Film Pairings — Two Films From The Seventies, Escape American vs. European Style

I can’t think of two more diverse approaches to film than these two 1970s crime films. One is American (U.S.) and the other European. If one needed an explanation of the difference in our cultures, this double feature should do the trick. 

Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw

The Get Away (1972) is about as American as a movie can get.  Sam Peckinpah directed.  Arthur Hill wrote the screen play based on a Jim Thompson novel.  There are are guns — lots of guns — car chases, crashes, fires, explosions, falling elevators, even a potential hydraulic compaction in the back of a trash truck. McQueen is an ex-con who, in his exchange for what he imagines to be his freedom, trades his girlfriend and agrees to do a bank heist.  We go from bad to worse.  No end to treachery.  Along the way, the Thompson noir got a Hollywood detour.  Quincy Jones provided some happy ending music.  Even so, the movie was a big hit, and despite its ‘70s sentiment, Getaway is nonetheless an adventure. You won’t doze off.  The casting director deserves an award.  Ali MacGraw costars with merit, and supporting actor Al Lettieri is appropriately and masterfully despicable. Sally Struthers is at her irritating best.

Maria Schneider and Jack Nicholson

The theme of the evening is “escape,” from what to what.  In The Passenger we find Jack Nicholson playing British-born American TV journalist David Locke who is fed up with his wife, his life, and his job, which has devolved into a shallow practice of a once important profession.  At a remote hotel in Chad, he discovers that a fellow Western traveller with whom he had befriended has died of natural causes. The dead man had few ties back in England. Locke figured that, given the circumstances and with a little tinkering, he could exchange identities.  It was Locke who would be dead, officially. And the Nicholson character would be reborn as Robertson, set free from his encumbrances. However, Robertson turns out to have been a munitions supplier in the Chad civil war.  The new Robertson comes into a large sum of money, but of course cannot deliver the goods.  In this European film, written in part and directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, the threats are more implicit than manifest.  The character’s philosophically existential dilemma is more important than his physical survival.

The Passenger (1975) is a slow, beautiful film. While Getaway is nearly all action, The Passenger slows so you can see the amazing stream of still photographs that make up the whole.  The life force in the film, however, comes from actress Maria Schneider, who plays a young and eccentric "passenger,",if only the main character would get it. She is a sprite who does her best to help a human (Nicholson) find what he is really searching for.

Oddly, at the end of Getaway, Steve McQueen tells Slim Pickens, “I hope you find what you’re lookin’ for.”  The thing is that the Slim Pickens’ character, hardly pivotal, was the only one (in both movies) not looking for anything and seems quite content.

The roughly four hours watching these two movies are spent in hot, dry and desolate places.  To help you endure your cinematic surroundings, put some ice into a glass with tequila or rum to stay cool.  Lemonade is nice too.

Film Pairings — King of New York, Last Man Standing

If you dislike screen violence, move on.  Nothing you want to see here.  Seriously.

In King of New York almost all of it happens at night — what you would expect from a noirish film like this. Night fell on the screenplay and couldn’t get up.  Last Man Standing is late afternoon to sunset, orange-gold overlays a world of endless dust, appropriate for a near-noir film.  In both movies, there’s lots of guns and lots of blood.

Though King has a remarkably talented supporting cast — Lawrence Fishburne, David Caruso, Wesley Snipes and a brief appearance by Steve Buscemi — there is no doubt Christopher Walken is The King of New York.  Walken ‘s character is cold-blooded and charming, crazy as a loon and despite his last, heartfelt and determined humanitarian attempt he fails to redeem his life of serious and gruesome criminality. The machine moves on. Directed by Abel Ferrara, the visually, but brutally striking film prompted some audience members at its premiere to walk out.  Filmed in 1996, it is one of few relatively recent films to meet the exacting standards of what constitutes noir.  There is no hope.

I’ve never seen Bruce Willis give a bad performance.  He is solid here as well, but something is missing.  Arthur Hill has admittedly and respectfully taken the story from Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo and it was also inspired, some say, by Dashiell Hammett’s work, The Glass Key and Red Harvest. A corrupt town is cleaned up by one tough and unrelenting gunslinger. Director Hill, mines the gold of his Western-movie roots.  He brings prohibition-era gangsters into a wild west town. Willis’ success in going up against impossible odds has less to do with an extraordinary intelligence but rather his ability to fire two guns at the same time. I believe Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rogers had this skill as well. But things were not nearly so bloody in their dramas. And we are not sure whether the main character is going against the odds, risking his life in the cause of justice or because he was disrespected. Early on, we’re promised the appearance of a super-gangster. Throughout the first half of the film, we (maybe just me) can’t wait for the meeting of the super good guy and the super bad guy, who we know by process of elimination, has to be played by Christopher Walken.  Walken’s surprisingly restrained performance is adequate here.  Given such a pivotal role, though, he’s not been given much to work with and the let-down is inevitable.  The movie is worthwhile entertainment, but it seems to me, Last Man falls well short of its potential. In the end, the most interesting character is the ineffectual sheriff played by Bruce Dern.

If you are staying in, this is definitely a hard liquor night.  I’d save King of New York for last to savor Walken’s incredible performance.  Nobody does crazy as well.