Stop Making Sense

Part of the Filmmusic Blog-a-thon hosted by Windmills of My Mind

“Hi. I’ve got a tape I’d like to play.”

Stop Making Sense thus gets under way. Not with blaring intro, smoke and pyrotechnics, but rather with one lone man armed with a guitar and a small boom box on a bare stage. This 1984 concert film by the Talking Heads ignores all the rules and just goes on its own merry way. It is the best concert film I’ve ever seen.

The Heads might seem an odd choice to present in this homey, low-key setting. David Byrne, after all, was the artist who once wrote a song that observed a scene of suburban bliss, and then concluded, “I wouldn’t live there if you paid me to.” All those songs about urban angst are in here, too, but the concert itself is joyful, not morose.

Take the opening bit. Byrne sets the boom box down, and behind a simple percussion beat, kicks into “Psycho Killer” This is a song about mental illness, but it’s also arguably the head’s most catchy tune, and watching Byrne strut and shimmy is FUN, despite the lyrics.

The concert itself is set up in a loose, informal way. After the opening bit, bassist Tina Weymouth joins Byrne onstage and the two of them play “Heaven”, after which drummer Chris Frantz joins in on “Thank You for Sending Me an Angel”, and so on until the stage is full of musicians. During the music, the stagehands are quietly setting up the next instrument, all in full view. Byrne and director Jonathon Demme wanted the focus to be on the music, not on the ancillary things that make up most concerts.

Ah, the music. The Talking Heads were a great favorite of mine in my younger days, and this concert catches them on a night (actually several nights) when they were “On”. The product presented onstage is in stark contrast to the image that their lyrics convey. Byrne himself is a physical contradiction. Facially, he pretty much maintains his joyless android look, but the rest of his body gives him away. Watch the guy dancing with two backup singers during “Slippery People”, and tell me he isn’t having fun.

For me, the two highlights of the film are a torrid rendition of “Life During Wartime”, from the great Fear of Music album, and “Once in a Lifetime”, for which Byrne dons Buddy Holly-esque glasses, and a suit jacket that seems a couple of sizes too big. It’s such a great song that it’s easy to miss how simply it is presented. The camera just holds on Byrne in a medium shot as he performs on a dark stage with just one small light illuminating him, and Byrne takes his great tune about domestic normalcy and injects it with equal parts funk, punk, and spastic madness.

It’s also striking to see how democratically Demme presents the musicians. Byrne is of course the focus, but the backup players are featured just as prominently as the band members. That’s as it should be, too, because bongo player Steve Scales and guitarist Alex Weir are as instrumental to the heat created on stage as the Heads are.

If the film has a weak spot, it’s in the inclusion of “Genius of Love”, by Tom Tom Club, which was the side project band led by Weymouth and Frantz. This is the only time Byrne isn’t on stage, and the film suffers for it. The song isn’t strong, and Weymouth has none of Byrnes’ jittery charisma.

Towards the end of the film, the camera turns around and gives us our first real audience reaction shot, and we suddenly realize that yeah, there haven’t been any audience shots. That’s one of the major ways that SMS strays from the tested and true, and it works beautifully. When we do see the audience, they are dancing in the aisle, as we might expect. Withholding this shot adds to the feeling that the concert has built to a crescendo. Instead of being bombarded with fast cuts and endless shots of people bopping away, we get to watch the band. What a novel idea.

Jeff's Filmmusic Hall of Fame #1

The film is Days of Heaven, and the music is by the great Leo Kottke. "The Train and the Gate"

The Marquee

The Seventh Seal

On Location

Orson Welles (top left) and the gang from the Mercury Theatre , 1938

God, sex, and allergies - An interview with Ingmar Bergman

Charles Samuels’ Encountering Directors should be on your shelf if you have any kind of a weakness for film books. Samuels conducts lengthy, in depth interviews with such titans as Carol Reed, Robert Bresson, and Michelangelo Antonioni. This is a link to his great interview with Ingmar Berman. It’s long, but endlessly fascinating. Bergman has a reputation for being a bit prickly, but Samuels is able to brush this aside and get some interesting comments from the director.

This piece is also notable for the way Samuels doesn’t just sit back reverently. He gets in Bergman’s face a little bit, and the results are really entertaining.

Read it here.

The Newsstand

Esquire, March , 1970

The Marquee (Blow-Up times Two)

Sansho the Bailiff

To scholars of Japanese film, Kenji Mizoguchi was part of a great triumvirate, which also included Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu. As such, it was always mystifying to me why his films were so hard to see. Had you done a search on Amazon.com a couple of years ago, you would have seen only his great masterpiece Ugetsu available on DVD. It’s a great relief, then, to see Criterion release his outstanding 1954 film Sansho the Bailiff on a new DVD. It’s a long overdue chance to see one of the landmarks of Japanese cinema.

Sansho tells the story of a humanistic governor, and how his defiance of the local lord sets a tragic chain of events into motion. The governor is sent into exile, and his wife and two children are left to fend for themselves. Before he leaves, however, he imparts a bit of his wisdom to his young son. “Without mercy, a man is not a human being”. This is advice that will resonate throughout the film.

The lonely young wife eventually decides to go to join her husband, but makes the grave error of trusting a kindly older woman, who betrays them to slave traders. The wife is sold into prostitution, and the children become slaves of Sansho the bailiff. Sansho is a harsh boss. Early on, a runaway is captured and brought back to the compound, and branded with a burning stick. One woman has the tendons in her feet cut when she tries to flee. This level of cruelty is stunning, and the disc’s liner notes make the observation that this may be Mizoguchi’s statement on the atrocities committed by the Japanese during WW2.

A recurring theme throughout Mizoguchi’s career is sensitivity towards his female characters, and it is certainly evident here. It’s the young sister Anju who stays strong during their captivity. The brother Zushio, on the other hand, shows signs of succumbing to the evil around him. Sansho gives him the opportunity to brand a runaway slave, and he obediently does it rather than questioning the order. We wonder if his father’s words of advice even occur to him at that moment.

The film cuts occasionally to the mother, still in grieving for her lost children. There’s a song that she sings, and its plaintive lyrics become a leitmotif for the space that now separates the family.

“My Anju, I yearn for you.”

“My Zushio, I yearn for you.”

This same song becomes the impetus for the escape of the siblings when Anju hears a new slave girl singing it, and realizes that they may now be able to find their mother.

The escape is the axis that the film revolves around, and it invites endless discussion. The children are ordered to take an ailing woman out in to the forest and leave her to die. Anju decides that this is the moment, and tells Zushio to make a run for it, and that she will provide a diversion. By doing this, she is essentially sacrificing her life. Then, at the last moment, she tells Zushio to take the ailing woman with him. This seems strange, because he would certainly move slower carrying the stricken woman than if Anju came with him. It is plain throughout the film that Anju is the stronger of the two, and by making her the martyr, Mizoguchi is paying homage to her courage. She does the tough job because she’s more able to. Her last gift to her brother is to ensure his freedom, which she hopes will result in the rest of the family being restored. With Zushio safely on his way, Anju drowns herself in a scene that is simplistic, yet remarkably beautiful.

Free at last, Zushio manages to be appointed to his father’s old position and takes it upon himself to close down Sansho’s operation, despite having no authority to do so. This tactic seems suicidal at first, but it creates a slave revolt, which topples Sansho. The determined Zushio is now channeling his father’s philosophy, and there’s a marvelous little scene where he again confronts the old man that he branded earlier.

“My sins in branding you can never be erased…”

It’s only now that Zushio learns that Anju is dead, and this makes his final meeting with his mother so poignant. He traces her to a remote beachside village, and led by the sounds of her singing finds her crippled and blind, supporting herself by shooing birds away from the seaweed harvest. She at first believes him to be an hallucination, but gradually comes to the realization that this strange voice does indeed belong to her long-lost son. It’s a gorgeous sequence, because it doesn’t wallow in false sentimentality. This family has been shattered, and although there is a closure of sorts, there is also a sense of immense loss.

The Marquee

On Location

John Wayne in another chess game, this time on the set of Chisum in 1970.

On this Date

Alain Resnais turns 85 today.

The Marquee (Flat movie with extraordinary talent division)

The Missouri Breaks, dir. Arthur Penn, 1976

Dialogue I Love

" Mac, wait a minute. Uhmmm-mmm. Excuse me sister, excuse me. Now don't tell me we're going to let these two little angels of mercy go away from here empty handed on Christmas Eve? This joint is the home of fine bourbon and fast women...and we need plenty of religion to keep 'em both in line. So come on, folks, how about it? Get it up now, come on. Ah, come on, a little action here. A little -- What's the matter? Ohhh! Hey! Hey Lord! Can you hear me up there Jesus? You didn't think we'd forget your birthday, did you boy? There you are Jesus -- and if I had any more you'd be welcome to it. Thank you brother. The Bible says never let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Well, what's your beef, mister? You ashamed of being a Christian? Oh, I see. You think religion is for suckers and easy marks and mollycoddles, huh? You think Jesus was some kind of sissy, eh? Well, let me tell you, Jesus wouldn't be afraid to walk into this joint or any other speakeasy to preach the gospel. Jesus had guts! He wasn't afraid of the whole Roman army. Think that quarterback's hot stuff? Well, let me tell you...Jesus wouldn't have made the best little all-American quarterback in the history of football. Jesus was a real fighter. The best little scrapper pound for pound you ever saw. And love, gentlemen? Love, gentlemen. Jesus had love in both fists. And what is love? Love is the mornin' and the evenin' star. It shines on the cradle of the babe. Hey, ye sinners! Love is the inspiration of poets and philosophers. Love is the voice of music. I'm talking about divine love...not carnal love."

Elmer Gantry - screenplay by Richard Brooks, based on a novel by Sinclair Lewis

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a.k.a. Killer Spy, 1965

Moments of Distinction

The Film – Scarlet Street, dir Fritz Lang

Christopher Cross (Edward G Robinson) has been conned by Katherine March and her boyfriend Johnny, who have been selling off his artwork under her name. Cross finds out and kills her in a fit of rage, and Johnny emerges as the prime suspect. This is a marvelous montage of testimonies from his trial. We hear from Johnny, from a couple of art experts, from her landlord, from a bartender, from a man who lent Johnny the ice pick which became the murder weapon, from Katherine’s girlfriend, from Cross’ harridan wife, Cross himself, and finally from Johnny again.

“She didn’t paint those pictures! Old Cross isn’t as dumb as he looks. HE painted them!”

“The accused brought me two pictures. He told me Miss March painted them.”

“In my expert opinion, there is no doubt about it. She was a very great artist.”

“She told me she was an artist when she rented the studio. He was with her. I didn’t like him then, and I don’t like him now!”

“Yeah, he was mean when he was drunk. He said he was gonna fix her when he left my place at about 2 AM”

“That’s when I say, you watch out, Johnny – You gonna kill somebody. So he kills her with my ice pick!”

“ I heard her say “Hey, Johnny!” before she hung up. He was there, all right! What I don’t understand is all this talk about her being an artist. I never saw her paint!”

“That was one of her peculiar traits. She never let anyone see her paint. I’ve compared her handwriting with the signature. There’s no question!”

“Mr. Cross paint??? Humph! He only copied her work! He’s a thief! He stole from me, from his employer, and from Katherine March.”

“My wife…I mean my former wife is correct. I really can’t paint. My copies were so bad I had to destroy them.”

“For god’s sake!!! He’s lying!!!!”

I think that this sequence is simply astounding. In the course of a minute or two, we see a pile of circumstantial evidence allow one man to get away with murder, and another, innocent man to go to the electric chair. Note how the camera gradually moves closer to the speaker, culminating with the good and decent Cross covering his tracks, and the frantic Johnny, who was so cool and saucy in the first frame, now pleading for his life. Scarlet Street is unusual for a Hayes Code-era film, in that someone gets away with murder (with a caveat - Cross ends up insane from guilt). I love how this little monologue boils the film down so neatly, and how the stuff that could be damning to Cross is negated.

On Location

"Tea, Madam?" - Grace and Hitch on the French Riviera, 1954

The Friends of Eddie Coyle

The image of organized crime that the movies have left us with is one of affluence. Incubated in the Cagney/Robinson/Raft era, grown to maturity in the Godfather movies, and still going strong today with The Sopranos, mob life means tailored suits, oak furniture, and big cars. There is, however, a great little blue-collar gangster film that co-exists amongst these big shots. That’s Peter Yates’ brilliant The Friends of Eddie Coyle, from 1973. If The Godfather is a Rolls Royce, Eddie Coyle is an old Chevy with a busted taillight.

Robert Mitchum plays the title character, an aging Boston gun dealer. Eddie has been around and seen it all, and when he speaks, it’s from deep, hard-earned experience. Mitchum was in his mid-fifties when he made Eddie Coyle, and his tired, basset hound face was never better used than in this role. It’s his last great performance.

Eddie is a guy who has done a bit of time in his day, and as the film opens, the possibility looms that the might have to again. He served as a driver in a heist up in New Hampshire that went wrong, and he is waiting to go to trial. The possibility of another jail term terrifies Eddie, but not for the reasons we would normally assume. He can’t afford to go away because he needs to provide for his family. He states, “I don’t want my wife to have to go on welfare.” This working class mindset is refreshing – Eddie Coyle is not a tycoon gangster: He’s more like someone who works in a factory or drives a cab.

Go back to the film’s title – The FRIENDS of Eddie Coyle. Three men drift in an out of Eddie’s orbit throughout the film, and they are all connected to his efforts to stay out of jail. There’s the undercover cop that Coyle is trying to cut a deal with (Richard Jordan), a gun dealer that he’s trying to buy from (Steven Keats), and Dillon (the great Peter Boyle), a mysterious bartender who seems to have irons in a lot of fires. Coyle is playing the three men off each other – The gun deal info is going back to the cop, and Dillon is also getting pumped for info. There is another level to all this, as well: Dillon is also talking to the cop, unbeknownst to Coyle. Were you to watch this film with the sound turned off, it would be a tall order to tell the good guys from the bad. I think that’s the way Yates wants it.

The cops’ real target is a gang of bank robbers who pull off a couple of jobs during the film. Their modus operandi is to kidnap the family of a bank official and use this to force the banker to let then into his vaults. The cop is plying Coyle for info on them, and Coyle is trying to help, despite having limited knowledge of the case. There’s a subtle little scene in a supermarket parking lot, where Coyle buys some handguns from the dealer, and accidentally sees something pretty interesting – a cache of machine guns in the guys’ trunk. This is something that Coyle can use with the cop, and sure enough, the gang is all arrested soon afterward. It’s not really clear how the connection has been made but we assume that Coyle’s info has played a part.

This is also the assumption of the robber’s bosses, and they decide to take action against the informer. The man that they hire to do the job is Coyle’s buddy Dillon, and it’s in the aftermath of this encounter that TFOEC really takes wing. Dillon gets off the phone from getting his assignment, turns to Eddie (who is in the bar) and suggests that the two of them have dinner and take in a hockey game.

The guy’s night out is freighted with hidden motives, of course. Dillon buys beers for Coyle to make the hit easier to carry out, but it’s hard not to think that he’s also actually enjoying a last night out with an old friend. As they watch the game, they cheer and yell like any other hockey fan, and there’s no question that the two men have a great affection for one another. When Dillon finally does finish the job, it’s anti-climatic. The film doesn’t linger over it, it just happens and that’s it. It’s just a shitty job that needs to be done.

The world that Eddie and his friends live in isn’t glamorous, or fun, or even very profitable. It’s a world where the lines between friends and enemies are blurred, and both groups freely cross over and back again. Dillon, for instance, is a longtime friend of Eddie’s but is ultimately the one who willingly destroys him. The definition of “friend” is pretty liquid to these people, and this is pointed out in spades at the films’ close, when Dillon reveals a heartbreaking twist to the story. Heartbreaking, but completely consistent for one of the friends of Eddie Coyle.

On Location

Marlene Dietrich and John Wayne play some chess on the set of Pittsburgh (1942)

The Marquee

Silver Lode

You probably haven’t heard of Silver Lode. Allan Dwan’s little low-budget Western is little remembered today, but it is one of the best of the “Message Westerns”. It’s no stretch to say that it belongs in the company of films like High Noon and The Ox-Bow Incident. It resembles both of those films on a superficial level, but it was much more bold in delivering it’s lessons.

The film opens on an ominous note, as a tough looking bunch rides into the town of Silver Lode. Led by the snarling, abrupt McCarty (Dan Duryea) they are looking for a man named Dan Ballard (John Payne), and discover him in the middle of his wedding to the richest girl in town, Rose Evans (Lizabeth Scott). The film then proceeds to turn the tables on us. McCarty, it turns out, is a U S Marshall, there to arrest Ballard for murder.

It’s very easy to miss this little sleight of hand, but ultimately, that’s what Silver Lode is about – changing perceptions. The townspeople at first rally to Ballard’s defense, but soon, some of them start to back-peddle. Ballard, after all, has only lived amongst them for two years. How well do they really know him? The Marshall’s story has Ballard shooting McCarty’s brother in the back and stealing $20,000 from him. The town’s banker observes that Ballard deposited $20,000 shortly after moving there. The whispers increase.

When Silver Lode was released in 1954, the United States was still in the throes of the McCarthy/ HUAC era. Fred Zinneman had already broached the subject in High Noon in 1952. High Noon was a veiled attack on the Red scare, but it could have also been watched as a more or less standard Western. Silver Lode was much more up front with its message. Take the villain of this film, the bullying, supposed lawman, who has little regard for legal process. It’s no accident that his name is McCarty.

Accused of murder, Ballard has only one hope – exposing McCarty as a fraud. To do this he has to send a telegram to a faraway town to check on McCarty’s story. In the meantime, the phony Marshall stirs up the feeling of the townspeople against Ballard. There is absolutely no hard evidence against Ballard, just the word of McCarty, and the movie makes the subtle point that McCarty’s being in a position of authority enables him to orchestrate the townspeople into conclusions that they should be questioning. Much as a Senator might be able to do.

The only people who support Ballard are two good women – His wife to be, and a prostitute named Dolly (Whom Ballard was once involved with). It’s in the passages with the women that Silver Lode is weakest. Dolly is the prototypical sharp-tongued whore with a heart of gold, and Scott doesn’t get to do much other than look stricken.

As Ballard struggles to save his life, he ends up with the whole town ready to shoot him on sight, and the final passages of SL feature some rousing action and gunplay. The climax features a shoot-out between Ballard and McCarty in a church bell tower, with the whole town looking on. The showdown is resolved in a fashion which might make some throw up their hands and go “Oh, Come ON!!!” but look closely at the bell that is central to the films finale. It looks an awful lot like the Liberty Bell, and as such, it gives Silver Lode a fitting little coda. The false accuser is destroyed by one of the great symbols of America.

The Marquee

On Location

Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn grab some sit-down time. War and Peace, 1956

And Also Starring...

Before there was a Bruce Dern, there was Dan Duryea. The leering snakes that Dern played in the 60’s and 70’s owe a great debt to the roles played by Duryea in the 40’s and 50’s.

Duryea was one of the main reasons that the cold, sneering psychopath came into the film lexicon, and it was his good fortune that his rise coincided with the rise of Film Noir. His debut was in the The Little Foxes in 1941, and he very quickly settled into the parts that he would ultimately become famous for. He was a heavy in his second outing, the Howard Hawks/Gary Cooper/Barbara Stanwyck comedy Ball of Fire, and then played a nasty reporter in Pride of the Yankees.

His most notable work, however was during the heart of the Noir era. There are three landmark films with Fritz Lang – Scarlet Street, The Woman in the Window, and Ministry of Fear, and the great Robert Siodmak noir Criss Cross. This last one gets my vote as my favorite Duryea role.

Other notable Duryea roles – Winchester ’73, Black Angel, and The Great Flamarion.

Ran and the Filmmusic Blog-a-Thon

This gorgeous sequence from Akira Kurosawa's 1985 masterpiece (scored by Toru Takemitsu) is another reminder to check out the Filmmusic blog-a-thon hoted by Damian at Windmills of my Mind. http://damianarlyn.blogspot.com/2007/01/filmmusic-blog-thon.html

My week of movie watching

Cloak and Dagger – Fritz Lang espionage thriller from 1946, with Gary Cooper and an exquisitely beautiful Lili Palmer. This is not one of Lang’s better-regarded films, but I liked it anyway. Cooper is good as a scientist trying to thwart Nazi research into the atomic bomb, and his exchanges with freedom fighter Palmer are nicely written. It’s ending skirts a little too closely to that of Casablanca, but overall, worth a look.

The Man Who Fell to Earth – First viewing of this. I have a soft spot for the work of Nicholas Roeg – Even stuff that nobody else likes, like Insignificance. This one, though, didn’t really do it for me. It's sexy as hell, of course, but the gaping plot holes just didn’t let me relax and take it in. David Bowie is an alien who comes to earth to raise money to get water to his home planet. Hmmm …Water is pretty much free, isn’t it? How’s he getting it back there? And how does the rival corporation think they are going to get away with the murder they commit?

D.W. Griffith: Years of Discovery 1909-1913 – A collection of early Griffith shorts. It features a terrific commentary track by film historian Russell Merrit, and is a valuable lesson in how Griffith basically invented many of the film conventions that we take for granted now. If you’ve seen Birth of a Nation, Merritt explains how Griffith was perfecting many of the techniques that came to fruition with Birth. There’s also a stunning short named The Redman’s View, which portrays Native Americans in a sensitive, sympathetic light. This was made years before the racist Birth and it’s appalling portrayal of blacks, and makes an intriguing counter-point.

The Marquee

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Joseph Sargent, 1974

On Location

Sergio Leone gets a piggyback perspective. Once Upon a Time in the West, 1968

Moments of Distinction

Moments of Distinction

The Film – Singin’ in the Rain – dir. Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen

The Set-Up – I think you know the set-up.

Let the stormy clouds chase everyone from the place.

Come on with the rain, I've a smile on my face.

The centerpiece of Singin’ in the Rain would be among the favorite movie moments of many, many people. In my case, I distill it down to this fabulous shot where the camera pans upward and looks down on Kelly’s face. What do we see? Simple, unalloyed joy. It’s the joy of a man who is in love, but it’s also the joy of a great artist immersed in the thing he loves.

I’m always interested in watching people when they are involved in that thing that is their passion, whether it’s Arnold Palmer playing golf, or Bruce Springsteen in front of a crowd with a guitar around his neck. It doesn’t matter who or what, it’s just a nice glimpse into that person. I don’t think the movies have a better example than this.

Léolo and the Filmmusic Blog-a-thon

A wee plug for the Filmmusic Blog-a-thon being hosted by Damian at Windmills of my Mind on June 21-25. http://damianarlyn.blogspot.com/2007/01/filmmusic-blog-thon.html I'll use any damn excuse to hear Tom Waits.

The Marquee (AHx3)

3 looks for Dial M for Murder