Hal Ashby's Harold and Maude (1971)

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Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein (1974)

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Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones' Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

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Édouard Molinaro's La Cage aux Folles (1978)

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Mel Stuart's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

Film Club’s theme for Movie Night this year is “originals.” That is, movies that were later remade into versions that, for younger viewers, have become more familiar then first. For example, raise your hand if you’ve seen both Peter Jackson's King Kong AND the original King Kong from 1933 or the Coen Brothers' Academy Award-winning True Grit AND the original True Grit from 1969 (with John Wayne). We were pretty intrigued by the idea of seeing these classics. What major differences would emerge? Would technology, or culture, or narrative be the most re-worked element? What made the original so entertaining or flawed that film-makers were compelled to make another one? And the more we talked about it, the more I got the sense that we were chalking this cannibalization of movie stories up to a typical Hollywood maneuver, one usually have to do with economics.

But it’s not. Telling stories, repeating them, adapting them, changing them, blending them with other stories – this is what we humans do, and we’ve done it for millennia. For example, Shakespeare’s plays are reworked versions of older stories. All three of the major Greek tragedians tell versions of the Orestes and Electra myth within a few decades of each other. More recently, Rick Riordan has been updating Greek myths for new readers. We love familiar stories, and we love to hear them with new twists. And sometimes because we love them, we want a small piece that makes us uncomfortable to be changed, so we can go on loving them.

In a trivial example of this, in 2005, HarperCollins, the publisher of the children's classic Goodnight Moon, decided to remove, from a picture that had long adorned the back of the book, the cigarette from illustrator Clement Hurd's fingers, using the magic of PhotoShop. "It [was] potentially a harmful message to very young kids," publisher Kate Jackson told the New York Times at the time. A significant outcry against changing what amounted to a historical document forced HarperCollins to reconsider.

So it may or may not surprise you to find out that there are two versions, an original and a revised, of Roald Dahl’s children’s book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, from which tonight’s movie, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, comes. The change is a small one, but it’s significant. And it has to do with the Oompa-Loompas, those endearing little people who live and work in Willy Wonka’s famous chocolate factory. Dahl published his book, originally, in 1964. The introduction and description of the Oompa-Loompas goes like this:

Children and parents alike rushed down to the edge of the river to get a close look.
“Aren’t they fantastic!”
"No higher than my knee!"
“Their skin is almost black.” 

At this point there is some incredulity about their size. Mike Teavee doesn’t believe any real person could be so small. And Mr. Wonka points out that the Oompa-Loompas are, in fact, pygmies (as in Faith Jacques original illustrations):

Pygmies they are! Imported direct form Africa! They belong to a tribe of tiny miniature pygmies known as the Oompa-Loompas. I discovered them myself. I brought them over from Africa myself -- the whole tribe of them, three thousand in all. I found them in the very deepest and darkest part of the African jungle where no white man had ever been before. They were living in tree-houses. They had to live in tree houses, otherwise, being so small, they would have been gobbled up by every animal in the jungle. And when I found them, they were practically starving to death. ... Poor little Oompa-Loompas!

When Mel Stuart began work on the film version that you’re watching tonight, there was some concern about controversial issues. If you read the passages that follow the original description of the pygmies, you’ll notice right away the stereotypes that have become associated with racist or imperialist imagery: A culture of struggling little natives rescued by a benevolent (white) European, easily adapted to entertainment (“They love singing and dancing. They are always making up songs”), still retaining elements of its "primitivism" ("they still wear the same kind of clothes they wore in the jungle  ... the women wear leaves, and the children wear nothing at all"), and who seem to have no problem with their indenture in a factory.

The studio wanted to ensure that the film was enjoyed by all and, as you will notice, they eliminated the pygmy look and replaced it with the now-distinctive orange and green Oompa-Loompa. Dahl followed suit in a revision of the book in 1974. The passages quoted above were replaced. Instead of Africa, the Oompa-Loompas now came from “Loompaland,” the existence of which is denied by Mrs. Salt. Mr. Wonka begs to differ and retorts:

What a terrible country it is! Nothing but thick jungles infested by the most dangerous beasts in the entire world – hornswogglers and snozzwangers and those terrible wicked whangdoodles. A whangdoodle would eat ten Oompa-Loompas for breakfast and come galloping back for a second helping. When I went out there I found the little Oompa-Loompas living in tree-houses.

The fantasy tone of the revised version echoes the fantasy of a magic chocolate factory, and few people challenged the changes. As revised fantasy Loompalanders, we’re less likely to criticize this depiction, which is retained in the revision, and echoed in Quentin Blake's 1998 illustrations for the book (right). Dahl explained the change this way:

"I created a group of little fantasy creatures ... I saw them as charming creatures, whereas the white kids in the books were ... most unpleasant. It didn't occur to me that my depiction of the Oompa-Loompas was racist, but it did occur to the NAACP and others ... After listening to the criticisms, I found myself sympathizing with them, which is why I revised the book."

This is not to say that Dahl is a racist, or that remakes and revisions exist to correct errors or weaknesses of the past. Dahl came from a time and a place still recovering from an intensely imperial (and imperialistic) past.

And that’s an interesting thing about originals – the window they open to earlier cultures. We get to look at a familiar story, but reflect on the unique way in which the story is told. You’re watching a movie tonight, one with orange Oompa-Loompas and a Willy Wonka definitely not played by Johnny Depp but by Gene Wilder. What elements of 1960s culture do you see built into the story? What elements stay the same? Whatever you notice, you’ll enjoy the riotous, sarcastic, deadpan entertainment of this version of Dahl’s story.

R. Findlay
Film Club adviser

Allan Arkush's Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979)

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George Lucas's American Graffiti (1973)

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Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976)

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Jim Sharman's The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

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Volker Schlöndorff's The Tin Drum (1979)

Everybody who sees Volker Schlondorff’s film Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum) should have an opinion on whether it should be shown at school. You might be glad that Film Club has the freedom to show risqué movies, or you might be shocked that they would, or you may even be upset that the school supports to its showing. Even if the fact that SPA is showing The Tin Drum doesn’t shock you, the movie very well might. It’s groundbreaking, dark and somewhat comedic, and very surrealist. It is also graphically suggestive. (Unless that’s an oxymoron. Hey, it’s surrealism.)

The film’s sexuality earned it enormous controversy when it came out in 1979, and controversy over controversy, on into the 1990s. The state of Ontario banned it as child pornography. Later on, an activist group in Oklahoma County asked their library system to remove their copy of the movie. When they refused, the group showed a single scene from the movie to a judge. Through a snowball effect, he not only blocked the movie from the library, but deemed showing it illegal. Tapes of the movie were confiscated, and police demanded the names of people renting the movie from Blockbuster outlets so those films could be confiscated as well.

Thankfully, the American Civil Liberties Union heard about the case. They filed suit, saying that the seizure of videos violated first, fourth, and fourteenth amendment rights. In the end, the film was re-legalized.

Among film critics, the film is considered a classic. It received the top prize at the famed Cannes Film Festival – the Palme d’Or, a mark of distinction for films as unusual as The Tin Drum. It also won an Academy Award (Best Foreign Language Film), an award rarely given to a film as dark or strange as The Tin Drum.

In fact, there are rarely films as dark or strange as The Tin Drum. It’s cited as a landmark of the terrifying type of movie that takes you way out of your comfort zone in the name of art. Premiere Magazine calls this type of film a “Dangerous Movie” – a movie which “puts square in your face all of the things Hollywood usually presumes you go to the movies to get away from.” Their examples of “dangerous movies” include Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, and Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave classic Weekend. It’s great that we live in a nation with not just the artistic freedom to make bizarre and shocking movies, but one with people willing to see them.

Noah Shavit-Lonstein
Film Club

David Lynch's Eraserhead (1976)

David Lynch finds horror in unlikely places. We were going to write about his being a difficult-to-categorize director, but then it occurred to us – he directs horror films. But not the kind you’re used to, not slasher pics like Friday the 13th or monster movies like The Host or fantasy horror like The Howling or psycho scary films like The Grudge or The Cell. No, we’d put Lynch in more of the existential horror mode.

Take a movie like Blue Velvet for example. In the opening scene, the camera moves in slowly on an idyllic suburban setting: cute little house, white picket fence, green lawn. The camera keeps getting closer and closer, moving down to ground level, then into the grass, then into the dirt. Where we find creepy crawly things. And a severed ear.

Yeccchh. The scene works as a good metaphor for Lynch’s early work, that beneath the seemingly benign or pleasant exterior there is a seedy, seething corrupt creepiness, that we find this creepiness more horrifying because it exists not just next to but inextricable from the ordinary. We see it in the overdone, psychotic makeup that Diane Lane wears in Wild at Heart. We see it in Dennis Hopper sucking pure oxygen in order to amp himself up to do something evil in Blue Velvet. We see it in the endless revelations of unexpected corruption in the TV-show Twin Peaks. And we see it the whole vision that is Eraserhead.

Lynch has been asked, many times, what Eraserhead is about, or what inspired it, or just “what the heck?” His answers are frequently elliptical or philosophical or oblique, never straightforward or concrete. Eraserhead is like one of those pointillist paintings, where you have to step back from it a bit to get a clear picture of what it represents. In this movie you’ll see a young man and his wife. They have a baby. What could be more ordinary than that? The stress of their relationship drives the woman away, leaving the man to take care of their baby. Okay, that’s basic conflict and good substance for a film. But if you’ve never seen Eraserhead, then what you’re imagining right now as you try to picture the film is nothing like what you’re going to see. That’s why critics tend toward the word “surreal.”

But it’s more than that. It’s horror. Lynch’s movie makes visual the terror we suppress not just in difficult situations like the one in the film, but in every moment of our daily lives. He suggests that we live in a nightmarish world, and the normalcy is just the clown make-up we plaster over it to feel safe.

As Lynch got older (he made Eraserhead, his first feature-length film, when he was 31), he moved away from the rawness and near avant-garde feel of this film. Now his movies feel more packaged, more polished. In some ways that has only enhanced his message, although movies like Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire are far more than just existential horror films. He’s pushed his work into other genres, like the thriller, and turned up the psychological volume a bit, bringing his films closer to a world we recognize and acknowledging his audience’s lust for conventional entertainment forms.

As you watch Eraserhead, enjoy its weirdness, its vision of psychic turmoil, and rest easy in the knowledge that some day, when you’re at a party, and someone asks “what’s the strangest thing you’ve ever seen?”, you’ll have a ready answer. And on that other day, when life is beginning to grind you down, and your perfect life is bending under the strain of finals, or your job, or bills, or those goons who’ve threatened to break your knee caps, you’ll have an apt visual image for the pressure you feel – it’s like someone’s putting your head into a pencil sharpener.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser

L. Q. Jones' A Boy and His Dog (1975)

Despite a certain amount of sex and violence, L. Q. Jones’ A Boy and His Dog is more like Road Warrior lite than a direct American counterpart to George Miller’s brutal Australian post-apocalyptic warning, which may be why the latter is better known (although one might also cite the nascent superstardom of Road Warrior’s Mel Gibson). In both movies, civilization is but a vestige of its former self and so humans are reduced to scavenging, scrabbling to eke out a minimal existence in a desert-like wasteland. Where Miller’s Road Warrior focused on the centrality of gasoline, the absence of which reduces most humans to sub-human sadists, A Boy and His Dog takes a more whimsical, general view – the movie explores more the question of daily survival than the threat humans pose each other when the social fabric has been shredded. Vic (Don Johnson) wants only food and the occasional female companionship to maintain his sense of quality existence.

In fact, if there’s a theme to A Boy and His Dog, it’s companionship. Jones juxtaposes two modern and common kinds, emphasizing them by their near-necessity in the post-civilized world: the companionship we feel with our pets (here represented by dogs who can telepathically communicate with their human counterparts) and the companionship we seek through mating (that’s right, sex and propagation of the species). In the end, A Boy and His Dog actually argues that one kind of companionship outweighs the other, but before we get to that, let’s consider the subtext. The script, from an original story by the fabulous science fiction writer Harlan Ellison, tells us that, when the world is destroyed, our greatest fear will be loneliness, a much gentler moral than those suggested by the nuclear-winter-and-cannibals hopelessness of John Hillcoat’s The Road (from Cormac McCarthy’s novel), the steroidal butchering motorcycle gangs of Miller’s The Road Warrior, the viral holocaust of Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, or the genocidal irony of Schaffner’s Planet of the Apes (from Pierre Boulle’s novel).

Is Jones that naïve or have our tastes merely conflated the allegorical nature of the post-apocalyptic story with our lust for horror films? (That’s a real question: discuss it amongst yourselves for a few minutes.)

One answer may come from that fact that this film, at times, has its tongue firmly in its cheek. We’ve included it in our collection of “post-apocalyptic visions,” but another way to look at A Boy and His Dog is as a cinematic shaggy dog story. Not that it’s about Blood, but that it contains a lengthy build-up to a rather sophomoric, somewhat disconcerting gag. We won’t give it away, but it may leave you wondering whether you were really meant to take the rest of the film seriously after all.

We hope you do. Ellison/Jones see their future world divided into a pair of communities not unlike those we found in the Boulle/Schaffner Planet of the Apes film – one group on the surface of the planet adapting to hardships in a remade world and one group beneath the surface, desperately trying to retain the vestiges of a passing civilization. One asks oneself, which is the more viable approach? Which the more desirable? And isn’t it better to avoid the whole choice in the first place and try to keep the world we have intact?

And if we can’t, will mere companionship make the new world palatable? (Consider what drives Viggo Mortensen on in The Road.) So now you get to choose: the dog or the human? Which will it be? Maybe you can discuss it with the person who came to the film with you while you have a bite to eat.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser

Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977)

In 1977 Woody Allen directed Annie Hall, winning four Academy Awards and over thousands of fans across the world. Annie Hall is a romantic comedy involving Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) and Annie Hall (Diane Keaton). Allen, who both acts and directs, produced many successful films prior to Annie Hall yet the 1977 romantic comedy is arguably his best. Allen followed this success with Manhattan (1979) and other films such as Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), which won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Allen’s success continued into the 21st century with his film Match Point’s nomination for an Academy Award (Best Original Screenplay).

One thing that makes Allen unique is that he is one of a small group of famous directors, such as Roman Polanski, Zach Braff, Quentin Tarantino, and Alfred Hitchcock, who have also acted in their own films.

Directors who appear in their own films will forever be related back to Sir Alfred Hitchcock from the United Kingdom, who made a cameo appearance in most of his films. For example, in his classic horror film The Birds, Hitchcock leaves a building with his two white terriers on leashes as the female lead enters. In Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train he is seen trying to carry a large bass fiddle onto a train car, the shape of which mirrors his own heavy set body.

Likewise, other directors have had small roles in their own films. Tarantino casts himself as minor roles throughout his films, including Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Death Proof and Inglourious Basterds. In Inglourious Basterds Tarantino plays a German soldier who awaits his scalping as well as an American soldier.

It is much more rare for a director to star in his or her own movie. Zach Braff actually starred as the lead male actor for his movie, Garden State, but that’s just one movie. Allen has directed almost 40 full-length feature films and starred in almost all of them. (Film Club will show the best Woody Allen film without Woody Allen in it, Bullets Over Broadway, next month.) While one can point to great actor-directors like Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, and Kenneth Branagh, none of them had near the body of work that Allen does.

So Allen’s starring as the lead male role, alongside three decades of famous actresses, including Diane Keaton, Mia Farrow, Helena Bonham Carter, and most recently Scarlett Johansson, makes him unique. And fortunately Allen has proved himself as a more-than-capable actor; his performance in Annie Hall is spectacular. He even received a nomination for an Academy Award for his performance.

Conor Dowdle
SPA Film Club

Woody Allen’s Sleeper (1973)

Woody Allen is kind of a funny guy. The critics think so. With five films on the AFI 100 years…100 Laughs list, he is the most represented director. The viewers think so, too. He has a rating of 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is only brought down by the poorly conceived films he acted in. And we think so. Sleeper, a comedy from 1973, is one of his funnier movies.

Allen stars as Miles Monroe, a health food-selling Brooklynite who undergoes nonconsensual cryogenic freezing. When he is defrosted 200 years later by scientists who hope that he can help overthrow the evil dictator in charge (a scene which Mike Myers and Austin Powers took more than a few cues from), the world is a very different place. This setting change from the tangible, real modern world to a completely goofy figment of Allen’s imagination allows for as many creative additions as he wants. The people of the 22nd century are all slightly robotic and vapid, and when the government police show up to arrest the scientists who have thawed Miles, he panics, scatters, and ends up posing as a robot in the house of Luna Schlosser (Diane Keaton), a poet in her own time. Cue a disastrous dinner party, slapstick jokes, and a new head for Miles the robot. Since robot Miles does not want to lose his human head, he kidnaps Luna. More hilarity ensues as they run from the police. Eventually, Miles is captured and brainwashed. Then rescued. Then involved in a plot to kill the evil dictator. (But struggles against adversity really aren’t the point in Sleeper.)

Funny writing, clever dialogue, and smart jokes characterize many Woody Allen movies. He is a cerebral writer and director, and it comes out in his humor much of the time. Sleeper represents a break from the later, more traditional Woody Allen mode. There are far more physical, Buster Keaton- and Charlie Chaplin-esque jokes, such as Allen’s robot impression, and the debacle that occurs in the fix-it shop. Physical humor turns out to be something that Woody Allen does very well. He has plenty of ironic and satirical humor, as always, but also includes props like the ‘Orgasmatron’(you’re not going to find an explanation here) and ‘the orb,’ a device that, when held, gives its user a sense of euphoria.

Sleeper also pays homage to scenes from other movies throughout. When Miles is attempting to get back to sanity, he flashes into a scene from “A Streetcar Named Desire,” playing Blanche DuBois, and Luna is forced to step into the role of Stanley Kowalski (by doing a ludicrous Marlon Brando impression) to steer him back to the real world. Also, Allen mimics the famous Marx Brothers scene involving a full-length mirror.

If you’re more familiar with Allen from his later more intellectual style in films like Hannah and Her Sisters, Annie Hall, or Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the comedic romp in Sleeper may catch you by surprise. Not that the movie isn’t intellectual, but it also includes and relies on humor that fans of the Three Stooges might enjoy. Yes, there’s a bit with a banana peel. A very big banana peel. If you’re a snob, you may have trouble enjoying it, but if you’re out to enjoy laughs any way they come, Sleeper is an easy one to sit down to.

Sam Rock
SPA Film Club

Sidney Lumet’s Network (1976)

"I am mad as hell and I’m not going take it anymore!” With these twelve words, screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky engraved his name in film history. Network is one of the most potent criticisms of the media and continues to be, even thirty years later. Directed by Sidney Lumet (Dog Day Afternoon, 12 Angry Men) in 1976, the film brilliantly explores the dark side of corporate media through the brilliant performances by Peter Finch, William Holden, Beatrice Straight, Robert Duvall, Faye Dunaway, and Ned Beatty.

Howard Beale (Finch) is the news anchor for the poorly rated UBS station. After learning he is going to be fired, Beale announces on air that he will commit suicide a week later. Although at first the company is outraged, enter entertainment head Diana Christensen (Dunaway), who sees Beale’s insanity not as a problem, but as an entertainment grab. As news head Max Schumacher (Holden) fights against Diana’s idea, he is subsequently removed from his post.

But at the center of all this is the lunatic Beale. Beale continues to go on air, ranting numerous times about the tumultuous events that seem to be creating fear around the country. Then, in one news program, he tells people to announce their anger to the world (thus the famous quote), and Christensen locks on to his power, creating the true spectacle of the show. What I find interesting is how audiences react to Beale. Beale shouts important rants on how we can deal with the problems of the world. He is giving the answers. But do people listen? No, they simply go on watching the show and eating their dinners.

Somehow, Network predicted how the world of television would shape the next thirty years. Chayefsky seemed to be the real “mad prophet of the airwaves.” He knew exactly how television worked back then and how we seem to follow the same patterns today. We still care only for ratings. News programs still focus on getting ratings through entertainment instead of quality journalism.

At the same time as Beale is giving his prophetic speeches, Diana begins an affair with Max. She seems to live life on the dangerous side all the time, as seen by her idea for a reality show following the lives a terrorist group (obviously inspired by the American terrorist group, the Symbionese Liberation Army). It seems over the top, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable in today’s strange world of news.

The power of performance is something Network seems to master. Two performances in particular achieved so much in so little time. Beatrice Straight only appears on screen for five minutes as Max’s wife. But her conviction as a woman hurt, but not surprised, by her husband’s affair is so convincing, so real, that it works (Straight’s Oscar win is the shortest screen time win of all time). Then there’s Ned Beatty as the executive of UBS who delivers a powerful monologue: “There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today,” he shouts at Beale.

Though most people reference Finch’s performance (who won the Oscar posthumously) as the standout, Holden’s for me remains the more subtle and actually more curious performance. Holden remains a moral conscience for us, but at the same time he is no better than others. Though he cares about Beale and real journalism, his engagement in the affair shows his vulnerability. When Max finally realizes he’s wrong, he gives a great monologue that shows his conviction to the world of TV. “And it's a happy ending: Wayward husband comes to his senses, returns to his wife, with whom he has established a long and sustaining love. Heartless young woman left alone in her arctic desolation. Music up with a swell; final commercial. And here are a few scenes from next week's show.”

Like any good TV show, as Diana would suggest, Network ends in a murder. It’s not a surprise though; we see the executives openly, and cynically, discuss how they can end the Beale show to save the ratings. The decision is made that Beale will be assassinated for the new terrorist reality show. What I find so fascinating about this scene is the complete lack of morality. Only at one point does one member suggest what they are doing is capital punishment. The world of Network is one without morals. It is simply about what we can do to increase ratings. It is the world we live in today, where capitalism undermines our moral conscience.

Network is a direct attack on corporate media. Somehow, despite its strong message delivered through powerful performances, people fail to listen. And what has happened to our news media? It has only gotten worse. Sometimes films can make a difference. Sometimes it will try and right a wrong. Unfortunately, no one has listened and TV continued to dominate. But as long as people continually see Network, there’s hope. And as long as someone is mad as hell, and not going to take it anymore, there’s a chance for change.

Peter Labuza
Film Club Co-President

Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

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Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974)

Forget It Jake: The Key Ways in Which Chinatown Reflects the Classic Film Noir Period

According to Todd Erickson's "Kill Me Again: Movement Becomes Genre," Roman Polanski's 1974 film Chinatown "is the only 'period noir' which manages to maintain an air of timelessness in its presentation." (Erickson 312). Chinatown is exceptional filmmaking with such essential noir elements as the non-heroic private eye, the complicated labyrinth-like plot structure, and a despairing, fatalistic worldview.

Above all, Chinatown is properly "voiced" in the classic noir style, although there is no actual voiceover used. The film stays with a single, subjective point-of-view, that of the main character, private investigator J.J. "Jake" Gittes. Polanski's camera tails Gittes as he is duped by the duplicitous woman (Evelyn Mulwray), who strings him along with lies and evasive half-truths even before Jake encounters an immoral businessman (Noah Cross) who happens to be Evelyn's father.

A detective in the vein of Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet, Gittes is a much coarser fellow with fancier pretenses. For example, he attempts to cover up his rough language in front of the ladies while making certain his pocket-handkerchief is arranged correctly in the breast pocket of his tailored suit.

This duality of character further enhances the theme of the film. Gittes searches for the truth about the Mulwrays and the Department of Water and Power never even pretending to limit his search to within the boundaries of the law. At one point, he impersonates a W&P company official in order to gain access to a restricted area; in another, he willfully destroys documents in the Hall of Records for his own immediate gain.

Much like Spade, Gittes has hard-boiled sensibilities, but Jake's code has a wider scope and latitude. The bottom line for Gittes is image, how others perceive him. Indeed, his primary reason for remaining on the Mulwray case initially is that he has been duped and exposed as such in the press. Gittes has to discover the truth in order to save face, subtly enhancing the central metaphor of Chinatown: a major code of the "inscrutable" East is the tradition of allowing combatants to "save face."

In addition, Chinatown has the requisite complicated plot. Despite the twists and turns, it is plausible, and it enhances the suspension of disbelief (323). …

Finally, Chinatown's worldview is one of despair, alienation and fatalism, all celebrated traits of classic noir. … In the world of Chinatown, there are no givens, no best bets, no sure things. The entire worldview is symbolized by the place, "Chinatown." This is a place where nothing is known, a mysterious place closed to outsiders, where nothing is as it seems. In a structure similar to films of the "classic" noir period, the viewer follows Gittes, sees what he sees, knows only what he knows, gets duped right along with him, and realizes finally that one can never really know anything for certain. Most assuredly, Chinatown delivers a "vicarious experience of the nightmarish world of noir" (323).

Tracy Taylor
© 2003, The Write Word, Inc.

Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H (1970)

Robert Altman, director of tonight’s film M*A*S*H and the recently released Prairie Home Companion, died last November. He leaves behind an impressive body of work, including Nashville, Short Cuts, The Player, and Gosford Park, notable as ensemble acting pieces in which character and character interaction supercede plot. Altman is not the only director to build his films around people and naturalistic interactions – Woody Allen has done the same for decades – but Altman’s style is less self-conscious and often impishly mines more political undertones.

M*A*S*H, for instance, depicts the daily life of doctors and nurses at a ramshackle military hospital during the Korean War. Altman made the film, however, during the Vietnam War; its audience could be expected to draw some obvious parallels. And in making a movie that is essentially plotless and comic, Altman is offering a satirical criticism of war’s insanity.

If you’ve watched the TV show M*A*S*H, you’ll notice some major differences. Alan Alda and Wayne Rogers as “Hawkeye” Pierce and “Trapper John” McIntyre are more righteous, cleaner, more scripted, and less likely to offend than their film counterparts, Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould. In short the movie is more profane, poking fun at military bureaucracy, racial identity, the sanctity of death, hypocrisy, and self-importance. Also the TV show had a laugh-track, famously turned off during the surgery scenes, while the movie has more faith in its humor and in the audience’s ability to perceive it. For me, one of the most telling differences has to do with the movie’s soundtrack. Both the film and the TV show use the same theme, “Suicide is Painless,” written by Johnny Mandel and Mike Altman (son of Robert). One verse and the refrain cynically go: “The game of life is hard to play; I'm gonna lose it anyway. The losing card I'll someday lay, so this is all I have to say … that suicide is painless. It brings on many changes, and I can take or leave it if I please.” The TV show, however, removed the lyrics and kept it just as an instrumental theme.

As America continues its involvement in Iraq, perhaps this as good a time as any to rescreen M*A*S*H, for it reminds us that no matter where we fight, what military prowess we bring to bear, or what larger purpose we might serve, in the end humanity, however wounded, survives while sanity is frequently the first casualty.

We often try to link the cartoon we show with the movie. Tonight we have a perfect pairing with Jules Feiffer’s “Munro.” Although it is made a decade earlier, Feiffer’s short animated film about a four-year-old boy who is inducted into the army and can’t convince them that they’ve made a mistake, comically unites tonight’s two features. Enjoy, and keep your head down.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser

Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude (1971)

The first time I saw Harold & Maude was a film editing class. My teacher told me that this film represents everything you need to know about life, death, and everything in between. >

At first glance, Harold & Maude's premise sounds more disturbing than enjoyable. Harold, played by Bud Cort (The Life Aquatic of Steve Zissou), is a young teenager obsessed with death. He commits fake suicides that look surprisingly real. When asked by a psychiatrist about how many he's committed he replies "A rough estimate? I'd say about fifteen." He also attends funerals where he has no business being and drives a hearse. We never really are given any straight answer about why Harold finds himself intrigued with death, but we can guess. He lives alone with his commanding mother, who shoves off his suicides with little care.

But when he meets Maude, played by Ruth Gordon (Rosemary's Baby), at a funeral, he and the audience learn the real celebration of life. Maude, a woman who’s "seventy-nine years young," lives each day to the fullest. She has no respect for any authority as she has almost in a way given up on life. In one scene, she completely abuses a cop in a hilarious way.

It's these ideas of life and death and how similar they end up being. By the end of the film, we have celebrated death, celebrated life, and once again celebrated death.

Many people list Harold & Maude as a classic 70s film. With its hip and spunky characters, great music, and 70s look, the film kind of sits as one of those classic 70s cult films that are hard to ignore. Others compare it to Wes Anderson films (He has called it his favorite film before) as it easily compares to the feel, both narratively and visually, of Bottle Rocket and Rushmore.

In the end Harold & Maude is just a wonderful story about issues teenagers face. Do we want to choose life? Or does our interest in death create a more compelling situation? The questions are up to you to answer.

Peter Labuza
Film Club

George Roy Hill's The Sting (1973)

Screened with:
Tex Avery's "Red Hot Riding Hood" (1943)

Your Humble Commentator would like to talk about cartoons. Over the last few weeks, we here at the BCFS have been celebrating the classic cartoon as much as classic films. Back in the day, every movie was preceded by a short cartoon. The older Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, Superman, Tom and Jerry, and Betty Boop cartoons (to name a few) that we’re so used to seeing on TV were originally made for the big screen. And on the big screen the gags are funnier, the painstaking hand animation more impressive, the original scores more thrilling.

Perhaps we don’t ask ourselves often enough: what makes a great cartoon? The techniques used to create the cartoons we’ve shown here at Blake are mostly gone now, replaced by computer animation, or slowed to fewer frames per second, or filled with stock animation, or saddled with limp anonymous music. We’re not knocking Japanese animation (in fact, we’re big Miyazaki fans) or the recent boomlet in nouveau animation like “Batman: The Animated Series,” “South Park,” “Duckman,” and all those “Ren & Stimpy” or Japanimation knock-offs on the Cartoon Channel. But what you’ve been watching at the BCFS are examples from the golden age, started by Winsor McCay and his “Gertie the Dinosaur” and perfected into the demanding, distilled six-minute format by masters like Ub Iwerks (Mickey Mouse), Otto Messmer (Felix the Cat), Dave Fleischer (Popeye and Superman), Chuck Jones (WB), Bob Clampett (WB), Friz Freleng (WB and Pink Panther), and Tex Avery (MGM).

The immortal Mr. Jones once said that the way to tell a good cartoon is to turn the sound off. If, he said, you can still tell what’s going on and what the characters are feeling, then it is well made. (This works. Try turning the sound off on an old “Scooby-Doo” episode. If every episode weren’t exactly the same, it would be impossible to tell what was happening or why.) Jones was a master of the silent test, and even incorporated it into some of his gags, like when Daffy and Bugs are trapped under a glass bowl in “Beanstalk Bunny” and Daffy mimes a fit until Bugs produces a glass cutter.

It also works for Tex Avery’s “Red Hot Riding Hood,” this week’s cartoon, with its iconic tribute to the comic “take.” While you may not have seen this cartoon before, you know all its moves – the inflated, bugged-out eyes, the red carpet tongue, the steam out the ears, the wooden mallet to the head. If you remember, Chuck Russell pays homage to all these moves in his comic book-into-movie version of The Mask, starring Jim Carrey. But we are proud to bring you Avery’s original, which so many cartoons and cartoonists have stolen from for so many years.

And oh yeah, we’re showing The Sting, winner of the 1973 Academy Award for Best Picture. The Sting has the distinction of being the first film Your Humble Commentator saw more than once during the opening run. This was four years before Star Wars made the first question when you got out of a movie not “what did you think?” but “how many times have you seen it?” The Sting was worth repeated viewings, and we sincerely hope you enjoy it, as much as we’ve enjoyed presenting the entire film series to you. Be seeing you! (YHC salutes audience by laying a finger to the side of his nose and doing that Henry Gondorff/Johnny Hooker thing, then walks off into the sunset. Somewhere a limousine is waiting, but that’s another classic movie …)

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser