Tag: Lee J. Cobb

The Dark Past (1948, Rudolph Maté)

The Dark Past opens with a lengthy, confidently showy, and capable POV sequence. Lee J. Cobb is arriving at work, just like anyone–and the movie does a lengthy “peoples is peoples” bit–except he’s a police psychiatrist. It’s his job to save kids from becoming hardened criminals, thereby not being on the taxpayer dime. It’s progressive but not too progressive. Cobb’s not some wuss.

Cobb is outstanding in the film. It’s a sometimes silly role with the framing sequence, but when he gets to acting, it’s acting. Past is a remake of a stage adaptation, and Maté spotlights the actors. Well, Cobb and Holden. Cobb’s the protagonist and narrator, and Holden’s the star. The rest of the cast stays busy, but everyone gets left in the dust. It’s worst for Nina Foch. Second-billed, and she just disappears.

Oh, yeah, the setup. So, when Cobb has to convince a cop a petty criminal is a human being, he tells the story of his adventure with Holden. Holden’s so infamous everyone recognizes his name. But apparently don’t know anything about his very consequential involvement with Cobb. No spoilers, but the more interesting story is the direct sequel.

So, back to the setup. Holden and his gang crash Cobb’s dinner party. They need a place to wait for their getaway boat. While the guests give Holden’s gang minor trouble, Cobb gets around to psychoanalyzing Holden in a commercial for the Freud method. Holden’s a vicious killer who delights in toying with his prey, but Cobb sees some glimmer of humanity and tries to cure him. Foch kind of wants picket fences and helps Cobb.

The second act is Cobb slowly unraveling the very simple knot Holden’s tied out of his subconscious. Holden can’t unravel it himself because he has repressed memories, which only come out in his single, ever-recurring nightmare. There’s an inverted color dream sequence. It’s not as successful as it should be.

Despite his top billing, the film keeps Holden in reverse for a good while. Once the bad guys take everyone hostage, it takes time even to get Holden and Cobb talking. Partly because of Holden’s reticence, and partly because there are so many subplots cooking. Every single one of them gets left unfinished. The film often feels like the framing device is a distraction from the real story–which is sort of true because there doesn’t end up being a comparison between Holden and the kid criminal in the present. It’s not about criminals possibly being human; it’s about psychiatry curing them of their anti-social tendencies. Cobb’s not even concerned how the patient feels about things.

It’s craven, and it makes for some great scenes. Holden can’t figure out Cobb’s angle, and–with the frame defining the character already–neither can the audience. Cobb’s intentionally inscrutable; the only thing the frame helps with.

Lois Maxwell plays Cobb’s wife, who does get to fail Bechdel with Foch, but otherwise just sits around with son Robert Hyatt. He’ll end up with a bit to do before the movie drops him for the next subplot. Past is so noncommittal to its subplots, for a while near the end I thought they might even skip closing the bookend. At that point, with everything else unfinished, why do it anyway?

Maxwell’s solid. She doesn’t get much at all. Foch is good with a little more. Between Holden and Cobb, Holden probably has the edge. It’s a showier role, but he’s also got an arc. Cobb’s just proving one point or another.

While Past has its problems, the stars are phenomenal, Maté’s direction is good, and Joseph Walker’s black and white cinematography is beautiful.

This post is part of the 6th Golden Boy Blogathon hosted by Emily of The Flapper Dame and Virginie of The Wonderful World of Cinema.

12 Angry Men (1957, Sidney Lumet)

Director Lumet wrote at length about his compositional decisions for 12 Angry Men in his book about filmmaking, aptly titled Making Movies. The camera starts up high, looking down at the jury room and its jurors, then gradually moves down and in; by the third act, it’s in tight, low-angle close-ups. It’s beautiful, sublime work with gorgeous black and white photography from Boris Kaufman.

But it’s only one of Lumet’s moves, and, while eventually the most important, it’s not the most startling. It’s a gradual, deliberate device. You can watch it as the film progresses, identify where Lumet makes changes. The most startling and deftest move is how Lumet brings the audience into the jury room as an active observer. The height and angle of the shot are part of it, but when it comes to the men sitting around talking and arguing, Lumet wants the audience to have a seat at the table. The camera becomes subjective, whether a juror speaking directly into it or the camera peering at someone, trying to suss out what they’re thinking.

But at one point, Lumet entirely flips it, giving the camera a second-person viewpoint. Loudmouth marmalade salesman and baseball fan Jack Warden makes a big scene, then has to apologize to someone. It’s the first time Warden’s acknowledged he can be wrong—he’s bigger on identifying when someone else is incorrect—and Lumet shoots Warden in one shot. There are a couple cutaways to the wronged party, but it’s mostly just this long take of Warden being extra, then realizing his error. The length of the shot isn’t for Warden, however, it’s for the audience. So much of 12 Angry Men is about a group of men looking at others; the shot of Warden doesn’t have the ten other guys. And the wronged party is in close-up, from Warden’s perspective. The rest of the room is silent, some doodling, some daydreaming, many smoking, many silently watching, just like the audience. It puts the audience in the in-group and Warden temporarily in the out-group. It’s an incredible beat and a literal relief.

The film opens with a jury getting their instructions from a bored judge (Rudy Bond); Bond makes sure the men know if they vote guilty, they’ll be sending the defendant to the electric chair. They retire to the locked jury room, and men settle in, making small talk, and reading the newspaper. Really quick ground situation establishing and hints at character details. Only one of them has an actual character arc throughout, Lee J. Cobb. A few others have shorter arcs as they realize they’re not so sure about their initial guilty verdict, but Cobb’s the one who the film—from a strict distance—reveals enough about for him to have an arc.

Led by jury foreman Martin Balsam, the men take an initial vote. Eleven guilty, one not guilty; Henry Fonda is the holdout. He’s not ready to send an eighteen-year-old Hispanic kid (John Savoca) to the electric chair without at least talking about it. 12 Angry Men runs ninety minutes and change, mostly continuously, but it’s not exactly real-time.

Most of the jurors have passively decided: Balsam, John Fielder, Jack Klugman, Edward Binns, Warden, Joseph Sweeney, George Voskovec, and Robert Webber. Of course, they’re assuming the prosecuting attorney’s not just going to lie.

Then there are the die-hards with other reasoning. Cobb has issues with his son—Savoca’s accused of killing his punchy father after having enough one night. Ed Begley’s a racist. E.G. Marshall’s a stockbroker who needs the prosecuting attorney to be unimpeachable to preserve his investment in the “system.”

The system, of course, is patriarchal white supremacy, which 12 Angry Men couldn’t even talk about if it knew what it was talking about. Not in 1957. But the film’s very much about Fonda convincing the men to question their prejudices and preconceptions. Some of the men bend to reason; some react to the opposition having such shitty logic (if not the bald racism), and some just need the confidence to (earnestly) share their truths.

Reginald Rose’s screenplay (based on his earlier teleplay for an episode of “Westinghouse Studio One”) never gives the actors too much about themselves. Almost everyone eventually shares the basics: their jobs, their family situations—no names, not until the end, and then only a couple. They’re a group of white men in a situation with social norms, but there are bullies operating on different levels; they’re still strangers, even when they’re in the exact same demographics, and they’re trying to figure out how to talk with one another. Their frustrations (and fulfillments) might play out in dialogue, but the performances are all physical. We’re watching the men find their voices, good and bad, both through their dialogue and just their physicalities. It’s an exceptionally well-made film. The way Lumet watches the performances, the way the men interrupt one another, listen to one another; it’s an actors’ picture, to be sure, but almost more a reaction picture.

They’re all setting one another off, intentionally and not, to great success.

The best performance is Cobb. After him, the top tier is Fonda, Marshall, Warden, Sweeney, and Voskovec. Then Begley, Klugman, Binns, and Balsam. Fielder and Webber are both good but have the most caricatural parts. Webber’s the closest thing the film’s got to comic relief, while Fielder’s just the sweet, meek guy.

Besides Cobb and Fonda, the other big star is Kenyon Hopkins’s score. The film doesn’t need the music for drama—and Men doesn’t use it to punctuate—but the music’s still essential to the experience. Just like the audience, it’s also got a seat in the deliberations, another active participant.

Great editing from Carl Lerner.

12 Angry Men’s one of the true masterpieces of film. Everything about it improves on repeat viewings: the acting, the directing, the music. All of it. Just staggering.

The Exorcist (1973, William Friedkin), the extended director’s cut

The extended director’s cut of The Exorcist runs ten minutes longer than the theatrical version. The last time I saw the theatrical, I thought the movie needed some more time to figure itself out. Turns out I was wrong. The ten extra minutes just make it sort of tiresome. Like, the third act of the film—with the lengthy actual exorcism sequence—is already a slog without having to slog through to get to it.

The first two acts of The Exorcist is a series of vignettes, intentionally doing a stilted summary. Director Friedkin, cinematography Owen Roizman, editors Evan Lottman and Norman Gay—even screenwriter William Peter Blatty—it’s all for effect. The film oscillates between Hollywood movie star living in Georgetown to film a movie dealing with daughter Linda Blair’s seemingly neurological decline and local priest Jason Miller’s family problems. Miller’s mom is sick and broke and he went to Ivy League schools on the Church’s dime to become a psychologist and it’s not like the Church is going to pay for her health care. Eventually the two storylines converge, with some (delicate) prodding from the script, and the film slowly moves out of summary for the third act.

Except it’s just for the exorcism. And the exorcism is long and boring (I mean, it’s a Catholic service). The film entirely loses momentum, especially since everything else building fizzles in the third act. After being simultaneously under intense focus and ignored, top-billed Ellen Burstyn’s disappearance becomes all the more obvious. It’s no longer about Blair getting better, it’s about Max von Sydow and Miller fighting the evil one.

Also, was it so obvious in the original version when Miller doesn’t mention to von Sydow how the demons possessing Blair requested him—von Sydow—by name? It’s a major plot hole and removes the oomph of von Sydow’s reappearance in the film. The Exorcist opens with a lengthy prologue set in Iraq where priest-archeologist von Sydow gets worked up over some recent relic finds and is overly dramatic about it. It’s long, seemingly pointless, utterly competent and occasionally inspired—kind of a metaphor for the film succeeding it—it’s a distinctive non sequitur of an opening. But when von Sydow comes back–actually coincidentally even though Miller’s heard a tape of Blair’s demons saying the character’s name—the prologue retroactively loses the distinct factor. It’s just a prologue.

Though von Sydow isn’t going to save the day with archeology, he’s going to do it with a good old-fashioned exorcism, which the film’s been building to since the opening titles and amped up with doctor after doctor failing Blair so they’re going to need an Exorcist. It’s inevitable. Though it’d be amazing if they hadn’t tied the threads together and it was just character studies.

Anyway.

The third act’s a wash. The epilogue sort of saves things. The exorcism scene never looks as good as it should. Not the special effects, which are fine (also pea soup is gross) or better, but the visual scheme Friedkin and Roizman go with for the third act. They just don’t crack it. The rest of the movie, they’ve got it down. But inside Burstyn’s house for the battle with the Dark Lord… Friedkin and Roizman don’t have it.

I sort of knew the “extended director’s cut”—director’s definitive cut–wouldn’t actually fix The Exorcist but I didn’t think it’d make it worse.

I was wrong.

The Exorcist (1973, William Friedkin)

Despite the title, The Exorcist is about pretty much everything except the actual exorcist. When he does appear, kicking off the third act, it’s kind of a stunt. There’s a lot of implied mythology in the film, without much connective tissue–but nothing ruling out connective tissue. Director Friedkin does a balancing act. The reveal moment of the exorcist, complete with foggy streets, is where Friedkin just gives in to the sensationalism.

It’s 1973, there’s a possession so real skeptical priest Jason Miller fights for it to be exorcized, things are about to get intense. There’s fog, isn’t there? And music. Friedkin’s sparing with music. He uses it to great effective earlier, less on the exorcist’s introduction.

The actual exorcism has excellent special effects and good acting. Friedkin’s direction is far more pragmatic than usual; unlike the rest of the film, he and editors Norman Gay and Evan A. Lottman don’t make any imaginative, affecting cuts. Cinematographer Owen Roizman is given the mundane task of insuring the frosty breath comes out. Previously, he’d been creating this warm, welcoming, terrifying Georgetown. It’s a step down.

Despite being entirely well-acted, none of The Exorcist’s actors particularly standout. Max von Sydow’s archeologist priest starts the film, digging up demonic relics. von Sydow just has to look scared or sick. It’s not much of a part. But Friedkin and the editors work their magic and make it through.

Then the film moves to Georgetown, where movie star Ellen Burstyn is filming an adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s best-selling novel, The Exorcist–just kidding, she’s in some mainstream hippie movie. She and daughter Linda Blair are living in a rental house, complete with servants and a full-time assistant (Kitty Winn). Everything’s going fine until something starts happening to Blair… and the doctors can’t figure out what.

At the same time, priest Jason Miller is confronting a crisis of faith while trying to care for his aging mother. Miller’s crisis doesn’t get much time, it’s just part of his ground situation.

The film cuts between Burstyn and Miller. They’re in the same neighborhood, their orbits moving closer and closer. Though not in any inevitable way, rather coincidental. Burstyn and Blair’s story, despite a deadbeat dad subplot, is a lot less intense than Miller’s. They have all the fun supporting cast members, including drunk movie director Jack MacGowran.

Friedkin and the editors seem to cut a little faster each time. Actors’ lines don’t finish in their scenes, but carried over to the next shot, the next scene. Simultaneously, Roizman’s photography is completely laid back. It’d be calming if the movie weren’t called The Exorcist and there weren’t occasional scary music and what are those weird noises in the attic?

After getting done with von Sydow and moving on to Blair, Burstyn, and Miller, the film keeps its character focus pretty well balanced. Until Blair gets less and less to do. She has to go to the doctor and we don’t find out until after it’s happened. That absence succeeds in hurrying things along, but not making Burstyn or Blair much more sympathetic. They’re sympathetic because they’re mother and daughter and Blair’s a cute kid, not because they’re particularly likable. Blatty’s script doesn’t do them any favors. He writes scenes for maximum effect, not character development.

Then Burstyn ends up losing time to Lee J. Cobb–as a police inspector–and Miller. Miller’s got a new church subplot, which eventually meets up with Cobb’s murder investigation one. It leads to an excellent scene, beautifully shot, edited, acted, but nothing for the story. During the second act, the film loses its sense of momentum. Cobb and Miller are too stone-faced; the film needs Burstyn’s growing dread, which it mostly skips, even going so far as to switch over to Miller to avoid showing Burstyn and Blair’s side.

Blair’s fine. She handles the part, which is considerable. She’s the film’s de facto subject. Everything revolves around her and she knows it. Mercedes McCambridge does even better, doing some of Blair’s character’s voice work.

Great acting from Cobb, Miller, and Burstyn when she’s got the material. Nice support from everyone else.

The Exorcist is often expertly and sublimely executed. But that strong execution mostly pauses for the third act. The epilogue is better though.

On the Waterfront (1954, Elia Kazan)

On the Waterfront is relentlessly grim until the strangest moment in the finale. As the film finally reaches the point of savage, physical violence–it opens with the implication, but not the visualization of such violence–a supporting character (familiar but mostly background) makes a wisecrack. Until that point in the film, director Kazan forcibly pushes even the possibility of a smile away.

And even though Waterfront is desolate–gorgeously desolate with Boris Kaufman’s photography–there’s still positive emotion among its residents. Eva Marie Saint’s compassion and tenderness, not to mention she and lead Marlon Brando’s love story, aren’t grim but Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg don’t let any light in. There’s no beauty in tenderness, just the inevitability of it being taken away. With prejudice.

But Kazan acknowledges this level of negativity. Leonard Bernstein’s score booms and quiets, races and slows, drawing attention to grim realities (and the film’s willingness to confront them) while giving the viewer the illusion of a comfortable distance. That distance gets smaller and smaller throughout until it becomes clear the distance was itself a mirage.

All the actors great. Brando and Saint transfix. They work on a plane elevated from the grime of the waterfront. Co-stars Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb and Rod Steiger seem natural inhabitants of the waterfront, which makes them different to watch. Brando’s got to do so much in every scene; without him, without his conflict, there’s no movie. He’s got to sell every second.

He does.

Waterfront’s magnificent.

4/4★★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Elia Kazan; screenplay by Budd Schulberg, suggested by articles by Malcolm Johnson; director of photography, Boris Kaufman; edited by Gene Milford; music by Leonard Bernstein; produced by Sam Spiegel; released by Columbia Pictures.

Starring Marlon Brando (Terry Malloy), Eva Marie Saint (Edie Doyle Karl Malden (Father Barry), Lee J. Cobb (Johnny Friendly), Rod Steiger (Charley Malloy), Pat Henning (Kayo Dugan), Leif Erickson (Glover), James Westerfield (Big Mac) and John F. Hamilton (‘Pop’ Doyle).

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Boomerang! (1947, Elia Kazan)

Boomerang! is a mess. The first half of the film is a misfired docudrama, the second half (or so) is a fantastic courtroom drama. Richard Murphy’s script is such a plotting disaster not even beautifully written scenes and wonderful performances can make up for its problems.

And director Kazan doesn’t help. He embraces the docudrama aspect, having amateurs act alongside regular actors… sometimes even treating them interchangeably. The amateurs are awful, often due to how Kazen directs them.

Worse, Murphy’s only able to make the courtroom stuff work because he’s been intentionally hiding things from the viewer. It’s a terrible, terrible move; if he’d played the story out sequentially instead of keeping so much for reveals, Boomerang! wouldn’t be some lame docudrama, but a complex story about greed, morality and decency.

The first half has a great performance from Lee J. Cobb. Even in the film’s weakest moments, Cobb can do great work. It’s sometimes heartbreaking. The second half has top-billed Dana Andrews, who also has some heartbreaking scenes. He and wife Jane Wyatt’s quiet moments together are wondrous. Boomerang! disappoints because it fails all its actors. Kazan and Murphy could have made something special but aimed low instead.

Also excellent is Sam Levene as a reporter. He bridges the two halves of the picture, along with a political subplot–the country club reform party has taken over from the machine–and is the film’s glue. Or should be.

Great photography from Norbert Brodine too.

Boomerang! just doesn’t work.

Coogan’s Bluff (1968, Don Siegel)

In my youth, or until Entertainment Weekly misquoted me about it, I used to opine that film entered the modern era in 1968. I cited films such as 2001, Once Upon a Time in the West, and Bullitt. Coogan’s Bluff, released in October 1968 (who doesn’t love IMDb for release dates?), sort of goes against that assertion (which I’ve long since abandoned anyway).

Coogan is an anomaly in Eastwood’s filmography and maybe just in film in general. It’s not a Dirty Harry film–though Siegel’s direction is similar in both pictures–in fact, Dirty Harry was more of an identifiable character than Coogan is in this film. But Coogan is a character study… It’s incredibly different and almost impossible to explain. While there’s a chase scene, there’s also Eastwood getting beat-up a bunch (see, back in the 1960s, people could beat up Clint Eastwood, not anymore… he’s pre-iconic in Coogan), then there are these long, delicate conversation scenes between Coogan and his romantic interest (how did Susan Clark not take off as a dramatic actress? I half blame it on Universal and half on marrying the football guy). I think, in the end, I only decided it was a character study because we–the audience–aren’t privy to the most important time in the film. They just don’t show us….

Another interesting aspect is to see Eastwood’s progression as an actor. In Coogan’s Bluff, away from the Western setting, he’s obviously missing something. He found it quick though, given Dirty Harry and Play Misty and The Beguiled. But it’s a ballsy role–he gets his ass kicked all the time. The majority of his time is spent causing trouble and trying to get laid. It’s not surprising no one knows how to market this film today, post-marquee Eastwood.

Films like Coogan’s Bluff really spoke to me when I was a teenager because they did something different. Coogan doesn’t speak as loudly as it did–maybe it does, I can’t remember–but there’s some beautiful stuff in some of this film. Unfortunately, the Lalo Schifrin score works against it sometimes. So do the scenes when it’s too apparent they filmed on the Universal backlot, though the syncing is excellent in other parts of the film. And who thought the Cloisters would ever be used as an action showdown?