MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > "The Many Saints of Newark" and "Psycho"...

"The Many Saints of Newark" and "Psycho" NO SPOILERS

posted 3 years ago by ecarle (14979)
9 replies | jump to latest

In the thread elsewhere on this board "Popcorn In Bed" Reacts to Psycho, swanstep wrote thisa about a DIFFERENT internet hostess -- who reviews movies rather than reacts to them(evidently):

swanstep wrote:

Her review this weekend of The Many Saints of Newark (she can't recommend it) is a classic of highly informed criticism. Enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFHhJnzQprY

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I responded:

I'll see the movie first. Probably this week. As with "Cry Macho" I can turn on my TV right now and watch "Newark" on HBO Max, but also as with "Cry Macho" I'm going to the movie theater first. Big screen and all that.

"Sight unseen," I've developed these thoughts about The Many Saints of NewarkL

ONE: Its taken fourteen years for The Sopranos to FINALLY develop some sort of offshoot. On the other hand, it took 23 years to get to Psycho II.

TWO: It occurs to me that The Sopranos could never "spin off" a character(say Paulie or Carmela) because to do so...showrunner David Chase would have to explain what happened to TonY Soprano. The show was doomed to end where it ended...no further explanation allowed.

THREE: The "prequel" route has been taken with Better Call Saul as a prequel to Breaking Bad. What's interesting with Better Call Saul is meeting a bunch of characters who MUST survive this prequel series...because they don't die until the years of Breaking Bad. This Sopranos prequel -- with its 30 years earlier timeframe -- will play the same way.

FOUR: Evidently, if this prequel is a hit, showrunner David Chase can make two or three more, as Michael Gandolfini grows older and can play Tony Soprano in the years between the 70's and 1999. Interesting.. Maybe.

Or maybe not. Rumor has it that the two-hour "Many Saints" movie can't come close to the 86-hour Sopranos saga.

And this: I claim Love Actually as my favorite movie of the oughts(2000-2009.) I got my reasons -- though I have found articles that call it "S--, Actually." I don't care.

But the truth of the matter is that my favorite movie of the 2000s may well have been The Sopranos. It ran in 1999 as well. But it certainly gripped me all the way to that awful non-ending. (Great movies have great endings -- see: Psycho.)

But the secondary truth of the matter may be that my favorite movie of the 2000s was a tie: The Sopranos and Mad Men. One started just a month after the other ended in 2007. And both series shared a writer(Matthew Weiner.)

Oh, well. I'll be seeing the Many Saints of Newark. And right now, its the only game in town for a "favorite movie of 2021." Cry Macho was an impressive achievement(91 year old stars over title in movie) but not much of a "real movie."

swanstep replied:

Many Saints builds the following bridge between Psycho and The Sopranos: Vera Farmiga has played both young Livia Soprano in Many Saints and young Norma Bates (both outside and inside of Norman's head) in Bates Motel.

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I have now seen The Many Saints of Newark, and I return to add a few "non spoiler points" that look to further compare and contrast Psycho and The Sopranos -- both as unique popular works of art unto themselves ....and "product" from which the studio/showrunners sought to develop profitable ancillary...works of art?

Opening note: one reason I prefer to stick to older movies like Psycho...and OBSCURE older movies that are NOT Psycho is...when a movie gets released NOW...it does take long for the movie to generate a ton of professional critical reviews and "fan reviews." The Moviechat page on The Many Saints of Newark(Newark for short) gets down and dirty and angry and cutting pretty fast and when you add the POVS of the younger generation to a host of "professional reviews"...you get... a failure.

Nor did "Newark" open to much box office -- 5 million or so versus 90 million for the Venom sequel. "Newark" "opened" day and date on HBO Max when supposedly hurt the BO, but I still think more was expected.

For the reasons WHY "Newark" was a failure...hey, check the reviews and board.

ONE: Too short, sketchy and underdeveloped -- no time to get the typical nuance of two Sopranos episodes(which this equals.)

TWO: The decision to focus on Dickie Moltisanti -- a guy only mentioned in the original series, and as long dead -- proved not too good. As adult wiseguy characters go...he's no Tony Soprano.

THREE: The decision to focus on the Newark riots and key African-American characters, rather got in the way of "Sopranos fan service" while at the same time shortchanging the black characters like everyone else.

FOUR: Speaking of fan service, bunch of reasonably accurate "Muppet Babies" lookalikes/sound-alikes for young versions of Paulie, Silvio, and Big Pussy didn't get much to do or say -- though Silvio came out best with dialogue assigned. Livia Soprano and Uncle Junior got slightly meatier parts but hardly meaty enough.

..and so forth and so on. I would add these personal observations.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

ONE: The film was co-written by the show's creator and showrunner...David Chase, who based much of the series(in the beginning) on his own sour relationship over the years with his mother as she aged. But I'm not all that sure that David Chase was the BEST writer on the series. Two others may have been better -- Terrence Winter (who went on to write The Wolf of Wall Street screenplay) and Matthew Weiner(who went on to write Mad Men.) On the original series, Chase could be counted on to write the "weird dream episodes," and Chase and Chase alone wrote that "controversial" ending("controversial" because a lot of us thought it sucked. Let the debate begin again. Or I'll just talk about the shrink scene in Psycho some more. Still movies with "uncontroversial" endings usually have GOOD endings -- see: Casablanca, On the Waterfront, NXNW, Psycho..The Sting, Jaws...)

TWO: Perhaps "the Tarantino Theory" is here again. The Sopranos ended 14 years ago , and David Chase is now 76. And he had a heart attack a few years ago that prevented him from directing this. Perhaps it affected his ability to write like he used to(he used a co-writer from the show.) One scene near the end where someone gets killed is as poorly designed, motivated and written as anybody ever wrote. I read of Chase having writers fired by underlings "because they were not meeting David Chase's standards." For this scene...he should have fired himself.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

THREE: As noted in the many reviews, Vera Farmiga's attempt to play Young Livia Soprano(Tony's old mother done so horribly well by Nancy Marchand) ended up instead sounding just like -- and around the eyes LOOKING just like -- Edie Falco, who played Carmella(Tony's wife.) Chase was willing to countenance this -- "Hmm...he married his mother...interesting possiblility." As an acting job, its...wrong. Vera Farmiga played both Mrs. Bates and Mrs. Soprano(both of them) ...and played all of them WRONG. (With Mrs. Bates, Hitchcock's one-note comical witch of an old crone became a "complex," sexual and younger character who had little to do with the woman who drove the terror in 1960.)

FOUR:...which brings Psycho more clearly into sight with regard to "Newark." A reversal: Bates Motel fleshed out a less than two-hour movie(Psycho) into a multi-season series(Bates Motel) ...stretching the STORY waayyyyy too long. Conversely, The Many Saints of Newark takes an 86-hour series and turns it into...a short two-hour movie, SQUISHING the main story waaay too short. (Yes, more "episode movies" of The Sopranos as Tony grows up may be made...but on the evidence, they CAN'T be very good. They can't use the key actors from the original.)

FIVE: This: "Newark" posits characters from the late 60's/early 70s who will grow up to be EXACTLY the characters who will populate The Sopranos as adults. "Bates Motel" professed to tell us the story of how Norman and Norma Bates grew up together into the 1960 characters...but they DON'T really, at all. Mrs. Bates doesn't kill Marion Crane or Arbogast in Bates Motel; Norman doesn't end up in a cell. Bates Motel is a "prequel that wasn't." Meanwhile, "Newark" suffers because we can't really believe that THIS actors(even James Gandolfini's near lookalike son Michael as Tony) will grow into THOSE characters. Bates Motel was contemporary, to match "Newark," the story would have to start in 1929.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

SIX: While the prequel "Bates Motel" is probably most "on point" with "Newark"...I was actually reminded, watching "Newark" of two other Psycho-related projects:

Van Sant's Psycho: different actors playing the same characters(age appropriate in the Van Sant, much younger in Newark) and not capturing the magic of the originals much at all.

"Hitchcock": (the movie about the making of Psycho with Anthony Hopkins." "Newark" reminded me of "Hitchcock' because in both films, a very great original source movie would OCCASIONALLY came into view (being made in "Hitchcock," with the characters and their lines in "Newark") -- and then the new movie would drift away from what made the original so interesting.

In "Hitchcock," the good scenes are those where Hitchcock argues with the studio about making Psycho and then goes about casting it, the bad scenes are the manufactured material about how Alma Did Everything and marital troubles and Ed Gein as Hitch's imaginary friend.

In "Newark," the good scenes ARE fan service tidbits, as when Young Lydia sneers "poor YOU!" or Young Uncle Junior yet again says of Tony's football hopes "He didn't have the makings of a varsity player" We smile in recognition and warm memories of Better Sopranos Past...and then the movie goes somewhere meaningless(dull scenes, if not "bad").

We're reminded -- again and again and again by sequels and prequels -- and EVEN by Godfather II(says I -- it made half the original made) that truly unique popular classics are very, very rare...very special...lighting striking ONCE, and that's it. Remakes do a little better if they can make that same lighting strike - Van Sant's Psycho did not.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

One great fan service moment with "The Many Saints of Newark" comes at the very end...when the famous opening theme song comes slowly rolling and chug-chug-chugging across the soundtrack, promising "better prequels ahead."
I hope so. And "Newark" (like "Hitchcock" and like "Van Sant's Psycho) was entertaining ENOUGH (in what faded memories it brought back of a much better original) but, ultimately, disappointing.

I'm still missing a favorite movie of 2021. Maybe I will declare a tie: "Cry Macho" and "The Many Saints of Newark" as "gimmick movies of the year" (Clint starring at 91; James Gandolfini's son playing his dad.)

Here's hoping it doesn't come to that.

PS. The internet reviewer referenced by swanstep at the top of the thread HATED the actor who so "overdid" Silvio(the toupeed Stevie Van Zandt character from the original.) But my companion hates watching Sopranos re-runs whenever Silvio takes the screen -- she thinks VAN ZANDT is to overdone. So evidently the youthful actor got it RIGHT.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

swanstep wrote (in the Popcorn in Bed thread)

BTW, the NY Times had a very interesting article this weekend about how The Sopranos is experiencing a huge burst of popularity with younger (college, 20s & 30s) viewers

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I know just such a couple...married in their 20's. They are watching the whole series right now. They aren't done yet.
They went to "Newark" and -- oops -- it spoiled something about the series. Right in the first scene.

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who read it as 'a parable about a country in terminal decline'--

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Well, Psycho spoke in 1960 to a country beginning that decline...it posits a pretty rough world indeed..."cruel eyes studying you," men running worthless businesses, women seeking love and finding death....

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It occurs to me that The Sopranos might be getting the same assist from advanced high school & colleges that Psycho got and still gets: The Sopranos is acclaimed as *the* benchmark, aspirational show for all of prestige TV, one that contains the technical DNA of what success looks like in the long-form TV medium.

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Just as Psycho contains the technical DNA not only for "the slasher film" but for the advance of American studio films IN GENERAL to adapt more violence, more sex, more kinky material going forward to the R/X in 1968.

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Kids get to watch it as teaching tool for all that much as Psycho was *the* film for many years used to teach everything from the basic notion of an auteur to what excellence in sound and editing and performance and shot-making,etc. consists in, indeed all the key concepts you need to understand any film film and why it is or isn't successful.

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Psycho is rather "the perfect film school on film." It is short. It is concise. The story still has power and springs some surprises even if it isn't utterly terrifying anymore. It teaches editing and montage. It teaches camera movement. It teaches lighting and composition and camera angle. It teaches the creative use of sound(the voices in Marion's car with her) and music(screech!) And it demonstrates the particular auteuristic touches of this particular auteur for future reference (example: the travelling POV shot as Lila walks up the hill to the house.)

Not to mention, it is a showpiece for powerful and entertaining acting. I could watch Norman and Arbogast ping pong their dialogue all day.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

swanstep wrote:

Psycho and The Sopranos may end up more twinned in history than we'd ever have guessed

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Well, they are both "seminal works" that changed the way movies(and TV, and "TV as movies") WORKED. And their violence/sex quotient keeps them interesting.

Both films have an Evil Old Mother and both films have a meddlesome psychiatrist. (Note: Psycho screenwriter Joe Stefano originally wrote the psychiatrist as a woman , because HIS was a woman. Hitchcock demurred.)

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when that screen went blank back in the '00s.

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You know ANOTHER reason I hate that ending? It broke a Hitchcock rule(that Hitchcock himself broke first with the kid and the bomb in Sabotage): "Don't build up suspense and then frustrate the audience. Give them release.)

The scene in Holsten's builds and builds and builds in suspense -- punctuated by Tony's daughter Meadow's back and forth, back and forth trying to park her car (which reminds us of a similar "car at curb" suspense sequence in Bonnie and Clyde.) I was at a "watching party" for the final episode and as that scene kept building, men and women were pounding the furniture and yelling about the scene: "This is too MUCH! What's going to HAPPEN?"

And then...nothing happened. Static on the screen. People thinking their cable went out. People ENRAGED.

Perhaps if David Chase hadn't taken the suspense to such a peak and thrown it away.some people(SOME people) wouldn't have been so mad.

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

Horseshit

[–] swanstep (2715) 3 years ago

@Metatron. Do feel free to mount a proper defense of Chase's ending to The Sopranos (I'm a little more positive about it than ecarle is myself)? Pure invective is dull, undistinguished, and unworthy of you (I assume).

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

CONT

Another Psycho connection to "Newark" is in its casting. There is a high school counselor who gets one scene with Young Livia and one scene with Young Tony. In her scene with Tony, she is a clear precursor to Dr. Melfi. And she is played by Talia Balsam, daughter of Martin Balsam, who played...you know. If only they could have found a part for Jamie Lee Curtis...