MISSOURI BREAKS (1976): Or How to Kill All of the Bats

Many of the best movies ever made were low budget films with big stars released in the 1970s.  I’m not being nostalgic in saying that because many of these films were anything but nostalgic.  The Great White Hope starring James Earl Jones came out in 1970.  There was McCabe and Mrs. Miller starring Warren Beatty and directed by Robert Altman released in 1971.  Straw Dogs featuring Dustin Hoffman also came out in 1971.  And Mean Streets with Robert De Niro and directed by Martin Scorsese came out in 1973.

 

Jack Nicholson especially played in some of the best films.  Nicholson appeared in Five Easy Pieces in 1970, co-starred with Bruce Dern in The King of Marvin Gardens in 1972, co-starred with Randy Quaid in The Last Detail in 1973 (one of my all-time favorite movies), played alongside Faye Dunaway in Chinatown in 1974, and finally appeared with Marlon Brando in Missouri Breaks.  Missouri Breaks may go down as one of the more bizarre and quirky westerns ever made.  And it isn’t Nicholson that gives the film it’s peculiar edge.  That left up to Brando, and the technique of telling the story by director Arthur Penn.  

Nicholson plays Tom Logan, a good-natured horse thief and cattle rustler, who would more than anything like to find a good woman and settle down.  Unfortunately, he has a friend hanged by a large landowner named Braxton (John McLiam).  Tom purchases a tract of land next door to Braxton’s property.  This tract is a sort of meeting place for Tom and his gang of cattle rustlers.  While Tom and his gang are intent on revenge against Braxton, Tom also falls in love with Braxton’s daughter, Jane (Kathleen Lloyd).  His confused loyalty does not prevent his gang from hanging Braxton’s foreman.  This results in Braxton’s hiring of a bounty hunter to take care of all of the cattle rustlers once and for all.

The bounty hunter is none other than the famous Lee Clayton (Marlon Brando).  In all movie history, there is probably never a more eccentric villain than this character.  Clayton will do practically anything to get information about the cattle rustlers.  This includes disguising himself as a preacher and as a grandmother in dress and bonnet.  Clayton can kill a man from a long distance with the rifle he carries.  And he will explain to anyone willing or unwilling to listen that he passes gas anytime he gets too upset.

Clayton knows that Tom is not a farmer, and he suspects him as being the leader of the gang of cattle rustlers.  One by one he kills the rustlers off.  These are all of Tom’s best friends.  Clayton is so effective and single-minded in killing off the rustlers that he even frightens the man who hired him.  Braxton eventually tries to fire Clayton only to find out that Clayton is not interested in whether he does get paid.  All Clayton wants to do is finish his job.  Clayton compares pursuing cattle rustlers to the hunting of bats.  He said that if you gather them all together, you have the “evil buggers” at your mercy. 

But Tom is wily enough to escape Clayton.  In fact, he cuts Clayton’s throat while Clayton is sleeping under the stars.  Tom then wants to leave the area with Jane, but after Braxton feigns having a stroke Jane is unwilling to leave her father’s side.  This elaborate ruse is an attempt to get Tom at close range and kill him.  But Braxton fails to accomplish this and ends up shot himself instead.  We presume at the end of the film that Tom and Jane will someday be together. 

Missouri Breaks is 126 minutes long.  There’s some good action sequences, but there are also some very long scenes where nothing occurs other than listening to the characters talk to each other in a comical and sometimes cynical fashion.  Yet with all that occurs, the two characters who survive in the movie are in their own peculiar ways the most decent characters in the film: Tom and Jane.  There is a sort of happy ending at the end of this strange film.

Many recent critics remain puzzled at why this film never made it at the box office.  This seems especially odd when at the time of its release the movie featured two recent Academy Award winning stars.  But when you see what films do make the most money, it’s really not a mystery.  Most blockbusters fit a formula.  Because moviemakers are frightened that anything new may not bring in money right away, most blockbusters have sequels.  And most blockbusters along with the sequels will make money and be deservedly forgotten in ten years.

The beauty of Missouri Breaks is that one can watch it over and over again, and still enjoy it.  One can catch reruns of the film on late night television.  You can even watch the entire film on YouTube.  It was too unorthodox to ever become extremely popular in the theater.  Yet it’s too original for those who saw it early on to forget it at a later date.

September 22, 2018

© Robert S. Miller 2018

PATHS OF GLORY (1957): Fighting In World War I

As director Stanley Kubrick’s earliest blockbuster, Paths of Glory is so much more than almost every film ever made.  As one of the earliest antiwar films, it is relevant.  It has characters we care for, and some that we despise – all well played.  And at only 88 minutes, it is an instance of concise and powerful storytelling.

Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas) is ordered by the French General staff to attack a well-fortified German position known as the “anthill.”  While even the generals believe that a successful attack is virtually impossible, the possibility of a promotion makes the general in charge, General Paul Mireau (George Macready), decide that such an attack is indeed necessary and doable.

Despite the bravery of Colonel Dax and many of his men, the attack is a disaster.  When it appears that the men will have to retreat, General Mireau orders that the artillery fire on his own men in order to motivate them to keep moving forward.  But because an artillery commander refuses to do so without written authorization, Mireau’s plans are thwarted.  Eventually, Colonel Dax and his men retreat back to their trenches.

Mireau is outraged and wants to execute 100 men.  However, General George Broulard (Adolphe Menjou), Mireau’s superior, convinces Mireau to reduce the number of executions to three.  The commander from each of the three squads under Dax’s command will choose which soldier would be put in front of the firing squad.  Corporal Paris (Ralph Meeker) is chosen by his company leader, Lieutenant Roget (Wayne Morris).  Corporal Paris was aware that Roget was drunk at the time of the raid and probably responsible for the death of another French solider due to Roget’s negligence.  Therefore, Roget viewed Paris as the best choice because Paris knows too much.  Private Ferol (Timothy Carey) is chosen to be executed because his commander considered him a social degenerate.  With two bravery citations, Private Arnaud (Joseph Turkel) is chosen because his commander decided to draw lots.

Colonel Dax, a lawyer in civilian life, volunteers to defend the three men.  This enrages Mireau who would more than anything like to see Dax broken and used as a scapegoat for the failure of the raid.  But Mireau knows that he does not have any justification to bring charges against Dax.

The entire trial is a sham.  No one intended to ever give the three men a fair trial, and all three are ordered to be executed at dawn.  Still, Dax does have sufficient evidence on his side to convince General Broulard that Mireau did intend to fire on his own men.  While Broulard has no intentions of stopping the executions, he does use the evidence to bring an investigation against Mireau.  Mireau, to the very end, protests that Broulard has just stuck a knife in his back.

Dax, knowing Roget’s complicity in having Paris executed, orders Roget to supervise the shootings of the three men.  The three soldiers react to their sentences very differently.  Ferol subs and is meekly blindfolded.  Paris refuses a blindfold and is executed standing on his own two feet.  Arnaud, injured the prior evening in a prison fight, is carried out on a stretcher and tied to the post to give the appearance that he is standing up.  

We don’t know what Kubrick thought of this film.  He could be extraordinarily harsh about his films where he didn’t have full control.  And how much control he had over Paths of Glory remains debatable.  Nevertheless, Paths of Glory was highly praised as well as highly criticized and censored.  It would be almost twenty years before the film could be shown in France.  And it would not be shown in Spain until well after the death of Francisco Franco.  

But for me, it probably is my favorite of all Kubrick films – many of whose films are among the best.   Paths of Glory does not have the humor of Dr. Strangelove nor does the violence shock like it does in Clockwork Orange.  Yet everyone in the audience understood what the soldiers must have felt.

At the end of the film, the soldiers are in a saloon at first having fun with a young German girl who is asked to sing in front of the French troops.  Understandably frightened, she still manages to sing a well-known German song.   The French soldiers stop mocking her and listen.  Many of the soldiers even sing along.  Colonel Dax knows that the soldiers are ordered back to the front.   But Dax cannot tell the soldier the news as of yet until they had their chance to listen to the singing.

To my knowledge, no other film has had a more moving ending.

August 21, 2018

© Robert S. Miller 2018

MARATHON MAN (1976): Is It Safe?

Marathon Man is one of the popular films that also makes for good viewing among a more particular set of moviegoers.  This is in great part due to good storytelling and acting.  But there is something else to the film that makes it compelling.  At all times in the movie, viewers know precisely what the main character is thinking and feeling.

Presumably the storyline in the film takes place presumably around 1970.  It stars Dustin Hoffman as Babe, a stellar student and runner who is about to have his life upended due to some bizarre circumstances.  Babe is in the process of writing his doctoral thesis on tyranny at Columbia University in New York.  His hero is Abebe Bikila, the Olympic marathon runner most famous for winning the 1960 Olympic event while running barefoot through the streets of Rome. 

Babe’s family circumstances are complicated.  His father, a blacklisted professor at Columbia, committed suicide at the time of the Joseph McCarthy hearings.  Babe, as a young boy, was the one to find his father after hearing the gunshot.  Babe’s brother, Doc (Roy Scheider), claims to be an executive in the oil industry, but is actually a government agent dealing in some nefarious schemes.  The two brothers care for each other, but also have almost nothing in common.  Babe lives in a dumpy New York apartment and seems to care almost nothing for worldly success or popularity (a neighborhood gang refers to him as “the creep”).  Doc travels the world and dines in the finest restaurants.  More importantly, Doc never understands why Babe obsesses over the death of his father rather than get on with his life and make something of himself.

The agency Doc works for is in the business of locating Nazi war criminals in hiding.  As a source, they use an infamous war criminal called Dr. Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier).  Szell is as evil as any character in movie history.  He made himself rich in Auschwitz by blackmailing Jewish prisoners to either provide him their riches or go under the most extreme tortures.  His fortune resides in diamonds kept in a safe deposit box in New York City under the watch of his brother.  But because Szell’s brother dies in a spectacular car accident (a scene that no one forgets), Szell needs to come to New York in person to access to the diamonds.

Babe in the meantime falls in love with a girl named Elsa (Marthe Keller).  While Elsa claims to be Swiss, she is actually from Germany.   She works for Szell.  Her mission is to keep an eye on Babe (and consequently Doc) to find out if they know anything about the diamonds.  Doc, who understands there is something wrong about the relationship between Elsa and Babe, first confronts her and then confronts Szell, himself (after Szell arrives in America), to leave Babe alone.  Szell doesn’t take the lecture well and instead stabs Doc to death.  Doc, badly bleeding and wounded, makes his way back to Babe’s apartment only to die in Babe’s arms.  He is never able to tell Babe what happened.

Due to the dealings of a corrupt agent named Janeway (William Devane), Babe ends up in the custody of Szell.  In probably the film’s most memorable scene, Szell tortures Babe to find out if Doc did tell him anything.  All along, Szell asks Babe, “Is it safe?”  Szell is wondering if it is safe to go to the bank to collect his fortune without anyone else interfering. 

By chance, Babe is able to escape Janeway and Szell.  Eventually, he is able to kill Janeway and Szell’s henchmen.  Elsa, who in the end attempts to save Babe, dies for her one good deed.  

Babe discovers where Szell is keeping the money and confronts Szell as Szell tries to walk away with the diamonds.  In Central Park, at a local facility, while confronted with a knife-wielding Szell, Babe throws all of the diamonds down the sewer.  Szell, in pursue of the diamonds, falls down the staircase and accidentally stabs himself to death with his own knife.  Through the hard-fought ordeal, Babe is for once victorious.

This long summary actually gives away very little of the convoluted plot of Marathon Man.  In fact, many movie reviewers obsess over the plot holes throughout the film rather than try to figure out why the film is extremely effective.  While every moviegoer is horrified by particular scenes (especially Babe sitting helplessly in the dental chair while Szell goes to work on his teeth), reviewers are trying to piece together a plot never designed to make literal sense.

Marathon Man is not so much about the plot as about a character study of someone almost every other character in the film underestimates.  Directed by John Schlesinger, it is 125 minutes long.  The character of Babe, beautifully played by Dustin Hoffman, is naïve, insecure, and cares too much for the truth and for others.  His counterpart, Szell, is conniving, cynical, and cares for no one besides himself.  In between, we have characters like Doc and Elsa, who for a time look aside at the evil rather than directly confront it.

Babe is a decent person.  His victory over Szell sometimes seems clumsier than heroic, yet Babe never runs away from a fight who could most likely lose. Marathon Man is like other effective 1970s adventure films such as Jaws or The French Connection.  These were also intelligent and unpretentious films with preposterous subplots – films which critics could not understand the appeal.  Sometimes, the viewer is more perceptive than the critic.

July 30, 2018

© Robert S. Miller 2018