‘My Darling Clementine’

In John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), it is remarked that, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” This seems especially apt when it comes to the treatment of the Arizona city Tombstone and the historic western yarn of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the renowned confrontation between the Clantons on one side and the Earps with John “Doc” Holliday on the other. This famous battle, lasting all of about 30 seconds, took place the afternoon of Oct. 26, 1881, and in recalling this skirmish, multiple variations and interpretations have resulted in a cinematic legend in the making, with repeated appearances of its setting, characters, and actions. When the dust settles, one of the greatest depictions of the event, its decisive individuals, and the surrounding area and occurrences (true or false), is Ford’s own My Darling Clementine, from 1946.

The reality of this gunfight is up for debate, but Western filmmakers can’t seem to leave it alone, especially not without adding their fair share of embellishment. The facts of the incident become less interesting, certainly less exciting, than the filmic representation, and John Ford, with his take, was no exception. As John Saunders has pointed out, “Ford had more use for the already legendary figure of Wyatt Earp than the rather dubious actuality of events in 1881.” And this despite Ford’s insistence that Earp described to him exactly what happened, and that’s what we supposedly see in the film. What we do see, however, is definitely not exactly what happened.

As the Earp brothers plan to call it a day and set up camp in the southern Arizona desert, the baby faced James is left behind to tend to their herd of cattle while Wyatt (Henry Fonda) and the other brothers head into Tombstone—”wide awake, wide open” Tombstone. Ford even uses geography with a creative license here. He shoots the town as being in Monument Valley, his trademark location, which is at the opposite end of the state.

Minding their business, just passing through, and simply looking for a shave, Wyatt in particular soon finds himself in the frenzy of this reckless town. After bullets tear through the barbershop, Wyatt wonders, “What kind of town is this?” and no sooner does he utter these words than he is engaged in the seizure and removal of the guilty party, a drunken Indian. Alas, Ford was often as guilty as anyone for playing into stereotypes. Fun fact from Ford biographer Joseph McBride though: Indian Charlie is played by Charles Stevens, one of Geronimo’s grandsons.



In any case, when the brothers Earp return to their campsite, they find their cattle missing and James killed. Based on the way he handled the inebriated Native American and, even more than that, because the name Wyatt Earp carries with it considerable clout, Wyatt had been offered the position of marshal earlier in the evening and turned it down. After he discovers that the rabblerousing Clanton clan probably had something to do with James’ murder, he decides to take the job after all.

Here a curious thing happens in My Darling Clementine. For a considerable portion of the film, this familial vendetta is put on hold somewhat, as Wyatt unwittingly becomes entangled in an already complex love triangle between the self-destructive Doc Holliday (Victor Mature), the less than reputable saloon girl Chihuahua (Linda Darnell), and the just-into-town Clementine Carter (Cathy Downs). To Doc (and the film), Chihuahua represents the untamed west while Clementine stands in for the civilized refinement of the east—a conflict at the heart of countless Western classics—and they’re both vying for Doc’s affection. And Wyatt, of course, inevitably develops a fancy for “Clem” as well.

Other narrative strands are incorporated into the picture, but for some time, the inaction of Wyatt stands out. Though he may not be overly concerned with the aggressive pursuit of the Clantons, Ford, as he always did so well, allows for arguably more compelling bits of supplementary business. Not the least of these is the sequence McBride calls one of the greatest scenes in American cinema and the “best scene in the film” (he’s right there). It is, he says, “pure magic.” The celebrated religious service and dance is a culmination of all things Ford: down-home music, hearty dancing, community, a folksy hero, and society taking shape in the midst of the western wilderness. When the townsfolk gather to worship and celebrate where an actual church has yet to appear, this pivotal scene typifies the times when society as a whole begins to emerge from the rustic environment. Out of this desert, a civilization will grow, standing alongside the natural landscape, in conjunction and in contrast.



My Darling Clementine, as much as it is about the story of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday, and the famous gunfight, also puts forth these ideas relating to an ever-evolving culture. For example, Ford arranges the town so that there is the settlement on one side of the street, consisting of bars, hotels, and other businesses, while directly across is the open desert. It’s a notable disparity emphasizing the gradual civilization being developed on one hand, while also hinting at the natural landscape being taken away on the other.

There’s no question though, the most famous event in Tombstone’s history was the famed gunfight, which didn’t actually happen at the OK Corral but in a vacant lot on Fremont Street. Either way, of the many depictions of this famous mêlée, Ford’s is one of the best. It’s a prolonged, well staged, and intricately choreographed sequence, with several resourceful touches on the part of Wyatt and his cohorts, even if, as per the norm, it isn’t 100% accurate (old man Clanton wasn’t actually present and Doc Holliday died years later from tuberculosis).

By the end of the film, Wyatt is still reluctant to stay put. Now that he achieved his ostensible goal of revenge, the stasis of civilization doesn’t befit his nomadic temperament. He must keep moving. While he functions as one who can settle the rambunctious town of Tombstone, he isn’t content with settling himself. The town may have reached a sort of stability, but Wyatt still has some of the wild west left in him, that roaming spirit. It’s certainly not coincidental that throughout the picture Wyatt chooses as his perch a position where the wilderness is never fully out of view. He has the settlement behind him, but he is looking out toward the unsettled.

This was John Ford’s first film after his work with the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, and you get the sense that he was seeking to get back to basics in a way, to return to a black and white world where the good guys were clearly good and the bad guys were clearly bad; indeed, only Mature and Darnell convey any sense of moral duality. As McBride argues, there’s a pleasant “simplicity” about the film, even if there is some complexity underneath.



Clementine was Henry Fonda’s fourth of eight pictures made under Ford’s direction, and the film features a solid lineup of other Ford regulars as well, including Tim Holt as Virgil Earp, Ward Bond as Morgan, and Russell Simpson as the preacher, John Simpson. Jane Darwell, six years after her Oscar-winning performance in Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath, appears as Kate Nelson, and an uncredited Danny Borzage is the accordionist (he also played the instrument between shots on set as well). Even Ford’s brother Francis pops up as an old soldier lovingly referred to by Wyatt as “Dad.” New to the Ford fold is Howard Hawks stalwart Walter Brennan as Old Man Clanton. Apparently, he and Ford did not get along though and this was the first and last time these iconic Western figures ever worked together.

Cinematography on the film (which has never looked better than on this new Criterion Collection 4K digital restoration), was by Joseph MacDonald, something of a cinematic heavy hitter himself. Among his credits are works with Elia Kazan, Sam Fuller, and Nicholas Ray. For Clementine, he paints a notable contrast between the beauty and expanse of the open desert in the daytime and the sense of isolation and hidden danger of the town at night; in many of these nocturnal scenes, the film is as darkly lit as one of his noirs.

As would befit any John Ford film, Criterion rustled up a bountiful helping of bonus features for the new release. There’s the 103-minute prerelease version of the film, a comparison of the two versions by film preservationist Robert Gitt, the commentary by McBride, an interview with western historian Andrew C. Isenberg about the real Wyatt Earp, and a video essay by Ford scholar Tag Gallagher. There are also brief TV programs about the history of Tombstone and Monument Valley, a radio adaptation with Fonda and Downs, and an essay by David Jenkins. For film history buffs, Bandit’s Wager, a 1916 silent Western short featuring John Ford and directed by Francis, is a exceptionally pleasant addition.

Ford himself was not a fan of My Darling Clementine, though through the years, many critics have understandably held it up as one of his finest achievements. There were multiple discrepancies between the final film and the screenplay, and Fox head Darryl F. Zanuck oversaw some post-production reshoots against Ford’s will, including the controversial ending, but there are so many classic Ford touches that even these alterations seem minor by comparison. McBride quotes British critic and filmmaker Lindsay Anderson who perhaps gives the best single word description of the film: “poetic.”

And as for the historical liberties, well, as Henry Fonda said of Ford, he “used history, he wasn’t married to it.”

REVIEW  from SOUND ON SIGHT

The Sounds of Revolution: Godard’s ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ and ‘British Sounds’

 

“Sometimes the class struggle is also the struggle of one image against another image, of one sound against another sound. In a film, this struggle is against images and sounds.”

 - British Sounds

There was something in the air when Jean-Luc Godard took up the political banner of the late 1960s and shifted his filmmaking focus in terms of storytelling style and stories told, and in a general sense of formal reevaluation and reinvention. Always considered something of the enfant terrible of the French Nouvelle Vague, Godard was keen from the start to experiment with the conventional norms of cinematic aesthetics, from the jarring jump cuts of Breathless (1960), to the self-conscious playfulness of A Woman is a Woman (1961), to the genre deviations of Band of Outsiders (1964) and Made in USA (1966). But Godard was still, at a most basic level, operating along a fairly conventional plane of fictional cinema, one with relatively typical characters and generally progressive narratives of beginnings, middles, and ends (“but not necessarily in that order,” as he would clarify).

But then something happened. Not so much eschewing narrative, rather reformatting it, Godard’s work began to change, to more blatantly challenge and provoke; challenging and provoking those looking at his films as films, but also those looking at his films as declarative cultural statements. With this shift in his work, signaled by sociopolitical features like Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1966) and confirmed by Weekend (1967), which put the nail in the coffin of this first phase in his filmmaking career, Godard’s output grew ever more experimental and deliberately provocative and esoteric, alienating certai+n factions of his previous audience along the way.



So be it. As Godard stated, to make political films, one must make films politically, and with that, bridges would be burnt and expectations would be thwarted. But this was Godard the activist and provocateur as well as the filmmaker. There was a sweeping sense of revolution all over the world, and Godard was in it, of it, manipulating it, and filming it.

If one takes a general survey of Godard’s most memorable filmic moments from 1958 to 1967, it’s safe to say that the vast majority of those moments would be visually based. In other words, it is in many cases the images, or Godard’s treatment of the images, that stand out: those jump cuts; his use of color in Pierrot le fou (1965); the stark, wintery black and white photography of My Life to Live (1962); Anna Karina’s tearstained face as she watches Maria Falconetti act in Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928); and our band of outsiders doing an impromptu Charleston. Of course, sound (or the lack thereof) is every bit as vital in these films (even in these sequences) but by and large, the auditory usually played second fiddle to Godard’s camera placement, movement, editing, cinematography, etc. This too would change in post-’68 Godard. Now, if not of a possibly greater importance, sound was on an even-keel with his sights.

With these elements in mind—the forging of new politically motivated paths, the continual exploration of bold formal approaches, and a filmic discourse that relied heavily on sound over, or at least in equal accompaniment to, the images—Godard was making revolutionary films in a revolutionary way.

First stop: England. Though initially considering The Beatles (the project fell through after several meetings and besides, according to Colin MacCabe, John Lennon was suspicious of Godard), The Rolling Stones entered the picture. Godard had early on expressed an appreciative interest in the group, particularly their 1967 psychedelic album “Their Satanic Majesties Request.” Cut to a year later and the Stones are working on “Beggar’s Banquet,” which, aside from containing songs of the moment like “Street Fighting Man” and “Salt of the Earth,” starts with the controversial and brilliantly written antagonistic anthem “Sympathy for the Devil.”



One Plus One, as Sympathy for the Devil was originally titled, is often now subtitled, and is still considered by Godard purists, captures the gradual orchestration of this opening track, shot over the course of three days, beginning with rough strains of improvisatory inspiration as they meld into a more fully formed creation. As Godard’s camera dollies, pans, and tilts its way through the recording studio, we see the entire Stones crew at work: Mick Jagger, clearly in charge; Keith Richards, too cool for school and erroneously billed as “Keith Richard”; Bill Wyman, hovering around the margins; Charlie Watts, who never looks entirely thrilled to be there; and Brian Jones, who at just 27 would be dead within eight months of the album’s release.

The sequences of Sympathy for the Devil that focus on the Stones, roughly about half the film, which are intercut with those sequences that will soon be discussed, contain the false starts, slip ups, frustrations, struggles, and achievements that inevitably go into most artistic endeavors. Aside from sound being obviously key in the development of a rock song, Godard incorporates an audio editorializing by having the sound randomly focus on specific elements of the song: Keith’s guitar, Mick’s vocals, Charlie’s drums, etc. There isn’t necessarily a rhyme or reason to what gets the attention when, nor is there always a correlation between who happens to be on camera and what sound in heard. This is Godard manipulating the sounds of the Stones as he had with other sounds before and continues to do today, amplifying certain fragments then and others now, often with little to no obvious justification.



The other half of Sympathy or the Devil is the more explicitly political and formally demanding portion and was shot a few weeks after these studio sequences. This assortment of segments features an eclectic and uneven mix of episodic vignettes. Anne Wiazemsky sprays discordant graffiti on city surfaces and turns up in the woods as Eve Democracy, the film’s producer, Iain Quarrier, whom Godard would later punch in the face following disputes about the film’s title and its conclusion, is a “fascist porno book seller,” and Black Power militant Frankie Dymon, as himself, is joined in a junk yard by likeminded comrades in arms. Over some of this, or dropped in as the scenes transition, we hear Sean Lynch providing commentary by way of a text that includes political, sexual, and violent references to Richard Nixon, Che Guevara, Ben Barka, Trotskyites, Lolita, Francisco Franco, General Walt Disney, and others.

The audio/visual assemblage of these sequences is fascinating if not always coherent or interesting. The first primary chapter features Dymon and other heavily armed black revolutionaries as they roam amongst, on, and even in the broken down shells of dilapidated vehicles behind a garage. In this junk yard, a Godardian set piece if ever there was one, several of the men recite from texts by Eldridge Cleaver, Amiri Baraka, and Stokely Carmichael, either simply aloud or repeated into a tape recorder, preaching and preserving the respective sentiments. This includes passages proclaiming a need to “concentrate on the main enemy” to others touting the smooth skin and softness of white women.

Alongside these extracts, Godard’s additional audio or visual accompaniment is often ironic or upsetting to the perceived verbal focus. As we hear the call to militant arms, the men’s voices are frequently drowned out by the real world sounds of nearby car horns, passing ships, or planes flying overhead; there are additionally times when Lynch’s voiceover also interrupts the recitations. As these slogans of revolution are proclaimed or usurped, we are urged to assume one of two things: first, when a passage is clearly audible, by that fact we should presume its importance (why else would Godard make it so comparatively comprehensible?); and second, when the sounds of the everyday world going about its business come in over the readings, we then question the text’s significance (it must not have been too important to hear). Taken together, Godard seems to be providing a contradictory commentary about the meaning and potency of these black power passages as they are highlighted and confronted.



No less aurally distinctive is the sequence with Wiazemsky as Eve Democracy. This segment follows a film crew as they ask Eve an assortment of questions about culture, drug use, sexuality, and politics. To each question, Eve answers only “yes” or “no,” a simplistic response to these dense and complex questions, again an ironic verbal contrast on Godard’s part: “A man of culture is as far from an artist as a historian is from a man of action.” “Yes.” “There is only one way to be an intellectual revolutionary and that is to give up being an intellectual.” “Yes.” (Richard Brody points out that Wiazemsky spoke no English, so Godard just cued her “yes” or “no.”) And like in the junk yard scene, amongst the beautiful green foliage of the forest even these sounds of social proclamation are occasionally compromised by the aurally overpowering natural songs of birds chirping.

The third key non-Rolling Stones sequence takes place in a bookstore with an amusingly diverse inventory that includes everything from “Playboy” and “Penthouse” to “Justice League America” comic books, “Wrestling Illustrated,” “Motorcycle Mechanic,” “Complete Man,” and assorted sexually suggestive novels. Amidst magazine covers touting bawdy tales and crime stories, Quarrier reads from Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” As the black power readings earlier leave one less than convinced of their polemic power due to Godard’s constant aural interruptions, the sections from “Mein Kampf” are similarly diminished in their influence by, on the one hand, Quarrier’s rambling presentation, and, on the other, the more dominant visual incorporation of tantalizing, comical, and tawdry magazines, which Godard’s camera continually hovers over.

The final segment of the film brings us back amongst the broken down cars as two African American women are interviewing the ostensible leaders of this revolutionary group. Spoken topics covered span the link between communism and Black Power, the oppression of the black populace in urban ghettos, and how Black Power will lead to political and economic gains. Most prescient in terms of this analysis is the stated hindrance of the communication barrier between classes and races: “Although we speak the same words, we are speaking completely different languages.” This then is something of a rarely overt proclamation of Godard’s own verbal preoccupations, especially as this film is concerned.

Through all of this, Lynch’s text and the Rolling Stones’ music come in and out of the soundtrack. But by the film’s end, “Sympathy for the Devil” as an organized song begins to take shape. When we return to the Stones during the final stages of the song’s completion, there is an evident cohesion of the tune’s disparate elements. Contrast this with the incongruous juxtaposition of political verbiage and ambiguous imagery in the film’s political segments. A little more than an hour into the picture, some of the political narration comes in over the Stones, but it seems to have trouble competing with the band as they hit their groove. Also as the song nears completion, we hear the isolation of vocals, drums, etc., all prior to the final mix. Here the similarity to the political vignettes is also obvious, as through the incorporation and dissemination of disparate sounds, Godard makes clear that context is everything, that any sound out of its unifying whole is perceived to be odd or incomplete, just as the reoccurring spoken texts are more or less vital given their surrounding accompaniments.

Though we do hear the completed version of “Sympathy for the Devil” at the end of the movie, this was not by Godard’s design and was done very much against his will. To Godard, the completed song signified a conclusion to the film’s political commentary as well, something he insisted was still a work in progress. “Sympathy for the Devil” should remain unfinished, just as the plight of the socially and economically repressed remains unresolved. Still, during this concluding scene, which has a general disarray of action, the multiple tracks of sound seem appropriate given the rest of the film’s complex nature. And as Richard Roud summarizes, “One knew how important the soundtrack was to Godard’s films, but One Plus One proves it is primordial.”





Two years after Sympathy for the Devil, Godard, now fully ensconced in the political climate of the era, returned to England to make an even more revolutionary and formally audacious film. Shot on 16mm at the behest of London Weekend Television (which turned down and later disowned the film) British Sounds, or See You at Mao (1970), is also divided into distinct segments, beginning with a tracking shot that spans a considerable length of a MG assembly line at the British Motor Car Factory in Oxford. In shooting this, Godard retains the realistic surrounding sounds of the industrial force. Aurally alongside the grinding, grating, pounding machinery is a voice reciting passages from “The Communist Manifesto.” The inclusion of the ear-splitting factory sounds was done, according to Godard, to stress his point that while audiences decry the harsh noise for its 10 minutes of screen time, the workers who toil away in such a factory are exposed to the unremitting cacophony for eight hours a day. Point well taken. The inclusion of the Marx/Engels text, which preaches against economic disparities, suggests the working class is slave to machines and overseers, and warns against the exploitation of wage labor, is clearly the more obvious auditory message. Taken together, these two sounds work in an odd unison where we actually see a type of labor discussed in the “Manifesto” put into practice as a sort of illustrated thesis. During this opening portion, we are also introduced to another audio theme that will last through the entire film. An older man (later a woman) reads a history of authoritarian abuse and worker difficulties to a young girl, who then repeats the text.

The second part of British Sounds takes leave from a broad appeal for working class rights and hones in on the concerns of women. A feminist text by Sheila Rowbotham rails against the exploitation of women, who when also workers are amongst the “exploited of the exploited,” while we see a totally nude young lady walk up and down stairs and enter in and out of two rooms. Here is a most perplexing form of audio/visual contrast or conflict on Godard’s part. While the text condemns blanket stereotypes and the objectification of women, we see the nonchalant objectification of women, the camera even at one point lingering on her pubic region (“Conceal your sex!” sounds out a male voice). Of course, every serious Godard scholar is quick to point out the non-titillating fashion with which the nudity is shown, but it’s still a curious decision. And when we see the woman on the phone, echoing the voiceover narration, the impression is that she is merely parroting the lines, repeating what she is told, not necessarily thinking for herself, which seems to go against the point of the segment.

Godard next includes black and white footage of a man spouting out statements in sharp contrast to the sentiments of the film so far. As an obvious counterpoint to the leftist proclamations in the first two sections, this astonishingly crass individual spews his extreme points of view regarding youth needing to “play their part in industry,” criticisms of students and worker ideology, and grumbling about “communist rabble” and Vietnam detractors. Most shocking are statements like, “Sometimes it’s necessary to burn women and children” and “We don’t like colored people, and I’ll tell you why.” Such profoundly offensive declarations are visually paired with either the man himself or insertions of printed text, everyday workers, or families.

The constrictive fourth segment of the film has a group of men sitting in close proximity around a table discussing business strategy and effective modes of production, while also recognizing the physical and mental toil that factory labor has on the workers. Though these men speak like management, they also note the need for a “political party committed to Marxism and capitalism” and they are quick to profess the need of both millionaires and those in poverty in order for capitalism to exist. This least interesting (visually) of the chapters appears to try to have it both ways (aurally), with little success in either case.



Following a poster with the words “students sound,” the next part of British Sounds has a group of university students listening to, and then revolutionarily rewriting, songs by The Beatles: “Hello, Goodbye” (“You say US, I say Mao”), “Revolution” (is rewriting really necessary?) and “Honey Pie” (“Money Pie”). These members of the Peoples Poster Brigade, as one poster indicates they are, are the youthful alarm of the coming revolution. Though their use of pop music to make their case is another ironic audio choice, they seem earnest in their attempts to take a commodity of popular entertainment and turn it into something politically active. In other words, to quote two of the printed texts that appear in this film, this is the amalgamation of “capital sounds” and “militant sounds.”

British Sounds concludes with two short scenes. The first features a bloodied arm making its way through the snow-covered ground toward a red flag, the second a barrage of voices and songs played over a montage of fists bursting through the Union Jack with appeals for solidarity. Throughout the film, the overlap of words makes for some challenging listening, with, like in Sympathy for the Devil, the assumption is that what is heard most audibly must by that fact carry some weight. To this effect, we get calls for the “abolition of the wage system” and statements that tie in nicely to this analysis, like “speech is the expression of power.” “It was the sound,” argues Richard Brody, “not the image, that mattered, because the sound carried the lecture, the doctrine, or rather, the indoctrination.”



In their conglomeration of multiple voices sounding off on everything from communism to orgasm, from Kennedy to Vietnam, Jean-Luc Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil, or One Plus One, and British Sounds, or See You at Mao, are prime examples of the filmmaker’s ever expanding use of sound in film, as an artistic tool and as a propagandist instrument. According to Penelope Gilliatt, Godard wanted to “pound people with language.” “Even these raw first works of a new stage that is now tough going seem likely in the end to reach the ears of people out of sympathy with [Godard's] radical politics,” she writes, “not because of the yelling powers of polemics but because of the carrying powers of a poet’s voice.”

That poet’s voice continues to be heard, and over the course of the 40-plus years since these two films, it has been heard in ever-varying modes of expression. It is little wonder that when Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville started a video production and distribution company in 1972 they dubbed the enterprise “Sonimage,” and it’s no surprise that some of his more recent films of astonishing visual flourish bare the aurally evocative titles For Ever Mozart (1996), Our Music (2004), and Farewell to Language (2014). Godard remains as adamant as ever to explore the integration and juxtaposition of the visual and the aural, getting down to the most fundamental features of motion picture art, commerce, entertainment, and politics.


ARTICLE  from SOUND ON SIGHT

‘Once Upon a Time in America’

Widely and justly heralded for his trendsetting Spaghetti Westerns, Sergio Leone’s final and arguably most ambitious work was in another staple American genre. Like these Westerns though, this film was as much of its respective variety as it was about it. Once Upon a Time in America, with its name obviously derived from Leone’s previous Once Upon a Time in the West, is a gangster film of the highest order, and, at the same time, it recalls so many of its predecessors, from the Warner Brothers classics of the 1930s to The Godfather. This was by design. As Leone himself notes, “My film was to be an homage to the American films I love, and to America itself.”

Out now on a newly restored and extended director’s cut Blu-ray, America stars Robert De Niro as David “Noodles” Aaronson. Probably the quintessential gangster movie actor of the modern era, De Niro was by this point firmly established as one of the preeminent performers of his generation, with two Oscar wins already to his credit. He is joined here by James Woods, fresh off his excellent turn in Videodrome but still a few years away from his first Oscar nomination and about a decade from becoming a household name, as partner in crime Maximilian “Max” Bercovicz. Rounding out their gang are Patrick “Patsy” Goldberg (James Hayden) and Philip “Cockeye” Stein (William Forsythe). There is also “Fat” Moe Gelly (Larry Rapp), their loyal friend, and his sister, Deborah Gelly (Elizabeth McGovern), Noodles’ perpetual love interest. As the names of these characters indicate, America is somewhat distinct as far as contemporary gangster films are concerned in that it is primarily populated with Jews rather than Italians. This doesn’t so much add or take away anything from the plot, but it does give the characters and the film in general a distinctively illustrated cultural background.

In smaller roles are Joe Pesci (just his eighth credited feature film) as Frankie Manoldi, and Jennifer Connelly in her big screen debut as the young Deborah. Key Leone collaborators Ennio Morricone (music), Tonino Delli Colli (cinematography), and Nino Baragli (editing) were also involved, and as with most of their work for Leone or elsewhere, America is all the better for their exceptional contributions.

Part of what gives America its ambitious quality is its scope. Post-Goodfellas, it’s perhaps not that uncommon to have such a life-spanning chronicle of one man’s venture in gangsterdom, but even that pillar of the gangster picture doesn’t touch America as far its lingering on minute details and crucial moments. Of course, America‘s now restored four-plus hour runtime allows for considerable temporal luxury as well.



Based on Harry Grey’s novel “The Hoods,” America follows the journey of four young men as they ascend the ranks of New York’s ruling criminal class, with all the loves and losses and friendships and fights in between. The story is indeed a sprawling one (little wonder there are six screenwriters credited) and it has the familiar rise and fall structure that befits the gangster film so well, for while it is always enjoyable to see the young hood make good, we know that peak success is short lived, and the downfall must soon come. As the film begins and we see Noodles in his older age, we are aware that he obviously survives, so the question then becomes what exactly is it he has survived? After leaving the city 35 years earlier, Noodles is called back, but by whom, and why?

As part of the film’s complex flashback structure, we instantly see that a younger Noodles is on the lam, to the ultimate detriment of his friends, and it’s made clear that the million dollars he has presumably stashed away is missing, but these various loose ends of narrative have yet to be tied together. It’s about 39 minutes into the film before Leone takes us to the very beginning of these young men, where the then adolescent crew does odd street jobs and shows off some criminally enterprising ingenuity. Friendships are forged, sexuality is explored, and while a grand drama unfolds when the boys are older, for now, in their youth, we witness a series of vignettes that shape the men they would become.



It is about half way into America‘s second hour when we leave their childhood and with them enter a more dangerous, amusing, and dramatic adult existence. When Noodles is released from prison (to keep this spoiler free, I’ll skip over the actions that put him there), things have changed. He was absent through the group’s more substantial formation and its emergence in stature and respectability, and thus he returns and remains something of an outsider, even though the others have done everything they could to maintain his involvement, going so far as to retain his cut of their profits. But now, conflicts of business and pleasure develop (Noodles has been away from both) and there are struggles between the individual—Noodles attempting to recapture a portion of life he was denied—and the group. It doesn’t help that Noodles is fairly antagonistic, continually provoking those around him, especially Max, with whom he has always had a complicated relationship.

The street kids have grown up and away from their low-level escapades and are now fully entrenched in the professions of bootlegging and prostitution, and they’re very successful at both. They are now also associated with crooks of a different color, namely politicians. Add to this their involvement with union leaders and their hostility toward corrupt law enforcement and you have most of the key ingredients to any great gangster film.

There is no denying America‘s indebtedness to gangster pictures of years past, and as shown in many of the genre’s archetypal titles, the gangster has always been the preeminent cinematic antihero. These men are lawbreakers and wrongdoers, but more often than not, we’re in their corner, frequently cheering them on along the way. America takes this tendency, intensifies it, and aggressively confronts it. Yes, Noodles, Max and the others are for all intents and purposes our heroes, and there’s no question they can be charming and quite appealing, darkly funny even (the baby-swapping), but they can be dastardly. They are, after all, murderers and rapists. “We have enough enemies without being gangsters,” says Noodles’ Jewish driver in a newly added scene, and this is something of an implied reoccurring theme throughout the film. These men, Noodles especially, have the ways and means to live an honorable life, but they are constantly reverting to their criminal ways. “Why go looking for trouble?” you can almost hear his Jewish mother ask. Even after Noodles finally has his romantic evening with Deborah, which is preceded by the heartfelt line when she asks if he has been waiting long and he responds, “All my life,” the beautiful sequence culminates with arguably his most barbaric action.



As a coming of age fable, America is very much about myth making, not unlike Leone’s Western film preoccupations (once upon a time…). He depicts moments as if in a memory, a dream, or as if captured via a Polaroid picture that has long since been tucked away in some forgotten and suddenly discovered shoebox. This gives the film a touching poignancy, an appreciable atmosphere of nostalgia, and a rendering of a very specific time and place. There are the loves had and those lost, the schemes and feuds, the sex and violence, the rites of petty crime and surprisingly harsh consequences. Leone’s color and lighting choices reflect this subdued wistful tone. He trades in his previous penchant for expressive and exaggerated imagery and sound for a more classically subtle and melancholic style (though we do get moments of lasting amplified noise for dramatic effect, such as the opening phone ringing—recalling the creaking windmill that begins Once Upon a Time in the West—or Noodles provocatively stirring his coffee).

This is also a wholly unusual landscape for Leone. Gone are the scorching, open western vistas; the sands of the desert have blown away and been replaced by cold, wet asphalt. Towering skyscrapers and bridges now surround this new breed of outlaw. Yet even in this foreign territory, Leone’s early 20th century Manhattan streets, with all of their bustling liveliness, have clearly been crafted by one who has a fondness for the era, or at least an exceptional knowledge of it. The art direction by Carlo Simi (also known for great work on numerous Spaghetti Westerns) contributes to an authentic recreation down to the smallest facet. By the end of the film, one truly feels as if having been through something and having experienced a world. Sure, a lot of this has to do with the film’s length, allowing for ample time to take it all in, but more than that, it’s this level of detail and the subsequent absorption into the milieu.

Where Once Upon a Time in America stands apart from nearly every other gangster film is in its strongly emotional conveyance of regret, of missed opportunities, opportunities lost, and of a somber reflection. And this isn’t only noticeable at the film’s conclusion. Throughout the entire picture, the characters appear to live as if they can see their own demise right before their eyes. “You can always tell the winners at the starting gate,” says Noodles, adding, “and the losers.” They seem to be aware that there is likely no permanence to what they’re doing, that their end, probably tragic, is in some ways inevitable.

Once Upon a Time in America is not a perfect film. No question it has more than enough greatness, but the “big reveal” conclusion in particular has never been totally satisfying. The reasons for Noodles’ return, the intricate revenge plot behind it, and the incorporation of political intrigue feel like they belong in another film. Nevertheless, the film was a true passion project for the 55-year-old Sergio Leone. (He supposedly turned down a chance to direct The Godfather in order to work on this picture.) Tragically, though, he would pass away a mere six years later. While it is undeniably sad to see such a great director die so early, and to think of what else he could have accomplished, as final films go, this is about as good as it gets.

REVIEW  from SOUND ON SIGHT

‘Ali: Fear Eats the Soul’

The tragically brief filmmaking career of Rainer Werner Fassbinder consists of great quantities, varying qualities, and an insatiable artistic vigor. With more than 40 completed works in less than 20 years, Fassbinder was a dynamo of creativity. He fluctuated in and out of any number of generic constructs, experimented with a variety of formal devices, and told an eclectic assortment of stories. With so many great films to his credit, it’s hard for any one movie to lay claim as his finest achievement. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, his second of four films released in 1974, is one that puts up a good fight though. At the very least, it certainly ranks among Fassbinder’s most purely charming and emotionally effectual.

“Happiness is not always fun” declares an opening title, and as Ali progresses from there, the path of this most unlikely of love stories is blemished by a xenophobia and bigotry that transcends decades, cultures, and countries. Emmi (Brigitte Mira, in her first and finest performance for Fassbinder) is an elderly cleaning woman who happens by an immigrant bar. She steps in to get out of the rain and casually orders a drink. The regulars decide to have some fun with this old lady. They tell Ali, one of the foreign laborers who frequent the establishment, to ask her to dance. Ali is played by El Hedi ben Salem, himself a Moroccan whose eight of nine acting credits were all in Fassbinder films and who, at the time, was also in a relationship with the filmmaker. Born in 1935, he would pass away just two years after Ali‘s release. By contrast, the veteran Mira was born in 1910. She lived until 2005.



Balled up, shrunken, and shunned, Emmi is as out of place in this bar as Ali will soon be in a conventional domestic setting. Asking her to dance is a simple gesture, even if it has roots in condescension, but it quickly turns into something more. As the two dance, the others mockingly survey the disparity of the duo. But then Ali goes back and sits with Emmi. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Then he pays for her drink. Then he walks her home. This definitely wasn’t supposed to happen.

In this opening sequence, Fassbinder shoots Emmi as a solitary figure or has Emmi and Ali together in one frame and the onlookers together in another. This basic pattern continues throughout the picture. Rare is the arrangement that has Emmi and Ali together with (that is, welcomed or embraced by) others. There is, then, an immediate visualization of the film’s “us versus them” theme of alienating conflict. Ali owes a great deal to the Douglas Sirk masterpiece All That Heaven Allows, but whereas age and class were the barriers in that 1955 classic, here there is age, class, race, nationality, probably religion; to say these two have the odds stacked against them would be quite the understatement.

A neighbor sees Emmi enter her apartment with Ali, and the accusatory condemnation in her circle promptly begins. Of the foreigner, one shocked neighbor proclaims to another that he’s “a black man.” “Real black?” eagerly—but not too eagerly—wonders the other. “Well, not that black, but pretty dark,” says the first.

Emmi reveals that her Nazi father hated foreigners and her husband was Polish. She knows what intolerance is like, but she sees past such prejudices. Rather, she recognizes the instant bond she and Ali tenderly share. They are modest, simple, and nonjudgmental. They are, in their own ways, alone, always working, and marred by sadness. Together they have something special though, something that is beyond the scope of what the gossiping, gawking, busybody neighbors can appreciate.



The neighbors aren’t the only ones to contend with. Emmi’s children don’t respond well to her declarations of love toward Ali either, and they respond even worse when they first meet the man himself. Daughter Krista (Irm Hermann, another of Fassbinder’s stock company) and her husband Eugen (Fassbinder) have their own domestic issues. But they can turn a blind eye to their relationship troubles by honing in on what they perceive to be their mother’s. Eugen especially has a deep-seeded hatred of foreign workers, so as far as he’s concerned, there’s one strike against Ali already. Emmi noted earlier that her family only really gets together for special occasions, but despite that implied familial distance, they are all suddenly now very troubled by this new development. The compressed disgust and hate that registers on the faces of Emmi’s children as the camera pans to each in close-up is one of Fassbinder’s most subtle and powerful touches in the film. The stunned silence is broken when son Bruno (Peter Gauhe) throws a tantrum and kicks through the television set (most certainly a reference to All That Heaven Allows).

No matter. Ali and Emmi are in love. There may be some naiveté on her part, or perhaps just innocent optimism, but she refuses to let the scorn get her down. One rainy day, the two marry at the local registry and they’re on their way as man and wife. First stop after the wedding: an Italian restaurant, where Hitler used to eat.



The reactions to the new couple grow increasingly ugly. The nasty and bitter coworkers and neighbors slam all immigrant works as uncivilized, barbaric, dumb, dirty, and money hungry (the women also don’t approve of policemen with long hair). When they’re not being so openly callous, they attempt understatement, telling Emmi euphemistically that there’s “dirt in the house.” Eventually, it gets to the point where they won’t even speak to her or sit next to her at lunch. Though El Hedi ben Salem is generally inexpressive (as he usually is, so it may not be the Ali character), Brigitte Mira has never been better, and she is especially good in these sequences. As she stares isolated in the frame, Fassbinder holds the camera on her weary face to maximum effect, giving us a chance to take in her dejected expressions of sadness, envy, and confusion.

Not everyone is so cruel, however. The landlord’s son, for example, sees nothing indecent about the relationship. But it’s too late. At an outdoor café where Ali and Emmi are almost comically deserted as strangers look on, she ironically professes her wish to be all alone with him, with no one around them. Then she breaks down. The recent treatment has gotten to her. She doesn’t like feeling ostracized.

Not long after this, everyone grows more cordial. But there’s a catch. It’s only the desire for personal gain that changes their tune. When it’s for their own benefit, they don’t have as much trouble with the newlyweds as they used to. The neighbors now like Ali’s muscles, and Emmi’s children no longer think their mother is a whore, especially not when they need something from her. Yet simultaneously, things starting falling apart at home. Emmi overcomes her disheartened state by joining in the gossip when there’s a new target and Ali, disenchanted with some of Emmi’s established ways, seeks the illicit company of a trampy bartender, going to her for couscous and “couscous.”



What’s Fassbinder saying with all this? Is the relationship indeed doomed to begin with, or is it just that it takes more work and sacrifice than either Emmi or Ali are willing to put forth? Ultimately, they reach a degree of understanding. They have tried to deny the societal influence that affects their lives, but by the film’s end, honestly sheds light on their hypocrisy. As in so much of Fasssbinder’s work, nobody here is wholly innocent or entirely wicked.

Todd Haynes, whose Far from Heaven (2002) is another take on All That Heaven Allows and, by extension, Ali, provides an introduction to the movie as one of the bonus features on the Criterion Collection release of the film. He gives a thorough background of Fassbinder’s politics, his career, and he discusses their shared influences and preferences. Among those preferences is an appreciation for light and color. Haynes’ decorative flair in his film is a more obvious mimicry of Sirk’s work, but Fassbinder too imbues Ali with an excellent use of color. It’s less overtly expressive than Haynes or Sirk (or even than in some of his own later films— Lola (1981) most notably), but it’s nonetheless a key part of Ali and a crucial nod to one of Fassbinder’s greatest heroes. As much as anything else, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is just that: a tribute to a style of filmmaking very much admired by this prolific and provocative German director. But because it is a Fassbinder film, Ali stands more than securely on its own merits, with its own ideology, its own unique form, and its own social intent.

Always inventive, never repetitive, Rainer Werner Fassbinder was among the world’s most fascinating filmmaking figures, responsible for several masterworks. Among them, Ali may be the best of the best.


REVIEW  from SOUND ON SIGHT

‘Macbeth’

Following the success of Rosemary’s Baby in 1968, and prior to what is arguably still his greatest film, Chinatown (1974), Roman Polanski made three curious filmmaking choices. One was the international coproduction and rarely discussed What? (1972), one was the racing documentary Weekend of a Champion (1972), and the third, which actually came before these two, was Macbeth (1971). It is obviously not that a Shakespearean adaptation in itself is unusual, but rather that it so seemingly diverted from the films that were garnering the young Polanski his worldwide acclaim: taut thrillers like The Knife in the Water (1962), Repulsion (1965), Cul-De-Sac (1966), and Rosemary’s Baby. Yet in Macbeth, there are a number of characteristic Polanski touches — in story and style — harkening back to these previous works and in many ways pointing toward those to come.



Don’t be fooled by the Playboy Production/Hugh M. Hefner as executive producer credits, this is no Penthouse Caligula (1979). This is a somber, sorrowful, generally faithful, and visually satisfying version of one of Shakespeare’s most cinematic works. It’s probably unnecessary to recount the entire plot of such a well-known tale, but suffice it to say, working with some truly gifted collaborators (production designer Wilfred Shingleton and cinematographer Gil Taylor especially), Polanski does great justice to this story of blind ambition, brutal murder, and erratic madness. When Macbeth (Jon Finch) first has the seeds of a lofty reign planted in his mind by the three weird sisters, his transformation from innocent curiosity at their declaration to the resolute drive that preoccupies his soul is a slow but steady development. Exacerbated by the devious Lady Macbeth (Francesca Annis), Macbeth begins to contemplate how to achieve the predicted role of King, who stands in his way, and who will obediently follow.



As Finch does an exceptional job conveying the brooding Macbeth, in all of his anguish and indecision, Annis is superb as his shockingly two-faced wife, who abandons her conniving ways, puts on her required mask of respectability, and reverts back again with frightening ease. Though Finch does a good deal to show Macbeth’s doubt, it soon becomes clear that there is indeed no doubt whatsoever. His path is clear; he is to give in to his “vaulting ambition,” he is to, as Lady Macbeth suggests, “look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it.” The first step is to kill King Duncan (Nicholas Selby).

Once the deed is done, an unceasing snowball of violence begins to roll, as Macbeth grows anxious and paranoid and he and Lady Macbeth both begin to mentally unravel. While Lennox speaks of “strange screams of death” the unruly night of Duncan’s murder, nothing could prepare the region for the conspiratorial turmoil that follows. Macbeth aggressively does all he deems necessary to secure his position, wiping out any and all potential adversaries, not the least of which is friend and fellow general Banquo (Martin Shaw).

Even before he goes on the warpath to his own destruction, Macbeth is shown to be prone to visions, seeing the dagger that directs him to enact Duncan’s demise, but as he descends into grief-stricken and murderous madness, his visions intensify. Haunted by Banquo’s death, he falls victim to delirious dream states of surreal panic. And as his breakdown progresses, he becomes more and more insular and suspicious, seeking refuge within the confines of his castle. In these sequences, we see prominent elements from many of Polanski’s finest films. The depiction of one’s progressive mental instability, intensified by paranoia and a sense of claustrophobia, revealed in Macbeth’s delirium and accompany delusions, and in the restrictive setting. Macbeth’s isolated castle is itself perched high on narrow mountaintop and within that, Polanski stages the drama to be even more withdrawn and visually tightening.



In contrast to this, there is the beautifully melancholic exterior photography, its lushness and natural splendor a precursor to Polanski’s Tess (1979). The windswept English location, shot under the effect of perpetual dampness and cloud cover, is scenery that strongly reflects the foreboding tragedy that unfolds. What the setting lacks in bold vibrancy, it makes up for with rich texture and stunning and subtle natural light, both of which become markedly apparent in the newly released Criterion Collection Blu-ray. If the exteriors point toward Polanski’s own later work, inside the castle walls, the interior design is reminiscent of Roberto Rossellini’s historical pictures from the late 1960s and early ’70s. In films like The Rise of Louis XIV (1966) or Blaise Pascal (1972), Rossellini similarly depicted largely unglamorous time periods in a realistic fashion, with acute attention to detail. A key difference here though, is that Polanski imbues the stark reality of his recreation with more expressive camera placement, movement, and editing.



The brutality of Polanski’s Macbeth is commonly remarked upon, and while there are occasionally quite graphic moments, the bloodshed isn’t that extraordinary, certainly not by 2014 standards. And even if it were, bearing in mind the tragic events of Polanski’s personal life just two years prior, it should come as no surprise that violence weighed heavy on the filmmaker and undoubtedly was in need of an outlet. This much of the film’s backstory is largely glossed over in the Criterion disc’s bonus features, which is perhaps for the better, as the Tate-LaBianca murders at the behest of Charles Manson are an unwieldy topic, one that can (and did) easily lead to distraction from Macbeth itself.

What is given considerable attention in these additions is a comprehensive account of the film’s tumultuous making (over budget, Polanski rumored for replacement) and its generally poor critical and commercial reception and meager release (the connotations of the Playboy name somewhat of a hindrance for “serious” filmgoers). There were, however, many positives, and that much of the production is discussed in a Dick Cavett interview with coscreenwriter Kenneth Tynan and in “Two Macbeths,” a 1972 TV episode with Polanski and theater director Peter Coe. The Polanski Meets Macbeth documentary contains some fascinating and revealing behind the scenes footage, including of the superbly realized movement of Birnam Wood. And Toil and Trouble: Making “Macbeth,” a documentary featuring interviews with Polanski, producer Andrew Braunsberg, assistant executive producer Victor Lownes, and Annis and Shaw, neatly covers the film’s gestation from beginning to end.

Though I’m by no means a Shakespeare film aficionado (or even a big fan), on the whole, Martin Shaw’s declaration in this latter documentary is reasonable. Given Macbeth’s visual accomplishments, the first-rate performances from all players, the excellent use of setting, and the overall production design, it very well may be the “best Shakespeare film that’s ever been made.”

‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’

Now a legendary horror film, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as it seems to be called just as often (hereafter TCSM either way), was at the time of its release a most unusual feature. Why the movie still resonates today though, why it still has such a strong cult following, and why it remains one of the genre’s greatest entries, is for many of the same reasons it was so groundbreaking in 1974. The Vietnam-era angst has since dissipated (or has perhaps been replaced by a new sort of battle fatigue) and the notion of a post-Night of the Living Dead horror film renaissance has certainly gone by the wayside, but TCSM remains just as expressive and as masterfully effective it ever was.

The opening scroll touts a film that is both “mad and macabre,” and goes on to give the picture a (false) true story mythos, suggesting with a tone of journalistic actuality that on August 18, 1973 the events we are about to behold actually occurred (production on the film started July 15, 1973, so there’s that). As flashbulbs illuminate mangled and rotting corpses, a piercing grinding or sanding sound cuts through the muffled noises and the voices of disembodied men. These are more than just corpses strewn about. These physically mutilated bodies are situated in bizarre arrangements in a graveyard. Something very wrong has been happening in this remote Texas region. A sickly feeling of impending, ghastly dread is heightened by hues of saturated oranges, yellows, and red, a color-coding that will reappear throughout the film. Over the radio, we hear news accounts of other horrific events in the area. Death is in the air it seems.



The story that follows is admittedly slight, with little in the way of narrative exposition or elaborate characterization, neither of which prove to be especially necessary for this film that functions far more successfully in its emphasis on atmosphere and visuals. Such as they are, there are five main characters though: Kirk, Pam, Jerry, Sally, and her brother, the wheelchair bound Franklin, the only character with a memorable presence, for better or worse. In these roles are William Vail, Teri McMinn, Allen Danziger, Marilyn Burns, and Paul A. Partain, respectively.

“Things happen here about,” says a drunkard rather cryptically in the beginning of the picture, and while the group’s intention of visiting an old family home seems innocent enough, it soon becomes obvious that things will not go as planned. Along the way, they pick up a bloodied and scarred hitchhiker who laughs hysterically, notes that his family has “always been in meat,” carries snapshots of cow carcasses, and proceeds to cut his palm with a pocketknife. What could go wrong here?

So much of what is now a tried and true horror cliché is present to this point—the eccentric drifter, the group of teenagers, a cemetery, an isolated setting, etc.—but when the hitchhiker is removed from the van and proceeds to smear his blood on the side, the initial mild weirdness takes a sharp yet subtle turn to imminent danger.

The quintet arrives at their destination and begins to survey the area, including a visit to a nearby farmhouse with inhabitants who, we find, have a very peculiar sense of dysfunctional family values. Again, this begins the now common, though then comparatively novel, scenario of picking off one by one each of the young people, ultimately concluding with the “final girl,” arguably the first incarnation of this similarly modern generic device.



Early on in the van, there is mention of the zodiac and planetary alignments suggesting some sort of otherworldly evil, but such a foreign stimulation for the terror that transpires is not to be. The evil here is not from the beyond. The evil here is very human, very real. From the first time we see the famous Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), it becomes clear that TCSM is operating on a whole other plane that its horror predecessors. The picture eschews the typical, but by no means mandatory, malevolent back-story assigned to the villains. This wickedness is an inexplicable one. There is no solace in an explanation, no comfort in reasoning. Those who reside in this house of horrors operate on an unknown and perhaps unknowable wavelength. They simply are who they are and director Tobe Hooper appears to be not the least bit concerned with establishing their motivations or their rationale. And the film is all the better for it.

There is surprisingly little bloodshed in the film, but there is certainly violence—painful and sudden violence—starting with the dynamic first kill, a brutally realistic and spastic takedown. In place of excessive gore, there is a palpable sensory experience. Stifling Texas heat and the concurrent dirt and grime that appear bonded to every individual and surface produce a texture of uncomfortable grit and roughness. Add to this the stated stench of the local slaughterhouses and the sweaty confinement of the van and you get a highly evocative sense of displeasure. TCSM utilizes abject features to amplify its unpleasantly potent picture of the horrific: spiders scurrying in the corner, peeling wallpaper, bones, hair, fur, teeth, and skulls. These naturally repellent or at least unsettling elements placed in these abhorrent sites set a truly horrific scene.



Related to this are the anatomical constructions that decorate the interior of the farmhouse. The gruesome set design created from these revolting props is an ornamentation built on the objectionable. While TCSM is a fictional film, part of its inspiration came from the ghastly exploits of Ed Gein (also a basis for Norman Bates in Psycho and Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs). Here, his fleshy furniture and corporeal costuming are ever-present and act as a sort of primitive precursor to the body horror subgenre that would develop years later, the pinnacle of achievement to come in the works of David Cronenberg. TCSM is particularly focused on physical deformity and disability (see, for example, Franklin, his crippled condition conveying a weakness that will contrast against the power of Leatherface) and, on the other hand, the strength of the physical and mental will that allows for the gruesome bodily modifications and the generally repugnant living conditions of this most uncanny family.

For a film that otherwise looks down and dirty and clearly on the lower end of the budget spectrum ($83,532 according to an IMDB estimate – yielding a $30,859,000 gross), credit goes to Hooper and director of photography Daniel Pearl for keeping the film punctuated by unexpected bits of stylish skill. Odd and interesting angles and smooth, occasionally quite intricate camera maneuvers do a good deal to offset any apparent budgetary restrictions. Yet one of the reasons TCSM is so impressive is its generally unappealing look. This has nothing to do with poor cinematography (though cheap 16 mm stock no doubt contributed), but it is a feature common to a great many horror films from the period. Take any number of the cannibal films of the 1970s, the average Video Nasty, or the early Wes Craven features; these films look unpleasant, and they work extremely well because of it. There is no gloss, no sheen, no consistently crystal clear imagery. They are grainy, murky, and soiled. The settings are filthy and ugly. The people, or at least the bad people, are unattractive and peculiar. Forget their narrative content, these films look like horror films. One of the last really great movies to effectively capitalize on this visual distinction was Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986), which arguably falls more into the drama category anyway, already signaling a stylistic shift in the form. In any case, such an objectionable quality and association is relatively rare now, which is a shame, for as TCSM shows as well as any, it makes for a profoundly visceral viewing experience.



For those who agree with any of the above assessment and likewise find TCSM to be a strikingly impressive horror film, the newly released 40th Anniversary Collector’s Edition 2 Blu-ray/2 DVD combo pack is a gold mine of fascinating featurettes, commentaries, and behind the scenes miscellanea. On the disc with the feature are no less than four distinct commentary tracks (two unique to this set), bringing in everyone from Tobe Hooper and a majority of the cast to production designer Robert Burns (perhaps the most unsung and integral contributor to the film) and editor J. Larry Carroll. The 72 minute The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: The Shocking Truth is probably the most informative special feature, but inclusions like a 2000 tour of the farmhouse-turned-restaurant with Hansen and an episode of Horror’s Hallowed Grounds will stoke the fan boy’s interest in the film’s contemporary state (I for one would gladly take a trip to Kingsland, Texas in order to dine at the Grand Central Café). Deleted scenes, outtakes, more interviews, even a blooper reel; the bonus disc sheds light on nearly every facet of this classic motion picture.

‘Hangmen Also Die’

Accounts vary regarding Fritz Lang’s departure from his native Germany in 1933. His own tale of a hasty and secretive escape in the dark of night has been met with scrutiny, and documentation from the period seems to confirm a considerable amount of embellishment on Lang’s part. In any case, the bottom line is that Lang got out while the getting was good, first stopping over in France, where he directed Liliom (1934), then making his way to America, where his first Hollywood feature, Fury, was released in 1936. Lang never fully left his Germanic sensibilities though, nor did he deviate much from his established cinematic style, already so marvelously displayed in the earliest of his German films. It stands to reason, then, that when World War II began in full force, Lang felt compelled to delve into war-related films. His personal connection to his European homeland and his feelings about what had became of it found an outlet in his Hollywood moviemaking, first with Man Hunt (1941) then with Hangmen Also Die (1943), an excellent wartime thriller that exhibits a number of Lang’s defining narrative and formal characteristics, and clearly indicates where he stood politically and socially.



After the Czechoslovakian resistance fighter Dr. Franticek Svoboda, AKA Karel Vanek (Brian Donlevy) shoots Nazi officer Reinhard Heydrich, AKA “The Hangman” (Hans Heinrich von Twardowski), he attempts to flee from the scene, which he does thanks to Nasha Novotny (Anna Lee). Nasha is a young Czech woman who lives in the area and quite innocently directs the Gestapo away from Svoboda. Such a seemingly innocuous decision, however, brings forth tragic and wide-ranging ramifications. Nasha’s father, Prof. Stephen Novotny (Walter Brennan), knows who Svoboda is when he comes to thank Nasha, and he is wise to what the stranger has done. The rest of her family, however, remains in the dark, as does her fiancé. Eventually, the Nazis round up anyone who may know the whereabouts of Heydrich’s assassin (including Prof. Novotny), planning to execute these hostages until the assailant reveals himself.



The suspenseful pursuit that transpires gives Lang ample time and varying scenarios to convey the threatening reign of terror that envelops this Czechoslovakian region. Reminders of intimidation tactics and promises of punishment constantly haunt the townspeople. Yet their destitution and surface meekness conceal a rebellion that boils underneath. The shooting of “The Hangman” lights the spark, and no matter that restrictions are tightened and hostages are taken, the bottled up defiance is steadily brought to eruption. Is Hangmen Also Die a propaganda piece? Of course, in the best possible sense. Adamantly pro-Nazi, the film in turn must undoubtedly favor the other side, as it should. It is a testament to the resilience of the resistance.

But there is also a very human drama acted out against this backdrop. Svoboda’s attack of conscience as he struggles between his own survival and that of the hostages is a powerful predicament. When the Nazis begin their community assault, all in the name of seeking the assassin, Svoboda wonders if it’s all worth it. He is reassured that the underground needs him, that he, or more specifically, his actions, are representative of the whole of the opposing population. “Czech people have executed the hangman,” he is told. It’s more than just him. But the guilt of the punishment extended to the innocent weighs heavily. At the same time, Nasha knows who Svoboda is and what he did. Drop the dime and her father will possibly be returned, but at what cost to the resistance? Like in so many Lang films, from M (1931) to Fury to Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956), moral dilemmas abound, all questioning simplistic divisions between the personal and the communal, between what is good for all and what is good for one.

Lang expertly shoots the tension with a stark, noirish treatment, where every word or suggestion potentially puts someone new in danger. Suspicion and impending betrayal sway actions and thoughts, and the hazards of traitorously playing both sides are shown to be quite dire. As in M, Lang’s interrogation scenes are taciturn and hostile, with little in the way of decorative visual or aural adornment to divert attention from the accusatory aggression. The questioning is cold, detached, and menacing. Likewise, as also in M or Fury for example, Lang’s depiction of a mob mentality, for better or worse, is powerful. When Nasha is questioned by her own people about her reasons for wanting to go to the Gestapo, the threat of their violently turning even on her becomes very real.

There are times when the overriding message of the film gets somewhat pedantic, but the intentions are admirable and the emotion is strong. And though the film gets slightly sluggish toward the end, with some needlessly prolonged digressions, these same scenes occasionally boast moments of brilliance (the way in which the traitor is revealed, for instance).



With cinematography by the renowned James Wong Howe, Hangmen Also Die looks great, even if it’s not quite as ornamental as his work on Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) before, or Sweet Smell of Success (1957) years later. Donlevy gives a decent performance, though it’s largely a one-note turn. Lee’s frightful Nasha fluctuates more notably, between timidity and stubborn strength. Brennan, not at all as most people know the actor, is generally responsible for the film’s didactic speeches, as given by the endearingly wise Prof. Novotny. They are brief appearances, but the performances of Lionel Stander as a pivotal everyman cab driver and Hans Heinrich von Twardowski as the creepy “Hangman,” an embodiment of pure evil, are also memorable. (Interestingly, the German von Twardowski’s credits range from work on the seminal The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) to a string of almost comically typecast roles in films such as Hitler’s Madman (1943), The Strange Death of Adolf Hiter (1943), The Hitler Gang (1944) — you get the idea.)



That Hangmen Also Die came together as well as it did and holds up as well as it does is something of a surprise given its tumultuous road to production and release. Accompanying the newly released Cohen Film Collection Blu-ray is a commentary by Richard Peña, a featurette with historian Robert Gerwarth, and an essay by Prof. Peter Ellenbruch, all of which detail the film’s complex backstory and its true-life source. Bertolt Brecht and Lang were friendly, and Lang did a good deal to secure the author’s arrival in America and his subsequent Hollywood employment, but each approached storytelling from drastically different methodologies, and their ultimate aims for the film were not always in sync. What followed also included contested screenwriting credit (hence John Wexley’s name), issues with studio requirements (more romance) and, years later, a “subversive” label at the hand of the HUAC. Whatever it took though, Hangmen Also Die works. With M, it is a film Lang considered among his most important.Coming out in 1943, it also must have been frighteningly dramatic for contemporary audiences, and it remains a chilling and captivating window into the personalities and emotions of WW II’s victims, their struggles, their small victories, and the sweeping human toll of the whole era.


REVIEW  from SOUND ON SIGHT