Film Reviews & Essays
Entries from May 2014
Rod Barnett, writing on his blog The Bloody Pit of Rod, has an intriguing take about what went wrong with both attempts to make The Lone Ranger the subject of big screen feature films. The first debacle, The Legend of the Lone Ranger, was a costly flop back in 1981 but it looked like a smashing success compared to the 2013 Disney version, which is estimated to have lost $250 million despite the presence of Johnny Depp. Barnett's article, written contemporaneously with the release of the latter film last summer, examines why both films veered far off course. Click here to read
By Don L. Stradley
The first image we see in Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia, a handsome new
documentary by Nicholas D. Wrathall, is
of Vidal at the Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington D.C., standing over what will
soon be his own tomb. He’s heavier than
we remember, leaning on a cane for balance. He recalls a few friends who are
already buried nearby, mentions his “pathological hatred of death,†and ambles
away. This is the titan at midnight, crumbling at the edges, still formidable.
The movie’s cryptic opening segues into a respectful,
occasionally moving, look back at Vidal’s life. It’s more a tribute than a
full-blown biography, for Wrathall presents Vidal as a kind of intellectual
colossus, utterly devoid of faults, a near perfect thinker, and the last lion
of America’s golden age of liberalism. The movie stops short of hagiography, but just barely. What keeps it interesting is Vidal, a born
entertainer who, even in his final years, could still spin a tale, drop a name,
or do an impression of JFK.
Vidal seems a natural subject for a documentary - there
have been several already, including a 2004 episode of the PBS American Masters
series - for his life was very much like a long, American novel of the 1920s.
His mother was a ditzy alcoholic. His father was an aeronautics instructor at
West Point, had an affair with Amelia Earhart, and wanted to be the Henry Ford
of aviation. The job of raising Vidal was left to his blind grandfather, the
fiery Senator T.P. Gore of Oklahoma. When
Vidal reminisces about the senator, the respect and awe is palpable. T.P. passed on to Vidal not just his liberal
politics, but also a love of literature, and a fearsome oratory skill.
After a stint in the U.S. Army during World War II, Vidal
went on to become a scandalous novelist, a playwright, a screenwriter, a
television dramatist during TV’s golden age; he was a self-described member of
the ruling class who struggled to escape it; he never referred to himself as
‘gay,’ but wrote books and essays defending bisexual and homosexual lifestyles;
he was deeply involved in politics, and later, was a TV gadfly, appearing on
The Tonight Show a dozen times, as well as many other programs, even lending
his voice to The Simpsons and Family Guy.
Wrathall taps most of those aspects of Vidal’s past
(not, alas, the cartoon work), but focuses mainly on Vidal the political
commentator, the weary traveler who sees America as a series of shams and
failures, the gruff grumbler. Indeed, the movie shows Vidal holding court at
various speaking engagements; all he has to do is call George Bush “a fool,â€
and the walls of the joint practically come down. If the movie has a glaring fault, it’s that
we see Vidal go from being a young author of gay themed novels to a
socio-politico bon vivant, with very little in between to illustrate his
journey. Instead, Wrathall relies on nameless, faceless narrators to offer such
bromides as “Gore was everywhere, like a shape shifter.â€
The cornerstone of any documentary about Vidal will be
his televised 1968 debates with William F. Buckley. Wrathall includes a hearty
helping of them here, and they still bristle nearly 50 years after their first
airing on ABC. Buckley is especially fascinating – he’s so effete he doesn’t
even know how to show anger. He bites his lip and cranes his neck like a man
having a fit. Vidal doesn’t come off
well either. He and Buckley were both trying so hard to be witty, and so unable
to conceal their hatred of each other, that whatever topic was on the table
grew cold quickly.
Much of the footage comes from late in Vidal’s life,
when he was bothered by physical problems and needed help getting around.
Hence, we see Vidal being helped up stairs, helped across bridges, helped up
hills, helped onto a stage at the 2005 Pen awards, and carted around in a
wheelchair. These scenes are interwoven
with a sort of “greatest hits†collection from Vidal’s past, where the great
pundit railed at this and that, his words rolling over his enemies like a
tank. The effect is entertaining enough,
and if Wrathall intended to depict Vidal as a fallen hero, he sort of succeeds.
Still, a more thorough and less deferential documentary might have considered
some of Vidal’s resounding flops. Remember Caligula?
Vidal’s long life, which included friendships with
Tennessee Williams, Paul Newman, and other bright lights of our popular
culture, can’t be jammed into a 90 minute documentary. For instance, Truman
Capote is barely mentioned, which is
akin to leaving Joe Frazier out of a movie about Muhammad Ali. The saucier aspects of Vidal’s life, such as
his affairs with women, are not mentioned here, either. His engagement to Newman’s future wife,
Joanne Woodward, is ignored, although there are several odd photos of the
Newmans with Vidal, including one of Vidal and Newman fondling a statue’s
buttocks.
Wrathall doesn’t spend an inordinate amount of time on Vidal’s
books, or the notion, held by many, that Vidal possessed a great facility with
words but could not quite write a masterpiece. Instead, Wrathall gets cute and
shoots close-ups of Vidal’s pithy quotes, including “Whenever a friend
succeeds, a little something in me dies.†And, “Never offend an enemy in a
small way.†Anyone who doesn't know
better might think Vidal composed blurbs for fortune cookies.
Where Wrathall succeeds grandly is in showing Vidal’s
soft side. It's touching to hear of Vidal's relationship with longtime
companion Howard Auster, and Wrathall is smart to let the camera linger when
Vidal turns melancholy. Watch how Vidal pauses when recalling a childhood
friend who died in WW2, or the way his eyes mist over when he recalls “school
boy’s stuff, at a boys’ school, long, long, long ago.†These moments, and the gorgeous scenery
surrounding Vidal’s Italian home, make the documentary worth seeing. Wrathall’s
movie is like one of Vidal’s novels in that it’s not great, but very good.
(The film has just opened theatrically in New York. Click here to view trailer.)
By Martin Sheffield
The Empty Canvas (original Italian
title La Noia), is a 1963 Italian drama waiting to be rediscovered as a
classic by retro film lovers in America. Besides being a solid outing for Horst Buchholz and part of Bette Davis’
1960’s resurgence, this film is a reminder of why French-born Catherine Spaak
was the “IT†European teenager of the period. She was described by critic Rex Reed as "[h]alf kittycat go-go
girl, half petulant defiance, … like a sexy lollipop [with] soft hair the color
of maple syrup.†In The Empty Canvas, the 18-year-old actress gave the best performance
of her career in a role intended to make her an international star. That performance earned a special Golden
Plate award at the David di Donatello awards (presented by The Academy of
Italian Cinema) in 1964.
Based on a novel by
Alberto Moravia, the film follows Dino (Buccholz), the twenty-something artist
son of a rich, American ex-patriot from New Orleans (Davis). Dino has
lost his way in life and no longer feels inspired to paint, or inspired for life
in general, so it seems. He resents his mother and her money, spending as
little time with her as possible.
Dino's life changes,
however, when he meets Cecilia (Spaak), an amoral young woman. Cecilia
has been carrying on a torrid affair with a much-older married painter, who is
Dino's neighbor. Upon the painter's death, Dino and Cecilia slide into a
torrid affair of their own. As their affair progresses, Dino, suddenly filled
with feelings and purpose in his life, becomes obsessed with obtaining
commitment from Cecilia. In the film's penultimate scene, Dino covers
Cecilia's nude body in lira notes in an effort to win her commitment.
Cecilia, on the other hand, is just out to have fun and do whatever makes her
feel good. Dino is in danger of letting his obsession with Cecilia
destroy his life, just as the old painter’s life was destroyed by his obsession
with Cecilia.
Of the
"money" scene, director Damiano Damiani was quoted in The Saturday Evening Post as saying that
"It was the most important scene of her career in her first
English-language picture, one that would either make or break her as an
international star. And she was cold as ice." While she may have been cold as ice in
controlling her nerves, as Cecilia, Catherine exudes a sensuous quality that
leaves no doubt about how a man like Dino could become obsessed with her
charms. In one scene set at an outdoor
cafe overlooking the city, as Rita Pavone sings "Now That You've
Gone," Cecilia dances seductively while Dino watches attentively from a
swing. Without a word being said, you can see Dino's resistance falling
and his obsession budding. That is one of my all-time favorite scenes
from any film.
Shot in gorgeous,
mood-setting black-and-white around Rome in the summer of 1963, the film's set
was a linguistic adventure. Director Damiani spoke English to Bette
Davis, German to Buchholz, French to Spaak, and Italian to others. The actors
spoke their lines in English for later dubbing. It had to have been interesting
to watch Bette Davis try to reign supreme over such an eclectic mix of
talent. In Rex Reed's N.Y. Times
profile of Catherine in 1966, he quoted her as saying: "I acted with
Bette Davis in 'The Empty Canvas.' Everyone in Rome was terrified of
her. I said only one thing to her: 'Hello'."
On a curious side note,
Bette Davis biographer Charlotte Chandler recounted in her book an odd incident
concerning Bette's arrival in Rome for filming. She was greeted at the
airport by Buchholz, who wanted to get things started off on a good note with
the notoriously persnickety Davis. Buchholz leaned forward to kiss Bette
on the cheek, as custom would dictate, whereupon Bette proceeded to put her
tongue in Buchholz's mouth in a more-than-friendly kiss! Buchholz never
knew whether she was just trying to shock him, or whether she had other
intentions.
It is also interesting to note that Sophia
Loren’s 18th century castle, renovated at a cost of nearly $2,000,000, was
loaned by her to represent Bette Davis' villa in the film. Furthermore, the filming of the garden party,
which provides the setting for the "money" scene, included the
participation of more than 150 leaders of Rome's cultural set, who were there
to honor Bette Davis' first film in Rome.
The Empty Canvas was a hit in Italy
before being distributed in the U.S. in March 1964 by Joseph Levine’s Embassy
Pictures. Levine was quoted by The Saturday Evening Post as saying that
“[Catherine Spaak] will be the biggest new star of the 1960's. This girl
will be the Bardot of her generation. Ten years from now there will be
girls billing themselves as the new Catherine Spaak.†In Bardot tradition, I suppose, some of the
advertising showed Cecilia draped only in a towel and was considered too risqué
in some circles. As a result, some of
the advertising was censored. Levine even took to Variety to express anger about the ad censoring by the L.A. Times and the L.A. Examiner. Censoring can
still be seen on many of the surviving lobby cards for the film. My how times have changed!
The Empty Canvas generally received mixed-to-negative
reviews at the time from American critics, but it did respectable business and
garnered considerable attention for Catherine in the U.S. She was featured on the cover and in a story
in the July 1964 issue of Cosmopolitan, and she was also the subject of
a feature story in the May
2, 1964 issue of the Saturday Evening Post.
Catherine’s story
was a dream come true for the press, because she was the daughter of well-known
screenwriter Charles Spaak, was the niece of famed Belgian politician
Paul-Henri Spaak, and had married actor Fabrizio Capucci (of the Capucci
fashion-design family) in February of 1963, while seven months pregnant with
their first child. Amazingly, after
giving birth to daughter Sabrina in April of 1963, Catherine shot a film called
The Little Nuns before commencing
work on The Empty Canvas in
July. By the time the film reached U.S.
shores, Catherine and Capucci had already split, including a well-publicized
incident at the Italian border, where authorities stopped Catherine as she was
trying to leave the country with her infant daughter. I am sure that the tabloids of the day were
all over this story.
The Empty Canvas has never been released on DVD
in North America, but it was released by Embassy Home Entertainment in an
English language version on VHS in 1987. With The Criterion
Collection’s impressive recent release of the 1962 Italian classic Il sorpasso (aka The Easy Life), in which Catherine has a prominent supporting role,
the time is ripe for rediscovery in America of her classic work in The Empty Canvas as well. Furthermore, there should be no Bette Davis film
from the 1960’s that is unavailable on DVD
in the U.S.
We want our DVD!
By Fred Blosser
On a windy night, a black-clad stranger
rides into Daugherty City, Texas. He
flips a coin to a scruffy drunk who is
strapped for the price of a drink. He exposes a crooked dice game in the local
saloon, where most of the townsfolk seem to be congregated. Then he departs. In the meantime, down the street, a gang of
acrobatic robbers breaks into the bank and heists a safe containing $100,000 in
Army payroll money. The getaway crew
escapes town before a wounded trooper can raise the alarm, but out on the trail
they run into the stranger, Sabata, who picks them off with a tricked-out rifle
and recovers the stolen money.
Thus, in under 15 minutes of running time,
Gianfranco Parolini neatly sets up the events that will drive the remaining 90
minutes of his 1969 Spaghetti Western, "Ehi amico... c'è
Sabata, hai chiuso!" -- better known simply as “Sabata,†as United
Artists retitled the English-dubbed version that debuted in the U.S. in
1970. The original Italian
title translates to something like, “Hey, Pal, Sabata’s Here, You Lose†. . .
or maybe closer to the film’s rambunctious spirit, “. . . You’re Screwed.â€
Bracketing the opening credits, Parolini
economically introduces most of the movie’s main characters, establishes their
personalities, and through their interactions with Sabata and each other,
defines the interpersonal relationships that will drive the plot.
Sabata (Lee Van Cleef), the sharp-eyed “man
who knows,†as the drunk Carrincha (Pedro Sanchez) calls him, deduces that the
men behind the attempted robbery are the local businessman Stengel, his partner
Ferguson, and their crony Judge O’Hara (Gianni Rizzo). He approaches them and demands $10,000 in hush
money. Refusing, Stengel dispatches one
assassin after another to kill him. Stengel’s henchman Slim, a hulking gunman named Sharky, two hit men
dressed like the Earp brothers, and a nervous killer disguised as a clergyman
all try and fail. With each attempt,
Sabata raises his price higher and higher.
An old acquaintance, barroom minstrel Banjo
(William Berger), one of the supporting characters deftly sketched in the
opening saloon scene, ambles in and out from the periphery, toting his own
tricked-out weapon, a carbine hidden under his musical instrument. Sometimes he sides with Sabata for money,
sometimes he works for Stengel; in any event, not to be trusted by either. He and a greedy saloon girl, Jane, have a
sort of romance characterized by mutual boredom and availability. Carrincha and a mute Indian acrobat, Alley
Cat (Nick Jordan), help Sabata.
Arguably, “Sabata†represented the high
tide of Spaghetti Western popularity in the States in 1970, benefiting from the
box-office success of Sergio Leone’s groundbreaking films and preceding the
decline of the genre as it sputtered toward a slow box-office death in the
mid-‘70s. Where Leone’s movies were
generally panned by mainstream U.S. media on their initial release, but
nevertheless attracted a small early following of more progressive critics,
“Sabata†ironically met the opposite reception.
Major outlets like The New York Times gave
it good notices, but the pioneering book-length studies of the genre by
Christopher Frayling and Laurence Staig & Tony Williams were lukewarm. Staig and Williams dismissed it as “a mixture
of gimmickry and borrowed themes.†Citing Banjo’s hidden carbine, Frayling said that the movie was one of
the “derivatives†inspired by Leone’s scenes in which “guns are fired from
unexpected places.â€
Other commentators over the years have
noted additional Leone influences. Before you see Sabata’s face in the opening scenes, Parolini gives us a
shot down the main street of Daugherty City, framed between Sabata’s boots in close-up
-- a favorite Leone visual angle. Paralleling the three lead characters of “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,â€
Parolini (who also co-scripted with Renato Izzo) builds the action around an
unflappable protagonist, an icy bad guy, and a talkative, slippery secondary
lead. Sabata’s black suit, black
military coat, and fanciful weapons recall Colonel Mortimer’s from Van Cleef’s break-out Spaghetti role in “For a
Few Dollars More.â€
The argument that Leone cast a long shadow
over Parolini’s movie is valid as far as it goes, but then Leone cast a long
shadow over all the Italian Westerns that followed after his enormously
successful pictures with Clint Eastwood. If we acknowledge that “Sabata†often follows the visual and dramatic
conventions of Leone’s movies, it’s only fair to Parolini to note that he
also departed from those conventions in
ways that other Spaghetti directors such as Sergio Corbucci, Sergio Sollima,
and Luigi Vanzi generally didn’t.
For example, like John Ford, Leone held a
sentimental reverence for the sanctity of the traditional family; the families
in his movies symbolize social stability. There are no traditional parents and children in Parolini’s universe,
even if a kid’s chorus heard in the movie’s bouncy title tune suggests there will be. The only offspring and parent in “Sabata†are
Sharky -- a burly, slovenly adult -- and his gray-haired old virago of a
mother, who berates him verbally and physically for not settling a score with
their neighbors the Mallorys. “They stole
your woman, didn’t they?†she
shrieks. No, Sharky retorts, “you sold
her to the Mallorys.â€
Carrincha, who looks a bit like Sharky in
girth and disheveled appearance, laments his life of thirst and poverty: “I
curse the mother who bore me, and my brother, and my whole family.†Almost everything Carrincha says is prone to
exaggeration, so it’s difficult to know whether this sentiment is real or
not. Regardless, it mirrors and
reinforces the satiric relationship between Sharky and his mother, poles away
from the traditional relationships portrayed by Leone and Ford.
Playing with the “trio†aspect of “The
Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,†Parolini assigns the trickster role of “the Uglyâ€
not to the boisterous Mexican (in name, at least) Carrancha, as Eli Wallach’s
Tuco was “the Ugly†in Leone’s movie, but to the Anglo drifter, Banjo. This way, Parolini finds not only differences
but also similarities between the two characters, including allusions to a
shared history during and after the Civil War and maybe a shared past outside
the law. This gives their relationship
an extra dimension not present in the relationship between the Good and the
Ugly in the Leone movie.
Critics and fans who appreciate “Sabata†on
its own terms usually employ terms like “hectic and chaotic,†and
“fun†that’s “not to be taken too seriously.†The movie hardly lets up for a moment (none of Leone’s long, measured
takes), but a term like “chaotic†can be misleading if you think it means slipshod. In fact, even though Parolini doesn’t build
the movie around a mystery as Leone does
in “For a Few Dollars More†(what do those seemingly shared flashback memories
by Colonel Mortimer and Indio mean?) or around a character arc as Sollima does
in “The Big Gundown†and Corbucci in “The Mercenary,†“Sabata†has its own
ingenious design. Beyond the action,
stunts, and cynical humor, “Sabata†bears repeated viewing to appreciate the
two techniques that Parolini uses to bring unity to the film.
One technique is
repetition. Little details that appear
in one scene in the visuals or in the dialogue will unexpectedly and sometimes
subtly reappear later in a different context. Slim’s loaded dice in the opening saloon scene always come up 7. There are seven men in the getaway crew from
the bank robbery whom Sabata ambushes. When Sabata checks into a hotel in Daugherty City, Banjo’s squeeze Jane
gives him Room 7 -- “next to mine,†she says suggestively. (Sabata isn’t interested. As Jules Feiffer once observed of Superman,
he is so self-sufficient and self-confident that he doesn’t need to pursue
every woman he encounters, or even to respond to every pass that comes his
way.)
Parolini’s other technique is
music. Like Ennio Morricone’s
compositions for Leone, Marcello Giombini’s score is integrated into “Sabataâ€
as an essential part of Parolini’s fabric. Like Morricone, Giombini
tailors certain musical themes and cues to specific characters in the
story. As John Mansell observes in his
liner notes for a 2001 CD soundtrack edition, Sabata’s theme incorporates “a
rather buoyant sounding guitar piece … interspersed with a solo muted trumpet,
occasional harpsichord flourishes plus the added support of choir, which is
carried along on a backing of slightly upbeat percussion.†Banjo’s theme is a cocky melody plucked on
his namesake instrument, sometimes augmented by jingling bells like those sewn
on his trousers.
But Mansell’s description of Sabata’s
theme, while insightful, fails to note that the theme also incorporates a
glissando passage like the swirling of the wind. Sabata is associated with the wind throughout
the movie. In the first scene,
tumbleweeds blow down the street and lamplight flutters as Sabata rides into
Daugherty City. In the closing scene,
Parolini and Sabata use the wind to the same ironic effect that John Huston
used it at the end of “Treasure of Sierra Madre†and Stanley Kubrick in the
finale of “The Killing.†Although Judge
O’Hara wonders if Sabata is a government agent, and Stengel snaps back that
“he’s nothing -- just a drifter who’s after our money,†the man in black
perhaps suggests his true elemental nature when he advises Stengel in one
exchange: “Don’t shoot at the wind.â€
Parolini and Giombini also take their
partnership one step further than Leone and Morricone did in their
collaborations. In Morricone’s scores,
Leone’s primary characters have (in the words of Staig and Williams) their own
“individual musical signatures†-- the template followed by Parolini with
Sabata’s and Banjo’s themes. The
difference is that, in Morricone’s scores, in any one scene where the character
either enters or dominates the action, his theme predominates. Parolini combines his individual themes for
Sabata and Banjo as point and counterpoint in the same scene to underscore the
two gunmen’s shared history and one-up rivalry.
Banjo’s theme sounds a little like the old
military marching tune, “The British Grenadier,†a reminder of Banjo’s allusion
to his and Sabata’s Civil War past on different sides of the conflict: “You in
the North and me in the South.†In their
first meeting after Sabata’s arrival in town, Banjo plays a mocking version of
the tune, in increasingly frantic tempo, as if trying to get under the other
man’s skin. Sabata stops the performance
by shooting one of the pegs off the banjo. “You were out of tempo,†he says dryly.
Near
the end of the film, as Banjo leaves Daugherty City in apparent triumph after a
pivotal final encounter with Sabata, a merry version of his banjo theme begins
to play, bolstered by a fife and drum that underlines the similarity to
military marching music. The jingle of
bells joins in with a close-up of the bells on Banjo’s trousers. The viewer senses that this is the victorious
music that Banjo probably hears in his own imagination. However, Sabata’s wind-theme presently swirls
in. As if in competition, the strum of
the banjo gains tempo, becoming increasingly insistent. Remembering the association of the fast-tempo
strumming with the much earlier scene in which Banjo was humiliated, you may
anticipate that Banjo’s present victory will be short-lived, too.
There isn’t an official 45th anniversary
edition of “Sabata,†but the Swiss label Explosive Media recently released a
new Blu-Ray combo pack that also includes a DVD print, a supplemental disc of
interviews and features, and a nice souvenir booklet in German, copiously
illustrated with stills and pictures of
various international posters.
“Sabata†and the two Parolini films that
immediately followed it are popularly known as “The Sabata Trilogy,†although
only one is a true sequel. “Indio
Black, sai che ti dico: Sei un gran figlio di . . .,†released in Italy in
1970, was imported to the U.S. the following year as “Adios, Sabata.†Yul Brynner played the hero who wears black,
this time a black fringed shirt and bell-bottom trousers instead of Lee Van
Cleef’s more formal outfit. In the
Italian version, he’s Indio Black; in the dubbed U.S. print, Sabata.
Both movies are strongly linked in casting
and style. Three of the major supporting
roles in the two movies are occupied by the same actors (Jordan, Rizzo,
Sanchez) and fulfill similar functions in character and plot. Dean Reed, who looks like the young Roger
Moore, plays an opportunist named Ballantine who serves as this film’s surrogate
for Banjo. There are several big-action
set pieces, mostly involving Sabata’s mission in Mexico to relieve a tyrannical
officer, Colonel Skimmel, of a hoard of gold during the revolution against
Maximilian.
“Adios, Sabata†is an entertaining Spaghetti
with a bigger cast of extras and more explosions than its predecessors. One set piece, in which Sabata sends the
no-good Murdock Brothers to their “just reward†in a showdown at the Bounty
Hunters’ Agency, is particularly well dialogued and choreographed.
But “Sabata†is the better movie, partly
because Van Cleef and Berger had stronger chemistry than Brynner and Reed, and
partly because Brynner’s character is a more traditional soldier of fortune and
do-gooder (he’s friends with benevolent old priests and small children) than
Van Cleef’s enigmatic loner. Although
Bruno Nicolai’s score for “Alias Sabata†is quite good on its own terms, the
title track emulating the full-on symphonic, choral sound of Morricone’s
Spaghetti music, it isn’t as ingeniously integrated into the movie as
Giombini’s composition was.
Parolini’s
authentic sequel to “Sabata,†released in Italy in 1971 as "È
tornato Sabata... hai chiuso un'altra volta," reached the States in 1972
as “Return of Sabata.†Lee Van Cleef
returns as the lead character, and Giombini returns as the soundtrack composer,
but unfortunately this movie doesn’t measure up to its predecessors.
As in “Sabata,â€Van Cleef’s character rides
into a town where a cabal of seemingly respectable citizens is engaged in nefarious
activity. This time, the heavies are
the outwardly pious McIntocks who trumpet civic expansion in Hobsonville by
raising money for new buildings and businesses. They do so by imposing exorbitant taxes on the town’s goods and
services.
In truth, patriarch Joe McIntock is
conniving with his brother-in-law, banker Jeremy Sweeney, to smuggle the money
out of town for his own enrichment. Sabata, who arrives in Hobsonville as a sharpshooter in a traveling circus
sideshow, following a hunch about something being rotten somewhere, uncovers
the fraud. As in “Sabata,†he demands
blackmail from the bad guys in return for keeping their secret. The McIntocks, reluctant to pay, send a
series of would-be assassins after him.
Again, Parolini employs his stock troupe of
Jordan, Rizzo, and Sanchez in supporting roles, and inserts a slippery
intermediary character, Clyde (Reiner Schone). Clyde, like Banjo, shares a Civil War past with Sabata. Giombini’s music isn’t as ingenious as his
score for the first movie, and the circus aspect of the story never quite jells
with the plot about the McIntocks’ scam; as a whole, the movie lacks the little
visual and aural details that wove “Sabata†together.
Another problem: Sabata loses much of the
steely, enigmatic quality that defined his personality in the first movie. In “Return of Sabata,†an old girlfriend, a
hooker named Maggie, drifts into town, and Sabata shacks up with her. Maggie is never quite integrated into the
story either. Sabata as a mysterious
loner in the original film was intriguing. As a more conventional character with a sexy main squeeze, like a hero
out of a paperback adult western, he isn’t. Still, “Return of Sabata†hardly merits a place among the “50 Worst
Movies of All Time,†as the Medved brothers asserted in their 1978 book. Maybe Parolini has the last laugh: the Sabata
movies live on while the Medved book is long forgotten.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER "THE SABATA TRILOGY" FROM AMAZON USA
(For information about Explosive Media's Blu-ray European special editions, click here. For more information, see the story in Cinema Retro issue #29. Click below to purchase).
Cinema Retro issue #29:
By Todd Garbarini
Ivan Kavanagh’s The Canal (2014) is the one of the creepiest, most brilliantly
photographed and edited psychological studies I have seen of late. An utterly frightening and unsettling concoction,
The Canal, which screened last month
at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, pulls no punches in creating an overwhelming
feeling of dread while constantly keeping the audience on its guard.
David (Rupert Evans) is a film
archivist who appears to have a wonderful home life. He and his expectant wife Alice (Hannah
Hoekstra) visit a prospective house, with a canal not far off, to settle in. As Alice inspects the layout, David sees what
appears to be someone walking through the first floor. Vexed, he swears that he saw someone. Or did he? Five years hence their lives appear ordinary with the addition of their
young son, Billy (Calum Heath). Alice
keeps telling David she loves him prior to leaving for work or following mechanical
sex. It arouses suspicion; at a dinner
party, Alice rushes off to speak with a client, Alex (Carl Shabaan), but David
notices intimate exchanges between the two and when she returns to dance with him,
and we see the estrangement on their faces.
At work, David’s work partner Claire
(Antonia Campbell-Hughes) tells him that new footage has come in and needs to
be viewed for archiving. He is shocked
to learn that it is a detail of a 1902 crime scene that took place inside the
bedroom that he and his wife now occupy (this is a point that the estate agent
naturally neglected to impart to the couple.) The footage has the look and feel of authenticity (the effect could have
probably been created in post-production on a computer utilizing a high brow
software package) and director Kavanagh shot the crime scene aftermath with a 1915 Universal movie camera by using the
lowest speed black and white 35mm stock that he and his crew could find. The film delves more into a ghost
story that recalls The Shining
(1980), The Ring (2005), and The Innkeepers (2011) in terms of
imagery and mood. Veteran composer Ceiri Torjussen provides a brilliantly
effective, frightening and memorable score.
David starts to become unhinged. When his wife prepares to go to work, David
pleads with her to come straight home and she promises to. After work, David follows her as she and
Alex, their affair now obviously confirmed, walk to Alex’s house which is
opposite a canal. David follows them
from a distance, and catches them in the midst of sexual passion, leaving him
feeling betrayed and disillusioned. He
stumbles into the worst cinematic toilet seen since Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting (1996) and begins to see
flashes of the murder that occurred well over 100 years ago. Like the best ghost stories, The Canal presents us with images that
give us pause to determine if they are real or if they are just happening in
the mind of the protagonist.
When David’s wife goes missing, he
contacts the police and tries desperately to locate her. The lead officer on the case (Steve Oram)
immediately suspects David killed her and asks him straight out; David is
bewildered by the inquiry. His son Billy
is too young to understand the concepts of disappearance and death; Sophie the
nanny (Kelly Byrne) is concerned for Billy’s welfare but is also afraid for her
own safety and as David becomes more and more frenetic she feels the need to
leave.
The film is beset in imagery that
references pregnancy and childbirth; water, as it did in Robert Altman’s
dreamlike 3 Women (1977), plays a big
factor, as does duality. The references
in The Canal are two-fold – there is
the canal where David’s wife’s body is found, and the birth canal is referenced
in a scene of unnerving horror.
The
Canal had me watching the end
credits in silent anticipation, holding my breath until the final sounds on the
soundtrack ended abruptly. It is a
visceral, gripping film experience, one to be ideally experienced
theatrically. Viewers will get that
chance in months to come when the film is released in 20 market
By Christopher Robinson
In 1977, a
low-budget flick about the New York disco scene became a sudden sensation.
Today it looms large in the pantheon of iconic cinema. Several of its moments,
however, allude to another equally iconic film. Well, more so than that Wizard
of Oz/’Dark Side of the Moon’ myth, anyway.
Saturday Night Fever’s success was undoubtedly attributed
to several factors. There are gripping performances, multi-dimensional
characters and a soaring soundtrack featuring the Bee Gees that steals the
show. At the heart of it all is an undeniably compelling story.
Tony Manero(John
Travolta) lives in Brooklyn with his parents, sister and grandmother. He works
at a hardware store and on Saturdays, treks to the local discotheque where he
reigns supreme as the neighborhood’s premier disco dancer. He parties, drinks
and carouses with his buddies then goes home and sleeps it off, dreaming of
more in life. ‘Night fever’: he knows how to do it and has fun but something is
missing and at age nineteen he’s “gettin’ oldâ€. The adoration he receives is
only so rewarding, his relationships superficial. His ignorant friends provoke
outside ethnic gangs, plunging them into brawls and Anette (Donna Pescow), a
confused young woman who tags along, pressures Tony with advances in hopes of
joining the ranks of her “married sistersâ€. His home life is no less
complicated. Dinner table spats, though run-of-the-mill for the Maneros are
exacerbated by Dad’s unemployment. Nevertheless, we see beneath the surface a
caring, loving family. The “character†of Tony’s nearly silent grandmother is
really to exemplify the multi-generational unit of the Italian-American family.
Enter Tony’s
brother, Frank Jr.(Martin Shakar), the priest who “ain’t a priest no moreâ€. His
decision to leave the church causes a rift within their household and makes
Tony reexamine his own choices. Tony’s brother often comes off as a surreal paradox.
Though repeatedly spoken of, he curiously is never seen with any family members
other than Tony. Were it not for his character being discussed in other scenes,
he would seem a figment of Tony’s imagination. It’s even tempting to think of
him as a component of Tony’s inner psyche. The name ‘Father Frank Junior’
itself, a contradiction in terms, he is essentially a cautionary figure for
Tony to observe. He warns his brother not to act out someone else’s dream but
to do what feels best for himself.
Tony’s world
feels very wrong to say the least. His friends are treading down a path of
drugs and recklessness. Misogyny and racism are ingrained in their sub-culture (Tellingly,
network and basic cable presentations of the film censor its racial slurs until
the pivotal diatribe where Tony denounces the group’s bigoted ways. To the
censors, these slurs are deplorable and unnecessary unless used sympathetically).
Looking for a way out, Tony searches new paths. He stares oddly at the Verrazano
Bridge to “get ideasâ€.
One idea he soon
gets is to try his hand at the club’s dance competition with the slightly
stuck-up Stephanie (Karen Lynn Gorney), a fellow Brooklynite who shares a
slowly developing sexual tension with Tony. They meet for lunch and she
belittles him, condescendingly boasting about big dreams and famous people she
has met. His ostensible unfamiliarity with the names she rattles off is belied by
the numerous pop culture images adorning his wall at home. Appropriately, one
of them is of Rocky.
Released in
1976, Rocky made a household name of Sylvester Stallone who portrayed
Rocky Balboa, a Philadelphia underdog willing to subject himself to anything
for a once-in-a-lifetime shot at the world heavyweight championship title.
A Stallone motif
arguably surfaces throughout Tony Manero’s life, even if that name could have stumped him too. Compare Fever with
Rocky and interesting parallels are obviated. Both center on characters
who “take a shotâ€, using God-given gifts to attain something better in life
than the perfunctory humdrum they face. Tony and Rocky both excel at their craft yet are still perceived as local losers
and each go out of their way to win the heart of a woman who seems their
virtual opposite. Both men sadly realize they have settled in with negative
people who keep them subjugated and bury their dreams. And… oh yeah, did I
mention their names almost rhyme?
Most
significantly, in Rocky, the title hero advises a young girl on the dangers of
allowing boys to mistreat and disrespect her. In vain, he explains how it will
only leave her used, hurt and alone. In Fever, Tony takes on this similar
role of the sage, educating Anette on how there are only “two kinds of girls-nice girls and pigs!†He elaborates on how she cannot be both and must decide
early on in life which to be. From what annals of wisdom this philosophy is
taken we simply do not know, but it is certainly likely that he ‘gets ideas’
from more than a bridge.
In the end, it
would seem, the story resumed with a closing credit sequence as the Bee Gees crooned
“How Deep is Your Loveâ€. Who could have guessed then that the connection would
be driven home when Stallone himself would write, direct and produce Fever’s
sequel, Staying Alive. Tony’s rollercoaster life is further chronicled
a few years later, still ‘taking a shot’, this time on Broadway. And… speaking
of Broadway, guess where Rocky is slugging it out right now?
See a
pattern?
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