered by the serial killers in trying to do known as the Manson Family. the right thing, Polanski left the US but his former police was invited back to direct colleague tells him Chinatown. A few years later, in the movie’s final he was convicted of unlawful line: “Forget it, Jake. sex with a minor and fled to It’s Chinatown…” ■ France, where he still directs. The poster for Key movies Chinatown suggests an old-fashioned film noir, 1965 Repulsion with a chain-smoking 1968 Rosemary’s Baby detective and a femme 1974 Chinatown fatale. But Polanski 1979 Tess effectively subverts the 1988 Frantic genre and plays with 2002 The Pianist audience expectations.

222 AND WE’LL BUY OURSELVES A LITTLE PIECE OF HEAVEN ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL / 1974 IN CONTEXT R ainer Werner Fassbinder’s Fassbinder (left) plays Eugen, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul son-in-law of German cleaning woman GENRE (Angst essen Seele auf) Emmi (center). He and his wife Krista New German Cinema is an intense study of an unlikely (Irm Hermann) laugh at Emmi when she but tender relationship between says she has fallen in love with a DIRECTOR an aging German cleaning woman younger Moroccan man. Rainer Werner Fassbinder and a younger Arab immigrant worker.It is also a trenchant achieved the emotional WRITER commentary on the state of 1970s engagement of classic melodrama Rainer Werner Fassbinder Germany, as the couple face the while exposing the underlying derision and criticism of their tensions in German culture. STARS family and friends. By focusing on Brigitte Mira, El Hedi ben the relationship between a white New German Cinema directors Salem, Barbara Valentin, German woman and an immigrant, such as Fassbinder sought to create Irm Hermann and placing it in the tough urban something peculiarly German by heart of Munich, Fassbinder bringing together the sharp BEFORE modernity and realism of the French 1955 Douglas Sirk’s romantic and British new waves with the melodrama All That Heaven Allows provides inspiration for Fassbinder’s Ali. 1972 Fassbinder makes his mark as a provocative filmmaker with The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. AFTER 1979 The Marriage of Maria Braun is Fassbinder’s biggest mainstream success. 1980 Fassbinder’s TV mini- series Berlin Alexanderplatz becomes a cult classic.

REBEL REBEL 223 What else to watch: All That Heaven Allows (1955, p.130) ■ Lola Montès (1955) ■ The Damned (1969) ■ The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) ■ The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) ■ The Tin Drum (1979) ■ Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) Happiness is not always fun. Epigraph / Ali: Fear Eats the Soul storytelling power of Hollywood. Ali: In his movies, Fassbinder In many of Fassbinder’s movies, his Fear Eats the Soul can also be seen presented to German society attitude to his characters can be as a homage to one of Fassbinder’s an uncompromising portrayal harsh and mocking. In Ali: Fear cinematic heroes, German émigré of its flaws. While Emmi and Eats the Soul, it is the cruelty of the Douglas Sirk, whose 1955 movie Ali may stay together, the people around Emmi and Ali that is All That Heaven Allows portrayed racism that makes him ill exposed. By contrast, Emmi and the romance between a well-to-do will not go away. Ali’s relationship is handled in a widow and a younger gardener. touching and sincere way. They move in together, Fassbinder always worked realize that they love each At the end of the movie, Ali quickly, but this movie was made other, and decide to marry. collapses and is taken to a hospital, exceptionally fast—in under two Their marriage is quickly suffering from a stomach ulcer— weeks, squeezed between two exposed to the prejudice something common, the doctor other projects. The result of this and gossip of everyone says, among migrants, because of rapid shooting schedule is a lean, around them, and an end the continual prejudice they face. stripped-down work of great to outright hostility only As Ali says, “Fear eats the soul.” directness and immediacy. comes from the local Emmi promises to do everything shopkeepers’ and bar she can to reduce the stress, and Racial tensions owners’ hypocritical has a solution that is profound in The German woman in the movie need to keep their its almost banal simplicity: “When is the 60-year-old Emmi Kurowski custom. The constant we’re together, we must be nice to (Brigitte Mira) and the immigrant is pressure threatens to one another.” ■ 40-year-old Ali (El Hedi ben Salem). destroy their relationship, They meet when Emmi ducks into and Ali seeks solace in the arms of an Arabic bar to get out of the rain the female bartender who used to on the way home from work. Ali asks cook for him, Barbara (Barbara Emmi to dance, and despite his Valentin, far left). Yet in the end, limited grasp of German, a heartfelt their love endures. relationship develops between them. Rainer Werner Fassbinder Director Fassbinder was directing play after play. He the driving force made his first feature movie in of New German 1969 and quickly achieved Cinema. In a international acclaim, but his career spanning private life was often troubled, just 14 years, he made more than and he died of a drug overdose 40 movies, many TV dramas, and at just 37. 24 stage plays. He was born in Bavaria, Germany, in 1945, and Key movies had a lonely childhood in which he watched thousands of movies. 1974 Ali: Fear Eats the Soul By 21, he was running a theater 1979 The Marriage of company, manically writing and Maria Braun

ANGELS MONSTE 1975–1991

AND RS

226 INTRODUCTION Steven Spielberg’s Jaws Taxi Driver and All the Star Wars takes Two epic turns usher in ushers in the era of President’s Men reflect science fiction and the 1980s: Jack Nicholson the blockbuster, and the psychological scars franchising into a of the Vietnam War whole new galaxy, while in Kubrick’s psycho- is a box-office triumph. Spielberg thrills again horror The Shining and the Watergate with Close Encounters. and Robert De Niro in scandal, respectively. Scorsese’s boxing of the Third Kind. biopic Raging Bull. 1975 1976 1977 1980 1975 1977 1979 1981 Video recorders go New York inspires both Science fiction veers from While Raiders of the mainstream as Betamax Woody Allen’s wry look crazed dystopias in Lost Ark launches and (one year later) VHS at love in Annie Hall and the Indiana Jones long-play formats enable the disco inferno that is Stalker and Mad Max to franchise, a German Saturday Night Fever. all-out horror in Alien, U-boat stalks its moviegoers to record while Apocalypse Now prey in Das Boot. and play movies at home. lays bare the horrors of war. A fter the major upheavals of Two years later, when George (starring Robert De Niro as cabbie the Swinging Sixties, the Lucas’s Star Wars came along and ex-Marine Travis Buckle) 1970s saw a different kind to capture the imagination of a would be the first of Scorsese’s of revolution unfold. For all the generation, the movie business was masterworks, a dazed snapshot tremors at their foundations, it further transformed. Entering the of paranoia and urban decay that seemed Hollywood’s big studios world of Wookies and Jedi would became an instant time capsule. were still standing, but now a new become a rite of passage for each kind of movie burst onto the scene. new generation of moviegoers, but Alvy Singer was the hero Lucas’s success also meant that and neurotic narrator of another Director Steven Spielberg was, soon, for Hollywood, there was no consummate New York story: like so many of his peers, a young, such thing as mere movies any Woody Allen’s romantic comedy, movie-literate hotshot. But deep more—only franchises in waiting. Annie Hall. For years to come, rare down he was also an old-fashioned was the movie that wasn’t in debt showman. In the classic Hollywood And yet this was also a time to one of those characters and tradition of happy accidents and when some of cinema’s finest its creators. unlikely triumphs, the production minds made their most audacious of Jaws was cursed by a man-eating and enduring movies. In America, Beyond Hollywood great white shark that Spielberg after Chinatown’s definitive Outside America, ambiguity felt was so laughably unrealistic he portrait of LA’s murky backstory, throbbed at the heart of movies that could barely bring himself to put it the spotlight now fell brilliantly once seen, would be impossible to on screen. And yet it became the hit and unforgivingly on New York. By ignore. From Australia, in the same that changed the movies, installing the mid 1970s, Martin Scorsese year that Spielberg’s shark thrilled a new type of blockbuster at the top had already announced himself audiences in Jaws, director Peter of the food chain. as a giant talent—but Taxi Driver Weir made Picnic at Hanging Rock,

ANGELS AND MONSTERS 227 Spielberg’s heartwarming Blue Velvet achieves Pedro Almodóvar’s black Set in 1920s China, Raise E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial instant cult status for comedy, Women on the Verge the Red Lantern seduces is science fiction for all David Lynch’s surreal audiences worldwide with the family; not so Ridley and subversive take of a Nervous Breakdown, the intensity of its visual Scott’s epic Blade Runner, wins the Spanish director a and emotional power. a neo-noir vision of Los on Americana. global following. Angeles in 2019. 1982 1986 1988 1991 1985 1987 1989 1992 The Sundance Institute Angels alight in Indies come of age with Disney’s Beauty hosts its inaugural movie Berlin in Wim Wenders’ Sex, Lies, and Videotape, and the Beast is the festival in Utah, to Wings of Desire, two a breakthrough hit for first animated champion independent years before the fall of studio Miramax and movie to be the Berlin Wall dividing and world cinema. East and West Germany. debut director nominated for an Steven Soderbergh. Oscar for Best Picture. a story that inspired equal dread Now more than ever we need by the subconscious, and at least with its wispy account of missing to listen to each other and as surreal, funny, and disturbing schoolgirls in the outback of 1900. understand how we see the as real dreams can be. Meanwhile, in an industrial pocket of Estonia, the great Russian world, and cinema is the best By the end of the 1980s, other director Andrei Tarkovsky was medium for doing this. voices were speaking up. Indie making Stalker, poised between Martin Scorsese movies were in the ascendant, from science fiction and philosophy. Spike Lee tracking racial tensions These are movies that remain, even gung-ho landmark, Top Gun (1986). in Brooklyn, to Steven Soderbergh now, gloriously unfathomable. And then there was David Lynch— training his lens on sexuality and who, like Hitchcock before him, relationships. From China, Zhang New decade, new voices was unique enough to exist as a Yimou’s Raise the Red Lantern was In the 1980s, Wall Street traders genre of his own, his movies driven both a gorgeous period drama and and mainstream movies looked a signal of a global future. slicker than ever, but around the edges, directors still drilled down Meanwhile, cinema itself into what lies beneath. Perhaps survived another attack on its nothing sums up that better than very existence: just as TV had been the fact that David Cronenberg— supposed to leave it for dead in whose notorious “body horror” previous decades, so too was the scenes were less disturbing than rise of home video in the 1980s. the psyches of his characters—was In the battle between VHS and once offered the chance to make that cinema, there was only one winner: new formats come and go, but the movies endure. ■

228 YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BOAT JAWS / 1975 IN CONTEXT T here are many memorable which smashes out of the water, lines in Jaws, but “You’re mouth gaping, heading straight GENRE gonna need a bigger boat” for the audience in their seats. Action adventure is the one most people remember. It comes just after Brody (Roy The shark’s first victim is lone DIRECTOR Scheider), the aquaphobic police skinny-dipper Chrissie (Susan Steven Spielberg chief of Amity Island, first sees his Backlinie). The attacker is all the nemesis: the great white shark, more terrifying for being unseen. WRITERS Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb (screenplay); Peter Benchley (novel) STARS Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw, Lorraine Gary BEFORE 1971 In Spielberg’s thriller Duel, a driver is chased by a truck. AFTER 1977 Close Encounters of the Third Kind is Spielberg’s ambitious sci-fi drama. 1993 In his blockbuster Jurassic Park, Spielberg brings dinosaurs back from extinction.

ANGELS AND MONSTERS 229 What else to watch: Godzilla (1954, p.129) ■ Moby Dick (1956) ■ The Deep (1977) ■ Piranha (1978) ■ Alien (1979, p.243) ■ Open Water (2003) ■ The Shark Is Still Working (2007) ■ All Is Lost (2013) What this movie is about, and where it succeeds best, is the primordial level of fear. Gene Siskel Chicago Tribune, 1975 It’s a theme-park moment—the with deliberately tricky characters Brody (Roy Scheider, center) wants shark is clearly mechanical, a and ambiguous moral codes. to close the resort, but is overruled by prop on a hydraulic crane, but Spielberg’s big-fish tale was a the mayor (Murray Hamilton, left), who we don’t mind because Jaws throwback to the fun-house origins fears that rumors of a shark attack is as much a ride as it is a movie. of the moving image—it was pure will ruin the tourist season. entertainment, a roller coaster When Steven Spielberg’s that promised scares but at the After Jaws came the Star Wars monster movie was released in same time sought to reassure movies, Spielberg’s Indiana Jones June 1975, there was a sense its audience. The movie contained saga, Back to the Future, and then that something new had arrived. all the elements that would go the superhero mega-franchises Adapted from a best-selling novel on to make a typical Spielberg of the 21st century. But, looking by Peter Benchley about a shark sideshow: ambitious special back, the picture that spawned that terrorizes a small beach effects, a high-concept story, these behemoths is a very different community, Jaws sold 25 million cute kids, a small-town American creature. Jaws, in comparison, is tickets in 38 days—it started hero who finds himself out of his a relatively modest adventure, its big and swelled to mammoth depth, and plenty of opportunities chief spectacle a rubber shark so proportions. Studio executives for marketing. unconvincing that Spielberg ❯❯ quickly realized that they were onto something—Jaws 2 was This was not a boat accident. rushed into production and came out in 1978. Spielberg had invented Hooper / Jaws the “summer event movie”—the action-packed blockbuster aimed at summer audiences that became Hollywood’s great obsession for the next four decades. Pure entertainment Jaws changed American cinema, which, for the first half of the 1970s, had been in thrall to low-key, European-style movies

230 JAWS worked hard to keep it off the screen as much as possible. Instead of the full-blown orchestral swoons for which he would later become famous, composer John Williams employs a jaggedly minimalist musical score to herald the approach of the shark; the result, a kind of panicked heartbeat, is the most haunting movie motif since the stabbing strings in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Claustrophobia story of the sinking of the USS With the Orca sinking and the As the narrative moves into its Indianapolis in World War II. “Eleven shark about to swallow Brody, he final act, the big showdown with hundred men went into the water, has one final desperate plan to kill the great white, its trio of heroes three hundred and sixteen men it in a spectacular finale. journeys out to sea—but Spielberg came out,” he growls. “The sharks narrows his focus on their tiny took the rest.” awesome terror. Spielberg is a fishing boat, the Orca, and the canny showman, and he knows story shrinks to a human drama. Quiet before the storm that roller coasters rely on a lull The Indianapolis speech is a before each stomach-churning For all the movie’s snapping moment of quiet that gets under plunge. It’s a mark of his genius shark jaws, exploding gas canisters, our skin, so when that fake-looking that Jaws contains more lulls than and severed heads bobbing toward mechanical shark-prop rises out of plunges, yet is remembered for its the screen, the most memorable the ocean we see it as the director shock horror and white-knuckle scene in Jaws is nothing more intended: a monster imbued with action adventure. ■ spectacular than three men talking: Chief Brody, shark expert Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), and psychotic sea dog Quint (Robert Shaw) share a late-night drink below deck. They compare scars and sing songs, and eventually the conversation turns dark, as Quint tells the chilling Steven Spielberg Director Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1946, drama. In 1993, he told a true Steven Spielberg has been a story of heroism during the household name for four decades. Holocaust with Schindler’s List. An all-American storyteller with Since then he has balanced a European eye, he has made historical drama with special- some of the most successful effects spectacles. movies of all time. With Jaws, his first hit, he invented the “event Key movies movie.” His enthusiasm for the silver screen led him to make the 1975 Jaws Indiana Jones series, a homage 1978 Close Encounters of the to 1930s action adventure serials, Third Kind while his family fable E.T. proved 1982 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial he was a master of emotional 1993 Schindler’s List

ANGELS AND MONSTERS 231 The movie’s poster is one of the most iconic designed for any movie. As with most Spielberg movies there were extensive spin-off toys and products. Surprisingly, though, it took 15 years before a Jaws theme park attraction opened, with enormous success, in Florida.

232 THERE’S SOME QUESTIONS GOT ANSWERS AND SOME HAVEN’T PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK / 1975 IN CONTEXT P icnic at Hanging Rock mysteries posed in this haunting opens with a caption Valentine’s Day trip into the wilds GENRE stating that on February 14, of the Australian bush. Mystery drama 1900, a party of schoolgirls went on a picnic at Hanging Rock near No resolution DIRECTOR Mount Macedon in the Australian The strange events at Hanging Peter Weir state of Victoria. It ends with the Rock were first related in a words: “During the afternoon 1967 novel by Australian author WRITERS several members of the party Joan Lindsay, which itself was Cliff Green (screenplay); disappeared without a trace.” This ambiguous about whether the Joan Lindsay (novel) creates the impression that the case of the missing party was story that follows is based on true true. When Weir came to adapt STARS events—but it isn’t. The movie, the book for movie, he faced an Rachel Roberts, Anne- made in 1975, is entirely fictitious. unusual challenge: Lindsay had Louise Lambert, Vivean offered no explanation for the Gray, Helen Morse So why are the words there? story’s central mystery. The three Are they a trick, or a clue—or girls and their teacher simply BEFORE both? This is the first of many vanish—there is no suggestion of 1974 Weir’s first feature, The where they go, or why. Could the Cars That Ate Paris, develops A movie composed director expect his audience to his trademark theme of almost entirely of clues. sit through a two-hour mystery macabre happenings in that has no resolution? Weir’s a small community. It forces us to stretch response was to draw out themes our imaginations. of absence—not only do the girls AFTER Vincent Canby and Miss McCraw, their teacher, 1981 Like Hanging Rock, disappear early in the story, but Gallipoli, Weir’s World War I The New York Times, 1979 no solutions or clues are found to drama, authentically captures the questions asked. Another Edwardian Australia. teacher, Mr. Whitehead (Frank Gunnell), is the first to accept that 1989 Weir’s acclaimed US the event is unsolvable—“There’s drama, Dead Poets Society, some questions got answers and echoes Hanging Rock in its some haven’t,” he says simply. In story of a tragedy at a school. Picnic at Hanging Rock, Weir is

ANGELS AND MONSTERS 233 What else to watch: Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) ■ Wake in Fright (1971) ■ Walkabout (1971, p.337) ■ The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) ■ The Blair Witch Project (1999) ■ The Virgin Suicides (1999) ■ The Way Back (2010) ■ The Babadook (2014) Irma, Marion, and Miranda share 1900, when European settlers Peter Weir an eerily idyllic moment just before were still strangers in an ancient Director they set off to climb Hanging Rock. land they did not fully understand. Irma will be found later with her corset Born in Sydney in 1944, missing. The other two, along with Possible hint Weir started his career Miss McGraw, disappear without trace. There is a hint that sexuality making documentaries with is at the heart of the vanishing. Australia’s Commonwealth asking the viewer to respect the When one of the girls “returns,” Film Unit. Associated with mystery for what it is. A kind unable to put her experience into the movement dubbed the of supernatural event seems to words, why is her corset missing? “Australian New Wave,” have occurred. It has no context Is it significant that the vanishing which included performers and is therefore frightening. Weir occurs on Valentine’s Day? Or that and filmmakers who found builds his drama on this menacing the rock itself sits on a dormant international acclaim in the atmosphere, which hums with volcano, a potential symbol of 1970s and 80s, he went on to the stifling heat of the Australian repressed desire? It’s impossible make movies that focused on summer. He shoots Hanging Rock to know. Any answers to the riddle communities under strain, his as though it were the surface of evaporate in the dry haze of the atmospherics mirroring the a hostile alien world, which is bush. In Picnic at Hanging Rock, tumultuous forces affecting what it must have felt like to the it is the mystery that endures, and the characters’ lives. After the characters. The movie is set in not the explanation. ■ success of his World War I drama Gallipoli, Weir’s films We shall only be gone have often been star vehicles a little while. that put a man into a closed society and watched him Miranda / Picnic at Hanging Rock struggle to connect, such as Harrison Ford’s John Book in Witness (1985), set within an Amish community. Key movies 1975 Picnic at Hanging Rock 1981 Gallipoli 1989 Dead Poets Society 1998 The Truman Show

SOMEDAY A REAL RAIN WILL COME TAXI DRIVER / 1976



236 TAXI DRIVER IN CONTEXT I t is 1976, and there are around The immediate response 7.8 million people living in is usually very visceral GENRE New York City. Travis Bickle and angry. But if this film Psychological thriller (Robert De Niro) regards them all weren’t controversial, through the filthy windows of his there’d be something DIRECTOR cab—everywhere he looks, from wrong with the country. Martin Scorsese Times Square to East 13th Street by way of Park Avenue South, there Paul Schrader WRITER are people, but to Travis they may Paul Schrader as well be characters in a movie. Interview with Roger Ebert, He is an outsider, alienated and STARS angry, who views the world from Chicago Sun-Times, 1976 Robert De Niro, Jodie the inside of a car. This is the taxi Foster, Cybill Shepherd, driver of Martin Scorsese’s movie, Harvey Keitel who drifts through the city in a clammy fever dream. BEFORE 1973 Martin Scorsese, Cleansing rain degenerate, railing against Robert De Niro, and Harvey Taxi Driver is a dirty movie, prostitution, homosexuality, and Keitel team up for the first not in the same way as the porn drug taking. When Travis talks time with Mean Streets, the movies that Travis likes to watch about a cleansing rain, he means story of a low-ranking New in the run-down theaters of 42nd it biblically, apocalyptically. But York mobster. Street, but in its depiction of the he is not a religious fanatic—he grimy city. Scorsese shot the movie just wants a purpose. His God 1974 De Niro shoots to fame in the summer heat wave of 1975, exists only to give him the order in The Godfather: Part II, as during a trash-collection strike that to kill, just as his commanding the young Don Vito Corleone. left Manhattan mountainous with officer did when Travis served rotting garbage. “Thank God for as a marine in the Vietnam War. AFTER the rain to wash the trash off the 1982 Scorsese directs De sidewalk,” says Travis. “Someday Lost soul Niro in The King of Comedy, a real rain will come and wash all Travis is lost in so many ways: a black comedy about another this scum off the streets.” he fought on the losing side in the delusional New York loser. war in Southeast Asia, and now In Travis’s world, the only clean 1990 Scorsese returns to the things are his conscience and his mob with Goodfellas, one of driving licence. To him, everything his most popular movies. else is disgusting, including his fellow New Yorkers. He finds them Minute by minute 00:32 01:05 01:30 When Travis takes Betsy A store is held up at At a rally for Palatine, Travis 00:19 to a porn movie, she walks gunpoint while Travis is in it. is spotted by a security guard Travis enters the out in disgust. He calls her He shoots the thief. The store as he approaches the Senator campaign office of Senator and sends flowers, but she owner covers for him, since and seems to reach for his gun. Palatine to volunteer, as an brushes him off. Travis has no gun permit. Travis leaves without firing. excuse to talk to his aide Betsy. He takes her for coffee. 00:00 00:15 00:30 00:45 01:00 01:15 01:30 01:53 00:27 00:51 01:21 01:34 Palatine gets into Travis’s After nearly running The day after paying for Travis shoots Sport, cab. Travis tells him the city over Iris, Travis buys her time, Travis sees Iris for a hotel owner, and a needs to be cleaned up. Later, guns. He starts an breakfast. He says that he will gambler who is with Iris. teenage prostitute Iris gets in, intense fitness regimen give her the money to leave He tries to shoot himself but pimp Sport pulls her out. and practices shooting. Sport and go to a commune. but is out of bullets.

ANGELS AND MONSTERS 237 What else to watch: Mean Streets (1973) ■ The Deer Hunter (1978) ■ Raging Bull (1980, pp.338–39) ■ The King of Comedy (1982) ■ After Hours (1985) he has lost his faith in the country are his passengers—but, like Martin Scorsese that he was fighting for. Even his him, they have no idea where Director ability to sleep has deserted him. they are heading. Most crucially, he has lost his “My whole life has been way in life. “All my life needed Ride through hell movies and religion,” Martin was a sense of someplace to go,” From the opening moments of Scorsese once said. “That’s it. he murmurs in his half-awake, Taxi Driver, Scorsese invites the Nothing else.” He was born a half-dreaming narration, as he viewer into the tormented mind Catholic in Queens, New York, glides endlessly through the of this antihero, suggesting his in 1942, and movies have night in his taxi, taking others to character’s instability through become for him a religion in their destinations. Travis’s eyes chaotically arranged images and themselves, an art form to are glimpsed on-screen in the rear- camera angles. revere and treasure. view mirror, as though the audience The first shot of the movie is Scorsese studied film Travis determines to save Iris a cloud of steam venting from the at New York University. He (Jodie Foster), a 12-year-old prostitute, sewers, tinged by red neon light. directed his first feature, I Call from her pimp, Sport, whether she It looks like brimstone rising from First, in 1967. Since then, his wants him to or not. By saving her, hell, and Travis’s cab appears output has been diverse, from Travis can be the cleansing rain. suddenly in its midst, as if it is ❯❯ gritty urban thrillers to grand historical dramas, paying homage to screen classics. Religion finds its way into most of his movies, most notably The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and Kundun (1997). He also has another great passion: New York City, the subject of so much of his work, from his first major success, Mean Streets, to Gangs of New York. Key movies 1973 Mean Streets 1976 Taxi Driver 1980 Raging Bull 1990 Goodfellas 2002 Gangs of New York 2006 The Departed

238 TAXI DRIVER on a journey through the underworld. (Cybill Shepherd), a campaign I know of nobody who can The car rolls across the screen, volunteer he has fallen for, “and surprise me on the screen slowly, as though pulling up and you’re gonna die in a hell, just like the way De Niro does… asking the audience to step inside. the rest of ’em!” Hell is what he sees On the sound track, the music when he looks around him, and he who can provide such swells and crashes. It’s a moment wants to save her from the flames. power and excitement. of dread that tells the audience- She is an activist campaigning for as-passenger exactly where “clean politics,” and in her own way Martin Scorsese it’s heading. she, like Travis, is praying for rain. It is a sentiment that struck a chord a 12-year-old prostitute called Iris “You’re in a with audiences at the time. When (Jodie Foster), who is every bit as hell,” Travis confident as Betsy—and equally tells Betsy the movie was released in 1976, uninterested in being saved by the Watergate scandal, in Travis. But Travis gives her no which President Nixon choice in the matter. was exposed as a liar and removed from office, was still Travis happens upon a hold up fresh in the national memory. in a store and shoots the robber Many Americans had lost dead. The store owner covers for their faith in politicians, and Travis, advising him to leave the felt they were leaderless. scene because he does not have a gun licence. Travis sees that Finding a cause Betsy, a beautiful and self- this killing, his first act of assured young blonde, rejects “cleansing,” is gratefully Travis after he takes her to a received. Now he porn movie on their first date. dons the Travis reacts badly, sending Betsy combat flowers afterward and harassing her at work, but then he turns his attention to another cause: Travis, alone in his apartment, prepares for his day of action. He meticulously builds holsters for his guns and imagines talking to his victims as he looks at himself in the mirror.

ANGELS AND MONSTERS 239 Travis Bickle’s transformation Before After Robert De Niro Actor • Is mentally unstable, • Shaves his hair into a threatening Robert De Niro has starred drinks heavily, and suffers mohawk, and wears sunglasses in more than 90 movies, eight from insomnia to hide his eyes of them directed by Martin Scorsese. He rose to fame • An ex-marine, • Becomes ever more playing the young Vito struggles to fit in mentally unstable and Corleone in Francis Ford and connect with violent, developing an Coppola’s The Godfather: other people obsessive delusion that Part II, and soon won a assassinating Senator reputation for his dedicated • Wears a casual Palatine will make approach to researching checked shirt, jeans, him a hero his roles. His preparation for and shoes Scorsese’s Raging Bull became • Wears an army legendary after he gained • Keeps a diary combat jacket and 60 lb (27 kg) to play the boxer a badge bearing the Jake LaMotta. • Visits porn presidential slogan, theaters regularly to help him blend into For the first three the crowd during his decades of his career, assassination attempt De Niro specialized in the portrayal of misfits, outsiders, • Conceals guns and and violent, unpredictable a knife under his clothing personalities, from Corleone and Travis Bickle to Al gear, shaves his head into a with the cab emerging through Capone in Brian De Palma’s mohawk, and sets out to enact it, and Travis’s mumbled narration, The Untouchables (1987) vengeance on Iris’s pimp, Sport the climax of the movie appears and Max Cady, the stalker in (Harvey Keitel), in what turns out to take place in a nightmare Scorsese’s Cape Fear (1991). to be a horrific bloodbath. Inside world. Scorsese has often talked More recently he has played gentler, less volcanic roles, Travis’s head, about movies existing at the and diversified into comedy. the storm breaks—the intersection of dreams and real rain has come at last. reality, and this is where he Key movies takes the audience. Nightmare world 1973 Mean Streets The cinematography of Travis’s A dreamy coda to the 1974 The Godfather: Part II rampage is hallucinogenic in its slaughter, in which Travis survives 1976 Taxi Driver contrasting colors and unnerving and becomes a tabloid hero, has 1978 The Deer Hunter angles, as though the movie is now been interpreted as his dying 1980 Raging Bull descending fully into unreality. fantasy. Whether real or imagined, Like the opening shot of the steam, it is Travis’s longed-for moment in the spotlight. Writer Paul Schrader sees the end as taking the audience back to the beginning, and so Travis drives away, but neither he nor the world has been cured. ■ Are you talkin’ to me? Well, I’m the only one here. Travis Bickle / Taxi Driver

240 I LURVE YOU YOU KNOW? I LOAVE YOU. I LUFF YOU. TWO ‘F’S ANNIE HALL / 1977 IN CONTEXT W oody Allen’s Allen’s movie stole 1977 movie the Best Picture Oscar GENRE Annie Hall from Star Wars, a rare Romantic comedy is a New York romantic example of a small, comedy with its two intellectual movie DIRECTOR elements in perfect beating a major Woody Allen balance. Allen himself blockbuster to the plays comedian Alvy coveted prize. WRITERS Singer, and Diane Keaton, Woody Allen, Allen’s girlfriend at the As a New Yorker, Marshall Brickman time, plays Annie Hall. Alvy is dismissive The movie is imbued with of Los Angeles, STARS Allen’s trademark neurotic which he sees as a Woody Allen, Diane humor, and may have been a comic cultural wasteland. Upon receiving Keaton, Tony Roberts reflection of the ups and downs of an invitation to present an award his real-life relationship with Keaton. on TV there, he replies: “In Beverly BEFORE Hills, they don’t throw their garbage 1933 The Marx brothers, a It is also very much a document away. They turn it into television huge influence on Allen, make of its time and place, focusing as it shows.” And when Annie expresses Duck Soup (p.48). He later does on the preoccupations of the a desire to go to LA, Aly sees it uses a clip from it in his movie late 1970s Manhattan intelligentsia, as a defect in her personality. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). with their long-winded, competitive At the same time, however, he opining on the meaning of art, film, recognizes that he is trapped by 1973 Ingmar Bergman’s and literature. Alvy lampoons their the persona that New York has Scenes from a Marriage pretentiousness while at the same given him. shows a married couple’s time reveling in it. ups and downs in a hyper- realistic way. A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move AFTER forward or it dies. And I think what we 1993 Allen and Keaton reunite got on our hands is a dead shark. on screen for the last time to date in the director’s Alvy Singer / Annie Hall Manhattan Murder Mystery.

ANNIE HALL 241 What else to watch: 8½ (1963) ■ My Night at Maud’s (1969) ■ Scenes from a Marriage (1973) ■ Sleeper (1973) ■ Manhattan (1979) ■ Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) ■ Deconstructing Harry (1997) ■ Blue Jasmine (2013) The self-absorption of the New Woody Allen Director/Actor York set is central to Annie Hall, and Alvy epitomizes it. In many Born Allen Konigsberg in slapstick comedies before ways the movie is an evolution of Brooklyn, New York, in 1935, developing works that were Allen’s stand-up routine, in which Woody Allen’s New York Jewish influenced by European art- he made comedy out of his own background would become a key house movies. Allen continues insecurities and preoccupations. theme in his movies. He started to make a new movie almost The movie opens with a out writing jokes for newspapers every year. monologue to camera in which and television before becoming Alvy sums up his problems with a stand-up comic in the early Key movies women by quoting Groucho 1960s, creating monologues that Marx’s famous comment: “I would drew on his mix of intellect and 1977 Annie Hall never want to belong to any club self-doubt. By 1965, he was 1979 Manhattan that would have someone like me making movies, starting with 1986 Hannah and Her Sisters for a member.” Of his first wife Allison, Alvy later says: “Why did futile, since the relationships he says, ‘Well, why don’t you turn him I turn off Allison Portchnik? She encounters are fleeting and not in?’ And the guy says, ‘I would, but was—she was beautiful. She was particularly meaningful. One couple I need the eggs.’” In this case, the willing. She was real… intelligent. attributes happiness to their mutual eggs are love, and Annie is the love Is it the old Groucho Marx joke?” shallowness and the fact that they of Alvy’s life. Annie Hall is Allen’s have “nothing interesting to say.” analysis of how love goes wrong— “We need the eggs” In the end, Alvy has to admit that how the eggs get broken. ■ Throughout the movie, Alvy explores what relationships are “totally irrational Alvy (Woody makes a successful and crazy and absurd… but I Allen) keeps being relationship and guess we keep going through drawn back to why relationships it because most of us need the Annie (Diane fail, even asking eggs.” This is a reference to a Keaton), but he is people randomly joke in which a man goes to a doomed to fail in on the street. But psychiatrist and tells him that all his relationships. it seems that his search is his brother thinks he’s a chicken. “The doctor

242 THE FORCE IS STRONG WITH THIS ONE STAR WARS / 1977 IN CONTEXT J ust as fairy tales begin with magical expression of the “Once upon a time… ,” Star American Dream, stressing the GENRE Wars opens with a title card power of the individual. Science fiction, adventure that reads “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” With these Mixing genres DIRECTOR words, the audience is transported For any fan of the movies, the joy of George Lucas to a storybook universe of heroic Lucas’s blockbuster is its magpie farm boys, dueling knights, comical approach to genre. Star Wars is WRITER servants, dark lords, oppressed a science-fiction adventure, a fairy George Lucas rebels, and princesses locked in tale, a Western, a war movie, a deep, dark dungeons. George Lucas samurai epic, a slapstick comedy, STARS combines these elements to relate a and even a Shakespearean tragedy— Mark Hamill, Harrison defiantly American tale. Obi-Wan and all of these blended into a single Ford, Carrie Fisher, Kenobi, the grand old Jedi master movie that’s accessible to anyone Alec Guinness (played by Alec Guinness), is a from the age of five up. In short, it is fusion of warrior-wizard and self- a great introduction to the endless BEFORE help guru, while “the Force” is a possibilities of the moving image. ■ 1971 George Lucas’s first movie, THX 1138, is a science- Princess Leia fiction fable set in a dystopian (Carrie Fisher) future policed by androids. joins Luke Skywalker (Mark AFTER Hamill) to do 1980 Lucas vacates the battle with the director’s chair for The Empire evil Empire. They Strikes Back, the first follow-up become close, but to Star Wars, which formed have a big surprise “Episode V” of a narrative arc. in store for them. 1983 The initial Star Wars What else to watch: Flash Gordon (1936) ■ The Hidden Fortress (1958) ■ trilogy concludes with Return Lawrence of Arabia (1962) ■ The Empire Strikes Back (1980) of the Jedi. It is followed in 1999 by The Phantom Menace, the first of three prequels.

ANGELS AND MONSTERS 243 YOU STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU’RE DEALING WITH DO YOU? ALIEN / 1979 IN CONTEXT A lien was released The poster was two years after designed to give GENRE Star Wars, which nothing away to Science fiction, horror had rekindled Hollywood’s audiences, and the appetite for space. Like movie reveals the DIRECTOR Star Wars, it featured alien’s form only Ridley Scott spaceships, distant bit by bit in order planets, and innovative to ratchet up WRITERS special effects. Unlike the tension. Dan O’Bannon, Star Wars, however, Ronald Shusett it was terrifying—a tough-as-hell nihilistic nightmare protagonist Ripley. STARS story spun around Audiences who Sigourney Weaver, cinema’s most disturbing alien. went to the movie expecting laser Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, guns and amusing robots were in Ian Holm The project was originally called for a surprise. Star Beast. It had a B-movie script BEFORE about an alien stowaway onboard Terror of the unseen 1974 The concept for Alien a spaceship full of humans. In the The alien is the story’s real star, in originates in Dan O’Bannon’s hands of director Ridley Scott, spite of the fact that Scott keeps his student movie Dark Star. however, this seemingly unoriginal monster hidden for most of the concept became something new in movie. The viewer glimpses its 1975 In Jaws, Steven Spielberg the science-fiction genre: a dark, spiny hand, its quivering drool, builds up dread with only brief sinister horror movie with gore, the black shine of its skull. The glimpses of the shark. violent deaths, and weird, audience’s imagination fills in psychosexual imagery. Scott brought the rest. The terror comes from its AFTER groundbreaking, grimy realism to dread and unbearable silences, and 1986 The sequel to Alien, the design of the spacecraft, engaged the knowledge—thanks to Alien’s James Cameron’s Aliens Swiss Surrealist artist H. R. Giger to iconic tagline—that “in space, no has multiple monsters. design the alien, and cast a woman one can hear you scream.” ■ (Sigourney Weaver) in the role of the 1992 In Alien 3, Ripley crashes on a prison planet, where the What else to watch: It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) ■ Jaws aliens wreak havoc among the (1975, pp.228–31) ■ The Thing (1982) ■ Aliens (1986) ■ Prometheus (2012) grizzled inmates.

244 IT’S SO OUIET OUT HERE. IT IS THE OUIETEST PLACE IN THE WORLD STALKER / 1979 IN CONTEXT L ike all The movie’s great artists, meaning has GENRE Russian been endlessly Science fiction director Andrei discussed since Tarkovsky was it first came DIRECTOR often asked out. Tarkovsky Andrei Tarkovsky where he found himself refused the ideas for his to be drawn in. WRITERS movies. Tarkovsky Arkady Strugatsky himself, however, It is worth and Boris Strugatsky did not think the mentioning (screenplay and novel) topic of inspiration these things was really much of a since they go STARS point for discussion. some way in Alisa Freyndlikh, “The idea of a film,” explaining Aleksandr Kaydanovsky, he once said, “always the director’s Anatoly Solonitsyn comes to me in a own, oblique very ordinary, boring attitude to BEFORE manner, bit by bit, by his art, which he discussed himself 1966 Anatoly Solonitsyn stars rather banal phases. To in his 1986 book Sculpting In Time, in Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev, recount it would only be a waste its title the perfect metaphor for about a medieval iconographer. of time. There is really nothing his cinematic technique. A fascinating, nothing poetic, Tarkovsky movie is in some 1972 Tarkovsky’s movie about it.”  ways like a piece of sculpture by Solaris begins a prolific period. British artist Henry Moore: the Tarkovsy’s pessimistic view abstractions mean as much as the AFTER of art in general might also seem realities, and what is left out often 1986 In his final movie, The surprising. “It is obvious that art has as much significance as the Sacrifice, a man bargains with cannot teach anyone anything,” he elements that remain. God to save mankind. said, “since in 4,000 years humanity has learned nothing at all.”

ANGELS AND MONSTERS 245 What else to watch: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, pp.192–93) ■ The Color of Pomegranates (1969) ■ Solaris (1972) ■ Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) When a man thinks of the past, he becomes kinder. The Stalker / Stalker Stalker, like many of Tarkovsky’s by the strange phenomena that Andrei Tarkovsky other movies, was adapted from an they stumble across after the Director existing work, in this case, the Visitors have left. 1971 novel Roadside Picnic by Born in 1932 to a family of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, The unexplained poets and writers in the Soviet which describes the aftermath Unusually for science fiction of the town of Zavrazhye, Andrei of a series of extraterrestrial time, the actual Visitation itself Tarkovsky decided upon a incursions, called the Visitation, was of no concern in the novel; nor career in movie in his early at six zones around the globe. is it for Tarkvosky. His interest in twenties. Enrolling to study the science-fiction genre resulted direction at Moscow’s State The casual detritus left behind in another masterpiece, Solaris, but Institute Of Cinematography, by the unseen Visitors is compared he used the form to suit his own where Sergei Eisenstein was in the book to “the usual mess” left artistic ends. Indeed, Stalker’s also taught, he made his first at a picnic: “apple cores, candy slow opening does not even try to student short film in 1956: The wrappers, charred remains of the explain what has given rise to the ❯❯ Killers, adapted from a short campfire, cans, bottles, somebody’s story by Ernest Hemingway. handkerchief, somebody’s penknife, The “Writer” (Anatoly Solonitsyn) Tarkovsky’s first feature, torn newspapers, coins, faded places a crown of thorns on his head Ivan’s Childhood, launched a flowers picked in another meadow.” as the men wait in the telephone room high-profile career of stylish Just as a picnic’s detritus baffles— while in The Zone. Like many images and nuanced art-house movies. and threatens—the animals that in the movie, the allusion is obscure. After a slow start—just two find it, so too are humans perplexed full-length features in the 1960s, including the acclaimed Andrei Rublev—he made up for lost time in the 1970s, beginning with the space story Solaris. Characterized by long takes and mysterious symbolism, his movies pose deep existential questions about life and its meaning. He died in Paris in 1986. Key movies 1962 Ivan’s Childhood 1966 Andrei Rublev 1972 Solaris 1979 Stalker

246 STALKER mysterious entity called “The first portion of the movie, but his The Stalker lies injured as the men Zone.” At this point, nothing is wife still begs him not to go into first enter The Zone. As they venture known about its origins, its purpose, The Zone and is afraid for his safety. into the unknown, to the sound of or its nature except that anything He brushes away her concerns and dripping water, the Stalker describes that goes into The Zone does not heads off to meet his two clients, it as “the quietest place in the world.” come out again, and that it has known simply as the Writer and the been sealed off by the authorities, Professor, who want to travel to The When the trio arrive at The Zone, and is guarded by military police. Zone, hearing that it has strange the movie suddenly switches from and possibly magical powers. sepia into the colors of the modern What it is that lurks in The world: “We are home,” says the Zone is something Tarkovsky has The quintessence of Stalker. But the men have not yet no desire to reveal. As the title of Tarkovsky’s spaces, the reached their ultimate destination. Sculpting in Time suggests, he Zone is where one goes Within The Zone, where the normal is interested in time, something to see one’s innermost practicalities of life no longer apply he uses a lot of—his movie clocks desires. It is, in short, and lots of strange, inexplicable in at around the three-hour mark. It phenomena seem to occur, there begins on the outskirts of the story, the cinema. is a place called The Room. When where the title character (played by Robert Bird they find it, the Stalker tells them, Aleksandr Kaydanovsky) is getting with excitement and awe, “Your ready for work. The word “stalker” Andrei Tarkovsky: most cherished desire will come suggests menace, but in this near- Elements of Cinema, 2008 true here…” adding, “The desire future world, a Stalker is both a that has made you suffer most.” thief who tries to smuggle artifacts out of The Zone and a guide who is However, it is not The Room willing to take others in. itself that concerns Tarkovsky but his characters’ arrival at its Entering The Zone threshold. What is it that they really The Stalker’s world is poor and want? And what will they find run-down, a fact reflected in the inside? At this point, Stalker mutes sepia cinematography used in the its thriller aspect and becomes a

ANGELS AND MONSTERS 247 My conscience wants vegetarianism interview, “but we are judged to win over the world. And my by people who don’t want to subconscious is yearning for a piece understand the work as a whole of juicy meat. But what do I want? or even to look at it. Instead they isolate individual fragments and The Stalker / Stalker details, clutching to them and trying to prove that there is postapocalyptic existential drama, movie, it comes with no some special, main point in in which its three protagonists explanation. One might see Stalker them. This is delirium.” discuss their lives and destinies, as a Soviet answer to Stanley reminiscent of Samuel Beckett’s Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, To realize his stark vision, play Waiting for Godot (1953). which poses the question, “Where Tarkovsky searched for a suitably do we go from here?” But as to bleak location for Stalker, and What next? whether Tarkovsky was making a found it in Estonia, at an old The final section deals with the comment about life in the Soviet hydroelectric power station and a Stalker’s wife and child, finally Union or life on Earth, the director factory dumping toxic chemicals closing in on his daughter’s face himself refused to be drawn in: upstream. He, his wife, and as she lies with her head on the in his mind, a true artwork should actor Anatoly Solonitsyn all later kitchen table, staring at three not be reduced to its components succumbed to cancer, possibly due glasses that seem to rattle under and interpreted so simply. “We are to contamination at the location. ■ her gaze while a train passes. Like judged not by what we did or many of the images in Tarkovsky’s wanted to do,” he said in an After the men draw lots, the Writer is chosen to enter a metal tunnel in The Zone. The tunnel leads them toward the mysterious Room.

248 YOU HAVE TO HAVE GOOD MEN. GOOD MEN ALL OF THEM DAS BOOT / 1981 IN CONTEXT W olfgang Das Boot has been Petersen’s released as a movie and GENRE Das Boot as a TV mini-series with Action thriller (The Boat) is an action added scenes. In 1997, movie set almost a 209-minute director’s DIRECTOR entirely in the cut was released. Wolfgang Petersen narrowest, most claustrophobic space Mediterranean. Das WRITERS imaginable—a German Boot is not a movie Wolfgang Petersen U-boat during a single about heroes; its (screenplay); Lothar- voyage in World War II. characters are all Günther Buchheim (novel) The story follows the ordinary men whose anxieties of the crew survival depends on STARS in such a way that our each other. “You Jürgen Prochnow, attention, like theirs, is have to have good men,” says the Herbert Grönemeyer, gripped within this undersea apolitical, battle-hardened captain. Klaus Wenneman vice of iron and rivets. “Good men, all of them.” BEFORE After a brief scene in which the An antiwar war movie? 1953 Charles Frend’s The crew carouses in a French bar before Lothar-Günther Buchheim, on Cruel Sea, the story of a a mission that seems to fill them, whose novel the movie was based, British corvette protecting and the viewer, with a feeling of criticized the movie for being too a convoy from U-boat attacks, impending doom, the U-96 departs exciting to convey the antiwar establishes the World War II La Rochelle and heads deep into message he intended. This echoed naval thriller genre. the North Atlantic. There the boat the view of the French director intercepts Allied convoys, is heavily François Truffaut, who said that a AFTER damaged in a depth-charge attack, true antiwar movie was impossible 2009 Samuel Maoz’s tense then makes a perilous attempt because such movies inevitably war movie, Lebanon, which to slip undetected into the tells its story entirely from the inside of an Israeli tank, The sea cannot claim us, Henrich. is compared to Das Boot by No ship is as seaworthy as ours. film critics. Captain Lehmann-Willenbrock / Das Boot