THE
KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE (1976) and
BUFFALO
BILL AND THE INDIANS… (1976)
Nineteen seventy-six, one of the most memorable years
in Hollywood history, saw the release of all-time classics “Taxi Driver,”
“Network,” “All the President’s Men” along with the popular best picture winner,
“Rocky.”
The five-year period starting the year
before (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Nashville,” “Shampoo,” “Jaws”) and
ending in 1979 (“Apocalypse Now,” “Manhattan,” “All That Jazz,” “Being There,”
“Alien”), with “Annie Hall,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Star Wars,”
and “The Deer Hunter,” among others, in 1977 and ‘78, represents the most substantial
run of great films the American film industry ever produced. In this small
pocket of time, writers and directors were given free range and audiences were
rewarded.
For me, the year marks the beginning of
my interest in movies as more than just entertaining diversions, as I recognized
the cinema as a complex artform, the best films offering a strong point of view
expressed by a screenwriter and a director. The journey had begun the previous
year when I finally saw “The Godfather Part II” and “Last Tango in Paris,”
seminal works of the era.
I could wax excessively about “All the
President’s Men,” having first watched it just as I segued from an English
major to journalism, but too much has been written about that influential
docu-drama.
Two underappreciated pictures from 1976 that
deserve revisiting are John Cassavetes’ street-wise tale of a seedy
businessman, “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” and Robert Altman’s
free-wheeling, historical satire, “Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting
Bull's History Lesson.”
Altman, in the midst of his most
productive period—"McCabe & Mrs. Miller,” “The Long Goodbye,”
“Nashville,” 3 Women”—drops viewers into the world of Buffalo Bill Cody’s
vaudevillian show of the Wild West, a theatrical circus that thrived from the
1880s until the early 20th Century, creating a mythology about the
white settlers’ “conquest” of the American West and casting the Native
Americans as villains.
Paul Newman, giving one of his most
underrated performances, plays Cody as an egotistical moron who can barely ride
a horse, but strides about like the hero he never was. In a coup, the federal
government allows the still regal Sitting Bull, the most famous tribal chief,
off the reservation to join the troupe. As ridiculous as the entire set-up
seems, it actually happened.
The supporting cast, like in every Altman
picture, is essential: Kevin McCarthy (“Invasion of the Body Snatchers”) is
hilarious as one of Cody’s assistants; Joel Grey, after providing MC duties for
“Cabaret” (1972), does the same for Buffalo Bill; Geraldine Chaplin plays the
emotional sharp-shooter Annie Oakley; Harvey Keitel is cast against type as
Bill’s sycophant nephew; and fresh from his memorable performance as Chief Bromden
in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Will Sampson confounds Cody as the
stone-faced spokesperson for Sitting Bull.
The best performance in the film is
delivered by the venerable Burt Lancaster as Ned Buntline, the dime novelist who
turned Cody from a minor figure into a Western legend. “[It was] the thrill of
my life to have invented you,” he tells Buffalo Bill as he departs. Every line
Lancaster speaks is a gem (Altman penned the film with fellow director Alan
Rudolph), dripping with sarcasm.
The picture offers the ultimate critique
of movie Westerns and their depiction of American history: the ungilded truth
fades, replaced by a more comfortable narrative and make-believe heroes. While
the filmmakers are clearly condemning the casual racism expressed by the white
characters, I can’t imagine the film being made today.
Ben Gazzara, one of Cassavetes’ best
friends, an intense actor who gave as many bad performances as good ones, is
perfectly cast as Cosmo Vittelli, the high-stepping proprietor of a low-rent
strip joint on Hollywood Boulevard. Like many of the writer-director’s movies,
“The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” feels unrehearsed, documentary style with
long takes of Cosmo strutting through the club or on the mean streets of Los
Angeles, always well dressed and full of confidence, but never very far ahead
of his creditors.
There’s not much of a plot—Cosmo is the
plot—but the title comes from a favor he’s asked to do to clear a gambling
debt. Among the mobsters keeping Cosmo in line are played by Seymour Cassel and
the scariest of all actors, Timothy Carey.
“Chinese Bookie” fits into one of the most
interesting movie trends of the 1970s: aimless, but insightful examinations of
individuals who don’t fit neatly into society.
Gene Hackman and Al Pacino in “Scarecrow”
(1973), Hackman again in “The Conversation” (1974), Dustin Hoffman in “Straight
Time” (1978), Jill Clayburgh in “An Unmarried Woman” (1978), Warren Oates in
“Two-Lane Blacktop” (1972), every ‘70s role of Jack Nicholson and Gena Rowlands
in her husband’s “A Woman Under the Influence” (1974) are just a few of
examples of this long-lost sub-genre.
THE
DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2 (2026)
Considering Hollywood’s love affair with
sequels, it’s surprising that it took 20 years to revive the world of fashion
journalism that made “The Devil Wears Prada” a major hit in 2006.
Bringing back Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway,
Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt, the new production straddles the line between
offensive extravagance and consideration of the importance of ethics and
loyalty, but let’s not take the film too seriously—this is well-acted, overly
plotted eye candy. It tones down the pretentiousness of the original with
Streep’s Miranda (a not very subtle comic portrait of former Vogue editor Anna
Wintour) coming off as an actual human with a touch of humility and
vulnerability.
Hathaway’s Andy is now an award-winning
journalist who, after the paper she writes for folds, returns to Runway, where Miranda
and Nigel (Tucci) still run the fashion magazine. After helping them dodge a PR
nightmare over third-world labor issues, Andy works behind the scenes to
unravel an ownership change for the publication.
Blunt’s arrogant Emily, once, like Andy, a
lowly assistant under Miranda, is now a major player in the fashion world,
running Dior.
Director David Frankel, who has mostly
toiled on television since the first film, returns to smoothly guide the sequel
and the fluctuating relationship between Miranda and Andy. Both actresses are
sharp; for Hathaway the performance is something of a comeback, her most
prominent role since her Oscar win for “Les Misérables” in 2012.
By the last third of the picture, the
scheming reaches such pointless levels that even someone as fashion-ignorant as
I was more interested in the haute couture than the story.
CONFESSION
(1937)
The biggest winners at the dawn of the
sound era were actresses. In no decade since the 1930s (and continuing in the
early ‘40s) have stories about women played such a large part of the industry’s
output. The number of actresses who were the stars (not just co-stars) of
pictures is overwhelming when one considers the course of movie history since
then.
While even causal movie fans remember
Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Katharine Hepburn and Greta Garbo, one of the
biggest box office attractions of the era, Kay Francis, has been virtually
forgotten.
In the past few weeks, courtesy of TCM
and YouTube, I’ve seen more than a half dozen of Francis’ films she starred in
for Warner Bros. after her initial success at Paramount. “The Keyhole” (1933),
“British Agent” (1934), “The House on 56th Street” (1935), “I Found
Stella Parish” (1935), “Stranded” (1935) and “Secrets of an Actress” (1938) are
all stories of romantic heartbreak and sacrifice, classic “women’s pictures.”
All told, she made 50 films during the 1930s, most as the top billed performer,
yet Francis never scored an Oscar nomination.
Probably her finest performance and most
interesting role is in “Confession” as washed-up Polish opera singer Vera
Kowalska who, minutes after she’s introduced in the film, shoots and kills her
one-time mentor (Basil Rathbone) as he leaves a nightclub in “Confession.”
Much of the movie’s story is shown in
flashback as Vera is forced to tell her story in court. Director Joe May, a
pioneer of the German film industry who emigrated to the U.S. in the mid-1930s,
brings the influences of German Expressionism to “Confessions,” fearing more
camera movement and stylish touches than you see even from Fritz Lang or Ernst
Lubitsch. According to IMDb, the film is an almost identical copy of the 1935
German picture “Mazurka.”
The film opens with the Svengali-like
Michailow (Rathbone) seducing a young piano protégé Lisa (a wide-eyed Jane
Bryan), a romance that ends abruptly when Vera shoots him. In flashback we see
how years earlier Michailow did his best to breakup Vera’s marriage to a war
hero (Ian Hunter). Rathbone, who was a villain right up to his career-changing
Sherlock Holmes series, plays the most despicable character I remember ever
seeing in a 1930s picture; it’s pretty clear he rapes Vera after getting her
drunk and has similar plans for Lisa.
Francis’ Vera provides the moral center of
the film, a stand-in for women mistreated by men in power, as she goes from a
European opera star to a second-rate cabaret singer who has lost everything she
loved. She creates a powerful image in the courtroom dock, her hair dyed blonde
and her piercing eyes staring hopelessly into space, unconcerned with the
charges against her.
Also memorable is the great character
actor Donald Crisp as the murder-trial judge who must weigh the cost of justice
in this complicated case.
By the mid-1940s, good roles weren’t
coming her way; she retired at 41 after “Wife Wanted” (1946), ironically about
a washed-up movie star. Too bad she didn’t hold off until film noir caught
on—like Davis, Stanwyck and Joan Crawford, she could have revived her career.
Retiring early and having just a single
great film—“Trouble in Paradise,” in a supporting role—explains why she’s not
remembered but Francis was a subtle, thoughtful actress, often a sharp contrast
to her male co-stars who were still learning how to act in talkies.
THE
STRANGER (2026)
One of the essential novels of the 20th
Century, Albert Camus’ manifesto on an absurdist approach to life creates a
challenge to filmmakers looking to adapt the book. The simplistic plot—a taciturn
shipping clerk’s mother dies and then he thoughtlessly shoots a man to death—is
just the frame that the French writer used to hang his theory concerning a pointless
existence; his rejection of traditional ideas of happiness and morals.
The great Italian director Luchino Visconti
tackled the novel in 1967 with Marcello Mastroianni as the dour protagonist.
I’ve only seen a fuzzy, VHS-transfer of that picture on the internet so I can’t
compare it to the new version. But Mastroianni’s natural charisma undercuts the
emotionless portrait of Meursault.
Benjamin Voisin, star of the acclaimed
French film “Lost Illusions” (2021), walks through the impressionistic film
with world-weary detachment, attending his mother’s funeral, commencing an
affair with a former co-worker (Rebecca Marder) and his accidental involvement
with Raymond (Pierre Lottin), his shady neighbor.
Like the novel, the picture is set in early 1940s Algeria amid the background of the French military incursion into the
African colony, adding a racial aspect when, after a scuffle with three Arab
men near a friend’s beachside home, Meursault fires five shots into one of
them.
Director François Ozon (“Under the Sand,”
“Swimming Pool”), who adapted the novel with Philippe Piazzo, emphasizes the
contrast of the intense North African sun with interior shadows, superbly shot
by Manuel Dacosse. The retro black and white cinematography adds to the film’s
fog of ennui.
THE
GIRL IN THE NEWS (1940)
Before he directed three of the finest
British films of the century—“Odd Man Out,” “The Fallen Idol” and “The Third
Man,” all in a row in the late 1940s—Carol Reed first signaled his filmmaking
potential with three 1940 pictures.
Reed, the illegitimate son of the British
stage legend Herbert Beerbohm Tree, worked in film companies from an early age,
rising to director in 1935; 1940 proved to be a turning point. Central to the
success of all three, “The Stars Look Down” and “Night Train to Munich” along
with “The Girl in the News,” is leading lady Margaret Lockwood.
Coming off international success playing
the amateur sleuth determined to find a missing elderly woman in Alfred
Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes” (1938), Lockwood had risen to the top of the
British film industry. In “Stars Look Down,” she’s the unhappy wife of a school
teacher (Michael Redgrave), a local who returns from university determined to
help the coalminers working in dangerous conditions. Foreshadowing John Ford’s
“How Green Was My Valley” (1941), Reed’s film isn’t the visual masterpiece that
Ford’s film is, but pushes for reform much more directly. As Jenny, Lockwood
plays a complicated, unsympathetic woman, unsure of her loyalties.
While those two films are recognized
classics of British cinema, I was unfamiliar with “The Girl in the News” before
stumbling upon it on YouTube. It might be the most challenging role of
Lockwood’s career, portraying a home-health nurse who, as the film begins, has
been accused of participating in the death of her patient. In a high-profile
trial, she is acquitted, but to find work she changes her name.
You don’t need to have seen a thousand
crime films to guess what happens to her new employer. While the first death
was clearly suicide, Anne’s innocent or guilt is muddier the second time
around. One of the strengths of the film is its underlining theme of class
distinction and how it weighs on justice. Sidney Gilliat, who contributed to
the scripts of “The Lady Vanishes” and “Night Train to Munich,” penned the
screenplay, based on a Roy Vickers’ novel.
The supporting cast is filled with
familiar British actors, including Emlyn Williams (also in “The Stars in the
Crown”), Roger Livesey, Basil Radford, Leo Genn, Michael Hordern and Felix
Aylmer.
While these 1940 releases only hint at the
dramatically flamboyant direction seen in Reed’s later pictures, they are
first-rate films willing to address controversial topics.
WORTH
(2021)
In contemporary cinema, there’s a thin
line between a hit movie and one relegated to being buried among the streaming
lineups of bad thrillers. Why some pictures fall between the cracks and fail to
receive studio promotion is nearly impossible to explain. This Michael Keaton
vehicle, barely released even though the actor had just starred in back-to-back
Oscar-winning films (“Birdman” and “Spotlight”) takes on a seemingly unfilmable
subject and delivers a compelling movie.
In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist
attack, the airlines faced another fear: being sued into bankruptcy. In
response, the federal government created the Victim Compensation Fund and
recruited lawyer Ken Feinberg (Keaton) to run it. After developing a formula
for payouts, Feinberg and his team find resistance from both ends of the
spectrum—survivors of regular folks killed, whose cases are argued by Charles
Wolf (a quietly memorable Stanley Tucci) and the advocate for the wealthy who
want a bigger cut of the pie.
Like a police procedural, the picture
follows Feinberg, and assistant Camille (the always solid Amy Ryan) as they
build a consensus among the relatives of the victims. The movie has the feel of
a TV movie as it portrays a few of the families’ stories, but the subject is
fascinating enough (the original title was “What Is Life Worth”) to sustain its
seriousness. The arc of Feinberg’s character—he’s a numbers guy who slowly
understands the humanity of those affected needs to be recognized—is superbly
portrayed by Keaton.
Director Sara Colangelo (“The
Kindergarten Teacher”) and screenwriter Max Borenstein (the recent “Godzilla”
series) turn a story that seems more typical of a 20-page New Yorker article
than a feature film into thoughtful cinema.
