A STONE WRAPPED IN COTTEN

THE STEEL TRAP (1952: Dir. Andrew Stone)

               A BLUEPRINT FOR MURDER (1953: Dir. Andrew Stone)

In the 1950s, there was only one filmmaker apart from Alfred Hitchcock, who consistently delivered superior white knuckle entertainment to cinema-goers, Andrew L. Stone. Beginning  in 1950 with the gut-punching gangster film Highway 301, this maverick writer-director-producer made nearly one suspense film a year until Ring of Fire in 1961 ended his unprecedented string of low budget successes. Stone, often with his wife and editor Virginia as co-producer, had been directing films for nearly twenty years when he finally hit his stride with a pair of lean nail-biters starring Joseph Cotten. Both of these were mini-masterpieces of domestic tension, and featured Cotten as a man struggling to care for his family under the most desperate circumstances. In The Steel Trap, he is the grasping husband of naive homemaker Theresa Wright, who successfully steals from the bank where he works only to have second thoughts. The film's coup de cinema comes when he decides to return the money before its discovered, leading to an extended sequence of almost unbearably nerve-wracking intensity as he attempts to rectify his misdeeds with the same precise planning that he used to execute the robbery. Stone, whose independently financed films where a textbook model of economy, always believed in the use of real locations instead of studio built sets, not just for parsimonious reasons, but to add a contemporary reality often missing from glossy Hollywood products. This practice was particularly effective in The Steel Trap, a film that lingers in the methodical detail and procedure of the bank and its employees, as it slowly tightens an invisible vice grip around the audiences' throat during the film's ticking clock climax. Director and star reunited the following year in A Blueprint For Murder, another solid suspenser with Cotten as a distraught man trying to solve the murder of his wealthy young niece. Unspooling in a brisk 76 minutes, ten minutes shorter than their previous collaboration, Blueprint, is, despite its mundane police procedural elements, nearly as heart-stopping, with a wrap-up that keeps one guessing almost until the end credits roll. In both films Cotten acquits himself admirably in roles which require him to convincingly convey moral uncertainty, while at the same time displaying a genuine and sympathetic every-man earnestness. As box-office insurance Stone made sure to cast previous Cotten co-stars as his love interests. Theresa Wright, who had played his admiring niece in Hitchcock's Shadow Of A Doubt (1947) becomes his loving spouse in The Steel Trap, and Jean Peters, the well-intentioned woman who discovered Cotton's uxoricidal intentions toward an unfaithful Marilyn Monroe in Niagara (1953), this time plays his coolly elegant and recently widowed sister-in-law. Stone was able to repeat this winning combination with two memorable back-to-back James Mason vehicles, Cry Terror! (1958), a paranoid home invasion extortion thriller, and The Decks Ran Red (1958), an offbeat seafaring tale of murder and salvage. Prior to that he also gave Doris Day her most emotionally overwrought role as the eponymous wife terrorized by pathologically jealous husband Louis Jordan in Julie (1956), an exercise in near hysterical unease. My particular favourite of Stone's suspense cycle is The Last Voyage (1960), a sinking cruise ship disaster movie with stalwart hero Robert Stack bravely rescuing his family from breathtaking jeopardy, his wife poignantly portrayed by Stack's former Written On The Wind (1957) co-star Dorothy Malone. Typical of the director's constant efforts at cinema verisimilitude, Stone rented the Ile de France ocean liner and flooded parts of it under controlled conditions, even insisting his actors undergo death-defying peril including Stack, who, with only a wire around his wrist, valiantly traversed a narrow plank precariously perched over an actual 73 foot drop. Ring of Fire, with Deputy Sheriff David Jansen menaced by a raging forest fire while being held hostage by a gang of criminal fugitives, provided a fitting end to this pot-boiling phase of Stone's oeuvre. Turning the page, Stone decamped to London where he made three largely forgotten comedies, followed by Song Of Norway (1970) and The Great Waltz (1972), a misguided matched set of thoroughly maudlin musicals whose disastrous receptions spelled the end of his career behind the camera. Having the last laugh, he lived to the grand old age of 96, long enough for critics to finally acknowledge this early auteur of anxiety. DVD

FILM FAILURES I REFUSE TO ABANDON Part One

The Sicilian (1987: Dir. Michael Cimino)

 

I pride myself for my loyalty. If a filmmaker makes even a single work that I fully embrace, then I consider myself a custodian of his entire oeuvre. Michael Cimino is one of these artists I will defend at any opportunity. Under the screenwriting mentorship of Clint Eastwood, Cimino made a memorable directorial debut with an eccentric heist buddy comedy Thunderbolt and Lightfoot in 1974.  His follow-up was The Deer Hunter (1979), one of the most influential films of the Seventies, and the first Oscar-winning movie made about the Vietnam War. High on his sophomore success, Cimino garnered an unprecedented budget and schedule commitment from United Artists to make his mesmerizing mega-budget western Heaven's Gate (1980), a nearly four hour box office disaster that bankrupted the studio, and became the tipping point for directorial excess in Hollywood. Chastened by his fall from grace, Cimino regrouped for the slightly less ambitious Year of the Dragon (1985), a dynamic though money-losing cop picture plagued by protests for its "racist" portrayal of Asian culture. Undaunted, Cimino accepted the assignment to direct the film adaptation of Mario Puzo's sequel novel to The Godfather, entitled The Sicilian, a largely fictionalized retelling of the life of Salvatore Giuliano, an actual post-war Italian bandit, known as the Robin Hood of Sicily. Puzo, in a crass bid to give historical credibility to his invented Corleone family, shoe-horned them into Giuliano's real-life exploits. With all cinematic rights to The Godfather still in the hands of others, any mention of the Corleones were excised from the script of The Sicilian, and Cimino also distanced himself from Coppola's landmark saga by avoiding the casting of any familiar Mediterranean faces. This led to some downright odd casting choices, including German Fassbinder almuni Barbara Sukowa as an American-born Countess, Cockney Terence Stamp as an effete sphinx-like Italian Prince, and fair-haired Irish actor Ray McNally as a Roman politician. Cimino personally campaigned for Frenchman Christophe Lambert as Giuliano, and at the time his choice must have seemed right, given the era's paucity of young bankable Italian stars. Lambert, whose myopic intensity and physical grace often compensated for his limited emotional range, perfectly embodied Cimino's romanticized hero, a direct contrast to the docudrama approach favoured by Neopolitan writer-director Francesco Rosi for his 1962 film Salvatore Giuliano. Much like Rosi, Cimino saw his Giuliano film as a personal statement, the third in his mythic trilogy of criminal systems and the rebels who oppose them. In Heaven's Gate, it was Kris Kristofferson's cynical betrayal by the robber barons of the East Coast, a reality lived by Cimino himself when the film was cut in half and forsaken by its distributors. In Year of the Dragon, it was Mickey Rourke's noble redemption in his one-man war with the Chinese Tong, revealing a determination which mirrored Cimino's own rising from the ashes, but it would all come to a fateful conclusion with The Sicilian, where the optimism of altrusitic banditry is proven to be no match for the seemingly eternal corruption of Mafia-controlled Sicily. Cimino learned the same hard lesson about the Hollywood system when his 146 minute director's cut of the film was legally butchered to 115 minutes and released with minimal enthusiasm by a fledgling production company founded by former Columbia Pictures chief David Begelman, the convicted embezzler in a notorious 1977 cheque forging scandal that almost fatally damaged the career of actor Cliff Robertson. Maimed in previous battles, Cimino now seemed to have lost the war, making only two forgotten subsequent films in the Nineties (The Desperate Hours; Sunchaser), before pursuing a career as a novelist in Europe. With its lacklustre North American reception, The Sicilian was effectively orphaned, with only a later home video version of Cimino's cut, where the virtues of David Mansfield's lush Italianate score, Alex Thomson's burnished cinematography, and the director's own eye for visually epic composition, could still be appreciated by those who believe that a true artist is the author of his or her own fate and can never be silenced by the opposition or indifference of their corrupt benefactors. BLU-RAY

FAR-OUT FLASHBACK

SPACE STATION 76 (2014: Dir. Jack Plotnick)

For fans of my generation it is the Science Fiction send-up we never imagined. A laugh-out-loud love letter to the groovy dystopian space fantasies populated by swinging stereotypes in all their bell-bottomed glory. If you grew up, as I did, devouring everything Sci-Fi in the Seventies, then filmmaker Jack Plotnick 's Space Station 76 is the ultimate nostalgia trip back to the future. By cunningly stealing external elements from such treasured television trash as The Starlost, Buck Rogers, and Space:1999, and emotionally combining them with the narcissistic angst of a John Cheever story, Plotnick and his collaborators have created one of the most amusing recent critiques of the so-called "Me Decade". The film is an evocative compendium of the social and sexual self-involvement of the Seventies, embodied by the isolated inhabitants of the film's eponymous space station. As the lives of these egocentric avatars were being played out in front of me, I couldn't help experiencing cringes of recognition in between prolonged bouts of ribald laughter. Plotnick not only knows that hair, make-up and clothes are the easiest of visual gags when summoning up such a colour-blind fashion epoch, but he also cleverly underlines the emptiness of his character's lives by recreating the cloying consumerism and psychedelic suburban styles that saturated the interiors of homes from my childhood memories. Just as this was an era when it was o.k. to have wood paneling and blue paisley wallpaper in the same kitchen, it was also a time when the tradition of marital fidelity was being challenged by a generation raised on a steady Sixties diet of freedom and experimentation. Western society was in transition, trying to make sense of a culture liberated by the enlightenment of new gender roles, and until 1977 when the retro-pulp fantasy of Star Wars changed the channel, the Science Fiction genre in film and TV reflected this disillusionment with outmoded ideologies. The danger is that films like Space Station 76 can fool us into thinking we have come a long way since those days, but it's Plotnick's ingenious intention to question that assumption, thus allowing the chilly air of truth to temper his warm mirthful memories. Blu-ray

ACTION HEROES WHO DELIGHT ME: Jean-Paul Belmondo

"THAT MAN FROM RIO" (1964: Dir. Philippe De Broca)

There are very few actors in the history of world cinema who are willing to risk their lives for a film. During the silent era, both Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd seemed to dance with death regularly, Lloyd even lost a thumb and forefinger in a botched explosion. For succeeding generations various performers have exhibited a desire to do their own stunts, and in France starting in the Sixties one daredevil actor perched himself above all others on the precipice of excitement. Jean-Paul Belmondo may not have been a vaudeville tumbler like Cary Grant, or a circus acrobat like Burt Lancaster, but this classically trained stage actor was just as fearless taking a punch or leaping from a tall window. Belmondo`s career as a leading man was auspiciously launched in 1960 with the art house hits Breathless and Two Women, and soon after his dramatic talents were firmly established in the challenging role of an intellectual cleric in Leon Morin, Priest (1961).  The next year he began a collaboration that would last for nearly his entire career, when director Phillipe De Broca cast him opposite Tunisian starlet Claudia Cardinale as the eponymous swashbuckling rogue in Cartouche. In this lively romp, Belmondo was allowed to finally cut loose, winning over a delighted audience with his abundant charm and seemingly boundless energy. Both men basked in the unprecedented success of their endeavour, so when De Broca was denied the film rights to the famous Belgian comic book hero Tintin, he quickly developed his own similar adventure film featuring a star whom he knew could deliver the requisite heroic stunts on camera. As with all action adventure films of that era and despite its roots in the traditions of European pulp literature, That Man From Rio, couldn't help but be also influenced by the recent 007 craze. Most notably featuring future Bond baddie Adolfo Celli (Thunderball) in a supporting role. Proudly flaunting its bubbly buffoonery the film's damsel-in-distress plot concerning stolen native artifacts, was in reality just a pretense to stage all manner of chases, fights and daredevilry, all the while featuring the jet set locations of Brazil, the sweet ethereal beauty of Francoise Dorleac, and of course, Belmondo`s affable humour and awe-inspiring physical courage. Even fifty years later, it still stirs the blood when Bebel (Belmondo`s nickname), performs his own vertigo-inducing high jinks in full view of the lens. It was a feat not attempted again by a major star until a generation later, when Jackie Chan took even bigger risks with often injurious results. That Man From Rio proved to be a substantial hit, and after collaborating on a more comedic follow-up project Up To His Ears (1965) co-starring Belmondo`s then girlfriend Ursula Andress, he and De Broca took a break from each other until their hilarious James Bond fantasy spoof The Man from Acapuclo a.k.a. Le Magnifique (1973), subsequently succeeded by the entertaining con man comedy Incorrigible (1975) and finally Amazon (2000), a late career mis-step uncomfortably combining the science fiction, comedy, and jungle adventure genres. Belmondo would vault into action for other filmmakers as well, but few of the those pictures possess the pure fun and innocence of those he made with De Broca, the filmmaker who made him France`s greatest action star. BLU-RAY

ACTION HEROES WHO DELIGHT ME: Roger Moore

MOONRAKER (1979: Dir. Lewis Gilbert)

For some he was the Bond that should have never been. For others he was a delightedly droll hero from the intensely paranoid era of Popeye Doyle and Dirty Harry. Roger Moore was never going to be the greatest actor to wear the mantle of Ian Fleming's ageless spy, but he was, for more than a decade, the unflappable personification of Seventies British Cool. Fresh from his debonair TV characters of The Saint and The Persuaders, Moore scored an immediate hit as 007 starting with the Blaxploitation Bond film Live and Let Die (1973), followed by the dreary kung fu antics of The Man With The Golden Gun (1974), and finally hitting his stride with the witty and sophisticated action adventure cocktail of The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). For Your Eyes Only, was intended to follow, but in the meantime Star Wars had proven Sci-Fi could be huge box-office, so the third James Bond novel Moonraker, with its out-of-this-world title, was substituted instead. It became the highest grossing film in the series to date, but it was not without its detractors. For Sean Connery, and even George Lazenby fans, Roger Moore's interpretation was just too light and self-mocking, an eyebrow-raising maitre d' presiding over a full course meal of snide one-liners, pigeon double takes, and silly set pieces. For the young film fans coming of age during this new era of the blockbuster, the tall fair haired Moore represented the ultimate parody of the British stiff upper lip, always ready with a witty rejoinder for every deadly situation and never with a hair out of place. This characterization mined a different vein from his predecessors but it was Moore's personal irreverence for his own acting abilities that sold his breezy Bond to a willing public. Possessing none of Connery's cat-like grace, Moore embodied the stiff action man, thereby diminishing much of the tension and suspense of Fleming's popular literary protagonist. Aware of these shortcomings, producer Albert R. Broccoli, embraced the infectious drollery of his new leading man, boldly anticipating an audience who didn't need to be shaken and stirred, just pleasingly satisfied with the deluxe morsels of a stylish Bondian banquet. Moonraker represents the zenith of the Moore era, containing the most extravagant set designs by series veteran Sir Ken Adam, the stunning in-camera miniature effects of Derek Meddings, the sensual cinematography of Jean Tournier and the majestically elegant score by Bond theme arranger John Barry. It was also the first of the series to be based outside of Britain, nearly overwhelming its Parisian crew of technicians with an ambitiously sprawling production matched only by the recent mega-budget spectacle of Superman. A middle-aged Moore would go on to star in three further Bonds, with progressively less enjoyable results, and despite futile attempts to cover his wrinkled visage, he would never lose his sense of facetious fun in a role that brought unaffected joy to a cynical post hippie generation. BLU-RAY

ACTION HEROES WHO DELIGHT ME: Errol Flynn

THE ADVENTURES OF DON JUAN (1948: Dir. Vincent Sherman)

Seven years ago I wrote a blog entitled Where Have All The Heroes Gone? in which I praised the traditional heroes of an earlier era whose selfless acts bore none of the cynicism of our selfish post-millenial age. With most screens now officially dominated either by the adolescent antics of  "super-heroes" or the machine gun marauding of weary, middle-aged "expendables", the old joy of light comedy action seems like a foreign language to a generation raised on violent video games and the morbid fascination of crime scene corpses.  I have always believed that humour is a vital component to all films, and as a fan of cinematic athleticism, I can think of no better actor who embodies both of these attributes better than Errol Flynn. Bursting onto the screen with the swashbuckling earnestness of Captain Blood (1935), the dashing Tasmanian thrusted himself into the pantheon of classic movie heroes. With the assistance of Belgian fencing master Fred Cavens, Flynn developed his superior skills with a sword, which combined with a devil-may-care charm and matinee idol looks made him the greatest action star of his day. Perhaps the most important aspect of his screen persona is his pure joie de vivre, an overpowering life force energy that envelopes the viewer in its sureness of purpose. Any actor can dexterously wield a blade or shoot an arrow, but Flynn's grin makes it fun in a uniquely satisfying way, as if we the audience are partaking in the exhilarating hijinks ourselves. I still find myself almost immediately drawn into the rousing action of The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) due to the infectiousness of Flynn's zestfully witty performance. His unparalleled run of escapist entertainments continued unabated for nearly a decade after Captain Blood had made him a star overnight, but it wasn't until after a fallow period of dramas during WWII, that Flynn returned to make his testament film, The Adventures of Don Juan. It would be a rollicking swashbuckler in the quintessential Flynn style, this time taking full satirical advantage of the aging star's real-life reputation as a notorious lothario. Directed by veteran Warner Bros. craftsman Vincent Sherman (Mr Skeffington), Don Juan is a fascinating and enjoyable hybrid film in the Flynn canon, full of self-deprecating jokes, electrifying action, and melancholy romance. Flynn, still able to perform much of his own swordsmanship, owns the screen, seeding little ground to his flavourful supporting cast, including Errol's jovial cinematic sidekick Alan Hale, the oily villainy of Robert Douglas and the luscious pulchritude of Viveca Lindfors. Its all topped off with composer Max Steiner's playfully Spanish score, pushing the already exciting action sequences into exuberant overdrive. Maybe the film's energy should be credited to Sherman, a man who nearing his 100th birthday can be heard still waxing excitedly about his and Flynn's achievement on the DVD commentary track, six decades later!  BLU-RAY

PRINTER'S INK PROTAGONISTS Part Two

DANGER: DIABOLIK (1968: Dir. Mario Bava)

When the American counterculture came into full-bloom during the late Sixties, there were very few cinematic heroes for disaffected youth to embrace. Most were government agents or other guardians of the status quo. This was an era before anti-heroes dominated the mainstream, with the closest Hollywood approximation being Harper, an irreverent gum-chewing private eye played by Paul Newman ( Hud, Hombre) in the hippest of his Sixties "H" roles. By 1967, the seeds of cultural and political revolution were also being sown in France and Italy, where a generation of teenagers grew up with comic book "heroes" whose behavior and mores represented an enviable anarchistic hedonism that fulfilled their now adult yearnings for a new world order. Many of these lawless protagonists were loosely based on the fictional template of the seminal French super-thief Arsene Lupin, created in 1902 and later the inspiration for such nefarious continental characters as Fantomas and Diabolik. Parisian arch villain Fantomas, having been around since 1911, was adapted for the screen many times, including a trio of films starting in 1964 that softened the dark psychopathy of its titular master of disguise, in favor of a more farcical approach. The knife-wielding Diabolik was the Italian anti-hero equivalent, eschewing Fantomas' ruthless power-hungry killing of innocent civilians. Instead, Diabolik confined his thieving ways to a greedy pursuit of personal wealth, aided by his gorgeous paramour Eva Kant. Created in 1962 by the Guisanni sisters, he first appeared in digest-sized monthlies or fumetti, printed in a black and white format well-suited to the noir atmosphere of his adventures. After an aborted attempt at bringing these characters to the screen in the mid-Sixties starring French actor Jean Sorel and Italian actress Elsa Martinelli, the rights were subsequently acquired by flamboyant producer Dino De Laurentiis who immediately hired ace genre director Mario Bava, an acknowledged maestro of  in-camera special effects. De Laurentiis chose as his leads, lanky American actor John Philip Law and petite French superstar Catherine Deneuve, but personalities clashed early on, so Deneuve was quickly replaced by statuesque Austrian cult actress Marisa Mell. With the characters' chemistry now rightfully restored, the resultant evidence was immediately apparent from their very first lovingly erotic embrace, when Law, breathtaking as Diabolik emerges from his flash sports car clad in a black head-to-toe skin tight rubber suit, to greet Mell, ultra sexy in her go-go boots and diaphanous orange mini dress. Glowing from their simultaneous off-screen affair, these two striking stars effortlessly draw focus in every scene, leaving Bava alone to dazzle the audience with his astonishingly substantive foreground miniatures and deceptive glass matte backgrounds. Having been one of Italy's premier cinematographers, he also took pains to suggest the visual two dimensionality of the original fumetti by dynamically employing wide angle lenses and the dreamlike layering of  rear projection.  Of course the comic book's original muted tones had no place in a Sixties romp, so Bava fully embraced the film's vivid colour scheme, particularly emphasizing a gold motif to symbolize the avarice of his doomed hero. Given its dazzling production design, one would imagine that Danger: Diabolik must have cost a comparative fortune. It was after all budgeted at the large sum of nearly 3 million dollars, however Bava, accustomed to achieving miracles on low budgets, shockingly completed the entire film for a measly $400 000 dollars. A sequel was proposed using the remaining funds, but Bava declined, having felt that the scrutiny he had endured as a director on such a high profile project was ultimately not worth the extra luxuries of production that were afforded to him. The film's resulting success both financially and artistically was further underscored when producer De Laurentiis followed up Danger: Diabolik with the 9 million dollar comic book adaptation Barbarella, once again starring John Philip Law. A bloated, static, and sometimes cheap looking fantasy, it has little of the joie de vivre of Bava's film and today is mostly remembered as an ambitious gamble by provocative filmmaker Roger Vadim (Blood and Roses), featuring his then-wife Jane Fonda in an unseemly salacious role. Signaling the end of a cycle, it would be ten more years before Richard Donner's Superman finally gave dramatic credibility to comic book heroes, initiating a blockbuster legacy that has irrevocably altered the entire Hollywood filmmaking model, seemingly forever. BLU-RAY