A hunky and charming seaman, devoid of education, aspires to become a writer. Sound like Jack London? Indeed London authored the novel Martin Eden, in part modeled after himself. The lush art film Martin Eden is Pietro Marcello’s adaptation, which he set in Italy.
Luca Marinelli plays the eponymous protagonist with charisma and physicality. His Martin Eden is a zealous autodidact.
Martin ingratiates himself with a wealthy family and seeks the approval and affection of the daughter, whom he begins to idolize. She sees him as a noble savage, a primitive ready to be cut and polished into a gemstone, and she encourages his education. She is attracted to him physically, but also appreciates his drive and intelligence. But she hopes he would harness his talents for something more commercial and more practical than writing.
Martin, however, attains fame as an author and public intellectual. Unlike Jack London himself, he rejects socialism and goes to the other Ayn Rand-like extreme. He becomes more confident in his philosophy. His political stridency leads to his rudeness at the girlfriend’s family table. She scolds, “you are unbearable“, and, indeed, he is.
Martin Eden has a very rich look and feel. Director Pietro Marcello’s work here has been compared to that of Visconti. There are some odd pop musical interludes, but the visual collages are much more interesting.
Martin Eden is a well-crafted and well-acted film, but its appeal is limited by the protagonist as he strives himself right into obnoxiousness. I watched Martin Eden on Virtual Cinema at Laemmle.
Actor John Saxon, was versatile, intense and prolific – the handsome, swarthy, character actor you would come to recognize in his 200+ screen appearances, mostly on TV. In 1976 ALONE, Saxon appeared on The Rockford Files, The Bionic Woman, The Six Million Dollar Man, Starsky and Hutch and Wonder Woman, acted in seven movies. and starred in the miniseries Once an Eagle. His best known movie roles were as Jackie Chan’s martial arts buddy Roper in Enter the Dragon (Saxon had already studied karate for years) and as police Lieutenant Don Thompson, who repeatedly battled Freddy Kreuger in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Saxon could handle quality roles when he got them, as in War Hunt and Joe Kidd.
Ian Holm in THE SWEET HEREAFTER
The 5’5″ Ian Holm was a giant of the stage, where he created a definitive King Lear, and is most well-known in movies for playing Bilbo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings franchise. I remember Holm’s heartrending performance in Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter, my choice as the most profoundly sad movie ever. He also appeared in supporting roles in some of my favorite movies: Young Winston, Jesus of Nazareth and the Kenneth Branagh Henry V.
Jerry Stiller, along with his wife and professional partner Anne Meara (scroll down), was a comedy pioneer. He’s best remembered for playing George Costanza’s father on TV’s Seinfeld and for being Ben Stiller’s real life dad. But Stiller sandwiched some good work in movies (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, The Ritz, Hairspray) between the early and later phases of his work.
Allen Garfield in THE CONVERSATION
Character actor Allen Garfield contributed to many fine films, especially in the 1970s heyday of American auteurs, including The Candidate, The Brink’s Job, Nashville and The Stunt Man. My favorite Garfield performance was as the sleazy Bernie in the 1974 masterpiece The Conversation.
Michael Lonsdale in THE DAY OF THE JACKAL
Michael Lonsdale is justifiably best remembered for playing the determined investigator in The Day of the Jackal (plus a Bond villain). He also worked in the recently rediscovered Mr. Klein and over 100 French films.
Ann Reinking in ALL THAT JAZZ
Ann Reinking, the great Broadway star, was most famous for originating the character Roxy in Chicago. Her greatest work came from her artistic partnership with Bob Fosse, with whom she lived for six years. Reinking’s art is forever preserved in one indelible film performance, essentially playing herself in Fosse’s All That Jazz. I strongly recommend Sheila O’Malley’s remembrance.
The prolific actor Stuart Whitman was strikingly manly and relatable, and also had the gift of imbuing strong-and-silent characters with emotional texture. Indeed, he was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for a 1961 film that I haven’t seen – The Mark, in which he played a guy seeking a normal life after being imprisoned for attempted child molestation. I remember Whitman for his performances in The Longest Day and the offbeat Convicts 4. He would not wish to be remembered for the giant carnivorous rabbit chiller Night of the Lepus.
Wilford Brimley in THE CHINA SNDROME
Wilford Brimley started out in life as a real cowboy. At age 45, he broke through as an actor playing Jack Lemmon’s loyal assistant engineer in The China Syndrome. More good curmudgeon performances followed on TV and in movies (Cocoon, Absence of Malice). Ironically, this fine actor is most well-known for a Quaker Oatmeal commercial.
Sue Lyon in LOLITA
Actress Sue Lyon died at the very end of last year and hadn’t made a movie in forty years. She is best remembered for her performance at age 16 as the titular character in Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 Lolita. She also appeared in The Night of the Iguana and in one of my guilty faves, The Flim Flam Man.
Jo Shishido in CRUEL GUN STORY
Actor Jo Shishido starred in a zillion Japanese crime action films, most notably Cruel Gun Story (1964) and A Colt Is My Passport (1967). Oddly, his career as a leading man took off after his plastic surgery, intended to emphasize his cheekbones, left him with puffy chipmunk cheeks.
I fondly remember the Rock pioneer Little Richard for his hilarious turn in Down and Out in Beverly Hills as the neighbor to Richard Dreyfus’ family, Orvis Goodnight. He appeared in one of the very first rock n roll movies Don’t Knock the Rock (1956), a same-year followup to Rock Around the Clock. His music was featured in hundred of films and television shows.
By the time she was 19 in 1980, Linda Manz had acted in and narrated a masterpiece (Terence Malick’s Days of Heaven) and appeared in two cult films (Philip Kaufman’s The Wanderers and Dennis Hopper’s Out of the Blue). Then she retired to raise a family.
John Benfield was superb as Mike Kernan, the sexist Britsh police commander perpetually frustrated by Helen Mirren’s Jane Tennison in five seasons of Prime Suspect.
Kirk Douglas – that icon of explosive virility – died at age 103. Douglas will be forever remembered for the epic Spartacus, a blockbuster hit that he produced, with his own searing performance as the star and the effect of ending the Hollywood blacklist. He could play sexy and despicable at the same time in Out of the Past, Ace in the Hole and In Harm’s Way and a profoundly decent hero in Seven Days in May. Two of my guilty pleasures are Ulysses and The Vikings, with Kirk as a shirtless warrior.
Sean Connery as Bond…James Bond
If we’re going to talk about male cinema stars with overpowering magnetism and studly charisma, we’re going to start withSean Connery, who has died at age 90.
No screen actor has more personally defined a role than did Connery with James Bond. The character of James Bond in Ian Fleming’s source novels is nothing special; Bond was made iconic by Connery’s gifts. The Bond movies are cartoonish, but Connery’s James Bond never is. Connery’s Bond is hunky, but he’s not just a hunk. He is supremely confident. He is cunning. He always assesses a risk before he takes it.
My favorite Connery performance (and the best movie he was in) is The Man Who Would Be King (1975).
Max Von Sydow as THE EXORCIST
Sixty-three years after the chess game with Death himself in The Seventh Seal, actor Max Von Sydow has finally succumbed. Von Sydow is justifiably most well known among cinephiles for his many roles in a cascade of Ingmar Bergman’s grimness, including The Seventh Seal, The Magician, The Virgin Spring, Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, Shame and The Passion of Anna. And in The Magician, he had to don the most off-putting of facial hair. His biggest hit, of course was as the title character in The Exorcist. Contrary to his image, he had the capacity for hilarity, which he demonstrated in Hannah and Her Sisters as a ridiculously pretentious and selfish artist. Along with that role, my favorite Von Sydow performances were in Jan Troell’s The Emigrants and The New Land as a Swedish settler in frontier America.
Carl Reiner (far right) in THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING! THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING!
No one has been more important in the evolution of American comedy than Carl Reiner, who has died at age 98. Reiner was a writer and performer on Sid Caesar’s seminal Your Show of Shows. He created one of the greatest and most influential TV sitcoms, The Dick Van Dyke Show. Reiner was the comedy partner who helped Mel Brooks form his work. And he directed four Steve Martin comedies. Reiner was the third person awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. My favorite Carl Reiner performance was inThe Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!
Olivia de Havilland in GONE WITH THE WIND
Silicon Valley native and icon of classic Hollywood, Olivia de Havilland (her real name) was raised in Saratoga and went to Los Gatos High. Her performance in A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream in the Saratoga Community Theater led directly to her appearing in the Hollywood film version of the play at age 19. She starred as the leading lady in her next film, Captain Blood, the first of a series of Warner Brothets costume romances that matched her with Erroll Flynn, with whom she had undeniable chemistry: The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Santa Fe Trail, Dodge City, They Died with Their Boots On and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. In this period, she was loaned to David O. Selznick for her most remembered role, that of the profoundly sweet and decent Melanie in Gone with the Wind. De Havilland won her contractual freedom from Warner Brothers through landmark litigation in 1943. She went on to more serious fare and earned yhree Oscar nods in the next six years, winning for To Each His Own and The Heiress.
Dick Powell and Rhonda Fleming in CRY DANGER
Actress Rhonda Fleming has died at age 97. She was known as the “Queen of Technicolor” when movie studios exploited her blazing red hair, blue eyes, ivory complexion and uncommon beauty in a series of Western, sword-and-sandal and adventure films; in this period, she was a candidate for the world’s most beautiful woman, along with her age peers Gene Tierney, Lana Turner and Marilyn Monroe. But Fleming’s very best acting work was in black-and-white, in Spellbound, Out of the Past, Cry Danger and While the City Sleeps. My favorite Fleming performance is in Cry Danger, where she plays the girlfriend of the guy who had framed the hero (Dick Powell) – an irresistible woman of uncertain loyalty.
Brian Dennehy
The actor Brian Dennehy stood a bear-like 6’3”and could have filled his career by playing menacing heavies (and he had his share of those). But Dennehy had uncommon range, as evidenced by his most well-remembered roles – Rambo’s nemesis in First Blood and the alien in Cocoon. My favorite Dennehy movie roles were the crooked sheriff in Silverado and Harrison Ford’s morally complicated boss in Presumed Innocent. Dennehy was even a bigger star on stage – he won Tony Awards for his Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman and his James in Long Day’s Journey into Night (the role Ralph Richardson played in the movie).
Fred Willard (left) in BEST IN SHOW
Fred Willard, as much as anyone, invented the deadpan mockumentary, starting with his talk show sidekick, Jerry Hubbard character in 1977’s Fernwood 2 Night with Martin Mull. Willard’s zenith was in This Is Spinal Tap and the Christopher Guest ensemble mockumentaries that followed: Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, For Your Consideration, A Mighty Wind and Mascots. He finished up by playing yet another uncontrollable character, Phil Dunphy’s dad on Modern Family.
Here are some tidbits from Willard’s unashamedly unprepared dog show commentator Buck Laughlin in Best in Show:
If you put them in a race, who would come in first? You know if you had a little jockey on them, going like this imitates jockeys hitting the side of the horse].
And to think that in some countries these dogs are eaten.
I went to one of those obedience places once… it was all going well until they spilled hot candle wax on my private parts.
[sees the trophy] I’ve taken a sponge bath in smaller bowls than that.
Chadwick Boseman in MARSHALL. Photo credit: Barry Wetcher ;ourtesy of Open Road Films
Chadwick Boseman, an emerging superstar after his iconic role in Black Panther, was able to humanize real life icons like Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall and James Brown. My favorite Boseman performance was in Marshall.
This week: seven new movie recommendations for the Holiday weekend. But first, two remembrances.
REMEMBRANCES
The novels of author John le Carré made for unforgettable cinema. Le Carré’s complicated and conflicted Cold Warriors battled though what he revealed to be corrupting bureaucratic game. His work was the most sublime literature, and it elevated the spy movie genre.
The VERY best screen adaptations of le Carré’s work are the BBC miniseries Tinker, Tailor Soldier, Spy (1979) and Smiley’s People (1982) with Alec Guinness.
Ann Reinking, the great Broadway star, most famous for originating the character Roxy in Chicago, has died. Her greatest work came from her artistic partnership with Bob Fosse, with whom she lived for six years.
Stage performances are temporal and film performances can be everlasting. Reinking’s art is forever preserved in one indelible film performance, essentially playing herself in Fosse’s All That Jazz. I strongly recommend Sheila O’Malley’s remembrance.
Ann Reinking in ALL THAT JAZZ
ON VIDEO
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a searing revelation of the impacts of racism, with charged performances by Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis. It’s streaming on Netflix.
David Fincher’s Mankis a black-and-white beauty of a film, a portrait of troubled talent in Classic Hollywood. Amanda Seyfried is great as Marion Davies.
Don’t forget that some of my Best Movies of 2020 – So Far, are already available (and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Mank and The Father are going on the list). I haven’t yet seen Nomadland, Mayor or The Sound of Metal.
Driveways: I can’t think of a more authentic movie about intergenerational relationships than this charming, character-driven indie. The more I think about Driveways, the more I admire it. It also features the final performance – so genuine and subtle – by Brian Dennehy. Driveways is available to stream on all the major platforms.
The Whistlers: In this absorbing crime thriller, a shady cop and a mysterious woman are walking a tightrope of treachery. The Whistlers was a hit at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, but COVID-19 impaired its 2020 theatrical release in the US. (Amazon, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play.)
The Truth: Writer-director Hirozaku Koreeda’s latest wry and authentic exploration of human behavior is a showcase for Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche. Hirokeeda, such an insightful observer of behavior, cuts to the core of his characters’ profound humanity. (Amazon, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play.)
ON TV
On the always anti-climactic December 26, Turner Classic Movies gives us two ways to go. First, there’s Ben-Hur, with the thrilling chariot race around that phenomenal set – one of the greatest sets in movie history – before CGI, they actually used to build them. Its star Charlton Heston was advised by the stunt supervisor, “Don’t worry, Chuck. Just stay in the chariot and I’ll make sure you win the race.“
And then there’s Casablanca, the most perfect film ever made – as romantic, as funny and as emotionally powerful today as in 1943.
We all know the story of John Belushi – a career soaring like Icarus, propelled by comic genius and then death by drug overdose at age 33. The new biodoc Belushi brings us more texture because of unprecedented access to Belushi’s friends and widow and to Belushi’s own letters, notes and journals.
There are many insights into Belushi’s family and his upbringing, the fodder for some of his unhappiness. We learn about a year of white-knuckle sobriety when he was protected by a bodyguard named Smokey. Friend and fellow addict Carrie Fisher weigh in regarding that unsupported year of sobriety.
And their are some new stories of Belushi’s zaniness, like when he wandered off a movie set to be found in a house across the street by Dan Aykroyd – Belushi had convinced the resident, a total stranger, to feed him a sandwich and milk and to let him stretch out for a nap.
We are justifiably still intrigued by the only unsolved American air hijacking. The documentary The Mystery of D.B. Cooper takes us back and adds some detail to the story. Most importantly, it makes four suspects become almost tangible to us.
We get to meet the flight attendant forced to sit next to the hijacker, and the guy who sat across the aisle and the pilot. But, the highlights come from the folks that are today convinced that they knew D.B. Cooper. These stories range from odd to bizarre.
Timothy Leary and Joanna Harcourt-Smith in MY PSYCHEDELIC LOVE STORY
The documentarian Errol Morris has a remarkable gift for finding interview subjects with bizarre stories to tell. In My Psychedelic Love Story, Morris introduces us to Joanna Harcourt-Smith, who was swept off her feet in 1972 by bad boy celebrity Timothy Leary and spent a few years as his romantic partner. This was a period when Leary, hounded by US authorities for advocating psychedelic drug use, was on the lam in Europe and the Middle East, and finally imprisoned.
Joanna Harcourt-Smith in MY PSYCHEDELIC LOVE STORY
Morris extracts the tale from Harcourt-Smith herself. We learned that Harcourt-Smith came from a wealthy but difficult and unconventional upbringing. She plunged into a hippie version of what we would now call a Eurotrash lifestyle.
While much of her story is undeniably factual, we suspect that Harcourt-Smith is less than a reliable narrator. She drops bits like “I was happy we were stopping in Lebanon because the President was in love with my mother”. It’s either an astonishing fact or a an astonishingly brazen lie. Either way, she’s entertaining.
I’ve loved Morris since his first feature in 1978, Gates of Heaven, the story of a Bay Area pet cemetery and its quirky owners and customers (plus digging up all the dead pets and moving them from Cupertino to Napa). For bizarre personal stories, it’s tough to top Morris’ Tabloid, about a woman who kidnapped and sexually abused a Mormon missionary in England and retired in North Carolina to a pastime of tending dogs cloned in Korea,
My Psychedelic Love Story, which is minor Morris, is streaming on Showtime.
The Prom brings the musical to the screen, with Meryl Streep and James Corden as the self-absorbed Broadway stars who seek to rebound from a disastrous theatrical closing. They lead a cultural rescue party to Indiana, where a high school lesbian has been denied her prom. They bring along their less successful buddies (Nicole Kidman and Andrew Rannells) in a comic misadventure in Flyover America.
The first part of the film, with the focus on the narcissism of the is performers, is pretty funny. As the story settles into standard fish-out-of-water territory, it’s less compelling.
Nicole Kidman in THE PROM
The cast is just fine at singing and dancing. Nicole Kidman (who better to play a leggy chorus girl?) is exceptional. I also admired Keegan-Michael Key as the local principal and Broadway fanboy. (And I have evidently aged to the point where I now watch movies where Kerry Washington plays somebody’s mom.)
The Prom is an airy confection, the movie equivalent of cotton candy. It’s streaming on Netflix.
The marvelous actress Regina King directed One Night in Miami, a study of four American Black icons – Cassius Clay, Jim Brown, Malcolm X and Sam Cooke – as they spend an evening together. The encounter is imagined, but the four guys did know each other.
Cooke was a star, Brown was a superstar, Malcolm was emerging as a national figure and Clay was about to become whatever is superior to “icon”.
The titular One Night is a unique one. Cassius Clay had just stunned the world by winning the world’s heavyweight boxing championship in an unthinkable upset over ferocious Sonny Liston. And he was about to shock America again by announcing his embrace of the Nation of Islam and his name change to Muhammad Ali.
The most interesting aspect is the emphasis on each man at a pivotal point in his career. Brown is at the top, recognized as an all-time great with nothing else to prove in pro football; the question is whether he can transition his fame into a movie career and other pursuits. Malcolm is about to move away from the leadership of the Nation of Islam and into a new level of public thought-leading. Cooke has been at the top, but his career arc may be descending. And, of course, Clay is seven days from becoming Muhammad Ali; enough said there. And none of them know that Malcolm and Cooke will be murdered within three years.
Of course, all four were faced with struggling against American racism – systemic and personal, flagrant and subtle. King’s unflinching eye introduces the particular ingrown racism of the 1960’s South with a gut punch of a scene, when Jim Brown visits a white acquaintance from his youth, played by Beau Bridges.
One Night in Miami is well-acted. Clay is played by Eli Goree, Malcolm by Kingsley Ben-Adir, Brown by Aldis Hodge and Cooke by Leslie Odom, Jr.
One Night in Miami is more intellectually interesting than enthralling. This is very talkie, however, and feels too much like a play to be excellent cinema.
I screened One Night in Miami at the 2020 Mill Valley Film Festival. You will be able to stream it on Amazon on Christmas Day.
Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis in MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a searing revelation of the impacts of racism, with charged performances by Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis.
The plot is about a turbulent recording session in 1927 Chicago, featuring the ferocious diva Ma Rainey, the Mother of the Blues. But the movie is really about how each character has been traumatized by racism. We see overt racism in the American North – in a cop, a working class deli, a recording studio and a crushing final shot of cultural appropriation. But the key is the reflection of racism in how it has shaped each of the characters.
There is a violent eruption that literally stuns the audience, and then, as Billy Wilder advised, the movie doesn’t stick around too long after. This is a dark film.
Chadwick Boseman in MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM
The core of the film is Chadwick Boseman’s portrayal of Levee, the trumpet player in Ma’s backup band. He sees himself as a star in the making, which doesn’t sit well with Ma. Boseman’s Levee is a peacock, but Boseman reveals that Levee understands superficiality and transcends it. At his core is a rage and a unhealed wound, profound emotional damage that he is able to hide…until he doesn’t.
Whether blowing his horn, hanging in the band room or canoodling with Ma’s oversexed sweet young thang (Taylour Paige), Levee is charismatic. The highlight of the film is his gripping monologue, and he’s absolutely electric at the climax.
Boseman died earlier this year at 43 after playing Jackie Ronbison, James Brown and Thurgood Marshal, and soaring to superstardom as Black Panther. There’s been a lot of buzz about a posthumous Oscar for this performance, which is both sentimental and richly deserving. I certainly haven’t seen a better performance in 2020.
Viola Davis, as one would expect, has the presence and ferocity to make an excellent Ma Rainey. The real Ma Rainey wore exaggerated makeup and was constantly sweaty, and Davis uses here characteristics in her performance.
Davis and Boseman are big stars, but Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is an ensemble work. Colman Domingo, Glynn Turman, Michael Potts, Jeremy Shanos and Paige are all excellent.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Blues is the second August Wilson play, following Fences, that Denzel Washington has brought to the screen in a deal that originated at HBO and moved to Netflix. This is obviously a play, but it doesn’t feel too stagey, especially with the scenes of the Chicago streets and an earlier Ma Rainey live performance in the rural South.
