Stuart Rosenberg's Cool Hand Luke (1967)

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a new hero arrived in American cinema: the anti-authority hero. Cool Hand Luke was one of the first films to portray this new type of hero, as portrayed by Paul Newman in one of his greatest screen roles.

Newman plays Lucas Jackson. We see right as the film begins how "Luke" represents anti-authority. He's drunk and cutting the tops off parking meters. We can't tell if he's doing it for the money or because he's angry, just that he's doing it because he can.

Luke is shipped off to a Southern prison camp, which is one of the film's major highlights. In the camp, a world of its own, secluded from society or real world existence (or just from any David Lynch film), prisoners must conform to the rules of the strict captain (played by Strother Martin). One of the many things that have come into pop culture from this film is the chain gang working o the roadside asking the prison guards' permission for trivial tasks like "wiping the forehead, boss" or "taking the shirt off, boss."

When Luke first enters, you can already tell he can't conform to this way of life. It isn't him. It's against everything he stands for. At first Luke is mistreated by the other prisoners, led by their somewhat leader Dragline (George Kennedy in an Oscar-winning role). But the thing is Luke doesn't mind. He keeps on living how he lives, and he eventually wins them over. (He gets the nickname "Cool Hand Luke" after winning a huge poker hand with absolutely nothing.)

But Luke also becomes an inspiration to the others on the chain gang. In one particular scene, Luke rallies his fellow prisoners to quickly finish a tar road in order to have a break. It's this sort of power, to rally others into defiance, which establishes Luke as this anti-authoritarian hero.

Yet Luke doesn't just get everyone to go along with him and have a happy ending. The captain and the bosses can't let their power be undermined. The guards realize that if the prisoners aren't suffering, they no longer have power over them. But the one who Luke runs into trouble with is boss Godfrey. Godfrey, hidden in the shadows or wearing dark sunglasses, represents the silent power that has tried to destroy these anti-heroes.

The guards finally make sure to stop anything Luke might or might not do after the death of his mother. Luke is put in "the box" until after his mother's funeral. One of the guards argues with Luke: "Just doin' my job. You gotta appreciate that." Luke's response -- "Aw, callin' it your job don't make it right, boss." -- underscores one of the film's themes, that law and authority does not always mean the same thing as justice. For a country still coping with the aftermath of watching mounted police attack civil rights marchers in 1965 (and just three years away from the horrifying killing of four Kent State students by the Ohio National Guard), Cool Hand Luke captures the human side of a very disturbing direction in national politics.

But the film is not a one-sided polemic. We feel bad that Luke is being punished for something he hasn't done. Yet we can sympathize with the guard who has no choice but to follow orders. Even the film's most famous line, "What we got here is ... a failure to communicate" (inspiring generations of bad Strother Martin impersonations), speaks to a larger social, generational, and political concern the United States found itself facing.

Cool Hand Luke remains one of the greatest films ever made about non-conformity. It's supremely acted, brilliantly written, includes plenty of wit and humor, and remains one of the first films of the time to create this memorable character type.

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