Murder and Mutiny on the High Seas: Billy Budd and

Time for another double-barreled review, and like the last one, both films are from 1962! Today we'll be looking at two fine Naval epics, each set during the Napoleonic Wars: Peter Ustinov's Billy Budd and Lewis Gilbert's HMS Defiant (aka Damn the Defiant!). The two films have virtually identical subject matter and setting, yet are very different. Both films, however, are certainly recommended.

Billy Budd



Based on a Herman Melville tome, Billy Budd is not so much a sea story as a mediation of law, justice and innocence - a maritime A Man for All Seasons or The Crucible, if you will. As such, it often comes across as a very stuffy filmed play. That it works is primarily due its fine set of actors and a well-written script.

During the Napoleonic Wars, the British man-o'-war HMS Avenger impresses young merchant seaman Billy Budd (Terence Stamp) into service. The naive and friendly Billy wins over most of the crew, but earns the suspicion of his officers - and the hatred of sadisitic master-at-arms John Claggart (Robert Ryan). Claggart is despised by the crew, and after the accidental death of a fellow seaman, Claggart turns full-force on Billy, attempting to convince Captain Vere (Peter Ustinov) that Billy is conspiring to mutiny. Billy accidentally kills Claggart, and Vere and his officers must determine whether he's guilty of murder.

To be blunt, Billy Budd is not the most cinematic of films, and this is its biggest flaw. Despite use of a real ship and a handful of nice seascape shots, the movie is mostly set below decks, with a very claustrophobic feel enhanced by the black-and-white photography. The film has lots of lengthy dialogue sequences, and no action scenes - this wouldn't be a complaint if this weren't a navy film set during wartime. Ustinov handles his co-stars well, to be sure, but his camera blocking and technical direction is rather rote and undistinguished. As it is, Budd comes across as a filmed play throughout, with all the inherent limitations; an exciting, conventionally entertaining film it is not.

However, in other areas - namely the story, characters and themes explored - Ustinov scores a home run. Billy himself is rather a cipher, more of a symbol of innocence destroyed than a character, but the rest of the cast is vividly portrayed. Claggart is an utterly loathable villain, yet manages to avoid being a cipher; a criminal press-ganged into service, he transferred his inherent sadism into a skill which has served him well as a sailor. More than anything else, he is a product of the cruel naval system of the time. More disgusting, in my view, is Captain Vere himself; he seems nice enough at first, but his utter lack of flexibility proves more insidious and evil than Claggart's cartoon cruelty. And yet, despite his callousness towards human life, he has the gall to claim Billy's fate is not his own doing. There's a grain of truth in this, but he gets no credit for divesting himself of the power his uniform provides him.

Budd's mediation on law and justice is its best and most thoughtful aspect. The film's high point is Captain Vere coldly and brutally rationalizing why Billy must be guilty of murder, in spite of the seeming ease with which he and his officers can pardon Billy; it's one of the most cold-blooded speeches I've ever heard, cruelly rationalizing the avoidable destruction of a man. Law is of course meant to be indifferent and impartial, without passion or prejudice; but in circumstances such as these, it seems cold and cruel. The questions the film raises are certainly pertinent to this day; is it just to break an unjust law? Is following orders an acceptable excuse for atrocities and murder?

As said above, what primarily makes the film are the performances. An impossibly young Terence Stamp gives a fine star turn as the angelic, improbably naive Billy, who in other hands might have been completely unconvincing. However, Stamp has the film stolen from under his nose by his distinguished supporting cast. Robert Ryan, who made a career of playing nasty, sneering bad guys, plays Claggart as evil personified - mean, manipulative, unfair, cruel and vindictive, yet tormented if not quite sympathetic. Nobody can raise an eyebrow or sneer quite as well as Ryan, and here he shows why. Peter Ustinov gives an excellent performance as well, putting his usual bumptiousness on hold; his character very convincingly develops from ineffectual captain to cold-hearted Pontius Pilate. The supporting cast is populated by a plethora of fine actors, including Melvyn Douglas, John Neville, Paul Rogers, David McCallum, Cyril Luckham, and Niall McInnes.

Billy Budd is perhaps not a truly great film, but it's certainly an intelligent and thoughtful one, and worth at least a look from a thoughtful viewing.

Rating: 8/10 - Highly Recommended

HMS Defiant



Our second feature succeeds on an entirely different level than our first. While Billy Budd looked at the machinations of law and justice, HMS Defiant is a straight-forward sabers-out action-adventure film. As such, it works beautifully, sacrificing the character and thematic depth of the previous film for bravura entertainment value.

Again, the setting is the Napoleonic Wars, this time on the titular British Naval vessel. Kindly Captain Crawford (Alec Guinness) is the ship's master, unaware of the trouble brewing beneath his very nose. His new First Lieutenant Scott-Padget (Dirk Borgarde) is a snivelling, sadistic but well-connected schemer with a habit of undermining his captains for sake of personal advancement. Even worse, several of his crewmen, led by Vizar (Anthony Quayle), are plotting a fleet-wide mutiny to redress low pay and poor food. Crawford clashes with his lieutenant repeatedly as they sail to meet a convoy in the Meditteranean, even though odds are that the fleet isn't there, with Scott-Padget manipulating the crew and his fellow officers into submission - using Crawford's own son (David Robinson), a newly minted midshipmen, as a pawn. Ultimately the crew (who respects Crawford but hates Scott-Padget) mutinities, but with a French fleet bearing down on them, they must make a decision whether to run or fight.

HMS Defiant is primarily an action flick, with story and characters secondary. The film moves along at a brisk pace, with characters broadly defined but very well-portrayed by a seasoned cast. The three-way conflict between the good captain, the evil lieutenant and the grumbling crew is well-established, and Scott-Padget's heinous scheming makes him an easily hateable villain. The conclusion of the film, however, seems a bit rushed; the movie possibly could have been better if it had explored the consequences of the mutiny more thoroughly, but it's so entertaining that this lack of depth can be forgiven.

Director Gilbert expertly handles the film's spectacle; it's a beautiful picture, with Christopher Challis providing beautiful color cinematography of the bounding main and the sparkling Mediterranean; there are a few obvious matte-paintings/sets at times, but these are forgivable lapses. The movie's big naval battles are filmed with aplomb, flourish and excitement, with Dirk Borgarde having a thrilling cutlass-duel with a French officer that Errol Flynn would envy; the final battle in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, the fights with the river junks in The Sand Pebbles and maybe the maelstrom in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End are the only cinematic naval battles I'd put in the same class.

Alec Guinness plays Crawford as his usual stern but kindly authority figure a la Prince Feisal or Yevgraf Zhivago (or Obi-Wan Kenobi); he's fine but a bit stiff, and this is far from his best performance. Dirk Borgarde easily steals the film from Guinness; his Iago-esque treacherous mate is a truly disgusting rotter, with more complexity and subtlety than Ryan's similar character in Billy Budd. The standout supporting turn is by the great Anthony Quayle, who gives one of his best performances as the conflicted Vizar, torn by desire and love of country.

HMS Defiant is a great rollicking old school adventure film, and comes highly recommended as such.

Rating: 8/10 - Highly Recommended

The Sand Pebbles

Robert Wise's The Sand Pebbles (1966) is a highly ambitious if flawed attack on colonialism, conveniently produced just as the Vietnam War was kicking into high gear. The film presents a complicated political situation - China in the grip of Nationalist Revolution circa 1926 - and with the exception of a few broad strokes does it in a nuanced, sophisticated manner one would not expect from a Hollywood epic. Only in some of its subplots does it falter - when focused on the affects of imperialism on conquerors and conquered and of men under extreme strain and durress, it's near-perfect. If nothing else, it features Steve McQueen's best performance and one of the best battle scenes ever filmed.

1926. China is in the grip of a Civil War with Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalists struggling to overthrow the corrupt government - while the Communist party waits in the wings. None of this much matters to Jake Holman (Steve McQueen), an introverted ship mechanic who has been transferred to the USS San Pablo, a US Navy gunboat patrolling the Yangtze River. Holman finds that the ship uses Chinese coolies for all tasks, including cooking, washing, and running the engine, and immediately butts heads with the lazy and bigoted crew (Simon Oakland, Ford Rainey, Joe Turkel, Gavin McLeod) and the routine-obsessed martinet Captain Collins (Richard Crenna). Holman and his crewmates find the nascent political unrest creating problems on shore leave - while Holman's pal Frenchy (Richard Attenborough) begins a doomed romance with Maily (Marayat Adriane), an articulate prostitute. An outcast among the crew and disgusted with what his uniform represents, Holman wants to desert and join pacifist missionary Jameson (Larry Gates) and his beautiful young charge Shirley (Candice Bergen) - but when the situation breaks out into all-out war, this proves impossible.

The Sand Pebbles is, first and foremost, a mediation on imperial politics. By 1926, imperialism was already a relic of an era gone by, though Britain, France and the United States still hung onto their share of far-flung possessions. The corrupt, lazy life of the American sailors, whose every menial task is taken over by the coolies onboard, represents the rotten and corrupting effect imperialism has on both occupiers and occupied, reducing the former to lazy and complacent malcontents and the latter to second-class citizens. When the coolies desert the ship, they find themselves entirely unable to function and turn on each other. The film doesn't entirely succeed in distinguishing Communists, Nationalists, and other factions among the rebellious Chinese, but the film's overall feel of the situation is wonderfully nuanced and pertinent: this is a messy situation, a bloody and confusing scrum amongst the locals, and no good can come from America (along with Britain, France, Russia and Japan) interfering. The final confrontation between Collins and Jameson exemplifies this; both men are deluded, with naively simplistic worldviews (blind militarism and naive pacifism) that end up killing both.

The movie's depiction of men-at-arms in an impossible situation, their fates and actions determined by politics they can't control or understand. Revolutionary China is a politically charged climate, and they are present as a tortured gesture: they represent imperialism but aren't able to enforce it (even when one of their servants is brutally murdered and they are pelted with garbage), and trapped in this intolerable situation they quickly go mad. Captain Collins' rigid attitude might be acceptable on a battleship at sea, but in the politically-heated climate he's in, it's completely inappropriate; his ignorance and terrible misunderstanding of the situation (sending soldiers ashore on liberty while the ship is under siege, obsessively refusing to fire on Chinese) only fan the flames of unrest, while frustrating and alienating the crew as well. In most films, when Collins threatens to fight the Chinese to the death over Holman, the crew would rally around the Captain; but in this case, the crew are so sick of these two that they'd gladly through their colleagues to the wolves. No wonder Collins throws his ship into a bloody battle without orders; after all the stress they'd been under they need to vent their frustrations in one way or another.

Perhaps the strongest aspect of the film is the characterization of its protagonist. Jake Holman pretty much exemplifies the typical draft-age American of the time, and is a wholly relatable characters. Forced into the Navy due to juvenile delinquincy, he really has no choice in what he does, but finds his one love in the engine - something he knows how to do, and to do well. Despite initial prejudice, he does make earnest attempts to connect with the Chinese, beyond the sex and servitude desired by his shipmates. His plans to escape the situation and join the missionaries come to naught; for all his cynicism, introspection, and reluctant heroism, he is simply a very small cog in a large machine, and his fate is out of his hand.

The film does stumble a bit at times. The film runs just over three hours with intermission and overture and not all of the material is strictly necessary. The most obvious is the Frenchy/Maily romance: it diverts from the main story, goes on too long, and when it ends in tragedy no one is really surprised. Similarly, the scenes in the brothel/bar tend to go on too long, and continue long after the point has petered out. Some of the political commentary is a bit obvious - several of Collins' and Jameson's speeches wreak of spelling things out for the audience, and especially Jake's constant regret of killing Chinamen in the river battle - but it's generally well-handled. In the end, though, the film can be faulted most for its cliched and dated metaphor of America as a squabbling nation united through battle (represented through some glaring symbolism in the final battle); as expressed in my Major Dundee review, such thinking may have been fine after World War II, but Vietnam would quickly make such a view an anachronism.

Wise shows a fine directorial hand; he's an old Hollywood pro whose mixture of diversity (his last two films were the hugely successful musicals West Side Story and The Sound of Music) and talent has rarely been equalled. The film's locations look beautifully authentic (the film was shot on location in Taiwan), and are well-captured by ace cameraman Joseph MacDonald. The rip-roaring final battle between the San Pablo and a boon of Chinese river junks, a bloody, rough-and-tumble hand-to-hand affair, is one of the best, most intense set-piece battles in any film I've seen. If nothing else, it's a great release for both the characters and the audience after 150 minutes of build up; so effective is it, indeed, that the protracted finale in the mission courtyard seems an unnecessary extra beat. Jerry Goldsmith provides a suitably dramatic score that balances the exotic with the emotional.

Steve McQueen gives a career-best performance. He portrays Jake as an Everyman caught in an impossible situation, successful mixing his usual rebellious persona with the brooding of a Paul Newman. If he hadn't been up against Paul Scofield's masterful turn in A Man for All Seasons, he almost certainly would have nabbed an Oscar. The supporting cast is mixed: Richard Crenna does well as Collins, but Richard Attenborough's performance is pretty obvious Oscar-baiting, and his character never becomes as sympathetic as the script wants us to find him. A very young Candice Bergen is unbelievably beautiful, but as would prove the case through most of her career, she isn't much of an actress. Mako's memorable turn as the tragic Po-Han provides some of the film's best moments. Supporting roles are generally well-played but none really stand out.

Despite its flaws, The Sand Pebbles is a fine movie that still holds up reasonably well forty-three years later. It may not be an out-and-out masterpiece, but it's one of the finest cinematic representations of Americans abroad.

Rating: 8/10 - Highly Recommended

Public Enemies

Michael Mann's Public Enemies arrives on the heels of much hype and much anticipation by me. It's the third major Hollywood film to focus on Depression-era outlaw John Dillinger, after the 1945 effort with Lawrence Tierney and John Milius's 1973 cult classic with Warren Oates. Being familiar with the book on which the film is ostensibly based, I was even more excited, if a bit leery about the casting of Johnny Depp and the eternally wooden Christian Bale. Unfortunately, while I was reasonably entertained by the film, I was also significantly let down.

To be sure, there are several strong moments in Public Enemies which hint at what could have been, and the film ends (or climaxes, rather) on a positively transcendent note. Unfortunately, although the film is decent enough as a piece of entertainment, it fails to live up to the potential offered by its cast and crew, and one suspects it could have been a lot more.

John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) is a dashing ex-convict who, along with a large gang of henchmen (including Stephen Graham, Jason Clarke, Stephen Dorff and David Wenham), begins a robbery spree in the Depression-era Midwest, knocking off banks and stores with impunity. The Bureau of Investigation, whose ruthlessly ambitious director J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) is itching to expand his nascent agency into a national police force, sends hotshot Special Agent Mevlin Purvis (Christian Bale) to track down Dillinger, with a team of inexperienced recruits - more accountants than lawmen - in tow. Dillinger falls for coat-check girl Billie Frechette (Marion Cottiliard), with whom he begins a passionate but doomed relationship. After Dillinger is arrested and almost immediately escapes, Purvis goes on the offensive, with Dillinger's gang gradually decimated - leading ultimately to the final showdown between the two men.

Bryan Burrough's source book is a wonderful, well-written and comprehensive account of the Depression-era crime wave, encompassing an entire time period and all its notables - not only Dillinger and Purvis but also Pretty Boy Floyd, the Barker Gang, Bonnie and Clyde, Machine Gun Kelly, and the elusive Alvin "Creepy" Karpis, and the birth of Hoover's FBI. The book is comprehensive, well-reserached, and perhaps too large and detailed for a feature film; it would perhaps take a miniseries to fit in all of the complexity, but it would certainly be worth the effort. Thus, Mann and his screenwriters focus solely on the Dillinger/Purvis showdown, with decidedly mixed results.

Focusing the film on Dillinger is perhaps understandable given the restraints of a feature film, but the film seems to dodge any complexity. In this film, the Kansas City Massacre, which really kickstarted the "War on Crime", is not even mentioned; Alvin Karpis (Giovanni Ribisi), who served as a nexus between the various robbery gangs (including the Dillinger and Nelson gangs, but also the Barkers, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly, and the Chicago Syndicate) and was essentially the book's central character, is made an inconsequential bit character. The role of the growing Syndicate is represented (the film implies the Mob help set up Dillinger), but is done obliquely and seems a distraction rather than part of the plot proper. The movie touches upon the FBI's evolution from inept greenhorns (basically gun-toting accountants) to ruthless no-hold's-barred killers, but it's done in such a tertiary manner that the transition never seems convincing.

Now, let's be clear: If the film had wanted to be a slim, trim Dillinger film, it would be fine. And certainly a more comprehensive portrayal of the period would be wonderful if done well. But Public Enemies tries to be having it both ways and doesn't quite succeed at either.

The film has a number of egregious historical errors as well; Purvis is shown gunning down Pretty Boy Floyd (Channing Tatum) in the film's second scene, when Floyd was killed three months after Dillinger. The Little Bohemia shootout, while fairly well-staged, seems to be more modelled on Heat than the historical record, with several Dillinger co-horts ahistorically biting the dust in a pool of blood (Baby Face Nelson [Stephen Graham], who had his own notable last stand a few years after Dillinger, would have been particularly surprised that his old boss survived him). This may be a personal problem to an extent, and I doubt most viewers will notice or care, but then I myself usually don't mind historical inaccuracies in films. If this movie were, say, The Untouchables, where accuracy is of little importance and the story is for fun, it would perhaps be excusable. But the film's pretensions to accuracy and seriousness make such egregious gaffes stand out, and leave a bitter taste in the knowledgable viewer's mouth.



Perhaps it's unfair, though, to be overly harsh on Mann for not adhering to the historical record. The movie knows what it wants to do and generally does it well, even if Mann seems to be recycling his earlier Heat at times. The film has a number of nice individual scenes (Dillinger's second jailbreak, the one face-to-face meeting of Dillinger and Purvis, the Little Bohemia shootout, Dillinger watching himself on a newsreel) but the only truly great sequence is the fatal showdown between our protagonists, which is a brilliantly-staged, instantly iconic sequence. Other big set pieces, particularly Dillinger's incognito visit to the Chicago police station, come off as false; the audience I saw the film with was laughing through the whole scene and I don't think that was intended. Still, the good generally outweighs the bad, and I would doubt the average viewer would have many of these problems.

The movie's portrayal of Dillinger is interesting. It tries to avoid the usual Robin Hood cliches associated with the Dillinger myth and portrays him in a complex light. He's sympathetic to an extent but the film doesn't shy away from his violent and unpleasant sides; he's basically a crook who nourished a public image. The film portrays Dillinger's obsession with public image (highlighted by the well-done scene where he and his cohorts watch a Dillinger-oriented newsreel in a theater), and the influence of the media and films on his actions; in fact he was slain just after watching Manhattan Melodrama, a gangster flick starring Clark Gable. Some have criticized the film for a lack of depth in the characterization, but this seems silly. Dillinger and his contemporaries were essentially violent, reckless sociopaths; the FBI, looking to make their name and unable to take out the slowly-growing Syndicate established through Prohibition, went after these easy targets with devastating results. There wasn't much depth there to find, really, and the film does a good job of showing this; Dillinger was mostly what people saw him as, whether a Robin Hood-style hero or a ruthless criminal in need of extermination.

A lot of people have complained about the use of digital video in filming the movie, but I can't say I had a problem with it. Although the handheld camera work is occasionally annoying, for the most part it's done rather well, and the HD visuals are quite striking at times. Shootouts and action scenes are well-staged by Mann, but nothing comes close to, say, the bank heist in Heat. The film is briskly paced, aside from a few draggy spots; the 140 minutes fly by, perhaps too quickly. The screenplay by Mann, Ronan Bennet and Ann Bidermann is full of dry, subtle humor (helped immeasuribly by Johnny Depp) and lots of quotable dialogue. The period detail in costumes and art direction is virtually flawless, which makes the bigger inaccuracies even more questionable. However, Elliot Goldenthall's score is mostly bland and forgettable synth-and-guitar riffs.

What helps make the film work is Johnny Depp. I am by no means a big Depp fan, but he excells as Dillinger, even if he occasionally veers towards the Jack Sparrow-esque. He injects the role with a perfect blend of humor, romance, charisma and violence, making the character an interesting, layered screen presence. Even when the script itself is unsure on what to say about Dillinger, Depp's talent and charisma makes the character work, and he remains a compelling (if not especially sympathetic) protagonist to the end.

The rest of the cast is mostly wasted. Christian Bale is his usual stiff self, which fortunately works well-enough for the film's characterization of Purvis. Marion Cottiliard has a few nice scenes but she mostly comes off as a perfunctory love interest, and her character's big emotional payoff seems forced. Despite a plethora of interesting character actors in the cast list, only a few stand-out; Billy Crudup as a ruthlessly determined J. Edgar Hoover, Jason Clarke as Red Hamilton, Dillinger's most dilligent sidekick, and Stephen Graham as the psychotic Baby Face Nelson. Other fine character actors like Stephen Lang, Lili Taylor, and Bill Camp get nice (if rather brief) grabs of screen time, but the rest are all but wasted.



In the end, my enjoyment of the picture is largely clouded by disappointment at the opportunity lost. A really great film could have been made from this material, but sadly this isn't it. I recommend Public Enemies as a good enough summer action film, but mourn the loss of a potentially great crime epic.

Rating: 7/10 - Recommended (with reservations)

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

Perhaps even more than the infamous Major Dundee, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) is touted by Sam Peckinpah fans as a lost masterpiece, ruined by studio interference. This is certainly valid to an extent, especially given the cruel cutting and micromanaging wrought by MGM's James Aubrey, but on the other hand Peckinpah himself brought on many of his through his excesses of drink and drugs. The result is this curious, interesting but unsatisfying film, which is great at times but never quite the sum of his parts; it's Peckinpah's most schizophrenic film, alternating scene to scene from brilliant to indifferent to outright bad.

In early 1881, Pat Garrett (James Coburn), an aging outlaw, is elected Sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico. He is pressured by Governor Lew Wallace (Jason Robards) and business interests to track down former partner William H. Bonney, alias Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson) and his gang. Bonney is captured but escapes, killing two deputies (Matt Clark and R.G. Armstrong), and Garrett - accompanied by several reluctant and generally short-lived deputies (Slim Pickens, Katy Jurado, Jack Elam, Richard Jaeckel) and one hired to keep an eye on Garrett (John Beck) - is forced to track down his former friend, decimating his gang in the process. Garrett is made to feel guilty over "getting fat" and betraying Billy, and when he finally confronts the Kid, it seems like he's killing himself.

The biggest problem with Pat Garrett, even in its "preview cut" form (I'm not touching the God awful 2005 edit with a ten-foot stick), is that it's unfocused and virtually plotless; only a few characters appear for more than one or two scenes, and most scenes play as isolated episodes. It is also a surprisingly distant film, especially compared to Ride the High Country and The Wild Bunch, and it's virtually impossible (for this writer at least) to become deeply involved in the story. Billy in particular is hard to care much about, as he does little more than drink, kill, and whore throughout the course of the film, with only the thinnest and most facile motivation given to his actions. And the theme that Garrett and Co. are selling out is expounded upon so often that you think Rudy Wurlitzer was getting paid for each time he wrote them.

The film's use of various Western icons in various bit parts actually (with a few exceptions) undermines what Peckinpah is trying to achieve; by not letting us get to know these characters, it becomes virtually impossible to sympathize with them. Slim Pickens' famous death scene is allegedly the most poignant and moving scene in the film, but as we just met him two minutes ago when he buys it, it's hard, for me anyway, to care what happens to him. One might argue that Pickens' own iconography and backstory bring weight to the character, but I'm not buying it; Once Upon a Time in the West employs a similar strategy in employing Henry Fonda, Jack Elam and Woody Strode as villains, but on the other hand the film works on its own terms. If this argument has any validity, it's saying that Pat Garrett is basically an in-joke for Western buffs - and I don't buy that as much of an argument.

Some cast members are outright terrible: John Beck is obnoxious as Poe, and while that's appropriate to the character he grates on the viewer's nerves. A very young Charles Martin Smith whines his way through the opening scene as a particularly obnoxious cohort of Billy's. Emilio Fernandez, so effective as General Mapache, has a worthless role as Paco, the Mexican sheep-farmer who befriends Billy, and his scenes are some of the worst Peckinpah ever filmed. Richard Jaeckal gives a wooden performance and his horrible-looking wig doesn't help matters. But most of the cast members simply aren't around long enough to make much impact - Pickens, Jurado, Paul Fix, Dub Taylor, Elisha Cook Jr., Jason Robards, and Barry Sullivan (among many others) are all in the film for five minutes or less, just long enough for a viewer to recognize them before they bow out. Bob Dylan's bit has little impact on the film; his twanging, whining, droning music, however, is borderline terrible. It might be good outside of the film, but for the most part it distracts from the action and makes the film periodically insufferable.

The film does, however, have sporadic moments of brilliance, starting with James Coburn's performance as Garrett. Coburn gives the best performance of his career, as the sarcastic, biting, fatalistic Garrett. He is a nice counterpart to Deke Thornton, but even more compromised and fatalistic. Garrett genuinely regrets most of his actions - many of his confrontations with Billy's gang are outright murder - but does them anyway, driven by a cruel sense of duty and inevitability; he knows that times are passing him by but does his best to stay alive, regardless of the cost. Coburn is wonderfully subtle and you believe he IS Garrett, rather than acting the part. Kris Kristofferson is good if unremarkable as Billy, though he can hardly be blamed for the poor interpretation of his character. And there are some members of the supporting cast who are effective: Richard Bright and L.Q. Jones as two of Billy's more colorful gang members, R.G. Armstrong, playing the psychopathic Deputy Ollinger ("Repent, you son of a bitch!"), and Chill Wills as a gutter-mouthed, shotgun-toting bartender.

Peckinpah's direction is sporadically brilliant. The shootouts of the film are blunt and violent and lack the visceral thrill of The Wild Bunch's blood-soaked massacres. This is not a criticism; in fact, it is very effective. The film's art direction is wonderfully authentic; the whole film has a rustic, lived-in, worn-out look that adds immeasuribly to the film's depressed atmosphere. There are some truly brilliant sequences sprinkled throughout; the shootout at Billy's hideout and Billy's escape from jail, the chance encounter and duel between Billy and Alamosa Bill (Jack Elam), Garrett's "shootout" with a river barge, the slow, methodical murder of Holly (Bright) by Garrett, Peckinpah's cameo as a coffin maker, Garrett shooting a mirror after killing the Kid. All of these scenes individually are among the best work Peckinpah has ever done; it's shame they don't gel into a more pleasing whole.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is a difficult and frustrating film to write about. For every good scene there's one that makes you scratch your head and ask "What the hell's going on?" It's a good film with occasionally great scenes, but it's far from a masterpiece.

Rating: 7/10 - Recommended

RIP Karl Malden

The last week has seen a very high body count - Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Billy Mayes - and yet another name is added to the list. Today, Hollywood legend Karl Malden has died at age 97.

Besides his infamously large schnoz, I'll always remember Malden for three brilliant performances. His fiery, fiercely moral Father Barry in On the Waterfront, violently urging Marlon Brando to do the right thing, stands out perhaps foremost in my mind. The kid in me who loved and adored Patton, will remember his flustered portrayal of Omar Bradley, trying desperately to keep friend and superior George C. Scott in line. And finally, in 1999, there's his heart-breaking guest appearance on The West Wing, as President Bartlet's priest, gently reprimanding the President for declining to stick up for his principles - one of the most powerful moments in television history.

He was a brilliant actor, and needless to say he'll be missed a great deal.

The West Wing

A nice tribute video

Jeremiah Johnson

In lieu of reviewing yet another mediocre musical I stupidly decided to watch (hello, Dreamgirls!), here's a review of Sydney Pollack's 1972 Western Jeremiah Johnson - a decidedly unique and different Western of a sort rarely made by Hollywood, or anyone else really. It has a lot more going for it than mere novelty, however.

The title character (Robert Redford) is a drifter and presumed Army deserter who, in around 1850, decides to strike out for the wide-open frontier of the Old West and live as a self-sufficient mountaineer. Jeremiah struggles to adapt to his new life, until he's helped by grizzled fur trapper Bear Claw (Will Geer) and eccentric ne'er-do-well Del Gue (Stefan Gierasch). Jeremiah befriends a tribe of Flatnose Indians and marries Swan (Delle Bolton), the daughter of their chief (Richard Angarola); he also adopts an orphaned boy (Josh Albee) who has survived a Blackfeet massacre, and the trio set up shop in the mountains. When Jeremiah helps a troop of cavalry cross a mountain pass on sacred Crow land, however, a - leading Jeremiah on a long and bloody vendetta against his family's killers.

Jeremiah Johnson scores some points for its premise alone. The story of trappers and mountain-men is only rarely told in Hollywood; while pop culture of the 19th and early 20th Centuries celebrated "squaw men" like Davy Crocket and Daniel Boone, who forsook white society for solitary existence in the Wilderness, few movies have actually been made on the subject. Certainly it's refreshing to see a film mostly bereft of the usual gunslinger/pioneer/bandit/cowboys-and-Indians trappings. But it's more than just the idea and story that sells the film. From the dialogue to the music to the gorgeous scenery to the pitch-perfect cast, the film has a complete sense of authenticity.

The film's wonderful moral ambiguity is perhaps its best feature. It lacks the politicking of many contemporary Westerns (The Wild Bunch, Ulzana's Raid, Duck You Sucker!), and mostly lacks the conventional heroics one might expect from the genre; it simply tells a story well. The film is mostly careful to avoid painting either Indians or settlers as "bad", which is welcome; along with Black Robe and Broken Arrow, it's one of the few films to give a nuanced and fairly accurate depiction of Native Americans without resorting to the Noble Savage stereotype of, say, Dances With Wolves or Little Big Man. The cavalry troop violates Crow land but only to deliver food and supplies to starving settlers (shades of the Donner Party?); the Crow's raid on the Johnson homestead is merely a retaliation against that. Jeremiah's vendetta against the Crow is the only part of the film that approaches cliche or convention, but the film redeems the blood-soaked heroics with a wonderfully unexpected conclusion. Commendably, the film doesn't make any broad statements about imperialism or settlement of the West; it's simply the story of a man trying to survive in a rough and cruel wilderness. And for that, the film deserves a lot of commendation.

Sydney Pollack provides wonderful direction; he uses his cast economically and well, and makes the most of a truly awe-inspiring set of locations. The film has an endless variety of beautiful scenery, from frozen, snowbound mountain-tops to sandy desert to pristine woodland; the movie certainly has a lot of variety in its locations, all captured beautifully by Duke Callaghan's cinematography. The art direction and costume design are rough-hewn and period-perfect, creating a wonderful sense of authenticity. The music is also worthy of praise: Tim McIntire and John Rubinstein contribute a wonderfully authentic, rustic and evocative score that adds immeasurably to the film.

Special praise, I think, goes out for the script: if there's a better duo of collaborating screenwriters than John Milius (The Wind and the Lion) and Edward Anhalt (Becket) out there (maybe Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson), I'd like to know about it; their script is wonderfully economical and sparse, with long passages without speech; the scant dialogue that is provided is appropriately rustic and colorful without overdoing it. This is one of the few Westerns that actually sounds period-authentic in its dialogue.

Robert Redford carries most of the film admirably; his tough, misanthropic mountain man is a departure from his usual breezy persona, and Redford gives very near a career-best turn. The film is very frequently stolen, however, by a colorful supporting cast, particularly Will Geer as the wily trapper who teaches Jeremiah the tricks of the trade, and Stefan Gierasch as an eccentric drifter with a grudge against Indians. The Indian cast acquits themselves well; Joaquin Martinez, Richard Angalora and the beautiful Del Bolton all give brief but fine performances.

Jeremiah Johnson is a great film and a wonderfully unique and original entry in the Western genre. Many other Westerns are better as entertainment and art, but few match the film's stark, unforgiving sense of realism.

Rating: 8/10 - Highly Recommended

Brief Encounter

David Lean's Brief Encounter (1945) is rightfully regarded as one of the best melodramas ever filmed, and the director's first masterpiece. Although I might argue that Blithe Spirit is his first truly great film, that was mostly due to the source material and the cast. This economical adaptation of Noel Coward's Still Life shows Lean coming into his own as a director. He certainly has help from a talented crew, a fine screenplay and two wonderful leads, but Lean can claim credit for the quality of the overall product. Rarely has a romance film been so brutally, simply honest about its subject matter.

Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson) is a typical middle-aged British housewife who meets handsome Dr. Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard) at a train station. The two bump into each other by accident several times afterwards and continue to see each other, realizing that they've fallen madly in love. Laura tries to keep her affair from her stuffy husband (Cyril Raymond), but finds herself overwhelmed by guilt, unable to look friends and neighbors in the eye. Despite her efforts to break off the affair, Laura finds her feelings for Alec far too strong.

Brief Encounter mostly works on account of its marvellous simplicity. At 86 minutes, it flies by, and aside from the subplot with station work Joyce Carrey and bumptious engineer Stanley Holloway (characters who played a much larger role in Coward's play, but are largely superfluous here), wonderfully focused and free of fat. It is a simple story of two middle aged people seized by something "violent", a feeling of love beyond their control or experience.

The movie's two main characters are wonderfully drawn. Laura is a wonderful mother and loving wife, but finds her boring husband unsatisfying; certainly, compared to her glamorous paramour he's a nonentity. (Their relationship, with him indifferently scribbling in a crossword puzzle while she ponders her infidelity, is almost identical to the Robert Mitchum-Sarah Miles marriage in Ryan's Daughter.) Laura finds herself torn apart, unable to reconcile with her inexorable guilt with her passionate attraction, compounded by her increasing lies and deception to her husband and friends. Alec is a very ambiguous character; as we see him almost entirely from Laura's point-of-view (aside from the brief scene where he tries to hide Laura from a flatmate (Valentine Dyall)), it's hard to tell his motives. Is he genuinely in love with Laura, or does he just see her as a fling? Either way, something is surely there, something that neither knew could exist in real life, and both are shocked by it.

The affair between the two leads isn't really tawdry as such - so far as we can tell Alec and Laura never consummate their relationship, and in that sense it remains "innocent". Still, the poignancy and intensity of their mutual affection is always evident; it's clear that their "middle-class morality" has prevented either from experiencing true affection rather than marriage of necessity, appearance or security. Maybe I'm just a stuffy moralist, but I find the film's ending both sad and wonderfully cheerful - the truly loving husband, not the glamorous, mysterious, gets the woman. He can't satisfy her more passionate wants, but he is who she ultimately "needs" as a husband. This must have been a very pertinent dilemna to Lean, he of the tumultuous private life, and certainly as relatable as Ibsen's A Doll's House to countless couples living in frayed and perhaps loveless marriages the world over.

Lean's direction is extraordinary. After three relatively minor films, he has finely honed his cinematic skills. He shows a marvellous, well-developed camera eye and attention to detail of teh sort that would become his trademark in later years. Robert Krasker's moody, emotional makes striking use of deep focus, shadow and Dutch angles; along with Laura's narration, the film often more reminiscent of a noir rather than a melodrama. The use of an all-Rachmaninoff score is wonderfully realized, adding a poignant, emotional commentary to the proceedings.

The movie also benefits wonderfully from its two leads. Though Celia Johnson had been in two of Lean's early films, she and Trevor Howard were all but unknown at the time. The supporting cast is mostly iffy - Stanley Holloway and Joyce Carrey's "artificial Cockneys" are painfully annoying, Cyrill Raymond and Valentine Dyall are fine but have little screen time - but the two stars easily carry the film themselves, giving marvellously understated and realistic performances.

Celia Johnson is a marvellous actress. In virtually all of her roles she embodied the typical, middle-class British woman, cheerful, devoted, beautiful (if a bit frumpy) and loving, but with a frisson of dissatisfaction and unease. Her shock and mixed emotions about falling in actual love, her guilt, betraying her family, are perfectly and subtly portrayed. She would be largely typecast in this part on film, with The Captain's Paradise allowing her to break out of her assigned role and have some much-needed fun. But it's Laura that she'll be remembered for, and with good reason: this is Johnson's career-defining performance, and her best.

Equally impressive is Trevor Howard. Despite a lengthy career in American and British cinema, appearing in a plethora of classic films (The Third Man, Gandhi), Howard never really got his due as a great actor, yet another sign of cinematic injustice. This is not quite his best performance - his fiercely moral Father Collins in Lean's later Ryan's Daughter or the inept, ruthlessly arrogant Lord Cardigan in the 1968 Charge of the Light Brigade takes that prize - but it's certainly a brilliant, near-perfect turn by an actor then with little experience. He makes Alec ambiguous and uncertain, both romantic and forward, charming yet with an undertone of .

Brief Encounter is not a perfect film by any means, but it's a powerful emotional experience and a fine work of cinematic art. It may not be the best romance ever filmed, but it's certainly deserving of its high reputation.

Rating: 8/10 - Highly Recommended