Tag Archives: Karen Black

Family Plot (1976): Hitch’s Swan Song

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You rarely hear mention of Alfred Hitchcock’s last cinematic foray, Family Plot, and you would assume that means a throwaway title — a fall from his illustrious heights. Not so! In fact, it’s rather a shame more folks haven’t turned the movie on because it proves the Master still has it. There’s still a twinkle in his directorial eye as he leads us on one final merry jaunt of murder, crime, and passion.

I was always under the illusion family plot was about some kind of conspiracy. The first inkling is from a cemetery plot even as it evolves into a broader conspiracy unraveling in front of us. It never registered as a pun until the story began to run its course. Allow me to explain.

Our story opens with a quack psychic (Barabara Harris) drumming up business with rich old spinsters ready to fork out money to get their fortunes told. She’s running the ongoing con with her boyfriend George Lumley (Bruce Dern). They’re purely small-time operators.

Soon he is on the beat poking around about a man named Shoebridge. What he’s doing at first isn’t exactly clear — he’s a taxi cabbie by day — however, soon we realize he’s digging up tidbits for future seance fodder.

Their latest coup involves a wealthy widow, if only they can locate her long-lost nephew who was given up for adoption years before. She looks to bequeath him some of her vast fortunes on behalf of her guilt-ridden dear departed sister. They too have a stake in finding him: $10,000 to be exact, which is a fortune to them.

Meanwhile, the headlines are taken with a crime of a different sort: The Constantine Ransom for a priceless gem. It really is the perfect crime. The police are befuddled and there hasn’t been a single false step. Their hands are tied as a mysterious lady in black — a twist on the Hitchcock blonde — shows up to make the trade. She leaves with her gem and orders a helicopter to aid in her getaway, all planned so she can drift back into anonymity.

It turns out she also has an accomplice: her lover, who works as a local jeweler (William Devane). By sheer coincidence, he is the very same man Dern is hunting for. Instantly we have the glorious joke at the center of the drama.

Because these circumstances have nothing to do with his dubious extracurricular activities and still, this uncanny connection becomes a lovely fulcrum for the movie to balance on with comic underpinnings. In one defining moment, the stolen diamond is kept in a very visible hiding spot established by a telling Hitchcock closeup. He looks to be having a gleeful good time of it.

Ernest Lehman’s script (remember he collaborated with Hitch on North by Northwest) is more liberal with the profanities, but it readily amuses itself with the quandary at its core exploring the relationships of these two couples and how these separate scenarios are tied together. In some strange way, it’s all things police procedural, murder mystery, and a bit like a vintage drawing-room comedy. They’re both after two very different pots!

The ransomers’ latest plans involve the brazen kidnapping of a local bishop taking full advantage of the congregation’s shock. Diagnosing the situation later, as they tear off their disguises and zoom away he notes smugly, “they’re all too religiously polite.”

Lumley’s travails take him to a religious setting of his own, in his case, the funeral of a balding gas station attendant named Maloney (Ed Lautner). There’s no need to get into his death although it involved some winding roads and a car chase of sorts…

In the most captivating shot, Hitchcock captures the overgrown cemetery from a birdseye perspective. Maloney’s reticent wife (Katherine Helmond) scurries away and Dern scampers along until he corners her. It’s the same old story. She wants to be left alone, and he just wants information.

The search for A.A. Adamson leads to all sorts of people and visual gags placed in front of us with a wry wink. But this is hardly the grandest joke as Hitchcock allows us to watch the stories converge as we are caught right in the middle. Again, it’s wonderful bits of coincidence getting in the way or more precisely bringing the story to an impeccable climax.

I’ve been mulling over the assertion that the great directors have a distinct point of view. With Hitch, he used the shot-reverse-shot paradigm certainly, but there was always a cadence to it. If he needed to break out of the rhythm he would.

My mind flashes to a scene with Dern as he’s hiding on the stairwell. The couple has returned from their latest crime totally unaware of their guest. Their feet wander around the kitchen as they talk. We’re paying partial attention to that but like Dern, Hitch makes us crane our necks and feel uncomfortable as the audience. In that individual moment, we don’t have the whole picture, and we are forced to be in his shoes for even an instant. There’s definitely a profound level of audience identification and inherent tension. This is all Hithcock’s doing.

The ending is more than satisfactory, but Barbara Harris’s wink to the camera is like a final curtain call for Hitch. This last gesture sums up his career for me. It was built on suspense and an intuitive understanding of visual cinema and audience manipulation. However, his very own persona and the connection he created with the masses wouldn’t be anything without his sense of humor.

Due to his deteriorating health, he would never complete another film, dying 4 years later in 1980. He was planning on a film called The Short Night, a project that obviously was never realized. With his death, the film world lost one of its most consummate craftsmen and storytellers.

In a Hitchcock movie, you feel well taken care of because the director knows what he’s doing, oftentimes even when we don’t. He scares us when we want to be scared. Thrills us. Gives us romance. And even deigns to allow us to be in on the joke.

Under the circumstances, I can’t think of a more appreciative place to leave the Master. His powers haven’t atrophied. On the contrary, he still knows how to play the game and how to have fun doing it. This might be the most pleasant surprise of Family Plot. Alfred Hitchcock never lost his wonderfully grim sense of humor.

3.5/5 Stars

Five Easy Pieces (1970): Ours Hearts Are Restless

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The world of blue-collar workers is immediately spelled out through a visual shorthand of hard hats, bulldozers, and oil rigs. At the center of Carole Eastman’s story is Bobby (Jack Nicholson) a young man who works alongside his buddy Elton and lives with his sometime girlfriend Rayette (Karen Black).

She’s pretty and nice enough, but there’s a sense Bobby feels like she’s somehow beneath him. Sure, she’s not the smartest girl — working as a local waitress — but she means well and seeks love like any normal human being. Still, it’s the kind of lifestyle perfectly summarized by the sounds of Tammy Wynette singing about heartbreak, songs like D-I-V-O-R-C-E, and the like.

Upon closer observation, it would appear Jack Nicholson is entering his prime — his snide, derisive years — as a seminal antihero of New Hollywood. The only difference, here he’s found in the bowling alley playing a round with his friends. He comes off as a jerk berating his girlfriend for being such a crummy player. So she can’t bowl, but Bobby makes it personal, bringing her to tears. It’s indicative of the toxic cycles that they go through together. He belittles her, pushes her away, and then asks her to come back. He’s never willing to commit. Never able to say I love you. And yet he can’t be without her.

The first third of the movie is mostly about slotting his character. Soon we learn a little more about him. His sister (Lois Smith) is a classically trained pianist. In fact, it runs in their family. Bobby was a bit of a prodigy himself, though he turned his back on the family obsession. Now he learns his father is dying. He doesn’t want to see him — it’s easy enough to tell — because they weren’t exactly on pleasant terms, but the supplications of his sister have an effect and he acquiesces.

The arc of the story is simple and Bob Rafelson’s picture is built out of the framework of the performances more than anything else. I think this is what I missed the first time I watched Five Easy Pieces. I was waiting for something to happen when all the time it was happening right in front of me.

Bobby’s prepared to go it alone and at the very last minute reconciles with Rayette yet again so they head up together. They also pick up a pair of lady hitchhikers making their way up to Alaska because it’s a destination not full of crap like everywhere else. They bemoan a pessimistic world full of maggots and riots; Bobby doesn’t want to hear it because he’s a bit of a misanthrope himself. He takes no pleasure in the trip he is making and they’re not helping.

Again, the prevailing mood of the picture is this kind of rustic, blue-collar atmosphere exemplified by that Tammy Wynette soundtrack and the bowling alley milieu. It plays as the complete antithesis of classical music on the piano and the family’s cozy residence tucked away in idyllic Washington state. It’s the music and change in scenery acting as the main signifier of Bobby’s quaintly middle-class upbringing. Tammy might be great in her own right, but she’s not exactly Mozart or Beethoven.

When Bobby makes his fateful return, he finds his father now is catatonic and looked after by a burly caregiver. His brother Carl (Ralph Waite) is a loquacious eccentric who walks like a duck and wears a neck brace after a recent injury. Parita (Smith) is the most likable but still a creature of this insular and totally pretentious ecosystem. She doesn’t know any better.

It might say more about my own affinities rather than any fault of this film, but I never feel any amount of investment or emotional exchange going on. However, this is exactly the point. We understand the drudgery Bobby associates with his familial life and everything it entails. It’s better to be poor and free than to be trapped by expectations and crowded by pompous self-entitled armchair analysts trying to outdo one another.

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Bobby at the same time is self-conscious of Rayette and protective of her because, in her own unadorned, simple manner, she’s a whole lot more real than any of these other imposters. At first, he puts her up in a hotel, and then she shows up unannounced willfully chafing against the propriety around her simply by being herself.

There is one person who does captivate Bobby. It’s his brother’s wife-to-be, another pianist named Catherine (Susan Anspach). The attraction between them is evident though he cannot figure out how she is so contented with the life he has run away from. In observing his condition, she notes he’s a person with no love for himself, no respect for himself, no love of friends, family, work. It strikes a little too close as he strives listlessly after some semblance of happiness.

I will say that Jack’s scene with his father, now crippled and silenced by a stroke, makes me appreciate his individual talents as a performer on their own merit. It’s not about any amount of trickery or charisma as much as we are privy to his acting process. We see him at work evoking a brokenness and a transparency of character I don’t often attribute to him.

Here he is before us laying it bear and crying out. It’s a release if not a total resolution. The film’s ending is another telling evolution in his ongoing saga of discontentment. We watch him as he ditches his car, his girl, his coat, and grabs a ride on a big rig up north. The destination is uncertain. Could it be Canada maybe Alaska? It doesn’t really matter.

What we do know is that he’s incorrigible, and yet it’s only a symptom of a broader problem. I’m can’t personally speak to whether this is true, but there is a sense Bobby is indicative of a broader social enigma. An entire generation of people lost and searching for something in the landscape of the 1970s — the dawn of a new decade — and still weighed down by the baggage of the past. This isn’t a new phenomenon and it’s universal. Because we realize over 50 years later there’s still something relatable by this unabating restlessness.

4/5 Stars

Easy Rider (1969): An Emblem of The ’60s

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EasyRider

“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”

There’s no beating around the bush when it comes to Easy Rider. It remains a cultural landmark not only of the counterculture of the ’60s, but it also stands tall as one of the Great American Road movies, albeit from a very specific perspective.

It opens with a dope deal. First, picking up the product below the border. Then, with planes taking off overheard — they make their connection with their contact (Phil Spector) — jamming away to the conspicuous “Pusher” by Steppenwolf. In a matter of minutes, our two cult heroes have got it made. They have a pile of cash for their troubles, and they’re ready to take on America.

Fonda’s Captain America is the epitome of disaffected cool — a triumphant symbol of a restless generation sticking it to the man — living on their own time and by their own standards as they see fit. It’s a new paradigm of manhood. But in his own way, he does have a certain idealism. He wouldn’t be taking to the road or living in this manner if he wasn’t driven by something: his own version of the American Dream.

Dennis Hopper’s performance is pervaded by a paranoid chatter, laughing in fits and starts when he’s not taking a drag. For now, they’re as light as a feather cruising down the highways and byways lazily with a steady array of classic tunes availing them with an anthemic backdrop. Take “Born to Be Wild,” “I Wasn’t Born to Follow,” and my personal favorite, “The Weight,” and there’s no looking back as we get to breathe in the fresh air and appreciate this land that was made for you and me. It’s during this invigorating outset one is made to appreciate America’s diverse geography.

Out of these open-air beginnings, Easy Rider becomes tantamount to a cinematic drug trip through flickering images, lens flairs, psychedelic rock, and certainly a copious amount of drugs. It’s composed of vignettes of many shapes and sizes coloring the journey of Captain American and Billy.

They’re thrust up against all sorts of lifestyles. In one moment they stopover in a man’s barn to remedy a busted tire, and the backcountry farmer shares his table with them. He’s contented in life with a Catholic wife and tons of children.

Another moment they pick up a hitchhiker who leads them to a rural commune bustling with kiddos and bleating livestock. The folks there are looking to subsist off the land, even as they share and share alike — holding carnivalesque stage performances for evening entertainment. It’s yet another form of the good life — living in solidarity and unity with one another.

However, the boys also butt up against the complete opposite subset of society. By this, I mean yokums suspicious of long-haired dudes they don’t understand in the slightest. They might as well be from the planet Uranus. Cutting a path to the Mardi Gras festivities, the boys wind up imprisoned for parading without a permit thanks to “weirdo hicks.”

Their jail bunkmate, George (Jack Nicholson in one of his early triumphs) is a rich-kid southern boy who nevertheless extends the olive branch. They come to appreciate one another. He’s as fed up with the scissor-happy locals beautifying America and subsequently making everyone look like Yul Brynner, a bald-pated Russian, I might add.

Furthermore, they partake in campfire chit-chat babbling about satellites and UFOs while getting totally stoned out of their brains. It feels like the beginner’s guide to writing such dialogue — mostly informed by ad-libs and circuitous digressions.

A roadside cafe becomes another microcosm of small-town America, and they stir up quite the maelstrom of gossip. If there’s anything close to empathy for the two bikers, it’s garnered in scenes like these because we understand what it is to be considered a social pariah on what feels like little fault of their own.

George is perceptive when he wants to be and also an affable companion on the road with his dorky football helmet. I’ve rarely appreciated Nicholson more. But he also has no illusions about how guys like Captain America and Bobby fit into the social order.

He sees that people are scared of what they represent: freedom. Because talking about freedom and being free are two different things. As an esoteric concept, individual freedom is nice to talk about even comfortable, but what about seeing an individual free — totally uninhibited and living by their own cadence. It’s true even the soothsayers are eventually silenced.

They make it out to a choice brothel with “prime rib” in memoriam to a dear departed friend, though it quickly turns into a night on the town for Mardi Gras. If we can say it, these are the most spontaneous sequences of the movie. Everything else feels sincere in its attempts at truth and authenticity, but it’s in this footage during the real Mardi Gras where everything starts to meld together. They wander around goofing off and making out with their new companions (Karen Black & Toni Basil).

Of course, this “reality” culminates in the infamous acid trip sprawled out in a cemetery. A solemn girl recites The Apostle’s Creed and Lord’s Prayer as they lose themselves totally to the psychedelics. It feels like an act of desecration but also an unveiling of all their fears and anxieties. Fonda clutches a statue and goes to pieces dialoguing with his long-deceased mother.

The soundtrack may only sound like audio atmosphere in the beginning but more and more it overtly informs the beats of the story. As they rebound and make their way forward, Bob Dylan’s “Alright Ma I’m Only Bleeding” becomes another uncanny expression of both their private and public angst. They all feel in a state of unceasing paranoid helplessness.

At its most compelling, the picture is like this perplexing tableau of performance art, indie slap-dash filmmaking, and docudrama. The production was notorious — Fonda and Hopper as director and producer respectively were at each other’s throats even as they remained the driving forces behind the film from its conception. And far from just portraying Hippies being brutalized by podunk America, it has the ring of truth.

Formalistically it’s informed by jump-cut-infused, schizophrenic pacing. One can only imagine what it might have felt like in the 3-hour monolith Hopper originally had cut. In its theatrical form, it feels more impressionistic and light leaving us stunned more than we are stultified because it never totally loses its resonance.

It runs parallel to Bonnie and Clyde — the sense of these outlaw heroes being decimated by the establishment — although in Easy Rider the retribution seems even more needlessly violent and unelicited. George’s caution never seemed more prescient. People are scared of seeing other people acting free.

But also thematically, Easy Rider fits with The Graduate and any other movies capturing the generational shift with youth breaking out of the shackles of the past, looking to exert and define their own road ahead. It just so happens the road ahead can be daunting even unnerving when the American Dream seems to have gone totally awry.

Easy Rider is another lodestone in the cultural conversation. You can hardly begin to grapple with the moment without bumping up against it, and the movie suggests so much in its many facets, through its decisions — its sense of truth and freedom — but also by what it doesn’t say. It makes the world out to be galvanizing and terrifying all at the same time. Far from just being about the corrosive nature of mind-altering drugs, sometimes humanity can be equally merciless. Take your pick. These dudes couldn’t win.

4/5 Stars

Review: Nashville (1975)

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nashville3What to say about Robert Altman’s Nashville? It has a lot of songs and music so it’s technically a musical. It has its smattering politics and Altman is typically one for subverting the norm so you could call it a satire. There’s romance, drama, in-fighting, and star power certainly, but that hardly gets to the heart of the film.

In fact, Nashville has an ensemble bulging at the seams with 24 individuals billed in alphabetical order and their names called out at the beginning of the film as if someone is trying to sell us an album. It’s a little over the top, feels superficial, and it’s a little pretentious. Maybe the director’s trying to tell us something. Over the course of the following minutes, Altman gives us a picture of a few days in the life of the country music capital of the world, and he shows us all sorts of people.

nashville1To name all of them would be tedious and would not give a whole lot of illumination as far as the plotting, but a few of the more prominent names are as follows: Barbara Jean, the sweetheart of Nashville, who opens the film receiving a warm welcome at the airport from her adoring public. But she is physically and emotionally fragile after recovering from a traumatic injury. Then there’s Haven Hamilton, who is an established country star, who still enjoys large popularity and political ambitions are on his radar. Jeff Goldblum, Lily Tomlin, Karen Black, Ned Beatty, and even Keenan Wynn all make appearances. So as you can see the cast is oozing through the cracks.

Their stories are constantly colliding, intertwining, and weaving in and out of each other. Making for a type of narrative that feels organic despite having a script. It feels like a realistic and truthful immersion into Tennessee reality. We even get appearances from a couple Altman regulars Elliot Gould and Julie Christie. Furthermore, it wasn’t much of a secret that the industry in Nashville did not take a liking to the film, but really is that any surprise?

Going into the film we already expect to get a look at the industry’s underbelly and we do, but it’s hardly seems sensationalized; it almost feels commonplace until the final moments. Singers griping, sleeping around, reporters ingratiating themselves to whoever they can find, and the general public coming from far and wide to be a part of the spectacle. It’s about what you expect from an industry that can be ruthless, superficial, and very rewarding to some. To those on the outside, it’s something to be fawned over.

nashville2The story is framed with the political campaign of the unconventional Hal Philip Walker of the Replacement Party. You can see his van going all across town proclaiming his wisdom to the honest citizens of Nashville. Most of them could care less about politics. Even in the closing moments at a concert in the park with a big flag patriotically displayed on stage with a giant campaign banner underneath, you get the sense that no one has gone there for political reasons. They want to hear Barbara Jean, Haven Hamilton, and maybe tolerate anyone else who comes up on stage. In a sense, that’s the American way wrapped up in a nutshell.  Taken in that light, the way that Altman ends his film is not all that surprising. There has to be something to break up the normalcy. Subvert all that is good and patriotic. Throw a wrench in the every day, because after all his whole film has revealed everything that besmirches the industry. It’s just that it usually stays under the surface or is thrown away to be trampled on or forgotten. Take the no-talent Sueleen Gay, who stubbornly tries to make it in an industry that doesn’t want her.

I’m the first to acknowledge that I’m not much of a fan of country, except if it’s someone like Johnny Cash. So overall I find the tunes of Nashville to be homely and often tiresome, although I do appreciate the fact the actors wrote most of their own songs supposedly. The one exception I cite is Keith Carradine’s memorable tune “I’m Easy” which works as a simple ballad reminiscent of a Jim Croce-type singer-songwriter.

However, I don’t get hung up on Nashville‘s music too much, because this film represents so much more to me. It’s about the intermingling of people and the analysis and dissection of the relationships that are so closely entwined with the country music industry. Whether it’s the insiders or the fans who make them big, Nashville is a thoroughly interesting view of America circa 1975. Some things have certainly changed, fashion-related and otherwise, but I think we can all agree that a lot of things certainly have not. Politics, music, and most certainly people essentially exist as they always have.

4.5/5 Stars