Husbands (John Cassavetes, 1970)

 

Cast: Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk, John Cassavetes, Jenny Runacre, Jenny Lee Wright, Noelle Kao, John Cullers, Meta Shaw Stevens, Leola Harlow, Delores Delmar, Eleanor Zee, Claire Mallis, Peggy Lashbrook. Screenplay: John Cassavetes. Cinematography: Victor J. Kemper. Film editing: John Cassavetes.

There are those who think Husbands is a masterpiece and those who think it’s a self-indulgent mess. While I incline to the latter opinion, I’m willing to hear what those who admire it have to say. Cassavetes is a favorite of those who admire his uncompromising individuality as a filmmaker, and he never displayed it more thoroughly than in Husbands. He compiled months of raw footage shot in New York and London, which he then submitted to an editor, who made what previewers though was a superbly commercial comedy about suburban husbands on a spree. But that wasn’t what Cassavetes wanted, so he took the footage back and edited it into a wholly idiosyncratic film with flashes of comedy but extended scenes of pain. It opens with still photographs, snapshots of some family gathering attended by four buddies: Harry (Ben Gazzara), Archie (Peter Falk), Gus (Cassavetes), and Stuart (David Rowlands). But Stuart appears in the fim only in these photos because he’s dead: The actual movie starts with his funeral, after which Harry, Archie, and Gus express their grief by going on an extended bender, which eventually winds up with the three carousing with any women they can pick up in a London hotel. I can see what Cassavetes is up to with the film: a searching look at the 14-year-old boy in every middle-aged man. And I have to admit that it works. But is it a satisfactory movie? Why do scenes like the beer-sodden song contest in a bar, and the consequent vomiting scene in the bar’s men’s room go on so long? Does Cassavetes not trust the viewer to get the message? Admirers of the film argue that this is exactly the point: the message is in the experience of enduring these and other scenes. We squirm in our seats because Cassavetes wants us to. But is that art or torture? 

Pressure Point (Hubert Cornfield, 1962)

Bobby Darin and Sidney Poitier in Pressure Point

Cast: Sidney Poitier, Bobby Darin, Peter Falk, Carl Benton Reid, Mary Munday, Howard Caine, Gilbert Green, Barry Gordon, Richard Bakalayan, Lynn Loring, Anne Barton. Screenplay: Hubert Cornfield, S. Lee Pogostin, based on a story by Robert M. Lindner. Cinematography: Ernest Haller. Production design: Rudolph Sternad. Film editing: Frederic Knudtson. Music: Ernest Gold. 

Stanley Kramer was a producer best known for "message movies," films aimed at the soft heart of the liberal consensus. Though in his heyday, Kramer's movies were often labeled "controversial," their point of view was rarely more than demonstrations that tolerance was good, prejudice bad. He also directed some of his most famous films, like The Defiant Ones (1958), On the Beach (1959), Inherit the Wind (1960), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967). And although he handed over the task of directing Pressure Point to a little-known second-stringer, Hubert Cornfield, it's widely assumed that Kramer also directed much of the film. It was not a box office success. Seen today, it feels more like a TV drama of the era, despite excellent cinematography by Ernest Haller, a nervous score by Ernest Gold, a commanding performance by Sidney Poitier and an incisive one by Bobby Darin. But it also feels like it's taking place in a world that never was: one in which, in 1942, a Black man could be a prison psychiatrist, treating a patient who was arrested on a charge of sedition, for being a member of the pro-Nazi organization the German-American Bund. Poitier's character, known only as "Doctor," is trying to help Darin's "Patient" with the problems he has sleeping. Naturally, this leads to the Nazi Patient taunting the Doctor with his racist beliefs. But when he cures the Patient of insomnia by having him face up to childhood trauma involving his abusive father and clinging mother, the Doctor wants to go further: to treat the Patient's racism as a mental disease. Even Sidney Poitier, at the peak of his "Magical Negro" persona, can't make that turn credible. Still, Pressure Point almost overcomes the artificiality of its story, the simplistic look at psychoanalysis, and the falsification of race relations in the 1940s, thanks to some intense acting. There's a completely gratuitous frame story set in the period when the movie was made, in which the older Doctor (Poitier with artfully grayed hair) counsels a young psychiatrist played by Peter Falk not to give up on his treatment of an especially frustrating patient by telling the story of his experience with the Nazi Patient. Unnecessary at it is, the frame -- like the rest of the movie -- is made watchable by the rapport of the actors.  

Mikey and Nicky (Elaine May, 1976)

John Cassavetes and Peter Falk in Mikey and Nicky

Cast: Peter Falk, John Cassavetes, Ned Beatty, Rose Arrick, Carol Grace, William Hickey, Sanford Meisner, Joyce Van Patten, M. Emmet Walsh. Screenplay: Elaine May. Cinematography: Bernie Abramson, Lucien Ballard, Jack Cooperman. Production design: Paul Sylbert. Film editing: John Carter, Sheldon Kahn. Music: John Strauss.

"I came as soon as I got your towel." That line, spoken by Mikey (Peter Falk) to Nicky (John Cassavetes) after the latter has thrown a bottle and a towel out of his hotel room window to get the former's attention, has an Elaine May ring to it. It's followed by a sardonic in-joke when Mikey chides Nicky for throwing the bottle because the broken glass could have put his eye out. (Falk lost an eye to cancer when he was 3.) The scene feels like a set-up for a comedy of rude manners, which Mikey and Nicky could well have become. But because May famously let the two great improvisatory actors have their head -- resulting in a shoot notorious for going way over budget and consuming reels upon reels of film -- the movie is a raucous, bittersweet tragicomedy about two old friends who have found themselves mobbed up beyond their control. Nicky, when we meet him, is a gibbering nervous wreck, so paranoid about being the target of a mob hit that he can't trust Mikey, even though he has called him to his aid. This time, the paranoia is justified: Mikey, it turns out, is in touch with the hit man, Kinney (Ned Beatty). But even the hit man is paranoid, fearful that he'll be the target next if he botches the hit on Nicky. And so goes this jittery one-of-a-kind movie, which is a kind of tribute to the movies Cassavetes directed himself. (Stories have it that he did direct some scenes.) I'm generally on the fence about Cassavetes's work, feeling that improvisation is a hit-or-miss way to make a serious movie: The misses seriously undermine the hits. Still, the energy generated by Falk and Cassavetes in Mikey and Nicky is potent and irresistible. The film is almost a two-hander, with the supporting cast, even Beatty, good as he is, serving as objects for the two leads to bounce off of. I can wish that May had exerted more control over her film -- she almost lost complete control of it to an uncomprehending studio -- but I also admit that I couldn't stop watching it.

The Princess Bride (Rob Reiner, 1987)

Fred Savage and Peter Falk in The Princess Bride

Westley: Cary Elwes
Buttercup: Robin Wright
Inigo Montoya: Mandy Patinkin
Prince Humperdinck: Chris Sarandon
Count Rugen: Christopher Guest
Vizzini: Wallace Shawn
Fezzik: André the Giant
Grandson: Fred Savage
Grandfather: Peter Falk
The Impressive Clergyman: Peter Cook
The Albino: Mel Smith
Miracle Max: Billy Crystal
Valerie: Carol Kane

Director: Rob Reiner
Screenplay: William Goldman
Based on a novel by William Goldman
Cinematography: Adrian Biddle
Production design: Norman Garwood
Film editing: Robert Leighton
Music: Mark Knopfler

Screenwriter William Goldman's death happened just a day or two after I watched The Princess Bride, and the film was mentioned in almost all of the newspaper articles about his life and career, on a par with the two movies that won him Oscars for screenwriting, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill, 1969) and All the President's Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976). But when it was released, The Princess Bride was something of a box office flop and got no attention from the Oscars. It has since become one of many people's most-loved movies, a beneficiary of its availability on home video. Countless parents who skipped it when it was in the theaters rented it for their kids and wound up watching it, too. Its huge success has been attributed to Rob Reiner's breezy direction, to the attractiveness of its cast, and to its immense quotability: Almost no one today utters the word "inconceivable" without expecting someone to reply, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." But most of all, The Princess Bride works because it's a celebration of storytelling, a reminder of the kind of transformation that a well-told story can bring about, the way the grandson in the film's frame story comes to regard his grandfather as more than an unwelcome cheek-pincher, and a "kissing book" can have unexpected rewards, especially since, as the boy puts it, "Murdered by pirates is good." Some unique chemistry of writing, acting, and directing has made The Princess Bride the classic of a subgenre, the spoofy movie, which has almost been played out by its imitators.

A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes, 1974)

Eddie Shaw, Peter Falk, and Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence

Mabel Longhetti: Gena Rowlands
Nick Longhetti: Peter Falk
Martha Mortensen: Lady Rowlands
George Mortensen: Fred Draper
Margaret Longhetti: Katherine Cassavetes
Angelo Longhetti: Matthew Labyorteaux
Tony Longhetti: Matthew Cassel
Maria Longhetti: Christina Grisanti
Garson Cross: George Dunn
Harold Jensen: Mario Gallo
Dr. Zepp: Eddie Shaw

Director: John Cassavetes
Screenplay: John Cassavetes
Cinematography: Mitch Breit, Al Ruban
Film editing: David Armstrong, Sheila Viseltear

John Cassavetes's A Woman Under the Influence was one of the first films I reviewed during my brief career as a professional film critic. I didn't like it much, and I compared it unfavorably to another film that had recently been released, the theatrical version of Ingmar Bergman's Scenes From a Marriage (1973). I have changed somewhat over the years, and while I still greatly prefer the Bergman film, I have developed an appreciation for what Cassavetes was trying to do. Presenting raw, unfiltered life in a fiction film is no mean task, and it helps greatly that, in Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk, Cassavetes had actors who were more than capable of giving their all to the task. The problem for me is that the film comes off as an acting showcase rather than a convincing depiction of a real situation. Cassavetes takes his players and puts them in real surroundings: a construction site, a wintry beach, a rather louche bar, and most of all a cramped house. It's somewhat like the reverse of Marianne Moore's "imaginary gardens with real toads": In A Woman Under the Influence the gardens are real, if rather weedy and untended, but the toads -- Mabel and Nick Longhetti and their children and in-laws and friends -- are imaginary, i.e., actors acting up a storm. The title is a little misleading, too. Mabel is not "a woman," in the sense of a stand-in for all womankind, but a specific person of peculiar habits, and she is not "under the influence" in the sense that we use it in the phrase abbreviated as DUI. Her problem is not drugs or alcohol, although she certainly gets loaded on the latter and there are hints that she has been taking pills (probably prescribed by the odious Dr. Zepp). Her problem is the influence of other people, especially her husband, who give mixed signals about how she should behave: Sometimes she's told "just be yourself," but when Mabel is most Mabel -- giddy and affectionate and generous -- she can't help crossing the invisible boundaries others set for her. And of course her husband, Nick, is as crazy as she is, except in a different way, and he has outlets -- his job and his buddies -- that allow him to blow off much of his steam. Mabel's only outlet is her children, who adore her, and that proves threatening to people like her mother-in-law (in an extraordinary performance by the director's mother, Katherine Cassavetes), who have their own fixed and unalterable ideas about child-raising. Ironically, Mabel's encouraging the kids to dance and play dress-up are much healthier than Nick's bullying them at the beach and letting them drink beer while riding in the back of a truck. I still don't think A Woman Under the Influence is a great film, as critics like Roger Ebert and Kent Jones do. I'm not sure it's even a good one. But it's an important and even fascinating one and I'll let it go at that.

Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1987)

Angels are usually a tiresome element in movies. I loathe the stickiness of the way they're conceived in movies like It's a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946), and even actors of the caliber of Cary Grant and Denzel Washington can't do much with playing them in films like The Bishop's Wife (Henry Koster, 1947) and its remake, The Preacher's Wife (Penny Marshall, 1996). Maybe it's because I subscribe to Rilke's dictum, Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich -- every angel is terrible. Only a filmmaker of genius like Wim Wenders can transcend the essential cheesiness of their presence in a plot -- a cheesiness that lingers in the American remake of Wings of Desire, City of Angels (Brad Silberberg, 1988). The idea that there are angels watching over our lives, reading our thoughts, but unseen except by other angels and sometimes by children, is not a very original one. But what distinguishes the working out of this idea by Wenders and scenarists Peter Handke and Richard Reitlinger is the empathetic approach to them as beings who have been around since Creation, watching the course of humankind and unable to alter it, and occasionally so moved by what they see that they choose to give up immortality and become human. And that these angels have a specific territory to cover, in this case the city of Berlin, a nexus of human cruelty and human suffering. Even so, the concept could easily slip into banality without the blend of humor and melancholy that Wenders brings to it, without performers of the caliber of Bruno Ganz and Otto Sander as the angels Damiel and Cassiel, and without the poetic cinematography of Henri Alekan. It was also an inspired choice to cast Peter Falk as himself, an actor shooting a movie set in the Nazi era who is often stopped on the Berlin streets by people who know him as Columbo, the detective he played on television. It's also a witty touch to have Falk turn out to be an ex-angel, able to sense but not see the presence of Damiel and Cassiel. In many ways, however, the real star of the film is the city of Berlin itself -- although Wenders was prevented from shooting in the eastern sector of the city, he uses the Wall as a kind of correlative to the division between angels and humans. Almost everything works in the film, including the shifts from monochrome (the angels' point of view) to color (the humans'), the shabby little bankrupt circus whose star (Solveig Dommartin) Damiel literally falls for, and the score by Jürgen Knieper. I'm not hip enough to appreciate Nick Cave's songs, but their melancholy eccentricity is an essential part of the texture of the film.