The 50 Great American Films 16-20
The next five films of the Chris Moeller Top 50 list, alphabetically, from E to G...ELECTION directed by Alexander Payne (1999)
We all have known a Tracy Flick in our lives. Tracy, played by Reese Witherspoon, is chipper, bright, and ambitious. She'll one day become president of the world, but first she has to win the high school student council race. Mr. McAllister (Matthew Broderick), the school civics and history teacher, recognizes the face of Satan in Tracy's well-rehearsed smile. He recruits the school's popular, earnest, and unwitting star quarterback, Paul Metzler, to enter the council race and derail Tracy's bid. Paul's lesbian sister, who sits on a hill and stares at the power station after school, becomes the Ralph Nader of the campaign. Alexander Payne knows our culture's "character types" better than any modern director. (And the four terrific leads in "Election" might all take a back seat to the school principal, played by Phil Reeves.) "Election" is a sinister fable, and a biting satire. It is small and simple, but it is not simple-minded. It never steps wrong. Others films have accomplished more in terms of scope and design, but it might be the only movie that could not be improved upon.
EVE'S BAYOU directed by Kasi Lemmons (1997)
History is not as it appears in Mr. McAllister's high school textbooks- linear and straight-forward. It is our collected memories, each with its own biases, colors, and perspective. Eve is the adult narrator of "Eve's Bayou," who begins the film with a better summary than mine- "Memory is a selection of images, some elusive, others printed indelibly on the brain." Then she adds, "The summer I killed my father, I was 10 years old." Lemmons, the only African-American female director that I could name, presents the entire movie through the eyes of the little girl. On at least two occasions, an older character even puts her arm around Eve and helps her to understand her confusion. The movie is directed with such stunning maturity, and with such beautiful visuals, that you would never guess it was Lemmons' first film. Samuel L. Jackson is Eve's father, whose sympathetic Southern Gothic patriarch tells us more about Bill Clinton's sexual weaknesses than John Travolta did in an almost specific impression of Clinton in Mike Nichols' "Primary Colors," released five months after "Eve's Bayou." "Bayou" contains a magical scene where Eve's aunt (Debbi Morgan) recounts the death of her former husband. The scene of his death is reenacted as a reflection in the mirror. Indelibly printed memories of "Eve's Bayou" call me back to see it time and again. It should also be seen for the largest collection of gorgeous women ever captured on celluloid.
FARGO directed by Joel Coen (1996)
Marge Gunderson (Frances MacDormand) is "a police officer from up Brainerd, investigating some malfeasance." She is an old-fashioned movie hero. She pursues the criminals, solves the crime, even gets an impassioned speech at the end of the film. It's a tribute to the sheer and utter originality of "Fargo" that you watch the movie without realizing how traditional she is. (Can you think of another movie in which the pregnant lead character doesn't give birth by the time the credits roll?) As a viewer, you're too busy absorbing the climate and the accents to notice the structure. It's a foreign film set in the middle of the country. It's a comedy, but there's not a joke to be found in the script, just an attitude. When the Coen Brothers released the movie, Time Magazine's Richard Corliss wrote that the Minnesota natives' function was to "italicize (their) giddy contempt toward people who talk and think Minnesotan." That reminds me of the constant criticism surrounding Nebraska-based Alexander Payne. Do New York critics really think we're so noble in the heartland that we don't have a sense of humor about ourselves? Marge Gunderson is a hero. No one would watch this movie and accuse the Coens of robbing her of her dignity? And didn't the brothers cut their home state a break simply by naming the movie after a bordering city?
One of the infamous scenes in "Fargo" involves Marge having dinner with a former high school classmate. Until recently I accepted the conventional wisdom that the scene was superfluous and inexplicable, but in his recent "Great Movies" review of the film, Roger Ebert points out that Marge adjusts her police interrogating technique based on the encounter. An odd exchange? Yes. Utterly original? You're darn tootin'.
GODFATHER directed by Francis Ford Coppola (1972)
I know this is one of your favorites because one of you references it in the comment box every couple weeks. 'The legend' of the "The Godfather" is bigger than the film itself more than 30 years later- so much so that those of us younger than the film can't fully appreciate the stunning way that it changed the world of moviemaking in 1972. Unlike other masterpieces like "Citizen Kane," its impact was immediate. It's operatic and auteristic, but it's also incredibly mainstream. Marlon Brando was considered the greatest actor in the world at the time, and audiences waited around the block to get a glimpse of how he would breathe life into one of the popular novel characters of the time. Brando delivered one of the extraordinary characters in movie history. Vito 'Don' Corleone is bigger than life in a role that demanded it. Brando stuffed tissues in his jaw and mumbled many of his lines throughout the film. The effect causes us to lean in and pay attention to his words. It adds reserve and strength to the mafia family's powerful leader. By the end of the film, when his successor is ascending to the family throne by consolidating power, we realize that we've been thoroughly absorbed into the greatest family epic ever told. One that, believe it or not, is even larger than that statement. Try this one out- It's the greatest movie ever made about the American Experience, about the constant bloodstream of immigration that gives us our vitality and demands to be preserved.
When Brando died this year, I watched the movie again and was struck by the new poignancy of the scene where Vito collapses and dies in his tomato garden, with his infant grandson there representing the Don's continuing legacy. A giant has passed, and we feel the entire weight of his remarkable life.
THE GODFATHER, PART II directed by Francis Ford Coppola (1974)
I know I wrote earlier that "Bride of Frankenstein" was the only film sequel to surpass the original, but the second installment of "The Godfather" is, hands-down, the best movie sequel period. It adds depth and texture to the first movie. Entertainment Weekly calls it "the greatest parenthesis ever put on film." I also think it was a necessity. Coppola never made up his mind about how he felt about Vito Corleone. In Part II, the entire epic comes into view as Greek Tragedy. Vito's son Michael (Al Pacino) has taken over the family business. We see the disintegration of his relationships, and, then ultimately, the gutting of his soul.
The Godfather Epic gave birth to a generation of crime families on screen. The most entertaining of the bunch is HBO television's "The Sopranos." (It's not really television.) David Chase's series is really an homage to Coppola's masterpiece. The same demons haunt the family. They wrestle with the issues of loyalty, obligation, assimilation, and death. The canvas is similarly painted with colorful characters. Luca Brasi, Salvadore Tessio, Frankie Pentangeli, and Hyman Roth have given way to Paulie "Walnuts," Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bompensiero, Silvio Dante, and Hesh Rabkin. The Godfather also inspired generational epics such as the miniseries "Roots," broadcast to record television audiences in the late '70s, and it's not unfair to say that it had a significant contribution to the geneaology movement in America over the last three decades.
America is still a country going through puberty, but "The Godfather" helped to give Americans our first sense of a shared heritage.
Previous Top 50 summaries were posted on 12/18, 12/23, and 12/30.
posted by CM @ 2:51 PM
3 Comments:
Your observation about Brando's acting style in the Godfather is, I think, great- the way you're forced to lean in to hear his words. It offers an immediacy and intimacy to the character that seems to transcend the distance between the film and the viewer. When a critic says something about "having presence", this is the sort of hard to pinpoint characteristic they're talking about.
I'll go off the subject to spread that analogy to the way Bob Dylan sings, who I think employs a similar strategy when he delivers song lyrics. Your theory is one that I've subconsciously attributed to Dylan for years. He may not have a great voice - not having the kind of vocal chords that you'd strip out and hang in a museum - but he's an incredibly dynamic singer, reminding that beyond hitting the notes, which Dylan does adequetly, singing can be boiled down to expression and delivery. He's playing a character.
I've long thought a fine essay could be written about Dylan's performance style and his debt to film stars and characters, including Brando, Rhett Butler, James Dean, even Charlie Chaplin, and (with his recent mustache), Vincent Price.
I hope you're not waiting for me to write the essay about how Rhett Butler and Vincent Price shaped Bob Dylan's career. Though I think Dylan probably helped shape "Brett" Butler's career.
Prior to the singer-songwriter tradition coming into vogue in music in the 1960s, "translating" already-established songs was the dominant trend in popular music. This is what Sinatra did better than anyone. The songs he sung were written by the likes of George Gershwin and Cole Porter in the '20s and '30s, and introduced by singers like Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby. When you're sharing a catalog of music with all of the other great artists, you have to have the originality to leave your mark. For Sinatra, it was the honesty in the lyric. He was the ultimate "actor" of American songs, whether they be swinging jazz charts backed by a big band, or saloon songs with just a piano accompaniment. I often hear people criticize the "kiddie pop" artists of today for not writing their own songs, and there's a lot of truth in that recognition of shallowness, but the great American musical tradition is in interpretation. The freedom of improvisation inherent in jazz music also gave unlimited artistic freedom to the vocalist.
There should also be great honor in interpreting music, as there is for stage and screen. You wouldn't go to see Pacino in King Lear and criticize him for not writing the play. Not that any of you were doing that. Just a thought.
Forgive the Bob Dylan tangent, but I've been reading his autobiography this week. I think your point about interpretation as the American form is a great one, although Bob Dylan (more than anyone) is responsible for moving away from that in the last 40 years. That being said, his autobiography drives home the fact that his own beginnings are founded in interpretation. The last of the 4 chapters deals exclusively with Bob talking about how he borrowed other folksingers' styles. Rock 'n Roll is ultimately a folk art and like any art, never operates in a vacuum. Everyone is always borrowing from someone or something that already came before.
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