LAST EMBRACE (1979: Dir. Jonathan Demme)
When an esteemed film-maker dies my first instinct is to research his or her filmography for the orphaned works in their curriculum vitae. These are the forgotten and forlorn films that have for no apparent reason, been overlooked by the public and cognoscenti alike. Jonathan Demme will forever be remembered as the director of The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Philadelphia (1992). However many years prior, Demme, who had previously been toiling away on drive-in exploitation fare, made one of his most satisfying early efforts, the Hitchcock inspired spy thriller Last Embrace. Unlike the contemporaneous work of Brian DePalma, Demme was not employing the genre in order to exercise his stylistic visual chops, rather he used the suspense form as a template to create a psychologically complex world for his protagonist, a practice he would later refine in Something Wild (1987), The Silence of the Lambs, Beloved (1998), and most recently The Manchurian Candidate (2004). Roy Scheider (Jaws) is the star of Last Embrace and as he demonstrated throughout his career, his is a screen charisma based on a uniquely vulnerable masculinity. One that could be both resolute and conflicted, sometimes within same scene. Playing these character traits to full effect, Demme forces Scheider's burnt-out secret agent through a gauntlet of arcane clues, paranoid attacks, and sexual duplicity nearly destroying his faith in humanity. In spite of the odds the viewer never doubts Roy's ingenuity for survival, much as he proved when outwitting the cinema's most famous ocean predator. Demme's eye for an eccentric supporting cast lends additional gravitas to the panicky proceedings, particularly the choice of two hot young actors: John Glover (Annie Hall) and Christopher Walken (The Deer Hunter), destined to dominate both stage and screen in the years to come. On the technical side, Demme was fortuitously re-united with cinematographer Tak Fujimoto, with whom he had previously collaborated on the Roger Corman-produced prison pic Caged Heat (1974). Their intuitive teaming would continue for most of their careers, but for this, their second joint effort, Fujimoto shot with a slightly diffused look that reflected the unease of the Scheider's shady world, expertly utilizing slow-motion dissolves to tease the tension and accentuate the anxiety. It all culminates in a melodramatic climax at Niagara Falls, abetted by a classically grandiose music score composed by Hitchcock alum Miklos Rosza (Spellbound). Released in early May of 1979 Last Embrace, was a disappointing failure at the box office, ironically followed by a similar paranoid thriller, William Richert's Winter Kills (see my blog here: http://motionpicturepredilections.blogspot.ca/2015/05/film-failures-i-refuse-to-abandon-part.html )which opened unsuccessfully a week later. They both were devoured by the juggernaut of Ridley Scott's Alien which burst onto screens a week after that. Undaunted, Demme turned a much talked about Bo Goldman script into the cult hit Melvin and Howard (1980) garnering multiple Oscar wins and major studio interest in its still-young director. His career was finally on track, and now as one looks back upon his eclectic body of work in both narrative and documentary films, it is evident that Jonathan Demme wrote his own epitaph in light and shadow, as a true original. BLU-RAY
