Tag Archives: Faye Dunaway

Review: Network (1976)

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“We’re not talking about eternal truth or absolute truth or ultimate truth! We’re talking about impermanent, transient, human truth! I don’t expect you people to be capable of truth! But, you’re at least capable of self-preservation! That’s good enough!” – Peter Finch as Howard Beale.

Throwing around the term auteur and you’ve already set yourself up for a grievous debate with some diehard cinephile. There are those ardent disciples as well as those who vehemently oppose what they deem a simplistic notion.

Because the main tenet is that the auteur or “author” who exacts his vision on a movie is namely the director. However, if there was ever a subject to cast in the role of “screenwriter as auteur,” Paddy Chayefsky just might be the perfect candidate. He came of age in the medium of television, an adamant humanist and purveyor of social realism. His most prominent work of those early years being the heart-warming classic Marty, which first starred Rod Steiger and then did great things for Ernest Borgnine in the film adaptation.

Network is conveyed by a veteran Chayefsky who has weathered the industry for a long spell now and looking at it presently, we observe his wry bit of commentary. Because the beast of a medium made him but he seems to derive some glee from confronting it head-on. He’s taken the systems in place and very conveniently added his own spin.

Along with the Big Three, CBS, NBC, ABC, he has created his own outlier, a dark horse, and the littlest giant UBS. The landscape is one familiar to anyone who lived through the 70s. Nixon got the can. There have been two recent attempts on President Ford’s life. It’s the wake of Watergate and Vietnam, with the throes of inflation and depression. America is looking for an escape valve for their dissatisfaction.

I’d like to think that the world of The Mary Tyler Moore Show has some semblance of truth to it with its camaraderie and the humanity of its comedy, but then we see Network and are provided another harsh alternative that bears the uneasy feeling of its own truth.

In this same world of civil unrest, television networks with their programming regimens and new shows are bloated with all sorts of agendas. You have the continually clashing horns between warring executives and self-serving angles in their neverending quest for higher ratings and a bigger share of the viewing public.

Max Schumacher (William Holden) is a remnant of television’s bygone era where men like Ed Murrow and Walter Cronkite were symbolic purveyors of truth in all facets of America. Maybe the nation was naive but at least they believed in something. Times have changed. Sensationalism and stories to stir up some form of controversy are of particular interest especially with Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) who aims to use such material to bolster the network’s abysmal ratings.

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Meanwhile, abrasive big whig Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall) is tired of the news division’s lackluster performance, and he’s ready to instigate some new changes within the business conglomerate. Schumacher feels slighted as his former allies seem to crumble around him.

Now’s about a good time as any to introduce Howard Beale (Peter Finch). He’s one of Max’s best friends from the old days and due to plummeting ratings, he’s been given the axe. I never felt sorry for Howard Beale before because he’s so often lost in the shuffle of the movie. He’s used by not only the network but the film itself as a kind of diatribe. It seems like the man is all but forgotten.

Finch plays the role so pitifully at times and that becomes easily overshadowed by his attention-getting histrionics.  However, when he makes his initial announcement that he will take his life on air, in two weeks’ time, it’s very matter-of-fact. There’s little agenda to it. Here’s a man who’s lost his wife and now is losing his job after 11 years of service to the network. Soon he’ll have nothing.

The utter disinterest in his plight is what’s most striking when you look down the line of producers and behind-the-scenes employees who sit in the dark in front of the monitors chatting rather than actually paying attention to their anchor. Apathy seems to reign.

Simultaneously, Christensen is exploding with harebrained schemes of inspired lunacy that she seems all too serious about enacting, from a docudrama called The Mao Tse-Tung Hour to keeping Howard Beale on the airwaves. She’s the foremost proponent of angry shows to articulate the angst of the general public through counterculture and anti-establishment programming. That’s her agenda.

In this very way, Network is a film of bewildering disillusionment in the world full of crises and absent of reason and maybe even God. Howard is a voice to all those absurdities and when he calls B.S., he turns the heads of the entire country. It blows up but as any publicity is good publicity, Diana convinces her boss to keep the mad prophet on.

She positions Howard Beale as a prescient even messianic figure calling out the hypocrisies of the age. Her boss openly objects, “We’re talking about putting a manifestly irresponsible man on television,” which Dunaway promptly nods her head in response to. Maybe she’s a bit crazy in her own right.

Then, when the fad keeps on going and he’s now got people yelling out their windows or sending their grievances straight to the White House, Christensen is complaining that he’s too irascible, not apocalyptic enough, recommending some writers be brought on to pen some juicy jeremiads for him to spout off. In spite of the ludicrous nature of it all, the results speak. Soon Howard Beale’s antics have landed him 4th in the Nielsen ratings surpassed only by The Six Million Dollar Man, All in The Family, and Phyllis.

Hackett is deliriously happy about the success and becomes power-hungry. But as Beale’s sole friend still kicking, Schumacher can’t help but feel Howard’s being used, even as he himself gets involved with Diana (she harbored a girlish crush on him in college).

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The film’s trajectory seems all but predestined. The fad of Howard Beale begins to wane and ratings go down with him. Max Schumacher’s job and then his marriage go down the tubes as well, all because of Diana. For her part, Diana is so completely consumed by her work that everything, even her personal life, works in scripts. However, the rendition of The Blue Angel that she’s unwittingly been playing with Max doesn’t end as she initially thought.

As a satire of the medium we know as television, Network certainly has few equals. Chayefsky spends a good spell of time orating off his soapbox as he does in many of his pictures. The ideas are there. The words are coming from voices and we’re taking them in, and they are spiced up with rhetoric and wit. If anything, one can marvel at his work even when it doesn’t take. It bears his mark.

The one thing about Network that is still harrowing today is the mere implications. Television was being considered an institution systematically destroying everything it touched through its manipulation and backstabbing industry practices. It only exasperates the situation by breeding a public that’s both vacuous and apathetic.

There is no call for human decency anymore. There are no true glory days. People are depressed, lonely, bitter, and helpless. If that all came to pass, theoretically, because of a box sitting in a family’s living room, 21 inches in size, that could be turned off, and had bad reception more often than not, what is the internet doing to us?

Now we’re in constant interface with our devices, warring for our attention and promising us comfort and convenience. Meanwhile, our ghost machines suck us dry. We’re shells of human beings. There are some figures in Network that I dislike, played most convincingly by Duvall and Ned Beatty. They seem opportunistic, crass, and merciless. But most everyone else of note I feel somewhat sorry for. The Max Schumachers, the Diana Christensens, and of course the Howard Beales. What did we do to deserve this madness?

4/5 Stars

Review: Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

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Fifty years on and Bonnie and Clyde remains a cultural landmark as the harbinger proclaiming a new American movie had arrived on the scene. As a cinematic artifact, it is indebted as much to the 60s themselves as it is the Depression Era where its mythical crime story finds its roots.

The spark of an idea came from screenwriter Robert Benton’s own knowledge of his father’s fascination in real crime novels, which even led the elder Benton to attend the actual funerals of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. It’s youth rebellion and a free love revolution by way of the 1930s mythology.

Formalistically, Bonnie and Clyde was an effort by producer Warren Beatty and director Arthur Penn, collaborating with their screenwriters, to channel the French New Wave. It’s true that at a time, two of the movements titans, Francois Truffaut and then Jean Luc Godard, were both attached to the project. Ultimately, it didn’t pan out but the spirit they’re pictures were imbued with remain even as this effort is undeniably American.

Bringing the exciting and at times challenging art pictures of Europe to the American mainstream with a jolt of new blood, squibs included free of charge. Even if everyone didn’t realize it at the time, it signaled a rebirth of a style and philosophy that was fully alive. It only took generations of new film school filmmakers to run with it and in subsequent generations eventually, kill it.

For now, we had the fateful meet-cute, Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) scantily clad, bored out of her mind, and spying the boy trying to nab her mama’s car. She catcalls him and he welcomes her — nay, challenges her — to join him. He’s Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) a small-time criminal who did a stint in prison and has two missing toes to prove it (It was his gag to get off a work detail a few days before he was paroled). They share a drink over Coca-Cola in the noonday sun. He’s intent on being a big shot and she’s disillusioned by her waitressing gig.

In a moment, he brandishes a gun to exert his manhood and he’s further coaxed on by Bonnie to rob the cash register in her quaint town. She doesn’t believe he has the gumption. A minute later he rushes out with the wad of cash and they’re on their way to a giddy life of crime so thrilling, at first, with its bouncy jangle of banjo strings. This is only the beginning. They aren’t big name criminals yet. That notoriety is born out of three words: We Rob Banks!

Yes, they do. They bring on slow-witted but able mechanic C.W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard) to keep their gears constantly turning so they can handily outrun the police and dot their native Texas with bank job after bank job. Clyde kills his first man after Moss botches their getaway and the papers start to document their harrowing exploits on the wrong side of the law.

A family reunion follows for Barrow as his older brother Buck (Gene Hackman) and Buck’s quibbling wife Blanche (Estelle Parsons), the daughter of a preacher, join their merry company. It should be noted the ladies take an immediate disliking to each other. Bonnie’s not agreeable to the domesticated lifestyle and she’s wary of Blanche, a woman she deems has no guts. It’s a perceptive observation.

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As their reputation grows, so do the prices riding on all of their heads. First, the cops look to ambush them on their holiday in Missouri. Then it’s a lone Texas Ranger (Denver Pyle) who winds up getting his picture taken to be plastered all throughout the newspapers. He’s not one to forget the humiliation and he’s aiming to make them pay.

Each and every time they take to the road again, starting up their rampage across the countryside a new, casing bank after bank, while gaining a bit of mystique with the common folk. Along the way, they pick up some extra passengers (Gene Wilder and Evans Evans) to terrorize and then make a pilgrimage to the Parker home due to Bonnie’s homesickness.

But even this move is extremely dangerous and soon another police ambush follows on their latest residence that is deadlier still. It’s a downward spiral with an ever larger target being pinned on their backs. Soon they’re picked off like ducks in a shooting gallery with Buck being mortally wounded and Blanche subsequently goes hysterical and spills her guts to the authorities all but sealing the fate of our antiheroes. Bonnie was right about her.

The other three escape by the skin of their teeth though badly battered. With nowhere else to turn, they seek asylum with C.W.’s father who extends some southern hospitality. Although, behind closed doors, he isn’t too keen about his son’s new lifestyle with tattoos and all.

We know the story must end even as Bonnie has successfully canonized their legend nationwide with a poem she penned subsequently published around the country. And they are as in love as they ever were promising to get married and dreaming of a different life where they could settle down and be normal folks. They take what they can get and love each other while they can. Because justice is swift and it comes with a vengeance.

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The old mores are upheld but utilizing a new language that was aberrant and gratuitous in comparison to the traditions of the past. But that was just it. Bonnie and Clyde was somehow the perfect vehicle of antiestablishment both in form and function. It was like the perfect storm of a cultural revolution and a medium to reflect the angst of a generation.

There’s a madcap raggedness to their crime spree that’s almost comical and Penn plays it like a comedy at first. A bunch of hicks out on a road comedy caper, only it’s underscored by graphic blood-spattered violence like the industry had never witnessed before. It’s like putting the frenetic zaniness of the Keystone Kops with the violent gunplay out of the gangster tradition and it creates a disconcerting dissonance ripping apart the standards of Classical Hollywood. Because the industry had showcased degenerate criminals before — the Cagneys, Robinsons, and Bogarts — but they were always hard-bitten figures and, of course, they got their comeuppance.

Up to that point, there was arguably no characterization quite like this where our leads were young and desirable — a new kind of antihero who forged an anarchic path between Gun Crazy, Breathless, and Pierrot Le Fou.

Arthur Penn pointed out at a later date, and you could easily make the argument, for the first time film was being more accurate by showing the actual impact of a bullet on a human body. There was no cutaway. There was no inference or use of the wizardry of editing to imply the results. They were right there in from of us in all their gory reality. That was indeed groundbreaking.

Its final scene ranks right up there with Psycho‘s shower sequence for how it completely shatters everything we knew to be convention. At that point, there’s no going back. You cannot unsee it. It stays with you. Both instances brutal in their meshing of image, sound, editing, and the myriad pieces at the disposal of filmmakers to make us see something deeply manipulating.

Bonnie and Clyde would bear many of the progeny that have challenged me; films that brazenly dabble in violence, comedy, and the darkness of the human heart in almost inconceivable ways. Mixing tones, emotions, and content in a manner that is incompatible at best and deeply perturbing in their most volatile forms.

Surely, we cannot laugh at something and an instant later be subjected to the blackness of death? People cannot be villains and cast as heroes in the same breath. Everything passed down from our traditions tells us this is not the way it works. After Bonnie and Clyde, it was a whole new landscape. No question.

5/5 Stars

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

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To watch the original Thomas Crown Affair now is to see a film that is so completely and confidently of its time. It opens with a Bond-esque enigmatic title theme, “Windmills of The Mind,” playing against blocked split-screen images composing the credits. As such, it’s easily dated by its 60s suavity, which nevertheless serves the film handsomely as it progresses and sinks into its story.

A heist is in its latent stages, composed of the same stylized patchwork of images visually coordinating all the parties involved as Steve McQueen pulls all the switches from the comforts of his corporate office. The streamlining techniques being utilized effectively consolidate the footage and make us more overtly aware of Hal Ashby’s influence serving as the film’s editor. It’s at times discombobulating, particularly when used extensively later on during the polo match to multiply the frames. But it more than serves its purpose through the stylized manipulation of the individual images.

It’s only a heist film for what seems like a few solitary minutes but it’s immaculate in both conception and execution as all parties converge on their target, get in and get out with their prize and very few complications. In this regard, those familiar with Kansas City Confidential (1952) might notice some nominal similarities. The brilliance of the crime comes in using robbers who have never met and can never be tied back to each other again.

The money is dropped off at a checkpoint and all parties involved will get their money when things cool off. In these opening moments you’ll wonder if Steve McQueen is actually a bad guy and where Faye Dunaway is because, after all, she robs banks too. When things begin to unfold and we see where we are destined, it’s not at all what I imagined with McQueen and Dunaway batting for different teams much of the film.

Insurance Investigator Vicki Anderson (Dunaway) is brought on as a favor to her friend to help a harried detective gain some much-needed closure on the case. She makes a stunning entrance and never lets up with the wardrobe changes. Ms. Anderson has an immaculate outfit to coincide with each subsequent scene and an answer for every situation. In fact, she’s the one who intuitively pins Thomas Crown as her man. All she’s got to do is prove it and she certainly can be very persuasive.

McQueen is the eponymous affluent playboy businessman who’s bored stiff by his day-to-day. It includes diversions like polo, dune buggy rides sliding across the sand and soaring through the skies in his custom-built sailplane. For a man like him, it’s not enough so he devotes himself to the perfect crime and it’s his lucky day when he meets a ravishing woman looking to trap him. It makes life a bit more exhilarating.

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Among other rendezvous, they play a literal chess match in his parlor, which serves the dual purpose. Not only does it reflect the sparring going on between the two of them but it effectively accentuates the romantic chemistry pulsing through them with every headlong glance, every thoughtful thrumming of the fingers, or caress of a chess piece. It’s near-wordless with Michel Legrand’s score impeccably setting the quietly sultry mood in the low light.

On top of the title track, Legrand devised his score by composing against the uncut footage and in a generally unprecedented move, the movie was cut to his work. What we are met with within the same extended sequence are faces eventually framed in lingering close-ups. Eyes, mouths, nervous ticks denoting concentration. What’s more, it all culminates into a spiraling kissing extravaganza kaleidoscope of color.

As Vickie closes in on Thomas, he knows she cares about him and he must force her hand instigating a nearly identical heist to draw out her response. She can either work with the authorities or chase after him as he soars away in his jet decked out in his iconic blue-tinged Persol sunglasses. It’s her choice.

The Thomas Crown Affair is the most backward game of cat and mouse with the coolest rodent you ever did see crossing wits with an equally wily and lovely feline. But the stakes are minor in this sumptuous affair as it’s all style over substance in this second teaming of McQueen with director Norman Jewison. Of course, when you have two stars as scintillating as McQueen and Dunaway one could argue that you don’t need much else. Purportedly McQueen jokingly christened his unestablished costar “Done Fade-Away” as a little picture called Bonnie and Clyde (1967) hadn’t been released yet. Boy, was he wrong. She was here to stay.

3.5/5 Stars

The Three Musketeers (1973)

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threemusk6In the beginning, this Dumas adaptation was to be the next zany live-action vehicle for the Beatles following the success of A Hard Day’s Night and Help. In fact, they even were ready to work with the same director. Well, Richard Lester stayed and the Beatles were disbanded for several years before this film even got going. In this incarnation, it was set to be a three-hour star-studded epic. Instead, it was thought better of, and this became the first installment with a second film coming out a year later.

Thus, The Three Musketeers has impressive star power, but the direction of Lester also supplies action with a constant barrage of gags for good measure. To top it off the film actually does follow the general story arc of the novel, but invigorates it was bits and pieces of humor that lighten up the tone. So perhaps it’s a light and fluffy piece of entertainment, but it’s still easy to enjoy what Lester’s been able to do here. It’s a great deal of fun.

threemusk4Our audacious d’Artagnon is a strapping Michael York, who has picked up plenty of swashbuckling skills from his father. So he heads out on his own to seek out adventure and uphold his family honor. In a matter of minutes he already a succession of duels lined up, and of course who are they with? The Three Musketeers: Athos (Oliver Reed), Porthos (Frank Finlay), and Aramis (Richard Chamberlain). He sides with his new comrades against the corrupt Cardinal Richelieu (Charlton Heston), and attempt to help the Queen (Geraldine Chaplin) get out of a tight jam.

What follows is a rambunctious array of treachery, romance, and royalty that involves Anne’s lover the Duke of Buckingham, a sly chambermaid (Faye Dunaway), the King, and of course the Cardinal. Peace stands in the balance not to mention the Queen’s self-respect, and so d’Artagnon and the boys do the honorable thing and bail her out. I said before that this film has it’s fair share of sword fights which are fun in themselves, but the laughs really accent the story nicely.

threemusk5The plot is there and we can appreciate the work of Alexandre Dumas, but it is not necessarily the focal point. Charlton Heston gives a seemingly uncharacteristic turn as Cardinal Richelieu, the corrupted man of the cloth, who cares more about politics and social unrest than he does about his faith. He’s no Moses or Ben-Hur for that matter. Furthermore, we are treated to a little tooth and nail type action courtesy of Raquel Welch and Faye Dunaway. It turns out to be yet another rewarding scene because these two ladies were two of the defining icons of the 1970s, and here we get to see them face off.

I’m already revving up for part two because I wouldn’t mind returning to these characters. There’s a lot of good old-fashioned fun to be had here.

3.5/5 Stars

Review: Chinatown (1974)

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chinatown1“Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown”

The more you watch movies like Chinatown, the more you realize how much you’re still learning. I saw it the first time and I naively thought I knew everything about it. After all, it seemed fairly cut and dry. But the beauty of this film is a labyrinth-like story that can still keep me engaged after multiple viewings. There are things that I missed, things that I have to piece together once more, and more often than not details I simply forgot.

Robert Towne’s script has an intricacy to its constantly spiraling mystery plot that remains powerful and Roman Polanski — with cameo included — directs the film with a sure hand as well as a cynically bitter ending worthy of his work. At that point, he was returning to the same city where a few years prior his wife Sharon Tate had been brutally murdered and that certainly had to still be heavy on his mind.

Throughout, Chinatown has elegant visuals of a desert-dry Los Angeles circa 1930s, and it is aided by a smooth Jerry Goldsmith score made for such a period crime film as this. Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson), is the smooth-talking, smart-aleck P.I. with a penchant for trouble, but that goes with the business. In the tradition of all his heirs like Spade and Marlowe, the whole story is told from his point of view and we get the details at the same pace as him. That means a lot of the time we are just as confused as him, trying to pick up all the pieces.

Aside from Nicholson, Faye Dunaway’s performance is an interesting reworking of the archetypal femme fatale, because she has a different side to her. Also, John Huston’s performance is wonderfully nefarious, because he plays Noah Cross with a top layer of geniality that is ultimately undermined by his base nature. It’s wonderfully wicked.

In the story’s first few moments of being in his office, we begin to learn a little about the means Gittes uses to appease his clients. Then, his newest client walks through the door, a Mrs. Mulwray, who wishes for him to tail her husband. And so he does, just like that, and he’s pretty good at it too. Hollis Mulwray (an anagram for Mullholland) happens to be an integral part of the L.A. Department of Water and Power as the chief engineer. From what Gittes sees, the bespectacled Mulwray seems to have his scruples, but he also has a secret girl, who the P.I. is able to snap some incriminating photos of.chinatown2 Back at the office, another woman shows up, a Mrs. Mulwray, but this time the real one. She wants to slam J.J. with a lawsuit, but he realizes he got framed, and in the end, she quickly drops her case. Pretty soon Gittes former colleague Lt. Escobar digs up Mulwray’s body and the cause of death is the height of irony. He drowned during a drought, a cruel demise, and his body is joined by that of a drunk, who also was wandering around the local reservoir. It’s time for our nosy P.I. to do a little more snooping, but he is scared off by two security guards from Water and Power who give him a deadly nose job.

None worse for wear aside from a small cast, J.J. knows the department is diverting water. It’s more than a little runoff like they contend. He gets lunch with Noah Cross (The great John Huston), who is the father of Mrs. Mulwray and the former business partner of the deceased. Like J.J., he’s curious about finding the mysterious girl, and he sweetens the pot for the P.I.

A bit of detective work takes Gittes to the hall of records and then a vast acreage of orange groves where he is mistaken for a member of the Department of Water and Power. They aren’t too happy to see him, but Mrs. Mulwray is able to bail him out. They check up on an assisted living home and tie it into the whole conspiracy. Someone is buying up land under the names of the unknowing residents.

chinatown3But as it turns out, Mrs. Mulwray is hiding a major secret of her own that she’s been keeping. Another girl is murdered and since he’s found at the crime scene, Gittes is in a tight spot with the police and so he wants to get things straightened out. But he doesn’t quite understand what he’s gotten himself caught up in. At the last minute, he decides to take the hero’s path, but it’s to no avail. The good is snuffed out, the bad walk away free, and corruption still runs the streets of L.A. There’s not much the cops can do about it either.

chinatown4So many people remember the film’s final words, which epitomize this place of confusion, corruption, and helplessness. The final words of Jake are just as illuminating, however, because he repeats the words he spoke to Mrs. Mulwray earlier when she asked what he did when he worked a beat in Chinatown, “As little as possible.” It’s so pessimistic and yet it’s the truth that everybody knows. He must resign himself to doing nothing because there is no way he can win, no way to overcome the forces that be. It’s a haunting conclusion, but ultimately the most powerful one we could hope for.

Earlier I alluded to the fact that every time I watch this film I pick on things that I missed before. For instance, within Robert Towne’s script are some interesting instances of foreshadowing. The first comes in the form of a pun uttered by the Chinese gardener who is constantly muttering, “It’s bad for the glass/grass.”

Then, while they are in the car Mrs. Mulwray dejectedly drops her head on the steering wheel and it lets out a short honk. This acts as an important portent to the end of the film along with the blemish in her left eye. If you have not seen the film yet, this might sound very cryptic, but if you keep your eyes open these little details are rewarding. Chinatown is a fascinating place to return to again and again after all.

5/5 Stars

Three Days of the Condor (1975)

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Three_Days_of_the_Condor_posterIn the wake of Watergate, the 1970s saw the advent of many political thrillers with arguably the granddaddy of them all being All The President’s Men. Three Days of the Condor is another film that finds Robert Redford trying to get to the bottom of a web involving politics and intrigue. However, this film reminds me a great deal of The Parallax View which came out a couple years earlier. Similarly, this film has probably its most startling moments during its opening sequence and slowly unwinds after that into a thriller full of paranoia and uncertainty.

Sidney Pollack’s film kicks into high gear abruptly as all “Condor’s” colleagues at a CIA-backed literature research post are gunned down by unknown professional hit men. Joe Turner (Robert Redford) was literally out to lunch picking up sandwich orders, and he returns to find his colleagues dead. From that point on begins his life of constant fear, because he cannot know who is with him and who is against him. He can trust no one.

While taking a moments respite, Turner notices a patron named Kathy Hale who is about to meet her boyfriend on the slopes, and he follows her and holds her hostage so he can have a place to stay. It’s supposed to be a matter of chance, but I mean, it is Faye Dunaway so it cannot be that random right? No matter, she’s initially deathly afraid of him, and he does not give her any relief holding her at gunpoint and tying her up. They’re both afraid.

But whether it’s some form of Stockholm syndrome or the fact that she actually believes his predicament, Kathy agrees to help him, and they have the obligatory lovemaking session inter-cut with the stark pictures on her wall.

What happens after this is sometimes difficult to track with as Redford’s character begins his search for a government agent named Higgins, avoiding hit men, while trying to understand who is even after him. Why do they want him? He’s just a lowly bookworm with one cockamamie theory about the odd languages a certain thriller has been translated in.

This one idea has got him caught up in something much bigger than he can ever know involving a hired mercenary named Joubert, CIA Deputy of Operations Leonard Atwood, and oil! That’s what it was all about. That’s why 7 people died and Turner can do barely anything about it. After all, who will print his story? Who will believe him? That’s is the country and the era he lives in after all.

Redford gives an admirable performance, and I personally prefer him to Warren Beatty any day. Dunaway walked a weird line between being demure and submissive, while also dishing out some sass every once and a while. It made her character feel uneven in a sense and she came to like Turner rather abruptly. Then again it was Robert Redford.

All in all, this film’s plotting seems utterly ludicrous to me now, and it becomes more and more ambiguous by the end. It feels hardly like a conclusion at all, much like the Parallax View. And much like the other film I can understand how this story could really strike a cord, especially after Watergate, when so much governmental corruption seemed possible. The sky was the limit and so Three Days of the Condor was perhaps not as far-fetched as it initially appeared. That’s a scary thought indeed.

3.5/5 Stars

Little Big Man (1970)

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9a376-little_big_manAlthough the film certainly had so good parts for some reason it did not quite jell with me. Focusing on the positive first, this was a revisionist western that tried to depict an alternative picture of the American west from the eyes of Native Americans. Although not perfect it was trying. Dustin Hoffman also gave an impressive performance that found him drifting between the worlds of “the White man” and “the Indians.”

Here is where I get into the main problem that I had with the film. Most of it had to do with age and casting. It was brave and somewhat strange that Dustin Hoffman portrayed his character from his teen years up until he was over a century old. For the most part Hoffman pulled it off. I also was kind of uncomfortable with his sister Caroline who looked like she was 30 even though she was only supposed to be a child. Then, you have Faye Dunaway. That had to be the strangest thing in the film. Although younger in real life, she was Dustin Hoffman’s adopted mother for a time and she played it up.

In some ways this film reminded me a bit of The Butler because we have a main character who grows old in front of us and he ultimately has a role in many diverse bits of history. Like that film, Little Big Man is quite interesting and at times entertaining, but the implausibility of the plot can get to you.

In defense of this film, I really did not know what I was getting myself into and so it surprised me with its mix of violent drama and a sprinkling of comedy. I would have liked to have seen more of Faye Dunaway and Martin Balsam, but it is what it is. Chief Dan George was the breakout character for sure. He was very enjoyable to listen to as he mentored Little Big Man.

3.5/5 Stars

Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

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b1a0c-bonnie_and_clydeStarring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, with director Arthur Penn, the film chronicles the crime life of a group of notorious gangsters during the 1930s. Clyde Barrow (Beatty), a small time thief meets the beautiful young girl Bonnie Parker (Dunaway) and together they begin robbing banks. Soon they enlist the help of a dim-witted mechanic C.W., and then Clyde’s brother joins the fray bringing along his wife. They have a string of successes and they become infamous nationwide. Soon they begin to bicker among themselves and the police start to buckle down. In a shootout Buck is shot dead and Bonnie, Clyde, and C.W. just barely escape. However, their actions eventually do catch up with them and thus ends the story of these two figures depicted as anti-heroes. This film is significant because it was influenced by the French New Wave but it in turn ushered in a new era of American film . It has a unique combination of comedy, romance, violence, and of course banjo music.

5/5 Stars

Chinatown (1974)

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89858-chinatownposter1Starring Jack Nicholson with Faye Dunaway and John Huston, this skillfully written neo-noir is a nod to the work of Chandler and Hammet. J.J. “Jake” Gittes is a P.I. in the L.A. area during the 30s who specializes in marital cases. When a woman calling herself Mrs. Mulwray asks Gittes to watch her supposedly cheating husband, he enters something he does not understand. Soon he meets the real Mrs. Mulwray (Dunaway), learns Mr. Mulwray is dead, and discovers Mrs. Mulwray’s father is the powerful water tycoon Noah Cross (Huston). As he tries to uncover the truth behind some odd events, Gittes meets with opposition, more confusion, and eventually some answers. The mystery is twofold and he begins to understand the plot over the L.A. water, however he does not figure out the secret kept by Mrs. Mulwray right away. When he finally does find out he is too late and tragedy ultimately comes in Chinatown. This film was enjoyable in the buildup and the ending was okay if not tragic. However, it did seem that the mystery surrounding the water was predictable.

4.5/5 Stars