Tommy

Tommy (Ken Russell, 1975) There have been bad rock and roll movies—really bad ones. But the genre seemed to hit its peak during the glitzy, gay disco-days of the 1970's. "The kids"—and Robert Stigwood—were making hits (and lots of money) from movies like Saturday Night Fever and Grease. But even more, the companies putting out the soundtracks filled with movie-hits were making a wind-fall. There was a subsequent crush of rock-movies with double-album soundtracks hitting theaters and stores and amidst that groundswell were such gems as the Barbra Streisand A Star is Born, Can't Stop the Music, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band—starring The Bee Gees and Peter Frampton—but ahead of the pack was this bloated and excessive refutation of all things revolutionary in rock n' roll—"Tommy."

Pete Townsend and The Who's "rock-opera" (though it doesn't follow strict form requirements) barely held together as an album, but it was a fine conceit. And where there's conceit, there is Hollywood.

An excessive film, during an excessive time in Hollywood. This scattered and episodic movie actually has more in common with the episodic "Broadway Melody" revue films of the 30's and 40's—guest-stars are trotted out (Eric Clapton, Elton John, Tina Turner, Jack Nicholson) for one song, then they are shipped off, never to be seen again.

Ann-Margret was asked to cavort in soap suds, baked beans, and chocolate 

as Russell wanted to make a point about materialism and advertising excess.

She was nominated for an Oscar for her performance.

I don't remember much of "Tommy" except the excesses (purging does that), but I do remember the frequent use by director Russell of the distorted close-up, how the songs didn't flow into each other but kinda...stopped. Paused.

We miss you, Tina...

Then started again. Flow was something missing from Tommy, and replaced by excess. Elton John was the biggest thing in music at the time, but he's just a blip in the film, perched atop stilt-like Doc Martens. Jack Nicholson (substituting for a probably-more-appropriate Christopher Lee) is in B-movie auto-pilot and CANNOT sing. Ann-Margret was inconceivably nominated for an Oscar for her performance in the film—probably for bravery, Tina Turner was deliriously ferocious (and fidgety) as "The Acid Queen," and the heretical "Eyesight for the Blind" sequence that took place in The Church of Marilyn Monroe. Tasteless, crass, and jaw-droppingly audacious, it is also a very neat commentary on the idolatry of celebrity—a far better one than the movie itself...or Townsend's original...was trying to be. Except for that sequence, the film is a waste of time. An extremely commercial indictment of things commercial.

I suppose it could be due a re-make.

Let's forget it (Better, still).

He's free. (We get it!)

The "Eyesight for the Blind" sequence (the song by "Sonny Boy Williamson II", performed by The Who, Eric Clapton—quite stoned—and Arthur Brown). Like the movie, it is padded to just go on soooo long and director Ken Russell (and editor Stuart Baird) do what they can to keep things semi-lively. Best thing about the movie.

The Big Sleep (1978)

Saturday is usually "Take Out the Trash" Day...

The Big Sleep (Michael Winner, 1978) You already know that it's going to be a bit problematic with the very first shot of this adaptation. This later version of Raymond Chandler's first detective novel—cobbled together from elements of his short stories and published in 1939—starts right where the novel starts—with detective Philip Marlowe (played, as in 1975's Farewell, My Lovely, by Robert Mitchum) driving up to the Sternwood Estate for an interview to taking a job. 

The thing is he's driving on the wrong side of the road. That's a clue. When you've been over-stewed in Chandler pot-boilers about L.A.'s most geographically-associated gumshoe that sort of thing stands out like the proverbial tarantula on angel food. He's not in Los Angeles, where they drive on the right (that is "non-left") side of the road, he's in London, held over from The War, it seems, and he's driving a Mercedes. Already you feel that something is very wrong, even before he does his interview. It's not your Grandfather's Philip Marlowe.

The interview with Sternwood (James Stewart) goes well, as far as it goes. The General is being blackmailed—it's not the first time—and his son-in-law Rusty Regan usually handled such things one way or another. But, Rusty has disappeared. There are rumors, but just that. Marlowe has been recommended by Scotland Yard and he accepts the assignment, but not before he's been told about the Sternwood girls, Charlotte (Sarah Miles, Mitchum's co-star in Ryan's Daughter) and Camilla (Candy Clark), who Marlowe has already met ("She tried to sit on my lap...while I was standing up," a line used in the book and both movies. For this version, the names have been changed—from "Vivian" and "Carmen"—to protect the not-so-innocent.

After taking his leave of the General, who has complained of fatigue, he is commanded to the bedroom of Charlotte, who demands to know what Marlowe has been hired for—possibly to find her missing husband? Marlowe says it's the general's business and none of hers, and she leaves unsatisfied and unimpressed.

Marlowe's first stop is to the bookstore of H. R. Geiger, whose name is on the notes. By subterfuge, he concludes that the shop is not a book store, per se, but rather a front for a pornography distributor. He has a bit of disagreement with the shop's receptionist, Agnes (Joan Collins), who develops an instant dislike to Marlowe's pestering.

Marlowe stakes out Geiger's flat and sees lights flashing inside. The last flash, though, is from a gun-shot and Marlowe breaks in to find much amiss: Camilla, drugged and naked in front of a camera, the film missing, drug paraphernalia  strewn about, and Geiger dead on the floor with a gunshot wound in the forehead. He checks the backway to look for the killer, but has missed him. Camilla is certainly in no shape to have done it, she's high out of her mind, the bar of which is set pretty low to begin with. The best thing to do is throw something on Camilla and get her home, pronto. He'll come back to the house later.

That's after he gets some well-deserved shut-eye; the bags under Mitchum's eyes are starting to look like suitcases. But, he gets called by The Yard (in the person of John Mills) to watch a car being dragged from the water. In it is the Sternwood's chauffeur, dead. A little too close to home, even if your home is a mansion, ain't it? Heading back to his office, Marlowe finds older sister Charlotte waiting for him, still wanting to know what the General has hired him for—no dice, lady—and to tell him they're being blackmailed by somebody else, this time with naked pictures of Camilla...from the previous evening's recreations. Marlowe tells her to pay up and she says she can borrow the money from gambling boss Eddie Mars (Oliver Reed in full hissing snake mode). Hmmm. Isn't there a rumor that Rusty ran off with Mars' wife? Bears investigating.

Well, one can get into the weeds very quickly here, and the movie's only 30 minutes in. There is a famous story about the Howard Hawks-Humphrey Bogart-Lauren Bacall version done in the 40's where there was a body but nobody had any idea who killed him. The writers didn't know. Hawks didn't know. Chandler didn't care—"that's your job" he told the movie-makers. By that time, Hawks didn't care, either. There's a line in both movies "so many guns. So few brains." Well, there are so many corpses that keeping track of them all without a toe-tag is an exercise in fatality. The 1978 version wants everything nice and tidy and explained, whether we care or not. Where, the 1946 version kept that information vague and unresolved, Winner doubles down to explain it with voice-over and a flash-back sequence introduced with a picture-spinning rotation (the edge of the frame threatening to slap us awake). He needn't have bothered.

What this version of The Big Sleep does well is to fill the film with so many good British actors that one gets dizzy remembering them all: Miles, Mills, Reed, Harry Andrews, Collins, Edward Fox (he's good!), Colin Blakely, Richard Todd, James Donald, who are clearly enjoying their versions of American 1940's types. It's just that it's set in the 1970's and the transition makes some of the scenes a little bit campy, like the actors are having too good a time "slumming." But, this one doesn't feel like one of those old B-movie shadow-fests. It's film-noir with the lights on, and one fairly squints from that and volunteering too much information. 

There's no style, just a lot of substance. And although it's a slightly more faithful version of the Chandler novel in the tawdry specifics, thanks to deep-sixing the Hays Code, nothing much is gained—other than the feeling that this would have been really racy in the 1940's, but in the era of buying nudie mags at the 7-11, it's merely people going to too much trouble for little return.

One of my favorite lines from the earlier version is in the scene when Vivian comes to Marlowe's office and gives him the envelope with Carmen's nudes. He takes a look at them and cracks "She takes a good picture..." It's funny and sick and rude and if you didn't know what he was talking about, you'd never know, so far does it fly beneath the censor's radar.

And it's clever, something that Winner's "bleed-by-the-numbers version" never really achieves. Should have known when I first saw the Mercedes driving up the left lane. This movie was going the wrong way.

The Three Musketeers/The Four Musketeers

The Three Musketeers: The Queen's Diamonds/
The Four Musketeers: Milady's Revenge (Richard Lester, 1974/1975) These rollicking films were originally planned as a two and a half hour epic (no matter what the Producers now say!) may just be one of the best adventure films (and adaptations of a classic novel) ever adapted, balancing the demands of the story, the tenor of the times in which it was made and the idiosyncrasies of its director.

When approached, Richard Lester (who hadn't made a film since The Bed Sitting Room in 1969) wasn't enthused. Then he read the story, and did some research...and heartily agreed. One can see why. For The Three Musketeers, as Lester and his screen-writer George MacDonald Fraser envisioned it, is a story of intrigue done in high places, but carried out by the lackeys and foot-soldiers who live only to serve. Forget that the palace-dwellers are either snakes or dullards—they provide an opportunity for income and adventure--two qualities lacking amongst the citizens of France and England, who, at the time, are at war. The opportunities for thrills, humor and rapier-pointed satire are rich and mined well by the film-makers.

And Lester's direction is masterful—simple set-ups and multiple cameras are used during the swash-buckling to make sure there's a glimpse of every buckled swash. And those scenes are choreographed as a group participation so that every Musketeer has "business." Lester also worked to make sure that the fights were inelegant affairs--not balletic, as had been the tradition, but more like street-fights, with few rules and the use of landscape and surroundings as equal strategies to the sword technique (and every part of the sword is used, as opponents are sometimes conked with the ornate handles). And, as Lester was renowned as a "one-take" director, opportunities for mis-haps, mess-ups and stumbles only added to the verisimilitude. Sure, the action was rehearsed, but any imperfections made things seem more real.

Reed, Finlay, Chamberlain, York and Kinnear enjoying the fruits of their labors.

Lester surrounds the royalty with games and idle amusements that have a slight tint of mindless cruelty to them, and that extends to the villains, whose elaborate machinations involving the Royals are merely extensions of those same games, with regime-toppling consequences.

A royal chess-game with dogs and capuchins

And the cast! As the musketeers, Oliver Reed as the surly Athos, Richard Chamberlain as the effete Aramis, Frank Finlay as the clownish Porthos, and Michael York as the young and naive D'Artagnan. As the Royals, Jean-Pierre Cassel as the foppish King Louis XIII, Geraldine Chaplin as the frail Queen Anna of Austria, and Simon Ward as the rakish Duke of Buckingham. As the villains, Faye Dunaway as Lady De Winter, Christopher Lee as the villainous Rochefort, and Charlton Heston in one of his best performances as the Machiavellian Cardinal Richelieu. Rounding out the cast are Raquel Welch as the Queen's seamstress, the accident-prone Constance de Bonacieux,* Spike Milligan as her randy husband, and Lester regular, the great Roy Kinnear as D'Artagnan's man-servant, Planchet. A superb cast, rarely equalled.

Welch and Dunaway as good girl/bad girl

It's long been contended that the film was supposed to be one movie, but that the Salkind's split it into two to maximize profits. That's the rumor—there is a natural split of the film at the half-way point that features almost all the actors for a sort-of bow, but it could have easily been used as the starting place for an intermission. It's born out by the fact that there is less movie in The Four Musketeers, it being padded with an "up-to-that-point" narrated prologue.

Charlton Heston in one of his best performances as Cardinal Richelieu

 

The two-film scheme is helped by the fact that there are two very distinct stories of different tones, both of which are resolved, the first being the intrigue-filled, but relatively light-hearted The Queen's Diamonds story (in which Athos, Aramis and Porthos are wounded, but not killed), and the second, Milady's Revenge where the Palace forces seek to disrupt whatever kept them from succeeding in the first one. That story, with its be-headings, extended back-story and several prominent deaths, is less fun (although certainly as clever) and considerably darker. Where Part 1 is rollicking fun with minimal consequences, the stakes in Part 2 are very high, passions flare, and the sword-play becomes deadly and fraught. The humor is darker than the first, too. Despite the same cast and crew,** the two are very different films. The combination of the two of them would have left audiences winded and less ebullient (and more anticipatory of a continuance).

Two other highlights: David Watkins' exquisite cinematography
and the hysterically ornate costumes.

Taken together, they have a moralist's sensibility of the costs of frivolity and duplicity; adventure can be fun, but in a poisonous political atmosphere, one adventures at one's own risk. You can have a good time watching The Three Musketeers, but the story is incomplete without the paid dues in The Four Musketeers. Together, they make one of the finest adaptations of a classic novel ever put to film.

* Welch, not the most versatile of actresses, won the Golden Globe for her hilarious performance in The Three Musketeers and tearfully told the crowd "I've been waiting for this since One Million Years B.C.!"

** ...except for the score composers--Michel Legrand for The Three Musketeers and Lalo Schifrin for The Four Musketeers.