Every 70s Movie: stuart rosenberg

Showing posts with label stuart rosenberg. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Move (1970)

Man, the late ’60s and early ’70s were the glory days for pointless movies about over-privileged men whose preferred means of confronting existential crises involved seducing comely young women and then yelling at those women for not understanding why it’s so difficult to be an affluent honky. In the pretentious comedy Move, Elliot Gould plays a put-upon New Yorker who complains about his marriage to the beautiful and funny Dolly (Paula Prentiss), mopes that nobody wants to produce the plays that he writes, and whines that it’s difficult to find good help for moving into a spacious new apartment. In the era of Civil Rights and Vietnam, these constitute real problems? Based on a novel by Joel Leiber and imaginatively directed by the versatile Stuart Rosenberg, Move depicts a fraught period in the life of Hiram Jaffe (Gould). Hiram makes a living as a dog-walker (leading to hassles with a citation-happy cop) and as a porn-novel writer. The character’s impending move to a new apartment is a running metaphor and a source of absurdist comedy, because throughout the picture, Hiram is besieged with phone calls from a moving-company representative who capriciously breaks arrival-time commitments. Hiram alienates Dolly, who finds comfort in the arms of her shrink, and then Hiram hops into bed with a character identified only as Girl (Geneviève Waite), a dippy English fashion model with a annoyingly breathy voice. Given the preponderance of leering nude scenes, trippy hallucinations, and wild camera angles, Move clearly wants to provide with-it social commentary, but there’s no coherence or sting to the filmmakers’ satire. Worse, the protagonist comes across as a neurotic, self-pitying, sexist asshole rather than a victim of nefarious forces. Call this one a case of style in search of a theme.

Move: LAME

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Love and Bullets (1979)

Executed with considerable polish and filled with familiar faces, Love and Bullets feels suspiciously like a real movie. After all, it’s ostensibly a crime thriller, and it stars Charles Bronson, who enjoyed more than a few successes in the realm of violent cinema. Yet the story has one of the most anemic second acts in screenwriting history, and the characters are preposterously undercooked. Adding to the list of shortcomings is a typically amateurish performance by leading lady Jill Ireland, Bronson’s real-life wife and his onscreen foil is far too many pictures. Having said all that, Love and Bullets has a few enjoyable passages of action and/or suspense, so even if the movie is the filmic equivalent of empty calories, at least some of the scenes have flavor.

Bronson plays Charlie Congers, a detective based in Phoenix, Arizona. Federal agents show up one day and ask Charlie to travel to Europe, where onetime mob girlfriend Jackie Pruitt (Ireland) is in hiding. The Feds believe Jackie has incriminating information on big-time gangster Joe Bomposa (Rod Steiger), her former lover, but the Feds offer convoluted reasons why they can’t cross international borders in order to collect Jackie. Charlie accepts the assignment, and before long he and Jackie are on the run from Joe’s hit men, who want to prevent Jackie from testifying. Naturally, the fugitives fall in love. The unusual wrinkle, which should have energized the story but never ends up adding much of anything, is that Jackie doesn’t actually have any useful knowledge about Joe’s criminal activities. Therefore, all the danger that arises from Charlie’s mission is pointless, which has the effect of making the movie feel pointless, as well.

Despite the inconsequential story, the sleek surfaces of Love and Bullets offer minor pleasures—as is true for most of the movies directed by reliable journeyman Stuart Rosenberg, best known for a series of Paul Newman collaborations including Cool Hand Luke (1967). During one imaginative sequence, for instance, Charlie makes a blowgun out of found objects and then uses the weapon to dispatch several would-be assassins. Additionally, the tightly wound score by Lalo Schifrin evokes the menace of Jerry Goldsmith’s music and a bit of the whimsy of Ennio Morricone’s, so the movie has a lively soundtrack. Colorful players including Val Avery, Bradford Dillman, Michael V. Gazzo, Paul Koslo, Strother Martin, and Henry Silva attack their supporting roles vigorously, compensating mightily for Ireland’s tone-deaf acting. Bronson is just Bronson, familiar but formidable. And then there’s Steiger, shouting and strutting through one of his signature overwrought performances. Rarely has so much effort been exhausted to portray a character of so little importance.

Love and Bullets: FUNKY

Thursday, February 12, 2015

WUSA (1970)

An unholy mess with an amazing pedigree, WUSA was likely the result of good intentions. The movie seethes with idealism and indignation, so the sense that it’s about something important is inescapable. Unfortunately, the characters, dialogue, politics, and storyline are all so impossibly muddled and pretentious that it’s difficult to discern what’s actually happening onscreen, much less what any of it means. The movie is a bit like an op-ed screed written in haste during a supercharged news cycle, blasting accusations and invective without any discipline or focus. Paul Newman, who put the movie together with frequent producing partner John Foreman, stars as Rheinhardt, a radio DJ who shuffles into New Orleans looking to collect on a debt from a preacher named Farley (Laurence Harvey). There’s a vague sense that both men are con artists and/or drunks and/or gamblers, though clarity on these points is in short supply. Unable to wring much cash from Farley, Rheinhardt bums around the French Quarter and meets aging party girl Geraldine (Joanne Woodward), with whom he begins a half-hearted romance. Then Rheinhardt gets a job at talk-radio station WUSA.

Enormous amounts of the film’s screen time are devoted to people either celebrating or criticizing the nature of WUSA’s broadcasts, but the speeches that Rheinhardt delivers on-air—as well as the monologues delivered by WUSA’s executive staff—are so cryptic that it’s hard to tell where the station falls on the political spectrum. Simply by dint of Newman’s offscreen politics, one must assume that WUSA is meant to represent the evils of the right wing. Anyway, the movie gets even more perplexing once viewers meet Rainey (Anthony Perkins), a weird character who lives next door to Rheinhardt and Geraldine. Rainey does some kind of door-to-door surveying of poor black neighborhoods, but his principal liaison to the African-American community, Clotho (Moses Gunn), acts as if he’s a pimp connecting Rainey with tricks—because, apparently, Rainey is a pawn in some grand conspiracy that’s related to WUSA. Suiting the bewildering storyline, the picture climaxes in a nonsensical riot sequence.

WUSA’s discombobulated script is credited to Robert Stone, who later won the National Book Award for his novel Dog Soldiers (1975), which was adapted into the Nick Nolte movie Who’ll Stop the Rain (1978). The director of WUSA, Stuart Rosenberg, also did excellent work elsewhere, helming Cool Hand Luke (1967) and The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984). On top of all that talent, WUSA features supporting turns by the fine actors Don Gordon, Pat Hingle, David Huddleston, Clifton James, Diane Ladd, and Cloris Leachman, as well as a rousing musical number by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Alas, whatever all these noteworthy people thought they were doing didn’t actually make it to the screen, because WUSA is virtually impenetrable.

WUSA: LAME

Friday, October 24, 2014

1980 Week: Brubaker

Although his entire career is defined by conflict between artistic aspirations, political inclinations, and the seductive pull of movie stardom, Robert Redford hit an especially perilous juncture in 1980. He made his directorial debut with Ordinary People, in which he did not appear, and the project eventually earned Redford an Oscar for Best Director. His commitments to the U.S. Film Festival (later to become the Sundance Film Festival) were consuming more of his time. And the film industry’s steady slide toward corporate control was making it more and more difficult to secure financing for the kinds of grown-up movies that Redford produced in the ’70s. A moment of reflection was in order, so Redford took a four-year hiatus from acting following the release of Brubaker.
These remarks are provided to give Brubaker some film-history context, since the movie is only so interesting on its own merits. An old-fashioned melodrama about prison reform, the picture boasts fine performances, an intense storyline, and unassailable morality. Yet it’s strangely forgettable in many ways. One problem is that the movie fictionalizes an amazing real-life saga, which has the effect of making the movie seem relatively trivial. (The lead character is based upon a reformer named Thomas Murton.) Another problem is the movie’s weak approach to characterization. The makers of Brubaker are far more concerned with demonstrating righteous indignation—and with showing the ugly extremes of inmate mistreatment—than they are with introducing viewers to distinct personalities. When combined with the film’s tendency to lapse into ornate speechifying whenever the title character decides to explain what’s wrong with the world, Brubaker ends up feeling more like a position paper than a proper drama. The movie is entertaining, if somewhat grim and pedantic, but it’s not vital.

Redford plays Henry Brubaker, a warden who goes undercover as an inmate at the Arkansas prison he’s been hired to supervise. After witnessing abuse, bribery, graft, rape, and violence, Brubaker makes himself known to the prison population and then begins a crusade for reform that rattles officials in state government. The film’s large cast of top-shelf character actors is mostly wasted, since the picture is designed as the soapbox on which Redford stands while cataloging the ills of the Arkansas prison system. So, as pleasurable as it is to see Jane Alexander, Wilford Brimley, Matt Clark, Morgan Freeman, Murray Hamilton, David Keith, Yaphet Kotto, Tim McIntire, M. Emmet Walsh, and others ply their craft, they all get crowded off the screen by vignettes that sanctify Redford’s character. However, since the making of Brubaker included behind-the-scenes tumult—original director Bob Rafelson was replaced, during production, with Cool Hand Luke helmer Stuart Rosenberg—the workmanlike nature of the picture is understandable.

After his many exemplary achievements of the ’70s (All the President’s Men, The Candidate, Jeremiah Johnson, The Sting, The Way We Were), Redford had set an impossibly high bar for himself. Thus, seeing as how Brubaker arrived on the heels of yet another mediocre picture that squeaked out box-office success, The Electric Horseman (1979), it’s no wonder Redford wanted time to consider where to put his energies.

Brubaker: FUNKY

Friday, September 27, 2013

Voyage of the Damned (1976)

Based on a horrific real-life incident and featuring an enormous cast of international stars, Voyage of the Damned should be powerful, but because the filmmakers opted for a talky approach—and because so many actors were relegated to minor roles that no single character provides narrative focus—Voyage of the Damned is merely pedestrian. The opportunity to make something great was so broadly missed, in fact, that it’s possible some enterprising soul in the future will revisit the subject matter and generate a remake with the impact this original version should have had.

Set in 1939, the picture depicts one of the Third Reich’s most brazen propaganda schemes. The Nazis loaded hundreds of Jews, some of whom were extracted from concentration camps, onto a luxury liner headed from Europe to Cuba. The passengers were told they were being set free, but the Nazis’ plan was to publicize the inevitable refusal by the Cuban government to accept so many unwanted immigrants. Per the insidious designs of Third Reich official Joseph Goebbels, the plan was to “prove” that Jews are unwanted everywhere, thus justifying the Final Solution. And therein lies the fundamental narrative problem of this picture—every person on board the ship, save for the captain and a few Nazi functionaries—is essentially a pawn in a larger game that’s taking place in Berlin. Thus, none of the characters in the movie truly drives the action, although some brave souls among the passengers prepare political counter-attacks once the true nature of the journey becomes evident.

Intelligently but unremarkably written by David Butler and Steve Shagan, from a book by Max Morgan-Witts and Gordon Thomas, Voyage of the Damned was directed by versatile journeyman Stuart Rosenberg, who generally thrived with pulpier material; his long dialogue scenes end up feeling stilted and theatrical, especially because some actors ham it up to make the most of their abbreviated screen time. Surprisingly, performers Lee Grant, Katharine Ross, and Oskar Werner each received Golden Globe nominations (Grant got an Oscar nod, too), even though their roles in Voyage of the Damned are so ordinary—and the overall story so turgid—that nothing really lingers in the memory except the haunting real-life circumstance underlying the story. (The picture’s shortcomings are exacerbated by an anticlimactic ending, which apparently represents a somewhat rose-colored vision of what happened in real life.)

Nonetheless, the luminaries on display in Voyage of the Damned are impressive: The cast includes Faye Dunaway, Denholm Elliot, José Ferrer, Ben Gazzara, Helmut Griem, Julie Harris, Wendy Hiller, James Mason, Malcolm McDowell, Jonathan Pryce, Jack Warden, Orson Welles, and the great Max von Sydow, who plays the ship’s noble captain. (Watch for Billy Jack star Tom Laughlin in a minor role as an engineer.) Fitting the posh cast, Voyage of the Damned is somewhat like an elevated riff on the disaster-movie genre, but the lack of truly dramatic events means the film is less an all-star spectacular and more an all-star mood piece. Grim, to be sure, but not revelatory.

Voyage of the Damned: FUNKY

Saturday, May 12, 2012

The Amityville Horror (1979)

In 1975, the Lutz family moved into a beautiful home in the Amityville neighborhood of Long Island, but the house came with a dark history: A mass murder took place there a year before the Lutzes’ arrival. According to the best-selling book that Jay Anson wrote about this notorious real-life incident, the Lutzes heard, saw, and smelled a variety of unexplained phenomena, leading them to believe their house was possessed. Anson took a lot of heat for presenting the Lutzes’ account as pure fact, and director Stuart Rosenberg’s sensationalistic movie adaptation pushes things even further. The Amityville Horror has some scary moments, but the scenario is so overwrought—it’s as if the Lutzes took a sublet from Satan—that the picture regularly creeps into unintentional comedy.

The main problem is that George Lutz (James Brolin) and his wife, Kathy (Margot Kidder), seem like the dumbest people ever to cross a movie screen. As soon as they move into their home, they start experiencing weird apparitions and sensations, but instead of gathering their three young children and running for safety, they summon a priest (Rod Steiger) to bless the house. The priest endures a horrific scene while the house traps him in a stifling upstairs room that fills with flies. Yet when the priest tells the Lutzes to vacate the house, they ignore the advice. Just a thought: If the demonic voice in your home says, “Get out,” it’s probably a good idea to comply. But, of course, if the big-screen versions of the Lutzes demonstrated any common sense, the movie would be over very quickly.

Sandor Stern’s silly screenplay tries to weasel around this unworkable plot contrivance by suggesting that George has lost his will to the evil force occupying the house, and Brolin delivers the concept through a performance of embarrassing excess. In his signature moment, a bug-eyed Brolin howls, “Oh, mother of God, I’m coming apart!” Truth be told, Brolin actually outdoes costar Steiger in the bad-acting department, and that’s saying a lot. (As for Kidder, who should have been building on her sassy performance in the 1978 blockbuster Superman, she’s wasted in a vapid victim role.)

Exacerbating its other flaws, The Amityville Horror is fairly dull through most of its running time, even though the production values are pretty good (the ooze dripping from the walls is enjoyably icky) and the wacky highlights are memorable. Nonetheless, lackluster storytelling didn’t stop the picture from becoming a major hit. The Amityville Horror earned nearly $90 million at the box office, and it kicked off a cycle of sequels and remakes that has continued well into the 21st century. Apparently, audiences are as reluctant to vacate the house at 112 Ocean Avenue as the Lutzes were.

The Amityville Horror: FUNKY

Friday, March 16, 2012

The Laughing Policeman (1973)

Long on atmosphere but short on coherence, this ultra-American thriller was, oddly, based on a Swedish novel. Despite its foreign origins, The Laughing Policeman is one of the most persuasive police procedurals made for the big screen in the ’70s, putting across a palpable sense of realism as it depicts badge-wielding working stiffs trying to sort out the mess of a complex murder investigation. The story ultimately spirals into confusion—an argument could be made that the filmmakers tried to achieve verisimilitude, leaving the audience as confounded as the characters—but even if the destination isn’t particularly worthwhile, the journey is engrossing.

Set in San Francisco, the picture begins with a horrific assault, when a mysterious assailant whips out a grease gun on a crowded city bus and annihilates all the passengers, including an off-duty cop. The dead policeman’s partner, taciturn detective Jake Martin (Walter Matthau), takes the lead on the investigation but shares very few of his discoveries with his replacement partner, hotshot Leo Larsen (Bruce Dern), or his irritable commanding officer, Lt. Steiner (Anthony Zerbe). Part of the reason Martin plays his cards so close to the vest is that he learns unsavory facts about his late partner, like the kinky aspects of the dead cop’s romance with a young woman (Cathy Lee Crosby), and part of the reason is because Martin senses a connection between the current crime and an unsolved case from the past.

Director Stuart Rosenberg, a TV-trained helmer whose eclectic résumé includes the macho melodrama Cool Hand Luke (1967), shoots the hell out of scenes featuring Martin and his fellow cops pounding the San Fran pavement to shake underworld sources for clues. Rosenberg and cinematographer David M. Walsh use long lenses to surround characters with evocative details, and they drape nighttime sequences in a soft haze that suggests salty air drifting off the Bay. Every scene feels like it’s happening in a genuine place, and Rosenberg lets his actors perform in a loose style that feels improvisational; this method generates fantastic moments between motor-mouthed Dern and tight-lipped Matthau, like a vivid throwaway scene in which they rest after ascending an epic flight of stairs.

Matthau is memorably belligerent and terse, while Dern, seizing the opportunity of his first above-the-title role in a studio picture, loads every line with energy and meaning. In addition to the colorful actors playing the cops (Louis Gossett Jr. rounds out the principal cast with an intense performance as a hot-headed detective), The Laughing Policeman showcases a cavalcade of eclectic bit players, essaying the various gamblers and informants and pimps who permeate the underworld the cops must troll for leads.

The Laughing Policeman: GROOVY

Monday, March 28, 2011

Pocket Money (1973)

So leisurely it frequently abandons momentum in favor of easygoing vignettes, this pseudo-Western starring Paul Newman and the incomparable Lee Marvin is notable as the last screenwriting credit Terrence Malick notched before launching his celebrated directing career. Although Malick is not the sole writer on the picture, Pocket Money strongly reflects his observational approach, most notably in the piquant dialogue of everyday American losers. So, for instance, when Newman boasts that “If anybody cheats me, I'm gonna hit him with a Stillson wrench and shove him in a coal hopper,” the line is not only resonant Americana but also an echo of similar wordplay in a previous Malick-scripted picture, Deadhead Miles (1972). As directed by unobtrusive journeyman Stuart Rosenberg, Pocket Money puts the delicate textures of Malick’s writerly voice front and center, albeit to the dismay of viewers who value a strong narrative over local color—even calling this movie “slight” would promise more substance than it actually delivers, although that’s not meant as a derogatory remark.

Newman and Marvin play contemporary cowboys whose guilelessness makes them easy prey for a sleazy rancher (Strother Martin, naturally), and the picture tracks the misadventures of the cowboys as they try to earn, cajole, and finally coerce money from their resourceful tormentor. The plot is insignificant, however, because what makes this sleepy piece interesting for patient viewers is the way the leads savor the homespun dialogue. Newman pours on the charm he perfected in his many Southern-fried hits of the ’60s, and Marvin displays the same gift for cornpone comedy that won him an Oscar for Cat Ballou (1965). Martin, though operating well within his self-described “prairie scum” comfort zone, complements the stars nicely as the villain, and M*A*S*H guy Wayne Rogers contributes an unexpectedly randy turn. So while Pocket Money generates very little excitement in the sense of traditional narrative, it offers lots of personality.

Pocket Money: FUNKY