Film Ignorance #23: The Birds

Film: The Birds
Rating: Meh.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Stars: Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy
Year: 1963
Reason for Ignorance: Looked Stupid
Ignorance Rating*: Pending

Disclaimer: I'm one of those weird people who thinks Hitchcock was a good director but nothing special.

The Birds is essentially a Romero zombie picture in which the zombies have been replaced by marauding birds, the social commentary has been jettisoned in favor of a traditional love at first sight romance, and the lowbrow aesthetic has been replaced by the glossy sheen of Hollywood's most polished director.

If that sounds good to you, enjoy it. I wasn't particularly interested.

Everyone knows that Hitchcock loves to torture blond women, and boy does he torture Tippi Hedren in this picture. Maybe it's fair though; when his previous fetish object, Grace Kelly, left Hollywood to get married, he was without a stunningly gorgeous blond woman to cinematically torture. Then he saw a commercial with Tippi Hedren in it. So yeah, Tippi had an entire week of having angry birds flung at her for a single scene, but she also went from model to model/actor in the twinkle of the ole H-cock's eye (not that it helped her much. In the 25 movies she made after The Birds, 18 of them are rated 2 stars or less by allmovie. But at least she got work...).

I don't have much more to say about this movie. As for all Hitchcock movies of this period, it looks fantastic - he was always better shooting in color than black and white. Some of the special effects are chilling; some of them are laughable. The same can be said for various sequences in the film: many are quite well put together; another involves a gasoline spill, followed by a certain event that any four year old or person who's seen Zoolander could predict (why did he light that damn cigar?).

All in all, this was a kind of ok movie. But killer birds? That's just stupid.

*The "Ignorance Rating" is the percentage of people who voted "Yes" on the poll for this film. If ten people vote in the poll, and 5 of them have seen the movie, I give it an ignorance rating of 50. It's just a ballpark way for me to know how egregious my ignorance was in this case.

Film Ignorance #15: Sweet Smell of Success

Once again, I bring you a Film Ignorance post on the same day that you can read about the same film over at MovieZeal for noir month. And the person at MovieZeal probably even liked the movie. Go support noir month!

Film: Sweet Smell of Success
Rating: Meh
Director: Alexander MacKendrick
Stars: Tony Curtis, Burt Lancaster
Year: 1957
Reason for Ignorance: Never heard of it
Ignorance Rating*: 40 (54 Votes)

Let me be upfront about a personal preference: I hate Tony Curtis. I think he's a hack who could never act in the slightest little bit. Now, I especially hate that this quintessentially 20th century ass clown was repeatedly cast in period pieces like Spartacus and The Vikings, which admittedly isn't the problem here. But man do I hate Tony Curtis. That guy sucks.

Sweet Smell of Success probably offers the best Tony Curtis performance I have yet seen, but you'll pardon me if I don't think that's so special. Tony plays Sidney Falco, an unbelievably slimy press agent whose only skill is being friends with J.J. Hunsecker, a gossip columnist who can change a nightclub's fate with just a few lines of text. When the film starts, Sidney is on the outs with J.J. because he has failed to break up J.J.'s sister's relationship with one of his clients. Thus, Sidney has to get slimier than ever to slander his own client to appease J.J. while preventing J.J.'s sister from finding out about J.J.'s involvement.

This is a pretty good premise for a movie, and when it's focusing on Sydney's wheelings and dealings, it actually works pretty well. Curtis may not have been a competent actor, but he's quite convincing as an asshole who's no good at his job but has managed to succeed based on his looks, connections, and inexplicable previous success (which we find out he sometimes fakes). As a desperate and failing man, all of Curtis' failings are rewritten as strengths; it's easy to believe that this guy has no idea what he's doing, and will sell his soul to keep his embarrassing career alive.

Unfortunately, as machination piles up on machination, the film's tone shifts and becomes more serious. Eventually, it seems to be aspiring towards Shakespeare - both with its incestuous and tragic themes and some dramatic irony of the type that always strikes me as charming in Shakespeare but clumsy and sitcomish in 20th century film. It doesn't help that Burt Lancaster plays J.J.; I like Burt, but I consider him something of an overactor. The overacting serves him very well in the film's first act - he's playing a god-like columnist, after all. When the business gets more serious and fate hangs in the balance, Lancaster's overacting combines with Curtis' natural hamminess to seriously hurt the movie.

There are really only three things I can unreservedly praise in Sweet Smell of Success. First, ace cinematographer James Wong Howe's work is absolutely superb - it reminded me of Gordon Willis' later vision of the same city in Manhattan. Second, Elmer Bernstein's score is, as you might expect, not just a pleasure to listen to but far better at conveying the emotions at hand than Curtis or Lancaster. Finally, Lancaster's reverse mullet (party in the front, business in the back) is one of the most awesome haircuts I have ever seen. But you don't need to watch the movie to appreciate it.

*The "Ignorance Rating" is the percentage of people who voted "Yes" on the poll for this film. If ten people vote in the poll, and 5 of them have seen the movie, I give it an ignorance rating of 50. It's just a ballpark way for me to know how egregious my ignorance was in this case.

Film Ignorance Guest Blogger #1: Pat Garret and Billy the Kid

Welcome to our first installment of Film Ignorance: Guest Blogger edition. Some friends and fellow bloggers have graciously agreed to put their ignorance on display along with mine. Today's entry comes from Film for the Soul, as part of that brave blogger's attempt to view the 1,000 Greatest Films ever made. Good luck with that.

Film: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
Rating: Meh.
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Stars: James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan (!)
Year: 1973
Ignorance Rating: 20 (5 Votes)

"This country's getting old and I aim to get old with it". - Pat Garrett

Seen by Peckinpah as the ideal film in which to stamp his authority and vision of the western frontier, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid has the air of a film that should have been a masterpiece; seeing as Peckinpah had begun his revision of the Western with Ride the High Country and taken it to it's bloody conclusion with The Wild Bunch, the mythology surrounding the friends turned enemies was almost too good to be true. Pat Garrett was going to be his crowning glory, the apex to where he'd been going all his directing life. Yet, from the very beginning the film was riddled with problems with budgetary issues, time restraints and technical faults leading to expensive re-shoots and haemorrhaging money. Finally, studio bosses stepped in and producer James Aubery took control of editing, taking a hefty 18 minutes out of Peckinpah's version.

In effect the released theatrical version was rejected and disowned by cast and crew, Peckinpah kept his original version and only showed it to friends and family for the next 10 years, finally getting a release in 1988. In this revised release, the bookend sequence of Pat's death is reinstated; one can only imagine what a mess studio executives made of this film, leaving out these vital scenes takes away any form of pathos and removes a vital narrative element. However despite the reinstated scenes, Pat Garrett is still less than satisfying, never really finding it's place amongst the sprawling array of characters, vignettes of violence and muted, hushed dialogue.

Kris Kritofferson (Billy the Kid) and James Coburn (Pat Garrett)

The film's opening sequence, the one reinstated in Peckinpah's cut and the version for which I base this review, starts some 27 years after the events, those surrounding the death of Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson). Garret (James Colburn) is mowed down by the same men that once hired him to kill his old friend, each shot is delivered in clinical Peckinpah slow-motion whilst the action cuts back and forth to a scene of chickens buried up to their necks being used as target practice. The shooters show themselves to be Billy and his gang, the action flashbacks to 1881 and Pat rides into town, orders up a whiskey and tells the boys that things are changing.

The original script by Rudy Wurlitzer called for the friends to only meet once at the end of the film, Peckinpah's inspired change to this was to start with the recriminations; Garrett meeting his maker at the hands of the same people that hired him to kill Billy. It’s to Peckinpah's strength as a story-teller that insisted Garrett and Billy meet at the beginning of the film, knowing that the audience needs to see that unique friendship for themselves. Garrett warns Billy that he has 5 days to leave the territory and lying beneath this slightly strained meeting is a nettled and furtive friendship, one that is eating Garrett up inside as he spends the rest of the film trying as he might in avoiding the inevitable finale.

Despite this promising beginning Pat Garrett doesn't really leave the starting blocks, choosing to keep us at a distance for the majority of the film by not developing the story, it's as if the film burnt itself out with that staggering, awe inspiring opening gambit. Alongside Kristofferson and Colburn, a whole plethora of genre stalwarts and old Peckinpah regulars fill out some of the film with worthy cameo's, if only for the majority of them to be shot down, including; Jason Robards, Slim Pickens, R.G. Armstrong, Chill Wills, Jack Elam, Richard Jaeckel, and Dub Taylor. There's poignancy in these old-timers deaths (especially Slim Pickens looking across the river, eyes widening as he awaits his death), all the while Coburn marches through the county, armed with a shotgun and dressed in black, an angel of death, lamenting and snarling, bringing down the end of a genre.

We're fixed to Garrett throughout, Kristofferson's Billy never seems anything more than a ghostly figure, self-involved and prone to posing, we don't feel anything for him; whereas Colburn's Garrett is a fully rounded figure, dignified yet hollow, compromised and beaten. He trundles on regardless, fully aware that in killing Billy he's signing his own death warrant. He realises that the West is changing and rather than being swept up by it all he becomes part of the establishment never fully immersing himself in the 'New World'; in selling out to the man, he loses his soul. There are echoes of Peckinpah's life being played out here by Garrett, the feeling of compromise (with the studio), the crushing of the individual and rise of the organised, conglomerate new order. Maybe a Peckinpah of old would have been Billy; refusing to sell out, reckless with the world at his feet but now there was only Garrett, taking everything down with him as puts an end to it all.

The films stand out scene; it gets me every time.

A lot is made of Bob Dylan's score and the use of 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door' aside; used sparingly and beautifully as Sheriff Colin Baker (Slim Pickens) prepares to meet his maker, it doesn't on the whole, work with this film. It jars with the images we see on the screen, as if the entire enterprise was made for an entirely different film; fractious working sessions with Jerry Fielding, an experienced film scorer, probably didn't help, seeing as Fielding held little regard for Dylan's music. Dylan also took a starring role as the figure 'Alias', a role which apparently shortened by the week until he was nothing but a footnote in the entire film, starting off with a strong introduction; where he dispatches of man using a knife to almost a nothing role for the rest of film; reduced to reading a menu out loud.

Peckinpah depicts a west falling apart at the seams, a lawless territory slowly becoming domesticated with politicians, money men and big business, which in turn leads to one Peckinpah's key themes; that of the expression of violence of man in these conflicted and compromised new societies. For all the film's problems, Peckinpah still gives us a stunning looking film on the screen, proving once again that his style and staging are second to none. The west has never looked so forlorn, desolate and hell-bound, with nothing but angry displaced men, disposable women and a decaying old guard slowly ebbing away, dotted around the barren wasteland waiting to die.

In the final sequence, Garrett tracks Billy down to Fort Sumner, approaching the house in the middle of the night, Garrett takes his chance and shots Billy dead, falling to the floor in another of Peckinpah's patented slow-motion shots. After his death Garrett turns to a mirror and shoots his reflection; shooting the man he has become proves futile and death will eventually catch up with him nearly 30 years later. Once Garrett has killed Billy a little crowd emerges and one man accosts him, calling him a "chicken-shit" and asks rhetorically "when are you going to learn you can't trust anybody, not even yourself Garret?" That man was Peckinpah, quite literally in a cameo as an undertaker, harassing and shouting down his mirrored self; berating himself in the public arena for selling-out to the man.

Film Ignorance #5: Ben-Hur

Film: Ben-Hur
Rating: Meh.
Director: William Wyler
Stars: Charlton Heston, Jack Hawkins
Year: 1956
Reason for Ignorance: Seemed like it would be long, boring
Ignorance Rating*: 71

In 1927, the first year the Academy Awards were given, the voters couldn't decide whether to give the Best Picture award to the best picture created artistically, or the best picture in terms of technical achievement. They decided not to make a decision, but to give two awards: one for technical achievement, to Wings, and one for artistic achievement, to Sunrise.

Since then, I think we are supposed to believe that the technical achievement best picture award has disappeared, and the only Best Picture award remaining is for artistic achievement. Watching a movie like Ben-Hur, which won Best Picture and 10 other Oscars, that's hard to believe.

Ben-Hur is laughable in more or less every respect accept for spectacular technical achievement. The lead, Charlton Heston, was not a great nor even a good actor; if he could be wonderful in certain roles, he does not shine here. Indeed, his Best Actor Oscar for this performance seems to have also been awarded for technical achievement; Heston's giant forehead and massive frame are a spectacle in and of themselves, but any scene where he is asked to do more than glower is problematic (for an absolutely dead-on assessment of Heston's acting ability and the roles he was best suited for, see this post by literary critic/giant douche bag Stanley Fish: http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/larger-than-life-charlton-heston/ )

The first hour of the film, which introduces the homoerotic love-hate relationship between Ben-Hur, a Jewish prince, and his old friend Messala, a Roman tribune, is dull to the point of madness. The next hour or so perks up a bit; it features David Lean favorite Jack Hawkins, the film's only good actor, as the Roman consul who commands the slave galley that Ben-Hur ends up on after Messala betrays and enslaves him. It also features a sea-battle that's mostly watchable. The final third isn't much more interesting than the first, except that it features the famous chariot race, one of the most exciting chase scenes ever filmed. The film's entire 3 hour and 32 minute run time is almost worth it for the chariot scene alone.

I am tempted to rate Ben-Hur "But...This Movie Sucks" but the performance of Hawkins, the delicious homoerotic subtext, and, above all, the chariot race elevate it to the level of Meh. The acting is terrible, the story cliched, Ben-Hur's faith and multiple chance encounters with Jesus and one of the three wise men complete hokum. Every single scene goes on longer than it should; every event is drawn out and given far too much significance by the excellent but bombastic score.

In short, Ben-Hur is the filmic expression of Charlton Heston himself. Massive, overblown, fitfully spectacular and certainly not possessed of good acting. Were it 2 and a half hours long, I'd give it a partial recommendation for the positive aspects I've mentioned. Since it's more than 3 and a half hours long, I recommend that you avoid it.

A final note: The Academy, I suppose, can be forgiven for mistaking Ben-Hur's epic bombast for epic excellence in the year it was released. But both AFI top 100 lists and filmsite.org's top 100 list all select Ben-Hur as one of the best hundred American films of all time. With historical distance, they should have known better.

*The "Ignorance Rating" is the percentage of people who voted "Yes" on the poll for this film. If ten people vote in the poll, and 5 of them have seen the movie, I give it an ignorance rating of 50. It's just a ballpark way for me to know how egregious my ignorance was in this case.