1. Starting this month, the Criterion Channel is featuring a collection of twenty-six neo-noir movies. Movies classified as film noir emerged in the 1940s and 1950s. They were shadowy movies, crime driven, often featuring a detective or, say, as in Double Indemnity, an insurance inspector. More often than not, the detectives were world weary. Crimes included a sexual motivator. Characters were cynical, often exploitative. My favorite feature in film noir movies is the stylishness. Often the soundtracks are jazzy. Film noir movies are atmospheric, and the atmosphere often is a physical representation of the movie's moral ambiguity -- shadowy, foggy, dimly lit, and sometimes hot or muggy.
As the constraints of the Production Code all but disappeared and movies began to feature more sexually explicit material along with an unbridled use of profanity, in, let's say, the 1970s, a renewed interest in film noir emerged -- now known as neo-noir movies -- and screenwriters and directors pushed the standard features of the noir film farther and farther. In addition, these the filmmakers tapped into the cynicism and cultural burn out that resulted with the end of the Vietnam War and the resignation of Richard Nixon and explored this malaise in these new, refashioned noir movies.
I went to a movie theater in the fall of 1981 to see Body Heat. I'm not sure I knew on that particular day that my first marriage was about to end, but I do remember this being one of the last movies my first wife and I saw together.
On that day, I didn't possess any film noir vocabulary. I certainly didn't realize that I was watching a neo-noir movie.
The movie stuck with me. Its atmosphere, a Florida heat wave, was especially memorable and I could feel how the heat was a way of giving external expression to the movie's highly charged sexual content and the accompanying murderous passions the two lead characters, Matty (Kathleen Turner) and Ned (William Hurt) were indulging. Actually, I'm thinking this might have been the most sexually charged movie I'd ever seen and now I know, without giving too much away, that its ravenous sexuality was actually a vivid expression of Matty's bottomless cynicism and of Ned's willingness to give over completely to his appetites and, in turn, become an easy mark for Matty's scheme, the scheme that comes to define and dominate the movie.
Watching Body Heat today, forty years after I first saw it, I was very impressed with its production. It's a stylish movie with its seductive music sound track, the attention paid to how its characters' dress, how they make smoking cigarettes seems sexy and cool, and, as I mentioned, its attention to atmospherics, whether through the seductive sound of wind chimes, the oppressive heat, the fog of one crucial night, the erotic cover of darkness shielding Matty and Ned's affair, and the bursts of fire that occur at key moments. So, I enjoyed how Lawrence Kasdan directed this movie and I admired the sexy, sassy, and cynical screenplay he wrote and how he plotted this story.
One last thing: Mickey Rourke has a small, but crucial, role in this movie and, back in 1981, his brief presence and his performance in the movie stayed with me. I remember when, in August of 1982, I went to the Magic Lantern in Spokane and watched Diner, I nearly came out of my seat when Mickey Rourke appeared in the movie. I didn't know his name as an actor, but I nearly said out loud in the theater, "That's the guy from Body Heat!" I can't pinpoint why he impressed me so strongly, but having had that strong reaction came back to me as I watched the movie today.
2. Cutter's Way is included in this collection of neo-noir movies. It showed in Eugene not too long after Body Heat came out and, if I remember correctly, it played at both the Bijou and Cinema 7 in separate runs and I saw it in both theaters.
I watched it today, too.
Later, when I moved to Spokane in August of 1982, I bought a Betamax video recording machine and Cutter's Way played on the now defunct movie channel called Spotlight and I recorded myself a copy. I watched it many times and, after I no longer owned the Betamax and gave up my tapes, I rented Cutter's Way more than a few times.
I guess you'd call it a seminal movie in my life.
It's funny, I guess, that, until today, I never thought of it as a noir movie -- let alone a neo-noir film!
I had thought of noir movies a bit too narrowly, primarily because I thought they always featured, as Body Heat did, a so-called femme fatale -- a seductive, manipulative, amoral woman who lures a man into a some kind of a compromising trap.
But, now I know that the makers of neo-noir movies think of noir as a state of mind or as a way of understanding the cynical, greedy, amoral, and criminal aspects of the world.
So it is with Cutter's Way. It features no femme fatale, but it explores a dark world of power and greed, of wealth and apathy, of murder and revenge.
Every time I watch this movie, I'm blown away, first, by Jeffrey Alan Fiskin's screenplay, adapted from the novel, Cutter and Bone, written by Norton Thornburg. I've never read the novel, but Fiskin's screenplay is a masterpiece of post-Watergate, post-Vietnam burn out, cynicism, apathy, and, to counter these characteristics, of a hunger for justice, for making things right in a broken world.
When I started watching Cutter's Way in early 1982, I'd seen John Heard in three other independent movies I enjoyed a lot: Between the Lines, Chilly Scenes of Winter (I saw it when its title was Head Over Heels), and Heart Beat.
None of these performances prepared me for his fiery, multi-faceted, arresting, and explosive work as the disabled and alcoholic Vietnam veteran, Alex Cutter. I don't know much about acting awards, but I remember thinking back then that his performance was award worthy and I looked forward to watching his career take off.
But, he was not nominated for any awards and I am not aware of John Heard garnering any widespread recognition for his brilliant work. Not only that, but to my disappointment, while John Heard remained busy throughout his career with a wide variety of acting roles, I am unaware of him ever again playing a character as obsessed, surly, unpredictable, intellectual, hungry for justice, dangerous, vengeful, funny, unpredictable, raging, verbally adroit, self-pitying, obnoxious, and driven as Alex Cutter.
John Heard's fellow lead actors were also brilliant.
Lisa Eichorn plays Mo, Alex's wife. She, too, is an alcoholic. She's lonely, cynical, a burnt out truth teller, who sees the world around her with blank, unforgiving, hollowed out eyes and, is the movie's canary in the coal mine. In her deterioration, offset by occasional bursts of vitality (like when she eschews the liquor store and buys groceries), we experience the spiritual emptiness of this movie's world, an emptiness characters defy from time to time, but that is predominant.
Jeff Bridges perfectly brings to life a golden nowhere man, an Adonis, named Richard Bone. Bone drifts. Currently he works as an apathetic salesman at a marina and, on the side, is a gigolo. Bone is famous among his friends as a walker -- he walks away from difficulty, his sex for hire clients, lovers before the night ends, jobs, responsibility, or anything else that makes a demand on him or interrupts his womanizing, mooching, and skimming ways.
Although she plays a lesser role, I thought Ann Dusenberry, the sister of the movie's murder victim, was also terrific and complicated as she allies herself with Alex Cutter and, sometimes, Richard Bone, to nail the man they believe is guilty of the homicide.
Cutter's Way develops as these characters work to confront the man they are sure murdered Valerie Duran's sister.
The atmosphere in Cutter's Way is created by the setting. It's festival time in Santa Barbara, time for the Founder's Day Parade, and the apparent mirth of these events is offset by the darkness that underlies the festival and is expressed through the eerie soundtrack music composed by Jack Nietzche.
I am all but certain I've seen this movie more than fifteen times now and I admire and enjoy it more and more each time.
And, as a bonus, I now know it's a neo-noir film and I think I have at least a partial understanding why.
3. I paused Cutter's Way at some point and decided to make a cold drink I thought up today.
I broke up a Klondike bar and put the pieces in a cocktail glass and stirred them up.
I added Creme de Cacao, some brandy, and some milk. I guess you could call it a Klondike Brandy Alexander!
I enjoyed it and confess that I felt the urge to make another one, but I decided to hold off and enjoy more of this drink later on in the week.
No comments:
Post a Comment