Criterion Confessions

I couldn’t have picked a more fitting movie to watch at the close of 2019, nor could I have timed it better. It was an accident that U2 and the movie’s credits kicked in around 11:57 p.m. Had I not watched “The Song,” Uli M. Schueppel’s documentary on Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ contribution to the Until the End of the World soundtrack, before jumping from disc 1 to disc 2 or taken various other pauses, the timing would have been different. The song and the credits would not have concluded just as midnight ticked over to a new decade. Wim Wenders’ characters celebrate the move from 1999 to 2000; I move from 2019 to 2020.

And it’s not a real stretch to suggest we have as much existential angst now as Wenders imagined we would at the turn of the millennium. Released in 1991, Wenders took a gamble basing his artsy sci-fi road picture only eight years in the future. He was potentially building an expiration date into his own move. Yet, looking back, he accurately predicted the way technology would change and what would concern us, even if the look of his future was just a little more clunky than what turned out. Internet privacy, personal communicators, high definition, GPS, VR, digital preservatio, and digital escapism--all these things are at the fingertips and the forefront of the mind in Until the End of the World. To Wenders, technology was getting better, but also taking over in unforeseen ways.


It’s worth watching the director’s introduction to the movie to hear how long it took to get Until the End of the World onto the screen, how much longer it took to get to this version--final cut nearly twice the length as what initial audiences witnessed in theaters and on home video--and how the virtual world he shows then represented the cutting edge of technology. Amusingly, the filmmaker’s final product horrified the people who had loaned him their high-definition capabilities, as he used their inventions not to enhance and increase the clarity of images, but to tear them apart. But what better metaphor for technology’s propensity to overtake our humanity? It breaks everything down into pixels and data, abstracting the original, and the more removed it becomes from that initial experience, the more we seemingly want it.


Until the End of the World is a movie that has always fascinated me. I had listened to its now classic soundtrack album hundreds of times before I ever got to watch the movie itself. Elvis Costello, Nick Cave, Julee Cruise, R.E.M., Neneh Cherry, Depeche Mode--Wenders was in my zone. (Recently reissued on double-vinyl, I’m listening to it now, and the compilation still delights.) Eventually I caught the movie on VHS and was enthralled by its unwieldy, ambitious narrative. Even then, there were rumors of longer versions. The United States had a 158-minute version, but Europe got 20 minutes more, and Japan somehow got nearly an extra 100. Wenders’ original cut was anywhere between 12 hours and 20 depending on what you read, but his preferred version, as seen here, is 287 minutes--or nearly five hours. This longer version, or some semblance of it, has been promised on DVD since the early 2000s. Remember when Anchor Bay supposedly was going to release it? (Remember Anchor Bay?!)


That sounds like a lot of math, but it’s a classic cinema tragedy. From von Stroheim to Welles to Tati, there are persistent tales of directors whose mad visions were undercut by business concerns. These “lost” cuts become fabled, and it’s always a gamble of whether or not what was intended ends up being what was best. You could have Ridley Scott finally getting to finish Blade Runner properly or the rediscovery of Peter Bogdanovich’s At Long Last Love, or you could get Francis Ford Coppola’s endless tinkering of Apocalypse Now and Oliver Stone’s exhaustive mining of Alexander [review].

Wim Wenders is somewhere in the middle. Until the End of the World is not a masterpiece, but it’s an impressive look at a celluloid Icarus almost making it to the sun. It is at times almost too playful with tonality, while later maybe becoming too ponderous, too in love with its own ideas. Not everything works, and the narrative structure is perhaps more befitting a novel than a film. Criterion smartly splits Until the End of the World across two discs to go with what is a very natural intermission. Part 1 is the international chase and long-term courtship of Sam Farber (William Hurt, Broadcast News [review]) and Claire Tourneur (Solveig Dommartin, Wings of Desire [review]), a con man/scientist and a morally questionable party girl, respectively. It treks across Europe, Asia, and the U.S. before sending the characters toward their final destination, breaking for Part 2 just as they leave San Francisco for Australia.


Part 2 is more serious and heavy, trading the madcap physical chase in for a more intellectual pursuit. Sam has been on the run from the law. He is wanted for industrial espionage and the stolen technology he is carrying. When Claire finds him, he is traveling around the world recording messages from family members using special glasses that will record not just the video and audio, but the experience of seeing the event, the waves that connect the eye and the brain. The intent is to capture something that can be re-created in the brains of blind people, to let them “see” again. Sam’s father, Henry (Max Von Sydow, The Seventh Seal [review]), started the experiment, and had to go into hiding rather than let government or corporate interests take over. He’s built a lab in the Australian outback, and his number-one test subject is to be his wife and Sam’s mother, Edith (Jeanne Moreau, The Lovers [review]).


The Australian half is all about trying to make the tech work and to understand the consequences and implications. It’s a struggle of fathers and sons, but also men and women, and ultimately played out against the backdrop of total annihilation. This whole time, an Indian nuclear satellite has been falling from the sky, and there is a full expectation that it will signal the end of the planet. In this pocket of waiting, a community forms; yet, as they wait, there is a bigger question of what will happen if the prediction is false.

That’s a pretty simplistic breakdown of Until the End of the World. As suggested above, it’s kind of all over the place. Wenders’ approach changes almost with every locale switch, as the cast expands and he touches on different genres. Is this a caper picture? Is it romance? Is it a literary character study? Science fiction? Family drama? Political?


Of course, Until the End of the World is all of the above. Some of it clicks, some is hokey. The acting can be all over the place. Dommartin is an alluring cipher, defined more by the vision of her presented in the authorial narration than anything she does on screen. Sam Neill (My Brilliant Career) plays a writer who, as her former lover, is writing a book about Claire and, ostensibly, this movie, and he spends much of the running time waxing poetic about Claire’s elusive sensuality. Wenders’ supporting cast is like a tour of the Criterion Collection--from Ozu-stalwart Chishu Ryu to David Gulpilil from Walkabout [review]--but dotted along the globe, embracing different legendary personages wherever his crew lands and integrating them into the outline. The effect, though, can often be of miscommunication, as some of the performances feel lost in translation. Rudiger Volger’s private detective or Chick Ortega’s French hoodlum never seem comfortable working in English and often go too broad and cartoony for the rest of the movie. Would that more of the actors just spoke their own language and subtitles did the rest.


Weirdly, this mish-mash serves William Hurt well. His character arc involves a lot of strange turns as he adapts his personality to fit the moment. As an actor, Hurt is perfectly suited for this. His quirky persona is appropriately malleable, but it’s ultimately that quirk that maintains a thread through every scenario. As an actor, William Hurt was already as weird as the movie was intended to be.

That Until the End of the World takes on so much with such audacity leads me to believe that its detractors will forgive it as much as they dismiss it. You have to appreciate that Wim Wenders went for it as boldly as he did, and as an independent production no less. It’s full of hubris, and thus folly. For those like me that take it on and accept it, however, Until the End of the World can be as addictive and dreamy as Max Von Sydow’s futuristic machine, leading us through the dread of a changing world toward the hope of a better tomorrow. It’s colorful and crazy and deeply satisfying, and pretty much unlike anything else out there. And for that, to borrow from its own poetry: I will love it until the end of the world.

“People knock themselves out trying to buck Fate.”


To call a film noir cynical is to be a bit redundant. To call it cynical even for a film noir--well, you know then you have something truly acidic on your hands.

Such is Edgar G. Ulmer’s 1945 sweatbox Detour, the first ever B-movie inducted into the National Film Registry. At a scant 69 minutes, it’s a feverish thriller, its characters always in motion. Even when they are physically stuck in place, their minds are still moving, each player considering the next exit. It’s breathless and exhilarating and a little bit hateful. But you’ll love how hateful.


Tom Neal stars as Al Roberts, a juke joint piano player in love with an actress (Claudia Drake) who has left him stranded in New York to make a go at becoming a star in Hollywood. Fed up with being alone and, let’s face it, both jealous and horny, Roberts starts hitching across the country to see her. In Arizona, his luck seems to turn when he is picked up by Charles Haskell (Edmund MacDonald), a sleaze-ball gambler who is willing to take him all the way to the City of Angels. Ulmer and writer Martin Goldsmith (The Narrow Margin) make no bones about what a dirty guy Haskell is. When Roberts asks him about the fresh scratches on his arms and hands, Haskell tells him they came from a lady hitchhiker who didn’t show her gratitude in the way her benefactor would have liked. “I was tussling with the most dangerous animal in the world, a woman!” he says, before reminding us that any woman who would hitchhike is pretty much asking for it anyway.

Yup. Real nice guy.


“That’s life. Whichever way you turn, Fate sticks out a foot to trip you.”

Fate comes up a lot in Detour. It’s a common noir trope: man can’t outrun his past, nor can he change his destiny. Because we have made our past, and we are our own destiny. You know the cliché: wherever you go, there you are.

So when Roberts’ dame runs off chasing her imagined destiny, he must try to alter his trajectory. Likewise, Haskell has lost his fortune on the ponies in Miami, and now he’s looking to shake his own bad luck loose. Yet twists of fate means each will get their comeuppance. First, a random accident causes Haskell to end up dead, and a panicky Roberts leaves him in the middle of the desert and assumes his identity. Second, instant karma means Roberts picks up Vera (Ann Savage), the very woman that left those scars on the dead man. Knowing that Roberts isn’t who he says he is, Vera blackmails him. He’ll take her into L.A., sell the car, and give her the money, or she’ll make sure he’s sent down for the killing, innocence and circumstance be damned.


And he can’t leave her until she’s satisfied. Possibly because she’s a little bit lonely, possibly because she’s just plain mean. Not to mention her plans keep shifting the more opportunities she sees.
When you think about it, hitchhiking is a perfect metaphor for this kind of randomly predestined happenstance. Each pick-up is a roll of the dice. Factor in that like always finds like, and there’s no way these three people aren’t meeting on the road. It makes for too good of a story, and Fate loves a good story.

Vera is right to hold Roberts’ feet to the fire. He’s no innocent victim of circumstance, it doesn’t take much deliberation for him to do the wrong thing. Tom Neal would suffer his own turn of fate some time after Detour and go to jail for six years for the manslaughter of his wife. A sad but fitting noir end for a noir...well, not hero. Nor antihero. If anyone really roots for Roberts, it’s because Vera is so nasty. Tom Neal is all square-jawed nervousness, and competent enough in the role, but he’s eaten alive by Ann Savage, whose motor-mouthed opportunist dominates every scene from the moment Roberts spots her on the side of the road. While he’s no typical hero, she’s also not really our expected femme fatale. For one, she’s far more of an active participant, forcing action rather than needing to manipulate it with her sexuality. When she does try to seduce Roberts, it’s not as confident as one would expect from a Rita Hayworth or an Ava Gardner; in fact, Roberts’ voiceover lays it out from the start, her looks are not that of a movie star. Savage being an atypical starlet allows for Vera to have a surprising vulnerability, one the actress has the chops to exploit. Vera also has a fate she can’t outrun: a case of consumption that will likely kill her.

That is, if some other terrible calamity doesn’t claim her first.


“Yes, Fate or some mysterious force can put the finger on you or me for no good reason at all.”

Edgar G. Ulmer is infamous for his down and dirty productions. As explained in the supplementary documentary Edgar G. Ulmer: The Man Off-Screen, the Austrian director was exiled to Poverty Row, where he established his own bluntly lyrical style as he jumped from genre to genre, shooting pictures under impossible deadlines and even more impossible budgets. Accounts vary as to whether he wanted to work the cheapies to avoid studio interference or if he was left out of big-budget Hollywood after his own noir-worthy bad decision, marrying the boss’ girl. Ulmer himself was a self-mythologizer.  The filmmakers share audio from the man’s interviews with Peter Bogdanovich, which they then compare to known facts--often finding that Ulmer’s own legend is far more interesting.

Detour is a perfect example of what an industrious artist can do on a shoestring. It was shot primarily on two sets: the apartment that Roberts and Vera share in Los Angeles and the car. At least half the movie is in the car, which itself was set up in a Hollywood studio, the only traveling being done by whatever camera crew shot the footage for Detour’s rear projection. Ulmer manages to keep the feeling of confinement intentional. This pair is forever linked. Even as they cover miles of highway, even if Vera finally relents, they can’t escape each other.

Nor can they escape Fate. The transcendence of Detour from forgettable to classic is down to how unrelenting it is. There is no ray of hope. Not even the girlfriend, who in other noirs might be the earthy blonde who offers some kind of respite from the dark underworld; here, she represents temptation, jealousy, and the unattainable. Not to mention our own knowledge about how old Hollywood operated means we fill in some blanks about what we think is really going on with her out on the West Coast.


For Roberts, the more he tries to dig himself out of this trap, the more he becomes entangled. So it is that the second accidental death in Detour is so grisly--but not entirely unexpected, almost like he’s manifested his murderous desires through sheer will. And so it is that we find Roberts at a point where he’s already surrendered, reliving the tale for what might be the first time or the millionth, depending on who you are and when you are hearing it. His punishment is to be a part of this movie, and our reward is to be able to watch it again and again and again.

Released in 1999, The Virgin Suicides marked the beginning of the career of writer/director Sofia Coppola, who to my mind is the best American filmmaker to emerge in the 21st Century [for more of my reviews of her films, see the links at the end of this article]. Thought not as accomplished as what was to come--and really, all things solidified in Coppola’s second feature, Lost in Translation--this oddly compiled, dreamy coming-of-age tale--or, alternately, a failure to come of age--displayed the promise of everything that was on the way. The ethereal soundtrack, the fascination with sisterhood and youth, and a sense of isolation so contained that it at times feels (and is) otherworldly.


The Virgin Suicides is based on a novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, a male author, which is part of what gives this film such a unique vibe. Though a story with five young women at its center, Eugenides tells it from the point of view of the teenage boys observing them. In its way, it’s stereotypical of memoir-istic first novels of young men, approaching the female of the species as if they are an unknowable riddle. In this case, the boys view the Lisbon Sisters as elusive phantoms--and not just after their deaths, but also before--and even in their adult lives, they can’t shake the influence the sisters had on them. The scenes with a grown-up Trip Fontaine (played by Streets of Fire’s Michael Paré, who is believable as a hard-living adult Josh Harnett) reminiscing on his brief relationship with Lux (Kirsten Dunst, also Coppola’s muse in Marie Antoinette) is like a pitiable version of the Edward Sloane monologue in Citizen Kane. “She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl.”

In her staging of the narrative, Coppola embraces the male gaze while simultaneously jumping to the other side and looking back (particularly, again, where Trip Fontaine is concerned). Her Lisbon Sisters are not a mystery to her, and she is permitting us to view their private lives. As viewers, we are privy to things that the obsessed teen boys never would be, and the secret we share with the Lisbon girls is that we are just aware as they are that their increasingly knowing laughter over the boys’ behavior is justified. The men circling them are silly and obvious, their gaze nearsighted at best. Sadly, it’s also that awareness that means the Lisbon Sisters can’t carry on.


Backing up a bit: for those not familiar with The Virgin Suicides, the story is set in the late 1970s in an upper-middle-class Michigan suburb. Mr. Lisbon (James Woods, Videodrome [review]) is the high school math teacher, and Mrs. Lisbon (Kathleen Turner, Romancing the Stone) is a stay-at-home mom. They are the epitome of square parents who themselves grew up in post-war America (nerdy dad is totally obsessed with WWII aircraft). One can guess a devotion to their Catholic ideals is partly to blame for their having five daughters, each born a year after the next, now aged thirteen to seventeen. A strict upbringing has limited the social interaction the girls have had with the outside world, and the quintet has formed their own solid bond, moving and acting as a single unit, a troop of perfect skin, white teeth, and blonde hair.


After the youngest, Cecilia (Hanna Hall, also the young Jenny in Forrest Gump), attempts to kill herself, it’s recommended that the Lisbons loosen the apron strings. Unfortunately, this doesn’t quite get at what is bothering the sensitive young teen, and as their attempts to be more open go wrong, the parents clamp down harder. Put under permanent house arrest, the girls grow even more distant and more insular, while the neighborhood boys start to plot ways to communicate with them and, ultimately, save them.

The Virgin Suicides has the dreamy air of youth culture, with Coppola adopting the airbrushed aesthetic of the time period, including fanciful montages that mimic 1970s advertising. This creates a very real distinction between the perception of the Lisbon Sisters and their reality. Likewise, it plays into the delicate balance between drama and satire that makes The Virgin Suicides all the more special. Coppola’s script expertly skewers the overly manicured banality of suburban life. It’s given an added sharpness by her embracing of the standard model of adolescent stories: teenagers are more acutely aware of the world than the adults who make them miserable. Indeed, at the core of The Virgin Suicides is a belief that as the 20th Century wore on, things had grown more complicated and difficult to navigate for developing youth--a theory that has only gained traction in the new millennium.


Adding to this push and pull is how the girls alternate between being in control and having it taken away from them. This is the most pronounced in Dunst’s Lux, the most adventurous and also the most desired, whose actions bring the most consequences. Again, while the majority see Lux as carefree and rebellious, all sunshine and smiles, Coppola gives us glimpses of her many disappointments. The common pose of the pouty teenager smoking a cigarette gives way to a more knowing look of defeat, a replica of a much older woman, a femme fatale who has seen what beauty and seduction has gotten her. It is interesting to compare this with the role Dunst played in Coppola’s most recent picture, The Beguiled. In that movie, she plays Edwina,  a teacher who is on the cusp of becoming a spinster whose embracing of her own sexuality also brings despair.


There are actually many comparisons to be drawn between The Virgin Suicides and The Beguiled. Both are stories about women who are secluded by circumstance, who have reason to fear the intrusion of men from outside and are surrounded by death. There are even parallel dinner scenes where an unsuspecting man finds himself at a table full of women, suddenly awash in a subtext of competition and desire (in one, the student Peter Sisten (Chris Hale) invited over by his teacher; in the other, Colin Farrell looking for safe haven). It’s almost as if The Beguiled is The Virgin Suicides made with a more experienced eye, even if the characters are possessed of a similar naïveté.

The naïveté that the filmmaker seems to have had, as well. Though Sofia Coppola comes from a famous moviemaking family, The Virgin Suicides still has the innocence of a first film. Her willingness to experiment with both narrative convention and visual styles gives us something that isn’t entirely baked, yet showcases an emerging voice. It’s as if uncovering the truth behind the Lisbon Sisters and their short lives is her way of finding her own foothold in adult storytelling, making for a film that could use some polish, but whose mysterious pleasures run deeper than you might realize on your first encounter with them. (Not unlike, say, Donnie Darko, which was still two years away--though Sofia Coppola achieved a much better artistic payoff in her following efforts than Richard Kelly was capable of.)


Speaking of that famous family, a couple of them show up on the bonus features. Brother Roman (director of CQ, regular Wes Anderson collaborator, and second-unit director on The Virgin Suicides) teams with his sister to direct the amusing music video tie-in for Air’s “Playground Love,” taken from the score. And mother Eleanor Coppola, the regular chronicler of Coppola productions (most notably, Hearts of Darkness), shot the 23-minute Making of “The Virgin Suicides,” an illuminating behind-the-scenes press kit featuring on-set footage and interviews with cast and crew, including Jeffrey Eugenides, who himself sees the difference between the director’s interest in his characters and his own. There’s a whole section on what different family members that chipped in or participated, including Robert Schwartzman playing the gangster’s son, Paul Baldino. The image portrayed is of a fun, collaborative set. Though, the opening clip of James Woods declaring his “crush” on Sofia hasn’t aged as well as the rest...

Also included is Sofia Coppola’s 1998 short Lick the Star. This black-and-white tale chronicles the fickle ins-and-outs of seventh-grade social structures, focusing on a group of girls concocting a scheme to poison high school boys, inspired by their love of Flowers in the Attic. The cool contemporary soundtrack and the script’s shifting character allegiances prefigures The Virgin Suicides. Blink and you might also miss both Robert Schwartzmen and Anthony DeSimone, who show up again in Suicides, as well as cameos by filmmakers Peter Bogdanovich and Zoe R. Cassavetes, another second-generation director with a famous father.

For fans looking for more updated special features, Criterion also provides plenty of new interviews, as well as a retrospective by Rookie-creator Tavi Gevinson, a devotee who discovered the film in her own early life (she was three when The Virgin Suicides was released).


My other Sofia Coppola reviews:

Lost in Translation
Marie Antoinette theatrical
Marie Antoinette home video
Somewhere
The Bling Ring

Originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2011:



The quality of John Huston's 1961 drama The Misfits is often eclipsed by its salacious backstory. The final completed film of both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, it was written for Monroe by her then-husband Arthur Miller while they were in the grip of a divorce. Shooting was difficult, as both Marilyn and co-star Montgomery Clift suffered from various addictions and mental afflictions. Both Huston and Gable were hard drinkers themselves, but their habits were nothing compared to their younger cohorts. The Misfits even fell into hot water with the studio, who couldn't make heads or tails of the film. If not for Gable, who had final script approval, standing his ground, who knows how the movie might have ended up.

As it stands, The Misfits is a marvelous motion picture, easily one of Huston's best (not an inconsiderable boast). If it was misunderstood in its time, it's because The Misfits was a couple of years ahead of the curve. Its tale of displaced loners looking for meaning in the Nevada desert grappled with the passing of time--and not in the sense of a ticking clock, but historically. These characters represented an age that was ending, a lifestyle that was fading. It was as much a metaphor for the oncoming demise of Old Hollywood as it was the disappearance of 1950s America. The aura of freedom the characters longed for, and the artistic license that Miller and Huston were grasping at, were just around the corner. In two years, Martin Ritt's Hud would be a big hit. Maybe existential cowboys were just easier to take when they were Paul Newman, or maybe 24 months really did make that much of a difference.


The Misfits opens in Reno on the day when Roslyn (Monroe) is going to court to finalize her divorce. Back then, Reno had the easiest divorce laws in the country, and wronged spouses moved to the littlest big city temporarily to establish residency and dissolve their union. (This was perhaps most famously portrayed in Cukor's 1939 production of The Women.) Getting her single life back likely paid off in terms of alimony, but it costs an emotional price for Roslyn, as well. Now that she's alone, she doesn't know what to do with herself.

Enter a cowboy. Gay Langland (Gable) is a rootless roughneck who has a way with the ladies. In his mind, the worst thing in the world is "wages"--that is, a regular job. When Gay meets Roslyn, he's looking to bug out of town and spend some time in the wild with his pal Guido (Eli Wallach), a war veteran and pilot. Guido actually saw Roslyn first, he met her and the woman she's staying with (the great Thelma Ritter) that morning to assess the value of Roslyn's car. That Gay moves in on the curvy blonde causes Guido much consternation. Both men have refused to settle down again since their last marriage--Gay is divorced, Guido a widower--but Roslyn has a way of inspiring men to make exceptions to their principles.


The quartet heads out to Guido's house on the outskirts of town, where they get loaded and flirty. Guido may know how to dance, but Gay wins the day, and Roslyn and he start shacking up at Guido's house. This is essentially Act I. Act II is hitting the rodeo to find a third cowboy to go mustanging. That is when they pick up Perce (Clift), another drunk who rides broncos and bulls. There is some intimation that he maybe has some mental problems, too, though which symptoms are caused by the booze and which by the blows to his skull are up to interpretation. Perce and Roslyn are immediately attracted to one another. If Gay is a kind of stable father figure, then Perce is a kindred spirit, a broken creature just like her. Seeing him tossed around a rodeo ring puts Roslyn on edge. She can't stand a living thing to be hurt. Earlier in the film, she even stops Gay from killing a rabbit who is stealing the lettuce from their garden.

Act III is the mustanging. Roslyn goes with the boys, thinking that they intend to capture the wild horses for riding. This is not the case. Nevada mustangs are rounded up for dog food. Once upon a time, there were thousands of them in the mountains, now the men head out there believing they will find at least fifteen; the actual count is less than half that, calling attention to how pathetic this whole scheme really is. Roslyn, of course, is horrified, and her reaction stokes the testosterone in the group. There is much male posturing. First, it's who will abandon the deadly quest fastest in order to placate her; then, as she rejects different members of the hunting party, who is the bigger man. Gay almost literally wrestles with a horse just to prove no one can tell him what to do. In the frontier days, he might have been applauded for this macho showing off. In the context of The Misfits, you end up sad for him--even if you aren't sure which way your pity should flow. Is it because he is so out of touch with the times, or because the times are so out of touch with him?


Arthur Miller's script for The Misfits is poetic and intelligent. The playwright never condescends to these characters; on the contrary, the writing shows tremendous affection for them. It would have been easy to make them purely comical, but the humorous moments come naturally, they aren't forced or born of ridicule. (The drunk antics when they all return home after the rodeo are as hysterical as the preceding scenes are heartbreaking.) There is a layer of metafiction here that is hard to avoid: these freaks getting boozed up and tearing each other apart out in the middle of nowhere really were a bunch of freaks in real life. The doomed history that follows The Misfits around--Gable died mere days after shooting was completed, Monroe followed within a year, and Clift apparently had his heart attack not long after refusing to watch the film on television in 1966--becomes part and parcel with the narrative. These were cinematic icons whose time was about to pass, working in a genre that had also seen better days. It's possible this is the first revisionist western, leading to the reassessment of the cowboy mythology that would redefine the genre over the next couple of decades. It's a safe bet that Peter Bogdanovich saw The Misfits before he started making The Last Picture Show [review]. John Huston's pioneering cinema style is all over that later film. Huston shoots in the thick of the action; wherever the dust is getting kicked up, he goes. Russell Metty's black-and-white photography is beautiful and gritty, capturing the open spaces of the desert plains and contrasting them with the cramped spaces where humans wall themselves in. The bar scene where Roslyn entertains the cowboys in inadvertent ways while playing with the paddle and ball is marvelously orchestrated; the men are climbing on top of one another, and the camera jockies for such positions, as well.


Just as it's easy to forget the excellence of the scripted drama under the scandal of the off-screen drama, it's also easy to forget that these actors became stars for a reason. The acting here is exceptional, with Marilyn Monroe turning in one of her finest performances as the bruised beauty Roslyn. There is a wonderful scene in The Misfits when Gay comments on how sad Roslyn is, and she is shocked, most men always tell her how happy she seems. He replies, "That's because you make a man feel happy." This one exchange could sum up the whole of Monroe's career, and to her credit, she brings this schism to life in her performance as Roslyn. She creates a complete character, one whose internal sorrow keeps her from ever being subsumed by the things the men in her life project on her. She can play at being happy, but Monroe knows how to do it so that it's clear that it's just for show.


By the shooting of The Misfits, Marilyn had put in time with the Actors Studio. Montgomery Clift and Eli Wallach were also purveyors of method acting, and they both bring their naturalistic style to the production. They appear to be living it, not putting it on. (Clift has obviously been living it too much; his handsome features are starting to show signs of age and vice.) Clark Gable somehow manages not to get lost in this. His performance is pure confidence. Perhaps it's the fact that Gay is meant to loom large over the other men working in his favor. He is intended to be different, a misfit amidst the misfits, and so the performance styles end up meshing within the material.

The Misfits is a heavy movie. It's a sad movie. It sets up multiple themes and contends with each, all the while giving proper showcase to the characters and their relationships. It's a movie that isn't afraid to be about something, but it never forgets to be about somebody--or a bunch of somebodies--along the way. It also doesn't skirt the surface or play with clichés; rather, Huston and Miller get right down in the human muck and root around in all the neuroses and foibles, and though they lament how their misfits are losing ground, they also show how these folks do it to themselves. The tide of history drowns those who can't adapt. The glimmer of hope here is that sometimes, when people swim for shore together, they actually find a way to stay afloat.

"The tragedy of your time, my young friends, is that you may get exactly what you want." - Factory Owner, Head

BBS was a short-lived, yet artistically progressive production company that had an integral role in one of the most adventurous periods of American moviemaking. Comprised of Bob Rafelson, Bert Schneider, and Steve Blauner, the company made seven movies in the late 1960s and early '70s, some of which went on to be iconic works, some of which are not as well known. Each were distinguished by the team's commitment to working with new talent to show contemporary America as they saw it, from the working class through to the counter-culture and on up to the moneyed folks. That is why the boxed set of these movies is called America Lost and Found. The BBS productions were chronicling a turning point in modern living, and their films were saying good-bye to an old, glossed-over Hollywood vision and hello to something more liberating.

In fact, you can see the struggle for the creative torch played out in the set's first and possibly most perplexing film, Head (1968). Directed by Bob Rafelson, and featuring scripting by none other than Jack Nicholson, Head is, of course, best known as the movie that featured the Monkees sending up their own image and addressing the critical misconceptions directly, but doing so in their inimitable madcap style.

I have always liked Head, though I have never been able to convince myself if it's actually good or not. It's entertaining and funny and full of great songs, but it's also maybe too long and too self-reflexive. At times, it feels like all involved are telling a joke only they are in on. Yet, the squeaky-clean television Beatles were breaking out of the box that broadcast their scripted adventures week after week. Head showed them doing things they couldn't do on TV, including Peter Tork hitting a woman and then wondering if that was something he could get away with. As he tells us, he is "always the dummy." Is he even allowed to search his soul to question the assigned morality?

The freeform collection of skits runs through movie history, flaunting clichés while addressing political and artistic concerns, melding social issues with the Monkees' insistence that they were authentic while also exposing the artificiality of their cinematic construct. Of course the group's heartthrob Davy Jones would be paired with America's sweetheart Annette Funicello, but he'd reject her to sing Harry Nilsson. The more obvious metaphor of old Hollywood vs. new, however, is the giant Victor Mature that chases the Monkees through the whole movie. In one scene, they are the dandruff in his oily hair; in another, the overly tanned actor is bored by their antics; in the end, he is one of the elements that chases them to their death. The question is, did he know that the cultural shift Head represented would actually be the cause of his own demise? The days of the Hollywood star system than made Victor Mature a celebrity were over.

Possibly not, especially since Head was not a box office or critical success. I doubt, then, there was much hope for the next BBS picture a year later: Easy Rider (1969). Directed by Dennis Hopper, and co-written by Hopper, Peter Fonda, and satirist Terry Southern (The Loved One), it was a road picture, a collection of vignettes strung along a map, following two motorcycle hippies on their journey from a West Coast drug deal to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Fonda plays Captain America, the flag-draped picture of laid-back cool, and Hopper is Billy, the spacey, long-haired cowboy that cruises alongside him. Wherever the pair go, they are met with resentment and distrust. It was the counter-culture directly meeting exactly what they were counter to, though in a lot of ways, they are far more sympathetic to the other side than Old America is to them.

Jack Nicholson appears in a memorable supporting role, playing an alcoholic lawyer the bikers meet in jail and take along with them on the rest of their trip. He lays it out for the Captain and Billy: they represent true freedom, and their rejection of the expected social paradigms exposes how the old democracy stifled individuality. Hopper and Fonda were taking the cheap B-movie, Hell's Angels-exploitation pictures they had been making for Roger Corman and, like the Monkees, flipping what was expected and injecting it with the unexpected. It's a pretty heavy-handed message, and it has a pretty heavy-handed outcome. And I hate to say it, despite the excellent performances, I actually find Easy Rider kind of boring. It's the sort of movie I can appreciate for its significance, but that maybe isn't as artistically potent now that some time has passed.

Excepting that, Hopper's directorial approach is impressively innovative. Legendary cinematographer Lázló Kovács shot the movie using a naturalistic lighting style, photographing the locations as they were; however, Hopper took this realistic-looking footage, and he and editor Donn Cambern cut it like a psychedelic movie. Transitions show flashes of things to come, like channel surfing into the future, be it the future that is just around the corner or further down. Hopper also uses contemporary music in a far more pronounced way than was common at the time. Whole songs match whole stretches of highway, with the two guys and their bikes rolling to the rhythm of Steppenwolf, the Band, the Byrds, and others. Granted, it's these extended "music video" sequences that can make Easy Rider drag, but you know, you can't win them all.

And let's face it: historically Easy Rider was a big hit, and it lead to BBS garnering more faith in their material from studios. This lead to a creative explosion, as the newly successful conglomerate set out to give fresh talent the avenue to realize their vision. First up, Rafelson and Nicholson (and Kovács) reteam for Five Easy Pieces (1970). Thankfully, third time is the charm, here is where they get it just right.

Five Easy Pieces was developed from various scripts by Rafelson, with the final product cobbled together by Carole Eastman (credited as Adrien Joyce). It's a movie that everyone thinks they know before they see it, based on one iconic scene--Jack Nicholson, diner, hold the chicken salad between your knees--but the complete film is really so much more. Yes, Jack plays Robert Eroica Dupea, the kind of motor-mouthed, half-cracked crazy that is his raison d'être, and in a way, it is the definitive revelation of so much Jack to come. Yet, as his pretentious name hints, there are layers to Robert. Though we meet him working as a roughneck in the oil fields of California, his return home to the Washington wilderness will be a journey of rediscovery and revelation. His middle name is for Beethoven's 3rd Symphony, and he is from a family of classic pianists. Bob himself can tickle the ivories, though he walked away from that and has been hiding out amongst the working class. He is only returning to his clan because his father may be dying.

What works so well in Five Easy Pieces is that odd pacing of real life that Easy Rider strove for and maybe didn't quite get. The way the story unfolds appears to be haphazard, as if there is no plan, it's only when you get to the movie's emotional climax that we realize that Rafelson and Eastman are building to something. The early part of the movie shows Robert's happenstance life, screwing around with his drinking buddy (Billy "Green" Bush) and screwing around on his girlfriend, Rayette (Karen Black, a BBS regular; she is also in Easy Rider). Ray goes with him on his drive North, and endures the pedantic hitchhikers they pick up (Helena Kallianiotes and Toni Basil), and eventually insinuates herself into the family situation. Robert is trying to keep his two lives separate, which is the worst symptom of his condition. He is a man trying to outrun his emotions, not just his pedigree, and Five Easy Pieces is when they catch up with him. The title is a little mysterious, but it has connections to how Robert squanders and cheats his true talents by playing the easiest music he knows.

Lázló Kovács' photography is once again the star here, and his underplayed style suits the dusty oil fields as much as it does the rain drenched Northwest forestry. His work here brings to mind the dirty photography of his pal Vilmos Zsigmond in Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller, not just for its lack of a glamorous color palette, but also for how he manages to create an uneasy alliance between the environment and the people. It is a relationship both parasitic and symbiotic, the humans don't quite fit and yet they must to survive. This serves Rafelson's metaphor: Robert is playing at being something he is not, and in the final scenes, he strips down and unintentionally removes his protection from the cold. It's a move of surrender, but one that means he can get back in touch with what is true about who he is and where he belongs.

Jack Nicholson is riveting in the lead. He is starting to develop that Nicholson persona, but what will be the tricks of his trade are so dialed down here, they still have the spontaneity that some later performances maybe lack. In his most incisive performances, Nicholson plays the anti-hero whose bravado is really just an illusory suit of armor, and a good director works with him to get beyond it. Again, it's the metaphor I just mentioned, of getting past the clothes and getting to the man. The actor has an impressive monologue in the film's heartbreaking climax, and despite the attention of the diner scene, his farewell to his father is really Jack Nicholson at his best.

"You're pretty. And sad. And weird as hell." - Fred, A Safe Place

For as progressive and individual as all the films in America Lost and Found: The BBS Story can be, the true odd ducks emerge midway through the set, paired on one disc. Drive, He Said (1970) and A Safe Place (1971) are the two least-known movies here, largely because they haven't been on home video prior to this boxed set. It's not hard to see why, they aren't exactly commercial screamers. Still, they are fascinating curios, and they speak to the artistic freedom Schneider, Rafelson, and Blauner extended their talent.

Drive, He Said is Jack Nicholson's directorial debut. The actor doesn't appear in the movie, but he co-wrote the script with Jeremy Larner, adapting Larner's novel. (Some sources say that Chinatown-scribe Robert Towne, who appears in the film as Karen Black's husband, and none other than Terence Malick also contributed to the screenplay.) The story follows two college roommates, stoned-out basketball player Hector (William Teppert) and unhinged political activist Gabriel (Michael Margotta). Hector is likely to be drafted to the NBA, Gabriel is fighting being drafted into the army; the former is indecisive and unsure of his future, whereas the latter is ready to push the boundaries and break free. Unsurprisingly, only one of them ends up making any definitive moves.

In an interview on the disc, Nicholson says that making Drive, He Said taught him that to successfully adapt an impressionistic work of fiction, the key is to remove any interior monologue. If something only happens in a character's head, it has to go. That may be the way to do it, I don't know; I can't say that Drive, He Said is entirely successful. Some of it works really well--the May-December romance between Hector and a teacher's wife (Karen Black) rings true, and Bruce Dern runs away with the movie as Hector's coach--but other parts fall flat. Particularly, Gabriel's theatrical protests struck me as pretentious and not very believable. While Nicholson was trying to harness the energy of unrest on college campuses, what he puts on screen comes off as staged and false. Like If.... [review] with its fangs filed down. Luckily, the emotions of the individual characters still feel real, and the plot continues to be relevant. In particular, viewers today might find much to identify with in the boys' predicament: the choices young people being offered for their future don't hardly seem like choices at all.

Henry Jaglom appears in Drive, He Said as the ringleader of Gabriel's political enclave, and Nicholson returns the favor by taking a supporting role in A Safe Place, Jaglom's debut feature as writer and director. The movie is an expansion of a stage play of Jaglom's, though the final product bears little resemblance to a theatrical production. A Safe Place definitely wears a cinematic wardrobe, though it's a little mixed up as to what articles of clothing go where. The shoes don't always match the shirts.

A Safe Place is essentially a romance, working the standard trope of a buttoned-up nerd (Phil Proctor) having a love affair with a flighty female (Tuesday Weld), and never quite figuring out if it is liberating or enraging. The story is told along several different timelines, and much of what we see might just be a fantasy of the girl, who is alternately known as Susan and Noah, depending on what part of the story she is in. Cut into her relationship with Fred are two other relationships: one with an old Magician (Orson Welles), who may be a stand-in for her father if not the real thing, and an ongoing affair with a rich, married man (Nicholson). The Magician seems to understand the girl that Noah used to be--and indeed, is the one who calls her Susan--and also to give value to her dreams. Noah remarks several times that, as a young girl, she could fly, and her main problem with being an adult is she can't remember how.

The true magic of A Safe Place is in the editing. Jaglom and Pieter Bergema create a kaleidoscopic mis-en-scene, moving back and forth between the various sequences, inserting moments of expressionistic commentary, and essentially pulling off a juggling act that is impressive even if the overall outcome is not. Part of me thinks maybe the script is weak, that some of the tropes are obvious and that the relationship elements and dialogue betray the shallowness of a neophyte writer. In a weird way, A Safe Place is a bizarre remix of Breakfast At Tiffany's, with the girl having multiple identities to cover her past and the poor schlub who meets Holly Golightly even being named Fred. That would make Orson Welles a stand-in for Buddy Ebsen in the Doc Golightly role, and Jack Nicholson as the various rich suitors who give Holly $50 for the powder room.

Regardless of some hinky dialogue, though, the story works, probably in large part because of the fact that it is so familiar. I think the problem ends up being in the acting. The main performers, Weld and Proctor, don't quite seem ready for prime time, with Proctor in particular coming off as if he were in summer stock rehearsals rather than on a real movie set. Weld lacks the charisma to make Noah alluring, she doesn't go deep enough to make us even halfway believe the girl's stories of magic boxes and flying. Both look all the more pale in comparison to their supporting cast. Nicholson is all charm here, working the role quietly, something altogether different than what is generally expected of him. And, oh, what a treat to see Welles at this age! Jaglom brilliantly lets Orson be Orson, magic tricks and all. He has several moments of speaking to the camera, addressing the audience/Noah directly, that show what an arresting presence he could be. It's one of his most comfortable screen performances, where the showiness rarely seems unnecessary or contrived, and instead is just a very real part of a gifted actor's personality.

In one of the documentary features on America Lost and Found, Jaglom good naturedly points out that though A Safe Place and Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show (1971) were released at the same time, their box office couldn't have been more different. As he puts it, Picture Show would go on to be the most successful film of the year, while A Safe Place was the least successful. There is no malice or jealousy in his anecdote. He seems quite clear that Bogdanovich had achieved something special.

For his first major full-length movie, Bogdanovich teamed up with author Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove) to adapt McMurtry's frank, tersely written ode to small town life in 1950s Texas. Stylistically, Bogdanovich pays homage to the period, using the country music that would have been on the radio at the time as his score, and cinematographer Robert Surtees shot the film in black-and-white, creating instant nostalgia. Nothing else is old fashioned about The Last Picture Show, however, as it busts the conventional squeaky-clean representations usually associated with the '50s by portraying kids who drink and fool around, adultery, and the general small-mindedness that often came with isolated rural living.

The Last Picture Show is essentially a year in the life of a Texas town, beginning the morning after the last game of the high school football season (it didn't go well) and ending at the start of the next season. Though an ensemble piece, the lead is ostensibly taken by Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms), a thoughtful boy who could be something better than what is expected of him if only he'd take the time to consider it. His best friend is Duane (a young Jeff Bridges), a tougher customer and more of a "free spirit." Duane dates Jacey Farrow (Cybill Shepherd), the prettiest girl in school. Sonny is dating an unpleasant girl at the start, but when they break up, he starts an affair with an older woman (Cloris Leachman), the wife of his basketball coach.

I first saw The Last Picture Show when I was 18 or 19, and at the time, I pretty much viewed it as a coming-of-age story and little more. Now that I am older, I can sympathize a little more with the older characters and appreciate the fact that Bogdanovich and McMurtry are showing all levels of town life--young, old, and in between. One of the themes of the movie, as with so many of the BBS productions, is the changing times, and unlike most of the other movies, The Last Picture Show really pays attention to how the turnover effects the previous generations and goes a long way to suggest that the older folks aren't so bad. They have their good apples and their bad apples like anyone else. The obvious focus character is the father figure, Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson), but there are also important lessons imparted by the middle-aged women, played with ferocity by Leachman, Ellen Burstyn, and Eileen Brennan. As good as the young cast here can be, they are schooled by the veterans, who more than own the screen.

Bogdanovich is paying tribute to cinema of days gone by at the same time as he says farewell to and demythologizes the supposedly more innocent past. As a scholar who learned everything he could about old Hollywood, while Bogdanovich took advantage of the looser standards of the 1970s, he still believed in traditional storytelling. The Last Picture Show adheres more closely to the old ways, employing more conventional techniques than the other BBS films. When he closes down the movie house at the end of the film, it's meant to be the final reel of a bygone era in American motion picture making.

The generational divide is nothing compared to the divide between brothers, if the final film in the set, The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), is anything to go by. Bob Rafelson returns behind the camera, working from a story he co-wrote with screenwriter Jacob Brackman. Jack Nicholson also teams with the director again, though this time in a role that apparently he almost didn't get. Rafelson didn't think it was showy enough for Jack's talents, while the actor smartly saw it was his chance to be different. Nicholson plays David Staebler, an introspective talk radio DJ sarcastically nicknamed "The Philosopher" by the brother he hasn't seen in two years. When that brother, Jason, calls out of the blue and demands David leave Philadelphia for Atlantic City, David goes, but he knows he's heading for trouble.

Jason is played by Bruce Dern, who at times seems to be channeling some of that trademark agitated energy Nicholson wasn't using this go-around. The pair make for believable brothers--different enough to be distinct, but alike enough that you can believe they came out of the same gene pool. When David gets off his train, Jason is nowhere to be seen. Instead, he is greeted by an aging beauty queen (Ellen Burstyn) and a tardy brass band. Jason, it turns out, is in jail for alleged auto theft. He sends David to get a local business man/mobster named Lewis to bail him out, which is just the beginning of the long con Jason is playing on his brother--though we are never quite sure, even to the end, how much is a con and how sincere Jason really is. If David is the thinker, Jason is the dreamer, and his latest scheme is a resort on a small, uncharted island in Hawaii. He wants his brother to go in with him, and enlists David in beating the bushes for backers, plying him with many promises, including a possible affair with the beauty queen's young stepdaughter, Jessica (Julia Anne Robinson).

It's amazing how easily David falls back into the routine with his brother. The pair of them pull a quick hustle at an auction house just because they can. We already know that David has the gift of gab and a tendency to exaggerate from the opening scene at his radio show, but this is something more. Rafelson is working one of the same irritated nerves that he was picking at in Five Easy Pieces: how family defines us, good and bad, and how hard it is to discard their influence. In much the same way Nicholson's more outlandish character in that movie gets sucked back into his family's erudite squabbles, so too does his polar opposite in Marvin Gardens drop right back into the shuck and jive. David and Jason are practically a classic comedy duo: one taller, the other shorter; one outgoing, the other the victim of his partner's over-sized schemes.

Visually, Rafelson and Kovács make use of the depressing aura around Atlantic City in the off-season. It's a gaudy setting, looking a little like the holiday resort version of Miss America without her make-up--an analogy that comes to mind since Atlantic City is where the Miss America pageant has traditionally been held, and in one of Marvin Gardens' most memorable scenes, the group rents out a hall to perform a mock version of the contest for Jessica. That sequence serves not only to show us the level of delusion that Jason and his ladies operate at, but it's also indicative of how Rafelson and Kovács use the landscape as juxtaposition. The size of the event center overwhelms these tiny people, and the fact that most of the accoutrements are taken down and packed into boxes just adds to how sad and misguided they are. Jason stands tall, but he's at the center of an empty arena.

The ending of The King of Marvin Gardens serves as a melancholy coda to America Lost and Found: The BBS Story. As with the movie theatre closing down in The Last Picture Show, or even Duane and Sonny saying good-bye, the split between the Staebler brothers is an unhappy one. It's necessary, but that doesn't mean they have to like it. They had fun together once. We see it in the final image, their grandfather's home movies of the two boys playing on the beach as children. It's the worst kind of emotional longing: that which can never be again, but that you'll still end up chasing no matter how hard you try to get away from it.

America Lost and Found: The BBS Story is an endlessly intriguing collection. Even if all the movies don't quite hit, they are all interesting, all informative in their way, encapsulating the changing landscape of American cinema and of the country itself. Taken as a whole, they form a kind of anthology, each movie informing the film that would follow, building a larger aesthetic narrative. Of the seven films, three of them--Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, and The Last Picture Show--are bonafide classics, and a fourth, The King of Marvin Gardens, is due to be reevaluated and classified as such. The other three round out the corners, provide the connections between their brethren, and are essential to getting the complete picture of this extraordinary collective. In any creative industry, artists would be lucky to find people to work with as supportive as Bob Rafelson, Bert Schneider, and Steve Blauner. The space they created for their people to work was unlike any other, and it's an experiment that can likely never be repeated--but, boy, wouldn't it be great if someone tried?

For a complete rundown on the special features, read the full review at DVDTalk.