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Film Writer David Thomson Returns: "A History of Movie Directors"

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Film critic/writer/theorist David Thomson is a marketable commodity, but an amusing one to me. In recent years, he has written books about the history of movies and of movie stars and "how it all fits together" and the truth of the matter is that he often writes about the SAME movies and movie stars and has to find ways to "re-wrote what he already wrote" while somehow bringing in enough new material to make the new book sellable as ...something new.

So his newest(2020) is called "A Light in the Dark : The History of Movie Directors" -- and he finds himself in an interesting place. He gives Hitchcock a whole chapter -- heaviest on Psycho, natch -- but pushes himself hard to take in the young directors of modern times, and to do a chapter on women directors, and to do a chapter on minority directors. You can feel the "pull" as the book -- pretty much chronological -- opens with Griffith and Fritz Lang ,moves on to Hawks and Hitchcock(separate chapters each) edges into Altman and Bogdanovich and Spielberg(none of whom gets his own chapter) moves on to Spike Lee and Kathryn Bigelow and finishes with....Tarantino and Scorsese.

Indeed , the finish with Tarantino and Scorsese finishes with their most recent films -- the two "paired events of 2019": Once Upon a Time In Hollywood and The Irishman. Which is great for me, because I loved those two movies, and as far as I am concerned "the movies have stopped" WITH THOSE TWO MOVIES. Oh...the movies will come back, but they haven't yet...the virus isn't over enough to give us back all our theaters AND all our movies.

Thomson writes of "The Irishman" ..."it may be Scorsese's final film," which as often happens with Thomson ...is wrong. Scorsese is proceeding apace (finally) with Killings of the Flower Moon, and casting is accelerating. There SHOULD be another Scorsese movie.

I got a love/hate relationship with this Thomson fellow. I keep buying his books to keep up the relationship. Sometimes his writing is great and insightful. Sometimes it is obscure and incoherent. Sometimes I agree totally with his opinions. Sometimes I find his opinions so wrong, I'm somewhere between mocking and angry.

Take that book he wrote -- 11 years ago! -- all about Psycho. It was called "The Moment of Psycho" and written to commemorate the film on its 50th Anniversary(2010.) Problem was..Thomson really didn't LIKE Psycho after Marion's car goes in the swamp. And Thomson tried to pick a fight that no one answered -- contending not only that the movie turns routine and TV-ish after Marion is gone(we'd heard THAT one before) but that the whole "solution" of Mother taking over Norman was "cockamamie rigmarole" that Thomson "doesn't believe for a second." He was sure that Hitchcock didn't either.

Nobody took Thomson up on his taunt. I'm afraid Psycho just didn't matter anymore that much, I guess. I answer Thomson two ways. ONE: About the second half: what Thomson could not acknowledge(did not know?) is that the second half is where ALMOST all the BIG SCREAMS ARE(after the shower murder). Or were...in 1960 and when I saw it in revival in 1979. Thomson wrote that he saw Psycho in 1960 "with few people in the theater," so he simply wouldn't know how that scream engine keeps roaring(Arbogast gets killed), roaring("Looking for me?" says Norman to Sam), roaring (Llla's reflection in the mirror) and then ROARING(the fruit cellar.) All in the second half (where, I might add , the Arbogast sequence is -- and I'm in that subset of folks who likes that part best.)

TWO: Mother doesn't really take over Norman's mind? Its a spurious argument that Thomson keeps losing track of. For instance, he determines that maybe that IS the plot, but that Hitchcock must have found that plot too silly and sort of to be ignored. And yet, Thomson also simply doesn't believe that Norman's mother side isn't an "act." Which makes no sense -- if Norman is only one killer, he should be THE killer.

What Thomson is out to ignore is the profundity of Mother being in Norman's head and how that was as meaningful to the movie AS the shower murder.

By the way, both in "The Moment of Psycho" (2010) and at least one other David Thomson article about Psycho from back in the 80s(I think), he elects to try to "re-write" Psycho to give it a better plot(to his mind.) Thomson writes: "screenwriters do this all the time, testing the story." Trouble is: Thomson writes versions of Psycho that would not have been hits at all...like one without the shower murder where Norman and Marion finish the movie as pals(!) Or one in which Marion's MOTHER (not sister Lila) comes looking so we end up with "Mother vs Mother." Or one that goes zipping off into a subplot about Sam and his...OTHER girlfriend.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

In this new book, Thomson spends a lot of time on Psycho again, in the Hitchcock chapter and elsewhere, and seems to have backed off his "Moment of Psycho" taunts to give it the usual treatment.

There is this nice paragraph in terms of "setting the table" for a group of movies that join "Citizen Kane"(as described by Kane) as "shallow masterpieces:" Birth of a Nation, King Kong, Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, Psycho, The Godfather and Jaws. That list seems KEY to me. Birth of a Nation and, to a lesser extent, Gone With the Wind, will be dropped from contention going forward , but the rest of them are movies that everybody loved to experience(not just see), and never forgot, and watched again and again. And Psycho -- in making that list -- demonstrates its centrality to Thomson's thinking, even if he hates the second half and the twist. Thomson writes of this list: "Movies have always offered the prospect of quick, penetrating shows to stir a great mass of people...brilliant but glib, in that they are accessible to millions of us at a single viewing."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

In the Hitchcock chapter, Thomson offers an assessment of Hitch's life that makes sense and doesn't at the same time:

"It was not much of a life...but I think Hitchcock wanted nothing more than to make movies..."

Not much of a life? Well, Hitchcock didn't go for the big game hunting and womanizing of his more macho contemporaries, but from what I've read, Hitchcock got to travel the world(both to make his movies and between them), eat the best food in the best restaurants, drink the best wine(his house was fully stocked with an expensive wine cellar) and certainly ended life more rich and famous than David Thomson.

Thomson notes the long marriage to Alma and opines, "it is possible that Hitch never had sexual relations with another woman." Very possible but then -- back then, yes? -- MANY marriages lasted for 50 years with only the spouse as sexual partner and...though some of these were probably unhappy marriages, I've certainly met some "oldsters" who were pleased to love only "that one" for 50 years. Hitch claimed celibacy for most of those 50 years and I suppose that's true for a lot of long-time marrieds.

Given that his chapter on Howard Hawks points up THAT director's continual womanizing(including during marriage, natch), well..one wonders: was Hitchcock really a "good guy" and we should be celebrating for his celibacy? Or was he a chump? So many men in Hollywood -- certainly the single ones but also the marrieds -- took the business as an open invitation to have sex with as many people as possible. That wasn't Hitchcock's deal.

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Funny note: its a good thing that this Thomson book has chapters on Lang and Renoir and Godard and Tarantino(he gets a chapter to himself) because...the Hitchcock material I've read before. But Thomson keeps tweaking it.

For YEARS now, Thomson has written that, in Strangers on a Train, when Bruno murders Miriam and he lowers her body in the eyeglasses shot..."it is as if he is presenting the dead woman as a gift to the audience." In this new book that becomes..."as if he is presenting a gift to Guy and the audience...a duck perhaps."

A duck?

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

And this: Thomson ultimately here elects to write about Hitchcock:

"Forty years after his death, Alfred Hitchcock is still the best known film director there ever was, or perhaps will ever be. A time may come where he stands for Movies in the way Attila the Hun bestrides the Dark Ages or Cleopatra signifies Ancient Egypt."

Woah...and here I am figuring Hitch will more likely become a "classic author" in the vein of Charles Dickens or Mark Twain, except in movies.

We've debated here if recent generations have ANY idea who Hitchcock was, but there are still a lot of us alive who came up on him, and I expect Psycho, Rear Window, and Vertigo are being taught in high schools and colleges with enough Dickensian regularity to keep Hitch going through the 21st Century.

That fame of course, is one reason Hitch has/had as many haters as lovers. Still, he had the movie AND the TV show(gave him millions more fans,made him millions more rich) and the books and the magazine. But the movies alone could have made his name. So many are SO good.

And thus, David Thomson must talk about him in this book about "The History of Movie Directors."

I suppose that Thomson might also mean that "no film director ever got as famous as Alfred Hitchcock did." Spielberg's TV show failed and he's kind of faded into being a rich studio head as much as a director. Most directors known to film buffs aren't really known to the general public. I'm intrigued that a FEW Marvel/DC directors seem to have fans, but not all of 'em.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Thomson's chapter on QT boils down to:

He loves Pulp Fiction. He liked Jackie Brown.

Everything else -- he hates. Disgusted by it.

Really, Mr. T goes overboard here -- QT's taste in blood, outrage and race just seems to invite nothing but rage from Thomson.

I like QT -- but I actually agree with Thomson somewhat. Up to a point.

Take Kill Bill. Coming 6 years after the middle-aged cool and calm(plus murders) of Jackie Brown, this was a "shock to the system" with the wall to wall slaughter of part 1 (a spectacular bloodfest of a one-on-100 swordfight). The woman-on-woman fights to the death got to be wearing and perverse. The hell HAPPENED to QT in those years since Jackie Brown?

Take Inglorious Basterds. I join Thomson(against others who love the scene) in finding the opening interrogation of the French farmer by Christoph Waltz(announcing his glorious overdone acting style to the world) ...not that good. I can't recall Thomson's beef, but mine is: it goes on way too LONG, it deflates before finally picking up at the end. QT was already demonstrating a "loss of pace" that he somehow turned into a calling card. His characters are SUPPOSED to talk too long and get into too much detail, otherwise it isn't a QT film.

I like Basterds in "reverse" to the critics. They loved the Waltz scenes and hated the Brad Pitt scenes. I think the movie only entertains IN the Brad Pitt scenes(including the ones with Chris Waltz.) That was enough for me to name Basterds my favorite of 2009...even if I didn't like that opening interrogation.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Of Reservoir Dogs, Thomson writes: "All you had to do to acclaim (QT) as the best new thing in movies was to overlook the meticulous vileness of Reservoir Dogs and its geometric nihilism."

Its been ever thus with QT...and he likes it and we must deal with it. Thomson can't.

I'll note that Thomson hated the "ear slicing scene" in Dogs; he almost walked out. It IS bad...but the actual slicing is not shown(the ear is) and what's more important is that early QT dialogue as "Mr. Blonde"(superhip Michael Madsen), left alone with a tied up hostage cop and saying, oh so cool "It doesn't matter if you tell me information, because I don't need to hear any information, I just want to hear you beg for a quick death that you ain't gonna get." Thus is Madsen -- who had been introduced in flashback as a seemingly stand-up guy of a crook...revealed as a psycho. And I guess folks forget the satisfying surprise at the end of the "ear scene." Anyway, Thomson's wrong again about how this all plays...to my mind.

Thomson spends a good lot of time on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood...liking the buddy acting of Leo and Brad Pitt very much, struggling with much of the rest of the movie...and hating the kill-the-Mansons climax, of which he writes: "What a lark! What a wow! What a disgrace...and one that we have been accomplices to." Ah....no.

I did consider this one complaint Thomson offers as well: "Why do we have the Al Pacino character? He does nothing for the storyline except to provide the pretext for Al in the picture." Hah. Seems to me that's good enough. Its great to HAVE Al Pacino -- doing his late era funny-talking Al Pacino Thing -- IN a QT picture. And a burst of serendipity in 2019: Pacino does his FIRST QT movie and his FIRST Scorsese movie(The Irishman) in the same year. Yay! (He gets more screen time in the Scorsese, but he looks better in the QT with his big fluffy hair , beard and Hollywood power suit.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Thomson is wrong about Pacino's role beyond having Pacino in it , by the way. He only has two scenes -- I wish he had more -- but in Scene One(the long one) he educates Rick Dalton about his crashing Hollywood career and need to go to Italy, and in Scene Two(the short one), he watches Rick on The FBI episode and makes the call that sends Rick TO Italy. A pretty important cameo -- and QT wrote it for Big Al.

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After writing a chapter of QT hatred, Thomson gets more respectful towards Scorsese in his chapter -- and centers it on The Irishman(thus, this book with its Hitchcock/Psycho retread material is "right up to date" for me.)

Thomson has this funny line about Scorsese's "deal with the Devil" (Netflix) to get financing for The Irishman: "It opened for three weeks in theaters and then...like a Faust limo'ed to hell..it began to stream on Netflix." Where you can still watch it today -- and I do (seeing as I can't buy a DVD.)

Thomson found the first 90 minutes of The Irishman to be a slog...but praises it no end for its second half. I find that whole thing picks up and kicks in when Pacino as Hoffa arrives(90 minutes?) but it is good enough in the first half, anchored by DeNiro with Pesci and Keitel and that guy from Everybody Knows Raymond "waiting for Al."

Me, I love The Irishman and I'll "jump in" to watch a few scenes on Netflix every few weeks. In the beginning I thought it had six great scenes...now I think more and...yes...I write about them on the Irishman page. So there.

I'll add this here: if The Irishman does nothing else , it gives us a chance to see Joe Pesci come out of retirement to do a GREAT performance in a "new tone": quiet, pensive, thoughtful(but just as dangerous) AND it gives us a chance to see Pacino -- in his first and maybe only Scorsese film -- giving us exactly what we want and love from Pacino. And I'm not sure we will ever see Pesci or Pacino get to deliver like this again.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I gotta hand it to David Thomson. He has gotten away in his new book with the ability to re-cycle his stuff on Hitchcock -- and Citizen Kane(Welles gets a chapter, and he didn't direct all those many movies...except the one Thomson says is the greatest) and Rio Bravo.. Psycho and The Godfather...while bringing in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and The Irishman to keep things current. Plus Spike Lee and Kathryn Bigelow. And Ozark(a streaming series he likes better than The Irishman. I don't. It started well but is running down.)

He's done it again. Damn him...

PS. A book about great film directors and he gives Billy Wilder not one chapter but..one SENTENCE. I don't think Thomson's much of a fan?

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

A book about great film directors and he gives Billy Wilder not one chapter but..one SENTENCE. I don't think Thomson's much of a fan?

Looking on Amazon at a few excerpts and at the table of contents, it all looks a bit narrow and a bit 'once over lightly'. Perhaps he should have called it '10 Great Directors' or 'My fave 10 Directors" (30 or so pages each) to accurately express both the book's narrowness (how can the history of film directing *seriously* be boiled down to such a very short list - e.g., I'd find it pretty hard to narrow down, say, The French New Wave & its close associates to 10 directors) and its shallowness (how can you say anything really insightful about a great director with a long career in just 30 pages?).

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Thomson is wrong about Pacino's role beyond having Pacino in it , by the way. He only has two scenes -- I wish he had more -- but in Scene One(the long one) he educates Rick Dalton about his crashing Hollywood career and need to go to Italy, and in Scene Two(the short one), he watches Rick on The FBI episode and makes the call that sends Rick TO Italy. A pretty important cameo -- and QT wrote it for Big Al.

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Well, whaddya know...I took another look at Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Pacino has THREE scenes, not two. The rhythm is "one long scene early on" (telling Rick about his TV career crashing) then later, one quick scene of Al watching "The FBI" episode in a bar and calling an employer; and then later, one quick scene of Al having lunch and calling the employer to actually get Rick the role. So..a VERY functional role, and Al looks cool and sounds cool in each scene(even as we suspect his power as being not quite so big -- he represents Rick Dalton, after all.)

This: I saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood less than two years ago(summer 2019) and here I am not able to remember that Al Pacino had three scenes, not two. I can be a little sad about advancing age, but on the other hand, I've become more and more aware of my brain "properly dumping" things that I think I'm not supposed to commit to memory. Like how many scenes Al Pacino has in OATIH...like entire MOVIES, sometimes, of recent vintage. My brain is saying: "You've seen the movie, you don't need the memory..see it again sometime."

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

By the way, both in "The Moment of Psycho" (2010) and at least one other David Thomson article about Psycho from back in the 80s(I think), he elects to try to "re-write" Psycho to give it a better plot(to his mind.) Thomson writes: "screenwriters do this all the time, testing the story." Trouble is: Thomson writes versions of Psycho that would not have been hits at all.

The thing is, it *is* natural (at least once you've seen a few hundred or a few thousand films) to start rewriting movies that *aren't* working almost as you're watching them or at least right afterwards. I was definitely mentally rewriting both Mank and Nomadland this year for example as both evidently tarted to flounder, bore, miss opportunities like crazy, etc.. What's disingenuous and, as you say, a taunt is to watch a great film like Psycho or Chinatown 100s of times (frame by frame, silently, etc.) so that it *finally* loses all of its original slam-bam, blow-you-away, hit-making power and then say 'Well what if I rewrite that?'

Of course Directors with their endless tinkering withdirectors/extended cuts of things do encourage this attitude too. I don't know what to do with Apocalypse Now and Aliens and Amadeus any more (and that's just the As!). They were celebrated, huge hits on release but the versions that are most widely available now are quite changed. Often they're longer, have less forward momentum, are less fun.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

I mean, *probably* Aliens would still have been a smash in its longer version where it isn't a *surprise* that when the marines & Ripley arrive at the deserted base they pick up movement and life-forms (uh-oh!) and it's a little girl, Newt! who's somehow survived. In the longer director's cut there's no real surprise that Newt's alive, we (a) met her earlier in the movie (indeed we saw the whole functioning base) and saw her scream as her parents get killed by face-huggers, and (b) we also earlier saw Ripley mope back on Earth about having a daughter (what? the gal in Alien was a mom all along? I don't believe it.) who lived and died while Ripley drifted through space in hypersleep for fifity years. In movie logic/character arc terms (b) tells us that Ripley's going to find a surrogate-kid, probably a new daughter in the movie, and (a) tells that that surrogate is Newt so, of course, their meeting is inevitable and that's what the readings when Ripley and the marines arrive on LV-286 will be. In this kind of way Aliens (directors cut) is less gripping and suspenseful, one damn thing after another always building tension, it's more like Titanic or Back To The Future - well-made, a little sermonizing, ticking off its obviously pre-figured plot points, melodramatic. I hate it. And I like Titanic and love BTTF! but the original Aliens was a different, less obviously *written*, nerve-jangling beast and it *pains* me that that's no longer the definitive version (indeed you really have to dig around to find that original cut now - it's a blu-ray extra in some editions).

So... I guess I'm saying that directors and critics alike need to give a bit more respect to the power and fun of the original money-making machine - one that editors and producers and studios often had a hand in creating. Aspects of films (or records for that matter) that *make them hits* often *are* harder to keep in mind when you reach the seen-it- (or heard-it) hundreds of times point. Film history is made by editors, producers, and (focussed on first weekends and non-super-fan, first-time-viewers) studios too. End o' Rant.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

By the way, both in "The Moment of Psycho" (2010) and at least one other David Thomson article about Psycho from back in the 80s(I think), he elects to try to "re-write" Psycho to give it a better plot(to his mind.) Thomson writes: "screenwriters do this all the time, testing the story." Trouble is: Thomson writes versions of Psycho that would not have been hits at all.

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The thing is, it *is* natural (at least once you've seen a few hundred or a few thousand films) to start rewriting movies that *aren't* working almost as you're watching them or at least right afterwards.

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Well..when I first saw Frenzy I'm 1972 and the film ended with the simple arrest of brutal rapist-killer Bob Rusk, I almost instantly added more "footage in my mind" of anti-hero Richard Blaney beating Rusk non-fatally with his tire iron weapon. I mean...I wrote that "better ending"(hah) IMMEDIATELY.

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I was definitely mentally rewriting both Mank and Nomadland this year for example as both evidently tarted to flounder, bore, miss opportunities like crazy, etc..

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When one reads about the various versions of a script that are written before a movie is made...one comes to realize that many critics' reviews are "yet another re-write" but when it is too late. Except in our minds. (And I'm certainly not saying I'm a critic.)

My beef with Mank was my beef with "Hitchcock" -- seeing the parade of missed opportunities to show "how a great movie was made," and staring in disbelief as some sort of "lesser" story was told instead.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

What's disingenuous and, as you say, a taunt is to watch a great film like Psycho or Chinatown 100s of times (frame by frame, silently, etc.) so that it *finally* loses all of its original slam-bam, blow-you-away, hit-making power and then say 'Well what if I rewrite that?'

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Ironic that you should bring up Psycho AND Chinatown here. I'll go with my Chinatown information first. I have finished a book called "The Big Picture." It is about the writing, making and reception of Chinatown, and though it uses material from earlier books...it has a big walloping new thing or two to say about the writing of the script.

The idea originated with the man whose name is solely on the script: Robert Towne(he won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for it.) But it turns out that Towne had his OWN Mank -- an old college roommate named Ed Taylor who Towne often had in the same room writing notes and offering ideas all THROUGH the writing of Chinatown. I'm reminded of how Billy Wilder(language-limited) used co-writers like Charles Bennett and IAL Diamond to get his scripts written. Anyway, Ed Taylor is a kind of Mank, and then director Roman Polanski arrived and pretty much re-wrote Towne's script -- not just changing the ending, but throwing out wholesale all these scenes and characters than Towne and Taylor wrote.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Reading the Towne/Taylor storylines keep changing for Chinatown, you can see EXACTLY how "screenwriters can keep changing the story over and over" until they get the one they want. For instance, various Chinatown drafts had different clients first coming to Jake Gittes with a case...and its always a different case than what we got in the movie("Mrs. Mulwray" wants her husband followed.) The character names change. And a big one(evidently solved by Polanski); in early drafts, Evelyn Mulwray being the incestual mother of her own sister was..revealed by...(1) Escobar the cop to Gittes or (2) Evelyn's doctor. Polanski evidently finally said, "No...Evelyn HERSELF must confess this to Gittes!" And that's what we got.

Some reviews of this "Chinatown" book take issue with the idea that the final screenplay was mainly Polanski's or how much this "Ed Taylor" had to do with it(he watched Towne pick up his Oscar and was proud for both of them.) To his credit(evidently)...the book credits Robert Towne with the two main ideas of the story: (1) The political water grab plot and (2) the incest plot (based on a real-life incest situation related to Towne by one-time girlfriend Barrie Chase, who is the woman assaulted by Robert Mitchum in the original Cape Fear. Chase's father -- Borden Chase, screenwriter of Red River and Winchester '73 -- is evidently Noah Cross in this real -life tale, but it was not with Barrie Chase. Enough on that, except -- see how ANYTHING in private life can be used for "the movies?"

Funny bit: a big ongoing debate in the Chinatown script writing was: which should be revealed first -- the water grab or the incest? They KNEW those were the two big "new things" about this script. As I recall, the choice was spell out the water grab first, but I find Noah Cross to rather acknowledge both crimes to Gittes at the same time ("The FUTURE, Mr. Gittes....at the right place, the right time, a man is capable of anything."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

....back to David Thomson and his fanciful "Psycho" re-writes.

One reason I keep buying Thomson's books is I've been reading him for decades now. Its been a journey, and previous favorites like Pauline Kael and...well, I'm not sure who else....are long dead.

And I know this: Thomson "re-wrote" Psycho as long ago as a Film Comment article from the 80's, I think, and that's where Thomson came up with this concept:

Thomson felt that Marion Crane and Norman Bates are BOTH two decent people who BOTH "emotionally connect" in their famous parlor supper scene and that (A) to kill Marion so violently just minutes later and (B) to consign Norman to "bad guy suspect status" for the rest of the movie...BETRAYED the human story of the supper scene.

Consequently, in Thomson's new "script," there is no shower murder. Marion and Norman part, and Marion returns the money and breaks up with Sam, and Marion "reads something in the paper" about Norman Bates being arrested (only) for keeping his Mother's body in his home. Marion returns to the Bates Motel, and helps get Norman through this ordeal. The story ends with them as pals more than lovers.

Ahem...Mr. THOMSON?

That "Psycho" might have been one of those interesting "50's psychodramas" that go nowhere but what the hell? No blockbuster. No horror(beyond Mother's body.) No movie history.

And I think that Thomson remains flat out wrong about Norman in the parlor being a "basically decent guy." Norman "lets mother out" time and time again, from "A boy's best friend is his mother" to his truly nasty and angry speech AT Marion , saying "what do you know about caring?" and "people always mean well...they cluck their thick tongues and suggest, oh so very delicately." Actually Stefano's writing here is just a bit "ham handed" -- Marion should DRIVE AWAY after that diatribe. But Norman starts talking nice and normal ("Well, I'll have breakfast for you in the morning") and the movie moves on to horror.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

In his "Moment of Psycho" book from 2010, Thomson elaborates on the "betrayal of the great character of Norman Bates" by Part Two of the movie, but makes this debateable claim (paraphrased): "Is there any clue in Perkin's gentle, kind performance of the monster we see committing those murders? I don't think that Norman is capable of that."

Say WHAT?

Of course he is. Hitchcock would use "Frenzy" to spell it out better: we see psycho Bob Rusk "in public" as a cheery, back slapping "best friend" type, but LATER...when he comes to rape and murder his next female victim, and no one else is around, we see that personality "fall away" as the sexual madman within eerily "emerges" from the man and we BELIEVE that killer. "Frenzy" in many ways allowed Hitchcock to "explain" Psycho and I think both movies show us that a "mild mannered maniac"(to use Richard Schickel's phrase about both Norman and Rusk) can hide his true nature from the world. (Think: Ted Bundy.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Of course Directors with their endless tinkering withdirectors/extended cuts of things do encourage this attitude too. I don't know what to do with Apocalypse Now and Aliens and Amadeus any more (and that's just the As!).

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Heh...just the As!

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They were celebrated, huge hits on release but the versions that are most widely available now are quite changed. Often they're longer, have less forward momentum, are less fun.

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Agreed...I can't say that I've seen ALL the directors cuts, but they do seem to have that "tinkering" problem.

On a large scale, I trace this back to Spielberg's "Close Encounters." It was released at Xmas 1977 and a big deal right on into 1978. But then...a mere two years later....Columbia re-released it as a "new kind of big deal" and I remember that it had a few "new scenes"(some shot SINCE 1978...Spielberg got more money) and that it "messed around with the middle part of the film" (some 1977 scenes were cut, some new scenes were restored) and we ended up with a "new" Close Encounters that was just as good...and frankly, just as bad...as the original...just in a new way. (I say "just as bad" because I always saw Close Encounters in ALL versions as rather lumpy and ill-formed and overlong, even with all the awe shots of spacecraft.)

Steve coulda/shoulda left well enough alone.

Of course, they did it to "Psycho" last year. Less than a minute of new footage not seen since 1960(for the most part.) I have granted this "German Version 1960 Psycho at Theaters" as my 2020 favorite film of the year, but mostly for the experience of seeing Psycho in the theater in a year I could not go to the theater for the most part. Also, two of the three "new moments"(they didn't qualify as new scenes) struck me as positive, rather than negative.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

So... I guess I'm saying that directors and critics alike need to give a bit more respect to the power and fun of the original money-making machine - one that editors and producers and studios often had a hand in creating.

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If a lifetime of reading about all SORTS of directors has taught me nothing else, it is that even the most auteurist of directors can be wrong sometimes and need the help of the other technicians and writers on set.

Hey -- Hitchcock originally wanted the shower murder to have NO MUSIC. Bernard Herrmann changed his mind...and probably added millions to the box office as word of mouth spread about the "scream machine" aspects of Psycho.

But from what I"ve also read, more sophisticated decisions were made to "help" directors on The Godfather, Jaws, and Chinatown -- and without them, these might not have been the classics and hits they came to be.

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Aspects of films (or records for that matter) that *make them hits* often *are* harder to keep in mind when you reach the seen-it- (or heard-it) hundreds of times point. Film history is made by editors, producers, and (focussed on first weekends and non-super-fan, first-time-viewers) studios too. End o' Rant.

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Good rant.

Hey, here's one that really bugs me:

I can remember -- here and now -- how the opening shot of American Graffiti looked when I saw it (and it changed my life) on opening weekend, August 1973. The realistic photography gave us a "dusk" of bluish-gray as the characters first were seen. There was the emotion of day surrendering to night -- a sense of something important about to begin, if a little melancholy.

Well, somewhere along the line, George Lucas CGIed this garish blood red/flame orange sunset into that dusk sky and...to me not only is American Graffiti a bit "lesser" now -- but my intact memory of 1973 has been dashed. By the maker, but really...didn't it become OUR movie once it was such a hit?

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

In movie logic/character arc terms (b) tells us that Ripley's going to find a surrogate-kid, probably a new daughter in the movie, and (a) tells that that surrogate is Newt so, of course, their meeting is inevitable and that's what the readings when Ripley and the marines arrive on LV-286 will be.

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Hell, I'm glad I didn't see THAT version.

BTW, if memory serves, after worldwide audiences invested all that emotion in Ripley as surrogate mother to Newt, and in saving her from the Alien Queen -- weren't we told in Alien 3 that Newt died shortly thereafter? THAT pissed me off.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

BTW, if memory serves, after worldwide audiences invested all that emotion in Ripley as surrogate mother to Newt, and in saving her from the Alien Queen -- weren't we told in Alien 3 that Newt died shortly thereafter? THAT pissed me off.

Alien 3 is kind of its own legendary disaster where they had all sorts of scripts and directors (young David Fincher was the director of record charged with saving the mess but has always disowned and refuses to ever talk about the film). I remember being pretty mad in the cinema at the decision to kill off Newt and Hicks in the opening credits, isolating Ripley all over again. I guess it *could* have been a cool touch a la killing Drew Barrymore at the beginning of Scream, but it *really* put me in such a bad mood at the time that my ability to receive the film never really recovered. I vaguely knew about some of the alternative scripts at the time and I was kinda incredulous that *this* was what they'd gone with. The ludicrous Ripley-Christ imagery of the end of the film that I saw on release really confirmed my sense that I'd just watched some pretty desperate, all-around-garbage.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I saw Alien 3 once, years ago, as a rental...I recall really hating that decision on Newt and feeling that "yet again, two good ones doesn't guarantee a third." My memory just drops most movies from the past these days if I don't rewatch; its my brain being efficient. And yet: I remember that Newt angle as being so unnecessary.

Poor David Fincher. Well...he moved on and done good. And he will move on from Mank, too. I think he will be involved in yet another "docudrama" about the making of a film: the one about the making of Chinatown. I've finished the book(The Big Picture)...there's a good movie in there....hope its not another "Hitchcock." Or "Mank."

[–] christomacin (4655) 4 years ago

Sometimes we learn more about cinema by watching an almost-great-but-not-quite near miss movie and instead of ones that are either obviously masterpieces or clearly horrible. For instance, what can you really learn about film-making by watching 2001: A Space Odyssey or Seven Samurai for the umpteenth time? After a while it kind of becomes a very passive experience - sitting in awe of every frame and second of the film. Conversely, what can you really say about "Plan Nine From Outer Space" or "Manos Hands of Fate", other than just how excruciatingly bad they are? Since Al Pacino has been brought up, I though I might mention "...And Justice for All", a film that just missed true greatness due to various flaws. There are about 10 minutes of deleted footage, some of which probably SHOULD have been in the film - somewhat the opposite of Aliens which added perhaps too much footage. There are some script problems as well - with a few characters (and scenes) that should have been composited into one character or scene, which lead to a certain repetitiousness. I also think the film would have benefitted if the themes had been broadened out to the flaws of America society as a whole (wanting to win at any cost), instead of focusing solely on the legal profession. Then there's the awful Dave Grusin score.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

@christomacin. Agreed that partially successful films can teach many useful lessons. Indeed, mental health as a film-buff really depends upon understanding that as vast collaborative enterprises films with flaws can nonetheless have strong technical aspects or good script ideas in various acts or great individual performances or...

Anyhow, I agree that ...And Justice For All is a very watchable film. It's not one of Pacino's '70s masterpieces but I dare say that it'd be good enough to get a Best Picture nom. in 2020. I recently got around to finally watching another second-tier '70s Pacino recently: Serpico (1973). It's a lot of fun, and is basically well-made (again, would easily get a Best Picture Oscar Nom and Acting nom for 2020!) but has a horrible score and a just so-so script, and isn't finally in the same league as Godfathers 1&2, Scarecrow, Dog Day, Panic In Needle Park, and so on. Well worth watching!

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

In one of those "pattern" coincidences that I rather love in movie history, two new "young" stars of the 70's had rather the same "career runs" :

Jack Nicholson and Al Pacino.

Nicholson hit first -- in 1969 -- with Easy Rider.

Pacino hit second -- in 1972 -- with The Godfather. But Pacino had made his name in the right circiles in 1971 with Panic in Needle Park (and Jack's bit in Easy Rider was a supporting role; he needed 1970 and Five Easy Pieces to become a leading man.)

Things came to head in three successive movie years in which both Jack and Al got Best Actor nominations:

1973: Al(Serpico); Jack(The Last Detail)
1974: Al (Godfather II); Jack (Chinatown)
1975: Al (Dog Day Afternoon); Jack(Cuckoo's Nest.)

I recall those Oscar years as "the Al and Jack show," even as oldsters like Jack Lemmon(in 1973 for Save the Tiger) and Art Carney(9n 1974 for Harry and Tonto) beat the young whippersnappers. Jack finally beat Al in 1975(Cuckoo's Nest)...and Al would have to wait til 1992 to finally win!(Scent of a Woman --an "affliction" win for playing blind.)

But this: it was as if -- almost instantaneously -- after the "climax" year of 1975, both Jack and Al started to falter. Jack had two Western flops (The Missouri Breaks with Brando; he self-directed Goin South) and Al floundered with "Bobby Deerfield" before closing out the decade with "And Justice For All" which just didn't feel like it was in the same bracket with the serious early 70's works.

People may forget this: in the 80's, both Jack and Al "re-grouped." Jack took supporting roles in Reds and Terms of Endearment; Al took FOUR YEARS OFF (from 1985 to 1989.) This worked for both of them; Jack was nominated for Reds and won for Terms of Endearment at the Oscars; Al came back "new and improved" and became the cool-voiced star he has been for decades.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Note: Al sure yells at the end of "And Justice for All" (YOU'RE out of order! YOU'RE out of order!) but it is rather out-of-control frenzy of a young man, outraged (he's been forced to defend an evil rapist of a judge.) As the years went on, Al refined his yelling -- first in Scarface, with an accent -- and then with comic polish (and, like Jack, an older man's stereophonice voice) in movies like Glengarry Glen Ross, Scent of a Woman, and Carlito's Way.

Its 2021 as I write this. Jack's been out of movies for 10 years, and is probably not coming back. Al had a banner 2019 -- his first movies for QT and for Scorsese -- and is working right now(playing one of the Guccis.) I guess we better hang onto Al...because it looks like Jack's not coming back, and Al's pushing 80, I believe. But oh from 1969 to 1975 -- Jack and Al made their "prestige" names and thus protected themselves for decades.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Sometimes we learn more about cinema by watching an almost-great-but-not-quite near miss movie and instead of ones that are either obviously masterpieces or clearly horrible.

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That's a "pleasing" aspect of being a longtime movie watcher. One gets a sense for the "perfect" films; one gets a sense of the films that are just so bad you sit there saying: "How did THIS get made?"

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For instance, what can you really learn about film-making by watching 2001: A Space Odyssey or Seven Samurai for the umpteenth time? After a while it kind of becomes a very passive experience - sitting in awe of every frame and second of the film.

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I suppose so...but if you "space out" the viewings -- say, once a year -- it can be edifying.

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Conversely, what can you really say about "Plan Nine From Outer Space" or "Manos Hands of Fate", other than just how excruciatingly bad they are

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Yes, well anyone can write a script....but exactly how good or bad that script is...is ..well I suppose it depends on natural talent and/or good education. A bad script reveals itself quickly. As does a bad actor(btw, so often movie star acting looks "easy" but -- while not rocket science, it IS harder than it looks.) And its funny about cheap production values: a lot of enterprising fillmakers can make a little look like a lot.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I'm always intrigued by watching good movies go bad for a bit.

Exhibit A: The Birds.

I've seen that movie a few times in revival and certain scenes get laughed at, every time. (Psycho generally escaped such laughs, though not entirely.)

The BIG laugh is when the hysterical mother at the Tides restaurant -- in huge overlit close-up -- yells at Tippi Hedren: "I think you're evil! EVIL!"

The laugh comes even before Tippi slaps the woman but then this happens : the Tides bartender comes running into the shot in stumbling, slapstick panic, running in from birds we can no longer see or hear -- and the audience laughs AGAIN.

Hitchcock "committed" to the "You're EVIL!" speech (and added his dramatic close-up and lighting); he was looking for Oscars and wanted The Birds to have a serious undertow(indeed...IS Tippi's arrival the reason the birds attacked? Is there not a "Crucible"-like mob hysteria brewing against against her.) Some think this scene works but I can attest to SEVERAL audience laughs at this -- and the ill-timed (and badly staged) run of the bartender into the shot right after only brought on bigger laughs.

And yet...The Birds recovers from that sequence and moves on to truly great technical acheivements and a doomsday ending.

Coulda/shoulda Hitchcock had a do-over to delete or re-stage that scene at the Tides? Release a "new director's cut" with a deletion of the scene entirely? (Just cut when Tippi and Rod see the people huddled in the hall; fade out.) Hitchcock didn't work in a system that allowed that back then; he turned in the movie he made -- flaws(unintential laughs) and greatness(some of the most powerful and exciting set-pieces in his canon, marvels of sight AND sound.) And WE learn by watching -- when a movie is working, and when it isn't.