Tuesday Minute
No. 231 | April 5, 2011

Run for Your Life

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In my choice of themes each week I look to find something that strikes my interest, and this week (another light week, by necessity), I’ll take a look at a couple of films about a subject very much on my mind these days.

I started running in the 1970s.  Going for a run has always been my workout of choice.  I would rather go for a run around the neighborhood, or wherever I might be, than go to a gym.  I enjoy the freedom and the solitude of a good long run, and staying healthy, I’ve found, is much better than the alternative.  In my younger years I ran races regularly, mostly 5Ks and 10Ks, and a couple of marathons, not so much for the competition as just a way to keep in shape.

I don’t have what’s called a runner’s body.  I never did, but the older I get, the truer it is.  My pet theory on aging is that people don’t put on years, they put on pounds, and despite my best efforts, it’s happened to me.   This year I decided to reverse the trend.  I would sleep better*, eat better, work out more, and for the first time in two decades, run a marathon.

My date with destiny comes this weekend.  Should I survive, I’ll be back with another look at movies of one type or another.  Meanwhile, a quick look at two films about—what else—running.

* Another of my pet theories:  the key to health is not diet or exercise, but sleep.

Our theme this week
Films about runners and running

Chariots of Fire

I’d love to say this film is a great inspiration.  But it’s not.  Not for runners, and certainly not for movie fans.  I watched it again recently, for the third or fourth time altogether, and what I still can’t understand is how the movie was a hit with critics and movie fans in 1981, and even more puzzling, how it won the Academy Award for Best Picture.  There are a handful of Best Picture winners I have not yet seen, but off the top of my head it’s hard to think of a less-deserving Best Picture winner in history.

Hagiography is not a popular shelf at the video store and the lives of saints do not make for good cinema.  Not when the filmmakers’ only interest is to thrust the saints atop a pedestal.  What we get in Chariots of Fire is not a story about human beings but about icons with all the life drained out.

The main story is set in 1920s England, at Cambridge University, where runners Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross) and Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson), among others, race and train for the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris.  Abrahams is a Jew, an outsider who must overcome the anti-Semitic attitudes of the administration and staff, though in the film he never suffers any real discrimination, let alone, persecution, so we’re left to wonder what all the fuss was about.  Liddell is a devout Christian, the son of missionaries, who runs for the glory of God.

If you enjoy movies about the pious and snobbish, this is the film for you.  But my beef, at least what I’ll get into here, is the film’s failure as a drama.  The essence of any good story is conflict, but at every turn the movie softens its rough edges instead to wallow in pretty pictures:  the period costumes, the historic scenery, and the slo-mo glory of amateur athletes back in the day.  Worse, it’s all accompanied by the score of Vangelis, an odd choice that was lauded at the time but seems like a serious misstep to my ears.

Later in the film, on his way to the Olympics, Liddell discovers that he’s scheduled to race on a Sunday.  His religious conviction won’t allow him to compete on the Sabbath, putting in doubt his chance for a medal.  The filmmakers took some liberties with the actual record, but it amounts to a crisis, as close as the story gets to having one.  Not to diminish Liddell’s faith, but it’s a rather thin reed to hang a movie on.

More interesting than the film itself is the story behind its success.  It screened at Cannes and was panned by French critics, who may not have appreciated references to “Frogs” in a boring picture about the glory of all things British.  An American, however, came to the rescue.  A young and influential critic named Roger Ebert engineered an “American Critics Prize,” the first and only time one has been awarded, and by a 6-5 margin Chariots of Fire came out of Cannes a winner.  Otherwise, its prospects may have been doomed.  The rest, even more than the story onscreen, is history.

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Chariots of Fire (1981)
Hugh Hudson, director
Colin Welland, writer
Ben Cross, Ian Charleson, Nicholas Farrell, Nigel Havers, Lindsay Anderson, John Gielgud, Ian Holm

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Quote of note
“Let us praise famous men and our fathers that begat us.  All these men were honored in their generations and were a glory in their days.  We are here today to give thanks for the life of Harold Abrahams.  To honor the legend.  Now there are just two of us—young Aubrey Montague and myself—who can close our eyes and remember those few young men with hope in our hearts and wings on our heels.”
—Lord Andrew Lindsay (Nigel Havers), Chariots of Fire (1981)

…58…59…60.

Tuesday Minute
Entr’acte | March 29, 2011

Elizabeth Taylor, R.I.P.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
“Miss Taylor… is terrific as a panting, impatient wife, wanting the love of her husband as sincerely as she wants an inheritance.”
—Bosley Crowther, The New York Times, 1958

Not everything as Tennessee Williams intended it to be, but the film still packs a powerful punch.  During production, Elizabeth Taylor’s third husband, Mike Todd, died in a plane crash.  It was the only one of her marriages not to end in divorce.

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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
Richard Brooks, director
Tennessee Williams (play); Richard Brooks, James Poe (screenplay); writers
Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman

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…58…59…60.

Friday Minute
No. 230 | March 25, 2011

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2011

Our theme this week
Performers inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011

Featured this week
(See Monday post for theme introduction and program note)
Monday         —   Alice Cooper
Tuesday         —   Dr. John
Wednesday    —   Darlene Love
Thursday        —   Neil Diamond

Tom Waits

Waits is an American original.  Though never a huge commercial success, he’ll be remembered long after many of his more popular contemporaries are forgotten.  He’s a musician first, but he’s worth noting for his work in film as well.  He first had a hit with “Ol’ 55,” when the Eagles recorded it in 1974; his original is a song I can listen to a dozen times in a row and still want to hear again.  ”The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)” was nothing less than an anthem during my college years.  You had to love a guy who had the courage to mumble through his songs.  But most of all, there was a sense of feeling in his music that you couldn’t find anywhere else.  Francis Ford Coppola had him score One from the Heart, and the result is a work of beauty.  Waits continued working in film, often onscreen, and his performances in Down by Law and Short Cuts are, to my mind, especially memorable.  I can’t do justice to Waits in a short sketch like this, and I won’t try.  Suffice to say, he’s one of the greats.

Waits on film
One from the Heart (1982)*
Rumble Fish (1983)
The Cotton Club (1984)
Down by Law (1986)
Dracula (1992)
Short Cuts (1993)
Night on Earth (1992)*
Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006)
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)
The Book of Eli (2010)

* Original score.
Contributed songs to soundtracks of many films (too many to mention, but Waits did much of the music for the 1992 Jeff Bridges film American Heart).

Final note on the Class of 2011
In addition to the five performers featured this week, three others were inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:  Leon Russell (as a “sideman” and not a “performer,” which seems like an arbitrary distinction to me), and non-performers Jac Holzman (record exec) and Art Rupe (pioneer of indie labels).  Congrats to all!

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Down by Law (1986)
Jim Jarmusch, director
Tom Waits, John Lurie

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One from the Heart (1982)
“This One’s from the Heart”
Tom Waits, Crystal Gayle, with Teddy Edwards on tenor sax / Soundtrack

 

Waits was nominated for an Academy Award for best original score.  The story behind Waits and the film here.

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Final Friday Five, the monthly mini-quiz

1.  Name the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers starring in each of these concert and documentary films.

Dont Look Back (1967)
I’m Going to Tell You a Secret (2005)
Live at Red Rocks (1984)
Shine a Light (2008)
Stop Making Sense (1984)
This Is It (2009)

2.  Name four of the seven Rock and Roll Hall of Famers to date who have won an Oscar for original song or original score. 

3.  Well more than 100 movies have opened since the beginning of 2011.  Before this weekend, how many of those films have grossed more than $100 million at the domestic box office?

4.  The baseball season usually brings with it another baseball movie or two.  This year’s most anticipated film about the sport is Moneyball, the adaptation of the book by Michael Lewis (The Blind Side), due to open in September.  The central character is Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland A’s, who used computer analysis and sabermetrics to field a competitive team.  Who plays Billy Beane onscreen?

5.  Match each of the following Elizabeth Taylor movies with the role that she played.

Father of the Bride (1950)
A Place in the Sun (1951)
Giant (1956)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
BUtterfield 8 (1960)

Kay Banks
Leslie Benedict
Catherine Holly
Maggie Pollitt
Angela Vickers
Gloria Wandrous

Answers here.

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Quote of note
“The beauty of quitting is, now that I’ve quit, I can have one, ’cause I’ve quit.”
—Tom (Tom Waits), Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)

…58…59…60.

Friday Minute
No. 223 | March 11, 2011

Rotary Club

Our theme this week
Mayhem, murder, and a telephone in the title

Featured this week
(See Monday post for theme introduction)
Monday         —   Dial M for Murder (1954)
Wednesday    —   Call Northside 777 (1948)

Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

A telephone is never just a telephone.  It’s a device serving different roles in this week’s featured films.  In Dial M for Murder, it’s a trigger for a carefully devised murder plot.  In Call Northside 777, it’s a means to answer a desperate plea for help.  In Sorry, Wrong Number, it’s a lifeline to the outside world for a wealthy, spoiled invalid—and then a source of terror as the lines are crossed and she overhears two men plan a murder to be carried out that night.

Barbara Stanwyck is Leona Stevenson, the bed-ridden wife, in a role played previously on radio by Agnes Moorehead.  Adapting the 22-minute drama for the big screen gave the filmmakers more time to tell the tale.  One addition was the backstory of Leona and her husband, Henry (Burt Lancaster), shown in flashback.  She’s the daughter of a millionaire (Ed Begley) and hardly a likeable character.  She meets and falls for Henry, young, uneducated, and far outside her social sphere.  Leona typically gets what she wants, and despite the objections of her father, she gets and marries her man.  Henry, though, is wrapped up with the wrong crowd, and a crooked character named Morano (William Conrad) blackmails him into plotting her death so he can inherit her estate.

In the bedroom, where the film begins, ends, and returns several times, Leona makes phone calls to piece together the mystery.  She finally discovers the intended victim of the murder plot—herself.  Henry, in a change of heart, telephones her with a warning, and as the police approach his phone booth, he hears her screams over the line.

The ending, and the famous last line, earned legendary status in Hollywood, and the film—a bit of noir, a bit of hokum—is a classic of its kind.  Stanwyck earned her fourth and final Best Actress nomination for her performance.  It was hardly subtle, and actually rather hysterical in bits, and perhaps an inspiration to later generations of scream queens.

One of the great actresses of the golden age, Stanwyck worked another four decades.  As her co-star, six years her junior, Lancaster was just starting out.  He went on to get four Oscar nominations himself, winning in 1960 for Elmer Gantry.

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Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)
Anatole Litvak, director
Lucille Fletcher (radioplay and screenplay), writer
Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster, Ann Richards, Ed Begley
Trailer

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Quote of note
“In the tangled networks of a great city, the telephone is the unseen link between a million lives … it is the servant of our common needs — the confidante of our inmost secrets … life and happiness wait upon its ring … and horror … and loneliness … and … death!!!”
—Prologue, Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

…58…59…60.

Wednesday Minute
No. 222 | March 9, 2011

Rotary Club

Our theme this week
Mayhem, murder, and a telephone in the title

Featured this week
(See Monday post for theme introduction)
Monday         —   Dial M for Murder (1954)

Call Northside 777 (1948)

Jimmy Stewart in transition:  that’s the best (but not the only) reason for seeing Call Northside 777.  Stewart was just a year or two past It’s a Wonderful Life and Magic Town and on his way to rendezvous with Alfred Hitchcock (Rope et al.) and Anthony Mann (Winchester ’73 et al.) when he starred as cynical newspaper reporter P.J. McNeal working a story about a twelve-year-old murder.

McNeal’s editor, Kelly (Lee J. Cobb), sends him off to find out who’s behind an ad in the paper offering $5,000 for the killers of a Chicago cop.  McNeal finds Tillie Wiecek scrubbing floors on the night shift in a downtown high-rise.  Her son, Frank, is serving a 99-year sentence for the murder—but he’s innocent, she claims.  The story of the hard-working, ever-faithful mother strikes a sympathetic chord with the public.  But the hard-nosed McNeal remains unpersuaded.

McNeal stays with the story, visiting Wiecek (Richard Conte) in the state pen, witnessing his lie detector test, and eventually coming to doubt his conviction.  McNeal’s skeptical attitude serves him well when the authorities try to obstruct his investigation into the crime.  Finally, during a sequence involving photo enlargement and wirephoto transmission—the cutting-edge technology of the day, apparently—he proves that the key witness against Wiecek had lied.

The story of the wrongfully convicted has been told in countless movies, among them The Shawshank Redemption and last year’s Conviction.  Call Northside 777 is a good early example.  Based on a true story, the film was shot on location in Illinois, mostly in a realistic, matter-of-fact style.  Though there’s never any doubt about where the story is headed, or where the film’s sympathies lie, it still provides a moving and compassionate look at the lives of those who receive injustice from the criminal justice system.

Whatever might happen, it’s always good to have Jimmy Stewart on your side.

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Call Northside 777 (1948)
Henry Hathaway, director
Jerome Cady, Jay Dratler (screenplay); Leonard Hoffman, Quentin Reynolds (adaptation); James P. McGuire (articles); writers
James Stewart, Lee J. Cobb, Richard Conte, Helen Walker

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Quote of note
“PERSONAL—NOTICES.  $5000 REWARD.  For killers of Officer Bundy on Dec. 9, 1932.  Call Northside 777.  Ask for Tillie Wiecek 12-7 p.m.”
—Classified newspaper ad, Call Northside 777 (1948)

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