Body Heat

Body Heat (Lawrence Kasdan, 1985) "It's hot."

Oh, man, you have GOT to be careful what you wish for!

A little history: after selling his second script*, Continental Divide to Steven Spielberg, the director brought Kasdan in to re-work the script of Raiders of the Lost Ark (lest we forget, the first Indiana Jones movie), whose work so impressed Executive Producer George Lucas, he brought Kasdan on to re-tool Leigh Brackett's script for The Empire Strikes Back, then again for the trilogy finale The Revenge Return of the Jedi, with one particular bargaining chip played between Episodes V and VI.

That bargaining chip happened to be Body Heat. First-time director Kasdan (with some behind the scenes anonymous studio support by Lucas to assuage nervous studio chiefs) did a full-color update of James M. Cain for the "me decade" and, in so doing, made one deliberately horny—smart, but horny (the two are much more often than not mutually exclusive!)—movie.

Ned Racine (William Hurt) is nobody's idea of a decent attorney, as he takes as much care with his lovers as he does with his cases—very little—as he's all surface and no depth—one judge tells him he hopes the next time he comes into his court he has a better defense "or a better class of client". Ouch! Burn! Maybe that's why it happens, a search for a better class of...anything. At an outdoor concert in the middle of a blistering Florida heat wave, he meets Mattie Walker (Kathleen Turner, in her film debut channeling the young Lauren Bacall, in her film debut), who is the answer to his prayers—if he did any praying.  He's all fancy patter and pick-up lines, but she's not too impressed. "You're not very bright, are you? I like that in a man," she husks. 

"What else do you like? Lazy? Ugly? Horny? I got 'em all."

"You don't look lazy," she cracks.

She's smart. He thinks he's smart. She's classy and he's a lawyer, who rarely gets an encounter with that quality. Racine is a small fish in a fetid pond—more of a bottom-feeder, really, but he thinks of himself as a big fish in a small pond, and his clients match his tactics. But, he has delusions of grandeur, given his ego, so he's constantly trolling for a step up to show the world how much better he is than his work would indicate.

So, imagine his good fortune at meeting Matty. She's everything he's not—classic and classy. But, he's more interested in what they have in common—they're both horny and they're both interested in him. What's not to like, after all? What could possibly go wrong? And Ned is always quick with a good line that feels self-deprecating: "I need somebody to take care of me, someone to rub my tired muscles, smooth out my sheets." "Get married", she counters. "I only need it for tonight!" It makes her laugh.

Matty is well-regarded in the community. Perhaps too well-regarded. When the two meet later (by accident?) at a local watering hole, Ned notices a table of men who keep watching her—rejects who have tried to last in the stool neighboring hers. They're all wash-outs with obvious lines and obvious hunger. But, Ned plays it a little cooler in the Florida heat and as her temperature runs a little bit above normal, so she decides to let him follow her to her house to "hear my wind-chimes" that deceptively ring that there might be a breeze, but there never is..."just hot air."

After feigning an argument for the yokels to think they're not leaving together, Ned follows Matty home, but he's a little too aggressive, and she retreats to her mansion. But, she stays in sight, heaving, waiting, and Ned passes the "lean-and-hungry" test by using some of her lawn furniture to to smash through the glass door, and they begin a torrid affair—her husband (Richard Crenna), who's a fixer of some kind, is out of town, and as long as they're discreet and keep it out of sight, they have the run of the place.

But, Matty's unhappy. She hates her husband, even though he's provided a good life-style, and would like him out of it—her life-style, I mean. And Ned's a lawyer, so if hubby can be eliminated and Ned can "fix" the will, they can enjoy the freedom they have become accustomed to. Pretty soon, she's convinced Ned that he can make it happen, even though he's warned by an ex-client of his (played by Mickey Rourke, very early in his career):

I got a serious question for you: What the fuck are you doing? This is not shit for you to be messin' with. Are you ready to hear something? I want you to see if this sounds familiar: any time you try a decent crime, you got fifty ways you're gonna fuck up. If you think of twenty-five of them, then you're a genius... and you ain't no genius. You remember who told me that?

It was Ned, of course, and he can only nod. It's not that Ned is stupid—he passed the bar, after all—it's just that he's not thinking with his brain, but with another organ. And once he's involved up to his hips, he doesn't realize that he's going to be sinking even further, to an outcome that's more in keeping with his clientele behind bars, putting him in a class that he's never seen himself part of, and never thought of for himself.

Kasdan's script is clever, full of quotable lines** and a pay-off that you just don't see coming, despite the fact that he's working with recycled material here, albeit one for a time in which characters are allowed to "get away with" things without some retribution from the law or Higher Powers, making it stand out from other "two's company-three's a potential felony" type of film-noir. And for a first-time director, Kasdan is very assured, keeping things erotic, but just ever-so-suggestively out of "X" territory (no frontal nudity below the waist and a lot of "backal" nudity), with a nice sense of understated lighting, helped by the efforts of Richard Kline, who rarely was given a chance to do something understated—or underlit—in his previous work. And John Barry's score, deep in his "slower temp" phase, evoked those wind chimes with a smarmy saxophone overlay that, by itself, made you feel like you should take a shower afterwards.

And the actors—particularly Turner and Hurt—are just plain brave, playing characters who are hiding weaknesses and unspoken thoughts while very frequently being physically exposed. It's a high-wire act in the nude. And if the noir side of movies, seem very American and very cynical, this one makes the others look like musicals. Even more for the fact that it's one of those stories where naked ambition is rewarded (or thwarted) by whoever is the wiliest of the bunch, and willing—in the words of the murder victim in the story—"to do what's necessary. Whatever it takes."

Body Heat does follow any moral code or religious stricture. It's playing by the rules of Darwin: survival of the fittest.

It's a smart movie. And..."it's hot."

* The first was The Bodyguard, which was eventually made with Kevin Costner and Whitney Huston.

** My favorite: At a hearing, one of the lawyers says "Would anyone mind if I smoked?" and everybody starts pulling out their cigarettes with the lone exception of Racine friend Peter Lowenstein (a pre-"Cheers" Ted Danson), who, when he's offered one says: "No thanks, I'll just breathe the air..."

The Postman Always Rings (Twice)

The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett, 1946) Drifter Frank Chambers (John Garfield) blows in on the Santa Ana wind* and gets picked up along the road by a man called Kyle Sackett (Leon Ames), and gets himself dropped off at a local diner-slash-service station called "Twin Oaks" run by a genial old fellow named Nick Smith (Cecil Kellaway), who has a sign out front that indicates he could use a little help around the place. Frank can use the work, but he's not sure about it until he gets a look at the benefits, when he follows a fallen lipstick across the diner floor and sees Nick's much younger wife, Cora (Lana Turner), who shows up in a midriff-baring white two-piece number that one presumes she doesn't normally wear at job interviews for mechanics. With Nick, he's a bit of toady, but with Cora, it's a sparring match where he always ends up the loser. "The best way to get my husband to fire you is to not do what I tell you to do," she tells him once he's off work the first day. When he grabs her in a clinch later, she just fixes her lipstick and walks away...slowly. She's funny that way.

But Frank is confident. "I can sell anything to anybody," he brags. "That's what you think," she scoffs. But, a moonlight swim (with Nick's approval) starts to get Cora in a buying mood. And when Nick goes away to Los Angeles, Frank seizes his chance—there's a lovely moment when, he's tending the dining bar with one lone customer between him and trying to make his move on Cora and he stares the poor sap down until he's so uncomfortable he leaves...with a tip—closing the diner for business and giving his full attention to Cora. She finally answers the question that's nagged at him—why marry Nick? She tells him that since the time she was 14, she had to fight off a lot of guys—all of them—until she met Nick, with a ring and a proposal. "And you retired," he says. "The undefeated champ." "Not 100% undefeated," she says. And that is that.

Soon after they begin their affair—hours after, in fact, which makes you wonder if they had enough time to have an affair—they run off together. But, as Nash has the only available car, they end up bumming rides to get away, and that's just honest-to-goodness not good enough for Cora (even though it may be good enough for Frank. *CONFLICT ALERT* She doesn't want to start out their life together as bums...like Frank. Besides, if she just up and leaves, all the work she put into Twin Oaks will go waste, as Nick would surely keep it in a divorce. So, the two go to plan "B" by dialing "M" for murder: they decide that Cora will get to keep Twin Oaks if they kill Nick. Well, at least kill Nick and get away with it.

And so, they hoof it back to Twin Oaks, waiting for Nick to come back. He does, conveniently weaving from from too much drink in the city, but not conveniently enough that he's killed drunk-driving all the way from Los Angeles. The plan is for Cora to clobber him in the bath-tub, so he falls and drowns. But, Fate, in the form of passing cars, busy-body motorcycle cops, and a darn cat manage to escalate the dread and foil the plot. Nash only get conked on the head by Cora, but a black-out-by-cat keeps the plot from being completed, and he ends up in the hospital, undrowned, with no memory of it happening at all. The speculation is that it's from his "fall" in the bathtub, but I'd make a case for him being "so drunk last night."

When Nick comes back to Twin Oaks, he decides to sell the place and move him and Cora to Canada with his sister, and that's something that Cora just won't do—so to prevent it, Frank and Cora stage a car accident, hitting Nick over the head—again—and the crash to explain the injuries that killed him.

Nick does die, and Frank is injured, but the District Attorney trying the case is the same Kyle Sackett who drove Frank into town, and, thinking that it's all too coincidental, separates the two lovers and gets a statement from Frank when he only files charges against her. The two turn on each other, and it's only through the machinations of Cora's lawyer (Hume Cronyn) that she only gets a manslaughter charge for being the driver of the vehicle.

Cain's sordid little story is given a veneer of M-G-M glamour throughout, making the affair between Frank and Cora much more romantic than it should be—after all, chicanery and murder are what bring the two together and what will ultimately drive a wedge between them. Everything looks clean and tidy and Frank is one of those lucky mechanics for whom grease never seems to stick, not even under his fingernails. Turner is always photographed in the best possible light and a shimmering gauze in close-up's. One may almost get the impression they're innocent of murder or deception. But, Cain's story ultimately catches up to them and anything illusory becomes tragic reality, when Fate comes a-knocking again and disturbs any complacent slumber and the dreams it may contain. The postman will always ring twice, just to shatter any misconceptions.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (Bob Rafelson, 1981) Cain's story was remade in 1981 with no pretensions by playwright (and ultimately director) David Mamet (his first screenplay), who takes the romance out of it, and with the more low-key direction of Bob Rafelson, makes the circumstances a lot more tawdry. The major difference is that the 1946 M-G-M version is a "PG" version, slouching towards a "PG-13" (if such a thing existed at the time), whereas the 1981 Warner Bros. version is a tumescent "R," where the participants are desperate people, unattractive in body or spirit. The disparities between the people involved are seen in a much harsher light. The novel's depiction of Nick Papadakis ("The Greek") is brought out with more emphasis on his ethnicity and the casting of John Colicos makes one wonder why this version's Cora—in the depiction of Jessica Lange—would "settle" for this particular man for any reason other than being sold to him or by any others means beyond some kind of blackmail.

One even wonders why she would find Jack Nicholson's drifter a more attractive alternative. Not that the actors' ages make that much of a difference—Nicholson was only 43 at the time of filming; Lange was 31. But, Nicholson was only 10 years younger than Colicos, and although a great actor and (sure) a star, he was beginning to get doughy, his hair thinning, and progressing from his younger, angular good looks to a young middle-age. Would a beauty like Lange's Cora risk everything for him? One wonders.

The story proceeds the same, but back in Cain's original era of the Depression years: Drifter. Twin Oaks. Older husband. Male lust. Female need. Clinch. Affair. Murder. Ring-ring. But, there's nothing romantic about the Frank-Cora affair in this one. The two start out just as bitchy as the 1946 version, but when Nick leaves town, there's no embrace and kiss—it's a lunging, violent sex-scene that starts out as a rape, with the major indication that Cora wants it as badly as Frank does ("Come on!") is she clears the bread-table—loaves, dough, bread-knife, flour (one worries about yeast infections)—with a clumsy wave of her arms and it's a big dusty fumble with a lot of flailing and almost comical moans of exertion. 

Ya know...like sex turned out to be rather than what you imagined...

But, it's not enough that Rafelson and Mamet strip away the romantic veneer that played such a part of the M-G-M version, they've also added a sado-masochistic kink to the affair, with a lot of roughage and slapping—Cora spits in Frank's face at one point and there's a disgusted curl to her lip when she says "You're scum, Frank. I knew that when I met you. You'll never change." This is "trading up?"

One gets the impression that this is what she wants and it's what she thinks she deserves and is resigned to her fate. She's certainly not as ambitious as Turner's Cora. She just "settles" for slightly higher increments. And Nicholson's Frank isn't a go-getter drifter, he's just a snake, who'll turn any situation to his advantage. It does make his turning on Cora once Nick is killed a bit more understandable, psychologically. He thinks he's the master of his fate, and a white trash Master of the Universe, who, if he knew about Ayn Rand, would cling to objectivism as an excuse for what is basically selfish self-interest. Maybe he and Cora have more in common than originally thought.

It made me think less of a human drama than of zoology—we're dealing with much more primal instincts that crouch deep in our alligator brains. Cora calls Frank an animal when she sees him drinking milk out of a bottle instead of a glass and one can see their relationship as more bestial—the male lion lords it over everybody while the female is the more practical of the sexes. But, it's a completely different power dynamic than from the '46 version, which has more to do with entymology. In that one, Cora is the queen bee, giving the illusion that the men are more than mere drones...and potential victims. 

"Aren't we ambitious?" Garfield's Frank cracks at Turner's Cora when she talks about her plans for Twin Oaks. Of course she is, and at a level far higher than the men she encounters. And higher than Lange's Cora in the Mamet-Rafelson version.

But, Nature is red in tooth and claw. And, far more powerful than the machinations that preoccupy the creatures that plan and scheme and rut in The Postman Always Rings Twice. It can unravel any scheme that chooses to beat Fate.

* Raymond Chandler wrote about the desert winds that blew into Los Angeles: "On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen."

Criss-Cross

Criss-Cross (Robert Siodmak, 1949) You can't tell a grown man what to do. That's the problem. Even though he's old enough to know better ("old enough to vote for two presidents") and even though he keeps saying that he's over all that, Steve Thompson (Burt Lancaster) comes back to L.A. and manages to get hooked up with his ex-wife (the wide-eyed Yvonne De Carlo) all over again.

And she's trouble. His mom knows it, his police lieutenant pal Peter Ramirez (Stephen McNally) knows it. Even his bartender (Percy Helton) knows it! On top of which, she's been seen stepping out with local hood Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea). And before you know it—boom!—she marries the bum.

So what are Thompson and Dundee doing planning an armored car robbery together? Dimes to donuts Anna Thompson Dundee is at the center of it all.Bet her maiden name was "Conda."

The mess that Thompson finds himself in is done with the best of intentions, but one of the tenets of film-noir is that good intentions done for bad people are a recipe for disaster. No good deed goes unpunished in the dark alleys and side-streets of film noir, even in blinded-by-the-light sunny Hell-A. And director Siodmak,one of the architects of noir-style, finds the shadows cast even in the noon-day sun.

Criss-Cross is a good minor example of the genre, with nice performances by Lancaster, DeCarlo and Duryea. And look for Tony Curtis in a brief (and silent) early appearance.

The Woman in the Window (1944)

The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang, 1944) The ex-patriate German film-stylist (Metropolis) makes the first of his "love-is-a-trap" film noirs with Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, and Dan Duryea. The second, Scarlet Street (Lang's next film) will be a nightmarish tale of lust, betrayal and greed that will skirt the Hays Code of having one of the triangle getting away with murder, but The Woman in the Window will be a bit more sedate...almost text-book.

Richard Wanley (Robinson) is a professor of criminal psychology, so you'd think he'd knows his stuff, but it seems he's only good at the theory. While his wife and kids are out of town for the Summer, Wanley becomes enamored with a portrait of a young woman in a store window (theory), and after a club-night with the boys (among whom is detective Raymond Massey), he comes across the woman in the flesh and accepts an invitation to her apartment. Turns out she's the moll of a notorious money-changer, see? And N.M.C. shows up at the apartment, looking to serve Wanley a Harvey Wallbanger.

Things get ugly and somebody gets dead. It's up to the Good Professor to do some Bad Things to keep his reputation intacto, not to mention his corpus.

The wonderful thing about Lang is he kept making his scary German films (like M, his "Mabuse" spy-fantasies) in Hollywood, with a budget that would make glossier his mouse-trap films. Lang knew how to tell his stories in shadow, and even include the vast area outside the frame in the mix to keep audiences guessing as to what would happen next—his protagonists (and they're not always heroes) have to run his maze of ever-tightening traps that will mean loss of freedom or death ("or worse!" as they used to say on the "Batman" TV show—which employed some Lang techniques—with this director you couldn't be sure if Death was the end of it).

Here, Lang dips his toe into the dark murky water that he will dive in head-first with Scarlet Street, sketching a nightmare scenario and cautionary tale, preparing for the final deadly masterpiece of his next film.

Provocative, stylish and downright cruel, the cinema of Fritz Lang spoke of high themes and low instincts and if he's not the father of "film-noir," he's certainly a very close uncle.*

* According to Wikipedia the term "film noir"—"black cinema"—was coined by the French Press—they also make damn fine coffee—in 1946, after the post-war arrival of American films The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, Laura, Murder, My Sweet," and...The Woman in the Window. So, the five fathers of "Noir" are John Huston, Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, Edward Dmytryk, and Fritz Lang—three Germans and two Americans (shudder!)