Scenes from the Cinematic Scorekeepers

Still out there? Good. The Siren has raised the blinds, put away her lace-trimmed hanky and is ready to face down Gladys Cooper, or whatever else gets dished out this week. She is still working on her Nightmare Alley thoughts, but the sudden, unwelcome spike in film obituaries has spurred her to put some down some old rambling thoughts.

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Hell of a time for film fans, isn't it? RIP, Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Michel Serrault and László Kovács. More interesting than the end-of-an-era stuff, however, is the subsequent scorekeeping. We cinephiles tend to pooh-pooh Greatest 100 Films of All Time Lists, then dive like Greg Louganis into debates over whether or not a director is an all-time heavyweight. In the most recent round, Jonathan Rosenbaum had critics all over the blogosphere uncorking either the champagne or the smelling salts when he ran a New York Times opinion piece on Bergman that the editors, in a moment of inspired chutzpah, titled "Scenes from an Overrated Career." Roger Ebert wrote a spirited defense, and discussions ensued all over everywhere, particularly at Scanners, a_film_by, Elusive Lucidity and Girish.

It is fascinating how the general tone in the treatment of a director or other film artist changes over time. If you admired Bergman in 1973, the year of Scenes from a Marriage, chances are you still do. But in that year you wouldn't have been contending with nearly as many reservations as have been heard in the two weeks since his death.

Other directors are also getting fewer awed reactions than in the past. When in her late teens the Siren started trying to watch movies in an intellectuallly engaged manner--reading up on history, seeking out serious critics, trying to mix as many highly regarded films into her viewing as possible--it was axiomatic that John Ford was a towering great. That was a while back, and Ford's status has slipped for some; he even got a sideswipe in Rosenbaum's piece. David Thomson and Richard Schickel, both veteran Ford haters, have a lot more company now.

On the other hand, back in the 1980s the Siren had a hard time getting a serious discussion of Billy Wilder going, unless she wanted to talk about his supposed misogyny. (She didn't want to talk about that, because she doesn't think he IS a misogynist, but that's another post.) Reagan was in office and, not coincidentally in the Siren's view, Frank Capra was fashionable. It was a go-go era, a time of vocal patriotism, even more so than now. Capra was better suited to it than Wilder, with his mordant view of what success means for Americans, and what we will do to achieve it. With the publication of Cameron Crowe's book and the tributes after Wilder's death in 2002, suddenly the Siren had no trouble finding Wilder admirers. He is better suited to the tenor of our own times than Capra--Ace in the Hole is a lot closer to the age of reality television than Meet John Doe--so it isn't surprising that Wilder now is more in vogue.

In vogue, if not in full pantheon membership. According to Brian Baxter of Britain's Guardian, Wilder is still "second rung" (though "never second rate"). In this Guardian obituary for Ingmar Bergman, Baxter names a "handful of geniuses--Robert Bresson, Carl Dreyer, Yasujiro Ozu, Jean Renoir, [and] Roberto Rossellini" who outrank Bergman and Antonioni, and by the way, they're also better than Wilder, Visconti, Kurosawa and Ray. You might think that with six Film Pageant Runner-Ups (if Mr. Bresson cannot fulfill his duties as Greatest Director of All Time...) you would have just six different ways of getting pissed off. But the Siren's initial reaction was "What about Max Ophuls, huh?"

Her readers can replace the name of Ophuls with their particular favorite. We all have our teacher's pets, no matter which directors are being debated more in film classes. Year by year, with pious patience, the Siren sits waiting for Mitchell Leisen to get his due. And she loves John Ford, but has resigned herself to the naysayers. Now the Siren can read David Thomson's vituperative Ford piece in A Biographical Dictionary of Film without recourse to ripping out pages, scribbling in the margins or calling her cousins to rant. On some directors she retains a certain touchiness, however. When you trash Ernst Lubitsch, smile, cowboy.

The Siren is firmly on the side of the Bergman lovers. His "private psychodramas" still say many large and universal things to her. She does think, however, that people should give Mr. Rosenbaum a break about not seeing Fanny and Alexander. For one thing, Antonioni's death sent the Siren scurrying to her Netflix queue in embarrassment--even though he isn't really in her chosen specialty, boy, does she need to get cracking on his filmography. For another, she is exceedingly fond of Fanny and Alexander and does not wish to hear it nitpicked, by Mr. Rosenbaum or anybody else. Far more painful than someone loving a movie you loathe is someone who hates a movie that you consider a work of genius--or, worse yet, waves the movie aside as old hat.

Rosenbaum himself gave a nod to the way reputations cycle when he showed up at Jim Emerson's place and remarked, "I don't think I could have written such an article for the Times WITHOUT it being to some extent a piece about fashion." The Siren thinks Bergman will swing back into fashion; he's too good not to. One rediscovered movie is often enough to do it. When I Vitelloni had a brief re-release in theaters some time back, the Siren went to see it. As she sat in the audience she felt a sense almost of surprise coming off some other patrons--the startled laughter and enjoyment of people who weren't expecting to be wowed. Fellini has also been out of style--try Googling Fellini and "overrated" and just look at all the opinions that come up--but the movie is so good it constitutes its own form of rebuttal. So does Fanny and Alexander.

Anyone wish to share some perceptions of who's in favor these days, and who seems to be getting more knocks than in the past?

In Brief: Le Samouraï

The Siren was oversold on Le Samouraï, not by any critic, but by the Jean-Pierre Melville movies she saw previously. Having seen Un Flic, which she thought pretty good, Bob le Flambeur, which she thought excellent, and L'Armée des Ombres, which she thought a masterpiece, the Siren was all in a tizzy to Netflix this classic. Le Samouraï, after a patently phony epigraph, opens with a long shot of Alain Delon, barely visible on the bed in a dirty Parisian flat, smoke from his cigarette gathering above his head. And there was this squeak in the background, and the Siren tried to figure out what it reminded her of, until she thought, "Damn. That sounds like the windmill in Once Upon a Time in the West." It's Delon's pet bird, but the association really, really should have warned her. This movie is a cerebrally paced, meticulously framed, fantastically good-looking stiff. The Siren admired its stark construction but it was an endurance test, 105 minutes that felt twice as long as L'Armée did at 145.

In interviews Melville suggested that Jef, a hired assassin and the "samurai" of the title, is schizophrenic, but crazy people are usually livelier than this, at least in the movies. Somewhere around the time Jef got nicked by a bullet the Siren realized there was never going to be a point where she gave two hoots in hell about him. Instead she found herself looking at Delon's face, dour and unchanging in shot after shot, and remembering the verdict of his ex-lover Brigitte Bardot: "Alain is beautiful, but so is my Louis XVI commode." Nathalie Delon (married to Alain at the time) and Cathy Rosier, both gorgeous, apparently had the same acting coach as the star. The police chief (François Périer) was the Siren's favorite. He cracks jokes and has facial expressions.

The Siren can understand the admiration for the steel-colored perfection of Le Samouraï's look. But watching Delon dart around the Metro, in fear for his life, left her as cold as Harry Lime looking down from the Ferris wheel. The Siren has resigned herself to more lonely iconoclasm, but she did find this. Merci, M. Rosenbaum, for expressing a few reservations. And apologies to Girish.

Above left (click to enlarge): Alain Delon, right three-quarters view; Alain Delon, left three-quarters view; Alain Delon looks at a gun; Alain Delon looks at Cathy Rosier; Cathy Rosier looks at Alain Delon. Special bonus: Compare the second shot with this snap of the Delons' son. Joie de vivre runs in the family.

*****

The Siren likes Delon in other movies, particularly Purple Noon, Rocco and His Brothers and The Leopard. Good takes on the actor to be found at Cinebeats and Sunset Gun. Kimberly of Cinebeats is a Delon expert, having put together a very groovy fan site for him, which is archived here.

The Siren's Top 9 Objections to the AFI Top 100

Because she likes the number 9 better than the number 10. In reverse order, the Siren's problems with who made it, Ma, and who didn't:

9. This morning, my daughter was playing with a set of wooden blocks. There are 30 blocks in the set. Her twin brother reached out and tentatively grabbed one block. This left her with 29. His sister let out a howl that could probably be heard in Newark: "No, MY BLOCKS! MINE!" And I had the same conversation as always. There are a lot of blocks here. Your brother can have his one block.

What reminded the Siren of this scenario was the presence, once again, of Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge on the River Kwai on this list. These films weren't merely created by a British director, like Vertigo. They are culturally and thematically British, about British history and British empire. Who cares about which country put up the money? Kwai had one American star and two American screenwriters, it is true, but one writer was in France and the other in London because we had, you know, made them leave in order to get work.

We have a massive film industry. We have our own blocks and furthermore, unlike this morning's combatants, we are not four years old. We don't have to take away movies from the British. (The Siren assumes that the howls over the prior inclusion of The Third Man as "American" must have made a dent, since its omission can't be explained otherwise.) And while we are on the subject, A Clockwork Orange, despite Kubrick, doesn't make much sense as an American movie either.

8. No Fritz Lang. Come on--no Scarlet Street? no Woman in the Window? Well, the second one has been hard to see for some time. The Siren hasn't seen it since the 1980s, but its DVD-less state is about to be rectified.

7. Sophie's Choice really isn't a good movie. It is a pretty bad movie with one great performance and an unforgettable climax. The other movies on the list that the Siren considers unworthy can be justified in terms of cultural impact or later influence--even (the Siren swallows hard) something like The Sixth Sense. But Sophie's Choice was recognized as a deeply flawed movie even at the time, and if it had lasting influence on anything other than subject matter and Meryl Streep's (well-earned) career the Siren has missed it.

6. The Siren loves James Cagney. Worships him, in fact. And she loves Yankee Doodle Dandy. But if you are going to do only one Cagney, the one to do is White Heat.

5. Similar beef with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Swing Time is great, but everyone knows Top Hat is the one to beat.

4. You out there, yes you, the one whining about Citizen Kane. Cut it out. No, it is not a "boring movie." No, it did not achieve its status strictly because of "technical stuff." It is one of the most thematically complex movies ever made in this country, an astoundingly rich statement on American success and American failure, as relevant today as it was in 1941. The Siren finds Paradise Lost boring. Nevertheless she does not waste people's time by trying to argue that this means Milton is overrated.

3. If, however, you wish to argue that The Magnificent Ambersons has as much of a right to be here as Kane, the Siren will listen.

2. Famous exchange at Ernst Lubitsch's funeral:

Billy Wilder: No more Ernst Lubitsch.
William Wyler: Worse than that. No more Lubitsch pictures.

While this thought depressed the hell out of Wilder and Wyler, a lack of Lubitsch does not unduly ruffle the mandarins of the AFI. That is ten different kinds of wrong.

1. As Ebert points out, this list is more a marketing tool than anything else, designed to shift DVDs. Given the amount of attention the list generates, and the fact that it is compiled by "filmmakers, critics and historians," does it have to be so SAFE? So many Oscar winners. So many epics and adventure stories, so few women's pictures, so little grit. Everything already widely seen and widely available. Live a little, guys. Is a bit of a surprise too much to ask?

Postscript: Mucho morning-after discussion on this, of course. Edward Copeland tracks the ins and outs on the list, and M.A. Peel at Newcritics looks in depth at the Top 10. Here is Chuck Tryon, giving his thoughts on the value of lists in general, and speculating about the "why" behind some of the MIA. Jim Emerson gives his thoughts, and links to his own list at the bottom of the post. Lots of love to the Reeler for the best two-word summary of the AFI list, and his constructive suggestions for alternatives. A list of "100 Forgotten Films"--now that is something the Siren could applaud.

Still more--Daniel at Check the Fien Print has no tolerance for the D.W. Griffith entry, and a lot of skepticism over how it was chosen.

Hostel Part II: "You Think I'm Hostile Now ..."

Many critics have a terror of going down in history like Bosley Crowther, as the relic who looked at a seminal moment in movie history (in Crowther's case, Bonnie and Clyde) and reached for the smelling salts. The Siren has no such anxiety. She wears her fuddy-duddiness with pride. Describe her taste as 1950s and she will be flattered. Call her Depression-era and she will buy you a drink.

The film of the moment is, god help us, Hostel Part II, and some excellent critics either love it or expect to. Michael Guillen and D.K. Holme loved it. Kim Morgan, Cinebeats and The Bleeding Tree are eager to see it. Dennis Cozzalio has posted a thoughtful consideration of the movie and what it means for the horror genre.

Still, the Siren examines her end of the bar for the other relics and finds some good company. Here is Filmbrain, a blogger the Siren unreservedly adores, and a man no one can accuse of having a low bloodshed threshold. James Wolcott looked at the "Quentin Tarantino Presents" imprimatur on the Hostel Part II posters and summed up the erstwhile wonder boy as "a pimp for geek sadism." Jeffrey Wells and David Poland could definitely use a double martini after sitting through the movie. The Siren believes she owes S.T. VanAirsdale a drink now, should she bump into him. And Damian Arlyn posted a most eloquent defense of his refusal to see Eli Roth's minimum opus. I didn't think I could add much to Damian's piece. Do read it, he does a splendid job. But for some reason--maybe it's those repulsive print ads I keep stumbling across, maybe it's this impromptu blogathon we seem to have going--I have to say my piece anyway.

The Siren won't be seeing Hostel or its sequel, or Saw and its spawn, or The Hills Have Eyes remake or Wolf Creek, or any of the antecedents like Cannibal Holocaust or I Spit on Your Grave, for that matter. First Amendment absolutist that she is, the Siren in no way argues for the banning of these movies, although when she reflects that Martin Scorsese had to spend many long days cutting down Goodfellas to avoid an NC-17, the irony just about asphyxiates her.

When the Grand Guignol shut down in Paris in 1962, its final director remarked, "We could never equal Buchenwald." The likes of Eli Roth and Greg McLean can't equal the Iraq war, but that hasn't stopped people from flocking. Well, the Siren requires no elaboration on the "why" behind the grosses for Hostel or its siblings. Our time has no need for catharsis or satiation that plausibly can be called unique. Read William Makepeace Thackeray's description of the crowd at a London hanging in 1840, and you will have all you ever need to know about what draws us to the most brutal side of horror. It is as fundamental a human taste as any other.

And the Siren doesn't think having that taste says much about a person. Her longtime roommate in the 1980s adored slasher movies. This was a man who never saw a baby he didn't want to cootchy-coo at, apologized to his cat when he moved it off the couch and wouldn't eat in a restaurant on Thanksgiving because he felt sorry for the waiters. He's the reason the Siren saw a long list of slasher flicks in the Nightmare-Freddie-Jason-Chucky-Hellraiser era, until she finally gave up trying to see the point of them and started retreating to her room with a book.

Most of us have a limited amount of viewing time relative to what we like to call "real life." Netflix just sent me L'Armée des Ombres, and I have not watched it yet. Anyone want to tell me that Hostel Part II is worth my time as much as that one? Is there a single performance in the latest round of jolly little splatterfests that can withstand comparison with one in Jean-Pierre Melville's movie? How about the dialogue, the camerawork, the editing, the sound, the art direction, the goddamn costumes even? Is there "social commentary" in any of the gorefests that could sustain an intelligent discussion for more than ten minutes?

You can argue that "torture porn" movies entertain. Rock on. So do a lot of things. Say that they are really about survival; the Siren does not buy that one, but you can argue it. You can point out that some of the techniques make their way into more mainstream fare. Fair enough. Dickens was influenced by the Newgate Calendar. That doesn't make Dick Turpin into Oliver Twist.

Praising the most gore-splattered subset of horror becomes supportable only by drawing in movies that really don't fit, such as the original Halloween or the wildly overrated Psycho, both of which achieve their effects far more through suggestion than through explicit violence. You could draw in John Ford--this John Ford--or John Webster , but there is, shall we say, a certain difference in script quality. The only other way to argue for these movies as anything other than disposable crap is to compare them with other blood-soaked horror films (comparing them with something like Val Lewton only exposes their limitations further). Hostel Part II may look great judged by the standards of Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Is it--or any other torture porn flick--great relative to Melville?

P.S. Guess I have my answer. Ian Pugh, of the very good site filmfreakcentral, compares Hostel Part II to Bunuel. Scoot over, Bosley. The Siren owes you a drink.

Les Misérables, Anna Karenina and Welles: A Dissent

The Siren registers polite disagreement with Dave Kehr of the New York Times, and his review yesterday of new DVDs. I hope he didn't mean it when he said that the 1948 Anna Karenina and the double DVD set of the 1935 and 1952 Les Misérables were destined to sit "somewhere on a back shelf in high school libraries, to be shown whenever an English teacher feels like taking an afternoon off." Both releases have a great deal to offer film lovers.

The Siren saw that version of Tolstoy quite some time ago, and while Vivien Leigh could not compete with memories of Garbo in the same role thirteen years earlier, Ralph Richardson was a superb Karenin. It was also directed by Julien Duvivier, a fine talent who achieved greatness more than once with films such as Un Carnet de Bal and Pepe le Moko. As for Les Misérables, the Siren hasn't seen the 1952 version, though Robert Newton supposedly does a good job as Javert, and Lewis Milestone was no slouch. But releasing the 1935 version is a genuine event, for it contains Charles Laughton as Javert, a role recorded at the pinnacle of his artistry. It's been darned hard to find for lo these many years, despite virtues such as cinematography by the great Gregg Toland. The director was Richard Boleslawski, a veteran of the Moscow Art Theatre whose role in bringing the Method to America led Simon Callow to call him "Moses, or perhaps John the Baptist." Laughton's wife, Elsa Lanchester (Madame Magloire in the 1952 version), thought it Laughton's finest performance. And Gloria, if you are reading this and you have a multi-region DVD player, Amazon has it for $13.99, and they ship to Spain. The Siren's copy is on its way.

Finally, a word about Orson Welles as Rochester in Jane Eyre (1944), also released this week. The Siren cheerfully acknowledges her own Welles worship, but she still thinks his performance has been short-changed. Rochester in the novel is a frequently menacing figure, who at first frightens Jane as much as he fascinates her. The Siren sees little similarity between Welles's Rochester, with his air of privilege and his acid sarcasm at Jane's expense, and Heathcliff, the half-wild, uncouth orphan, desperately in love with a woman he cannot have. (Perhaps the association comes from Laurence Olivier. He was mesmerizing, but he played Heathcliff throughout with an accent more redolent of the Old Vic than the stable.)

Joan Fontaine did indeed play the spirited Jane a mite too close to Mrs. de Winter territory. But I would not call the novel's Rochester downtrodden, as Mr. Kehr does, not even at the end when, as Joyce Carol Oates wrote, "the blind and crippled Rochester is no less masculine than before." Rather than playing it safe, as a straight figure of romance, Welles brought out the neurosis in Rochester to a marked degree while retaining the arrogance of the aristocrat. That was a definite risk. As David Shipman put it, Welles "moved and looked the part, darkly romantic, but it was hard to believe that he wasn't as insane as his wife."

Do the Contrarian: Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

It is a lonely thing, disliking Once Upon a Time in the West. Trawling through the vast store of critics' reviews compiled on IMDB yields approximately five thumbs down. The rest fall all over themselves to call this the greatest Western ever made. The Siren's own husband has already penciled in a date to see it with the kids when they're ready (in about ten years). One of my favorite film writers named his blog after Sergio Leone. (Dennis, please try not to hold it against me.) The film's reputation seems impregnable, and in questioning its greatness the Siren plays an exercise somewhat akin to lobbing a spitball at the Washington Monument. She is resigned to the idea that few, if any, will agree with her piece of contrarianism. She does hope, however, that for the time it takes to read this post, you will at least be able to see the movie through her eyes.

Instead of summarizing the plot, which is widely known and too murky anyway, the Siren will state why she dislikes this movie: It is overlong, badly acted, misogynistic and dull. Dear god is it dull. The movie is often compared to an opera, but the more apt comparison is oratorio--plenty of music, no scenery and no acting. The structure cycles through same, same, one minute of dialogue, gunfight, same.

Then again, Leone's camera doesn't seem to care if we ever get interested or not. Again and again we return to the basic pattern of long shot (flat, sun-bleached, not terribly interesting desert) to close-up (flat, sun-creased, not terribly expressive face), close-up to long shot. It has a sort of lulling rhythm to it, like walking through a gallery and turning your head from portrait to landscape and back again. But like the paintings in the gallery, it just hangs there. Leone is supposed to have choreographed OUTITW's performances to Morricone's pre-written, excellent score, but the tempo doesn't change much even when the music does. Certainly there are references to other filmmakers--better filmmakers--Fred Zinnemann with the opening train station sequence, John Ford with the build-up to the massacre, the funeral sequence borrowed from George Stevens. Some take that as a sign of the movie's greatness, but spotting those only irritates the Siren further, as it reminds her of other movies she could be watching. (She could, for example, watch High Noon AND 3:10 to Yuma in only slightly more than OUTITW's running time.)

Said it before, repeat it here--the grand unifying theme of Western movies is, "who's the man here?" OUTITW gives us two. The first is Charles Bronson. Actors do not usually become stars without some sort of star quality, and Bronson has presence, a great deal of it in fact. But Leone's preference for monumental performances, meaning the actors hold poses for beat after beat after beat while we are supposed to wonder what is happening behind those scrunched-up eyes, is catastrophic for Bronson. The Siren is not kidding when she tells you she prefers Bronson in Death Wish, where at least he gets to move. Here he seems preserved in amber, an actor who manages to overplay his lack of affect. That is its own form of odd accomplishment, but that doesn't make it moving.

The second man, more by dint of blowing Bronson off the screen than the script itself, is Henry Fonda. The Siren often wonders how much of OUTITW's impact, then and now, is due to the stunt casting of Fonda. Holy moly, Wyatt Earp just shot a kid! How could Tom Joad be so mean? But is it surprising that a serious, stage-trained actor with a 40-year career behind him at that point could play a villain? Frank is a figure of pure evil, as such his character arc is more like a straight line, and Fonda's chief virtue is in refraining from the sort of hamminess Anthony Hopkins brought to Hannibal Lecter. Fonda, as always, walks softly. The shock from the against-type casting lasts about 20 minutes, and the movie is, of course, 165 minutes long. You have plenty of time to notice that Frank's villainy is no more fleshed-out or believable than hundreds of others, from Lee Marvin as Liberty Valance to Jack Palance in Shane. The difference is that those villains don't overstay their welcome, mostly popping onstage to punch up the action and heighten the stakes. Here you have to spend a long, long time with Frank, and he never gets any less or any more evil, nor does he get more interesting.

If there is anything the Siren can enjoy about the movie, aside from the deservedly praised opening, it is Jason Robards as Cheyenne. He is so deliciously, cornball hammy he seems to have dropped in from another set. When he is on screen the movie does occasionally lurch to life, as when he pops up in a window, hanging upside-down from a railway car, wearing a marvelous expression somewhere between apprehension and glee. Unfortunately, many of his scenes are played with Claudia Cardinale.

Ah, Cardinale as Jill. Misogyny irritates the Siren, but even more than misogyny she is irritated by those who try to gloss or dismiss the problem, for problem it is. OUTITW puts a woman in the middle of the action, gives her character great thematic importance, and then shows her behaving in ways that simply beggar belief. She's the whore with a heart of gold (heaven help us, and in 1968 yet), but more than that she is all appetite and survival instinct, only minimal brain. Jill is an animal shorn of even the small dignity of an animal's initiative. She spends the movie merely reacting to events. Kidnapped? Guess she better sleep with Frank. Railroad workers need water? fine, and because Cheyenne says so she'll let them pat her backside (one of the most bizarre assertions of workers' rights the Siren has ever heard). Bronson rips her dress? She falls in love with him. Duck? Fine, she'll duck. And whether deliberately or inadvertently, Leone cast an actress who was unable at any point in her screen career to suggest much of an interior life for even a well-written character, as in The Leopard. In Visconti's masterpiece, this most beautiful of actresses can mime the charm of a young girl only by waggling her shoulders a great deal and biting her lower lip at strategic intervals. Here Cardinale mostly holds her head still (thank God for that small favor from Leone's techniques) but reverts again and again to the same lips-slightly-parted stare, as the audience wonders whether false eyelashes and Cleopatra liner were around in the 1880s.

Here the Siren returns to the mystery of talent, and why some actors can project things to the camera that others simply cannot. Garbo, whom Orson Welles flatly called "stupid," could stare into the distance and take the audience on a journey through all the ages of Woman, as we pondered what lay behind that beautiful face. Cardinale's beauty is no less stunning, and yet as she looks into the camera you suspect she is trying to recall whether she left the hot plate on in her trailer. Well, perhaps Garbo could have breathed substance into Jill. But the Siren doubts it.

In his better movies (though the Siren has reservations even about those), Leone choreographs the set-up for violence fully as much or more than the violence itself, such as the justly celebrated final shoot-out in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The Siren doesn't mind the lack of realism in this; as she has said before, realism is a style like any other, and an overrated one, at that. But here Leone just does not know when to stop. I will accept two men circling one another for a final confrontation, sizing one another up like dogs and spitting. I will accept them doing it for a longer time than any two armed men probably ever did in the history of the Colt 45. But when they do it for a quarter-hour--and stop for a flashback to boot--it becomes ludicrous. You might as well bring in Russ Tamblyn and George Chakiris and let the characters dance it out. Furthermore, the impact of this, the final confrontation, is lost because this is how ALL the confrontations in the movie have played out. We have been watching menacing poses for two and a half damn hours. A few more just aren't that interesting.

The theme of OUTITW is the bloody track of the railroad, and how it brings the tough-hombre era to an end even as it brings more exploitation. Leone correctly grasps that the idea of space--that, like Huck Finn, you can always light out for the territories--is a big part of our fascination with the push westward. The director's other idea, here as in his Dollars trilogy, is to strip away the myth that out there was something good or noble, and show that greed and violence built the West. He was hardly the first to do that, but he was one of the most thorough. Trouble is, Leone takes every traditional aspect of the Western and, rather than building on it, either mocks it or replaces it with relentless, dour pessimism. So when the end credits roll at long-bloody-last, all you have is a funhouse reversal of Roy Rogers. Once Upon a Time in the West is, finally, as predictable in its darkness as Rogers was in his eternal goody-goodyness.


(This post is offered as part of the Contrarianism Blog-a-Thon sponsored by Jim Emerson at Scanners.)

Ten Underrated Films

It's so late in spring it's almost summer, but the Siren is sprucing up once again, adding some wonderful film bloggers she somehow never put on her Blogroll: Matt Zoller Seitz and the crew at The House Next Door, That Little Round-Headed Boy, Edward Copeland on Film and Mr. Middlebrow (he's not all movies, but I like his style, so on he goes).

Back in April, Mr. Middlebrow issued a challenge, taken up by TLRHB among others, to name "10 movies you consider overlooked, underrated, offbeat and in general deserving of not being forgotten." The one rule is that the movies you choose must never have won a major award (and preferably have not been nominated for Best Picture, either). Well now, the Siren knows she is late to the party, and she doesn't want to get too list-happy, especially since she just did one of these things for Edward Copeland's blog. However, she went over the submissions in Mr. Middlebrow's comments, and to be blunt, there aren't enough old movies on the lists to suit her. I mean, good movies and all that, but must they all be in color? And must they be quite so macho? So here's her list:

1. Portrait of Jennie (William Dieterle, 1948) Ignore the ludicrous voice-over at the beginning (complete with gathering cloudbanks) and let yourself be swept away by this full-throttle romance, a film unafraid to say that deeply felt love is an artist's truest inspiration. Jennifer Jones gives her best performance, aging from a little girl to a full-grown woman. If you go over to IMDB you'll see more reviews than usual for such an old movie, but it still deserves a far wider fame.

2. The Diary of a Chambermaid (Jean Renoir, 1946) Paulette Goddard, in real life sort of a Lorelei Lee with intellect, got only a few roles to showcase her unique quality--the hint of a mercenary soul under that heart of gold. Goddard produced this one with her husband, Burgess Meredith (one hell of an odd couple, huh?), resulting in her best performance, her Chaplin films notwithstanding. Jean Renoir's adaptation of Octave Mirbeau's novel has both fans and detractors, as well as those who prefer Luis Bunuel's version, but the Siren thinks this one is swell. It's a dark little farce about class, money and sex, with an outstanding Francis Lederer as the sinister valet. Diary hits many of the same themes as La Regle du Jeu, and perhaps that is why it gets short shrift, since few are the movies as good as Renoir's masterpiece. But Renoir's worst movies are better than many directors' best, and this is far from his worst. Of course it isn't available on DVD but it pops up on TCM every once in a while.

3. All This, and Heaven Too (Anatole Litvak, 1940) This big-budget version of Rachel Field's bestseller didn't fulfill box-office hopes at the time, and to this day it's a bit of a stepchild. The main character, a gentle governess, isn't what you expect from Bette Davis, the central romance remains unconsummated, and the historical background (the 1848 revolution) is one that gets a "whaa? whaddya mean, no Bastille?" response from most Americans. Still, it's the Siren's favorite Bette Davis movie, a sweeping melodrama with a dead-sexy turn by Charles Boyer as the tormented Duc de Praslin. Barbara O'Neil, usually the warm, understanding mother figure, here plays Boyer's Duchesse as the most ghastly, unmaternal harpy imaginable. O'Neil manages to keep just enough of the woman's pathetic (and, for 1940, suprisingly explicit) desire for her husband to make it a truly fine performance.

4. Madeleine (David Lean, 1950) One of the Siren's side interests is crime, but as with film her fascination is with the old or very old. Madeleine Smith, tried for murder in 19th century Scotland, is an enigma as great as Lizzie Borden. Did Madeleine poison her lover? did he commit suicide in an attempt to implicate her? David Lean's subtle, sexy take on the celebrated case starred his wife, Ann Todd, and though she looks nothing like the raven-haired Smith she does a superb job. This, Lean's first effort to tackle a piece of actual history, is criminally unavailable at the moment but scheduled for release in 2008. It's good enough to mark your calendar for.

5. The Strawberry Blonde (Raoul Walsh, 1941) James Cagney plays a two-fisted dentist, an even better conceit than "James Cagney plays a two-fisted inspector for the Bureau of Weights and Measures." Jack Carson plays a heel, five words that are enough to get the Siren to rent anything. Rita Hayworth is the hard-to-hold title character and Olivia de Havilland is Warner Brothers' notion of what a wallflower girlfriend looks like. It is hard to describe this rather whimsical, genre-crossing movie, except to say that it outranks both its predecessor and its remake.

6. Two-Family House (Raymond De Felitta, 2000) The Siren's favorite overlooked movie so far this century won the audience award at Sundance, then vanished from the radar. That's a pity, because it's the perfect indie Christmas movie, the tale of the self-redemption of a sad-sack Staten Islander.

7. Bachelor Mother (Garson Kanin, 1939) Ginger Rogers and David Niven in an incredibly funny screwball comedy. Plot summary is pretty useless, it's all there in the title. The pleasure is from the dialogue and Niven's timing, as when he defends the honor of a baby with "Of course he talks! Why, he can recite the first line of Gunga Din!"

8. Three Came Home (Jean Negulesco, 1950) Based on the memoirs of a woman who spent World War II interned in a Japanese prison camp, this harsh drama does perpetuate some stereotypes. Claudette Colbert, as good as she is here, should have let herself get a little more mussed. But Sessue Hayakawa plays the Colonel in charge of the camp as an honorable man well aware of the codes he is breaking. And late in the film, a scene between Colbert and Hayakawa brings them together and breaks the audience's heart.

9. The Young in Heart (Richard Wallace, 1938) A family of con artists finds themselves in a quandary when their old-lady mark starts to win their affections. Janet Gaynor's last starring role, and a very funny film. Best scene: Roland Young and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., seeking gainful employment with no very lively desire to succeed. Second-best scene: Young arriving for his first day of (gulp) work.

10. Seven Sweethearts (Frank Borzage, 1942) Not a classic, maybe even not that good, but this is my list so I'm putting it up anyway. If fairy tales aren't your thing, stay far away. If, however, you have a soft spot for Borzage the true romantic, wait for this one on TCM. Reasons to watch include S.Z. Sakall (the bartender from Casablanca) flinging his accent all over the place, a funny and self-deprecating turn by Marsha Hunt, and a magical scene between Van Heflin and Kathryn Grayson in a rain-soaked car.

Snubbing the Showgirls

The Siren apologizes for her overlong absence. She was editing a physics monograph for a relative. No, she is not kidding. Her brain hurts.

But it seems she has arrived back just in the nick of time, for a group of film bloggers, including Siren faves Flickhead, Girish and Peter, have banded together in an attempt to resurrect the reputation of Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls--or, failing that, at least to discuss it with a straight face.



The Siren would never suggest that scenes such as the one above have muddied their usual sparkling thought processes. But she is still a bit worried. Hold the line while the Siren dabs her cyberfriends' foreheads with a lace handkerchief. Here, gentlemen, please borrow my marabou-trimmed fan for a moment. Pass it to Jacques Rivette when you are done. Breathe gently and evenly, and listen to the Siren.

The movie is a walking, pecking, flying, gobble-gobbling, ready-for-its-bourbon-bottle-closeup turkey. Sure, it has a certain '90s social relevance. So does "Veronica's Closet."

Douglas Sirk's movies smuggled a lot of subversive messages, but they were, even on the surface plot level, about serious subjects. Racism in Imitation of Life. The arrogance of the rich in Magnificent Obsession. Impotence, alcoholism and general family dysfunction in Written on the Wind. The petty constraints of bourgeois society in All That Heaven Allows.

What, exactly, is the serious subject matter of Showgirls? All that glitters is not gold? Except it is. There is no implicit critique of Vegas, the movie is celebrating--hell, wallowing--in it. Watch the camera linger lovingly on Nomi's every acquisition. See it sweep through the Haute Hick interiors as though doing an appraisal for tax purposes. And if the movie is anti-erotic, that is due to ineptitude, not deliberate distancing.

The acting is just atrocious. Elizabeth Berkley, moving her mouth as though the lip gloss is a surgical dressing she dare not disturb. Gina Gershon, sporting a "Texas" accent that even George Bush Sr. would deride as phony. Kyle MacLachlan, so obviously phoning it in he should have pinned his salary check to his shoulder.

And the dialogue. Sweet St. Francis of Assisi, the dialogue.

Cristal Connors: I've had dog food.
Nomi Malone: You have?
Cristal Connors: Mmm-hmmm. Long time ago. Doggy Chow. I used to love Doggy Chow.
Nomi Malone: I used to love Doggy Chow, too!

Joe Eszterhas shopped the script around Hollywood for years, it was his pet. The Siren remembers the pre-release publicity for this movie, before everyone realized it would bomb. The lure was that it was made for adults, supposedly very frank and open about its eroticism. During filming the screenwriter went nuts if anyone tampered with the dialogue. So if, when Gershon tells Berkley, "I like nice tits," Berkley wanted to reply "I like possessing nice tits" instead of "I like having nice tits," that was verboten, because you don't want to rough up the meter when dealing with poetry like that.

And the rape scene also tells you that these guys were serious, that was there was no winking at the audience. This was an exploitation flick gone horribly wrong and way over-budget. It has some value as camp, but that's it.

Gentlemen, the Siren usually worships your taste, but de gustibus non est disputandum and all that sort of thing. She sincerely hopes you do not mind this energetic dissent.

And now she is signing off...to watch a Douglas Sirk movie.

Before she does, the Siren sets aside her smelling salts to give you an updated list of the many hardy (lost?) souls participating in International Showgirls Day, commemorating the 10th anniversary of the film's European release.

UPDATE: The SHOWGIRLS BLOG ORGY includes, in alphabetical order:

• Aaron at Cinephiliac.
• Ben at The Whine-Colored Sea.
• Brian at Hell On Frisco Bay.
• Darren at Long Pauses.
• David at Drifting.
• Dennis at Sergio Leone & The Infield Fly Rule.
• Eric at When Canses Were Classeled.
• Flickhead.
• Joshua at Fagistan.
• Mubarak at Supposed Aura.
• Nilblogette.
• Peter at Coffee Coffee And More Coffee.
• Sean at Bitter Cinema.
• Tim at Obsolete Vernacular.
• Zach at Elusive Lucidity.
  

The Siren Dismisses the Nanny

For the four or so people who may not have heard--Jude Law is in the international celebrity doghouse over a dalliance with his children's nanny. Some of the chat boards the Siren frequents are full of women ready to tar and feather him. You never saw such a hoo-ha in your life. "I used to think he was cute but CHEATERS AREN'T CUTE." "I HATE him now." "Stinking sack of [bleep]." "He's scum." Etc. Etc.

Out of step with the times as a matter of habit and self-protection, the Siren is having an especially hard time understanding the fuss. My moral code most emphatically does not include approval of a bit on the side. But this bit is a consenting adult, not a stepdaughter, not a 13-year-old stoned on champagne and Quaaludes. This isn't even Divine Brown.

The torrent of ire has me flummoxed. Isn't this what hotshot sex symbols DO? Isn't that why you aspire to become a hotshot sex symbol in the first place? I try to picture the late Oliver Reed performing, as Jude has, an extended public belly-crawl over a peccadillo and the synapses immediately short-circuit.

And the Siren is also puzzled about the hate spewed at the nanny. Ladies, here is living proof that you don't have to look like Sienna Miller to snag a dalliance with the likes of Jude Law. (And Ms. Miller's interviews don't suggest her erstwhile fiance was with her for the long evenings of stimulating conversation.) In terms of fantasy, shouldn't that be encouraging?

As for whether the nanny should have resisted any impulse in Mr. Law's direction; yeah, right. Look, I saw the man do a full-frontal nude scene on Broadway in Les Parents Terribles (eighth row, on the side but sightlines just fine, thank you) and suffice it to say I predicted his stardom the instant he jumped up out of the bathtub. I am a happily married Siren but if I were in my twenties, single and working at the Law household I am not sure I would hold out for the Gold Medal in Self-Restraint.

What makes an object of desire is on the movie screen and not in the New York Post. Why should it matter if Montgomery Clift preferred men? He's dead, first of all, and second of all even had we been contemporaries and he been straight it isn't as though an ordinary woman was likely to sweep him off his feet. But when I watch Red River, Monty's all mine. Libby Holman, motor accident, who cares?

Jude Law isn't mine, so I don't mind if he can't walk the line. When the camera discovers him on the beach in The Talented Mr. Ripley, that corpse of a movie wakes at last. He can get back together with Sienna, Sadie, marry the gardener, whoever, who cares.

Whether or not this remake he's filming will be a patch on the original All the King's Men--now there the Siren can summon a little passion.

Get It Away From Me: The Getaway (1972)

The Siren has stumbled into a week of posts about movies she didn't care for that much, though she wouldn't call The Getaway bad. Here a bloody bank heist gets pulled off by the Cooler King, oops I mean Doc McCoy, played by Steve McQueen.

Some critics call Doc amoral. Poppycock. No matter what the movie, McQueen always has a code of ethics. Here, under the direction of Sam Peckinpah, McQueen seeks to avoid killing bank guards. He wants everyone to wear the proper safety equipment during a robbery. He behaves magnanimously toward annoying children. He will pay big for a favor (within certain limits).

The Getaway opens with a brilliant sequence on Doc's humiliating stint in prison. It isn't equalled until later, when McQueen stalks a crowded train tailing a con man who walked away with the loot from the bank. Otherwise, it's mostly bank-robber stuff like watching the guards through binoculars and the Big Pre-Heist Meeting in Some Kind of Cellar. There are lots of things exploding, odd since logic suggests an ideal getaway would be quiet. Late in the movie you get a two-people-trapped-in-a-trash-compactor scene that surely must have suggested something to George Lucas for Star Wars.

After seeing Ali MacGraw in two of her big pictures, Love Story and this one, I don't think she deserves her reputation as an all-time bad actress. She isn't nearly as bad, for example, as Daryl Hannah was on a regular basis. She's hampered by a thin, teenagerish voice that clashes with her beauty (Penelope Cruz has the same problem) but Ali is adequate to the demands this script makes on her, which are look sexy, look nervous, shut up. I suspect Peckinpah and screenwriter Walter Hill considered this pretty much all you could expect from a broad anyway.

The Getaway is an action movie; I wasn't expecting Adam's Rib. I wasn't prepared, however, for this film's devotion to what Louise Brooks called "the beloved proposition that all women are whores anyway." There's Ali, who sleeps with a repulsive Ben Johnson to get her man out of jail and gets slapped around by McQueen for her pains. After that, she threatens to split, but never does. Treat 'em mean and keep 'em keen. Will someone put that cliche out of its misery?

And any reviewer who calls this movie "gritty" or "realistic" has to be either ignoring Sally Struthers' character or harboring a bit of a grudge against women himself. Sally and her veterinarian husband are taken hostage by McQueen's wounded, double-crossing robbery accomplice (Al Lettieri). By the very next scene the wife decides she wants a piece of that big, big gun. Struthers isn't bad, exactly, but what could any actress do with this role? Getting it on with Lettieri lets the wife's nymphomaniac inner self come screeching out. What she really wanted to do instead of nursing animals was to have sex with a criminal while her husband, bound to a chair, looks on. Would even Caril Ann Fugate find this believable?

By the end, despite her admiration for the film's stylishness, energy and suspense, the Siren had a headache. Rampaging misogyny does that to her.

Goofy but Great: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)

The Siren may be going out on a limb calling this movie great.

"Some of the sets and machines were amusing, but ... the movie was 145 minutes of badly acted, sugar-coated whimsy, punctuated by dreadful songs and shoddy special effects," says Ronald Bergan in 1986's The United Artists Story. Apparently the critics in 1968 hated this, too. And I guess if I saw it right after a screening for Rosemary's Baby or Bullitt I might have hated it, too, or at least have come out of the theater muttering, "What the hell?"

But I saw it as a child and loved it, and when I see it as an adult I love it still. Yes, the rear projection is awful, but if you notice the rear projection is awful in Vertigo, too, and nobody questions your taste when you love that one. Chitty probably doesn't need me to defend it, since it was critic-proof in 1968 and is adored to this day. As an intellectual exercise, however, I decided to go over what I think fans see in this movie that Mr. Bergan and others don't. Plus I needed an excuse to sing along with "The Travelling Life" again.

It's based on stories by James Bond creator Ian Fleming, and has some things in common with the Bond movies. You have improbable gadgets including the flying car of the title, a ruthless dictator, a gorgeous woman and an endlessly inventive hero out to save everybody. You even have Gert Frobe (and Cubby Broccoli as producer).

Tots Jeremy and Jemima persuade their father, itinerant inventor Caractacus Potts (Dick Van Dyke) to refurbish an old car they have fallen in love with. Once Potts has it up and running, it turns out the thing can fly, and float, and navigate. Word of the car's miraculous powers reaches the sinister Baron Bomburst (Frobe), who has the Potts' grandpa (Lionel Jeffries) kidnapped in the mistaken belief that Grandpa is the car's inventor. Off go the Potts to rescue Grandpa, accompanied by Truly Scrumptious (Sally Ann Howes), daughter of the local candy magnate. When they arrive they find that the Baron has outlawed children in his little Ruritanian dictatorship. As Bugs Bunny would say, of course you know this means war.

Dick Van Dyke was in great singing and dancing form, especially in "Toot Sweets" and "Me Old Bamboo." I suppose someone watched Mary Poppins and said, "Dick, let's just forget about the British accent this time, 'kay?" So it wasn't until I watched the movie as an adult that I bothered to wonder why Dick sounds American, but everybody else is English as crumpets. Anyway, I love the British, but they need to get over the "Dick Van Dyke accent." I will make a deal with them: y'all don't bring up his ersatz Cockney, and I won't mention Laurence Olivier's weird pronunciations in The Betsy and Kenneth Branagh's braying in Dead Again.

But Dick isn't the primary reason the Siren adores this goofy movie. Rather, I love it for:

1. Sally Ann Howes. She radiates intelligence, she takes crap from no one in this movie, she decides she wants the hero before the hero wants her and she goes after him. Plus, she gets to wear wonderful hats. Howes was 38 when she made this movie and she looks about 25. See, wearing wide-brimmed hats protects your face from the aging effects of the sun, just like Mama told you. If you like Howes as much as I do, check out the wonderful old portmanteau thriller Dead of Night (1945).

2. The children. One aspect of movies that has improved over the years is children's performances. So many times you watch an old movie like The Women and want to strangle the mugging little brat you're supposed to feel sorry for. And remember Bonnie in Gone with the Wind? When she broke her neck jumping that fence I swear I felt sorrier for the pony.

The children in Chitty are peppy and enjoyable without causing tooth decay. As a little girl, I thought Jemima had the edge, and I still do. She has fire and initiative, and a mouth on her too, as when she calls Baroness Bomburst "VERY UGLY." The ever-helpful IMDB tells me that Heather Ripley, who played Jemima, never made another movie, but is now an "eco-warrior" protesting things like nuclear plants. Somehow it seems very fitting that Jemima would grow up to be a fighter.

3. That castle. 'Nuff said.

4. Last but not least, a superb villain in Robert Helpmann's Childcatcher. Compared to this terrifying individual, the Baron is as pathetic as Wile E. Coyote. I saw a documentary on Robert Helpmann a while back. He was, of course, primarily a ballet dancer, which explains how he could convey menace with his entire body. On this show, they interviewed a man who had been Helpmann's friend. This man's children adored Helpmann, and sometimes when the kiddie-winkies were going to bed they would ask him to "do the Childcatcher." When Helpmann obliged the children would scream in utter terror. The friend thought this was hilarious. I think I would asked have asked Sir Robert to switch to a bit from Tales of Hoffman, but I guess I am a PC American wimp.

In fact, so scary is the Childcatcher that I don't think I will let my kids see this movie until I am sure they can handle him. But when that happens, I will be ready with my sing-along DVD.

So take that, Mr. Bergan.

Mr. Cheney's Netflix Queue

The Siren learned recently that Amnesty International is a liberal organization.

Startling information, since reports such as this one, and this one, and this one, had me believing Amnesty didn't have much in the way of political bias. But if our vice president, various members of Congress, the Wall Street Journal opinion columnists and the Free Republic chat boards wish to concede concern for human rights solely to the liberal side of the aisle, then I say, "Sure thing, Daddy-O." You take on protecting zygotes, medical prognoses for brain-dead Floridians and stamping out blow jobs, and we'll take over the Anti-Torture Beat. The Siren considers this fair trade.

Still, recent remarks by some prominent Republicans have me thinking that, perhaps, these gentlemen's notions about torture are in need of some refinement.

Over here, we have Vice President Dick Cheney remarking, "Guantanamo's been operated, I think, in a very sane and sound fashion by the U.S. military. ... I think these people have been well treated, treated humanely and decently." And over there is GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter, saying "The inmates in Guantanamo have never eaten better, they have never been treated better, and they have never been more comfortable in their lives than in this situation, and the idea that somehow we are torturing people in Guantanamo is absolutely not true, unless you consider having to eat chicken three times a week, real torture."

Our government hasn't really disputed that it uses certain interrogation techniques at Guantanamo and elsewhere. Those include sleep deprivation, loud music and temperature extremes. What people like Mr. Cheney question is whether that constitutes torture, or just enthusiastic questioning of really, really bad guys. It all depends on how you look at it, we are told.

Well then. If art does anything, it makes us look at things in all kinds of different ways. And in that spirit, the Siren would like to nominate these films for inclusion in Mr. Cheney's Netflix queue. He can invite Mr. Hunter over for chicken and pita while he watches.

Stalag 17 (1953) has a lengthy scene in which Don Taylor, as Lieutenant James Dunbar, is being interrogated by Nazi commandant Otto Preminger. Please, before you scroll to the comments section and start Durbin-izing me, understand that I am not comparing the U.S. to the Nazis. I am pointing out only that this movie illustrates the effect of sleep deprivation. Taylor's character is reduced to a state where his desire for sleep is hunger, thirst, illness; he can barely stand, he hardly knows his own name. It doesn't involve electrodes, but it's still brutal. For many people, the scene is even more difficult to watch than the one where William Holden is beaten almost to death by his fellow prisoners of war.

Next up, The Rack (1956), with Paul Newman as an American POW from the Korean War. Newman returns home in disgrace, having betrayed his fellow soldiers for, as the character puts it, a filthy blanket and a few hours' uninterrupted sleep. You see, the Koreans put him in an ice-cold cell and then kept waking him up. (He was beaten and his menu is lousy, too, it must be admitted, but by the character's own account it wasn't the lack of fresh fruit that made him crack, it was the lack of sleep.)

No interrogation movie marathon can ignore The Manchurian Candidate (1962), in which sleep deprivation and temperature control are just two of the techniques used to reduce the POWs to automatons. Hell, maybe Dick should even rent One, Two, Three (1961) and see Horst Buchholz ready to sign a bogus confession because the nefarious East Germans made him listen to "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" too many times in a row. It's ridiculous, but at the same time you do wonder how many times you'd have to hear that song before you rang for the Red Cross inspectors.

For the finale: The Battle of Algiers (1965). Scenes in this one would probably strike most normal human beings as torture. Maybe not Ann Coulter, but she's a special case. I read that Pentagon officials watched this one before starting the present unpleasantness in Iraq, eager to get some tips on how to run a war in an Arab country. This was rather like hearing that French army recruiters were looking at All Quiet on the Western Front on the eve of World War II for pointers on how to appeal to the nation's youth. Did the Defense guys really watch the full two hours of French forces torturing, interrogating, cracking down, going house-to-house and throwing their full military might at Algiers? I do hate to post spoilers, but I think Pontecorvo's film should be screened again for Mr. Cheney and the Pentagon, with special attention to the part near the end.

That would be the part where the French lose.