The Formula

Written at the time of the film's release.

The Formula (John G. Avildsen, 1980) Fairly lousy movie, done in the clunky Avildsen style, of a police detective (George C. Scott) following a series of murders that involves the MacGuffin of a synthetic substitute for petroleum. Avildsen is the perfect director for thudding cartoons like the "Rocky" series and The Karate Kid. But when having to provide any subtlety or style, as he attempted to do with Slow Dancing in the Big City, it's a miserable failure. And one has to say that he didn't add anything to the thriller or detective genres (or even the "paranoid thrillers" established in the 70's) with The Formula.

There is one joy, however, and that is to see the meeting of two of the better actors of the American stage square off, and really, it's probably the only reason the film got made (except for a tenuous tie-in to the then-dissolving energy crisis). They have one scene together of any consequence. Both men are a bit over-weight—Marlon Brando playing the fattest of oil-cats—and the two meet for a semi-perfunctory sizing up of each other.* One anticipates sparks flying between two acting titans.

And they don't. It's a genial little walk in the sun and the two banter back and forth—Scott's Lt. Barney Caine probing gently and Brando's Adam Steiffel waxing folksy and feigning detachment. But it's fun to watch. Brando's off in his "method" world—if he seems distracted it's because an assistant is feeding his lines through a hearing aid, and Scott observes the performance with an odd amusement, completely out of character.** What you're seeing is a fellow thespian (and fellow Oscar refuser) do his thing and barely suppressing his amusement...and bemusement.

It happens sometimes in movies, when very talented people with nothing to prove collide in a scene. As when Meryl Streep and Vanessa Redgrave play old friends in Evening, or Al Pacino just sits back and revels in Jack Lemmon's shop-talking in Glengarry Glen Ross. It doesn't help a bad movie. It can't help Evening or The Formula. But it's one of those magical moments when artifice is usurped by genuineness and the joy of creation is reflected off the screen to the audience.

* Come to think of it, Brando's character would have been more effective if he were an insular baron.

** Apparently, the rueful shakes of Scott's head during the scene are his reaction to Brando doing a completely different "read" of his lines than previous takes.

Anatomy of a Murder

Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger, 1959) The novel of "Anatomy of a Murder" (by judge John D. Voelker and based on a 1952 murder case where he was the defense attorney) was a number one best-seller in 1958—and on the New York Times Best-Seller List for 62 weeks!—so it was fast-tracked to the movies with a tight script and un-fussy but frame-filling direction by Otto Preminger. The German producer-director shot it in one mere month and had it edited and scored ready for previewing 21 days after that. That could be the reason why the film is a whopping 161 minutes long, or it could just be that the film is so full of good stuff there wasn't anything to cut out.

 

But, "that stuff" was enough to make it controversial—and even banned in a couple places—in the U.S. of the 1950's. Preminger always enjoyed thumbing his nose at the Hays Code, and Anatomy of a Murder's constant harping on rape, torn panties, spermatogenesis, penetration, contraception and the terms "climax," "bitch" and "slut" were enough to draw people away from their televisions—where married couples couldn't sleep in the same bed—and into theaters (although star  James Stewart's own father considered it "a dirty picture").

Stewart plays, well, basically author-judge Voelker, loving the law and fishing. Retired D.A. Paul Biegler (Stewart) is enjoying a happy retirement—forced on him by being voted out of his district attorney position—of fishing and free jazz when he's approached by Laura Manion (Lee Remick) to defend her Army Lieutenant husband, Fred (Ben Gazzara), who has been arrested for murder in nearby Thunder Bay, Michigan. The victim was a local innkeeper named Barney Quill. Meeting Mannion in prison, Biegler finds him admitting to the murder, but defends it saying that Quill raped his wife. He also claims that he has no memory of killing Quill, just the sort of detail Biegler can hook his defense on.

With his secretary sardonic Maida Rutledge (Eve Arden) and alcoholic colleague Parnell McCarthy (Arthur O'Connell), the small consortium start doing research in the law stacks and strategizing their defense of Manion, which will entail a little manipulation of the facts...or at least some creative presentation. For instance, Manion's lack of recall lends itself to a defense precedent for temporary insanity based on "irresistible impulse"—that'll mean expert witnesses whose theories might lead to debunking by cross-examination.

Then, there's the matter of  Laura Manion, who is (shall we say?) a little "loose"—not only in her manner, but also with the facts— andcould be smeared at trial for "provoking" her attacker—the usual "tarnish the victim" strategy. So, she is coached, given a make-over, and presented in such a way at trial to be as unprovocative as possible. But, the facts of the case and Quill's attack can't be denied, try as the prosecuting team—local D.A. Mitch Lodwick (Brooks West) and stringer, big-city prosecutor April Dancer (George C. Scott, in one of his early highly acidic roles)—might, so they go after the tenuous "irresistible impulse" defense and the Manion's volatile married life. This creates a highly charged trial with Dancer's vicious cobra-like questioning and Biegler's "courtroom theatrics" thundering back and forth. One would swear 50% of the dialog consists of "Objection!" Pity the poor judge (played by Joseph N. Welch, he was made famous by the Army-McCarthy hearings—and had no shame to exploit it!).

Anatomy of a Murder is different than most of the trial depictions that 1959 audiences were used to. Saturated with previous courtroom dramas and the weekly trials of "Perry Mason" on television, viewers were seeing these things as mystery stories, with the investigating going on in real time only to have the solution revealed at the end. This one, however, already has the "whodunnit" sorted out before the first swing of the gavel. The emphasis is on debate, advocacy, counter-arguments, presentation, theatrics, and, frankly, scoring points with the jury. It's more like a real trial process is, but with better lines and better actors.

And...it's a hell of lot less boring. But, then, the law SHOULD be boring. Theatrics only muddy the head-waters to the truth. And to justice.

Scott goes in for the kill: "Barney Quill was WHAT, Miss Pilant?!"

But, it's also a movie on the cusp of change, especially with the actors, a mix of old Hollywood, young Turks, and The Method, the clashing styles all giving off friction-sparks in the proceedings. It is a genuine thrill to watch aging pro Stewart at full volume going after the intensely malevolent Scott and more than holding his own, or watch him back off and scrutinize the inscrutable performance of Gazzara. Stewart always makes it look easy, but he was a student of the acting form with a vast array of tricks in his kit-bag. He navigates the styles and generations of actors like a well-tuned sports car, constantly and smoothly shifting.

It's always a pleasure to sit back and judge Anatomy of a Murder. It sure beats jury-duty.

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.

The Last Run (1971)

The Last Run (Richard Fleischer—after John Huston, 1971)

"Father, I have sinned. Lately, I haven't done much of anything. I don't believe much. There's this thing I have to do and I want to do it right. It's the only thing I know. It's for money. But, I would like to do it right. That's all."

Harry Garmes (George C. Scott) is a driver. He used to work for the Outfit in the U.S. and for the past nine years has been living low in self-imposed exile in Portugal. His only child is dead. His wife's run off. He has few companions—his friend, Miguel, with whom he started a fishing business and ended up just selling him the boat; and Monique (Colleen Dewhurst), a prostitute with whom he is involved but not romantically. Both are business ventures. That's all.

If he has a passion, it's for a relic of the past—his vintage 1956 BMW 503 Cabriolet convertible, which Harry has customized with a supercharger—and Harry dotes on it, like a family doctor. In the title sequence—accompanied by a stately romantic theme by Jerry Goldsmith, dominated by cimbalon, strings, and harpsichord—Garmes does some final adjusting, listening, fine-tuning. We don't know it yet, but he's making final preparations for a job. It is his first in nine years, and he wants to make sure it is done right. At least, that he does his job right.

He does a test-run of the Beemer, pushing it to its maximum, and, satisfied, he does a final visit to Miguel and Monique. He leaves her with an envelope of money that he may need when he comes back—if he gets back. If, after a time, he has not retrieved it, the money is hers. Then, packing lightly, and securing a gun under the dash, he takes off for the job. On the way, he makes one last stop.

At a provincial church, he enters and takes a look around. Except for a single "vieja", the place is deserted. Seeing a confessional, he crosses over and kneels and slowly stammers out the speech at the top. Then he gets up. As he walks out, a priest comes out of the vestibule and asks if there's anything he can do for him. Harry realizes there was no one in the confessional, he was just speaking to empty air. "No, I've done what I need to do." He walks out.

His instructions are to drive to a certain spot and wait. He's given a photograph, which he memorizes and burns. He cleans his pistol and takes a long, scenic drive through the Spanish mountains to his rendezvous. He doesn't know what he's waiting for; he has the picture, the place and that's it. It's all he needs to know, except that he'll be driving his passenger to France to another rendezvous. Simple enough. 

It's never that simple. 

When Harry gets to the spot, he witnesses a rather elaborate set-up for a prison-break and his "package" escaping undetected by the guardia or anyone else. It is Paul Rickard (Tony Musante) and Garmes makes quick work of stashing him under the back-seat, throwing him a wig and a change of clothes and then gearing out of there while the authorities are still confused. It is miles before, he lets Rickard see the light of day and peppering him with questions about what he knows (nothing). But, he does find out that Rickard is more of a hired-gun than a safe-cracker, that he has plans beyond just getting to France—like hooking up with his girlfriend, and that he is one irritating, cocky son-of-a-bitch. "The job" just got that much worse.

It just gets "better" and "better." When they get to the hotel that Rickard has specified, they find Claudie Scherrer (Trish Van Devere), who has been waiting for them for two weeks. Garmes is annoyed—she gives the trigger-happy Rickard a gun, while the young tough decides he's in charge constantly needling Garmes by calling him "Uncle" and a "dinosaur." Garmes already feels like a third wheel on this job, and he sees which way it's going.  He decides to give the couple his intended double room, taking the single Claudie had been staying in, but on his way out asks to speak to Rickard privately out in the hall.

He slams Rickard into a wall face-first and puts a choke-hold on him, rasping that he's in charge and he won't be anyone's punch-line. Rickard, mollified for now, sulks back to his room, while Garmes goes up to the girl's room, finding the sink filled with her soaking underthings. 

He dutifully hangs them to dry and gets some fitful sleep. His run is suddenly more complicated and a lot more dangerous—what do his old mob-cronies want Rickard for? He's a hit-man, not a safe-cracker and hit-men are a dime a dozen. Who is on the other side of the trip to France and why do they go to all the trouble for this punk?

It turns out Garmes fears are warranted. Rickard is in jail for assassination and is to be delivered to France for disposal. That's the job. But, having completed his task, Garmes can't help but go beyond the bounds of the job and do a little over-time, getting involved against his better judgment. Why? Claudie may have the answer: "We're his family." And, as irritating as Rickard is, Garmes can't help but feel protective towards Claudie, even though he suspects Rickard is using her to influence him.

Fleischer is adept at using the film's widescreen format to show the
obvious triangulation between Harry, Paul and Claudie. It might have
 been too obvious a visual trick for Huston.

The three turn into a dysfunctional triangle of fugitives, on the lam from the very people Harry is working for, and the longer that they are in his care, he's in danger. So, he finds an alternate way to get them to a sort of safety, against his older, wiser, better judgment.

The tag-line in the film's promotional material is "In the tradition of Hemingway and Bogart," (although Bogart only did one movie based on a Hemingway story—Howard Hawks' To Have and Have Not) and Scott, in an interview in Time Magazine at the time of filming, said he was making the movie because it reminded him of old Bogart movies. Scottish writer Alan Sharp—who also wrote Arthur Penn's Night Moves—may have had that intention (the Garmes confessional scene certainly has the feel of a disjointed Hemingway monologue) and the film feels a bit like the earlier mentioned Hawks movie as well as a similarly-themed film by John Huston, Key Largo. In both, a principled, if shaded, man must make a decision he wants to avoid, as circumstances are forced on him. The Last Run certainly carries that theme, but with much more of Hemingway's existentialism than with a studio-enforced happy ending.

Interestingly, Richard Fleischer wasn't the first director on the project. John Boorman was but left the project (going on to make Deliverance, instead—good move). John Huston took over the project, having worked with Scott twice before—The List of Adrian Messenger and The Bible: In the Beginning—but the two got into loggerheads about script re-writes and the casting of Tina Aumont (daughter of Maria Montez and Jean-Pierre Aumont) as the female lead. Huston left the production quite soon after the start of filming, taking over quickly and efficiently, and working with Ingmar Bergman's director of photography Sven Nykvist.

The film did not make money, and wasn't considered a success, either at the box office or artistically, despite Scott's post-Patton notoriety. He would bounce back the next year with The Hospital (written by Paddy Chayevsky) for which he was again nominated for the Best Actor Oscar—which he again refused to acknowledge.

I recently participated in an episode of the podcast Forgotten Films where I helped discuss this rarely seen troubled Scott film. Hope you give a listen.

Scott and Huston in the early days shooting The Last Run

Patton

Patton (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1970) Patton was a different kind of war movie. Where most films of that genre would concentrate on the cinematic battles, or use the war as a back-drop for soap-stories, Patton chose to take the more quixotic route of Lawrence of Arabia (or more appropriately, The Desert Fox about Patton's "player on the other side" in Africa, Erwin Rommel) by making a personal story about war and how it shapes the human being. Of how the warrior makes the war, but war also makes the warrior. The world war is the most important story, of course. But the story of General George S. Patton, Jr. (played by George C. Scott, with all the eerie command he brought to every role, probably far more than the real Patton personified) is so intertwined with that war's European campaign, as a mover and shaker of it, and his fortunes so changed by it (and not for the good) that even as it revels in the eccentricities of the man, it also shows how out of touch a professional warrior and student of conflict can be in this day and age.

Or in any day and age.
"God, how I hate the twentieth century" is one of the laugh-lines of Patton. But it's one of the truest lines of the script (by Fox scribe Edmund H. North and a very young Francis Ford Coppola). Patton, the soldier, was from another time (he thought so, literally), and his romantic notions of war and warriors made him an "odd duck" of the military, and a "lame duck" when it came to the political strategies inside an Army at war. He held disdain for bureaucratic warriors on both sides of the conflict (including "that paper-hanging son-of-a-bitch" in Berlin and his British counterpart Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery—played with birdlike pompousness by Michael Bates), the exceptions being his West Point classmate Dwight Eisenhower, and Erwin Rommel, who had opposing tank battle scenarios to Patton's own. The movie has the Germans studying Patton and his techniques, more approving of Patton than his own fellow Allied Commanders.
Scott's position as the centerpiece of the film is critical, but director Franklin J. Schaffner,* who apprenticed in live television and whose previous film was the better-than-it-deserved-to-be Planet of the Apes, brought his customary expansiveness to the theater of war. With a wide-screen process dubbed "Dimension 150,"** Schaffner created vistas of carnage and blazing battles of ferocity that took a dirtier, grimier and bloodier view of battlefield action than had been seen previously in the "clean-kill" war movies preceding it.
Patton, the man (both in life and on film) romanticized war, reveled in it, but the film bearing his name went further than most in de-glamourizing the traditional heroics of the less thoughtful war films, carefully explaining the strategies, viewing the battles dispassionately, almost like a chess-master reviewing the board, and in the after-math, taking stock of the scattered, shattered pieces. However planned a battle may be, it ends in chaos. Chaos and death. And in Patton, you can almost smell the stench of a battle-field's carnage.
Death is omnipresent in Patton, with detailed shots of dead and wounded in the battlefields, and of the crude graveyards made in haste. Some of the eeriest parts of Patton take place in those moments, backed by the cascading trumpets and marching jig of Jerry Goldsmith's spare score when it is stilled to shimmering strings, and unresolved motifs.****
Schaffner used his locations well, taking a page from David Lean, cramming as much information into the frames as he could, or by presenting stark landscapes that seemed to go on forever, showing the regimentation of war, how vast numbers of human beings could crowd a frame, or how solitary individuals could be lost in a landscape, or for that matter, History. The scenarists and Schaffner choose to end the movie, leaving Patton alive, just days before having his neck broken in a jeep accident. They leave him contemplating the transience of Glory walking mythically (and quixotically) towards a solitary wind-mill.
It is also about showmanship. A lot of actors turned down the role (some, like Rod Steiger, to their regret), but it was a tour de force for George C. Scott, who buried himself in the role, studying biographies, running films of the general over and over, doing an extensive make-up transformation—shaving his head to sport a Patton buzz-cut, matching the moles on Patton's face, and even having his teeth capped to make his smile more like the general's. There were some things he wouldn't do, like try to match Patton's voice—Scott felt simulating Patton's high-pitched voice*** would undercut some of his authority in the role.

The effect was extraordinary. Patton's kids, who were never too keen on the idea of the film, were amazed at Scott's appearance, and the role (which won Scott a Best Performance Oscar—which he famously refused) replaced the real-life General in the imaginations of the Nation, despite ample archival evidence.
Partially, it is the opening. Written by Francis Ford Coppola in an early draft of the script, it is a combination of several of Patton's inspirational addresses to his troops, performed—as if a stage performance—by a solo Scott before an out-sized American flag. It is this section of the script that most intrigued Scott, the stage actor, but also intimidated him. It was the last section filmed, and director Schaffner promised that it would be placed after the Intermission, as the actor—rightly—felt that the address would overpower the rest of the performance.

Schaffner, having a showman's instinct, reneged. And that speech, setting the tone and tenor of the performance that dominated the film, went immediately into pop iconography. It has been parodied and propagated for decades, a radical introduction to one of the more colorful players in the second World War. A thesis, a preamble, if you will, a first movement...but, more appropriately, a shot across the audience's bow.

***

The image most people have of Patton is George C. Scott.'s portrayal, 
but the real Patton was not so theatrical or full-throated.

* Few men were as suited as Schaffner to film this story: during WWII, he was part of the contingent landing at Sicily...under the command of Patton.

** It was camera-maker Todd AO's challenge to Cinerama, and presented a viewing range, or scope, of 150. Only two movies were shot in "Dimension 150"—The Bible and Patton. George C. Scott appeared in both of them.

****

"For over a thousand years, Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of a Triumph—a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeters and musicians and strange animals from the conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conqueror rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Some times, his children, robed in white, stood with him in the chariot...or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning—that all glory...is fleeting."

Patton Don't Make a Scene's:

The Opening

The Battlefield

The War-prayer