In Contention

Tag: On the Waterfront

  • LIFE WITHOUT OSCAR: 1953 and 1954

    Catch up with the idea behind this series here.

    Did you guys see that USA-Algeria game today? I mean, talk about a life without Oscar. How can anyone think of movies while the World Cup is going on? Can we start a petition to give Landon Donovan the Jean Hersholt award this year? I suppose not everyone has the fever so let’s talk about some films that should be burning up your Netflix queue.

    1953’s big prize went to “From Here to Eternity,” a serious film that few probably argued about then and warrants uninspired admiration today. 1954 gave us “On the Waterfront,” another serious film that briefly brought the Academy back to social drama before awarding more shitty, bloated epics later in the decade. So what should have gotten some love?

    1953 – “Tokyo Story” (Yasujiro Ozu)

    Yasujiro Ozu is one of the few directors I can think of that actually got better with age. The films made in the twilight of his career show a maturation of technique that rivals all masters of the medium, but they also show a maturation of storytelling that favors simplicity, as if he’s realized that life is too short to bother with anything but the heart of the matter. People can’t seem to stop talking about how “Toy Story 3” made them cry, but I can watch the last five minutes of “Rudy” with zero context and cry. “Tokyo Story” made me want to call my parents and tell them I love them, and that is the real power of the movies.

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  • R.I.P. Budd Schulberg

    I just came back from one of the most expertly written films of the year (Guillermo Arriaga’s “The Burning Plain”) to the sad news that one of the great screenwriters of our time, Budd Schulberg, has passed on from this mortal coil.  At 95 years old, he seemed to get everything you can possibly get from life.  He is perhaps best known and remembered for “On the Waterfront,” for which he won an Oscar and gave us the immortal line: “I coulda had class.  I coulda been a contenda.  I coulda been somebody.” He will be missed.

  • The films you’re supposed to love, but don’t

    Gene Kelly in Singin' in the RainBound to raise many a film buff’s hackles, The Guardian carries an entertaining piece today by novelist Tim Lott on the subject of “the worst best films ever made” — in other words, the roundly lauded and canonized classics that routine appear on “all-time greatest” lists but, well, simply aren’t all that.

    It’s a wholly subjective issue, of course, and Lott is unashamedly provocative (if overly glib) in tackling it, taking down some seriously big targets along the way. Films in the firing line include “The Searchers” (which he accuses of both racism and “rude mechanicals”), “Les Enfants du Paradis” (“dated, overlong and absurdly wordy”), “On the Waterfront” (“a masterclass in ham acting”) and “Death in Venice” (“a colossal piece of soft-focus masturbation”).

    I disagree on most counts, but now and then his venom strikes a chord of with me. I wouldn’t go as far as he does in calling “La Dolce Vita” a “turgid, lazy mess of half-realised conceits,” but I agree that it’s not a film that has aged particularly well; compared to the still-pristine “8½,” its experiments in anti-narrative look idle and incomplete. And I’m glad someone else has the courage to say that subsequent decades of radical reinvention in the field of the movie musical make “Singin’ in the Rain” look like a very ordinary achievement indeed. (I’ll just come out and say it: I can’t stand Gene Kelly.)

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  • Which moments hooked you?

    (from left) Lon Chaney and Mary Philbin in The Phantom of the OperaI love the current poll series about the most influential films of all time, but it got me thinking about the moments in movies that hooked me on cinema forever. You know, the ones we see as kids that have an enormous impact on us, forever bonding us to this art form we all so love?

    For me, as I’ve mentioned before, it was a scene in “The Ten Commandments,” Cecil B. DeMille’s remake of his own epic, which I saw in 1972 (I think) in a re-release of the picture. In the days before video (yep, that old) the studios would re-release their films every few years and this was a major re-release for Paramount. My dad, also a movie junkie (though not as bad as his son), had talked about this for years and now that it was back we were going.

    Admittedly, I was a tad cynical at 12 years old.  I fully expected to be disappointed.  Still I wanted to see it because I enjoyed going to the movies. Little did I know my life would be changed forever.

    We piled into the car and made the drive to the theater, which was packed with familes similar to ours. The lights went down and for the next four and a half hours I was swept back in time, stunned by the size and scope of the film, amazed at the colors, and most of all, astonished at Charlton Heston. Never before had I realized how an actor could command the screen.  I never felt like I was watching a performance, either.  In awe I watched the Exodus scene as literally thousands of actors moved out of Egypt, led by Moses.

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  • Revisiting the waterfront

    As Sunday’s Oscars bear down upon us with a measure of both inevitability and indifference, I can’t be the only one fed up of watching, talking or even thinking about certain 2008 nominees — even some of the ones I liked. The sooner we can begin putting some much-needed distance between ourselves and these films, the better, I say.

    So it was with great pleasure this evening that I plunged into the refreshing waters of both classic Oscar history and a different medium altogether — by going to see Steven Berkoff’s quite stunning reconceptualisation of Elia Kazan’s “On the Waterfront” on the West End stage.

    The source, of course, needs no introduction: Kazan’s searing 1954 study of corruption and violence amid the longshoremen of Hoboken boasts any number of immediately quotable lines, arguably Marlon Brando’s signature performance and, of course, eight Academy Awards. It remains, for me, one the Best Picture category’s finest hours.

    Turning such a flavourfully urban example of realist cinema into a heightened physical theatre exercise may seem a foolhardy task, but Berkoff’s interpretation is equal parts devoted tribute (Budd Schulberg’s original screenplay is transferred largely intact, while thumping jazz cues speak to Leonard Bernstein’s iconic score) and wildly stylised reinvention.

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  • Just because I don’t get it, doesn’t mean it’s not good

    Citizen KaneKris is taking some heat in some quarters for his comments on “WALL-E,” and while he has never said it was a bad film, he didn’t fall over himself seeking superlatives for it either.  In fact, the movie did not do much for Kris, which is an unpopular sentiment, given the critics awards and rave reviews for the film.

    Why is this not okay with some people?  Similarly, why is not okay to say that one does not feel “Citizen Kane” is the greatest film of all time? I don’t think it is and you have no idea the heat I take for that. Kris made a bold decision, one he believed in, one he felt was right, one that was honest.

    When will people realize that at the end of the day we are all critics with an opinion, but some of us are fortunate enough to do it for a living?  Does that set us apart?  Not really.

    Watching a film is connected to the oldest of rituals, similar to the ancient Greeks filing in to see a play and watching with rapt attention the players on stage. They then left the play and discussed it, just as we do today with cinema. Maybe we like the film, maybe we don’t…it is all opinion-based and at the end of the day, no one is really wrong.

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  • Fox Searchlight double-bills two classics with ‘The Wrestler’

    Fox Searchlight Pictures' The WrestlerFox Searchlight Pictures will be screening its awards season favorite “The Wrestler” in tandem with two classics of American cinema next week: Elia Kazan’s “On the Waterfront” and Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull.”  The event, to be held at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, has been dubbed: “Contenders: A Look at Film Heavyweights.”

    Each film, with their esteemed blue collar performances from Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro respectively, has popped up in Q&A sessions during screenings for Aronofsky’s film, a Searchlight spokesman said.  The screenings will take place on Monday, December 8 and Tuesday, December 9.

    “I look at those films and I stand in awe of them,” Aronofsky told me yesterday.  “You can’t take your eyes off them.  They are mentor films to ‘The Wrestler’ in a way” and they contain “untouchable, iconic performances.”

    Aronofsky says both “On the Waterfront” and “Raging Bull” have always been an inspiration.  He studied both in film school, in fact.  But beyond that, it is hardly surprising that parallels might be drawn between these two classics and Aronofsky’s film; actor Mickey Rourke’s performance has been singled out as an “amazing tour-de-force” by the Los Angeles Times’ Patrick Goldstein.  Variety’s Todd McCarthy, meanwhile, wrote that Rourke’s work “instantly takes its place among the great, iconic screen performances.”  And so it will again next week.

    “My favorite part of the process is working with the actors,” Aronofsky said.  “It reminds me that the only true time we get to be artists is between ‘action’ and ‘cut.’  And every day, Mickey gave me a new gift.  Watching him work is amazing and the honesty he brought is reminiscent of those films, I think.”

    The first double-bill will start at 6:30 p.m. Monday evening with “On the Waterfront.”  “The Wrestler” will follow at 8:00 p.m.  Tuesday, Aronofsky’s film will show at 6:00 p.m. and “Raging Bull” will close the evening, and the two-day event, at 8:00 p.m.