1958: The Long Hot Summer

The Long Hot Summer (Ritt, 1958) 6/10

In the wake of Elia Kazan's immensely successful 1951 adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Streetcar Named Desire, Hollywood spent a good portion of the 1950's flirting with the New South. Incorporating notions of traditional Southern hospitality with the then fashionable adoption of sub-Freudian baggage, Hollywood's studios produced a body of often-sex drenched work set in backwater towns, decayed plantations and dying patriarchal communities.

Picking up momentum toward the end of the decade, films such as Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Baby Doll and The Long Hot Summer dissected concepts of Southern life: centralized on the dichotomy between young and old, modernity and tradition, past and present. The latter film is a prime example of this sub-genre: an often steamy and sultry piece of work, overcooked in its dramatic statements and false in its preposterous atmospherics. Adapted from a series of short stories by legendary Southern author William Faulkner, the film is best remembered today for launching the career of Paul Newman and his subsequent romance to co-star Joanne Woodward.

Sticky and sweaty, The Long Hot Summer exudes the sensibilities that popularized Hollywood's investigation into the modern South. Set in a rural Mississippi hamlet alongside the river, The Long Hot Summer centers upon Ben Quick (Paul Newman), the son of notorious hellraiser who enters a town dominated by local businessman Will Varner (Orson Welles). Owning everything from the cotton gin to the local pharmacy, Varner maintains control and influence over every spectre of the town from his employees to his family members.

Desperate for a job, Ben obtains a position in the Varner household as a sharecropper and resides in ramshackle lodgings bordering Varner's extensive land. But despite his contempt for Ben's father, Varner soons takes Ben into his heart as his surrogate son. Unlike the bombastic Varner, his children are viewed as incomplete individuals unable to follow in their father's arrogant footsteps. His daughter Clara (Joanne Woodward) is an uptight schoolmistress whose bland exterior is only matched by her equally dull beau Alan (Richard Anderson), while his effortless son Jody (Anthony Franciosa) lacks the gritty determination and menace Varner believes necessary to continue his regional empire.

At the heart of The Long Hot Summer is an extensive generational confrontation between Varner and his children analyzed through ideas of strength and weakness. Desiring for complete control over his family, Varner attempts to force a union between Ben Quick and his daughter Clara, despite her dignified objections. His opinion of women can be reflected in his relationship with a local aging prostitute (Angela Lansbury), who is simply a vehicle for physical pleasure and fleeting companionship. Yet, Clara rejects this concept. She believes in her education, her possibilities for the future and ability to intelligently and independently set her own course. Detached from her father, she believes she does not need to utilize her father's name and reputation to succeed.

Her brother Jody on the other hand is a cowardly fool. Realizing his son lacks neither the courage, nor the guile to operate a business, Varner seeks out the equally morally corruptible Ben Quick to continue were his own progeny have failed. Whereas, Quick desires to be a self-made man, Jody has rested upon his father's laurels: believing in his God-given right to inherit all of his father's material and economic possessions. Rather than spending his time learning his father's trade, Jody has failed through his own laziness and intellectual ineptitude: whiling around his days engaging in "recreational" activities with his nymphomaniac wife in their bedroom to compensate for his cerebral impotence.

Stylized around the studio's equally tawdry Peyton Place released the year before, Fox's production of The Long Hot Summer transplants the former's tale of upper-class indiscretions to the Deep South. The result is a film that flares between tense dramatic performances and a ridiculous, turgid script. Newman is fantastic in his raw earthiness as the untamed Quick, a characteristic to which he would add a degree of bleakness five years later in his superior collaboration with Ritt, 1963's Hud. Woodward is equally debonair as the cool-hearted schoolteacher, while the flamboyant Welles adds a liveliness to the proceedings.

Sweltering in a turgid swollen atmosphere, Ritt's film creates a theatrical environment belied by a slew of falsities from the dearth of African-American characters to the messy Shakespearan comedy of the film's illogical finale. When Ritt attempts to neatly tie up the film's loose ends, these deceits move to the forefront and sit ill-perched alongside the sublime dramatic sparring between Newman and Woodward that breathes an aura of genuine intrigue into a film that drifts between dramatic reality and stage-bound absurdity.

* The Long Hot Summer is available on DVD through Fox Home Video

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque

2007: Zodiac

Zodiac (Fincher, 2007) 10/10

There is more than one way to lose your life to a killer (Zodiac Poster Tagline)

American director David Fincher is one of contemporary cinema's most perplexing talents. His films are often artfully constructed, yet he has been noted for his fondness for mainstream fare such as Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. His career began in music videos and- has continuted to be involved with- commercials, yet his films overtly use the cinematic medium to its fullest, rather than to create extended pop videos.

His oeuvre has currently been defined by two characteristics: first, a dark aesthetic prowess embodied in astute cinematography and a taste for psychologically menancing and often violently gruesome subject matter. From The Game through Seven and Panic Room, Fincher has demonstrated a cunning ability to create films that artfully menace both the audience and his high calibre actors with suspenseful chills and morbid curiousities.

The second notable facet of Fincher's career has occurred off-screen. For all his talent and precision in creating gems such as Fight Club and the aforementioned projects, Fincher has had a hit and miss connection to the audience. Seven, Panic Room and The Game all raked in hundreds of millions, whereas Fight Club and Zodiac tanked at the box-office. And while the former notably became a best-selling cult classic after its release on DVD, one can only believe that the public response to Zodiac will be less vocal, yet equally passionate amongst its supporters.

Despite its critical acclaim, Zodiac was a major flop domestically; breaking even due to the ever-important overseas markets. Certainly several factors played into the film's commercial failure. The almost three-hour running length turned off countless viewers asininely unwilling to sit through Fincher's work, which also limited the amount of times the film could be run. The studio's decision to release a film with potential for mass critical acclaim at the beginning of March, rather than the Fall award season was equally damning to the film's commercial potential. But then again, grosses and popularity does not automatically equate brilliance.

Brilliant however is an appropriate euphemism to describe Zodiac: a jazzy riff of a film that winds through dark alleys, smoky factories, cluttered apartments and decrepit basements with obessive intrigue and innate destruction. With Zodiac, Fincher has created a mature and fully realized project that will probably always remain a forgotten classic when bookended against his other films. Yet, a contemporary classic it is: a film with countless potential to be acclaimed the year's best film a decade from now.

Based on two books by former San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist Robert Graysmith, the film documents the hunt for the elusive killer through the eyes of three principal characters: Chronicle cartoonist Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), Chronicle crime reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr) and San Francisco police officer Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo). Through a series of encrypted letters in the aftermath of a slew of gruesome crimes, the mysterious individiual simply known as "The Zodiac" terrorizes The Bay Area for almost a decade. Armed with their own respective interests into the case, the three men each desire to solve the riddled identity of the killer, yet at a cost to their own personal and private lives.

Filmed with neo-noirish sensibilities, Fincher creates a masterly and detailed portrait of San Francisco and California in the late Sixties through the Seventies. Spending eighteen months researching, interviewing and investigating the case, director David Fincher and screenwriter James Vanderbilt created a dialogue-driven film structured in fact, yet coolly enveloped in mythology, intrigue and personal loss.The period flavour is astutely captured by referencing the styles and cinematic approaches used in films ranging from San Fransisco based action films such as Dirty Harry and Bullitt to 70's political thrillers like All The President's Men and The Conversation, as well as the photography of Stephen Shore.

Hauntingly shot in digital cinematography by Harris Savides, Fincher is able to convincingly utilize CGI to create a forgotten analog world of Noirish tropes, spacious offices and amateur sleuthdom. Through this environment, Fincher uses Graysmith's work and the research he and Vanderbilt undertook to establish a thematic aura of obsession. Toschi, Graysmith and Avery each become gripped on discovering the true identity of the killer at the expense of their personal and private lives.

The lust to solve the case takes each man to the edge. Like the Zodiac, they court the media and lose the sanctum of privacy governed by their badge or pen strokes. Their faces become exposed to the media and subsequently their personal downfall hastens. The extroverted Avery retreats into an alcohol induced solitude to ease his demons, only for alcoholism to quickly envelop him.

Toschi can no longer decide whether he wants a principal suspect to be the Zodiac simply to end the case, or to find satisfaction in unravelling the riddle. Toschi's partner William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards) asks for a transfer to prevent himself from becoming too attached to the case. Like Toschi, Graysmith wants his main suspect to be the killer at all costs; in his case to simply to release himself from the marital and professional strife his obsession has brought into his home.

The stressful, tension-filled hours of disappointment and desire are perfectly captured in Fincher's astute pacing, allowing the audience to soak up the atmosphere. Although Fincher's film tends to lean toward the conclusion's of the Zodiac's identity as in Graysmith's book, the director produces a fair and balanced film. His protagonists are not glorified, but rather are viewed as victims of their own self-induced tragedies brought upon by their obsessions. Furthermore, the director grounds his story deep in fact to produce a gritty texture and realistic mood. There is an everyday ordinariness to the proceedings. There are no action sequences, no political critiques or unneccessary and stereotypical glances toward Haight-Ashbury drug culture and hippiedom.

Instead, Fincher avoids cliches and happy endings to create a swath of darkness. When moments of suspense do arrive, they are usually created through situations in which the characters are trapped by their increasingly dangerous personal involvement into the case. This unsettling realm is enhanced by an excellent cast and crew featuring a nervy performance by Jake Gyllenhaal, a distrustful effort by Mark Ruffalo, a somber Anthony Edwards and a marvellously unkempt Robert Downey Jr. If the film does have a weak point in the casting is that the baby-faced Gyllenhaal seems too young to be a divorced father, but his nerdy awkwardness produces a superb counterpoint to Downey's cocky Avery and Ruffalo's unrelenting Toschi.

Filmed with an unnerving spectre of bleakness, Zodiac is an intelligent, meticulously constructed epic thriller. Structured with elegant digital cinematography and gaunt production design, Fincher creates a sphere of destructive compulsions and dearth infatuations. The result is a film not bound by contemporary cliches of the recent past, but rather it is attunted and gratefully indebted to a filmic language of yesteryear: an era when thrillers needed no pre-fabricated solutions, but rather captured the destitute realities of puzzles that forever remain unsolved.

* Zodiac is availble on a bare-bones DVD through Paramount Home Video. An edition featuring the director's cut, director and cast commentary as well as extras regarding the unsolved case is to be released in 2008.

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque

1976: Network

Network (Lumet, 1976) 6/10

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" Howard Beale

Screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky might not be American cinema's greatest satirist, but he is arguably its most well known. Despite starting as a creator of "kitchen sink" type dramas such as his award-winning Marty, Chayefsky quickly re-invented himself as a caustic cultural observer in the latter portion of the 1950's through the 1960's. Works ranging from Paint Your Wagon to the underrated duo of The Americanization of Emily and The Goddess, which brought him modest critical success.

Chayefsky's grandest acclaim came as a result of 1976's multiple Academy Award winning media satire Network directed by Sidney Lumet and featuring an all-star cast featuring Robert Duvall, Faye Dunaway, William Holden and Peter Finch. The film examines the downfall of fictional television network UBS. Repeatedly last in the ratings, the network desperately yearns to reach an audience. Noticing the debts incurred by UBS' News Division, network head Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall) yearns to merge the division into regular programming to garner greater ratings and revenues.

Yet, News Division head Max Schumacher (William Holden) resists such as manuever and is subsequently told that his erratic and depressed Howard Beale (Peter Finch) will be subsequently fired due to poor ratings. Crushed, the alcoholic Beale decides to commit suicide on the airwaves. Instead of pulling a trigger, Beale indulges in an oft-kilter tirade that expresses the frustration of the American public.

This inspires ambitious programming executive Dana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) to re-fashion the network around Beale and his spectre of appeasing the angry American viewer. Subsequently, Beale re-invents himself as a populist "mad prophet of the airwaves" encapsulating his frustration with his loss of personal and social indepedence by proclaiming "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" and hosting a gaudy show in which everyday news is dressed up as entertainment.

Directed by Sidney Lumet, Network is the child of its screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky rather than its accomplished director. Often amusing, prophetic and boisterous, Chayefsky's talkative script about the corrupting nature of power, influence and media is one of American cinema's most revered. Pre-dating contemporary tabloid media, Chayefsky envisions a world in which demogogary and quarterly earnings are revered and honesty is downplayed.

Despite the film's topical freshness, the script is often filled with misogynistic opinions toward career women and self-righteous, cantankerous views about the history of television and the rise of youth culture. Although, the biting satire features skilled efforts by Faye Dunaway, Robert Duvall and William Holden, as well as an incredulous, over-the-top performance by Peter Finch as the maniacal Beale, Lumet's direction feels at times slick and stuffy.

Chayefsky's imprint is evident throughout Network, a film bristling with unbounded topical extremities and indulgent doses of vitrol. It is this film that Chayefsky's hallowed reputation rests upon. And for the most part, Network prophetically foreshadows a world of profit margins taking precedence over quality, accuracy and honesty. With multi-national conglomerates like Gulf + Western purchasing film studios during the Seventies, the screenwriter did not need to gaze far in order to seek out artistic inspiration. Yet, what is revelatory about Chayefsky's screenplay and Network in general is the manner in which the line between information and entertainment becomes blurred.

In Network, television once the new fangled usurper of cinematic audiences is no longer viewed as simply a cost-free distraction, but as a decayed vehicle that is symptomatic of a larger cultural and social devolution. Once profit takes precedence over art, both the artist and the audience become corrupted. Messages and opinions are dictated not by didactic intentions, but by dollars and cents funded by third-party revenues.

The corporate-cultural hegemony operating behind the scenes creates a platform designed to maximize the commercial potential of television at the expense of the brittle souls of the artist and the individual. Duvall's slick businessman is repeatedly reminded by the stream of former CBS News employees working in UBS' News Division that the news corps are expected to lose money. News is designed to inform the viewer, rather than enthrall.

Historically, these networks have maintained a journalistic independence designed to provide the fullest and most complete assertion of local, regional, national and global events. Yet, the new generation spearheaded by Duvall and Dunaway are unwilling to accept such a notion. In their minds, television is an entertainment medium and therefore a profit is expected to be extracted from this venue. Subsequently, the mode of news becomes perverted and stripped of all credibility in the name of advertising dollars.

This produces an environment allowing for the dessication of television. Ideologues, crackpots and the psychologically impaired become neo-messiahs for the masses: spouting hyperbolic social observations that the network passes off as entertainment. But to the audiences, the rants of psychics and cracked celebrities are taken not as mindless leisure, but and as honest assessments of society. Here, Chayefsky's script at its core demonstrates the rise of "infotainment" and crass, one-dimensional political punditry.

Whilst as anchor for the UBS Evening News, Howard Beale had one of the lowest viewer ratings in the country; resulting in his firing from the network. But as the revamped host of his carnivalesque news variety show, Beale becomes the hottest ticket in the country. Insulting the intelligence of his audience, Beale appeals for American citizens to educate themselves through reading literature, engaging in the democratic process and ironically turning off their television sets. Instead, audiences lap up his floor-crashing histronics and oral theatrics, rather than his message of individuality, social justice and civic interests.

With its church-like set design, Beale becomes the pastor of a nationally televised pulpit featuring a variety of acts more suitable for a circus than a news program. Here, he acquires the power and influence lacking in his previous position through an instable persona. In comparison, his cool mannered mentor Max Schumacher engages in an unsuccessful affair with Diane Christensen in order to try to reclaim part of the identity and power he once held.

While Holden's Max Schumacher appeals to his friend and his fellow UBS executives to protect the mentally instable Beale, the network ignores his pleas. As long as Howard Beale brings in dollars, the network cares less about Beale the person and more about Beale the commodity. When Beale's viewership declines, he simply produces more outlandish statements and ideas to rein in his audience. Thus, Beale's individuality, political opinions and intelligence is only respected as long as it results in a healthy financial return. Yet, when Beale's ravings tread too closely to UBS' business interests, the head of the network (Ned Beatty) orders him to change his stance. The world is no longer about nations, but business.

By infringing on the network and the nation's financial morality, Beale's opinions expose the duplicitious hypocrisy of the network's co-option of controversial political ideas. While Beale freely espouses his disgust toward the current democratic process and Diana Christensen attempts to use countercultural chic for her new show "The Mao Tse-Tung Hour," the network cannot allow discourse that strays into its paradigm. When Beale switches his argument to examining the dehumanization of society, he quickly loses viewers. Audiences previously engrossed by his antics that were endorsed and exploited by UBS are no longer interested in hearing about the same depressing, real-life material that once was the staple of the news: demonstrating their unwillingness to accept life's hardships in order to retreat to safely packaged formulaic programming and outrageous opinions.

* Network is available on DVD through Warner Home Video

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque