The Young One (1960)

dir. Luis Bunuel
writ. Luis Bunuel and Hugo Butler (as H.B. Addis), from story, "Travellin' Man" by Peter Matthiessen
feat. Zachary Scott, Bernie Hamilton, Key Meersman, Crahan Denton, Claudio Brook

While The Young One is not without charm or thought-provoking social commentary, it's fairly straight, heavy-handed melodrama for Bunuel. Evalyn (Meersman), a girl of roughly 15 years, watches her grandfather die as the film opens, left with only Miller (Scott), now sole caretaker and only other resident of the island wildlife preserve where they live. Miller is a cold, hard man who alternately admonishes and leers at Evie, treating her like a possession not yet fully possessed.

As Miller leaves the island to go into town, Traver (Hamilton) a black man on the run from the law after a woman cried rape, arrives in a small boat, soon finding Evie and treating her roughly though fairly as he insists on procuring gas, food and a rifle. Traver pays his way but still manhandles Evie as he needs to, albeit it more fairly.

Naturally, Miller returns to find his belongings missing and sets out to kill the black man, thus setting off a compelling standoff that explores the power relationship between the men. Traver says it best when he explains to Evie how he doesn't wish to kill Miller though Miller would kill him, hence he must keep the gun to keep the balance. The men fall into a kind of tough guy respect as the story plays on, Traver playing his clarinet while the guns sit idle without Miller leaping to turn the tables.

Then just as Traver is ready to leave, Jackson (Denton), reappears, telling the story of a woman's rape in the nearby town. Miller flips his lid, sure that he knew all along that something was wrong with that Traver, and sets out with Jackson to kill Traver. Here, Reverend Fleetwood (Brook) is thrown into the mix, visiting the island to prepare Evie to move off island to live with a family. Miller isn't sure he wants to let Evie go, his own ideas on making her a woman kept a secret between he and she. The hunt is on as the Reverend and Evie talk about her troubling relationshipo with Miller.

Finally, Traver crosses paths with the Reverend, explaining his case, how a woman attempted to seduce him, he refused, and she cried rape. For all of the hokey (or overly "hip") dialogue in the film, this twist and the Reverend's ready acceptance of the story as Traver tells it is stunningly progressive for 1960. It's also just the kind of story that people like Miller and Jackson won't accept.

Perhaps, Miller's guilt surrounding Evie, or more likely his fear in being found out and persecuted, softens him up as Jackson only grows angrier, ready to take on anyone and everyone in pursuit of his justice in seeing Traver dead. There is something beautifully tragic about the desperation in Jackson's flailing assault on Traver, as though he's fighting for a way of life that without which he might die, unable to cope with the complexity of a changing world. While Traver, on the other hand, doesn't echo that rage, even if he might deserve to, perhaps having seen enough injustice already.

Bigger Than Life (1956)

dir. Nicholas Ray
writ. story and screenplay by Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum, from New Yorker article by Burton Roueche
feat. James Mason, Barbara Rush, Walter Matthau, Christopher Olsen

Leave it to Nicholas Ray to capture so many disturbing elements of American life in a single picture. Schoolteacher Ed Avery (Mason) attempts to hide his second job as a taxi dispatcher from his wife (Rush) and son (Olsen), not wanting to upset them as he provides the idyllic suburban life. Though he insists that they are a boring couple with boring friends, he won't upset the boat He also hides debilitating pains that strike regularly, until his collapse forces the issue.

Diagnosed with a severe circulatory disorder, he goes on the new miracle drug, Cortisone, the perfect solution to his problem, though with potential psychological side effects. Naturally, he hides the side effects and ups his own dosage, while falling under the spell of the drug, dipping into depression before rising wonderfully into manic highs. A sharp script and Mason's pitch-perfect performance make for brilliant transitions between these highs and lows, bringing a surprising realism to his mood changes without the typically overblown histrionics of Hollywood (see Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend).

As the manic side takes over completely, Ed at first embraces the family, eager to give his wife and son their every desire, despite the family's meager finances. But as the dosage rises, Ed's demons are set loose. He dismisses childhood as a disease, something to be cured by teachers, then abandons the school, envisioning himself as an educational crusader. He promptly prepares to leave his home, only burdened by his wife who he clearly no longer loves.

It is in moments like these where the film truly distinguishes itself, with Rush managing a tone of the doting wife, even offering to help her beloved husband pack as he readies to abandon her, all with the hope that he will recover. She suffers repeated insults, including being told by her husband at the dinner table in front of their son that he has no love or use for her anymore. But she acts out of faith and love, hopeful that she can recover the man she married, or at least protect their son from his madness.

Ed only sticks around to educate their son, Richie, though he feels no shame in his draconian methods of marathon sessions rife with ridicule for Richie's failures to answer questions correctly. It is only a matter of time before he sees his son as a burden and untrustworthy, turning to the Bible for guidance, certain that he must sacrifice the boy. Anyone who knows the story of director Nicholas Ray finding his wife, Gloria Grahame, in bed with his teenage son from an earlier marriage, can't help but consider the fuel lent to this penultimate savage scene.

While the film gets the luxury of blaming the demon drug for much of the wrongdoing, thus escaping with a hopeful happy ending, the wary approach to the conclusion including the fact that Ed will still have to use Cortisone to stay alive preserves the eerie aspects of the film in plausible way, leaving the future uncertain for the family, forever to be haunted by the father and husband's psychotic period.

Murder, My Sweet (1944)

dir. Edward Dmytrk
writ. Raymond Chandler (novel), John Paxton (screenplay)
feat. Dick Powell, Claire Trevor, Anne Shirley, Otto Kruger, Mike Mazurki, Douglas Walton

Little Dicky Powell, eager to exchange his golden-throated crooner image for that of hardboiled dick, steps into the Philip Marlowe role. After finding Marlowe, eyes bandaged from an unknown injury, in police custody explaining his way out of trouble, we dive backward into the story.

Big lug, Moose Molloy (Mazurki) shows up looking for his old flame, nearly dragging Marlowe from his office to go hunting for her. Then an old fop (Walton) shows up needing help with retrieving a jade necklace. Soon there is a murder and Marlowe's cases start to cross wires, leading him into typical Chandler territory, a labyrinthine mystery with a few too many twists and coincidences, but also a ride so enjoyable that one forgives such crimes.

Murder, My Sweet runs dark and deep. In addition to being assaulted repeatedly, Marlowe is taken captive and drugged in a wonderfully nightmarish scene where he fights off the cobwebs clouding his mind as he stumbles through his escape, all while drifting in and out of lucidity. The film is beautifully shot, including a few matte shots to set up especially cinematic settings, namely the Grayle's seaside house. It also moves along fluidly and compellingly, keeping one guessing right up until the final explosive climax. Heck, it even works in a nice little love story with some good 40s sexist commentary by Marlowe.

While Powell manages a reasonably believable beleaguered-yet-flippant tone through the picture, there is something about his delivery that retains a hammy quality hailing from his musical days. He appears to be working at sounding casual, like a man on stage, too aware of his presence. Still, he entertains and lends a vulnerability to Marlowe that you won't find in Bogart's version two years later in The Big Sleep.

An interesting additional note for 1944 is Chandler's other film, Double Indemnity, directed by Billy Wilder. Indemnity was the bigger success for the year, a script that Chandler adapted from the James Cain novel. Naturally, Chandler complained about changes made to his story by Paxton (aside from the title change from Farewell, My Lovely, made to dissociate the film from Powell's musicals,) while making plenty of his own revisions to Cain's work.

Play Time (1967)

dir. Jacques Tati
writ. Jacques Tati, Jacques Lagrange, additional dialogue by Art Buchwald
feat. Jacques Tati, Barbara Dennek

Play Time is a daunting film to approach in writing, a creation too beautiful and sublime to reduce to leaden little words. For good reason and to wonderful effect, the film has no important dialogue. Words are used as filler, to serve a purpose but never for their individual meaning. Tati understands as well as any director the art of showing, not telling, in film and does so masterfully.

Monsieur Hulot leads us through a modern world of gleaming metal and glass, where innovative technology races ahead of the people intended to manipulate it. People who don't adapt to the changing system, find themselves disconnected, even lost, though not without beautiful distractions and the promise of convenience.

Hulot is flummoxed by this world, ever curious but never quite fitting in, constantly stumbling and unable to make his business appointment, though not for lack of effort. Yet he muddles through, finding his way and even managing to reconnect with the man he intended to meet, though more casually, on the street in the evening as the man walks his dog. This nod toward an easygoing, perhaps old-fashioned way of things reappears later in the restaurant. As the newly opened hot spot transforms from a snooty, exclusive resort of the rich to a crumbling gin joint, it becomes warmer, looser and more human.

While one could guess at Tati's intentions, simplifying the film to a criticism of cold modern progress while warmly reminiscent of friendlier, olden ways, his touch is too delicate to assert this claim. Hulot stumbles through the world no matter the setting, and while the advancements intended to improve and expedite life may confound him, they also create new juxtapositions, beautiful and chaotic, into the human struggle. Tati observes all of it with such clarity that it will take any viewer several screenings to pick up on all of the details of his complex, uncertain world.

Doubt (2008)

dir. John Patrick Shanley
writ. John Patrick Shanley (play and screenplay)
feat. Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis

Watching Doubt made me keenly aware of the common dramatic approach particular to plays that I think of as the "slow draw." It's a different technique from the "slow build" common to all drama, by which the story begins calmly, introducing the characters and their world, leaving time to build up to the climax. The slow draw works by presenting the world so plainly that it almost seems boring, something the viewer has seen before, characters interacting in familiar ways in familiar settings, with nothing particularly compelling about the current version. But the play is slippery, taking a turn here and there that suddenly makes the world new, something askew. When best played, as it is in Doubt, the world changes by degrees, drawing the viewer in, raising new questions faster than answering them, always leaving with a few left spoken yet never directly addressed.

Another impressive quality of few films and plays, is the pursuit of a single theme, where most of the important elements of the story encircle that idea, raising it, turning it around, exploring it from every angle. Rarely does a film do that as completely and effectively as Doubt, and even more rarely can the title of the picture sum up that theme in a single word.

It is a great joy to see such dramatic heavyweights as Streep and Hoffman go head to head with such great sparring material. And Adams is a powerful supporting character, wonderfully representing youth and hope. And Viola Davis deserves a new award for single scene stealer, an astounding showing and a surprisingly impactful influence on a film given her brief appearance.

Doubt nears perfection as a story and film, only stumbling in its final minutes, as it reaches for a play-worthy moment of catharsis, unjustified for the character we've seen. It is a moment that shuns the close-up, deserving to be trusted to a subdued long shot, more honest for both the character and the audience.

Muppets from Space (1999)

dir. Tim Hill
writ. Jerry Juhl, Joseph Mazzarino,& Ken Kaufman
feat. um, The Muppets

So, I'll admit to having read a description of this late entry to the Muppets canon that described the story by noting that Gonzo's breakfast cereal tells him he is an alien, setting him on a quest to learn of his origins. I will also admit that any story initiated by a cereal telling anyone anything will likely pique my interest.

Unfortunately, the scene where Gonzo's alphabet cereal spells out such messages is a bit of a low point in the film, too digital and uninventive. However, other moments and the general enthusiasm of the Muppets keeps some energy alive for the duration of the movie. Perhaps most pleasantly surprising is the frequent patter by Pepe the Prawn, one of the newer additions to the Muppet clan. The Latino shrimp cracks wise throughout the picture, ready with a witty remark nearly every second he's on screen.

While the film lacks the charm and the sense of growing chaos that built up to grand finales in the earlier movies, it manages to keep a brisk pace and pack in a fe good laughs and guest stars. And while it feels more like the unemployed actor's support group than the superstar guest of yesteryear, Ray Liotta manages a surprisingly goofy stint as an armed guard and Kathy Griffin is beautifully sent up as too freakish and overbearing even for Animal's taste in women.

Naturally, we also get a finale that both justifies Gonzo's suspicions and reminds us that Muppet friends are often the best family.

Wendy and Lucy (2008)

dir. Kelly Reichardt
writ. Kelly Reichardt and Jonathan Raymond
feat. Michelle Williams

Perhaps appropriately for a film about a woman on the verge of destitution, Wendy and Lucy manages to expose such a life with an economy of words and images (a mere 80 minutes.) Kelly Reichardt returns to the Pacific Northwest, the setting of her previous (also beautifully quiet and fulfilling) feature, Old Joy, this time to tell the tale of a woman and her dog, Wendy and Lucy respectively.

Wendy is heading to Alaska, though we never know why, presumably to start a new life where she hears "they need people." It doesn't matter why she's going, only that she's struggling to get there or anywhere. A broken down car traps her somewhere in the outskirts of Portland, Oregon where while trying to keep her minimal funds, she winds up in jail and losing Lucy. As her situation worsens still, she is trapped in an unfamiliar town without friends or resources.

Michelle Williams completely embodies her role of a young woman on the brink of disaster, strong and independent but nearly lost, with just one friend in the world and that one gone missing. And while the film suffers a bit for falling into what has become a slacker-road-movie formula (alternately vindictive, friendly, and dubious strangers; violent threats that plays out unexpectedly,) the final scenes transcend such material, defining new metaphors for love and loss and leaving the viewer haunted and wondering what may come next for Wendy and Lucy.