Serpico

Serpico (Sidney Lumet, 1973) 

"A policeman's first obligation is to be responsible to the needs of the community he serves ... The problem is that the atmosphere does not yet exist in which an honest police officer can act without fear of ridicule or reprisal from fellow officers. We create an atmosphere in which the honest officer fears the dishonest officer, and not the other way around."

Frank Serpico

Based on Peter Maas' best-seller ("Serpico: The Cop Who Defied The System" published 1973) about the Knapp Commission (1970-1972) and its star-witness, Frank Serpico, whose whistle-blowing on wide-spread systemic (there's that word) corruption in the New York City Police Department (and his subsequent suffering of acts of reprisal within his department), led to the formation of the commission by the city government. Serpico testified to the common practice of bribes given to officers and shake-downs for protection which were so pervasive and so accepted that any one—like Serpico—who did not take money were considered untrustworthy among the rank and file, a culture that was so topsy-turvy as to be Orwellian.

But, Serpico lived it on a day-to-day basis, and despite threats and intimidation, lived to tell the tale.

Events happened so fast that a film utilizing Maas' material was turned around very quickly for a December, 1973 release only a year after the commission had wrapped up its duties and made its recommendations. Director Sidney Lumet (a quick replacement for John G. Avildsen, who was originally attached) made short work making the film—4 1/2 months for shooting and post-production—utilizing locations in all five burroughs of New York City. It also had the benefit of new star Al Pacino, fresh off his role as Michael Corleone in The Godfather, providing a two film range where he could play both the extremes of both heroes and villains.

The film starts towards the end of events in 1971, with a thrumming drumbeat of windshield wipers as Detective Frank Serpico (Pacino) is being driven by car to the hospital after being shot in the face on a drug-bust.  Police guards are stationed at his hospital room and he's visited by Chief Sidney Green (John Randolph)—who has been working with Serpico on internal investigations and who suspects he's been shot by one of his partners in the narcotics division.

It's 1960 and Frank Serpico, the son of Italian immigrants, has made them proud graduating from the police academy, fulfilling a life-long dream of being one of the guys in blue who "know what's going on." But, he starts to become dissatisfied with how his fellow officers do their jobs and before long, he gets a plain clothes job with the Bureau of Criminal Investigation. But, working the street in suits and ties seems a bit stupid to him, so he begins to grow his hair out, and dress in more funky clothes. The other cops think he's crazy...or gay...but he gets results, even though one of his fellow officers might take a shot at him for not recognizing he's a cop.

He draws the attention of Bob Blair (Tony Roberts), a detective with the Mayor's Office of Investigations and the two make an unlikely friendship: Serpico knows the streets and Blair knows the politics and when the detective is given his share of split bribe money, he turns it back to his sergeant and informs Blair, who wants to do an official look into it, but Serpico won't testify lest he become a target for fellow officers, so the two quietly drop it, but Serpico begins recording his phone calls and gets transferred to another division, one described as "clean as a hound's tooth".

It's the first of many transfers, each more frustrating than the next because they all are taking bribes, pay-offs or letting well-connected criminals skate as long as they get their take. He's told with some intimidation by his colleagues, that you can't trust a cop who doesn't take bribes, so he confides in the well-meaning Captain Inspector McClain (Biff McGuire), who tells him he'll take his complaints to the commissioner if he'll just be patient and continue gathering evidence on the inside. But, after a year and a half of "gathering evidence" nothing is done, while Serpico becomes increasingly afraid for his life. Blair is stymied by politics when he tries to take it to the office of the Mayor.

The two become convinced that the only way to solve the problem is to take what they know out of the PD, especially when they learn that, despite assurances, the matter has been deliberately buried in the department and never gone any higher. Even when the matter is taken up, finally, by a grand jury and Serpico exposes himself to danger and retribution by testifying, that the matter is limited to street cops and not the higher authorities who are tolerating it. Finally, with the the assistance of Chief Green and Blair, a reluctant Serpico takes his story to the New York Times, and he is re-assigned to a dangerous Brooklyn narcotics division. It is at that time that he is shot and hospitalized.

These days...these times...with extra attention on the way policing is done post-911 and their militarization in anticipating terrorist attacks in the worst case and calls for defunding the police and diverting funds to social services, the plight of Serpico paints a nightmare scenario. Today's talk of the "one bad apple" coloring the whole of a police barrel is turned on its stem in his story where he is "the one good apple" under constant pressure to be rotten and "doing the right thing" is the exception rather than the systemic norm. One wants to think the best, but the reality is often a different story.

A lot of it has to do with culture. Most work environments I've seen and worked in lately seem to be more adversarial than service, although it is never talked about openly "on the floor." Co-workers will gripe and kvetch about customers and their idiosyncracies (if not downright cravenness) in an environment where the myth of best practices is that the customer is always right. Peer pressure and tribe mentality exacerbates the tendency to create an "us against them" environment. In a job where one is armed and in "warrior-mode" that pressure might be one's last line of defense in a dangerous situation and risking it by "rocking the boat" might not be in one's best interest. One wonders if George Floyd would be alive if the three rookie cops who observed his arrest had spoken up, even if it was questioning the methods of a more veteran officer. Conscience may make cowards of us all, but it certainly doesn't make us conscientious. Not when we're constantly watching our backs.

Despite its production rush, Serpico is one of those paranoid thrillers that's only enhanced by the nervous energy Lumet throws at it, and its a tour de force for Pacino, who appears in nearly every scene and shows how he can carry an entire film on his back with an on-point performance that veers from soulful to manic and is often a pain in the ass without losing an audience's attention or patience. 

"In these challenging times," it is a film that resonates even more than the time it was made.

Lumet would make an unofficial "police corruption trilogy" with this film, 1981's Prince of the City and 1990's Q & A.

Through my appearance here today ... I hope that police officers in the future will not experience ... the same frustration and anxiety that I was subjected to ... for the past five years at the hands of my superiors ... because of my attempt to report corruption. I was made to feel that I had burdened them with an unwanted task. The problem is that the atmosphere does not yet exist, in which an honest police officer can act ... without fear of ridicule or reprisal from fellow officers. Police corruption cannot exist unless it is at least tolerated ... at higher levels in the department. Therefore, the most important result that can come from these hearings ... is a conviction by police officers that the department will change. In order to ensure this ... an independent, permanent investigative body ... dealing with police corruption, like this commission, is essential.

Play It Again, Sam

Play It Again, Sam (Herbert Ross, 1972) Woody Allen was well into his directing career in 1972, but when Paramount Pictures brought his play, "Play it Again, Sam" to the movies, he was relegated to adapting the script and starring in it (despite the fact that his agents Charles H. Joffee and Jack Rollins—who would be the long time producers on his films—were also part of the production team). The directing duties were given to Herbert Ross, who'd done the musical numbers for Funny Girl, and had directed the musical version of Goodbye, Mr. Chips (for MGM), The Owl and the Pussycat (again with Streisand for Columbia) and a drama T.R. Baskin (for Paramount), possibly because one of the producers was Arthur P. Jacobs—who'd produced the musical of Mr. Chips. It might have been that Allen's films up to that point—Take the Money and Run, Bananas, and a couple of short satire films for PBS—had a rough, low-budget feel to them and Ross could give them the necessary big-screen gloss. 

Allen explained that his impetus was three-fold: he had no interest in directing one of his plays for the screen (a rule he forgot when he directed 1994's TV movie of Don't Drink the Water); he was tied up with trying to get his farce of the best-seller Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex*; and he thought that if someone could make something charming of the film, it could only help build an audience for his own films.

Good choices, those; He was right on all counts. Play it Again, Sam reached a wider audience than Allen's previous movies and set up an audience attracted to his comedy (and his nebbish persona) for his subsequent films. He also must have gotten some pointers from observing Ross on this film as his following films exhibited a better directorial panache, while still keeping the autonomy he enjoyed as a talented independent film-maker outside the studio system.

In the film, Woody plays Allan Felix, the recently-divorced editor of of a fringe film magazine ("Film Weekly") and "one of the life's great watchers" (as his ex describes him). She's left him because he's no fun, risk-averse ("I'm red-haired and fair-skinned—I don't tan, I STROKE!"), and just watches movies, while she wants to have a happy, active life. He worries that will give him a heart attack. When we first see him, he's watching Casablanca, (probably for the umpteenth time), rapt. He's much more comfortable in a movie theater, where he can passively absorb and not act, or engage, or "be" in the world (the movie is set in San Francisco, rather than New York). He's a bit adrift, but that might be less a result of his divorce, than a symptom of his own, which probably contributed to it.

He begins to ruminate over his situation, going over his split in his mind, and having imaginary conversations with Humphrey Bogart (Jerry Lacy) whom he idolizes and wants to emulate. But, Bogart's advice isn't very realistic: "Dames are simple, kid," Bogart's spirit tells him early on. "I never met one who hasn't understood a slap in the mouth or a slug from a 45." Bogart is much more comfortable in his own skin (if he had skin), and he basically advises Allan to "man up" (or the 1972 equivalent as  filtered through the '40's). And as far as being dumped is concerned? "Nothing a little bourbon and soda can't fix."

Alcohol, however, makes Allan nauseous. He pours his heart out to his best friends, Dick Christie (Tony Roberts), a preoccupied stock-broker and his model-wife Linda (Diane Keaton). Dick tells Allan his divorce is an opportunity to be free, "to sow wild oats", to go and meet women, but when they set Allan up with some of their friends, he is beset with insecurities and a false brio that make every date a disaster—even their friend, a nymphomaniac, rejects him. Barely able to sustain anything more than half-a-date, Allan starts to become a third wheel in the life of Dick and Linda.

Allan: That's quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn't it?
Museum Girl: Yes, it is.
Allan: What does it say to you?
Museum Girl: It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness
of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of Man forced to live in a barren,
Godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste,
horror and degradation, forming a useless bleak straitjacket in a black absurd cosmos.
Allan: What are you doing Saturday night?
Museum Girl: Committing suicide.
Allan: What about Friday night?

Allan wants a relationship ("Where'd you learn THAT word, a shrink?" scoffs Bogart) like they have, but even that marriage isn't all it's cracked up to be. With every change of venue, Dick has to check in with "the office" to make sure they know where he can be reached (this is in 1972—the pre-history of cell-phones) and his frequent absences make the neurotic Linda feel abandoned and needy and she ends up spending more time commiserating with the equally needy Allan. With so much in common, pretty soon, their friendship turns to affection and Allan starts envisioning having an affair with her, but struggles with his conscience about cheating with his best-friend's wife.

Egged on by Bogart, Allan pursues Linda, even as he has visions of the result such an indiscretion will have—Dick dramatically walks into the sea in one, and in another he's a vengeful Italian (eh?) seeking to filet Allan for making him a cuckold. But, the Bogartian prodding, like a gat in the lower spine, has him pursuing the low hanging fruit with self-esteem issues that bothers to give him the time of day...if only she'd give him a night.

What's interesting about Play it Again, Sam is what it gets wrong. In the same way, that the lead male of (500) Days of Summer achieves his idea of romance from "a mis-reading of The Graduate," Allan's Bogart-familiar is a mis-reading of the Bogart persona, emphasizing all the things that Allan lacks with not much else. Lacy's Bogart is ostensibly in the guise of the early 1940's Bogart in the era of his Sam Spade-Richard Blaine-Philip Marlowe personas. But, as hard-bitten as Bogart's character would appear in their respective films, there was always a sensibility of decency deeply rooted in the character, less interested in scoring with the ladies than in doing the right thing and living to a code of ethics that this Bogart would probably mock. It's an over-simplification to say that Allan's Bogart manifestation is Bogart—or any amalgam of his screen persona's (unless you throw in a couple of his gangster parts), so much as a projection of what Allan thinks he lacks. He ultimately has to abandon Bogart's advice and look to himself to do the noble thing, for which he's awarded with a boost in his self-esteem, a chance to re-enact one of his favorite movie scenes, and a salute of sorts from his errant bad angel.

Looking at the film today with 21st Century sensibilities, there are some cringe-inducing lines and a general sensibility—insensitivity, more accurately—that the world of women is a bit like a buffet for an indiscriminate diner...at least from a man's perspective (which is the only perspective this film has). "Playboy" for nerds. It's funny, sure. Funny and churlish. And one imagines the real Bogart, head bowed, sadly contemplating the glowing end of his cigarette, over being misused and misrepresented in the name of a misogyny he'd probably have curled his lip at. Woody Allen's Bogart is not the one I remember—tearing his guts out while confessing "I won't because all of me wants to..."**

It makes me recall that when I watched Play it Again, Sam all those years ago, my loyalties shifted subtly and radically away from Allan Felix to Linda Christie and her predicament (in much the same way that Allan Felix's character must also shift to...finally...do what's right by her). A lot of that has to do with Keaton's winsome playing of the character. But, a lot of it has to do with the realization that heroes...even projected ones...have to be heroic, if they have to win our trust and admiration. And you don't do that by looking around for heroes, but by looking for it within.

Here's looking at yourself, kid.

* but were afraid to ask. 

**