KING KONG 1933-2005 - who really killed the beast?

Kong has always been more than a monster to me.

Not implacable, mechanical, heartless, like those in ALIEN, JAWS, or THE TERMINATOR. He is warmer than FRANKENSTEIN who also had a tragic aura about him - but he whined a bit too much for my taste.

Okay, Frankie suffered from PTSD and all those electro-shock treatments --- and his HMO must have been one of the worst. What’s the co-pay for Dr. F, the mad scientist?

Serial killers in the movies are our modern urban monsters of the implacable sort. Their stories rarely give them redeeming qualities meant to touch us. Ralph Fiennes in RED DRAGON had a bit of it. PHANTOM OF THE OPERA grasps for this sentiment.

But KONG is not really a beast. He is more like me — misunderstood, unloved, a lonely guy in a scary jungle, apparently the only one of his kind - a mammal stranded among stupid dinosaurs who can’t take a joke. Like me, he craves some warm-blooded company, some companion, preferably someone in a slip.

Of course, Kong’s story involves an inter specie love story - truly the love that dares not (and cannot) speak its name. Sure, its a mismatch, but no worse than Ashton and Demi, Tom and Katie ... or any on The Bachelorette.

The story has always been a kin of the road film, where a woman is captured by an apparent brute who she tames and ultimately destroys or redeems with her femininity.

It takes a little from many fables, “Jack And The Beanstalk,” IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, THE LOST WORLD, even the ending from TITANIC.

I won't mention "Beauty And The Beast" because ... well, you know, "T'was beauty killed the beast" is as familiar a bit of corny movie poetry as "Here's looking at you, kid."

If you want to see the story with poetry, watch Cocteau's BELLE ET LA BÊTE.

The original KK had some nasty implications as a racist / sexist cautionary tale - the dark eyed male beast abducting the white woman in order to peel her lingerie like a banana. The latest Kong seems to have the same hang-up about blondes, but that's where his humanity ends.

The 1933 Kong was big, but somehow, when I first saw him on TV in black and white on that small screen, he seemed to be almost human. True, he swatted men, pteradactyls and biplanes like wasps and wrestled a T Rex to the death, but he was no superduperhero like the CG cartoon of the latest incarnation. This one is more a stuntman than a hero, more a circus performer than an ape in trouble.

One thing that I wondered about was whether Kong killed all the previous offerings and what made Ann Darrow such a delight that he was willing to risk all. I must admit that every actress who played the part - Fay Wray, Jessica Lange, and now Naomi Watts - has been a dish. But none have been what I would call femmes fatales, intentionally drawing the powerful male to his doom.

I suspect that what makes this story so cool for boys and girls is that it means something visceral to each sex - and the meaning is different to each sex.

To boys it simply is a fantasy of masculine power - KK is the essence of “Awesome.”

And to girls, there is something irresistible about a guy who can slay dragons while you’re safe in the palm of his hand. A post-feminist hero defined. Respectful, tender, and strong. Because Ann is innocent of her allure, she is an eye-opener for girls who can be sexually empowered with little effort.

And please, hold the jokes about bad breath, banana peels all over the house, and who’s gonna clean the bathroom?

It is a nice, little love story, perfect for an independent movie about misfits trying to mesh.

Unfortunately, as Oscar Wilde observed, “Nothing succeeds like excess.”

Peter Jackson’s movie is like taking a 747 to go to the grocery store.

He has more in common with Cecil B. DeMille who magnified Bible parables into super colossal, stupendous behemoths with casts of thousands. Jackson identifies more with Carl Denham than with any other character and he is fully aware of his folly and his tragedy.

Loving the magic (of Hollywood), he has mastered it and all but destroyed it with his excessiveness. He shows the same callous contempt for the audience of his movie that Denham shows in his exhibition. He tries too hard to impress us with his computer tricks, when in reality, he had a pretty good little tale to tell.

Tell the truth. Did you ever once forget that blue and green screens were behind the curtain?

What Jackson and the other techno-thrill ride creators forget is that roller coasters, no matter how fast they are, lose their wallop with each trip. We're hip to all the video game illusions - and they no longer move us very much, no matter how much we admire the technical wizardry behind them.

Naomi Watts saves the movie because of her expressive innocent sensuality, her close-ups the only acting that goes on in a human scale in this gargantuan monstrosity of computer design gone berserk.

Her relationship with the big guy arcs like that of a pet for its benefactor. She is like a toy poodle, first terrified by her enormous owner, then winning him with amusing tricks and her cuteness. She cowers, seeks his protection. Eventually, she bonds with him and now yaps at his enemies. Ultimately, she mourns him.

And so do I. Jackson and his minions have taken my Kong away from me.

SHOPGIRL - a pop quiz

1. Steve Martin is either:
(a) a first rate artist and thinker who has made the almost impossible jump from lightweight comic to satiric genius to writer of real “literature” and weighty scripts; or

(b) a pretentious pretender to Woody Allen’s dubious title as the aging clown who wants to make us cry and who egotistically miscasts himself as potential lover to 20-something girls, without Bill Murray's self-restraint.

2. “Ray Porter,” the character he created in his novella and his screenplay and plays in the film is either:
(a) an emotionally crippled but basically decent man who has reached the stage in his life where he can accept ‘love’ only on superficial terms, thereby losing a chance to assuage his isolation with true commitment of his heart, to his eventual regret; or

(b) a self-deceiving over-the-hill seducer of an emotionally fragile girl - the only prey he could impress with his sprayed on charm and ostentatious wealth.

3. Claire Danes is either:
(a) an enchanting actress who perfectly embodies an almost beautiful girl/woman who begins without self-confidence, but when treated as desirable and glamorous, becomes a radiant star; or

(b) an empty shell with a minimal emotional range and less sex appeal.

4. “Mirabelle Buttersfield,” the character Martin wrote and Ms. Danes portrays, is either:
(a) a delicate moth about to become a butterfly, with and for the right guy, finding the strength to face the pain of failed love and the possible rejection of her art; or

(b) a man’s idea of a foolishly immature and dull young woman who is drawn to losers and users, with every right to be depressed, especially when she is dumped by a sugar daddy, who buys her nice clothes and pays off her student loan, freeing her to miraculously "self-actualize" as a successful artist and finder of true love.

5. Jason Schwartzmann is either:
(a) a talented actor who shows surprising scope - able to credibly mature from male ditzy-slacker-nerdy dude roles to a more adult kind of “real” person; or

(b) still a B-list undergrad Ben Stiller type who can't even reach Adam Sandler's bootlaces.

6. “Jeremy,” the character he plays, is either:
(a) a socially inept and offensively insensitive boy who makes the commitment to mature when he senses hope for love from a terrific girl, and does grow up and gives his heart to her; or

(b) a caricature of a type barely remembered by the over-middle-aged writer who used to be a sort of “Jeremy” when he was THE LONELY GUY and THE JERK, but is now rich, famous and "wiser."

7. SHOPGIRL is either (a) a delicately balanced and tenderly performed movie about people adrift in the dreamworld of Los Angeles, a worthy sequel to Steve Martin’s previous satiric insights about this city, L.A. STORY and BOWFINGER, but with “a little sex,” and a straighter face; or

(b) an overwritten, over-directed, self-consciously acted embarrassment that aspires to but utterly fails to be what LOST IN TRANSLATION and BROKEN FLOWERS achieved.

The right answer to every question is: (a) or (b), depending on your digestion, tolerance, zodiac sign, the phase of the moon, your age, sex, marital status, and / or mood.

ALEXANDER - revising the revisionist vision

As Oliver Stone begins his softening campaign to prepare the world for his 9/11 movie, WORLD TRADE CENTER, I thought it timely to re-evaluate his last production. Stone re-cut the movie for his DVD, and included his own very revealing commentary. The result tells us more about Stone than about the subject of his film.

A director’s cut usually adds scenes that had been cut for commercial reasons. This one is the opposite. The movie was such a failure with audiences and critics that Stone felt compelled to re-cut it, shorten it, re-order scenes, in order to make it coherent. It is still a mess, but the real problem is that, like Greek tragedy, it was doomed from its conception.

The first problem is the subject matter. A historical biography of this nature must contain two parallel arcs: the Macro and the Micro. The needs of Drama defy coherent telling of both lines in Alexander’s case. The famous general events of his life must be touched. They contain hints of “story,” but the truth is complex, lengthy, and doesn’t provide a natural arc and climax. He conquered and then he conquered more, and then he died. His death was anti-climactic; his life was unfinished, his legacy muddled.

The Micro story is even more problematic as a drama for contemporary taste. As with all great leaders, people have been trying to figure him out and Stone gives it a shot, trying to wedge him into his pre-conceptions. Alexander was a Greek, which meant being raised in Greek mythology, religion, sexual values. His motivations, demons, actions, are strange to our sensibilities.

Stone tries to psycho-analyze the great man, so that modern audiences can nod in some kind of recognition. His family was dysfunctional. Father Phillip the king of Macedon, played by Val Kilmer, was a drunken brute who feared his son’s challenge to his power.

Mother Olympias, played by Angelina Jolie, was even stranger. She raised her son to believe he was descended (even sired) by The Gods. She kept pet snakes in her bedroom for company - and metaphoric references. Snakes are like men, Stone has her telling Alex in her Natasha-like accent.

No wonder the kid was screwed up, driven, neurotic, insecure, ended up liking boys more than girls.

Stone, as revealed by his commentary, knows he is walking in the sandals of giants. For him they are De Mille, Lean, and other “epic” filmmakers. He also knows his own filmography, and refers frequently to his other war film, PLATOON.

Stone cannot evade his own political nature, and can’t help finding parallels between Bush and Alexander, referencing military escapades of Westerners into "The East" - Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq.

Western leaders go East with “good” intentions, but Alexander, in Stone’s view, was wiser and nobler than ours. He wanted to unite East and West and his policies toward enemies were benign, respecting their religions and even their leaders after he defeated them. His generalship was better. Alexander never let go of one enemy to pursue another.

Stone opines that Alexander would never have let Bin Laden slip away. It seems like an argumentative stretch.

A second insurmountable problem for Stone is that his Alexander, Colin Farrell, is too small for the role of world conqueror. He is fine in the micro moments, when his sad little eyes seem frightened of his parents, of his lovers, of his obsessions. But when he must be Heroic, inspiring his troops with speeches, he lacks the presence of George C. Scott (PATTON), the brute macho power of Mel Gibson (BRAVEHEART), the tortured ambiguity of Peter O'Toole (LAWRENCE OF ARABIA), or the poetry of Olivier (HENRY V).

Stone decided to use Irish and Scottish accents -except for Angelina’s silly sounding Albanian (?) accent - for his Greeks, arguing in his commentary that the Macedonians had Celtic origins, were a crude bunch, and Greece was a “diverse” population. He likes the lilt of Irish and shied from the usual classic English - as in the 1954 Richard Burton ALEXANDER THE GREAT.

Okay, but it still sounds out of place to our ears, diminishes the larger-than-life element that legendary heroes require.

A third problem he fails to solve is how to make the complicated battles coherent. Stone tried to faithfully suggest the tactics of the famous Battle of Gaugamela, in which Alexander defeated the enormous Persian hordes of Darius by martial genius and near maniacal courage. But, despite aerial shots, explanatory dialogue and other devices, it remains a jumble in the desert. Compare these scenes with comparable battles in LAWRENCE.

Stone had a terrible time with the syntax of the narrative. He responded to the audience’s reaction to the theatrical release. Apparently the previews hadn’t warned him. In the DVD, he changed the order of scenes to a less linear telling, saving key events of Alexander’s childhood and rise to power until after battle scenes, moving some to the second and even the third act. His arguments for the change are convincing, but don’t solve the inherent problems.

Finally, Stone has to prove that this story has “relevance” and an important theme for us. As usual, he hammers his ideas. Alexander wanted to be civilized, but he still possessed the brutality of his nature, symbolized by the primitive lust for power and death embodied by the mythological Titans.

Anthony Hopkins, as Alexander’s general Ptolemy in old age, narrates throughout the film as Stone’s voice. In the epilogue, he “reveals” to us that Alexander was poisoned by his friends, that he knew the wine was poisoned, but wanted to die after his lifelong “companion,” Ephistaion, died - probably also poisoned, according to Stone.

Alexander was a dreamer, and therefore had to be killed by his generals — including - Stone, ever the conspiracy seeker asserts — by Ptolemy himself.

Stone’s commentary admits that all of this is speculation which some historians have permitted, but Stone likes it because it suits his theme. The dreamers must be killed because they exhaust us with their dreams. They are dangerous to peace and tranquility. He’s still arguing for JFK’s hero status and his assassination rationale.

The commentary is full of praise for his subject, distinguishing him from tyrants who led armies for conquest, like Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler. The argument is self-serving and superficial. Yes, Alexander carried the benefits of Greek cutlure, had some enlightened policies. But all conquerors can say that, and all of their propagandists have made that argument.

I think it is revealing that Stone admits that he first became enamored of Alexander through his boyhood reading.

Stone, whose reputation is as opponent to war (BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY) and governmental power (NIXON, JFK), reveals himself to be a film director who loves power more than any ideas. Part of the thrill of directing on this scale is the exercise of generalship, moving toy soldiers around a story board.

Stone wins the battles he has scripted but loses the war of ideas and drama. No wonder he is nervous about the reception to his 9/11 movie.

BOX OFFICE Q&A

Movie executives are always looking for catchy titles to insure success.

The length of marquees has always been of concern making problems for such as ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND and DR. STRANGELOVE OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB.

So, execs keep looking for shorter titles. Recent years have produced the following:

Q&A, A.I., B.A.P.S., O, PCU, S.W.A.T., U-571, UHF, XXX and the one that made the most money, E.T.

For some reason, K is a popular letter for short movie titles, like K-2, K-9, K-19, K-PAX.

But my favorite K titles are the longer, little known, but charming:

KABHI KHUSHI GHAM and KAL HO NAA HO.

While we're on K's, we should observe that Hollywood can be a tad repetitive. In the last 10 or so years there have been:

THE KING AND I, KING ARTHUR, KING OF NEW YORK, KING RALPH, KINGDOM COME, KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, KINGPIN, KING'S RANSOM,

and the biggest KING --- KONG.

The formula of KK,BB wouldn't be the same without:

A KISS BEFORE DYING, KISS ME, GUIDO, KISS OF DEATH, KISS OF THE DRAGON, KISS THE GIRLS, KISSING JESSICA STEIN,

and of course, KISS KISS, BANG BANG.

Which do you think grossed more:

LA STORY or LA CONFIDENTIAL?

Back to short titles.

Numbers are good, but you have to be careful or the numbers won't add up at the B.O.

THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN made more money than 13 GOING ON 30.

Total grosses for 101 DALMATIONS roughly equaled 3 NINJAS + THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN.

Somehow, 28 DAYS LATER made more than 28 DAYS.

Defying laws of mathematics:

50 FIRST DATES made about the same as 40 DAY AND 40 NIGHTS + 28 DAYS + 2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY.

But if you add THE 6TH DAY, you get more.

8 MILE outgrossed the total take for 8 HEADS IN A DUFFEL BAG + 8 SECONDS + 8 MM + 3000 MILES TO GRACELAND.

For criminal law buffs, 3 STRIKES made more than 187, but 21 GRAMS beat them both.

2 FAST 2 FURIOUS made far more than 2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY.

1492 barely beat out 2046.

Then again, which do you think made the most money:

THIRTEEN DAYS, THIRTEEN GHOSTS, THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR, or THE THIRTEENTH WARRIOR?

THREE FUGITIVES, THREE KINGS, THREE MEN AND A LITTLE LADY, THE THREE MUSKATEERS, THREE OF HEARTS, THREE SEASONS, THREE TO TANGO, THREE WISHES, or THREESOME?






[Source: /www.boxofficeguru.com/num.htm]

THE NEW WORLD - no hit and all myth

Part of the mystique of Stanley Kubrick was his meager output (7 films directed in @30 years). Writer / director Terrence Malick is even less prolific — 4 directed movies in 30 years --- and thus, for some idolizing critics, is also a genius.

BADLANDS (1973), was a small movie about runaway teens on a crime spree. Based on the Starkweather / Fugate killings in the barren Midwest, it introduced Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek to audiences. In 1978, he wrote and directed DAYS OF HEAVEN with a bigger budget, starring Richard Gere. It flopped with audiences who thought its pace too slow and the pictures of bleak prairie landscapes boring — not unlike the reaction to Kubrick’s artwork, BARRY LYNDON. Malick’s 3rd movie was THE THIN RED LINE (1998), also not box office.

Critics love both Kubrick and Malick for their unique “poetic vision,” the apparent profundity of their insights as revealed by lyrical images and near silent lingering scenes which critics feel lend gravity to their work.

Some art-oriented critics have dubbed THE NEW WORLD a masterpiece. I can’t help wondering whether a scientific experiment, something like a blind wine tasting, would have produced less gushing from Malick lovers.

If somehow critics had been lured into theaters without foreknowledge of “auteur-ship,” would “lyrical” now be “ponderous and dull?” Would “poetic” be “pretentious?” Would “thoughtful” be “self-indulgent?”

The movie tells a legend that is as short as a fairy tale.

Capt. John Smith, an English settler of Jamestown colony, in 1607, is captured by “Naturals” and is about to be executed when Pocahontas, Indian princess, falls in love with him and begs her father to spare his life. Smith learns the Indian ways, falls in love with her. She warns Smith of her father’s plan to attack, saves the Englishmen, stays with them. Smith goes to England, leaving her there to mourn. She meets John Rolfe, marries, bears a son, goes to England, where she is a celebrity. Rolfe arranges a meeting with Smith, and she chooses to stay with Rolfe. Returning to America, she dies.

That’s the legend, and as I will show, like most legends, it is a half-truth, and also like most legends, is far less revealing than the whole truth.

John Ford’s famous quote from THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE was something like, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” There is no denying the power of legends, and no denying the reality that perception is more influential than factual adherence in politics, entertainment, and popular culture as well as art.

But oh, it is dangerous sometimes. My continuing prime example is BIRTH OF A NATION, the first proof of the power of moving pictures to “change history” to our detriment. The book and movie, THE DA VINCI CODE, is the most recent one. (A British poll claimed that a majority of people reading the book believed that Jesus had a child and that “Opus Dei” was an evil conspiracy.)

The Pocahontas legend is probably not as poisonous, but to some it is an affront. When Disney’s musical animated movie was released, the net was awash with Native American critics who decried the distortion.

English historians doubt that a love affair between Smith and the Indian maiden even existed. Smith was a prolific diarist, yet made no notation of the event in his contemporaneous reports. He only told the tale many years later. None of his contemporaries every wrote about it.

Her birth date is said to be @1595, which would make her 12 years old when the love affair is said to have occurred.

In Virginia historical accounts, the legend is repeated, crediting Pocahontas as an intermediary between the alien cultures who tried by urging and example to be an ambassador of peace.

She has also become a symbol to Feminists, who want to spin the tale a little more, emphasizing her independence, intellect, powerful personality and steadfastness.

Native Americans bridle at the “Euro-Centric” mythology that distorts their perception of the true history, which as expected, points out propagandistic distortions partly motivated by her status as the first Native American who the English successfully converted to Christianity.

A writer for the “Powhaten Nation” gave his version of “The Pocahontas Myth http://www.powhatan.org/pocc.html:

"Pocahontas" was a nickname, meaning "the naughty one" or "spoiled child". Her real name was Matoaka. The legend is that she saved a heroic John Smith from being clubbed to death by her father in 1607 - she would have been about 10 or 11 at the time. The truth is that Smith's fellow colonists described him as an abrasive, ambitious, self-promoting mercenary soldier.

Of all of Powhatan's children, only "Pocahontas" is known, primarily because she became the hero of Euro-Americans as the "good Indian", one who saved the life of a white man. Not only is the "good Indian/bad Indian theme" inevitably given new life ... , but the history, as recorded by the English themselves, is badly falsified in the name of "entertainment".

The truth of the matter is that the first time John Smith told the story about this rescue was 17 years after it happened, and it was but one of three reported by the pretentious Smith that he was saved from death by a prominent woman.

Yet in an account Smith wrote after his winter stay with Powhatan's people, he never mentioned such an incident. In fact, the starving adventurer reported he had been kept comfortable and treated in a friendly fashion as an honored guest of Powhatan and Powhatan's brothers. Most scholars think the "Pocahontas incident" would have been highly unlikely, especially since it was part of a longer account used as justification to wage war on Powhatan's Nation.

Euro-Americans must ask themselves why it has been so important to elevate Smith's fibbing to status as a national myth worthy of being recycled again ...

The true Pocahontas story has a sad ending. In 1612, at the age of 17, Pocahontas was treacherously taken prisoner by the English while she was on a social visit, and was held hostage at Jamestown for over a year.

During her captivity, a 28-year-old widower named John Rolfe took a "special interest" in the attractive young prisoner. As a condition of her release, she agreed to marry Rolfe, who the world can thank for commercializing tobacco. Thus, in April 1614, Matoaka, also known as "Pocahontas", daughter of Chief Powhatan, became "Rebecca Rolfe". Shortly after, they had a son, whom they named Thomas Rolfe. The descendants of Pocahontas and John Rolfe were known as the "Red Rolfes."

Two years later on the spring of 1616, Rolfe took her to England where the Virginia Company of London used her in their propaganda campaign to support the colony. She was wined and dined and taken to theaters. It was recorded that on one occasion when she encountered John Smith (who was also in London at the time), she was so furious with him that she turned her back to him, hid her face, and went off by herself for several hours. Later, in a second encounter, she called him a liar and showed him the door.

Rolfe, his young wife, and their son set off for Virginia in March of 1617, but "Rebecca" had to be taken off the ship at Gravesend. She died there on March 21, 1617, at the age of 21. She was buried at Gravesend, but the grave was destroyed in a reconstruction of the church. It was only after her death and her fame in London society that Smith found it convenient to invent the yarn that she had rescued him.

In Malick’s movie, the girl is played by Q’Orianka Kilcher, who was 14 when filming began. This probably accounts for the absence of sex scenes.

Every encounter between the girl and Smith (Colin Farrell, 28) is tender, consisting mostly of petting (not as in “heavy petting” but as in “petting a deer”). What passion there is between them is expressed by her shy looks. Farrell’s every emotion (he has one or two) shows in his eyebrows, which are his competition to Bette Davis’ eyes. Nicolas Cage must be jealous.

Malick lingers on every look, every faltering touch, every shy smile. There is no editing involved. Without these scenes, and those of birds flying, suns setting, and rivers flowing, the 2 1/2 hour movie would be a short.

Malick’s casting of Ms. Kilcher is the stuff of authentic Hollywood myth. Her father is said to be Quechuan, Peruvian Incan ancestry, while her mother is Swiss, raised in Alaska. Her grandfather was an Alaskan mountain climbing legend named “Pirate” Genet, who died on Mount Everest. The young actress / singer was discovered on the exotic streets of Santa Monica, playing her guitar. (IMBD bio).

The Thriller - Its Fall and Rise

Alfred Hitchcock, we are told, was “the master of suspense.” The plots of his movies were filled with tension and sardonic wit, ironic twists that satisfy the audience’s appetite for drama. Yet even the great Hitchcock resorted to barely believable plot elements and he had trouble resolving his stories.

The ending of SUSPICION which he made for Selznick is a famous case in point. Is Cary Grant trying to murder his wife or is her suspicion unfounded? Legend has it that alternative endings were tested, and audiences would not buy Grant as guilty, so the happy one was patched together, undermining the mood crafted so coldbloodedly. It is notoriously unsatisfying and clumsy.

The famous cropduster scene in NORTH BY NORTHWEST is brilliant as a psychological and witty visual set-piece but ludicrous as a serious effort by clever spies to kill someone. The Master also over-relied on Freudian symbolism - action on trains, the color red, blondes - as shorthand for sexual obsession.

The plot of the darling of modern critics, VERTIGO, demands an impossible suspension of disbelief, hinging on Mac’s confusion about the woman’s identity, and her idiotic yielding to his obsessive re-make of her image, thus insuring her exposure. Of course, if Mac had seen a photo of his pal’s wife, dead or alive, there would have been no film at all. The ending, with Kim Novak’s unlikely paranoid induced fall from the tower, echoing the earlier episode of the fake fall, neatly wraps the story with a final crescendo in an ironic twist that, somehow, leaves us dangling.

Hitch liked the idea of falling as a means to terminate his villains so much that he couldn’t avoid the cliche. In SABOTEUR Norman Lloyd slips from Bob Cummings’ grasp and falls from The Statue of Liberty. NORTH BY NORTHWEST and TO CATCH A THIEF both climax in near falls. SHADOW OF A DOUBT ends with Uncle Charley’s grisly fall from a train. REAR WINDOW ends with another fall.

These endings satisfied the Master’s desire to build tension, use monumental settings, and mostly, to expose primal fears such as falling from great heights — but I prefer the endings of NOTORIOUS or THE BIRDS, in which nothing happens.

The modern thriller is one of the two or three most salable genres of contemporary film. (Teen and Horror being the other two.) Film makers have studied Hitchcock thoroughly and adapted his conventions to create the modern formula. Some have done better in constructing plausible plots within the conventions of the genre, but few have solved the “climax” problem.

The chase subs in for the fall in modern thrillers and similarly suffers from overkill. In fact, the entire thriller formula as a shell for thematic story telling is overused.

Hitchcock must be credited and blamed for fathering the innumerable sub-genres that are so common as to be tediously predictable:

1. The erotic thriller (UNFAITHFUL). 2. The psycho thriller (DRESSED TO KILL). 3. The serial killer thriller. (SEVEN, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS) 4. The cop thriller. (Any Al Pacino or Robert DeNiro movie) 5. The parapsychological thriller (THE RING, THE SIXTH SENSE). 6. The horror / monster thriller. (JAWS, ALIEN) 7. The Hit-Man Thriller (COLLATERAL).

Hitch of course pioneered the psycho thriller (PSYCHO, duh), the erotic thriller (MARNIE), the serial killer thriller (FRENZY). And he mastered other variants that later filmmakers have yet to equal: the ordinary guy vs. spy thriller (THE 39 STEPS, THE LADY VANISHES), the innocent man thriller (THE WRONG MAN, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN), the black comedy / thriller (THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY, FAMILY PLOT), the nearly perfect crime thriller (DIAL M FOR MURDER).

There are an infinite number of combinations of the variants. My personal favorite: the erotic / psycho-serial killer / cop thriller (most notable example BASIC INSTINCT; worst recent example, TAKING LIVES).

The jackpot is of course the Teen / horror / erotic / psycho-serial killer / cop thriller (SCREAM, HALLOWEEN, FRIDAY 13TH, WILD THINGS, etc.).

Only a few filmmakers have managed an original spin on the genre. David Lynch can fascinate us with his riddles, as in BLUE VELVET and the more enigmatic MULHOLLAND DRIVE. Bryan Singer's THE USUAL SUSPECTS combined mystery and thriller genres successfully. And in MEMENTO, Christopher Nolan spun the genre into reverse to surprise audiences.

Because this genre exploits our most elemental movie needs — risk, sex, violence (boo, kiss, bang), it will forever challenge movie makers and audiences — not to mention therapists.

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE and BEE SEASON - endangered species

These two recent films are a matched set. Both depict families in crisis, both setting the blame squarely on the shoulders of the fathers, smart but emotionally absent men — perhaps ciphers for the dilemma of males in contemporary family structures that now demand rethinking of roles. In both, the mothers, dissatisfied with their "traditional" subservient familial roles, provide the impetus for the crack-up and both focus on the impact on sensitive children.

Family tragedy will always be a ripe subject for drama. It is a universal story, with infinite variations, depending on which family member is telling the tale. The Greeks covered the ground (OEDIPUS REX). Shakespeare had a whirl (HAMLET), as did Arthur Miller (DEATH OF A SALESMAN), James Agee (A DEATH IN THE FAMILY), Lillian Hellman (THE LITTLE FOXES), Tennessee Williams (THE GLASS MENAGERIE). It is there as subtext for such disparate mixed genre films as UNFAITHFUL and THE ROYAL TENNENBAUMS.

Eugene O’Neill’s excruciating LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT is the uncredited (and probably unconscious) template for both of these current films. Domineering dad, victimized mom, two siblings damaged by their parents' self-absorption. The classic 1962 film of the great play, directed by Sidney Lumet, starring Katherine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards and Dean Stockwell, may be “dated” to most contemporary viewers. Today’s young people might yawn about the melodramatic acting family's "issues:" an egotistical miserly father, drug-addicted mother, alcoholic and self-pitying sons.

SQUID'S writer / director Noah Baumbach’s father Jonathan, is a novelist and his mother is a critic. He has a younger brother. They lived in Brooklyn’s Park Slope in the 1980's when his parents divorced. So Noah, who has written and directed two previous movies, made this one about “Bernard Berkman,” a novelist, and “Joan,” his wife, who is also a writer, and their two sons, teenage “Walt” and 12 year old “Frank.” He got very talented actors, Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, Jesse Eisenberg and Owen Kline (the son of Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates) to play the family.

From the first scene, Dad and Walt use their superiority, real and imagined, to belittle Mom and little Frank. But Mom has had it. She is now a published author in her own right, while Dad's third novel is unpublishable, is reduced to teaching college lit to idolatrous kids and spouting pompous opinions which Walt parrots without question.

Walt has inherited his father’s insufferable smugness and is equally unaware of how socially clumsy he is with girls and how foolish his false pomposity sounds. In one particularly painful but funny scene (that could have been written by Woody Allen), Walt impresses a girl by repeating his father’s pronouncement about Kafka’s “Metamorphoses,” which Walt of course hasn’t himself read. When she later reads it and wants to discuss it with Walt, he repeats another of his father’s phrases, “It’s very Kafkaesque.” She still wants to give him a hand job and maybe sleep with him anyway. Walt is so wrapped in his father’s bullshit about superiority, he tells the girl she has too many freckles. At this point, we fear for this kid’s sanity.

The divorce is shown through the eyes of the boys, each of whom make painful discoveries about their parents and themselves and are left in the end with unsettled futures. We are saddened by these revelations of parents’ weaknesses, because it seems that these boys are too immature to be faced with “adult” realities. The young son acts out, drinking and jerking off at school, cursing at his parents. We're left with a sense that he is the one who will feel the most pain and have the most trouble coping with it. (A hint about Noah Baumbach's brother?)

Walt, the character that Noah most identifies with, begins to see that blindly following his father’s model is disastrous when he gives up the girl he likes, and is caught plagiarizing song lyrics in a school talent show. He is then forced to begin the painful process of coming to grips with his anger and embarrassment at discovering his mother’s sexual nature, then seeing his father screwing a student that Walt is attracted to.

The Mother, being a woman, is more in touch with the emotions involved, is also the stronger person, demanding her freedom, not only from her domineering husband, but also from the constant demands of her children. She has found power and self-esteem as a desirable woman and a creative artist and the children must deal with her as she is now.

You're not meant to like either of the parents - they are not redeemed in the end. It is not a pleasant story to watch, and Baumbach avoids Hollywood ending, where all the characters end in “a better place.” The dad is the same jerk in the end as he was at the start. Frank will probably continue to be a “project,” drawn to self-destructive addictions. Mom, we suspect, will keep searching for romances as material for her novels.

The hope, if there is any to the dreary tale of a family’s doom, is that the boys are smart, well educated, and may have the ability to write their own novels and scripts when and if they grow up and complete their therapy.

An interesting subtext to the story is one not touched upon, but which for me is an elephant in the room. We are never shown any of the writings of the parents in this film, but I wonder whether their lives and those of their children seeped into their work; whether a side of their brains were formulating “characters” while they experienced their drama, whether they used their lives as text. Baumbach’s autobiographical writing must have affected his own family. Curious about how his parents, both writers themselves, view his use of their lives for his art. Are they ambivalent: proud, but hurt? Or are they such committed “artists” that they have blurred the line between “character” and “human?” That would have been perhaps a more interesting theme. O’Neill ordered that his gut wrenching play about his own family’s secrets be kept unpublished until long after his death, a wish his widow overruled to our benefit.

BEE SEASON, its script written by Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal (wife of director Steven Gyllenhaal and mother of actors Jake and Maggie) from a best selling book by Myla Goldberg, contains many of the same elements as SQUID.

First and most importantly, the father is the “heavy” of the piece. Richard Gere plays “Saul Naumann,” a religion prof in Berkeley. Like “Bernard Berkman,” he is Jewish, intellectual, domineering, and completely insensitive to the real needs of his wife and family. And like “Bernard,” “Saul” can teach, but has no creative genius. He understands all about spirituality, but doesn’t feel any. Both dads are egotistical hypocrites who fail their family and cause the crisis.

Second, the teen son, “Aron” (played by Max Minghella, son of director Anthony — in SQUID, the son was played by celebrity son Owen Kline), begins as seemingly idolatrous of his dad, playing string duets and discussing Kabbala. The youngest sibling, 11 year old “Eliza” (newcomer Flora Cross) begins as the quiet child, seemingly ignored by her father. Like the 12 year old boy in SQUID, she is closer to her mother, if any of the parents. Both teens will rebel against their dad, Aron searching for his own spiritual center in a Hare Krishna hottie (“Choli,” played by Kate Bosworth), while in SQUID, Walt tried sex with a literary minded girl. In both movies, it will be up to the youngest to try to save the family.

Third, the mom, “Miriam,” (Juliet Binoche), like Laura Linney in SQUID, is also going to “leave” her insensitive husband in order to survive, although in this case, the departure is into mental illness, some sort of a refuge for a thwarted creative self-realizing impulse. Miriam is revealed to be an obsessive-compulsive fruitcake, who for years has been secretly stealing bits and pieces of glass, wind chimes, and doo-dads from strange houses. When she is finally discovered and breaks down she is relieved to now be “free” to “be herself,” no matter how nutty herself is.

Structurally, the mom’s story in BEE SEASON is the most problematic. At first, she simply seems somewhat detached from her family. We're told of her childhood trauma - her parents abandoned her to boarding school and died in a car crash which she witnessed. She seems functional - works in a laboratory, implying intellect and ability. But soon, we see her driving around, entering a house and taking an earring. We are deceived into suspecting a secret affair. Later, she repeats this act in a different house. Only in Act 3 do we see that she is completely bonkers and has been possibly for her entire life. Somehow she has incorporated her husband's mystic spiritual metaphors about the world as "shattered glass" that needs to be "healed" into a psychotic web, motivated by lack of self-esteem, exacerbated by her husband's dominance. Whew!

The classic feminine dilemma --- "lack of fulfillment" in the the marriage structure --- was supposed to be addressed by the Feminist Revolution of the last forty years. Male and female consciousness was said to be sufficiently "raised," acting to free women from stultifying familial and sexual roles. Yet, judging by recent movies, women are still feeling as trapped as their ancestors, Nora Helmer of Ibsen's A DOLL'S HOUSE, and Tolstoy's eponymous ANNA KARENINA.

And now, added to the classic drama is the dilemma of the male in such families.

MATCH POINT - postmod woody allen

I had just been surfing for “art & morality,” and “postmodern films” and come across an article calling Woody Allen “the quintessential postmodern filmmaker,” and “this Nietzschean evangelist of nihilism.” The fact that these pejorative arrows were fired from a Christian based website toward the Atheist New York lapsed Jew, Allen, made me think that it was sadly hyperbolic.

Films have been labeled postmodern by academic cinemaniacs based mostly on their style. The film maker most often mentioned was David Lynch (BLUE VELVET and MULHOLLAND DRIVE). Allen’s films are not like that, at least not in style. Allen doesn’t resist storytelling, his constructions are usually linear, and his visual style (or styles) are derivative of his favorites: Bergman, Fellini, The Marx Brothers.

Then again ... One of the precursors of Postmodernism is certainly Existentialism with its core faith that chance is responsible for more than we care to admit and that therefore, finding rational meaning in the whole mess of life is absurd. Morality is situational in such a world, truth subjective, and all choices can be right AND wrong ... or is it that there is no Right OR Wrong? Hmmm...

So, I start watching MATCH POINT, not having heard much about it during its theatrical run, except that critics generally had praised it as one of Woody’s better recent efforts. And in the very first scene, a voice over tells me that “LUCK” rules our lives more than we admit, using the example of a tennis ball that hits the top of the net and hovers, randomly falling for a loss or a win.

Sure sounds like existential, nihilistic, atheistic postmodern evangelism...

The story that followed was pretty involving, if familiar. Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), a tennis pro, is befriended by Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode), an upperclass airhead and his rich and connected father (Brian Cox) and snooty mother (Penelope Wilton). There is a sister who falls for Chris, and persuades her father to offers him entre into the upper class. He also meets his future brother-in-law’s fiancee, an American actress.

The sister, Chloe, is played by Emily Mortimer, whom I personally would accept as a mate if the opportunity arose (and I like her father, John Mortimer, a British criminal lawyer who wrote RUMPOLE OF THE BAILEY, but not with the same kind of passion). On the other hand, the actress, Nola Rice, is played by Scarlett Johanssen, and it is not a fair fight if the issue is good wife and good life vs. HOT, HOT, HOT.

So of course, Woody's Chris wants both. We are now in murky moral territory previously explored by Allen many times (from HANNAH AND HER SISTERS to CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS).

Because it is Woody, we wait (and hope) for some ironic comic spin on the lusty male philandering, but uh-uh. This is the new Woody. Gone is New York angst or whiny guilt (for the most part). This is England and it is Agatha Christie or Patricia Highsmith who are called upon for literary assistance, and Hitchcock (if anyone) whose style (as in DIAL M FOR MURDER or SUSPICION) is recalled.

So we follow Chris as he relentlessly pursues Nola until he has her, while also struggling to keep his place in the sun —

Hey, now that I mention it... Theodore Dreiser’s novel “An American Tragedy,” which George Stevens adapted as A PLACE IN THE SUN (1951), was about a social climber (Montgomery Clift) who lusted for a plain girl (Shelley Winters), won her, but disposed of her when she got inconveniently pregnant after he saw the 20 year old Elizabeth Taylor, scrumptious daughter of a rich and connected father and raised the aim of his lust and ambition.

Woody knows his film history, so I am sure this “coincidence” didn’t escape him; his idea is much different. Chris marries the plain but rich girl and lusts after the poor and low class goddess, who is the one who gets inconveniently pregnant. Call it an homage, or a variation on a theme.

Anyway, Chris explains his dilemma to a confidante: wealth and comfort vs lust.

Here’s where Chris makes what seems to be a non-postmodern choice, according to my understanding of the "Christian view" of postmodernism, that is. They ascribe selfishness and amorality to the philosophy, but also assert that the postmodernist deviates from Biblical teaching by asserting “heart” vs. “head” when it comes to issues of love vs. duty, desire vs. “the right thing.” (I mean, they point to Clinton as a postmodern president).

So one would think tht Allen, the postmodernist, would choose lust over the choices that provide more security and faithfulness to conventions like marriage.

But in this case, Chris sensibly goes for the gold. He devises a complex plan to get away with murdering Nola.

Now, here I have to note parenthetically that I am by trade a criminal defense lawyer and am almost always disturbed by crime stories that hinge on stupid plot devices that fail the smell test of coming close to “reality.” But in this case, I don’t think the devices used are egregious errors, although English cops might wince at a few false assumptions about their competence. There is the trite device of a trivial item that might expose the crime (like the key in DIAL M and the lighter in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN) and whether it will be discovered is part of the reason this movie has been placed in the “Thriller” genre.

At any rate, Allen’s construction does permit us to think that this is far from a perfect crime. In fact, he wants us to know that it is not, and that only LUCK will decide whether the double murdering culprit will be caught and punished, not morality or reason or the lust for order in the universe.

Chris does feel some pangs of guilt in his lavish apartment overlooking the Thames, but he convinces us (in a ghost scene) that he can overcome his qualms and be pretty happy, despite a few moments of recurring angst, which we accept because we postmodernists are used to living with angst.

THE MISFITS - an accidental pop culture classic

Some movies are oxymoronically dubbed Instant Classics. The passage of time is required to achieve classic status, in my book. Later critics and audiences re-evaluate it and it is then recognized for what was originally overlooked. Orson Welles' was revived and raised to Olympus many years after his work was done.

John Huston’s THE MISFITS is a classic, not so much because of its inherent quality. Viewing it today, 45 years after its initial release (1961), it is still a messy movie with a pretentiously romantic arty theme. Still, Huston’s visual style, settings, leisurely story telling, make the movie more watchable for a generation weaned on Indie art films, with many of the same flaws and pleasures.

It became a classic because of events that began as soon as it was completed. First, Clark Gable died shortly after, at 59 of a heart attack, brought on by the physical stress of his role and, perhaps, the mental stress of dealing with Marilyn’s neuroses. Marilyn Monroe and screen writer Arthur Miller separated during filming, divorced soon after, and Marilyn overdosed and died before completing another movie, at age 36. Montgomery Clift (41), who plays a featured role, never made another notable movie and died 5 years later, ravaged by depression and drugs.

Watching the movie now it is hard not to be affected by that knowledge. But it is not simply bits of movie trivia that lend ironic meaning to the movie. It is that the events and back story fit so well into the themes, images, and mood of the work, enhance it to the point that it becomes an extraordinary sample of pop culture iconography.

Gable, Marilyn, and Clift each were powerful icons of their eras in movie culture. The Old King of the studio era, the Sex Goddess, and the forerunner of the new male – the brooding sensitive (possibly sexually ambiguous, certainly the Anti-Macho) boy. None will survive in the world that was beginning in the 1960's, the one we now occupy. Watching it now, the actors seem to foresee their fates, and it is excruciating to watch them living it.

The characters they are playing are also on the edge of extinction — the rugged frontiersman, the aging beauty, the broken cowboy. Huston and Miller were consciously showing the end of the legendary Hollywood West. The characters live at the end of the world, the fringe of the western desert, not romantic and noble, but shabby and arid, lurid, cruel.

The men have dusty western dreams. They try to rope mustangs — killing the free to make money to preserve their own sense of freedom — unaware of the irony, until the woman, in a last burst of energy — screams them out of their killing frenzy. Miller — a city boy — cruelly exposes the irony of the Western and the Hollywood myths: both were built on the destruction of freedom. Killing the mustangs is symbolic suicide and despite the triteness inherent in the motion picture script, the real life and mythic pop culture life script conjoin to lend far greater irony to the climax.

The stars are stars of Greek tragedy. The traits that gave them their power were their fatal flaws: Gable’s machismo, Marilyn’s innocent and vulnerable sex appeal, Clift’s fragile sensitivity. Our legends are bound to self-destruct; they can’t survive their own myths.

THE MALTESE FALCON and the origins of pulp film

In the 1960's, I discovered Raymond Chandler’s books. I bought and read everything I could get my hands on. That led me to his predecessor, Dashiell Hammett, and I read all of his novels and many of his short stories.

From there, it was a short dive to the books of James M. Cain, Horace McCoy and Nathaniel West. Back then, these men who had written popular fiction first published in pulp magazines (like “Black Mask” and “True Detective”) from the 1920's through the ‘50's, and later, in cheap paperbacks with lurid covers --- with sleazy blondes in tight sweaters and drooping eyelids, full red lips with dangling cigarettes, and graceful hands holding smoking automatics --- were being re-discovered.

At UCLA, Phillip Durham taught their work in a class on modern literature, and it was a sensation. That this trash could be labeled “Literature” was a scandal and a revelation. Parenthetically, I believe it to be one of the first breakthroughs that led to the current freedom to consider comic books and other pop phenomena as subjects for serious academic and cultural consideration.

Among their works, consider the following list: Chandler: The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye; Hammett: The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key, The Dain Curse, Cain: The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce; McCoy: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?; West: The Day Of The Locust, Miss Lonelyhearts.

Another writer who is overlooked is W.R. Burnett, who labored for the Studios as a screenwriter, script doctor and dialogue contributor on many films for over 30 years. He was responsible for many film noir classics. He contributed dialogue to Little Ceasar and Scarface, wrote the novels on which Huston based High Sierra and The Asphalt Jungle. He adapted Graham Greene’s This Gun For Hire and wrote Night People. He wrote Nobody Lives Forever for John Garfield, and The Racket for Robert Mitchum.

If you recognize movie titles, you have solved half of the mystery of their importance.

They wrote about crime in cities among characters who had a resemblance to people we could believe really existed. Violence and sin were exciting: sex, greed, cruelty, perversion, were all openly shown with crackling hip wit and wise winks. Mean streets, hotels, alleys, nightclubs, bars, apartments, and the mansions of the nasty spoiled rich were the settings. All the action occurred in the black and gray shadows of nighttime in the city. The crimes and sins of the characters were going to be revealed and sometimes even committed by a tough hero, who might be a detective and later, would evolve into a sucker for a dame.

Hammett and then Chandler wrote private detective stories, in which the hero could be shady and walk slightly outside of the often corrupt legal establishment to achieve justice. The culprits were often women who were as tough as the men, sometimes tougher. They exposed the underside of the gender upheavals of the early 20th century: the sexual liberation of the Twenties and the Depression had created feminine ideals who were independent, scheming for a share of the swag, and using men as pawns to get ahead.

The French would recognize them from their models in literature as femmes fatales and by that label they would be forever known. After World War II, Cain wrote novels in which the femmes overwhelmed the heroes, whose ideals had been shorn by Depression and war, and lured them to destruction with promise of sexual greed. These anti-heroes had little of the nobility of the previous working detectives, but retained their appealing sexual adventurousness and hipness. They were often men bored with ordinary lives and wanted passion, even if it cost their lives.

When Hollywood discovered the formula, they made movies dark and erotic, which the American critics called cheap and tawdry B movies, and which French critics who loved them called Art and gave them a genre: Film Noir. The influence of this style on popular culture has been enormous, shaping our entertainment and ideas of Cool probably for good.

The Maltese Falcon and Cool

In 1998 The American Film Institute produced a list of the 100 greatest American films of the century. The controversial list defined “greatness” by several standards, including of course commercial success. By such measure, the vastly overrated and hopelessly dated Gone With The Wind was rated 4th. However, the list includes some films that are undeniably “great,” and The Maltese Falcon is one of them, number 23.

For my money, this film is rated far too low. Falcon is great by any standard, but the one that most interests me at the moment is its influence on popular culture.

The novel was published in 1929, the motion picture released in 1941. Its impact was immediate, widespread, and longlasting. Even today, filmmakers continue to draw from the ideas, images, concepts, mood, that the work embodies. Roman Polanski’s modern classic, Chinatown, of course, owes much of its mood, ideas and setting to this film and the genre it elevated to a form of art.

[Huston's version was the 3rd remake of the novel. In 1931, Roy Del Ruth directed a decent version starring Ricardo Cortez as Spade. In 1936, another version, SATAN MET A LADY, was a disaster despite Bette Davis as the femme. ]

The Coen’s 1990 Miller’s Crossing is based on elements from two Hammett novels, Red Harvest and The Glass Key. Tarantino’s work inherits the hard-boiled attitude toward greed, sex, and violence. Graphic novelists Max Collins (The Road To Perdition and Nathan Heller), and Frank Miller (Sin City) are inheritors of the Dashiell Hammett / John Huston / Humphrey Bogart genetic code.

The persona of “Sam Spade,” as created by the former private eye Hammett and personified by Bogart, has influenced our concept of Cool for the generations. Spade is the spiritual father of “James Bond,” the screen personas of such anti-heroes as Jack Nicholson, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson Jean Paul Belmondo, Clint Eastwood.

Harrison Ford has said that George Lucas’ direction to him in the bar scene introducing Han Solo in Star Wars was to “think Bogart.”

The dominance of the anti-hero ideal goes so far in our consciousness that it is hard to imagine Hip-hop gangstas, dark superheroes like Batman and the other tragically secret identity nerds without reference to the Spade paradigm. The influence of this ideal upon the whole of post-modern literature and popular culture is incalculable.

What is there about this novel, movie and character that we find so attractive and pertinent to our values?

Greg points out that Spade is “sentimental” in the sense that he “does the right thing,” that is the legal, conventional thing, by solving the crime, avenging his partner, and turning in the killer, even though he was attracted to her.

Yet, Spade can also be seen as “unsentimental’ in the sense that he gives up the possibility of love for work and duty. The climax of both novel and film is the asserted denial of sentimentality: “I won’t play the sap for you,” he tells Brigid, the girl with the pure sweet face and lying eyes, as he turns her in.

He is the ultimate recalcitrant male, rejecting feminine soft-headed notions like passionate emotional attachment for the manly ideals of loneliness, honor, and work. This is the quintessence of between-the-wars masculine ethic, exemplified in Camus’ existentialism, Hemingway’s self-proclaimed dedication to his “work” and politics, and Hammett’s lonely alcoholic sadness.

Whatever the case, Spade is not merely the template for all private eyes of the hardboiled variety. He is sadistic, attractive, on the edge of the law, unpredictable, risky, tough, smart. Through his portrayal of this character, Bogie solidified his status as the standard of Cool, which so impressed the French New Wave.

In 1959, Jean-Luc Godard’s first film, Breathless, shows Belmondo (as near a physical match as the French could find) near a Bogart movie poster. He brushes his finger across his lips to imitate his hero, whispers “Bogie.”

Pauline Kael writes:

“Godard ... saw something in the cheap American gangster movies of his youth that French movies lacked; he poeticized it and made it so modern (via fast jump cutting) that he, in turn, became the key influence on American movies of the 60s. Here, he brought together disharmonious elements—irony and slapstick and defeat—and brought the psychological effects of moviegoing into the movie itself. (His hero was probably the first to imitate Bogart.)”

This comment in a Roger Ebert review could apply to any post-modern independent movie:

“To describe the plot in a linear and logical fashion is almost impossible. That doesn't matter. The movie is essentially a series of conversations punctuated by brief, violent interludes. It's all style. It isn't violence or chases, but the way the actors look, move, speak and embody their characters. Under the style is attitude: Hard men, in a hard season, ... are motivated by greed and capable of murder ...

“Everything there is to know about Sam Spade is contained in the scene where Bridget asks for his help and he criticizes her performance: 'You're good. It's chiefly your eyes, I think--and that throb you get in your voice when you say things like, 'be generous, Mr. Spade.'

''He always stands outside, sizing things up. Few Hollywood heroes before 1941 kept such a distance from the conventional pieties of the plot.”

Kael’s take on Sam Spade:

“Bogart played him as written by Hammett, and Hammett was not sentimental about detectives: they were cops who were going it alone, i.e., who had smartened up and become more openly mercenary and crooked. Bogart's Spade is a loner who uses nice, simple people. He's a man who's constantly testing himself, who doesn't want to be touched ....”

The movie vs the novel:
Huston’s film does have a few minor flaws, which became clear to me after about 50 screenings — as in the best movies, it can be enjoyed that many times. The tension in the plot depends on the audience’s doubt about whether Spade loves Brigid enough to suspect that she is a killer, and whether he will protect her even after he has figured it out.

Hampered by the morality code then in effect in movies, Huston is forced to merely imply intimacy the night Cairo and the police leave Spade’s apartment after Brigid sighs about not knowing what is a lie. Spade seems taken with her vulnerability, leans over to kiss her, she pliantly raises her lips, he hesitates to look out the window to see the danger lurking in the street.

The next scene the morning after in Spade’s office reveals the change. Brigid now calls him “Darling,” he caresses her gently, calls her (somewhat unconvincingly) “My own true love,” and arranges for Effie to take her home to protect her.

This is one case in which a passionate sex scene would have definitely helped. It would have made the payoff speech: “Maybe you love me and maybe I love you ... I won't because all of me wants to and you counted on that... I’ll have some sleepless nights when I send you over, but that’ll pass ... You’ll be out of Tehachapi in twenty years. I’ll be waiting for you ...” even more chilling than it is.

In the novel (published in 1929), Hammett was far more explicit than the film about the love scene, though, of course, he stopped short of a literal sex scene. At the end of Chapter 9 of the novel, this is how Hammett described the evening scene [note how the script used the dialogue]:

“Her eyelids drooped. ‘Oh, I’m so tired,’ she said tremulously, ‘so tired of it all, of myself, of lying and thinking up lies, and of not knowing what is a lie and what is the truth. I wish I—’ She put her hands up to Spade’s cheeks, put her open mouth hard against his mouth, her body flat against his body. Spade’s arms went around her, holding her to him, muscles bulging his blue sleeves, hand cradling her head, its fingers half lost among red hair, a hand moving, groping fingers over her slim back. His eyes burned yellowly.”

The next chapter begins with Spade leaving Brigid in his bed and searching her apartment, returning to make them breakfast. The dialogue leaves no doubt of the change in their relationship and what happened the night before. The final scene in the novel, which Huston eliminated, goes this way. Spade enters his office the morning after turning Brigid over to the police. He cheerily greets Effie, who is reading the newspaper. She asks him if the report is correct. He affirms it. Hammett writes:

"... His face was pasty in color, but its lines were strong and cheerful and his eyes, though still somewhat red-veined, were clear. The girl’s [Effie’s] brown eyes were peculiarly enlarged and there was a queer twist to her mouth. She stood beside him, staring down at him. He raised his head, grinned, and said mockingly, ‘So much for your woman’s intuition.’

"Her voice was as queer as the expression on her face. ‘You did that, Sam, to her?’

He nodded. ‘Your Sam’s a detective.’ He looked sharply at her. He put his arm around her waist, his hand on her hip. ‘She did kill Miles, angel,’ he said gently, ‘offhand, like that.’ He snapped his fingers.

"She escaped from his arm as if he had hurt her. ‘Don’t, please, don’t touch me,’ she said brokenly. ‘I know— I know you’re right. You’re right. But don’t touch me now— not now.’

"Spade’s face became pale as his collar....”

[Effie quickly leaves the office, and returns to tell him that Iva, Miles Archer’s widow, has come in.]

"‘Yes, he said, and shivered. ‘Well, send her in.’"

The entire final passage is an affirmation of The Code which precludes sentiment over doing what Greg called “the right thing.” Effie’s reaction is the feminine one, expressing the ideal that love and emotional attachments are more important than logic and duty. Spade’s adherence to his code and refusal to be permanently swayed by emotion is what makes him one of the most attractive, yet terrifying “heroic” characters in literature.

The significance of this character in contemporary popular culture and fiction is obvious. One need only think of the other important heroes it was a model for. I am thinking particularly of the spy hero, such as James Bond, who represents the Cold War inheritor of the pre-World War II hard boiled private eye.

He too is sadistic, cold, calculating, eschews sentiment while keeping his eye on the prize: the winning of his personal battle against the enemy. He is ardently sexist, uses females without concern for emotional attachment. He is anti-authoritarian while still managing to be a member of, while he uses, the Establishment. His superiors treat him as a pariah, disavowing his excesses, while he barely tolerates their rules, bending them when it suits his goals. He has style and that is more important than the mere achievement of result, a hallmark of post-modern heroism as exemplified in our sports and music idols.

These characteristics are reminiscent of Spade and his successor Phillip Marlowe, derivative of their outrageous rebellion. Bond could not have existed without them. Neither could any of the rebellious “anti-heroes” of the 60's. Brando in any of his guises, Nicholson, McQueen, Bronson, Eastwood, all owe their attraction to the core of Bogart’s definition of the eccentric loner he vividly embodied.

It is just a small stretch to see hip hop and rapping anti-heroes of contemporary culture and fiction as inheritors of this mantle. Comic book superheroes, including Batman, Superman, and the other tragically lonely secret identity nerds owe much to this paradigm.

That this anti-authoritarian rebel who nonetheless maintains his own strict code of ethics holds magnetic universal appeal to each restless generation shouldn't be a shock. Nor should it be discouraged. Though Sam Spade coolly chooses duty over love, we sense that his Code might lead him to a higher "nobility" which might inspire selflessness, passion and romantic love.

In fact, the very next year after The Maltese Falcon was released, Bogart was steered into Casablanca, in which "Rick Blaine," the hard-boiled saloon keeper who "sticks his neck out for nobody" is persuaded to sacrifice: first, his manly solitude - for passionate love for Ingrid Bergman (the anti-femme fatale), then, to give her up - in favor of "The Cause."

But that's another story ...