The Sweet Smell of Success

 

  The Sweet Smell of Success

Alexander Mackendrick, 1957, USA

Screenplay: Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman

Coming from Ealing, Mackendrick went to America and made this vehement attack on the noxious shwbiz gossip journalism scene. Moving stateside, the wit is less satirical and more acidic. Full of memorable put-downs and one-liners that are just desperate to punch you. The pace is at an authoritative stride and you’d best keep up. 

Elmer Bernsteins’s score keeps up the jazz dizziness and cool, never overpowering the dialogue but always paralleling the sense of characters constantly riffing. And with that heavy-hitting script and actors at their best, with that agile camera following and gliding through James Wong Howe’s wonderful black-and-white photography, it’s definitely a film where everyone is at the top of their game.

The screenplay is by Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets from Lehman’s novel, and it’s a legendary script. It’s film noir with the nihilism and wisecracks transported to column writers rather than private dicks. And even if there is the implied gloss of the entertainment industry and we’re visiting high end clubs and restaurants, we’re firmly in the gutter and underbelly here. Tony Curtis practically sweats self-loathing as Sidney Falco, the press agent trying to simultaneously suck up to and siphon some power from columnist J.J. Hunsecker. Burt Lancaster as Hunsecker seems to turn the very air around him to cruelty. And boy, Lancaster and Curtis know just how to deliver those zingers. The former’s sleaziness and the latter’s ever-present ominous threat are palpable essences. Falco avoids the conscience-pricking of his secretary whilst Hunsecker connives to destroy his sister’s romance (Susan Harrison) to the decency of a jazz musician (Martin Milner). That’s the plot that barely hints at the poisonous flow of character and scheming, the hints of the incestuous and moral vacuity. All for the sake of personal weakness, cynicism and show business.

And of course, these men would never think they might be beaten at their own game.

A cold classic.

The Third Man - and the humbling of another

 

The Third Man 

Carol Reed, 1949, UK

Screenplay; Graham Greene

‘The Third Man’ is a tale of an American pulp writer Holly Martins in the post-war ruins of Vienna, trying to solve the mystery of the death of his friend Harry Lime. He does this mostly by initially stomping around and barking his privilege and entitlement. He’s often insulting to the British authority investigating the death too, for Lime was apparently mixed up in some shady business – but Holly’s not having it. He’s going to ignore the officials and their incompetence and solve it on his own.

Except what he really does is fall for Lime’s girlfriend, Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli). But he does ruffle some feathers and uncovers inconsistencies in accounts and reason to suspect that Lime’s death was faked. But by then, Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) steps in to stop him barking around to show the evidence they have that Lime was indeed guilty of what they say. Now, usually it undermines my sense of the film’s credibility when the authorities seemingly hand over the investigation to a writer/journalist or whoever: this is a recurring trait in giallo and a plot feature I often just can’t take seriously. But in ‘The Third Man’, it’s the turning point for Holly: besides, they are telling him to stop stirring things up and maybe to get him on their side. He is proven wrong and all his entitled bolshiness is hobbled. From then on, his confidence is broken. He is not very good when he gives his lecture on the contemporary novel. Even when he finally finds and meets Lime, he hasn’t the imagination or smarts to counter Lime’s famed sociopathic “cuckoo clock” speech. Most bullish dupes crack wise right to the end, lamenting fate and desire, dominating the story with their self-pity, but there is no voiceover here for that. Harry becomes more and more speechless and overwhelmed by circumstances far bigger than him and that he doesn’t really understand. By the end, where he doesn’t really get the girl, he is silent. Just patient and hopeful.

In fact, it is the silences that impress most. Or rather, how the film knows when to let silences speak. Whereas many genre pictures will talk and talk – and not that it’s lacking in that department because Graham Greene’s script is classic, sharp and memorable: the debate about morality and human worth between Holly and Harry; a fleeting “striptease” gag. But with the final chase, the ‘The Third Man’ goes into the sewer system and lets the sound design take over. Not even Anton Karas’ unforgettable Zither score – which is one that haunts every second, even when it’s not playing – intrudes on this subterranean cat-and-mouse. It’s like the film is holding its breath.

There is the leading feeling of resignation that overwhelms everyone, and it just takes Holly a little time to catch up. It’s the post-war milieu where we go from sumptuous interiors to bombed buildings with just a few footfalls. Joseph Cotten is apt for the role, going from obnoxious belligerence, to out-of-his-depth, to soulful and bruised square jaw machismo. And:

“In Vienna, Martins is constantly at odds and out of step, never able to forget that he is in an alien place where everything seems upside-down. This wasn’t too far away from how Cotton felt himself when making the movie. The star complained of a endlessly shifting schedule that he was afraid as going to keep him in Vienna far longer than the two weeks he had anticipated: ‘This method of making a picture,’ he complained to Selznick executive, Daniel O’Shea, didn’t make him feel at home in a location so far away, so cold and dirty and so uncomfortably occupied by such a variety of peoples.’”

Charles Drazin, “The Third Man: Mixing fact with fiction”, Studio Canal Vintage Classics booklet, page 9. Quotes from original documents […] taken from the files ‘The Third Man’ in the David O. Selnick Collection, Harry Ranson Cemter, the University of Texas at Austin. 

If you are one of those that find constant annoyance at characters walking into other places and assuming their dominance and privilege, watching Holly’s assurance being dismantled during the unravelling of the mystery is satisfying. It’s a pleasure to see Cotten getting progressively more soulful, speaking with eyes rather than wisecracks, despite the actor’s apparent reservations.

The film turns every character on their side when it can. Anna’s loyalty to and love for Harry doesn’t quite seem unblemished romanticism when we know how manipulative he is, and that she knows the truth of him. Is she just foolish? She’s not stupid. Is there a hint of Stockholm Syndrome here? The Major becomes an increasingly decent sort the more he comes to light. Holly isn’t so bone-headed and simple when his privilege is challenged and found wanting: he doesn’t launch into denial. And so on. 

The pace is fast and so some of the nuance may not be so apparent on a first watch. Even in supposedly more minor works like ‘A Kid for Two Farthings’ and – a personal favourite – ‘The Fallen Idol’, Reed’s camera always feels like it’s moving with the story, not simply observing and serving exposition. For example, a plethora of Dutch angles tells you all the time that this is an off-centre world. It’s speedy, smart, fully entertaining. And there’s that unique Viennese location of a certain time and place and a wealth of brilliant character actors.

It’s as much a tale of the humbling of one man, who’s likely all the better for it, as it is a mystery being solved.

And, of course, that Zither score.

The Tree of Wooden Clogs

 

 L'albero degli zoccoli

Director & writer: Ermanni Olmi

1978, Italy 

I am a sucker for Epics By Masters, ever since I first saw Bertolucci’s ‘1900’: I had not seen anything like it at the time (it was part of some “World Cinema” season on TV, after which I was never the same again). Well, I always watched Leone’s ‘Dollar’ films when they were on as a kid, so that might qualify. Other than Leone’s work: ‘The Children of Paradise’, Kaurosawa’s ‘Ran’; ‘Heimat’, and at the time of writing I am watching ‘The Human Condition’; Tarr’s ‘Satantango’, Kieslowski’s ‘Dekalog’, Bergman’s ‘Fanny and Alexander’, etc. Pawlikowski’s ‘Cold War’ impressively condenses the sprawl of history, vistas, time and individuals that typifies the genre within ninety minutes. 

Olmi’s ‘The Tree of Wooden Clogs’ has the sprawl at three hours, and yes this contributes heavily to the label “epic”. But it’s the inverse of grand and sweeping, for it details the dramas of small community a handful of families of farmers, dependant on the graces of their landlord. It is like the counterpoint to ‘1900’ in that it eschews big gestures, overt political symbolism and shocks: they are there – a visit to a city in turmoil; animals butchered in real time – but they are organic rather than punctuation. But aside from length, it is both classic in scope and in its intent of recreating 19^th Century Italian feudal life, with its wealth of vistas and informative mid-range shots that keep its characters surrounded by a wider context of the farm. The symbolism more lies in the dedicated and delicate planting of tomatoes and hope.

Religion is organic and dominant. John Pym writes that, “the film’s juxtaposed and half-complementary political and religious arguments are underpinned by what Olmi has suggested is the film’s key, the permanence of the relationship between God’s land and the people who work it.” But there is nothing exotic in this peasant life and the land they toil. Religion is how they hold hope. Politics, however, is mostly a vague concept to these people in their limited experience, at least until the honeymooning couple go to the city and see but do not understand the upheaval. But then there is the moment where, rather than listening to a public speaker talk of change and democracy and respect for a citizen's right over privilege, the old man concentrates secretly on getting a coin lying in the dirt. Olmi never forgets the political context that the characters are unaware of.

Yet ‘The Tree of Wooden Clogs’ is also very much slice-of-life in that it is more about vignettes and incident rather than story or narrative. It is driven by the tales of how, for example, a woman seemingly saves an ailing cow with prayer; how this community gives one another jobs; shucking corn; the joy in community gatherings in the barn; the hiding of a coin; the routine of courtship. Or how girls spill laundry into the dirt making more work for their long-suffering mother. This farm is their whole world. There’s the overarching storyline of one of the family’s boys being deemed too smart for farming life and, at the priest’s instruction, is sent to school: it’s this that leads the incident with the wooden clogs which eventually leads to the closing injustice (an expulsion from Eden). 

 Roger Ebert says, “We say the movie is a masterpiece when we mean that it is about people we pity and respect.” If sentimentality leads us to overvalue a film… but by what criteria should a film be a graded a “masterpiece”? Not pity and respect? Ebert is famed for saying cinema is a machine for creating empathy, but surely sentimentality is a facet of that, too, for an audience? And surely sentimentality is an ingredient of the lives depicted? There is a hint of the condescending here. He goes on, “What I'm suggesting is that this movie should be viewed for its actual visual content, rather than for its noble pretensions.” I guess this is how I similarly ignore that garish sentimental half of a Spielberg film to enjoy the other half? Or, perhaps, the WWF mentality of ‘Predator’ to enjoy it as a monster movie? It seems to be that Ebert found the sentimentality of Oli’s film too saccharine, perhaps, but it didn’t strike me as such. My personal reaction is that the sentimentality of ‘The Tree of Wooden Clogs’ was not so garish that I felt myself rejecting it. Like its religious ethos, I felt it to be part of the fabric of these lives. By example: am I to believe the film is telling me that prayer can save a dying cow? I don’t go for this, but I can fully accept that the character believes this. And there are other reviewers contest its sentimentality. I am more in agreement with Kristi Matsuda: 

“Although Olmi, who also wrote, photographed, and edited the film, poeticizes some aspects of the peasant farming community—perhaps a hazard of filming in such pastoral parts—he presents a clear-eyed portrait of the farmers’ relationship to the land as one that’s practical rather than mystically earthy; in doing so he affords them an astonishing humanity.”

Olmi’s cinematography reminds me something of Polaroids, with contrast that seems both turned up and yet a little dulled on occassion. It is like that kind of look that I have a penchant for in Ozu’s colour films, where the establishing shots look like Polaroid snapshots. It’s a 16mm camera. The cast are non-professionals – but not that you would know or criticise, for such is their veracity – speaking in the Bergamasque dialect (the subtitles on the Arrow release only translate much instead of all that’s said; non-speakers are missing out). It’s the little details that hook: the boy frequently in the background leaving the farm for his long daily walk to school, for example. That’s the story.

For all of cinema’s heightened dramatics, a film like ‘The Tree of Wooden Clogs’ reminds that its recreation of ordinary lives is the equal of any fantasising, and equally as picturesque and wondrous. It is long but always compelling in its recreation of the forgotten lives of workers lost to history.

2001: a space odyssey

Stanley Kubrick, UK

screenplay: Stanley Kubrick & Arthur C Clarke

My experience of ‘2001: a space odyssey’ begins was when I must have been around nine or ten and a man told me its story. I was dragged along for my parents’ visit to a friend, and the friend’s lodger sat with me in the lounge and he explained the tale as he played the soundtrack. The details of the moment remain very vague, but I consider this a formative childhood experience: I still remember vividly how I imagined the story’s final journey as a spaceship caught in a kind of black hole of multi-coloured crystals. And thus, my love for storytelling was taken to a brand new level. I wouldn’t see the film for a few years yet.

This was one of those films that I saw several times as a kid, every time it came on TV (pre-video era, youngsters). I don’t know when was the last time I saw this, but it must be decades. Nevertheless, it remained a vivid memory in my mind. And of course, production stills of its imagery in popular culture have never gone away so there’s always a reminder. Recently, my friend said he was going to see it at London’s Prince Charles Cinema and I thought that was a great way to see it again. It’s a film that demands the big screen.

Even as a kid, I found it enticingly abstract but hardly baffling. I knew enough science fiction as a preteen to know it was all about the ascension of man, escalating to a higher life-form, et cetera. I don’t remember such ideas ever being mystifying, although evolution wasn’t quite something I could name: after all sci-fi and religion and mythology are loaded with such transformations. These evolutionary leaps made by humankind are facilitated by the obelisk that appears to him, firstly when he is perhaps fixed in a more primal state and again when he has developed enough to go out into space and to find the next obelisk. The whole early history of man is captured in one seminal temporal jump from a bone thrown in the air to a spaceship on its way through the void. Later, it will take the form of a psychedelic light show.*

What I was struck by, seeing it now, was how Kubrick insists on conveying man’s presence in space as workmanlike and prosaic: this is all just another working day for people. When crises happen, the spacemen are cool-headed and rational, exactly as you would expect professionals to be: compare to the unimpressive hysterics of the military team in Cameron’s ‘Aliens’; the reaction of Mark Watney (Matt Damon) to his situation in Scott’s ‘The Martian’  is a natural and convincing extension of ‘2001’s sensible Kier Dulla’s Dave Bowman.  It’s a substantial imagining of working in space – meeting in space station lobbies; taking a moment to call home; media reportage – that, despite some of it’s datedness (females will be space stewardesses and, of course, how computers look), is still credible. The screens on tables, for example, surely resemble laptops and screen-calls are ubiquitous now, etc.

And then there are the spacecraft models: in an era of CGI where we are used to seeing the amazing all the time, the tangibility of these models in loving long takes are a delight. For example, see how, if you look closely, the engine vents on the craft are painted black as if from exhaust fire. Modern CGI effects extravaganzas are so used to being set on continuous “dazzle!” that this is mistaken for awe-inspiring. To think that Kubrick’s imagining of future space work was happening at the same time as the first moon landing and that it still remains credible is testimony to its attention to detail. Later, Ridley Scott’s ‘Alien’ and John Carpenter’s ‘Dark Star’ will add the grime of the workplace and a slacker grubbiness to space jobs. ‘2001: a space odyssey’ remains awesome.

This is achieved by themes and pace where the understatement of the human action is juxtaposed with the stunning “in space” visuals and effects, with the seminal, transcendental use of bombastic classical music. It’s use of classical music is so influential that it has by association defined the works of György Ligeti, Richard Strauss and Johann Strauss. Ligeti’s ‘Requiem For Soprano, Mezzo Soprano, Two Mixed Choirs & Orchestra’ evokes the obelisk’s eerie presence; Richard Strauss’‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’ signals the moments the obelisk supercharges mankind to the next level; Johann Strauss’ ‘The Blue Danube’  treats the movement and interaction of spacecraft as a dance, for example. There are truly very few narrative beats to the story, taken from Arthur C. Clark’s ‘The Sentinel’, but the deliberate pace and the prolonging of moments allows the audience to both attune to its low key evocations and to be overwhelmed by the experience where necessary, and overall.  

To see ‘2001: a space odyssey’ on the big screen now, in all its cool majesty, is to note how much genre cinema is bombast and juvenilia. That’s part of what the sci-fi superhero genre is, so I can accept that, but offerings like ‘Ready Player One’ and ‘Alita: Battle Angel’ are thematically and dramatically stunted by comparison. For further comparison, even ‘Akira’, although set on “dazzle!”, has a sense of pace and theme, a maturity, that allows the awe-adainspiring to take hold. 

 It remains a zenith of the genre and artform, a pure visual experience with some big existential questions. ‘2001: a space odyssey’ remains awesome.

• My interpretation, even as a kid, has always aligned with what is apparently footage of Kubrick himself explaining the ending.