Confession of a Schizophrenic Movie Fan
I have been enjoying the pinnacles of cinematic art since my late teens, when I began haunting a beautifully shabby repertory theatre in Philly’s Germantown called The Bandbox. Those were the days, those pre-home-video days, of going to see Himalayan double bills of Fellini and Bergman, of Kurosawa and Godard, and all for the first time. Later in Philly we had another great repertory house, the TLA on South Street, and I saw so many classic movies there. Even now in this post-repertory cinema age (and to be honest I’d have a hard time getting my carcass out to the rep even if there were one) I’m the first in line at the current TLA (now a video store) to snap up the latest great new Criterion DVD from Renoir or Visconti or Melville or Antonioni.
(Oh, and let us not forget the legendary “Schaefer Award Theatreâ€Â, which came on I think at 11:30 on Saturday nights and which I remember mostly for introducing me to those great 50s Brando films like On the Waterfront and The Wild One and The Men and Viva Zapata! Not to mention the not so great ones like Teahouse of the August Moon and Desirée.)
Okay. But.
But I also grew up watching double-bills at the Fern Rock Theatre on 5th Street, watching whatever double helping of schlock was on the screen that day. In that far-off time I sat firmly round the campfire with Cahiers du Cinéma when it came to the work of Mr. Jerry Lewis, and I was also a great aficionado of what my friends and I called “Roman†movies (which genre included any movie featuring muscular men in skirts, regardless of nationality), of “scary†movies, which in those days was anything with Vincent Price, and of the shoddiest sort of western, preferably ones starring Audie Murphy or Rory Calhoun. “Monster†movies were good too: Mothra, Godzilla, please take your bows. In short I watched and was perfectly happy with tons of crappy cheap movies.
I have to admit that with alleged adulthood my tastes diverged from Cahiers du Cinéma vis-à -vis the oeuvre of Mr. Lewis, but I must also admit that to this day I enjoy crappy movies, albeit crappy movies only of certain sorts. For instance I can watch any spaghetti western with complete satisfaction, no matter how seemingly debased and vile it may be. In fact things have gotten to such a state that I’d rather watch a newly-released DVD of some justifiably-neglected third-string spaghetti western that only pasty-faced parents’-basement dwellers have even heard of than to watch an acknowledged classic of the genre, like Once Upon a Time in the West, simply because the newly-released third-stringer might be new or newish to me while I have seen Once Upon a Time perhaps a couple of times too often. It’s the same with crappy Italian thrillers from the 70s, or any Japanese yakuza or samurai movie. I love this stuff. Just the other night I watched with serene ecstasy an Italian gangster flick from 1972 called Hired to Kill. Sure, it was lurid trash, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. (And, on a purely technical level, it had a brilliantly shot and edited long chase scene just as good as that fabulous chase that starts off the recent Casino Royale.)
And then we have movies that draw all their basic elements from crap movies but somehow become acknowledged classics: The Wild Bunch for instance, which is basically a really good spaghetti western. Intellectuals can feel good about approving of this movie because of its clearly defined existential themes, but let’s face it, the movie is also an incredibly violent shoot-‘em-up with a somewhat rickety plot. Everyone knows that The Seven Samurai is a classic, but it’s also a samurai movie, and it shares many of the same demotically enjoyable qualities of any of the dozens of movies chronicling the bloody adventures of Zatoichi, the blind masseur and gambler and Curly Howard-lookalike who also happens to be one bad-ass swordsman.
And so in all honesty I cannot join in with some of my esteemed colleagues in their dislike of certain types of vile low films…Take for instance the canon of Mr. Quentin Tarantino. I admit it, I’ve throughly enjoyed his movies, even though I cowered gibbering under my seat during the ear-cutting scene in Reservoir Dogs (and have fast-forwarded through the scene in subsequent home-viewings); I still haven’t gotten my lazy ass out to Grindhouse yet, but, trust me, my greasy little paws will be among the first to grab it when it shows up at the TLA. In fairness to Mr. Tarantino I must remind his detractors of his least Tarantinoesque movie, Jackie Brown. This adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch has very little violence, none of it extremely graphic; there’s much more violence in Leonard’s fine novel. The movie has a rich and deep and wise performance from Robert Forster (whose career Tarantino rescued from obscurity), it’s got the supernatural Pam Grier, and it has not got Bruce Willis. I’ve probably watched Jackie Brown more often than any other Tarantino. And to those for whom the cartoon violence of the Kill Bill epic was all too much I will say only these words: Michael Parks. Any director who gives not one but two parts in one movie to the former star of Then Came Bronson cannot be all bad.
And now we come to the controversy which brought me to write this little confessional in the first place: l’affaires de Hostel II, Saws I- through-C, and the various remakes and sequels to The Hills Have Chainsaws of the Living Dead. All right, I haven’t seen Hostel (I or II), but I did finally break down recently and watch the first two Saws, and, I have to admit, I didn’t despise them. They delivered all I was asking at the time, which was some cheap thrills when I was too tired to read or to watch a serious movie, and besides they both featured Shawnee Smith, alias Linda from Becker. To me a movie like Saw can be watched, and on some conceivably bizarre night I might possibly visit a Hostel or II (and probably regret it) but I would rather submit myself to the actual tortures depicted in all Saw movies ever made and to be made than writhe my way through any recent comedy from Steve Martin or any heart-wrenching dramedy from Robin Williams or anything Bruce Willis does when he’s not working for Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez, or any single animated kids’ movie, period. The Saw flicks weren’t nearly as good for me as, say, Compañeros or Revolver or any of the Zatoichi movies, but they did what I wanted them to do. And what I want from these sorts of movies is something completely different from what I get from watching other movies I’ve loved like Antonioni’s La Notte or Fellini’s I Vitelloni or anything by Bergman, or The Wizard of Oz, or The Best Years of Our Lives, or From Here to Eternity. And I think that’s okay. but even if it weren’t or isn’t okay I’d have to live with it, because sometimes I want to watch Rocco and His Brothers, or Persona, or A Man Escaped, and sometimes I just want to crack a beer and watch some glorious crap like Hired to Kill.
I love Proust, but sometimes I just have to read Richard Stark. And you know what, Richard Stark is not crap. He — or his other persona, Donald E. Westlake — is not Proust, but what he does he does better than anyone, and I’m sure Proust (who was no snob) would agree.
As Pike Bishop says to Dutch Angstrom in The Wild Bunch:
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.â€Â
(This piece, which has been a Quinn/Martin Production for Desilu, is an exclusive for Newcritics, but check out my joint anyway, you lazy bastards!)
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I do believe, however, that certain types of genre dreck get more respect than others, and that is frequently tied to who enjoys it. The sort of stuff Tarantino favors--grindhouse, slasher, giallo, kung fu, whatever--appeals to the still very male critical establishment, and therefore gets more respect. Whereas the kind of stuff I favor when I want empty movie calories--the lesser-grade women's pictures, Sandra Dee, Baghdad-and-boobs--have less boy-appeal.
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I understand the other distinction you make, the unchallanging vs. the challenging and that one is still somewhat important to me.
Part of the beauty of age is the ability to find beauty and meaning in a wider variety of intellectual experience, some not overtly challenging and certainly not sanctioned as art. I can't think of any way that Tarkovsky's Mirror is more satisfying to me than Midnight Run, both movies I really like. I realize the purpose in making those two movies may have been completely different, maybe even at odds, and I am curious to know those things, but in the end, they both hold special spots in the mythological atmosphere of my brain.
I too frequented the TLA in the early eighties during my school days and part of the whole experience was the feeling of specialness combined with the restlessness of youth in seeking out the new and maverick. That feeling has never gone away, I just seem to satisfy it in common and unexpected places nowadays.
...Or maybe as Mrs. Context says, "You're just getting more stupid."
We really are curiously in sync this week. There's a little Dana Andrews connection, too.
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Dear Out of, I do agree with your sentiment. Different types of movies (and books, and music, and people) affect us in different ways. If I had the critical acumen I might try to talk a little more deeply about certain types of books and movies that are basically genre works but that somehow also work as art, although you might get your art mixed in with a lot of not-art. (We all know what the accepted examples are: The Seven Samurai, My Darling Clementine, The Godfather, etc.) The trouble is, you start talking like this about the Zatoichi movies and you can easily take all the fun out of them.
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Bingo. Looking for art.
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I think OutofC brings up an important point re the "guilty pleasure" vs the challenging/not issue. Seems to me a guilty pleasure is one person's "not-challenging" cinema choice -- for whatever reason and for which there may be no good reason other than personal taste (or lack thereof).
Whereas your average non-challenging flick is probably agreed upon to be, at least by fans of the type or genre in question, okay time filler. That is, more than a few isolated obsessive types will buy in.
It's possible some of the genre pictures that are generally enjoyed may have a chance at being elevated in the film pantheon simply because they're rock-solid good. On the other hand, the oddball flicks that can only be enjoyed by the few are less likely to have that happen.
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I think every film critic, and film fan should watch this documentary called Bergman Makes a Movie, from 1962, by Vilgot Sjoman. Just a beautiful depiction of the whole process of Ingmar Bergman writing, directing, doing post-production and finally attending the opening of his movie Winter Light. One of the things I loved most about this documentary was the sense of fun you saw in Bergman at work on this rather austere but beautiful movie. I mean he's utterly serious and precise about every slightest detail, but he's also cracking jokes and laughing with the actors and technicians. You see him kidding around with an actor, then it's time to shoot again: the actor because he's a trained actor is immediately in the moment, Bergman is completely concentrated on the scene, they shoot a few moments of brilliance; cut. Then they're joking around again.
Art doesn't have to be painful, either to create or to experience, and it would be nice if it weren't painful to read about.