Dreams of Death

By Eric Jessen 3/5/2010 (Photograph by Weegee)

Confessions of a Killer from "The Naked City"

The streets were rough in those days, but aren't they always. That's just one of those things people say. Only until you've licked the pavement do you know it's true.
I never thought it would end this way: lying in a pool of my own blood, eating cement, gunned down by a cop. Death, sure I saw it coming, and not of natural causes. I wasn't that thick. I wasn't one of those hot-shit hit-men, reckless punks who think they're in the wild west. But not by a cop, never aced by a dirty pig. What a horrible way to go. I always wished a boss ordered my death. That's more dignified.
I had it all mapped-out in my head, like a teenage girl planning her wedding. I would start out committing a few petty crimes: hold up a liquor store, a drug store. Maybe I'd meet a few hoods along the way. I knew the right places to hang out. Eventually I might drive for a bank job. I'd do some time, sure. The pen's where you meet the big shots. To earn the mob's respect I'd have to bump off some middle-ranking hood – just enough to get their attention. Then I'd take one in the back.
Everyone remembers you if you're killed by the mob. I tried my best, made it pretty far. Blackmail, that's where I went wrong – pinned the wrong people in a corner, the wrong cops. The DA always told me I'd end up a stain on the asphalt – called me “scum.” I hate that I proved him right. He's probably standing over my body right now, shaking his head. It makes me sick. He's one of those high-and-mighty pricks who talks about “cleaning-up the streets.”
Standing over my body, I bet he thinks the streets are cleaner now that I'm dead. He doesn't know the half of it. I've tasted them, they're filthy.

Shutter Island (2010)

By Eric Jessen 3/1/2010

Martin Scorsese's new film Shutter Island is like a great jumble or crossword from the newspaper: fun to twiddle over while waiting for your flight at the airport. And for at least the first hour-and-a-half to two hours it was hard to put down. But as with all puzzles the solution pales in comparison to the fun of unscrambling. Although the solution is quite tantalizing. (When it's finally time to board I always peak at the up-side-down fine print on the jumble.) Reading the Dennis Lehane novel that inspired the movie it must be almost impossible to resist flipping to the final chapter.
Shutter Island certainly has all the elements of a great spellbinder. Scribbled notes, misnomers and anagrams turn our brain to mush. The story twists and turns with seemingly no regard for retracing its steps. And what better setting for a mind-bender than an asylum for the criminally insane. Ghostly crazies creep around ward A, whispering to themselves. In ward C scarred and battered faced maniacs, some with body parts held together by what look like zippers, dangle their arms through cell bars, grasping at air. Muffled screams and the thumps and screeches of the soundtrack underline the tension.
To open we see two U.S. Marshals, Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), investigating the disappearance of a convicted killer riding a ferry. From the thick fog that covers the strangely 2D looking Boston Harbor we know there's something odd in the works on Shutter Island.
Deputy Warden McPherson (John Carrol Lynch) greets the marshals at the shore with few words and a skeptical look in his eyes. At the gate when McPherson asks for the marshals' firearms Chuck has trouble getting his gun out of his holster – the first little piece of the puzzle to put in our memory bank. The marshals meet the head Doc John Cawley (played by Sir Ben Kingsley) who shows them to the escaped “patient” Rachel Solando's room. Under a broken floor board Teddy finds a note that says “Who is 67” - another puzzle piece, this one a corner.
A white haired German doctor played by Max Von Sydow gives us chills. A hurricane hits Shutter Island leaving the marshals stranded in a cemetery. From there as the story unfolds it becomes apparent that Teddy has fallen into an elaborate trap. We learn Daniels has his own agenda aside from finding Rachel Solando. He suspects Shutter Island is not just an asylum for the criminally insane but a secret government laboratory for gruesome psychological experimentation, and he's determined to prove it. But it seems the doctors and the warden are always one step ahead of him.
Questions in our mind mount. Although the movie is almost half finished our puzzle seems barely started, as if we had a mix of pieces from two different puzzles. What are we to make of Teddy's flashbacks of storming Dachau – numerous close-ups of frozen emaciated corpses seem gratuitous – as well as dreams of his late wife smoldering into ash? Were these flashbacks and dreams along with strange conversations actually hallucinations caused by a spiked aspirin or cigarette? Is Teddy in fact slowly going insane?
A vital document Teddy refuses to acknowledge and a cigarette delicately placed at the edge of a cliff – two more pieces to the puzzle which only add to our confusion. The most compelling question becomes how is this possibly going to end? Only in hindsight did it seem possible. Surprisingly almost all loose ends are tied. I can say at least the end is logically satisfying. Unfortunately the fun of the whirlwind dissipates. Teddy finds himself blabbing on and on through fire in a cave, wasting a dozen matches to light a conversation in a prison cell, then finally storming ward B, the infamous lighthouse, and learning the truth from Dr. Cawley. I guess the game has to end somehow.

Pickup on South Street (1953)

By Eric Jessen 2/11/10

The train rocks and Skip McCoy moves closer. He's picked his target: a young woman with a surprise waiting for him. A sea of people force his body up against hers. As the train starts to move again he slips his hands down by her waist, pretending to hold open a newspaper. One sway of the train and he's unfastened her purse. Two government agents stand maybe ten feet away, their eyes fixed on his every move. His fingers delicately sift through a handkerchief, some makeup, then pluck out her wallet. As the train comes to a stop he bumps her closing her purse then rushes off to find out how big he's scored.
Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark) must be dim. He's definitely backward. Why if he's a “three time loser” would he risk getting caught a fourth time with his hand down a woman's purse and by state law guarantee himself life behind bars?
The simple answer given by Pickup on South Street and most film noir, crime genre movies is that he just doesn't know any better. Once a “two-bit canon,” always a two-bit canon as Captain Dan Tiger (Murvyn Vye) would say. In the world of gangs, hoods, mugs and stoolies there's no turning back. And as much as that may sound like a hell for the criminals who find themselves down the wrong path, the same movies routinely finish them off with a moral tongue lashing.
Perfect for director Samuel Fuller that such a routine exists. Fuller is an iconoclast, a maverick, a cynic if there ever was one. I must admit he is a favorite. His willingness to shock and appall is refreshing. Fuller is a master of the underground, a quintessential termite-filmmaker. And during the 50's the former tabloid journalist made a series of no-fluff B-classics.
His filmography could only have been made in pulp heaven: a murder mystery at a mental hospital (Shock Corridor); a prostitute fleeing the big city to the suburbs and finding herself handcuffed by a kind of man much worse than a pimp, a child molester (The Naked Kiss); a landowner (played by Barbara Stanwyck) with her forty body guards at her back and a U.S. Marshal finding they love the click of the trigger, and BANG of their pistol more than they care for each other (Forty Guns). And on top of that, no description of Fuller's pulp legend is complete without mentioning one simply nutty opening voice over - as a man in pajamas chases a toddler and a puppy through a destroyed city we hear, “In this ravaged city where people are starving, all the dogs have been eaten except one” (China Gate). Writing these descriptions I can't help but giggle.
It's true, any thought of sensitivity has never stood in Samuel Fuller's way. To call him “heavy-handed,” “over-the-top,” “primitive” or merely “fast, flashy, and essential empty minded” (as Pauline Kael did) would be an understatement. Fuller's movies can get downright absurd, and their violence bludgeoning. I prefer Manny Farber's description of Fuller: the first director to attempt “poetic purity” through “unlimited sadism, done candidly and close up.”
A convention commonly disregarded in Fuller movies is that the good eventually defeats the bad. Or, that the bad sooner or later get their comeuppance. In a Fuller movie like Pickup on South Street the bad don't necessarily defeat the good. Instead the bad – McCoy, a pickpocket, Candy (Jean Peters), a prostitute, and Moe (played fantastically by Thelma Ritter), a police informant – defeat those even worse – Commies.
Fuller prefers the “alternate path” not as a success story, where turning to crime is rewarded, but as a vehicle for a thrill ride and occasionally a message. No matter if that message is sometimes simple-minded or heavy-handed. Along with his best B-movies that sport hilarious tag lines, every so often Fuller delivers a gem, Pickup on South Street certainly being one.

Adam's Rib (1949)

By Eric Jessen January 17, 2010

It was convenient for director George Cukor and particularly for writing duo Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, that they had a sweet couple in Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy to play with. No amount of marital chirp would annoy us with these two. They're perfect leads for a light and wonderful comedy: warm, lovable, and also intelligent enough to convey a serious message. But I still wonder if Adam's Rib is a statement first and a comedy second or vice versa.
Gordon and Kanin certainly came up with the most logical set up to prove women are equal to men. Hepburn as Amanda Bonner and Tracy as Adam Bonner are a marriage made in courtroom heaven. She's a defense attorney and he's a prosecuting attorney. He believes in justice. She believes in equality. With those values, no matter what happens, they're both winners. And is there a setting more reasonable, more civilized, or more American then a courtroom? Perfect that women's equality would be decided by a judge and jury.
At first Amanda seems to be a stereotypical wife. In her silk nightgown, very dutifully, she serves Adam breakfast in bed. But just as she begins to smooch-up to her husband, his grumpy reaction gets her blood boiling. Terrific that a case came along Amanda thought perfect to prove a point. The very innocent and desperate looking Doris Attinger (Judy Holliday) shot her cheating husband Warren (Tom Ewell) after catching him in the act, but the fact that she trembled with fear, closed her eyes and turned away just as she pulled the trigger proves she didn't mean it. And she says she was just trying to scare him. Even more terrific that this very case fell into Adam's lap.
But who would make the better argument? I was very interested to see. Given the circumstances it seemed to be an open and shut case. I wondered how Amanda would possibly create suspense leading to the verdict. So when Adam and Amanda's daily arguments finally made the courtroom I was thoroughly disappointed.
Screwball comedy or not, Adam proves himself an absurdly incompetent attorney. And really Amanda isn't any better. Her argument for why Doris should be acquitted assumes men frequently get away with shooting their cheating wives. Do they? She claims they were only trying to protect their home, and so was Doris when she shot her spouse. Picture the defendant as a man, she pleaded to the jury, then what would your verdict be? I did and wasn't convinced.
However Adam's Rib still has its moments. Hepburn and Tracy are funny here. Certainly Judy Holliday and even Tom Ewell and Jean Hagen as Ewell's mistress in supporting roles are exceptional. It's unfortunate they're rarely given anything but easy gags. Gordon and Kanin write a pretty good comedy but a weak, at best, statement.
So they fought, they bickered, they patted each other on the bum and a few times it got raucous. A few times it got personal. But really, it never went that far. It was always all in fun. And in the end the man, Spencer Tracy, won the battle. But for a while, the woman, Katherine Hepburn, got the better of him. Long enough, I guess, for 1949 to earn Adam's Rib a brief mention for being “ahead of its time.” Some went as far as to call it “pioneering.”
It seems all that matters is that they had a battle, Hepburn even put up a fight. She wasn't a doll, she was a woman, a woman that deserved as much respect as Spencer Tracy. So she didn't win and didn't even really pack much of a profound or though-provoking punch, but for once a woman had made her way into the ring. I hope you're satisfied.

Notes on Criticism

By Eric Jessen 12/31/09

When I think of my dream job, I think of Pauline Kael describing in her fifth book Reeling, a trip she took to the Broadway area with a young critic to see a hard-core movie. She describes the small theater, the crowd full of men, the live show that accompanied the movie – a young girl, around 17 or 18 doing a strip and then a dance naked. She describes the girl's eyes scaling the audience with a look of hatred, then staring at her. She describes being overcome by a feeling similar to one she got while watching many recent movies, those as she put it with a “mixture of nostalgia and parody” and a nihilistic atmosphere, as if “everything had turned to dung, oneself included.”
There's something about all this that I love. Maybe it's that the critic sees past the popular, the marketing, the stars, and the glittering lights. The critic can point out the excellence in a small or all but forgotten film, and at the same time point out when the movies have turned to dung. And maybe in some small way the critic makes film better.
I used to just watch movies, hundreds and hundreds. But it wasn't until I starting reading great criticism by my favorites, like Kael, Farber and Ferguson, Agee and Sarris, that I came to appreciate movies as trash and art, and directors as auteurists, frauds and hacks. I worry that with the demise of newspapers and magazines, where my favorite critics worked, that my generation won't benefit from great criticism.

Bad Lieutenant (1992)

Eric Jessen 12/15/09
It's easy to spot a movie with prize-worthy realism by its painstakingly slow pace, one disturbing grunt-filled sex scene, and your almost certain boredom or unbearable discomfort.
Another feature of movies with pure realism is overly mechanical and deliberate acting. So in Bad Lieutenant when Harvey Keitel started weeping uncontrollably every other scene, I knew director Abel Ferrara had executed something particularly extraordinary.
Much of Bad Lieutenant is a worthy crime drama for 1950's Italian cinema (though just as unwatchable as Open City and other neorealism "masterpieces"). But rather than having an easy charm and a poetic quality that pre 8 1/2 Federico Fellini would be proud of, Bad Lieutenant peddles a crude thrown-together, where-have-you-been-God type of meaning-making. After the masturbation scene (which is in-your-face realism), and the constant Catholic-guilt spewing, I'll award Bad Lieutenant "most realistically awful experience of the week."

Their Merry Romance

By Eric Jessen 12/6/09

A "merry romance," a "screen feast," which movie comes to mind: Frank Capra's It Happened One Night or Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday?
A Hawksian movie is rarely merry, but often a feast. It's hard to resist the easy charm of Capra's It Happened One Night: with Clark Gable, as a boozing recently fired reported Peter Warne and Claudette Colbert as the helpless heiress Ellen Andrews. Capra has a flair for the romantic and merry (It's a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington are great examples). But I have a hard time describing any of his movies as a feast. (I take my cues from Manny Farber, the painter and critic who points out, "the only subtle thing about this conventionalist is that, despite his folksy, emotion-packed fables, Frank Capra is strictly a mechanic, stubbornly unaware of the ambiguities that ride his shallow images.") But as lightly enjoyable as is It Happened One Night, Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday is raucous fun. Each scene is layered with gags, no joke goes uninterrupted by another, and as much as I love Gable and Colbert, Cary Grant as Walter Burns and Rosalind Russell as Hildy Johnson are just as wonderful. So His Girl Friday definitely deserves such compliments: certainly a feast and merry, I guess.
Both It Happened One Night and His Girl Friday are deserving of praise. So why then was the reaction to the two movies markedly different? It Happened One Night, despite poor early returns in the theaters, went on to become a huge hit, the biggest ever up to that point for Columbia Pictures. Gable feigning street smarts and peevishly nagging Colbert, and Colbert acting like a snobbish prude while flashing half a calf at the most opportune time, glad to let him - this purportedly quintessential screwball comedy melted Great Depression era hearts. It captured all the major Academy awards (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Writing), a feat unmatched until One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It catapulted Frank Capra into the stratosphere of mainstream success (although to the eventual disdain of highbrow critics). On the other hand, His Girl Friday had only moderate success, and was pooh-poohed by the New York Times and the usually reliable Otis Ferguson.
I wonder if in a time of the Hays Code (separate beds and no "excessive or lustful kissing") the vastly different portrayal of women in the two movies had anything to do with their success. Mid 1930's audiences ate up the down and out reporter barking orders at the overly pampered débutante. It Happened One Night tickled their fancies for the underdog, a spontaneous elopement, and a shirtless Clark Gable. The fact that Gable's character loved to hear himself holler and refused to give Colbert's character an ounce of respect never crossed their minds. By 1940 I guess they were still not ready to see Rosalind Russell jostling with Cary Grant as one of the guys.
But to understand fully why His Girl Friday was unsuccessful compared to It Happened One Night, it is important to note that His Girl Friday was a remake of the critics and consumer's darling, The Front Page. Maybe audiences were just annoyed with the regurgitation of a favorite. (I'm dreading the rumored upcoming remake of The Third Man staring Leonardo Dicaprio.) Although, His Girl Friday is not exactly like the original: the Hildy Johnson character was a man in The Front Page, and Walter Burns was trying to prevent him from leaving the paper to get married. In 1940 critics and audiences may have seen His Girl Friday as the tarnishing, or even feminization of a classic. Frank S. Nugent of the New York Times began his review of His Girl Friday by saying, "They've replated The Front Page again, have slapped His Girl Friday on the masthead and are running it off at the Music Hall as a special women's edition." Do you detect a hint of bitterness? Did the sourness in his words stem from some kind of Freudian women-envy or did he just love The Front Page that much? If only Roz's Hildy had left Bruce (Ralph Bellamy) at the altar to run away with Walter. But could you ever see her in a wedding gown?