Day 20: Films 17 and 18 – On Circus Camels and Jealous Lovers

Okay, two movies behind, and it’s only January. I’m starting to feel like Alice’s rabbit a bit here – late, late for a very important date – and wouldn’t Van Johnson be mad?

Well, he might be, but I hope his spirit takes this classic review in the spirit I’ve intended to convey – one of respect for a kind man and professional actor, just one mired in the conventions of his day.

As for my viewing schedule difficulties, the answer that many of you have been seeking is finally here: yes, this is getting hard. I’m getting heavily reacquainted with the 10:30 p.m. – midnight crowd. But as my favorite many-tentacled movie beasties love to cry out, “Never Give Up! Never Surrender!”

Film 17: “The End of the Affair” (1955)

Adapted by Lenore Coffee (“Young at Heart,” “Evelyn Prentice”) from a novel by Graham Greene
Directed by Edward Dmytryk (“The Caine Mutiny,” “Raintree County”)

Who knew 1999’s excellent, gritty, down in the sheets, jealous and angry “End of the Affair” with Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore was a remake? Not I, said the fly. But as so often in Hollywood, it was, and in the original film of the same name (adapted by screenwriting great Lenore Coffee from Graham Greene’s novel), Deborah Kerr and Van Johnson prove that 1955 knew a little bit about desire, too.

What’s fantastic about this movie: Deborah Kerr – always a great actress in Lady’s clothing – gets a chance to play someone unsympathetic – the cheating wife – and she’s heartbreaking. Even with the studio ending.

BUT what’s fascinating about this movie: Van Johnson (Gene Kelly’s All-American pal in “Brigadoon”) – the boyish, red-haired, perky male equivalent of Debbie Reynolds – goes dark. He spends the whole movie looking as if he’s just come off a black-and-white bender, age and sun spots replacing his normally smooth, pancaked, tan perfection. Yes, he scowled in other films, but it was the same scowl from film to film. (One he’d practiced in the mirror, I’d bet.) Here, Johnson blatantly, desperately, amateurishly goes for something deeper, something like raw emotion, something like – dare I say it? – Method acting? It was 1955 after all, and the studio system was shredding even as the stars kept arriving for work. The big B was busy flattening his male competition, shouting and groaning his way through “On the Waterfront” and “Streetcar Named Desire.” Hard-working, make-no-trouble, everyday soldiers like Johnson had to be shaking. Where was his place in this Brave New World?

Now, anybody already ensconced in a profession whose entire skill set shifts overnight is going to be unprepared for the job requirements. Think record album manufacturers when faced with the cassette tape, or land-war generals in 1915 France dealing with the Tommy gun. Johnson clearly feels he’s not quite there, bowing to Kerr in all of their scenes for guidance, allowing his nervousness as an actor to nag at every corner of his performance. And yet, he goes for it. He finds a way through the tape reels and hails of bullets to give us the most underwrought, honestly played role of his career. He’s no Brando, no Kerr, but he does show us – just this once – a little of his soul on film. I think it shows up best in his arguments with Kerr, the lover who resists leaving her husband. He bullies her, cajoles her, bribes her – whatever he thinks might work – and halfway through these delicious arguments, he forgets to pose, to look pretty and even, ever so briefly, to Be Real. He just is – vulnerable and confused and beautiful.

The horrible disaster of this film for me is its legacy – that Johnson never again went for it like he does here. He survived the studio breakdown instead by adopting a healthy dose of self-mockery – so entertaining in “Divorce American Style” – or a mask of staged anger – in all his later war films – that comprise the lions’ share of his subsequent performances. But for the Van Johnson that might have been, I grieve that there is no further evidence than “The End of the Affair.”


Film 18: “The Big Animal” (‘Duze Zwierze’, Poland) (2000)

Written by Krzysztof Kieslowski, based on a story by Kazimierz Orlos
Directed by Jerzy Stuhr

So now I’ve taken all my time on the first review, I’m going to have to give this one short shrift.

That’s probably okay, since the premise is easy to understand. A traveling circus in rural, Communist-era Poland leaves behind a camel, which local childless couple Zygmunt (Jerzy Stuhr, a favorite actor in Poland) and Marysia (Anna Dymna) Sawicki adopt. Funny, right? Not to their neighbors, who want to make money off it, or to the authorities who want it “to be useful.” The Sawickis’ tale of clinging to something beautiful and original in the midst of pressure to conform held me spellbound. This is no grainy, out-of-the-back-of-a-lorry film either. The photography is crisp and lean, and on many occasions, inspired. How many cameramen have managed to make a camel leering out of his stable at a mob behind his ‘parents’ seem human? Can’t think of a single one. Simple and short – at just an hour and 12 minutes – this darkly comedic darling will remind you of Charlie Chaplin’s simple beauty. Very few words required.

Days 7 and 8: "The Godfather" and "The Godfather: Part II" - Where's the Soul, Mon Frere?

warning: rant ahead...two days' worth at least...

Films 7 and 8: "The Godfather" (1972) and "The Godfather: Part II" (1974)


I’m a girl who believes in “Never Say Never” – the saying, not the Bond movie. (Not that Sean Connery was terrible or anything, but let’s face it – sssssllllllooooowwww film.)

I believe in giving most everything a chance.

I tried understanding football after sitting through weekend after weekend next to my husband. Now I’m more extreme than many men in their NFL devotion, including a strict no-phone-calls-or-visitors policy on Game Day.

I sought clarity on the “younger women make me feel sexy so I’m giving my old wife the boot” POV, worried that I might be wrongly condemning the majority of La Jolla or Beverly Hills as soulless macho narcissists. This led to enjoying several pieces that tackled the subject – Steve Martin’s “Shopgirl,” for instance, and last year’s cancelled dramedy “Big Shots,” a rich man’s “Sex in the City” – and lo, I found I could identify – even if I didn’t always agree – with some of these resolute ‘old wife’-traders.

Shoot, I even checked out Clive Owen and Michael Davis as they out-Woo’d John Woo in the recent “Shoot ‘Em Up” – a non-stop, hysterical attempt to leave no shot (of film) without a shot (from a gun). I howled in fact at Paul Giamatti’s overdone bad guy with a one-track mind: kill, kill, grimace. (Okay, two tracks.)

But I will never, ever, ‘til the day I die understand what people – especially men, it seems – see in “The Godfather.” Yes, go ahead and scream. Yell. Call me a feminist, chick-flick-loving heretic. Doesn’t hurt. And it’s not going to convince me to love this insipid movie or its never-ending sequels.

It’s taken me thirty-seven years, but I’ve finally gotten around to watching – or making as good a stab as I can muster – these power-heavy polemics. I even watched “Godfather Part II” just to see if Diane Keaton's mealy-moused wife 'Kay' would ever wake up. (She does, apologizes for it and then disappears.) And for the benefit of my movie-watching sisters, I can safely say, “Skip it.” Unless you harbor a burning desire to see men posture for power; suppress, bully or ignore the women in their lives; and struggle with the ever-present dilemma of who to kill when – you can probably sleep peacefully without these movies.

No offense to Pacino, Coppola, De Niro and the rest, but they just don’t do it for me. Men dealt a bum rap. Poor, humiliated, desperate to escape the brutality of their childhoods. Hmmm…what to do? Something new? Groundbreaking? Anything that would earn my respect as a filmgoer, if not as a woman? Well…

Brando, as old Don Vito Corleone, tells his underlings, including son Michael (Pacino) to shoot people. Michael resists, but then his brother and wife are shot, so he shoots people, too. In the next film, as a silent child of five, Vito Corleone suffers through his father’s murder by the local Old World mafia, then his brother’s, and finally, right in front of him, his mother’s. He doesn’t say a word, just runs. He’s smuggled onto a boat for New York. He’s quarantined on Ellis Island, and finally, alone in his room overlooking the Statue of Liberty, he breaks into a perfect, transcendent hymn, worthy of the Sistine Chapel. In the next scene, instead of seeing him struggle to accept his new world, we view his miraculous replacement by a grown-up, talking Vito (De Niro), happily married but poor. Guess what he decides to do for a living? Bang bang. Wow me.

“But these are universally revered films!” you cry. Universal for men, maybe. When was the last time you noticed a woman weeping with you as Michael Corleone sacrifices his humanity for “family?” (i.e. organized crime) Pauline Kael loves them, you say. Whatever. One female critic who claims to love male-only domain genre films does not a ‘universal’ trend make. What’s your wife got to say about it?

Probably nothing, since she can’t even make it through any of these yawners. I’m not saying all women are faking it who claim to appreciate these flicks, but I draw the line at “objectively great.”

“You're oversimplifying!” you’ll likely hear. Especially if you’re in a Serious Crowd. And you can count on some females in the group to be towing the Officially Accepted View. “These are classic texts on the American experience!” they’ll cry. And you will balk and wonder what to say next.

Here’s my two cents. Hope it helps you out of the jam.

Michael Corleone’s central problem in “The Godfather:” what kind of man will he be? What can I say? Not my problem. “Oh, but it’s about family,” my pal James told me recently. “Everyone has family.”

Sure, I’ve got family. Will any of those family members ever pressure me to be the head of the mafia? Nope. Okay. Neither will James’s. But I bet he's closer.

Will my friends and family even judge me alone by the job I have? Any Western woman who can answer “yes” without reservation has some evolved parents – the kind that don’t want grandkids. But say they do. Say they don’t care at all whether I’ve found love, whether I’ve got someone “to take care of me” like a small puppy. Some say they love us anyway, even if we’ve failed at most mothers’ version of ‘being of a complete woman.’ Will they then turn their critical eye on me and ask me to forsake my own moral code in order to save the family honor? Sorry. I don’t think so.

Men are asked to turn a blind eye to morality sometimes – often even – on behalf of their worldly success, yes. Women sacrifice – and are often expected to sacrifice – that very worldly success to keep the ‘family’ fed, bathed and populated. Michael Corleone loses his soul in order to save his family’s honor and standing. His wife Kay (Diane Keaton) loses hers when she aborts their son in order to save him from following in his father’s footsteps. Michael strikes her, disallows her from seeing her children and excommunicates her from his life. (Okay, I’m skipping ahead to “Godfather II;” she’s too silent even to count in the first film.) Michael loses her, yes, but he was already a shell – no longer fully human. He will continue to be successful in the world. She has lost everything. There is no redemption for a woman without moral superiority.

But her plight is not what “The Godfather” is about. Nope, it’s simply: “What will Michael do with his life? Will he sacrifice power and stature (represented by his family) and break away for freedom (represented at first by Kay)?” A worthy question, but a man’s question. In the end, he believes vengeance for his brother’s death and the death of his first wife justifies his return to the family fold. The fight, even though he didn’t start it, must go on. And to complete his fall from the light, he drags down Kay with him. (And all my sister and I can think is, ‘Run, girl, run!’)

I do not say that women aren’t required to choose between right and wrong, between morality and success. (See Lady Macbeth.) What I do believe is that very few of us have been offered the inherited reins of corruption as a birthright. Millions of women have felt the impact of family violence – across their cheeks – from the same kind of men who in “The Godfather” espouse to “put family first.” But how many men have been willing – much less eager – to give their daughters that power? How many women have been shamed into killing – or abusing – others on behalf of the family pride? Maybe the one out of a thousand who honestly lists “The Godfather” as a favorite film.

Society asks women to die for our families, not kill. (Female soldiers returning from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan are finding that clinics often don’t even recognize their duty as having PTSD potential, since according to Congress, they weren’t officially in combat.) We died in childbirth in droves in a pre-hospital world. Post-hospital, we continued to die, years before our time – worked to the bone in 1930s America on remote farms with ten children and no electricity – and continue to die in our 50s in 21st century cities, as we often work two jobs, both underpaid, to put food in front of our ‘fatherless’ children. Most horrifically, we die because our ‘protective’ husbands and boyfriends would rather see us dead than with someone else (still the leading cause of female homicides).

But I would argue that we die most often in the movies so that our cinematic husbands can suffer nobly - without complications. When was the last time you saw a Clint Eastwood or Mel Gibson wife still alive by the 20-minute mark?

Which pill is harder to swallow? Life without morality or never-ending martyrdom? I don’t know many movies which take both sides of the real story head-on. There are thousands of films which explore a woman’s sacrifices, her moral quandaries when it comes to family. “Sophie’s Choice” is memorable because a mother must choose which child will die – but it’s a man who does the killing.

So that the men’s heads will stop reeling, I will say here that the “Godfather” movies have value. Any movie that moves you, that addresses dilemmas you face, that changes your world or resonates in your consciousness long after you’ve seen it – anything that does that has enormous value – to you.

But it’s time women cinephiles were honest with their male counterparts. Instead of nodding blithely when these films inevitably come up in conversation as The Greatest of All Time, I hope some of you will find the courage to say, “Really? Bored me senseless. But ‘Room with a View?!’ Now there’s a movie!”