The Three Faces of Eve (Nunnally Johnson, 1957)

The Three Faces of Eve (Nunnally Johnson, 1957)

Cast: Joanne Woodward, David Wayne, Lee J. Cobb, Edwin Jerome, Alena Murray, Nancy Kulp, Douglas Spencer, Terry Ann Ross, Ken Scott, Mimi Gibson, Alistair Cooke. Screenplay: Nunnally Johnson, based on a book by Corbett Thigpen and Hervey M. Cleckley. Cinematography: Stanley Cortez. Art direction: Herman A. Blumenthal, Lyle R. Wheeler. Film editing: Marjorie Fowler. Music: Robert Emmett Dolan.

When cases of what was then called "multiple personality disorder" were first diagnosed and made known to the public, it was a godsend to actors, who could then show off their skills in three-or-more-in-one roles. Playing "Eve White," "Eve Black," and "Jane" in The Three Faces of Eve launched Joanne Woodward's film career and won her a best actress Oscar. Later, it would give Sally Field a chance to play more than a dozen characters in the TV movie Sibyl (Daniel Petrie, 1976), earning her an Emmy and helping her break out of the "manic pixie dream girl" type that she had been stuck in after the TV series Gidget and The Flying Nun. (Sibyl's producers also indulged in the stunt-casting of Woodward as Sibyl's psychiatrist.) Today the disorder is more usually known as "dissociative identity," and it still stirs controversy in psychoanalytic circles, with some questioning whether it really arises from childhood trauma like the ones portrayed in The Three Faces of Eve and Sibyl, and even if it might be induced by the psychiatrist's own techniques in treating patients. That is to say, despite the attempts -- which include a sober-faced introduction in which Alistair Cooke solemnly asserts that the film is a "true story" -- by The Three Faces of Eve to present its narrative as a sort of docudrama, the movie needs to be met with a lot of skepticism. That doesn't deny, of course, that Woodward gives a terrific performance, carefully segueing from one Eve to another and eventually to Jane. And I liked Stanley Cortez's manipulation of shadows in filming the story -- though it's not a movie that needed to be in CinemaScope, always something of a distraction in black-and-white. But what may make Woodward's performance stand out even more is its contrast with the hamming of David Wayne as Eve's violent hick husband, a man almost as much in need of a shrink as she is. And Lee J. Cobb is uncommonly bullying as Eve's doctor, constantly sucking on a cigar as if invoking Sigmund Freud. We have a happy ending, of course, despite the fact that the real "Eve," Christine Costner Sizemore, led an anxious and troubled later life, at one point suing 20th Century Fox over a contract that deprived her of the rights to her own story.

The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)

Linda Blair, Max von Sydow, and Jason Miller in The Exorcist

Chris McNeil: Ellen Burstyn
Father Damien Karras: Jason Miller
Regan McNeil: Linda Blair
Father Merrin: Max von Sydow
Lt. William Kinderman: Lee J. Cobb
Sharon: Kitty Winn
Burke Dennings: Jack MacGowran
Father Dyer: William O'Malley
Karl: Rudolf Schündler
Willi: Gina Petrushka
Karras's Mother: Vasiliki Maliaros
Demon's Voice: Mercedes McCambridge

Director: William Friedkin
Screenplay: William Peter Blatty
Based on a novel by William Peter Blatty
Cinematography: Owen Roizman
Production design: Bill Malley
Film editing: Norman Gay, Evan A. Lottman
Makeup: Dick Smith

From classic to claptrap, that's pretty much the range of critical opinion about The Exorcist. I tend toward the latter end of the spectrum, feeling that the novelty of the film has worn off over the 45 years of its existence, revealing a pretty threadbare and sometimes offensive premise. It was at the time a kind of breakthrough in the liberation from censorship that marked so much of American filmmaking in the early 1970s. Audiences gasped when Linda Blair growled "Your mother sucks cocks in hell" with Mercedes McCambridge's voice. Today it's little more than playground potty-mouth behavior. The pea soup-spewing and head spinning now draw laughs when they once had people fainting in the aisles. We can argue that there was something noble about those more innocent times, and that we've lost something valuable in an age when the president of the United States can brag about pussy-grabbing and denounce shithole countries and still retain the loyalty and admiration of a third of Americans. But isn't it also true that the move from a horror film based on religious superstition to a horror film like Jordan Peele's Get Out, nominated like The Exorcist for a best picture Oscar, represents an improvement in our taste in movies? Get Out at least has a keenly satiric take on something essential: our racial attitudes. The Exorcist makes no statement about the value of religious faith, unless it's to suggest that it's based on a desire to scare us into believing. To my eyes, The Exorcist is slick but ramshackle: William Peter Blatty's Oscar-winning screenplay never makes a clear connection between Regan's possession and Father Merrin's archaeological dig in Iraq. (The opening scenes of the film were actually shot in the environs of Mosul, which today has succumbed to a different kind of evil.) There are some scenes that make little sense: What's going on when the drunken film director taunts Chris's servant Karl with being a Nazi? What's the point of introducing the detective played by Lee J. Cobb with his usual self-absorption? Some of the plot devices, such as Father Karras's guilt over his mother's death, are pure cliché. And who the hell names a daughter Regan? Was Chris hoping for another kid she could name Goneril? For thousands of moviegoers, however, these objections are nitpicky. For me the flaws are the only thing that remain interesting about The Exorcist.  

On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)

While not the masterpiece that it was once thought to be, On the Waterfront has held up in spite of the charges that director Elia Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg made it into an apologia for informing -- as both of them did when they appeared as "friendly witnesses" before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and in spite of the fact that its once-praised "grittiness" has been surpassed in the era after the Production Code ceased to hold its grip on Hollywood filmmakers. What it has going for it is the Oscar-winning performance of Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy, even though Brando can't quite overcome some of the inconsistencies in the script: Is Terry a punch-drunk, self-pitying "bum" or just an average guy who, after knuckling under to pressure, rises to heroism? Eva Marie Saint, also an Oscar-winner in her debut picture, and Rod Steiger, also shine. Less convincing are the scenery-chewing Lee J. Cobb as the mob boss Johnny Friendly and Karl Malden as the two-fisted Father Barry, a character that almost seems designed to please the Catholic-dominated Breen office. Richard Day won a well-deserved seventh Oscar for his art direction, and Boris Kaufman's cinematography also took an award. Leonard Bernstein's only original score for the movies was nominated, but didn't win. An uncredited contribution to the film was made by James Wong Howe, who was called on for some shots that Kazan felt necessary after production had finished. In the concluding scene, in which Terry Malloy, having been savagely beaten, struggles to walk toward the warehouse, Kazan wanted a point-of-view shot that would show how difficult it was for Terry to make the walk: Howe gave the cameraman a hand-held camera, then spun him around to make him dizzy, so he couldn't walk straight. Editor Gene Milford, another of the film's Oscar winners, then cut the unsteady point-of-view shot into Kaufman's shots of Terry walking toward the warehouse.