While Billy Budd (1962) and The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972) take widely different approaches to a period milieu, they are both at their best when they spotlight their charismatic performers. The literary-sourced Budd and life-based Bean were recently released on Blu-ray from Warner Archive.
I’m generally not fond of the dudes on a ship genre, but Billy Budd has its own rhythm and transcends any genre trappings. I’ve found that my enjoyment of high seas drama depends dramatically on which dudes are aboard and that is one of the strong points of this film based on a stage play drawn from Herman Melville’s final, and posthumously published, work.
Set in 1797, all of the action takes place on a naval vessel where naïve crewman Billy Budd (Terence Stamp) has been taken from a merchant ship to serve. With dreamy eyes and dandelion fluff hair, the crew is baffled by the gentle, optimistic Budd, though they eventually admire his positive perspective. The sadistic master-at-arms John Claggart (Robert Ryan) feels threatened by Billy’s comfort with and desire to befriend him. He attempts to frame the young man for attempted mutiny, which ends up being deadly on multiple counts.
In his film debut, Stamp makes Billy an almost otherworldly character. He always seems a step removed from the pain and fear that plagues the rest of the crew members. This frightens Claggart, who is perturbed that he can't control him with fear and perhaps a bit disturbed by his attraction to Budd. He is the sort of man who gets an intense thrill from whippings and drawing blood, that this joyful boy should exist in his orbit dampens that erotic charge.
The captain of the ship (Peter Ustinov, who also directs) knows how destructive Claggart is for his men, but he fears Billy more; he could lead the crew to a more lusty mutiny than the master-at-arms. As a disillusioned elderly sailmaker, Melvyn Douglas, wearily watches Budd move towards his doom, though even he can’t see where it all is leading.
Billy Budd hits its stride when it begins to focus on one-on-one conversations. The tension between Ryan and Ustinov, and especially Stamp and Ryan is presented with menacing intimacy. These private moments form the dark core of a story the crew cannot begin to understand, increasing the overall tension. What is expressed stands equal to the repressed fears and desires of all aboard but the innocent Billy.
Special features include an interesting commentary in which director Steven Soderbergh talks with Terence Stamp about his experiences making the film. Perhaps because the pair worked together on The Limey (1999), they have a good rapport and their conversation has a nice flow.
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean is a more comic enterprise. Its humorous success varies, depending on who has the spotlight in this loosely history-based western full of cameos. Director John Huston pulls together some good tall tales, but never weaves them into a cohesive whole.
As the frontier-based Bean, Paul Newman moves from the bad side of the law to impose his own morally-flexible definition of justice. He lusts after the distant star of the stage Lily Langtry (Ava Gardner), falls for a young Mexican girl (Victoria Principal), and tangles with an unruly cast of characters.
Newman is the weakest part of Roy Bean. He doesn’t have the ornery toughness or the comic juice to make his crusty character pop. While the actor could be funny in the right circumstances, he had a bad habit of seeming more amused by himself than the audience. That quality is at its worse here.
A diverse cast of characters take up the slack, in a series of amusing vignettes. Anthony Perkins sets aside his jittery persona in favor of a wry restraint as traveling man of the cloth. Leaning into his gravelly voice, Tab Hunter works against his pretty boy looks as a shifty, but oddly sympathetic outlaw. Most amusing is Stacy Keach as the bandit Bad Bob. No one relishes an over-the-top role like this actor; he looks like he is having the time of the life, which adds to the humor. Roddy McDowall and Ava Gardner also demonstrate reliable ensemble chops as a hapless lawyer and Langtry respectively.
In the end, the mess of stories, punctuated by a scene-stealing black bear, becomes a bit exhausting, but the cameos help to renew interest when the action flags.
Many thanks to Warner Archive for providing copies of the films for review. To order, visit The Warner Archive Collection.
Last night at SIFF Cinema Uptown, I enjoyed the first SIFF screening of Amy Scott’s documentary about filmmaker Hal Ashby, Hal (2018). Brilliantly edited, compassionate, and full of insightful interviews, I learned a lot about this director who I have always admired, but I realize now not fully understood.
I've always found Ashby to be a rabble-rousing rebel, but he is only that if striving for peace, love, and human connection is rebellious. Perhaps that is true; I hope not. Where the studios he worked with are concerned, the rebel label fit. He always had to fight to fulfill his artistic vision.
Ashby found his first Hollywood success as an editor, winning his only Academy Award for his work cutting In The Heat of the Night (1967). That film was one of several he made with his mentor and friend, director Norman Jewison. While Ashby was married five times and fathered a daughter, it is clear that his most significant bond was with Jewison, who understood this workaholic, peace-loving rebel and gave him his first opportunity to direct: The Landlord (1970).
The film starred a baby-faced Beau Bridges as a trust fund kid who buys a building in the black ghetto with gentrification on his mind, but finds himself increasingly involved with his tenants. A work of great idealism and anger at the status quo, it would possess all the elements of Ashby’s best work: empathy, eccentricity, and a core built on vibrant relationships.
Scott follows Ashby through these great works (and the less satisfying productions to follow), which form one of the most remarkable runs of artistic and commercial success in the film industry. After The Landlord there was Harold and Maude (1971), The Last Detail (1973), Shampoo (1975), Bound for Glory (1976), Coming Home (1978), and Being There (1979). They are all iconic works, created with frequent resistance from the studio, which Ashby and his savvy associates fought off with determined fidelity to their work.
Scott weaves together a wild brew of letters, interviews and vintage footage, pacing it all as if she is seducing a viewer with waning interest. It really pops, confidently drawing you into Ashby’s passions. In a Q&A following the screening, producer Brian Morrow mentioned how many more recordings of Ashby they had and other fascinating stories that couldn’t be included in the film. Her fidelity to flow over the lure of all those other elements pays off.
Ashby’s complexities are slowly revealed as the focus shifts occasionally from the work that consumed him to his less successful personal life. A teenage father, he abandoned his daughter, and after those five tries, he abandoned the idea of marriage in favor of taking up with a series of girlfriends who could accept that his true love was film. Childhood trauma also colored his life, as he was all peace and love in expressing his art, but less placid when it came to confronting his own demons.
Unfortunately, Ashby could not maintain his all-consuming passion for film and work in an industry focused on profits. It was painful, but moving to see people he worked with like Jewison and Rosanna Arquette tear up with regret that he was not able to launch a third act and fulfill his ambition. Perhaps Ashby is not in the upper pantheon of directors as he deserves, but here you see many who have worked with, admired, and understood this uniquely gifted filmmaker.
During the post-film Q&A I asked the film's producer Brian Morrow if anything he learned about Ashby during the production had surprised him. He talked about the overwhelming amount of audio content the director left behind and how impressed by the extent that he was a “wildly committed artist,” who would refuse to compromise his vision. He talked about remarkable clips where the director said he understood white privilege and the challenges of racial identity. It sounds like he was ahead of his time.
In addition to Morrow, Ashby’s friend, former LA Weekly critic Michael Dare, shared some memories about the director; one of the best to be revealed later in this review.
I was also amused that the projectionist leaned out to ask a question. That’s the first time I’ve seen that!
One of Ashby’s best films, Being There (1979) screened at SIFF Cinema Uptown the next afternoon. Starring Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, and Melvyn Douglas, the D.C. set drama might be more relevant today that it was upon release.
Sellers is Chance, a gardener who has spent his entire life in the home of a wealthy man. Chance appears to be on the spectrum, emotionally disconnected and possessing the intellectual development of a child. Obsessed with television, his understanding of the world is almost entirely drawn from the shows he watches, flipping constantly through channels. When the old man dies, he is abruptly thrust into a world he has never seen up close.
Instead of struggling, the empty slate Chance presents to the world is like a blank check for this dignified, well dressed white man. He finds himself in the home of a dying millionaire (Douglas) with a loving, but lonely wife (MacLaine) who falls hard for him. His benefactor is well-connected, granting him an audience with the president (Jack Warden), who like everyone else sees his simple talk about gardening as profound musings about life.
Chance becomes a celebrity: invited on talk shows and circulating with the international elite. Everyone sees what they want to see in his pleasant talk. Only Douglas’ doctor, played with intelligent compassion by Richard Dysart, understands the truth about this simple man. His is an important character that can be found in the best of Ashby’s films: the one who truly sees into people. It is Ruth Gordon in Harold and Maude and Beau Bridges in The Landlord. Dysart knows that Chance is not a towering intellectual, but he also understands the people in his orbit and how the truth is something they construct to create their own safety. It’s all chillingly familiar.
During the Q&A for Hal, Dare mentioned that the famous ending was not in the script and made up by Ashby on the set. Making that unusual scene happen depended on winning over the on-set spy Lorimar had put on the director. He told an amusing anecdote about how the director convinced the young man that he didn’t want to be responsible for blocking this remarkable shot. I hope that he realizes how important his cooperation was for film history.
Hal screens again at The 44th Seattle International Film Festival on Sunday, 6/3, 12:30pm at the SIFF Cinema Uptown.
The forties were an interesting time for Joan Crawford. In that decade she left her long time studio MGM for Warner Bros, finally won a coveted Oscar for best actress (Mildred Pierce [1946]) and her performance style matured beyond the movie star mannerisms upon which she'd relied so heavily in her early career. Two of Crawford's best titles from this era, A Woman's Face (1941) and Flamingo Road (1949), from MGM and Warner Bros. respectively, are now available on DVD from Warner Archive.
A Woman's Face (1941)
Crawford was in the last years of her long association with MGM when George Cukor directed her in the Hollywood remake of A Woman's Face (Ingrid Bergman starred in the Swedish original in 1938). She is Anna Holm, a woman made bitter by an ugly scar, that covers one side of her face, the result of a childhood accident. Unemployable, she runs a tavern as a cover for a large blackmail operation through which she takes pleasure in torturing ladies who have the kind of breathless, illicit romances she only dreams of having herself.
One night at her establishment, she hosts the charming and wealthy Torsten Barring (Conrad Veidt). Though he can have any woman he wants, he is intrigued by Anna, connecting with her darkness. She is stunned by the attention, and falls in love for the first time.
When Anna is caught in the midst of blackmailing unfaithful wife Vera (Osa Massen) by her plastic surgeon husband, Dr. Gustaf Segert (Melvyn Douglas), the doctor insists on fixing her face. In some respects it is a matter of pride for him to attempt the surgery, but he also claims that he wants to know if she will remain ugly inside if she becomes superficially beautiful.
The operation is a success and Anna's whole life changes, but in her new beauty Torsten sees only the means to achieve his own dreams. He convinces her to take a job as nanny for his nephew, the only person who stands between him and a large inheritance, so that she may kill him. She takes the job, and under Dr. Segert's watchful eye, struggles with what ugliness remains in her when faced with a kinder, more welcoming world.
It is thanks to Cukor that Crawford seems to have matured overnight as an actress here; this is a transformative role for her. He insisted, with her agreement, that she drop her movie star act and truly become her character. Together they worked to make Anna angry, humble, tender and conflicted. It is one of her most complex performances and one of the first times the actress truly got lost in a role.
The film itself has plenty to say about women, and how their self-worth and value in society is tied to beauty. As an actress beginning to be seen as past her prime, Crawford must have felt Anna's turmoil deeply. She also was seeing her value decline because of age, though she was on the cusp of achieving some of the best, most unaffected performances of her life.
Special features on the disc include the short You Can't Fool a Camera, the cartoon Little Cesario, two radio adaptations of the film, one starring Ida Lupino, the other Bette Davis, and a theatrical trailer.
Flamingo Road (1949)
Crawford was well into a successful run at Warner Bros. Studios when she made Flamingo Road with director Michael Curtiz. She had won the Oscar and achieved some of the best performances of her career in films like Humoresque (1946) and Possessed (1947).
It was also the start of a period where, while the actress was maturing as a performer, she continued to take parts for younger woman, which sometimes gave an odd feeling to a film. This small town drama is one such occasion, where she plays a carnival showgirl who should be in her late twenties or early thirties, but 40-something Joan, who was at least aging gracefully, makes it work.
As dancer Lane Bellamy, Crawford is tired of skipping out on hotel bills and constantly traveling with the low-class carny set. She decides to settle in a Southern town, attracting the attention of deputy sheriff Fielding Carlisle (Crawford's Mildred Pierce costar Zachary Scott), who buys her a meal and gets her a job. This is all to the chagrin of Sheriff Titus Semple, who is grooming Carlisle to one day serve as his puppet governor.
Semple bullies everyone, this is a man who becomes angry if he is not given a separate chair for his hat, but he is hardest on Lane. He gets her fired, has her picked up for soliciting and does everything in his power to get her out of town. Yes she is not good material for a politician's wife, but Temple also seems to find it unnerving the way Lane has of detecting and speaking the truth, something he works very hard to conceal when it proves inconvenient. Years on the carnival circuit have toughened Lane though and she refuses to back down.
As she builds a life for herself, finding work, and eventually marriage and a home, Lane faces constant pressure from Semple. He treats everyone with contempt, calling Fielding "Bub" as if to continually reinforce that he considers the younger man beneath him, and only a tool for his use. While while he presents an exterior of smooth, psychopathic evil, from the way he guzzles milk instead of liquor it seems he is suffering from ulcers, a sign of a man who is more tormented than he lets on.
Flamingo Road plays like a melodrama, but has the look of a film noir. Even on a sunny day, long shadows haunt Semple's porch, a constant reminder of the grime beneath the cheerful exterior of the town. Lane is set up at every turn to be the victim of that darkness, but she is stronger than the easily blackmailed men who give the illusion of being in control of that town.
Special features on the disc include the featurette Crawford at Warners, the cartoon Curtain Razor, a radio adaptation of the film and a theatrical trailer.
Many thanks to Warner Archive for providing a copy of the film for review. This is a Manufacture on Demand (MOD) DVD. To order, visit The Warner Archive Collection.
