Author: Marty Leicht

‘The Quiet Man’ brings ‘Taming of the Shrew’ to Ireland

John Wayne kisses Maureen OHara in ‘The Quiet Man’

The basic story of The Quiet Man is that of Sean Thornton (John Wayne), a native of a small Irish town who has spent most of his life in America (“Pittsburgh, Massachusetts”, as one character claims) and has just returned to his native land to start over.

He bears a terrible secret: as a boxer in America he once accidentally killed a man in the ring. Now he wishes to put that behind him and start a new life with the girl of his dreams, Mary Kate Danaher (Maureen O’Hara). The only obstacle is her obnoxious, overbearing brother, “Red Will” (Victor McLaglen), who attempts to sabotage Thornton at every chance he gets. Ultimately, Thornton must decide whether to fight Red Will over Mary Kate’s dowry, a decision which goes against his will to remain non-violent but which is demanded by Mary Kate’s (and the community at large’s) sense of honor.

The basic frame already seems to bear many traits of the Fordian Western. The Quiet Man contains many of the same archetypes as can be found in a film such as The Searchers or High Noon. The fact that on the surface the film’s symbols appear different is no matter, they still signify the same meanings for the narrative.

The differences which occur arise out of setting: the Western takes place on the frontier, where everything is new, customs and practices are still developing, and there is little to no established procedure for anything. Ireland, on the other hand, is the “old country”. Things are run by tradition and people judged by their lineage (Thornton is only truly accepted back home once it is revealed who his father and grandfather were). In other words, the ways of living have long been set, and there is little room for change. These two distinct settings become the lenses through which the archetypes shared by the Western and The Quiet Man are to be viewed.

While the customs of the frontier and rural Ireland are seemingly opposing forces, they serve the same narrative purpose: they are the motivating force behind the protagonist’s actions. In The Quiet Man, Thornton is constantly at odds with the established order, and the conflicts between his individual desires and the demands of the community fuel the majority of the plot (much like in any number of Ford’s westerns).

First, he is frustrated by the very formal customs surrounding courting. He cannot understand why Mary Kate cannot see him without the permission of her brother (her oldest living male relative). The rest of the community, however, despite the fact that they support Thornton and wish him to be with Mary Kate, also insist that the family obligations be respected and upheld. Even after Thornton is finally allowed to court Mary Kate, he must do so with the Matchmaker, Michaleen Flynn (Barry Fitzgerald), present at all times. Once Thornton and Mary Kate are finally married, Red Will refuses to give Mary Kate her dowry. The significance of this act is very different for the two newlyweds.

With his American identity, Thornton feels that it would be shameful to “beg” for the money, and because of his shadowy past as a boxer he does not wish to fight Will. He would rather live with the stigma of being a coward afraid to fight than risk another potentially fatal encounter. For Mary Kate and the community, however, it is shameful for Thornton not to demand what is rightfully his (or hers). The fact that he won’t fight compounds the shame. It becomes so bad that Mary Kate, despite loving Thornton, decides to leave him. It is not until Thornton compromises his own sensibilities that he wins Mary Kate back, but he does so by integrating the customs of the community with his own ideals.

Even with all of these themes and motifs set aside, the basic underlying conflict has a great deal in common with the Western. At its heart, there is the “good man” or protagonist, an outsider, who comes into conflict with the “bad man”, the established, rich, and overbearing land owner. The conflict centers around love (Mary Kate), honor (the dowry) and community acceptance. The Quiet Man is a distinctly Fordian film in every sense. Not only thematically, but in style and presentation as well. Along with having all the old familiar Fordian faces such as Ward Bond, Victor McLaglen and Mildred Natwick, the film possesses the same broad sense of humor and beautiful geographical environment. The cinematography is bright and beautiful, and the characters are suitably archetypal while also being individually complex and flawed. If I were pressured, I would have to rank The Quiet Man as one of my two or three favorite John Ford films ever.

The new special edition DVD has several interesting features, but overall the quality of the disc is a little suspect. The print is bright and colorful, but by today’s standards it’s little more than average. This is not a disc of the quality of some of the Criterion Collection re-masters. Still, the overall package coupled with the relatively low price make it a bargain for any fan of this classic film.

May 16, 2004
Douglas Sirk’s ‘Imitation of Life’ (1959) is a bonafide classic

Poster for Douglas Sirk’s 1959 classic, ‘Imitation of Life’

Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life (1959) was the second adaptation of Fannie Hurst’s popular novel of the same name. The film tells the story of two women, white aspiring actress Lora Meredith (Lana Turner), and her black confidante/maidservant Annie Johnson (Juanita Moore), and their struggles to raise their respective daughters, Susie (Sandra Dee) and Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner).

Using his own highly ironic interpretation of the original story, Sirk utilized the lens of fifties melodrama in order to project social issues such as race relations, maternal and sexual womanhood, and the artificial construction of whiteness, and in doing so, criticize the shallow representations that these issues find in “everyday” life.

Lora Meredith starts out as a struggling single mother who has just moved from the midwest to New York City. Her ambition to be a successful actress instantly seems odd, even selfish, especially considering the reality of supporting a small daughter. In addition to this, Lora is in her mid-thirties, hardly a “spring chicken” as one agent points out to her. Her age and situation call into question the soundness of her attempt to make it big as an actress instead of finding more stable work.

When Annie comes to live with Lora, she allows the would-be actress to disregard even more of her motherly duties. Initially having a live-in maid (although the role is not official until the second half of the film) allows Lora to leave home and audition constantly. After a rough start (including a harrowing modeling job for a flea powder ad), she finally starts getting steady acting work, at which point she is distanced even further from her home life.

She succeeds in her career, becoming a successful stage actress, but even this success is undercut by Sirk. Her success is seen to be as much a result of her sex appeal as her ability, and she is often portrayed as little more than a clothes horse for seedy agents and self-righteous playwrights. Sirk makes a conscious decision to have all the sets that Lora performs in front of appear trite-looking, flat, and archaic. These sets are so blatantly fake as to remind the audience of the imitationwhich is taking place.

About halfway through the film, the focus of the story shifts from Lora and her tribulations as an actress to Sarah Jane and the far more significant trials she faces as a young black woman in a culture that is strictly divided along racial and economic lines.

Central to Sarah Jane’s problems is how quickly and easily her mother Annie slips into the role of domestic servant in Lora’s household. The greater Lora’s financial success, the more clearly defined Annie’s maid-role becomes. The transition is played deftly, no attention is ever directly brought to it; it feels like a quite obvious turn of events. Annie plays into the conventional “mammy” role, the universal nurturer who stays at home and cares for both her own child and for the white mistress’ child. This situation, however, is anything but natural to Sarah Jane, who, despite being loved by Lora and Susie, feels the unconscious exclusion from the white women’s ascension to wealth.

This places Sarah Jane, a very fair-skinned black, into the uncomfortable position of appearing white or “superior” while being in a living situation where she is “inferior” because of her black heritage, symbolized by her mother. She continually acts out against her mother and Lora alike, rejecting what she sees as an unfair social situation. Throughout the film, Sarah Jane identifies material success with being white, a common construction of whiteness that she has fully adopted.

On the surface the acting appears to be vintage 50s melodrama: overwrought and overdone. But well before Todd Haynes’ dull and awkward attempt with Far From Heaven (2002), Douglas Sirk was intentionally using the melodrama in a sardonic fashion in order to get at the real issue of the film.

Lora and Susie are self-involved, overly dramatic, and completely clueless. The sappy love which both mother and daughter share for Steve Archer (John Gavin) is over the top ridiculous and is a damning condemnation of their obliviousness to the problems Sarah Jane is struggling with. The mannered style of Lana Turner and the Gidget-in-training turn of Sandra Dee bring to the forefront the shallow nature of the society they represent. Juanita Moore is elegant as the reserved but observant Annie. Annie is a generation apart from her rebellious daughter, so she appears on the surface to be more accepting of the subservient role handed to her. Oftentimes she over-parents Sarah Jane and seems confused by her daughter’s desire to “pass”. She is however, completely aware of the injustices of society.

We ultimately come to see that Annie’s trouble with Sarah Jane is not her daughter’s resentment of the white society, but that she has unwittingly bought into that society’s opinion of her, and as a result she herself has come to look on being black as something lesser.

In the end, Imitation of Life deals with just that, the artificiality of the social, racial, and sexual institutions by which the characters try to live their lives. The inherently shallow nature of these constructs fate these characters to either exist obliviously within them or struggle futily against them. It is a bonafide classic which transcends its genre and form to stand as a truly timeless piece of cultural commentary.

Finding a copy of Imitation of Life can be a bit tricky, as its initial printing is currently out of print. If you can find it at your local video store you would do well to give it a look, though disappointingly there are no extras of any kind on the disc.

April 30, 2004
Superhero genre established by ‘Superman II’

Jor El (Marlon Brando) puts General Zod on trial in ‘Superman II’

By the end of the 1980s, the movie-going public had tired of campy comic book hero film translations and was in the mood for something darker and grittier. The putrid Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) was the perfect precursor to Tim Burton’s moody and violent retelling of Batman in ’89. The wheel never stops turning, however, and it wasn’t too long before these new dark “edgy” revisionings started too look as hackneyed as their forerunners.

Recent comic-to-film translations such as Spiderman and the two X-Men pictures have tried to rekindle some of the fun of their source material and have tempered their action with varying amounts of goofy humor. Still, none of these films has rekindled the pure unadulterated joy of watching grown men and women prance around in tights while whacking each other over the head as Richard Lester’s first crack at the Superman mythos in Superman II.

Itself a sequel, the second Superman film wasn’t so much a homage to the old television series as the first Superman was. Rather, it was the first major step in the evolution of a newly burgeoning genre that would come to dominate the summer cineplexes for the next two decades and counting.

Superman II‘s story deals with Superman’s (Christopher Reeve) desire to have a normal, human life when he’s not fighting crime in his underwear. This desire finds its focus in Lois Lane (Margot Kidder), the spunky reporter for the Daily Planet and the co-worker of Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent.

Clark is completely enamoured with Lois, so it is doubly vexing to him when she falls head over heals for the Man in Tights. He realizes that it would be dangerous for Lois if she were to discover his true identity, and so he continues to pine for her as Clark while teasing her with glimpses of Superman. Eventually, however, even Lois can’t miss the not-so-subtle connection that the nerdy reporter and the superhunk hero share. In one of the more ridiculous (and wonderful) scenes in the movie, she realizes the truth when Clark trips over a bearskin rug and drops his hand into a roaring fire without getting burned.

He may possess super speed and strength, but apparently he can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.

Now that Lois knows the truth, there is still an impediment to the star-crossed lovers’ romance: namely, Superman isn’t human. Using one of his trusty green crystals, Superman gets a visit from his dead mother via an interactive hologram and learns of a process that would render him human and enable him to be with Lois. The caveat: he will lose all of his powers and cease to be Superman. In haste to get his life with Lois moving forward, Superman undergoes the procedure and he and Lois happily unite.

But there’s a problem, of course. Clark is used to being super strong, and now that he’s just a normal man he can’t even stand up to the thuggish truck driver who hits on Lois at a roadside diner. What’s worse, after being pummeled by said truck driver, Clark learns that three of his fellow Kryptonians, the villanous General Zod (Terence Stamp), Ursa (Sarah Douglas), and Non (Jack O’Halloran), have been freed from their interdimensional prison and have found their way to Earth.

Now they, too, have superpowers, and seeing as they were imprisoned by Superman’s father on Krypton, they’ve got an axe to grind. As if that weren’t bad enough, the trio are aided by Superman’s arch nemesis, Lex Luther (GeneHackman), who has uncovered the location of his Fortress of Solitude.

So now Clark has a tough decision: return to being Superman and lose Lois, or stay with the woman he loves and watch Zod and his lackeys enslave humanity? Decisions, decisions. From here on out the film rocks and rolls all the way to its satisfying and clever conclusion.

One of the most satisfying things about Superman II is the depth they give to Superman as a character. Make no mistake, this is still a comic book character, and the colors which fill in the inked outlines remain bright and primary. Still, he is much more than the muscle-headed naif that he was in the first film. The main problem with the first picture was that Lex Luther was smarter than Superman, who always broke through walls first and asked questions later. It made Superman’s inevitable victory less palatable since it was the result not of his cunning, but of his superpowers and more than a little luck.

In this sequel, Superman shows that he has the super brain to match his super brawn and it is ultimately his wits that save him from the enemies allied against him.

Everything about Superman II screams campy goodness. The special effects, which were state of the art when the film was released, maintain some cartoonish charm despite the fact that they seem hopelessly outdated by today’s standards. The story is interesting and involving without ever taking itself too seriously. If ever an actor was meant to play a role, Christopher Reeve was meant to play Superman. He is so good as both the steely-eyed Superman and the geeky Clark Kent that you can almost buy the fact that everybody in the city of Metropolis is fooled by a pair of thick black-rimmed glasses (almost).

Gene Hackman is delightfully over the top as Lex Luther, and he instills the film with massive doses of needed humor, much as he did in the first film. Margot Kidder gives a convincing portrayal of Lois Lane as a reporter so dedicated to uncovering the truth that she would throw herself into a raging river and risk death just to prove that Clark is really Superman. Terence Stamp always brings something undeniably cool to any role he takes on, and his General Zod is deliciously evil and pompous, vacillating between maniacal glee at inflicting damage and boredom at not having more worthy opponents to vanquish.

The recent DVD release of Superman II (concurrent with the releases of I, III, and IV) leaves quite a bit to be desired, unfortunately.

There are no extras aside from the obligatory theatrical trailer and cast bios. The picture is presented in its original anamorphic widescreen format and everything looks crisp and clean, but it definitely shows its age. Overall, it feels like the film was just slapped cheaply onto a disc without much thought or care being put into the overall product. Why is it that you can get a 47-disc special edition of Matrix: Revulsions (with three discs dedicated exclusively to apologies) but this bare bones disc is all we Superman junkies can lay our hands on?

Nearly twenty-five years after its release, Superman II remains as arguably one of the best superhero movies ever, staying true to its source material and poking fun at it without ever making fun of it. Smarter than Spiderman, more fun than X-Men, and just all around superior to the crudfest that was The Hulk, Superman proves again just how cool it is to have x-ray vision… and to use it for good.

April 30, 2004
‘View from the Top’ crashes and burns

Gwyneth Paltrow and Kelly Preston co-star in ‘View from the Top’

After sitting through View from the Top, you might get the impression that somebody at Miramax has a whole bunch of incriminating photographs of the film’s cast. Either that or Bruno Barreto (Bossa Nova, One Tough Cop) must be one damn nice guy that nobody can say no to. Nothing else seems to explain how a film as god awful as this could have been made in the first place, let alone released on an unsuspecting public.

As directed by Barreto (from a script from first-time scribe Eric Wald) View from the Top is a film that never has a sense of itself, and as a result flounders for 87 seemingly endless and laugh-free minutes.

On the one hand it is a comedy, endlessly deriding the small-potato ambitions of its characters. On the other hand, however, it is an inspirational drama about reaching for your dreams — and realizing what those dreams really are. The tone of the film is never set, so we are never sure whether we are rooting for our heroine or mocking her. Personally, I was just relieved when the credits began to roll (credits that, unfortunately, contain some of the least funny “outtakes” of any movie of the modern era).

The heroine of this story is Donna (Gwyneth Paltrow), a small town girl who dreams of escaping from her humdrum existence in Silver Springs, Nevada. At first her plan is to escape from her dysfunctional family (consisting of a mother and her dimwitted step-father and brother) by running off with her boyfriend, the assistant manager at the local Big Lots megastore. Unfortunately he has plans to make off with another employee who is more “upwardly mobile”.

Heartbroken, Donna finds inspiration in the form of Sally Weston (Candice Bergen), a former airline stewardess and self-help guru. She then sets out on a journey to become a top flight attendant, a journey that will take her from the sleazy, local airline all the way to the prestigious Royalty Air. Along the way she runs into an assortment of studio-mandated cameo celebrities, including Rob Lowe, Mike Myers, and Kelly Preston, and in the end she must decide whether her true dream is to fly the New York-Paris line or marry scruffy Cleveland-based lawyer Ted (Mark Ruffalo).

The cartoonish, over the top first sequences establishing Donna as a flight attendant severely undercut her earnest desire to achieve some amount of respectability. From her clownish “big hair, short skirt” outfit at her first airline gig to her comically dogmatic adherence to even the most trivial of rules in the Royalty Air guidebook, it is very hard to ever take her seriously.

Christina Applegate plays Donna’s not-so-convincing nemesis, and provides little more depth to her character than that of a finely toned bikini bimbo. Mike Myers, as Royalty Air’s top instructor, appears to be stuck in his own personal circle of Dante’s Inferno, where he is forced to rehash old Austin Powers schtick in a series of sequences that are completely out of sync with Paltrow’s sappier, melodramatic scenes.

In the end, there doesn’t seem to be a single thing that this film ends up doing right. A cast riddled with talented performers is completely wasted, and we are left with a pseudo-comedy that attempts to be earnest and tongue-in-cheek simultaneously, and fails on both counts. While Paltrow has made quite a few stinkers in her time,View from the Top stands as her biggest disaster to date.

The DVD doesn’t feature anything exciting enough to make this even a worthwhile rental. The picture quality is not bad, and the sound is fine, but who cares? And if you want to watch a behind the scenes featurette or the silly History of the Flight Attendant” rather than racing back to the video store clasping this abomination with tongs so as not to permanently scar your precious flesh, then go ahead.

But they won’t last long.

Apparently Mr. Wald wrote his script for View from the Top while enrolled in UCLA’s MFA Screenwriting Program. It would be interesting to find out what grade he received for turning out this hackneyed, cliché-riddled little film. If you still have functional brain wavelengths after sitting through till the end, you’d probably give him an F.

April 27, 2004
‘She Wore a Yellow Ribbon’ is John Wayne at his best in classic western

John Wayne with Joanne Dru in ‘She Wore a Yellow Ribbon’

Few filmmakers have left their mark on American cinema as John Ford has. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon comes second in Ford’s Cavalry Trilogy, between Fort Apache and Rio Grande, and it is perhaps the strongest film of the three.

While on the surface the film appears simplistic and at times even cornball, this belies the intricate thematic layers which Ford has expertly woven together. The film is both grandiose and subtle, broad and meticulous in the way it handles the themes of the individual versus community and civilization versus the wilderness of the frontier.

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is the story of Captain Nathan Brittles (John Wayne). Brittles is stationed at Fort Stark, a community both thrust out into the wilderness and insulated from it at the same time. The main thrust of the film has Brittles leading one last patrol before his retirement to observe whether there is unrest among the Native American tribes in the surrounding wilderness since news of Custer’s fall. He is forced to take with him the niece (Joanne Dru) of his commanding officer. Also on the patrol are two young lieutenants, Cohill (John Agar) and Panell (Harry Carey Jr.), polar opposites who are in competition with each other over Dru.

The stylistic choices Ford made with She Wore a Yellow Ribbon are in stark contrast to those of the other two cavalry pictures. Most obvious was the decision to shoot in Technicolor (the other two pictures were shot in black and white).

From the earliest stages of pre-production, it was John Ford’s intent to tailor the cinematography of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon to that of the paintings of famous turn-of-the-century artist Frederic Remington, and he does so brilliantly. Ford makes effective use of the nostalgic grandeur that Remington’s canvas imbued onto the old frontier, and the vibrant color palette and carefully picturesque framing of each shot help recreate a romanticized West” which may only have existed in false memory. Innumerable scenes — such as the lightning storm in Monument Valley — helped Winton C. Hoch win the Oscar for best color cinematography.

In She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Ford is clearly more interested with his characters (both human and environmental) than he is with the plot, which is bare-bones at best. The episodic narrative structure of the script emphasizes characterization over thematic confrontation. Personal interactions and character development take precedence over artificial plot points. As a result Ford is allowed to present thematic ideas naturally and fluidly, without the restraints of the more rigid, traditional dramatic structure.

This idea of fluid movement is especially important in the film. Through the use of dissolves (in place of fades) Ford creates a seemingly endless frontier; it is not just the geographical location of the characters, it is their universe. By making use of various well-known Western landmarks and locales and then seamlessly connecting them into a completely fictional filmic space, Ford is able to create a West even grander than that which already existed.

John Wayne addresses his cavalry in ‘She Wore a Yellow Ribbon’

From the very start, a dichotomy is set up between the fort and the frontier wilderness. The dividing line is the large gate of the fort: the frame which Ford uses to distinguish between worlds. The cavalry riders, seemingly so impressive in ranks while inside the fort, are continuously dwarfed in comparison to their treacherous natural environs.

Within the fort itself there is another split, between the two primary communities: the public (cavalry) and the private (family). Just as tensions exist between civilization and the frontier, frictions also arise between the military and the family as a result of the impositions the one puts on the other.

As with most westerns, the tensions between the East and the West are apparent. On the larger scale the cavalry represents the eastern value system which is imposing itself on the West and the Native American communities as the frontier is pushed further and further back. Also apparent in the film is the split between the North and the South. This is a particularly important theme for a cavalry picture, especially for one such as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon which takes place very shortly after the Civil War and which attempts to show the slow healing process within the army as it tries to unite after its darkest historical moment.

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is perhaps one of John Wayne’s finest performances. Far more subtle than usual as the aging Westerner watching the wave of new blood wash over the frontier, he serves as a linchpin for all of the themes of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. He is a man respectful of foreign customs; the Native Americans, Southerners, and East-coasters alike are treated fairly and kindly by him. He is an independently minded westerner, hardened by a lifetime of cavalry service in the dangerous frontier, yet tempered by his public and private communal ties.

Brittles slowly has to come to grips with the changing times and his impending retirement. He has become an independent minded individual dependent on the social structure of his public community. Without this structure the only remaining option for him is to push further west, into the dwindling frontier, to cling to an existence which is ever more rapidly making the transition from contemporary to nostalgic.

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon stands as a classic Western/Cavalry picture. With its gloriously broad Technicolor landscapes, its even broader humor, and its carefully interwoven, underscored themes, Ford is triumphant in eliciting a response to the mythic Old West which borders on nostalgia, even in those who were born forty years after the film was made and one hundred and forty years after the actual conquest of the West.

The DVD version of the film, put out by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, has surprisingly good picture quality for such an old film that has not been re-mastered. Most scenes remain gloriously bright and vivid, and the backdrop of Monument Valley is simply sumptuous. There are individual scenes or shots, however, where the colors seem somewhat muted and/or faded. There are moments where there is detectable dirt on the print, but overall the picture quality is slightly above average.

There is no surround sound available, but in 1949 there was no surround sound, so it’s not a big deal. The most disappointing aspect of this DVD is the complete lack of any decent special features. Aside from an old trailer and a bizarre silent 3-minute chunk of footage showing Ford and Wayne drinking beer, there is absolutely nothing. It would have been nice to have some more background on the film, its production, the use of Remington as inspiration, or the Cavalry Trilogy as a whole.

As it stands, all you really get is the movie. Not so bad, considering.

April 22, 2004