Rage (1972)

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day.

Rage (George C. Scott, 1972) Actor George C. Scott has only three directing credits for film: his TV-movie of "The Andersonville Trial" (a play in which he starred on Broadway), the controversial 1974 The Savage is Loose (which he ended up distributing himself), and this film—the only one he directed for a major distributor (in this case, Warner Brothers). All of his work behind the camera occurred in the period between 1970 and 1974, the time when he was most associated with the film Patton, for which he won the Best Actor Oscar (which he famously refused to accept).

 

Those who admired his Patton work with its strong military theme, must have subsequently been surprised when encountering this film, as it's decidedly anti-military and anti-medical establishment, and then ups the ante on its revenge scenario plot until its protagonist fits the definition of "terrorist." So, how does all this start?

Rancher Dan Logan (Scott) and his son (Nicolas Beauvy) are sleeping outside watching their sheep-herds when a helicopter passes over their location. There's a military base near-by and Logan doesn't think anything of it—as long as the craft isn't flying so low it doesn't scatter the flocks. That night, Logan sleeps in the tent, while his son sleeps outside to watch the stars. It is a calm night, but, with the dawn, comes the nightmare.

The sheep in the field are all dead and his son is unconscious and bleeding from the nose. Logan gathers up his son and makes a mad dash to the local hospital, where the two are separated and emergency techs start working on his son. Logan's doctor, Caldwell (Richard Basehart) is called, and finds that the hospital is buying time while they try to diagnose what's wrong with the Logan kid. Logan himself is confused, as he's being held at the hospital, won't be allowed to see his son or go home, and is getting no information other than a "be patient" dismissal. He tells Caldwell to find out what he can.

That's not going to happen. The truth is Logan's son is dead, killed by an accidental release of a nerve agent from one of those passing military helicopters. The military, for their part, regret it happened, but—making lemonade out of nerve gas—see it is as an opportunity to study its effects on humans, under the supervision of Drs. Spencer (Barnard Hughes) and Holliford (Martin Sheen). Logan is being watched and will never be released from the hospital. But, his frustration grows, and before long, he starts to take action on his own.

His first act is to find his son, but can't find him in any of the rooms, but ultimately ends his search where all searches end—in the morgue. Logan is devastated, and he escapes from the hospital, vowing revenge. First, he goes to a military hardware store to buy a gun.

For the most part, Scott's movie is competent, but problematic. The acting is all fine. Most of the actors have worked with Scott before, whether he was directing or co-acting with them—Basehart and Sheen from "Andersonville" and Paul Stevens and Stephen Young from Patton, and Hughes and Robert Walden from The Hospital. It does have some peculiarities to the early 70's that were "of the time" and are not so much in evidence today. The most prominent of which is the use of slow-motion. Sam Peckinpah rather artfully brought it to the fore with The Wild Bunch (and subsequent films), with which he would tweak action sequences by putting in frames to call attention to something that might be missed in frenetic multi-camera set-ups—sometimes, things just happen to fast in those action sequences, and Peckinpah knew when to just take a moment and focus on an aspect.

Scott is not so subtle a film-maker, and his choices to call attention to are off. An early shot of Logan spitting a loooong stream is a case in point. Sure, it's a fast action that a normal 24 frames per second shooting speed might not do "justice" to, but...an entire shot of it? He might be technically proud of either 1) the expectoration, or 2) the cinematographer (Fred J. Koenekamp—from Patton) being able to track it, but as far as importance to the story, it's just not important. Likewise, a shot of a soon-to-be-a-distraction cat jumping onto a sofa might be too quick to notice with slo-mo, but it takes away from the pace of a very tense scene. Peckinpah would have given it a few frames and dumped the rest. Scott gives us the whole thing.

 

It's always interesting to see what fine actors will do behind the camera for good (George Clooney, Kevin Costner, Robert Redford) or ill (Gene Wilder, Walter Matthau, Marlon Brando) whether they'll be genuine story communicators, or merely an extension of the "look-at-me" aspect of their careers. Scott was great with actors. His story-telling left something to be desired.

Il Bidone

Il Bidone (aka "The Swindle") (Federico Fellini, 1955) The Italian maestro in his hey-dey. 

This 1955 film follows a trio of grifters—Augusto (Broderick Crawford), Picasso (Richard Basehart), and Roberto (Franco Fabrizi)—who are low-level con-artists in search of the Big Score—even a Ponzi scheme will do. They drive into a small village, all pomp and circumstance, with as much respectability as a disguise or a decent suit can buy. Then, with guile and a healthy disrespect for people's own need for "easy riches" or a "too-good-to-be-true" deal, bilk the citizenry out of as much cash as they can find lying around. As priests (using the respectability of the Church), they convince simple farm-folk of "buried treasure." On a grander scale, they're developers collecting down-payments on rooms to a vapor-hotel that will never materialize ("The economy's bad and we've suffered some set-backs").  

For Picasso, there are dreams of becoming a famous painter (but in the mean-time he can forge a few masterpieces to get by, much to the chagrin of his long-suffering wife, played by the wonderful Giulietta Masina). Roberto, their chauffeur/get-away driver, is young to the game and is always looking for new angles so he can set off on his own crime-spree, free of "the losers" he thinks might be holding him back.   

But, the leader of the group, Augusto, is feeling the advance of age and getting a little desperate; he hasn't achieved any real fortune, just what can be piffled away on a falsely high lifestyle and an evening of prospecting at the clubs (he's not a high-roller, but he has to play one and that can get "spendy"). He is torn. He wants the respectability that a really big perpetual con (like the kind found in government circles and among the constabulary) can bring. In essence, what this overlarge, over-age boy in big pants wants in reality is what he only play-acts in his livelihood—a man of respect, a high roller, an adult, or his imagining of what that is. For Augusto, he hits "the brick-wall of Reality," in the presence of his very real daughter, for whom he wants most to be seen as a man of accomplishment, instead of the fraud he pretends to be.

I started out this review saying "the Italian maestro in his hey-dey" and have come to this point wondering if that is true.  I've often dismissed his latter films as inferior if more complicated and less grounded in reality to his 1950's films, which are more aspirational in nature. They're about wishing and hoping for success which eludes their protagonists—the street-performers of La Strada, the drifting men of I Vitelloni... and Cabiria. When director Federico Fellini became film-maker "Fellini," international artist, he seemed to lose that touch of "becoming," replacing it with observations of his new life "having made it," and finding it difficult to maintain as well as being empty, and finding it wanting. In a sense, Fellini was compiling an autobiography of his journey to success and beyond. Even his wife (Messina) complained that his Juliet of the Spirits wasn't about a woman's issues, but about his own. His movies about the glitzerati felt hollow and self-absorbed (appropriately).  

But, the director still aspired, although he struggled for subject matter (see 8½) or funding, especially in his later years, despite his international reputation. He retreated to fantasies and circuses, reality being not enough—and maybe not too sure anymore about what reality actually was, surrounded as he was by reputation, the expectations of fame, and the glare of the spotlight. Simple virtues and humble origins cannot be found on the soundstages of Cinecitta, or the boardrooms of Titanus. 

But, the aspirations continued. As if documenting Shakespeare's seven stages of life, Fellini's vision, aimed ever inward, began looking back, becoming nostalgic for those early times of "wanting" dreams, trying to reclaim them, make them real again. The films were not so much aspirational anymore, but seeking the times and memories of aspiration, when the world was full of possibilities, when wonder was more than kleig-lights and grease-paint, a fraud wanting to be real.

He Walked By Night

He Walked By Night (Alfred L. Werker, 1948) It's funny the things you find. You go down the twisted, dark corridors of the film noir genre and once in a while you find a gem shining in the black, one that has many facets and goes beyond its origins and haunts.

He Walked By Night is one of those. Picked up at the Socialist Book Collective (Your Public Library) for free, it looked to be a modest little film. It starred Richard Basehart and Scott Brady, an actor so anonymous they had to bill him with a past movie as a middle name—Scott "Canon City" Brady.* It's a low, low budget film that looks like a million bucks because it was photographed by one of the great cinematographers in Hollywood history, John Alton. Alton painted in black and white and his intricate screens of shadow are works of art, made quickly and with little money. He worked often with director Anthony Mann who is rumored to have directed parts of this film (and sections of it look like Mann's T-Men, one of the best film-noirs). But credit goes to Alfred L. Werker, a director who toiled in the "B" and "C" strata of movies, working with such talents as Laurel and Hardy, even Disney, and directed the second (and I think best) of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939).

But He Walked By Night is a different detective story entirely. Based on a "true" LAPD investigation, ** it's a police procedural that details the work the force went into to capture a cop-killer and criminal who "seemed to be one step ahead of" them, all the way. The case drags on for months, and its only the dogged determination of one dedicated cop that leads to the case being solved. It boasts that beautifulAlton cinematography, L.A. locations, and a sense of realism that even precludes the use of a musical score. The film begins with a city-wide dragnet and ends with an incredibly well-done chase and fire-fight in the cavernous drainage system, the gun-fire echoing endlessly through the concrete corridors.

Performances are stalwart throughout, with Richard Basehart given the chance to shine through as the creepy killer, and slate-voiced B-actor Whit Bissell as the best lead witness who gets more than he bargained for.

Then, down in a the credits is a thin, odd little actor who plays the CSI expert—or as it would become known "One of the Lab-Boys"—with a perverse sense of humor: Jack Webb. If He Walked By Night comes off as seeming a little familiar, that's the reason. Although having only a minor memorable role, Webb managed to strike up a relationship with technical adviser Marty Wynn, who suggested a radio series based on the crime-files of the LAPD. Webb ran with the idea and debuted the radio series "Dragnet" four weeks after this film premiered. The blue-print is here: the no-nonsense narration with the city as character and even the well-worn phrase "the names have been changed to protect the innocent." It's not exactly "Dragnet"—Webb drained the emotion out of it and did it on an even more thread-bare scale, but it's the facts, ma'am. This is where "Dragnet" started.

Why not look for yourself? He Walked By Night has slipped into the Public Domain, and you can watch it for free here.

* Not so anonymous, really. Brady was one of those crusty dependable actors who could do just about everything and did, playing spokesmen, governments agents, cops, people in authority, but strictly blue-collar. You'd know his face if you saw him. He had a rough-hewn authenticity and credibility that was used to its full advantage as the nuclear plant worker who vindicates Jack Lemmon in The China Syndrome. He was also the more successful brother of actor Lawrence Tierney. There's a resemblance.

** Well, that's stretching it. A lot. Some of the particulars are used--the electronics genius, the use of the L.A. storm drain system for escapes, the meticulousness, the murders. But the truth is far stranger, and not so neat and tidy.

The story is based on the career of Erwin "Machine Gun" Walker, who returned from WWII slightly unhinged by survivor's guilt and the death of a friend at Leyte Island—a death he felt responsible for. He began a series of robberies to fund--I kid you not--a project to create an electronic "death-ray." This led to the murder of Officer Loren Roosevelt, who was gunned down attempting to question Walker after seeing him casing a store.

Instead of technologically-savvy, dogged police work, Walker's undoing was bragging about his crimes to his catholic girl-friend, who mentioned the story in confession, and the priest informed police—and so much for the story of sanctity of the confessional.

Walker pleaded insanity for his crimes—he wasn't tracked down in the drainage system and killed—but was captured in a raid on his home (like the one depicted in the film) and wounded in the arrest. Citing insanity in his family and his war trauma, he made his plea, but was found competent and sentenced to death. 36 hours before his execution, he was found nearly strangled with an electrical cord, a suicide attempt—his father had killed himself six months earlier.

The suicide attempt led to Walker being declared insane and his execution postponed for 12 years, while he was remanded to various mental health facilities. In 1959, he was deemed "cured," but, reasoning that it might provoke another suicide attempt, his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

Then, he was granted a re-trial, and because it ruled his initial confession at the time of his arrest was coerced, he was set free.

Rather than being cut-down in a melodramatic blaze of gun-fire as in the film, Erwin "Machine Gun" Walker walked.