Witness (1985, Peter Weir)

Witness has a beautifully directed scene or sequence every five to ten minutes. Just something director Weir is able to particularly nail, sometimes with John Seale’s photography’s help, sometimes with Thom Noble’s editing, then probably least of all, with Maurice Jarre’s score’s help. Jarre’s score is good, very pretty, and occasionally redundant; when it sells a scene, however, it stands out. There are a couple where it’s all on Jarre. There just happen to be a lot more leveraging the photography and editing. Though mostly the Seale photography; Witness is often absolutely, intentionally gorgeous.

Weir directs some of Witness like a Western, which isn’t too much of a stretch since it’s got a Western’s story. Harrison Ford is a city cop who ends up having to hide out with the Amish to protect himself and a defenseless witness (eight year-old Lukas Haas) from the bad guys. Haas and his mom, Kelly McGillis, were traveling through the city and Haas witnessed a murder and Ford needs him to identify the killer.

The film opens with McGillis and Haas at home, in mourning—McGillis’s husband has just died and they’re going to visit family, leaving father-in-law Jan Rubes and prospective (whether McGillis is interested or not) new husband Alexander Godunov waiting for their return. The first half of the first act is Haas experiencing the big city, albeit through the train station, for the first time. Pretty soon it’s going to open up to his experience of the police investigation into the murder; once they get back to Amish Country, however, the film’s going to quickly lose track of Haas.

During the police investigation in the city, there’s a lot of procedural as Ford figures out what’s going on after Haas spots the bad guy and a bit of character backstory revelation. The film handles the exposition dump rather affably, given the violence around it; McGillis and Haas have to spend the night at Patti LuPone’s house—LuPone is Ford’s sister—and the next morning McGillis gives Ford the rundown on what LuPone really thinks.

McGillis and Ford have a standoffish relationship until after they get to the country, when McGillis has to nurse Ford back to health, setting them up on an inevitable romance arc. McGillis is risking everything for it, Ford not so much. Weir handles the romance with more distance than anything else in the film. Remote third person. We rarely get to see McGillis and Ford together, usually only for the most cinematic romantic sequences. The distance works, not just for the classy romance novel cover takes on their constrained love scenes, but also because it means Witness doesn’t have to delve too deep into the character development. There’s a never addressed, bulbous subtext about men controlling women—starting with all the Amish and McGillis, then Ford dictating LuPone’s social life, then Rubes dictating McGillis’s… it goes on and on and on. And Weir does his damndest to avoid it.

Because if the first act is Haas and his experience of life among the English, the second act ought to be McGillis’s, only it’s not. It’s also not Ford’s. He gets to do action hero in the third act—in an exquisite sequence from Weir, Seale, and Noble—but the second act is this roaming narrative about the situation of Ford recuperating in hiding, with Weir’s direction giving the film the structure, not the script.

It’s not a character study, it’s not a melodrama, it’s not a mystery. Committing to any specific genre would make the script’s decencies too obvious. So for the toughest spots, Weir just lets Jarre’s music have it and Jarre makes it work.

There are times when Jarre is more part of the team—the fantastic barn raising sequence, for example—and while they work better overall, it’s still cool to see (and hear) Jarre make the problem of disappearing subplots just not matter.

Ford and McGillis are good. The distanced approach works for them. Haas and Rubes are great. Godunov’s good, even though he’s basically a handsome creep. Josef Sommer, Brent Jennings, and Danny Glover are all good as the city cops. Glover gets the best showcase, Jennings gets the least.

Witness is really good. Weir’s direction is solid throughout, but when it’s better than the norm, it’s very special, which scales to the film itself.

Michael Hayes (1997) s01e02

It makes sense they did another episode to run as the first episode instead of this pilot. What doesn’t make sense is CBS green-lighting the series based on this pilot episode. It’s also interesting to see who they got to come back for the previous episode after they clearly didn’t work out in the pilot; Sam Coppola as star David Caruso’s cop mentor has a surprise twist here, so maybe it was good to bring him in before… but they really could’ve used Dina Meyer. She’s an investigator at the U.S. Attorney’s office and has been dating Caruso for long enough other investigator Ruben Santiago-Hudson teases him about it them talking flirty over the radio, but apparently she was out of town two weeks before in the first episode.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting from the pilot—I’d forgotten the hook of the show is former cop Caruso becomes acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and not just former cop Caruso becomes a deputy U.S. Attorney or whatever—but they really try to cram it all in here. The episode opens with a mob hit (so did the previous episode, sort of) and then we get Caruso meeting with dead guy’s attorney Donna Murphy, Meyer, and Philip Baker Hall. Hall takes Murphy’s car, which goes boom—leading to Caruso saving Hall from the burning car while a line of cops stand around and do nothing (again, it’s pre-9/11). Eventually Caruso gets the job, which would presumably cause some problems for Meyer, who doesn’t sleep with bosses. If only they can think of a way to exit her from the show while being low-key misogynist about it.

Caruso’s not initially on Murphy’s case because he’s busy getting Joe Grifasi in trouble. The episode’s got a handful of solid character actor guest stars—Murphy, Grifasi, Josef Sommer—and it’s scary to think how the show would play if it weren’t them. Tom Amandes is on as another deputy U.S. Attorney whose job it is to tell Caruso he’s going too far with the working class hero takes on the blue bloods stuff (Peter Outerbridge has a filler scene, presumably shot after they decided they needed him—or Amandes found steadier work). None of the previously mentioned guest stars appear on the IMDb page, apparently because none of their agents think anyone would care they were once on “Michael Hayes.”

Anyway.

Wouldn’t you know Grifasi’s case is going to end up having to do with Murphy’s case, but then it’s going to turn out there’s an even simpler explanation to it all so they can do a bad sirens-on cop car sequence and giving Caruso—at the time the acting U.S. Attorney—a burner handgun so he can be macho.

Along the way we get some more with Caruso’s family problems—nephew Jimmy Galeota needs recently released ex-con dad David Cubitt (credited as a guest star, which makes you wonder what’s going to happen to him in the series) to pay him some attention while the relationship between Caruso and suffering sister-in-law Mary B. Ward is different than in the previous episode. Especially since last time Caruso was trying to convince her to take Cubitt, hashtag family values, while this time he’s telling her to stay away from his deadbeat brother.

John Romano’s teleplay is fairly bad—the show has Romano and Nicholas Pileggi as creators but Pileggi doesn’t have a writing credit, just a story one, which is telling. Thomas Carter’s direction is fairly good for a nineties TV show (it’s interesting to be able to compare to the previous but subsequent episode just for Carter’s ability to compose for 4:3).

Maybe ten percent of Caruso’s performance is good and better. Most of it’s middling. Some of it’s “CSI: Miami.” All of the bad is Romano’s fault. He writes rather trite dialogue. The most important performance ends up being Mary Lou Rosato as Coppola’s wife and she doesn’t even get a credit in the opening titles.

Grifasi’s the biggest disappointment; not even he can accomplish Romano’s script. He’s only in it for a scene and doesn’t have the weird baked-in misogyny Murphy ends up with. She’s fine, just wasted. I was hoping for more obviously because what kind of shit stain wastes Donna Murphy.

I have no idea what to expect from “Michael Hayes” going forward, which must’ve done wonders for it back during original airings when you had a whole week to decide if you wanted to come back.

Still of the Night (1982, Robert Benton)

At the end of Still of the Night, the film puts aside the “whodunit” to give second-billed Meryl Streep—who’s playing the femme fatale part but not at all as a femme fatale—a lengthy monologue. It’s all one take, Streep just acting the heck out of this mediocre thriller monologue. It doesn’t make the film worthwhile, but it does make one wonder if it’s what writer and director Benton had in mind the whole time. Was he just setting up this moment in the preceding eighty minutes.

Because he’s definitely setting up the third act, which has lead Roy Scheider walking through the real location of a former patient’s dream. And it all being for a mediocre Streep monologue… well, it'd be something. Otherwise, Still of the Night is anti-something. And when you find out it’s a Hitchcock homage… you wonder what Benton liked about Hitchcock. Outside a blonde Streep and fifty-something Scheider’s only friend being mom Jessica Tandy. Streep’s thirty-three or so, but seems younger. Maybe because she’s introduced as Josef Sommer’s mistress and, even though Sommer’s not even fifty, he seems older. He seems like a dirty old man… because he is a dirty old man. But emphasis on the old.

Scheider’s a psychiatrist, Sommer’s his patient, who works at a New York auction house. Streep works at the auction house for Sommer and he always has affairs with his subordinates; his wife gets a lot of mention in the first act, with Streep bringing a watch Sommer left at her apartment to Scheider’s office so Scheider can return it to the wife, Sommer complaining Scheider never wants to hear about Streep, just about his bad marriage. Lots in the first act. Nowhere else.

I forgot to mention: Sommer’s dead. The picture opens with his dead body. He’s in a lot of flashback though, as Scheider reviews their old sessions and Still flashes back either to Sommer describing the events in the session or the described events themselves. Always beautifully edited; Gerald B. Greenberg and Bill Pankow do some lovely cutting. Sommer’s an elitist auction house snob and a poor quality human being. His description of “seducing” Streep made me wonder if anyone involved with the film in 1982 had ever thought of pairing “enthusiastic” with “consent” or if the concept would melt their minds (at the time).

Joe Grifasi, who’s thirty-eight in the film but somehow looks like he’s seventeen going on fifty-three, is the investigating detective. Scheider doesn’t give him any information about Sommer, even though he’s dead. Maybe because Sommer told him Streep killed someone once and got away with it and would she do it again. Also Sommer can’t shut up about how much he thinks Scheider would be into Streep.

It’s very, very strange. But also a lot more engaging than anything in the second half. Sommer’s a major creep, but he’s a major creep with a pulse (wokka wokka). When Tandy’s not around to liven things up, everyone seems on the verge of a nap. Scheider’s recently divorced, living in an almost empty apartment, focusing on his work; we know he’s a good guy because his first scene establishes he’s going to see a laid off white collar guy even if the guy can’t pay him. Scheider’s… not really believable as a psychiatrist successful enough to have an office even in eighties New York. Tandy’s a psychiatrist too and they get together and talk shop a couple times throughout the film. After they go over the dream sequence, which would still be somewhat creepy even if Benton didn’t… objectify a seven year-old girl, Tandy tells Scheider to call the cops but he won’t because of Streep. He’s got for the hots for her now. Their first kiss is rather uncomfortable because we’ve just seen Scheider getting all this intel on her mental state and then taking advantage of it. His unprofessional behavior is somehow even worse than the perceived age difference (Streep appearing younger, Scheider appearing possibly even older). When he complains in the third act about how he could lose his license… it’s like, yeah, Doc, you probably should.

While the first half build-up is—with qualifications—solid, the second act and its two big action sequences don’t play. Benton doesn’t have much music in the film. John Kander has a single piece they play three or four times, a very romantic piece; has nothing to do with the film or its tone. So there’s no music in the action sequences, just the gorgeous sound design. Sound design, editing, they’re where Still of the Night excels. Everything else has problems.

But having this muted vérité-style just draws attention to how absurd the action plays out. Scheider gentle stalking Streep through Central Park; great sequence, beautiful direction on it too, but it doesn’t work because Benton’s got things too firmly set in reality. Néstor Almendros’s photography plays into that footing too. Almendros does a throughly competent job in the film but in entirely the wrong style. It’s flat, plain, boring. Benton doesn’t showcase New York very much, not even the Central Park thing (which helps on this sequence), but Almendros also lights it without any personality. The lighting is off from the first scene.

The film is off from the opening titles. Lighting first scene. At some point in the film, almost everything becomes off in some way or another. Except the sound, the editing, and Jessica Tandy. Tandy’s awesome.

Maybe the reason everyone looks so dejectedly constipated in the film—save Tandy—is because they all felt it not working but no one said anything. They just made the movie and it really didn’t work, which a ninety-three minute runtime for the first picture Benton directed after winning… Best Director would certainly suggest.

Great sound though. If the third act weren’t so disappointing, I could see Still being worth it for the sound.

That Streep monologue you could just watch in a clip.

Dirty Harry (1971, Don Siegel)

Dirty Harry only has one significant problem. It has a bunch of little problems, but it gets past those–sometimes manipulatively, sometimes just nimbly thanks to director Siegel and star Clint Eastwood–but the big one. It can’t overcome the third act. Villain Andy Robinson (I can’t forget to talk about him) has kidnapped a bunch of school kids. Eastwood’s got to stop him. It should incorporate the film’s (significant) stylistic successes–the big scale action sequence (Siegel loves shutting down a city block with Eastwood playing super-cop) and the harrowing thrills (the middle of the film has this phenomenal sequence where Robinson’s running Eastwood all around San Francisco from pay phone to pay phone).

Instead, the finale has neither. It feels tacked on, sure, but a lot of Dirty Harry feels tacked together. And I’m not just making that observation because I know from director Siegel’s memoir he, Eastwood, and screenwriter Dean Riesner literally sat around and taped scenes they liked from the various failed drafts of the script. Most of the time the tacking works–it leads to strange, nice scenes, usually giving Eastwood some depth–but not at the end. At the end, it flops. The big final action sequence? Well, it’s not big, but it should be. But it doesn’t work. Even if the film’s final shot, with the beatific, haunting Lalo Schifrin music, is awesome.

The film starts in the daytime–literally, with Robinson killing his first victim on a sunny, presumably warm day–and gradually moves the action to night. Much of the second act is at night. Most of the second act, counting screen time and not present action elapsed, takes place at night. Nighttime is where even affably, charmingly churlish super-cop Eastwood gets to be scared. The movie works up to it, establishing Eastwood as much of a caricature as it can–doing a good job of it, of course, and doing the occasional aside to make sure the audience knows he’s their kind of bastard.

The finale’s not at night. It’s during the day. A very, very problematic day. Plot holes galore in its timing. Plot holes really shouldn’t matter in the last fifteen minutes of a serial killer thriller.

So the daytime throws Siegel off a bit with the finale. As does the setting. As does the pacing (he’s only got about ten minutes to wrap things up). But he also seems to let editor Carl Pingitore take a break, which is a big mistake. Pingitore’s editing intensifies as the film does, through the first and second acts; it’s incredible during the nighttime suspense sequences. Siegel, Pingitore, cinematographer Bruce Surtees–Dirty Harry is often breathtakingly well-made. Often set to the perfect Schifrin score.

Plot holes, Siegel’s lax direction, and daylight timing aren’t the finale’s only problem. Dirty Harry’s big little problem–and one of its most surprising successes–has its (muted) blow-up at the end: how can these silly cops and politicians not get over their liberal sensibilities and understand Robinson’s dangerous?

By the end of the film, Robinson’s killed a wealthy, beautiful, young white woman, a ten year-old boy, a fourteen year-old white girl (who he raped), a cop trying to stop him (Robinson shot him up with an assault rifle), and maybe someone else. Maybe not. But definitely those four. Yet mayor John Vernon and district attorney Josef Sommer want to make sure Robinson’s “rights” are “protected” more than anything else. Double quotation works because, while the rights are specific, how to ensure their protection isn’t. Anyway, even worse, they’re convincing Eastwood’s boss–Harry Guardino in a nice, ruffled performance–they’re right.

Eastwood’s new partner is a pre-affirmative action but come-on hire. Except, after working a couple nights with Eastwood, college educated, Hispanic Reni Santoni comes to understand not just the reality of the street but also how much no one listens to Eastwood. How could they? Their characters are too thin to have ears.

Harry’s coats its dog whistles in beautiful filmmaking, but it doesn’t do anything to disguise any of them. So when it turns out the reality of the street is Eastwood’s rampaging super-cop basically gets along with the bad guys. Even when they’re black guys. It’s all in the game, though sort of in a pre-cop movie, post-Western sort of way. It can even make for likable Eastwood moments.

It just doesn’t add up when Robinson’s the villain. He’s a proto-incel gun nut who fantasizes about killing marginalized people. The film frequently dehumanizes the character with these whiny, squealing wails. It’s supposed to make it okay for Eastwood to torture him. But it also makes the character even more unlikable because Robinson’s wails are so good, you just want Eastwood to kick him in the face until he shuts up.

It’s also kind of okay because at that point in the film he’s killed two adults and two children in a variety of circumstances and methods. Harry’s other problem with making its political statement is how ill-suited it integrates with the story. Dirty Harry doesn’t have much character development. In its place is this subtext about the problems with liberal intellectual politicians letting pedophile, cop-killing spree killers literally run wild. At least be invested in that subtext.

Until the third act, the film does a pretty good job of integrating that subtext. It usually gets loud for a moment, then quiets down for a while. In between are some great scenes. Getting over that thin aspect of the script is one of Dirty Harry’s successes, because Siegel and Eastwood are able to leap and bound over the thinness. Until the third act.

So Dirty Harry doesn’t finish as strong as it should. It’s hard to imagine how it could. Aside from the final action sequence actually being suspenseful.

There’s a lot of good acting–Eastwood, Guardino, Santoni, Robinson (kind of until the third act), John Vernon (ditto). Amid all those third act problems, Ruth Kobart gives the phenomenal performance in a small role. The film’s expertly made. Siegel’s Panavision direction–with Surtees’s photography–is outstanding. Those great Pingitore cuts, that great Schifrin music.

It’s just got a bad finish.