The first 20 years of John Marcellus Huston's directorial career were a careful dance between practicing studio politics with the moguls of old Hollywood and pursuing his muse as an artist. But, once the "studio system" had died, Huston had to find other ways to pursue his art. Forming partnerships with actor-producers, independent's, filming more for the likes of United Artists than a Warner or a Zanuck, he took on the working ethic of his pal Orson Welles, working where he could, subsidizing some projects with acting gigs (beginning, seriously, in 1963 with The Cardinal, for which he was Oscar-nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role), taking on "jobs" until he could bankroll one of his pet projects, some of which had been thought about for decades.
Huston became more of a vagabond artist, a jack for all trades, rather than a hired man, and the role suited him, as it had when he was a penniless youth selling paintings to get by in Paris. And he was a chameleon, a director of no discernible identifying style, but an ethic of intelligent irony that straddled the short-lived fashions and fads of Hollywood. His ingratiating wit and wickedness never fell out of fashion, creating a legacy of work that rarely strayed from the evergreen. His films don't "date" or age, but seem as fresh as when they were first made. It's why so much of his work is part of the National Film Archives. John Huston, maverick, gambler, iconoclast, endures.
John Huston, the man, died of pneumonia August 28th, 1987. He was 81.
Miller's screenplay tells of dancer Roslyn Taber (Monroe) divorcing her husband (Kevin McCarthy in one scene) in Reno, Nevada, and at a loss of how to continue with her life. At a bar with her friend Isabelle (Ritter), they meet aging cowboy Gay Langland (Gable) and Guido (Wallach), who take to Roslyn like...well, like bar-flies to gin, and insert themselves into her post-divorce convalescence. The party moves to Guido's half-completed house in the hills, left unfinished after his wife's death in childbirth. He's pushy and intense, while Gay is laid-back and folksy, and soon Roslyn is living with Gay in Guido's house, and happy. But, dark clouds invade and it usually has to do with Gay's obstinacy about living free and not "being told what to do." He's a cowboy without a ranch and the best that he can do is round up wild horses to be sent to the dog-food factory. He's a tumbleweed. And his idea of freedom is different from hers. With the help of a punch-drunk rodeo rider Pence (Clift), a round-up on the Nevada salt-flats is planned, but Roslyn breaks down, seeing the wild horses, roped and tied for slaughter.
If there's a problem with The Misfits, it's the script. Miller is a little circumspect in his themes, and the only one who comes right out and says anything is Roslyn, and she's seen as merely a trophy...or the missing something in each of the males' lives. There's a constant male-female yin-yang, as both sexes stumble through transitions, but if there's a statement about which sex does a worse job of it, it's hard to spot. Nice metaphor of the horse-roping with Gay's own mule-headedness to see that the cowboy ways have veered from westward to south. As hard as the actors try, there's a lack of yearning that would be necessary to pull it off. Clift comes off best, and Monroe sparks off him, more than she does Gable. Sadly, it would be the last film for The King, who had a heart attack two days after completing re-shoots, and Monroe, who battled addictions and her own demons until she overdosed two years later.
Huston's film traces the young psychoanalyst (played by Montgomery Clift, working again for Huston after his amazing performance in The Misfits) from his early days dealing with mysterious symptoms and being rebuffed by the medical establishment in Vienna, his explorations of the unconscious through hypnosis and how they affected him personally, through to the presentation of his radical theories on infantile sexuality which made him a pariah even among his closest associates. The film also stars Susannah York and David McCallum as two of Freud's most troubling troubled patients.
Jerry Goldsmith (perhaps recommended for the job by Goldsmith's mentor-friend Alex North, who did the score for The Misfits, or, has been suggested, for his queasy TV-scores for "The Twilight Zone" and "Thriller") produced experimental atonal music for the film, that still feels so contemporary that Ridley Scott lifted whole segments to use in his sci-fi-horror movie Alien, replacing music that was being written for it...by Jerry Goldsmith.
As if to show the film was no serious drama (and more probably to attract audience attention to a film without much American star appeal other than Douglas), Huston peppered the film with cameo "guest stars" with elaborate make-ups (designed by John Chambers) to hide their identities ("they" being Tony Curtis, Burt Lancaster, Robert Mitchum, and Frank Sinatra), who reveal themselves in a coda at the end. The score is Jerry Goldsmith's second for Huston, producing a creepy soundtrack that might fit well in a particularly lurid Agatha Christie mystery.
The cast included Richard Burton (who brought his new mistress, Elizabeth Taylor, for the filming), Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, Sue Lyon, and Grayson Hall (who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar) and a phalanx of press to record the fireworks. Any worries that the set might have been as chaotic as The Misfits (or Cleopatra) were dispelled when Huston bought his cast their own personal derringers.**
He needn't have worried. Despite expected troubles in the remote location, the film came in on time and on budget.
The Rev. T. L. Shannon (Burton) is a defrocked minister, who finds himself at this point in his life at the bottom of a whiskey barrel, working for a second-rate tour company called Blake's Tours, escorting a hot, tired bus-load of "old...er, the, the...good" Baptist women ("a crate of wet hens" he calls them) through the unholy hot environs of the religious vestiges of Puerto Vallarta. The roads are bumpy but the relationships are bumpier: the tour's brittle organizer Ms. Fellowes (Hall) is suspicious of Shannon—her jail-bait niece, Charlotte (Lyon) is paying way too much attention to him for her peace of mind (if she has any). Fearing for the loss of his job, Shannon sabotages the tour bus to end up at his one refuge in the area, the Mismaloya hotel run by his friend Fred Faulk. But Fred has recently died, leaving his widow Maxine (Gardner) to run the place by herself. Shannon hopes that by keeping the tour at the isolated hotel, he can keep Ms. Fellowes from calling his boss and firing him from the lousy job he has failed into.
Also finding themselves at the hotel (despite it being closed for the fiery month of August) is Hanna Jelkes (Kerr) a painter and caretaker for her poet grandfather, whom she calls "Nonno" (Cyril Delevanti). They have run out of money on their journeys while the old man struggles to complete one last poem. Shannon implores Maxine to let them stay, while he tries to keep control of a situation he has already lost and is making worse by hitting the bottle, suffering a complete breakdown in the process.
It seems like a "nothing" play, but with Williams' words and a pitch-perfect cast (except for Burton, who's a bit florid in his part—Huston wanted the far less magisterial James Garner for the role, which would have been fascinating), it is alternately raucous and moving, a vivid portrait of middle-aged angst and of time's ability to throw in a cage-match the indifference of the world and our own demons.
Filmed in 70mm, it is a huge film (and there was talk of the film's producer, Dino DeLaurentiis, making a film of the New Testament later on), a bit sprawling and filmed by Huston in a style veering between naturalistic and surreal.
The parties during the filming must have been good, though.
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| Sellers and Welles in one of the few scenes they filmed simultaneously on the same stage (with Ursula Andress) |
That last had a great deal to do with the falling-out between Huston and his producer, Walter Mirisch, who objected to Huston casting his daughter Anjelica in the lead, insisting that Huston find someone else. That might have been enough to sour the deal, but Mirisch also recut the film (and replaced the intended John Barry score with a lighter one by composer Ken Thorne) after some lackluster previews, leading Huston to list Sinful Davey as one of his few film-making regrets. It is a better film than Huston lets on, mostly larky, and with an eye towards being deliberately provocative. Hurt shines in the role, making the most of a part where he is always the life of the party.
Huston takes a page from Zeffirelli and Bergman in this tale of young lovers clinging together against a sardonic mistrustful world. Just as Zeffirelli cast young actors rather than established stars for his Romeo and Juliet, Huston does the same here, and despite their lack of experience it is rare when the movie sinks to high-school dramatics. The production is spare, employing a lot of location shooting and a scruffy environment ala Bergman. Huston was losing the Hollywood veneer he had grown accustomed to and was doing maverick film-making more in line with his pal, Orson Welles—just with more stable financing. It's hard to find A Walk with Love and Death, but it's far better than its reputation implies.
Huston has had many great male performances under his direction, from such as Bogart, Gable, Clift, Brando, Connery, Finney, but I don't think I've ever seen a better performance in one of Huston's films than Stacy Keach in this.*** In whatever you've seen him in, nothing prepares you for the internalized pain that Keach conveys in every aspect of his performance. And there's one moment that will stay with me for the rest of my life. During the fight-centerpiece of the film, when Tully makes his comeback, he's knocked to the canvas, but never counted out. He spends an interminable nine seconds on his knees and elbows, head hanging—and there's a moment, a long moment, when you wonder if he's going to get up—if he even wants to get up. Then, he rolls up into a rickety stance to complete the last few seconds of the round. The fighters retreat to their corners and Keach sprawls on his stool, as the cut-men treat a bleeding gash over his left eye.
Huston stays on Keach's face, and there is no expression on it—none. So, you go to his eyes, which are dead, betraying no light and no spark. There may be nothing going on in his mind except the most primal reptile instincts to survive; his head is a black hole, nothing leaves, and there may be nothing to leave. He's a shell, hollow and broken. That look will show up again in the film, as a final note, lacking in grace, the soundtrack empty, giving a brief glimpse of death, a living one, yes, but a death that still haunts.
That logic (or lack of it) is much in display in Huston's film of The MacKintosh Man (written by Walter Hill),**** a spy thriller the director made in Britain and Malta with Paul Newman. In it, a British Intelligence agent, Rearden (Newman) is framed and sent to prison, in order to infiltrate a criminal organization. But, unknown to him, the deceit goes much deeper, as his superior, Mackintosh (Harry Andrews), is using the mission to ferret out a leak in information in the British government. Once Rearden is sprung from prison by the conspirators, overseen by an enigmatic figure named "Mr. Brown" (Michael Hordren), Rearden and another prisoner, Blake (Ian Bannen), are spirited away to an unknown location, drugged and held until the police activity surrounding the prison break cools down. The escape causes a row in Parliament, led by a law-and-order lord, Sir George Wheeler (James Mason), who rails against the bumbling way in which the prisons and the law are handling it, until he is persuaded to cool down the rhetoric by Mackintosh, himself.
Things get complicated when Mackintosh is run down in the street, and the operation taken over by his deputy, Mrs. Smith (Dominique Sanda), who is now charged with a double mission—finding the leak and who sanctioned the murder of Mackintosh.
Huston barely takes any of this seriously, even if Newman plays it straight, and Sanda—well, it's hard to tell if she plays it at all, her character being so enigmatic as to be undecipherable. But, it's all staged well (and photographed by the legendary Oswald Morris), especially a car chase through winding Irish country roads that look dangerous as Hell, and Huston ends on a typically ambiguous note. But, he's made much better films about duplicity and duty (as has Hill, for that matter), and this one feels like a minor effort before tackling much more ambitious projects.
That plan, after an arduous journey that tests their resolve and their mettle, works only too well and only too easily, so that their success can only be threatened by their own greed and hubris. It will lead one to his dreams far beyond his meager imagining, and the other to realize that Fate can break even the most stubborn of bonds, only to, ultimately, rebuild them again after a painful accounting. Everyone is brilliant in this and have the best of material to work with. Perhaps it was Fate, that enemy of so many best laid plans and Huston films, that forced the movie to wait for its perfect casting. The Man Who Would Be King is a classic of Huston's that ranks with The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (which it closely resembles in theme), as not only the best of Huston's work, but the best of cinema itself.
Phobia (1980) What to make of this one? Phobia looks to have a TV-movie budget—so did Wise Blood, but with better source material, as opposed to this one, being the work of horror-film writers. After championing psychology in both fiction and non-fiction films, Phobia has as its protagonist a shrink (Paul Michael Glaser), treating his patents' fears through radical immersive media techniques, who, to his horror, discovers that his patients are dying—by the very things that terrify them. Very convenient. The police (in the form of police detective John Colicos) are baffled, especially when the accidents are a little too "on the nose" and begin showing signs of being set up. In the words of Ed Wood, Jr., "it looks like murder! And somebody's responsible!"
I was left wondering who was responsible for this film. There are faint glimmers that somebody was thinking during this, but not with any wit or panache. If anything, it looks like Huston was going out of his way to not put any style at all into the film—an anti-thriller...and trying to make the footage last long enough to make a feature-length film. Everything looks cut-rate, the photography is unexceptional, the sound muddy and "roomy," but without evoking atmosphere. Perhaps, like the procedure in the film, it was an experiment gone wrong, and one hopes that at least everyone got paid. It is, hands down, the worst film of Huston's career.
The film went through some re-writes (some at Stallone's behest)—originally the outcome offered by the German Commandant (played by Max von Sydow) is that if the Germans are allowed to win, the POW's would be freed, but if the POW's won, they'd be executed—but, it was changed to be a bit more straight-forward, winner-take-all conclusion, the POW's had to win the match AND escape, and if that wasn't enough, they choose to delay their escape, so they might ALSO win the match. That might be a goal too far for credibility's sake. Still, it's an interesting film for football fans.
The property is a mess—the songs are not great, although "Tomorrow" is an effective ear-worm—and once you boil down the comic-strip to its essentials, it's very campy. There's not much Huston can do with that—Carol Sobieski is credited with the script, what there is of it between the incessant songs—but he did some home-work watching M-G-M musicals and it is in the dance sequences, freed from stage limitations, where Annie genuinely shines as a movie. And it's quite a lovely thing that Huston stops the movie dead for a few minutes, to show us highlights from Cukor's Camille. Most amusing is the performance of Albert Finney, cast as "Daddy" Warbucks (Huston was first interested in Sean Connery playing it), who does a full-tilt dead-on John Huston impersonation in the role. And there's something else distinctive about Annie...
It is the only film in Huston's entire work that has an unambiguously happy ending.
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| WHAT could she be singing? |
It is November 1, 1938, the "Day of the Dead" in Cuernavaca, Mexico and Firmin has just quit his job as Consul. He celebrates it and the Mexican festival the same way he does every day, by drinking himself into a coma. The activity is complicated by two unusual events: the return of his wife Yvonne (Jacqueline Bisset), who has returned, after leaving him the year previously, to try and reconcile their marriage; and the visit by his half-brother Hugh (Anthony Andrews), returning from reporting on the Spanish Civil War to touch base with his out-of-touch sibling in the hopes of helping him get back on the wagon, or, at least, to some semblance of functionality. But, Firmin is too far gone in his alcoholic delirium to even conceive of such sober conclusions. He does not make it easy, and is so far gone that his life may be irretrievable.
It is an amazing performance by Finney, who keeps the tragedy of Firmin the focal point by ignoring it, never making Firmin a fool but a genuine train-wreck on two shaking legs, suggesting the charm and intelligence of the man that once was, before being drowned in an ocean of booze. Like train-wrecks it's fascinating to watch, even as you know you should avert your eyes.
Charley meets Irene at a family wedding and asks his former lover Maerose Prizzi (Anjelica Huston), the Don's granddaughter, who it is. A little insensitive on Charley's part as he and Maerose used to be a couple. Seems Irene's a hit-person, who sometimes does "wet-work" for the Prizzi family. Charley is smitten, but is unaware that Irene is married. Fate plays a hand in the romance when Charley is assigned to kill Irene's husband for robbing a Nevada casino under Prizzi control. Irene agrees to pay back the Prizzi's what money she can access, but Maerose, jealous of Irene's hold on Charley, discovers that Irene is probably holding back some of the stolen money, a move that restores her honor inside the family, after her break-up with Charley. Amidst all the turmoil, Charley and Irene marry, but, as with so many marriages, work gets in the way of the relationship.
For Prizzi's Honor, Huston was again nominated for Best Director for a film (it was his fifth nomination for Director, though he'd been nominated many times for Writing)—and at 87, he was the oldest director to be so honored, and his daughter Anjelica actually won the Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role Oscar, completing a multi-generational hat-trick for the Huston clan. Her grandfather, Walter, had won Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, also directed by his son, her father. It is sweetly ironic that so much "family business" is tied to a film about a family business. But, it is also a neat little closing of the circle in Huston's career, that he should maintain such longevity and prowess to direct both his father and daughter to Oscar wins. He would have one more film in him, another long-wished-for project of his, and his daughter, Anjelica, would top-line it in another impressive performance.
You look back on the accomplishments of Huston's storied career—the classics like Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen, The Man Who Would Be King, the grandiose films of the '50's, his WWII documentaries, and "unfilmable" projects like Moby Dick, The Bible: In the Beginning..., Reflections in a Golden Eye, Wise Blood and Under the Volcano, and the occasional misstep like Beat the Devil, Casino Royale, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, Phobia, or The MacKintosh Man******— it is apt that he "go out" on this simple, elegant adaptation of one of his favorite authors' (James Joyce) short stories, working with his kids (Tony wrote the screenplay, Anjelica stars and in many ways is the "center" of the film), set in the land he loved—Ireland—where he lived and filmed for so many years. An insatiable gambler on- and off-set, this one he was "all in" and left the table a winner.
Tough project, too. Most of it set in one room, a large part around a dinner table, with fine singing (and in one case, not—but the guests are graceful in their praise—and the director moves away from the elderly actress singing, having trouble with lip-syncing the dubbed song, and charitably meanders to another room, dwelling on the cherished collections of that character's rich life, instead). Huston was in frail health, directing from a wheelchair using a monitor in another room to keep the sound of his by-now always required air compressor from ruining the soundtrack while filming.
Graceful is the word for The Dead, and despite the title, it only periodically succumbs to Irish melancholy. It centers around a celebration, after all, a once-a-year special occasion in which, who knows, it may be the last time some of the group might be there. Best to keep the spirits up, the praise high, and the liquor slightly rationed. And there aren't any small parts here, if the lines are unevenly distributed, there are bits of business, reaction shots, ensemble acting and quite a bit of dancing to keep things busy.
I just wish (selfishly) the host had stuck around to throw another party.
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| John Huston statue in Puerto Vallarta The inscription is from Huston's eulogy for Humphrey Bogart: "We have no reason to feel any sorrow for him, only for ourselves for having lost him. He is irreplaceable. There will never be another like him.' |
* So he was dubbed by no less than Paul Newman.
*** Everybody is good in this, but one should also note Susan Tyrrell's feisty, free-wheeling performance of a drunk bar-fly that is on par with Keach's and feels so real you want to throw up your hands and give up.
**** This was around the era where Huston was no longer adapting classics, but beginning to take advantage of the scripts of the new college-class of film-makers, including Hill and (for his previous film) John Milius.
*****
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| Huston's long-time assistant and muse Gladys Hill...with Connery and Caine. |
****** Just imagine if his last film was Annie—which, in itself, was a weird untypical chancy project for him to take on!
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