This movie is as hypnotic as any DePalma film, with the added advantage that it is straightforward and to the point. Maybe it is just good guys versus the bad guys, but when the Good Guys are lead by Kevin Costner and Sean Connery, I don't know how anyone can turn away. Throw in DeNiro as Al Capone and you have a heavyweight fight that would break pay per view records if it were a boxing match.
Even before the first scene, the movie is pulling you in with a haunting and propulsive theme played over artistically rendered Titles. Ennio Morricone was Oscar Nominated for the score of this film and it should have been his. The background themes are great at accentuating the heroes in their glory moments, and the action scenes are supplemented with exciting motifs that come up in various sections of the film. There are plenty of opportunities for the music to make an impact on you.
The botched opening raid is a nice way to set our expectations at a different place. Later, when the group of Untouchable Law Enforcement agents swoop down on smugglers at the Canadian border, we are amped up to see the results after the earlier futile effort. The key set piece is the train station shootout with the slow build and all the closeups. DePalma has studied the Serio Leone films meticulously and lets those beats play out at the same agonizing and tension filled pace as we got in the Spaghetti Westerns. Every complication adds to the suspense, every effort to get the accountant and keep him alive makes our anticipation of Andy Garcia as Stone worthwhile. Costner plays it so cool in this scene in comparison to some of the early moments of the film. You can see the character arc in his demeanor here.
Of course Sean Connery is the lynchpin for the film. His world weary folksiness and Chicago cantankerous nature were a perfect realization of the character. The combination of his story and that of Charles Martin Smith gives license to Eliot Ness to get a little dirty, in spite of his white knight image. Charlie Martin Smith and Billy Drago are the unsung heroes of the cast, one showing the exuberance of a puppy dog and the other reflecting the darkest elements of the Capone organization. Maybe Capone doesn't go flying to his death, but we know that his empire has crumbled because of the turning of his own tactics against him.
Filmed in the 80s, DePalma and Company make Chicago look like fifty years earlier, and the soundstage sets match up so well with the exteriors, you can believe it was all shot in the time and place depicted. This movie is just a lot of fun. Fidelity to the real story is lacking, and the conclusion in the court is a bit baffling, but you won't care because everything else is so rousing.
Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy.
The Man Who Would be King
One of the treasures of the year 1975, was a film I experienced in early 1976. "The Man Who Would be King" opened in late December 1975, but it was not until my birthday in February that my father took me down to Hollywood to see it. I knew Michael Caine thru a few films I'd seen on television, "Zulu", "The Ipcress File" and "The Wrong Box" to name a few. I'd seen "Sleuth" and "The Wilby Conspiracy" in theaters, but it was this film which cemented me as a lifelong fan. in part because he was so great but also in large part because he was playing opposite of one of my favorite actors, Sean Connery. This whole vibe of British adventurers in India and Afghanistan during the time period of colonial rule of the late 19th century just held a huge allure for me. I loved "Gunga Din" and this felt like an update of the kind of swashbuckling adventure story that made me a movie fan in the first place.
This highly praised film did get a little criticism for the performance of Michael Caine, in the Variety review in 1975, and on the "Lambcast", this past week. The suggestion was that Caine was exaggerating his working class accent and doing a bit of a caricature in his performance. As I said on the show and will say here now, I think Caine was channeling the character of Peachy Carnahan, particularly in those spots. Peachy is a bit of a con man, given an outsized personality to gain trust, or present an image to the world of someone more in command than he actually was. To me, it was all set up in that opening sequence where Peachy steals the watch, and then noticing it belonged to a fellow Mason, tries to return it without getting caught. When the Kipling character reveals that he had missed the watch earlier and that Peachy's mask has slipped, he smiles and becomes an even grander version of the larcenous character.
Sean Connery is clearly having the time of his life with his role as Caine's partner Danny Dravot. His wink and nod to Kipling when he reveals their blackmail plans is just the start. When his character is disguised as a mad priest, in the caravan they travel through Afghanistan with, he gets to mug with his facial expressions and dance joyously on a hilltop. The character moment between the two when they are trapped by a collapsed snow bridge is also a meaty slice of acting, and the fact that these two good pals were getting to act together in the scene is just gravy.
The theme of the film is hubris on the part of the two leads. The mendacity of the two characters leads us to doubt their true intent, but then it turns out they really do have an audacious plan to conquer a nation. Their colonial superiority seems justified at first because their military skills are far superior to those of the tribes that they are gathering as followers. We know as observers however, that they are imperfect men with an outsized appetite for adventure and that it will lead them to trouble. When they latch upon the ruse that Daniel is the long lost son of Alexander and the tribal people treat him as a deity, it is not had to see the fall coming. Danny gets so caught up in playing the role, he gets taken in by their own deception. Peachy gives good counsel but still did not see where the downfall would be coming. John Huston, the director of this film, also made "the Treasure of the Sierra Madre". That 1948 film , almost feels like it was the template for this movie. A trio of adventures, seeking wealth, battling natives and losing it all in the end from greed and exaggerated self importance.
The only other reservations I heard on the podcast had to do with the tone of the film. The light hearted adventure takes some dark turns and that seemed hard to accept. I'm not sure why anyone would have a hard time moving through those alternating tones, that has been a standard emotional wave from "The Adventures of Robin Hood' and "Gunga Din", all the way up to Indiana Jones. When you have monkeys giving a sieg heil in one scene and then implied torture in another scene, we know this is how adventure films work. Drama is interspersed with comedy throughout the adventure. Iron Man makes quips as worlds collapse and characters die. Maybe the fact that Peachy and Danny seem real, is the thing that made some people have a harder time with the tonal shifts.
Everywhere you look in this film, there are moments to relish. The incensed attitude of the two Brits when being offered the daughters and sons of their first manipulated tribal chief, is traded off by the two, each one getting a moment of indignity followed by a lesson from the other, the second one smugly mocking the first.
Billy Fish: Ootah say take your pick. He have twenty three daughters.
Danny: Those are his daughters? Why the dirty old beggar!
Peachy Carnehan: Now, now Danny. Different countries, different ways. He's only being hospitable according to his lights. Billy, tell him one's as pretty as the next and we cannot choose.
[Billy translates; Ootah replies in Kafiri]
Billy Fish: Ootah say he also have thirty-two sons if you are liking boys.
Peachy Carnehan: [angrily] Tell him he makes my gorge rise; tell him!
Danny: Now Peachy, different countries, different ways. Tell Ootah we have vowed not to take a woman until all his enemies are vanquished.
When they are holding up the gems in Alexander's treasure room, and Peachy one ups Danny with a bigger ruby, you want to laugh. The military demeanor they take with the commissioner is funny and reveals Peachy's character playing again. Connery tells Peachy and Billy to stay back, as they are mere mortals. Everywhere there are sly bits of humor.
To me, the key line that sets up the fact that this is an incredible story being told by one of the participants, who has learned a lesson the hard way,
Rudyard Kipling:
Carnehan.
Peachy Carnehan:
The same - and not the same, who sat besides you in the first class carriage, on the train to Marwar Junction, three summers and a thousand years ago.
That phrase, "Three summers and a thousand years ago" tells me I'm going to get a fantastic story. and we get just that.
MovieRob, the host of Acting School 101 on the Lambcast, invited me to join him for a discussion of the films of Sean Connery. Anyone who has been here before certainly knows that I think Connery IS James Bond so I was thrilled to participate. We countdown our own top five performances by Mr. Connery and have a good time talking about toupees and other acting tools.
In preparation for the podcast, I went through my laserdisc collection and put up a wall of Connery features. Four of my five picks can be found here. Try to guess what they are before you listen to the podcast. Have fun everyone.
[ This essay was originally Published on the deleted site "Fogs Movie Reviews" in the Fall of 2013]
All
you film fans out there who were born after 1970 are about to eat your
hearts out. You may know that the 70s were the second golden age of
Hollywood, after all that's when "Star Wars", "The Godfather", and
"Alien" all started. You may even be aware that the greatest adventure
film ever made, "Jaws", was released in the Summer of 1975. It would be a
solid argument to make that 1975 was the apex of Hollywood film making
in that decade. Here is a partial list of the movies released that year:
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dog Day Afternoon, Barry Lyndon,
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Rollerball, Three Days of the Condor,
Shampoo, Nashville, Seven Beauties, Cousin cousine,The Passenger as well
as the aforementioned fish story. " That is a list of essential films
for anyone who loves movies to partake of. Buried in the avalanche of
great films from that year, is the one film that stars Michael Caine and
Sean Connery together as the leading men (each had a small part in "A
Bridge Too Far") and as a bonus it was directed by John Huston.
"The
Man Who Would be King" was a dream project for John Huston. He had
tried to put together a version of the movie as far back as the 1950.
His original choices for leads were Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart.
That was the royalty of the earlier film generation. When he finally did
get to put the story in front of the cameras it was to feature the
royalty of the next generation of movie stars. While other names had
been mentioned, someone (likely Paul Newman who turned down the film)
suggested that Huston stick to using British actors. That was the best
advise Huston could get because this movie is a quintessentially British
story focused on a time period when the English Empire was at it's
height and the ambitions of men who were it's subjects knew no bounds.
It is this condition that allows our lead characters to work so well in
the tale.
Peachy
Carnahan and Daniel Dravot are recently retired British non
commissioned soldiers who decide the world at home is not big enough for
the likes of them. They have developed a strategy to make themselves
Kings. In particular, rulers of Kafiristan, a remote region of
Afghanistan.
Daniel Dravot:"
In any place where they fight, a man who knows how to drill men can
always be a King. We shall go to those parts and say to any King we find
- "D'you want to vanquish your foes?' and we will show him how to drill
men; for that we know better than anything else. Then we will subvert
that King and seize his Throne and establish a Dynasty."
Before
they begin this quest, they make the acquaintance of an English
journalist working in India as well. This journalist turns out to be
Rudyard Kipling, who wrote the story on which the film is based. These
encounters with Kipling becomes the bookends for the film and give the
story an even greater sense of adventure and mystery. While the story
itself is fantastic, the characters are ground in reality and the
presence of Kipling as future narrator of the tale is all the more
needed to set the mood. If you have not seen this film, be assured that
when you get to the end you will empathize with the Kipling character
and stare in wonder at the proof of it all. The tie in to the story
concerns the masonic brotherhood that the English characters share in
common. There are some great curves that follow from this early
revelation. Christopher Plummer is unrecognizable in the role and he
strikes just the right tone of concerned bemusement in the first act and
utter astonishment in the conclusion.
After
assisting the two adventurers, Kipling fades from the story and the
focus is on the travel to Kafiristan. There are several exciting
incidents on the road but eventually the spine of the story begins when
they arrive and connect with the remnants of an earlier English
expedition. The lone survivor is a gurkha soldier named Billy Fish. He
becomes their interpreter and confidant. His part in the story reminds
us that the relationship of the British to their Empire was not always
hostile. These fierce hill people fought valiantly alongside their
English counterparts in many battles over the last two hundred years.
While the relationship is not one of equality, the two adventurers are
not condescending to their third partner, in fact they trust him
implicitly.
The second act of the film focuses on the battles and
strategy that the two employ to gain the power that brought them to the
remote land to begin with. There are several small incidents that test
their friendship and commitment. There is a great deal of humor involved
in the training sequences and in some of the moments of conquest. That
humor may be viewed as politically incorrect at times, but it is not so
much based on racism as ethnocentricity. The world is still a brutal
place, and while those of us living in Western cultures might view some
of the behaviors as relics of the past, it may not be as true as we
wish. Of course the intercultural conflicts go both directions since the
English soldiers are viewed just as differently by the tribesmen they
encounter as we might treat a alien from another world.
All
of this is offered up though through the performances of two of the
greatest screen personae of the last fifty years of film. Connery and
Caine are both Award winning performers from the generation of actors
that came out of England in the sixties. Along with Albert Finney, Peter
O'Toole and Richard Harris, they represent that moment in time when the
culture of Great Britain was the Beatles and James Bond. Here they are
in an adventure story that harkens to the glory days of the Empire
and much as the Western is a romanticism of American history, a film
like this served the same purpose for the English. Connery plays Daniel
Dravot as the more blustery of the two itinerant soldiers. He uses his
commanding voice and fierce expression to cow his enemies and establish a
position of power with others. He can however take on a warm quality as
he does with Kipling at one point and his subjects later on in the
film. The dividing point for the two characters comes when Danny becomes
infatuated with a local beauty that he sees as cementing the legacy of
Alexander he has come to see himself playing. The beautiful Mrs. Caine
was cast in the part at the last minute as soon as John Huston met her.
Peachy
Carnehan has the more subdued character. Caine is more sly and
cautious, except for the scene on the train in the opening of the film.
Peachy does get his dander up but almost always it is in response to his
partner and not the other characters. It is Michael Caine's delivery
of the opening framing story that gives the tale it's magical quality.
Rudyard Kipling:"Carnehan!." Peachy Carnehan:
"The same - and not the same, who sat besides you in the first class
carriage, on the train to Marwar Junction, three summers and a thousand
years ago."
It is that prologue that sucks us in and makes us want
to know what has transpired in the intervening three years. Caine has a
breathless line reading that is haunting and fits really well with the
coda of the story. It is his willingness to hold back his voice at times
that allows the ruse these two perpetuate on the populace to work. He
is the brains of the outfit but he has to stand back to let his partner
gain the power that both of them seek. You can also see it in his face
and posture when Danny gets full of himself and Peachy has to let some
of the air out of him.
Connery
has said that this is his favorite film that he appeared in. I heard
him say it in person at the Archlight Cinerama Dome Theater in Hollywood
three years ago. He did a short five to ten minute introduction of the
film at one of the AFI Night at the Movies events. It is easy to see why
he would feel this way. He and Michael Caine get to play larger than
life characters who are a little bit crazed. There is action, drama,
comedy and suspense throughout the story. While there are a number of
other elements of the film that make it memorable and worthy, all of
them would be for naught if the two actors at the heart of the story
were not perfect.
The film was nominated for four Academy Awards:
art direction, costume design,editing and screenplay. Amazingly it did
not win any of those categories. Even more amazing is that the two leads
and the fine supporting performance from Plummer were not recognized at
all. It is ideal to imagine that this was a result of the lushness of
the films of the period. It was clearly not the inadequacy of the work
done by the film makers. The score is by Maurice Jarre, the man
responsible for the music of "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Dr. Zhivago". So
you can expect the music to reflect the grandeur of the setting and the
heroics and faults of the two main characters. If you listen to the
opening track that accompanies the titles, you will hear echos of "Gunga
Din" and those 1960s classics as well.
As the story unfolds and
you witness the relationship between Danny and Peachy, you will see why
Huston thought of Bogart and Gable and later Redford and Newman. There
is great byplay with the two actors. At one point they had hoped to
share the screen again, this time with their pal Roger Moore, in a
version of James Clavell's Tai Pan. It is something to lament that this
coupling of actors could not be accommodated later on. That makes it
all the more important to treasure this match up of two great actors the
likes of which we may never see again.
Richard
Kirkham is a lifelong movie enthusiast from Southern California. While
embracing all genres of film making, he is especially moved to write
about and share his memories of movies from his formative years, the
glorious 1970s. His personal blog, featuring current film reviews as
well as his Summers of the 1970s movie project, can be found at Kirkham A Movie A Day.
For the second week in a row, I made it down to Hollywood to catch a classic on the big screen at the Egyptian Theater. Actually there were two classics, both James Bond films from the heyday of the 1960s. These are the two films that most turned 007 into a a massive popular cultural phenomenon and the most consistently successful film series of all time. The pairing was irresistible to me and although I could occassionally hear the snickering of hipsters in the audience over the costumes in the movies or a piece of plot line that seems a little fantastic, the general response was one of love from the hundreds of us who managed to make it there and see the first and greatest James Bond, Sean Connery.
Goldfinger
It was just last June that I saw Goldfinger on the big screen along with another Sean Connery feature "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade". I can and do regularly watch this film. It is as entertaining as any movie you are likely to see and it is in my opinion the greatest of all the James Bond films. I won't relive the entire countdown to Skyfall that I did in 2012, but there are a few posts that you might enjoy here.
This first is a memory piece and review that I did early in the year leading up to Skyfall.
This is the KAMAD Video Blog that I posted after the Father's Day visit to see 007 and Dr. Jones together.
I did notice something a bit odd in last night's screening. The end credit did not list the correct movie coming up next in the sequence. Here is the way it looks in the DVD remaster from a half dozen years ago:
It properly lists "Thunderball" as the next film. On last night's print the film listed was "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". Amanda and I talked about this and she is of the opinion that this was the original listing because they did not know that "Thunderball" would be next due to all the legal issues surrounding the property. I tended to agree with her except that "You Only Live Twice" came before "OHMSS" and "Thunderball" was released the year after "Goldfinger" so they should have been in production at the time they did release the third film. The answer according the IMDB is:
In the original end title credits, which featured the famous "James Bond
will return in..." teaser, the next film advertised was On Her Majesty's Secret Service
(1969). However, when the producers began pre-production, they were
unable to secure the Swiss locations needed for the film and decided to
make Thunderball (1965) instead. The end title teaser was later changed to advertise "Thunderball".
So that mystery is solved for the moment.
Thunderball
I don't think I have a previous post exclusively on "Thunderball". I do however have this section of a post that I have copied over for you:
The original "Thunderball" was one of the biggest blockbusters of the
1960s. When adjusted for inflation it stands as the most financially
successful of all the Bond movies. The audacity of Goldfinger was
multiplied by a bigger canvas for the story telling. More exotic
locations and bigger set pieces are put into place. As a kid I wanted
the 007 lunchbox with all the frogmen fighting underwater. It was an
image that sold all of us on the adventure we had coming. As far as I
know, this is the first story to exploit the idea of nuclear terrorism.
It was not of course the last. Here was SPECTRE as a real organization,
with a board of directors and a chairman presiding over crime and doling
out death as a punishment for failing the company. In a way, with all
of the numbers, and secret locations and passwords or codes, it is the
mirror image of MI6, and the bureaucracy that Bond actually represents.
There are great sequences in the picture and some real imaginative
gizmos in the story. The jet-pack is just so outlandish that it gives
the ejector seat a run for it's money as the most over the top toys of
007 in the early films. The miniature breathing apparatus looks like it
could be practical for emergencies. Bond gets taken for a ride in an
early Mustang, he has an underwater version of the jet-pack, and he gets
yanked into the sky forty years before Batman uses the same technology
in "The Dark Knight". The problems with the film have to do with pacing.
A slog through the stuff at Shrublands, hide and seek in the Mardi Gras
like parade in Jamaica, and the underwater battle looks cool but needed
some editing. "Thunderball" is like one of those great Thanksgiving
meals with so many choices, that are so rich and you want to try them
all. When you do, you feel a little sick afterwards. "Thunderball"
doesn't exactly make me sick, but my blood sugar is usually a little
high after I watch it. I should get up and go for a walk, but I usually
just fall asleep contentedly. Another blogger El Santo, did a fantastic
piece on the music from "Thunderball', that goes way beyond the theme
song. I hope he is OK with my linking ithere, you should read and listen.
I will also mention that this film was one from my youth that I know gave me a nightmare or two. When Angelo Palazzi playing the doppelganger of Major François Derval gets stuck in the seat belt in the plane he just hijacked and landed in the ocean, Largo cuts his air hose and he drowns flailing away for help and oxygen. It gave me the creeps watching it and I dreamed about that death on more than one occasion.
Sometimes there are little things that might slip by on the television screen that will not escape your attention on a screen thirty feet high and seventy feet wide. Last night I remembered one of those weird little details when the image came up for just a brief couple of seconds. There is a dog, taking a leak in the middle of a scene, and it either was too complicated to shoot it over or the editor just thought it was a lark and left it in. I went in search and fopund it on my DVD of the film and thought I'd share it with you here.
As Bond is trying to escape in the confusion of the parade, two of his pursuers are bisected in this shot by a random animal lifting it's leg and letting it out. Amanda missed it but I have now made sure that none of you reading this will ever miss it again.
We have a long wait until the next James Bond film, but with a rich 50 year history and opportunities like this screening at the American Cinematique at the Egyptian, we will always have plenty to talk about.
