Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976)

By law, any synopsis or review of Network must include one or all of the following phrases: "prescient," "crystal ball," "prophecy." I'm sorry, but predicting that TV would grow increasingly more sensationalistic, corporate-driven and vacuous doesn't exactly count as master soothsaying. That doesn't mean it's not a message worth conveying -- it's the method of conveyance that matters. For example, 1995's The Net accurately predicted the problem of identity theft over the interwebs, but no one seems to be hailing its visionary qualities or lamenting why we didn't heed the clarion call of Sandra Bullock and Dennis Miller. That's because the message was conveyed to the audience mostly through car chases.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have Network, which conveys its message primarily through  endless preaching and speechifying. I wanted to like this movie, really -- it's one of many classics I'm embarrassed not to have seen, and I'm not averse to satires of TV (I absolutely love The Truman Show). Also, I have no problem with dialogue that's considered "unrealistic" -- hell, I even defended (parts of) Juno. But my God, screenwriter Paddy Chayevsky is in love with his typewriter. Here's an excerpt of a monologue by Beatrice Straight, which basically won her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, even though this was essentially her only scene: 

This is your great winter romance, isn't it? Your last roar of passion before you settle into your emeritus years. Is that what's left for me? Is that my share? She gets the winter passion, and I get the dotage? What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to sit at home knitting and purling while you slink back like some penitent drunk?

The question isn't whether or not characters actually talk like that -- the question is, simply, do you want to listen to characters talk like that? I don't. But, I do want to hear characters talk like Walter and Phyllis in Double Indemnity, even though their patter is equally far-fetched.

Also, several of the characters are nothing but symbols. Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway), for example, is television incarnate. How I can say this with such certainty? Because another character CALLS HER THOSE EXACT WORDS. Actually, I don't have a problem with characters being symbols, but the audience figured this out about Diana in her first scene. The whole relationship between Max (William Holden) and Diana, in fact, is just an excuse for Chayevsky to set up new-school TV seducing old-school TV and then letting old-school tell off new-school at the end. Blah.

The stuff that I liked was the Howard Beale subplot and the whole "I'm mad as hell" bit. The rambling monologues actually fit Beale's character since he was spiraling into insanity. Unfortunately, the other characters didn't have this excuse. 

Park Row (Samuel Fuller, 1952)

Sometimes I think I like the idea of a Sam Fuller movie more than his actual movies. My problem, I guess, comes from trying to analyze them like literature -- some of his dialogue is overwrought and his storytelling ham-fisted (for example, the "love" story in Park Row is pretty ridiculous). I did love the visual style of the film, though, with its eye-catching deep focus compositions, lighting, and (especially) peripatetic camera -- the standout example of this is the scene in which Mitch gets into three or four fistfights in the street before marching into The Star.

As it turns out, I guess I had a similar reaction to Fuller as Andrew Sarris, who wrote in 1968:

Fuller is an authentic American primitive whose works have to be seen to be understood. Seen, not heard or synopsized...Fuller's ideas are undoubtedly too broad and over-simplified for any serious analysis, but it is the artistic force with which his ideas are expressed that makes his career so fascinating to critics who can rise above their political prejudices...It is time the cinema followed the other arts in honoring its primitives. Fuller belongs to thecinema, and not to literature and sociology.

But what the hell, I'll try to talk about Fuller's ideas a little anyway. As most people familiar with Fuller know, he became a newspaper crime reporter at 17, and Park Row is his paean to the ink-stained wretches he knew and loved. He fashions the story as a classic underdog tale, with the feisty, upstart Globe led by Phineas Mitchell trying to avoid the flyswatter of the Wal-Mart of newspapers, The Star, whose bitch-goddess editor fired Mitchell for not toeing the company line, which includes telling outright lies to sell papers. Throughout the film Mitch is extolled as a "true newspaperman," a goal so noble to aim for that when 75-year-old reporter Mr. Davenport feels that Mitch has attained it, Davenport can die peacefully knowing he's lived to see the the fire of true journalism burn on.

What wasn't clear to me for awhile was why Mitch was considered such a great newspaperman -- his first story, after all, came from him turning in Brodie, the Brooklyn Bridge jumper, just so he could publicize the arrest, then get even more attention later when The Globe freed him. I guess what it comes down to is Fuller wants journalism to follow the "first, do no harm" dictum of medicine. It's OK to have an agenda and manipulate the truth, but not to tell outright lies like the ones that apparently led to the execution of an innocent man, the incident that spurred Mitch to rebel against The Star.

The movie is more about The Globe's fight for survival against an immoral and corrupt enemy that's trying to drive it out of business than it is about the fight for social justice -- this ain't All the President's Men. The climax of the movie comes when The Globe fights impossible odds (including pipe bombs) to get out an edition that exposes the truth about its hateful neighbor down the street, The Star, not a story exposing police or political corruption. Even His Girl Friday paid lip service to the importance of that function of journalism in its climax.

These aren't really meant as criticisms -- and, to be fair, Davenport does question Mitch a couple of times about his intentions, showing that at least someone was thinking about this issue. I just kind of wish that Fuller either

a) held Mitch's feet to the fire a bit more (think about what happens to Charles Foster Kane after his idealistic beginnings), or

b) dropped some of the pretensions of aspiring to the highest ideal -- some of Davenport's eloquent obituary, for example, elevate Mitch to a status I don't think he attained. Then again, he's way more of a newspaperman than anyone at the all-powerful Star, so maybe that was Fuller's point. Mitch is a stubborn underdog, fighter and survivor -- just like Fuller.

And dammit, it was still a fun movie to watch and (most of the time) listen to. And I did like some of the not-so-subtle metaphors that Fuller lent a certain gusto, like Mitch putting what he thinks is the last edition of The Globe on the "obituaries" peg, or ending the movie not with "The End" but with "Thirty." Even if it should have been written like this:

--30--

Buchanan Rides Alone (Budd Boetticher, 1958)

After watching Decision at Sundown, a movie that seemed to try to explain everything to the audience, it was quite a treat to watch this one, which didn't do a whole lot of explaining of anything, including:

1) why the hero would get himself involved in a fistfight with the local law enforcement on behalf of someone who he had never met (and, by the way, had just committed murder), and

2)how three brothers could be so callous toward each other -- their only concern surrounding the death of one of the brother's sons revolves around money, and they constantly try to sell each other out to try to snag it.

Here's what I wrote about it on criterionforum.org:

This has to be the most underrated of the Boetticher/Scott Westerns, and if I had to venture a guess as to why, I think it's because of the black comedy aspects [an astute poster] mentioned. It's a very different beast compared to the more psychological bent of Seven Men from Now, Ride Lonesome, etc. Here, you have a family that's so irredeemably evil that you just have to laugh -- Boetticher and screenwriter Charles Lang (and/or the uncredited Kennedy) wisely forego any kind of explanation as to why they're so corrupt -- they just are. I know this was a few years before Yojimbo, but I see connections between the two (besides the obvious synergy between Western and samurai) -- the corruption of the entire town that's fueled by greed, the disdain for family members, and again, the black comedy.

I thought the movie was going to get serious once, when Pecos, one of the corrupt deputies, has a last-minute change of heart, and shoots his partner instead of letting Buchanan die. At first, I thought Pecos did that because he didn't want Buchanan to die thinking he had anything to do with his death since they were friendly earlier. But in his post-mortem conversation with his partner, Pecos said he only did it because Buchanan, like Pecos, was from west Texas. Buchanan gives a noticeable eye-roll to that, acknowledging the absurdity of the situation.

And really, the whole movie is absurd, but I mean that in the best possible way -- the movie acknowledges this, especially in the title, since other than the opening scene Buchanan is pretty much always riding with someone and is hardly the taciturn loner of his other Westerns with Boetticher. The only one of the three wretched brothers who's alive at the end of the film is Amos, the big dumb guy who spends most of the film lurching between his hotel, the sheriff's office, and the judge's estate, clutching his heart, which is located barely above his hiked-up overalls. When he's not sure where he's supposed to go next, the camera lingers on him as he stops in the middle of the street and looks around, confused about who he's supposed to be screwing over. The last line of the film is from Carbo, a real bastard who the movie paints as almost a good guy because he was loyal to the judge until the end (come to think of it, that's why Pecos, who actually wasn't a bad guy, got killed -- lack of loyalty to one side). He says to Amos, who's looking at his two dead brothers, "Well, don't just stand there -- get a shovel." It's not a cruel line at all, because Amos (just like his two dead brothers) didn't give a rat's ass about their well-being while they were alive. Sadly, that's what makes it so funny.

I've now seen all the Ranown Westerns, and can't wait for the DVD's, which are allegedly coming from Columbia by the end of this year.

Decision at Sundown (Budd Boetticher, 1957)

Although she can keep unwatched episodes of Best Week Ever and The Hills on our DVR indefinitely with no repercussions, my wife still expresses surprise and/or disgust when I freak out if she suggests erasing some of the movies I recorded off Turner Classic Movies. Unbelievably, she doesn't seem to appreciate the historical significance of the Ranown cycle, the seven westerns director Budd Boetticher made in the late '50s with star Randolph Scott. Either that, or she didn't like the fact they'd been on the DVR for almost a year. Whatever.

I'd already seen four of the Ranown films (Seven Men from Now, The Tall T, Ride Lonesome, and Comanche Station). Seven Men from Now is the only one of these out on DVD -- the others I saw on VHS tapes I ordered from Comet Video, a little operation that has to this to say about watching Westerns with pals and a root beer: "That's livin!" That's awesome.

Anyway, I finally sat down to watch Decision at Sundown, sans pals or root beer, to see if it could measure up to the first four Ranown films I'd seen, all of which I'd liked a lot (especially Ride Lonesome). Unfortunately, I was a wee bit disappointed. I shall quote myself, from over at criterionforum.org:

I'm not sure what to think. On the one hand, I liked the concept of the revenge-bent hero fighting for the wrong cause, who Scott played extremely well, and I thought the against-the-grain ending was brilliant. On the other, a lot of the dialogue made me realize how dependent Boetticher was on Burt Kennedy for the other Ranown films (imdb has him as an uncredited writer on Buchanan Rides Alone, which is the only one of the Ranown cycle I haven't seen [sic: I haven't seen Westbound either]). Any scene involving Doc was painful, and, though I'm not a huge fan of High Noon, at least the townspeople's behavior was consistent and believable. Here, after some preachiness from Doc, suddenly the entire town grows balls and stands up to Kimbrough, whose pernicious impact on the town is never effectively conveyed. I wonder if Kennedy would've done better with this story, but then again, all his scripts for Boetticher were set in the harsh landscape of the West instead of in towns, where people can mess up a good Western by talking.

This had the potential to be a great psychological Western, with Scott realizing too late he was seeking vengeance for no good reason and having his quest thwarted when Ruby shoots Kimbrough in the shoulder, prematurely ending the showdown. The real kick to the nuts comes in the next scene, as Kimbrough, the bad guy, and Ruby, the whore, ride off together, to live happily ever after, I guess, while Scott gets loaded at the bar. The irony (besides the good guy failing and the bad guy winning) is that Ruby is a whore and Kimbrough doesn't care, whereas Scott's wife was a whore (not officially, but in practice, we're told) and he was blind to it -- that misperception of his wife's purity is what led him on his fruitless mission of revenge in the first place. The image of him riding out of town, pulling one empty horse, reminding us of his partner's senseless murder, is a potentially devastating one. Unfortunately the last bit of dialogue from the film is some lame business from Doc about how glad the town was that Scott came to town and helped them come to their senses. As if these yokels learning their lesson and standing up to the class bully is really what the movie is all about. The problem is, that last scene didn't come out of nowhere -- that kind of bad dialogue, poor acting and misplaced, heavy-handed thematic statement had permeated the film up to that point anyway. To be honest, I was kind of waiting for that ending to be ruined. This is why I missed Burt Kennedy, the screenwriter of the other Ranown films I've seen -- I think he would've kept the conflict centered on just the main characters, and we would've felt Scott's pain much more.