A Dozen Characters for the Ages

My friend MovieMan0283 over at The Dancing Image recently suggested I take part in the ongoing film blogger conversation regarding favorite film characters. Normally I'd call this a meme. But it seems everyone is being a tad mindful of each other's schedules and avoiding any application of pressure by skipping the usual, "...here are the rules... and you must select five other bloggers... blah, blah, blah..." So in that spirit, I will do the same because it seems so much nicer. After the jump, I've listed a dozen of my favorite movie characters in chronological order. With each, I've included a pivotal quote which is either character defining or somehow seals their celluloid fate. I encourage all of you to come up with your own, and list them in the comments section or your own blog. Enjoy! Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly (1955) She told me if I dropped her off at the bus station, I could forget her. But if she didn't make it, she said, "Remember me." Gene Hackman as Popeye Doyle in The French Connection (1971) All right! You put a shiv in my partner. You know what that means? Goddammit! All winter long I got to listen to him gripe about his bowling scores. Now I'm gonna bust your ass for those three bags and I'm gonna nail you for picking your feet in Poughkeepsie. Pam Grier as Coffy (1973) It was easy for him because he really didn't believe it was comin'. But it ain't gonna be easy for you, because you better believe it's comin'! Gene Hackman as Harry Caul in The Conversation (1974) I'm not afraid of death. But I am afraid of murder. Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in The Godfather: Part II (1974) If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything, it is that you can kill anyone. Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in Alien (1979) Wait a minute. If we let it in, the ship could be infected. You know the quarantine procedure. Twenty-four hours for decontamination. James Caan as Frank in Thief (1981) You are making big profits from my work, my risk, my sweat. But that is okay, because I elected to make that deal. But now, the deal is over. I want my end, and I am out. Michael Douglas as D-Fens in Falling Down (1993) I am not economically viable. Al Pacino as Carlito Brigante in Carlito's Way (1993) Who the fuck are you? I should remember you? What, you think you like me? You ain't like me motherfucker. You a punk. I've been with made people, connected people. Who've you been with? Chain snatching, jive-ass, maricón motherfuckers. Why don't you get out of here and go snatch a purse? Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth (1998) I have rid England of her enemies. What do I do now? Am I to be made of stone? Must I be touched by nothing? Terence Stamp as Wilson in The Limey (1999) You tell him, you tell him I'm coming. Tell him I'm fucking coming! Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood (2007) I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.

Seventies Cinema Revival: The French Connection

by Tony Dayoub

One of the great, iconic films of the 1970s, The French Connection (1971), finally makes it debut on Blu-ray this week with a little bit of controversy. But this does not change the impact the film still has today. A gritty, realistic look at all angles of a huge heroin deal by its then young film director William Friedkin, it also made a star out of its lead actor, Gene Hackman. It also went a long way towards romanticizing the seamy underbelly of New York City.

 

New York crime films became a staple of seventies cinema due in no small part to films like Gordon Parks' Shaft (1971) and The French Connection. Movies like Across 110th Street (1972), Serpico (1973), The Seven-Ups (1973), The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), and Dog Day Afternoon (1975) were all subsequently inspired to employ the washed out color and grainy look of fast film stock that was so often utilized by documentarians for its flexibility in shooting in low-light situations. The jittery hand-held camera in such films signalled a "spontaneous" stolen shot and an immediacy that was rare before Friedkin's film. And the littered streets of New York's backalleys were often spotlighted, rather than glossed over, in an effort to heighten the raw intensity of the docu-inspired dramas.

New York City cops Eddie Egan (pictured, above) and Sonny Grosso had participated in just such a takedown of a heroin smuggling ring a decade earlier, with much the same outcome; the alleged kingpin got away with the crime. But it was still the largest drug arrest of its time. And Egan and Grosso were exciting personalities to base a film on. Egan was a bigoted hothead with a cagey way of throwing his perps off by interrogating them about an incident unrelated to their arrest, "Ever pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?" Grosso was a methodical cynic who helped rein his partner in. Egan harbored the ambition that actor Rod Taylor would play him in the cinematic adaptation of their story. So, as Grosso recounts in a documentary on the Blu-ray, he was very surprised when he was introduced to the mild-mannered man who would ultimately win the role of Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (based on Egan), Gene Hackman.

As Hackman tells it, even he wasn't sure he could sell the crude facets of Egan's personality. Doyle is a cop with no personal life, save for a predilection for women that might be too young for him. He's an alcoholic, frequently waking up from a bender; in one scene, cuffed to his own bed by a young woman he picked up off the street. In a warning to his partner, Buddy "Cloudy" Russo (Roy Scheider), his deep-seated racism is more than evident:

Doyle: You dumb guinea. 

Russo: How the hell was I supposed to know he had a knife? 

Doyle: Never trust a n****r. 

Russo: He could have been white. 

Doyle: Never trust anyone!

But he does have an instinct and drive that suits the case that falls on his lap, a drug deal involving a supplier from Marseilles, Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey). Together with his partner, he relentlessly tracks all angles of the case, even on his off-hours, to the point of obsession and exhaustion. This obsession ultimately endangers anyone - cops, innocents - that get between him and his quarry.

Hackman gives us a nuanced take on what, according to Grosso, was the emotionally one-note Egan. Rather than play the constant intensity of the type-A cop, the actor instead leavens it with a world-weariness that humanizes the driven supercop. The dynamism in his performance makes it even more chilling when Doyle is able to spring into action after an exhausting night, as a sniper tries assassinating him on his way home. This leads to a nerve-wracking chase in which Doyle drives a car recklessly in pursuit of an elevated train.

Credit Friedkin for that inspired setpiece, which he hyperbolically insists that he shot from inside the car himself, an assertion disputed by the film's cinematographer, Owen Roizman, in a recent interview with Aaron Aradillas on Back by Midnight. He also admits to daring his stunt driver, Bill Hickman, to drive the car (with only a siren on top to warn oncoming traffic) as fast as possible even though no permits were secured to close off the street for the shoot. The driven Friedkin obviously saw a kindred spirit in Egan (and the character of Doyle). The manipulative director, by his own admission, was prone to yelling at Hackman in order to keep him in a constant state of stress. The results are on the screen, though. The French Connection wound up winning Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Film Editing, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

While much of the controversy concerning Blu-rays of older films has to do with the elimination of grain in the film, the debate over this one is over the opposite. As Friedkin illustrates in a documentary on the disc, he has color-timed this new addition by starting with a sharper, grainier black and white base element and slowly bled in a little color. As Glenn Kenny observes in a recent posting, ironically titled What hath Friedkin wrought? , "...considerations of cinematic ethics aside, Friedkin's re-visioning of the picture really is a radical one." While I agree with him that a copy of the original iteration should have been included in the Blu-ray, especially for archival purposes in what is probably an "ultimate" edition, I am not averse to the film's new look. Essentially, the blacks are darker, the film grainier, and the color less intense, all qualities that enhance the look he was aiming for in his movie originally. And the change is nowhere near as eviscerating as what he did to The Exorcist(1973) in his "Version You've Never Seen" (2000). Great new documentaries shot with Friedkin at the original locations make this Blu-ray worth purchasing (one dedicated to Scheider, who died last year, is sorely missed), and for those wedded to the film's original look, make sure you don't throw away the original DVD.

Update 3/3: Among other things, director William Friedkin responds to Roizman's opinion on the new Blu-ray, and critic Glenn Kenny gives his take on the debate, on this week's Back by Midnight.

The French Connection and French Connection II are both available this week on Blu-ray disc. Stills provided courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.

DVD Review: Bonnie and Clyde - Beatty's Contributions Sparked the Fuse of the 70s Film Explosion

by Tony Dayoub

It is number 42 on the American Film Institute's top 100 movies. It is notable for bringing Faye Dunaway and Gene Hackman to the attention of moviegoers around the world. It was Gene Wilder's film debut. It was the first film Warren Beatty produced. And above all, it is arguably the film that ushered in the era of "auteur cinema" that was so dominant in the 1970s, even though the film was released in 1967, and the film was hardly the solitary vision of its director, Arthur Penn. Bonnie and Clyde is all these things and more, and it was finally released last week on Blu-ray and standard DVD in a version much improved over its first DVD release in 1999.

Warren Beatty was not an unknown at the time he decided to produce this film, but he definitely saw the opportunity to further his career with the David Newman & Robert Benton-penned script. The two former magazine staffers first presented the script, covering the exploits of gangster folk heroes Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, to François Truffaut. A leader of the French New Wave, his Jules et Jim had some influence on the story. Truffaut turned it down, but recommended it to Beatty, who was in the market for something to shepherd into production. Not only did Beatty see the chance to give it his all and launch his career as a power player in Hollywood. He saw the possibility of transcending his pretty-boy career with his portrayal of the gangster Clyde Barrow. The sometimes self-conscious Beatty has rarely seemed as dynamic as he does when wooing Dunaway's Parker into complicity at the start of the film.

He also was generous enough to offer the part of his brother Buck to the then unknown Gene Hackman. This was the beginning of a trend as Beatty has always surrounded himself with actors he has befriended in movies throughout his career, such as Reds and Dick Tracy. After costarring with him in Lilith, Beatty had said Hackman was the best thing about the movie. This and other anecdotes are referenced in the wonderful documentary, Revolution! The Making of Bonnie and Clyde included in the special features). In that doc, Hackman tells of how very close he was to quitting as an actor before this movie brought him an Academy Award nomination.

Together with director Arthur Penn, Beatty made an extraordinary effort to bring this film in line with the French New Wave films that were causing such a stir at the time. Penn contributed his speed and agility in setting up the camera from his time as a TV director. Beatty used his own frustrations with the studio system to stoke the fire fueling the cast and crew. As told in the documentary, the pair made a pact to argue about whose filmmaking approach was going to be best for that day's shooting. Whoever got tired of the discussion first would usually lose the debate.

This gave the film its fresh freewheeling flavor that contributed to the development of the "auteur cinema" that subsequently prevailed in the late 60s and 70s American film. Sexual frankness in film was largely absent at the time of its release. Yet both men pushed the envelope in scenes depicting Clyde's impotence and Bonnie's naive remedy... oral sex, a box-office taboo in the 60s. The drastic tonal changes from rollicking to comedy to jarring violence and the now famously shocking abrupt ending were further evidence that the pair were out to change the art of American film. Even though this was not the solitary vision of one director, the lunatics were clearly running the asylum, so to speak. The era of the domineering studio boss was fast approaching its apocalypse.

Gain an appreciation for one of the more entertaining and fast-paced classics by making this one a star in your movie collection. You won't be disappointed.

Still provided courtesy of Warner Home Entertainment.