Movie Review: Grudge Match (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

One of the unfortunate effects of cramming the viewing of so many awards-worthy films into the final months of the year is that a movie like Grudge Match ends up looking quite thin in comparison. No, this comedy-drama isn't a dramatic or technical heavyweight, if you'll pardon the pun, like others currently in release. But if it'd open just a month from now, in the winter doldrums just preceding the Oscars, it might be judged differently. Robert De Niro slums a bit, rehashing a lot of his Raging Bull tics in service of a turn that's more a parody than a performance. But Sylvester Stallone builds on his Rocky past in his continual bid to prove he can hold his own with more renowned actors.

Movie Review: American Hustle (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

Marking the welcome return of the long con crime film subgenre, David O. Russell's American Hustle is an above average, populist comic film that could itself be seen as some kind of confidence game. The movie opens its prologue with Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges' romantic saxophone gem "Jeep's Blues," a piece that links Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), the two crooked lovebirds at the heart of the film. For its opening credits Russell then switches to "Dirty Work," another great sax tune more synonymous with AM light rock. This bait-and-switch signals that we are now entering a world where any perceived and addictive glitz and glamour bears the putrid trace of elaborate falsehood, a parallel drawn by Irving's discarded wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) in reference to her Swedish fingernail polish. Even its first title indicates that only "some of this actually happened," a reference to the ABSCAM scandal from the late 70s that it dramatizes, in which the FBI recruited a bunco artist to teach them how to ensnare crooked politicians willing to take bribes.

Movie Review: Limitless (2011)

by Tony Dayoub

If a film's protagonist is supposed to be the smartest person in the world and the viewer is often one step ahead of him then something must be wrong with the movie. And so it is with the flawed Limitless, a cautionary bit of sci-fi addressing what could go wrong if an average man suddenly finds a means to becoming a super-intellectual for 24 hours at a time, provided he continues to take a "magic" pill. Even the casual moviegoer can figure the way most of the movie's situations will turn out without furrowing their brow too much.

The Movies...They Play Better in My Head Than They Do Onscreen

by Tony Dayoub

So last night I had quite a vivid dream, which is strange since I rarely recall my dreams at all. As they usually do this one took the form of a movie, one in which my point of view is in the middle of all the action but with a sort of detached omniscience allowing me to see multiple angles... think of an action movie if it were not just in 3D but as immersive as Star Trek's holodeck, yet none of the participants can see you. Get it?

Movie Review: Everybody's Fine (2009)

by Tony Dayoub



Robert De Niro is back. One could be forgiven for thinking his new film, Everybody's Fine, would be your standard issue Oscar-bait weeper from those Academy marketing mavens over at Miramax. And in many ways, the film is just that. But director Kirk Jones (Waking Ned Devine) surrounds Mr. De Niro with an interesting cast of younger actors: Drew Barrymore (Whip It), Kate Beckinsale (Underworld), and Sam Rockwell (Moon). The three (who usually headline their own movies) bring their A-game to what must have been a tempting proposition—the chance to work with a legend like De Niro. Except recently, De Niro has been trading on his reputation to star in some pretty ugly dreck in order to finance his business ventures, stuff like the career-killing Righteous Kill, in which he starred alongside another fading legend in even worse shape, Al Pacino. The good news is that Jones elicits a superb and subtle performance from De Niro (around which the whole film revolves), the likes of which we haven't seen since at least 1995 when he starred in Heat.


The story is a bit predictable, with De Niro's Frank Goode embarking on a journey to visit each of his four grown children after they all cancel their visit to see him for their first reunion since his wife died. Unable to find his son David in New York, he continues on to visit his three other children who live all over the country. Meanwhile, the siblings are all conspiring to keep him out of the loop concerning David, who reportedly suffered an overdose somewhere in Mexico. As they try to figure out what is going on with their youngest brother, they each obfuscate the issue by prodding Frank to go back home. Each of them lies about their personal life for fear that they won't measure up to the demanding Frank's expectations, high expectations which may have driven David to his careless lifestyle.

While their is plenty of opportunity for moments both lighthearted and sad as De Niro plays the cranky set-in-his-ways Frank, this is the first time in a while he stays a good distance away from the now all too predictable mugging that has marred his comedic work in movies like Meet the Parents. Instead, the actor plays Frank amazingly straight as a widower whose loneliness inspires him to reconnect with the children he never suspected had grown so far apart from him to begin with. While none of the young actors resemble each other in appearance or temperament (a typical problem in films of this variety), De Niro makes sure they all resemble him, complementing their performances so that he somehow manages to endow Frank with a distinct behavioral quality from each of his children. His Frank is driven like Beckinsale's Amy; befuddled and humble like Rockwell's Robert; and acerbically humorous like Barrymore's Rosie. He even manages to create an impression of David despite the character's absence, informing it with Frank's own ambitions which he projected onto his son.

Sometimes there are whimsical touches that enliven Everybody's Fine, like the way Jones has child actors stand in for each sibling whenever Frank first lays eyes on them. Other times those touches go a bit too far, as in a third-act dream sequence—where all of the inner turmoil is worked out between Frank and his kids—that is just a touch too on the nose in its frustratingly expository execution. But Jones never descends into maudlin sentimentality, always keeping the film moving briskly past its more melodramatic moments.

He has De Niro to thank for that also. Or maybe De Niro should be thanking Jones, since his performance is Oscar worthy. By directing the actor to internalize much of Frank's misgivings about his relationship with his kids, Jones encourages De Niro to modulate his later more overt emotional expressions like the actor one had always expected in earlier films. A disturbing encounter with a vagrant midway through Everybody's Fine and the inevitable physical toll it has on Frank even later in the movie are sequences which both triumph because De Niro has managed to withhold vital emotions from the viewer prior to the scenes, making their eventual release all the more touching and resonant. If for nothing else, De Niro's poignant performance is enough to recommend the movie.

Everybody's Fine opens in theaters tomorrow.

Blu-ray Review: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)

by Tony Dayoub



What a difference fifteen years can make. At the time of its release, Kenneth Branagh's version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein struck me as uneven, and worst of all less than horrific. Its recent release on Blu-ray inspired me to watch it again for the first time since its initial release. I was impressed with its emotional resonance this time around, and reminded of just how powerful and horrific the film could be in one particular scene.

De Palma Blog-A-Thon: The Pleasure Of Being Cuckolded (Or Is That Castrated?)

Notes inspired by some links between Brian De Palma’s Hi, Mom! (1970) and Body Double (1984) by Glenn Kenny [It is an honor to have one of my personal heroes, film writer Glenn Kenny of the wonderful Some Came Running, contribute a piece with a unique perspective on De Palma's sexual predilections.] In Brian De Palma's giddy, absurdist, radical early feature Hi, Mom, Robert De Niro plays a disturbingly disaffected young man named Jon Rubin. The character was introduced in DePalma's prior film, 1969's Greetings. He's an ardent voyeur and would-be filmmaker, and he's got an inspiration. He intends to invent gonzo porn some two decades avant le lettre by surreptitiously filming himself getting it on with woman from the building across from his own (a fantasy object he's discovered in his obsessive peeping, played by Jennifer Salt). Of course, in order to make the scheme work, he's got to meet, attract, and seduce her first, which he does by putting on the mask of a sensitive square and inventing some malarkey about a computer date. Once he's gotten her out—they attend a double feature of David and Lisa and Porgy and Bess before going to dinner—he elicits her sympathy by relating this tale of woe:

...reminds me of something that happened to me. I was coming home... I was living with a girl, Barbara, a few years ago and, uh, it was her birthday and I came home and I had presents and, uh, cake and candles and all kinds of confetti and crepe paper, and I was rushing up the stairs, ecstatic. I opened the door very quietly, crept in, and I heard the shower running. Well I open the door to the bathroom...and I hear some voices...and all of a sudden I open the shower curtain and there...there she is with another person...they were naked...and the funny thing about it is he had this kind of laugh, this kind of evil grin...and it really threw me and I naturally ran out of the place in a state of shock, I didn't know what to do...

As tales of cuckolding and in flagrante discovery go, it's pretty banal, and wouldn't be worth noting had not De Palma put nearly exactly the same scenario on film almost 15 years later in his controversial Hitchcock/porn-schlock pastiche Body Double. There's no birthday in this version. Craig Wasson (perpetually hapless and anticipating the New Male stylings of, um, Bill Maher, yeesh) plays struggling actor Jake Scully, whose vertigo, I mean claustrophobia, I mean claustrophobia as Brian De Palma and co-screenwriter Robert J. Avrech have decided to imagine it, compels him to blow a springing-from-the-coffin take in Vampire's Kiss, the B-horror picture he's starring in. Feigning sympathy, director Rubin (no, the name of this De Palma stand in, portrayed with near-unseemly relish by Dennis Franz, is not a coincidence) gives Jake the rest of the day off. Goofy smile on his face Jake zips away in his sharp blue vintage Mustang (note the late-Hitchcock homage in the not-very-accomplished rear projection) to Tail O' The Pup where he gets a few dogs. Once at his apartment we see he's preparing a meal for two. There's a neon sign reading "Jake [heart] Carol" on a table. Jake goes off to find Carol, and there are a number of tracking POV shots attesting to coupledom; we see the "family" dog, and two dressing mannequins with the couples' head shots tacked to the heads, and so on. Jake continues to smile as he hears some laughing voices, but loses the grin as he cracks open a door... ...to see his beloved Carol straddling Some Dude. Oops! (Carol is, we note here, played by future Re-Animator scream queen Barbara Crampton, the ineffable love object of het perv cinephiles the world over.) DePalma here chooses to omit Some Dude's laugh and evil grin (although we did hear the laugh prior to discovery), but it's not really necessary. We get the idea like nobody's business. And it is here that we turn to our good friend Robin Wood and his invaluable 1986 text Hollywood From Vietnam To Reagan. One of our favorite Woodsian devices is the bold-pronouncement-right-off-the-bat, as in "Scarface belongs with the comedies," and the opening of his Vietnam/Reagan chapter on DePalma does not disappoint in this respect: "Brian DePalma's interesting, problematic, frequently frustrating movies are quite obsessive about castration, either literal (Sisters, Dressed to Kill), or metaphorical (all the rest)." (An asterisk after this sentence leads us to this note: 'Since this chapter was written, Body Double [though it is far from being among DePalma's best films] has amply confirmed its [sic] argument.") Now people talk about castration as if it's a bad thing. But if we look at the storyline of Body Double, and the character arc of Jake Scully, as a complete whole, we can discern that his cuckolding/castrating constituted something of a liberating event. The betrayal deprives him of a "normal" monogamous relationship, and motivates him to jump off the wagon he's apparently been on (with no real ill effects over time, as it happens). But it frees him to self-actualize in a new way. He gets to wave his freak flag, wild and high, indulging in a voyeurism that, yes, will embroil him in a dangerous and horrific web of murder but will also turn him into a porn stud and mystery solver par excellence. And it is only after he accepts the notion that all human interactions of the putatively normal sort resolve in betrayals both ordinary and awful that he can conquer his phobia, regain the vampire part he was in fact fired from, and "get" the "girl," the girl here in the once-unlikely form of porn star Holly Body (Melanie Griffith). One assumes that Jake and Holly have a somewhat more "open" relationship than Jake and Carol did. Let's also assume, for the moment, that aside from its value in gaining the confidence of would-be porn object Judy Bishop, Jon Rubin's story is also true, as it were. If so, the cuckolding/castration is also a defining moment in the making of a radical—in Mom, Rubin subsequently becomes politicized and emerges as a full-blown domestic terrorist. The undermining (as Wood has it) of the traditional male position forces the male to confront ideas, forces, and lures that he has never before contemplated. It gives birth, in a sense, to a new man, no longer an oppressor but a potential partner in the reimagining of societal norms. APPENDIX: On learning that I was contemplating writing about Body Double, my old friend Joseph Failla e-mailed me these thoughts:

...[W]hile DePalma's detractors are probably on their steadiest ground with this film, DOUBLE does in fact comes across as a culmination of all his themes (voyeurism, violence, Hitchcock), indulgences, and excesses up to that point. I'm sure you'll remember our jaw dropping expressions of disbelief when we first saw DOUBLE together. Starting with De Palma's idea of what a low budget vampire flick looks like, Dennis Franz's casting as that film's director with a vision (even then we noticed how much he resembled De Palma), Craig Wasson's wimpy lead performance, the villain basically identifying himself upon arrival, the ridiculously kinky sex scenes, the overly intricate tracking shots, the choice of electric power drill as murder weapon, and the hilarious moment when Frankie Goes to Hollywood shows up in the middle of the porn film within the film. Most unpardonable of all is De Palma's insistence at shoehorning his story into the well known frame work of Hitchcock classics (even going so far as to cast a supporting actor who's the spitting image of both Wendell Corey and Henry Jones,—"Nice save Scully!"), that whatever potential the narrative had to stand on its own was long gone before it got started. However, while acknowledging all of the above, I still find DOUBLE compulsively watchable and I've seen it at least as many times as his revered successes. When we first heard that De Palma was going to explore the limits of censorship by setting his thriller in the world of pornography, there was no way that the film that was eventually released could ever match the movie we imagined. Even though we may have been disappointed in that respect (his work in GREETINGS and HI MOM! better addressed those themes), we enjoyed his technical audacity just the same. Something I wouldn't necessarily champion again until FEMME FATALE, which also felt totally fabricated, but in a much more inventive and satisfying fashion. BTW, Melanie Griffith is quite good in the role intended for an actual adult film star; this, as you know, was years before Sasha Grey was given an opportunity to appear in a somewhat mainstream movie of her own.

The adult film star Joe refers to was Annette Haven, who DePalma never refers to by name in the making-of shorts included on the most recent DVD of Double. I'll have to look into this "Sasha Grey" character.

De Palma Blog-A-Thon: And So It Began

by Ratnakar Sadasyula [We kick off the De Palma Blog-A-Thon with a nostalgic piece by Ratnakar Sadasyula, first published at Passion For Cinema.com, a movie portal founded by Indians to promote the independent movement in Indian cinema. It acts as an interface between filmmakers and the public with the intent to discuss cinema encompassing all genres and styles, from Indian to Hollywood, studio to independent, Western European to World cinema.] 1988 - I was watching the Academy Awards ceremony on TV. The nominees for the Best Supporting Actor were being announced, and one of them was an actor who, to date, still happens to be my favorite Bond, Sean Connery. He was slightly older, with a salt and pepper beard, but still looking dashing enough. And then they showed the clip where he utters that dialogue,

You wanna get Capone? Here’s how you get him. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue! That’s the Chicago way, and that’s how you get Capone!

The way Connery recited the dialogue, his expressions, his movements, were just totally seeti maar (a crowd-pleaser). I was not surprised when Connery won the award. Normally, I would give Oscar nominated flicks a big miss. Until then most of my Hollywood movie viewing was restricted to the big budget blockbusters and the slam-bang stuff. But this single clip just whetted my appetite. I had to see this movie. And when some of the movie magazines praised this as one of the best English language movies of the time, I was much more eager to see it. In the days before DVD, online movies, YouTube, and before HBO, the only way one could see a new English language flick, was to get hold of a videocassette. So we scoured the video shops, me and my cousin, drawing a blank that only increased our longing for this movie. 1989 - Sangeet theater, Secunderabad, the watering hole for all the English language movie lovers of the twin cities. Our long wait had come to an end. I stepped into the theater along with my cousin, another movie fanatic like me. The screen went dark, and first came the Paramount logo, then the titles "A Brian De Palma Film", and then the cast names. As each name appeared on the screen, the background was mostly dark. We just saw shadows that would lengthen, letters coming into focus, and then on the screen, The Untouchables in huge letters, a dark and yellow background, and the shadows sprawling across. Simple, minimal and yet so effective. One of the best opening credits ever, and add to it Ennio Morricone’s memorable opening theme. Then the movie unfolded. Robert De Niro’s introduction with the camera zooming in from the top, as he lies on the bed, having a shave, speaking to the media; Sean Connery and Kevin Costner meeting on the bridge; the encounter between Sean Connery and Andy Garcia; and of course the, by now, legendary “Odessa Steps”-inspired shootout scene in Chicago's Union Station; and then the ending; we were totally hooked. I was now totally into the movie, and I saw it again and again, borrowing money, sometimes sitting even in the lowest class, which then cost a princely sum of Rs 5. I was not just hooked, I was mesmerized. Even for a die hard English language movie fan like me, The Untouchables (1987) was a totally different experience altogether. It was not just the “Odessa Steps” setpiece, but so many other scenes; the dialogue; the tense confrontations; the way Prohibition Era Chicago was recreated; Ennio Morricone’s memorable score; the performances... everything. This started my fascination with Brian De Palma, and in Scarface (1983), it continued. I was not too impressed by Scarface when I saw it the first time. The staccato bursts of dialogue; the jerky camera movements; the not too likeable characters just put me off, and add to it a cartoonish climax, better suited to a Mithun Da or Rajnikanth (over the top) movie, where the hero goes single-handedly against a group of baddies. However, subsequent viewings have just made me fall in love with it, and to date, it remains one of my favorite films. Then followed a host of other flicks: Carlito’s Way (1993); Mission Impossible (1996); Body Double (1984); Carrie (1976); Dressed to Kill (1980); Blow Out (1981); and Snake Eyes (1998), that just deepened my fascination for him. What I discovered was a world of violent, gory, crazy, twisted characters; people who are not what they seem to be; camera angles that made me dizzy at times. It was not a feel good world, nor were any of his characters particularly likeable, but there was something fascinating about that. For me, De Palma’s movies are generally the inverse of Tim Burton’s dark, gothic tales. Burton creates a crazy, gothic atmosphere, populates it with strange characters, and then drives home the point that beyond that creepy looking weirdo is actually a nice, ordinary person. De Palma takes seemingly normal characters, in totally mundane places, and then takes us inside the person to show that inside him/her lies a dangerous secret. Burton takes the beast and tries to explore the human being in him. De Palma explores the beast within a human being. It is quite ironic that my first De Palma film was quite different from most of his other movies I had seen. Sure, The Untouchables had a lot of gore, but nothing remotely close to the chainsaw murder in Scarface or the power-drill murder scene in Body Double. But what really strikes me about The Untouchables is the characterization. In sharp contrast to most of his other films, where characters are either cranked out, or inhabit a grey world between the black and white, The Untouchables has a clear cut division between black and white. In fact, The Untouchables is more of a throwback to Hollywood’s classic era movies, from its black-and-white characters, to the epic style of movie making, to Morricone’s thunderous music, to the panoramic shots. Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner) is the whitest of the lot, nothing seems to be wrong about him. He is an arrow-straight, honest cop; a loving husband; a doting Dad; a total family man; in total... the noble, idealistic hero. On the other extreme is Al Capone (Robert De Niro): the bad guy; the gangster who literally owns Chicago city; who has no qualms about breaking people’s heads with a baseball bat; totally ruthless and powerful. And in between there is Jimmy Malone (Sean Connery), an Irish cop, who believes that going by the book is not going to help in the fight against Capone; someone who becomes Ness’s friend, philosopher, guide, and mentor; who teaches him how to fight crime ”Chicago style”. Add rookie sharpshooter George Stone (Andy Garcia); nerdy bookkeeper Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith); and a whole host of other stereotypes... the corrupt cops; the inquisitive journalist; the vicious hit man, Frank Nitti (Billy Drago). Trust De Palma to make a classic out of a movie that is totally black-and-white in terms of characterization, and which is predictable more often than not. Even now, I don’t care if Connery’s accent is really Scottish or Irish. I just love watching him deliver that ”crime-fighting Chicago style” quote, or that kickass movement when he pretends to interrogate a dead gangster and gets the other gangster to speak up. The brilliance of De Palma’s shot setups for me begins right with the opening shot of Al Capone itself. The camera zooming in to Capone, lying on his couch taking a shave as the media persons surround him shooting questions at him. And as Capone is speaking to the press persons, the barber accidentally nicks him. The man is terrified, afraid of facing the wrath of Chicago’s most powerful person, and begins to cower. For a minute the tension level rises up, and Capone just smirks, the barber is relieved. That one bit speaks a whole lot for the way Capone was able to wield power over so many people. Another brilliant moment is the first encounter between Malone and George Stone. The fact that Stone was really an Italian, Guiseppe Petri, and had to change his name to avoid discrimination highlights the anti-Italian bias as well as the traditional Italian-Irish animosity. Here again, I loved the way Andy Garcia was introduced, people at the shooting range, Garcia’s back to the camera. Suddenly he whirls around, bang, bang, bang, totally classic film style. Then the face off:

Malone: Why do you want to join the force? Stone: To protect the property and citizenry of… Malone: Ah, don’t waste my time with that bullshit. Where you from, Stone? Stone: I’m from the South Side. Malone: Stone. George Stone. That’s your name? What’s your real name? Stone: That is my real name. Malone: Nah. What was it before you changed it? Stone: Giuseppe Petri. Malone: Ah, I knew it. That’s all you need, one thieving wop on the team. Stone: Hey, what’s that you say? Malone: I said that you’re a lying member of a no good race. Stone: Much better than you, you stinking Irish pig. Malone: Oh, I like him.

I also loved the way De Palma sets up Malone’s death scene. The camera tracking the intruder, Malone’s back to us, when he suddenly wheels around, mocking the intruder for taking a knife to attack him, and as he comes a waiting Nitti lets out a stream of bullets. Finally, there's the iconic shoot out scene. Again, here the setup is brilliant: Ness and Stone wait in the station looking for the gangsters. The air is thick with tension and the station is largely deserted, except for a few people. The camera zooms in onto the stairs, and then a lady wheels down the steps with her baby in a pram. Ness offers to help, and as he guides the pram down the stairs, the tension goes up further. The gangsters come in and the firing begins, shots intercutting between the pram rolling down the stairs, close-ups of the mom screaming out, and the gangsters and cops firing at each other, all in slow motion. And then the final coup de grâce, Stone, sliding to stop the pram, and throwing the revolver to Ness. Gosh, even now, a good 20 years after the movie has been released, this scene just hooks me. I mean no amount of CGI-induced stuff can hold a candle to this scene for me, one of the most brilliantly shot ever. Interestingly, for a director whose movies are often women-centric or have strong female characters, The Untouchables has no prominent female characters at all. Also the movie is totally devoid of sex, again a surprising departure for De Palma, considering that most of his early movies were noted for their voyeurism and erotic scenes (most notably the steamy dream sequence in Dressed to Kill). It is as if De Palma was trying to prove that he could make studio friendly blockbusters too, after Scarface was roundly trashed by critics and criticized by many family audiences for its high level of violence. De Palma’s career itself is interesting. One of the 70s directorial brat pack, along with Spielberg, Coppola, Scorsese, and Lucas, he followed his own path. He was not a studio favorite as, barring Carrie, most of his other movies were not exactly huge money spinners. But what really hurt him more was the fact that unlike Scorsese or Coppola, he was never a critics' darling either. He was quite often dismissed as a style-over-substance specialist, or a second-rate Hitchcock, and the critical bashing reached a peak with Scarface. The fact is, most of the time, critics would benchmark his movies with others in the genre, and quite often than not it would never satisfy their expectations. Many expected Scarface to be a Cuban Godfather, but it ended up something different, totally contrary to the gangster genre. It did not really go by the conventions of what critics expected from a gangster flick. But honestly does Brian De Palma really care for critical applause? I really don’t think so. This is a man who is so passionately in love with his craft, his movies, that quite often he really does not care. Nor has he ever gone down the “Dude, where is my Oscar?” path, unlike some other directors who started off with quirky indie stuff, and then quickly turned to more studio friendly, Academy-friendly stuff. Quite often he has mocked studios and critics, showing the middle finger to them, making movies the way he loves to. But then with The Untouchables, he has shown that he could make a stylish, studio friendly, gangster epic, that still is miles ahead of the standard summer blockbuster. And it's quite fitting that he should be an admitted influence to another rebel, Quentin Tarantino. I don’t want to get into cliche territory here, calling De Palma a genius or a maverick, this series of posts is rather my take on his work, and his movies. There is still a whole lot of Brian De Palma for me to explore: his early movies with De Niro (Greetings, Hi Mom); his pre-Carrie work (Sisters, Obsession, The Fury); and Phantom of the Paradise (1974), one of his more acclaimed movies. And I sure hope I get to watch them, sometime or other. [You can find more posts on De Palma by this author here.]

Pasolini Retrospective - Accattone (1961)

The mark which has dominated all my work is the longing for life, this sense of exclusion, which doesn't lessen, but augments this love of life. - Pier Paolo Pasolini Today would have been the 87th birthday of director Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975). A man of contradictions, he was both a journalist and a poet; once a devout Catholic and later an atheist and Communist. The circumstances of his death are lurid. Brutally murdered in November 1975 by being run over a number of times by his own car, there have been many largely unsubstantiated rumors as to who was behind Pasolini's death. Some said it was an anti-communist conspiracy. Others said he staged his own death, due to the eerie similarities that can be found in his films. A young hustler was arrested, and confessed, to the murder of the openly gay director who - as his closest friend writer Alberto Moravia (Il Conformista) acknowledged - had a proclivity for violent, young men since his early days as a novelist (Ragazzi di vita). Pasolini's first film, Accattone (1961), portrays the lifestyle of these street people - or as he would often refer to them, the sub-proletariat - that lived outside the conflicting political currents that engulfed Italy and instead, held onto a fading code of morality. Vittorio (Franco Citti), known as "Accattone" to his buddies, is a pimp whose days are spent scrounging for food, lamenting his existence, and making bizarre wagers in order to get enough money to get buy. He could just get a real job, but as he observes about the blue collar life:

Accattone: We're all washed-up and everybody avoids us. If we've money we're alright, if not we're nothing. We're finished because we're incapable of making it on our own. Today its better to be a thief than follow this despicable trade.

When his prostitute is sent to jail, he finds himself without income. He meets a naive young woman, Stella (Franca Pasut), who he falls in love with. But before long his desperation for money, and his inability to conform to the mainstream work force, lead him to persuade her to take up the life of a streetwalker, corrupting the only innocence left in his life. Pasolini's early films were often mistaken for a new kind of neo-realism. There is a grittiness, to be sure. But even Accattone, his first film, shows a sense of style not found in the documentary-like work of his Italian predecessors. The credits roll under the strains of Bach's "Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder" from St. Matthew Passion, a piece Martin Scorsese would use to opposite effect in the opening credit sequence for Casino (1995) many years later. Pasolini uses the operatic tune to elevate his tragic lower class heroes. In one fight scene midway through the movie, the theme aggrandizes the wide-angled perspective on two men grappling in the dirt to an epic battle of honor. Scorsese used the same musical motif to diminish the explosive propulsion of Ace Rothstein (Robert De Niro). A man flying through the stratosphere of Vegas becomes just another leaf falling from a tree, beautiful but insignificant. This is but one instance of Pasolini's influence on the young Italian-American directors of the seventies. Like Scorsese used De Niro as his cinematic doppelganger, Pasolini formed a long and productive relationship with Franco Citti. Citti's ugly sad-eyed mug spoke of the streets of provincial Italy, the same way De Niro's grimace did of New York's backalleys in Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973) a movie that centers on a subculture similar to the one in Accattone. Is it any surprise then that when Francis Coppola was seeking an authentic Italian actor for the part of Michael's Sicilian bodyguard, Calo, in The Godfather (1972), that he chose Citti to play him? Having already worked as a writer on some of Fellini's films (Nights of Cabiria) in the fifties, Pasolini would also mentor his young assistant director in Accattone whose career would eventually eclipse his, Bernardo Bertolucci (Last Tango in Paris). Pasolini would also reinvent himself a few times in the short span before his death. Ironically, the music from St. Matthew Passion would inspire one such instance of reinvention 3 years later, when he directs one of the most acclaimed takes on the Gospels, Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St. Matthew). His constant mutability and knack for courting controversy soon made Pasolini a pivotal figure in Italian cinema. This is the first in a series of posts on some of Pier Paolo Pasolini's most notable works.

Seventies Cinema Revival: The Godfather Part II

It may be bold to say this, but I believe The Godfather Part II (1974) to be the best American narrative film ever made. Even among its fans, many prefer the first film. But I would hasten to point out that without the second film, The Godfather (1972) is simply a well-cast genre picture. Part II's double-pronged storyline, with Robert De Niro playing Vito Corleone in his early days, and Al Pacino continuing his portrayal of son Michael, enriches and adds complexity to the story begun in the first film. Director Francis Ford Coppola, who cowrote the screenplay, fleshes out the family's travails by bringing his own experience as an Italian American to Mario Puzo's original story. His deft ability to enhance the Corleone saga with actual historical events further frames the saga as the ultimate immigrant's tale, and adds a distinctly jaded viewpoint to what it means to be an American. Thus the film, released in the Watergate era, the height of Americans' disillusionment with their country, is both timeless and of its time. The film begins in the 1900s, with a young and near-mute Vito Andolini, of the town of Corleone, Sicily, taking flight to America after his family has been slaughtered by local Mafia chieftain, Don Ciccio. In Ellis Island, the boy is mistakenly renamed Vito Corleone, becoming first in the family line in a symbolic sense. The story then jumps to the late fifties, where his son, Michael, happily married to Kay (Diane Keaton), has moved the family to Lake Tahoe, a place he hopes will serve as the jumping point for his goal of achieving legitimacy for his family. Coppola consciously parallels events in the first film to highlight the differences between the father and son. For instance, while we meet Vito, in the first film, urgently conducting Family business in order to enjoy his daughter's wedding, in the second film, Michael is eagerly exploiting his son's communion celebration to establish political ties with the powerful Senator Geary (G.D. Spradlin). Though Vito is quick to consider the price he pays after his eldest son is murdered, calling for a truce, Michael seeks to incite infighting within his ranks, and mentor Hyman Roth's (Lee Strasberg), in order to pick through the remains and consolidate his power in the aftermath. Coppola also highlights the difference between Vito and Michael as he segues between the respective storyline for each. Vito is warm, and generally holds court with his caporegimes, Clemenza (Bruno Kirby) and Tessio (John Aprea), at his kitchen table with his wife nearby. The increasingly distant and paranoid Michael conspires, sitting as if on a throne in a darkened den at the family compound, with only his closest bodyguards, Al Neri (Richard Bright) and Rocco (Tom Rosqui), present. Kay is never privy to his dealings, and often times even the consigliere, adopted brother Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) is left out of the loop. Vito's primary concern is always the protection of his family and his neighbors, as when he eliminates the neighborhood extortionist, Don Fanucci (Gaston Moschin), in this exciting setpiece that precedes the film's intermission: Michael's desire to protect his family is supplanted by his capitalistic desire to acquire power and control, vanquishing all of his enemies in the process, even if it may include his own misguided brother, Fredo (John Cazale). Coldly setting a calculated series of traps to ferret out the person in his Family who is supplying Roth with inside information, it is only on the eve of Castro's revolutionary victory in Cuba, New Year's Eve 1958, that Michael discovers who it is: After the intermission, Michael becomes embroiled in scandal, as a Senate committee starts to investigate his dealings with organized crime. He is ultimately exonerated, but his alienation from his family accelerates with the one-two-punch of Kay's request for a divorce followed by her revelation that she had an abortion. After the additional blow of his mother's death, which serves to bring his sister Connie (Talia Shire) back into the fold, the stage is set for Michael to retaliate against Fredo. Contrast that personal vendetta that propels Michael into ruthless solitude, with the one that Vito must exact to become the Corleone patriarch. Where Michael's fratricide dehumanizes him, leaving him a deteriorating husk of a man by the end of Part II, Vito's revenge on Don Ciccio is depicted as a necessary archetypal rite of passage. Vito must assassinate the man who murdered his father to truly become a man. By killing the patriarch that rules over the town of Corleone, Vito solidifies his ascension as patriarch of the Corleone family. It is said that Puzo, author of the novel on which the two films are based, said that if he knew both films would be so popular, he would have written a better novel. A lot of credit for the story's enhancement belongs to Coppola. A second generation Italian American, Coppola directed the first film as a gun-for-hire, but was sure to bring enough personal touches to give the film credibility. A pretty faithful adaptation, his influence was strongest in its strong casting of what were, until then, predominantly character actors. Choosing a decidedly ethnic looking Pacino to play the All-American boy was his coup-de-grâce. The Godfather Part II validates Coppola's instinctive auteurial talents. He was able to again cast an ethnic looking up-and-comer in a pivotal role by choosing the gifted De Niro for Vito. He was able to exercise greater artistic freedom by using a nontraditional story structure, and a roman-à-clef bent on historical events, to give texture to the story, deepening what was a commercially successful gangster story into a mythic family crime saga about power in America. For Vito, the story ends here, when we realize that the greatest price he paid is one which he won't live to see: the ironic alienation of his youngest son Michael from his precious family, the loss of his very soul, as the sins of the father visit the son. At the conclusion of The Godfather Part II, as he exacts revenge on all of his enemies, the diseased Michael looks significantly older than his years. Michael then recalls a simpler time that devastatingly foreshadows his fate in regards to his family, with his father's presence hanging over the scene like a ghost's: For more on the Godfather films, see: Seventies Cinema Revival: The Godfather DVD Review: The Godfather Part III - Operatic Film Deserving of Reappraisal Stills courtesy of Paramount Pictures.