Mike Sarne (Myra Breckenridge, 1970) was one of those talents who ran away with himself, artistic notions indulged by the industry, until he was exposed as having little to say. Joanna is pretty empty of everything except style. And that wouldn’t be so bad if it was consistently stylish or showed a genuine flair for the visual image beyond a woman bathing in a lily pond or chasing an ambulance through a park.
And, of course, it’s never a good idea to park your inexperienced girlfriend upfront and center of your debut feature. Genevieve Waite, a model in the Twiggy fashion, had a thin, whiny baby voice, and lacked the skill to suggest any depth to the titular heroine.
The film stands up today as a shrine to misogyny, for the way in which, in the name of emancipation, women were exploited by men. Sexual freedom, bouncing along from one man to another, is the theme. “All women gained from emancipation is the privilege of being laid,” points out one (male) character. Freedom is expressed as lack of commitment. It’s kind of odd to hear young trendy men going on about commitment and expressing reservations about a flighty lifestyle, but it’s just as if the male authority figure had simply skipped a generation and was determined to keep women in their place.
Joanna, arriving from the countryside laden down with pots of home-made jam, flits through the Swinging London scene, exploring her artistic side through attending an art studio, occasionally working as a model, but more likely living off men, who are as likely to be married, and even then with another woman on the side.
She flits between artist Hendrik (Christian Dormer), nightclub owner Gordon (Calvin Lockhart) and wealthy dying toff Lord Peter Sanderson (Donald Sutherland) with a yacht in Morocco who surrounds himself with talented people because he lacks any talent himself. We don’t learn much about Joanna except her father, whom she fantasizes about cutting his throat, is a powerful enough magistrate that he can intervene when coppers are causing her boyfriend grief.
The other theme explored is racism. Gordon, a Sierra Leone native but a tax-paying British resident for eight years, is subjected to some racial abuse and later given a beating. That’s given more prominence than the miscegenation that would the following year (in 100 Rifles) attract so much controversy.
Lacking a strong narrative – mostly it’s people sitting around talking or getting into bed with each other – the film mostly hangs on a series of fantasies. Any time a new character appears, Joanna has the habit of spiriting them into a fantasy. Gordon’s sister is transformed into a maid in an English country house, Gordon becomes a Regency hero, the minute someone says sex can get you anything you desired even an elephant, lo and behold there’s Joanna sitting atop an elephant.
There’s a self-consciousness that this film can’t quite shake, the idea that somehow Sarne is holding a pillar up to society when in reality it is more a reflection of his own fantasies. The best scene comes at the end when the entire cast sings the theme song along a railway platform. The song, with no sense of irony, rhymes “top banana” with “Joanna.” And, of course, would you believe, this was all a film, director and cameras appearing at the end.
Whimsy is piled upon whimsy and that’s not enough to sustain the film. Waite offers very little except bounce, Donald Sutherland (The Split, 1968) – now coming up on 200 screen and television roles – is sorely miscast. Calvin Lockhart (The High Commissioner, 1968) brings more to the table, a polished performance that avoids the temptation to go too American. Sarne wrote the screenplay.
It’s not as bad as most films that get two stars from me but for the life of me I can’t see how it honestly earns three stars. You can sample it for free – or watch it all the way through – on Youtube.
There was one in every town: a woman, rich (Sanctuary, 1961) or poor (Claudelle Inglish, 1961) or in between (Butterfield 8, 1960), with a predilection for sex. There were several men in every town, queuing up to take advantage. The woman was inevitably a shameful creature, the men the envy of their peers. You don’t have to look further than Frank Sinatra’s tom-catting in Come Blow Your Horn (1963) or Omar Sharif as the romantic star of the decade with two women in tow in Doctor Zhivago (1965) for an idea of the double standards in play. Welcome to hypocritical Hollywood.
Grace (Suzanne Pleshette), father dead and stuck with a domineering mother, finds escape and fulfilment in sex, and just to give hypocrisy a final tug discovers that while boyfriends are keen to help her explore such physical needs, they take the hump when they discover they might not be the first – or the only. Parents, naturally, are appalled, and discovery of Grace’s antics – and she’s not particularly particular, a passing waiter will do – leads her mother to collapse.
Having confessed to potential husband Sidney (Bradford Dillman) that he will not be marrying a virgin and almost bursting with gratitude that he is willing to overlook her behavior, Grace becomes a farmer’s wife and then a happy mother, until construction owner Roger (Ben Gazzara) comes on strong. She might well have been able to have her cake and eat it but Roger, having fallen in love, reacts badly to being dumped and it’s only a matter of time before her world implodes.
Made a couple of years later, when the independent woman was being exalted, this would have been a different kettle of fish. Here, the boot on the other foot, the woman who picks and chooses her lovers seemed a step too far for that generation.
Before the big trouble begins, the movie does explore, though somewhat discreetly, the almost taboo notion that a woman might just enjoy sex for the sake of it. Sure, Grace likes being wanted and likes being held, but if she was around today, nobody would bat an eyelid if she just came out and expressed her preference.
Less discreetly, the subject of consensual sex comes up, but not as a question of debate, more as a matter of fact, that when Grace says no she actually means yes. There’s a very uncomfortable moment at the beginning when in a Straw Dogs-scene, though nothing like as violent, Grace appears to welcome a rape. Whether this is as bad as it sounds, or is just Hollywood hiding the blush that a woman would not seek out sex but could only discover its pleasures when forced upon her, is hard to say.
Nor is Grace a walking sex machine. She knows enough about men that she only has to put out feelers and any susceptible male will take the bait. And given the restrained times, she’s got no female pal with whom she can discuss her unseemly desires.
Of course, if this was a man, nobody would be batting an eyelid. Sure, once caught, he’d come up with all sorts of excuses, denials, begging for forgiveness, but an audience would give him a free pass. It’s only because this is a woman that it causes ructions. The movie just about gets close to what does make Grace happy and why she needs the thrill of extra marital sex but by that point the melodrama has taken over and there’s little time left for discussion, what with Roger intent on revenge and another lovelorn wife, mistakenly imagining her husband has fallen victim to Grace’s charms, also on the warpath.
Small town constraints play their part, too. Washing your dirty linen in public the worst of all offences. Author John O’Hara, on whose bestseller this is based – and whose other works Butterfield 8, Ten North Frederick (1958) and From the Terrace (1960) explored similar worlds – knows only too well that while wealth brings freedom and privilege it comes with chains attached.
And there’s some interesting role reversal, an illicit lover falling in love with a married person normally a starting point for a movie to explore happiness and its opposite rather than being the one act Grace will not tolerate in a lover, she wants strings-free sex, not anything with encumbrance. While Grace would like to act like a man, and has the wealth to shield herself from the worst of the fall-out, as a mother she is extremely vulnerable, and in this particular era could risk losing her child if seen as maternally unfit.
While lacking the sexual combustibility of Elizabeth Taylor or Lana Turner or other Hollywood heartbreakers, Suzanne Pleshette (Nevada Smith, 1966) gives a decent enough performance especially when it comes to her straightforward attitude to sex, aware she might be causing upheaval, but finding it impossible to ignore desire, or imagine a life in which that does not play an impulsive part.
Bradford Dillman (Sanctuary) has less room for character maneuver and is mostly called upon to suck it up. He comes into his own in the movie’s latter stages when bewilderment at betrayal and public humiliation clashes with continued love for his wife. Ben Gazzara (The Bridge at Remagen, 1969), trademark leer and smug face kept in check, has a showier role especially when the violent aspects of his character explode.
Director Walter Grauman, while better known for war picture 633 Squadron (1963), had just come off another picture dealing with female trauma (Lady in a Cage, 1964) and does quite a decent job here, the camera intensely focusing on the leading actress and then as the tragic outcome unfolds drawing away from her. There’s one great piece of composition. He had used tree branches and the countryside to frame Grace and Sidney at the height of their love. And he does the same again when Grace is abandoned.
Asks some difficult questions without quite getting to grip with the real subject of female sexuality. There was a sense that Hollywood was just on the cusp of accepting the independence of women, but didn’t want to go the whole hog just yet, because, apart from anything else, where would it leave the guys?
Klaus Kinski and The Pleasure Girls. What depraved mind dreamed up that concoction?
In reality, given this is early onset Kinski, before he was a fully-developed beast, and because it just precedes the British censor throwing off his shackles to accommodate the likes of Blow Up (1966) and The Fox (1967) it’s pretty tame stuff.
Klaus Kinski – what more did any B-picture of the decade need?
The girls might parade in night attire, and, should they happen to sleep in the nude, flash a bit of less rude skin, but that’s as far as it goes although at least couples are permitted to share a bed unlike the U.S. where that was outlawed by the Production Code (hence, in case you didn’t work it out, why there was so much frolicking via censor loopholes such as the outdoors or in the surf a la From Here to Eternity).
And you might find it hard to believe that John Wick’s Ian McShane has been a star for nearly half a century. Though here on the shifty side here and a shade fresh-faced his trademark cynical eyebrow is perpetually raised. He’s one of the suitors of a posse of girls sharing a house in London. A year later and a photographer like him would have had girls throwing themselves at him rather than primly trying to hold onto their virginity.
A weekend of drama awaits model wannabe and suburban lass Sally (Francesca Annis) on her arrival at the house, a whirlwind of parties beckoning, though drugs and booze in little evidence. Among her flatmates glamorous Dee (Suzanna Leigh) is mistress of slum landlord Nikko (Klaus Kinski) and while happy to be wined and dined and presented with jewellery, fur coats and cash, draws the line at being put up in an apartment. Compliant Angela (Anneke Wills) is enmeshed with unscrupulous gambler Priddy (Mark Eden).
While there are plenty good-time girls to hand in casinos and there is some discreet nudity at a party it’s not exactly high-end stuff what with scenes set in launderettes and street markets and girls cutting themselves shaving their legs. And while proclaiming himself sex-mad, Keith (Ian McShane) is rather more romantic than he would like, prepared to wait for Sally, even while spouting self-conscious lines like “surely every girl wants you to want to even if she doesn’t want to,” the kind of hypocritical male double standard of the day.
The Sally-Keith relationship doesn’t get much beyond will she-won’t she so the real drama takes place in the lives of Dee-Nikko and Angela-Priddy and Dee’s very outgoing brother Paddy (Tony Tanner). Nikko collects debts with the help of thugs and an Alsatian, while Priddy sells his girlfriend’s precious brooch.
There’s more violence than sex. One man beaten up and tied to the hood of a car to be whipped with a belt. Another is tied to a chair and hung out a window. And, for the time, one man’s homosexuality is unusually tenderly expressed while the prospect of a career being more attractive than marriage is given a fair airing.
It’s surprisingly well acted, all the characters believable with enough development twists to keep you interested, and of course it’s not the degrading or unseemly world the posters would have you believe although in a pre-Pill world the dangers of unprotected sex are only too obvious.
Producers Tony Tenser (later founder of Tigon) and Michael Klinger (Get Carter, 1971) had made their reputations on exploitation pictures like the previously-reviewed London in the Raw (1964) and this attempts, at least for marketing purposes, to go down a similar seedy route, but is confounded by a storyline that is more Peyton Place than Bad Girls Have Sex.
It’s more an opportunity for rising stars to be put though their paces rather than characters put in their place. Ian McShane’s (Sky West and Crooked/Gypsy Girl, 1966) twinkle is never far from view and he demonstrates the charm that will keep him in demand for the next near-50 years. Klaus Kinski (Five Golden Dragons, 1967) is remarkably restrained given his later work, proving he doesn’t have to over-act to make his mark.
Of the others in the talent shop window, Suzanna Leigh (Deadlier than the Male, 1967) makes the biggest impact. It didn’t make a star out of Francesca Annis though Mark Eden (Curse of the Crimson Altar/The Crimson Cult, 1968) had marginally better luck.
Gerry O’Hara (Maroc 7, 1967) directed from his own script.
100 Rifles was easily the most underrated film of the year. Even if the sum of all its parts did not add up to greatness, it had a lot more going for it than has generally been attributed. For a start, there was the attempt to build Jim Brown into a mainstream African American star. Secondly: the return of the bold female character that had largely disappeared since the heyday of Barbara Stanwyck, and Joan Crawford. Thirdly: the conjunction of these first two elements in a sex scene raised the issue of miscegenation that Hollywood had otherwise sought to avoid.
Fourthly, and perhaps most hard- hitting of all: the issue of genocide, the mass slaughter of the Yaqui Indian population providing an uneasy parallel not just to the United States treatment of its own indigenous Native American population but also to its actions in Vietnam.
But there was a danger that, without both incisive direction and potent performances, the movie would spiral downwards into another simple case of “When Beefcake (Jim Brown) Met Cheesecake (Raquel Welch).” Since nobody had expected Sidney Poitier to ascend the Hollywood ladder so fast, and in so doing set a trend, the industry had nobody lined up to ride in his wake and exploit what now appeared to be, at the very least, acceptance of African Africans as stars in their own right, with an audience ready to embrace a new kind of hero. Although MPAA president Jack Valenti called for more African Americans in more African American films, the number of highly touted big- budget African American–oriented pictures that offered stardom potential rarely made it out of the starting blocks.
But there was one potential crossover star waiting in the wings: Jim Brown. While lacking Poitier’s acting chops, he had the physique, looks and charisma. Cleveland Browns football legend with strong supporting roles in The Dirty Dozen (1967), Dark of the Sun (1968) and Ice Station Zebra (1968), top-billing had been limited to low-budgeters like Kenner (1968), The Split (1968) and Riot (1969).
But Variety had singled him out at the start of 1969 as one of its “new stars of the year” and judged him “the strongest contender to inherit some of Sidney Poitier’s earning power.” 100 Rifles had double the budget of any of his previous pictures.
Raquel Welch was in a similar situation to Jim Brown regarding Hollywood acceptance. However, she was not in a minority as far as female stars were concerned. The 1960s had been dominated by the likes of drama queen (in more ways than one) Elizabeth Taylor, comedy queen Doris Day and musical queen Julie Andrews, not to mention Audrey Hepburn, (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 1961), Italian import Sophia Loren (El Cid, 1961), Jane Fonda (Cat Ballou, 1965), Natalie Wood (Sex and the Single Girl, 1964) and Shirley MacLaine (Sweet Charity, 1968). There was also an overabundance of new talent in Julie Christie (Doctor Zhivago, 1965), Vanessa Redgrave (Blow Up, 1966), Lynn Redgrave (Georgy Girl, 1965), Mia Farrow (Rosemary’s Baby, 1968) and Faye Dunaway (Bonnie and Clyde, 1967).
But those stars had more to offer than mere beauty, whereas Welch, having made her name primarily as a pin- up and as eye candy in movies like One Million Years B.C. (1966) and Fantastic Voyage (1966), had trouble shaking off the idea that she won more parts on the basis of her body than for the acting skills, appearing in a dry bikini in Fathom (1967) and a wet one in Lady in Cement (1968).
However, like Jim Brown, she was actively looking to fill a niche, and set out her stall as a player of dramatic intensity, and she found it in the most unlikely of places: the western. That she chose 100 Rifles was interesting given her other choices. She was offered the Katharine Ross part in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when the lead roles had been offered to Steve McQueen and Warren Beatty and again when Paul Newman came into the frame. She was also up for the Faye Dunaway role for The Crown Caper (title later changed to TheThomas Crown Affair), again with McQueen, and a film with Terence Stamp (which was never made). But she clearly felt those roles were more decorative.
At one time, the female western star had been a staple. Claire Trevor was the star of Stagecoach (1939) and Texas (1941). Gene Tierney made her name with The Return of Frank James (1940) and Belle Starr (1941). Barbara Stanwyck carved out her own niche as a western icon after taking top billing in Union Pacific (1939), California (1947), The Furies (1950), Cattle Queen of Montana (1954), The Maverick Queen (1956) and Forty Guns (1957). While Maureen O’Hara took second billing in Rio Grande (1950), McLintock! (1963) and The Rare Breed (1965), she was the star of Comanche Territory (1950), The Redhead from Wyoming (1953) and The Deadly Companions (1961). Yvonne De Carlo headlined Black Bart (1948), The Gal Who Took the West (1949) and Calamity Jane and Sam Bass (1949). Rhonda Fleming had the female lead in The Redhead and the Cowboy (1951), The Last Outpost (1951), Pony Express (1953) and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957). Johnny Guitar (1954) achieved classic status largely on the performance of Joan Crawford.
There had even been modern precedent: Inger Stevens had nearly cornered the recent market after A Time for Killing (1967), Firecreek (1968), Hang ’Em High (1968) and 5 Card Stud (1968) while Claudia Cardinale went from a supporting role in The Professionals (1966) to top billing in the forthcoming Once Upon a Time in the West.
Raquel Welch set out to follow suit. In Bandolero (1968) she proved capable not only of holding her own against veterans James Stewart and Dean Martin but as adept on the pistol- packing side of things. While Welch professed herself “no Anne Bancroft,” she was pleased that she was not “running around half- naked all the time.” After that punched a hole in the box office, she was offered the female lead in 100 Rifles to be directed by Tom Gries who had made his name as a director with his unflinching portrayal of the cowboy in Will Penny (1968).
The basis of the film was Robert MacLeod’s The Californio, published in 1966, and the essence of the story concerned a “reckless stranger” who refused to turn the other cheek while innocent people were being killed. After Clair Huffaker turned in his screenplay, Gries wrote two further drafts. It is safe to assume that the casting of Jim Brown came after the Huffaker script had been handed in. When Huffaker did not like the way his work had ended up on screen, he insisted on using the pseudonym Cecil Dan Hansen, as he had done on The Second Time Around.
For 100 Rifles, he was so upset at the end result that he demanded either his name removed or the pseudonym installed, complaining that the finished product “bears absolutely no resemblance to my script.”
The story of The Californio bears little resemblance to 100 Rifles. Not only is the hero of the book, Steve McCall, white, he is a rawboned young man and not a lawman in his 30s. He is not a gunman either, being more proficient with the lasso. In fact, when forced into bloody action, he discovers that he abhors violence. The book could more aptly be described as a “rite of passage” novel where a young man, sent south “on legitimate business in the interests of the (U.S.) Federal Government,” leaves home for the first time, becomes a man, loses his virginity and kills his first man.
Nor is Yaqui Joe a bank robber in the book, and after meeting up with McCall, they embark on further legitimate business. Maria, named Sarita in the film, is most like her feisty movie counterpart, and although in the MacLeod version she is married, that does not prevent her taking Steve’s virginity. Of the villains, Verdugo (the name means “Hangman”), while not elevated to general, is still as ruthless, but the foreign adviser is not.
Most of the film’s action was invented by the screenwriters, including the concept of the 100 Rifles, Sarita’s sexy shower as a way of stopping the troop train, and the children being taken hostage (although in one episode in the book, children are shot). Trying to reshape the book to suit the new requirements of the characters makes the picture unnecessarily complicated. Burt Reynold’s solution was simpler: “Keep his shirt off and her [Raquel Welch’s] shirt off and give me all the lines,” he reportedly advised producer Marvin Schwartz.
The movie was shot over a ten- week period in Spain beginning in July 1968. Although that country had become a viable alternative for westerns looking to keep budgets low, in part in 1968 due to the devaluing of the peseta against the dollar, the volume of films shot there had declined by nearly a third compared to the previous year.
Despite the popularity of the location, Almeria, the actual area of countryside where most spaghetti westerns were shot, was very small. This resulted in a limited variety of available landscapes compared with films shot in the U.S. such as The Stalking Moon. The actors had to contend with extreme heat, and Gries was laid low for three days after contracting typhus. Gries decided to get the sex scene out of the way on the first day of shooting, probably to ensure that tension about the content was not allowed to linger until later in the shoot. However, it had the opposite effect. Neither Brown nor Welch had been given time to get to know one another nor to adjust to different styles of acting and to understand the perspectives of each other’s characters. Welch was not happy with the scene and tensions between the two stars continued throughout the film, some press reports putting this down to squabbles over close- ups, others to unresolved sexual tension. Welch later complained that scenes edited out of the picture had reduced audience understanding of her motivations. The MPAA also did some judicial trimming, axing Welch’s shrieks during lovemaking.
Critical reception ranged from sniffy to downright hostile. Perhaps like The Stalking Moon, advance publicity, although not this time pointing in the direction of the Oscars, had served to put critics off what sounded like an exploitative film. For the western traditionalist, sex scenes were off- putting, and although naked breasts had started appearing in a handful of movies, there were precious few full- on sex scenes, never mind one that featured miscegenation. Variety judged it a “routine Spanish- made western with a questionable sex scene as a possible exploitation hook.” On the plus side, Welch’s performance was “spirited” as was the Jerry Goldsmith score; Brown and Reynolds were just “okay.” The Showmen’s Servisection took a different view: “Fast pace, fine performances lift western several notches above the ordinary.” Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun- Times called it “pretty dreary.” Howard Thompson, the New York Times’ second- string reviewer, said it was a “triumphantly empty exercise.”
Twentieth Century–Fox had been affected by recent financial disasters such as Doctor Dolittle (1967) and Star! (1968); the former collecting $6.2 million in domestic rentals on a budget of $17 million, the latter $4.2 million in rentals after costing $14.5 million. To counter mounting exhibitor panic about production being slashed, Fox had drawn up an ambitious program for 1969, promising one new movie every month. The program kicked off with a $7.7 million adaptation of the Lawrence Durrell classic Justine with Dirk Bogarde (January), followed by Michael Caine and Anthony Quinn in the $3.77 million film of the John Fowles bestseller The Magus (February) and the trendy $1.1 million Joanna from new director Mike Sarne (March). British star Maggie Smith in the $2.7 million The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (April) came next with 100 Rifles (May) and another Marvin Schwarz production, Hard Contract starring James Coburn, costing $4 million (June). Summer highlights were Omar Sharif in the $5.1 million biopic of Che! directed by Richard Fleischer (July) and Gregory Peck in the $4.9 million Cold War thriller The Chairman (August). Come fall it was the turn of Paul Newman and Robert Redford in the western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid coming in at $6.8 million (September), Richard Burton and Rex Harrison as aging homosexuals in The Staircase costing $6.3 million (October) and Warren Beatty and Elizabeth Taylor in George Stevens’ $10 million The Only Game in Town (November). The year ended with John Wayne and Rock Hudson in the $7.1 million Civil War western The Undefeated (December).
The studio needed several box office home runs because the following year it was already committed to three roadshows—Tora! Tora ! Tora!, Hello, Dolly and Patton—costing over $60 million. By spring it was clear that the first two movies in the schedule had been major flops, Justine bringing in only $2.2 million in rentals, The Magus $1 million. Income from Joanna and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie barely exceeded costs.
By the time 100 Rifles swung into action with two largely untried leads and a director making only his second major picture, the pressure was on. “
At the box office 100 Rifles got off to a great start and Twentieth Century–Fox reported with delight that it had outgrossed Bandolero! by 40 percent in Washington (and by 500 percent in the ghetto areas), and by 300 percent in Philadelphia. In Baltimore it grossed $50,000 from a single theater compared to $80,000 from eight for Bandolero! and in Atlanta first run it had been $61,000 for the new film compared to $38,000 for the previous one. However, while Brown and Welch fans were out in force in certain areas, that did not make up for less interest in regions where westerns were associated with bigger or more traditional names. Ultimately, 100 Rifles fell short of expectations given the budget. U.S. rentals amounted to $3.5 million, and it registered in 29th position on the annual chart— the sixth highest- grossing western of the year and ahead of Mackenna’s Gold, The Stalking Moon, Paint Your Wagon and Once Upon a Time in the West.
But, of course, the domestic performance did not take into account the popularity of westerns overseas and the distinct following Raquel Welch had accumulated. So where some of the studio’s major dramas stumbled in the global market, 100 Rifles hit the ground running.
SOURCES: This is an abbreviated version of much longer chapter devoted to the film that ran in The Gunslingers of ’69: Western Movies’ Greatest Year (McFarland, 2019) by Brian Hannan (that’s me). All the references mentioned can be found in the Notes section of that book.
Highly under-rated but effective western that cemented Raquel Welch’s position as the queen of the genre, established Jim Brown as the first African American action star, scored points for its parallels with Vietnam, and provided the only image of the actress to rival that iconic fur bikini.
Arizona lawman Lyedecker (Brown) arrives in Sonora, Mexico, in 1912 on the trail of half- breed bank robber Yaqui Joe (Burt Reynolds). He finds the Mexican army callously executing Yaqui Indian rebels. To prevent further killing, Joe creates a diversion, which, while failing, permits the captured Sarita (Raquel Welch) to escape. The $6,000 Joe stole buys the titular 100 rifles to help the rebel cause.
Most posters played up the action but here the emphasis is on La Welch.
Helped by Lyedecker, Joe escapes, picking up Sarita on the way. Both Lyedecker and the Mexicans are in pursuit, and the Mexicans soon recapture Joe and Lyedecker, who is now viewed as a rebel. Sarita again escapes. Lyedecker and Joe are returned to the garrison where the Mexicans have taken possession of the rifles. Just as the pair are put in front of a firing squad, Sarita, leading a group of rebels, frees them and steals the weapons.
In retaliation, the Mexicans attack a village, slaughtering the inhabitants and taking the children as hostages. At night, Lyedecker, Sarita, Joe and some rebels capture the garrison before the soldiers return, freeing the children. Lyedecker has been injured in the battle; after Sarita binds the wound, they make love.
When they take the rifles to the rebel stronghold, they discover the rebel leader is dead. For no particular reason, the rebels elect Lyedecker their new “generale.” Seizing a Mexican troop train is pitifully easy once Sarita creates a diversion by taking a shower under a water tower. The empty train is sent cannoning into the town and in the ensuing battle Sarita is killed. Yaqui Joe takes over leadership of the rebels while Lyedecker rides home.
While the capture- escape-chase-capture formula is overdone, the movie’s biggest structural problem is Yaqui Joe, clearly turned into a drunk to avoid becoming a romantic encumbrance for Sarita, leaving the way clear for Lyedecker. His other contributions are to brawl with Lyedecker and try to get the American to give up his quest and stay and help the rebels. There are other unnecessary characters and touches. We know it is a modern western because a motor car is involved as there would be in The Wild Bunch. The sole purpose of a German military adviser Von Klemme (Eric Braeden) is to act as a sounding board for Gen. Verdugo (Fernando Lamas), whose actions in any case speak louder than words. Railroad magnate Grimes (Dan O’Herlihy) represents equally callous big business. When Americans get drunk in westerns, that usually leads to fisticuffs, but when Indians knock back the liquor in 100 Rifles they act like clichéd drunken Indians, tearing up the town, looting and destroying anything in sight.
These reservations apart, the film has a great deal to recommend it. On the whole, it is well directed, although without much of an eye for landscape. Sarita, wearing a red headscarf, thus continuously color-coded, is accorded the greatest emotional depth, haunted by guilt for sacrificing her father in the name of freedom: “I helped him to die.” But she has another weapon at her disposal: her body. When captured, she distracts a soldier with sight of her breasts before stabbing him, the shock in her eyes suggests this is the first time she has killed a man.
Although the narrative advocates her as feisty leader from the start, this scene, and in particular her reaction, suggests otherwise. More than capable of taking care of herself, it is she, and not the two stronger men, who effects an escape. When she organizes the rescue of the two men, she’s more interested in the guns than them. But when it comes to children, they take precedence.
The genocide theme, pertinent both to American treatment of its own indigenous Native Americans and to the current war in Vietnam, is raised. It is more trouble than it’s worth for Gen. Verdugo to clear the Indians from their lands and ship them elsewhere, as the Americans had done when putting Indians onto reservations. Verdugo has few compunctions. Unlike in The Wild Bunch and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, here the railroad is a tool of control. Trains loaded with troops and guns (including Gatling guns, also seminal to The Wild Bunch) and artillery can travel with ease across alien territory to keep the inhabitants in check. As exemplified by Grimes, railroads also represent the intrusion of big business into politics and ordinary lives, and the railroad man, while concerned that Lyedecker’s possible execution could jeopardize U.S.- Mexican relationships and, by extension, possible halt the American railroad’s expansion, is ultimately more apprehensive about damage to running stock than the cost in human lives of his partnership with the Mexicans.
There’s a nod to seminal Sidney Poitier picture The Defiant Ones (1958) with Lyedecker and Joe chained together, and the American, initially disinterested in rebellion, only takes up the cause after a child he has befriended is slaughtered.
100 Rifles shares with The Stalking Moon, The Wild Bunch, Mackenna’s Gold, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid the theme of relentless pursuit, of an implacable enemy, often with justice or morality or power on their side, who will never give up, and, in a twist on this, in True Grit Rooster Cogburn is the one in fearless pursuit.
At the time, in male-dominated society, the sexual centerpiece was Raquel Welch in various states of undress, forgetting that women, too, were apt to be partial to the sight of an unclothed muscular male. It is Jim Brown who is first seen shirtless. And it is Sarita who takes control of the scene, kissing him as a reward “for all the bad things I said to you.” (Another gender twist, for usually it is the man making reparation.) A more tender scene between Lyedecker and Sarita, ostensibly of the more traditional kind, feisty female transformed into docile housewife by cooking her man a steak invited another reading, more in keeping with her character, not, you may notice, clinging to him, desperate for his love, but happy to enjoy the moment and abandon him when it suits (as Katharine Ross will in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, departing before the outlaws die).
For many, of course, the highlight is Sarita, the leader in all but name, using her body as weapon. As the train approaches the water tower, the soldiers see Sarita standing underneath dressed in only a man’s shirt, taking a shower. The train shudders to a halt for this voyeuristic delight; the camera too, for the audience’s sake, lingering on Sarita’s curves.
Although 100 Rifles is ponderous and improbable in places, with too much emphasis on escape- and-rescue, it certainly achieves its immediate aims, setting up Brown as an action man, giving Welch a role that’s hardly subordinate, ensuring the combination is as sexy as all get-out, while at the same time supplying enough shoot- outs and battle scenes to keep traditionalists happy. As important, director Tom Gries (Will Penny, 1968) is not afraid of using the film to make points, if sometimes a little heavy- handed, about Vietnam and genocide. Clair Huffaker (The Hellfighters, 1968) wrote the screenplay along with Gries based on a Robert MacLeod novel.
All in all, a movie that deserves a good bit more respect.
This review is an edited version of an article that appeared in The Gunslingers of ’69: Western Movies’ Greatest Year (McFarland, 2019) by Brian Hannan (that’s me).
Far more prophetic than you would have ever thought possible in acknowledging the growing power of the young, the pandering of politicians to them, and the unexpected ability of youth to see through politicians and set their own agenda. Plus, Christopher Jones gives the kind of performance that had David Lean rushing to sign him up for Ryan’s Daughter (1970).
It was prescient, too, of its time, not just the notion that the young could lead the way in opposition to political forces.
And what top pop star has not believed they could harness their global following for the greater good – Live Aid the classic example – and once you’ve bedded your way through the known female universe and sampled every drug known to man there has to be something else that’s going to grab your attention. And, for once, a movie star makes a very credible pop star.
Max Frost (Christopher Jones), channelling his inner Jim Morrison, is on top of the world, a phenomenon, the biggest thing since Elvis and The Beatles. His rebellious streak emerges at an early age. And where other nutcases would torture animals or pull the legs off spiders or play with matches, he blows up the family car. But he’s something of a statistician and reacts to the notion that there are more young people than old people – 52 per cent of the population is under 25 – by writing a song about it, a song that turns into a protest that segues into a movement.
Aspiring politician Fergus (Hal Holbrook) thinks he can harness what he perceives as a dumb youngster with fans so dumb they will ape his every command. His vote-winning idea is to campaign on a platform of lowering the voting age from 21 to 18, not that revolutionary an idea since ever since American men were shipped off the Vietnam there had been similar calls along the lines of too young to vote but not too young to die.
Max pretends to back him but instead demands the voting age be reduced to 14. This being politics, there’s negotiation, and the compromise is reducing the age to 15. The ever-read Max has songs covering whatever age is agreed.
Bandmember Sally LeRoy (Diane Varsi) is elected and gets a law passed to lower the voting age. Fearing youth and somehow assuming Max will curb their worst excesses, older politicians support his bid for the Presidency (as you may know, anyone in the U.S. can become President even if they lack political experience) but once he gains power he turns on them and forces through a law making retirement compulsory at 30. And goes about, Heaven help us all, doing good, albeit with a dictatorial agenda.
But the fairly straightforward satire, puffed out with endless scenes of public demonstration, works very well, and not just because the power of youth is demonstrated everywhere today, not least among Hollywood mavens who seem unable to make anything that doesn’t appeal to that age group, but because the brain behind the scheme are actually pretty smart. The group is presented as clever all round, their excessive income down to the business acumen of Billy (Kevin Coughlin) so the band have no chance of ending up penniless, ripped off by everyone in sight. Sally is a former child star so she’s been taken advantage of already and ain’t going to let it happen again. There’s a clever sting in the tale that takes the campaign to its logical conclusion.
It’s great fun seeing grizzled politicians being outsmarted by Max and his cohorts and for the older population to, unwittingly, get a taste (no pun intended) of what it’s like to be young. Audiences went for this in a big way since it presented an alternative universe, part sci-fi but also with some imminently achievable aims, some of which came to fruition. Hollywood was brought to heel the following year after Easy Rider, only in retrospect anyone realizing that the rescue from box office oblivion of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by spaced-out hippies was a turning point not a one-off. The voting age was lowered a couple of years later. These days, of course, nobody needs elected or has to pass a law for changes to be made, and far quicker than if they had to go through the political process. Developments nobody voted for have been forced through by the court of public opinion, though sometimes by the very minorities that were once outside the existing power base.
Christopher Jones (Three in the Attic, 1968) delivers his best performance in what turned out to be a very short career. Shelley Winters (A House Is Not a Home, 1964) gives another scene-stealing turn and on back-up are Hal Holbrook (All the President’s Men, 1976) , in only his second movie, Diane Varsi in her biggest role to date, Millie Perkins (The Diary of Anne Frank, 1959) and an early showing from Richard Pryor.
Barry Shear (The Karate Killers, 1967) directed from a screenplay by Robert Thom (Death Race 2000, 1975).
You could probably go through this ticking off what predictions have come true and it’s more powerful now than it was at the time.
Faultessly prophetic. Acquiring significantly greater power than at initial release. You can easily imagine Dennis (Anthony Perkins) these days as a conspiracy theorist on social media. You can picture Sue Ann (Tuesday Weld) as the impressionable acolyte learning at his feet. What she picks up most is the art of manipulation. And it’s done with marvelous flair, disturbing information slipped in at the right moment, and so focused are we on Dennis we scarcely notice Sue Ann’s transformation.
There’s a sense of Big Brother – Dennis evades his probation officer for a year to prevent his activities being overseen – and untrammelled big business, the chemical factory nonchalantly poisoning the local river. And it all takes place in Humdrum U.S.A.: hot dog stands, teenagers practising for parades, evenings at the movies, necking in the woods, mindless jobs in factories, with just a hint of overbearing police wielding a moral big stick.
Classic example of the marketing team getting cold feet. Fox didn’t know how to sell this in the subtle fashion it required so it came over in the bulk of the advertising materials as second cousin to “Bonnie and Clyde.”
The 1960s had taken a new line on the wicked women of the 1930s and the femme fatales of film noir. They might be mentally disturbed like Lilith (1964) or scrapheap fodder like Bonnie Parker (Bonnie and Clyde, 1967), but more likely to be cartoon villains decorating spy movies. This follows a completely different path, exploring latent tendency that might have remained hidden forever except for encountering the right spark.
Dennis is an outright oddball, a fantasist who has created for himself another world of being a secret agent intent on thwarting an alien plot. (Less intense than A Beautiful Mind, 2001) Some people, the next door neighbor, for example, who without question drops in spools of microfilm at the chemist for development under her own name, are easily taken in. Others are not, his employer at the chemical factory itching for an excuse to fire him, Sue Ann’s mother (Beverly Garland) who catches him out too easily.
Dennis snares gullible bouncy blonde Sue Ann in textbook style. He elicits mystery, popping in and out of her life, peppering her with secret codes, tradecraft, warnings, a farrago of information that would appeal to the insecure. She goes from girlfriend to accomplice, an eager participant in Dennis’s admittedly clever plan to cause the plant to shut down. But when he is rumbled by the nightwatchman and rooted to the spot in fear, it’s Sue Ann who comes to the rescue, clubbing the interloper, pushing his body in the river, sitting triumphantly aside her still conscious victim holding his head under the water.
The twist is: reality has paid a visit. Dennis is shocked at the murder. Although his past is now revealed, he is remorseful that it caused unfortunate consequence. Sue Ann’s reaction is the opposite. She wants post-murder sex. Cool to the point of calculating, remorse scarcely entering her vocabulary, taking command, spinning a web Dennis doesn’t see coming.
It plays out brilliantly, even to the point of Dennis taking comfort in the fact that he has spawned a murderess, one who might embark on an endless killing spree, such is the attractive innocent mask she hides behind.
You would put down Anthony Perkins (Psycho, 1960) as warped the minute his lop-sided grin slips into place. But there’s a youthfulness to this nutcase, always sprinting away, and he’s not, like Norman Bates, sitting in a lair awaiting potential victims, and, in a sense, he’s humanized by a beautiful woman falling in love with him. He’s out there like a con man with the practised patter that’s going to snare the pliable. If he was planning to wage war on the chemical polluters we’d be on his side immediately, and although that kind of action wasn’t yet going to turn anyone into an automatic screen hero, it does now, so a contemporary audience would be inclined to view him through an entirely different, and more sympathetic, prism.
Perkins’s playing is perfectly judged. He takes the mickey out of stuffy superiors, smart enough to elude the probation officer for a year, astute enough to find a job that gives credence to his secret identity, ingenious enough to come up with the perfect crime, and certainly his vulnerability evokes audience sympathy, especially when it transpires he may be the subject of unlawful judgement.
But Tuesday Weld (The Cincinnati Kid, 1965) is this movie’s gift. She is stunningly believable, both as the innocent dupe and the calculating killer. Yet she never emerges from her teenage dream. Even when her actions are clearly more grown-up she remains winsome and youthful. If Perkins is revealed as a child who had never grown up, Perkins becomes an adult in teenager’s clothing.
It’s only at the end you think perhaps this movie should be read back-to-front and that Perkins was the victim all along. (Arthouse filmmakers have been more celebrated for less.) Which would make her the mother (or perhaps daughter) of all femme fatales. There is no limit to what she going to get away with. If it was made today, there would be a sequel a year.
Noel Black (Run, Shadow, Run/Cover Me Babe, 1970) was the cult director’s cult director, eventually making a living in television, and only occasionally managing a big screen effort. This would have been a twisty enough number at the time but has rightly grown into a cult.
You couldn’t make this now. What top-ranked actor would be willing to play a character who takes sexual advantage of a vulnerable young woman? You’d find it even harder to get a marquee name to play a female with paedophiliac tendencies, predatory sexual instincts and thinks it fine to drive a lovelorn young man to suicide.
That it was feasible back in the day was largely due to the restraints imposed by the much-maligned Production Code. Most of the issues are delicately probed, the problematic themes only touched upon, so that the result is quite amazing, the director turning to the lyrical, rendered by its intensity a metaphor for internal conflict.
War veteran Vincent (Warren Beatty) takes a job as an occupational therapist at an upmarket mental institution, the kind that looks more like a country club or grand hotel with extensive manicured grounds. Few of the inmates are of the type found in the normal hospitals for the insane, the worst cases a woman with a maniacal laugh and another who treats a doll like a baby, but he is warned insane women are more “sinister” than crazy men.
One of his charges is the withdrawn Lilith (Jean Seberg) whom he gradually coaxes out of her shell, soon believing that it is his innate skill that brings about the possibility that such a high-risk individual could possibly achieve something akin to cure, or at least a greater degree of normality. You can hardly blame him for missing the obvious – that Lilith is using him – for the young woman is every inch the winsome innocent seeking guidance from the more mature responsible male.
It’s mostly shorn of obvious metaphor but there is one scene, compelling in itself, where Vincent plays the knight on horseback, complete with lance, winning a contest of skills for his lady, that completes his idealisation in her eyes. But he is already halfway there, with unexpected dexterity he frees her hair caught in loom, the kind of scene that in an otherwise more romantically-inclined movie would be the meet-cute.
And this isn’t one of those films about a madwoman in an attic or an apparently sane person turning demented. Instead, considerable time is spent analysing the condition of the schizophrenic, either through clinical lead Dr Lavrier (James Patterson) expounding his theories or through Vincent discussing individual patients with his boss Dr Brice (Kim Hunter). The idea of opening up a new realm to an audience is crystallised in one scene where Lavrier explains that even spiders go mad, resulting in asymmetrical webs rather than the typical formations to which we are more accustomed.
And by using one of the oldest tricks in the book, an inexperienced young man negotiating a new world, disbelief is suspended. But just when we think we are seeing everything from Vincent’s perspective, we are thrown into a heightened intensity linked to the lyrical – a river, a waterfall – the madness of ecstasy, what used to be called rapture, as Lilith stares and stares at nature.
But there are warnings about the personality of both characters. Lilith bears a startling resemblance to Vincent’s dead mother. He has difficulty committing, lack of communication while away at war resulting in girlfriend Yvonne (Anne Meacham) marrying someone else.
And there is plenty that is disconcerting about Lilith that only the besotted would overlook. She leads on lovelorn Stephen (Peter Fonda) to potential disasters he cannot foresee. Angry at Vincent, “I show my love for all of you and you despise me,” she seduces vulnerable older patient Laura (Jessica Walter). But the worst aspect of her character is that she perceives no boundaries to behavior. She exhibits inappropriate attitudes to young boys, inviting one to rub his finger along her lower lip.
However, for most of the film the skilful direction of Robert Rossen (The Hustler, 1961) has you rooting for the young lovers. Even while never falling back on the cliché of the doctor-type saving the ill person, there is enough in Vincent’s earnestness and Lilith’s innocence to make that a distinct possibility, were it not for the other discordant elements of her character. The picture is wrapped in natural sound – the river, waterfall, a flute playing mournful tune, ping-pong ball hitting bat, reeds or branches parting, rain, footsteps, a ticking clock, and the bulk of the music emanates from Stephen’s radio. And then he will twist it slightly, reflections are seen upside-down in the river, or a shot of the waterfall is held for too long, the sound of water increasing, or Lilith standing in the river bends down to kiss the surface, or at a picnic she eats a leaf irrespective of whether it might be poisonous.
Usually, when you get so much detail it’s a surfeit, and ends up drowning the viewer. But that’s not the case here. Either it builds or expands. And there is even a throwaway that mocks the notion of containing madness in an institution. The best, most revealing, line in the picture is not spoken by either of the two principals, but secondary character Yvonne, seen only at the beginning and end. When for unspecified reasons Vincent turns up at her house and her husband (Gene Hackman) leaves them on their own, she says, “I told you I’d never really let you make love to me until I was married,” (pause), “well, I’m married now.”
Jean Seberg (Moment to Moment, 1966) is just superb, coming across as a young woman entering adulthood full of fears and insecurities, only suggesting the darker side of her character, and never giving in to the temptation of overplaying. Warren Beatty (Kaleidoscope, 1966) can’t quite match her for subtlety or kick those acting mannerisms – lowered head, looking away – but his stupefied expression towards the end as he realizes just what he has taken on is priceless.
There’s an outstanding cast of rising stars. Peter Fonda (Easy Rider) as the preppy insecure victim is excellent while Jessica Walter suggests the qualities that would make her the prime candidate for the femme fatale in Play Misty for Me (1971). Gene Hackman, in his movie debut and still working on his trademark chuckle, provides early evidence of his immense talent.
Robert Rossen, who wrote the screenplay (from the novel by J.R. Salamanca) and also produced, couldn’t have wished for a better epitaph. This was his final film in a relatively short career – he only directed 10 films.
Despite contemporary reservations about the content this is a beautifully observed piece and well worth a look.
When your starting point is an arcane French inheritance law and the plot revolves around swindling a concentration camp survivor you are immediately on “icky” ground. Throw in a relationship between an adult male and the step-daughter of his deceased wife and the audience might already be backing off.
So it’s a tribute to the acting and that each character is not so much unlikeable as both vulnerable and predatory that this turns into a very involving drama. On the eve of World War Two in Paris Dr Michele Wolf (Ingrid Thulin) buys the love of penniless Polish chess player Stanislaus (Maximilian Schell) but at the cost of abandoning her step-daughter Fabi (Samantha Eggar). For him, love is contingent on wealth, but he marries Michele, a Jew, in a (failed) bid to save her from the clutches of the Nazis. Fabi, shorn of maternal love finds turns to a paternal variation, but is capable of coming up with an ingenious murder plot.
Just quite how hollow Michele has become is demonstrated in a brilliant opening scene set after the end of the war. In a railway carriage, a bored small boy endlessly kicks a door. Pretty much for 90 seconds we either see or hear that door being kicked. Foolishly, his hands wander from the window to the door handle. Next thing, he has fallen out. Cue screams, chaos, shocked passengers racing out of the carriage.
But when the conductor turns up to investigate the incident he finds Michele still sitting in her seat, oblivious to any death, even that of a child. When she returns to Paris, she takes a room in a hotel under a pseudonym, fearing that her ravaged looks make her unattractive, guilty at surviving (by volunteering to work in the camp brothel) when all her relatives were wiped out, unaware that she has unexpectedly inherited all their combined wealth.
So the story begins in a different way. When Stanislaus meets her accidentally under her false name, he immediately assumes she is just a dead ringer for his deceased wife and enrols her in a scheme to win the millions currently held in escrow under this inexplicable French law.
Since she continues to play the part of a different woman, she hears the truth about her relationship with Stanislaus, that although he committed the only unselfish “gallant act” in his life in marrying her nonetheless his prime reason was money. Already Fabi, in full femme fatale mode, is planning to rid the couple of Michele once the money has been legally acquired.
To his credit, Stanislaus initially balks at this notion, but when Michele reveals her true identity and scuppers his relationship with Fabi while at the same time trying to win back the affection of her step-daughter, matters take a deadly turn.
For the most part what we have is a menage a trois, equal parts driven by money and love, but in each instance propelled by innermost desire. Stanislaus is adept at pulling the wool over Michele’s eyes, she only too willingly blinding herself to his sexual deception. But Michele is equally willing, even when she knows his true feelings, to use her money to win him back while Fabi, aware that for her lover money will always trump romance, is determined to use her body to achieve the same effect.
What makes this so compelling is that, unusually, it avoids sentiment. It would have been easy to load each character up with such vulnerability that an audience would not condemn them. Instead, in addition to their individual weaknesses, we are shown their inherent predatory natures.
What makes it so enjoyable is the acting. So often Maximilian Schell is called upon to play stern characters, often typecast from his accent as a villainous German of one kind or another (Judgement at Nuremberg, 1961, The Deadly Affair, 1967), rather than allowing him to invent a more rounded character as he did in Topkapi (1964). This is a wonderfully involving performance, the wannabe chess grandmaster who uses his considerable charm to buttress his fears of poverty, and is only too aware of his failing, full of joie de vivre, bristling at being a kept man yet at the same time only too ready to financially exploit the situation.
Where in The Collector (1965) Samantha Eggar was constrained by circumstance and in Walk, Don’t Walk (1966) saddled with an initially cold character, here she is permitted greater freedom to develop a conflicted personality, loving and deadly at the same time, drawn to and hating her step-mother, attracted by the thought of the money that would secure Stanislaus but repulsed by the cost.
Ingmar Bergman protégé Ingrid Thulin (Wild Strawberries, 1957) is given the least leeway, another of the tormented characters in her intense portfolio. Herbert Lom (Villa Rides, 1968) puts in an appearance as a friend trying to warn her off Stanislaus.
Director J. Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone, 1961) takes the bold approach of allowing characters and situation to develop before moving into thriller mode. There are a couple of quite superb scenes, running the opening segment close is the much-vaunted scene of Fabi in the bath (“No one may enter the theater once Fabi enters her bath” was a famous tagline). It is brilliantly filmed in film noir tones, bright light slashed across eyes rather than through windows, and Johnny Dankworth provides an interesting score. Julius J. Epstein (Casablanca, 1942) wrote the screenplay based on the bestseller by Hubert Monteilhet.
Wild raucous’n’roll rollercoaster that, contrary to expectation, I found totally absorbing, length not an issue. Employing a simple structure of rise and fall, and exploring the upside and downside of Hollywood in the transition from silent to sound, it seemed to me in essence to capture movie-making. A Broadway play could be a hit if seen by 100,000 people, that size of audience constituting a flop for a movie, but the play was viewed by 100,000 of the “right” people, the moneyed elite who could afford the tickets, a movie by the flotsam and jetsam that made up the majority of the American population even when, theoretically, the country was going through the boom times of the “Jazz Age.”
Most films and books concentrate on the downside, the battle to get to the top, the seamy undercurrent, the inevitable collapse, but none capture the giddy heights like this. Silent movies were viewed primarily as technical, nobody had to even talk, much less learn lines or spout Shakespeare. Initially, the stars were drawn from vaudeville so had some proven talent but then it was clear anyone could become a star, such as here Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), or a producer like Manny Torres (Diego Calva) by simply being in the right place at the right time, initiating a gold rush to Los Angeles.
Just as there is no single reason for the camera and audience to turn a person into a star, the same applies when they fall out of favor. In a movie thankfully given little to long lectures on filmmaking beyond aspirations to “form” and wanting to do something good, the best explanation about how/why careers end is delivered in dry tones by columnist Elinor St John (Jean Smart) to disillusioned out-of-favor Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt).
The narrative shuttles between Conrad, LaRoy and Torres, interweaving the lives of trumpet player Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), Conrad’s multiple wives, LaRoy’s hapless father (Eric Roberts), director Ruth Adler (Olivia Hamilton) studio wunderkind Irving Thalberg (Max Minghella), publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst (Pat Skipper), gangster James McKay (Tobey Maguire) and imperious director Otto (Spike Jonze). Excess is the name of the game whether ostentatious consumption Hollywood-style or the more sedate black tie dinners of caviar and lobster enjoyed by the elite.
The elite looked down their noses on a new class of wealthy individuals who were ill-educated, didn’t talk proper, but had struck gold simply from being able to stand in front of a camera without being able to tell their Ibsen from their Shakespeare and didn’t understand art.
Surprisingly, this is a pretty good comedy, slapstick sometimes but excelling at setting up visual jokes, though audiences might recoil from a rare reliance on elephant ordure and vomit. Some scenes are pure standout: Nellie’s first talk scene where the sound engineer has tyrannical control; Nellie’s fight with the snake; Manny’s race to find a camera before the director loses the light; the uncontrolled venom of battle scenes; the black Sidney not black enough; and of course the various wild parties although nothing in the Hollywood imagination could match the depravity of one where Manny is the unwilling guest of gangster McKay, as if fiction cannot match reality.
Of course, people who have everything rarely know what they actually want and spend their lives throwing away what they have in pursuit of the unattainable, so Conrad is apt to view wives as disposable, Nellie finds relief in drugs and gambling, Manny’s obsession with Nellie which should lead to ruin paradoxically by happenstance brings him happiness. The rampant unchecked hedonism that runs through the picture could well just be a metaphor for the helter-skelter modus operandi of the movies, enjoy it while you’re hot, cram in as much as you can, because, heaven knows, something from left field (sound, for example) could dramatically upend everything.
Brad Pitt (Bullet Train, 2022) is very good as the often drunk but generally streetwise star. You can hardly take your eyes off Margot Robbie (Amsterdam, 2022), not just for her brazen sexuality, but her ability to cry on cue, awareness of her self-destructive personality, inherited from self-destructive parents, greedy idiotic father, mother committed to an upmarket mental institution. Diego Calva (Beautiful Losers, 2021) is good in a less showy part. Interesting cameos abound.
This has the intensity of Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash (2014) rather than the cleverness of La La Land (2016).
I mentioned in my review of Tar that it could have done with a stronger producer to cut down on the running times and some elements I felt were bound to alienate audiences. I would make the same suggestion here, though not so forcefully. Elephant shit and urination are always, I reckon, going to be a major turn-off for audiences. While I had no trouble with the length, that’s clearly been an issue and it would hardly be a problem for a decent editor to snip chunks out of party scenes or eliminate non-essential characters.
Emotionally and artistically this seems to me to capture the essence of the formative days of Hollywood before the double whammy of the Great Depression and the Hays Code brought about a systematic rethink with studios insisting their stars take more care hiding their proclivities from general view.
The Magnificent 60s 