Widmark and Javier - do you need to think before you choose?

Last week some airhead masquerading as a presenter on the Today Programme (BBC Radio 4) lapsed into giggles after an item about a recently discovered piece of recorded sound from 1860 or thereabouts.

All right, these things happen, but why, rather than apologise and move on, do they repeat the foolishness an hour later? And why report it on TV that evening? And why, the next morning, does the relentlessly trivial TV breakfast programme do a top ten of famous examples of ‘corpsing’?

I know I’m being a bit po-faced, but the silly woman collapsed into hysteria while trying to read out a report on the death of Abby Mann, creator of Kojak, and Oscar-winner for his script of Judgement at Nuremburg. I think he deserved a little more respect than that.

The same programme announced this morning, and with more dignity, the death of Jules Dassin, director of Brute Force, The Naked City and Night and the City. That was in the days when they knew how to make movies.

Last week saw the death of Richard Widmark, by unhappy coincidence a link between the other two deceased having starred in Nuremburg and Night and the City. I know he was 93, but it’s still a bloody shame to lose anyone you’ve grown up with and admired.

The TV and radio news were crass, as usual. ‘Richard Widmark made a career out of villains and psychopaths, etc.’ Moreover, they seemed unaware that he had made any films after his first, Kiss of Death, for which he was Oscar-nominated, and in which, giggling gleefully, he pushed a crippled old lady down the stairs to her death.


There aren’t many of them left, the stars of the post-war era. Probably only Kirk Douglas is still with us. But Peck has gone, as have Mitchum, Lancaster, Holden and Glenn Ford. And I was halfway through writing this when I heard that Charlton Heston too had died.

I’m not sure that Widmark is really in their class. He lacked warmth; his heroes were always edgy; there was always a misanthropic tinge, to say the least, in his performances. Robert Ryan, another of that generation, gave the same impression – ‘I don’t give a shit whether you like me or not.’

He was a good Jim Bowie in a bad Alamo, a prototype for Dirty Harry in Madigan, and the repentant outlaw in that very intelligent Western, Warlock. He was excellent too in John Sturges’ The Law and Jake Wade, the second best film Budd Boetticher never made (the best being Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country). I watched it again yesterday as a personal tribute to him.

Sardonic, cynical, sneering, who genuinely feels betrayed because Robert Taylor’s character has deserted him. ‘Women. Nice to have around. But they sure do slow a man down.’

I’m not sure which of his films he would have chosen to be remembered by, but I guess it would be The Bedford Incident, which he helped produce. Oddly it is not included on the IMDb shortlist used to discover his most popular film.

To me his Captain Finlander is the archetypal Widmark character, charismatic but fatally flawed – and you don’t come more fatal than this man.

Rest in peace, Dick. I saw many of your movies, and I’ve got no complaints.



WIDMARK’S CO-STAR in The Bedford Incident was Sidney Poitier. As I recall, little if anything was made of his colour. I can understand that, but it’s probably a flaw, just as it was regarding the Morgan Freeman character in Unforgiven. Both films were set at times when racism was rampant and I find it difficult to accept that no-one would have used their blackness against them.

I thought about this when listening to earnest liberals discussing Anthony Minghella’s movie of The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. (Bloody hell, another dead movie-maker.)

Oh dear, they fretted, it was patronising. Those Botswanans ‘beamed’ too much. They seemed too happy. The film didn’t address the issues of aids, poverty and imperialism. Admittedly it did address the problems of witchcraft and male chauvinism, but – Oh, my god (no, the old bastard is not getting a capital letter) – that sends a negative message, doesn’t it?

As it happens, Detective Agency was a charming film, beautiful to look at, with a range of engaging characters and a free and easy plot that leads to a happy ending. It’s a humorous hymn to common decency, something I thought liberals were in favour of.

I SRARTED this blog intending to talk about No Country for Old Men. So I'll give it a mention.

I read Cormac McCarthy’s book before I saw the film and I’ve re-read it since. And when the movie returns to my local multiplex, as is promised, I’ll watch it once more. Partly because I thoroughly enjoyed it, partly to see if it really is as great as everyone seems to think.

The film follows the book so closely that it’s one of those rare occasions when you’re often able to think about both at the same time.

My first impression of the novel was simply that it was a thriller with pretensions. By that I don’t mean pretentious, but that the author used a crime and chase plot to muse on the moral cesspit in which the old sheriff fears that the world is drowning. I don’t know whether the old sheriff, who observes changing society with despair, speaks for the author, or whether the sheriff is right or wrong in his observation. Perhaps he’s just grown old and uncomprehending.

If I have a criticism of the film it’s that we don’t see enough of Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Ed Tom. Some people are pleased that so much of the character’s first-person commentary is excised from the film. Personally I miss them.

Did Javier deserve his Oscar for best supporting actor? Leaving aside the fact that it’s really a lead role, I think not. Since his win was such a foregone conclusion, I’d better explain.

The character, Chigurgh, is as relentless and robotic a killer as the Terminator, as tinged with the supernatural as Darth Vader and as evil as Ming the Merciless. It takes only a competent actor to portray such a one-dimensional character.

In the famous scene where he orders a gas station owner to toss a coin to determine whether he lives or dies combines the impatience of Richard Boone in, say Hombre, when people don’t immediately comply with his instructions, and the matter-of-fact murderousness of Lee Marvin in The Killers.

Moreover, the nature of the character seems to me to a flaw in the conception of the novel and film. The sheriff at one point says that the decline of society begins when kids stop calling their father ‘sir’. In other words, when courtesy fails and when people cease to care for one another, then criminality will follow.

Maybe he’s right, but the presence of a killer who is half-ghost and half-psychopath turns the theme into a mere horror story.

There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood (2007), directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Starring Danel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano.

SPOILER ALERT

I won't call this a review, just a reaction.

I have seen There Will Be Blood twice now, and I still don’t get it. Then again, maybe I do get it and am right to think that there is a lot less to it than meets the eye.

It has received such praise that I would be arrogant indeed not to question my initial reaction. Rolling Stone compared it to Citizen Kane – that does no film any favours; others to Treasure of the Sierra Madre – same problem; Mark Kermode declared that it ‘redefines the grammar of cinema’ – I tend to think that it ignores it; Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance was ‘visceral’ – or was it a hammy impersonation of John Huston; the music was unjustly denied even an Oscar nomination – but I found it portentous and intrusive.

It’s not my complaint merely that it has been over-praised. It’s not that I don’t admire many aspects of it. I just think it fails, and that it fails unnecessarily. Maybe it should have shown more respect to filmic grammar after all.

* * *

The film opens with a blast of doom-laden music and a barren landscape, and we are treated to a near wordless overview of Daniel Plainview’s rise from solitary silver prospector to independent oilman, acquiring on the way a broken leg and an adopted son, symbols no doubt of his flawed humanity.

This dialogue-free opening reel is arresting, but hardly original. Off hand I recall its being used in the taut Dirty Harry and the flabby Rio Bravo.

When Plainview finally speaks clearly it is in a silkily confidential voice, inviting his audience of farmers to view him a plain, honest family man, as well as a professional in whom they can have confidence should they allow him to drill.

Many reviewers invite me to see the presence of his ‘son’ as evidence of his callous ruthlessness. The lad is a mere prop. The farmers are being swindled. Underlying this accusation, for which I can detect no evidence as yet, is surely the fact that he is an ‘oilman’. In other words, a capitalist, and worse than that, a pillager of the earth’s resources.

At this point of the movie I see only a hard-working, rather admirable entrepreneur, with a heartfelt, if rough, love for the boy. Frankly, I like him a lot. Anyone who can shrug off the pain of a broken leg to relish his discovery of silver has my admiration.

* * *

It is because of this sympathy that I recognise immediately the distaste he feels for the self-appointed preacher, Eli Sunday, one of the locals where Plainview makes his biggest strike.

Sunday’s snivelling sanctimony is repulsive. If he is intended to be Plainview’s great rival or antithesis, then the script or the actor fails to deliver. What we need is Burt Lancaster as Elmer Gantry. I wonder, by the way, how many notice that Sunday quotes Burt when he talks about ‘gumming the devil’ should he find himself without teeth.

The disgust finally erupts when Plainview’s son is injured and loses his hearing. He beats and humiliates Sunday, the supposed believer in divine miracles and ineffective healer.

If, as some critics, say Plainview and Sunday stand for the twin evils that exploit the American common man, capitalism and fundamentalist religion, then the film is demeaned, for humanity has been lost. No work of art can aspire to greatness that departs from the examination of man and his motives.

And here is my main problem with this film. Why does Plainview act as he does in the second half of the story?

* * *

Plainview’s ‘brother’ turns up. Obviously, he’s a fraud. We all know that; so why not Plainview, this shrewd and ruthless man?

It’s nothing but a clunky plot device. The script has plans for Plainview’s end and we need some motivation pretty damn quick. A handily discovered brother enables Plainview to cavort in the sea and reminisce about his youth, dream of a house full of children and then confide his misanthropy and hatred of competitors.

Where on earth did all that come from?

And when he learns at long last that his brother is no such thing, he shoots him dead. This, of course, is no surprise, because we know how much he hates everyone. He’s just told us, hasn’t he?

But he’s found out by one of Sunday’s flock of sleep, coincidentally one whose land is badly needed. They blackmail him into accepting baptism and confessing his sins. It’s humiliating for him, embarrassingly funny for us and sweet revenge for Sunday.

Sunday demands he confess to abandoning his child and it’s odd how many reviewers agree with him, even though all he’s done is send him to a special school. Good idea, in my opinion. The boy himself agrees with the critics, the ungrateful brat, and strikes Plainview on his return, despite his father’s genuine display of joy at the reunion.

* * *

The film has been going on for some time now and we need to speed to a conclusion. So a quick cut to ten years later, with the boy now married and announcing his departure to try his luck in the oil business. A horrified Plainview – he hates competitors, remember – denounces him and reveals, though not to us, that the boy is not his real son, just ‘a bastard in a basket’. Not nice, I agree, but we all say hurtful things when we ourselves are hurt.

We move rapidly along and Sunday re-appears for the final showdown. Plainview gets his final revenge with some basic lessons on the geology of oil and a repetitive speech about milk shakes. As if realising that this is hardly dramatic enough he beats out the preacher’s brains with a bowling pin, and declares – in words the screenwriter must have thought a crowning sentence – ‘I’m finished.’

Black screen and some violin music (rather good, I thought).