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Goldfinger (1964, Guy Hamilton)
How can a film, with such a beautiful, awe-inspiring fight scene (Bond and Oddjob), have such terrible editing overall? In fact, how can the technical side be so contradictory… terrible direction from Guy Hamilton on most scenes, but fine or excellent when he’s on set. Terrible editing for most of it, but then the rest of the time, perfect editing. Or the rear screen projection. All the rear screen projection is atrocious, but the second unit photography is inspired. The only non-contradictory production element is the music. John Barry’s score is a masterpiece of effectiveness. The sequences where it overpowers the scenic audio are… they’re amazing. It’s like watching a scored sequence the way it should be.
Oddly, I have nothing but good things to say about Sean Connery too. He plays his role with a smile and a great deal of athleticism. He’s just a lot of fun to watch and he does great with his co-stars, particularly Gert Fröbe and Cec Linder. Fröbe and Linder, besides Harold Sakata’s fantastic performance as Oddjob, are the two best in the supporting cast. Problematically, the romantic interests in the cast leave a lot to be desired… Shirley Eaton is probably the best, with Honor Blackman not doing particularly well, but much better than Tania Mallet, who is awful.
Unfortunately, the movie is unaware of its own silliness (in terms of plot)… but once Bond is done using all his gadgets, it gets real good… starting with a great scene between Connery and Fröbe. That scene, though too short, comes after one of the film’s worst… when Fröbe meets with all the American gangsters (they aren’t called them the Mafia, of course, which makes it both dated and hilarious). That one good scene kicks off the last part of the film, which does very, very well….
And even though the last scene is poorly paced, Goldfinger comes off fine (thanks to Sean Connery of all people, which I find… given his work post-1970, rather amusing).
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Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott), the final cut
I’m having trouble working up the enthusiasm for a Blade Runner post. Not because it isn’t a great film, but because I don’t really want to engage in this “Final Cut” business, which I guess I’m going to do anyway. I’ll get it out of the way… Ridley Scott’s “Final Cut” is, so far as I can tell–with the exception of the filmic equivalents of sound bytes–no different from the studio-produced “Director’s Cut.” Or, if he did add or remove anything, it doesn’t change the experience. I kept waiting for something to provide further evidence for his overall thesis on the piece and it isn’t there (having the actor and writers working against you–not to mention the source novel, though I can’t see Ridley reading the source novel–can’t help). It’s cleaner, clearer and the same as the last time I watched it. Or as I recall.
Trying to figure out how Ridley Scott could have turned out such a delicate and subtle film–Blade Runner is, essentially, a film noir set in the future, but down to the subtext of people and their work and their relationship to that work, which figures greatly in to all film noir (and, actually, Ridley’s “truth” behind the film would invalidate). It’s a film noir in the classic, non-neo-noir sense. Sure, the Rutger Hauer scenes break away a little, but it’s really about the detective. And, in the truest film noir sense, it’s about the detective spending a long time figuring something out he could have figured out in a minute had he not been drunk and feeling sorry for himself.
And even though he becomes secondary for a lot of the last act, Blade Runner is one of Harrison Ford’s best performances. He’s the Dick Powell of the future. While Hauer is excellent too, I think Sean Young was the most surprising. She’s perfect in the role. The supporting cast is also excellent, but it’s mostly about those three.
As for Ridley. I really cannot reconcile the excellence he does in this film with anything else he’s done before or since. It suggests a real understanding of the material, though everything he says about the film suggests he doesn’t have one. Though… he relies a lot on Vangelis’s score, which manages to make the future, visibly uninteresting and banal to the film’s characters, magical to the viewer.
Until the second to last scene… when Ford gets the magic too.
★★★★CREDITS
Directed by Ridley Scott; screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Webb Peoples, based on a novel by Philip K. Dick; director of photography, Jordan Cronenweth; edited by Marsha Nakashima and Les Healey; music by Vangelis; production designer, Lawrence G. Paull; produced by Michael Deeley and Charles de Lauzirika; released by Warner Bros.
Starring Harrison Ford (Rick Deckard), Rutger Hauer (Roy Batty), Sean Young (Rachael), Edward James Olmos (Gaff), M. Emmet Walsh (Bryant), Daryl Hannah (Pris), William Sanderson (J.F. Sebastian), Brion James (Leon Kowalski), Joe Turkel (Eldon Tyrell), Joanna Cassidy (Zhora), James Hong (Hannibal Chew) and Morgan Paull (Holden).
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Spaceballs (1987, Mel Brooks)
It’s kind of amazing how much of Spaceballs is actually funny–pretty much everything with Rick Moranis and Mel Brooks as the Spaceballs president–given how everything with Bill Pullman and Daphne Zuniga falls flat. It doesn’t even fall… it’s a zero degree plane. Some of it has to do with the writing of that portion–Brooks and his co-writers aren’t particularly interested in the good guys because they aren’t funny (the jokes are cheap and substandard and Brooks tries to give it a narrative–and romantic tension–instead of playing against narrative for laughs, like the Moranis parts). But it’s not all poor writing–Pullman’s terrible and Zuniga’s worse, giving one of the abysmal performances in a Hollywood studio film from the 1980s.
There aren’t any good performances on the good guy side–John Candy’s probably the best, if only by comparison (he’s not good by any means and his character is unfunny) and Joan Rivers’s vocal work as the robot is obnoxious. It doesn’t help it’s obvious the robot is frequently a dummy. Brooks as the Yoda stand-in isn’t funny and the only amusing parts of his sequence (besides the Wizard of Oz reference, which is good) is trying to place the actors playing the Dinks (the Jawas). The less said about Dick Van Patten, the better.
The bad guys are all great, from Brooks as the dumb president (though it’s hard not to think he’s doing a Harvey Korman impression), George Wyner and then there’s Moranis. Moranis does something real strange in the movie, especially given the Pullman, Zuniga and Candy sequences. He acts and he acts very well.
The rest–the jokes about marketing–is hit and miss, but the real problem is Brooks tries to tie a narrative to the movie instead of just playing for laughs. It makes Spaceballs rely on Pullman and Zuniga, so it really can’t do anything but fail.
And… I really do think George Lucas ripped off the good planet’s costume designs for Episode I.
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The Presidio (1988, Peter Hyams)
I can’t forget so I need to open with it. In this ‘rah-rah, go USA’ twiddle, Sean Connery actually hijacks a eulogy at a Medal of Honor winner’s funeral to resolve his issues with his daughter. It’s a hilarious close to the movie, which has such bad jokes throughout, a laugh track wouldn’t be out of place.
The film’s actually incredibly important in terms of 1980s film history–it’s Paramount trying to repeat pass success without the people involved with those successes. The Presidio is basically a Simpson/Bruckheimer production (down to the terrible script from Larry Ferguson), just without their particular brand of cinematic styling–for all the lame chases and exploding cars, Peter Hyams is not a bad director… he has a good understanding of using a Panavision frame to tell narrative, apparently just not the sense to know how to fix a bad script. The film’s missing a hip score and Eddie Murphy. Mark Harmon’s in the Eddie Murphy role, though I’m not sure if Simpson and Bruckheimer would have gotten rid of Connery. (He’s actually not terrible in it, with his native… ability–or long experience–above the script).
Harmon’s pretty terrible, with his bouffant hair doing most of the “acting” for him. Casting Harmon as a tough cop was a ludicrous decision and he spends most of the film utterly lost, kind of like a deer in headlights. Meg Ryan, however, is pretty good.
Hyams takes advantage of San Francisco as a location (not just for the frequent chases) and it gives The Presidio a classier look than it deserves. But as a Paramount executive shepherd’s pie–I’m wondering if all the principles were fulfilling contracts since all three did Paramount work just prior–it’s a gem. It’s atrocious, with simpler politics than First Blood (how they didn’t get a Reagan cameo, I don’t know), but it’s always rare to see a film so empty of any artfulness.
And what was Jack Warden doing in it? From The Verdict to The Presidio… it’s inexplicable.
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Phantom Lady (1944, Robert Siodmak)
There’s a distinct, definite brilliance to Siodmak’s direction. The film itself is unique in casting a woman as the hero in a film noir, essentially Bogart in The Maltese Falcon, while maintaining her as female. Ella Raines’s boss (played, in the film’s only mediocre performance, by Alan Curtis) is falsely convicted, due to perjury. Raines goes after the three perjurers and Siodmak creates, in each case, a magnificent sequence, whether it’s chase or just discomfort. Phantom Lady’s most well-known for the sexually charged scene with Raines and Elisha Cook Jr. at a jam session, but Siodmak’s just as impressive during the subsequent resolution to that scene.
All of or most of Phantom Lady was shot on set and Siodmak even uses matte paintings–quite effectively–for one of the pursuit scenes. Early on, during the trial, Siodmak gets the acknowledgment of artifice out of the way, summarizing the trial with voiceovers, tracking time with a court stenographer’s shorthand, focusing the cameras on Raines and Thomas Gomez (the sympathetic cop). Once that very artificial sequence is out of the way, once the audience has digested it, Siodmak doesn’t have to worry about anyone griping about the sets.
The relationship between Gomez and Raines is particularly interesting, because he’s in that position as the film noir sympathetic cop who shouldn’t be helping but is helping… but he’s also sensitive to Raines’s position (she’s in love with convicted boss Curtis). The two details never conflict for Gomez (and, to some degree, it’s entirely believable Raines would be as dedicated without the emotional investment). It’s a big surprise, seeing such unique gender dynamics in a Universal noir from 1944.
All the performances–besides Curtis’s–are fantastic. Raines is both the Kansas farm girl in love with her boss and the film noir hero without ever toggling between the two. She’s always both… Cook’s good in his scenes, as are Fay Helm and Andrew Tombes. Franchot Tone is great, surrounded by weird statues in an apartment; it looks like the Coens adapted it for Blood Simple.
I think I’ve only seen Phantom Lady once before, but certainly remembered it being good… I just didn’t remember Siodmak’s utterly great direction (or maybe just wasn’t filmically mature enough to appreciate it).
★★★CREDITS
Directed by Robert Siodmak; screenplay by Bernard C. Schoenfeld, based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich; director of photography, Elwood Bredell; edited by Arthur Hilton; released by Universal Pictures.
Starring Franchot Tone (Jack Marlow), Ella Raines (Carol Richman), Alan Curtis (Scott Henderson), Aurora Miranda (Estela Monteiro), Thomas Gomez (Inspector Burgess), Fay Helm (Ann Terry), Elisha Cook Jr. (Cliff Milburn), Andrew Tombes (Mac the bartender), Regis Toomey (Detective Chewing Gum), Joseph Crehan (Detective Tom), Doris Lloyd (Madame Kettisha) and Virginia Brissac (Dr. Helen Chase).
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