One thing that becomes apparent as you age is how differently you view events and art and relationships with the advance of each new year. What's thrilling to a five-year-old is dull to a fifteen-year-old. What's cool to a fifteen-year-old is idiotic to a 25-year-old. What's fascinating to a 25-year-old is old hat to a 35-year-old, and so on, with each additional decade changing and shaping our perception of the world around us. I, and perhaps many of you, have noticed this with movies, especially, in my case, in the last few years as I entered middle age.Recently I watched Coming Home again for the first time since my teens. I was just barely entering my teens when it was released in 1978 and saw it in my still early teens a year or two later on cable. I have used that childhood viewing as my measuring stick for the film ever since and my negative, condescending dismissal of it was based on the views of a budding cinephile barely into his teens.
Another film I watched again recently was Last Tango in Paris. This was another film I first saw in my early teens and then, later, around 1988, had the pleasure to see it on the big screen at the AFI, which was, at that time, still headquartered in the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. I loved it and thought it not only immensely entertaining but deep, dark and profound.
I watched both of these films again recently by happenstance, scrolling, as I was, through the selections on Netflix Instant. As it turns out, both films deal directly with mid-life crises, one, an American widower living in Paris who has just lost his wife and the other, a military wife coping with being alone as her husband goes off to war. Paul (Marlon Brando), the character in Last Tango, finds a woman (Maria Schneider) he can fuck and frolic with in a neutral apartment under the condition that neither one ever finds out anything about the other one, including their names. Sally (Jane Fonda), the character in Coming Home, finds a paralyzed veteran, Luke (Jon Voight), with whom she connects on a personal level, the whole relationship being entirely dependant upon each one knowing everything about the other.
In watching the two back to back, several things struck me:
One, Coming Home, while no cinematic masterwork, is pretty damn good and no one should ever pass off any opinion as valid that they came to while anywhere in the vicinity of puberty. I shrivelled thinking of my smug kiss-off of this film at such a young age, a film dealing with a subject with which I had no sense of connection and that lack of connection, I arrogantly thought,
didn't matter. I was under the impression, you see, at the wise old age of fourteen, that movies were objective beasts and could be judged according to a matrix of acting, directing, cinematography and writing that could be cut, divided and assigned numerical value. How stupid I was.Two, Last Tango in Paris felt more juvenile than ever, mid-life crisis as seen through the eyes of a teenager. I realize neither Bernardo Bertalucci nor Marlon Brando were teenagers, but the film still has that feel. And that's precisely why I found it so good, so goddamn cool, as a teenager! Watching it now, at close to the same age as the Brando character, I found his behavior quite unintentionally funny, silly and stupid. His wife cheated on him and then up and died and what's he do? Find some Parisian girl and talks about reaching into the ass of death while she sticks her fingers up his ass. And, oh yeah, he also mentions a pig simultaneously fucking her and vomiting on her while she's doing this. Deep, deep stuff. Real heady, that there shit. And it's a load of shit I ate up in my teens and twenties.
Meanwhile, Sally and Luke connect sexually in a way so meaningful that I found it one of the most emotionally powerful sex scenes I've ever witnessed in a film. Coming Home chooses a different path than Tango, I realize that. It deals with the lost wandering of Sally by having her seek out, and find, an emotional connection with a fellow traveller and Tango has Paul seek out anonymity as escape from the problems of his life. One is a female character, the other is male. I understand both are going for vastly different things but my point is this: It's the handling of Coming Home's plot and characters that makes it feel real and grown-up, and the handling of Tango's plot that makes it feel phony and juvenile. Tango, with the exact same plot could have felt real and mature and Coming Home could have felt forced and childish. It's not the plot, it's how the writer, director and actors all chose to handle it. Brando's mumblings about butter and pig vomit make him sound like a kid doing his best to impersonate middle age angst while Fonda and Voight feel like the real thing.
In the end, it may just be the directorial approach. Bertolucci darts back and forth in his story from Schneider's tryst with Brando to her movie making adventure with her boyfriend, from Brando at the funeral parlor yelling at his dead wife to the apartment building he runs to commiserate with one of her lovers. It goes here, there and everywhere and Brando says a lot of funny, clever things along the way but none of it ever really adds up to anything. With Coming Home, on the other hand, Hal Ashby keeps the focus tightly on Fonda and Voight at the Veteran's Hospital where she volunteers to help paralyzed vets like Voight. There are other elements present but Ashby never lets them take over.
Since I know the tempting response will be one of disbelief ("You think Coming Home's better than Last Tango?! You're crazy!") I should reiterate that I'm not writing this piece in praise of Coming Home as a great film nor am I necessarily saying Last Tango is not. Just that, in dealing with a middle-aged adult's life in turmoil, one chose a path that felt real to me while the other did not. And that's a difference I never noticed, or could have noticed, until reaching a certain point in my own life. And so the obvious proves true once again: movie aren't objective beasts after all. Our perception of them changes and warps and distorts through time. But then, we already knew that didn't we?
As a final note, I'd be curious, if anyone cares to spill, what movies anyone else thought were bad or good, cool or dull, thrilling or indifferent at one age and then felt practically the opposite way at another.
58 comments:
I responded deeply to Coming Home, which I believe I saw in my early 20s, and felt confused by Last Tango, which I saw when I was in college. I'm pretty sure my date took me to the latter to get me into bed, but it was too disturbing to me. That, I think, is the point of Bertolucci's film, a disruption to the way things are supposed to be to match Brando's disruption of his normal life by his wife up and dying. It is a deeply selfish reaction that he has, and therefore, juvenile, though I don't think the film itself is juvenile.
Coming Home spoke to some guilt I think our country was feeling about the way we were treating our Vietnam vets. Fonda's compassion (and yes, the sex scene is absolutely outstanding) was a balm to us all in a strange way. It WAS about connecting, about the healing the fractures war had opened.
It's interesting you juxtapose these two films, because they look at fracture and mending.
Marilyn, I was really moved by their sex scene, as emotional a scene as any I can think of offhand. Watching Coming Home again was a revelation. I foolishly dismissed it because I had no connection to characters decades older than myself but now, I was quite moved by all of their plights. Bruce Dern's facial expression as he takes off his wedding ring and puts in on the lifeguard stand before running into the water is heartbreaking. Jon Voight's speech to the high school students feels simple and real and Jane Fonda was simply amazing as the center of the film, torn apart on both ends.
Last Tango, on the other hand, did feel juvenile to me. The film itself is well made but the characters generated nothing but indifference in me. I thought Paul was so interesting decades ago but this time, he seemed shallow and dull. Like I said in the piece, I know they're going for something different and you're right, Paul's reaction is juvenile and that's what they're examining and there's certainly validity in examining a character making that choice. I just didn't care to study it this time. It didn't seem like there was much there to study.
That's fair. I've always made the point that films are there to help us get through life through the stories they tell. That's why I would never put down Twilight. It's not meant for adults and should not be judged by the same standards, though some of its social assumptions could be questioned (a denial of sexuality, for example) and probably should be.
I'd be all for a rating system that judged films based on the maturity level needed to get something out of them, not by sex and violence per se.
You might be interested in an article I've written for a site called Fandor that is scheduled to go online Sept. 28. It's about approaches to death on the silver screen, with a special emphasis on All That Jazz and Dead Man. I mention specifically the importance for having our stories told.
I'd be all for a rating system that judged films based on the maturity level needed to get something out of them, not by sex and violence per se.
My wife and I use our own makeshift maturity level ratings system with the kids. The youngest son, now sixteen, and already in possession of quite good taste in music and film, will ask about some movie we have, like, let's just say Coming Home, and we'll say, "It's good but you probably won't get anything out of it for another twenty years or so." And then it's up to him.
And I'd love to read that piece when it goes up. You should cross-post it at Ferdy on Films. I'm very interested as to how you'll break both of those films down and would definitely like to join in the discussion.
I will if I can. I'm not sure what Fandor expects from me in terms of exclusivity. At the very least, I'll mention it and provide a link. I'll let you know that neither film makes the grade in my eyes of universalizing the death journey.
They wouldn't with me either but I didn't want to say anything. I'll wait until reading your piece to say anymore. I think it's a great match-up though and can already speculate in my head where you may go with it (but I won't because the piece isn't published yet and I'm probably completely wrong anyway).
I'm 22 and I love Ashby and Bertolucci, so there! Though Last Tango from Paris isn't my favorite Bertolucci.
Anyway, to answer your question, I think the way my taste has evolved is that my favorite movies don't read like the IMDb Top 250 anymore, if that makes sense. It's hard to name specific movies that I've really radically changed my opinion on because of a maturing perspective, because I still like a lot of the movies that I would used to cite as "BEST MOVIE EVER!", I just don't love them like I used to.
Ryan, I'd be very interested, if you're still writing online in twenty years, to see if there are things you wrote in this period that just make you cringe. I didn't have the internet at 22 to lay down all my very strong opinions but I do know that I already look back on just around four years of writing and think, "What the hell was I thinking?!" with something I just wrote, say, two years ago.
It's amazing how fast your taste can shift. Sometimes I'm amazed at how quickly a film can fall out of favor with me or gain in favor.
I haven't gone back to Coming Home since it came out, but as for Last Tango...
I saw it when it came out. I was fourteen and eager to see the sex scenes. I pretended to "get" the premise of the film for the sake of my hipster friends (all of them fourteen- or fifteen-years-old, supposedly well read and educated). In reality, all I could think was, "how is he fucking her with his pants on?"
I saw it again sixteen years later at age thirty, when I was very, very fortunate to have experienced a premature midlife crisis. I won't get into that in any detail, but I will admit to thinking then that Last Tango was among the most honest, profound works of the century. It spoke about private things I knew all too well: pain, disenchantment, longing, of the need to connect while fearing true intimacy. It was, in a word, brilliant.
Fifteen or sixteen years later, I decided to watch it again, and had pretty much the same reaction as you did. I sat there wondering why Brando and Bertolucci -- who made the film in their fifties -- were so naive about things I'd processed in my forties. Despite its X rating and "sexual honesty," it struck me as thumpingly childish.
Ironically, I caught some of it last night on the MGM HD channel. How anyone could get excited over this film today is simply beyond me. But, in a few scenes (and only a few), Brando is excellent.
I decided to see The Song of Bernadette again after seeing it on television once over forty years ago. I found that I had more to say about the film than I had anticipated. My post is part of my Henry King series, tomorrow. With age and education can come deeper readings of some films.
Peter - Bernadette is a favorite of mine and one of the best biopics ever made. I can't wait to read what you have to say about it.
Ray, I looked up their ages and Bertolucci was 33 when he made it and Brando was 49 so, perhaps, Bertolucci was too young but I can't say what Brando's excuse was.
I too found it brilliant and dark and profound until watching it again recently. Now, it just doesn't speak to me at all and, I agree, in 2010 it feels hopelessly naive.
Of course, if it does speak to us at younger periods in our lives then I suppose it has great value in that. It's just that, past a certain age, it becomes pointless to anyone who's experienced mid-life doubt with directness and honesty.
Peter, it's so true and thank you for giving an example of a film that changed for you over time. My wife and I have been seeing so many foreign films at the AFI in the last two years that I have only seen once, in my teens. So far, almost all of them I went into thinking, "This was okay, as I recall, but nothing special," and came out thinking, "God, I was an idiot when I was younger." I mean, really, some of the films I arrogantly found "overdone" or "cliched" or "obvious" or whatever youthful bullshit I came up with, I see again as an adult and am bowled over!
Like Marilyn, I look forward to your review of The Song of Bernadette.
It's been a consistent stream of experience of mine in adulthood, and especially since I started writing regularly six years ago, that I simply can't count on the evaluations I made about movies I saw in my college days, especially ones I only saw once and then never again. (Many of those were film school classics which certainly deserve to be revisited for whatever reason.) I've made it a sort of practice to try to go back to movies that I was clearly too immature to process at that age. Conversely, anything I loved at that age has got to be at least suspect. It's all part of what I enjoy about the process of writing, doing exactly what you did in this piece, Greg-- taking stock of what your life has meant to the movies most meaningful to you at any given point in it. It's what we mean, I think, when we talk about the movies being alive-- of course they are in terms of what they can give us and what the filmmakers have put into them, but in terms of what we are ready to receive the movies are even more alive because we are different people from year to year-- hell, from moment to moment.
I've had an ongoing conversation with Altman ever since it dawned on me that his movies weren't bad simply because they didn't feel like anyone else's. (These are the ideas you come up with when you're raised in a cow town-- at least the ones that can be printed and discussed in an open forum!) But the movie that I've had the most lingering sparring match with over the years has been Kubrick's Clockwork Orange. It was part of that wave of violent pictures in the early '70s-- The French Connection, Straw Dogs, Dirty Harry-- and being an impressionable 11-year-old I was obsessed with them all. I read Robin Moore's nonfiction book on which Friedkin's movie was based because I knew it was VERY unlikely I'd be allowed to see the movie when it came to town (I was right), and I read Anthony Burgess because I knew my hometown theater wouldn't even play the movie-- with only one or two exceptions the owner avoided the "X." Whether he did or not I knew that would be one I'd have to wait for college to see, yet my obsession with it continued. When I made it to university six years later it was one of the first movies I saw, campus screenings and midnight movies still being popular and Clockwork Orange being a very popular college programming choice.
Of course I loved it-- it's very much a movie designed to be embraced by young people who, their lack of criminality notwithstanding, are primed to identify with the way the system bruises about Our Humble Narrator's free will and all. It took several more screenings for me to start questioning the filmmaking itself and Kubrick’s own squirrelly morality, yet in doing so my feelings about the movie would still swing back and forth—one time I thought it was great, the next time I was disgusted. I haven’t seen the movie in probably 15 years, and I have my suspicions that it will not hold up well. But I’ll be very curious to find out for myself. Middle age was its advantages, and one of them is definitely the application of experience and the confidence in knowing that just because many folks think A, B or C is a great film doesn’t necessarily make it so when we assess these matters on our own terms and, of course, the ones that the movie itself constructs.
By the way, I loved Dirty Harry when I was 11, and I still do.
"Middle age was its advantages..."
Well, maybe it was, but I'm also quite sure it has its advantages, although perhaps skill at proofreading is not one we can take for granted!
Greg -
I am so relieved to find that someone else watched Last Tango again and found it almost laughable, because that is exactly the reaction I had when I channel surfed into it on cable one night about a year ago. Of course when I first saw it, I was a very innocent 18-year-old, and the whole thing went right over my head. So I can't say I've ever been able to relate to it on any level.
In college, I saw Lina Wertmuller's Seven Beauties and thought it was absolute genius. When I got back to it again, 30 years later, I was appalled by it. The film hadn't changed, of course, but my reaction to it told me a lot about how I had changed.
Conversely, anything I loved at that age has got to be at least suspect.
Ha! That's something I've come to do as well, suspect all the movie loves of my youth. Sometimes I see them again and am relieved to find I still think they're great. Other times it doesn't turn out so well.
Since you bring up A Clockwork Orange I would be remiss if I didn't mention the post I did on it two years ago here. I compared the book to the film including the initially excised final chapter which, I felt, brought the story round to a more mature completion but not everyone agreed, and with good arguments. It's back when I was using haloscan for commenting, like an idiot, so the comments are copied to a link at the bottom of the post. And of course, everyone calls me "Jonathan" because that's back when I was hiding my blogging from work under a pseudonym.
Point is, I viewed Clockwork Orange very differently later in life and felt Kubrick really shortchanged it by giving it the ending he did whereas in my youth I thought it was the coolest ending imaginable.
I love the idea of movies being immutable and unchangeable, recorded for eternity on celluloid, and yet, as we change they change in our minds. It is wonderful getting older (and I mean that literally, as in 18 going on 19 or 56 going on 57, not "approaching retirement") because we can see the differences before us and try to map out how they came about. It's also nice when you can accept a film, like Coming Home, without giving a shit if it makes you look cool or not. It's not Ashby's best film but it really moved me.
Pat, like I've said throughout the piece itself and to Marilyn and Flickhead, I was surprised by just how underwhelmed I was with my most recent viewing of Tango. More than that though, I also agree with Flickhead that Brando is good in parts, but only parts. Most of it is just him improvising some crap he made up. What I saw as a great performance years ago I now saw as a lazy performance but then, Brando gave a lot of those. It irritates me each time because he had real talent and most of the time he just didn't give a damn, which, of course, was his right.
But now you have me intrigued! I have never fully seen Seven Beauties. I saw probably half of it years and years ago on cable. Why I didn't see it all I don't know but I remember nothing about it, except him going to prison. I know I don't remember being appalled and so now I know I MUST see again, in full this time. I'm going to try and check it out soon.
Back in the 70s, not wanting to appear Out Of The Loop, I'd tell people Seven Beauties was excellent even though I honestly thought it wasn't. I saw it again in 2006 and wrote this:
"The immense popularity it had thirty years ago now feels like a dream. It played to packed houses, but what were the audiences thinking? I recall when I saw it at the time, feeling let down after the colorful and calculated politics of Swept Away. Seven Beauties is claustrophobic and shrill, with so many earthy faces darting in and out, that the heavy handed nostalgia and labored social relevance (so much of it undoubtedly inspired by de Sica’s Garden of the Finzi-Contini [1970]) are quickly lost in the shuffle. Set during World War II in Italy and a German concentration camp (with the imposing Shirley Stoler as the commandant), the picture carries the burden of self-importance, an epic in awe of itself."
So, Seven Beauties is definitely sounding like a movie that didn't date very well. Will see it this month if I can and then read your full review afterwards.
"Back in the 70s, not wanting to appear Out Of The Loop, I'd tell people Seven Beauties was excellent even though I honestly thought it wasn't."
I know exactly what you're talking about, FH. I went through the same thing with Seven Beauties AND Swept Away..., and it was only when I got a little older (but not much, in this case) that I allowed myself the luxury of a little honesty. It got good to me, and pretty soon I was telling all my pals how much I disliked Dawn of the Dead. That got me into much more trouble than admitting an aversion to Seven Beauties.
Although I suspect that, with the possible exception of The Seduction of Mimi, Wertmuller (the films, not the woman) on the whole probably doesn't look so great 40 years on.
Dennis, I've got to see more Wertmuller now. I'm not really familiar with a lot of the foreign language work of the seventies. The sixties and before I saw as much as I could (and am now discovering upon re-watching many of them that I didn't quite get them the first time around)and then, in the eighties, I saw all the big ones each year (Official Story, Fanny and Alexander, Ran, etc) but the seventies I focused on all the American films that defined the cinematic landscape in that decade. I'll have to go back and pick up the seventies foreign work now as well.
I know what you mean about getting too much confidence in being honest, something we all eventually learn to be with our opinions. It's usually around your late teens to early twenties that you become fearless throwing out contrarian viewpoints. Later, you still do it but you're much more tactful about it.
Which leads to one more observation about viewing films differently. There are also plenty of films I pretended to like when I was young because I didn't get them but later on really did like them because now I got them and could relax knowing that when I now said I liked it, I really meant it and could explain myself.
This is a fascinating conversation. I wish I had more to add to it.
I feel in so many ways that my taste is getting more and more juvenile, so perhaps I'm not even the right person to jump in.
I'll say that I enjoyed Coming Home well enough back in the day, but I'm curious how I'd feel now.
I never found anything to connect to in Last Tango In Paris, and feel no interest at all in returning to find out if I'd feel different about it today.
I'm surprised at how much in agreement so many of us are on Last Tango. I thought for sure that would get me a lot of blowback. Pleasant surprise that it didn't.
I feel in so many ways that my taste is getting more and more juvenile, so perhaps I'm not even the right person to jump in.
When I say 'juvenile' with Tango I mean, of course, the attitudes and presentation. I don't think the films you like suffer that problem so say whatever you want, or nothing. Both are fine.
Oh, I know the difference between the uses of the word juvenile.
I like a lot of the subjects here.
I remember dismissing Citizen Kane as overrated and dull until, well, I actually saw it. I know there are plenty of others... Movies I pretended I understood or loved more than I did... or pretended to have seen and loved and gotten without having seen at all.
What I find interesting that I've thought of is the movies that seem only to grow with me. My viewing of Planet of the Apes or Treasure of the Sierra, two movies offhand that I've loved a long, long time, are very different from the way I once did, and those have changed many times over the years... perhaps with every viewing.
And in that, I wish there were some of these I'd written about over the years to see how that's changed.
I'd happily add Dennis's example of Dirty Harry, which he didn't suggest in this context, as another that I've found to grow with me actually.
I remember dismissing Citizen Kane as overrated and dull until, well, I actually saw it.
When I was around 12 to 15 and soaking in all my 'history of the movies' books, I would pretend like I'd seen all kinds of movies I hadn't seen yet and base my 'opinion' of it on what I had read. Even when I saw them (again, I'm talking around 12 to 15 here) I really did nothing but parrot critics I had read. But so what, right? I mean, it's how we start to understand film and develop our own tastes and opinions; by repeating someone elses until we understand and either agree or disagree with it.
My viewing of Planet of the Apes or Treasure of the Sierra, two movies offhand that I've loved a long, long time, are very different from the way I once did, and those have changed many times over the years... perhaps with every viewing.
You and I are both huge POTA fans and it's probably one of my most viewed favorites. Thing is, I still think it's much more thoughtful, balanced and tightly paced than most sci-fi so when I watch part of it or all of it (and my viewings are quite recent) I always feel I'm watching one of the best sci-fi's out there. I totally get why people joke around with the lines and love Heston's arch delivery and it doesn't offend me because I love doing that too but I really do think it's a fun as hell sci-fi flick taken totally straight, which is how I take it. Still, I've met many a non-sci-fi fan who, despite my best intentions, walked away bored, much to my surprise.
Also, one thing that has never changed, ever: When I watch it I want to hang out on the Ape City set. Oh man, I love it! If I was rich enough to build a compound I'd make it like that.
Jon Voight's performance in Coming Home is one of the best examples of screen acting in the history of cinema. Really. He won the Best Actor Oscar for it, but nobody ever talks about it. The end scene where he's talking to the high school kids? I have watched it over and over again and I still don't know how he got there. How he did it. How he makes it seem like it's not acting. And I love the way Ashby sneaks up on the scene, shooting him from the aisle, or so it seems. It's a thing of beauty. Thanks for reminding me.
I wanted to like(and for the first half I did)the brother and sister in Bertolucci's The Dreamers,but by the end they were ripe for the guillotine like so many a revolutionary with no real substance.
I'll be cracking open Bernadette and Portrait of Jeannie here again soon for an autumn dose of Jonesian mysticism.
Lina Wertmuller made one of the few films I ever walked out on. I liked Mimi and found Seven Beauties of some interest, but didn't really care for Swept Away. I kept on watching some of her films to see if I was missing something. Several titles were recently on DVD, and after the first couple of films I deleted the rest from my Netflix queue. I don't find her to be a good filmmaker on any level.
Larry, that final scene of his is something to behold. He goes through three or four different emotional states and each one lasts but a few seconds. The speech itself maybe gets a minute of total screen time but Voight feels absolutely real in it to me and, contrasted with the banality of Fonda going shopping and Dern preparing to swim into oblivion, it has an incredible emotional charge to it.
Also, the Marine recruiter does a great job with his "keeping my face emotionless because I'm the recruiter but starting to lose the battle" expression. You only see it for a few seconds but it looks like any second he's going to break down and start blubbering.
Christopher, I've never seen The Dreamers but Song of Bernadette and Portrait of Jennie would make a great double bill! I must see Jennie at least once a year. It's such a gentle film that keeps it's ghostly elements mystical rather than creepy. I like that about it a lot. It always puts me in a kind of zen state when watching it.
I don't find her [Wertmuller] to be a good filmmaker on any level.
Wow! Well, I just checked on instant last night and both Seven Beauties and Swept Away are on it so I'm going to give them both a look and see what I think.
I will be anxious to her your thought on Seven Beauties, Greg.
It was a real big deal to me as a college freshman, becasue Wertmuller herself came to our campus for the screening and answered questions from the audience afterwards, via an interpreter. I think I was a bit overawed by her.
Here's what I posted about it in the very early days of my blog: http://doodadkindoftown.wordpress.com/2007/11/07/reelin-in-the-years-seven-beauties/
Sorry, don't know what's up with that link - my post on Seven Beauties is the first one in tne Novermber 2007 archives.
The link worked fine for me. I'll post it again - Seven Beauties.
I just went over and read it and it's amazing how much your opening could be the opening for this piece as well. It's exactly the sentiment we're all sharing here now and I recommend reading it to everyone here.
I probably shouldn't have read your review before seeing it again but I must say, even without having the movie fresh in my head I can see everything you're saying to be true. It's precisely that type of shock imagery and near-glee at showing the destruction of its characters that makes certain films feel juvenile to me. But I'll watch it soon and see.
Greg, I will admit to a fondness for Swept Away. I can see its flaws (they're practically underlined), but nostalgia keeps it warm and fuzzy for me. Of course, that's my nostalgia, so I don't expect anyone else to share my hazy-headed enthusiasm. Its musical score by Piero Piccione, however, is excellent.
Along these same lines -
I watched Harold and Maude this past weekend for the first time in my life _ I don't think it played anywhere near my dumpy little hoemtown theater in the early '70s. Viewed from my middle-aged, 21st century perspective, I could certainly understand why it was a beloved cult hit, but I couldn't enter into the enthusiasm that many of my friends have for it. It seems very much a film of its time - and for the young people of its time. That my boyfriend and others continue to cherish it, I think, may have more to do with nostalgia than anything else.
I know, for me, it's my nostalgia for the late '70s glory days of Woody Allen that keeps sending me back to the theatre every for his newest release - and almost always being disappointed.
Ray, I was going to review the score for Swept Away over the summer for Mondo Cult Magazine but they ended up sending me the score for La Poliziotta instead by Gianni Ferrio. I liked that one too but would have preferred Swept Away from what I had heard from it.
Pat, for me, Woody's great period runs all the way through the 90's. And I've seen all of them often and regularly so no false memories there. From 1998 on though, I don't think I've liked anything he's done. I mean, there were definitely movies in that 20 year period I didn't like either, but I really haven't liked one thing since. Not even the ones most other people like, like Small Time Crooks or Matchpoint. That's okay, though. Like Orson Welles said, concerning excellent films on your resume, "You only need one." More than that and you've already outdone 90 percent of the industry.
And I never liked Harold and Maude as much as cult followers of it but it was a favorite as a teen. Haven't seen it in a long time so I don't know how I'd react now. It's on Instant so maybe I'll check it out too.
Truth be told, I like or love most of Woody's stuff right up through Bullets Over Broadway but those late 70s films (particularly Love and Death, Annie Hall and Mahattan have this special afterglow that has as much (or more) to do with who I was and what I was doing when I first saw them as it does with the film themselves.
I know we're both POTA geeks, and I promise I didn't choose it on purpose for that, as I don't intend to hijack a very interesting discussion of the movies you brought up.
But I certainly agree with you about it. I always watch it completely earnestly. But I think the many levels one can appreciate it on - laughing at, laughing with, thrilling to, thinking seriously about - is part of what makes it work so amazingly well.
I've never seen COMING HOME (my interest in doing so isn't very high, either), and I only saw LAST TANGO once, many years ago. But outside of Brando's thunderous performance, I thought it was a pretentious slog. I feel that way about Bertolucci in general.
laughing at, laughing with, thrilling to, thinking seriously about - is part of what makes it work so amazingly well.
Agreed. I watch it seriously too. I can appreciate chuckling a bit at the great Chuck's heavy-handed delivery at times, but I could never, ever abide the MST3K treatment by viewers. That shit would piss me off.
Bill, I feel that way about some Bertolucci too but honestly, I haven't seen that much. Maybe five. I wouldn't rank it very highly for Brando either although I once did, years ago. Watching it again it felt very lazy. The scene in the funeral parlor is just awful, and that's without the almost comically noticeable breathing (and moving!) of the corpse. Brando just improvises some stuff (the TCM doc on him last year revealed that most of his performance was unwritten by Bertolucci who simply relied on Brando to make up stuff for the character), says a lot of crazy shit, does a really bad and unconvincing job of crying and leaves.
I don't mind an actor improvising of course, hell, some folks like the Christopher Guest mockumentary crews, have made it an art form. But Brando kind of sucked at it, quite frankly because his improv never seemed to depend on the character. His improv stuff in Apocalypse Now could be swapped out for the Tango stuff and you wouldn't even notice. When he improvs stuff, it's just random chaotic crazy talk done half-heartedly. The whole thing just left me cold.
I haven't seen that much Bertolucci either, but I've seen some of the "big" ones, and he just does nothing for me. Outside of THE LAST EMPEROR, I guess, which I remember liking, but I barely remember it.
As for LAST TANGO, all I'm going by is memory, so it's very possible that I might agree with you if I saw it again. It impressed the hell out of me at the time, when I was in a pretty strong Brando phase.
I'm glad to read some positive reviews about Coming Home, which I think gets overlooked because of The Deer Hunter (which took home Best Picture that year) and Apocalypse Now. It's a shame because the performances by the three leads were outstanding. When I first saw this (at 14 when it first came out), I thought Dern was doing his typical over-the-top, but as I got older, I understood how he perfectly captured the cuckolded returning vet, betrayed by his country, his wife and his fellow soldier. As for Voigt, I agree with the scene at the high school. He perfectly underplayed the scene, which is why it didn't seem like acting at all. It would be interesting to find out what happened to these characters so many years later, but considering that Fonda and Voigt occupy both ends of the political spectrum, I doubt we'll ever see that happening. However, since Fonda used a body double in the sex scene, it isn't entirely out of the question.
I know what you mean about revisiting films from the vantage point of age and experience. I remember watching Swept Away... and Going Places on cable in the mid-Seventies and thinking these films so cool and sexy, a peak inside the free-wheeling world of continental Europe. It was only when I was in my mid-twenties and decided to watch both films on tape with a then-girlfriend that I realized how they were both fatally flawed, particularly with their attitude towards woman, sex and rape. It was during the scene in Swept Away... when the woman begs the man to sodomize her that my girlfriend turned to me with tears in her eyes and asked me why I'd made her watch this since I knew she'd been raped in college. Needless to say, I wasn't about to watch A Clockwork Orange with her.
With all works of art, it comes down to perspective. And our perspective changes as do we.
Bill, I suspect you'd feel differently watching it today. Brando is very good in it in parts but that's the problem for me, and Flickhead it seems. He doesn't commit to the full performance, giving a little here, nothing there and then maybe some in-between here. It's very uneven.
Fred, although Fonda used a body double the impact of the scene is her face, which is, of course, her. That's what makes the scene work so well, how she plays physical and emotional climax together so perfectly. And I felt the same way about Dern. Over the top, blah, blah, blah when I first saw it. Then, just recently, watching the scene of him going nuts with Fonda and Voight holding the gun and bayonet on them was just incredible to behold. He plays that seem so damn well! He's got anger and hurt pouring through every word.
It was only when I was in my mid-twenties and decided to watch both films on tape with a then-girlfriend that I realized how they were both fatally flawed, particularly with their attitude towards woman, sex and rape.
You know, one of my least favorite (read: hated) things in the world is insisting someone watch a film with me that I have fond memories of from years and years before only to discover during the forced viewing that it doesn't hold up! And you're squirming and looking like an idiot because it's not really that good and you hyped it and they're thinking, "I thought you knew movies really well."
I don't recommend movies anymore anyway unless it's to a fellow cinephile but even then, I try to avoid recommending anything I haven't seen again in the last two years.
I certainly couldn't deal with a full on MST3K treatment of POTA either, although I did see it once at an outdoor showing, where I sat in the beer garden and had no trouble with people's occasional chuckles... even laughing myself a couple of times... There's a moment where Dodge and Landon both bend down in front of naked Taylor that really is pretty funny, and I'd never really noticed. Not to mention that I'm hardly immune to satire... The "Simpsons" POTA musical bit is hysterical!
One brief interlude to note I've never really cared for The Deer Hunter. This would fit in the opposite of that two-year recommendation thing, so I'm in no position at all to defend that position, but I always did find it overhyped. I've always preferred Coming Home.
I may have just been being contrary, though, like I said, I couldn't defend that position properly right now.
I've also learned not to recommend things I can't properly remember well enough to be confident of. Both because of quality and because of moments like Fred describes, where something like a rape scene that doesn't register properly in my brain from memory to make a decent connection.
On the other hand, I've also learned to be a lot more open to movies that I didn't care for, when they're recommended to me by people who I trust or care about, especially when they mean a lot to them.
she plays physical and emotional climax together
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
What I found juvenile about TANGO was Bertolucci's (and Brando's, and Schneider's) assumption that they were being bold by showing certain mildly transgressive acts. Big deal. We were supposed to be so busy being shocked we wouldn't notice how stunted the character development and script were.
In regard to Wertmuller, I adored SWEPT AWAY, and enjoyed MIMI a lot; but on reflection, that may have been because of Giancarlo Giannini--who was born and bred for those roles.
Neil, I was never too thrilled with The Deer Hunter either but it's been a long time since I've seen it so I might see it now and think it's great. And, after my experience with Coming Home, I kind of do want to see it again.
As for The Simpsons POTA musical, that was one of the best things ever, in the history of ever! I don't know how many times I've sang those songs.
"Oh my god, I was wrong, it was earth all along.
I guess you finally made a monkey..."
"Yes we finally made a monkey..."
"You finally made a monkey out of meeeeeeeeee."
Bill, contain yourself.
Margaret, I can't comment on the Wertmuller since I'm so unfamiliar with her work but this,
We were supposed to be so busy being shocked we wouldn't notice how stunted the character development and script were,
is totally true. Although it was adjusted down to an "R" by the late seventies re-release, in its initial run it got an "X" for mild nudity and very brief, very unspectacular sex scenes. Amazing considering how tepid it all is years later. And it does feel as if Bertolucci and Brando thought they were doing something so shocking that it didn't require as much on the character front. I suppose they wanted the acts to define the character, something I can respect, I just don't think it defined them very well.
"What's wrong with me?"
"I think you're crazy."
"How 'bout a second opinion?"
"You're also lazy."
Doctor Zaius, Doctor Zaius. Doctor Zaius Doctor Zaius, whooooooooooah, Doctor Zaius!
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