SUNSET BOULEVARD

(August 1950, U.S.)

During Hollywood's Golden Age of the 1940's and '50's, even "Tinseltown" itself recognized just how merciless, cruel, corrupt and insane the entire industry was. Billy Wilder opens SUNSET BOULEVARD by telling us that life in Hollywood is not only a struggle, from the down-on-his-luck screenwriter to the forgotten star, but also deadly. At a dilapidated, old mansion on said boulevard, the body of Joe Gillis floats in the swimming pool. The film is also narrated by said corpse - something a little different, indeed. But how did it all happen? The flashback that follows relates to the bizarre events six months earlier that lead to Joe's tragic death.

Joe Gillis (played by William Holden), while trying to sell an otherwise hopeless script to Paramount, as well as avoiding the repo men looking to take back his car, stumbles upon what looks like a seemingly deserted mansion. What he discovers instead is Norma Desmond (played by Gloria Swanson), a long-forgotten movie star of the silent era. The only other person with her is the butler Max (played by Austrian film director Erich von Stroheim), who cater's to "Madam's" every whim and desire, as if she were still the glamorous movie goddess she once was. Learning that Joe is a writer, Norma insists on his opinion of a script she's written for a film about Salome. She intends to play the role herself in a triumphant return to the screen. The script is hopeless, but he flatters her into hiring him to work on it, nonetheless. As he'll soon discover, the position of script doctor soon turns to that of kept man, if not personal live-in bitch. Joe realizes that Norma refuses to accept the hard fact that her fame has evaporated over the years and even the many fan letters she receives weekly were secretly written by Max in order to keep her emotionally fragile state in tact, for she has attempted suicide in the past (and will again after Joe temporarily leaves her).

Norma's hopeless script eventually reaches the hands of her former director Cecil B. DeMille (playing himself). She receives call from Paramount, and presuming it's because they want her and her precious script, she returns to the studio to discover (to everyone's surprise) that she's been missed and is still loved by the older members of the film crew who still remember her. Alas, however, we learn that Paramount only called her because they want to rent her unusual vintage 1929 Isotta Fraschini automobile for a movie. As Norma prepares for a comeback that will never happen, Joe is busy secretly pursuing his own script ambitions with a young script girl named Betty at the studio. As cliché would dictate, Joe and Betty hook up, but not before Norma finds out and pretty much goes insane in a jealous rage. Perhaps by now, you're starting to guess how Joe ended up dead in the pool? By this time, the flashback is over, and Norma's grand house is filled with police and parasitic Hollywood reporters ready to watch her go down for murder. Having lost all touch with reality at this point, Norma believes the newsreel cameras to be the movie cameras that will film her unworthy script. Max and the police play along with Norma's delusions, Max even pretending to be the film director. As the cameras roll, Norma dramatically descends her grand staircase of her house. She pauses and makes an impromptu speech about how happy she is to be making a film again, ending with that all-too-famous Hollywood line, "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up." (later altered over time into "I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.")

Just like classic film noir of the age, SUNSET BOULEVARD effectively works with dark, shadowy black and white cinematography. Like Billy Wilder's DOUBLE INDEMNITY, the film shows us the dark and sunny sides of Los Angeles by bringing together both dark and light without completely separating the drama of the two. Joe's world inside Norma's mansion is a dark one, while his seemingly more down-to-earth world with Betty at the studio is a lighter one. Still, this tale of Hollywood is a dark and cold one. Norma Desmond, who was once a great lady, is a discarded relic of the past, not too unlike the female protagonist in Charles Dickens's GREAT EXPECTATIONS (that comparison is even noted by William Holden in this film). The fact that the film is told through the eyes of a dead narrator may be considered highly original or perhaps a cheap and ineffective movie stunt - you decide. Gloria Swanson's performance is both drama and tragedy at its best, reminding us of just how fragile our egos, if not our very lives can be at the hands of those who once loved us and now have no need for us any longer. Hollywood is cruel, indeed, but the town can also be seen as darkly comical through the eyes of those just trying to survive inside of it.

I'm glad I've chosen to write blogs and books instead of scripts!

Favorite line or dialogue:

Joe Gillis: "You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big."
Norma Desmond: "I am big! It's the pictures that got small!"

SUMMER OF SAM

(July 1999, U.S.)

I was just ten years-old in the summer of 1977. My family and I were living in a rather luxurious apartment complex in the town of Floral Park in Queens and we were also renting a small beach house in the town of Westhampton Beach, Long Island. So it's pretty safe to say I was living a sheltered life away from the hell that took place in New York City that summer. However, I was not completely oblivious to what was going on outside the safety of our four walls. I was well aware of the Son of Sam, aka the ".44 Caliber Killer" murders taking place all around the city because it was just about the only story being covered on the local news stations. In fact, I remember feeling a strong degree of anxiety every time my mother decided she was going into Manhattan for the day. I was also well aware of the infamous New York City Blackout of 1977, though our lights stayed on thanks to a self-generating power plant independent of local power companies which fed the complex (I wouldn't learn of the crime and looting until later). Disco was king, the New York Yankees were having a winning season that summer and Reggie Jackson was my hero.

At the start of Spike Lee's SUMMER OF SAM, Jimmy Breslin himself of the New York Daily News says that there were many New York stories that fateful summer, and this is one of them. Although the film focuses on the many items I just mentioned, the story centers on two young men in an Italian-American neighborhood in the Bronx, Vinny (played by John Leguizamo) and Ritchie (played by Adrien Brody). Vinny is a man of the disco era, as well as all of the sexual opportunities that lived within that era. He cheats on his wife Dionna (played by Mira Sorvino) whenever possible (even with her cousin) despite the fact that she's hot herself and is willing to please him sexually. She also seems willing to repeatedly overlook his infidelities. Ritchie has implied "death to Disco" by embracing punk music (though his favorite band is The Who, which I would classify as classic rock, even back in the '70s) and punk fashion. It's no wonder he's considered a major freak of the neighborhood when he goes around looking like this...

Although Vinny witnesses a slain couple at the hands of the Son of Sam and is briefly terrified that he will be the killer's next victim, it's not the main point that Spike Lee chooses to focus this thriller on. Like DO THE RIGHT THING (1989), this is also a tale of a small neighborhood on the brink of implosion due to its surrounding circumstances of bigotry, prejudice and crime. These are also people, for their own reasons, that are being destroyed by sex. As a married couple with a willingness to try something different, Vinny and Dionna cannot survive an experimental evening at Plato's Retreat, where sex and all of its possibilities are free for the trying. The tough Italian hoods who protect the neighborhood from all elements they consider unwanted and unclean cannot contain their disgust and sickness when they briefly visit the punk music world of the now defunct rock club CBGB to try and find Richie, who is now believed to be the Son of Sam by many of the locals simply due to the fact that his freakish nature makes him different from everyone else, and the fact that he's also earning money as a male dancer and prostitute at a gay porno theater. Tensions continue to mount as the killings continue and the infamous 1977 blackout hits on that fateful hot night in July. Tensions lead to paranoia, which ultimately leads to betrayal of friends when Vinny lures Ritchie out of his home and into the hands of the Italian lynch mob ready to crucify him as the Son of Sam. It's literally at the moment of his beating in the streets that we learn the actual killer, David Berkowitz, has been apprehended by the police in Yonkers, though it does not resolve the dark side of human nature the neighborhood has ultimately sunk to.

SUMMER OF SAM may almost be considered Spike Lee's personal tribute to Martin Scorsese, in particular MEAN STREETS (1973), with its visual neighborhood relations, tensions and even its trash. It's depiction of 1970's pornography, perversions, pervasive language and unflattering, defamatory representations of white Italian-American ethnic culture is powerfully and harshly realistic, if not offensive to those who chose to embrace it that way. Even if you don't remember the summer of 1977, it's impossible as a witness to these events on film, not to feel the impact of the time. Lust, guilt, betrayal and fear are Spike Lee's weapons and they hit hard, even when we choose to put aside the serial killer element of it all. In SUMMER OF SAM, the so-called "innocent victims" are actually uglier than the killer, which only goes to show us the state of human nature in the '70s, or any other decade, for that matter.

Favorite line or dialogue:

Ruby: "So, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to tell you how to fuck your husband?"

SUMMER OF '42

(April 1971, U.S.)

Writing about Robert Mulligan's SUMMER OF '42 is an emotional challenge because it forces me to face a part of my past that I still carry around like a deep scar. For thirty-eight years, my family had a home in the town of Westhampton Beach, Long Island, and not too unlike Hermie (played by Gary Grimes) of this wonderful film, the house and the inlet that it resided on, came to define who I was as a boy, a teenager, and a man. Like Hermie, who narrates to us at the beginning of the film, "There weren't as many houses or people as there are now. The geography of the island and the singularity of the sea were far more noticeable then.", I look back at my own past in that small seaside town of the Hamptons and recall who I was and why every detail of my surroundings mattered to me and why. In effect, I was no too unlike that young man who sits on the dune staring out into the loneliness of the open sea and the rustic, isolated beach house belonging to the young woman who would change his life forever...

Bear in mind, however, that despite all of the haunting beauty and mystery of SUMMER OF '42, this film is still, at heart, a coming-of-age story of three best friends and their confusion, their wonderment and their puzzlement in the world of adolescent sex. It's summertime, the kids are on the beach, and the girls are wearing bathing suits that reveal just enough of their bodies to send young men like Hermie and Oscy into a frenzy about how, when and where they'll "cop a feel" or even manage to experience something new they've read about in a sex book called foreplay. Of the three best friends who call themselves "the terrible trio", Oscy (played by Jerry Houser) is the most dominating and the most immature of them all, and it's interesting, if not intriguing to learn that he's the one who manages to lose his virginity first to a young, pretty blonde he met while at the movies one night with his friends. Hermie, while still full of every traditional adolescent form of confusion and stupidity, is the more mature one who easily recognizes his own deep feelings of infatuation and frustration when he first lays eyes on and meets the beautiful, young (and married) Dorothy (played by Jennifer O'Neill) who lives in the house by the ocean. She's not just another girl of the neighborhood, but rather a mature woman (she's actually only twenty-two) who brings out a part of himself that he's never known before. As he also narrates to us at the beginning of the film, "Nothing from that first day I saw her and no one that has happened to me since, has ever been as frightening and as confusing. For no person I've ever known has ever done more to make me feel more sure, more insecure, more important and less significant." Consider those words carefully and try to imagine just how some people, even in passing, have managed to affect the outcome of whom we'd later become in life. Even while Hermie gets to know Dorothy by carrying her groceries and placing boxes up in the attic for her, he's also a young man with a very horny imagination toward her, even if she only regards him as just a nice, considerate boy from the neighborhood.

SUMMER OF '42 also serves to remind us just how insane and how much fun the tender age of fifteen can be to a boy. Who among us young men can't remember just how nervous we might have been the first time we walked into a pharmacy to try and purchase condoms residing behind the check-out counter. Some of us may have even sat next to a girl at the movies and tried very subtly (and even slyly) to move our hand up and over her shoulder and fix it on just the right place where we could feel her breast without any objections, though I seriously doubt any of us were clueless enough to squeeze the poor girl's arm instead, as Hermie manages to do while Bette Davis and Paul Henreid are up on the screen in NOW, VOYAGER. That classic film within a film helps to remind us that this is the year 1942, and despite any similarities in boyhood antics between now and then, there is still a great degree of innocence and ignorance among boys who know nothing about sex. What we may now know today as the "natural order of progression" of sexual activities, would have likely seemed very different back then and may have actually required the step-by-step teachings that the three boys read about in a book that Benjie (played by Oliver Conant) has swiped from his mother's book shelf. It's amusing to think that Oscy is going to rely on the twelve steps of "foreplay" the book endorses, but on the other hand, they do work as he manages to get laid (twice) on the beach at night during a seemingly innocent marshmallow roast.

So, as the film's pharmacist says, "fun is fun", and while the summer antics of the "terrible trio" may be the main focus of the film, there is still the very haunting romance that inevitably takes place between Hermie and Dorothy. Let us be reminded that the world is at war, and young men die in war. One night, when Hermie shows up at Dorothy's house, it is eerily quiet inside. He discovers on her living room table, a bottle of whiskey and a Western Union telegram from the United States government informing her that her husband has been killed in action. Dorothy's been crying and it's with Hermie's simple words of, "I'm sorry", that things begin between them. During the course of this moment, no words are spoken. We hear only the waves of the ocean outside and the film's beautiful theme by Michel Legrand playing on the phonograph as Dorothy takes Hermie by the hand and leads him to her bedroom, where she draws him into bed with her and they very gently make love with each other. When it's over, she's withdrawn again into her world of pain and anguish and only says, "Good night, Hermie." when he tries to approach her. I can only say that I have known love and love making on the beach, both on screen and in my own life, and yet nothing has every haunted me as much as the visual and emotional interaction that takes place between Hermie and Dorothy in this moment of SUMMER OF '42. It also haunts me that the film leaves us just as dazed and confused as Hermie is when he returns the next morning to discover that Dorothy has fled the island in the night and left him only a note with her final words to her. On paper, they're words of comfort, but the fail to leave him (or us) with any sense of hope or resolution. Perhaps all we're really left with in the end is the hope of our own manhood.

Let me also point out the bizarre irony we've just witnessed in this entire love making scene. By today's modern legal and moral standards, Dorothy is a female pedophile who has just committed an act of statutory rape against a minor. But it's also very bizarre irony that to even take the time to consider such an act, though legally viable as it may be, seems inappropriate, if not indecent, for such a beautiful, haunting and memorable piece of cinema that helped to make Jennifer O'Neill the star she became.

Now, let me tell you about my own personal "Summer of '82". Like Hermie, I was fifteen years-old and spending the summer at the beach with my family. Across the street from our house was a public beach and on it was an eighteen year-old blonde lifeguard who worked there every day (I can't remember her name). Like Hermie, I looked for any excuse to go to that beach every day and speak to her. Even as I sat next to her lifeguard chair saying mindless and pointless adolescent jibber-jabber, all the while I kept fantasizing about what it would be like to touch her and hold her in her white bathing suit and what it would be like to have her touch and hold me. Unlike Hermie, of course, nothing ever happened because in her eyes, I was still just a kid. Still, they are boyish, horny memories that I continue to live with and reflect upon whenever the mood of nostalgia hits me. She was never "my Dorothy", but she was an example and a reminder of what it meant to once be a boy trying so hard to grow into a man.

Favorite line or dialogue:

Hermie as narrator (voice-over): "I was never to see her again. Nor was I ever to learn what became of her. We were different then. Kids were different. It took us longer to understand the things we felt. Life is made up of small comings and goings. And for everything we take with us, there is something that we leave behind. In the summer of '42, we raided the Coast Guard station four times, we saw five movies, and had nine days of rain. Benjie broke his watch, Oscy gave up the harmonica, and in a very special way, I lost Hermie forever."

SULLY

(September 2016, U.S.)

At the start of the year 2009, New York City and the rest of the world had plenty on its mind; a global financial crisis, the first recently elected African-American President of the United States, and the criminally fraudulent activities of Bernie Madoff, just to name some. On January 15, 2009, the best news the city of New York could have received was good news, particularly news involving a plane. On that day, I was at home on Long Island looking for a new job, and by the time I'd turned on the TV, the breaking story of the crash of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 into the Hudson River after striking a flock of birds was already a couple of hours old. This was the image that dominated the screen...

...and while it must have been a scene of fear and terror for those on board that ill-fated flight, for those of us watching the TV and still recalling the events of 9/11 just over seven years earlier, the sight of that plane in the water with all of its one hundred and fifty-five passengers alive and awaiting rescue was just the miraculous sight of relief we all needed to see. Then there was, of course, the ongoing coverage of the flight's heroes, Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger (played by Tom Hanks) and First Officer Jeff Skiles (played by Aaron Eckhart). We needed heroes at that time, and we got them. Makes you almost wonder why it took seven years for the film that would tell their story of the accident that day that would come to be known as the "Miracle on the Hudson".

Director Clint Eastwood's film SULLY is non-linear in its timeline approach to what not only took place on January 15, 2009, but also the aftermath of the media coverage hailing Sully as a hero, the aftermath of Sully himself in which he experiences haunting dreams of the crash, and the inevitable investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board claiming that a series of computerized simulations suggest that Sully could have landed the plane safely at nearby LaGuardia or Teterboro Airports instead of choosing to ditch the plane in the Hudson River. To the film's viewer, such allegations are absurd and insulting, but we also have to presume it's what actually took place behind closed doors even as we had no doubt of who the hero of the day was, and why we needed such a hero in our lives.

As the film switches back and forth between the events of the accident from both the perspective of the pilots and the passengers, we experience the on-board tension of watching a plane fly unreasonably low over New York City because we haven't forgotten what happened on September 11, 2001. We also feel the tension of Sully having to experience the stress of those who believe he may have been in error when making that fateful decision that saved the lives of all on board. He arranges to have the simulations rerun with live pilots, and the results are relayed to a public hearing. These simulations result in successful landings, one at each nearby airport. Still undeterred by his decisions and actions, Sully argues that the simulations are unrealistic because the test pilots had the convenience of knowing in advance of the bird situation they would face and of the suggested emergency action that would follow. Thus, they were able to practice the scenario several times until they got it right. They weren't there the day it happened and cannot possibly understand the human factor involved. In the end, allowing for a thirty-five second pause before the plane's diversion, new computer simulations are performed which prove Sully to be right, concluding that he acted correctly and saved the lives of everyone aboard.

Like FORREST GUMP (1994) and CASTAWAY (2000), Tom Hanks surely owns this movie, delivering a strong and stirring, yet emotionally quiet and humble performance to pay the proper tribute to a true American hero. Eastwood, who has always been a hit-and-miss director with me, offers an engaging drama that is both rich and tense in its delivery of not only a terrifying plane crash, but also the fears and anxieties that plague those who survive it. In other words, when you're not freaking out waiting for the plane to hit the Hudson (more than once), you're also feeling a low-key sense of calmness in the film's beauty of human beings at their best when they're forced to come together for each other. That's what New York City really needed on January 15, 2009, and it looks like they got it.

Favorite line or dialogue:

Elizabeth Davis (at the NTSB investigation proceedings): "First Officer Skiles, is there anything you'd like to add? Anything you would have done differently if you had to do it again?"
Jeff Skiles: "Yes. I would've done it in July."

SUGARLAND EXPRESS, THE

(April 1974, U.S.)

I recently watched Steven Spielberg's most recent film READY PLAYER ONE and was grossly disappointed. It then occurred to me that I've been grossly disappointed with every Spielberg adventure film since his terrifying remake of WAR OF THE WORLDS in 2005. I have instead preferred his historical dramas, from MUNICH to THE POST. That in mind, it felt necessary, if not therapeutic to return to the beginning of Spielberg's theatrical career (after his 1971 TV movie debut, DUEL) with THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS; a crime film, a road film, and also based on a real incident that took place in Texas.

Had I not been part of the later generation who discovered Goldie Hawn in her films of the '80s and '90s (not to suggest that they were all so great, because they weren't), I would have likely been immediately turned off by her in this film because she is, let's face it, a nagging and whining bitch throughout just about the entire story (perhaps she was the precursor to the nagging and whining bitch that was Kate Capshaw in INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM). Perhaps this was the most effective way to identify the redneck, hillbilly-type of Texan woman back then...who knows. Whatever the reason for her character traits, one can best approach THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS as the first adventure film of Spielberg's screen career.

The year is 1969 and Lou Jean Poplin (Hawn) is visiting her incarcerated husband Clovis Poplin (played by William Atherton) to inform him that they're going to lose their baby boy forever because he's due to be placed in the permanent care of his foster parents. With only four months left of his sentence, his crazed wife convinces him to escape from prison with her help. Actually, escape is hardly the word I'd choose because it's a simple matter of him changing his clothes and walking right out with the other visitors, which should give you a good idea of just how bad the prison security is. Free and on the run, the Poplins are now on a desperate mission to retrieve their child. Hitching a ride with a clueless elderly couple, they're on the brink of getting away with their escape until an unexpected stop by patrolman Maxwell Slide (played by Michael Sacks) provokes them to take his police car and make a break for it. This moment is about as high speed as the chase gets because it's not long until they crash the car and kidnap Maxwell with his gun, Clovis claiming, "I never shot a man!" From this moment, as Lou Jean and Clovis are on the run from what looks like every lawman in Texas, including police captain Harlin Tanner (played by Ben Johnson in a sympathetic role that may remind you of Harvey Keitel seventeen years later in THELMA & LOUISE) the chase has reduced itself to a slow-moving caravan across the state. As the desperate mommy and daddy travel with their hostage through drive-through food stops, drive-in movies and even a trailer dealership, the three form an almost cliché bond of mutual respect for one another. As parents who are fighting for the right to keep their child, Lou Jean and Clovis have become state heroes, winning the admiration (and even assistance) of many of the local yokels of the towns they drive through. On the flipside, though, are the local Texas gun freaks who are looking for any excuse to take their shot at the Poplins and take them down.

As the caravan slowly draws to its final destination at the home of the foster parents, one can't help but feel the impending doom that looms over our two anti-heroes, who like Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, will meet a violent and bloody conclusion. Unlike that 1967 film, however, only Clovis is killed, leaving Lou Jean wounded and in total dismay and bewilderment of how it all ended for her. This is another moment when you can't help but feel something personally negative for Goldie Hawn because you can't believe just how stupid her character was this entire time, as if she really expected to succeed in getting her child back in this manner? Well, I guess the joke is ultimately on us because according the end credits, Lou Jean spends fifteen months of a five-year prison term in a women's correctional facility, and upon getting out, manages to obtain the legal right to live her life with her son. Go figure.

THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS is certainly not the highlight of Spielberg's great career, but it's a good reminder of where we all start out in our careers. As a debut theatrical feature, it continues the traditions of the road movie already popular of its era. For its time, there are many technical aspects of the chase that Spielberg concentrates on, be they car chases, explosions, whatever, and that's highly effective for a thriller as this. Unfortunately, it can deter itself from any potential character development we may want to experience from the Poplins and even their hostage. On the other hand, we're talking about blue collar characters without much sense or logic in their actions, so perhaps it's best not to expect too much from them. Perhaps we just sit back and appreciate THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS for what it really is; an entertaining theatrical debut from the man who would next take us into the water and remind us that "We Are Not Alone" through the remainder of the 1970s.

Favorite line or dialogue:

Maxwell Slide: "He took my gun, but he wasn't gonna use it!"

STRIPES

(June 1981, U.S.)

When I was fifteen years-old in the summer of 1982, I had a bunk mate at sleep away camp named Michael W. whose favorite movie was STRIPES. I knew this because he made it well known verbally, but he would also repeatedly quote lines from the movie. I can't begin to tell you how many times he would get in my face and say, "Look if you don't want me in your camp, then kick me out! But get off my back!" and "Any of you guys call me Michael, and I'll kill ya!" Hell, Michael even got another kid at camp who didn't speak much English to sing a little of "Da Doo Ron Ron" without knowing why he was singing it. Well, all of this wouldn't have bothered me so much if it weren't for the fact that I still hadn't seen STRIPES by 1982, so I had no idea what Michael was talking about. I didn't actually see the movie until November 27, 1983 when it premiered on the ABC Sunday Night Movie, and of course, that was all edited-for-television. Still, it also reminds me why underage children should be allowed to see R-rated comedies. It's because children will find anything and everything funny about them. Even on television, STRIPES had me in stitches from all of its wild and outrageous antics from a wise-ass like Bill Murray as John Winger (whom, by 1983, I'd only seen on screen in MEATBALLS and TOOTSIE) trying to make his way in the United States Army.

This is not to suggest that STRIPES still isn't a funny movie, because it is. It just doesn't have me in stitches the way it did when I was a kid. In fact, today there are times in the film when I find the wit and sarcasm of Harold Ramis as John's best friend Russell Ziskey more entertaining than ol' Bill himself. But even as a kid, I looked for any opportunity to be drawn into the world of R-rated films, even if it meant only watching and taping them off of TV at a time before I could afford to buy my own uncut, unedited VHS movies. At sixteen, my hormones were raging and I enjoyed the opportunity of getting even a momentary glimpse of P.J. Soles's gorgeous ass behind her sexy nightie as she stood up from inside the wooden chest after having sex with Bill Murray, which he found "interesting"...

Of course, after having done a little bit of extra research for this post, little did I know that we the audience have still been cheated all these years by extra graphic nude scenes of P.J. Soles that apparently never made the final cut of the film (those bastards!)...

The entire basic training portion of STRIPES still holds up well because a man like John Winger, who never takes anything seriously in life, is not one to ever survive the strict disciplinary routines and structure of the army, particularly when he has a man like drill Sergeant Hulka (played by the late Warren Oates) up his ass about every little thing he does or says. One can only imagine and compare men like the Marx Brothers or Cheech & Chong in a similar predicament to appreciate the full value of the film's humor. Unfortunately, from the moment these misfits of the army arrive in Italy, the film attempts to turn entertaining comedy into an almost spiritual adventure where the pride and honor of America reigns supreme against our adversaries of the Soviet Army because a bunch of goofball soldiers (even John Candy) inevitably learn the valuable lesson of what it means to join the U.S. Army and "Be All You Can Be". It is, after all, this vintage TV commercial that first attracts John during the film's opening credits. But I suppose I prefer the consistency of John Winger as the lazy bum who joins the army as a quick and easy solution after losing his job, his car, his apartment and his girlfriend in just a matter of two hours time rather than the John Winger who decides to become a true American patriot. I suppose in my opinion, military patriotism is best left to Sylvester Stallone in the '80s and Tom Hanks in the '90s (SAVING PRIVATE RYAN) and not Bill Murray of 1981.

Favorite line or dialogue:

Army Recruiter: "Now, are either of you homosexuals?"
John Winger: "You mean, like, flaming, or...?"
Recruiter: "Well, it's a standard question we have to ask."
Russell Ziskey: "No, we're not homosexual, but we are willing to learn."
John: "Yeah, would they send us someplace special?"

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN

(June 1951, U.S.)

Every once in a while, like a drug, I need to revisit, re-experience and re-absorb the work of Alfred Hitchcock, particularly the work that doesn't necessarily involve Cary Grant, James Stewart or a butcher knife in a shower. STRANGERS ON A TRAIN was a relatively late discovery for me and I first became aware of it through a rather unlikely source; it's brief cameo mention in a rather stupid 1987 comedy called THROW MOMMA FROM THE TRAIN (sometimes movies work that way).

The story, based on the original story by Patricia Highsmith, concerns two strangers who meet on a train, a young tennis player named Guy Haines (played by Farley Granger) and a charming (and possibly homosexual) psychopath named Bruno Antony (played by Robert Walker). During the course of their bizarre conversation, Bruno suggests that because they each want to "get rid" of someone, they should "swap murders", so that neither of them can get caught due to lack of suspicion and motive of killing a total stranger. Guy would love to see his cheating, double-crossing wife Miriam dead because she's refusing to grant him the divorce he needs to marry his new sweetheart Anne Morton, who also happens to be the prominent daughter of a U.S. senator. Bruno would love to see his father dead simply because he hates him. While Guy doesn't take the conversation seriously, he humors Bruno long enough by pretending to find the whole thing amusing. Bruno, however, interprets Guy's amusing response as a solid agreement to go along with the scheme. By the time the entire encounter is over, Guy has accidentally left behind his monogrammed lighter for Bruno to retrieve and even use against him later on in the film.

Now on a mission of murder, Bruno tracks down Miriam and follows her to a local carnival, where he eventually strangles her. This scene of murder is particularly inventive in the way that Hitchcock shoots it on a double printing technique, through the point of view of Miriam's black and white glasses lens, having fallen to the grass in front of her. Take a look...

Once the awful deed is done, Bruno insists on payment from Guy, who has no intention of killing Bruno's father in return. While being devilishly charming throughout the entire experience, Bruno is, nonetheless, a psychotic who won't take no for an answer and expects Guy to fulfill his obligation and proceeds to follow and harass Guy all over town of Washington D.C. Brought to the point of desperation, Guy inevitably pretends to agree to Bruno's original plan and attempts to warn Bruno's father by creeping into his bedroom while he sleeps. As one might suspect, Bruno is in the bed instead and finally realizes that Guy has no intention of going through with what he though was a legitimate agreement between two strangers on a train. From this moment through the remainder of the film, Bruno will use Guy's lighter to set him up for Miriam's murder and Guy must stop him. This is where Hitchcock uses the game of tennis to build the tension of time running out and working against Guy in order to clear his name of any crime. We watch the game as we would any other sporting event on film, knowing full well, however, that if Guy doesn't win the match quickly, he may very well go to jail for murder. It's subtle tension, but Hitchcock knows just how to work it to the advantage of gripping his audience. Still, even subtle tension must often build itself to the point of a more hardcore climax. At the carnival where Miriam was murdered, Guy and Bruno face each other on an out-of-control merry-go-round up until the last moment when Guy's name is cleared by the revelation of his lighter tucked into the palm of Bruno's cold, dead hand.

It's interesting to know that in the American version of STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, the final scene shows Guy reunited with Anne on a train home. A minister, who's also a tennis fan, recognizes Guy and attempts to strike up a conversation, but remembering the trouble he got into by talking to a stranger like Bruno on a train, Guy and Anne leave the train car.

Hitchcock repeatedly loved the theme of the ordinary man caught up in a web of fear and circumstances he cannot control and will have to fight to survive. A man like Bruno Antony is fiendishly effective because it's his quiet and persistent charm and patience that makes him all the more frightening and dangerous. The film, while not particularly fast or exciting, is still woven with a very wicked style and a certain degree of deliciousness, making it one of Hitchcock's most entertaining thrillers. Watch carefully the scene where Guy arrives home to his apartment building only to discover Bruno lurking in the shadows across the street not long after he killed Miriam. This is a rendezvous Guy cannot possibly comprehend because he never took Bruno's proposal on the train seriously to begin with. A deed has been done, a pair of glasses is delivered as the receipt of that deed, and now payment is expected. This scene effectively symbolizes just who Guy and Bruno are and the twisted relationship they've gotten themselves into. And while not officially designated as film noir, Hitchcock's use of light and darkness manages to give his two main character the proper overlapping qualities of good and evil.

Favorite line or dialogue:

Bruno Anthony: "Everyone has somebody that they want to put out of the way. Oh, now surely, Madam, you're not going to tell me that there hasn't been a time that you didn't want to dispose of someone. Your husband, for instance?"