Orphans of the Storm

As long as I can remember being obsessed with movies I've compiled my own lists. Sure it's fine and dandy when a critic focuses on a film and provides insight into what we are seeing up there. But what about the opposite?

Sometimes there are interesting elements of a movie that aren't up there on the screen as we watch it. How often have you heard someone asking, "have you seen the documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now? it's actually better than the movie itself." I'd never go that far. But, that's just me. I worship Apocalypse Now (1979, Francis Coppola).

There are tons of rumors and gossip like this. I'm not as drawn to that as I am to the confounding instances of a movie being disowned by its director. And this seems to always involve an up and coming auteur battling with a studio, and a large budget at stake. We'll never see Orson Welles' original cut of The Magnificent Ambersons (1942); David Lynch wants his name off of Dune (1984), produced by Dino De Laurentiis; producers hijacked Backtrack (1990, Dennis Hopper Alan Smithee), which I learned about from Fat who shared this article; David Fincher says he lost creative control of Alien³ (1992) to 20th Century Fox; the producers taking Wild Side (1995) out of Donald Cammell's hands allegedly precipitated his suicide; Terry Gilliam didn't entirely get to craft his vision as he wanted on The Brothers Grimm (2005) because of the Weinsteins. I wish I had a list of these kinds of movies.

It is annoying to enjoy the work of a director and find out one of his or her movies ended up in a form that he or she wishes to ignore. But for me I still watch these orphaned movies, fascinated, stubborn, unwilling to skip over them. Admittedly, I've always been compulsively enamored with directors above all else.

The Wim Wenders retrospective is about halfway through and I am very into it. Chronologically the program is at the point where Hammett (1982, Wim Wenders) was released. The 4K restorations of all of the theatrical exhibitions so far have been released thanks to Wim Wenders Stiftung, and the foundation's website lists every title in his filmography except Hammett.

Last night for the first time I watched Hammett and it wasn't shown in a theater. I watched it on DVD at my home. Yeah, shitty, I know, tell me about it.

I'd first heard about Hammett a while back watching a documentary about filmmaking, or Hollywood, or directors, or Coppola, or American Zoetrope, I can't remember exactly. But on at least one occasion I know it was spoken of with a negative connotation, and even in the context of contributing or exemplifying some of the factors leading up to the demise of Zoetrope Studios along with One from the Heart (Coppola) released the same year.

I love thinking of the film school brats of the 1970s as an American professional sports league, and fans having their favorite teams, remaining loyal to them through thick and thin. From 1970-1984 I'm a Coppola fan all the way. But Carpenter during the same period is just as impressive to go back to, hell often more impressive.

So despite the evidence that points to Coppola bullying Hammett away from Wenders, wait a minute because of the evidence that points to Coppola bullying Hammett away from Wenders I was endeared by its trainwreck of creative conflict and other odd characteristics.

Throwing out my or anyone's sensible criteria for appreciating a movie, I couldn't get enough of the artificial look the sets and lighting give off. What I mean is the sources of the lights are hard and not as diffuse as other less distracting methods of lighting--but I like this effect. Having been shot at Zoetrope Studios plays into Hammett as a throwback to 1940s Hollywood studio filmmaking. Wenders' early films shot by Robby Müller are striking because Müller sculpts light like an artist, and the locations are pre-existing spaces not studio sets. And around 1982 no one wants movies to look fake like the 40s movies do now to us, but I do because I'm into nostalgia, especially for this time in film history.

Also Wenders' earlier films are as sparse with dialogue as his desolate landscapes are void of civilization. Even though that's one of the greatest strengths of those films, Hammett is a non-stop bombardment of machine-gun fire period pulp slang dialogue. It doesn't at all feel like Wenders but it works.

Finally, since I'm slowly now beginning to actually say something about Hammett itself, the casting from Frederic Forest as HAMMETT down to several supporting characters fits in and nails the homage of the 40s noir films this is modeled on. Forest is also one of Coppola's best collaborators going back to The Conversation (1974, Coppola), and Apocalypse Now (1979, Coppola). David Patrick Kelley plays a hoarse whispered gunsel worthy of Elisha Cook, Jr.'s turn as the counterpart goon in The Maltese Falcon (1941, Huston), which is funny because Elisha Cook, Jr. also stars in Hammett. And Roy Kinnear channels Sydney Greenstreet's heavy from The Maltese Falcon just as accurately.

Who knew Jack Nance would turn up in this thing as a sex-trafficking blackmailer? Hammett boasts a formidable array of cult character actors and Nance seems to be the clincher. Director Sam Fuller also shows up again in a Wenders movie after his noir appearance in Der amerikanische Freund (1977, Wenders).

In a case of history repeating itself, this rare instance of a movie about a writer unwittingly becoming a character in one of their own type of tales happens again with The Brothers Grimm, and in both cases it sound like the director started with their first choice of cinematographer only to see them fired during production--Robby Müller and Nicola Pecorini, respectively. Anyway initially I thought the premise of a writer stumbling into one of their own stories sounded unappealing to say the least, but afterwards I've found that in these two cases I really like these movies.

--Dregs

An Hour Ago Rudy Linnekar Had This Town In His Pocket Now You Can Strain Him Through a Sieve

The ninth film I was able to see in the Orson Welles series was projected in 35mm and it made a big difference.

So, I've seen Touch of Evil (1958, Welles) a few times on dvd before. And lately I've been realizing more and more the benefits of seeing something on a big screen in a theater over my tv at home; and, film over digital. But seeing Touch of Evil in a theater was like discovering it for the first time--this might also have to do with that I'm older, and maybe also because I've seen ten other Orson Welles movies in a theater in the last month.

First of what's most important in Touch of Evil is the setting: Mexico. Specifically the US-Mexico border. Welles had already photographed parts of the films The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and Confidential Report (1955) in Mexico. Welles is also one of few filmmakers who has chosen not to employ subtitles when characters speak in a foreign language. And Touch of Evil features a lot of Spanish.

Secondly the Noir aspect. Let's presume I can use darkness synonymously with evil, alright? And noir also translates as black. So, the darkness in Touch of Evil can be read in many ways other than Hank Quinlan's (Welles) corruption. The Mexican setting delves into the dark criminal underworld of murder, blackmail, reefers, mainlining, brothels, stripclubs, leather jackets, hot rodding JDs, molotov cocktails, and peeping through windows. And this is the last Film Noir ever made. No I don't have evidence to support my claim, but I'm convinced. Trust me on this one.

Dark lurid trash was the producer of this film, Albert Zugsmith's specialty. Zugsmith also produced Douglas Sirk's trashy melodrama masterpiece Written on the Wind (1956, Douglas Sirk) and Tarnished Angels (1958, Sirk). Compare Written on the Wind and Tarnished Angels to any of Sirk's other films and you will definitely see Zugsmith's influence--they're way trashy darker than anything else Sirk ever did. Leather Daddy Butch Mercedes McCambridge's cameo as the Mexican villain who says "You know what a Maryjane is? You know what a mainliner is?" and "Let me stay. I wanna watch," is probably the most bizarrely vulgar one of Welles's films has ever gotten. She's awesome.

Tertiary is the Shakespearean tragedy of the whole affair. Quinlan refuses, like Macbeth, to sleep. This gives the film a unique dramatic unity and urgency--it will be resolved before he falls asleep, we know it. Quinlan is dying. Holy crap, the scene where Quinlan frames Vargas' wife for Uncle Joe Grandi's murder is shot with these slowly paced out strobes from somewhere outside through the small apartment room where the final struggle between Quinlan and Grandi takes place--the light bursts are evocative of Quinlan's life slowly dying out of him: the beat of a heart visualized; the light that's left of him diminishing into darkness; the poetry of that scene is very important.

Once Quinlan falls off the wagon and starts drinking bourbon--my own worst poison, but also the most seductive--he starts talking about his dead ex-wife. And the sheer madness and dementia that appears in the insomniac, old, tired, obese, man makes us think for a second: wait a minute did he kill her, his own wife? But it's only a glimpse. Even more intriguing. Later Menzies (the Master Swallow to Quinlan's Falstaff) defends Quinlan saying that he only thinks about his ex wife while he's drunk until even later Quinlan:

I'm always thinking of her. Drunk or sober.

What else is there to think about, except my job?

My dirty job.

Okay this is like as darkly romantic as it gets. This is poetry. That this suffering man has one friend and somehow has still hung onto his career makes the setup for the great tragedy of him unnecessarily framing Linnekar's Mexican son-in-law that results in him destroying what's left of his job, securing his own ignominy, and murdering Menzies, his only friend, the only one who loved him, powerfully Shakespearean. But, like the stuffed spiked black bull's head that the desperate Quinlan rests under in the brothel, he is a magnificent beast that holds our attention in the ring because some part of us is fascinated by seeing him slowly, methodically killed by a hero. But we are here for the bull, not the bullfighter. Yet the bull has to die. That is tragedy.

We also get all of the best the B genre has to offer. Dennis Weaver as the motel clerk who postures as erratically as an ostrich on angel dust, being the only human the sexy pointy cone brassiered Janet Leigh is stuck with in this motel two years before she'd meet Anthony Perkins at the Bates creates a whole different brand of suspense. Weaver really makes Perkins look like a ladies man compared to his awkwardness. 

Oh and Welles is on point with his mise en scène, but not just the famous opening. This was the first time I noticed how long the take was when Quinlan interrogates Sanchez at his apartment. That's an impressive sequence. But the opening still takes the cake. Man, you really realize how close that bomb is to going off right next to Heston and Janet Leigh's characters. And the litter polluting the river where Quinlan goes to die is gorgeous. The Joseph Cotten cameo is also a treat for Welles aficionados.

Yet one thing I can't quite get over is that Quinlan has Menizies take Vargas' wife to a motel he knows Grandi owns. Do you realize how early in the film this happens? That truly is evil of Quinlan is he had the foresight for this that soon after meeting Vargas. How can he despise him so? Is is because he's Mexican? Because he's younger? Better at his job? Smarter? Has that smoking hot Janet Leigh wife? Or is it because he knows Vargas is onto him? Quinlan is a fat, ugly, evil, monster villain. But again, damn if I don't still love him. Welles knows his magic.

--Dregs

Like the Sharks Mad with Their Own Blood Chewing Away at Themselves

The fifth film in the Orson Welles retrospective was projected from a DCP. The negative was immaculate. Only five in and it's already the end of Welles's Hollywood phase.

In The Lady from Shanghai (1947, Orson Welles) Welles tones down his expressionist camera somewhat; because there are less abstract angles or compositions; but, the locations are truly influenced by German Expressionism through their nightmare quality. And the locations used in The Lady from Shanghai also indulge Welles's passion for exotic locale, especially the picnic detour up the coast of Mexico. The Mexicans in that sequence appear so authentic, they must be locals. And the latter half of the film boasts some historical treasures by getting to see the streets of San Francisco as they looked in the late Forties.

The Lady from Shanghai is nightmare noir; although the only other noir I can think of that fits this description is Detour (1945, Edgar G. Ulmer). Some professors of screenwriting argue that movies must have an active protagonist. Or in other words, they maintain that a protagonist cannot passively progress through a narrative where other characters are responsible for actions against him or her; they say a character has to make choices. Do you act in your dreams? I don't. In my dreams stuff just happens. There are no rules in filmmaking, and The Lady from Shanghai is one of my favorite examples of the successful use of a passive protagonist: Michael O'Hara (Orson Welles).

A key ingredient in this noir is the overwhelming sense of paranoia that surrounds O'Hara. It constantly feels like everyone is lying, manipulating him, and out to get him like a bunch of sharks. And they are. The other key to The Lady from Shanghai is the titular femme fatale, Elsa Bannister, played by the sultry, created for the gaze of celluloid Rita Hayworth.

Elsa introduces herself as a princess after O'Hara rescues her, and tells him that she'd like to hire him as a sailor. But then she reveals that she's married. And her husband is the top criminal lawyer in California. And he's rich. And he's much older than her. And he's crippled, walking with two canes. Incidentally, her husband Arthur Bannister is played by Everett Sloane. Sloane was a part of Welles's Mercury Theatre, appeared in Citizen Kane, and Journey Into Fear, and rarely do I say this about actors, but damn I love Everett Sloane. Recently I was on a Twilight Zone bender and that led me to discover an amazing early teleplay that Rod Serling wrote for Kraft Television Theatre called Patterns from 1955 starring Sloane. Patterns is about a heartbreaking changing of the guard in a big business potboiler of a live program. Okay, I'm getting off topic, but when else will I have the chance to talk about Everett Sloane?

So, Arthur Bannister, his socialite buddy Grisby, and Mrs. Bannister exploit the hapless O'Hara. But what lures him into this madness? The femme fatale, Elsa. This might be as old of a movie I've seen where the sex appeal is still intact. Rita Hayworth is framed and photographed to look timeless. She's in her prime and radiates glamor and a disarming feminine allure. She's dynamite in her close-ups, her repose in wet clingy black bathing suit, and coos with feigned vulnerability that eats up the screen. The Lady from Shanghai is a nightmare also because Elsa deceives O'Hara into falsely believing she is attracted to him, yet she's duplicitous, and she's dangerous; but, even though he suspects all of this, he keeps following her further and further. This parable's got teeth.

Welles the thespian has another scene-grabbing monologue, and when he tells the surreal tale of the sharks of the coast of Brazil uncontrollably devouring each other, turning the sea red with their blood, he once again distills the essence of an entire film into a vivid cipher--a nightmare within a nightmare.

Welles's lasting impression as visual stylist is found during the funhouse climax, where the protagonist O'Hara stumbles down a winding dragon of a slide, and gets caught in a shootout in a maze of mirrors.

--Dregs