By Other Voices voices@moviecitynews.com
AFI Movie Reviews
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| Paul Newman brought a new, casual intelligence to male stardom in the 1950s and ’60s, a sensitive tricksterism versus Brando’s and Dean’s wounded inarticulation; David Thomson wrote that Newman “seems to me an uneasy, self-regarding personality, as if handsomeness had left him guilty.” As Fast Eddie, the talented pool player who lacks the self-esteem, focus and drive to win, Newman’s performance in THE HUSTLER (1961) was his first major critical and popular breakthrough. (It was such an iconic role for the enduring star that he would win his first and only Best Actor Oscar for playing Eddie again in the film’s (AFI no no) 1986 sequel, THE COLOR OF MONEY.) Frequenting dimly lit New York pool halls, captured in moody black-and-white by European cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan (EYES WITHOUT A FACE) and rhythmically edited by Dede Allen (BONNIE AND CLYDE), the film is an absorbing psychological drama that effectively subordinates plot to character exploration. In addition to Newman, the film boasts several other remarkable performances, including the steely George C. Scott as a pitiless gambler and Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats, Eddie’s ultimate adversary; both actors were nominated for Oscars for their memorable contributions.
Fox has struck a new print of the film for this screening. (USA, 1961, 134 mins) |
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| Charlton Heston may be fondly remembered for his larger-than-life personifications of conquering heroes, but in a few striking examples, such as Sam Peckinpah’s MAJOR DUNDEE (1965) and Orson Welles’s TOUCH OF EVIL (1958)—both of which were severely edited against their directors’ wishes, defended by Heston and partially restored in recent years—he proved he was perfectly willing to tackle material that questioned the limits of power. After the wide acclaim of his second feature, RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (1962), Peckinpah envisioned MAJOR DUNDEE as an ambiguous morality play with equal parts John Ford and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962). A Union officer demoted as a prison warden in New Mexico rallies together Confederate prisoners to pursue a marauding Apache in Mexico. With its themes of loyalty, risk and obsession, it seems like a practice run for issues that would preoccupy the director of THE WILD BUNCH (1969) for years to come, and Heston’s iron screen persona deliciously intensifies the film’s ambiguities. After Peckinpah went over budget and was fired, producers cut 20 minutes from the film, and distributors cut another 14. This partial restoration includes 11 minutes unseen for decades and a new score by Christopher Caliendo that’s closer to the filmmaker’s intentions.
(USA, 1965, 134 mins) 35mm |
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| Famously holding the record for the most number of Oscar nominations (nine) that didn’t include Best Picture, Sydney Pollack’s 1969 adaptation of a Depression-era Horace McCoy novel packs a timely punch today in the midst of the financial industry crisis. Jane Fonda plays Gloria, a bitter Dust Bowl evacuee and aspiring actress who enrolls in a Los Angeles dance marathon hoping for fame and fortune. Dance marathons began in the Roaring Twenties but by the time of the Depression attracted masses of unemployed workers and greedy promoters who capitalized on their contestants’ mental and physical exhaustion; marathons could last weeks or months, offering a kind of “reality entertainment” with strict rules that narrowed the survivors. Marathons were symbols of desperate times and a system that treated people like animals. “There can only be one winner, folks,” says one promoter. “But isn’t that the American way?” In films like TOOTSIE (1982) and OUT OF AFRICA (1985), Pollack established a reputation for romanticism, but this earlier effort offers a hard-edged allegory. He claustrophobically traps the viewer within the dance hall, achieving a heightened sense of terror with long tracking shots and handheld cameras.
(USA, 1969, 125 mins) 35mm |
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