Lady in a Cage (Walter Grauman, 1964)

 

Lady in a Cage (Walter Grauman, 1964)

Cast: Olivia de Havilland, James Caan, Jennifer Billingsley, Rafael Campos, William Swan, Jeff Corey, Ann Sothern, Scatman Crothers, Charles Seel. Screenplay: Luther Davis. Cinematography: Lee Garmes. Production design: Rudolph Sternad. Film editing: Leon Barsha. Music: Paul Glass. 

After the success of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962), a cruel and ugly word, “hagsploitation,” was coined to denote a new subgenre in which aging movie stars were cast in films that subjected them to all manner of abuse. The stars were all women, of course. Male movie stars like Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, and Humphrey Bogart were allowed to keep playing tough guys and cowboys and even romantic leads until the end of their careers. But actresses like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Olivia de Havilland were stripped of their glamour in movies like Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Aldrich, 1964) and Lady in a Cage, which bridged the gap between psychological drama and horror movie. Lady in a Cage is a deeply unpleasant movie, with a pervasively nihilistic view of human beings. Its opening scenes, before we even meet our protagonist, Cornelia Hilyard (de Havilland), feature a young girl tormenting an apparently unconscious woman lying on the sidewalk and a shot of traffic swerving around a dead dog in the street. Soon, Cornelia, who is recovering from a broken hip, has sent her coddled son, Malcolm (William Swan), off on a long holiday weekend, only to be trapped by a power failure in the elevator she has installed in the stairwell of her house. She has an alarm bell, but no one hears it except a ragged wino, George Brady (Jeff Corey), who breaks into the house and begins to plunder it with the help of his friend Sade (Ann Sothern). When they visit the fence (Charles Seel), the loot catches the eye of Randall (James Caan) and his cohort, Essie (Rafael Campos) and Elaine (Jennifer Billingsley), a trio of psychopaths. They proceed to make life hell for Cornelia; in addition to looting and destruction they discover a letter that Malcolm has left for Cornelia in which he threatens to kill himself unless she stops coddling and smothering him. Randall takes the opportunity to suggest that Malcolm is gay and that mother and son are incestuous lovers. Mayhem ensues, and the film ends bleakly. And yet it’s a strikingly effective movie, one that feels out of time, anticipating by many years some of the darker films by directors like Lars von Trier and Michael Haneke. 

Dogville (Lars von Trier, 2003)

Nicole Kidman and Zeljko Ivanek in Dogville

Narrator: John Hurt
Grace Margaret Mulligan: Nicole Kidman
Tom Edison: Paul Bettany
Gloria: Harriet Andersson
Ma Ginger: Lauren Bacall
Mrs. Henson: Blair Brown
The Big Man: James Caan
Vera: Patricia Clarkson
Bill Henson: Jeremy Davies
James McKay: Ben Gazzara
Tom Edison Sr.: Philip Baker Hall
Ben: Zeljko Ivanek
Olivia: Cleo King
Liz Henson: Chloë Sevigny
Chuck: Stellan Skarsgård

Director: Lars von Trier
Screenplay: Lars von Trier
Cinematography: Anthony Dod Mantle
Production design: Peter Grant
Film editing: Molly Malene Stensgaard

Lars von Trier's Dogville has weathered an initial critical reaction that dismissed it as "Our Town on downers" to become among his most admired films. But that may be in part because von Trier's life and works have been the focus of so much intense controversy since the film was made, so that Dogville looks like a relatively stable and focused work, especially in comparison with Antichrist (2009), which provoked walkouts at Cannes, and Nymphomaniac (2013), his sexually explicit epic-length film. Von Trier has also been plunged into controversy after joking in an interview that he was a Nazi -- he later apologized and said he was drunk when he made the comment -- and by charges of sexual harassment during the making of his films. He has become something of a latter-day poète maudit, whose defenders are as passionate as his detractors. But Dogville, though overlong and perhaps too show-offily "experimental" in its minimalism, tells a strong story with the help of some gifted performers, particularly Nicole Kidman, who gives one of the best performances of a remarkable career in the role of Grace, the gangster's daughter who winds up being abused by and then destroying the titular town. Some of the criticism initially directed at Dogville centered on its supposed "anti-Americanism," which seems to me wrong-headed. Is the barely masked greed and hypocrisy of Dogville's inhabitants indigenous to America? Is its portrayal of the dark side of frontier village life any more an indictment of America than that of the town of Presbyterian Church in Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), a film that I've never heard called anti-American? And anyway, there's nothing more American than the freedom and willingness to criticize America. Why not extend that freedom to Danish filmmakers, too?

El Dorado (Howard Hawks, 1967)

James Caan, Robert Mitchum, Arthur Hunnicutt, and John Wayne in El Dorado 

Cole Thornton: John Wayne
J.P. Harrah: Robert Mitchum
Mississippi: James Caan
Bull: Arthur Hunnicutt
Maudie: Charlene Holt
Dr. Miller: Paul Fix
Josephine (Joey) MacDonald: Michele Carey
Bart Jason: Edward Asner
Neise McLeod: Christopher George
Kevin MacDonald: R.G. Armstrong
Luke MacDonald: Johnny Crawford

Director: Howard Hawks
Screenplay: Leigh Brackett
Based on a novel by Harry Brown
Cinematography: Harold Rosson
Art direction: Carl Anderson, Hal Pereira
Film editing: John Woodcock
Music: Nelson Riddle

Like his later Rio Lobo (1970), Howard Hawks's El Dorado isn't so much a remake of his Rio Bravo (1959) as a movie built on its template: Gunfighter John Wayne teams up with a drunken sheriff, a greenhorn, and an old coot to stand off an assault by the bad guys, who greatly outnumber them. Wayne retains his earlier role in El Dorado, but here the drunken sheriff is Robert Mitchum, the greenhorn is James Caan, and the old coot is Arthur Hunnicutt, replacing Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, and Walter Brennan, respectively, in the earlier film. Unfortunately, Hawks was unable to find a suitable replacement for Angie Dickinson's Feathers, the "Hawksian woman" in Rio Bravo, and tried without much success to sub in two C-list actresses, Charlene Holt as Maudie, the woman with a past that involves both Wayne and Mitchum, and Michele Carey as the hoydenish Joey. Neither makes the impression that Dickinson made. Leigh Brackett was disappointed to find that Hawks had turned her screenplay into a reworking of Rio Bravo, but she was used to his freewheeling ways by then, having worked for him on The Big Sleep (1946) and Hatari! (1962). There are diminishing returns to any kind of remake, and by the time Hawks made Rio Lobo, the template had worn thin, but El Dorado is solid enough entertainment, especially when Wayne and Mitchum are on screen together, playing off of each other gleefully. Except for the rather hackneyed "El Dorado" theme song over the opening credits, with its by-the-numbers lyrics by John Gabriel, Nelson Riddle's score is a pleasant surprise in its avoidance of Western movie clichés -- no cowboy songs or "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie." The one sour note in the movie comes when Caan puts on a racial-caricature "Chinaman" act to get the jump on a lurking gunman.

Bottle Rocket (Wes Anderson, 1996)

A little whimsy goes a long way, but too much is a bad thing if it turns terminally twee. The unique sensibility of Wes Anderson has kept it going for 20 years now, culminating in the best picture and best director nominations for The Grand Budapest Hotel (Anderson, 2012). Though Bottle Rocket was a box office flop, it was an auspicious debut for Anderson, as well as for its then-unknown stars, Luke and Owen Wilson. (The latter also co-wrote the screenplay with Anderson.) Bottle Rocket inevitably became a cult film, building on what seems like a sly parody of Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992) mixed with a bit of Coen brothers tongue-in-cheekery. All that it lacks is Bill Murray -- it's the only Anderson film in which he doesn't appear -- but his special above-it-all manner is aptly supplied in Bottle Rocket by James Caan. Anyone coming to this movie in search of characters with fully fleshed-out backstories -- like, why was Anthony (Luke Wilson) suffering from the "exhaustion" that led him to commit himself to the posh, low-security mental institution from which he "escapes" at the movie's beginning? -- is going to be sadly disappointed. The effect is more shaggy-dog than Reservoir Dogs. It's a film that features among other things, a heist on that least likely of targets, a book store, and probably the most thoroughly planned and ineptly executed robbery ever put on film. It's also one of those movies that are perhaps even funnier when you try to remember them afterward and figure out what the hell you just watched.