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Spring 2011:
Taxi Driver
by
John Gallagher
TAXI DRIVER: One of the home theatre highlights of the year thus far is Sony Picture Entertainment’s Blu-ray release of Martin Scorsese’s TAXI DRIVER (1976). The urban horror movie, from Paul Schrader’s original screenplay, features kinetic and compelling direction, a brilliant portrait of paranoia in Robert DeNiro’s Travis Bickle, Bernard Herrmann’s last score, and Michael Chapman’s cinematography capturing a squalid moment in time, Manhattan’s Times Square and Lower East Side 1975. On Blu-ray it’s stunning; don’t think the opening’s scratchy Columbia Pictures logo reveals an inferior print; Scorsese insisted on it as an evocation of the Deuce’s grindhouse traditions. Director and cinematographer guided the extensive 4K restoration and remastering.
The disc is packed with extras -; interactive script to screen, Criterion’s 1986 Scorsese/Schrader audio commentary, commentaries by Schrader and Professor Robert Kolker, featurettes on Scorsese, the producers, the production, DeNiro, the film’s influence, a comparison of Times Square changes from ’75 to the present, a location guide, animated photo galleries, and a storyboard to film comparison introduced by Scorsese.
I interviewed Paul Schrader in 1982 when he was making the rounds promoting his directorial effort CAT PEOPLE: “TAXI DRIVER grows for me. I haven’t seen it in quite a while, but it grows in my memory. I know that it’s going to endure. I knew it the first time I saw it. I knew we had done something of permanence. It’s not that immortality is somehow the goal, but we had done something that was really satisfying, that worked, that had flesh and blood and passion and made sense. It’s cohesive, with a mesmerizing interior logic.
“The working relationship with Marty is very clean. We meet. I write a script. He reads it, we meet again. I polish that script. I hand it in. I disappear. After I hand it in, I’m gone. I don’t call, I don’t ask. Then he makes the movie. I have done my job. If the script is really good it will inspire him to be better, and that’s the best I can do. I always feel that the presence of a writer on the set is one of the sure indications that something has gone awry, because by the time a movie begins shooting, the actors should understand the character as well as the writer, and the director should understand the structure and the style as well or better than the writer. If they still need the writer at that point, they probably started shooting too quickly.
“I wrote the script in ten days. It jumped out like an animal out of my breast. I aggressively attacked the typewriter. It just happened and would that all scripts did that. RAGING BULL (1980) was a different example, because they had a script that was written by Mardik Martin. It wasn’t focused enough, and they were having trouble getting it financed. They needed a focus, so both Bob and Marty came to me and asked if I would lean my shoulder to the task, and thin it out, organize it, get the theme down. I unified it so they were able to perceive what it was about. They couldn’t quite get a handle on it. I gave them a direction to go, and then they went in that direction. The final movie on screen is not Mard Martin’s script, it’s not even my script, it’s yet another thing.”
A critical hit hampered by lackluster box office upon its release in 1986, Jonathan Demme’s SOMETHING WILD emerges 25 years later as one of that decade’s essentials. Coming in the middle of a brilliant collaboration with cinematographer Tak Fujimoto and editor Craig McKay (MELVIN AND HOWARD, MARRIED TO THE MOB, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, PHILADELPHIA), SOMETHING WILD boasts dazzling color design, Demme’s exciting use of found music, and outstanding work by Melanie Griffith as a free spirit who hijacks yuppie Jeff Daniels on a comic odyssey that turns violent with the arrival of psychotic ex-boyfriend Ray Liotta (stealing his every scene in his screen debut). Indie icons John Sayles (as a motorcycle cop) and John Waters (as a used car salesman) appear in cameos.
E. Max Frye’s original script defies the McKee “rules” of screenwriting that condemn so much current Hollywood product to the most pedestrian fare. The first half of SOMETHING WILD is funny, wild, sexy, the second half dark, deadly, dangerous, pushing the limits of both screwball comedy and film noir genres; it is unimaginable that a studio would produce such risky material today.
The movie has received a typically A+ DVD/Blu-ray release from Criterion, with a newly restored digital transfer supervised by Fujimoto and approved by Demme. There’s an excellent essay by David Thompson, who points out that audiences have become accustomed to the Tarantino blend of humor and violence over the last 20 years; in 1986 this approach was truly unexpected. The disc includes the original trailer (which purposely avoids the film’s brutality), and new video interviews with Frye and Demme; the director’s remembrance of how he came to cast the unproven Liotta is especially fascinating.
A spectacular Blu-ray release comes from Paramount Home Entertainment -; Cecil B. DeMille’s landmark Biblical epic THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956). It’s a sumptuous presentation, an absolutely dazzling visual experience. DeMille had directed and produced a 1923 silent version that elevated the art form, reconstructing Pharaoh’s Egypt in the California desert, but it was really an extended prologue to a modern-set story. For his ultimate production, DeMille devoted 231 minutes to the tale of Moses (Charlton Heston) and Rameses (Yul Brynner) in Technicolor and VistaVision, with an all-star cast including Anne Baxter, Edward G. Robinson, Yvonne de Carlo, Debra Paget, John Derek, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Nina Foch, Martha Scott, Judith Anderson, Vincent Price and John Carradine.
DeMille was 73 years old when he began making the picture; while filming on location in Egypt (where temperatures hit 90 degrees by 7 a. m.) the veteran director suffered a heart attack and continued shooting back in California at Red Rock Canyon State Park and Paramount’s Melrose Avenue studios, where twelve of the company’s eighteen soundstages were devoted to THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. The statistics are staggering even today -; two years in the making; 8,000 extras in the Exodus sequence, with 200,000 gallons of water a day provided to quench thirst; 161 days of production plus a full year of special effects work (no computers, just composite printers); a final budget of $13.2 million 1955 dollars; an initial gross of $64 million, making it the most financially successful movie since 1939’s GONE WITH THE WIND (the above stats come from Scott Eyman’s definitive Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille, 2010, Simon & Schuster).
There were seven Oscar nominations (Picture, Color Cinematography, Editing, Sound, Color Art Direction, Color Costume Design); only John Fulton won for his ground-breaking special effects. The National Board of Review named Yul Brynner as Best Actor for his trifecta of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, THE KING AND I and ANASTASIA. PHE’s Blu-ray includes commentary by DeMille historian Katherine Orrison, a newsreel of the New York premiere, a 1956 “making-of” trailer, and trailers for the 1966 and 1989 theatrical reissues.
Other noteworthy new Blu-ray release -; all vast visual and aural improvements on the DVDs, all from 20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment -; include Bernardo Bertolucci’s sexual epic LAST TANGO IN PARIS (1973) with Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider and Jean-Pierre Leaud and a Gato Barbieri jazz score; Norman Jewison’s delightfully romantic celebration of la famiglia, MOONSTRUCK (1987) with Cher, Nicolas Cage, Danny Aiello, Olympia Dukakis (an NBR Award and an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress), Vincent Gardenia and John Mahoney, from a John Patrick Shanley screenplay, with audio commentary by Cher, Shanley and Jewison and featurettes on production and music; and Barry Levinson’s comedy-drama road movie RAIN MAN (1988), an Oscar Best Picture with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise in two of their finest performances, including commentaries by Levinson and writers Barry Morrow and Ron Bass, and featurettes on the production and on autism.
In the career of the man who directed A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, ON THE WATERFRONT, EAST OF EDEN, BABY DOLL, A FACE IN THE CROWD and SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS, AMERICA, AMERICA (1963) holds a very special place. Elia Kazan himself intones the opening voiceover narration: “I am a Greek by blood, a Turk by birth and an American because my uncle made a journey.” Kazan then hurls us into the story of that journey, an epic drama that rates with his best pictures, indeed perhaps the best movie ever made about the immigrant experience. Haskell Wexler’s evocative black-and-white cinematography and Kazan’s cast of unknowns create a raw documentary-style verisimilitude. Author Foster Hirsch provides an audio commentary.
OLIVE FILMS: Otto Preminger directed some of the best 40s/early 50s noirs (LAURA, FALLEN ANGEL, WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS, ANGEL FACE) before moving to important adult fare like THE MOON IS BLUE, CARMEN JONES, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM, SAIT JOAN, BONJOUR TRISTESSE, ANATOMY OF A MURDER, EXODUS, ADVISE AND CONSENT, IN HARM’S WAY, BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING, all the while developing a reputation as a Teutonic tyrant. His success gave him the rare privilege of complete creative control, big budgets and top stars, but by the mid-60s Preminger seems to have lost touch with his talent. While he continued to produce and direct until 1979, he did not make a truly good film during his last decade.
For the Preminger completist, and continuing to mine the Paramount vaults, Olive Films releases two of his later pictures, HURRY SUNDOWN (1967) and SUCH GOOD FRIENDS (1971), both severely flawed, both showing the artist in decline. HURRY SUNDOWN was a huge production, an adaptation of a 1,000 novel by K. B. Gilden about racial tensions in a small post-WWII Southern town. As always, Preminger assembled an excellent cast -- Michael Caine (hot off his hit ALFIE), Jane Fonda (in her best pre-THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY? performance), Faye Dunaway just before BONNIE AND CLYDE superstardom), John Phillip Law (a year before co-starring with Fonda in BARBARELLA), Burgess Meredith, Diahann Carroll, Robert Hooks, Madeline Sherwood, Jim Backus -; but slipped up on fashioning a serviceable script, resulting in a soapy, bloated movie. As the first major producer to attempt a frank portrayal of race relations in mid-60s America, Preminger should be credited with rolling cameras before both IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT and GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER?, taking his army of actors and technicians on location to Louisiana despite pressure from the KKK. SUCH GOOD FRIENDS (1971) is a cosmopolitan New York story about a wife (Dyan Cannon) who discovers her comatose husband (Lawrence Luckinbill) is a chronic womanizer, based on a novel by Lois Gould. Preminger veers wildly from arty sophistication to sex farce to failed drama, again wasting a good cast (James Coco, Burgess Meredith, Jennifer O’Neill, Ken Howard, Nina Foch, Louise Lasser, Doris Roberts). As a vivid depiction of 1970 NYC, however, SUCH GOOD FRIENDS is an invaluable time capsule.
Also from Olive/Paramount: ROPE OF SAND (1949), a CASABLANCA-inspired noir reuniting that movie’s Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Peter Lorre and producer Hal Wallis. Burt Lancaster stars in this South African diamond thriller; it’s slick, effective and entertaining. Director William Dieterle (1893-1972) is a major candidate for scholarly rediscovery. A leading man in silent German cinema (Leni’s WAXWORKS, Murnau’s FAUST), he directed a dozen features before joining Warner Brothers in Hollywood in 1931, directing some of their most stylish pre-Code gems (THE LAST FLIGHT, HER MAJESTY LOVE, JEWEL ROBBERY, SCARLET DAWN, LAWYER MAN). He became the studio’s prestige director co-helming his theatre mentor Max Reinhardt’s A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHT DREAM, and the Paul Muni bio-pics THE STORY OF LOUIS PASTEUR, THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA, and JUAREZ, and Edward G. Robinson’s A DISPATCH FROM REUTERS and DR. EHRLICH’S MAGIC BULLET, but he would also be contractually required to fill-in on other films, including THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD. He quarreled often with Jack Warner and left for the sweetheart producer-director deal RKO was handing out to Leo McCarey, Gregory LaCava and Orson Welles at the time; here he made his masterpieces THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1939) and THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER (1941). When SYNCOPATION (1942), an overambitious history of jazz, flopped, he went back to studio security with MGM (TENNESSEE JOHNSON, KISMET), Paramount (LOVE LETTERS, THE SEARCHING WIND) and Selznick (I’LL BE SEEING YOU, DUEL IN THE SUN, PORTRAIT OF JENNIE). He stayed at Paramount through the early 50s, handling contract stars like Charlton Heston (DARK CITY, his debut), Alan Ladd (RED MOUNTAIN), William Holden (BOOTS MALONE), and Elizabeth Taylor (ELEPHANT WALK) in routine vehicles, returned to his rich visual style with SALOME for Columbia, and closed his career back in Germany directing TV films. ROPE OF SAND is minor Dieterle, but still worth a look for Burt Lancaster’s early star charisma, the fine supporting cast, Charles Lang’s cinematography, Franz Waxman’s music, and the film’s resonance to CASABLANCA.
THE MOUNTAIN (1956) stars Spencer Tracy and Robert Wagner as brothers on a mission to rescue the survivors of an Alpine plane crash. Tracy is always a pleasure to watch, truly one of the greatest of screen actors, here directed by Edward Dmytryk (THE CAINE MUTINY, THE YOUNG LIONS) in a reasonably compelling adventure.
INTERNET: Some interesting sites to check out:
A 107-minute audio interview with director Howard Hawks (SCARFACE, ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS, HIS GIRL FRIDAY, TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, THE BIG SLEEP, RED RIVER, RIO BRAVO) by Tony Macklin, conducted at Hawks’ Palm Springs home in 1975:
http://tonymacklin.net/content.php?cID=228
John Bengston’s photo essays on silent era movie locations for classic comedies by Chaplin, Lloyd and Keaton have been published in book form to great acclaim; now many of his then-and-now photos are available on-line:
http://silentlocations.wordpress.com/
Ever wonder what new classic releases are heading your way? Check out the comprehensive bi-weekly listings at Classic Flix:
http://www.classicflix.com/articles.php
John Gallagher
jgmovie@gmail.com |
