Tag: The Missouri Breaks

Arthur Penn (1922-2010)

I had a bad feeling that after Gloria Stuart and Sally Menke we were bound to get a third (as it always happens), and so we have. Arthur Penn has passed away a day after his 88th birthday. He’s obviously best known for helming 1968’s “Bonnie and Clyde,” which changed the face of American cinema at a time captured brilliantly in Mark Harris’s “Pictures at a Revolution,” but there were other gems along the way like “Mickey One,” “Little Big Man” and “The Missouri Breaks.” Not to mention trailblazing work on the small screen (specifically during the 1960 presidential debates) and on the stage. He will be missed.

After the break, John F. Kennedy’s closing statements from the October 21, 1960 presidential debate, which Penn directed.

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September 29, 2010
1976: the last hurrah of the American western

The western was not yet dead in 1976 when four high-profile installments were released to varying degrees of success. Four years later, of course, Michael Cimino’s “Heaven’s Gate” would kill the genre for several years (and United Artists for longer), and though it has seen ups and downs in the years since, for the most part, the western remains one of the least popular genres with studios.

In my opinion, Cimino’s film was never as bad as the critics said it was at the time. Many of them were lying in wait for a Cimino failure, hoping to ambush him for the lies told during the press interviews for ‘The Deer Hunter,” which won the man an Oscar and was the Academy’s choice for Best Picture. He was not a Vietnam veteran, he had never seen Russian Roulette used as torture, in fact he had never been out of America until he made the “The Deer Hunter.” This all but ruined Cimino’s reputation, which is somewhat sad because the man had a hell of an eye for detail.

That of course was the issue with “Heaven’s Gate”; though stunning in its detail, the film is insufferably slow and ponderous, with perhaps two truly stunning sequences, the best among them the community roller skating sequence, which pulsates with energy driven by a young man, the film’s composer David Mansfield and his fiddle, as they skate around the rink, veering in and out of surrounding bodies.

There was a time in the 1950s and 1960s when 20% of the films coming out of Hollywood were westerns. There were 26 prime time western programs on television, all popular, and John Wayne ruled as the top box office star. By the 1970s, westerns were made less frequently, and Wayne’s box office throne had been usurped by another star of the genre: Clint Eastwood.

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July 17, 2009
The under-appreciated

We all know that there are brilliant films that sometimes never find an audience, slipping out of theatres long before they should and often disappearing into the void of the home market.

In fairness, the advent of VHS and now DVD has allowed for such films to be re-discovered by future generations, and VHS was easily responsible for saving “Blade Runner” in the 1980s. But these types of films deserved beter in their initial runs. Perhaps the studios were not clear on how to release them (often the case). Perhaps critics did not get the film. Or perhaps audiences just stayed away despite strong reviews. Whatever the reason, there are often times that a great film just doesn’t catch on.

I am currently contracted to write a study of the films Steven Spielberg has directed, and following that, I will be writing a study of under-appreciated films from the 1970s and 1980s. This has now been expanded into a decade-by-decade series, beginning with the 1980s (to be released in 2010), then the 1970s, the 1990s and the current decade, each one a year apart. For obvious reasons, I am quite excited about them.

For me, some of the more under-appreciated gems from the 1970s and 1980s for me have been films like “Black Sunday,” featuring an Osca-caliber performance from Bruce Dern, and still the best film ever made about international terrorism; John Wayne’s last film, “The Shootist,” in which The Duke portrays an aging gunslinger dying of cancer when he himself was being ravaged by the disease; the odd little western “The Missouri Breaks,” with Brando and Nicholson going toe-to-toe; the sensational musical “Hair,” directed by Oscar winner Milos Forman, who really does recreate the summer of love.

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September 21, 2008
What does early (and excessive) Oscar hype do to a film’s chances?

In 1996, a fall movie preview of Entertainment Weekly arrived in my mailbox, the cast of “The Crucible” staring back at me on the cover, making clear to me this was going to be THE film of the fall. There were rumors floating within the industry that the film, based on the Arthur Miller play, could conceivably be nominated for 12 or 13 Academy Awards, and it seemed a cinch for at least a Best Picture nod.

Having directed the play twice, studied it at length in university and being a huge Arthur Miller fan, I was thrilled that the film was finally going to get the intense big screen version it deserve. The 1959 French adaptation was okay, but not enough people had actually seen it. Here was a chance for one of the greatest dramas of the 20th century to make the transition to film with a superb cast, including Daniel Day-Lewis, Joan Allen, Paul Schofield and Winona Ryder.

Somewhere along the way Fox panicked and released the film late in December, and though Day-Lewis finished second in balloting for the New York Film Critics Awards, the picture never caught fire as it had been predicted to do. Instead it was a dismal box office failure, nabbing only a supporting actress nomination for Joan Allen and an adapted screenplay nod for Miller.

“The Crucible” is a great film, with powerhouse performances from Day-Lewis, Allen and Ryder, though many critics attacked the latter. But was the film a victim of over hype, or were audiences simply too familiar with the story? What happened?

The same sort of thing almost happened to Steven Spielberg’s “Munich,” which at this time in 2005 was being touted as not just an Oscar nominee, but the likely winner for Best Picture and Best Director, sight unseen. It opened and was very good, but it wasn’t the searing masterpiece everyone had been hoping for. And somehow “Crash” won the Best Picture prize.

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September 20, 2008