Aaron Aradillas – Page 2 – Press Play Video Blog

CRUEL SUMMER: WARGAMES (1983)

This video essay is part of the "Cruel Summer" series of articles; this series examines influential movies from the summers of the 1980s. The previous entries in the series covered THE BLUES BROTHERS (1980), STRIPES (1981), and ROCKY III (1982).

The fantastic opening sequence of WarGames uses one of the most basic constructs of video games: just when you think you’ve figured out a level, it turns out to be part of a bigger scenario. We first see an approaching car in the middle of a nasty storm. Two men (played by the late John Spencer and Michael Madsen, both looking very young) approach a house and enter its welcoming living room. After they walk up to a mirror, we learn they’re at a military outpost. Soon they are in an elevator that immediately descends into the Earth. When they reach their destination, we realize they’re in a fortified room in a nuclear missile silo, from which they’re in charge of launching a retaliatory strike if the U.S. is ever attacked. After an alarm goes off, an emergency message is received: an order to launch the first of ten nuclear missiles. As they insert their launch keys and go through the required checklist, the one who’s a veteran (Spencer) starts to have second thoughts about turning the key. The scene climaxes with the Madsen character pointing a gun at his commanding officer and ordering him to “turn your key, sir!” The sequence ends with what is known in the gaming world as a cut scene, an abrupt transition to daylight.

WarGames is the best video game movie ever made, precisely because it isn’t explicitly based on a video game. Hollywood has had mostly disastrous results when they’ve tried to tap into the video game market. Beginning with the Tie fighter sequence from Star Wars, video game graphics and situations have been clumsily incorporated into movies like, say, 1979’s Moonraker, a classic example of Hollywood attempting to retool an established property (in this case James Bond) to take advantage of a current craze. Arcade games like Pac-Man, Defender, and Galaga became part of the youthful movie-going experience. The line from Pong to Star Wars to Pac-Man to Atari to Hollywood seems fairly obvious. Hollywood’s first official video game movie was the summer ’82 release TRON, a spectacular sight and sound show that flopped but that Roger Ebert correctly described as “. . . breaking ground for a generation of movies in which computer-generated universes will be the background for mind-generated stories about emotion-generated personalities.”

WarGames is one of those movies. It works because the story is the main focus, not the technology. (That’s why a movie like the summer ’84 release Cloak & Dagger can retain a retro freshness while TRON: Legacy plays like a rerun.) Director John Badham and screenwriters Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes knew that the sight of a home computer system was exotic enough that they didn’t need to linger on it in order to keep the audience’s attention. That’s what separated WarGames from the glut of other summer ’83 releases that had some kind of video game and/or computer plot point. There was the speeder chase in Return of the JEDI that played like a take-off on Defender, while in Superman III,Richard Pryor played a computer programmer coerced by Baddie Robert Vaughn into working for him. (The climax of the movie had Vaughn firing missiles at Supes while seated at the controls of the world’s biggest game console.) Joe Dante’s segment of Twilight Zone—The Movie played like a cross between a Tex Avery cartoon and a video game. Even The Man with Two Brains had a throwaway gag of Dr. Necissiter’s (David Warner) brain transfer machine needing quarters in order for it to work. But WarGames felt organic (even if its story was a high concept mix of Steven Spielberg suburbia and Cold War fear). WarGames has a primal pop immediacy that uses the Reagan-era fear of a Russian invasion as a way to tap into the then percolating fear of modern technology.

After that intense Fail-Safe opening, the action switches to Colorado, specifically the NORAD command center where U.S. defense strategies are enabled in the event of an enemy attack. (In reality NORAD only handles detection, not actual military defense strategies.) At the time of the movie’s production, the NORAD set was the most expensive in history ($1 million) and it remains one of the most famous, ranking with the War Room from Dr. Strangelove. The shot where we first see the set is a beaut as a single analyst walks into a rather nondescript room, then, in an unbroken shot, the camera follows him as he walks up some stairs and a panning shot allows us to take in the massive computer screens that make up the front of the NORAD complex.

It turns out that the emergency launch was a test to see if the men in the missile silos are willing to turn the key. Twenty-two per cent of the men failed the test, which is viewed as a major problem by Washington. Some of the President’s men have arrived at NORAD to discuss ways to address this problem. Gen. Beringer (Barry Corbin) is a veteran of war who acknowledges the need for technology but feels safer knowing that men are in the silos. McKittrick (Dabney Coleman) is a civilian analyst who wants to replace the men with computers in order to guarantee the President’s orders are carried out. The film allows us to see validity in both sides.

We then meet David Lightman (Matthew Broderick), a bright kid who lives to play computer games. When we first see him he’s at an arcade playing Galaga. (There’s a brief fun shot of all the games as we try to spot our personal favorite. The detail of David playing Galaga and not, say, Pac-Man is just right. Pac-Man is a game of timing where Galaga requires real skill.) At school, David likes to stay under the radar. He invites Jennifer, played by Ally Sheedy, to come over to his house where he uses his personal computer to dial into the school’s computer and changes a recent scoence test grade from an “F” to a “C.” He does the same for her, because she also did poorly. When she orders him to change the grade back, he does, only to change it to an “A” after she leaves. David and Jennifer are cut from the same cloth as the kids in a Spielberg movie; you can almost imagine a cinematic suburb where the split-level houses from E.T., Sixteen Candles, Risky Business, and, yes, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off are all lined up. The byplay between Broderick and Sheedy is charming and blessedly lacking in teen sexual anxiety. David may be the movie’s first computer hacker, but he’s devoid of paranoia or arrogance. He’s like Mark Zuckerberg’s well-adjusted older brother.

What connects David to the men in the missile silos is his desire to play with the ultimate computer system. When he hacks into a computer game company he inadvertently finds himself playing a game with the W.O.P.R. (War Operation Plan Response), the U.S. Defense computer that comes up with every possible scenario in the event of World War III. Naturally, David wants to play a game of “Global Thermonuclear War,” representing the Russians himself. The sequence where David and Jennifer play on his computer and the people at NORAD scramble to come up with a proper response is close to slapstick. (The cross-cutting by Tom Rolf sustains tension impeccably.) The moment David ends the game is chilling, equating sudden termination of game play with possible nuclear annihilation.

Finally David realizes he almost caused nuclear war, but the W.O.P.R. insists on finishing the game. The idea of computers becoming aware and taking over the world is not new. (Think of 2001, when the HAL 9000 suggested to Dave Bowman that he take a pill and reconsider what he was doing.) The W.O.P.R.’s indifference is just the natural extension of the military creed about turning men into killing machines. Why bother with the men when the machines can simply follow their programming? In its own way WarGames foretold the day when our dependency on computer technology would be at the heart of all our fears.

Of course, Badham and his collaborators don’t bludgeon you with this message in this big-studio summer movie. Badham is known as a journeyman director, something quite rare in today’s Hollywood; he’s able to adapt to whatever environment a story is set in, giving the movie a sense of pacing and character—as in the classic Saturday Night Fever. His other worthy credits include the unjustly forgotten Whose Life Is It Anyway?, Short Circuit, Stakeout, and the underrated real-time thriller Nick of Time. Released a couple of weeks before WarGames, Badham’s Blue Thunder showed a noir-ish techno style that was like an adult video game. For WarGames he was aided immensely by the cinematography of William A. Fraker (Rosemary’s Baby, 1941), whose clean, bright lighting was indicative of early ‘80s movies. (Shooting several computer screens, Fraker does a really lovely job with reflections.) The score by Arthur B. Rubinstein is a mix of militaristic bombast and early sketches of electronica. My favorite musical cue is when David has his first “conversation” with his computer and asks, “What is the primary goal?” Both the answer and accompanying music never fail to create a genuine moment of dread.

The one thing that has made WarGames hold up to countless repeated viewings long after its then novel computer terminology has become dated is the depth of its supporting characters. Today, gadgetry and armory have placed ahead of character, but WarGames is a reminder of when Hollywood seemed to have things in somewhat proper proportions. Coleman allows McKittrick’s weakness for logic to keep him from being an unfeeling martinet, while Corbin is absolutely winning as a career military man only too aware of the situation’s severity. Corbin’s delivery of the classic line, “Goddamnit, I’d piss on a spark plug if I thought it’d do any good,” is typical of his good ol’ boy charm. Maury Chaykin and the incomparable Eddie Deezen play a couple of computer geniuses with a mix of jocular aggression and know-it-all superiority. (“Mr. Potato Head! Back doors are not secrets!”) The one misstep in the movie is the conception of the character of Dr. Stephen Falken (John Wood), a computer programmer who disappeared after personal tragedy and the realization that his work was going to be used for all the wrong reasons. A cross between Stephen Hawking and Robert Oppenheimer, Dr. Falken’s pessimism about humanity and belief in futility is the only place where the movie is explicit about its no-nukes message. Wood eventually wins viewers over, especially when he tells Gen. Beringer, “What you see on these screens up here is a fantasy; a computer-enhanced hallucination. Those blips are not real missiles. They're phantoms." That’s just the set-up for the movie’s climax, a spectacular sight and sound show that suggests that the futility of war might be beside the point. It suggests that all of life’s lessons will be learned online.

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.

VIDEO ESSAY: Cruel Summer: ROCKY III (1982)

[The following is the working script of the video essay above. It was modified during the editing process.]

He’s one of cinema’s most beloved heroes. He represents strength, decency, and determination. Born and raised on the streets of Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love and the birthplace of democracy, Rocky Balboa stands for all that is good about America.

Taken together, the first two ROCKY movies tell a human-sized story of triumph, with the original ROCKY as a Bicentennial fairy tale about a bum winning his pride and the love of his girl, while ROCKY II shows him becoming a man and champion.

But how do you continue a story that everyone assumed was complete? Well, if you’re writer-director-star Sylvester Stallone, you look within yourself, and the rapidly changing tastes of the movie-going audience, and you come out ready to ROCK.

ROCKY III continued an American tradition by transforming the stage of Rocky into a 4^th of July fireworks show. It used compact storytelling and groundbreaking montage editing to create a new kind of fist-pumping summer crowd-pleaser.

The opening montage recalibrated the viewer’s ability to take in multiple pieces of information simultaneously. Made nine months after the launch of MTV and one year before FLASHDANCE, ROCKY III is the first instance of a major Hollywood entertainment embracing MTV-style editing. A kind of ROCKY 2.5, the sequence caught us up with our favorite characters, introduced the themes of fame and becoming soft, and kicked the story into motion by letting us see the villain all but stalking Rocky—with everything held together by Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger,” a piece of working-class pop perfection.

Stallone used his overnight success following the release of ROCKY to inform ROCKY III’s portrayal of how celebrity can lead one to be isolated and lose touch with everyday life. Rocky—and Stallone—had become such outsized characters that some self-criticism was necessary.

But Stallone places all this thoughtful reflection in the background of the movie. What’s front and center is keeping the movie in constant motion. Shorn of nearly 30 minutes, ROCKY III compresses its story without sacrificing emotion. Some viewed this as an indication that audiences' attention spans were growing shorter, but what it really said was that audiences were able to process events and plot points at a quicker pace.

The story of ROCKY III shows Rocky getting a comeuppance courtesy of street fighter Clubber Lang, who’s enraged by Rocky’s softening. Rocky takes the challenge, but his trainer Mickey knows it’s a bad idea.

It’s only the 30 minute mark when Roc loses his title and, in a plot twist that shocked audiences back in ’82, Mickey dies from a heart attack. Normally these events would’ve occurred at the halfway point of the movie, but ROCKY III was so relentless in its pacing that the movie felt halfway over by this point. The death of the beloved Mickey gave weight to the remainder of the story, reminding us of the dramatic pull the ROCKY movies have on audiences.

The rest of the movie shows Rocky returning to the top, as former adversary Apollo Creed offers to train him. Apollo wants Roc to go back to the beginning, to get back in touch with his roots as a street fighter. How does he plan on doing this? He teaches him rhythm—to dance around the ring.

It must be noted that a lot of the elements of ROCKY III—from the cocky hero to the musical montages to the shaking of the hero’s confidence from an early defeat to the death of a friend—would become key elements of several popular movies throughout the 1980s. ROCKY III created a template for success.

Everything leads up to THE SHOWDOWN, which, following the car chase, became the defining movie sequence of the 1980s. What made the climax of ROCKY III different from all the others is that it’s the only one that doesn’t compress the final fight into a montage. Instead, it plays out in something approximating real time. It’s a three-round action sequence that pummeled the audience into submission, as ROCKY III set a new standard in summer entertainment. ROCKY III trained us to demand more bang for our buck.

A critic, journalist and filmmaker, Matt Zoller Seitz is the staff TV columnist for New York Magazine and a finalist for the Pulitzer prize in criticism. He has worked as a movie critic for The New York Times, New York Press, and New Times Newspapers, and as a TV critic for The Star-Ledger of Newark. 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. Seitz is the founder of The House Next Door, a website devoted to critical writing about popular culture. His book-length conversation with Wes Anderson about his films, titled The Wes Anderson Collection, will be published in fall 2012 by Abrams Books.

CRUEL SUMMER: STRIPES (1981)

In this series, frequent Press Play contributor Aaron Aradillas will analyze a significant movie from each year of the 1980s. The previous installment: The Blues Brothers (1980).

When Bill Murray came on the scene at the start of the 1980s, he represented a fundamental shift in comedy. He specialized in an utter emotional detachment from any and all situations. His fans claimed he was deconstructing the absurdity of whatever predicament he found himself in. The famous Saturday Night Live sketch of Murray as a lounge act performer singing about Star Wars was funny because he knew how pathetic the guy was. Murray did nothing but asides and put-ons. Some critics praised him as a Groucho Marx type, but if you looked closely, some of his lines had a nasty streak; while Groucho took the air out of a tense situation, Murray made you tense.

Performers like Jack Nicholson, Richard Pryor, even Eddie Murphy in 48 HRS., specialized in upsetting the status quo, speaking up for those who couldn’t speak, and expressing suspicion of those in power, Murray spoke for himself, suspicious of everyone. The most courteous thing he would do is not remind you that he’s the smartest person in the room. It’s almost impossible for Murray to do sincerity. His worst scene as an actor? His plea for goodwill toward your fellow man at the end of Scrooged. He’s like a bully telling you to be kind to others or else.

Murray became a comic hero pretty quickly. He gave the genial summer-camp comedy Meatballs a groovy anarchic charge. Along with Rodney Dangerfield, he was the highlight of the surprise hit Caddyshack. But it wasn’t until the release of Stripes in the summer of 1981 that Murray became a star. A service comedy that was surprisingly reverential toward the military, Stripes was the kind of anti-Establishment comedy that appealed to audiences. It was safely subversive but not offensive.

Directed by Ivan Reitman and written by Len Blum and Dan Goldberg, along with Harold Ramis, Stripes had the kind of anti-authority attitude that even conservatives could get behind. Rather than trashing institutions like the military, the movie just made the individuals in power look comically foolish. This was a big change from the thinking of just a decade earlier. At that time, young people questioned the nature of long-standing institutions far more aggressively. (It’s interesting to note that Stripes was originally conceived as a vehicle for Cheech and Chong. They truly didn’t trust institutions.) Now, it seemed, a compromise was being reached as Stripes predicted the coming onslaught of pop militarism in American movies. Just six months before the release of Stripes, Goldie Hawn had scored a hit (and an Oscar nomination) with the post-feminist service comedy Private Benjamin. Now we had Stripes. Throughout the 1980s, a whole series of movies did a brilliant job of allowing us to forget the trauma of Vietnam. Uncommon Valor, An Officer and a Gentleman, Missing in Action, Firefox, Rambo: First Blood Part II, Heartbreak Ridge, Aliens, Iron Eagle, Top Gun, RedDawn, Platoon Leader, and Commando all suggested, in one way or another, that Vietnam was a winnable battle. A lot of these movies were outrageously entertaining. They were also cinematic recruitment posters. (Oliver Stone’s Platoon would single-handedly provide the antidote to Hollywood’s love affair with war.)

The opening of Stripes indicates it’s going to both play with and poke gentle fun at images of authority. The first image we see is a commercial for the Army playing on a television. Murray’s John Winger views the commercial with a mix of skepticism and (possible) curiosity. Murray’s trademark ironic detachment surfaces with his first line of dialogue. (“I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy.”) Winger is so blasé about life that when his girlfriend leaves him, he looks as if he is just going through the motions of being hurt. When Winger says, “Then, depression,” we laugh: If a Murray character is depressed, that would suggest he was once happy.

(Murray aficionados will no doubt know that Joel McHale’s character on Community is an homage to the stock Murray character. The difference being is that McHale’s Jeff Winger genuinely does care about his studymates.)

Luckily for the movie Murray’s coolness is tempered by Harold Ramis as his loyal best friend Russell. When Winger decides to join the Army because, frankly, he has nothing else to do, Russell accompanies him almost for the intellectual exercise of seeing where this will lead them. Or, in the parlance of Animal House, one stupid gesture deserves another. What gives the movie its zip is the comic spin given to standard basic-training scenes. There’s a less abrasive National Lampoon/MAD Magazine quality to some of the gags. There’s also a surprising sense of reverence toward the military, particularly in a shot at dusk where the platoon is going through an obstacle as they sing a recruitment song. Bill Butler’s crisp cinematography makes it clear this shot is not meant to be ironic. On the other end of the shot is the famous scene of the men marching and singing Manford Mann’s “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” as a cadence. (It is said that after the release of Stripes this became a popular cadence.) What you get with that bit is the acknowledgement of rock & roll’s place in the military.

Sgt. Hulka gives the movie’s situational comedy some weight. It was a masterstroke to cast Warren Oates as Hulka. He represents authority, but not totalitarian authority. He has Winger’s number the moment he sees him. He understands the impulse to question people in power. (He does it himself.) But he also knows that some semblance of order is needed to sustain life. Murray’s best scene is when Sgt. Hulka calls him out on his bad attitude and the audience ultimately comes to side with Sgt. Hulka.

From that point on, Murray’s performance picks up. The scene where he takes the guys to a mud wrestling contest has a playful three-ring circus quality. (The sequence is helped tremendously by John Candy’s wonderfully light comic presence.) When Murray is called upon to deliver an inspirational speech (a staple of 80s movies), he makes it off-kilter enough that he almost sounds convincing. It’s a jingoistic speech with a little sting. (“We’ve been kicking ass for 200 years! We’re 10 and 1!”)

The movie climaxes, of course, with an action sequence, as Winger, Russell, and their MP girlfriends must enter enemy territory (Germany and Czechoslovakia!) to rescue their fellow soldiers. Like the parade finale of Animal House, this sequence is about destruction, but it ALSO works as an action set-piece. Stripes toys with AN anti-authority stance but ultimately adheres to tradition. And at the center is Murray, thumbing his nose at everyone and everything. In recent years. a generation of filmmakers have found interesting ways to utilize Murray's limited range of emotions. John McNaughton located Murray's capacity for menace in the brilliant Mad Dog and Glory, while Wes Anderson maximized Murray's deadpan detachment by turning him into a terrific supporting actor in Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums. (When Anderson forced Murray to play a front-and-center character who had to care about others in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, the result was both compelling and uneven.) But in the beginning, with Stripes, Murray's what-me-worry cocky arrogance turned out to mirror both the audience's and American movies during the 1980s.

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.

CRUEL SUMMER: THE BLUES BROTHERS (1980)

CRUEL SUMMER: THE BLUES BROTHERS

In this series, frequent Press Play contributor Aaron Aradillas will analyze a significant movie from each year of the 1980s. First up: The Blues Brothers (1980).

According to John Landis, The Blues Brothers was the last movie made under the old studio factory system, in which Universal had everything from the props to the costumes made on the lot. The Blues Brothers feels, indeed, like a transition from the old to the new. It takes the form of a big studio musical, but its execution is all 1980s bigger-is-better filmmaking.

The first movie to expand a sketch from Saturday Night Live, The Blues Brothers was “high concept” before that term even existed. When The Blues Brothers was made, Landis was the go-to comedy director working in Hollywood, having just made National Lampoon’s Animal House,the most successful comedy in movie history. Stars Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi had just ended their time on SNL, possibly the most culturally influential TV show of the late ‘70s. The Blues Brothers was the right movie, hitting at just the right moment. This movie fed an audience leaning toward the sophisticated comedy of Woody Allen and Steve Martin on the one hand and slob comedies like Animal House, Caddyshack, and Meatballs on the other.

The movie itself, despite its winning ingredients, is a big, lumbering, at times awkwardly paced thing that only intermittently comes to life. The screenplay by Aykroyd and Landis is less a script than a scenario. The story of Jake (Belushi) and Elwood (Aykroyd) putting the band back together, in order to raise money to pay off the back taxes owed by the orphanage where they grew up, has a Mickey-and-Judy-let’s-put-on-a-show innocence that’s quite appealing. The problem is that Landis stretches this story to over two hours, which allows for several unnecessary storylines. (Pacing has always been a problem in Landis’ work. It’s telling that his best movie, An American Werewolf in London, is also his shortest.) There are no scenes in The Blues Brothers. The movie consists entirely of sequences, numbers, and set-pieces. Consequently there aren’t any real characters. Everyone is more or less a cast member. As it turns out, this would be the modus operandi for a vast majority of movies made throughout the 1980s.

The problem with The Blues Brothers movie is the concept of the Blues Brothers themselves, a soul gimmick. (The band’s best performance remains their cover of Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man.” The sight of white boy John Belushi proclaiming he has soul is funny and kind of touching.) At the time no one seemed to question or even be concerned with the sight of a couple of white guys performing predominantly black music. (Inexplicably, The Blues Brothers’ Briefcase Full of Blues remains one of the all-time best-selling blues records.) The difference between the Blues Brothers and, say, Elvis or the Stones or Eminem is they rarely attempted to do anything that would test them as performers. They were an instant nostalgia act.

Landis probably knew the appeal of the act was limited and that’s why he added so many subplots, ranging from Illinois Nazis to Illinois state troopers to The Good Ole Boys to Jake’s parole officer to Carrie Fisher chasing the boys in their trademark police car. All of these adversaries have potential, but most of them don’t go anywhere. (The Illinois Nazis unfortunately provide the movie with a gratuitous scene of Henry Gibson shouting ugly rhetoric into a bullhorn.) Landis is clearly emulating It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World, but what made that movie a masterpiece was its gags on top of gags. It also allowed performers like Buddy Hackett, Phil Silvers, Sid Caesar, Ethel Merman, and Jonathan Winters to play characters that showcased their talents. Belushi and Aykroyd are kept mostly in check throughout this movie. Belushi’s kamikaze style is what made his appearances in Animal House and 1941 so memorable. And Aykroyd is best when he uses his Asperger’s-esque detachment to subversive comic effect. (His career performance remains his portrayal of Joe Friday in the underrated Dragnet.) The only sequence where the buried antisocial behavior of their act comes to the surface takes place when they disrupt the peace in a snooty restaurant in order to persuade Mr. Fabulous to join the band.

The musical performances are a mixed bag; small bits of each number indicate just how good they could potentially be. Whatever reservations you may have about Belushi and Aykroyd as bluesmen, the band itself, a combination of Stax musicians and a New York horn section, is always fun to listen to. And a couple of the players manage to emerge as terrific comic actors, especially Willie “Too Big” Hall and the recently deceased Donald “Duck” Dunn. The band’s big performance at the Palace Hotel Ballroom is fun but the song selections just remind you how good the originals are. I mean, compared to Solomon Burke’s original or The Rolling Stones’ cover, Belushi’s version of “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” just ain’t cutting it. Belushi’s best vocal is on the movie’s opening song, “She Caught the Katy.” The song is used to score Jake’s release from jail and reunion with his brother. The opening guitar picking and blast of the horn section get the movie started on a high note, And Belushi’s phrasing is good because he doesn’t force it.

Unfortunately the promising opening song is followed by the movie’s worst musical number. The boys are sent to church to get some inspiration. James Brown plays Rev. Cleophus James, a showman who leads his congregation in a boisterous rendition of “The Old Landmark.” Designed as a tribute to black gospel music, the number borders on offensive as George Folsey’s frenetic editing makes the dancers into leaping bodies, killing any chance of the song’s building to a climax, and turning the spiritual into something comical. Besides, who wants to see The Godfather of Soul do a gospel song? Aretha Franklin does better with her rendition of “Think,” but Landis stages the dancing awkwardly. And when the band plays a rowdy country bar, the mere sight of Jake and Elwood in their costumes performing “Theme from Rawhide” simply doesn’t do enough to make the connection between country music and the blues.

Then, Ray Charles does a fantastic cover of “Shake a Tail Feather.” Charles proves to have perfect comic timing. (“It breaks my heart to see a boy that young go bad.”) And it’s also the best edited and choreographed of all the musical numbers. Even better is Cab Calloway donning his trademark white tux and performing “Minnie the Moocher.” He makes an effect Belushi and Aykroyd struggle to accomplish look effortless.

The Blues Brothers is best remembered for its extended climactic car chase, and it’s still a doozey. Cars fly, spin, flip, careen, and crash into one another like a pileup at a Hot Wheels factory. (“This is car 55. We’re in a truck!”) Landis sustains the comic momentum of the sequence in what amounts to the movie’s best musical number. The sheer audacity of the sequence at the time turned out to be prophetic, as it pretty much announced the 1980s as the decade of the bigger-and-louder-is-definitely-better school of filmmaking. The Blues Brothers put the existential dread and emphasis on the personal of ‘70s filmmaking in its rearview mirror. What it was speeding toward didn’t matter. The chase was all that mattered.

VIDEO ESSAY: AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN HOLLYWOOD: HORROR, MAKEUP AND THE OSCARS

Editor's Note: Press Play is aware that our videos can not be played on Apple mobile devices. We are, therefore, making this and every video in this series available on Vimeo for these Press Play readers. If you own an Apple mobile device, click here.]

Narration:

The practitioners of visual effects have a favorite phrase for what they do: the Invisible Art – effects that are imaginative, even astonishing, but that are ultimately there to sell a world, a character or a moment. Special makeup might be the best illustration of this principle. One of makeup's greatest triumphs is An American Werewolf in London, which in 1982 became the first film to win an Oscar for makeup in regular competition. Overseen by Rick Baker, who supervised all of the film's makeup effects, it shows a man changing into a werewolf in real time…right in front of your eyes. This sequence was the culmination of eight decades of movie makeup. And the film's Oscar represented a coming-out for a once-neglected aspect of filmmaking.

Makeup effects were always a key component of the movies. Greasepaint, wigs, putty, latex appliances and other items in the makeup master's toolkit helped make the improbable, and the impossible, seem vividly real. Boris Karloff could make us believe that he was a tormented, tragic creature built from pieces of dead men in Universal's Frankenstein films – with makeup by the great Jack Pierce. Pierce's work on The Wolfman made an ordinary man become a werewolf when the wolfbane bloomed and the moon was full and bright. A 25-year-old Orson Welles played the title character of Citizen Kane at a dazzling array of ages, thanks to inventive, at times highly theatrical effects by Maurice Seiderman.

Yet despite these and other examples of the makeup master's art, the Academy refused to acknowledge the contribution of makeup artists. Prior to the 1980s, just two Special Achievement awards were given for makeup effects. Both were handed out in the 1960s. One was for 1964’s 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, which sported effects by William Tuttle. The other was for 1968’s Planet of the Apes –makeup by John Chambers. The latter citation is fascinating because, while the Academy was right to recognize the extraordinary achievement of Apes, it ignored a film from that same year whose ape makeup was even more impressive. The ape makeup in the Dawn of Man sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey was so good that many people assumed that director Stanley Kubrick used actual, trained apes. This uptake in visual sophistication was par for the course in that period of American film.

The 1960s through the 1980s were the high point of traditional, analog filmmaking techniques. Some of the most memorable films from this era showed transformation, decay and violence with unprecedented realism. Some of the most striking makeup effects of this period were the work of one man, Dick Smith, who finally received a special Oscar from the Academy in 2012 after decades of groundbreaking work. Nobody spilled blood with more panache.

And nobody has ever done more convincing old-age makeup. For The Exorcist, Dick Smith helped turn preteen actress Linda Blair into a rotting, puking, devil-possessed monstrosity so profoundly revolting that it haunted the dreams of millions. But the film also contains a much subtler triumph: Max von Sydow's transformation into the title character. Von Sydow was just 43 when he played the role. But Dick Smith's wrinkles and liver spots were so believable that for years afterward, casting agents kept offering him old man parts. Just as viewers thought that the costumed actors in 2001 were real apes, casting agents unfamiliar with von Sydow's work for director Ingmar Bergman thought he was some doddering European character actor. For makeup artists, such misperceptions are the highest possible praise.

The late 1970s saw makeup effects moving away from realistic applications and moving toward the extremes of fantasy. Christopher Tucker's remarkable makeup for David Lynch's 1980 drama The Elephant Man may have pushed the Academy to start handing out a Best Makeup award the following year. After eight decades' worth of movie makeup effects, and 20 years of rapid technical innovations, to continue ignoring the makeup artist's craft would have seemed perverse. And speaking of perverse….

When Rick Baker received the first Best Makeup Oscar ever given in regular competition for 1981's An American Werewolf in London, it was sweet vindication, not just for makeup artists, but for fans of genre movies. The creation of a makeup category was not just a means of acknowledging a branch of the industry that had been glossed over in the past. It was also a sneaky way to let Academy voters bestow awards on horror, science fiction, fantasy, action and other genres that were, and maybe still are, considered un-serious, or low-class. With its still-unique mix of slapstick, romance and gore, American Werewolf never could have gotten Oscar nominations in the major categories. In retrospect, the makeup award seems not just a prize for the movie's sophisticated use of latex, air bladders and audio-animatronic puppets, but for the originality of writer-director John Landis' vision. The technical categories let Academy voters honor offbeat fare – including genre films that tend not to get nominated in the picture, director, screenplay or acting categories.

The 1970s and '80s were the age of the makeup artist as cult figure. Magazines aimed at genre buffs and wannabe-gore wizards turned the giants of the field into heroes: Jack Pierce; Dick Smith; John Chambers; Tom Savini, George Romero's go-to guy for zombie makeup; Rob Bottin, who created similarly dazzling lycanthropes a year before American Werewolf in Joe Dante's The Howling and still-unmatched alien transformation effects in John Carpenter's The Thing.

The Oscar for American Werewolf signaled that the 1980s – the decade of high-concept blockbusters – would be the golden age of analog makeup effects. When you look back over genre movies from the period – small and big, sensitive and crass, clichéd and innovative – the special effects often hold up surprisingly well. In some cases they're the main reason that people still talk about the movies. Modern makeup effects are slicker and more consistent from scene to scene and shot to shot for reasons that we'll get to in a minute. But, given the mechanical limitations of the pre-digital era, their achievements are still impressive. Even when the storytelling falters, or when the film itself seems less an artistic statement than the end result of a studio deal memo, you can still see the behind-the-scenes craftspeople working at the peak of their powers, always striving to innovate and impress.

But as it turned out, this golden age also represented a final flowering. The industry was about to change in ways that transformed every aspect of production, including makeup. With few exceptions, the '80s heyday of makeup focused on the fantastic – the spectacular. For every film like The Elephant Man or Mask, which integrated extraordinary makeup into a realistic drama, there were a dozen more films in which the makeup was the real show. But the thing is, on some fundamental level, even in the very best makeup-driven movies of that period, you were still aware of the makeup. The effects looked, at times, a little too wet – too painted-on. This was always true, even in earlier periods, when the abstracting effect of black-and-white film gave makeup people another layer of artifice to work with. In the early '90s, right around the time that Bram Stoker's Dracula was winning an Oscar for its state-of-the-art yet old-school makeup effects, new technological advances were making it harder to tell the difference between the real and the virtual. Starting in the late 1980s, advancements in computer generated imagery had begun to offer a level of detail that wasn't possible when done practically. It reached a point where you couldn’t tell where the makeup ended and the computer imagery began.

By the time of The Dark Knight and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, viewers started to assume that makeup effects were achieved not with putty, powder, latex or other physical materials, but with computer generated effects. And increasingly, they were right. Movies were always driven by the mandate to make the implausible plausible. But this became an even more urgent mission in the '90s and aughts. Entertainment became centered on TVs, then computers, then ultimately phones. Hollywood strove to give viewers reasons to go to theaters and experience movies on a big screen. That increasingly meant spotlighting the unreal. The ostentatious. The overwhelming. All these qualities were more achievable with CGI. Special makeup effects have gradually become less apparent, and ultimately almost invisible, thanks to CGI. The work of makeup artists and visual effects wizards became intertwined – blended together after-the-fact by digital manipulation. The new tools blend acting, photography and visual effects with makeup. CGI is like a finishing coat of paint, applied to everything. For makeup artists, and indeed for all special effects people, this is the ultimate irony. The invisible art has finally earned its nickname.

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. A critic, journalist and filmmaker, Matt Zoller Seitz is the staff TV columnist for New York Magazine and the founder of Press Play. Ken Cancelosi is the co-founder of Press Play and photographer living in Dallas, Texas

AARON ARADILLAS: 20 years later, a soundtrack that still has JUICE

The first half of the 1990s may be considered by some as being ruled by grunge, but for more enlightened music fans that is simply not the case. Hip-hop and R&B, in particular the New Jack Swing sound of the early ‘90s, has had a profound impact in shaping pop music. Producers like Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis and Teddy Riley modernized the rather quaint sound of R&B with funk rhythms, piano, jazz and break beats, while guys like Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest and The Bomb Squad gave hip-hop a fuller sound – a bass-thumping thickness. Rap and R&B, two genres that had been segregated by class prejudice and musical temperament, were now fused together to create an at once looser and tighter sound. Songs like Johnny Kemp’s "Just Got Paid" or Tony! Toni! Tone!’s "If I Had No Loot" or Michael Jackson’s "Remember the Time" or Schoolly D’s "Am I Black Enough For You?" or Naughty By Nature’s "O.P.P." made you feel as if you were inside the song – as if the greatest block party was boiled down to four minutes of grooves, beats and samples.

At the same time, the New Black Wave in American movies was for the first time giving young black filmmakers the opportunity to tell stories of the contemporary black experience. Naturally, the soundtracks to most of these movies contained some of the most cutting-edge tracks around. Unlike the soundtracks to movies like Breakin’ or Krush Groove, which were dominated by the most adventurous rap acts around, the soundtracks to movies like House Party or New Jack City made room for R&B slow jams and new-funk dance tracks. With songs like Bobby Brown’s "We’re Back" from Ghostbusters II or Public Enemy’s anthemic "Fight the Power" from Do the Right Thing giving their respective soundtracks a jolt of energy, it was inevitable that a full-scale new-jack soundtrack would make its mark. 1990’s House Party was a good start, with Kid 'n Play kicking the party up a notch or two. Then, 1991 saw new jack soundtracks start to come into their own. The soundtrack for Mario Van Peebles' New Jack City featured memorable tracks by Ice-T ("New Jack Hustler"), Christopher Williams ("I’m Dreamin’"), Keith Sweat ("(There You Go) Tellin’ Me No Again") and Troop/LeVert’s interpretation of "For the Love of Money." (The soundtrack also featured the ridiculously sexual #1 hit "I Wanna Sex You Up" by Color Me Badd.) The soundtrack to John Singleton’s landmark directorial debut Boyz N the Hood added a West Coast seasoning with songs like Ice Cube’s "How To Survive In South Central" and Compton’s Most Wanted’s "Grownin’ Up in the Hood." Even Stevie Wonder got into the swing of things with his song score to Spike Lee’s interracial love story Jungle Fever. (If you think about it, albums like Stevie Wonder's Innervisions laid the foundation for the new-jack sound.)

Then, in 1992, a movie and soundtrack announced with authority the arrival of street-level hip-hop. Ernest Dickerson’s excitingly directed Juice was an up-to-the-minute morality play about the intoxicating power of guns. Shot on the street corners of Harlem, where the ritual of hanging on the corner with your friends is charged with the possibility of violence, Juice has an electrifying propulsive energy. So does the soundtrack.

Produced by Hank Shocklee of The Bomb Squad (the production crew behind Public Enemy’s collage of sound), the soundtrack highlights everything from hardcore hop-hop to mid-tempo new-jack grooves to playful girl crew anthems.

The opening track, Naughty By Nature’s "Uptown Anthem," is a piano-driven thumper highlighted by Treach’s scat-fast flow. They’re contrasted by Son of Bazerk’s "What Could Be Better Bitch," a hilarious boast about being the best rapper around.

Too $hort’s "So You Want to Be a Gangster" is a spare and stark warning against getting into "the life," while M.C. Pooh’s "Sex, Money & Murder" is a jaunty strut about not giving a fuck. The one weak track on the soundtrack is EPMD’s "It’s Going Down." Its cluttered soundscape obscures some terrific rhymes. Cypress Hill offers something better with "Shoot 'Em Up," a sinister creep of a song with B-Real’s trademark nasal flow. (Not included on the soundtrack, but featured in the movie, is Cypress Hill’s "How I Could Just Kill a Man," a song that is easily the equal of Johnny Cash’s "Folsom Prison Blues.")

On the R&B tip, Teddy Riley & Tammy Lucas’ "Is It Good to You" is an afternoon delight shoulder-shaker. Aaron Hall’s "Don’t Be Afraid" gets you in the right mood, while Rahiem’s "Does Your Man Know About Me" is a creamy background jam about a male lover’s paranoia over getting caught.

But the two most memorable tracks are Eric B & Rakim’s "Juice (Know the Ledge)" and Big Daddy Kane’s "Nuff Respect." Positioned as the theme song for the lead character Q (Omar Epps), a good kid who dreams of being a mixmaster DJ, "Juice" is a stunning New York anthem about hustling as a way of survival. From its tension-filled bass line to Eric B’s perfectly timed scratching to its multiple samples, "Juice" feels like the big-budget sequel to "Paid in Full." Even better, "Nuff Respect" showcases Big Daddy Kane’s breathtaking rapping as he easily keeps up with Shocklee’s and G-Wiz’s thumping production. The soundtrack to Juice is just about the most perfect sampler of early '90s hip-hop. It’s more than a blast from the past. It’s a look into the future.

AARON ARADILLAS: Loving LOVE STORY means never having to say you’re sorry

“What can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant? That she loved Mozart and Bach and the Beatles? And me.” – Opening narration from Love Story

Ali MacGraw Disease: A movie illness in which the only symptom is the sufferer grows more beautiful as death approaches – Roger Ebert’s Little Movie Glossary

Watching Love Story today is like opening a time capsule you didn’t know had been buried. The movie is at times shocking, not because it’s bad (it’s actually surprisingly good), but because it is a movie unaware of the time and place where it is set. Erich Segal’s screenplay and novel (he wrote the script before the book) are shrewd mixes of innocence and shameless manipulation. The movie is devoid of all the hot-button topics of 1970: political orientation, the Vietnam War, drugs, the burgeoning awareness of the environment, civil rights, equal rights for women, rock & roll. (When poor working-class Catholic girl Jenny tells wealthy WASP Oliver that she loves the Beatles, you get the feeling she’s more of a Rubber Soul fan than The White Album.) By removing anything that could be remotely perceived as “controversial,” the filmmakers ensure a direct connection between the audience and the film. The universal blandness of the story allows us to project our own memories and feelings onto the characters. Love Story is calculated with a vengeance to get an emotional reaction out of the viewer. And I’ll be damned if it doesn’t still work.

(The one concession to contemporary audiences at the time is the rather touching use of profanity. Words like “bullshit” and “bitch” are tossed into the middle of sentences almost at random. Similar to when sound was first introduced, filmmakers were finding their way when it came to the new freedom of modern language. It is said that President Nixon liked the movie except for all the cursing. You can’t please everyone.) As you watch the following scene, notice the language as well as the syntax in this scene:

The story of Love Story is so simple it’s almost primal. It chronicles the romance between fourth generation rich Harvard kid Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan O’Neal) and poor Radcliffe girl Jennifer Cavalleri (Ali MacGraw). There are no major obstacles preventing them from being together. Oliver isn’t tempted by some sexy hippie chick. Jenny doesn’t have an affair with some long-haired campus radical. When Oliver’s humorless father cuts him off from any financial assistance for marrying “that girl,” they take their destitution in stride. Then, after Oliver graduates Harvard Law School and becomes a successful New York lawyer, they attempt to start a family. When they can’t conceive it is discovered that Jenny is ill. Jenny’s death turns a storybook romance into a tragedy.

1970 saw American movies responding to the radically changing times. Just look at the list of movies released that year: Woodstock, Five Easy Pieces, M*A*S*H, Catch-22, Gimme Shelter, Tropic of Cancer, Zabriskie Point, The Revolutionary, Alex in Wonderland, R.P.M., Hi, Mom!, Brewster McCloud. Hell, even Patton, the winner for Best Picture, was embraced by the counterculture as it turned the ultimate hawk into a rebel. Like Airport, (the other runaway hit of that year), Love Story was like a shelter from the storm. It provided a release for audiences growing more and more uncertain of the world around them. And like Airport (which kicked off the trend of disaster movies), Love Story more or less became ground zero for what is derisively referred to in some circles as the “chick flick.” Everything from An Officer and a Gentleman to Ghost to Titanic to The Notebook can be traced back to Love Story.

(I am in no way suggesting that Love Story is on par with any of those movies. It’s more on the level of The Notebook than Ghost or Titanic.)

So why was Love Story such a hit? That’s the mystery, isn’t it? The strength in Arthur Hiller’s direction is his knowing not to get in the way of the actors. He knows he’s working with very delicate material, and that if you push it you are likely to get bad laughs. (For some viewers the bad laughs were always there.) Hiller is one of those reliable journeyman directors who knows how to get you what you want. He knows how to bring movies on time and on budget. In other words, he has no real distinctive style. That’s crucial for a movie like Love Story. Both Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw are onscreen almost constantly. We must believe they are drawn to each other from frame one. We do. The dialogue and plot developments are secondary to how they look and relate to one another as both actors and their characters. Hiller does do a smart thing that is key to the movie’s success; whenever possible, he places O’Neal and MacGraw in real locations. Scenes of Oliver and Jenny walking and courting are given real immediacy when we can see activity swirling around them. Hiller indulges in what Roger Ebert at the time termed the Semi-Obligatory Lyrical Interlude. That’s when the movie stops and shows two characters walking together as a song plays on the soundtrack. By 1970 this had gone from novelty to standard to cliché. There are at least three such sequences in Love Story (the best being the one where Oliver and Jenny are goofing around in the snow). The musical score by Francis Lai is purposely ladled over the movie. Its swooning piano theme is appropriately romantic and mournful. (Since Jenny is studying classical music the score has a reason for being so formal. You do wonder though, if she’s a Beatles fan, does that mean Oliver is a Stones fan?) Watch Oliver and Jenny goof around in the snow:

(Note: By the time its sequel, Oliver's Story, was released in 1978, Watergate, the fall of Saigon, Star Wars, disco, and punk had occured. Audiences no longer cared if Oliver was still in mourning. They had their own problems.]

The performances by MacGraw and O’Neal are a case study of different energy levels matching up beautifully. At the time MacGraw had major heat coming off of Goodbye, Columbus. Her dark-haired attractiveness was in at the time. I admit she doesn’t do much for me. Compared to other actresses at the time like Faye Dunaway, Ann-Margret or Jane Fonda, there isn’t much mystery when it comes to MacGraw. What you see is what you get. She lacks the vulnerability, strength, and potential madness that marks all great actresses. And the staccato chirpiness of her line readings can be at times quite grating. Then, she’ll make subtle adjustments in her performance that makes it difficult to dismiss her. Her scenes with John Marley as her very understanding father show that Jenny doesn’t act the same way with everyone. (Marley, who is probably best known for playing the ruthless Hollywood producer Jack Waltz in The Godfather, is quite winning, especially in his final scene with O’Neal. I admit I kept expecting Marley to turn to O’Neal at any moment and say, “Well, let me tell you something, my Kraut-Mick friend.”) The way MacGraw says the word “preppy” has just the slightest hint of playfulness that you wonder if Oliver ever realizes that she’s mocking him. For me, MacGraw’s best moment is toward the end when she and Oliver are sitting together after he’s ice-skated for her. She asks if they have money to get a cab. He says, “Sure, where do you want to go?” Jenny’s two-word response is the most heartbreaking moment in the movie.

The success of MacGraw’s performance is due in no small part to O’Neal’s forceful acting style. Like Redford, O’Neal was also burdened with being extraordinarily good-looking. Both men spent a good part of their careers having to overcome their beautiful exteriors in order to be taken seriously as actors. Redford used his looks to deconstruct the myth of the entitled WASP male. O’Neal used his looks as a way to disarm those around him. It allowed him to play con men, cads, jerks. He both embraced and resented the fact that being good-looking enabled him to get almost anything he wanted. (It was genius on Kubrick’s part to cast him in Barry Lyndon.) There is a constant seething anger in O’Neal’s acting that charges even the most routine scenes with the possibility of violence. There’s a startling moment when he gets mad at Jenny and tells her to stay out of his life. For a moment you’re genuinely scared for her safety. (It is this scene that leads to the moment where Jenny utters the immortal line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”) O’Neal’s scenes with Ray Milland as his stern father are filled with tension as both father and son are constantly unable to make any kind of connection. (I’m sure at the time the Milland character was hissed at by young viewers rebelling against their out-of-touch parents. Seen today, Milland is very good at suggesting a man who comes from a generation not accustomed to expressing emotions. His final scene with O’Neal is a little jewel of understated acting.) The final scene between O’Neal and MacGraw is deservedly famous. Both actors display such genuine love and affection toward one another that we not only feel Oliver’s loss, but Jenny’s too.

What can you say about 42 year old movie that became apart of the zeitgeist? That it is synthetic, shameless and corny even by the standards of the time it was made. That if actors believe in their
characters you’re capable of believing anything. And that it still works.

‘SHOULD WIN’ VIDEO ESSAY SERIES: Best Actress Viola Davis, THE HELP

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Press Play presents "Should Win," a series of video essays advocating winners in seven Academy Awards categories: supporting actor and actress, best actor and actress, best director and best picture. These are consensus choices hashed out by a pool of Press Play contributors. We'll roll out the rest of the series between now and Friday. Follow along HERE as Press Play picks the rest of the categories including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Documentary. Important notice: Press Play is aware that our videos can not be played on Apple mobile devices. We are, therefore, making this and every video in this series available on Vimeo for these Press Play readers. If you own an Apple mobile device, click here.]

Narration:

Four out the five performances nominated for Best Actress are in part based on fulfilling audiences’ preconceived notions of what they should be. Both Meryl Streep and Michelle Williams do impersonations on the level of genius. Streep dares to make Margaret Thatcher seem all too human; Williams lets us look beyond Marilyn Monroe’s wiggle and teasing smile and see the insecurity, sadness and natural born talent that is required to be a star. Rooney Mara becomes a star by bringing to life one of popular literature’s most revered heroines in recent history. She allows us to feel the heat of Lisbeth Salander’s rage and burgeoning soul. Glenn Close pulls off a stunt that some actors believe is the ultimate test of their talent, be it Dustin Hoffman, Linda Hunt or Hilary Swank.

But it’s Viola Davis as Aibileen Clark in The Help who creates a character from scratch. She makes us feel the anger and unbearable sadness that comes from raising and caring for 17 white kids over the years only to have some of them grow up and see their affection turn to indifference and casual cruelty, all the while enduring the pain of burying her only son.

The power of the performance is in Davis’ eyes. They take in everything – tossed-off racist remarks, a child’s need to be comforted. And her voice, which never rises above a formal submissiveness, quivers with a boiling anger that stands for generations of women whose hard work goes unnoticed. It’s a voice that needs to be heard.

The character could be seen as an example of Hollywood condescension: the quietly suffering noble black domestic. But Davis makes Aibileen unforgettable by cueing us into her quiet defiance. She knows a change is coming but worries if it’s too late. Aibileen may not possess the recklessness of youth, but in her own way she takes a stand. Davis may not raise her voice but we hear her loud and clear.

Kevin B. Lee is Editor in Chief of Press Play. He is also a film critic and award-winning filmmaker. 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.

‘SHOULD WIN’ VIDEO ESSAY SERIES: PRESS PLAY picks the Oscars

OSCARS REVISITED, 1981: ON GOLDEN POND

[EDITOR'S NOTE: In a yearly feature titled "Oscars Revisited," Press Play takes a look back at the Academy Awards race from earlier eras. Our inaugural series focuses on the five Best Picture nominees from calendar year 1981: Reds, Atlantic City, On Golden Pond, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Chariots of Fire.]

Of the five films nominated for Best Picture of 1981, On Golden Pond is greeted with the most derision – dismissed as the Academy falling for cheap sentiment as an excuse to honor their own. Raiders of the Lost Ark set the template for the modern blockbuster, its popularity and influence so immediate that recognition could not be denied it. Atlantic City had an almost European attitude toward character and sexuality while providing a wonderful showcase for Burt Lancaster. Reds was a mix of sweeping historical romance and vanity project. And the winner, Chariots of Fire, had just the right combination of underdog scrappiness and rarefied air of repressed British passion that wins over voters. But what about On Golden Pond?

At the time of the Academy Awards, the film's box office take was closing in on $80 million. It was obviously hitting a chord with audiences, but the critical response was mixed at best. The positive notices seemed to be written under duress. The rest of the mixed-to-negative reviews rang of hardened resistance to being moved at the sight of two old geezers puttering about and saying the damnedest things. (I know one critic who at the time referred to the movie as On Golden Shower.) Some critics and younger film buffs scoffed at a movie they perceived as appealing to middlebrow tastes – i.e., conservative older moviegoers who probably say things like, “Why don’t they make more movies like that?” On Golden Pond was one of the first big Reagan-era dramas, the anti-Ordinary People. The pairing of Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda bridged opposing ends of Hollywood’s political spectrum – the brassy liberal and the stern all-American traditionalist. And the sight of Hanoi Jane making nice with her dad now seems like one of the first examples of what turned out to be a major trope in 1980s American cinema, the sight of '60s kids reconciling with their parents.

Seen today, the film version of Ernest Thompson’s Broadway hit looks shockingly small-scale, quaint even. If it weren’t for the star power, it might not have been a hit. Seeing Hepburn and Fonda portray Ethel and Norman Thayer stirs all kinds of emotions. We are at once watching the characters and the actors. The simplicity of the story is crucial to us connecting with the Thayer family. A more complex story would be pointless. Fonda was 76 years old and Hepburn was 74 years old at the time of filming. They no longer had to get into character. They were the characters.

If you didn’t know the movie was based on a play it wasn't hard to figure out, and not just because the story takes place in and around one location. Thompson’s dialogue has, at times, an overly-written cleverness. Unlike the worst of Neil Simon, where characters talk in two-liners, Ethel and Norman speak to each other in quips. What keeps their exchanges from being intolerable is that we feel as if they’ve been talking like this for their entire lives.

The story’s structure is at times quite rickety, but it is also curiously comforting. The opening scene sets the tone perfectly as the Thayers arrive at their summer home and Ethel quickly gets out of the car and calls for Norman to listen to the loons. It’s a classic Kate moment as she says, “The looons, the looons.” (Norman claims he can’t hear anything.) The opening scenes have a stagy busyness that only pros like Hepburn and Fonda can keep from being grating. (The bit where Norman calls the operator so they can call him is quite funny.) The opening passages show the Thayers puttering around, taking their boat to town to pick up supplies, making small talk with Charlie the mailman (William Lanteau). These scenes are finely executed but feel frankly quite twee. Then, Norman has an episode where he can’t remember the route of the road in the woods he’s taken thousands of times to town. He momentarily lets his guard down and tells Ethel he’s scared. Ethel comforts him by saying, “Listen to me, mister, you’re my knight in shining armor.” Up to this point Hepburn has spoken in her trademark New England braying bellow. (Seeing and hearing her again made me realize just how astonishing Cate Blanchett’s portrayal of Hepburn was in The Aviator.) But when she comforts Norman she lowers her voice, almost whispering. It’s a great piece of acting that only someone as experienced as Hepburn could make look easy. The scene hooks us and we’re on Norman and Ethel’s side for the rest of the movie.

Not much happens during the summer. Well, not exactly. What happen are the kind of small compromises and accommodations that sometimes occur in families. The Thayers’ wayward daughter Chelsea writes and says she wants to visit for Norman’s 80th birthday. She says she’s bringing her latest boyfriend and his 13-year-old son from a previous marriage. The scene where Norman and Ethel wait for Chelsea to arrive surprises us because an unexpected tension starts to mount. Through inferences we learn that Norman and Chelsea have a friction-filled relationship that they tiptoe around; of course there’s also tension because we know real-life conflict existed between Jane Fonda and her dad. That’s what makes their first on-screen scene together so good. We sense things could explode at any moment. Henry Fonda’s admiration of his daughter’s acting registers as Norman’s distant nature as the old man tries in his own way to get along with her.

(Watching Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond, I was struck at how son Peter Fonda’s career-capping performance in Ulee’s Gold is like the dark side of Norman Thayer; the younger Fonda is playing both his dad and Ulee Jackson.)

The middle section of the movie consists of the Thayers looking after Billy Ray (Doug McKeon), son to Bill Ray (Dabney Coleman), who is taking Chelsea to Europe for a month. Coleman’s big scene with Henry Fonda is a real gem. At first he is intimidated by Norman and comes off as almost condescending towards him. Norman senses this and refuses to give him a break. The way Bill calls Norman out on trying to push his buttons is startling to both us and Norman. Norman decides he’s good enough for his daughter. McKeon, iffy in the early scenes, eventually grows on you. He matches up nicely with Fonda as they develop a winning comic rhythm. We need to feel their affection for one another so that the sequence where their lives are danger doesn’t feel like a manipulation of the plot.

Norman, Ethel and Billy make a fun trio as we sense they’re getting right as surrogate grandparents what they got wrong as parents. There’s a feeling that tragedy could occur at any moment. It doesn’t, really. The big scene in the movie is when Norman and Billy attempt to navigate their boat through a rocky cove. They hit a rock and Norman falls overboard. The highlight of the sequence comes when Ethel goes looking for them and comes upon their boat. When she sees Norman and Billy hanging onto a rock she immediately dives into the water and swims toward them. What gives the scene a swelling emotional power is that Hepburn’s stunt is done in one unbroken shot. She really jumps into the water.

Jane Fonda’s interactions with Hepburn and her father demonstrate her skill at being able to adapt to differing acting styles. Her scenes with Hepburn have a loose give-and-take feel. There’s a remarkable scene where mother and daughter go skinny-dipping at night. Seeing their heads poking above the water at night, we register that it is possible Jane could be the offspring of these two. Her sharp features and her quivering, clipped voice are just right. Her big scene with her father is one for the time capsule. The way her Strasberg-training acting style and his do-it-as-rehearsed strictness rub against each other beautifully illustrates the generational gap they are trying to close. The elder Fonda hated improvisation. He felt there was no need to change what was already on the page. This leads to a fleeting moment where the real world comes crashing into the movie. Chelsea tells Norman she wants to be his friend. When the camera switches to Henry Fonda’s side of the scene, Jane/Chelsea improvises a gesture and puts her hand on his arm. (You’ll miss it if you’re not looking for it.) This bit of business was not rehearsed and startled the elder Fonda. His fleeting reaction to this moment of affection is real. You see him turn, almost embarrassed by the intimacy of the moment. At the end of the movie, when Chelsea, who always refers to her father as “Norman,” calls him “Dad,” we can no longer separate the characters’ quiet acknowledgement of their love from seeing Jane and Henry finally connect with one another.

At the time of its success, On Golden Pond was mocked in some quarters as being some kind of big-screen therapy session for the Fondas. Seen today, removed from its zeitgeist moment, On Golden Pond reveals itself to be an enormously moving (if manipulative) story of familial reconciliation.

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.