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`Strike' Two - tribunedigital-chicagotribune
February 21, 1997|By Michael Wilmington, Tribune Movie Critic.
5-6 minutes

The Darkest, Scariest And Coldest Of The `Star Wars' Trilogy, `the Empire Strikes
Back,' Still Is A Force To Be Reckoned With In Its Special Edition Form

Coming so soon after the planet-shattering box-office success of January's "Star

Wars" re-issue, this week's go-round of "The Empire Strikes Back Special Edition"
might seem almost anti-climactic. Not financially: George Lucas' 1980 "Empire" --
which brings back most of the characters from "Star Wars" and sends them through
another set of raging space battles and rocket chases -- will help rewrite the
record books once again. There's no stopping a comet.

But how many space duels, pop myths and box-office-list rewriters can you handle in
one month? I could have cheerfully waited half a year -- or at least until the
excitement over the first picture died down.

Still, the old space destroyer -- in its new retro-fitted, retooled, spanking-shiny
model -- is welcome once again. "Empire," the second movie of Lucas' space opera
trilogy, is an almost foolproof blockbuster. Directed by Irvin Kershner from a
Lucas story, it balances bloodshed with charm, spectacle with childlike glee. It's
a near flawless movie of its kind.

So, here they come again: cocky Han Solo (Harrison Ford), haughty Princess Leia
(Carrie Fisher), tyrannical Darth Vader (body by David Prowse, voice by James Earl
Jones), the cute robots, the nasty white-armored stormtroopers and, of course, Luke
Skywalker the teenage Odysseus, Flash Gordon's flashier grandson (Mark Hamill). (Or
maybe Gordon's many times removed great-grandfather, since "Star Wars" is set in
our past.) All of them glide back onto a screen so crammed with pyrotechnic effects
and bizarre planetscapes, it seems ready to explode in our faces.

And explode it does. "The Empire Strikes Back" was always the most disturbing of
the "Star Wars" trilogy. The darkest, scariest and coldest: the one that stirred
our fears more than our hearts.

Covering the time right after the jubilant rebel victories of "Star Wars," and
digging back into Luke Skywalker's tangled origins while plunging his buddies into
new troubles, "Empire" is the bridge movie. It leads us from the youthful optimism
and high spirits of "Star Wars" to the battle-tested calm and celebration of
"Return of the Jedi."

Unlike its basically cheery forerunner, "The Empire Strikes Back" is nightmarish. A
far more visually spectacular movie than "Star Wars," it lacks -- probably
deliberately -- much of the first film's lighthearted charm and buoyant
personality, the sheer joy of moviemaking that shines out of nearly every frame.

Instead, "Empire" is shot in so many cold and menacing locales, it might have been
a mistake to re-release it in winter. We're either on a planet buried in snow and
ice, or about to get eaten by hairy beasts or stomped by huge robot Walkers, or
racing through an asteroid storm, or lost on a dank swamp world laced with caverns,
or in the gullet of a gigantic space slug, or dangling over bottomless abysses in
an outlaw space city -- as part of a climactic fear-of-heights scene that tries
hard to be "Vertigo" cubed.

Writers Lawrence Kasdan and the late Leigh Brackett (a frequent Howard Hawks
screenwriter and sci-fi veteran) start blasting away in the first few minutes and
almost never let up. The movie is one long chase -- broken up occasionally into
smaller chases. The only time it relaxes is when it introduces new characters:
Billy Dee Williams' suave space rogue Lando Calrissian (an old Han Solo crony) or
the wizened gnome and master Jedi teacher, Yoda (a puppet operated and voiced by
Muppeteer Frank Oz).

Otherwise, we get violent battles, broken up by male bonding between Han and Luke,
sex antagonism between Han and Princess Leia, gentle bickering between C-3PO
(Anthony Daniels) and R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) and constant cutaways to the prince of
darkness -- and worst boss in the universe -- Darth Vader, who keeps executing all
his space admirals for incompetence.

Vader and Yoda -- the dark and light sides of the Force -- really dominate this
movie, which ends daringly, with a real cliffhanger: one of the good guys in
unresolved peril, a thunderous revelation that pulls the space-rug right out from
another one. And this is where the "Star Wars" trilogy gets simultaneously more
grandiose and more intimate. At times, villain Vader seems to have reduced the
entire galactic fight to a more personalized duel between him and Luke.

Though there's little new material in "Empire's" Special Edition (the negative has
been restored, the backgrounds enriched and enhanced), it's still a mind-blower.
And though, back in 1980, "Empire" seemed a curious assignment for director
Kershner, he establishes his rhythm early on.

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`Strike' Two - Page 2
February 21, 1997|By Michael Wilmington, Tribune Movie Critic.
4-5 minutes

The Darkest, Scariest And Coldest Of The `Star Wars' Trilogy, `the Empire Strikes
Back,' Still Is A Force To Be Reckoned With In Its Special Edition Form

Up until 1980, Kershner, an ex-student of abstract painter Hans Hoffman, had

directed mostly offbeat, highly emotional character dramas and comedies ("The
Hoodlum Priest," "The Flim Flam Man" and "Loving"). He brings something special to
the job: "Empire" is the most beautiful of the trilogy. Working with the crack
Lucas visual wizards and the great British cinematographer Peter Suschitzky (while
another great cinematographer, Chris Menges, did second-unit work), Kershner helps
creates gorgeous frames, drenched in lustrous color.

The younger actors are now more confident. When Harrison Ford played Han in 1977,
he'd had a spotty career. "Star Wars" made him a star and he kept that standing --
unlike Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher. In a way, the deck was stacked for him. Han
is written as the quintessential Hollywood hero, the sardonic-tough John Wayne-
Robert Mitchum-Humphrey Bogart type, with a softie's heart lurking under the hard-
guy surface. Ford's Han is a more rigorously controlled performance here than
before. He dominates the screen -- even while Luke, growing quickly from boyishness
to an embittered, scarred veteran -- dominates the story.

In many ways, Lucas' subject in "Star Wars" was Hollywood itself. And if Luke
suggests a coming-of-age teen, Yoda suggests the world of "The Wizard of Oz." When
Yoda appears, the movie gets back an emotional center, reclaims some of the hold on
our affections it had when those charmingly wayward robots C-3PO and R2-D2 were
screen center. (Here, they're battered, torn apart and blown up like metallic Two
Stooges.)

But Yoda is a different story. In a way, he fulfills the father-figure/teacher

function Alec Guinness' Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi had in "Star Wars," teaching Luke how
to survive by grace and skill in a world run by devils, dictatorships and big
corporations. Yoda brings fairy-tale beneficence with him. His fuzzily benign
facial features were allegedly modeled on writer Theodore White (the "Making of the
President" books), but they also suggest, somewhat, a Maurice Sendak drawing of
Peter Lorre playing Friar Tuck. Oz gives him a dry, fetching Muppet-ty personality.

The biggest flaw in "The Empire Strikes Back," in fact, may stem from Lucas'
decision to give up the directorial reins, hiring others to write and helm his
concepts. If some people think "Empire" is the best of the trilogy -- and others
prefer Chapter Three, "Return of the Jedi" -- I've always ranked the movies in
descending order, from "Star Wars" to "Jedi."

We can really sense Lucas' presence and personality in the first "Star Wars." But,
as the epic gets more grandiose, the effects more incandescent, the movies also
progressively get less personal and more, well, imperial. Was it inevitable? Maybe
the Empire did strike back after all.

`THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK SPECIAL EDITION''

(star) (star) (star) 1/2

Directed by Irvin Kershner; written by Leigh Brackett, Lawrence Kasdan, based on a

story by George Lucas; photographed by Peter Suschitzky; edited by Paul Hirsch;
production designed by Norman Reynolds; music by John Williams; special visual
effects by Brian Johnson, Richard Edlund; produced by Gary Kurtz ("The Empire
Strikes Back"), Rick McCallum ("Special Edition"). A 20th Century Fox release;
opens Friday. Running time: 1:04. MPAA rating: PG.

THE CAST

Luke Skywalker .......................... Mark Hamill

Han Solo ................................ Harrison Ford

Princess Leia Organa .................... Carrie Fisher

Lando Calrissian ........................ Billy Dee Williams

C-3PO ................................... Anthony Daniels

Lord Darth Vader ........................ David Prowse

Lord Darth Vader's Voice ................ James Earl Jones

Yoda .................................... Frank Oz

Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi .................... Alec Guinness

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`Exorcist' Still Leads The Field Of Screams
September 22, 2000|By Michael Wilmington, Tribune Movie Critic.
5-6 minutes

Why do some scary movies shock us for decades, while others fade like a cheap
scream in the night?
In 1973, director William Friedkin's and writer-producer William Peter Blatty's
runaway hit "The Exorcist" affected film audiences like few horror movies before or
since.

The times certainly helped contribute to this response. It was an era drenched with
horror, both real life and on the screen: a time infected by the Vietnam War,
Watergate, street violence, crime and movies that starkly reflected it all --
including those unprecedentedly savage, low-budget horror classics "The Texas Chain
Saw Massacre" and "Night of the Living Dead."

But could we have predicted that "The Exorcist" would continue to exert its demonic
spell 28 years later?

Re-released now in a digitally enhanced, sonically improved and slightly longer

version, the movie is even better than it was in 1973. This jolting tale of a 12-
year-old girl possessed by the devil, her desperate movie actress mother and the
two priests called in to exorcise the demon, actually seems a deeper movie now --
more intense, less formulaic or shallow. Yet it's also retained all its original
hypnotic narrative grip. (It's a writer's cut: The added 12 minutes are explanatory
scenes, previously trimmed for length, that Blatty had wanted.)

Based on a huge bestseller by author Blatty -- who also wrote and produced the
movie -- "The Exorcist" is the story of a glamorous household under siege in the
Washington, D.C., neighborhood of Georgetown, while two lonely priests try to
battle the forces of darkness. The heroine, single mother Chris MacNeil, is a
smart, gorgeous movie star who, in the novel, is obviously modeled on Shirley
MacLaine. (In the film she's played by Ellen Burstyn.) Chris' daughter, Regan
(Linda Blair), is an adorable and lively girl, who -- while her mother acts --
suddenly grows sullen, rebellious and incredibly foul-mouthed.

After the director of Chris' movie, Burke (Jack MacGowran), dies in a plunge from
Regan's window, and Regan turns into a scar-faced, burning-eyed, profanity-spewing
monster, it becomes clear to Chris that the doctors examining her daughter are
clueless and helpless. Convinced that Regan is possessed by demons, she turns to a
local priest, Father Damien Karras (played in his movie-acting debut by playwright
Jason Miller).

Father Karras, struggling with a crisis of faith himself, is initially skeptical.

But after learning about the case from Chris and avuncular police detective Lt.
Kinderman (Lee J. Cobb) and after seeing Regan's head-whirling, crucifix-abusing,
green vomit routines, he calls in an elderly, experienced exorcist, Father Merrin
(Max Von Sydow). The core of the movie is the exorcism, in Regan's upstairs'
bedroom, so cold that plumes of frost expel with every breath, so rancid with
terror that audiences at the time sometimes heaved in the aisles.

Back then, "The Exorcist" was effective, but obvious and shallow. I was a big fan
of Friedkin's previous movie, the Oscar-winning cop thriller "The French
Connection" and I liked Blatty's scripts for his frequent director, Blake Edwards
("A Shot in the Dark"). But I was suspicious of "The Exorcist" and its hype -- and
besides, Friedkin's trademarks up to then had been gritty urban realism and
ensemble acting gusto ("The Boys in the Band"). He seemed an odd choice for a
devilish thriller. Shouldn't Roman Polanski ("Rosemary's Baby") have made "The
Exorcist"?

In fact, writer Blatty had rejected Polanski. Friedkin was among his top choices,
and he proved a brilliant match for the material. The Catholic-raised Blatty
created a blueprint for a horrific shocker, but Friedkin, an agnostic from a Jewish
family, made the story real -- and more terrifying. It is Friedkin's bleakly
cynical viewpoint, plus his flair for documentary vividness and pungent detail --
the qualities that make "French Connection" a great thriller -- that also make
"Exorcist" come alive. Friedkin, a former WGN-TV newsman and documentarian, knows
how to make the improbable real, how to convey a convincing atmosphere of modern
chaos and dread.

The movie is also blessed with the right cinematographer ("French Connection's"
Owen Roizman) and a top-flight cast. I've always regretted that MacLaine, one of my
favorite actresses, didn't play the part she inspired, but Burstyn makes the role
her own. Miller and Von Sydow are a deeply affecting duo, two tormented but
steadfast souls striking convincingly noble chords. Cobb makes Kinderman (whose
name suggests a fairytale) engagingly gruff and paternal. And Blair both charms as
the early Regan and scares us silly as a mother's worst nightmare.

articles.chicagotribune.com
`Exorcist' Still Leads The Field Of Screams - Page 2
September 22, 2000|By Michael Wilmington, Tribune Movie Critic.
2-3 minutes

Damned for its obscenity, fiercely attacked by many (including Billy Graham) for
the ways it reflected that era's seeming collapse of values, "The Exorcist" has
since then been attacked as a conservative allegory: the disguised story of a rich
movie star rescuing her drug-addicted daughter with the help of the church.

But "The Exorcist," like most memorable Hollywood movies, gains its power from the
way it mixes opposites: new-style realism and sexual radicalism, old-style horror
and religion. How odd it now seems that one of the most ferociously pro-Catholic
films of its era should have been attacked as anti-Catholic, or that a film so
saturated with religious feeling should have been dammed as immoral and irreligious
in intent. But four-letter words often offend professional moralists more than
content and, thanks to Blatty, Friedkin and McCambridge, "The Exorcist" contains
some of the most memorable obscenities in any movie.

It has much more, though. Even after almost three decades of increasing movie
overkill, it's a thriller that really thrills, a shocker that really shocks. And
it's still a movie that can scare the hell out of us.

`THE EXORCIST'

(star)(star)(star)(star)

Directed by William Friedkin; written and produced by William Peter Blatty, based
on his novel; photographed by Owen Roizman; edited by Norman Gay, Jordan
Leondopoulos, Evan Lottman, Bud Smith; production designed by Bill Malley; music by
Jack Nitzsche, Mike Oldfield ("Tubular Bells"). A Warner Bros. release; opens
Friday. Running time: 2:12. MPAA rating: R (strong language and disturbing images).

THE CAST

Chris MacNeil .............. Ellen Burstyn

Father Karras .............. Jason Miller

Father Merrin .............. Max Von Sydow

Regan McNeil ............... Linda Blair

Lt. Kinderman .............. Lee J. Cobb

Sharon ..................... Kitty Winn

Burke ...................... Jack MacGowran

Devil's Voice .............. Mercedes McCambridge

articles.chicagotribune.com
`The Night of the Hunter'
November 23, 2001|By Michael Wilmington, Tribune movie critic.
2 minutes

Laughton was inspired by both D.W. Griffith and the '20s German expressionists, and
he uses Griffith's virgin goddess Lillian Gish as his emblem of goodness, the
children's heroic spinster-savior, guarding them with a shotgun on her knee. But he
was also inspired by his unlikely star. Mitchum, who was usually dismissed in the
'50s as a sleepy-eyed bad boy movie hunk, shows just how good (or great) an actor
he was here, as the seductive lady-killing revivalist Preacher Powell, crooning
"Leaning on the Everlasting Arms," with "Love" and "Hate" tattooed on his knuckles.
Relentlessly pursuing the kids down the river after marrying and murdering their
mother (Shelley Winters), Mitchum plays the Preacher with such cold-blooded
conviction, such looming force and evil, that he chills the blood -- just as he did
seven years later as Max Cady in the original "Cape Fear." "The best actor I ever
worked with," Old Vic veteran Laughton said of Mitchum, an opinion later echoed by
John Huston.

"The Night of the Hunter" has a spellbinding visual poetry. The shadowy trees
bending toward the river, the moonlight on the water-ripples; these images lodge in
your mind. Cinematographer Stanley Cortez had shot "The Magnificent Ambersons" for
Orson Welles; his work here is just as impressive.

This restored revival, struck from an original 35 mm negative, gives us another

chance to sample its night-shrouded marvels and eerie wonders.

----------

"The Night of the Hunter" ((star)(star)(star)(star)) plays Friday through Thursday

at the Gene Siskel Film Center.

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`Eraserhead' Makes Its Mark As A Monument To Alienation
November 19, 1993|By Michael Wilmington, Tribune movie critic.
3-4 minutes

Take 2. Friday's Guide to Movies & Music. Movie review.

Good movies pass your time; great movies haunt your dreams.

When David Lynch's "Eraserhead" was released in 1978, another of the '70s "midnight
movies" ("El Topo," "The Rocky Horror Picture Show") that won fanatical repeat
audiences, it still stood apart. It had a mesmerizing look and soundtrack, bizarre
images that rattled, upset and fascinated audiences. And still do.
"Eraserhead" was one of a kind: from its dysfunctional hero-introverted Henry
Spencer (Jack Nance) with his upswept Bride of Elvis/Frankenstein hairdo and his
skittish girlfriend, Mary X (Charlotte Stewart)-to its stunningly weird visual
style (which suggested classic pre-Hitler German cinema and, less obviously, '60s
Eastern European films), to its wildly askew take on '70s America.

Shot in L.A., but set in a German Expressionist version of Philadelphia (a city

writer-director David Lynch, who once lived there, describes as "Hell on Earth"),
"Eraserhead" becomes a strange reverse-erotic poem. It focuses on sexual fear,
nightmare, disgust and revulsion-typified by Henry's angst-ridden courtship and the
horrific child born to him, who, wrapped in bandages and wailing, looks like a
glistening lizard-dinosaur embryo. Sexual bliss is a trap as well. When Henry,
improbably, gets it on with the seductive Girl Across the Hall (Judith Anna
Roberts), his own bed dissolves into a swampy luminous mist.

"Eraserhead" posits an alienation from the world so extreme that Henry eventually
retreats into fantasies of his own destruction (erasure?), dreaming of death or
watching the seemingly endless stage show that is being conducted in his own
radiator, starring a strange, tumor-cheeked lady (Laurel Near) who prattles and
sings of a Heaven probably nowhere within reach.

What makes "Eraserhead" great-and still, perhaps the best of all Lynch's films?
Intensity. Nightmare clarity. And perhaps also it's the single-mindedness of its
vision; Lynch's complete control over this material, where, working on a
shoestring, he served as director, producer, writer, editor and sound designer.
Perhaps also, it's because "Eraserhead" is in black and white: a voluptuously
bleak, beautifully grim and eerie monochrome reeking of German expressionism and
all its film noir/horror movie progeny.

And perhaps it's simply because Lynch's viewpoint is so bizarre, he needs to be

completely immersed in his own hermetic world to be, paradoxically, free.

``ERASERHEAD''

(STAR)(STAR)(STAR)(STAR)

Directed, written, edited and produced by David Lynch; photographed by Frederick

Elmes and Herbert Caldwell; art direction by Lynch; sound design by Lynch, Alan
Splet; music by Fats Waller. An Asymmetrical release; opens Friday at the Music Box
Theatre. Running time: 1:29. No MPAA rating. Strong language, adult situations.

THE CAST

Henry Spencer..................................................Jack Nance

Mary X..................................................Charlotte Stewart

Girl Across the Hall..................................Judith Anna Roberts

Lady in the Radiator..........................................Laurel Near

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`Eyes Without A Face' Terrifies Without Gore Or Carnage
November 24, 1995|By Michael Wilmington, Tribune movie critic.
5-6 minutes
Take 2. FRIDAY'S GUIDE TO MOVIES & MUSIC. Movie review.

Georges Franju's 1959 "Eyes Without a Face" is one horror classic that hasn't lost
its power to shock or hypnotize audiences over the years. Playing in a newly struck
35 mm print at Facets Multimedia, "Eyes" can still seduce you with beauty and stun
you with terror.

It's not a matter of gore or frenzied pacing. Franju's adaptation of the Jean Redon
novel is classically paced and shot, filled with what Pauline Kael called images of
"exquisite dread." Instead of drenching us in carnage, "Eyes Without a Face" moves
us with a mixture of sensitivity and brutal directness: a hatred of violence, yet a
refusal to look away from it.

In this elegant thriller about a brilliant, mad surgeon who keeps trying -- and
failing -- to graft the faces of kidnapped girls onto his daughter's flayed and
ruined countenance, there are shots and moments that make you cringe. Chief among
them: the notorious operation sequence, when Dr. Genessier (Pierre Brasseur), with
the help of his assistant Louise (Alida Valli), uses a scalpel to pry off the face
of the beautiful, anesthetized Edna (Juliette Mayniel).

It's a legendarily horrific sequence. Yet Franju shows nothing very shocking beyond
ersatz blood seeping from ersatz cuts. It's the way he shoots the scene that traps
us: the rapt stillness, the incongruously lovely images. The doctor's methods are
examples of paternal love and science running amok -- and he's also trying to
assuage his guilt over causing the car crash in which his daughter, Christiane
(Edith Scob), was disfigured. His enigmatic helper Louise, who supplies his
victims, is another veteran of his cosmetic experiments, a ravishing demon.

The movie is one of the most beautifully shot of all black-and-white horror films
-- lit by master cinematographer Eugen Schufftan ("Port of Shadows," "The Hustler")
and set mostly in Genessier's clinic and chateau, with black bare trees twisting
against gray skies and the camera gliding gracefully, depicting Christiane in her
Givenchy gowns and Louise in her black leather jacket. Underneath the chateau, the
doctor's caged dogs howl, foreshadowing the unforgettable climax.

"Eyes Without a Face" was adapted from Redon's novel by the original author, along
with the writing team of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac and a 25-year-old
newcomer named Claude Sautet. Boileau and Narcejac wrote the novels on which two
suspense classics were based: "Diabolique" and "Vertigo." And Sautet -- who was
also Franju's assistant and later became a star writer-director ("Un Coeur en
Hiver"), is by now considered one of the Grand Old Men of French cinema. (The
composer, Maurice Jarre, a Franju discovery and regular collaborator, won world
fame three years later with "Lawrence of Arabia.")

It's a prodigiously talented company. And, headed by Brasseur -- the lecherous

tragedian of "Children of Paradise" -- and the haunting Valli, it's a fine acting
ensemble, too. But Franju's personality dominates. A brilliant but later neglected
figure, Franju was, along with Alain Resnais, France's best documentary filmmaker
of the 1950s. (Both made their first fiction features in 1959.)

But Franju's influence was already extraordinary. In 1936 he had founded, with
Henri Langlois, the legendary French Cinematheque. And "Eyes Without a Face" is
saturated with Franju's, and Langlois', love of old films, especially the pre-World
War I horror serials of Louis Feuillade and the '20s German Expressionist
nightmares of F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang.

Does the film seem slow? It should. The visual aesthetic comes from the age of
silent movies, the power of black-and white imagery to enrapture, horrify and
mystify.
"Eyes Without a Face" is a perfect example of how cinematic poetry can transform a
seemingly disreputable movie genre. The horror and the poetry intensify each other,
just as the chateau's chic is set off ironically by the howling dogs, the cuts of
the scalpel, the sense of death in the shadows.

The title "Eyes Without a Face" suggests a kind of surreal voyeurism, and that's
the tradition Franju recaptures.

``EYES WITHOUT A FACE''

(star) (star) (star) 1/2

Directed by Georges Franju; written by Jean Redon, Claude Sautet, Pierre Boileau
and Thomas Narcejac, based on the novel by Redon; photographed by Eugen Schufftan;
edited by Gilbert Natot; production designed by August Capelier; music by Maurice
Jarre; produced by Jules Borkon. In French, with English subtitles. An Interama
release. Running time: 1:28. No MPAA rating. Images of graphic horror.

THE CAST

Professor Genessier....................Pierre Brasseur

Louise.....................................Alida Valli

Christiane Genessier........................Edith Scob

Edna..................................Juliette Mayniel

Jacques................................Francois Guerin

Paulette.............................Beatrice Altariba

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Hoffman, Voight Carry `Midnight Cowboy'
May 20, 1994|By Michael Wilmington, Tribune movie critic.
5-6 minutes

Take 2. FRIDAY'S GUIDE TO MOVIES & MUSIC. Movie review.

When "Midnight Cowboy" won 1969's Best Picture Oscar, it seemed to signal a new
Hollywood age. The first X-rated film released by a major studio (United Artists),
the first-and last-to win an Oscar, this relentlessly downbeat look at the down-
and-out Manhattan friendship of an inept cowboy gigolo from Texas and his
tubercular gimpy "manager" seemed the most radical shift possible from the sugar-
plummy Broadway and British spectaculars ("My Fair Lady," "The Sound of Music,"
"Oliver!") that dominated Oscars throughout the '60s.

With its prestigious literary source, raw realism, nudity, profanity, onscreen (if
discreetly staged) sex acts, near-documentary looks at Manhattan high and low life,
plus a raft of cinematic tricks (flashbacks, fantasies, videos, shifts from
monochrome to color) rifled from all the '60s arthouse hits of Italy and the French
and Czech New Waves-"Midnight Cowboy" was an unabashed American art film.

It was also a howitzer blast right through the remnants of the old Hollywood
Production Code, which once forbade even inferences to deviant or extra-marital
sex. One by one, the movie seemed to shoot down taboos with effortless abandon, but
not just for shock value. Audiences were genuinely, even deeply, moved by the
story, adapted from James Leo Herlihy's novel by ex-blacklist victim Waldo Salt.
And, especially, by its central characters: Genial, gentle and deluded Joe Buck
from Texas ("I may not be a for-real cowboy, but I'm one hell of stud!") and
snarly, sawed-off, streetwise Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, from the Bronx. ("I'm walking
he-ah! I'm walking he-ah!")

Twenty-five years later, on "Midnight Cowboy's" silver anniversary and with the
current re-release of a restored print, we can see that it wasn't as far from
"Oliver!" or "In the Heat of the Night" as we thought. We can see also that the
breach it opened for daring Hollywood movies would soon close again. John
Schlesinger, "Midnight Cowboy's" Oscar-winning director-a British '60s critics'
darling for "Billy Liar" and "Darling"-went on, after an early '70s flurry, to a
fairly conventional studio career. Writer Salt had only four more credits before
his death.

But two "Midnight Cowboy" mainstays went on to careers of exceptional stature;

they're the main reasons we watch the movie today. As Ratso Rizzo and Joe Buck,
Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight (who was forced on Schlesinger when top choice
Michael Sarrazin was cast in "They Shoot Horses Don't They?") breathed life into
characters who by now stand for something far outside and beyond the movie itself.

"Midnight Cowboy" moves beyond realism into an archetypal tale of the Big City
destroying dreamers. Joe and Ratso, like "Of Mice and Men's" George and Lenny, are
quintessential failed, lower-class, buddy-dreamers.

In the movie, Joe Buck is gullible, foolish, drenched in movie fantasy. (Posters of
Paul Newman and Steve McQueen flank the mirror in his first hotel room.) But, as
played by Voight, he is also, quite simply, one of the sweetest, most
heartbreakingly likable and genuinely decent American star movie characters since
the heyday of the young Jimmy Stewart. That he occupies a seedy world, playing a
male prostitute-a profession for which he is shatteringly unsuited-and that life
maneuvers him into situations where he steals from, threatens and beats up
customers, are part of what gives "Midnight Cowboy" its considerable power.

Voight makes Joe a human being without malice, meanness or guile. That's why his
relationship with would-be con man Ratso-played by Hoffman with shifty eyes, a
stubbled, livid, chinless face and a whiny voice that suggests ultimate '50s movie
city-nerd Arnold Stang-is so poignant. Ratso is as maladjusted a pimp as Joe is a
hustler. The city, satirically viewed-a Darwinian obstacle course of rigid social
strata and empty media dreams-is conning and killing them both.

Neither Voight nor Hoffman has ever been better on screen than they are here. Their
acting is somewhat theatrical; both obviously give brilliant "performances." But
that bravura stylization only helps bring out the comedy and the meaning of the
story, which is about getting trapped in self-destructive role-playing.

"Midnight Cowboy" may not have deserved the Best Picture Oscar. "The Wild Bunch"
probably did. But it's a good choice-and Voight probably should have won as Best
Actor. (Instead, he and Hoffman knocked each other off and the Oscar went, 15 years
too late, to one of Joe's movie cowboy models, John Wayne for "True Grit").

articles.chicagotribune.com
Hoffman, Voight Carry `Midnight Cowboy' - Page 2
May 20, 1994|By Michael Wilmington, Tribune movie critic.
2 minutes
Take 2. FRIDAY'S GUIDE TO MOVIES & MUSIC. Movie review.

Yet, in 1969, and for years afterward, I felt that Schlesinger messed up the last
scene of "Midnight Cowboy." I thought he tricked up that annihilating image-of Joe
shutting Ratso's eyes on the bus and clasping his dead body-with too many ironic
cutaways and fancy through-the-window angles. Seeing it again, I'm only impressed,
astonished, with Hoffman and Voight-at how they (and Schlesinger) made those roles
and that story both fix a moment in our time, and open the pure currents of grief
and empathy that transcend it.

``MIDNIGHT COWBOY''

(STAR)(STAR)(STAR) 1/2

Directed by John Schlesinger; written by Waldo Salt, based on James Leo Herlihy's
novel; photographed by Adam Holender; edited by Hugh A. Robertson; production
designed by John Robert Lloyd; music by John Barry; produced by Jerome Hellman. A
United Artists release; opens Friday at the Fine Arts. Running time: 1:19. MPAA
rating: R (re-rated from X). Language, sensuality, nudity, violence.

THE CAST

Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo........................................Dustin Hoffman

Joe Buck........................................................Jon Voight

Cass..........................................................Sylvia Miles

Shirley.....................................................Brenda Vaccaro

Mr. O'Daniel..................................................John McGiver

articles.latimes.com
Movie Review : 'Mad Max' Is Fueled By Action
July 10, 1985|MICHAEL WILMINGTON
5-6 minutes

Far, far past Apocalypse, in humanity's decay, the twilight of the West, deep in
the very bowels of chaos--this is where we find ourselves in George Miller's "Mad
Max: Beyond Thunderdome" (citywide).

Civilization as we knew it is only a memory. The cities have been laid to waste;
humanity's artifacts are charred rubble. Fallout still steams up from the earth.
And now here in Australia, this devastated land (which some had thought a refuge
from nuclear wars), primitivism has arisen with a vengeance. Tribes of lost, feral
children huddle in caves. Nomads wander the parched wastes, soar like vultures in
hang gliders or gather in tawdry cities where life is cheap, murder is a spectator
sport and energy, in this post-fossil-fuel era, comes from methane gas, extracted
by slaves shoveling pig dung.

It's a hideous world, but it has a hideous energy. It pulses with furious life.
Survivors battle tooth and claw in an arena where little of value or beauty is
left.

"Beyond Thunderdome" is the third in George Miller's "Mad Max" series, and it
closes the trilogy like a lightning blast followed by the ominous, resonant drone
of thunder. Great action sequences crop up frequently today, but great action
movies are always few and far between. "Beyond Thunderdome" is one, every bit as
much as its two predecessors.

Here, the action is not an end in itself but part of a personal world, ignited by
character, streaming up from the rotting milieu. Like John Ford, Howard Hawks or
Akira Kurosawa, Miller creates violent set pieces that, as part of an overall
vision, keep reverberating in the mind. If the vision seems more garish or
simplistic, it's perhaps because he works in an industry more unsettled and
valueless, and in a world teetering on the brink. In a way, he has become chaos'
poet.

He cheerfully violates what has seemed an unbreakable rule of modern sequels, most
of which simply repeat the first movie, scene for scene ad nauseam. But Miller goes
beyond "The Road Warrior," amplifies it, creates a logical trilogy . . . though in
some ways he retains in all three the original formula: the heroic loner, battling
barbaric punks and killers who have taken over the roads.

If in "The Road Warrior" he established himself as the all-time king of the car-
chase movie, he lets most of "Thunderdome" go by before breaking out his skills--
and then, spectacularly, he breaks new ground. We are 15 years further on, and
rickety vehicles streak along like weird insects, remnants of a gaudy, wasteful
past.

And if "The Road Warrior" upgraded the art direction and design of "Mad Max I," in
"Beyond Thunderdome" Miller extends himself in another area, ensemble acting--
abetted by co-director George Ogilvie, a Melbourne specialist in serious stage
drama.

Mel Gibson, who made his debut on screen as Max, still packs the old simmering
charisma, but he's turned the character toward greater weariness, the deadly
equipoise of someone who's danced above hell for too many years--but whose reflexes
for heroism (honed in his first incarnation of highway cop defending family) still
snap into place at a challenge.

Around him, the acting is no less vivid than before, but more detailed; beyond
comic book toward something more Goyaesque.

Tina Turner, the peerless rock singer whom Janis Joplin herself idolized, boils
with dynamism. The villainous Auntie Entity, queen of depraved Bartertown, is a
perfect role for her: explosive, pungent, bigger than life. She's backed by a
hellishly amusing gallery: Frank Thring (erstwhile all-purpose sneering despot of
biblical epics) as Bartertown's sybaritic "Collector"; Angelo Rossitto and Paul
Larsson as the two-headed tyrant Master-Blaster, and, very memorably, Edwin
Hodgeman as the despotic auctioneer Dr. Dealgood, hawking bloodshed with the elan
of a TV pitchman hawking cars, announcing owlishly to his audience, "Ladies and
gentlemen . . . dyin' time's here!"

The world of "Beyond Thunderdome" is defined by pop culture--movies, television,

comic books, rock 'n' roll. But its stature is defined by the way it takes all
these elements, tossed into so many movies without any real juice, fire or
inspiration, and somehow makes them sing and soar. These battles in the wasteland,
wild dances in post-atomic embers, chases through fiery wilds, become a symphony of
screams, sighs, shrieks of laughter. The movie is, in every sense of the phrase,
outrageously entertaining.

'MAD MAX: BEYOND THUNDERDOME' A Warner Bros. distribution of a Kennedy Miller

presentation. Producer George Miller. Directors Miller, George Ogilvie. Script
Terry Hayes, Miller. Co-producers Doug Mitchell, Hayes. Camera Dean Semler. Music
Maurice Jarre. Editor Richard Francis-Bruce. Visual design consultant Ed Verreaux.
Costume design Norma Moriceau. Production design Graham Walker. With Mel Gibson,
Tina Turner, Frank Thring, Helen Buday, Bruce Spence, Robert Grubb, Angelo
Rossitto, Angry Anderson, Edwin Hodgeman.

Running time: 2 hours, 8 minutes.

MPAA-rated: PG-13 (some material may be too intense for children under 13).