Blog 8. Klute. The Comfort of Numbness.

Director...Alan J. Pakula
Screenplay...Andy and Dave Lewis
Music...Michael Smalls
Cinematography...Gordon Wills
Budget $2.5 million
Box Office $12.5 million ($75 million in 2019)

Bree Daniels...Jane Fonda (Academy Award Best Actress)
John Klute...Donald Sutherland
Peter Cable...Charles Cioffi
Frank Ligourin...Roy Scheider
Arlyn Page...Dorothy Tristan
Psychiatrist...Vivian Nathan

 Right before we broke we watched one of several sessions in Klute between Bree Daniels and her psychiatrist. This one above is, for me, one of those amazing moments in American film where an actor is totally in synch with their character and is willing to be thoroughly honest to the character.  Watching it makes us shake my head in amazement—though you don't have to. This is one of those movies, dominant in the early seventies, in which genre doesn't matter.  Yes, it is a mystery—where did Tom Gruneman disappear to?  Who is stalking Bree and making all those creepy midnight calls?  Who killed Arlen Page?

But speaking for just myself,  I'm not all that interested in the who-done-what aspect of the story.  We already know that Peter Cable, who sent Klute looking for Gruneman, is the one listening to the tapes of Bree.  How creepy is that?  And it will get creepier.  But even still, I'm much more interested in this woman who is so smart and tough and vulnerable and self-destructive, so self-aware yet unable or unwilling to get herself out of life that cannot end well for her. Bree is a self-confessed control freak—as is John Klute (a long way from Hawkeye Pierce for Donald Sutherland, who in 2020 would never be a star).  Two attractive (well, one more than the other), talented young people who are trapped in something to a great degree of their own making.

1. Your reaction to the movie? Like? Dislike? Why? And how would you describe this movie to people not in the class? What ARE (that's plural on purpose) its genres? Use specific examples in your answer.

2. Bree Daniels: what word or phrase best describes her? Where do we see her be most herself—whatever that means to you? And do you find her sympathetic or not? Use specific examples in your answer.

3. What is the counter culture in the movie? Or maybe we should say, who is the  counter culture in the movie? Would they be comfortable at Altamont—or with Stones' lawyer Melvin Belli and his cronies? Explain your answers by referring to specifics in the movie.

Ashley talked about how hard this was to watch alone. Well, the scene below explains that reaction.

See you all tomorrow.

Blog 7. MASH. "That Man's a Prisoner of War, Doctor." "So Are You, Sweetheart, But You Don't Know It."

Watch the opening of the film one more time.

Elliot Gould, Donald Sutherland, Sally Kellerman, and Tom Skerritt.

The Last Supper...for Painless Pole Waldowksi

Waiting for Margaret O'Houlihan to take her shower.

Yes, made the same year. 

Director...Robert Altman
Screenplay...Ring Lardner Jr., based on MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors by Richard Hooker (Hiester Richard Hornberger Jr.)
Music...Johnny Mandel (Theme "Suicide is Painless" by Mandel and Mike Altman, director Altman's 14-year old son)
Cinematography...Harold E. Stine
Released 25 January 1970
Budget $3.025 million
Box Office $81.6 million

Capt. Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce...Donald Sutherland
Capt. Francis Xavier "Trapper John" McIntyre...Elliot Gould
Capt. Augustus Bedford "Duke" Forrest...Tom Skerritt
Maj. Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan...Sally Kellerman
Maj. Frank Burns...Robert Duvall
Lt. Col. Henry Blake...Roger Bowen
Father Francis John Patrick "Dago Red" Mulcahy...Rene Auberjonois
SSgt. Wade Volmer...David Arkin
Lt. Marie "Dish" Schneider...Jo Ann Pflug
Capt. Walter "The Painless Pole" Waldowski, DDS...John Schuck
Lt. Leslie...Indus Arthur
Capt. Bridget "Knocko" McCarthy...Tamara Horrocks
Cpl. "Radar" O'Reilly...Gary Burghoff
Capt. Oliver Harmon "Spearchucker" Jones...Fred Williamson
Pvt. Warren Boone...Bud Cort
Ho-Jon...Kim Atwood

Movie Poster 1970

 HOT LIPS. [to Father Mulcahy, referring to Hawkeye] I wonder how a degenerated person like that could have reached a position of responsibility in the Army Medical Corps!
FATHER MULCAHY.  [looks up from his Bible] He was drafted.

P.A. ANNOUNCER. Attention. Attention. May I have the camps' attention? This week's movie will be When Willie Comes Marching Home. Uh...The biggest parade of laughs of World War II. All the love, laughs and escapades of the Willies who came marching home. This film stars Dan Dailey, Corinne Calvet, and Colleen Townsend.

Satire: 1. A literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule and scorn. 2. Trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly. (Webster's Ninth New College Dictionary)

MASH is Robert Altman's second film, and to know anything about Altman is to know that so much of what's important is on the fringes of the movie: in the overlapping dialogue, in the little bits and pieces that can so easily be missed. The visual joke of Col. Blake and Radar looking in the wrong direction for Hot Lips' helicopter; the announcements over the camp loud speaker (added after the movie was finished)—the "short arm" inspection required of officers; the war movies that make their way to the camp ("When Willie Comes Marching Home Again": a real movie and advertisement for it, by the way); and, of course, Trapper John's comment about the "clowns"—himself and the others—working on some poor soldier's mangled chest. This is a movie where you laugh so you don't cry or scream.

Altman, by the war, was a veteran of the bombing campaign in Europe during World War II.

This was a gigantic success when it came out, one of the highest grossing movies of the year—hard to believe, perhaps, given its graphic depiction of the operating rooms, its satirical swipes at just about everything and everyone, its allegiance to its crude, rebellious heroes and critique of what is clearly meant to be the Vietnam War. This movie would never get made today. And a movie like this today certainly would not gross 85 million dollars. Ah, but this was 1970—protests on the streets and on campuses across the country against the war; in a few months, the U.S. would invade Cambodia, and at Kent State in Ohio and Jackson State in Mississippi, college students would be gunned down by state police and National Guardsmen. Altamont. Harold and Maude. In a world like this, a movie like MASH could be a hit.

My questions: be sure for every question you cite specifically some detail or details directly from the movie.

1. Sophia said in class that she felt our protagonists—Hawkeye, Trapper, Duke—behaved amorally. Do you agree? Why or why not?

2.  Could you talk a little about Major Margaret O'Houlihan—"Hot Lips"?  When I said this was awful, what was coming up, referring to the exposure of O'Houlihan's body, I meant it.  I have never been sure how Altman wanted us to respond to this.  It is the cruelest moment in a movie filled with cruelties, often visual cruelties—how many retractors can be inserted into a hole in one's body?  How mangled can a human body be after being shot or blown up? How cruel can one human be to another?  (And don't overlook the complicity of Hot Lips fellow nurses in this prank) So—unless you already addressed this in #1, write about how you react to both Margaret O'Houlihan and to how she is treated.

Choose one of the two below.

3. Clark said after class that the behavior of our doctors and nurses—with the exception of Frank Burns—is an act of moral defense. Agree or disagree. And why?
Or:
3. If you had to pick the "vice or folly" that the film exposes the most, which would it be? And what is it exposing about it? And what moment best shows the film's attitude toward it?

Finally: slapstick and violence. This is the war we get to see in the film. Fought for profit.

Blog 6. Harold and Maude. If You Want To Be Free, Be Free. Due by 11 PM.

Director...Hal Ashby
Screenplay...Colin Higgins
Music...Cat Stevens
Cinematography...John Alonzo
Budget: $1.2 million
Released 20 December 1971

Dame Marjorie "Maude" Chardin...Ruth Gordon
Harold Parker Chasen...Bud Cort
Mrs. Chasen...Vivian Pickles

This is probably one of those movies that you either love or hate, find profound and affecting or precious and cloying (at the time more moviegoers hated it than loved it) .  A lot of critics I respect hated it.  We happen to like it a lot, and like it more and more the older we get. Think of all the remakes of old movies being made today (Planet of the Apes included):  We'd venture to say that you'll not be seeing a new Harold and Maude anytime soon. 

 The reason we showed this is because it does represent a type of movie that would never be made today (as arguably the others we have watched wouldn't be either).  It represents a movie that at the time it came out was a failure, and, over time, has become a classic.  It definitely is a movie tied to its era's zeitgeist, even if it was initially rejected in that zeitgeist.  And, most importantly, it stands, we'd argue, as some solution to the problems that Gimme Shelter and Beneath the Planet of the Apes present.  AND it stands, arguably, for why those problems couldn't be (and maybe still can't be) solved.

So:

1.  What was your reaction to the film?  Was it a comfortable experience—or something else? Explain.

2. What do you think is the significance of Maude being a Holocaust survivor?

3. Is the ending happy? Explain.


4. Does the movie offer a solution to the problems we've seen in the moves we've recently watched? If so—what? If not—why not?

And finally...One last look at Harold and Maude, the Oliver and Jenny of their time.

Blog 5. Battle For The Planet of The Apes. Man is Capable of Nothing But Destruction

Director: Ted Post
Screenplay: Paul Dehn. Based on characters created by Pierre Boulle
Cinematography: Milton R. Krasner
Music: Leonard Rosenman
Released 26 May
Budget: $4.7 million
Box Office: $19 million

Brent...James Franciscus
Zira...Kim Hunter
Zaius...Maurice Evans
Nova...Linda Harrison
Mendez...Paul Richards
Adiposo (Fat Man)...Victor Buono
James Gregory...General Ursus
Ongaro (credited as Negro)...Don Pedro Colley
Taylor...Charlton Heston

 This film, we admit, is a guilty pleasure of ours.  It's not really a good film in many ways.  It was a way to capitalize on the popularity of the original film. If you're interested, you can look here and see all the negative reviews--and some positive ones as well.  One of the points we wanted to make by showing this movie was that, one, worthwhile movies are not always art; and, more importantly, it's often the art that is designed as sheerly commercial that tells us most about ourselves and our time—that shows the zeitgeist most clearly.

So it goes with Beneath the Planet of the Apes. The bleakness that you saw in it is perfectly in keeping with the time it was made.  Consider Taylor's words as he cradles the just killed Nova: "I should let them all die! Not just the Gorillas! Everyone!  Every living thing!  Us too!  Look at how it all ends—It's time it was finished—finished!"  Now this is from the original script and it is not exactly what Taylor says in the film: but we got the idea even without it being made explicit as it is here.  All Taylor sees is madness and evil; he sees a world full of inhabitants, himself included, that don't deserve to live.  And of course, it's Charlton Heston—Moses himself—who pushes the button and destroys the world.  As the screenplay states: "There are no end titles.  There is nothing more.  The films, itself destroyed by the atomic catastrophe, is over."  This may be a cheap sequel, but still: to kill Moses AND James Franciscus with his wonderful abs and tan AND the girl AND the WORLD TOO was a brave if not just audacious act on the part of the filmmakers.  It wouldn't happen today.

So the question:  how does this film and Gimme Shelter connect?  What makes them, as I'm suggesting, companion pieces?  In answering this, address what they both say about that particular moment in time, 1970.  Write a couple hundred words AND (pay attention) respond, reflect, comment on what another blogger says in their answer.  Agree, disagree, add to: somehow respond to another entry(ies) in your answer.  That is, except for the first person to get a comment in...250 words.

Taylor before he destroys the world...

 See you tomorrow.

Blog 4. Gimme Shelter."Rape, Murder, It's Just a Shot Away."

Directors: Albert and David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin
Cinematography: Albert and David Maysles
Editing: Ellen Hovde, Charlotte Zwerin
Released: 6 December

“'It’s creating a sort of microcosmic society which sets an example for the rest of America as to how one can behave in large gatherings.' Altamont set an example, all right. As did Vietnam."

This is from an essay on the film at the Criterion Collection website.  There are several essays on the film here; please read this one and this one as well.

Whether you believe it or not, and by the looks on some of your faces during the film, I'd bet on the non-belief, Gimme Shelter is a great and classic film, both as a rock movie and as an unsparing documentary of what happened to the sixties.  It is not meant to be an easy film to watch.  It doesn't turn its eye for one moment from the disturbing and frightening moments it captures: Mick Jagger's preening; the way the Stones let a bunch of business sharks and high priced lawyers in faux hip clothing and sideburns and big ties make the deal with a self-promoting speedway owner to "create a microcosmic society which sets an example for the rest of America as to how one can behave in large gatherings"; the young people messed up on drugs in all sorts of ugly ways (the large naked woman at the front of the stage that folks were laughing at?  the shirtless man being passed over the heads of the crowd? Drugs, boys and girls: really bad drugs).   The curly headed fella with the fringe jacket and the Englishman running the stage were both involved with Woodstock; but as they told the black man with the hat who asked for help, the way they had at Woodstock, they weren't giving any.  What Sam Cutler, the Brit, did say was, "Get the fuck off my stage."  The killing of Meredith Hunter.  Think about this clip from Woodstock, of John Sebastian, tie-dyed and groovy...."Your kid's going to be far out. (watch it, please)

6 months later (please watch).

1.  What was your reaction to the Woodstock clip?

3.  What does Gimme Shelter say or imply went wrong at Altamont?

4.  In a film full of striking images, what image particularly struck you in terms of how the film portrayed the counter culture–the hippies?  And why? 

Write a couple hundred words answering these questions.

Blog 3. Love Story. "Love Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry." Due Sunday by 10 PM.

Ryan O'Neil and Ali McGraw

 Director: Arthur Hiller
Screenplay: Erich Segal, based on his novel
Music: Francis Lai
Cinematography: Richard Kratina
Released: 16 December
Budget: $2.2 million
Box Office: $136.4 million

Jennifer Cavilleri...Ali McGraw
Oliver Barrett IV...Ryan O'Neil
Phil Cavilleri...John Marley
Oliver Barrett III...Ray Milland

Viewed today, Love Story and The Wild Bunch could be seen to come from different worlds and different eras, even though they were released a year apart.  Ivy League Cambridge and Manhattan, rich preppy lawyers vs. the Mexican border, 1913, and...well, you know.  In neither film is there a glimpse of what we may think of as the 1970 zeitgeist: hippies and the counterculture, Vietnam.

Or do I speak too quickly.

Actually, in Love Story, the Vietnam war is referenced quickly and subtly: over dinner or lunch at what we might assume to be the Harvard Club or some other snotty blue-blood eatery, Papa Barrett mentions that a friend of Oliver junior is going into "OCS", and young Oliver makes a quick comment about how that is not good.   OCS is Officer Candidate School, a training program for officers-to-be in the Army; and that certainly means, in 1969-70, being sent to Vietnam. At some point as well,  Ollie says to his father something along the lines of "At least I'm not marrying a hippie." And even though The Beatles are mentioned in the film, we never hear their music. We actually hear very little music (don't they own a stereo or a radio?).

And The Wild Bunch?  Several of you brought up Vietnam in our discussion of it. Americans laying waste to a foreign country? A law that is corrupt? Outlaws who could be mistaken for a scruffy rock band? This is not a movie that reminds us of World War II.


1. What scene or moment in the movie stayed with you? What about it made it memorable?

2. The movies is shamelessly—or as Jack said, "unapologetically"—sentimental. Yet no one expressed any criticism of this in class. What allows this movie to get away with being so sentimental?

3. What does this movie say to us about 1970? In answering this, use three specific details from the film.

Write about 250 words. 

That's it. Here's a preview of what's coming up next.

Blog #2. The Wild Bunch. "We All Dream Of Being a Child Again, Even the Worst of Us. Perhaps the Worst Most of All."

"We're not gonna get of anybody! We're gonna stick together, just like it used to be. When you side with a man, you stay with him. And if you can't do that, you're like some animal. You're finished! We're finished!"
—Pike

DUTCH. How 'bout us, Pike? You reckon we learned—bein' wrong today?
PIKE. I sure hope to God we did.

TECTOR. That damn railroad you're talkin' about sure as hell ain't a-gettin' no easier.
SYKES. And you boys ain't gettin' any younger either!
PIKE. We got to start thinking beyond our guns. Those days are closin' fast.

We are not in the final act of the movie. Angel—gee, I wonder they named him that?—has just been betrayed by Teresa's mother and then Dutch ("When you side with a man, you stay with him"—until you don't). This leads to the final action taken by our Bunch. The machine gun and grenades they got with the rifles will play a part. So...

1. What to you is either the predominant theme of the film OR, more simply, what it is about? What it's about does not mean what the narrative action is—bad men go to Mexico—but what is the chief concern of the story? If The Great Gatsby, for example, is about a man trying to relive his past to find what he had lost when he lost his girl, then what, presented in a similar way, is The Wild Bunch about? Write at least two sentences and no more than four.

2.  We have now more than one group to contend with in the film: The Bunch; the Bounty Hunters; the Railroad who sent Deke and the "egg-sucking peckerwood guttertrash" to kill the Bunch; Angel's village; Mapache and his army.  If you judge them by what they value, list them in order from best to worst values, with a sentence that defines each group's most prominent value.

3. What moment from today's viewing still stays with you, now hours later—and why?

4. List The Bunch in order from your favorite to least favorite—and for each, a sentence saying why you placed them in this order.

5. Above is probably the most famous scene from Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, coming out the same year as The Wild Bunch. The song "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" by B.J. Thomas and written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, won the Oscar for best song and went number 1 in the US, Canada, and Norway, selling two million copies in six months. The movie won four Oscars and was nominated for best picture; it made $102 million in its first run. The Wild Bunch didn't make $102 million.  So: what do you think of this scene? It's a western made the same year as Peckinpah's movie: in fact, Butch and Sundance were real life figures who led a band of outlaws called...The Wild Bunch. How might this scene explain why this movie was a huge success—and why The Wild Bunch made $11 million? Write 4-5 sentences.

This is due by 10 tonight. The ending of TWB...you've not seen anything like it, I'm predicting.  A preview of tomorrow:

See you tomorrow.

Blog #1. The Wild Bunch (1969). "If They Move, Kill 'Em."

The Wild Bunch (1969)
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Screenplay: Walon Green, Sam Peckinpah
Story: Walon Green, Roy N. Sickner
Music: Jerry Fielding
Cinematography: Lucien Ballard
Editing: Leo Lombardo

Pike Bishop...William Holden
Dutch Engstrom...Ernest Borgnine
Deke Thornton...Robert Ryan
Freddie Sykes...Edmond O'Brien
Lyle Gorch...Warren Oates
Tector Gorch...Ben Johnson
Angel...Jamie Sanchez
Mapache...Emilio Fernandez
Coffer...Strother Martin
T.C....L.Q. Jones
Harrigan...Albert Dekker
Crazy Lee...Bo Hopkins
Major Zamorra...Jorge Russek
Lt. Herrera...Alfonso Arau
Don Jose...Chano Urueta
Teresa...Sonia Amelio

Released 18 June 1969
Budget: $8 million
Box Office: $11 million (?)

Information: Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wild_Bunch)

The Wild Bunch: Tector, Lyle, Pike, Dutch. The Good Guys.

The Bad Guys. (That's Coffer on the left standing and TC on the far right standing)

Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid (1969): Katherine Ross and Paul Newman

Shane (1953): Alan Ladd and Brandon deWilde

The Grateful Dead, February 1969

Hampshire College, Amherst MA 1977

So you've just seen the first 40 minutes of what has become generally accepted as an American classic, hard as it may be to believe.  Look at what the famed New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael said at the time of its release. Stephen Hunter of the Baltimore Sun wrote in 1995:

[...] all these years later, the movie retains its almost seductive grandeur, plunging one ever closer to the heart of darkness and chaos. It remains one of the best written and best performed American films of all time. I love the colloquial majesty of the dialogue and the intellectual gropings of the Bunch as they try to figure out what honor requires.

Judith Crist of New York Magazine had a slightly different response: "If you must see The Wild Bunch, be sure to take along a barf bag."

So:

1. What did you think? Like? Dislike? Horrified? Angered? Or whatever else your initial response was. What jumped out at you—and/or what stayed with you?

2. Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys here? Think about this before you answer. TC and Coffer make be dumb as mules and smell like them as well, but they have genuine affection for one another, not something we particular see in the Bunch as they fight among themselves. The answer should not be obvious. And why do you choose who you do?

3. Look at the pictures above, the first two from the movie, the third from another western released the same year, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, which made over $102 million, the fourth from the classic western Shane, the fifth of the rock group The Grateful Dead, and the last one of the campus of Hampshire College, an extremely progressive college (invent your own course of study because the school does not offer majors) founded in...1970. Why did I put them up in connection to the film we're watching? Pick one and make a logical connection to what we've seen today—how does it connect or not?

When you answer be sure to click on Comment at the bottom of the post and then use the comment box. DO NOT MAKE YOUR OWN SEPARATE POST, okay?

See you all tomorrow.