ROBERT NISHIMURA’S THREE REASONS: Ken Russell’s THE DEVILS

ROBERT NISHIMURA’S THREE REASONS: Ken Russell’s THE DEVILS

Three Reasons: The Devils from For Criterion Consideration on Vimeo.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Press Play's Robert Nishimura video series Three Reasons continues with Ken Russell's The Devils. He feels the disturbing film is a perfect candidate for restoration and release on the Criterion label.

By Robert Nishimura
Press Play Contributor

Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971) was doomed from the moment it finished production.  The censors immediately gave it an X rating, even after Russell removed over thirty minutes of film.  The U.S. poster art is basically a warning to anyone who wandered off the street into the cinema: The Devils is not for everyone. (An actual blow-up of the poster appears below.) It might as well have read: "Watching this film will cause instant miscarriage and paralysis below the waist." Whereas most provocateurs would kill for that type of publicity, The Devils suffered the terrible fate of being banned in several countries and forgotten. It's now unavailable, of course.  This year saw it's first actual uncut "premiere" in London, which means a restored home-video release is inevitably in the works.

The Devils was partly based on Aldous Huxley’s 1952 non-fiction novel The Devils of Loudun, as well as John Whiting’s 1960 follow-up play The Devils.  Both sources were inspired by the notorious case of supposed demonic possession in 17th-century France, in which a charismatic Catholic priest, Urbain Grandier, was accused of bewitching nuns to commit vile acts of sexual debauchery. Whether true or not, the story was perpetuated by Cardinal Richelieu to King Louis XIII as an excuse to destroy a small village that just so happened to have a large community of Protestants.  Russell's film highlights the delirious excess of French patriarchy, the corruption of Church and State and the degradation of religious principles, points that still hold true today.  But that's not what caused critics to universally pan the film upon its release as "monstrously indecent."  What enraged most critics/audiences/countries is what Russell subsequently edited out, that which only very recently has been restored and replaced: the sweet, sweet sexual debauchery.

A quick search will reveal just what exactly had to be removed, and there's little point in including those scenes here (or in the video) because it has become irrelevant.   Like censoring a porno to exclude the money shot, Russell's worldview is loud and clear; we just don't get the satisfaction at the end.  Cross-dressing kings shooting Protestants dressed like birds, a nunnery home for wayward nymphomaniacs, barbaric 17th-century medical practices, torture, rape and religious genocide – just some of the family-friendly fun actually deemed "good enough" to make the cut. Maybe if critics had viewed the film as satire, or at least (charred-) black comedy, the scenes they singled out would be unnecessary to excise. Russell so willingly made the cuts because his overall message had remained intact and, luckily, overlooked by the censors.

What makes the film so compelling is Oliver Reed’s performance as the libidinous priest, Urbain Grandier.  Russell always recognized Reed's potential as an actor, and there weren't too many directors capable of restraining Reed's self-destructive tendencies long enough to get a great (or sober) performance out of him.  Just one year earlier the Academy was practically throwing Oscars at Russell for showing Reed and Alan Bates wrestle in the nude in Women in Love, yet having Reed being burned alive for heresy didn't even get so much as a nod from any award-givers.  Another tragically ignored performance came from Vanessa Redgrave, whose portrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots in Charles Jarrott's film of the same name earned her a nomination for Best Actress the same year Ken Russell was nominated for Women in Love.

For the past few years there's been the rumor that Warner Bros. was restoring the film for home release, even going so far as to design a DVD jacket for online retailers.  Then, suddenly, poof – the film was pulled without any mention of cancellation or delay.  Perhaps when they finally saw the film in it's entirety, they thought better of it.  Perhaps when they saw Reed and Redgrave finally "get together" in the film's conclusion, Warner Bros. feared backlash from the same conservative zealots that the film lampoons.  Regardless, an uncut print exists in the U.K., which means a release is possible in the U.S.  Hopefully, Criterion gets the message and first dibs.

Robert Nishimura is a Japan-based filmmaker, artist, and freelance designer. His designs can be found at Primolandia Productions. His non-commercial video work is at For Criterion Consideration. You can follow him on Twitter here. To watch other videos in his "Three Reasons" series, click here.

DVD REVIEWS: PRIEST, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, CLASH and the Criterion CUL-DE-SAC

DVD REVIEWS: PRIEST, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, CLASH and the Criterion CUL-DE-SAC

By Simon Abrams
Press Play Contributor

EDITOR’S NOTE: This week Press Play contributor Simon Abrams features a quartet of mini-reviews spotlighting new releases on home video. They are: the Vietnamese martial arts film Clash, Criterion’s Cul-De-Sac, Stuart Gordon’s The Pit and the Pendulum, and Priest, starring Paul Bettany.

Clash: It’s unfortunate that I only caught up with Clash now that it’s on DVD instead of earlier this year when it made the rounds on the festival circuit. Just a few months ago, people were unsure of whether or not Thai martial arts superstar Tony Jaa would, let alone could, make his comeback after filming, choreographing and starring in Ong Bak 2 and Ong Bak 3. Those two releases started life as a single massive production that wound up being re-shot in parts and broken into two films. That massive project caused the lithe performer to have a widely publicized emotional breakdown. Jaa retired to a monastery last year, but now he’s back and apparently working on his next big project. So what to do with Clash, a sub-standard vehicle for Johnny Tri Nguyen and Thanh Van Ngo, two rising martial arts stars from Vietnam that, for a time, looked like they could step in for Jaa during his absence?

The short answer is, well, not a heckuva lot. Nguyen and Ngo are rather good but they’ve both done better. Clash is a barely passable homage to John Woo’s early gangsters-and-gunplay films, one that retains neither the kinetic choreography nor the sincere, macho emphasis on honor and brotherhood of Woo’s pictures. To top it off, as talented as they are, neither of Clash’s lead performers have the charisma that Jaa effortlessly exuded. Nguyen, who outshone Ngo in The Rebel, can’t keep up with her here, where she plays his love interest. Still, even Ngo performs like a very talented stunt worker and not a real action star. She’s good, but she’s not Tony Jaa good. Thankfully, it’s now only a matter of time until Jaa makes his triumphal return to the big screen. In the meantime, rewatch The Protector and/or Ong Bak 2. I give it a “C-.”

Cul-De-Sac: The Criterion Collection graces us this week with an impeccably restored transfer of Roman Polanski’s characteristically absurd and bleak character study. Donald Pleasance and Françoise Dorléac co-star as a couple whose 10-month-old marriage is rapidly dissolving. Two gangsters, one representing the couple’s moribund intellectual connection and the other (Lionel Stander) representing their bullying and strained emotional relationship, hold the couple hostage while they wait for their mysterious boss to come pick them up. Pleasance’s emasculated husband thinks that he has to defeat Stander’s character to win back his wife’s affection, but he doesn’t realize that in doing so, he’ll ultimately destroy their relationship. (Spoiler) Once Pleasance does kill Stander, there’s nothing holding the couple together. A very tense and satisfying paranoiac thriller, one that expands the unfairness of Polanski’s cruel worldview to accommodate a couple instead of just a neophyte individual. Must-see viewing before the upcoming Carnage. I give it an “A-.”

The Pit and the Pendulum: Director Stuart Gordon and screenwriter Dennis Paoli re-teamed for a couple of projects after they initially worked together on Re-Animator. One of their lesser-known collaborations is this 1991 adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s eponymous short story. Paoli throws in elements of other Poe tales, like The Cask of Amontillado and The Black Cat, to amp up the kinkiness in Gordon’s story of a corrupt Spanish inquisitor (Lance Henriksen, of course) that arrests and tortures an innocent woman (Rona de Ricci) that he has the hots for. Though The Pit and the Pendulum features a fun cameo from Oliver Reed, the film reaches toxic levels of camp that just aren’t as entertaining or gut-churning as superior Gordon/Paoli projects like From Beyond. For Gordon completists only. I give it a “C.”

Priest: While Legion suggested that director Scott Stewart was a promising young talent, Priest, his sleepy follow-up, proves that he has not reached full artistic maturity. Based very loosely on the manga of the same name, Priest is a glitzy but largely mediocre hybrid of brooding Anthony Mann westerns like The Naked Spur and tacky sci-fi actioners like, uh, Judge Dredd. Needless to say, the cluelessness of the latter influence stymies any of the potential pathos of the former. Paul Bettany, Stewart’s muse, stars as a vampire-slaying clergyman that becomes excommunicated after he disobeys an order from Christopher Plummer’s selfish monsignor. In defiance of the Church (not to be confused with God’s will), Bettany hunts down the vampires that have abducted his daughter.

As in Legion, Stewart combines campy violence with flat but sincere piousness throughout Priest. But while it looks comparatively better thanks to its bigger budget, it’s not as palpably weird as Legion. Priest is too streamlined to be convincing. All of the wet and wooly peripheral details that made Legion such fun pulp are missing. For example, instead of Legion’s demonic grannies and ice cream men of doom, Priest offers crucifix-shaped ninja throwing stars and a ridiculous explanation for why a new breed of sightless vampires are soulless (because the eyes are the windows to the soul, nyuk nyuk).

Additionally, Stewart is still a lousy actor’s director and all of his cast’s performances, save for Brad Dourif’s cameo, suffer greatly for it. I’m hoping the still-wet-behind-the-ears director gets another chance to go forth and be freaky with a very big budget. But since Priest rightfully bombed at the box office, I tend to doubt that’s going to happen. This one also rates a “C.”

Simon Abrams is a New York-based freelance arts critic. His film reviews and features have been featured in the Village Voice, Time Out New York, Slant Magazine, The L Magazine, New York Press and Time Out Chicago. He currently writes TV criticism for The Onion AV Club and is a contributing writer at the Comics Journal. His writings on film are collected at the blog, The Extended Cut.

DEEP FOCUS: Sidney Lumet’s PRINCE OF THE CITY (1981)

DEEP FOCUS: Sidney Lumet’s PRINCE OF THE CITY (1981)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Press Play is proud to premiere this video essay by New York based critic-filmmaker Steven Santos. His piece on Prince of the City is split into two parts and can be viewed above. It is a visual analysis of Sidney Lumet’s so-called “NYPD films”: Prince of the City, Serpico, Q & A and Night Falls on Manhattan.

by Steven Santos
Press Play Contributor

THE STORY

Prince of the City was released on August 19, 1981. Like so many of Sidney Lumet‘s movies, this one lives and breathes New York City, showing us everything from tenements to court rooms and everyone from drug addicts to district attorneys. The film has well over a hundred speaking roles and what I would consider one of the best casting of authentic New Yorkers in film, mixing professional and non-professional actors throughout. The look and feel of the movie would influence many films and television shows in subsequent decades, ones that strove for realism and a more procedural approach to the cop genre. One of those shows, Law & Order, even used one of the film’s most prominent cast members, Jerry Orbach.

Prince is a complex tale of police corruption in the 1970’s adapted from the book by Robert Daley and based on the life of narcotics detective Robert Leuci. Danny Ciello, played in a towering performance by Treat Williams, is an over-confident narcotics detective has skimmed money from criminals for years without it weighing on his conscience. The film’s title refers to his ability to make cases while working mostly unsupervised.

But from the opening scene, you begin to see the cracks in this prince’s facade. An argument with his drug addicted brother shows that there is someone unwilling to continue the charade that Ciello and his partners are somehow upstanding officers of the law. In a key scene, Ciello is forced to rob a drug addict to supply heroin to his informant. He begins to take pity on him, perhaps recognizing his own addicted brother. More importantly, he begins to witness firsthand the consequences his illegal acts as a cop have on others.Ciello remembers why he wanted to become a detective, and makes an effort to change because he can no longer see much of a difference between the cops and the criminals no matter how much he tries to justify his actions by blaming the way the criminal justice system works. Perhaps you would think that this film will be a simple tale of redemption, where a man acknowledges his wrongdoings and then helps to put the remorseless criminals behind bars.

But as we all know, but rarely care to admit, doing the right thing is quite a messy process. While Prince of the City may be a sprawling epic about how deep corruption runs in the New York City police department, it is as much about how we never can quite wash the slate clean of our own past corruptions, big or small.

SERPICO/CIELLO

Prince was not the first or last time that Sidney Lumet examined this subject. 1973’s “Serpico”, based on the real-life detective Frank Serpico, is the only one of his films about police corruption in New York City that he did not write or co-write. In real life, Robert Leuci was an acquaintance of Frank Serpico. Serpico begins with its main character graduating from the police academy and follows him from precinct to precinct, as he seems to run into a citywide problem of outwardly corrupt police officers. In interviews, Lumet has said that he made Prince because he was not satisfied with the way he portrayed cops in his earlier film. Watching Serpico today, one would be hard-pressed to disagree with him. While it features a terrific performance by Al Pacino, the film refuses to examine this real-life figure beyond making him a martyr. It’s not about a man struggling with doing the right thing, it’s about a man resented by the world for being a tortured saint. While both Serpico’s and Leuci’s stories occurred during the same time frame, the films about them seem to take place in different worlds.

The key difference between Serpico and Ciello is that Ciello does not necessarily stop lying when he decides to come clean, for fear of incriminating himself or ratting out his partners. Lumet’s Serpico does not necessarily challenge its main character’s righteousness, nor does it bring many shades of gray to its exploration of why the rest of the police department seems completely corrupt. Prince raises questions about morality and loyalty; unlike Serpico, it doesn’t make it easy for us to decide who the bad people are. Police corruption was the subject matter that Lumet kept revisiting and exploring, perhaps to find new shades that could not be contained in just one film.

LUMET’S NYPD

In addition to Serpico and Prince of the City, Lumet returned to the theme of police corruption twice more in the 1990’s with Q & A (1990) and Night Falls on Manhattan (1997). Of the four films, Q & A is the one that plays most like a crime thriller, as we watch a fairly degenerate cop (Nick Nolte) target drug dealers who had ripped him off at the same time that he’s is being investigated by an assistant district attorney (Timothy Hutton). Without a doubt, you can call Nolte’s character the villain of the film. But even so, Lumet allows this corrupt cop to explain his logic, almost daring you to empathize with someone who you know from the very first scene has committed the murder he is being investigated for.

In 1997’s Night Falls on Manhattan, also based on a book by Robert Daley, corruption extends to family members. The film centers on an assistant district attorney (Andy Garcia) whose rise in that office coincides with an investigation into police corruption that may involve his own father (Ian Holm). While the father’s partner (James Gandolfini) is clearly on the take, his own corruption involves fudging an arrest warrant to put away a drug dealer that he had been targeting for a long time.

Lumet is fascinated by the logic behind corruption. What is the thought process that causes people to lose their way? The key to Lumet’s success in exploring this theme is the degree to which he does not pass black and white judgment on his characters. The more we see ourselves reflected in people who justify their amoral actions, the more Lumet has made these people human. While Q & A and Night Falls on Manhattan admirably try to explore the gray zone of morality and corruption, it is Prince of the City that is Sidney Lumet’s masterwork on that theme.

ARE YOU THE DETECTIVE CIELLO?

While we may understand what drives Danny Ciello to help the special attorney task force make cases against corrupt cops, we are less sure how we feel about him. Much of what drives this man is his loyalty to his partners. As he puts it, “The first thing a cop learns is that he can’t trust anybody but his partners. I’ll tell you something right now. I sleep with my wife, but I live with my partners.”

Prince of the City takes the time to show us why that is. Even when Ciello finally admits to his partners that he is working to take down corrupt cops, they gather to not necessarily support him, but show concern for his well being. There is a loyalty among these detectives that Ciello will never have with all the attorneys he works for. The film further blurs the line between moral and amoral by showing Ciello’s mob-connected cousin as someone more reliable than the often ambitious attorneys. In one scene where a crooked cop and bondsman threaten to kill Ciello, it’s his cousin who vouches for him, saving his life.

Prince of the City is the Lumet film that truly makes you understand corruption by showing us this expansive group of people and the degrees they are willing to live with their consciences. Ciello’s final confessions lead to the destruction of people he considered family, people who loved him in a way that he will probably never experience again in his life. That is why you can see and understand the regret in his face when his partners eventually shun him. Doing the right thing is quite a messy process.

While Prince of the City has many admirers, the film has not gotten its due for its influence on the genre or the complexity with which it presents its subject matter. I consider it to be the Sidney Lumet film to watch to fully understand who he is as a director, a summation of all his work. With its large cast, the film creates a detailed world with communities of lawyers, gangsters, drug addicts and cops. At the center of it all is a performance by Treat Williams that ranks among the best, comparable to the greatest work of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, actors originally considered for the role.

What makes “Prince” essential is its universal and complicated take on how each of us cope with the moral choices we make. If we try to understand who Detective Ciello and how we feel about him, we begin to understand ourselves.

ADDENDUM:

This video essay has been in the works for a while. By coincidence, while I was editing it near the end of July, Prince of the City was given a rare screening at the Film Society of Lincoln Center with both Treat Williams and Robert Leuci in attendance. It was shown as part of the Film Society’s tribute to Sidney Lumet.

Williams and Leuci had a fascinating Q & A after the film in which they mostly talked about working with Lumet. Williams in particular showed pride in this film. It is clearly the highlight of his career. But it was odd to see the man the film was based on talk about it in the flesh, considering that film does not portray him heroically. Leuci had not even seen the film from beginning to end until that night, probably because reliving that experience could not have been easy. While he admits the film takes some dramatic license, Leuci lauded how Lumet had stayed true to his story.

As this was a tribute to Lumet, Williams and Leuci told stories about the making of Prince, talking about the long audition process Williams went through and how Lumet did not want Leuci around set due to the not-very-happy experience of having Frank Serpico on set all the time during the production of Serpico. Although Lumet is not acknowledged as a significant auteur by cinephiles because his almost invisible direction served the story rather than himself, the Williams/Leuci Q & A re-asserted that Lumet was a filmmaker with a true vision, and highlighted the choices he made that enabled Prince to be so effective.

According to Scott Foundas, who introduced the screening, Prince of the City was the hardest film of the tribute to locate a 35mm print for. Apparently, this print was borrowed from the Harvard Archives. In essence, on its 30th anniversary, Prince almost feels like a lost film. It wasn’t even released on DVD until about four years ago. I hope this video essay will shine a light on Prince of the City as well as Lumet, acknowledge its masterful filmmaking and storytelling, and perhaps help prevent the film from being lost in the coming years.

Steven Santos is a freelance television editor/filmmaker based in New York. He has cut docu-series for MTV, The Travel Channel, The Biography Channel, The Science Channel and Animal Planet. His work can be found at http://www.stevenedits.com. He writes about films at his blog The Fine Cut). You can also follow him on Twitter.

GROUNDED IN MUSIC: MANHUNTER and the Michael Mann soundtrack

GROUNDED IN MUSIC: MANHUNTER and the Michael Mann soundtrack

By Aaron Aradillas
Press Play Contributor

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of two Press Play pieces commemorating the 25th anniversary of Manhunter, which was released August 15, 1986. To view a video essay about the film by Aaron Aradillas and Matt Zoller Seitz, click here.

Most filmmakers who use source music in their movies do so as a way of enhancing a scene — think Martin Scorsese’s use of Donovan’s “Atlantis” in GoodFellas. Or they use music as an ironic counterpoint to the action — think Quentin Tarantino’s use of “Stuck In the Middle with You” in Reservoir Dogs (or practically any use of music in a Tarantino movie). Michael Mann is different. He uses source music (and sometimes original scores) as a way to set a mood for a given scene. (He also doesn’t believe in irony.) Where directors will turn up the volume at a crucial moment in a scene, Mann likes to start the music long before anything has happened. He doesn’t use it to ratchet up the tension. Rather, Mann is interested in using music as a way to set the emotional landscape from scene to scene. Think of the way he has the Brian Eno track “Force Marker” start long before the actual bank robbery begins in Heat.

Or, the Otis Taylor electrified banjo number “Ten Million Slaves” that’s used throughout Public Enemies. (The banjo picking is meant to recall Bonnie and Clyde, except this time the music isn’t meant as comedy.) Or, in what remains one of the great opening sequences in film history, the medley of Sam Cooke songs as a way to encapsulate the Black Power movement of the 1960s in Ali.

But Mann’s greatest use of original and pre-existing music remains the soundtrack to the serial-killer masterpiece Manhunter.

Adapting Thomas Harris’ first (and best) novel to feature Hannibal Lector (inexplicably spelled “Lektor” in this film) Manhunter was a different kind of horror movie. Released in a decade filled with slasher pictures hoping to cash in on the success of Halloween and Friday the 13th, Mann’s film was an intellectual freak-out that used forensic detail to dissect a mass murderer’s heart of darkness; a generation of horror fans that had cheered and laughed while dumb teenagers were slaughtered by masked stalkers was forced to consider what it meant to have sympathy for the devil. Upping the ante of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, which played a nasty black-comic joke by putting you in the shower with doomed Marion Crane, Manhunter placed you inside the mind of a madman from frame one. Also like Psycho, Manhunter used its score to set the tone every scene — only Mann used synth-pop majesty and prog-rock doom instead of a shrieking string section.

Mann’s debut feature, Thief (1981) was a modern-day noir with a Tangerine Dream score that was used in a more traditional, ratchet-up-the-tension way.

(Interestingly, an extended cat-and-mouse stalking sequence at the end of Thief used silence as its score, then brought in a thunderous rock piece — “Confrontation,”” a “Comfortably Numb” sound-alike by Craig Safan — when the scene erupted into violence.)

Following Thief, Mann served as executive producer on Miami Vice and forever changed the way pop music was used on television. The show’s use of both Jan Hammer’s score and popular rock songs laid the groundwork for Manhunter. Here is “In The Air Tonight” as featured on Miami Vice.

The synth-rock temperament of the music creates a constant unease that connects FBI profiler Will Graham (William Petersen) to The Tooth Fairy, Francis Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan), a lunar cycle-obsessed murderer of families. Graham’s gift (curse) is his ability to identify with the psychological torment of serial killers. His ability to at times operate without filters led to his suffering mental breakdown while hunting and capturing Lektor. As Graham tentatively reconnects with his wife and son, the hunt for The Tooth Fairy calls to him. It is the annihilation of the family unit (a crime that we gather Graham nearly committed himself) that must be stopped. The recurring instrumentation, lyrics and songs psychically connect the profiler and the murderer.

The film opens with a sinister synth wall of sound as we see nighttime POV angles. At first, we can’t quite make out what they are. Suddenly we realize we are seeing a home invasion in progress. The scene climaxes (along with the music) with a woman being awakened from sleep and realizing that someone is standing at the entrance of her bedroom. This track, entitled “Leeds House,” is reprised after Graham has accepted the case and visited the Leeds’ residence at the precise time when the murders occurred.

The same POV shots and musical cue are used as Graham enters the mind of The Tooth Fairy. Interestingly, the track is reprised a third time during a parking garage stalk-and-snatch sequence. It’s the only time the movie breaks from using music as a mood setter and uses it as almost a telltale theme for the killer. Performed by the outfit known as The Reds, “Leed’s House” (along with other original compositions “Lector’s Cell” and “Jogger’s Stakeout”), uses a combination of synthesizers, drums, and crunchy guitars not just to create dread, but to connect the two lead characters sonically. When the movie switches perspectives halfway through and follows Dollarhyde through a doomed romance with a blind woman, we are not taken out of the story. The musical cues by The Reds allow for an almost seamless transition.

The major contribution from pre-existing music is provided by Shriekback. Their songs are exclusively the killer’s theme music. “Evaporation,” with its echoed vocals and stuttering drum loops, is played as Graham investigates an older crime scene. As he retraces the events, the music suggests he is receding deeper into the killer’s thought process.

The other Shriekback tracks, “Coelocanth” and “The Big Hush,” are used during the extended romance sequence as Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan) finds temporary reprieve from his twisted nature by going out with the caring Reba (Joan Allen). The flute-heavy “Coelocanth” suggests something otherworldly and erotic. (The flute instrumentation might be seen as a nod to the Eastern origins of the source material: Harris’ novel was titled Red Dragon, a reference to both William Blake and a caricature found on a Mah-Jongg game piece.) Deployed during a startling tender love scene, “The Big Hush” is a full blown trance-out.

Along with The Reds, Michel Rubini also contributes original music to the movie. His slow-build-to-a-cathartic-crescendo track “Graham’s Theme” is broken into two pieces.

The first half is used when Graham finds himself sitting alone in an airport lounge, looking at his reflection, trying to will himself to catch his prey. The scene is a callback to an image of Graham back at the Leeds’ family home as Graham looks at himself in a bathroom mirror, and the Leeds’ answering machine clicks on. At that moment, The Reds’ “Leed’s House” can be heard. “Graham’s Theme” seems to take off from that earlier cue. The second half of the track is heard as Graham pieces together the process by which Dollarhyde selects his victims. While staring at twin TV sets showing transferred home movies of both families, Graham realizes the killer must have seen these same films. As Graham becomes convinced of this fact, he walks over to a window and seems to stare at his own reflection. The track climaxes with a massive wave of guitars and drums. Graham, having almost destroyed himself by identifying with the ugliest killer he’s ever encountered, reclaims his identity—and sanity.

The final movement of the movie is signaled by the opening horn-like notes of The Prime Movers’ “Strong As I Am.” Written as a personal confrontation with parental abuse, this slow-burn industrial rock number is brilliantly re-contextualized by Mann to indicate Dollarhyde’s final break from reality as he misinterprets an innocent gesture as an act of betrayal.

The movie’s most famous use of music is, of course, Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” The ugliest rock song in music history is used as the theme music for the ugliest serial killer in film history. Having kidnapped Reba from her home, Dollarhyde plays the song as he prepares to complete his transformation into the Red Dragon. His preparation is cross-cut with Graham and the FBI coordinating with local law enforcement agencies to take him down. As the song goes through its numerous instrument solos, the action builds and builds. (There is a sly continuity joke as events that are unfolding over the span of several hours are condensed into a few minutes of screen time. The 17-plus minute song seems to play in its entirety, as if everything was happening in real time.) A specially edited version of the song was prepared for this sequence, allowing Mann to match on-screen action with the music. When Graham is wandering outside Dollarhyde’s isolated home, sensing someone is in danger, the extended organ solo accompanies him. There is real poetry in the way Mann extends the tension of the sequence, creating anxiety in the viewer as Graham breaks from his paralyzing fear and leaps into action. Once he crashes through Dollarhyde’s window, the song’s famous drum solo, with its pounding drum rolls and fills, kicks in and the movie takes off into a whole other dimension. This showdown-at-dawn shoot-out is one of the all-time great pure action set-pieces, aided in no small part by its musical accompaniment.

Alas, the Manhunter soundtrack stumbles with its closing credit song. “Heartbeat,” performed by Genesis’ Mike Rutherford’s side project Red 7, is a decent song but feels truly of the moment. (It doesn’t help that the song reminds you of Don Johnson’s same-name hit single from 1986.) No matter. The Manhunter soundtrack is a one-of-a-kind synth-pop journey into one’s dreams. Once you’ve listened to it, it is impossible to get it out of your head.

San Antonio-based film critic Aaron Aradillas is a contributor to The House Next Door, a contributor to Moving Image Source, and the host of “Back at Midnight,” an Internet radio program about film and television.

“DO YOU SEE?”: ZEN PULP, PART 4; composition and psychology in Michael Mann’s MANHUNTER

“DO YOU SEE?”: ZEN PULP, PART 4; composition and psychology in Michael Mann’s MANHUNTER

 

http://www.movingimagesource.us/flash/mediaplayer.swf?id=52/799


By Matt Zoller Seitz and Aaron Aradillas
Press Play contributors

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first of two Press Play pieces commemorating the 25th anniversary of Manhunter, which was released August 15, 1986. It was originally commissioned as part of a series of five video essays published by Moving Image Source in the summer of 2009. This chapter dealt with Mann's analytical use of close-ups, which reveal psychology and power relationships by the placement of characters' heads in the frame, and the patterns that those placements create when the director cuts from one shot to another during a conversation. The climax of the video essay is a detailed analysis of the final sequence in Manhunter, a police raid on serial killer Francis Dollarhyde's house set to Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida". To read the other article in this package of pieces, Aaron Aradillas' epic analysis of the Manhunter soundtrack, click here.

Manhunter (1986), written and directed by Michael Mann, is best known for introducing Hannibal Lecter, author Thomas Harris's most famous creation, to movie audiences, and for its then unusual choice of hero, an FBI profiler who catches killers by imagining his way into their psyches. But it's also notable for how it distills one of Mann's fascinations: the notion of commonality, meaning the ways in which seemingly distinct people can reflect each other, blur into each other, replicate one another's stories or problems and otherwise show themselves to be part of a continuum that they are not even aware of.

The movie's antagonist, Francis Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan), considers himself a freak and nourishes a deep resentment of suburban nuclear families, which appear, through his eyes, to be living the idealized life he fears he can never have. After studying and consulting with the imprisoned butcher Lecter (Brian Cox), he refashions himself as a destroyer, a Grim Reaper figure who will spread fear through the world by murdering the representatives of so-called "normalcy"—husbands, wives, and children—in their own beds. The film's protagonist is FBI agent Will Graham (William L. Petersen), who catches serial killers by constructing a psychological profile of his quarry and then immersing himself in it, Method-actor-style—a technique that led Graham to capture Lecter but cost him his sanity. The film's two-sided-coin approach has many equivalents elsewhere in Mann's filmography. The director's work is rife with doppelgängers, doubles, and reflections, concepts that are established in the film's screenplays and defined by Mann's filmmaking.

To read the full transcript of the video essay's narration, click here.


San Antonio-based film critic Aaron Aradillas is a contributor to The House Next Door, a contributor to Moving Image Source, and the host of “Back at Midnight,” an Internet radio program about film and television. Matt Zoller Seitz is the TV critic for Salon and the founder and publisher of Press Play. You can view his other Moving Image Source video essays — including his many collaborations with Aaron — by clicking here.

RECAP: BREAKING BAD, Season 4, Episode 5: “Shotgun”

RECAP: BREAKING BAD, Season 4, Episode 5: “Shotgun”

By Matt Zoller Seitz
Press Play Contributor

EDITOR'S NOTE: This piece contains spoilers for Breaking Bad, season four, Episode 5. Read at your own risk.

Tonight's Breaking Bad, titled "Shotgun," ended with a scene that did what TV drama does best: define characters so completely that you feel as if you know them as well as you know yourself.

The scene was a family dinner at Hank and Marie's house, with Walt, Skyler and their kids as guests. Earlier in the episode, Hank had convinced himself that the murdered Gale's lab notebook proved Gale was Heisenberg, Walt's alter ego — which in turn meant that the DEA could stop looking for Heisenberg, and Walt could breathe easy, at least for a little while. Then Walt, who already seemed tipsy, excused himself to get more wine from the kitchen; the camera lingered on Walt in the foreground as he poured and drank a glass and then poured another one, his family's voices echoing in the background. Would Walt control himself and let his DEA brother-in-law continue to think that Gale was Heisenberg, thus ending or seriously delaying the investigation? Or would Walt give into macho pride, or intellectual conceit — the two are intertwined for him — and hint that the real Heisenberg was still out there?

Walt just had to be Walt.

The chemist's Achilles' heels are intellectual vanity and a kind of beta male machismo. After living most of his life as a schnook, to quote Henry Hill at the end of GoodFellas, he got a taste of what it's like to be rich, innovative and important (within his criminal circle, which is admittedly limited, and invisible to everyone who isn't already part of it). Dangerous, too; he's a killer now, remember? Now Walt wants to be treated like he's The Man. Whenever he's forced to bow, you can see how miserable and angry it makes him.

To read the rest of the recap, click here.

PressPlay founder and publisher Matt Zoller Seitz is the staff TV columnist for Salon.com. His video essays about Terrence Malick, Oliver Stone, Budd Boetticher, Wes Anderson, Clint Eastwood, Michael Mann and other directors can be viewed at the at the online magazine Moving Image Source.

SLIDE SHOW: Why aren’t these actors famous?

SLIDE SHOW: Why aren’t these actors famous?

By Matt Zoller Seitz
Press Play Contributor

EDITOR’S NOTE: Press Play again features Matt Zoller Seitz’s latest slide show from Salon. These 10 underrated film and TV stars deserve to be household names.

This slide show is the first installment in a two-parter celebrating the most underrated performers in film and TV. Today’s slide show spotlights 10 underrated actors; we’ll follow up next Friday with 10 underrated actresses.

What makes a performer “underrated”? To me it means that a performer is versatile, works a lot, is recognizable, and is thought of by peers and viewers alike as a net gain for any project, somebody who nearly always improves a scene; and yet when you look at his or her biography, you see surprisingly few awards and nominations next to their names — especially from mainstream organizations. They are well-liked, perhaps even loved, but for whatever reason they aren’t household names.

My admittedly arbitrary cutoff point is an Oscar or Emmy win; if a performer has taken home at least one statuette, they didn’t make my list, because they could no longer be considered “underrated.” If I were the emperor of Hollywood, these are 10 actors I’d let have their pick of the most interesting leading man parts, just to see what they would do. The oldest actor on this list is pushing 80; the youngest is a little over 40 and had his breakthrough as a teenage actor in a Martin Scorsese film. They all have been around the proverbial block more times than you can count, and they are very, very good at what they do.

Readers, I hope you’ll submit your own favorite underrated actors in the Letters section of this piece, and get embroiled in geeky conversations about the definition of “underrated” and whether these 10 actors fit the bill.

Matt’s slide show starts here.

PressPlay founder and publisher Matt Zoller Seitz is the staff TV columnist for Salon.com. His video essays about Terrence Malick, Oliver Stone, Kathryn Bigelow, Budd Boetticher, Wes Anderson, Clint Eastwood, Michael Mann and other directors can be viewed at the The Museum of the Moving Image web site.

GREY MATTERS: Young and old memories of the Hotel Chelsea

GREY MATTERS: Young and old memories of the Hotel Chelsea


By Ian Grey
Press Play Contributor

I loved Lance Loud from the first time I saw him on TV in his room at New York City’s Hotel Chelsea. He was a son in the troubled suburban clan profiled on PBS’s An American Family, television's first-ever reality show, which aired in 1973. Lance broke ground just by being himself — a young, out, gay man — in front of 10 million pairs of stunned American eyes. This was Nixon's America, remember. It’s really hard to convey to younger viewers how balls-out crazy-brave it was for Lance to act the way he acted in those caveman days. Whatever his personal situation, his blasé public bravura influenced countless other young adults — including me. And it was through his example that I became more assured of my sense of identity as I discovered and wrote my own story in this life. (You can watch HBO’s strangely inert retelling of the American Family story in Cinema Verite by clicking here.)

Following the filming of that legendary documentary, Lance moved from Santa Barbara, California to New York City. He had his own dreams — mostly all things Warhol-ian and Velvet Underground-ish — and he moved into the Hotel Chelsea, the one immortalized in Warhol’s three-hour experimental film, Chelsea Girls (1966).

Lance’s journey to the Hotel Chelsea wasn't unusual for its day. Between the time the hotel opened in 1884 to the 1990s (when its slow decline began), the place was a Mecca for countless artistically-gifted young adults seeking to create lives of their own — a haven for troubled young people with big dreams. If you were a musician, filmmaker, artist, writer, drag performance artist, pool hustler, theater queen, drug dealer, recovering addict who was a drag performance artist (not naming names!), or if you were friends with or financially supported any of the aforementioned people, you would, at some point, inevitably, as dawn follows night, end up climbing the grand black wrought iron staircase at the Chelsea.

The Hotel Chelsea was an iconic symbol of creativity. Its space represented artistic freedom. It was like nowhere else in the world — a place of irresistible cultural gravity. And given this period of atomized subcultures, nothing like it will ever exist again.

In my mind's eye I like to imagine Lance standing before 222 23rd Street, decked out in his trademark black tee, Levi 501s and Brando-style Schott motorcycle jacket, staring up in awe at the twelve floors of black iron balconies. I can sense the wonder he must have felt as his fingers touched the blood red brick façade for the first time.

I try to imagine what Lance must have felt as he signed in at the front desk that day: excited, perhaps, and humbled, but more likely intimidated. Over the past 100 years, the Hotel Chelsea has played host to some of the most influential names in art, music and fashion. Together, those names represent the plasma pool of the 20th century’s most essential working artists: Bob Dylan, Edith Piaf and Dylan Thomas; Tennessee Williams, Quentin Crisp and William S. Burroughs; Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns and Claes Oldenburg. All of them set head to pillow at the Chelsea.

In my imagination I see Lance walking through those hallowed, empty halls wondering if it was in this room that Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey, or if it was in that room that Jack Kerouac penned On the Road. I see Lance stopping in front of room 328 and staring for a moment, because it was in this room that mad occultist and experimental filmmaker Harry Smith died in the arms of the poet Paola Igliori, singing as he drifted away.

I see Lance closing his eyes and imagining the ghosts of those that came before: Viva, Ondine, Nico and Edie Sedgewick.

The Chelsea was the place where ex-would-be Jersey-wife Patti Smith and sweet, Catholic Queens-boy Robert Mapplethorpe — then just kids together — found their artistic voices and felt free enough to create immortal, awesome things. A mystical whatsit force emanated from the Chelsea and it attracted both gloom-folk king Leonard Cohen and all-pop queen Madonna. The Material Girl would return to the hotel in 1992 to shoot the images for her way-iconic book, , American Film, Details and Vanity Fair. He also suffered a terrible physical decline resulting from a two-decade addiction to crystal meth and the effects of HIV-AIDS. He filed one last article, "Musings on Mortality," for The Advocate before dying in hospice of liver failure as a result of hepatitis C and a co-infection with HIV in 2001. He was 50 years old.

Rufus Wainwright, a close friend of Lance’s and fellow Hotel Chelsea alumnus, sang “Over the Rainbow” at his memorial.

But the Chelsea dream lives on, and its cultural gravity seems universal to me. It manifests itself in encroaching encampments all over the outer boroughs, in far Greenpoint, Bushwick, Bed-Stuy and Coney Island. In Detroit, Pittsburgh and Cleveland, as the forsaken everyone — not just forgotten teens — try to mine liberal utopias from designated rustbelts.

Ian Grey’s Press Play column “Grey Matters” runs every Friday.

Ren & Stimpy: 20 years of reflexive vomiting

Ren & Stimpy: 20 years of reflexive vomiting

By Jonathan Pacheco
Press Play Contributor

I’m sure you’ve seen it before: a movie wants to take an easy satirical jab at the state of TV programming and how it’s rotting the brains of our youth, so it shows some wide-eyed drooling kid watching a cartoon so loud, crass and violent that you know it has to be fake. Ren & Stimpy is that gross and twisted fake show, except quite real. It set the mark for what you could get away with in children’s television, and it had me planted in front of the screen, the drooling kid, poisoning my mind more and more with every passing minute. But that was 20 years ago, and now that I can take in the escapades of Stimpson J. Cat and Ren Höek with a more discerning eye, I can fully appreciate the show’s crude charm while also recognizing how it eventually went wrong after the departure of creator and showrunner John Kricfalusi.

For me, the most fascinating thing about Ren & Stimpy is that you simply can’t trust what you’re shown. You don’t expect a kids’ cartoon to have much episode-to-episode carry over, but this show isn’t even consistent from shot to shot. Missing eyeballs, ripped tongues, specific facial expressions, the way a shirt fits, vomit on a character — none are important enough to warrant continuity between cuts. But continuity isn’t simply ignored here, it’s totally flouted, as if the animators saw every new shot as a fresh opportunity to draw something completely different, damning any rules of animation with a dangerously Ed Wood-like enthusiasm. Interspersed among these shots are the famous gruesome close-ups (“gross-ups?”): detailed, mostly static paintings, typically included to accentuate something disgusting, such as crusty boogers, curly butt hairs or skid marks left by a fart. They’re skillfully crafted frames, to the point where it almost feels like the very concept of each episode was conceived just to animate around these central works of art.

Adding to its bizarre appeal is the show’s timing, but not in the traditional comedic sense. Especially during the first few seasons, Ren & Stimpy punctuates its conversations and actions with frequent lingering pauses. I often wondered if the artists were incapable of animating more than one movement at a time because many actions in a shot happen sequentially rather than simultaneously. Ren smacks his palm in emphasis, pauses, speaks his line, pauses, continues smacking. For some reason, the animation couldn’t (or purposefully refused to) walk and chew gum at the same time, and the humor of this style of pacing, intentional or not, perfectly complements the show’s off-kilter characters with a sort of dimwitted vibe.

After Nickelodeon fired Kricfalusi midway through the second season thanks to struggles with censorship and the showrunner’s inability to deliver episodes on schedule, animation duties were passed from John K.’s Spümcø to Nickelodeon’s in-house Games Animation department, and the directing reigns were given to Bob Camp. Fans of the show lamented the loss of its creator’s auteurist touch and noticed a sharp drop in overall quality. As a kid during the time of the switch, I saw no difference; still lots of violence, fart jokes and “gross-ups,” right? So what’s to complain about? These post-Kricfalusi seasons — up until the show’s cancellation after its fifth year — do have their moments and even some great episodes (an all-time favorite will always be “Ren’s Pecs,” in which the fat of Stimpy’s apple bottom is used for Ren’s studly chest implants), but viewing these seasons now, I clearly see reason for disappointment. By Season 4, there really is a noticeable difference in animation quality. Most of the episodes feel cheaply and hastily created, abandoning nuance for less creative facial expressions and easier visual gags. Even the painted close-ups are mostly lifeless, and, in some episodes, used so frequently as to indicate the work of an imitator rather than an originator, as if the animators were following a checklist. Call me crazy, but I saw love and affection in the way Spümcø and Carbunkle Cartoons crafted Stimpy’s buttcrack and Ren’s bugging eyeballs.

The writing similarly follows a lazy pattern. There’s a good amount of thought put into the progression of jokes and violence in the earlier seasons, leading to some brilliant climaxes; if you need proof, just re-watch “Mad Dog Höek.” The later seasons struggle to find this same rhythm. A childhood favorite episode of mine from this era, “Blazing Entrails,” begins promisingly with a more-braindead-than-usual Stimpy hopping out of bed to brush his teeth with a hammer, and the next morning cooking Ren an aromatic breakfast, only his hanging tongue ends up being the crispy bacon and his blinking, bloodshot eyeballs are the eggs. However, watching the episode now, I see how remarkably boring the rest of it is as Ren enters Stimpy’s enlarged body, treating us to a series of lame virus and organs jokes before Ren eventually fights off an Ignorant Gland with a choke hold on Stimpy’s tiny brain. Episodes like that feel like they’re just going through the motions.

A key element missing from “Blazing Entrails” present in the likes of “Son of Stimpy” or even “Ren’s Pecs,” is the true affection between our beloved cat and dog, despite the show’s defiant stance against being a “lessons” program (admittedly, “Son of Stimpy” is one of Kricfalusi’s purposefully “warmer” episodes, meant to appease Nickelodeon, allowing him to keep doing crazier stories). Sure, Stimpy’s love for Ren, really more motherly than homosexual despite what most people like to claim, is clear throughout the show’s entire run, but there’s a sweetness to Ren’s fragility and dependency on his friend, despite his irrepressible violence and verbal abuse. The characters worked because you saw why they were lifemates, and too much of that insight was slowly lost during the Bob Camp/Games Animation era.

Kricfalusi didn’t always have the golden touch. In 2003, he revived his characters in the ill-advised Spike TV spin-off, Ren & Stimpy “Adult Party Cartoon.” To appease the network’s request for a more extreme version of the show, John K. threw out his inhibitions along with every ounce of subtlety and innuendo in favor of incredibly cheap sexual and scatological jokes — and that’s saying something, considering the show’s reputation. (In the opening moments of the first episode, Ren tricks Stimpy into kissing a squirrel’s dirty anus. Welcome back, John Kricfalusi.) In this new rendition, Ren and Stimpy are now blatantly homosexual, or bisexual, since they both still love the ladies, most famously in the unaired episode “Naked Beach Frenzy,” in which the two, working as shower attendants, jump at the chance to soap up some boobs. Not too much of a stretch for these characters, even though we should remind ourselves that we are talking about a dog and a cat here. The problem is how obsessed the show is with this idea in the most unimaginative and unfunny ways. “Altruists” spends a good two minutes on a scene where Ren straps a long handsaw to his hip and begins cutting away at a log propped on Stimpy’s backside by thrusting his hips back and forth. A lot of more thrusting and moaning later, Ren finishes, handsaw limp, leaving a deposit of sawdust on his partner’s back. When you think it couldn’t get any worse, Stimpy, still with the residue on him, asks Ren if he would stay and cuddle, to which Ren responds, “Shame on you! Clean that shit up,” tossing a rag at the tearful cat.

It’s very easy and quite popular to bag on “Adult Party Cartoon,” but it’s mostly for good reason. Even as a college freshman when the show premiered, right in the show’s demographic, I always felt it was way off in its approach. Not too surprisingly, the censorship of Nickelodeon and inherent restrictions of early ’90s kids’ TV pushed Kricfalusi and Spümcø to greater creativity, cleverly redefining the limits of what could be gotten away with. Greater freedom on Spike TV led to lazier conception and writing.

The once untouchable legacy of Ren & Stimpy is now a mixed bag in my eyes. My adoration for its raw, crude, insane take on comedy is as strong now as it was when I was 10 years old and attempting the “Happy Happy, Joy Joy” butt bounce dance with my sister (I know we weren’t the only ones to try it, though we were probably the only ones to try it naked). But even if you somehow discard the “Adult Party Cartoon” fiasco, it’s difficult to ignore that the show’s best days were behind it before it even made it halfway through its run. But what a crazy run it had.

This piece can also be read at Edward Copeland on Film here.

Jonathan Pacheco contributes film and theater criticism to The House Next Door and Edward Copeland on Film while only pretending to write on his own site, Bohemian Cinema. In order to eat, he works in the Dallas area as a darn good web developer. Follow him on Twitter, if you like.

FANDOR: A Double Shot of “35 Shots of Rum”

FANDOR: A Double Shot of “35 Shots of Rum”

By Kevin B. Lee
Press Play Contributor

EDITOR’S NOTE: As part of Keyframe’s ongoing spotlight on the films of Cinema Guild, Press Play features a double shot of video essays edited by Kevin B. Lee — both discussing the themes of Claire Denis’ acclaimed family drama 35 Shots of Rum. The first essay is based on film critic Roger Ebert’s four star review of 35 Shots of Rum published last year. The second essay cleverly combines video footage of the film with an audio interview of director Claire Denis, recorded at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival. These essays can be viewed on Fandor here.

Essay #1: Roger Ebert on 35 Shots of Rum

Read Roger Ebert’s full review of 35 Shots of Rum. And if you’re missing Ebert’s actual voice from this video, catch several vintage clips of his on-air reviews at Ebert presents At The Movies.

Essay #2: Director Claire Denis on 35 Shots of Rum

Music tracks “Opening” and “Train Montage” featured on the video are by Tindersticks from the 35 Shots of Rum soundtrack, available from Constellation Records.