So Dark The Night (1946): Directed by Joseph H. Lewis

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So Dark The Night is certainly a bit of an oddity functioning as Columbia’s attempt at a Parisian noir before being transplanted to the idyllic countryside. Linguistically, it’s a strange hybrid dominated by English with stylistic sprinkles of Francés.

Regardless, of any discrepancies, Joseph H. Lewis follows up My Name is Julia Ross with an equally befuddling little drama imbued with his usual elan, freely breaking through the obvious economy.

Some of the compositions are mesmerizing. For one thing, they often draw a moderate amount of attention to their near artificiality. Take, for instance, a tracking shot moving from outdoors to an interior in one fell swoop. There’s no fourth wall — real or invisible — to get in the way of the camera. You also cannot help but notice the very deliberate and rather ostentatious zooms applied throughout to emphasize character entrances.

He has other visual tricks too. One is reminded of the moment he introduces his taciturn heroine (Micheline Cheirel) hanging up laundry on the line. All we see are her hands as they move down the line as her head pops shyly over the articles of clothing. Then, noticing a fancy car rolling into the courtyard, she’s busy eyeing all the shiny grills and nobs with a mesmerized fascination. She barely notices the famed policeman Henri Cassin (Steven Geray ), nearly stars truck, staring at her before he’s snapped out of his own reverie. 

Most, if not all of the cast, are all but forgotten today. They are a homely crew, stilted at times, while still obliging with their own brand of blushing charm. Given the prerequisites, Geray, a chipper Austrian-American with a vaguely foreign accent, earns center stage. The quibbling mother and father are played by a pair of veterans, Eugene Borden and Ann Codee. However, it is the relationship between Gerray and Cheirel giving rise to this slightly perturbing psychology — not to mention a budding romantic connection.

The ensuing courtship feels like Lewis’s own artificial Hollywood-style take on the scenery of a Renoir movie, and it’s not meant to be as dismissive as it might sound. Because given his greatest successes — all low budget crowd-pleasers — he somehow makes the aesthetic work in his favor.

However, a threat is injected into the storyline with the jealous, near-suicidal obsession of Leon (Paul Marion), the young man she’s been pledged to be married to since adolescence. He makes it very clear he doesn’t want to see his Nanette with Cassin anymore and his brute jagged edges effectively disrupt the picture’s cornballish jauntiness with high-strung dramatics. It’s one extreme replaced with a new normal on the complete opposite side of the spectrum.

However, it remains to be seen where our sights are set. We can do little more than observe what is before us. Surely, someone will make a move amid the prevailing uneasiness. There must be an initiation of rising action. Soon enough we get an answer.

Nanette goes missing and all roads point to Leon. A crime of passion perhaps? Except he’s nowhere to be seen either. The local commissioner calls on the expertise of Mr. Cassin and the kindly man sets aside his vacation to investigate the troubling events.

Driven by empirical evidence, he nabs his man — under quite extraordinary circumstances — and his conclusions verge on the ludicrous. Given the little amount of time it’s allotted, So Dark The Night quickly spirals from a mere mystery to a tension-infused time bomb of anticipation. It’s a matter of knowing what’s coming: Murder!

Still, far from stripping the movie of its intensity, it lends the finale a Hitchcockian flair even in its abrupt denouement around the shattered shards of a window frame. This intermittent sense of spectacle is what will draw some viewers to an otherwise unassuming noir, which might be easily forgotten. Couched between the evocative cinematography of Burnett Guffey and this odd strain of psychological extrapolation, we have a most peculiar curio on our hands.

The one implausibility I cannot forgive is how Gerray could have been such a prolific policeman for such a long time and yet he nor anyone else picked up on the imminent warning signs swirling around. Otherwise, it’s idiosyncratic enough to enjoy without too much reservation.

3/5 Stars

Framed (1947): Janis Carter and Glenn Ford

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The opening scene of Framed is glorious. It’s the epitome of why these old B pictures have some much to offer audiences often bloated on cinematic glut. A runaway truck careens down a mountain road as the driver sweats it out trying to punch the breaks uselessly. Entering a busy town, he’s forced to make a wild maneuver the other way. Finally, his big rig dies down lazily plunking a truck backing out into the street.

In the ensuing altercation, we learn so much about the tightwad trucking foreman who won’t pay for the damages and our nameless hero who took the gig for the cash and proceeds to hand over what’s coming to him to pay for the damages of the victim (Edgar Buchanan).

We’re finally allowed a breather as he steps into the nearby La Paloma cafe and conveniently our whole story is laid out before us in tantalizing fashion. We’re on board for the ride.

The internal logic of the film noir malaise means everything that can be stacked up against a man will be. Mike Lambert’s not a bad fellow; he seems as honest and frank as any. True, he drinks too much, he’s prone to gambling, but he’s been given the bum steer. In a matter of minutes, he sits down at the bar only to get whisked off to court and sentenced for his misdeeds. In this regard, the crook of the law seems to be bent in favor of the unscrupulous.

However, this is only a starting point or a pretense because Lambert is pulled out of the clink by the dubious generosity of an amorous barmaid bombshell with a pair of bewitching eyes (Janis Carter). Why she would stick her neck out for a stranger and dish out $50 remains to be seen.

Except everyone in a picture like this has an angle to work. Soon enough, we find out hers. Because she and an accomplice are looking for the perfect stooge, the perfect patsy, the perfect man to be framed.

The movie is built out of what feels like a chainlink of romantic entanglements with people strung out in a line between one another. Glenn Ford is romanced by Janis Carter to keep him in town and at the same time oblivious. Her real accomplice is a man named Steve Price who has married into money; his wife remains utterly disillusioned with their loveless marriage.

It’s also a contrived story where everything is conveniently interconnected — at least in cinematic terms — so all the relationships, even if they feel circumstantial, fit together in just the right ways to tease out the dramatic situation.

Consider for a moment how Ford, a field engineer, reconnects with the straggly man Cunningham (Buchannan) who happens to be a miner in need of a loan. Then, consider how the man in charge of loans at the bank is none other than Mr. Price. It’s his refusal that keeps Lambert waiting around town looking for a break as Paula continues to run interference and ingratiate herself to him.

However, the logic never feels like a lynchpin because it all builds up to this near fatalistic helplessness of a man unknowingly walking straight into a trap. Perceptive viewers might recognize that this ensuing sense of powerlessness setting in is not unlike North by Northwest or more aptly Double Indemnity — albeit from the inside out.

It gives us a different kind of investment as this time our “hero” is not the perpetrator but the victim. Because Lambert, without his knowledge, is being dragged into a grand conspiracy rife with larceny, murder, and any number of things. Although in the end, the trap is sprung in a different manner than expected.

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Do you think Ford’s about to get bested in his own picture? Not likely. As a steady leading man, he’s always easy to like even when he verges on the brusque in a movie like this. The film sets him up as a straight arrow, hampered by his vices though he might be. Edgar Buchanan falls into his role like most any of them with a familiar aplomb. Whether the part is stretching at all seems beside the point, because he manages to fill it so seamlessly.

Another character veteran, Art Smith, has a bit part as the none too solicitous, solitaire-playing hotel clerk. If nothing else, while I always enjoy coming upon him in a picture, his presence is a marker of the times. He too, like so many others, would become a casualty of the McCarthy-era witch hunts, self-imposed by Hollywood. Included in this unfortunate club was the film’s screenwriter Ben Maddow as well as actress Karen Morley.

Barry Sullivan is unscrupulous but fairly straitlaced and bland while end-to-end Janis Carter is yet again the unsung hero of the picture. Like all the great conniving dames of yesteryear,  beauty is an asset with which to utterly bewitch the opposite sex. She uses it handily.

We watch her continually modulating between moments of self-serving opportunism and genuine showings of sentiment and fear — as the fairer sex — with the movie somehow casting her in this duplicitous mold of both temptress and victim.

There you have the heart and soul of the femme fatale right there. So when Paula looks out the back of that car and Mike drops his cigarette butt in disgust, we are borne into the tension. It’s the tension between doing the right thing and getting to have someone like that look at you that way. In such a disquieting world, there might be right or wrong, but somehow, it doesn’t make it any more agreeable on the other side. Frankly, it stinks.

3.5/5 Stars

Night Editor (1946) and a Femme Fatale Worse Than Blood Poisoning

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This expedient B noir opens with the most peculiar of narrative devices. The only guess is it’s somehow tied to the film’s roots in serial radio drama. A pack of poker-playing, late-night newshounds is chewing the fat, and out of their nattering comes the story of Tony Cochrane (William Gargan).

The real film starts in a kid’s bedroom. A father talks cops and robbers with his son along with roller skates and going fishing like they used to. The boy watches his “Pops” leave before entreating him to “Keep his nose clean.”

Gargan, a gruff, marble-mouthed type, fits the role of the nondescript detective on a beat, though he doesn’t seem like much of a family man. It’s not the only seemingly incongruity around him. His doting, overly angelic wife (Ms. Jeff Donnell), a typical noir staple, wants to see more of him because she loves him dearly. Expectedly, her very presence sets up an uneasy queasiness in the cinemagoer’s stomach. Where there exists a “noir angel” her foil must be nearby — a woman whose feet go down to death.

Sure enough, he’s knee-deep in a clandestine affair. He’s got another dame and what a vicious creature of deception she is. We’ve jumped from the seat of matrimony and domestic tranquility to the front seat of his car stashed away in some neglected place all the more convenient for necking.

Janis Carter doesn’t get too many kudos these days, even in noir circles, but a picture like Night Editor alone is worthy of hoisting her out of the shadows into a place of ill-repute. It’s more than scummy and vindictive enough to put her on the map.

Granted, a lot of the film’s dialogue is clunky but some of it is also too delicious to pass up in terms of noir-speak. One opening exchange between the surreptitious lovers springs to mind, “You’re just no good for me. We both add up to zero. You’re worse than blood poisoning.”

This is fertile ground for something devastating to happen. It turns out we don’t have to wait around because Cochrane and Jill happen to witness a nighttime murder just across the road. It’s the kind of punchy jolt movies like this thrive on.

Instantly the dramatic situation is placed before us conveniently because our protagonist is a cop — bound by some sense of morals and justice — he’s not completely ditched his conscience yet.

Still, her pleading words ring in his ears as he sticks out his gun to apprehend the killer. It’ll be a scandal. His wife and kid will suffer. And the worst part: She’s right. So the assailant runs off into the night and for the rest of the picture, he’s got to wrestle with his decision. It’s a petrifying situation to be in, and it’s got him all twisted up inside.

Soon enough, news of the murder breaks, and the game is afoot as Tony is called on to help with the case (and simultaneously looks to cover his tracks). Ole (Paul E. Burns) is his amiable colleague at the police station. Although he’s more Swedish and less imposing, he shares some overlapping qualities with Barton Keyes, employing the same kind of uncanny intuition. But, best of all, he’s a loyal friend.

Meanwhile, the newshounds sitting around the station wait with bated breath for scraps. There’s a feeling the case could blow wide open at any moment. It just so happens his gal is a smarmy high society gal where it counts, married to an affluent old boy. She’s a trophy wife out on the prowl. However, she’s also got another budding love affair — no doubt one of many — but this one is of particular importance.

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A flattering man named Loring who works at the local bank holds the keys to the case. Except only Tony and Jill know it. When she effectively provides him a fictitious alibi, Tony is all but forced to live a lie and eat his words as she walks off with another man. Truth is often created by the people who speak first, and there’s no way for him to easily refute her.

What’s before him now is an extension of his living nightmare. No girl, no relief, and, of course, his home life has suffered due to his increasing aloofness. There’s little recourse but to take a stand against Julia — with one final stab at veracity — lest the lies eat him alive.

It’s a foregone conclusion. Their final confrontation cannot end well. There’s too much between them, of both malice and consequence, for any decision to resolve itself smoothly. And so in the kitchen, sure enough, he lets her know he’s going to talk — someone’s going to believe him.

Her reaction is almost cute. The doe eyes. The breathiness. The physical touch and the vaguely genuine show of sincerity. There’s an inkling that it might be true. But even if it is, she’s predisposed toward the violence and self-preservation all but ingrained in her very nature.

He staggers out into the living room in a near surreal state, with a new resolve and calm cast over him. Still, we’ve witnessed something bearing irrevocable consequences. Out on the doorstep stand the authorities. Surely, this is the end…Then, he crumples to the ground — the dramatic exclamation point to a sordid procedural.

Sadly this quagmire of fatalism was not to be, all but remedied by the same hokey radio program hoax as the editors tie the story up with an ending fit for an innocuous Disney movie. Until this final false step of pollyannaism, Night Editor more than earns its keep as a wanton noir gem. You just have to look between the bylines.

3.5/5 Stars

 

Boris Karloff at RKO: Body Snatcher, Isle of The Dead, Bedlam

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In our current climate, it almost seems like an oxymoron to have a shoestring-budget period piece, but many of Val Lewton’s best movies were founded on this formula.

His three-film partnership was beneficial for all parties involved and we would like to consider how he was able to fashion Karloff into a new kind of monster.

In honor of the spooky season, let’s talk about Karloff at RKO:

The Body Snatcher (1945)

Robert Louis Stevenson is an auspicious literary figure for anyone raised up on fiction like Dr. Jeykll, Treasure Island, or Kidnapped. Much of this might have come from any of their many adaptations. Thus, it seems fitting to know his work also received the Val Lewton treatment in the form of his short story, “The Body Snatcher.”

The year is 1831 in Edinburgh, Scotland, a place I reminisce about fondly. This is not a world of invading pod people; it’s actually a much more arcane movie with a gothic mood and style of the Victorian Age.

There’s a practicality to its premise and the origin of the horror. Not unlike Doctor Frankenstein, these doctors need cadavers — specimens on which to learn their trade. They have a bit of a silent agreement with a local coachman named Gray (his eminence, Boris Karloff), who is also a “Resurrection Man” by night. In other words, he digs up dead bodies.

The Doctor Macfarlane (Henry Daniell) has an empty callousness in his face and voice, like a shell of a former man who probably had ideals in his youth. Now he’s shackled by something, either vocational obsessions or something far more sinister.

The character dynamics are mostly intriguing as it’s hinted that “Toddy” and Gray shared a slightly sordid past together long before their current business arrangement. The Doctor’s housekeeper is also closer than she appears, chiding him to let the past go and with it the callow boy he’s brought on as his assistant.

Russell Wade is perfect as the naive Fettes, who only sees the altruistic good in their profession and his mentor. The young student vows to a pretty young mother that her invalid daughter might walk again if only the doctor might operate on her. Macfarlane’s less inclined to make such a rash promise.

Because of these clouded histories, much of the movie is about the specters of the past with Gray constantly at the ready to hound the man of reputation. He aims to keep their lucrative partnership going by any means necessary.

One of the film’s most visually arresting scenes is in the dead of night. There’s a haunting street singer done up in a shawl with a small bowl for alms. Her gorgeous brogue pierces through the evening lamplight and the all but silent cobblestone streets as she sings “When Ye Gang Awa Jamie.” Soon even she goes quiet…

Another definitive moment comes later upon entering the cabby’s quarters with the camera turning right into his horse resulting in a genuine jump scare. Bela Lugosi feels almost unrecognizable to me and by that I mean he hardly speaks, mostly slinking about in the periphery of the story. When he finally does speak that’s the giveaway.

Joseph pays a visit to gray with a mind to blackmail, but he’s not half as cunning. They share a drink in the firelight. Karloff’s propped on the table grinning lasciviously as he leans over the oblivious man. Who’s in control of the situation is plainly apparent, and it’s such a stunning composition honoring two of the greatest horror showcases Universal ever had.

Now they are with RKO, certainly older, but Val Lewton pays them his utmost respects. Although Karloff’s the biggest name, this is a new generation of films removed from his earlier persona. Lewton effectively allows him to rebrand himself as a new kind of villain, a new kind of monster to be feared. The extraordinary thing is how it’s hardly makeup or special effects-driven but performative in nature. It’s also chilling.

There’s a jolt of ambiguity into the ending of the movie as the Doctor is haunted by his sins, but Karloff’s just as agonizing. Maybe it’s because he seems to represent past sins reincarnated. I’m curious if contemporary critics hailed it as a return to form for Karloff. Even with the passage of time, it seems to show a startling range I’ve appreciated more with time. He gets to show another side of himself.

4/5 Stars

Isle of The Dead (1945)

Isle of The Dead begins with an unbelievable scenario with no forewarning as Karloff’s General intimates for a disgraced officer to commit suicide in order to maintain the company’s reputation. Minutes later he takes a journalist (Marc Kramer) for an amble through no man’s land in the First Balkans War as if nothing has happened.

There’s something uncanny and manufactured about how this General brings this other man along with him as he goes to visit his wife’s crypt on a nearby deserted island. Just saying it now sounds outlandish. But this is what happens. I’m not saying it’s naturalistic, but that’s hardly the reason for watching this movie. It’s as if we have entered this transitory world that operates outside of our accepted logic.

It is a bit of a surprise because Lewton normally worked very hard to create the baseline world and the logic of his stories, so we might be fully committed as an audience. Although this might be partially lacking in Isle of The Dead, what’s not absent is his signature sense of foreboding atmosphere adding a shroud of horror-worthy darkness to all his pictures. Their eeriness cannot be shaken off easily.

Then, again perhaps I spoke too soon. The story still works in ample amounts of mythology including Vrykolakas: undead, vampire-like creatures that haunt the living. Some believe they have been sent as punishment by the gods, there are pagan rituals to Hermes, prayers are sent up regularly, and belief is a powerful force.

Although the opening premise is suspect, it’s this added context creating the foundation for the rest of the movie as it sends Karloff deeper into this Grecian abyss of darkness and shadow. In no moment is this more clear than the glorious sequence when Ellen Drew walks the hallways at night, candle in hand. It encapsulates the entire movie in a few successive shots of stylized pitch-blackness.

Our protagonist says, “I put my faith in what I can feel and know and see,” and yet his rationality must do war with the steady barrage of wind and shadow. Many of the island’s inhabitants are stricken with the plague. It seems like a silent killer born out of voices calling out from the night and a fleeting apparition in white.

Lewton hasn’t lost his touch in conjuring up such mysterious environs to assault our senses. It’s never about out and out shock value, but this pervasive sense of the inevitable. This must all come to some end. We all die be it from war, plague, or something equally as sinister.

3.5/5 Stars

Bedlam (1946)

It’s curious and rather extraordinary that two of Karloff’s films with RKO were inspired by paintings. Bedlam came out of William Hogarth’s series A Rake’s Progress. It occupies itself with Bethlehem Asylum in 18th century London. Although this is the so-called “Age of Reason,” treatment of the mentally ill is hardly benevolent.

All the “loonies” are kept in their cages like sideshow attractions for the public to gawk at for a tuppence fare. We’re privy to one of its present tragedies: a man falling to his death from the asylum rooftops with a little assistance. If we want to get to the bottom of the callous hell hole, we must look no further than Master George Sims.

There he is: Boris Karloff done up in a wig and the attire of the age. Here’s another joyous occasion to see him take on yet another century of English history through the period lens of Hollywood. It’s a deliciously unctuous performance, and he proves himself just as skeevy as he’s ever been.

He’s called in for a stern talking to — the corpulent Lord Mortimer (Billy House) and his lady protege (Anna Lee) have some words for him. He’s taken mild dissatisfaction on losing some of their entertainment.

Always quick to ingratiate himself and despite having sent Mortimer’s poet to his demise, he vows to put on a frivolous performance to tickle the patron’s fancy. It’s so easy for him to use and degrade his tenants for monetary gain because what worth are they to the world outside?

The moment Anna Lee enters the inner sanctum of the asylum and sees the tenants in their own world she’s momentarily surprised even moved by their fate. Though she tries to mask it on the outside with words and a riding crop, she does harbor pity for them.

It is a perceptive quaker (Richard Fraser) who notices her reaction and rouses her to some form of Christian action. She is more sympathetic than the rest of the idle masses because she is self-made. Without the luxury of personal wealth or power, she knows intuitively how hard it is to find self-preservation in an often heartless world.

In some way, it feels like a call for tolerance and sympathy by reaching into the past to inform the present. Because although it is a story in the guise of 18th-century horror — Karloff’s presence makes sure of that — there is something more to the picture.

Like all Lewton’s work, there’s a deceptive depth and substance to Bedlam that is at one time both intriguing and generally commendable. Because he doesn’t just make entertainment. It entertains, yes, but you can watch the RKO films and there are supplementary thematic interests to them.

Karloff is the standout in all three pictures — no one else comes close — though I am fond of Lee here because she actually has spirit and stands for something. She’s willing to do battle with him. It’s a collision of dueling philosophies.

He snarls that men are not brothers — they are not good and kind — but savages that must be ruled by force and his worldview plays out in how he governs Bedlam. With the saintly quaker speaking into her life, she looks to reform the asylum as she is trapped on the inside vowing not to give in and cave to Sims’s merciless conception of the world.

Karloff obviously relishes his subtle insinuations and well-placed comments to stir pots and get what he wants while pushing back against those who wronged him. Namely, gaining the good graces of Lord Mortimer and spurning the impudent, proud lady.

Is he evil? Not exactly — at least not at first — but he has a steady mean streak which proves to be utterly Machiavellian and maniacal. It’s villainy at its finest because it slinks so easily under the radar of societal convention. He’s despicable and still oddly droll making for a fine antagonist.

4/5 Stars

Noises Off… (1991): From Stage to Screen

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In the olden days, a stage production — or shall we say “the theater” — was blessed with a certain cultural cachet not extended to moving pictures. While this dichotomy hasn’t totally eroded, given the directions movies have gone, Noises Off…is buoyed by the stage for another reason.

Rarely have I witnessed something that totally blurs the line between performance and reality in such a self-reflexive manner. Noises Off… began as a highly successful play about a stage production going off the rails due to inadequate rehearsal times and the backstage histrionics of an amorous cast of characters. In other words, the original form fits the function.

Just by merit of the medium of film, it cannot be as intimate as the stage nor is it performance art in quite the same manner, though the director tries to stretch out sequences as long as they will contort to maintain the pace.

But the stage, because it is live, requires actors who are able to keep up with the utter mayhem of the material like trained athletes. Both the controlled and wildly chaotic nature interpolate into one storyline. So you obviously lose some of that instant spontaneity acquired by no other means.

If anyone knows that fact it’s Peter Bogdanovich, an avowed theater aficionado. He doesn’t let the story sag; it’s always zooming along, and it still manages something almost palpable. The trick is not fiddling too much with the concept nor trying to contort it in some grandiloquent way to fit the cinema.

The structure of the story itself is just as crucial in developing this cumulative impact. The Three Act Structure begins with the frantic rehearsal hours before they are set to perform. The long-suffering director (Michael Caine,) who might be on the edge of a nervous breakdown, is running out of time and dealing with temperamental actors asking for motivations or just absent-mindedly showing up late to set. He’s also romancing his leading lady (Nicolette Sheridan). The issues are there for comedic effect, but we have yet to reach impact — that requires a theater full of people.

Next, we follow the show from behind the curtain. The preparations are frantic, actors are missing, and the backstage crew, Julie Haggerty and Mark Linn-Baker, run around like two stage chickens with their heads cut off. It doesn’t change when the performance begins either because the whole story is based on timing — cues and a bustling scenario with slamming doors and traded props. It’s everything we’ve already seen, albeit from the inside out, ignited by male feuds (John Ritter gives Christopher Reeve a bloody nose) and private lover’s quarrels filled with bitter malice.

The show from the cheap seats is the worst (or best) of all as this mounting discontentment disrupts the foregone storyline with all kinds of private barbs and acts of pettiness played out on the stage. The key is how the fictional audience eats it all up because each absurd miscue feels like the next great flashpoint of brilliant comedy. It’s the height of farce.

One of my few reference points is Hellzapoppin’ even as the earlier film was often about the endless possibilities of non sequiturs. What they have in common is this almost Vaudevillian sense of gags and payoffs — where each character has a shtick that can be called upon at any given moment. This isn’t method acting so objects don a different meaning as tokens to carry out gags, and Noises Off… brings them to a fever pitch. Sardines and telephones, flowers and bottles of bourbon. A pickaxe bandied about by all, each carrying varying attentions.

They effectively blend the space where two planes of existence bleed into one because these same tokens are exchanged and traded both on the stage and behind the stage. I joined the fictional audience in laughter even more heartily because, in many ways, we get to see the interworking of the beast in all its comedic underpinnings.

If we’re observant and stay with them, we see where the story has gone off the rails and the “unscripted” chaos that exerts itself on the storyline. The so-called “audience” snarks at each snafu because it’s a hilarious faux pas — the pratfalls are even better because they are “real.” And here you have the joy of Noises Off where it brings out these double-meanings or double realities and fictions.

We get the benefit of being both an audience member and a backstage observer. Because we know that all this world’s a stage and all these people merely players. Like Hamlet, it is only a play within a play, but it broaches into our space with startling verve and a raucous sense of precision.

I am reminded of the security guard; he sits in the wings watching all the madness quizzically with a raised eyebrow. What a crucial insert he proves to be because comedy is so much about the reactions to the stimuli. He reminds us how zany all this fracas is just in case we need a point of reference — a threshold to ground us back in reality.

Since they cannot help being in a cinematic space, the cast is tip-top including some faces I’m often quick to forget about and others who I miss dearly. John Ritter and Christopher Reeve are a joy even if this is hardly remembered compared to their greatest exploits. Carol Burnett is a comedic jewel. Bless her. Marilu Henner brings back all those fine memories of Taxi reruns. Denholm Elliot had such a long and illustrious career, but a doddering part such as this made me appreciate him even more.

The transition from stage to screen would not work as whole-heartedly without its cast, and I love them all in spite of their doltishness. In fact, it’s probably precisely because of this the movie works. Noises Off...would have been quite the sight to behold on stage, but it doesn’t lose all its merits in the hands of Bogdanovich, who makes it still a worthwhile and totally jocular experience. My primary barometer was my own personal reservoir of laughter. I couldn’t control it, and that speaks volumes enough for me.

3.5/5 Stars

Targets (1968): Orlok Makes You Scream

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The story goes Peter Bogdanovich met Roger Corman sitting in a screening of Bay of Angels (1963). What came out of that was an apprenticeship of sorts on Wild Angels (1966) in the Corman Film School where Bogdanovich did everything you could possibly imagine from script doctoring to location scouting etc. What he got for his troubles was hands-on experience but also the chance to direct his first feature…with a couple stipulations.

Corman gave him full control of his own movie as long as he reused some footage from an earlier Boris Karloff picture, The Terror, as well as utilizing the veteran actor’s two days of service he still owed Corman. There you have the birth of Targets, which manages to amount to far more than these contrived beginnings might suggest.

Because Bogdanovich found a way to make these haphazard pieces work — where it feels more like a meditation than a constraint — and the movie uses this to its advantage. It’s like a ’60s rendition of the poverty row pictures of the ’40s where necessity is truly the mother of invention. Sometimes you get a diamond in the rough.

The irony is while the big pictures were giving us entertainment that would become emblematic of the times like The Graduate, Bonnie & Clyde, or 2001: A Space Odyssey, it’s a movie like Targets placing us in the times themselves. In this way, it functions more like contemporary television.

What we are provided is a very concrete sense of Reseda in 67-68. There’s the “Real” Don Steele on the radio waves. Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder is a modern classic featured as the Saturday night movie on channel 7. A family sits down in the evening together to take in Joey Bishop and sidekick Regis Philbin. And, of course, there are drive-ins.

If this sets the stage and places Bobby Thompson (No, not the ballplayer) in a vaguely familiar landscape, the movie itself comes flowing out of the persona Boris Karloff provides free of charge.

Looking at them without context, there are so many elements of Targets that might leave one mystified. For instance, this white-haired gent with the booming voice. If you put the movie in a time capsule, those who find it probably wouldn’t know this is Boris Karloff. His Byron Orlok isn’t an anagram, but it feels like one.

Although he’s an acclaimed name, he’s resigned himself to a sorry fate. In his own words, “I’m an antique, out of date — an anachronism. The world belongs to the young. Make way for them, let them have it.” He might have seen Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate too.

Still, he’s continually in dialogue with his own personal legacy and very aware of it. Just as he watches a version of himself on TV. His character recalls a tagline from his heyday, “The Marx Brothers make you laugh. Garbo makes you swoon. Orlok makes you scream.” It’s all part of this persona closely mirroring Karloff’s past.

Likewise, Sammy — that guy’s not much of an actor — although it changes instantly if we know this is Bogdanovich himself. The young screenwriter walks in, sees the TV, and right on the nose says, “It’s Criminal Code. I saw this at the Museum of Modern Art. Howard Hawks directed this. He really knows how to tell a story.”

They become these dueling pawns, partly fiction, partly reality, as Orlok bemoans the fact he has become high camp; he can hardly play it straight anymore, and Sammy coaxes him that the role is something he can do (Targets?). Otherwise, he’ll offer it to Vincent Price.

It’s as if the director beat Orson Welles to the punch with this kind of intratextual dialogue between the medium and its real-life players. Surely history helped out because Targets was just his beginning followed by a whole slew of classics, albeit disrupted and undermined by his own turbulence and troubles replicating his most supernal successes. All these things and more are what make Targets so riveting when it has little right to be.

Targets Boris Karloff and Nancy Hseuh

Orlok’s secretary Jenny (Nancy Hsueh in a charming role) is romantically attached to Sammy, but also has a staunch devotion to Orlok. She doesn’t want the old man to just give up and she feels slighted when he lashes out at her — one of the few people who genuinely cares for his well-being.

He’s ready to turn his back on it all only to reluctantly agree to make a public appearance. He’s fallen to the low of the Drive-in Theater circuit, living off the residual celebrity of his waning fame.

Meanwhile, Bobby has gone through his daily paces. He seems like an All-American boy. He’s married but lives with his parents. He likes guns, and he’s been taught a healthy (or unhealthy) sense of competition. There’s an underlying angst supplied by this deceptively pristine life.

He stakes out on top of an oil well, brown bag and a soda pop in hand, as he sets up overlooking the freeway, prepared to pick some people off. Bogdanovich captures the evolving sequence with a Sam Fuller sense of grab-and-go photography, on the side of the freeway, with a brazen even outlandish sense of drama.

This is real traffic and real places and the director plucks out his shots from these pregnant moments of simulated reality. Between the crosshairs, gunshots, swerving vehicles, and flailing bodies. The scene evokes the Texas tower shooting of 1966 where killing becomes this indiscriminate force of violence.

The Sniper (1952), from over a decade prior, was a picture that, no matter its effectiveness, was meant to elicit a social response. Stanley Kramer’s movies can be strongly identified by this sense of responsibility toward the viewer. Targets hardly feels like a political statement of any kind, but its themes are no less intriguing — probably because it never feels like it’s preaching something. Instead, it allows us to consider its various digressions and still be gripped.

The drive-in finale actually does a solid job of reconciling the two disparate story strands. Bogdanovich had watched enough Hitchcock, heck, he’d interviewed the Master of Suspense, and put in this position calling for such a set piece, he seems to know intuitively what he has to do.

What’s more, it signaled the young director’s ascension as a New Hollywood darling. What’s so striking is how it marries Classic Hollywood with the contemporary climate and does it with a startling sense of command. If you needed a picture to try and sum up Bogdanovich himself, then there is no better lodestone.

He wants to revel in the days of Karloff and Hawks of old — when violence meant monsters and gangsters — and yet he brings it into the 60s. Because violence still existed but in a different form. In the age of social tumult and assassinations, the landscape of the 1960s feels a lot more futile and incomprehensible.

And the images make you shutter as we are implicated in this alongside a killer even as we sympathize with Orlok trying to bow out gracefully. I’m not sure which aspect is more telling. The power is that we need not pick between them. We are presented horror in its various forms, old versus new, and the person who unifies them so evocatively for us is Peter Bogdanovich. It’s quite a stunning feat of ingenuity.

4/5 Stars

My Favorite Year (1982): Dying is Easy, Comedy is Hard.

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This is my entry in CMBA’s Fall Blogathon Laughter is The Best Medicine!

In the old days, if you wanted to see actors, you’d go to the stage. Hollywood was the place for movie stars. Lucille Fay LeSueur was given a new name (and a new birth date) only to become one of the most luminary stars of all time: Joan Crawford. Publicity columns were milked for all they were worth and scandals hushed up in equal measure. Archibald Leach donned the much more becoming pseudonym Cary Grant. In fact, he famously said, “Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.”

Allan Swann (Peter O’Toole) is a creation born of the same dream factory. He is a larger-than-life figure with a fictitious biography and a stage name befitting a gargantuan figure such as himself. He’s entered the twilight years, fading away, and still living off the laurels of his illustrious career. It allows him to maintain mythical stature in the present.

However, he’s allowed himself to become a carousing idol, who’s let himself go. He used to be big. Or maybe it’s the pictures that got small. Because in 1954 everyone is watching TV.

Is this too much like Peter O’Toole already? Although he’s cast more in the image of Errol Flynn or maybe a John Barrymore. Lest anyone misconstrue something, Peter O’Toole was an actor first and a personality second, though he is admittedly an indelible one on par with some of his most prominent predecessors.

My Favorite Year is the kind of movie that plants its flag with nostalgia and if you don’t like it, it’s not going to win you over. For everyone else, there’s time enough to drift back into yesteryear for an hour and a half. It’s altogether contented with its sentimental sense of antiquity be it Buicks or Milton Berle. Because in 1982 and certainly now, there’s a romantic patina about the times. Far from realism, it is most importantly an affectionate send-up.

It imagines a story at the crossroads of the newfound TV generation and the swashbuckling serials of old. When television, as a medium, was still in its infancy and live — more like the theater and radio than film — and you had personalities that existed in people’s living rooms. Comedy Calvacade could be any of a number of shows that were popular at the time most obviously Sid Caesars’ Your Show of Shows.

This is a writer’s room at 30 Rock decades before Liz Lemon. Two of its resident denizens are Alice and Herb. She acts as his comic mouthpiece. Their target is always that eminent tower of jello, Cy Benson, who more than deserves their continual ribbing. Lowest on the staffing totem pole is Benjy Stone and, fittingly, he becomes our willing surrogate.

He’s living the dream in the middle of all the magic, picking up the lunchtime bear claws, and romancing the pretty production hand K.C. (Jessica Harper), who rebuffs all his grandiose come-ons. But he’s not one to give up easily. It’s at the heart of his character.

He wouldn’t be working here rubbing noses with the likes of resident prima donna King Kaiser (Joseph Bologna) or program stalwart Leo Silver (musical legend Adolph Green). You have to believe in the power of entertainment to be there on the ground floor of such an operation.

Thus, when the iconic screen icon Allan Swann agrees to guest on the latest episode of Comedy Calvacade, it seems like the perfect task for Benjy. The bet he has going with Sy makes it personal. He will act as attache — the notorious talent’s constant companion — making sure he makes it to rehearsals and telecasts in one piece.

Swann famously evokes another actor when he says, “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.” Regardless, this is a part made for O’Toole to fill up and make his own, bringing his Shakespearian bravado and genial wit to a world that otherwise feels twee and conventional. He positively bursts forth with all sorts of magnanimous energy.

The triumphant return of Swann is befitting his reputation. He takes his young guardian under his wing, as it were, returning to the old haunts like the Stork Club. It doesn’t matter that he once got thrown out of the place. He’s shameless enough to grab his old table and pick out the prettiest girl in the place. However, he still finds time for the public, graciously dancing with the lady (Gloria Stuart) enchanted by his romanticism.

It’s this kind of urbanity that sweeps Benjy off his feet as well, informing his own lackluster attempts to woo K.C. And yet over a humble dinner of Chinese takeout in the projection room, there is a chemistry in the air. Watching them watch O’Toole in what very easily could be a scene plucked out of Robin Hood, there’s a light in their eyes. We can sense the suspension of disbelief and the kind of awe movies could engender in a different, simpler time.

There are the travails of Brooklyn where Benjy takes America’s great hero to meet his unequivocally Jewish family (along with his Filipino step-father Rookie Carocca). It has all the trappings of an awkward evening and yet somehow it’s yet another showcase of people forming connections — of a man coming off the screen and being allowed to be among the hard-working people who love him.

That’s not to say there are no instances where we see the man’s faults laid bare. As a man always good for a quote he says, “You can depend on Allan Swann. He will always let you down.”

In the final act, it threatens to be true as the actor plays out his worse narrative. He is a man notorious for going AWOL at a moment’s notice. Still, while he’s not impervious to scandal or drunkenness, womanizing, or any number of shortcomings, there’s an inherent decency he carries about himself.

my favorite year

His greatest shortcoming is fear. He’s crippled by stage fright — being thrust into the arena of live television where his image cannot be monitored — even as he’s too fearful to speak to his estranged young daughter. Really, he’s a shell of a man. Could it be that the mills of Hollywood were lying all the time? For all these years, he was merely an imposter, done up to be extraordinary.

The live taping is best seen without comment. Just know Allan makes his triumphal entry onto the stage, and it’s a cathartic moment; he is allowed his audience and he lives up to their expectations in the most sincere ways. Many of us know the fictions of Hollywood. Benjy Stone is hardly oblivious to them, and yet for a sparkling minute, they are realized for anyone who was ever enraptured by the silver screen, not least among them Allan Swann.

The reason this was Benjy’s favorite year is obvious. He met his boyhood hero. Not only that but for a few fleeting moments the myth became real and the man was alive and in his life as not simply an idol but also a friend. He lept off the screen and he was real and charming and human, but moreover, he made us believe in the dreams of our childhood for the briefest of moments.

Watching him swoop down from the balcony — cutlass in hand — to vanquish the enemy, affords us the fairy tale ending and deservedly so. What a lovely performance it is for O’Toole, and he turns out in spades.

4/5 Stars

The Stunt Man (1980): The Show Must Go On!

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From its initiation in the opening shots, The Stunt Man is built out of a comic serendipity allowing it to execute its own sense of narrative rhythm. It leans into coincidence, cinematic logic, and what really necessitates reality. Consequently, all these themes lay the bedrock for what the film is as it blithely blends genre into a fluid creature with a penchant toward action, drama, romance, and the darkest most absurd sense of humor.

For a little bit of backdrop, Richard Benjamin was slated to direct the film in the early 1970s. Before him, two very telling directors were considered. The first was Francois Truffaut who made Day for Night (1973), a film that shares many of the same thematic elements as The Stunt Man. They both enter a full-fledged dialogue with the medium of film itself and the creative process behind it. At one time, Arthur Penn was also tapped. This seems uncanny as he would later helm Night Moves (1975) another movie involving a subplot of stuntmen flying planes and the like.

All said and done, this production was labyrinthian even by Hollywood standards. Filmed in 1978, it was finally released in 1980 at the dawn of a new decade. But given the subject matter, it somehow feels like a fitting representation of the industry.

The Stunt Man, after all, is quite simple before it gets crazy. A fugitive (Steve Railsback) flees from the police utilizing his agility and Vietnam training to evade capture. Cameron breaks himself free from his handcuffs and then tries to blend into the beach scene at a nearby tourist trap in La Jolla. The ethereal theme music hums along, “Reality is your to define” and “What good are dreams in a world where nothing is at it seems.” The lyrics prove to be a portent.

Because they also just happen to be filming a movie — a WWI period piece led by the incomparable Eli Cross (Peter O’Toole) — and it’s drawn quite the crowd. The use of blood capsules at once leaves the audience gasping with horror and then the next cheering with adulation. It’s the magic of the movies in bodily form.

Where a woman peels off her facade to become someone else — a stunning leading lady (Barbara Hershey) for the scraggly-haired young man to carry off to safety like a knight in shining armor. However, the masses aren’t privy to some of the drama behind the scenes. A stunt man was tragically killed trying to get a crucial shot.

So the fugitive becomes a convenient figure, and Eli quickly pulls him into his production in a calculated move of madness. With the local police breathing down his neck about his filming schedule, he covers up the setback, keeping the ship aloft by turning the wanted man into their perished stunt man. It serves them both, and so they agree to the ludicrous alliance.

Thus, The Stunt Man takes the themes of Truffaut’s Day for Night to preposterous ends by cultivating this illusion of a patched-together reality played out on screen. Spurred on by a maniacal director, it creates a whole plot out of a dead man who is replaced by a stand-in.

the stunt man peter o'toole heliocopter

As he fluctuates between his chopper or his levitating crane, Eli blithely proclaims, “If God could do the tricks that we can do, he’d be a happy man.” It’s true there’s something powerful and deceptive about him. If he’s not the devil’s incarnate in a helicopter, then he might have at least made a deal with the fallen angel. He is symbolic of the director as madman — someone who likes spontaneity — and he will go to great lengths to preserve his art.

To the degree possible, the picture goes through the paces of an action movie and there are stakes, just not what we normally expect. Because there are payoffs and yet we know in some self-reflexive way they are all an illusion, more so than usual. What’s not false is the threat of death.

If Truffaut was fascinated in the artifice — this sense of relishing the reflection to life itself — then The Stunt Man gives it a sick twist. Where fiction and reality are like death-defying bedfellows. We rarely know when scenes are going horribly awry or strictly according to plan.

There’s this razor-thin line between stunt and sleights of hand and then disaster. Hence the reason this fugitive got his gig in the first place. It’s utter lunacy, and yet it’s a bit like watching a car wreck. Who’s going to turn away? We want to be wowed. And yet Cameron’s life hangs in the balance. He feels trapped inside the madness and Eli’s not about to let him escape.

Initially, he is taken in out of necessity and eventually disillusioned by the monster, even as he is driven toward his fateful conclusion. It’s inevitable. In none too many words, the show must go on, and Cross will go to the greatest lengths to make darn sure that it does. The script calls for it.

The ultimate joke is how it slaloms so fluidly between the heights of chaotic drama to this kind of absurd humor, sinking back into an uneasy equilibrium once the darkest devolutions have boiled over. This is what’s the most unsettling.

How the movie can be feel-good and joyous with a stunt man and leading lady embracing in a triumphant moment of euphoria. Likewise, the irascible, gargantuan personality of the director still comes off as strangely charismatic (thanks to O’Toole), but it drips with the delusional insanity of something like Apocalypse Now. In other words, you cannot marvel at the movie without shuddering and laughing rather uneasily at what movie magic entails.

Because The Stunt Man is not just about the art of being a stand-in and doing the impossible. It functions as an extension of the moviemaking process in its most harrowing iterations. We have to be a little mad. First, to make something like this, and then to sit in the dark and let it affect us so forcibly. Regardless, it’s an evocative and deeply unnerving ride. But isn’t that what we go to the movies for?

3.5/5 Stars

The Big Chill (1983): Banking on The Nostalgia Factor

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When a little baby boy is singing “Jeremiah was a bullfrog” in the bathtub — Larry Kasdan’s son — it’s the perfect introduction to this film. In fact, you always hear rumblings about The Big Chill. It’s a touchstone for a generation: For my parents’ peers.

Moments later “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” plays over the credits as all our main characters are introduced wordlessly. They all converge at a funeral to mourn the loss of their college friend Alex, who took his own life and seemed to be on a road to nowhere. He had so much promise and then seemingly wasted all his potential.

Without trying to sound too glib, this seems an apt diagnosis for the movie itself. The premise throws together a group of friends with a storied history already set in place. There’s a troubling inciting incident to dictate the parameters of the story, providing reasons and space for characters to dialogue with their individual anxieties. Each car in the funeral procession is like a conveniently contained capsule of drama.

However, despite, the fairly high-profile cast, it merely dabbles in substantial conversations on life and the existential questions that hit us in mid-life crisis moments. Is it wrong to say we never truly get to know these people aside from a few pleasantries? Because even if they know each other so well, we are never able to break the ice in the same way. We are outsiders never allowed in from the cold.

In scenes of mild interest and concern, they never amount to much aside from detached observation. Nick Carlton (William Hurt) has become the hardened cynic in years gone by (Fortune cookies have followed suit). Sarah Cooper (Glen Close) is especially emotional when she thinks of their deceased friend. Sam (Tom Berenger), a celebrated Television actor, drudges up old feelings for the dissatisfied housewife Karen (JoBeth Williams). Jeff Goldblum — who is one the most visible still, of all the ensemble — is probably the best source of comic relief. I wish there was more to be said about their relationships, but I don’t have much.

Likewise, The Big Chill is understandably lauded for its soundtrack. It’s true the music is the perfect ambient backdrop for the storyline. However, there’s one immediately apparent issue. It has no meaning in the moment, at least in a way that we can comprehend. These iconic tunes do not create a greater appreciation for the world or complement the storytelling.

Instead, it is the ubiquitous backbeat to the Baby Boom generation — a kind of audio comfort, even now. If you wanted to be cynical like Nick, you could suggest it’s all about getting a certain subset of the viewing public into the seats by banking on the nostalgia factor. It works even in the opening moments, first Three Dog Night, then Marvin Gaye, and later the casket leaving the church to the vocals of Mick Jagger in “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

However, gradually the pervasive montages and the shameless use of music feel less and less discreet, never feigning any kind of purpose or meaning. This is fine. Still, it’s not quite a unified and eclectic wall of sound like American Graffiti, nor does it come to highlight the shared experience of the characters, like The Commitments harnessing of Wilson Picket’s R&B.

For that matter, “A Whiter Side of Pale” feels far more alive in the hands of Alan Parker. And instead of hearing “The Weight” as a sprawling road anthem in Easy Rider, it becomes kitchen table music as characters busy themselves with breakfast. Now totally rid of all its glory.

In full transparency, these are songs I adore. I’m protective of them, and I couldn’t even tell you how many thousands of times I’ve heard “Good Lovin’,” “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” and some of Motown’s best singles. They too are like friends and many of them feel stripped of any substance or meaning in the context of the movie.

The same might be said of the plotline. These are harsh words, but to my mind, they’re warranted. Because The Big Chill has the potential to be something of genuine heart — pregnant with meaning and lessons about life — how we band together with our friends to get through together.

But it always feels a bit like an impostor or at least a pale imitation. I don’t doubt this movie has resonance to Larry Kasdan or else, in a world of Stars Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark and Body Heat, he wouldn’t have made a movie like this.

The problem is there’s nothing left in the movie where the characters strike a chord or feel altogether meaningful to me. I would argue this doesn’t fall on not being of a certain stage in life. After all, in 5 years, maybe 10, I will be exactly like these people. That’s still a stretch of time, but I have a feeling this is not what’s getting in the way. Their issues, the malaise they feel saddled with, and any number of other issues are not my own. And so I look at them, and I see no reflection of who I am or what I care about.

My mind goes to my parents. In 1983 they were just getting married. A few years later they had their first child. Then more children. It strikes me they probably never had time for this kind of self-reflection. Maybe they would have been grateful for it. But I do know they are not people to regret the road life has led them down together. At the very least, they would not be ones to overanalyze it; this dubious honor would fall on me. They were people who were too busy living life for this to ever be an issue.

It also strikes me when Nick notes friendship is tough in the real world. It’s true. The bubble of college easily insulates you from a lot. We get busy and distracted, spread out by geography, and people change and drift away. But the inevitable — at least for me — makes it all the more imperative that I cling to the friendships that mean the most to me. And I do my darndest to invest in them.

They are imperfect, but I like to think they are genuine. I’ve had the misfortune to attend funerals of friends already, and I’ve been even more fortunate to celebrate weddings and other such auspicious events. The music was good, but the time spent with my people was far better. With or without “Jeremiah was a Bullfrog.”

3/5 Stars

Something Wild (1986): Happy is a Yuppie Word

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One of my favorite bands penned a song called “Happy is a Yuppie Word.” I never spent much time dwelling on the meaning of the statement, but as I grow older, it somehow takes on more pertinent meaning. If I remember correctly, Bob Dylan gave an interview with Rolling Stone magazine where he said essentially the same thing. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the song took its cues from one of America’s foremost bards. I start here because Something Wild comes at us ready to bulldoze the Yuppie conventions we come to attribute with the 80s and 90s. That is Happiness as this quantifiable qualifier for the richness of one’s life.

Look at Charlie Driggs (Jeff Daniels). He’s the picture of middle-class success and respectability. He’s rising up in a formidable firm. He’s always reasonably dressed in a suit and tie. He has his pager on hand for important reminders. And yet there are inklings of chinks in his armor. After all, he is human.

He still wears his wedding ring, but his home life isn’t quite as idyllic as he would like the world to believe. Likewise, sitting at a perfectly conventional cafe, he has an urge to do something really, incredibly outrageous! He steps out without paying his check!

Except no one seems to notice…aside from one pair of perceptive eyes. They belong to the one person who will change his life forever. Meet Lulu (Melanie Brooks). Her look is unmistakable with a Luise Brooks-inspired bob and sunglasses — an air of self-assured confidence. She could rat him out. Instead, she offers to take him for a little ride.

From here on out Something Wild becomes a road comedy-screwball hurricane propelled by a giddy soundtrack and Lulu’s total rejection of Charlie’s middle-class monotony. They go careening down streets and racing down the highways and byways blasting The Troggs “Wild Thing.” What follows are scenarios replete with shenanigans, handcuffs, amorousness, and more unpaid checks.

And yet if Lulu comes off as a glitzy, laissez-faire call girl, she slowly begins to show more of herself, including her real name: Audrey. She proves herself to be far more three-dimensional and far more of an innocent human being. She takes Charlie to visit her mother where they masquerade as a married couple in front of mom. But there is no malintent. The charade is purely out of a desire to please the good-natured woman. Then, Audrey brings him to her high school reunion — celebrating the spirit of ’76 — complete with performances by The Feelies.

If anything, these series of scenes hint at where the film might be going as it slowly sheds its craziest inclinations. In fact, the film takes its major tonal shift with the introduction of Ray Liotta as Ray Sinclair — Audrey’s former love. But there’s more. Previously the movie was frisky with a dollop of lunacy. Now Something Wild stands poised to takes a bitter turn.

We suspect it from the moment Liotta enters. He’s handsome and charismatic, but there’s an instant menace to him — behind his eyes and his cajoling tone — the way he handles the part in a kind of underhanded way. Reference to his prison sentence gives a bit more heft to his reputation. But it really comes to a head when he robs a gas station.

Of course, Lulu and Charlie did much the same before. This isn’t to totally absolve them, but Ray’s brutal brand of reality plays in stark contrast to the carefree mad-dash infractions Daniels and Griffin were accustomed to before.

This is a stone-cold crime with consequences, and there’s no longer anything left to laugh at. Crime, all of the sudden, isn’t a lark; it’s something callous. And with its ugliness, all the leisure and fun is siphoned out of the picture. It’s given up its roots in pure, zany screwball to be something else — less warm and fluffy in conception.

Charlie gets shoved around, beaten up and bloodied, and Ray ultimately goes off with Audrey — to take her back as his own — threatening that he’d better stay away if he knows what’s good for him.

Even though my education in Demme is brief, my inclination is a desire for him to go toward the film’s initial tone. Because it’s the idiosyncratic touches that function best for me. They do not alienate my sensibilities. For instance, Charlie proves himself to be the most conspicuous trailer when it comes to the art of the tail.

He sets up on a street corner with a new wardrobe across from Ray and Audrey’s hotel room. For me, it’s scenes like these where Demme really shines; he has a sense of geography and how to use it to build a full-bodied world around our characters. He captures his hero in his car snoozing or peering out from behind a pair of binoculars.

But the church behind him, the store across the way, even the folks lounging at the pool make this feel like vibrant pieces of humanity albeit in a fairly relaxed town. He uses this same motif later when they finally have their fated confrontation at a genial family restaurant. The only reason Charlie gets enough gumption to actually face Ray and Audrey has to do with the reassurance that some local policemen are sitting at the table just across the way. These are the quotidian joys of the film at its very best.

However, this is a story that never quite rests on what is easy or comfortable. Because in itself this would be the antithesis of what it is looking to shoot down in the form of yuppie culture and all its signifiers. There must be another fanatical reverse in fortune. It’s genuinely terrifying. Far from spoiling it, I will leave you to it so that you might experience it for yourself.

Instead, my mind goes to this. For how merciless and scummy Liotta feels throughout the picture, Demme extends him the ultimate courtesy. The climactic moments are unnerving in a way. I hope I haven’t said too much already.

But in a single moment, Liotta is allowed to look into the camera his eyes full of surprise — a sign of weakness for the first time — and that one shot nearly single-handedly makes us feel sorry for him. It’s a hard sell, but we’re almost there: Having compassion on a seemingly irredeemable man.

The movie settles into a new normal. The moral, if we can call it that, seems obvious. To grab life by the horns — with warmth and spontaneity — within some framework of reason. Something Wild lives up to its name even tonally as it seesaws around. It wasn’t quite what I expected or what I might have wanted, but this could easily play in its favor for someone else.

Demme still shows himself to be a genuinely humane director. He likes people and with comic verve and music, he’s capable of whipping up something quite enjoyable. What is more, he shows himself willing to go somewhere else with characters.

I am slowly learning more and more about his oeuvre, but Something Wild suddenly makes a film like Silence of the Lambs feel less and less like an outlier. The jump is not too far to make, and we come to understand his movies even a little bit better. If you humanize a gangster, could it be the next step is to connect us with a serial killer? Wild Thing, indeed.

But I started out by talking about Bob Dylan, and it’s as good a place to end as any. Happy is a Yuppie word. It’s something fleeting — momentarily attainable — and then stripped away from us.

Dylan suggests a change in paradigm: between blessed and unblessed. Could it be that Charlie would agree? Because whatever assails Audrey and him, they are no longer dictated by the world’s measures of happiness. They can live by a new standard — a standard that is not dispositional or material. It’s based on us and whether or not we are prepared to search out the joys and blessings of life no matter the turmoil. That’s something wild. It can flip your world upside down.

3.5/5 Stars