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April 27, 2008
Forward Thinking HD Becomes A Classic Horror Fan's Delight!
Ever since I abandoned the then HD heavy Dish Network (and their Monsters HD channel) a year ago for DirecTV, I bemoaned the fact that I would no longer be able to see movies such as BLOOD OF DRACULA, ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS and MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD in HD. Even though DirecTV now has about 90 HD channels, it does not carry Monsters HD (which, unfortunately, shows modern B garbage 90% of the time).
However DirecTV does carry MGM HD (which Dish does not carry), and while most of the movies shown since its inception several months ago have been epics, current and mainstream movies, all that started to change a few weeks ago. I could not believe my eyes when I saw in my program guide that REVENGE OF THE ZOMBIES, starring John Carradine, Robert Lowery and Mantan Moreland, would be shown in HD at some ungodly hour in the morning (thank heavens for HD DVRs). When I watched the movie (hey, it's fairly dull and interior to KING OF THE ZOMBIES) the next evening, I was amazed at the absolutely pristine video print. Contrast was superb with inky blacks and delectable nuance in all shades of gray. The sharpness that one expects to find in HD broadcasts was present with foreground, middle ground and background sharp as the proverbial tack. Never has such an old chestnut B programmer ever appeared this clear. After years of watching watched out, scratched video tapes or PD DVD releases, it was a revelation to see the movie looking this good. Put it right up with the restored DVDs coming out from Warner and Fox, but this was an HD broadcast, not just a well executed restoration.
Humm, I thought, in another six months they might show another old B or classic vintage horror movie. Then April 19, 2008 arrived, and for any fan of classic science fiction and horror, Christmas arrived early. For one full day and night, MGM HD showed the following horror movies plus others: CURSE OF THE FACELESS MAN, TOMB OF LIGEIA, THE HAUNTED PALACE, MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH and IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE. For me the two classic Vincent Price Poes (THE TOMB OF LIGEIA and MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH) were essential titles to see in HD. Presented in their original aspect ratios with pristine video prints featuring deeply saturated color, the prints were very sharp yet very film-like. Seeing these movies presented in HD was going one rung higher than watching the standard definition Midnite Movies versions. The additional shades of color that HD provides, the dense contrast and the sharpness of the image was like sitting in the 10 th row at the Vilma Theatre back in 1964.
But one of my all-time favorite B movies is IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE, a classic B production that always jolts me in a new way every time I see it. Yes, the movie reeks of 1950s sci-fi cinema (always a good thing to me!) with its stereotypes, chiseled heroes and men-in-monster-suits threatening to destroy our world. And while the MGM Midnite Movie release is dynamite, here, the HD presentation is noticeably superior. Once again we have the original widescreen aspect ratio restored and the inky blacks and dense contrast only add to the horrific mood aboard that claustrophobic rocket ship. Even though Ray Corrigan plays the space-invading monster wearing a Paul Blaisdell rubber suit, the invading predator has always been a fan favorite and becomes one of the outstanding examples of just how good men in rubber suits can be. The fact that director Edward Cahn shows the creature in silhouette and in very quick cuts at first only enhances the suspense. But even when the monster is shown for extended periods of screen time, it delivers the necessary chills. The only criticism of this HD broadcast is that a few of the monster's rubber-suited flaws are more noticeable in HD, but for me this only makes that classic period of monster cinema more endearing. The sharpness of the print and the deep contrast make the movie appear virtually brand new. And I am wagering the film never looked this good since its original theatrical release. How could it possibly!!!
I keep hearing people say I will invest in HD for cable or satellite TV to watch sporting events or modern movies where the HD would truly benefit the presentation. These same fans, some of them classic monster lovers, ask time and time again just how much better films such as REVENGE OF THE ZOMBIES, IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE or Roger Corman's THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH can look in HD!!!!! Well, for one glorious day (and yes, less stellar movies such as ALIENATOR and TROLLS 2 were also shown... they all can't be classics!) in the spring of 2008 we got our answer. HD presentations are vastly superior to former/current SD DVD releases of the same movies. A few days later the just-released RETURN OF DRACULA with Francis Lederer was broadcast in HD, and I guarantee those special color sequences will rock in HD.
The only frustration is that our Dish HD DVR can only hold 20 hours of HD broadcasts and currently no way exists to burn these babies to HD Blu-ray quality discs. Oh, the time will arrive shortly when this can happen, but technology has yet to catch up.
Myself I am awaiting the latest generation of Blu-ray players to be released this spring/summer and I plan to jump on the bandwagon now that Blu-ray has won the format wars. I already own 20 Blu-ray movies (which I currently cannot play) and I am constantly buying sale-priced titles when they are available.
I am sure the day is not too far off when titles such as IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE and all the others mentioned here will be sold as home video Blu-ray releases. Will I purchase all my titles over again? Of course not! But will I buy my favorites from the past in Blu-ray... you betcha! When Blu-ray discs sell for as little as $15 and are always 30 percent off (or more) at Amazon.com, switching to Blu-ray is an easy decision for many classic movie fans.
Thanks MGM HD for proving my point!
April 8, 2008
THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM And The New Film Grammar
Cinema speaks in a language all its own.
When we think of film editing, technique becomes the substance of film, even though the most artistic technique does not draw too much attention to itself. When we think of film grammar, we think of the dissolve, the jump cut, the montage, the low-angle shot, the high angle shot, the fade to black, the superimposition, etc.
Such cinematic language served cinema well for over a century.
But THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM demonstrates the evolution of film grammar to satisfy a techno-savvy viewing public in the Millennial years. It is not as if the film created this new film grammar spontaneously, but THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM just seems fully-formed as a example of story-telling that employs a new film grammar to tell its story.
What I am talking about is something usually credited to Alfred Hitchcock originally... totally visual storytelling that involves editing without dialogue, or with minimal dialogue. But Hitchcock's style is decidedly old school compared to the hyper-kinetic style created by director Paul Greengrass, cinematographer Oliver Wood and editor Christopher Rouse.
Just study the early sequence in THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM where Jason Bourne instructs the British reporter to go to the Waterloo train station and await further instructions. In a tremendous sequence that goes on for roughly 15 minutes, Bourne slips a freshly purchased cell phone into the man's pocket and then rings him, after observing every agent posted in or around the station whose mission it is to take out Bourne and the reporter, who now knows too much. Bourne becomes the reporter's GPI instructing the dazed reporter in what lane to walk, when to bend down to tie a shoe to allow agents to walk past him and what shop and bathroom in which to disappear. Constantly passing each other and saying only a few words in short spurts, Bourne intercepts the reporter on a stairwell as agents are twisting around the corner to kill him. In a frenzied fight to the death, Bourne takes on three agents (or is it four?) in hand-to-hand combat, taking them all out of commission. I don't know if the action has been sped up or if the micro-quick cuts are shortened for graphic intensity, but no onscreen fighting sequence ever packed this much of a visceral punch. As the sequence is ending, Bourne tries to get the reporter out of harm's way, instructing him not to venture into the open station area until he gives the word. But the reporter is panicking and feels someone is sneaking up behind him, so he ignores Bourne's orders and runs out into station, catching a bullet in the head only a few steps past the doorway. In another cat-and-mouse pursuit, Bourne tries to catch the assassin, but the man is literally one step ahead of Bourne and escapes on a train car whose door closes as Bourne and the assassin lock stares. With hardly any dialogue, suspense cinema evolves into something decidedly new and ferocious with sequences such as this one.
In another climactic sequence, Bourne is racing across and through small apartments and rooftops in Tangiers, as hired CIA hitman Desh is pursuing Nicky (Bourne's female friend) to kill her. As Nicky remains 40 paces ahead of the professional, she ducks into alleyways and unoccupied apartments. Soon Nicky is trapped in one of the apartments, only a few steps away from slithering Desh, who is snaking around the interior of the apartment where Nicky is hiding. Bourne, pursued by the local police, is jumping rooftops looking in vain for Nicky, who is always visible but out of his protective reach. Soon in a dynamic shot, Bourne runs faster and faster and dives down through a glass window, the glass shattering as Bourne's body acts as a cannonball and falls a few feet from both Nicky and Desh. Then, in another fistfight to the death, Desh and Bourne go at it in the most dramatic visual style, featuring jump-cut editing that moves faster than the human eye can decode. Perhaps this editing style is created to hide a lack of proficiency in the actors' ability to fight as viciously as they appear to be doing, but the intensity is ultra-extreme and the sequence works its magic only too well. Finally, Desh is pounded to death near a toilet by Bourne, who leaves the cold corpse trumpled as he and Nicky escape.
These two sequences become touchstones for this new and emerging film style. Hitchcock may have used 40 cuts to create a 30-second sequence. Here, the filmmakers use 100 shots for the same amount of time. Shorter, quicker shots are used to create a vertigo affect, too much information bombarding our senses at once. However, bottom line, these visual sequences work only too effectively. This is not your father's action-adventure movie, and even if each individual shot does not hold up under individual scrutiny, the bottom line is how the entire sequence plays. And such sequences, such as the two above, play extremely well. They are dizzying, off-putting, ugly, aggressive and headache inducing, but they convey frenzy and rage only too well.
Me, I prefer the Hitchcock old-school methods, but I can also appreciate the new hyper-frenetic editing style that movies such as THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM bring to the screen. Metaphorically, these butting styles become the difference between a hiccup and a seizure... both are out of our control but one is subtle and the other is abrupt.
I guess this change in film grammar is akin to film fans that grew up with action adventures produced during the 1940s and 1950s, when suddenly James Bond hit the cinema circuits in the early 1960s and the action movie moved one quantum leap ahead. Perhaps John Woo and his Hong Kung pistol operas such as THE KILLER and HARDBOILED took films to the next level. Now we have THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM and others that transcend to the extreme level. Each movie generation either keeps up with the new film grammar or retreats to the classics of old.
How much action can one man take before he screams, "Uncle!"
March 31, 2008
THE THREE STOOGES And The Continuing Slapstick Legacy
Last year the first volume of a chronologically released series of Three Stooges two-reelers came to DVD. THE THREE STOOGES COLLECTION VOLUME ONE: 1934-1936, released by Sony, contained 19 digitally remastered shorts and sold for only $20. Even more impressive was the gorgeous looking and sounding restoration that made every sound effect snap and every eye poke become painfully real.
Amazingly, when I was a child growing up in the 1950s, The Three Stooges were considered low-rent, derivative and overly violent when their shorts first became available to television. The comedy team of Laurel and Hardy were the classic slapstick torchbearers of physical comedy. Even though many claim the Laurel and Hardy team reached its artistic zenith with the best of their silent shorts, their sound feature films such as WAY OUT WEST, SONS OF THE DESERT and others became a staple of early television viewing and every baby boomer was weaned on such entertainment.
Unfortunately, the Stooges were always compared unfavorably with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. The Laurel and Hardy team was comprised of two individuals who each created distinct personalities and whose physical humor arose from such characterizations. Even though Ollie was the bully and Stan the innocent child-man, their humorous pranks were never sadistic or based entirely upon pain of the eye-gorging variety. Granted, Laurel and Hardy tried to be imaginative and even artistic in their movie comedy, and the duo appeared to be the icons of slapstick for generations to come. Or so we thought back in the 1950s and 1960s.
But let's reexamine that prediction ago. Very few Laurel and Hardy movies are available on American DVD. In England box sets containing all the two-reelers and feature films have been available in the PAL format for several years, and such collections have been every Laurel and Hardy fan's dream. But here in the States, Laurel and Hardy releases are generally minimal, barely remastered with subpart image and sound quality. Ask anyone younger than 40 today who are Laurel and Hardy, and most people will shake their heads they don't know. But ask the same crowd about The Three Stooges, and immediately everyone will recognize them or mimic their sound effects or head-slapping technique. On home video, most of the feature films and now all of the shorts have been released to the American market (or rather we are in the process of releasing all the shorts). Spike TV network on cable/satellite still runs their Stooges hour filled with trivia and insider jokes. But where on TV can one watch Laurel and Hardy?
One of the stunning surprises of my life has been the trivialization and downgraded status of the iconic Laurel and Hardy comedy team. What was considered classic comedy 50 years ago is almost a lost blip on the cinematic radar screen today. And those loathed Three Stooges (loathed that is by the critics and our parents) have only risen in the pantheon of comic genius with their features and shorts re-mastered and re-released on home DVD. For the first time in ages, the lowbrow, less-subtle Columbia-released Three Stooges have trumped the high art produced by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Even as a teenager I always felt that Laurel and Hardy were superior and The Stooges were unsubtle yet funny in a crude way. Back then we always had to qualify or make excuses for our appreciation for the Stooges.
However, over the decades, Laurel and Hardy's status never dropped in my estimation; however, the Stooges rose. The characters created by Moe (the bullying boss brother that we soon pity), Larry (the so-called Porcupine and his persona of the quietly daffy underachiever), Curly (the ace in the hole frenzied loon) and Shemp (the rubbery-faced contortionist who almost rivaled Curly) have only become more classic as time wears on. What was once perceived as manic violence can today be viewed as well-crafted character interplay. While our parents only saw the slaps, the pokes and the violence, we, the children, saw people so stupid that our hearts opened up to the point that we wanted to give each Stooge a psychic hug. And most surprisingly, as we grew into adults, the laughter (which our parents felt was only due to our youth) only increased as the subtlety of their craft appealed to adult sensibilities as well. Today, when the guys get together in the home theater for an afternoon of movies, we still laugh just as hard at a classic Stooges short. And to be honest, some of the Laurel and Hardy sound shorts, though still classic, are looking a little creaky today.
Please be warned, to enjoy The Three Stooges it helps to be a male and to have that male Stooges gene that allows us to appreciate their variety of humor. In almost every case, our wives and female friends universally almost just do not get the Stooges. Their comic appeal is lost on the fairer sex. Recently, at one such showing a young lady, Leslie, watching the short with an audience of baby boomer males, was the only person not roaring out loud. At the end of the show she added shyly that when she was a child she thought the Stooges were hurting one another so such antics only frightened her. She just did not find their pranks funny. So that's the long and short of it. Some people get it, while others simply do not. It's all in the genes!
But since 1934 the artistic appeal of Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Curly Howard and Shemp Howard has held steady and their comedic shenanigans are entertaining an entirely new generation of cinematic slapstick lovers. Looking at the classic Stooges two-reelers contained within the first DVD collection, I chuckle to myself at the antics in shorts such as Woman Haters (the Stooges are required to sing and rhyme all their dialogue); Three Little Pigskins (football was never this much fun and they even rival the Marx Brothers in the zaniness department); Pop Goes the Easel (culture and the arts cannot civilize our rough-around-the-edges boys); Hoi Polloi (in this inspiration for the feature film Trading Places , the Stooges are the subject of a bet concerning their assimilation into the world of culture); Movie Maniacs (in this seldom seen short, the Stooges invade Hollywood and the studio back lot); A Pain in the Pullman (who thought an overnight train ride could produce this much fun, especially when the Stooges all try to fit into the same top berth in a sleeping car), just to name a handful.
And guess what, in May Volume Two of the THE THREE STOOGES COLLECTION will be released, detailing the next round of comedy shorts. For a Stooges fan, life just doesn't get any better!
March 16, 2008BEOWULF And the Destruction of a Literary Classic
Amazingly, this iconic and the earliest of all British literature (that survived) has seldom been the subject of filmmakers until now. And what egos director Robert Zemeckis and screenwriters Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary must have to think that such a masterfully told story needed to be so radically rewritten. As an adventure movie geared toward adolescent males, BEOWULF has merit, but as a translation to the screen of a true literary classic, the movie disappoints in all areas. Remember, when we watch the ALIEN series, PREDATOR and all those 1950s monster movies, the plot formula come from Beowulf.
First of all, the original text is a work of Anglo-Saxon England, a Pagan piece of oral literature that celebrated the hero’s audacity and glory of battle by putting oneself into the hands of the gods. The gods always decide the hero’s fate, and the hero accepts that preordained outcome. In Zemeckis’ movie, Odin and the “new Roman god Christ” are mentioned several times, but the concept of Paganism and fate is lost. True, Christian monks finally wrote down the text during the Middle Ages by substituting Christian for Pagan gods, but they did so in a haphazard manner, often leaving Christian references (stating that Grendel descended from the seed of Cain) on the same page with the original Pagan references (the god of fate, Wyrd, for example). But scholars are able to easily tell the changes resulting from this literary contamination.
More radical changes occur regarding the function of Beowulf in the story. In the original work, Beowulf is a stranger-savior hero, an outsider (a Geat) who comes to help the crippled Danes, who cannot rid themselves of the “disease” that cripples their community, a monster called Grendel. In such a work, the stranger-savior helps the community “heal” by destroying its contagion, and once the community functions wholly again, the hero is no longer needed, nor does he even fit in, so he leaves (this pattern has been recreated so many times… in THE ROAD WARRIOR, THE LONE RANGER TV series, etc.) to wander, to find new broken communities to fix. In the original epic poem Queen Wealthow privately makes her husband King Hrothgar promise to name a Dane as successor to the throne, not a Geat. However, in the Zemeckis version, even though Beowulf promises to leave for home, he never does. He remains in Denmark the rest of his life (while in the original work, Beowulf returns to Geatland and reigns as their king, until 50 years later a stolen golden cup awakens a fire-breathing dragon, and Beowulf, with Wiglaf his surrogate son, slay the beast, but Beowulf is wounded fatally). In the Zemeckis version, Beowulf inherits the keys to the kingdom after Hrothgar commits suicide (another unnecessary new plot angle added).
Most distressing are the depictions of both Grendel and Grendel’s mother. Grendel, who is never described in the original work, is a child monster but a monster that enjoys sucking hot slippery blood (one sequence in the movie recreates that lustful joy, when Grendel yanks off a warrior’s head and holds his body upside down as the human’s blood gushes into the monster’s mouth). In close up Grendel, with his crooked and enlarged lower jaw, looks monstrous enough, but in long shots Grendel looks more like a perverse claymation version of Gumby. In such a realistic CGI realistic movie, Grendel appears to be a rather crude special effect. This movie drops the plot motivation of Grendel creating havoc in Hrothgar’s Mead Hall because all the thanes celebrate regularly with drinking and debauchery, enjoying their pride of community camaraderie, while the monster Grendel is shunned. Grendel attacks the Danes in their Mead Hall to destroy their sense of community. In other words, if Grendel cannot be invited to their party, there will be no party! In the movie, Grendel becomes the demon spawn of an unholy union between monster and human, thus creating a perversity to the original poem’s clear-cut motivation why Grendel attacks the Danes and reaps horror for 12 winters.
Gaiman and Avary take too many liberties with the story. In the original poem, after Grendel is slain when Beowulf, fighting without the use of weapons (but no mention is made of his fighting in the nude), rips the monster’s arm off, Grendel’s mother vows revenge and attacks the Mead Hall the next day. In the original text Grendel’s mother is described as a beast, with scales and claws, and the horror she evokes is compared to the horror an Amazon creates compared to a male warrior. In the movie version, the nude and sexy Angelina Jolie plays Grendel’s mother as anything but monstrous. Emerging from the water, gold dripping from her skin, her pony-tailed hair lashing to and fro, Grendel’s mother seduces the willing Beowulf, offering him power in return for bearing her a child (much in the same way that Hrothgar was seduced earlier by mother and Grendel, their love child, resulted). In Gaiman and Avary’s version, both Hrothgar and Beowulf become corrupted and tainted by evil, Beowulf harboring the truth of his lie (the lie that he killed Grendel’s mother) until his dying day. The phrase “sins of the father” is often used in this screenplay to describe the psychological burden that each warrior king harbors inside.
But Beowulf exists to establish the purity and righteousness of the noble warrior, he becoming the personification of all the noble Anglo-Saxon values. Not so in the Zemeckis movie. BEOWULF the epic poem is at heart the story of unadulterated heroism and glory in battle. The hero remains untainted and noble, while in the Zemeckis movie the hero is seduced by the dark side and spawns a monster child that comes back to destroy the community that the hero is sworn to protect. A simple story between monster slayer and monster is distorted and made unwieldy. Unnecessary psychological baggage is added.
After the roller-coaster ride diversion of Beowulf defeating the fire-breathing dragon in the movie, actually Beowulf’s own son, Beowulf lies dying as Wiglaf becomes the new king, hand picked by Beowulf to be his heir. But in the movie’s final sequence, we again see Grendel’s mother slowly emerge from the water ready to seduce Wiglaf and carry on the sins of the father for the next generation. In a way the screenplay does hold together thematically, but thematically the entire emphasis of the original piece of literature is subverted.
But what about the CGI human-articulated animation look of the movie? Zemeckis first attempted this realistic CGI with his POLAR EXPRESS, but critics always mention the uncanny recreation of humans with dead eyes. Here, the animation process has been improved significantly, yet the humans still appear not quite fully imbued with a soul. With a process that could recreate characters that are hybrids of long dead classic film actors, Zemeckis instead recreates actual modern actors as CGI clones. Thus, John Malkovich’s Unferth looks like Malkovich, as do the characters recreated by Anthony Hopkins, Ray Winstone and Robin Wright Penn. The question must be raised, if the CGI animation only attempts to recreate the actual actors, why not shoot the entire movie with live actors portraying the parts? Of course we all realize that in real life Angelina Jolie would not have appeared totally nude with full frontal nudity for extended periods of time (of course the CGI could make an already smoking hot actress look even more smoking by digitizing imperfections). But too often, in sequences such as Beowulf fighting the sea beasts in the race with Breca, or fighting Grendel in the nude or flying along with the dragon during the film’s climax, the movie looks more like a video game than a classic drama of epic proportions. It seems to pander to the adolescent demographic target audience a tad too blatantly. And the IMAX 3-D photography is just as gimmicky here as those patented 3-D money shots made for the first wave of 3-D movies back in 1953 or 1954.
BEOWULF, the epic poem and iconic shaper of all hero and monster slayer stories that followed in its wake, deserves better than this commercialized adolescent pandering. The story has survived for 1500 years and became the model, in all of Western literature, of all epic heroes who fought the evil beastie to save the fearful community of the contagion that they could not cure. Why burden the hero with lapses of sexual seduction, betrayal and guilt? Why can’t a hero king and warrior remain larger-than-life heroes to their culture? Why couldn’t the original source material be respected and preserved? Why fix what ain’t broke?
March 4, 2008
Hollywood and The Birth of the Gangster Genre-- LITTLE CAESAR, SCARFACE
Over the weekend a bunch of friends spent a Saturday afternoon watching two pivotal Hollywood gangster movies, beginning with Warner Bros.' creaky 1931 LITTLE CAESAR, the film that made a star out of Edward G. Robinson. The movie, overly dramatic and definitely larger than life, attempted to deal with current (at the time) social problems. We then watched the superior Universal SCARFACE, a film released one year after LITTLE CAESAR in 1932, but a film superior in so many ways. But as we re-watch both films today, each tells us a lot about Hollywood moviemaking and a lot about American history.
LITTLE CAESAR starts off as Caesar (known as Rico) sits with a friend and imagines what it would be like to be a citizen of importance and earn respect from everyone he meets. The answer for this second generation American is to move to the big city, join the mob and make his mark as a badass mobster. Having connections with gangster Sam Vettori (Stanley Fields), he promises to follow orders, keep his nose clean and to accept any monetary cut offered him. Of course, once his foot is in the foot, working with naïve and conscience-driven friend Joe Massara (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), Rico has greedier ambitions. Massara, late for his initial appointment because of ambivalent feelings about the outlaw life, learns too rapidly that once you are part of the mob, there's no turning back. Soon Rico, the more ambitious and conniving of the duo, convinces the "boys" to back him, so Vettori is moved to the back burner and now works for Rico. Rico guns for the city's chief gangster Pete Montana (Ralph Ince) but stupidly ends up killing the crime commissioner, bringing on the full heat of the city police. By the movie's end, when Rico, in total disbelief, is gunned down, he utters, "Mother of mercy, can this be the end of Rico?!!!!" His own disbelief in his own mortality cannot save him from a violent death.
LITTLE CAESAR and its portrayal of Rico illustrate the American dream where guts, determination and aligning yourself politically with the right people lead to fast success. Rico's tragic flaw is his unbridled lust for power and his fatal error is bumping off the crime commissioner. When Rico needed to lie low, he comes out with guns blazing. Instead of being satisfied for the wealth and power earned, Rico has to be top dog and takes power in the most unsubtle way possible, drawing too much attention from the police and city politicos. And he can't even keep his paws off his best friend's girl, Olga (Glenda Farrell). Too much too soon explains the rise and fall of Rico, and while he does achieve his American dream for a short moment, at what cost? Dying violently in a fury of bullets is not the most practical means of maintaining one's power and prominence.
More sophisticated is Howard Hawks SCARFACE, surprisingly, a gangster film not made by Warner Bros. but one produced by Universal. Director Mervyn LeRoy's minimal sets, pedestrian shot setups and stiff acting (Robinson is indeed wonderful though) doom LITTLE CAESAR to mediocrity, other than the fact it debuted the American sound gangster genre. Howard Hawks' direction is faster-paced and features ambitious camera setups. Playfully, every criminal who dies has his cinematic demise punctuated with some type of onscreen "X." For instance, when criminal Gaffney (a gaunt Boris Karloff months before he filmed FRANKENSTEIN) is gunned down at the bowling alley, an "X" appears on his scorecard before his execution. In other sequences sunlight forms shadowy "X's" in the background of sequences, signaling that another gangster is about to die. In one technically gonzo scene, a gangster is gunned down by a passing car and the criminal lies face down beneath a "Undertaker" street sign, his body forming the "X" from the shadow of the street light. The high angle shot is framed and lit to absolute perfection. Gimmicky, yes, but cinematically such audacity draws us in as well. Hawks is able to propel his movie with an energy and charisma missing from LITTLE CAESAR, and for me SCARFACE becomes the defining gangster movie of the era.
Paul Muni, sporting a disfiguring scar on his face, becomes more crazed and less predictable than Robinson's Little Caesar. Both are intelligent and ambitious criminals, but while Little Caesar was ruthless, Scarface Tony Camonte is a loose canon, and a twisted one at that. He is obsessed with protecting his 18-year-old sister Cesca (Ann Dvorak), who appears to have been around the block once or twice, to the chagrin of brother Tony. Any boyfriend is never good enough, for it appears that Tony's interest in sis is almost incestuous and his total control of her life becomes emotionally paralyzing for both. When Cesca, almost as wild-eyed as Tony, stands with Tony at the film's end and takes a bullet in the side and dies, Tony loses his desire to survive and goes on a virtual suicide rampage, defying the policeman to gun him down.
While Edward G. Robinson's Rico is often quoted ("You can dish it out..."), his performance today is remembered more for his acting tics and vocal mannerisms. His performance is one-note and fueled by his over-reaching ambition. His is a performance that will be long memorable, but it is one able to be teased and satirized. Muni, on the other hand, creates the more robust performance, one beaming with intense gazes and broad smiles. Muni's performance is never subtle, but it is one less easy to pigeonhole than Robinson's broader and traditional one. Perhaps the advances of cinema in one year make the acting in SCARFACE more believable and less dated by time and the restrictions of early sound movies. Howard Hawks brings a visual power to SCARFACE that is missing from LITTLE CAESAR. For instance, his brief reenactment of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre starts with an overhead shot of wooden "X" lattice frames. The camera lowers and we watch as the gangsters are lined up, all in silhouette, as they are gunned down. In another ambitious montage sequence, in quick succession we watch as Tony's criminal network moves in and takes over the booze business as trucks crash into curbs and store fronts are shot or blown up. But then again Hawks is the more innovative director and we expect such virtuosity from a master.
Interestingly enough, SCARFACE (subtitled "The shame of a nation") opens with a prologue criticizing the federal government for ignoring the gangland problems confronting the U.S. The text reminds viewers that we are the government and that we have to rise up and demand our government take action. And then what follows is a virtual roller coaster ride of corruption and warring gangs (viewers get the feeling that if they do nothing the gangs themselves, from greed, will eliminate one another if given enough time). However, this all out political attack on the ineffectiveness of the government is gutsy, especially when we remember that Prohibition was still in effect at the time of this movie's release.
America, especially when considering Prohibition, has not changed radically since the early 1930s, and the question of immigration, assimilation, economic empowerment and the criminal control of vice only reminds us that which failed 75 years ago still is failing today. Research came out in the press this past week that one in every 100 U.S. citizens is in jail and that most incarcerations are because of our drug laws. Doesn't this attest to the fact that just as Prohibition failed 75 years ago, that our current war against drugs is failing today? Outlawing vice only allows the criminal elements to become more powerful in its control. Perhaps the not-so-subtle truth of the message of SCARFACE needs to be heeded once again today. Sometimes crusty old movies are worth revisiting.
