Films etc.

It was quite a shock to hear last Thursday that James Gandolfini had died the day before, June 19th, in Italy of a heart attack — much too young at age 51. And then to learn a few days later that writer Richard Matheson had died on June 23rd was just too much. Matheson had a longer run — he was 87 — but it was no less of a jolt. Matheson’s death may have even reached a deeper place in me, because he’s been in my life since I first read his amazing, deeply unsettling horror novel, I Am Legend, in 1954, and had stayed with him throughout his long career in books, television, and feature films.

Both were born in New Jersey; Gandolfini in Westwood on September 18, 1961, and Matheson in Allendale on February 20, 1926. Gandolfini grew up in Park Ridge, NJ, where he went to high school. He received a BA in communications studies from Rutgers University in 1982, where he also worked as a bouncer at an on-campus bar, an interesting detail considering the types of tough-guy characters he frequently played during his career. He eventually became involved in acting while living in New York City. Richard Matheson was raised in Brooklyn. In 1943 he joined the army and was in the infantry during World War II. After the war he earned a BA in journalism at the University of Missouri in 1949, then moved to California in 1951.

Because of The Sopranos, Gandolfini will probably be identified now and forever with the character of Tony Soprano, and always have a strong connection to the state of New Jersey. The New York Daily News and the New York Post both referred to him as Tony Soprano in their headlines announcing his death. I’d seen him in supporting roles prior to The Sopranos, most notably in his fifth feature film as a mob soldier who dukes it out with Patricia Arquette in True Romance (1993), written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by the late Tony Scott. In that film he brought some dimension, different and quirky, to what could have been a standard character that we’ve seen many times before. But it was his portrayal of mob boss Tony Soprano that put James Gandolfini on the map, and helped make HBO the gold standard of television programming in the process.

I’d subscribed to HBO a few years earlier, mainly so I could see Garry Shandling’s brilliant series, The Larry Sanders Show, before it ended its run. So I was all set when The Sopranos made its debut on January 10, 1999. I’m not clear on this, but I don’t think I started watching it right away. I know I’d already seen Analyze This, a feature film that opened in March of ’99, with Robert De Niro as a mobster in analysis with Billy Crystal as his shrink. I was skeptical of The Sopranos‘ premise, thinking that this had already been done in Analyze This, and wondering where they could go with a series. Well, I found out, along with the rest of us who watched rabidly through eighty-six episodes and six seasons from 1999 to 2007, when it went off the air with one of the most famous and controversial series finales ever. Last Saturday, my wife and I started re-watching The Sopranos from the beginning. We’d burned through the first season by Wednesday night, and now it’s on to the second. The show is still great, maybe even greater. Even though other actors were considered for the part of Tony Soprano before James Gandolfini landed the role, it’s virtually impossible to imagine anyone else as that character.

The impact of The Sopranos, and the character of Tony Soprano in particular, has often overshadowed Gandolfini’s fine work in feature films. He brings a lot of heart and soul to the role of Winston (aka Lester), a gay hit man in The Mexican (2001), an otherwise rather lackluster film directed by Gore Verbinski, with Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts in the leads. The following clip features Roberts and Gandolfini as they talk in a coffee shop.

One of my favorite films of Gandolfini’s, both for his performance and the film itself, is the little-seen and underrated Lonely Hearts (2006), written and directed by Todd Robinson. The story of the true-life “Lonely Hearts Killers” had been filmed twice before, first as The Honeymoon Killers (1969) with Tony Lo Bianco and Shirley Stoller, and then as Deep Crimson in 1996 by Mexican director Arturo Ripstein. James Gandolfini and John Travolta co-star in Lonely Hearts as the two Long Island detectives who finally crack the case. There’s something sad and mournful about this noirish film. From what I could find, it grossed less than $200,000 in the U.S. and Canada, which hardly seems possible, and difficult to account for. How can any film make so little money? Believe me, Lonely Hearts is well worth seeing.

Other excellent James Gandolfini performances include playing Big Dave Tolliver in the The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001), directed by the Coen Bros.; Where the Wild Things Are (2009), directed by Spike Jonze, in which Gandolfini beautifully brings to life the character of Carol, a lonely Wild Thing with anger-management issues; as C.I.A. director Leon Panetta in Zero Dark Thirty (2012); and in Not Fade Away (2012) as the father of a boy trying to form a rock ‘n’ roll band in the wake of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in 60s Jersey, also the debut feature film written and directed by Sopranos creator, David Chase. In 2009 Gandolfini appeared on Broadway in the hit play, God of Carnage, for which he was nominated for an appropriately-named Tony Award. And then there’s this great clip from an appearance on Sesame Street.

There was a funeral service for James Gandolfini in New York City on Thursday, June 27 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine near Columbia University. Unfortunately I didn’t attend (no excuse, got up too late), but “Variety” has posted an account which quotes heartfelt remarks from David Chase. The New York Times obituary has more details about his life and career.

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Last December I wrote about Richard Matheson in a post titled “Famous Monsters and Me — Part 2: Books and Comics” (which includes his first published story, “Born of Man and Woman,” a stunning debut). You can check out the full post, but here’s a segment:

“All of this material was filling up my head with crazy, wonderful stuff. I wasn’t aware of film directors then, but I knew the book authors, especially Richard Matheson. He has had a huge impact in the fields of science fiction, horror, and fantasy. Matheson has written novels, short stories, film and television scripts. His work in television alone is astounding. He wrote 16 episodes of The Twilight Zone, including the classic ‘Nightmare at 20,000 Feet’ with William Shatner going bonkers when he sees a demon on the wing. I doubt I’ve ever been on a flight and not thought of that episode, especially if I was seated over a wing.  Matheson wrote the short story and script of Duel, the TV movie that helped put Stephen Spielberg on the map. He wrote The Night Stalker for TV, which gave us a hardcore vampire in the modern world, followed by The Night Strangler, which led to the series Kolchak: The Night Stalker. These are just a few examples of his work. Matheson is a giant. His fingerprints are everywhere. I can’t imagine the landscape without him.”

Stephen King has been quoted as saying that Richard Matheson is the author “who influenced me the most as a writer.” That’s quite a statement. Of all his work, Matheson’s I Am Legend, the book that caused my head to explode with possibilities, has cast possibly the longest shadow. One can’t overestimate its influence on genre writing and filmmaking. George Romero has said that I Am Legend, and the first film version of that novel, The Last Man on Earth (1964), were an inspiration for his 1968 epic, Night of the Living Dead, in itself a game changer that has spawned a staggering number of zombie films and books.

Matheson was incredibly prolific in the 1960s and early ’70s writing for films and television, as well as novels and short stories. He wrote several screenplays for Roger Corman’s series of films based (loosely) on works by Edgar Allan Poe, starting with House of Usher in 1960, followed by The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), The Raven and The Comedy of Terrors, both in 1963. His television work, besides The Twilight Zone, includes episodes of Star Trek, Have Gun – Will Travel, Lawman, Combat!, and Wanted: Dead or Alive.

Steven Spielberg credits Richard Matheson for giving him his first real break by writing the story and screenplay of Duel (1971), a hugely important event in Spielberg’s career. Dennis Weaver plays a  businessman driving through the desert who becomes increasingly unhinged as he’s pursued by a seemingly demonic truck that wants him dead. If this was a Stephen King story, the truck would quite literally be from Hell. We never see the driver; the truck takes on a life of its own. The situation is all the more terrifying and out of control because Weaver never knows why this is happening to him, and neither do we. The relentlessness of Duel is seen again in Spielberg’s Jaws and the opening 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan.

Duel was originally shown on television as an ABC Movie of the Week. The running time of the TV version was 74 minutes. Spielberg subsequently shot new scenes to bring the running time to 90 minutes for theatrical distribution in Europe and Australia, which is the version you can see here.

There’s an interesting 1994 interview with Matheson from the New York Times. When asked what influenced his writing, he says, “When I first joined my local library, I read endlessly. I immediately headed for the fantasy section, fairy tales, you name it.” I identified strongly with this, as it mirrors my own early reading experiences. He’s also asked what influenced his novel The Shrinking Man, to which he replies, “I went to see a picture with Ray Milland and Aldo Ray, and in this one scene Milland in an angry mood leaves his apartment and mistakenly picks up Aldo Ray’s hat. The hat went way down over his ears, and my immediate thought was what if a guy put on his own hat and that happened.” I love that. It’s great to get a sense of how his mind worked.

Matheson’s obituary in the New York Times refers to him in the title as a “Writer of Haunted Science Fiction and Horror.” That’s accurate enough, but his value to me in my formative years, and still today, goes way beyond that. We’ll always have his work to experience and re-experience, as well as that of James Gandolfini. Thank God for that, but the loss still hurts. I knew neither one of these guys personally, but it sure feels like I did. – Ted Hicks

This is a bit of a ramble. Please bear with me.

So much has been written online and in print about Man of Steel in the week since it opened, that I’m hesitant to add anything at this point (though I don’t intend to let that stop me). Despite the massive pre-release buildup, I didn’t anticipate the film would be the subject of quite this much attention, and even controversy.

I was definitely amped up to see it (despite my reservations about Zack Snyder as director), and did so on opening day in IMAX 3D at a 9:15 am showing. Even for someone as absurdly obsessed with films as I am, 9:15 in the morning seems like an odd time to be in a movie theater. But there I was, bright and early, mainly because the AMC theater chain in NYC offers discounted ticket prices for shows that start before 12 noon, and also because I wanted to see it on the IMAX screen.

I was less enthusiastic about seeing it in 3D, but that was part of the package. In the previous six weeks I’d already seen Iron Man 3 and Star Trek Into Darkness on this same IMAX screen, also in 3D. None of these films, to my eye, gained much by being in 3D. They were shot flat and converted to 3D after the fact. I try to avoid these conversion jobs as much as possible, since the results can be problematic. I have nothing against 3D per se, as long as the film was conceived for 3D and shot that way. So far the best uses of this format that come to mind have been James Cameron’s Avatar (2009), the animated Coraline (2009), and Pina (2011), Wim Wenders’ great impressionistic dance film about choreographer Pina Bausch . Even during the 1950s 3D craze, which mostly showcased gimmicky effects, there were standouts, such as House of Wax (1953), Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), and Inferno (1953), which was more of an immersive experience, though in the last reel they seemed to realize this was a 3D movie, and stuff started flying out of the screen. But regardless of how it was shot, seeing a film in 3D is like wearing sunglasses indoors. There’s always a loss of brightness to one degree or another, which is unfortunate.

Earlier I mentioned my reservations about Zack Snyder. I had some apprehensions when I first heard he would be directing Man of Steel. I’d liked Dawn of the Dead (2004), his remake of George Romero’s zombie epic, even though it lacked the original’s social commentary and satire of American consumer society. But it was good, fast, and really rocked. Snyder’s next film, 300 (2006), was a CGI sword and sandal blood fest that looked and felt like a video game, and was quite ridiculous. His next film, Watchmen (2009), was a major disappointment, when you think of what it might have been. I’d liked the graphic novel it was based on, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons in 1986-87, and had hopes for a film version. Efforts to adapt it had been made over the years, with Terry Gilliam set to direct at one point. He would have the perfect director for this, but finally decided it would be impossible to cover properly in a two and a half hour feature film. He was right. Snyder’s version is an incoherent visual overload that only hints at the originality and complexity of the source material. I have not seen  Sucker Punch, which he made in 2011, but by all accounts it’s more of the same.

Which brings us to Man of Steel. Superman is perhaps the iconic American superhero of the 20th Century, standing for “truth, justice, and the American way.” He’s also the ultimate immigrant (“strange visitor from another planet”). It feels like Superman has always been with us, though his journey on film, after Christopher Reeve’s debut in 1978, has been problematic. Superman was created in 1933 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, high school students in Cleveland, Ohio. Superman helped create the superhero genre itself, first appearing in Action Comics #1 in June, 1938. This is considered the Holy Grail of comics, a copy of which sold for $1 million dollars in 2010. By the way, an excellent novel inspired by the lives and work of Siegel and Shuster is Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, published in 2000. I totally fell in love with this book and can’t recommend it enough.

From 1941 to 1943, Max and Dave Fleischer created seventeen animated shorts that helped to define Superman, and much of what they did carried over to the Adventures of Superman television series with George Reeves that aired from 1952 to 1958. Reeves was the first Superman for my generation in the 50s, but when I later saw the Fleischer cartoons, I realized how much had been derived from them. Superman didn’t fly until the Fleischer cartoons. Up to that point in the comics, he only leaped “tall buildings in a single bound.” Here’s one of the Fleischer shorts, “The Mechanical Monsters.” If you’ve never seen any of these, strap yourself in, because they’re pretty amazing. This one, in particular, is an eye-opener. It foreshadows transformer robots, which I’d thought were created by the Japanese and Hasbro in the 1980s, and subsequently turned into a series of soul-crushing Michael Bay films. It’s hard to imagine that someone in Japan hadn’t seen and been inspired by this cartoon.

I seem to be circling around Man of Steel without actually getting into it. There’s so much Superman history that’s gone before that’s it’s hard not to be distracted. Okay, since this film, like all “blockbusters,” is as much, if not more, about dollars and cents than anything else, let’s get that out of the way first. Man of Steel reportedly cost Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures a staggering $225 million to make, with a global marketing cost of $150 million. But don’t be too concerned for these people, because even before its release, Man of Steel had already recovered $170 million for marketing rights from companies such as Wal-Mart, Kellogg’s, Nokia, Converse, Gillette, and toy makers such as Mattel, Fisher Price, and Lego. As the Tribeca Film website says, “Man of Steel is more of a marketable product than a cinematic work.” Of course, this applies to most of these “tentpole” pictures. On top of that, the film grossed $125 million on its opening weekend, which is the biggest June opening ever, as well as the second best debut of the year after Iron Man 3, which took in $174 on its first weekend.

But is the movie any good? In the final analysis, I don’t think it is. It’s both too much and too little. Current CGI technology allows filmmakers to put just about anything (and as much of it as possible)  as they can imagine up on the screen. It might be hard now to remember just how stunning CGI was in a film like James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991). We’re so used to it that it’s become sort of ho-hum. The structure of most of these effects-driven films is to present bigger and bigger action set-pieces, one after the other, with as little down time as possible in between. That’s why last year’s The Avengers (the third-highest grossing film of all time so far), written and directed by Joss Whedon, seems like such an anomaly. As impressive and often thrilling as the action sequences were, what I enjoyed most were the frequent scenes of the superhero team just standing around bickering and sniping at each other. This felt authentic and recognizable, and made the film itself feel more real because of it. Whedon has a rather unique sensibility, an ability to bring genres to life in quirky ways we haven’t seen before. He cares about the human factor. Vampires and demons may have been what first drew me to Whedon’s great television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but the ordinary problems of its very relatable characters are what kept me there for seven years. Man of Steel could have used some of this approach.

The first part of Man of Steel is essentially an origin story, with enough twists and turns to make it feel new (yet familiar), while still following the basic outline of Superman’s beginnings. I get it that the filmmakers wanted to bring Superman into the present world, to bring him up to date. This makes sense. After all, DC Comics has rebooted their entire superhero universe a number of times over the years.

Man of Steel opens with a lengthy and rather disorienting prologue on the planet Krypton, which ends when Jor-El (Russell Crowe) sends his only son Kal-El (the future Clark Kent/Superman) into space towards Earth, just before Krypton explodes, but not before Jor-El has had a fatal showdown with General Zod (Michael Shannon), leader of a coup to take over the soon-to-not-exist Krypton. Zod is after a mysterious “Codex” that Jor-El has stolen and put in the rocket with Kal-El. Zod defeats Jor-El, but his coup fails before he can stop Kal-El’s rocket. He and his two lieutenants are banished to the Phantom Zone, but we can be sure they’ll be back, since we’ve already seen a version of this in the second Christopher Reeve film, Superman II (1980), when Terrence Stamp was a somewhat more nuanced Zod. If this sounds convoluted, it is, and there’s a lot more of it (Jor-El riding on the back of some sort of winged reptile while making his escape after lifting the Codex, for example), and only vaguely comprehensible.

Once on Earth, Man of Steel immediately puts a spin on the traditional origin narrative by jumping ahead 30 years or so to find the now fully grown Clark (Henry Cavill) working on a fishing trawler in the Arctic. The film periodically flashes back to different stages of his boyhood in Smallville, where his father, Jonathan Kent (Kevin Costner), has strongly cautioned Clark to never reveal his powers, for fear of how the public (and authorities) would react.

Clark’s “years in the wilderness” is one of several religious (specifically Christian) allusions. Jor-El (who has god-like powers compared to the people of Earth) sends his only son to earth. In the present day of the film, Clark is 33 years of age. The holographic/artificial intelligence presence of Jor-El tells Clark that he can save the world. There’s a scene where Clark goes to a church to see one of his boyhood friends, now a priest. Clark sits in a pew with an image of a kneeling Christ wearing red robes in a stained glass panel in the background. And there are at least two scenes where Clark is in a crucifixion pose.

If you think I’m forcing these connections, I read just yesterday that Warner Bros. had hired a “Christian-focused firm Grace Hill Media to promote Man of Steel to faith-based groups by inviting them to early screenings and creating trailers that highlight the film’s religious themes. They also enlisted Craig Detweiler, a Pepperdine University professor… to create a Superman-centric sermon outline for pastors titled ‘Jesus: the Original Superhero.'” I know this is just more marketing, so I probably shouldn’t be surprised.

When Clark reveals his powers and appears as Superman in the suit (though he’s never called that in the film; the name Superman is said only twice, as I recall), there’s no period of adjustment and acclimation for either Clark or the public to his status. Instead he’s immediately tasked with saving the entire planet from Zod’s plan to convert Earth into a new Krypton, which will unfortunately kill the rest of us in the process.

The film is well cast in the major parts, but since little or nothing anyone says or does seems remotely real, I couldn’t get too involved with these characters. Henry Cavill certainly looks the part as Superman, and he does a good job. Russell Crowe brings a bit of his Gladiator vibe to Jor-El, and gets quite a bit of screen time, even after death. Kevin Costner is a standout as Clark’s adoptive father, Jonathan. The film would have benefited from more scenes of them together. Lois Lane is a major player in this version, but her role is decidedly different from what we’ve seen before. Amy Adams does well in the part, but the character doesn’t have much resonance. The wild card here is Michael Shannon as General Zod. He’s an actor best known for terrific, intensely committed performances in smaller independent films, such as the anxiously strung-out Bug (2006), Revolutionary Road (2008), Boardwalk Empire (HBO 2010-12), The Iceman (2012), and especially two films written and directed by Jeff Nichols, Shotgun Stories (2007) and Take Shelter (2011). He tends to play tightly-wrapped characters, frequently with barely contained violence just under the surface, threatening to erupt. He’s quite good at this, and that intensity probably helped get him cast as Zod, a big part in a huge film that will definitely raise his profile. His Zod is constantly in full glowering mode, eyes popping, cranked up and threatening to blow his gaskets at any moment. The performance is extreme, obvious, and a little silly, but appropriate for the film.

Superman first faces off with Zod and his troops in Smallville, and finally in the seemingly endless climax in Metropolis. For all their super powers, which Zod realizes he also has on Earth, it still comes down to a slugfest. What’s new with Man of Steel is that when Superman hits Zod, or vice versa, they get punched through several city blocks of buildings, causing a stunning amount of damage. This is an impressive effect the first couple of times you see it, but it gets old fast after the next dozen or so. Man of Steel has a PG-13 rating, so all of the damage is to property. But watching it, especially in the Metropolis scenes, where buildings are repeatedly collapsing in a way uncomfortably reminiscent of 9/11, you know that thousands of people are being injured and killed. You see people running, with maybe a scratch or two, but that’s about it. I have a fairly high tolerance to violence in films and television, but this is a lie, an exhausting cartoon. A private company, Watson Technical Consulting, which obviously has too much time on its hands, estimated that 129,000 people would have been killed in Metropolis, with over 250,000 gone missing, and nearly a million injured overall. The physical damage to Metropolis would be at least $700 billion. In the process of trying to save the world, Superman destroys half the city. I don’t think you’d want this guy to hang around.

Here are two trailers for Man of Steel that will give you an idea of what the film is like. The second trailer begins on a more lyrical note, but they both end up in the same place.

The main problem, it seems to me, is with the script. Films that don’t work almost always fail on the script level. A good script can usually survive deficient filmmaking; but it’s next to impossible to make a good film out of a bad script. It goes beyond that for me. Ironically enough, for a film that sucked up this much money, talent, time, and effort, it’s not that entertaining. All I remember about Hans Zimmer’s music is that it was very loud, and that visually the film is not memorable for the most part, despite all the CGI design. The sequence where the newly suited-up Superman is getting the hang of his flying abilities is close to thrilling, but not much else is. Finally, one of the worst things about Man of Steel is the last scene, set in The Daily Planet. It’s clever and cute, I suppose, but when you think about it, makes no sense whatsoever given everything that’s gone before. And what about that Codex? – Ted Hicks

Which one of these Gatsbys would you rather see? Based on the poster for the Alan Ladd version (1949), which appears to recast the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel in noirish gangster terms, it’s no contest, that’s the one for me. But I haven’t seen it, so I could be wrong. It might be as much of a misfire as the Robert Redford (1974) and Leonardo DiCaprio (2013) versions. Though I’ll bet it doesn’t try to pass itself off as a classic, and therefore might be more entertaining (though Leonard Maltin’s movie guide calls the film “Too talky and much too literal minded,” so I’m obviously guessing as to its possible merits).

The 1949 Great Gatsby was directed by Elliott Nugent, who directed Bob Hope in three features, and co-written by Richard Maibaum, who would go on to write thirteen James Bond films. In this version, Alan Ladd as Gatsby has acquired his fortune as a bootlegger. To be fair, his bootlegging past is mentioned several times in the novel (as well as the rumor that he had “killed a man”), though a trailer fragment I found shows Gatsby in a shootout, blasting away at gunmen in another car as they pursue him through city streets at night, so I’m thinking they play up this aspect. This may not be the tone Fitzgerald was after, but as I learned from reading a synopsis at the Turner Classics Movies website, the film does follow the basic plot of the novel, as do the 1974 and 2013 versions.

Other than the fact that the 1949 film turns him into more of a tough guy than Fitzgerald probably intended, I have the feeling that Alan Ladd could make a fairly credible Gatsby. His slight stature (5′ 6″ is the most commonly reported height) and vulnerable smile seem appropriate to the character, at least as far as looks go. Again, I haven’t seen this version, which is currently unavailable on home video (I’m hoping it will turn up on TCM), but I think the following brief clip gives a sense of what this Gatsby might be like.

It’s also interesting to see the ways the studio marketed this film, taking the beefcake route in this particular presentation of Alan Ladd, as seen in the poster at left and the movie tie-in paperback cover at right. Again, I’m assuming this is probably not what Fitzgerald had in mind, though it does put an intriguing spin on things.

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The first film version of The Great Gatsby was made in 1926, just one year after the novel was published. The book received mixed reviews and sold only 20,000 copies in its first year (when Fitzgerald died in 1940, he was certain he’d been a failure). Despite this, a successful stage adaptation opened on Broadway within a year, followed by this silent version, starring Warner Baxter as Gatsby and Neil Hamilton (better known now as Commissioner Gordon on TV’s Batman series in the 60s) as Nick Carraway. It is by all accounts a lost film, though I did find the following trailer. Note the hyperbole of the on-screen description that refers to Gatsby as a “record-selling novel.”

I also ran across an interesting review of the 1926 Gatsby (I don’t know where it appeared or who wrote it — other than the initials “E. G.”) What strikes me about the review is that it could just as well be talking about the new Baz Luhrman version, which has received many of the same criticisms (and quite a few more).

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I had reasonably high expectations for the 1974 Gatsby, which I haven’t seen since its initial release, but remember finding it flat and turgid. This was disappointing, since the cast and filmmakers felt right. Robert Redford, 36 at the time, seemed an excellent choice, maybe an obvious one, to play Jay Gatsby. He was extremely popular, and his golden looks were thoroughly American. He was a good fit for the part. And as I recall,  he said “old sport” as well as anyone is likely to get away with. I also liked Jack Clayton’s work, a British director with strong credentials. His previous films included Room at the Top (1959) with Lawrence Harvey and Simone Signoret; The Innocents (1961) with Deborah Kerr, based on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw; and The Pumpkin Eater (1964), an extraordinary film with Anne Bancroft, Peter Finch, and James Mason. In retrospect, Clayton wasn’t the right director for The Great Gatsby. I’m not sure who would have been better, though it’s interesting to imagine what might have been had Francis Ford Coppola directed. Coppola wrote the Gatsby screenplay, taking over when the original screenwriter, Truman Capote, was fired. In Capote’s version (per IMDB), Nick Carraway was a homosexual and Jordan Baker a “vindictive lesbian.” This might have brought some needed life to the picture, but we’ll never know.

Baz Luhrman’s three-ring (3D) circus version of The Great Gatsby came out earlier this year, preceded by much advance hoopla. For me, nearly everything about the film is too much, over the top, inflated, and numbing. This approach worked well for Luhrman with Moulin Rouge (2001), which I loved, but for Gatsby, not so much. The only justification I can see for shooting Gatsby in 3D, other than higher ticket prices, is to render the excessiveness of Gatsby’s lifestyle even more so. The only scene that seemed real to me was set in the Plaza Hotel in New York, with Gatsby, Nick Carraway, Jordan Baker, Daisy and her husband Tom knocking back drinks in the stultifying heat while the tension rises. This is where truth gets told and the knives come out. It has a snap and electricity that I felt nowhere else in the film, and suggests what the film could have been.

For all the glitz and glitter on display, nothing is more excessive than Leonardo DiCaprio’s endless use of the term “old sport” to punctuate nearly every sentence. I realize “old sport” comes from the novel, where it’s used ninety-four times, but DiCaprio says it so frequently here that it just becomes a joke, an awkward affectation. What works on the page doesn’t necessarily work when you hear it spoken.

I’ve always liked DiCaprio as an actor, though I didn’t buy him as J. Edgar Hoover in Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar (2011), a film that seemed more about prosthetics and makeup than anything else. But he’s been basically incredible in films such as What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), Marvin’s Room (1996), The Departed (2006), and Django Unchained (2012). And he certainly looks right for Gatsby (though maybe not as right as Redford). He was a good choice in 2013, as Redford was in 1974, but he may have been undone by Luhrman’s style of filmmaking (and having to say “old sport” so many times).

There’s much that’s wrong with this Gatsby; the weird framing device of Nick writing the novel in some sort of sanitarium back in the Midwest, for example. Though oddly enough, the anachronistic music choices didn’t bother me at all. In fact, I think Luhrman should have gone all the way and made the film a musical. That might sound like a joke, but the more I think about it, the better it sounds. I’m serious. Or imagine Gatsby directed with this cast by Martin Scorsese. Think about that. He’d be perfect for this. But whatever Luhrman’s Gatsby is or isn’t, it’s never as unwatchable and annoying as a lot of other movies, such as Eat Pray Love (2010), or a film I saw earlier today, the totally meaningless Now You See Me. Baz Luhrman is a director with skill, energy, and imagination, and when his films work, they’re something to see.

There have been six film versions of Gatsby since 1926, including a TV movie in 2000, with Mira Sorvino as Daisy and Paul Rudd as Nick Carraway, which caused barely a ripple from what I can find. G appeared in 2002, with Richard T. Jones, Blair Underwood, and Andre Royo in a more radical interpretation about a hip-hop mogul who moves to the Hamptons in search of his lost love. It, too, was not a success. Maybe films of The Great Gatsby are destined to be made every twenty years or so until someone finally gets it right. Or maybe some books should just be left alone. – Ted Hicks

Burt Lancaster would have been 100 years old on November 2 of this year. The Film Society of Lincoln Center is taking the occasion to show 13 of his 74 feature films. Last Friday I saw one of my favorites, From Here to Eternity (1953). I’ve seen it many times over the years, but can’t remember the last time I saw it on a big theater screen. The film is just as powerful as it ever was, which is saying something. For me, it’s just about perfect from top to bottom, start to finish. Adapted by Daniel Taradash from James Jones’ best-selling novel, From Here to Eternity was nominated for 13 Academy Awards and received eight, including Best Picture, Best Director (Fred Zinnemann), Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actor (Frank Sinatra), and Supporting Actress (Donna Reed), Best Cinematography, Editing, and Sound Recording. Both Lancaster and Montgomery Clift were nominated for Best Actor, but lost to William Holden in Stalag 17.

The role of First Sergeant Milt Warden was a definitive one for Lancaster. As an actor, Lancaster projected great strength, authority, virility, and intelligence. This role used all of that and then some. Throughout his career he always seemed like the toughest guy in the room, the most capable, and the most dangerous. I’m always struck by his precise diction, the way he bites off his words without any waste, and the way he can use “ain’t” repeatedly in From Here to Eternity and still sound sharply intelligent.

From Here to Eternity is filled with great film acting, down to the smallest parts. As Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt, a haunted outsider who loves the army but is determined to go his own way, Montgomery Clift also had a definitive role. Prewitt is the moral center of the film; it’s impossible not to empathize with him. Frank Sinatra is equally amazing as Private Angelo Maggio, Prewitt’s friend and a “tough monkey” destined for the stockade and the sadism of Sergeant “Fatso” Judson (Ernest Borgnine). Sinatra had campaigned heavily for the role, which resuscitated a flagging career. All three figure strongly in my single favorite scene in the movie, where Lancaster breaks up a fight between Maggio and “Fatso” Judson in a bar, and says the great line, “Okay, Fatso, if it’s killin’ you want!” It’s a terrific scene that foreshadows much to come for Clift and Sinatra’s characters.

Earlier in the bar scene, before the fight starts, there’s another key moment when Prewitt displays his considerable talent with a bugle, playing with a clarity and passion that  deepens our understanding of and feeling for his character. It’s quite thrilling.

Though without a doubt, the most famous scene in From Here to Eternity has to be Lancaster and Deborah Kerr on the beach. It’s the one that almost everybody knows, even if they haven’t seen the movie. It has a life outside the film. The image, seen in the poster above, is iconic. The scene itself has been referenced, imitated, and parodied in countless films, TV shows, and publications, including Mad magazine (of course).

It’s ironic, considering what the characters go through, that From Here to Eternity is set in Hawaii, an exotic location often seen as a kind of paradise. Lancaster’s Milt Warden, involved in an illicit and illegal affair with the company commander’s unhappy wife, Karen Holmes (Deborah Kerr), is unwilling to take the step of becoming an officer – he hates officers – that would allow them to be together. Clift’s Robert E. Lee Prewitt falls in love with Lorene (Donna Reed), a hostess at a “gentleman’s club” (a brothel in the novel). She loves him, but doesn’t want to marry a career soldier. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor sets in motion the resolutions to these storylines. No one walks away happy, and some don’t walk away at all, but it all feels right. It’s a wonderful movie, probably a great one.

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Lancaster occasionally played weak characters, such as his roles in Come Back, Little Sheba (1952) and The Rose Tattoo (1955), but those were exceptions. His film debut was the lead in The Killers (1946), adapted from the Ernest Hemingway short story and directed by the underrated Robert Siodmak. It’s interesting, and I think unusual, that Lancaster was the star of the films he was in right from the start. He followed The Killers with a series of exceptional film noirs. These included Jules Dassin’s grim and violent prison drama Brute Force (1947); I Walk Alone (1948), Lancaster’s first pairing with the equally intense Kirk Douglas; Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), with Barbara Stanwyck; the evocatively titled Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948); and his second film with Robert Siodmak, Criss Cross (1949), which includes Tony Curtis, in an unbilled bit part, who would later co-star with Lancaster in Trapeze (1956) and the incredible Sweet Smell of Success (1957).

Per the typical film noir template, the characters Lancaster played in these films, while tough and capable, were often victims of forces beyond their control and larger than themselves. Lancaster went on to star in  The Flame and the Arrow (1950) and The Crimson Pirate (1952), swashbuckling adventure films that utilized his training as a gymnast and acrobat. These films featured Nick Cravat, who Lancaster knew from the 1930s when they were an acrobatic duo performing in a circus. Lancaster’s ability to do his own stunts added credibility and authenticity to his films, quite literally in a film like Trapeze. To my knowledge, there was never anything physically clumsy or awkward about the characters he played. Even in roles that didn’t require stunt work, his physicality informed the way he moved, the way he walked across a room, or even just sitting still.

Lancaster made four films directed by Robert Aldrich including  Apache and Vera Cruz in 1954, and Twilight’s Last Gleaming (1977). My favorite Aldrich film with Lancaster is the extremely stark and brutal Ulzana’s Raid (1972). I saw Apache and Vera Cruz earlier in the week. They don’t hold up all that well, whereas Ulzana’s Raid, which I saw yesterday, is every bit as good as it ever was. Set in 1880s Arizona, Lancaster plays a scout for the U.S. Army who accompanies a troop of soldiers to track down and capture the Apache warrior Ulzana, who has left the reservation to raid homesteads in the area, torturing and killing everyone they meet. It’s an exceptionally tough-minded film, and you see things you haven’t seen in a Western before.

As much as I love Lancaster in his earlier films, such as Brute Force, Criss Cross, and especially From Here to Eternity, his later films often have greater weight. As he gets older, his energy and strength become, for the most part, more self-contained, but it’s still there. He becomes more of an authority and less of an acrobat. In films such as the corrosive Sweet Smell of Success, Lancaster is a truly menacing figure in his horn-rimmed glasses as a powerful newspaper columnist (based on Walter Winchell) who cuts people to ribbons with his words. In John Frankenheimer’s great political thriller Seven Days in May (1964), he plays an equally threatening figure, an Air Force general engineering a coup d’état against the government (this was also the fifth of seven films he would appear in with Kirk Douglas).

Lancaster made five films directed by John Frankenheimer, including Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), but my favorite has to be The Train (1964). Frankenheimer took over direction of the film from Arthur Penn after Lancaster had Penn fired. He had that kind of clout. Lancaster plays a French railway yard official during World War II who reluctantly agrees to help stop a Nazi plan (led by an excellent Paul Scofield) to transport French art treasures to Germany by train. Shot in black & white, using little or no special effects (the train smash-ups are the real thing, and you can feel it), the physical production feels tremendously authentic. Once again, Lancaster does his own stunts.

Another favorite Lancaster film of mine is The Professionals (1966), written and directed by Richard Brooks, who had previously directed Lancaster’s Oscar-winning performance in Elmer Gantry (1960). This is a tremendously enjoyable Western set in 1917 with Lancaster and Lee Marvin leading Robert Ryan and Woody Strode on a mission to rescue a wealthy cattleman’s wife, Claudia Cardinale, from Jack Palance, a former Mexican revolutionary who has abducted her. The story may be a bit thin, but Lancaster and Marvin are great together, and the early 20th Century period and advanced weaponry (machine guns and automobiles) set it apart from other Westerns. Three years later, Sam Peckinpah would set The Wild Bunch (1969) in a similar context. The score by Maurice Jarre, who also did the music for The Train, is very effective and does a lot to sell the movie.

In 1978 Lancaster starred in Go Tell the Spartans, a grossly underseen film about U.S. military “advisors” in Vietnam set in 1964. It was one of the first films to critically address U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The Green Berets it is not. It was critically well-received in its limited release, but isn’t that well known today.  Lancaster, 65 at the time, obviously believed in the film and its message to the extent that he put up $150,000 of his own money to cover a short-fall in the budget.

In addition to winning for Elmer Gantry, Lancaster received Academy Award nominations for Best Actor in From Here to Eternity, Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), and Louis Malle’s Atlantic City (1980), for which he received numerous other nominations and awards. It’s a wonderful performance, filled with grace, dignity, and bravado.

Finally, a good way to wrap up this piece is with a brief Turner Classics Movies tribute to Burt Lancaster, narrated by his frequent director, John Frankenheimer. The clips are excellent, and it’s great hearing what Frankenheimer has to say, especially about his  working relationship with Lancaster. – Ted Hicks

All of the films cited are available on home video through Netflix, Amazon, and other sources.

Luchino Visconti’s “The Leopard” – 1963