mesocricetus_squatus

This is a made-for-television film that isn't easily forgotten. It's a psychological drama, memorable more for the excellent character development and acting than the plot. The story might be hard to believe, particularly the ending, were in not based on a real events.

Tracey Gold plays an 18-year-old runaway from a lower-middle class home, determined to break out of an contentious relationship with her mother. Basically a good girl but naive, Gold's character, Stacy, ends up in the world of cross-country truckers, where a smooth operator named Richard (expertly played by Thomas Calabro) convinces her to take a ride west with him and his driver partner in an empty rig. Richard comes across immediately as a slick con artist, and Stacy is impressed.

Once the pickup is made, the viewer watches as Richard is revealed slowly and methodically to be a criminal, a hustler, and ultimately a violent, paranoid psychopath. A level of suspense is maintained as the viewer sees each change in Richard's demeanor before Stacy herself understands the mess she's gotten herself into.

But it's not a simple tale of "madman grabs girl." Richard is a conflicted man, Stacy his perfect prey. The interaction between them shows the complexity of the personalities of all involved, from Richard's dominated and abused accomplice to the vulnerable and guileless Stacy. But Richard is the character that fascinates most. Everything he does suggests a troubled past, a tendency to unpredictable mood swings, and ultimately, when Stacy's fear becomes overwhelming, a compulsion to possess her and control her, even to the point of threats to take her life.

Still, a curious bond is formed between them. And that's what makes the story so poignant. This is a well-made film; it has the sort of subtlety that makes it worth watching more than once.

More than the silents that preceded it, this is a rare glimpse into a world that is almost impossible for our generation to imagine. The acting style seems bizarre by modern standards. The characters walk as if they were trying to dance, and they speak as if they would rather sing their lines. Okay, sound equipment may have been awful then - "talkies" were brand new in 1929 - but that fact does nothing to make it less pretentious when the characters stretch their mouths to yawn proportions to utter dated lines like, "darling, I love you more than life itself."

Then there's the plot, another feature of this film that is as quaint as the acting and the dialogue. "Norma," played legendary silent screen actress Mary Pickford at the end of her prolific career, becomes "compromised" by a night with a boyfriend, Michael. Michael vows to marry her but instead finds himself in an angry confrontation with Norma's father, the doctor.

Father takes a gun to avenge his violated daughter - who is played, remember, by a 37-year-old woman. And poor Norma, finding her lover on his deathbed, pours forth a mind-numbing, melodramatic declaration of her love that had to have been way over the top even in those days.

But the most amazing part is the end, where the doctor is on trial for murder. Norma takes the stand to accuse her lover of rape and thus save her father, which she does admirably and with all the flourishes and eye-batting appropriate for the era. Suddenly, the father's conscience is stirred and he rushes to the feet of his daughter - this in a court of law - and pleads with her to let him take the blame with honor. The doctor eyes the murder weapon, a revolver sitting on a table before the judge, and then stands before the court and demands that he pay his debt to the state. Imagine that!

Father then rushes to the arms of daughter and begs her to "hug daddy" as she used to. What follows was surely, even to audiences of the day, an excessively-long, gruesomely-sentimental embrace. To a modern viewer seeing it in the contemporary context, it would clearly suggest incest, though this was certainly not the meaning of the scene. That done, father grabs gun and commits suicide in the courtroom. To the film's credit, the event is conveyed well by the sound of a single gunshot - no blood.

Pickford may have been the darling of silent film, and she was undeniably a remarkable actress in that setting. But her talkie debut is flawed in every conceivable way, from the bogus southern accents of her and others' characters to the comical arm gestures she makes to emphasize her schmaltzy love-talk with Michael.

You have to cut this film some slack not only for the year it was made, but also because sound movies were then in their infancy. Still, the story line and script are painfully exaggerated and the acting horribly stilted.

But is it worth watching? I say yes. It's important cinema history. And it's fun.

This movie is flawless. The characters, the plot, dialogue, and the hauntingly beautiful scenery combine to make a movie that is breathtaking. The story is plausible and fascinating, the timing perfect. George O'Brien (Jim Metzler) plays a clean-cut, yuppyish computer executive who takes off from Southern California to set up a new operation in Reno with almost half a million dollars in embezzled money in the trunk of his car (Volvo, of course). He suddenly finds himself on a collision course with a different world when he stops on a lonely stretch of highway near Death Valley and picks up a young couple who have rolled their car on the side of the highway. The duo, perky Patti (Jennifer Rubin) and her sickly companion Chevy (Kyle Secor), quickly turn out to be far more trouble than George could ever have imagined.

The way the personalities of the characters unfold is psychological drama at its absolute finest. At first George cringes at the sophomoric banter of his two passengers, a sleazy gambler and his part-showgirl, part-prostitute "better half." But things get really edgy as George tries to part ways with the luckless pair, and soon he finds himself and his car taken hostage at the point of a gun.

As the story moves forward forward at an even pace, so does the viewer's insight into the complex personalities of the three main characters. Patti is as much a survivor as Chevy is a pathological and abusive hoodlum.

This is one production that deserves to be watched thoughtfully and attentively. Every piece of dialogue, even the smallest gesture, carries its own bit of symbolism, clues to the troubled lives of the hitchhikers and the confusion and mounting terror felt by their unwilling host. This movie accomplishes more with body language than others achieve with the most spectacular visual effects. Even minor characters like Robert Costanzo, who plays a tawdry Las Vegas mobster, and Jerry Orbach as his inconvenient operative, are fascinating and memorable.

As a visual experience, this film is stunning. The vast, gorgeous desert scenery frames both players and plot with an awesome melancholy. A preacher appearing on a flickering television screen in a low-rent motel room is a metaphor for all that is hopeless, while the zombie-like Arabella, seen for scarcely a minute in a Vegas hotel suite, brings to mind an even more chilling image of woman as bimbo without a soul.

Patti, more than any character in this story, is full of contradictions. Her motives and choices can never be predicted, not from the vantage point of the viewer and certainly not by those with whom she must share this part of her life.

If the definitive mark of the film noir is the interaction between tragic, troubled people with conflicting agendas, this is the future face of the genre. It is truly a work of art; not a moment is without meaning. Delusion is a satisfying, mesmerizing movie, one that gets better and better with every viewing.