I have written about this movie before, but as you can see from all the "Jaws" and "Lawrence of Arabia" posts, I don't necessarily feel sated by one entry on a film. "Casablanca" may be one of the most important films in my love of movies. The main character is my namesake, and the circumstances under which I first fell under it's spell, tell a traditional story of a movie fanatics love affair.
Eleven years ago, there was a 70th Anniversary screening by Fathom Events, You can read my comments on that occasion here:
My opinion on the film has not changed at all, the movie is still perfection. The Sunday Night show that we went to was three quarters full, which is good, but the audience was elderly, which is less so. That comes from someone who just reached the Social Security milestone, so it was noticeable. This is a program that is designed to sell the release of the film on a 4K format, which probably means little to most of the fans who came out, but maybe it will help bring in some younger viewers so that the near Universal respect that this film is held in will continue.
There has been a Social Media prompt the last couple of weeks, listing a series of items to answer, you know: "Movie that I Hate", "Movie that I find overrated", "Movie that I can watch over and over again". Several of my on-line friends played along and the one item that stood out to me was that at least three of them answered "Movie I should have seen but haven't"; CASABLANCA.
Far be it for me to chastise people for having a blind spot, believe me I have plenty. I am just surprised because this is such an accessible film Unlike some foreign language cinema masterpiece, or a dense metaphysical dive into existentialism, "Casablanca" is emotionally engaging, easy to dive into and a pleasure rather than a chore. I hope that all of you who have not caught up to it will do so soon.
The love story at the center of the film, features a broken romance, a love triangle and the complications of the Nazi threat to the world. All of those get a satisfying resolution at the end, at least from a moral perspective. Everyone lives up to their duty and faith in the face of horror. My favorite elements of the film however, repeatedly involve Claude Rains as Captain Renault. His presenting self is as a neutral in regard to others and the politics of the war. He cynically accuses Rick of being a sentimentalist underneath his gruff exterior. Renault, is among the least moral characters in Casablanca, engaging in corruption and exploiting women through his power to grant an exit visa. Yet he is also the most charming and insightful of characters, and every time he and Rick engage in verbal by-play, it is music to my ears.
So many films have good stories and dialogue that services the story, but it feels mannered and manufactured. Every line in this movie feels organic to the characters that are being presented. Sascha playfully flirts with Rick's current girl Yvonne, but it is not heavy handed and full of double entendres, instead it is light, fun and reflective of his personality. Peter Lorre's Ugarte is slimy with a sense of neediness that makes us sympathize with him in spite of his obvious faults. Carl is suitably felicitous as Bogarts major domo of the Café American, and he is a human being who reflects our own concerns about the characters in the main story. I will leave Ferrari, Strasser, Sam, Lazlo and so many others to another time, let's just say they are all perfectly cast and deliver performances that make the script sing.
The esteem I have for this movie can also be read in my birthday list from two years ago:
I did a pretty extensive write up of this film back in 2014 on the 30 Years On Project, which covered films from 1984. We are just a year short of a 40th Anniversary for "A Nightmare on Elm Street", but the screening was this last weekend so I'm not going to wait another year.
Most of my previous comments are still true in regard to my opinion of the film. The practical effects are the thing that make this movie so compelling. The sequence where Tina is attacked, while she is in bed with her boyfriend, continues to be pretty horrifying. We think one way to deal with nightmares is to have someone with us, but Wes Craven doesn't give us that out. The brutal sequence happens in spite of the fact that physically capable Rod is right there. He is powerless as Tina is ripped open, flung around the room and snuffed out by the invisible nightmare she is having. The movement on the ceiling, the long cuts to her abdomen, and the volume of blood, make a terrific horror sequence.
The same is true of the attack on Glenn played by Johnny Depp. I criticized his performance in the first half of the movie, but it is not any more problematic than the rest of the cast, and everyone does seem to do better once the character of Freddy is established as the villain. I suppose it is silly to knock a film like this for overkill, so I won't complain, but the amount of blood that poor Glen gives up is impressive.
If the film has any element to it that does not hold up, it is the musical score which marks it as a product of it's time. Composer Charles Bernstein has the synthesizer do so much of the heavy lifting in the picture, that the music feels like an 80s cliché right out of the box. There were a few eerie moments, but way to often, the volume key and the hold key on the electronic instruments just happen too obviously.
Wes Craven created a masterpiece with this film. I frankly have not seen any of the follow ups, but I think I am going to remedy that soon.
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.
Diamonds
The trailer here represents one of the issues with selecting this film for the TBT project. The movie is not commercially available so no one seems to have cared to find and post the trailer for the film. What you see above is a fan created promo, obviously done on free software since the watermark is all over the video. I had never heard of this movie before checking a list of 1975 films on IMDB. When I saw that Robert Shaw and Richard Roundtree were the stars, I was enthusiastic about including it on the project. The problem is that it is not really available. No streaming services were offering it, it never had a DVD release, and the only home media that was available was a VHS tape for sale on ebay.
So I made my purchase and dug out the VHS player that my wife had used in her classroom, it also has a DVD player, and hooked it all up. It turns out I could have watched a bootlegged copy on You Tube. In the long run, a You Tube viewing will be my last resort for these lost films. I still prefer physical media, even if it is an antiquated format.
Before I talk about the film itself, there are a couple of interesting points. First of all, the film was also marketed as "Diamond Shaft". That is the cover title on my ebay acquisition and the art work there pretty well explains why the title switch. Richard Roundtree was best known as the actor who portrayed Shaft in the movies. The character of John Shaft is nowhere in this film, and Roundtree does not ever hold a gun in his hand in the movie. Another alternate title was "Ace of Diamonds", which I think would have worked better, but back in 1975, no one asked my opinion.
This is a heist picture and it has some interesting elements to it. Robert Shaw for example, plays twins. He is both Charles and Earl Hodgson. Earl is a security expert who designs protection for large businesses. Charles is a diamond merchant. An early scene establishes the competitive nature of the two brothers, they are both blackbelts and they spar with one another. Charles has tricked his way into having a social evening with Sally, played by Barbara Hersey who was going by Barbara Seagull at the time. Sally is the girlfriend of recently released prisoner Archie, the professional thief played by Roundtree. It is a convoluted sequence designed to bring all of them together but also to potentially drive a wedge between Sally and Archie. Charles has some agenda that we are not yet privy to.
"Diamonds" was written and directed by Menahem Golan, who was yet to partner with his cousin Yoram Globus, to form Cannon Films, but they did have a history of making films in Israel, which is exactly where this movie is mostly shot. The rest of the cast are Israeli actors who I did not recognize, but they were all pretty good. Oh there is one other American actor in the cast, Shelly Winters appears as a widow visiting the Holy land, but her role is completely superfluous to the story. At best she is comic relief, but if you took her out of the film completely, it would not have changed a thing about the plot.
The three act structure is very clear in the plotting. The opening section is the recruitment phase, which largely takes place in London. When they arrive in Israel, things get more complex as the plan is being laid out for us and there is a substantial amount of police attention paid to Archie because he is a known criminal. I enjoyed seeing the Israeli locations and seeing all the people in the squares and marketplaces. This elaborate set up contains a lot of cat and mouse playing between the thieves and the police who have them under surveillance. There are also a couple of red herrings thrown in, to baffle the police and us.
I am usually of the opinion that we as an audience should be in on as many details of the planning as possible, without giving away any surprises. There were a couple of technical elements in the execution of the theft which would have been more dramatic if we had seen them coming. However, the casing of the security vault and it's procedures was shown pretty effectively. Charles has some insider information that could have been laid out to his partners, but it was not of critical importance. I do think though that Shaw's character needed to have a little more development as a personality. The interactions between him, Archie and Sally, after the opening section in London, are pretty dry. There is a suggestion of some tension but none of it is very dramatic.
When we get to the heist itself, the parts we see were well staged. As is required in a plot featuring a crime like this, there are some complications, but the main variable is the cooperation of a representative of the security vault. His motivation to provide information is a result of threat and duress, but when he overcomes that, he is so tentative about approaching the authorities that the extra time feels like a dramatic cheat. Robert Shaw was on the other end of an elaborate con game in "The Sting", so it is kind of fun when the tables are turned on the cops and his partners at the climax of the film. "The Thomas Crown Affair" seems to have also been something of an inspiration for the story turns here.
"Diamonds" or "Diamond Shaft" if you prefer, is not an essential film. Shaw was better in "The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3" the year before. The film is however interesting enough for fans of heist films and Robert Shaw. Roundtree and Seagull(Hersey) have little opportunity to shine because character development is not a goal of the screenwriter/director. This is a movie that is all about the crime, and it is only moderately interesting in spite of the tricks that get played.
I was really hyped up about this film. I expected it to be ridiculously violent and full of bad puns and jokes about a bear being high. There was some of that but not nearly as much as I wanted. If you have read this site in the past you know I have a weakness for cheesy, violent movies. "Smokin' Aces", "Seven Psychopaths", "Piranha 3D" and "Piranha 3DD" are good examples of the sort of nonsense I was looking for. It's not that this did not deliver, it did, just not in spades like I was hoping. We get caught up in a couple of stories that are supposed to structure the film, but they are just not that interesting and I kept hoping the bear would do some more damage to more people and property.
A movie like this has to be self aware of how over the top it is. In the best sequences, you do get that sort of malicious nastiness that we come to this for. The opening sequence with the European tourists sets us up pretty well. They are a little too self involved, but their dialogue was fun. I'm all for naming a kid Texas, I think they would both love it and hate it. The old joke about not needing to be faster than the bear, just faster than the other person, gets tossed aside pretty quickly. The dismemberment image is just enough without going too far in the intro. The problem is, it takes a long time to get back to this sort of thing. Even though there is an amusing sequence with the plane that drops the cocaine, it turns quickly to some issues that ought to get out of the way a little quicker.
Kids in jeopardy is a trope that also undermines the story. We know that the film maker is not going to have nine year olds ripped to pieces in front of us. That would undermine the enjoyment of the bear attacks. The victims need to be idiots, scum, or something else we can enjoy seeing brought down. This is not a horror film but a thriller comedy. Now the drug smugglers, the muggers, the smug do-gooders, that's the stuff we are looking for. So there should be more of that. The problem is that the national park setting is not as target rich an environment as the river locations in the Piranha movies. There is also no gratuitous nudity to enhance the cheesy nature of the movie. The closest we get to characters who fulfill that need for our voyeurism, is a middle age ranger and a nature crusade. That don't work.
My favorite death moment in the film is not really a bear attack but an accidental moment by people who are so hyped up by fear that they act stupidly. The sequence at the ranger station and the ambulance is the high point of the bear mayhem, and it occurs halfway through the movie, and we need something a little stronger at the end. This is Ray Liotta's last film and he put in some effort, especially in the section where he confronts the detective in the story. The problem is he never gets hyped up the way the other characters do about the bear, and it makes this part of the story feel too much like it is from another picture. Director Elizabeth Banks, makes the sequences with the bear work well enough, but the pacing of the rest of the story seems off and a little slow.
Don't get me wrong, I had a good time with this but it is not the perfect realization of the high concept premise that I wanted. My standards may be low when it comes to a movie like this, but I need to be honest, some good laughs and disturbing deaths were not quite enough to make it a classic. If you are intrigued by the idea, and you understand the approach the story is taking to this, you too will have some enjoyment. You may not however feel a need to ever return to the film, and a movie with this sort of promise should always be re-watchable.
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 Hindenburg
This was another of the few 1975 films I am covering on this year long project, that I missed in theaters when it opened in December. As a freshman debater at USC, we were expected to participate in and help out in the major National Debate Competition held on our campus"The Alan Nichols Invitational". So I was preoccupied at the holidays and never got a chance to catch up. Also in December we had "Lucky Lady","The Killer Elite", "The Black Bird", "Hustle", "The Man Who Would be King", "Barry Lyndon", and "Sherlock Holmes Smatter Brother". Many of these were released the same day as "The Hindenburg". The reviews on the film were not promising at all. Many reviewers called it a "disaster" of a disaster movie. Some said it was the worst film of the year, and called the acting and dialogue laughable. So it was no wonder that it slipped passed me at the time.
Many years later I caught up with the movie on a subscription service and my opinion was not nearly as negative. I remember thinking it was a little dull but I did not hate myself for having watched it. Today, I am going to stick to that opinion, the film is serviceable, not great, but certainly not the dregs that were suggested by Pauline Kael, Roger Ebert and Vincent Canby. The movie was made by Robert Wise, no slouch as a director,and meticulously integrates the real world events in with the fictional story that structures the movie. Several of the characters and the manner in which they escaped from the flaming crash of the Zeppelin, are accurate if dramatic re-creations of those events. I can't say that the acting was excellent but I can say that the cast was. George C. Scott was one of my favorites in the decade of the 1970s. He is trying to play a sympathetic German Colonel who is resistant to Nazi control of the military. He obviously needs the part to be written that way because we would be unlikely to root for a Nazi as our hero. Anne Bancroft is a passenger on the trip, given a plot line just to justify having the female lead of the film portrayed by a star. William Atherton, who will become the default prick of so many 1980s films, is playing against type here as a crewman with a somewhat heroic but dangerous agenda.
The rest of the cast was filled with familiar faces:Roy Thinnes, Gig Young, Burgess Meredith, Charles Durning, Richard A. Dysart, Robert Clary, and René Auberjonois. Young had been fired from "Blazing Saddles" a year before because he was incapable of performing while withdrawing from alcohol. He was typecast as a boozer for very good reasons, and his ultimate tragedy is something you might wan to read about if you are in the mood to be depressed. Meredith and Durning both had two Academy Award Nominations in their careers, Meredith in fact was nominated this year for his performance in another 1975 film, "Day of the Locust" (which also featured Atherton and Dysart). While performances from this film were not honored, the special effects were, two wins for Special Achievement in sound effects editing and visual effects, and three nominations for art direction, cinematography, and sound.
The best things about the film are in fact it's handsome production. The elaborate reconstruction of the interior of the Hindenburg is impressive. The metal frames and catwalks are intricate and provide lots of opportunities for the actors to run through, climb on, and ultimately fall off of them. The dining hall and lounge areas might make you wish that travel by airship still existed. The luxury of a cruise ship, combined with a view of the Earth from several hundred feet above the surface, is very appealing. The cabins look a little small but they could work if you spent most of your time looking out the observation ports. The manner of loadings, docking, and operating the ship seems to be pretty accurate, and if the plot does not suck you in, at least you can enjoy the details that are provided from the era.
Basically, we know from the get go, that the Zeppelin explodes at the end of the movie. The story speculates on political intrigue because the Nazis used the Hindenburg as a propaganda tool, and it is still a mystery as to what really caused the explosion. This story postulates that there was a conspiracy to sabotage the airship as a way of indicating that there was a resistance effort at work in the Third Reich. The technical effectiveness of the film is tied up in how the actual film footage of the real disaster is integrated into the filmed sequences depicting what happens to the characters we see in the story. Except for some mild variations in the film stock and lighting, the results are very solid. Anyone who has watched the newsreel footage from 1937 will be amazed to learn that two thirds of the passengers and crew survived the conflagration.
The characters in the film represent a passenger list of 36 and a crew of 61. There is a fun sequence where the Broadway impresario plays a satiric tune on the piano as a vaudeville clown acts out the concepts. The mocking of the Führer was funny but unlikely to get as far as it did with the audience on board. The movie is filled with red herrings about the plot. There is a clairvoyant, diamond smuggling, drafting sketches, and coded messages which are there to create intrigue but really have nothing to do with the threat to the vessel. Scott is a special security expert, brought on board to respond to a rumored threat, and Thinnes is the Gestapo counterpart who has methods that Scott's Luftwaffe Colonel objects to.
I did find the film a little dull because of the pacing, but the whole point of a film like this is to build up to the conclusion. I did not find it objectionable but I would suggest that if you decide to watch this, you make sure you are fully caffeinated. I saw the Laser Disc version of this film many times but never pulled the trigger on that so I watched this on a bare bones Blu Ray release. There was literally no menu options except for subtitles. There were no extras, chapters, or other languages available on the media I had. I will say however, the picture looks fantastic and the images of the ship in the air combine the model effects with matte paintings very convincingly and in a beautiful composition.
We are eight films past Avengers: Endgame and the MCU continues to stumble around looking for a coherent way for their stories to proceed. Aside from two Spider-Man movies and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, the universe has been a mess, filled with meandering new threads, new characters that no one is particularly interested in, and established characters looking for something to do. The Multiverse seems to offer endless possibilities but so far, they do not seem to have been compelling or building a new narrative for everyone to follow. The scattered trajectory of the new Marvel films has suddenly doubled down on options by taking a deep dive into the quantum realm, which when layered alongside the Multiverse, ought to render all the storylines meaningless. Let's face it, if you have billions of possible outcomes at any given time, why should we care about the particular one we are watching now?
Additionally, the television shows are starting to cross pollinate with the films, so that if you haven't been watching and re-watching the shows, you may have no idea what is going on in the films. This is exactly what I was worried about when the Disney+ started adding new series to their inventory of superheroes. There have been eight new series there in the last two years. I have watched four of them, all of which finished their initial run almost two years ago. The villain in the new Ant-Man and the WASP film is Kang, the Conqueror , who was apparently referenced in "Loki" which I saw once, and do not remember all that well. His expanded role in this film did little to tell me why he is important, how he threatens the Universe or what his powers are. It's as if he were a DC Villain, slipped into the MCU for filler. There may be a rich vein from the comic books to mine here, but unless the stories do a better job at updating movie fans who are not also comic book readers, the future seems bleak.
"Quantumania" in particular has a few things going for it, but largely wastes them by the end of the film. There are domestic issues between Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and his daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton). Those troubles need a bit more development so we can care about a resolution in our adventure. In this movie, they barely qualify as an incident much less a plot thread. The failure to build this dynamic more effectively, makes what comes later in the film feel perfunctory rather than meaningful. Scott and Cassie bonding over a shared fight against a compelling enemy would mean more if their relationship was at stake, but it never felt to me like it was. Hope and her parents have a little more going in because we know there has been a big gap in their relationship. The failure of Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) to elaborate on her time spent in the Quantum Realm, is an artificial plot point that does not make much sense. Her continued reluctance to reveal information, once all the principles have been sucked into the world, just feels arbitrary to stretching out the story. Michael Douglas's Hank Pym, feels like he is just along for the ride, although there will be ants at some point and that is fun once we get there.
When it comes to the worldbuilding of the Quantum Realm, much of it reminded me of the Cantina scene from the original Star Wars, only enhanced with CGI so it feels like the casino planet sequence from "Star Wars: The Last Jedi", and that is not a compliment my friends. The sub-atomic worlds of the Quantum Realm, are populated with a variety of organic and inorganic, living creatures, subsisting on no apparent source of food or water, and some of them have been conquered enough to exist in a mass city that looks like every futurist location you have seen for the last twenty years. Since there is mostly no sun in this world, the corners are dark and the sets seem to hide any number of enemies, friends, weapons or anything else that will be needed when the script calls for it. The one creative variation that works and has a comic effect is a gelatinous creature, who provides a liquid that allows the visitors to understand and be understood by the residents. I say that it is the one humorous element that works, and that is in spite of the fact that Bill Murray turns up for an extended scene. Usually, if Murray is allowed to improvise and riff on his lines and the characters, that would be gold. Either he was not adequately inspired or he was required to stick to the script, because his dialogue falls flat and barely gets a smile much less a laugh. It feels like they have wasted the opportunity to give him a role comparable to Jeff Goldblum's in Ragnarock. It is stunt casting that did not pay off.
The villain Kang, is played by Johnathan Majors, who I last saw in "Devotion" where he was a much more interesting character. If you stick around for the mid-credit sequence, you will get to see the wholly dull variations of the character that are coming up in future storylines, it does not look promising. Corey Stoll, who was the villain in the first "Ant-Man" movie, sort of returns here as M.O.D.O.K, Mechanized Organism Designed Only For Killing. The threat from this character is that you will bust a gut looking at how his face has been implanted in this mechanism. Maybe it is based on a comic book character but it adds to the carnival nature of the production design. If James Cameron's Avatar films are the Disney Imagineering group, then this MCU picture is the Dark Ride designer for a traveling carnival, like the Funhouse in "Funhouse".
Paul Rudd continues to be a great Ant-Man, and when he is given a chance, the character can be heroic and fun. This movie puts most of the jokes in the visuals of the new world they are playing in, and Rudd has to make due with substantially less material. There was one great sequence that almost gets to his potential. The multiple Ant-Man variations that show up do get in a concentrated bit of what they hired Rudd for in the first place, but it is not enough. I still had a good time at this, and it is at least as good as the last Doctor Strange film and Love and Thunder, but it is not moving the wider plot forward and it is clunky in way too many places.
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.
