Classic Movie Review: Wise Blood (1979)

Wise Blood (1979)

Directed by: John Huston.

Written by: Benedict Fitzgerald & Michael Fitzgerald based on the novel by Flannery O'Connor.

Starring: Brad Dourif (Hazel Motes), Dan Shor (Enoch Emory), Harry Dean Stanton (Asa Hawks), Amy Wright (Sabbath Lily), Mary Nell Santacroce (Landlady), Ned Beatty (Hoover Shoates), William Hickey (Preacher), John Huston (Grandfather).

 

John Huston’s Wise Blood, based on the novel by Flannery O’Connor, is a very strange movie indeed. It is a redemption story of sorts – the story a non-believer, a nihilist really, who comes back into the fold and embraces Jesus in the end, although by then he has lost pretty much everything else in his life, so it may well have been better for him not to find Jesus (at least, in this life). It is a story of holy and unholy fools – crooks and charlatans – although according the movie at least, that doesn’t mean that Jesus isn’t real.

 

The main character in the film is Hazel Motes and he’s played with single minded determination by a perfectly cast Brad Dourif. He returns from the war (the film never specifies which one – although O’Connor’s novel in set in post WWII, the film however doesn’t have the trappings of a period piece – perhaps due to budget constraints – so it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say Vietnam), and goes back to his small, Southern hometown. There is a new highway there – opened, he’s told, just long enough for everyone to drive away from town. None of his family is left – we glimpse his preacher Grandfather (played by Huston himself) – is flashbacks, but no one else. Hazel ends up heading into the city, where he plans to start street preaching. But he is not a typical street preacher, talking about how Jesus saves – just the opposite really. His is a “Church without Christ” - “where the blind don’t see and the lame don’t walk and what’s dead stays that way”. Despite all his supposed hatred of Jesus, Hazel has the passion of a true zealot – he rarely talks of anything other than his Church, and spreading his “gospel”. If Wise Blood is anything, it is a reminder of that old saying – the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Hazel doesn’t really hate Jesus – he’s just mad at him, perhaps because of what happened during the war (he says he has an injury, but doesn’t want people to know where), or perhaps because of the fire and brimstone his grandfather preached (which scared him so much, he wet himself).

 

While in the city, Hazel meets a series of fools, crooks and charlatans. He isn’t there long before he finds a new follower – the hapless Enoch Emory (Dan Shor), who becomes committed to him despite the cruelty in which Hazel treats him. Enoch is clearly a lonely, somewhat dimwitted young man, who will eventually end up in a gorilla suit in another ill advised obsession. There is Asa Hawks (the great Harry Dean Stanton), a supposedly blind street preacher, and his daughter Sabbath Lily (Amy Wright). They are scam artists – he isn’t really blind, despite what his “clipping” says (he supposedly was going to blind himself for Jesus). Sabbath Lily sets her sets on Hazel herself. There’s Hoover Shoates (Ned Beatty), who hears Hazel’s pitch, and likes it – he feels there is a lot of money to be made from it, but when Hazel doesn’t get on board – it isn’t a scam to him – Shoates simply goes out and hires someone to give the same sermon (William Hickey). Finally, there is Hazel’s landlady (Mary Nell Santacroce), who seems so kindly – but of course, even she has something else on her mind.

 

There is nothing new about redemption stories – and yet Wise Blood is one of the strangest ones you will see. It isn’t really about a saint among sinners – we see Hazel Motes do a hell of lot of bad things. It is the work of a cynical Christian – but a Christian just the same. For the most part, the film follows O’Connor’s novel fairly closely – even if Huston initially had a different interpretation – he thought he’d be making a satire about Southern religion, which in a way, I guess he was – he was still the right choice to direct. Huston is one of the few directors who was able to take difficult, literary material and turn it into a film that is both faithful to the novel, and works as film itself. The film isn’t perfect – I find, in particular, that the scenes leading to the ending could use a little more clarity – but mainly, it is a fine adaptation of a difficult novel.

 

Lots of things helped here – including, oddly enough, the lack of a budget. It is a small budgeted film, and so Huston shot mainly on location in Macon, Georgia – using the rundown city as a perfect backdrop to the film. The lack a definitive time period works here (I often don’t like, as specificity is the soul of narrative – here though it makes it a more quintessential American story). The cast of character actors could hardly be improved upon – Dourif apparently wanted to add more nuance to Hazel, but Huston rightly knew that he was a one note character – whatever he embraces, he embraces fully. Harry Dean Stanton delivers one of his finest in a long line of morally dubious conmen. Amy Wright is a wicked joy as Sabbath Lily. Ned Beatty all smiles as he steals from you – and Hickey is wonderfully pathetic as his sidekick. Santacroce sneaks up on you as the unnamed Landlady – helping in those final scenes.

 

If Wise Blood doesn’t quite rank up with Huston’s best films, that is because of the strength of his resume – from The Maltese Falcon to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre in the 1940s to Prizzi’s Honor and The Dead in the 1980s, and much in between, Huston had a varied, wonderful directing career. Wise Blood is a little seen, underrated late career highlight for him – and everyone else involved.

Classic Movie Review: Winter Kills (1979)

Winter Kills (1979)

Directed by: William Richert.   

Written by: William Richert based on the novel by Richard Condon.

Starring: Jeff Bridges (Nick Kegan), John Huston (Pa Kegan), Anthony Perkins (John Cerruti), Eli Wallach (Joe Diamond), Sterling Hayden (Z.K. Dawson), Dorothy Malone (Emma Kegan), Tomas Milian (Frank Mayo), Belinda Bauer (Yvette Malone), Ralph Meeker (Gameboy Baker), Toshirô Mifune (Keith), Richard Boone (Keifitz), David Spielberg (Miles Garner), Brad Dexter (Captain Heller One), Michael Thoma (Ray Doty), Ed Madsen (Captain Heller Two), Irving Selbst (Irving Mentor), Chris Soldo (Jeffreys), Byron Morrow (Secretary of State), Elizabeth Taylor (Lola Comante), John Warner (President Tim Kegan).

 

Winter Kills is a strange movie that was made at just the right moment for it, and yet for some reason, didn’t connect. The film is ostensibly a paranoid thriller, made at the end of the decade in which paranoid thrillers were at their peak, and yet is really a straight faced comedy – it’s thriller elements so silly that they cannot be believed, although no one in the movie lets in that they’re in on the joke. The film should have been perfect for 1979 audiences, and yet the film was a commercial failure at the time. It’s gained a cult following since, yet watching the film, I couldn’t help but feel like I was watching a relic of a previous era, who time had come and gone. I hate using the term dated to describe old movies – yet it’s undeniable that some movies are made for their time, and don’t work outside of it. Winter Kills is that type of movie.

 

The film stars Jeff Bridges as Nick Kegan, the beach bum half-brother of the former American President, killed by an apparent lone gunman nearly 20 years ago. An ex-con confesses to Nick, while on his deathbed, that he was he second gunman that day – and he was hired by an organization he did not know. Nick goes to his powerful father, (John Huston) with the information, who doesn’t want to hear it – but Nick will not give up. He starts a country spanning investigation, meeting people in all walks of life related to his brother, and a possible conspiracy – but as he unravels the plot, the people he meets with keep getting murdered by unknown killers.

 

You could hardly ask for a better cast for a film – Bridges, Huston, Anthony Perkins as an all-powerful Wizard of Oz type character, Eli Wallach as a gangster, Sterling Hayden as a powerful businessman, only seen riding around in a tank, Dorothy Malone as Bridges semi-out there mother, and Elizabeth Taylor, who never speaks, but wanders around looking Elizabeth Taylor. That doesn’t even mention small roles by Ralph Meekler, Toshiro Mifune and Tomas Milian – the film becomes a spot the star cameo game throughout, as these stars come out, have a scene or two, and then disappear. They keep the film watchable, and somewhat enjoyable.

 

But the film never quite finds the right tone – this film was required to walk the razor edge between plausible thriller and satiric comedy, and doesn’t really commit to either. It’s at its best in the most absurd scenes – like Huston’s introduction, accompanied by a large of rich men, who come riding in on golf carts, as if they are an invading army. The film also work in the background more than the foreground – like the presence of a ping pong table at the last place you would expect to see one, which undercuts the seriousness of the scene it’s in.

 

The ultimate problem with Winter Kills is that it doesn’t work as a comedy, a satire of a thriller. It wants to be a paranoid thriller – it is from the author of one of the best ever made, The Manchurian Candidate, but it doesn’t take its premise seriously (if you think about it, The Manchurian Candidate itself is a silly premise – they just sell the hell out of it). But it never quite nails the more satiric or comedic side ether. I could see the film working better in 1979 – having sat through a bunch of these types of films the preceding decade or so, perhaps it better hit those comedic targets. Watching it now through, it doesn’t really work. There’s a lot of talent involved in Winter Kills, and it is a very strange film – it just doesn’t add up to that much.

The Best Movies I've Never Seen Before: Under the Volcano (1984)

Under the Volcano (1984) *** ½

Directed by: John Huston.

Written by: Guy Gallo based on the novel by Malcolm Lowry.

Starring: Albert Finney (Geoffrey Firmin), Jacqueline Bisset (Yvonne Firmin), Anthony Andrews (Hugh Firmin), Ignacio López Tarso (Dr. Vigil), Katy Jurado (Senora Gregoria), James Villiers (Brit), Dawson Bray (Quincey), Carlos Riquelme (Bustamante), Jim McCarthy (Gringo), José René Ruiz (Dwarf).

Under the Volcano is about a British alcoholic living in Mexico. John Huston, who was known to drink and was an American who spent most of his final years in Mexico, could probably relate to that. It is based on a book by Malcolm Lowry that was thought to be unfilmable, but that never stopped Huston before, who often took on literary adaptations thought to be unfilmable (his final movie was based on James Joyce’s The Dead for example). The movie takes place before the outbreak of WWII, and there is talk of what the Nazis are doing in Mexico, who they’re backing and who is getting killed. But these conversations take place mainly in the background, and happen because the main character was once the British Consul to Mexico, and his half brother is a reporter who is following the story, and as such, they are expected to talk about such things. The main character doesn’t much care – he acts like he does, but when it gets right down to it, all he really cares about is when and where he is going to get his next drink.

The main character is Geoffrey Firmin, and he is played in one of his best performances by Albert Finney. The movie traces his character for 24 hours over Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebrations – starting with Finney getting drunk, giving an offensive speech , and then stumbling around the city before falling asleep in a ditch. The next morning, he wakes up, and drags himself home – still wearing his tuxedo. His wife Yvonne (Jacqueline Bisset) shows up after a long absence, during which time she has gotten a divorce, and says she wants him back. Geoffrey has wanted her to return for months now, but now that she has come back, he becomes somewhat cruel to her – he is alternately drawn to her, and repelled from her. We gather fairly early that she had an affair with his half brother Hugh (Anthony Andrews), who joins them as they go out to celebrate the day of the dead. Much of what happened in the past is left unspoken, but it hangs over everything in the film.

Actors love it when they get to play drunks. It allows for a lot of stumbling and slurred speech, or in others words it gives them a chance to ACT. Most overdo it to one degree or another, or else, the directors do, as they try to get too fancy with the direction to try to put us in the drunk’s “state of mind”. Billy Wilder’s Oscar winning The Lost Weekend with Ray Milland, pretty much set up all of the drunk movie clichés that movies have followed ever since – and while it worked in that film, it doesn’t in many others. But Albert Finney and John Huston do something different with Geoffrey. He is a drunk who is at his most lucid, most understandable, when he is drunk. It’s in his brief moments of sobriety when he looks at his worst. When you drink as much as Geoffrey does, it no longer get you drunk, but rather it simply gets you back to normal. Finney never overdoes his performance here, but rather he hits all the right notes. I don’t know if he started drinking to dull the pain of his failing marriage, or his marriage failed because of his drinking – but it doesn’t matter. The result is the same. Yvonne may have come back to Geoffrey, but it isn’t only because she loves him – it’s because she had no where else to go. Before they got married, she was an actress in New York, and when she left him, that’s where she went once again. But she’s aging now, cannot get the great parts anymore, and once the run of her play ended, and she didn’t get another one, what else was she supposed to do? Finney is brilliant in his role, but Bisset matches him in every scene, not so much in terms of acting ability, but in being just what the movie needed. She is a woman he both loves and hates – that he wants to forgive, but cannot. She accepts him for who he is, because deep down, she does love him, and needs him. The weak link in the cast is Anthony Andrews, not really because he acts poorly, but because little more than his physical presence is required. He’s younger than Geoffrey, more athletic, better looking. He loves Geoffrey in his way, but more than that he pities him. And while Geoffrey knows he needs him, he hates him for that pity. Geoffrey knows that Yvonne and Hugh would be happier together without him, and that destroys him. And in his selfishness, he destroys not only himself, but those around him as well.

The Best Films I've Never Seen Before: The Night of the Iguna (1964)

The Night of the Iguana (1964) *** ½

Directed by: John Huston.

Written by: Anthony Veiller and John Huston based on the play by Tennessee Williams.

Starring: Richard Burton (Rev. Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon), Ava Gardner (Maxine Faulk), Deborah Kerr (Hannah Jelkes), Sue Lyon (Charlotte Goodall), Skip Ward (Hank Prosner), Grayson Hall (Judith Fellowes), Cyril Delevanti (Nonno), Mary Boylan (Miss Peebles).

The characters in a Tennessee Williams play are always damaged. Even when it appears that there is a healthy character in his play, by the end whatever their weakness is has been exposed for the audience to see. His characters struggle, often in vain, to try and have some sort of human connection, but are left just as damaged at the end as they were at the beginning – in some cases more so. This could describe many of the films of director John Huston as well, who liked his characters broken or wounded. And it’s why the pair of them make a good team – and why The Night of the Iguana is such a fine movie.

The movie stars Richard Burton as Reverend Dr. Lawrence Shannon, who ran into some trouble in his Virginia congregation because of his relationship with a young pupil. He wasn’t defrocked or charged with a crime, but he may as well have been, as life there became impossible. He has moved to Mexico, and now gives religious tours on a low end for a low end tour group – and things here haven’t gotten any simpler. His most recent group is a women’s group from a church in Texas – and he seems to be in trouble again. The youngest woman on the tour is Charlotte (Lolita herself, Sue Lyon), who is underage and sent on this trip by her father to get away from a boy she was infatuated with. Now, she is infatuated with Shannon. He tries his best to resist her charms, although his lust for her makes it difficult. The chaperone on the trip is Judith Fellowes (Grayson Hall), a dour, stick in the mud, who doesn’t like what she sees going on – and makes it clear that she is going to report Shannon on their return. To avoid this, Shannon deliberately makes their bus breakdown just outside a small hotel, run by his old friend Maxine (Ava Gardner). Thinking that a few days in her beautiful hotel may quell Miss Fellowes mood, he gets them to stay there, but of course, Miss Fellowes will not go quietly.

It goes without saying that all of these characters – plus two others, the “oldest working poet in the world” Nonno (Cyril Delevanti) and his niece, a caricature artist Hannah (Deborah Kerr) who happen upon the hotel themselves, are all damaged, all reaching for human connection, and that love and lust has been confused in their minds. If they can’t have one, they’ll settle for the other for the time being – it sure beats the hell out of being alone.

Huston gets the most out of his actors here. Burton, a explosive personality and one of the great actors of his generation (whose work was at some points marred by his excessive drinking) delivers one of his best performances here. Shannon is a man well past his breaking point, who is simply trying to hold onto the last shred of dignity he has left – and that Charlotte is trying to take away from him. Lyon is wonderful as the precocious teenager, all raging hormones and lust, who falls in love in a heartbeat, and right back out of it just as quickly. Ava Gardner’s earthy beauty and lust has never been on such display as it is here. She was always uncomfortable with herself, and that shows in much of her work, but here, channeling those insecurities, she may just deliver the best work of her career. Deborah Kerr has a rather thankless role, but it gets deeper as it goes along – climaxing in her sad speech about her two “love affairs”, if you can call them that. She may just be the healthiest one of the lot, because at least she recognizes her deficiencies, and is dealing with them. The only cast member who has nominated for an Oscar back in 1964 when the film was released (and a case could be made that they all deserved to be) was Grayson Hall, who at first appears to simply being a shrewish, party pooper but even she gets a genuinely great moment late in the film – when something she has suppressed all her life is thrown in her face.

Huston loved to shot on location – something many filmmakers didn’t bother to do in the studio era. His exploits on The African Queen (1951) set are legendary, and even inspired a wonderful movie in its own right (Clint Eastwood’s underrated White Hunter, Black Heart). Here, he was taking a risk bringing these people to a remote era of Mexico. Burton had an explosive personality to begin with, and he brought along his girlfriend Elizabeth Taylor on the shoot – even though she was still married to Eddie Fisher at the time. Ava Gardener could be explosive herself, and the rest of the cast was experienced enough to perhaps be off put by the rustic, not at all glamorous surroundings. Yet, Huston was able to pull them altogether, and he ends up with a wonderful movie. The movie is a howl of pain from these characters, reaching out, trying to connect, and being rebuffed. The movie has a somewhat hopeful ending – everyone seems to be where they belong. I just doubt that any of them are going to wind up happy for very long.

The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: The Misfits (1961)

The Misfits (1961) *** ½

Directed by: John Huston.

Written by: Arthur Miller.

Starring: Clark Gable (Gay Langland), Marilyn Monroe (Roslyn Taber), Montgomery Clift (Perce Howland), Thelma Ritter (Isabelle Steers), Eli Wallach (Guido), Kevin McCarthy (Raymond Taber).

The story of the making of The Misfits is at least as interesting as the movie itself. It was the last film of both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe – he died just 12 days after shooting wrapped of a heart attack (which many blamed on the strenuous shoot – although the man did smoke 3 packs of cigarettes a day), she died just over a year later of a drug overdose. Monroe was already struggling with alcohol and drug dependency during the shooting of the movie, often showed up late to set and struggled to learn her lines, written by her then husband Arthur Miller, who was constantly re-writing the script. When the project started, they two were recently married and completely in love. When they started shooting the movie, they bloom was off the rose, Monroe had moved out, and Miller, deciding perhaps to try and embarrass her, put many uncomfortable autobiographical details of her life in the script. Co-star Montgomery Clift was also struggling with drug addiction, and was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Then there was director John Huston, who was suffering from emphysema at the time, and was sometimes too sick to show up on set. When he was there, he was often exhausted, because the film was shot in Nevada, and Huston was a chronic gambler who stayed up all night at the casinos. They even had to shut down production for a week when Huston went over his “gambling allowance”, and had to come up with more money. When the movie opened in February 1961, critics and audiences both disliked it, and it became a high profile flop for all involved. But over the years its reputation has grown, and now watching it 50 years, it is considered a minor classic.

Miller’s purpose in writing the script was to debunk the myth of the rugged, individualist life of cowboys. Instead, he saw them as lonely, pathetic men, whose days was over, but they simply could not admit it to themselves. The movie stars Clark Gable, in one of his greatest performances, as Gay Langland, an aging cowboy who was once a star of the rodeo and could make money “mustanging” in the mountains of Nevada – where they round up the wild horses to sell to people who wanted them for kids. He still mustangs, but now there are fewer horses, and the only people who will buy them are dog food makers. The romanticism of his life is over.

Until, at least, he meets Roslyn (Monore), a free spirited, yet spiritually pure, ex-stripper who cannot help it if every man she meets falls in love with her. Roslyn first meets Guido (Eli Wallach), when he comes to fix her car – that her soon to be ex-husband gave her as a “divorce present”. He convinces her and her friend (the acid tongued Thelma Ritter, great as always) to come to his house out in the country with him and Gay. Guido is still reeling from the death of his wife, but thinks that perhaps Roslyn can cure him – but of course she falls for Gay. Later, they meet up with Perce (Montgomery Clift), a younger, more idealistic version of Gay, who has hit the road because when his father died, he left to family ranch to her mother, who has now remarried and her husband runs the ranch. He spends time at the rodeo, but agrees to come mustanging with Gay and Guido – who bring Roslyn along, who is horrified when she discovers what is going to happen to the mustangs.

The Misfits is a Western, but it is a modern day one – and one without action until its final sequence out in the desert when they all go mustanging. Watching the film, I was reminded of another film I reviewed earlier in this series – Nicholas Ray’s The Lusty men. Both films are about aging, broken down cowboys, realizing their lives are empty. Perhaps that’s why Huston wanted to cast Mitchum in the Clark Gable role in this film (apparently, Mitchum thought the script was incomprehensible, so he dodged Huston’s calls until Gable was cast). Both are very good films, but I think I prefer this one – which isn’t quite as obvious. This is a movie about buried secrets and resentments, coming forward. Clark Gable saw much of the film before he died (Huston shot in sequence and edited as they went), and he felt it was the best work of his career, and it certainly gave him a more complex role than he normally had. We immediately like Gay, because he is Clark Gable, and is so charming and likable, but as the movie progresses, and his darkness and loneliness comes out, we start to have our doubts about him. Gable plays it brilliantly. It is certainly the best dramatic performance of Monroe’s career. Yes, the movie still views Monroe as a sex object, but in this case, it isn’t so simple – it’s almost more of the fact the characters view her as a sex object, a woman who can redeem them, even though they don’t even know her. Whatever her problems on the set were, Monroe was able to give the most complex performance of her career in this film. The underrated performance in the movie is by Wallach, you seems like such a nice guy, who is really a lout. He hates Gay, while pretending to be his friend. He may have even hated his “beloved” dead wife. When Monroe finally calls him on it, something inside of him breaks. Thelma Ritter does what she was cast to do in her brief performance – dole out sarcastic comments, as an aging woman who the men take along to get to Monroe. For the most part though, Montgomery Clift is wasted as Perse – I understand he was supposed to be a younger, more idealistic version of Gay, but his character isn’t developed enough for him to truly fill that roll.

Ultimately, although The Misfits is not a great movie, it has greatness in it. Yes, critics at the time were right to call the film flawed. And yet, there is so much in the film that works wonderfully well, that I cannot help buy love it. If you ever wondered if Marilyn Monroe could actually act, rent The Misfits, and she’ll remove all doubts.