KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: The Stepford Wives

Throwback Thursday #TBT

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 Stepford Wives

I did some on-line reading about the reception of this movie at the time of it's release, and amazingly enough, it was objected to by some feminist groups who saw it as anti-woman. My immediate thought was that there is a large continent of the population that does not understand satire. This movie is for all intents and purposes a depiction of a feminist nightmare. It visualizes a world where women are erased as individuals and replaced by stereotypes of femininity. In other words it is mocking the men who want to have women be subservient sex machines with no purpose other than satisfying their mates needs. They are the villains of the piece but somehow in 1975, there were people who did not see this, amazing how ideological blinders can prevent you from recognizing an ally. 

Author and playwright Ira Levin had a big hit when his novel "Rosemary's Baby"   was adapted and filmed by Roman Polanski. No doubt the makers of this film had a similar goal of making a modern gothic horror story into a money making machine. The returns however were modest at best and it is the cultural impact that makes the movie memorable. the phrase "Stepford Wife" immediately produces an image of a docile, attractive, robotic perfectionist and the connotative meaning is all too well known, even by people who have never read the book or seen the movie (including the execrable 2004 remake/reinvention).  Regardless of the controversy or the lack of box office muscle, the film has managed to worm it's way into the culture and influence our thinking about gender roles ever since.

As a movie, this would definitely be a slow burn which is typical of the 1970s and one of the reasons that those movies can be appealing. We get introduced to characters before we get thrown into the plot. We see how Katherine Ross as the protagonist Joanna, slowly realizes that something is amiss. We understand because of her career ambitions and uncertainty about having relocated to Stepford, that the threat is to her being not just to her physical manifestation. As I watched the friendship she develops with Bobbie, played deliciously by Paula Prentiss, I cared about the women, even when I thought there were times that they were being annoying and self centered. The most arcane moment of the film comes when Joanna, Bobbie and their friend Charmaine (Tina Louise) make a deal to get the other local wives to participate in a consciousness raising meeting. Feminist ideas and relationship talk get sidetracked by the programming of the local women. 

The movement to a more horror driven "Body Snatchers" feel, comes in a couple of ways that were nicely set up. Charmaine's surrender of the tennis court that meant personal freedom for her, was a scary moment even though the only horrifying image is a Caterpillar Tractor pulling up some concrete. The Men's Association is visualized as an old dark house, and it is taboo to go there, even though the warning is the politest brush off a cop can give. We know that bad things are coming when Joanna's dog goes missing, and we simply see it in a cage in the bed of a truck driving down the road. These are the creepy moments that make the movie worth sitting through, even if you don't buy into all the social signaling that is going on. 

Screenwriter William Goldman was unhappy with changes made to his work. The well known story in Hollywood is that the Screenwriter has the least amount of power of the major players on a project. Somehow Goldman, had managed to block Brian DePalma as the director of the film and ironically, his replacement, Bryan Forbes, was the source of all of Goldman's subsequent unhappiness. Regardless of the power issues, Goldman's screenplay is a well paced reveal of the plot, with interesting characterizations along the way. Bobbie has the funniest lines, Joanna parry's with her husband and Diz, the head of the Men's Association who is played by Patrick O'Neal. You would expect a lot of gaslighting but Goldman let's the characters with bad intent, play things normally for the most part. The artist who is drawing details of Joanna's face doesn't try to hide them from her, he shares them with her. The stammering vocal designer has a logical reason for her to record his list of words. Her husband concedes that an ambulance did seem to go off in the wrong direction, instead of insisting she is nuts. He also suggests she get help, not at an inappropriate moment but at exactly the right time, he does not insist on a therapist of his choice but defers to her. It's during her first meeting with the therapist that the true horror gets stated, "If I am wrong, I'm insane... but if I'm right, it's even worse than if I was wrong."

The climax of the picture mixes some great moments with some unfortunately trite tropes. Joanna's confrontation with the changed Bobbie is a perfect moment, her running around in the rain and running from Diz in the Men's Association is just woman in jeopardy boiler plate writing. The visualization of the new Joanna is a great creepy moments that reveals the twist and it works without having to go into a lot of detail. Little shots of the town, the industry in the area and the jobs of the local men, were all we needed. An exposition dump is wisely avoided. 

On a side note, I find it particularly satisfying that Paula Prentis as Bobbie, is caught up in a world of artificial persons, since in real life she is married to Richard Benjamin, who two years before this movie, ran into the same problem in "Westworld".  

Lawrence of Arabia (2023 Visit)

 

Those of you who are regulars know the score here, If "Lawrence of Arabia" is on the big screen within throwing distance, I am going to go and see it. 

Yesterday was a return trip to the The Paramount Theater in Austin, where I will be spending most of my summer. They have a great film series and they have included an essential film for me. 

I have written about Lawrence many times before, you can find links to most of those posts on the Top Ten List I did a couple of years ago HERE. 

As usual it was a great experience, I was impressed by the turnout, the theater was packed. When the host asked who was seeing it for the first time, about 20% of the audience responded, so that was a surprise. 

Whenever I see the film, I try to pay attention to something new and this time it was the sky. Of course there is the famous edit where we go from a burning match to the sun rising on the horizon. There are some wonderful moments of the moon and stars as well. Seeing the flare streak across the sky to signal a stop to hostilities in one of the attacks looks pretty as well. The night swallowing Ali as Lawrence is being tortured is relieved by a brief glow of moonlight on his face as he awaits the outcome of the assault on Lawrence. 

By the way, the Sky here in Austin was beautiful and clear, and the temperature seemed to match the desert when Faisal's army is crossing the Sun's Anvil. "No Prisoners!"

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

 

In the last two weeks we made an effort to catch up on all the Transformer Movies, as a way of preparing to see this one. I would not recommend doing that to anyone who wants to enjoy the films. They work best in small doses and the fact that many of them are two and a half hours is really depressing. I liked the First in the series pretty well when we saw it way back in 2007, but by the time the third one came out, I'd lost interest and even though I saw the fourth one, I'd forgotten it completely. The fifth one is equally forgettable, the main exception to this trend however was "BumbleBee" which was in fact quite enjoyable. 

"Rise of the Beasts" has something in common with most of the films, a solid opening forty minutes. The problem with these films is that once we get to the giant robots fighting each other, for long periods of time, it becomes monotonous. Also, watching Los Angeles, Chicago, Hong Kong and multiple other cites get destroyed is sadly disturbing and repetitive. "Beasts" does us a solid by locating the main battle scenes to the jungles of Peru, sparring us the sight on thousands of people being wiped out for entertainment purposes. Another variation that "Rise of the Beasts" gives us is the absence of a young child in the middle of that final battle. When the little boy in the story, who has sickle cell, talks about going with his older brother on the fight in South America, I started to roll my eyes. Imagine how happy I was when the older brother leaves and the kid is not accidentally smuggled in the trunk of a car or a suitcase. 

Anthony Ramos is the star of the film, and having seen him in a couple of other films, I was glad to see he was still doing good work, although more subdued than you might expect in a film like this. The real stars of these movies are the giant robots, and this version gives us another race of robots called Maximals, which instead of being modeled after cars are modeled after animals. Their leader is an ape robot named Optimus Primal, get it?  The main villain is a planet consuming being called Unicron, but mostly it is the minions of Unicron that we see on screen battling the Autobots. The nice thing about the battles in this film is that we get to see one on one action, frequently isolated, so we can tell what the hell is happening. It still runs long and gets tiresome at the end, but it looks a lot better. The story is more streamlined than any of the other films, so you get a good sense of what the hell is happening most of the time. 

"BumbleBee" will probably continue to be everyone's favorite, but "Mirage" was a robot who I did not want to see destroyed after five minutes, and by the end of the film I sort of liked the relationship that they tried to build through the rest of the film. It is probably a good thing that Michael Bay is producing rather than directing. Steven Caple Jr. seems to know how a movie should look and he tries to keep the story interesting. Like I said, the fight sequences were clearer than in most of the other episodes, but they do go on too long. This would work better if it were a hundred minute movie and the action was selected for story rather than spectacle. At least the jungles offer us a different environment, although futuristic mechanical structures rise out of the ground like instant mashed potatoes, and then become the focus of the fights. 

If you are completist for these films, and want to rank them, I think this one would be the third best. I liked the Mark Wahlberg reference, it was funny, and since the movie is set in the early 90s, it makes a little sense.  The stinger at the end, promoting a different film franchise is not clear, but when your goal is to sell toys, maybe that doesn't matter. I'll bet there are plenty of kids playing with these toys who have told more compelling stories in their backyards. Maybe I should look on YouTube for some of those.

Asteroid City

 

Somewhere over the last decade, I became a fan of Wes Anderson movies. I have enjoyed them all but not all of them are great. The previous film from the director, "The French Dispatch" is the least interesting of the films for me. It's style is elegantly in line with the visual flair of Anderson, but the content just seemed a little too on the nose for me. It was a movie filled with references to language and the way that we use words was the focus of the film. It did at least have that to hold it together. "Asteroid City" does not have these kinds of ambitions. There is a singular story told through multiple levels that will keep us amused and detached simultaneously,  and for me it worked a lot more effectively because I could not detect a point or theme, i only saw an entertainment. 

Once again, if you are not willing to be presented with artifice being passed off as a story, you should skip this, but if you look at the crystal blue sky and the phony desert horizons in the opening part of the film, and they make you laugh, then you are in the right place. This film cruises on the look Anderson can achieve in the circumstances he and his cowriters have conceived. This is a film, conceived as a play, being described by a documentary about the creation of the story. Every step we take leads down a different path and sometimes, just as you are getting involved with something that is happening on screen, the camera pulls back and we see the story from a completely new perspective, although the attitude and the moods remain the same. 

The film is filled with the usual suspects. Anderson has developed a company of players that he wants to have in his movies and when you see how they fit in, you can't blame him for wanting to keep some consistency. Jeffery Wright returns for what I think is his second Anderson film, and his delivery of General Gibson's speech is perfection. I'd love to have the laminated version that all of the attendees were promised, I think I could read it everyday and still laugh out loud. Jason Schwartzman is back for his seventh film with Anderson, and he has his biggest role since being the star of "Rushmore" back in 1998. He has mastered the deadpan delivery that is a signature of  Anderson's words. Even when he is supposed to be reacting strongly to a moment with co-star Scarlett Johansson, he still manages to keep the reaction dulled down to fit with the character. Edward Norton, Bryan Cranston, Adrian Brody and Willem Dafoe all show up for repeat appearances in one of these unusual films. Tom Hanks shows up in his maiden voyage on the good ship Anderson, apparently replacing the usual presence of Bill Murray who is surprisingly not in the film. Although he is in the movie for only a couple of seconds, I really want to believe that Jeff Goldblum was in the alien costume, although it is clearly some of the animation that has been used in Anderson's two best films, "Isle of Dogs" and "The Fantastic Mr. Fox". 

I mentioned the production design early on. The black and white sequences are fine, with some effective lighting and clever use of backstage tropes. As usual though, the colorful and cinematically electric visuals in the sequences that are in color are the thing that will hypnotize you. There is a filter on some of the scenes that will make you feel like you are driving through the desert on a summer evening, cruising Route 66 in 1956. There are two or three moments with some blue shading that are subtle but make the actor's eyes pop on screen. Cinematographer Robert Yeoman has done a fantastic job of bouncing between styles, and evoking moods with the lighting of this film. Also, as usual, the production design team should be given all the awards this year for their fake sandstone towers, two lane blacktops and especially the train that opens the film. This movie is just a visual delight. 

The story dances around grief as a subject, but it also touches on authoritarianism, love, music and family. None of the subjects are really the point of the film. This is a bauble, made to look amazing, with a stack of nesting doll type storytelling that reveals one new thing after another. It is not so much emotionally engaging as it is visually and intellectually evolving. Don't get caught up in whatever plot you might pick out, just sit back and watch the circus perform. If we are going to get movies that are all about the spectacle of how they look, this is a nice alternative to the CGI worlds of James Cameron. Both can be breathtaking, but one feels warm while the other simple seems to celebrate technology.  

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: a Boy and his dog

Throwback Thursday #TBT

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

a Boy and his Dog

A dystopian nightmare as a dark comedy, "a Boy and his Dog" has been widely praised and criticized. Based on the novella of Harlan Ellison, This was the second film directed by actor L.Q. Jones, the first being a micro budgeted western 10 years earlier, "The Devil's Bedroom". Good luck finding that film, but "a Boy and his Dog" is available in a beautiful restoration from Shout Factory, and was also released in pan and scan on VHS and Laserdisc, with a later Widescreen Laserdisc Edition as well. 

I saw "a Boy and his Dog" in it's initial release in 1975, when it did not do much business. It did play continuously in repertory houses and by 1982, it had become a cult classic that demanded a second run at theatrical presentation. Jones distributed the movie himself so it played in different areas at different points and he was particular about the theaters that it played in.

The controversy over the film has largely to do with accusations of misogyny because the words of the telepathic dog are dismissive of women, females are seen largely as disposable objects to be taken by force by the men who scavenge the remains of the upper world, and they are treated as factories by the powers of the lower world. It is a science fiction film that is more misanthropic than misogynist, but that requires a perspective that existed in the 1970s. This is not a film that you could make today, it violates too many taboos. 

For those of you not familiar with the story, after WWIV, the surface of the planet is scoured by ravagers who take what they want by force and sustain themselves with leftovers of the previous world. Vic is affiliated with a telepathic dog who aids him in sniffing out danger and food, but for the teen age character Vic, the most important resource the dog can locate is a woman. My understanding is that the widely played video game "Fallout" is based on the concepts of this story. If you are a fan of "mad Max", especially the "road Warrior", you will see much of the foundation of that world in the opening half of this movie. Gangs dominating anyone they find, solo males craftily taking advantage of their own skills to beat others to the punch. It is a brutal world, with very little to recommend it except that Vic has a friend and companion in his dog Blood, who has more intelligence than anyone else in the film, and frankly, more humanity.

L.Q. Jones did a nice job of taking advantage of his main location. Supposedly, the landscape is the remnants of the outskirts of Phoenix after the war, but it is really the high desert of Southern California. The sets are make up of junk that feels like it could be debris from the city. Lean tos are made up of corrugated tin, there are shelters with appliance parts used to make walls or covers for a hole in the ground. In one scene, an overlord with a collection of slaves, is dragged around in a chariot made up of bicycle parts.  Lord Humungus and  Immortan Joe owe a debt to Fellini, the cut rate lord of this wasteland.

Vic falls into a honey trap, set by the underground community of Topeka, a blighted community, trying to survive by rolling back in time and submitting to a fascist regime administered by the elderly survivors . Jason Robards appears in this section as the patriarch of a society that is barren of children and a future. How Vic fits into this plot is one of the big jokes of the movie.  Quilla June, the girl who lures Vic into her underground city, has her own plans. She turns out to be a rebel without a clue and the machinery of the dying civilization is not going to go away simply because she wants it to.

The end of the movie is a notorious joke that is in bad taste and fueled the belief that the screenplay was a misogynist creation. Harlan Ellison's story has a more thoughtful and believe it or not, romantic exit line. L.Q. Jones used a line he and the other screenwriters came up with, and it is the biggest bone of contention that Ellison has with the film. Jones however, understood the audience that this film would be seen by, and he crafted a dark joke to finish off with, rather than the more sentimental commentary on the actual event that finishes the story and remained unchanged from the novella. 

Don Johnson is the star of the film, this is his second feature of the year on this project, and it is also listed on IMDB as coming out after "Return to Macon County". His performance in the gung ho humorous moments of the film, remind me of Kevin Costner in "Silverado" a decade later. He is very good in the movie, but he does get upstaged by the dog, who was one of the best animal performances on screen of the time. The voice characterization of the telepathic canine was supplied by Tim McIntire, an actor who also composed the music for several sections of the movie.

The main tagline of the film is "an R rated , rather kinky tale of survival". It's interesting that the director urged the ratings board to give it an R instead of a PG (this was before PG-13 existed).   It certainly needed to be more closely scrutinized by parents who might think they were going to a family film based on the title. The film is also set in 2024, as the poster proclaims, "a future you'll probably live to see". Well we hopefully will make it to next year, I'm happy to say this fiure is not quite as grim. . 

Paramount Theater Summer Classics Father's Day Double Feature: The Maltese Falcon and the Treasure of the Sierra Madre

 


The Paramount Theater planned a nice Father's Day for me, of and a couple hundred other lucky dads, by showing two films from the great John Huston. It was actually a Huston Family Weekend because Angelica Huston starred in yesterdays film, "The Royal Tenenbaums. 

I have been lucky enough in my life to see "The Maltese Falcon" on the big screen a number of times. Almost certainly, the first time was a screening at the Rialto Theater in South Pasadena in the early seventies when that theater was a revival house. I'd bet a dollar that it was on a double bill with the same film from today. The one time that I have written about it was from a Fathom Event from 2016. 

Humphrey Bogart is simply great as Sam Spade. There are so many wonderful moments where he gets to demonstrate what a formidable actor he was. The sly half smile he shows, every time he manages to one up another of the characters is just deviously perfect.. The momentary hand tremor when he feigns outrage as a way to get Gutman off balance was also a nice touch. All the interactions with Mary Astor as the duplicitous  Bridget O'Shaughnessy, come off well, including the famous ending where he promises to wait for her. 

Bogart's part in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" is perhaps less subtle but it is certainly a tour de force. Fred C. Dobbs is a figure of pity, a man of action, a self centered loser and a good partner, and that's all before he starts to go made while he is out prospecting for gold. This is another film that I wrote about as a result of a Fathom Event in 2018. As great as he is in "Falcon", and even though I adore that movie slightly more than "Treasure", it is his character in this film that I think might be his best remembered role outside of "Casablanca".  Dobbs is haggard and filthy at the start of the film, and he cleans up nicely a couple times during the story, but ultimately, he returns to the gutter in spite of the riches that come from working with two partners who teach him lessons of humanity that he just can't take to.

Tim Holt as Curtain, and Walter Huston as the grizzled Howard, hold up their ends incredibly well. Walter Huston , indulged by his son the director, steals the picture with his wise, tough and ultimately moral character. His ebullient laugh and dance when they do find gold was a perfect moment in the film before things start turning really dark. His whole "take it as it comes" philosophy is a nice counterpart to the driven intensity of his two partners. None of the men are Saints, they do choose at one point to murder the intruding Bruce Bennett, simply because they foresee accepting his offer of partnership as a power failure.  They are saved from that moral lapse by the intervention of truly evil men. Still Hobb's paranoia gets the better of him, and the moral of the story is sealed.

As usual, my advice is to always see these movies in a theater with an audience. The collective atmosphere and the required focus on the films, will give you a greater appreciation of their talents of the artists than if you watch it on video. 

The Royal Tenenbaums

 

When I first saw this movie on it's original release, I have to admit that I did not quite get it. There is a vibe to Wes Anderson's film making style that I was not tuned into. The arch, dry, detached story telling left me less engaged than I thought I should be. I did not dislike the film, I was simply indifferent to it. Flash forward twenty years and I have evolved a bit when it comes to Anderson's style. I have seen more of his films, adjusted to the off kilter approach and I have embraced the absurdity of the production design with enthusiasm.

"The Royal Tenenbaums" is Anderson's most commercially successful film, but it is not my favorite. "Isle of Dogs" the stop motion animated film, was my number one film of it's release year and contains most of the mannerisms that this film has, but it adds more heart to the story, which is where I think "Tenenbaums" shoots for but only partially succeeds at. The film is not meant for us to love the characters, they are all deeply flawed and that is the joke. We do understand them a bit better by the end and we don't wish them ill, but we can also see that they are still problematic human beings. Laughing at Royal's clueless cruelty and self centered behavior was easy, seeing him as a figure of redemption is a little harder but the steps he took seem right in retrospect.

As always there is an impressive cast in a film from Anderson, and the thing that helps me re-evaluate this film more positively is the presence of my favorite actor, Gene Hackman. As the patriarch of the family, Royal is a passively malevolent figure in his children's lives. As the lead character, he is a delightful figure to watch with jaws dropped as he utters the cluelessly cruel comments about his own family. Hackman sells this narcissistic persona flawlessly. His rapid delivery of the lines may finish before we even realize how thoughtless his words are. At this stage in his career, it pleased me to note that I was not put off by those flashbacks where he is made up to look younger. Although the image is imperfect, the acting was spot on.

If I have a reservation about the film, it is that there is a scene that involves the death of an animal. It takes place off screen, and there is some acknowledgement that it is supposed to be in a humorous context. Unlike the same sort of scene in "A Fish Called Wanda", we had a bit of a connection with this dog and that makes the film a little more sensitive for us animal lovers. Maybe this is the reason we got Isle of Dogs", if that's the case than the fiction is worth it.